The thing of it is...

HOLY $#!*

2010-12-30T15:39:00.000-08:00

If you want to watch a movie that will make you sit right up in your chair, with your eyeballs popping out of your head in disbelief and general horror, while your stomach queases over with disgust at the inconceivable images of brutality and the actor from Old Boy loses all the dubious sympathy he had gained... man, this is the flick for you. It's called I Saw The Devil and it is NOT messing around. I don't so much recommend it as warn you about it. I'm glad I saw it, but it is most definitely not for everyone.

It is as if the writer and director watched a series of revenge movies, Straw Dogs, Death Wish, anything else with Charles Bronson, and they said, "That's pretty good, but not revengey enough. Needs more brutal revenge and more brutality to the victims." They took the revenge genre adn turned it up to 11. It's impressive, but not something to watch if you want to sleep easily.

In true Bluth style, though: That's why you always kill the serial killer when you first catch him.

Makes me sad

2009-06-08T21:30:00.001-07:00

Upsetting

To all my in-laws

2009-01-29T22:13:00.001-08:00

While I still love you all and respect you, ultimately this is how I feel about this.

An experiment in Entertainment

2009-01-29T02:37:00.000-08:00

First: watch The Deal or The Queen with Michael Sheen.
Second: Watch any of the Underworld movies.
Third: Try not think sentences like: "Tony Blair just bit the hell out of Felicity Guy's neck!"

It's fun, give it a try.

Tootsie and Sinatra, some thoughts on some movies

2009-01-27T16:36:00.000-08:00

Depressingly, while I was looking for a good photo of Tootsie I found a blog entry by some other guy, who seems to be a Clevelander, who summed up what I wanted to say even better than I ever could, but I will champion on anyway. Tootsie is NOT the God Of All Comedies. I am not sure what film that title would go to, though I have always remembered the first time I saw Dumb and Dumber, with Jon Park. We got into the end of the early showing and without having any idea of the plot watched the last half hour. We were laughing so hard that our sides ached before we ever even saw the last of the credits. By the time the movie started over we had calmed adequately to be able to breathe. But from the first moment seeing Jim Carrey's absurd haircut again we were rolling. I think I laughed more in that movie than at anything in my whole life. But I WAS 16, so I probably had hormonal issues going on. Or perhaps what I thought was laughter was actually some sort of internal zit popping.

My point, I promise there was one in there, is that Tootsie is ok. It's not great. Bill Murray is far and away the best thing about the movie. Without question, his last line, sitting in an easy chair and reading Dashiell Hammett, is the best line in the movie. If the film had ended right there, I'd have been happy.

The music is embarrassing. Jessica Lange... let's talk about Jessica Lange. She got an Oscar for this? Really? And why is she considered better looking than Terri Garr? Terri Garr is WAY more attractive than Jessica Lange, and more fun, seemingly. I mean, at least she gives it up, and on virtually no effort. For Hoffman's character, I mean, this guy is BEGGING women to talk to him and he had Terri Garr sitting right there? What's his problem? (Admittedly she is shown to be a little cuckoo, but isn't that what women in romantic comedies are supposed to be?)

The supposedly feminist slant was ludicrous. The only way I could see it was that if a woman was more like a man, or indeed a man, then she would be more like what women want to be. It is like when Hooper breaks down the racism of Return of the Jedi in Chasing Amy. I wish I wasn't at work so I could put up a YouTube of that scene. The crux of his argument is that Darth Vader indicates the filmmaker's vision of African Americans really desiring to be white men. It seems that this goes double for Tootsie.

But man, Bill Murray slumming is still better than anyone else doing anything, ever.

Then we come to The Son Of A Bitch, Frank Sinatra. Even before I really understood who Frank Sinatra was I knew that my Aunt Mae hated him. I remember before going to Florida for the first time, when Grandpa Pitrone told my parents all about Aunt Mae's habits. I think that I was eating Kix at the time. Anyways, he was saying the she never swears, something like: "She says Jimminy Christmas and things like that, but she does say SOB whenever Frank Sinatra is mentioned." I was little, younger than 10, so this mostly flew over my head, except that I liked the phrase Jimminy Christmas. It then became this little joke between Tom and her. Or at least Tom used it to make fun of her, which was always funny. An Aunt Mae a little irritated was an Aunt Mae happy, so that worked well.

In later years I have always wondered, given Aunt Mae's life and Frank Sinatra's reputation, whether or not they had had a fling at some point, or if her distaste was more of a second-hand thing. I like the idea of Aunt Mae being on Frank's arm and some ding-a-ling function, but it is probably just a figment of my over-active imagination.

Again, sort of a rambling method to get to what I wanted to say, which is this: Frank Sinatra really kind of seems like a Son Of A Bitch in this movie. I could kind of believe that Aunt Mae just saw this in the theatre and decided he was scum from there.

I really like the movie, for the most part. It starts out really strong. The story of a cabaret singer in 1920s Chicago, defying the mob to do what he wants. Lots of renditions of All The Way. This seems to have everything you could want. Then, tragedy. He gets beaten up and, as one character puts it, "They slashed his vocal cords." (This seems unlikely to me. It's a pretty careful surgery to have random thugs perform. There is no evidence here, but I suspect they just slit his throat.) Then he disappears from the hospital and all of a sudden it's 1937. Time jumps around a bit in this movie, but it's worth it.

There are some really terrific little things here:

There are scars on Frank's face that no one mentions in the whole movie.
There are two women who love him, and he is just a jerk.
His marriage falls apart and it is indicated that it is all his fault, but watching the film I can't figure it out. It seems like his career-girl wife is to blame. Or at least, it seems so to me. Margaret says I always take the man's side. I argued my point pretty loudly, and I suppose too long. Finally she told me I was right and could we please watch the movie again.

However, the end is terrible. It has some thematic significance, but ultimately it just feels like the writers ran out of steam.

Oh, and the jokes are so bad that it reminds you that comedy was a bizarre wasteland for a long time. People sing the praises of Lenny Bruce, people including Bob Dylan, but come on, that stuff wasn't funny. Was it provocative? Possibly. Was it satirical? Probably. Was it funny? Hell no.

Sam Kinison is the same thing. And Andrew Dice Clay. What the heck are people laughing about there?

So maybe Tootsie really seemed like The God Of All Comedies when it came out.

Finally, I am making another, by now routine, impassioned plea for further Uncle Michael stuff. I am adding everything I get to the site, as I get it. If you have anything you'd like to see, or would like others to see, send it on over to my e-mail and I will post it. Thanks.

Thoughts?

Very Good

2009-01-18T06:45:00.003-08:00

I liked it. They tore up Tricky Dick pretty hard, but it was still pretty doggone good.

Huh...

2009-01-18T00:16:00.001-08:00

A Couple Things

2009-01-16T05:38:00.000-08:00

This first:

Second:

No one has anything else in regards to Uncle Michael? I am shocked. I thought there would be an overflow of many, many things. I am very surprised.

Deee-licious

2009-01-14T02:58:00.000-08:00

Can I suggest that everyone, including and especially Don Tomaso, start checking out the "All The Things I Look At Daily" link on my Links menu. I update it daily with many, many interesting things and the things I have found this evening will enthrall. Trust me, enthrall.

Uncle Michael Pitrone 101

2009-01-13T03:38:00.001-08:00

On what would otherwise be a pretty joyous occasion, the writing of my 101st blog post, instead I am here to mourn the passing of my Uncle Michael. He died yesterday evening at 9PM EST. It was 11AM here in Okinawa and I had a whole work-day to think about how I feel about it. (Well, I did have work to do too, but I thought about it an awful lot.) And I feel like I never really knew the man. That's what I feel like. I liked him, I loved him. He was family and in the Pitrones that means something and a half. But I guess I never knew him.

I remember that his coming, when I was little, was the first time anyone explained what being gay was to me. (And thanks for that one, Tom. It would have been uncomfortable except that I had no concept of it at all. I thought it was yucky. To this day I think that it is kind of yucky, but I suppose that my way of doing things seem pretty yucky from the other side of the fence. As Stephen Fry has said, "When I was born I took one look at my Mother's birth canal and said to myself, 'That's the last time I go in there.'")

He was cool, though. He read a Return of the Jedi book to Frank and I, even though Tom would NEVER read that book to us. He was funny, and I just liked him.

Then I didn't see him for a long time. That was kind of a hallmark of my relationship with the man. There would be long time periods where I didn't see him. I'd hear from him now and again, mostly about him, I guess. But no contact.

Anyways, all this to say that I will miss him.

I started a website in his honor, for those that are interested and want to go it is at michael.pitrone.9f.com

If you have anything to add, please add it there.

Windows 7

2009-01-09T23:45:00.000-08:00

This is it! The Public Beta has arrived and I strongly suggest clicking these words to get it! This is the 64 bit and the 32 bit, whichever you need!

Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together

2009-01-08T21:21:00.000-08:00

So, I found these two things today that made me happy, and I offer them here, to those of you who hang on my every posted word.

Thing One

and

Thing Two

Now, obviously Thing One is less vital to National discussion. BUT it is a great little essay about a terrific movie that I strongly suggest to anyone who hasn't seen it. (And for those of you haters who still have aught against the 1970s, this might be the balm you need. Watch this and then watch the re-make and tell me that the 1970s didn't kick all sorts of cinematic tail.)

Thing Two, I strongly suggest be read, re-read and then promulgated as a new National Doctrine. It is excellent.

Finally, for those of you who were interested in the Windows 7 post from earlier in the week: Microsoft is offering a free public beta on Friday. This is the Wired article on how to get your hands on it.

N-Likely N-All

2009-01-07T21:46:00.000-08:00

Today I found myself asking, "Will I ever write anything as clever as this?"

The answer of course is, "Unlikely."

That David Mamet gets me every time. I find his novels to be somewhat un-readable, but his plays and films are always an occasion for joy and this essay of his is no less than tremendous. He is making some splendid points throughout and I wholeheartedly salute him.

What a guy.

New Records All Over

2009-01-05T22:24:00.000-08:00

Two posts in two days? It's incredible!

First of all, to address the comments from my post yesterday, what makes Belle the best? That's my problem with the whole thing. I don't see Belle as the best and I can't understand why Gaston would. She was physically identical to the blond trollops. What set her apart? Her brains? Why does that appeal to him? Does he need someone to read to him at night? I am not convinced that the characterization makes sense.

And then my new thing: Windows 7.

I might have seen someone's computer who might have a slightly bootlegged copy of Windows 7 that they might be using as their main OS. Here's the theoretical skinny from an expert.

Here's my take:

This software is incredible. As the article above suggests, beta versions of software are all about probable stability, not about speed. The speed on this software is incredible. I can't get over how fast this thing is. My friend hasn't really burned any discs with it, he usually uses thumbdrives, but copying files is absolutely smoking fast. I can't get over it. The GUI is really, really classy. There is a neat little spot in the right-hand corner that clears the desktop and all the Start line items/icons show what is happening in them when they are minimized using Picture in Picture technology. The start up, from boot to running is about 45 seconds. My friend says that there is nothing like it, and I have to agree.

This is not to say that there are not bugs in it. There have been some BSODs, some random shut-downs, some video shakiness... but all in all, my friend says that every time he considers going back to Vista or XP the OS stuns him in some new way.

The upshot, it's a strong recommendation from my friend, and I accept his word implicitly. It breaks records as far as Microsoft Windows is concerned. I know that there are a million folks out there who claim that Linux based things are the greatest, but I tried Ubuntu, and so did my friend, and it just didn't cut it. I like just being able to click on things. I like it to be easy. Maybe that's lazy, but why should computing be complicated? There were things my friend and I liked about Ubuntu, but in the end, Windows 7 is the trick.

Disney Character Motivation Dissection

2009-01-04T18:02:00.000-08:00

I have been taking issue with the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast. What's the deal with Gaston's character motivation? I am really not clear. Why is he interested in Belle? I can't suss it out. He's got these three bolonde girls who are swooning for him and dressed like trollops. They all have the exact same body and face as Belle, so other than that he digs brunettes, what is the difference? Belle is bookish, snobbish, dislikes him, has no money. Her Father is crazy... I am not understanding. The best that anyone can explain it to me so far is that he wants her because he can't have her. But that is like saying that I can't have a sperm whale as a pet. Why is it an issue? I don't get it. And without some motivation for him wanting Belle the whole story falls apart. Everything he does revolves around him wanting to marry Belle, but I can't conceive of a reason he'd WANT to marry Belle. I can see that he'd want to have sex with Belle, I guess that makes sense, she's good looking, he's a hunter... But even that is pretty specious reasoning. I think that he'd settle down with one of the three blondes, while throwing the other two a bone from time to time, get fat and pump out some disturbingly chinned children. The whole movie falls apart for me on this point. Thoughts?

Thoughts?

2008-11-02T21:09:00.000-08:00

Here is the thing about failure: Once it starts, once that ineffable losing streak begins to weave its path into your day-to-day fate, you never again regain the sense of invincibility that you once had. Every teenaged boy is a bristling ball of security. No matter how abused or down-trodden, no matter how self-conscious or needy in most respects, no teenager ever thinks of himself as anything other than invincible and eternal. Sure, there are the death fantasies and there are the moments of horror about complexion or school-yard cruelty, but the fact remains, hope and life are still intertwined in inexorable affinity.

There is a point however, usually sometime in the mid-to-late twenties, when the inherent flaws and perfectly honed responses that family, friends and community have built into the individual, when failure begins to raise its ugly head. There is no way to avoid it totally. Some people can manage to make it into their thirties; usually they have money or phenomenal looks to back them up, some magical charm that keeps them safe from the inevitable, without facing up to the evil visage of their own self-defeating nature.

When it comes, it crushes. There is nothing like a true failure, a failure in career, in love, in friendship or general denial of the boons and graces that life has granted hitherto. It is the end, quite simply the end of childhood. It is not the beginning of adulthood, merely the end of the previous, grace-filled state. Failure doesn’t make one a man. Failure can hone a person’s manhood, but it does not create, ex nihilo, manhood.

That is what failure does not do; let’s talk about what it does. It steals, even if you give yourself to your failings, even if you have granted failure every possible advantage and license, it still steals the sense of value that you had a right to. It steals it away and while you may regain this or that sense of self, or this or that sense of worth, you can never regain the sense of value, inherent value and pride that you held beforehand. In some cases this is a good thing. Inflated sense of worth is a negative attribute and failure is the comeuppance of the arrogant soul. But it is a cruel lesson learned.

One might find, as I confess to having found, that later in life, after the failure of youth and after the hard won and oft referred to struggle to regain self-worth, that any minor failing, and minor falling out or disagreement, any minor ruffle in the otherwise placid surface of day to day life causes me to question everything I hold dear. I am not a man, I am not of value, I am not capable, I am not intelligent, I am not worthy or worthwhile. I am merely a failure.

Each time I reach this conclusion, each time I fail, I have to re-fight the battles of my nature and my upbringing and regain the sound footing that tells me that I am a man, that I have value, that I am capable, intelligent, worthy and worthwhile. But each time, that victory, once won, is less sweet. It is tinged, each time, by a greater and greater knowledge of how tenuous, how easily lost the ground is. The battles are less difficult to win, the points less difficult to score, because in each battle I better know the ground recovered. But that makes the ground worth less and less. And I am not becoming MORE of a man, etc. each time. I am remaining, sustaining a manhood. My value does not increase, but the value of holding onto it decreases. It is a losing battle, in the face of failure.

Just as pain is a supposedly necessary part of physical existence, failure is a necessary part of the emotional makeup of a man. But just as pain is also attached to destructive forces and the deterioration of the body, so failure is the anathema of success. And it is a poison that once tasted is forever a part of the self.

Too Clever By Half?

2008-11-02T21:00:00.000-08:00

The Bodies Exhibit, Washington DC

The exhibit is held at the too-modern for words Newseum at The Dome in Rosslyn. The locale is extremely futuristic as befits this post-modern, post-moral, post-mortem. The rather stark entrance-way leads directly to the stark-raving coat-check fellow, who rambles semi-coherently about flash photography. Then up the stairs to the Will-Call window and a quick stop at the trivia-festooned bathrooms. (Hint: Toes is the correct answer.)

The exhibit itself: It starts out with a whimper. From behind a small partition you emerge into the soft light of a scapula and the first of the eerily standing corpses. The lighting is subdued, bringing out the brown of the epicanthically-folded, oddly taxiderm-ish eye on the plasticine'd cadaver. The initial reaction is one of stressless shock. It hasn't sunk in yet that there are former human beings posed around. You still have your vaguely clinical detachment, as you move to the second room, noticing that the trivia motif has continued, that the lighting now shows anatomic structures on the walls and that your mind insists that they are only patterns. That's when two things strike you, hard: the flesh is shiny, wet-looking, too biological to be detached from; the second is the tiny, blood-red bug trapped in the case with the sagittal section of the brain and skull. It's moving about, Escher-like, with the maggot assurance that there is food somewhere. You insist to yourself that it is old-fashioned, archaic, to be grossed-out. You try as hard as you can not to imagine it eating anything... That's when you enter the room of the disembodied flesh and your gorge starts seriously to rise.

If you've ever seen the Texas Chainsaw Massacre II, there's an immediate reference, but it sends you reeling into horror terminology and becomes one more thing to repress...

Past partition after partition, past the respiratory system, some grisly hearts and the absurd anti-smoking section, you stumble half-heartedly. The question of the participant's willingness keeps rearing up, but it's not till you move downstairs that the force of it shocks, literally shocks your system.

In a series of jars, preserved like berries at Grandma's house, are succeeding stages of fetal development. All questions of willingness, voluntary participation or free will dissolve at the recognition of the miniature fingers, toes, eyes and hearts. The increasingly manic trivia proclaims the beginning of the heartbeat and the helpfulness of the placenta. To be fair, you can side-step this room, but it doesn't make the room not exist and you no longer have any desire to be fair.

The final room contains a lab-coated museum worker to offer a scholarly benediction, to point out the scientific value and natural wonder of what you have just seen. Like an apologist at an abattoir she directs your gaze around the dissected Asian bodies that haven't already shocked you. A stronger stomach than yours would have been quaking by now, and you are feeling sick to death of it. The crowd around her, in a religio-scientific rapture excoriates our, "insane morality," for holding us back from performing this act on our own. And one can't help but reflect on the other horrors that have been encouraged in the name of science.

If this seems a breathless, or an over-excited review, it is only because perspective has not yet been reached. It is an artful exhibit, well set up, cleverly controlled and brilliantly propagandized, but one can't help but lose perspective in the host of unanswered moral dilemmas that no one in the room seemed even slightly bothered by.

The Coolest Place on Earth

2008-10-08T18:39:00.000-07:00

Wired has this article today. I am envious to end all envious. It's all very well not to covet your neighbors whatnot, but they never mentioned a library in the text...

Random Thoughts on Many Things

2008-10-06T18:34:00.000-07:00

I have no particular thing I wish to express today. I have lots of little things that have popped up and been considered.

Sarah Palin/Tina Fey: Ok, I love, love, love Tina Fey. Margaret and I are huge fans of her work and especially 30 Rock. I can't help but think that there is a really strange convergence of events that bring her and Palin to the forefront of pop-consciousness. Normally our parodic instincts give us people who look nothing like the political figure they are mocking. Chevy Chase and Gerald Ford? Dana Carvey and Bush Senior? Nothing like each other. Phil Hartman as Bill Clinton was close, but Phil Hartman could have played Mary Tyler Moore convincingly, so that's not going to fly. But from the moment Palin was announced, all I could think was that Tine Fey was going to do a drop dead perfect Palin. And sure enough, she does. Seriously though, how does that work? Did McCain pick Palin with Fey in mind or what? How did they work that out? (And, to be fair, the first sketch, with Amy Poehler as Hillary, was so funny that I almost choked.)
This election: I am not excited about anyone in it. If Obama wins I think that my life will change virtually not at all. I know a lot of conservatives that are convinced that he will be a death-knell for individual liberties in the US, but I think that since the Bail-Out Bill gives the IRS permanent powers for undercover operations indicates that there are very few individual liberties to take away. What the hell is Obama gonna do? NKVD powers for the IRS are about as evil a set of circumstances as I can imagine and I really doubt that there is anything else out there. Will he make abortion more legal? Will he legalize pedophilia? Probably not. The only issue I can think of that might be in the danger zone is Israel, and from what I am reading Israel is about ready to take a swing at Iran, at which point it doesn't matter who is in charge, we're probably not along for the ride. This election seems like a circus, which makes me think that it doesn't matter. It's a show and the actual powers that run the USA probably have it on as another opiate for the masses. Who is actually running? There are two old guard players with equal experience in saying insane things that you have to hope they don't mean. McCain and Biden. There are two inexperienced, hopefully well-intentioned but seemingly kind of dumb outsiders, Obama and Palin. Either way, it seems like we're getting the same choice. I am not convinced that voting matters this time, and the fact that MTV and Rolling Stone insist that it DOES matter makes it seem all the more unlikely.
OJ Simpson: Man, that sucks. You really had to think that you could get away with anything, didn't you? I mean, let's face it, you walk away from a double homicide, you figure you're untouchable. Who'd have thought that some minor vigilantism would bite you in the ass?
Books: I think that I have read every book on the entire island of Okinawa. I am going crazy. Thankfully Margaret got a job and our income is about to reach a level where I can buy books again. Amazon is about to get a payday. I need to read something new!
My Brother Drew: He might get to come visit Okinawa for an extended stay. Certain personal issues in his life are leading to his needing a vacation. I am looking forward to seeing him, if it works out, more than I can say. Margaret and I talk about him all the time now. Everything we see we interpret through the likely Drew response to it. It is a safe bet that we end up laughing.
I had this strange experience at 3:30 this morning. I was fast asleep and heard this screaming sound. It kind of reminded me of that old alarm clock we used to have that had a high-pitched whine as the alarm. I got up, to check the house. When I got up Margaret woke up and heard it, and she thought that it was some strange Japanese noise and that there was no way it was in the house. I walked out to the computer desk and one of my external hard drives was screaming, and I reached out to touch it, but just before my
fingers hit it, it stopped. And it never started again. But then I was awake till about half an hour before it was time to wake up. So I slept in a little, which is unusual for me.

I can't think of anything else that I need to talk about. Thoughts?

Apparently the final update...

2008-09-23T16:22:00.001-07:00

The Google Phone arrives.

It is a little more expensive than was indicated, and without the great bandwidth deal that has apparently been kiboshed by Congress the data package isn't as wonderful as was projected, but it still sounds worth it. It's cheaper than the iPhone, by about $20. The data package isn't too bad, though the whole thing is less exciting than I was projecting it could be.

And Google is now starting to be considered evil in its own right, which... talk about a bummer.

Petra Out Rocks Jackson

2008-09-11T21:00:00.000-07:00

Petra Hayden, formerly of the awesome That Dog, and more recently to be found singing with the best band in the known universe: The Decemberists, has recently not released this.

It is wonderful, especially wonderful since she does all the parts. Every part of it is pure Petra Hayden. Enjoy.

Scary and Awful, but it makes me laugh. Problem?

2008-09-11T19:41:00.000-07:00

http://www.wnbc.com/news/17450126/detail.html

The part I like best is that there was a big group of sex offenders living together. Boy, what would one of their parties be like? I'll bet their TV schedule really throws off demographic trends. "Why is there a huge viewership for Barney re-runs in prime time?" I'd love to go to one of these houses where there are 5 or more sex offenders who dress and act like they are children or pretend to be the grandparents of 30 year olds posing as children. Talk about bizarre. John Waters needs to make this his next film. Also, one of them is named Stiffler? How is that even possible in the world? A sex offender named Stiffler? Life imitating art or art imitating life?

I just love this place.

2008-08-12T18:17:00.000-07:00

This place I have never been to rocks my socks off.

Some Dark Thoughts

2008-08-12T05:35:00.000-07:00

Margaret and I watched Dark Knight for the sort of second time last night. We have a copy that we can watch at home, (Homeland Security, come and get us.) and we watched it once with some friends the weekend it came out in the US, but we were playing with a two-year old most of the movie and didn't really see much of it.

We came to a couple of conclusions about the movie, and the new Batman franchise in general.

Conclusion 1.) Margaret REALLY doesn't like the Rachel Dawes character. I am not sure if it's that she really wants Batman to love her instead of whoever is playing Dawes. I thought at first that it was an anti-Katie Holmes impulse, and let's face it, who could blame her if it were. But it turns out that it isn't that. She dislike Maggie Gyllenhall just as much. (Did I spell that wrong? It's her fault for having an unpronounceable and confusing name. I decree that the new spelling.)

Conclusion 2.) It really is too bad that no one will get to be The Joker ever again. It's a great role and Heath Ledger OWNS it. I know, everyone and their brother has said that already, but I haven't seen any of my brothers say it yet, so I get to be everyone and they get to be my brothers.

Conclusion 3.) This is kind of a two-fer. See, it seems to me that they need a good bad guy for the next one, and lets face it, there will be a next one. And when Margaret and I were talking about the Batman Rogue's Gallery we agreed that The Riddler is a good choice, if they could un-Jim Carrey him. And then we noticed that everyone in Dark Knight, when they want to be scary, talks in a gravelly voice. Now, who can you think of who talks in a gravelly voice and would be PERFECT for The Riddler? Damn Skippy! Will Arnett! GOB is the perfect Riddler. He could resurrect his theme song. The Final Countdown is a wonderful Riddler theme. He could do his magic tricks, totally in character. Man, Tony Hale could even come in and be his sidekick. It would be like when they were going to bury GOB alive. They could dance and stuff. Arnett could do gravelly voice and Hale could do the Ledger falsetto. Can anyone deny that this is brilliant? Speak up!

As Frank So Elegantly Puts It: Booze

2008-07-24T18:02:00.001-07:00

Above you can see the treasure trove of alcoholic splendor that came back North with us. Now, that last post, my "Love Of Whiskey" post, got some negative comments. People said that I can't claim to be a whiskey lover if I don't drink Scotch. Well, let me tell you something, I CAN call myself a whiskey lover and not drink Scotch. I just did.

And another thing, all of this Scotch nonsense. I don't like Scotch. I never really have. There are times when I will drink it and think, "Hmm, not so bad." But there has never been a time I've imbibed and said, "That was the stuff!"

People who love Scotch are like people who love J.D. Salinger. J.D. Salinger is respected, he's the old guard and some of the things that I really like to read have come about because of people who were inspired by J.D. Salinger, but honestly, he leaves me cold. I half like "A Perfect Day for Bananafish", but then *SPOILER* Seymour kills himself in the end. Now to me, a really great character that you really come to love shouldn't blow his brains out just when you're sold. But then, I guess I am not the genius that people say Salinger is.

At any rate, the analogy holds. People respect Scotch, it's the old guard of the alcohol shelf, and I really like bourbon which is the American version of Scotch.

The thing is, peat tastes like dirt. I really don't like that wildly over-hyped peat flavor. It does nothing for me. And I think that it is unpatriotic. It's just an excuse to put down the US at the expense of European hegemony. I understand that a lot of people are really pro-Europe, but I am not. Tom says that all the good Europeans left and came to America, and I think that I agree more and more.

So I say, drink bourbon, the Patriotic choice.

One of my Favorite Things

2008-07-14T22:36:00.000-07:00

I just heard today that a friend of mine from Hospital Corps School is in Okinawa. He's a good guy and I'm really, really looking forward to seeing him, but the result of his arrival on island is that I am thinking nostalgically.

There was a time, before I joined the Navy, when I drank a lot. I still drink a pretty good amount, but at the time I'd had a severe setback in life and drinking masked the pain a little bit. It got to be egregious. But it did give me the chance to get a little taste for whiskey.

When I started drinking whiskey I was a Jack Daniel's man. Now, Jack Daniel's is a good, workman-like whiskey. It's been described as a wild-man's drink, but I think that it is really more of an immature man's drink. I still drink it when I can't get anything else, there is a big bottle of it on my counter at home right now, but it is not my favorite.

In an effort to change up the sort of whiskey I was drinking I tried a few old-school favorites. I think that I was inspired by a trip to Florida to move my great-aunt's things up to the good old Cleveland area. Aunt Mae had a stash of old whiskey, I have no idea when she started buying it or when she thought she was going to drink all of it, but there were bottles and bottles of supposedly 12 year old whiskeys that had been bought in the 1960's. Even a Canadian Club turns into a golden brown drink of the gods when aged for 50-some years. My brother Frank and I began to sample and mix drinks, when we got back, not on the drive up, and gained a little bit of a useless education. We knew what bottles of obsolete brand whiskey could be stored in a closet for 50 years and still taste wonderful, and which ones would turn. I haven't found a good outlet for this knowledge yet, but someday I'm sure I will.

I bought a bottle of Canadian Club a week or so ago and realized, without the extra closet time, it's not really worth drinking. I tried mixing it with Coke, to mask the revolting taste, but neither Coke nor anything else worked. The verdict: Except for wonderful advertisements and the occasional great-aunt-aged bottle, Canadian Club is worthless.

There was also a bottle that was shaped like a patriotic figure from history, but it was not clear which Founding Father had lent his image to an obscure and obsolete brand of whiskey. Whichever one he was, Hurrah for Him! That bottle, seemingly corked during the American Revolution, was a delicious, if slightly treacly concoction. I believe that Frank still has the bottle, though since it was two moves back for him, I may be wrong.

I bought a bottle of Cutty Sark a few years back and developed a strict rule, no blended whiskeys. I'll drink a mash bourbon any and every day of the week, and I do. But pass me a blended whiskey and I will shudder and pass it on. The sickly sweet taste of these evil demon liquors makes them unpalatable and unlikely as anything other than industrial cleaners.

But what this is really all about is a little story that Acosta, the friend I mentioned way back at the beginning, put me in mind of.

I joined the Navy in March 2005. I went to boot camp from March till May. I don't know about everyone's Navy experience, but I didn't have a lick of alcohol for that whole time. Now, I don't know if you were paying attention back at the beginning, but I was a pretty serious drinker in the time before that. After the 8 weeks of boot camp and another week or so waiting to have clothes and a place to go, I took a Friday night, all alone, and took the train into downtown Chicago.

I'd been to Chicago once before, a long time before, and it hadn't struck me as a drinking town. Most places didn't when I was 9. But getting off the train in the center of the city, all I could think about was the possibility of a thick cut glass, ice cubes, a steady hand to pour and the warm, sharp taste of Maker's Mark. I thought about it while I looked at the Sears Tower. I thought about it while I avoided drunk classmates. I thought about it as I entered and left Millennium Park and I thought about it as I straddled a bench at a little Italian bistro near where I started my journey. I had exactly 2 hours and I planned to spend both of them getting drunk on the long-lost elixir.

The bartender was an Italian woman of a certain age. Now, with most women of a certain age I am able to employ a charm that borders on mind-control. I can't explain it. If I ever had the looks to be a gigolo, I'd have been one of the best. But as it is I usually used it to charm girlfriend's Mothers or improve my tips when I was a server. But due to some sort of Nature/Nurture imbalance, Italian women are my kryptonite. They do not respond to my charms. They are not in on my allure. I am not like Mama used to make, I am Ragu.

This was a seemingly negative turn of events and I looked around for a second to see if there was an open table. Sure enough, there was. I ordered my first Maker's Mark and took a long, slow sip.

The taste was as exquisite as I remembered. So smooth, so effervescent. Like some sort of alcoholic spring water, like the beverage version of a Mother's hug. I settled into the warmth like settling into a favorite chair. The spirals of flavor and smoky enjoyment danced on my palate. A friend once described it as, "It's like licking the inside of a light socket, but it tastes better."

I got the table and a cute little waitress. (At least, I think she was a cute little waitress. Not having had a drink for 8 weeks turns a tolerance from whatever it was to 11 year old boy. My one sip of whiskey had set me along a dangerous path. At two hours I had woefully over-estimated the time it would take. Two minutes in and I was Bertie Wooster on Boat Race night.) I ordered Chicken Parm, on the assumption that it can't really be ruined. I suspect that it was not really a great meal, but I couldn't actually tell you one way or the other. By the time it came I was on my second Maker's, this time with club soda, and I was dead to other sensory input.

I dated a girl once who called whiskey and soda, "The Ocean." As in, "What are you drinking, another Ocean?" Given my newly nautical career I liked the ring of this nickname and I ordered another round of The Ocean for myself. Apparently there is a Chicagoan drink called The Ocean. Perhaps it is not a Chicago local, just a speciality of that particular bistro, but it was an evil little mixture. I think that they use linseed oil, lacquer thinner and kerosene. Maybe they had a dash of vermouth, for taste. It was AWFUL. I drank it quickly, drank some water, and asked for another Makers, this time with soda.

I don't really remember getting back to base.

I must have done it on time, I never got into any trouble. I must have made it through the gate without indicating my advanced state of inebriation. I must have paid for both my meal and the train back to the School. Beyond that, I remember waking up the following afternoon with my head screeching and pinging, my back wracked with spasms and my eyes glowing like one of the X-Men.

It didn't do anything to diminish my love of Maker's Mark, still my favorite tipple. It didn't sour me on Chicago and it didn't make me slow my roll there, either. Whiskey is the one drink I've ever had that remains sick and hangover proof. I've given up brands of beer, I've given up gin, I've given up vodka, but I'll stick to Bourbon till I die.

And then I met this:
I have four bottles of this. I want to send a couple of them to the States, but it is apparently illegal. I'll find some way before I leave, but for now I am just trying to get the courage to try it.

Has anyone out there ever tasted this? Is it good? How does it compare to Maker's Mark?

Pet Issue = Big Issue

2008-07-03T18:15:00.000-07:00

I think there might be some misunderstanding here.

First of all let me say that the people who commented are all my family. At least, as nearly as I can tell.

Second, and I don't want to be argumentative, the population control thing is silly. The homosexual population of the world, in spite of whatever popularity it seems to hold currently or will over time, seems pretty stable at about 7-10% of the population. Now admittedly, as the population grows, that number is bigger, but that won't have much to do with keeping the population from expanding. I know that's a pretty light point in the responses, but let me just throw that out there.

Third, and it probably ought to have been first, let me say that I meant no offense whatsoever and I think/hope that I can say why offense taken at that last post is not really right. I apologize for hurting any feelings, and especially familial ones.

Let me re-state my case a little more carefully, it hinges on a few key points:

1: Evolution is a true.
2: Homosexuality is genetic.
3: Evolution is progressive, by which I mean that it take beings from less to more complex structures over time.

Now, I don't necessarily believe ANY of those points. I think that the third one is the closest to anything I could say was actually true, but since I don't know if I buy point 1, then 3 is probably moot.

If 1,2, and 3 ARE true, then it's a shaky place to be. And I bring it up only because I had this thought process years ago, and since then I read articles like the one mentioned in Slate.

Please, everyone go read that Slate article, and if possible the article in the June 2008 issue of Psychology Today, "The Darwinian Logic of Homosexuality" on page 89. It's a pretty good article and the researchers are Italian, so that's our hot buttons right there, as a family.

They are interesting articles that make interesting points AND they kind of allude to the points I made above as putting one on a shaky philosophical ground.

I also appreciate that there was very little personal mud slung, since I am a blot on the family escutcheon and probably deserve more mud slung my way than I generally get.

Things I am NOT doing in either of these posts:
Suggesting that I have a reason for homosexuality.
Suggesting anything at all about ACTUAL sexuality.
Saying anything that should be cause for offense.

I tried to make it clear that that is NOT what I wanted to do. The article and my response to it are only there to say that there is this kind of logical danger that one can get into when presupposing these things.

Let me say these following things and then I'll go back to a passive role for a while:

1.) Obviously I have some family that is gay.
2.) I love them, every one of them. There is no member of my family that I do not love and do not wish I could see more often.
3.) I am probably the least successful of the people who are responding to me, so probably the other people should start blogging. I'll read what you blog, I promise.
4.) I don't blame anyone for anything in my life and would be surprised to hear that others are blaming their parents/friends/family for theirs.
5.) Can't we all just get along?
6.) The logic is there in the points, but it is really the points that have to be argued with at that point.
7.) 7 is my favorite number because when Grandpa Pitrone wanted us to pick a number between 1 and 10, he was always thinking of 7. Sorry Frank, I knew and you didn't.

So, to those of you reading that I love, I love you and I am sorry if I hurt your feelings, I didn't mean to. Please, while you're here, go look at the other things I have on here. There's some good stuff about Okinawa and in my Flickr site there is good stuff about Cambodia.

I'll take the spanking now. Whattaya got?

One of my Pet Issues

2008-06-25T23:32:00.000-07:00

The wonderful Slate magazine, purveyor of articles that help me procrastinate and waste the oceans on time the Navy wants me to waste, has a neat article about one of my favorite issues. Is there some sort of explanation from an evolutionary standpoint, for homosexuality? It seems like there can't possibly be one. But Slate says that there is.

To be honest, I read an article about this in Psychology Today, or something such magazine, and I thought it was pretty unlikely, but this Slate article makes the case seem a little more plausible.

I tend to think that homosexuality is more of an inclination than a genetic predisposition, but I am willing to be wrong on that and am always looking for the information that proves the subject. (Though when I say that I am looking for it I really mean that I am reading things when I notice them and then think about whether I believe if they are true.)

The issue that I have always had is something along these lines:
Suppose evolution is true and evolution moves from less complex to more complex.
Suppose homosexuals can't reproduce, and as couples they can't. There are sperm banks and donated ovums and what have you, but that's going to be a hard sell evolutionarily. (Or a hard cell?)
Suppose as is so frequently suggested, that homosexuality is genetic.
Supposing all this, homosexuality seems to be some sort of negative, non-productive mutation. And if that is the case, don't we almost have a Survival of the Fittest right to get rid of them?

(The following paragraph was in the original post, a so-called friend of mine decided to be an asshole and erase it when he had access to my computer and is about to be stricken from my life. I apologize to anyone who read this post and was offended, it was not my intention and without this paragraph it is a very real possibility.)

I am not suggesting that we OUGHT to get rid of homosexuals at all. There is no reason, other than the case outlined above, which rests on some tenuous assumptions, to do so. All I am saying is that the assumptions above seem to be popular with a lot of people and when put together in that light... well, they don't look the best.

So, while I am always looking for an answer to this question, I do not currently have one. That Slate's article suggests that there is one makes me momentarily fascinated. But then I read the article and it is firmly speculative and further, it sounds like stretching to accept a point. I mean, it sounds kind of like someone had the same line of reasoning that I had, and then came up with anything that they could think of to deny it. And I almost approve of just doing that, but at the same time, it seems like poor science. It might be great science and the two articles I read might simply be poorly written or poorly reasoned, but they seem like poor science to me.

Thoughts?

That Gorgeous Blue Planet

2008-06-22T22:56:00.000-07:00

"Our planet is a blue planet: over seventy percent of it is covered by the sea. The Pacific Ocean alone covers half the globe. You can fly across it non-stop for twelve hours and still see nothing more than a speck of land. This series will reveal the complete natural history of our ocean planet, from its familiar shores to the mysteries of its deepest seas."

– David Attenborough, from episode one

This remarkable documentary series took over five years to make and is well worth the 8 hours it takes to watch. Margaret and I have been watching it in 2 episode installments over the last several days and have enjoyed every moment of it. (I did intersperse a few of Attenborough's Life In The Undergrowth episodes, about insects. Margaret was not as fascinated by these.)

They actually discovered species while filming this. They discovered things about the way different species live and act. There were DISCOVERIES in the filming of this. I am fascinated that it's even possible to do that.

The Deep Sea episode is a standout to me, and we watched it the day before we swam in our ocean and found hundreds of little jellyfish. It was momentarily disconcerting, but we picked them up and played with them to no ill effect. (Though when I picked up a really big one, using a hand that had cuts on it, it felt like electric shocks all up and down my arm. Really, really cool.) We saw a bunch of Japanese kids throwing jellyfish at each other and went to look at the lot of them.

That's about what they looked like. They were really cool and made us feel like we are impervious to all jellyfish stings. (We suppose we might not be, but are acting on the assumption that we are, until proved otherwise.)

The big fear here is the Box jellyfish, which is perfectly see-through and really, really dangerous. Supposedly they don't happen in our bay very often, but they do happen sometimes, so keep your eyes peeled, etc. We're pretty confident that they can't hurt us, though.

The Question...

2008-06-18T23:01:00.000-07:00

"But who drives around with their laptop in their car?"

The Answer: "I don't know, but I'm willing to start."

In Defense Of Donalds

2008-06-17T15:33:00.000-07:00

Certain Donalds have been doing dirt to the name. I don't want to point any fingers, but I thought about a few of the Donalds that I've known and I thought that perhaps a tribute might be in order. So, in my personal chronology:

"Uncle" Don Navatsyk:

When I was very young, my parents were young too. They belonged to a church full of young people in a small town in Ohio. The church was very close-knit and familial. Many of the young people had kids, and many others were sort of looking to get married. It was, in my mind looking back and from stories I've been told, a little like Melrose Place with a church instead of the titular locale. (And television executives reading right now, that's my idea!) Don't get me wrong, it was a lot... churchier, but you know what I mean. At any rate, the kids were encouraged to call the adults "Uncle" and "Aunt." So, Uncle Don. Uncle Don is the father of one of my best friends ever. When his daughter Julie and I were growing up there was talk that we would get married some day. (A close escape for her.)

Don Navatsyk is still, to this day, the worship leader at the church and he is one of the most exuberant worship leaders I've ever seen. He jumps around, waves his arms, sings and hollers. In most specifics, he is like an older, male cheerleader. (Cheerleader for the Lord. Once again TV executives, MY IDEA!) One of the funniest things about this is that if you call him at his house on any given day of the week, even on Sunday after his performance, you will hear the a voice from a tomb. He seems to expend all the energy a body could ever possess on his Sunday singing jags. My friends and I used to call his house a lot, back when I was in high-school. The conversations would go something like this:

Sprightly Teenager's Voice: Hello! Can I talk to Julie or Gail?
Sepulchral Voice, Like A Ghoul On Quaaludes: No, they are out.
Slightly More Nervous Teenager Voice: Well, how are you then, uh, sir?
Sepulchral Voice, Now Even LESS Enthusiastic: Goodbye.

But that paints him in a less than glorious light, which is inaccurate. That's not how we really saw him. He was the Dad of a couple girls that were widely admired as the coolest and prettiest around. (I suppose later generations of young guys felt the same way about his younger daughters, but they were too young for me to feel that way.) He was an exciting teacher in the Sunday School and other classes/Bible studies we went to with him. He was also a coach for a lot of high-school ball things, but I wasn't a part of that either.

He was this great, funny, wildly enthusiastic on occasion, fellow to know. He is still a family friend and I still think about him on a pretty regular basis. He is the guy who got me interested in St. Peter, as a guy and as a role-model.

Donald #2: Donald Shumer

Donald Shumer was a great, great guy. I dated his daughter for a while and was a family hanger-on for even longer.

When I was 19 I met Abigail Shumer and really, really liked her. A couple months after I met her, she lived a few hours away, I went to visit her and her family. My friends Dave Michelson and John Stewart came with me, and we whiled away an incredibly flirtatious evening under the watchful, and ever so kind gaze of Donald Shumer. Though it was a lot more self-consciously sexual than how I imagine the old timey courting scene, it was in some ways very similar. Don Shumer made sure nothing untoward happened and we all acted like what we imagined adults would act like in similar circumstances. (At 30 I can say, without too much fear, adults don't act anything like I did at 16. Adults breathe and blink, but other than that, there is no basis for comparison.) Even so, Don Shumer allowed us all to act like fools and never made us feel that he was not looking out for our best interests.

Over time I had a real relationship with is daughter, I dropped out of college in an attempt to make that relationship more real and I even ended up moving to his town for a protacted period of misery after the inevitable break-up. Through all of this, and through later disasters and embarrassments, Don Shumer never was anything other than kindness personified. He helped me, even let me work in his shop for a while when I lived there. (Though that was disastrous, having ingested nothing other than cigarettes and coffee for a couple days prior I passed out, almost at the lathe. I made it out of the shop just in time to pass out in his house. He helped me to a bed and his wife, the inestimable Carol, fed me wheatgrass juice. (Don't ask me why that was what she fed me, there are reasons and they are complicated.)

I am eternally indebted to the man. Throughout the whole time he invariably passed on wisdom, and since I wasn't related to him I was at least willing to listen. When, later on, another of his daughters married a very close friend of mine it helped to cement my relationship with his family. He passed on a while ago, complications with cancer and a backhoe, but he will always be a shining example to me of what a man can be and of a man I wish I could be like. Alex Gardner and I, the son-in-law and close friend, used to intone his name as a gold standard of excellenc: "Don!"

Donald #3: Donald Landies

Now, this one is a lot of fun. Uncle Donji is one of my favorite people that I've ever worked with. He's passionate and irrational. He's explosive and given to wild bouts of exaggeration and wildness. He is thoughtful and enjoys nothing more than sitting and playing a recorder on his lunch break. He is, in a nutshell, the kind of guy I can hang out with.

I started working with Don Landies after I had suffered a major life set-back and his deep and intimate knowledge of the inner workings of life setbacks was my lifesaver. I had no job, was living out of a suitcase and scored a job for John Stewart's dad, painting for a small painting company in Cleveland. My first few weeks there I never met Don. I suppose that I knew him from my past, his family and mine go way back, and I know I helped him move once when I was in my teens. But I didn't know the guy.

I first worked with him on a job where my position as the young guy on the job was indisputable. I forget what that position is like, now that I am in the military and it is never the case for me. But when I think back, it's a great thing to be. The young guy on a job, particularly in the trades, is a dog's body job. Run to get coffee, run to get lunch, sand that wall. There is no responsibility and no need to worry. Every mistake will be dealt with, provided there are not too many mistakes. It's a great time and there is ample opportunity to sand while talking to people.

And boy, can Don talk! I think that I have never spent more hours on a job site with my mouth working, and if you know me, you know that's saying a lot. Don Landies has done every stupid thing I have ever done, and then some. He and I can compare experiences from now till we are no longer able to experience anymore.

I probably think about Don Landies once every couple days. I don't know a man better able to coin and capture phrases, and I use Don phrases every day.

While tapping one's head: "Not Just A Hatrack!"
When leaving anywhere: "It's Been All Hats And Horns."

I resurrected the old "Uncle" gag for him and he became my Uncle Don. He'd call me O, which no one has done since I was a baby. I loved it. A couple of times we had the opportunity to work, just the two of us, at a job site. These times were amazing, we'd talk about every boneheaded thing ever done. It was like some kind of boneheaded endurance course. Between the two of us it was as if there had never been a boneheaded thing that hadn't been done. David Sedaris says, in his latest book, that there are times when the things you haven't done are the only things that leave you able to be a human. He says that it gets bad when it gets down to murderers, but even they must be able to say, "I've never killed anyone, WITH A HAMMER." That was the kind of talk Don and I would have.

All of this, this whole thing, to say that I like Donalds, they are A-OK with me. If you know a Donald, go out and give him a hug.

Bob Dylan Said It Best...

2008-05-13T04:39:00.000-07:00

In an awesome and ironic twist of fate my Roomba just knocked down the only broom in the house and pushed it into the screendoor. I am proud to have such a forward thinking and zealous Roomba, though I worry what it will do with Margaret. It is not used to her and her return may spark some jealousy issues. So far Roomba and I have developed a really pleasant and friendly working relationship, but the voice that the Roomba uses to tell me things about itself sometimes makes me think that it thinks that we are more than just friends.

Oh, and Bob Dylan termed it a Simple Twist of Fate, and I recommend looking into that.

A Few Comments Regarding Woot.com and Roombas

2008-05-08T03:35:00.000-07:00

First of all, Woot.com is the coolest thing in the whole world. Second of all, so is out new, incredibly cheap Roomba. Both are the best ever. Also, owning a robot makes me feel powerful...

Cambodian Kiddery

2008-05-07T20:29:00.000-07:00

This little girl was my favorite. She was SO brave. All the other Cambodian kids were terrified of us, but she just came right up and played. After 2 days of her playing with us, the other kids got comfortable. Also, I think she looks like she could be a Malich. Is there a Cambodian Malich clan? I gave her her first taste ever of peanut butter, which was awesome. It was only MRE peanut butter, which isn't the greatest, but she was amazed by it.

This is the first girl's sister, I think. They were always together and I frequently saw this one, I assume the elder, tell the younger not to do X or Y. It is only an assumption, my Khmer never got very good.

This girl was one of the prettiest, but her smile was not the best.

I never really knew this guy. He did a lot of pull-ups, though.

More News For Everyone

2008-05-04T07:25:00.001-07:00

Y'all, So there I was, straddling a 20 year old boy…, wait, that sounds wrong. So there I was, wrapped around a 20 year old on a moped… no, not better. So there was this moped. I'll start at the beginning:

Last night, after a day of boring typing and a fence-line shower, we decided to go and get dinner. There was talk that the place we usually go to, The Cambodian Cheers, was out of food. The last time we were there they only had organ meats from some animal. Supposedly it was from several different animals, but we're not convinced. It wasn't liver, it might have been heart, but there were a lot of valves and it tasted a little like… well, it was a bit tripe-ish, with some liver-y consistency and heart grittyness. I guess it could have been a little of each. No one wanted to hazard a guess what animal or animals the bits were from.

I think that we've come as a huge boost to the local economy. It will be sad for them tomorrow when we pack up and leave. I'm trying to feel sorry for them, but the thought of a real, hot, clean shower is my only focus. At any rate, we stopped at Noggin's Cambodia, but they said they only had, "a little bit of beef."

Take it from me, a little bit of meat here is the same thing as, "It's passed beyond gamey and into completely unrecognizable as food. It's a kind of cow jelly now, with hair." We had heard that there was another place up the road and to the left, so a group of six intrepid gourmets took off in the direction that some random person had pointed.

We started our trek with good spirits and every hope of eventual dinner. Had we but known the horrors that awaited us… We started to think we might have bitten off more than we could chew when we realized that there is no signage in Cambodia. Finding a restaurant here is a matter of seeing which houses have more plastic chairs in them than the others. It's not an exact science, but it tends to work. For instance, we all saw the restaurant as we passed it, but since it was on the right instead of the left, we figured we must be wrong.

We ran into many, many people on the trek. A few of them told us that there was indeed a restaurant on this road, but further up than we had gone. One fellow who spoke middling English told us that it was 100 or 200 Meh ahead of us. We took this as a good sign, until someone pointed out that we have no idea what a meh is. Someone else took this dispiriting moment to say that mile, when abbreviated, is mi. Mi could be pronounce meh. 100-200 miles seems pretty far to go to get to a restaurant of dubious merits, but we struggled on in the hopes that meh were actually meters.

When we'd gone another kilometer we started to doubt the veracity of the meh rule. Plus, it was getting dark and the people on the street no longer even understood the universal, "Hello!" At some point we realized that the road ahead of us had no light whatsoever. One of the main requirements for food preparation, we surmised, is the ability to see. So we turned around. Now the people knew "Hello!" but we were too tired to call it with our former vim. It was a long trek back. Not all of us made it to the restaurant we'd passed the same. It was our own version of the Ho Chi Mihn trail. As we trudged, heart-sick and foot-sore, back towards the camp, one of the RCAF doctors popped out of a hovel on the WRONG SIDE of the road and told us that this was the restaurant we'd been searching for.

We entered the glorious peace of the restaurant and found seats. Gombio almost sat on a baby, but they scooped him, er… the baby, up and ran him to another seat. We all collapsed into out chairs and tried to sort out ordering food. Fortunately for us the RCAF Dr. helped us get our order straight. When it came to ordering beers, all we wanted was cold and in a bottle. We asked for Angkor Beers, but they only had cans. We were willing to go with anything else, but they only wanted to give us Angkor, since we'd asked. Cambodians can be remarkably hard-nosed when it comes to Angkor Beer, apparently. They insisted it was possible, if we were willing to pay, to get Angkor. We WERE willing to pay, so we whipped round and tried to give them the money, but no, it was not that sort of deal.

One of us would take the money, with the kid who was going, and pay for the beer at the shop. Guess who was the only one to volunteer? His name starts with O. So I followed the kid out of the restaurant, over to his moped and when I realized that we wouldn't be walking I got a little nervous. I mean, roads are things that happen to other people in Cambodia.

The road here would barely be called a path in the US. Wealthier folks have this sort of "road" through their gardens where I come from. To be flying down one of these roads, strapped to a kid, legs flung out in front in the hopes that my feet would not touch the ground left me feeling forklempt. Thoughts like: "Dying for a beer, eh?" And: "How exactly will I explain my violent injury to Margaret?"

By the way, at this point I'd like to interject that there are photos up at flickr.com/photos/cip08 Feel free to go and take a gander, when you get the opportunity.

We drove over potholes that don't really do justice to the term pothole. They were more like kettle holes, tureen holes, holes that if they were pot, then were cannibal pot. Upon arrival at the little shop that was going to sell us our beer we found them all out of Angkor Bottles, so we took a case of cans and went back to get dinner. Once again, as the little moped ramped up through the gears and the thousands of tiny, blood-sucking, itch-inducing midges splattered against my teeth, I thought: Does anyone need beer this badly?

After we'd been back at the restaurant 10 minutes I was finally calm enough to sit down at the table. It took quite a while because my heart hadn't made it back into my body. Do you remember the cartoons where the cat falls asleep next to the dog and when they return to their bodies they get mixed up? My heart felt a bit like that. As if the speed of the moped taking off had left my interior person up the road at the shoppette.

Dinner was quite good and on the walk home, after finishing our case of beers, we all, including the female, stopped in the bushes for a pee. We had a patient today complaining of salty urine. I'll let you all ruminate on that one for a while. Today we're mostly packing up, seeing a few patients, trying to get rid of our remaining medicines. If we can get rid of all the meds sooner, we can be done sooner. The moment there are no more meds, we can start taking down the tents. When we're done taking down the tents we can pre-stage the gear to put on the trucks tomorrow. When we're done pre-staging then we're just waiting to get the closing ceremony over with in the morning and onto the bus to the pretence of civilization that is Siem Reap. More to come, but we're closing on the end. There is Angkor Wat and the flight home. I haven't got the passport photo that I am apparently supposed to have, so I might be stuck here. But hopefully not, and hopefully you'll see the rest of the story here, instead of on Drudge Report.

Another One to Everyone

2008-05-03T13:35:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had a really bad hangover? Have you ever had a really bad hangover and then had to sit in oppressive heat and take blood pressures of smelly people all day? How about this one, have you ever had a really bad hangover, had to spend the day taking smelly blood pressures and then had the tent you are under collapse over you? Welcome to my Friday!

Thursday night was a celebration of sorts. Dr. J, our veddy British doctor, was leaving us on Friday morning and we were sending him off in Cambodian high-style. By which I mean, there were almost clean plates to eat off of and people who had had the foresight to bring their own booze from home broke it out. The misty, finger stained glasses at the restaurant were the perfect counterpoint to our fine Scotch whiskey, and in true Navy style we shot the two fingers of 22 year aged Glen Fiddich. Then the good Dr. broke out his private stash of Bacardi and we got down to a serious goodbye. It was in the midst of telling a story that I realized that my tongue was no longer under my control, and it was then that my friend Thompson and I decided to stumble back to out tents.

Have you ever slept on a spinning cot before? It is most unpleasant. The normal discomforts of camping are nothing until they are combined by a really good, beer, scotch, rum-drunk. I may have thrown up some rice, organ meats, random unidentified vegetables, the four massive Angkor beers I'd had before the scotch and then all the liquor I've ever seen. I may have thrown them up into a water bottle. It may have been an unfortunate water bottle to discover when I woke up in the morning. And when I say it may have been these things, I guess I mean it was so. Not that I am trying to duck responsibility for my actions or anything, I genuinely made the incredibly foolish choices that led to this miserable end, but there were extenuating circumstances… I really hadn't liked being sober the day before.

That morning started at about 0230. After having voided my entire body cavity at about 1030 I fell into a fitful and feverish doze. At 0230 one of the other fellows in my tent lost his iPod earbuds and blasted the rest of the tent with the supremely restful sounds of Minor Threat, or perhaps it was Social Distortion. At any rate, the group that played had a name that brings to mind the overthrow of governments by violent means. They are a loud, obnoxious, spirit-rending musical group and they were played at decibel levels that explain this fellow's general inability to hear orders when shouted at him. Finally we resolved the earbud issue and fell back into the snooze that had been formerly denied.

Within 40 minutes the local roosters started crowing, their internal alarm apparently set several time zones to the left of their actual location. When they ceased crowing the rise of the sun in Alabama there was a scant 20 minutes of rest before some spirited Cambodian mistook our tents for the home away from home of American Idol. He burst into frenzied song for 40 or more minutes, during which time I lay in a stupor of illness and fever. While I prayed that the singing would cease so that I could once more pretend that sleep was possible I envisioned a massacre. I saw myself wielding a bloodied machete, with the blood of a thousand roosters and all amateur vocalists, the world over, staining its blade. If I had had a machete, and had not been so given over to ensuring my continued breathing by intense concentration, what a legend I could have been.

When the local Cambodian William Hung finally ceased his endless rendition of "She Bangs Cambodia" I allowed my breathing to take over and slept the 10 minutes that the local populace allowed before their early morning horn and Caribbean steel drum chorus took over the musical duties. Might as well try to sleep at CBGBs. I wrestled myself from my mosquito netting and stumbled around in the remains of my dinner while using baby-wipes to clean the more egregious filth from the floor and my body. After a miserable shave and morning toilet I ate some MRE bread and jam for breakfast, drank some luke-warm bottled water and started taking morning vital signs.

The Cambodian people are not regular bathers. I have had experience with people who rarely bathe. The detainees in Guantanamo Bay are not, as a rule, the most hygienic of men. This did not particularly bother. They have a spicy smell, those detainees, they are a human curry. A rich mélange of spices and bodily oils. Afghanistani people are the spice of life, however evil and insane they may be. Cambodians, on the other hand, are like an armpit. Perhaps like an armpit that has not learned to adequately wipe its bottom, if your mind can conceive of such tortured anatomy. There is something in their odor that makes one wish for almost any other scent. Pure toilet filth has it over Cambodian peasant in the pure toilet filth is a distinct smell, not a mixture of foulnesses. Perhaps I overstate this, but there is truth in it.

Take this unpleasantness on top of already being filthily sick and repulsed by one's own smells and the day becomes an unpleasant admixture of nausea. It's also impressive how, in a country absolutely rife with skin diseases, parasites, amputated limbs, gross deformities and dengue fever there is daily someone who combines all of these features into so startling a visage that comment is forced from you. In so much as there are general unfortunates and general combinations, and the wearying morass of humanity parades before you without pulling one up short for comment, the ones that really stand out stand out in such a grotesque way. Your hand, reaching for their wrist to check the pulse, draws back in horror and then, nerve overcoming distaste, returning to the sore-encrusted member and squeezing for the heart-thumping pulse. All the while your mind screams for release and your hand shivers at the oozing pustules that are in its grasp. The milky, dessicated eyes that stare, unlevel, out of the too cheerful face, the toothless, rotten gum-landscape of their mouth. Unforgettable, and yet always topped within the day by some horror more grotesque. Dr Treves would have been beside himself here, so many discoveries for the Academy. The poor elephant man would have been only one in a crowd.

Miserable hang-over days are the longest ones, and it proved so on Friday. Though I was sitting next to my dear friend Thompson I still failed to appreciate the day as I have hitherto. Misery, heat, sweat, despair, the four horsemen of a Cambodian hang-over.

In the early afternoon a wind kicked up. When I say a wind kicked up I want you to imagine a scene from Pecos Bill, the tornado that Bill roped and rode was not less forceful than the wind that kicked the patient waiting-area tent off the ground and dropped it back onto the poor Cambodians awaiting treatment. In the second of time I had to react I started towards the people who were being endangered, which I will always feel was a heroic impulse, but our LT called us all to leave the tent area. In the moment of hesitation I was lost and by the time I had turned back to help, all help had already been rendered. I was only able to assist in the tent remediation, and even that I was not much use. My friend Thompson managed to give a local woman heart failure when he scooped her up from her peaceful seat and carried her bodily out of the imagined harm's way. She was never in any danger other than death by Thompson, but he wasn't to know.

After the eventual re-setting up of the tent there were many quiet hours of vital signs, punctuated by kids with large upper arms, friendly babies, pretty girls, and the occasional semi-human golem. We saw 987 patients on Friday and it was a long, long day. When the patients were finally gone we all had a medication sorting party until around 8, at which point I took my fence-line shower, read some Paul Johnson and collapsed into bed. The day over, I could finally reflect. Never again, I decided, never again. I don't care how many British doctors are leaving my life forever, I'm not mixing 151 and Glen Fiddich for anyone. And let that be a lesson to all of you. Much love as always and more to come.

Cambodia

2008-05-02T14:54:00.000-07:00

To the whole damned lot of you: Well, it's just past the half way point of this Cambodia trip that I'm sure you've been curious about. What? You didn't even know I was going to Cambodia? Well, I've been here 6 days and I have about 5 more to go. It's been a heck of a visit and I have to say that while I might be willing to return to a tourist center, I will not be looking to return to Th'mir Pouk any time soon. The kids are really cute, but cute kids do not a wonderful experience make. I don't care what you've heard to the contrary.

We left from Kadena Air Force Base on Okinawa on Friday the 25th. It was a reasonably pleasant flight over. Only about 4 hours in the air, turbulence-free. We arrive just outside of Siem Reap at about 1100. The airport will be featured on Flickr, when I eventually get back to civilization. It's two hours different, so it was 1300 our time, and we were getting hungry. We'd eaten at about 0430, at Kadena, from a hotbox van; one of those driving junk food things that you see on union job sites. Unpleasant food for unpleasant people, we wolfed it down. We had to do a whole bunch of work at the airport, not the normal customs things, but loading and unloading our own luggage and equipment, getting it all onto trucks.

I almost passed out from something very like heatstroke. It was a close run thing. We started moving these large, flat metal pallets which were very, very hot and I started to get woozy. I stumbled over to a grassy knoll and upchucked. Unpleasant. They gave me some water and made me sit down for a while. I got a little better and it was time to head to the hotel. We drove around, looking at the wandering cows and the incredible number of Buddha statues everywhere.

The squalor, even in the relatively cosmopolitan Siem Reap, was intense. People sitting in filth, cooking in filth, hell, cooking filth in filth, it was depressing. We got to our hotel, which I can't recall the name of, but you'll see it on Flickr and I recommend it if you are planning trip to Cambodia. It is probably the most luxurious place I've ever been or even seen in real life. The photos can't possibly do justice to the feeling of exotic comfort. From the shrine in the lobby to the 50 channels on the TV in the room, there is nothing you can recognize as Western. I watched a kids show about Krishna and a band of demons. All with live action actors and not one thing that happened made sense. Possibly the best 20 minutes in front of a TV ever spent. The salt-water pool is a delight, warm as a baby's bath and so salty that it puts the ocean to shame. The actual hygiene issues involved with a salt-water pool are questionable, but it felt too good to care. The bathroom in the hotel room… I have been without a bathroom for several days now and so I hesitate to let flow the incredible details that seems so fresh in my mind. Let it simply be said that the torrent of complimentary details cannot hope to match the torrent of water that needles into your pliant skin in the shower. I didn't take a bath, figuring I'd hold out till I really want one, i.e. when I get back from my dirt bath. It was a good choice, I have no doubt that the bathroom will once again wow me, but holding off makes the expectation much greater. I don't know what I've missed. I have to imagine that it's great.After a few hours at the hotel, without eating anything, though I did drink my first Angkor Beer, we all met up to go with the Non-Government Operators (NGOs henceforth) for dinner.

Siem Reap at night is impossible to imagine. I told Margaret that it was like something out of Deerhunter, and that's true, but it's so much stranger than that. Being in Cambodia at night is like living a PJ O'Rourke essay. (This is HIGH praise, from me. Coming from other people it might be a negative position. I suppose you'll have to go read some PJ and then decide for yourself.) We went to dinner at a place called Dead Fish. I had heard about this place before I came. Each table is on a separate level, for privacy. It's a neat system, though it really wastes a lot of space. We fit 30 people around a long table on a high level and half of them never got the food they ordered. I felt their pain, I never got my seconds. The food was very good. Kind of like Thai food, which I like very much, but a little spicier, or differently spice. Like when Mom puts too much cinnamon in the chili. You still know it's chili, but the taste is just different. At any rate, the food was tasty, but not filling. There were crocodiles inside the restaurant that you could feed fish for $.50. We didn't do it, but we watched a French couple do it. They seemed to be really happy doing it. We were just happy watching the crocodiles eat the fish. There was a floor show of traditional Cambodian ceremonial dancing, which I thought was dull. Then there was a couple of overweight American kids who came out and sang 90's hits. Since I am all about 90's hits, this went over big with me. My loud clapping irritated them, though. (They have no appreciation of virility in tourists.)

After dinner we decided, and when I say we, I mean my friend Cranston whose bank I am while we're here, to go to Bar Street. It's this crazy little street with lots of , wait for it, bars. It's cordoned off by police, though. They make sure that none of the little kids who beg can come onto the street and beg from you. The first place we went to was called The Temple. Again, there are Flickr images coming, but it was a cool place. We hung out there for a couple hours. We met a guy who works for Homeland Security, which was cool. He was drunk and said some things he probably shouldn't have, unless they were lies. But it was fun all the same. Then Thompson met up with this girl named Annie. At least, I'm guessing that's how she spells it. She pronounced it Annie. She took us to another place.

This other place was off Bar Street and a lot less… it was a whore bar. Apparently Annie asked for no money at the end of the evening and Thompson still has his passport and both kidneys, so maybe she just likes to hang out there, but it was something else. They don't have strip clubs here, it's not acceptable behavior. They DO have dancers though. These young girls who act like they are about 8, but look like they are older, if you see what I mean, dance around fully clothed; at least, fully clothed for them. The big question of the night was which of them were actually men in drag, it's shockingly difficult to tell with your basic Occidental face. I was coerced into a little dancing with one of them, but it was my usual awkward dancing and I think she got the worst of it. It got a lot of Cambodian laughs, but was not successful as a form of seduction, on either of our part. We stayed there for a while, until I finally was just done.

I gathered up half our party and took off, back to the hotel. We had to be up at 0445, so being out passed 1100 wasn't on for me. As it was, I got to sleep at almost 0100. I was sleepy when we got up the next day and boarded our bus for Th'Mir Pouk. This turned out to be a bad move on my part. Roads are something that happen to other people in Cambodia. The basic design of a road here is a pothole with no paving for miles. Several times I thought my coccyx was going to be fused to the metal of my seat. Most unpleasant. After 5 hours of miserable driving we finally found ourselves at the appointed place. Now, a few of you might have heard that we'd be performing our medicine inside of a Buddhist temple, and indeed, that was the plan. However, it turned out that our advance party had counted its chickens before they hatched and we were not going to be able to use the temple.

We are using the local governor's compound, instead. This is a little bit of a blessing, as it means that there are police around all the time and we don't have to set up our own guard system. That's nice because it means that we can sleep all night, instead of only in shifts. The downside is that there is no way to keep people out. (Don't ask me why not. There are gates and everything, and did I mention police? Yeah, I have no idea how that works. At any rate, it's a pretty nice place. Not great in so far as normal amenities that we enjoy in the West. The toilets are all bucket affairs. After you do your business and bag your toilet paper/baby wipes, you take a bucket of water and pour it down the spout until it finally flushes. Not pleasant. There is no shower capability. We use bottles of water and the back fence line.

Directions for a water bottle shower: Take 3 or 4 bottles of water, wear skimpy shorts, dump one bottle all over yourself, get every area wet. Soap up, don't drop the soap in the dirt! Use the other bottles to rinse the soap off after you drop it in the dirt, walk, covered in soap, back to the tent with the water and get more so that you can rinse off. Endure the taunting yells of your friends, also catcalls. Repeat every other day, when your own stink overwhelms you. Take care to avoid random dogs, chickens, children and Cambodian locals who would like trip you, watch you shower, or just plain lounge near you.

It took us most of the early afternoon to set up our tents and when we finished there were already 200+ locals outside, just waiting to be seen. So we took the late afternoon to see patients. I did vital signs at the start. It was fun. We had to see the 200+ before dark, so we had to move really quickly. The vital signs team had to keep ahead of the triage officer who had to keep ahead of the doctors who had to try not to overload the pharmacy. It was a mildly complicated process, and I enjoyed it. We ate our MRE dinner and went to bed, exhausted. In fact, I Think it might have been the most exhausted I've been in years, probably since boot camp. I did not dream. Wake up a little before 0600 and for many an MRE breakfast. Your intrepid author managed to go without food, though. MREs are foul at the best of times and not to be countenanced first thing in the AM. I require a soothing cup of tea and perhaps a quiet period of reading and a contemplative poop. These, unfortunately, are not an option in the field. I settled for sitting and making fun of my fellow early-morning risers.

A full day of seeing patients, I think we saw over 700 that first full day. The vitals team and I learned a bit of Cambodian and I entertained the crowd at lunchtime with all the hand motions and faces I could think of. The "living hand" thing didn't go over as well as it always did with me, but then I would be the first to admit that I lack the stage presence of a Chico Marx or a Bruce Campbell. The kids here, as I said, are adorable. Utterly, utterly adorable. I think that there is something in the water here though. The little girls are unutterably gorgeous, as young teenagers they have a grace that is not found in Western teenagers. But by the time they are in their mid-twenties they look like life is over for them. I was saying the other day that if this is how everyone used to age, in the old days, then no wonder they married so young. It's shocking, honestly. I have seen a couple of twenty-something girls who are still pretty, but there is a feeling of tenuous timing, as if their days are numbered and everyone knows it.

Several days went just like that, showers when possible, the bucket toilet, vital signs and vital signs and vital signs. We are all ripe, the smell in the tent where the enlisted guys sleep is something like what you'd imagine medieval moat to smell like. Spirits are pretty high though. We are all getting along well. There are two restaurants nearby. We have adopted one of them as our home away from home. I go every other night. We have Angkor Beers and Lohk Lahk. (Or it might be Lahk Lohk, we have not had a satisfactory explanation.) We ate frogs there the other night and bugs that they caught around the lamps. It was pretty special. The fruit! That's what I needed to tell you about. First of all, you have never had a real mango. I don't care where you think you had a mango, you're wrong. Real mangoes are sold, hot off the tree, at stands on the side of the road in Cambodia. And there are mangostines, I have no idea if that is the correct spelling, but they are delicious. There are many different kinds of things that are similar to gnapes. I guess frogs don't count as fruit, but those were good too. So far every growing thing we've eaten has blown us… away. At any rate, like I say, there will be more coming, there is still half a story to tell and part of it will take place in Siem Reap. Hopefully some of it will also be taking place at Angkor Wat. There will be photos and fun details for people in specific. Look forward to more.

That guy is a doggone legend

2008-03-24T18:18:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I never read the book. I am slightly ashamed to be reviewing this whole thing based on the information I have, but I read a comic book adaptation of the book. It was pretty good, it was by Steve Niles and I liked it pretty well. I have no idea how it turns out in the book, really.

I just read wikipedia's article on the subject and it quotes Stephen King as saying that if Richard Matheson didn't exist, he wouldn't either. Obviously Matheson has a lot more to answer for than the several poorly made attempts at filming his original vision. I suppose we can't take him to trial for creating Stephen King, but I can always dream of the day that someone is punished for that crime.

The book is pretty tense, well like I say, the comic adaptation was pretty tense. The way the main character's neighbors were on to him from the first and just waited and haunted him was a good setup. The antagonistic relationship with his former buddy on the block made me really pleased and reminded me of when I used to fight with our next-door neighbors, the Rayles. Nice kids, two girls and little boy. I can remember beating the boy up, sitting on his chest and punching him. I think he'd bitten me. Anyways, a belated sorry to Bobby Rayle and I hope that he never becomes a vampire and hangs around outside my house for revenge.

I also liked how much he drank in the book. It appealed to the lush in me. I also thought that it made a lot of sense. If all my neighbors were camping out in front of my house every night I'd probably want to get pretty trashed as well. My current neighbors are mostly Okinawan and I think that if they became vampires it'd be pretty terrifying. I'm not sure I'd be able to tell if they were vampires or not. They already hang out behind the house all night, how would I be able to tell if they were also eating people? They left a dead goat in my backyard last week. I mean, what would the signs and symptoms of vampirism be, and how would they be different. This is the sort of dilemma that culture shock brings.

My point, and I genuinely DO have a point, is that this particular movie version is pretty rotten. I liked how scary bits of it were, and I liked the first 25 minutes a whole, whole lot. But then little things started to bug me. Why was Emma Thompson in this movie? Why did the vampires look like CGI monsters? What's the satirical value of monsters that are nothing like people? Useless. And what the hell is the whole thing with the heroic value of Bob Marley? How nonsense is that? Bob Marley? Is Hollywood really scraping the bottom of the barrel for heroes or what? I have no idea what album it was that Will Smith claims is the best album ever, but since it is a Bob Marley album I have to say that I suspect he is wrong. Not only wrong, but wildly, hilariously inaccurately wrong.

There is a great scene, really scary and intense, where he is driving around and sees someone standing in the road. It's great, the whole scene that follows is wonderful. But it is ruined by the stupid CGI effects that look ridiculous, no matter how many time we see them. They look like they are Beowulf's cousins that suffer from alopecia. It's just sad.

Vern said that he waited through the whole movie for Will Smith to say something like, "Why's it always gotta be a black man gets eaten by the vampires?!" And while it wasn't quite THAT bad, I saw what he meant. I think that Will Smith, while I will always love him for his Fresh Prince shtick, both in his albums and his TV show, has kind of painted himself into a corner as an actor. It's too bad, as I think that he is pretty good, but just like Keannu Reeves always appears to be about to say, "Dude!" Will Smith always seems like he is about to try to out Martin Lawrence Martin Lawrence.

Access Woes

2008-03-24T17:39:00.000-07:00

Have you ever used Microsoft Access? It is making me frustrated. Or, to put it another way, These Pretzels Are Making Me THIRSTY!

I'm working on a database, well on creating a database, that needs to be able to do approximately everything for an entire battalion of people. Boy, is it a pain in the tuchus. I am not the most technically proficient guy in the world. I'm ok. I have some amount of skill. I can figure things out and I used to be able to make startling leaps that denied all actual knowledge in my head. ("What does this mean, Pitrone?" "Umm, it means that when you were 7 years old you were able to stand on your head?" "How did you know that!?")

Unfortunately, as I get older I find that my ability to make ridiculous leaps is waning. So now I am relying on my native cunning and what skills I have squirreled away over the years. It is not enough.

So if you're out there reading and you have lots of Access ability and want to help out your country and your blogger, please get in touch.

HEY, INTERNET, STOP BEING SUCH CYNICAL EFFING DOUCHEBAGS BLOG-A-THON!

2008-03-18T06:09:00.000-07:00

These are a few of may favorite thing that I am minorly, secretly, ashamed of. I know better than to love either one of them, but I can't help myself.

Andy Capp Hot Fries: These are basically plasticene rectangles with no food content whatsoever. They are of no value as food. But I love them. They are spicy and delicious. They are FunYuns for lovers of spicy food. When I was 14-16 I went to a home-school co-op in a small town about 20 minutes from my house. My Mother would pack up my brothers and I every morning and drive us out to Thompson, Oh for "Co-op." We would then get our heaping helping of socialization for the week, and we did. I made friends there that I have kept for the past 14 years, so it had real value. The day was split up into periods and we had to be at different classes at different times. All the classes were taught by home-schooling mothers. It was a good time, I learned a bit, but not as much as I probably was supposed to. I think I was probably getting too old by that point.

I'm bringing this around to Hot Fries, I promise.

There was an hour for lunch. Usually we packed our lunches, and as a not wealthy at all family, we usually had things that no one would be terribly excited to eat. But I started to have pocket money at about this time and I would walk, with my brother and our friend Alex Gardner, across the Thompson Square, to a little mini-mart, and buy Andy Capp Hot Fries. I have no idea how I originally chose these little treats. There must have been something about the packaging, thought I never liked Andy Capp as a character. (I disliked the air of spousal abuse that is such a great part of the strips humor. I know, I'm a prig.) But I just remember that I loved them. I would open the package just the slightest bit at the top. Then I'd crush down then fries into crumbs and tip the bag back over my mouth, taking half the bag at a crunchy, chewy, spicy gulp. It was delicious and it made me happy each time I did it. I would occasionally buy more than one bag, to save one for when I got home. But instead I'd always eat the other bag after the first.

To this day, when I see a bag of Hot Fries it takes all my effort to keep from purchasing them, and I frequently fail. I have never understood Andy Capp, and I think of Hot Fries as an incredibly white-trash snack, but I love them.

Zombies: Is there anything of worth about zombies? I mean, honestly, anything? I don't think that there is. They are the id of American popular art. I can't think of a redeeming quality that zombie stories have. When Pandora opened the box of troubles, there remained hope. Zombie moves begin with all hope gone, and end without hope returning. (The exception is 28 Days Later, but that isn't REALLY a zombie movie. It's a horror movie with zombie-like beings. In contrast, 28 Weeks Later IS a zombie movie. It knows that there is no chance of returning the planet to a livable status quo post-zombie. It teases us, at the start, with the idea that zombies have been eradicated, but we know it isn't true. Further, it shows that zombification is not like hypnosis, you will do things as a zombie that are against your most basic intentions as a human being. Zombie nature is the farthest form of human nature, the worst of the worst.)

But, zombies are glorified evil. They are the most base, the most evil, the least redeemable or redeemed of all the villians. In zombies we see America, we see our values, our civilization and our desires perverted and destroyed... with NO hope. That is what is rotten about zombies. (If you'll allow the pun.)

But I love them. I love them staggering and slow or lightning fast. I like to see them eat humans and tear us apart. I like to see their heads explode from bullets, axes or LPs. I enjoy everything about zombies and I harbor happy little fright fantasies about the zombie menace becoming real.

JJ Abrams created the film Cloverfield in order to create an American monster. I read an interview where he talked about being in Japan with his son and noticing the Godzilla is everywhere. (I am in Okinawa, Japan right now and I have no idea what he is talking about in this interview, but I guess it must just be mainland Japan.) At any rate, he wanted to create a uniquely American monster. A monster that we could relate to our culture, a monster that is a satire for Americanism, for our form of patriotism and our national notions. He created some damn monster, I didn't see the film, but I haven't seen it grasp anyone like Godzilla seems to have grasped Japan. I would argue that the gap he was trying to fill is already filled by zombies.

Zombies are our satirized selves. They tell us about our consumerism, our fascination with media and our ability to rationalize. They tell us that we are a hair's breadth from a terrible future.

They remind us of the need to deny our natures.

People talk about their nature all the time. They talk about being born this way or that. They talk about finding themselves. They talk about the purity of the natural state. They are talking about being zombies.

In our natural state we use everything as a latrine, we eat whatever we can get, raw. We are filthy, naked, cold, and miserable. The desire for betterment and the denial of self, the denial of nature, that is what makes humans better. In zombie movies the people who are selfless are the ones who cause good things to happen. Those who are self-centered, those who seek their own desires, those who accept themselves as they are and do not strive for betterment, those are the ones who become zombies and cause the most damage.

Zombies teach us about life and nature. Zombies teach us about civilization and the need for self-abnegation.

At least, if you think a WHOLE LOT about them, they do.

If, for instance, you are the kind of person who wants to rationalize their love of a hipster fad. If you are the kind of person who likes to talk about great zombie moments and thinks the George Romero is a great master of ideas. (And perhaps has the entire tag-poem for Monkey Shines memorized.) Then you might have a really good reason for liking something with no discernable value, like zombies.

Anyways, thanks Final Girl, for letting me write about my guilty pleasures and tell the world how much I like things I probably shouldn't.

That Old Boy

2008-03-17T22:06:00.000-07:00

If you want to watch a movie that made Margaret gag, then I recommend this one.

This absolutely has to be the best incest/revenge, comedy/torture drama I have ever seen. What a great/insane film.

The basic premise, which starts out the bax with a bang, is that a man is kidnapped, held for 15 years and when he is released he is tortured by a Big Brother-esque villian that sees his every move and is always one step ahead of him. It's kind of like a reverse Ocean's Eleven, Twelve or Thirteen. Instead of our wildly stylish and clever protagonists being one step ahead, always out thinking and out planning the bad guys, it's the wildly stylish and clever, incredibly evil villian.

There are plot twists and there are teeth pried out with hammers. There is a wonderful fight scene with 20 guys attacking one. There is a tongue removed with scissors. It's a winner, a visceral thrill ride that is said to have inspired the Virginia Tech shooter. So, if you've been thinking about going insane and shooting up your school, this could be the movie for you.

Across The Universe

2008-03-17T16:52:00.000-07:00

I watched this film with Margaret the other day. At least, we watched most of it. I was excited to see it because it's directed by Julie Taymor, who is one of the most interesting directors alive. She love puppetry and wild imagery, she choreographs and designs costumes and scenery. If you've ever read any of Paul Johnson's histories that speak on art you will see that set design is a major chunk of art. Many of the great landscape painters were also set designers.

At any rate, I was excited about it. I am not a fan of Rachel Evans Wood, and I kind of suspected that the film would be pretty trite. A hippy-view of the 60's fueled by Beatles covers... not the greatest plan for a movie I've ever heard. I figured that if anyone could pull it off, it would be Julie Taymor.

At any rate, the film itself.

A lot of people here in Okinawa talked the film up to us, they told us it was really good. Before we saw it they would ask us what our favorite song in the film was, things like that. I have no idea how it got such a military following, but it has one. So one Saturday we popped it in.

The first scene is the ostensible hero, Jude, (Jim Sturgess) singing Girl. It's a nice scene, understated, kind of quiet and interesting. From there you have a ten minute montage of early 60's scenes to various Beatles songs. Not a new idea, but nicely done. Hard to tell what is being said in a few places. Hard to discern the ideas that are being shown, but they are being shown so prettily that you give it a pass.

As the film goes on the pastiches are more and more lovely and more and more chaotic and difficult to decipher. But that's not an issue. I would watch a Cremaster type manic dream, if it was directed by Julie Taymor and had her majestice imagery. But the characters grow more and more self-centered and less and less relatable, until we eventually turned it off, shortly after Bono showed up and depressed us.

The film is INCREDIBLY stupid in parts. The names of all the characters cribbed from Beatles songs. There is Sadie, Lucy, Maxwell, Jude, Dr. Roberts, on and on. There are the usual sops to anti-war protests and the musical revolution of the time. There is a haunting picture of the Watts Riots, but it takes about 5 seconds and then moves into some hippy glorification.

I was incredibly turned off by the characters. I tuned them out and despised them. But over the last couple of days I have been thinking about them. I think that perhaps their point was to be rotten. Maybe their irritating self-centeredness isn't some sort of miscalculation. Maybe it was a reflection of how irritating and self-centered the time really was. Maybe it's a satire on the whole hippy/Baby-Boomer self-absorption.

I like the idea that there was an intentional argument in this film. I like the idea that Rachel Evan Wood's incredibly dull, one-dimensional performance intentionally illustrated the dull, one-dimensional character of the 60's.

I would like to ask someone who was there, was part of the "counter-culture movement" to watch the film and let me know. Any takers?

Pretty Funny Stuff

2008-03-17T12:28:00.000-07:00

For those of you who write blogs:

2008-02-21T23:58:00.000-08:00

HEY, INTERNET, STOP BEING SUCH CYNICAL EFFING DOUCHEBAGS BLOG-A-THON!

One day, and one day only: Tuesday, March 18.

The amazing Stacie Ponder, over on Final Girl, the best horror blog on the internet invites us all to write about something that makes us incredibly happy. Any have anything to write about, but no blog? Write it here on a comment.

Uh-mazing

2008-02-19T03:56:00.000-08:00

With my usual faultless timing, I watched tonight a film that people raved about months ago. I am adding my voice to those raves. The King Of Kong, or A Fistful Of Quarters is superb. Besides having one of the most loathsome villains to be seen on the screen in ages, it also has one of the best analogies ever, watch out for the Obi Wan Kenobi explanation, it is splendid. Absolutely heart-wrenching and hilarious, the entire effort feels staged, except for the wonderful wife of the hero, who is never less than supportive and loving. Run, don't walk.

The Age Old Trade-Off

2008-02-15T16:15:00.000-08:00

I realized this week that I no longer have acne problems like I have for years and years. The upside of being 30 is that the acne seems to mostly vanish. The downside is that I now have thick, grey hairs growing out of my ears and nose. It makes me wonder if God is a little bit of a groomer monkey. He likes us best when we have to focus on physical flaws and tear things out of our bodies or squeeze stuff out of our faces. It doesn't appeal to me, but I guess I am not the target audience.

Yes, that's right, in the past few days I have turned thirty. It happened without my even noticing, almost. One day I was a free-wheeling, fun-loving fellow in my late-twenties, next thing I know I reach a day when there is grey hair in my ears and I am 30. How does it happen?

Again, I have to point the finger at God. It's one of those ineffable plan things. Apparently age must teach us all lessons or something. I'm not clear on the exact details, but I am sure there are some.

What else is happening that I can tell you all about? What is our news, here in Okinawa:

Margaret is slowly going stir-crazy while working on her thesis. She has come to hate the sight of comic books, except for Bill Willingham's Fables, so good thinking there, Rob. Probably don't let her downstairs at your house with matches and gasoline, though. She is also preparing to paint the old table and the new chairs that we're going to get today. We're entertaining this Sunday and we're trying to get the house together for it. I think it will be a lovely time.

I spent the 4 days after my birthday in the field. There were huge tents to sleep in and no showers and smelly bodies and ridiculous training exercises that taught no one anything. I suppose that's how the military likes to do things. A waste of time is still time spent, and that's what the tax-payers are paying for. My job looks to be getting better, though. I am, without any real effort, well-known for my ability to work with computers and I will be using my old friend, Microsoft Access, to build some databases for Charlie Co. Hopefully this will work out well and I have not forgotten everything I know about Access. I have been sold big, I can't afford to let everyone down.

Today we are going to the Okinawa Aquarium, to see the whale sharks. It ought to be wonderful, and after we get back we'll be posting the photos we have from the past couple weeks. You'll all be updated via image. Be excited!

O+M

Why have these two not combined previously...

2008-02-14T00:09:00.001-08:00

With a girlish scream of delight at the wonderful symmetry of joy!

An Update

2008-01-28T18:08:00.000-08:00

Sorry it's been a while, but we somehow put the neighbor's internet out of commision and have felt reluctant to ask them to let us back on, now that it is fixed.

We're doing very well. I have started work, kind of. So far I have gotten up early in the mornings, but not really done any work. It's been a lot of fun, let me tell you. I'm spending a lot of time in the library, wishing they had more books.

Yesterday was the first day I was allowed on a computer at all, and it wasn't able to get onto Blogger. Since that seems my most effective tool for getting in touch with people, I wanted to wait till I could use it. That day has come.

Yesterday evening we walked around trying to catch these huge turtles that are in a sewage ravine by a power plant, but no dice. There is a good photo of Margaret looking really grossed out by a sea-slug/sea cucumber, but I don't have it with me, so just imagine it for now.

We are doing really well. When we have internet we'll be doing better, but there are no complaints as of right this minute. We have to find a cheap car, hopefully this weekend.

How are all of you?

Margaret says to tell her family that she is alive and well and will be making phone calls the moment she is able. Sorry to everyone who hoped to hear from us sooner, we're just not making it easy on anyone right now, what with not having a phone or internet. But we still love you all, we promise.

Many little unimportant, and one pretty sad, things...

2008-01-22T22:57:00.000-08:00

The sad thing first: Heath Ledger died. That's kind of sad. I liked him in all the movies I ever saw him in and I suspect I'll like him in movies I haven't seen yet. He seemed like a fun guy to know and I know he's got a daughter that he's leaving behind and all. Sad. I know that my side of the family is rolling their eyes at this point, but it makes me unhappy. I'm crying, but that's mostly because Margaret just made me cut a bunch of onions. (Well, it's all because of the onions. I knew the news for hours before and the onions are making me cry. Now I'm over-protesting.)

Other than that, I have some links, some recommendations and some observations.

For Tom Pitrone, a link to an interesting and positive take on One From The Heart.

For my brother Rob I have the Hellboy trailer, you may have already seen it, but I want your feedback. Margaret says the final monster scene is too much. Thoughts? (Anyone else can chime in as well, of course.)

I strongly recommend the following two Christian Bale films: 3:10 to Yuma, and The Machinist. Both are spectacular, The Machinist is so heavily dread-filled, without being at all a horror movie, that it is almost terrifying. Margaret managed to see a cat outside our window while we were watching it and then couldn't sleep till I got up and checked everything out and made sure that there were no imaginary intruders. (I recognize that this might not be high praise to many of you, but to those on my wave-length here, it's a good'un.)

3:10 to Yuma, Bale manages to make being quietly heroic both sympathetic and frustrating, as anyone who has ever attempted quiet heroics can attest that it is. Also, does Russell Crowe ever do a BAD job? Maybe in that romantic comedy with Salma Hayek? I can't remember that I ever watched that, but he doesn't seem the type to shine there. Perhaps the better question is, does Christian Bale ever give a bad performance? He really classed up that dragon movie he was in. And I think he was even good in Newsies, though all I really remember about that is a kid named Crutchie.

As for the questions that keep popping up about my work, let me just say that there is no great news in sight. I think that my friend Cornelius and I are thinking about taking over the office area. We will be the Adminjerks, but at least we'll have work to do pretty regularly. I don't know, I spent the day there today and it was depressingly dull. The suggestion from Cornelius is to make myself as useful as I can, but I don't know how useful that will be. I suppose I can teach R.A./H.F.G. house painting techniques, or refreshers on why it is important to alway have a lawyer...

Margaret's family, shame on you! Margaret just told me she's never watched Malcolm in the Middle, for shame!

As to the rest of our life, this is the proposed vehicle style:

Though Margaret is angling for this:

But fortunately there are Disney characters on there and you all know how I feel about that. I am putting my foot down.

That Ol' Library of Congress

2008-01-20T16:45:00.000-08:00

They's gone and put up a whole host of photos on Flickr. Click the photo for the link and enjoy the photographic history.

In case anyone forgot...

2008-01-20T06:07:00.001-08:00

There is now a FIFTH season of the wonderful QI available for... um, watching.

96 Hours+ of Liberty and our views.

2008-01-15T23:36:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the delay. We haven't had any access to any sort of internet or phone for a few days now. We've moved into our house, the fabled New Covenant address that we had hoped for. It's gorgeous and due to the kindness of our upstairs neighbors we now have internet access. We're going to be getting fiber optic internet access, but as everyone tells us pretty regularly here, things take longer in the East than they do in the US. (Except getting apartments, we accomplished that in about 4 days.)

So, let's see, what all things can I tell you? So much has happened in so little time.

I'll try to start at the beginning. We went to the housing office with our paperwork for the apartment, in order to see if I had set it up correctly. There was supposed to be a couple of different types of downpayment, but our friend and helpful housing agent set us up so we don't have to pay them till PSD reimburses us. (Which they have done, supposedly, yesterday. I should really check that out...)

Ok, checked it out and it's fine. The question that remains is how to pay it to anyone. We get paid in dollars, which then have to be transformed to Yen, but that's complicated due to the rambling, changeable exchange rate. You never know what you're spending on anything, really. We can usually guess that Y100 is equal to $1, but it's always a little different than that. It's really a mystery, though. How do I write a check for Yen? Is it possible? No way to know today, I suppose.

This is the view from our back porch. It's amazing. Obviously this photo was taken on a cloudy day, but it's GORGEOUS today. I'll try to get a picture of it, hang on.
There you go. It's great!

The whole thing is pretty special. I was thinking this morning that everything is working out so well, that there either needs to be a big fall or maybe God is trying to show me that everything CAN work out well for people who are honest. It's probably just grace towards Margaret, but I am a lucky side benefitter.

Below is the letter I sent home, and to many of you, so it won't be news to some, but people whose e-mails I can't find, you might like it.

To one and all, whether you cared or not, I am terribly sorry for not getting in touch with any of you for the past several days. (Though some of you have been out of touch with me for far longer. That's the difficulty with this sort of long-range, wildly random, e-mailing. Those folks with the telegrams, they knew what they were about.)

My wife and I are in Japan. Well, we're in Okinawa, it counts though. Lovely place, there are some photos of it up at my blog, if you have the chance to look. There will be more up before too long. Margaret is planning on getting a Flickr.com account and there will be links to it sent to everyone, when we know what it is.

We got here about two weeks ago and we already have a place to live and all of our stuff set up. Yesterday we bought a couch and carried it a mile down the street together, before our upstairs neighbor came and picked us up in his minivan thing. (That's a point, all the cars here look like Hot Wheels. It's pretty cool. The highest speed on the whole island is about 50 MPH, so the cars don't have to have a lot of pep or be particularly impressive. As a result, we love every car that goes by. Our next purchase will be a vehicle and Margaret has her heart set on a van-like contraption that has 13" wheels.)

Our house is gorgeous, all wooden and, as Kanye West would say, Japanese-y. The drains attach directly to the sewer so they pong a bit sometimes, but there is a trick with bleach that seems to work well. Our view is incredible, the ocean is directly outside our back doors. We could, if we so desired, throw our furniture into the ocean. (We don't generally desire that.) The hot water heater is a little kerosene boiler that has to be turned on a few minutes before you want to use the water, but that's pretty cool, too. The whole place is wonderful.

A mile away is a store that we have affectionately titled, "The Everything Store." For those who know what I mean, it's like Conley's. For everyone else, it's a mixture of Wal-Mart, Home Depot, a grocery store, a Best Buy and a Pier One. Possibly the coolest store ever. We discovered it a couple days ago and have not gone a day without visiting it since. Everything is in Japanese, which makes every trip an adventure. In direct contradiction to what everyone was telling us on the way here, no one speaks English. We're as foreign as can be, which is really, really strange. Little kids look at us like we're some sort of bipedal dogs. The adults are barely more solicitous. It's pretty amazing.

Right up the street from us is a Family Mart, which is sort of like a 7-11. For reasons that, since we haven't learned a lick of Japanese, are a deep mystery, the teenagers who work there start talking, a series of rote phrases from what we can tell, the moment anyone walks in the door and then continue to chatter off slogans until the various, and also seemingly rote, cashier slogans as you leave. It has become sort of a game, trying to figure out what they might mean.

"Hello foreigners, welcome to our plus-good store with the fantastic prices and the expensive beer!"
"Enjoy your time in our frightening bathrooms, do your best to aim at the hole in the floor accurately!"
"Thank you for spending our comical coin money at our super-wonderful and extra glossy cash register, please place your money in this tray and keep your gaijin hands aways from mine and have a nice day!"

I haven't really found out what I'll be doing for work yet. I start on Tuesday morning, so I'm hoping it's good. I am a little worried from what I am hearing. It sounds like work here mostly consists of not doing much at all. Apparently we take a lot of classes on nonsense and then wait to be deployed. I want to do something a little more meaningful, but I guess we'll have to see how that works out.

How are you?

O+M

Amazing, Amusing, a Hope and a Hope

2008-01-09T04:19:00.000-08:00

So, check THIS out:

We went and got all the stuff lined up to get our off-base housing. It looks good, we went out today and looked at a few places. We found THE place. We found a place, within, more than within, our price range. I did one of the smartest things I've ever done in this sort of situation. I had two lists of apartment listings, one from a month ago. I highlighted all the places that hadn't rented and then picked the ones that we might want from that list. What we ended up with was this place that's a second-floor apartment, it's approximately 20 feet from the beach. It's gorgeous. Really, really Japanese seeming and cool. All wood, two bedrooms, perfect. We were biased towards it from the first though, the building is called The New Covenant building. How's that for a sign?

Anyways, we'll have to see what the deal is tomorrow, but start praying for us. Margaret loves the place and I'd love to get it for her. Money is a little scary, but we'll figure it out.

Oh, and Margaret got her Okinawa license today, too.

Day Two and Photos

2008-01-05T22:19:00.000-08:00

This morning we woke up around 8. Margaret fell asleep last night at 7 or so. We had made a dinner of pasta and bacon, with egg and garlic. It was pretty tasty, shaky cheese from the local shoppette rounded it out. It wasn't terribly Japanese, but it was kind of homey.

We got up and got dressed this morning, Frosted Flakes for breakfast.

I got a hold of my sponsor to find out what we're going to be doing today. (Answer, nothing.) and what I need to do/get ready for tomorrow. (Answer, lots of stuff.) And then Margaret and I went out to see what's around here.

It's pretty great, honestly. Everything, seriously everything is foreign. It's got to be one of the strangest feelings ever. There is virtually no English anywhere.

Ok, I just got the pictures up, so I'll try to explain a little. There are photos from the plane flight, where we went over Alaska, apparently? It's a mystery to me how that works, but I guess we did. It looks cool. There's the obligatory, Margaret thinks it's cool photo. There are a lot of pictures from today. We were walking and we found a big, huge, sand baseball diamond. There were all these little kids playing baseball. It was really cool. There is a picture of the terracing across the street from the baseball diamond. I liked number 13, who was kind of lerpy and didn't really want to be there. Margaret liked number 9, who was hefty and was completely off sync with the rest of the team. It was funny.

The photos of the gas station are to show that even in Japan, small-town gas station attendants have mullets. But also, look how small/narrow that carwash is! The cars here are so skinny! It's crazy.

More tomorrow, I'm sure.

Japonisme

2008-01-04T22:57:00.000-08:00

When I was little Kate had a book of that name on the shelves and I used to take it down from time to time, I think it was about the influence of Japanese culture on French art, and I'd think that Japan sure would be a crazy place to visit. Well, as of yesterday evening, I live in Okinawa Japan. So far it's pretty military. We've seen two airports and been around a base, but the Pacific Ocean looks pretty wonderful and Margaret and I got some shells and things from the beach at the base we're staying at, so it's a start.

A little background, we got on a flight out of Cleveland on Tuesday afternoon, the 2nd of January, 2008. Our flight was supposed to be at 1:44 in the afternoon, but we got to the airport around 10AM, just to be sure that we got our rental car in on time and so on. (You ought to have seen me trying to navigate my 100+ pound seabag from the rental car to the rental car counter, in the snow and ice, wearing cowboy boots. For that matter, you ought to have seen Margaret trying to walk and drag two rolling suitcases, with the snow and ice, wearing cowboy boots. We were a little worse for the wear by the time we got on the shuttle to Hopkins.)

The flight was delayed out of Cleveland, due to the snow at O'Hare, so we sat around for a LONG time, talking to random people, and then, randomly, Joe Bromley, who was waiting for a flight out as well. When we got to Chicago it turned out that our connecting flight, to Seattle, had left already, so we waited a long time to get on the next one, maybe. We met a really nice guy who had just come in from Frankfurt Germany, he said that 8 days ago they'd told him there were lots of seats on the plane, so we were a little hopeful, and then there were seats, we even got to sit together. (Thanks guy from Frankfurt! Leonard Szymborski, by the way, if you ever run into him in the airport, say hi!)

In Seattle we got our luggage, got to a hotel and then got hold of Joe and Lisa Park. We went to this great place right by the airport called Roasters, which was super nice and had GREAT beer selection. Joe and Lisa, by the way, have matching tattoos that no one in their family will comment on. They are nice tattoos, though. They say something like, "If lost, please return to Yahweh," but in Hebrew. Joe and Lisa are well, and lots of fun. They look great, too. Really well and happy.

We got up super early the next morning and got a shuttle to the Seattle Airport, which was actually just right around the corner, and the really knowledgeable shuttle driver told us where to go for our flight. Then we haggled with the flight folks, so we could get our really heavy bags on the flight. Then we waited at the Seattle Airport for a LONG time. Thank God for Hudson News stores. Seriously, Hudson, your News stores are a life saver! Good work, Hudson!

The flight to Japan was LONG, very, very, very LONG. It wasn't bad, we had a pretty good time, and we hadn't really slept much for the previous few days, so we avoided most of the jet-lag, but it was a LONG flight. I read all of C.S. Lewis's Horse and His Boy, to Margaret. We also listened to a lot of The Godfather, on her iPod.

Arriving in Japan was nice. There was a sponsor there to help us out, HM3 Phillips, she is cool. She took us to the Commisary this morning, to help us get started and get some juice and things. Margaret and I have walked all over the base we're at, Camp Courtney, but I think that we'll try to live at Camp Foster and then I'll work at Camp Something With An H.

But we're well, and this blog, for so long neglected, should show some renewed signs of life, so check it out.

Part 2.1

2007-11-08T14:06:00.000-08:00

He found that he really had a lot to say to her, but the conversation was pretty one sided.

- I can't believe you really shot me.

Not even a blink from her.

-I know I wasn't the perfect man. I know I treated you badly. I even deserved to die, but still... You look so pure and innocent right now. It's hard to see you like this. This new light you're in is too much for me. I guess I'll be seeing a lot of things in a new light.

She not only failed to respond, she scratched the inside of her thigh in a disconcertingly private fashion. Rudy knew she couldn't sense him. He was extant only to himself, which was unfortunate in so many ways.

Rudy saw the bicycle taxi a long time before Brenda did. With a great deal of effort he managed to get his spectral form up above the accident. The bird's eye view did him no favors. The way Brenda tore out of the windscreen was disturbing for everyone, but it was particularly awful from Rudy's perspective.

Brenda split into two parts, he bod and her other form. She was present for just long enough to blurt out - I killed you! How are you... OH!

And she was gone.

The bicycle taxi driver stuck around for a moment longer. He looked at his shattered cab and corpse.

- F#ck man! I just paid that shit off! I was finally going to make some money. Dammit! That sucks. I was totally not ready for another incarnation yet.

And then he started to shrink and grow younger looking. His features changed and in a child's voice: - I f#cking HATE the birth canal!

And he was gone.

Rudy's attention was absorbed by this display. He completely failed to notice the man dressed like an investment banker who was walking swiftly away, holding the bulging case of cash. He failed to notice for about 10 feet.

Part 2

2007-11-05T14:22:00.000-08:00

Rudy hadn't lived much of a life, but he'd always thought that it would end with a whimper, rather than a bang. He'd known there were troubles between the, but when Brenda actually pulled a gun on him... well, it was a radical shift in perspective.

- Baby, what is this?

- Don't you f#cking 'baby' me, asshole! This is the way this f#cking story ends. Drop the f#cking case and move over there.

If only she'd been right. Later on Rudy had LOTS and LOTS of time to reflect on how wrong she'd been.

- I said, 'Drop The F#cking Case!' You impotent, dimebag, skinny-d!ck, piece of sh!t!

- Look, Ba..., Brenda, Brenda honey, it wasn't, it isn't like this isn't OUR money, OUR life. We're here together.

- F#ck that! I know you. You're not innocent, you're not f#cking sharing. You're looking at that money and you're f#cking making plans.

- Plans for us! Plans for US, ba.., Brenda.

- That's all I have to hear. You barely know my f#cking name! I'm just one of your damn 'Babys' Well f#ck that, and f#ck you! I'm not having that. I'm having it all.

The windmills turned over head. Oblivious to the quickly cut-off,
- Baby, NO!
and the four shots that followed.

Rudy, looking down at his corpse, reflected that she'd been too close. She was spattered, well spattered. Not like Carrie or anything, but it was a bloody mess. She stood so still that it was almost as if SHE'D died. But then her eyes moved to the case and it was like a current to a clock. Instant movement.

Rudy was a little startled. Not being a terribly metaphysical kind of guy he'd never really given much thought to what happens after death. Now it was happening. He'd been planning on checking into a hotel at around this time. Within two hours he'd planned to be showering the sex off and leaving a note. He'd given a lot of thought to whether or not he'd leave money. He'd decided not to, which had only made it more surprising to be shot. Ask anyone who has suffered a fatal gunshot wound, (consult your local medium) they'll tell you it's pretty surprising.

Rudy watched her level his body over the cliff and was impressed again at how different she was than he'd thought. She'd seemed, for the couple months he'd known her, to be one of those pretty, little bitches that one meets and discards. He'd never thought of her as something special. Clarity rarely comes to one in the full flush of rapid existence. But get to the other side and things start to clarify in a hurry.

Rudy saw that she was a little more than just a random bar slut. She was obviously better looking, but she'd also been planning this caper for a while. The ease with which she had pulled it together, the swift movements for disposal. Rudy wished he'd seen things this clearly before he'd died. With one of those goofy little smiles of his, the ones that defined his success with women when he was alive, he thought about using his new found deductive skills to, well, to what?

As Brenda started the car and drove off Rudy experienced yet another little shock. He stopped being by the windmills and found himself floating about 10 feet behind the car. With all the control he could muster over his new, apparently nomadic, dicorporeal form, he stopped in midair. But within seconds he was moving again, floating along behind the car. He considered his options. Apparently his would not be an existence of control. Something clearly compelled him.

Rudy was used to control. Not that he wasone of those control freaks or anything. He ran one of the most continually successful minor casinos on the strip for a very, very successful little syndicate, known under a variety of sobriquets and mostly feared by those in the know. The case Brenda had taken was only 1% his, and as a consequence some very, very angry men would be coming after Brenda before too long. Rudy expected to feel good about seeing harm come to her, but was surprised to find that he couldn't muster and malice whatsoever.

There was closer and there was in the car. Those were his options. By a little manipulation of the will he found that he could move in any direction, 10 feet from the car. He considered a destiny tied by a 10 foot leash to a rental car. It seemed bleak. Being in the car with Brenda, near all that blood, it was disconcerting. He found that he really had a lot to say to her, but the conversation was pretty one sided.

The New One

2007-11-02T15:53:00.000-07:00

This is what I do while in class at Field Med.

The windmills churned round again.

On the ground the blood had almost entirely soaked into the dust. Standing by the door, like a blood-soaked gargoyle, she finally let the gun fall onto the driver's seat. As if the falling gun had restarted time she began to move. Using the tire iron from the jack she pushed the carcass off the cliff. The car started with the whisper of luxury and in the backseat the case with the 400,000 hundred dollars bills glowered accusation.

Pulling back onto The Strip an hour later she barely even glanced at the gaudy extravaganza. So focused was she on her mission, she never saw the two-seat bicycle taxi that killed her.

The collision was quick and the taxi driver barely even noticed the sleekness of her Rolls. He didn't have any customers, so it was only the loss of one resident Las Vegan. But she was through the windshield before she knew what happened and dead before the case in the backseat hit the floor.

James Lauer had given up years ago. He knew he hadn't ever accomplished anything. All his pleasures and perfections were vicarious. After High School there were a couple of years when he thought that something might happen for him, but nothing ever did and the slow movement West had finally landed him here. Vegas offered him a good disposable income. He sustained off the gullibility of tourists. The move towards a more family oriented Sin City had been a boon to him. All the brightly colored shirts and fear of looking stupid made perfect sense to a business model that covers all the angles. A suit, not a flashy one, a smile, thank God Dad was an orthodontist, and a guarantee of successful gambling skills taught in one hour increments and two hour "Intensive" courses. It all added up to money, if not in the bank, then at least under the carpet in the living room.

As he ran to the wreck though, all he could think about was the woman who's flown through the window. As the rolls had passed him, sitting on his bench, eating his late dinner ham and cheese, he'd been awed by her. She was, without question, a specimen of perfection.

It was a split second and she never saw him. His firing synapses had only just hit their receptors when her head hit the glass. Just as his heart leaped in his chest, the rolls leaped over the taxi and all the bits of perfection came crashing to earth.

So James ran.

He got to the wreck and took it in with a glance. The woman was obviously dead. She had obviously died and bled and torn all at once. The only thing left to take in was the case in the backseat. It was lying open, as if it had been placed that way, full to the top with tightly wrapped hundreds. A true child of the Media Age, the phrase, "unmarked, non-sequential hundreds" immediately tolled through his mind. He was later discouraged to find them to be both marked and sequential. Nonetheless, the case retained its emotional allure. Money does that.

Looking around him with a speed and intensity that he had rarely found before, he opened the rear passenger door and took the case. With another swift glance around, and a more tender on at the bloodied angel in the street, he closed the case against his leg and walked off.

I can't see it, but...

2007-09-27T05:31:00.000-07:00

...supposedly this is Wes Anderson's short that will no longer be shown with The Darjeeling Limited get it while it's hot.

3:24 PM (37 comments):
Here's a link for Wes Anderson's Hotel Chevalier -- Jason Schwartzman, a yellow and biege hotel room with a great view, Peter Sarstedt's "Where Do You Go To, My Lovely?", the naked Natalie Portman (with bruises) and a great pair of lines -- Portman saying "if we f, I'm going to feel like s tomorrow" and Schwartzman saying "that's okay with me." The download is free. It's best to have iTunes open first. It lasts 13 minutes.

Another Fan Opportunity

2007-09-27T04:59:00.001-07:00

For those who know how much 30 rocks

From the desk of Frank Pitrone

2007-09-26T11:33:00.000-07:00

...comes this little tidbit for the booklover.

Two of my faves

2007-09-26T05:38:00.000-07:00

I really like these guys.

"All work and no play makes Homer...

2007-09-26T05:34:00.000-07:00

... something, something."

Probably only news to me...

2007-09-25T07:31:00.001-07:00

... but this is awesome.

For Dunder Mifflin-ites everywhere.

Anatomy and haircut

2007-09-25T05:53:00.001-07:00

So, this is the haircut I tried to have when I was a teenager, and also the visual explanation of why.

That New Yorker!

2007-09-25T05:34:00.000-07:00

They're always getting it right!

Two thoughts from my ride in to work

2007-09-24T05:04:00.002-07:00

First, I was driving behind an SUV with the following two bumper stickers:
"Gore '08... for earth's sake.
"Still PISSED at Yoko"
And it made me wonder if the person driving the vehicle knew that he/she was now a living cliche'.

The second is that I REALLY hope that the Iranian president's speech at Columbia is like when the Martians visit the Congress.

"Ack Ack, AckAck ACK ACK!!" And then a deathray kills them all. That would make me laugh.

The other thing I was thinking though is, what if he is assasinated? I mean, during Yom Kippur, he says something stupid, some hot head in the crowd get rowdy, has a gun... When will or colleges learn about gun control, blah blah blah, talking head fever. But what are the ramifications? Interesting idea.

Thoughts?

Brak could have told them this would happen...

2007-09-24T05:04:00.001-07:00

NEVER trust a monkey!

Some Pretty Great Creatures

2007-09-24T04:42:00.000-07:00

From Prince Caspian

I Disagree and why.

2007-09-21T10:11:00.000-07:00

So, read all of this:

CHEAP TOMATOES - A Reality Check!
This one tells it like it really is..............Hope you read it all...........

This English teacher has phrased it the best I've seen yet. CHEAP TOMATOES?This should make everyone think, be you Democrat, Republican or Independent. From a California school teacher - - - "As you listen to the news about the student protests over illegal immigration, there are some things that you should be aware of: I am in charge of the English-as-a-second-language department at a large southern California high school which is designated a Title 1 school, meaning that its students average lower socioeconomic and income levels. Most of the schools you are hearing about, South Gate High, Bell Gardens, Huntington Park, etc., where these students are protesting, are also Title 1 schools.Title 1 schools are on the free breakfast and free lunch program. When I say free breakfast, I'm not talking a glass of milk and roll -- but a full breakfast and cereal bar with fruits and juices that would make a Marriott proud. The waste of this food is monumental, with trays and trays of it being dumped in the trash uneaten (OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK)I estimate that well over 50% of these students are obese or at least moderately overweight. About 75% or more DO have cell phones. The school also provides day care centers for the unwed teenage pregnant girls (some as young as 13) so they can attend class without the inconvenience of having to arrange for babysitters or having family watch their kids. (OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK) I was ordered to spend $700,000 on my department or risk losing funding for the upcoming year even though there was little need for anything; my budget was already substantial.. I ended up buying new computers for the computer learning center, half of which, one month later, have been carved with graffiti by the appreciative students who obviously feel humbled and grateful to have a free education in America. (OUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK) I have had to intervene several times for young and substitute teachers whose classes consist of many illegal immigrant students here in the country less then 3 months who raised so much hell with the female teachers, calling them "Putas" whores and throwing things that the teachers were in tears. Free medical, free education, free food, day care etc., etc, etc. Is it any wonder they feel entitled to not only be in this country but to demand rights, privileges and entitlements? To those who want to point out how much these illegal immigrants contribute to our society because they LIKE their gardener and housekeeper and they like to pay less for tomatoes: spend some time in the real world of illegal immigration and see the TRUE costs. Higher insurance, medical facilities closing, higher medical costs, more crime, lower standards of education in our schools, overcrowding, new diseases etc., etc, etc. For me, I'll pay more for tomatoes. We need to wake up. The guest worker program will be a disaster because we won't have the guts to enforce it. Does anyone in their right mind really think they will voluntarily leave and return? There are many hardworking Hispanic/American citizens that contribute to our country and many that I consider my true friends We should encourage and accept those Hispanics who have done it the right and legal way. It does, however, have everything to do with culture: A third- world culture that does not value education, that accepts children getting pregnant and dropping out of school by 15 and that refuses to assimilate, and an American culture that has become so weak and worried about "politically correctness" that we don't have the will to do anything about it. If this makes your blood boil, as it did mine, forward this to everyone you know. CHEAP LABOR? Isn't that what the whole immigration issue is about? Business doesn't want to pay a decent wage. Consumers don't want expensive produce. Government will tell you Americans don't want the jobs. But the bottom line is cheap labor. The phrase "cheap labor" is a myth, a farce, and a lie. there is no such thing as "cheap labor." Take, for example, an illegal alien with a wife and five children. He takes a job for $5.00 or $6.00/hour. At that wage, with six dependents, he pays no income tax, yet at the end of the year, if he files an Income Tax Return, he gets an "earned income credit" of up to $3,200 free. He qualifies for Section 8 housing and subsidized rent. He qualifies for food stamps. He qualifies for free (no deductible, no co-pay) health care. His children get free breakfasts and lunches at school. He requires bilingual teachers and books. He qualifies for relief from high energy bills. If they are or become, aged, blind or disabled, they qualify for SSI. Once qualified for SSI they can qualify for Medicare. All of this is at (our) taxpayer's expense. He doesn't worry about car insurance, life insurance, or homeowners insurance. Taxpayers provide Spanish language signs, bulletins and printed material. He and his family receive the equivalent of $20.00 to $30.00/hour in benefits. Working Americans are lucky to have $5.00 or $6.00/hour left after paying their bills and his. The American taxpayers also pay for increased crime, graffiti and trash clean-up. Cheap labor? YEAH RIGHT! Wake up people. THESE ARE THE QUESTIONS WE SHOULD BE ADDRESSING TO THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES FOR EITHER PARTY. 'AND WHEN THEY LIE TO US AND DON'T DO AS THEY SAY, WE SHOULD REPLACE THEM AT ONCE! THIS HAS GOT TO BE PASSED ALONG TO AS MANY AS POSSIBLE OR WE WILL ALL GO DOWN THE DRAIN BECAUSE A FEW DON'T CARE.

This is what bothers me about it, if you'd like to complain about the government programs, then I am with you. The drain on tax payer dollars is absurd and I tend to think that about 90% of the government programs anyone could name. Post-New Deal, we're swamped with useless expenditures that are nothing but a drain on our country, and an unwelcome one at that. But I don't see the problem with immigrants and I don't see the problem with the $5 or $6 and hour that he makes. If there is a complaint that is valid here it is in regards to the unearned benefits of a non-taxpayer getting tax-funded benefits. But shouldn't the issue be the tax-funded benefits themselves?

To complain that someone is not a citizen but is getting the rights of a citizen, but then to also say that the person should not be MADE a citizen, well that seems foolish. Make citizens of these people. Make them pay taxes as citizens. Let them decide, as voters, whether they want to have their income taxed and spent on food programs, or if they'd rather write irate e-mails about whomever we're not letting into the country next.

Honestly, this just strikes me as a racist argument, and one that is not at all new. It's been around since there have been immigrants, and I suppose it's not going away.

Really A Clever Idea

2007-09-21T06:30:00.000-07:00

From the mind of the quite talented and interesting Jesse Eisenberg come this quite clever site.

One of my favorites

2007-09-21T05:58:00.001-07:00

Ably defended

And I wish I'd called this blog "Disgustipated."

That Gphone

2007-09-21T05:46:00.000-07:00

More Good News

Zur is back!

2007-09-21T04:51:00.001-07:00

Hopefully the Kodan Armada will be close behind.

In Other Words...

2007-09-20T14:46:00.000-07:00

... a magazine for us.

An impassioned plea for stuff....

2007-09-20T04:48:00.000-07:00

In case anyone wants to read it here, instead of their e-mail...

So, just to be a complete materialist and all, I'm gettting ready to leave for Japan and I have a bunch of stuff at Grandma Pitrone's. I'm going to come home on the 30th, really late, with the wife, stay for two days, get everything together to go with us, and then leave by Wednesday morning, early as we can. The point of all this is, if anyone has anything that could be considered mine, please bring it to Grandma's before then and I will pick out the things that the wife and I may need, and then everything remaining can be sold/given/thrown away. I know that many of you are actually utilizing the stuff, and if you are, then by all means keep it, but if not, then please bring it to Grandma's toss it in my room and I'll sort it when I am home and go from there. Thoughts? I'd really appreciate it, and I imagine that it will free up some important space at Grandma's, and it'd really help me out, Thanks, and I hope to see you over those couple days.

Microscopically moe interesting...

2007-09-20T04:44:00.000-07:00

When smooth is no longer smooth, but still cool.

Rerun

2007-09-19T12:37:00.000-07:00

Sorry, today was rotten, you only get a rerun:

So, do you realize how tall Bill O'Reilly is? He is MASSIVELY tall. He's 6'4" tall and he wears shoes that make him tower. Just an enormous guy. He's also got the blotchiest complexion you've ever seen. He looks like a gigantic "Before" ad for Pro-Activ solutions or something. Also, his nose just dwarfs the rest of his face. His eye look remarkably beady, given the size of the nose and the impression of blotchiness that is so overwhelming. I've got to say, though, he's a pretty nice guy. He's about as full of himself as you'd expect. He's about as much of a dick as you'd expect... in fact, other than that he is personable and tall there wasn't any real difference between watching his show and meeting him in person. I got to the galley 15 minutes early, but because of the usual planning and forward thinking displayed by the military I was 45 minutes early. So I walked over to a TV room and spent a dull 30 minutes watching Leslie Nielsen on The Golden Girls. I can't believe that Mitch Hurwitz, the genius behind Arrested Development, used to have anything to do with Golden Girls, it is a terrible show. But after I watched that for a while and began to seriously consider swearing off of TV for life, I got up and went back to the galley. I walked in and passed a bunch of other sailors who were waiting to have lunch with Infamous Bill. I walked into the dining room proper and there was no direction at all. There were a couple of tables with "Reserved" signs on them, but other than that it looked like I would just be standing till told otherwise. Finally I saw a Sgt. Major who told me what to do. I got my tray and tried to decide what to eat while talking to this pseudo-celebrity. I decided on pork roast, rice, some french fries and a salad. Nothing flash or messy. (The rice then became messy. I felt like an idiot, "Always stick to potatoes with an O'Reilly," my new motto.) I went and sat at one of the smaller tables, not wishing to push myself forward. At this point I was one of about 8 people in the dining room and I didn't want to appear to be a Factor sycophant. I ate about 2 bites when Admiral Harry Harris walked up behind me and patted me on the back. I stood up to greet him, because I am Captain Military Bearing when it comes to licking the boots of powerful officers. He told me to go and sit at the head table. He positioned me one to Bill O'Reilly's opposite right. Still no O'Reilly in the room, but we're getting to that part. The Admiral sat down and asked me where I work. I almost laughed because I see him about 3 times a week in meetings, but he doesn't know who the hell I am. (I suppose, why should he? It isn't as if he and I are at the meetings alone. He never actually talks to me, but still, I DO see him a few times a week... I ALWAYS notice him. He doesn't even know I exist. I feel like a 7th grade girl.) I told him that I work at the hospital and he got excited and jumped up to tell the press that there was a corpsman at the head table. (At least, that was my impression. He might equally have been asking how the hell they'd let a corpsman get at the head table, or asking intel why there was a no-nothing bozo like me sitting with O'Reilly. Who knows what he said? He's the freakin' Admiral, he can say whatever he wants.) So I had about 2 more bites and then my friend Eppley walked in at sat next to me, which bucked me up considerably. I always like to have a buddy close by when I am planning to skewer a popular pundit. Epp was all cheerful and said he was nervous. I told him that I had exhaustively researched Mr. O and I spewed a few useless facts about the man, including the interesting fact that O-Rizzle had once played semi-pro ball and tried out for the Mets. I wasn't sure it was true as the only place I'd seen it was Wikipedia, but I planned on checking it out with The Man, if I got the chance. At about this time Mr. O'Reilly himself wandered up to the table. He had chosen, probably much to the disgust of the galley staff, a turkey sandwich with lettuce and tomato and a packet of regular Lays potato chips. (Not even the ruffled, I thought this showed a spirit of plebeian honor and a distinct lack of celebrity pride. I also thought, "Who's this guy trying to fool, the food here sucks, but he doesn't have to rub our faces in it." I decided that if I am ever invited to eat at Fox News I'll get the most extremely exotic thing they have, just to show up Bill O'Reilly. Probably none of that will ever happen, but I like having contingencies planned for.) So we all stood up for Big Bill and he sat down with us. The Admiral had us go around the circle and introduce ourselves. We were all polite. They kept trying to fit more junior enlisted at the table. I turned my tray sideways so that it took up less space, but there was no elbow room. So we sat and felt stupid for a second and then I tossed a Jon Stewart to John Kerry softball and asked if the Mets story was true. Billy Boy lapped it up, this was the sort of question he was dying for. He answered it at length, going on and on about how he wasn't good enough and how he had played for an all-black semi-pro team. (Apparently they used to call him white boy, which I thought was kind, since I would have called him Spotty or something more direct. Ugly? Big-Nose? Something that indicated his more personal flaws.) Then there were a few other soft balls from my table-mates, primarily BIG, BIG fans. They asked how people could think he was wrong and whether it was tough doing his show. This was when the rice became a problem for me and I was busy focusing on the table manners issue. To eat rice with a fork you need elbow room. That's my theory. Also there was an Army Sgt. who works for the Public Affairs office who is so good looking as to be distracting. (Having spent 5 months on this desolate rock, I have to say that almost any woman has taken on mythic proportions for me. I drool when I see suggestively shaped rocks. All I'm saying is that, in real life this Sgt. might not be all that and a bag of chips, but here on Gitmo she's so good looking that people, not just me, routinely walk into objects, cliff-faces and things of that sort, just because their mind is so full of looking at her. All the guys, and one short haired girl who seemed to have... well, I don't ask or tell, but a lot of people were fascinated by the Sgt. All of this to say I spilled rice on myself and tried to look like I hadn't.) After that episode shook my confidence I was a little reluctant to ask the tough questions I had planned on, but then I thought, hell with it. I jumped in with a, "So, Sir, have you interrogated the interrogators like you planned?" He gave me this little look, like he knew he hadn't got the WHOLE table in his pocket and then said, "Yeas, I'm the first one who's been allowed this kind of access...." on and on about how cool he is. And this is where I figured out what it is that I don't like about most pundits. Every issue becomes about them. They can't talk about any issue without pointing to themselves. If you ask Bill O'Reilly about abortion it will become about him. (Which, perhaps it should have been, in a nasty way, if you see what I mean. But it wasn't it has nothing to do with him personally. There are big issues with abortion, tough issues and there is a lot to say about it, but Bill O'Reilly's personal history and perspective, reflecting nothing more than the fact that Bill O'Reilly is awfully cool, well that doesn't really add to the debate. He lost me, at that point.) He went on with his normal cant, he is not a conservative, he's a truth seeker, etc. One of the kids at the table asked him, "Why do so many people disagree with you?" I thought, "Why don't you just climb into his pants, kid?" Why do so many people disagree with you? Good thing we have a public figure here to talk to, I'd hate to see the opportunity wasted without important questions like that. But then Captain No Spin broke the bank, his response was, "Well, you know there are a lot of morons in America. The US Constitution gives you the right to be a moron and there are a lot of them." The kids at the table were lapping this up. Bill said, "And here you are, fighting for the morons, defending the morons..." I said, "Well Sir, I've been in the military a while now and I have to say that not all of those morons stay at home, some of the morons are defending the morons, if you see what I mean." He laughed out loud and said, "Fair enough, son." Then he stood up to go. He said, "This will be on my show on Monday, so be sure to tune in. I have to go and do my radio show now." Then he stood around and did photos and autographs for about 15 minutes and left. I was interviewed on my time with The Factor Master by the Armed Forces Network and then I went back to my room. I was kind of proud of having made him laugh, as any of Tom Pitrone's sons will attest, getting a laugh is a big moment in any man's life. But also felt pretty empty from the experience. He hadn't said anything, he hadn't asked any questions or made any probing/insightful observations. He sounded like a commercial for himself, for the most part. He just recited his own party line, over and over. I went back and re-read the Wikipedia entry on him and the other things that I had downloaded to prepare to meet him and saw that he had quoted a few of his own tag lines word-for-word. His not-conservative line had been cribbed from every other statement he's made on the subject. His contrasting himself with Anne Coulter was straight out of his column that day. He brought nothing new to that table and I was disappointed. I suppose I ought to have known that he wasn't there to debate a 28 year old barely enlisted kid, but I had hoped that he would take the opportunity to say something of value. To show WHY he has a television show that is top-rated, instead of just telling us that he had a show and that is was top-rated. All in all it was not the experience I had hoped for. If you watch on Monday night you'll probably see a guy with rice on his uniform sitting across from a tall, blotchy man. I think my expression is probably one of cheerful disgust, both with myself for having bathed in rice, and with Mr. Bill O'Reilly, for failing to bring anything but marketing to one of the most interesting places in the world.

The King is dead...

2007-09-18T05:54:00.000-07:00

Long Live The King!

Wes Anderson Does It Again

2007-09-18T05:51:00.000-07:00

At least I think that it is, but I can't see it. The Navy isn't a fan of my man Wes.

Very, Very Cool

2007-09-18T05:09:00.000-07:00

This is what I would like the world to be like.

Some Several Things (Or, Many, Many Brians)

2007-09-17T08:40:00.000-07:00

Let's see, since Friday...

Friday night we worked at Houston's. I got there and found that they had kind of set me up. I was working as the Headwaiter, which means that I had a very, very good section, but that I had to stay at work till after 1:30, doing the financial paperwork for the whole restaurant. It gave me the opportunity to work with Bryan Zar, the new manager, who is apparently responsible for the new rankings of servers, and I tried to give him the heads up that he has bungled it, but he ignored me. Too bad for him, in the coming days, as people who have previously been really great supporters of the Houston's way of doing things quit and fall away, I hope he will not feel that no one warned him.

Saturday morning we got up reluctantly and went to pick up Tokka and Eli's puppy. It's a 12 week old American Bulldog named Luna. Seriously adorable and fumbling, a lot of fun. We also went to the Arundel Mills Mall, which is seriously massive. We picked up some shoes for both of us, ballet-slipper things for her and running shoes for Field Med School for me. Also a lamp for the bedside, the lovely old wooden one that Mom had picked up for me way back when finally gave up the ghost. It was a gorgeous day, just a little chilly, and we had lunch at the mall and walked around outside with Luna for a while before ordering some food from Victor's, in Bethesda. The food was excellent and we watched X-Men 2, which she had not seen before, and which was as entertaining as could be expected. It made me really regret the Brian Singer left the series for that bland Superman remake that he did instead. I'd have loved to have seen X3 be as good as the setup he had going. It might have been gang-busters.

Sunday mornig we got up, again reluctantly, and went to see Ali and Brian and the kids. It was nice time, and I think it might have been the most stress-free time there that I've ever had, which, Thanks Luna! I guess.

Sunday afternoon we napped and then had some eggs and bacon for dinner, to top off a great weekend we watched, wait for it.... THE FIRST 4 EPISODES OF THE NEW IT CROWD!!!! Yes, it is finally time, and they are very, very good. The episode with the 3 dinner dates is standout wonderful, but Moss, Roy, Richmond and Jen are all great. There is even a slightly topical stab at the whole German cannibal internet thing, which was wonderful. So good, run, don't walk to the closest T@rrent site you can find and get them. Super wonderful, great!

Christmas Exchange

2007-09-14T05:59:00.000-07:00

Which sounds like something that we would have with countries that don't have the same holidays as we do. "And here, Ecuador, is where we offer you Christmas in return for Bull-Baiting Day."

But what I am really talking about is my family's New Deal. We've apparently decided that the old system, purchasing gifts for the whole family, is not cost effective. Now, I know that my sister-in-law Ami has been working up to this by degrees, and now that she has ANOTHER sister-in-law to climb on board, I think she's going to put it over. (In the Pitrone household you need a two-thirds majority to make an issue pass, unless it is vetoed by... well, here is where the system of government breaks down, unless it is vetoed by anyone at all.) And I don't WANT to veto this idea. I like it pretty well. It makes sense. Except for one thing, the idea behind it is frugality, which is a good idea. None of the Pitrone clan are particularly well off. And the wife and I are not least of this batch of not well-off-ness, nor am I personally least culpable in the matter of the family's penury, but I LOVED giving everyone presents. And I think that everyone else did, too. And it didn't much matter to me if the presents were dumpster diving rejects from Drew or Dollar Store stuff from Rob. And giving presents is the FUN part of Christmas, at least, after you're 11 it is. So, I am pretty ambivalent on the subject.

The way that the gift exchange from the extended family works is pretty suspect, too. I mean, there is the normal, everyone gets a gift from Grandma Pitrone, and everyone gets one gift-exchange gift. But it never actually works that way. There is always the wild card aspect of the Redhead/Malich faction, who lavish each other with gifts as if it was their private Christmas together. (Which I can't help but feel is a little bit rude. I mean, way to express how outsider everyone else is compared with your clique. But that's just me being snarky. It doesn't really bother me all that much, it more a sour grapes thing at never being the super popular one who gets all the great side presents.)

So my point it, won't there be a lot of this at the Tom Pitrone gathering as well? I mean, won't it mean that Nic and Drew will get lots of little things from everyone, etc? And then Nika will only get her one present and the whole thing will go thermonuclear in a matter of moments. Maybe not, and the names there are only hypothetical, maybe Nika will get lots of presents but Drew will only get one. At which point it won't go thermonuclear, but merely a little hurt. And that's pretty much just as bad. So, thoughts?

Oh, to have a hobby!

2007-09-14T05:49:00.000-07:00

I've decided that my new hobby will be to formally make up excuses for other people. And they have to be excuses that I would never use for myself. So, for instance, "Really in a hurry." doesn't count, as that could be a valid excuse. But, "Maybe he's just on his break..." is hobby-worthy, as I would never use it for myself.

Can you think of any good ones?

How Racist Does This Make Me? Who's Keeping Score?

2007-09-12T08:40:00.001-07:00

I have a thought that I am not sure is original, but is at least something I haven't heard discussed much. I was listening to NPR and there was an interview with a fellow who recently wrote a biography of Condoleeza Rice. He was saying that Rice's family was from Birmingham, AL and that she grew up during the Civil Rights movement, but that she was seperated from it. That her parents had a different structure and belief about how it ought to work. They were relatively well off, and had been successful, even under Jim Crow. They felt that working hard, being educated and achieving through normal, systemic, means was the way to go. They encouraged CR to work twice as hard, as she could work twice as hard and no one would be able to say she was not equal. They felt the MLK et. al. were using up time, effort and money that could have been better spent on things that were more necessary. The writer said that the NAACP felt the same way, the MLK was setting up straw men for them, when there were more important things to do in the meantime.
My point, and how this comes to be in this particular comments section, is that I was thinking that the archetype for black-male success is that of a rabble-rouser. It is an MLK-type, lots of splash, lots of noise kind of archetype. In the same way that Condoleeza seems to get very little credit for being who she is, both her race and her sex, that educated, well-to-do, hard-working archetype seems to be at best a niche less-explored.
This then leads to the POV that todays black-youth culture is a direct result of that more powerful archetype. Make a splash with a gang, with a video, with what-have-you. That seems to be the way to succeed. Any thoughts on this? Am I just another racist white-guy? I am genuinely moved by the plight of the community and am just trying to see it correctly.

Does this make you feel better or worse?

2007-09-11T11:38:00.000-07:00

That doggone Knopf, not content with having the best design team in the universe, not NOTHING makes them happy.

MASTER CONTROL!!!!

2007-09-11T11:36:00.000-07:00

The MAN is back!

2007-09-11T11:32:00.000-07:00

This is absolutely filthy, but absolutely hysterical. Vern brings the funny, and the queasy, with his review of Zoo, the movie about people who really, really, love their horses.

A Weekend of Sleeping

2007-09-10T11:21:00.000-07:00

What a great weekend! I think that Margaret and I slept for about 80-85% of it, and it was wonderful! Friday night we worked at the restaurant, which was a pleasant experience for a change. One of my tables asked advice as to whether they should just pack up, that minute, and go to Vegas, which I strongly encouraged them to do, and then I sent every single server I could find over to their table (22, for those who know the numbering system) to encourage them as well. Then they found out that tickets to go that night were $700 per person, so the y got a slice of key lime pie, instead. (Almost as good as Vegas!)

Saturday we slept all day, we watched a couple of movies, I think, but nothing is jumping out to my mind... Annie Hall? Something else? I can't remember, but it seems like we watched something else. OH, we watch Deathproof again. Wow, that's such a great movie and I forgot about it, I can't believe it.

So, Quentin Tarantino's Deathproof, the one that was the opposite bookend to the fantastically brilliant Grindhouse mess, is pure cinema. Man, that Tarantino can direct! Maybe I should give some background here. I am an old-school Tarantino apologist. I first saw Pulp Fiction on a double bill at a midnight movie with True Romance and I was hooked, completely, totally hooked. I ran right out and bought Reservoir Dogs, which also blew me away, and then when Jackie Brown came out I was in line at the theatre on Christmas night, just waiting to have my mind blown by a genius. And sure enough, he did it again. Kill Bill, same thing, both times. The crunching the eyeball scene in Pt II, it still gives me chills to think of it.

So I was pretty primed for Quentin to wow me, and he sure enough did. Editing, soundtrack, shot after shot of perfection! The way he re-creates Kurt Russell's bad-@ss personality, just awesome. The whole thing, fantastic.

Yesterday, on my way to work, I listened again to the soundtrack, and it was just as great as I remembered it being. There are some truly stand-out songs on there, but then I realized that they ALL are stand-out songs. Too good to be true! (And it has a great voice-over scene where it shows Eli Roth as the villainous, misogynist jerk that I always suspected he was.)

Saturday night we went to dinner at the always wonderful, and famous for being the location of our fateful first date, Bacchus of Lebanon. You can all ask Dominic about the chicken there, which is rocking, but we had some great appetizers, the notable one being the chicken Shawarma, and the tomato/feta salad, which I love.

While we were there we overheard these two couples of Indian descent talking about how much they like Osama bin Laden, which kind of coloured the rest of the evening. It's hard to feel totally comfortable with that. There was talk of how the girls found him attractive and how they all liked what he'd "done to the US." Really kind of creepy. But then Margaret suggested that maybe it was a DIFFERENT Osama bin Laden, and we felt better.

The Evil One

2007-09-07T04:35:00.000-07:00

So, this news came out today. And the news story says that bin Laden is dying his beard, though I always call it tinting, I never say die. But what I was thinking was, what if Osama isn't tinting his beard, but he's actually a super-villain? I mean, Lex Luthor changes his appearance almost at will, and he's never getting any older. He has insane schemes that work really well and almost destroy civilization as we know it. The only problem is, we have no Superman. But that actually makes the story EVEN BETTER! I mean, Superman, iconic as he is, is kind of a namby-pamby hero. He's always whinging on about the American Way and whatnot... I mean, sure, inspiring and all, but not really edgy. But that's not really my point either. My point is: What if we have a for real, never aging, dyed in the wool, super-villain on our hands? Wouldn't that be cool?

GooglePhone

2007-09-06T09:06:00.001-07:00

This and this illustrate the incredibly cool possibilities, and HOLY COW do I want these ideas to be the truth!

Queenan Country

2007-09-06T06:40:00.000-07:00

So, this last weekend, on one of the little jaunts the wife and I took with Frank and Ami, I found a great little book called Queenan Country by Joe Queenan. It's a little bit guide book and little bit memoir, but it's a heck of a lot comedy and a heck of a lot anglophile. It's a trip around Britain with one of America's leading wits and it's great. Highly recommended.

Last night, while still getting 10+ hours of sleep, the wife and I watched Take The Money and Run, which she'd never seen before. (Side note, I considered calling this blog, The Continuing Cinematic Education of Margaret Pitrone, but then I realized I was stealing the blog name and patronizing my wife, so I demurred.) The film is a good one, though. Woody is in fine form and looking YOUNG! The gag with the soap gun is always a winner and the running gag with the broken glasses is chuckle-worthy, but boy-o-boy has MTV ever altered the way one watches comedy. This has some good chuckles, and they happen with regularity, but not with frequency. It's maybe 90 minutes long, but there are only, say, 18 good gags. Not a terrible ratio, but not what one expects from a comedy these days.

I have a couple of more in depth reviews started but not finished, and I'm hoping to be able to get to them today or tomorrow. This weekend you might get a review of stand-up comedy AND of a comic book convention, so keep your fingers crossed!

Don't Touch Ma Eyes!

2007-09-05T08:16:00.000-07:00

So, in spite of all my bragging and na-na-ing, I am NOT going to get eye surgery. It turns out that I have some strange and very rare condition where my actual vision is improving, but I am getting a worse astigmatism. It's really rare, but I guess it happens and since my prescription has changed one whole unit (?) in 6 months, they are reluctant to give me the surgery. Also, my corneas are too shallow.

I am pretty disappointed, of course, but what can one do? I am going to have to work now on 5 days that I REALLY wanted off. The Clinic here is becoming unsupportable. What I could once pass off as an irritation on the way to a goal is now... well, I mean, I'm leaving, whatever the goal is will have to be reached without me, so the irritations are now someone else's problem, and I wish they'd get them out of my way.

When I first moved back to Chardon I had to come to a new conclusion about the world. I found life there really irritating and rotten. It wasn't where I wanted to be, living with Grandma Pitrone, while wonderful in a lot of respects, really opens one up to a lot of flack from family. There were some definite downsides. So I struggled with it and came to this conclusion, "Inconvenient is not necessarily bad."

It's not an easy place to get to, but it's true and it's important to remember sometimes. Life can be pretty inconvenient and if you remember that that's not really a bad thing, then it can make the hard times better. I am re-learning that lesson, I guess. You'd think that being in the armed forces would teach that right away, but there are lulls in the difficulty of Navy life.

Tonight, the wife and I go to be EARLY. 10 hours of sleep in 72 is too little. Even if we DID sleep all day Monday.

Falling Behind

2007-09-04T09:37:00.001-07:00

As so many of you have pointed out, I am falling behind on my committment to daily blogs. You're SO right. The reasons are many, but what I will site is the fact that I am trying to get all of my stuff together to leave the US as soon as possible. (Well, as soon as possible being the end of December, but I had my Japanese Encephalitis shot today, and that's only one of several things that sound scary when I tell you about them, only I won't. My MOM reads this, for crying out loud!)

We, the wife and I, had a wonderful time this weekend with my brother Frank and his wife Ami. They came out here on Thursday and we had a nice dinner at Houston's (the Ho, to those who work there.) Then Friday we went to the Pirate restaurant with Ivan and Eliana Vasquez, which I thought was a real treat. We drank grog and had a ball. Saturday was obligatory tourist day and we wandered all over the DC area. We found some really nice areas in Georgetown and Frank and I found the chiars we would like to own for the rest of our lives. Between the two they cost around 7 grand, so if anyone has that burning a hole in their pocket....

Sunday was a day of mostly rest. We went to the pool with Margaret's sister's family in the afternoon. It was a really, really good time, the whole weekend. If anyone has a home to invite Frank and Ami to, I suggest you go for it.

Monday Margaret and I slept all day long.

Thoughts about a great

2007-09-04T09:33:00.000-07:00

SO Excellent

For those keeping score

2007-08-29T21:06:00.000-07:00

I just realized that I'm a gusher. It's true, all of my reviews thus far are gushers. Sad, I will never be as critical of films as I am of strangers.

So, more on the Sun=Hell story. So here's how I see it. The main character is a scientist, a man of reason, who has never even thought about religion as a viable concept. So, it's a few years from now, everyone has gone green, there is no more reason for global warming, but it's gettting worse and worse. So they start to say, "Huh, maybe it's not the gasses, maybe it's the sun." They start doing all sorts of analyses of the sun and then they listen to it. (I have no idea about any of the science here, but then, neither do you, most likely. And Miss Teen South Carolina would eat it up, so I feel safe with this concept.) They listen to the sun and they hear millions of people's voices, screaming. (Which would be an incredibly scary moment in the movie I am imagining. Main scientist played by... Steve Coogan? Someone like that.)

So they start to do all sorts of tests on the sound. And we're saying the sound takes... a long time, a matter of months or a year or something, to get back to Earth, so there is all this speculation and fear and no one knows whats going on, but they start to get this picture of the sun as having bodies on it, and when the clearer, more pinpoint sound comes back, it's individual voices and they are screaming about being tortured. They are cursing the beings that are torturing them and they are saying that they would have lived better lives if they'd only known, things like that. It's intense and it's kind of hard to deny that something strangely like hell is going on.

But I have no idea how it ends. I like little things about the idea, like that it isn't the Industrial Revolution that kick-started the warming, it was Darwin's Theory of Evolution. That there are periods of cooling, and they coincide with times that there are revivals of spiritual belief on the Earth. Things like that, you could play with them, it'd be fun.

Thoughts?

The Newest news

2007-08-29T14:17:00.000-07:00

So, apparently I am being kicked out of Bethesda and am not allowed to go to my next command. At the end of September, last working day Friday the 28th, I will be expelled from the frosty bosom of NNMC Bethesda and left for a time on the rocky shores of real life. I am not supposed to be in Camp Lejeune until October 16th, and it has been strongly suggested that I not go early, so I am going to have to take ANOTHER several days of leave. I am not too happy about it, but I can deal. I have a lot of leave saved up, so I guess it's not that bad. But still, I was hoping to just go and do the FMSS training and then have a full month. Instead I will have 2 weeks before hand, which I will spend working at the restaurant and then going to visit the wife's side of the family in Long Island, and then 2 weeks after, a week and a bit in Cleveland and a little while in Florida. Both times should be fun, but I am really looking forward to Christmas with the family, and possibly, BOXING DAY!

Sunshine

2007-08-28T20:05:00.000-07:00

I know, I'm one of the last ones in America to see/comment on this, but I really liked it. On the other hand, it should be noted, I liked Event Horizon, too. (Actually, the only person I know who liked Event Horizon more than I did was my friend Adam Peterson, who liked it to a frightening degree. We rented it on a Sunday night and he watched it 19 times before it had to go back on Tuesday. Needless to say, I heard a LOT about it that week. Which reminds me of a Steven Wright joke about taking a two month road-trip across the US with only one tape in the car. He couldn't remember what tape it was.)

At any rate, Good movie. I thought that the choices made were good ones. I liked the pressure build-up. I thought that the subliminal things were cool, but I have a soft-spot for subliminals. They get me somewhere in my unconscious... Rimshot!

Anyways, I thought that the decision not to show Earth to the end was good. It is nowhere near as good as Alex Garland's book The Beach, which everyone on Earth should read before the sun DOES burn out. But the whole thing made me think that there'd be a good story idea in that the sun is actually Hell and that the reason it is burning so much hotter/global warming and whatnot, is that more people are going there now that there is no morality. Maybe Kirk Cameron and company could do it as a Left Behind spin-off kind of thing?

As alway, really like Danny Boyle's choices and his visuals are nothing less than stunning. The first shot of the spaceship should be taken as a primer for all future sci-fi directors, just like Lucas's was in the first shot of Star Wars. Same idea, fantastic execution.

And the cast was good as well, I love Jane Fonda's son, who's name is something like Garrity, Jay Garrity? I can't remember and I can't be bothered to look it up. Someone else look it up and tell me if I'm wrong. All around, really solid, really scary in a couple parts. I'd have preferred if the whacked out spiritual craziness had been more... well, more whacked out, but like I said, I liked Event Horizon.

(Though tell me that if the guy in the observation room had had wings, scary-@ss, demon wings, it wouldn't have made you sqeal with terrified delight.)

Check it out, if I am not the last American to have done so.

Why we will always be better than that Finns

2007-08-28T16:58:00.000-07:00

Right here...

I couldn't get on all day...

2007-08-27T12:56:00.000-07:00

... but I have to tell you, The Host. EXCELLENT. Seriously. Korean Monster movie, anti-American intervention sbu-text, whatever. The most amazing thing is the monster. This thing is a two-hour indictment of the entire prequel trilogy. If these Koreans could pull this off on an eighth of the budget Lucas had and make it so... wow, just wow. Well, George ought to just hand in his notice. He's out, ILM is out. They are just drooling old codgers. This thing is tits.

Margaret and I watched this last night on our little TV and STILL we couldn't take our eyes off it. Every moment when this thing is on-screen is it mesmerizing. Those things that Obi-Wan rode in the 3rd movie, garbage. Jar-jar, garbage. Name something from those lame movies, then watch this and see how it should be done. Seriously, a GREAT one.