whither macy's?

Kris and I have roughly $150 worth of Macy's gift card money that expires a week from today, so we pretty much have to spend it this weekend.

What should we use it on?

tears for fears

Help me to decide...

I voted.

It took me a while; at 7:45 am, there was a hugeass line outside of our polling place (2nd ward, 22nd division). No surprise, since there are predictions of a record turnout. I actually got out of line to go back to the house and wait it out. I hung out with Kris, made coffee and read up more on the candidates and questions. It was nice to have what felt like a real morning. And at 9 am, I was able to walk right up to the Palumbo Rec Center and sign in.

Help me make the most of freedom and of pleasure...

It felt very good to finally get the chance to vote for Barack Obama. As I was discussing with Kris last night, I'm not sure I'm wild about his policy proposals, particularly his universal health care plan. And I don't think Hillary is as bad as some think, or even that different from Obama w/r/t policy proposals; I think she'd probably make a fine president, and I actually reconsidered my support for Obama this morning before voting (which I considered a healthy re-examination of my thoughts and beliefs).

But Hillary voted for the Iraq war, which I cannot abide. And as far as I can see, her campaign has not been able to shake the impression that she's running for president because she really really wants to be president. I am sure that Obama's motivation is not selfless, but he just seems removed from our current political narrative, whereas Hillary seems as if she's its inevitable product. He's just diferent, as Chris Satullo writes in an excellent op-ed in today's Inky.

Hopefully I get the chance to vote for Obama again in a few months.

I cant stand this indecision, married with a lack of vision...

In the two big races in Center City and our little slice of SoPhi, I voted for Queen of Good Government Anne Dicker in the PA Senate District 1 race, and Peggy Banaszek in the PA House District 182 race. Despite Dicker's disorganized campaign, I was more turned off by Farnese/Dougherty in the Senate race.

Nothing ever lasts forever...

Banaszek actually came to our house to ask for our vote (well, my vote; I wasn't home at the time and Kris is a registered independent). Babette Josephs has been by most accounts a fine representative for decades (and will probably continue to be after a victory today), but Banaszek's bona fides are strong, she'd be new blood in a legislature with rising Democratic stars, and quite frankly it's hard to ignore a personal appeal from somebody who lives in the neighborhood.

So, satisfied with my participation in the democratic (and Democratic) process, I drove down 5th Street, past Independence Hall, leaving the rows and rows of TV trucks behind me as I motored towards the Ben Franklin Bridge, my iPod beginning to play through my car's speakers...

Everybody wants to rule the world...

devil's den

Last night Kris, Man-Chris and Man-Chris' girlfriend Hillary tried out the new gastropub in "SoPhi" (I will get this nickname to stick), Devil's Den (1148 S. 11th St.). I was very excited, as we are (or really, I am) desperate for that one awesome, comfy, chill local place where we can go and convince friends to hang out in our 'hood (i.e., SoPhi), and Devil's Den is only four blocks away.

From the inside, the place looks great, and given that it was the first truly beautiful night of the year, the windows had been thrown open and everything was very comfortable. For me. My wife was roasting, but that may be because she's preggers.

There are great beers on tap; I had two Schneider Aventinuses (Aventini? Aventinii? Let's get some declensions for this shit), which had been impossible to find in draught form since dear departed Ludwig's departed; I also tried out the Rowhouse Red from the new Philadelphia Brewing Co.

But the food was, uh, not good. Lukewarm mussels are gross, and three of us each got stttttttttttttttt66666666666666666666666666666hj (cat-like typing detected! Probably because Pandora just walked across the keyboard) a different variety of gross lukewarm mussels. Our pommes frites were a bit overdone, in that they could have been called "toothchippers" on the menu.

After our meal, our very sweet waitress accidentally dumped beer down Hillary's back, and comped us for... one beer.

It would have been nice to see the management make more of an effort to apologize, especially considering 1) they're new, and 2) I really really really wanted to like this place.

As it is, there is great potential here that will remain unfulfilled until the kitchen gets its act together. Maybe we'll try this place again in the fall. In the meantime, we'll still be waiting for that one kickass local joint to steal our hearts (hopefully not for real, though); a home away from home in SoPhi.

noooooooooo

The wife informs me that NBC has all but cancelled "Journeyman," one of my two favorite new shows this fall ("Pushing Daisies" is the other). It's really a shame - I didn't think I'd like it as much as I did. Well-written, well-acted, interesting characters that felt real, plus a cool time travel element.

Hopefully NBC will change its mind.

i hate sports

I decided yesterday that I hate sports. Consider:

The Giants - Well on their way to yet another second-half collapse. To make matters worse, the Eagles have once again sprinkled themselves with pixie dust, and despite their loss to the Patriots last night, will go on a magical late-season run that their fans will lament after it does not end in a victory in Super Bowl XLII. The difference is, they get their magical late-season run, whereas Giants fans get to listen to their team yap about how great it is before seeing them lose the same games they've been losing forever, only worse.

When A.J. Feeley - A.J. Fucking Feeley - plays so much better on the road against one of the best teams in league history than Eli Manning does against a 4-6 team at home that it's not even close, it's time to blow it up and get to that decade-long post-first-overall-pick-bust hangover earlier.

The Mets - Well on their way to an offseason that might be as demoralizing as their September collapse. If they were a movie studio, they'd try to get Brad Pitt and somehow end up with Carrot Top starring in all of their pictures.

The worst thing of all is that they had a moderately good thing going, and they've blown it in that divine way that only the Mets can. What can you say about a team that turns Jose Reyes from joy personified to asshole diva? What can you say about an organization for which palace intrigue is as natural as winning is to the Yankees? What can you say about players who said they were bored while leading a race for a division title that they would eventually lose? (I might remind you the Mets have only won five of those things in their entire sad history). What can you say about a manager who says the "real fans" knew they were trying hard the whole time?

The Knicks - Virtually dead to me. I'm a Knicks widower at this point. It's hard to imagine an organization for which constant losing and lack of passion is dwarfed only by how morally offensive it is to any decent person.

The Rangers - I'm sure they'll blow their nice start and join the rest of my teams. They lost yesterday, and another loss to the Islanders later this week seems like a good start. Stringing me along until an April collapse seems the likeliest possibility, though.

I can handle losing. The Mets losing in the 2006 playoffs didn't hurt that badly until the team made it clear that strike three looking was as good as it was gonna get.

But I'm sick of caring about teams that go beyond losing and make me embarassed to root for them. If they don't care, why should I? Why do I?

I hate sports.

remember...

... the ending of "A Nightmare on Elm Street," when everything's seemingly OK and the mom is waving goodbye on the front porch, and Freddy's arm breaks through the front door's glass pane, grabs the mom and sucks her through an impossibly small opening?

It would be cool to be able to do that in real life. Especially at work, when you walk by somebody's office and the door is closed and they're listening to smooth jazz very loudly in there, and you bet they're all cool and relaxed.

I bet they wouldn't see that coming.

dear mets

Please win before I go.

I would love to go on my honeymoon not feeling like there's some weirdness between us. If it comes to that, I'll spend a 10-hour plane ride pondering how shitty you've been to me.

Oh, I know I'm not the only one you've hurt... but sometimes it feels like it.

So please... let's hush up all of the hateful gossip. Let's not give 'em something to talk about, especially this weekend.

Just prove to me that you still care.

Just win.

More than once, preferably.

bachelor party time!

Tonight at sundown, it begins.

Despite what Hurricane Schwartz (Shwartz? Schwarz? you know, the weather nerd from channel 10) will tell you - i.e., that sundown is roughly around 8:23 pm - glorious Sol actually sets at roughly 7:05 pm tonight. That's when my bachelor party begins - with first pitch at Citizens Bank Park (alas, Shea Stadium is many, many miles away).

Judging solely by the fact that they're actually coming to a baseball game just to celebrate with me tells me how cool my friends - aka, the Bachelor Partiers - are. Three of them hate baseball, and two of them are Yankees fans. Yet they'll be there with me to witness the Phillies take on Barry Bonds and the Giants.

I must admit, I have no rooting interest in this affair; I have an intense dislike for the Phillies, and even without the Barry Bonds thing I think I'd have a vague, nebulous distaste for the Giants. As it is, I just don't like 'em. Never have. Make no mistake - I'll have one eye on the out-of-town scoreboard to see how the Mets are doing.

Then tomorrow we watch Yankees-Red Sox in the afternoon, go to dinner at Ruth Chris, and play poker through the night in our room at the Embassy Suites here in town. And that's as far as I know; given that I've charged Man-Chris with planning this party, there may be surprises yet (my one edict - no strippers. I'm just not a stripper kind of guy).

I'm so looking forward to seeing everyone! And admittedly, I'm looking forward to seeing Barry Bonds play. I haven't seen him play since I was a kid, and steroids or not, tonight could be history in the making.

So... I've had an idea for a blog post for a while - I've wondered what it would be like if you tried to make your everyday conversations sound like dialogue from flashbacks on "Lost." And I think it would go a little something like this...

Me: "Hey Person X, do you have a stapler I could borrow?"

Person X: "Sure, here you go."

Me: "Thanks. And remember - EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON."

Then there'd be a whoosh, and Person X would be on The Island, thinking about how that stapler he let me borrow was actually a metaphor for his intense personal flaws.

So there you go; that's how it would work.

Bye now!

something tells me they won't get that PG-13 rating

"Wenyerpushd... killn'seaseesbrethn."

pandora

She's a sleepykins. Still.

calliope

Yeah, my new camera rocks.

awesome.

flickrvision.

monday under-the-table upside-down kitty blogging

Awwww, she's sleepy.

thursday youtube blogging

In the absence of real "content."

"'Rosebud Frozen Peas': Full of country goodness and green pea-ness... wait, that's terrible. I quit."

riding with death!

For shits and giggles, enjoy the MST3K'd version of Riding with Death! Click on the YouTube logo for links to the rest of the episode.

david wright

So it's pretty clear that David Wright is struggling. In fact, he hasn't really looked like David Wright since not long after I bought his t-shirt.

Certainly there are other possible explanations for his struggles - the idiotic Home Run Derby fucking up his swing, the absence of mentors Joe McEwing and Cliff Floyd (even though the Mets have an incredible Joe McEwing simulation on their roster, who is roughly as worthless as the genuine article), the fact that he probably drowns his sorrows in all-nighters at Scores after grounding out to short four times a night in decidedly Piazza-esque fashion (seriously - watching Wright slump is eerily similar to what watching a Piazza slump was like). Perhaps all of it is to blame. Perhaps not.

Last year at around this time, I had to apologize to the Baseball Gods for annointing Wright "The Chosen One," which caused them to swiftly, albeit quite temporarily, fuck up his career.

Now that Wright's career seems more seriously fucked, I wonder - did I once again play some sort of karmic role in his fucked-upedness by buying that t-shirt? Last April, my arrogance was an affront to the Baseball Gods; this time, I'm not really sure how a t-shirt is tantamount to punishable hubris. How does one apologize for owning a t-shirt, other than to say that I'm sorry that Wright totally blows at the moment?

Am I trying to think in terms of a moral scheme to the baseball universe, when in fact none is applicable (or even exists)? Is this curse unthinking? If so, is the key to lifting it simply getting rid of the t-shirt?

coolest gift ever, part 2

Kris gave me my wedding gift last night, and it's the Coolest Gift Ever, Part 2! It's a Nikon D70 digital SLR - i.e., the kind of thing I've always wanted but never thought I'd actually own. I love photography, but as a hobby it's only feasible if you use digital, or if you have a bazillion kajillion dollars to spend on film, developing and enlarging.

Well, she knew this, and apparently she was tired of waiting six months for me to develop a roll of film. Thus, her wedding present to me!

I've really only toyed with it so far, but here is a nice little picture of one of our kitties, Calliope:


It's a little blurry because there wasn't a whole lot of light (I also adjusted the white balance in Microsoft Photo Editor a little bit), but she's being cute, so here you go. Have another!

if you can't tell...

... I'm REALLY bored today. I've busted my ass over the past few weeks to get a rough cut of something done, and now that I have two weeks to write it and tweak it, I have absolutely no desire to work. I guess I'll stay here another few hours, then go home to my fiancee. She seems nice.

In any event, I got a piece of spam today advertising Penn-themed ringtones. They actually sound pretty good, though there's something vaguely weird and uncomfortable about the thought of using one. Plus, I think I sort of promised myself once long ago that if I ever bought a ringtone (highly unlikely), it would be "The A-Team" theme.

Also, has anyone seen the new Dunkin Donuts commercial with Rachael Ray? Or, another more precise question would be, is anyone else profoundly disturbed by the new Dunkin Donuts commercial with Rachael Ray? I wish I could find a video or some pictures from this thing.

Basically, it goes like this: a new DD employee notices blue skid marks on the floor right in front of the register. As he's wondering what they are, Rachael Ray runs into the store near the speed of light, skidding to a stop right where the marks are (thus explaining where they came from). She orders "the usual," which the grizzled old employee seems to know by heart. Meanwhile, the new employee's mouth is agape. Ray points at him and asks, "who's that?" The bemused DD veteran says, "that's the new guy." Ray turns to him and says, "hi new guy!" Then takes a sip of her coffee and says "delish!" Then she runs out of the store near the speed of light.

That's it.

I dunno why this commercial disturbs me so. Is it the fact that it tried so very hard to make Rachael Ray seem like a normal person? (i.e., having a "usual" at Dunkin Donuts; saying "hi new guy!", which feels like what some ad exec thinks normal people say).

Is it the fact that when she turns to greet the "new guy," her eyes bug out such that she looks like she wants to tear his throat out with her teeth?

Is it the fact that the apparent employee hierarchy at a DD is such that newcomers are dehumanizingly labelled "the new guy," instead of being addressed by their names?

Is it the fact that she runs near the speed of light for some reason? (I'm guessing that is supposed to imply that she's a busy career woman with all of her Food Network shows and other projects, yet ironically if she were to run near the speed of light time would slow for her to the point where she really wouldn't have to be that busy... I think).

Is it the fact that she wears shoes with bright blue rubber soles (judging by the skid marks), which Kris informs me is a near-impossibility in the world of women's footwear?

Is it the word "delish"?

Just watch it whenever you happen to catch it and tell me what you think. On its surface it's light and cheery, but I'm not sure if its many subtly upsetting elements aren't any better than the aggressive creepiness of the posthumous Orville Redenbacher ad. Watch his claw-like hand burst into the microwave, and tell me you wouldn't rather meet your end that way, rather than having Rachael Ray explode through her sunny veneer and rip your throat, warm and wet, from your trembling neck.

thursday aladar blogging

Aladar.

lazy sunday

Thanks to everybody who showed up at the Hoond last night - a good time was had by all! And Jack Daniels-flavored sunflower seeds ROCK.

Some random Sunday notes:

- It would be cool if there was more unnecessary profanity in our lives. For instance, I'd like it if there were home improvement shows on HGTV or Fine Living called What's With That Fucking House?, or Look at All This Shit. The shows would be like any other show on those channels - I don't think I'd even have the hosts speak with profanity, unless they were saying "Welcome back to Look at All This Shit."

I also think that if I was ever on Survivor, I'd purposefully be the most profane contestant to ever grace the show, to the point at which nearly all the footage shot would be unusable. Everytime Jeff Probst talked to me, I'd act like I wasn't listening, and then say in a really dismissive tone, "... the fuck do you want?"

- I strode bravely into 2003 yesterday, as I bought my very first iPod. I haven't really used it yet, as I've been busy loading every CD I can find onto it, but it seems very cool.

I felt bad dropping all that money on a gadget, but it's really like a birthday present to myself. At least, that's what the Wheel of Rationalization landed on yesterday afternoon. But I figure that the Enjoyment Potential (EP) for this little doodad is massive, and getting one has been on my mind for a while. And to paraphrase Ed Sabol (i.e., The Boss), if you buy quality, you forget the price long after you pay it. (He phrased it a lot better than me).

The iPod, however, is not the coolest gift ever...

- The Coolest Gift Ever arrived yesterday - Kris got me a Nintendo 64 off of Amazon Marketplace! It replaces the one that was ripped off and sold for crack a couple years ago. MarioKart, one of the few things that didn't get sold for crack (despite the fact that by playing it you might as well be smoking crack), hasn't been used since then, but it won't be long before Yoshi or the Princess will be leaping through the secret cave shortcut on the beach once again.