wow (part one)

So I logged onto Blogger to start composing a three-part update to haplography, to get y'all caught up on all things Haplo. Now, when you log into your account, it tells you the last time you've updated your blog. And boy, was I surprised when it said "21 July 2006." Because I don't even remember doing this. I still think it would be cool to shoot things out of your hands that rip peoples' fucking faces off. Conceptually, at least; in reality it would probably be pretty disturbing.

On to blogness (it's like business, only blog-themed!)... it seems right to start part one picking up where I left off. Five weeks ago, I was all set to buy a Pedro shirt. I really was. And I was all set to wait until the Mets' hot streak was over. I really was.

The next night, David Wright does this.

Go here, and click on "Amazin' DP for Mets" (I can't link to it directly). I was there that night; it happened so fast I didn't even see it until I got home and watched it on the computer. There aren't many plays that turn a season, and that was one of them. Without it, the Mets, in all probability, don't sweep the Phillies, don't build a ridiculous lead in the NL East, and who knows what happens then.

Amazin'.

Strangely compelled I was after that. Moral dilemmas mattered not. On my way home from work the next night, my car drove itself to the Cherry Hill Mall. My feet took me to Modell's. My credit card found its way into the cashier's hand. And I walked out with a black "Wright #5" shirt.

Unfortunately, the medium shirt which looked to fit me while it was on the hanger left little to the imagination, and left me little room to use my lungs, or move. So I still really didn't have my Mets shirt. Kris and I went to the game that night, and I sat there Wrightless as the Mets won again.

They did it again the next day, and the idea of a David Wright shirt had officially dug its way into my brain. It rooted around in there for a few days, pulling apart neurons and making me highly susceptible to... suggestion. Modell's didn't have any larges, so I bit the bullet and paid much, much more for a large on the internet (and got a floppy hat while I was at it). I got a package with a hat and a shirt while at work. The large was ginormous, but shrunk enough in the wash to look respectable.

Life was good.

Tomorrow (Part Two): Fenway Park, and the biggest project of my career
Sunday (Part Three): Big news!

drunk friday bloggging

don't you just wish you could shoot things out of your hands which would rip the fucking faces off of random passersby? yeah, me too.

in any case, I'll have an actual sober update tomorrow. Godspeed!

moral dilemmas

Yes, this blog has been shoved to the periphery. No, it is NOT what I wanted to have happened, but it's happened. I've spent my weeks in far-off locales - wrestling pumas in dirt pits while loud villagers all around me clutch fistfuls of rupiah and yell very loudly in exotic tongues. I suppose I could have blogged about this, but wrestling pumas is extremely exhausting mentally, and the only thing I really wanted to do at the end of a long day spent grappling with big, angry wildcats was to get home, put my feet up, crack open a beer and watch the laugh parade that is According to Jim (at least 75% of its episodes are refreshingly puma-free).

I've also been following the Mets rather closely, thanks to the jittery, pixelated magic that is MLB.tv. I'm enjoying their success, though part of me still expects it to disappear in the most cockpunchingly painful way possible. I suppose if I didn't expect that at least a little bit, I wouldn't be a Mets fan.

Here's my dilemma: I've decided that my authentic Mets home jersey is bad luck. I can't remember the last time I wore it to a game that they've won, so I'm not going to wear it anymore. It has no name and no number, but it is of the style of jersey worn from 1991 to 1992 - buttoned-down, with orange-blue-orange piping down the sleeves and the sides. Those of you with long, freakish memories will note that the Mets went 146-174 in the years in which they wore these uniforms. Not good. I suspect this has something to do with the Mets' poor recent record in games I've attended wearing my jersey.

(Also note - last summer in Pittsburgh, I wear my jersey on Saturday night and the Mets lose by a lot; I wear my Hey Day shirt the next day and the Mets win. The fact that Kaz Ishii pitched the first game and Pedro pitched the second game probably had nothing to do with it - I'm pretty sure it was the jersey).

I've decided to replace it with one of those t-shirt jerseys that are popular these days. I think most of the Mets' current uniform designs are lame; buying one is prohibitively expensive; and for some reason it's always sort of lame to see somebody at the ballpark or in public wearing a current authentic baseball jersey with a current name and number. Now, for whatever reason people who wear authentic hockey jerseys, replica football jerseys and throwback baseball jerseys have managed to avoid this lameness, but that's neither here nor there.

So I'm going to buy one of those t-shirt jerseys. You've seen them - they don't look like jerseys really; they're more like regular monotone t-shirts with the team's lettering printed across the front chest, and a font-accurate name and number on the back. Here are my two dilemmas:

1) When do I buy it? and
2) Whose name and number do I get?

My first dilemma seems simple: when do I buy the shirt so as not to jinx a Mets hot streak (such as the current one) and/or feel like a bandwagon jumper? The answer to the first part of the question seems obvious - I must wait until the Mets are no longer on a hot streak. But this raises another troubling moral issue - if buying the shirt would give me pleasure (which it would), is there then a part of me that waits impatiently for a Mets hot streak to end? What kind of fan would I be if this were indeed the case? And what kind of fan would I be if I didn't wait to indulge myself, thereby dooming the Mets' hot streak in the process?

As for bandwagon jumping, I know I'm not a bandwagoner, but I think I would feel like one if the Mets won 10 in a row and I went out and bought the shirt at the peak of a frenzied baseball-induced high. Which brings me back to my moral impasse: if I resolve to wait out a hot streak before I buy a shirt - thereby validating my "true fan" status - is my subconscious mind rooting for the Mets to lose?

The name-and-number question is much less confusing. I'm pretty sure I want to get a shirt with "MARTINEZ 45" on the back. Kris and I went to the Cherry Hill Mall on Saturday, and we stepped into Modell's. The only Mets shirts they had were Reyes, Wright, Delgado and Wagner. Delgado and Wagner were easy "no"s, as both have been on the team for two and a half months and have had their ups and downs. Reyes and Wright were "no"s based on the fact that I won't get the name-and-number of anybody younger than me until I have to, because that's just weird.

I think it's gotta be Pedro, because he's much older than me, because I get such joy from watching him, because he takes such joy in playing baseball, because he completely changed the attitude around Shea and because it seems like he's not even real. The guy is like a cartoon character. Read this Onion article on him - satire, yes, but more exaggeration than fiction - and tell me you don't like him. He is my favorite Met.

I'm mildly concerned that getting a Pedro shirt will jinx him, but I'm much more worried that the act of buying a Mets shirt in general - regardless of the player - will jinx the entire team (see: dilemma #1).

Moral quandaries aside, I'd like to make this happen in the next two weeks, as Kris and I are going to Boston to see the Mets play on the 29th. We've had the tickets since February, and we just booked accommodations yesterday; we're staying in what looks like a charming B&B about a mile away from Fenway (according to Orbitz), and we're going to spend Thursday and Friday night in Beantown, which should give us time to do some sightseeing. Then we'll mosey on down the East Coast as the Fourth of July weekend progresses... who knows - we may be making a stop in your town! Just look for the guy wearing "MARTINEZ 45" on the back. It'll probably be me. Or Pedro.

very very early friday thoughts

- What are Law and Order: SVU repeats doing on the SciFi Channel? The only plus side would be Sam Waterston somehow staring intently into the camera during a promo and talking about how Mansquito is "inherently dramatic."

- Demolition Man is the stupidest movie of all time.

- You just knew this story had to come from Philly.

- I bet the Baby Looney Tunes think the Muppet Babies are total assholes.

And what happened to Lola Bunny in between her time as a baby Looney Tune and a disturbingly sexy rabbit-thing? You know, besides the cartoon boobs. Where was she?

My guess is that she and Bugs grew up together and became high school sweethearts. Bugs liked to drag race out in the desert by the ravine, and on the night before he was to ship out to Vietnam, he went up against Yosemite Sam for "slips," as the kids said back then. Lola wanted to come along, not knowing that the locking mechanism for the passenger-side door on Bugs' '72 Charger had rusted and broken. On one particularly sharp turn around the edge of the ravine, the door gave way and flew open, sending Lola hurtling into the night. The Looney Tunes eventually gave up hope of finding her, assuming that she had met her untimely demise at the bottom of the chasm.

Bugs was emotionally scarred and coped with his guilt in odd ways. Eventually he ended up a transient - moving from city to city, forest to forest, always living in holes in the ground to keep people from seeing the shame that hung around him like a cloud of cigar smoke. At one point he attempted to create a suit simulating Lola's appearance from the skin of the dim-witted local sportsmen he often encountered.

But Lola was not dead - she survived her fall into the ravine and was found in the desert days later by a mysterious stranger, who nursed her back to health. Her physical therapy involved honing her basketball skills, and through her games she became friends with her former enemies - one of whom gave her lessons in sassmouth and overall spunk.

Lola rejoined her fellow Looney Tunes as they fought for their very souls. She sank layups and used her wit and endearing feminine pluck to show her fellow toons that she could survive - even thrive - in a world not of her making. After beating the Monstars, she and Bugs lived happily ever after, despite the fact that Bugs still spent most of his time living in holes, wearing womens' clothing, and and arguing with his would-be skin donors as to which hunting season it actually was (the answer? HUMAN SEASON!!!!!).

finally

Well, it took two months, but I finally got my photos from the trip Kris and I took to L.A. I don't have a digital camera; it's all film. As my boss would say, film is like wood.

I'll be trying to fill in the comments at some point, but I really don't feel like it right now. If you're wondering, the photos roughly go in this order: Disneyland, Getty Center, Griffith Park, L.A. Zoo, Santa Monica Pier.

Enjoy!

the end of history

Thanks to Mensch for sending this along.

This is the End of History - thousands of years of human civilization have led up to this one indelible endpoint, and now it's past. The purpose of the combined life-toil of the tens of billions of people who have walked this earth since the Dawn of Man has finally become clear.

Life will go on, I suppose, but now that humanity has officially entered its post-historical age, it is difficult to see a point to all of it. We've reached the peak of the mountain, and there's nowhere to go but down the other side.

my apologies to david wright and the baseball gods

Since I annointed him "The Chosen One" on this blog - 6-for-33, 0 HR, 1 RBI, 6 K.

I should have known better than to open my big mouth. The Baseball Gods were angered. My apologies, David. My apologies, Baseball Gods.

best song ever

If Terry and Janice play this song at their wedding reception, I'll give them ten dollars each. Seriously - that's a promise. I'll give Janice $50 if she walks down the aisle to it during the ceremony (with an extra $10 for each accompanying "raise the roof" motion). I think that's fair market value.

Anyhoo, it's a good sign if the Mets can not only win but beat the Braves(!) on the same day their marketing department releases the jaw-droppingly embarassing baseball equivalent of "My Humps." Next up for their brain trust: hire a somewhat familiar, in-your-face talking dog as the team's new mascot, then have him hunt Mr. Met for sport within the labyrinthine bowels of Shea Stadium (hey, SNY needs programming).

monday tidbits

- So Mensch called Spector and I "fuckers" for not posting about Fran Dunphy leaving Penn; apparently we are the only connection to Philly sports that dear Matthew has. I've decided to rectify the situation forthwith.

Daily Pennsylvanian: Dunphy announced as next Temple coach

There you go, your majesty!

Seriously, I wish Dunph all the best; you can't really fault him for wanting to do this. I can only hope that whoever is next to lead men's basketball 1) doesn't pull a Joe Scott, and 2) regards coaching the Penn Quakers the same way one would regard managing the Yankees or coaching Notre Dame football. We may live in an ESPN world that has long since left Ivy League sports behind, but that doesn't mean it isn't amazingly special to pace the hardwood at the Palestra.

- I don't know who Ray Glier is, but after writing his commentary on the upcoming Mets-Braves series, it seems clear he can go back to his home on Whore Island. Seriously. Part of me wonders if he was wearing a Braves hat in the Turner Field clubhouse/dugout when he got quotes for this thing. It reminds me of the dueling columns in the DP and the Daily Princetonian on the eve of Penn-Princeton basketball, only it's completely sincere and written by a grown man and a professional journalist.

Bluster like this is one of the many reasons the Braves deserve to fall, and fall hard (though I don't know if it's better or worse than the type of intellectually dishonest homerism that frames the rivalry as the poor wittle Braves versus the big bad Mets), but as Clint Eastwood once growled, deserve's got nothin' to do with it. So we shall see.

I've come down from the euphoria of last week, as Carlos Beltran is apparently hurt again (oh, come on!) and the Mets looked lucky to take two of three from the Brew Crew. I'm getting that "Lucy's going to pull the football away just before the Mets try to kick it" feeling in the pit of my stomach - again - but I really really really really hope this year is different. I know these three games against the Braves won't tell us either way if this year is indeed The Year, but I really hope they slap those bitches down and put them back seven games before April 20th (I'd take five).

I've been calling David Wright "The Chosen One" for about two weeks now; normally that would invite a meteroite to explosively sluice through the skull of whichever Met had been called that (by anybody anywhere), but Wright just has that certain "it" factor that makes me unafraid to anoint him as such. I'm hoping that tonight he begins to fulfill the prophecy and bring balance to the force (i.e., finally finally lead the Mets to first place - and beyond).

- Some musical moments of zen: I heard Hall and Oates' "Your Kiss is On My List" not once, not twice but three different times this weekend: once while Kris and I were walking through Ann Taylor on our way out of Franklin Mills on Saturday, once in Kris' car on our way back from Franklin Mills, and a third time at Lowe's yesterday.

The odds against that have to be astronomical; I'm guessing either that or winning Powerball was going to happen once in my life, and now it has, and it wasn't the Powerball one.

The other musical moment of zen occurred this morning on the NJ Turnpike; I stopped at a service area to get some coffee at Starbucks - just regular old coffee, nothing too fancy. When I got back in the car, Mike Doughty's "Busting up a Starbucks" was playing on XPN.

Now it's true that railing against the corporate, bourgeois ubiquity of Starbucks is very 1999, but as I drove along sipping my Tall Freshly Brewed, I was like "yeah, Starbucks sucks, man!" I don't know what that says about me.

opening day

Exactly six months ago, I lamented the loss of baseball and the onset of fall. The previous day, Kris, Spector and I watched Mike Piazza take his bows as a Met for the final time, then watched as Jose Offerman lined into a double play, officially ending an 83-win season for the New York Mets.

Today, they're back - not just the Mets, but the Brewers, Blue Jays, Padres - all of them. It's Opening Day, and 2006 can finally begin.

I guess I'm just a huge sports nerd, but my summers are not only defined by what happens to me in my life, but what happens to groups of millionaires as they run around ballfields. And really, the two are intertwined - I'll always remember 2005 for the first full summer Kris and I enjoyed together, and we spent part of it following the Phillies to Camden Yards, following the Mets to PNC Park, making trips down to Citizens Bank and a couple pilgrimages to Shea. It was incredible highs at work (and a few lows), and it was the Mets taking their shot at the playoffs.

So as sad as it seems to say it (considering the fact that it's the jockly equivalent of dividing up cherished life memories based upon when seasons of Star Trek spinoffs begin and end), Opening Day is more than just game one of 162. It's day one of 2006. We can once again don shorts and flip-flops and rub in some suntan lotion and go out and let life begin. It's time to make new memories, even if some of them are going to be sitting in a 45,000-seat stadium for three hours drinking $7.50 Budweisers. It's time to live our lives nine innings at a time, even if we miss today's game - there's always another game tomorrow.

Flowery prose aside, I'm cautiously optimistic about this year's Mets team. They seem to have put together their best, most likeable group since the magical season of 1999, and as bad an in-game manager as Willie Randolph can sometimes be, the players play for him - he brings a veneer of professionalism to a franchise that has too often been a fucking insane circus (you may think the use of the word "fucking" is gratuitous here, but the phrase "insane circus" can't begin to describe the 2002, 2003 and 2004 New York Mets; hence, "fucking").

Of course, this is the type of optimism that lasts just about as long as it takes for Tom Glavine to give up three first inning runs and get that "I hate New York, life and myself" look going today, so we shall see. Enjoy Opening Day.

don't blame us, we voted for kodos

I have no idea who Gina Cobb is, but today she sounded a warning klaxon w/r/t Iran's development of nuclear weapons (via Krauthammer in Time).

I share her concern. Nuclear proliferation is probably one of the biggest issues facing humankind, as well as one of the least understood. Our administration's poor record on proliferation (making latter-day SDI plans public, seeking to resume nuclear arms production, sending John Bolton to the UN, patting India on the head for flaunting the NPT, etc., etc.) aside, Cobb, keeping in spirit with the Bush Doctrine, seeks to place pre-emptive blame for the Iran problem:

"One of the most awful legacies of the American left ultimately may be that it has undermined American and world support for decisive action to stop Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons until it is too late. By its relentless attacks on the White House centering around the Iraq war, the left has hobbled the Administration at a time when swift and unanimous action is required."

OK, here's the thing: nearly every poll in the known universe shows that a majority of Americans 1) decisively disapprove of Bush's handling of the Iraq war, and 2) think it was a mistake to go to war there in the first place. You want to know why the political capital Bush bragged about after the election is completely spent? Look no further than these numbers.

Now, I think it's pretty apparent that we on the allegedly "loony" Left don't make up a majority of Americans (one look at who controls all three branches of federal government should dispel any notions to the contrary). So how, then, can one explain why mainstream America is rejecting the Iraq war en masse and crippling the administration's further use of preemptive force? I think it's one of two possibilities:

1) Mainstream America is being led astray by the Left's corrosive attacks on the Bush administration's handling of the war; in particular by the media's refusal to report "good" news coming out of Iraq.

I think this is the explanation with which neo-conservatives will ultimately stick. The only problem with it is that if you take it to its logical conclusion, it's basically saying that 1) the power of leadership within the Bush White House is not enough to overcome the administration's shrill critics, and 2) mainstream America is easily swayed, which is a euphemism for "stupid."

Which is ironic, given how conservatives love to paint liberals as smug elitists - how often have we heard those on the Right chuckle about how the only message progressives have for people is "vote for us, you idiots!" Indeed, after huge wins in the past three election cycles, it's been incredibly easy for the GOP to proclaim its great faith in the wisdom of the American people. Only now that the shoe's on the other side of the aisle, Republicans are doing their darndest to tell middle America that it's been brainwashed by an agenda-driven New York Times; given the current poll numbers, when conservatives talk about the Left and the media's attacks on Bush, they're essentially telling Americans, "wake up, you idiots! And then vote for us!"

2) Ultimately, the American people are suckers for the truth.

Bingo.

Also, what Churchill said. As the disastrous way that Bush conceived and executed this war becomes more apparent, a majority of Americans respond with increasing negativity - robbing the President of his precious capital. It's that simple. To blame the people - on the Left or anywhere else - for both the political and real-world consquences of this nightmare is absurd.

What does this mean w/r/t Iran? Well, I don't want to be consumed in nuclear hellfire any more than you do. Unfortunately, you've gotta dance with the one who brung ya, and by that I mean we're going to be forced to give our trust to a man who has not yet shown he's worthy of it.

what the f

A quick two-minute hate, then back to work:

Apparently our Prez has rendered all public school civics classes obsolete (not to mention the United States Congress). Also, he made Princess Amidala cry.

Imagine for a moment that it's 1995, and Congress has just passed a new campaign finance reform bill after months of intense bipartisan negotiation. Now imagine that President Clinton signed the bill into law, then wrote in his own addenda right after the signing ceremony gutting the new law and ensuring that it could never apply to him. The ensuing rage among the chattering skulls of the Right would have been able to power the entire city of Tokyo for one full night. I'm pretty sure Ann Coulter would have transformed into a huge werewolf live on the set of Hardball, digging her slathering maw deep within Paul Begala's chest for a most unholy feast.

Well, I don't know about you, but I'm not expecting any hearts to be eaten on live TV in the next couple days, if you know what I mean.

from the next invasion u.s.a. dvd release

"if as part of an eternal curse i had to spend the rest of my life in a movie... (invasion usa) would definitely be part of my top 500 choices or so." --ryan kelly, haplography"

Yes, I said it. Thanks to Spector for putting it into jacket-cover-endorsement-quote form, though.

i've got a fever...

... and the only cure is more snakes on a plane.

red dull

The Poor Man Institute made me laugh today.

First of all, the invasion of the US? We don’t see it. We are just told it happened, and then we get to watch everybody cry when they see their dad in a cage. Daddy, I loves you! Oh son, I loves you! Boo-hoo-hoo! My daddy’s in a big cage! And I loves him! Dude: NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR BORING MOVIE DAD. Also, you suck at acting. Please kill Russians. If memory serves, this “character development” crap goes on for approximately the entire history of time, before somebody finally kills a Russian. They shoot him with a bow and arrow or a hunting rifle or something, and that’s pretty much it. And then, it’s back to the cry-a-thon.

I too saw Red Dawn around the age of ten, and remember it being disturbing and decidedly non-fun. To any true-hearted ten-year old boy (i.e., me, when I was ten), there's nothing worse than going to a friend's house for an all-nighter of action movies (the best the 1985-1990 era had to offer; we're talking lots of the Total Recall-type of late-80s mega-event pictures that could turn then-10-year old male brains into buzzing dopamine factories), having Red Dawn foisted upon us by a parent (not mine, thankfully) who swears we'll enjoy it, and then watching as Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen feel deep about things before tying their friend's limbs to four horses and tearing him asunder.

You're just not going to think it's that cool of a movie if the most ardent wish you've made in your life up to that point is to be there on opening afternoon for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze.

A much better movie involving a Communist invasion is Chuck Norris' incomprehensible masterpiece Invasion U.S.A. The whole movie is a protracted A-Team episode, only with corrupt small-town sheriffs replaced by an unholy alliance of Russians, Cubans and Nicaraguans, and people not dying replaced by lots of people dying. It doesn't get much better than when a small group of the invading Communists drive a K-Car alongside a schoolbus full of singing children and stick a time-bomb to the side of it, only to have Chuck drive behind them, pull the bomb off of the bus, catch up to the K-Car and throw the bomb in the open driver's side window just as it explodes. The only thing missing is the great Robert Z'Dar; the role of leader of a Communist invasion force should have been the one he was born to play.

(By the way, I can just assume you've already thanked me for not linking to or discussing any "little-known" Chuck Norris facts. You're welcome).

Anyhoo, the Poor Man's thoughts on this matter are really funny, and all relevant context is explained therein.

the truth is out there

Specifically, it's at Aarrgghh!!

the more you know

So some idle IMing with Janice somehow led to talk of what I call the Donut Spot - that swath of Schuykill Expressway underneath 30th Street Station and the adjacent Post Office that smells like, well, donuts in the warmer months. It never occurred to me that this odor could actually be produced by donuts - surely it had to be some sort of industrial by-product or the sweet stench of a very peculiar type of urban decay. Surely a quick Google would confirm as much!

Nope. It's donuts.

almost

The Quakers gave it everything they had, and there were times I thought, this is it. This is going to be the year we finally win a tournament game.

But Texas was a bit too big down low, and Penn missed two or three shots too many, and the good guys ultimately fell, 60-52.

This is the best I've ever seen Penn play in the Dance - which figures, as this was the first year since I've started following Quakers basketball that it seemed the team had absolutely no chance to win its first-round tournament game. Yet they were within a point of second-seeded Texas - in Dallas - with five minutes to go.

I'm proud of the Quakers. They earned the respect of the college basketball world tonight. It just would have been so much sweeter to win.

Someday...

AHHHHHHHH! AHHHHHHHH! IT'S HERE! IT'S HERE!

CAN'T FORM WORDS OR COMPLETE SENTENCES! SNAKES! ON PLANE! TRAILER!

EVERYBODY CRACK EACH OTHER'S HEADS OPEN AND FEAST ON THE GOOEY INSIDES!

bicoastal

Everybody's very happy
'Cause the sun is shining all the time
Looks like another perfect day

I love L.A. (We love it!)
I love L.A. (We love it!)

- Randy Newman, "I Love L.A."

So Kris and I are finally back at work after a nine-day span that saw us visit both Los Angeles AND New York City. We were in L.A. for six days of fun, and we were in Manhattan Wednesday and yesterday for both business and pleasure (I call it "pleasness," but the boys down in marketing didn't think that was so hot).

It was my first time in SoCal, and I'm still not sure how to encapsulate it. It may take years to be able to absorb and describe the essence of any place, let alone a city as huge, decentralized and diverse as Los Angeles. Asking me to hold a singular concept of L.A. in my mind right now would be akin to asking me to contemplate the sound of one hand clapping. It's a zen koan, only with crippling traffic and plentiful souvenir T-shirt stores.

That said, I do have some pertinent thoughts/observations.

- I got the sense that most Los Angelinos just don't get the Northeast, nor why anybody would want to live there. One older woman made idle conversation with us in a hotel elevator and was truly shocked when we told her we were from Philadelphia. "Why would anyone want to live in Philadelphia?" she asked. No joke. She looked at us as if we belonged to some subspecies of insane ape.

- Why can't we have the fast food places they have out there? Carl's Jr. was pretty good, and In-N-Out Burger was sublime. We never did get to try Jack in the Box or El Pollo Loco, despite seeing about 1000 locations of each every day we were out there (nope, no exaggeration there). But I can only assume they're scrumtrulescent.

- We stayed with my uncle in Irvine the first couple days we were out there, and I think I liked the O.C. better than L.A. proper. Also, when I mentioned that to Kris, she threatened to hit me if I ever voiced the phrase "the O.C." again.

Orange County seemed to be a little more relaxed, a little nicer; definitely more suburban, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The sleepy coastal communities of Newport Beach and Laguna Beach were charming, and Irvine was nice.

- My uncle engaged in a cultural practice that the East Coast would do well to take up; I don't know if it's at all prevalent in Southern California, or if it's something only a select few support - he called it "wine time," known to the rest of us as "5 p.m." The concept of "wine time" is pretty simple - at five, the workers throw down their blackberrys, wipe their weary arms across their sweaty foreheads and stare dramatically into the fading sun. Then they walk from their home offices to their kitchens and/or media rooms to pour themselves glasses of wine. Kris and I both thought there was merit in this particular custom.

So in our five days in L.A., we ended up hitting Disneyland (where Kris let me win at Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters; see Figure 1.01 below); the Nixon Presidential Library and Birthplace; a Stockton Thunder-Long Beach Ice Dogs ECHL hockey game at the beautiful Long Beach Arena (courtesy of David Perez y Perez, who helped build the Thunder's arena); the Getty Center; Griffith Park (we wanted to see the observatory, but it was closed for renovation); Six Flags Magic Mountain; the L.A. Zoo; and finally, the Santa Monica pier. We didn't do too shabby. Hopefully I'll have pictures up soon.

New York, as always, was cool. I was there for some business yesterday, which allowed Kris and I to see many of my friends from high school and college on Wednesday. We had lunch with Adam Rosenbloom, after which Kris and I checked into our hotel and stumbled upon the National Geographic Channel's in-depth show on "Hogzilla." We followed that up with dinner - we met Brad Moore, Jordan Burg, Clifton Jackness and Clifton's new ladyfriend at Lederhosen in the West Village (where one could order liters of German beer); then Brad, Jordan and I met a host of ex-DP folks (including Spector) for Jon Margulies' birthday party at Pete's across town.

It was a great, fun, exhausting vacation, and now Kris and I are back in our respective workplaces for a grueling one-day week. It's been a little hard today getting back into the groove, but at least there's Penn basketball tonight - the #15 Quakers dutifully play the role of "Opponent" against second-seeded Texas in the first round of the NCAA tournament... in Dallas. Which is in Texas.

Good luck, guys. Let's go Quakers!

Figure 1.01: Kris letting me win. Also, you'll notice we're in a complete vacuum without protective spacesuits of any kind, yet still carrying out our duty in dispatching the forces of the evil emperor Zurg. Now that's professionalism!