[Editor's note: Initially, I was hesitant to swap material between this space and my other fine feature. Then, I decided that hey, it's my blog and I can do whatever the heck I want. My apologies if you surfed over here from "Small Things Considered" in search of fresh material. Hey, the headline's new, anyway. And while we're at it, so is the Editor's Note...]
So, I went out for a walk this morning. I did this with some trepidation. Not because there was anything especially scary about the walk, although I never know what might happen when I spook the rabbits who have apparently taken up residence in our backyard. No, the trepidation has more to do with image.
Yes, for all the world, I look like I really ought to be jogging. In fact, every six months or so, I kick myself into gear and decide I'm going to go out running again. I tell myself, There's nothing to it. Just run a couple of blocks today. Then add another block tomorrow. And another couple of blocks the next day. Before I know it, I'll be running a mile or two every evening.
The trouble is, I hate running. I always have. Even while I was playing baseball in college and in the - relatively speaking - best shape of my life, I couldn't stand it. The difference then was that I was capable of doing it (it's amazing what having a coach shouting at you will do for your motivation). Nowadays, I run those first couple of blocks and instead of coach shouting at me, it's my legs, bellowing, What the hell are you doing to us? Did we do something to upset you? We thought baseball practice was over 14 years ago. At least take us to batting practice when this is over.
But Tosa is a jogging kind of place. At least it seems to be in the evenings when I get home from work. There is always a steady stream of nauseatingly fit-looking people cheerfully bounding by our house. And I worry that walking amongst them, even briskly, will raise all sorts of questions like, What's the deal with that guy? Doesn't he like to run? I've considered buying an enormous knee brace just for the sake of image.
I realize this is stupid. I realize that no one cares whether I'm walking or running. It's about my lungs, and heart, and legs - not the people running by my house at 7 pm.
And that's why I went walking first thing in the morning. And as it turns out, at 6:15 am, Tosa is a walking kind of place. I passed probably a dozen people, getting their blood moving in a somewhat slower fashion. Some of them were less than 103 years old, even. No one seemed anxious to break into a faster gait.
Except for the rabbits, who all seemed like they were in a big hurry.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Friday, August 25, 2006
Yilidans for a Brighter Tomorrow
I haven't given up on my dream of being named Ambassador to Yilida.
Yilida, you'll recall, is the mysterious homeland of a genre of AA batteries that power an spinning, light-emitting, and seminally entertaining toy called a "meteor storm". It's a toy that graced the boxes of the 19 Minutes Playroom for months until the batteries finally ran down, at which point we opened the battery compartment to find two AA batteries labeled:
Made in Yilida
We wrote about this enigmatic place, and the exotic images conjured up by its self-described distinction, "Town of the Wire Nettings".
But lo these many months later, we still had not been able to pinpoint an exact location for Yilida on the official 19 Minutes globe. Fortunately, our previous post was able to provide the missing puzzle piece for a fellow Yilidaphile, who related the following e-mail correspondence with the makers of the Meteor Storm:
It turns out our correspondent is actually running for County Council in the former 19 Minutes stomping grounds of Montgomery County, Maryland. We'd be tempted to endorse his candidacy, except that:
a) We're reluctant to throw out the years of objectivity 19 Minutes has worked so hard to maintain, and
b) We're worried he'll use politics as a stepping-stone to land the Yilidan Ambassadorship before we can secure it.
Yilida, you'll recall, is the mysterious homeland of a genre of AA batteries that power an spinning, light-emitting, and seminally entertaining toy called a "meteor storm". It's a toy that graced the boxes of the 19 Minutes Playroom for months until the batteries finally ran down, at which point we opened the battery compartment to find two AA batteries labeled:
Made in Yilida
We wrote about this enigmatic place, and the exotic images conjured up by its self-described distinction, "Town of the Wire Nettings".
But lo these many months later, we still had not been able to pinpoint an exact location for Yilida on the official 19 Minutes globe. Fortunately, our previous post was able to provide the missing puzzle piece for a fellow Yilidaphile, who related the following e-mail correspondence with the makers of the Meteor Storm:
Having learned the NAME of my toy loaded with batteries from the global superpower motherland of Yilida, I Googled "'meteor storm' toy" and found a toy store selling it that identified it as a product of Schylling Toys.
Schylling has contact info so I wrote an email with the results we all longed for.
From the web page Ms. Goodwin sent me, I googled "Tanjiang Highway 325"
It led me to pages referring to this road near a city named Kaiping, which is part of Yilida's full company name. Fairly safe to assume then that Yalida is somewhere near Kaiping in Guangdong province about midway between Guangzhou and YangJiang along National Highway 325, the gray line connecting those two cities. (http://www.maps-of-china.com/guangdong-s-ow.shtml)
From: William Jacobs
Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 10:17 AM
To: info@schylling.com
Subject: "Meteor Storm" batteries
Dear Schylling Toys,
I hope you can help clear up a mystery for us.
A Schylling Toys "Meteor Storm" LED toy of ours ran out of battery power and the original "Wanshifa" batteries shipped with the toys are labeled "Made in Yilida"
Can you possibly tell me where Yalida is. There is growing interest in the too-much-time-on-our-hands community.
Bill Jacobs
www.athensproject.com
On 8/22/06, Jennifer Goodwin wrote:
Thank you for your inquiry - the batteries should be labeled Made at Yilida; that is the name of the manufacturer, as can be found at http://www.yilida-battery.com/english/gongsi.htm . I hope this closes the case for you, and I hope you enjoy the English translations on their website as much as I have.
Thank you again for choosing Schylling,
Jennifer Goodwin, Customer Service
Schylling Associates
www.schylling.com www.tintoys.com
It turns out our correspondent is actually running for County Council in the former 19 Minutes stomping grounds of Montgomery County, Maryland. We'd be tempted to endorse his candidacy, except that:
a) We're reluctant to throw out the years of objectivity 19 Minutes has worked so hard to maintain, and
b) We're worried he'll use politics as a stepping-stone to land the Yilidan Ambassadorship before we can secure it.
Sunday, August 20, 2006
Road trip
Saturday, 11:00 am. My wife, daughter, and I made the trip up from Milwaukee in exactly and hour and 20 minutes. We're driving through the gates at Road America, in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, site of this weekend's Generac 500 auto race, a race that I'd wanted to see ever since I'd first heard of it, roughly five seconds before we passed through the gate.
Actually, the real reason we're here is to meet up with my father-in-law, whose Mazda club is having an annual get-together at the race course. (I'm also aware that, technically speaking, it's a rotary engine club, but all the engines involved happen to be inside Mazda hoods. And since I'm ill equipped to discuss anything engine-related, except on the topic of "things that might go wrong with your '85 Subaru", we'll stick to the Mazda description.) Anyway, my father-in-law has secured a pass to drive his RX-7 on the race course, and offered me the chance to ride shotgun. And as we drive through the gates, I'm debating whether to chicken out. After my one previous experience at a race track, I'm not so worried about my father-in-law's driving as much as the other yahoos who may have turned out for the event.
Saturday, 11:05. I'm feeling better already. In contrast to the crowd that showed up for last month's Craftsman Series race in their beat-up Cutlasses and Ford Rangers, the parking lot in Elkhart Lake is full of Audis, BMWs, and Jaguars. It strikes me that the drivers of these cars are less likely to drive 6 inches off our bumper than the NASCAR crowd. If this group wanted to kill me, they'd more likely use an ice pick or a poison-tipped umbrella. Still...
Saturday, 11:15. We meet up with my father-in-law, whose RX-7 is already parked in the line of cars that are going to go out on the track. There are at least a hundred cars in the queue, including such atypical race cars as a Chevy Cavalier and a VW Golf. (Now, don't get me wrong: I used to drive a Golf for several years, and it was fun, comfortable car. I'm just saying in a race between the '87 Golf and a parking meter, you'd probably do best to feed your quarters into the meter.) With so many cars in line, it strikes me that the track is probably concerned about safety. I decide to go ahead and do it.
Saturday, 11:30. Father-in-law goes off to the "drivers' meeting" with the other hundred or so drivers. No idea what they're talking about, or what directions they're getting. Meanwhile, my wife is running a "passengers' meeting" of her own:
Meanwhile, our two-year-old has settled into the passenger seat of "Grandpa's race car" and takes some convincing before she extricates herself. I consider whether any Grand Prix drivers have won a race while driving with a child safety seat in the back.
Saturday, 11:45 am. It's post time, but there's a launch delay (and a mixed metaphor, to boot). I consider that if anything goes seriously wrong, it's actually my fault. My father-in-law, who lives in Minnesota, bought the car from a guy in Maryland seven or eight years ago. At the time, my wife and I were living just across the DC line. We did the scouting report on the RX-7, which meant that the original test driver... was me. And as previously noted, my car mechanics expertise is limited to figuring out how to program the presets on the stereo.
Saturday, 11:55 am. A few minutes late, we roar out on the track, behind (by my count) 17 other cars. Okay, we don't exactly roar. It turns out the first lap is a practice lap (as opposed to the other laps, which are, apparently counted in our permanent records), which means we're cruising around the four-mile-long track at an average speed of 15 mph. This is okay, because at 15 mph, I'm not too concerned when my father-in-law checks his GPS unit.
Saturday, 12:03 pm. Somewhere up ahead, the pace car accelerates. And so do we. We are actually roaring around the track. My actual role in this affair is to take pictures. And so, top down, windows down, baseball cap on my lap, car flying around turns, I'm fiddling with my father-in-law's camera, trying to figure out how to keep all the pictures from looking washed-out on a brilliantly overcast day in August.
Saturday, 12:10 pm. Okay, I've got the washed-out issue solved. Now, the question is how to take pictures that don't just look like we're driving down the highway. Because even at 80 mph, a guy driving a car looks pretty much like a guy driving a car. I decide that, hey, the top is down - I can lift the camera over the windshield and get a shot of the hood, the track, and a little of the track ambiance. At 80 mph, this is trickier than I bargained for.
Saturday, 12:20 mph, er, pm. My father-in-law handles the RX-7 pretty impressively, and the engine does have a delightful roar as he blasts it up through 3rd and 4th gear. It's a "sports car commercial" feel, rather than a "feeling of imminent death" that I imagine would be generated by a trip in a stock car around a mile-long oval. Still, there are plenty of drivers who seem like they're taking out a year's worth of rush hour frustration on the Road America track, including a Volvo driver who barrels by us on a straightaway that's not very long (or straight).
Saturday, 12:30 pm. The VW Golf is still behind us, which is - if nothing else - a morale-builder. We tend to blow him away on the straightaways, but he manages to creep up on us at turns. My father-in-law notes he thinks we've hit 90 mph, but to his credit, he's paying more attention to the track than the spedometer. I consider turning around and taking pictures out the back of the car, but to my credit, I don't.
Saturday, 12:40 pm. There's a hill on the last straightaway that leads up to the start-finish line. It's both an exhilerating and worrisome feeling to fly up that hill at 85 mph - exhilerating because the speed really is a celebration of what an automobile can do; worrisome, because one of these laps will be our last lap, and I'm a little concerned we'll fly over the crest into a forest of red tail lights and I'll regret that the car my father-in-law asked me to test drive wasn't a Sherman Tank.
Saturday, 12:43 pm. The checkered flag goes out with plenty of warning time, and we don't end up becoming permanent parts of the track (Roadkill America?). I emerge from the car with a new appreciation for performance drivers, for the rotary engine, and for sports photographers. And as I walk to where my wife and daughter have been watching, a thought comes over me. Next year, I take the Jetta Wagon on the track. With the car seat.
Actually, the real reason we're here is to meet up with my father-in-law, whose Mazda club is having an annual get-together at the race course. (I'm also aware that, technically speaking, it's a rotary engine club, but all the engines involved happen to be inside Mazda hoods. And since I'm ill equipped to discuss anything engine-related, except on the topic of "things that might go wrong with your '85 Subaru", we'll stick to the Mazda description.) Anyway, my father-in-law has secured a pass to drive his RX-7 on the race course, and offered me the chance to ride shotgun. And as we drive through the gates, I'm debating whether to chicken out. After my one previous experience at a race track, I'm not so worried about my father-in-law's driving as much as the other yahoos who may have turned out for the event.
Saturday, 11:05. I'm feeling better already. In contrast to the crowd that showed up for last month's Craftsman Series race in their beat-up Cutlasses and Ford Rangers, the parking lot in Elkhart Lake is full of Audis, BMWs, and Jaguars. It strikes me that the drivers of these cars are less likely to drive 6 inches off our bumper than the NASCAR crowd. If this group wanted to kill me, they'd more likely use an ice pick or a poison-tipped umbrella. Still...
Saturday, 11:15. We meet up with my father-in-law, whose RX-7 is already parked in the line of cars that are going to go out on the track. There are at least a hundred cars in the queue, including such atypical race cars as a Chevy Cavalier and a VW Golf. (Now, don't get me wrong: I used to drive a Golf for several years, and it was fun, comfortable car. I'm just saying in a race between the '87 Golf and a parking meter, you'd probably do best to feed your quarters into the meter.) With so many cars in line, it strikes me that the track is probably concerned about safety. I decide to go ahead and do it.
Saturday, 11:30. Father-in-law goes off to the "drivers' meeting" with the other hundred or so drivers. No idea what they're talking about, or what directions they're getting. Meanwhile, my wife is running a "passengers' meeting" of her own:
"DO NOT DISTRACT MY DAD," she directs me.
"Not even to change the CD?" I ask.
"DO NOT TOUCH THE STEREO," she retorts.
"I wonder if he's bringing any food along," I say.
Meanwhile, our two-year-old has settled into the passenger seat of "Grandpa's race car" and takes some convincing before she extricates herself. I consider whether any Grand Prix drivers have won a race while driving with a child safety seat in the back.
Saturday, 11:45 am. It's post time, but there's a launch delay (and a mixed metaphor, to boot). I consider that if anything goes seriously wrong, it's actually my fault. My father-in-law, who lives in Minnesota, bought the car from a guy in Maryland seven or eight years ago. At the time, my wife and I were living just across the DC line. We did the scouting report on the RX-7, which meant that the original test driver... was me. And as previously noted, my car mechanics expertise is limited to figuring out how to program the presets on the stereo.
Saturday, 11:55 am. A few minutes late, we roar out on the track, behind (by my count) 17 other cars. Okay, we don't exactly roar. It turns out the first lap is a practice lap (as opposed to the other laps, which are, apparently counted in our permanent records), which means we're cruising around the four-mile-long track at an average speed of 15 mph. This is okay, because at 15 mph, I'm not too concerned when my father-in-law checks his GPS unit.
Saturday, 12:03 pm. Somewhere up ahead, the pace car accelerates. And so do we. We are actually roaring around the track. My actual role in this affair is to take pictures. And so, top down, windows down, baseball cap on my lap, car flying around turns, I'm fiddling with my father-in-law's camera, trying to figure out how to keep all the pictures from looking washed-out on a brilliantly overcast day in August.
Saturday, 12:10 pm. Okay, I've got the washed-out issue solved. Now, the question is how to take pictures that don't just look like we're driving down the highway. Because even at 80 mph, a guy driving a car looks pretty much like a guy driving a car. I decide that, hey, the top is down - I can lift the camera over the windshield and get a shot of the hood, the track, and a little of the track ambiance. At 80 mph, this is trickier than I bargained for.
Saturday, 12:20 mph, er, pm. My father-in-law handles the RX-7 pretty impressively, and the engine does have a delightful roar as he blasts it up through 3rd and 4th gear. It's a "sports car commercial" feel, rather than a "feeling of imminent death" that I imagine would be generated by a trip in a stock car around a mile-long oval. Still, there are plenty of drivers who seem like they're taking out a year's worth of rush hour frustration on the Road America track, including a Volvo driver who barrels by us on a straightaway that's not very long (or straight).
Saturday, 12:30 pm. The VW Golf is still behind us, which is - if nothing else - a morale-builder. We tend to blow him away on the straightaways, but he manages to creep up on us at turns. My father-in-law notes he thinks we've hit 90 mph, but to his credit, he's paying more attention to the track than the spedometer. I consider turning around and taking pictures out the back of the car, but to my credit, I don't.
Saturday, 12:40 pm. There's a hill on the last straightaway that leads up to the start-finish line. It's both an exhilerating and worrisome feeling to fly up that hill at 85 mph - exhilerating because the speed really is a celebration of what an automobile can do; worrisome, because one of these laps will be our last lap, and I'm a little concerned we'll fly over the crest into a forest of red tail lights and I'll regret that the car my father-in-law asked me to test drive wasn't a Sherman Tank.
Saturday, 12:43 pm. The checkered flag goes out with plenty of warning time, and we don't end up becoming permanent parts of the track (Roadkill America?). I emerge from the car with a new appreciation for performance drivers, for the rotary engine, and for sports photographers. And as I walk to where my wife and daughter have been watching, a thought comes over me. Next year, I take the Jetta Wagon on the track. With the car seat.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
The Empire strikes back
The 19 Minutes staff, still smarting after the demise of its monthly column in the efficiently titled Northern Arizona's Mountain Living Magazine (still ranked as one of the top free magazines available in the foyers of Flagstaff-area health clubs) , is pleased to announce its most recent spin-off.
"Small Things Considered" debuted on WauwatosaNOW.com yesterday afternoon. It'lll occasionally look somewhat like (and sometimes exactly like) this fine feature, but will pretty much be limited to local minutae. ("Minutae Rice" was a runner-up name for that blog, but was so thoroughly trashed by everyone I floated it by that I relented.)
Well keep you updated on the progress of 19 Minutes Idol, now in development by a major studio.
"Small Things Considered" debuted on WauwatosaNOW.com yesterday afternoon. It'lll occasionally look somewhat like (and sometimes exactly like) this fine feature, but will pretty much be limited to local minutae. ("Minutae Rice" was a runner-up name for that blog, but was so thoroughly trashed by everyone I floated it by that I relented.)
Well keep you updated on the progress of 19 Minutes Idol, now in development by a major studio.
Monday, August 14, 2006
The "Joy" of Painting
When it comes to houses, some people dream of a log cabin in the woods, some wish for a seaside cottage. Still others aspire to a romantic villa in Tuscany or a ski lodge somewhere (probably not Rhode Island).
For my wife, it's not so much the house itself, it's that she's always dreamt of having a yellow kitchen.
We've been at it for a good 30 hours now, and we're just now approaching the point which professional painters refer to as "getting there". Professional painters say this as they work to cover vast numbers of square feet on the walls of large kitchens. If only that were the issue in our case.
Our kitchen's actually a decent size - enough room for a table that we could theoretically eat breakfast on if it weren't covered with stacks of credit card offers, "welcome to the neighborhood" letters from local dentists, and postcards from realtors excitedly noting all the homes that have gone on the market since we moved in, leading us to wonder whether there's a cause-and-effect relationship at work.
Anyway, as far as kitchens go, it's probably no trickier than most. There are plenty of cabinets to work around, appliances to move, and a built-in spice rack to enable us to hold debates over accent colors.
But there was no debate this weekend over what color to paint the kitchen. As you may recall, we were predestined to have a yellow kitchen. We'd actually purchased the paint a couple of months ago from a local paint dealer who knew a Clueless Paint-Buying Husband when he saw one ("Well, if you're going to be painting a kitchen, you're definitely going to want this paint, which resists stains, washes up nicely, wins architectural design awards, pilots a race car, etc."). We chose "Van Gogh Yellow", because nothing says "cheerful kitchen" like a color named after a painter who was so depressed that he cut off his own ear. (Okay, perhaps he wasn't so much "depressed" as he was "insane", but it still seems an oddly cheerful color for the guy.)
So we set about slathering the Van Gogh onto our kitchen walls, which up to this point were painted a color called "Imodium AD Green". It turns out that in a Celebrity Color Death Match between a crazy painter and a anti-diarrheal medication, the soothing liquid wins the first two rounds.
To make matters worse, on several walls, the previous painters had attempted what the design shows refer to as a "faux finish". The trouble is, the whole concept of faux finishing revolves around replicating some kind of textured surface. If that was the case in our kitchen, the surface the previous painters were attempting to replicate was most likely that of cuttlefish parts dipped in white paint and embedded in a green wall.
So by the end of the day yesterdaysome walls looked basically yellow, except around the edges, where the Imodium AD Green stylishly showed through, giving the wall an Anti-Diarrheal Tuscan Villa look ("Hi, I'm Diane Lane for Imodium AD..."). The other walls looked basically yellow, with the occasional cuttlefish part poking through. Then, we ran out of paint, which of course meant the paint store closed at 2:00 pm on Sundays, which of course meant that I headed out to the paint store at 8:30 this morning, which of course meant that our fabulous racecar-driving paint only comes in one gallon increments, despite the fact all we have left is the edges, the area behind the refrigerator, and any remaining cuttlefish.
So the painting continues, and as my wife notes, "This kitchen had better be damn cheerful."
I'm beginning to think Van Gogh had the right idea.
For my wife, it's not so much the house itself, it's that she's always dreamt of having a yellow kitchen.
We've been at it for a good 30 hours now, and we're just now approaching the point which professional painters refer to as "getting there". Professional painters say this as they work to cover vast numbers of square feet on the walls of large kitchens. If only that were the issue in our case.
Our kitchen's actually a decent size - enough room for a table that we could theoretically eat breakfast on if it weren't covered with stacks of credit card offers, "welcome to the neighborhood" letters from local dentists, and postcards from realtors excitedly noting all the homes that have gone on the market since we moved in, leading us to wonder whether there's a cause-and-effect relationship at work.
Anyway, as far as kitchens go, it's probably no trickier than most. There are plenty of cabinets to work around, appliances to move, and a built-in spice rack to enable us to hold debates over accent colors.
But there was no debate this weekend over what color to paint the kitchen. As you may recall, we were predestined to have a yellow kitchen. We'd actually purchased the paint a couple of months ago from a local paint dealer who knew a Clueless Paint-Buying Husband when he saw one ("Well, if you're going to be painting a kitchen, you're definitely going to want this paint, which resists stains, washes up nicely, wins architectural design awards, pilots a race car, etc."). We chose "Van Gogh Yellow", because nothing says "cheerful kitchen" like a color named after a painter who was so depressed that he cut off his own ear. (Okay, perhaps he wasn't so much "depressed" as he was "insane", but it still seems an oddly cheerful color for the guy.)
So we set about slathering the Van Gogh onto our kitchen walls, which up to this point were painted a color called "Imodium AD Green". It turns out that in a Celebrity Color Death Match between a crazy painter and a anti-diarrheal medication, the soothing liquid wins the first two rounds.
To make matters worse, on several walls, the previous painters had attempted what the design shows refer to as a "faux finish". The trouble is, the whole concept of faux finishing revolves around replicating some kind of textured surface. If that was the case in our kitchen, the surface the previous painters were attempting to replicate was most likely that of cuttlefish parts dipped in white paint and embedded in a green wall.
So by the end of the day yesterdaysome walls looked basically yellow, except around the edges, where the Imodium AD Green stylishly showed through, giving the wall an Anti-Diarrheal Tuscan Villa look ("Hi, I'm Diane Lane for Imodium AD..."). The other walls looked basically yellow, with the occasional cuttlefish part poking through. Then, we ran out of paint, which of course meant the paint store closed at 2:00 pm on Sundays, which of course meant that I headed out to the paint store at 8:30 this morning, which of course meant that our fabulous racecar-driving paint only comes in one gallon increments, despite the fact all we have left is the edges, the area behind the refrigerator, and any remaining cuttlefish.
So the painting continues, and as my wife notes, "This kitchen had better be damn cheerful."
I'm beginning to think Van Gogh had the right idea.
Friday, July 28, 2006
Summer rerun
The 19 Minutes home office is on its annual decompression trip to the mid-coast of Maine. But, so that the liquid donut business doesn't top our news for the next week-and-a-half, here's a rerun from Sunday, March 27 - for no other reason than it was the entry that popped up at random when I went looking for a rerun. Please note that my daughter is no longer 9 1/2 months old, and as a result, her experience at the Chicago Hyatt this evening (en route to Maine) will likely be a bit different.
We stayed at the Loews Ventana Canyon Resort, thanks to the generosity of some key relatives of the 19 Minutes staff. But for purposes of this post, let’s pretend we paid the $279/night that our room would normally go for. That’ll make the comparison with the $46/night Holiday Inn Phoenix West work a little better, anyway. We stayed at the Holiday Inn on the trip back north.
Let me start by saying that the Loews is a very nice hotel. The service was extraordinary, and it’s tough to beat having a saguaro cactus literally just outside your door (unless you’re a sleepwalker, I suppose). But I’ve always been a little skeptical about whether I could actually tell the difference between a humorously expensive hotel room and, well, a humorously not expensive hotel room. At least I wondered whether, at $279/night, the Loews was really six times sweller than the Holiday Inn.
Our comparison breaks down into several areas. Here goes.
Location:
The Loews is located, as is everything in Tucson, roughly 75 miles from anything else. The trip off the interstate gives you a good feel for what your trip to Tucson will be like – roads that go on seemingly forever, lined with expensive brown adobe homes wedged onto the hillsides and strip malls that pop up at random intervals. It definitely discourages the riff-raff from interfering with your stay. Their cars would never make it that far.
The Holiday Inn is located a convenient 75 feet from Interstate 10, meaning the sounds you got used to on the drive will follow you into your room. The marquee out front reads “Welcome Riff-Raff.”
The pool:
The Loews has a recreation pool, a lap pool, an outdoor hot tub, and a “cooling off” pool replete with waterfall. The smell of mesquite from the surrounding desert wafts over the entire area. There are dozens of deck chairs around the recreation pool, giving vacationing investment bankers plenty of room to read the Wall Street Journal and bark at their surly underlings via cell phone while keeping one eye on their kids and another on the bikini-clad women in the neighboring chairs.
The Holiday Inn’s pool is located under an overhang at the front of the hotel. It’s walled off from the entry driveway, but even the wall doesn’t keep out the wafting aroma from the fast-food joints across the street.
The room:
Our room at the Loews had a king-sized bed, a couch, an easy chair, and a desk. The mattress had seen better days, or at least wished it had seen lighter guests. Reading material included Condé Nast Traveler, Tucson Living, and USA Today on the one day they got around to delivering it.
Our room at the Holiday Inn had a king-sized bed, an easy chair, a desk, and a refrigerator. The mattress was relatively new and pretty comfortable. Reading material included the guide to the hotel amenities and area attractions. This hit all the hot spots, including the Phoenix Zoo, the world-famous Heard Museum, a nearby batting cage, and the Garden of Jesus’ Suffering.
The bathroom:
No real complaints about the Loews bathroom, unless you count the poor audio quality on the bathroom phone. The Loews bathroom also featured a TV (though it was one of those little ones you’d take camping and not a 50-inch plasma job). It also included a humongous tub, in case our 9 1/2 –month old wanted to get her lap swimming in, as well. Nice soaps/shampoos/mysterious lotions, though for some odd reason, we were never provided with soap for the sink. Enormous towels.
The Holiday Inn bathroom had working fixtures.
Ambiance:
Loews – grand piano and lounge singer in the main foyer.
Holiday Inn – Friday night was some sort of a special “dress up like pimps and hookers” night at the sports bar just off the main foyer. Not that anyone at the Holiday Inn was calling it a foyer.
Kind of a Hobson’s choice, actually, between the two places.
Parking:
Both places noted that the parking lots were under some form of surveillance, but one got the feeling that it only actually mattered at the Holiday Inn.
**
When it comes down to it, both places served their purpose – the Loews gave us a bed and a relaxing (well, as relaxing as it was going to get with a baby around) respite from the everyday. And the Holiday Inn gave us a bed and was, on the whole, somewhat safer than actually sleeping on Interstate 10. Was the Loews Ventana Canyon Resort six times better than the Holiday Inn Phoenix West? Pretty close, actually. Though the Holiday Inn would catch up pretty darn quickly if they put that 50-inch plasma TV in the bathroom.
Resort living vs. a room at the Inn: a report
So as I mentioned, we went to Tucson last week, allowing our daughter to take a vacation from the stress that's involved in being 9 ½ months old.We stayed at the Loews Ventana Canyon Resort, thanks to the generosity of some key relatives of the 19 Minutes staff. But for purposes of this post, let’s pretend we paid the $279/night that our room would normally go for. That’ll make the comparison with the $46/night Holiday Inn Phoenix West work a little better, anyway. We stayed at the Holiday Inn on the trip back north.
Let me start by saying that the Loews is a very nice hotel. The service was extraordinary, and it’s tough to beat having a saguaro cactus literally just outside your door (unless you’re a sleepwalker, I suppose). But I’ve always been a little skeptical about whether I could actually tell the difference between a humorously expensive hotel room and, well, a humorously not expensive hotel room. At least I wondered whether, at $279/night, the Loews was really six times sweller than the Holiday Inn.
Our comparison breaks down into several areas. Here goes.
Location:
The Loews is located, as is everything in Tucson, roughly 75 miles from anything else. The trip off the interstate gives you a good feel for what your trip to Tucson will be like – roads that go on seemingly forever, lined with expensive brown adobe homes wedged onto the hillsides and strip malls that pop up at random intervals. It definitely discourages the riff-raff from interfering with your stay. Their cars would never make it that far.
The Holiday Inn is located a convenient 75 feet from Interstate 10, meaning the sounds you got used to on the drive will follow you into your room. The marquee out front reads “Welcome Riff-Raff.”
The pool:
The Loews has a recreation pool, a lap pool, an outdoor hot tub, and a “cooling off” pool replete with waterfall. The smell of mesquite from the surrounding desert wafts over the entire area. There are dozens of deck chairs around the recreation pool, giving vacationing investment bankers plenty of room to read the Wall Street Journal and bark at their surly underlings via cell phone while keeping one eye on their kids and another on the bikini-clad women in the neighboring chairs.
The Holiday Inn’s pool is located under an overhang at the front of the hotel. It’s walled off from the entry driveway, but even the wall doesn’t keep out the wafting aroma from the fast-food joints across the street.
The room:
Our room at the Loews had a king-sized bed, a couch, an easy chair, and a desk. The mattress had seen better days, or at least wished it had seen lighter guests. Reading material included Condé Nast Traveler, Tucson Living, and USA Today on the one day they got around to delivering it.
Our room at the Holiday Inn had a king-sized bed, an easy chair, a desk, and a refrigerator. The mattress was relatively new and pretty comfortable. Reading material included the guide to the hotel amenities and area attractions. This hit all the hot spots, including the Phoenix Zoo, the world-famous Heard Museum, a nearby batting cage, and the Garden of Jesus’ Suffering.
The bathroom:
No real complaints about the Loews bathroom, unless you count the poor audio quality on the bathroom phone. The Loews bathroom also featured a TV (though it was one of those little ones you’d take camping and not a 50-inch plasma job). It also included a humongous tub, in case our 9 1/2 –month old wanted to get her lap swimming in, as well. Nice soaps/shampoos/mysterious lotions, though for some odd reason, we were never provided with soap for the sink. Enormous towels.
The Holiday Inn bathroom had working fixtures.
Ambiance:
Loews – grand piano and lounge singer in the main foyer.
Holiday Inn – Friday night was some sort of a special “dress up like pimps and hookers” night at the sports bar just off the main foyer. Not that anyone at the Holiday Inn was calling it a foyer.
Kind of a Hobson’s choice, actually, between the two places.
Parking:
Both places noted that the parking lots were under some form of surveillance, but one got the feeling that it only actually mattered at the Holiday Inn.
**
When it comes down to it, both places served their purpose – the Loews gave us a bed and a relaxing (well, as relaxing as it was going to get with a baby around) respite from the everyday. And the Holiday Inn gave us a bed and was, on the whole, somewhat safer than actually sleeping on Interstate 10. Was the Loews Ventana Canyon Resort six times better than the Holiday Inn Phoenix West? Pretty close, actually. Though the Holiday Inn would catch up pretty darn quickly if they put that 50-inch plasma TV in the bathroom.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
And now, this fine dining tale
It's 8:45 am. I've forgotten to bring my packet of oatmeal to work (and besides, how many days in a row can a person eat oatmeal, even if it is of the maple and brown sugar variety?). A brisk walk up Wisconsin Avenue to the Milwaukee Bagel Company. There's a handlettered sign on the door, noting they're closed for the week. I kind of appreciate the fact that there's a bagel place in the middle of downtown that's small and funky enough that the owner can take off for a week, but for Pete's sake, I forgot my oatmeal this morning.
So I go next door. Okay, next door is a tanning salon. I go one more door down. Dunkin' Donuts. Get in touch with my inner New Englander. Shades of "Good Will Hunting" along the Milwaukee River.
Whatever. I order an iced French Vanilla coffee. Large. I'm given the option of cream and sugar. I opt for both. Extra sugar, actually. It comes back a lovely tan color.
The first sip comes through the straw accompanied by a healthy measure of sugar crystals. It takes just one more sip for me to figure it out. I'm drinking liquid donut.
This is the most perfect drink ever concocted.
Of course, I'm never allowed to drink it again.
So I go next door. Okay, next door is a tanning salon. I go one more door down. Dunkin' Donuts. Get in touch with my inner New Englander. Shades of "Good Will Hunting" along the Milwaukee River.
Whatever. I order an iced French Vanilla coffee. Large. I'm given the option of cream and sugar. I opt for both. Extra sugar, actually. It comes back a lovely tan color.
The first sip comes through the straw accompanied by a healthy measure of sugar crystals. It takes just one more sip for me to figure it out. I'm drinking liquid donut.
This is the most perfect drink ever concocted.
Of course, I'm never allowed to drink it again.
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
A low interest rate
One of the spiffy things about being a journalist is getting to ask nosy questions. Or at least feeling empowered, when I see something that piques my interest, to ask what the heck is going on. I do this, as long as I have a microphone with me, or at least a notebook that says "NEWS" in large letters. Otherwise, I feel like just another schmuck bugging people to know what's going on.
Anyway, the side effect to this is my inability to countenance a lack of curiosity. I don't understand the mindset of someone who - given a situation in which there are barricades, dozens of emergency vehicles, protesters holding signs, and traffic backed up for miles around - goes about his business seemingly oblivious to the scene unfolding around him.
And yet, that was the scene on the bus the other day (and here you thought I was constructing a brilliant-yet-hypothetical scenario), as several people approached the driver to ask a) why the busses were all running so late, and b) why the route had been moved to a different street than usual.
The answer, of course, was that the President of the United States was going to a fundraiser at a downtown hotel (which for some reason necessitated closing a street on one side of the hotel, but not the other). The driver claimed to have no idea what was going on - leading me to believe he either thought he was performing some sort of national security-related function by not divulging his knowledge of the situation, or he honestly hadn't bothered to ask why his route had shifted and the traffic had backed up and the protesters were spilling into the street and there were a thousand police cars with their lights flashing just down the block.
One of the less-spiffy things about being a journalist is feeling the need to inform strangers on a bus when you actually know the answer to what's happening around you.
But there are plenty of would-be reporters out there, and so I let one of the would-be journalists on the bus handle the situation. I thought about giving him my notebook that said "NEWS", but then he got the facts of the story wrong.
Anyway, the side effect to this is my inability to countenance a lack of curiosity. I don't understand the mindset of someone who - given a situation in which there are barricades, dozens of emergency vehicles, protesters holding signs, and traffic backed up for miles around - goes about his business seemingly oblivious to the scene unfolding around him.
And yet, that was the scene on the bus the other day (and here you thought I was constructing a brilliant-yet-hypothetical scenario), as several people approached the driver to ask a) why the busses were all running so late, and b) why the route had been moved to a different street than usual.
The answer, of course, was that the President of the United States was going to a fundraiser at a downtown hotel (which for some reason necessitated closing a street on one side of the hotel, but not the other). The driver claimed to have no idea what was going on - leading me to believe he either thought he was performing some sort of national security-related function by not divulging his knowledge of the situation, or he honestly hadn't bothered to ask why his route had shifted and the traffic had backed up and the protesters were spilling into the street and there were a thousand police cars with their lights flashing just down the block.
One of the less-spiffy things about being a journalist is feeling the need to inform strangers on a bus when you actually know the answer to what's happening around you.
But there are plenty of would-be reporters out there, and so I let one of the would-be journalists on the bus handle the situation. I thought about giving him my notebook that said "NEWS", but then he got the facts of the story wrong.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
In case you weren't streaming
We get plenty of e-mails here in 19 Minutes World Media Headquarters via that spiffy e-mail link that shows up on my profile page. Most of them, of course, are for offers for Cialis - or, as the e-mails like to call it, C!@l1s (as though spelling the name of a prescription drug with an at-sign and an exclamation point makes it seem more legitimate). But in our parallel e-mail universe, our readers are clamoring to learn what's happening in the interview wing of the 19 Minutes office complex.
This is especially key since our departure from our past headquarters rendered our podcasts inoperative. One of these days we'll get the 19 Minutes technical team to remove the outdated links.
In any case, to appease the screaming and teeming masses from our parallel universe, here are some of the highlights from our radio existence in the past few weeks:
Pauls Toutonghi has written an entertaining, mainly fictional account of a first generation Latvian-American growing up in 1989 Milwaukee. He was also a terrific interview, especially as he read from his book, "Red Weather", noting his interpretation of the protagonist's mother was based on his own mother's accent, which he conceded sounded a little too much like Count Chocula.
Hazel Barton is something of a rock star in her field, which of course you already know is the microbiology of caves. She's one of the cave explorers featured in the Imax film, "Journey Into Amazing Caves", and speaks articulately about why studying organisms called "extremophiles" is important. But she's equally eloquent about why caving will never be an "extreme" sport - mainly because no one can see your brightly colored spandex when it's underground and covered in mud. And she notes that scientists can also wear nice clothes above ground, too. Really. She said that.
In an effort to interview only people with "Hazel" in their names who like nice clothes, we also spoke with Robin Hazelwood, a Wisconsin native who managed to attend an Ivy League school while simultaneously working as a fashion model. She's also written a mainly fictional book called "Model Student" about, well, a Wisconsin native who manages to attend an Ivy League school while simultaneously working as a fashion model. To my knowledge, the book's not nominated for a Pulitzer, but it is most definitely an engaging read, and Hazelwood was a witty, candid, and thoughtful interview. We're thinking of instituting a new policy of only interviewing former fashion models.
Richard Russo's "Empire Falls" did win a Pulitzer. He was a fantastic interview, and one of the rare people who's done a million interviews and still manages to remain introspective, or at least pretends really well. I'm sure it wasn't the first time he'd noted that "the first thing an author does when he wins a Pulitzer is get Caller ID," but it still sounded fresh. We're rerunning the interview tomorrow, but if you just can't wait, the original interview is still archived, along with its spiffy picture of Russo with me. Plus, the movie adaptation of "Empire Falls" is worth checking out, though unlike our streaming audio, it's not free.
And also in recent weeks, we interviewed Minneapolis-based musician Brianna Lane, who stresses the word "music" is at the end of her URL, so that it's not confused with a former porn site. Unfortunately, the part of the interview where we attempted to justify the music wee had on our respective iPods was lost to the cutting-room floor. But her album, "Radiator", is fantastic if you're into acoustic guitar-based stuff (actually, it's fantastic regardless of your tastes), and the interview's music clips should at least whet your appetite.
From there, we're on to other important topics, like figuring out how to use "whet" in another context.
This is especially key since our departure from our past headquarters rendered our podcasts inoperative. One of these days we'll get the 19 Minutes technical team to remove the outdated links.
In any case, to appease the screaming and teeming masses from our parallel universe, here are some of the highlights from our radio existence in the past few weeks:
Pauls Toutonghi has written an entertaining, mainly fictional account of a first generation Latvian-American growing up in 1989 Milwaukee. He was also a terrific interview, especially as he read from his book, "Red Weather", noting his interpretation of the protagonist's mother was based on his own mother's accent, which he conceded sounded a little too much like Count Chocula.
Hazel Barton is something of a rock star in her field, which of course you already know is the microbiology of caves. She's one of the cave explorers featured in the Imax film, "Journey Into Amazing Caves", and speaks articulately about why studying organisms called "extremophiles" is important. But she's equally eloquent about why caving will never be an "extreme" sport - mainly because no one can see your brightly colored spandex when it's underground and covered in mud. And she notes that scientists can also wear nice clothes above ground, too. Really. She said that.
In an effort to interview only people with "Hazel" in their names who like nice clothes, we also spoke with Robin Hazelwood, a Wisconsin native who managed to attend an Ivy League school while simultaneously working as a fashion model. She's also written a mainly fictional book called "Model Student" about, well, a Wisconsin native who manages to attend an Ivy League school while simultaneously working as a fashion model. To my knowledge, the book's not nominated for a Pulitzer, but it is most definitely an engaging read, and Hazelwood was a witty, candid, and thoughtful interview. We're thinking of instituting a new policy of only interviewing former fashion models.
Richard Russo's "Empire Falls" did win a Pulitzer. He was a fantastic interview, and one of the rare people who's done a million interviews and still manages to remain introspective, or at least pretends really well. I'm sure it wasn't the first time he'd noted that "the first thing an author does when he wins a Pulitzer is get Caller ID," but it still sounded fresh. We're rerunning the interview tomorrow, but if you just can't wait, the original interview is still archived, along with its spiffy picture of Russo with me. Plus, the movie adaptation of "Empire Falls" is worth checking out, though unlike our streaming audio, it's not free.
And also in recent weeks, we interviewed Minneapolis-based musician Brianna Lane, who stresses the word "music" is at the end of her URL, so that it's not confused with a former porn site. Unfortunately, the part of the interview where we attempted to justify the music wee had on our respective iPods was lost to the cutting-room floor. But her album, "Radiator", is fantastic if you're into acoustic guitar-based stuff (actually, it's fantastic regardless of your tastes), and the interview's music clips should at least whet your appetite.
From there, we're on to other important topics, like figuring out how to use "whet" in another context.
Monday, July 17, 2006
Looking for some surreal estate
Sunday's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran an article about a new trend in the real estate industry - wherein home-building companies, to show off their model homes, hire actors to portray a "typical" family living in those homes. The idea, presumably, is to help potential buyers better visualize what living in these homes would be like, at least if they were better-looking and had nicer taste.
It kind of surprised me to read this story, because it was a tactic that seemed decidedly unWisconsin-like, unless things have changed radically in the four months since I moved here. But a closer inspection revealed it was a reprint of a New York Times article, datelined Santa Clarita, California. This was less surprising, considering current trends in the California real estate industry include charging $950,000 for a refrigerator carton under the 405 Freeway, plus forcing prospective buyers to write a love sonnet to the current owners, plus free pedicures for life, plus the sellers get to jump up and down yelling, "Big money!", as though they're on "Wheel of Fortune". (My wife and I considered all these options when we were considering a job in California last year, and decided moving to Jupiter was a more cost-effective option, especially considering I ended up not getting the job.)
Of course, hiring actors to hang out in Wisconsin houses might be a shrewd move, when you consider some of the houses we looked at in the Milwaukee area. For example, there was the house that was still being used as a "day care center", which meant as we were looking in the linen closet, the woman who owned the house was hanging out on the couch, smoking a cigarette and watching soap operas while the two kids in her charge slept on the couch next to her.
Most of the houses we looked at were empty, though, which meant that there would have been plenty of room for actors to ply their trades. And so in case we decide to look at houses again in the near future, allow me to help the real estate actors of the world find their motivation, because acting like the 19 Minutes household would require some specialized acting talents.
For starters, the husband and wife would need to spend much of their time debating whether it would be worse to have lace curtains in their bedroom, or no curtains at all. The husband would spend the rest of his time on the front steps, playing an incomprehensible game with his two-year-old daughter. The game basically involves taking small rocks and placing them in a plastic cup - but God forbid he tries to put the wrong rock in the plastic cup, because then all the rocks are dumped back out on the ground and the game starts over. The wife would also be in the yard, pulling weeds, then second-guessing whether they were weeds or plants that would have yielded beautiful flowers, had they only stayed in the ground for another week.
For her part, the two-year-old would divide the rest of her time between discovering the miracle of sock fuzz between her toes, and asking her dad to tell the "t-shirt story", which was the exciting story he made up on the spur of the moment about his t-shirt ("Once there was a mommy and a daddy. And one day they went to a store called 'Sam's Club' in a place called Flagstaff, Arizona...").
But there's probably a good chance that whenever we go house hunting again, the trend of hiring actors will likely have passed. And that's why I'm polishing up my sonnet writing, just in case.
It kind of surprised me to read this story, because it was a tactic that seemed decidedly unWisconsin-like, unless things have changed radically in the four months since I moved here. But a closer inspection revealed it was a reprint of a New York Times article, datelined Santa Clarita, California. This was less surprising, considering current trends in the California real estate industry include charging $950,000 for a refrigerator carton under the 405 Freeway, plus forcing prospective buyers to write a love sonnet to the current owners, plus free pedicures for life, plus the sellers get to jump up and down yelling, "Big money!", as though they're on "Wheel of Fortune". (My wife and I considered all these options when we were considering a job in California last year, and decided moving to Jupiter was a more cost-effective option, especially considering I ended up not getting the job.)
Of course, hiring actors to hang out in Wisconsin houses might be a shrewd move, when you consider some of the houses we looked at in the Milwaukee area. For example, there was the house that was still being used as a "day care center", which meant as we were looking in the linen closet, the woman who owned the house was hanging out on the couch, smoking a cigarette and watching soap operas while the two kids in her charge slept on the couch next to her.
Most of the houses we looked at were empty, though, which meant that there would have been plenty of room for actors to ply their trades. And so in case we decide to look at houses again in the near future, allow me to help the real estate actors of the world find their motivation, because acting like the 19 Minutes household would require some specialized acting talents.
For starters, the husband and wife would need to spend much of their time debating whether it would be worse to have lace curtains in their bedroom, or no curtains at all. The husband would spend the rest of his time on the front steps, playing an incomprehensible game with his two-year-old daughter. The game basically involves taking small rocks and placing them in a plastic cup - but God forbid he tries to put the wrong rock in the plastic cup, because then all the rocks are dumped back out on the ground and the game starts over. The wife would also be in the yard, pulling weeds, then second-guessing whether they were weeds or plants that would have yielded beautiful flowers, had they only stayed in the ground for another week.
For her part, the two-year-old would divide the rest of her time between discovering the miracle of sock fuzz between her toes, and asking her dad to tell the "t-shirt story", which was the exciting story he made up on the spur of the moment about his t-shirt ("Once there was a mommy and a daddy. And one day they went to a store called 'Sam's Club' in a place called Flagstaff, Arizona...").
But there's probably a good chance that whenever we go house hunting again, the trend of hiring actors will likely have passed. And that's why I'm polishing up my sonnet writing, just in case.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Not soaring gently into that dark night
And speaking of the Copper Peak International Ski Flying Facility, we've recently learned that the eagles and raptors are apparently the only ones enjoying the hill's updrafts, since skiers haven't launched themselves off the jump since 1994.
There's an interesting website that decries that fact, noting that Copper Peak should be the US ski jumping equivalent of Yankee Stadium, Lambeau Field, Churchill Downs, or the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Meanwhile, the organization that maintains Copper Peak as an observation tower in the summer has its own website, with an important message from its president.
If nothing else, at least it's not the ski jumping equivalent of Tiger Stadium.
There's an interesting website that decries that fact, noting that Copper Peak should be the US ski jumping equivalent of Yankee Stadium, Lambeau Field, Churchill Downs, or the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Meanwhile, the organization that maintains Copper Peak as an observation tower in the summer has its own website, with an important message from its president.
If nothing else, at least it's not the ski jumping equivalent of Tiger Stadium.
Soaring gently into the collection
I have some strange hobbies. Most of them don’t take up much time. My business card collection, for example, continues to exist much as it did when I was 15, only now it's in the basement of my own home, rather than taking up bookshelf space in my highschool-era bedroom between the Bloom County books and Spenser novels. (As an actual working person, I tend to accumulate more business cards than I did at age 15, but I'm not considering the cards strewn around my desk as part of my collection yet.)
But the more relevant hobby (to this column, anyway - it's not really relevant in any other way, shape or form) reared its head over the weekend on a trip to the western edge of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
I like picking up the tourist guides printed by local chambers of commerce. Partly, this is to find interesting stuff to do when you're in a place like Ironwood, Michigan. But more frequently, they provide a great opportunity to peruse some of the most tortured syntax in the history of the English language. Today's entry comes courtesy of the Adventure Guide published by the aforementioned town in Michigan:
But the more relevant hobby (to this column, anyway - it's not really relevant in any other way, shape or form) reared its head over the weekend on a trip to the western edge of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
I like picking up the tourist guides printed by local chambers of commerce. Partly, this is to find interesting stuff to do when you're in a place like Ironwood, Michigan. But more frequently, they provide a great opportunity to peruse some of the most tortured syntax in the history of the English language. Today's entry comes courtesy of the Adventure Guide published by the aforementioned town in Michigan:
On any given day, one may see a pair of Eagles or other Raptors soaring above the hillside of Copper Peak International Ski Flying Hill. Regardless of the direction of the wind, there is always a gentle updraft on the 600 foot landing slope of the only ski flying facility in the Western Hemisphere which enables these birds of prey to capture air under their wings and soar gently above the hillside.(There are countless other ski flying facilities in the Western Hemisphere, of course, which allow the birds to soar aggressively above their respective hillsides.)
Thursday, July 06, 2006
And now for something vaguely different
I was never really part of the drug scene at any of the colleges I attended. This was largely because I never actually used any drugs. But I had friends in college that experimented with a variety of controlled substances (including one who used his occasional marijuana use as an excuse to his parents for his poor grades, despite the fact that the real reason was that he was spending too much time with his girlfriend. But I digress.), and they often liked to have me around as they were going through whatever they were going through. That's because I had, and continue to have bizarre thoughts like these:
It's time for Chinese restaurants to freshen up their placemats with some new zodiacal years. I'm tired of having been born in the "Year of the Rooster", though it was nice of them to swap out the word "cock" and thus eliminate 90 percent of the fun junior high school students have at Chinese restaurants. But if they can make that change, there's no reason they couldn't do something more radical. And that's why I'm proposing the following new Chinese years over the next decade:
2006: Year of the Anvil.
2007: Year of Top Soil.
2008: Year that Won't Stick to Most Dental Work
2009: Year of the Bug that's Flying Around in My Floor Lamp
2010: Year of Excedrin
2011: Year of Mucilage
2012: Year of Hogan's Heroes reruns
2013: Year of the Al Stewart hit, Year of the Cat
2014: Year of farfel
2015: Year of Pueblo, Colorado
We'll wait a little while before we propose the drawings that'll appear on the placemats.
Bizarre Thought #2: Imagine you're from a country with no tradition of cable TV. Say, Burkina Faso. Now, pretend you've traveled to the United States and are looking for educational programming on television. And now, imagine that you get confused and believe QVC is actually a university, and not a shopping channel. Think of all the wackiness that ensues when you write to pitchman Bob Bowersox and suggest he ask for a sabbatical.
(And just a reminder that rum and Cokes were the strongest thing to enter my system in college...)
and finally, Bizarre Thought #3: Wouldn't it be just incredible if Kenneth Lay died mysteriously before he could be sentenced for his role in the Enron debacle? I think that would be terrific, because it would give people something to talk about with the Vincent Foster conspiracy buffs.
But that one's way too far-fetched.
It's time for Chinese restaurants to freshen up their placemats with some new zodiacal years. I'm tired of having been born in the "Year of the Rooster", though it was nice of them to swap out the word "cock" and thus eliminate 90 percent of the fun junior high school students have at Chinese restaurants. But if they can make that change, there's no reason they couldn't do something more radical. And that's why I'm proposing the following new Chinese years over the next decade:
2006: Year of the Anvil.
2007: Year of Top Soil.
2008: Year that Won't Stick to Most Dental Work
2009: Year of the Bug that's Flying Around in My Floor Lamp
2010: Year of Excedrin
2011: Year of Mucilage
2012: Year of Hogan's Heroes reruns
2013: Year of the Al Stewart hit, Year of the Cat
2014: Year of farfel
2015: Year of Pueblo, Colorado
We'll wait a little while before we propose the drawings that'll appear on the placemats.
Bizarre Thought #2: Imagine you're from a country with no tradition of cable TV. Say, Burkina Faso. Now, pretend you've traveled to the United States and are looking for educational programming on television. And now, imagine that you get confused and believe QVC is actually a university, and not a shopping channel. Think of all the wackiness that ensues when you write to pitchman Bob Bowersox and suggest he ask for a sabbatical.
(And just a reminder that rum and Cokes were the strongest thing to enter my system in college...)
and finally, Bizarre Thought #3: Wouldn't it be just incredible if Kenneth Lay died mysteriously before he could be sentenced for his role in the Enron debacle? I think that would be terrific, because it would give people something to talk about with the Vincent Foster conspiracy buffs.
But that one's way too far-fetched.
Sunday, July 02, 2006
What I did on my wife's summer vacation
Here in the 19 Minutes Home Office, we're around 32 hours into our latest Solo Dad experiment, while my wife is reuning with some college friends halfway across the great state of Wisconsin (well, 70 miles or so). It's not the first time we've solo'ed (note the entertaining use of the first person plural connected to the word "solo") for multiple days, but it is the first time in a while we've gotten around to blogging about it. So let's dive right and recap the weekend, and while we're at it, take a couple of gratuitous swipes at the military:
Saturday, 1:45 p.m., Madison, Wisconsin: The transfer of power officially takes place in a parking garage along State Street. There's no lowering of a flag, just my wife putting Sylvi in her car seat and kissing her on the forehead, as I drive back to Milwaukee.
Saturday, 1:50 p.m.: Sylvi may have fallen asleep, but I'm not sure, since she's wearing sunglasses and still clutching her sippy cup.
Saturday, 2:00 p.m.: I'm pretty sure she's fallen asleep, since her head is now slumped to the side and she's dropped her sippy cup. The downside to her napping on the ride home is it eliminates the possibility of my own nap later. The upsides to this are a) at least she's napping, and b) I can listen to whatever CD I want on the hour-and-a-half drive. So why am I still listening to "The Backyardigans"? Okay, just one more repeat of "A Pirate Says Arrr", and I'll switch.
Saturday, 3:25 p.m.: We're approaching Wauwatosa, and our exit. Sylvi's still asleep. There's no way I'll be able to accomplish the Car-to-Crib Sleeping Child Transfer. I may have solo'ed many a time before, but I must have been absent on that day of Parenting College. So we'll drive towards Lake Michigan - if Sylvi wakes up, she can check out the big bridges, giving the trip the veneer of a Cultural Experience.
Saturday, 3:28 p.m.: Sylvi, naturally, wakes up half a mile past our exit. She spots an airplane out the window, which gives me a great idea: "Hey, Sylvi - do you want to go watch airplanes at the airport?" She does, and we're rewarded with an observation parking lot adjacent to the runway, and which I never knew existed. Alas, the wind is blowing around 40 mph, and the takeoffs and landings are few and far between. There's also a sign advising us we can hear the planes by tuning into 88.5 fm. I do this, and tell Sylvi, and then realize that "hearing planes" for her involves a noise like "Vrrroooom!", and not the sound of people saying words like "niner". After 15 minutes of this, I decide to get the car washed.
Saturday, 4:00 p.m.: Sylvi deals with the automatic car wash pretty well, considering the enormous floppy brushes resemble Muppets from Hell (or at least Elmo after a tragic Cuisinart accident). She's fine right up until the rinse cycle, which makes sense, considering she's fine with baths right up until it's time to rinse.
Saturday, 6:00 p.m.: After a couple of Tivo'ed Mr. Rogers episodes, it's time for dinner. Just before dinner, I make the mistake of calling the Kopp's Frozen Custard flavor line, and find out the Flavor of the Day is "Sprecher Root Beer Float". This is a mistake because I'm going to be impatient for Sylvi to finish eating her dinner, whatever it turns out to be.
Saturday, 7:30 p.m.: Sylvi finishes eating her nine bites of macaroni and cheese and half a bowl of raisins. I had planned to make myself dinner after she finished eating, but at this point, I settle for the rest of her macaroni, and we set out for Kopp's.
Saturday, 7:31 p.m.: I lift her down the stairs to go out to the car and puzzle over why her pants feel wet. Perhaps it has to do with the pungent odor emanating from her posterior. Hmmm.
Saturday, 7:32 p.m.: We're back to the drawing boa- er, changing table, as we discover the World's Largest Poop has overwhelmed her Pampers and forced a last-second pants change. Sylvi requests a skort, but settles for shorts when Dad's not absolutely sure whether her skort matches her shirt, and he's pretty sure Mom has spies throughout the Milwaukee area who will rat him out if he takes his daughter out in a mismatched outfit.
Saturday, 7:40 p.m.: We're out the door. On the way, instead of asking where Mom is, she inexplicably calls for Kristi, one of my wife's college friends, whom Sylvi has basically just met today.
Saturday, 8:00 p.m.: Against my better judgement, I order two scoops of Sprecher Root Beer Float in a dish. I do this because I love both root beer floats in general and Sprecher Root Beer in particular. As it turns out, as a frozen custard flavor, Sprecher Root Beer Float is a little disappointing. Sylvi and I finish it anyway, which has me a little concerned about her readiness for bed when we get home.
Saturday, 9:15 p.m.: Apparently the custard effects are offset by her shorter-than-usual nap, and she falls asleep without even so much as one verse of "Zamboni", which, honest to God, is what she wants to hear every night.
Sunday, 7:45 a.m.: After a pretty lame edition of the Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle on NPR, I get out of bed, which isn't easy, because I celebrated a successful day of Solo Dad by watching an Atlanta Braves-Baltimore Orioles game that I recorded for no good reason, which got me into bed around 1:00 am. Sylvi probably won't wake up for at least another hour, so that gives me a little time to read the Sunday paper and take a shower without ducking my head out from behind the curtain every 15 seconds.
Sunday, 8:45 a.m.: Bingo. Sylvi's up. "All done sleeping," she announces, repeatedly, until I can make it into her room, roughly 20 seconds later.
Sunday, 9:30 a.m.: Super Solo Dad has kicked into action. We've gotten her dressed, fed her raisin bran (with a few spoonfuls of Dad's Apple Jacks, just to allowe her to appreciate the finer things in life), and we're starting to pack up for the zoo.
Sunday, 9:40 a.m.: We're in a holding pattern as I stop and try to figure out whether the name "Apple Jacks" is, in some way, clever. It seems like it ought to be a play on words of some kind. I try reversing some letters. "Japple Acks". "Ajjle Packs". I can't figure it out. This is what Will Shortz should have quizzed the puzzle contestant about this morning.
Sunday, 10:20 a.m.: Amazingly, we're closing in on the zoo. This is going to be great. It's Summerfest weekend in Milwaukee, and besides, it's only 10:20 a.m. Who the hell is going to be at the zoo this early?
Sunday, 10:22 a.m.: There's a huge line of cars waiting to get into the zoo. People wearing blue shirts with American flags and the words "Operation Freedom" are directing traffic into the parking lot. Gee, there sure are a lot of cars with USMC stickers on them. And mine with an NPR sticker. Finally, I reach the entrance booth. A teen, who looks as puzzled as I do, reports, "It's Eye-rack-ee War day at the zoo. They're expecting 17,000 people today." Great. Maybe we'll just check out the hippos and go home.
Sunday, 11:00 a.m.: There are, indeed, a lot of people at the zoo, celebrating our dubious success in Iraq by checking out the turkey vultures. And really, what are we fighting for over there, anyway, if not to preserve some people's inalienable right to smoke just 25 feet from the sign noting the "Northwestern Mutual Family Farm is a smoke-free environment"? [Gratuitous Swipe at the Military #1 follows] Anyway, our dubious success in Iraq probably shouldn't be a major surprise, considering the difficulties some of the people were having deciphering the zoo map today. On the other hand, it was a largely polite crowd, and I didn't worry about terrorists taking over the Seal and Sea Lion show.
Sunday, 1:00 p.m.: Sylvi's a huge fan of the Seal show, actually. I was sort of hedging on whether to try to wrangle her in line for 15 minutes without some parental backup. But as she usually does, Sylvi surprised me, and spent the 15 minutes entertaining everyone around by doing an interpretive dance to the Cher music blasting from inside the seal arena. (Or was that the Seal music blasting from the Cher arena?) This worked especially well, because the two-year old boy next to us in line was busy having a meltdown, which further reinforced Sylvi's image as Perfect Girl. We are rewarded with front-row seats at the Oceans of Fun show, at which we're informed that all the exhibits at the zoo attempt to accurately portray the animals' natural environment, after which we're reminded that the Oceans of Fun show is sponsored by Miller Beer, which explains the big sign but leads me to wonder what the natural environment of an Atlantic Harbor Seal actually looks like.
Sunday, 2:00 p.m.: After all the running around at the Zoo, we're primed for a nice, long nap this afternoon, which will hopefully accommodate a nap for me, too. Sylvi starts drifting off to sleep five blocks from our house, but I just manage to keep her awake...
Sunday, 4:00 p.m.: ...for the next hour and 40 minutes. Actually, I change her diaper and get her into bed with no problem. She then proceeds to have an animated conversation with whatever stuffed animals will listen. By 4:00, she's still chatting loudly, and punctuating it with loud kicks on the side of the crib. Finally, she starts calling out, "Mommy! Mommy!" I think about boycotting her until she remembers which parent has been on duty for the past 28 hours, but relent.
Sunday, 4:45 p.m. We go out to get dinner. Boston Market. I'm pretty sure we went shopping on Friday so that I could feed myself and Sylvi this weekend, but to this point, I've come up with macaroni and cheese, raisin bran, applesauce (at the zoo), and dinner out. On the other hand, she blasts through her mashed potatoes, some (yes!) more macaroni and cheese, some of my roasted chicken, and a large piece of cornbread. She falls asleep on the ride home.
Sunday, 5:30 p.m.: But as tempting as it is, there's no way I'm letting her nap at 5:15 p.m., so I wake her up, and get out the miniature soccer goal she has, along with two soccer balls. She proceeds to demonstrate that she could have beaten Brazil yesterday, as she somehow manages to dribble one ball with each foot and kicks them both into the goal. Satisfied that her full-ride scholarship to UNC is secure, she goes off to collect little rocks in a plastic cup, which she will then stir with a stick and announce "Sylvi is making smoothies." (Everything she says is in present progressive tense these days, which gives the impression of having a conversation with a Russian just learning to speak English: "Daddy is having cold coffee now...", or "Sylvi is having big poop.")
Sunday, 8:00 p.m.: We've dragged out the evening to the point I'm pretty sure she'll be off to dreamland soon. We get her changed into pajamas and she requests a longish book, "The Happy Lion", which she's figured out I'm a sucker for reading. I like the book because a) there are lots of French names (Monsieur Dupont, Madame Pinson, etc.) and I enjoy putting into use the accent I picked up in six years' worth of French classes, without having actually learned any French; b) Sylvi has already figured out how to say bonjour, which is worth the price of admission; [Gratuitous Swipe at the (French) Military #2 follows] and c) there's a great scene where the Happy Lion goes wandering down the street, cheerfully saying "Bonjour" to everyone, and the French military band immediately beats a retreat to the alleyways and sidewalk cafes. I read "The Happy Lion", sing one rendition of "Zamboni", and she's asleep.
Sunday, 10:27 p.m.: She's still asleep, despite the fact that our various Wauwatosa neighbors have decided this is a good time to shoot off fireworks, despite the fact that IT'S JULY 2nd, YOU IDIOTS! WHY CAN'T YOU GET YOUR DAMN FIREWORKS OCCASIONS RIGHT?
Of course, the better question is, why haven't I gone to sleep?
Saturday, 1:45 p.m., Madison, Wisconsin: The transfer of power officially takes place in a parking garage along State Street. There's no lowering of a flag, just my wife putting Sylvi in her car seat and kissing her on the forehead, as I drive back to Milwaukee.
Saturday, 1:50 p.m.: Sylvi may have fallen asleep, but I'm not sure, since she's wearing sunglasses and still clutching her sippy cup.
Saturday, 2:00 p.m.: I'm pretty sure she's fallen asleep, since her head is now slumped to the side and she's dropped her sippy cup. The downside to her napping on the ride home is it eliminates the possibility of my own nap later. The upsides to this are a) at least she's napping, and b) I can listen to whatever CD I want on the hour-and-a-half drive. So why am I still listening to "The Backyardigans"? Okay, just one more repeat of "A Pirate Says Arrr", and I'll switch.
Saturday, 3:25 p.m.: We're approaching Wauwatosa, and our exit. Sylvi's still asleep. There's no way I'll be able to accomplish the Car-to-Crib Sleeping Child Transfer. I may have solo'ed many a time before, but I must have been absent on that day of Parenting College. So we'll drive towards Lake Michigan - if Sylvi wakes up, she can check out the big bridges, giving the trip the veneer of a Cultural Experience.
Saturday, 3:28 p.m.: Sylvi, naturally, wakes up half a mile past our exit. She spots an airplane out the window, which gives me a great idea: "Hey, Sylvi - do you want to go watch airplanes at the airport?" She does, and we're rewarded with an observation parking lot adjacent to the runway, and which I never knew existed. Alas, the wind is blowing around 40 mph, and the takeoffs and landings are few and far between. There's also a sign advising us we can hear the planes by tuning into 88.5 fm. I do this, and tell Sylvi, and then realize that "hearing planes" for her involves a noise like "Vrrroooom!", and not the sound of people saying words like "niner". After 15 minutes of this, I decide to get the car washed.
Saturday, 4:00 p.m.: Sylvi deals with the automatic car wash pretty well, considering the enormous floppy brushes resemble Muppets from Hell (or at least Elmo after a tragic Cuisinart accident). She's fine right up until the rinse cycle, which makes sense, considering she's fine with baths right up until it's time to rinse.
Saturday, 6:00 p.m.: After a couple of Tivo'ed Mr. Rogers episodes, it's time for dinner. Just before dinner, I make the mistake of calling the Kopp's Frozen Custard flavor line, and find out the Flavor of the Day is "Sprecher Root Beer Float". This is a mistake because I'm going to be impatient for Sylvi to finish eating her dinner, whatever it turns out to be.
Saturday, 7:30 p.m.: Sylvi finishes eating her nine bites of macaroni and cheese and half a bowl of raisins. I had planned to make myself dinner after she finished eating, but at this point, I settle for the rest of her macaroni, and we set out for Kopp's.
Saturday, 7:31 p.m.: I lift her down the stairs to go out to the car and puzzle over why her pants feel wet. Perhaps it has to do with the pungent odor emanating from her posterior. Hmmm.
Saturday, 7:32 p.m.: We're back to the drawing boa- er, changing table, as we discover the World's Largest Poop has overwhelmed her Pampers and forced a last-second pants change. Sylvi requests a skort, but settles for shorts when Dad's not absolutely sure whether her skort matches her shirt, and he's pretty sure Mom has spies throughout the Milwaukee area who will rat him out if he takes his daughter out in a mismatched outfit.
Saturday, 7:40 p.m.: We're out the door. On the way, instead of asking where Mom is, she inexplicably calls for Kristi, one of my wife's college friends, whom Sylvi has basically just met today.
Saturday, 8:00 p.m.: Against my better judgement, I order two scoops of Sprecher Root Beer Float in a dish. I do this because I love both root beer floats in general and Sprecher Root Beer in particular. As it turns out, as a frozen custard flavor, Sprecher Root Beer Float is a little disappointing. Sylvi and I finish it anyway, which has me a little concerned about her readiness for bed when we get home.
Saturday, 9:15 p.m.: Apparently the custard effects are offset by her shorter-than-usual nap, and she falls asleep without even so much as one verse of "Zamboni", which, honest to God, is what she wants to hear every night.
Sunday, 7:45 a.m.: After a pretty lame edition of the Weekend Edition Sunday puzzle on NPR, I get out of bed, which isn't easy, because I celebrated a successful day of Solo Dad by watching an Atlanta Braves-Baltimore Orioles game that I recorded for no good reason, which got me into bed around 1:00 am. Sylvi probably won't wake up for at least another hour, so that gives me a little time to read the Sunday paper and take a shower without ducking my head out from behind the curtain every 15 seconds.
Sunday, 8:45 a.m.: Bingo. Sylvi's up. "All done sleeping," she announces, repeatedly, until I can make it into her room, roughly 20 seconds later.
Sunday, 9:30 a.m.: Super Solo Dad has kicked into action. We've gotten her dressed, fed her raisin bran (with a few spoonfuls of Dad's Apple Jacks, just to allowe her to appreciate the finer things in life), and we're starting to pack up for the zoo.
Sunday, 9:40 a.m.: We're in a holding pattern as I stop and try to figure out whether the name "Apple Jacks" is, in some way, clever. It seems like it ought to be a play on words of some kind. I try reversing some letters. "Japple Acks". "Ajjle Packs". I can't figure it out. This is what Will Shortz should have quizzed the puzzle contestant about this morning.
Sunday, 10:20 a.m.: Amazingly, we're closing in on the zoo. This is going to be great. It's Summerfest weekend in Milwaukee, and besides, it's only 10:20 a.m. Who the hell is going to be at the zoo this early?
Sunday, 10:22 a.m.: There's a huge line of cars waiting to get into the zoo. People wearing blue shirts with American flags and the words "Operation Freedom" are directing traffic into the parking lot. Gee, there sure are a lot of cars with USMC stickers on them. And mine with an NPR sticker. Finally, I reach the entrance booth. A teen, who looks as puzzled as I do, reports, "It's Eye-rack-ee War day at the zoo. They're expecting 17,000 people today." Great. Maybe we'll just check out the hippos and go home.
Sunday, 11:00 a.m.: There are, indeed, a lot of people at the zoo, celebrating our dubious success in Iraq by checking out the turkey vultures. And really, what are we fighting for over there, anyway, if not to preserve some people's inalienable right to smoke just 25 feet from the sign noting the "Northwestern Mutual Family Farm is a smoke-free environment"? [Gratuitous Swipe at the Military #1 follows] Anyway, our dubious success in Iraq probably shouldn't be a major surprise, considering the difficulties some of the people were having deciphering the zoo map today. On the other hand, it was a largely polite crowd, and I didn't worry about terrorists taking over the Seal and Sea Lion show.
Sunday, 1:00 p.m.: Sylvi's a huge fan of the Seal show, actually. I was sort of hedging on whether to try to wrangle her in line for 15 minutes without some parental backup. But as she usually does, Sylvi surprised me, and spent the 15 minutes entertaining everyone around by doing an interpretive dance to the Cher music blasting from inside the seal arena. (Or was that the Seal music blasting from the Cher arena?) This worked especially well, because the two-year old boy next to us in line was busy having a meltdown, which further reinforced Sylvi's image as Perfect Girl. We are rewarded with front-row seats at the Oceans of Fun show, at which we're informed that all the exhibits at the zoo attempt to accurately portray the animals' natural environment, after which we're reminded that the Oceans of Fun show is sponsored by Miller Beer, which explains the big sign but leads me to wonder what the natural environment of an Atlantic Harbor Seal actually looks like.
Sunday, 2:00 p.m.: After all the running around at the Zoo, we're primed for a nice, long nap this afternoon, which will hopefully accommodate a nap for me, too. Sylvi starts drifting off to sleep five blocks from our house, but I just manage to keep her awake...
Sunday, 4:00 p.m.: ...for the next hour and 40 minutes. Actually, I change her diaper and get her into bed with no problem. She then proceeds to have an animated conversation with whatever stuffed animals will listen. By 4:00, she's still chatting loudly, and punctuating it with loud kicks on the side of the crib. Finally, she starts calling out, "Mommy! Mommy!" I think about boycotting her until she remembers which parent has been on duty for the past 28 hours, but relent.
Sunday, 4:45 p.m. We go out to get dinner. Boston Market. I'm pretty sure we went shopping on Friday so that I could feed myself and Sylvi this weekend, but to this point, I've come up with macaroni and cheese, raisin bran, applesauce (at the zoo), and dinner out. On the other hand, she blasts through her mashed potatoes, some (yes!) more macaroni and cheese, some of my roasted chicken, and a large piece of cornbread. She falls asleep on the ride home.
Sunday, 5:30 p.m.: But as tempting as it is, there's no way I'm letting her nap at 5:15 p.m., so I wake her up, and get out the miniature soccer goal she has, along with two soccer balls. She proceeds to demonstrate that she could have beaten Brazil yesterday, as she somehow manages to dribble one ball with each foot and kicks them both into the goal. Satisfied that her full-ride scholarship to UNC is secure, she goes off to collect little rocks in a plastic cup, which she will then stir with a stick and announce "Sylvi is making smoothies." (Everything she says is in present progressive tense these days, which gives the impression of having a conversation with a Russian just learning to speak English: "Daddy is having cold coffee now...", or "Sylvi is having big poop.")
Sunday, 8:00 p.m.: We've dragged out the evening to the point I'm pretty sure she'll be off to dreamland soon. We get her changed into pajamas and she requests a longish book, "The Happy Lion", which she's figured out I'm a sucker for reading. I like the book because a) there are lots of French names (Monsieur Dupont, Madame Pinson, etc.) and I enjoy putting into use the accent I picked up in six years' worth of French classes, without having actually learned any French; b) Sylvi has already figured out how to say bonjour, which is worth the price of admission; [Gratuitous Swipe at the (French) Military #2 follows] and c) there's a great scene where the Happy Lion goes wandering down the street, cheerfully saying "Bonjour" to everyone, and the French military band immediately beats a retreat to the alleyways and sidewalk cafes. I read "The Happy Lion", sing one rendition of "Zamboni", and she's asleep.
Sunday, 10:27 p.m.: She's still asleep, despite the fact that our various Wauwatosa neighbors have decided this is a good time to shoot off fireworks, despite the fact that IT'S JULY 2nd, YOU IDIOTS! WHY CAN'T YOU GET YOUR DAMN FIREWORKS OCCASIONS RIGHT?
Of course, the better question is, why haven't I gone to sleep?
Friday, June 30, 2006
Hey Tux Boy, you breathin' my air?
So it dawns on me that we've had two tuxedo references in this space in the last week. And now it's three, which actually equals the number of times I've actually worn the tuxedo I own.
I bought a tuxedo for my wedding, using the Guy Logic that says, "well hey, if the bride spends $47,000 on a dress she's only going to wear once, why shouldn't I spend a few hundred dollars on a piece of formal attire I could wear literally hundreds of times?"
I used this piece of logic even though the only previous occasions that had called on my to wear a tuxedo were a) the aforementioned Winneshiek (Iowa) County Fair Queen Pageant; b) the aforementioned (in the comments section of the same posting) Decorah (Iowa) Bridal Show; and c) my brother's wedding (not in Iowa).
If nothing else, the tuxedos employed for occasions a) and c) were at least timeless styles - no powder blue, no ruffles, no loud vest. Ironically, the Decorah Bridal Show (which was employing me as a "celebrity" escort for the women modeling the wedding gowns) put me in the least attractive of any of them - a black tuxedo with a long, white collar, giving off the effect the I had a wet towel around my neck - as though I'd just changed into my tuxedo after playing racquetball.
By the time my wedding rolled around, I was living in Flagstaff, which at the time had two formalwear options - one was a formalwear/lingerie boutique which employed a little too much red velvet in the decor for me to be comfortable with. The other was normal enough store, but after the saleswoman critized my taste enough ("Oh, cummerbunds are so 1990... What you want is a nice, flashy vest. And maybe a white collar...") that I gave up and went to San Diego to buy a tuxedo. (Hey, what's an eight-hour drive, when you consider I'll get to wear it literally thousands of times?)
So of course I wore it to my wedding. And, a year later, to a charity fundraising ball, as moral support for another guy who wanted to wear the tuxedo he had bought for his wedding. And I wore it as the Master of Ceremonies at a community orchestra concert last winter in Flagstaff, which gave me the opportunity to tell people about Handel, while at the same time trying to figure out if my cufflinks had fallen off.
I'm sure I'll get to wear it again before too long. I considered putting "owns a tuxedo" on my résumé back in my job-hunting period, but decided that would only help if I were applying for a position has a billboard model for Indian casinos, or a job drawing lottery numbers on TV.
So I'll keep looking for opportunities. Or co-workers in need of a formal racquetball game now and then.
I bought a tuxedo for my wedding, using the Guy Logic that says, "well hey, if the bride spends $47,000 on a dress she's only going to wear once, why shouldn't I spend a few hundred dollars on a piece of formal attire I could wear literally hundreds of times?"
I used this piece of logic even though the only previous occasions that had called on my to wear a tuxedo were a) the aforementioned Winneshiek (Iowa) County Fair Queen Pageant; b) the aforementioned (in the comments section of the same posting) Decorah (Iowa) Bridal Show; and c) my brother's wedding (not in Iowa).
If nothing else, the tuxedos employed for occasions a) and c) were at least timeless styles - no powder blue, no ruffles, no loud vest. Ironically, the Decorah Bridal Show (which was employing me as a "celebrity" escort for the women modeling the wedding gowns) put me in the least attractive of any of them - a black tuxedo with a long, white collar, giving off the effect the I had a wet towel around my neck - as though I'd just changed into my tuxedo after playing racquetball.
By the time my wedding rolled around, I was living in Flagstaff, which at the time had two formalwear options - one was a formalwear/lingerie boutique which employed a little too much red velvet in the decor for me to be comfortable with. The other was normal enough store, but after the saleswoman critized my taste enough ("Oh, cummerbunds are so 1990... What you want is a nice, flashy vest. And maybe a white collar...") that I gave up and went to San Diego to buy a tuxedo. (Hey, what's an eight-hour drive, when you consider I'll get to wear it literally thousands of times?)
So of course I wore it to my wedding. And, a year later, to a charity fundraising ball, as moral support for another guy who wanted to wear the tuxedo he had bought for his wedding. And I wore it as the Master of Ceremonies at a community orchestra concert last winter in Flagstaff, which gave me the opportunity to tell people about Handel, while at the same time trying to figure out if my cufflinks had fallen off.
I'm sure I'll get to wear it again before too long. I considered putting "owns a tuxedo" on my résumé back in my job-hunting period, but decided that would only help if I were applying for a position has a billboard model for Indian casinos, or a job drawing lottery numbers on TV.
So I'll keep looking for opportunities. Or co-workers in need of a formal racquetball game now and then.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Fresh hot updates galore
Things have been a little slow, posting-wise, around 19 Minutes World Media Headquarters in the last couple of weeks. Fortunately, our legions of fans have their thick binders full of back issues to dust off and go through. But as we looked though those back issues ourselves, we realized there are some updates to bring you.
For starters, there's a heartwarming coda to our prom story from this spring, which found its way into the "comments" section. Unfortunately, I bought my tuxedo roughly 13 years too late.
But more importantly, faithful readers of this column are no doubt wondering which Milwaukee area supermarket the 19 Minutes Purchasing Department chose to buy its Froot Loops.
Tragically, the home office is not located near any one of the Piggly Wigglys (Wigglies?) in the great Milwaukee area, so we have not been able to investigate their selection, or why the hell they would choose to name a supermarket "Piggly Wiggly".
Fortunately, there's a ready assortment of other shopping options within an easy drive. Here are the contenders:
There's Sentry Foods, which is another seemingly random name for a grocery store. But it's not just any Sentry Foods... it's something called "Metcalfe's Sentry", which I would assume (had I ever been to another one) has all the attraction of a regular Sentry, plus a spiffy Prepared Foods section (lest we go without California Rolls in Wauwatosa), a hefty-sized bakery, and a full liquor section (which isn't really that big a deal, given that we're talking about Wisconsin).
Nearby is something called Pick-n-Save, which combines all the appeal of a warehouse-style grocery store with the ambiance of a construction site. In all fairness, it actually is a construction site at the moment, as a former Walgreen's next door is ripped out and the grocery store expanded. People in the Sentry seem, on the whole, happier than people in the Pick-n-Save, but I've never stopped to ask them why.
People in both stores seem happier than the shoppers at Outpost Foods, a handsomely designed natural foods store across the street from the Pick-n-Save. This probably doesn't have anything to do with the nature of Outpost itself; rather, it has to do with the people who shop at such stores, who can't quite hide the fact that wheatgrass juice doesn't taste nearly as good as Dr Pepper. On the other hand, it is refreshing to be in Wisconsin, a state where one can get both organic bananas and cheese curds in the same store.
On the other side of town, we find Sendik's Market, which you know will be more expensive than the other stores the moment you walk in and see they're selling Sendik's logowear. (I may be wrong, but I don't remember seeing logowear for sale at the Secret Safeway in Tenleytown.) The stuff is good and occasionally you run into something like two dozen eggs for 99 cents, but in the 19 Minutes Staff's estimation, there's a limited need to pay $4.00 for Chips Ahoy (for instance, you're in Bulgaria). On the upside, Sendik's has, hands-down, the nicest plastic grocery bags ever made. And their logo is pretty spiffy.
Of course, the Wauwatosa Sendik's is apparently not related to something called the Elmbrook Sendik's , which has prices more in line with the Sentry and the Pick-n-Save, and whose plastic bags are swell, but not in the same league as the Wauwatosa Sendik's. Plus, no logowear. But the best selection of frozen pizza of any of the Tosa stores. Despite being called "Elmbrook", it's actually in Brookfield, across the street from the Wauwatosa line. I have no idea how either of these stores relate to yet another Sendik's incarnation, also in Brookfield.
All of these stores (except, maybe, Outpost) sell Product 19, which places them ahead of all the supermarkets in Flagstaff.
So the 19 Minutes staff does its shopping at... whatever store has the best deal on yogurt on any given day. Our two-year-old eats a lot of yogurt.
And finally, there's no real update on the annoying Erin Crocker racing story, which is to say that there's still no story. However, we just went though our pictures from the
18-hour Crocker watch at the Milwaukee Mile over the weekend, and we thought this one worked out especially well, because it's a good indication of how close I came to getting the interview. Not very.
Further bulletins as events warrant.
For starters, there's a heartwarming coda to our prom story from this spring, which found its way into the "comments" section. Unfortunately, I bought my tuxedo roughly 13 years too late.
But more importantly, faithful readers of this column are no doubt wondering which Milwaukee area supermarket the 19 Minutes Purchasing Department chose to buy its Froot Loops.
Tragically, the home office is not located near any one of the Piggly Wigglys (Wigglies?) in the great Milwaukee area, so we have not been able to investigate their selection, or why the hell they would choose to name a supermarket "Piggly Wiggly".
Fortunately, there's a ready assortment of other shopping options within an easy drive. Here are the contenders:
There's Sentry Foods, which is another seemingly random name for a grocery store. But it's not just any Sentry Foods... it's something called "Metcalfe's Sentry", which I would assume (had I ever been to another one) has all the attraction of a regular Sentry, plus a spiffy Prepared Foods section (lest we go without California Rolls in Wauwatosa), a hefty-sized bakery, and a full liquor section (which isn't really that big a deal, given that we're talking about Wisconsin).
Nearby is something called Pick-n-Save, which combines all the appeal of a warehouse-style grocery store with the ambiance of a construction site. In all fairness, it actually is a construction site at the moment, as a former Walgreen's next door is ripped out and the grocery store expanded. People in the Sentry seem, on the whole, happier than people in the Pick-n-Save, but I've never stopped to ask them why.
People in both stores seem happier than the shoppers at Outpost Foods, a handsomely designed natural foods store across the street from the Pick-n-Save. This probably doesn't have anything to do with the nature of Outpost itself; rather, it has to do with the people who shop at such stores, who can't quite hide the fact that wheatgrass juice doesn't taste nearly as good as Dr Pepper. On the other hand, it is refreshing to be in Wisconsin, a state where one can get both organic bananas and cheese curds in the same store.
On the other side of town, we find Sendik's Market, which you know will be more expensive than the other stores the moment you walk in and see they're selling Sendik's logowear. (I may be wrong, but I don't remember seeing logowear for sale at the Secret Safeway in Tenleytown.) The stuff is good and occasionally you run into something like two dozen eggs for 99 cents, but in the 19 Minutes Staff's estimation, there's a limited need to pay $4.00 for Chips Ahoy (for instance, you're in Bulgaria). On the upside, Sendik's has, hands-down, the nicest plastic grocery bags ever made. And their logo is pretty spiffy.
Of course, the Wauwatosa Sendik's is apparently not related to something called the Elmbrook Sendik's , which has prices more in line with the Sentry and the Pick-n-Save, and whose plastic bags are swell, but not in the same league as the Wauwatosa Sendik's. Plus, no logowear. But the best selection of frozen pizza of any of the Tosa stores. Despite being called "Elmbrook", it's actually in Brookfield, across the street from the Wauwatosa line. I have no idea how either of these stores relate to yet another Sendik's incarnation, also in Brookfield.
All of these stores (except, maybe, Outpost) sell Product 19, which places them ahead of all the supermarkets in Flagstaff.
So the 19 Minutes staff does its shopping at... whatever store has the best deal on yogurt on any given day. Our two-year-old eats a lot of yogurt.
And finally, there's no real update on the annoying Erin Crocker racing story, which is to say that there's still no story. However, we just went though our pictures from the
18-hour Crocker watch at the Milwaukee Mile over the weekend, and we thought this one worked out especially well, because it's a good indication of how close I came to getting the interview. Not very. Further bulletins as events warrant.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Irony Racing League
Lest I forget, the highlight from the weekend's auto racing adventure:
I didn't actually stay for either of the two races themselves (figuring that 18 fruitless hours at a racetrack was more than enough). I did, however, see one wreck - a crash during the qualifying run of a driver named Kim Crosby. And it would figure that the one car that would smash its rear-end into the wall would be sponsored by something called "Boudreaux's Butt Paste".
Also, a racing fan from Iowa who calls himself "Crazy Ernie" followed me around for a while, but maybe that's not really a "highlight".
I didn't actually stay for either of the two races themselves (figuring that 18 fruitless hours at a racetrack was more than enough). I did, however, see one wreck - a crash during the qualifying run of a driver named Kim Crosby. And it would figure that the one car that would smash its rear-end into the wall would be sponsored by something called "Boudreaux's Butt Paste".
Also, a racing fan from Iowa who calls himself "Crazy Ernie" followed me around for a while, but maybe that's not really a "highlight".
Godot International Motorsports
As anyone who knows me reasonably well can attest, I am an ardent supporter of women in sports. I think women tend to bring an attitude towards competitive athletics that's often missing from the men's version - that is, they actually seem to enjoy it much of the time. Or at least they don't spend as much time fighting with their teammates.
I'm interested in the pioneering aspect of it, too - women competing in sports that they've traditionally been pushed away from. I mean, why is it okay for women to shoot a basketball, but throwing a baseball overhand is out of the question?
So I was enthusiastic about the opportunity to profile Erin Crocker, a race car driver trying to do for NASCAR what Danica Patrick did for Indy Car racing - attract some interest from people over and above the usual race fans. And I'd love to tell you how she rose to such a high level in the male-dominated sport, while also getting an engineering degree, and playing other sports at a high level.
I'd love to, but I can't. She wouldn't talk to me. Or, rather, her people wouldn't make her available.
In 15 years of reporting, I can think of four key interviews that got nixed. Danny Glover, Bill Clinton, (then-)San Francisco Giants Manager Dusty Baker, and Erin Crocker.
Danny Glover's plane got delayed and he barely made it to his event. President Clinton may have had some other things going on. Dusty Baker was being a schmuck. And Erin Crocker was... well, I don't really know.
But on the other hand, Danny Glover is a world-renowned actor, Bill Clinton was the leader of the proverbial Last Remaining Superpower, Dusty Baker was being a schmuck, and Erin Crocker was about to drive in two minor-league auto races in Milwaukee over the weekend.
And yet her "publicist", one Toni McCray, ran interference for her as though she was hiding Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie from the paparazzi in Namibia. She wouldn't return my phone calls. For three weeks. She wouldn't return phone calls from the NASCAR communications staff. Even her sponsors were having trouble reaching her. (And something tells me that even if you don't want to talk to a few hundred thousand public radio listeners, you might want to talk to the people who slap the word "Cheerios" on your car.)
But why wouldn't you want to reach public radio listeners? If one of the side goals of having a competitive woman racecar driver (aside from, say, winning) is to get more people to watch, it seems like it'd make sense to reach out to the audience that isn't yet watching.
But I really don't know what the Crocker team's motivation was. In my one actual contact with McCray - at the time I was actually supposed to be interviewing Crocker - she said only that Crocker wasn't up to doing an interview "because the day wasn't going so well".
Like I said, I'm a strong supporter of women in sports. But it's hard to imagine Tiger Woods getting away with an excuse like that.
So I spent 18 hours at the Milwaukee Mile over two days, watching cars circle a track, gradually going deaf, leaving periodic messages on Toni McCray's voice mail, getting sunburned. And Erin Crocker never showed.
She finished 25th in the Craftsman Truck Series race on Friday, and 29th in the Busch Series race on Saturday. Which gives me some consolation, knowing that at that rate, it won't be long before reporters stop returning her "publicist's" phone calls.
I'm interested in the pioneering aspect of it, too - women competing in sports that they've traditionally been pushed away from. I mean, why is it okay for women to shoot a basketball, but throwing a baseball overhand is out of the question?
So I was enthusiastic about the opportunity to profile Erin Crocker, a race car driver trying to do for NASCAR what Danica Patrick did for Indy Car racing - attract some interest from people over and above the usual race fans. And I'd love to tell you how she rose to such a high level in the male-dominated sport, while also getting an engineering degree, and playing other sports at a high level.
I'd love to, but I can't. She wouldn't talk to me. Or, rather, her people wouldn't make her available.
In 15 years of reporting, I can think of four key interviews that got nixed. Danny Glover, Bill Clinton, (then-)San Francisco Giants Manager Dusty Baker, and Erin Crocker.
Danny Glover's plane got delayed and he barely made it to his event. President Clinton may have had some other things going on. Dusty Baker was being a schmuck. And Erin Crocker was... well, I don't really know.
But on the other hand, Danny Glover is a world-renowned actor, Bill Clinton was the leader of the proverbial Last Remaining Superpower, Dusty Baker was being a schmuck, and Erin Crocker was about to drive in two minor-league auto races in Milwaukee over the weekend.
And yet her "publicist", one Toni McCray, ran interference for her as though she was hiding Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie from the paparazzi in Namibia. She wouldn't return my phone calls. For three weeks. She wouldn't return phone calls from the NASCAR communications staff. Even her sponsors were having trouble reaching her. (And something tells me that even if you don't want to talk to a few hundred thousand public radio listeners, you might want to talk to the people who slap the word "Cheerios" on your car.)
But why wouldn't you want to reach public radio listeners? If one of the side goals of having a competitive woman racecar driver (aside from, say, winning) is to get more people to watch, it seems like it'd make sense to reach out to the audience that isn't yet watching.
But I really don't know what the Crocker team's motivation was. In my one actual contact with McCray - at the time I was actually supposed to be interviewing Crocker - she said only that Crocker wasn't up to doing an interview "because the day wasn't going so well".
Like I said, I'm a strong supporter of women in sports. But it's hard to imagine Tiger Woods getting away with an excuse like that.
So I spent 18 hours at the Milwaukee Mile over two days, watching cars circle a track, gradually going deaf, leaving periodic messages on Toni McCray's voice mail, getting sunburned. And Erin Crocker never showed.
She finished 25th in the Craftsman Truck Series race on Friday, and 29th in the Busch Series race on Saturday. Which gives me some consolation, knowing that at that rate, it won't be long before reporters stop returning her "publicist's" phone calls.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Starting my engines
I'm off on assignment tomorrow at The Milwaukee Mile, a racetrack in scenic and sunny West Allis, Wisconsin. I'm profiling a female race car driver who is trying to break into the big time, such as it is.
I've never actually been to a real-live auto race. The closest I've come was an appearance at the Winneshiek County Fair (which, it strikes me, I may have blogged about in the past). As a local radio "celebrity", it fell to me to serve as master of ceremonies at the Fair Queen Pageant, which took place immediately before the dirt track stock car races.
The scene that played out, then, involved me, dressed in a tuxedo, the five or six Winneshiek County Fair Queen contestants, standing in their evening gowns, and 3000 fans in John Deere and Pioneer Seed caps bellowing at me to shut up and get the damn races started already.
When it ended, the contestants, who were smart enough to have thought ahead, changed into their jeans and went into the grandstand and watched the races. I also spent the rest of the evening watching the races but concentrated more on not spilling mustard on my tux.
I'm planning on wearing jeans to the Milwaukee Mile tomorrow. And ear plugs.
I've never actually been to a real-live auto race. The closest I've come was an appearance at the Winneshiek County Fair (which, it strikes me, I may have blogged about in the past). As a local radio "celebrity", it fell to me to serve as master of ceremonies at the Fair Queen Pageant, which took place immediately before the dirt track stock car races.
The scene that played out, then, involved me, dressed in a tuxedo, the five or six Winneshiek County Fair Queen contestants, standing in their evening gowns, and 3000 fans in John Deere and Pioneer Seed caps bellowing at me to shut up and get the damn races started already.
When it ended, the contestants, who were smart enough to have thought ahead, changed into their jeans and went into the grandstand and watched the races. I also spent the rest of the evening watching the races but concentrated more on not spilling mustard on my tux.
I'm planning on wearing jeans to the Milwaukee Mile tomorrow. And ear plugs.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Time now for... ABC's Narrow World of Sports
A message to ABC and ESPN: Stop introducing me to international soccer. At least pretend you think I know something about it. Even though I don't, really.
The United States, of course, isn’t really a soccer-watching nation. The long stretches of the game where not much appears to happen, the concept of “injury time”, that vaguely arbitary amount of time the referee adds to the game clock at the end of each half, the noisemakers in the stands that sound like constipated cows – they’re all decidedly foreign to American audiences.
Even the most memorable US soccer moment in recent history – Brandi Chastain’s winning goal in the 1999 Women’s World Cup final came in a particularly American way – a penalty kick shootout, when you’re guaranteed something is going to happen. (And the American TV announcers need only to come up with “Goal!” or “No goal!” to accurately portray what’s happening on the screen.)
One gets the sense that the play-by-play guys are trying – really trying – to pull of a broadcast that sounds sophisticated and European. Or something. They clearly have a soccer game cadence in their heads when they’re announcing the action (“Mendez with it… Mendez… crosses to Kaviedez! Header! But it comes up wide…”), but one can almost see them straining to burst, Tourette’s-like, into a more American style of sports announcing.
Okay, our many hypothetical European readers are wondering, “What are you talking about? What’s the ‘American style’ of sports announcing?” (Glad you asked, hypothetical European Person...) Put succinctly, it’s the announcer’s inability to shut up when he (or she) has nothing useful to add. This is a problem for American soccer announcers, who haven’t been calling international games for the four years between World Cups. If they had, they’d be able to harken back to that Brazil-Uruguay qualifier from three years ago, or compare Ronaldhino’s performance this year to Ronaldo in 1998.
Instead, this is what an American soccer broadcast sounds like:
I got into cricket like that – I was in Australia in 1989, during the England-Australia tournament known as “The Ashes”. Cricket matches, conveniently, last for roughly nine hours, so it was possible to go to sleep at night watching a game (which was going on in England) on TV, and wake up to see the end of the same game. Some basic background information would have probably been useful (What, exactly, are they doing? Why the hell is it called “The Ashes”?), but being able to watch the spectacle as it was made it a much more exotic experience, and one that hooked me. At least for a month or two, until I went back to college and got into writing humorous history papers on Franklin Pierce.
Granted, I’m not the first person to float this concept. I did an interview this week with Sean Wilsey, co-editor of The Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup, who got into soccer a few years ago, and promptly went out and bought the entire 1970 World Cup on video cassette, which he watched in real-time, not knowing how it would turn out. It was an experience, reminiscent for me, of having listened to a radio broadcast – in 1981 – of the 7th game of the 1960 World Series, and being completely elated by Pittsburg second baseman Bill Mazeroski’s series-winning home run. But I digress.
So I know it sounds counter-intuitive for a country where most TV viewers don’t know anything about soccer. But pretend I do. Or at least shut up for a few seconds.
[And now, this late note: The very entertaining World Cup play-by-play blog on the New York Times website invited readers to check in on ABC/ESPN's soccer announcing prowess during today's England-Trinidad and Tobago match, with entertaining results.]
The United States, of course, isn’t really a soccer-watching nation. The long stretches of the game where not much appears to happen, the concept of “injury time”, that vaguely arbitary amount of time the referee adds to the game clock at the end of each half, the noisemakers in the stands that sound like constipated cows – they’re all decidedly foreign to American audiences.
Even the most memorable US soccer moment in recent history – Brandi Chastain’s winning goal in the 1999 Women’s World Cup final came in a particularly American way – a penalty kick shootout, when you’re guaranteed something is going to happen. (And the American TV announcers need only to come up with “Goal!” or “No goal!” to accurately portray what’s happening on the screen.)
One gets the sense that the play-by-play guys are trying – really trying – to pull of a broadcast that sounds sophisticated and European. Or something. They clearly have a soccer game cadence in their heads when they’re announcing the action (“Mendez with it… Mendez… crosses to Kaviedez! Header! But it comes up wide…”), but one can almost see them straining to burst, Tourette’s-like, into a more American style of sports announcing.
Okay, our many hypothetical European readers are wondering, “What are you talking about? What’s the ‘American style’ of sports announcing?” (Glad you asked, hypothetical European Person...) Put succinctly, it’s the announcer’s inability to shut up when he (or she) has nothing useful to add. This is a problem for American soccer announcers, who haven’t been calling international games for the four years between World Cups. If they had, they’d be able to harken back to that Brazil-Uruguay qualifier from three years ago, or compare Ronaldhino’s performance this year to Ronaldo in 1998.
Instead, this is what an American soccer broadcast sounds like:
Play-by-play guy: Srna brings it up the far side for Croatia. Still with it… Srna… looking for Babic!… He crosses it! And Brazil are able to clear the ball back downfield and out of trouble…As I said, I don’t really know anything about international soccer, so references to the 2003 Brazil-Uruguay match wouldn’t fall under the category of “common knowledge” for me. But maybe, just maybe, that’s how the sport could suck me in. There are years of soccer history out there about which I have no knowledge. It’s like becoming a fan of a TV show halfway through its 8th season. Even after the season ends, you have 7 ½ years’ worth of shows you’ve never seen – and they all fill in the blanks and give you a better understanding of the characters you’re seeing on the screen today. (Except, of course, for Law and Order, which has dropped more characters than an Arizona high school student.)
Color commentator: it really looked like something was going to develop there…
[five-second pause, as the announcers strain for something useful to say]
P-B-P: Of course, Brazil is in South America, where most countries are Spanish-speaking. But interestingly, Brazilians speak Portuguese on their lovely beaches. The largest Brazilian cities are Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, but the capital is Brasilia, which is away from the coast, in the Central-West part of the country.
Color commentator: I wonder what the people at the bars in Brasilia thought of that near-miss by Croatia…
I got into cricket like that – I was in Australia in 1989, during the England-Australia tournament known as “The Ashes”. Cricket matches, conveniently, last for roughly nine hours, so it was possible to go to sleep at night watching a game (which was going on in England) on TV, and wake up to see the end of the same game. Some basic background information would have probably been useful (What, exactly, are they doing? Why the hell is it called “The Ashes”?), but being able to watch the spectacle as it was made it a much more exotic experience, and one that hooked me. At least for a month or two, until I went back to college and got into writing humorous history papers on Franklin Pierce.
Granted, I’m not the first person to float this concept. I did an interview this week with Sean Wilsey, co-editor of The Thinking Fan’s Guide to the World Cup, who got into soccer a few years ago, and promptly went out and bought the entire 1970 World Cup on video cassette, which he watched in real-time, not knowing how it would turn out. It was an experience, reminiscent for me, of having listened to a radio broadcast – in 1981 – of the 7th game of the 1960 World Series, and being completely elated by Pittsburg second baseman Bill Mazeroski’s series-winning home run. But I digress.
So I know it sounds counter-intuitive for a country where most TV viewers don’t know anything about soccer. But pretend I do. Or at least shut up for a few seconds.
[And now, this late note: The very entertaining World Cup play-by-play blog on the New York Times website invited readers to check in on ABC/ESPN's soccer announcing prowess during today's England-Trinidad and Tobago match, with entertaining results.]
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