Alternative Rock

Favorite sports teams

2012-02-06T18:38:00.000-08:00

Most Americans are loyal to their "home" teams - they're born in a metropolis, have family and friends who support the local team, and are naturally drawn into the support of the same club.

I didn't have that luxury. My father wasn't much of a sports fan (other than tennis and NASCAR), so my exposure to sports came through other avenues. By the time I was exposed to the Philadelphia teams, I already was a fan of other teams...so while the Phillies, Sixers and Eagles became my second teams (the Flyers can go fuck themselves), my allegiances remained elsewhere.

The first support I fell in love with was football. I grew up in Maple Shade, a working class town in the Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia. When I was four, a few of my neighbors (my age) and I used to play pickup football. One afternoon, I sat in front of the TV to watch the NFL. It was my first time, and I'll never forget the game: Oakland Raiders vs. New England Patriots. The Raiders received the kickoff, and the return man took it and ran straight back up the field. At about the twenty, there was a pile of players...he didn't cut, but leaped over the pile and kept going until he was tackled near midfield.

I was hooked.

Over the next few years, my love for the Raiders grew to obsessive levels. When the Raiders would make a great play or win, I would jump around and break things in the family room. When they lost, I would beat up my brother. It got so bad that by 1976, I was banned from watching the games. Unfortunately, that was the year the Raiders won the Super Bowl, which I was only able to watch for a couple of moments here and there while we took down our Christmas decorations in the living room.

Around that same time, I fell in love with baseball, and my father in 1979 game me a gift I still have this day: The Ultimate Baseball Book by Daniel Okrent. The book was divided into nine chapters, roughly corresponding to the nine decades of baseball history, and each chapter had an addendum. The first chapter covered the pre-1900 time period, and the article at the end of this chapter shaped my love. It covered the first Baltimore Orioles: Wee Willie Keeler, Hughie Jennings, John McGraw and the great pennant winners of the 1890s. I also played third base, and worshiped the glove work of Brooks Robinson. That fall, the Orioles played the Pirates in the World Series...and lost a 3-1 lead. When I saw Ken Singleton hanging on the right field wall watching Willie Stargell's home run fly above his head, I cried. Like...tears.

Fortunately, the Orioles beat the Phillies in 1983 to give me some satisfaction. I still didn't like the Phillies at this time - the first sixteen baseball games I went to were at Veterans Stadium...and the Phillies lost every one.

Except one. They tied the Expos when the game was called in the tenth inning due to a downpour on the night they opened Fanavision.

So, to this day, I support baseball and football teams that have the worst owners in all of sports. Al Davis has died this year, but I think he died years ago and they kept his body warm for the masses. Peter Angelos turned his back on The Oriole Way written by Paul Richards, and the Orioles today have no chance in the monster division they play in. But I've always loved underdogs, and the Orioles fit that role in 2012.

I'll get into the other sports teams in my next post.

Winnie the Pooh

2012-01-13T10:34:00.000-08:00

I went to Disney with my wife's family this holiday season. They're fanatics - my wife has been there 19 times, and the rest of the family 14. I hadn't been there since 1989, and wasn't enthusiastic about it (other than having a week's vacation and spending time with Irish Spring's family, who are genuinely fun...when they're not behaving like lunatics in Disney's theme parks). I'd rather go see Paris than have a crepe in EPCOT France, and since the parks are designed for children (when I don't have any...yet), I didn't think I'd have a great time.

It turns out I had a better time than expected. Except for one day...the day we spent at Magic Kingdom.

When I was in second grade, Miss Ackerman had us write a short story. My story was titled, "Winnie the Pooh gets lost in the woods". It probably wasn't very good, but it had a point - that Winnie was a stupid little shit that couldn't figure out by opening his (its?) hand, Pooh could get the damn honey jar off. Somehow an entire story was built around this anthropomorphic bear being stupid as shit. I saw it for what it was, even at age 6. In my story, I killed him. Hell, if he couldn't figure out how to get a honey jar of his hand, he certainly couldn't survive getting lost in the woods, right?

That story earned me a trip to the school psychologist. I guess I was deemed safe to other students, and in the long run I forgave Miss Ackerman, probably because I had a crush on her. But I never lost my hatred for Pooh. Piglet was fine, Tigger was a coked-out lunatic, and I even named a student of mine Ee-yore. But the central figure of A.A. Milne's stories I still rejected.

On the third day on vacation, we spent the day at Magic Kingdom. My wife's family arrived at 8 am when the park opened, and rushed around making sure they hit all the rides before the crowds arrived. Irish Spring and I decided to sleep in, as neither of us thought it important to ride Pirates of the Caribbean at 8 am when sleep beckoned. We agreed to meet up with her family after their adrenalin-fueled morning for breakfast at the Crystal Palace Restaurant. Irish Spring's sister Fan Club President's eyes lit up every time one mentioned their breakfast buffet. We had reservations for ten.

My wife and I arrived a little late for circumstances that do not involve this story. What is pertinent is that the Milne characters were the mascots of the Crystal Palace. Tigger, Piglet, and yes...that stupid bear Pooh. My in-laws knew my hatred for Pooh, and made efforts to get Pooh to come to our table. I played along with it, running to the bathroom when Pooh got close, and made comments. I think I may have gone a bit too far - the In-Laws suspected I feared Pooh rather than hated.

In the end, Pooh came over to us and pictures were taken with it. I decided to make up for years of despising it. As Winnie came to me for a photo-op, I said, "Pooh, I've hated you for 43 years. I guess it's time we made up." I then gave Pooh a hug...sort of. As I leaned in, I failed to gauge how wide the mascot actually was. My head was around the back, and my left hand came to rest on Pooh's chest.

Here for years, I thought Pooh was a boy. My left hand could provide testimony that Pooh is, in fact, a female. Embarrassingly, I wound up groping a cartoon character.

Fucking Pooh.

Life as a Husband

2012-01-04T04:22:00.000-08:00

One of my goals this year is to get back to writing. Since I met my wife (and if you don't know me, it was May 26th...and a whirlwind courtship that resulted in me getting married November 7th), a lot has changed. Not surprisingly, my time is now our time, and therefore I don't have hours to put together a Top 30 list (okay, occasionally I do) and muse about drunken stories from yesteryear.

For now, I think about how lucky I am.

When Irish Spring and I started dating, she told me that she hated cuddling. That same night, she said I was too sensitive and that she would be the man in the relationship. For someone as insecure as I, normally those words would have been a deal-breaker...but that would've meant she was right.

So, here was a woman who hated cuddling, who fell asleep with her head neatly resting on my shoulder. Today, a few months after that fateful night, Irish Spring can not fall asleep without her touching me.

Fathers tell me the love of a baby is amazing, but I can assure you that laying in bed with the woman of your dreams needing your touch to fall asleep is incredible. What's even more incredible is that during the night, when we lose touch with one another, she wakes up. Sort of.

Irish Spring doesn't remember any of this, but if I try to pull my arm from underneath her head, she lifts her head, moans and groans until I put it back, and then she's asleep again within seconds. When she turns over away from me, instinctively she reaches back across the bed and implores me to follow.

I'm a light sleeper. I can lay awake for hours, and I certainly wake up when she moves, if only because she's smacking me in her sleep. But the love I feel makes me love her more. So, at 7:21 in the morning I write this. The computer is on my lap, I'm awake, but she's breathing heavily...

And our legs are intertwined to make sure she gets a good night sleep. It's a love I've craved all my life.

College Football Sidebar

2011-12-19T10:43:00.000-08:00

I am sometimes amazed at how short-sighted people can be. The Big East was founded in 1979 as primarily a basketball conference, but it contained a number of D-I football schools. Joe Paterno and Penn State had been clamoring for a football conference made up of Eastern schools, and in 1982 Penn State applied for membership to the Big East conference...was the Big East going to become a football conference as well?

No. Penn State's application was rejected, and it took ten years for the Big East to play football. Since then, the Big East has become the ugly step-child of the BCS system. Or whore, since it seems willing to accept anyone in an effort to keep its place at the BCS table. If we had a time machine, let us re-create a possible Big East football league:

Penn State
Pittsburgh
West Virginia
Syracuse
Boston College
Rutgers
Virginia Tech
Miami
Florida State
Army
Navy
Temple

What a colossal league that would've been. Would the schools bolt to greener pastures?

Top Alternative Rock songs, 19 December 2011

2011-12-19T09:09:00.000-08:00

1. Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs - Garden
2. The Black Keys - Lonely Boy
3. Bombay Bicycle Club - Lights Out, Words Gone
4. Hey Champ - Gold Dust Girl
5. Martin Solveig - The Night Out
6. Tennis - Take Me Somewhere
7. The Horrors - Endless Blue
8. The Rapture - How Deep is Your Love?
9. Guided by Voices - The Unsinkable Fats Domino
10. Wilco - I Might
11. tUnE-yArDs - Gangsta
12. Phantogram - 16 Years
13. Miami Horror - Holidays
14. fun - We Are Young
15. R.E.M. - We All Go Back to Where We Belong
16. The Airborne Toxic Event - All I Ever Wanted
17. Lykke Li - Jerome
18. TV Girl - Baby You Were There
19. Foster the People - Call it What You Want
20. Blink 182 - After Midnight
21. Atlas Genius - Trojans
22. Florence & The Machine - Shake it Out
23. Silversun Pickups - Broken Bottles
24. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Monarchy of Roses
25. Grouplove - Tongue Tied
26. The Lonely Forest – Turn off This Song and Go Outside
27. Rihanna featuring Calvin Harris - We Found Love
28. Deportees - When Buildings Sleep
29. Wavves/Best Coast - Nodding Off
30. Cashier #9 - Oh Pity

Marriage, Part 1

2011-11-18T06:41:00.001-08:00

Quick story, and a longer intro:

I've always had trouble receiving gifts. They make me uncomfortable. They make me wonder if I'm deserving of them. And my wife just bought me new sneakers and a coat. I wasn't as thrilled as she wanted me to be. I loved her choices, but...

She grew frustrated. "These are NOT gifts. This is a coat. You needed a coat. The coat you have is from 1927, and I would not be seen in public with you wearing it. So deal with it."

I love her :)

Top Songs, 7 October 2011

2011-10-07T08:05:00.000-07:00

Hi!

It's been a while - I'm getting married one month from today, so hopefully you'll accept my humble apologies. Anyway, I haven't gone to any concerts, and I've had to curtail my listening pleasure (Irish Spring can't stand alternative rock). But I've discovered a great site that converts YouTube videos to mp3 files, so I've been plugging away at that, filling gaps in my music collection. Without further ado, here's what I've been listening to over the last month.

1. Tom Vek - Aroused
2. Miami Horror - Holidays
3. Miami Horror - I Look to You
4. Darwin Deez - Up in the Clouds
5. Airborne Toxic Event - All I Ever Wanted
6. Florence & the Machine - What the Water Gave Me
7. The Kooks - Junk of the Heart (Happy)
8. Viva Voce - The Future Will Destroy You
9. Wilco - I Might
10. Boxer Rebellion - If You Run
11. Young the Giant - Cough Syrup
12. Beastie Boys - Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win (featuring Santigold)
13. Cut Off Your Hands - All It Takes
14. Bombay Bicycle Club - Shuffle
15. Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - The Death of You and Me
16. Dum Dum Girls - Bedroom Eyes
17. The Drums - Money
18. Eastern Conference Champions - Bull in the Wild
19. CSS - City Grrrl
20. Bush - The Sound of Winter
21. Girls - Honey Bunny
22. Palpitation - We Don't Need To, We Don't Have To
23. Foster the People - Call it What You Want
24. The Duke Spirit - Surrender
25. The Kills - Future Starts Slow
26. St. Vincent - Cruel
27. Tennis - Take Me Somewhere
28. Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs - Garden
29. Red Hot Chili Peppers - The Adventures of Raindance Maggie
30. The Joy Formidable - The Greatest Light is the Greatest Shade

Children's names

2011-09-07T10:02:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned in this blog before how I'm proud of my French heritage, and how I'd like to have children with French names. Not surprisingly, I mentioned this to Irish Spring one night as we were sitting on the front steps having a glass of wine.

She looked at me like I had a nose growing out of my forehead.

So I presumed traditional French names for boys was out. I then focused on French names for girls:

*Aemelie
*Alexandrene
*Dauphine

"Aemelie" is the French version of Emily, and "Alexandrene" is Alexandra obviously. But Dauphine doesn't have an English equivalent. When France had a monarchy, the heir to the throne was called "Dauphin", much like Prince William is the Prince of Wales. I explained to Irish Spring that the female version of Dauphin was, essentially, "princess". She wasn't overwhelmed with the name.

You mean like "dolphin"? With an "e"?

I've spelled it for her twenty times, trying to get the thoughts of aquatic mammals out of her head. Over time, and more bottles of wine on the front steps, Dauphine grew on her. She agreed it would be cute to have as a middle name.

Small victories!

A few days after she accepted Dauphine, I wrote to my cousin in France, who ironically has a father who loves the United States...though he has never been here. As a result, she does not have a French name, but rather an American one. The same as my girlfriend's. In July, Eighth Cousin wrote to me on Facebook:

Marc, are you watching semi finale of femal soccer wordldcup? France vs US... boys here are very interested!!!

Her English is better than my French - I wrote back:

Hi Eighth Cousin! My girlfriend and I were watching it until the US went up 3-1. Good games, good for woman's soccer! P.S. if we end up having children, our daughter's middle name will be Dauphine! I'm trying to get Etienne for a boy, but I don't think she'll go for it!

This didn't get the response I had hoped.

Good game. Congrat' for american girls!
About your P.S., we're waiting for the birth announcement !! Etienne is the french for Steve, but Dauphine isn't really a girl name. It's a potatoe, but not a name!!! Delphine is a name...

I couldn't tell Irish Spring was the name of a potato. For three weeks I held my breath, hoping that we could maybe find another French name she loved, and that way I could avoid the thought of naming a girl after a potato. Finally, I spilled it, in front of her sister, who I told a week earlier.

Irish Spring was shocked. Stunned. And she LOVED it.

So, should she get pregnant, she's having a potato. And we will decorate the nursery with Mr. Potatohead stuff.

The poor girl is going to hate us. God forbid should we come up with a boy's name.

Top Songs, 31 August 2011

2011-08-31T16:55:00.000-07:00

1. Cut Off Your Hands - All it Takes
2. Tom Vek - Aroused
3. Wilco - I Might
4. Beastie Boys - Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win (featuring Santigold)
5. The Rapture - How Deep is Your Love?
6. The Drums - Money
7. Lykke Li - Youth Knows No Pain
8. Red Hot Chili Peppers - The Adventures of Raindance Maggie
9. Tallest Man on Earth - Weather of a Killing Kind
10. Odio Paris - Uno de Noviembre
11. Washed Out - Amor Fati
12. Mates of State - Maracas
13. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Same Mistake
14. CSS - City Grrl
15. Fabian - Dream to Wishes
16. M83 - Midnight City
17. St Vincent - Surgeon
18. Little Dragon - Ritual Union
19. Bombay Bicycle Club - Shuffle
20. Dale Earnhardt Jr Jr - Morning Thought
21. Fleet Foxes - Grown Ocean
22. The Republic Tigers - Merrymake it with Me
23. Metronomy - The Bay
24. Radical Dads - Walking Wires
25. The War on Drugs - Baby Missiles
26. Bon Iver - Calgary
27. Friendly Fires - Blue Cassette
28. Sleeper Agent - Get it Daddy
29. Jane's Addiction - Irresistible Force
30. Dum Dum Girls - Coming Down
31. Those Dancing Days - Can't Find Entrance
32. The Raveonettes - Recharge & Revolt
33. The Vaccines - If You Wanna
34. Neon Indian - Polish Girl
35. Adele - Set Fire to the Rain

Parties in Damascus

2011-08-24T06:47:00.000-07:00

I told this story last night on my front steps (dubbed "The Magic Carpet" by Irish Spring) - it was great when it happened, so I'll try and relate it here.

I had lived in Damascus for about eight months when someone in the expatriate community decided they were going to throw a party. It was decent - there may have been about fifty people there - all foreigners (no Syrians), but someone at the party said, "I can throw a better party.", then went ahead two weeks later and did so.

It was on.

A month later, a Dutch female friend of mine threw a party, but unfortunately I wasn't allowed to drink. I had been in the hospital, and I was taking it easy. It's funny - parties are never as much fun sober as they are drunk. I had been there about forty-five minutes, trying to engage people in conversation, but it wasn't happening. There was a Marine at the party, new to the Syrian scene, who wasn't really talking to anyone either. He didn't know anyone.

"Danny, follow me."

We walked into the kitchen, and I searched for something that would change my attitude towards the party. There, on the stove, I found it: a tea kettle. I plundered the host's fridge, take various bits of fruit and juice, then attacked the liquor. After I filled the kettle with this concoction, Danny and I proceeded to walk around the party. I would tap someone on the shoulder, and announce loudly, "BOW BEFORE THE KETTLE OF CONTENT!"

They did. At the next party, two weeks later, the host of the latest "best party" bought four new kettles for me to conjure up new "content" shots.

In this stretch of expatriate parties, I threw my hat into the ring with a toga party, honoring the 600 year occupation of Syria by the Romans. It was a success, but my place was small so I couldn't go as far as some other expats. In my second year as a teacher, the parties were getting incredibly large. A friend of mine, named Mark, had an idea. Why don't we combine forces? Throw the biggest party Damascus has ever seen?

It was on - we recruited Buxom Blonde, and the three of us contributed about a thousand dollars each. Keep in mind, a thousand dollars in Syria goes a lot farther than it does in the States, and since this was 1996 (and not 2011), that money went farther still. Mark lived atop a five-storey apartment building, with a nice two-bedroom flat, complete with a study (set up with a bar and sofa), and a couple bathrooms. The difference between his place, and every other place, was his deck:

It was the top of the building. Mark's apartment sat in the middle of the building, and on all sides ranged this enormous area where hundreds of people could party. We set the theme ("Vicars and Tarts", i.e, Priests and Prostitutes), gained sponsorship from a couple of local businesses (The winner of the Best Costume contest won tickets for two to either Cairo, Egypt or Istanbul, Turkey).

We had a "Confessional". We had a pool for baptizing, complete with blue jello. We hired staff to man the bars, lighting artists and DJs, maids and painters for the day after. We paid off the landlord, who ignored complaints from tenants below and wound up at the party himself. We paid off the police, who were directing people to the correct party instead of traffic when we arrived.

Speaking of arrival, we decided to go the Australian Embassy bar beforehand and celebrate a job well done. The party began at nine - we didn't make our entrance until after eleven. By that time, there were about four hundred people at the party - many locals, all enjoying the evening. It was incredible.

The most surreal moment for me came when the DJ threw on Bob Marley's Could You Be Loved? watching a couple hundred Arabs (some in traditional outfits) jam to reggae gave me chills.

But the best events of the evening had yet to occur.

My friends and I had arranged to take the stage at various points throughout the evening and play the role of emcee. Other friends asked to do the same as well - generally, they all worked out well. My performance was to go on last, at around 3 am.

Simon started it off, by giving a sermon based on the "Gospel of Mark". It had nothing to do with the New Testament, but rather the partying lifestyles of the hosts of the party. A bit cerebral, but appreciated. Mark then took the stage (cross-dressed as the biggest Tart ever) and invited five Australian girls who were dressed as The Spice Girls up as well. He then had them compete for prizes - each of them had to put a condom on a banana without using their hands, and the winner won a prize offered by another one of our sponsors.

She was impressive.

There were others, but all the while I ran around pouring shots out of a tea kettle into kneeling people's begging mouths, doing shots myself, and having a great time. I had a crush on a girl that was at the party, and she told me around one o'clock she was leaving. I never had the guts to tell her I liked her; but this night was different. "You can't leave until you snog me."

She couldn't believe what I said, and asked me to repeat it. I did so, then we did. It was an amazing kiss...at least, I'd like to believe it was. You see, I don't remember this part of the evening at all, and I missed the chance I had to hook up with the girl I liked the most while living in Syria.

At three o'clock, I took the stage. I had a detailed plan as to my performance - it was something I was supposed to do when a good female friend was getting married, and I chickened about then. With loads of alcohol running through my veins, I wasn't going to back out a second time.

I was dressed as a monk, in an outfit designed by me and created by a German woman who was married to an expatriate who worked for Shell. It was black, hooded, and came down just past my knees. I wore sandals typical of a monk, and I matched it with a rope belt, bible, and pouch hanging off the rope. The hood was drawn over my head as I took the stage. The music came to a stop.

"Look at all of you SINNERS!! Your body is a Temple of God, and look at how you treat it! You are all drinking, smoking, dancing too close to one another...you have given in to the TEMPTATIONS OF SATAN!!!" (cheering) "You have allowed the Devil to enter your souls! You have allowed the DEVIL INSIDE!!!"

The music began.

On Michael Hutchins' "Unh unh-unh", I turned away from the hundreds of people dancing, and lifted the back of my monk robe. I was wearing a devil's tail. I then removed the hood, and I had horns on.

I did a strip tease. Off came the rope, the sandals, the pouch. Finally, the robe.

Underneath, I was wearing a T-shirt and gym shorts, but the show wasn't done. I invited some girl in the front row on stage with me, and we started grinding. I had cut a V in the neck of the shirt - as we danced I grabbed my shirt and ripped it from my body, and had her remove my shorts. Beneath, I was wearing a teddy.

By now, the rows directly in front of the stage had stopped dancing, and stared in stunned silence. I can't remember exactly who it was, but it wouldn't be a far stretch to suggest that a number of co-workers/teachers, and parents of my students were there (I know for a fact, actually). I also know that at least three students of mine were at the party. I can only imagine what was going through their mind as their teacher stripped down to nothing.

After dancing around in a teddy for a short while, I took the teddy off. The last article of clothing I wore was a thong. Red. Sequin. It looked ridiculous. But it worked. The place was cheering loudly for me to complete the show and take it all off. It would've fit the mood of the evening: a Dutch girl was doing two UN soldiers on the elevator, and many of the rooms had couples in various stages of fucking, without a care as to who or how many were watching.

I did NOT take off the thong.

But the party was a success - I left around 10 the next morning, after having sex with a local Syrian girl who must have loved red thongs, and the thought of making love to Satan.

After that party, no one in the expatriate community attempted to throw a bigger or better party.

Top Songs, 23 August 2011

2011-08-23T08:37:00.000-07:00

1. Odio Paris - Uno de Noviembre
2. Cut Off Your Hands - All it Takes
3. The Rapture - How Deep is Your Love?
4. Girls - Vomit
5. Fabian - Dreams to Wishes
6. Yuck - Suicide Policeman
7. M83 - Midnight City
8. The Tallest Man on Earth - Weather of a Killing Kind
9. Eastern Conference Champions - Atlas
10. Foster the People - Houdini
11. Eleanor Friedberger - My Mistakes
12. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Same Mistake
13. Starfucker - Mystery Cloud
14. CSS - Hits Me Like a Rock
15. Lykke Li - Youth Knows No Pain
16. Mates of State - Maracas
17. Adele - Set Fire to the Rain
18. elite gymnastics - o m a m o r i
19. Hypocrite in a Hippy Crypt - The Town Crazies
20. Death Cab for Cutie - Doors Unlocked and Open
21. The War on Drugs - Blackwater
22. Bon Iver - Calgary
23. Radical Dads - Walking Wires
24. Friendly Fires - Blue Cassette
25. Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. - Morning Thought
26. The Raveonettes - Recharge and Revolt
27. The Vaccines - We're Happening
28. Dum Dum Girls - Coming Down
29. Dakotafish - Midnight Lemonade
30. Fleet Foxes - Grown Ocean
31. Bombay Bicycle Club - Shuffle
32. The Joy Formidable - The Greatest Light is the Greatest Shade
33. The Drums - Money

The City, Part 2

2011-08-16T04:09:00.001-07:00

Ever since Irish Spring and I began dating, I've wanted to take her to Honey's Sit 'n Eat, my favorite breakfast place in Philadelphia. Unfortunately, until this past weekend, a few things have held us up.

1. Honey's is nationally renowned, mentioned in a blog on Yahoo. When I used to live in Northern Liberties, it was open 8-4 six days a week, and rarely had a line. These days, one can go there by themselves and possibly get a seat at the counter in fifteen minutes. Or, to avoid lines altogether, go before 9 am on the weekends, or at random times during the week. It's open 7 days a week now until 10 pm, and crowded for most of them.

2. Irish Spring doesn't do breakfast.

On Sunday, we managed to make a plan to go there for lunch. I, of course, would be eating breakfast (served all day), but Irish Spring was going to grab a sandwich. It normally is a five-minute drive from my house, but since her car was crushed by a drunk driver a few weeks back, we had to use SEPTA. We walked a block to the 15 trolley eastbound, get off at 5th street and walk four blocks to the restaurant.

The fun started after we got off the trolley. 5th Street isn't the best of neighborhoods, just a bit west of the nicer sections of Northern Liberties. We were about to pass St. John Neumann Church when an African-American woman walked towards us. She was talking, but paid us no mind. She was a bit on the larger side, her hair medium length and natural, and she wore a loose-fitting black dress.

Then suddenly, she wasn't.

This woman, in the mid-afternoon Philly sun, directly in front of us, reached down and parted her dress, exposing herself ENTIRELY to us. Her pubic area was shaved into a racing strip, but she wasn't pleased with whatever was happening down there. She began swatting at herself, slapping her inner thighs and vagina. "My PUSSY has FUCKING FLIES!!," she screamed, all while squatting and swatting.

Irish Spring and I raced past her, and I tried to change the subject, pointing out the famous church on our right. But she was about to break into laughter, her face bright red from either embarrassment or the effort it took not to say anything within earshot of the woman. I then mentioned the irony of her doing this directly in front of the church. Irish Spring started laughing.

"Are you trying to test me to see at what point I'll never come to the city??" she said laughing. First her car gets crushed, then this.

Never a dull moment.

We did have breakfast/lunch - I'm surprised Irish Spring was able to maintain an appetite after that sighting.

I guess next I'll have to try something a bit more random and threatening. You know, just to see how she'll react.

The City

2011-08-09T11:21:00.000-07:00

I grew up in the suburbs. I think most Americans do. I liked living in the suburbs.

Until I got a taste of the city. Philadelphia, that is. When I was eighteen, I was introduced to South Street, which at the time hadn't been invaded by chain stores, but had a "bohemian" attitude. Punk rocker clothing shops, hipster vintage clothing stores before they became popular, mom-and-pop pizza shops, hole in the wall dive bars (where the women waiting in line for the occupied bathroom actually CHEERED when the door opened, only to expose that a guy and girl were having sex while bladders screamed for release) all lived together in a balance that welcomed every walk of life.

From that point on, I spent as much time in cities as possible. My backpacking tours in Europe revolved around the urban life. Cairo became one of my favorite cities in the world for the reason that there were 12 million people living on top of one another. The more people, the better.

Unfortunately, after all this traveling and loving the urban setting, when I returned back to the States and settled into a teaching job, I did what most Americans do: I bought a house in Suburbia. It didn't make sense - by 2004, I still lived in New Jersey, but was spending at least five night a week in Philadelphia. My car's odometer spun out of control.

Tuesday: Quizzo at Rembrandts.
Wednesday: Basketball or squash in Chestnut Hill, then over to McNally's.
Thursday: Cricket practice at Haverford College, then to any of the pubs who sponsored our team.
Friday/Saturday: Old City, or Rittenhouse Square, or Fairmount.

Sundays and Mondays were days of rest, both for myself and my car. Finally, in 2005 I decided to take the plunge - I sold my house (at the peak of the real estate boom, thank you very much!) and moved to Northern Liberties. I had an unbelievable bachelor pad, complete with 25 foot high ceilings, a skywalk leading to my bedroom, and exposed brick out the wazoo. I shared it with a bar manager from Le Bec Fin who was never there.

But Northern Liberties wasn't all it was cracked up to be, at least in my opinion. The next year I moved to Fairmount, where I've been ever since. And I always thought it was where I would live, get married, raise kids, and grow old.

When I began dating Irish Spring in May, she wasn't as sold on my neighborhood as I. It is admittedly on the rougher side of things, but it started to grow on her. We sit on my front steps, dubbed "The Magic Carpet", in contrast to the bar across the street, "The Flying Carpet". Irish Spring is nosy - she says hi to everyone, quiets down when people are talking loudly in the area, and friendly to the point where she invites everyone for a drink at The Magic Carpet.

Some nights, there are more people on The Magic Carpet than there are at The Flying Carpet.

When Irish Spring stayed over for the first time, I was worried about her car - it is a 2011 Audi A4. I had an A4 before I moved to Australia, and I loved it. I don't own a car since I've moved back, since I don't need one.

Another reason to love the city.

That night, after a couple bottles of wine, I wasn't going to let her leave, nor did she want to. But I didn't want her to park her car on my block, so we drove about 4 blocks away to a safer neighborhood. Her car was fine the next morning, and over time she became comfortable with my block, my neighbors, and actually enjoyed hanging out with all the locals: the five young kids who live next to me, the father/daughter tandem two doors down with rhyming names, the regulars at the bar who take a break by sitting on our step and having a glass of wine with us. Even Biggie and Smalls look out for us, always willing to stop over and say hello. In a mixed neighborhood slowly becoming more gentrified, it is comforting knowing some of the old heads look out for us, and for Irish Spring's car.

Two weeks ago, Irish Spring parked her car in the spot right in front of my house - the young kids next door knew better than to steal her spot, and we went to bed. She had work early the next morning, and I had a deadline on my final paper for school approaching.

We didn't get any sleep.

At 3:30 in the morning, I heard a loud crash in front of my place. I jumped out of bed, saw a car hitting Irish Spring's car and the car behind hers, with people watching on the far side of the road. I was awake instantly. Irish Spring would've slept through it, but I shouted, "Your CAR!!" and ran downstairs.

When I rushed outside, the woman driving the late 90s model Ford Crown Victoria was just pulling away. She had damaged three cars along the street, then just drove away as if nothing had happened. Irish Spring came out shortly thereafter - her car had received the worst of it. The back left bumper was pushed all the way in, the tire bent abnormally, and the car halfway on the sidewalk. The car was also pushed into the truck in front of hers, damaging the grill and front bumper.

Of course, there was no damage to the pickup.

There were a half-dozen people standing around, not believing what we had just witnessed. One woman stepped forward, and handed us the exact information about the car that hit us, specifically the license plate:

HNR 443 (Pennsylvania plates)

Four of us called 911 to get the police there. The last of those calls took place as the car went through the green light a block away - if any cops were in a rush, they could've caught the driver. Instead, Irish Spring, myself and my roommate sat in stunned silence for almost two hours waiting for a police officer to arrive at the scene. By five AM, the two witnesses who saw everything went to bed. The police officer finally showed up, and did...nothing. Didn't want to get out of his car, told us it would be a waste of time to find who had done it, because they probably didn't have insurance, etc. It took him a hell of an effort to even leave his car to survey the damage. We asked him to run the tags, and he said it wasn't a valid license plate - PA license plates these days have 4 numbers at the end, not 3. I asked him to plug in a 0-9 at the end, ten numbers in total to see if something popped up. He told me it wasn't worth his time.

Irish Spring's car was undriveable. She had to be in work at 8 am, and now neither of us had a car. I spoke to her insurance company about what happened next. They would send a tow truck the next day, but they were only paying $15 a day for a rental car - that wouldn't cover the cost of a car.

We went to the first open rental place - an Enterprise in Center City that opened at 7:30.

More bad news - we found out Irish Spring couldn't rent a car. She doesn't have credit cards, and in order to use her debit card, she needs to show a utility bill. She lives with her father.

I rented the car, drove her to work, then went home and took a nap before getting on the phone with the towing people, the collision people, the insurance people. I didn't get my paper done.

Once things calmed down, Irish Spring got her Irish up. She was pissed they wouldn't run the tags, so I called my brother. He said legally he wasn't allowed to, yet when Irish Spring asked her friend on the force to run it, he did. Some help my brother was.

We came up with two possibilities: one with a 5 at the end, the other a 7. Both were from West Philly, and both had the correct model car. That night, Irish Spring, her cop friend and I went in search of the car.

We came up with nothing. Maybe the license plate was fake, maybe the car was stolen, maybe...it didn't matter. Irish Spring had to pay a $500 deductible, and maybe for a rental car.

Two days later, Irish Spring and I were sitting on my steps, when one of the witnesses came home. We told him what had happened, and how the license was wrong. His words, verbatim:

"No! There was an extra '4' in the license! When the woman (other witness) gave you the information, I thought I had added too many 4s." The real license plate:

HNR 4443

Irish Spring's friend ran the tag, and it's a valid plate. We went to the police station to update the report. They told us there was nothing we could do. The report had been sent to district HQ, we didn't have the correct info at the time of the accident, so they would not issue a ticket to the driver.

I call bullshit. Had the cop showed up when we called, and not almost two hours later, the witnesses would've still been there. We would've had the right address, the right license, and an arrest could've been made (the woman was obviously drunk by the way she drove). Instead, the Philadelphia Police were wiping their hands clean of the entire situation.

And with all of this I'm supposed to convince Irish Spring to move to Philadelphia.

When Irish Spring first came outside, I knew it was a lost cause. I turned to her, watched her fighting back tears. "So...Collingswood?"

ADDENDUM: A few days later, we saw Biggie on the street. He had been looking after Irish Spring's car to make sure no one broke into it, but he couldn't prevent a drunk driver from hitting it. After we shared the story of the entire evening, and the followup with the police effort (or lack thereof), he gave me his number.

"When do you want to take a ride to West Philly?" The man has three teardrops on the corner of his left eye. I'm sure there would be some resolution...but not the type I'd want. Somehow I think the police might take a more pro-active attitude towards that.

At least, I'd hope so.

Top Songs, 7 August 2011

2011-08-07T20:03:00.000-07:00

1. Cut Off Your Hands - All it Takes
2. Mates of State - Maracas
3. M83 - Midnight City
4. Dakotafish - Midnight Lemonade
5. Fabian - Dreams to Wishes
6. War on Drugs - Blackwater
7. Odio Paris - Uno de Noviembre
8. CSS - Hits Me Like a Rock
9. Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. - Morning Thought
10. Girls - Vomit
11. Hypocrite in a Hippy Crypt - Town Crazies
12. Fleet Foxes - Grown Ocean
13. Beastie Boys featuring Santigold - Don't Play no Game That I Can't Win
14. Boots Electric - Boots Electric Theme
15. Bon Iver - Calgary
16. Friendly Fires - Blue Cassette
17. The Tallest Man on Earth - Weather of a Killing Kind
18. Elite Gymnastics - o m a m o r i
19. Adele - Set Fire to the Rain
20. Lykke Li - Youth Knows No Pain
21. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Same Mistake
22. Eastern Conference Champions - Atlas
23. Radical Dads - Walking Wires
24. They Might Be Giants - Can't Keep Johnny Down
25. Eleanor Friedberger - My Mistakes
26. VHS or Beta - I Found a Reason
27. Niki & the Dove - The Fox
28. David Bazan - Wolves at the Door
29. Does it Offend You, Yeah? - Wrong Time, Wrong Planet
30. Tennis - Take Me Somewhere
31. Raveonettes - Recharge and Revolt
32. Rapture - How Deep is Your Love
33. Adele - Rolling in the Deep
34. Yuck - Suicide Policeman
35. Best Coast - Gone Again
36. Umpire - Corner an Owl in an Alcove
37. Arcade Fire featuring David Byrne - Speaking in Tongues
38. Cassettes Won't Listen - Perfect Day
39. Death Cab For Cutie - Doors Unlocked and Open
40. Foster the People - Houdini

A Night With Irish Spring

2011-07-24T12:23:00.000-07:00

A couple of Fridays ago, I had an entertaining night with Irish Spring...again. There were a few reasons why it was:

1. Vodka, drank by Irish Spring.
2. I think I was in the right.

That doesn't happen often, and I know this. The Quote Machine said to me one time, in reference to being in a relationship with a woman: "You can be right, or you can be happy. You can't be both."

For one night, that wasn't the case.

My front porch step is nicknamed The Magic Carpet - Irish Spring and I hang out often there, having a glass of wine or three and getting to know the neighborhood. People stop by, have a glass or two, and we've met the five 22 year olds that just moved in next door. They fear Irish Spring, and save her parking spot in front of the house. They were also having a house party on Friday, and we agreed to go. I was a bit hesitant to go...after all, I was twenty years older than them.

But first I had work - I finished around ten, and Irish Spring and a friend of hers met me at Krupa's. A whole group of us from work arrived in a pack. Irish Spring and her friend were already drunk...and they did a shot of whipped cream vodka five minutes after arriving. Irish Spring's friend then decided she needed to make out with a guy. Later she explained she wanted to make out with someone, and a wall would've been just as good. Being she chose the worst human being in the bar, The Wall would've done better making out with a wall.

We left shortly following The Wall's mistake. He was hounding her, but her defenses were strong. The Greatest, my favorite bartender, was handing her a beer with The Mistake standing behind her. Without him noticing, The Greatest gave her a shake of the head. The Wall caught the signal, but couldn't shake The Mistake. It took a whole group of us: Irish Spring, Irish Spring's friend, two of my friends (ATM and Kajagoogoo) and I to keep The Mistake from getting in the car heading back to the Magic Carpet.

Once back at my place, the five of us settled in on my front steps and I poured glasses of wine for all of us. The party was jumping next door, with loads of 22 year olds hanging on their second-rate Magic Carpet. The Quote Machine came across the street, and the six of us drank liquid courage to hang with the young ones. After a refill, all of us save The Quote Machine went next door. None of us really wanted to go, but it was the neighborly thing to do.

It was exactly what one would expect from a party full of 22 year olds. There was a completely stoned dude on the living room sofa, staring at a TV replaying the intro to a video game. Beer pong was on the second floor, and a homemade brew in a garbage can awaited the adventurous in the basement, and the party's focus was in the kitchen. We ran into the hosts there...and none of them could remember Irish Spring's name. She wanted to leave. The Wall did as well, so drunk that she couldn't stand without using it to prop herself up. Kajagoogoo went downstairs to experience the home brew. I carried on conversations with the hosts, talking about everything. It didn't matter that I was twenty years older than they, I was enjoying myself. Irish Spring was not, and wasted no time in telling me. "I'm sweating..."

The Wall was just plain wasted.

I wasn't ready to budge - I was having a good time. Kajagoogoo was talking to a guy who resembled Billy King, the former GM of the Sixers. With support, I continued talking to the hosts. Irish Spring wasn't giving up that quickly. "We're staying for one drink, right?" I nodded. She then chugged her wine. "Let's go." I wasn't leaving yet. Irish Spring was exasperated. "I'm too old for this party, and I'm only five years older than they are." She made a drunk gesture towards them. "How can you be comfortable? You could be their FATHER!!" and laughed. I was not amused. I held out for a couple of minutes by continuing my conversation, but when Kajagoogoo went downstairs for a refill, I was alone. I put my tail between my legs and joined the three women I came with walking out the door, my head held high knowing I had been in a party with a bunch of young, nubile women and hadn't spoken to any of them.

We walked down the steps, Irish Spring in front of me. Young Nubile Girl leaned against the ledge outside the front door, drunkenly facing us as we left. YNG kept her mouth shut until Irish Spring walked by. I was next.

"OH MY GAWD! What's that on your shur-urt??!!" I was wearing a USA soccer jersey, and I was clueless. I looked down at my shirt while Irish Spring looked over her shoulder at this mess. YNG leaned forward while I was looking down at my chest, held her hand out, and tapped my nose. "Boop!"

Irish Spring was not amused. I was stopped a second time, this time by a guy standing at the foot of the steps. He asked me if I supported any soccer clubs outside of the United States. Irish Spring returned to my steps, I delayed my return to avoid any confrontation. It turned out Soccer Fan was from France, and had lived in the Middle East. We wound up talking for about twenty minutes about soccer, travel, and language. Kajagoogoo finally left the party to join us, realizing he was the only person in the party over the age of 40.

Hell, he was the only person left there over 25.

Kajagoogoo is a jokester. He loves to press people's buttons...and for some reason, he thought it was the perfect time to press Irish Spring's buttons. He sat down next to her, and began discussing my sex life with Irish Spring. I should preface this section by saying the following:

1. I have never discussed my sex life with Kajagoogoo...at least, not my relationship with Irish Spring.
2. I'm too insecure about my sex life to talk about it in a serious way.
3. Irish Spring didn't know that I didn't tell Kajagoogoo.

After a few jokes/comments to Irish Spring, while I was still talking to the Soccer Fan, she got up to yell and embarrass me. Kajagoogoo intercepted her, and somehow prevented her from starting a scene. A few moments later, I returned to my steps. The mood was not the best - The Wall had moved to the sofa inside the house, while I stood facing Irish Spring and her other friend. Irish Spring was doing to me what Kajagoogoo had done to her...pressed my buttons. Kajagoogoo meanwhile was trying to stick it to The Wall inside on the sofa.

She finally got to me. "You're being a bitch."

Remember the part where I was in the right? On that comment...not so much.

Irish Spring stormed into the house, gathered her things, then stumbled down the steps towards her car, keys in her hand. She was planning on leaving drunk that night...while two of her friends were still at my house, including one straddling my friend on my sofa. I thought that might be a bad idea.

After she put her things in her trunk, I pulled the keys from her hand. We argued, she tried to get them back, but I wasn't letting her leave...and I wasn't going to win an argument with a drunk girlfriend. I ran inside, only to see Kajagoogoo doing a dismount equal to the gold medal gymnastics routine from the '92 Olympics. (We are in our 40s, after all) I hid Irish Spring's keys, then walked down the steps and out the door past an unconscious The Wall. The rest of my friends were sitting on the steps, including a drunk, angry girlfriend.

"Good night all."

"You're going to BED??!!" "Well, I'm not going to win an argument with you tonight, am I?"

I wasn't. I went to bed. A little while later, Irish Spring came into my room, still angry but not willing to walk out on me. She came to bed, did her "I'm not pleased with you so I'm going to sigh heavily" routine.

I fell asleep.

The next morning, we admitted our wrongs. I'd like to think I was more right, but I did call her a bitch. To make up for it, I made her breakfast.

On her part, showing that she can admit she took things a little too seriously, she'll occasionally point at my chest. "What's that on your chest?"

I still haven't learned.

Top Songs, July 23rd 2011

2011-07-17T18:30:00.000-07:00

1. The Raveonettes - Recharge & Revolt
2. Adele - Rolling in the Deep
3. Eastern Conference Champions - Atlas
4. Darwin Deez - Up in the Clouds
5. Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. - Morning Thought
6. Foster the People - Pumped Up Kicks (Irish Spring is making me play this song, which is why it returns to my Top 30. Check here for its original inclusion.)
7. Friendly Fires - Blue Cassette
8. Radical Dads - Walking Wires
9. The Thermals - When We Were Alive
10. Niki & The Dove - The Fox
11. Bon Iver - Calgary
12. Rogue Wave - Good Morning
13. Best Coast - Gone Again
14. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Same Mistake
15. Boots Electric - Boots Electric Theme
16. Foster the People - Warrant
17. CSS - Hits Me Like a Rock
18. We Were Promised Jetpacks - It's Thunder and It's Lightning
19. The Decemberists -Wanting Comes in Waves
20. Beady Eye - Wind Up Dream
21. Tallest Man on Earth - Weather of a Killing Kind
22. Cage the Elephant - Around My Head
23. VHS or Beta - I Found a Reason
24. Arctic Monkeys - Catapault
25. David Bazan - Wolves at the Door
26. British Sea Power - Living is so Easy
27. Does it Offend You, Yeah? - Wrong Time, Wrong Planet
28. Darwin Deez - Radar Detector
29. Young Galaxy - Cover Your Tracks
30. Fleet Foxes - Grown Ocean
31. The View - Grace
32. Get Up Kids - Pararelevant
33. The Vaccines - All in White
34. Eastern Conference Champions - Bull in the Wind
35. War on Drugs - Baby Missiles

Concert Review: Darwin Deez

2011-07-13T07:52:00.000-07:00

@ Johnny Brendas 7/12/11

Last night I was asked by a regular at the local bar what I didn't like about my current girlfriend, Irish Spring. Irish Spring answered for me, before I even got a chance to be diplomatic. "He hates my music."

It's true - country music is horrible, as I've outlined in this blog before. While I don't want to change Irish Spring, I would like to expand her horizons when it comes to music, and last night was the first in what I hope will be a series of successful moves. Darwin Deez came to Johnny Brendas, and they put on a show that even my girlfriend, who didn't know their music, loved.

The opening band was nondescript, except for the fact that the lead singer had a terrible voice. I'm not one to judge as I can not sing, but I noticed. Irish Spring (who is vocally trained) winced through a few songs. The one thing that made Caged Animals stand out was that their guitarist was dressed like Fred Flintstone. After their set was done, we moved down front and center for the main attraction. And they didn't disappoint.

A few things about the band: Darwin Smith is the lead singer and a complete goofball. He wore short shorts, his hair is from another planet, which he attempts to coral with the thinnest headband seen since Olivia Newton-John. The other band members fit right in with that theme. When they came on stage, they did a dance/pose number to the Star Trek theme, then jumped into their newest single, "Up in the Clouds". Throughout the night, it was obvious they enjoyed their time onstage. Every two or three songs the four member band would drop their instruments, and perform a (barely) choreographed dance routine - something ridiculous, something outrageous, something fun. Earth, Wind & Fire was the basis of the first one; the others a mix of various songs including "Wannabe" from the Spice Girls. It was highly entertaining, but the best part was when Darwin "Deez" rapped. It was catchy, it was light, and his lyrics/voice reminded me of Eminem when he was funny. The rest of the band posed in "gangster" poses while he wrapped about pop culture.

As for the songs they played, Darwin Deez made mistakes, but they didn't really care. The lead guitarist danced like he was having a seizure, but I think that was a part of the act...I hope. Darwin played a song out of order, and the rest of the band just went with it. Sometimes the guitars were too soft, other times too loud. At one point I don't even think a guitar was plugged in. It didn't matter.

Darwin Deez are good musicians, but when they put down their instruments and strut around stage to Enya's "Orinoco Flow", it is obvious they are entertainers first, and even with the mistakes within the songs, they never failed to entertain.

Halfway through the concert, Irish Spring turned to me. "I'm really having a good time!", even while the girl in front of her was bumping into the two of us every twenty seconds.

It was all I could hope for as an introduction to alternative rock concerts.

Setlist:

1. Up In The Clouds
2. Suicide Song
3. DNA
4. Deep Sea Divers
5. Bed Space / You Can Call Me Al
6. The City
7. Rap Interlude
8. The Bomb Song
9. Bad Day
10. The Coma Song
11. Radar Detector

The Ski Trip

2011-07-09T14:05:00.000-07:00

The first year I was in college, I met another freshman named Da Schwensen. Da Schwensen's family was wealthy, and they owned a cabin near Hunter Mountain in the Catskills, probably the best ski slope on the East Coast outside of Vermont. He invited a few of us the first weekend of the spring semester that year, and it became a yearly pilgrimage. We would leave school after class on Thursday, drink Thursday night and ski Friday. Friday night was our big party night, after which the serious skiers would head back to the mountain the following day. The majority of us (a group that peaked at around twenty people some years) didn't feel like dealing with the large weekend crowds (and higher prices), so we stayed at the cabin and hung out. We would return back to school Sunday night.

This tradition lasted well beyond our school years, for close to twenty years. Not surprisingly, a lot of memories were made. There was the time the passed out guy at the bar bought everyone rounds and rounds with the pile of money to the side of his drooling head. Or the time Swinger led the crew to the club, announcing "I'm the designated driver, whoever wants to go come with me!", only to return a few hours later drunk as hell, vomiting, while everyone else was completely sober. The time I was told to "pick up some girls" since I wasn't skiing, and so I did...

My favorite story took place about ten years ago, about twelve years after Da Schwensen and I had graduated. Swinger went along, as did The Ginger, a friend of mine who lived in London but was originally from England. A number of other friends from school went, and friends of friends. We arrived Thursday morning, skied Friday, then went out Friday night. On Saturday morning, four of us: The Ginger, myself and two others decided it would be a good idea to head into town and grab breakfast at The Last Chance Antique and Cheese Shop in downtown Tannersville. At that time, it was just that: an antique and cheese shop, with a little cafe down some steps to the right of the shop. It was known for having some decent breakfast options, which were even more decent being the cabin we were in had nothing to eat, save some peanut butter and jelly. A couple of the serious skiers were going to grab food on the mountain; those not going into town asked us to pick up some bread across the street at the local Acme to utilize the PB & J. Around 9 am, we drove into town.

After a short wait, the four of us were sat in the greenhoused styled cafe. We were along the outside wall away from the antique/cheese shop, down a few steps. We had a great waitress, friendly and outgoing. We didn't wait, and ordered a series of omelets and pancakes to satisfy our hunger. After writing them down, she asked if we wanted anything to drink. The first person ordered an OJ, then our waitress' eyes turned towards Kor-el. The Last Chance cafe had alcoholic drinks on the menu, so they had a liquor license. Kor-el asked our waitress if they were serving so early on a Saturday morning. They were. "Then I'll have a Guinness.", then looked around our table to challenge our manhood, grinning with a Charles Manson styled look.

The ante had been raised.

The OJ order was rescinded, and quickly replaced by a Guinness as well...then a third. I'm not one to back down from a challenge, and the first of our beers were consumed around 9:30 that morning. Our second round was consumed at around ten, and then I skipped to scotch by 11. I'm pretty sure the waitress knew she needed to get rid of us, and so told us she needed to close out the check, and mentioned that in the antique/cheese shop proper was an actual bar. We had been in the cafe a number of times, but none of us had noticed it. The scouting report from Kor-el suggested there was - next to the cheese deli was a well-worn varnished bar. There were four barstools at the bar, and none were occupied. We settled our bill, then walked up the steps into the shop. We sat at the bar, and rang the bell on the left side of the bar: RING FOR SERVICE. A bartender arrived to deliver us beer menus.

We had entered heaven. There were over 270 beers on the menu. We accepted the challenge.

The Last Chance Antique and Cheese Shop did not have all the beers on the menu, but there were enough varieties to entice us to orbit the Earth via alcohol. Brazilian Xingu, Samuel Smith from England, Sapporo from Japan, each sampled by the four of us. In the process, we lost track of time. The owner of the shop joined the bartender, and asked us if we wanted to try an illegal beer. By this point, we were all in.

It wasn't "illegal" as if made with hallucinogenic ingredients, but the owner had received a case of it without it going through customs, and therefore, illegal to sell in the States. He had a case.

We drank a case.

Near the end of the Satan Beer case, we heard a voice from behind us. "Hey, thanks for the bread." Behind us was everyone who hadn't come with us to the cafe: the skiers, the poor, and the lazy from our cabin. They insulted us, ridiculed us, but it didn't matter: Satan was warming our hearts and flowing through our veins. We laughed and attempted to explain how we had accomplished sailing around the world four or five times. They weren't having it. Armed with loaves of bread, they left us at the Last Chance Antique and Cheese Shop Bar. Without them, we couldn't get home - too much alcohol had been imbibed. Around 9 pm, we decided to grab some dinner to balance our the twelve hours of drinking. We stumbled back down the steps, back to our favorite table, and ordered more food. I had the chicken pot pie.

1 Chicken Pot Pie does not cancel out the effects of a case of Satan.

At some point, one of the guys (I believe it was Kor-el, for whom Satan Beer may have been named) offended our waitress, and we were forced to leave. We returned to the bar, only to see the bartender was gone and the light behind the bar. We rang the bell, but to no avail. We were unwanted in The Last Chance.

We drove back to the cabin. I'm pretty sure it was a group effort, as none of us was singularly sober to handle the duties themselves. We overcame the ten minute drive, and the subsequent hangover the next day. From that day on until the end of our skiing tradition, a few of us always stopped at The Smallest Bar in The Last Chance Antique and Cheese Shop.

These days, there is a bar next door to the shop. I'm pretty sure the selection is as varied as it was ten years ago, and the cafe still cooks up a great meal. But I wouldn't be surprised if they kept the regulars of the bar out of the Antique and Cheese Shop.

Famous People

2011-07-03T08:46:00.001-07:00

On Wednesday, Irish Spring and I came back from a great dinner with The Eraser and her husband, when we decided to stop on my front porch for a nightcap. We parked the car, and glanced across the street to the bar I work at on Saturdays. "Maybe we should stop in and say hi." Irish Spring said, and so we did.

Not thirty seconds later, Danny DeVito walked in with Dee from Always Sunny In Philadelphia, along a number of stage crew people. A few things of note here:

1. Danny DeVito is short. I mean, SHORT. I'm not sure I ever realized how short. Irish Spring is short...and she towered over him.
2. Big Jay is BIG. Big Jay I think was his personal guard, and he sat next to Irish Spring and I at the bar. Irish Spring can get a mime to speak, so I wasn't surprised when the two of them were engaged in conversation not two minutes after he sat down next to us. He warmed up to her, and when the bartender asked to take a picture with DeVito, Big Jay did what he could. It happened:

3. The bartender was flustered with famous people being in the bar, and was running scatter shot trying to take care of the Hollywood crowd. Irish Spring took control over the situation - she leaned over the bar, took a bottle of wine and poured two ENORMOUS glasses for Dee and her friend. "I think I like you!" Dee said with a smile on her face.

4. The owner of the bar promised them free drinks. That didn't happen...but I'm not surprised.

5. They were called back to the set a few minutes later, and they were gone. Just another night at the bar.

A day later, I was assigned to President Obama's fund raising event in Philadelphia. At first, I was excited. After all, I was "hand-picked" to work the event. But I learned a few things that night.

1. The Secret Service is the shit. They were very efficient, effective, and I can't imagine any of those Hollywood movies where the villain avoids detection working. I was told to bring a passport (as all the staff were), but I never got closer to him than standing in the living room and seeing him walk from the marquis out to the motorcade when he left. Secret Service herded the staff around like we were cattle, and we were packed into a room like Nazi trains for forty-five minutes waiting to finish his speech.

2. I've become disillusioned with our political system. For anyone who says our political parties aren't about money, I retort: you're full of shit. If I had the power, I would sue Republicans and Democrats under anti-trust laws. There is money to be made, and they do. Each attendee paid $10,000...and they weren't paying for the lobster salad or filet mignon. That money only got them in the door - if they wanted a picture with the President, or alone time to discuss whatever was on their mind, they had to fork over more...some said close to $35,000. When all was said and done, Obama was able to raise over $2 million on that day alone. To which I ask: how much was spent on security? Do the Democrats have to reimburse our government for the extra security and transportation needed for one of these events? And if anyone doubted that this entire event was about the money (he gave a speech about trimming the deficit, but whatever), after he had left and we were cleaning the place, two accountants/henchmen walked by, one after the other. "Got the money?" the first asked. "Check!" said the other as they walked quickly past us, through the house and into the waiting SUV.

3. It doesn't matter what you're background is, with money you have access to the president. The host of the event had a large picture of the Republican National Convention on the wall near the stairs to his basement, and other Republican insignia around the house. People who play in Washington don't get behind a horse in hopes they win; they bet on both...and somehow come out on top. In addition, there was a slum landlord in attendance, about whom it has been suggested is bi-polar. The man is a complete asshole, or the nicest individual ever (usually the former). He has government contracts which he then backed out of, and unfortunately for the government, hasn't been forced to follow through on his promises. But hell, if one can buy a meeting with a President using the money earned illegally acquiring these properties, why do they need to follow laws?

4. This past semester I read Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson. It's a brilliant book that argues that nations are a product of modernity. In doing so, he suggests that they are artificially constructed and not historically based. There is a lot of validity to this - for instance, what do I really have in common with someone who lives in Little Rock, Arkansas?

I don't remember if Anderson makes this argument, so I will. The modern concept of nation began around two hundred years ago, and with the changing economic world, it is becoming outdated. Today, countries aren't very self-reliant, and in fact many of them aren't successful. Some countries' labor force is inefficient - it is too small, and therefore has some citizens doing work that elsewhere in the world it is being done better.

But I'm getting off the track.

The United States is large enough in many ways to still be considered a nation, but still needs the help internationally with some issues (re: global warming, BP oil spill). Instead, what has become outdated is the construction of our government.

Our Constitution was ratified in 1789. It is the oldest Constitution still in use today (England does not have a Constitution, but if one were to compare the style of Britain's government between 1789 and 2011, they would see it has gone through greater change than ours...not to say theirs is any less efficient). Our Constitution has 26 or 27 ratified amendments - almost none of which have changed the way our country is governed.

Obama was talking about the reduction of our deficit. Republicans and Democrats are working on an agreement...yet many of the things that could be done to reduce the deficit aren't even being discussed. Why? Because the Congressmen and Senators voting on these issues are worried about their own constituents, their own re-election, and more pressing issues to their localized politics than the need of a "country" called "The United States of America". I'm a Congressman from Alaska, where the largest zinc mine in the United States is. Committees in Washington DC have recommended we could reduce money spent on our coinage by eliminating the use of zinc and nickel in our pennies and nickels. But my state makes a LOT of money from zinc, and a lot of people earn their well-being from that mine.

What is more important to me: the well-being of Alaskans, or some far off (and abstract) issue such as a national debt?

Worse, the Congressman from Alaska represents the whole state. Most Congressmen represent a much small area, albeit about the same population. Each has their own agendas, their own worries, and if one were tackle the national deficit properly, each of those 435 Congressmen and 100 Senators would find something in the final proposal offensive to their support.

The national deficit is something that needs to be decided by nationally elected officials. And here's the problem:

We only have one...our President, and he can't do anything without these locally-elected officials. So, in order to lower the deficit, they ask the same questions the accountants asked on the way out of that fundraiser I worked.

Got the money??

Too often, they do.

Economic Lessons

2011-07-01T08:20:00.001-07:00

I was having a conversation with one of the regulars at Krupa's last night, and I discussed how I worked the Obama fundraiser last night (which I WILL be posting, but later). The four of us (IBS, The Greatest, Casper and I) were discussing various things related to the President, and the economy, when Casper made this statement:

"Dishwashing isn't worth more than minimum wage."

I cringed, and I realized how little Americans understand about economic law. This might be the root of our problems in the current situation our nation finds itself.

In Casper's mind, dishwashing is a menial job, and therefore shouldn't be paid more than minimum wage. Helping to reinforce this image, companies tend to hire illegal immigrants to do those jobs at rates Americans would not be willing to do. And therein lay the economic lesson of the day:

The value of any job is what the employer and employee agree to as a wage.

It's that simple, and if illegal immigrants weren't in our country, and Americans were to work those jobs, I imagine they would have to pay more to get those things done. Then, dishwashing wouldn't be a minimum wage paying job.

Casper disagreed, then argued concerning how it would affect the economy if companies were forced to pay higher wages for that job to be completed. Would the prices on menus be higher? No doubt. So less people would eat out, thereby causing higher unemployment.

I'm not sure this would have a great ripple effect, but I believe the other effect would be as important (or limited): if Americans continued to consider that a menial job, the wages for other jobs would rise as well.

But Americans are conditioned to think that some jobs are below them, and therefore should be done by people from Third World countries for them. Unfortunately, that is a bad view to take, especially with the direction our nation is going. It could be solved to an extent, by merely following the same economic law I mentioned earlier (which I have written about before):

*If one wishes to eliminate a problem, one needs to reduce demand. If demand goes away, supply will automatically shrink.

Our country spends billions and billions on the drug war, but can't understand why it hasn't been successful. The reason is simple: there is still a demand for drugs in our nation.

Relating back to illegal immigration - if we wanted to eliminate it, our government should not be punishing the immigrants: they come from shitty lives, with little to lose, and want to do a little better for themselves and their families. Who among doesn't want the same? Yet the companies that hire/employ them merely get a slap on the wrist. Here's what we should do:

1. For every illegal person employed by a company, they are fined $100,000.
2. The whistleblower who turns in the company will get half the fine.

Within weeks, we would have no illegal immigration. Jobs previously not filled by Americans would be, and we could then understand the TRUE value of these menial jobs.

Would the economy be turned upside down? Absolutely...but I think it might turn out better for our country than those who never took an economic class suggest.

Woman Intuition

2011-06-28T15:44:00.000-07:00

Women have this innate ability to sense things. It's pretty impressive, except when one is the subject of it. Back in 1999, I was.

At the time, I was dating a girl I met a charity event. She was there with friends, but made a point to come and hang out with my friends. At the end of the night, she and I left to go to Five Spot, which used to be a great swing/salsa club located in Old City. From there, we began to date, and I invited her to the Bahamas for Y2K - a great place to lounge if the world was coming to an end, as was suggested. In fact, it's a good place to visit no matter what the dire status of our planet. Just before we left, The Mayor and his wife (with whom we were going to Nassau) had a Driest Martini Party Ever. It began at 10 am, and offered breakfast, along with Ketel One from the freezer.

There was no vermouth, or olive juice. On the outside of the martini glasses, etched into the glass, were olives. That was as close as any than Ketel One came to the glass.

My girlfriend and I had been there for about an hour when Triathlon showed up. Triathlon and I had that history, and things were a bit strained between the two of us. An hour into drinking, hanging with friends, however, I thought I did a really good job of acting like nothing had happened. I introduced my girlfriend to her, bantered with everyone, and laughed and joked until we left around 2 pm. About an hour before we left, however, I noticed my girlfriend had grown quiet. I didn't ask what had happened.

We went outside to leave, and I unlocked her door and walked around to the drivers' side. She didn't get in the car, and rather stared at me. I stopped when I got to my side. "What's up?"

"You fucked her, didn't you?"

I was stunned. "Who?"

"You know who. Triathlon."

I'm bad at lying, and worse at hiding the truth. At that point, it was written on my face. "Umm..." giving the guilt away immediately. "How the hell did you find out? Did she tell you?" (Mind you, this had happened over two years earlier, and only happened once.)

"I could just...TELL." She got into the car and slammed her door shut. I drove the two of us home in silence, the wheels in my mind churning trying to figure out what clues I had given away during our time at The Driest Martini Party Ever.

Needless to say, my girlfriend didn't fuck me that day.

It was the first time I really women have this ability to read situations, me, and other women. I've never been able to explain it, nor have I ever been able to hide my feelings from this ability.

Maybe it's why I'm still single. Maybe if I could hide my inner feelings/thoughts, I would be married, with a casual affair or two on the side. But I can't...and so I'm still single.

Until I marry someone with a full commitment, and I don't care if she can read my mind.

Nickname for the Girlfriend

2011-06-24T06:50:00.001-07:00

In order to protect the not-so-innocent, I tend to give nicknames for those people in my life and in my stories. They are not the nicknames of these people in real life, and rarely do they know what I call them, but I do take a lot of pride in some of the names I've come up with. For instance, I went on a date with a girl one time who had a lot of difficulty with directions - and therefore, I called her Tom Tom.

Yet sometimes I struggle with a monicker, like I have with my girlfriend. She read it, and was unhappy with it (very unoriginal), and it was a fair point:

1. I didn't put much time into it, and
2. I couldn't think of anything that stuck out to suggest a better one.

Yet it was there in front of me the whole time.

The first night she stayed over, I made sure everything was right. I brushed my teeth, took a shower, straightened the bedroom (as best I could) in an effort to impress her. When we settled in that night, she cuddled. Her head nestled into my left armpit, and her leg flung across mine. As she adjusted herself to get comfortable, she suddenly stopped.

"Are you wearing Irish Spring deodorant??"

I was. I asked her how she could possibly tell the exact scent of a man's deodorant. She giggled.

"My dad wears Irish Spring deodorant..."

So much for any sexual overtures that evening. I asked her if she wanted me to change my deodorant, because the last thing any boyfriend wants to do in bed is remind the woman of her father (insert West Virginia/Alabama joke here). She said it was fine, and that it would relax her. It did - she slept like a baby. And I still wear it, because she loves the smell (insert same West Virginia/Alabama joke).

For the first time in a long time, she made my heart feel alive. The death of winter is over, my time in mourning is finished. And from this day forth, I christen her Irish Spring. For that funny reason, but also because my heart blooms again.

Top Songs, June 23 2011

2011-06-23T09:52:00.000-07:00

1. Does it Offend You, Yeah? - Wrong Time, Wrong Planet
2. Young Galaxy - Cover Your Tracks
3. Darwin Deez - Radar Detector
4. Lykke Li - I Follow Rivers
5. Foster the People - Warrant
6. Fleet Foxes - Grown Ocean
7. Coldplay - Every Teardrop is a Waterfall
8. Starfucker - Mystery Cloud
9. Yuck - The Wall
10. Adele - Rolling in the Deep
11. Darwin Deez - Up in the Clouds
12. Cults - Abducted
13. The Raveonettes - Recharge and Revolt
14. Here We Go Magic - Backward Time
15. Those Darlins - Be Your Bro
16. The Dig - You're Already Gone
17. Eastern Conference Champions - Atlas
18. The Strokes - Taken for a Fool
19. Death Cab For Cutie - Doors Unlocked and Open
20. Arcade Fire (feat. David Byrne) - Speaking in Tongues
21. Bon Iver - Calgary
22. Beastie Boys - Make Some Noise
23. Friendly Fires - Blue Cassette
24. The War on Drugs - Baby Missiles
25. Taking Back Sunday - Faith
26. Shilpa Ray & Her Happy Hookers - Heaven in Stereo
27. Bright Eyes - Triple Spiral
28. East Hundred - Fools, Kings and Queens
29. Beach Fossils - Fall Right In
30. Yuck - Operation

Love

2011-06-21T20:54:00.001-07:00

My girlfriend told me she loved me tonight. She was drunk, but I'll take what I can get :)

Baseball Game

2011-06-21T08:29:00.000-07:00

I was reminded of this story as friends and I compared stories from attending various baseball games. I've been to hundreds of games - but I've only had interaction with the players on the field once...and it was brilliant.

In 1992, there were about ten of us that went to Veterans' Stadium in Philadelphia to attend a game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Phillies. It was an afternoon game, and if we didn't tailgate before the game (I can't remember), it didn't take long for us to catch up.

We sat in the outfield, in one of the sections that abutted the center field wall, somewhere between center and left field...but closer to center. Lenny Dykstra was the center fielder for the Phillies that day, and Mariano Duncan was in left. Andy Van Slyke was the center fielder for the Pirates. Almost immediately, I began to yell at the players on the field. Dykstra was fidgety - constantly slapping his glove on his left leg, after which he would shake his left leg in the air to the side. Tobacco juice ran down his chin onto his jersey from the enormous piece of chew in his cheek. Every inning, after he was finished throwing the ball back and forth with Mariano, I would yell, "Shake a leg, Lenny, shake a leg!" He didn't do it for me, he did it all the time...but after he did, I would yell, "Thank you!!!" in a deep baritone voice. I have no idea why. The people in our section got a kick out of it. That just encouraged me to antagonize more of the baseball players.

I started on Van Slyke a few innings later. There was a pitcher on his team who had come up through the Milwaukee Brewers farm system, and the year before I had worked as a camp counselor with a guy who had done so as well. He told me this pitcher used to fuck any female groupie of the minor league club, and as a result contracted herpes. Around the third inning, I started asking Andy if he picked up herpes from fucking this pitcher. By the sixth inning, Andy had had enough. He turned to me, and flipped me off.

Our section cheered.

Someone told me something to say to Mariano in left field in Spanish, and I got his attention, and he laughed. We were having a great time, fueled on by the knowledge that the pro ball players heard us, and were responding. Then, the seventh inning stretch.

This is before they used to cut off alcohol sales around this time. This is before they would play "America the Beautiful", and all the focus was on "Take Me Out to the Ballpark". A few years earlier, I had learned a different version:

Take it out at the ballpark,
Swing it around at the crowd!
Stick it in your peanuts and Cracker Jack,
I don't care if you give it a whack
Cause it's Beat Your Meat at the ballpark...
If you don't cum it's a shame!
Cause it's ONE, TWO, THREE strokes you're out
At the Old Ball Game!!

Completely inappropriate. Mothers were covering their childrens' ears. My friends roared with laughter, then joined in when the stadium organ player (heh heh...he said ORGAN) played it again. Fathers laughed, and we ordered more beer.

Nails (Dykstra) returned to the field at the top of the eighth inning. I started on him again. "Shake a leg, Lenny...shake a leg." He did so. "Thank you." I knew he had to hear me by this time.

"Pick your nose, Lenny. Pick your nose." Our section grew quiet, waiting for a reaction from our center fielder. Lenny looked to his left, then to his right, trying to spot where the cameras were. He then turned to his right, facing us, with the glove on his left hand shielding his face from the rest of the ballpark. With his right index finger, he reached deeply into his nostril, dug, pulled out, and flicked in our direction.

The entire section cheered. In many ways, it was the coolest thing that had ever happened to me.

Country Music

2011-06-18T15:20:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wonder about the household I grew up in as a kid. I had so little in common with the rest of the family that at times it wouldn't surprise me had I been adopted. Or had a surprise father.

My family listened to shit music. Mommie Dearest listened to Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow, and used to take us roller skating at one of those places that still used an organ player for that "Muzak" feel, and my father? Let's just say that he thought Abracadabra by The Steve Miller Band was the best song made after the mid-60s.

My brother listened to Q-102 in Philadelphia (think: Stevie B) and wore Cavariccis. My stepbrother listened to country often enough that he wound up hooking up with a female DJ for the local country station.

I never liked country music. Ever. I mean, there were a few songs I thought tolerable, such as Marshall Crenshaw's "Someday Someway". I'm not sure country music fans would consider it country. Or the Gin Blossom's "Cheatin" - more country, but from an alt rock band.

These days, country fans I know try and defend country music, saying it is more "pop" country than country. This does nothing to make me like it, as I can't stand "pop" music either. Recently I was asked what I didn't like about it, and to be fair, I hadn't given it much thought. But I think too much, and I've finally come up with a number of reasons.

1. The twang.
2. Lack of a strong beat/bass line
3. Lyrics have no depth.
4. People who listen to country music have no depth (completely stereotyping here, bare with me)
5. Represents Middle America - I have more in common with Arabs than I do with this section of the United States
6. Sounds like mass produced music.
7. Reminds me of growing up in a household I wasn't happy in.

The woman I'm dating now (who shall remain nameless) says that I need to listen to it, and I'll start to like it. As she said, "I never listened to it until my ex-boyfriend turned me on to it."

To which I respond: why can't this boyfriend turn you away from country music and onto alternative rock?

Another night at Krupa's

2011-06-12T09:46:00.000-07:00

A number of months ago, I stopped in at Krupa's around 9:30 on a Friday night. The bar wasn't packed, but a friend of mine Wheels was sitting at the end of the bar. Wheels is a big Irish lad, married with a baby, so I was pleasantly surprised to see him at the bar. He told me his wife and daughter were asleep, so as his wife was retiring to the bedroom, he told her he was going to stop at the neighborhood bar for a beer, and she said fine. He left his phone on the living room coffee table and wandered down.

That was over two hours earlier. Wheels was drunk...like I said, Irish, so the two tend to go hand in hand.

For the next hour or so, Wheels and I (among others, like Momma's Boy) had beers and shots, shots and beers. Wheels is a funny guy, so our conversations were resulting in a lot of laughter. No thought was given to a wife, or a young daughter. Wheels smokes, so we stepped outside to continue our conversation as he lit up. He faced the street corner, while I looked up 27th street, where I spotted a woman approaching, dressed in pajamas. It was his wife. By the time he realized she was walking up the street, she was in his face.

"What do you think you're doing? You told me you were coming out for A BEER. That was three hours ago? I tried calling your phone, only to find out you left it at home." She was getting louder. "How did I know you were okay? What if something happened at home? What if something happened to you??!!" She turned and stormed the two blocks back to their house. The regulars on the street corner stood in silence, shocked at what we had witnessed. In fact, Wheel's wife was so loud, the people in the bar were quiet in respect for her as well. Finally, I broke the silence. "You wanna do a shot?"

Wheels finished the last drag on his cigarette, tossed it into the street, then smiled. "Yeah. I'm already in the shit, might as well go out with a bang." The next thirty minutes we joked about him sleeping on the sofa (where he did), and wondering what harm could come in having a few more drinks.

Hell, he was Irish.

Last Night at Krupa's

2011-06-11T14:03:00.000-07:00

Krupa's is one of the best dive bars in Philadelphia, which I think one could tell if they read any of my stories about it. Last night, there was a first.

I was there after working at the Art Museum, and about six of my co-workers joined me. Already there were a couple of regulars: Yoda, IBS and her friend Casper, Close Talker, Rolling Stone and others. As the night went on, my co-workers went home, and so did much of the bar. By 12:30, there were only five of us: Senor Tulum, Close Talker, Rolling Stone, myself and Starbuck. The door swung open, and then there were six of us.

She was about 5'5", brunette hair, olive skin, and brown eyes. Her hair was wet, and she wore a retro Phillies T-shirt. She was in bare feet, and I couldn't see what shorts she was wearing. She ran up to the bar, babbling at The Greatest (our bartender). He couldn't understand what she was saying, so she climbed up on the stool, then spun around and sat her ass on the bar. It was her ass, because the Phillies T-shirt rode up. There was nothing underneath. Senor Tulum spun to me and muttered, "do you see that??!!" as if I wasn't aware of what was happening in front of me. I was at the corner of the bar next to Starbuck, facing the rest of bar. This woman's ass was planted directly in front of the taps, about fifteen feet away from where I sat. My stool was aimed directly at this nubile young woman's ass. The Greatest was trying to be polite and remove her from the cool metal surface in front of the taps...I'm sure there's some legal ramifications if a woman's ass is planted on a bar. She continued to babble, and she giggled at The Greatest, waiving her head and wet hair in his direction. I had to ask.

"Excuse me, why is your hair wet?"

It hadn't rained all night. Had she gone swimming? If so, where was her bathing suit? If she went skinny dipping, was this a normal occurrence? I mean, there are situations where I could find myself other than Krupa's on a Friday night.

I think she heard a voice, but never looked at me. She continued to babble in a language that most closely resembled Hobbit. The Greatest walked from behind the bar, past Starbuck, myself, then Senor Tulum. He reached her as a woman walked in the bar. She used to be a regular, but since her breakup we've seen her less and less. Based on her actions, I think she knew the woman on the bar. The Greatest reached for the girl's hand, and pulled her down. She drifted like a light feather of the bar, and landed on her toes, and began taking off her shirt. The Greatest managed to prevent her from taking it all the way. She then fluttered out the door into the arms of her waiting friend. They went outside, at which point we broke into a detailed conversation over what happened.

From where I sat, I could see out the window, and I saw her in the middle of the street. She no had no clothes on. We ran outside.

For the next half hour or so, the bar was empty. We were all in the street, watching this girl run up and down the street avoiding attempts to corral her and her naked, young, firm body. When she disappeared down a side street, we began talking again about what the hell this girl was on to convince her running around 27th street with no clothes on was a good idea. Senor Tulum decided it was worth giving a closer look to, so he wandered down the street. Starbuck and I went back to my place.

I called Senor Tulum this morning to find out how the evening ended. He said she never did put her clothes back on, but had decided that swimming in the Schuylkill River would be a great idea. The Schuylkill is only about four blocks away from Krupa's, and she was in no great shape to go for a swim in a body of water that numerous people have died attempting to swim. Senor Tulum called 911.

He explained what was going on. They asked for a description of the woman. "She's the one with no clothes on!", shocked they didn't understand the description initially. I think the dispatcher patched the message on correctly to the police - they arrived within 30 seconds, and put her in the back of a police car.

Just one more story about the Best Bar in Philadelphia.

Sequel

2011-06-09T08:13:00.000-07:00

When I'm finished editing my manuscript, the final chapter will be me flying home from Australia to confront my issues, rather than running from them as I've done all my life. It leaves room for a follow-up...not that I intended it that way, but it seemed like the best way to end the book.

Since April of 2009, there have been a lot of stops and starts to my recovery. What I have noticed is that I really haven't done well being single. It seems like I've needed accompaniment from a woman. It's funny - for most of my life, I've loved being single, yet over the years I've become more accustomed to being in relationships, though I haven't always been fully committed to them, or necessarily wanted to remain in them.

Take for instance this year. I met a great girl at a holiday party at the end of last year. She was attending, I was bartending. She didn't like the people she was sitting with, so she spent much of her time hanging at the bar. I flirted; I through out some of the worst lines known to mankind...so bad, most of my co-workers had to leave the room to avoid laughing. She never flinched, so I got her number.

I had just broken up with Quiver. My reasons were numerous, but the most important one that I stressed was that I wanted to be single. And suddenly, I wasn't.

But I did want to be single. I wanted to be alone. I NEEDED to be alone. So while I dated Holiday Party, I did so by keeping her at arm's length. She didn't deserve it. Quiver didn't deserve me ending our relationship, just to witness me jumping into another one. Quiver and I kept in touch, and insisted on angrily calling Holiday Party another name.

I hurt Quiver. She didn't deserve to be hurt either.

So, over the last six months, I pulled away from Holiday Party, even though she put no restraints on me, and I kept in touch with Quiver because I cared for her as a person, and I never wanted to see her hurt.

This summer came, and suddenly I had the attention of not just Holiday Party and Quiver, but a number of other women as well. Those issues of commitment, and me not being happy with myself, all manifested in the way I flirted and attempted to keep each and every one interested in me.

Except Holiday Party.

Then I met someone. Suddenly, I don't care who knows about it (because when other women knew I was in a relationship, they wouldn't be interested). I don't care who's talking about it. All I know is I want her here with me, and I think about her when she's not.

I called Quiver today to let her know. She had a boyfriend lately, but it was more to keep her mind occupied while I was "being single". She cried, which she never does, and hung up on me. I deserved it.

I called Holiday Party last week to let her know. I've never been good at "break-ups", and I sure wasn't good at this one. I just wished I could have explained to her that I liked her - we could talk on the phone for hours, we could laugh and make fun of each other, and she accepted me as I was, but there was always something missing, and I was too chicken to say and too worried about being alone to do what was right. Holiday Party "unfriended" me from Facebook. I deserved it.

I haven't felt this way about anyone in a long, long time. I hope I deserve it.

Top Songs, June 7 2011

2011-06-07T13:14:00.000-07:00

1. Yuck - The Wall
2. Young Galaxy - Cover Your Tracks
3. Yuck - Operation
4. Adele - Rolling in the Deep
5. Beach Fossils - Fall Right In
6. The Dig - You're Already Gone
7. Foster the People - Warrant
8. The Get Up Kids - Shatter Your Lungs
9. Best Coast - Crazy For You
10. The Raveonettes - Recharge and Revolt
11. Starfucker - Mystery Cloud
12. The Postelles - 1 2 3 Stop
13. Foster the People - Helena Beat
14. Here We Go Magic - Backwards Time
15. Does it Offend You, Yeah? - Wrong Time Wrong Planet
16. TV on the Radio - No Future Shock
17. Lykke Li - I Follow Rivers
18. The Cars - Sad Song
19. Death Cab For Cutie - Doors Unlocked and Open
20. Cold Cave - Villains of the Moon
21. The Decemberists - January Hymn
22. The Thermals - Never Listen to Me
23. Cake - Mustache Man
24. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
25. The Beastie Boys - Make Some Noise
26. Man Man - Knuckle Down
27. Eastern Conference Champions - Atlas
28. Cold War Kids - Stop the Charades
29. Darwin Deez - Radar Detector
30. The Submarines - Birds

Death

2011-05-31T05:01:00.000-07:00

It is no surprise a person my age has seen someone die. By the time one reaches their 40s (an age I jokingly loathe to admit), they may have witnessed an older family member pass away in a hospital bed. They may have sat with them, held their hand, and had an opportunity to say their goodbyes. Maybe they weren't there directly, but woke up in the morning, only to see a loved one had passed in their sleep.

But has anyone been the cause of the death of another? Maybe it was a car crash. Maybe...oh hell, I can't think of another circumstance. But I am worried that I may become the cause of a person's suicide, or at least a contributing factor.

When I was in Australia, I was trying to pull my life together, and it took months. I returned home for the holidays in 2008, but I wasn't ready to return to reality quite yet. I was still a mess, and that was confirmed by some choices I made upon my return. But two days before I left Sydney, I went out with a group of friends from the cricket team I played for in Australia. We had drinks at the bar outside the Sydney Opera House, a tourist-y priced place that wasn't a bad place to spend an evening.

Bob Barker and his girlfriend were out with a bunch of her friends, and friends of those friends. I knew only Bob and his girlfriend, but in typical fashion, I hid my securities and plunged right in, getting to know quite a few of the people there. I also zeroed in on Erin Go Braugh-less, a voluptuous red-haired Australian woman who wore green. I don't remember what I said to trigger our conversation, but we wound up talking at length. When the party was breaking apart, Barker and some others had intentions of going to the Ice Bar, where patrons dress in Eskimo coats and drink $18 shots on a bar made of ice. I had little time for this; Erin Go Braugh-less was leaving.

I chased after her, and suggested we grab a taxi together. Both of us lived on the North Shore, I was only thinking of the economics.

Of course.

We wound up at a hotel a few minutes from her house. The next day, she rented an apartment for a day near where I lived, and we spent most of the day in bed again. Then, I flew back to the States.

In the seven weeks I was back in Philadelphia, I was miserable. I was depressed. And I still hadn't gotten over the causes for me fleeing my life in the first place. Not a week after I arrived, I bought yet another ticket for Sydney, but didn't have intentions of staying there this time. I just needed to finish what I started. In my mind, however, Erin Go Braugh-less was not one of those things. She had been a nice diversion from all the issues in my head, and we kept in touch while I was in Philadelphia - a great reminder of all that had been good during those three months I spent Down Under. Since I was a world away, I flirted. I said things that I didn't mean, but thought they were appropriate to say and thought nothing more of them.

Erin Go Braugh-less clung to them as if they were a lifeboat while she floated near the wreckage of the Titanic.

She had been dealt a harsh blow as well - a terrible breakup of a long-term relationship, and a family structure that offered little to no support. I shared with her my writing; I shared with her all of my issues. To me it was safe, to her it was getting close to someone.

On January 7th I returned to Sydney. I didn't tell her. I arrived Friday night, went out for a drink or four with Bob Barker, then we went back to his flat, where I was renting. The next morning, on the shoulders of Five-Hour Energy, I played in a cricket match and eased back into the life I had carved for myself in 2008. Two weeks later, during one of the lulls during the day, I called Erin. Through word of mouth, I thought it would only be a matter of time before she heard I was back in town, and I thought it best she heard it from me. We talked, got together, and went swimming. We wound up back at her place in bed, but the whole time my insides screamed I'm not ready. I'm not ready...and at no time did I realize what I was doing to this woman. Or care.

She lent me her copy of Eat, Pray, Love based on what she had read of my manuscript. She offered me advice, and she reached out to be a friend, lover, or whatever she could be to me. And the whole time I used it, used her, without realizing the ramifications of my actions. I knew she wanted to get closer, but I kept her at arms' length. Soon, that wasn't far enough, and I pushed her further and further away, all while her own life was falling apart as well. All the support she gave me I didn't give in return; I couldn't give her. About a month or two after I was back in Sydney, I stopped returning her calls. I didn't answer her e-mails. And I stopped thinking about her.

I knew she had plans to travel to Paris and work as a nanny. I thought that move may have been best for her, but I didn't keep in touch to know if she had chased her dream. I stopped writing my Australian blog, because she read it regularly, and I wanted to be as personal and truthful as possible...and I couldn't do that, knowing she was reading it. I started this one.

A few days ago, I got an e-mail from Erin.

"Is this still you?
I'm in Paris. I've been living here for two years now. I don't think I can stay past the end of august when my visa expires. I found that out this week.
My mum died last year. Last may.
She was diagnosed with stage four cancer. 4 weeks later she was dead.
I went home. I was going home for my besr friends wedding. I collapsed at the wedding because i had pneumonia.
I've been sick a lot too. Had a second knee reconstruction last august.
I watched a man die. I watched my friend lose her inner light because of it.
I have continued to smash my heart trying to get men who can't or won't love, to love me. Doesn't matter what i do, they don't love me enough to even want me around.
I'm broken and i don't know how to live this life i've been given. I'm scared of my mind. I've lost the person I used to be.
Ive never felt so alone.

Then, I thought of you.

I don't know how to respond, or if I can. But I know if I don't, I could be responsible.

And I don't think I could handle being responsible.

The Dinner Date

2011-05-26T06:48:00.001-07:00

In 1999, I spent most of the summer in Europe. The first part of the trip Big Boy and I wandered through France and Holland, then went to London to meet up with friends of mine. When Big Boy left, I stayed in London for a few days before heading north to hike Hadrian's Wall and visit Scotland with The Welshman.

While in London, I stayed with Filthy and his roommate in Islington, a young-ish section of London, with a number of good pubs, restaurants and night life. Needless to say, Filthy and I took advantage of it often, but one particular night we were on our way to the Tube Station when two girls drove up and asked us for directions. Filthy knew exactly where they needed to go, and intended on showing them. He hopped in the back seat. "I'll take you there."

That was a bit much for them, and they were very (VERY) hesitant to drive anywhere with this strange Englishman in the back seat, whom they merely asked directions. Then this American jumped in the car as well, and somehow they got past their feared and agreed to drive. We directed them where to go, we got a ride to the subway, and most importantly, we got their numbers. One of the girls was Irish and lived close enough, while the other was a friend visiting from New Zealand. Both were cute, and both agreed to come around to Filthy's place sometime in the near future for dinner. A phone call later, we planned it for the Sunday after I got back from northern England.

That Sunday arrived and saw a hungover Filthy and I hanging out in his living room watching The Matrix for the twelfth time, inspired to do nothing. His roommate was away; the flat was perfect for a quiet dinner for four. What did we do to get ready? Absolutely nothing. The dinner was scheduled for seven o'clock; at five we checked his cupboards to see what there was to serve.

Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

His fridge contained the following: a half stick of butter, a half bottle of wine, and dust.
The cabinets had even less. With two hours to spare, we went to the local Sainsbury's supermarket to purchase some supplies. With two hours to spare, we still had plenty of time. It was a ten-minute walk.

Sainsbury's was closed. It was Sunday evening, and they closed at 4. I began to worry. Filthy remained cool and collected, thinking for a Plan B (or Plan C) on the way back to his flat. Once we got there, he had an idea. He went through the menu lists he and his roommate had accumulated in the time they lived in Islington. He picked out a local Indian restaurant. "You like Indian?" Of course I do...but how will we fool the girls? "No worries." He called the girls to confirm their arrival. They asked if they needed to bring anything. "Bring some wine - we forgot to get to the shops to pick some more up."

We called the Indian restaurant at around 6 o'clock, and ordered four Tikki Masala dishes. We then went into his kitchen and began arranging things in such an order to make it look as if we had spent an afternoon working on the perfect dinner. Pots on the stove. Cutting board on the counter. Every single things he had in the cabinets and fridge were placed around the kitchen. Spice jars opened and sprinkled liberally.

At 6:40 the food arrived at the front door of the apartment building. We paid, then rushed upstairs to set everything up. The rice went into one pot, the chicken and sauce went into another. We splattered a bit of sauce on the counter, rinsed off one of the chicken pieces and rubbed it on the cutting board, then threw it in the pot with the others. Filthy spiced up the sauce with an additional bit of pepper...you know, to make it his own creation. With about five minutes to spare, our "work" was done. At seven o'clock sharp, the women arrived, two bottles of white wine in hand.

Dinner went off without a hitch. We finished off the bottle of wine Filthy had in his refrigerator, then moved into the dining room where we placed the pots of tikki masala on pot holders, very warm from being kept on simmer in Filthy's kitchen. We served the ladies, then served ourselves, then cracked open a bottle of wine and toasted the evening. The conversation was excellent, and soon he and I split the girls up for a more intimate get-to-know-each-other session. At some point, Filthy was showing his girl pictures of his travels, hung up around the apartment. The girl I was talking to asked about the dinner: "Marc, did you cook this yourself?" "I only cooked the rice." She turned to Filthy: "Filthy, did you make the dinner?!" "I did", he exclaimed. "Did I add too much pepper?" We talked food for a while, then spent the night talking about anything and everything while polishing off the last of the wine.

Filthy and I didn't get lucky that night. Maybe it was the lack of wine. Maybe it was my lack of "closing" skills. But one thing it wasn't: the Tikki Masala.

The Denshawai Incident

2011-05-25T10:54:00.001-07:00

It's taken me a number of years to approach getting a doctorate in history. There are a number of reasons for this:

1. Other priorities, which included (in no particular order):

partying
traveling
cricket
women

2. I was always interested in detailed aspects of history, but not in the people who liked them as well. As I told more than one person, "I would love to write a book on the history of paper, and how the knowledge of how to make it traveled from China to Europe. What I don't love is giving a talk about to the other three people who are just as interested." I'm not kidding.

But I've gotten my head around finishing my graduate degree, and am now only a paper away from a masters and applying to a school for my PhD. To that point, I needed to come up with a subject I could do that I would be interested in. That almost immediately eliminated the history of paper, because I don't speak/read the languages needed to cover that time period (Chinese, Arabic, etc.). But I was still interested in the Middle East, based on the two years I lived there. The first direction I looked was towards Damascus, but my professor/adviser suggested there too would be a paucity of material. "Syria was a French colony - the material you'll need with either be in French or Arabic. Are you fluent in either?"

I'm not. We both agreed that maybe Israel would be a better choice. At least, I agreed for about a month, when I had a meeting with another professor of mine, this one from the spring semester. "You're interested in the Middle East - you have to do something related the Arab or Persian worlds. If you do Israel, you have to go for a doctorate in Jewish Studies. Do you know Hebrew? Is there anything in your pedigree that would suggest to schools you're moving in that direction? Your resume will look bi-polar, and no one will want you. At least no good school."

He suggested I look towards Egypt, and specifically the period when it was ruled by the British Empire. Oh, and I needed to have a thirty page paper done on it by the end of the semester. All the other students in the class had been focused on their topics for a couple of years - I was on my third topic in two months, and didn't know anything about it. I was playing catchup to a bunch of PhD students, and I didn't think I could pull it off.

And maybe I still can't - the jury's still deliberating. But what I do know is that I've found a topic that no one has covered. I mean, no one. And more importantly, I gave a talk about it in class, and the others in class (and my professor) wound up interested in it. Maybe I won't have to talk to three people who are interested in it, but can discuss it with a larger audience and get them interested in it.

That's why I've had success in teaching. I've taught a subject to students that many found boring, and I gave it life. I taught with passion, I taught it in a way to make it interesting. And more than one of my students became history teachers in their own right. Others began to travel because of me. I can do it again.

But the difficulty level has been raised. The net below the trapeze swings has been removed. This time, I'm not teaching what others have learned, I'm going to become the person who knows the most about the subject...and that takes confidence, because others will try to show other vantage points, and other aspects that I didn't look at.

I am also starting from scratch.

I am covering The Denshawai Incident. Denshawai was a sleepy little village in the western part of the Nile Delta, about a third of the way towards Alexandria if one were traveling from Cairo. In 1906, five British officers left their camp and decided to go pigeon hunting at Denshawai. It was about ten kilometers from camp - the five left a sixth officer (a Lt. Hargreaves) in charge of camp (about seventy men) as they were marching from Cairo to Alexandria...about a three day trip in those days.

Major John Edward Pine-Coffin was the head officer, and he suggested this town. He had been in Egypt for two years, and had hunted there in the past. Every village in Egypt in these days had an omdeh, or headman. A message was sent to Denshawai's omdeh that a few officers wished to hunt. While they didn't hear back, there were carriages and a translator waiting for them when they left for the town on June 13th. They arrived at the town around 1 pm, and sent the Egyptian police officer to find the omdeh. They never saw the officer again - his testimony stated that the omdeh wasn't home, and so he went to have lunch with a friend of his. The officers encountered a few locals, who warned them not to hunt in Denshawai, as the villagers had been disturbed by them the year before. The locals spoke Arabic, and the translators for the British officers didn't consider the threat much of anything and therefore did not tell the officers about it.

An elderly gentleman did direct them to hunt far enough away from town so as not to cause any commotion. It wasn't far enough.

Three of the officers: Major Pine-Coffin, Captain Bull and Lieutenant Smithwick went to the north of the village, about 500 meters from the houses. The other two, Lieutenant Porter and Dr. Bostock went to the south of the village, about 100 meters from the threshing floors where the corn was shucked.

Lieutenant Porter got off about nine shots before the trouble began. A fire broke out in the threshing floor of a Mr. Mohammed Abdel Nebi Moazzin, and was put out in about five minutes. But Mr. Moazzin was not amused, and he confronted the officers. He was joined by thirty villagers, who seized the gun from Lieutenant Porter and surrounded he and Dr. Bostock. In the struggle for the gun (during which Porter attempted to unload the ammo, then put the safety catch on), the gun went off. For locals were injured by the shot, including the wife of the local iman who led the prayers at the mosque.

The officers to the north also encountered some locals. Captain Bull was prevented from shooting a pigeon by one of the villagers, and a party of nine told them the problems that were happening with their comrades. They rushed to Porter and Bostock's aid. The woman lay nearby, and the officers assumed she had been killed. Pine-Coffin took control of the situation - he ordered the officers to surrender their guns, and some other valuables. He then arrested Lieutenant Porter under the assumption that it was he who had shot the woman. They began to walk back towards the carriages and horses, prepared to leave the village.

Unfortunately, more and more villagers arrived, and they weren't in the mood to let the officers go. Some began to lob dry mud and bricks at the officers, and others swung at them with nabouts (a wooden club stuffed with lead). Pine-Coffin was hit in the head and knocked down, but recovered and managed to get into a carriage. The villagers refused to let them leave, so Pine-Coffin ordered Dr. Bostock and Captain Bull to run for camp and let the men know what was occurring. Both the men broke away and took off on a six-mile run, but Captain Bull wouldn't make it. He had been hit twice in the head with bricks, and blood streamed from a gash in his head and a nostril. About a mile and a half from camp, Captain Bull collapsed in the 100 degree heat. Bostock arrived in camp, and a patrol set out for Denshawai. Along the way, they found Captain Bull unconscious. They brought him back to camp, but he never regained consciousness. At around 7 pm, Captain Bull died.

Meanwhile, the three officers left behind were pulled from the carriages and were beaten mercilessly until a few of the village elders arrived and pulled them to safety. The elders gave the men water, surrounded them to keep the angry villagers away (which numbered almost five hundred by this point), and waited for the British army to arrive. Major Pine-Coffin has suffered a broken left arm, and Lieutenant Smithwick's nose was broken. All the men (including Dr. Bostock who was back at camp) also had numerous contusions from repeated blows of sticks and stones. All would receive a few days' medical attention.

This was not the first time locals had confronted members of the British army, nor would it be the last. But in this instance, the British government (with the "support" of the Khedive of Egypt) decided to use a little known decree passed over a decade earlier to prosecute the offending villagers.

The army took testimony from the officers, interviewed dozens of villagers as well as the Egyptians who accompanied the officers to Denshawai, and arrested over fifty villagers. But this was no ordinary trial: their guilt would be decided by five judges, three of which were British. There would be no grounds for appeal, and the sentences would be enforced the day after the end of the trial.

The defendants received consul from three Egyptian lawyers, but for some reason their defense was atrocious. In the end, the lawyers thanked the British for occupying Egypt, thanked God nothing worse had happened in Egypt during their stay, and made a few statements trying to show that the attack had not been premeditated. At the end of the three-day trial, the sentences were handed out:

Hassan Ali Mafouz, Youssef Hussein Selim, Said Issa Salin and Mohammed Darweesh Zahran were to be executed via hanging.
Two other received life imprisonment
One received fifteen years in prison
Six received seven years in prison
Three received one year, with fifty lashes by way of flogging
Five received fifty lashes

The day after the trial, on June 28th 1906, the floggings and hangings occurred in Denshawai. The gallows were roped off, surrounded by Egyptian police and the British army. A large number of Egyptians gathered to watch, while the locals were kept away, noticed only on the occasion when a large wailing went out from the women. As one man was hanged, he was left there to insure death while two men were flogged. One man hanged, two men flogged. When the sentences had been carried out, a strange silence settled on the village and the prisoners were marched away. The British doctor checked the bodies to make sure they were dead, and then the event was over.

But it wasn't. The stories of this event took on a life of their own. An Egyptian wrote a poem about it, "The Hanging of Zarhan" which was later turned into a movie. In it, Zarhan was the first to die, and gave a speech condemning the cruelty of the world. While it didn't happen like that, what did happen was that it united Egypt against the occupation. Until 1906, there were segments of the population in favor of the British: Coptic Christians, the upper classes, and even some of the fellaheen (poor villagers) were unaffected or received less of a tax burden then they had before. After 1906, however, that changed. One of the Egyptian judges, Boutros Ghali (the UN Secretariat's grandfather) was assassinated two years later by an Egyptian nationalist for his role in the event. A number of the lawyers involved (all urban Egyptians) were shunned. Some, such as Anwar Sadat, point to this event as the birth of modern Egyptian nationalism. Amazingly, during the recent peaceful protests against the Mubarak dictatorship a number of Egyptians referred to Denshawai.

Until I learn Arabic, I can only wonder why that was so.

The British officers themselves disappeared into history and the fabric of the British military. Pine-Coffin received a medical leave of absence for four months, and in 1908 was transferred to Mauritius where he served one year before retirement. The others I know little about, other than Captain Seymour-Clarke Bull. He died at age thirty, and was buried in the British cemetery in Cairo. His possessions, valued at about £2,300, were sent to his mother back in England.

So what do I want to know about Denshawai?

I want to know about those five officers - how they wound up in Egypt, in Denshawai on that fateful day, and where their careers took them after. Lieutenant Porter was 23 at the time, he would have been 31 at the onset of World War One. Did he serve?
I want to know about pigeons. I want to know their role with the Egyptian fellaheen, and pigeon-hunting as a sport among British officers.
I want to learn about the fellaheen themselves - what did they do for a living? What was life like for poor villagers at the turn of the century?
Why has their been intense hatred for the Egyptian police by their countrymen? It is evident even at this time.
Did this event change British foreign policy, or would they continue to make similar mistakes? (Lord Cromer, the governor of Egypt at this time, lost his position as a result of Denshawai, and many agreed the punishments were a bit too extreme ex post facto.)
I want to understand the post-modernist aspects of Denshawai. How has it become something that it wasn't?
Is this in fact the birth of modern Egyptian nationalism?

I have a long way to go, but in the end, I hope you want to know the answers as well. That way I'm not stuck talking to three people with pocket protectors.

The Deli Ticket

2011-05-20T06:29:00.000-07:00

There are times in our lives that our sense of judgment is compromised. Usually, alcohol is involved, but often blood is rushing to other parts of our body rather than our brain.

This is a story of both.

My senior in college, I rarely hung out on my college campus. The school was too small (about a thousand students), the women weren't that great, and those that I was interested in I had alienated by my senior year.

I'm not proud of my college "career".

So, over the last two years in school, I went to two places: either Phoenixville, where I worked and had become friends with a number of co-workers, and got to know a number of locals, and a few of the women. I hadn't offended them yet...or maybe they were just harder to offend, I'm not sure.

The other place I stayed regularly was at the University of Penn, where my friends The Buttheads went to school. I had met The Buttheads through Soup, a high school friend of mine. Over the years, he occasionally came to hang out at Ursinus with me, but by the last two years I spent more and more time down in Philadelphia. This one particular weekend senior year, I was hanging out with Soup, Apple Pie and The Atlanta Daves. We went to one of the regular hangs for seniors, Smokey Joe's - a good, solid college bar, complete with dance floor and cheesy early 90s music. But the year was 1990, so it didn't seem as cheesy as it would twenty years later. Beers were flowing, and the liquid confidence I indulged in allowed me to stop being self-conscious and performed the White Man Overbite on the dance floor.

There was a good-looking-in-a-slutty-way on the dance floor, and it didn't take long for the two of us to be grinding away. The conversation was minimal; I'm not sure if I was capable of maintaining one at that point. Plus, the music was loud, and...well, grinding my crotch against hers just seemed like more fun.

I always have a problem at this point - at what time should one ask the girl to leave? Is it appropriate at any time? Sometimes I would wind up talking to the girl over on the side, and she would get bored. Other times I would suggest leaving, and the girl would be offended for thinking she'd put out without knowing me. It's always a fine line. Fortunately, The Buttheads helped out this night. Later, I think I wished they hadn't done such a good job.

Apple Pie came up to me: "Gue, we're leaving. What are you doing?" It wasn't the first time the question had come up that night, but the guys had given me a bit of leeway seeing as I was having fun on the dance floor. But their patience had thinned, none of them were getting lucky, and it was time to stop spending money. "Gue! What's your plan?"

Truth is, I didn't have one. I never did. I looked to the girl, who heard the entire conversation. She smirked. "Your call."

It always is. Sometimes I'd wind up back at their place, and they'd be like, "I'm not going to do this...you'll never call." Or, "it's that time of the month." Or, "I was just dancing for fun. What were you expecting??" like I'm some stalker/rapist. I looked at them, and looked at her. The shots were running through my veins, and the blood was settling in below the belt. A good decision never stood a chance.

"I'm staying."

The Buttheads left, and I left with the girl a few minutes later. I didn't have a dime on me; she paid for the cab that took us from 40th street into Center City around 20th. We fumbled and groped, kissed and grabbed. A few minutes later, she paid the cab driver and we hopped from the cab towards her apartment. It was a basement place, down a few steps, colder and damper than the early spring night we were leaving. She unlocked her door, opened and stepped in. I followed...and was hit by a strong smell of cat piss. STRONG.

Bad decisions.

Her bed was on the floor, and there were a couple of cats making themselves at home. I wondered where the smell was coming from, but then, the jackets came off and I stopped worrying about it. Hell, there were more important things about to happen. The clothes came off, and we rolled around and I made for that final move, the goal of the evening. She stopped me. "There's a condom over on the dresser."

Condom. As in singular. As in one. ONE. As in, "I really like you and I want this to happen and by chance I happen to have one condom that the two of us can use and complete one of the greatest nights of my life." Singular. I'm special.

I fumbled out of the bed, and reached her dresser. I felt around with my hands, searching for Excalibur, the one condom that would turn me into King Arthur, champion of Camelot. I couldn't find the damn thing. Where is it?? She sensed my trouble, so offered some help. "In the bowl."

Bowl?

I found a glass fishbowl sitting in the middle of her dresser, and reached over the lid and inside. There, about halfway down, was a condom. Or rather, hundreds of condoms. HUNDREDS.

I felt like I was taking a deli ticket at the supermarket, and I didn't want to know what number I was in line. What would you like, sir? To not be behind those five people over there.

Regrets? Yeah, I've had a few. We did it once, and I'm pretty sure we did it again. We passed sometime in the middle of the night, I drifted in and out of a drunken passed out state, waking when the smell of cat piss got through the nasal neurons, much like ammonium salts to a football player whose head just got rung.

The next morning, I did the obligatory thing. I got a number, and I asked where she worked. Maybe she should've lied, but she didn't. "I work as a cashier at the adult book shop across the street."

Maybe they just ran a special on condoms one time there, and I was the first to try one out with her. I wouldn't know; I left that cold morning, and without any money, ran back to The Butthead Palace in University City.

Girls, I know it's a double-standard, but there's just a few rules you should abide by, unless it's understood ahead of time.

1. "I work in retail", or "I work as a cashier in a store" works better the first night. I'm just saying.
2. When you say, "there's a condom on the dresser", make sure there's one. ONE.
3. Don't advertize them in a fishbowl.

I'm just saying.

Concert Review: The Vaccines, Arctic Monkeys @ Electric Factory 5/18/11

2011-05-19T07:48:00.000-07:00

Did anyone know the Electric Factory wasn't located on 7th between Spring Garden and Callowhill (421 N. 7th Street)? Does anyone care? For those who do, it originally stood at 22nd and Arch in an abandoned tire factory.

I learned this in Krupa's. Of course, I could've just found this out on Wikipedia, the site where All Things Are True.

I'll admit: I'm not that big a fan of Electric Factory. It's too big a venue for the bands I like, and the acoustics aren't great. But The Arctic Monkeys aren't going to be playing Johnny Brendas any time soon, and the First Unitarian Church tix could go for $200 and they would sell it out in five minutes. Large arenas are still too big for their audience, so The Electric Factory it is.

The opening band, The Vaccines, are a post-punk British version of our Wavves/The Drums. I love their sound, and I think it's great they opened for Arctic Monkeys to get more people to hear their music.

But if they had played in one of those smaller venues, they would have brought the roof down. Great energy, The Vaccines played a tight, quick set (only 30 minutes) and got the crowd ready for the Monkeys - which is their job. The audience seemed to recognize their Alternative Rock hit "Post Break Up Sex", but for the most part they stood and listened. I hope The Vaccines come back to Philly soon, and play one of the venues in which their sound and energy won't dissipate.

The Vaccines set list:

1. Under Your Thumb
2. Blow It Up
3. ?
4.
5. Wreckin Bar?
6. Wetsuit
7. All In White
8. Post Break Up Sex
9. Nørgaard

As for Arctic Monkeys, I saw them a few years ago, and they did a poor job. A number of times they missed chords, and Alex Turner forgot the words to a couple of songs. This time was a lot better.

But have they lost their edge? The set for their performance was decorated, the lighting perfect, I got the sense that maybe they've been around too long (after all, they're going on ten years, four albums and thousands of shows). This time, they didn't miss a note.

And it was great. Any worries I had about them becoming too over-produced, or too mainstream left when they began their show. I was all the way in the back, and for a couple of moments I had pangs of regret. The audience below thrashed around with every song, occasionally a crowd surfer would appear and in the middle of their set a mosh pit broke out spontaneously. I thought to myself, I'm witnessing an event for these kids, and wished I were back in my early 20s. It was an event - Arctic Monkeys did a great job of mixing in old classics with their new album (though they skipped a few of my favorites, such as 'Mardy Bum' and 'Leave Before the Lights Come On', the last of which remains one of my top 10 favorite videos of all-time).
I would have loved to hear some of the Last Shadow Puppets, but then it wouldn't have been an event.

They opened with the first track off their new album "She's Thunderstorms" (a good start to the show), and then ripped into Brianstorm, which is just a brilliant song to get the crowd fired up. For their sixteen song set, Arctic Monkeys mixed a generous portion of new material with songs from their previous three albums, though I was a bit surprised they only played 2 from their debut album ("Still Take You Home" and "I Bet That You Look Good on the Dance Floor"), and more from their second album than their third.

They didn't wait long after their set to come back for an encore - they knew they were getting one, and the audience's cheers were long and loud. I was a bit surprised with their choices - "The View From the Afternoon" isn't one of their better known songs, especially from their debut album, and "The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala" the same. Their last song was off this latest release.

Overall, Arctic Monkeys did a better job than the first time I saw them, and it turned out to be a great venue in which to perform. But I think they could have done a better job with the encore.

Arctic Monkeys setlist:

1. She's Thunderstorms
2. Brianstorm
3. This House is a Circus
4. Still Take You Home
5. Don't Sit Down Cause I've Moved Your Chair
6. Pretty Visitors
7. Teddy Picker
8. Crying Lightning
9. Reckless Serenade
10. I Bet That You Look Good on the Dance Floor
11. Potion Approaching
12. Brick by Brick
13. If You Were There, Beware
14. Do Me a Favour
15. Cornerstone
16. That's Where You're Wrong

--------------------------------------
Encore:

17. The View From the Afternoon
18. Hellcat Spangled Shalalala
19. Fluorescent Adolescent

The Washington Metro

2011-05-18T11:32:00.001-07:00

Over the years, I've been able to ride a wide array of modes of transportation. My favorite story is from Berlin, where the bus driver cut his route short to deliver me to the train station before my train was scheduled to leave. In Aarhus Denmark, I once took a bus around and around the city hoping to see something that looked familiar until finally the driver reached their destination (in a small cul-de-sac on the bay), turned the bus off, looked at me and shrugged, then left the bus. I'm a veteran of the London Tube, and its Parisian counterpart (almost an equal, but without the deodorant), and have learned how to use American versions of the same.

This week, I tested the Washington DC Metro extensively.

I've been to DC before, and I've used it on occasion, but this time I relied on it. I had to do some research at the Library of Congress, and the friend I was staying with (The Other White Meat, or TOWM) lived well outside the city. He lived near the Red Line, however, and had a pass. I used it, put money on it (very easy to do), and was on my way. Piece of cake.

Today I'm returning to Philadelphia, and I couldn't steal TOWM's pass, so I needed to get my own pass. He had a conference near the Medical Center station, so he volunteered to drop me off. It was 6 am, but that was okay - I could only stay at the LOC until 1 pm to give me time to catch my bus.

Driving in Maryland is horrible. Driving in DC is worse. There is traffic everywhere, and I believe Maryland drivers are the worst in the world this side of Russia (and the Middle East). There was bumper to bumper traffic at 6 am, and TOWM was swerving lanes hoping to get an advantage. He's not from Maryland originally, but he's adapted well.

I arrived at the station at 7. I went to the automated pay machines, and read my options. I could pick one ticket to get me to the LOC, but I wanted to get one that would allow a trip to Union Station as well. I weighed the options, and there it was:

One Day Pass: $9.00

It was a little more than the two trips I was planning, but if I wanted to grab lunch elsewhere, or catch a bus, I figured it would be worth it. Plus, as a capitalist, before I left DC maybe I could get a few bucks for it. I bought it.

When I went to the gate, it wouldn't accept my pass. WTF? I tried different ones; I tried turning the ticket over. Nothing.

I went to get assistance from the man in the booth. He was sound asleep like a traffic controller. I had to pound on the window twice to get him to wake up.

"Why won't this work?" He answered me, but hadn't turned on his microphone. There may have been a little sleep drool hanging out the side of his mouth as well. He pulled himself together. "That's a one-day pass."

No shit. "And?"

"It isn't valid until 9:30." "Can I get a refund? I need a pass now..." I woke this employee from a sound sleep - he wasn't about to hook me up. "You have to get a different pass. Sorry." I went back to the machine, and couldn't find any comment about when a Day Pass was valid...you know, besides a complete day.

Shouldn't they change the name of the pass? Call it a "Post Rush Hour Day Pass", or PRHDP for short? That's too difficult an acronym. How about these?

Sucky Hours In-day Transit Pass? Or, for short, the SHIT Pass?

Overall, The Metro is fantastic, and I shouldn't complain. If we could just do something about these drivers, however...

I Missed a Song...

2011-05-17T08:25:00.001-07:00

My apologies to Idle Hands - I think this song is great, and I failed to include it my top songs this week. Because of that, I'll give it a separate page:

The Surprise Birthday

2011-05-15T05:21:00.000-07:00

The Fairmount Stallion and I have known each other since we were about twelve. When someone asks, he usually tells them I used to beat him up for lunch money - funny, since he's bigger than I am. Even more funny was how short I was back then, while he played line for the football team. When I returned from the Middle East, he and I were at a wedding for a common friend. We both hang out in Philadelphia a lot, so we exchanged numbers and decided it would be worth our effort to combine forces. Generally, this worked out. Except when one of us got information about plans for an evening. One Friday night, one of the Stallion's friends Tim was celebrating his 30th birthday party, and his girlfriend invited the Stallion. Stallion knew Tim well, and knew how sociable he and his girlfriend were. The Stallion called me, and told me to meet him at his place - we'd head over together for a good bash, and single women.

We arrived a bit early...around 8 o'clock, when Tim's girlfriend suggested the party would begin. When we entered, it was the girlfriend, Tim's parents, and his grandmother. Fair enough, I thought. It's early. I grabbed a drink and tried to make small talk, while the Stallion did a better job, since he knew Tim's girlfriend. A few minutes later, a couple showed up. A gay couple, with the same names as the Stallion and myself. It was like seeing Bizarro Me - needless to say the group of us had a few laughs about it. Tim's girlfriend told us he would be arriving sometime after nine - and still, there was no one at the party. A few times under breath the Stallion apologized for getting to the party so early, but it was bound to pick up. It didn't.

Around 9:15, Tim's girlfriend excitedly exclaimed, "He's here! Everyone take your positions!!" Holy shit...it's a surprise birthday party, and there I was tucked behind the cherry red living room recliner with Tim's grandmother. What the fuck was I doing here????

Tim walked through the front door, and the eight of us (Bizarro couple, Tim's parents, grandmother, girlfriend, Stallion and I) jumped out from out hiding places and yelled, "SURPRISE!!"

Tim was surprised. The look on his face suggested it. What came next amplified our understanding of his surprise. "Who the hell are you????" All eyes turned to me. I turned the color of the recliner.

We only stayed long enough to grab a slice of cake. Well, the Fairmount Stallion did - I thought I had intruded enough into a personal part of someone's life I didn't even know.

Stallion and I don't hang out as often as we used to. Maybe he's comfortable doing the private birthday circuit. Personally, I don't like birthdays...especially when I don't know the person celebrating one.

Top Songs, May 14th 2011

2011-05-14T12:37:00.001-07:00

1. Yuck - Operation
2. Chikita Violenta - Roni
3. Eastern Conference Champions - Atlas
4. Death Cab For Cutie - You're a Tourist
5. Cold Cave - Villains of the Moon
6. Dom - Living in America
7. Brother - Darling Buds of May
8. Foster the People - Helena Beat
9. My Morning Jacket - Holding on to Black Metal
10. Airborne Toxic Event - Changing
11. The Dig - You're Already Gone
12. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
13. Peter Bjorn & John - Second Chance
14. Black Lips - Modern Art
15. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Belong
16. City Rain - I'm Gone
17. The Naked & Famous - Punching in a Dream
18. The Vaccines - Post Break-Up Sex
19. Ida Maria - Cherry Red
20. The Postelles - 1 2 3 Stop
21. Beastie Boys (featuring Santigold) - Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win
22. TV on the Radio - Second Song/Will Do
23. The Vaccines - Blow It Up/If You Wanna
24. Broken Bells - Meyrin Fields
25. The Joy Formidable - A Heavy Abacus
26. Dum Dum Girls - He Gets Me High
27. Mumford & Sons - Roll Away Your Stone
28. Givers - Up Up Up
29. The Decemberists - This is Why We Fight
30. Dangerous Ponies - I Only Wear My Favorite Clothes at Home
31. Daft Punk - Fall (M83 vs. Big Black Delta remix)
32. Cults - Abducted
33. The Cars - Sad Song
34. Oh Land - Son of a Gun
35. Lykke Li - I Follow Rivers
36. Foo Fighters - These Days
37. Cold War Kids - Skip the Charades
38. matt pond PA - Love to Get Used
39. The Wombats - Techno Fan
40. The Raveonettes - Recharge and Revolt

*The Dears - Stick With Me Kid

Mother's Day

2011-05-11T12:14:00.000-07:00

Not surprisingly, I didn't call my stepmother this year. (We'll call her "Mommie Dearest" from here on, as she used to call herself that when signing my birthday cards) I haven't spoken to her since right before I left for Australia, except for once when I called her to ask what the date was of my father's passing. For some reason I couldn't remember (he died the same day Frank Sinatra died, so I'll never forget it now).

The reason I made that decision to remove her from my life was because of some events that transpired between us the summer before I moved to Australia. In the previous year, my fiancee had ended our engagement, my brother announced he had HIV, and I had been accused of sleeping with a student. Mommie Dearest heard about this from friends less than a week after I had been suspended, and once I had been cleared I called her to tell her what had really transpired.

For those that don't know the story, I was dating a 25 year-old former student. That in itself isn't illegal, but I had a couple of things working against me:

1. The superintendent and I did not get along at all.
2. This was not the first former student I had dated, and
3. I wrote a public blog about it, as well as a number of personal things in my life.

Obviously I've learned from my mistakes, since I no longer keep a public blog.

I might have fought the superintendent who was pushing for me to be removed as a teacher, but when rumors surfaced that I was hooking up with a current student (sort of like Whisper Down the Lane, only more ruinous), my reputation was ruined, and I just wanted to run away and start a new life.

I explained to Mommie Dearest what I had been accused of, and why, and then told her I was moving to Australia. I told Mommie Dearest I didn't think she ever understood me, and she told me that it was difficult getting to know me since I lived far away, and I always had a wall around my feelings. By the end of our phone call, I thought we had left things on decent terms.

Until I got the letter.

A week before I left, I received a letter in the mail. It was from Mommie Dearest. And at a time I was having trouble dealing with a lot of issues, it was the worst thing I could have received. It said in no uncertain terms that I was:

1. Responsible for my own actions, and needed to own up to them.
2. I was selfish.
3. I was narcissistic.
4. I was an asshole.

This took about two pages, and this was the best part:

"But you're my son, and I still love you. Good luck in Australia."

Wow. After that, I never saw a reason to contact her, and she's never made an effort to contact me. If she tried, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't answer.

So, on Mother's Day, if I were to make a call, I thought it appropriate to contact the woman who actually gave birth to me. I hadn't spoken to her since my visit in March - I was busy, but I also wasn't ready to "rush" into a relationship with my mother. She wasn't home when I called; her return call was left unanswered as I was working and didn't hear it.

I didn't save the message - in this day and age, my initial reaction to every call I get is to just hit 7 and delete it. I did so here, but still remember most of the message:

She told me who it was first (she always addresses herself by her first name, as do I). She said her and her husband were out walking their dogs, but thanked me for remembering her on Mother's Day. She then told me that when she left our home she had hoped our stepmother had given us a loving home to grow up in...and had realized during my visit that she hadn't (my brother told me about a book he kept in his room details the ways he was going to kill himself to hurt our family due to the emotional abuse he received, mostly at the hands of Mommie Dearest).

She finished it up by saying she would be honored if I called her Mom.

I listened to the message during a quick break from work. Maybe I shouldn't have deleted it, and allowed for the message to seep into my bones and my mind, and allow me to think about it. But I think I already know the answer:

I've had this wall around me for years, and it's not ready to come down. Yet. For the time being, we'll remain on a first-name basis.

Maybe time does heal all wounds.

Bathroom Review

2011-04-18T09:34:00.000-07:00

I once wrote a bathroom review guide to a few of the restaurants in Philadelphia on a blog long lost. Today I wish to write another review, if only to highlight how bad things are at Rutgers University. The cost of college has gone up significantly; hasn't any of the money gone to the bathrooms?

Rutgers-Camden: the Paul Robeson Library bathrooms are horrible. There are three; one is perpetually locked. I actually discovered this one open (in the back area of the basement), and it was clean - except for the three inch long cockroach. Cockroaches don't bother me (let me tell you about the roaches I had in my apartment in Syria), but the overflowing toilet did. The other bathroom in the basement? Worse. One urinal is missing from the wall, plaster put over the barely disguised pipes appearing from the wall. Another urinal is simply covered by a plastic sheet, instructing students to choose another urinal. There are three toilets - all of the stalls have graffiti on them, and the toilet I used to prefer now has a detached seat, movable at the most inopportune moments.

There is no soap for the sinks. Ever. Some of the sinks work, but probably not. And good luck finding paper towels to dry your hands.

There are no bathrooms on the main floor, but on the second floor is a doozy. I went to use it today, only the toilet in the handicapped stall was overflowing. The color water was a greenish-brown.

This, by the way, is not unusual.

One sink doesn't work. The other can't be turned off. Almost all fixtures (sinks, toilets and urinals) leak, sometimes with the water coming out stronger there than where it should. A roll of paper towels sits on the sink that doesn't work because someone doesn't feel like putting the paper towels where they belong...or maybe it doesn't work like the one in the basement.

Rutgers New Brunswick isn't much better, but it IS better. My biggest complaint is with the toilets (when they're not clogged). There is a large metal button one is supposed to press in order to get it to flush. The only problem is that it takes the strength of ten men to press it. I have never succeeded using my hands - I usually launch a roundhouse kick at it. It's not a surprise that every time I've gone to use a toilet there, there's always something in it.

Rutgers bathrooms? An outhouse is better. Hell, wiping my ass with poison ivy leaves while squatting over a log is better, since my sandals won't be covered in greenish-brown crap.

Top Songs, April 14th 2011

2011-04-14T13:33:00.000-07:00

If you get a chance, check out the Beach Fossils this Saturday @ Johnny Brendas. If you're there, say hi...I'll be the idiot old guy jamming.

1. Chikita Violenta - Roni
2. The Cars - Sad Song
3. Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Belong
4. Cage the Elephant - Shake Me Down
5. The Vaccines - Post Breakup Sex
6. The Joy Formidable - A Heavy Abacus
7. Dum Dum Girls - He Gets Me High
8. Oh Land - Son of a Gun
9. Kings of Leon - Pyro
10. Glasvegas - Euphoria Take My Hand
11. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
12. Death Cab for Cutie - You're a Tourist
13. Peter, Bjorn and John - Second Chance
14. TV on the Radio - Caffeinated Consciousness
15. War on Drugs - Comin' Through
16. Violens - When To Let Go
17. Yellowcard - For You, and Your Denial
18. The Raveonettes - Forget That You're Young/Recharge and Revolt
19. Gold Motel - Safe in L.A.
20. Arcade Fire - Sprawl II/Modern Man
21. Foo Fighters - Rope
22. Mona - Teenager
23. The Kills - Satellite
24. The Wombats - Anti D
25. Pete Yorn - Precious Storm
26. Guster - Architects and Engineers
27. Jane's Addiction - End to the Lies
28. Submarines - Birds
29. Beach Fossils - Fall Right In
30. Black Angels - Entrance Song

Local Business

2011-04-11T20:19:00.000-07:00

I have a free moment (sort of in the same way George Clooney's boat saw clear skies in the middle of "The Perfect Storm"). In the middle of this chaos, I thought I'd write a story about a recent event in my life.

I believe in supporting local businesses. They help keep the spirit of a neighborhood, they help each of us recognize each other, and develop a sense of "us versus them". Finally, it puts a warm spot in my heart for helping others...so, in that sense, completely selfish.

There is an extent to which one should support local business, and a line that shouldn't be crossed. Last Thursday, I went above and beyond the call of duty. There's a semi-regular customer who frequents the bar across the street from my house. Grandmaster Flash has done some time, but he's a great guy, and he cuts hair. I figured since he had been in my bar on occasion, there was no harm done in getting my hair cut by him sometime. And to be honest, I'm currently looking for someone I'm comfortable getting my hair cut by. Since I turned 18, there have been only three people I've felt comfortable as my barber/stylist/hair cutter. The latest, a cute young girl who was from Turkey (we talked a lot about the Middle East) was recently promoted within Hair Sluttery to assistant manager, and so left the branch near where I used to live. Suddenly, I was looking for another person to cut my hair as her replacement/transvestite Simone wasn't the person I was looking for.

(S)he didn't do a very good job either.

So, after a few visits to Super Cuts, I thought I'd give the local barber a try. When I asked Grandmaster Flash, he suggested I have the owner of the shop a try. Last Thursday, I did.

Bob is 62. He's cut hair for forty years, and his father owned the shop before him. But...

he has a Jheri Curl. Dried out JC. With a two-inch blond streak running from his left temple up his hair. I should've left. I could've just asked for Grandmaster Flash, and, seeing he wasn't there, left. I didn't.

I sat in his chair, and explained how I wanted my hair done. "Number four trimmer around the side and in the back, blended trim on top with the same part." "Not a problem."

I'm pretty sure Bob has never cut a white man's hair. There was no effort to dampen my hair. He simply took out his trimmers, and using (what I think was) #4 trimmers proceeded around the sides and the back.

His hands trembled. The razor bounced off and on my skull, and Bob would return to that area to clean it up. I broke out into a cold sweat.

After about fifteen minutes, he turned the trimmer off, got a mirror, and handed it to me. He had yet to touch the top of my head. "What do you think?" At this point, I looked like Moe from the Three Stooges - a mushroom cap instead of hair on top of my head. I should've gotten up and thanked him for the cut. I should've walked away. Instead, I stated the obvious:

"Can you take a little off the top?"

He did. He took the mirror from me, turned the trimmer on, and with his trembling hands skipped the trimmer across the top of my head like a stone skipping across a pond. Bounce, bounce, bounce, with hair falling all around me. I broke into a cold sweat.

"How's that?"

It was time to cut my losses, mind the pun. "Good! Great! What do I owe you?" I paid, ran the block to my house, grabbed a baseball cap and hopped the bus to Super Cuts. Melissa took me on as a customer. "What'll ya have?"

"FIX THIS!!" I took off my cap. "Holy shit! What happened?" I explained while she laughed, and fixed as much as she could.

By the end, I decided I could trust a fourth person to cut my hair.

It isn't Bob.

The Weekend

2011-03-20T12:48:00.000-07:00

Was there one?

The schedule I'm staring in the face until the end of the semester leads me to think I may not have a day off until mid-May. I'm working at the bar across the street Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday nights, at the Art Museum on Friday nights, while I have class Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

Ugh.

Today I had off, and I needed to get to Rutgers campus to get a few books they've set aside for me. I have a bibliography due Wednesday for a thirty page paper...and have one book included in it. I need 30.

Double ugh.

After the Super Bowl, I still had some free time, and a few of us at Krupa's stayed after the game to drink. About two hours in, Dolce yelled, "Eskimo Brothers!", and the four of pounded fists. From there on out, it was a comedy session - even the owner of the bar (The Bitch) had tears running down her face laughing.

The next morning, Momma's Boy and I relived the events of the previous night, and pondered how we could set up a podcast, and how to create an environment that would allow us to be that funny ALL the time.

Presuming, of course, that we're funny sober. I can promise you it was funny as hell drunk.

Someday, when I'm rich beyond belief, I hope to just sit in a dive bar, tell stories, get recorded, and make people laugh. The other three have jobs, however, and I'm not sure they'd be too impressed with their conversations being posted online.

I'll have to come up with something...

Top Songs, March 16th 2011

2011-03-16T07:59:00.001-07:00

Hello, countdown...it's been a while:

1. Cage the Elephant - Shake Me Down
2. Cut Copy - Far Away (Solly remix)/Take Me Over
3. Chikita Violenta - Roni
4. Raveonettes - Forget That You're Young
5. Submarines - Birds
6. TV on the Radio - Caffeinated Consciousness
7. Arcade Fire - Sprawl II/Modern Man
8. Dum Dum Girls - He Gets Me High
9. Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
10. Kings of Leon - Pyro
11. Early Ape - Radio
12. Gold Motel - Safe in L.A.
13. The Decemberists - This is Why We Fight
14. Cold Cave - The Great Pan is Dead
15. The Hush Now - Vietnam Giraffe
16. The Go! Team - Buy Nothing Day
17. Bright Eyes - Shell Games
18. Peter Bjorn & John - Second Chance
19. Best Coast - Sun Was High (and So Was I)
20. Scars on 45 - Give Me Something
21. Foo Fighters - Rope
22. The Dead Weather - Blue Blood Blues
23. Radiohead - Lotus Flower
24. Two Door Cinema Club - What You Know
25. Matt & Kim - Block After Block

My Mother, Part 2

2011-03-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

When I was growing up, I never learned about anything my father did before he got married. What I learned was either told to me by friends of his while they had imbibed a bit too much, or hinted at through conversations that I happened to overhear. As far as I know, this was essentially my father's life leading up to the marriage to my mother.

1. Not a very good student.
2. Ladies' man.
3. In love with a girl he graduated with, but her parents hated him. Upon her graduation, her family moved away so that he could never see her again. (SIDEBAR: I have his senior yearbook - I have no doubts that she loved him, and that he slept with her. I can only imagine what my children will think when they read my yearbook. Example - "when are we going to BANG??" 1986 was slightly less subtle than 1961)
4. Had a bit of a temper, more so when he drank, which:
5. Happened to be quite often.
6. Signed up for the army to avoid the draft (not sure of the logic behind this). Just before he was to leave, a few policemen were harassing his friends. Drunk, my father entered the fray and beat the hell out of a few of them before he was subdued and thrown into jail. (Don't know the validity of it, as I've heard he beat up 2, 3 or 4 that evening) My grandfather left him in jail to think about what he had done, instead of bailing him out as he had done in the past.
7. Went to Temple U. for a semester, with the agreement that he would pay the first semester and his parents would pay the second semester. To make ends meet, my father worked as a stock boy in the local Acme overnight. He got decent grades for the first time in his life, only to be told by his parents they weren't going to pay for his schooling. He never did get a degree.
8. Had a beach house in 1966 (I know NOTHING about this summer, other than all his friends wound up getting married from relationships made that summer). Oh, and he pretended to be a blind man one time when they went into a restaurant.
9. My mother and he were engaged when she became pregnant, and they moved up the wedding date so she wouldn't be showing.
9a. My mother "trapped" my father by getting pregnant, because she didn't want him to abandon her.

On March 12th, 2011, I heard the other side of the story. I should state that I have to take both sides with a grain of salt - my father was bitter about my mother leaving, and so painted himself in a better light than maybe he would've, or more to the point, made my mother look like a conniving bitch. My mother told me her version forty-two years after the fact, a time where she was able to reflect on the events, and throw my father under the bus since he's no longer able to defend himself.

This is, as best I can do, my mother's story:

"Marc, your father was engaged to another girl when he was 24 or 25, and she broke it off. Your father was made fun of, and your grandfather suggested there was something wrong with his manhood if he wasn't married by 25. So, one summer I had a house with a bunch of my friends, and your father and his friends used to come over all the time. He dated one girl in the house, then another whose boyfriend was in the Air Force. Your father wanted her to break it off with him, but she told him it was only a casual thing for the summer and not to take it so seriously. Then he moved onto me. Was I third best? I certainly wasn't his first choice...what was wrong with me? Then I got pregnant, and we had to get married, because that's what was done in 1968. The whole time, I knew your father never loved me. I don't know why he was crying when he slept upstairs next door to your bedroom. I can't explain it, because he never loved me...maybe he loved the idea of being married. I don't know. Your father had a drinking problem. I was home with a baby, and he would stay out with friends and come home in the middle of the night drunk. Then, he had knee surgery and had to stay at home, so I went back to work. One time I came home and found him crying...you wouldn't stop crying, and he shook you until you passed out. I couldn't trust him around you. He wasn't working, I had to pay the bills but was scared of leaving you with him... And then I got pregnant again. I was depressed, upset, and trapped. We moved to Maple Shade, and your father decided he couldn't work for the union anymore because it was causing the stress that led to him drinking. He decided that we had enough money saved up where we could move again, and he could start his own business. We went looking for houses, and he chose the one house I didn't want. I wanted a house in Lumberton, but he didn't...because he didn't fit HIS plans. There was a shed in the back, that he later built into a workstation. The work wasn't there; the money ran out quickly. We grew food, we had chickens, and I never left the house. I was depressed, not in love, and was with a man who controlled me. I had to leave..."

Some of this I have heard from my father - he explained why he left the union. I remember looking at the house she wanted...my brother and I loved that house as well. Instead, we ended up weeding everyday after school. And waking up with the sunrise to collect eggs. Ugh.

I told her how my brother was my father's favorite, and when he married my stepmother, I was essentially left out of the family. She said, "I don't know why, but he ignored you. You idolized him growing up, like any son would do to his father."

I know why I was - my father told me. When my brother was born, my mother ignored him and my father. She focused her love on me, so my father then took my brother under his wings. It was a pattern that lasted until my mother walked out of our lives. She said it again:

"You idolized him..."

I know I did. I don't remember doing it, but there is a picture I was given before I left for the Middle East in a scrapbook put together by my stepmother. Our family didn't have many pictures, and almost none from before the divorce. But this one picture got me to tear up.

I started running because my father was a runner. When I broke my arm and stopped playing baseball, I switched to tennis...because that's what he did. I used to play with his razors...It's true. I idolized him.

My mother fled.

She didn't love him, she didn't feel loved, and needed to get away and start again. Her escape route was the prayer group she was in, and the priest who had been kicked out of the Catholic Church.

By the time she was done talking, the walls were gone. We spent much of the time talking about anything and everything. By the time I went to be around one, we had said all that needed to be said. Did I believe everything she said? Not necessarily...but a good friend of mine told me after I called her and let her know how well it went, "Just remember Marc - your father stayed. He hung onto you and did everything for the two of you. She didn't. Don't view your father in a bad light."

I don't. But my father did mellow as he got older, and I'm sure he could've been a bastard to live with early on.

The next morning, we had pancakes, and Tim and my mother drove me to the station so I could come back to Philadelphia. Along the drive (this time, about forty-five minutes), we would occasionally come up with little gems.

"Remember when the dog used to hide under the dishwasher when he crapped in the house?" "One time when you were a baby you ran away..."
"How about the time when..."

I gave them both a hug when I left.

I have a need to feel loved, but I tend to shun those that offer it. Hopefully this will be the beginning of a change in my life. But in my efforts to be loved by my real mother, I need to remain grounded in the thoughts of what my father did for my brother and I. To that extent, I will call her, but not for a while. I told her and Tim that the rest of the semester was going to be very difficult for me, and I would call when I got a chance. The semester ends right around mid-May. Her birthday is two days later.

I don't have any answers to any questions she may have about the past. But hopefully any questions about the present will be answered by both of us, and not by an eight-year old child coming to terms with a collapsed family.

My mother, Part 1

2011-03-14T12:06:00.001-07:00

This has been a long time coming. On March 11, 2011, I saw my mother. It was the first time since July of 2002, and only the second time since I was a little boy in 1978.

This origins of this story are in my manuscript, and don't need repeating, but I will summarize what I knew about what happened through the eyes of an eight year old as I watched my parents' marriage crumble, and I tried to make sense of it.

As my third grade year ended, my father no longer slept with my mother. He slept upstairs, in the spare room next to mine, and I once asked him why. He told me, "Your mother can't sleep with me in the room," and then I heard him cry himself to sleep. There are very few things that are more scary to a small child than hearing a parents incapable of dealing with a situation within the family. A month later my mother left the house and moved in with a woman who was in this religious group. The group was led by a man who had been kicked out of the Catholic priesthood, and man who used to hold prayer meetings at our house since my earliest memories. Over time, almost all of my aunt and uncles participated with these meetings, but this ex-priest (referred to by my mother as "The Archbishop") was very controlling, and he commanded those who came to these meetings to devote their lives to the way of life he was preaching. Most of my family left, which is why for much of my early childhood I had no contact with my grandparents. By June of 1977 my mother committed to him. My father took my brother and I to move in with The Archbishop and another man.

We stayed there for three months, during which time I was beaten so badly that I pissed myself. Every toy I owned was thrown in the trash. Once, The Archbishop pinched my neck in an effort to pick me up as if I were a little kitten being carried in the mouth of its mother.

My neck wasn't made to be grabbed like that, and the skin ripped. Once, my brother and I were watching TV, and the candy dish atop the TV fell off, shattering on the ground behind it. The Archbishop came into the room and asked what happened. We tried to explain, and that we hadn't done it, but he insisted we knocked it over. The devil was inside us, he said, and it needed to be beat out of us.

He tried.

In October, my father took us back to our house, where we had nothing left except a bunk bed and a dresser. My father had his bed; the rest of the house lay empty, and he tried to rebuild a home for us. In many ways he failed, but the key was that he tried.

My mother never did. A year after we left The Archbishop's place, my mother picked us up to spend a day with her. As the sun was setting, she drove us to the corner of our street, about 2/10 of a mile from our home. She refused to come close to the house. Before we got out, she told us she could never see us again.

And we didn't.

I have commitment issues. I tend to ruin things that are going well in my life, but I expect to get rejected. I expect...nay, feel that I deserve for things to not go well for me. As a result, I tend to "blow things up" in my life. Detonate situations so that women leave my life, I get fired from jobs, all because I feel as if that's what I deserve. It's a pattern I've developed over the last thirty years, and one that I've had real trouble breaking.

I was in love in the mid-90s. I pushed her away from me, accepting a job in the Middle East. While we dated, I mentioned on more than once occasion that I needed to go visit my mother, wherever she may be. There was no internet, I had no idea how to find her. I wish I had reached out to her then, because maybe I wouldn't have left a woman who loved me for being me.

By 2001, the internet was up and running (thank you Al Gore), and my brother learned of her whereabouts. In July of 2002, I finally had the balls to show up on her doorstep and visit her. I did it out of anger, I did it out of spite. I wanted her to hurt like I hurt, for twenty-four years.

Needless to say, it wasn't a pleasant visit, and when I left she took my phone number, but I didn't want to hear from her. She called me on my birthday to wish me a happy one, and told me, "I'm ready to answer the questions you asked," but in my mind she had already answered them. I thought I could move on. Then two years later I chased another woman out of my life, and I started with therapy. Therapist John told me at some point I would need to forgive her, whether I went to see her or not.

I needed to move on.

My brother meanwhile had visited her, and had moved on. He was much younger when all of this happened, and I'm not sure he remembers much of that time period. When I asked him for advice on going down to see her, he suggested that I not bring up the past and just build something new.

I can't do that. I'm not wired like that.

On March 11th, I arrived by train in Baltimore Penn Station at 6:49 pm. I came up the escalator, and there she stood waiting for me with her husband, The Archbishop's ex-roommate. I said hello, and offered my hand. She shook it, and I turned to shake his hand as well. He did, and then said, "Come here," and gave me a huge hug.

We made small talk on the way back to their house, a journey of twenty minutes in which they described Baltimore, talked about places I had seen in the city, then explained what their town was like. For twenty minutes we avoided the past.

My mother prepared a dinner for the three of us - homemade. Salmon with spiced butter, a sweet potato/apple puree, homemade coleslaw with cranberries, and more than I could ever expect to finish. Her husband (let's call him Tim) invited me to have a drink. My mother wasn't much of a drinker, he was going to have a scotch.

My ears perked up. "What kind?" "Glenlivet." "I have some with a couple drops of water."

I'll admit - I tried to dislike Tim. I did. But he made every effort to reach out and make both my mother and I comfortable. After dinner, we had desert, and then retired to the sitting room. It was then that we began to cover years of history.

The first thing I did was apologize for the way I approached her in 2002. If there was forgiveness to be given, I think I needed to be forgiven for the way I had handled it. From there on, secrets were told, feelings shared. My mother mostly listened, as I told her of my father crying upstairs, of my father trying to rebuild the family, of my issues with women and why I run away from relationships. On me, drifting alone in a family that I didn't feel apart of for years after, while my father and brother's relationship grew in unison with my stepmother's and her son's. I learned during that time that I needed to survive on my own, for better or for worse.

One can not get hurt if they don't open their heart.

My mother told Tim before my arrival (probably told him after my visit in 2002) that I had accused The Archbishop of beating the crap out of me when I lived with them. She called me a liar in 2002, then suggested I had been a rebellious child. I have a feeling Tim backed my story up, because he was the first to speak.

He told me he was at work that afternoon (the worst beating) when The Archbishop called. "You have to come home, I've lost Marc and his brother. What am I going to tell Jack (my father)?" From there, Tim said that when he left work early and got home, we were already back, a few hours after our curfew, and had returned from beyond the boundaries of where we were allowed to play. The Archbishop was already in full-swing, literally. He tried to apologize for The Archbishop's actions, and suggested that they only wanted to provide a stable home for my brother and I, something we hadn't had in a long time. He suggested that The Archbishop may have overdone the punishment.

I suggested that he had; since I peed myself during the beating.

Tim then talked about he thought it was obvious I didn't like living with them, but with my father's business going down the tubes and him not having any money left, he offered my father to be our guardian, let my father out of any responsibility of raising us so he could get himself together. My father told them he couldn't possibly leave the two of us, and a few days later took us away from there.

Tim told me he had read me all wrong - on the night we were leaving, I cried, "I don't want to leave." Here was a child, he said, who seemed very unhappy with the living conditions, begging not to leave.

I remember that night, and I remember it well...but I can't remember why I said that. I remember The Archbishop making some hot milk to calm me down, and me learning that hot milk sucks - it has that layer of film on the top, and tastes like crap. What I can't remember for the life of me is why I would cry about leaving. I have a great memory, and can remember every teacher I've ever had, all the way back to kindergarten (God bless, Ms. Levin, who changed her name four times in five years), but I can not remember the teacher I had for the beginning of my fourth grade year.

Hell, I even remember a couple of substitute teachers' names from the sixth grade, including one who was there for one single day. Yet I can not recall my fourth grade teacher. I can't recall any fellow classmates, only a kid who lived in the apartment complex we lived in, whose house I used to hang out in to avoid returning back to ours. We used to listen to old 45s, "Do You Believe in Magic?" among other records.

I remember the Beetle in the parking lot, covered in green shag carpeting. I remember the factory to the side of the apartment complex, exploring it and discovering a secret stash of Playboy magazines, my first introduction to naked women.

But I can't remember my own feelings about that evening.

We arrived back in Mount Laurel late at night, in a very cold house. The heat wasn't on, but my father started a fire and we fell asleep under blankets around its warmth, until my father woke us up and took us to our bunk beds. For the next two weeks, we went with him everywhere - to work, shopping, everywhere. He refused to let us out of his sight, because (as he told us later) he was scared my mother would show up one day to get and he'd never see us again. After a few weeks, my father enrolled us in a private school, with strict instructions that no one else could pick us up from school but he, or we took the bus and stayed with our neighbors until he returned home from work. Some nights, that meant 9 or 10 at night.

It was the start of a new life...with my father.

While living with The Archbishop, my mother was never around. I don't know why I didn't want to leave...

Finally, my mother spoke up.

Egypt, Part 2.

2011-03-10T08:18:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting on a bus in the pouring rain on my way to Washington DC. I have a few days off from work/school/life, so I'm going to see friends...and my mother, a woman I have seen but once in the last 34 years. We're having dinner, and I'm sleeping over. I hope we're actually on talking terms, or else I'll be sleeping at the train station. The last time we saw each other (in 2002) didn't go so well. It's in my book/manuscript, so I won't bother with the details here. I have a few hours, so I thought I'd catch up on my story about visiting Egypt.

Part 1 started in Syria, as I was visited by a fellow teacher who lived in Cairo. During his time in Damascus, I rarely slept and my liver turned to mush. I told Expat that paybacks were a bitch, and I would make him sleep at little as possible, and drink in an inverse proportion.

Expat's response? "I welcome the challenge."

I should have known better.

There was a teaching conference in Cairo in the middle of March, and since I was teaching a new course at my school in the fall, the administration and I thought it would be a good idea if I went to the conference to get an economic textbook and some ideas on how to approach the subject. I had never taught economics before, though I had taken a refresher course in the subject the summer before I left for Syria, and had taken a few courses in college. The school paid for my trip, on the assumption I would use the time wisely and prepare for the upcoming year.

That didn't happen as much as they would've liked.

I left a few messages for Expat to let him know what flight I would be on, and to make sure it was okay to stay with him for the week. I never got a hold of him, so when I boarded the flight with other teachers from DCS I hadn't made a decision on where I'd stay when I arrived.

A few hours later, we landed in Cairo. We went through customs, and a bus was waiting for the teachers to take them to their hotel in middle of the city. There was no sign of Expat. The other teachers asked when I was going to do. I took a chance, and said I was staying at the airport in case he showed up. The other teachers gave me the address of the hotel (on Zamalek), and left.

I waited. And waited.

At about one in the morning, a taxicab driver pulled up in from of the terminal, where I was curled up in the (surprisingly) chilly Egyptian air. It was the first car I had seen in an hour; the airport was closed except for the custodial staff. The driver stepped out of the car, and held up a ripped sheet of notebook paper. It was a poor imitation of the limousine drivers who wait for passengers arriving in the terminal, but it was the best thing I could've seen at that time. Scribbled, in barely legible English, was one word:

Marc

I stepped forward to the cab and dropped by luggage in the trunk. I asked the taxi driver who had given him the piece of paper. "Mr. Expat." I asked where he was. "Mr. Expat is at a hotel bar. He was too drunk to come." The Expat was starting without me, obviously not intimidated by my threats at all.

The ride into town took maybe a half an hour, and cost me about twenty US dollars. I stepped out in front a nice hotel, took my bag from the back of the cab, and paid the man. I wandered into the hotel, looking for a drunk expat.

I found about a hundred, and for a moment one could forget I was in Egypt and assume I was in Dublin. There was an Irish band playing onstage, and everyone was wearing green and singing along. In the back corner, with a few friends of his, sat the Expat. The grin he was wore was huge, but not as big as the beer he was holding. He had on a green shirt, his face a ruddy complexion. He looked like W.C. Fields, maybe a few years younger. He stood up and gave me a big hug. "Marc, great to see you." His eyes couldn't focus at all, I'm not sure if he could even see me. "Get a beer quick, it's last call."

I ordered two.

As I was about to ask him the plan for the evening, the Irish band finished their set and wandered over to our table. The Expat knew them, but of course he did: he knew everyone. Introductions were made, and they asked him where we were going after the bar closed. "First we have to drop Marc's bags off at my place, then we're going to go someplace seedy."

As if Cairo were any different from Damascus.

I don't remember much from the rest of the night, other than us arriving back at his place after the sun came up. Before we left the band, I had written down their name and where in Ireland they were from. In a few weeks I was flying into Dublin to see about a girl, and I thought it would be great if I caught up with them in their home country.

The next day I tried to read what I had written...it looked worse than the scribbled piece of notebook paper The Expat had sent with the taxi driver to find me at the airport. For one, I had written their name on a cocktail napkin, and I had used a felt pen. I also had used my drunken hand, which was attached to my drunken head and eyes. Finally, it smelled of beer, and I was sure the napkin had spent time mopping up beers spills in whatever seedy bar we found ourselves in the night before. Needless to say, I never did catch up with The Greatest Irish Band I Have Ever Seen in Egypt.

This investigation took place around one in the afternoon. I was awake and starving, so I got up and went to the kitchen. There were empty beer bottles everywhere, and a few empty bottles of spirits. I opened the refrigerator.

Beer.

I opened some cabinets.

Beer.

There was no food in the house at all. I grabbed a bottle of water in an effort to quiet my stomach. I began checking other rooms, thinking that The Expat and his roommates may have decided to store their food somewhere else to leave room in the kitchen for alcohol. All I found were more cases of beer.

At about three in the afternoon, I couldn't take anymore. It had been almost a full day since anything solid had been in my stomach, and I needed food. I woke The Expat up. "I need food."

After taking a few minutes to pull himself together, he stumbled into the kitchen and asked me what had happened the night before. I explained what I remembered, all the while I saw him packing a cooler full of beer. I asked him what he was doing, and all he said was, "Round 2."

Uh-oh...

it's March

2011-03-09T08:55:00.001-08:00

And I haven't posted anything recently. I'm in the process of putting together a Top Song list since it's been about a month, but classes have gotten the better of me lately. I did want to mention a few things that have come to mind lately...

1. The GAO are recommending that we do away with the $1 bill and switch over to a $1 coin. It will save the USA about $5.5 billion. That's great - we can also eliminate nickel from the nickel (over the protests of the nickel lobbyists) and copper from the penny (over the protests of the copper lobbyists) and save even more money. Wait - it might be zinc, but all I know is with a huge deficit, we need to quit worrying about these damn lobbyists. I wish there were a way...

2. The Wisconsin governor is playing hardball tactics with government workers in an attempt to break the union and pay lower wages. I agree the pensions given to state workers (I know, I was one) are completely out of touch with the economic state. When I entered into teaching, I believed I was sacrificing a chance at a great salary for security. Over the last few years (about fifteen in NJ), that changed, and there is little or no reason to work in the private sector if one doesn't have to. That's not a good thing...

3. But a contract is a contract is a contract. When the current contract is up, the governor should play hardball with them. But honor the contracts as they are written.

4. I'm not a union fan...and it seems as if most of America isn't as well. Less than 7% of the United States' work force is unionized these days. But unions do have a purpose - by occupying a decent size of the country's workforce, they raise the wages of non-union people as well. Why do I bring this up? Because WalMart is one of the largest employers in the United States, and as I write this, they may have moved into #1. They also pay their workers SHIT. So poorly, in fact, that people who work for WalMart full time still qualify for federal aid. WalMart figures this into their balance sheet, and it allows them to undercut wage costs versus competitors. So, WalMart is being subsidized to create distortions in the market. I'm a believer in Smithian economics - and this is bullshit.

5. I agree with Governor Christie's move to reel in costs. I think he needs to abide by contracts, but I agree that the pensions for state workers should NOT be figured on a retirement age of 55. When I was teaching back in the early 1990s, they change it, and it has cost the state BILLIONS. Grandfather those who were on the old system pensions in, and all new hires should be figured on the age of 60, otherwise the pension system/state will be broke. And soon.

6. Back to WalMart for a second - their ability to pay minimum wages to a maximum amount of the workforce works in the opposite direction as unions. I think the workforce at Walmart should unionize...it would help the entire country. And if they started offering health care to its employees? Even better.

7. There is a law going through Texas legislature that I agree with, except for one fatal flaw. Anyone knows if one wishes to eliminate a problem, one should go after the DEMAND. Rarely do we do that. With the drug problem, we should attack those who buy the drugs, not the ones who sell it. If we eliminate the sellers, more will pop up to meet the demand, and usually they're a bit more violent. It creates an escalating problem. Texas has decided to fine businesses/people who employ immigrants. THAT'S ALL IT TAKES. If it becomes too costly to hire illegal immigrants, they won't get hired. If they don't get hired, they won't come to this country. Throw the borders open; it won't matter. However, Texas has a loophole - one can hire an illegal immigrant if they work within a household.

That's bullshit. But again, that's our government. Always looking out for the special interests rather than regular Americans like you and I.

Update

2011-02-17T08:58:00.000-08:00

I'll get back to my Egypt stories, which, if you remember Part 1, I hadn't even arrived there yet. I had to give the back story to understand the debauchery that took place on my first visit.

Last night I was supposed to meet up with The Cone of Silence, but signals got crossed and I didn't head out to the bar. I went home instead, and was abused from a distance.

But I was excited to see the gang, if only to tell them I recently gained an understanding of a recent fortune told to me. According to "the reading" (which I don't necessarily subscribe to, and many can be interpreted in different ways), I was going to meet/be assisted by a divorced woman with two kids. I joked, because I tend to date women much younger than me - women who aren't independently successful, who couldn't possibly help me with my hopes of getting published or earning money via my writing (and God knows definitely not with what's on this blog!).

I called my real mother again on Tuesday. I last called her on Christmas Day, and before that I hadn't spoken to her since 2002.

Before then? 1978.

It's time to forgive. It's time to forget...both of which I have a lot of trouble doing. I left a message on my way home from work, and an hour later I got a call back from her. Two minutes into the conversation, my phone died. I called back from another phone, after turning mine on long enough to get the number (remember when you could memorize everyone's number? I still have about twenty numbers memorized of friends from when I was a kid with a rotary phone). I have spring break in March, and I thought that might be a good time to take a trip to Washington DC to visit friends...and along the way, stop to see my mother.

Did I mention she's divorced, with two children? My brother and I. No, I'm not going to pull an Alabama or West Virginia on her, but if I'm able to forgive and forget, maybe it will allow me to fall in love again. Move on. Gain peace.

And search for a f***ing agent without fear of rejection, like I've done for so long in my life.

Top Songs, February 13th 2011

2011-02-13T12:13:00.000-08:00

1. Best Coast - Sun Was High (and so was I)
2. Boxer Rebellion - Step Out of the Car
3. The Hush Now - Vietnam Giraffe
4. Tokyo Police Club - Bambi
5. Cut Copy - Take Me Over
6. Arcade Fire - Sprawl II
7. Early Ape - Radio
8. Cold Cave - The Great Pan is Dead
9. Crystal Castles - Not in Love (feat. Robert Smith)
10. The Drums - Best Friend
11. The Wombats - Tokyo (Vampires and Wolves)
12. Tapes 'N Tapes - Freak Out
13. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Heart in Your Heartbreak
14. The Veils - Bloom
15. The Last Royals - Crystal Vases
16. Delphic - Halcyon
17. Two Door Cinema Club - What You Know
18. Kings of Leon - Pyro
19. The Naked & Famous - Young Blood
20. Violens - Violent Sensation Descends
21. Stars - Wasted Daylight
22. Cake - Long Time
23. Asobi Seksu - Trails
24. British Sea Power - Who's in Control?
25. The Strokes - Under Cover of Darkness

Egypt, part 1.

2011-02-12T09:43:00.000-08:00

The last few days have been almost as exciting for me as when I was watching the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Back then, I was in college, and my friends and I would stay up for hours watching the events of Eastern Europe as they unfolded. As first Tunisia and then Egypt removed their strongmen presidents through peaceful protests, I wondered what country would be next, and if the Middle East would be finally moving towards democracy.

But this has nothing to do with the story I'm about to tell.

When I was living in Damascus, my school hosted a soccer tournament for a number of the private American schools in the Eastern Mediterranean area. Parents and teachers were asked to host players and coaches, and so I volunteered. A coach from Cairo was assigned to me - a man of South African heritage who grew up in England after his parents left due to their anger over apartheid (they were white, but couldn't believe a government would do that).

Expat was a great guy - a few years older than me, he had lived in Egypt for years. He never met a challenge he didn't like, never found himself in a situation that made him uncomfortable. I've told a story about him before...this is when we met.

The teams arrived Wednesday night, and were leaving on Sunday. On the first night, I met him at school, and we walked over to my house, about a half mile from school. Once there, he dropped off his luggage, freshened up, and we went to the Headmaster's apartment, who was hosting an event for all visitors. On the way over, Expat told me he had been to Damascus, and wanted to hang out in town. He said he knew a couple places.

I had lived there for two months. I only knew the British Embassy bar (The Pig & Whistle), and the Australian Bar (The Roo Bar). I only socialized with Americans, and I was basically boring. Expat, who didn't even live in the city, and could barely speak Arabic (he understood it better), was going to show me around the city of three million. An hour into our appearance at my boss' place, we left. There were four of us in two - he and his assistant coach, a cute girl in her mid-20s, myself and another teacher from my school. We grabbed a taxi, and Expat said to the driver, "Take us somewhere seedy."

He then said something in Arabic, which I don't think meant "seedy", but got the idea across. He took us to a part of town I never visited again. Dark, litter on the streets, faded signs. Seedy.

We walked into a strip club. In Damascus. In the Middle East.

The working girls weren't that cute, but they did serve beer, the first time I had seen it outside the embassy bars. Expat wasn't impressed. "We need someplace seedier." We left, and hopped into another cab after getting general directions from one of the bouncers at the club. By the end of the night (by which I mean about an hour before I was scheduled to teach), we were in a strip club with Ukrainian girls who had hit every branch in the ugly tree, girls who may have had some chromosomal issues. The girl with us was a good sport, talking to the other teacher from Damascus. I cringed every time I had to touch something in the club, afraid I was going to get every type of hepatitis.

Expat's eyes gleamed. He loved the seediness of it.

The next night was Thursday night, where the regulars went to The Roo Bar. But Expat decided we were going instead to the Damascus Sheraton, host to Lufthansa's sponsorship of a Oktoberfest Party. I had gone with some Americans a couple days earlier, where we indulged in German food and beer (at about $60 a ticket), and the wild evening included a dance with our school's 60 year old guidance counselor. Just a crazy evening (insert sarcastic tone here).

The event was sold out, and had been for weeks. Expat didn't care - he figured he could talk our way in.

And so he did. At first the Syrians at the front argued, but Expat wasn't taking no for an answer, and we wandered in. There were about four hundred people there, seated along long tables, as if in a Munich beer garden. Against the far wall was the British Embassy staff, and two tables closer to us were members of the Dutch Embassy. In between sat a large contingent of Syrian families, parents hoping to introduce their children to the better aspects of foreign culture. I recognized some of the British from their bar, so Expat and I made our way over to them.

They were shit faced. Three sheets to the wind. Completely trousered. Expat and I attempted to catch up.

It was during this evening that I got to know The Diplomat and Fat Bastard, two of my favorite people in Damascus. One of them that night decided it was no longer Oktoberfest; instead, it was a Greek wedding, and began launching plates in the wall behind him, where they shattered upon impact. Waiters rushed over to clean up the mess, but realized the futility of stopping what was happening. After the fifth or sixth plate they stopped coming around. Not long after, the British Embassy workers tired of breaking plates, and decided to start a food fight with the Dutch Embassy. It started innocently enough with some pieces of bread, and the Dutch laughingly retaliated...and then it got serious.

I can still see in my mind this particular image: as things were flying back and forth, there was a Syrian family of eight stuck in the middle of the mayhem. The father, immaculately dressed in a navy blue suit, faced the Dutch table, his back to the British. He was unwilling (or unable) to confront the participants, so he kept his kids' heads low and instructed them to finish their meal as quickly as they could. His face was down towards his meal, and he shoveled food into his mouth almost nonstop...all the while, soup dripped off his left shoulder down his back.

An hour later, the oompah band was strutting their German music, and The Diplomat's wife and decided it would be a good time to do the tango down the entire length of the table. We were drunk; the table cluttered with broken plates and bits of food. Somehow, not only did we make it the entire length and back, but we were damned good as well. In the two years I stayed in Syria, The Diplomat's Wife and I attempted to do the tango again and again...and each time, we were nearly as good as we were that night.

After the Oktoberfest party was finished, Expat and I wound up staying out until late night again. I managed to get four hours sleep in before wandering over to school (Friday was the weekend), where I watched some of the soccer tournament. After Expat's team was done, he took me to a college party in Damascus - I have no idea how he found it, but we stumbled upon the university that hosted foreign students who wanted to study Arabic - the Ifiad. At that party, I met a number of American, British, French students who were in Damascus for the school year. We didn't stay all that long - Expat wound doing his own variation of a Scottish céilí with a young girl and flung her into the chandelier, shattering it (she wasn't injured) and the hosts were a bit angry. My memory's a bit hazy by this point, but I'm pretty sure we wound up someplace seedy that evening.

That weekend changed my life in Damascus. I became good friends with the The Diplomat and Fat Bastard, and the next week I met Filthy, the boyfriend of the girl who had hit the chandelier. These three became some of my closest friends in Damascus, and I remain in touch with them today.

Expat went back to Cairo that Sunday, and I told him I owed him a return visit. "I welcome the challenge."

And so he did - that March, I went to Egypt for the first time in my life to pay him back for the lack of sleep he caused during his stay. It wasn't a fair fight...he was ready. And I fell in love with Cairo.

The Modern World

2011-02-10T09:59:00.000-08:00

I rarely do two posts in one day, but the review of last night's concert was shit, and events around the world are unfolding rapidly. To hell with my reading for Monday's class on postmodernism. I'll read it later.

Let's start on the homefront first: I'm registered Republican. And I don't think I've ever been more frustrated with it as a party than I am these days. More to the point, what the hell do they stand for?

Here's what I think the basic problem is with Republicans - there are three groups vying for control: the libertarians, the neo-cons, and the Christian Coalition. While I'm not going to go into detail on any of these, I will attempt to summarize each position

Libertarian: small government, relaxing of gov't laws and regulations
Neo-Cons: belief in free-market principles, but the overriding ideals concern the security of American citizens, to the point of playing "Big Brother" and siding with governments allied with the U.S., ignoring any faults they may have. (I guess I'm a little against this group)
CC: Religious tones to all their stances, ranging from inclusion in the public school systems, the issue of abortion et. al. It also believes in the "invisible hand" of the market, but sticks to conservative values when relating to morals.

While there is a slight connection between these groups (the idea of a "free-market", though it runs secondary to more important issues for some of these sects), the underlying unifier within the party these days is their opposition to the Democratic Party.

That's it.

They can agree that the Democrats running the country is bad for America. The problem is, once they take power (for instance, creating legislation now that they control the House), they can't agree on anything.

Until they get this resolved, the Republican Party will not be able to maintain a leading role in American government. Its best position will be in opposition...and that isn't healthy for the United States.

Which brings me to Wikileaks. If anyone hasn't seen the interview 60 Minutes did with Julian Assange, they should take the time to do so now. I'll wait.

Done? Good.

Recently, members of the American government have been speaking out against Wikileaks and its founder. Let's ignore for the moment that he may be going on trial for rape, and his arguments for fighting extradition to Sweden being a load of shit.

Wikileaks is good for the world. It's good for the people. What its bad for is secrecy, which allows for corruption, secret deals, and "democratic" governments acting in not-so-democratic ways. Did the United States get egg on its face through the release of thousands (millions?) of documents. Yes. Should we look for ways to arrest Mr. Assange? No.

Learn from our mistakes. Get better at running an open and honest government.

It makes me sick that Michael Moore is helping Julian Assange. It makes me even more sick that the Republicans aren't.

Which gets me to the events happening in the Middle East.

After the events of September 11, 2001, G.W. Bush went on the air and spoke about the importance of democracy spreading through the Middle East. In the following months, the American government put pressure on its allies to become more democratic. Unfortunately, two things happened:

1. America became more focused on fighting two wars, and
2. Hamas won the elections in Palestine.

I want to focus on the second. As a result of Hamas' victory, we stopped pushing for democracy. And we refused to talk to Hamas.

And we're viewed as being hypocritical in the Middle East.

Hamas won the election because Fatah (Arafat's party) was/is one of the most corrupt organizations in the world, and the aid the UN has been giving to the PLO has wound up in Arafat's family and his cronies, while those that need it have received nothing. Hamas is honest - it keeps very little money for itself and donates to those who are unemployed or injured from the infitadah. This is the major reason they were elected, not because of their opposition to Israel (which didn't hurt their votes). Israel and the United States refused to negotiate with Hamas until they recognized Israel's right to exist.

That was Hamas' only bargaining chip. Let them use it at the negotiating table.

Instead, the PLO is fragmented today, Hezbollah (another fiscally honest organization) and Hamas have gained popularity and strength. What has Israel or the US gained by taking a hard-line stance? Oh, right...the backing of Egypt.

Whoops.

Egypt needs to have a democracy. It needs a Constitution to protect the rights of a freely-elected government. And it needs its people to stand up to any more strongmen who try to throw away those ideals.

And the United States and Israel need to support it, no matter who wins an election.

Concert Review - Taproot/Willpowerless 2/9/11

2011-02-10T05:12:00.000-08:00

Is it possible to make a living as a rock star these days? I'm not sure if one can - other than the "superstars"...

My case in point was last night's concert at the North Star Bar, with Taproot headlining. I work with a couple of the guys in Willpowerless, who were one of the opening bands (MeTalkPretty was another).

When I arrived, they were onstage...and they put on a great performance. Part of the new "Nu-Metal" scene, Willpowerless has been together for about ten years, and have obviously spent time working on stage presence. While they're only in their early 20s, they commanded the room as if they were much older. I'll admit - Nu Metal is not my type of music, but these guys brought it. I was also impressed with Willpowerless' new/old drummer Jake, who is back with the band after taking some time off.

I skipped MeTalkPretty..after the opening song, I got the impression their lead singer was similar to Amy Lee of Evanescence, and I wasn't in the mood.

The last band was Taproot, a band that has been around for almost fifteen years. The guitarist from Willpowerless was telling me (and showing me) how big a fan he was. In his possession was a ticket from when he went to see them as a kid (seven years ago).

It was signed by all the members of the band.

It was also a show they did at the now-named Wells Fargo Center. In front of thousands. And here, last night, they were playing in front of about 150 people...and about half of them were friends of Willpowerless. It defies logic.

At least one guy was there to see Taproot. Bald, with a hundred tattoos, he approached the group I was with, yelled at us to get closer to the stage. Based on his crazed eyes, I took two steps back. And once Taproot got started, all the craziness boiled to the surface. He didn't take notice of the "No Moshing" rule, and...well, I'm not sure how it started, but he wound up in a fight with four bouncers. It took two songs for the bouncers to remove him from the area.

I thought they threw him out of the bar, but he wasn't. When I went to the bathroom later, he was sitting at the bar telling a group of people how into Taproot he really was.

Well done.

Taproot did an amazing show - and I don't know a damn song by them. And yet they were in front of a hundred fans who came to see them...less than a year after releasing their latest album.

I don't get it.

What I DO get, however, is that hot women go to see Nu Metal. I have never seen, percentage wise, more beautiful women at a show. When are they playing again?

The Mayor

2011-02-06T10:20:00.000-08:00

I have a lot of stories about The Mayor and I. This one I told last night at the bar, and every time I think about it I end up laughing out loud. For those that don't know, The Mayor has been one of my best friends for the last 16 years or so.

His wife is a fantastic person as well, and she used to love messing with him by throwing him surprise birthday parties. It worked on a couple levels, because:

a. The Mayor doesn't like birthdays, and
b. The Mayor doesn't like surprises.

Mrs. Mayor had been throwing him surprise birthday parties for a few years when The Mayor started catching on and becoming very wary around that time of year. So she did what any decent prankster would do: she threw him birthday parties at any time of the year.

The last time she got away with a surprise party she recruited me to assist. I had been back from the Middle East for about a year, and I had never attended one of his parties. She thought if I invited him to an event, he wouldn't suspect a thing. And it was true; a few months earlier I had invited The Mayor to a Lounge Lizards event.

When I lived in Damascus, I spent a lot of time hanging out with Brits. One of the Brits I played rugby with, The Diplomat, had been stationed in Manila in his previous posting, and it was there that he joined the Lounge Lizards.

I should explain the origins of the group.

Back in 1988, British employees at the embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, were looking for ways to have fun. Pakistan is not the social center of the universe, and embassy employees tend to drink more than the average person. They were bored with life there, so they decided to do something about it. They created a group, twelve men dressed in tuxedos who would meet every six weeks or so. They would attend a dinner, act incredibly formal and...English, then after the meal was done the head of ceremonies (The Toastmaster) would stand, raise a glass of port and offer a toast to the Queen. After the toast, he would command the Lizards to remove their jackets, light cigars, then all hell would break loose.

It was a popular event in Islamabad, and each of the twelve vowed to take it with them to their next posting. One of the members went to Manila, where The Diplomat was stationed. The Diplomat brought it with him to Syria. But there was a problem; by-laws suggested it was a group for male British embassy employees...only in Damascus, there weren't twelve men in total, let alone that might be interested in joining such a group. So The Diplomat did the next best thing: he invited other expatriates. I was on that list.

After my two years in the Middle East, I returned to the States and hosted a Lounge Lizards event in Chinatown. Everyone who went had a great time, and many asked when I would host yet another. The Mayor could've cared either way, but since he was a good friend he thought it important to go and support my event. His invitation came on a formal letterhead, with the Lounge Lizards emblem. It invited him to another gathering of the Lizards, two months or so after his birthday.

On the day of the event, he was at home dressing into his tuxedo. It was a very warm day, and The Mayor did not want to go. Mrs. Mayor refused to say one way or another an opinion - she knew his loyalty would guilt him into attending. She told him she was going shopping with a friend of hers, then rushed to the place where we were holding the surprise party.

The best part of the event was where it was being held. We had reserved the upstairs of a biker pool hall in Manayunk. So picture the following:

The Mayor's friends are all gathered in an upstairs pool hall, behind a curtain in this room. Dressed in summer clothes, waiting for The Mayor. The Mayor is a shortish Puerto Rican man.

Walking into a biker bar.

Wearing a tuxedo.

Everyone downstairs stopped to look at this strange person walking in. He meekly asked the tattooed man in charge if there was a dinner or something taking place in the building, and he gruffly pointed (if that's possible) to the stairs. He walked up, lifted the curtain away, and all of us yelled, "SURPRISE!!"

I never seen The Mayor swear as much as he did that day, chasing me around the pool tables. He was angry, yet laughing because he knew he had been tricked. Again.

Oh, and he was sweating more than any man should. The tuxedo jacket came off when he blew out the candles, but it didn't help much.

I guess a tricked Puerto Rican man hanging out in a seedy bar sweats a lot.

Changing Times

2011-02-04T10:33:00.000-08:00

This never would have happened years ago, and my reaction would've been completely different as well.

Last week, I went into work, and I ran into the manager of the restaurant in the building. Not my boss. Nice guy. Gay. Big deal.

He and I have a common friend whom went to school with me, so we've talked at times. But not like Friday.

"Nice haircut!" I had my flowing manes finally tamed the day before. For a while, I looked like Shaggy Dog. And I don't handle complements well...just ask my therapist.

"Thanks. You're just saying that because I don't look like I'm from 1974 anymore."

"That's not true!", he retorted. "The haircut looks great, and trust me...you're my style."

In my younger years, I probably would've yelled some vindictive mean-spirited comment about him being gay. You know, homo, fag...something.

Instead, I stood there, stunned. Absolutely stunned. Not lying, my lower jaw had dropped.

He smiled, and diffused the situation. He moved his hand into a high-five position, not to give me one, but how a Native American would've begun to say How. "No disrespect!"

I had been blatantly hit on by a gay man. Offended? No. Shocked? Yes. And in 2011, I was able to laugh about it.

Concert Review - Best Coast/Wavves 2/1/11 @ Starlight Ballroom

2011-02-03T13:22:00.001-08:00

Before I begin a critique of the actual show, I think I should explain that Starlight Ballroom is my least favorite venue for shows in Philadelphia. I mean, there may be a worse one, but I haven't been to it yet. But when these two bands are too big for Johnny Brendas/Northstar Bar/Kung Fu Necktie/First Unitarian Church, and aren't big enough for the TLA (let alone Tower Theater or Electric Factory), they don't have much of a choice.

First, I'll list my likes and dislikes for the venue:

Likes:

1. The floors are wooden. It doesn't hurt the feet as much as TLA or First Unitarian Church.
2. That's it.

Dislikes:

1. Everything else. Actually, to be serious:
2. The section for the 21 and over crowd is all the way in the back. At other places (TLA, Electric Factory), there is at least one or two places to see the band closer to the stage.
3. The venue was obviously not made for shows. Pillars block the view for some, the floor is flat preventing those in the middle of the floor good sightlines, etc.
4. The acoustics aren't very good.

Yet with all that, I thought the show would be good, and I wasn't too disappointed. The first band, No Joy, did a nice job, though at times were more like a shoegazer band in the vein of My Bloody Valentine. After the first four songs, they got a little more into the performance, and I'd compare them to either Belly or The Melting Hopefuls. Maybe a combination of all three.

I have a simple rule for the opening act of a show with three or more performances: be either completely different as to shock the audience, or create a vibe the next performers can build on. In this way No Joy was successful.

For me, the star of the show was Wavves. As they came on stage, a few stage hands threw beach balls into the audience (and a few onto frontman Nathan Williams' head), and got the winterized Philly crowd into a summer mood. The songs rocked, the audience verged on breaking into a mosh pit (with one girl actually climbing onto stage and launching herself back into the crowd for a short-lived crowd surfing ride), and the sound retained a raw sound - so raw, in fact, that at least three times the band had to restart songs because of some mix up between the members. It matched the lo-fi garage punk sound they were going for. There was little differentiation between numbers, but since their show relied on energy, that wasn't a real problem.

Best Coast came on shortly after. They did a good show, but it wasn't great for me. There were two reasons for this: first, they didn't play my favorite song of theirs, and they didn't do an encore. Bethany Cosentino was suffering from an upper respiratory infection, which she said caused her to visit the hospital that day. It didn't affect her vocals though, as she did a hell of a job, including the cover of Lesley Gore's "That's the Way Boys Are".

I wish I had time to link all the songs they did...but I'd have to research the lyrics. Setlist.com doesn't have them, and I have snippets from each song on my phone. I'll get to it later.

Wavves:

1.
2.
3. King of the Beach
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12. So Bored
13.
14.
15.
16. Post Acid

Best Coast

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13. Boyfriend
14.
15. That's The Way Boys Are
16. Let Me Wake Up
17. When I'm With You
18.

Guest Post

2011-02-01T13:14:00.001-08:00

A close friend of mine and I keep blogs. Most likely, they should be private, but against our better judgment (and lack of inner filter) we've made them available to the general public. Unfortunately, it's not the general public she or I are worried about reading it.

It's the people we know.

As a result, she and I discussed the possibility of keeping a "double secret" blog, or something our friends would never see. It would be somewhere we'd talk about our friends, our something about ourselves we never wanted others to see. I'm a little busy personally with school, so she gets first dibs.

Enjoy :)

....................................................................................................................................

Fasten your seat belts folks. This might be the most unintentionally racist post of all time. And the irony of posting it on the first day of Black History Month is not lost on me.

The world we live in is very PC. Relax people, sometimes it's OK to tell a joke. Like when Daniel Tosh says he loves Chinese because they taste just like chicken.

The Gue and I have been friends for almost twenty years. And in that time I've introduced him to many of my other friends. Over time he has come to realize that me and my close girlfriends tend to speak in acronyms. We also use phrases that need explanation for those not in our circle. He's asked me to break down some of these acronyms and phrases (in case any of you bump into us in public......which is something you should try to avoid at all costs).

This post is unintentionally racist because we are obsessed with racial stereotypes. I am German and Black (I usually refer to this as mulatto or Halfrican-American). On the Jefferson Scale (ranging from Thomas to George) I would say I hover somewhere between Old Michael Jackson and New Michael Jackson. Q, a close friend that I've known even longer than The Gue, is Korean and Hawaiian. We focus in on the things "our people" are most known for. Example - if she were to be involved in a car accident I would be totally OK with telling her "yes, I am well aware that your people are known for crappy driving". And if I told her that I had planned a nice ski weekend she'd have zero issue saying "bitch, please, you know black folk don't like cold weather" and I'd remind her about the half German part of my heritage. We would NOT consider it OK to use any racial slurs, EVEN AMONGST OURSELVES. We generally stick to the above four races and Mexican (Q's manfriend is Mexican and he partakes in our adventures).

2nd floor RR - When it comes to bodily functions we are worse than 13 year old boys. We have to talk about ALL OF IT. Q works for a prestigious banking institution (she would argue about that "prestigious" part) and it's an unspoken rule there that if you have to go #2 you should use the restroom ON THE SECOND FLOOR.
Example of how to use this in a sentence: "I'm stuck in traffic on the NJTP and we aren't moving and I need a 2nd fl RR. Maybe I'll pull over and duck behind a tree".

AEF - alter ego fun. A friend of ours was involved in a relationship with a total jackass. We all disliked him and it seemed like their relationship was the craziest emotional rollercoaster ever. He wanted to marry her and took her to Turks and Caicos. She broke up with him while they were there. Of course, they stayed Facebook friends so they could spy on each other. According to his FB status updates he was going out a lot and having the time of his life. She was home crying and worried about the pace at which he had moved on. We assured her that he was staying home crying as well. He was sending his alter ego out every night of the week to party. It was fake fun to show her that she didn't break him.

E.Clair - E.Clair has been a friend of mine since grade school. She is incredibly sweet and reminds me a bit of Charlotte from Sex and the City. She works in fashion and I don't think she has ever looked bad a day in her life. Don't let that description fool you, though. She can drink beer with the best of them and she crushes ALL COMPETITION in fantasy football. The woman is my design muse. She is also a hoarder. Everyone on our blogs has a nickname. The Gue used to have an Aunt Clair that was a hoarder. Sadly she passed away amongst her hoarded goods and several days later her body was discovered. He couldn't help comparing the two and now the name stuck. Yes, we are well aware we're going to hell. Why do you ask?

The Brady Diet - Our friend Brady advises he's fat because he "eats his feelings". We've started calling it The Brady Diet. We are ALL on the Brady Diet. Well, all of us except E.Clair.

FSC - FANTASY SEX CAMP. UGH. This is a game Q and I play when we're bored. It's a game that I discovered on the Internet about 10 years ago. I wish I could find the source so I can point you in the right direction, but alas, I can not (SAD FACE).

Essentially, you have 7 nights of awesome celebrity dates.

Example: Monday night - You and Jake Gyllenhaal attend some film premiere is some exotic locale. After the movie he spends the evening attending to your every whim and paying for dinner.
Alternate - Lakers courtside seats with Rex Ryan. After the game you'll go get a god damn snack***

Gue edit: (*** my friend has a major crush on Rex Ryan - including the feet. I just don't get it.)

Low Budget Asian - Q decided that she'd cook some Korean food for dinner. Now, I love Korean food. I would go so far as to consider myself a connoisseur. Q had to look up a recipe on the Interwebs because she's low budget Asian. Or Asian light. Whatever you prefer. You can pretty much interchange this with any other race.

MST - I know you're wondering why Mystery Science Theater is making an appearance, but before you run with that thought let me crush it and inform you that MST stands for Mexican Standard Time - Q and I are both anal control freaks and could never imagine being late for anything. Consequently, MST isn't even our creation. It has an Urban Dictionary listing! During the last election primary Hilary Clinton's campaign was accused of telling Caucasian voters in Arizona that polls opened at 9, while poll notifications that went to minority neighborhoods advised polls opened at 8. African Americans have their own version of MST. It's called CP Time. It also has an Urban Dictionary listing as well. Because Urban Dictionary is like Wikipedia. Neither lie. EVER.

Come back next week for part 2!

Marxist History

2011-01-31T17:50:00.000-08:00

This has nothing to do with what I normally post. But since I'm in class regularly, and the material I'm working with is dense, I need to jot down what we went over in class soon after it ends. What better place to do it than here?

It's no worse than the political rants I go on occasionally...

Today in class we discussed Marxist history.

I'm a Republican. I hate Marx. And after reading the articles and books about Marx this week?

I hate those who write about Marx.

But I learned a lot about Marxist history, and an important quote concerning it.

"The best thing to happen to Marxist historians was the fall of the Soviet Union."

I could be wrong here, but after tonight's lesson I'm under the impression that Marxism has little to do with the prediction of the future - it took up a minute part of his writings. What he was more concerned with the critiquing of various humanists before him: Adam Smith, David Ricardo, David Hume, Thomas Malthus.

What all of these predecessors to Marx stated was that the age they lived in was the "natural state" for man, governed by natural law. Marx set out to prove them wrong, and he may have done so.

If Marx wasn't the first social historian, he certainly was one of the first, and he was the first that declared that politics, economics and society could not be separated from one another. None existed without the other, and therefore could not be explained separate from another. The modern world we live in - that of capitalism, came into being through a tortuous struggle by those who lived it. Eventually there were winners, and there were losers. It wasn't linear, it wasn't "impersonal", it was very real and inhumane to those who lived it.

The end of feudalism came over a period of time. Until its end, the serfs and the lords had a social/political contract, with economic foundations. The serfs were in charge of farming the land, in charge of any excess surplus agriculture until the time of exchange with the lord. Whatever agreement the nobility made with its peasants, the peasants were left with some sort of excess. At some point (Marx points to the seventeenth century in England, later in Western Europe), the serfs lost possession of the land. From this point forward, the proletariat was only selling his/her own labor, and any surplus was controlled by the bourgeois from beginning to end.

To this point, I need to define a few terms (according to Marxist historians):

1. economy: social relations, relative to how we produce
2. capitalism: separation of producer and product
3. surplus: cost of production < style="font-style: italic;">The Making of the Working Class in England brackets the years 1695-1801, as evidenced by a series of food riots. What makes these riots interesting is that the poor who rioted tended to be disciplined - they took farm goods from the early capitalists, and paid for them at a price they deemed worthy. It would be like looters breaking into a store, and leaving cash for the things they took...not the price tag, but what they valued it at. The poor struggled with this changing world, and they looked back to an earlier time where the lord was supposed to look after his people.

It didn't always work like that, but haven't we, throughout history, hark back to the "Good Ole Days"?

Both sides (the haves and have nots) fought and struggled to deal with these changing times, the haves staying in control through the use of politics, laws and power. THIS is why they are all intertwined. Since the inception of capitalism, many presume a wage given to a laborer is a private deal between employer and employee, and a balance is reached: if the employee asks for too much, the employer may find another to do the same job at a lesser price. If the employer offers too little, the employee may be able to find work elsewhere for a better wage.

All very "natural law-ish". But Marx argues that "wage" is a social relationship developed as a result of struggle, one in which the ancestor of the employee lost and the ancestor of the employer won.

Today, our government is highly regulatory - it has rules against child labor, working more than forty hours a week, safety rules to protect labor, and social welfare nets to protect those who don't succeed. The government for the most part, however, stays out of the private contract determining salary.

Non-Marxists argue that it is because it is a private issue. Marxists believe the government staying out of it is a political decision, and therefore a public matter. When this capitalist world first developed, there were maximum wage laws, and various methods to keep the proletariat workers down. Now that the business owners won, there is no need for government to be active, and have withdrawn from that aspect of the economy...and that is because the war was fought. The battle is over. Political power created this situation, the removal of political power maintains it.

Government was never a neutral arbiter. Government is a human instrument. There are no disinterested parties, and no natural law governs the "private" matters of wage.

What I found extremely interesting during this lesson was how the landed gentry attempted to hang on to power through symbols of their power. The following began as "traditions" during this time: wigs, fancy dress, noble titles, and kilts. It was a way to remind people of how things "used to be", even though the terms/dress were new.

Forget the predictions Marx made - they're horseshit. It's his work as a historian that's interesting.

Mind you, I don't agree entirely with his premise - and if one doesn't agree with the beginning of his argument, the whole thing (obviously) falters. But he certainly makes an interesting case.

We'll get back to our normally scheduled programming later this week as I review the Best Coast/Wavves concert Tuesday night. I promise I won't be this boring.

Crime

2011-01-29T19:25:00.000-08:00

Is no laughing matter.

A lot of people I know who live in the city have one story or another about getting jumped, robbed, something. And finally, it happened to me.

Unfortunately, the story of what happened has done nothing but made my friends at Krupa's laugh. So much for wearing it as a badge of honor.

I left Fergie's, where Zeppo had invited me to join his friends for a round of Quizzo. It was a good time, and we won...only we didn't. It seems we broke the rules by having 9 people on our team. Only about 5 contributed, but no matter: we were disqualified, with nothing but pride of a job well done to show off.

That pride disappeared a few minutes later. I walked to 15th and Arch Streets to catch the "48", and visit the late night crew at Krupa's. To make sure there would be someone there (it was about 11), I called The Greatest. He told me there were 3 people there, and they were leaving. He said I shouldn't bother. I then went back up to City Hall to wait for the bus that goes to my house.

I checked my phone - I had the better part of 20 minutes to wait for the bus. As I do in these situations, I pulled my phone out, played a game, and texted anyone whom I thought I could bother late on a Thursday. There were about ten people waiting around, most for my bus. A gentleman walked up to the stop, and asked no one in particular, "Is the 33 still running?" That was my bus, I certainly hoped it was.

He took a step closer to me, but I didn't notice...I was playing my game. Then, suddenly I wasn't. He had snatched the phone from my hand, and began running down the street. I gave chase. We ran by the stop for the 48, where two cops had been standing not two minutes earlier. As we approached (I'm about twenty feet behind the thief), I start yelling, "Police! Police!"

No luck - they had stepped inside to grab something to eat (insert stereotypical cop joke here). I gave chase for another five blocks, as I slowly fell behind. I'd like to blame it on the peacoat I was wearing, or the bulky clothes, but I'm certain it had more to do with being an old fuck and running out of breath. By the time we reached 12th and Race, I was a hundred feet behind and fading. He slipped down a dark alleyway.

Fuck.

I attempted to cut him off by going around, but unless he decided to stop, take a piss, read a newspaper and jerk off I wasn't quick enough to go a LONGER way around to the other side of the alley. I circled back, and peaked down the alley. If he were there, I couldn't see him...and going down that alley was not a good idea without knowing where he was. If he had any weapon, he didn't need it at the bus stop, but he could use it here.

I turned around and went back to the bus stop. One of the policemen who had been standing at the corner before the chase was out on the street again. He had been alerted by the bouncer at the bar, and he said he tried to cut off the chase at Broad Street. We talked for a bit, but I didn't have much to say...I couldn't breathe.

I have insurance on the phone. It wasn't that big a loss, but I my ego was wounded.

I told everyone at Krupa's on Friday I was mugged. At first, they were sympathetic...until I told them I basically lost a footrace with someone with no weapon. One of the regulars offered me her tampon to "clean up my pussy".

So, now I've joined the thousands of people in Philadelphia who have been the victim of a crime.

More than anything, I'm embarrassed.

Concert Review: SSLYBY, TDCC, TPC (1/23 @ Trocadero)

2011-01-25T06:52:00.000-08:00

I don't have much time to write a new entry - I have class in two hours, and the work I've done for said class is...lacking.

I went to the show at the Trocadero this past Saturday. One ticket, thought I might run into a couple of friends. I did, but they arrived near the beginning of the second act. I wanted to the opening act, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin from just outside St. Louis. They have a couple decent songs, but their performance suggests they still have some ways to go. The band members really didn't know what to do onstage, and occasionally the lead singer would jump in the air to emphasize some point in a song. The landing was always off-beat, and usually during a song that didn't need or encourage such behavior.

Your songs are melodic - become Travis. Treat each performance like a singer/songwriter show, describe what you're playing, connect with the audience. Currently, the band is probably better in the studio than onstage. Give them time.

The big disappointment from the evening came from Two Door Cinema Club. Mind you, most of the audience loved them, and they should: it's catchy music, it appealed to the under 21 crowd, and if one hadn't seen them before, they would think it was a good effort by the second act. The problem was I had seen them before:

At the First Unitarian Church on October 14th.

Two Door, a little advice: if you're going to play a show in a city you recently visited, change something in the performance. Change the times you relate to the crowd. Change your jokes. Change...something. It was the same 14 songs (they took the 2 from the encore at their headliner show and added them to the main set. For the second half, I went to the back of the balcony and talked with friends, and I wasn't the only one. I returned to my place for the headliner, Tokyo Police Club, as I hoped they would redeem the evening.

They did.

The last time I saw them, they opened for Passion Pit at the Mann Music Center, and their energy was swallowed up by the size of the venue. The Trocadero is about the right size for them, and the crowd was definitely into it. They connected with the audience, had the right blend of old(er) songs, as well as songs from the new album. To top it off, they returned for the encore with the members of Two Door Cinema Club, and the eight of them jammed The Strokes' "Last Nite". A good finish to what had been an average show.

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin:

1. Back in the Saddle
2. Sink/Let it Sway
3. All Hail Dracula
4. Modern Mystery
5. Think I Wanna Die
6. House Fire
7. Pangea

Two Door Cinema Club:

1. Cigarettes in the Theatre
2. Undercover Martyn
3. Hands Off My Cash, Monty
4. Do You Want it All?
5. Something Good Can Work
6. Handshake
7. This Is The Life
8. Kids
9. You're Not Stubborn
10. Costume Party
11. What You Know
12. Eat That Up, It's Good For You
13. Come Back Home
14. I Can Talk

Tokyo Police Club

1. Favorite Colour
2. Nature of the Experiment
3. Graves
4. End of a Spark
5. In a Cave
6. Tessellate
7. Favorite Food
8. Cheer It On (one of my favorite videos, and not the original)
9. Be Good
10. Bambi
11. Frankenstein
12. Citizens of Tomorrow (favorite part of the show, after finishing the song he told the crowd, "We Made it!" - the song was set in the year 2009)
13. Breakneck Speed
14. Wait Up! (Boots of Danger)
15. Your English is Good

Encore:

Last Nite - Strokes (with Two Door Cinema Club)

Top Songs 23rd January 2011

2011-01-22T15:42:00.001-08:00

1. Tokyo Police Club - Bambi
2. Two Door Cinema Club - What You Know
3. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin - Sink/Let it Sway
(all three bands above I saw in concert last night, concert review shortly)
4. The Wombats - Tokyo (Vampires and Wolves)
5. The Drums - Me and the Moon
6. Cut Copy - Take Me Over
7. Young the Giant - My Body
8. Boxer Rebellion - Step Out of the Car
9. Girls - Heartbreaker
10. British Sea Power - Who's in Control
11. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Heart in Your Heartbreak
12. The Naked & Famous - Young Blood
13. LCD Soundsystem - Dance Yourself Clean
14. Crystal Castles - Not in Love (feat. Robert Smith)
15. Amusement Parks on Fire - Flashlight Planetarium
16. The Drums - Best Friend
17. Sleigh Bells - Infinity Guitars
18. Sun Airway - American West
19. Arcade Fire - Sprawl II
20. Cold War Kids - Louder Than Ever
21. Jukebox the Ghost - Schizophrenia
22. The National - Afraid of Everyone
23. Bright Eyes - Shell Games
24. El Guincho - Bombay
25. Mumford and Sons - The Cave
26. Stars - Wasted Daylight

New Semester

2011-01-18T05:54:00.000-08:00

And, hopefully, my last.

I am taking three classes this semester - one, to improve my Arabic language skills that were shaky at best even while I lived in the Middle East for two years. The others (Craft of History, Cultural Memory) are to finish my requirements for my masters. Next semester I'll write my capstone, and then I'm cast off into the Great Unknown.

I'm nervous for all the normal reasons: am I capable of doing the work this semester? (the workload is crazy) Can I afford to take three classes AND work? Can I afford NOT to?

Most importantly...what happens next semester? And after that? At least I'm back on track of my life. The question is can I keep it there...

Asshole

2011-01-17T16:18:00.000-08:00

When I backpacked Europe in 1992, it was a hell of a lot different than traveling around Europe today. With today's iPods, PSPs and other handheld entertainment systems, travelers don't meet or share experiences as well as they used to.

Or maybe I'm just getting old.

While spending the summer in Europe that year, I met a number of people traveling. I met a Swedish guy named Mikhail who introduced me to the band James, I met Polish college girls when looking for a bar in Warsaw. What's funny is the people I got to know best (other than my cousin, with whom I traveled) I really don't recall how I got to know them.

When I left Vienna for Venice, on my way to Rome to meet up with my cousin Jack, I was sitting in a train compartment, reading the USA Today I had bought two weeks earlier. It was the only contract I had with my home; and I clung to it like I was in the icy sea clinging to the edge of a Titanic lifeboat. One of the guys in my compartment was reading a book, and since we were there for a number of hours, we eventually picked up a conversation. He went to school in Pennsylvania near me, and we talked about a number of things. Eventually, we got around to his book.

Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. Eco is better remembered for his book that became a movie starring Sean Connery and Christian Slater, The Name of the Rose, but this guy said very good things this book, so I asked if he minded me having a look. Eighty pages later, I was hooked. I found an English copy in Rome, and I took it with me to Greece. It's still my favorite book today, and I am on my third copy (the other two I lent out to friends who never returned them, or wore out reading it over and over).

That isn't the story. While talking to this guy, a group of American and Canadian backpackers congregated in our area on the train, and while Eco Fan wasn't going to Greece, there were about three who were. I was meeting up with my cousin in Rome the next morning - he went to Switzerland while I visited Poland and Czechoslovakia - and we were going to decide the next week of our trip before we went to the convention in Oslo we needed to be at.

When I met him at 8:30 in Rome, I had three people with me. He was sitting alone.

"Come on...we're going to Greece."

Jack and I weren't getting along when we parted ways in Berlin, so it didn't come as any surprise I would just tell him where we were going, instead of asking for his input. I'm sure he called me "Asshole" a few times under his breath...in fact, I know so, since I've read the diary he kept while we traveled.

We took the afternoon train from Rome to Bari, and planned on taking the ferry from Bari to Corfu, then onto Athens in a day and a half. By the time we arrived in Bari, there were about seven of us traveling as a group, and a few of the backpackers told the rest of us they were staying on Corfu - Athens was another day's travel and they didn't feel like spending all that time on a boat. Jack and I knew time was precious, and Athens wasn't a good option. By the time we got there, we would only have a day in the city before we had to turn around and head for Oslo. As we boarded the crowded boat, the eight of us had decided we would all spend at least three days in Corfu. Jack and I had time for four, but with that extra day we could stop somewhere along the way to Northern Europe.

The ferry was packed. We didn't have a room (our EuroRail passes only allowed for us to be on the ferry, rooms were extra...and it was booked anyway), so the group of us settled in on the deck and began to play...asshole.

I won't explain the rules, but I will explain just a few things. If a person finishes last, they become "asshole". Asshole is responsible every hand for giving the "President" (the player who won last hand) their best two cards, and doing everything the President asks.

We were drinking. And I kept losing. The Presidents grew bored of making rules for the game (no picking up cards with right hands, no using the letter "e" when talking, etc.), so they began to pick on me, and make me do anything. And everything.

Why not? I was having fun, we didn't know anyone on the boat, and it created entertainment for our group. Plus, I was trying to impress this beautiful Dutch/Jamaican girl in our group. At some point I was told to run around the boat without any pants. I did it. I was also expected to yell out at various points through the night "I'M ASSHOLE!!!"

It wasn't long before everyone on the boat knew me. The next morning we disembarked in Corfu City, and made our way to The Palladium, a resort created for North American backpackers. Throughout our five-day stay (Jack and I wound up late to the convention), we traveled around the island, and occasionally we would see people from the ferry, people whom I never met. But they knew me.

"Hey, ASSHOLE!!!"

I've been called worse.

Rant about the government, part 714.

2011-01-14T08:43:00.000-08:00

I read today that the chief executive of NPR made $562,000 last year.

I wonder if that bothers anyone as much as it bothers me.

I wish a think tank in Washington could run the revenue numbers on the following tax rates:

$0-20,000: 0% (and for every dollar a person makes under that, they get 50% of it.
If married, the first $40 K is untaxed.
Every dependent is an additional $5 K, untaxed. (That means for a family of 5, the first $55 K is tax-free)

Every dollar earned above that threshold is taxed at one rate: 30%

No such thing as capital gains - any income earned fits into the tax scheme.

Deductions become a thing of the past, though I would reduce tax breaks on mortgages by 10% each year over ten years.

Estate/Death tax? If a person inherits money, that is taxable on the same scale. So if I made $50 K in a year through work, and I inherited another $250 K from a wealthy aunt I didn't know I had, it would be taxed at 30%.

*I am willing to negotiate the last part, but I am very interested to see what revenue streams would be created through this system*

The way our tax code is written today, it creates various distortions in the marketplace. The longer these distortions last, the more difficult it is to correct. When it does finally correct, the results usually hit those that can least afford it.

Eliminate the distortions!!!

Careers

2011-01-11T09:28:00.001-08:00

Some people are meant for certain jobs. Hell, I belonged as a teacher until I screwed up. Others belong in sales.

One of the girls I work with at a country club, Boba Fett, absolutely belongs in sales. It's funny to watch the members all fawn over her. I don't think she's gorgeous, and neither does she (she's actually said that to me). But her personality? She could sell refrigerators to an Eskimo, and he would thank her after the transaction was over.

Tyler is another one. I work with her at the Art Museum, and this girl can sell anything to anyone. She's broke, works five jobs, but has no problem planning out her trip to Spain this summer. "Marc", she said, "I get things for free."

As if to prove her point, when we left work last night, I drove her car to the parking garage exit, where one is supposed to insert the garage ticket, and the gate raises allowing the car to pass. This won't work unless the person paid the ticket. Tyler didn't - she could've gotten it validated in the museum, but she still would've owed $5. "It was too far a walk, and I'm not paying five dollars." I was driving, since I can parallel park. When we reached the gate, she told me to press the info button. We did, and the gate raised. No questions asked by security, nothing. They knew Tyler, and Tyler didn't have to pay.

So Tyler is going to Spain this summer, and she knows I may have to go to Israel for a few weeks. She cornered me at work during a slow period. "How exciting is that?! We'll be so close! I can fly Ryan Air to Israel and we can hang out!" I told her Ryan Air didn't fly to Israel. "Well then come to me. We can party in Barcelona, go nuts in Ibiza, and I've always wanted to go to Morocco!!"

I don't have the money to go to Barcelona. I don't have the liver to go to Ibiza. I tried to play it down.

"Marc, I get things for free. If you visit, you won't have to pay for anything. I'm great at picking up women, you'll have a great time." Within a few minutes we were plotting our destinations for the summer of 2011.

Damnit, it may be below freezing outside, but I need a fridge.

A Few Thoughts...

2011-01-09T08:33:00.000-08:00

I spent a bit of this morning reading about the shootout in Arizona. Horrible. Besides the Congresswoman being in critical condition, the young girl (born, ironically, on September 11, 2001) being killed, the victims of a deranged 22 year old who may or may not have been inspired by Sarah Palin's "target" list. Of course, a few thoughts came to mind:

1. It doesn't do anyone any good to highlight the list, or blame Palin for it, or claim she was the inspiration (except those trying to prevent Palin from running for President, which may be the point).
2. This reminds me of Judas Priest getting sued by parents of a teenager who committed suicide after listening to "Better By You, Better Than Me". The suit was dismissed...as there were (obviously) bigger issues with the individual to be triggered by a song - or a "target" list.
3. The current atmosphere in Washington is toxic. It is as bad as any time in American history, save the period just before the Civil War when Congressmen were beaten for speeches they gave and opinions they held, or when the Federalists were losing power to Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans and tried to hold power via the Sedition Acts among others.
4. In some other countries, it is mandatory to vote. I believe in Peru one can go to jail for 30 days if they fail to vote. I don't think this is healthy; I once read where an American liked how our democracy worked, and people didn't feel it was a life-or-death situation should their party of choice didn't win the election, as it is in other countries, like Zimbabwe.
5. The huge increase in voting for the last presidential election, the current economic climate and this shooting suggest that period of time may be coming to an end.

So what to do? As always, I have thoughts.

1. In the media, there needs to be a news station that reports news as the BBC does. They don't use pundits, they don't need 18 Talking Heads discussing what it means to the average American. Let the people decide for themselves. In addition, I would love to host a show similar to The Daily Show (but hey, wouldn't everyone) where politics is ridiculed. But instead of straight humor, one day it would look at the Democrats, the other the Republicans. No guests from either party to defend, just look at what was said by someone in politics, and break it down. They contradict themselves, make ridiculous statements, and blow smoke up Americans' asses. It's time someone called them on it.
2. I hate how the House of Representatives is elected. Gerrymandering stinks, and it encourages extremism. The battles that are waged in court and in State legislatures are becoming legendary. So what to do? Very simple - change the Constitution. Instead of creating districts, Congress runs to represent an entire state. If New Jersey has 14 seats, the top 14 vote getters are elected to office (voters only vote for 1, so they can't just check either Party's "list").
3. Amendment to the Constitution: each adult is responsible for their own actions. (sorry, I'm not sure how much this relates to the topic, other than people blaming Palin)
4. This is going to encourage more and more of our politicians to use bodyguards at the expense of the taxpayers, which is already a huge drain as pointed out by Gregg Easterbrook (TMQ on ESPN.com). Another example of a country's leadership losing touch with its people.

I wish Gabrielle Gifford a speedy and complete recovery. I wish the same for our country, but I think that might take longer.

I Want What I Can Not Have

2011-01-08T08:47:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons I've only been in love twice, and never really manage to stay in relationships is because I've always found the chase more thrilling than the catch.

My therapist suggests that I think to myself that I'm not good enough for the women I like, and if I wind up dating a woman, I immediately think there must be something wrong with her to like someone like me. Either way, it doesn't work in developing meaningful relationships.

Twice I've overcome a fear of being rejected, and asked out someone with whom I was enamored. Twice I've fallen in love.

There was a third, one that I could only describe in the same way as those two, but it's one I've hidden in the back of my mind. It was my first heartbreak, and it was entirely my fault.

My senior year, I became much more outgoing than I had been in my first three years in high school, because I was a senior. I thought that was how seniors acted, and I thought that being a senior would impress the underclass women, and they would like me for that rather than liking me for me.

Over the summer, I hooked up with the new girl in our church youth group. We had a "love-in", and there was major flirting. By the time our classes on dating and relationships were over and we settled into watching movies (around 3 in the morning), my hands had settled into places they probably shouldn't have been in the House of the Lord. They remained there until another girl whom I had hooked up with ripped the covers, exposing my wandering hands for the Associate Reverend. This, among other things, prevented me from joining the youth group on their annual trip to Ocean City, New Jersey for the Methodist weekend. It was a severe penalty - that weekend was when thousands of high school Methodists descended upon the town Labor Day weekend and flirting, hooked up, and...oh yeah - did religious stuff.

I always said I went to church for the wrong reasons.

So, as I entered my senior year, I was dating Digital Display, which is what my stepbrother called her because of her large...digital displays. For the first few weeks of the school year, we didn't do much other than meet at church, since I was still 16. But by the end of September I had a car, and we went on a few dates. I brought her to my homecoming dance, and we were having fun, but not as much fun as I hoped - rumor had it she liked to get naked when she drank, but I never managed to get her in a place where I could make this happen (outside taking her to a party, where EVERYONE would see her naked. I wanted it to be a private show). By November, Digital Display and I were bored of the situation, her more so than I. At the wreath making event at church the weekend after Thanksgiving, she told me (as I sat with her and her family) that she thought we should date and be free to date other people. I was surprised, a bit hurt, but I reacted as a senior who wanted to work the senior magic on sophomores. I went to my friend's younger sister and asked her to introduce me to a girl I had admired from afar at church. She never went to the youth group, and I never saw her other than at church service, but I thought she was gorgeous. I probably would've never had the guts to do it, but I had to prove to Digital Display that other women would want what she seemed to reject.

We were introduced, and we hit it off immediately. As Digital Display and her family stared on in disbelief, I worked my seventeen year-old charm, got her number, and we agreed to get together at some point. Hell, Digital Display thought we should date other people - why not right away?

This girl was a sophomore cheerleader, one who would later compete in Miss America competitions. She was funny, cute, and genuinely seemed to like me. It also helped that we went to the same high school, and I could see her on a regular basis, whereas Digital Display and I saw each other once a week in a social setting (outside of dates). We flirted in the hallway, we hung out before school, and I absolutely fell head over heels for her.

The entire time we dated, I couldn't believe my luck. And I didn't. While we dated, I never made a move on her. I was scared of getting rejected, scared of doing something that would ruin the time I spent with Miss America. It turns out, that was the completely wrong thing to do. She wanted me to make a move, she wanted to lose her virginity to me. And the entire time, I wouldn't even put my hand down her shirt, something I had done with probably twenty girls since I was in middle school. The problem? I liked this girl. Maybe even loved her. She was there for me all the time, and I never saw it. One time she suggested we go park at Laurel Acres after hours. Instead of making my move there, we walked onto the ice and skated and goofed off. The cops showed up later, expecting to find a couple of teenagers in various states of undress. No doubt they were confused to find two innocent kids nervously laughing at the tension in the car, and the fun we had that night.

One night, Miss America decided to make a move. She was babysitting with a friend, and she invited me over. I drove over, she came out to the car, and we started making out. She was a great kisser - time could have stopped for me while we did it. But this time, as we were making out, she took my hand and moved it to her breast, covered by a sweater. I paused, nervous, then gently groped. I never made a move to go underneath the sweater, viewing it as an impenetrable fortress, while it was merely a shell waiting to be removed.

The next time we went out, she had given up on me. I was driving her home from the movies, and she sat there in silence. I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know what. When she got out of the car, we had a quick kiss and she went inside. My spidey senses were going nuts...and I didn't know why.

A couple days later I got a call from a friend of mine, Gator. Believe it or not, he was a good friend, and I'm sure he didn't know how much I liked Miss America. I don't think he knew how much I loved her, and maybe she was trying to get a reaction out of me. To this day, I'm not sure what happened.

Gator called: "Hey, I heard that Miss America likes me. I know you and her have sort of been dating...what's the story?" This was my chance to explain that I loved her, that I wanted to be her boyfriend, that I wanted to give her everything she wanted, and be her first. But I didn't have any guts when I was with her, and that senior aura I built up was gone once it was questioned, as weak a defense as that sweater would've been if pressed. Gator was a senior as well, and more popular. Of course Miss America would like him more.

I told him I didn't care, that I was talking to a couple of other girls, and that Miss America wasn't doing it for me. We talked for a few minutes, then hung up. Not a minute later, Miss America called me. She was hurt, wanted to know what I felt, and what I was doing. In those short few minutes, I reverted to a little boy. I played it off, all the while my heart was being torn apart. She gave me every opportunity to tell her how I felt; every chance to tell her I loved her, and explain why I never made a move on her.

I never did.

That spring, Gator dated her, and she was over the top aggressive with him to make sure he knew exactly what she wanted. I know this, because Gator was one of my best friends, and since I told him I didn't care about her, he thought I wanted to know what she was like. A few months later, they broke up without having sex. Most of the seniors went on the senior trip, including Gator and I, who both hooked up with seniors on the trip.

Miss America lost her virginity to a senior who hadn't gone on the trip. I was crushed.

I don't think I ever spoke to her again. One of my best friends was a girl in her class, and she never liked Miss America. Over the next few years in college, she would call me up and let me know what Miss America was doing - her getting caught drinking on their senior class trip, who she dated, everything. We both used to laugh at her expense, and make fun of her, but it was all a facade. It was the first girl I loved, and I had blown it.

It wasn't the last time I blew it.

Top Songs, 4th January 2010

2011-01-04T08:42:00.000-08:00

1. The Wombats - Tokyo (Vampires and Wolves)
2. LCD Soundsystem - Dance Yourself Clean
3. El Guincho - Bombay
4. Sleigh Bells - Infinity Guitars
5. Mumford and Sons - The Cave
6. Amusement Parks on Fire - Flashlight Planetarium
7. Cold War Kids - Louder Than Ever
8. Arcade Fire - Month of May
9. The Drums - Best Friend
10. Sun Airway - American West
11. Someone Loves You Boris Yeltsin - Sink/Let it Sway
12. Miniature Tigers - Bullfighter Jacket
13. Belle & Sebastian - I Want the World To Stop
14. Crystal Castles - Not in Love (featuring Robert Smith)
15. The Decemberists - Down by the Water
16. The Black Keys - Everlasting Light
17. Two Door Cinema Club - What You Know
18. Social Distortion - Machine Gun Blues
19. Jukebox the Ghost - Schizophrenia
20. Wavves - Post Acid
21. Someone Loves You Boris Yeltsin - Back in the Saddle
22. The National - Afraid of Everyone
23. Delorean - Stay Close
24. Stars - Wasted Daylight
25. Klaxons - Echoes

New Years' Eve, Part 3

2011-01-01T13:50:00.001-08:00

All gone wrong.

In the late 1990s, a friend of mine rented a bar just south of South Street and invited a couple hundred people to join him for the evening. It was inexpensive, it was fun, and the bar was large enough to get one's self into trouble.

The place was called Ulana's in Queen Village, and it was a dive. I think the woman who owned it was named Ulana, and I can't imagine it was a regular bar. But it was a place available to rent out and throw a party...and the Fairmount Stallion was always good for a party. The place was two floors, had a dance floor and two bars on the first floor, and the second floor was more of a balcony, overlooking the dance floor. One year, I went with a group of friends, and I met a few women. For whatever reason, I also seemed to be on my "A" game, as two women in particular were into me...and I couldn't decide. So I did what any decent male would do...

I made sure they were on different floors, and went back and forth throughout the night, making out with one, then making out with the other.

But all good things must come to an end, and I guess each of them thought I wasn't into them enough, since I kept disappearing for a good part of the night. They left, and I went home alone. A few months later (March 1999), I was a DJ at Champps Sports Bar in Marlton. I picked up the Friday night gig there when I resigned from being a stock broker to go back into teaching. Since I was only working as a substitute until I picked up a full-time gig, I needed a second job. I used to DJ in the early 90s, and friends of mine got me hired at the bar.

Champps was a great place to work back then - I was there from 5 pm to 2 am, a long shift, but the place was packed, and I got to meet some great people, flirt with women, and hang out with friends who came in. And I got to do it all without spending any money. So in March on a Friday night I was bouncing around the bar with the microphone, asking trivia questions and handing out prizes, when a girl came up to me. "Excuse me, where you working here on New Year's Eve?" She was very attractive...and I was hoping to continue talking with her, but I couldn't lie. I told her I hadn't worked that night. "Hold on!" she said excitedly and ran away.

I had no idea what was going on, but I waited. She returned less than a minute later. She had another friend with her...one of the girls I had made out with at Ulana's. There was an awkward pause, and then some hellos. The girl doing the introductions was as excited as a seven year-old on Christmas morning. She was practically jumping up and down. She darted away while Makeout Girl and I looked at each other. A few seconds later, she came back...with the other girl I had made out with.

The three of them were friends.

The one I didn't make out with just started laughing at me. I hadn't been as smooth as I thought.

I returned to the DJ booth, and didn't bother with wandering the crowd that night. The following year, I went back to Ulana's, hoping to rectify the previous year's mistake. I took my sort-of-girlfriend with me...and wish I hadn't.

That was the last year for New Year's Eve bashes at Ulana's for me.

New Years' Eve, Part 2

2010-12-30T12:29:00.000-08:00

I'll repeat here something I wrote on FB, then get to another story about NYE.

To be blunt, I'm sick and tired of complainers. Last night, there was a discussion about Governor Christie being a pompous ass (he is) and how he is screwing the average person. I asked the person for a solution to the $112 billion deficit New Jersey is facing. He immediately brought up the "millionaire's tax cut". A few things of note:

That "tax cut" wasn't a tax cut. The Corzine tax was enacted for one year. In order for it to be extended more than one year, it had to pass the NJ legislature and the Governor. Had he not vetoed it, it would've been political suicide (look at Corzine's loss this past year).
Cost to the NJ budget? $600 million. Deficit in the upcoming 2011 budget? $10.5 billion, which does not include the shortfall in pension funding ($54 billion), though some suggest (fairly) it could be as high as $174 billion.
NJ should look at the following as a start: closing loopholes in the tax code, such as the "farmers" tax cuts currently on the book and being taken advantage by many rich people. There are other loopholes.
As suggested by East Asian, NJ has given municipalities a series of rules/laws each need to follow, then promised monies for them to abide by the new rules. Lately, the towns haven't received the promised money, but are still expected to have these changes enforced. Scrap the rules (I don't have details, I'll have to ask EA to assist me here).
When I was teaching, NJ and the teachers' union (and all NJ public employees) came to an agreement that the pensions would be figured on a retirement age of 55, not 60. This meant a quick 9% increase in all pensions, AND that increase would multiply each year following. Christie is taking them to court to return to try and reinstate the age 60 formula.
I wonder - companies have been able to scrap contracts they've had with unions, other companies etc. when they encounter financial difficulty, or declare themselves bankrupt. What happens if a town/city/state does the same?

I'll get to my story later.

New Years' Eve

2010-12-28T08:42:00.000-08:00

Every family/person has a tradition for NYE, and my family was no different. Growing up, we always went to see a movie with my parents' best friends. Herbie the Love Bug, Johnny Dangerously and other movies were among the subjects we saw. Afterwards, we'd go back to either house and countdown to the New Year.

When I was a senior, I managed to break away from the family and go out with friends. For the first three years in college, I was home on winter break and New Years Eve was spent with high school friends. But by senior year, I had lost touch with many of them, and after Christmas I was on the phone with Soup, the only person I talked to regularly. I asked him if he heard anything taking place, and he was in the same boat as I.

We didn't have plans for New Years Eve. I wasn't about to join the family for the release of Tango & Cash.

Soup and I talked again on the December 27th, and we realized we needed to come up with some plan. I had friends who were going to parties, but they were parties I would know about five people. Soup felt the same way; we needed to create an event for us...where we knew everyone, and were the center of attention.

We had nothing.

Finally, with a little brainstorming, we thought that we might be able to throw something at Soup's college residence, a house at 40th and Walnut known to all as the Butthead Palace. Soup and his friends were The Buttheads, a reference to a Married With Children episode where Al Bundy took on the phone and electric companies. He was losing, and his son Bud pleaded with him to give into the utilities. Al then told a story in which he compared himself to Thomas Jefferson. Bud responded with, "But dad...they called Thomas Jefferson a great man, and they call you Butthead." Al retorted, "If that's the next word for greatness, son, so be it." From then on, Soup and his friends called themselves Buttheads.

Soup checked with the other Buttheads, and all of them were home for the holidays except for The Dentist. The Dentist was staying at school, and he was fine with having a party - in fact, he asked if he could invite people. We agreed, and went into motion to create the best party we could throw with four days to prepare on the biggest party night of the year while everyone else already had plans.

I invited everyone I knew - and I got commitments from about six people. Most said the same thing: already have a party to go to, but we'll stop by on the way if we can. Since Soup's house was in University City on the edge of a seedy part of Philadelphia, we weren't expecting much. We bought a keg, I brought some bottles of liquor, and some mixers. We were ready to go by 9.

By 10:30, there was a total of 12 people at the party. We were having a good time, but nothing special.

At 10:31, The Dentist showed up with his friends.

Eight women.

Until that point, the ratio was 7 guys to 5 women, then suddenly it was 8 guys to 13 women. More of The Dentist's friends showed up...and they were all women. Soup and I looked at each other - this party was awesome!!!

When midnight came, Soup and I played our cards right. There was mistletoe available, we were hammered, and we decided to have a competition to see who could make out with more women. I don't remember who won, but I will say this: I made out with about eight women that night, I wound up going out with one of The Dentist's friends, and I actually made out with a woman after I had gone down on another woman. A great party.

As a result, Soup and I had a new tradition, and for the next four years we threw New Year's Eve parties hoping to capture the spirit of the NYE Party of 1989.

Twas the Day after Christmas...

2010-12-26T08:01:00.000-08:00

the day after I called my real mother.

The couple of days I've done some things I felt I needed to do. Why? Because 2011 is going to be better than 2010. On a scale of 1-10, I'd give 2010 about a 4.5. Got back into school, did well, but emotionally I'm not sure I built upon the gains I had made earlier, and my financial situation grew more and more dire as the holiday season approached.

Did I mention I'm writing this from atop a steam grate in Center City?

On Christmas Eve, I went to a holiday party held by Cone of Silence's mother. Cone of Silence is a woman a few years older than me who I used to hang out with at McNally's in Chestnut Hill. There used to be a group of us: The Mayor, Reality Tour, she and I, but over time the group has become separated. I met Cone's mother a few years ago; she's a great woman (do I have a slight crush on a 77 year old woman? Maybe...), and she also does readings.

I'm not a big fan of readings. I've explained why previously, but over the last few months I realized I needed something like this. Some people put their faith in God, I put my faith in myself...but I haven't had much faith in myself lately. Since the summer, I knew I needed something to tweak my brain enough to make it think it could accomplish things. A reading fit the bill. Do I believe it can predict the future? Not really, but if I could trick my mind into believing 2011 would be better, I could go ahead and make it better.

The reading was a surprise to me. The first part suggested that I would make money from my writing. This could mean a couple of things: first, I might finish editing my book and get it out to some agents, one of which decide to represent me. Second, it could mean that my masters thesis (which I'm hoping to finish this fall) will get me into a paid doctoral position. With this in the back of my mind, it will help me to not get disheartened.

Something else kept popping up. With that first part about the writing, it suggested that I would be assisted by a woman. The first time, it could've been an agent, a mentor, some woman. The second time we ran through the cards there was no doubt: I was going to meet a woman with whom I'd fall in love with.

A divorced woman with two children.

The immediately joke I cracked was something to the point of, "I don't know any 23 year old divorcees with two kids!", since I date that age, but whatever. It might mean that by breaking ties off and turning my back on my past dating trends, I could open up some new opportunities.

To that extent, I started changing my life Christmas morning.

I was on the way to my stepbrothers' house for Christmas dinner, a few hours to play with my nephew, and see family. I was waiting at the train station when my alarm went off. I had set it a few days earlier so I wouldn't forget, but I hadn't...I was just delaying something I've been meaning to do for quite sometime.

The alarm was named "Jackie". Jackie is my real mother. The mother that left our family when I was eight, two years later during one of our visits told my brother and I she could never see us again, and walked out of our lives. The woman who I went to see in 2002 for the first time in 24 years; the woman I sat with for an hour and reverted to being that eight year old kid who had been crushed by his mother. The kid who hasn't been able to see a relationship through, because he's afraid of getting walked out on yet again.

While waiting for the train, I called her. Her husband answered. "Richard?" I asked. "Yes?" "Marc Carcanague." "How the hell are you?" "I'm good...Merry Christmas." "Merry Christmas to you...let me put you on speaker."

For the next five minutes or so, the three of us talked. The last time we talked my mother called me on my birthday in 2002, two months after I had gone to visit her. She told me she was ready to answer those questions I had asked on my visit, I told her I was busy and I would call her back. I never did, until Christmas morning.

It was only five minutes, but it felt like an hour. Was I nervous? Not as much as I thought I would be, but I didn't have any topics planned. I ran through my head, made a bit of small talk, and kept reminding myself don't bring up the past...I have to learn to forgive and move on. my brother has done so. I haven't.

It's time.

Before I hung up, we made general plans to get together sometime in the next few months. Nothing set in stone, but just an agreement to talk again soon, and I'll go see them.

If I'm able to forgive here, maybe I can forgive elsewhere as well.

Like my stepmother. Bitch.

Merry Christmas

2010-12-25T06:39:00.000-08:00

I've always been a skeptic. I don't just believe something, I need to be shown that it is true. I have a hard time believing the resurrection, hard time believing the girl who said, "This is my first time." while shes moving as if a front-line star of Cirque de Soleil.

The same goes for Santa Claus.

I don't remember why I questioned his existence in second grade - whether it was older kids at school, or if some of us discussed it in class, but I do remember asking my mother about Santa Claus as Christmas approached. She and my father both said he was real, but that wasn't enough for me. I needed proof.

And I knew just how to get it.

On Christmas, my parents put my brother and I to bed as they normally did (I think around 9 or 9:30), and I waited. And waited. A couple minutes later, I went into my brother's room and woke him up. I told him my plan (the poor kid was only 4, so he thought he was going to have a chance to meet Santa Claus), and he agreed to join me. We were going downstairs, sneak into the living room, and hide behind the sofa and jump out when someone (thief? parents? man in a big red suit?) began fumbling around under the tree.

What felt like hours might have been a few minutes, I'm not sure. When you're a kid, having to sit still can seem a lifetime. But there we were, waiting....

Let me take a moment to describe the living room. From where we were crouched, the fireplace and that wall ran directly to our left. In Santa poked his head out from the chimney, I would need three seven year-old steps to tap him on the head. Another five steps put me in front of the window. To the right of that window stood the tree, then on the other side of the tree yet another window. My brother and I hid behind the corner of the sofa, and beyond the sofa and table with a lamp was an open area. To the right was the dining room, a hard right put us on the steps, but a quick right then a left put us in a hallway: my dad's office, parents' bathroom and the master bedroom. I chose to hide here because, by Christmas Eve, I wasn't buying what my parents were selling. They were guilty suspects #1 and #1A.

We sat there...and waited.

Finally, we heard something. A light came on in our parents' hallway, and they walked into the dining room/living room space.

My brother sneezed.

"Who's there?"

I can't begin to tell you how pissed I was, but I'll try. Just after my brother finished his sneeze, my fist connected with his face, and I jumped on him and began pummeling him. If the sneeze weren't enough, the sounds of him screaming surely caught my dad's attention. He and my mother ran into the room, pulled me off my brother, and sent us back to our rooms. I don't recall getting disciplined that time for hitting my brother...but I did plenty of other times.

Tears of anger wiped from my face, I was back in my room even more stubborn in proving my theory. I looked out the back window. From there, I had a clear view of the next door neighbor's house. This wasn't your normal development of cookie cutter houses on top of each other - there was plenty of distance between the two homes, so I could see around the entire house with no problem. In addition, we lived in a two story house, while they had a rancher. And a chimney. The night was clear, visibility perfect. I had the roof in my scope.

I sat up the entire night, watching the chimney of our next door neighbor's house. No sleigh ever arrived, no tapping of reindeer hooves.

The next morning, at the crack of dawn, I marched downstairs into the living room and saw the tree surrounded by presents. When my parents came out to join us, I announced proudly that there was no Santa, and I explained how I knew. My parents admitted they were the guilty party, and my brother cried.

A few months later, as Easter approached, my mother spoke to me quietly in the kitchen. "Marc, we know you don't believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, but your brother still does. Don't tell him the candy and gifts he's getting at Easter are from us." Not a minute later, I ran into his room and spread the news.

He cried again.

I guess you can tell a theme of our relationship.

Santa or no Santa, that is not the point of Christmas. It is to celebrate loved ones, and give thanks to what we have. And if one can afford it, it is to spread cheer to the next generation, and keep them believing in Santa as long as we can. I'm going to see my stepbrother, his wife and my nephew today. I may just have to wear a red suit.

The Methodist Church

2010-12-23T15:06:00.000-08:00

I was brought up in the Methodist Church. I consider myself Methodist to this day, though I've only been to church once since my father's memorial service in 1998. But the most formative years of my life happened around the Methodist Church my father and soon to be second wife joined so that they might marry at the Church. I was in fifth grade; I was only there for a few months before their service was held at the Church, and a few more months before I became comfortable in Sunday School and the Youth Groups.

There were a few things working in favor of the church for someone my age to want to go. First, it was a large church, and therefore a lot of kids my age. Second, the Reverend was awesome - he was friendly and funny, and a year after I joined they brought in an Associate Reverend who was like a rock star with the kids. Third, there was a summer camp at Mt. Misery that I attended for most of my middle school years, and some of my high school. Given an opportunity to get away from a family I didn't want to be a part of, I jumped at the chance.

Most of my pubescent growth took place in that church, and with the girls I knew in Youth Group. My prom date was from church, and Soup (who sat next to me in homeroom in high school) always asked me how my weekend went at church, because he knew I had a great time there. In fact, my junior and senior year in high school, we convinced the church to serve breakfast to us Thursday mornings before school, just so we could hang out more. So an associate pastor (not the rock star, who had left the church) and some other volunteers dragged their groggy selves into the church to make us pancakes at 5:30 each Thursday. By senior year, a number of us were cutting school on Thursdays, after meeting up with everyone at church.

One would think with how much fun I had at church, I would've been the perfect student. The perfect Christian.

Far from it.

I made a few mistakes at church, some of which I will write about someday, but this story is about when I left the church for good, never to return. It made me realize that I was going to church for all the wrong reasons, and until I decided to go to church for the right reasons, I shouldn't go at all.

When I graduated college, I returned to that church and attended services, hoping to meet up with old friends. My family had moved on; they didn't like the new Reverend, and with both my brothers in college, they easily packed up and attended a church more to their liking. So, each Sunday I would drive myself to church, attend the service I was most comfortable with, and spend an hour after the service talking to other attendees. In addition, there were a number of older members of the church who used to volunteer their time to assist the youth groups, and I would see them every week and catch up.

I have no idea why they thought highly of me - but again, those are stories for another day.

Somehow, and I'm not sure who nominated me, but I was asked to serve on the Board of Elders. I accepted, and one night a month I spent at the church helping to decide the future of the church. I didn't speak up much, but when I did I was listened to. I was amazed by this - I hadn't been a great member of the youth group, and I was the youngest member of the board.

I felt like I didn't belong. I was a goofball, and didn't see how anyone could take my presence seriously. To change that and make myself worthy of that position, I decided I would start volunteering with Sunday School. The woman who taught fifth grade needed an assistant - since it was the first year I had attended, I had come full circle. I signed up.

I was 22 years old.

I thought the teacher was attractive, and in her mid-30s. She was married to a man with a beard, speckled more with gray than black, so I think he was in his mid-40s. They had two children, both in high school, though the daughter may have been in college. She was also attractive, and for some reason I thought helping the mother might be a way to get in with the daughter.

As one can see, the reasons for helping with a bunch of ten year-olds at church was not on the up-and-up.

I didn't go all the time, but the teacher never passed judgment. Sometimes I may have even shown up hungover, or smelling of alcohol. My priorities were a bit askew, and I was not dedicated to the position. But at the end of every class the teacher and I would talk - she would ask what I thought of a particular lesson (as I was a teacher, and in her eyes an expert in the field), and we talked about life.

One day, about four months in, we were talking after class, and I said something about her husband.

"Oh! He's not my husband..."

There was an uncomfortable silence - I was hungover, so my reaction was a bit slow. I looked at her, stunned, then mumbled an apology. I changed the subject.

The next week, I showed up late to help with class, and she had a gleam in her eye as she passed materials and helped the kids. When she had a second, she leaned over: "I have some exciting news to tell you!"

I was hungover, and had overslept. I had no idea what it could be. The hour-long class couldn't go any slower...it felt like a day passed before everyone moved on.

She came to me, ignoring all the materials and stuff strewn across the room. This was important.

"I thought about it, and you're right. I've decided to marry Graybeard!" She was practically jumping up and down. "I've been living in sin, and it's time to be accepted in God's eyes. Thank you!!!"

HOLY FUCKING SHIT.

This woman just decided to marry Graybeard, a man who had asked her in the past but she had turned down, because she thought in my hungover stupor I was judging her and her life in the eyes of Christ. The two kids were not hers; but she wanted to become their Christian mother.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT.

If she wasn't so happy with this revelation, I'm sure she would've noticed the look of horror in my eyes.

Here is a woman making a life decision based on what she thought I thought about her. She thought I looked down upon her, and was changing her ways to be a better person. I was stunned, and left to go to service.

I resigned on Monday from the Board of Elders, and I never went back to that church. I don't know what happened to that couple, but I do hope it worked out for the best. I'm scared to death to think that I may have ruined someone's life simply because they thought that was what I thought she should do.

Top Songs of 2010

2010-12-22T07:38:00.000-08:00

I organized my song lists over the year early, since I had to vote on Y Not Radio's year ending survey. There's an opportunity to win the right to play one's own top 20 list on their radio station, so I went ahead and figured out my own Top 50.

My list is messed up. This year my iPod broke, and my computer (iTunes? external hard drive? MacBook?) is pausing on certain songs, so I haven't been able to listen as often as I like. I asked East Asian to scan my external HD for bugs, but that was in November and he still hasn't gotten it back to me yet...and he's away until 2011. Go figure.

In reading my lists from the year (twice weekly, when I had time), I noticed I broke a number of rules I set up to prevent any artist from dominating my lists. For instance, lately I've been on an LCD Soundsystem kick. Should the entire album be in my Top 50 list at the end of the year? No, but when I went to see a band in concert, I generally put a number of their songs on my list. Therefore, it's a Top 50 list, but whenever an artist had more than one song on that list, I included it, as well as another song at the end to compensate (I should have ended up with 50 artists on the list; I'm not sure I did).

Click on the links to play the video on YouTube (or another comparable site).

1. Beach Fossils - Youth
2. Two Door Cinema Club - Something Good Can Work (opening for Tokyo Police Club 1/22 at the Trocadero, may have to go to the show)
3. Cold Cave - Love Comes Close (song is from early 2009, but it was such an amazing song it remained in my heavy rotation well through 2010. Again, shoot me for following my own rules)
4. Big Pink - Too Young to Love (2008, but didn't discover it until early this year)
5. Drums - Forever and Ever Amen
6. Band of Horses - Laredo
7. !!! - AM/FM
8. Blonde Redhead - Here Sometimes
9. Broken Bells - Ghost Inside
10. Beach Fossils - Daydream
11. LCD Soundsystem - Dance Yourself Clean
12. Gorillaz - On Melancholy Hill
13. East Hundred - Slow Burning Crimes (2008, saw them this summer and it kept the song around)
14. Two Door Cinema Club - I Can Talk
15. Tokyo Police Club - Wait Up! (Boots of Danger)
16. Broken Social Scene - Texico Bitches
17. Two Door Cinema Club - Undercover Martyn (saw them in October, still predict great things for them, but they're not at Passion Pit's level quite yet)
18. A Silent Film - You Will Leave a Mark (2009, though a radio station here in Philly finally picked it up)
19. The National - Terrible Love (alternate version with drums going nuts is the better version)
20. We Were Promised Jetpacks - Quiet Little Voices (2009)
21. Cee Lo Green - Fuck You
22. Best Coast - Boyfriend
23. Japandroids - Younger Us
24. The Wombats - Tokyo (Vampire and Wolves)
25. Kings of Leon - Radioactive
26. Caribou - Kaili
27. Cults - Go Outside
28. Foster the People - Pumped Up Kicks
29. No Age - Glitter
30. Minus the Bear - My Time
31. Bear Hands - What a Drag
32. LCD Soundsystem - One Touch
33. Blur - Fools Day
34. Crystal Castles (featuring Robert Smith) - Not in Love
35. Broken Social Scene - Forced to Love
36. Gorillaz - Stylo
37. The xx - VCR
38. Cold War Kids - Louder Than Ever
39. Tokyo Police Club - Breakneck Speed
40. Drums - Let's Go Surfing
41. Moneybrother - Born Under a Bad Sign
42. Mumford & Sons - The Cave
43. Calvin Harris - Flashback
44. Arcade Fire - Ready to Start
45. Dead Confederate - Run From the Gun
46. Ra Ra Riot - Too Dramatic
47. Klaxons - Echoes
48. Cut Copy - Where I'm Going
49. Freelance Whales - Generator ^ Second Floor
50. Freelance Whales - Location
51. Stars - I Don't Want Your Body
52. Soft Pack - Answer to Yourself
53. Girls - Lust for Life
54. Best Coast - When I'm With You
55. El Guincho - Bombay

I count only the time from January 1st until this week, so some songs (i.e., "Lust for Life") got a lot of play between the two years, but their score was split between last year and this one.

Another Krupa's Moment

2010-12-21T05:21:00.000-08:00

My 200th post on this particular blog.

I worked all day Saturday in New York City, finally returning to Philly around 9 pm. I was tired, and with the whole gang coming to Krupa's on Sunday, I was only going to stop by the bar Saturday night and grab a beer before heading home. I had no idea I was about to witness another epic moment in the story of the Fairmount Dive Bar.

When I walked in, there were five people of significance there: The Bartender, with which the bar wouldn't be great, and four customers. Muppet, Angry Girl, Dolce and Bizarro Me. I should explain each of these.

1. Angry Girl - plays a pivotal role in the epic-ness of Saturday night. I had never seen her before. She looked to be in her mid to late 30s, and was in a bad mood. She was in a bad mood, as she said numerous times throughout the night, and she was drunk.

2. Muppet. Muppet is a classic - looks slightly like Steve Buscemi, but without the good looks. He's lived in Fairmount for all 47 years of his life, and it hasn't treated him well. These days, he has one lung, and one testicle, and lives on disability. Most of the money goes to feeding his liver alcohol. Muppet is also very intelligent and funny...when he isn't drunk. When he is drunk, he stutters. And stumbles. And lurks.

SIDEBAR (thanks Nadine): Wheels was in the bar Friday night, and he mentioned how Muppet should move in with another Fairmount lifer/Krupa's regular Cartman. Cartman's mother recently passed away, and he now lives on his own. He's on disability as well, and the two of them together would be funny as hell. One time, Cartman got stuck in the bathtub, and Muppet had to go to his house and help him out of the tub. Wheels thought if cameras were set up in the house, not only would it make a great reality TV show, but the two of them would probably forget the cameras were there in minutes. "Hell, I'd watch the webcam feed 24/7!" Wheels said.

3. Dolce. The only large black man with this much style. He's currently living in a three bedroom apartment with 7 Asians, yet it doesn't seem to cramp his style. He's more conservative than John Birch, is 27 but knows more than almost anyone about 1980s trivia, and will be played by Anthony Anderson in Krupa's: The Movie, whether he likes it or not.

4. Bizarro Me: Bizarro Me is the exact opposite of me. Examples:

He's 22. I'm...not.
He loves smoking pot. I haven't smoked in 22 years.
He has a thing for Asian women. I don't, in fact, they are my least favorite ethnicity.
He hates to read. I love reading.
He feels more comfortable hanging with older people, and in small bars. I prefer to hang out with younger people, and in large crowds.

A few months ago, I was looking to move back into the neighborhood, and we were drunk one night, and came up with the brilliant idea of moving in together. When this was mentioned to other Krupa's regulars, after the initial shock most said, "You know what? You two would be perfect roommates." We're not roommates, but we do get along...even with nothing in common.

I walk into Krupa's, and settle in to the right of Bizarro Me and Dolce. Muppet and Angry Girl are seated on to the left of the bar, two seats between Muppet and Bizarro. Muppet is talking to Angry Girl.

Or trying to. She's talking back, and isn't revolted by him as are most women. He has a chance.

Then it starts. "D...D...D...D..." He can't speak. She stares at him, drunk, trying to understand what he's saying.

Muppet gives up. He's cockblocked himself, and frustrated, leaves his seat and comes and sits down next to us in the barstool farthest away from Angry Girl. Another guy walks into the bar, who obviously knows Angry Girl. She's drunk and angry, but he convinces her to do a shot with him, and they talk for a while. Bizarro, Dolce and I continue to talk and laugh about whatever, and Bizarro mentions how he's having trouble with his cell phone. He can't read his e-mail. Dolce's a techie, he takes the phone and begins looking into the matter. Muppet stays for a short while sulking, then slinks out the door.

After doing the shot, and staying for a few more minutes, then the guy leaves. The bartender asks where he's going (or more importantly, why he isn't taking Angry Girl with him, but he says he has a dinner to attend). Angry Girl stays in the bar with her glass of wine. In the time I've seen her in the bar, she's had a beer, a shot, and a glass of wine. She was drunk when I arrived, I can only imagine what condition she's in at this point.

Angry Girl is now alone, and I look over to gauge her availability, and if it's worthwhile. She has dark hair, dark eyes which can't seem to focus on anything, and an enormous chest.

I'm a chest man; she just got some bonus points.

But the rest of her is...eh...average. But, it would be rude not to speak to her, especially since her non-focusing eyes seem to be drifting glances towards the three of us.

"Why are you so angry?" Not an innocent question, but one to start a conversation. It could either way at this point - I can pick on her, or backpedal and play the nice guy. Everything is in play at this point.

She lifts her shoulders to give a big shrug, and then breathes out heavily. "Harumphhhhh..." she says. That's all. I'm not interested, Dolce is working on a phone, I go to play a video game. Bizarro picks up where I left off.

"Why are you mad??" She gets up off her barstool, stumbles to get her jacket, and tries to put it on. She gets one arm in a sleeve, has trouble with the other, then launches into Bizarro. They start making out.

I'm playing the video game. Dolce is working on the phone next to them, so he explained it better the next day.

"One second they're making out, the next she's hugging him cause she needs to be hugged. Bizarro helps put her other arm in her coat, and they two of them leave."

Bizarro said four words to her, and paid attention for less than two minutes, and he's leaving with a woman at least ten years older than him.

Like I said, he's the complete opposite of me.

The rest of the night, Bartender Dolce and I try to comprehend what we just witnessed, and joke about the women of Krupa's, or more specifically, the women who hook up in Krupa's.

Someday, there will be a movie.

The next day, Dolce and I share the story with the packed bar. Everyone is waiting for the Eagles game to start, and he and I have the captive audience of thirty people. As the game begins, Bizarro walks in. The bar stands up and cheers.

"Did the Eagles score?" No, Bizarro, they're cheering for you.

Yes, he scored. And she wasn't in her mid-30s, she was 44. He is half her age, and, more importantly, she is older than Bizarro's mother and both his aunts. He was supposed to call her Sunday night at 8 pm, maybe so she can tuck him in and read him a bedtime story.

After all, he doesn't like to read.

I'm Baaaaackkkk...

2010-12-17T06:48:00.000-08:00

And so is my friend Nadine. Check her out at her blog. In the meantime, my semester is over, which leaves me some time to tell more stories, stories that flash into my mind, a smile comes over my face (now THAT would make a good story!), then disappear again as my mind moves onto some more important stuff I need to take care of.

I would do a music countdown, but I can't. I haven't done one in a couple months, but my friend East Asian has my external hard drive to see if it has any viruses, and I haven't downloaded any new music lately. If it isn't my external hard drive and some music I've downloaded, then my MacBook has a virus...and I need to seriously curtail my surfing of the net :/

Anyway, here's a story I never got around to telling:

There's a show called The League. It's about a group of guys who have a fantasy football, and is very funny. It also gave us the term Eskimo Brother. Looking back, it's amazing at who I'm Eskimo Brothers with, and who I'm not:

I'm Eskimo Brothers 3 times over with my brother, before he decided he liked cock more than vagina.
I'm NOT Eskimo Brothers with The Swinger, even though we've been best friends for years and have even hooked up with the same girls. Never slept with the same ones though...
Don't know if I have an Eskimo Sister. That would be cool though...

So, when a group of friends hang out regularly at their local bar, and girls become regulars as well, there is a tendency for some overlap. Late night, there's usually some high-fives given, and a cry for "Eskimo Brothers Unite!"

Like I said, it's late night.

So at this one favorite watering hole of mine, there was this one girl whom I had a crush on. She had a great personality, a great chest, awesome eyes. She had the worst butt known to mankind, but these things can be overlooked.

She had a boyfriend of a couple of years, whom she lived with. This could be overlooked.
She made a number of my friends in the bar Eskimo Brothers. This, difficult as it was, could be overlooked.

Why was this the tough one? Because she had been with them at the same time.

I'm not a crazy person when it comes to sex, in fact, I'm down right boring. I like what I like, I don't like what I don't like, and I don't like the fact that if I were to close the deal on this lady, I would be following a couple of my friends into the breech, as it were. But put enough beers in the belly, it was overlooked.

So on this particular day, I was at the bar, and I got a text. She was around the corner, did I want to come meet her for a drink? Absolutely, and off I went.

A drink? We closed the damn bar. She and her friend had been there for hours, and her friend was now hanging out with her regular fuck. The four of us left, and Double Mint asked me to walk her home. To her and her boyfriend's house. The friend and her lay stumbled away. Double Mint and I started making out, with the normal fumbling of clothes. She then asked, "You wanna fuck?"

I did. But where? She told me she knew this alleyway around the corner.

I think too much. I do. I know it's a problem. And instead of giving into lust, here's why my brain began to take too much blood away from...other organs.

How does she know about this alleyway? Has she used it before?
I don't have a condom on me. Am I nuts?

We start in one position, then in another because I'm not living up to my end of the bargain. I'm now laying on wet dirt, leaves, back is cold and wet, and she's on top, and talking dirty. Again, I can't finish the deal. But I assist her, we make out a bit more, then she tells me she won't be going up to the bedroom when she gets home, as she doesn't want to wake. She wants phone sex, will I call her, or can she call me?

Yes. Phone sex I can do.

We start with some texts, then she tells me she's going to call, but she can't talk. Will I tell her what to do to herself? Sure. In her texts, she tells me she likes it dirty. She likes it rough. So, I get into it, and I'm telling her all this stuff, and she gets off. She thanks me, and we hang up.

I get a text shortly thereafter. She says she owes me. She wants to know what I'm doing the following night. She texts me that I'm a naughty boy, and I like it dirty (which I don't), and she tells me to invite four of my friends around the next week so we can do a train on her.

As if I wasn't thinking too much before, this puts me over the top. The next morning I contact The Swinger, not to finally become Eskimo Brothers, but rather to ask him some basic questions. All he did was laugh at me:

Where would I find four guys who would want to do such a thing? I know, there are plenty of guys out there who would be up for it. But would I want to invite people I don't know? Would I want to invite friends of mine? I don't want to see their dicks...
Would I even be able to keep my dick hard with four guys standing naked near me? Is this remotely attractive to any heterosexual guy?
Let's say I'm first - do I close my eyes so I don't make eye contact with anyone else?
WHOSE BED ARE WE USING? Is it a faux pas to buy plastic sheets? Do I want guys shooting all over my bedroom? Who the hell is going to clean up this mess?
When we're finally done, and she's covered in cum, she's going to need to use the bathroom and clean off. I'd think the guys would to. I don't want them using my bathroom. Is that a problem?

All of these questions, and many, MANY more are racing through my head. I have a couple days to come up with an excuse why I can't, or find four friends to do this with. Another friend I mentioned it to was all about it initially, and then on second thought decided it wouldn't be such a good idea. Fortunately, she texted me the next morning.

I don't think last night was a good idea. I don't think we should hang out like that again.

My mind starts reeling. Was it the fact I couldn't finish the deal? Was it that she thinks I want to gather the population of a small town to gang rape her? What did I do wrong?

Damn brain. I got past it quickly, however.

Double Mint didn't. I never spoke or saw her again.