One Rude Dude

Week 7 Number One Fantasy QB Kyle Boller?

2011-10-22T15:53:00.000-04:00

There's something seriously wrong with Sports Illustrated's Week 7 Fantasy Football player projections: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/fantasy/football/nfl/player_projections/2011/07/quarterback.html

Your eyes don't deceive, they're ranking the Raiders' Kyle Boller #1 among Quarterbacks (even though it's looking like Carson Palmer will start) and calling for him to account for 1 passing and 4 rushing touchdowns. WTF SI? That's just irresponsible.

Snorkel Adventure with Brad Pitt

2011-10-22T12:32:00.001-04:00

I'm Brad Pitt. Welcome to the inner monologue, where I work out anecdotes, phrases and sound bytes in masculine voice over, color-commentating on the large-living glamour parade that is my life in lyrical lusciousness and bon mots with an ineffable, world-weary cool.

Angie, me and the kids have just arrived in the Maldives for a fabulous beach vacation. All checked into our villa and Angie and the littles are tired so I've got the wonderful opportunity of an afternoon to myself for the first time in so long I can't recall.... I'm taking a toke and going for a fucking snorkel.

My FedEx package of t-shirts was at the reception just like my assistant said it would be and wadded up inside the bundle of t-shirts in several nested layers of mouthwash-filled ziploc bags is my ounce of escape -- the finest Sao Paulo North Slope trip weed money can buy, a ceramic chillum and a box of matches from the BOA on Sunset. Why reuse when I can resupply? I have the money and don't need the headaches of any kind of security BS even though I pretty much go where I want with minimal hassle. (Except Germany, where they even hassle Mick Jagger.)

But the herb's still the word when I'm defining relaxation and since Angie gets a little peevish with her malnourishment already making her tetchy and not digging on the stoned-dad routine, it's better to keep things separate. The FedEx package tails us at luxury hotels around the globe addressed to my unemployed man-of-means alter-ego Bobbi Gula. Anyone knows Bobbi, and this includes high-end hotel concierges, knows the drill. That's Brad Pitt's stuff traveling incognito.

Which is super rad on the most perfectly breezy, crystalline blue and green water tropical beach in the Maldives. This is what it's about. Palm trees. White sand. A couple of monster rips from the chillum and then I'm wrapping my kit in a beach towel and fussing with my neoprene booties so I can hit the reef with my brand new Mare scuba fins and snorkel mask from Italy.

I'm sporting some scruff, which is how I roll when I'm relaxing = not shaving. This can create problems with mask seal so, I've got some spiffy silicone gel I smear in my 'stache and that makes for a swell, watertight seal and keeps the puddles from obscuring my vision, which after all these years I'm proud to say is still 20/20.

The water is beautiful, 82 degrees and crystal clear, with the mid-afternoon sun sparking it just right so the light dances off the bottom like a macro-kaleidoscope and the colors are really popping like mad. The coral growth is spotty this close to shore, but I can see the rim of the lagoon a few hundred yards out where the big old Indian Ocean rolls in to meet the proper reef. There's water spraying into the air where the rollers smack the more ambitious coral heads and that's where the action is.

I start to kick out there over the shallows with big stretches of sand and patches of turtle grass and pass over a half-buried stingray, kind what killed the Crocodile Hunter by piercing him through the heart with it's stinger (gnarly), and a young barracuda whose reflective skin almost makes him invisible above the sand. He vanishes with a flick of his tail as I draw near.

Soon enough, I notice the bottom dropping away from 10 feet down to 25-30 or so. The bottom's still sandy, and I pull my head up out of the water to have a look around and reorient in the way air-breathers must. Apparently, I've reached the channel where boats entering the resort breach the barrier reef and cross the lagoon to the pier.

This is semi-dangerous territory for a relatively little snorkeler (though I'm still all beefcake), it'd be easy for a cruising boat captain with a little liquor in him to miss me bobbing in the waves moments before his hull, keel and prop grind up the world's most celebrated living actor to chum. Nonetheless, I have to brave it.

I check both directions and start kicking hard to cross the channel. This is the ocean-going equivalent of running up the stairs from the basement after flipping off the lights. You're 99% sure you're going to make it, but you hold your breath all the same, waiting for the strike of fangs on your ankle to signal impending doom.

Soon, I'm back over the shallows on the other side and kicking confidently for the barrier reef. The coral heads are more consistent, lush and thriving this side of the channel and in turn I'm noticing more and larger fish: a school of green parrotfish as big and wild as a herd of American buffalo; a moray eel thick and muscular like my thighs(!); a neon-orange clownfish family living in a vast, electric shag carpet of a sea anemone; a trip-a-delic peacock flounder and holy shit a giant fucking clam. It's the size of my suitcase with thick, olive-spotted lips and I take a breath and kick down to the bottom to get a better look. Captain Nemo's in my head, warning of pearl divers drowning with their legs caught in the bear-trap grip of the giant clam. I can't resist and reach out to test this animal's reflexes. I dart my hand in and out, nudging the slick, firm flesh inside. It jerks slowly and contracts about a foot in a matter of several seconds, expelling a jet of clam-water that strikes my mask and might have smelled were my nose not covered. No way a clam could catch a man with that slow a response, plus which the shell doesn't even fully close. Disappointed? No. Edified. I'll never try to undo a villain by giant clam. And our hero snorkels on.

Gems of the Web: Bestsnow.net

2011-09-16T12:38:00.000-04:00

Tony Crocker's 'Bestsnow.net' is another all-substance, no-style labor of love that I am putting forth as an old school gem of the web. Written in simple, iframe-era HTML with no appreciation or ambition for the aesthetic of web 2.0 or the intriguing possibilities of data-visualization with something as palpably measurable and comparable as snowfall, Crocker has built a dogged and complete curation of North American ski resort snowfall data going back to the late 1990s (which, judging by the look, is the first and last time the site itself experienced any design work).

Clearly Tony and I have few things in common: a passion for skiing and fascination with weather and data. He's created a resource here that I would probably want to create myself if it didn't already exist. The painstaking data collection itself is one thing: accurate, organized and, I would suspect, mostly manually curated from a wild variety of sources as I don't think there's a lot of RSS of snowfall data going on. But there's also the analysis from a skier's point of view with a candid account of the what matters to the people seeking this kind of information: powder.

Assassin Bug

2011-09-07T00:33:00.000-04:00

Ever since I was a small boy who chanced upon the terrifying spectacle of a pair of mating beetles on the sidewalk in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I've maintained a horror-fan's fascination with the insect world. So naturally, I was intrigued when I spotted this creeper lurking near the entrance of our house on the Eastern Shore.

It's a buggy place out there for sure, particularly on a steamy midsummer night when the lights stay on inside and the windows become irresistible, luminous magnets for a teeming, insectoid phantasmagoria of unimaginable variety. Watch and you'll see everything from sub-tropical jumping spiders to fantastically woolly caterpillars to clambering katydids (which are apparently vicious predators).

But none so far had topped this freaking stranger. Which is about as weird as that unidentified bastard I discovered in my shag carpet last year. So I was duly stoked at the opportunity for another cloud-sourcing experiment to uncover the nature of this little beastmaster. But for my own skills at internet searching, I quickly verified the identity of my discovery and thus spoiled the mystery while adding to my own trove of trivia.

Per the excellent website, InsectIdentification.org, (a gem of the web, no doubt) this is a 'wheel bug' of the assassin bug family of 'true bugs' of the order hemiptera and famous for the painful bite it inflicts with that absurdly large rostrum. Yikes!

Don't You Hate It When...

2011-08-20T09:13:00.000-04:00

Cab drivers jam you for taking advantage of the credit card payment systems their cabs offer?

Traveling for work, as I did Thursday morning, requires exact documentation of my costs for reimbursement. Whenever possible, I like to pay with the company card to keep my cash in my pocket, create the electronic record and not blur the lines. I've been using Victory Cab for my scheduled cab travel around Philly, to the airport and 30th street station mostly, because their dispatch service is generally prompt and they take credit cards. And until Thursday morning I hadn't got much guff from Victory drivers for using plastic.

But when I asked to charge as we pulled up to 30th street, I got one of those exasperated groans, followed by an agro semi-statement of sorts: 'I only take cash.'

Um, let me count the signs saying I can use a credit card: credit card logo stickers in the windows, the taxi riders 'bill of rights' entitling me to plastic purchase, and the flipping credit card processing machine stuck to the plastic bullet shield separating me from the driver.

I'm going to have to insist, I told him and persisted with the credit card. He grumbled some more about not wanting to start his day with credit card. Which I understand.* But a) would you rather not have the business? And lastly, don't give my your grief since you (taxi driver) implicitly agree to the terms of compensation as a cab driver when you sign up for duty. You don't like how your employer processes credit card tips, that's not my problem, take it up with your asshole boss and spare me the awkwardness and guilt. I like my cash just as much as you do.

It's Going to Get Hot in Philly

2011-07-22T11:09:00.001-04:00

Here's a look at the hourly forecast for today, July 22, 2011 provided by Weather.com:

Is it strange that I'm actually excited about this? See, thanks to the overwhelming humidity, the heat index accompanying today's heat is supposed to reach 115 degrees, which would be the hottest outside temperature I will ever have encountered.

As a young lad in Boise, Idaho I once experienced the mercury rise to 111 degrees, tying the all-time Boise record set in 1960. But that was a typical Great Basin dry heat, with humidity in the 10-15% range. It was toasty, for sure, but bearable and also relieved nightly by the crisp interlude of the high desert night.

Philly's humidity today will range from 55 - 69% and temperatures will peak around 101-102 around the 4 o'clock hour for an insane heat index of 115. There will be no relief with darkness either. I plan to be outside for some or all of this phenomenon to get the most savage taste of suffocating heat seen this side of Libya.

Watch Out When Porting Service From T-Mobile (Evil Bastards)!

2011-07-21T15:52:00.004-04:00

On June 15th I signed on with AT&T and joined the iPhone revolution. I had been with T-Mobile for over 2 years so I was now month-to-month and figured there would be no issues with letting AT&T do the dirty work of ending my relationship with T-Mobile (which in the end isn't really ending the relationship, since AT&T is buying T-Mobile).

So I was surprised today to receive a 'final' bill from T-Mobile for $85.14, which was about what I had been paying for a full month to cover the vestigial 6 days in June before I canceled by account. In the bill I found the following line item Monthly Recurring Charges explaining my debt to T-Mobile:

Partial monthly charge for G1 UNLDATA 400MSGS from 6/09/11 to 6/14/11 $5.00
Partial monthly charge for G1 UNLDATA 400MSGS from 6/15/11 to 6/15/11 $19.99
Partial monthly charge for myFaves 600 from 6/09/11 to 6/14/11 $10.00
Partial monthly charge for myFaves 600 from 6/15/11 to 6/15/11 $39.99

In plain English, T-Mobile recognizes the 6-days pro-rata usage in the billing cycle up to termination but is charging me the full monthly usage anyway as an 'F you' to send me out the door. Cue outrage!

I called the Customer Service Number immediately and was stonewalled by a powerless(?) peon named Meredith with vague allusions to the dreaded 'Ts and Cs' (terms and conditions) to which she asserted I'd agreed and that seemingly bound me to this full charge for monthly services upon termination of my account if I didn't call them myself to inform them of my intent to leave. She was certainly powerful enough to handle me.

Here's a look at the language (relevant bit highlighted in blue) I could find in the Terms and Conditions:

Somehow between when I signed up with T-Mobile in 2008 to now, the Ts & Cs changed from what I had originally agreed to: You will remain responsible for all fees and charges for your Service and usage through termination (T-Mobile Ts & Cs, 2008). Was the world a better a place in 2008? Because this seems fair to me. It honors 'termination' as the point ending usage and debt for said usage and just generally makes sense in the universally fair, pay for what you use doctrine. Apparently between then and now all that changed was T-Mobile found an avaricious lawyer to comb their Ts & Cs for loose language that could be keeping them from squeezing every last penny from their ~~customers~~ victims.

While the new clause is patently unfair, it doesn't exactly seem ironclad. The 'may' seems pretty squishy and 'may' be the loophole I use to fight back here if I hear back as promised from Meredith's manager 'Shannon.' Whom Meredith was quick to point out was equally powerless and couldn't override charges I'd agreed to in the Ts & Cs. Otherwise, in the pretty standard lawerly-way that corporate Ts & Cs screw consumers, I'm limited to arbitration rather than court to settle disputes with T-Mobile.

In the end, all of this is a long-winded, ventilating way to say that I'm probably getting fucked out of $60 by T-Mobile. Not the end of the world, but it still really pisses me off. Imagine how much bad profit T-Mobile is making through this little clause change in aggregate. And what a backhanded and cowardly way for lawyer-driven companies to squeeze the common man out of a few more bucks. It really is outrageous.

I have faith that awareness helps, if I keep shining lights where the Man doesn't want people looking maybe I can keep the next guy from losing his $60. Then, maybe I can count that $60 as good karma in the bank and hope that companies reverse course on cloaking themselves in legal protection from their customers and don't do what's wrong just because they can and it earns them a few bucks in the short term. Hopefully this costs T-Mobile more customers than just this guy.

Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged

2011-07-15T18:35:00.002-04:00

“[W]hen you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing; when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods, but in favors; when you see that men get rich more easily by graft than by work, and your laws no longer protect you against them, but protect them against you . . you may know that your society is doomed.”

Skunks Redux

2011-07-11T15:01:00.001-04:00

Man, a while ago I complained about never seeing a living skunk and I think in the cosmic view of things that was the wrong move. Karma and whatnot, 3 months go by and Saturday night I'm driving home from dinner out on the Eastern Shore and notice a flash of white and black scuttling through the grass in my peripheral view. Could have been a kitty right? I didn't think about it again as I let the 3 dogs out and settled onto the couch for a viewing of True Grit.

Eddy lets the dogs back in 5 minutes later and Brownie, the adopted Australian Shepherd we found cowering under the boxwoods in the summer of 2005, rolls in smelling like jet fuel. Only at a distance was the smell remotely skunkish in the familiar way of whizzing by roadkill on the freeway. Up close, it takes on a different character and the only adjectives that came to mind were powerful - nuclear, chemical, burning in the nostrils. It is truly overwhelming in the intimate encounter -- enough to reset the inner narrative and induce short-term amnesia.

Brownie was acting frantic too. Imagine an animal whose primary means of navigation in the world is the sense of small and the scale of the sensation for her must be something else. The only human parallel I could imagine would be the daze brought on by a flash bang grenade. Brownie was out of it, eyes rolling in her head and desperate whining for relief.

Smart phone technology brought up the usual list of treatments, including tomato juice bath, vinegar, dish detergent, and hydrogen peroxide. Having no tomato juice, we whipped up a bath of the former and shooed the dog outside where a garden hose was also brought to bear.

Not wanting to ruin my clothes I stripped down to my undies and we held and washed the dog outside with several good scrubbings with the mixture, interspersed with rinsing blasts from the hose. It worked quite well except for what skunk scent Brownie had already brought into the house lingered through the night.

Though maybe it was more us acclimating to the odor, as those from paper mill or refinery towns. This morning, Monday, Jill called me from the office to report that the first young patient in whose mouth she put her hands this morning initially recoiled with a gasp, choking out the question what's that smell? And that after about a dozen good latherings with various skunk-scent solvents.

Gems of the Web: Fish of Lembeh Strait

2011-06-30T21:38:00.000-04:00

Caledonian Devilfish, Lembeh Strait, Sulawese, Indonesia, Asia, Planet Earth

From time to time I'll stumble across absolute treasures on the Internet that aren't made in Silicon Valley and it's these increasingly rare moments that keep me rooting for this grand experiment.

To wit, the link below will take you to a marvelous photo gallery of the most exotic fish in the world presented in a decidedly homegrown website which itself is a wonder as the apparent passion project of a Swiss ex-pat living on the Indonesian island of *Sulawese. So glad we had the opportunity to connect, if only virtually.

Link: Underwater Photos from Lembeh Strait

Almost as much fun as the actual discoveries themselves is the path of curiosity that leads me to these day-making discoveries. In class this evening I met an Indonesian ex-pat who's studying in Philly. He told me that once he leaves Philly, he's going back to Jakarta to run a few product-lines of his parents' polymers business. Mind blowing stuff that alone and it got me thinking of Indonesia, and all the places there I'm curious about including Bali and the scuba diving possibilities of the world's largest archipelago. Soon enough I was Googling the scuba scene in Indonesia and found a refreshing, old-school un-commercialized corner of the Web (messy, awesome and weird like it was in the late '90s early '00s) made up of fan pages about 'muck diving' in Sulawese's Lembeh Strait.

*As upheld by the fish that live there, Sulawese is in fact the most exotic place I can imagine and officially goes in the file of ultimate adventure destinations along with Borneo, the Seychelles, Kamchatka, Tierra Del Fuego, Assam and the Okavango Delta.

Vegemite Sandwich in Philadelphia?

2011-06-30T18:30:00.001-04:00

The 'Ex-Pat' is the first sandwich on the list at the new Wedge + Fig in Old City and at first I didn't get it. Ingredients: Quicke's cheddar, Marmite, Avocado, Watercress on a Sesame baguette.

What is marmite? I asked the girl behind the counter. She started to say something about salty yeast extract, and then stopped, said, it's an acquired taste, maybe you'd like a try? At this point the owner stepped out of the kitchen and drew the parallel between Australia's famous Vegemite, which is illegal in the United States, saying Marmite is the America-safe version of this concept, which is, literally, yeast extract only with government-mandated processing for sensitive American gastronomy.

Then an ice cream sample spoon was offered over the counter with a dab of thick, dark syrup on the tip. So this is Marmite? It was opaque, not quite tacky, about as viscous as molasses. The taste was bracingly salty but with a familiar organic tang to it. After processing, I compared it to distilled soy sauce, like the heroin to soy sauce's morphine.

True to stereotype, Australians are apparently, actually crazy about vegemite and as word has spread of the marmite sandwich at Wedge and Fig, the owner has reported Aussies making pilgrimage from around the Philly area to snag a sando with the flavors of home. Now the 'Ex-Pat' part was making sense.

And I was intrigued enough to order one. True to assurances from the staff, the marmite wasn't overwhelming and added delicious saltiness next to the smooth avocado. It was a delicious sandwich.

Most of all it's good to see Wedge + Fig stepping up the game in this promising space. The former tenant and concept-proving, Old City Cheese Shop was decidedly un-cheesy for a cheese shop and a little too laissez faire in terms of knowledge, service and overall business-savvy. The best recommendation I ever got out of the OCCS was 'cheddar.' The Wedge + Fig has outfitted the fridges with a properly exotic roster of cheeses and sent me home with an excellent sheeps-milk cheese called 'ewephoria' in addition to the sandwich that helped me finally understand the Men at Work.

Stickin' it to the Man (or his proxy, the Philadelphia Parking Authority)

2011-06-28T18:23:00.000-04:00

A lot has happened since last we spoke, back at the end of May, which was literally the last time I felt free to do things that don't pay me or require a high degree of professionalism (like this blog), but the long and short of isthat I'm enrolled in the summer semester at Wharton which is a huge time suck featuring 7 hours of evening class, 2 nights a week plus more homework than you can shake a stick at. Fortunately it's over on June 30, but I didn't want that to let a whole month go buy without a peep.

Also, I'd like to prove I'm still out there setting out crafty, bloggish thought experiments to entertain the masses and have been cataloging them through various digital channels including Facebook mobile uploads, Twitter and emails to myself with notes about things I'd like to write later on. I maintain a list of 'Band Names' on a notepad application on my cellphone and have added a few this month, which I'll sample here:

Big Word Salad
The Nestorian Heresy
$mutKitten

So it's still very much on.

To wit, this post, which was motivated by my good friend Dr. W following the trend of moving to town from New York City and doing so in a big UHaul truck which he emptied and parked on the street in Old City last Monday night. Having helped him hump a bed, bookshelf and other heavy items up to his 4th floor apartment, I was clearly in a giving mood and kept on with some advice on the Philadelphia Parking Authority (PPA, stars of TLC Show 'Parking Wars'): that he'd better get the UHaul out of there lickety-split at 7am or he was in for a world of pain. No problem, he'd set his iPhone to wake himself up and return the UHaul.

715 I get an angry text that Dr. W has slept in a mere 10 minutes and by the time he arrived on the street, the PPA had already called a tow-truck to the scene who couldn't be dissuaded from collecting his rented UHaul the associated $250 release fee. Ouch. But we saw this coming.

On Tuesday night I was over at Penn where I park my car on the street and the PPA collects tolls for this privilege until 8pm at night. You can pay for up to 3 hours at a time, but it increments in 10 minute intervals from the time of your payment so it's often the case when I'm buying big chunks of time that I am forced to increment past the hour of 8pm because I have to stay until 9. Not this time. Claiming an ounce of Dr. W's pound of flesh, I won back $0.25 by paying for parking through 7:59pm rather than 8:09pm just to see if the PPA would be on the scene in the moments of my infraction. I know this sounds lame, but you have to fight the aggrieving forces of creeping bureaucracy in subtle ways or it will overwhelm you. And I'm happy to report that I didn't get a ticket. So take that PPA!

Inception Sound Effect Button!!

2011-05-23T14:11:00.001-04:00

Push the button and prepare for incredible Sound Effects! Do it!

HBO GO = No go

2011-05-22T22:34:00.000-04:00

Wow! That's not good. Amid a pretty big promotional push to get people to use what looks like a promising service in HBO Go, the site is apparently crashed. Having the juice to handle the traffic is 101 in website launches. This looks bush league and is pretty humiliating for HBO.

NFL Players All Over

2011-05-19T10:07:00.000-04:00

Sports Illustrated has this nifty gallery of famous NFL players organizing their own workouts as the lockout prevents them from actually using NFL team facilities.

While I was disappointed not to see some pics of the Eagles in here, I do have a bit of local dish from Old City, where I've witnessed Eagles' 3rd-string QB Mike Kafka blasting his pecs (one armed bench press, no less) at the Sweat Fitness on 2nd street. I may have to stalk the gym now with my cellphone to sneak out any photographic evidence, but I'd also have to weigh that against the real threat of that making me creepy.

Healthy Choices

2011-05-16T14:37:00.000-04:00

I try to make 'Healthy Choices' too. Which is why I was so glad to see that the Jade Garden in Dresher, PA, where I dined on Lunch Buffet today, has anticipated the need for 'Special Diet Sauce,' which they serve on the side. Not sure what's in special diet sauce, but I'd like to think it's a mix of Fen-Phen and MSG for good flavor. Pouring it on your Chinese Food then is like taking speed and not having to eat for the rest of the week while you ride the snake to a skinnier you. Ah, the trope of making fun of Chinese menus never fails to amuse.

One Offs: mustaches and scuba mask seal

2011-05-16T14:19:00.000-04:00

Turns out mustaches make it difficult to get a watertight seal with a scuba mask. I've been snorkeling and diving a bit lately and kept noticing water pooling in the lower half of my mask. Without any introspection I chalked it up to flaws in the mask until an older, mustachioed gentleman on my last dive boat asked me if I wanted some silicon gel to help the mask make a seal around my mustache. He had a little jar of it, kind of like the old Carmex compacts of yore, and with a light application in the furry upper-lip area I was able to maintain both my mustache (technically part of my total facial hair package, or, beard, more commonly) and my watertight scuba mask seal.

Why is the Tower Theatre So Expensive?

2011-05-06T09:00:00.001-04:00

Tickets to the Fleet Foxes' May 21 show at Upper Darby's Tower Theatre range in price from $96 to $331 when purchased directly from the venue on their website. I'm a casual fan of the Fleet Foxes and had some interest in going with my Special Lady, but not if I've got to shell out ~$200 for the experience at a minimum. This also leads one to wonder how many rabid Fleet Foxes fans out there are ready to plunk down $700 to treat themselves and a friend. Is this a glitch or do I just not know all the rich-ass mofos who love them some Fleet Foxes?

Another exciting show coming through the Tower Theatre is Eddie Vedder, whom I last saw in Philly during Pearl Jam's epic 4-night stand to rock out the Spectrum in 2009. This time it's just Eddie (presumably with a guitar, at least) and the Tower Theatre is selling tickets ranging from $126 in the nosebleed zone to an astronomical $868 for row BBB in the orchestra pit:

I mean, those are sweet seats and it is Eddie Vedder, but $900 for a ticket? $1800 if you want a friend to corroborate the experience? (Which you must if you're going that far to enjoy yourself.) I'm not buying it. So what's the deal Tower Theatre? How special an experience are you peddling? For $900 I'd want guaranteed access to a semi-serious friendship with Eddie Vedder.

Greening the William J. Green Federal Building

2011-05-04T11:34:00.001-04:00

Last night around 10pm the special lady and I were walking up 7th street back from Washington Square to Old City when we noticed some conspicuous activity up the street. Squad cars had blocked off 7th between Market and Arch and an improbably tall crane, lit by intense spotlights was hoisting large bundles of something from the street up to the roof of the Willam J. Green Federal Building, which houses the local offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Entering the immediate area on foot, we noticed a flatbed truck with a dozen or so bales of 'green roof media' which the crane was lifting one-by-one up to the roof of the building. A little Google-searching reveals this stuff is used to grow grass on building rooftops.

So, a couple of thoughts: 1) way to go on the FBI for greening a building. Not what I expected of a conversative Federal agency. Are they doing this elsewhere? 2) Is a sky-high crane really the best way to do this? I've heard crane rentals start around $10K/day, but it seems to me a few trips in the freight elevator could accomplish the same task. I'd like to see the cost-benefit analysis in energy savings making this a worthwhile endeavor, though in spirit I probably agree that it is no matter the installation costs.

Curated Content: Raul Ibanez Scared Hitless

2011-05-02T12:47:00.001-04:00

-Raul Ibanez went 0-4 last night and is now 0 for his last 34 at bats. The Inquirer adds some context: "To put his woes in perspective, the record for most consecutive hitless at bats in the big leagues is 46 by Brooklyn Dodgers catcher Bill Bergen in 1909, according to baseball-reference.com." 1909. Ouch. Not that Ibanez is there yet, but he is pressing and it's looking bad. He even shaved the devilish beard he was sporting earlier in the season to stoke his mojo.

La Compagnie Transe Express at Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts

2011-05-01T11:18:00.001-04:00

If you don't know how to describe this, you're not alone. But this is a scene from the culminating event of the ambitious 25-day Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts. Sold by the friends who enticed me to come out last night as a circus with French acrobats and pyrotechnics, what we actually got was 'Maudites Sonnants/ The Celestial Carillon,' courtesy of a troupe of Lyonnais known as La Compagnie Transe Express. Bascially, we have an over-engineered contraption (later revealed to be a chandelier) hoisted into the sky on a very tall crane. Dangling beneath the metal and wires is a gang of French minstrels with drums and bells and just 3 acrobats. The contraption expands and contracts and slowly rotates while the musicians tinkle out the creepy-clown music of a child's nightmare and the acrobats write around on swings or ropes.

All in this was the kind of opium dream spectacle of Toulouse-Letrec-era France that is kind of lost on modern audiences who have no expectation of such things. Hence my confusion when it turned out to be very un-circus. There was also a notable underwhelmingness in the crowd of 150,000 or so Philadelphians, who waited an hour while the device haltingly got off the ground in 20 minute, bell-announced intervals. This was puzzling: technical flaw or French theatrics to build up the anticipation? Either way it had the affect of riling a rile-prone audience and then under-delivering in terms of expected dynamics. Acrobats, for example, did no flying leaps and pyrotechnics turned out to be a few sparklers and kerosene torches.

Still, in terms of sheer novelty it was the most original thing I've seen in a long while and no doubt left some indelible impressions on attendant children, some of whom are still cowering in fear this morning after resultant night terrors, while others are probably plotting their emigration to Lyon to sign up with the celestial performers of La Compagnie Transe Express.

Video provided by the Inquirer since words fail.

My Professional Network Visualized

2011-04-30T10:51:00.000-04:00

One Off: the limitations of skinny jeans

2011-04-21T16:21:00.000-04:00

1) Friends of mine report from Brooklyn on the fate of a mutual acquaintance from college who transformed himself into a pretty serious hipster. Seeing him at a party he had a flowing gypsy scarf tied around his locks so to channel the more feminine end of the spectrum along the lineage of Louis the XIV, Purple Rain-era Prince and now Russell Brand. After the party, waiting in line to get into a club everyone decides to leave and merrily steps over the velvet rope stanchion to find a more inclusive event. Everyone that is except said hipster, whose pants are so tight he can't raise his leg high enough to step over the rope.

2) This morning at the local Starbucks I witnessed one of the barrista boys in painted-on black jeans (still not sold on this as appropriate for a man, even, or especially, considering the precedent of European swimsuit tastes) attempting to carry a table outside to place on the sidewalk. Was he the least appropriately attired Starbucks employee for the physical demands of this job? I'd argue so. Because I saw him waddling like a penguin with a popsicle stick clenched between his nethercheeks while 'maneuvering' the table through the double doors up on edge like a wheel. Constrained by his pants and grappling with the physical challenge of opening door, propping door open, rolling table, he lost his grip and the table rolled out the door and did one of those twirling routines like a runaway coin, turning a few pirouettes before belly-flopping down decisively on its side and nearly crushing a small dog on its way down.

Monster Bug Fights

2011-04-20T08:10:00.000-04:00

A few years ago I came across an amazing website called Japanese Bug Fights which pitches terrifying bugs against each other in forced terrarium matches with low-fi sound effects and

Now some smart producer at Discovery Networks' Science Channel has given the concept the classic Westernizing treatment with high production values, on-location shoots and gripping voice over from one of those movie trailer narrators. There's also expert color commentary from dorky entomologists cut in to give it just enough facts to put it on the Science Channel. But the best part is probably the enhancement of the canned sound effects from Japanese Bug Fights.

Listen to the clip from Monster Bug Wars as each bug is introduced and enters the battle. The unique cocktail of animal-sound gibberish they mix up for each bug is fantastic.

March Madness: Chicago

2011-03-31T11:49:00.008-04:00

I looked up and realized today is the end of March, which meant I had to hustle to get my 'March Madness' post up asap or risk dreaded, un-bloggy, decidedly anti-2.0 anachronism. Any case, here's the highlights of a stopover in Chicago to catch up with some old amigos and watch a little hoops during the 2nd and 3rd rounds* of the NCAA men's basketball tournament.

A few highlights worthy of mentioning that didn't make the highlight reel for reasons of decorum and or forgetfulness include: hanging near (not with, per se) Nick Lachey at the United Center while his beer lackey and bodyguard ensured he kept his cool; bowling at an old-fashioned, man-powered lane in Chicago; and outmaneuvering the 'chocolate milkshake' treatment at Weiner's Circle while still thoroughly enjoying the fully-loaded Chicago Dog and socially tense, verbally-abusive vibes.

On with the pics:

This is VCU torching Georgetown en route to a Final Four appearance.

Albert, iced.

Joanna Connor, Kingston Mines, tearing up the Whipping Post.

Kingston Mines was a gas. If you're in town, ever, go. And if you cross paths with Joanna Conner, ever, go. She can melt face with the best of 'em and was the most fun heavy blues rock surprise I've had since Anders Osborne at Jazz Fest last year.

*Feels weird to refer to what are still in spirit the 1st and 2nd rounds as such just because there are a few random play-in games.

Skunks

2011-03-27T15:52:00.000-04:00

Last night was my father-in-law Eddy's 66th birthday and we celebrated by having dinner at Smith & Wollensky steak house in Philadelphia. Not exactly an original choice of restaurant, but given the constraints imposed by 3 grand children, it was nicely suited to the occasion blending the appropriate level of fanciness and child-tolerance, and we got a great, private table in their amazing second-floor dining room overlooking Rittenhouse Square.

Between the taxidermized* moose heads on the wall and my sister-in-law's recent vehicular run-in with a telephone pole, the conversation turned to roadkill at which point my youngest nephew chimed-in that he'd never seen a skunk, except for what gruesome, dead remains they came across on the side of the road.

And it's true, driving around the city and burbs for almost two years now, I've seen countless roadkill raccoons, skunks and opossums, but have yet to see a single living example of any of these three critters which are so evidently present. Curious.

Then it was Eddy's turn. As a 27 year-old immigrant from the Dominican Republic in the 1970s he and some of his buddies had never encountered a skunk. (In fact I remember asking him a few years ago what the Spanish word for 'skunk' was and he didn't know it (mofeta, in case you're curious) because I guess they don't have any skunks in the DR.) So during his residency at a party, one of his colleagues found a skunk rooting around outside and captured the animal with his bare hands and then brought it into the party to show his friends what he'd found. A mix of hilarity and panic ensued, but Eddy doesn't recall the skunk getting down to skunkish business with the stinky spray.

Hearing this I wondered why hadn't the skunk sprayed? Which brought me to another supposed insight I'd gleaned from a classmate in college who was a direct descendant of original mountain man Daniel Boone. Seeing as Daniel Boone fought bears without aid of fire arm, we afford credibility to his great great great grandon's testimony that if a skunk raises its tail to spray, you have a split second before the scent-glands engage and the manly response to this is to step forward, grip the skunk by its tail and fling it skyward to avoid the spray. You can also run the other way, but what fun would that be?

*Hipster bars in New York City are teeming with taxidermy. Last month after whiffing on my trip to Bonaire, I drowned my sorrows in a bar in the East Village which featured some really poor-quality taxidermized deer heads on the walls.

One Offs: Omniture Summit 2011Edition

2011-03-10T18:50:00.001-05:00

3rd day in Utah and haven't had much down time to report on a few things I wanted to share from Summit 2011:

*No Josh James this year diminished the opening night star power of previous years and some of the enthusiasm. Omniture was a bit of a cult of personality with James at the center so it will be interesting to see how the 'business group' (part of Adobe for about a year now) and its attendant culture starts to change. Summit was a big part of that and may get softened by Adobe, whose California-based players seem to like making jokes about Utah.

*Another slight against Utah was the presentation of Vail resorts as the ski industry examplar of good web-marketing practices (as crowned by Exact Target, their enterprise email vendor). With the Utah ski culture playing a big role at Summit, I wonder if Exact Target thought that through before presenting Vail as the finest ski area in the world. And, uh, meanwhile let's get excited about the Canyons on Friday.

*Flouting rumors ranging from the Black Eyed Peas, Kings of Leon, Muse or even Bon Jovi, Lenny Kravitz was the entertainment this year. The announcement was met with little initial fanfare and you could count me among those only mildly interested. BUT, Lenny rocked it. He and his band were pumped and tight and gave a terrific show with some unexpectedly groovy extended funk jams. His back up band kicked ass, routinely, and I give Kravitz a lot of credit for pulling out the extra effort for a corporate gig.

*I can't remember the exact stat, but someone said that something north of 90% of the web pages on the Internet have some form of advertisement on them. That media used to be content consumed in the presence of ads, and somehow we've got to the place where now it's ads viewed in the presence of content. This makes me feel good and more resolved to not have ads on my blog.

*Which also reminds me of the time I did try to monetize my now dormant College Football blog with AdSense. After about a year, I was somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 in accrued click revenue. At this point Google upped the automatic payout amount to $100 and I guess I never got there. I burned out on the blog and the few users it's still getting are apparently ignoring the ads.

*But, it may have been a blessing in disguise. Last year I recall a notice from the City of Philadelphia inviting local bloggers to come to a cocktail reception/brainstorm on development opportunities to showcase the blogging talent of the City. Once they got the respondent bloggers together in a room, the City quizzed them on whether they'd tried to monetize their blogs with ad revenue. Those that replied in the affirmative were promptly slapped with a reconciliation request for the Philadelphia Business Privilege Tax of $300. At $40 of unpaid ad revenue (which I might add was earned before I moved to Philadelphia, so don't get any ideas Nutter) which could reasonably be par for the earnings course for most of us aspiring-professional bloggers, the $300 is a steep, relative 'privilege' to pay. But staying on point, shame on you Philadelphia for being predictably disingenuous and sneaky and cloaking this tax-revenue dragnet in the virtuous guise of fostering creative output from your citizen bloggers. Motherfucking money-grubbing. No ads on this blog.

Emergence

2011-03-06T12:41:00.002-05:00

I took the good weather on Saturday for a chance to spend the afternoon outside making some improvements to the small strips of soil that pass for 'landscaping' around my apartment. I put on my headphones and set my phone to vibrate in my pocket and was just getting into a good debris-clearing groove when a strange number with a northern Jersey area code interrupted me.

It was good George Flores calling from a post-office in Jersey City (outlet of the Holland tunnel from Manhattan) to tell me that a bag with my belongings had been turned in to his possession. Eureka! Sweet mother of luck, I thought, could it be the world has smiled on me and I'll be made whole except for the irrevocable loss of the trip to Bonaire?

Feeling no offense that he'd already gotten into my belongings to learn my identity, I encouraged him to keep digging and report out what else might still be in the bag. Well, there was a passport, some glasses, some other shit, (literally he said that), batteries, some prescription drugs....

I cut him off. No iPad? No digital camera? No. Damn it!

I suppose I might be grateful I'm getting anything back at all, but here's the thing -- what's being returned does me almost no good at this point. Two weeks since missing the trip, I'd already cancelled the passport and diving certification cards and spent the money to replace them as well as my prescription eyeglasses. Whoever first found my bag helped themselves to the fungible values contained within and did nothing to prevent me from sinking the cash to replace the items of no use to them.

I guess I'm expecting honor among thieves here, but if they were going to take my street valuables and return everything else, an anonymous email or text message certainly would have been possible and helped me to not lose the additional $500 or so it's taken to replace those things. Now it's just sentimental value (passport stamps?) and the modest utility of back-up pair of prescription glasses that would spur me to retrieve the bag. George Flores can't mail it to me since there's a passport involved, cancelled or not, so on top of everything there's the unpleasant errand of a special trip to Jersey City. I might just forget it.

Because I was at the point where I was moving on. This in some weird way, reopens the wounds and has sparked a second wave of anger. And for what? Because the thief wanted to feel better about themselves by returning my lost belongings after helping themselves to what they liked. Well guess what asshole? You don't get off that easy. You still stole from me and you didn't help mitigate any further losses on my part because you're a bad person who steals and you know what you did was wrong in every way so fuck you for bothering to return my bag at all. I wish you'd kept the whole thing and tried to sell the passport and gotten busted for treason and renditioned to Cuba where CIA interrogation experts tore out your teeth and toenails with pliers. So there, God and I both reject your attempt to make things right and that's the thanks you get for returning my bag, dickhead.

Google Street View Tricycle

2011-03-02T11:28:00.002-05:00

By now you can tell that I'm totally obsessed with Google Street View. Having previously appeared both in person and vehicular avatar on Google's effort to visualize the mapped world, I feel a sort of connection to the project.

It was my awareness of the peculiar, camera gantry-topped car and chancing to recognize one coming down the street that created the opportunity for minimal Internet stardom. In case anyone else is interested in replicating, I wanted to share that Google is now 'off-roading' the effort to photograph parks and trails, off piste, so to speak, with these nifty man-powered tricycles. So look out next time you're plodding through the back country.

The camera equipment looks heavy, good because you probably have to move relatively slow to get good photos, but this must be a hell of a job, particularly in hilly country. Still I know plenty of hipsters who'd love nothing more than to slow down some hiking yuppies with this kind of work.

Shots Fired 41st and Pine!

2011-03-01T08:07:00.001-05:00

I'm generally suspicious of any calls from unknown numbers, but particularly those interrupting me at 1:16AM this morning. Naturally I screened the call, but this caller was determined to get through and left not only a voicemail but one better: a chilling text message about 'shots fired' at 'area of 41 pine.'

'41 pine' is a pretty specific location to pin the nebulous sound of 'shots fired' but okay, shit's going down at a street address about 9 blocks from my own apartment. I wasn't feeling threatened at this point, but curious and also wondering whom was behind this rather sophisticated security feature. At first I thought it was the City of Philadelphia, but this was hard to swallow for a number of reasons having to do with the City's general inability to perform basic tasks like trash pick up with anything approaching efficiency. Plus which, if I got a phone call and a text every time there were shots fired in the Philadelphia Police Department's jurisdiction I'd be blowing up like the World Trade.

So I turned to Google which revealed ace reporting by the Daily Pennsylvanian citing shots fired (and nobody injured, phew!) at the intersection of 41st and Pine streets as opposed to the street address 41 Pine street. Now things were making sense. This was the doing of the University of Pennsylvania and their largest private police force in the commonwealth. And then I remembered that I'm enrolled at Penn, paying tuition and taking night classes in the Old Dogs, New Tricks department, and so am entitled beneficiary of this level of protection. Which is at once impressive -- showing what a state-of-the-art privatized police force can do to keep its paying citizens safe -- but also a bit scary in the dual sense of being both a glimpse of the future of the surveillance state and testimony to how far behind our public police organizations are.

Part II: The Weekend of Disaster on Amtrak

2011-02-28T13:44:00.000-05:00

The short answer from Continental is no. With the exception of a few rare documents I don't possess, there's nothing other than a Passport that will allow an American to leave the country on an airplane no matter what the entry requirements of the destination nor how much body cavity searching you can tolerate. Predictably denied, I booked myself on the next flight to Bonaire, 24 hours later and turned towards the trains to track my bag into New York City.

A return trip on the people mover and I was waiting on the train platform in a chilly breeze waiting for the NJ Transit train to Penn Station. I phoned my dad and brother who had been waiting at the gate for me to join them on the airplane to share the bad news and also checked in with Jill for her latest process with Amtrak security. In the dark below the platform a peculiarly large rabbit lopped across the train tracks, squeezed through the hurricane fencing and disappeared into the gloom of Newark airport.

The NJ transit train was a half hour late and these were probably my grimmest moments, sitting there beating myself up with how different things could have been if I'd only been paying attention. Calls ahead to Penn Station and Amtrak were fruitless and all I could do was wait and hope that someone kind and responsible would retrieve my belongings and help them get back to me.

Following up in person did me no better as I got weary repetitions of their archaic 'lost and found' operations that are only open Monday-Friday from 8am-4pm excluding holidays, which did me exactly no good at 11:30 Friday night with a long weekend in the offing. The train I'd been on had come and gone to a train yard for cleaning and the best I could expect was my bag returning to the office Tuesday morning, which means I'd miss the Saturday night flight to Bonaire, and thus the entire vacation since flights from Newark go out on Friday and Saturday nights only.

I left Penn Station after midnight, dressed for morning touchdown in the Caribbean, feeling ridiculous and stupid and under dressed for the cold. With my huge check-on bag in tow, I hailed a cab and met up with some friends in the East Village to drink away the pain. Over beers and shots of Jameson we brainstormed ideas to get me to Bonaire on the Saturday night flight ranging from a new passport via expediter to buying new ticket in a friend's name and assuming their identity. Ultimately, the passport processing idea only works mid-week on a 24 turnaround time at great cost and borrowing someone else's passport amounts to some kind of fraud and probably ends up with problems for both the borrower and lender. I was perfectly screwed and with no one really to blame but myself.

Still, I held out hope of a 'good samaritan' recovering my bag and taking one of the ample clues inside with my contact info in the recognition of its personal and time-sensitive importance. (Most of us don't casually travel with Passport and every owned, portable electronic device at once.) But this didn't happen in time to salvage the trip and with each passing day is looking less likely at all. A disappointing side note on society these days, I guess. I would have accepted anonymous return of the passport and diving certification cards in exchange for the electronics.

Defeated by the combination of my own goof, the incompetence and undesire of Amtrak and the low scruples of whomever has my bag, I returned to Philly on the Saturday afternoon Amtrak where Jill cheered me up with tamales and micheladas at El Rey.

The Weekend of Disaster on Amtrak

2011-02-24T10:31:00.000-05:00

Tuesday morning as I shoveled my car out of the 5 inches of snow that fell in Philly overnight, I mumbled some a curse at the Universe beneath my breath since by rights I should have been in the Caribbean this morning on a scuba adventure with my dad and brother.

Rewind to Friday night after a crazy week of work and I'm scrambling to wrap up my business affairs, spend a last few quality minutes with Jill and catch the 8pm, 138 Northeast Regional train from 30th Street Station up to Newark to catch the red-eye to sunny Bonaire.

I make the train and we sit there next to the platform for about 30 minutes without moving. The conductor comes on to explain something about the 8:35 pm train breaking down and its passengers needing to board our train. Not a big deal, but I actively chose the 8pm train because the 35 minute difference might mean something on an international flight. Still, I'm not panicking as we pull out of 30th street at 8:35 and begin the journey.

Under normal circumstances I'd have been on the platform at Newark airport at about 9:15, which would have been plenty of time to catch a midnight flight. But the train keeps slowing down and even stopping and we're getting up there past 10pm and still not there, so I'm starting to get a bit anxious.

10:15PM we finally pull into Newark and I grab my checked bag and hurry off the train to get a ticket for the strange people-mover type train Newark uses to get people from Amtrak to the airport. I settle onto the people mover, in a small car all by myself and as the glass doors seal me in and the train leaves the station I realize that I've left my carry-on bag with my passport, iPad, digital camera, prescription glasses, sunglasses, antibiotics, and scuba diving certification cards on the Amtrak bound for New York City.

The rush of panic I felt just then was about as serious a jolt as I've felt since watching Jill nearly bleed out on our couch. As I realized that I'd probably just screwed myself I went into a rage and gave the glass door of the people-mover a few good head butts before picking up my phone to call Jill, to get her working from home with the advantage of a good Internet connection, and then Amtrak to see about tracking down my bag.

Meanwhile, I'm still puttering on at slow donkey pace toward the Newark Airport terminal while my precious bag and passport are flying down the tracks in the opposite direction towards the mean streets of New York City.

First of all the Amtrak Police are completely useless. Don't even bother calling these guys. I'm not sure what they respond to, but unless someone's entrails are hanging out already I'm not sure they'd bother with the situation. They tell me 'we don't do that kind of thing,' (like, help people?) so I have to call sales and support through the 800 number. My heart sinks. I picture the Amtrak cop hanging up and smiling at his buddies over their steaming styrofoam cups of coffee and saying some poor fuck just left his passport on a train and thinks he's still got a chance of flying tonight.

The 800 number is predictable, polite computer voice recognition maze of sales oriented dead ends that takes 10 minutes to speak with an agent despite my dire, loud screams that yes, I'd like to speak an agent. I'm sorry, I didn't quite get that, it sounded like you said you'd like to speak to an agent. Who finally, also informs that she has no way to get in touch with the train, but I could phone up ahead to Penn Station in New York to alert them and have them look for my bag.

The people mover stops and I get off at the terminal in Newark. The Continental line isn't too long, maybe 10 groups ahead of me in sandals and Hawaiian shirts with their passports poking out of the front pockets. I'm still on hold with Penn Station's customer service line when I get to the check-in and the guy there does a double-take as I inform him in an increasingly hoarse voice that I don't have a passport but is there any amount of body-cavity searching I can submit to that would get me to Bonaire?

To be continued...

That is Philly in the Cedar Rapids Trailer

2011-02-21T10:39:00.000-05:00

Here's the screen grab from the 25th second of the Cedar Rapid's Trailer on IMDB, and that is definitely some old* b-roll of Philadelphia from somewhere over the Art Museum being passed off as Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Here's the actual Cedar Rapids skyline for comparison:

Not quite the same.

*Old, because the Comcast Center is conspicuously missing form the shot meaning two things:
1. The footage is definitely pre-2008 when the Comcast Center was completed, but maybe even older since there's no tower visibly under construction either.
2. The filmmakers saved a buck or two on some outdated, canned footage of a city skyline, still the choice is mystifying for lack of any real good reason to use it. The shot doesn't contribute to the general theme, which I suspect is central to some of the comedic set up of the film, of Cedar Rapids as a bit of a backwater.

Selected Scenes From Philly Thundersnow 2011

2011-02-17T23:19:00.001-05:00

In addition to being the night of the East Coast's last freakish weather event, aka Thunder Snow 2011, January 26 was also when I watched 'Exit Through the Gift Shop.' The street art subject matter of the film got me feeling a bit mischievous and coupled with the interesting weather outside, motivated a midnight adventure armed with Flip Video and digital camera. I've already shared the motion picture account of that evening, which featured such unusual moments as drunk bastards snowboarding down Market Street, but here share a quieter sampling of my favorite still shots of the city transformed by more snow than most Philadelphians have seen in a generation (unless of course they were here last winter).

Results: Beer Stein of Change

2011-02-16T08:48:00.001-05:00

That's $0.01 shy of $95 dollars.

The poll closed with 12 votes and most of you deeply underestimated the value of quarters. A full half the field estimated $45 in change in my Lowenbrau beer stein and only one reader took the high and accurate road of $95. So much for the wisdom of crowds. Or maybe 12 doesn't quite make a crowd. I think Surowiecki's point had something to do with random individuals and large sample sizes, neither of which we produced here. It's clear form the poll results that I just know a few skeptics.

That said, I do want to get back to a comment by reader 'Iceman' that read:

Coinstar is for suckers....go to any TD Bank and they'll sort your change for free.

Cold, Iceman, but true. I didn't do my homework going in and was only mildly surprised (as in, I should have expected this) the Coinstar tries to fee-gouge you to the tune of 9.8%. And after that just gives you some kind of 'cash voucher' which must create a second layer of inconvenience as you find a way to redeem it. I was picturing some kind of mail-in and wait 6-10 weeks for a check, but didn't go down that road to find out for sure. Perhaps someone else can comment?

So I went with Plan B, which in Coinstar terms is taking the full dinero amount in the form of a gift card with one of their pre-selected partners. This is also a pretty sly deal and I'm sure Coinstar's getting a tummy scratch on the back end of this too, but at least you get your full value and some of the vendors are pretty good. I chose Amazon.com but you could have iTunes, The Gap or a few others. Surprisingly, Wegman's wasn't one of the vendors.

Adding in poll results for posterity and because I wanted to remove the widget from my left-hand nav:

Gritty City: Philly's Got Your Back

2011-02-14T07:58:00.004-05:00

This is an incredible story wherein Philly tough guy Joseph Lozito ended the killing spree of a New York City serial stabber in a spectacular subway car knife/karate fight:

Philly.com: Philly guy fights off NYC serial-stabbing suspect.

The article and picture confirm Lozito as 'burly.' I know we don't respect the judgment of serial killers as a rule, but in a subway car full of people it didn't occur to him to attack someone other than the 6'2" 260lb martial arts buff with the shaved head, fu manchu and biker tattoos?

Still, glad he did. One leg sweep later and Philly did New York a solid and justice has been served.

My Second Act on Google Street View

2011-02-09T08:17:00.001-05:00

I was pretty stoked back in 2008 when my car appeared on Google Street View parked out in front of my folks' house in Boise. However, being that said car was parked there from June to September 2007, it was as likely as not that should the Google camera-car drive by sometime that summer, my car would be there ready for its cameo. What are the chances lightning strikes twice?

Flash forward, probably last spring some time, and my amigo Ben and I spotted one of these Google Street View camera-cars rolling down 2nd street in Old City with its conspicuous roof-mounted gantry. Here's the moment of recognition captured in digital perpetuity:

Spotting the opportunity from the cross-walk....

We makes it pay off big time, brah!

I made a mental note of the corner: 2nd and Market, not too hard to remember, and just happened to check back in with Google Street View yesterday. To my surprise and delight here we are looking about as douchey as we do in real life, proving once more that Google is succeeding in its mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Avoid us at all costs it says.

Beer Stein of Change

2011-02-06T09:55:00.007-05:00

What is the dollar value of loose change contained in this beer stein from the Lowenbrau in Munich? My guess is $60, Jill's guess (after watching my scientific estimate-building process) is $75. We're heading to Wegman's in Cherry Hill, NJ where there's supposedly a Coinstar machine to convert this into crisp paper bills and will report back on results.

But, first how much change do you think is in here? Submit your best guess in the poll at the top left of the blog and see whether you get it right when I report back next Monday.

Gritty City: Murder Map

2011-02-03T10:10:00.002-05:00

Fortunately for moi, Old City where I live is in the eastern end of the little valley between 'Point Breeze' and 'Strawberry Mansion' which are both summits of killing in this captivating visual rendering of murder by numbers in Philadelphia. True to its flat topography in this map, I haven't heard of a killing in Old City in the year and a half that I've lived here.

So it was hard to fathom that Philly's been nearly as deadly to Americans over the last decade as 7 years of open warfare in Iraq, but when there were 7 murders last weekend alone, it felt a bit more real. Nearly all of these were gangland-style, multiple-bullets-to-the-head brutality. Yikes!

This got me thinking about whether it's more dangerous in Philly compared to other prominent American cities. The data is readily available and in terms of per capita rate of murder and non-negligent manslaughter, Philadelphia is tied for 9th place with esteemed peers Cleveland and Memphis with .2 instances per 1,000 residents, or about 300 per year. This is below the rates of familiarly violent cities New Orleans (#1 with .50 murder-death-kills per 1,000 residents), Detroit (.46) and Washington, D.C.(.24), but well above Boston (.08), San Francisco (.06) and New York (.06).

For reference, my hometown of Boise, Idaho doesn't even rank in the available data set. Which might not surprise anyone.

Out of the Darkness Came Thundersnow!

2011-01-31T09:23:00.000-05:00

I've literally felt like hibernating since the end of December, but then woke up last Wednesday night as the 15 inches of Thundersnow was covering Philadelphia and felt like taking a late-night walk in the otherworldly winter scene outside. I took along the new Flip video camera I got for Christmas and shot a little b-roll of the scene in Old City. Pretty ridiculous that we're on pace this winter to beat out last winter's all time record 85 inches of snow in Philly. I wonder if this is the new winter paradigm for the area, the unpredictable emergence of global warming simply making things crazier, or two freakish blips on the radar. Either way it merits documentation.

Can You Identify this Bug?

2010-12-28T11:27:00.000-05:00

As cabin craziness descended, stuck in-doors at the in-laws while 'the blizzard' caused the NFL (in its infinite 'wusiness') to cancel the Philadelphia Eagles game, I staved off boredom for a few seconds by scrolling through the farrago of photographs on my BlackBerry. There I found the snapshot I got of this creep back in late October with the intention of figuring out what the fuck it was:

So, cloud, any ideas? I went through the easily-available bug identifiers on the Web and have a few maybes (iron clad beetle, oak borer) but all with fatal flaws. So I'm hoping to crowd-source an entomologist for an official taxonomy. Since I don't know one (an entomologist) and if you're generally a fan of advancing knowledge, indulging curiosity or testing the networking power of the Web, your assistance would be appreciated.

Though it would be a fitting prey for such a prehistoric parasite, that's not woolly mammoth pelt in the background of the photo. Which brings me to my next point on the vexing duality of the flokati rug. Think carefully before you indulge in one.

As for pros, flokatis are awesome to look at in both chocolatey brown or creamy white shag varieties and feature miraculously luxurious tufts of wool. Mine at 13' by 9' is great for warming up a drafty, hard-floored apartment and feels great on bare feet.

As for cons, flokatis are heavy as shit (just imagine skinning a woolly mammoth) and tend to shed such that my apartment rather than having traditional dust bunnies has 'flokati bunnies' thriving, reproducing and advancing towards culture in the nooks and crannies. The flokati-maker advised of this risk saying it wears off in a few years and can be helped along with regular raking of the flokati. So I bought a little kid rake at Target and bust it out when the mood strikes to tend my flokati. But we're about a year and half in and I still get rich harvests of wool when I rake it and the natural shedding still produces weekly armies of flokati bunnies, which need collection and management of their own.

Beyond that, the rug is dark and mysterious and its character stretches in this direction thanks to the difficulty of really getting in there and cleaning the thing. The wool is 5 inches deep in places and thick like natty dreads. Stuff falls in and never emerges and I have suspicions of an ecosystem evolving in its depths sort of like the benthic layers of the ocean where nutrients drift down in the form of dead whales and stuff and get consumed in the way of the one thing the Protestant could appreciate about the Indian - scarcity enforcing an economy where nothing gets wasted.

Hence this creeper, and its decided predatory appearance, hunting the thickets of my flokati was disturbing on a number of levels. Most ominously what it leaves to the imagination. If I found this fiend on the surface, what lurks below?

Onto Toronto!

2010-12-19T14:39:00.000-05:00

The ride up to Toronto on Monday night was fascinating in the context of the enormous winter storm that scrambled the Midwest and coated it in a thick layer of snow over the weekend. Loved the views from 30,000 feet, including ice flows forming in Lake Erie, and the spectacular explosion of Christmas-lit homes surrounding the airport. Glad to see people still taking the Holiday lighting of homes as seriously Clark Griswold.

Some reason I find airplane rides to be contemplative time for myself and had my share of 'Up in the Air' moments, including a quiet celebration of my 30th segment on Delta this year which seals my second consecutive year of Silver Medallion membership. No small feat this, and one of the accurate representations from Up in the Air, business travelers where their loyalty status as badges of honor and now I see it: there are a handful of things you can't achieve without putting in the time. One is love. Another is airline status.

Not to equate the two, or isolate them as the only examples, but it's true. 30 segments is a lot of flying and it barely qualifies for the bottom rung of elite status.

For this sacrifice, I've earned the right to never pay for checking bags and the occasional upgrade pending availability and other travelers higher-up in the pecking order. Somehow it's worth it. Savings on the checked bag fees is actually huge, considering it also applies to my wife when she's traveling with, and the semi-frequent upgrades to 1st class are like the crack that keeps 'em coming back.

Still the experience of flying is worse now than its ever been. Maybe it's just because I'm doing more of it, or that my latest go was fraught with the nervous expectation and experience of delay, but it was almost comic how much of it now seems designed to skirt the edges of disaster and create delays.

One of the most frustrating is the trend to Smaller planes + Checked Bag Fees = More Headaches for the Carry-On Crowd thanks to gate-side bag checks, which in Toronto on Monday night made for a bone-chilling 5 minute wait on the tarmac for my bag. It was something like 14 degrees outside with 35 MPH winds.

The whole point of carry-on is to save time and money and the airlines have found a way to obliterate that efficiency as well.

The LED Xmas Tree

2010-12-10T08:25:00.000-05:00

Spurred by the obligatory sense of shame that guilts people into buying canvas grocery bags and giant corporations into buying carbon credits, and all to theoretically offset greenhouse gas output, I had to do something to apologize to Mother Nature for taking a tree into my home for the selfish purposes of a few weeks of holiday cheer.

Hence, the blindingly white LED lights gracing the boughs of my smallish Christmas tree. The packaging extols the energy efficiency of these lights compared to traditional, halogen Christmas lights and says that while they may be up to 10x the price on the front end, the energy savings and karmic value are more return-on-investment than you can shake a stick at.

Unfortunately, they're not really delivering in the Christmas-cheer department which, for me, is priority number 1 when it comes to Christmas lights. In the name of energy-savings these lights have forsaken warm yuletidey glow for retina-searing intensity and suddenly my Christmas decorating is starting to feel less roasted-chestnut cozy and more glitch in the Matrix.

Charting Philadelphia Landmarks

2010-12-06T17:53:00.000-05:00

Instead of working as hard as I could have today, I made this in PowerPoint because I'd always been curious to know:

From L to R: Pat's King of Steaks, Independence Hall, Rittenhouse Square, Citizen's Bank Park, Battleship, Aircraft Carrier.

One Off(s)

2010-12-01T19:38:00.001-05:00

* I love sensations, but I hate sensation.

*Monterey Jack is in all ways an inferior cheese when compared to cheddar, unless your thing is rubbery texture. (Which, who wants to admit that?) Cheddar always.

*The thing you have to question about social networking is its intrinsic, paradoxical combination of courage-by-electronic proxy and undeniability. It used to take a lot of guts to pick up the phone and call a girl. Now you can just sleaze it up behind the mask of digital media. So the problem becomes the written record of stupidity following you around. Seems like it would have been easier when things weren't always recorded for cringe-induction come morning's sobriety but if anything people aren't deterred (as rationale would predict) but emboldened!

Love and Hate

2010-11-28T13:52:00.000-05:00

After the Republican sweep of the house in the recent mid-term elections my brother and I got on the phone to commiserate about the state of politics such that candidates no longer stand for anything and votes are decided largely by what people are against. We decided that this is like most things an outgrowth of the frustration at the hard work it takes to love versus the relative ease of hate. This is one of those eternal themes, and as such was a major subject of the Star Wars films.

Remember how easy it was for Luke to be tempted by the Dark Side? Where power was immediate? But the other side of the Force (light, or good, I don't recall if it was definitively named) wasn't so easy to master. It took work and it took dedication, but the implication was that if realized it was a million times more awesome.

The mundane allegory in our society is love and the fact that it takes work and conviction is something a lot of people find frustrating. They want it and they want it now and ultimately being frustrated in this expectation (any by taking the wrong approach) is what I think sends people to rail against everything policy-related except the universal wish list item of not paying more taxes.

I'd also like to point out that I'm not saying this love/hate dichotomy cleaves evenly across political dispositions or party lines. I don't think it does at all. In fact, I'd wager that most of the love is in the middle where most of us live. That why it's so disappointing to hear wholesale rejection of any policy solutions aimed at addressing this group of haters hijacking the dialog.

Thus bummed out, and on Thanksgiving no less after having contributed to the consumption of no fewer than 4 Turkeys, 2 kegs, 4 cases of beer, and 2 cases of wine in the name of love, goddamit, I'll leave you with this:

There's a maxim from the sport of kayaking called 'point positive.' I learned this on the Payette River in Idaho and its simple advice is to focus on where you'd like to go, rather than where you wouldn't. Otherwise the avoidables tend to behave like black holes and the aspirables tend to become holy grails.

NBA Basketball

2010-11-27T14:33:00.000-05:00

Two Mondays ago as I was checking into the Westin hotel in downtown Charlotte, I felt a large shadow dim my light and looked up to see all 7 feet of dubious number two draft pick Darko Milicic looming behind me to ask the front desk for something. Turning around fully, I witnessed most of the Minnesota Timberwolves milling about in casual, pre-athletic dress in the lobby and noted the team's make-up of recent NCAA tournament stars including Micheal Beasley, Corey Brewer and Kevin Love.

I haven't followed the NBA really since high school and the glory days of Michael Jordan, so this roster of the Timberwolves was news to me and kindled my interested as a dedicated fan of the NCAA tournament. I decided to hit up the Charlotte Bobcats game that night to take in my first NBA game in probably 5 years, but it could be 6.

My Charlotte-resident colleagues advised that the Bobcats were courting a relatively poor product despite a spiffy new arena and more side-show pageantry than you could shake a stick at, and that I could probably scalp tickets after tip-off at significant discounts. This was true to the tune of about 80% off the face value.

So we sat down with a couple of beers amid a crowd that could only have been 25-30% full. A couple of things stood out in the experience:

*There's a lot of gimmickry put up to market bad basketball. I remember the Washington Wizards game I went to in 2005 where the world's bendiest boy was brought out at half time and emerged from a small, plexi-glass case, did some contortions and then went back into the case. They also had a small, RC blimp that went around over the crowd dropping free tickets and, I swear to god, the odd $100 bill. At the Bobcats' game it was more of the same, including the beloved hotdog cannon, but the blimp didn't drop a thing and our half-time show was a ridiculous bunch of dancing poodles on loan from the UniverSoul Circus.

*Michael Jordan owns a significant share of the Bobcats (I'm too lazy to look up exactly what it is) and sat with his girlfriend next to the team on the bench. His posture was surly and removed most of the game, true to the form of his reputation as a big asshole, even when the Bobcats were coming back to win late in the 4th quarter.

*The Bobcats play in a really great arena with all the creature comforts and the basketball was actually pretty competitive between two of the NBA's worst teams. Too bad they can't do more to charge up the crowd and fill the seats, but I suspect all the poodles and hotdog cannons in the world won't do it.

Dunkin' Donuts Sausage Pancake Bites?

2010-11-12T09:57:00.000-05:00

When I was twelve my parents' high societal aspirations were realized in the form of a small equity share in a winery, in Idaho. All of this meant that they shelled out some decent amount of cash up front for: a.) the status it lent; b.) annual receipt of some cases of Idaho 'red wine' never to cumulatively exceed (let alone match) the dollar value of the equity share and c.) invitation to the hoity-toity holiday party at the winery. I don't think there was ever a whiff of a profit, though the wine had cool, Western labels and attained some limited popularity vis a vis marketing space in the Orvis Fly Fishing catalog.

Anyway, I had nothing on the calendar that weekend more important than putting on a gay sweater and accompanying the rents to a party I legally couldn't enjoy. There was a lot of pomp being passed around, like pate and fungal cheese from Europe all candle-lit and set to the soothing melodies of a chamber quartet and washed down with chilled Idaho Chardonnay, misting the outside of plastic cups with condensation.

I was bored out of my gourd and shambled around the scene ambivalently as it dawned on me that nobody wanted to talk to a 12 year old. Then I spotted a waiter carrying a plate of what appeared to be tater tots. Like any red-blooded Idahoan, I would never pass up a tot, particularly amongst the exotic culinary surroundings I found myself in at the time. The tot was familiar, comfortable, home.

I turned on the closing speed and snatched two handfuls from the waiter's tray, and popped one in my mouth without thinking first that they were a little larger than your standard tot. Biting in, I experienced the unique dissonance of food texture expectations flipped upside down. Instead of hot, pillowy potato beneath the crispy-fried exterior, there was a flaccidly-resistant, flan-like firmness followed by a briny gush of hot moisture.

Revolted, I choked and gagged up the uneaten half from my mouth into my hand for inspection and found this strange interloper in tot form with shimmery vittles dangling from the wad of gray-matter at the center of the fried batter crust. Years later I would say it looked a lot like the halved-orb in the Dunkin' Donuts signage for their new Sausage Pancake Bites, but with more guts hanging out of it. (Funny that Dunkin's putting this out there to entice people to try these things.)

The waiter, at first taken aback by my eagerness, was now half realizing the pratfall I'd walked into and relished the opportunity to ask if I'd enjoyed the Rocky Mountain Oyster: calf testicle, battered and fried.

Baby in the Corner

2010-11-11T14:32:00.006-05:00

Somehow the Halloween candy bucket always ends up looking like this about a week or so into November. How can the makers of Baby Ruth hold their heads up high amongst the other candy products teams at Nestle? This is all the focus group confirmation you need that the Baby Ruth faces a serious preferential challenge.

But I would argue it's one of perception rather than taste.

My theory is that people still think of that floater from Caddy Shack when they're reaching for the candy bowl and it's like, um, let's see Butterfinger or Baby Ruth, no way that shit tastes like shit! I'm going with Butterfinger.

Below the impacted fecal surface, Baby Ruth is peanuts, nougat and caramel, the very same roster of ingredients that Snickers has rode to American candy bar market domination. Curious no?

I Voted

2010-11-02T12:01:00.000-04:00

No Hanging Chads Permitted in 2010.

Apparently these are important elections in 2010 and in Pennsylvania. Above and beyond the usual, local noise and funk, we had our choice of new Governor replacing Ed Rendell and new Senator replacing the flip-flopped then forfeited seat of Arlen Spector. Rendell out on term limits, the Spector vacancy is sign of changed times.

I had a long chat with my old man last night, who lived through the optimism of the 1950s and came of age in the disillusioning 1960s and has thus seen all kinds of political turmoil. He said he hadn't seen politics as vitriolic as the current Tea Party campaigning by loud, fringe elements of the Republican Party.

The most astonishing thing from his perspective is how the only thing this group of charlatans seems to stand for is opposition to Barack Obama and that this seems like thinly veiled racism. Beyond that, where is the semblance of a plan for making things better? Is there a platform? Any policy?

This kind of campaigning is made to appeal to one selfish sentiment: keeping money in your pocket; and to one end: getting the candidate elected. But the hidden danger is in only knowing what someone is against, you have no understanding of what they are for. Why put that level of dubious intent in Congress?

It's not a popular platform, but we need something to the effect of old British austerity measures to get the country back on track, that is spending less and raising taxes. Ouch. But it's got to hurt if it's going to heal.

The problem is nobody seems ready to take the high road. I'm not seeing a lot of strength in the Democratic corner either. Lots of the moderate Democratic campaigning seems to be about distancing one's self from the dirty-word liberal Obama administration stimulus and healthcare bills, even though the former had to be done and nobody understands yet the provisions or effects of the healthcare legislation. It's too early to put a stamp on these initiatives, but at least they are action. I'd rather err on the side of doing something, than railing against everything.

But it's disappointing all the same that the Democrats have let the Tea Party movement set the terms of the debate. As one sign of how sad this is, consider the story of my sister-in-law, who's living on a conservative island in one of the Main Line's most liberal neighborhoods, Bala Cynwyd.

It's her Constitutional right to display yard signs for the Republican candidates she supports. But this year she's engaged in a saboteur's war with some anonymous liberal in her neighborhood who keeps stealing her Pat Toomey and Tom Corbett signs. Each day she replaces them, and after the 2nd or 3rd theft, added a little direct communication of her own, an additional, hand-made sign baring a threat to donate additional dollars each time a sign is stolen to the Republican cause in the name of the Democratic thief. It's low-blow politics right down to the Grassroots level.

Which still leaves me wondering, if people obviously care so much, why are they so focused on the wrong things? That's not to say that D or R are the wrong things, because I don't think anyone's getting it right. But rather a plea that we start demanding a higher calling out of our elected officials and supporting those who bring solutions rather than criticism, open-minded cooperation rather than partisan group think.

This will likely be my only political screed of the year, but I hope it makes people think, vote and start paying a little more attention.

First Snow

2010-10-28T21:33:00.002-04:00

Janky quality* notwithstanding, 11 inches in October is a beautiful thing. It's a La Nina year and that usually means more storms for the Northwest.

*Scrappily rendered from Sun Valley's webcams via SnagIt video capture.

Return to the D

2010-10-27T07:54:00.000-04:00

The Detroit People Mover is no place to let your guard down or make jokes about bombs.

Post-Season Stressball

2010-10-22T20:51:00.001-04:00

When the Phillies finally lost after an excruciating series playing the Giants version of fan-torturing small ball, I was at first filled with that peculiarly empty feeling of a sports fan who really wanted it and more or less gave up 3 hours of each day going back to April to watching and loving a team. When all of that caring amounts to nothing it's a really harsh comedown. The second step in the detox, after the emptiness, is a combination of self-loathing and feeling stupid for allowing yourself to care about something as unimportant as sports and giving it that much time and emotional energy.

But another strange thing happened when the Phillies finally lost. I started to feel better. Tonight for the first time since July I watched TV without a sense of obligation or the ulcerated pit in my stomach. It felt wonderful. I felt free.

Yarn Bomb!

2010-10-22T14:32:00.001-04:00

Yarn Bombing: the horticultural equivalent of dog sweaters.

So this, apparently, is 'Yarn Bombing' as recently witnessed on 3rd Street in Old City. It appeared mysteriously overnight, perpetrated by unknown citizen hipsters, as if by elf magic, and I suppose is conceived as high-minded, viral, civicdo-goodism but it just looks like B-grade foolishness to me.

Swiss Cows and Colds

2010-10-13T19:20:00.003-04:00

Yesterday about 4pm a cold hit me like a rogue wave and by 630 I was in bed with sinus pressure, post-nasal drip and the whole sorry bit. This is the second time in my advanced age that a cold has pulled a fast one on me during waking hours. That I've noticed the onset of the illness is the strange part. I don't remember having that experience before. But you're sitting there one minute, alert, active and feeling good when an invisible pall settles down and mucus starts oozing in the unseen caverns in the face.

Good to get this out of the way early this season, I guess. By the time the mutations strengthen the bug and make it really nasty my body will have the right antibodies in the war chest and I should cruise through winter as healthy as an ox. (Oxes are supposedly really healthy.)

Or maybe I just have cows on the brain. I was in Switzerland in September and saw more ideal cows than I'd ever imagined existed though I probably could have connected the dots on the Swiss cheese thing. Anyway, I kept thinking of that line from Fight Club about 'calm as a Hindu cow,' which sounds calm, but I'd have to ask Tyler Durden if he's ever been to Switzerland. Those Swiss cows are seriously calm.

For comparisons sake, among other reasons having to do with Jill's crazy goal of running a marathon this year, I went for a 15 miler in the Amish Country outside Lancaster this weekend to get the read on American cows. We saw lots of cows. In fact it was a bit of an Old McDonald kind of experience out there, with horses, mules, turkeys, chickens, cats, and the wildest species of all, the Amish themselves, cruising around on modern roads with their old-fashioned horse-drawn carriages.

Deep in the midst of a an exaggerated, low-down, short-shorted groin-stretch one such cart clip-clopped by with about 4 Amish children riding on a kind of shelf affixed to the back of the cart. They were looking otherworldly mature in their 3-piece suits, self-darkening glasses and woolly beards and we locked eyes like aliens from different planets encountering one another for the first strange time.

Shaking it off, I noticed the specific wear the horse-drawn carts put in the roads and wondered if the Amish pay state or Federal taxes for this privilege. (They compensate my father-in-law with quilts for brain surgery services rendered, so I didn't really feel off-base or bigoted in this assumption.) Later on Google would confirm that they do and my ire cooled.

But back to the cows, American cows, Amish cows. They're pretty calm too, eating and crapping and making dairy products in the green-beating heart of Pennsylvania.

Towards the end of our run we came across a field freshly covered in manure that was just starting to reek in the mid-morning sun. The smell was literally over-powering and though you may doubt the science behind this, I'm convinced that somewhere in the noxious fumes I inhaled this bug I have now.

Which brings me lastly, to Zicam, which is another awful thing I've put up my nose in the midst of my prolonged encounter with cows. Though the intake is something to endure, especially when your wife has to pin you down to administer the first dose, I'm coming around on the stuff. It can actually be inspiring if you surrender to its magic.

Witness David Beckham

2010-10-09T11:24:00.000-04:00

Moments later the Union got bent like Beckham.

Thursday night I went down to PPL Park in Chester for the LA Galaxy vs. Philadelphia Union soccer match and got the treat of witnessing some world-famous soccer players at work. Especially Landon Donovan, but especially David Beckham.

Beckham's a bit of a sensation, if you haven't heard, and lived up to the billing Thursday night by acing the corner kick assist for the game's only goal. While setting up his kick the crowd heckling was at a roaring boil that quickly silenced by the score. Beckham seemed to relish the melodramatic role of the Spaghetti-Western villain and did a salty, backwards jig out of the corner to taunt the fans after the goal.

Meanwhile the ladies in the crowd went nuts at the end of the game when, predictably, Beckham tore of his sweat-soaked jersey, which he pitched into the crowd rockstar style, to conduct his post-game interviews shirtless.

This one here pretty much sums up the female reaction to the spectacle:

Notice the coy smirk on the blonde. She's a little embarrassed that she can't help feeling attracted to Beckham. Despite the high-minded approach she just can't suppress the animal instinct.

The Munich AC/DC Taxi Cab

2010-10-04T23:12:00.003-04:00

Hail this cab in Munich for to get rocked to the follicles!

Rain in Munich made the beer tents at Oktoberfest an impossibility (but also because you need table reservations a year in advance to get in to one of the mythical tents) so we set out in the early afternoon for a snack at the giant Pagoda in the middle of the English Garden and ended up downing several more liters of beer and a couple of those mondo pretzels for which Bavaria is also justly famous.

It started getting dark, windy and raining harder as we realized that we'd need to get back to central Munich by dinner time and the walk in had been longer than we'd hoped to repeat. So meandering through what looked like a nice neighborhood we tried in vain as literally dozens of cabs whizzed by with passengers.

Then this one screeched to a halt and we couldn't believe our luck. The driver was an aging German rocker, possibly a former roadie for Scorpions, in long hair and beat-up black leather jacket. He sat real laid back in the driver's seat, almost standoffish, with one hand casually draped over the steering wheel, and the other (in fingerless gloves) at the trigger of a massive, after-market Blaupunkt sound system with fluorescent light effects.

'AC/DC?' I asked, falling back on the language-barrier defying trope of the obvious, and he said 'Jawhol!' and pumped up the jams and put the pedal to the metal, actually peeling out, and it was wunderbar.

At ear-drum beating volume we rocked out to two obscure AC/DC songs: 'Can't Stand Still' and 'Caught With Your Pants Down' as we rocketed through the darkening streets of Munich towards our hotel on Karlsplatz.

The D is Totally Happening

2010-09-01T11:23:00.001-04:00

STP Rocking the Fox with Noise and Fury!

I spent the back half of last week hanging in mucho-maligned-o Detroit, Michigan for work and have to say that despite the preparatory comments by nearly everyone who heard I was going there, I was impressed by the D. Not only because it didn't live up to my gloomy previsions of urban blightedness (if you live in Philly, the D ain't no thang when it comes to bombed-out acreage of post-industrial wasteland) but because it felt like it was actually happening.

Now most of this was because Miley Cyrus was also staying in my hotel, the improbably ritzy Westin Book Cadillac. But a lot of it was also just the general feeling of unexpected energy and the degree to which my co-workers and I took advantage of our situation and sucked the morrow out of Michigan's mightiest city.

Thursday night we started out at the amazing Slow's Bar BQ for the best dry-rub ribs and chicken I've ever had - a must do in Detroit. From there we walked by the old Detroit Tigers stadium, now-razed and ghostly empty save for the original entrance fence and in-field where a few local dudes were playing sandlot style ball.

The Old Detroit Tigers Stadium in Nuclear Winter

From there we proceeded to the obligatory stop at the MGM Grand where I played craps next to a couple of exotic-looking hookers who were having an improbable, slow-burning heater putting $10 chips down on the Field. The Siamese sister hit like 10 of these in a row. Crazy. So we went up a couple hundred quickly ourselves playing the come line and the points until their Pimp showed up and started telling his girls to 'earn yo' money,' in an unconventional twist on hooker productivity management. He started putting bets down on the 'Don't Pass' line, effectively betting against the rest of the table. Then whatever voodoo spells his ladies we're casting started paying off as the Pimp hit 5-6 of Don't Pass bets and I lost $300 in a head-spinning flash. This was a sure sign that our luck had run out.

Or had it? Back at the Westin Book Cadillac we reaped the rewards of suffering through a morning power-outage by claiming a free round of fancy hotel bar cocktails and wondered how we'd cap the evening when I suddenly remembered that the Stone Temple Pilots were playing around the corner at the Fox Theatre.

Off we went, hiking through the quiet abandoned city-scape of Detroit past the new Tigers Stadium and Ford Field to the Fox. It was about 930 at this point and the show began at 7 with an opening-act, so I reasoned that we'd arrived early in the second STP set. Lame folks were already leaving the show and we bummed 3 stubs in exchange for $15 and breezed in through the side, smokers entrance just in time to catch the crescendo of the show in which STP played their standard hits from the '90s. Scott Weiland I noticed, has grown a bit of a paunch and I think this a good sign considering his traditional skeletal looks were the surface evidence of a life and death struggle with heroin. Very rock and roll, that, but it's probably better in the long term that he's eating solid foods now.

After getting rocked to the follicles we strolled back to the hotel past the set of Amy Heckerling's new movie 'Vamps' starring Alicia Silverstone and caught them shooting a night-time scene in a park which is supposedly passing for New York City.

Detroit set of 'Vamps.' I was asked not to take this picture.

What bears commentary here is that there were 4-5 different shoots (at least) going in Detroit while we were there. That's why Miley was in town and I also shared an elevator and a free joke with Richard Lewis and saw Malcolm McDowell (the white-haired British guy who plays Terence in Entourage) in the lobby. Supposedly Transformers 3 and a remake of classic '80s Swayze beefcake takes on communism flick, Red Dawn, were also shooting in or around town.

Word from people in the know is that Michigan is heavily subsidizing film production in state by dint of generous tax breaks and a 20% discount on anything purchased in Michigan to support the production and suddenly Detroit is Hollywood MidWest. I can't see how Jennifer Granholm's budget makes money on the transaction, but I guess when unemployment is at 13.1%, you're more worried about cash flow and putting people to work than balancing the budget. Why should Michigan act any different than the Federal Government in this regard?

Anyway, it's definitely contributing to a sense of energy in Detroit that I hadn't expected and very much enjoyed on a couple of hot nights in the D.

Gritty City: Ants on a Cracker

2010-08-30T11:35:00.002-04:00

One Off

2010-08-18T10:00:00.003-04:00

If you're not in an airport and reading a USA Today, chances are you stayed in a hotel last night. Keep this in mind next time you're casing a target as part of your part-time detective work.

The Losing Season

2010-08-16T21:39:00.003-04:00

This is the face of men's rec-league soccer through the Philadelphia Sport and Social Club, where my team of free-agents (the proudly named 'PSSC Adidas') put the finishing touches on a winless regular season last night by scoring an own-goal to break a 3-3 tie late in the second half. Crushing defeat and we finish a sweltering season of abasement 0-7. Yes, thank you, we dreamed the impossible dream and dared to underachieve completely, submitted to rampant old man strength and it was awesome. Chalk it up to character built.

*Special Note: props to Sean last night for taking it like a man and smiling through the pain while I MacGyvered a medical dressing from napkins and athletic tape.

Gritty City: Boomer the Dog

2010-08-13T08:00:00.000-04:00

Fat Birds

2010-08-09T22:27:00.001-04:00

We live behind an Italian restaurant in Old City and most of the time people think hey, what a sweet thing to live so close to this cute BYOB that always smells like garlic, you must eat here all the time. 3 times total, and that's counting the chance encounter 8 years ago when I dined with my cousin visiting from Idaho on our mutual first trip to Philadelphia, so that's really like twice, which is to say living behind an Italian restaurant is more of a mixed bag than anyone not living behind an Italian restaurant realizes.

In 2007, or the last time I was in Italy, I heard some crazy shit was going down in Naples where the civic authorities somehow had failed to pick up the garbage for a stretch of about six weeks in the midst of the sweaty Mediterranean summer. Something about a feud with the mafia and their claims on the waste-removal business, but by and by the normally quaint and can't-miss tourist town slowly filled up to waist-deep in most places of fetid, stinking garbage and while that's about the worst of it (with tourists and residents alike walking around, half-drowning in their own stench-induced vomit) there's also the proliferation of trash-loving vermin like roaches, rats, centipedes and bums.

Here in the Ill it's not so bad, but with City Hall enforcing 'brownouts' on non-essentials like the Fire Dept, we're always a little nervous that waste-removal might be the next furloughed public service if the stimulus continues to wear off. I'm merely highlighting the worst case scenario of too much Italian unconsumed or undisposed. At present, our trash is removed weekly and our local vermin, consisting of the occasional mouse, are held in check by the neighborhood semi-feral cat whose taste for Italian isn't much.

But the birds, those little nameless brown and gray jobs that you see everywhere (I only want to say nuthatch because it's fun), can't get enough Italian food and are raiding the trashcans continuously for clam shells, pancetta and bathes of alfredo sauce. As a result they've grown as round and fat as hamsters and spend more time on the ground hopping about and squabbling amongst the crumbs than they do soaring in the clouds.

Doodle of the Week

2010-08-04T08:26:00.000-04:00

Sights, Sounds and More from Chromeo at the Troc

2010-08-02T17:48:00.001-04:00

Last Tuesday night the Missus and I stepped out for an evening with Montreal Canada's hottest electro-funk pop duo, Chromeo, at the Trocadero and I wanted to report back on some of the the notable sensations that comprised the experience.

-The sign on the door warned entrants that Chromeo's show features intense strobe lighting effects. This is no joke and so I'd have to conclude that Chromeo in concert is not for epileptics. Sorry guys.

-There were 3 opening acts, the last of whom was an aspirational MGMT with decent musical chops, but like zero charisma. I think that makes all the difference in the world.

-Chromeo got the crowd rocking - particularly the 35 year old dude next to us in the balcony viewing area. We may have been dating ourselves, chilling up there in the balcony with its u-shaped, padded vinyl benches, but I'd have to register a minor complaint about the size of this dudes dance moves. Way too big, like 6-7 feet in lateral distance. Sure, it's cool to get on your feet and shimmy around a bit and clap in time (the 2 and the 4 white folks), but when you're elbowing, kicking and crotch-thrusting into your neighbors with each gyration its time to reign in it a bit. The ground floor in front of the stage is a more apt environment for sweaty shenanigans like this, not too mention that they're generally better left to young, attractive women.

-But mostly shame on the couple behind us too for their equally disturbing interpretive dance. Ignoring the exclusively up-tempo beats, said couple spent the night in a middle-school slow song tangle, complete with awkward pre-coital embrace and aggressive sucking of face. I didn't think the show was 18+, ( or maybe they had good fake IDs) but who else needs to sneak out of the house just to French kiss for two hours? Making matters worse, our twinkish male-lead in this PG-13 love scene, was actor and director - filming the action for significant stretches of time with the video capture on his smartphone.

-Chromeo's set was short and sweet. They took the stage late and played their most beloved tunes in quick succession, sparing the audience too much of their new or lesser-known work. I for one applaud the lack of bullshit and getting to the point of delivering the goods.

Monday Morning Blue Screen of Death & Other Signs of the Apocalypse

2010-07-26T11:56:00.040-04:00

Error Code: 0x5000d64. That can't be good.

This morning I was greeted with the infamous 'Blue Screen of Death' when I logged in to my work station. And for the next hour while IT looked into my shit, I was powerless, paralyzed, gun shy that here was notice the general abundance of chaos and bad news had finally trickled down to the level of the you and the me.

This on the ominous heels of yesterday's blackout in my building after I'd just come home with a couple hundred bucks worth of groceries that required refrigeration and couldn't keep my meat, cheese and other perishables chilly amidst the onslaught of the hottest summer in history.

And I kept ruminating on how fragile we are and how dependent on each other and the technical advances we somehow manage to keep up to make our standard of living possible. What would I know if asked to fix the power grid? Sad to say without PECO I'd be sweating it out by candle-light eating what nuts, berries and vermin I'd be lucky enough to scrounge.

In the 100 degree heat on Saturday, as another example of my existential thinking lately, I'd remarked to CW that it's amazing what a thin band of temperature we can tolerate as human beings, where 32 is cold and 92 is hot. That's a mere 60 degrees difference and it's so important and makes us seem like wimps (and/or miracles) if you take a cosmic view of toughness. On Mercury the temperature swings from -300 to 800 degrees Fahrenheit between night and day.

To which he said, 'well, we're so much more complicated than rocks.'

Gulf Oil Spill DIY Web Clip

2010-07-23T08:32:00.004-04:00

Not to assign any kind of higher, cosmic meaning to the Gulf oil spill (cause who believes in that shit?), but the time of the free-flowing gusher neatly coincided with the duration of my brother's unemployment. He was laid-off in late April, just as the Deepwater Horizon oil platform burst into incandescent plumes of gas and literally took a new job this past Monday, just after Top Hat Number 10 (a Flange Transition Spool and a 3 Ram Stack) corked most of the leak.

As significant events in both the macro and micro experiences of our lives, the two events will serve as markers for one another and ensure the duration and dates of these chaotic storylines stay clear in memory. Strange how that works. Everyone around at the time remembers where they were when Kennedy died. We'll always have Deepwater Horizon.

Anyway, if you're morbidly fascinated with this disaster as I am, you will find the New York Times excellent interactive oil spill tracker a compelling and sobering little tool. In the Internets abiding spirit of plagiarism and copyright infringement, I paired it with another of my favorite tools, SnagIt!, to create the clumsy 9MB animation above and call it my own content.

What's Wrong

2010-07-20T08:25:00.000-04:00

As an occasional exercise, typing open-ended questions into Google seems a great way to tap into the troubled minds of a people. Google Suggest will let you know that it's okay, you're not alone in worrying about mostly useless shit by offering up temporally and contextually related searches compiled algorithmically from other users like you. Here in Philadelphia, users like me appear to have one overriding concern - the plight of the punch-less Phillies. Pretty dead-on accurate.

While it's fun to look at this and say, how shallow we are, I actually take it as a good sign that most of the list is comprised of blather and fleeting concern like Spencer Pratt and Kelly Bensimon because it means we generally know which trough to seek for dirty water. What's more troubling is question #3 in the list. How should Google know? And why are you asking? Doesn't this suggest a major reshuffling in the spiritual leadership ladder? Or maybe I'm the one underestimating the Search Engine's ability to provide answers.

One Off

2010-07-19T00:25:00.000-04:00

May I recommend the German pancake?

Nasty Nestling

2010-07-16T11:08:00.000-04:00

The creative process of blogging is probably something like a comedian's in gathering notes on the absurdities and adventures of life and revisiting those at a later date to apply a coating of thought. Combing through the photos I email myself from my phone as part of this process, I found this shot from just a few weeks back that I'd almost forgotten having survived: rescuing a nestling robin.

Jill and I went out to play tennis during one of the rash of hot, dry days we've been having around Philly this summer and as I approached the baseline, this clump of gray detritus shot it's head up in the air, mouth agape and let out a shrill salvo of peeps.

Lying just court-side of the hurricane fence and a bunch of neighboring hedges, this little nestling had escaped his tipped-over nest, which lay on a broken branch at the top of the hedge, and crawled onto the court as a last act of survival. And there he collapsed in an awkward heap, prone with nonworking legs and wings outstretched frying on the hardtop court. Without intervention he wasn't long for this world.

Our first instinct was to try to return him to his nest, but the nest was clearly abandoned as it contained the withered, maggot-ridden corpses of his two siblings. So we turned to the Internets which advised a shoe-box nest lined with an old shirt coupled with a tweezer-administered diet of warm water-mushed dogfood.

Within hours our nestling was responding well to our therapy and gaining strength. Every time we approached the shoebox, his little head shot up, mouth wide open, and the stream of peeps came out soliciting gobs of dogfood gruel. From then on he was literally an eating and guano-shitting machine. Which quickly became gross as the bloom wore off the rose of our do-gooding hearts.

Then he started to look ugly, sickly and skeletal without plumage and a voracious appetite and white, nitrogenous, toothpaste-like oozing guano in abundance sullying his shoebox nest and we started to wonder what kind of animal we had saved. Nestlings are hard to identify and we weren't sure if we had gone to so much trouble just to ensure there's one more crow or grackle in the world.

Plus which it was now Sunday and what would we do with our professional schedules with a bird who needs to eat three times an hour during daylight?

Rearing him in our Center City apartment wasn't a savory prospect, nor one that looked promising for the bird. Fortunately, a little more research on the Web revealed the Tri-State Bird Rescue & Research organization in nearby Newark, Delaware. They happily take in rescued nestlings, regardless of the bird's exotic appeal, or mostly, lack thereof. (They get 25 birds a day, mostly robins and grackles.)

We drove him in to this secret facility tucked into the woods surrounding Newark and found a rootsy, but seemingly well-funded little operation like you'd expect Jane Goodall to be running on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, only instead of chimpanzees it's suburban birds in plexiglass containers being nursed back to health and then released in netting-covered woods.

The receptionist confirmed that our nestling was a robin, which, better than a grackle, but by no means the rare exotic we'd envisioned when deciding to rescue. But hey, we did a good deed shored-up on some karma and went on our way.

One Off

2010-07-14T12:58:00.000-04:00

Do Swede's only seem clever?

Serving Mark Zuckerberg in Sun Valley

2010-07-14T11:28:00.001-04:00

At the Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley last week, media luminaries from around the globe descended on the central Idaho mountains for a week of R&R and M&A. Many famous deals have been brokered at the conference over the years from the Google YouTube acquisition to Comcast's bid for a controlling stake in NBC/Universal last year.

This year the biggest news was Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg getting duped by a would-be autograph-seeker who turned out to be a process server notifying mighty Mark that he's being sued for an 84% ownership stake in Facebook.

The lawsuit may be frivolous (claiming Facebook was bought for $1000 back in '03 by one Paul Ceglia), but the rush experienced by the process server must have been as real as it gets. As depicted in Pineapple Express, process serving is a high-stakes game of cat and mouse, even when dealing with low-profile scumbags like drug dealers. Imagine when your quarry is Mark Zuckerberg, what kind of assassin's thrill that must bring when you realize he'll be in Sun Valley for the Allen & Co. conference and you head him off at the pass. A perfect plan meets perfect execution as your spring the trap and ambush the biggest name in Silicon Valley.

Heat

2010-07-12T12:23:00.001-04:00

Having lived 4 of the last 5 years in San Francisco I got used to the relative boringness of Bay Area weather which consists mostly of non-seasonal coolish weather year round, with a mix of fog and sun wherever you go. The difference between day and night is 10-15 degrees and so is the difference between summer and winter.

Philadelphia has been a wildly different story so far. Last summer was like the European Mini Ice Age with highs cracking 90 only one week in August that I can remember and a pretty consistent track of cool temperatures and steady doses of record-setting rainfall. This continued in the winter with the all-time record setting 10 feet of snow that we got in Center City. And why stop there, thought Mother Nature, before besieging the city with it's hottest summer in a decade and the 8th hottest since regular temperature recording began as a second act.

Critics of global-warming would point to the 10 feet of snow and say, look, proof that the temperature isn't rising. Hah Al Gore!

But all that is anecdotal evidence and at that it may even be evidential support of the data. All we know is that we're putting more energy into the system and what that brings in the local experience of global warming is unpredictable, but more frequent and violent extremes, mood swings if you will, is a likely outcome.

ICED!

2010-06-30T11:29:00.003-04:00

One of many highlights from Memorial Day on Nantucket was this early adoption of the 'Icing' viral Internet meme as popularized by the (now defunct?*) site BrosIcingBros.com. The seeds of this moment were laid in advance by a series of covert emails on the concept, a victim was selected and the Ice was presented.

Luckily, I was there to capture the moment and have to say that I think the composition of this icing is excellent. Let's break it down. First, there's the look of pure anguish on the victim's face as he kneels defeated to take the ice. Then there's the triumphant gat hand gestures of the perp gunning down his enemy cholo style with a couple imaginary 9s. Brilliant!

And yet, not funny enough for BrosIcingBros.com. Like any good meme, it relies heavily on UGC. Realizing what comedic gold we had on our hands here, I submitted the photo for inclusion and got this response from the big shots at BIB:

They even said "awesome ice bro...." Seemed like a done deal right? So I scoured the site for days later and have yet to see our submission get published. So I have to criticize their vision, having witnessed a lot of janky icings getting pub. What gives? What's the matter with our ice?

*Why do I think Smirnoff lawyers have to be somehow involved in this?

Air Force One

2010-06-28T17:14:00.004-04:00

When I observed this curious trio of aircraft flying just outside of New York City on Friday, May 28 at 5:43PM, comprised of 1 CH-47 Chinook and 2 AH-64 Apache Longbows painted in stark white, my first impulse was, holy shit, that must be Air Force One, because 'Air Force One' isn't technically the 747 the President flies around on (though it often is) but rather whatever airborne vehicle the President happens to be flying in at that particular moment.

Since it's not practical to fly a 747 into Manhattan, I thought we had a chance here of an incidental Presidential path-crossing, figuring somebody important must be in the Chinook to require a dual-Apache escort out to Newark.

Unfortunately, the President's daily schedule is remarkably easy to come by with some light Googling and multiple sources (including this one) agree that he was probably in Chicago at the time, thus debunking my theory. But still, this was an impressive display of air superiority to witness on a fairly routine commute and thus merits inclusion in my continuous documentation of life's little oddities.

So with that, if anyone has any ideas who this may have been please speak up. My next best guess is Mikhail Prokhorov, aka that wild Russian billionaire who recently bought the New Jersey Nets.

Tiny on the Drums

2010-06-23T07:44:00.000-04:00

Tryon Street, Charlotte, North Carolina, June 22, 2010 9:16 PM

Mile High Weekend

2010-06-22T16:47:00.000-04:00

I'm going to start with some not excellent cellphone photography of a most excellent bull moose that we caught out in the open this past Friday in the Indian Mountains Wilderness above Tabernash, Colorado. So there you go. I only risked life and limb to creep up on this mighty bastard as he munched his riparian seaweed lunch so I could get within 75 yards or so and still just barely within the functional range of my Blackberry Tour 9630. Check out the resolution of 3.2 megapixels at 800% magnification. Impressive no? No.

But the moose, now that was really something. Too bad I couldn't capture it with the available state-of-the-art technology, but he seemed very at home there in central Colorado. Which is odd because he doesn't belong, not really. Moose in Colorado, like the mountain goat, is a man-made artifact. Someone in the late '70s, probably at the compelling behest of John Denver, who seemed authoritative, felt the place would be better off with some appealingly rustic immigrants and before you know it the wilds were populated with strange new beasts. This about a century after grizzly bears and wolves were extirpated from the area.

This wasn't the only human-affected oddity we observed in Colorado over the weekend. May I present the second (glimpses of which are also visible to the careful observer in my moose shot):

Here we have lodgepole pines, the ubiquitous conifer of the American Rockies, dying en masse thanks to pandemic mountain pine beetle infestation. Scientists concerned with the problem, which has killed vast swathes of Colorado forest (among other western states' groves) aren't entirely sure but believe the balance slipped out of control as a result of global warming, which shortened winter and expanded the window of time during which beetles may feed on the trees without die-off due to cold weather.

It was awesomely sad to see mile after mile of Colorado forest where I'd guess 85% of the trees were dead, withered and orange. Devastating forest fires are the inevitable next step and we may be witnessing the extinction of the lodgepole pine, which couldn't adapt too man-made global warming. The thriving moose, on the opposite tack, is a hopeful reminder that nature will survive it's encounter with humanity and its impact on evolution.

Keep Your Receipts

2010-06-16T11:24:00.001-04:00

Regular check indeed. What the hell was I doing on Thursday, October 1st of last year that I needed three $0.49 turkey sausages, one 'dessert' and a cup of coffee at 9:41am? I should have been at work where these things are not available. So, I'm not sure, I don't exactly recall ordering this, nor having visited the Corner Bistro, but this receipt was there in the thick stack of confetti gathering in my Costanza-esque wallet. So it's clearly the truth.

I've always wondered why I keep receipts, I'm not particularly vigilant against credit-card fraud and I'm not enough of a tactician to want to parse my own paper trail at the end of the tax year for nickel and dime business expenses to write off. But now I understand.

I do it because it reminds me what I've been up to. Much of my own life remains a mystery to me, particularly that which disappears faster and faster with each year into the thickening fog of my past. So like the credit bureaus, or a noble archaeologist digging through the midden of a lost Indian village, I can mine the history of my purchases to uncover clues about my life and hopefully add to the non-ending quest for self-knowledge.

It's almost like looking at old pictures, only far more mundane, filling in the bulk of life between the victories, and thus probably more accurate as to the true nature of things, in that moment some months ago where the need for turkey sausage, some kind of sweet, and a cup of coffee was the imperative of the day.

Some Thoughts

2010-06-14T23:57:00.000-04:00

-Day one of the World Cup: I was thinking, after a pair of annoying, low-scoring ties, so far, so boring. 200 years ago, the United States didn't settle for ties with England. Why are we so high on this one? The Founding Fathers would not have been stoked, maybe even badly disappointed, particularly given that goal was complete garbage.

-Day two, I'm really feeling Die Mannschaft after the show they put on drubbing the 'Socceroos.' Having encountered a few genuine Australians in the world, with their 'no worries mate' attitude, acid-washed jeans and near unanimous sun-kissed good looks, it was oddly fun to see their party ended by efficient German workmanship.

-It bears noting that my wife made the most outrageous meal order of her adult life the other day at Beau Monde for breakfast, I guess you'd call it: a mimosa to kick things off then a froment crepe with apples, toasted almonds, brown sugar, caramel and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. This was the breakfast of champions that kicked off a day of beer-drinking and hotdog eating at the Phillies' game.

-Speaking of whom, it's been painful watching them slide from 1st to 3rd in the National League East, particularly heading into this month's American League tour de force, already off to a banging start losing 2/3 to the Red Sox before hitting up the Yankees, Twins, Indians and Blue Jays before the month is out. It's hard to image the Phillies coming out of this stretch unscathed, so I've already begun the word-smithing of a cleverly-titled post to the effect of 'The Philadelphia Phaillies' or something like that. I'd be happily proven wrong.

-I reached out to volunteer some time and energy to the Philadelphia Tax Reform movement as avowed at PhiladelphiaForward.org and was met with a disappointing reply of weary capitulation. I hope somebody's still beating some drums on this topic.

-I've been following the story on Sabina Rose O'Donnell's murder since it first broke. I saw her photo on Philly.com and got a chill because back in January she had been our waitress on our lone visit to PYT. It's a terrible shame what happened to her at the hands of a coward and I hope they catch whomever is responsible for this terrible deed.

Just Ridiculous

2010-06-08T11:33:00.001-04:00

This isn't my first screed on Ticketmaster, and it probably (sadly) won't be my last. This was just so shocking I had to share with the world. I'd like to catch Chromeo at the Trocadero in Philadelphia next month, but at a 43% gouge for convenience, I'll inconvenience myself by walking to the box office. It's nice out today and this might actually be a fun errand.

American Express Foreign Currency Conversion Fee

2010-06-07T13:50:00.002-04:00

On my way back from Canada two weekends ago I naturally wanted to hit up the duty-free at the Thousand Islands crossing to shore up on my summer reserves of booze sans tax. While the exchange rate isn't awesome these days, the prices are marginally better and you can also load up on Canadian candy (Smarties baby!) and maple syrup.

So after scoring bottles of Patron, Hendricks, Ketel One and Grand Marnier, I thought I was pretty clever right up until I got stopped at the US Customs and Border Patrol checkpoint and referred to secondary inspection after admitting I'd ignored the one-bottle per visitor rule and actually purchased four.

They lined me up with about 7-8 other cars and had me roll up all the windows and leave the vehicle and not use my cellphone (to call my Al Qaeda friends), while a big Ford truck with a white box in the bed (Mobile Radiation Portal Monitor) slowly puttered down and up the line of cars apparently shooting some kind of radiation to find bombs, yellowcake or other instruments of terrorism.

Satisfied that we were carrying nothing dangerous, CPB let us go and I was off into the States with my tax-free hooch.

Now a fortnight later, I'm checking my American Express bill online and notice this funny little blue dot in the statement next to my duty-free liquor purchase:

...and find that AMEX has tacked on an extra 2.7% to my purchase for the service of foreign currency conversion. Shame on your AMEX for taking the low-road of surprise hidden fees (though I'm sure I was notified in one of those dense, rice-paper pamphlets about my Terms and Conditions), but I guess you have to take advantage when you have the world by the balls? That's nice customer-centric thinking.

I used to think of AMEX as the goto for travel purchases, but knowing that I'll pay an extra 2.7% on top of anything I buy in foreign currency, I'm thinking twice.

Justin Bieber's Purple High Tops

2010-06-03T10:30:00.001-04:00

An old story goes that, back in college, I got out of sorts one afternoon while watching MTV and had an emotional 'freak out.' Without willing it, I drifted across the street to the multi-cultural student union building for a smoothie, into which I gently wept over my despair at feeling out of touch with pop culture. The exact stimulus, I believe, was N*Sync, or something like them, on a stage in Cancun amid a throng of thong-clad beauties and their bouncing parts and here was my sudden and overwhelming lack of comprehension. Looking back it was probably just plain old jealousy. My spring break trip to Key West hadn't been so fruitful.

Since then, I've largely reconciled my connection with pop culture. I think in the maturation of (still) pending adulthood, which entailed the erosion of the dream of setting the curvature of cool myself, my efforts to be so have softened to the point that I'm really taking most things less seriously and not expecting much beyond face value. As a result, I've come to celebrate Justin Timberlake's entire solo catalog and I'm not afraid to admit it.

There's no shame in owning up to something that makes you feel good. So another thing I'm going to surrender henceforward is my effort to log and hold people accountable for instances of hypocrisy. We're all guilty of it and pointing it out (usually) as a means to justify something bad you want to get away with is not a constructive exercise. The better thing to do is expect it, since it's human, and get on to the constructive path of forgiving. It's what Jesus would have wanted.

So with my new enlightened attitude, I'm marveling at this new wunderkind, Justin Beiber, who's suddenly up there dancing and singing from the wisdom of his 16 year old perch about love and its travails. He may be an old soul, but the 20 year old me would have rejected this on grounds of dubious voracity. What does a doe-eyed, pre-pubescent Canadian queerbait have to tell me about love?

Then, what would I have to gain by keeping the Beiber at arms-length? That's what the older me has realized and so I'm embracing Beiberama and starting to plumb its pop-cultural richness for seams to lace into my own life.

To wit, these are my new kicks -- Adidas Equations, to be precise -- loosely inspired by a sweet pair of purple kind that Bieber sports and they're driving my wife crazy. Only, not with the teenage fan-girl lust like I'd hopefully envisioned. It's more like crazy with fatigue at my antics, or something such that effects more weariness and ridicule than horniness and adoration.

Still I occasionally insist on these shoes, most recently on the ferry to Nantucket, because my point is this: Bieber doesn't act his age. Why should I?

May Tripping

2010-06-02T17:04:00.003-04:00

From the home base in Old City, I traveled over 5,000 miles across the Eastern United States throughout the month of May as abstractly illustrated in the above SnagIt Editor on Google Maps digital visualization. In real terms, I made round-trip visits from Philadelphia to:

Atlantic City, NJ
Charlotte, NC
Nantucket, MA
New Orleans, LA
New York, NY
Rideau Ferry, ON

As much as my itinerant nomadisticity was a journey of man on wheel, rail, wing and hull, what strikes me here at the end of it all was the gastronomic effort involved in literally eating my way through May on the road. En route I sampled an awesome array of distinctly North American cuisine in all of its regional splendor. While the exotic wonders of cajun cuisine in New Orleans, buttered chip wagons in Canada, and Nantucket's amazing Portuguese bread command respect, the core of the culinary experience was far more American: lite beers (and lots of them) plus hot meat, cheese and white bread.

For the most part I try to watch what I eat. But healthy eating, like exercise, piano-lessons, non-fiction reading and prayer, is a routine easily toppled by the flux of travel. Simply stated, the road is an excuse to scarf all the junk food you can handle. And so this May I happily gave-in to the impulse to eat, and eat I did to end up here in June counting back on the previous month and realizing that I ate literally 3 home-cooked meals, had red meat almost daily and can count among that total cheeseburgers from 10 different sources and 3 philly cheesesteaks (my normal total on both of the above is like 1 per month).

Beefy Highlights:

Hot barbecue brisket at the random strangers house in New Orleans on the recovery from being rocked by Pearl Jam at Jazz Fest.
Returning to the fast-food burgers of my youth: Wendy's 1/4 Single with Cheese, A&W Papa Burger, McDonald's Big Mac.
The simple, yet technically advanced burger at the Crepe Cellar in Charlotte, NC - hand-packed patty, fried onion strings, gruyere and a truly wonderful bun make this the only one I'll refer to as the French Onion Soup of cheeseburgers.
Not 1, but 2 cheesesteaks at Cosmi's - Philadelphia's best 'Philly Cheesesteak.' (Suck it Pat's and Geno's!)
Memorial Day Natucket grill-o-rama featuring classic, hand-made burgers on the grill with sliced tomato, grilled onion and pickles and the best weather anybody's seen on that island since the New World was discovered.

It's been real.

Now as my brother says, it's time to be a homeboy, and for June that means getting back to leafy greens and high fiber to hopefully undo some of the massive damage May must have done on arterial walls and GI tract.

Random Fact: Nashville, Tennessee Got a Lot of Rain in May 2010

2010-05-19T12:27:00.001-04:00

A somber footnote from my recent trip to New Orleans was that my brother, a last minute addition out of Nashville, Tennessee, spent a good portion of the trip nervously monitoring his iPhone for updates on the deteriorating situation with regards to the Cumberland River and record-setting flood stages back in his home city.

The weather that weekend in New Orleans was strange, frighteningly humid with an endless surge of low-lying clouds flowing north off the Gulf at 20-25 mph. It was horror-movie, pre-apocalypse style cloud action and everyone just kept waiting for what felt like the inevitable, Biblical deluge. But it didn't come.

With this boatload of moisture coming in from the sea, New Orleans only reported 1.55 inches of rain during those first two days of May while Nashville received 13.56 inches. I'm an amateur meteorologist in aspiration-only, but my feeling is we saw that moisture in New Orleans en route to Nashville.

*Data for this post was provided by Weather.com, which is an excellent website with a lot of delightful drill-down ability for the weather and/or data junkie. Check out the Monthly view for precipitation and temperature recordings, extremes and averages.

Facebook Makes Your Privacy Difficult to Understand

2010-05-18T10:16:00.003-04:00

There's a genius working at the New York Times graphics design center who produced the comprehensive visual (from which I happily pimped the above) of Facebook's 'bewildering tangle' of a privacy policy.

I'm generally trusting of all things Internets, including Google's all-seeing eye (well acquainted with the collective id), but it's not a bad thing to be a little standoffish in knowing that the privacy rules governing the web are largely unwritten, or rather, being written by the companies you use everyday on the Web (Google, Facebook, etc.). Your guardedness should arise from the fact that they are attempting to create a market-driven, self-interest supporting code of conduct that balances their business interest against the whip of torts. As with any pioneering enterprise, the law isn't yet advanced enough to cover this ground with prescriptive rules simply because the list of contingencies is branching and broadening everyday with no signs of slowing down or normalizing. So the shake-out of privacy protection will probably happen by dint of these companies being called-out in court for bad behavior, aka violations of your privacy. All I'm saying is be careful how much you share since Facebook is working mostly to capitalize on your personal information as their marketable data. This should bother you only so much as you have ignorantly shared compromising information. The upside is relevant advertising, the downside is martyrdom in the courts. As always, the ancient writ of caveat emptor applies.

In these instances, I like to fall back on the rhetorical utility of my run-in with the naive young coed Boobs McGee, whom I interviewed several years ago at a campus recruiting visit to an elite college in the Northeastern United States. Before the interview, I received a dossier on Ms. McGee (actual name forgotten to protect her identity, which, on second thought, why should I work harder to protect her identity than she does?) with her resume and cover letter.

Naturally, I Googled her and found her Facebook page entirely too-open to the public featuring a profile picture of her busting out of a slinky black dress with some frat-guy chomped down on the upper-middle camber of her cleavage. Whatever her name was, 'Boobs McGee' she instantly became and the jettison of respect only quickened when her self-reported 'interests' included 'My Tits' and 'Cocaine.'

After the interview, I consulted with the career services folks and let them know that Ms. McGee wasn't quite right for us but might be better-suited for one of the open (and far more lucrative) Tiger Woods' mistress roles. Additionally, her professional faux pas might be cited as a parable to all undergraduate job-seekers as to the dangers of over-sharing via Facebook.

My Weekend at Jazz Fest in Pictures

2010-05-11T14:34:00.001-04:00

Trombone Shorty!

Two Rude Dudes!

Tipitina's!

Cafe du Monde!

Peace!

Clouds!

vitaminDeficient

2010-04-29T14:16:00.001-04:00

So I went in for my less than annual check up a few weeks ago and submitted to the indignity of the physical - including needle puncture, blood-letting, and the culminating abasement of having my man-parts man-handled while a twiggy Indian resident 'observed' in a state of mild chagrin. Despite the preteenish demeanor of his young accomplice, the excellent Dr. Dhond was all business and handled the man-handling professionally. I'm always impressed with the brusqueness of the doctors who have to perform this service to society.

The probing completed, I waited the interim days while the mysteries of the blood work were performed and wondered with increasing paranoia what unforeseen illness lurked in my veins. In past iterations of this routine, it's come up that I have off-the-charts cholesterol levels for my age, as well as peculiarly high counts of a liver enzyme called bilirubin. The cholesterol at least proved a red herring caused by my failing to fast by dint of a cream-cheese bagel in the run-up to my blood sampling. The bilirubin bit is a genetic gift from my lineage called 'Gilbert's (jheel-BAYR) Snydrome' which is largely asymptomatic, save for the occasional bout of jaundice. So if I ever seem a little yellow that's probably why.

This time around it turns out I've come down with a case of vitamin D deficiency thanks mostly to a dogmatic adherence to the ritual of sunscreen, which blocks the carcinogenic Ultraviolet B rays from the sun that are needed for synthesis of vitamin D in the skin. Sunscreen usage is so pervasive, according to Dr. Dhond, that almost 50% of adults are borderline/outright vitamin D deficient. The collective plight is not helped by the fact that nobody over the age of 12 drinks much milk.

So, what's my risk? I'm too old for rickets, but not too young to start worrying about osteoporosis or the detrimental, yet poorly understood, effects that vitamin D deficiency may have on my immune system. Not leaving a thing to chance, I suggested that I just start getting sunburns again but this didn't amuse Dr. Dhond.
He says I need supplementary vitamin D in pill form or before long I'll be as brittle as a gingerbread man.

It's Ticketmaster's World...

2010-04-28T15:26:00.010-04:00

So I'm lucky enough to be heading off for the second weekend of the justifiably famous New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, or Jazz Fest, and am struggling with the unjust dilemma of ticket sales here in Ticketmaster's world (and we all just live in it).

Pre-paid ticket sales are $45 on the Jazz Fest website but go up to $60 if you're buying day-of at the gate. So the obvs move here is to pre-pay, right?

But then witness the Ticketmaster peripheral sales funnel of ultimate aggravation in action:

Exhibit A

Okay, so even though it's a weekend long festival, if I'd like to go to more than one day I have to buy individual tickets for each day. That's not very convenient.

Exhibit B

Oh, now I get it. You want to sell me individual tickets so you can double (or triple) me up on the infamous Ticketmaster service fees, which at over 18% are in the polite range of what you'd tip a waiter at a fancy restaurant.

I'm still saving $6.85 per day off the box office price. That's cents that makes sense. But wait...

Exhibit C

It's easy to look at this and say, quit complaining and go Will Call (and I probably will). But there are times when this matters. Witness Outside Lands Festival 2008 when the Will Call line was like an hour long and yours truly missed the Black Keys, Beck and a good chunk of Radiohead as a result. And then what is Ticketmaster really charging me for? The privilege of self-service? $2.50 to print it out my damn self?

I understand a company's got to make a buck, but there's also a difference between good profit, earned for delivering value, and bad profit, earned by pressing your position of power. Somehow Ticketmaster has all the tickets and to me this is no bueno.

41 Coors Lights

2010-04-26T10:04:00.002-04:00

Draft Day Memories with Lawrence Taylor:

It looks like he's still feeling the effects of those Silver Bullets, the legendary amounts of sideline cocaine, or the collective cranial impact of thousands of tackles in the NFL. Whatever it is, there's something not right behind those eyes.

Oven Elements, Still Hot

2010-04-20T12:49:00.000-04:00

There goes my hand-modeling career.

How to Fix Healthcare: Robot Doctors

2010-04-19T12:39:00.000-04:00

The new Star Wars films are pretty ridiculously bad movies, but they continue an important vein of thought from the original films that is especially relevant considering the direction we're headed as a socialized country: robot doctors.

In the screen capture above, a floating robot doctor explains to Obi Wan Kenobi that Princess Amidala is medically healthy but dying of a broken heart. It's a dramatic moment. You may remember from The Empire Strikes Back the closing scenes where a less-advanced bi-pedal robot doctor fixes Luke Skywalker up with a spiffy bionic hand.

The point remains the same: robot doctors.

Now, when I see those Coke Zero ads asking scientists where's all the futuristic shit they promised us back in the '50s, like flying cars, time machines and clones, I think, why not add robot doctors to that list? Sure the R&D expenditures would be heavy up front, but once the design is perfected it would be all profitable gravy on the back end. I bet when you compared it with the collective numbers it takes to get everyone through med school it starts looking a little better. Robot doctors don't need living expenses and wouldn't bitch and get tired during ridiculous residency hours, plus they're really good listeners.

Phillies' Worst Fan

2010-04-16T14:05:00.000-04:00

Presenting the Phillies' worst fan, Matthew Clemmens of Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Sadly proving that Philly's grimiest grit comes from across the Delaware. If you see this man-child at Citizen's Bank Park, run, don't walk, in the opposite direction, else you could end up like Easton Police Captain Michael Vangelo and his little daughter, upon whom he forcibly vomited at Wednesday night's baseball game.

UPDATE

And everybody knows it too:

These are the encapsulated 'Story Highlights' from Sports Illustrated's coverage of the incident, meant to highlight the most important details in 75 words or less.

Dicks of a Feather

2010-04-15T07:43:00.000-04:00

You know this had to be out there somewhere. Thanks to SI for digging it up. Tiger Woods and Ben Roethlisberger during happier times at 'Tiger Jam 2009' (which takes on a wildly different connotation given recent events) at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Both beaming at the thought of all the chicks they'll sleaze after the press conference is over.

Hey Big Ben, Where's the Beef?

2010-04-14T09:18:00.000-04:00

The chips are starting to fall for the NFL's pre-eminent jackass, Ben Roethlisberger, who certainly seems capable of the churlish crimes he's been alleged of committing. Watching this guy win multiple Super Bowls has been a little aggravating, even as a fan with no particular beef against the Steelers (though I have some remnant Northwest sympathies for the Seahawks, who got jobbed in '06, jobbed I tell you!), because Ben Roethlisberger seems like such a stereotypical jock dickhead. And nobody really wants to see those guys win.

So, while hating to admit I'm prone to such pettiness, it's been awesome watching this clownshoes get shredded in the media after his rape case got dropped. (Watching the DA in Georgia make that announcement on ESPN, I could feel his pain that the evidence didn't make enough of a case. We all wanted it for you buddy!)

But Ben's still getting his comeuppance.

What a perfect storm of embarrassment. Starting with the timing of the textbook douchebag haircut to the public upbraiding by NFL founding father Terry Bradshaw and moving right down to the loss of his one major sponshorship deal - PLB, a Pittsburgh food product marketing company , and former geniuses behind 'Big Ben's Beef Jerky', the coincidence of abandonment has confirmed what I've suspected for some time - nobody but Ben Roethlisberger takes Ben Roethlisberger seriously. Good luck with the civil suit a**hole.

Sights & Sounds from the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club Show at the TLA

2010-04-07T10:47:00.000-04:00

Last night at the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (BRMC) show at the Theatre of the Living Arts (TLA) I finally figured out how to disable the ineffectual little flash on my Blackberry and get improved (though not good, on the standard of iPhone or Android cameras) cameraphone shots of a rock concert. My results are posted below to enrich the growing meme of this kind of photography which are fantasmagoric abstractions that can be best described as various sorts of fireballs or pyrotechnic sorcery. Thank god for smoke machines and laser light shows. (For the full effect, I'd suggest playing the BRMC video below and you'll have a scant notion of what it was like having your face melted by this throwback rock band.)

As powerful as this experience must have been, you'll never understand what it was really like to stand behind the mid-Atlantic's tallest BRMC fan:

Or to meet a banging, tatted-up pixie in the crowd who reveals herself through a series of cryptic answers to be an FBI field officer under cover on the tail of a dangerous underworld kingpin, both huntress and hunted BRMC fans. Last night was rock and roll!

Yes, Palau! That's the 'PA' I Meant.

2010-03-24T15:38:00.000-04:00

Computers think they're so fucking smart.

Well, how about settling this little quibble. I've been to Palau. It's nowhere close to Pennsylvania in terms of geography or economic importance. It hasn't even been a Minor Outlying US Territory since 1994, so how about kicking it off the US State drop down menu ( courtesy of Wired.com of all people) and doing the 13 million of us living in Pennsylvania and regularly filling out our fields with 'PA' a favor?

No offense meant to Palau, tiny, awesome semi-autonomous island nation of 20,000 betelnut-chewing badasses. Your scuba diving, Chinese brothels and jungles filled with rusting brigades of tiny, WW2-era Japanese tanks, rock the party that rocks the body.

Signs It's Spring in Philly: Butter Krak

2010-03-16T20:15:00.000-04:00

Possibly, no, definitely the world's worst-named candy, Zitner's Butter Krak, is being showcased with prominent cash register area placement at neighborhood Wawas in an apparent Philadelphia homage to trashy Easter traditions. WTF? Since when is Philly's 'krak problem' something to make light (fluffy candy) of? Let alone use as a device for marketing Easter candy to children?

Obvious Innovation Arrives in the Starbucks Splash Stick

2010-03-11T10:00:00.000-05:00

Dude, apparently Starbucks Splash Sticks have been available for almost two years now. Which begs the question of how have I been so dim on my semi-regular Starbucks visits to miss these simple, helpful little devices.

I routinely put my coffee lid through a torturous road test including one-handing 1) my squirrely 11 pound dog Woodstock on leash; 2) pastry; and 3) coffee while I walk. (You may have already guessed that the other hand is busy with the task of poo bag, public sidewalk dog feces retrieval and disposal.) This ambitious task list usually conspires on several occasions to scald the multi-tasking hand with several splashes of hot coffee.

What you see above are the actual results of this morning's iteration of my combined coffee-run/urban dog walk. And that, my friends, is a fine, fine outcome considering the amount of erratic jostling Woodstock (who walks on a leash like a rainbow trout hooked on 2 pound test line) put that hand through.

Without the Splash Stick, I'd have horrible horrible burns. With the Splash Stick, there are a few small puddles, most of which came through the air-vent perforation above the sipping hole, and no burn-salve required today.

My Healthcare Lifehack

2010-03-09T18:00:00.000-05:00

Lifehacker is an inspiring place to go to for clever tips for optimizing your life. Whether its saving money on energy, defeating procrastination or learning how to work a room, they've probably got advice on how you could be doing whatever it is you're doing better. In pursuit of the ideal of adding value, I wanted to highlight a recent win I discovered which, inexplicably, isn't covered by Lifehacker.*

If you're married to someone else with a job, chances are one of you picks the health insurance and you both get on it and trust that the market generally serves equal pricing. In our case, we went with my wife's under the lazy reasoning that her employer (Tenet Health, a healthcare company) would provide good health coverage at a competitive price.

One again the old adage proved true, when you ASSUME you make an ASS out of U and ME. I don't routinely examine my wife's pay stubs, nor she mine, but when I finally took a look I noticed what I first thought a typo, over $250 per pay period deducted for health insurance. Nope. We were paying over $500 a month for health insurance.

A little digging revealed that we could save $150 a month by switching each of us to our own employers' plans. Better yet, we could save $200 a month by going straight to mine. We made the switch and are now enjoying an additional two fancy dinners each month.

The applicable point here is that the costs of group health insurance plans are not consistent and not a given. In a relationship where you might have options, you should research all three potential choices: both on hers, both on his (or hers again), or each on his (or her) own.

*Not incidentally, Lifehacker does have a Tips email address wherein users can 'Suggest a post': tips@lifehacker.org (And I just might do so)

Google Finance Gets Trippy

2010-03-08T18:07:00.000-05:00

I found this an appropriately fuzzy interpretation of the stock market.