So, technically Thursday was in fact my birthday. I had to work and we have been getting ready for the University of Buffalo's first annual debate tournament to occur this weekend. Anyway, we did get the opportunity to do a number of enjoyable things. Katie bought me a wireless card so I no longer have to steal her computer in order to check my email at whatever random debate tournament we happen to be at. More importantly and probably infinitely more useful, I will actually be able to utilize the internet at school. I mean, its ridiculous that the closet I hang out in is literally referred to as an office, having no windows, no telephone, no intenet access. Nonetheless, the fact that I will be able to comminicate via instant messenger and check my email will probably make it more likely that I will get work done at school, as well, I will likely not have to run to the library or the center every 5 minutes. So a big public thank you to Katie for my adaptation to contemporary technology.
On a further technology note, I am actually getting a decent piece of telephonic technology as well. My phone, which was a piece of shit to begin with, like before it was ever utilized, straight out of the box, has gotten progressively worse as a result of my, for instance, dropping it into a garbage can full of ice water when fishing around for a non-diet Pepsi, last weekend. Nonetheless, we have spiffy new cameera phones in the fed-ex version of mail that should arrive Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. Brief tech update, since I am now at Buffalo judging a debate round and using my wireless internet card, I can say for sure that it rocks the socks of a box fox as a birthday present. Best ever. Mad ups to the Katie-Bear.
Anywho, I haven't said anything since the Wilkes-Barre trip, largely because I have been busy and stuff, but I suppose that is no excuse. My favorite thing about going to Wilkes-Barre is having the debate with Katie about the name of Wilkes-Barre. I say this because I am 100% confident that I am correct about this situation, not because I like making Katie upset or anything. When she actually gets upset and embararssed I give it up. Nonetheless, for the most part she seems to take it as I intend it. The basic point being that the word Barre could be pronounced, in my world at least, in one of two ways. either
"bar" or, obviously in a somewhat silly fashion "barr-ay" like the French word for the past tense of the verb barrer, which translates in english to "barred." I prefer "bar." Nonetheless, we found out last year when we arrived that the place was actually called Wilkes-"Berry" like the fruit or the dingle. I however, have adamantly refused to give into such obvious spelling elitism, such nonsenicality. I'm not sure how serious she is all the time, but Katie loathes it when I say this in front of other people, although I would be happy to inform them about the fact that they are being scammed by the good people of Wilkes-Bar, who want nothing more than to make them all pronounce things like complete fucking ninnies.
Regardless, we got their really late on Thursday night, well, not that late, but later than I wanted to get there. I essentialy starved that night, because all I got to eat was a Cinnabon on the road. The fucking limp ass Perk in front of our hotel was closed so I drank some grape soda and went to sleep exhausted. I woke up at ass oclock to participate in what I had heard was some sort of orgiastic continental breakfast, qua the Embassy SWEETS. I had been told there were like waffles and scrambled eggs, and there were in fact, toaster waffles (the non-eggo kind, the bakery type preservative filled type) and hard-boiled eggs. This was not exactly what I was looking for, but I rolled the waffles and hit up some powdered sugar mini-donuts as well, which were solid. I was upset that this specific continental breakfast didn't have cereal, especially because I am a huge fan of cereal dispensers. If I ever have a buttload of money, veritable or otherwise, I am investing in like three of them, its like continental breakfast everyday. It was noise that there were no debates until the afternoon, and though I found it slightly odd that we left on Thursday when we easily could have done so Friday morning. We judged debates, we had dinner at the Perk. The Perk in Wilkes-Barre is not only not 24 hours, but also has a fucked up menu including "hash-brown casserole" as an alternative two the regular hashed browns. I don't know if I have ever mentioned my views about "hashed browns," but basically I think they are awesome. I think that calling them "hashed browns," which emphasizes that they are browns which have had hashing performed on them. They have been hashed. I feel the same way about "corned beef," beef which has been corned. It has had the process of corning performed on it. I wonder if, in the long run, words like hashed browns and corned beef run the risk of a similar fate to that of "xerox" or "kleenex." Not exactly that they will lose their copyright, but that they will gradually become corn-beef or hash-browns. I think that would be sad.
I should note that I am extraordinarily tired during the prep time of round four that I am currently judging. I will continue later. Maybe during prep for the 2nr, they have a lot of time.
But I like the stairs...
Peace,
MB-K
Saturday, October 02, 2004
Thursday, September 23, 2004
I Got the Moon, I Got the Cheese, I Got the Whole Damn Nation on its Butt
I have little to say today, but I feel the obligatory nature, intrinsic to the debate season, to announce that we are oot of here for the weekend. Luckily the Pack's contest against the evil Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts is on national tv and hence will be waiting on tivo for me when I get home. We are going back to Wilkes-Barre, PA, the Kings College Tournament which we also attended last year. This time, luckily, most of our expenses will be paid for by Rochester, since Katie works for them officially. Anywho, it shouldn't be difficult or anything, so at least the money we make juding will be helpful. It comes right at the point where we are starting to get paid on a regular schedule anyways, but a couple extra dollars to waste on psychoanalytic literature, J. Crew payments, and truffles never hurt nobody.
My classes today were both hella good, the type that remind me why it is that grad school was actually something I wanted to do, that made sense. The second course obviously should, since its titled and focused around one of Lacan's seminars I know almost nothing about and have not read. That said, the seminar has enough "famous moments" in it that I had heard of most of its important elements, many of the Lacanian aphorisms, but lacked any real comprehension of their surroundings. That gives this seminar the potential to be especially interesting and Steven Miller is exceeding my, fairly high, expectations. The other seminar, which I expected to be interesting, but not necessarily useful, is looking like it may fulfill the first expectation and defy the second. I have read a couple articles by Irigaray in the past, but for the most part I had no serious knowledge of her writing. One of the things I find fascinating at this point is her ability to adopt certain conventions, pretty explicitly, without naming them. Before class I could have told you that she does this with Lacan, since I can pick out the moments she is obviously building on or playing off the statement that "Woman does not exist" or the idea of multiple being, but it was indicated to me this afternoon that she does the same with Hegel and Meleau-Ponty among others. She acknowledges when she is criticizing Freud or Marx or whoever and it appears that there are times when she will mention that she is entering into dialogue with Lacan, but nonetheless, this appropriation, which is a fairly common tactic of contemporary literature, and especially feminist literature, is something I have never encountered in theory before. I'm sure will have more to say about her in the future but for now, we wll leave it at that.
My friend Erin Anderson is in Japan and posting all these crazy pictures of Tokyo. I will admit that I have never had the pizzazz my brother and a number of my friends do for all things Japanese, from anime to sush and ridiculously packed cities. I was enthused at the fact that since my brother is more than likely going to end up in Japan for a while after he graduates, I will likely get the chance to visit him. Though I obviously would not exclude the possibility that I would go to Tokyo without there being a family member in residence, I would say it is much less likely. Regardless, there are some things the Japanese seem to have a passion for which have got their ups and downs. Lets take vending machines: the Japanese have vending machines that kick it where you stick it but also vending machine stores!! Vending machines should take credit cards, you should have some ability to do crazy shit like buy a certain number of quantities or select amongst hundreds of options or...well I can't really think of anything else you can do with a drink vending machine, but I haven't even really put much thought into it. I mean, there are people who fucking design vending machines, I know this because there are new ones out there, new ones every year or so, what the fuck are they doing, just sitting around like "how bout this, instead of having the little buttons all in a row ont he side of the machine, we could make them really big and put them in the middle!!!" Seriously, no other designer gets off with such minor innovations over the course of like 30 years. Despite this obvious super-ability of the Japanese attitude, the vending machine store is the dumbest idea of all time. What the fuck would you bother to rent a store for if you are just going to fill it with vending machines. How bout just rent one wall of a store or a FUCKING SIDEWALK!!! or THE SIDE OF YOUR FUCKING HOUSE!!!
I have more to say on the subject of Japanese plus and minus, but now I am tired and have to get up early so I can go to class and shit before I head to the PA that does not go with Puffy.
Peace,
MB-K
My classes today were both hella good, the type that remind me why it is that grad school was actually something I wanted to do, that made sense. The second course obviously should, since its titled and focused around one of Lacan's seminars I know almost nothing about and have not read. That said, the seminar has enough "famous moments" in it that I had heard of most of its important elements, many of the Lacanian aphorisms, but lacked any real comprehension of their surroundings. That gives this seminar the potential to be especially interesting and Steven Miller is exceeding my, fairly high, expectations. The other seminar, which I expected to be interesting, but not necessarily useful, is looking like it may fulfill the first expectation and defy the second. I have read a couple articles by Irigaray in the past, but for the most part I had no serious knowledge of her writing. One of the things I find fascinating at this point is her ability to adopt certain conventions, pretty explicitly, without naming them. Before class I could have told you that she does this with Lacan, since I can pick out the moments she is obviously building on or playing off the statement that "Woman does not exist" or the idea of multiple being, but it was indicated to me this afternoon that she does the same with Hegel and Meleau-Ponty among others. She acknowledges when she is criticizing Freud or Marx or whoever and it appears that there are times when she will mention that she is entering into dialogue with Lacan, but nonetheless, this appropriation, which is a fairly common tactic of contemporary literature, and especially feminist literature, is something I have never encountered in theory before. I'm sure will have more to say about her in the future but for now, we wll leave it at that.
My friend Erin Anderson is in Japan and posting all these crazy pictures of Tokyo. I will admit that I have never had the pizzazz my brother and a number of my friends do for all things Japanese, from anime to sush and ridiculously packed cities. I was enthused at the fact that since my brother is more than likely going to end up in Japan for a while after he graduates, I will likely get the chance to visit him. Though I obviously would not exclude the possibility that I would go to Tokyo without there being a family member in residence, I would say it is much less likely. Regardless, there are some things the Japanese seem to have a passion for which have got their ups and downs. Lets take vending machines: the Japanese have vending machines that kick it where you stick it but also vending machine stores!! Vending machines should take credit cards, you should have some ability to do crazy shit like buy a certain number of quantities or select amongst hundreds of options or...well I can't really think of anything else you can do with a drink vending machine, but I haven't even really put much thought into it. I mean, there are people who fucking design vending machines, I know this because there are new ones out there, new ones every year or so, what the fuck are they doing, just sitting around like "how bout this, instead of having the little buttons all in a row ont he side of the machine, we could make them really big and put them in the middle!!!" Seriously, no other designer gets off with such minor innovations over the course of like 30 years. Despite this obvious super-ability of the Japanese attitude, the vending machine store is the dumbest idea of all time. What the fuck would you bother to rent a store for if you are just going to fill it with vending machines. How bout just rent one wall of a store or a FUCKING SIDEWALK!!! or THE SIDE OF YOUR FUCKING HOUSE!!!
I have more to say on the subject of Japanese plus and minus, but now I am tired and have to get up early so I can go to class and shit before I head to the PA that does not go with Puffy.
Peace,
MB-K
Sunday, September 19, 2004
We've Got the Right To Choose and There Aint No Way We'll Lose It This is Our Life, This is Our Butt
I will start right out by a brief complaint at how badly the Pack sucked it up this afternoon. By sucked it up I mean entirely failed to score, turned the ball over at exactly the wrong times, and played horrible pass defense against a team whose QB-receiver combo is arguably the worst in the NFL I mean, I guess you've got the Ravens, but thats not really a fair comparison. Anyway, the Pack hopefully learned this afternoon that they need to take some of this more seriously, because turning the ball over twice in the red zone against a decent team will kill you as well. Anyway, we need more work, even though Ahman Green had 100 yards of rushing in the first half. Brett threw a couple beautiful passes, but a couple that sucked. More notably we still had Driver drop at least 2 balls and Ferguson let one go through his hands, hit him in the stomach, and fall on the ground that would have sustained a seriously necessary drive and may have even gone for seven. Regardless, I will let it go.
Katie and I were away for Friday and Saturday, we headed over to Rochester for a big work weekend on the Rochester debate squad. I think Katie got a good amount of work done and it was nice to see other people, hang out, and get my smoke on. On Friday I didn't accomplish very much, but Saturday allowed me to roll through thank-you notes which are right on the edge of being ridiculously late. I think we will get all of them sent out by Tuesday or Wednesday, which means less than three months from the wedding date, which I consider acceptable. Anyway, I wrote for like three solid hours and have a gigantic sore on my thumb to show for it. This afternoon at Damon's I got them all addressed and licked shut, which is awesome. On a somewhat related topic I heard someone mention that their goal was to "Lick breast cancer" which, although I obviously agree with the anti-breast cancer message, boo breast cancer, etc., seems to need reconsideration as a slogan. Maybe Andy, Sanjay, and I are the only ones for whom this is a problem, but whenever you put "lick" and "breast" next to each other, I am not going to be in a reverant mode of respect and determination to fight disease. But thats me, that's, how I roll.
I remember where I saw this, it was on the webpage for the Miss America competition, which was on last night. I won't spoil the non-stop suspense for those of you who tivoed the extravaganza that is the pageant, but let me say this, Minnesota gets fucked again, right in its proverbial pooper (I would officially like to submit "proverbial pooper" for consideration in the alliteration of the year department). Anyway, Katie loves these competitions and I like making fun of the things that happen, so we were tuning in. While doing so Katie was reviewing each of the candidates platforms online. I don't have to go into a big shpiel about how fucking limp it is that the competition makes it so almost all of these people choose a cause which, while worthy and interesting, is not really a platform, rather its an accepted social goal. Maybe I am the only one who considers the term "platform" to indicate the thing that someone is standing for AGAINST the opposite viewpoint, ie: a political platform. I'm against "child abduction" and all, but I wouldn't consider it much of a platform. Anyway, while we surveyed the long list of non-controversial causes I quickly became much more interested in the final question on each Ms. America's little bio, "Three Nouns You Would Use to Describe Yourself." First of all, what a stupid question, why select nouns; if you aren't going to just use adjectives like normal, if you want to mix up your part-of-speech questionaire-ism, why don't you go with "Three Adverbs You Would Use to Describe Yourself" or "Three Past Participles You Would Use to Describe Someone Else." That aside, let me note two things about answering these questions: 1) you need to choose if you are going to describe yourself explicitly or in a more round about fashion, because it sounds fucking stupid when someone puts "Runner, Determination, Stick-to-it-iveness" 2) I think you should be officially disqualified from the Ms. America pageant if you get this question wrong, think that isn't possible, check out Miss Montana or Miss Oregon (who I think should have listed "Boning Andy and Sajay" as her platform). That is all I have to say on this subject.
The Emmys were on tonight. James Gandolfini got fucking robbed by James Spader, Martin Sheen got robbed by James Spader, for the most part, any lead actor in dramatic television got robbed by James Spader. This isn't even really anything against James Spader, but rather that there are so many good choices and they picked the Practice. On the plus side, Sopranos won both the supporting actor awards and best drama, Angels in America literally cleaned house, and CJ won best dramatic actress. I love television, and am so glad to actually be watching HBO original series these days. I didn't see as much of Deadwood as I would have liked and I have not been able to get into Entourage, but the stuff they do well they do hella fucking well.
I cannot think of anything else to blather about, and there is still football, so I shall bid you a fond farenight.
Peace,
MB-K
Katie and I were away for Friday and Saturday, we headed over to Rochester for a big work weekend on the Rochester debate squad. I think Katie got a good amount of work done and it was nice to see other people, hang out, and get my smoke on. On Friday I didn't accomplish very much, but Saturday allowed me to roll through thank-you notes which are right on the edge of being ridiculously late. I think we will get all of them sent out by Tuesday or Wednesday, which means less than three months from the wedding date, which I consider acceptable. Anyway, I wrote for like three solid hours and have a gigantic sore on my thumb to show for it. This afternoon at Damon's I got them all addressed and licked shut, which is awesome. On a somewhat related topic I heard someone mention that their goal was to "Lick breast cancer" which, although I obviously agree with the anti-breast cancer message, boo breast cancer, etc., seems to need reconsideration as a slogan. Maybe Andy, Sanjay, and I are the only ones for whom this is a problem, but whenever you put "lick" and "breast" next to each other, I am not going to be in a reverant mode of respect and determination to fight disease. But thats me, that's, how I roll.
I remember where I saw this, it was on the webpage for the Miss America competition, which was on last night. I won't spoil the non-stop suspense for those of you who tivoed the extravaganza that is the pageant, but let me say this, Minnesota gets fucked again, right in its proverbial pooper (I would officially like to submit "proverbial pooper" for consideration in the alliteration of the year department). Anyway, Katie loves these competitions and I like making fun of the things that happen, so we were tuning in. While doing so Katie was reviewing each of the candidates platforms online. I don't have to go into a big shpiel about how fucking limp it is that the competition makes it so almost all of these people choose a cause which, while worthy and interesting, is not really a platform, rather its an accepted social goal. Maybe I am the only one who considers the term "platform" to indicate the thing that someone is standing for AGAINST the opposite viewpoint, ie: a political platform. I'm against "child abduction" and all, but I wouldn't consider it much of a platform. Anyway, while we surveyed the long list of non-controversial causes I quickly became much more interested in the final question on each Ms. America's little bio, "Three Nouns You Would Use to Describe Yourself." First of all, what a stupid question, why select nouns; if you aren't going to just use adjectives like normal, if you want to mix up your part-of-speech questionaire-ism, why don't you go with "Three Adverbs You Would Use to Describe Yourself" or "Three Past Participles You Would Use to Describe Someone Else." That aside, let me note two things about answering these questions: 1) you need to choose if you are going to describe yourself explicitly or in a more round about fashion, because it sounds fucking stupid when someone puts "Runner, Determination, Stick-to-it-iveness" 2) I think you should be officially disqualified from the Ms. America pageant if you get this question wrong, think that isn't possible, check out Miss Montana or Miss Oregon (who I think should have listed "Boning Andy and Sajay" as her platform). That is all I have to say on this subject.
The Emmys were on tonight. James Gandolfini got fucking robbed by James Spader, Martin Sheen got robbed by James Spader, for the most part, any lead actor in dramatic television got robbed by James Spader. This isn't even really anything against James Spader, but rather that there are so many good choices and they picked the Practice. On the plus side, Sopranos won both the supporting actor awards and best drama, Angels in America literally cleaned house, and CJ won best dramatic actress. I love television, and am so glad to actually be watching HBO original series these days. I didn't see as much of Deadwood as I would have liked and I have not been able to get into Entourage, but the stuff they do well they do hella fucking well.
I cannot think of anything else to blather about, and there is still football, so I shall bid you a fond farenight.
Peace,
MB-K
Thursday, September 16, 2004
So Easy, But Nothin Seems to Please Me, It All Feels So Right, When I Fade Into the Butt
My favorite thing for the week: my Glade Wisp. If you haven't seen the Glade Wisp on television or become lucky enough to have one it is a magical air freshening device, which is just a little plasticy thing that sits on the table. You might respond by telling me that there are many air freshening devices which are made of plastic and sit on tables. You would be right. The cool part about this one is that the way it freshens the air is by taking this bottle of fragrance oil (perfume) and poofing out a little poof of it into the air. The reason I wanted this particular air freshening device was because you can actually see the little poof it kicks out into the air. I mean, if you watch the little thing every couple seconds you see a little Wisp (creative fuckers huh) of smoke-like stuff come out of it. Every time it does that I get a smile on my face. I don't know why that is, but it rocks. I have named mine The Poofer. I think Katie is getting sick of hearing "The Poofer just poofed!" every couple minutes that I am not absolutely absorbed in either a book or a television program. At some point I am going to try to die the perfume-stuff blue and see if my poofer will poof blue. If your house smells bad or you like things that do really simplistic but neato actions every now and then my poofer came with a bunch of coupons for three bucks off a new poofer, so I can hook you up.
The worst coincedence ever happened tonight, we were coming home from debate practice and decided that we needed ice cream. This was not a bad decision, in fact, it was a very good decision, because we technically had custard, and that custard was hella good, and I liked it. Anyway, on the sign at the Andersons, where we got the custard, it said something like "Come See the Tigers and Wolves." That didn't mean anything to me at the time, I assumed it was some joke or something that I didn't get, but we walk up to the door and there was a little flyer which indicated that on Saturday the 25th and Sunday the 26th there would be baby siberian tigers and baby wolves at the fucking Andersons. There are going to be baby tigers, quite arguably the cutest fucking things on the entire fucking planet, within like 2 miles of my house. I could walk over to see the baby tigers. Unfortunately, I will not be able to take that walk. Instead, I will be at King's College, in beautiful Wilkes-Barre, PA at the first debate tournament of the year. I mean, I have no problem going to the tournament and since Katie is going to be there I obviously want to accompany her rather than sit here alone except for the couple hours or so each day I would spend with the tigers. Regardless, I will be missing the baby tigers right down the street. That is too bad. I need to find some tigers. I suppose zoos are good for that.
I know the previous two topics were not entirely related to each other, but this one is arguably entirely less related. When we were back home in Minneapolis and sitting at Katie's rents place watching a baseball game, Katie found this article in Gourmet magazine. It was ostensibly a reporter covering the Maine Lobster Fest, or MLF. It did that, of course, it discussed the world's largest lobster cooker, the main eating tent, the cooking contests and the like. That was a couple solid pages. The other 5-7 pages were a discussion of the ethics involved in the cooking and consumption of lobster. Of course the article, written by David Foster Wallace I should mention, seemed to recognize the obvious problems involved in his covering this event by going off in such a fashion, whether the ethical questions were really under the purview of the readers of Gourmet magazine, who for the most part, are probably l-oo-bster fans. I would imagine that anyone who has read this blog can probably imagine what I thought of his argument (which I should mention, ultimately concludes that lobster is murder, at least concludes that in a mild fashion with several caveats etc.) and anyone who has watched the Good Eats on lobster would undestand that in this I am especially convinced. Nonetheless, I won't go into the fact that the closest living relative of the lobster is the cockroach or the grasshopper. If you are willing to crush a bug in your house or not get upset that the shit you clean off of your windshield after a long drive is fucking millions of various species of insects then you should have no problem at all killing a lobster in order to eat it. Maybe you wouldn't want to deal with the act yourself, but again, this is not the subject of my discussion.
The thing I wanted to mention concerned a tangential part of the essay, his comments on the tourist nature of the event. I haven't explicitly read this argument somewhere else, but I get the idea that it does exist in some form or another. Since the MLF is pretty much the best reason to come to Maine. I mean, I guess technically just loobster is the best reason to come to Maine, but the MLF is the king of all lobster eating occassions. Wallace's concern (I will see if I can find this article and paste the link, heres a link to an article about the article there are a bunch of other ones, apparently this was a much bigger deal than I realized) is about the authenticity of the event, whether the locals actually come, whether it is part of Maine and part of lobster culture. (THE POOFER JUST POOFED!!) I guess the substance of the argument was that Wallace didn't understand why anyone would want to participate in tourism, and (in this respect I may be either boiling him down too much or putting a philosophical slant to his essay which wasn't there, I don't have the original in front of me, you can check it out yourself) since your presence at the event as tourist automatically destroys that event in its authenticity. Its like the Schrodinger's cat "indeterminacy" argument, (the best description I've ever heard is written by Douglas Adams in one of the Dirk Gently books, but the jist is to imagine a cat is in a sealed box with a radioactive particle which has exactly a 50% chance of decomposing into a compound which will kill the cat and a 50% chance of simply remaining neutral, the argument is then that the cat is both alive and dead until the moment we observe the result, you can find a better and certainly more scientific explanation with a quick google search, but I will leave that to your personal taste) once you are there to see it you aren't just an observer, your presence alters things.
There are a couple problems I had with this part of the argument, primarily the whole notion of the authentic event, I've never really gone for the romanticism that accompanies this attitude towards small town rituals. Like these fisherpeople, who are just fucking people who happen to live where the lobster do notably, they aren't a different species of homosapiens, have some innate connection to the waters of the Northern Atlantic. Regardless, the response I wanted to mention came up in another piece of reading I was doing before class one morning, Don Delilo's White Noise . I am referring to a section wherein two characters go to an old barn which is a tourist trap entitled "The Most Photographed Barn in the World" and is always surrounded by people with cameras taking snapshots. The argument presented there is that you are there precisely not to capture the barn in its authenticity, because that barn no longer eixsts. The most photographed barn in America depends on the fact that you are there to photograph it. In contrast to the authenticity of the event that Wallace is out to protect, Delilo sets up the "aura of the barn," which is a consequence of its popularity. The aura envelops the barn, whatever might be underneath it is never seen, you are there to experience the aura which is the common element of anything "tourist." Anyway, thats why I love Wisconsin Dells and the State Fair and rest stops and the twine balls and the like, at least thats part of it.
Maybe some unity next time.
Peace,
MB-K
The worst coincedence ever happened tonight, we were coming home from debate practice and decided that we needed ice cream. This was not a bad decision, in fact, it was a very good decision, because we technically had custard, and that custard was hella good, and I liked it. Anyway, on the sign at the Andersons, where we got the custard, it said something like "Come See the Tigers and Wolves." That didn't mean anything to me at the time, I assumed it was some joke or something that I didn't get, but we walk up to the door and there was a little flyer which indicated that on Saturday the 25th and Sunday the 26th there would be baby siberian tigers and baby wolves at the fucking Andersons. There are going to be baby tigers, quite arguably the cutest fucking things on the entire fucking planet, within like 2 miles of my house. I could walk over to see the baby tigers. Unfortunately, I will not be able to take that walk. Instead, I will be at King's College, in beautiful Wilkes-Barre, PA at the first debate tournament of the year. I mean, I have no problem going to the tournament and since Katie is going to be there I obviously want to accompany her rather than sit here alone except for the couple hours or so each day I would spend with the tigers. Regardless, I will be missing the baby tigers right down the street. That is too bad. I need to find some tigers. I suppose zoos are good for that.
I know the previous two topics were not entirely related to each other, but this one is arguably entirely less related. When we were back home in Minneapolis and sitting at Katie's rents place watching a baseball game, Katie found this article in Gourmet magazine. It was ostensibly a reporter covering the Maine Lobster Fest, or MLF. It did that, of course, it discussed the world's largest lobster cooker, the main eating tent, the cooking contests and the like. That was a couple solid pages. The other 5-7 pages were a discussion of the ethics involved in the cooking and consumption of lobster. Of course the article, written by David Foster Wallace I should mention, seemed to recognize the obvious problems involved in his covering this event by going off in such a fashion, whether the ethical questions were really under the purview of the readers of Gourmet magazine, who for the most part, are probably l-oo-bster fans. I would imagine that anyone who has read this blog can probably imagine what I thought of his argument (which I should mention, ultimately concludes that lobster is murder, at least concludes that in a mild fashion with several caveats etc.) and anyone who has watched the Good Eats on lobster would undestand that in this I am especially convinced. Nonetheless, I won't go into the fact that the closest living relative of the lobster is the cockroach or the grasshopper. If you are willing to crush a bug in your house or not get upset that the shit you clean off of your windshield after a long drive is fucking millions of various species of insects then you should have no problem at all killing a lobster in order to eat it. Maybe you wouldn't want to deal with the act yourself, but again, this is not the subject of my discussion.
The thing I wanted to mention concerned a tangential part of the essay, his comments on the tourist nature of the event. I haven't explicitly read this argument somewhere else, but I get the idea that it does exist in some form or another. Since the MLF is pretty much the best reason to come to Maine. I mean, I guess technically just loobster is the best reason to come to Maine, but the MLF is the king of all lobster eating occassions. Wallace's concern (I will see if I can find this article and paste the link, heres a link to an article about the article there are a bunch of other ones, apparently this was a much bigger deal than I realized) is about the authenticity of the event, whether the locals actually come, whether it is part of Maine and part of lobster culture. (THE POOFER JUST POOFED!!) I guess the substance of the argument was that Wallace didn't understand why anyone would want to participate in tourism, and (in this respect I may be either boiling him down too much or putting a philosophical slant to his essay which wasn't there, I don't have the original in front of me, you can check it out yourself) since your presence at the event as tourist automatically destroys that event in its authenticity. Its like the Schrodinger's cat "indeterminacy" argument, (the best description I've ever heard is written by Douglas Adams in one of the Dirk Gently books, but the jist is to imagine a cat is in a sealed box with a radioactive particle which has exactly a 50% chance of decomposing into a compound which will kill the cat and a 50% chance of simply remaining neutral, the argument is then that the cat is both alive and dead until the moment we observe the result, you can find a better and certainly more scientific explanation with a quick google search, but I will leave that to your personal taste) once you are there to see it you aren't just an observer, your presence alters things.
There are a couple problems I had with this part of the argument, primarily the whole notion of the authentic event, I've never really gone for the romanticism that accompanies this attitude towards small town rituals. Like these fisherpeople, who are just fucking people who happen to live where the lobster do notably, they aren't a different species of homosapiens, have some innate connection to the waters of the Northern Atlantic. Regardless, the response I wanted to mention came up in another piece of reading I was doing before class one morning, Don Delilo's White Noise . I am referring to a section wherein two characters go to an old barn which is a tourist trap entitled "The Most Photographed Barn in the World" and is always surrounded by people with cameras taking snapshots. The argument presented there is that you are there precisely not to capture the barn in its authenticity, because that barn no longer eixsts. The most photographed barn in America depends on the fact that you are there to photograph it. In contrast to the authenticity of the event that Wallace is out to protect, Delilo sets up the "aura of the barn," which is a consequence of its popularity. The aura envelops the barn, whatever might be underneath it is never seen, you are there to experience the aura which is the common element of anything "tourist." Anyway, thats why I love Wisconsin Dells and the State Fair and rest stops and the twine balls and the like, at least thats part of it.
Maybe some unity next time.
Peace,
MB-K
Sunday, September 12, 2004
Once There Was this Kid Who, Got Into an Accident and Couldn't Come to Butt
I will have a hard time giving explicit detail to the extent that I did about the fair, so I won't even really try. I will mention some highlights of the drive that occurred after my morning in St. Paul. We drove to Chicago, Katie slept, we got there around 8 o'clock-ish. After some getting lostedness on our way to their house, we met up with Katie's aunt and uncle and their children. The kids were a little on the hyper side, as children I think tend to be. We watched the olympics between reading books and playing games and such until they went to sleep. We watched another hour or so of the Olympics before we hit the sack for a good nights sleep. Those are all the details I can really provide about Chicago, because thats all there were. We were on the road by 10:30 or so the next morning, after some coffee, some more books, and the like.
We drove pretty much uninterrupted until the early evening, when, after suffering the mild rush hour annoyance of Cleveland, we arrived in Mentor, Ohio, the town which features both the site of our unfortunate alternator failure of about a while back and the nearest Dillard's to Buffalo. We had some gift cards to use, some things to return, and some crystal to buy to round out our Waterford. Anyway, we made that stop, we went over to the Dillard's men's store (perfectly positioned on the opposite fucking side of the mall) and failed to find any fitting dress shirts, even at the fat-guys section, which goes to show that even if I fit in double-x clothing, my neck has some freakish relation to the rest of my body. I think I need like a 20-21 and since even big'n'tall doesn't even think that counts as reasonable, we ended up buying some quality t-shirts. There was one more thing we needed to do in Mentor, besides stopping at Wendy's which I don't think really counts, which was pick up a Baker's Square pie at the nearest Baker's Square to Buffalo. I can't explain to you how much it sucks to get serious French Silk cravings and have to settle for Perkins. I mean, its not a bad pie, there is just something about the composition of the silk, the velvethy smoothness of that combo of whipped delicious creaminess on top and silky chocolate goodness, that can't be matched. Regardless, we brought a pie home.
When we arrived home there was pretty much nothing to do but watch the olympics, turn on the air conditioning, because it was getting so hot, I was gonna take my clothes off. It was nice to be home with a full two days to get ready for Katie's birthday and school, which were pretty much the events of late summer. School didn't take much since I already had the basic set up of the course I was teaching under control, it really just took a couple hours of syllabus fill in to be ready to go. Katie's birthday had been being prepped for a week or two however, everything from menu and cake design, to the every important Katie's birthday shopping spree. I made stops at Kohl's, J. Crew, Herbergers, and Daytons over the course of my return to Minnesota and had all the various items wrapped by Katie's mom. This meant that on Monday morning Katie got to open two pairs of jeans, a pink sweater, pink suede shoes, Yves St. Laurent perfume, and two pairs of earings. I think she dug it. I did the cooking and preparation while she was at Rochester for some debatey practice and by the time she returned my chocolate mint cheesecake was cooling and the shrimp was ready to go in the wok.
Andrea, the first guest of our wedded life, had arrived a half hour before Katie did, since she was crashing with us on her drive back to Boston for school. That made her the fourth in a line of illustrious visitors that features el Dobas, Ben Kantor, and Wilking and Jen (who count as one, I guess, at least in visitor succession, not in personhood). Since we have been in this apartment over two years, I don't find that very impressive, but it was nice to have her here. We drank some good wine, ate some good food, and hung out until fairly late in the evening. I love Katie's birthday, to be honest, its much more enjoyable than mine. She is really pretty easy to shop for, running contrary to the female stereotype, and really appreciates the presents. Good times all around, though I had to start classes in the morning.
So far those classes have been alright. I'm teaching boring shit yet again, but I have the stuff so engrained in my mind now that I can spew it without even thinking. The other class I have on Tuesday is with Gasche, yet another close reading of German philosophy. This time its Gadamer's Truth and Method, a book I still know almost nothing about, besides its relevance for hermeneutics and its interesting revision of Heidegger. On Wednesdays I have a couple afternoon/evening sessions, which is annoying to be there so late, but otherwise very cool. Both are shit that is for the most part explicitly related to what I typically, one reading Kristeva and Irrigaray, who I desperately need to know more about than I currently do, and the other reading Seminar XVII, which has now been "about to be" published for 2 plus years. Anyway, its a really cool opportunity to do what is essentially a close reading of Lacan's text with Steven Miller, who seems a pretty fucking smart dude and is filling in for Joan this year. That is enough about school for now, since I am sure I will be blabbering about it in the future.
I love football so much. I don't know if I can explain it, i fucking love this game. I like college football and there are some collegiate match-ups that I fucking will not miss. Those tend to come up later in the season, but I fucking love a Michigan-Ohio State shootout or a Texas-Oklahoma. I mean, not like those games aren't loved by everyone, but still. My real love is the NFL which kicked off with one hell of a game on Thursday night. The NFL has set up some badass QB showdowns in the first 5 or so weeks of the season, Payton, Brady, McNair, Favre, all coming up against each other. I have never really thought Tom Brady should be considered one of the best 5 or so QBs in the NFL, but at some point I will have to admit that when you win 2 Super Bowl MVPs and now 16 games in a row, you've got something going on. He looked pretty good on Thursday night and I think there is probably a good argument that the Pats are the best coached team in the NFL, because no one saw any of that coming. The biggest hype of the offseason moves is either TO to Philly or Dillon to the champs, and the first offensive series for New England features...an empty backfield. I know Al and John commented on this, but it was fucking glaring, no one saw this coming. That said, Corey Dillon turned out to have a pretty solid impact on successive drives and the Pats D fundamentally won them the game. The Colts have alot in common with the Vikings of years past, where the strategy pretty much rests on the idea that we can score more and faster than you. It sucks that you have to count on scoring 30 or so to win, but I guess when you have 3 of the best 10 or 20 offensive players in the AFC you can try for that.
Last night did feature a college game that entirely disproved my typical attitude towards the University game, as Miami came impressively from behind to defeat FSU in an OT nailbiter. The college OT format is one of the few things I really enjoy more than NFL football, especially when I get to cheer for a team I love like the Caines against the Dallas Cowboys of the BCS. Those results were matched by a couple great games today, including, for the most part, Marshall v. Ohio State and Michigan v Notre Dame. The result of the Notre Dame game was pretty surprising, but it was a quality contest for the most part, some pretty solid talent on both sides of the ball. I don't think Michigan should ever have been ranked that high without a really viable running game at this point, but, admittedly, I am not a coach or sportswriter, which disqualifies my vote in the polls. While I did enjoy today's footbal schedule, I must say to the folks at CBS "Go fuck yourselves" for not showing me the Miami v Tennesee game instead of the tennis. Why didn't you just move the tennis to some other station and show the fucking NFL. Now, there may be some sort of tv contract thing which prevents them from showing the game nationally, which I understand, but at the point you are already moving the date of the contest, I think that can probably be altered too. I just think that at any time there is an NFL game on, absent it being blacked out, I should be able to watch one. Maybe I won't be able to watch the one game I want, but I will be able to watch A game, if that makes sense.
Anyway, Katie and I had a phat turkey dinner tonight, which I may describe more manana, but for now the triptophen has gotten me. John Madden would be proud.
Peace,
MB-K
We drove pretty much uninterrupted until the early evening, when, after suffering the mild rush hour annoyance of Cleveland, we arrived in Mentor, Ohio, the town which features both the site of our unfortunate alternator failure of about a while back and the nearest Dillard's to Buffalo. We had some gift cards to use, some things to return, and some crystal to buy to round out our Waterford. Anyway, we made that stop, we went over to the Dillard's men's store (perfectly positioned on the opposite fucking side of the mall) and failed to find any fitting dress shirts, even at the fat-guys section, which goes to show that even if I fit in double-x clothing, my neck has some freakish relation to the rest of my body. I think I need like a 20-21 and since even big'n'tall doesn't even think that counts as reasonable, we ended up buying some quality t-shirts. There was one more thing we needed to do in Mentor, besides stopping at Wendy's which I don't think really counts, which was pick up a Baker's Square pie at the nearest Baker's Square to Buffalo. I can't explain to you how much it sucks to get serious French Silk cravings and have to settle for Perkins. I mean, its not a bad pie, there is just something about the composition of the silk, the velvethy smoothness of that combo of whipped delicious creaminess on top and silky chocolate goodness, that can't be matched. Regardless, we brought a pie home.
When we arrived home there was pretty much nothing to do but watch the olympics, turn on the air conditioning, because it was getting so hot, I was gonna take my clothes off. It was nice to be home with a full two days to get ready for Katie's birthday and school, which were pretty much the events of late summer. School didn't take much since I already had the basic set up of the course I was teaching under control, it really just took a couple hours of syllabus fill in to be ready to go. Katie's birthday had been being prepped for a week or two however, everything from menu and cake design, to the every important Katie's birthday shopping spree. I made stops at Kohl's, J. Crew, Herbergers, and Daytons over the course of my return to Minnesota and had all the various items wrapped by Katie's mom. This meant that on Monday morning Katie got to open two pairs of jeans, a pink sweater, pink suede shoes, Yves St. Laurent perfume, and two pairs of earings. I think she dug it. I did the cooking and preparation while she was at Rochester for some debatey practice and by the time she returned my chocolate mint cheesecake was cooling and the shrimp was ready to go in the wok.
Andrea, the first guest of our wedded life, had arrived a half hour before Katie did, since she was crashing with us on her drive back to Boston for school. That made her the fourth in a line of illustrious visitors that features el Dobas, Ben Kantor, and Wilking and Jen (who count as one, I guess, at least in visitor succession, not in personhood). Since we have been in this apartment over two years, I don't find that very impressive, but it was nice to have her here. We drank some good wine, ate some good food, and hung out until fairly late in the evening. I love Katie's birthday, to be honest, its much more enjoyable than mine. She is really pretty easy to shop for, running contrary to the female stereotype, and really appreciates the presents. Good times all around, though I had to start classes in the morning.
So far those classes have been alright. I'm teaching boring shit yet again, but I have the stuff so engrained in my mind now that I can spew it without even thinking. The other class I have on Tuesday is with Gasche, yet another close reading of German philosophy. This time its Gadamer's Truth and Method, a book I still know almost nothing about, besides its relevance for hermeneutics and its interesting revision of Heidegger. On Wednesdays I have a couple afternoon/evening sessions, which is annoying to be there so late, but otherwise very cool. Both are shit that is for the most part explicitly related to what I typically, one reading Kristeva and Irrigaray, who I desperately need to know more about than I currently do, and the other reading Seminar XVII, which has now been "about to be" published for 2 plus years. Anyway, its a really cool opportunity to do what is essentially a close reading of Lacan's text with Steven Miller, who seems a pretty fucking smart dude and is filling in for Joan this year. That is enough about school for now, since I am sure I will be blabbering about it in the future.
I love football so much. I don't know if I can explain it, i fucking love this game. I like college football and there are some collegiate match-ups that I fucking will not miss. Those tend to come up later in the season, but I fucking love a Michigan-Ohio State shootout or a Texas-Oklahoma. I mean, not like those games aren't loved by everyone, but still. My real love is the NFL which kicked off with one hell of a game on Thursday night. The NFL has set up some badass QB showdowns in the first 5 or so weeks of the season, Payton, Brady, McNair, Favre, all coming up against each other. I have never really thought Tom Brady should be considered one of the best 5 or so QBs in the NFL, but at some point I will have to admit that when you win 2 Super Bowl MVPs and now 16 games in a row, you've got something going on. He looked pretty good on Thursday night and I think there is probably a good argument that the Pats are the best coached team in the NFL, because no one saw any of that coming. The biggest hype of the offseason moves is either TO to Philly or Dillon to the champs, and the first offensive series for New England features...an empty backfield. I know Al and John commented on this, but it was fucking glaring, no one saw this coming. That said, Corey Dillon turned out to have a pretty solid impact on successive drives and the Pats D fundamentally won them the game. The Colts have alot in common with the Vikings of years past, where the strategy pretty much rests on the idea that we can score more and faster than you. It sucks that you have to count on scoring 30 or so to win, but I guess when you have 3 of the best 10 or 20 offensive players in the AFC you can try for that.
Last night did feature a college game that entirely disproved my typical attitude towards the University game, as Miami came impressively from behind to defeat FSU in an OT nailbiter. The college OT format is one of the few things I really enjoy more than NFL football, especially when I get to cheer for a team I love like the Caines against the Dallas Cowboys of the BCS. Those results were matched by a couple great games today, including, for the most part, Marshall v. Ohio State and Michigan v Notre Dame. The result of the Notre Dame game was pretty surprising, but it was a quality contest for the most part, some pretty solid talent on both sides of the ball. I don't think Michigan should ever have been ranked that high without a really viable running game at this point, but, admittedly, I am not a coach or sportswriter, which disqualifies my vote in the polls. While I did enjoy today's footbal schedule, I must say to the folks at CBS "Go fuck yourselves" for not showing me the Miami v Tennesee game instead of the tennis. Why didn't you just move the tennis to some other station and show the fucking NFL. Now, there may be some sort of tv contract thing which prevents them from showing the game nationally, which I understand, but at the point you are already moving the date of the contest, I think that can probably be altered too. I just think that at any time there is an NFL game on, absent it being blacked out, I should be able to watch one. Maybe I won't be able to watch the one game I want, but I will be able to watch A game, if that makes sense.
Anyway, Katie and I had a phat turkey dinner tonight, which I may describe more manana, but for now the triptophen has gotten me. John Madden would be proud.
Peace,
MB-K
Thursday, September 09, 2004
Talk To Me Softly, There's Something in Your Butt
It was two weeks ago, well, two weeks ago today now, that one of the greatest events of the year occurred. I mean, you've got your holidays and your birthdays and the like, but this is different. This was the Great Motherfucking Minnesota Fucking Get the Fuck Together! Its the State Fair slizuts, get it together. I should briefly contextualize why it is that I mention the fair in such high esteem. I don't mean to brag necessarily, but I think I have as good an understanding of State Fair dynamics of about anyone on the planet. There are things that need to be done, that can't be done, that are optional. My parents started taking me to the fair when I was very young. I was born about a month after the fair ended in 1979, so I didn't make it that year. But as a one year old I first experience the joys that occur for the two weeks leading up to labor day, in between Snelling and Cleveland, Como and Larpenteur.
I obviously don't remember the early years, but I attended every year of my life from 1980 until last fucking year, 2003, when my living out here made it impossible for me to get back. From the very beginning we would pretty much make a day out of the experience. We would go early and head straight to the world's greatest mini-donuts, the Tom Thumb booth next to the food building, right next to the Old Mill ride, a couple booths down from the original Sweet Martha's. You must understand, I remember going to the fair when it was still a much smaller operation. I've seen the booth explosion continue year by year. I mean, it was never a pristine Minnesota wilderness or anything, but you used to be able to DRIVE down these streets. Literally, you turned off of Snelling directly into the fair grounds, through the giant blue and green State Fair gates. You didn't just park on Judson Ave. or anything, but you could make your way to back behind the grandstand or up on machinery hill. If you take at some of those areas now you will notice that alot of important booths have sprung up direcly where the traffic used to operate. The deepfried candy bars would be run over by the first Yukon in the joint if the whole situation hadn't changed. There are still alot of wide open expanses, boulevards in the French sense of the term you could say, a promenade of sorts. But those are really just in the areas where excessive first and last weekend traffic would make it impassible otherwise. Anyway, I am not going to blabber on a whole lot further but to say that I have always loved the fair. Many of my fondest memories are of mini-donuts and cookies for breakfast, pronto pups and cheesecurds for lunch, random shitty all afternoon, and a show at the Grandstand before cotton candy and caramel apples for the ride home and for a top-of-the-fridge snack the day after.
Since about mid-end of high school the whole family up at the crack of dawn to the fair tradtion has sort of given way to my trips with mi amigos and the like. I have probably regailed ya'll with the tale of Wilking and the pot-butter, but if not I will save it for another time. This year I was pleased on a number of levels: I got to go with my new-wife (who has very few experiences of the fair whatsoever, certainly, not of my style of fair-going), one of my groomsfolk (whom had never accompanied me to the fair, though he is obviously a lover of the fine eaterizations and sublime beauty presided over by Princess Kay as well) , and his son (whom went to the fair last year, but not with me, not with such phat hair, and was the first younger folk to accompany me). Basically, I'm talkin' Katie, AJ, and Kaya.
We had to be home at some point before school started, but also had some fair lookin priority. As a result we decided to get up early Thursday, hit up St. Paul's finest, and then drive to Chicago and stay with Katie's Aunt and Uncle, since I fucking hate driving the whole mofucking drive in one sitting. We picked up the A, the J, and the K about 8:30 and despite my failure to get into the turning lane, were on machinery hill just moments after 9:00. The first weekend of the fair is a madhouse, but the weekdays leading up to it, especially in the morning, it is pretty calm. We took advantage of this fact and while we did glance at the tractors on our way down, we pretty much made a bee-line for donut city. I believe we started by going for the fair special, three bags for 8 bucks. I love these things, and who doesn't but I actually think that the Big K may have me beat here. I mean, he didn't eat more than me and if we were competing I would fucking hope I could roll even the world's finest 3 year old competitive eater, but if you go donuts per-pound of eater, I got smacked. We ended up having at least 4, maybe 5 bags total, and based on the sugar accumulation on his face, I would estimate he ate at least 2 of them. We decidded that we needn't go far to hit on the days finest culinary accomplishment. Its in the food building, no, I correct myself, it is the raison d'etre for the fucking food building. If you don't know what I am referring to yet: 1) I feel so bad for you, we will talk next summer 2) you will have to wait just a couple sentences.
I noticed, before we even walked in, that one of the big changes which occurred in the two years since I was last on the fairgrounds was the basic structure and composition of the joint. That includes the exterior, which got a nice paint job and some neon lights, the plaza outside, which got some new picnic tables and a general cleaning, and the interior, which is all but unrecognizable. I will explain. For the most part the food building was a wide open warehouse of a place. Back when the fair was little more than an livestock and 4H thing, the food building contained almost all the confectionary in the joint. As the occassion grew into something for the general populace, far and wide, the food building became a locus for some classic specialty foods. Now it is apparently one of the hardest tickets to get on the grounds, its expensive and there is a long wait-list. For the most part the places in there (the cinamon rolls, the cheap drinks and footlong booths along the side, the lefse, the thai food, etc.) have been there about as long as I can remember. Once you are established somewhere as a legit component of the state fair I think there is little risk that you aren't going to turn a significant process. The real reason that those businesses have been able to go so hardcore and the reason getting a spot in the food building is such the nuts, is due to the king of all the specialty food stands, which I mentioned a few moments ago. For a long time the middle 40% or so of the food bullding was devoted to this booth, and often more importantly, the lines for it. There were many times I can recall those lines being upward of 20 minutes long, this is for fair food notably, not a sit down sushi joint. Its also not like this was a small time operation, there were probably 15 people working there at busy times, a couple selling, a couple handing out, and the rest working the manufacture. Your average pronto pup stand has 2 tops, sometimes just a kid working the till and his/her mom/pop on the patented Pronto Pup turny-frier. My dad and I almost got in a physical altrication with a group of people who obstinantly refused to understand the basis of line formation in this situation once, and though I doubt I would have actually resorted to physical violence in light of snack food, if there was anything I was gonna smack someone about, this product would probably be it
The manufacture of what you ask, you ignorant prick, cheese baby, cheese. Cheese curds to be technical about it. They are the most delicious and unexplainable thing on the planet earth. Deep fried cheese curds, they have a mild cheddar cheese flavor with a beautifully stringy consistency and just a hint of twang. They are incredible. They are the foundation of the food building and I must admit that the geography of the place post remodel recognizes this fact. The cheese curd booth is no longer a free standing entity, but more like one wall of the building, where lines can form without completely shutting off the traffic around the area. The traditional cute little mouse guy standing atop his cheese has been accented by some neon Deep Fried Cheese Curd lettering high atop the wall in the classic sublimity of the state fair. The process of ordering and receiving the curds has been accented by an ordering procedure which takes obvious cues from the Corn on the Cob stand next to Bayou Bob's Gator Snax on the front-East side of the Grandstand. The dude/tte who you order from prints out a little ticket, qua the movie theater ticket spitter device, which you move down the line and exchange for a tub 'o' cheese. Two orders, two tickets, etc. There are still two or three different ordering and receiving stations, but there seems to be a much better flow.
I suppose I should return to the actual story of our Thursday, rather than just rambling on the general topic of the food building. I should admit, with my commentary on the food building, that we weren't gettin curds at prime curd-eatin time, it was only maybe 9:45 or 10:00 in the morning. Nonetheless, it was good. I bought two orders and grabbed a couple of Cokes from the soda and hot dog thing that lines the South wall of the joint (I should note, it is not exciting, but this booth does provide one of the best deals at the fair, considering your average 20 oz bottle runs at least 2 bucks, the 1.75 32oz-er is well worht the cash and since it is literally the entire length of the building there is never a line to speak of) before we found a spot to rest and munch outside. I think that this particular morning featured a particularly good batch of curds, they were as tasty as they have ever been. So tasty in fact, that though Kaya continued to chow the donuts he ad recently fallen in love with, AJ went back for another two tubs of goldeny yellow deliciosity.
We left the food building to do some walking and checked out the livestock. We didn't do much checking, but I remember that when I was a kid I liked to see cows and horses and stuff, at least a couple of them, so we took K over there. He seemed to enjoy the big moo and I always enjoy checking out the yearly installment of Boarzilla (this year he was 1200 pounds I believe, which is a good dose of bacon, but doesn't hold a hog-fat-candle to the original two-ton boheomoth (to be read "bo-ha-wee-moth" as per Stephen Wright qua Resevoir Dogs, tribeuce) from years back. We also made fun of the alpacas and beefalos, but just glanced around before heading towards the giant slide. We got pronto pups, padre and son made their debut voyage on the giant slide and we walked, people watched and just chilled for a while. We eventually got a bucket of Sweet Martha's and checked out the All-You-Can-Drink Milk booth (another remodeling highlight of this year, instead of the shabby white roughly octagonal structure with a tanker truck parked alongside there is now a classic red miniature dairy barn) which now features chocolate (a high quality addition, though I only tried one glass) and has undergone what I believe is the number three worst example of price inflation I have experienced in my lifetime (smokes and gas being the bastards ahead of the pack). Fucking thing was a quarter when I used to go with the rents, its a dollar now. Next thing you now you won't be able to enjoy a bucket of cookies and a couple cold tall-boys for less than a 20 spot. Regardless, we relaxed for a while, I drank 7 or so glasses of cold moo juice and hung out with Kaya as he explored the fish pond and general wildnerness of the DNR setup. By this point the K man was a little tired, Katie was a little exhausted from dealing with my mix of excitement and voracious unsatiable appetiteosity, so AJ and I directed the crowd over to the dairy bar for a tasty chocolate malt, a glimpse of the opening day's butter sculpture, and the long walk back up machinery hill. Kaya checked out some tractors, which may have been the only truly disappointing development of this year's fair experience. I mean, Kaya had fun, but he didn't know what AJ and I did, that back in the day they used to have big honkin things up there. I mean, I'm not exactly your agricultural equipment expert, but there are fucking lawn mowers with seats and then there are tractors, big fucking thresher things 20 feet high. When we were kids we didn't go on any rides, we just climbed on the gigantic tractors for an hour or two. We sat in the cockpits (are they called cockpits on a tractor?) pretended to drive them through major cities during rush hour (at least I did, maybe I was a little fucked up) and generally dicked around. Those are gone, not a trace. The biggest thing we could find would still fit in the average suburban garage (maybe not alongside a car, but it wasn't huge). Regardless, K enjoyed himself, though I think a majority of his pleasure was derived from directing his father onto a tractor at least a line or two beyond his own. We hit the pet building (cute chocolate colored mini-badger-dogs, which I had never seen and were hella cute) but no pug dogs or St. Bernard's to be seen. As a final tribeuce to my mom I grabbed a bag of cotton candy on the way out and it made a delicious snack for the drive home (loves it). Overall we were there for about 4 hours, and we were on 94 towards Chi-town by 1:30.
It was not one of my longer state fair experiences, but without question it was one of my favorite. Next year I hope to get there a couple times and try out some differnet snacks, though I think the only thing there I haven't had were some of the exotic animals, Safari Snacks, they were called, wild boar and the like. Anyway, we should make plans early and often. If there are those of you who have never experienced the fair ( I mean really experiecned it) we should get together. Maybe we can have a pre-fair planning session in the early summer, head out there some June afternoon for a dry run, map out a food route which will maximize an "appetizer-entree-dessert-dessert-snack-appetizer-entree-dessert-etc." rotation. That can wait. Right now, there is football. Fall rocks.
Peace,
MB-K
I obviously don't remember the early years, but I attended every year of my life from 1980 until last fucking year, 2003, when my living out here made it impossible for me to get back. From the very beginning we would pretty much make a day out of the experience. We would go early and head straight to the world's greatest mini-donuts, the Tom Thumb booth next to the food building, right next to the Old Mill ride, a couple booths down from the original Sweet Martha's. You must understand, I remember going to the fair when it was still a much smaller operation. I've seen the booth explosion continue year by year. I mean, it was never a pristine Minnesota wilderness or anything, but you used to be able to DRIVE down these streets. Literally, you turned off of Snelling directly into the fair grounds, through the giant blue and green State Fair gates. You didn't just park on Judson Ave. or anything, but you could make your way to back behind the grandstand or up on machinery hill. If you take at some of those areas now you will notice that alot of important booths have sprung up direcly where the traffic used to operate. The deepfried candy bars would be run over by the first Yukon in the joint if the whole situation hadn't changed. There are still alot of wide open expanses, boulevards in the French sense of the term you could say, a promenade of sorts. But those are really just in the areas where excessive first and last weekend traffic would make it impassible otherwise. Anyway, I am not going to blabber on a whole lot further but to say that I have always loved the fair. Many of my fondest memories are of mini-donuts and cookies for breakfast, pronto pups and cheesecurds for lunch, random shitty all afternoon, and a show at the Grandstand before cotton candy and caramel apples for the ride home and for a top-of-the-fridge snack the day after.
Since about mid-end of high school the whole family up at the crack of dawn to the fair tradtion has sort of given way to my trips with mi amigos and the like. I have probably regailed ya'll with the tale of Wilking and the pot-butter, but if not I will save it for another time. This year I was pleased on a number of levels: I got to go with my new-wife (who has very few experiences of the fair whatsoever, certainly, not of my style of fair-going), one of my groomsfolk (whom had never accompanied me to the fair, though he is obviously a lover of the fine eaterizations and sublime beauty presided over by Princess Kay as well) , and his son (whom went to the fair last year, but not with me, not with such phat hair, and was the first younger folk to accompany me). Basically, I'm talkin' Katie, AJ, and Kaya.
We had to be home at some point before school started, but also had some fair lookin priority. As a result we decided to get up early Thursday, hit up St. Paul's finest, and then drive to Chicago and stay with Katie's Aunt and Uncle, since I fucking hate driving the whole mofucking drive in one sitting. We picked up the A, the J, and the K about 8:30 and despite my failure to get into the turning lane, were on machinery hill just moments after 9:00. The first weekend of the fair is a madhouse, but the weekdays leading up to it, especially in the morning, it is pretty calm. We took advantage of this fact and while we did glance at the tractors on our way down, we pretty much made a bee-line for donut city. I believe we started by going for the fair special, three bags for 8 bucks. I love these things, and who doesn't but I actually think that the Big K may have me beat here. I mean, he didn't eat more than me and if we were competing I would fucking hope I could roll even the world's finest 3 year old competitive eater, but if you go donuts per-pound of eater, I got smacked. We ended up having at least 4, maybe 5 bags total, and based on the sugar accumulation on his face, I would estimate he ate at least 2 of them. We decidded that we needn't go far to hit on the days finest culinary accomplishment. Its in the food building, no, I correct myself, it is the raison d'etre for the fucking food building. If you don't know what I am referring to yet: 1) I feel so bad for you, we will talk next summer 2) you will have to wait just a couple sentences.
I noticed, before we even walked in, that one of the big changes which occurred in the two years since I was last on the fairgrounds was the basic structure and composition of the joint. That includes the exterior, which got a nice paint job and some neon lights, the plaza outside, which got some new picnic tables and a general cleaning, and the interior, which is all but unrecognizable. I will explain. For the most part the food building was a wide open warehouse of a place. Back when the fair was little more than an livestock and 4H thing, the food building contained almost all the confectionary in the joint. As the occassion grew into something for the general populace, far and wide, the food building became a locus for some classic specialty foods. Now it is apparently one of the hardest tickets to get on the grounds, its expensive and there is a long wait-list. For the most part the places in there (the cinamon rolls, the cheap drinks and footlong booths along the side, the lefse, the thai food, etc.) have been there about as long as I can remember. Once you are established somewhere as a legit component of the state fair I think there is little risk that you aren't going to turn a significant process. The real reason that those businesses have been able to go so hardcore and the reason getting a spot in the food building is such the nuts, is due to the king of all the specialty food stands, which I mentioned a few moments ago. For a long time the middle 40% or so of the food bullding was devoted to this booth, and often more importantly, the lines for it. There were many times I can recall those lines being upward of 20 minutes long, this is for fair food notably, not a sit down sushi joint. Its also not like this was a small time operation, there were probably 15 people working there at busy times, a couple selling, a couple handing out, and the rest working the manufacture. Your average pronto pup stand has 2 tops, sometimes just a kid working the till and his/her mom/pop on the patented Pronto Pup turny-frier. My dad and I almost got in a physical altrication with a group of people who obstinantly refused to understand the basis of line formation in this situation once, and though I doubt I would have actually resorted to physical violence in light of snack food, if there was anything I was gonna smack someone about, this product would probably be it
The manufacture of what you ask, you ignorant prick, cheese baby, cheese. Cheese curds to be technical about it. They are the most delicious and unexplainable thing on the planet earth. Deep fried cheese curds, they have a mild cheddar cheese flavor with a beautifully stringy consistency and just a hint of twang. They are incredible. They are the foundation of the food building and I must admit that the geography of the place post remodel recognizes this fact. The cheese curd booth is no longer a free standing entity, but more like one wall of the building, where lines can form without completely shutting off the traffic around the area. The traditional cute little mouse guy standing atop his cheese has been accented by some neon Deep Fried Cheese Curd lettering high atop the wall in the classic sublimity of the state fair. The process of ordering and receiving the curds has been accented by an ordering procedure which takes obvious cues from the Corn on the Cob stand next to Bayou Bob's Gator Snax on the front-East side of the Grandstand. The dude/tte who you order from prints out a little ticket, qua the movie theater ticket spitter device, which you move down the line and exchange for a tub 'o' cheese. Two orders, two tickets, etc. There are still two or three different ordering and receiving stations, but there seems to be a much better flow.
I suppose I should return to the actual story of our Thursday, rather than just rambling on the general topic of the food building. I should admit, with my commentary on the food building, that we weren't gettin curds at prime curd-eatin time, it was only maybe 9:45 or 10:00 in the morning. Nonetheless, it was good. I bought two orders and grabbed a couple of Cokes from the soda and hot dog thing that lines the South wall of the joint (I should note, it is not exciting, but this booth does provide one of the best deals at the fair, considering your average 20 oz bottle runs at least 2 bucks, the 1.75 32oz-er is well worht the cash and since it is literally the entire length of the building there is never a line to speak of) before we found a spot to rest and munch outside. I think that this particular morning featured a particularly good batch of curds, they were as tasty as they have ever been. So tasty in fact, that though Kaya continued to chow the donuts he ad recently fallen in love with, AJ went back for another two tubs of goldeny yellow deliciosity.
We left the food building to do some walking and checked out the livestock. We didn't do much checking, but I remember that when I was a kid I liked to see cows and horses and stuff, at least a couple of them, so we took K over there. He seemed to enjoy the big moo and I always enjoy checking out the yearly installment of Boarzilla (this year he was 1200 pounds I believe, which is a good dose of bacon, but doesn't hold a hog-fat-candle to the original two-ton boheomoth (to be read "bo-ha-wee-moth" as per Stephen Wright qua Resevoir Dogs, tribeuce) from years back. We also made fun of the alpacas and beefalos, but just glanced around before heading towards the giant slide. We got pronto pups, padre and son made their debut voyage on the giant slide and we walked, people watched and just chilled for a while. We eventually got a bucket of Sweet Martha's and checked out the All-You-Can-Drink Milk booth (another remodeling highlight of this year, instead of the shabby white roughly octagonal structure with a tanker truck parked alongside there is now a classic red miniature dairy barn) which now features chocolate (a high quality addition, though I only tried one glass) and has undergone what I believe is the number three worst example of price inflation I have experienced in my lifetime (smokes and gas being the bastards ahead of the pack). Fucking thing was a quarter when I used to go with the rents, its a dollar now. Next thing you now you won't be able to enjoy a bucket of cookies and a couple cold tall-boys for less than a 20 spot. Regardless, we relaxed for a while, I drank 7 or so glasses of cold moo juice and hung out with Kaya as he explored the fish pond and general wildnerness of the DNR setup. By this point the K man was a little tired, Katie was a little exhausted from dealing with my mix of excitement and voracious unsatiable appetiteosity, so AJ and I directed the crowd over to the dairy bar for a tasty chocolate malt, a glimpse of the opening day's butter sculpture, and the long walk back up machinery hill. Kaya checked out some tractors, which may have been the only truly disappointing development of this year's fair experience. I mean, Kaya had fun, but he didn't know what AJ and I did, that back in the day they used to have big honkin things up there. I mean, I'm not exactly your agricultural equipment expert, but there are fucking lawn mowers with seats and then there are tractors, big fucking thresher things 20 feet high. When we were kids we didn't go on any rides, we just climbed on the gigantic tractors for an hour or two. We sat in the cockpits (are they called cockpits on a tractor?) pretended to drive them through major cities during rush hour (at least I did, maybe I was a little fucked up) and generally dicked around. Those are gone, not a trace. The biggest thing we could find would still fit in the average suburban garage (maybe not alongside a car, but it wasn't huge). Regardless, K enjoyed himself, though I think a majority of his pleasure was derived from directing his father onto a tractor at least a line or two beyond his own. We hit the pet building (cute chocolate colored mini-badger-dogs, which I had never seen and were hella cute) but no pug dogs or St. Bernard's to be seen. As a final tribeuce to my mom I grabbed a bag of cotton candy on the way out and it made a delicious snack for the drive home (loves it). Overall we were there for about 4 hours, and we were on 94 towards Chi-town by 1:30.
It was not one of my longer state fair experiences, but without question it was one of my favorite. Next year I hope to get there a couple times and try out some differnet snacks, though I think the only thing there I haven't had were some of the exotic animals, Safari Snacks, they were called, wild boar and the like. Anyway, we should make plans early and often. If there are those of you who have never experienced the fair ( I mean really experiecned it) we should get together. Maybe we can have a pre-fair planning session in the early summer, head out there some June afternoon for a dry run, map out a food route which will maximize an "appetizer-entree-dessert-dessert-snack-appetizer-entree-dessert-etc." rotation. That can wait. Right now, there is football. Fall rocks.
Peace,
MB-K
Friday, September 03, 2004
When I Wake Up, Well I Know I'm Gonna Be, I'm Gonna Be the Man Whose Going Home With Butt
Ah Friday night. I didn't get enough work done today, but that is sort of the story of my days. Hopefully it will not set a tone for the semester, something I plan to establish by actually doing some work tomorrow. Then again, I am a motherfucker, so we will have to wait and see. So we are sitting around, enjoying a bottle of wine after a tasty dinner, and playing on our laptops. Katie technically is not playing, but rather writing a T file, which is a pretty exasperating experience. Anyway, not the case for me.
I woke up Sunday sometime after going to sleep on Saturday. I say that only because I was so intoxicated when I got back to Katie's parents place that I pretty much laid down on the bed and fell asleep instantly. Apparently Katie told me some of the results of the big brother website, but it is the one thing that I don't remember. Anyway, when I did wake up there was no one in the house, Katie and her mom were at work. I drank a bunch of water and swallowed ibuprofin like it was going out of style. By 2:00 or so I was feeling up to snuff and headed over to my mom's place via a ride from my sister. My mom has only been in her place for about 3 weeks longer than my dad but has pretty obviously put some more work into furnishing the place. Its a very cute St. Paul style house, though not very large. It reminds me in in many ways of the house Katie's parents used to live in on St. Clair. There are a couple bedrooms on the first floor, along with a kitchen, a living room, and a bathroom the outside of which has some "artistic expression" the former owners wronlgly thought didn't lick an asstitty. There is a nice little master bedroom type thing on the top floor and a partially finished basement. Apparently my mom and Deb have a good friend who is a contractor and intends to help them fully flesh out the basement along with doing some work to the top floor, adding a bathroom and stuff. The back yard is surprsingly roomy for the location, with a decent sized deck, a fair amount of room for the Geez-man to run around in.
We all hung around and watched the Olympics. Melia and my bro had stayed there the night before so they didn't need a ride back to the burbs. Everyone else had gone home with Mr. and Mrs. Wilksteady, another in a long line of things that they have saved us in, qua moving out of the house. Melia went and played with our legos for a while, though I am not sure if she got anything cool built or just fucked around with multicolored houses without roofs like I used to do. Nonetheless, we did that until Katie and her mother came over after work. Tom also came about that time and we ate some pistachios and veggies to warm up for the barbemacue. My mom and Deb made spareribs and potatoes and corn and Deb made a couple of tasty summer pies, including a very respectable chocolate creme. The woman really knows how to bake and while my mom is perfectly able to whip up a batch of Special K bars, I think she may be with Deb largely for the cookies, cakes, and the like. Anyway, we ate dinner and relaxed for a while. It was a nice place and I think my mom is happier then she was in the burbs.
At some point we all went to Arcadia, a coffee shop in Minneapolis, which at least at some point was owned by Maggie's dad Tom Berthiaume. I don't know if he still has the place or not, but there is a performance place in the back and Karly and Heidi were playing there, so we all headed out. For anyone who has spent much time around the women of the Kauf household or attended our wedding or reherasal, the fact that Karly has some skizzills likely comes as very little of a surprise. Anyway, she and Heidi played some pretty good original stuff and a bunch of covers that I kind of know, including a Mellisa Ferrick (sic) tune I thought went over really well, with the exception of Tom's growing discomfort. It was fun to watch, even though the place was a bit on the warm side. I don't know when or where they are playing again, but the Purple House Project is currently strongly in the lead for the official band of my blog. A designation I'm sure they are fighting desperately for.
The blow by blow gets a little old I know, so I will just hit the remaining hot spots. First was the pick up of our photos, which occurred on Tuesday afternoon. We spent a little more on our photographer than we would have necessarily liked to, but these people were skillled and it paid off pretty strongly. The pictures were gorgeous, we looked at them, talked about them with Wendy and went over all the relevant options from here on out. Then we met up with both of our mothers for cake, coffee and a looksidaisy (I think looksidaisy is a word and a concept which has never quite gotten the props which it deserves. I will admit that it does fall into the category of words which it is nearly impossible to say while sounding straight, but at the same time, its just a good thing to take. Having a peek or a glance is so plain, so nondescript, but a looksidaisy is just the right combination of sass and pizazz.) I think they all enjoyed the pics and we left the book of 800 million proofs with them so they could do any relevant purchasing or ordering. At some point maybe I should post a couple selected shots, but I will get there when the time is right. For now I am going to watch a movie and finish my wine, like uno bueno perro en la mesa a la izqierda.
Peace,
MB-K
I woke up Sunday sometime after going to sleep on Saturday. I say that only because I was so intoxicated when I got back to Katie's parents place that I pretty much laid down on the bed and fell asleep instantly. Apparently Katie told me some of the results of the big brother website, but it is the one thing that I don't remember. Anyway, when I did wake up there was no one in the house, Katie and her mom were at work. I drank a bunch of water and swallowed ibuprofin like it was going out of style. By 2:00 or so I was feeling up to snuff and headed over to my mom's place via a ride from my sister. My mom has only been in her place for about 3 weeks longer than my dad but has pretty obviously put some more work into furnishing the place. Its a very cute St. Paul style house, though not very large. It reminds me in in many ways of the house Katie's parents used to live in on St. Clair. There are a couple bedrooms on the first floor, along with a kitchen, a living room, and a bathroom the outside of which has some "artistic expression" the former owners wronlgly thought didn't lick an asstitty. There is a nice little master bedroom type thing on the top floor and a partially finished basement. Apparently my mom and Deb have a good friend who is a contractor and intends to help them fully flesh out the basement along with doing some work to the top floor, adding a bathroom and stuff. The back yard is surprsingly roomy for the location, with a decent sized deck, a fair amount of room for the Geez-man to run around in.
We all hung around and watched the Olympics. Melia and my bro had stayed there the night before so they didn't need a ride back to the burbs. Everyone else had gone home with Mr. and Mrs. Wilksteady, another in a long line of things that they have saved us in, qua moving out of the house. Melia went and played with our legos for a while, though I am not sure if she got anything cool built or just fucked around with multicolored houses without roofs like I used to do. Nonetheless, we did that until Katie and her mother came over after work. Tom also came about that time and we ate some pistachios and veggies to warm up for the barbemacue. My mom and Deb made spareribs and potatoes and corn and Deb made a couple of tasty summer pies, including a very respectable chocolate creme. The woman really knows how to bake and while my mom is perfectly able to whip up a batch of Special K bars, I think she may be with Deb largely for the cookies, cakes, and the like. Anyway, we ate dinner and relaxed for a while. It was a nice place and I think my mom is happier then she was in the burbs.
At some point we all went to Arcadia, a coffee shop in Minneapolis, which at least at some point was owned by Maggie's dad Tom Berthiaume. I don't know if he still has the place or not, but there is a performance place in the back and Karly and Heidi were playing there, so we all headed out. For anyone who has spent much time around the women of the Kauf household or attended our wedding or reherasal, the fact that Karly has some skizzills likely comes as very little of a surprise. Anyway, she and Heidi played some pretty good original stuff and a bunch of covers that I kind of know, including a Mellisa Ferrick (sic) tune I thought went over really well, with the exception of Tom's growing discomfort. It was fun to watch, even though the place was a bit on the warm side. I don't know when or where they are playing again, but the Purple House Project is currently strongly in the lead for the official band of my blog. A designation I'm sure they are fighting desperately for.
The blow by blow gets a little old I know, so I will just hit the remaining hot spots. First was the pick up of our photos, which occurred on Tuesday afternoon. We spent a little more on our photographer than we would have necessarily liked to, but these people were skillled and it paid off pretty strongly. The pictures were gorgeous, we looked at them, talked about them with Wendy and went over all the relevant options from here on out. Then we met up with both of our mothers for cake, coffee and a looksidaisy (I think looksidaisy is a word and a concept which has never quite gotten the props which it deserves. I will admit that it does fall into the category of words which it is nearly impossible to say while sounding straight, but at the same time, its just a good thing to take. Having a peek or a glance is so plain, so nondescript, but a looksidaisy is just the right combination of sass and pizazz.) I think they all enjoyed the pics and we left the book of 800 million proofs with them so they could do any relevant purchasing or ordering. At some point maybe I should post a couple selected shots, but I will get there when the time is right. For now I am going to watch a movie and finish my wine, like uno bueno perro en la mesa a la izqierda.
Peace,
MB-K
I'm So Happy, Cause Today, I Found My Friends, They're in My Butt
I now have my laptop back which roxors for a number of reasons. To begin with it means that I will be able to sit on the couch and type on my blog and babble and google random pieces of information as TV makes them "relevant" to my life and existence. It also means that Katie and I can start some sort of laptop war, a game I have not yet involved rules for, but which I feel simply must be played when two people sitting on the same couch are each hacking away on their personal computadora. Regardless, things are back on track. So some brief props to CompUSA for fixing my laptop in reasonably efficient fashion and returning it to me without wiping the harddrive, even though you tried to get me to back it up for like 70 dollars, which is I believe the computer equivalent of a transmission flush, which my mechanic assures me is the automotive equivalent of your doctor telling you it wouldn't hurt to take a quick enema at a charge of 200 bucks, not covered by your insurance, when you came in to get your cast removed. Irregardless.
I believe our story left off in Rosemount. My brother came in Friday night, I saw him only very briefly, but we had scheduled to have lunch that Saturday with all the ninos, the relevant significant autres, and mi padre. My dad had been playing golf, but my sister stopped by around 12:00, and the lot of us went to McDivot's. I like McDivot's, though I don't have quite the attachment to it my dad has always seemed to harbor. I guess it is pretty much the closest thing possible to his house and if one did not have to drive directly past the fucking popo to get back home, it would be kinda sweet. Not that my dad is going to do anything besides a little speeding that would make him weery of the policiaca, but its still a little disheartening. We ate and hung out, caught up with my dad. He has some interesting plans and ideas, stuff I think is not a surprising reaction to the divorce situation. For the most part it is work things, including applying for a job with the UN prosecuting war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, which is one of the few times my dad and I end up even remotely near each other in questions of international relations. I guess its not surprising that my dad, who loved his job in the first place and went back to school in an enormously difficult environment just to get it, would put even more energy into his practice with alll his kids late in college and living on his own. We talked Pack football and are trying to work out a situation whereby I could make it to a Monday night game, but we shall have to see.
Then we had to rush around and do a couple errands, picking up cigarettes for my bro, wrapping paper and a hairbrush for Katie. We made it back to the house 2:30 ish and needed to leave sometime around 4:00 to get to the wedding on time. My brother was actually the only person who wasn't on top of the timing of the situation, since Katie, Melia, and I were in the car at 5 minutes till 4. We had to pick up Wilking and Jen, since we were trying to minimize the cars going into St. Paul and hence minimize the drivers. That meant my brother and Melia got to share the backseat with the stead-bomb and Jen-ification. It was the latter of these two individuals who was forced to sit aboard the lap of the former, and let me tell you the intense amusement it provided for all of us except the woman whose butt was positioned in exactly the relation to Wilking you do not want your butt positioned. That is true even in the situation which someone may not always mind some Wilk-related butt attention, (Jen, Nikki, Andy, I'm looking at you), you just don't want that going on in front of a crowd while your head is smashed against the ceiling so profusely burned by one APK on your way to a wedding.
The wedding itself was to be held at Macalester's Weyerhouser Memorial Chapel, a place I believe I have entered more times since graduating from Macalester then I ever did while attending. I guess that is not surprsing given that the chapel is primarily an experimental theater facility with an altar, but thats neither here nor anywhere fucking else. It was neat to see the different possibilities for using what is really a fantastic space, much warmer and much more intimate than a traditional forward facing facility like St. Joes. Even modifications of what I conceive as traditional church design really can't capture the near circularity that is in question here. Anyway, there were some ceremony notes worth mentioning, including but certainly not limited to: Moody was a groomsperson and not only has that motherfucker started to look way and way better with every passing week, but he had it going on in the tux-sweet-o as well. Lives up to its name in his case. The other surprising attendant related question was the existence of Ms. Nga Chiem, which was throroughly surprising to me. I guess I can't or shouldn't say that its surprising in any way that Nga was either there or involved in the whole dilly, but to be honest I just haven't given Nga a second of thought since high school. Thinking back on it I am pretty sure that I was a dick to her in high school, but since I was fundamentally just a dick for alot of high school, its not a surprise.
I can only think of one Nga story off hand, it didn't really involve me, I'm pretty sure that it borderd on offensive and the person in question receives enough abuse by me in this here blog. Anyway, lets just say we weren't the best of friends. I'm pretty sure Nga hasn't given any consideration to the existene of any of us since the day we graduated. Anyway I was surprised to see her. No one from our table talked to her, I don't know if she had any convos with Cort, Joe, etc. from the debate community. I barely saw her at the reception, but to be honest there were some mitigating factors. I should also note that I have no idea what kind of person Nga is, if she parties, if she spent more of the evening in the bathroom doing blow, or maybe she is secretly involved with the Dobs. We were near or on the dancefloor at pretty much all points when we were not at the bar so not seeing her there suggests no on the party front, but since the women's bathroom was way down on the first floor and the Dobs was no where in sight, I can't rule out any of those possibilities.
The reception was over at the University Club downtown, a beautiful classic St. Paul joint. Katie and I had looked at the website and I think most people who focus on St. Paul extravaganzas do, but I had never actually been there. The floor they were working on had a bar-loungey place and the ballroom. The bar was classic Dillenger area St Pizzle, with dark wood everywhere and, most importantly, free Summit baby. We pounded a couple back in the bar before dinner and moved in there before anything started. I doubt most of the people there were tetotaling, but it seemed that Table 7 was representing in the alchohol zone like no one else. We grabbed a set of drinks and sat down, munched our salad and bread and shit, ate dinner, which was very tasty, drank some wine, and ate some cake, which roxored. At some point Andy said we should slam a glass of wine, I had already decided to get as hammered as reasoably possible without destroying anything around me, so I agreed. Andy went electro-weak style on the bit and did not slam his glass of wine unless I put another one down. Katie then recruited me to pound something else down in order to get Andy to eat some flowers or something stupid along those lines, which we probably could have just watied for his intoxication later and gotten for free, but whatev. By the time we reached the cake I was fairly far along in the world of non-sobriety. We had to pull some techniques to make sure both Katie and I got the cake variety which was necssary, but the choco-sweets came strong.
There were some neat things that James and Cassie did at the reception. There was a little digital slide show with pictures of Jimmy and the Cassinator as children. I could have told you, from my experiences with James since my first year in highschool, that he hasn't changed much, facially, follically (relating to hair, which may not be a word, but is cool), but it was funny to see exactly how long that had been in existence. Katie's estimate was that James became James around age 3, but my guess is that he had the same part before he even heard the first verse of Baby Beluga. Cassie surprisingly did not look that much like she does now and I probably couldn't tell you which of the Doll-sisters was which, if I didn't know their respective ages. James said some nice words on behalf of the couple. There was a Macalester picture taken, I believe I knew James, Katie, and Joel, out of the whole bunch and at least one person insinuated that I did not go to Mac. Not unreasonable I suppose.
You will notice that my level of detail drops dramatically as the evening progresses. I think this can be pretty safely linked to the fact that I somehow spent about 15 dollars at an open bar. Since I know for a fact that I got more than one Summit on several of those trips I will avoid estimating how many drinks were involved. We talked with Cort and Carol and Joe and Lynn and Pete and Meg for a good long while, making fun of old debate weirdos who are no longer involved with the activity, good times style. Joe and Lynn left somewhat early, but I suppose that having a kid sort of makes that understandable. Cort and Carol partied hardy however as they have done at each of the three weddings I have attended with them. We did some dancing, we did some sitting. Katie managed to dance with almost everyone she wanted to dance with, including a very memorable one with my brother which involved country line dance style galloping to "Boot-Scootin Boogie", a talent I was not aware that he possessed. Anyway, it was good good times the whole night long.
I missed having the Sanj there and Pete and I were discussing that the last several weddings have made us strongly associate a wedding reception with an opportunity to hang out with TLT (she's dynomite). Overall, out of 5 stars, I give James and Cassie's wedding a "supergreat." Good times, St. Paul beer, and good peeps. Congratulations to the newlyweds (who probably are not reading this because they are still in fucking Paris those lucky ass fuckwhores), a long and happy life to you both. James and Cassie Hart. I'll get that down, I swear, even though I think they should have gone with Doll-Hart just for the kitsch baby. Since I have no obligations external to the home manana, I hope to update again. We've got my mom's house, Karly's concert, and the phat Thai restaurant coming up next time on "Shitty I Babble About."
Peace,
MB-K
I believe our story left off in Rosemount. My brother came in Friday night, I saw him only very briefly, but we had scheduled to have lunch that Saturday with all the ninos, the relevant significant autres, and mi padre. My dad had been playing golf, but my sister stopped by around 12:00, and the lot of us went to McDivot's. I like McDivot's, though I don't have quite the attachment to it my dad has always seemed to harbor. I guess it is pretty much the closest thing possible to his house and if one did not have to drive directly past the fucking popo to get back home, it would be kinda sweet. Not that my dad is going to do anything besides a little speeding that would make him weery of the policiaca, but its still a little disheartening. We ate and hung out, caught up with my dad. He has some interesting plans and ideas, stuff I think is not a surprising reaction to the divorce situation. For the most part it is work things, including applying for a job with the UN prosecuting war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, which is one of the few times my dad and I end up even remotely near each other in questions of international relations. I guess its not surprising that my dad, who loved his job in the first place and went back to school in an enormously difficult environment just to get it, would put even more energy into his practice with alll his kids late in college and living on his own. We talked Pack football and are trying to work out a situation whereby I could make it to a Monday night game, but we shall have to see.
Then we had to rush around and do a couple errands, picking up cigarettes for my bro, wrapping paper and a hairbrush for Katie. We made it back to the house 2:30 ish and needed to leave sometime around 4:00 to get to the wedding on time. My brother was actually the only person who wasn't on top of the timing of the situation, since Katie, Melia, and I were in the car at 5 minutes till 4. We had to pick up Wilking and Jen, since we were trying to minimize the cars going into St. Paul and hence minimize the drivers. That meant my brother and Melia got to share the backseat with the stead-bomb and Jen-ification. It was the latter of these two individuals who was forced to sit aboard the lap of the former, and let me tell you the intense amusement it provided for all of us except the woman whose butt was positioned in exactly the relation to Wilking you do not want your butt positioned. That is true even in the situation which someone may not always mind some Wilk-related butt attention, (Jen, Nikki, Andy, I'm looking at you), you just don't want that going on in front of a crowd while your head is smashed against the ceiling so profusely burned by one APK on your way to a wedding.
The wedding itself was to be held at Macalester's Weyerhouser Memorial Chapel, a place I believe I have entered more times since graduating from Macalester then I ever did while attending. I guess that is not surprsing given that the chapel is primarily an experimental theater facility with an altar, but thats neither here nor anywhere fucking else. It was neat to see the different possibilities for using what is really a fantastic space, much warmer and much more intimate than a traditional forward facing facility like St. Joes. Even modifications of what I conceive as traditional church design really can't capture the near circularity that is in question here. Anyway, there were some ceremony notes worth mentioning, including but certainly not limited to: Moody was a groomsperson and not only has that motherfucker started to look way and way better with every passing week, but he had it going on in the tux-sweet-o as well. Lives up to its name in his case. The other surprising attendant related question was the existence of Ms. Nga Chiem, which was throroughly surprising to me. I guess I can't or shouldn't say that its surprising in any way that Nga was either there or involved in the whole dilly, but to be honest I just haven't given Nga a second of thought since high school. Thinking back on it I am pretty sure that I was a dick to her in high school, but since I was fundamentally just a dick for alot of high school, its not a surprise.
I can only think of one Nga story off hand, it didn't really involve me, I'm pretty sure that it borderd on offensive and the person in question receives enough abuse by me in this here blog. Anyway, lets just say we weren't the best of friends. I'm pretty sure Nga hasn't given any consideration to the existene of any of us since the day we graduated. Anyway I was surprised to see her. No one from our table talked to her, I don't know if she had any convos with Cort, Joe, etc. from the debate community. I barely saw her at the reception, but to be honest there were some mitigating factors. I should also note that I have no idea what kind of person Nga is, if she parties, if she spent more of the evening in the bathroom doing blow, or maybe she is secretly involved with the Dobs. We were near or on the dancefloor at pretty much all points when we were not at the bar so not seeing her there suggests no on the party front, but since the women's bathroom was way down on the first floor and the Dobs was no where in sight, I can't rule out any of those possibilities.
The reception was over at the University Club downtown, a beautiful classic St. Paul joint. Katie and I had looked at the website and I think most people who focus on St. Paul extravaganzas do, but I had never actually been there. The floor they were working on had a bar-loungey place and the ballroom. The bar was classic Dillenger area St Pizzle, with dark wood everywhere and, most importantly, free Summit baby. We pounded a couple back in the bar before dinner and moved in there before anything started. I doubt most of the people there were tetotaling, but it seemed that Table 7 was representing in the alchohol zone like no one else. We grabbed a set of drinks and sat down, munched our salad and bread and shit, ate dinner, which was very tasty, drank some wine, and ate some cake, which roxored. At some point Andy said we should slam a glass of wine, I had already decided to get as hammered as reasoably possible without destroying anything around me, so I agreed. Andy went electro-weak style on the bit and did not slam his glass of wine unless I put another one down. Katie then recruited me to pound something else down in order to get Andy to eat some flowers or something stupid along those lines, which we probably could have just watied for his intoxication later and gotten for free, but whatev. By the time we reached the cake I was fairly far along in the world of non-sobriety. We had to pull some techniques to make sure both Katie and I got the cake variety which was necssary, but the choco-sweets came strong.
There were some neat things that James and Cassie did at the reception. There was a little digital slide show with pictures of Jimmy and the Cassinator as children. I could have told you, from my experiences with James since my first year in highschool, that he hasn't changed much, facially, follically (relating to hair, which may not be a word, but is cool), but it was funny to see exactly how long that had been in existence. Katie's estimate was that James became James around age 3, but my guess is that he had the same part before he even heard the first verse of Baby Beluga. Cassie surprisingly did not look that much like she does now and I probably couldn't tell you which of the Doll-sisters was which, if I didn't know their respective ages. James said some nice words on behalf of the couple. There was a Macalester picture taken, I believe I knew James, Katie, and Joel, out of the whole bunch and at least one person insinuated that I did not go to Mac. Not unreasonable I suppose.
You will notice that my level of detail drops dramatically as the evening progresses. I think this can be pretty safely linked to the fact that I somehow spent about 15 dollars at an open bar. Since I know for a fact that I got more than one Summit on several of those trips I will avoid estimating how many drinks were involved. We talked with Cort and Carol and Joe and Lynn and Pete and Meg for a good long while, making fun of old debate weirdos who are no longer involved with the activity, good times style. Joe and Lynn left somewhat early, but I suppose that having a kid sort of makes that understandable. Cort and Carol partied hardy however as they have done at each of the three weddings I have attended with them. We did some dancing, we did some sitting. Katie managed to dance with almost everyone she wanted to dance with, including a very memorable one with my brother which involved country line dance style galloping to "Boot-Scootin Boogie", a talent I was not aware that he possessed. Anyway, it was good good times the whole night long.
I missed having the Sanj there and Pete and I were discussing that the last several weddings have made us strongly associate a wedding reception with an opportunity to hang out with TLT (she's dynomite). Overall, out of 5 stars, I give James and Cassie's wedding a "supergreat." Good times, St. Paul beer, and good peeps. Congratulations to the newlyweds (who probably are not reading this because they are still in fucking Paris those lucky ass fuckwhores), a long and happy life to you both. James and Cassie Hart. I'll get that down, I swear, even though I think they should have gone with Doll-Hart just for the kitsch baby. Since I have no obligations external to the home manana, I hope to update again. We've got my mom's house, Karly's concert, and the phat Thai restaurant coming up next time on "Shitty I Babble About."
Peace,
MB-K
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Butt
Tsup. I know its been a long time, there have been some delays, for which I apologize. I usually remember to mention when we are going to be MIA for some time, but the whole end of the summer not working at Wal-Mart nonsense kind of fucks it all up. While this shouldn’t be the blog updating epic that I think the wedding in June sort of ended up, it might take me a couple days to catch up completely. That will also be complicated by the fact that my laptop is in the shizop (I didn’t really want to write “shizop” as opposed to “shop” but it has better fucking rhythm) but should be around soon. I am also back in school which can be both a blessing and a curse for the world of blog.
Anyway, we left for Minnesota immediately after I finished work on the 18th of August. Work finished up pretty strongly, all the people I work with are cool and ended up throwing me a little party, we had corn dogs, cookie cake, and brownie cake. Very solid all around. The only thing that blew goats severely was that I was sick like a mofucker. I don’t get sick very often, but I will fully admit that I am a pretty miserable bastard when I am. I feel that modern medicine, even modern over the counter medicine, should be able to pretty much entirely cure my symptoms. I guess that’s what naïve faith in the medical sciences get you. Anyway, while I was feeling better than I had the day before, when I came home after only three-ish hours of work and slept all day and night, I was still feeling like ass.
I began by sleeping and Katie took care of the first shift of driving. We made it to the first post-Cleveland reststop on the tollway before I took over. I was feeling good for the first hour or so of driving then it started raining like it often does through Ohio, in what I imagine is a concerted effort to make me hate that state even more than is humanly possible. The rain started tired me out pretty quickly, as well as slowing me down to around 45-50, which is a crawl at 1:00 am on the freeway. By 2:30, shortly after we entered Indiana, I had no prudent option but to pull off at a rest stop. Katie wasn’t ready to take over yet, so we slept in the car for almost three hours. I would wake up every 40 minutes or so, try to convince myself I could drive, ultimately determine that I was insane, and go back to sleep. Eventually I was so furious with the devastruction this break had done to our attempt to make good time that I drove in what may not have been the world’s safest condition. My intent was to get us through Chicago before rush hour, but since I forgot that Chicago’s rush hour runs from 4 am to midnight, that was a futile effort.
We switched on and off, eventually got to St. Paul sometime in the late afternoon early evening. We dropped by Katie’s parents place, where Katie hung out while I went to James Hart’s bachelor party. I should note that besides the fact that our families live there and we love it there and all that, the real reason we were in the TC was the wedding of James Hart and Cassie Doll. James’ situation was not completely dissimilar to my own, excepting the Harvard Law School graduate, real job in Chicago situation. I mean simply that he was only in town for a short period before the wedding and since so many of his friends were from out of town the bachelor party was held at short-ish notice. Brad Hart, James’ little brother, was in charge as the best-man, and did a solid job. I think Brad had a lot of pressure on him, at least he perceived that there was a lot of pressure on him.
As someone who recently had his only brother as his best man, I can say with a fair amount of certainty that absent showing up at your bachelor party and being kicked in the crotch, flown to Abu Dhabi and sold to an alpaca farm, its virtually impossible to be disappointed by what he does. That said, the situation Brad was in was somewhat different from my brothers, most notably because Lil’ B is not simply acquainted with my friends, but is friends with all of them as well. If my brother had his own bachelor party the guest lists would be virtually identical, with maybe a few extra people from Mad-town included. I think that meant that Brad felt that he was responsible not only to James about the whole evening, but just as importantly to James’ friends, to provide whatever it is they would imagine as a bachelor party. It ended up not being an issue and I think Brad figured out fairly early on into the evening that he had gotten it right. I didn’t get to try out Mannings’ new 2 pound beast of a burger, but I will someday. I also didn’t really get to party, since I had 3 hours of sleep the whole time and still had to go down to Rosemount to meet my dad at his new townhouse. Anyway, the action was picking up as I left, with some crazy-James-drinking-challenge getting under way. From the reports I received it remained a hella-good and for the most part wholesome guys night at Brad’s apartment. That makes RHS debate 2 for 2 on naked-lady free bachelor parties, a trend which I can’t imagine continuing for too many more members.
My dad was at one of his clients’ boxing matches and didn’t get home until like 11:30, we met him around midnight. The place is right by the new St. Joe’s church in Rosemount, only about 2-3 miles from the old rents place. For one person it is quite large, three bedrooms on two floors with the living room and kitchen essentially wide open on the first floor. He has technically moved in, he has the TV and the couch and chairs and lamps and a table and stuff, his bedroom furniture etc. but besides that the place is not really furnished. I know he doesn’t need much more than a couch and a TV and a bed, since the time he spends at home is pretty much just limited to watching legal drama and football. Nonetheless, I think he felt a little awkward about the fact, though neither Katie or I could care less. After a long pseudo-argument we ended up staying in my dad’s room for the entire week we were there. It seemed to be what he wanted so we were happy to acquiesce, but next time we are around we will be more in control.
Katie had to work early on Friday morning, so we got up at a reasonable time and said hey to my dad before we left. I came back and did laundry virtually all day while she worked. When I picked her up we ran to Southdale to get a wedding present, to Chipotle for a burrito, and then to Dave and Amy’s place to play some poker and hang out. They have gotten two pretty sweet things in the past month or so, the first one is a house in St. Paul. Its in the Midway area and a pretty nice joint. Its not huge, but it has space to expand if that is something in their future. If you’ve been in an average St. Paul residence you know what I am referring to. The other one is related and probably less important in the big picture, but much cooler in my book, that being a puppy. Specifically, a golden retriever puppy named Milo, who is fucking adorable. I mean, golden retriever puppies are pretty much the picture of cuteness in the first place, but this guy was above and beyond. He was hopping up the stairs, he was chewing on my shoes and hands, he was just adorable. I am not one of those people who is hugely into the golden retriever, I mean, I dig them, but I don’t plan on getting one, but I must admit that the puppies are the me-fucking-ow.
The poker game that went on was alright, I came in second technically, since only me and one dude had chips at the end. I could have gone short stack master and tried to take him out, though he had like a 4 or 5-1 chip advantage, but nowhere near the necessary experience to finish things off. Nonetheless, it would have taken some luck and probably a bit of time, so I just won Katie’s money back and took my own, essentially a 5 dollar win for me. Not shabby. I really didn’t play much more poker the whole time I was in Minnesota, unfortunately, maybe I will fix that over the holidays.
More may come later tonight whenever I decide to go for the discussion of Saturday and the wedding proper. Check it.
Peace,
MB-K
Anyway, we left for Minnesota immediately after I finished work on the 18th of August. Work finished up pretty strongly, all the people I work with are cool and ended up throwing me a little party, we had corn dogs, cookie cake, and brownie cake. Very solid all around. The only thing that blew goats severely was that I was sick like a mofucker. I don’t get sick very often, but I will fully admit that I am a pretty miserable bastard when I am. I feel that modern medicine, even modern over the counter medicine, should be able to pretty much entirely cure my symptoms. I guess that’s what naïve faith in the medical sciences get you. Anyway, while I was feeling better than I had the day before, when I came home after only three-ish hours of work and slept all day and night, I was still feeling like ass.
I began by sleeping and Katie took care of the first shift of driving. We made it to the first post-Cleveland reststop on the tollway before I took over. I was feeling good for the first hour or so of driving then it started raining like it often does through Ohio, in what I imagine is a concerted effort to make me hate that state even more than is humanly possible. The rain started tired me out pretty quickly, as well as slowing me down to around 45-50, which is a crawl at 1:00 am on the freeway. By 2:30, shortly after we entered Indiana, I had no prudent option but to pull off at a rest stop. Katie wasn’t ready to take over yet, so we slept in the car for almost three hours. I would wake up every 40 minutes or so, try to convince myself I could drive, ultimately determine that I was insane, and go back to sleep. Eventually I was so furious with the devastruction this break had done to our attempt to make good time that I drove in what may not have been the world’s safest condition. My intent was to get us through Chicago before rush hour, but since I forgot that Chicago’s rush hour runs from 4 am to midnight, that was a futile effort.
We switched on and off, eventually got to St. Paul sometime in the late afternoon early evening. We dropped by Katie’s parents place, where Katie hung out while I went to James Hart’s bachelor party. I should note that besides the fact that our families live there and we love it there and all that, the real reason we were in the TC was the wedding of James Hart and Cassie Doll. James’ situation was not completely dissimilar to my own, excepting the Harvard Law School graduate, real job in Chicago situation. I mean simply that he was only in town for a short period before the wedding and since so many of his friends were from out of town the bachelor party was held at short-ish notice. Brad Hart, James’ little brother, was in charge as the best-man, and did a solid job. I think Brad had a lot of pressure on him, at least he perceived that there was a lot of pressure on him.
As someone who recently had his only brother as his best man, I can say with a fair amount of certainty that absent showing up at your bachelor party and being kicked in the crotch, flown to Abu Dhabi and sold to an alpaca farm, its virtually impossible to be disappointed by what he does. That said, the situation Brad was in was somewhat different from my brothers, most notably because Lil’ B is not simply acquainted with my friends, but is friends with all of them as well. If my brother had his own bachelor party the guest lists would be virtually identical, with maybe a few extra people from Mad-town included. I think that meant that Brad felt that he was responsible not only to James about the whole evening, but just as importantly to James’ friends, to provide whatever it is they would imagine as a bachelor party. It ended up not being an issue and I think Brad figured out fairly early on into the evening that he had gotten it right. I didn’t get to try out Mannings’ new 2 pound beast of a burger, but I will someday. I also didn’t really get to party, since I had 3 hours of sleep the whole time and still had to go down to Rosemount to meet my dad at his new townhouse. Anyway, the action was picking up as I left, with some crazy-James-drinking-challenge getting under way. From the reports I received it remained a hella-good and for the most part wholesome guys night at Brad’s apartment. That makes RHS debate 2 for 2 on naked-lady free bachelor parties, a trend which I can’t imagine continuing for too many more members.
My dad was at one of his clients’ boxing matches and didn’t get home until like 11:30, we met him around midnight. The place is right by the new St. Joe’s church in Rosemount, only about 2-3 miles from the old rents place. For one person it is quite large, three bedrooms on two floors with the living room and kitchen essentially wide open on the first floor. He has technically moved in, he has the TV and the couch and chairs and lamps and a table and stuff, his bedroom furniture etc. but besides that the place is not really furnished. I know he doesn’t need much more than a couch and a TV and a bed, since the time he spends at home is pretty much just limited to watching legal drama and football. Nonetheless, I think he felt a little awkward about the fact, though neither Katie or I could care less. After a long pseudo-argument we ended up staying in my dad’s room for the entire week we were there. It seemed to be what he wanted so we were happy to acquiesce, but next time we are around we will be more in control.
Katie had to work early on Friday morning, so we got up at a reasonable time and said hey to my dad before we left. I came back and did laundry virtually all day while she worked. When I picked her up we ran to Southdale to get a wedding present, to Chipotle for a burrito, and then to Dave and Amy’s place to play some poker and hang out. They have gotten two pretty sweet things in the past month or so, the first one is a house in St. Paul. Its in the Midway area and a pretty nice joint. Its not huge, but it has space to expand if that is something in their future. If you’ve been in an average St. Paul residence you know what I am referring to. The other one is related and probably less important in the big picture, but much cooler in my book, that being a puppy. Specifically, a golden retriever puppy named Milo, who is fucking adorable. I mean, golden retriever puppies are pretty much the picture of cuteness in the first place, but this guy was above and beyond. He was hopping up the stairs, he was chewing on my shoes and hands, he was just adorable. I am not one of those people who is hugely into the golden retriever, I mean, I dig them, but I don’t plan on getting one, but I must admit that the puppies are the me-fucking-ow.
The poker game that went on was alright, I came in second technically, since only me and one dude had chips at the end. I could have gone short stack master and tried to take him out, though he had like a 4 or 5-1 chip advantage, but nowhere near the necessary experience to finish things off. Nonetheless, it would have taken some luck and probably a bit of time, so I just won Katie’s money back and took my own, essentially a 5 dollar win for me. Not shabby. I really didn’t play much more poker the whole time I was in Minnesota, unfortunately, maybe I will fix that over the holidays.
More may come later tonight whenever I decide to go for the discussion of Saturday and the wedding proper. Check it.
Peace,
MB-K
Monday, August 16, 2004
She Had To Take Him Down Easy, and Put a Bullet in His Butt
I have three days left to go at work, so I think I can handle it. Nonetheless, it has gotten a little irritating to not have a day off for so long. Today was the worst, because I worked with two of the biggest idiots in the entire world. We have determined recently that one of the women in question seems to sincerely hate me and I find that more and more humorous at every passing moment. This is someone that cannot handle the operation of a cash register, or really the operation of ball-point pen, for that matter. The story I think best encompasses this woman is the fact that she is responsible for the fact that the photo-lab no longer has a battery tester. The reason for that fact: she tested a battery on it and threw it away when it did not respond. She also lost 2 rolls of film for an hour this afternoon, I found them under the counter on the opposite side of the lab. Idiots, literally, fucking idiots.
The best thing that happened today was that, while I was in the middle of doing an immense amount of work very quickly in an attempt to make up for the incompetence of my surroundings. Luckily that work all involved standing at the back counter loading film and staring off into the electronics department. Most of the people in the electronics department were wads as per the usual, old women looking for Barbara Stanwick CDs and children trying to finagle their way into old Game-Unit titles for half price by pretending they saw them at Target. There was only one person who really caught my attention and he was a dude wearing a tank top that would have been perfectly suited to a Girls Gone Wild video, but was quite ill suited to what vwas most likely the hairiest back in all of human civilzation.
For some reason this dude immediately brought to mind a comparison to George the Animal Steele. I have no idea if that is the correct way to spell George the Animal Steele or if anyone out there besides Pete knows what I am talking about. Anyway, for some reason I remember George as having an incredibly hairy ass motherfucking back. More certainly than that I remember the dude eating the turnbuckle, or at least ripping the cover off of it with his teeth. So I stood there at the back counter of what Scott and I have now officially gotten to calling "Your Friendly Neighborhood Lockport Wal-Mart Digital One Hour Photo Center" which sounds really fucking awesome when you rattle it off top speed on the phone, and I thought about why I was thinking about George the Animal Steele. It seems like a simpler day, doesn't it, when your wrestling name could just be your normal name with a one-word moniker in the middle. I mean, I guess that can still be the case, but there seem to be a lot more "Shockernator" type ones today. I don't mean to apply this specifically to wrestling, especially insofar as I am sure I will get criticized by more knowledgable fan-boys-or-girls than myself. Thats all I really had to say about that fact, besides how fucking weird it was that for 5 or so minutes today I was spontaneously reminded of George the Animal Steele, whom I hadn't thought about in at least several years. I don't mean that in any sense to be sexual and if you don't believe me, I recommend you take a quick look-see-daisy at some pictures of George the Animal Steele. All the wrestlers I liked as a child were actually some pretty butt-fucking uglyass bastards, most notably a tag team I believe were called The Bushwhackers. Enough.
I watched The Others earlier, which was loaned to me by Amy at the lab. It wasn't a bad flick, but it didn't do for me what everyone seemed to think it did. My theory is that, in many ways, The Sixth Sense runied this genre of films for us all. If you haven't seen The Others and its something you are really looking forward to, I 'd skip a paragraph here, but believe me that I haven't given away anything yet, you will instantly recognize this film's indebtedness to M. Night Shamylan and others along those lines. I think it is still possible for a movie to have some spectacular switches at the ending and not be somewhat of a letdown, many of them in fact, fall into what I would call the "Usual Suspects" variety rather than "Sixth Sense" section. Mullholland Dr. and Memento are the two best examples that immediately pop into my head, but I am sure there are others. I might even say that Signs, Shamylan's Mel Gibson flick, fits closer into this category than the supernatural-ism one. Now everytime something which even faintly rings of death and ghosts or the beyond or the like and my mind immediately says "now, who in this film who does not appear to be dead but is actually a ghost." A couple more years of moves along these lines may make it possible for someone to actually have the twist be the lack of a twist, whereby the person is simply alive. A curve a la Frailty, which both fits this pattern perfectly and is one of the few supernatural thrillers post "Sixth Sense" which really was up to snuff. I think I've gone off on that before however.
Katie has been out of town this weekend, she is at a women's debate collective thingy-ma-jigg in Phoenix. The only positive I could find in the situation was that I got the opportunity to watch a fuckload of TV I had been storing up for weeks. Katie doesn't like Six Feet Under or The 4400, both shows that I have been very excited about all summer. I know she's not into sci-fi so that eliminates the USA series and I think the fact that each episode begins with someone dying in an occassionally gruesome manner turns her off what she would probably otherwise agree is a fantastic show. I have only seen moments of this program before this season and only the premiere of this season before two nights ago. I fucking adore the characters on this show, even without understanding all the back-story. If I could afford HBO series on DVD I would be picking these up as fast as possible.
I thought this was going to go in a very positive direction when I started off with George the Animal Steele, but I realize that I have since gone on to blabber about TV and such I have been watching while Katie is gone. Three fucking days and we are headed back to Minnesota for a while. Booya!
Peace,
MB-K
The best thing that happened today was that, while I was in the middle of doing an immense amount of work very quickly in an attempt to make up for the incompetence of my surroundings. Luckily that work all involved standing at the back counter loading film and staring off into the electronics department. Most of the people in the electronics department were wads as per the usual, old women looking for Barbara Stanwick CDs and children trying to finagle their way into old Game-Unit titles for half price by pretending they saw them at Target. There was only one person who really caught my attention and he was a dude wearing a tank top that would have been perfectly suited to a Girls Gone Wild video, but was quite ill suited to what vwas most likely the hairiest back in all of human civilzation.
For some reason this dude immediately brought to mind a comparison to George the Animal Steele. I have no idea if that is the correct way to spell George the Animal Steele or if anyone out there besides Pete knows what I am talking about. Anyway, for some reason I remember George as having an incredibly hairy ass motherfucking back. More certainly than that I remember the dude eating the turnbuckle, or at least ripping the cover off of it with his teeth. So I stood there at the back counter of what Scott and I have now officially gotten to calling "Your Friendly Neighborhood Lockport Wal-Mart Digital One Hour Photo Center" which sounds really fucking awesome when you rattle it off top speed on the phone, and I thought about why I was thinking about George the Animal Steele. It seems like a simpler day, doesn't it, when your wrestling name could just be your normal name with a one-word moniker in the middle. I mean, I guess that can still be the case, but there seem to be a lot more "Shockernator" type ones today. I don't mean to apply this specifically to wrestling, especially insofar as I am sure I will get criticized by more knowledgable fan-boys-or-girls than myself. Thats all I really had to say about that fact, besides how fucking weird it was that for 5 or so minutes today I was spontaneously reminded of George the Animal Steele, whom I hadn't thought about in at least several years. I don't mean that in any sense to be sexual and if you don't believe me, I recommend you take a quick look-see-daisy at some pictures of George the Animal Steele. All the wrestlers I liked as a child were actually some pretty butt-fucking uglyass bastards, most notably a tag team I believe were called The Bushwhackers. Enough.
I watched The Others earlier, which was loaned to me by Amy at the lab. It wasn't a bad flick, but it didn't do for me what everyone seemed to think it did. My theory is that, in many ways, The Sixth Sense runied this genre of films for us all. If you haven't seen The Others and its something you are really looking forward to, I 'd skip a paragraph here, but believe me that I haven't given away anything yet, you will instantly recognize this film's indebtedness to M. Night Shamylan and others along those lines. I think it is still possible for a movie to have some spectacular switches at the ending and not be somewhat of a letdown, many of them in fact, fall into what I would call the "Usual Suspects" variety rather than "Sixth Sense" section. Mullholland Dr. and Memento are the two best examples that immediately pop into my head, but I am sure there are others. I might even say that Signs, Shamylan's Mel Gibson flick, fits closer into this category than the supernatural-ism one. Now everytime something which even faintly rings of death and ghosts or the beyond or the like and my mind immediately says "now, who in this film who does not appear to be dead but is actually a ghost." A couple more years of moves along these lines may make it possible for someone to actually have the twist be the lack of a twist, whereby the person is simply alive. A curve a la Frailty, which both fits this pattern perfectly and is one of the few supernatural thrillers post "Sixth Sense" which really was up to snuff. I think I've gone off on that before however.
Katie has been out of town this weekend, she is at a women's debate collective thingy-ma-jigg in Phoenix. The only positive I could find in the situation was that I got the opportunity to watch a fuckload of TV I had been storing up for weeks. Katie doesn't like Six Feet Under or The 4400, both shows that I have been very excited about all summer. I know she's not into sci-fi so that eliminates the USA series and I think the fact that each episode begins with someone dying in an occassionally gruesome manner turns her off what she would probably otherwise agree is a fantastic show. I have only seen moments of this program before this season and only the premiere of this season before two nights ago. I fucking adore the characters on this show, even without understanding all the back-story. If I could afford HBO series on DVD I would be picking these up as fast as possible.
I thought this was going to go in a very positive direction when I started off with George the Animal Steele, but I realize that I have since gone on to blabber about TV and such I have been watching while Katie is gone. Three fucking days and we are headed back to Minnesota for a while. Booya!
Peace,
MB-K
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
You're Just a Product of Loveliness, I Like the Groove of Your Walk, Your Talk, Your Butt
Our Monday adventure continued at the Social Security office in Niagara Falls. We had a brief moment of lost-ed-ness-osity-ism but eventually found our way there. I had thought the reason the Social Security office was in Niagara Falls had something to do with the whole border thing being there, maybe people immigrating from Canada or something. I guess, I didn't think very hard about it very hard, or, alternately, or probably additionally, I think I was entirely unaware of the variety of services offered by the Social Security office. I mean, I am glad these services are provided, and I don't know dick enough aboutn the SSA to testify as to whether they should be the ones to administer these programs. Nonetheless, it meant that we spent an hour and a half in that joint and we actually go out fairly early. Notably all we were doing was getting new cards.
I guess its naive and stupid for me to imagine that all they would do there is issue cards and send out checks and collect taxes. That would be a little excessive to have an entire agency. I guess there are two things I got out of the experience. The first was the understanding about the things they do over there, which is probably good. The second was the absolute necessity for someone to figure out a better way for me to get a new social security card, since it made no sense for us to waste the time of people actually doing important things. Maybe they should do it at the DMV or have it automated or something. I mean, I would imagine that most of this frustration is borne out of my desire to not sit in their office for one and a half hours, but regardless we got it done, with only a small bit of riffing by the dude who helped us out. We stopped by the J. Crew outlet while we were in the city of NF and got Katie some tank tops and pants and such Crew-ish stuff before heading back to Lockport and going to the insurance place again and the bank. The bank is rarely a problem, and indeed it wasn't difficult to change our names and such. The woman we were working with was a complete fucking moron and printed like 15 copies of a form which wasn't necessary, typed our account number in wrong, and consulted with Shawn, who might have well has done the fucking thing himself. She kept saying that she was confused by the fact that I was changing my name and while it was a funny enough ecuse the first 5 times or so, after that just admit that you have an erection where your brain should be and get on with it. So thats the story of Monday.
We are now watching the 2004 Teen Choice Awards and despite the fact that much of it is moronic bullshit, Paris and Nicole have been pretty good. Loves it. I do watch a majority of the programs that are relevant here and enjoy many of them, but have been disappointed that The O.C. has been about as dramatically smacked by vote splitting as any program in history. Every acting and star category has featured either Summer and Marissa or Seth and Ryan and hence were robbed by Jennifer Garner and Chad Michael Murray. When they didn't have two different people to support The OC dominated best drama and I cannot wait for the new season. The ads have me totally excited and I am worried that they will not live up to the high standards set by season one, even though they are getting some phat new writers who are no longer involved in Joss-related projects, I am hoping for no sophomoric slump. Ashlee Simpson also did a live performance of the album version of "Pieces of Me," I mean, she didn't even go the step to record a live version like most pop stars, it was just the straight album version. It was still great. Loves it.
I know this was shorter, I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing.
Peace,
MB-K
I guess its naive and stupid for me to imagine that all they would do there is issue cards and send out checks and collect taxes. That would be a little excessive to have an entire agency. I guess there are two things I got out of the experience. The first was the understanding about the things they do over there, which is probably good. The second was the absolute necessity for someone to figure out a better way for me to get a new social security card, since it made no sense for us to waste the time of people actually doing important things. Maybe they should do it at the DMV or have it automated or something. I mean, I would imagine that most of this frustration is borne out of my desire to not sit in their office for one and a half hours, but regardless we got it done, with only a small bit of riffing by the dude who helped us out. We stopped by the J. Crew outlet while we were in the city of NF and got Katie some tank tops and pants and such Crew-ish stuff before heading back to Lockport and going to the insurance place again and the bank. The bank is rarely a problem, and indeed it wasn't difficult to change our names and such. The woman we were working with was a complete fucking moron and printed like 15 copies of a form which wasn't necessary, typed our account number in wrong, and consulted with Shawn, who might have well has done the fucking thing himself. She kept saying that she was confused by the fact that I was changing my name and while it was a funny enough ecuse the first 5 times or so, after that just admit that you have an erection where your brain should be and get on with it. So thats the story of Monday.
We are now watching the 2004 Teen Choice Awards and despite the fact that much of it is moronic bullshit, Paris and Nicole have been pretty good. Loves it. I do watch a majority of the programs that are relevant here and enjoy many of them, but have been disappointed that The O.C. has been about as dramatically smacked by vote splitting as any program in history. Every acting and star category has featured either Summer and Marissa or Seth and Ryan and hence were robbed by Jennifer Garner and Chad Michael Murray. When they didn't have two different people to support The OC dominated best drama and I cannot wait for the new season. The ads have me totally excited and I am worried that they will not live up to the high standards set by season one, even though they are getting some phat new writers who are no longer involved in Joss-related projects, I am hoping for no sophomoric slump. Ashlee Simpson also did a live performance of the album version of "Pieces of Me," I mean, she didn't even go the step to record a live version like most pop stars, it was just the straight album version. It was still great. Loves it.
I know this was shorter, I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing.
Peace,
MB-K
She Thinks She Missed the Train to Mars, She's Out Back Counting Butt
We are getting to the point where my work at Wal-Mart is almost complete for the summer. I mean, I guess I still have a full week and not a signle day off until I am finished with work completely, but still I have only that week. I have 8 days as of this moment, then we are going to drive back to Minneapolis the evening Wednesday the 18th of August, getting in sometime on Thursday. That means I may even be able to go to James' bachelor party sometime on Thursday evening, though I will be skipping the tittybar portion of the evening. I find the idea of a drunken James at Deja Vu very humorous, but I will have to live it through the description of anyone I know who will be along for the ride. I find it increasingly hilarious that James' bachelor party will be the first of our friends to feature folks of the stripper persuasion, not because there is anything aboug either James or myself really makes it likely or not, but rather that in high school we discussed whether or not we would have to throw a bachelor party at Jakes for Jimmy-pop in abstentia. Regardless, I think those are the relevant plans for the immeidate furture.
I know that the Simple Life 2 is over now, but I fucking loved that program. I have determined officially that there are two Paris and Nicole-isms that I must integrate into my vocabulary at whatever the cost. I mean, two years ago I had never said either "a to the g" or "ja reuse" and they are now pretty much staples of my expressionary landscape. The first one is relatively simple and probably used by alot of people before, but not in the same sense or with the same frequency as these ladies have done it. That is of course "that's hot" when describing nothing of a sexual nature, nothing attractive, nothing fast, or not even necessarily good. In that sense its kind of like deuce, it has neither a positive or negative connotation, it can rock like the deuce or suck like the deuce. Basically, "thats hot" seems to just be a response to something, like an okay essentially. The other one might be the greatest expression since the deuce itself, and that is saying a fucking lot. My guess is that this derived from internet lingo, since it appears to have the same basic format as instant messager expresions which utilize the fact that when you type a message your username appears in front of whatever you said. Hence the expression "loves it." Obviously, this does not have the versatitlity of "thats hot" but its just great, try it out, give it a couple days. When there is something cool, just say "loves it." I cannot imagine not enjoying this expression, but I promise a full refund.
Katie and I got a piece of mail the other day, sort of addressed to us, or at least some version of our names, which was from the Minnnesota State High School League, offering us contracts to judge at the State High School Debate Tournament. Since I have been involved with debate in the state of Minnesota for a decade now, this may not seem weird to you. Even if you knew that only 6 of those years were as a judge, its a long time. I remember when I was in high school, trying to qualify for this tournament as a debater, the judges were old school, at least they seemed that way to me at the time. I mean, there were young people or younger people, my coaches were not quite 30 at that point, I think Carrie and Pete and Becky had contracts, or at least were about to get them, and they were well under 30. Nonetheless, the majority of the judiging was people who coached outside of the metro, people who had been at their programs for centuries. Not that there is anything wrong with being one of those people or that these people were not often high quality critics, but they are very much unlike me. I mean, maybe back in the day they were just like me. I don't know, but for a long time I felt like as much of a renegade figure as was possible in the activity. I don't mean that I thought I was all cool (though I did) or that I pictured myself as a James Dean outsider at the square convention, for fuck's sake I was still at a public high school at 8 am on a Saturday so I could hear 16 year olds discuss what we should do with fucking fish. Anyway, I think many people who knew me in high school as a senior or during my first few years of college would be at least somewhat surprised, as I was , that I am now in the ranks of state critics.
We were really busy yesterday running lots of really annoying errands. We finally finished off our car insurance shenanigan by signing our policy at EIGHT FUCKING FORTY FIVE. After that, we went to the DMV. I had some worries and some confidences about this process. My confidence was actually Katie's area of worry--it involved the difficulty of the male name change to reflect wedding status. We had done Katie's name change thing the week before, so I was certain we would not have problems. I mean, even if they didn't expect it, the forms and the process for chaning a woman's name on a DL is the same as doing it for a man. I was absolutely correct on this count, no one had a problem with the name change process. Every single person we spoke to made some borderline offensive comments about how Katie must have bullied me into the decision and commented about how weird it was that we were doing this, but still it wasn't hard. The stuff I was really worried about was that we wouldn't have the necessary documentation to get the car registered or they would tell us we couldn't do it with expired Minnesota plates, but none of that happened either. We were in and out of the DMV in like half an hour, which I think is a record for having three seperate transactions done at the same time.
There is more to this story, but I am literally about to pass oot. Loves it.
Peace,
MB-K
I know that the Simple Life 2 is over now, but I fucking loved that program. I have determined officially that there are two Paris and Nicole-isms that I must integrate into my vocabulary at whatever the cost. I mean, two years ago I had never said either "a to the g" or "ja reuse" and they are now pretty much staples of my expressionary landscape. The first one is relatively simple and probably used by alot of people before, but not in the same sense or with the same frequency as these ladies have done it. That is of course "that's hot" when describing nothing of a sexual nature, nothing attractive, nothing fast, or not even necessarily good. In that sense its kind of like deuce, it has neither a positive or negative connotation, it can rock like the deuce or suck like the deuce. Basically, "thats hot" seems to just be a response to something, like an okay essentially. The other one might be the greatest expression since the deuce itself, and that is saying a fucking lot. My guess is that this derived from internet lingo, since it appears to have the same basic format as instant messager expresions which utilize the fact that when you type a message your username appears in front of whatever you said. Hence the expression "loves it." Obviously, this does not have the versatitlity of "thats hot" but its just great, try it out, give it a couple days. When there is something cool, just say "loves it." I cannot imagine not enjoying this expression, but I promise a full refund.
Katie and I got a piece of mail the other day, sort of addressed to us, or at least some version of our names, which was from the Minnnesota State High School League, offering us contracts to judge at the State High School Debate Tournament. Since I have been involved with debate in the state of Minnesota for a decade now, this may not seem weird to you. Even if you knew that only 6 of those years were as a judge, its a long time. I remember when I was in high school, trying to qualify for this tournament as a debater, the judges were old school, at least they seemed that way to me at the time. I mean, there were young people or younger people, my coaches were not quite 30 at that point, I think Carrie and Pete and Becky had contracts, or at least were about to get them, and they were well under 30. Nonetheless, the majority of the judiging was people who coached outside of the metro, people who had been at their programs for centuries. Not that there is anything wrong with being one of those people or that these people were not often high quality critics, but they are very much unlike me. I mean, maybe back in the day they were just like me. I don't know, but for a long time I felt like as much of a renegade figure as was possible in the activity. I don't mean that I thought I was all cool (though I did) or that I pictured myself as a James Dean outsider at the square convention, for fuck's sake I was still at a public high school at 8 am on a Saturday so I could hear 16 year olds discuss what we should do with fucking fish. Anyway, I think many people who knew me in high school as a senior or during my first few years of college would be at least somewhat surprised, as I was , that I am now in the ranks of state critics.
We were really busy yesterday running lots of really annoying errands. We finally finished off our car insurance shenanigan by signing our policy at EIGHT FUCKING FORTY FIVE. After that, we went to the DMV. I had some worries and some confidences about this process. My confidence was actually Katie's area of worry--it involved the difficulty of the male name change to reflect wedding status. We had done Katie's name change thing the week before, so I was certain we would not have problems. I mean, even if they didn't expect it, the forms and the process for chaning a woman's name on a DL is the same as doing it for a man. I was absolutely correct on this count, no one had a problem with the name change process. Every single person we spoke to made some borderline offensive comments about how Katie must have bullied me into the decision and commented about how weird it was that we were doing this, but still it wasn't hard. The stuff I was really worried about was that we wouldn't have the necessary documentation to get the car registered or they would tell us we couldn't do it with expired Minnesota plates, but none of that happened either. We were in and out of the DMV in like half an hour, which I think is a record for having three seperate transactions done at the same time.
There is more to this story, but I am literally about to pass oot. Loves it.
Peace,
MB-K
Friday, August 06, 2004
Its Not a Habit Its Cool, I Feel the Butt
There is this new commercial for Wrangler Jeans that is on TV these days and if you are among us in the lucky tivo-dvr crowd or you don't watch alot of hick TV (pretty much NASCAR or the WB really) you may not have seen it. Regardless, the commercial features a song that I believe is by Sheryl Crow and is entitled "Steve McQueen". It is pretty much the only interesting thing currently on the Wal-Mart TV network and since they seem to recognize this as well, it plays about once every 15 seconds. It is the one of the best things about being at work recently. Today was not a good day at work, the whole experience kind of sucked. Basically, there was a woman who worked at the store who passed away last night. When I arrived Amy told me that the place was kinda odd that day largely because this had happened and everyone was pretty depressed. I didn't really know her very well, but she was apparently very nice. All we had heard at this point was that she went home early yesterday because she had a migraine. Everyone sort of figured that it was some sort of aneuresym like thing, and while that isn't an extraordinarily common thing to happen to a 27 year old woman, it isn't entirely unfeasible.
One of the women in the lab knew her pretty well so we weren't surprised that she wasn't in the lab for the first couple hours of her shift. The corporate office had sent in grief counselors, one of the few Wal-Mart corporate policies I can support, though its pretty standard for pretty much every corporation of decent size I would believe. When that woman returned to the lab we found out that those people who were back talking to the grief counselors had recently heard that the woman did not die of an aneurysm, but instead was murdered. Thats all I know at this point, but its pretty fucking weird and a little disturbing. Since I had a little time to think about it this afternoon, I realized that it was actually less frightening when I knew that the woman had been killed when I thought she had died of an aneurysm, I think I have an etnirely unjustified belief that people who get murdered tend to have some involvement in their death, not that they do something to justify it or encourage it, but that the chances of you getting murdered are pretty low if you live in this country, and don't put yourself in dangerous situations. That may be entirely false and is probably related to the whole American dream you get what you pay for, bootstraps yadda yadda nonsense, but whatever.
Amish in the City is an awesome show. I mean awesome. The UPN rarely knows shit about shit, but my feeling is that there is one dude or dudette who is way too smart and way too cool to be working at the fucking UPN who pushes or produces or creates the few good shows they have. That was probably the same dude or dudette who booked Buffy and kept it around, versus the morons at The WB for instance. Because there is no fucking way that the people responsible for The Player came up with Amish or ANTM. When they hit babe, they put it oot of the park. Regardless, some of these people are great, seem really fun, intelligent, and loyal. Mose, for instance, is the breakout star of the summer in my mind, though probably not as good as Seth Cohen was last summer (side note, Fox is already giving me televisual blueballs with the ads for The OC, which, with Angel's demise and the absence of a Sopranos season, might be my second favorite program).
Katie made a cake tonight, it was just a box cake that someone gave her as part of a shower gift I believe, but it is tasty. I have been really in the mood for cakey sweets recently and it hit the spot. We haven't had any cookies or anything, not even really any candy to speak of and since I have been attempting to excercise on a regular basis the lack of sugar kills me. I have roxored the bike we got from my rentavos and have biked at least 11 miles each day. I am aiming to add some other excercises in there, but I would really prefer to have some comfortable place that is not my living room to do it. There is in fact a Gold's Gym that opened up in Williamsville right down, but since I can't afford a meal at the Golden Fucking Arches, I sure as hell ain't going to be able to afford those dues.
But I do have some good news, I saved a bunch of money on car insurance. I'm not using that as a lame transition, I seriously did save a bunch of money on car insurance, but not with Geico. Anyway, this agent dude found us a sweet fucking policy and we are actually going to be able to afford all the shit ass car expenses associated with the state of New York. I hate not living in Minnesota by the way, even if that be in name only, because I don't like not having MN license plates and not having to worry about the assishness consistently imposed on the rest of the state because it happens to contain NYC. Fucking city kids, screwing everything up for the psuedo-rural suburbs of an industrial shithole named after a beautifully large charging herd animal nearly driven extinct in the early days of the United States of America we know today. Ass.
I have to work early, I know this was unconnected nonsense. I'm still getting back into the swing. Anyway, sleep calls like a drunken APK.
Peace,
MB-K
One of the women in the lab knew her pretty well so we weren't surprised that she wasn't in the lab for the first couple hours of her shift. The corporate office had sent in grief counselors, one of the few Wal-Mart corporate policies I can support, though its pretty standard for pretty much every corporation of decent size I would believe. When that woman returned to the lab we found out that those people who were back talking to the grief counselors had recently heard that the woman did not die of an aneurysm, but instead was murdered. Thats all I know at this point, but its pretty fucking weird and a little disturbing. Since I had a little time to think about it this afternoon, I realized that it was actually less frightening when I knew that the woman had been killed when I thought she had died of an aneurysm, I think I have an etnirely unjustified belief that people who get murdered tend to have some involvement in their death, not that they do something to justify it or encourage it, but that the chances of you getting murdered are pretty low if you live in this country, and don't put yourself in dangerous situations. That may be entirely false and is probably related to the whole American dream you get what you pay for, bootstraps yadda yadda nonsense, but whatever.
Amish in the City is an awesome show. I mean awesome. The UPN rarely knows shit about shit, but my feeling is that there is one dude or dudette who is way too smart and way too cool to be working at the fucking UPN who pushes or produces or creates the few good shows they have. That was probably the same dude or dudette who booked Buffy and kept it around, versus the morons at The WB for instance. Because there is no fucking way that the people responsible for The Player came up with Amish or ANTM. When they hit babe, they put it oot of the park. Regardless, some of these people are great, seem really fun, intelligent, and loyal. Mose, for instance, is the breakout star of the summer in my mind, though probably not as good as Seth Cohen was last summer (side note, Fox is already giving me televisual blueballs with the ads for The OC, which, with Angel's demise and the absence of a Sopranos season, might be my second favorite program).
Katie made a cake tonight, it was just a box cake that someone gave her as part of a shower gift I believe, but it is tasty. I have been really in the mood for cakey sweets recently and it hit the spot. We haven't had any cookies or anything, not even really any candy to speak of and since I have been attempting to excercise on a regular basis the lack of sugar kills me. I have roxored the bike we got from my rentavos and have biked at least 11 miles each day. I am aiming to add some other excercises in there, but I would really prefer to have some comfortable place that is not my living room to do it. There is in fact a Gold's Gym that opened up in Williamsville right down, but since I can't afford a meal at the Golden Fucking Arches, I sure as hell ain't going to be able to afford those dues.
But I do have some good news, I saved a bunch of money on car insurance. I'm not using that as a lame transition, I seriously did save a bunch of money on car insurance, but not with Geico. Anyway, this agent dude found us a sweet fucking policy and we are actually going to be able to afford all the shit ass car expenses associated with the state of New York. I hate not living in Minnesota by the way, even if that be in name only, because I don't like not having MN license plates and not having to worry about the assishness consistently imposed on the rest of the state because it happens to contain NYC. Fucking city kids, screwing everything up for the psuedo-rural suburbs of an industrial shithole named after a beautifully large charging herd animal nearly driven extinct in the early days of the United States of America we know today. Ass.
I have to work early, I know this was unconnected nonsense. I'm still getting back into the swing. Anyway, sleep calls like a drunken APK.
Peace,
MB-K
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
Its the Eye of the Tiger, Its the Thrill of the Butt
So the other day, before I went to work, I saw my favorite commerical on a break from Sportscenter. I have seen this commercial before, but I am pretty sure it was the last musical thing I heard before I went to work on Friday or Saturday or whichever day that was. It was, of course, the Starbucks "Glenn Glenn Glenn" commercial. The funniest part is of course the "Roy Roy Roy" line that concludes the ad. I really wish there were more lyrics to that tune, because they are probably better than the original ditty. Well, at some point, probably watching some movie or something, Katie heard the actual Rocky version of that song. Apparently she had not heard it before and for at least the weekend, was in love with it. It was a very odd blast from the past, to see someone 20+ years old hearing a song like that, which seems to have been almost an iconic pop-rock song when I was a child, for what was essentially the first time. I don't think she has seen the doubleshot espresso commercial since she started listening to the Rocky soundtrack, but maybe she will appreciate it more. The other surprsing thing about that moment was that Katie had also never seen the film from which that song hails, fucking Rocky. I mean, I can understand not seeing the sequels with Mr T or Hulk Hogan, or Dolph Lundgren, but the fucking original. All the Adrian jokes on every episode of Sesame Street would even be lost to her. Anyway.
I even remember having this song on what was arguably my favorite tape of all time. I bet I could find alot of these songs online, but I have never really tried. Regardless the tape was like Alvin and Chipmunks Sing the Silver Screen or something like that and it included A+C covers of Eye of the Tiger, Fame, and, what was probably my personal favorite, Chariots of Fire. You may be thinking, its not easy to cover Chariots of Fire, since it has no lyrics. That is the genius behind this cover. It begins as a humming cover, Alvin Simon and Theodore doing the "hmm, hm, hm, hm,hm, hmmm, hm, hm, hm, hm, hm,hm." and then progressing to some dialogue about the lack of lyrics and the awkwardness of covering a lyric-less tune, especially when the cover band in question is a three-person chipmunk choir. Damn, I really need to get my hands on that shit.
We had some tasty sweet corn for dinner just now, it wasn't as good as the sweet corn I had at the fiesta de bachelores, but it was hella good. I guess Minnesota is not known nationally for its corn, thats the sort of thing you associate with Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska. I make a distinction between being known for your corn, like feed corn and shit, and your sweet corn. Iowa and Kansas, there's your feed corn, but Minnesota sweet corn cannot fucking be beat. I mean, you get a good grill going and slap that sweet corn on there, let it carmelize up and slather it in sweet cream Wisconsin butter, yummi-dee-dum-dinger. We had cheeseburgers as the other significant dinner item, which made me at least think of all the Minnesota barbecues that should be filling our summer nights and are instead replaced by indoor pasta dinners. Not that there is anything wrong with that, I just get culinarily nostalgic very easy. The corn has also reminded me of the place where one obtains the world's greatest sweet corn, the rapidly approaching Minnesota State Fair. While it is August, and technically the fair is right around the corner, I will still withhold my commentary until we get closer to the great Minnesota get-together.
I have decided that it is really unfortunate that I didn't get into poker until the fairly recent past. I know I am not an incredble poker player, but I also recognize that I haven't played alot of poker. Everything you read and see, just the anecdotal evidence even, demonstrates that smart people that learn and practice and study are good at the game of poker. In some ways the professional poker community reminds me alot of the debate community, a really insular activity (well, I guess its becoming less insular, but still, fairly tight) filled with really intelligent people who love to do one certain thing that many people outside that community don't understand. Those people in it though, tend to feel an intense passion for it, they write alot about it, do it to excess, let their whole lives get wrapped up in it. I also think there is probably a propensity for both of these activities, more so than sports lets say, or community groups, for the people involved to be compulsive in not always positive ways. That sometimes manifests in working 80 hours a week on what it is that they love, be that cutting cards or playing cards, but often also shows itself in substance abuse, emotional issues etc. Nothing about substance abuse is inherent to debate or poker, but my guess is that you will find more active or recovering alchoholics, narcoholics and the like at the NDT than you would at a comparable event in the world of comic books for instance, which in other ways can be thought of as a similarly insular, intense, and often all-consuming activity.
I suppose that both poker and debate have competition at their core and since they don't involve the physical use of the body in the ways football or basketball (to choose but a few examples) do, maybe people who are driven strictly towards competition but not towards the perfection of the body, or against the abuse of the body, lean towards them. I guess you could further say that they go to the opposite extreme of psychology and intelligence, but I wouldn't accept the argument from anyone else that athletics, especially competitive team sports, don't require those two attributes every bit as much as the NDT does. I think poker and debate both place some emphasis on "lying", though obviously without the connotations that word might regularly enjoy. That lying is employed to win, though for different reasons I think. Rarely in debate do you activiely attempt to bluff your opponent, though you may focus on some argument in the block when you actually intend to go for the 30 seconds of ASPEC in the 1NR. Instead your bluffs are usually involved in maintaining the truthfulness of an argument to a critic that you may actually believe or know to be false. Picking and choosing is important in both as well, from starting hands to starting arguments, you've got loose debaters who read 12 off all of which are crap, versus a couple more specific and quality debates.
Anyway, maybe I will come up with more to say on that subject at some point, I could even think of writing about it at some point, but not know. The only other item I really had to mention was that of Ricky Williams, who went all Robert Smith on the bit and retired from the NFL at the age of 27. I heard about this last sunday, which is apprently when it happened. I was in the car and heard them say as they came back from commercials "Ricky Williams has retired. Not the crappy washed up never any good Ricky Williams. The dread-locked Miami Dolphins Ricky Williams, who, oh yeah, plays in the same division as the Bills. We're taking your calls on that." I had my opinion on that issue then and I have thought and read about it a good bit more since. There are a number of factors which have gone into his decision, from the interviews he gave and such. Obviously the dude likes the ganj, you could have gathered that from the dreadlocks, the going to Texas, and the testing positive for marijuana three times. He has the time now to spend in Amsterdam and Thailand and Vancouver, some of the places he has apparently explicitly listed in his itinerary for the trip around the world. I have some sympathy for the argument that its not cool for him to let his teammates down at this point. Tell them now that this will be your last season, play it out, then retire. If you do it now you fuck your team over, they don't have much chance to sign a back of your quality (not that there is one available in the NFL) or even a true NFL starter. At least give them a chance to trade or draft someone, you have an offense which has no passing game to speak of (wait, the addition of the mighty AJ Feely...) and now starts Travis Miner, I'm glad I haven't had a fantasty draft yet.
Anyway, I have some respect for that argument. I have a tiny, almost miniscule non-existant respect for the other argument, well, a version of the other argument, psuedo-articulated by Mike Ditka on SportsCenter the other day. Ricky Williams is a motherfucker who pretty much has it all. He has a job millions of people in the country would kill for, that countless people want, try, and can't do. He is giving up, not only a huge amount of money, but one of the rarest opportunities on the planet and maybe its like the dude who quit on Survivor, its not okay to waste something you got to do that we didn't. That said this argument is easily defeated by the several true responses I have been dying to hear someone in the media articulate. In the first place, Ricky didn't get lucky for any of this, he worked his fucking ass off. I mean, yes, he is physically gifted, he has a perfectly built body for a running back, his natural muscle mass is enormous, and he's fast. Those things said he has trained about as hard as anyone in the world, played a game which requires non-stop attention to his body, puts him through constant pain, and isn't easy on the mental side of things either. He earned it, he wasn't chosen out of a hat.
More importantly, dude wasn't happy. Everyone who knew him has said that he had problems, he had issues, he didn't want to do this for his whole life, he has always felt constrained by the football lifestyle, and that he wasn't able to lead the life he wanted. Admittedly, he didn't handle it as well as Robert Smith and he probably isn't doing it for the primarily intellectual reasons, but still, he wasn't happy. One of the things I have always really respected about my father was the courage it must have taken to go finish college, and go to law school as a 40ish year old man with a wife and family. Three school age kids, and more than a couple bills I'm sure. Most people I would imagine, me included more than the average folk given my propensity to go with the flizzle, would have toughed it out, at least for another three years. Maybe others would be convinced by the money, the respect, the not wanting to let people down. It takes alot to give something good up for something better, I like to hope that if someday I found a job I really loved and thought I could pull off, I would have the couage to follow my dad's example, but I don't think either half of that condition is about to be fulfilled.
All that said, Ricky has enough money, enough fame, and enough skill, to make sure this is not an issue. He will live incredibly comfortably, he will have a great trip around the world, smoke the finest varieties in all the land, and grow some of finest dreads this side of Jamaica. He doesn't give a fuck about my respect, nor do I know or like him enough to give hum any unconditional respect, but he has my props for getting out of a career which most people would never give up because its not what he needs. This is essentially a sidenote to the fact that I am uber-pumped for football season. Training camp baby.
Peace,
MB-K
I even remember having this song on what was arguably my favorite tape of all time. I bet I could find alot of these songs online, but I have never really tried. Regardless the tape was like Alvin and Chipmunks Sing the Silver Screen or something like that and it included A+C covers of Eye of the Tiger, Fame, and, what was probably my personal favorite, Chariots of Fire. You may be thinking, its not easy to cover Chariots of Fire, since it has no lyrics. That is the genius behind this cover. It begins as a humming cover, Alvin Simon and Theodore doing the "hmm, hm, hm, hm,hm, hmmm, hm, hm, hm, hm, hm,hm." and then progressing to some dialogue about the lack of lyrics and the awkwardness of covering a lyric-less tune, especially when the cover band in question is a three-person chipmunk choir. Damn, I really need to get my hands on that shit.
We had some tasty sweet corn for dinner just now, it wasn't as good as the sweet corn I had at the fiesta de bachelores, but it was hella good. I guess Minnesota is not known nationally for its corn, thats the sort of thing you associate with Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska. I make a distinction between being known for your corn, like feed corn and shit, and your sweet corn. Iowa and Kansas, there's your feed corn, but Minnesota sweet corn cannot fucking be beat. I mean, you get a good grill going and slap that sweet corn on there, let it carmelize up and slather it in sweet cream Wisconsin butter, yummi-dee-dum-dinger. We had cheeseburgers as the other significant dinner item, which made me at least think of all the Minnesota barbecues that should be filling our summer nights and are instead replaced by indoor pasta dinners. Not that there is anything wrong with that, I just get culinarily nostalgic very easy. The corn has also reminded me of the place where one obtains the world's greatest sweet corn, the rapidly approaching Minnesota State Fair. While it is August, and technically the fair is right around the corner, I will still withhold my commentary until we get closer to the great Minnesota get-together.
I have decided that it is really unfortunate that I didn't get into poker until the fairly recent past. I know I am not an incredble poker player, but I also recognize that I haven't played alot of poker. Everything you read and see, just the anecdotal evidence even, demonstrates that smart people that learn and practice and study are good at the game of poker. In some ways the professional poker community reminds me alot of the debate community, a really insular activity (well, I guess its becoming less insular, but still, fairly tight) filled with really intelligent people who love to do one certain thing that many people outside that community don't understand. Those people in it though, tend to feel an intense passion for it, they write alot about it, do it to excess, let their whole lives get wrapped up in it. I also think there is probably a propensity for both of these activities, more so than sports lets say, or community groups, for the people involved to be compulsive in not always positive ways. That sometimes manifests in working 80 hours a week on what it is that they love, be that cutting cards or playing cards, but often also shows itself in substance abuse, emotional issues etc. Nothing about substance abuse is inherent to debate or poker, but my guess is that you will find more active or recovering alchoholics, narcoholics and the like at the NDT than you would at a comparable event in the world of comic books for instance, which in other ways can be thought of as a similarly insular, intense, and often all-consuming activity.
I suppose that both poker and debate have competition at their core and since they don't involve the physical use of the body in the ways football or basketball (to choose but a few examples) do, maybe people who are driven strictly towards competition but not towards the perfection of the body, or against the abuse of the body, lean towards them. I guess you could further say that they go to the opposite extreme of psychology and intelligence, but I wouldn't accept the argument from anyone else that athletics, especially competitive team sports, don't require those two attributes every bit as much as the NDT does. I think poker and debate both place some emphasis on "lying", though obviously without the connotations that word might regularly enjoy. That lying is employed to win, though for different reasons I think. Rarely in debate do you activiely attempt to bluff your opponent, though you may focus on some argument in the block when you actually intend to go for the 30 seconds of ASPEC in the 1NR. Instead your bluffs are usually involved in maintaining the truthfulness of an argument to a critic that you may actually believe or know to be false. Picking and choosing is important in both as well, from starting hands to starting arguments, you've got loose debaters who read 12 off all of which are crap, versus a couple more specific and quality debates.
Anyway, maybe I will come up with more to say on that subject at some point, I could even think of writing about it at some point, but not know. The only other item I really had to mention was that of Ricky Williams, who went all Robert Smith on the bit and retired from the NFL at the age of 27. I heard about this last sunday, which is apprently when it happened. I was in the car and heard them say as they came back from commercials "Ricky Williams has retired. Not the crappy washed up never any good Ricky Williams. The dread-locked Miami Dolphins Ricky Williams, who, oh yeah, plays in the same division as the Bills. We're taking your calls on that." I had my opinion on that issue then and I have thought and read about it a good bit more since. There are a number of factors which have gone into his decision, from the interviews he gave and such. Obviously the dude likes the ganj, you could have gathered that from the dreadlocks, the going to Texas, and the testing positive for marijuana three times. He has the time now to spend in Amsterdam and Thailand and Vancouver, some of the places he has apparently explicitly listed in his itinerary for the trip around the world. I have some sympathy for the argument that its not cool for him to let his teammates down at this point. Tell them now that this will be your last season, play it out, then retire. If you do it now you fuck your team over, they don't have much chance to sign a back of your quality (not that there is one available in the NFL) or even a true NFL starter. At least give them a chance to trade or draft someone, you have an offense which has no passing game to speak of (wait, the addition of the mighty AJ Feely...) and now starts Travis Miner, I'm glad I haven't had a fantasty draft yet.
Anyway, I have some respect for that argument. I have a tiny, almost miniscule non-existant respect for the other argument, well, a version of the other argument, psuedo-articulated by Mike Ditka on SportsCenter the other day. Ricky Williams is a motherfucker who pretty much has it all. He has a job millions of people in the country would kill for, that countless people want, try, and can't do. He is giving up, not only a huge amount of money, but one of the rarest opportunities on the planet and maybe its like the dude who quit on Survivor, its not okay to waste something you got to do that we didn't. That said this argument is easily defeated by the several true responses I have been dying to hear someone in the media articulate. In the first place, Ricky didn't get lucky for any of this, he worked his fucking ass off. I mean, yes, he is physically gifted, he has a perfectly built body for a running back, his natural muscle mass is enormous, and he's fast. Those things said he has trained about as hard as anyone in the world, played a game which requires non-stop attention to his body, puts him through constant pain, and isn't easy on the mental side of things either. He earned it, he wasn't chosen out of a hat.
More importantly, dude wasn't happy. Everyone who knew him has said that he had problems, he had issues, he didn't want to do this for his whole life, he has always felt constrained by the football lifestyle, and that he wasn't able to lead the life he wanted. Admittedly, he didn't handle it as well as Robert Smith and he probably isn't doing it for the primarily intellectual reasons, but still, he wasn't happy. One of the things I have always really respected about my father was the courage it must have taken to go finish college, and go to law school as a 40ish year old man with a wife and family. Three school age kids, and more than a couple bills I'm sure. Most people I would imagine, me included more than the average folk given my propensity to go with the flizzle, would have toughed it out, at least for another three years. Maybe others would be convinced by the money, the respect, the not wanting to let people down. It takes alot to give something good up for something better, I like to hope that if someday I found a job I really loved and thought I could pull off, I would have the couage to follow my dad's example, but I don't think either half of that condition is about to be fulfilled.
All that said, Ricky has enough money, enough fame, and enough skill, to make sure this is not an issue. He will live incredibly comfortably, he will have a great trip around the world, smoke the finest varieties in all the land, and grow some of finest dreads this side of Jamaica. He doesn't give a fuck about my respect, nor do I know or like him enough to give hum any unconditional respect, but he has my props for getting out of a career which most people would never give up because its not what he needs. This is essentially a sidenote to the fact that I am uber-pumped for football season. Training camp baby.
Peace,
MB-K
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)