October 2008 Archives

One of my favorite things about the 2000 election, was Will Farrell imitating George W on Saturday Night Live. Made up words like strategery come to mind. Then, came the 2008 election. Most guys that I knew were already in love with Tina Fey from 30 Rock, but her Sarah Palin impression put her into the next stratosphere.

And now friends, they’ve joined forces.

The best line by far is when George W admits he has declared the oval office a bummer free zone.

I grew up on the east coast in a small city called Syracuse. Although people in Syracuse will say it’s located in central New York, most folks from NYC would classify it as upstate New York. Then again, most New Yorkers will classify anything north of the Bronx as upstate. For the last 4 years, I’ve been out in Seattle. Quite a different experience from Syracuse, but an even bigger one from NYC.

While spending the week out in New York city, I’ve put together a small list of the ways New York differs from Seattle.

Enjoy, and chime in if I missed anything.

1. Street crossing against the Don’t Walk sign is expected and encouraged. You do it with at least 2 dozen others, usually including 2-3 cops. If oncoming traffic gets too close, you usually slap one or two of the cars on the hood.
2. No New Yorker will ever smile at you as they pass by. And they definitely won’t say “hi”.
3. People go to symphonies on a week night, and the guys break out their best tweed blazers with elbow pads.
4. Free Wi-Fi is not something your local Laundromat owner has ever thought of, or even understands.
5. One drop of rain = thousands of umbrellas appear.
6. When ordering out for lunch, the number of restaurants you can choose from within a 1 mile radius is approximately 3,248.
7. The Apple Store is a tourist attraction, and no one has ever heard of a Zune.
8. Coffee is fuel, not arm candy.
9. Women in New York wear stilettos, a designer purse, a skirt, and no jacket in 20 degree weather. In Seattle, the ladies sport flip flops, a backpack (with Nalgene bottle), jeans (with stubble underneath), and a North Face fleece… in 45 degree weather.

In an attempt to stimulate their patrons’ brains, the Westin has been posting signs throughout their hotel with various tips for life, love, and increasing one’s intellectual horsepower. The latest, and perhaps most disturbing, includes a math problem posted on the shower wall. Naturally, updated daily.

Can you solve it? It’s actually not as hard as it seems.

My favorite part is how they have been periodically substituting in other signs that don’t have math problems at all. Instead, they tell me to “Take your workout to the next level by using Wii Fit”. Did they really not expect me to notice such blatant advertising?

P.S. – when you click to see the enlarged version, you’ll likely see the answer written upside down on the bottom left corner.

One of the trends I’ve seen lately, is that it’s just plain unfashionable to be a conservative. Darn it all, W, you’ve just made it so hard for people that lean to the right to be loud and proud.

It’s kind of like shopping at K-Mart when you’re a kid.

A lot of kids were actually forced into shopping there, but it would be the last thing they would ever admit. Covering up those Wrangler jeans any way possible was a daily a ritual for me. Maybe if I just get a bigger waist size, they’ll sag a bit and won’t seem so high-watterish! Or, so I thought.

The worst (and best) thing that would ever happen, though, would be if you were discovered at a K-Mart by a classmate. It’d be the worst, of course, because you were definitely a K-Mart shopper. And the best, because now, you have a secret ally. And even if he’s the worst bully in school, he’ll never accuse you of shopping at K-Mart anymore – because, naturally, you both know he shops there too.

The political equivalent to that is happening, and I’m finding all sorts of “K-Mart shoppers” through digital means.

I’ve seen a bunch of posts on Twitter like the above, and it just makes me smile. Maybe because now I know, deep down, I have an ally.

I’m spending this week in New York City on business. I had trouble getting comfortable on the flight over (which might have had something to do with an older Asian woman who was trying to cuddle with me), so I decided to try to bring some tranquility to seat 31F with some music.

I’m usually a shuffle guy, in fact I’m almost always a shuffle guy. It’s funny because I’m generally decisive. For some reason, though – I enjoy music when it’s random. After doing that for about 5 minutes, I found that I had skipped through about 50 tracks – and at that rate it might have been a little difficult to fit in some sleep. So I, for that afternoon, became an album guy.

The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner. It was Ben Folds Five’s third and final studio album. I’ve been thinking about that record a lot because they recently reunited to play it front to back (and I failed miserably at getting tickets). I have to say, on the whole, I never really liked Messner as much as the other Ben Folds Five albums. It did, though, have some of my favorite songs of theirs – like Don’t Change Your Plans and Army.

But for the first time, I got it. I understand why that album might actually be their best.

I had heard an interview with Ben a while back discussing this record. He had said it was originally written and recorded as all one song. There were long instrumentals that transitioned from one track to the next. When I listened all the way though, it became something that was much more than the sum of its parts. Songs like Mess and Hospital Song that never really did it for me, now became an intricate part of the album’s story.

That album was meant to be listened to, in order, from start to finish. Like a piece of classical music written with many movements, each piece building the previous. Its finish is even poetic and ironic (knowing their breakup was months away), with the last line of the last song Lullaby having the simple and and unapologetic words “let the moonlight take the lid off your dreams.”

It’s strange, because it’s taken me 8 years of listening to it to get to this point. And now, I can’t seem to take that album off repeat.