New Haven

It is somehow ironic that I should have such warm feelings for a place where, in retrospect, I must have been so unhappy. Around most very corner in the City of Elms is the memory of a longing, most of them routinely sated, no matter who said what. It is not unlike the way in which the approval of those who reject me is so important to me.

In so many ways, New Haven has flavor and texture, where Princeton is all sustenance and presentation.



Went to the Doodle, had cheeseburgers.

Burning

It's easy to watch TV and see fires burning in the California hills and just be like: "Well, that sucks". At least it's easy for me.

But it gets kind of different when you're talking to someone who's out there. A few minutes back I was on the phone with some guy in a seaside town right close to San Diego. This is a guy who is the mastermind of a 3-in-1 flashlight that has a bright light to blind someone 20 feet away, point a targeting laser at them, and blast them with some hardcore pepper spray so they're really blind and writhing in pain on the ground. Sounds like a bummer, but it beats being shot dead. And here's this longtime military and then postmilitary guy who's probably close to really retiring if he's not retired, with a sweet crib down by the sea which is on the point of total and utter destruction. Talking to someone right in the eye of the storm puts it all in perspective, that's for sure.

Does the Universe Have a (Special) Purpose?

The John Templeton Foundation has inaugurated a series of "conversations" on "Big Questions" populated by a variety of high-end talking heads from science and other disciplines, but mostly from science because, as we all know, scientists are just smarter and can switch hit to the speculative domain of the humanities much more easily than we can science because, after all, their abstruse noodlings are empirically grounded.

Sadly, all too often these, the talkingest scientific heads of a generation, can scarcely surpass the presumed logic of one Navin R. Johnson, Steve Martin's Jerk, who might have answered the Templeton's question: "I too have a special purpose!"*

David Gelernter of Yale states resoundingly "yes", the universe has a purpose:
"Namely, to defeat and rise above our animal natures; to create goodness, beauty, and holiness
where only physics and animal life once existed; to create what might be (if we succeed) the only tiny pinprick of goodness in the universe–which is otherwise (so far as we know) morally null and void." OK yeah yeah. This is scientist taking license pretty bad, but it gets worse:

"Why seek goodness?

Because most humans desire goodness. For most (not all!) humans, this urge is easily ignored in the short term, but nearly impossible to uproot over the long haul."

This is all nicey nice, but it's not a strong argument for anything, and he's at least pretending to operate in an argumentative vein.

Now, we gotta give the guy credit not because he's Joe Scientist, but because he's one of the people who got seriously mauled by a package from the Unibomber, causing him serious damage to one hand, to which he alludes at the end of his little disquisition: "But as Job teaches us, we must play the hand we are dealt." So he's utterly admirable for his generosity of spirit, but really pretty lame on the depth of thought side of things.

Lots of others (Jane Goodall, Elie Wiesel) hold forth on the question of purpose with varying degrees of interest and sophistication, but in the end it just gets boring.


*I.e. a penis.

Serenity

This movie, i.e. the one called Serenity, rocks. What else to say? Star Wars knock-off with a no-star cast and a kick-ass heroine. Gotta love it.

Though my life is certainly much improved with my own parking spot at Princeton Junction and the double-decker trains they got running in the morning. Seats for all, seemingly. It's like I've had an upgrade, save for the fact that I'm commuting to Manhattan. We'll see how long this lasts.

Walnuts

There are black walnut trees in our backyard, and they are toxic to all too many plants, as are their leaves and nuts and other spawn. So each year when that stuff comes down we rake and clean it up and haul it to the curb.

The walnuts aren't big on being raked, so we have to go after them with hands and receptacles. When a child is still young enough to be gullible, he/she may be duped into joining in. As it was with Natalie, so it is with Graham, giving us a mild "family togetherness" moment.

But Graham has proven lucky. This year the walnuts can be put into buckets, as compared with prior years when there were seemingly thousands and we had to put them in garbage cans and forcibly haul them to the curb. I remember clearly saying at the time that the massive production of nuts was a homeostatic response to draught or global warming, that the tree gave off all these nuts because it wanted to preserve the species by reproducing (foiled!). But this year is kind of a draught too, what gives?

We should perhaps do some research or ask an arborist. But what fun is there in that?

Eyeballs and Chicken Pot Pie

There was an article in the Sunday Times Business Section about how there was an outbreak of MacNasty salmonella which befell people who had eaten undernuked chicken pot pies. There were, like, 150 instances of this nationwide. First off, let me say hats off to the CDC for aggregating that data and figuring out the common etiology of all this salmonella. This is truly an unironic instance of our tax dollars at work.

So the manufacturers (Conagra and others, methinks) clearly know that this is a problem of labelling and communication on pie boxes, letting consumers know about the different power ratings of microwaves and how much nuking it takes for each type to kill the little boogers.

But.....

The real problem isn't just getting the right text on the box, which would satisfy Legal. No, you've gotta be sure people will read the box. Product boxes are competing for eyeballs with all the other millions of ways marketers are trying to get to consumers. The same Business Section had an article on how Nike and others are veering further and further from traditional push marketing into all kinds of ways to build customer affinity. A little salmonella might get people to sit up and read, but for how long?

Shoot Out the Lights

Released in 1982, this was to be Richard and Linda Thompson's last album as a pair, and one of their last acts as a married couple. Critics go back and forth as to whether the album is "about" the upcoming divorce, which is kind of irrelevant. The break was surely in the making, as these things don't typically pop up overnight, even if the affair that brings them to light may.

And so, the record, maker of numerous best ever lists. For me it's all encapsulated in the last minute of song two, "Walking on a Wire." With Linda in the lead, Richard steps in to sing a "harmonic" back up, and all of a sudden they're singing together but apart like nothing you've ever heard, two strong, expressive voices fighting for supremacy, warbling and weaving around each other like the Blue Angels on Oxycontin. And there's undoubtedly some foretaste of a marriage on the way out here, however comely and compelling the form, like a vocal shard of the early Andy Gill gliding into a ballad.

Ron Paul on Nassau St.

Well, not exactly. Just saw a non High-Net Worth black woman and her probable teenage son (in beltless baggies and a sweatshirt, not prepped out like Obama-Cosby junior) carrying a big Ron Paul placard and passing out campaign lit. This was surprising to me. Ron Paul's political vision does not seem like one which would be huge amongst the lower-income of-color set. Were this woman and her younger companion in fact paid political operatives? That would be classic disruptive agitprop.

It makes me feel like Ron Paul is a conservative version of the creeping leftist infection of John Malkovich's The Dancer Upstairs. If you haven't seen this movie, RENT IT NOW, and then you'll know what I mean.

RDU

Trapped beneath a television blaring ESPN, surrounded by dudes with hair of note both facial and other. Hard to think.

Just left my laptop at security after the security fellows had to do an "exterior check" on my back, looking for what, explosive traces? Pretty scary. And it's not even Halloween yet. Gotta run.

Tech 2007

Down at the Council on Entrepreneurial Development's Tech 2007 conference, it flew fast and furious. Over here Dayjet CEO Ed Iacobucci played George Bush on the aircraft carrier, declaring victory over a complex optimization problem after 52 live flights. Yeah yeah. Talk to me after 10,000. He also talked in detail about his personal history, which was really enlightening.

In the exhibition hall some dudes displayed some mushrooms they used to grow drugs. Mmmmhmmm. There was all manner of other boring medical crap, and my heart pined for some financial apps. They most slam-bam med app was this 360 degree modelling thing that looked like it targeted cosmetic surgery. Why am I not shocked? Magnus Health Portal is a sleeper. Good technology, but better business model and attitude.

The CTO of Nokia/Ericsson song and danced about the future of the cell phone. Soon, you'll be able to buy your sandwich, drag and drop files from one phone to another, and wipe your ass with it too. There were so many features have you wonder what use it could ever be to an aging population. No doubt, telecoms and devices generally need an Oxo, somebody to have a culture oriented towards building devices targeted at the boomers and older. He showed multiple videos of what were basically commercials, which was pretty weak.

In the zone

Just flew down from Philly to NC. You would think that some kind of excitement would happen. Did not.

Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen. Cheerwine. Next Dip's. Livin the life...

(4 hours later)
Actually, going to Dip's brought back a bunch of memories. Somehow this restaurant has gotten by for 20-odd years, but the service always sucks and tonight the food was basically no good too. The cornbread was tasty, but the barbeque was crappy and the chicken and dumplings, which I thought a signature dish, bit as well. And we waited 40 minutes for this, not because of the wait but because the cooks were having dinner. When I worked in a restaurant we ate before the shift. This place is shittily managed and would appear to basically coast on a reputation it somehow earned.

At long last

It's raining outside and it's hard to focus on anything else. Everything is dry and brown and so on, though the grass on the front lawn died, we ripped it up and planted more and the little dudes are just burgeoning.

I can't help but to feel guilty because it's much nastier dry in Chapel Hill, though the chance of relief is set at 50% tonight.

I'll see tomorrow.



In other news check out Blogger Play, which lets you monitor in "real-time" images as they are uploaded to the Blogger server. It's 2.0 at its rawest, like a visual Twitter that you don't even have to go to.

This weekend's flix

Because of the holiday, we watched to movies, not one. Crazy.

Water
This Indian film about pre-war Indian widows living together like untouchables in the olden way could have sucked, but did not. It hit some hard and honest notes without lingering on them, and the plot resisted the most pathetic of happy ending cliches, opting for some tragic / hopeful cliches instead. The white Indian chick was totally hot.

Year of the Dog
Call us suckers, with Molly Shannon at the wheel we thought this was gonna be funny. And we did laugh at times. But most of the time it was a quasi-clinical look at a descent into psychosis. With dogs. Don't watch it, even though some of the acting is flat out 'ler.

Marion Jones and UNC

I'm not in Chapel Hill, so I can't see what all the local talking heads (Chansky and whatnot) are saying, but if I were in the Athletics Department at UNC, I'd be a little concerned with my long-term track record this week. UNC has skated through years of hassling by the NCAA with no reprimands or serious cases being brought against it to my recollection. Somehow. We all know UNC isn't as pure as it likes to project, and we've seen and heard evidence.

But once the really big dawgs leave UNC, they tend to get involved in a scandal or too. Think about Lawrence Taylor and his caine, Michael Jordan and his wagering, James Worthy and them hookers. Now Marion comes along and tells us she was doing steroids at her peak moment.

Duke players, by comparison, just mess themselves up. Think Bobby Hurley and his pickup truck, Jason Richardson and his fly cycle, and Christian Laettner, Jay Bilas and the rest of the big white lunks with their generally useless selves. Grant Hill has a messed-up knee but is clean and ready to run for political office if he'll just get organized.

Something about UNC's untouchable status seems to make its big stars think they're above the law. Now lets wait to find out what they get Mia Hamm for.

The sly ones

Coming back from the phleb lab today, I tapped my brakes appropriately when I came around the bend and saw a Princeton Borough cruiser lurking there on the grass side of the street. But then, as I passed it, I could see there was no fuzz in there and it was just our tax dollars at work. The Princeton Police, with its infinite and well-rested staff and its surfeit of late-model cars, left a decoy on the side of the road.

Now, in and of itself, there's nothing really new to that, empty cop cars are often left on the side of the road as a deterrent. But usually they're visible from far away, so that they deter maximally. No no, Princeton is sneakier than that, it hides them so that -- instead of scaring drivers in a specific moment, it instills in them a general fear that there might be a cop lurking behind any corner or hedge. This is not unlike the practice of Stalin's secret police of randomly arresting and killing innocent people who had no idea what they'd done (nothing) just to instill fear in the populace at large. Admittedly, what the Princeton cops do is less fatal. OK. Fine.

But still.

A triumph!

Graham just after bedtime alerted me and then pooped in the potty for the 3rd time in a row, thereby earning himself the Thomas the Train Rock Crusher which he had been so coveting and which had been promised him. After we opened the crusher and he played for a bit, I put him in his bed again, and as I passed by his door a couple of times I heard him blowing copious kisses my way.

Now lets just see if he can keep it up.

Downtown. Not quite nostalgia.

• 8:00 AM Diner on Bway in Tribeca – Wood panelling. Lots of grey and also old people. 60ish woman reads hardcover mystery from public library, pulls out NYC DOT employee badge on a shoelace at 8:30. Fidgets with lace to get it to lay right around her neck.
  
• 10:30AM Café at W3rd and Bway – basement “stylish” bar, red paint, black toilet, smell of stale beer, not really far from He’s Not Here, just a different skin
• 11:15AM Step-down Used book store North of Houston on Mercer
  
• I don’t know the fiction authors
• Lit crit authors, not surprisingly, I do know, have not changed
• Sections for "Computers" and "Computers of the Past"
  
• 11:25 DayGlo Orange Lamborghini on Mercer in Soho. No surprises there

My loyal readers...

Will surely appreciate that I got a hit today from the following locale.

Tehran, Tehran, Iran, Islamic Republic Of,

The visitor had found me by googling "Jaguar Enhancement Cream"

Thanks, team, for helping me rope em in.

How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It)

In this biopic we learn many things about Melvin Van Peebles:

• He worked in many genres: jazz, film, fiction, television commentary, floor trading
  
• He was smart and determined and disciplined
• He had more lives than a cat, and more lovers than a dog
• He was not bereft of ego
• He influenced many

What this film does not demonstrate, however, is that he did anything particularly well, even speaking French. His masterpiece and true claim to fame (other than son Mario) Sweet Sweetback's Baaadaasssssssss Song is an important film, sure, a powerful film, sorta, but it's durned hard to watch, as I remember. Except for the sex scene. Hollywood may have cheapened and perverted it to cook up blaxploitation, but in so doing it made better movies. It's like America's version of Makaveyev's Sweet Movie or the Russian I Am Cuba or the earlier Vertov/Eisenstein days, one long stiff lecture, perhaps with sex.

The French gave made him a Knight of the Foreign Legion, but God knows what they did for Jerry Lewis, and they eat snails.

Stewart and the Phantom of Liberty

For those of you who missed it a couple of weeks back., John Stewart had Bolivian President Evo Morales on his show, with a translator, a first in my memory for a prime time show. It was pretty surreal, with echoes of Bunuel and perhaps even Woody Allen's Bananas. Morales gazes lovingly at Stewart, and speaks at once in the most delicate and high-falutin idealistic language, next in a down to earth way about accomplishments and Stewart fawns on him with his doe eyes and feeds him softballs.

It was a very odd bit of primetime TV -- , but one that could only happen on the John Stewart show, or, during Colbert's book review. Between the two of them, hosting lefties and righties alike, these two goofballs have raised the bar of popular political and intellectual discourse in ways we couldn't have dreamed of 15 years ago. Nobody puts simple farmer poet Bolivian politicians on TV. This gives us a taste of the rest of the world's political delusions, and a break from our own.

The Lumberjack's Swan Song

Went to the mall today to return a summer shirt that Mary had vetoed and pick up a flannel shirt. There were no flannel shirts to be had, and chamois was right out.

What can we say about this. Clearly, the income gap and the internet and whatnot have changed things since we were in high school, when there was a smoky anti-glamor to the construction worker and the worker in general, the days when the likes of Burt Reynolds and John Voight went around slamming pickup truck doors with tall boys in their hands in movies from Silkwood to Smoky and the Bandit to the frickin Deerhunter. A time when Bob and Doug McKenzie could at least exist. Flannel ain't cool no more.

Passport photos

(This is the kind of topic that comes of sitting at a desk all the time)

At long last I got my new passport back from the Federal Government, so I can travel. I can travel! At least, I could travel, had I more ducats.

In any case, they sent me back my old passport too with a copy of the new picture across from the old one, which was taken in early '97 when I was gearing up to go to mother Russia for dissertation work, towards the outer edge of my Manhattan period.

So lets compare and contrast. From '97 to '07 I didn't put on much weight, though, as Mary might note, I didn't lose much either. The hairline stayed largely in place, moving much less than, say, the icecaps. Most notably, the eyelid that droops a little for the sake of character now droops a little bit more. And there is a general loss of freshfacedness, replaced by a gentle tincture of malevolence, which belies an uptick in actual good-naturedness brought on by the peace and harmony of the our Garden State.

Tale of the Boogeyman

At a birthday party a couple of weeks ago for Sally, we saw some terrible shit. Her dad Fred's brother Johnny and his wife had apparently gotten in the habit of reigning in their elder boy during moments of wildness by telling him: "Your uncle Sonny is gonna get you." Now Sonny, it must be owned, reportedly broke all the bones in his face when he was younger in a bad car accident and so, in the kind words of his sister, "Isn't as handsome as he was before." But she was kind but not euphemizing, the guy looks fine, just a little different. But out of sheer laziness and stupidity, Johnny and wife turn Sonny into the boogeyman.

So here's the birthday party and here comes Johnny and his family and over there we got Sonny and.... the elder boy flips out when he sees him, and there he is, six years old wearing his soccer uniform, face planted in his mother's lap, sobbing and moaning, until they disappeared off to the bathroom or something. I cannot recall ever seeing a more reprehensible instance of parenting.

A sign of our Times

Met an old reporter for the New York Times today at an intermittently fascinating conference on Securities Lending. Grey, paunchy and somewhat curmudgeonly, studiously underdressed, he was in all rather Lou Grantish.

But mostly the guy was an object lesson in the trajectory of the papers of record, and especially this institution that is delivered to our doorstep each day, which continually morphs and shrinks, as does its cousin the Journal, which in its most recent pre-Murdoch state was consciously inching away from news towards being an opinion broker. Will the Times and the Journal eventually be wires plus magazines? Who knows. But I think my recycling container is going to get lighter and lighter and time goes on.

And what if the New Yorker too succumbs to its senescent demographic (which would include us)? Then what will become of my household?

The tomatoes of Archangelsk

Thanks to Mark Izeman of the NRDC in Moscow for forwarding this BBC story.

The Russians aren't too stressed out about climate change: "We are not panicking. Global warming is not as catastrophic for us as it might be for some other countries," Rinat Gizatullin, a spokesman for the Natural Resources Ministry, says. "If anything, we'll be even better off: as the climate warms, more of Russia's territory will be freed up for agriculture and industry."

This is much like the Bush claim that we'll just use AC when it gets hotter; it's cynical and self-serving.

Meanwhile, Moscow's hope is that Western polluters will be queuing up to buy its carbon
emission quotas. The money they get will then go into improving infrastructure and
energy efficiency. Yeah right they will.

If they realize that energy efficiency is what they need (and they do), why don't they purpose some of their $130 billion in reserves from oil sales to infrastructure that hedge fund manager and Russian Senator Andrei Vavilov wants to privatize and invest in... alternative investments, mgolly. I think a chunk of that aimed at all Russia's leaky above ground heating pipes could be kind of helpful.

Our guy in Lowe Library

President Lee Bollinger, Columbia University's answer to Chuck Norris, is at it again. As we all see from the headlines, he invited Iranian President Ahmadinejad up to Columbia to talk and then shat all over him as he came in the door. All for the sake of intellectual freedom? ("He can think what he wants but I can fight with him about it").

Methinks not. Instead, Bollinger just wants to keep Columbia in the news, make it a "player", so he can keep raising funds and consciousness to further the Northward enhancement of the university into Harlem, and the establishment of a Columbia campus on each continent. Oh yes, he will be king.

I suppose that's the modern way to go. But do alums really want to give money to guys who invite delusional and dangerous heads of state and then pummel them on arrival? This one doesn't.

How did he know Ahmadinejad wouldn't pull a smooth one on stage and leave egg on Columbia's face? Can you be sure a guy is delusional and not just faking?

Graham poops in the potty

For those of you who are perhaps tiring of my abstruse theoretical and journalistic noodlings, let the news ring out across the land: Graham, the last holdout in our family for diapers, has pooped in the potty. We know well that there may yet be a rough road out ahead of us, but he has done the deed, and it was well-formed too. Soon we may be a truly happy family, pooping together in a diaper-free household.

Echoes

As ever, Mark Hulbert's been scanning the newsletters for opinions on what's up with the market. There are those, he says, who see parallels with the August 1998 implosion of the Russian debt markets which brought low Long-Term Capital Management and (let us not forget) almost nailed DE Shaw and thereby the BofA-Nationsbank merger. Coming out of that, the markets had their big run-ups to the spring 2000 booyah peaks.

I'm reminded of 1998 in a different way. When the Russian debt markets blew up, there was a massive devaluation of the ruble, which made it hard for Russians to keep snapping up all the imports they had been favoring. This meant that the final years of Yeltsin's administration bolstered Russia's declining industrial base and laid the groundwork for a redevelopment of payrolls and confidence under Putin. Could a similar fate await Detroit and the rest of the industrial heartland as the dollar continues its slide? Will Bentonville look to Biloxi rather than Beijing for extruded goods?

If it works, there's a good chance a Democrat could ride a neo-populist wave. Perhaps a $400 wave.

Front row junkyard

On a forlorn earthen lot on Main St. in Somerville, New Jersey, just down the hill from the Washington Hotel -- "Oldest continually operating hotel in America" -- there is a used car dealer that jams the most cars onto his space I've ever seen. Not just cars, but classics and would be classics: Firebirds, Impalas, El Caminos, Beetles. Towards the front today was a circa 1986 Plymouth Reliant convertible. Also a 1997 truck that might actually be salable. And could actually be gotten off the lot.

This lot has been there since we came to Central NJ some 10 years ago. At that point in time it had some pretty cool old cars. I believe some of them are still there today. There is one Camaro nestled in tight next to some Olds about four rows back. 6 inches apart. Between them grows a sapling. Back towards the office at the back of the lot, there are cars with no engines and no windows. "I'll have one of those," I almost cried out.

It's a junkyard, really, on Main Street, clearly owned by some pathological hoarder of transmissions and frames. Keep on not truckin! That's what I say.

Thick as Thieves

Email from Lee I learn that he "doesn't talk much to Yalies anymore " and from Sarah that she "doesn't talk on the phone much." And, indeed, it's harder to get even me excited to gab on the phone much.

It seemed like there was a time in our early 30s when people settled down and found something resembling a career and had kids and whenever I would see people there would be total joy and gabfest, even people I never used to like.

Does the power of shared experience diminish as we age? Does the succession of milestones: marriage, kids, graduation, deaths, divorce, financial crisis, medical trauma, job loss, do all these things become so prosaic themselves that it becomes more difficult to bond over them? Does it become harder to maintain strong relationships? Or just more labor-intensive. Seems like when you talk to em lots of people are like: "whatever, we're aging and we're all gonna die anyway, I'm going home to bed."

I know I know, I should get my butt back to NC and eat some Q. But I feel like there's I'm witnessing a general if gradual emotional pullback of sorts, if not necessarily from my intrepid readers.

Here's what I mean.

The Jam


The Jamm

What is there to tell?

A fine day in Jersey. Went and got my hair cut. The barber guy started going off about OJ and some other criminal on the flat panel TV and the question of appropriate punishment. You can imagine. "Some guy comes in my house and is raping my daughter, I think I got a right to kill em." Indeed, the law provides for these situations. "And what about those guys who are having sex with babies and kids and stuff. I mean, what do they do? I can't imagine it." Apparently you can and do, buddy. And not infrequently.

We expect conversation and amusement from those who cut our hair. Like the Kosovar guy who cut my hair in Larchmont last month. He had a tale to tell.

I was going to say that's why we need gay men to cut our hair, but I would add to that immigrant men, who are engaging at least for the first cut. And it's always good to have ladies touching your head, though they can be as lame conversationally as their male colleagues.

Our maybe it's better to just let your hair grow.

Natalie as Kurt

That unkempt hair, the wrinkly shirt... I know I've seen it somewhere... Has my beloved daughter turned into Kurt Cobain?

There is, truth be told, no musical evidence of it, though she does sing a lot. And, given that she can still get excited about buying herself some chicken nuggets for lunch, I'd say she's not too despondent. Thought she does lock herself in her room to read those books about that magic boy with glasses and other crazy, wierd stuff.

And she is still mighty ticklish.

Refreshing honesty

From Marketwatch:

Greenspan said he said he supported the removal of Saddam Hussein as Iraqi dictator. "Saddam Hussein was obviously seeking to get a chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz," Greenspan said, referring to the narrow waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf through which oil-carrying vessels pass. That would have caused chaos, he said. Greenspan said he believes the Iraq war was about oil but that he wasn't saying that this was the principal motivation of the Bush administration in invading the nation in 2003.

OK. So he contradicts himself a little towards the end, but it's basically straight no chaser, in a very Ayn Randian way. And when you put it that way: "Take out the dictator so he'll cause less economic chaos" rather than "the government is in the pocket of big oil," it sounds a lot better. From a Green perspective Hussein@Hormuz would expedite peak oil and the adoption of altfuels.

But it's hard to see how he would have ever pulled it off, what with Iran and Saudi Arabia in the way.

Why Russia?

One of the questions most often asked of me -- along with

"What do you want to do next?" and
"Where'd you get those two blonde blue-eyed kids, you swarthy one with a brown-haired brown-eyed wife?"

-- is "How did you get into Russia?" Although there's much truth in my stock answers that I grew up during the Cold War and that Russian literature, in particular the novel, represents an apogee of civilization comparable perhaps only to Elizabethan drama and classical music from Bach through Beethoven, but as so often, there's more to it.

Shuttling back and forth between New JerseYork and North Carolina recently suggests another possibility: from a young age, Russian literature struck a nerve in my perception of the relations between center and periphery, capital and province. All these Russian superfluous men, lying in bed and sitting on park benches pondering and dreaming of life in Petersburg or Moscow or, for those who were already there, Paris and London. Measuring themselves against the capitals, dreaming of conquest, and then, perhaps, time for dinner or a stroll with a ladyfriend, as the demands of the here and now made themselves heard. And, in the end, the Russian novel -- child of the periphery -- won, pushing aside the French and English in the battle for preeminence, everywhere, that is, but PBS. And the superfluous are remembered from the Volga to the Hollywood Hills, where they peek their heads up now and again and claim center stage at the hinges of epochs.

Scare

Graham scared the shit out of me today at the library. I was checking out the books, and he and Natalie and Margaret were standing next to me. When I had checked them out I looked up and only Natalie and Margaret were standing next to me. I looked down at the end of the rows of books, in the cafe, the obvious and easy places. Anne Blenman walked in. "Have you seen Graham," I ask. "No." Outside to check that his scooter is where it was. It is.

Natalie and Margaret are planted in the cafe. To the third floor, he's not there. Nor on the second. I begin to spin childnapper scenarios, but do not show panic. I alert the library staff. Anne is looking too. I go past Natalie and Margaret in the cafe. "Have you seen Graham?" "No," says Natalie, "and I'm hungry."

Finally, I go outside to where the book signing party is going on. After alerting one more person
I turn around and there's Graham marching along, kicking his legs up, perfectly relaxed. I pick him up and chastise him. Three minutes have passed, maybe five.

Later, on a perfect autumn day, Graham pushes himself home on his hot pink scooter, displaying admirable control and judgment over bumps, a bit of the the crack of his little ass peaking through between T-shirt and shorts. Turns out he wasn't wearing underwear.

A big 10-4

All systems are go for Graham's birthday party tomorrow. The cupcakes are cupped, frosted, and squirrelled away. It was hard not to eat one when I was frosting them after going running, but somehow I managed. Mary had, after all, counted them.

We will convene at Rosedale Park, a place which like so much else around here comes from the largesse of the Johnson family. As in Johnson & Johnson, only there are more of them than 2. (As the word Johnson has occurred several times, please insert enhancement jokes here _________). But seriously, the Johnsons are huge. Sometimes it feels like we live on their estate, like that old Bongwater refrain: "It's Frank's world, the rest of us just living in Frank's world."

To return to the point. We have cupcakes. There will be a playground. The task from here on out is to keep it from expanding further.

Ghosts of days past

Going through the Eurasianet website -- still the world's authoritative Anglophone source of information on the Caucasus and Central Asia -- I was pleased to see many chestnuts left over from the day I sat in the cockpit of that bitch.

For example: gaze upon the smooth stylings of the travelling East of Magnum exhibition.

Then there's also two themed pages on the Aral and Caspian Seas, at their time groundbreaking, by now decrepit and full of dead links but still standing.

Those were the days when information really wanted to be free.

The Snake

When I came downstairs to get lunch, Mary had hooked the kids up with a video and gone for a walk. It was a Harry Potter video, and I came down right when there was a very scary looking monster serpent trying to put a hurt on Harry, who, in his turn, did smite the big snake with his sword.

But, as I said, the snake was pretty scary looking, and I asked the kids if they were a little scared. Natalie, the hip big kid, was not touched by the thing at all. Graham, on the other hand, was scarcely able to voice his fear, and started to cry a little. So I sat down on the couch with him, put my arm around him, and sat with him until the end of the scene, which had other scary shit in it even after the snake was fully smote. Fear of nasty cinematic creatures is a pretty strong emotion, as I myself was recently reminded in 28 Days. These are great moments in parenting, when you get to shelter and comfort the little guys. I used to love that shit when I was little.

Anyhoo, I decided it wasn't the right moment to give the kids the rubber snakes I brought them from Reddick's of Wrightsville Beach, long (I'm sure) a leading purveyor of flip flops, bikinis, and assorted bric a brac.

In the numbers

My mom and my dad were born two days and thirty miles apart in 1938. So I suppose it should come as no surprise that their social security numbers are within 1200 digits of one another. But it's still a little spooky, the deja vu when I heard dad's.

All of this just goes to show that proximity does not likeness make.

Peel the onion

Balzac, it is said, was averse to being photographed, feeling that each picture of him stole a little bit of his person, like the slow peeling of an onion.

In many ways, sending out resumes feels much the same. Tweaked and versioned, they leap into the ether from my browser, these verbal mini-mes, terse little chunks of self. I have to track which went where so I can be sure the right me shows up, should a need arise.

But if one page seems so little, it is much longer than the words on my future gravestone, with which it will share precious little text. I hope.

Sea you later

Dashed out of conference today to go swimming in the ocean, a nasty tide heading North along the shore. Once more felt childhood coming over me, but resisted the temptation to scamper and frolic.

Now must rush to the fabled RDU.

Flooding

After almost twenty years of absence, of vacations spent in such Northeastern watering holes as Fire Island, Martha's Vineyard, Block Island, various rocky shores of Maine, the Finger Lakes, the friggin Hamptons, the Jersey Shore, with all of their fancy restaurants and cliffs and nature preserves and whatnot -- the Grouse returned to the North Carolina shore, home of Beach as Such.

Starting with the 70s-era motel blessed by Jimmy Buffett himself and the sea air thick with salt and moisture never heard of in the North, I knew I was back on familiar ground. Checked in, I headed off to the beach. Now, to be sure, there is sand where land meets water up North. Sometimes. But rarely in such quantities, and rarely stretching off into the distance, and never so damned soft.

And off along the beach, to a pier mysteriously made of concrete rather than treated pine, charging money just to go out on that bitch. Through the tidal pools we referred to as the puddles, to which Leslie and I would head on beach mornings before the heat of the day came accompanied by one parent or grandparent, in what I now recognize to be a classic child care pawn-off. To a convenience store staffed by some old dude who couldn't even tell me that the road I was on was right and would take me to my motel.

Memory after memory. Oh yes, we will bring the kids.

Our man for the Senate

The Grouse would like to take this opportunity to officially endorse Joshua Harold Stein in his bid to represent the 16th District in the North Carolina State Senate. It has long been apparent to members of the Greater Piedmont (encompassing New Jersey) that Mr. Stein is well-suited for discharging the duties of elective public office. Specific achievements supporting this hypothesis include:

• Manifesting steely will in scoring the deciding goal for Chapel Hill High School in the shoot off against Raleigh Sanderson* in the semi-final of the 1983 North Carolina State High School Soccer Championships, catapulting his team on to eventual victory.
• Displaying equally firm resolve when, head dripping with blood after banging against the concrete floor of his garage, Stein did stretch forth his hand for a penny on the ground even as his father carried him off to the ER.
  
• As an adult he is a progressive thinker, just as in youth he outstripped his peer group in achieving many common goals.
  

For these and several other reasons, the Grouch beseeches its readership to dig down and support our man in his bid.

At rest

The first day of school has passed.
From the backyard, a faint breeze.
From the front, the sound of churchbells a few blocks down.
Mary took the train to the city for Tanya's opening.
Graham's poop has been cleaned from his underwear, the smell is gone from my hands in relatively few washings.
Natalie had mango with Beethoven's late quartets, while Graham mashed frozen blueberries against his face.

By now my uncle Heywood has probably breathed his last, succumbing to a nasty aggressive cancer.

After dinner, Natalie drove forward with Harry Potter #4, and Graham took his first ride along the sidewalk on a salvage bike, its tires just inflated.

Back to the Apple

I avoided New York as much as possible this summer, for obvious reasons. It's a nasty, smelly place to be when it's hot, and anybody with any money gets the fuck out. So I, in an attempt to mimic the rich, I stayed out.

But summer comes to an end for everyone and every place, and today I was back in the apple saddle. Five degrees cooler and I'd call it glorious, but it was OK. And fashion week in Bryant Park, lots of people milled about hoping for something to ogle, and there was that cleavagy chick in the pink dress waiting for a limo, perhaps somebody. And as I walked down sixth there were many examples of leggy and skinny, but were they fashion week related? You just never know. It's just Manhattan.

Inflection points

The year was 1979, and Freddie Kiger had foolishly piled half the 8th grade of Guy B. Phillips Junior High into school buses and hauled us across state lines to the PA-VA-WV border, home to some truly awesome Civil War battles and equally good biscuits and fried chicken.

Somehow they forgot to enforce any kind of curfew for us, and we found ourselves watching Saturday Night Live, back in its heyday. And then the musical guests arrived, what did we feast our 13-year old eyes on. Sadly, not exactly the clip below (for once, YouTube disappoints), but it was the Specials, playing "Gangsters". Like visitors from another planet to the land of the Commodores and Christmas Rappin.

Exact copies

After discussing musical and delectable goings on at the Indian Fair out at the Mercer County Park, Craig told me about how an Indian in his crew at work had described the status of Indian performance in America. In India, within certain castes, all kids learn how to perform something: singing, tablas, other instrument, etc. The emphasis there is on breadth of repertoire, as in back in the day before TV and radio when somebody had to entertain. But it's very competitive.

In the States these days, it's all about learning one or two songs, and not just songs, specific classic performances by greats, which kids ape down to the quarter-trill (Craig's phrase). So you can have a competition where ten kids mimic the same canonical performance by some great. Thrilling. Like "American Idol" on steroids.

This is, of course, repulsive to the Grouse, and to anyone else reared in the "letter killeth spirit giveth life" tradition, or indeed in the post-Romantic vision of art as expression of individual self, or the post-punk do-it-yourself way of being, which are all bound up with one another. Shit, it ain't very 2.0, for that matter. But it's plenty corporate, in the old way.

Why won't Google maps print the screen?

This is something the Sith Lords of Mountain View might think about working on. If I pull up a map in a browser, it's not unlikely that I want to print what I'm looking at. But Google Maps cuts off about a third of what I see in Firefox, at least. Maybe they're cozier with IE. But if they're serious about not doing evil, this is a great place to start.

Liquid relief

The markets eased into the holiday weekend on twin reasurrances from Bernanke and Bush. It's hard to think back to the time when the markets weren't pushing the government around with such ease, didn't have this tried and true call and response routine worked out with CNBC and, by extension, both the investing masses and the elites.

It's striking how quickly we've gone from general talk of "excess liquidity" driving up the prices of all sorts of assets from real estate to collectibles to equities to a liquidity shortage or "credit crunch." So on with the spigots! A direct injection here, a discount rate there (a symbolic gesture that did not in fact result in net added liquidity for the week in which it happened), a tweak to Federal Mortgage insurance there, keep it flowing. I think there's plenty of liquidity out there, it's just in private pools, stagnating and fostering mosquitos.

And, at the end of the day, when the dollar crumples, China eases out of Treasuries and the current account deficit hangover, we'll be left like Russia in '98: too poor to buy imports. So who could be the big winner: Detroit.

Campaign rhetoric

In answer to a question about the online fund-raising capacities of his campaign site, a common friend of ours wrote me:

"Most small campaigns are using paypal, I notice."

In view of our shared anxieties about size, I could only reply:

"If you feel your campaign is small perhaps you should dab a little ointment on it.
Using the clipped version of your first name can't help the size-perception situation."

Together, as we shall see, we can help make this young man's campaign large indeed!

The Team

This is a Research Triangle based investment team that shall go unnamed. I'm sure my old firm used to look clonish some of the time, but this is ridiculous. Did somebody decree blue-shirt day only to have a few white-shirt rebels turn up? I'm sure these guys have some fascinating yarns to tell, like: "... and I had an onion on my belt, which was the fashion at the time."

Home alone

Got home from Larchmont, checked the mail. From Citigroup (Citi?), I received cards for me and Mary with a new number. From another branch of Citi, I received a come on to use our newly enhanced cash advance power to borrow money at the old card number. Whoops. There will probably be fees to transfer the balance.

Then I went to the grocery store, where I noticed a sign over the ice machine claiming "crushed ice is food." I can just see it, a family at table and one of the kids says "mom, can I have another serving of the crushed ice, please." It must have been reclassified under Reagan, along with ketchup.

Naughtilie

When I was about to pull the burgers off the grill I dashed upstairs to push Mary Lee towards wrapping up her often lengthy process of putting down Natalie, who is, after all, her first grandchild. What I found, instead -- much to my dismay, was Natalie alone in bed with a Harry Potter novel, perhaps the third. She and I agreed she would read fifteen minutes more and then turn off the lights.

I forgot to check, and when I went back upstairs at 9:30, there she was, light on, many pages deeper into the novel. "I got carried away" she said, sheepishly, all too conscious of her guilt. We kicked the cat off the bed and turned off the light.

Since Mary doesn't read this blog, she'll never know.

Bonnie Briar indeed

Riding bike through Bonnie Briar golf course in Mamaroneck around 3 pm on a warm day, I noted an umbrella and table coming up on my left. Young ladies, who upon closer inspection proved to be model pretty, sat in there. And what were they distributing, these bonnie lasses? Lemonade? I don't think so.

Dewar's. In the middle of the summer, models pouring free shots of scotch for a bunch of bozos in black pants (I actually saw that too) and Mercedeses.

At once preposterous and repulsive

Sitting in a Starbucks in Larchmont, NY, a densely-packed inner suburb of New York, I am looking at the most obscene vehicle I have ever seen. It's a luxury king cab of a Freightliner rig with a pickup truck rear. It makes a stretch Hummer limo look demure. The owner -- undoubtedly an investment banker with an sick sense of humor -- should be shot on sight

Getting a life

Just reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about how business people -- and consultants in particular -- have to continually be figuring out to dress to feel appropriate and fit in. In one example, a woman talked of getting directions from a style maven client to spruce up because she wasn't fashionable enough. Which is absurd. The correct answer for both of them is get a fucking life. Later in the article others kvetched about how one needed to be careful to pick consultants who fit in.

It never ceases to astonish, the things people get paid lots of money to do.

Larchmont - Mamaroneck - Scarsdale - New Rochelle

Today I hauled my tired old mountain bike around the charms of upper-lower Westchester. Scarsdale was the goal, as I had never really checked it out, though I vaguely recall having disdain for it in college.

For naught. It was swanky as all get out. There was one building where there was a newsstand on one side, furs on the other, but they were both in the same font and color, which looked kinda funny. Ornate old buildings in the town center.

On the way home swung through New Rochelle, where parts are just flat out ghetto. In front of one bakery as I passed, a slim and attractive young black woman was screaming at an Hispanic woman who walked past, who had apparently rolled her eyes at her. "You better not come on back here or I'm gonna fuck you up good, in front of your man." She nattered on as I left. I liked to had told her to carry her lazy self on and get a j-o-b.

Princeton Junction - Newark 10:50 AM

These daytime trains are a frickin zoo. Bizmen on phone doing deals, Borat with the moustache over there talking at length in some language, and then 4 shiny and tan Princeton teenage girls with demonstrated cleavage bound in squealing, reenacting pop videos ensemble in voice and dance while playing tunes aloud on their... cellphones. New to me.

Memories of yore

In the doldrums of August, with seemingly no one at their desk to take my call or read my carefully crafted email, I resorted to one of the many amusements of the so-called "Internet": GoogleMaps.

So I checked out the satellite images of Emerald Isle, my old beach haunt, and confirmed that, indeed, they done built a bunch since I was last there.

And my eye trailed south from Emerald Isle to Bear Island, or Hammock's Beach State Park, as pristine and untouched as ever it was. And my eye focused more specifically on the southwest tip of the island, where, in 1988, I wandered naked amongst the dunes with a number of my college cronies, until most of them headed back up the beach to where our stuff was, and I was left lolling in a shallow pool of water -- far out of eyeshot from anyone and with a long views of anyone who might approach -- with a young woman with whom I was, at the time, romantically involved, whom we may call, shall we saw, Jennifer. And we lolled there in that water and talked, and I thought... and I thought.... and I thought too damned much, and did not pull the trigger, and there it went. My one and almost certainly final chance to have fantasy island sex on the beach, vanished in the ether, only to be immortalized in blog.

Melanchorolina

I'm feeling a bit grave after learning of an uncle's impending demise from multiple myeloma. This after hearing of a peer's recent demise from some other equally nasty cancer.

I suppose I might really take this as a message that I should chill the fuck out, stop being so serious about everything. Indeed I might.

Had been thinking about reading Samuel Pepys, the original graphomaniac diarist fool from back in the 17th century day, as a model for the daily blogathon. Then I took a look at volume 1 of a neighbor's 6 tome set, and I saw that Pepys wasn't very reflective at all, though he was observant, they say. Just flat out boring, is all. Which is not what the Grouse means to be, nossir.

Not that I have anything particularly scintillating going on here at "Tales from the Desk," rack my head as I might.

I will say that I was a little shocked to see Stephen Colbert bring on some poor guy who had been behind bars for 26 years but was exonerated by DNA. Colbert takes a very generous step like letting the guy have some large airtime and then stays in his psychotic pseudo conservative character and hardly lets the guy talk. He's gotta make up his mind which side he's on. As if we didn't know. He's on the side of Stephen Colbert.

Old Nick

Every once in a while I remember just how much there is on YouTube.

Here, for example is the greatest Rock and Roll scene in the history of film: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds doing "From Her to Eternity" in Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire.



Cave has done a fine job to keep his career going all these years, but the sad thing is that he keeps leaning on the same look, has never had the courage to reinvent his persona/hairstyle. He has, in some sense, become like Johnny Haliday, a eurorock impostor.

Nonetheless, he does some good work. Here's a video of Cave in a duet with PJ Harvey. Really an amazingly subversive video, insofar as they demonstrate sexual desire by.... actually touching each other, as compared to hiphop rumpshaking or the Nashville Levi's airbrushing with Breck school of wholesome sexuality. Never mind that he's not even cute.

Today's headline "Sentinel sells some assets to Citadel"

I may yet have a thoughtful post, but this headline just caught my eye. Two hedge funds with the same branding consultant do biz. It's like the sports page that days "Tigers devour Lions" or a tale from the playground like "Sophia bit Lucia" or (OK) "Madeline was picking on Natalie." But Sentinel/Citadel, that's extremely ripe.

Down at the bread line, or, fun with whitey

I was told that NJ Dept of Workplace Development mandates attendance at a "Reemployment Orientation" to get your benefit paid, so I went down there to Trenton yesterday. Unfortunately, I got tangled up in directions and was seven minutes late. So the lady at the "Triage desk" tells me that they lock the door right at 9 and I need to come back tomorrow. So I say, "Will they really require a Social Security card? I haven't had one in 20 years." And she says, yeah, they will, but go over to SSA a few blocks down and order one and the printout for ordering one will suffice. So I go and do that and it goes smoothly and easily.

So today I come back just like she said and I was there plenty early, and nobody asks to see Social Security Card at all. Then a 9:06 somebody comes in the room and at 9:10 somebody else. The door is literally but not figuratively locked, and she didn't turn them away.

They just have fun tweaking the white-collar types. It's cheaper than cable, you gotta figure. There's more, but I gotta run.

Idea for a party

Invite 20-30 people. Solicit suggestions for tunes. Order songs from your favorite vendor and arrange. Print set list with recommender's name and post to web too.

Quick and dirty way to get exposure to stuff.

Make sure you have multiple rooms at party so that people can recoil to music-free zones as necessary.

Men at work

In a Starbucks on Market St in Philly today I chanced to overhear a young insurance salesman working a prospect while his slack-jawed understudy looked on. "So lets just say we've got your mortgage and your other fixed expenses covered, how much income do you think you would need?" Like the guy's going to be able to estimate that. For retirement income replacement there are pretty much standard formulas based on a % of your income, there's no reason Life insurance shouldn't also be formula driven. He shouldn't be asking the guy that question, he should be giving him guidance. But he was probably trained to do this to milk prospects for bigger policies and premiums. I wish I coulda figured out who he sold for.

Later, in the wilds of backroads NJ, out for a ride of record length (for the kid at least), was only surprised see that Lindbergh Road (goes by the estate from which the baby was nabbed back in the day), a narrow winding two-lane road between nowhere and nowhere through woods over a "mountain," had a significant rise in traffic at rush hour. I've said it before, but this proves it: any through road in NJ will become somebody's shortcut at rush hour.

What's more, traffic picked up at 4;45. It was the ultimate getaway crowd.

Protecting the Innocent

I was enjoying a lunchtime read of an Institutional Investor piece on Orin Kramer and his attempts to beat some sense into the New Jersey Pension Authority or whatever it's called, which has long managed its own money in-house (i.e. nothing in funds of any sort). Given Kramer's reformer's zeal and serious pedigree, I reckoned it might be a place for someone like myself to earn bread fixing processes and whatnot.

Then I kept reading. There's a lot of pushback against Kramer from unions, fear he's gonna put too much money in hedge funds etc. In fact, the unions resist putting money in funds since they see it as outsourcing and, get this, the investment staff of 65 is unionized! That's the stupidest thing I've heard in a long time. Securities analysis and trading are not functions subject to collective bargaining. You should be able to fire these people at any time, and their comp should be based on individual performance. Otherwise why would they bother pushing themselves to do well?

This is a sure recipe for disaster for New Jersey and its pensioners, but nothing surprising from out most opaque neighbor to the south, Trenton. Would that it were Kramer vs. Kramer.

Too much mumbling

De Niro's The Good Shepherd suffers from many things. It is too long, too bleak. Sure, one of its themes is noncommunication, but that could have been enunciated more clearly. All the "Ang" part of Brangelina gets to do is sulk, after some initial moldering. And, finally, it is unjust towards the fine men of Skull and Bones, who have done so much for all of us. I guess.

Memories

My laptop won't take power from the cord, even the one Dell impressively overnighted to me after I ordered it last night at 10:30. Trying to jiggle and finesse the thing. It brings to mind the tortures of trying to get Natalie and then Graham to breast feed in those first days out of the belly. Excruciating.

Rumbling

Was watching Vulture investor Wilbur Ross talk about the subprime mess with a reporter from Marketwatch when I heard something that sounded suspiciously like a fart. I rewound the wmv file, but there was nothing there. It was, apparently, me, getting a rumbling in my tummy. Onwards to lunch!

Day of Challenges

Nasty drive home today for Concord, MA. First was vexed by Massachusetts and its typical shit. Trying to take 126 to the Masspike, got confused by multiple sets of poor and misleading directions. And the de minimus signage favored in puritano-aesthetic North was no help. What would have helped, admittedly, was a good map. But I was too cheap and lazy for that.

The Masspike and gentle Connecticut were kind to me, admittedly, flowing by smoothly. Even the occasionally skittish Saw Mill and Tappan Zee rained favor on me.

But my New Jersey and the inaptly named Garden State, they made my day.... nasty. And diverting onto 78 was vexing in its own way. All in all, bad.

And then, at home, I discover that my power brick would appear to have died. So I have to commandeer Mary's computer till Dell can get me another one. Stay tuned..

John Thornton for President

Although his arrogance sometimes make him seem arrogant, I'm casting my ballot for John Thornton in 2012. Everything that comes out of the guy's mouth is smart and interesting. If China is the future, Thornton is our best shot at staying dialed in.

Man with plan

As I pulled out of the driveway this morning (to park the car on the other side of the street and free up the other car, down at the end of the drive), I had an idea. A rarity, though now I've had two in three days.

What's our drought status? (I thought). How far below normal are we for this time of year? I know where to dig that up in the Times, on the web. But I don't care enough to put that much effort into it.

And then I thought: what about an environmental / climate change dashboard, like the CEOs love so muchso they can swivel in their desk chairs and know at a glance how their company is doing? What if I could plug in a zip code* and see a tricolor summary of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) like precipitation, mean temperature, smog, CO2, rate of farmland consumption, whatever else. And also be able to drill down on the data and change date parameters to map historical change. This would rock. The trick (as always) would be to get good and reliable data and then get traffic to the site. But it would be a terrific consciousness raising tool.

Has anyone seen such a thing?

*Another good front end model would be like Smart Money's Map of the Market (which must be the only thing propping that old rag up).

Falling down

All this hand-wringing about the Minneapolis bridge collapse and the implications for bridges throughout the Interstate system reminds me of the hullabaloo following the August 2003 power outage, when a few trees near Lake Erie plunged everybody into darkness. For a few weeks after that, we all became experts on grids, substations, yatta yatta yatta, and politicians promised focused and decisive action.

So what became of that? It could well be that it receded from the headlines and substantial progress has been made. It's much more likely that $42 million and some earnest crackerjack civil engineers have been thrown at it, and they're doing their utmost but lack the high level visibility and sponsorship needed to fund, drive, and coordinate major interagency initiatives. I'm sure it's underfunded.

The fact of the matter is that the US has pretty mindblowing infrastructure. How much should be spent on maintaining it, and how to allocate it are basic questions. But they are not sexy ones. Building a new bridge or highway is sexy and enhances electability for local and state politicians. Fixing an old one is not. I cannot tell you if this is a partisan issue, but I tend to doubt that it is. Maintenance is the type of thing only a lame duck administration could like.

90 Degrees

Sitting in a bar in DC listening to Bananarama and watching X-game idiocy. Some old black guy I thought was homeless with matted hair turns out to be a neighborhood intellectual, of sorts. Something like my dad.

It's 90 in DC, 90 in Chapel Hill, 90 in Princeton, 90 in Manhattan. 95 in Boston. You can't win. At least I took off my tie.

Between me and home lies a frigid Amtrak trip.

Washington appears to have some character. Saw an African diplomat in kente cloth wandering amongst the 6 story glass boxes and sorority girls.

A clean well lighted hotel room

Oh, the classic conundrum of arriving in a hotel room in a distant city with nothing in particular to do. What to do? First must eat, but then. TV? Web? Sleep? The possibilities are endless, but not the time.

And so, Washington DC. Our nation's fair capital, hot, humid, urban and quasi-urbane but with much bad furniture and often only reasonable hair. A town where people would seem to do the things they think people are supposed to do in cities, like the black T shirt punks out my window down by Dupont Circle sitting in the dirt strumming a guitar. That's city living. Maybe kids do this in New York too, and I don't see em. Some do it in Princeton, and they're silly.

We'll see.

Update from the pool

This is turning into a huge landmark summer for Natalie. First she fully mastered the bicycle, at one point in time going a full 11 times round the large loop of the driveway at Canandaigua.

Also in the Finger Lakes, she made tremendous strides in the cool, cool, clear water, swimming out to the raft unescorted by the time we left.

Then, as we have recently reported, she plowed through the first Harry Potter book mercilessly. No prisoners.

And so, after a couple of weeks swimming at the Dillon Gym summer camp, I decided to take her out to the Community Park Pool for a swim to let her strut her stuff. Very impressive, it must be owned. She can swim long distances without help. She can touch the bottom with her hand. She's learning freestyle and breast stroke. She'll dive off of my knees. Mostly, she's perfectly comfortable and acclimated in the warm, chlorinated water, and wants to keep swimming.

Crazy hats off to those buff and bored young counsellors at the camp.

My readers

For a blogger, there's little that's more flattering than sustained visits by readers. And freely available modern technology lets us monitor who's coming and going. So when I have a reader sit down and read for an hour or so and dig through my archives, there's nothing more flattering. But when it turns out the reader works in a lawyer's office, and returns to a methodical pouring through my complete works after breaking for lunch, it makes me wonder. Is this a casual reader, or has someone taken a professional interest in my musings. God forbid I should have made some actionable booboo in there.

Or, as this reader hails from the State of North Carolina and probably overlapped with me in Chapel Hill in the late eighties or nineties, perhaps it's just an old friend.

In any case, the Grouse welcomes comments from avid readers.

North v. South: the rumble continues

The collective accrued wealth of the Northeast is staggering. The great campuses of the Ivy League make the physical plants of Southern universities look like frat houses within Second Life (though Columbia's Lee Bollinger surely salivates at the real estate available too them). Sidewalks abound, connecting a huge stock of cool old houses, and fleets of artisans trained to maintain them. Yes, for decade upon century, people have been raking in fat ducats up here and plowing them into the physical plant, making for many a beautiful place.

But so many people are hip to it, meaning traffic, scarce parking, long nasty commutes. Density is good, making it easy to run into people and exchange ideas. And if density is the future, the Northeast holds the future firmly in its grasp. Would that it were less of a pain in the ass to get there.

Natalie loves Harry

I knew it had to be, eventually. Natalie has fallen for another boy, and not just any other boy, but a sorcerer-type. To wit, Harry Potter. In a day long not feared, Natalie has taken up the magician of choice these days with a vengeance, blasting through tens if not hundreds of pages in a sitting.

After having brought her back from her camp, with its many "crazy hats" and "crazy field trips," she settled in with Potter after a brief paw through of the just-arrived Highlights magazine. Just now I peaked in on her. I've been blasting the AC in her room and then pumping it round the corner to the un-airconditioned "Granny's room," so it's quite chilly in there, and she's got the sheet over her legs and is deeply engrossed, where surely she'll stay till dinner.

And she still wilingly holds my hand crossing the street and enjoys milk. Which you've gotta love.

Playing soccer

Played six on six for like two hours in brutal humidity this evening. Sweated like a pig. Non-trivial pain walking around and then especially coming up the stairs. Watching movie my hamstring began to cramp, I've barely avoided a full clenching.

Clearly, I need to play more to get back in shape.

Home-Lewisville-Lawrenceville-Terhune-Pretty Brook-Home

All told 16-17 hot and humid miles. I was surprised to see beads of sweat falling beneath me, appearing to be rather yellowish-brown. I had such a pure notion of my sweat, which is now ruined.

Dutch treat

Summer driving around in Mary's car pulled up an old tape of Betty Serveert's 1992 Palomine. This is a good record. These nederlanders did better than most of their contemporaries (cf. Oasis and the Catherine Wheel) to recycle Skynyrd grooves, and the drummer has a full-on jazzy groove. The lead singer sings with real passion, investing much in her sophomoric lyrics. Incredibly, this band still exists.

Somehow my focus on Betty Serveert has been broken by discovering what Dexter Romweber is up to. I'm delighted to see that he's neither dead nor held within some psych ward. Sounds like he's sober now.

Larchmont -- Stamford -- Princeton

After driving in the studentless calm of Chapel Hill, hitting the road in fair Larchmont was eye-opening. No back up, mind you, just lots of cars and trucks everywhere, making a routine task like proceeding a quarter mile along the Boston Post Road fraught with much cogitation and concentration: which lane should I be in to avoid being slowed down by that truck? What is that moron doing?

Everywhere, the would-be heroes of 9/11 lollygag and obstruct. In Mamaroneck, two fat cops sit with their motorbikes jutting out into the street palavering with some other fat guy at a busy intersection. Road workers (this being the peak season for road repair) dicked around with their SLOW sign. Some construction workers double parked at the deli while picking up Snapple and bacon egg and cheeses. You see this shit all the time. Dudes revel in their ability to slow traffic.

The ride back to Princeton came off painlessly, save for the lack of a Starbucks at the Vince. It ain't right.

Hillsborough - RDU - EWR - Larchmont

After catfish and encouraging discussions of possible future sports endeavors for the Grouse, it was back to the airwaves and back up to Yankee territory for a morning tete-a-tete with an altogether different kind of beast. Often, airplanes offer up interesting anecdotes for the blogger, but today there was very little of note, just some rather plain young lady taking pictures of New Jersey in flight with the camera in her cellphone. She's probably already posted those to her own blog, and I'm sure it rocks.

In general, these are rather heady times for the kid. Many voices call me homewards, while quite a few sing another tune. Should I hack at a few more dragons before repairing to the castle? Time will tell, and not much of it.

Bring it home!

I'm more than a little bit troubled by the difficulty I chronically have in obtaining certain regional delicacies back home in my native Chapel Hill. One would think we really weren't in North Carolina at all.
* The burger "with everything": i.e. chili, slaw, onions, and mustard. Don't nobody sell it.
* Coconut cake: perhaps I should be looking harder. I know where to get it in Manhattan, why not here? Neither Dips nor Crook's has it on the menu.
* Cheerwine. This is the most important thing. Regional sodas should be thriving in the pomo 2.0 economy. They are, after all, distinctively delicious, and none more so than the flagship of the Carolina Beverage company. The Cheerwine.com Distributor Locator clearly indicates that Long Beverage (919-481-2738) of Raleigh dispenses the elixir. Given Cheerwine's long historical association with intellectual and academic achievement, might not the absence of this beverage from the so-called Southern Part of Heaven explain the inability of UNC-CH to vault upward towards Berkeley and Michigan into the very upperest tier of public universities?

The Streets of the Triangle

Praise the lord that it hasn't been too hot. Exceptionally mild days, which we've told Mary are typical, have been the backdrop for our tour of the older neigborhoods of Chapel Hill which -- owing to the limited stock of such locales -- was exhaustive without being exhausting.

But it's nonetheless taken a lot out of us. The though of moving home for me, to a frickin foreign land for her, is non-trivial.

What is striking, I must say, is the relative wildness of the south, the roughness of the landscaping, the scrappiness of the yards of even high-end homes. And I'm not Mr. yard Perfect either. The greens seem deeper and richer in the Northeast.

I remember reading a review of a book about houses in France from 1760 to 1820 where the Parisians, when travelling to their country estates, would pull closed the curtains on the side of their carriages when passing through unreformed country because the chaos of it offended their dainty eyes. I'm having a little bit of that, which is just shameful and pathetic.

Sucking ze blood

Today was a slow day. I was scheduled to go to my former employer and give blood in honor of a deceased coformerworker, so I went there. I also scheduled lunch with another coformerworker. Luckily, it was the day of a quarterly meeting so, by tradition, there was free pizza. The fatal free pizza.

There, in my ex-office, were blood-sucking people I had never met with forms to read and disclaimers to sign, which I took care of quickly. My blood, it seems, was good.

But into the line for blood extraction came a woman who needed to get back to her desk in an hour, so I gave up my place in line and went to have pizza with my former colleague, whom we shall call "Bob". Well "Bob" and I palavered and pizzad, and then it was time to return to the line, through which I sailed to my date with the needle.

So they stuck it in my arm, they did, those 501(c)(3) vampires, and that went by quickly. Naturally, I was apprehensive about what it would be like afterwards, when one hears rumors of light-headedness and fainting. But that's just for girls, I thought. No no. Turns out one shouldn't really eat before having blood drawn. Blood goes to stomach or somesuch. So when I was done, I sat up, felt light-headed and hot, and the nice vampirette said "why don't you lie back down?" And put cold compresses on my forehead. And brought me juice, then Coke. All and all it was twenty minutes of receiving fine service in a potentially embarassing situation.

Thank God noone will ever learn of it.

Home work

Ahh, the joys of having the family around the house throughout the business day. One woman here in the neighborhood likened having her husband in the house job searching to having a "teenage girl." Her actual words. And I don't think she meant his figure was both comely and shapely.

But frankly, I'm not the problem. Right now Graham is downstairs screaming his head off because Mary refused to take him to pick up Natalie from camp if he wouldn't sit on the potty and try to poop. Which would really be a good idea, in fact. But no, he'd rather poop in his underwear.

After a few minutes of quiet, Mary and Natalie return home, and the demonstrative screaming begins again. Mary is duly impressed by his perseverance.

Card-carrying members

Some nice young lady was prowling the block yesterday evening, looking to sign people up for the ACLU. Mary gave ten bucks so she could say she was a "card-carrying member." I chided her for not giving 20.

This morning, a nice young man called to thank us for our generous contribution. OK. I'm sure they were both volunteers or interns, so the ACLU wasn't wasting much money, but is that the best the ACLU can do with its volunteer time? A thank you call for a ten dollar contribution?

Ah nature

Up in Canandaigua, one day at the beat-up old tennis court I felt something on my arm and I looked down and it was a real spider. Not a grandaddy longlegs or something civilized, or a little corner scamperer, but a plump little brown booger with beady eyes and multiple legs and all. I shrieked like a schoolgirl and contorted violently, but I got away.

Later, walking in the woods of the Onanda reserve, I passed a seventy-year old guy out for a walk wearing a multicolored shorts matching a windbreaker he had on -- shirtless -- unzipped to his belly button (a look huge with the ladies). "Seen any bears yet? There's plenty of them around here." That got me to thinking, so I called Mary on my cellphone to confirm my memory of what you're supposed to do if you come across a bear in the woods. She remembers that stuff. Unfortunately, what with being in the woods in upstate New York and having a cheap shitty LG phone because I'm basically cheap, we had a poor connection and she basically thought I was calling because I had seen a bear. So when we got cut off she called back to see if I was OK.

When I got to one of the scenic overlooks in the park I saw that it was tagged with gang graffiti, probably the work of some of the country b-boys we had seen strutting around, yet another instance (like the bling wheels I saw on an Oldsmobile on a back road between Hillsborough and Roxboro, NC last year) of the confluence of hip-hop and cracker culture.

Surprisingly mild

It's a surprisingly mild and mellow day here in central NJ, perfectly tolerable as long as the absence of AC is offset by a no shirt policy. There's a soft breeze and birdie melodies complement home improvement percussion and the occasional growl of a Shelby Cobra driven by some cocky investment banker or his spawn. And normal cars too. Mostly women walk the sidewalks of my street, some with strollers, some with high school art projects.

I understand that the Durham Bulls will be hosting the Norfolk Tides next Tuesday night (7/24). The Grouse is intrigued by this development, and has directed his administrative team to make all necessary arrangements to assure his attendance.

Grahamisms

Getting ready for a party at Abby and Spenser's house, Natalie came downstairs in a sweet little floral white and blue blouse and matching skirt. When I remarked that she was dressed for the party, Graham flew into enthusiasm: "Hawaiian shirt! Hawaiian party shirt!" He called out a number of times, and then ran upstairs to retrieve said shirt. Fashion conscious at an early age, he is.

He has also taken to overgeneralizing "may," where he should use "can," as in "Mama, may you give me a muffin?"

Running late...

to pick up a pizza. Muscle car night in the Wegman's parking lot here in Canandaigua.

Sadly, day after tomorrow we must return to the lower NorthEast, where there's more action than is strictly speaking necessary.

Freak n geek

So I'm sitting in the Market Cafe area of the local Wegman's (a grocery, for you non-initiates), responding to email, minding my own business, when this sweaty bespectacled freckly guy in a baseball cap comes up to me uttering some pseudo-italianate nonsense about by laptop. "I'm a techy," he explains, "just checking out your set-up. Wow, that's an old laptop." I say "It does the job" or somesuch, and he moves on outside onto the deck with his sub, his soda, and his buddy.

A few minutes later I head out onto the deck to talk on the phone, and I hear Mr. Computer telling his pal: "I hacked into the Vatican, like, where the pope lives. I figure I'm not a believer so I gotta know what they're up to." And his pal gives the most Beavis and Butthead-like "Cool... heh heh heh" that I've ever heard.

Later, as I'm driving off, I see the guys moving slowly through the nasty summer heat in the parking lot on/with their bikes. Mr. Technical was pushing his, for some unclear reason. There was no big hill which would justify it. I don't think this is a good place to be a computer geek.

Bang your head, not

Yesterday morning I couldn't find my hat, my prized once red now rose Zinn Design/Build baseball cap, and then I remembered I had left it up by the tennis court. So I enlisted Graham to come with me, and I kicked a soccer ball and he brought with him the croquet mallet which has been his near constant companion here on the lake. And indeed, I found the hat where I suspected it would be, and then Graham had the bright idea to bang the soccer ball with the croquet mallet. Some bird was singing real nice, and we sat on the bench and listened. If we drank, it might have been a beer commercial moment.

Meanwhile, down at the house, Natalie excitedly got up from where she was sitting on the patio, whirled around and hit her head -- BOOOSH! Against a structural wooden column. Mary told me about this as Graham and I returned and as she, David S. , and Carol headed out to the grocery store.

Natalie's booboo seemed minimal, but then in 15 minutes she went and lay in her bed, claiming to be sleepy. Symptom 1. 15 minutes after that, she puked for the first time. David O., my family doctor on call, at that point in time said to get her to the emergency room, which I did, with 4 kids and one big bag of chips and a couple of frantic calls to the grocery store for support.

Anyhow, the doctor checked her out and gave her a CAT scan which was negative on both bleeding and cats, and we returned home after a three and a half hour round trip to the ER (which is really fast in my book).

But Natalie has been instructed to take it easy. Which is hard on vacation. And today it was hot as hell. Good for swimming. The doctor said she could swim, but "no splashing," and Natalie insists she can't swim without splashing a lot. So by the end of the day she's emotional toast, claiming her friends are excluding her by swimming and by everthing else they do. And at last she blows her top and kicks me as hard as she can which doesn't hurt me but would hurt kids, so I pick her up and bring her inside and give her a time out and yell at her loud, so she'll know I'm not kidding for once. And she's miserable, stubborn, kicking, crying, won't go out and play with friends. It's hard to be stubborn with a mild concussion on a hot day in July.

Thank you all

Somehow my minor absence from my scribal post has not negatively impacted my blog traffic. Thank you, gentle readers.

Meanwhile, up here in Canandaigua, New York, nothing keeps on happening. Mostly we observe spousal tensions, which is something. Even between all the lesbians who were shacked up in the place next door. Sister lesbians. Twin sister lesbians, even. With dogs, saying things like, "oh, sorry, this dog's not very well-trained." Which isn't a very good line in my book, but frankly it has nothing to do with her sexual orientation and everything to do with being in your 20s and childless, and all of a sudden having to deal with this incursion that other dimension sometimes known as the nuclear family, sometimes as New Jersey, or, in our specific case, the Griswolds. Protective of small children. Well-provisioned, dammit.

What's a group of chain smoking current and erstwhile lesbians from Beantown and Frisco to do? Tie them dawgs up. Put em on the screened in porch. They're not going to run over and freak out young Graham, I'll tell you that much.

Woe is me

My friends. It's been very hard to get internet access here in the wilds of upstate NY. I'm churning out text statically and posting it when I can. Keep coming back. Don't forsake the Grouse.

Violent Femmes

My multi-year retrospective tour of both Mary’s tapes and my own landed my on a Violent Femmes record I never owned myself. In the years since the Femmes got coopted into first frat boy anthem and then the classic rock format, it’s become easy to forget how new they sounded when they appeared, in ’84 or so, and how fresh they remain to ears disaccustomed to their sound. These guys were not even thinking about kidding, purists who somehow found the mike. Like Casey Casem meeting the Birthday Party.

Chicago Style

With granny available to care for the childs, Mary and I headed out to a rare date night dinner at the Inn at Bristol Lodge or somesuch, near Seneca Point. Any fears I had that it might be bland and corporate were put to rest by the stuffed baby bear that greeted us in the foyer. This was a rough-hewn wood, high-end flannel and shotgun kinda place.

On the menu, one of the appetizers was homemade potato chips with melted blue and gruyere cheeses. Guy food, designed to be consumed with beer. Mary was not sold. I pretended to be disgusted too.

The view was beautiful, and our food was OK. However, a fiftyish woman at a nearby table was not so lucky. The waitress brought her some blackened tornados or filets of beef, a $27 dish or somesuch. She was disgusted. “What is this? I’ve never seen beef look like this.” The waitress tried to explain: “But it’s Chicago-style, you sear the beef.” The poor victim would have none of it. She kept the plate in front of her for a while. She may have tried a bite and poked it a bit. But, in the end, the trauma was too overwhelming, and she and her date (who had ordered the fancily-worded fried chicken with cheese over pesto) asked for the bill in the middle of the entrée.

The Griswolds Ride Again

And so, after loading the car and the amorphous $50 Sampsonite black roof blob (suggested by Walter) with bags, toys, dairy-free food products, one night’s worth of seltzer, one large box fan and stuffed animals, with bikes what’s more on the back and the whole family with granny in the middle, we set off for Canandaigua (US 31 to US 206 to PA 33 to I 80 to I 580 to I 81 to US 17 to NY 371 to NY21 to Wells Curtice to West Lake RD).

However, at the intersection of 80 and 580 (“Gateway to the Poconos”), there was traffic. As there often is. And bladder pressure, as there often is. So we stopped and relieved.

And, backing out of the parking lot of our relief spot – what with all of the chattering in the back seat and the poor visibility due to bags and bikes and guiding our path solely by the side mirror – of a sudden our backwards progress was arrested by a loud “BAMM!!” Shock set in. Had I backed into another car? Everyone seemed fine. The car was at rest.

Stealthily, I stepped out of the car to see what had happened. I walked to the rear of the car and found the malefactor to be an otherwise innocent-looking telephone pole. The car was mostly fine enough, given how old it is. But my bicycle, my expensive, my sleek, my shiny bicycle was a little mangled. Front wheel mashed.

Undeterred, we recited the Griswold motto in song and headed on.