UFC Highlights - better late than never...

It's a little late to be topical, but I just have to put some thoughts down about the Ulitmate Fighter show and the UFC matches this past Saturday.

How happy was I (and thousands of other viewers) that Forrest kicked the crap out of Sam and made it to the light heavyweight final against Bonnar? Man, that was just about the best goddamn fight I've ever seen. Bonnar and Griffin went at for three long ass five minute rounds at a pace that matched Hagler vs Hearns with both taking and dishing wicked shots. Personally, I would have given the fight to Bonnar with him taking the 2nd round and a split between the 1st and 3rd. For one of those guys to go home without a contract for the UFC, to say that one was worthy of it but the other was not would have been a real mistake. My opinion is they both have a good future in the UFC and of course there is the possible drama of one or both of them fighting Liddell or Couture at some time.

I think Diego Chavez has a good future - but he better cut some fat and bulk up a bit if he wants to roll with Matt Hughes and or St. Pierre. I just can't see him at middleweight and competing. Of course, I could be wrong - the kid has a ton of heart. Speaking of which, how sick is Matt Hughes? In the UFC welterweight championship match against Frank Trigg, he showed tremendous grit and skill. About midway through the first round, Hughes has his back to the cage and is clinched up with Trigg, who then knees Hughes right in his groin. Hughes manages to break out of the clinch and moves to his left along the cage and looks at the referee for some help with the low blow, but none comes and Trigg follows up on Hughes and smokes him a few good ones and winds up taking his back sinking a rear naked choke. Hughes defends, gets out of it and winds up picking up Trigg and carrying him across the octagon like a bag of peat-moss and then does an WWE-riffic body slam, takes Trigg's back and sinks a rear-naked on Trigg to end it in the first round. Fucking great.

I give the best quote of the night to Renato "Babalu" Sobral, when asked by Joe Rogan to describe how he finished off Travis Wiuff with an armbar:

Gracie Jiu Jitsu

How great is that?

All in all it was a great night of fights with a good number of submissions. As for the big match of Couture vs. Liddell, well it ended too fast when Liddell just smoked Couture with a right a little over two minutes into the first round. Kudos to Liddell, but so much for the great fight I was looking forward to.

Back in the Day...

In a little while I am going to tool up the Taconic to see my good friend and buddy, Mr. Dennis of http://www.d2stuff.com, for some beers, some barbecue and to watch the UFC PPV matches tonight.

What a great way to spend an evening.

Of course, the big highlight match is Liddell vs Couture. It seems Den is routing for Couture because of his age and his demeanor. Me -- I have no idea who I'd like to see win, in fact I'm pretty sure it does not matter to me. I know both guys are great fighters -- I just want to see a great fight. Its pretty disappointing to see someone just get taken down and get beat on till the ref stops it, especially when you are paying cash on the barrel for your blood sport.

Anyhow, Den's gotten all into MMA since I've started BJJ. He's actually probably into it a bit more than I am. If his schedule ever allows it, I think he just might wind up at the NYMAG in Poughkeepsie and getting his roll on. That'd be cool. That would mean that I'd finally have someone to Mountain Bike and BJJ train with.

We met about 6 years ago whilst working as contractors for Texaco. I'd originally been hired as an Admin Asst. and managed to transition to doing some intranet web stuff for a few departments there. I really had no idea what I was doing, but welcomed the opportunity to learn some skills create some sort of a career path. A month or so into treading water and trying to figure out what the department wanted and how the hell I was supposed to do it, they brought on Dennis to help out.

Of course, at first I ignored him. It just seemed the Texaco way. Plus he was inching in on my turf and that pissed me off. I guess he got tired of lonely office life because one day he just came over and said "Let's get some lunch". I have to mention that they gave him an office. But, the powers that be made it clear that it was not his office. He was just in it. The staff would go out of their way to reference / reinforce the relationship between Den and the office. If there was a meeting they would say: "I'll be in a meeting with Dennis in the office that he is in." It was freaking odd. But hey, that odd bunch paid him and me a ton of cash just to do exactly what they wanted for their website, no matter how fucked the requests were. We were contractors, and as such were kind of like guns. They'd just point us and fire and we'd execute the disaster they had designed.

Suffice to say that we did not get a whole lot done, but what we did do we did a whole lot of. Towards the end, when Texaco had been bought by Chevron and we knew our days were numbered, we'd just take off for a hours at a time and walk the huge campus. There was an apple tree with apples to make a stop at, a beaver pond to sit and stare at along with, and I shit you not, the occasional Coyote. Ostensibly we were in the "server room" which was far far away from our department in the first place, and a place our boss did not have access to, so it was a perfect place to "be".

Ahh, those were the days. The people there were great, we had every other Friday off and for the most part, we could do what we wanted. Plus, I cut my teeth in tech there and learned all important workplace rules of thumb like the 3x rule - that is a person needs to ask you three times to do something before you do it. Otherwise, its just a bullshit pipedream request they are not serious about and you should not waste your time. The other all important rule is Perceived Work + Actual Work = Real Work. In other words, yeah you know that you can do what's needed in about 5 minutes, but they don't know that. Why fuck yourself into increased expectations?

Of course these were lessons Mr. Den helped me learn. Oh the looks of consternation I’d get when our boss would ask for something and I’d turn it around in no time like a good Boy Scout. I learned though.

Amazingly, though, it seems I've perfected things too far because this latest job is a purgatory of productivity. I’m still dying for stuff to do. Not the worst of job fates and waaay better than having to wash a car outside in the summer in a suit. Well, nothings forever and I'm sure that at some point I'll be chalking this all up to a transitional period.

Alrighty then -- its off to beers, bbq and choke outs.

Ramblings from a fevered mind...

I'm sick and on top of that I'm hurt.

Being that I ride the train to work everyday and work with people that do not stay home when they are sick, its no surprise that I'm nursing another head cold. Stay home people! On the other hand, whatever the hell went wrong with my left hip flexor is beyond me. I was fine all day yesterday but when I got up to leave at around 6PM my left hip felt stiff and when I walked my leg felt locked up and a little numb. Once I got home, it got worse and gave me a hell of a time getting to sleep. It still hurts right now, but at least my fever, sore throat and runny nose seem to be in check and I don't feel as drained as I did earlier.

So, I stayed home today and just slept and blew my nose and slept. Of course this happens just when I'm feeling a bit better about things and came up with a weekly diet and exercise plan. I get a little bit of a rhythm going and boom, something always seems to happen. Its not our problems that are so important as how we respond to them, right? Well, right now I'm having one hell of a time, and though I really try to respond positively to challenges like this little bit of discomfort among other things, there is a part of me that wants curl up and take a bath in my frustration, pain and self pity. If you read Death of Salesman or Notes from Underground you'll note its not an uncommon condition in the author's eyes. Like the characters in those works, you play it safe, you observe, you bide your time thinking that there is always tomorrow, or maybe you get hung up on something you can't let go or maybe theres always some excuse not to act. Ultimately, you paralyze yourself.

What a shitty way to go through life.

Fuck Willy Lohman and fuck Dostoevsky's Underground Man. I have things to do and people that count on me.

Choked Out

Last week, a six-foot tall, one-hundred-ninety pound purple belt taught me what a cross collar choke is really all about. I waited too long to tap and passed out for a second or two after he’d let go. What a very strange experience. My vision went all white and I went deaf and I went out. Poof! It was very “floaty” and I think my mind was still working but the outside world had just, for a moment, ceased to exist. A “release” is another way of putting it I guess. I came to on my own and the guy was asking me if I was ok and I just had to lay there face down on the mat and grasp for a second where the hell I was. I got up, rested a bit, we shook hands and went at it again. About 30 seconds later he took my back and gave me a rear naked choke.

I thought to myself, “This is ‘Make James Your Bitch Day'.” I also thought, “You’re learning from this, so its good.”

The next day in no gi I arm barred an experienced blue belt. I’ll take it.

Herald Square Hilarity

Its finally nice here in NYC today, so I took the opportunity to have a quick bit of nosh in Herald Square Park and do some people watching. I wound up on a little chair on the outside of the park facing north near 6th with, of all things, a very computerized pay to use public toilet directly ahead of me. So I’m sitting and noshing on my overpriced Roman Lemon Chicken when a commotion of embarrassed shrieking and laughter kick in from near the toilet. The door is open and the woman inside is hiking up her skirt and a friend / brother / cousin (not boyfriend, no sane boyfriend would laugh at this) is laughing his ass off while being lightly shushed by a girlfriend / sister /cousin. He puts fifty cents in again, the door closes…and about 5 seconds later, for whatever reason, opens up again and the woman is jumping up again and now the guy is just howling. He steps inside to check out the scene and comes out a few seconds later but with a 4 foot strand of toilet paper stuck to his shoe, so now girlfriend is laughing, but the lady inside thinks she’s laughing at her…

And so it went for about three minutes while they tried to get the HAL the toilet to work and HAL turning on every light but “occupied” and opening the door just when you thought it would stay closed. Finally they gave up and I alerted the guy to the toilet paper streamer attached to his right shoe. Last I saw they were wandering toward Macy’s. Man, Jay Leno should get crew down here to film all the bladder challenged folk struggling with this contraption.

Anyhoo, I took a moment to look up the manufacturer of this toilet and by the press and the design of these things, you would really thing that the future is here now! These toilets play you music, self clean after every use, cleaned 3 times a day and are supposedly monitored via a central server. Now if the door would just stay closed. Oh yeah, there is also a 15 minute time-limit to how long the door will stay closed with someone inside, ostensibly to deter people from doing drugs in it, having sex in it, moving in et cetera. Come on now, not that I’m bragging here but 15 minutes is plenty of time to do some drugs AND have some wild sex if you just focus!

Harper's Classified Weirdness

I picked up Harper's on a lark at Hudson's newsstand in Grand Central last night and casually flipped through it on the train, managing an article or two before hitting White Plains. Nothing great. Basically I'm finding it a bit boring. Not willing to just trash my $5.95, I gave it a second chance this morning. Right away I found myself at the classifieds, since I tend to flip through magazines backwards looking for items of interest. Now I know any news or lit rag with classifieds always attracts a few racy odds and ends and my attention span is short short first thing in the morning, so I stop to take a look. Harper's classifieds do not disappoint, though they are missing that sex position foam pad ad that's everywhere these days. First, I notice:

FEMINIST PIN UPS: Powerwomen, Soldier, Policewomen etc.

Not bad. Somehow fitting for Harper's. I catch myself wondering if the Army's mud wrestling enlisted women are featured... Then I get to the education section to find this little ad with a Yahoo email as the only contact information:

DEPT OF EDUC. GESTAPO TACTICS: Scaring elderly, low income citizens into paying on bogus, non-verifiable loans.

Wow. That's pretty ballzy. Either its recruiting people to scare elderly people or this guy thinks that the Dept. of Education is like the Gestapo and scaring the elderly into paying on loans. Who knows, maybe Harper's classified is a sordid underbelly of recruitment for grifters? Then we slip into the truly oddly disturbing an inch or so over in the next column. This ditty appears under the heading of Human Rights:

RACISM-GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA! Strange Fruit hanging from the Gainesville Poplar Trees. Contact (same guy as the preceding ad!)

My knee jerk reaction is that a white supremacist org is recruiting in Harper's of all things and looking to fund itself by ripping off old people! What the hell?! On the other hand, maybe someone knows about racist attacks in Gainesville and heavy handed tactics by the Dept. of Ed.? Either way, though a bit disturbing, those classifieds proved way more intriguing so far than the sleep inducing abstract trippiness of Daniel Mason's story entitled "A Registry of My Passage Upon The Earth" which has a kind of a The Sound and The Fury point of view thing going in on it. I'm too tired to figure it out.

The same classifieds are not on Harper's online. Perhaps they removed them and the intern that missed them the first time around has been properly disciplined and relegated to loading the stapler for the on-staff post modernist deconstructionist critic?

Oh yeah, one more ad, this one right after someone pimping a philosophically slanted baseball rag and before another selling remote viewing tips:

PROVACTIVE SPANKING EROTICA: Our "Prep-School Punishments" feature both a rebellious co-ed and a sophisticated female teacher being spanked by handsome faculty members

Imagine that! A rebellious co-ed AND a sophisticated female teacher! How the hell does that work? You finish up some articles about strip mining in West Virginia, Social Security and peruse a few Readings and then...well you must just feel like getting your spank on? That has to be it or the ads wouldn't be there. Luv it.

Jenn in her CIA whites.
Posted by Hello

Palm Sunday

Last year, all the Brooklyn family that could make it came over for dinner. It was our first family event. I was married, had a house, two cats and a dog and suddenly I was hosting a holiday dinner. How the hell did this happen? Despite my misgivings, I managed a ham, pork roast and garlic roasted potatoes along with some appetizers. Dinner was a success and everyone had a good noisy time. People just stayed at our huge dining room table and ate and joked and laughed.

So one year ago I was in my kitchen with my sister by my side to guide and supervise me. We laughed, talked about food and just were together. It was great. It was moments like that that made me want to go to the FCI and somehow, eventually, work together. What a difference a year makes. This Palm Sunday she's gone and I'm sick with some sort of cold / sinus infection and cooking is something I tend to avoid these days. I guess its part self punishment and part pain avoidance. If I just make eggs I want to go to cooking school and all it takes is that bit of cooking to make me think of Jenn and her missed opportunities. She knew I wanted to go, but I know she also felt that the reality of the industry might be too much what with the low starting salary and tough hours. It takes a lot of sacrifice to be a chef. If you want to learn more about it, read Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute of America. There is one incident in the book I am indirectly involved in - back in 1996 there was one hella blizzard and the author describes trying to get to class from Poughkeepsie to Hyde Park. At the same time back then I was trying to make it from Hartsdale to Peekskill. A 20 min trip to 4hours that night. The author actually gets taken to task for not showing up to class in a blizzard that had already dumped around 4 feet of snow. That's the type of industry it is and that's the expectation. Jenn excelled there. She'd found her calling. That's more than I can say.

Anyway, this week is a week of healing and redemption and mercy and though my faith is hardly what it once was I find myself humbled and praying for her.

Strat and The Ultimate Fighter

I was at Sfumato's last night to play our first Strat series . We lost, 3 games to 4 but all things considered it was a good showing. Our team is crap and we have to manage each game like a World Series game in order to give ourselves a chance. If we even come close to contending, the season will be a brilliant success. More than the game though, I enjoy hanging out with Sfumato. Strat is merely an excuse to get together and BS and just put life on hold for few hours and concentrate on weighty issues like whether to bring in Bruce Chen or play Alex Sanchez in CF against a lefty or consider the merits of bunting with Matt Lawton.

After the series was over we BS'd about a few things for a while - a long while actually. Long enough to catch the midnite showing of the Ultimate Fighter on Spike.

I have two comments on the episode:

1. Sam needs to get whacked around. Granted, editing can make anyone look bad on camera, but even so.... Sam has to get a beat down. That fake smile fake good guy look of his grates on me.
2. I'm still amazed how fast the tide can turn in one of these fights. Underdog Beard Guy came out throwing and opened a nice cut on Bald Crazy Guy but could not capitalize on it. If he had managed to go down in the center of the octogon or been able to throw some more strikes at that big cut, things might have turned out better for him. Instead he got taken down, put into side control and mounted in a hearbeat. Then the pummeling begins. It just goes to reinforce the scoring sytem in BJJ - the mount is a good place to be in a real fight.

Misery

I'm sick and I'm freaking miserable. My right eye and nostril are running like finely tuned high performance Italian engines. Just the right side though. The left eye and nostril live now in constant fear wondering when the germ gestapo is going to bang the door down. Trapped they sit there and quiver in fear.

The dastardly sickness started creeping up on Friday afternoon. By the evening it was looking to get a superior position and score some points before trying to sink in a wicked face flood hold. No sleep last night except for maybe 30 min here and 30 min there. Things really started to look great when my tissues were pink with blood around 3:45AM.

Oh yeah - this is great. Love it.

Jedi Philosophy and CSS Image Replacement

About two hours ago I hung up on a friend. Just clicked end because I was pissed off and frustrated.

Did he bang my wife? Drink my liquor? Wreck my car? Steal my stereo? Tell me I was a amoral crazed libertine? Were we arguing over social security? The Iraq war?

Nope.

The crux of the debate centered around CSS image replacement techniques. Yeah -- "What the hell is that?" you might be thinking. Well its a geek thing and the argument we had / are having is about as divided as you can get. Like North Vs. South divided. It might seem stupid outside of IT, but you should just see how hostile things can get between say, an open source unix guy and well, anyone not using that platform. It gets ugly folks. Who knew, right?

We (my friend and I) just see things differently. There really is no right or wrong - its what works for you and what works for your clients. Still though, I get tired of having to defend shit. Every new technique that comes out on the web is not a hack. Not all old techniques are hacks either but time and progress does march on.

I guess my problem stems from the word hack - to me it has a derogatory connotation. I prefer the terms "method" or solution for my side of things. My buddy views image replacement techniques as a hack because he thinks they use the background property in CSS for a purpose other than which it was intended, namely to display an image which itself displays text or something like Britney Spears in a see through top or some such. A background, he thinks, should be just that, an abstract thing sitting behind the element like a color or a gradient pattern. If it has meaning of somesort, he wants it in an image tag. If its a spacer GIF, that's ok too. Moreover he sees it as hypocritical - because the same crowd, in general, that espouses this technique as capital G Good, and which he sees as a hack, decries the use of tables for anything other than a debit credit ledger or a phone list. See, tables were not meant to be layout elements, but people adapted them to it. Now people are using the background of elements to do funny things with image replacement and that's just crazy talk.

Me, I'm a bit of a tech crow. I like shiny sites. I like nice fonts and good design and clean crisp images and strong use of photography (within limits of the site objective, of course). To me the image replacement techniques are great. You get to have your cake and eat it too. In the end the site looks better, is accessible and indexable. Win Win Win. Moreover I like things modularized. I like the idea of markup that is ready to go anywhere and can be styled however it needs to be and still stay presentation free.

Still though, its a silly thing to be getting into a fight with a friend with. Of course, I really don't think he even thought we were having a fight. He wasn't. Me on the other hand...I was., I was just getting more and more pissed off and frustrated. Frustration leads to anger and anger leads to the Dark Side and bad dialogue that sounds like it was translated to German and back to English. Silly Silly.

Side bar -
Other 'hacks" (usage of something for other than what it was intended):

• The Wright Brothers Airflow Technique (man was not meant to fly -- but we do FALL really well)
• The Cousteau Drowning Negation Method (we do drown very well)
• The Commuter Lap Beverage Implementation (hey look a place for this 200 degree cup of coffee!)
• The Angry Wife Rolling Pin / Frying Pan Kinetic Solution (eh heh).

End side bar

Ultimately, it seems man just does what he can with what he's got and we all do the best we can. What more can we ask of ourselves?

On the mat

3 keylocks and an armbar for submissions tonight. Granted the guy is newer than me and has been missing class lately too. He's strong though, and close to me in weight.

What the hell though. For now, I'll take it. Its when I start holding my own / submitting most of the other white belts that I'll be ready to test for Blue. Its not happening yet -- but barring another injury that time is right around the corner. I'm feeling my Wheaties.

The Token Boarder

I took up snowboarding about 4 years ago after a long respite from winter sports. In my younger years as a pre-teen and teen I skied fairly often and with pretty decent finesse. Of course, having family on the ski patrol to teach me and follow down the mountain really helped. To me skiing was always a lot like skating but with just really long skates. But at some point I just lost interest and stopped. From about 20 or so to 33 there was no skiing and no snowboarding. So typical of me to stop something like that.

Anyhoo - fat and out of shape I just decided to give it a try. Plus I needed an outlet for the frustration of being jobless at the time - Texaco had let me go in November. The first day was brutal and I landed on my ass and face planted more times than I could count. Toward the end of that first day though I strung together a bit of a run here and there - managed to link a turn or two and, man, what a great feeling. I was hooked and immediately got the vibe of it. My enthusiasm for it intrigued my friend Paul and he was hooked soon too. I remember on our first day together at Hunter sitting in the lodge with him and talking about how much we missed by just staying on campus so much at Fordham. Sure it was great, but we were like -- man what a scene we missed!

I've gotten better since that first day and always board, for a while at least, with my uncle Tommy, the now retired ski patroler. He's really good and if I can keep up even a little on my slow ass board its a good thing.

This past weekend we were up in the Catskills visiting the three bears (Eileen, Tommy, Christine) at their weekend ski chalet in Hensonville. The idea was to drive up on Friday, hit the mountain on Saturday and then go to a beach party at some friend of The Bears and then either hit the mountain again on Sunday or just recuperate.

Well, we managed to make it up on Friday in the middle of a snowstorm that miraculously did not stick at all to the ground while we made our way up from Westchester. We hung out and chatted a little bit and watched Riley the bunny jump around a bit. Yeah, that's right - Riley the bunny. Christine wanted a pet, knew she'd get killed for a dog so she got a bunny instead. At first, Riley was Hunny Bunny but then Hunny's ballz dropped and voila - Riley. Don't ask me why. No idea.

Saturday morning comes and Tommy and I head out to the mountain, but not after a bit of confusion as to how we were getting there. Tommy thought we would take my car, I thought we would take their car, since Clarisa was going shopping with Christine and Eileen thought we were going to go with a friend of theirs, Spencer. After a bit of consternation it all works out and we hit the mountain and I get to board for the first time all year (thanks to the sprained foot back in December). No one is on the mountain and its fresh snow. Not powder really, but Eastern Powder and mostly undisturbed. We go right to the top and after a few runs I'm following Tommy and Spencer down some black diamond trails and even hit a trail on Hunter's west side. Did I bomb down, no. But at this point I'm not just turning my board into a big snowplow either. Eventually Tommy ditched me (the token boarder) so he could make some runs on his own at his own pace of 9.81 meters per second squared and spend some time with his large crew of Hunter friends. I make a few runs on my own, get a coffee at the Skytop cafe and head down to chill out on a deck chair because the sun has come out and my legs are asking for a break.

We meet up and get a little nosh afterward and head over around 5pm for the beach party. Man, talk about a party crew. These people dance, drink and just "party" like the 70's never ended. So a fun time with them is always guaranteed. And since we've been hanging out with Tommy and Eileen more, we are starting to get to know their other friends and can actually mingle a bit now. Its really nice. It makes me hope that our crew can get it together like this someday. That would be nice too.

Good Achey Feeling

While no camel clutches or figure 4 leg locks were applied, as one commenter hilariously suggested, I did manage to make it to 2 (count 'em) BJJ classes in a row. While there was no fanfare or big group hug -- I could tell the guys I know there were happy to see me and it was great to see the familiar faces of my BJJ boudreaus. The workouts were not too bad either, mainly because of the classes I chose to go to. Tuesday nights tend to be medium intensity and the Weds early class is about the same or a bit lower. Fortunately, on the first day I got to work out with Alan, a really big blue belt that put up a fight but let me work at the same time. Its cool when someone is willing to coach you a little bit rather than just crush you. Lets face it, at this point I need coaching.

I ache today, but its a good type of ache that comes from honest effort. Its the thank you your body gives you for actually using it. It could be worse. I could be a massive pile of quivering torn muscle, but I'm not. I guess the time I put in at Crunch helped. Also, in a way, the worst is over because I've overcome the inertia of not going to BJJ / exercising and replaced it with activities (my wife will swear to you they do) make me happy.

Plus, a part of me just loves to kick ass.

Going back to the mat.

Tomorrow I'm going back to BJJ for the first time since my injury back on December 18th. That's about 2 and a half months, yeah? I've been working out at Crunch and running and all of that and doing the Abs Diet thing -- but nothing really works you out like BJJ and a part of me is dreading my body's reaction.

I know my heart is going to feel like its going to explode in my chest sometime tomorrow. I know I'm out of shape still despite working out at Crunch. I know my body is going to ache and I realize that this is probably not the last time I'm going to be injured doing this. I realize that I'm probably going to tap out a bunch of times. But I need to go back because I love it, and I know that in a few weeks my heart will not want to explode anymore and I'll be back in the groove.

Bottom line - I love to compete. And while BJJ is competition against others to an extent, it really comes down to a competition with yourself. How hard are you willing to work?

The Catch Up

Well, seeing as how I'm behind a bit, lets start with last weekend...

The long holiday weekend was spent doing nothing and doing it very well. Well, not nothing mind you - but nothing mentally or physically taxing. Nothing. Its the new slacking. The nothing consisted of:

Friday: A fine dinner at Zanaro's, a new Italian restaurant in White Plains NY. The service was great, the food was good and its just kind of cool eating in the old atrium of a huge 1930's bank. Leaving the place, we noted that Trump is putting up a building right across the street from it. While part of me thinks it would be financially smart and sound to buy a place in there sight unseen, I think we would never be able to pay for it. :-P Its friggen White Plains!!

Saturday: A matinee of Million Dollar Baby. Yep, that's right. I finally wore Clarisa down and we saw it. The bonus was that I managed not to hear about its big plot twist by avoiding all reviews and articles and shutting down any conversations about it. As for the movie itself -- Its a Movie. A Film and as such carries with it the gravitas only Eastwood seems to be bringing these days. Like most great drama's (aka "life issues" movie) MDB is imbued with the complexity, beauty
and strain of relationships. Its amazing how much you can learn about characters in a short time when the filmmaker knows what they are doing. MDB stands in stark contrast to Sunday's fare....

Sunday: We saw Constantine. Somehow, I think the Mad magazine parody of it might be better. Like Clarisa said, "I like this movie better when it was called The Prophecy", specifically referring to Satan's cameo in both those films that elevated them slightly. The thing that makes comic books / graphic novels great issue after issue is not so much the art and not so much the special effects (and face it, there can be TONS - its just extra ink and imagination vs. a roomful of programmers) but the characters. Readers come back for the characters and the style of the art -- which can be likened to a film's cinematography, I guess. A lot of times, it seems that comic based film's can't do the characters justice. Everything is rushed, the exposition is awkward and too long and generally, they just suck. And I hate having to say that.

Monday: Alias DVD viewing interspersed with Desert Combat Blasting -- ah the joys of leaving a game for a bit and coming back to it to find that while there is a new release out, the game has about 1/8th of the servers hosting it that it used to. DC seems to be on the shnide. Regardless, you can't play on all of the servers at once anyway -- so if there's just one available with a good mix of guys that's good enough for me!. The new maps are interesting and added some new twists to things.

So, yeah, the Alias DVD quest continues (just finished season 2!)...Ever since we caught the two hour premier of the Alias this year, we got hooked and decided to get caught up by Netflixing all the previous shows. So now during on any idle block of time that happens to be non Gilmour Girls / One Tree Hill / CSI /Deadwood (you need to watch this just for Al Sweraangen, played with moxie by Ian McShane)/Dead Like Me (another must see) time, we race through season after season and episode after episode trying to catch up with the very active Bristow family. Some odd things happen when you concentrate episodes that are supposed to be a week or weeks apart. One, you start to see all the plot devices revealed in stark Groundhog Day clarity. Lets just say I really did not want to see Sidney and Vaughn meet in that cyclone fence cage again, for one thing. Two, its possible to OD on Jennifer Garner. You just can't take anymore. After three episodes in a row, we get to the point where Clarisa is like a marathon runner unable to stop and I have double over and puke on the side of the Alias DVD highway. Generally, the only solution to an Alias OD is to blast something in Desert Combat. A more productive thing might be to play guitar I guess...

Anyhoo, that was the weekend. The work week was actually a little interesting this time around. I've been helping out one of the programmers with the CSS for some basic layouts. He is resistant to change, but he's getting it and most importantly he's letting me work on it because he knows I'm climbing the walls there. Thing is, when the pages are done...its back to a big case of ennui.

Last night Clarisa came down into the city and we went to see Billy Connolly at The Town Hall. The seats were close up, but way over to the left side so we had a bit of a hard time hearing him at points over the laughter. I guess the sound waves had a hard time making a right angle turn out of the speaker. Regardless, he was funny as hell. He did some bits on getting older and how he pays his kids to tell him if they catch him doing typical old people moves. "Here's 5 quid -- now you tell me if I smell of piss!" He did another bit bemoaning the fate of American cars. "They're all beige! Or, you know, like some beigeish color. You used to have Big Red Cadillacs, Blue ThunderBirds and we loved them. What the fuck did you do to them!?" Stuff like that. Well IT WAS FUNNY WHEN HE SAID IT! After the show we walked around Times Square and checked out the Virgin Megastore for a little while. We came out empty handed because every CD we looked we thought "ah - lets just get what we want on iTunes" and for every DVD we saw, we thought 'We can get it on eBay cheaper". So take that Branson.

Oh and on a side note, yesterday I was in the Suncoast in the Manhattan Mall and saw a Detroit Red Wing Best Of DVD that has games going back from 1996 or so -- and includes the fantastic March 1997 game where all hell breaks loose as Darren McCarty goes after Claude Lemieux for injuring Chris Draper months earlier in the season. I saw that game live and remember screaming and whooping at the TV in bloodthirsty glee as the Wings and the 'Lanche mixed it up old school style. The 40 bucks or so for the DVD is worth it just for that intense game which cemented Detroit vs Colorado as one of the biggest sports rivalries. Man, what a great team Detroit fielded over the years since 1996. And what a shame Stevie Y is probably done for and never got the farewell from the fans he deserved. Here's to you Steve. And while I'm here let me just say,

Bettman you can go fuck yourself for destroying hockey..you SOB!

Correction

In my last post, I said I did not condone what Hunter did. While letting that remark stand, I'd also like to clarify what I meant without getting to deep into a very emotionally charged subject with vast religious and philosophical overtones.

In general, I don't condone suicide. I'm pretty sure I'm in agreement with a lot of people when I say that. Its a bad thing and the language we use to talk about it reflects that. Often words like "senseless" and "selfish" and "cowardly" get thrown about when suicide is discussed. Let me say this though - while those words might be applicable in a general sense, not all suicides are created equal and none are the same. Depending on circumstance suicide can be senseless or it can also be a very lucid final act of control, especially when the life you want to live is no longer possible. So, while I don't condone it, I can, in some instances, respect the choice. From what I've been reading, the general take on Hunter's death seems to be the latter - an act of control.

Sometimes I think its a desperate escape. In the summer of 1985 (does my memory fail me?) my friend Dave R. and I found out that a our good friend Dan had killed himself. Dan had moved to the Carolina's with his family months before and he was going to school down there and he had a girlfriend he'd met down there. We were still in school but it was near the end because all of the trees were green and it was really warm out. Dave had got the news from a phone call at school and told me. I remember being shocked and devasted. We just walked out of school, right past the principal who said nothing to us and out into the brightness of the day. We found a six pack and drank in the woods near his house and just talked. I can't remember what about exactly but it was about what you would expect -- ruminations on the meaning of life and just remembering Dan. Later on some details came to us, like how Dan had hung himself in the basement of his house. That he had leaned into the rope and that his knees were almost touching the ground. At any second while he was stil conscious, all he had to do was stand up. He never did. I also heard some rumors about his homelife that were said to be a factor but it was all basically heresay so I can't speak to that. I can't say for Dan what it was - senseless or a choice. The younger you are, the more senseless it seems. There's still potential and the life story is hardly written at 15. Your problems are workable. How horrible to be in a place where you can't see that anymore.

Months later I recalled a brief conversation with Dan. He had already moved and was up visiting for a bit. We had been drinking (go figure that one) and we were hoofing through the woods somewhere from point A to point B and just talking and making jokes and remarks back to one another. Finally I remember Dan had said something that night about killing himself. It was so casual and off the cuff, and we were both so drunk that I just dismissed it right away with "Don't be fucking stupid. There's a lot to live for." and we just continued our night of getting buzzed without thinking about it or talking about anymore. When I finally remembered that conversation, I felt guilty for a while that I had not said or done more. I'm great at blaming myself. Its even probably a little self centered of me to think that I could have made a difference somehow.

Dave and I have since drifted apart for whatever reason and aside for some bad poetry I wrote in college, Dan rarely comes to my mind.

Dave R. - if you are out there and see this, shoot me an email. I hear you are nurse working on a medi-vac helo crew. That's great to hear. So if you feel like it - give me a shout.

Goodbye, Hunter

I was checking the frontpage of www.ntytimes.com last night around 11:15pm or so when I saw a new headline that wasn't there when I checked around 10pm (Its an OCD sort of thing I've developed since 9/11 - check check check the news). And here was a headline telling me Hunter S. Thompson, co-founder of Gonzo Journalism had taken his life. I sat for a second and thought about it and let it soak in.

"Aww no..." I thought. I also immediately thought of my estranged friend Tom who was a bigger Thompson fan than I. At least back when we spoke regularly he was. Anyway, I walked into the bedroom and told Clarisa what I had just read.

"Really? Wow.' She paused and looked briefly at her laptop screen, but saw nothing and looked back up at me. "In way, that makes sense.' she paused again."That's the end of something, isn't it?".

I thought about what she said for a second and I had to agree. I knew what she meant -- that it was more than Hunter that had just died. An age of sorts has passed. The voice of Gonzo Journalism silenced himself and left us to fend for ourselves in this land that I see quietly creeping toward Orwellian prognostications. And how was he supposed to leave this earth? Dying slowly in a nursing home? It just seems to fit that this is how it would end for him. By no means do I condone it and I hope I never face such a choice but it seems to fit, though I'd rather it not.

While not a regular reader, I always found it comforting to know that he was out there doing his thing; thinking bounding thoughts and experiencing things in a visceral way. What's more, I knew that I could, when I wanted, check right in and live vicariously through him for a bit via a column on ESPN's Page 2 or in any of his other writing. His writing is still there, of course, but all of a sudden I'm not as comfortable. Maybe he could appreciate that.

My first Imix

On the last day I ever saw Jenn - she sat down here at this PC I'm at and made a mix to take on her trip out to Oklahoma. I'm not sure it was so much for her as it was for me and a select few others.

Now its for you too. Just go to iTunes and then iMix's and search on "Kitcher" and her tunes will come up.

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: No Mullah Left Behind

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: No Mullah Left Behind

When I read OP-ED pieces like this one from Tom Friedman, I get really fired up. Go read it. If not, here is the executive summary...By not supporting an energy independence initiative, improving energy conservation, taxing gasoline or demanding increased mileage from Detroit the Bush administration is financing both sides of the war on terror. As the price of oil goes up, the need for economic and governmental reform diminishes and the U.S. energy policy basically becomes "No Mullah Left Behind".

I absolutely advocate energy independence from the mid-east. Energy independence should be this generations moon race. Right after 9/11 Bush could have announced an initiative like what I'm talking about. Instead, we got told to shop. No surprise since Dubya is best friends with the Saudis.

I also agree with Friedman that our nation's campuses are curiously quiet in regards to this issue and, to my mind, the war as well. Where are the idealistic kids?

Despite the lack of support from the administration, some U.S. auto manufacturers have seen the writing on the wall as to the future of oil and are hedging their bets by developing hybrid gas/electric vehicles and hydrogen powered vehicles. Take GM's program for instance which is designed to possibly accelerate what my old friends at Texaco's Strategic Management Group called the Hydrogen future. Since the petroleum present seems to have only another twenty to fifty years left, we would do well as a nation to prepare now for that inevitable change and start building the infrastructure we'll need to support it. The whole world would benefit economically and environmentally.

You think its going to happen when the Bush line of kings is in Washington?