Rustwerx ©2008

Purgatory is a half packed apartment

2009-01-06T20:13:00.003-05:00

Packing sucks. Almost as bad as the moving part. Most would argue that the moving is much worse but i argue its the opposite - I've lived in my current place now for about 2.5 years, and I've accumulated so much SHIT that I'm ashamed of myself... so packing involves organizing, organizing involves prioritizing, priorities preclude the question of what to toss/donate and what to keep - a major headache.

The new joint is killah. Positively gi-normous, open floor plan sunlight strewn magnificence. More than enough room for all the aforementioned SHIT yet i will cut it down, shed some skin, grow some new bright plumage and finally get to throw some serious parties that will maybe breathe some life into an otherwise stagnant social scene here in ol' Kingston.

It seems that every couple of weeks i run into someone who looks me up and down and begs questions like: "What the fuck are you doing here in Kingston?" or my favorite: "You know, you like, BELONG down in Brooklyn, why are you living here instead of there?" I don't know, family, decent job, and while my circle of friends is very small, they are a pretty kickass crew of people; but it never grows, it only shrinks. And i understand why people ask me those questions - its not whether or not if i belong here, its that i feel completely alienated and different from 99% of the people who DO live here. Browse myspace for 10 minutes and see what i mean, peeps who tout glitter tags and claim that they are proud to be a 'redneck', a 'crazy bitch', 'thug' or 'party 24/7'. The essential American ingredients: Arrogant about being Ignorant. Pride in self centered egomania. Being better than you, in every way. Its the epitome of the small town existence, people get settled into roles that were set in high school or maybe even roles that their parents set for themselves at the same high school 30 years earlier - a family legacy of social recognition. The 99% might cling to this as the definition of home, i consider it pretty fucking tired and lame - then again, I'm still here aren't I? The 1% that i could potentially identify with? Well. I probably know them all, or they... moved to Brooklyn. Yeah.

When i think about when i moved into this place i remember how it seemed less like an exciting change and more like a frenzied escape from my previous situation - lets just say that something changed after 8 years - and while i don't regret the situation at all whatsoever, the move was a need, not a want. I had to change and it was because of this that packing was a slapdash, frenzied mess of throwing random shit in any box that would accommodate it. This time, the move is friggen exciting and awesome, and the motivation is to trim all the crap, whittle it down.

But that's not the whole reason packing sucks. Its all the rocks you have to turn over, all the surprises waiting for you at the back of a closet, in a forgotten drawer, an old shoe box. Things that were put away because they needed to be put away - i would say that when it comes to precious memories, I'm a pack rat. I guess i always had this feeling that way down the road, 50 years from now i would like to be able to pour over movie ticket stubs, wine bottle labels, dried leaves or say a torn up receipt from a meal at a choice restaurant. I'd like to hold this stuff in my own hands and try and remember why i saved it, have a physical tie to these memories that might be hazy and distant by then.

Now its impossible to come across this stuff and not fall into it, the problem is, I'm too goddam young for some of these memories to be simply precious and sweet. Its not that I'm stung with regret over these things, its just that I can't appreciate it - i can still connect dots from those memories to where i am right now and I can't simply enjoy, it all makes me think too much. They need to... brew for another 50 or so years before they ferment into something resembling a fine wine, something that will be 'oaky and full bodied', memorable of the time and place it was from instead of some bitter concoction that has been tapped too early and hastily imbibed.

Time capsules. What a concept.

Here's hoping 2009 in the new spot brings the change I've been waiting for, and Kingston maybe shows me that one doesn't have to move to Brooklyn to find a pretty smile with a brain to match.

2009 NY Yankees: The Empire Strikes Back

2008-12-24T12:33:00.002-05:00

I'll have more to say about this after the holidays, but needless to say, the straight NINJA MAGIC that Brian Cashmoney dropped on the Teixeira deal was nothing short of masterful. After listening to John William's 'Imperial March' on a loop for inspiration and fantasizing about being universally feared again in the MLB, heres my projected lineups:

Ol' Reliable:

CF Damon - L
SS Jeter - R
1B Teixeira - S
3B A-Rod - R
DH Matsui - L
C Posada - S
2B Cano - L
RF Swisher - S
LF Nady - R

Late Defensive Alt or Rest Damon Day:

DH Damon - L
SS Jeter - R
1B Teixeira - S
3B A-Rod - R
C Posada - S
RF Swisher - S
2B Cano - L
LF Nady - R
CF Cabrera/Gardner - S/L

Alt. Catcher Day:

CF Damon - L
SS Jeter - R
1B Teixeira - S
3B A-Rod - R
DH Matsui / Posada - L/S
RF Swisher - S
2B Cano - L
LF Nady - R
C Molina - R

Righteous Change

2008-11-05T22:01:00.006-05:00

Even though November 4th 2008 is going to be the day in the history books, July 27th 2004 will always hold more weight in my mind when i think of this election. We had just endured the first 4 years of Bush, Iraq was turning into the nightmare that we all worried it would become and the wound from 9/11 was still raw. I was one of the many who ran with John Kerry on the 'anyone but Bush' platform, and i was never more aware of this de facto sentiment when on that day - July 27 2004, i watched Barack Obama give the DNC keynote speech. While it was impossible for anyone to be swayed by Kerry's droning rhetoric, Obama moved me so much that i thought to myself: Fuck Kerry - this guy should be running for president, this is the type of man America needs right now. I called my girlfriend at the time into the room and made her watch it - i needed to validate the idea that I had indeed perceived something real, something heartfelt and true - coming from a politician. She was moved, as were my parents a few days later, and over the next several weeks, i would tell more and more people.

That November, while Kerry lost the presidency and we were all shocked that 51% of this nation could re-elect W, Barack Obama won his Senate race in a landslide. That christmas, my parents gave me his autobiography, Dreams from my Father and after reading it i swooned at the idea of a man like this as president - but was also convinced that this was a reality that would never, ever happen.

During the democratic primary, i felt trapped between friends i knew who were too cynical to care and others who felt that a good democrat should go for Hillary Clinton. It was a personal affirmation for me, knowing that before i was a democrat or a republican, liberal or conservative, i was a progressive - and the progressive candidate was Barack Obama. Each month that primary dragged on, i felt more sure that he wasn't going to win, that they would run a 3 party election before the old guard Clintonista camp allowed him to take the nomination. But it seems as if the bright, new campaign for Change was resonating too loudly against the forces of old. Up next, John McCain and Sarah Palin. Surely lies, deceit and manipulation would win again.

But he won. Yes We Did. Mr. President Barack Obama. This campaign of change will now need to evolve into administration of progress. An entire generation of people were doomed to grow under a dark shadow in the 'new post 9/11 world', maybe now we've given them some light instead, and a hope that better things are coming tomorrow.

Treeclimbing with HG Wells

2008-10-26T17:55:00.004-04:00

If i could go back in time to when i was 14 and tell myself that 15 years from now, you'll be living in this same town, I probably would have gone outside in front of my parents house and hung myself from my favorite tree. Indeed, Kingston was a terrible, awful place to be as a teenager, it didn't really matter why, you just knew that pretty much any other place in the world would be better than this, it just had to be. Things improve a little bit after you get your license and get the fuck out of high school, but the 'grass is greener' mentality holds fast till you do something about it. Unlike most of my friends, who migrated to Brooklyn, i chose to go north to Montreal for college. After immersing myself for a few years, i returned home to Ulster county and realized how hard i had been on the area - as small towns go in America, we have no idea how good we have it here upstate - metropolitan peeps with open minded mentalities at a small town pace. We're lucky to have more art galleries than baptist churches, good venues and a music scene to match - farmers markets and historic districts. So, um, where for art thou, satisfaction?

I drive by my childhood house several times a week, and my favorite tree is still out by the road. I drove by today in no particular rush and was compelled to stop - and of course, once i was standing under the tree I was even more compelled to do what i did years ago: climb it. I mean, i climbed this tree all the time, it was the best place to be in a water balloon fight, a sweet lookout post for seeing neighborhood kids coming down the streets on BMXs, or just a spot to chill out and read Tin-Tin comics and choose your own adventure novels. I had my first 'girlfriend' in the 5th grade and i was so excited that i clumsily carved a heart into the trunk, surrounding the initials C+J - before heading up the tree, i tried to find it but came up empty: not a trace. Tree bark and human hearts seem to have similar characteristics when it comes to closing wounds. I thought i'd never get over it, the scars would never fade! Ahhh: 5th grade. We moved from Kingston when i was 15 and i never climbed that tree again.

Anyway, i was amazed at the instinct and memory i had, knowing which branches to hold, which route to take. I remembered exactly where i would lounge and since the tree has been growing up too, the fit felt good to put my legs up and take a deep breath. I hadn't looked at Kingston from this perspective in a long, long time - my old house, renovated, is hardly the same house, but the sounds and the smells of that autumn air was unmistakable. And there i was, a big kid in the breeze, trying to remember what it was like to really not give a shit about anything outside of the moment.

Looking out between the remaining leaves - I still felt that theres something 'missing' here. Five years ago my primary solution would be to blame this town and say i needed to move, i needed a change of scenery, new people, etc etc. Instead, I've been enduring this feeling and trying to make the best of things, leaving has now become synonymous with denial: that i know whatever it is that i think is missing - it will carry with me from place to place until i figure it out. I could have stayed up there all evening, but it wasn't the same without a good book or someone to share the view with. Climbing down felt like climbing back out of the past, and i got older with every little hanging drop, by the time i was standing on the sidewalk, it was 2008 again. Touching, ain't it?

Maybe what i feel as 'missing' is really just the way life keeps us all motivated, if we ever felt truly content and complete, what would there be to live for right? Yea - keep telling yourself that... i know that my best is still ahead of me - but I'm skeptical that it won't show until after I find this missing piece.

The crooked heart that I butchered into the side of that tree was a first and a last. It didn't seem prudent to jinx myself ever again, ya know? I don't know what more I can do in living life now - Maybe i just want someone to climb trees with, up into the past - without fear of the future - in the breeze? Maybe that missing piece is an excuse to finally carve a new set of initials into a new tree.

Hold off on the Bubbly.

2008-10-16T23:22:00.005-04:00

The final debate has come and gone, and now all there is left is a down-the-stretch foot race that will eventually conclude, one way or another, on November 4th. As of today, the polls had Obama at a 4-6 point lead over McCain and the gossip was that McCain was probably going to try something drastic - a complete reinvention of himself, or a searing accusation, he would come out swinging in this debate.

Yeah. Not so much.

I was honestly a little worried. Here we are, some 3 weeks away from the election and the new hope for progressives like myself: Barack Obama, has a promising lead over John McCain - a man who has become analogous with the Bush administration and the neoconservative social club that has controlled our country for the last 8 years. No, you don't even want to whisper about confidence, let alone planning for the future - but bipartisan voter stat website fivethirtyeight.com has Obama's winning percentage at 95.1%. Yeah son.

Any sports fan is familiar with the idea of an 'upset' - when two teams face off, people make predictions using complex stats to predict who's probably going to win and lose. When the 'underdog' comes onto the field and promptly destroys the favorite in front of an entire fanbase of crushed, confused people, you've got an upset! Sometimes (like the MLB 2004 ALCS game 4. fuck that game.) the team is so favored to win, that they go and cover the locker room with giant sheets of plastic to protect the room from the impending champagne showers. Surely, at the end of this game, there will be our team, shouting and wailing victory, blasting corks and sending streams of champagne over every teammate and all over the fucking room. Nope, instead, you're the loser, and all that victory preparation - the booze, the plastic, the championship t-shirts and hats that will now be donated to poor kids in third world countries - just makes it burn that much more.

So I'm worried. Worried that for some forsaken reason, on November 4th, there might be an upset. That some unseen, nefarious minion a la Karl Rove has had his plan cooking all along, and that maybe 2 days before the election, they decide to unveil some critical evidence, some calculated influence that just sends the swing voters into some vicious frenzy of reckoning, where they coalesce into an angry mob and finally push the election into the favor of the old white guy and his caricature prop of a running mate. It will be something irrelevant and low brow, it will be something that speaks to the 'values of America' - it will be something that plays on the reptilian brain response, something that will be designed for immediate effect and maybe not seem like such a big deal in hindsight. Give them a headline, a piece of gossip, a dirty allegation - JUST at the right moment, and nothing that has been said or done over the last 20 months of either campaign will matter one fucking bit.

Why is it that American citizens so often vote on the who the person is and not what the person has done or wants to do? The choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate is evidence that this is the known game plan - the Republican voter base cheered when she was introduced, no one knew a thing about her or her experience or policies yet everyone was immediately transfixed - people could relate to her and her hockey mom bullshit. She made people feel as if anyone could be president ... and this is a good thing? Look... i don't know about you, but i don't want anyone to be president. I'll go back to the sports thing: You've always wanted to be the hero at the plate for your favorite team, late in a game, trailing with a chance to win with a single swing of the bat - but if the team really WAS in that situation, who would you really rather have at the plate - your team's MVP? or some asshole that reminds you of you?

Rolling Stones' Matt Taibbi summed it up quite nicely in his piece Mad Dog Palin:

"And none of it matters, so long as you remember a few months before Election Day to offer them a two-bit caricature culled from some cutting-room-floor episode of Roseanne as part of your presidential ticket. And if she’s a good enough likeness of a loudmouthed middle-American archetype, as Sarah Palin is, John Q. Public will drop his giant-size bag of Doritos in gratitude, wipe the Sizzlin’ Picante dust from his lips and rush to the booth to vote for her. Not because it makes sense, or because it has a chance of improving his life or anyone else’s, but simply because it appeals to the low-humming narcissism that substitutes for his personality, because the image on TV reminds him of the mean, brainless slob he sees in the mirror every morning."

I shouldn't be surprised really. Isn't this our society? Its all about who you are right? I mean who you are in the rhetorical sense: your personality, the way you talk, your appearance, your charisma. Now - what you do, what you stand for and what you've accomplished have very little to do with who you are - on the contrary - even if these important details stand to nullify or disprove some part of the general perception of who you are, it doesn't seem to do much to improve that perception. People are painted in stereotypes and generalizations. For these two presidential candidates, it's by enormous media conglomerates and political punditry. For everyone else, we let things like the clothes we wear, books we read (well some of us), and music we listen to dictate our identity and override our true behavior. Coming to identify a fellow human with your characteristics seems to be a social insurance, a mechanism for dealing with cognitive dissonance. Reinforce what you believe by surrounding yourself with the same identities - even if its going to be bad for you - and try not to think about what it might be like on the other side, so to speak. I can't tell you the frequency I see people together, FRIENDS or significant others treating each other dishonestly or disrespectfully - and continue to do so because they seem more committed to feeling a sense of similarity and validation instead of taking a chance outside of what they know or what they normally experience.

A black man as president? That's pretty new, too new for most Americans and I'll say that if we weren't undergoing this current economic clusterfuck, I doubt Obama would have the lead. Without the crash, we'd all still be talking about Sarah Palin, and wondering just how another election was going to be won on some bullshit that doesn't really matter. I think the idea of a liberal in the white house is enough to send most of the right wing middle American base into fits of denial - a black guy with a funny sounding name might just force them into some terrible angry mob. This is the dangerous stuff, when logic and reason cease to apply and all that's left is a bunch of scared people who do not understand how this happened. An entire generation of people have grown up in this society over the last 8 years and they don't know anything different. Even the actions of Bill Clinton in the previous 8 years saw essentially the same trends - just substitute the privileged, moronic, bible beating puppet with a privileged saxophone playing smooth talking adulterous puppet.

What I like about Obama isn't that he's a black guy or that hes a liberal - what I like about Obama is exactly what his campaign slogan claims to bring: Change. Not change in the sense of we've had a republican and now I want a democrat. I mean change in the sense that Obama isn't from the same upper class yacht club as the Bushes, Clintons, McCains and Kerrys - No more Liebermans, no Romneys, hell - I don't even want any more Kennedys. What I want is a new leadership that has very little ties to the culture of entitlement and elitism that comes with being born into wealthy old money families, people who had daddies and grand daddies in politics, people who don't owe any favors to benefactors and brothers or cousins expecting nepotistic favors. I'm sick and tired of seeing this same tired phony clique run this country the same way its always been run. I think the suits on Capitol Hill and Wall St fear this change very much, they fear that now they will not have the free pass that they've had all along, no more unrestricted, unregulated growth, no more legal loopholes and a system that blatantly favors the wealthy and pisses on the working man. Time for the big guys to sweat just as much as the little guy.

But I'm still worried, because i know that only in this country - a man like Obama - who is seeking to do more for the blue collar middle American than any president since Carter, can still be perceived with venom, fear and spite - all from a perception that's been propagated by a media industry that is more concerned with viewer ratings and protecting the interests of their sponsors than delivering objective journalism. It doesn't take much to push people to vicious acts - and we've seen the old guard resort to any means necessary to stay in control, all we can do is wait with baited breath.

I dare not whisper confidence about November 4. I'm not going to buy the champagne - but if dawn comes on November 5th and Barack Obama is our president - you better believe I'm going to have one hell of a Freixenet hangover on November 6th.

Super-Huit

2008-10-10T11:22:00.003-04:00

Here it is, knocked about 9 minutes down to 3.5 - as i mentioned in the blog while i was over there: it was frustrating shooting out a car window for most of these great landscape shots. After this experiment, i hope that i can go back with more time and patience to do a combined media tour of France using a medium format TLR and different Super8 films. Anyway, check it out:

Fresh New Holga's

2008-08-26T12:45:00.007-04:00

First three rolls of 120 from early summer - 9 more to develop! Some local stuff, some Euro stuff - so far so good. Click the pix for the Flikrness - these rolls are combinations of cross processed Provia 400 and straight Kodak EPT 160, no digital post.

Closing Arguments

2008-07-26T15:00:00.012-04:00

40,000 feet over the Newfies again. The flight has been a lil bumpier than the way over but i guess we've got a headwind or something. Decided to make a random list of details, observations and what not.

Peak Oil -

I could count the amount of SUV's and trucks i saw on one hand the entire time i was there. If people need to move shit, they either rented a truck or have a trailer to hitch up. I didn't see any evidence of electric hybrids or hydrogen stations, but there were a ton of diesels (not to mention our own rental) - diesels get better mileage and now that the price of crude is as high as it is, the price difference is negligible. I guess they've also been formulating it without sulfur so the emissions are less harmful. Oh and if you think that gas is expensive back home, how does €1.50 a liter of 87 sound - nearly €8 a gallon and almost €12 for 93? (keep in mind, thats $1.56 = €1. Hurts don't it?)

Generally speaking though, the real difference is simply the size of the cars - i doubt that the average American ego could afford to suffer the indignation of driving these little lunchbox sized bastards - but let me tell you, they sell for cheaper and as a result, people are able to afford new vehicles more often and keep them better maintained. Let us not forget the ubiquitous European trend of the scooter and motorcycle - they really are everywhere. Personally, i like the styling of European brands better - sure everyone knows about BMW, Mercedes, VW and Audi but other brands worth mentioning are Peugeot, Renault, Citroen, Seat, Opel and Fiat. Another thing was that the US markets' 'luxury' type brands like Mercedes and BMW have an entire product line of affordable, efficient cars over there, we don't see that in the states because they fear that it would tarnish the brands ability to define their owners as holier-than-thou smug pieces of shit, knowhatimsayin? The funny thing is that there were actually quite a few Fords. The only Ford i recognized was the occasional Focus, but they've designed quite a few sub-subcompact cars over there, logic would dictate that the oil crisis might have swayed Ford to offer these models back in the states, but so far, nada... doesn't make a whole lot of sense - but then again, not much makes any sense in America.

Environmental -

This was the biggest shocker for me. France sucks for the environment, although you'd never ever know it from looking out the window (or at my photosets). I was in Tourbes, in bed at the B&B, when i woke up in a daze around 5:00AM, i still wasn't caught up on the time difference, and back home it was like midnight, so I'm usually awake doing whatever, the first several nights the sleep i was getting was feeling more like a long nap after work that I'd overslept through and woke up in the middle of the night. Anyway, there was no chance of me going back to sleep so instead i decided to open the shutters and step out onto the balcony to chill out and read a bit. At first i took in the view, tried to saturate the color of the sunlight coming off the buildings - fairly perfect if you ask me, but something was missing and i couldn't put my finger on it. Then it hit me...

I'm a night owl for sure, i like to stay up late, but not too late. 'Too late' for me has always been that point that the sky begins to get some color back, and almost immediately after that - the world becomes inundated with a cacophonous chorus of BIRDSONGS. At my balcony at 5:30AM in Tourbes, there wasn't a single solitary peep. I began to pay attention everywhere we went and noticed that quite honestly, we're in this beautiful countryside and aside from the farm animals there's no fucking animals anywhere.

No birds, no squirrels, no deer... no lions, tigers or bears...

Upon closer inspection i also noticed that aside from ants, flies and a smattering of bees, there were no insects either, no crickets, no grasshoppers, nothing. Seriously now, it seems like they keep a few pigeons around churches for the tourists, but that's about it. After interrogating my family about what the hell this was all about (and a confirmation that this wasn't a natural vacuum in the south of France) the answer i got was: Pesticides. It would seem all that beautiful countryside and farming comes with a price - in layman's terms, they knocked out the bottom of the ecosystem with killing all the insects, which forced birds to go elsewhere for food, which in turn ran right up the chain. Its simply the result of generations of pesticide applications for maintaining crops at any cost. All of a sudden, that farmers market in Privas seemed a little bittersweet to me. Yeah. I'm an upstate NY country boy, where I'm used to seeing deer and squirrel corpses littered around as often as you see a road sign - no animals was fucking creepy.

Another BIG thing. France has got the nukes goin on. In the drive, within sight line of the road, we passed THREE different nuclear power plants, the cooling towers hovering on the horizon like monolithic paper coffee cups steaming on a cold morning. Make no mistake about it - they're a scary sight, and it was a completely bizarre contrast to see hundreds of kilometers of countryside that would rival the hanging gardens of Babylon, and then all of a sudden; the twisted brainchild of Einstein and Oppenheimer and shadows of Chernobyl.

As we got closer to the Tricastin plant near Privas, my grandmother tells us, a bit too casually, that they just had an accident there several days ago when they were forced to vent irradiated water from the cooling pool. I mean. Really? Was i getting a dose? Did they evacuate everyone? No, a routine accident. The thought of one of those babies going critical and poisoning that beautiful place just seem all sorts of wrong. Sure, they're not burning coal, but i just can't hang with that.

Health (No Fat Chicks) -

A day before i left i had an unfortunate chat with a complete stranger here at home about my impending trip:

Stranger: "So you look like you're heading out for some sort of trip"
Me: "Uh, Yeah... I'm leaving tomorrow for 10 days in France."
Stranger: "Oh really? Well just watch out over there cause none of them women shave or wear deodorant over there!"
Me: "I'm going to kick you in the teeth you fat dumb fuck."

OK, maybe not the last line as I really couldn't afford to sit in a police station the day before i left, but it just reminded me as to why i was so happy to be getting the hell out of the country for a little while. Anyway, i have to comment on this retarded accusation.

First off, it is the 21st century, ideals of beauty set by popular culture have reached far and wide and chicks in Europe do indeed shave their pits. Now, every now and then I'd spot some lovely middle aged woman that didn't shave - but you know what, I'll take a general population of chicks who don't shave over a bunch of obese sweat pant clad behemoths, that's really what it comes down to. On the average, most every woman i saw over there, whether she was in her 20's or 50's, on the whole, were prettier, better dressed and all had very nice bodies (meaning that they were neither emaciated or hauling 2 tons of ass) And nice like, without effort, it didn't seem as if every woman in Europe spent an hour at the gym everyday, it was just a natural beauty complemented with the healthy glow that came with eating right, not sitting on the couch for 6 hours a day and enjoying a quality of life that 4 weeks of paid vacation every year provides.

What good is a shaved set legs if they look like shrink wrapped bags of cottage cheese and striped with varicose veins? What am i going to do with a Brazilian wax job if its buried under some disgusting FUPA? I'm not advocating my elementary school bus driver when i say I'll take hair over fat, but look - its just the way it is, European chicks are smokin hot and a lot of American chicks should take a cue; try sexy, classy and confident without having that air of entitled vain egomania.

I paid very close attention to this phenomenon (ahem...) and my conclusion was that it all started with the kids. Did i see some overweight / chunkier people over there? You betcha, you can't predispose an entire culture to things like cheese, bread and wine and not expect to put on a few pounds. However, you know what i didn't see a single one of? Fat kids. No fat children, not a one. People feel very strongly regarding policy on things like school lunches and physical activity, couple that with a socialized health care system where everyone is getting attention and advisement, and you have a culture that even though they still suffer from human ailments like cancer and AIDS, there is less diabetes and far less obesity, allergy and social anxiety disorders. You set the precedent at a young age for health, and it tends to carry through to adulthood. I contribute this to Europe following a wellness model of health care as opposed to our sickness model. The difference is that in a wellness model, the objective is to promote staying healthy and making the choices that will keep you from getting sick in the first place, on the flip side over here, a sickness based model is one in which no one usually speaks to a doctor until they're contracted some illness or disease, its in the interest of the US economy to treat symptoms instead of prevent the ailments that cause them.

Well kids, thats it for Eurotrip 2008. Hope you enjoyed, cause from here on out, you can expect posts of the usual biting criticism, cynical observations and sociopolitical snoozers.

The End Times (no, not those End Times)

2008-07-25T17:51:00.005-04:00

Theres this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach. I can only explain it like this - its like when you're out in a big public space, like a mall or something, and its gotten right up to or over the closing time, and you're still inside for some reason? Theres no fear of getting left behind or getting locked in, but you just feel as if you need to get out, its done, its over, no one else here, time to go? Its as if it won't really close until AFTER you leave, everything is waiting on you - and once you leave, maybe the place will cease to exist at all (quantum mechanics?)... there is some big cosmic eye nervously flicking back and forth between its big cosmic wristwatch and little ol you, still sitting around while the world is waiting to move on. Its an uncomfortable feeling. Yuck.

So here I am, with the vacation behind me, all stops made, all family visited, with less than 24 or so hours before i board another Swissair flight bound for JFK, another afternoon to repack my shit, say goodbyes and do one more lunch with the grandparents. Even though i don't want to leave, i sort of wish i could just go to sleep tonight and just wake up at home in bed back in Kingston.

What a great idea for a travel agency: we send men in black fatigues and balaclavas the night before you leave, chloroform your ass while you sleep, give you heavy sedatives before they cart you onto your flight and bring you home, where you're then tucked in at home with your suitcases at the foot of your bed, and voila - Genius... if only.

I guess its sort of like what it was before I left - I told a few people i was terribly anxious about the flight but once i was in the air I'd be fine. But going home will be tough - Ulster county, NY after the south of France? Ouch. Not to mention that its nearly August and the summer itself will be more than halfway over - this was my big vacation this summer and now, theres not a whole lot left to look forward to... I wish that could change.

Regardless, i do miss my crew, playing Hold 'em @ Suicide Kingston, watching the Yankee games, my cat Marco and a few special people, things will be just fine. Not to mention, I get to develop 15 minutes of Super8 film and about a hundred or so Holga 120 exposures. At least I'll have some shit to talk about now - something i had a complete lack of ten days ago!

Oh, and whatever you do - don't tell Robbie Cano and the Yankees that I'm coming home tomorrow - my boy Robbie has been absolutely raking - 14 of 27 with 7 RBI and 5 runs scored since the break and they've won six straight going into this weekends big series against the 'Sux. If i get home tomorrow and they lose, I'm just gonna stay the fuck out of the country until after October...

Privas

2008-07-24T20:34:00.007-04:00

Privas Photoset

Over the course of the 10 days I've met a lot of family - some I've seen more recently than others, for example, my cousin Fabiola and her new hubby Jean Thierry visited the states just 2 years ago. Before that, my cousin Robin came and visited with his friend Guillaume. My grandparents, Amanda, Annie Claude, Felix, Christian and Bea have all visited in the last 15 years. However, my aunt Annick and her family have never visited the states and as a result i've only met my cousins Raphael, Lucille and Liza in photographs. I hardly had any memory of Annick and my uncle Bruno so i was very much anticipating meeting the Schaefer family and I had no doubt that it would be a fun experience.

The drive up into the mountains surrounding Privas was enjoyable and even though the town of Privas wasn't as impressive as say, Pezenas or Tourbes, the landscape kinda took the cake. The house they live in, nor the surrounding houses on the hill simply cannot be found back in the 'states - the stonewalled houses date back to around 1600. Sixteen. Hundred. That predates our our own Independence from the Brits by 176 years. Huh, Manhattan? You mean New Amsterdam? You get that? This isn't a tourist attraction - its their home - and its breathtaking; all the way from the wild flower gardens to the uber-traditional wine cave of my Uncle Bruno (we'll get to that more in a sec). Now I'm not trying to draw a comparison or draw favorites at all, but out of all my Aunts, I instantly thought that my own mother shared the most with Annick - the youngest of the four Badrot sisters (and thats pronounced BADGE-ROW, not BAD-ROT. Idiot.) The taste in decor for the house, their fashion choices... all very similar - and as a result, i believe i felt most at home in Privas.

The three cousins I had met earlier in the trip because they were at the weddings, but they were more open and comfortable at home; Raphael, 17, is an avid PC gamer and MotoX'r who wants to go to school for programming next year (hes been dabbling in PHP but i talked to him a bunch about getting to know Ruby on Rails, AJAX and keeping sharp on basic HTML/CSS skills.) The two sisters are younger, Liza, 12, is as sweet as they come and she was very engaging and we tried to talk as best we could, but mostly just laughed and nodded and stumbled through conversations. Lucille can't be more than 6 or 7; when shes not busy being the cutest little girl i've ever seen, she spends her time outwitting you, bossing everyone around and laughing like some terrifying psychotic child o' the corn.

We started the day by heading back into town to the bi-weekly farmers market. It was really great to see and provided plenty of good photo ops. One of the few good things Kingston has going for it is its uptown farmers market and it was interesting to see the original article that we were trying to emulate back home. Bruno picked up some grassfed local porkchops that, when we barbequed them for lunch later, gave my favorite butcher Fleishers, a run for their money.

Bruno is the real deal when it comes to wine collectors, and any wine collector worth his ...grapes, in France, has a wine cave. This thing was a time capsule, the least changed part of the house (originally for cold food storage as well as wine) and it not only contained close to 200 bottles, but all the trimmings too: dried sausage, cheese, pate, mustard - if its French and you can eat it, its down there. He even had an oldschool hand crank meat slicer nailed to the top of a wine barrel that he used to cut the aforementioned sausage. It lacked any windows or electricity so it was always candlelight, which of course, added to the ambiance. In the day and a half we were in Privas, we must have consumed close to 10 bottles - each one probably better than any wine I had ever had previously (and thats saying a lot for me). No words or photos would really come close to doing it justice, but I'll just say that out of the entire vacation - this was the gastronomic high water mark.

When we left, I felt truely heartbroken as i knew it was the final stop before heading back the Chambery for the last day. They gave us a few bottles to take home, Bruno gave me a 2004 named Cuvee St. Christophe, which i'm not sure if I'll ever have a good enough occasion to open up for - and they stood in the driveway, waving goodbye as we disappeared around the winding road that would descend us back to the road to Chambery, and eventually, home.

Jacques Kerouac

2008-07-22T16:30:00.002-04:00

I should make this clear - the vacation I'm on, in essence, is a road trip across the south of France, east to west and then back - over the course of 10 days. Its an amazing opportunity, but as i mentioned in an earlier post, its incredibly frustrating to do so much over such a short amount of time. Today, we began to cut back west toward Switzerland and we would start the trip by skirting along the Mediterranean for an hour. Before continuing on, we decided to stop and have lunch next to the beach at Agde. Beach here is sandy, as opposed to the beaches further east toward Nice, which is more rocky. Even though the beach stretches for 25km (here i go with the metric) its damn narrow - i don't exactly understand how the science for this works, but there's hardly any tidal effects at all in the Mediterranean - the beach doesn't need to have depth. Same water. same moon. no tide. Comprends pas...

It was pretty neat that near the western edge where we were, i could see Spain and the Pyrenees across the water. Also worth mentioning was the lunch - i had a beef carpaccio au parmesan that was delectable, possibly the best meal I've had so far on the trip and that wasn't just the view talking. Before we left i ran down into the surf and got my feet wet for a short walk; mission accomplished.

We got going shortly afterwards to begin the trek north back toward Geneva, but first we were stopping in Privas for a day and a half with my Uncle Bruno and Aunt Annick. On the road again...

La France Profond (Deep France)

2008-07-21T17:33:00.012-04:00

St.Martial Photoset

Today was the big wedding day - the aforementioned couple of my cousin Amanda and her fiance Edgar. The ceremony was to take place in a small town called St. Martial about 1.5hrs northwest of where we were in Tourbes. I had been told it was a small village up in the mountains but nothing could really prepare me for this. My father and I had the Passat to ourselves and chatted politics the whole way while we drove in caravan, following another one of my cousins, Capucine, up into 'Deep France'. The drive was all twisty's and as Capucine bobbed and weaved around slower traffic on these narrow little roads, i accepted that my French genes were responsible for more than just my love of food, wine and artiness - we all drive like maniacs too. Get me on a straightaway and I'm just bored - i could give a shit about my 1/4 mile time; but get me on the back roads with a chance to heel/toe and cut across lanes - it doesn't get anymore fun than that.

I'd have to say that this village is probably the most remote place on Earth I've ever been and when we got there, i was speechless. The ceremony took place in the old two room schoolhouse and there were maybe 20 or so people in attendance. Unlike Carcassonne, St.Martial was so remote that there simply were no tourists. Had it not been for the pristine gardens and steppe farmed vineyards i would have thought that the town was derelict.

After the simple ceremony (more or less just paper signing and vows), everyone descended to the bottom of the valley near a stream and had a reception full of - you guessed it - bread, wine and cheese. I wound up being the de facto wedding photographer and had a lot of fun capturing the moments for this side of my family i had not been close with for so many years, it was a privilege.

Carcassonne

2008-07-20T12:16:00.007-04:00

Carcassonne Photoset

The nitty gritty on Carcassonne is that its the largest, most impressive remaining castle in all of France and maybe Europe. Don't get me wrong, in the trip so far it seems like i see a castle on every hilltop and I'm not exaggerating - but this joint must be what they ripped off of for the whole Disneyland thing, its massive and doesn't disappoint. Since its initial inception by the Romans, its never been breached by an invading army. A matter of fact, no English army during the 100 years war or the campaign of Edward the Black Prince of Wales even mounted a threat. It was only through a lengthy siege during the fourth crusade against the Cathars that the inhabitants were forced to surrender, after that, fortifications were increased and it never happened again. Anyway, I'm really into this stuff and it was cool to see the real deal. Unfortunately its a complete tourist trap and its infested with fanny pack-clad middle aged couples and obnoxious high school students. I was patient with the camera and managed to find a few angles that were devoid of people, definitely got some halfway decent shots.

The good: I managed to snag a bottle of Absinthe from a wine shop inside the walls, I've always wanted to try this stuff after reading an article in Wired a few years ago about Absinthe buff Ted Breaux.

The bad: said bottle of Absinthe was the only brand they carried and i don't exactly have high hopes for the quality, but it did come with its own little sugar spoon.

Everyone has this idea that Absinthe makes you trip because its created in part with wormwood extract, which contains the chemical Thujone, rumored to have psychedelic effects - but recent analysis of vintage bottles of Absinthe show very low levels of Thujone and much higher alcohol content than previously thought. The stuffs supposed to taste terrible but I'm sure it'll get you fucked up in a 'different' sort of way... now if i only had some Laudanum.

St. Puy

2008-07-19T23:30:00.007-04:00

St.Puy Photoset

Nice B&B tonight, a room to myself and I'm watching a postmodern German stage rendition of Hamlet - with French subtitles. This shit is off the hook - the entire front of the stage is covered in mounds of black dirt and all the male characters save Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are massively bearded and wearing reservoir doggish black and white suits. The guy who plays Hamlet is pulling off the batshit crazy thing to a T. They even added subtle filthy makeup around his eyes and mouth giving him that sort of I'm in the terminal phase of syphilis' look that all the chicks in Denmark must go nuts for. The soundtrack is some crazy ass prog noise metal - I've got to find out what the name of this performance is, German never sounded so good.

Today was the reception for my cousins wedding, and honestly, just too many people to meet. The drive from Tourbes to St.Puy might be the most beautiful car ride I've ever taken and it was extremely frustrating to constantly witness perfect photo ops and not be able to stop for anything because of our schedule. I took a nice Super8 of the party that i think I'm gonna cut together and give as a wedding present. So I figured out a few things too:

1 - The sun in the south of France is about a gazillion times stronger than the sun back home and I've got myself a terrific burn all over my face, neck and arms - just from sitting down in the yard for a bit too long... maybe it'll just tan out but I've got a week left here and i would hate to spend it in agonizing pain, I'll find out tomorrow.

2 - My mother spoke mostly french to me until i was about 3, and I've always felt like the entire lexicon is scattered around up there like so many post-it notes - but now I'm sure. In the three days that I've been here I've gone from uncomfortably stumbling through conversations with a lot of hand gestures and common English to electing to speak in French whenever possible and I'm getting pretty damn good, I've no doubt that i could be fluent if i stayed here for say, one month. J'espere que je revener d'ici l'ete prochaine pas-ce que je voudrais parler francais jusqu'a bien de mon anglais... vraiment.

3 - France gets an F- when it comes to internet. I've been able to use other computers to access my gmail but that's about it, I've yet to find a single place to get my macbook online... and i thought Europe was full of wifi everywhere - not so. I've amassed all these entries in notepad and I've taken a lot of pics, but there's no way for me to access this goddam blog, which means that the first third of my holiday is going to be posted all at once - and that's assuming I'll even find a cafe with more to offer than just amazing coffee and pastries tomorrow - when we go to the ancient castle / tourist trap of Carcassonne.

Oh, and i stood up and looked westward across the sunflower fields of Gascony today, gazing westward all the way across the Atlantic, and I thought of you...

Tourbes

2008-07-18T23:30:00.007-04:00

Tourbes Photoset

The trend so far is that every day I'm treated to something new that trumps the previous day - we spend a tedious 5 or so hours in the car (now loaded with 2 extras - mes grandparents) heading south. The view alternates between amazing mountain faces and rolling hills of violets, sunflowers or grape vines, the further south we go, the more color is injected into the landscape and before long i can smell the salty air off the Mediterranean.

We arrive at the house of my aunt Bea and uncle Christian in the village of Tourbes. This village is ancient, with barely any new constructions and very few businesses - the old country. Not that i needed any explanation about why the south of France was so desirable or anything, but it blows my expectations out of the water. Its exactly as you would imagine it, even if your vision is a completely idealistic Elysium of colors, scents and light. The house in Tourbes seals the deal - a fairly large provincial style home with shuttered windows, a large patio and modest sized pool, with a vineyard in the backyard that surrounds Bea's garden. I meet my cousin Fanette for the first time since she was about 5 (shes 18 now, which makes me feel like a fossil) and the soon to be married Amanda and her fiance Edgar. They've been living in Berlin by way of Mexico, by way of France while Edgar is engaged in a prized research gig in semiconductor technology - he speaks way better English than i speak French and we carry on about sports and our respective jobs, they're very cool people (had i known them while they lived in Mexico, i would have certainly visited them!) Before long, we decide to head down to our bed and breakfast only to find that its closed - Bea explains that its the south of France; what do we expect? They're probably sleeping off last nights bottle and would open in time for the dinner shift - so, naturally, we're left with killing time back at the house.

Chambery

2008-07-17T15:30:00.004-04:00

Chambery Photoset

Later on we drive about 10 minutes away to Chambery because there is a cathedral there that has incredible Trompe D'ouiel work on the interior. The town itself is also pretty ancient (but most of them here are!), so it sounds like a good time. The drive there is nice and i can't help but notice that I've seen nothing but smallish farms the entire time we've been on the road - local, decentralized agriculture either never left France, or its making a comeback - i have to remember to ask someone about that before i leave.

The town and the cathedral live up to the hype. I'll let the photos do the talking. Unfortunately, since it was overcast i opted to not waste any film from the Holga or the Super8, whose vintage color effects only really reproduce well in good direct sunlight.

One funny thing happened to me almost immediately after i got there. I round the corner and there, approaching me is a pack of about 4 or 5 french girls, with the one in the middle, dressed head to toe in a vinyl Catwoman outfit (actually it was sorta like Tank Girl meets Catwoman cause she had these crazy ass goggles up on her head). Naturally, I'm totally shocked when the entire group saunters up to me and asks me in French if i would dance with Catwoman while the rest of them sang for us. I'm doing my best nervous laugh and trying to back out of the situation when i finally decide i can't say no to such a charming group - i only warn them in bad french that I'm a terrible dancer and ask them to keep it short - Catwoman looks very embarrassed and picks up that I'm not French and tells me in English that she can't dance well either. So the group starts to sing some solemn sort of tune that would have sounded incredible on an accordion or something - undeniably french, and even though she begins to dance in front of me, i take her by the waist instead and give her a few turns right in the middle of the street, in front of a dozen or so onlookers before bowing out - at which point the girls thank me and tell me that Catwoman is getting married and this is part of her bachelorette party/hazing. Flattered, I tell her good luck and its a good natured laugh, a funny experience to kick off my first day out and about... I love this place.

Chez Grandmere

2008-07-17T10:00:00.004-04:00

What a day. Even though i snuck in a needed 1hr nap halfway through the day, I'm wiped out. We got off the plane and let me tell you something - the Swiss do not fuck around when it comes to wrist watches. There are billboards every 5 feet on both sides of the corridors coming in and i swear to you, every single one was a luxury watch advert. How big of a market is watchmaking that they could fill every single box in the airport with watch ads? I wonder if anyone is ever late here... or poor. Also cool/creepy was a huge friendly sign for the CERN laboratory (CERN is a research facility outside Geneva that is home to the worlds largest particle accelerator / super collider, rumors have always lingered that the nature of the experiments done at CERN could potentially end the world. Cool sign though.

Picked up our rental car - a sweet 2008 Passat Estate TDI (picked that sucker out myself), made the straight shot from Geneva to my grandparents place in La Motte Servolex in about an hour. It was wonderful to see them as it has been about 10 years for me since they visited the states. The weather was a bit overcast and the geography of the Alps keeps a lot of the moisture trapped in the valleys here so clouds tend to cling tight to the ground and along the mountainsides - making it feel more like the Andes than the Alps - but the architecture is undeniably European and its awesome to just be here. There's a jagged rock sticking out of the tallest of the surrounding mountains they call "La dent de la chat" - The Cats Tooth; and I'm instantly reminded of the Catskills and Shawangunks back home (only these fuckers are HUGE).

We ate a big lunch / dinner of roast beef, locally made bread and locally grown mini russet potatoes (they apparently go for about 7 euros a lb) and cracked a bottle of champagne along with two bottles of red - one of which, a 2003 Cote du Rhone named St. Joseph was very very good. We talk about the flight and my grandparents constantly bicker about whatever they can manage to bicker about, which is pretty hilarious to watch. My grandmother compliments me on my terrible french and my grandfather talks to me about which car I'm driving these days (Passat B5 V6) and he tells me about his Golf, which he loves, even though it has strange electrical problems (big vdub shocker right there).

Flightlog

2008-07-17T09:00:00.007-04:00

7/16 8:35PM - 30,000 ft over Newfoundland - Flightlog

Finally i have my prescription of vodka tonic and i can relax! Takeoff was smooth - just prior to taking off, my Ipod decided to cue up a track from Explosions in the Sky - a track that i decided i should skip and avoid till I'm no longer in said sky. The bad choice was immediately offset by a good one - "Red Eye" off of "Into the Blue Again" by the Album Leaf. Perfect.

I had my aisle seat ganked by some middle aged french woman who claimed she would be using the bathroom frequently and it would be easier for us if she took the aisle - i agreed, but i feel as if I've been duped. Flight has been smooth so far and we took off on time - the trip is supposed to take 8hrs - but the Nav Computer (aka tiny little screen in front of me) says 6hrs 47min, so bonus there, one less hour in the plane works for me. The hottie blonde 20-something Swiss stewardess is coming back around for more drink orders, I'm gonna put the pen down lest i get distracted by the tightly wound little neck scarf and bookworm specs...

7/16 10:30PM - Middle of Nowhere

You'd think that chicken dinner, Yo-Yo Ma and a third Vodka tonic would have made me sleepy... nah. I still don't get how we can put a man on the moon but somehow, figuring out power outlets on planes may as well be figuring out a cure for cancer. Coach class sucks and the bathroom lady who stole my seat has yet to use the bathroom yet - and the bitch snores. The only thing falling asleep in this seat is my ass. Toss up... movie or a read? 4hrs left in the flight as Provisional by Fugazi kicks in my headphones, making sleep even further away. I miss my sleepbot.

7/17 1:09AM EST / 6:09AM Local - Scotland

Turns out "Selected Ambient Works II" from Aphex Twin is audible Ambien. I managed to sneak in an hour or so of sleep. We've caught up with the rising sun and my bespectacled stewardess is handing out hot hand towels to wake everyone up. Swiss Air and Japanese Restaurants... wassup with that? I manage to swap seats and get a window - giving me an opportunity to snap off a few requisite wing/cloud/sky shots before eating breakfast.

7/17 8:13AM - France

Down through the clouds, anticipating the view to erupt below us, the Alps looming. Perfect landing as i decide that i only ever want to fly with pilots who have British accents as it was the smoothest flight ever.

Kick the Tires and Light the Fires

2008-07-16T18:22:00.004-04:00

I'm staring at our Airbus A330 as it rolls up to the boarding bridge, snapping photos through the plate glass window walls. I flew last year and went west, to San Diego - that was the first time I'd flown since the last time i was in France - which no one can really remember, but everyone approximates that i must have been between 10 and 12 years old. I had my nerves in a knot before the early morning flight to San Diego but thankfully it was delayed and my friend Magpi and I managed to sneak in several double-deuces of Stella Artois before we took off. I compounded the effects of the beers with steady vodka tonics the whole way and needless to say... it was an easy flight - you just can't beat being lit up like a christmas tree at 9:30am, hurdling through the sky at hundreds of miles per hour.

This time, I'm off to France, and I've been bitching to the lot of you my displeasure with flying over large bodies of water (that Atlantic Ocean thing), and here i am, staring down the aircraft that promises to cart my ass over it, knowing that this apprehension makes no sense for me - the last time i made this trip, i apparently had no issues with the concept - allow me to explain.

However old i was, when my folks, my younger brother Pat and i got to the gate to wait, i never wanted to sit - i wanted to watch the planes land. So, as long as i was in line of sight, i was allowed a wide berth, running around to get the best view of the runways. Unfortunately for everyone at the gate, that was never my game to sit and watch, my imagination always took over and before long, i would be getting interactive... So, there i was, 10 years old, glued to the window, when i began to follow the paths of the landing with my hands, mimicking the planes floating down to the runway, making engine noises and all. Of course, that wasn't exciting enough for me - so just as the planes would touchdown, my 'flying' hand would violently smack into the window sill and I'd make a LOUD explosion noise - plane after plane, landing after landing:

woooooooooosssssssshhhhhhhh...... BOOOM!!!! nnnnyyyyyyyeeeeeeerrrrhhhhhhh........ BOOOOOM!!!!!

Before long, there wasn't a single passenger within 25 feet of me - tourists who were happily snapping photos (like I'm doing here now) nervously shuffled away, taking their bags and herding their loved ones away from the freckled demon with the bowl haircut who seemed to be willing absolute carnage and tragedy for the lot of them. I had no idea i was so cool.

Whatever... fuck the Atlantic, I've got big things to look forward to, and besides - if the plane goes down, I'll just tell myself I'll wake up on The Island.

Itineraire

2008-07-16T14:08:00.005-04:00

View Larger Map

The Kit

2008-07-16T02:24:00.003-04:00

The Kit, originally uploaded by Rustwerx.

I've seen a few of these types of inventory photos about and i just have to get all nerdy out about it. Heres the carry on - notice i have to carry the Ektachrome film with me in order to keep the luggage x-rays from ruining it all. I'm bringing several cameras with me, but i'm most excited about shooting my Canon 814AZ Electronic - a vintage '72 prosumer Super8 film camera.

Preflight Insomnia

2008-07-16T01:29:00.003-04:00

I shouldn't be surprised that it took the potential craziness of a 10 day stretch in France for me to finally start a blog. So here i am, night before i leave - with barely any wit, trying to manufacture a good 'first post'. Really, i suppose its fitting - cause i'm about to leave on a trip so i have something to talk about.

About the only thing i mind right now (aside the traveling tomorrow) was the 4hr50m All-Star game at Yankee Stadium - which just now ended on a Michael Young sac fly in the 15th inning, making it 4-3 American League. The win makes it 11 straight over the Notsogood League - regardless of their recent resurgence.

Needless to say, it was a game balanced by pitching and tempered with clutch defense (As long as your name isn't Dan Uggla.) The funny thing was that there was opportunities abound - the collective number of men left on base was 28! The RISP mark for both teams was brutal - and now i'm starting to wonder that maybe the Yankees woeful offense this year is due to some twisted psychic attack by The Stadium itself. Its almost as if it can sense the wrecking balls looming and in some futile reaction, like a cornered animal, its sucking all the luck out of 2 out hits and generally jinxing the ball off the sweet spot of the bat in big situations... Then again, it made for a pretty epic game, i can't remember anything particularly exciting about recent ASG's but between Josh Hamilton hitting an insane 28(!) homeruns in one round of the 'Derby and it being the longest game in All Star history, it was a fitting end for the last year in The Stadium.

My only disappointment was that Mariano didn't get the opportunity to close it out - although it was pretty entertaining to see that bitch Papelbon blow it for the AL team in the 8th after he ran his mouth about who was more deserving to get the ball in a save situation (guess who?) Mo showed him up during the 9th - K'ing 2 in 1.2 innings.

Tomorrow, i'll be departing for the Big Trip, 10 days in the south of France, visiting family i haven't seen in forever and enjoying being the fuck out of this country! I'll be touching down in Geneva Thursday morning around 8:30 in the am, and i'm going to try and keep a good photoblog going while i'm away... more to come.

Music for Castaways

2008-04-18T11:49:00.002-04:00

So i'm not entirely sure if its the unseasonably warm weather we're having or the return of Lost tonight (i've been living vicariously through Desmonds undying love for Penny and Jacks awesome ability to viciously pummel faces while maintaining his 'nice guy' charm. Endearing! ) but i've been thinking of that dumb question:

"If you were stuck on a desert island and had to choose which *book, music, person, sunglasses, kitchen utencil, terminal disease, etc* to have with you, what would it be?"

Well, i was specifically asking myself about the music i'd choose. I was noticing while i tend to ingest new music all the time, there are some albums that just refuse to retire themselves from my ipod no matter what mood i've been in or how long its been since the release. Anyway. I totally couldn't make a decision or narrow it down to one - yep - i'm a Gemini.

So the best i could do was narrow it down to 2 each in a genre:

Indie

Codeseven: The Rescue - Quite possibly my favorite album of all time. Too bad they broke up... fucking tragic.

Tie - Cursive: The Ugly Organ - They kicked ass in poughkeepsie last sunday! Such a complete effort, front to back it goes angry to somber and back with a complete menagerie of musical instruments.

Fugazi: 13 Songs: 'Nuff said.

Hip Hop

A Tribe Called Quest: Midnight Marauders - What i have to explain myself? Maybe i just like the idea of kickin it under a palm tree with a few coconuts and some native honey while i bump "Electric Relaxation".

Quasimoto: The Unseen - Just in case there's some good herb growing on this island.

Folk

Postal Service: Give Up - You know, in case i got so bored that i needed to persuade myself into suicide.

The One AM Radio: The Hum of Electric Air - Hurley took Joe Purdy with him to the Lost island, but after watching that new KIA spot with his song in it, i'm thoroughly turned off. The One AM Radio is a gorgeous blend of gitz and violins that i don't ever tire of.

Rock

Faith No More: Angel Dust - I just think this album is the apex of Mike Pattons early music career, every goddam song is sick. Midnight Cowboy at the very end would be excellent background for getting horizontal and stargazing.

The Police: Synchronicity* - Ok, so its a copy of Synchronicity that also has "Message in a Bottle" on it for some reason. Just for, you know, irony.

Jazz

Miles Davis: Kind of Blue - Out of all the albums, i think this is the one that i'd have the easiest time listening to, over and over again, without getting sick of it... ever.

Billie Holiday - If i could lug along an old Victrola player to listen to her on old shitty, warped, scratched vinyl - i'd be totally content.

Classic

Bach: Cello Suites - If i had to build shelter or a boat or something, or if i had decided to write some "Treatise on the Anarchistic Inclinations of Desert Island Culture", i'd be rocking the Cello suites on the regs - total thinking mans music.

Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf - i'm just a sucker for Russian composers and Peter and the Wolf just draws me back to my childhood i guess...

Oh... right, theres no metal or hardcore up there... hey i dunno, i love me some HC but you're alone on a desert island and THATS what you want to listen to? I've got no car to drive fast, no fight to have, and no show to go to... i guess i'd just have to live without it. I'll give this category honerable mentions: Pelican: City of Echoes and my homies Dead Unicorn, just cuz of the End 'o the World implications of surviving on a deserted island.

Other honorable mentions throughout would come from the likes of Tom Waits, Johnny Cash, Deftones (White Pony), MF Doom, Madvillian, Portishead, Radiohead, Failure, Dredg, The Beatles (Revolver, Sgt Peppers), The Cure (Disintegration), Hendrix (In the West)

You know, this deserted island thing doesn't sound all that bad after thinking about this so much - actually sounds pretty sweet... More ideal than any other situation i can think of - particularly if the population of this island was 2 and she liked "Electric Relaxation".

I'm gonna start booking risky flights...

Valentine's Distractions

2008-02-14T13:48:00.003-05:00

V-day?

nah. fuck it. its pitchers and catchers today baby, first day of spring training down in Florida! The season inches closer!

See how i did that? Took that shit AWAY from Hallmark.

Just while we're on this sports thing, i'm amazed at how much the Giants beating the Pats has impacted the vibe on this upcoming baseball season between the Yankees and the Sox. Instead of Boston being a certified pro-sports juggernaut, its just the city that suffered the worst upset in history - the bragging rights become depreciated and you know what? Even though the sox deservedly won the WS last year, because of the Pats loss - things sorta feel 'even' again - which is when this rivalry is at its best, can't wait!

Anyway, if you're a NY fan, you'll enjoy this pic from the NY Post of poor kids in Nicaragua wearing the non-sellable 19-0 victory merch that the Pats had printed up weeks before they even played the Superbowl. I mean, kudos to the NFL for sending this stuff to people who need it instead of incinerating it, but it is kinda hilarious.

The scary clown must be asking the kid for spare change after he lost all his money gambling on that 14 point spread...

Oh right, and fuck valentines day too.

Spotless Minds

2007-12-01T22:55:00.002-05:00

Lets open with a quote that isn't so much me that it belongs on my profile but is me enough that it deserves to be quoted here.

"Sand is overrated. It's just tiny little rocks ... If only I could meet someone new. I guess my chances of that happening are somewhat diminished, seeing that I'm incapable of making eye contact with a woman I don't know ... Why do I fall in love with every woman I see who shows me the least bit of attention?" - Joel, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Its getting colder and its all sparkling lights, red+green and Nat King Cole, the dying last days of the year begging me to write my own annual evaluation ( i expect my report on my desk Monday morning.) I find I've been getting on much better when i don't pause to look in the mirror, don't think much about where i am / what I'm doing. But this time of year forces me to get introspective. needless to say, id rather have a tall bottle and a pair of horse blinders, run on autopilot and trudge on through the snow with only expectations of myself in mind and nothing about this world this town this life. Just keep moving forward.

So many awesome things in 2007. Revelations, acceptance, circumstances, luck, perseverance. I got myself far and need to hi-five myself on the regular because I'm simply PWNING the shit out of a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff that maybe i had been neglecting over the last couple years due to wearing rose tinted glasses and procrastinatory denial. No more of that shit, forward momentum is all i need and I've gotten that.

Should be rollin in it. but you know, its not that easy. There was a time when i believed that all i needed was someone to love, that you could take everything away and if i had that, i could somehow pull it together and find my way, endure any hardship that came my way. Now that was never an excuse to neglect myself - but when i did have it, I wasn't motivated enough to make moves, i was content but stale, static. I was satisfied - but i wasn't happy, when i looked in the mirror i knew i had to save me from myself. Changes were made, changes i don't regret. and...

Now I'm at the top, i feel like Ive pulled out of my nosedive and I'm a better man now than i ever have been. I've got plenty of reasons to be happy and feel good about my life. Maybe i should be content with that, satisfied. and for as happy as i am lately, now I'm not satisfied. Fucking human condition man, we sure know how to make life difficult for ourselves. You've got so much, and yet all you want to talk about is what you don't have. Stupid fucker.

That quote from Eternal Sunshine is applicable because when i first saw that movie years ago and that scene came up in the first 10 minutes i nearly jumped out of my seat and wanted to scream THAT'S ME!

If you've seen the movie, you know that the 'attention' he refers to is so much more innocent than you'd expect - passing a girl on the street and she glances at you and smiles - is some sort of validation that you're worth something, that you're not an invisible dude, and you want to turn around and chase her and say:

"HEY - you noticed me, no one notices me! can we talk a while i want to show you how fucking exceptional i am cause when you smiled back there, you just took all the fear out of me and made me feel like the me I've been looking for..."

Call it fear of rejection, call it fear of success, call it cowardice, call it me being extremely picky about my taste (guilty as charged) it doesn't matter, all that matters is that i have a million reasons to NOT roll the dice on someone, to define my results before the notion even fully processes in my head, its all over before it starts.

It always happens like that 'when you're not expecting it'. Its never at the bars i frequent or at work, or at a party - i rarely feel open enough or even present enough to make an impression on anyone, if theres even someone there that perks my interest, i convince myself that she hasn't even noticed me, or shes way out of my league.

No - it always happens on the street, passing one another. or from one car window to the next (happens ALL the fucking time). its always the cashier at a bookstore, the hostess at a restaurant, always a circumstance that requires me to be awkward, requires me to break convention in order to squeak out a 'hello' and devise some remark or conversation that doesn't paint me as some random crazy ass stranger.

I'm there and I'm not ready for it, and she looks over and glances at me, and looks away nervously or smiles quick and keeps moving and then I'm struck: here's your chance, don't blow it. Shes so pretty... go get her. She smiled at me... just walk up to her. She could fall in love with you... what do you have to lose?

And then i walk past, cursing under my breath, making excuses about how its better this way... bargaining with myself that i won't do the same thing next time... until i get caught off guard and it all happens again, i watch the chance dissolve over the horizon... going, going... gone. No, you'll never find it if you're looking for it, but what happens when it shows up unexpectedly and you can't pull the trigger?

OK I've said enough. time to go roll the dice again, it is Saturday night, there's pints to be drank and I'm still me... no guts, no glory, right?

Slow Jam

2007-05-13T17:12:00.001-04:00

Fuckin a. Mondays. just kinda blaaaaahhhhhh. Slow jam hip hop beats keeping me chilled out... mostly.

Well, the Yankees are 8 games out and its getting to that part of the season where i let myself get upset about standings, gotta hang tough. I think I'm the only Yankee fan in Kingston that rocks his 5950 without a flat visor and the gold sticker still on it, just looks fricken retarded to me, who started that shit?

What else ... Daimler-Chrysler just got bought by some weird company that I've never heard of: Cerberus Capital Management. Memo: You're already a dark horse company making a $7.4bn acquisition, might want to pick a less completely sinister evil sounding name, huh? For all you that don't know, Cerberus was the mythical 3 headed evil-dog-beast that guarded the gates to hell... lil shady there guys.

UGH... otherwise. i guess i just want something NEW to happen. I'm dying for some new something to look forward to, anything, somewhere, someone... good?

Until then, can we do something about the crazy amount of fake slutty chicks luring me to join a dating site in order to look at their tits? I get like 3 a day, none of them are ever real. the profiles are entertaining tho, most of them read like:

Part 1 - 'hi guys, my name is Bambi and I'm new to the area and I'm really really shy, I'd like to meet new people but i don't get out much and have no friends. did i mention I'm really really shy? super shy, and innocent too. and shy.'

Part 2 - 'By the way, i just uploaded a bunch of pictures of me wearing nothing but a plastic lobster bib while licking honey off my best friend Tiffany (who I'm sure is pretty shy too), check them out now!'

The most awesome part of it is that the fake profiles have tons of friends and usually have some guy in the top 8 who's name is like 'E-DaWg1, 1000 fReNz MaN, PlAyIn dEm BiTcHeS, dOnT bE hAtiN!'

Enjoy yer '1000 frenz' playa, you earned it. but you and $$shiv-nuggaz$$ might have to throw down in the thunderdome over top-8 rankings...

I love myspace though, its like front row seats to the train wreck to end all train wrecks. Eventually its going to morph into some giant sentient robot intelligence and systematically hunt down all these nice shy girls, only to discover they're already being pimped out by $$shiv-nuggaz$$ and E-DaWg1, and in some fit of jealous robo-rage and disappointment, execute huge fucking swaths of the population with giant red laser beam eyes and bloody robo-claw hands, mindlessly repeating 'I HEART BAMBI' again and again until all is smoke and fire and rubble from horizon to horizon, bad ass!

*sigh* i can see it now. so cool. I'd pay a ton of dough to see that shit. For real.

I guess in the meantime I'm gonna have to be patient, keep on clicking DENY and play more BIBLE FIGHT.

Yankee Confessional

2007-02-14T21:13:00.004-05:00

So, I've been staring out the window at the snow and ice, watching my neighbors break there collective asses shoveling and salting, thinking to myself: thank god I'm not a homeowner. There are few upsides to being a perpetual tenant, and this is one of them. One day it'll be me out there, bitching, moaning, freezing my ass off, but not today, today - I'm not even thinkin politics or social injustice. I'm thinking baseball. anyone who tuned in for a fix of tirading diatribes - sorry to disappoint!

Yesterday was February 13, the day pitchers and catchers from many major league teams report to the grapefruit league (aka spring training) in Florida. I won't get into specifics about my aversion to Florida - but lets just say that spring training in March is about the only good thing to come out of that damn state. But right now, I'd love to be sitting in Tampa at Legends Field, spring training home of the New York Yankees.

Let the hating commenceth.

i know. i hear it all the time. I actually know more Mets fans than Yankees fans - despite the prevailing opinion that Yankee fans are the majority and the Mets fans are the little guy 'underdogs'. I've had people get surprised that someone as eclectic, socially conscious and humble as myself could possibly be a fan of the 'evil empire', a franchise who's front office exploits have garnered itself a reputation to be materialistic, greedy, and *gulp* corporate in its dealings. I'll just come right out and say it, not out of shame or apology: but as a pure and simple admission:

Most Yankee fans are obnoxious, front running, spoiled fan boy jerks who know nothing about the game. And yea, George Steinbrenner can be an evil, dictatorial prick.

Happy? I'm not. Having to defend my team or explain myself every time this comes up sucks pretty bad, but hey, what am i gonna do, they're my team, and they were my dads team, and his dads team. Lineage. Starting to get the picture?

Well if not, here's one that's worth a thousand words:

Yea. Thats me in the Bronx - Wedensday, August 24th 1988, 9 yrs old, leather at the ready, smilin them horseteeth for my dad. The Yanks were playin the A's in the 3rd game of a set, with the series tied at 1 a piece.

So what hasn't changed? - my love of yankees baseball, and apparently, my haircut. And what has changed? Well, how about the yankees?

In 1988, the bombers came in 5th place, finishing out 85-76 at a mediocre .528 percentage. They hadn't won a world series in 10 years, or an AL east pennant since 1981. Keep this in mind - if you were a "frontrunner" then - you were a Mets fan, they had just won the Serious in 1986 and finished 15 games out in front of Pittsburgh for 1st place in the NL East in 1988. My team, the Yankees - were nothing to shout about. But the players...

Don Mattingly, who will be Joe Torre's bench coach this year, was in pre-injury form, batting over .300 for the fifth consecutive season, and earned his fourth consecutive gold glove for flashing some serious leather at 1st base.

Rickey Henderson, playing left field, batted .305 and had 98 stolen bases on the year.

Dave Winfield, playing right, smacked the ball with a .322 avg, hit 25 homers and contributed 107 rbis before the year was over.

Other mentionables for '88 were Tommy John, Dave Righetti, Ron Guidry (now the pitching coach), and Al Leiter. And who else? Willie Randolph - current skipper of the crosstown Mets. Willie didn't do anything phenomenal that year, but my position was 2nd base in Little League, so i've always had this natural inclination to favor the guy there, in 88 it was Willie, and these days, its Robinson Cano.

The Yanks weren't much for championships during my youth, but i remember my dad watching the games or listening to them on the radio, i remember my grandfather cursing them out on Sunday afternoons when i visited them for lunch. I remember the overall feeling that this was my team, that i was supposed to root for the Yanks. I was too young to understand the bitter Red Sox rivalry, being hated by the Mets, i wasn't aware of George Steinbrenners less-than-savory backroom dealings or how the crooked bastard went out of his way to smear some of the best players on our team - like Dave Winfield or Reggie Jackson - over personal differences. Baseball was innocent, a game, before i knew stats or off-field antics - i knew Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe Dimaggio, Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle were the immortals, and my family had immortilized them for me, i was a Yankee fan, there was just no other team for me.

And how far have they come since 1988? 11 Division titles. 4 World Series titles in 6 trips. Why do they call it the world series if its always played in the Bronx?

You can rub it in my face if you want, i know better than any hater that the Yanks have had piss poor postseason records since 2000 - they choked, and then choked again. Their strongest assets went missing, their weaknesses exagerrated, and they never seem to find their moxie when October started, which has been the antithesis of the dynasty years - postseason magic, not postseason collapse. It hurts, like it would hurt any fan of any team - but i don't mind. I'm not one of 'those' fans.

This team has been the team to beat in their division for the last decade - and the AL East is arguably the toughest division in the majors. I'm supposed to be ashamed of this? Look, i'll leave the shame to Derek Jeter, i've got to admire him for saying anything less than a World Championship is a failure in NYC. Dissappointed? Hell yes. Ashamed? Only of the fans who call division pennants a waste.

How do i feel about the Mets? I like the Mets. I like David Wright, Delgado, Endy Chavez and of course, Wille Randolph. Nothing bothers me about the team. This has always been the conundrum between the Bronx and Queens - Mets fans seem to care a helluva lot more about the Yankees than the Yankee fans care about the Mets. And thats probably the reason Mets fans hate the Yankees so much: we can't even reciprocate a rivalry for them. Shit ... if it weren't for interleague play, I doubt i'd even care at all. So, friends of mine who're Mets fans - i come in peace, y'all don't bother me. Hate on if you want - i don't really care.

I can't say the same for the Red Sox. I have a few buddies who're Boston fans, and i can even talk baseball with them: mad respect for being able to meet each other in the middle - this isn't for you. Unfortunately, the majority of Sox fans i've found seem to be more motivated to see the Yankees lose than they are in even seeing their own team win. Hey, the majority of Yankee fans suck - and it would seem to me that the same is true with Redsox fans. If you really love the sport, rooting for one team just to hate on another is pathetic. Inferiority complex anyone? Get a clue, and kiss the rings bitches!

Why do i love the Yankees now, as an adult, why haven't i jumped ship? What makes me stick? You can laugh, but yea - its the aura and mystique, its the ghosts that haunt the hallowed ground in monument park in left-center field, its the black and white footage of Ruths called shot, Gehrigs goodbye speech, Larsens perfect game. Its late-game impossible comeback magic. Sure, the Sox did it in 2004, for the Yanks - it comes with the territory: every year it seems, regardless of the players, or the manager or the fans - it just seems to come with the pinstripes. Its why the aloof Yogi Berra once said: "It ain't over till its over."

Last season, on May 16, vs the Texas Rangers, i saw one of the best games i'll ever see. No written description will do it justice, but to nutshell the game, the Yanks impossibly came back from a 9-0 defecit after being brutalized early and went into the 9th inning with the game tied. The Yankees brought in the formidable Mariano Rivera to hold the game, and he blew it, giving up a run on a Rod Barajas double. They had come back twice already in the game, and now they were going to lose 13-12, a crushing defeat. I was laying on my floor, listening to John Sterling on the radio, nervously pounding a ball into my mitt. With 2 outs and a man on, Jorge Posada came up to the plate, with the crowd hushed on the precipice of defeat, he battled the count to 3 balls, 1 strike. Posada crushed his next pitch, a straight fastball, deep into the rightfield bleachers for a walk-off homer: the Yankees won, 14-13.

Back to August 24th 1988. Different team, no Jeter, no Mariano Rivera, no Giambi et al - 1988 was hardly an all-star lineup. The 5th place Yankees were playing the 1st place Oakland Athletics. The Yanks were playing horrible ball that month, running a 9-20 record. The A's took the game into the top of the ninth 4-2, and tagged on two more runs on a Jose Canseco dinger, pounding the last nail in the coffin for a sure bet 6-2 win for the game AND the series - because the A's dominant hall of fame closer, Dennis Eckersley was on the mound to get the final 3 outs.

The game was in the bag. Or it should have been. It started with a pair of basehits from Claudell Washington and Don Mattingly, followed with a homer from dh Ken Phelps to make it 6-5. A fielders choice double play tied the game as Don Slaught plated Dave Winfield. But with 2 outs in a tie game, Rickey Henderson came up to bat and served a single into left field, bringing utility infielder Luis Aguayo home and winning the game 7-6. The Yanks had put up a 5 spot in the bottom of the ninth against the games most dominant closer, and won the game. Friggen magic.

It ain't over till its over: This is Yankees baseball. This is why they're my team, wether its the pathetic dredges of 1988, the cinderella story champs of 1996, the loser 'chokees' of 2004 - or whatever comes between now and October - its gonna be a hell of a season!

Lets go Yan-kees!

Social Network True Ads

2007-02-11T17:23:00.001-05:00

OK these True ads need to stop. Two of the types of ads that True seems to like to run on Myspace drive me crazy.

The one style is a photo of some over-sexed chick with fuck-me eyes going on, but with a multiple choice question about whats the best thing about naughty girls (uh, everything? spankings, etc). I thought that it was only fair for them to complement that with a list about what are the worst part about naughty girls, just to be safe. You know - having to kick your best friends ass because she slept with him, herpes, sloppy seconds, paternity suits, and overhearing second hand urban myths about the time she tried to felate an entire hotel floor full of jello-shot fueled frat boys in Daytona beach while singing the star spangled banner. Yeah - that's EXACTLY what I'm looking for in a girl - a hundred other guys.

What i don't get about this ad campaign is that i have yet to see an ad that promotes the best aspects of 'nice' girls. This infers its lame to be nice. Boring... be a bitch. Be loose. Be naughty. Just like guys, nice girls finish last.

The other set of ads is just too obvious, and i haven't seen many of them around lately. But for a while, the ads were just like an enormous set of tits, with the tag - "Find True Love". Unless this is some Freudian appeal to the males deep seeded evolutionary attraction to C-cups (guilty as charged), I once again see this mixed message that love and sex are one in the same, or maybe that screwing a hottie can replace those feelings of deep romance.

Whats wrong with me? Do I fuck through a hole in a sheet? Am I some puritanical hard-ass who can't appreciate a ''naughty' chick? On the contrary - 'naughty' (this word just keeps getting lamer every time i say it) might as well be a requirement - what fun is sex with inhibitions? But I personally like to earn that right through developing chemistry with someone, or being surprised by some unexpected sluttiness in the bedroom ... or in the kitchen ... or in the car, you get the idea. If shes broadcasting the naughty thing to everyone and anyone, shes just not attractive anymore, theres no challenge. And yes, theres a big difference in being sexy and being slutty. Respect and integrity comes to mind.

And hey look, i get the one-night-stand thing, its liberating to let loose and throw caution to the wind and indulge in someone that's gotten your blood boiling. I guess it just bothers me when i see a huge swath of our society engage in it almost exclusively. The fear of commitment and loss of identity is so great that no one really wants to be obligated anymore and relationships are just perceived as a ball and chain. We're so obsessed with ourselves, that theres no room for anyone else: you're taking away from my career, you're taking away from my studies, you're taking away from my ability to fuck whoever i want whenever i want. Theres no incentives placed on the comfort that comes with the trust, loyalty or understanding that comes with commitment. its 2007, and its all about me.

Years and years of media slamming us in the face has left us all with this false impression that the only thing that matters is physical attraction - and dont get me wrong, its damn important. But its not the only thing that's important, and i think way too many people look only skin deep - not only at other people, but especially at themselves.

I hate to generalize, but the more 'sexy' a person, the more they tend to just be sexy and nothing else. That's what happens here, you're so overly rewarded for being attractive, you start to feel superior, you get used to the attention, you don't feel the need to develop your personality into something tangible: I'm sexy, men pay attention to me, and if i smile the right way, i can get anything i want. Rinse, repeat.

In the words of Dave Chappelle, "Chivalry is dead - and women killed it". Way too many women giving it away under some false pretense that they are simply exuding the same chauvinist attitude that men have had over the last ... um ... OK, like forever. The false pretense is that male chauvinism is OK, encouraged even. You guys had your fun, and now its our turn to brag about being mean, superficial and heartless. Yeah, that's awesome.

So yea, chauvinism on any level from any gender is fucking lame. Casual relationships, one-night-stands, swingers, hey it's all good and you've got the freedom to do it all - i just worry that theres alot of people out there who are confused and don't bother to think, they see these ads for True, they see a Girls Gone Wild commercial, they jump into the thong contest at the club, and they think this is the only way to act, the only way to live - this is what a woman is supposed to be. This is what men find attractive.

I wonder alot about this confusion, 'cause there seems to be a never ending parade of girls who say they want to be the bad-girl, or that they want the bad-boy, diving headlong into something and then come out the other side feeling hurt, used, and angry. Despite feeling this way, they go ahead and make the same mistake, again and again and again. They feel like they're hardcore and strong and know what they re getting into, and then they're shocked when they feel hurt afterwards. The real trouble is that repeating the mistake tends to only distance the person from real emotional relationships and that becomes the only way they know how to show or receive affection: cheap sex with people for all the wrong reasons.

Being the 'nice' guy for most of my life, I've heard it all about the bad-boy drama from alot of platonic girl friends. He was so hot, his car was so nice, his band rocked, he had alot of money, he looks just like *celebrity of choice*. This is what gets you in the door, and it takes alot less to get from the door to the bedroom, shouldn't it be the opposite, whats up with that?

I just wish thered be some counterpoint to the mass media, some motivation or a voice telling everyone to meet everyone halfway here: lets all stop acting like pigs and let ourselves even entertain the idea of falling in love again - giving people chances, with no strings attached.

And no, that doesn't mean you need to take the handcuffs off the headboard...

Essential reading:

Female Chauvinist Pigs

Generation S.L.U.T.

Groundhog Bitchslaps Lynne Cheney

2007-02-02T15:34:00.002-05:00

Groundhogs day sneaks up on me every year, its one of those strange mysterious 'holidays' that seemed to matter alot more when i was just a kid. Now you look back and wonder why it mattered at all, there was never any fanfare, gifts or family dinners, whats the big deal? Did anyone even really hold that rodent accountable for his predictions or what?

This year was a little different, and i was reminded of Groundhogs day when i had heard rumors that my good buddies down at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) had dropped off a SUITCASE FULL OF CASH to the groundhog in order to potentially influence his 'prediction'.

The AEI, an ExxonMobil-funded conservative thinktank with close ties to the Bush Administration, determined that an early-spring prediction compounded with this already unseasonably warm winter, might fan the flames on the hot topic of global warming. The AEI offered the payments for articles that emphasise the limitations of the groundhogs shadow gazing method of climatological prediction. More than two dozen AEI alumni have served either in a Bush administration policy post or on one of the government's many panels and commissions.

Thankfully, our furry bucktoothed friend threw the suitcase back at Lynn Cheney - Dick Cheneys wife and AEI senior fellow claiming:

"Bitch - i'm a fucking GROUNDHOG! What the fuck am i supposed to do with a suitcase full of money!?"

Needless to say, the 'hog said early spring, and crawled back into his hole - and Lynn Cheney crawled back into her hole too.

But in all sincerity, this actually happened, except not to the groundhog - It happened to a consortium of British scientists on Feb 2nd. The Guardian UK reported:

"Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies ... offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ... The letters, sent to scientists in Britain, the US and elsewhere, attack the UN's panel as "resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work" and ask for essays that "thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs"

In other words: the AEI is whining about science being irrefutable. The IPCC report was published the same day and of course yielded the results everyone has been expecting:

"A substantial portion of the IPCC's membership argued that global warming was "virtually certain" to have been caused by human activity."

and

"The really chilling thing about the IPCC report is that it is the work of several thousand climate experts who have widely differing views about how greenhouse gases will have their effect. Some think they will have a major impact, others a lesser role. Each paragraph of this report was therefore argued over and scrutinised intensely. Only points that were considered indisputable survived this process. This is a very conservative document - that's what makes it so scary,"

'Nuff said really. the main point is that this isn't some left wing liberal leaning organization or Al Gore here - this is science at its most conservative, and i don't know how you can spin that around, even with a suitcase full of dough. Now, I don't think much of Greenpeace, they're intentions are good, but i think extremist environmental groups tend to just give a good cause a bad name to most of the populous. But Ben Stewart from Greenpeace had a great quote:

"The AEI is more than just a thinktank, it functions as the Bush administration's intellectual Cosa Nostra. They are White House surrogates in the last throes of their campaign of climate change denial. They lost on the science; they lost on the moral case for action. All they've got left is a suitcase full of cash."

werd.

so fa king we todd ed

2007-01-31T23:25:00.001-05:00

"It's a hoax - and it's not funny," said Gov. Deval Patrick.

Au contraire governor, it was fucking HILARIOUS.

Thank you for giving me a topic to chew on here that had nothing to do with political or religious strife ( i swear theres more to me! ).

So, today, some genius in Boston was driving his 'cah' to the 'pahk' and saw this and thought it might be some twisted evil device designed to inflict pain and suffering:

if you're not in the know, much like the maligned Bostonite, thats my main man Err, mooninite marauder from Aqua Teen Hunger Force - flippin the bird - as hard as he can. So what the hell were these things doing all over Boston? Well, its just a viral marketing tactic employed by the uber-hipsters at Williams Street / Adult Swim for what im guessing is the new Aqua Teen movie (the new season ended a few weeks ago so it wouldn't be for the show). The idea is you're walking around through the city and you see this crazy space-invaders character glowing in the dark flipping you off and you go 'huh?' and the insuing 'huh' makes you go out and ask/tell other people about it, thus spreading the marketing virally. Viral tactics have been the method of choice lately for many companies, proving to be far more successful than traditional saturation methods like billboards, urinal-posters, or repetitive tv and radio ads.

the idea is that the human mind can only take so much before they start to tune out the message - oversaturation: you're only going to see the ad once and then begin to tune it out (unless its the girls gone wild commercial, which still sends me into a rabies-like frenzy of violence and psychotic laughter). If you see something that isn't quite normal, like an atari game character giving you the finger without any accompanying message, you freak out and desperatey try to make sense of what you've seen, and you absolutely remember it until you can manage to figure out exactly what you've seen. And i guess if you're from Boston and you can't figure it out, you call the fuckin Dept of Homeland Security.

Needless to say: the boys at Williams street got more than they were bargaining for, a moment of paranoia that closed highways, bridges and a section of the Charles River for most of the day today while 8 other devices were gathered up from different parts of the city. Ok - 9 mooninite lite-brite magnets shut down parts of Boston for the better part of a day without a single person recognizing the characters and quelling everyones dirty-bomb fears? Dude. Unacceptable.

Also worth pointing out that this campaign took place over the last several weeks and in a bunch of other cities: New York; LA; Chicago; Atlanta; Seattle; Portland; Austin; San Francisco; and Philly. Leave it to Boston, they obviously need to smoke more moonajuana.

Three things are certain:

1) Viral marketing works.
2) Aqua Teen movie is gonna rock.
3) The Red Sox still suck.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Global Warming

2007-01-04T18:31:00.001-05:00

Its January 4, and its a sunny 60 degrees outside. This Saturday - supposed to be 70, and I'm starting to think, hey it's not all so bad, i could live with this. I mean, pitchers and catchers report to spring training in about 40 days, and I'm ready to play some 'ball right now. I'm ready to rock my Robbie Cano tshirt and hit the batting cages, its springtime in January! I'm supposed to be going through some post-holiday-low-sunlight seasonal-affective-disorder-thing but no - I'm thinkin about lazy meandering hikes, picnics, girls in short skirts and casual rounds of long toss, whiffle ball and frisbee.

Sometimes, usually in late March, i like to drive around with the windows down and the sunroof open, but with the heat all the way up, and it sorta feels like May or June. I did that today. In January. Can we just maybe skip this whole winter thing altogether? Lets bring daylight savings time in a few months early, get the days longer and just deal with a freakishly long springtime, who's with me?

Then again, I'm not a polar bear. or a penguin. or a million year old sheet of glacial ice. Things might seem a bit weirder to me if i was, you know, an Inuit living way up in Yellowknife and noticed that the caribou didn't bother migrating south this year or whatever. That the permafrost beneath me just didn't seem so 'perma' anymore.

I was having a hazy weird conversation last week about whether or not Polar Bears feel cold or not. We watched this sumbitch on Discovery roll around in the snow and then dive into the arctic waters without hesitation, and i thought - no f'n way is that dude cold. But i don't think that's the question anymore really, the more relevant/important question to ask Mr.polar bear is:

Can you feel heat?

Champagne Champ

2007-01-01T17:34:00.000-05:00

1.5 bottles of Freixenet champagne straight to my head isn't my record, which was almost 3 bottles for New Years Eve 2004. Needless to say, 3 bottles was a threshold i never wanted to cross again. But 1.5 - totally reasonable, recommended even - if you can handle champagne that is. Now I'm hardly a heavyweight, i cant do alot of liquor at all and I'm mostly a beer guy, but Ive seen some hardcore drinkers shy away from champagne for one reason or another. The last night of the year, I'm a fuckin champagne champ. Bring it.

The worlds a mess, civilization faces opposition at every turn, our society is trying its hardest to make a mockery of being human, and i can't seem to meet anyone, let alone get a date, but hey, its a new year now. No matter how many times you spend Dec 31 looking back with regret and pessimism, you have no choice but to spend Jan 1 looking ahead at the next 364 with hope and optimism. New opportunities and unexpected surprises, heres hoping these will find me sooner than later. I've been hearing 'This too shall pass' for months. Well, here's your chance, friggen pass already!

Here's hopin that 007 turns out to be a year with more reasons to celebrate, open up more bottles of champagne, and stumble around all crooked-like. cheers y'all.

End Year Politickin'

2006-12-29T20:38:00.002-05:00

Man - been a while...and its not because i haven't had anything to say, i think its more accurate to say I've had too much to say (way too much) and perhaps couldn't calm my mind enough to decide on one. Of course, its also a matter of getting things off my chest to certain specific people - and if that's the case, myspace, while oft used as a public forum for personal craziness, is not my preferred space to spill angst ridden personal attacks or project fucking emo-ness to the 4 corners of my 'extended network'.

Although i sometimes feel the odd man out cause there seems to be a majority who now prefer to have a myspace-catharsis over actually being physically present and using voices and glances to communicate personally. Oh whoa is me - where has the intimacy gone when it comes to dramatic bullshit?

Not why i was writing though, i wanted to round the year out with a couple socio-political tidbits that got into my head this morning as i tried to distract myself from the other shit that's been dominating my landscape of late. I know most people must just move to the next blog when they hear 'politics', but fuck y'all. The sheer stupidity and patheticness (is that a word?) of it all is mad funny!

OK first off, Somalia/Ethiopia: Anyone following this cluster fuck? In a nutshell, when Prez Big Willy sent our boys into Somalia over a decade ago to oust the warlord Adid from power, the place was total anarchy - and not even the cool kind you wanted when you were 16, a screaming fucking bloody mess. Over the last several years, an organization called the Somalia Islamic Courts Council (or SICC - sounds like evil to me!) moved in and started to pacify the warlords and militias and gained huge popular support among the people.

Problem is the 'I' in SICC.

Just like theres no I in TEAM, theres no I in FREEDOM either. Now even though people weren't starving or dying in the streets anymore, and that was good, they had all welcomed the idea of imposing Sharia law and creating an Islamic state in the horn of Africa - which was bad. Western civ just wasn't gonna have that, and I'm sure a few phonecalls were made, envelopes were delivered, threats made. Needless to say, there was gonna be a big throw down in Mogadishu, SICC vs the unpopular Somali govt - It never happened, partly because of their neighbor, Ethiopia - contributed large amounts of TANKS and WARPLANES to the Somali govt. The SICC forces melted away in the face of opposition and it was over before it happened. OK, theres the boring primer in a nutshell, if you want to find out more, google that shit up. To the point.

1 - Ethiopia has Tanks and Warplanes? What the fuck? I have to sit through hours of guilt heavy infomercials with fat Sally fucking Struthers surrounded by poor starving little kids in Ethiopia, cause they have no fucking food or water or medicine, enduring a pandemic - and Ethiopia has the budget for some F-16s and Tanks - even more than the Somalians! I mean that's sheer craziness, i thought the USA had the brand identity of screwing its poor while spending trillions on wars we don't even belong in, but congrats Ethiopia, way to go! Just pennies a day from me to adopt a kid? Liquidate a few smart bombs dude, or harpoon Sally Struthers, just feed those damn kids, their lives are fucked!

2 - The SICC just gave up and walked away in the face of opposition? I've seen this movie before. Perhaps the generals on the ground haven't. Its widely speculated that the majority of the SICC military forces are made up of foreign fighters, but Its a mixed bag, lots of normal folks trying to defend their homeland, but you also have extremist elements like the Shabaab who might be a direct arm of Al Queda. Everyone over there and in the news is throwing a party over the SICC retreat and victory of the Somali govt. But the movie goes like this:

Somali Regular 1: "DUDE! that was so easy! I thought we were totally gonna get our asses kicked."

Somali Regular 2: "I know man, i was totally stoked to shoot some motherfuckers with this sweet Ethiopian tank! Bummer!"

Somali Regular 1: "Whew. Well i guess i can go home to my starving kids now, you think i have to give back the assault rifle?"

Somali Regular 2: "Nah. Hey...you think maybe that was, like, a little too easy?"

Somali Regular 1: "Dude you're crazy - you see me up here on this tank, i look like a baaaad ass! Those SICC guys saw my ass coming and they said, yo, fuck all this allah islamic fundamentalist shit and they bounced! Scared shitless! "

Somali Regular 2: "Yeah, i guess you're right. Hey is that Sally Struthers over there?"

End scene, anyone else see the problem here? Crazy islamist fundamentalists never retreat on the run. Avoiding conventional warfare in the face of overwhelming opposition is like the golden rule in guerrilla warfare. They wanted the Somali govt to take Mogadishu just like we took Baghdad. They have no interest in dealing with crowd control, feeding angry people, rebuilding an infrastructure or forming a new government. Instead of losing a sizable portion of their forces in combat, they melt away and live to fight another day. While everyone over there is doing a little victory dance, the guys in Shabaab are prepping suicide bomb belts and wondering how long it will be till the Americans get there so they can kill them too.

Its a conundrum, you keep the SICC in power, and you have relative peace, but only because everyone is united under strict Sharia law, and you have an Islamic state, which has the potential to get real ugly like Taliban-Afghanistan or a relatively stable, fair republic like you have in Iran. You remove the SICC, and the power vacuum gets filled by warlords like Farah Adid, and the anarchy you have in that is just as bad as extremist-Islamic states.

Expect severe ugliness in Somalia in the near future kids, bound to happen. Fortunately for us, i don't think theres any oil in Somalia (Just like Darfur), so i doubt we give much of a shit how many Africans are dying over there.

Next in the news, some really idiocy:

"In order to comply with EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) regulations, and at a cost of about $5.2 million per ICBM, the rocket motors on 500 Minuteman III missiles will be replaced or refurbished (with new fuel). The rocket fuel will emit less toxic chemicals when used ... Thus, if the Minuteman III ICBMs have to be used in some future nuclear war, their rocket motors will not pollute the atmosphere."

Yeah that's right, if the trillions of tax dollars going to Iraq wasn't quite enough of a waste, tag on another 2.6 billion to retrofit our nuclear missiles with FUCKING ENVIRONMENTALLY SAFE LOW EMISSIONS MOTORS. What the fuck is this, our nukes have to pass friggen inspection laws? And what if the check engine light is on?? I can see it now, we lose (as if you could win?) global thermonuclear conflict because the EPA wouldn't let us launch because of the emissions of our rockets, brilliant. You know, I'm all for Greenpeace and the EPA and regulating corporations - the fuckers are all snakes and cant be trusted so its good we have these organizations in place - but EPA, c'mon dudes, that is some silly silly shit. If you guys are so bored, my kitchen could probably use a little environmental cleanup, message me bitches!

That's all kids, theres no way 2007 could possibly be any worse than 2006. I figure its all about making moves this year, makin shit happen, 06 was a stalemate. I'll be happy to see the last few days dissolve away into history, peace y'all.

Christoper Rahm

1995-08-20T00:08:00.001-04:00

This site began centered around a blog I started during July 2008 as a travel blog of my trip to France, and i enjoyed writing so much that i decided to keep it going, write more and put up my portfolio as well. I'm a designer and video editor with 12 years of professional experience across the field - I do a little bit of art and also enjoy writing when the mood strikes me. Currently, i've got a cool job as Creative Director / Chief Editor at Ellenbogen at the Seven21 Media Center in Kingston, New York. ( Mouthful isn't it? )

Most of the stuff I wind up writing is boring social commentary, political smacktalk, speculation on the end of the world, and occasionally, Yankees baseball. I'd define myself as someone who's lost faith in the system more than anyone with a political affiliation, but i'd choose the puppet on the left if i absolutely had to. In my spare time I enjoy playing poker, exploring outdoors, watching adult swim and playing with old film cameras.

Oh - and I only listen to good music and watch tasteful movies. Promise.