i'm sexist

but i'm right: women are not funny.

now some feminista might counter with the ellen degenereses and tina feys of the world. but remember, we're not talking about women who are funnier than the average woman, we're talking about women who are genuinely, laugh out loud, belly aching, bladder distracting funny. say dave chapelle, chris rock, jerry seinfeld, jon stewart etc.

so if and when you're lucky enough to find some girl who really has it, she's a keeper.

being that it is christmas, try this at home. ask your siblings about the funniest female person in their life (for accurate results, female significant others should not be present). then look around and observe the confounded looks that appear on the faces of those around you as they desperately search their memories for someone that even somewhat fits the charge.

maybe i should consider myself lucky. i have ran across the rare breed that is the humor-producing woman. and as chance had it, she shared her sensible theory to explain the scarcity. humor, unlike femininity, big tits and a hemispherical backside, is not valued in women. hence it goes unnurtured. and once females find they are unrewarded for the trait, they fail to incorporate it into their personality.

now, in my mind, this is unquestionably true. on the other hand, it doesn't constitute a complete explanation either. if it were, we wouldn't know what polonium or radium was. but of course madame curie did indeed identify these two elements, which leads us to the question of why there hasn't been a truly funny woman to emerge from the woodwork. in the end, it's only intellectually honest to conclude that there must be another factor, biological being the most obvious, that contributes to the female disposition for humorlessness.

i leave you with this statistic: 2.25. that is how many funny women i've run across in my short 29 and one-half years. whether that makes me lucky or not, i've yet to determine.

the panhandle's shining star

a short while back, i debated with a friend of mine where the good restaurants in san francisco were located and which neighborhoods played the haves and have nots. we didn't agree on everything (i dissed his home neighborhood, north beach, while giving props to the mission and marina), but there was little argument that the panhandle was severely lacking.

one restaurant can't change that fact, but the opening of nopa at hayes and divisadero certainly marks an effective first step. pick day of the week and one will still find the restaurant teeming with patrons, nearly all of whom seem to be chatting enthusiastically over a glass of wine. all the chatter means private conversations have to occur at raised vocal levels, but it also lends a festive ambience to the restaurant ideal for combatting the malaise that follows a mundane work day. the wide open space and exposed kitchen only add to this fact.

however, not all was perfect with the meal. The dishes generally shined, but the service ranged from curt to downright icy. the hostess nearly left my friend and i behind as she weaved through the crowds as if there were an unannounced race to our table. and the gelid blonde couldn't even manage a smile as she handed us our menus before skirting away. and though the service never lagged, at times it felt like we were being prodded through our meal in order to free our table for other patrons. our server gave terse explanations to my inquiries about the wine list and left the check halfway through dessert without ever asking if i desired a cup of coffee or a glass of port to accompany my sorbet.

still, the shortcomings of the service did little to detract from enjoyment of entrees like the mediterranean fish stew, which comes heaped with baby golden potatoes, squid and served in a hearty rouille. however, the real star of the meal is the seared black cod, a generous cut that your fork slides right through served with a crispy skin that adds a richness to the white fish. it's only the beef carpaccio with which i have qualms over the preparation. the meat is exceptionally fresh and with its topping creme fraiche achieved a buttery richness. however, the beef was sliced so thin it degenerated into a pile of mush while trying to extract it from the plate's surface.

even before i dined at nopa, i'll admit to being a fan. as much as the panhandle needs good restaurants, but the city of san francisco needs quality dining options that stay open past midnight (nopa serves until 1 a.m. daily) all the more. the food itself virtually guaranteed a return visit, but the extended hours means it earns a spot in the regular rotation.

13, 12, 11...all good things come to an end

over the past year, i've made a point of mentioning the wire every time the subject of tv arises in conversation. i do so because no other piece of viewing entertainment, whether on the big or small screen, even approaches the greatness of the series. it's the best thing on television. sadly it's also the best show on television no one watches. so i do my best to spread my word, because others deserve to share in that quality. and also in the hopes, faint as they may be, that a season six may somehow come to bear if a few more people start tuning in or buying the dvds.

and like i say to those i hope to convert, i wish i still had four seasons to catch up on.

the king of all liars

up till now, the best one i'd heard was on a shuttle from the atlantic city airport where a fellow rider claimed to have built an automobile that ran on used vegetable oil. he'd taken it cross country once too, though he'd have to stop at mcdonalds ever couple hundred miles and ask the fry cook for a bottle of their used oil. apparently, that made the car leave a trail of french fry fragrance.

well that all changed at the 21st amendment this past evening. i met a friend for a beer before the giants game and found him conversing with an older gentleman. as i approached him, he excused himself to the bathroom, but not before introducing me to bobby. i asked if he was also headed to the giants game. he said no. and i believe that to be the last truthful statement he uttered.

now with my fleeting memory, i'll never be able to do justice to the whoppers he dropped, but here goes.

- professional craps gambler, or "whale" as he likes to call himself, who travels the world, but spends a lot of time in vegas, mostly in comped suites at the belaggio.
- bigtime sports bettor, i mean to the tune of 2k-3k per game. that is all 16 nfl games every week. but he never uses a book. being italian, you just bet person to person.
- godson of frank sinatra
- and my personal favorite, fucked playmates with whitey bulger, reputed boston mob boss

the gayest thing i've ever done

other than suck that biker's dude cock (just kidding). well it has to be shopping at the container store. and not just shopping, but examining the various opening mechanisms to garbage cans; comparing the aesthetics of an enamel paint versus stainless steel; wondering if an 8 gallon capacity would be enough, even for a single "man".

as i wandered through the 2(!) expansive floors of every goody ever conceived that could hold other goodies, i wondered, perhaps out loud, whether i was actually one of those dudes who gets married, has kids, and on their 42nd birthday finally gets the whole guys in uniforms thing.

and this suspicion only grew with each moment i weighed the merits of whether a dual-direction drip tray warranted an extra $20 for a dish rack. i determined it did. well it had to be -- the red sticker pasted onto each box said so. so i was relieved to see another man pushing a well-stocked shopping cart past my aisle; at least until he greeted his boyfriend (the top) in a voice i could only imagine on a man if a monkey had been trying to juice an alto tenor's balls.

so as i stood waiting to checkout, i resolved to watch some porn or use my hammer to do something as soon as i got home.

well just as soon as i set up the dish caddy.

the business model of outlets

everyone loves getting a deal. it makes you feel smart, as if you've somehow outsmarted the system such that your money is doing more for you than the next guy's money is doing for him.

the outlet mall depends on this sort of thinking. fancy brand names set up shops, take in the past season's (and sometimes many seasons before that) ugliest designs, reduce their markup by some impressive percentage, and hope their brand will blind the shopper's aesthetic instinct. not to say that one cannot find worthwhile purchases, but one has to look mighty hard. and i can only guess what great proportion of shoppers feel the tinge of buyer's remorse on the drive back home.

all of this makes sense for the hugo bosses, calvin kleins, and kenneth coles of the world. but as i strolled through the 100-degree heat of the gilroy premium outlets, a store caught my eye. not because i thought i might find the one piece of attractive clothing, but because i could barely fathom how an outlet for this particular vendor came to be: jelly belly.

would a jelly belly outlet sell all the flavors that no one cared to purchase, i.e. tasted like shit? and if so, what would possess someone to patronize the store? granted there are plenty of fat people moving (or not) around gilroy but would they not opt for the flavors that actually taste good. after all, i can't imagine the candy to be prohibitively expensive. i mean, they do sell them at safeway.

light bulb. how about a gummi bear outlet. we can sell bulk packages of the yellow ones that even half the fat little 8-year olds who get picked last in kickball leave in the bag.

know your audience

through my year of j school, one theme always arose in discussions of the media: they don't write for the people who read them. it's why there's a business section in the paper, but not a social welfare section. it's why the silicon valley gets big coverage while oakland is largely ignored.

these thoughts occurred to me as i was picking up a few slices at arizmendi for my saturday lunch. as i ambled down ninth avenue, i noticed a banner hanging across the front of andy's, one of the local chinese joints. it boasted that asian weekly had bestowed the honor of best kung pao chicken (presumably for either sf or the bay area).

now i am not here to uphold or debunk asian weekly's claim. in fact, i am completely unqualified to do so, for i have never tasted andy's kung pao chicken, nor have i ever ordered it elsewhere. furthermore, i have never ate at a chinese restaurant where any of my companions to do so. this leads to me believe, that asian people don't really order that dish.

which brings us to the original point. why would a newspaper written for an asian audience have a best of category that is irrelevant to an asian audience?

the davis reduction

of the select group of guys who i consider true friends, one seems to do exceptionally well with the opposite sex -- with one caveat. he's got terrible taste in women. he thinks asian girls are overrated -- fine, i agree -- but he also digs the trashy look as well. the around-the-block but i clean up well thing. if i didn't know him and saw a photo album of his exes, i'd have pegged him for italian with an affinity for gold necklaces and earrings.

so to no suprise, the conversation lead to the discussion of handling women. the techniques, so to speak. his #1 ploy: the davis reduction. now i'd never heard mention of this particular tactic, so i asked him to explain. apparently, reduction is the term doctors use for mending broken bones. davis is his physician colleague who has transplanted this method to the male-female relationship.

apparently, davis, like so many others, has a difficult girlfriend, one whose psychosis seems to arise at regular intervals. and so when one of her moods shows, it's time to cut off the face time. ignore her, then reestablish the connection a few days later (say five) as if nothing out of the ordinary has taken place.

subtle, yes. without words you have communicated to the female who has control over the relationship. yet you were not mean, and in fact she has nothing to even accuse you of, since nothing out of the ordinary has even transpired. at least she thinks that's what you think.

i was of two minds while listening to my friend elaborate on the practice. one, i've always done this, though i never came up with a clever name for it. and two, it's retarded that this is how relationships have to work. because my friend was right. and so despite my approaching true adulthood (30) and him on the fast track to a career in orthodpedics, this is the idiocy that all people deal with. all for a little love; and a little more sex.

0 for 2

it's pretty rare for people to flake on me. i think it's because people like me. it might be because i make plans with so little time in advance there's no way to weasel out. nonetheless, on each of the last two evenings, i've had people cancel on me. goddamn planning.

but it's worked out. sort of. instead of drinks and dinner, i "decided" to work. and by work, i mean play cards. i think that sounds terribly pretentious -- when you refer to playing a game as work -- but when you're counting on the money to pay your apartment and nourishment, it is what it is.

i've been running a little salty recently; it may have something to do with my karma being shit right now. so instead of pushing things, i've pretty much stayed away from the (virtual) table. but my "diligence" paid off during the unexpected open spots in my schedule. a few fortunate cards, some horrendous play by my fellow players, and the last two days have given me rent and a token for my orange savings account.

all the same, i'd like to avoid the flaking moving forward. the good luck can stay though.

that looks mighty heavy, sir

make a list of the most loathesome activities and moving surely makes an appearance somewhere near the top. i can say that to be true, both personally and for all those individuals who populate the p2p review sites, like gayot, tribe and yelp. there you find dozens of posts entitled 'best money i've ever spent' or 'absolutely worth it'.

heeding the advice of those experienced with movers and the voice inside my head saying hard labor is better left to others, i secured an appointment with the local faves, delancey street movers. in three hours -- including an unpaid lunch break -- they moved my stuff from my one bedroom in palo alto to the same in san francisco. i'm not sure they broke much of a sweat.

and therein lies the rub. while i loafed in a lawn chair basking in the peninsula sun, phoning my other bourgeosie friends to extol the virutes of hired muscle, i began to feel, well, a wave of femininity. and the feeling was only exacerbated when the most diminutive of the three movers tossed my dresser -- which i nearly slipped a disc trying to move in -- over his shoulder and walked, seemingly on a layer or air, down the stairs and to the moving truck.

"strong, isn't he," another of the movers mouthed to me. yes, he was. but something made me suspect something between the lines. i found a silent, "weak, aren't you" there.

yes i was happy to not be scuffing my hands while fumbling box after box, item after item of furniture. hell, i might get a splinter. still, what does it say about a man who, through hours of work where the only thing he moves are numbers around a spreadsheet, has sissified to the point where he cannot even move his own possessions?

all these thoughts crossed my mind as i sipped a glass of bordeaux while unpacking my belongings from the boxes -- so neatly stacked by those three blue collar fellows.

attractive people don't like the homeless

i recently attended a charity art auction sponsored by an organization called the coalition to end homelessness, a name that more or less explains what the org considers its mission.

taking place at the somarts center on brannan, i figured it would attract a young and cultured, yet still profoundly hipster crowd. hence, even if i didn't take a liking to the art -- which i didn't -- i would still have plenty of pleasing things to look at. and not that i'm superficial, but this is was a profoundly unattractive crowd. and not that stylish to boot.

recently returning from a one year exile on the peninsula, i'm easily impressed by even a hint of urbanity (i.e., vintage jeans, you must be cool) on this night though, i may have secured the title of most metropolitan at this gathering. at least i had a hood.

fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice...

well shame on me of course. apparently some lessons are difficult to learn. and so i found myself once again dining in a tapas restaurant, hoping that small plates would finally fulfill their big promise.

this time the culprit was iluna basque, a somewhat trendy eatery on the corner of union and powell in north beach. as you walk inside, the interior designer's fondness for maroon becomes immediately apparent. the walls wear that color, as do the accoutrements selected to hang from it. but despite the bordello-esque hue of the restaurant, the corner location and long windows spanning 180 degrees of the exterior chase all possible feelings of claustraphobia.

and now to the downside; the dining experience. the first inkling comes just as you take a seat at your table. you unroll your place setting and spread the napkin across your lap, only to realize there is paper in your hand. it takes audacity to put seared foie gras on the menu and then ask patrons to dab their mouths with the product of a recycled notebook, but iluna basque does just that. if only they had demonstrated such boldness in other aspects, say the cooking.

between the three of us, we selected nine small plates, including a butter lettuce salad, seared scallops, a duck empanada, a petite ribeye and the aforemention foie gras. the only thing that stood out was the salinity. each bite elicited the expression of one who had inadverently swallowed a mouthful of atlantic ocean water. in fact, the saline flavor was so overpowering that you could taste nothing of the ingredients themselves. the only relief from this sodium infusion came from the wine, an excessively sweet and hollow grenache.

the one dish of the nine that i cannot speak for would be the cheese plate, which we ordered yet never arrived, except on the bill. upon mentioning to our server that he had overcharged us, he felt no need to apologize for the omission or to ask if we would still like to have the dish brought. without a word, he snatched up the bill walked back to the kitchen and made the correction. i'm not even certain he said a word -- not then or during our entire meal, since he felt no need to make a visit, other than the mandatory ones where he was dropping off food.

it's too bad, i mean for iluna basque. my two dining companions are recent transplants to north beach, and have plenty of money to spend. and i happened to know they were on the lookout for a regular neighborhood spot. somewhere to spend their money 3 or 4 times a month. the restaurant certainly lost them. and me along with it.

bar tartine: it's no tartine

if you live in san francisco, you are either well acquainted with tartine bakery or severely deprived. i suppose you could also be vegan, hence not able to enjoy their delectable baked goods, but there again you fall into the category of severely deprived. some doubt tartine's perfection, calling their bread pudding excessively eggy; those people would be mistaken. a more appropriate manner to describe the dish, and everything else they serve, would be the finest way to start a day.

despite the occasional complaint, however, the acclaim for tartine bakery is nearly universal. initially though, bar tartine -- same people, full restaurant -- failed to garner the same level of praise. inconsistency permeated the menu and the service lacked the attentiveness and precision of formal dining and the warmth and care of the best neighborhood establishments. or so the reviews said. but as the months passed, so did the critics. the dishes, which previously lacked imagination and suffered from flawed execution, had been fixed. now everything they served matched the quality of their bakery sister. allegedly.

i beg to differ. nothing on the menu was priced exorbitantly, nor did anything deserve to be. along with one of my regular dining partners, we split two each of starters, appetizers and desserts. i confess to never having any sort of confit except duck, so i was intrigued by the tuna confit salad. now i'm aware that tuna confit is just an alias for starkist. the fact that the greens were horrendously over-dressed in italian vinagerette only exacerbated the situation. my companions watermelon and radicchio salad was a significant upgrade, but still short of remarkable.

sadly, the entrees brought little relief. the sweet corn risotto was slightly undercooked, leaving the center of the risotto slightly chewy. but the pan-roasted quail didn't make me feel i had erred in my selection. the green salad the quail was served with actually overshadowed the bland prepartation of the fowl.

even the desserts, which would seem almost guaranteed to approach perfection given their relationship with the bakery, didn't quite meet expectations. the warm chocolate cake with chili flakes finished with a suprising kick, but it was notable primarily for its novelty. even their signature dessert -- muscato soaked nectarine served with a scoop of basil sorbet -- though excellent, brought little glee. the peel of the nectarine made it such that even when slicing with a knife, the fruit was ground into a pulp-like form. plus my knowledge that just a few short blocks away at range, a nearly identical, but superior version of this dessert was being served, simply made me wish i had chosen another dining location.

i'm sure i'll check back in a year or so. by then, maybe they will have actually sorted through their problems.

bocadillos, or how i learned to kick the tapas trend

i love the idea of tapas. but slowly and sadly, i am arriving at the realization that they don't work well in practice. sort of like marxism. in manifesto form, everyone involved is happy and well fed. in execution, not so much (see: ussr, late 20th century).

well tapas too. is it not every visit to a restaurant that after looking at the menu, you are faced with many more options than you could possibly try? not with tapas. instead, you get a taste of all the dishes that strike your fancy. mix it with a pitcher of sangria, a fex kalimutxos and a cafe con leche after dinner, and not only has your yearning for food been satisifed, but you're just caffeinated and inebriated enough for a night of socialization (and further revelry).

at least in theory. i've given tapas a fair chance. more than fair some would say. in addition to bocadillos, i've frequented esperpento, ramblas, picaro, alegrias, thirsty bear, cesar, cha cha cha and others i'm sure i've forgotten. i'm still waiting to be overwhelmed.

bocadillos has its high points, the foie gras roll and the grilled shrimp with pepper flakes most notably. but it has its low notes as well. the calamari was oversalted and the short ribs didn't fall from the bone when my knife and fork nudged them as they should. considering bocadillos represents the finest tapas san francisco offers, well, perhaps it's best to just stay away. the portions grow smaller, yet the price not to the same extent. the service seems rushed and uneven and the kitchen's execution inevitably tends toward inconsistency. maybe they're just asked to handle too many dishes at once. or possibly, the unshakable hipness of small plates these days means attention to cuisine just doesn't matter much.

whatever the reason though, i think i've finally learned to stay away. let the young urban professionals who populate the in-crowds fill the tapas restaurants; i've got other places to squander my paltry salary.

bad neighbor, part 2

so i knocked on the door (as the complaining party should have done) the two neighbors who may have been the culprits in the porch-light-tattling situation and both parties denied being the snitch. fishy.

although i'm certainly not the confrontational type, i'm a bit disappointed i didn't get to tell somebody off. at least the guilty party has been informed that their behavior is unacceptable -- even if he or she didn't have the backbone to own up to it.

stanford, a world class university

as i'll be moving out of palo alto and back to sf, and paying for the movers, i decided to do something out of character for me. instead of keeping my textbooks or giving them away to friends who are taking the class this coming term, in the interest of time, i sold my used books back to the bookstore.

so i tossed my thirty odd books into my big roller bag and rolled them to the bookstore. i piled them up on the cashier's desk in two large stacks and she took the top one off the right-hand stack and began to process the transaction. but then i heard something dreaded, she asked her co-worker how to scan it and the co-worker said we have to enter the isbn's my hand.

so i ran the coffee shop picked up a water and a pastry and had a makeshift breakfast at the cashier's desk while she painfully entered each book into the system. then i made a couple more calls afterwards. then i waited for another 15 minutes for them to finish. world class university my ass.

and my reward, 25 books sold and a big $63.50 in my pocket, almost 15% of the retail price! that's what you call being violated academically.

in range

not often can you authoritatively say this thing or that thing is the best. well here's not one, but two things that can be added to that list. the best thing about living (back in one month, after a 10 month exile in palo alto) in san francisco is the food and the best restaurant for your money is range.

range is a petite eatery, though not quite as petite as it appears from the outside. the front third of the restaurant has a bar and a handful of tables that they keep open for drop-in guests. but if you walk toward the rear, there is a back room decorated in a modern classic theme, both with its artwork and other rectlinear accountrements. the room is dimly lit and somewhat sparse so it lacks the formality of true four-star dining. and while that also extends to the prices, it does not for the quality of cuisine.

it should be said that the cuisine is new american, so unlike fine french brasseries the descriptions of menu items won't be littered with ingredients you can neither pronounce nor identify. and for some, that foreigness may be part of the fun for splurging on a meal out. it's not for me.

i've spent the past two friday evenings at range so between what my dining companions and i have ordered i've sampled a majority of the menu. however it should be said that in that one week time frame, the entire dessert menu has changed (bring back the plum upside down cake please) and they offer a daily specialty cocktail so there was no way to get bored. the bavette steak (similar to a skirt i was told) was very good, cooked to a perfect medium rare with an encrusting that bursted with flavor. however, i thought the horseradish cream sauce could have been applied with more moderation. the steak stood fine on its own, and about halfway through the meal i began to clean the sauce off the slices of steak with my fork as best i could.

essentially, that was the kitchen's only misstep. the brown sugar glazed chicken served with a nearly molten spoon bread rivaled the famous chicken of zuni. and the slow-cooked pork chop ranks so close to perfection that it makes one completely rethink their stance on the meat. i could rattle off a list of things on the menu that were also terrific, but i'll just mention one dessert: a muscato-soaked nectarine served with a dollop of mascarpone and a scoop of blackberry sorbet and a lemon-pudding cake. in fact, the only thing more remarkable than the food may be the price. starters never cross $15, entrees $20, desserts $8.

over the last six weeks, i've spent my dining dollars at bacar, zuni, plouf, globe, acme chophouse, and three seasons. and while all are at the same or a higher price point, none of them come remotely close to matching range.

dress code

on a lazy weekday afternoon, i found myself at the stanford gym pumping a little iron, some andrew bird playing in my ears courtesy of my iPod nano. i stood waiting for an enormous -- and flamingly homosexual -- samoan man to finish on the chest fly machine. likely, i was contemplating how embarrassed i should be that i'd have to remove about 75% of the weight if i hoped not to tear my arms from their sockets while performing the exercise. but my thoughts were interrupted by a tap on my shoulder.

a stocky black man introduced himself, identifying himself as the assistant general manager of the gym. now he was a bit too big to have a napoelon complex, but nonetheless, he seemed to take his position of power with great seriousness as if he were in charge of homeland security or national intelligence. in my mind, assistant manager of a gym is sort of like a junior cashier at mcdonalds, but that's beside the point. still, i think mr. manager enjoyed his pseudo alpha position.

he said (paraphrase):

"you're in violation of the dress code. we don't allow cargo shorts. but I'll let you slide this time."

gee thanks, that was magnanimous of you. sainthood in your future perhaps, mr. manager, for such acts of unmatched kindness. being the curious soul that i am, i decided to inquire. it turns out the buttons, allegedly, ruin "our upholstery".

yes, he referred to that sticky, pleather-esque substance as upholstery. funny, i thought the bodily excretions of the hundreds of profusely sweating women and men seeping into the upholstery, making it about as virulent as mutated anthrax and fragrant as an unwiped ass after a night of spicy indian food, was the real problem.

silly me.

bad neighbor

my landlord sent me an email the other day informing me that one of my neighbors had complained to her about some of my behavior during the late night. no, i wasn't having some wild kegger where some frat boys passed out on their lawn and puked on their stoop. and it wasn't me blasting music in the wee hours in the morning. my transgression: leaving the porch light on overnight a few times.

apparently, the blinding light rays emanating from the 60-watt fluorescent bulb is disturbing the beauty sleep of my millionaire neighbors. they didn't pay a million and a half for their two bedroom, one bath so they could be disturbed by some punk student who disturbs the complete blackness of their suburban night. i can't believe they've put up with my antics for this long. good thing, they're so understanding.

my prefontaine moment

suffering from a moderate hangover this past sunday, i decided on the traditional remedy: sit on the couch with the television on. and after the completion of the day's second world cup match, i started flipping channels and came to a track and field meet. normally, the steeplechase is about the least interesting race to me, but one of the competitors' names caught my ear: steve slattery, reigning national champion.

using the power of google, i got the relevant info on him. yes, it was the same steve slattery that i ran against in a state sectional cross country meet while in high school.

nowadays, i struggle jogging to the mailbox and almost collapsed last week after an hour of banging around the tennis ball with my kid brother. but back then, as a senior in high school, i had just cruised through a 16-minute 5k a couple weeks earlier and in the best shape of my life (including the next 50-odd years). slattery was just a fresman then, but was already being timed sub-4:30 in the mile. he had talent, but i had experience and the drive to go out on top.

slattery opened the race with his typical sprint, racing out to the lead while i took it out at my normal measured pace. i knew my strategy, run even splits, and pick off the runners one by one. halfway through the race, the plan unfolded to perfection. i had moved into the top-10 and could see the runners in front of me starting to break down. steadily, i gained ground on the few remaining competitors in front of me until slattery was squarely in my sites.

a moment later, i spotted my coach who exhorted me keep moving up. "slattery's 10 yards away. get him"! he screamed. then i said "slattery, you're mine" either out loud or chanted in my head.

by this point, we were all alone. everyone else must have been 30 seconds back with less than a mile to go. i could easily let slattery pull me along to the finish line and try to outkick him in the quarter mile. second place would be guaranteed that way.

but if we ran hundred races and left it to the last 400 meters, he'd win 100 of them. slattery had too much speed. if i wanted to win, i had to break him over this final mile. make the move now and decide the race before finishing speed came into play. so that's what i did.

i put in a burst and caught slattery seeing if the kid could hang with the upperclassman. i kept pushing the pace, pressuring him to break.

he didn't. i did. i went the way of prefontaine.

even casual track fans know the story of prefontaine's 5k race in the '72 olympics. he had the silver medal in hand with a lap to go and did something either foolish or brave. he went after the gold by challenging lasse virren early knowing he couldn't outrun him late. the reward for his ambition was a big pile of nothing: a 4th place finish and no medal.

my story was infinitely less dramatic, but thematically similar. i knew slattery was a better runner at that point than i could ever be. i knew i couldn't beat him in a sprint. i probably couldn't beat him in the mile either. but there was, however small, a chance -- at least in my mind, and that made it worth the risk.

it didn't pay off. i completely fell apart. two people probably made up 200m on me in the last quarter mile. by then, my coach was just urging me to finish the race. it barely happened. i tripped over the finish line and a couple people who i'll never know carried me out of the finishing chute and lay me in a grassy area. i remember closing my eyes, apparently i didn't move for about 45 minutes.

like pre i finished fourth. it sure would have been nice to say i beat a national champion, but at least i tried.

body control

while sitting outside arizmendi bakery enjoying the sun and a couple of slices of their designer pizza, a woman who looked to be in her mid-20s exited the bakery and went running up the street.

since she was just average looking and not in possession of any special gluteal qualities, i normally would have shifted my gaze to other things. however, in the crotch area of her jeans i noticed that there was a somewhat round area darker than the rest of her jeans.

now it's possible that she chose an unfortunate wash for her jeans; or that she bought something off the irregular rack at marshalls and didn't notice where the irregularity took place

or that she lost urination control in the bakery and was now rushing home to change out of her piss soaked jeans and panties, hoping to avoid the notice of any percpetive onlookers.

mission failed.

disclosures update and irony

well, i've now spoken to 20 newspaper ombudsman for my story and Mike Needs is still the only one to support the idea of an online webpage for reporters, which provides details about their backgrounds and involvements that affect the perspective -- not bias! -- they bring to all their stories.

i've found one thing so ironic about all the interviewing i've done with newsroom employees. over and over i've been told the reporter's job is to listen to all the sides and then make a judgment on the facts -- that's what makes them a professional. no argument there. apparently though, a majority had the earplugs in because som many were clearly not considering one question i raised.

makes you wonder how well this whole professionalism works in practice...

un-star struck

a friend and i were debating the fashion merits of tapered jeans at the boy least likely to show last week. my friend took the position that no one could succed being stylish while wearing a pair of jeans that ended tight as they approached the ankles. i countered the arg, but was envisioning females as the rare exception. regarding tapered jeans, they can never work for men.

this all reminded me of when i was in nyc over christmas. after dinner, i happened to cross paths with matt dillon. lo and behold he was sporting the tapered jean, and true to the rule he looked straight outta the 80s. my theory is he was trying to relive the outsiders glory days.

the white bomber jacket and black sneakers provide a bit more proof.

changing people's minds, one story at a time.

for anyone who stumbles upon this blog, you'll have no idea that i'm working on my journalism master's project. and if you've read some of the writing on this site, you might be wondering what they're teaching me in the program. that's beside the point.

the point is that the big minds of academia (read: me) are having an impact on the real world out there. and don't worry, i got evidence.

this past friday i spoke to mike needs, the ombudsman for the akron beacon journal, about his feelings toward creating bio pages for reporters that listed all sorts of background info, such as organizational affiliations, educational background, community involvements etc.

and to my surprise he said yes. at that point i had spoken to nine ombudsman, and none thought this was a good idea. since then, i've interviewed seven more. so far, he still the only one who advocates taking this step (karen hunter, the ombudsman for the hartford courant, was ambivalent).

two days later, needs wrote about the very topic in his weekly column that appears on sundays. here's the article. i'm the stanford student.

http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/columnists/mike_needs/14738618.htm

it even made it onto romenesko.

http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45&aid=102368

one small correction to needs' article though: a newspaper, the greensboro news record, is planning on taking this step. and for the record, i agree with needs, which might suprise you given my reaction in the article. but i'm aware that it could backfire too. so what i'd like to see is some midsize newspapers like the akron paper plunge forward and see what the results are.

i'm guessing that the conspiracy theorists and media bashers out there wouldn't change one bit -- they might get even louder if that's possible (michelle malkin is already pretty loud). but a few skeptics would change their minds for the better, and the ones who are grateful for the work that reporters do, myself included, would grow closer. i'm also certain that it would help journalists figure out where their biases and conflicts of interests lie.

source crushes

a girl i know who works for the la times was telling me about someone she worked with at a small paper with. her friend had taken a personality test and the results had been definitive: she wasn't going to make it far in the journalism business.

now i've never taken that particular personality test, but as someone who knows myself pretty well, i'm fairly certain i'd fare similarly. ironic, because like this hopeless soul i'm aspiring to break into the same business. here are the facts.

it's hard for me to cold call sources. sometimes i feel the need to reach down and make sure my body hasn't sucked up my balls like a frightened dog. then i dial. approaching strangers at an event for comments isn't exactly my forte either. for that matter, i'm not a great writer either. pretty good compared to just about everyone i meet, but not exactly a standout around people trying to do the same thing i am for a living.

yet i try. and it's because even i have those occasional days where interviews will stop being uncomfortable and the interviewee just keeps saying interesting things. i still trip over questions, but they don't seem to mind and send something witty, insightful or both back anyways.

that i enjoy. i want to tell friends about the great conversation i just had. and yes, if i were a 12-year old girl i'd probably draw a big heart with an arrow through it with my name and the sources printed inside.

so courtesy of a story i am reporting about publid disclosures of conflicts of interest, here's who i heart right now:

i called geneva overholser because she's more or less the most qualified source in the world for writing stories about the media. she's been a foreign correspondent on two continents, editor of the des moines register when the paper won a pulitzer for overall excellence, editorial board member of the nyt, ombudsman for the post, and now teaches at missouri. i could list all her credentials but that might exceed whatever memory blogger allocates my humble blog. oh, and she's smart as hell and seems to formulate well thought-out ideas in the time average people need to decide their next word. at one point, she said i haven't considered the issue before so this is off the top of my mind than went ahead and said about five things where i immediately thought to myself, how can i work that into the story? next time i'm hard up for something to write, i may just call her and say what's on the tip of your tongue?

cassandra tate, you may have never heard of. i hadn't either, though she was pretty successful as a journalist, and wrote for cjr and was a nieman fellow before she left the biz to get a ph.d in history. but admittedly, while i was chatting with her, i felt a tinge of envy toward her husband (ombudsman for the seattle pi) who i had spoken to a day earlier. i can't imagine how many great conversations took place in their house. she spoke as if you needed to turn a painting into your editor. i wasn't in lewiston, idaho in april of 1978 but it sure sounded great.

if you haven't spoken to jay rosen about old-school journalists, then you're missing out on many good laughs. rosen's blog, press think, is mandatory for anyone looking to think critically about the media. and he's more or less the guy in civic journalism. to date, he's the only source i've encountered who goes in to character on the phone. without warning when talking about journalists, he goes into the act, a sort of whiny crowing voice paraphrasing the usual complaints about who's going to pay for this or that or how are we going to do the important stories. his message: stop being a bitch and start trying to figure things out. yet, he's not condescending about it, he's right.

i'm a nerd; it's official

you can take this test too. it's just one question.

it's 6:45 am on a thursday morning
a) sitting on a couch with two unconscious naked girls sprawled across your equally. naked lap. at least one has a rubber tube tied around her forearm.
b) you just walked in the door after a typical wednesday night out.
c) heading to the office early to get an early start on the new project you're starting today.
d) lacing up your nike shox for the diurnal jog.
e) celebrating the finish of the first draft of a paper about race in cyberspace for a your graduate school media theory class with some solo dancing and lip syncing to tegan and sara.

hope you didn't answer 'e' too.

what do you play?

i've been listening a bit to this electronica-indie band called ladytron and i can't help but be embarrassed that i'm liking it. but i do. and when i'm listening to song 2, destroy everything you touch, i have to consciously stop myself from breaking into spontaneous dance.

while looking at the cd jacket though, i noticed that there's two women sketched in ink but two men sketched in ink on the back. now my first thought was how the guys felt about getting relegated to the back of the line, but then i realized that there's not enough musical roles to go around.

from my listens i count two: (female) lead singer and synthesizer.

so guys, my question for you; what the hell is your part in this operation?

i met him on the internet

while waiting for my burrito to be made, a woman, probably around 30, was talking about the guy she was seeing who she had met online. there were plenty of other people withing hearing distance, so it was obvious to me that she felt very comfortable with the idea of meeting people in cyberspace.

now in a lot of ways, i suppose that meeting people through craigslist and such makes a lot of sense. you can have a real conversation -- sort of -- and you won't have to scream so that you can be heard over the deafening roar of the bassline of some bad electronica. on the other hand, there's no room for any sort of physical chemistry, at least until you start sending pictures of your genitals to each other or you have a webcam set up. i don't know which one of those steps happens first. i will say this though, i figure anyone who owns a webcam already has picture of their apparatus saved on their computer. after all, is there any non-perverted use for the webcam -- in the real world, not theoretically.

still, i think the biggest arguments against internet dating won't even show up unless you actually end up as a couple. and everytime you guys socialize together, right after people ask what you do for a living, they ask how you guys got together. can you imagine for the rest of your life having to say we met in ther personals? how many fake looks of approval would you have to pretend not to notice?

maybe i'm just being shallow but anyone i got together with the internet would have to agree to tell a more palatable story of how we hooked up. that's a non-negotiable.

fda says you're dead

it turns out that the eczema medicine i've been using causes cancer. i will say that it did work great at curing my stubborn skin disorder. too bad it has to kill you in order to do that.

according to their regulations, the med will stay on the shelf but will be in the dreaded "black box", which means use only if there are no other options for you. this i don't quite get. i mean if this were a treatment for hiv or malaria, i could understand keeping it on the shelf, but for bad skin? to me this sounds a lot like the cure being worse than the condition.

i also sit here wondering if i should try and do anything about it. it's kind of annoying that things just turn out to be deadly. i googled elidel and noticed that there is already some ambluance chaser who's set up a website to try and put together some litigious folks that he can get a contingency fee off of. fucking lawyers. they're another type of cancer altogether.

falling down.

i just saw a commercial for the new harrison ford movie, firewall, and if i must say it looks like a real piece of dung. not that i should be all that surprised, considering his recent body of work. let's review.

Firewall (2006)
Hollywood Homicide (2003)
K-19: The Widowmaker (2002)
What Lies Beneath (2000)
Random Hearts (1999)
Six Days Seven Nights (1998)
Air Force One (1997)
The Devil's Own (1997)
Sabrina (1995)
Clear and Present Danger (1994)

by my count, of his last ten pictures, four (hollywood homicide, what lies beneath, random hearts, six days seven nights) deserve consideration for worst movie of their particular year, two (firewall (being optimistic), devil's own) and four are mediocre (k19, air force one, sabrina, clear and present danger).

in sports, we always get guys who hang on too long. former superstars like jerry rice who can't convince themselves its time to move on even though they've done more than enough to convince everyone else. for this we have dancing with the stars to thank.

but in hollywood apparently, the same phenomenon exists. the difference is actors are able to hold on for decades. despite ford showing over the past dozen years that the ceiling for the quality of his work is something so forgettable that imdb is the only record of its existence, he has three films in the pipeline.

guity by association

i started reading an excerpt of a book called remediation about virtual reality that was assigned for a class that i'm taking called digital journalism. twice in the first paragraph i had to stop reading and look up a word on dictionary.com: remediation and hypermediacy. and despite the ostentatious wordplay used by the author, i had to admit that the metaphor he drew between virtual reality and other art forms such as painting, photography and film to be compelling and completely unexpected. his point is that the goal of all is to eliminate the interface between the human and the medium so that when viewing it one is given the impression of a real reproduction of the human world.

still, one thing in particular kept bothering me about what i was reading: he kept referring to the movie 'strange days' when talking about the idea of virtual reality. now a long time ago, i did set aside two hours of my life to watch that film. i'm not saying it was terrible, but it was unremarkable. and when you're writing a scholarly piece about the evolution of technology as it relates to classical art, a few style points are immediately deducted for referring to a movie starring angela bassett.

it would be like writing a story about the heroism displayed by this country's revolutionary forefather in breaking away from the british empire, then referencing mel gibson's 'the patriot' to emphasize your point.

saturday night blues

so after deciding to make my weekly trip up to san francisco tonight, i decided for no good reason to stay home in palo alto. sure i have a stack of books i could read and a few fellowship applications that need to be finished before the semester gets busy, and if those were the reasons for staying in, then that would be fine.

but they're not.

i'm not going because i couldn't bring myself to attend the party that was to be my evening's activity. and the main reason is i felt like a second-class invitee. i had been forwarded the evite by a friend of mine, and when i checked it this evening for the address, i saw that it was going to be a small event. what that meant is that it would be a bunch of first-class citizens and me.

now i'm not claiming that as soon as i walk in a room that every head turns in my direction and guests start queueing to get a chance to get a word in, but given the right situation i can be a pretty witty conversant. on the other hand, if those circumstances are just a bit off of what i look for, i can turn into a silent wall decoration that looks for a shadow to cower into. and that's pretty much what i've come to accept of myself. plus, even though i'm running out of weekends in my twenties, it's not as if i've given up my last weekend on the town.

so sitting on the couch and drinking some homemade lemonade, i felt no remorse over skipping socialization. but then an epiphany. the television was on and i realized what was going on: a single man at home on a saturday night watching ladies figure skating. granted, at least i wasn't watchng men's figure skating or ice dancing. and while i'm not someone who goes around telling guys to be a man's man (since that would make me a hypocrite) but still this represented a serious problem.

so to my two resolutions for the new year, i add one more: start acting like a man, or at least a reasonable approximation of one. at least after sasha cohen finishes skating.

country boys.

television ranks as the most destructive, yet beloved, invention of the twentieth century. and to realize this is true, all one needs to know is that in the average american household has it turned on for eight hours of each day. when you do the math, this is how it comes out: 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of work, and 8 hours of television. obviously something about this balance strikes me as not being quite kosher.

without sleep, you lose your sanity. without work, you waste away and die (or live with your parents, a fate far worse than death). without television, you probably improve your health, broaden your culture and further your education. not only that, these days people will pay upwards of $100 per month for the privilege of becoming mindless zombies.

i won't pretend that i watch televison; i'm ashamed to admit that i even pay for cable television. and i think part of me knows that i surf the internet while watching the tube in order to dilute the feeling that i am completely wasting my life by doing something that can at least be considered marginally useful.

now proponents of television would argue that tv establishes cultural norms that everyone can learn, thereby unifying our diverse society. and while this is in fact true, who cares about a consistent set of values when the quality of culture created is so vacuous. network television these days consists of bad talk shows during the day and reality television (note: project runway is exempt from this negativity) in the evenings. viewers have distorted their values so greatly that even when a good show stumbles onto the networks, they can't recognize it, even after several seasons (arrested development, family guy). instead, they tune into ultrasafe sitcoms surrounding failed b-stars (see two and a half men, bernie mac show, george lopez show, my wife and kids).

the other purported positive about television is that it actually educates the public, on things like politics and news. sadly, this is also true. people do learn from something from television, but certainly not enough about any single thing to do anything about. for my money, i'd rather the people who get all their information from television to just stop watching. this way they'd be immediately identifiable as ignorant, non-participants as soon as any discussion about public issues and current events begins. they can break off into their groups and talk about the day's weather or whatever else they were able to observe in their functionally illiterate world.

but for once, i forgive people who scheduled their day to ensure that they could watch david sutherland's documentary on kqed/pbs about white trash families. i didn't causing me to miss the first half, but what i did see leads me to believe that this is a unique case of important television viewing. when i think -- and most americans as well -- about poor people, my mind immediately concentrates on the predominantly black and latino ghettos of the inner cities. and while there's no doubt that these places act as poverty traps to many of those who grow up there, it doesn't mean we should ignore the white ghettos of the south and midwest where they're can be equally devoid of opportunity.

i have to believe that part of the reason that these areas go uncovered is that as a group they're more difficult to sympathize with. after all, they haven't been the victims of a prejudiced society like other minorities but in fact are the ones who probably have done some of the oppressing societies. the dirty southern drawl and visions of confederate flags planted in the front of trailer park's doorways just doesn't make you feel anything for them except distaste.

poor people in general get ignored and that's because they don't have money and what group in society caters to anyone without some financial incentive. but because there are compelling social issues such as race and immigration surrounding minority communities, the media at least puts up a token effort to cover them. without an analogous reason for poor white folks, there really is nothing to compel anyone to talk about the plight of white trash. and so they don't.

for six hours, sutherland provides a glimpse for us into this. and it's not all that attractive a place. lots of ugliness; lots of obesity and lots of christianity. not my kind of place. i'll admit that i thought that the first segment struck me as more informative than riveting, but the preview of the segment looked to be more dramatic. plus, it takes time to really feel acquainted with characters.

country boys is a tad depressing, and watching the less fortuante always makes me feel a tinge of guilt for allowing my mind to spin on the comparably minor problems of my life. on the other hand, it motivates me too: to take advantage of the opportunity i have. hopefully, the latter sentiment wins out.

my no-starbucks policy

admittedly, my near-universal boycott of all things chain store-related isn't entirely grounded in logic. but everytime i make the scary journey out to one of the plentiful sterile suburbs, where massive mini-malls interlock with each other and the cheesecake factory wins the readers poll every year for best splurge restaurant, i'm reminded that this might not be paranoia but prescience on my part.

now that i've left the city and am now forced to call myself a resident of one of these culturally vacuous towns though, i wonder how i should adjust my policy. should i continue to forgo the convenience of the starbucks and blockbuster videos of the world? after all, just about everything worth saving is already gone. and i've never been one to say that the convenience of the super store has no place in this world, simply no place in the world that i inhabit.

suburban philistines are free to get lost in the endless aisles of kitsch made by the hands of illegal mexicans which line the shelves at walmart. if suburbanites need a starbucks on every corner to stop the vertigo caused by anything not completely familar to them, so be it. to each their own, if it is sick, wrong and a little bit disturbing.

but i figured, when in rome, so as any self-respecting palo altan would do when he wanted to get out of the house and do a little work at a local cafe: head to the local starbucks.

so at 830 on a sunday evening, i hopped in my car to make the 1/2-mile journey. and when i arrived, the first thing i noticed a sticker on the glass door proclaiming this a tmobile hotspot. silently i wondered if this meant that i was going to have to pay to connect to the web. immediately i began to think this place sucked -- even outside the city.

still, emboldened by my determination to get some work done, i pulled the door open and walked in. i turned to the miniature cafe area, filled by a dozen, miniature circular tables and a small work area. and to my chagrin, every space was taken. perhaps, even more annoying was that all the tables were far too small to be shared with my laptop. so even had there been an attractive young lady sitting on her own, she would have had to remain unaccompanied.

and so goes my visit to starbucks, likely not to be replicated anytime in the near future. i turned around to walk out, catching a couple of dirty looks from the two female cashiers who mistakenly believe that because their title can be prounounced with a rolling 'r' sound, they have license to be cunts.

i did drive around a bit more hoping to find a nice independent coffee merchant which i could use as my office for the next couple of hours, but all of them had closed for the evening. well, i guess it was almost 9 p.m. now. saddened, i drove home and attempted to do some work, culminating in a one-hour nap after i reorganized some newly downloaded mp3s.

reverse log cabin fever

at the beginning of my three-week christmas break, i set out to accomplish all sorts of tasks that would get me ahead for the coming semester allowing me to concentrate on laudable goals such as getting published. but as expected -- given my recent history of productivity -- i fulfilled almost none of what i had hoped to.

now that the 21 days of vacation having dwindled to just two, i decided to forgo the final saturday of my break to finish an application for a fellowship with the la times. and of course to no one's suprise including myself, it didn't get done. i blame it on the internet; there's just too many things to read, too many things to search for.

so in the 14 hours that i was "working" on my application, i also managed to do the following productive activities:

- googled all the girls that i've messed around with whose first and last names i could still recall. what i noticed is that i could still recite half of their full names. this seemed about right to me. any more and i figure that could mean i'm intoxicated for too much of my free time.

- persused the top-10 albums of the year lists from all the major music media outlets. i still haven't figured out what's so good about mia.

- made a playlist of all the music i've downloaded and organized to make sure all the track names were correctly spelled and capitalized.

- read the scouting report for a bunch of the nfl prospects that i'm "interested" in.

i wonder what i'll find when i finish my application on sunday.

losing the race

encounters with girls you've slept with always makes for an interesting dynamic. it's like a contest to see whose done more since the two of you stopped sharing a bed. well at least that's the way i treat the situation.

and sadly, i seemed to have clearly lost the competition. two and a half years have passed since i started avoiding her calls and then after i changed my mind, she decided to avoid mine. since then she started some sort of phd in international economics, bought a house, and done field work in mozambique and italy. apparently she's headed to colombia for her next project. (bitch) she's also happily back with her future husband (who she was taking a break from when we got together).

i'm still wandering, having started the j school at stanford, but really just using it as a dilatory tactic while i try to find a job.

the best i can say is that she seems to have gained a bit of weight and turned the corner on her twenties. plus she was wearing a really unflattering pair of jeans. had we still been messing around, i would've cringed seeing her leave the house wearing that garment. outside of painting and gardening, those jeans should have stayed in the dresser.

american football and canadian rock

not one person wore a piece of clothing manufactured this century. and with the exception of maybe five people, they were all too cool to dance. with their tussled air and vintage clothing, this was your typical trendy-but-pretend-not-to-be crowd that made their way to the independent for wolf parade.

the first thought that crossed my mind was how many people from this crowd had watched the national championship game in football. and i got the feeling that the game, billed as the most important and anticipated of recent memory, hadn't factored one bit into the daily schedule of most in attendance. not me, however. yes, the game lasted for more than four hours and the first half was as sloppy as a local pop warner game, but had i missed the second half which made it one of the great football games in history, how could i forgive myself. i wonder, does that make me an oddball?

as for wolf parade, i have these things to say: first, they made the best record of the year. second, their record was far better than most people's best record of last year the arcade fire -- who they have a connection to. and third, the arcade fire's performance dwarfs wolf parade's in all measurable ways.

to be honest, wolf parade sounded pretty true. on the other hand, that their keyboard player hadn't figured out how to use his new electric piano and needed to take a timeout between every song to set it up got annoying rather quickly. it took any and all flow of the show away meaning they couldn't build any momentum, even after they would bang out a song that worked.

even worse was there encore, which was screwed on so many levels. after finishing their flawed set, the audience's applause had all the excitement of one who'd just seen a mediocre, high school talent show string quartet performance. again, i don't know if i'm the only one, but bands should play encores when the crowd gets raucous and demands it, not when they apply politely so as to not hurt anyone's feelings. letting the crowd stand out there why they pat their hands together lightly until they became confounded as the stage remained empty -- that's rock and roll. checking your blackberry in between sets and then using it's backlight to read some trashy paperback -- as the girl behind me chose to -- that's not rock and roll. and their two-song encore sucked, playing one song that they admittedly hadn't practiced and then finishing with the most mellow song from their record.

new year's resolution

i will update this daily.
i will update this daily.
i will update this daily.

oh yeah, and i'm going back to the gym.