The retail power of sitting

A. and I visited Northampton recently. I lived there for a couple of years and we've been wanting to go back for some time now—it's a nice town and we're still in touch with some friends there. Plus there's the Northampton Brewery, which is worth the drive on its own.

We timed the trip to meet with a local wedding photographer, and got together with her at a nice little café that opened up not long before I moved away. I can never remember the name of it so I call it the Woodcock, because that makes me laugh. It also makes A. laugh against her wishes. (I think it's really called the Woodstar or the Northstar or something; it should be called the Shadestar because the patio is never in the sun.) (This also reminds me of the Irish bar across from Boston City Hall that I can never remember the name of, so I think I'll start calling that the Glasscock.)

Anyway, we reasonably enjoyed the photographer's stuff, though it didn't blow us away. She's probably in the lead, but only because our first choice (talent-wise) is too expensive, and her idea of cutting us a deal was asking us to pay her in cash under the table so she doesn't have to pay taxes on it. We'll keep looking.

Afterward we walked around town a bit, sold some CDs at Turn It Up and hit some other shops. The lady loves to shop, and she loves to shop in Northampton. One thing I remember about shopping there (actually, waiting around while A. shopped there) is that many stores offer—let's just say it—the guys a place to sit while the girls look at and try on every little thing. I cannot stress enough how essential this is to a store turning a profit. I'll admit it, I can turn into a grump when I'm waiting for her to finish up, to the point where I'm sure she's cut it short a bunch of times for my sake.

But if a store puts a chair or a bench or something for me to chill out on, then I'm less likely to pester her and more likely to just wait it out. Which increases the odds of her buying something. Hell, it increases the odds of me buying something if they have an interesting book or anything to play with to pass the time. Often when we're (she's) making a concerted effort to shop somewhere I'll bring along a magazine because I know what I'm getting into. Now if you're a retailer, and you have a half-comfortable seat in a corner of the store with a slang dictionary on the table next to it (which I did flip through during one of these Northampton pit stops), that will give A. time to browse around and pick something out. And then I might get up and walk to the register with that dictionary. Now isn't that good for business?

Of course I didn't, and she didn't. But we could have.

Back for more!

No matter how out of touch I'm getting, it's still fun to discover new music. And "discover" is the loosest of terms here, because it usually indicates unearthing something that, you know, hasn't been discovered yet. But I'm too old and tired to be doing much of that anymore. So I'm talking about discovering something that's been around for a while, even popularly enjoyed for a while, but has so far avoided me and my picky ears.

For instance, a couple weeks ago I heard for the first time this song "Mongoose" by Elephants Memory. I was aware of the band only because I knew they backed John Lennon on some tour(s) or recording(s) or other(s), but to my knowledge I'd never heard them before. Not even backing Lennon. (I leave most of his solo stuff the hell alone. In fact, here are the solo Lennon songs I like, in chronological order: "Cold Turkey," "Working Class Hero," "Well, Well, Well," "Gimme Some Truth" and "How Do You Sleep?" I've tried to like "Jealous Guy" but it's just too sappy. Sappiness sucks.)

So "Mongoose." 1970. Phenomenal. I recognized the opening drum bit from some hip-hop song (Jungle Brothers?) so I was probably preconditioned to like it. [Edit: It's Cypress Hill's "Latin Lingo" and Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth's "It's Like That." At minimum!] As it played on it just kept getting better, luring me in further, convincing me it could not possibly get better so I'd lose focus a bit and then get knocked over again. I'm a sucker for the way the instruments join the fray one at a time (as in "The Crunge," also hip-hop fodder). And then the groove gets going, and the harmony-like wailing (another thing I fall for—voices as instruments; I love what the Kinks and the Who used to do, and what Yo La Tengo does still, where they harmonize melodies; wonderful). And the distorted bass, and the chunk-a-chunk guitar. I'm practically melting to death as I hear the first thirty seconds of this song. And then the vocals come in, not my favorite singing voice but good and urgent and unrestrained and fucking human. And then the chorus, with a backing that tells me there were at least two black guys in the band—they pull off an all-time riff. One of those that can stick in your head all day, one you never want to forget. Plus, the lyrics (guess I picked up something here) are about finding a mongoose to exact revenge upon a cobra, or something like that. And then the baby cobras call bullshit on that and exact their own revenge. Heady shit.

Can't think of too many others that grabbed me the way this song does. Definitely "The Big Three Killed My Baby." "Touch Me I'm Sick" and, going historically backwards with that riff (skipping "I'm Sick of You"), "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago." The Stooges one that slayed me (having owned only Raw Power at the time) was "T.V. Eye," even if it's in a commercial now. Another is "There Was a Time" from the live James Brown album I pimped in one of my first posts. "How Many More Times." "Baron Saturday" (first psych-era Pretty Things song I heard). "Rebel Without a Pause." "Kerosene." And so on. These are all songs that excite me just thinking about them, just writing about them in the silent vacuum of the office this morning.

So thank you, Elephants Memory, for "Mongoose" and its glory.

“How can we manifest that as a problem?”

An actual quote from an actual meeting! Basically, we were reviewing how successfully or unsucessfully some year-end process went. I'll spare you the details, but the person in charge of this ninety-minute craptastrophe had to keep reminding us that we were there to bring attention to problems we ran into, rather than trying to provide solutions to these problems. It was an open forum, and whenever someone mentioned a problem she would have to distill it down to something she could fit onto one of those giant Post-It pads. Thing is, she didn't understand much of what anyone was talking about. So there were a lot of clarification breaks.

Not only that, but after she had finished scrawling down all of the "problems" we had to vote on which were the most severe. She assigned a number to each one and we were given ten votes that we could scatter around. (I'm not explaining this well, but my head is starting to hurt… again.) Rather than go back to our desks, put the votes into an email and send that shit off to her, for each topic (like forty) she went around and counted hands. Then, someone had to keep a record of how many votes each problem received, and then turn that into some kind of spreadsheet or whatever. Which I guess is easier than copying and pasting from a bunch of emails and giving everyone in the room a half hour in which to do actual work. I mean, that would be my guess if, say, I kept shitting in my own pants. Because seriously, I'd have bigger things to worry about then. But only then.

You can keep “In My Life”

I mentioned in my last post that A. and I are all engaged up. It's going to be April of next year, but the way we're cruising along it might as well be this year: she already has her dress and I already know where I'll go suit shopping a week before the wedding.

We've had a lot of practice with weddings the past few years and we've been watching and learning. I'm thirty-one so my "peak" was 2001 when I went to I think six of them. She's twenty-seven and nearing or at her peak now. So yeah, it's safe to say we know what we like and what we wouldn't touch with a ten-foot wedding poll.

One thing we're in total agreement about—which is most stuff, honestly; we've determined the only things we truly disagree about are city smoking laws (she wants to remain alive and I want everyone to be left alone), wine flavor (I tend to like the reds that she doesn't and she tends to like the whites that I don't) and the value of a bed-and-breakfasts (I embrace the lack of obligation that comes with hotels); and if we're not just the cutest things then you can go to hell—is how to treat the music. I enjoy a cheesy band as much as the next guy—in fact, some friends and I used to frequent an Allston bar and so mercilessly tormented a frequent house band with shouts of "Highway to Hell!" that they actually learned the song. But there are instances where you want to hear the exact version of a song you're familiar with, and there are no winners when your carefully choreographed dance moves get fucked up by some cover-band hackery. So we'll stick to what we know, and if what we know is Mick Jagger puzzling his way through "Get Off of My Cloud" then that's what the guests are getting. Crazy laundry-detergent verses and all.

Potentially we'll turn the music over to a machine, which might result in some kind of Terminator-like apocalypse. I'm willing to risk that. Ever since one of my awkward sixth-grade dances when a friend and I went up to the DJ to request "Black Dog" and the old gross dude said "You just want something fast so you can watch their titties bounce," I knew to avoid the whole lot of them. And that my innocence was broken.

This will not be a Wedding's Greatest Hits! wedding. There will be no "In My Life" (a truly depressing song as incongruous as using "Fortunate Son" or "Volunteers" to evoke patriotism—oh wait, that's been done). No "Wonderful Tonight" (ick). No "At Last" (as much as I like the song, I refuse to contribute to its wedding oversaturation). We both love music, and we're not going for this canned playlist shit. We're picking important songs we actually like. For instance, our first dance will be Elliott Smith (an artist she introduced me to) covering "Waterloo Sunset" by the Kinks (a group I introduced her to). Isn't that nice?

We'll also play "Groove Is in the Heart." Because that song is the balls.

RIP Steve

I've been out of commission lately, mourning the passing my cat and best buddy Steve. My lovely fiancée (we're engaged now) wrote a beautiful little eulogy that she emailed to friends and family to let them know—it's better than anything I could produce. So I'll let her speak for me.

Hi friends. I'm sorry for the impersonal note, but I have some sad news and I can't bring myself to keep relating it over and over. Jarrod and I lost our beloved cat, Steve, on Sunday, after he developed a severe respiratory problem caused by a hole in one of his lungs. He had been ill periodically since having a tumor removed about a year ago, most recently the week before last, but the results of some blood tests and an ultrasound that were done at the time were encouraging, other than that they revealed a problem with his liver (which we were addressing with a reduction in the dosage of his daily chemo pill). He was a fighter, though, and he rallied for one more week of happy memories with us (and tuna). But he took a turn for the worse over the weekend, so we took him to Angell Memorial Hospital in Boston on Sunday afternoon. Nothing could be done or even attempted to help him that wouldn't have caused him a lot of additional pain and suffering and it probably wouldn't have saved him anyway, so we knew we had to let him go.

Although we know we did the right thing, we still miss him a lot. As you probably remember, Steve's and my relationship got off to a rocky start, but over the past couple of years especially, as he got used to me being around all the time, we became close and I grew to love him. His loss is especially hard for Jarrod, though, as Steve had been his little buddy for the last eight years and they had a special bond. We're trying to keep sight of the most important thing, which is that Steve is not suffering any more. We know he's in a happy place now, where he can eat tuna every day and where there's no doubt a replica of his favorite cow toy, probably just as dirty and well-loved as the one he left behind.

I just wanted to let you all know because you knew that Steve was an important part of our lives and really a member of our family.

Thanks, babe. And bye, little guy. I miss you. I love you.

A mysterious ooze

A few weeks ago they handed out these cool stress balls at work. I don't have much job-related stress (it's pretty cushy) but I do have busy hands, so this was a much-appreciated little toy—even with the company logo on it. It had a cool green rubber skin, not unlike those semi-translucent iPod cover things. The only unfortunate thing is the ball had a white residue all over it that reeked of industrial plastics, and when I attempted to wash it off the ball became tacky like the Wacky Walkers of my youth. So I could pick up crumbs with it now, which is nice.

I have a fairly destructive tendency with tactile things that normally is kept just in check. For instance, I spent a few solid hours trying to pop the thing, as it was certainly too stretchy for its own good, but just when I got to the point where it might actually rupture I would let up. Because I wouldn't want to be without it or the ability to torture it.

One time, though, I reined myself in too late, and the next thing I know I've got this goop on my hand. This mysterious ooze. The motherfucker was mortally wounded and bleeding on me.

(On the way home I called A. to let her know there was a strong possibility I would mutate overnight. I advised her to buy a shotgun. But I was hopeful I would survive and be able to harness my mutation into a kind of superpower. As in, I would show up in stressful environments, have everyone grab a handful of me and squeeze for a few minutes, then move on when everything was chill. Who wouldn't like that? Beside me.)

Needless to say I was a little disappointed to not have this little stress ball to push around anymore, especially since I never did mutate. Lucky me though, I was walking around the office one afternoon looking for free food and I saw a table with extra stress balls on it. Same green rubber, same white powder, presumably the same clear interior ooze.

I wasn't going to kill this one off so easily. I treated it pretty well, kneading and bullying it every day for about a week and a half. But then I started to pick at the little plug on the bottom, and it was all downhill. I must commend the manufacturer because there were a lot of safeties in place to prevent someone from accessing the ooze this way—many thin layers that I had to breach in spite of myself. Eventually I had a slow leak going, which put a damper on its supposed de-stressing abilities but kept me focused nonetheless. I could still twist the thing around with minimal discharge, so long as I was smart about it. Smart.

On Thursday of last week I settled on letting the thing destroy itself. I twisted the ball into two distinct sections—one half ready to blow and the other with a lot of slack—and leaned it against my computer so it looked like a mushroom (slack half a nice dark green on top, catastrophe-in-waiting half stretched to near-translucency underneath). No change as of Friday, but it had a nice long weekend to develop. (By the way, I know this is pathetic like a retarded fourth-grader and his science-fair potato is pathetic, but give me a break. The alternative was to go shopping for a fun hat for Friday's "Fun Hat Day," and nothing good was coming out of that. At least I was adding a new level of de-stressing to this thing: full-on distraction.)

Got in yesterday and noticed a slow leak had formed. Like when Ash went berserk in Alien, that first drip of android fluid on his temple? Look out!

At last, a nice puddle of ooze greeted me this morning. I couldn't be happier, and not just because we're allowed to wear jeans all week. I was sad to throw the corpse in the trash, but at least I have my ooze-puddle to carry on its memory. There's an air bubble right in the middle and the whole thing is gradually solidifying, and I will cultivate it until I can pull it off the desk like a pancake. I will try to roll it up into Son of Stress Ball. Then I will make it scream.

Loyalty is: Royals… Athletics… Red Sox… Yankees…

The Johnny Damon Saga is unfortunate but not Earth-shattering. There are several pissed off people around here (and I've met some Yankee fans who aren't too psyched either), but I'm still pretty buzzed by the 2004 win to care too much about anything the team can do right now—even though I'm troubled by how very little there is left of that 2004 team, Theo included. I'll miss Damon, but I'll miss (and have missed) Cabrera, Lowe, Pedro, Mueller, Mirabelli, Bellhorn, Roberts, Myers and a few others too. Baseball is a business and that is a little sad, but so is football and the Patriots have managed to keep a solid core of guys while dealing with a salary cap! So I think the Sox organization has a lot to answer for when it comes to the live-and-die-by-the-Sawx fans around here (which, as big a fan as I am, does not include me).

It's hard to blame Damon in the whole deal because the Sox seemed caught off guard. Inexcusable on their part. Damon is a dense, narcissistic star who, despite what he had to say about loyalty, was going where said stardom would best excel (hence all the New York and Los Angeles talk). But the team was completely blindsided, like they assumed the whole negotiation thing was on holiday as they sat around the tree wrapping up pieces of Fenway Park grass to sell to lamebrains. Is this how you appease a fanbase when it comes to one of the game's most popular players?

In two years (if that long) I think the Yankees will be lobbying hard for the institution of a short-field allowance like in softball, where you can field a tenth player a bit behind second base, purely to act as Damon's cutoff man when he's trying to throw out a baserunner. I loved watching the guy play, but seeing him throw was like pulling out a nose hair: you cry out and then your eyes water. Someone recently wrote that he threw like a girl… throwing left-handed. Funny and true.

This transaction probably won't amount to much in the larger baseball scheme. Damon won't help the Yankees win a World Series because that offense was already stunning. What they need is for everything that went wrong last year with their pitching (Pavano, Wright, even Johnson and Mussina to an extent) to fully correct itself, and everything that surprisingly worked (Small, Chacon, Wang) to keep clicking. They'll score a lot of runs, and they'll need to.

As for the Sox, we'll see what a brand-new infield can do. I'm not too enthusiastic, and am already expecting a cruise-control year. They are looking squarely at 2007 when it will practically promote its entire AAA Pawtucket squad to the big leagues. One thing I'll miss about Theo is his commitment to the farm system, and in the next couple of years we'll see some amazing young talent all over the roster, pitching staff included. This year it's a bunch of "Who dat?" old dudes running out the final years of their contracts, keeping the field warm for the young studs to follow. At least the Beckett deal is pretty cool in the meantime.

If the Pats can win another Super Bowl (here's hoping for a XX rematch against the Bears; I'll probably make a playoff post after next weekend when I know who we're playing, but as of now I'm not too afraid of the Jaguars or the perennially overrated Steelers) then maybe the lunatics around here will settle the hell down, listen to their new Christmas iPods instead of WEEI and actually enjoy a Summer without having to constantly check the scores (Red Sox and Yankees), wonder where Manny's going at the trade deadline (because I think he'll still be here) and convince themselves that $12 isn't all that bad for two Bud Lights.

Let Damon have his bottle and get yourself to the beach. It's lovely.

Redemption, Cambridge style

I realized last night after yelling at a fellow motorist for the fourth or fifth time this week that I have occasional issues with rage. These are usually restricted to when I'm in the car, because driving in Cambridge (even more so than in Boston) will destroy your faith in a universal order. The one-way streets and criminalized U-turns are stacked up in such a way that mankind does not stand a chance. You might be able to snake your way through the city without a scratch, but you will die a day earlier in spite of it.

(By the way, a big middle finger to the Porter Square shopping plaza, where I'm sure they'll start pouring sugar into everyone's gas tanks as yet another way to screw you—tight parking spaces, narrow lanes, aloof cabbies and carriage corralers, retarded pedestrians and no way to exit south on Mass. Ave. are not enough in the war against reason. And I seem to be the only one bothered by this.)

Alright, this was supposed to be my positive Cambridge entry. Really, though, I love living here. I love my apartment, and sharing it with A. and my cat Steve and even the corpse of the giant spider I killed last night. I love getting one of the best burgers in town ninety seconds away from my doorstep, and washing it down with a great beer menu to boot (that is, a selection from the beer menu; the menu itself slakes no thirst!). I love walking to Harvard Square and taking advantage of the forty-second Walk light at the main intersection (actually a triangle) that kicks my sanity in the nuts whenever I'm stuck trying to drive through. (I know it's forty seconds because the display counts down from forty. Forty! Seconds!)

Deep breaths. The first thing I love about Cambridge this week actually started out badly. Back in April I walked out to my car that wasn't there—it had been towed. Short story is there was a sign that said you couldn't park there during the day on Tuesday and I was towed on Wednesday. So not only did I have a parking ticket to battle, I had to head out to the tow yard (not subway-accessible, naturally) and drop $65 to retrieve my car. Hey, who doesn't like handing out $65 on a whim? (Of course I'm blaming the city here, not the tow yard. Even though the owner of the place took offense when I made some remark about how no one likes to visit a tow yard because it means you got towed, and who likes that? Hey, they did a good job towing my car. Real nice. But let's not pretend your service offers as pleasant a customer experience as, say, back-alley mattress sales.) The good news is—after many fruitless conversations with an asshole named Margaret who repeatedly assured me my claim was "still being investigated," which I think is bureaucrat-speak for "You and your claim can blow me"—I finally got my goddamn $65 back. I'm thinking I might buy myself $65 worth of gum, chew it up real good and stick it in every city-property keyhole I can find.

Happy story, part two: progress on the William Dawes site! I wrote about this in September, and I'm happy to say the project is nearly complete. Something is seriously wrong though, because they only started on it the other day and should finish by the weekend. This goes against every Cambridge construction policy I'm familiar with. Instead of a lazy/unionized clan there are only like four guys (seems just right) who've actually been working. So I'm guessing they're either non-union (wonderful!) or, even better, four guys who just got sick of looking at that shit and decided to get it done. Bravo! I'll have to give them some of that gum.

Lost in the maize

What can I say, I'm good with puns. Anyway, A. and I had a fun Autumn Sunday last weekend: we went leaf-peeping, picked some apples and then conquered the Davis Mega-Maze. This is a seriously large cornstalk maze in central Mass.—about an hour away—that we learned about in the AAA newsletter, of all things. No AAA discount though. What the fuck?

Once we traversed the parking lot maze (not really, but close) we started our adventure. They said it could take anywhere from thirty minutes to three hours or more to reach the exit. Frankly, I don't think thirty minutes is possible unless you have a map or guess correctly all the way through. We did it in about eighty minutes, which is pretty good for a first time (they change up the maze once or twice per week).

Throughout the maze are these bridges that raise you above the corn so you can supposedly see where to go, but it doesn't really help since it just makes you realize how far off the mark you are. There are also these pit-stop areas along the way where you can take a pee break, eat a snack, paint your face or zap some villains (there's an odd superhero theme to the whole thing). It's important to remember how to get back to these spots, since they act as hubs from which to move forward instead of backward. We also had to get over the fact that we repeatedly saw the same people over and over for a while, going in all directions, and just trust that no one else knew what they were doing any more than we did. Once we adopted this attitude we pretty much cruised, except for some of the muddier spots (it was close to seventy degrees on Sunday after snowing a couple of inches on Saturday; did I mention we live in New England?).

As you exit they reward you with a token proclaiming that you are a maze superhero. Hopefully, if we make a habit of this and conquer the maze once every Autumn for the next twenty years, I'll have enough tokens to melt them down and fashion a championship belt.

It’s football season so please move on

What's getting lost in all this Red Sox/Theo Epstein hooplah is the fact that Dan Shaughnessy is a terrible, terrible writer.

Seriously though, all of this mess was avoidable. Many people are saying (and these people are right) that Theo should have been offered a contract extension on October 28 of last year, the morning after the Sox won the World Series. Maybe it's a little poetic justice, since Theo waited until the last minute to try to re-sign Pedro last year and it fell through. But I have respect for him right now, since walking away is probably the most difficult decision he could have made. (And difficult is a relative term because he won't go hungry any time soon.)

This story should blow over in the next few days, hopefully, since it's not the end of the world. Theo did a great job, but I think a lot of people could do at least a good job with the payroll the team can afford. Even Dan Duquette—Theo's predecessor who is hated around here for letting Clemens go, even though these same haters agreed at the time that Clemens was on the downslope—did well in signing Pedro, Varitek, Damon, Lowe and others. Whoever lands here, so long as he's not a total nut, should do fine. (And as much of an ass as Lucchino is at times, he's an intelligent baseball guy who's been around the league a long time. Too bad he didn't put the kibosh on the Renteria signing, though, and insist on keeping my man Orlando Cabrera. Everyone in New England knew that was a mistake before it was even official.)

Last note: A. and I had the news on Monday night, and hadn't yet heard anything about Theo's resignation. The sound was muted so we couldn't hear the report, but the headline on the screen read "Theo Resigns." So A. said "Oh no, Theo resigned!" (as in quit) and I said "No, it's re-sign" (as in signed again), because that was the story earlier in the day. Language is a funny thing.