Three cavities! (alt. title: No sympathy, no doubt)

Went to the dentist today for the first time in [mumble], and I was shocked to learn I have THREE CAVITIES! For those of you in the real world, this may seem like nothing, but you have to know something about me: I am in my 30s now, and I have NEVER HAD A CAVITY BEFORE. When the doctor brought in my X-rays, he asked me, "Where are your fillings?" I took it as a note of pride that my teeth were au naturel in their little photos, but then after my cleaning (btw, the sonic thing they use is much better than I remember from my last visit to the dentist), he dropped the bomb on me. Damn.

Anyway, other than that, things look good in my mouth, in case you were wondering. If you see me soon, ask to take a look; showings are every hour on the hour.

Oooh...it arrived in Secaucus!

Is there a nerdier (and yet, for some reason for me right now, more satisfying) pleasure than my recent obsession with package tracking? Probably not, but if there is, let me know, because I'm a man who loves watching packages move across this humongous nation of ours.

Some men are born great...

Saw a fantastic version of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night last evening; the best part was that it was performed in American Sign Language. It really added a new dimension to the performance: the actors on stage signed the play, while voice actors off stage verbalized the dialog. The result was that Shakespeare, normally an oral experience with word play, also became a visual experience as the word play was both seen and heard. Truly amazing, and honestly made Shakespeare more exciting and accessible. Highly recommended!

One of the coolest parts was seeing the reaction of the deaf audience; they were enthralled, and it occurred to me that they probably don't have the chance to "see" Shakespeare that often. I loved applauding in ASL; it's a lot like jazz hands...and who doesn't love jazz hands?

Southwest Sychology

If you have flown Southwest Airlines, you know they do seating on a first-come-first-served basis...sort of. Actually, they break passengers into four groups: preboard, and then A, B, and C, and have handy "line markers" outside of every gate so you know where you will line up according to the letter on your boarding pass.

And that's where the fun begins. I have flown SWA a few times now, and I am always fascinated at the human nature on display when it comes to lines. There are always the Line Nazis, the people that want to line up as early as possible. These people annoy me because they start the whole problem of having to line up as early as possible, rather than getting to stay seated. Then there are the Line Breakers, people who line up, but intentionally do it in a non-linear fashion (say, off to the side, or stay seated but put their luggage in...not cool in today's airports). These people are even more annoying, because they are really Line Nazis in disguise, just not as honest: their place in line matters, but they go out of their way to make it look like they don't care. The final group, the Line Wanderers, actually fall into two sub-categories: the Confused, who either have never flown SWA before, or have never entered human society before and have therefore never stood in line, and so wait until the flight is called, then obliviously stroll to the front of the line, freaking out the Nazis and outing the Breakers, who get just as pissed. Then there's the Refusniks, who stay seated and pretend not to see the line, or make fun of the line, and just sigh, roll their eyes, and get at the end of the line when it's their turn.

The next time you fly, try Southwest...it's as close to a legal Skinner Box as you'll probably get these days.

Wow, that's...different...

So I got a letter in the interoffice mail yesterday from my boss boss (not my office boss, her boss); a little nerve wracking, I suppose. Still, I think I've been doing a good job, so no worries, right?

Inside, it says I'm getting a raise. Turns out that during my two-year probationary period, I get a performance review every six months. If I am doing poorly, they can fire me. If I am doing well, they say nice things to me and give me more money. Huh.

Being a former classroom teacher, I was completely unprepared for this. It's bad enough I still don't have the hang of taking vacation time, but now you're giving me more money?

Wow.

Netflix: My savior

I know that it is becoming cliche to talk about why people aren't going to the movies anymore, but I must add myself to that list. I don't want to lock myself up at home and avoid human contact, but I do want to avoid the humans I ran into at the movies yesterday.

We went to see A History of Violence (btw, good movie...not great, but good) at the Century 20 in Daly City. Maybe I should have expected it at a megaplex, maybe I should have expected it on a Sunday afternoon, maybe I should have expected it in Daly City, but the whole experience was just awful. People walking around, talking in normal volume, cell phones going off, and worst of all, people "theater hopping" (i.e. walking into various theaters, watching for 10-15 minutes, then moving on). I had no idea your ticket price allows you to be a nomad for the afternoon, watching a little bit of everything. I guess the high ticket prices reflect this movie-buffet-all-you-can-watch mentality.

So I move one step closer to hermitage. Time to update my queue.

Just a taste

I was alternately thrilled and disappointed with ESPN's decision to broadcast a portion of Midnight Madness last Friday: excited to see the Wildcats break the attendance record, disappointed that it was used by ESPN as an infomercial for their new ESPNU channel. Jerks.

Still, fun to see college basketball again, although when the commentators were talking about UK's big wins last season, I notice they didn't mention the first round squeaker against my beloved Colonels? They're scared, I tells ya! Scared!

I looked in the trap, Ray

Tried a new haircutter today (there are literally at least six different places within a few blocks of my house, so figured I shouldn't lock myself in at the beginning of my new hobby), and it was very nice. Nothing against the guy who sheared me last time, but there was something this time he couldn't offer, and it is best explained by paraphrasing from the movie Ghostbusters:

When the hot asian girl asks you if you want to go to the back for a "rinse off," you say, "Yes!"

Before you get concerned about my marriage, it was just that: she rinsed my head. Still, a nice touch, and one that will keep me going back. Just don't tell my wife.

In a world...

Tired of shmaltzy movie trailers? Tired of shmaltzy movie trailers that look exactly like every other shmaltzy movie trailer? So was whoever made this.

[since I got the link from one Alabama friend, I thought it only fitting to get the title of this post from another Alabama friend]

Feels like the first time

Last night, we went to the opera for the first time. It was an interesting choice for a first opera: the very modern, world-premiere production of Doctor Atomic. The site sums it up better than I can, but in short, it is set in 1945 New Mexico as scientists race to build, test, and possibly use the first atomic weapon. The plot centers around the moral issues involved in building the weapon, its use on other humans, and the genuine fear of simply not really knowing what it would actually do (the opera makes reference to a theory that it could have potentially ignited the atmosphere, literally killing the world).

We were invited as guests of the director (felt semi-important for a minute there!) to the final dress rehearsal, so there were producers scurrying around throughout the performance, checking light and sound levels, making copious notes, and generally taking me out of the moment. The music is amazing: it is beautiful and soft one moment, then discordant and angry the next. Many of the vocalists were clearly not going "full volume" for the final dress, so it was tough to understand them sometimes, but Gerald Finley, in the role of Robert Oppenheimer, was outstanding.

We are thinking that we now need to go see something a little more classical before we make our final judgment on whether we can be "opera people," but this was certainly a fascinating introduction.

I see London, I see France...

Today was an example of bad planning turning into some fun. We thought about going downtown to test-drive a car, and hopped on the train. As the stops went by, more and more people wearing leather and little else were getting on. Pretty sure that there wasn't a Village People reunion concert going on, we started to realize that the odds of driving anywhere downtown were nil: it was Folsom Street Fair weekend, and that means several blocks of downtown shut down for the leather-and-chain clad masses.

Or I should say, leather-and-chain clad masses if you are lucky. To get your ticket/sticker to enter, you have to walk past the "No Nudity" sign to the topless girl selling the stickers. Ahem. Once past the ticket booth, it was literally anything goes: I can't even imagine the level of self-confidence involved in walking around wearing nothing but a leather hat, shackles, and flip-flops, but there were dozens of people who could clearly answer that question. I think my favorite part was seeing the line of people waiting to get spanked for a donation of at least $5 to a Hurricane Katrina relief fund. I love this city.

Didn't get to test drive the car due to the street closures, but certainly didn't go away bored! We also found this cool Spanish restaurant that had amazing tapas and some of the best sangria we've had in a long while. It's cool to eat the fruit out of the wine glass, right?

Good afternoon.

Litter or recycling?

I have been watching an interesting phenomenon on the train recently: people littering, and doing so completely free of guilt. Here's what they do: as they finish a section of the newspaper, they fold it up, and drop it on the floor under their seat. I have seen this happen a few times, and finally asked this guy who had just dropped the financial section of the Chronicle under a BART seat. His response: he was leaving it for someone else to read. I asked him if he got it off the floor originally, and he said no. So I asked the next Larry David-esque question: would you ever pick up a newspaper off the floor of the train? He looked at me like I was being a jerk (he was partially right, in that I broke a cardinal rule of transit ettiquette: don't speak. However, I really did wonder if he would), and then got off at his stop without answering.

Interesting.

Devil's haircut

Yesterday, I did something I haven't done in close to fifteen years: I got a haircut. If you know me, you know that during this past decade and a half, my hairstyles have been variations on the same theme: something that I could do at home with my own set of clippers. Therefore, I invested in a $20 set of clippers lo those many years ago, and have been cutting my own hair since.

Why the change, you ask? Not sure I could tell you exactly. Part of it deals with our bathroom: there is only one outlet, and it is so old that the plug falls out, meaning I have to hold the plug in with one hand while I cut with the other. Awkward, to say the least. Related to that is the idea then of where I have to cut my own hair: I usually did it in the shower (always a good idea to take an electric device into the shower, kids!), but due to the outlet, I was cutting it over the sink, which was just messy and annoying. Honestly, though, I think I was also just tired of cutting my own damn hair.

So the streak is over. I paid $10 (outrageous!) for the cut at a little salon down the street, which was far better than the $18 (scandalous!) the barber shop next door wanted. And, I have to admit, it was nice. No clean up, nice and neat, even the neck looks good.

Might have to go back before 2020.

Sex shy, take two

So last night, I watched the movie Kinsey, figuring that since I had just finished reading the below-reviewed book, I would compare it with another fictionalized version of Prok's life. It should be noted that the movie is told from Kinsey's point of view, whereas the book was from the POV of one of his interviewers.

There were a lot of similarities, but the most striking difference was the portrayal of Kinsey himself. In the movie, Prok is shown as a more compassionate person, laughing, understanding that love is important, struggling with his father, etc. In the book, the opposite was true: Prok was a domineering, overbearing taskmaster who drove his team and all those around him with imperious precision.

I don't know which is true, or if the real man (as is probably often the case) was a combination of both, but one scene that occurs in both the book and movie was very telling: Kinsey having sex with his male researcher. In the book, Kinsey is clearly the aggressor, beginning choreographing, and guiding the affair from the beginning as sort of a "test" to see if indeed the young interviewer will be effective and not "sex shy." However, the movie plays the same scene very differently: Kinsey is hit on by his interviewer, and is shown to go along , albeit somewhat reluctantly, with the young man's advances.

Is it an important distinction? My guess is that there was an actual affair between the two men. However, for the movie version, I'm guessing the producers felt that the idea of their leading man Liam Neeson seducing a younger man may have been too much for the audience? Ironic, given the subject matter and content of the film, and an unfortunately short-sighted decision, given what Kinsey himself was trying to promote.

Sex shy

Just finished The Inner Circle, T.C. Boyle's fictionalization of Dr. Kinsey and the beginnings of the Kinsey Institute in the 1940s. Interesting read, and I liked the writer's choice to mirror Kinsey's own research style; this novel is all about sex research, and yet the sex described is clinical, detached, and devoid of any excitement or romance. In my opinion, Boyle made a distinct choice to write a flat, passionless (dare I say flaccid?) book to show the main flaw with Kinsey's own research: sex is more than statistics and fluids, it's about excitement and raw emotions. It made the book annoying to read at times, but it was an interesting stylistic choice.

Good read, although I'll admit sometimes I wondered if anyone was reading over my shoulder and what they thought of me. Then I wondered what Kinsey would have thought of me getting embarrassed about what other people thought of me. Then, to quote Kevin Nealon, suddenly I lost interest. I'll give it a solid B: good read, interesting subject, great style choice by the writer.

Food affair?

I got home very late last night, and was both ravenously hungry and so tired I couldn't imagine cooking. So I picked up some Thai take-out and was walking home...when I ran into Mr. Ha, owner of our favorite Chinese restaurant on the block. He looked down, saw the take out bags that clearly were from some other establishment, looked up at me, and (this could have been my overactive imagination) I could have sworn I saw a brief look of disappointment flit across his face before he smiled and we engaged in small talk, all the while completely ignoring the small pink bag I was carrying.

I felt a little dirty, and wanted to reassure him that it was a one-time thing, that their pad thai meant nothing to me, and that I would always love his basil chicken in the future, first and foremost. But it all went unsaid.

What video games say about my mood

If you are curious, my Xbox game du jour is Destroy All Humans!, a fun-filled romp through 1950's America trying to...well, to do exactly what the title suggests. No false advertising for this one.

Not sure I like what this says about where my head is at recently, but I guess it's better to take out my frustrations on pixels and bits than on my idiot neighbors or the moron who keeps parking in front of my driveway.

Yabba Dabba Doofus

We bought an iPod this weekend; if you look at your calendar, you will notice that we are about two years behind the trend, which is actually pretty fast for us. Our only far right tendencies are our position on the bell curve when it comes to keeping up with current technology (we still use dial-up, we got our first DVD player last December, etc.).

In the past, it hasn't been that big of a deal. But then we brought our new little toy home...and got stopped cold. It turns out that our Windows operating system is two systems behind the minimum needed to operate an iPod, our USB port is too slow, etc. I asked the pterodactyl inside the hard drive for help, but couldn't hear his answer over the wooly mammoth vacuum cleaner.

BTW, in case you were wondering, yes, I felt very old just buying the damn thing. Even the bag made me feel bad; it is designed to be worn like a backpack, unless you look like me. Then it is designed to be carried awkwardly in both hands, like a combination of nuclear waste and a present for the grandkids.

Get ur Freak on...

I don't review many books on this blog, but I should, so I thought I'd start with a book I finished on the train yesterday. Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, is an odd ride through the correlation between seemingly unconnected events in our world. I was impressed that they even tried to connect the dots between things as (seemingly) disparate as Roe v. Wade's impact on crime years later, and while I think they jump to several unsubstantiated conclusions with the greatest of ease, I enjoyed the writing style and moved through it quickly. I will share also that there is little to no "hard" economics, so if you are a math-phobe like me, you'll be just fine.

Since I'm an ex-teacher, I'll go with grades: I give this book a solid B for being thought provoking and entertaining, if a little quick to make assumptions. Good effort.

The City of Pride and Purpose

I went to visit a client in Richmond yesterday, lately of Coach Carter fame. In the 15-20 minutes it took to drive off the highway and to my client's house, I witnessed the following:

1. A large fight down a side street, which looked like it involved at least five young men, arms and legs swinging.
2. An almost-fight at the gas station, in which the gentleman in front of me and the cashier got into a huge profanity-laden argument, resulting in the cashier coming out of his bullet-proof booth with a baseball bat, and the gentleman in front of me reaching into his jacket, but then apologizing to me and the two small children behind me in line, turning, and leaving. [cue release of breath]
3. Four loud pops in succession (which I am trying hard to pretend were firecrackers), followed a few minutes later by four racing Richmond police cars, three of which pulled into a housing unit, leaving the fourth to park across the entranceway, so no one could get in or out.

When I was in the gas station, the little kids helped me pick out a Vitamin Water (they said I should buy the Formula 50, because Fifty Cent [or, as I call him, "Fiddy"] advertises it). They were adorable, and very pleased that I made the right choice (btw, Fiddy makes a pretty good drink). I thought of them when I got back on the highway later and realized that I got to leave. They have to live there.