Author: Gil

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Darin’ Aaron Magoo

So sorry for the lack of updates, dear readers, but my buddy Aaron (a.k.a. Fink) came to visit this weekend, and we spent much time . . . um, hanging out, watching movies, and eating very NJ food.

Speaking of which, Fink may never eat solid food again, after back-to-back days at Hackensack’s finest: White Manna and Brooklyn’s Brick Oven Pizzeria. I’ve never seen someone use Jameson as a digestif, but it seemed to have the right acid content for him.

It was a good time, intestinal woes notwithstanding. We got Fink up to speed on the most entertaining movie ever, as well as a couple of movies with hot women in their 40s: Catherine Keener and Kelly Preston.

And . . . we meandered around Ringwood Manor on Saturday, where Amy & I took a ton of pix! (Fink also took pix on his iPhone, but we didn’t check those out.) It was a wonderful day — mid-70’s, dry, breezy and clear — so we spent a bunch of time just strolling around the grounds. Well, Fink & I did. Amy was pretty dedicated to working out her new camera. I was just happy to have some success with the macro function on mine.

Anyway, it was a weekend of fun conversation, fun movies, and heavy-duty dining choices. Oh, and we swapped our iTunes libraries, so I may stumble across even more obscure and bizarre music than ever.

Fink on the bridge

(This post’s title comes from this morning’s installment of Achewood.) 

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It also fixes your schwerve

Sure, I get plenty of headaches at work, but there’s also fun to be had. You just have to know where to look. For instance, while checking out news releases this morning, I stumbled across a clinical-stage drug that’s described as a “minor groove binder.”

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Fashion Police

Moreover, the Economist‘s arts mag’s blog (?), has a good post on Sen. Schumer’s (D-NY) idiotic legislation against fashion knockoffs. Beyond the standard complaints about how these knockoffs allow fashion to trickle down to people who can’t afford couture (I hope I’m using that term correctly), I was intrigued by the idea that we could create a whole new class of constabulary, charged with busting fashion copycats!

Wouldn’t it be great? Instead of having courts deal with $54 million lawsuits over drycleaners’ liability for lost pants, courts could judge whether the pants’ silhouette was too similar to a design from Paris. We could have a meter on how many homages constitute theft! Think of the possibilities (without ripping off anybody else’s thoughts)!

Maybe it’s a silly idea, and we should just focus on the idea that fashion should be out of reach of the hoi polloi. In that case, I get to break out the scanner and offer up some of my favorite comic-book panels of all time:

Peter Bagge's Hate: Lisa in a potato sack

Peter Bagge's Hate: Lisa in a potato sack Peter Bagge's Hate: Lisa in a potato sack

All panels copyright 1992 Peter Bagge.

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Physical Humor

I’m in my mid-30s and have a family history of high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease, so I figure it’s best that I start getting some expert opinion on my health. I’m not diligent enough to see a doctor regularly, but I did manage to have my nowhere-near-annual physical this morning.

I had to fill out a general medical info form when I got to the office. Near the top of the form was a line for ‘Chief complaint,’ which I responded to with “high taxes.” I know I should’ve gone with “incivility on the internet,” but that’s what you get for writing in ink.

Anyway, the doctor was happy with pretty much everydarnthing. My LDL’s a little high, but it’s down 30 points from my last checkup in September 2005, so no statins for me! Blood pressure, heart-rate and EKG were also just fine. He even praised my moderate drinking, though he admitted that there wasn’t a ton of research on the benefits of gin.

I was actually a little worried about that EKG, given a family member’s recent episode of SVT, but the doctor assuaged my fears on that one. He mentioned that the EKG showed no basic signs of it and, “When you hit 50, we’ll do a stress test and all the other regular exams.”

“When I’m 50,” I said, “we’ll have nanobots to take care of that stuff.”

Then I thought, I’m gonna be 50?

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Miss Thing

I noticed in college that the more books I had in my dorm room, the fewer questions visitors would ask me about literature. So, in the never-ending quest to cover up my intellectual inadequacies, I keep lots and lots of books around.

Since I get far fewer visitors at home than I do on my site, I post things like All The Books I’ve Finished Since 1989 and Books On My Nightstand (most of which have not been there since 1989, although I still use the alarm clock I got from a girlfriend back in 1994) to keep people from asking about my literary interests.

This weekend, I discovered yet another great way of keeping any of you from asking me about my literary interests! It’s a website called LibraryThing and I just used it to upload a complete list of all the books I own.

I already have a database of all the books in my library downstairs (we need to figure out more shelf space, so we can unpack more of Amy’s books), thanks to the fantastic Delicious Library program, which uses my computer’s camera to scan the bar codes of my books and search them out on Amazon. LibraryThing is capable of using DL’s export file to reconstitute that library on the website.

LibraryThing looks to be a neat type of social networking site. It’s not exactly a Myspace for nerds, but it looks to be a pretty neat tool for finding other people who’ve read the same obscure books you have.

Anyway, go check out the site (and my library). It’s free to upload as many as 200 books in year, or $10/year or $25/lifetime for unlimited uploading. I sprung for the lifetime membership because my geekiness is worth it. For fun, click on the “Books In My Library” item in the sidebar on the right side of this page; it’ll open a random selection of five books from my library.

Just don’t ask me which ones I’ve read.