Author: Gil

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Just one of the Chebabs

Back in 1995, the movie Boys filmed several scenes on the campus of St. John’s College, where I was attending grad school. I was sitting out in the quad between classes one evening with my friends. The crew was getting ready to shoot an outdoor scene with Winona Ryder.

My buddy Mitch stared at the crew setting up on the lawn.

Our friend Haydn asked, “Whattaya thinking?”

Mitch replied, “I’m gonna run through that shot, throw Winona over my shoulder, and carry her all the way down to the river, shouting, ‘Court order or no, we’ll be together!'”

Mitch had been a rugby player, and if it came down to him and Lukas Haas, there was no doubt in my mind to the outcome.

I asked, “Why ya gonna do that?” I was an awful stick in the mud.

Mitch replied, “Because I want my college alumni bulletin to read, ‘Mitchell Prothero is not allowed within 50 yards of Winona Ryder.'”

Years went by, and Mitch is now writing from Gaza City:

Sure, some gunmen remain, but they’re all in Hamas uniforms, and the leadership has banned the infamous black ski mask. (Hamas leader Ismail Haniyah said militants should don masks to fight Israelis but not when patrolling the streets of Gaza.) So, people can now see the faces of their police officers. But in most cases, it’s not gunmen doing law enforcement, it’s a collection of unarmed men in Hamas hats and bright safety vests that say Police in English and Arabic. They provide traffic control, investigate petty crimes, and offer a general nonthreatening sense of security not provided in the past by surly masked gunmen with uncertain political (or ethical) affiliations.

Smart readers will be waiting for the “but” in this story. And Gaza currently has a big “but.” The semblance of normalcy on the streets belies the fundamental problems at work in this tiny, conservative coastal strip. Gaza and its 1.5 million people appear destined, at least for the moment, to be cut out of any political process involving the Palestinians. Not to mention cut off from government funds and humanitarian resources, and barely able to travel in or out of the strip. Even the Israeli fuel company that provides gas and oil for generators is operating on a day-to-day basis. If they cut those supplies, people will run out in a matter of hours, and hoarding supplies of fuel and food grows less possible each day.

Perhaps even more frightening for the people of Gaza is the sickening sense that things are about to get really bad, which they certainly will. It’s just a question of which direction the fresh hell will come from.

Give it a read, or Mitch’ll come for you next.

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Pharma Phunnies

From another of my pharma profiles:

In the past year, Takeda made a splash in the U.S. with its surreal commercials for sleep treatment Rozerem. Featuring such elements as Abraham Lincoln and a talking beaver, the spots are supposed to evoke the incredibly embarrassing dream-symbols that insomniacs miss out on. Lucky them.

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No Tiger Lily Left Behind

The deer have wiped out most of my tiger lilies, but a few managed to escape their predations. A pair of ’em blossomed this morning, after last night’s thunderstorm:

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Monday Morning Montaigne: Of honorary awards

In honor of Father’s Day, I thought Of the affection of fathers for their children would offer up some good material. As it turns out, M. uses most of the essay to argue that elderly men should know when it’s time to withdraw from worldly affairs, then concludes that the great writers correctly treasured their books above their children. Seriously:

If [Epicurus] had had to choose between leaving behind a deformed and ill-born child and leaving behind a stupid and inept book, [would he] not rather have chosen, and not only he but any man of like ability, to incur the former misfortune than the other? It would perhaps be impiety in Saint Augustine, for example — if it were proposed to him on the one hand to bury his writings, from which our religion receives such great fruit, or else to bury his children, in case he had any — if he did not prefer to bury his children.

Wow. So I decided to backtrack and go with Of honorary awards instead. M.’s point in this one is that, the more you give out an award, the less value it has. It comes off as sour grapes, because he received a knighthood of the Order of Saint Michael only after it had become more commonplace.

But this essay gets my Father’s Day seal of approval because it manages to hearken the Montaigne of today, Chris Rock:

We do not note in commendation of a man that he cares for the education of his children, since this is a common action, however just.

and

N*****s will say some dumb shit like, “I take CARE of MY kids!”

You’re SUPPOSED to, you dumb motherf****r!

(For the full experience, go here and advance to the 2:20 mark.)

Next week: either Of books or Of cruelty.

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The future ain’t what it used to be

A few months ago, I wrote about the Chrysler 300C, which appealed to me because it resembled the Batmobile. Over at 2Blowhards, Donald Pettinger writes about the 1950s’ dream cars, with a fantastic gallery of Cars of the Future:

With no place to go trend-wise, stylists thrashed around in search a new trends or themes. One such theme was aviation or space, already successfully tested by Harley Earl at General Motors. I’m thinking of a series of futuristic scale models that yielded the famous 1948 Cadillac tail fins. The success of Cadillac led stylists to go pretty wild exploring that theme — wild to the point where dream cars (and to a lesser degree some production models) looked less and less like cars.

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Take a Hike

(You can always skip the slight narrative and go right to the pictures! And my wife’s pictures!)

Amy wanted to break in her new hiking boots yesterday, so I looked up a nice route through Ramapo Mountain State Forest on my NJ/NY Trail Conference map. The weather forecast threatened rain, but the sky was pretty clear and the temps were only in the mid-to-high 70s, so we doused ourselves in sunscreen and bug repellent, drove up to the top of Skyline Dr. and a trail entry point, and got a-hikin’. (For reference’s sake, we took Hoeferlin trail down to the lake, MacEvoy trail north around the lake, and then Castle Point trail back up to Skyline Drive.)

I feared that our late start (10:30am) on such a pleasant day would leave us without a place to park, but I was happily surprised to find only 8 or 9 cars in the area, with plenty of spaces free. We always talk about hiking there, and it’s only a few miles from our house, so I feel bad that it took me this long to get out there.

When we pass the park area going to or from work, there’s usually at least one trail-biker armoring up for a trek through the forest. We didn’t see any in the parking lot as we pulled in, but plenty of cars with bike racks had arrived already. Once we set out on the hike, it didn’t take us long to meet some bikers. As expected, they were decked out like American Gladiators, ready for the day’s wipeouts on the rocks.

As unexpected, we discovered one of the trail-bikers was only half as sane as his compatriots: he was riding a unicycle. We’re still kicking ourselves for not snagging a picture of him. He tried to head down a rock ravine that we’d just passed, so we figured we’d get a photo when his group caught up to us, but it seems that they elected not to follow that path. Can’t say I blame them.

A few minutes later, while Amy was snapping pix of a spider’s web in the sunlight, a biker pedaled up the trail to us. He was armor-plated, wearing orange-tinted wraparounds, and exhausted. I made space for him, but he took the opportunity of my presence to stop and rest. I said, “You’re a better man than I. Oh, and my wife’s just up the trail; try not to run her over.” He panted for a while, and I thought, “I could be in shape like that if I bothered to exercise.”

Eventually, we reached the Ramapo Lake. I remembered walking on these trails with my family and our dog when I was a little kid, but only in the abstract. I mean, I remember getting out of the car at a different entry point to the trails, and I think I recall walking around the lake, but that was it.

As we began to skirt the lake on MacEvoy trail, I noticed that, amazingly, there’s a private home that overlooks the lake. I was impressed until I poked around this morning and found Ryecliff, an even more amazing estate in the park (got $5 million I can borrow)?

From the lake, we turned on to the Castle Point trail to get back. The map showed several good observation points on the trail, as well as the eponymous Castle Point. I had no recollection of a castle from my childhood trip(s) to the park, so we got our adventure on and began following the white trail blazes.

Unfortunately, I’m not great at figuring out the topographical parts of these maps, so I didn’t realize that we were in for a couple of quick ascensions. They only added up to 350 feet — we were around 550 feet at lake-level, and ended up at an elevation of 900 feet at the top of the trail — but they came upon us quickly and were tiring. Also, it seems like the bugs preferred the higher elevations, so this last stretch became much more of a hassle.

But it was awfully rewarding. We discovered Castle Point almost without warning, as gray stone ruins emerged under the sun-dappled green canopy.

There’s nothing more satisfying for me than when I can find a story. I treasure that unfolding process, when what we saw gains more meaning as we discover its context. Or maybe it’s like an iceberg. Whatever. Anyway, we walked through a ruined building in the forest yesterday, and I found out where it came from and how it fell today.

After we poked around among the ruins and took all sorts of pix, we continued on the trail, reaching a solid, square, stone building. I said, “Looks like I was wrong about those ruins being Castle Point! This must be it.” I added that this made the ruins “Castle Pointless,” but Amy didn’t find that very funny.

We circled the tower and then looked inside, but we couldn’t figure out what the building was, nor what its relationship to the ruins was. There were no stairs (or sign that there’d been any) inside, so it couldn’t have been an observation tower, despite its high vantage. We puzzled for a bit, gave up, had some water and some trail mix, and continued along the trail. Today, I discovered that this building served as the water tower for the ruins, which were the Castle Point. I had noticed a pipe heading out of the building in the direction of the ruins, but failed to put 2 and 2 together.

After the water tower, we finished the Castle Point trail and reached Skyline Drive, where our body-armored and orange-sunglassed biker passed by us. I said, “Wow! It’s like a Herman Hesse novel, but with a better plot.” Amy didn’t find that very funny either.

That pretty much covers the “facts” of our hike. I’m not feeling too reflective/ruminative, so I’ve held the commentary about the region’s history, the joy of nature, the folly of castles, etc. to a minimum. It was a lovely hike, and we had a great time. If you come out to visit and the weather permits, we’ll take you out to see it. I promise.

(Go check out the pictures. Amy’s are better than mine.)

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The Lady or the Colon

One of these links will connect you to AfterEllen.com’s Hot 100 list of hotties. Another points to a lengthy interview with Jane Jacobs about urban environments and convention centers. The third? Mark Cuban’s discussion about his colonoscopy.

Do you dare click through door #1? Or is door #2 more your speed? Could door #3 lead to the words, “Like every guy, the thought of being violated by a long tube is at the very bottom of the list of things I want to do on a summer day”?

Good luck, dear readers! I’ve randomized the links in tinyurl.com, so no peeking!

Door #1

Door #2

Door #3

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Embarrassment of bitches

In summer, our office hours are 8am-1pm on Fridays. It’s a nice treat, getting out before the weekend traffic, even if it’s just to get some shopping done or get home early.

Today, I stopped off at a comic shop on the way home, to pick up the new issue of Buffy: Season 8 for Amy. I hadn’t been to a comic store for a while — probably since the last issue — so, even though I’m in a cash crunch for the next month or so, I browsed the recent releases.

It was then that I realized the comics gods were taunting me.

It wasn’t enough that I found a new book by Eddie Campbell. No, it wasn’t even enough that I found

No, dear reader. Above and beyond all that, I found Comics Gone Ape, a book about the history of primates in comics. Presumably, it will include the great Jimmy Olsen: Gorilla Reporter.

Clearly, the comics gods want me to go broke. But you’ll be glad to know that I calmly paid for Amy’s comic, walked out of the store, and quietly sobbed as I slumped over the steering wheel of my car.