Author: Gil

Posted on

How I Misspent My Summer Vacation, 2011 Edition: Day 2

Friday, Aug. 12: Dead Men & Funnybooks

After a ridiculously wondrous night’s sleep at the Davenport, I had to get to work.

Shannon, one of my work-pals, was picked me up to take me to her office, so I could interview John B., another one of the guys. (Thus turning this leg of the vacation into a business expense for me.) We went with a 9 a.m. start, so I could get work out of the way and Amy & I could spend the rest of the day in the city before the evening’s Royal Wedding.

About the wedding: my pal Dave was marrying a co-worker (not in his department; I’d never met her before the previous night’s dinner). He’d gotten divorced around 2 years ago (so did she), and I gave him a sympathetic ear while he went through that process. He’s a great guy, and has been the primary parent for his 2 daughters since the split. Dave’s also half-black, half-Japanese, and was the only non-white person I saw in my 2002 trip to Spokane. When we got together in NYC last March, he showed me an iPhone picture of him with chef Morimoto at Nobu. I asked him which one was Morimoto. (What did I tell you yesterday about taking the piss?)

But the wedding was a few hours off. At the moment, I sat down with John in his office to shoot the breeze a while. We’d planned to record a little Q&A about managing customer expectations during facility expansions for a writeup in my October issue (I live life of excitement, I know), but I had a secret motive for this meeting. I was going to interview John about what it’s like to die.

John didn’t attend that NYC trade show in March; companies frequently pick and choose / revolve staff for these events. On the second morning of the show, I stopped by the company’s booth to say hello. My pal Peggy said to me, “Something terrible happened to John. He’s going to be fine, but his heart stopped last night.”

John, who’s an athletic, fit guy in his early 40’s, was playing soccer with his team that evening, felt light-headed, and sat down. And promptly died.

That is, his heart had stopped for 15 minutes. Lucky for him, several doctors are on his soccer team, and they were able to keep him pumping blood till the EMTs arrived and he got zotzed back to life. But he was, as he’s the first to say, dead.

At our dinner the night before, he told us, “I found out recently from my cardiologist that when he got the call that I’d died, his wife, also a doctor, asked what was up. He said, ‘One of my patients just died,’ and she asked, ‘Well, is he still dead?’ Only a cardiologist would ask that . . .” He was laughing when he told this story. If I were in his position, of course, I’d be looking off into the distance, pausing dramatically.

Which is why I wanted to talk to him about it. He was a cheerful guy before this episode, and didn’t seem any different the two times I’d seen him since, so I was hoping that a more in-depth conversation might reveal whether he’s looking at things differently now. My plan was to bust out the audio-recorder for our pharma-interview, but also conduct another conversation with John about his death, and how he’s lived since.

(He said the doctors have no idea why his heart stopped, so they’ve installed a defibrillator in his chest to zap him if it happens again. The day after his death, he told Peggy that he was planning to come to the office the following Monday. She threatened to fire him if he did, but he managed to make it in for a few hours anyway, broken ribs/sternum and all.)

But a funny thing happened on the way to the undiscovered country: we started talking about comic books.

During our pharma-conversation, I mentioned a comics-related anecdote about John’s CEO, prompting John to ask what sort of comics I read. Now, this conversation can be pretty fraught. My comics are, um, “non-mainstream,” which is to say, “not superheroes,” but many people tend to equate comics solely with costumed crusaders. So I offered up an early gambit by saying, “I like more indy, art-fare, like Clowes, Bagge and the Hernandez brothers.” This used to be the holy trinity of art-comic surnames to cite; a little out of date now, but I didn’t want to go hardcore geek, in case John was a big reader of, say, Spider-Man.

I was gratified to discover that he actually knew what I was talking about, and that we could have an intelligent conversation about funnybooks, art, and storytelling. He even tossed a Cerebus reference into the conversation (!). Stupidly, I didn’t turn on the recorder for THAT segment, because it would’ve been pretty entertaining. At one point, he mentioned seeing an episode of True Blood (which I haven’t watched), and said, “I don’t know who the writers are, but they owe a huge debt to the southern gothic vibe that Alan Moore had in his run on Swamp Thing.”

To which I (internally) replied, “Daaaaaamn!” and decided to break out my story of the time I met Frank Miller at a party but didn’t realize it was him for half an hour or so.

So, rather than have a mopey conversation about death (which I’m not sure John’s capable of, since he’s so damned upbeat), we talked comics for at least an hour. He had an 11:00 a.m. appt., we took care of our pharma-interview, and I made a note that I have to bring him one of my favorite art comics when he comes to NJ for our conference in September.

(The last time I mentioned my comics interests in a work context was at a trade show in June. That advertiser-exec took it as an opportunity to ask me what I thought of the Green Lantern movie. I haven’t seen it and don’t plan to, but do have strong opinions about it.)

After we wrapped up, Shannon took me back to the Davenport. I unloaded some of my work-stuff, like the big-ol’ Zoom H4 audio recorder that I brought from the office, and headed out to find Amy.

She was back in Riverfront Park, outside the brazenly named Sugar Shack, shooting pictures. The island was a run-down railyard something in the old days, but had been given a make-over in 1974 as part of the World’s Fair. Which was held in Spokane, WA. No, really. The new park has some nice walkways and rides and fountains for kids, as well as a shit-ton of concession stands dedicated to furthering childhood obesity and diabetes.

Amy & I meandered around the park and downtown, stopping in at Auntie’s, a nice, multi-level indy bookstore that Shannon had mentioned. I had to tell myself, “I have more than 1,400 books at home, along with a Kindle; I’m not buying any books here.” But it was nice to see that sort of store seemingly flourishing. I looked for a copy of The Leopard, so I could give it to Shannon, but they didn’t have it in stock.

After the bookstore, we had a wonderful lunch next door at Sante, where I had a burger that made up for the awful one in the SeaTac airport. Because I keep score.

I liked the vibe in downtown Spokane (which I realize I haven’t discussed). It felt very mid-century to me, with lots of brick buildings, and there were plenty of local shops alongside the inevitable global brands. There was a bit of a college-town vibe, which I miss. The baristas in the coffeeshop around the corner from the Davenport were unreasonably cheery, but I could overlook that.

During our drive to the company’s site that morning, Shannon mentioned that European trade shows the last two years gave her her first opportunities to travel outside America. I told her my theory that Bush II wanted a weak dollar during his presidency to make it more expensive for Americans to travel abroad. That way, we wouldn’t have anything to compare our lives to.

Shannon said she was amazed by the sheer history in these foreign cities, coming from an area that was so recently settled. I told her I felt the same way, even though my town was founded in 1742 and had a ton of Revolutionary War history. We’re both going to a big trade show in Frankfurt in October, but she and her husband are making a side-trip to Prague after. I told her that Amy will kill me if I go to Prague without her. She told me that she likes to read novels about the places she’s visiting. I told her not to read Prague.

Anyway, after our meander around downtown, we headed back to the Davenport, read for a bit (who watches TV?) and got ready for the wedding. Rather than get a ride from Shannon, we decided to walk. However, since our wedding shoes weren’t too comfortable (I brought a pair of black Johnston & Murphy brogue wingtips for the occasion), we packed them in my tote bag (freebie from Monocle) and wore comfier kicks to walk to the wedding venue. In my case, that meant pairing my navy suit (Rubenstein’s) and yellow striped shirt (Brooks) with a pair of white SeaVees. With a seersucker Alexander Olch tie and a white silk pocket square tucked in presidential-style, I felt invulnerable to criticism.

The route we chose put us smack dab in the “club district,” such as it was. It went on for a block and the activity at that hour (6 p.m.) consisted of band-members hauling their equipment out of vans and hangers on hanging on. We drew some looks, but no one made any comments. Even though we deserved them. I credit the tie and pocket square. (This is the closest you get to any Mean Streets of Spokane reference. That pic I posted yesterday was from two blocks away from our hotel, when I was out for coffee. It looked like someone had it in for a car window, the night before.)

At the wedding, we got to meet all my pals’ spouses and kids. It’s funny how much more real that makes people. I mean, it was one thing to see John B. as “the guy who died” and build a little theoretical framework about how that experience might have affected him. It was another to meet his wife and 2 teenaged daughters and to think about how close they were to losing a father last March. The pictures keep getting more detail.

The wedding ceremony was lovely, and included this colored sand rite, in which Dave participated with his new bride and his two daughters. It was meant to illustrate how their lives would blend together. Since Dave’s company performs lyophilization of injectable drugs, I thought he could’ve come up with something that involved freeze-dried particles in suspension, but I guess that’s a little too “inside pharma.”

I don’t have any great anecdotes from the wedding. The food was good, the conversation was fun, and the view of the river from our venue (the rooftop of the Spokane Convention Center) was gorgeous.

It struck me that second weddings should feel different than firsts, but I’ve only been to two or three so I haven’t been able to characterize them “‘Til death do us part,” seems kinda silly to keep in the vows, but what do I know? I only got hitched at 35.

During a conga line, we put on our comfy shoes and walked back to the Davenport and its comfy bed. I wanted to thank Dave for inviting me and wish him bliss & love, but he was already there. Plus, I was afraid of getting sucked into that conga line.

Thus endedth day 2!

Coming up in Day 3: Discovery Park and the Cosmic Cube!

Posted on

How I Misspent My Summer Vacation, 2011 Edition: Day 1

“Spokane. Shit. I’m still only in Spokane . . .”

I can’t think of the last time I took a (planned) weeklong vacation. (Last December’s northeast-blizzard-enforced stayover at my in-laws’ in Louisiana doesn’t count.) Typically, Amy can only get away for a few days, so we tend to take long weekends instead. But now we had a full week: Thursday to Wednesday. Off to the Pacific Northwest!

We’d been thinking of taking a trip to Vancouver for a while now. Amy’s parents had been there years ago and loved it. Then one of my work-pals in Spokane, WA invited us to his wedding, so we decided to make a Seattle/Spokane/Vancouver week of it! (Seattle, because the fares to fly into Vancouver were insane, and I have a ton of friends in Seattle.)

The summer’s been weirdly rough for me. After working very hard on my July/August issue through the month of June, I found myself beset ever since by a combo of ennui and anxiety: ennxiety? anxui? Regardless, I’ve been uninspired and frazzled ever since wrapping up that ish. Amy, has been pretty burned out by work too, so we were hoping the change of scenery would be restorative.

I set up flights, hotels, a rental car and a dog-sitter, and put Amy in charge of finding us some nice restaurants. I was, of course, filled with anxiety about leaving the dogs with someone for a week, but the sitter offered to stay at our place, so the boys wouldn’t have to deal with a new environment while we were away. Added bonus: this made us clean the house (somewhat).

Speaking of anxiety, I expected us to be at the airport late, then delayed en route to Seattle, where I’d set up an 80-minute layover to connect to Spokane, and/or to die in a smoldering wreck smack-dab in the side of a mountain. We got through Newark security 85 minutes before the flight, arrived early in Seattle, and had smooth flying throughout. No, I’m not fun to travel with.

While the not-morbidly obese mom in the denim skirt so short that her vag was scrubbing her seat in the row ahead of us was punching the DirecTV unit because it refused to recognize her credit card after no fewer than fifty swipes, Amy & I countered the lowbrow vibe by watching, Public Speaking, a documentary about Fran Lebowitz on my iPad. I’m tired of telling people about great stuff I’ve read or watched, but this is really a blast, and it’s only about 80 minutes long. She’s seen a ton, loves New York, and, in her words, “is always right.” Plus, she’s a great speaker.

(The mom and her mulleted progeny were headed on to Alaska, as were a multitude of other passengers in tube tops or Zubaz sweatpants, several of whom found it acceptable to use the airplane toilet barefoot.)

The flight was almost 5.5 hours, but I just didn’t have the head to read. Sometimes I feel like I’m letting some recording angel down if I watch movies or TV instead of reading. I also watched Howl (nice, not great, and way too ACTED in the courtroom scenes), and The Social Network (second time around, watching mainly for the David Fincher Moments, and also to figure out why this role of Jesse Eisenberg bothered me so much less than his other ones).

Arriving at SeaTac, we had to claim our big suitcase and go back through security, so there was a good opportunity for my anxiety to flare up, since the security lines were pretty long. But then they said that there’s an express area for Seattle-Spokane flights, so I was stuck just being at ease. Boo.

We grabbed lunch at the Seattle Tap Room in the airport, where I was served one of the worst burgers ever made. I grabbed some Starbucks by the gate (when in Seattle…) and was gratified to discover that they don’t serve it at the heat of a thousand blazing suns. On the short flight to Spokane, I watched the last episode of season 1 of Spaced. Still no reading.

But all this preamble and ramble, and we’re not even in Spokane!

So we landed in Spokane, got our suitcase ($20 charge on Alaska Air each way; from now on, we will travel with two roll-aboards), and took a cab to our hotel, the Davenport.

This wasn’t my first trip to Spokane. In February 2002, I was invited by a local economic development council to check out all the great biotech-y stuff in the Spokane metro area. One of my magazine’s major advertisers was in the city, so I figured it would be fine to take the trip and see them. I convinced the EDC to fly me out to Seattle a few days early, so I could hang out with friends there. That schedule reduced the airfare significantly (Saturday night stayover), so they were amenable.

Not knowing anything about Washington’s geography, I had no idea that Spokane was quite so climatically different than Seattle. February in Seattle means dreary rain and mist and 50 degree temps. February in Spokane means whiteouts and temps of — no lie — 4 degrees. I was, to put it mildly, unprepared for the weather. To put it more bluntly, I have never been so cold as I was on that jaunt.

Still, I had a decent time in Spokane in ’02. Two weeks before the trip, the organizers mentioned that they needed me to give a speech about the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry before an audience of local businessmen and other interested parties. (Go here and search for “Roth”; turns out they were charging admission for my speech!) I felt that it was a little unfair to spring that on me so late in the game. I’d never really done any public speaking, and was convinced that I was going to be exposed as a fraud. As you can see, this anxiety thing is nothing new for me.

The night before my speech, I sat at the desk in my lovely room at the Davenport and filled 3 pages of a hotel notepad with observations and topics for the talk. The next morning, I got 2 or 3 lines into the notes before I said, “But really, to understand that, you need to understand . . .” and proceeded to ad lib for another 25 minutes. I’d been working in the pharma-field for fewer than 3 years, but it turned out that I’d internalized a great deal of info and trends and — surprise — was capable of threading everything together for a coherent talk, as well as a Q&A. I don’t remember much of the speech, but I did get a big laugh by blaming that period’s pharma R&D drought on Hillary Clinton.

I didn’t get to see too much of Spokane on that visit. On the first day, I was spirited around to industrial parks, hospitals, and universities. After my speech on the second day, a bigwig at my Spokane-based advertiser took me on a little tour before bringing me over to the company’s manufacturing building.

His name was Rick, and he died early this year from lymphoma. Driving me around the city, he told me that it was quite a change from his home back east. I asked him how he was getting along in such an isolated region. It’s not to knock the city, but it’s out of the way in comparison to, say, Philadelphia.

Rick drove me by his house. It was quite the spread: 3 stories high, plus basement, atop a valley overlooking the city. It was beautiful site. He said to me, “This house cost me $250,000. I’ll get over not being in Pennsylvania.”

So here I was, 10 years later, back at the Davenport. It’s a wonderful old (restored) hotel, and it possesses The Most Comfortable Beds of Any Hotel Ever. (They sell ’em, and my wife is seriously considering ordering one behind my back.)

Amy & I cleaned up, unpacked some (enough for 2 days in Spokane) and headed out to meet my work-pals (and the groom-to-be) for dinner.

Let me note here that “work-pals” doesn’t mean I don’t like ’em as much as regular pals. It’s just to denote that I met them through work. That usually means we only get together during trade shows, when we’ve all been traveling and spend much of the day on our feet in convention center exhibit halls. We talk about our “civilian” lives, but rarely do we encounter each other outside of this work-travel environment. Ironically, work-pals only get to see me in suits and nice clothes, so they have no idea how ratty I can look.

However, my Spokane pals are different than my other advertisers. Amy asked me if I have as much fun with people from other companies as I do with these guys. There’s one other work-pal I consider a great friend, but most everyone else is business-first: like ’em, but we don’t hang out during my vacation.

So what makes the Spokane crew different?

Piss-taking. I’ve never seen a group of people so mercilessly goof on one another, yet stay friends and remain productive. Amy got to see a little of how they interact when we took out a bunch of ’em during a conference in New York last March. Our first night in Spokane, when they took us to dinner at Clinkerdagger (?), she got the double-barreled experience.

(I think they were on good behavior in March, but eventually concluded, “If she could be married to Gil, she can’t possibly be offended by, um, anything!”)

So, over a nice dinner (most everyone ordered a surf & turf, while I went with a tuna ahi dish), my pals proceeded to demolish one another and, of course, me. It’s infectious. I never mind getting blown up by this crowd, even though I tend to bristle at that sort of thing in general.

We were also treated to a great “It’s a small world” anecdote. The guys were telling us about how great Spokane is, and how people from even outside the area all seem to know each other. Then John B. told us, “Back in the ’70’s, my in-laws went to see Gordon Lightfoot once. They said it was the worst show ever, because he was obviously hammered. He could barely stand up on stage, and didn’t even finish the show that night.

“Well, years later, I’m working here, and [a slightly older member of our dinner party] tells us the story about how she and her husband once hung out backstage with Gordon Lightfoot when he was in town . . .”

“. . . And we got him so wasted and high before the show that he couldn’t stand up!” she chortled.

“I never told my in-laws that my boss wrecked their evening 30 years ago.”

If it weren’t so goddamned cold in wintertime, we’d consider moving out here.

After dinner, Amy & I walked through Riverfront Park to get back to the Davenport. It was dark when we left, but I’d never heard talk about the mean streets of Spokane, so I figured we were pretty safe. We did manage to walk through a shooting-gallery-esque block of teenagers, but no one gave us any crap.

And that was the first day of our vacation.

Coming up in day 2: The Mean Streets of Spokane!

Posted on

Virtual Memories Radio: the missing tapes!

I just discovered that I have a podcast from last May that never posted! I could’ve sworn I posted this one shortly after Ernesto Sabato’s death on April 30, but there’s no sign of it anywhere on the blog!

The files were posted on the morning of May 4, but there’s no sign of the post I must have written to link to them! In fact, a pal of mine cited the podcast on his blog on May 14! Grar! I’m really hoping that other posts haven’t gone missing, too!

Anyway, here’s what you need to know about the time I posted this piece:

Anyway, here’s episode 3 of Virtual Memories Radio (mp3 and m4a). It’s about 10 minutes long and recorded in several different locations in my house, so the audio has some jumps in quality.

I’m planning to record a new one this weekend, but it’ll be another solo joint. Boo. . .

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More

Posted on

Unrequired Reading: Jewel Eye

It’s time for another month’s worth of my tweets from twitter! First the retweets (the ones that begin with RT) and then the marginally more original ones! Remember, you can get these regularly by following groth18!

In honor of July 4th, we’ll start off with a bang!

RT @felixsalmon (Felix Salmon):

 

* * *

RT @radleybalko (Radley Balko) – Letter from Cory Maye

* * *

RT @sharilynj – Read about @marcmaron‘s powerful keynote address, opening up this year’s #JustForLaughs #jfl

* * *

RT @kylevanblerk (Kyle van Blerk) – A bear. Made out of 20,000 zip ties. As you do.

* * *

RT @susanorlean (Susan Orlean) – Wonderful!! “@NewYorkTheater: Niagara Falls lit with colors of rainbow on 1st day of N.Y.’s Marriage Equality”

* * *

RT @LettersOfNote – There’s so much to love about this photo of Jimi Hendrix

* * *

RT FishbowlDC – Find out how the bridge of someone’s nose figures into The Atlantic‘s Megan McArdle’s (@asymmetricinfo) interviews.

* * *

I don’t have kids, and that’s why I side with #GayTalese on dropping serious cash on clothes: #notthatIspendTHATmuch

* * *

Because I don’t like kids, that’s why.

* * *

Heartbreaking article about treating vs. screening #DownSyndrome

* * *

Chinese govt. tries to disprove adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity: #weallcrashedthetrain

* * *

The art of #RickyGervais.

* * *

The #JewishAutonomousRegion sounds like the Off-World Colonies in Bladerunner: #Jewsinspace

* * *

A Bentley SUV? But what if the NBA lockout doesn’t end soon?

* * *

I’m disappointed the Hercules machine isn’t on this list: #pinball (Hercules is over here)

* * *

Beetlejuice in NJ, via @nycscout

* * *

I thought #PillowTie was the best Skymall product ever, but it’s no match for #DribbleBib

* * *

Oh, look! It’s the scariest goddamned thing ever! #dummyland #ventmyrage

* * *

Oliver’s Army is here to stay: #andiwouldratherbeanywhereelsethanheretoday #cromwell

* * *

Timmy, have you even been in a Norwegian prison?

* * *

The Midgard Serpent sleeps below Park Ave.

* * *

Just #FranLebowitz and her awesome car

* * *

@SimonDoonan on getting married to Jonathan Adler.

* * *

A “thoroughly generic bookstore” (as per my 40th bday post) is closing: #bookberries

* * *

Euroleague’s greatest hoopster is from West Memphis. #MarcusBrown

* * *

Freelove: sister of Increase, mother of Wealthy: #nydutch

* * *

“I’m looking for something hipster-y“: http://nyr.kr/p5opGB

* * *

Can you tell us more often in 1 article that there was no internet in 1981, please? #shittywriting #tigerwoods

* * *

Set taser to #KTFO: #zotz

* * *

The #StopMakingSense fashion collection: #thisisnotmybeautifulcoat (does @davidbyrne know about this?)

* * *

To quote #Nirvana, I think I’m dumb.

* * *

(Hilarious) summer fashion trends, courtesy of @simondoonan.

* * *

Leopard goes ape: #donotconfrontangryleopard

* * *

5 major factors in the #Borders collapse: #bookswithoutborders

* * *

Speaking of: Proving that people surrounded by books can still be total retards: #bookswithoutborders

* * *

Bob Colacello, whose #Warhol memoir Holy Terror I enjoyed the heck out of, auctioned off his portrait by AW.

* * *

On escaping and not escaping #Auschwitz

* * *

“Interview Your Own Damn Self!” the #Nabokov way: http://bit.ly/nrtMZQ

* * *

Boy, #SeanBean sure does get killed a lot.

* * *

Transocean: the “I didn’t do it” kid of the gulf oil disaster

* * *

#WoodyAllen on Rilke, selling out Hannah & Her Sisters, and that new movie of his

* * *

Lovely photos of writers & their dogs by #JillKrementz (no greyhounds, I notice)

* * *

“Using .NET is like Fred Flintstone building a database”: Why #Myspace went boom

* * *

Why is weed wacky? #potluck

* * *

M(ormon)BA: Mormons are the new Jews? #wedressbetter

* * *

Does the mind rule the body, or does the body rule the Ren? #renandstimpy

* * *

Holocaust theory: #saturdaynightreading

* * *

Busch-basching: http://buswk.co/pJrg9k

* * *

Peter O’Toole on being awesome. #doublephallicname

* * *

Nothing harder than getting laughs from a room full of comedy writers: http://bit.ly/poW20I

* * *

I miss Karen Allen, but I’m still glad I skipped that last #IndianaJones flick.

* * *

A stoic and a zen buddhist walk into a bar…

* * *

Neat profile of @MaerRoshan that i missed till now: #offmyradar #harhar

* * *

#Hitchens, on the Gandhi myth

* * *

Mob scene: #mafiaTV

* * *

Psst! It’s a secret bookstore! #brazenhead

* * *

Pad See Yew Later, Addiction! #ThaiRehab

* * *

Writer procrastination: (I bought a super-cheap PC laptop and deleted everything but @ommwriter) #mustdisablewifi

* * *

Final meal . . . Cajun-style! (via @wadecortez) http://bit.ly/rukM1M

* * *

Signal-to-noise and old-cooterism, by @binarybits: onforb.es/nRWJTq

* * *

Crisis in Swedish Ballet Training: #WhyILoveMonocle

* * *

The next generation of painkillers will come in small nuggets that you heat up in a pipe and inhale. #drugdelivery

* * *

I still think that #CCTV building’s gonna tip over

* * *

I guess it’s a good thing Brooding Persian isn’t on Twitter. #associationsanddisassociations

* * *

Hegemony from column B: http://bit.ly/ott95H #SinoTheTimes

* * *

Chimpanzee that! He’s a photographer! #GoApe #monkeynews

* * *

@SimonDoonan on the Cute & the Savage: #notanewsoapopera

* * *

Sometimes the gorilla gets the banana, and sometimes the banana gets the gorilla. #GoApe

* * *

Nowhere, special: #NoUtopiaWithoutToddRundgren

* * *

Orwell vs. God

* * *

Building the perfect #KingLear: #Shakespeare

* * *

#WinstonGroom on #TrumanCapote: #getyourmindouttathegutter

* * *

I just want to stay ahead of my illiterate dad: http://bit.ly/kuJPUt (okay, here are all the books I’ve read)

* * *

Chess computers are using PEDs?

* * *

High school time capsule, courtesy of #BourgeoisSurrdender

* * *

In this particular instance, I’ll chose NOT to #belikeMike, thank you: http://bit.ly/iYSriE

* * *

The accordion market gets squeezed: #bwahhaha

* * *

John Lindsay: one suave mofo: #mayorofcool

* * *

To end this month’s installment, I offer 1 Lap of Manhattan in 26 minutes (soundtrack set to Underworld, of course):

Posted on

Thunderstruck

In 2003, I took a 2-week vacation to New Zealand. During that trip, I bungee-jumped, jetboated through river-canyons, took my first helicopter ride (over a rain-forest, onto a glacier), table-danced to AC/DC, and otherwise had the time of my life. The most daring thing I did on the trip? Drink with Australian men.

My last night in NZ, I partied with some Aussies who were in Queensland for a friend’s triathlon. They introduced me to what I thought was the most evil mixed drink ever: the Flatliner. For nearly a decade, I hadn’t come across a worse idea for a drink. When I finally did, it came from an Australian.

In edition 108 of Monocle’s weekly podcast, Australian food writer Jill Dupleix talked about Sydney’s restaurant, bar and coffee scenes. She had a neat observation about the way the 1996 summer Olympics induced an entire generation of youth to drop out of school and go into the hospitality industry. “It was like the national service,” she said. “Like they’d been conscripted.”

And then she mentioned what has to be The Worst Drink Ever: the Lagerita. “A massive amount of beer, ice, tequila and lime juice in a great big glass tankard,” as she described it. I’m sure there are more terrible ingredients in the mix.

My point — and I can’t stress this enough — is never drink with Australians.

Posted on

In Search Of . . . Gargantua

So back in April, I added the two hardcover collections of Madman comics to my Amazon wish-list. I used to read the Tundra issues of Madman back in my college days, and thought it would be nice to catch up on almost 20 years of work from Mike Allred.

Problem was, the newer volume, Madman Atomica, is still in print, but 2007’s Madman Gargantua isn’t. Its list price for the 850-page book was $125 but used sellers were asking around $150 and higher. I could afford it, but it wasn’t that big a priority. Maybe it’ll get reissued sometime, I thought. And maybe it’d be more fun to stop in or call comic stores and see if they had it in stock.

Now, I have no idea if normal people experience anything like this, but for a comic reader, there’s a great joy in finding This One Book I’m Looking For.

I don’t even know if the thrill is gone, since we live in a world of near-infinite, and infinitely available, entertainment. Everything can be ordered online, or downloaded for immediate gratification. Do back issues matter anymore, if everything’s been collected in a reprint?

And it wasn’t just comics for me; I also used to hunt down books with the same in-person fervor. Of course, there’s a greater disappointment in finding the book you’ve been searching for, because of the realization that it’ll take a lot longer to read than a long-sought comic will. There’s also the disappointment of finding the object of your quest in a boring location. In my sophomore year of college, I finally stumbled across a copy of William Gaddis’ first novel, The Recognitions, on the shelves of a Brentano’s Books in a suburban NJ mall. No dark, dingy used bookshop or literary salon: just fluorescent lighting and blue-gray carpeting in a mall of Rt. 206.

One of my best finds was in my college years, when I stopped into The Paperback Exchange, a since-closed comic store in Nanuet, NY, on the way home from college. I asked the owner, “You got a comic by Kyle Baker, called, ‘Why I Hate Saturn‘?” That one was impossible to find, but every cartoonist I liked was praising it to the heavens that year.

He said, “We’ve got one in the back room, but it’s a little dinged up. You still wanna buy it?”

“. . . Sure,” I said, trying not to betray the fact that I was ready to knife the guy and run into the stockroom to find that book.

I bought it, and was the envy of my geek pals back at Hampshire, until the second printing finally came out a few years later.

I have no idea if people still prowl for out-of-print comics and books. I mean, I’m allegedly a grown-up and don’t spend a lot of time hunting for comics, so none of this is meant to reflect the attitudes of the comic-reading world at large. But seeing “Available from these sellers” on Gargantua’s Amazon page reminded me of how I enjoyed scoping out shops for That One Book. I decided to make it my not-too-imperative mission to find that book.

Over the last few weeks, I called a number of NJ and NY comic stores about the book, but no one had it in stock. I didn’t expect much luck from suburban comic shops, since they tend to be mainstream-oriented. But they tend to have just one or two little unappreciated gems on the shelves. Perhaps the owner took a flyer on a certain paperback, figuring that one kid might buy it when he’s back from college. But it was to no avail. Shop after shop in the area hadn’t seen the book since it was first in print. Understandable, since a $125 book in a non-returnable market is quite a commitment for a store-owner, and it’s not like Madman was a household name or had a movie coming out.

On Tuesday evening, Amy & I went out for dinner. While she was in the restroom, I flicked through the Twitter feed on my iPhone. A tweet from Madman creator Mike Allred scrolled by: “Any comic shops out there still have MADMAN GARGANTUA at cover price or below? I know isotopecomics.com has a picture of it on a shelf…”

Then one of his followers tweeted “funny books in lake hiawatha new jersey does! I just saw it there”

I didn’t recognize the town, and immediately typed it into my Maps app. It was about 20 minutes away from the restaurant, and 30 minutes from my home. As Amy returned to the table, I searched the store online. Without looking up, I said, “We may be making a detour to Lake Hiawatha. It’s not too far out of the way.”

“What’s there?”

“A comic store that has This One Book I’ve been looking for.”

I can never tell if her knowing glances are as filled with pity as I think they are.

I called up the store’s site and discovered that it’s closed on Tuesdays. (That’s a standard practice for comic shops; since new comics arrive on Wednesday, Tuesdays tend to do the least business.) I decided to hit the store immediately after work on Wednesday.

Before calling the store in the morning to make sure they had the book, I started thinking about how high I’d go over cover price. After all, $125’s already pretty steep for a comic collection, and he did have me over a barrel, since it’s not like I could just go to another store down the street to buy it. I concluded, if the price got anywhere near the used sellers on Amazon ($165 today), I would bail.

Around 10:30 a.m., I rang the store up. I asked the owner if he had the book in stock. “Sure do! Now this is the first one, the out-of-print one,” he said.

“That’s the one I’m looking for. What time are you open till tonight?” You must understand: I actually thought that either Mike Allred or some fan was going to swoop into this little town in suburban NJ and buy this rare treasure if I didn’t make the trip that very day.

“Nine p.m.”

“Great! And how much is the book?”

“Well, the list price is $125 . . . but I can let you have it for $100.”

God bless comic shop owners and their failure to grasp supply-and-demand.

After going home and walking and feeding the doggies first, I drove down to the shop. It was one town over from where I occasionally bought comics in high school. The owner took the copy of Gargantua out from the counter — yes, I’d asked him to put it aside when I called — and gave me the brief tour of his shop. It was small, but well frequented on New Comics Day, with several customers coming through during my 10-15 minutes there. He tried to gauge my interest in LOST, the Captain America movie, and DC Comics’ impending relaunch of 52 (!) of its titles, but soon figured out that my interests were on the indie side of the scene, not the superhero end of things.

He showed me a shelf or two of books that were part of his 50% off FAIL SALE, and I scoured that for overlooked treasure. I wound up with a recent Trondheim children’s book (I hear it’s not great, but it is Trondheim), a Beto Hernandez collection I didn’t own (hard to believe), and KIRBY FIVE-OH!, an oversized book collecting pieces from the 50 years of Jack Kirby’s career. Nothing I needed, but lots of things that I’d enjoy, esp. at half price.

As he rang me up, the owner tossed a freebie comic in my bag: it was a preview of the aforementioned relaunch of DC’s titles. I looked in horror at the cover of the preview — a new, “modern” Superman, who apparently wears patched jeans, leather boots, and grey knee-high socks (?) — tumbling into the mix with my purchases. I figured that six months of Kirby’s career showed more creativity and vitality than all of the 52 “creative” teams and titles previewed in that comic. At home that evening, I flipped through the preview and revised my opinion: two months.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get to the ginchy adventures of Frank Einstein . . .

Posted on

Hard Drivin’

After my wife read my previous post, in which I dithered about getting a new iMac, she said, “If it’ll help process photos better, then we should do it.” Just because she was under the influence of headache medication didn’t mean she wasn’t right. I was ready to pull the trigger on a refurb of a 27″ iMac from the Apple store on Friday, but I decided to price-check against Amazon, where I had a shit-ton of gift credit piled up, courtesy of their electronics trade-in store. (You should check this out if you have old iPhones, iPods or other tech-items you don’t use anymore.)

Amazon had marked down the same model of iMac, albeit not as far as Apple’s refurb. But then I discovered that Amazon also wasn’t going to charge sales tax ($100 on the Apple site). And Apple’s shipping options were

a) Free, but at least 1 week’s wait

b) $35 to get it to me by Tuesday or Wednesday

c) $50 to “overnight” it (Monday arrival).

What did Amazon offer? Overnight shipping, on Saturday, for $3.99. So I cashed in my gift-credit, ordered the iMac from Amazon and, sweartagod, had the new computer at my front door less than 24 hours later.

I decided to hold off on migrating my old system on to it until tomorrow, once Amy’s done shooting and processing today’s photos for the cookbook she’s contracted to do this summer.

Instead, I decided I would clean up my dreaded hard drive hoard.

(There are 4 more that are plugged in and thus not pictured.)

Externals

  • 1.5 tb Western Digital Elements – music & movies
  • 1.5 tb Western Digital Elements – music & movies backup
  • 1 tb iomega Prestige – Time Machine drive for 24″ iMac
  • 1 tb LaCie in that fancy Neil Poulton design – blank (used to be music & movies backup, but I don’t need that many copies of the library)
  • 1 tb Seagate – blank (used to be the music & movies drive, but I don’t trust Seagate drives)
  • 500gb Western Digital mybook – backup of 24″ iMac, plus space for other backup files
  • 500gb Western Digital mybook- blank
  • 320gb Western Digital mybook- backups of old computers and laptops. No, seriously.
  • 250gb LaCie shaped like an old-school Mac Mini – for photos (although we’re close to filling this one up)
  • 250gb Maxtor – holds about 100gb of video that a pal of mine sent me (someday I’ll convert all those NewsRadio files into mp4/m4v and import ’em into iTunes, I guess)
  • 200 gb LaCie – blank (used to back up the photo drive, but we filled it up; it’s got this awesome metal case that weighs a ton)

    •  

Portables

  • 1tb Western Digital my passport – movies backup (named Vic Taybackup)
  • 500gb Western Digital my passport – music backup
  • 320gb iomega – music backup (sue me)
  • 320gb iomega – backup of photo drive
  • 320gb iomega eGo – backup of Amy’s laptop
  • 320gb iomega – backup of my laptop and my office computer

Yes, that’s seventeen external/portable hard drives in one room (not all plugged in, mind you), including 2.7 tb in blank drives. Oh, and I have a full music/movie library external drive at my office, bringing the count to eighteen.

How’d it get this bad? Well, I guess I’m just a sucker for NewEgg’s cheap deals. And I can’t throw ’em out, because, um, what if I need one someday?

So the big question is: do I pick up a 2 tb external to use as a Time Machine drive for the new iMac? The 2 tb Western Digital Elements is only $99 at NewEgg . . .

Posted on

Far From the Tree

To quote Kip Dynamite, “I love technology.”

I’m not a super-geek, but I am a geek. I admit it. I like neat gadgets. During our trip to Louisiana last weekend, my mother-in-law asked me how I knew about the Kindle and the iPad and all this technology. I was stuck for an answer. I couldn’t exactly say, but I also couldn’t imagine not knowing about this stuff.

Along those same lines, my father-in-law is really good at carpentry, home repair and the like. I play along, but feel pretty inadequate about my own skills in that field. But when I installed a wireless router at their home last Christmas and tried to explain how to troubleshoot it, his whole tone of voice changed and he sounded . . . pretty much what I sound like when he starts talking about carpentry.

Now, it’s not like I’m always buying the newest and greatest stuff. I don’t play video games (I have too addictive a personality), I never adopted Blu-Ray, and most of my computers are from Apple’s refurbished store (same warranty, decent discount). And I tend to ride devices into the ground. I virtually never trade up unless a device is near the end of its service life. This has put me in a conundrum.

I use an iMac for my desktop computer at home. It’s a 24″ refurb model from mid-2007 and it runs perfectly fine (although it’s a little pokey trying to deal with my ridiculously outsized iTunes library). Amy uses it for her photo processing, and I do writing, research and general webbery on it. It’s outlived its 3-year AppleCare warranty window, but doesn’t show any sign of impending failure.

I’ve been pretty happy with the old machine, and figured I could keep riding it for another year or two, but I’ve just discovered that this computer is too old to run Lion, Apple’s new OS.

That’s right. Mr. Tekmology owns a machine that’s too antiquated. So now I have to decide whether I should pick up a new (refurb) iMac just to be able to use all these neat features. Can I just keep rolling along with the perfectly functional oldster, or will I start giving it resentful looks, irked that it can’t keep up with the hot new model?

(Cut me some slack: my old man’s mid-life crisis consisted of motorcycles, Corvettes and 18-year-old hairdressers, okay?)

BONUS!

While trying to find some info on my current iMac, I found the site where Apple keeps a list of all the devices I’ve registered with them over the years. (If you have an Apple ID, you can find yours at supportprofile.apple.com) Holy crap, has it been a pricey decade:

 

  • iPhone 4
  • Macbook Air (11-inch Late 2010): I managed to get $500 in trade-in value from Tekserve for my old Air, so this model didn’t cost me too much.
  • iPad 3G: two (Amy deserved one, too)
  • iPhone 3G: two (ditto)
  • iPod classic 160GB (Late 2009)
  • Macbook Air (13-inch Early 2008)
  • iPod 5th Generation (Late 2006)
  • iPhone: one (first-gen)
  • MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2010): for Amy
  • MacBook Pro (15-inch Core 2 Duo): two (I sold one to my boss; I can’t remember what became of the other one)
  • iMac (24-inch Mid 2007): this is the desktop computer that appears to be just too old to run the new OS
  • Mac mini (Early 2009): two (they were on sale in the refurb store; I gave one to my mom and use the other one to rip DVDs and serve up music & movies to my Apple TV)
  • iSight: camera for my OLDold iMac
  • iMac G5 (20-inch): the aforementioned old iMac. I gave this to my brother a few years ago; it melted down after around 7 years of use, which is pretty impressive
  • iPod (Click Wheel)
  • PowerBook G4 (12-inch DVI): I still have this 12″ PowerBook. I break it out once a year to print labels at our annual conference. The screen grows dimmer each year. It also weighs around twice what my current Air weighs
  • iPod (10 GB with Dock Connector): This one is lying on the floor of the WABAC machine.

The 10gb iPod cost $299 back in mid-2003. It was the third generation of the device. That was the model with the buttons that had slightly raised rings around them and red lights for the icons. It was, at the time, the greatest thing ever. My current iPod has 16 times that storage space and cost less.

Posted on

Who Am I?

I’m the guy who bought the following books at The Strand yesterday:

So I’m the guy who occasionally undercuts the Kindle revolution a little.