Category Adventures in Gin

Entries 55 Total

Finishing the Dance

Dec 9, ’11 9:16 PM

I first encountered A Dance To The Music Of Time in the mid-’90′s. A Borders bookstore had opened at the West Belt Mall in Wayne, NJ, and as was my wont, I inspected the fiction section — or was it “literature”?

At the time, my points of reference were the beginning of the G’s, where I’d look for Williams Gaddis and Gass, as well as David Gates, and the late P’s, where I’d check the selection of books by Richard Powers and Thomas Pynchon. It was in the latter section that I discovered Anthony Powell. University of Chicago Press had recently released a four-volume, slipcased edition of A Dance To The Music Of Time.

In college, I focused on “the encyclopedic novel” for my literature degree. I had a vague idea of what that term meant, and wound up conflating it with “really long novels with which I could impress/cow my contemporaries.” As such, this 12-novel cycle looked like it was right up my alley. Still, I’d never heard of Powell and the internet in that period wasn’t as awash in fan pages for obscure artists as it is today.

Further, I don’t recall there being any “flap copy” or anything else involving a plot description on the slipcase, which was shrink-wrapped to prohibit singleton sales. So I had nothing to go by, in terms of knowing what this series was about. The case was adorned with Poussin’s eponymous painting of the Dance, and the spine of each volume was a detail of one or another face of the dancers. I knew nothing of Poussin back then, still a year away from reading Arcadia for the first time.

The dance to the music of time c

Sixty or so dollars was a large sum to me in those days, so I held off on buying the Dance. It slipped off my radar shortly after. When Powell died in 2000, I read up on the Dance a little. I considered tackling the series, which is a sort of roman a clef of British literary & society life through the eyes of a crypto-Powell narrator over the span of half a century, but never got around to it. I noted at the time that it seemed like a book to tackle in my 40′s. I used to say that about Proust when I was young, but I got around to him before turning 35, and should’ve done so sooner.

It wasn’t until last December, when U of Chicago Press announced that it had released all 12 novels as e-books, that I returned to the notion of reading the Dance. Like a good drug dealer, the publisher was offering the first e-book free. I had just finished My Year Of Gin, in which I would try a bottle of a new (to me) boutique gin each month of the year. I had planned to write about the project, but both overachieved (in terms of bottles) and underachieved (in terms of coherence), and so scrapped my chronicle of the project. You can, however, find photographic evidence here:

A Dance To The Music Of Time, it seemed to me, would make for a fine followup. The two projects were of a piece with what I now realize is a life of dilettantism. Why not give my amateur passions some degree of structure by organizing them around the calendar?

And so I decided to read one book of the Dance each month throughout 2011. Besides allowing the pace to mirror the seasons themselves, around which each novel was (subtly) organized, I was also protecting myself from burnout. I know myself well enough to know how easy it would be for me to roll through 3 or 4 of the books in the first 6 weeks of the year, before allowing the distractions and derailments that characterize much of my life to lead me away.

This morning, I finished reading the last of the 12 books, Hearing Secret Harmonies. My wife still asks me, “So, is it good?” and I don’t know exactly how to answer her.

I certainly enjoyed reading the novels, and I’ll be the first to admit that Powell’s prose can be quite tortured at times. I was also amazed at the reticence to reveal anything about the narrator’s own life or feelings, to the extent that one never learns Jenkins’ children’s names nor much about the books he writes over his 70 years (his volume on Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy notwithstanding).

At times, the sheer volume of coincidental meetings can be maddening (coincidence being the author’s point, I know). Another type of coincidence, during a bombing raid of London, strains all credulity. But then, perhaps that’s because my own life doesn’t have much room for chance meetings nowadays. In the early books, bumping into old friends takes the place of the narrator having to commit any real activity. While the stories and the interrelations of his friends and acquaintances are engaging, I found the “autumn” novels — those covering WWII — much more entertaining, because the narrator was largely removed from his society surroundings and had to become much more of a participant in the world. Paradoxically, the level observation is much sharper in these books than the preceding ones. There’s a wonderful comedy of manners of Jenkins’ superiors at dinner, highlighting the absurdities and hierarchies of military life. (There’s also a great moment when Jenkins, who remembers everyone over the years, encounters his brigade from earlier in the war, and discovers that his old cohort has no recollection of him whatsoever.)

I think Jenkins also undergoes a maturation process during the war novels. By book 9, The Military Philosophers, his literary persona really blooms as his military duty begins to draw to a close. There’s a wonderful passage where he realizes his assignment has taken him to Cabourg, the town that Proust fictionalized into Balbec. Maybe it’s a sort of clue into the roman a clef of the whole Dance itself, but it’s also some of the most gorgeous writing in the books.

As I look back over the scope of it all, a story beginning in 1920 or thereabouts, carrying on to 1971 (the year I was born, coincidentally enough), and flashing back to Jenkins’ childhood in the naughts, I’m struck by the vividness of so many minor characters. Just like life, I didn’t think much of some of them at the time and miss them now they’re gone. (Speaking of which, Powell is merciless in his characters’ ends. So many figures are simply reported dead as the years carry on. I was under the impression that the whole cycle of novels would revolve around the four schoolboys introduced in the first book, and then found myself thinking, “Well, they didn’t actually show us [x]‘s body, so maybe he’s still alive and will be back in a later novel…”, as though Anthony Powell was writing The Fantastic Four or something.)

But I won’t write too much about the goings on of the Dance. I do think it comprises a wonderful tapestry of the transformation of a certain class in British society throughout the century, but it’s also the sort of thing that no one (I know) reads anymore. In harmony with my college self, that’s probably a big part of why I stuck with this project all year.

Just as Jenkins sees patterns and echoes throughout the generations (and there are plenty of echoes in the last novel), I know there are echoes of myself from that pretentious college kid to this pretentious trade magazine editor. But there are also substantial changes, both internal and external. That Borders was demolished a few years ago, before the chain itself went under. Pynchon and Powers? I don’t read them much anymore.

I’m not sure if I’ve changed all that much since beginning A Question of Upbringing last January. It’s been a complex year, and I think reading The Leopard had more of an effect on me than these 12 novels. Perhaps I’m underestimating. After all, the clarity of the first 800 words or so of this piece — written in the morning after finishing Hearing Secret Harmonies, driving my wife to the bus stop, and walking the dogs in a frosted-over field — and the sense of bliss I had all morning long could be telling me that I’ve been feeling a subtle anxiety about completing the Dance. Maybe my hesitance and depression of these past few months has stemmed from an anxiety about coming to the end of something so long and continuous. (Everything after Anatomy of Melancholy was written following a long day at the office.)

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Unrequired Reading: April Link Showers

May 31, ’11 7:53 AM

Bizarre! I was just settling in to collect my May Twitter-links for a big Unrequired Reading when I discovered that last month’s load o’ links never went live! So here’s all of April’s great stuff! I’ll post May’s tomorrow!

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It’s time for another month’s worth of Twitter links, dear readers! If you want to follow along, I’m at twitter.com/groth18!

First, the retweets:

RT @mookiewilson86 (paul raff): David Koresh had a better homestand than the Mets.

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RT @ESQStyle Esquire Style: And the best-dressed male guest at the #RoyalWedding is… not David Beckham.

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RT @felixsalmon (felix salmon): Wherein Martin Amis blathers on for 4,000 dutiful but unnecessary words about Christopher Hitchens.

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RT @kylevanblerk (Kyle van Blerk): Client request of the year.

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RT @simondoonan (Simon Doonan): Creative factory: Simon Doonan, My Faves!

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RT @GreatDismal (William Gibson): “WE HELPED YOUR GRANDAD GET LAID” #daytonbootsvancouver

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RT @mattzollerseitz (Matthew Zoller Seitz): “‘After Hours’ exists to prove that ‘Taxi Driver’ actually displayed some restraint. @notjustmovies

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RT @JPosnanski (Joe Posnanski): In honor of touching CNN story, I write a little more about Nick Charles and a moment I’ll never forget.

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RT @asymmetricinfo (Megan McArdle): Why Europe won’t develop as an independent military power

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RT @kottke (kottke.org): Hilarious fake TLC promo

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RT @kylevanblerk (Kyle van Blerk): Bored at work. Photoshopping Bieber’s head onto things.

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RT @questlove (?Love of The Roots): Man. Not even “OJ Guilt” is the proper colloquialism for what I feel after eatin Cinnabon.

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And now, the links!

NBA Action: Bet On It! #IhadSpursandMagicinthefinals

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Ah, #vodka, with your “marketing gimmicks that make getting drunk seem like a gateway to fame and fortune”

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The bowling alley of the #Frick: it’s no basement of the Alamo, but still.

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There’s now a computer as dumb as my boss. #thatswhatshesaid

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Joe Queenan goofs on the #gehry glut.

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Is anyone at the #royalwedding sporting a monkey-tail beard?

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Via @khoi, abandoned Yugoslavia monuments of awesomeness.

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Xanadu comes back to life! (Will #MichaelBeck and @olivianj be at the opening?)

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Xanadu: More of disaster than @XanaduMovie? #likedecoratinganuclearreactor #bringbacktheAlexander’smural

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In the movie, I see Billy Bob Thornton as the local, and Pesci as the mobster: #greateststoryever #trustme

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“Tefillin: it’s like Jewish blood pressure.” Go, @MitzvahTank! #areyouJewish?

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Will nobody think of the #pistachios?!

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#AllStarSuperman never should’ve released the sun-eater from captivity:

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The Walk of Shame goes #StreetStyle, via @sartorialist

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So VCs are like the AIDS activists of our time?

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I’m all for taking advantage of gorgeous chicks, but sheesh! #modelscam (via @felixsalmon)

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#HaroldBloom and his “elite Europhile glasses” #agon

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Eat lead! #staedtler and #fabercastell at war

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Every so often, I remind myself why I find contempo literary fiction useless and stultifyingly dull

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Go read this #BenKatchor interview! Nownownow! #CardboardValise (just plow through the “what is comics?” section)

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@felixsalmon delivers a (much appreciated) Jonathan Franzen smackdown

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@witoldr on the secret language of architects.

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This #Houdini article escapes from the need to write in complete sentences. #escapeartistry

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I guess I oughtta get around to reading #GeoffDyer sometime, huh?

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In honor of tonight’s season 2 premiere of #Treme on #HBO, check out this interview with #WendellPierce (#BunkMoreland)

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#ChrisElliott has a DAUGHTER on SNL? #igrowold

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Dali makes aliyah!

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Ron Rosenbaum implores us to visit (Joyce’s) Ithaca (but not much else). (I admit I’ll likely skip #Ulysses)

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I’m awfully happy with my @allenedmonds, I have to say

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I look down on my wife. #shekicksmeintheshins

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#Starbury = Jim Jones?

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Is it good or bad that my TV/movie/prose diet is so similar to that of #StevenSoderbergh? #MillersCrossing!

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25 years ago: Graceland and the Gatwick Baby

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“People who drink coffee are different in many ways from those who don’t drink coffee” #whataboutgin?

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Geoff Dyer on being allergic to David Foster Wallace’s writing (his compare/contrast w/Federer is great)

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“You look into the fiery furnace and see the rich man without any name” #wallstreet

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Neat video of @billy_reid at home.

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@simondoonan on camp: “I am not the brightest Art Nouveau lamp in the room…” #needIsaymore?

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NOLA: The Big Hypothetical

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Fun interview with Glenn O’Brien, onetime Warhol employee and current #StyleGuy for #GQ: #howtobeaman #glennobrien

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Ah, get back to me around yer 20th reunion, ya young bastid.

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Neat take on Android, Google’s business model, and moats.

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Authors and broken promises. #Icantgetstarted

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I would prefer not to poke you. #groupmeh

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Um, the good news is that “cancer” doesn’t exist (the bad news is that it’s more complex than anyone thought) #uhoh

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Would it have more success if it were called a “scrodpiece”? #probablynot

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“It’s still real to me, dammit!” #soareconcussions #andearlydeath #wwe

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When Antonioni met Tarkovsky: #shakeitlikeaPolaroidpicture

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RPG = Rocket-Powered Genius (of design) #rocketpunchgeneration

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@rupaul answers all questions, except, “What’s up with the mustache?” #dragrace

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@david_j_roth speaks truth to pizza (I still don’t understand how @pizzahut stays in business here in NJ.)

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Is there a Damien Hirst level to unlock? #jeffkoonsmustdie

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By @mattnycs: Vote for the man in the small hat: a rabbi runs for office … in Uganda: Parts I and II #really

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Hot chicks with (old) douchebags: #Iblamesociety #Ialsoblamehotchicks

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No Shakespeare in Topeka? #talentnotgenius #billjames

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#Koppenburg: why I don’t bike. #whoneedstheexercise?

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Accidental Mysteries: masked #seenandunseen

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GREAT piece by @comicsreporter on a trip to the #centerforcartoonstudies

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Because, as we know from #chrisrock, books are like Kryptonite to… certain people: #padandquill

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The Perplexitude of Hilfiger

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Proto-Facebook

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Darkness at Noonan: #tomgoestothebar (happy 60th, Tom Noonan!)

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And I close this month’s edition with a non-link:

“I used to believe that worry was a talisman against something bad happening to you.” thx for the wisdom, @ConanOBrien (& @MarcMaron)!

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Who Am I?

May 21, ’11 8:59 PM

I’m the guy who realized how much he sounded like Ron Swanson when he explained to someone yesterday, “I only drink three things: water, black coffee, and gin. You may think I mean that’s what I like to drink, but that’s not what what I’m saying. I’m saying I only drink water, black coffee and gin.”

Ronswivel

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Unrequired Reading: The Februariad

Feb 28, ’11 1:00 AM

Here’s your monthly dose of Unrequired Reading, dear readers who are too lazy or otherwise uninclined to follow my twitter feed at twitter.com/groth18

My dogs would get so confused on these awesome staircases.

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Nothing about how Craigslist enables Arab protestors and revolutionaries to get laid? #noitdoesnt

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Great pix from Sept. shuttle trip in honor of my production manager, who bailed on our current ish to watch the launch.

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Simon Schama on Helen Mirren. Well, not ON Helen Mirren, but you know. #IneverdidseethatMazurskyversionoftheTempest

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Sadly, I’m sure there’s a novel/screenplay about a romance between a mope and a fluffer.

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So it’s better to shoot at civilian protestors with 7.62s, not .50s?

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“Exotic Superfluid Found in Ultra-Dense Stellar Corpse”: the title of the new Orb record? #littlefluffytweets

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Glad to find out street heroin and my G&Ts both have quinine: always important to stave off malaria. #themoreyouknow

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I’d be afraid of the NJ version of this #50moststylishnewyorkers list.

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Gator and the Berra. #NYY #louisianalightning

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Don’t bet against the Tic-Tac-Toe Chicken. #starbucksduanereadeorcupcakes

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Profile of Al Goldstein: the (not-)new pornographer.

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Greatest. Memo. Ever. #weneedtosolvepakistanbeforelunch

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@simondoonan: not exactly a fan of Fashion Week (but hilarious). http://slate.me/gLK6Jz #nyfw

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tl;dr?

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There really should be a Yinka Dare award, too. #nbaantiawards

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Great Michael Caine interview. Get Carter was #badass

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“Alcoholic hospice”? I used to joke about drinking with careerist determination, but wow.

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Ahoy-ahoy! #thatisall

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If only Bill Murray had missed out on The Man Who Knew Too Little, too… http://bit.ly/fCEPi9 #billmurray #castingdirectorofbabel

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To Mr. & Mrs. Ball, a son: Curve. #intheloop #greatestmovieever

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That’s it! No Ferrari for me! #okayidriveasubaru

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KenJen on #Watson: very smart, very fast, speaks in an uneven monotone, and has never known the touch of a woman.

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Michael Lewis (satirically) on who’s to blame for the financial crisis: #blamecanada?

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It’d be funnier if the greys just took off like rockets: #judginggreyhounds

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Did NYC consult @dandrezner for the zombie invasion section? #apocalypselaw #escapefromnewyork

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West Egg. 8-Bit. Great Gatsby video game. #gatsbyfornes

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Great piece by Adam Kirsch on literary criticism. Go read it! #notbookreviews

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Sartoria Rossi: or is it Satori Rossi? #beitalian #iwishicoulddressthiswell

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@nealstephenson on the development of the Rocket #ficktnichtmitderRaketemensch! #youdroppedthebombonme

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Valentine’s Day special! Here are the best NYC restaurants in which to stage a breakup! #noromance

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Fun story of SEO abuse on Google. #jcpenney #seohack

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Not on the menu @ Veselka: Ron Rosenbaum on cannibalism in the Ukraine c.1932-3 #noendtoevil #ieatcannibals

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Schizo NYC from @jeremoss: Two-Face, Composite Superman, or Ultra The Multi-Alien? #splitcity #uglierbytheday

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“Yoga in bed” is a euphemism, right? #clydefrazier #whatrhymeswithtantric

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Ouroussoff fluffery on new Gehry bldg. Was this actually written by a computer using random samples of O’s prose?

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Important lesson – never marry a chemist: #whenxiaoyemetthallium

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I’d wear Jesse Eisenberg’s costuming from Social Network before I’d be caught dead in Sorkin’s sack suit #badfashion

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Richie Rich: explosion on the runway. http://bit.ly/gyAz2R #nyfw

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My old man swears he once reached a polar research base with his HAM setup: #wb2zvs

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Not quite as implausible as Jews In Space, but it’s close: Jews In Syria! (neat story, trust me) http://bit.ly/gkOntd

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Neat @nicknotned (Nick Denton) Atlantic Wire interview about his news consumption habits.

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Covering J.G. Ballard #jgballard

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Real question is: Can a novel be “philosophical” without being dreadfully dull? #doubtit

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Metropolitan or Gossip Girl? or … #whitstillman #gossipgirl (I’m a Metropolitan man)

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Queenstown, where I heard the voice of God (also, where I bungee-jumped) http://nyti.ms/dSZiHx

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Greatest. Band name. Ever. #drteethandtheelectricmayhem

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Clive James on roman policier: #okaytheyrecrimenovels

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The honey badger doesn’t give a shit: #randall

Honey badger remains b-a-d-a-s-s (I can’t even survive drinking half a 40 of King Cobra). #honeybadger

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In this almost empty gin palace . . .

Jan 1, ’11 10:30 AM

I planned to try out 12 new (to me) gins in 2010. I was going to write about one each month and add a “My Year of Gin” feature to my blog. I gave up on that idea pretty quickly and decided to sample a whole bunch over the course of the year:

ginyear

If you click through to the flickr page, you’ll find notes (and links) on all them. In addition to these bottles (please note that not all of them are empty; I’m not that much of a lush), there are a few I haven’t tried yet, including the “high test” version of Old Raj (110 proof), Blue Gin, and North Shore No. 11. Also, I had a very nice G&T during my November trip to New Orleans using Right Gin, which I haven’t picked up a bottle of yet.

No, I don’t have any resolutions for 2011. Why do you ask?

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Unrequired Reading: September 10, 2010

Sep 10, ’10 4:00 AM

Are you ready for some linkball?

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What It Is: 7/5/10

Jul 5, ’10 8:23 AM

What I’m reading: Once I was done reading financial filings, press releases and analyst reports for my Top Companies ish, I was able to kick back, relax and celebrate the July 4th weekend by re-reading Heart of Darkness!

What I’m listening to: Night Work (Scissor Sisters), We Are Born (Sia), a new Mad Mix I’m putting together, and Big Boi’s Mixtape for Dummies.

What I’m watching: Jaws, The Sixth Sense, a documentary about plate lunch diners in southern Louisiana, and some Yankees baseball.

What I’m drinking: No. 209 & Q-Tonic, after an aborted attempt at making a G&T out of Ransom, an Old Tom (malted) gin. Blech.

What Rufus & Otis are up to: Well, Ru didn’t have a good weekend. He’s terrified of fireworks (and thunder, but we haven’t had that in a while), so he spent much of Saturday and Sunday nights curled up in the back corner of my home office. On Sunday, a late-day walk home from a neighbor’s party left him with a little blister on a front paw-pad, so he’s limping all over the place today. I bandaged it up, but that just makes him look more pathetic. Otis, on the other hand, got to take a solo trip to the Ridgewood dog park on Friday, where he met The Big Dog. He had an okay time, but consecutive days with “chasing squeaky tennis ball” sessions left him with a little tear on his carpal pad (the paw pad further up on the “wrist”, which they use for braking). I’m just a bad dogfather, I know.

Where I’m going: Portland, OR next week for the annual meeting of the wonderfully named Controlled Release Society (get yer mind outta the gutter; there’s nothing tantric about it).

What I’m happy about: I managed to finish that July/August issue in time and managed to squeeze a 30 Rock joke into my editorial (how an earlier feature went over about as well as NBC’s Salute to Fireworks). And getting out to see my pals John & Liz for a July 3rd party. And being rewarded for a 40-minute traffic jam on the way home on the NYThruway that evening; it turned out to have been caused by a bus fire. By the time we passed it, the bus had been so thoroughly scorched that its entire skin was gone. I haven’t seen any news items on it, so it’s likely no one was hurt; that means I’m allowed to consider it awesome.

What I’m sad about: The sight of a limping dog; Sia’s decision to cover Madonna’s Oh Father instead of its Like a Prayer companion song, Dear Jessie; my 68-year-old, somewhat-invalid neighbor’s accident that left her Saturn SUV rolling down the hill in the woods behind her house on Saturday morning. (She had gotten out of the car to move her walker, but left it in drive. She wasn’t hurt, and the Saturnstopped after 25 or 30 feet when it ran into a fallen tree.)

What I’m worried about: Today’s trip to the endodontist, in which I get to cap off 6 months of heavy duty work-stress by getting assessed for a root canal. Go, me!

What I’m pondering: Whether I should let my Sports Illustrated subscription lapse. I got a few renewal forms in the last month or two, and it occurred to me that I barely get around to reading SI or the ESPN mag nowadays. I still dig sports, but I’m more likely to read New York, Monocle, or the Paris Review when I’m in my, um, favorite reading location.

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What It Is: 6/7/10

Jun 7, ’10 7:46 AM

What I’m reading: Pattern Recognition

What I’m listening to: Around the World in a Day, Wake Up the Nation, and The Finest Thing

What I’m watching: Extract and In The Loop

What I’m drinking: Budweiser Select 55. Don’t judge me. I was at an impromptu crawfish boil. See?

IMG_0662

What Rufus & Otis are up to: Gallivanting with their pals Ruby & Willow while we were away for the weekend in Louisiana (see the pictures!). Also, getting used to their new beds. Rufus is settling into his, but Otis has never had a new bed before, and is unaccustomed to its thickness. He tends to slide off of it, like a fat guy trying to get on an inflatable raft.

Where I’m going: Chicago & Madison, WI for a client’s press event. For two-and-a-half days. The last day will include a three-hour bus-ride to Madison, and a Madison-to-Milwaukee-to-Newark flight home.

What I’m happy about: Not dying from eating a bad crawfish.

What I’m sad about: That only two of my friends sent me this Slate story about gin the moment they saw it. I expected at least a half-dozen of you to forward that to me.

What I’m worried about: Well, I was worried about my eyesight, because I’ve been having a lot of trouble with my contacts in the past few weeks. If I read on the computer or the iPhone for a little while, I found my eyes just couldn’t focus well. Only this morning did I discover that my optometrist, or the contact lens company, sent half of this year’s lenses in my standard prescription, and the other half with a stronger prescription. So, for 6 weeks, I’ve been using lenses that are too strong for my eyes. Grar.

What I’m pondering: How much my life has changed since I first read Pattern Recognition. I wrote about it in the very early days of this blog (Feb. 2003), and was pretty dismissive. Now I find it much more fulfilling, even if one of my earlier critiques holds up (the McGuffin is still too similar to that of his second novel). I’m no longer so sensitive about its 9/11-ness, and my own awareness/interest in fashion and corporate brands has helped inform this re-reading of the book. The really jarring thing this time was the first chapter or so, which felt embarrassingly like “SF writer not quite ready to downshift into a here-and-now setting.” The opening descriptions feel like they’re from another novel, before he got the hang of writing about “the present.” But I’m much more forgiving, this time around.

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Weakly – May 6: The Miracle and the Wrigley Killing Field

May 18, ’10 8:48 PM

[This is the fourth in a series of long-ass rambling posts about my travels in Chicago and Toronto from May 3-9. Part 1 is over here and part 2 is over there. Now, where did I put part 3? Oh, it's right here!]

Where were we? Oh, yeah: I had gone to bed at midnight, head pounding, anticipating a hangover to rival Informex in Las Vegas 2004. That time, my publisher, a sales-pal of his, and I started drinking sangria around 4 p.m. when the show ended, and kept going until around 11. That was the time I discovered you could be hungover while still drinking. The cab-ride to the airport the next morning was no doubleplusungood. However, the early-morning flight back to Newark was filled with TV executives, and they were all coke-burnouts, so my omnipresent sunglasses and greenish pallor went unremarked.

This time around? Sure, I’d taken the ibuprofen & Gatorade combo that served me in pretty good stead back in grad school, but I didn’t have high hopes.

And then I opened my eyes at 6 a.m. and felt perfectly fine. I was puzzled. I immediately ran my hangover-diagnostic, rolling my eyes up, down, left and right, waiting for the brain-crippling pain to strike. But it never came. I cautiously got out of bed, expecting to find that

  1. I was still drunk and couldn’t stand up straight,
  2. I was dead and that a bright white light was going to stream through the door of the hotel room and take me to that great mall in the sky, or
  3. I’d crapped the bed.

Astonishingly, it turned out to be none of the above. A miracle had transpired, right there in my overpriced hotel room in Chicago! I’ve long sworn by the notion high-end gins as being less damaging to one’s health than a Bombay Sapphire or Tanqueray, but the two Hendrick’s at dinner were pretty sizable and (for me) quickly consumed. I didn’t recall pacing the North Shore & tonic over any appreciable length of time. And I’d neglected to mention the beers earlier at the conference, a couple of Sam Adams bottles courtesy of the nearby Massachusetts pavilion, because I didn’t want you to think ill of me.

With relative vigor, I strode into the bathroom and peed for about five minutes straight, during which time I checked my iPhone, which I’d left charging on the counter. It was there that I’d received the bad news to counter my awesome start to the day.

My pal Tom, who was planning to join us in Toronto for the weekend, had to cancel his trip. His mom (and travel partner for this junket) had taken ill the night before the flight to Canada, and he could neither compel her to risk her life on a plane or abandon her, what with it being Mother’s Day weekend and him being a decent human being. Beyond my worries about his mom’s health, this bummed me out because I was hoping to spend some time shooting the breeze with Tom during the trip. Also, he was supposed to moderate an all-star panel of cartoonists at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival during the weekend, and I knew how much he was looking forward to that. And then there was the panel we were supposed to moderate together . . .

He’d e-mailed 40 minutes earlier with the bad news and asked me to call. It was 4 a.m. local time for him, but I followed his orders. He told me that his mom had been able to rest once Tom had convinced her that she wasn’t “ruining everything” by getting sick. I’m sure the anxiety over a canceled trip exacerbated the health problems she was having. Tom was sad about having to miss TCAF, as well as dining & conversation with me and Amy.

A week earlier, he asked me if I’d be interested in co-moderating a panel with him during the festival. It would consist of the two of us interviewing one of my favorite cartoonists, Roger Langridge. Tom figured that I could focus on Roger’s earlier “alternative” work, while he would tackle Roger’s most recent project, an ongoing comics adaptation of The Muppet Show. I was thrilled to have been invited, but by the end of our conversation this morning, I had volunteered to conduct the interview solo. It’s funny how these things happen. Once we were off the phone, I wrote down in my notebook, “Pick up Langridge books!” I was only going to be home for about 10 hours between flights, and would likely forget something important; I’d need to read through some of Roger’s comics to put together some good questions for him.

Meanwhile, I still had another day of BIO ahead of me! The only appointment on my calendar had fortunately rescheduled from an 8 a.m. breakfast conversation to a 1 p.m. stop at my booth. Hungover or not, I was happy not to have a conversation about bio-manufacturing market issues before I’d metabolized my morning coffee.

Also, it’d give my skin time to settle down. Between the harsh soap of hotel sheets and pillowcases, and the need to shave every morning (I usually go 2 days between shaves), my face can get pretty scratchy and irritated in the morning. There are many little aspects of business travel that make it a pain.

So I packed, cleaned up, put on “final day” clothes — suit-jacket, dress shirt and tie and khakis, rather than a full suit — and headed out for the show. The stop for the shuttle-bus was gone, as our corner of E. Illinois St. was blocked off for some sort of Top Chef competition and taping. A cardboard cutout of Padma Lakshmi leaned against a production truck. I wondered if I could get it onto the airplane that evening. The new stop turned out to be around the block, and I shared the trip with another pal from the same Belfast-based company. His accent is easier for me to understand than Philip’s, but he’s a quiet-talker, so I was back at square one.

For some reason, the conference organizers had decided that the final day of BIO should run a full 9:00-5:00 schedule, a bizarre move considering that

  1. shows always have shorter hours on the final day, because that day is slower than molasses and it’s ridiculous to make exhibitors stand around with no one to see for 8 hours, and
  2. this would result in hundreds — if not thousands — of people streaming out to cabs and airport shuttles during Chicago rush hour.

My flight home was 7:15, and I already anticipated that I would have to get out of a traffic-stranded cab, grab my suitcase, and start running down the highway to get to O’Hare in time. Fortunately, my boss realized that it was a little unfair to have me on setup and teardown duty with my mini-vacation schedule. He paid the show organizers to take down the pop-up, pack it, and ship it back to us. This meant I could bolt by 3:30 or 4:00. I was relieved.

“It’s a pity you didn’t come to dinner with us last night,” my boss said. We nicknamed him Captain Zagat because of his devotion to finding great restaurants wherever we go.

“Where’d you eat?”

“We went for Italian,” he said. I looked puzzled; what with him being a goombah from NJ and all, I didn’t think he’d bother with Italian anywhere but home. “Yeah, yeah, I know. This is probably the first Italian restaurant I’ve gone to west of New York. But it was amazing! The only problem happened at the end. . .”

The dinner party was just my boss, my sales director, and my associate editor. The latter two headed off for the ladies’ room while Cap’n Z. settled the bill. The owner came by the table to talk to him, and he told her how this was one of the finest Italian meals he’d ever had. She chatted with him for a second, then suddenly ran away from the table.

He wondered what he’d said to cause that reaction. Then she came running back, carrying a glass of water from a nearby table. Apparently, when my sales director had gotten up, she’d tossed her cloth napkin on the table and it landed on a candle. The owner was able to douse it before the fire spread, but my team was pretty embarrassed.

I was glad I went with My Dinner With Sid instead.

As is my wont, I meandered around the exhibit hall on and off throughout the day. Most of my advertiser pals were happy to shoot the breeze, since most attendees had already blown town. I was trading travel plans with a pal of mine. He was headed back to the Pacific Northwest the next day, so I gave him the location of the lounge I hit the night before, along with the name of that amazing gin.

I told him, “At some point, I thought it was smart to get a flight home that lands at 10:30 p.m., then get a flight at 11 a.m. the next morning for Toronto.”

“You’re dumber than you look,” he remarked.

His new CEO, a smooth businessman near my age, was in earshot, and asked, “Why are you visiting Toronto?”

I thought for a moment about how to answer this. I could’ve just gone with, “I have family and friends up there, and my wife loves the restaurants.” After all, this guy represented one of our major advertisers, and I didn’t know him well enough to judge how he’d react to finding out the editor of one of the major pharma B2B magazines is also an indie-comic geek.

On a whim, I said, “There’s a comics and cartooning festival going on up there, and I’m moderating a panel.”

He brightened. “Really? There’s a fantastic comic store in Toronto that you have to visit!” he exclaimed.

I was flabbergasted, but was able to say, “You mean The Beguiling?”

“No, no! That’s good, too, but you have to get to The Silver Snail! It’s on Queen Street! It’s amazing!”

I told him I’d check it out, depending on how much time I had. He was heading out from the show, shook my hand, and left.

My pal stared at me, and said, “I don’t believe that just happened.”

“Neither do I! He likes comics?”

“Dude. That’s so bizarre.” He gathered up a few coworkers to tell them about the exchange, and all of them were incredulous. Between that and the discovery that my pal Sid went to college with my future sister-in-law, this trip sure kept me on my toes.

My 1:00 p.m. appointment rescheduled for 3:00 and, while it went well, we were often interrupted by the noise of people tearing velcro displays down, or sealing boxes with packing tape.

Around 3:30 the marketing director asked, “What time are you heading out?”

“As soon as we’re done talking,” I told her.

“Oh, my gosh!” said the VP of business development. “Why don’t you head out? We’ll talk more once we’re back in the office!” We traded cards and they left for their booth.

Here are the two biggest lessons I’ve learned in my <gasp!> 15 years covering trade shows for business magazines:

  1. wear comfortable shoes
  2. keep outgoing cards in one pocket, incoming cards in the other

The first is pretty obvious: you’re spending hours and hours walking through a lightly carpeted convention center hall. The second? Think of how dopey you look when you hand someone your card and then realize it’s another person’s card. You end up fumbling through a stack of jumbled cards, trying to find one of yours. It’s unprofessional and easily preventable: just keep your cards in one pocket, other people’s cards in the other. Don’t say I never did anything for you.

(Note: you could go with a fancy-looking card holder, but nobody trusts someone who uses one of those.)

Around 3:45, I closed up the booth, putting the remaining magazines out on the table, and headed for the cab stand. There was no line, which worried me. As it turned out, that was because every single person at BIO was already in a cab on the way to O’Hare. Seriously, the traffic was insane. I marveled at the idiocy of stretching the last day to 5:00 p.m., and was thankful that I wasn’t going to be there for it.

The 20-mile drive to O’Hare took more than hour. I put on my iPod, listened to The National, in anticipation of their new record, and watched the scenery, such as it was. The only noteworthy sight (well, the only thing I can recall) was a strange billboard for the Chicago Cubs:

It’s not opening day.

It’s opening year.

YEAR ONE

Year One? Eek! Apparently Pinella was overthrown by Pol Pot, the Cubbies are playing at Wrigley Killing Field and Carl Zambrano’s stint “in the bullpen” is just another version of the re-education camps. I can’t imagine what they’d do to Steve Bartman.

Anyway, the airport was uneventful. When I checked in at an e-kiosk, I was offered $200 to defer my flight till next morning. For a split-second, I thought, “I could change tomorrow’s ticket on Porter to a Midway-to-Toronto, and Amy could drive herself to Newark in the morning.” Then I thought, “Only if they add a zero or two to that offer.” They didn’t, so i spent some time in the Red Carpet Club (United’s version of the President’s Club), saw the news about some wild stock market gyrations, read some of that Mitchum biography, continued to marvel over my lack of a hangover, and chose not to tempt fate by having a Hendrick’s & tonic at the club bar.

I got in to EWR safe and sound, hit the ground running (well, relaxedly strolling) and walked in the door at home at 11:30 p.m., greeted by wife and tail-wagging, face-licking doggies, the latter of whom had no idea I was going to be out the door 10 hours later.

Next: Ame and Squalor Victoria

May 3: Bloodshot Eye of the Tiger

May 4: Skokie, the Germans, and the Lost Ugandan

May 5: “Jumpin’ with my boy Sid in the city”

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Weakly – May 5: “Jumpin’ with my boy Sid in the city”

May 17, ’10 5:53 PM

[This is the third in a series of long-ass rambling posts about my travels in Chicago and Toronto from May 3-9. Part 1 is over here and part 2 is over there.]

Before heading over to the McCormick Center for the second day of BIO, I made plans for dinner with my old pal Sid. We’d gone to the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College around the same time (I was 1993-95, and he was 1994-96). He’d seen my White Sox post on Monday (oh, and I forgot to mention: The national anthem at that game? That was sung by The Maytag Repair Man) and dropped me a line. We hadn’t seen each other in 15 years, so I was looking forward to catching up. I’ve been working pretty hard lately at not Doing All The Talking; I wondered how that would work out.

Meanwhile, if it’s Wednesday, then this must be Singapore! I had a 10 a.m. appointment with the Singapore delegation, which wanted to talk about the city-state’s biomedical initiatives and how I might be able to develop some good articles about the place. The three Singaporean representatives talked for a bit about the history of their home, the generational trends — founding generation was concerned with survival, second generation with building a middle class, third generation with entrepreneurialism — and the importance of moving from services to innovation. We were later joined by an American who was working for the group, and he gave me some western perspective on the business and social atmosphere. “You can get a green card there in two weeks! I’m not kidding!” he told me.

When the PR people for Singapore first contacted me six weeks ago, I had to do my standard check on far eastern countries that want publicity: do they hate Israel? A few years ago, I wrote about how Malaysia wanted to meet with me at BIO, and how that country’s stance against Israel — as in, it doesn’t and shouldn’t exist — put them on my “no fly” list. Singapore, it turns out, was quite the opposite; Israel was one of the first countries to recognize its independence, and the IDF may have helped Singapore build its army.

The conversation went well, concluding with an open-ended invitation to visit (on their dime, I think). I’m sure any such visit would end in my making an inadvertent transgression that leads to a judicial caning, but we’ll see.

From there, I hustled over to one of our advertisers. They had a new marketing team in place and wanted to talk with me about the state of their industry and their company’s place within it. That was an interesting conversation, because I thought the company had engaged in a flawed expansion strategy in the early part of the decade. It had gone through awful struggles based on one major acquisition gone wrong (c.2004), but even before that, I suspected the company was a house of cards.

We bickered a bit on disproving a negative — would the company have fallen into trouble without that big acquisition? — then moved on to the question about the viability of trade shows. Neither the new marketing director nor I knew if it made sense for companies like his to attend big trade shows (like BIO) anymore. For the past few years, we’d all seen attendance drop at the major events, and I’m convinced it’s only partly because of the economic slowdown. Companies exhibit at these shows to meet leads and try to develop new business, as well as to catch up with existing clients, keep up a presence, and otherwise keep abreast of industry happenings.

Some argue that, even though attendance at the major shows is down, but that the quality of the attendees is up. That is, the people who are attending are the real decision-makers, so you’re getting your money’s worth out of exhibiting. Others disagree and have withdrawn from a few major trade shows in recent years, which can have a domino effect: “If [X] isn’t there, then it must not be a major event anymore, and we shouldn’t be there either.”

I’m lucky, inasmuch as my presence at trade shows is for not-directly-commercial purposes. I’m there to make contacts, trade info, get story ideas, and keep up with our advertisers. Whenever anyone asks me, “How’s the show going?”, I tell them, “I’m not selling anything, so it’s going just fine!” Of course, we’re all selling something.

But it raises the question of where these contract service providers are supposed to make new leads, if not at trade shows. Print and online advertising are important, but the serendipity of an attendee walking by a booth and realizing, “Hmm, [company x] may be able to handle that assignment we need done,” is irreplaceable. At our own annual show, a much smaller affair than these multi-thousand attendee events (we have 140 exhibitors and around 350-400 attendees, depending on how good a lineup of speakers I come up with), we’ve had exhibitors tell us, “I wish we could pull out of [major show x] and just exhibit at your event. We get more leads here in one day than we do in three days there.”

So companies are re-assessing where they’ll exhibit and which shows deliver the attendee base they’re looking for, since attendance is suffering everywhere. More to the point, they’re trying to develop new models for how they make connections.

Which brings me to my evening with Sid.

I caught the shuttle back from BIO around 5:30 (no Uganda Limited this time), cleaned up, and went for a walk around the neighborhood. There was a used bookstore nearby, so I stopped in to, well, walk around a used bookstore. You know what I’m like.

I was hoping to find a present for Sid on the shelves, but they didn’t have any of my faves on hand. So I headed back to the lobby of my hotel, read Robert Mitchum’s biography on the Kindle app on my phone, and waited for my pal.

A few months ago, Sid’s Facebook status mentioned that he was staying in a hotel about 15 miles from my house in NJ for a corporate event. He was busy the whole time, so we couldn’t meet up. I was left to ponder what sort of company books national events in suburban NJ, only 10 miles away from New York. A quick look at his FB profile before our dinner in Chicago, and I discovered that he worked for a wine company that’s based in Fair Lawn, NJ: question answered.

So, about Sid: when we met at St. John’s, I thought he was older than me (I was 23-24). He worked as a cook at Harry Brown’s, a bar & grill in town, and it seemed like a more grown-up job than my gig as a GED/literacy teacher for state highway workers. Also, Sid was pals with another new grad student, Miguel, who was 8 or 9 years older than me. It turns out that he was a year younger than me, graduating college in 1994. He felt like a contemporary this time around, esp. since we’re both recently(ish) married, no kids, and too smart for our own good.

This is what we looked like in 1995, when we went to Miguel’s wedding. Sid’s the guy in the middle. In my memory, the guy on the right looks like Tim Kazurinsky. Now I realize he was actually Mark Mothersbaugh. I’m the guy who looks like he has AIDS:

elsid.jpg

Sid’s job means he’s in deep with the booze & hospitality biz, I think. At least, I assume that’s why the manager of the hip restaurant he took us to came over to say hello and shoot the breeze for a bit. We tripled down on tuna dishes for appetizers and entrees, then spent dinner catching up on the past 15 years, trading stories about our hometowns (it turns out his little Pennsylvania town has an analog to my town’s Jackson-Whites), lamenting the lack of St. John’s-style conversation in our lives, explaining our jobs, and not explicitly wondering how we got here. Oh, and in a wonder of retcon, it turned out that he went to college with my sister-in-law as well as the daughter of Chip Delany, one of the authors I used to publish. Small world.

I was burned out from the day at BIO, and my Hendrick’s & tonic got to me a little early. In addition, we were eating on a sidewalk patio, and the dropping temps and breeze made me a lilttle shuddery and headachey. I was hoping it didn’t show, and it did help me with my Not Doing All The Talking.

That said, I really enjoyed the conversation that evening. It was good to get away from BIO for a bit, even if my coworkers were disappointed that I didn’t join them for dinner that night (they hadn’t told me about any dinner plans until I mentioned that I was going out with an old pal; we don’t always disseminate information well, which is sad inasmuch as it’s only a four-person team). I was happy to hear someone’s stories and just talk about our lives and our respective mid-life crises. I’m not going to go into depth recounting everything, because so much of it was just an easy back-and-forth between a couple of guys closing in on 40, with no need to impress each other. I haven’t even described what he looks like now, I realize. Here you go: big white guy (not fat, particularly), shaved head, goatee, wearing a brown seersucker jacket with a light plaid shirt underneath. At first I was concerned at the conflicting patterns, but they grew on me as the evening progressed.

As we finished our ahi burgers, Sid asked, “You wanna have one more G&T and then get a drink at this place I know?”

The equation flashed through my head:

2 G&Ts at dinner

+

1 more drink at a lounge/speakeasy/den of iniquity (at a minimum)

=

blown-out hangover the next day.

“Sure!” I said, thinking about how horrible Thursday’s flight home (and possibly Friday’s flight to Toronto) would be. But seriously, I don’t have a drinking problem.

We talked more as I polished off my Hendrick’s. He was embarrassed when I asked him what he’s been reading. I realized that Sid reads this blog and my literary ramblings probably make it sound like I’m always reading snooty-ass highbrow books. I assured him that Robert Mitchum’s bio wasn’t exactly St. John’s fare, and that most of the fun/light stuff I read is online, not in book form, so it doesn’t always make it onto the blog.

He told me he was reading Bill Bryson lately, about whom I’ve heard good stuff. Yet another author on my list. Sigh.

Over my protests, Sid took the bill for the meal, and took me on to The Drawing Room, a gorgeous underground lounge in the Gold Coast neighborhood. During our walk from the car to the lounge (Sid had only had a single beer over dinner), he regaled me with stories of municipal corruption in Chicago. I countered with, “In Bloomberg’s New York, any of his moneyed pals can build anything they want . . . except for a new building at Ground Zero, where no one can make any progress!”

We were seated at a corner to each other, with a square pillar between us, so that we both had to sit at an angle to see/talk to each other. Must be why they call it “hip.”

When I mentioned that Sid reads this blog, I should have pointed out that he pays particular attention to my gin-related posts, like Geneva Conventional a few weeks ago. In fact, he apologized at dinner that the restaurant didn’t serve my snooty Q-Tonic.

Our waiter brought over drink menus, and I asked what gins they had available. He named several of my high-end faves, then mentioned a local one called North Shore, which Sid had mentioned to me earlier in the evening. I asked what tonic they served.

“We make our own tonic in house,” the waiter said.

I nodded slowly. I could feel Sid’s grin through the pillar. “Uh-huh. I’ll have a North Shore and tonic, please.”

Sid, valiantly drinking lightly in order to not DWI, said under his breath, “champagnecocktailforme.”

The waiter walked off and, despite my pounding headache and slight nausea, I asked Sid, “You sure you don’t want a cranberry juice with that, you pussy?”

And it was back to old times, except I’m more fun now than I was then, or so I like to believe. He regaled me with stories about our pal Miguel, and their hijinks at work and in class. The waiter returned with our drinks, which were accompanied by a pair of narrow, frosted shot glasses. “The bartender would like to offer you a complementary Aviation,” he told us, gesturing at the shots.

I’d wanted to try one of these for a while, thanks to my wife’s pal Claudia, who loves the things. The problem is, two of the ingredients — maraschino liqueur and creme de violette — would never find any use in our house, and we’d be stuck buying two $25+ bottles for a single drink, so I’d never tried one.

I sampled (drank) the Aviation and concluded that we could probably stand to have more maraschino and violette in our diets.

Then I turned my attention to the gin & tonic. “No lime?” I said to Sid.

“It doesn’t need it.”

I held the glass below my nose and inhaled, trying to parse some of the botanicals. Its yellow tint implied saffron, but there was a weird spice-mix below the dominant juniper notes that added to the mystery. Good to know that, even headache-wracked, I could try to bring a discriminating palette to my booze.

I took a draw from the glass, eyes closed. “. . . Cinnamon?” I said

“Isn’t it great?” Sid asked.

“This may be the greatest G&T I’ve ever had,” I told him.

Hangover be damned. I marveled over the subtle warmth of the gin, how superior it was to the chilly florals and cucumber notes in the Hendrick’s I’d drunk an hour earlier. My only regret was that I would associate this drink with That BIO Show Where I Was Totally Wrecked On The Last Day. (Like that Interphex in 2005, except without the blackout.)

After the drink, we headed out. Sid was a good sport about my maunderings; I think I belabored the point about how he should get down to Decatur to visit our friends Miguel & Joy, because you never know what’s going to happen in this world. At some point, I asked him if he’s happy, which is something I like to ask old pals when we catch up. Not out of any preciosity, but just to find out how they’re doing in the all-important happiness scale. He said, “I’m around 85%. That sounds about right.”

On the drive back to my hotel, Sid mentioned a post I’d linked to a while back, about an Archie comic where Jughead becomes a punk-rocker. He told me that he and his brother were huge comic readers in their youth, and he remembered that issue backward and forward. Again, it struck me as funny that the Sid I knew at St. John’s was That Older Guy Who Works At The Bar, but in reality we were awfully similar people, except that it, um, never occurred to me to get a real job in order to be able to afford things. Outside of that, we were more alike than I imagined, right down to our shared affinity for Ambush Bug.

Sid dropped me at the corner and I made him promise that next time his company brought him out to Fair Lawn, he would spare some time to have a meal at our place, meet the wife and doggies, and otherwise let me reciprocate his hospitality.

As he drove away, I looked at the entrance of my hotel, teetered on the sidewalk, and decided to cross the street and hit up Walgreen’s for some Gatorade and ibuprofen. It was my hangover remedy at St. John’s and, while I was likely too far gone for it to matter, I decided to give it a shot for old time’s sake.

Back in my room, it occurred to me that meeting up with Sid was of a piece with the earlier conversation about trade shows. Sure, we were lucky that we’d managed to cross paths, but we also had the infrastructure in place to “make our own luck,” in the form of Facebook. Without it, this reunion wouldn’t have happened.

Just around midnight, I finished off the last of the 20-oz. Gatorade, turned out the lights, and went to bed.

Next: The Miracle

May 3: Bloodshot Eye of the Tiger

May 4: Skokie, the Germans, and the Lost Ugandan

May 5: “Jumpin’ with my boy Sid in the city”

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