A podcast about books, art & life — not necessarily in that order
Fixed some links and added some sites to the blogroll (see left), including Gennady’s site Newzspeak. Go there and harass him into writing more. I’m gonna get back to laying out those Pharma profiles. If I post “Is Pfizer Pfucked?” at 3am, ignore it; I’m punchy.
Looks like John Rocker’s walking away from his attempt to return to Major League Baseball, after a not-so-effective stint with the Long Island Ducks of the Atlantic League (6.50 ERA in 23 games, 19 Ks and 28 BBs in 28 innings).
Last month, I wrote about the time I bumped into Rocker and discovered that his public persona was not exactly the same as his conversational self.
So I’m a little bummed to find that he’s just not able to compete well enough to get back to the big leagues. It would’ve been a nice story, especially if he could’ve demonstrated a little more restraint when confronted with the idiocy and provocation of drunken fans.
On the plus side, this whole episode gives you, dear reader, the opportunity to do something good!
If you head over to Rocker’s website, you’ll find that he’s participating in a 150 km bike-ride charity event for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. If you have a little spare cash and want to pledge some money to the cause, you can do so here. And you get to leave him a personal message.
I clicked past that option too quickly when I made my donation, so I didn’t get to tell him the most important thing: Get a haircut.
I finally have a morning of rest, dear reader. No conference to get to, dinner parties for departing friends, company picnics, or late-starting NBA finals games! I still have a ton of those Pharma & Biopharma profiles to write, but I’m taking today off. The official VM fiancee & I are heading down to a party at the shore soon, but that won’t stop me from dropping some pix from the past week on you! Without Freddy Adu:
At the BIO conference, there were plenty of oddball sights. I’m still not sure why this guy was dressed like this.
Mr. Kamikaze? Mr. DNA!
The conference consists of lots of regional pavilions, because of the importance of attracting venture capital to economic areas. The Hawaii pavilion was pretty near our booth. After the second day, all the regions start breaking out local entertainment.
Evidently, Canada’s idea of local entertainment was a dude handing out test-tube shots. I should’ve gone over to the Louisiana pavilion in case they had a guy dressed like a hand grenade, giving out shots.
Well, after I left BIO on Wednesday afternoon, I went home for a brief nap, then headed into NYC for a going-away dinner for official VM buddy Bryn. He’s the guy on the left in this pic, which is busy being worth a thousand words. Note: she’s 24 weeks into her first pregnancy.
What’d I tell ya? It was week of preggers for me, as I dined with Mary & Liz that night, and stayed in Philly with my friends Blake & Ines, who are expecting their first kid. Back in the office, we have two bloatinas meandering around. It’s a conspiracy, I tellsya!
Bryn decided to show us his baby, too. I sure love my friends.
Then I get home yesterday and find some young buck just hanging around outside my house! There are no manners anymore!
Nice job by the Supreme Court, deciding that property seizure for private development is Constitutional. I guess I’ve changed over the years, because I never thought I’d say, “I really agree with Rehnquist, Scalia and Clarence Thomas on this one.”
Between this and the retards in the House bringing up that dumb-ass flag-burning amendment again, I almost wish they’d go back to trying to legislate against Jose Canseco.
You’ve probably read this already, but if not, here’s a link to the commencement address Steve Jobs just delivered at Stanford. It’s pretty wonderful reading.
This article about how celebrities are freaking out over being seen in hi-definition TV is pretty funny. It includes a great description of Jewel’s makeup, and the word “frankensteinian,” which is impressive, considering it’s the NYTimes.
It’s a picture, and it’s worth a thousand words!
Evidently, Steven Spielberg believes that his new War of the Worlds flick reflects post-9/11 angst, instead of just being a summertime special effects monstrosity.
I think the movie poster shows that we have plenty in common with these aliens: we both like bowling.
Meanwhile, this makes me laugh more than the other foreign-language posters. Not sure why. Probably because it reminds me of the “Jews In Space” piece from the end of History of the World, Part I:
It was a wedding-plan weekend, dear reader, interspersed with some other entertainments. On Saturday, the official VM fiancee visited a Nicole Miller boutique and fell in love with a gown. At the same time, her parents were testing out the food at the venue where we’re planning to get hitched, down in New Orleans (they’re locals). Today, we bought a stone for The Ring, at a little jeweler in the East Village. (No hyperlinks for any of these places till they’ve done their jobs and I can guarantee their link-worthiness.)
In-between? We risked our very lives. And I’m not talking about today’s return-trip to New York during the Puerto Rico Day Parade.
Very rarely, I’ll find myself struck with a peculiar notion that supersedes every other priority. Saturday afternoon, for example, I noticed a remaindered-book warehouse-store, and it instantly became imperative to stop in. Why? I can’t really explain it. My library is over a thousand volumes at this point, and I’m still immersed in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, which keeps me from opening any other book.
Still, we do as needs must, when the devil drives. Forty-five minutes later, I left with an armload of books, accompanied by a fiancee who has smaller arms and hence a smaller load of books.
Perhaps it’s a mood that makes me susceptible to these uncompromisable whims. I like to think I’ve been much more compromising and flexible in recent years, but how then to explain the mania that grabbed me later that evening? What possessed me, as we were doing our food-shopping Saturday evening, to grab this grotesquerie? To be fair, at the moment I picked up the Jack Daniel’s Mesquite EZ Marinader bag, I turned to my One True Love and said, “I’ll try this during the week, while you’re back in the city.”
But she’d have nothing of it. If I was going to brave a steak immersed in “EZ Marinade,” she’d be by my side. She’s a heck of a girl, that way.
So we bought a pair of unsuspecting steaks, got home, and placed them in the gelatinous muck of the marinading bag. I can’t believe I just wrote that. Anyway, the marinade needed a minimum of 30 minutes to dissolve the steak down to its constituent atoms and restore itself to life soak into the meat, so we gave it an hour while we took care of other stuff (I baked some pre-made/-cut cookies, while my girl stewed bananas in coconut milk). Then it was time for the show.
We put the steaks in the broiler. Because we’re the sort of people who bought Jack Daniel’s Mesquite EZ Marinader, the packaging comes with explicit instructions: namely, take the food OUT of the bag before cooking it. Yes, dear reader, it’s apparently necessary to warn consumers not to put A PLASTIC BAG into a broiler or onto a grill. We took the bag’s advice.
Ten or so minutes later, we got our brown-jelly-covered steaks out of the broiler. Most of the brown jelly seemed to have burned away, but we were afraid it was hiding somewhere in the broiler.
This is the last known picture of me, just a moment before my first bite. Fortunately, my digital camera has a bemusement-filter.
As it turned out, the marinade wasn’t bad. It wasn’t good, either. It was phenomenally generic. Two weeks earlier, Amy & I tried out a rib place here in NJ, but it turned out to be bar food, and the sauce on the ribs was “utterly adequate,” as she put it. These steaks came out the same way; we basically cooked up bar food at home, with better quality meat. Fortunately, we blew off Spirited Away for some Family Guy reruns, and offset the over-sweet marinade with a broccoli rabe and garlic side, but I think I learned my lesson: Never do anything on a whim in a supermarket.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to see how these frozen, microwave-able White Castles came out.
Went into the city last night for my friend Elayne’s birthday get-together. Her birthday was last month, actually, but she and her co-worker James decided to delay their festivities till the semester was over.
So we met at the Telephone Bar, where we had a room sorta reserved to hang out, drink, nosh, and gallivant. But first, I got a long-overdue haircut. I needed to get it cut for about two months, but kept getting delayed and then lazy. Eventually, I started looking like a big angry Q-tip, so I hit the Jean-Claude Biguine on E. 23rd and had a large, swarthy French-speaking guy “style” me. The final result was great. I felt like I was the best-looking straight guy at the party that evening. Not that anyone else believed it.
Anyway, here are some pix, which is all you’re really in this for. I can tell:
Some people talked.
Others sat in a comfyish corner.
Renowned author Samuel R. Delany put in an appearance! Even though Elayne asked me to bring my camera, she seems terrified that I’m taking this pic.
That’s better.
Both guests/hosts of honor! Belated happy birthdays abound!
I had a little too much gin last night, so I’m a bit run down today. I’m also working on a really writing-heavy issue of the magazine (as opposed to the issues where I get in a lot of contributed articles), so I’m outta words right now. I’m gonna go catch Game 1 of the NBA Finals. If I get a chance this weekend, I’ll write up the Mad Mix that I made for Elayne’s birthday gift.