Author: Gil

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Swingers

Not that anyone comes here for political wisdom, but I sure am glad to see the pendulum swing this morning. It’s gratifying to me not because of any leftover leftist tendencies from my college years, but because it demonstrates what it is that works about our democracy: our ability to throw the bums out, or at least to wrest power from one group of bums and bestow it on another.

In the gratifying / infuriating department, it’s good to see that the 2004 sentiments like “we live in a permanent Republican majority,” “right-wing Christian fundamentalists have hijacked the country,” and “gerrymandering has rendered all elections meaningless” have proved to be utter bullshit. I never take it well when someone takes the present moment and decides that it’s an indicator of how everything will be for the rest of time.

Which gets me back to that pendulum. It swings. In my opinion, which is likely wrong, the end point of the pendulum’s arc (is that called its period?) was the moment at which the federal government intervened in the Terry Schiavo case. Plenty of other people will contend it was the Iraq war, while others will contend it was “the economy.”

So the pendulum swung in one direction, and now it’s swinging back. Let’s see some gridlock-induced compromises in the next two years! Go, Team America!

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Travels & travails

When I got to the airport yesterday, I found that the earlier flight to Newark was running late, and that mine would also get pushed off a bit. So I switched planes, got stuck with a middle seat, and made it home an hour before I was scheduled to get back.

This helped because I had no idea on which floor of the parking garage I’d left my car. I did remember the general area I parked, recalling that I’d pulled up next to a Chrysler 300, so I could check it out before heading over to the monorail. But as I got into the parking garage elevator yesterday, I asked myself, “What floor was that?” And I had no adequate answer to that question.

So I started on the second floor, and eventually found my Element of Style up on the fourth floor. Travel days that began at 5:30am are not good. That’s yer official Virtual Memories advice for the week.

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We got hats now!

For years, one of my favorite trade-show goodie-scores was a baseball cap from the legal firm of Morrison & Foerster, because it featured the company’s abbreviated name: mofo.

I lost the hat during my drive down the Pacific Coast Highway in a convertible in 2004, heading from San Fran to San Diego. I was peeved, especially because I lost the hat a moment after passing a warning sign about high winds.

Now, at last, I have a replacement. And it’s all thanks to the architectural firm of Hooker and Cockram.

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Yeah, Brock! You hit him so hard he has an afro now!

Official VM buddy Mitch Prothero sent over a news item about how the Washington Wizards’ two centers got into a brawl last week. He was amazed that Brendan “Brenda” Haywood showed some fire, body-slamming Etan Thomas.

I, on the other hand, was amazed that Haywood “[tore] out at least two of Thomas’s dreadlocks in the process.”

Now I seriously regret my decision to skip the Washington/Orlando game last night. I would’ve been close enough to get pictures of Thomas’s bald spot!

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I Live in a Suitcase

Well, them’s the best-laid plans. I decided not to spend $200 just to get into the Magic game (I could’ve gone with a cheaper seat, but it would’ve been pretty high up in the O-rena), and the conference people called to say that they couldn’t sneak me into the Pleasure Island get-together, meaning I’d have to pony up the $120 fee to explore . . . Pleasure Island! (I make a dramatic pause whenever I say the name.)

Deciding drunkenness is the better part of valor, I elected to hit Shula’s for dinner, knock back a couple of Hendrick’s & tonics with my 20-oz. Kansas City strip, and head back to the room for some awkwardly confessional writing. Because I’m all about customer satisfaction.

Which brings us to my hotel room, where I’m sitting in my underwear (black socks, natch) and listening to I Live in a Suitcase, by Thomas Dolby. It came from his fourth album, which is terrible, but I’ve gained an affinity for this song, which is about getting stuck in Los Angeles. Funnily enough, it’s just about the only major city I haven’t been to for a conference or trade show.

It’s also the city I think is least likely to offer itself up over the course of a 3- or 4-day trip. I’ve always had this impression that LA is much more a state-of-mind city than just about any other in America, that it reveals itself over the course of day-to-day life, but not to the tourist. This probably stems from being as spread out as it is, and as devoted to its key industry (entertainment, of course) as it is.

And it probably stems from my mythologizing of it, but I’m really not trying to romanticize Hollywood by any means. It’s just that almost every other city puts me in mind of a particular set of landmarks, of lifestyles, of business, of history, and I find myself drawing a blank over LA. I don’t think “Chinatown” should stands in for the city. Maybe I’ll make an extended trip there someday, but I doubt it’ll happen. If any of you have some commentary/meta-thoughts on LA to share, comment away!

But we’re in Orlando (or, more precisely, Lake Buena Vista, FL): Living in a suitcase also puts me back in the world of USA Today, as I mentioned during last week’s travels.

Over breakfast this morning, I discovered that avian flu is a subject for the Life section, not News. It seems that Indonesia isn’t doing so well treating it because “Decentralized power weakens grip on outbreak.” If only that junta were still running things.

On the plus side, it appears that coffee helps against Alzheimer’s disease, and just about everything else. Is nothing beyond the reach of coffee achievers?

The lead News story is about how Fresno is the most insanely hard-ass city on drunk drivers in America:

Police sneak into the driveways of convicted drunk drivers to plant Global Positioning System tracking devices on their cars and search their homes for evidence they’ve been drinking.

The “problem,” it seems, is that drunk driving fatalities have leveled off since the mid-1990s, after dropping annually for nearly 20 years prior to that. Rather than credit the reduction in deaths to improved vehicle safety and greater awareness about drunk driving, the article implies that it’s only police & the courts that can reduce the number of deaths. Hence, bugging the cars of convicted drunk drivers.

I also discovered that the Second Amendment doesn’t seem to pertain if you’re drunk:

One officer observes a man walking unsteadily as he leaves the bar. When he gets in his SUV and starts to drive off, other officers swoop down on him. The officers find a loaded Glock handgun in the center console. The man’s friend, who owns the SUV, walks over to show the police his concealed weapons permit. But he has been drinking, too, and the permit is void if he’s intoxicated. They arrest him, too.

In the Money section, we learn the valuable art of spin with the lead story Prius finally available without a wait. In addition to increased production, it turns out that reduced demand is a factor.

The Sports section told me that Ricky Williams is some sorta zen master:

When it comes to the search for elevated self-awareness and a higher plane of existence, Ricky Williams may be the [most] introspective athlete of all time. He is a vegetarian, a yogi, a vertiable Buddhist philosopher in shoulder pads. Unfortunately for the enigmatic running back, pro football does not place a premium on the quest for eternal truth and personal fulfillment.

Also, he really likes weed.

And I found out that Doogie Howser, M.D. is gay. All this over breakfast!

* * *

By lunch, I learned that there’s a staging of The Winter’s Tale that you might be interested in seeing, if you’re around NYC the next few weekends. It’s being directed by a guy who used to be my closest friend, but he’s been a douchebag to me for three-plus years now, so I figure I’ll skip out on this performance.

I do find it pretty funny that he can’t return a phone call or e-mail to me since 2003, but is quite content to send group e-mails asking for people to come out and see and/or promote his show. We’ve got different ideas of friendship, is what it boils down to.

Speaking of which, a bunch of my high school friends (Pennsylvania edition) have invited me to a mini-reunion next week down in Philadelphia, so I may come back with some entertaining anecdotes or photographs by Sunday. It’s one of those things where I realize how close so many of these friends have stayed in the 17 years since we graduated high school, and how close they stayed to me even though I only attended school for one year down there. Different ideas of friendship.

That said, I’m at a point in my life where I really don’t want to crash on someone’s sofa or air-mattress, so I’m trying to find an inexpensive hotel (sans bugs) that I can stay in Saturday night. I’m gonna get back to that right now, since I’ve given up on trying to figure out why my buddy Chip likes that Nightwood so darn much. It’s baroque; fix it.

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More with the decisions

I should mention that, instead of going to the Magic game tonight, I could partake in the big conference reception/party. Unfortunately, it’s being held at, ahem, Pleasure Island.

I have surveyed a decent sample set of attendees and exhibitors at this conference, and just about 100% of them agree: “Pleasure Island” is a really creepy name, and sounds like a ’70s stag-flick.

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Decisions, decisions

While the rest of America has to make up its mind about which way to vote tomorrow, I have to figure out if I want to spend $100 for a ticket to an Orlando Magic game, then spend $100 on cab fare to and from the arena, since I’m currently in the Disney Protectorate of Lake Buena Vista.

Which is to say, it’s not looking good, dear readers.

Fortunately, I found a bar that serves some high-end gin. So I have options, is all I’m saying.

Becaues we’re in Mauschwitz, the keynote address for our conference was a 45-minute presentation by a representative from the Disney Institute. He discussed innovation issues, and how what Disney does can translate into practices for the healthcare industry.

Which means, I guess, that drug companies should “lobby” members of congress into extending drug-patents indefinitely into the future, the way Disney has done with the copyright for Mickey Mouse. That’s innovation!

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Reporting from Mauschwitz

Got into Orlando safe and sound. I didn’t think about the fact that a flight here on a Sunday morning would be filled with screaming kids traveling to Disney World. The stewardess didn’t even ask me to turn off my iPod for takeoff.

I took Nightwood with me. It’s the favorite book of one of the authors I used to publish. I read about 20 pages of it once before, but the floridity of the prose tired me out. So I figured I’d make it the only book I have with me, like I did with Foucault’s Pendulum a couple of summers ago.

Of course, I took a break to do the crossword puzzle in the Continental in-flight magazine, but that only took about 20 minutes.

Anyway, the conference/exhibition starts in a few minutes, and I’ve got ironing to do. This place sure is, um, pleasant.

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Borat & the Mini

Well, now that the Official VM NBA 2006-2007 preview is wrapped up, I can get back to the ongoing ruminations and ramblings about my life. I’m heading out to Orlando at 6:30am for my next biz-nass trip, but I figured we oughtta catch up, dear readers.

First and foremost: my wife bought a car! Amy finally got out of debt (college loans, etc.) last week, so the time was ripe to get back into debt. She’s been in love with the Mini Cooper S for a while now, so we checked them out earlier this week. They talked us into buying a 2006, and Amy & her salesman sat down and built the model she wanted online. It’ll take 4-6 weeks for it to show up. Until then, this is all you get:

We took a similar model out for a test drive today, and she fell further in love. I fit pretty easily into the car, which was a major concern. If I wasn’t opposed to buying a German car, I’d be interested in getting one for myself; they’re awfully well engineered and the ride was impossibly smooth.

While the salespeople were really pleasant and not “car salesman”-like, someone did try to screw us out of $550 when we signed off on the order this morning. The sales manager presented us with an itemized “build page” that showed the order as Mini had received it. “That’s the right amount, right?” he asked about the total at the bottom of the list.

The dollar amount was the same as we were quoted, but Amy noticed that the build page included a $550 Harman Kardon sound system, which was not part of our order. “Coincidentally,” the $550 destination charge was missing. So the manager had to “fix up” our order and produce a new build page. But this one was a printout from a “later stage in the build process” and did include the destination charge, but not that stereo, which was removed.

Which is to say, we would’ve been paying an extra $550 for the car, if Amy hadn’t gone over the list closely. I’m not necessarily accusing the sales manager at Mini of trying to jack up the price, but it does seem like an odd mistake to make.

Anyway, the car is ordered, and Amy’ll be able to track its progress online from when it leaves the factory in the UK and ships out to Port Newark. That’ll be fun. Or infuriating.

After this morning’s test-drive and signoff, we went out to catch Borat. I have to concur with Ron Rosenbaum’s take on the movie: it’s nowhere near as funny as the segments on Da Ali G Show, largely because the movie has to create a “plot” to get Borat from one place to another. A number of those segments — he has dinner with a commerce group down south, he talks to a group of black kids about how to be black, for example — felt scripted, more Larry David uncomfortable-improv than the sheer genius of having Borat at a wine tasting in the Midwest. “Oh, and is he your slave?”

Moreover, the scenes of his life and the depictions of Kazakhstan actually are less fun, because they literalize things that are far funnier when Borat intimates at them. That is, actually seeing the Running of the Jews is less funny than having Borat make a comment about it to an unsuspecting person in America.

So, while it was an entertaining flick, it just wasn’t as funny as watching him in action in his interviews. Although the scene in the bed & breakfast was hysterical.

One more thing: What the f*** is wrong with people that they’d bring their 8-year-old children in to see that movie? I mean, how out of touch are parents if they can’t figure out that an “R” rating just might mean that it’s not suitable for kids? Ferchrissakes, the trailers were violent and coarse enough that I’d have gotten my kid outta the theater, but it went downhill from there. I don’t have kids and so it’s easy for me to say, “Have half a brain before exposing your kids to this stuff.” Anyway, that’s enough moralizing for me.

The biggest disappointment of the afternoon was that the trailer for Apocalypto actually looked pretty good on the big screen. This bummed me out because I won’t give money to a production by Mel Gibson. Also, I’m not sure if there are subtitles in this flick, but there should be because it’s awfully tough to figure out the Mayan term for “sugar tits.”

It’s off to Orlando for me. Not sure what book I’ll take with me. Gringos was boring, compared to the other Charles Portis books I’ve read. I’m thinking of just reading some long-form comics for the next few weeks, till that new Pynchon novel comes out. If you have any suggestions, make them in the next 8 hours.

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All done!

The last NBA divisional preview is up! Go, Northwest! (It’s still a preview even though the season started a few days ago, right?)

Thanks to all who contributed to this year’s preview: Tom Spurgeon, Craig Sirkin, Sam Richezza, and Adam Taxin! I promise to coordinate this thing better next year! As is, you’ve gotta be happy that I bumped it over to its own page!

I’ll be down in Orlando for a conference from tomorrow morning through Tuesday afternoon, so I’ll try to head over to the O-Rena to catch that Washington-Orlando matchup Monday night. If I get close enough to the bench, I’ll pretend I’m trying to serve Gilbert Arenas with a subpoena. Wish me luck!