There are a couple posts I've been meaning to write over the last couple months, and this is the season to do it! Today I present to you: FREE CATS!
I moved back to Toronto at the beginning of September, and one of the first things I noticed upon settling in to my new house were the two cats that frequently wandered through my room and the rest of the two-story part-of-a-duplex apartment. As far as I knew these cats didn't belong to my roommates, so I had no idea where they came from. As it turns out, they jump over the fence from our other-side-of-duplex neighbours, entering our house through the third-floor deck.
To me, this is the perfect pet situation. You get all the cuddliness and meowdowns (meow showdowns - who will stop meowing first), and none of the upkeep costs. Unfortunately, they don't visit so much in the winter, but when I first moved in they were hanging out all the time, and I managed to snap a few photos.
Click "view on slideshare" or whatever the bottom right button says if you want to fullscreen this and optimize your viewing experience.
Free cats
Monday, December 20, 2010
Saturday, November 20, 2010
My Justin Bieber Screed
I've been meaning to write this post for a long time, and was reminded it of it last night after having another Justin Bieber conversation. If you're reading this, you probably hate Justin Bieber. I say that because it's the general reaction I've been getting from my friends and other people my age and, honestly, I don't get it. I mean, Justin Bieber's music is bad. I'm not here to defend his music. I don't listen to it, and the few times I have, I haven't liked it, but that's beside the point.
Look, there are always going to be Justins Bieber. Pre-teen girls have to be in love with someone, and that someone is always going to make bad music. Pre-teen girls just have terrible taste in music. It doesn't matter how cute the guys from Animal Collective are, they aren't getting a grade 6 fan-base.
(By the way, I'm not trying to be sexist here - pre-teen boys have terrible taste in music too. I was listening to FM 96 (London's The Edge) non-stop at that age, as we all were.)
So yeah, Justin Bieber isn't a new concept. It was the Backstreet Boys and then 'N Sync when I was that age. It was the New Kids on the Block before that. Hanson was in there at some point. Now it's Justin Bieber, who took over for the Jonas Brothers. Justin Bieber is just a fact of life. But he's a fact of life that absolutely doesn't concern people in my generation, so I just don't understand why ADULTS care how good his music is.
Even if you do want to debate the merits JB, I think he stacks up pretty well to his predecessors. Groups like BSB and 'N Sync were money-making monsters created by record labels (same with the Spice Girls - remember when they were created? Something crazy like 10,000 people auditioned, and it was so publicized, the Spice Girls were superstars before we even knew who was in the group).
While J-Biebs is clearly a product at this point, his rise to fame was somewhat more organic - he was discovered through Youtube videos of him singing covers. It may seem like splitting hairs, but I think there's a big difference between being "discovered" and auditioning for a group that would be formed one way or another.
Secondly, I like that he's actually a teenager himself. Somehow it seems disingenuous to market a boy band of 20-year-olds guys to 12-year-old girls. Bieber is 16 now, but he was "discovered" at just 13, having already become popular on Youtube.
Now, some people have pointed me to videos where JB has come off as arrogant, stupid, annoying, whatever. He's not perfect. But at the same time, anything he says or does is magnified quite a bit, and nobody's on their game 100% of the time. And he's so ridiculously popular, I can understand him thinking he's the shit. He basically doesn't know any other way of living! Finally, he's been the victim of a LOT of ridicule and mean-spirited internet "jokes" (4chan is bunch of assholes, I don't care if funny stuff comes out of there occasionally), and, fame and money or not, that can't be easy. On the whole, he doesn't seem like a bad guy to me.
Now, while I'm baffled and disappointed by the hate JB receives from people my age, I fully endorse it coming from anyone under the age of 18. Just as falling in love with teen pop stars is part of growing up for some people, rejecting what's popular is part of growing up for many others. I hated the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync when I was a kid, as most boys did (and some girls too, let's not leave them out of the hate-fest!), and that was part of my childhood identity. So hate on, kids! But the day you turn 18, or graduate from high school, or, well, somewhere around that time anyway, you're not allowed to care anymore.
(Then you can care again when you're a parent and you have to deal with positive and negative influences and all that stuff, but I have to imagine innocent teen pop stars are the least of your concerns when you're worrying about violence and sex and stuff.)
I am a little worried about the Biebs. Where does he go from here? He's going to lose his pre-teen fan-base at some point, and his reputation with non-pre-teen girls has pretty much been forever tainted, no matter if he actually becomes a good musician at some point. There's a little hope, though: did you hear about that crazy band with one of the Hanson dudes, the Smashing Pumpkins guitarist, and a guy from Cheap Trick? I have no idea if they're any good, but that's kinda cool. And, obviously, Justin Timberlake is the gold standard for terrible pre-teen pop musicians becoming amazing artists. Let's hope JB's hilarious SNL sketch with Tina Fey last year is a portent of future success.
Of course, maybe I'm just trying to defend my Hallowe'en costume.
Look, there are always going to be Justins Bieber. Pre-teen girls have to be in love with someone, and that someone is always going to make bad music. Pre-teen girls just have terrible taste in music. It doesn't matter how cute the guys from Animal Collective are, they aren't getting a grade 6 fan-base.
(By the way, I'm not trying to be sexist here - pre-teen boys have terrible taste in music too. I was listening to FM 96 (London's The Edge) non-stop at that age, as we all were.)
So yeah, Justin Bieber isn't a new concept. It was the Backstreet Boys and then 'N Sync when I was that age. It was the New Kids on the Block before that. Hanson was in there at some point. Now it's Justin Bieber, who took over for the Jonas Brothers. Justin Bieber is just a fact of life. But he's a fact of life that absolutely doesn't concern people in my generation, so I just don't understand why ADULTS care how good his music is.
Even if you do want to debate the merits JB, I think he stacks up pretty well to his predecessors. Groups like BSB and 'N Sync were money-making monsters created by record labels (same with the Spice Girls - remember when they were created? Something crazy like 10,000 people auditioned, and it was so publicized, the Spice Girls were superstars before we even knew who was in the group).
While J-Biebs is clearly a product at this point, his rise to fame was somewhat more organic - he was discovered through Youtube videos of him singing covers. It may seem like splitting hairs, but I think there's a big difference between being "discovered" and auditioning for a group that would be formed one way or another.
Secondly, I like that he's actually a teenager himself. Somehow it seems disingenuous to market a boy band of 20-year-olds guys to 12-year-old girls. Bieber is 16 now, but he was "discovered" at just 13, having already become popular on Youtube.
Now, some people have pointed me to videos where JB has come off as arrogant, stupid, annoying, whatever. He's not perfect. But at the same time, anything he says or does is magnified quite a bit, and nobody's on their game 100% of the time. And he's so ridiculously popular, I can understand him thinking he's the shit. He basically doesn't know any other way of living! Finally, he's been the victim of a LOT of ridicule and mean-spirited internet "jokes" (4chan is bunch of assholes, I don't care if funny stuff comes out of there occasionally), and, fame and money or not, that can't be easy. On the whole, he doesn't seem like a bad guy to me.
Now, while I'm baffled and disappointed by the hate JB receives from people my age, I fully endorse it coming from anyone under the age of 18. Just as falling in love with teen pop stars is part of growing up for some people, rejecting what's popular is part of growing up for many others. I hated the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync when I was a kid, as most boys did (and some girls too, let's not leave them out of the hate-fest!), and that was part of my childhood identity. So hate on, kids! But the day you turn 18, or graduate from high school, or, well, somewhere around that time anyway, you're not allowed to care anymore.
(Then you can care again when you're a parent and you have to deal with positive and negative influences and all that stuff, but I have to imagine innocent teen pop stars are the least of your concerns when you're worrying about violence and sex and stuff.)
I am a little worried about the Biebs. Where does he go from here? He's going to lose his pre-teen fan-base at some point, and his reputation with non-pre-teen girls has pretty much been forever tainted, no matter if he actually becomes a good musician at some point. There's a little hope, though: did you hear about that crazy band with one of the Hanson dudes, the Smashing Pumpkins guitarist, and a guy from Cheap Trick? I have no idea if they're any good, but that's kinda cool. And, obviously, Justin Timberlake is the gold standard for terrible pre-teen pop musicians becoming amazing artists. Let's hope JB's hilarious SNL sketch with Tina Fey last year is a portent of future success.
Of course, maybe I'm just trying to defend my Hallowe'en costume.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Real-Life Edition
On Saturday, I heard about a "Real-Life Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" scavenger hunt type thing. It sounded fun, so I texted a few friends, got one interested, and we met at King and Bay in downtown Toronto for the event.
We were given a piece of paper with six locations scrambled using a cipher, which were pretty easy to decipher. It instructed us to find informants in six locations: the Eaton Centre, Commerce Court, Hockey Hall of Fame, the Metro Convention Centre, First Canadian Place, and 32 Dundas East. After finding the informants, we were to receive clues from them, solve some sort of puzzle, and then get a clue regarding CS's final location. Presumably, in the end, we could combine all the informant clues to solve the mystery. Additionally, the instructions revealed that all the informants were stationed in the underground PATH network.
Thinking time was of the essence, I hopped on my bike and sped towards the Eaton Centre while my partner Jimmy ran alongside. We then proceeded to spend about half an hour looking unsuccessfully for the Eaton Centre informant - for one thing, the EC is connected to several branches of PATH, all of which are extremely busy, being connected to the Eaton Centre and a couple of subway stations, and since we hadn't encountered any informants yet, we didn't know what to look for. Eventually, we found tiny stickers on a set of doors saying something like "anywhere but Sears". We decided this was a pretty clear indication to look in and around Sears, but (spoiler alert) we never did find the EC informant, so whether those stickers were even related to the scavenger hunt is unclear.
After giving up on the EC, we went to the next closest location, 32 Dundas East, which, as it turned out, was an address that didn't exist (the correct building was 10 Dundas East). I'm not sure if they had ciphered the numbers 32 in addition to the letters, but if they had, there wouldn't have been enough information to figure that out. Furthermore, the complete location was listed as "32 Dundas East, 5th Floor". There was no 5th floor, so we looked for a while on the 3rd floor, thinking they might be including the two basement levels in their calculation. That failed, but eventually we stumbled upon the agent... on the first basement level (second floor from the bottom).
We should have been annoyed by the misleading instructions, but we were just relieved to finally find our first informant an hour and a half into the event. The agent told us he needed to know the price of a plane ticket to Johannesburg, so I went in search of travel agencies while Jimmy went back to search the Eaton Centre some more. The first travel agency didn't have anything listed, so after a few minutes of fruitless pamphlet-searching, an employee asked me if I needed anything. So I asked her for the price of a ticket to Johannesburg. Obviously, her first question was "when?", because plane tickets are not fixed prices. I had anticipated this ambiguity in the clue, but wanted an answer to bring back to the guy anyway, so I said "tomorrow". She was confused.
After explaining the situation several times, I finally got a quote and went back to the guy. He told me I was wrong, obviously, but after telling him how I got the answer, he straight up told me to go to a different travel agency. Unfortunately, he didn't tell me which one, so I went to a second incorrect agency and wasted 10 or 15 minutes there before meeting up with Jimmy again. Jimmy had a brainwave and remembered a third travel agency nearby, though clearly the third-closest to the location of the informant. That travel agency had a deal to Johannesburg on their window, and this proved to be what the informant was looking for. How we (the solvers) were expected to know to go to this particular travel agency is beyond me, and if it wasn't for Jimmy I would probably have wasted the rest of the day on this search.
At this point it was pretty late in the competition (it was to be three hours long), so I decided it was imperative to split up if we had any hope of contending. I sped down towards Front Street and hit up Commerce Court. That clue was easy; the agents were easy to find, and I just had to decipher a couple of scrambled messages using the same key as before.
Next was the Hockey Hall of Fame and, once again, a quick and easy solution. That agent was an "actor" who had a problem - he couldn't cry on command, and asked me to show him how. So I started pulling out my nose hairs. After fake crying out in pain and faking some tears (I was sweaty from running, it was easy) I started on another nose hair, and the guy was like "dude, okay, that's fine!"
At that point I was feeling good; if Jimmy got one or two we might still solve this thing. Then I went to the Metro Convention Centre and spent 45 minutes looking for the informant. The PATH network doesn't go into the MCC; it just connects via the Skywalk (the passage from Union Station to the CN Tower). So I figured the agent would be in the Skywalk, but I walked up and down several times and didn't see anyone remotely agenty (one thing I will give the group who organized this is that the agents were in costume and in character). I also ventured into the convention centre itself on several occasions, even though the informants were supposed to be firmly in the PATH. Inside the MCC I encountered some sort of bizarre balloon convention. Seriously, there were all these well-dressed people... and then a large number of people carrying classic multi-coloured bunches of balloons. It felt like I was at the premiere for Up or something. Needless to say, my ratty clothes stood out and I was gently asked to leave (even though there had been no security I had to sneak by or anything).
Eventually, I gave up on the convention centre and met up with Jimmy who had given up on the Eaton Centre for a second time and had found the agent in First Canadian Place. That agent sent him to Union Station where a sub-agent was waiting; we found that guy and returned to FCP with the clue answer only to discover the FCP agent had left his location, permanently, about 15 minutes before the end of the competition (and we encountered other groups experiencing the same frustration).
Jimmy had to go, but I was interested in at least getting some closure, so I went to two of the locations where I knew agents had been. They had left, but it was after six at this point, so that was understandable. Less understandable was the lack of people at the starting location. I thought there would at least be someone announcing the end of the competition or the winners or where the after-party was or something, but it was desolate. So I thought to myself: "um, okay, I guess I'll just go home now?" I was pretty disappointed; I was expecting an after-party at some nearby bar, or at least, as I mentioned, some kind of closure. None was to be found.
All in all, I had fun at times, but we spent most of the three hours looking for agents rather than solving clues, and it just sort of petered out at the end. Pretty disappointing, on the whole.
We were given a piece of paper with six locations scrambled using a cipher, which were pretty easy to decipher. It instructed us to find informants in six locations: the Eaton Centre, Commerce Court, Hockey Hall of Fame, the Metro Convention Centre, First Canadian Place, and 32 Dundas East. After finding the informants, we were to receive clues from them, solve some sort of puzzle, and then get a clue regarding CS's final location. Presumably, in the end, we could combine all the informant clues to solve the mystery. Additionally, the instructions revealed that all the informants were stationed in the underground PATH network.
Thinking time was of the essence, I hopped on my bike and sped towards the Eaton Centre while my partner Jimmy ran alongside. We then proceeded to spend about half an hour looking unsuccessfully for the Eaton Centre informant - for one thing, the EC is connected to several branches of PATH, all of which are extremely busy, being connected to the Eaton Centre and a couple of subway stations, and since we hadn't encountered any informants yet, we didn't know what to look for. Eventually, we found tiny stickers on a set of doors saying something like "anywhere but Sears". We decided this was a pretty clear indication to look in and around Sears, but (spoiler alert) we never did find the EC informant, so whether those stickers were even related to the scavenger hunt is unclear.
After giving up on the EC, we went to the next closest location, 32 Dundas East, which, as it turned out, was an address that didn't exist (the correct building was 10 Dundas East). I'm not sure if they had ciphered the numbers 32 in addition to the letters, but if they had, there wouldn't have been enough information to figure that out. Furthermore, the complete location was listed as "32 Dundas East, 5th Floor". There was no 5th floor, so we looked for a while on the 3rd floor, thinking they might be including the two basement levels in their calculation. That failed, but eventually we stumbled upon the agent... on the first basement level (second floor from the bottom).
We should have been annoyed by the misleading instructions, but we were just relieved to finally find our first informant an hour and a half into the event. The agent told us he needed to know the price of a plane ticket to Johannesburg, so I went in search of travel agencies while Jimmy went back to search the Eaton Centre some more. The first travel agency didn't have anything listed, so after a few minutes of fruitless pamphlet-searching, an employee asked me if I needed anything. So I asked her for the price of a ticket to Johannesburg. Obviously, her first question was "when?", because plane tickets are not fixed prices. I had anticipated this ambiguity in the clue, but wanted an answer to bring back to the guy anyway, so I said "tomorrow". She was confused.
After explaining the situation several times, I finally got a quote and went back to the guy. He told me I was wrong, obviously, but after telling him how I got the answer, he straight up told me to go to a different travel agency. Unfortunately, he didn't tell me which one, so I went to a second incorrect agency and wasted 10 or 15 minutes there before meeting up with Jimmy again. Jimmy had a brainwave and remembered a third travel agency nearby, though clearly the third-closest to the location of the informant. That travel agency had a deal to Johannesburg on their window, and this proved to be what the informant was looking for. How we (the solvers) were expected to know to go to this particular travel agency is beyond me, and if it wasn't for Jimmy I would probably have wasted the rest of the day on this search.
At this point it was pretty late in the competition (it was to be three hours long), so I decided it was imperative to split up if we had any hope of contending. I sped down towards Front Street and hit up Commerce Court. That clue was easy; the agents were easy to find, and I just had to decipher a couple of scrambled messages using the same key as before.
Next was the Hockey Hall of Fame and, once again, a quick and easy solution. That agent was an "actor" who had a problem - he couldn't cry on command, and asked me to show him how. So I started pulling out my nose hairs. After fake crying out in pain and faking some tears (I was sweaty from running, it was easy) I started on another nose hair, and the guy was like "dude, okay, that's fine!"
At that point I was feeling good; if Jimmy got one or two we might still solve this thing. Then I went to the Metro Convention Centre and spent 45 minutes looking for the informant. The PATH network doesn't go into the MCC; it just connects via the Skywalk (the passage from Union Station to the CN Tower). So I figured the agent would be in the Skywalk, but I walked up and down several times and didn't see anyone remotely agenty (one thing I will give the group who organized this is that the agents were in costume and in character). I also ventured into the convention centre itself on several occasions, even though the informants were supposed to be firmly in the PATH. Inside the MCC I encountered some sort of bizarre balloon convention. Seriously, there were all these well-dressed people... and then a large number of people carrying classic multi-coloured bunches of balloons. It felt like I was at the premiere for Up or something. Needless to say, my ratty clothes stood out and I was gently asked to leave (even though there had been no security I had to sneak by or anything).
Eventually, I gave up on the convention centre and met up with Jimmy who had given up on the Eaton Centre for a second time and had found the agent in First Canadian Place. That agent sent him to Union Station where a sub-agent was waiting; we found that guy and returned to FCP with the clue answer only to discover the FCP agent had left his location, permanently, about 15 minutes before the end of the competition (and we encountered other groups experiencing the same frustration).
Jimmy had to go, but I was interested in at least getting some closure, so I went to two of the locations where I knew agents had been. They had left, but it was after six at this point, so that was understandable. Less understandable was the lack of people at the starting location. I thought there would at least be someone announcing the end of the competition or the winners or where the after-party was or something, but it was desolate. So I thought to myself: "um, okay, I guess I'll just go home now?" I was pretty disappointed; I was expecting an after-party at some nearby bar, or at least, as I mentioned, some kind of closure. None was to be found.
All in all, I had fun at times, but we spent most of the three hours looking for agents rather than solving clues, and it just sort of petered out at the end. Pretty disappointing, on the whole.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Anatomy of an Unexpectedly Successful Evening
A couple months ago, I bought tickets for a comedian named Paul F. Tompkins. I barely even knew anything about him: I had recently started following him on Twitter, I think because John Hodgman (the "I'm a PC" guy) often mentioned him on Twitter. So I had read a few of his tweets and was vaguely aware of the fact that he was a stand-up comedian. One day he tweeted that there were only a few tickets left for his Toronto show in October, so I did a little bit more research.
Turns out PFT (which I can call him now because I know so much about him, like we're basically best friends) has this thing called the "Tompkins 300" wherein, if a city can muster 300 residents to pledge attendance at a show, PFT will book a show there. It started one year ago yesterday, the first show being in Toronto (a Toronto comedian named Bob Kerr organized the first Tompkins 300 Facebook pledge group, inspiring the project) and has since expanded all over North America, and even to faraway places like Denmark and Australia (check out the Tompkins 300 Map).
It sounded like a cool concept, so I bought two tickets on spec, figuring "dude, I've got two months, I'll find someone to come to the show with me!" Well, of course, I procrastinated, and when it came time to ask the people I thought most likely to accompany me, they were all busy/not interested.
Not wanting to lose $25, I took to Twitter to try to find a taker for the second ticket. First, I tweeted at PFT himself to see if he could re-tweet my offer to the masses, but he was probably on a flight or something. But while doing this I stumbled onto his Twitter page, which shows all the other people who have tweeted at him, and one such person was desperately looking for tickets. So on Saturday, I tweeted to this guy, Greg, that I had an extra ticket and that he should e-mail me on Sunday to figure things out. He replied that he was looking for two so he could bring his girlfriend, but would take just the one if that's what it came down to.
Upon waking up on Sunday, I had an e-mail about the tickets waiting in my inbox. Partially due to the fact that I wasn't sure what Greg's real name was because his Twitter name didn't make it immediately obvious and partially due to the fact that I was drowsy, having just woken up, I just blindly assumed the e-mail was from Greg. It wasn't - it was from a different guy named Steve, who, apparently, had also been on PFT's Twitter page, and had followed the paper trail to get my e-mail address. So I e-mailed him back confirming that I still had an extra ticket, not realizing that I was now promising him my ticket.
I was in and out of the house throughout the day commuting between three different tutoring appointments, and sometime in the afternoon I called Steve to figure things out. At this point I had decided I was kind of ambivalent to going to the show, and if he wanted the second ticket for his girlfriend, he could have it, but if he didn't, I would happily go to the show. Steve was confused by this since, remember, he wasn't the guy with the girlfriend. So he said he just needed one, and I assumed his girlfriend had dropped out.
Shortly thereafter I got an e-mail from Greg asking about the ticket, and that's when it dawned on me that I was dealing with two different people. I called Greg up and had to apologize for promising my second ticket to a guy I thought was him, when it could have gone to his girlfriend, but told him I'd still get him the one ticket. He was cool about it; I think he was just appreciative to get any ticket.
So I headed down to the Rivoli around 9 to meet the guys. I didn't have physical tickets; I just had my name on a list. So after meeting Steve and while waiting for Greg I went downstairs to make sure these two guys could go in on my reservation. The girl at the door seemed confused by the situation, so I half-heartedly explained ("I accidentally sold both my tickets to two different guys, not realizing they were different people" (in retrospect, my subconscious did a great job of explaining this in the most pitiable way possible even though at this point I was planning on not going to the show and was not especially disappointed about it)), and she was like "dude, I can get you in, no problem". Cool! So it all worked out - Greg and Steve would both get to go to the show, and so would I, though I still felt bad for Greg's girlfriend.
A few minutes later Greg showed up with his girlfriend, which was kind of awkward because I had screwed up when I could have gotten her a ticket, so I tried to mend things by explaining that the girl at the door would sneak me in and maybe we could get the same deal for her. Greg seemed concerned, asking if I still had a ticket for him. After assuring him I did, he was like "ohh, no problem! We scalped a ticket for (his girlfriend)". I guess they had showed up for the early show and found someone selling an extra! Now it had really all worked out.
Well, that's it for the tedious procedural details, which, as you should know by now, make up the bulk of Xave's Xlog. There were a couple short opening acts, which were okay, and then PFT did what seemed like an extremely long set, although I'm not sure because I've never specifically bought tickets for a stand-up comedian before - only "Friday night at Absolute Comedy!" or whatever.
It was great! PFT is hilarious. Aside from 20 or 30 minutes of "riffing", which he made a point to comment on (the act of riffing, I mean - he kept being like "okay, enough riffing, gotta get on to the material", and then not doing it because he was struck by something else to riff on, or something, and it was amazing), he basically told his life story starting from dropping out of college because he knew he wanted to be a comedian, working a couple of terrible jobs at video stores, meeting Paul Thomas Anderson and subsequently all the famous people in Magnolia, getting his scene (but not voice) cut from Magnolia (Magnolia: "a movie where everyone in the phonebook starts talking to each other"), PTA repaying the favour by giving him a tiny part in There Will Be Blood through to his hosting gig on the show Best Week Ever, which ran for four and a half years or so. I thought it was a unique approach; of course comedians talk about their life, but it's usually bits and pieces rather than an hour-long narrative. Of course it was hilarious also.
If you want to check PFT out a little more, he's got a couple albums, and he recently started a podcast, entitled the Pod F. Tompkast, which I think is ingenious, even though it may seem cutesy and somewhat obvious, but it's become one of those phrases that I just keep repeating in my head. Pod F. Tompkast. Pod F. Tompkast. Hilarious. See, you're doing it now.
After the show, the bar gave away promotional posters for free, which were actually really nice, and PFT set up a table to sell CDs and sign stuff, so Greg, his girlfriend, Steve and I got a chance to meet the man, and he even laughed at a couple of my jokes, genuinely or not. (I also discovered his scene in There Will Be Blood is the first scene with dialogue, which if I recall correctly is like 15 or 20 minutes into the movie, in case you want to check it out.)
In case you can't read it, it says "Dave! A good Samaritan!"
Turns out PFT (which I can call him now because I know so much about him, like we're basically best friends) has this thing called the "Tompkins 300" wherein, if a city can muster 300 residents to pledge attendance at a show, PFT will book a show there. It started one year ago yesterday, the first show being in Toronto (a Toronto comedian named Bob Kerr organized the first Tompkins 300 Facebook pledge group, inspiring the project) and has since expanded all over North America, and even to faraway places like Denmark and Australia (check out the Tompkins 300 Map).
It sounded like a cool concept, so I bought two tickets on spec, figuring "dude, I've got two months, I'll find someone to come to the show with me!" Well, of course, I procrastinated, and when it came time to ask the people I thought most likely to accompany me, they were all busy/not interested.
Not wanting to lose $25, I took to Twitter to try to find a taker for the second ticket. First, I tweeted at PFT himself to see if he could re-tweet my offer to the masses, but he was probably on a flight or something. But while doing this I stumbled onto his Twitter page, which shows all the other people who have tweeted at him, and one such person was desperately looking for tickets. So on Saturday, I tweeted to this guy, Greg, that I had an extra ticket and that he should e-mail me on Sunday to figure things out. He replied that he was looking for two so he could bring his girlfriend, but would take just the one if that's what it came down to.
Upon waking up on Sunday, I had an e-mail about the tickets waiting in my inbox. Partially due to the fact that I wasn't sure what Greg's real name was because his Twitter name didn't make it immediately obvious and partially due to the fact that I was drowsy, having just woken up, I just blindly assumed the e-mail was from Greg. It wasn't - it was from a different guy named Steve, who, apparently, had also been on PFT's Twitter page, and had followed the paper trail to get my e-mail address. So I e-mailed him back confirming that I still had an extra ticket, not realizing that I was now promising him my ticket.
I was in and out of the house throughout the day commuting between three different tutoring appointments, and sometime in the afternoon I called Steve to figure things out. At this point I had decided I was kind of ambivalent to going to the show, and if he wanted the second ticket for his girlfriend, he could have it, but if he didn't, I would happily go to the show. Steve was confused by this since, remember, he wasn't the guy with the girlfriend. So he said he just needed one, and I assumed his girlfriend had dropped out.
Shortly thereafter I got an e-mail from Greg asking about the ticket, and that's when it dawned on me that I was dealing with two different people. I called Greg up and had to apologize for promising my second ticket to a guy I thought was him, when it could have gone to his girlfriend, but told him I'd still get him the one ticket. He was cool about it; I think he was just appreciative to get any ticket.
So I headed down to the Rivoli around 9 to meet the guys. I didn't have physical tickets; I just had my name on a list. So after meeting Steve and while waiting for Greg I went downstairs to make sure these two guys could go in on my reservation. The girl at the door seemed confused by the situation, so I half-heartedly explained ("I accidentally sold both my tickets to two different guys, not realizing they were different people" (in retrospect, my subconscious did a great job of explaining this in the most pitiable way possible even though at this point I was planning on not going to the show and was not especially disappointed about it)), and she was like "dude, I can get you in, no problem". Cool! So it all worked out - Greg and Steve would both get to go to the show, and so would I, though I still felt bad for Greg's girlfriend.
A few minutes later Greg showed up with his girlfriend, which was kind of awkward because I had screwed up when I could have gotten her a ticket, so I tried to mend things by explaining that the girl at the door would sneak me in and maybe we could get the same deal for her. Greg seemed concerned, asking if I still had a ticket for him. After assuring him I did, he was like "ohh, no problem! We scalped a ticket for (his girlfriend)". I guess they had showed up for the early show and found someone selling an extra! Now it had really all worked out.
Well, that's it for the tedious procedural details, which, as you should know by now, make up the bulk of Xave's Xlog. There were a couple short opening acts, which were okay, and then PFT did what seemed like an extremely long set, although I'm not sure because I've never specifically bought tickets for a stand-up comedian before - only "Friday night at Absolute Comedy!" or whatever.
It was great! PFT is hilarious. Aside from 20 or 30 minutes of "riffing", which he made a point to comment on (the act of riffing, I mean - he kept being like "okay, enough riffing, gotta get on to the material", and then not doing it because he was struck by something else to riff on, or something, and it was amazing), he basically told his life story starting from dropping out of college because he knew he wanted to be a comedian, working a couple of terrible jobs at video stores, meeting Paul Thomas Anderson and subsequently all the famous people in Magnolia, getting his scene (but not voice) cut from Magnolia (Magnolia: "a movie where everyone in the phonebook starts talking to each other"), PTA repaying the favour by giving him a tiny part in There Will Be Blood through to his hosting gig on the show Best Week Ever, which ran for four and a half years or so. I thought it was a unique approach; of course comedians talk about their life, but it's usually bits and pieces rather than an hour-long narrative. Of course it was hilarious also.
If you want to check PFT out a little more, he's got a couple albums, and he recently started a podcast, entitled the Pod F. Tompkast, which I think is ingenious, even though it may seem cutesy and somewhat obvious, but it's become one of those phrases that I just keep repeating in my head. Pod F. Tompkast. Pod F. Tompkast. Hilarious. See, you're doing it now.
After the show, the bar gave away promotional posters for free, which were actually really nice, and PFT set up a table to sell CDs and sign stuff, so Greg, his girlfriend, Steve and I got a chance to meet the man, and he even laughed at a couple of my jokes, genuinely or not. (I also discovered his scene in There Will Be Blood is the first scene with dialogue, which if I recall correctly is like 15 or 20 minutes into the movie, in case you want to check it out.)
In case you can't read it, it says "Dave! A good Samaritan!"
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Pizzafish
A couple days ago, I had one of the weirdest dreams of my life. Here's what I remember:
- I was with a bunch of people (don't remember who) in the Rocky Mountains
- There was a lake nearby populated with a certain kind of (fictional) fish
- We ate the fish and it contained both white and red meat. I hazily remember this as similar to the Simpsons (or Family Guy, can't remember) where the pig rolls over and offers some bacon ready to be peeled away from its stomach. The fish wasn't talking to us, but it was like there were strips ready to go and they were labeled with easy-to-pull tabs indicating red or white.
- Even more bizarrely, there was a whole pizza inside the stomach of the fish. And somehow I knew (by that particular inexplicable surety unique to dreams) that the pizza was a naturally occurring phenomenon inside the stomach of this fish.
I posted this in less detailed form on Facebook the other day but it's such a fascinating dream that I felt compelled to expand it into its own blog post and examine some of the consequences that would arise from a world in which the Pizzafish existed.
First, I should note that I think the pizza was a plain cheese pizza. This is a detail that I hadn't considered, but after a friend posed the question in response to the aforementioned Facebook post, I searched back through my memory and while said memory is extremely uncertain, doesn't it just seem like, were pizza to be found naturally occurring in the world, it should occur as the classic trio of crust, sauce and cheese?
Anyway, the first post-dream analysis question that popped into my head is whether pizza would be considered meat in this world. The first instinct is to say yes, it would. After all, other animals have stomachs that are edible (and presumably the contents of the stomachs are part of that, I don't really know), and those are certainly not considered to be vegetarian.
However, a friend pointed out pizza could be analogous to eggs in this case. If the fish were to release the pizza from its insides as a chicken does an egg, then clearly it isn't meat, because no animal is killed in order to collect the pizza. But a chicken might not be the best analogy: fish lay eggs too, and humans eat them. Caviar, however, is collected from dead fish. Despite what you may think, there are no caviar trawlers out there, scraping the ocean floor for tiny delicacies. Therefore, according to chickensaysmoo on Yahoo! Answers, caviar is not vegetarian, and accordingly, in our hypothetical Pizzafish dreamworld, neither would pizza be.
Pizza-as-fish-egg raises another large question, though. Are we to assume that in Pizzafishland, as such a world would obviously be called and the name we will use from this point forward, the Pizzafish springs forth from pizza itself? Well, dramatic changes in physiology are not unprecedented: think caterpillar/butterfly. So it does at least seem conceivable that a fish could go through an early life stage as a pizza.
Unfortunately, the dream's timeframe wasn't long enough for me to witness the lifespan of a Pizzafish, so I can't give you an absolute answer. But given that the pizza is a natural phenomenon, it must have served some purpose - that's just straight-up evolution. Animals don't evolve superfluous body parts. What purpose could the pizza have served besides reproduction?
I suppose the pizza could have been useful in order to feed newborn Pizzafish. Perhaps the Pizzafish's offspring would spend the first stage of their life growing inside their creator, mammal style, and would feed themselves on the pizza. This is an unsatisfying answer, however, as it leads to two questions: 1) would this mean the Pizzafish could only reproduce once, or would it be able to re-generate its pizza? and 2) after being raised on a diet of pizza, would the young Pizzafish not struggle to survive upon exiting the womb, only to discover a vast ocean with no pizza?
Another, more esoteric possibility is that the pizza is something like a physical manifestation of the cat-nine-lives principle. Perhaps a Pizzafish has the same number of lives as the number of slices in its pizza, and each lost slice brings it that much closer to death.
This scenario has also led me to speculate about pizza delivery in Pizzafishland. At what stage would the pizza be extracted from the fish? If we are to believe that Pizzafish follow the trend of other fish, the extraction occurs somewhere on land after the Pizzafish has been caught. But this doesn't narrow down the possibilities much. The pizza could be removed immediately upon being caught, by the pizza place, or not until it's delivered to the customer.
I'd imagine that in most cases the pizza would be removed early in the process and pizza delivery would be pretty much the same as it is in our world. However, I would guess that there would be Pizzafish snobs who would insist on a fresh, un-excavated Pizzafish. Naturally, niche businesses would pop up to serve this population.
One of the things I love about science fiction is speculation about how the world would change if it was altered somehow. Clearly the existence of the Pizzafish, a relatively minor existence in the grand scheme of things, would lead to far-reaching consequences that would fundamentally change our world. Don't be surprised if we return to this topic and delve into more detail about the theoretical yet delicious Pizzafishland.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Canada's Wonderland
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I went to Canada's Wonderland a couple days ago - the first time I'd been in about seven years. Last time I went was on a high school jazz band trip, and I distinctly remember it for a few reasons: 1) after having previously been terrified of rollercoasters, I discovered a new love for them and spent the whole day riding every one CW had to offer, 2) in keeping with tradition, I spent every second of every rollercoaster ride screaming and to this day I believe that my falsetto vocal range permanently lost fairly significant range, and 3) a guy in our group got caught sneaking pot into the park.
Seven years later, I was looking forward to rollercoastering it up once again, since not only had I never been back to CW after discovering this aforementioned affinity, I had barely been to any theme park in that time - the only other instance being our family's outing to Disneyworld earlier this summer. Disneyworld, though, only has a couple of rollercoasters, neither of which are really all that intense, so it barely satiated my thirst.
So I guess I'll try to remember the order in which we went on the rides to give you a feel for the day (because you're so heavily invested in my life) and give a quick review of each one.
I went to Canada's Wonderland a couple days ago - the first time I'd been in about seven years. Last time I went was on a high school jazz band trip, and I distinctly remember it for a few reasons: 1) after having previously been terrified of rollercoasters, I discovered a new love for them and spent the whole day riding every one CW had to offer, 2) in keeping with tradition, I spent every second of every rollercoaster ride screaming and to this day I believe that my falsetto vocal range permanently lost fairly significant range, and 3) a guy in our group got caught sneaking pot into the park.
Seven years later, I was looking forward to rollercoastering it up once again, since not only had I never been back to CW after discovering this aforementioned affinity, I had barely been to any theme park in that time - the only other instance being our family's outing to Disneyworld earlier this summer. Disneyworld, though, only has a couple of rollercoasters, neither of which are really all that intense, so it barely satiated my thirst.
So I guess I'll try to remember the order in which we went on the rides to give you a feel for the day (because you're so heavily invested in my life) and give a quick review of each one.
- Behemoth - this is the newest rollercoaster, apparently, and also the one with the highest Terrifying Factor or whatever it's called. It certainly is pretty terrifying, especially that first drop. I couldn't go no-hands the first time, but after we got into the gentler parts of the ride I was able to let go and start air-guitarring and air-drumming for the mid-coaster photo (aside: my friend Ian related a story about a friend who had been on some sort of river-rafting ride somewhere, grabbed the canoe paddle, and air-guitarred at exactly the right place. Obviously he bought the photo, despite its over-pricedness. This story inspired me throughout the day.) Unfortunately, I didn't know where the photo was to be taken and didn't time it right.
- The Italian Job - Another one that's new since I was last at the park. It's actually called something else now because Paramount dissociated itself with CW, but I can't remember the name. Anyway, the calling card of this rollercoaster is that it goes 0 to 60 in some crazily short amount of time. Otherwise it's a fairly short and unimpressive-looking ride, but near the end it goes into a seemingly small building only to spend a much longer-than-expected amount of time hurtling through darkness. I enjoyed this one a lot.
- The Great Canadian Minebuster - an old standby, one of the two wooden coasters in the park. Not really a great ride, very slow line, but a must-do just to say you've done it, I guess.
- Skyrider - gave us a couple of firsts - first stand-up rollercoaster of the day, and first upside-down of the day as well. Short but a fun ride.
- Dropzone (now my memory is getting hazy about the order of things) - this was at CW the last time I was, but I didn't attend. It's gotta be the shortest ride in the park, but it's pretty fun. Also, the "Drop Zone Penny Trick" - whereupon a penny placed on one's hand/knee/other body part falls at the same rate as the Drop Zone because gravity - was explained (though unfortunately not demonstrated - they make you show your hands before you go up, not that that prevents you from getting into your pockets at the top) to me. Here's a crappy video of the trick which was at least better than a couple others I looked at.
- Dragonfire - I barely remember this one, I think I always get it mixed up with Skyrider... average rollercoaster, probably a loop or two, had been on it before.
- Wild Beast - the other wooden coaster in the park, nothing to write home about.
- Spongebob Moving Chair Movie - the last time I went in a moving chair movie was also at CW, and I think it was about dinosaurs. I'd also previously been on a couple when I was a kid at Disneyworld, and even though I was six or seven at the time, those were two of the few things I still remember fairly clearly. This was the first moving chair movie I've ever been on, however, that was also in 3-D. It was great! Possibly my favourite ride of the day (and certainly can be classified a "ride" - it was more intense than I was expecting). My favourite part was when Spongebob was trying to make the hamburger and then he lost the pickle! So the pickle flew out and it was like right in front of me! I tried to grab it but it didn't work.
- The River Rafting One - I distinctly remember this being my favourite ride before I got into rollercoasters, and it's definitely still up there. It's very relaxing in a couple of ways: it provides some stomach relief from all the violent rollercoaster action, and the various waterfalls and random watersplosions provide some much-needed heat relief. Ironically, though it seemed like I was the only member of our group of six who didn't mind getting wet, I was the only one who didn't.
- Behemoth - yeah yeah, I already talked about Behemoth, but we went on it again after dinner, and I really warmed to it. The first time was fun but dizzying, but the second time I loved it, especially since the sun had set while we were in line, the rollercoaster track was lit up, and we got a great view of the surrounding area (woooooo suburbs!)
Conclusions
- Were it not for the second ride, I wouldn't have loved Behemoth, but in the end it was up there with Spongebob and River Rafting for my favourite rides.
- I tried many variations on the Air Guitar in an effort to get a sweet rollercoaster photo, including Air Harp, Air Clarinet, Air Violin and lots of funny faces, but as it turned out, most rides didn't have the photo thing going on, and I guess I messed it up on the ones that did. Oh well.
- I was disappointed we didn't make it to Top Gun, which was my favourite one the last time, but that opportunity was exchanged for the second Behemothing, so it was worth it.
- We also didn't make it to Vortex or the Bat, both of which I'd been on before, so no big deal.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Panini
A couple months ago, I wrote about Gary _____, an interesting character I met while spending five April days in Bogotá with my friends Ben, Fed and Meg. Today's post features something else which unexpectedly became a recurring theme of our five days in Colombia's capital, and with the World Cup ending recently it seemed an appropriate time to finish up this long-delayed post.
Actually, selling stuff on the streets seems to be generally more common in Bogotá. We constantly had people trying to sell us stuff that looked like it had just been lifted from a store, including flash drives and awesome Spiderman toys that actually climbed down walls on their own. The most hilarious, though, was the guy who tried to sell us a whole thing of laundry detergent. Dude, we're obviously tourists; what are we going to do with laundry detergent???!
Despite coming to this conclusion early in our trip, we didn't get around to buying any until Saturday, our 4th day. But we were instantly hooked. While none of us know much about soccer, Fed and Ben and I are generally aware of the very top players, as well as which countries are usually the strongest. This meant that Brazilians instantly became the hottest commodity, even though we had no idea who most of the Brazilian players were. Other criteria for card-valuation began to emerge: single-named players (y'know, like Pele) were extremely valuable, as were Italians, since Fed obviously wanted all of them. And Ben was always open to trading anyone on his roster, except for one guy from Ghana we had never heard of, who became known simply as "The Ghanean". Through Ben's constant refusal to even consider trading him, we all started to really want this guy, and he became one of the most valuable commodities in the game.
In the end, while it's tempting to beat oneself up over "wasting" valuable vacation time doing something pointless like trading soccer cards, it was just really fun. Joe Posnanski, superstar of the online baseball community, wrote a blog this morning about how going to the World Cup for the first time made him feel like a kid again, because, over and over, he heard diehard fans speak wistfully of the stories and legends of soccer that every fan learns as a kid and never forgets, the likes of which exist in every sport, from Babe Ruth's called shot to Paul Henderson's goal. Trading cards are part of that too, I think; I'll never be into baseball or hockey cards the way I was as a kid, because I simply know too much, but spending a few hours over a couple days playing General Manager with some friends allowed me to re-live my childhood trading card glory.
Plus, when I got back to Barranquilla, I totally grifted some of my students. Haha, suckers. (And I got a text from Fed claiming he'd done the same in the Bogotá Airport.)
Several weeks prior to this mini-vacation, I had started to notice a new fad among my students; they all had these soccer trading cards, which are sort of like traditional baseball cards, and they would bring them into class and, well, trade them. Even though I'm a big sports fan and I also love embracing trends around here, especially among kids, it mostly got on my nerves since it was disrupting my classes. Especially because they're not actually cards; they're stickers, which the kids peel off the backing in order to stick into the Official Album so they can try to complete their collection. This, of course, creates an endless flood of sticker-back garbage on my classroom floor. (Colombians are terrible at waste disposal of any kind, recycling or garbage.)
Although, I have to admit, even though the cards mostly annoyed me, they did look like fun, and when on several occasions my students urged me to get in on the game, I had to admit that if the opportunity presented itself I might be tempted. At first, the opportunity didn't present itself, since as far as I could tell (and according to one of my students), there was only one place to buy the cards in Barranquilla.
Bogotá was different. The cards were available on almost every street corner.
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| Meg buys a new set of cards |
Actually, selling stuff on the streets seems to be generally more common in Bogotá. We constantly had people trying to sell us stuff that looked like it had just been lifted from a store, including flash drives and awesome Spiderman toys that actually climbed down walls on their own. The most hilarious, though, was the guy who tried to sell us a whole thing of laundry detergent. Dude, we're obviously tourists; what are we going to do with laundry detergent???!
Back to the cards. In Bogotá, my friends and I instantly noticed their prevalence, and I immediately recognized them as the same cards that had taken over my classroom. We also recognized the official album, where you stick the stickers, which I had previusly been sort of aware of, but hadn't really understood. And we all agreed that the cards would make for a fun diversion; on our own, merely collecting the cards would be boring, but having three friends with whom to wheel and deal sounded like a good time.
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| Fed and I lay our collections out on the conference table in order to better assess our strengths and weaknesses |
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| Ben does a little research to ensure he's getting fair value for his commodities |
I was worried that Meg would get bored by all this sports nerding, and maybe she did, but if so she hid it well behind her hilarious strategy of trying to collect the best-looking player on each of the 32 World Cup teams. Upon opening a new pack of cards, we would instantly submit our five new players for Meg's inspection, and if she liked any of them, we'd start to talk trade. Needless to say, when all was said and done, Meg's team would have run away with the Mr. World Cup crown (and her team was definitely handsomer than this one).
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| Meg ogles one of her hotties |
Plus, when I got back to Barranquilla, I totally grifted some of my students. Haha, suckers. (And I got a text from Fed claiming he'd done the same in the Bogotá Airport.)
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| The Boardroom |
Saturday, July 10, 2010
The End of an Era
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I left Colombia for the foreseeable future one week ago today, and several days later I encountered a machine that provided me with an apt bookend to my time across the Caribbean Sea. (I still plan on writing several blog posts about Colombia, specifically about the recent 10-day trip I took with my parents, but non-linearity has always been a hallmark of Xlog Xave's.) No, I'm not talking about a literal bookend-making machine, though that would have given me the great pleasure of being able to apply the word "literally" to a phrase that is almost always figurative.
As a matter of fact, the machine in question is a guitar pick-making machine, the likes of which I had never seen before. A music store near my parents' house here in Palo Alto, California has this do-it-yourself machine sitting out in the public area of the store, with an attached sign giving old credit cards as a suggested use.
I was delighted to realize that I did, in fact, have recently-outdated cards given my time in Colombia. So I took out my Cedula, the Colombian ID card which is kind of like a SIN but with a photo ID, briefly wondered whether I might need it at some point before noticing the expiry date of July 22, 2010, the day before I fly back to Canada, and went to work. The result:
In retrospect, if I had been more efficient (and as an industrial engineer, that should always be the first thing on my mind), I might have been able to get four. Furthermore, it would have been cool to get a fingerprint-pick, though that probably would have ruled out the face-pick, which I was only half-successful in creating anyway.
I left Colombia for the foreseeable future one week ago today, and several days later I encountered a machine that provided me with an apt bookend to my time across the Caribbean Sea. (I still plan on writing several blog posts about Colombia, specifically about the recent 10-day trip I took with my parents, but non-linearity has always been a hallmark of Xlog Xave's.) No, I'm not talking about a literal bookend-making machine, though that would have given me the great pleasure of being able to apply the word "literally" to a phrase that is almost always figurative.
As a matter of fact, the machine in question is a guitar pick-making machine, the likes of which I had never seen before. A music store near my parents' house here in Palo Alto, California has this do-it-yourself machine sitting out in the public area of the store, with an attached sign giving old credit cards as a suggested use.
I was delighted to realize that I did, in fact, have recently-outdated cards given my time in Colombia. So I took out my Cedula, the Colombian ID card which is kind of like a SIN but with a photo ID, briefly wondered whether I might need it at some point before noticing the expiry date of July 22, 2010, the day before I fly back to Canada, and went to work. The result:
In retrospect, if I had been more efficient (and as an industrial engineer, that should always be the first thing on my mind), I might have been able to get four. Furthermore, it would have been cool to get a fingerprint-pick, though that probably would have ruled out the face-pick, which I was only half-successful in creating anyway.
Nevertheless, three perfectly good guitar picks. And given the presence of most of my name, my year of birth, and part of my face, I might even be able to use this as ID!
If it turns out that I do need this for some reason, like to get back into Canada, I can always re-build.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
What I Would Like To See For The Rest Of The World Cup
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I´m on vacation with my parents in Colombia right now, and of course the World Cup is everywhere, even though Colombia didn´t make it. Occasionaly, we´ve been able to fit a match into our vacation schedule, including today, when we watched Spain beat Portugal 1-0 in a restaurant at the top of Manizales, a city in the coffee-growing region of Colombia (aka El Cafetero).
The game was the last in the round of 16, and now there´s a bit of a break before the quarter-finals start on Friday. Even though I´ve had favourite teams since the beginning of the tournament, this feeling of temporary finality got me thinking about how I want the rest of the tournament to go down. So, without further ado, my best-case scenario for the remainder of the World Cup. (This is not what I think is going to happen; I wouldn´t presume to know enough about soccer to predict that. It´s just what I want to happen.)
Quarterfinal: Uruguay vs. Ghana
Looking at this game by itself, I´m kind of ambivalent. I would like to see Ghana win because they´re the only African nation left, but at the same time I like Uruguay for equally meaningless reasons; their jerseys, their history as the winner of the first World Cup, and I´m not sure why, but their star Diego Forlan strikes me as a cool guy.
But I can´t look at this match in a vacuum, because What I Want To See For The Rest Of The World Cup includes subsequent rounds, so I must consider the match-ups created by the outcome of this game, and for reasons that will soon become clear I want Uruguay to win this game.
Quarterfinal: Netherlands vs. Brazil
For some reason, the Netherlands are my favourite soccer country. I think I decided that during the last Euro Cup when they looked like the strongest team in the tournament in the preliminary round and then flamed out in the knockout round, as predicted by the English friends of my London-residing cousin with whom I watched said flame-out. I don´t know why; maybe it´s the orange, maybe it´s because I´ve met a lot of cool Dutch people.
Brazil is the favourite in this match, so I want to see them dominate the first half and take a 2-0 lead into the second period, at which point the Netherlands will turn it on and perform one of the great comebacks in World Cup history, winning 3-2 in extra time.
Quarterfinal: Argentina vs. Germany
Like the Netherlands, I find myself drawn to Germany and this goes back (at least) to the ´08 Euro Cup. A couple weeks after watching my favourite team lose while visiting my cousin in England, I was in Strasbourg, France, very close to the German border. It just so happened that Germany made it to the final against Spain, so I hopped over the border for about 24 hours, still the only 24 hours I´ve ever spent in Germany, to watch the game. Germany lost, but I had a great time, and now I consider Germany my second favourite team. At least I think so. It´s one of those things: I honestly don´t know who I´d cheer for in a Netherlands/Germany final, and I don´t think I will know until the game starts, if such a situation occurs.
My ideal scenario in this game would involve tons of amazing plays by Messi, because he´s Messi. He would score like 3 or 4 or 17 goals, but the organized German squad would pick apart the Argentinian defense whenever Messi couldn´t get near the ball to squeak out a 4-3 victory.
Quarterfinal: Paraguay vs. Spain
Things have worked out such that I´ve watched a lot of Spain games in this World Cup, but I have no particular attachment to them, other than the fact that I got Xavi Hernandez in Panini trading cards when Fed, Ben and Meg and I got obsessed with them in Bogota. I don´t really have a particular attachment to Paraguay either, but for previously-mentioned but as-yet-undisclosed reasons I want them to win this game, against all odds.
Semifinals: Netherlands vs. Uruguay, Germany vs. Paraguay
I´ve already explained why I like each team, so the rest of this shouldn´t take long. I want the Netherlands and Germany to win their respective semi-finals, which they would be clear favourites for if they faced these opponents. The only caveat here is, as mentioned, I´m not sure who I would cheer for in such a match-up, and it might be more fun to have a clear personal favourite in the World Cup Final.
You´ve probably already figured this out, but I want Paraguay and Uruguay to win their quarterfinals and then lose their semifinals to create the seminal "Battle of the Countries That End in Guay" Third Place Game. It´s just too bad Chadguay isn´t around to create some sort of three-team free-for-all Guay orgy.
Alternate Scenario: Final Four of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay
It´s crazy that four of the final eight teams are South American, and even moreso that they´re all in different quarter-finals. It would be infinitely crazy if they all won to make the All-South-American Final Four, and I would love to see it. And you know what? It totally could happen. Uruguay and Brazil are the favourites in their games, and Argentina and Germany are pretty close. Paraguay is the weak link, facing an excellent Spain team. It would be very cool, but my #1 and 1a teams are standing in the way of hoping this happens.
I´m on vacation with my parents in Colombia right now, and of course the World Cup is everywhere, even though Colombia didn´t make it. Occasionaly, we´ve been able to fit a match into our vacation schedule, including today, when we watched Spain beat Portugal 1-0 in a restaurant at the top of Manizales, a city in the coffee-growing region of Colombia (aka El Cafetero).
The game was the last in the round of 16, and now there´s a bit of a break before the quarter-finals start on Friday. Even though I´ve had favourite teams since the beginning of the tournament, this feeling of temporary finality got me thinking about how I want the rest of the tournament to go down. So, without further ado, my best-case scenario for the remainder of the World Cup. (This is not what I think is going to happen; I wouldn´t presume to know enough about soccer to predict that. It´s just what I want to happen.)
Quarterfinal: Uruguay vs. Ghana
Looking at this game by itself, I´m kind of ambivalent. I would like to see Ghana win because they´re the only African nation left, but at the same time I like Uruguay for equally meaningless reasons; their jerseys, their history as the winner of the first World Cup, and I´m not sure why, but their star Diego Forlan strikes me as a cool guy.
But I can´t look at this match in a vacuum, because What I Want To See For The Rest Of The World Cup includes subsequent rounds, so I must consider the match-ups created by the outcome of this game, and for reasons that will soon become clear I want Uruguay to win this game.
Quarterfinal: Netherlands vs. Brazil
For some reason, the Netherlands are my favourite soccer country. I think I decided that during the last Euro Cup when they looked like the strongest team in the tournament in the preliminary round and then flamed out in the knockout round, as predicted by the English friends of my London-residing cousin with whom I watched said flame-out. I don´t know why; maybe it´s the orange, maybe it´s because I´ve met a lot of cool Dutch people.
Brazil is the favourite in this match, so I want to see them dominate the first half and take a 2-0 lead into the second period, at which point the Netherlands will turn it on and perform one of the great comebacks in World Cup history, winning 3-2 in extra time.
Quarterfinal: Argentina vs. Germany
Like the Netherlands, I find myself drawn to Germany and this goes back (at least) to the ´08 Euro Cup. A couple weeks after watching my favourite team lose while visiting my cousin in England, I was in Strasbourg, France, very close to the German border. It just so happened that Germany made it to the final against Spain, so I hopped over the border for about 24 hours, still the only 24 hours I´ve ever spent in Germany, to watch the game. Germany lost, but I had a great time, and now I consider Germany my second favourite team. At least I think so. It´s one of those things: I honestly don´t know who I´d cheer for in a Netherlands/Germany final, and I don´t think I will know until the game starts, if such a situation occurs.
My ideal scenario in this game would involve tons of amazing plays by Messi, because he´s Messi. He would score like 3 or 4 or 17 goals, but the organized German squad would pick apart the Argentinian defense whenever Messi couldn´t get near the ball to squeak out a 4-3 victory.
Quarterfinal: Paraguay vs. Spain
Things have worked out such that I´ve watched a lot of Spain games in this World Cup, but I have no particular attachment to them, other than the fact that I got Xavi Hernandez in Panini trading cards when Fed, Ben and Meg and I got obsessed with them in Bogota. I don´t really have a particular attachment to Paraguay either, but for previously-mentioned but as-yet-undisclosed reasons I want them to win this game, against all odds.
Semifinals: Netherlands vs. Uruguay, Germany vs. Paraguay
I´ve already explained why I like each team, so the rest of this shouldn´t take long. I want the Netherlands and Germany to win their respective semi-finals, which they would be clear favourites for if they faced these opponents. The only caveat here is, as mentioned, I´m not sure who I would cheer for in such a match-up, and it might be more fun to have a clear personal favourite in the World Cup Final.
You´ve probably already figured this out, but I want Paraguay and Uruguay to win their quarterfinals and then lose their semifinals to create the seminal "Battle of the Countries That End in Guay" Third Place Game. It´s just too bad Chadguay isn´t around to create some sort of three-team free-for-all Guay orgy.
Alternate Scenario: Final Four of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay
It´s crazy that four of the final eight teams are South American, and even moreso that they´re all in different quarter-finals. It would be infinitely crazy if they all won to make the All-South-American Final Four, and I would love to see it. And you know what? It totally could happen. Uruguay and Brazil are the favourites in their games, and Argentina and Germany are pretty close. Paraguay is the weak link, facing an excellent Spain team. It would be very cool, but my #1 and 1a teams are standing in the way of hoping this happens.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Americana
Note - this blog is automatically imported into facebook, but unfortunately it loses some formatting in the process. Click here to visit the real thing.
It took me a while to think of a title for this post, because there really isn't a unifying theme; it's just a bunch of observations and occurrences from my last hours in Colombia and first day in an English-speaking country in almost a year. But at some point the above title came to me, and it fits well, especially because it refers to both parts of my journey. Something I've noticed in Colombia is that Americans, upon being asked where they're from, should not answer "America", because South Americans think of themselves as "Americans" as well. Thus, even though there isn't a connecting narrative between parts of this entry, the title is that unifier.
*****
The day started auspiciously.
Actually, it didn't start auspiciously at all, I just think saying it does gives this whole post an awesome sense of expectation that will keep you reading beyond the first paragraph. And you're still reading! Ha, it worked.
Anyway, the day started slowly with me finishing up the packing I hadn't finished the previous night, but it really picked up with my cabbie's music selection on the way to the airport. After 10 minutes of standard Colombian radio (salsa, merengue, etc.), the guy got out a CD, meaning he had very specifically decided on this particular music. Very soon I discovered that "this music" referred to a terrible pan-flute version of "My Heart Will Go On" that sounded a lot like this awesome recorder version. This fantastic piece was followed by similar pan-flute covers of Let it Be, Unchained Melody and (!!!) Africa (by Toto). Incredible.
*****
When I arrived at the Barranquilla airport, I half-expected to run into students from my school, since seemingly every one of my students has relatives in Miami, or regularly goes to Miami for vacation, or has a huge Miami fetish, I dunno. And my students are all fairly well-off, or they wouldn't go to a private school. Well, I was right - there were two girls from grade nine going to Miami to meet a tour group. They weren't my students, but I had substituted in their class a few times. By a twist of fate, we ended up sitting beside each other on the plane, and they were endlessly amused by my Spanish interactions with the stewardesses, especially my use of the colloquial "porfa" (short for por favor).
*****
A week or two ago, Elizabeth asked me if I thought I'd get culture shock upon returning to Canada (or the USA, as the case has turned out to be). I said I didn't really think so; I mean, I've lived in Canada my whole life apart from the last 10 months. Obviously there are things I'll need to re-adjust to, but will anything legitimately shock me? I found that hard to believe. But today, within my first hours back on the continent, I was proven wrong.
*****
When I arrived at the Fort Lauderdale airport, I decided to try taking the cheap way to my hotel, since a cab would run me something like 30 bucks. Even though this would involve lugging three heavy bags around, since I'm basically in the process of moving, and taking at least two different buses, I still went for it. I like taking public transit - it's my favourite way to learn a new place, partly because I often get lost and see parts of the city I would never see otherwise. Not that I was hoping to get lost with three huge suitcases.
After asking a few different airport officials, I found myself at a bus stop outside the airport, where an extremely friendly lady in a wheelchair helped me figure out exactly what bus to take. It was only after she got on to the first bus that came and confirmed my instructions with the driver that I realized she didn't need the wheelchair, and it was only after coming to that realization that I noticed the presumably complimentary wheelchair at EVERY bus stop in the airport. Haha, classic Florida.
When my bus eventually came, I asked the driver to let me know when we reached the place where I would eventually have to transfer to another bus in order to get to my hostel. He enthusiastically assured me that he would, and I sat down, re-assured that I would get to the hostel fairly quickly and hassle-free, possibly even in time to get to the Florida Marlins game I was hoping to attend.
The bus gradually filled up as we got further from the airport and further into the city of Fort Lauderdale. One of the passengers who was forced to stand near me because of the fullness of the bus was a middle-aged Spanish-looking guy, and I just didn't get a good feeling about him. He looked angry. Well, I was right. Shortly after getting on the bus, the driver was forced to makhttp://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=3139234229404821775&postID=8152879144482325713e a slightly jolty maneuver for one reason or another. It was barely anything, really. But the dude instantly said "f***ing bus drivers, man", fairly loudly, possibly loudly enough for the driver to hear. Dude, relax!
Eventually we started going past streets I recognized from my previous research, and I started getting worried, but I decided not to say anything because 1) I was sitting right in the front and the driver could see me every time he turned around, so I thought there was no way he could forget and 2) in Colombia, I asked this favour of drivers on many occasions, and it never failed. But when we got to the end of the line and I asked him if this was where I transferred to the other bus and he got all frustrated and yelled at me, I knew that he had forgotten.
Which, okay fine, I was a little exasperated, and I no longer expected to make the baseball game, but I was resolute and determined to make it to the hotel the cheap way, so I asked him what I should do. But before giving me the next set of instructions, he chewed me out for being an idiot and not getting off where I was supposed to and "that's why we have a talking bus!" Dude, I don't even know what the stop was called, how was that supposed to help me? And you SAID you would tell me when to get off. All I wanted was for him to apologize and for me to be on my way, but he had to act like I had personally offended him. Lame. Dude, relax!
Oh, also, the handle on my suitcase completely broke off when I was getting off the bus at the end of the line. This is a bit of foreshadowing - I'm hoping to write a post soon on all the things that are broken in my life.
Later, while watching the NBA finals in the comfort of my hostel common area, a group of people about my age who could accurately be described as white trash came in and got into a dispute with the very friendly and helpful Peruvian manager. These people had some weird story about how one of the girls' grandmas had booked the room with her credit card, so they didn't have a credit card they could use as a deposit to protect against room damages, etc., and her grandma was in the hospital so they couldn't get her credit card (leading one to wonder how and why she made the reservation in the first place). The hotel chick was being very reasonable: all she needed was a credit card that corresponded to one of the people there. Apparently, among the four of them, that was not possible. So they got angry and yelled at her, at one point even spouting "first of all, I don't need your attitude", when she wasn't giving ANY sort of attitude. Dudes, relax!
The reason I've related these anecdotes in succession is because this was my first instance of culture shock. People are assholes here! And now that I think about it, differences in the behaviour and demeanor of people is probably the form that most of my culture shock will take. As I said before, there are a lot of cultural differences that I will need to re-adjust to, but won't come as a shock, like public transportation, available food products, etc. But human interaction is something so deeply ingrained, subtle and less superficially apparent that it sure does take you by surprise when you are completely adjusted to a different culture.
Of course, most of the people I've met are not assholes. And I'm hoping that this forgotten Assholism is less pronounced in Canada than here in the USA. But it will be there, to some extent, and meeting three in the span of a few hours is something that never just happened in ten months in Colombia.
*****
Back to my bus odyssey. When I finally got to the transfer spot, I had a long wait for the next bus, and during this wait something fun happened - I was asked for help and was able to give it! This is one of the best feelings, always, and especially when you're in a new city that you hardly know. It's happened to me before - one time I successfully gave directions in London, England, after being there for just a few days. But this was the first time that it happened in another language. Yep, that's right, I was asked for help in Spanish, in a city I had arrived in hours earlier for the first time in my life, and was able to successfully answer. Awesome!
Another note on language: while waiting for the second bus, a pair of girls sat down beside me and started talking in what I tentatively identified as German, and later confirmed when I heard "ein, zvi, tri". They got on the same bus as me and helped me get to the hostel when it became apparent to them that I was clueless - they were staying at the same hostel anyway. On the walk to the hostel, they asked me where I was from, and I followed by noting "you're from Germany, right?" They were impressed. Boo yeah.
*****
I've been amazed by the amount of Canadian flags in Fort Lauderdale. Seemingly every hotel and some restaurants had two or three flags: American, Canadian, and sometimes a third. I also went by a food stand/permanent food truck type thing that sells... yep, you guessed it, poutine. Incredible! My hostel chick later informed me that Fort Lauderdale typically sees a huge winter influx of Canadians, especially French-Canadians. Weird! I wonder why French Canada in particular is attracted to this city - maybe it's just a self-perpetuating community thing, like now that Fort Lauderdale is known as the French-Canada winter spot, more French-Canadians vacation here.
*****
I had forgotten that it was game seven of the NBA finals, but after dinner I was channel-surfing in the hostel and remembered. When I arrived on the right channel, there came a shout from the neighbouring kitchen: "hey, are you turning it to... oh, yeah, sweet". I was glad to win the approval of my hostel-mate, and after he finished cooking dinner we sat down to watch the game together. Ironically, it was the first NBA game I'd watched in the entire season, having been in Colombia for the whole time.
Unfortunately, the lobby area closes at 11, and this happened to be with about 8 minutes left in the 4th quarter of a very close game. So we were kicked out and had to find a bar on the boardwalk to catch the last few minutes. I lost my watching buddy, since I had to go back to the room for a minute, and I ended up in a bar that could only be described as a hillbilly bar. It was very charming: the southern-accented long-haired dudes and ugly women were busy playing pool and couldn't have given less of a shit about the basketball game, except when one particularly drunk middle-aged woman noticed it and shouted "oh, Boston's playing! Go Boston!" and promptly went back to whatever she was doing (drunking). The bartender was your classic southern belle; tall and beautiful with a thick accent, and while inspecting my ID jokingly shook her head and tsk tsked.
When there were just a couple minutes remaining it became apparent that one of the pool players was interested in the game, and ambled over to the TV to turn the sound up. When this happened, the whole bar (it wasn't that full, about 15 people) tuned in and excitedly watched the last two minutes of the last game of the NBA season. Probably the only two minutes they watched all year. Hey, that's not much less than I watched, I guess. Anyway, it was fun to have company in finishing out the game, even though the team I and the drunk chick were cheering for (Boston) lost.
The game ended, there was a sense of "well, that's that", the hillbillies went back to pool, and I went back to the hotel, my first day back in North America over.
*****
Wow, this might be the longest entry I've ever written. Can't believe you made it all the way!
It took me a while to think of a title for this post, because there really isn't a unifying theme; it's just a bunch of observations and occurrences from my last hours in Colombia and first day in an English-speaking country in almost a year. But at some point the above title came to me, and it fits well, especially because it refers to both parts of my journey. Something I've noticed in Colombia is that Americans, upon being asked where they're from, should not answer "America", because South Americans think of themselves as "Americans" as well. Thus, even though there isn't a connecting narrative between parts of this entry, the title is that unifier.
*****
The day started auspiciously.
Actually, it didn't start auspiciously at all, I just think saying it does gives this whole post an awesome sense of expectation that will keep you reading beyond the first paragraph. And you're still reading! Ha, it worked.
Anyway, the day started slowly with me finishing up the packing I hadn't finished the previous night, but it really picked up with my cabbie's music selection on the way to the airport. After 10 minutes of standard Colombian radio (salsa, merengue, etc.), the guy got out a CD, meaning he had very specifically decided on this particular music. Very soon I discovered that "this music" referred to a terrible pan-flute version of "My Heart Will Go On" that sounded a lot like this awesome recorder version. This fantastic piece was followed by similar pan-flute covers of Let it Be, Unchained Melody and (!!!) Africa (by Toto). Incredible.
*****
When I arrived at the Barranquilla airport, I half-expected to run into students from my school, since seemingly every one of my students has relatives in Miami, or regularly goes to Miami for vacation, or has a huge Miami fetish, I dunno. And my students are all fairly well-off, or they wouldn't go to a private school. Well, I was right - there were two girls from grade nine going to Miami to meet a tour group. They weren't my students, but I had substituted in their class a few times. By a twist of fate, we ended up sitting beside each other on the plane, and they were endlessly amused by my Spanish interactions with the stewardesses, especially my use of the colloquial "porfa" (short for por favor).
*****
A week or two ago, Elizabeth asked me if I thought I'd get culture shock upon returning to Canada (or the USA, as the case has turned out to be). I said I didn't really think so; I mean, I've lived in Canada my whole life apart from the last 10 months. Obviously there are things I'll need to re-adjust to, but will anything legitimately shock me? I found that hard to believe. But today, within my first hours back on the continent, I was proven wrong.
*****
When I arrived at the Fort Lauderdale airport, I decided to try taking the cheap way to my hotel, since a cab would run me something like 30 bucks. Even though this would involve lugging three heavy bags around, since I'm basically in the process of moving, and taking at least two different buses, I still went for it. I like taking public transit - it's my favourite way to learn a new place, partly because I often get lost and see parts of the city I would never see otherwise. Not that I was hoping to get lost with three huge suitcases.
After asking a few different airport officials, I found myself at a bus stop outside the airport, where an extremely friendly lady in a wheelchair helped me figure out exactly what bus to take. It was only after she got on to the first bus that came and confirmed my instructions with the driver that I realized she didn't need the wheelchair, and it was only after coming to that realization that I noticed the presumably complimentary wheelchair at EVERY bus stop in the airport. Haha, classic Florida.
When my bus eventually came, I asked the driver to let me know when we reached the place where I would eventually have to transfer to another bus in order to get to my hostel. He enthusiastically assured me that he would, and I sat down, re-assured that I would get to the hostel fairly quickly and hassle-free, possibly even in time to get to the Florida Marlins game I was hoping to attend.
The bus gradually filled up as we got further from the airport and further into the city of Fort Lauderdale. One of the passengers who was forced to stand near me because of the fullness of the bus was a middle-aged Spanish-looking guy, and I just didn't get a good feeling about him. He looked angry. Well, I was right. Shortly after getting on the bus, the driver was forced to makhttp://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=3139234229404821775&postID=8152879144482325713e a slightly jolty maneuver for one reason or another. It was barely anything, really. But the dude instantly said "f***ing bus drivers, man", fairly loudly, possibly loudly enough for the driver to hear. Dude, relax!
Eventually we started going past streets I recognized from my previous research, and I started getting worried, but I decided not to say anything because 1) I was sitting right in the front and the driver could see me every time he turned around, so I thought there was no way he could forget and 2) in Colombia, I asked this favour of drivers on many occasions, and it never failed. But when we got to the end of the line and I asked him if this was where I transferred to the other bus and he got all frustrated and yelled at me, I knew that he had forgotten.
Which, okay fine, I was a little exasperated, and I no longer expected to make the baseball game, but I was resolute and determined to make it to the hotel the cheap way, so I asked him what I should do. But before giving me the next set of instructions, he chewed me out for being an idiot and not getting off where I was supposed to and "that's why we have a talking bus!" Dude, I don't even know what the stop was called, how was that supposed to help me? And you SAID you would tell me when to get off. All I wanted was for him to apologize and for me to be on my way, but he had to act like I had personally offended him. Lame. Dude, relax!
Oh, also, the handle on my suitcase completely broke off when I was getting off the bus at the end of the line. This is a bit of foreshadowing - I'm hoping to write a post soon on all the things that are broken in my life.
Later, while watching the NBA finals in the comfort of my hostel common area, a group of people about my age who could accurately be described as white trash came in and got into a dispute with the very friendly and helpful Peruvian manager. These people had some weird story about how one of the girls' grandmas had booked the room with her credit card, so they didn't have a credit card they could use as a deposit to protect against room damages, etc., and her grandma was in the hospital so they couldn't get her credit card (leading one to wonder how and why she made the reservation in the first place). The hotel chick was being very reasonable: all she needed was a credit card that corresponded to one of the people there. Apparently, among the four of them, that was not possible. So they got angry and yelled at her, at one point even spouting "first of all, I don't need your attitude", when she wasn't giving ANY sort of attitude. Dudes, relax!
The reason I've related these anecdotes in succession is because this was my first instance of culture shock. People are assholes here! And now that I think about it, differences in the behaviour and demeanor of people is probably the form that most of my culture shock will take. As I said before, there are a lot of cultural differences that I will need to re-adjust to, but won't come as a shock, like public transportation, available food products, etc. But human interaction is something so deeply ingrained, subtle and less superficially apparent that it sure does take you by surprise when you are completely adjusted to a different culture.
Of course, most of the people I've met are not assholes. And I'm hoping that this forgotten Assholism is less pronounced in Canada than here in the USA. But it will be there, to some extent, and meeting three in the span of a few hours is something that never just happened in ten months in Colombia.
*****
Back to my bus odyssey. When I finally got to the transfer spot, I had a long wait for the next bus, and during this wait something fun happened - I was asked for help and was able to give it! This is one of the best feelings, always, and especially when you're in a new city that you hardly know. It's happened to me before - one time I successfully gave directions in London, England, after being there for just a few days. But this was the first time that it happened in another language. Yep, that's right, I was asked for help in Spanish, in a city I had arrived in hours earlier for the first time in my life, and was able to successfully answer. Awesome!
Another note on language: while waiting for the second bus, a pair of girls sat down beside me and started talking in what I tentatively identified as German, and later confirmed when I heard "ein, zvi, tri". They got on the same bus as me and helped me get to the hostel when it became apparent to them that I was clueless - they were staying at the same hostel anyway. On the walk to the hostel, they asked me where I was from, and I followed by noting "you're from Germany, right?" They were impressed. Boo yeah.
*****
I've been amazed by the amount of Canadian flags in Fort Lauderdale. Seemingly every hotel and some restaurants had two or three flags: American, Canadian, and sometimes a third. I also went by a food stand/permanent food truck type thing that sells... yep, you guessed it, poutine. Incredible! My hostel chick later informed me that Fort Lauderdale typically sees a huge winter influx of Canadians, especially French-Canadians. Weird! I wonder why French Canada in particular is attracted to this city - maybe it's just a self-perpetuating community thing, like now that Fort Lauderdale is known as the French-Canada winter spot, more French-Canadians vacation here.
*****
I had forgotten that it was game seven of the NBA finals, but after dinner I was channel-surfing in the hostel and remembered. When I arrived on the right channel, there came a shout from the neighbouring kitchen: "hey, are you turning it to... oh, yeah, sweet". I was glad to win the approval of my hostel-mate, and after he finished cooking dinner we sat down to watch the game together. Ironically, it was the first NBA game I'd watched in the entire season, having been in Colombia for the whole time.
Unfortunately, the lobby area closes at 11, and this happened to be with about 8 minutes left in the 4th quarter of a very close game. So we were kicked out and had to find a bar on the boardwalk to catch the last few minutes. I lost my watching buddy, since I had to go back to the room for a minute, and I ended up in a bar that could only be described as a hillbilly bar. It was very charming: the southern-accented long-haired dudes and ugly women were busy playing pool and couldn't have given less of a shit about the basketball game, except when one particularly drunk middle-aged woman noticed it and shouted "oh, Boston's playing! Go Boston!" and promptly went back to whatever she was doing (drunking). The bartender was your classic southern belle; tall and beautiful with a thick accent, and while inspecting my ID jokingly shook her head and tsk tsked.
When there were just a couple minutes remaining it became apparent that one of the pool players was interested in the game, and ambled over to the TV to turn the sound up. When this happened, the whole bar (it wasn't that full, about 15 people) tuned in and excitedly watched the last two minutes of the last game of the NBA season. Probably the only two minutes they watched all year. Hey, that's not much less than I watched, I guess. Anyway, it was fun to have company in finishing out the game, even though the team I and the drunk chick were cheering for (Boston) lost.
The game ended, there was a sense of "well, that's that", the hillbillies went back to pool, and I went back to the hotel, my first day back in North America over.
*****
Wow, this might be the longest entry I've ever written. Can't believe you made it all the way!
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Math Comics 3 - Number Trouble
Note - this blog is automatically imported into facebook, but unfortunately it loses some formatting in the process. Click here to visit the real thing.
Here's part 3 in the Math Comics series, entitled "Number Trouble".
Panel 1: There were numbers and numbers
Panel 2: Everyone had a partner
Panel 3: But not number 2. He was sooo alone...
2: "I'm so alone"
Panel 4: He was very very sad.... He didn't talk with anyone
2: (sad face)
Panel 5: But one day he found someone.
2: (surprised face) "She is so cute!"
Panel 6: He tried and tried to talk to her, but he was too shy."
2: "he he"
Panel 7: When he see her, he break in pieces
2: (heart)
(BOOM - 2 explodes)
Panel 8: He was sad because he couldn't talk to her:
2: "not again"
Panel 9: But one day something amazing happen.
2: (happy face)
Girl 2: "hi 2"
Panel 10: (BOOM - 2 explodes again)
Panel 11: 2: "hi!"
Girl 2: "Wanna hang out?"
Panel 12: 2: "yay"
Panel 13: so they were in love, and hang out
Panel 14: And get in love=
2: "Me (2) + you (2) = for(4)ever"
Panel 15: NOT AVAILABLE FOR KIDS
Panel 16: and had many many kids.
(2 and girl 2 are surrounded by 6 little 2s)
Commentary
This is a sweet love story, but with two completely awesome additions. First, the thing about 2 exploding every time he tries to talk to girl 2 is hilarious. Maybe the girl who wrote this is a big Futurama fan. And second, of course, the last two panels are genius, especially coming from a very sweet and cute little grade 7 girl. I also like the 2+2 thing.
Here's part 3 in the Math Comics series, entitled "Number Trouble".
Panel 1: There were numbers and numbers
Panel 2: Everyone had a partner
Panel 3: But not number 2. He was sooo alone...
2: "I'm so alone"
Panel 4: He was very very sad.... He didn't talk with anyone
2: (sad face)
Panel 5: But one day he found someone.
2: (surprised face) "She is so cute!"
Panel 6: He tried and tried to talk to her, but he was too shy."
2: "he he"
Panel 7: When he see her, he break in pieces
2: (heart)
(BOOM - 2 explodes)
Panel 8: He was sad because he couldn't talk to her:
2: "not again"
Panel 9: But one day something amazing happen.
2: (happy face)
Girl 2: "hi 2"
Panel 10: (BOOM - 2 explodes again)
Panel 11: 2: "hi!"
Girl 2: "Wanna hang out?"
Panel 12: 2: "yay"
Panel 13: so they were in love, and hang out
Panel 14: And get in love=
2: "Me (2) + you (2) = for(4)ever"
Panel 15: NOT AVAILABLE FOR KIDS
Panel 16: and had many many kids.
(2 and girl 2 are surrounded by 6 little 2s)
Commentary
This is a sweet love story, but with two completely awesome additions. First, the thing about 2 exploding every time he tries to talk to girl 2 is hilarious. Maybe the girl who wrote this is a big Futurama fan. And second, of course, the last two panels are genius, especially coming from a very sweet and cute little grade 7 girl. I also like the 2+2 thing.
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