Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Four for Today

It’s fun to get tapped to participate in a blog meme like the one I’m about to lay on all a’y’all, but it’s distressing, too, especially when my new job leaves hardly any time for that blogging stuff I used to do more freely before. I blame Jason Santa Maria. Not for the new job, but for passing on the meme. And for other stuff, too, but I won’t go into it. For now, some lists of four…

Continue Reading …

+

The Mini-Binder Sketchbook System

SketchbookThere’s a bit of throwback enthusiasm going on right now among the otherwise digitally inclined for the mystique of Moleskine. These decidedly analog, leather-bound notebooks and sketchbooks are a counterpoint to the foundering PDA market: they are idea keepers and organizers that can capture fluid, organic meanderings of the brain in a way that neither the Palm OS nor the Pocket PC can hope to approximate. What’s more, rather than losing their value and technological currency with age, they are built to grow more precious with repeated use, as their owners invest ever more care and time into filling their pages.

Continue Reading …

+

When Losers Win

Red SoxTo be sure, the Red Sox absolutely, a hundred and ten percent, for sure deserved to win their first World Series in forever last night — it was probably the most well-earned championship we’ll see this decade, if you forget the inconvenient fact that they got into the post-season by virtue of the wild card. Personally, as a fan of the Yankees, it was a weird experience to see them do so well, being so accustomed to wishing ever more bad luck on them. I’ve never bought the image of the team as a gang of ‘lovable losers,’ something they’ve been cultivating with almost obsessive care. This year’s team, in fact, has struck me as having more than its fair share of assholes. Still, I was rooting for them all the way.

Continue Reading …

+

Ceci N’est Pas Un Opinion

DebateMuch to my dismay, news outlets and politically-oriented weblogs are continuing to devote time, words and breath to the fact that John Kerry mentioned Mary Cheney, vice president Dick Cheney’s daughter — who happens to be a lesbian — in the course of last night’s debate. You can find all of the details elsewhere, so I’m not going to detail them here. In my opinion, it’s much ado about nothing — Kerry’s reference was both respectful and relevant — and the brewing furor is yet another example of trumped-up indignation on the part of conservatives (however, I admit that even some of my pinko friends found it somewhat inappropriate).

As it happens, this incident is a good illustration of one of the reasons I find it so frustrating and stressful to watch the presidential debates, especially when George W. Bush is a participant.

Continue Reading …

+

Stress Testing

Presidential DebateIt’s a really, really stressful night to watch television if you follow either the Major League Baseball postseason — both leagues are in the first two games of their championship series tonight — or the race for the White House — Bush and Kerry are in the midst of their third and last debate. I keep going back and forth between these the debate and the Yankees/Red Sox game, and it’s like maddening. I can’t look away though. Anyway, as a friend of mine joked yesterday, “I hope the Yankees beat George Bush.”

Continue Reading …

+

Putting the Dubya in AWOL

AWOLI watched Dan Rather’s 60 Minutes II piece on the renewed questionability of George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard this evening with great interest. Two quick things occurred to me: first, that it’s highly unlikely that the network would have allowed Dan Rather — who is synonymous with the credibility of their news organization, for better or worse — to lend his imprimatur to this report without being pretty confident that they were right on the facts. This is an important point, because CBS is notoriously weak-willed, having caved into Republican pressure on everything from a harmless Reagan made-for-TV movie to commercials from MoveOn.org. It means something when a lapdog like the Eye bites back.

The second thing I considered was that, hey, maybe the reason George W. Bush didn’t show up for duty is that he came across one of these discs in his mailbox back in 1969. Could be.

Continue Reading …

+

Little Bit of Little Saigon

I would’t discourage anyone from trying any of the Vietnamese restaurants in New York, but even the most well-regarded of them pale next to what can be had in Westminster, California’s Little Saigon area. Being Vietnamese, I’m more critical of these establishments — and of how closely their cooking methods resemble my mother’s — than the average customer. But it’s not just a cultural thing, it’s a matter of dollar value, too. What you can get in Manhattan, in finer restaurants like Cyclo and Blue Velvet 1929 isn’t bad; it’s just disproportionately expensive given the inaccurate and uninspired dishes they bring to your table.

Continue Reading …

+

Grant Me the Serenity

Two things, which are completely out of my control, have me in a foul mood this evening, and I wonder half-jokingly if they’re somehow linked. If you were the sort to gloat, you might say that they’re exactly the kind of things that an East Coast liberal should be rightly suffering over. There’s lots of things I could say in response to that, but I’ll just say that that’s what makes this country great, right?

Continue Reading …

+

Don’t Go Back to Dulles

Baseball in WashingtonIt appears virtually certain that the Montreal Expos, who have been waiting to find out where their new home will be for a brief eternity, will end up somewhere in rough proximity to Washington, D.C., at least according to recent reports. That they were headed to that part of the country was not news to me, but I was surprised to hear that it’s going to come down to competing proposals, one from the city proper — hoping to replace their long lost Washington Senators — and one from the more affluent suburbs further west and south, in Loudoun County.

I resist posting entries here about baseball, mostly because I feel under-qualified when trying to make the same kind of snotty, dismissive pronouncements about the sport that I am able to make about other subjects about which I know slightly more. But I don’t mind coming right out and saying that I’d rather not see baseball come to the Washington Metropolitan area at all than see the Expos move to Loudoun County.

Continue Reading …

+

A New Vast Wasteland

TelevisionFor a year, our television’s picture has grown gradually more distorted at the top edge, such that the head of anyone who appears on it seems elongated and unnaturally tall — my friends call it the ‘conehead effect.’ I would’ve liked to have replaced it sooner, especially given that it’s often difficult to make out who’s winning a ball game if a network — like say Fox Sports — chooses to display the score horizontally, at the top of the screen; our aging, fake-wood paneled idiot box would cut off most of the runs, outs and innings at the top.

The final straw came on Friday evening, when the picture moved even further north, and left behind fully two-inches of unused black space along the bottom. I fiddled with it a little bit, then left it alone for the evening as we went to dinner. Saturday morning it showed the same result, and I finally felt justified in buying a new set.

Continue Reading …

+