That Doesn't Say "Hikers," Dipshit

Everyone has pet peeves. Some of them are more important and valid, like rudeness. Some are less so, like my noted distaste for Goth kids. I've seen "pet peeve" described as a "minor annoyance that can instill extreme frustration in an individual." These things differ from person to person. Of course, the whole point is the minority of it. There is absolutely no reason to get worked up over something so trivial. And yet, you can't stop yourself from getting worked up.

One of my biggest pet peeves is vanity license plates that have a "1" where there should be an "I." "W1NNER" is not the same as "WINNER." If the vanity plate you want is taken, then get something else. Use your brain. Don't try to cheat by using a 1 when it's clearly a 1 and not an I. You're not fooling anyone.

Yesterday I saw a license plate that was doubly offensive in this regard. I believe it was supposed to read "HIKERS," but of course it didn't. It was "H1KER5." What the hell is that? H one ker five? I saw the driver getting out of the car and I almost called her on it. But what would be the point?

(Dalton-Themed) Quiz Time!!

I don't know how long this link will be up, but check out the Mental Floss website for a Dalton-themed quiz:

http://www.mentalfloss.com/trivia/quizzes/?quiz=3209

How cool is that? Big props to my friend Melanie for forwarding me the link.

The 'Zards Are F'ed In The A

My beloved Wizards have managed to limp into the playoffs despite the fact that they have now dropped six in a row. This means they have handed the Miami Heat the Southeast Division title. They might as well have wrapped it up with a pretty bow and delivered it to Southern Florida. Fortunately for the erstwhile Bullets the woeful Pacers managed to lose to the even more woeful Sixers on Tuesday night. As of now that means the ‘Zards will be the sixth seed and they’ll be up against the Toronto Raptors in the first round. I can dig it. I saw them play the Raptors at Verizon Center last month and the outcome of the match could accurately be described as an ass-stomping. The ‘Zards won by twenty points, and led by as much as 28. Most of the stars sat out the entire fourth quarter. Gilbert scored like 22 points and he didn’t even play that much. The Raptors essentially lost to the B-team. So even without Caron Butler and Arenas, I think they might able to make it a series in the first round. They might even make it to the second round. But probably not. ‘Course, the playoff seedings still have some shaking out to do. The Wizards have four games left, and three of them are against teams they have no business losing to, even sans Butler & Arenas. They play the Hawks tomorrow, who are arguably one of the worst teams in the league. If they can’t beat that bunch of punters, it would be pretty sad. Then the Magic and the Pacers next week, neither of whom have much to recommend them. On Sunday erstwhile Bullet Scott Skiles and his team of punks come to D.C. for the ‘Zards final home game. (In fairness, since dumping Tyson Chandler the Bulls are less thuggadocious than they’ve been in recent years. Luol Deng, in addition to having one of the coolest names in the NBA, is a finalist for the NBA Sportsmanship Award.) I’ll be at that game, and while I’ll be disappointed if they lose, I won’t be angry. If they lose to the Hawks, however, I will be livid.

My friend Doug remarked that the Wizards playoff appearance this spring is merely prolonging the agony. We all know they’re f’ed. Oy gevalt, this sucks! This season was shaping up for a deep playoff run, despite some annoying inconsistencies. Specifically, I don’t get why they could keep beating the Pistons or the Suns, and then lose games to cellar-dwellers like the Pacers, Bucks or Celtics. And then we lose our superstar and pretty much the only player with any kind of defensive wizardry within a week of each other. Out for the season. Damn. Still, it’s important to keep this in perspective. This is not like being a Real Madrid fan. Madrid fans are so accustomed to uninterrupted success that if the team goes one year (or currently, three) without winning some kind of trophy, the fans are really pissed off. By contrast, with the possible exception of the Clippers, Southern California’s red-headed stepchild, the Bullets/Wizards have arguably been the worst team in the NBA over the last quarter-century. They are the only team that did not win a playoff game in the nineties. That’s right. They went an entire decade without winning a single playoff game. So the mere fact that they are in the post-season for the third year in a row should be cause for celebration. I hope they make it past the first round. But realistically, their chances of doing that are about the same as the number emblazoned on the jerseys that Gilbert Arenas will not be throwing into the stands after games: zero.

Rock Me Amadeus!

If you're not familair with pandora.com, you should be, because it is awesome. The idea is based on something called the Music Genome Project. You set up channels on the website, based on songs or bands that you like. The channels then play songs that are musically similar. Here's an example: right now I'm listening to the Los Amigos Invisibles channel, and a song was recently chosen "because it features male lead vocals, major key tonality, simple harmonic progressions, romantic lyrics and mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation." Some of the songs the software chooses are a bit of a stretch. But it's a great idea; you know you'll like most of the new music you hear because it's similar to something you already like.

One of the channels I have programmed plays music that's similar to Xzibit. So if it only played West Coast hip-hop, I'd probably like most of it. I was listening to the Xzibit channel recently and they played a song by an MC out of Kansas Citay named Tech N9ne. I was not familiar with his ouevre and in fact he is the first and only rapper I have heard of who represents K.C. Here is his description of the significance of the name Tech N9ne:

"My name means Technique Number Nine. Nine is the number of completion. Nine months completes a pregnancy. A cat has nine lives. Three plus six is nine. Three hundred and sixty degrees is a complete circle. Technique number nine – I am a complete technique of rhyme."

The song was entitled "I'm a Playa." This is not the most original title one can come up with for a rap song. The song, however, was really good. They sampled "Rock Me Amadeus" by Falco, and of course the chorus goes:

"I'm a playa, I'm a playa
I'm a playa, I'm a playa, I'm a playa
I'm a playa, I'm a playa, I'm a playa
oh oh, well I'm a playa
I'm a playa playa,"

That's pretty creative.

To The Top Of Mount Saint Albans

I had everything planned perfectly. If I could get out of the house around ten AM, I could ride my bike to Georgetown, enjoy some coffee and a pastry of some sort at Dean & Deluca, and make it to the theatre on K Street for a 10:45 showing of Grindhouse. What sort of people go to movies at quarter of eleven in the morning, you ask? Well, lots of people. Sociopaths, the unemployable, young mothers with infants, etc. I even stayed in on Friday night, which is something I do about 3 or 4 times a year. I love seeing movies in the morning. It’s cheaper, the theatre is invariably more or less empty, and it’s a time of the day in which I wouldn’t be doing anything interesting were I not at the cinema.

But I forgot that it was supposed to snow. Snow and bicycles are not the best of friends. In the event, the snow was confined to grassy areas, so the bike ride was no problem. It was cold. Cold and windy. At times the snow would blow off of branches and mix with the flower petals of Bradford pear trees and other ornamentals. This momentarily made it seem like I was actually riding along while it snowed. But of course, I didn’t actually leave the house in a timely fashion that morning. So by the time I got to Dean & Deluca on M Street it was like 10:40 and the long line confirmed that I wouldn't have time for a nosh. Then my moby rang. Someone trying to schedule a racquetball game with me in an hour or so. Not compatible with my desire to view a 3 hour plus film. But in my haste to leave the house, I had grabbed my wallet, but failed to check the contents. So I had no money or even a debit card with which I could obtain more ducats. I made plans for the racquetball match.

The other thing I’d planned to do on my bike ride this past Saturday morning was supposed to take place after the movie. The Georgetown theatres are on K Street, right by the river. So I was going to ride my bike from the Potomac all the way up Wisconsin Avenue to the National Cathedral. The cathedral sits atop Mount St. Albans, which is the highest point in Washington. So a bike ride from the river to D.C.’s highest point sounded fun. I started from M Street instead. And the ride wasn’t that bad. While passing the Whole Foods in Glover Park, I briefly considered giving up or at least taking a break. This was the first time I’d tried this ride. But you know what? There’s a word for people who give up halfway through something because they think it’s too hard: losers!

I made it all the way to the cathedral, and hung out in the Bishop’s Garden for a spell. (That’s one of my favorite spots in Washington.) The tulips were out in full force, but there was still some snow hanging about on the trees. I went downhill towards Massachusetts Avenue and watched a few minutes of a Landon/St. Albans lacrosse game. Then I went past the observatory/VP’s residential area and down Massachusetts Avenue, into Rock Creek Park, then past the Kennedy Center and across the Roosevelt Bridge back to the Old Dominion.

Halfway across the bridge, I stopped to take in the view. The Kennedy Center was on my right, gleaming like an enormous box of chocolates. Roosevelt Island was on my left as I looked upstream. It’s easy to forget when you see this stuff everyday, but Washington must be one of the prettiest cities in the world. (And I’m really well-traveled, so I think my statement has some validity here.) Sometimes I drive down Constitution Avenue in the evenings when all the monuments are lit up. People come from all over the world to look at these edifices, and I get to see them all the time, when all I’m doing is driving to a bar to meet friends. It saddens me when I meet peeps who’ve moved to Washington and don’t dig it. I sort of understand why, though. Most of the criticisms are pretty valid. People here work too much. They’re too focused on their jobs. They can be kind of superficial. I totally understand why native Left Coasters or Midwesterners wouldn’t dig the pace of life here. There are a lot of places in the United States where I doubt I would enjoy living, and I’m sure they all have passionate boosters of their own. (Except Newport News. I can’t actually imagine someone coming up with a compelling argument for why that’s a great place to live. Seriously.) Someone recently told me that she thought Baltimore was cooler than Washington. I helpfully suggested that she stop smoking crack.

"People critically don't think of Brad in terms of the Jim Morrisons and the Kurt Cobains, but they will."

At the end of December, I made a short visit to the NYC to kick it with my main man W. Nathan "Nasty Nate" Aiken. I also wanted to hang in Queens with my friend Andrea "Dre" Schwartz. Dre represents Queens, but we met in D.C., so we’d never chilled together on her turf. Or with her hometown friends. Both of which sounded rad. On Thursday evening, the 28th of December, I met up with Dre and her peeps at a Lower East Side spot called the Skinny. If you have ever been to the Skinny, you’ll understand how it came to acquire that sobriquet. Having spent uncountable hours in D.C.’s own Adams-Morgan, I am used to bars in narrow spaces. But the Skinny is kind of extreme. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being not extreme, and 10 being extremely extreme, I give the Skinny’s narrowness a 9. It feels like it is about twelve feet wide.

At the Skinny, I was talking about music with Dre’s friend Matt. (I love talking about music.) We were discussing bands, specifically. More specifically, I mentioned that if I had to name my five favorite bands, not one would be American. At the time I think said, and this is in no particular order, Led Zeppelin, Los Amigos Invisibles, Queen, AC/DC and The Police. And actually, I’m going to make that top eight, so I can include New Order, the Clash and Super Furry Animals. Anyway, for the top five, one is Australian (although Bon Scott and both Angus and Malcolm Young were born in Scotland), one is Venezuelan, and the remaining three are English. If we make it top seven, we add a Welsh band and two more English ones. Matt expressed the opinion that the British really have us, as bands go. We’ve got some incredible musicians, no doubt, but American musicians frequently become famous as solo acts.

So I thought about what my favorite American band is. I thought of Sublime. I can think of a few people who will take issue with this (two Langley graduates come to mind), but I think Sublime had an absolutely fantastic sound. There are two things, I think, that a band can do to be great. One path is to pick one style, and play that better than anyone else. AC/DC is the best example. The other is to create a synthesis of more than one style. After you introduce it, other cats might start playing it, but the creation will be your own. The Police, Led Zeppelin, and Sublime are good examples of this.

The straight-up punky stuff Sublime did was good (especially if you dig the O.C. Punk, and I do), but I don’t think it was terribly groundbreaking. No, they made their mark with those reggae/hip-hop/ska/rock jams. That’s what got them on top 40 radio and made them beloved by whitebread college students across the nation. Their eponymous album put them over the top (it included the Modern Rock chart number one "What I Got," "Doin’ Time," "Santeria," and naughtiest of all, "Caress Me Down"). It was arguably the biggest rock album of 1997. But Brad Nowell, Sublime’s sublimely talented songwriter and singer, didn’t get to see any of this. Inexplicably, he had o.d.ed on heroin right before a European tour, and two months before the album ultimately came out. He died three days after he was married. There was nothing cool about this. It was just a shame. Due to this pointless event, Brad Nowell’s son will grow up without his father. His wife, family, friends, band mates and dalmatian were left behind. And that’s to say nothing of all the people who loved his music because it held meaning for them.
(I don’t mean to suggest in anyway that Bud Gaugh and Eric Wilson, the other 2/3s of Sublime, are not incredible musicians whose talent was anything less than a critical part of the band’s success. I have the album they recorded as the Long Beach Dub All-Stars after Brad Nowell’s death, and it’s great. But it’s not Sublime.)

My favorite Sublime album is "40 Oz. to Freedom." This is technically their debut album. It was released in 1992 and was sold largely from the trunk of Brad’s car, a method that would later set Master P on his road to success. Brad Nowell was about 23 when he wrote the lyrics for many of the songs on "40 oz." When I was 23 I listened to that album a lot. Usually I pay a lot more attention to music than lyrics when I listen to CDs. But there was something about the stuff that he was writing about in those songs that got me. The thoughts he expressed felt awfully familiar. And Brad Nowell was only 23 when he composed those songs. This is the worst part of his death, for Sublime fans. Imagine what Sublime albums would have sounded like when the band had been around for 15 or 20 years. When they had been alternately cosseted and then discarded by the cruel mistress called fame. After they had gained the maturity and wisdom that comes with fatherhood, marriage, success, failure and an awareness of one’s own mortality? What kind of songs would Brad Nowell have written then? We shall never know.

The Rectification of the Vuldronaii

I have an annoying habit of repeating lines from movies. One of my favorite lines from Ghostbusters is spoken by Louis Tully as possessed by Vinz Clortho the Keymaster as portrayed by Rick Moranis. This is not one I repeat often as it's long and difficult to remember. But it is kind of awesome:

"During the rectification of the Vuldronaii, the Traveler came as a large, moving torb. Then, during the third reconciliation of the last of the Meketrex supplicants they chose a new form for him - that of a giant sloar. Many shubs and zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the sloar that day, I can tell you!"

I found this on wikipedia, of course. It blows my mind that there is someone out there who has so much free time, and is so dorktastic, that he can actually sit there watching the DVD and pausing it so he can write down this ridiculous quote and place on the web. Bravo, dork. Bravo.

"Back off, man. I'm a scientist."

My homey Eric "Papa Doc" Karlins is a scientist, and he works at the National Human Genome Research Institute up in Bethesda. I believe his job involves doing science. Particularly science relating to genes. A project that he worked on for the better part of a year is currently "breaking science news." Apparently, this involved identifying some allele that is responsible for size in dogs. The domestic dog has a greater size range than any other "terrestial vertebrate." A full-grown chihuahua can weigh 2 pounds, while an adult Irish wolfhound might tip the scales at 160. You can check out the the abstract he worked on at the "Science" magazine site here:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/316/5821/112

If you'd prefer to get your information on this breaking science news minus all the fancy scientific terminology, check out this article in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Mini-Mutts.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

And if you're too damn lazy to actually read something, and you prefer to receive your breaking science news in an audio format, you can check listen to the story on NPR's website:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9348104&sc=emaf

GOOOOOOOO ERIC!!

Quoth the Raven: This bar is lame.

I like to think of myself as a pretty flexible, easygoing dude. There are only a handful of bars in the D.C. area that I generally refuse to patronize, and one of them is the Raven. The last time I was there (which, granted, was at least three years ago) I had such a miserable and lame time that I decided I wouldn’t go there again. For some reason, several of my friends decided to meet up there last night. Eventually I decided to join them, but not before I’d laid out the reasons for my dislike of the joint. To wit:

1 - I don't like dives. And the Raven isn't even a dive, but a faux-dive, which is pretentious.

2 - It's cash only, which is kind of lame. (Granted, the Black Cat is cash only, but it makes up for that in many, many ways.)

3 - The crowd there is largely composed of fauxhemians. They think they are non-conformists but they’re all wearing ironic Girl Scout T-shirts, black frame glasses and straight leg jeans. That’s pretentious.

4 – It’s a terrible place to meet, let alone see women. The crowd is always at least 80% dudes, and the girls who are there are with their boyfriends, and not terribly attractive anyway.

After my experience last night, I’ve decided that some of my stated reasons were less valid than others. (Let no one say I won’t admit it when I’m wrong.) The Raven has been open since the fifties, so it’s not a faux-dive. It’s just a dive. Your seating options are booths that your ass will sink into, or plastic folding chairs that appear to have been borrowed from an AA meeting in a church basement. The crowd last night was composed of normal cats, and not pretentious “hipsters.” Numbers 2 and 4 on the list did hold true last night, for the most part. There were several attractive women there, but they were among the group I had come to meet. I did, however, find three new reasons not to go there:

1 – They don’t serve Budweiser. (This is actually a problem at many bars in D.C.) I’m sorry, I thought this was America. This isn’t America? Last time I checked I lived in America. And if I can’t order a Bud in a bar in America, then obviously the terrorists have already won. Seriously though, Budweiser is my go-to beer when the bartender approaches me and I haven’t decided what to order. When I am told that Bud is unavailable, it throws me into a state of existential angst from which it is most difficult to escape.
2 – The barkeep was somewhat surly. Dude, I’m sorry if you’re having a bad evening. I’m sorry if you’re the only one working tonight. I’m sorry that you had to single-handedly eject a belligerent drunk. But it’s not my fault you brought me a Miller Lite when I ordered a Pabst. I’d prefer to have my drink served without the attitude, thank you very much.
3 – Most importantly, I saw two people there I didn’t want to see. I studiously avoided interacting with either of them. One is a fellow alumnus of William & Mary who said something very unkind to me the last time I spoke to him. The other was an odd bird who has never given me any reason to have a problem with her. She did, however, remind me of a particularly wack evening that occurred several years ago during and after a party in Mount Pleasant. Over the course of this evening, some wanker named Liam introduced himself by insulting me based on an assumption he’d formed due to my surname, then informed me it was fine with him if I had sex with his girlfriend, then asked me to lend him $2,000, despite the fact that he had just met me and had made a spectacularly poor first impression. Next he threatened to “kick [my] ass” when I refused to lend him any ducats. Later in the evening I was sexually assaulted by the hostess. As I say, this was not a fun night. So if people I don’t want to see hang out at a particular bar, that makes me not want to go that bar.

I was with a pretty neat group of people last night, so I had a good time at the Raven. But it also confirmed my opinion that that bar is lame. You won’t find me there in the future without one hell of a compelling reason.

Book Review - "Brick Lane" by Monica Ali

Last night I finished reading Brick Lane by Monica Ali. This book was very well-reviewed, so I reckon my expectations were pretty high. Before it was even published, the manuscript got the author included on Granta’s “Best of Young British Novelists” list. In 2003 the novel was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. It was also short-listed for two other literary prizes, and won two: the British Book Awards Newcomer of the Year and the W.H. Smith People’s Choice Award. Additionally, it was named one of the best books of the year by several periodicals, including The Washington Post, The Guardian and others.

I’m going to have to respectfully disagree with all of those esteemed reviewers and publications. I really didn’t think the book was all that good. The main problem, I found, is that it’s just not that compelling. I had to force myself through all four hundred pages. I didn’t finish it because I was involved, but because I was willing myself to do so. Of course I was going to finish the book. I always finish books, even when I’m enjoying them far less than I enjoyed this one. This is partly due to a neurosis about leaving things unfinished. In this case, it was compounded by the fact that I was reading Brick Lane for a book club, and I was the one who’d picked it. I would have looked quite the jack-ass had I shown up for a meeting without reading my selection. There are a few sections that did get me turning the pages, but it certainly wasn’t like reading The Kite Runner. That book kept me up for four hours in the middle of the night because I was so involved in the story that I simply couldn’t put the book down.

While I’m talking about compelling books, I’d like to bring up Jane Green. She’s almost the same age as Monica Ali, and she’s published nine books in the last seven years. I’ve read four of them. Jane Green, however, is unlikely to be short-listed for any prestigious literary prizes. In that context, her oeuvre would most likely be dismissed as “chick-lit” by those who insist upon making a distinction between “popular fiction” and “literary fiction.” Jane Green doesn’t appear to be trying to make any overarching or subtextual points about society, geo-politics, culture or metaphysics in her novels. All of this ignores one salient point: Jane Green is an extremely talented writer. Her books are very easy to read, they’re compelling, and her heroines are fully-realized and (to varying degrees) likeable. She can transition from laugh-out-loud funny moments to something serious so smoothly that you don’t even notice it until the heaviness is already upon you. This increases its impact.

Monica Ali does manage to craft characters that are three-dimensional, but for the most part, they are not especially likeable or interesting. I realize that I haven’t put in a synopsis. The book is rather rambling and episodic, which I suppose is understandable as it covers a very long period of time (more than twenty years). Let’s say it’s the tale of Nazneen Ahmad, a young Bangladeshi woman who moves to England for an arranged marriage. Through the years, she experiences the travails of being an immigrant, a wife, and a mother, and then starts an affair with a younger man. These are the stops on her journey from believing that fate controls all to a belief in her ability to make her own choices. So, yes, the author appears to be making a point about personal agency versus fatalism. Great stuff, as subtext goes. But fatalism is kind of appropriate if your life is this dreary and monotonous. Even in England, these women are constrained by a suffocating and antediluvian patriarchy. They live in tiny, overcrowded apartments in drab council estates. They have trouble relating to and controlling their children, many of whom feel they are not really English but not really Bengali either. And Nazneen and her friends are incredibly fortunate compared to many of their female relations back home in Bangladesh.

This is illustrated most vividly by the letters Nazneen receives from her sister Hasina. Hasina ran away from home at a young age to marry a man whom she loved. Disowned by her father, beaten by her husband, and then forced to fend for herself, things keep getting more and more hellish for poor Hasina. Her letters, rendered in broken English, are among the most compelling sections of the book. Hasina, despite the series of grave misfortunes she endures, never seems to sink into the slough of self-pity. Her faith holds steady. Nor does she seem paralyzed into inaction by excessive self-reflection, like her Londoni sister. In fact, Brick Lane works better as a social document than a story; I found that Hasina’s letters and the other parts of the book set in Bangladesh were among the most interesting parts. If you want to learn something about Bangladesh, and about Bangladeshi immigrants in the UK, this book is a good place to start. This leads me to my next point.

I suspect that part of the reason this book was so well-received is because it’s the sort of novel that a lot of people feel that they should like. Hundreds of thousands of white Britons eat curry and chicken tikka everyday, and the vast majority of them probably couldn’t pick Sharukh Khan out of a line up or tell you the first thing about the Bangladeshi War of Independence. I don’t think it’s much of stretch to imagine that readers of a multiculti bent might feel obliged to speak well of a novel that so earnestly explores the immigrant experience of South Asians in the UK. But it’s possible to balance this sort of social documentation with a gripping narrative. The Kite Runner taught me a great deal about the recent history and culture of Afghanistan, and it has a great story that almost never lags.

Another problem I found with Brick Lane is the near-total lack of comic relief. Since reading Michael Cunningham’s The Hours last year, I’ve become convinced of the importance of a bit of humor in any novel. Regardless of how serious or deep the intentions of the author, leaving out even a trace of whimsy is not a great idea. Books that are unrelievedly serious are rarely fun to read, no matter how talented the writer is. The few funny moments found in Brick Lane principally come from Chanu, Nazneen’s much older husband. Chanu comes across as perhaps the book’s most likeable character, even though he is snobby, passive and slightly pathetic. There is real, human, affecting emotion in this book as well. Again, much of it comes from Chanu. His warmth towards his wife, and the nature of his friendship with a character named Dr. Azad stand out as high points of the story. I don’t mean to say this is a bad novel by any means. It’s actually pretty good. But I do think it’s overrated.

Death to all fanatics!

Last Saturday, I was helping a friend move. After the first truckload of stuff had been transferred to the new crib, we were driving back to the old one. On Walter Reed Drive in South Arlington (The S.A.), we saw a truck with a prominently displayed bumpersticker that read, "DESTROY RADICAL ISLAM." At first, I thought it was meant to be ironic. You know, like the "DEATH TO ALL FANATICS!" bumperstickaz (which are hilarious). But we got a better look at the truck, and it also included an NRA sticker as well as another one that read "What Would Reagan Do?" And then we realized there was no irony involved. The sentiment was sincere.