Here We Are Now

On November 20, 2007, Sara and I met for our first date at a restaurant in Ft Greene called Olea. It's on Lafayette St just a couple blocks from the school she was teaching at that year. It's a simple but thoughtfully put-together place with actual cushions on the chairs and pew seating along the walls. The noise level is somewhat quiet but not in a stifling way, and the lighting is moderate. The food is good and the menu encourages you to order tapas. Basically, it's a perfect place to have a first date. I had never been there before, and--prior to last night--I had never been there since.
In addition to working up street on Adelphi St, Sara also used to live in the vicinity, maybe a 15 minute walk away. That was one job and two moves ago for her, though, and so neither she nor I ever had a reason to be in the area. However, since she both liked the restaurant and is a sentimentalist, she always wanted to return. Last night we finally did.
I am not to be confused with a sentimental person, but it was certainly a nice experience to relive what turned out to be a very important moment in my life. I say "what turned out to be" because it wasn't at all so obvious at the time. I'm going to go ahead and speak for her a little now, but we didn't have anything like the love-at-first-sight experience(1). And then, while we both had a very nice time at the first date, it was far from apparent that we were on the march toward a lifetime together.
I'm fairly certain that her basic motivation for approaching me was to help move on from her previous relationship. Two years later, my motivation is still unknown to me, but whimsy no doubt played a large role.
The point is that there's more than one way to skin a cat, and sometimes the cat still gets skinned even if you aren't trying.
Too often people too strongly use either societal generalities or their own experiences or to explain or understand others. I really enjoyed re-doing our first date last night, not because it reinforced my love for Sara, but because it reminded me how delicate and unpredictable fate can be. There was an impossible sequence of extremely tenuous events that unfolded just perfectly to leave us in the happy place we are today. I met her when I'd just turned 27. Perhaps 60 years of my life then were laid out before me, on the basis of very little. So much of who we are is castles made of sand. No, I'm not being rueful, I'm being impressed. And feeling very fortunate.


1. We didn't first meet at the restaurant, of course. That happened at a bar called Moe's four days prior, but that connection was far less memorable. I mean that literally, since I was quite inebriated. In fact, when she texted me the next day I did not initially remember her at all and only after great effort was I able to recreate what I (fortunately, I can now say) deemed to be her cute face.

The Man Who Scoffed at Everything

I try to avoid the fanboy-type posts but that's probably what this is.
I used to be a pretty big Food Network addict. When I lived alone and had only 6 channels, every night my default station was Food Network. I had my favorites, but really I watched everything they aired(1). It was good because not only did it entertain me but usually it also inspired me to actually cook things, and specifically to cook things better. Cooking appeals to me for two very fundamental reasons: because it's basically an unreachable pursuit of perfectionism, and because after a certain point you can mostly just wing it as you go.
Anyway, marriage and devoting time to things outside of myself and whatever else has caused me not to watch Food Network as much. Also, quite frankly, watching the same type of those shows gets tiring. The only ones I still watch are "Good Eats," and the contest/straight cooking shows like "Iron Chef" and "The Next Iron Chef"(2). I watch these because Alton Brown is still ridiculously informative, and because I like watching the absolute pros during "Iron Chef." And, because I love Jeffrey Steingarten.
Steingarten is the lumpy grey-haird frequent judge of "Iron Chef" and constant judge of "The Next Iron Chef." And he's a son of a bitch. He talks with an arrongance and a lisp as though he forgot to swallow his oyster, and I can't pin down if either are at all affected. He's the most knowledgable and nasty judge I've ever seen on those shows. He's like what Simon Cowell could be if Cowell didn't always operate as though he were his own media empire.
There is always one truly great moment of every "Iron Chef" episode: when the Chairman unveils the secret ingredient with his hyper-aggressive arm-waving style, followed by the super-intense bulging-eyed stare from one contestant to the other. It's all pure theater(3) but by god I can never get enough of it. Someone should make a youtube video of just all the secret ingredient reveals one after the other. I would be mesmerized.
The more times I watched "Iron Chef," the more I realized that there was often another great moment of many shows, the moment when the judges are introduced and Jeffrey Steingarten is one. That's right. Part of the reason I watch this very competitive cooking contest show is to see a somewhat obscure judge. To my great enjoyment, he usually tears to shreds whatever celebrity-type judge they have with him, but I've also seen him and Bobby Flay butt heads numerous times during the food presentations. He's a very tough critic who doesn't seem to care what others think, and he doesn't begrugde people their inferiority. I like that.



1. I even watched the one show that even then I hated: "Unwrapped." Mark Summers used to be awesome when I was nine and he was on "Double Dare." Now he's very lame and unbelievably annoying. He's the host/narrator of "Unwrapped," which is basically a half-hour version of the Mr Rogers segments where he tours the factories, except the only factories Summers tours are ones that make licorice or peeps or fritos--junk food. Summers&co apparently missed the fact that what made Mr Rogers's forays into industry were great because they were so short (yes it gets boring just watching a machine assembly line) and because his target audience was dumb little kids. I should mention now that "Unwrapped" usually airs around 10pm. However, none of this is what makes me want to hurt myself while watching the show. It's Mr Summers's delivery. He can't go more than three or four words without making a huge inflection, like he's constantly doing a radio advertisement for a big sale at a used car lot. Watch one episode and you might not notice, watch a handful over a week and you definitely will, watch a dozen and you'll want to slap that son of a bitch every time his smiling face appears in that old-timey diner booth surrounded by jujubees.
2. I always thought you were supposed to italicize TV series and quotate individual episodes, but just now did a check of nytimes.com and they are quotating series. I've got my eye on you, Sulzberger, don't lead me astray.
3. For instance, The Chairman isn't actually the nephew of the Japanese Iron Chef guy. He isn't even Japanese and he's just an actor named Mark Dacascos who was born in Hawaii to a Hawaiian-Filipino father and an Irish(!)-Japanese father. Sorry to crush that illusion.

Internet Entrepreneur: Me

And now for something quite different. I have an idea for a website. This might absolutely amaze you, but it would be a social-network type of site, where people have friends or followers or whatever. But unlike all the bullshit you get on those sites, mine would contain only one thing: links to people's personal calendars.
Take the upcoming thanksgiving holiday. If I wanted to know what my friends are doing then, I could simply login into the site and open up their calendars. No need for multiple emails. If I am staying local and I see that any of them are going out of town, then I don't bother with including them in the planning.
Sometimes when I'm thinking about upcoming events (such as holidays or big sporting events or just a happy hour) I wish I could just post my plans and/or my desires for all to see. It would save me lots and lots of time. Also, like the more traditional social sites, it would also serve as a way to keep other people informed. It would helpfully eliminate the seeming infinite status updates such as: "watching Mad Men," "sleeping in on a dreary Saturday," or "wishing I were at the beach." Really? No one fucking cares. There is way way too much crap on those sites, so that it all becomes white noise.

My site could be color-coded, too. Green events would be scheduled and confirmed. Blue events would be something you are looking forward to but have no plans for. Yellow events would be tentatively scheduled. Black events could be private. Then if one of your friends joins you in an event, their little icon or name or whatever would appear in that box as well. Of course you would be able to invite people into these events, too.
Many of my friends have talked about going to Madison Square Garden to see the Buckeye basketball team next Thursday night. People could go to my page and open up that date and see the game listed in its proper time and color-coded yellow because I don't yet have a ticket. There would also be a few of my friends' names. Then if a couple names who I would assume should be there are not, I could go to their pages and find out why. If the time is open on their pages, only then would I need to send an email just to them. If their pages are occupied at that time, then I would know why they won't be at the game. So simple. So organized. It helps both you and your friends. It lets people be self-centered. It lets people be pervy and leer at other people's calendars.
I only need a name (YouCalendar, YouCal, InLife, MeLink, etc--these are weak but you get the idea). And much more net savviness than I will ever have.

Josh ______ Folger

While I can find no good reason to go into any detail here about what happened yesterday(1), there is something of note for me to report. I changed my name today. Legally and everything.
Today being my 29th birthday, it is also the day my New York state driver's license expired, and so naturally I waited until today to get it renewed(2). I used this opportunity to enact the plan I decided on while waiting in the airport heading to my honeymoon: to change my middle name to Mallett, which is my new wife's maiden name. So now as far as the state of New York is concerned, I am Joshua Mallett Folger. And she is Sara Mallett Folger. Synchronicity.
In a previous generation, a wife assuming her husband's last name was relatively automatic, but over the years more and more womyn, for a variety of good and silly reasons, have made more and more choices to keep their given names into married life. I'm not going to pass any judgement on that, but I will say that it really meant a lot to me when Sara decided that she would take my name.
For something so ultimately arbitrary, it's a rather big life choice, and I don't take it lightly that she made it. For me (us), it's a commitment not just to each other, but to the new family that we have become. We are now the Folgers. Our kids will be Folgers. I know this might seem trifling to someone inexperienced in this way, but it's an amazing feeling.
So I got to thinking a little. Sara had a lot of identity in her previous name--Mallett--so what she did was drop her old middle name and keep Mallett as her new middle name. And if she was prepared to sacrifice part of that old identity in order to help make a new one with us, why shouldn't I? There is a family history in Mallett, a history that I am now also a part of. My middle name up until about 11am this morning was Ryan. Ryan is basically just a name(3), so why not drop it and embrace a piece of Sara's family history, even if mostly just symbolically?
I'm not the same person I was before I met and married Sara, so why not let my name reflect that? Sara doesn't have to be totally modernized with her name choices, but neither do I have to be old-fashioned.



1. After five weeks of rolling along at a reasonable pace of about five NFL bets per week, which were coming back at an exact 50% success rate, something unknown to me caused me to place 13 bets this week, just in time for a gigantic outlier of a 15% success rate performance. Of course. The gambling gods are still paying me back for one of the greatest days of my life: Friday, March 21, 2003, when as a college senior I watched from inside a couple of Las Vegas sportsbooks as my first eight bets of the day all won, and only the shot of the tournament by Drew Nicholas stopped me in the ninth game, which was UNC-Wilmington to win outright on a line of +390. I had my very own cheering section of degenerate gamblers who were actually pulling for me, and not simply the teams on the tv screens. Quite an experience. Sure beats looking down at a blackberry app as it refreshes with steadily worsening news of failure.
2. Did you know it costs $80 to get a license renewal? When the woman told me that, I asked if the name change caused the price to go up and she said no that was the basic cost. A license is valid for only five years. That's $16 per year. I think we ought to charge more to Jersey and Connecticut people who drive into the city, so people like me who only require a license for ID don't have to pay so damn much.
3. This isn't 100% forthright. Ryan was a normalization of Reinhart, which was my paternal grandmother's maiden name. So while it isn't technically devoid of meaning for me, it was a far far weaker bond that Sara had with hers. Anyway, I never ever used Ryan.

1. Yeah, I know. Thanks to every person who saw me Saturday for reminding me that Ohio State actually did in fact cover that 44-point spread. 45-0. With trick plays and on-side kicks. Sometimes you eat the bear........

2. Not only did I not have a costume to wear for Halloween this year, but I also got tired and decided that a trip to the netherlands of Williamsburg would be too much of an effort at 11:00pm on a Saturday. Granted, I had to work and was up at 5:50am that morning, but still that is pretty bad. I've got my third straight working Saturday this weekend, but perhaps after that I will be able to return to some normal level of social activity.

3. I almost feel like I should apologize to most of my friends before I say this but as of now I don't consider It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia to be a good show anymore. I vocalized my opinion a month ago that I felt like a few of this season's episodes were pretty weak. Then I saw a good one and resisted the urge to overreact. At this point though, I've seen six or seven episodes of this season and I think that's enough to pass judgement. It needs to go away and let us fans enjoy the goodness that it was. I'm not sure how to explain that it's possible, but the show is both trying too hard and mailing it in at the same time. I've found myself noticably uncomfortable (not the kind of uncomfortable that is cool from the show being edgy but from it being bad) several times this season. They clearly don't have enough good ideas to get through a whole season, and unfortunately the idea of a two or three episode TV season is unacceptable to people who make those decisions.
I'm going to keep recording the episodes this season and watching them when I get around to it but I've abandoned hope that I'll get anything as good as I used to, and I'm not going to lose any sleep if I miss an episode or two entirely.

4. Yesterday was the New York City Marathon, and since I'm a poor supporter of things even personally interesting to me, I didn't watch any of it, even though it passed just three-quarters of a mile from my apartment, and I was awake for all of it. I don't know, I did laundry.
But Sara did go, and she told me something that will never ever fail to disappoint and agitate me. Apparently, not only were people using electric-controlled wheelchairs during the race, but the crowd was also cheering these people on.
A long time ago, I came to peace with wheelchair divisions in marathons: a marathon is a hugely inclusive event, and not just a race for fast long-distance runners, so including a division for wheelchairs and having them start early so they don't get in anyone's way is perfectly fine. Sure, succeeding at pushing a wheelchair for 26.2 miles isn't even close to the same accomplishment as running the same distance, but the purity of the race is still there, so bully for them.
HOWEVER.........a wheelchair that is electrically-powered is just ridiculous. Not only that, but it's offensive to every other regular wheelchair participant, and especially the thousands of bipedal participants.
I understand fully that large marathons in 2009 often devolve into little more than parades, but still within those floating happy masses are many many people who are pushing themselves physically--much slower than those at the front of the field, but inside their weaker bodies the punishment they are inflicting and the stress they are struggling to overcome is at least in the same ballpark. If you are being powered along in an electric wheelchair and accepting the admiring cheers of all the supporters along the way, then you are really just a soulless embarrassingly self-centered asshole. Thousands of people wouldn't turn up, and the city wouldn't block off miles and miles of roads to traffic, and big companies wouldn't pay millions of dollars to sponsor the race, and many many countries arond the world wouldn't pay attention if the "New York City Marathon" were just a parade or a contest for people in electric wheelchairs. The reason this person received a warm response was thanks to the great effort and sacrifices made by so many other people.
I'm doing my damnedest not to analogize this situation. To do so is my wont, but in this case I think it would almost subtract from the absurdity.
Again, I don't care if this person was the reincarnated carcass of Pat Tillman, or an AIDS patient just hours from death, or Mike Bloomberg's adopted daughter who was saved from a North Korean sex slave trade. Any of that would be totally irrelevant. He/she had no business in the race. The marathon is about achievement--physical achievement--and the presence of an electric wheelchair debases the whole damned thing. It disgusts me immensely. Assuming this person had an actual number, someone at the NY Road Runners, or ING, or whoever allowed him in, should either be fired or never allowed to work with the marathon ever again, and then subjected to Reality courses, the same way drunks are required to attend AA, or domestic abusers might have to attend anger management classes.