Meek New World

In a second, I'm going to be the five-billionth person to talk about technology and how it's changed our lives. So, you know, brace yourselves for innovation.
As has slowly become more and more apparent, my natural inclination is to introversion. This is only fractionally surprising because I had about a 6-7 year run starting in college during which time I was pretty legitimately extroverted. Basically all my life before and after this sustained bout of openness has been what I now clearly deem to be my true state of being.
It's not that I don't like people or that I don't enjoy being around them, it's just that usually I don't need other people, and in fact I not-infrequently prefer to be totally alone. Additionally, in most instances when a decision could be made to do something either more or less socially, I will almost always choose the "less."
Anyhow, this fancy thing called the text message just happens to allow me to much more easily be myself.
People surely remember what it was like to communicate without text messages. You actually had to speak to someone else, like verbally. And you had to listen at the same time. It was weird. And awkwardly intimate. If someone was your friend, you had to call him on the phone to make plans to see him, plus you'd inevitably have to exchange pleasantries while doing so. There would be no sports or asinine commercials on the TV to use as a social crutch. And assuming you were trying to get together more than just one other person (again, the group setting to be used as a social crutch), you'd have to repeat this verbal conversation several times, likely even more than once for a couple of individuals. The horror, indeed.
My own personal timeline with this is a little bit undescriptive because wholesale texting started not too long after I left college and clearly my social dynamic was changing a lot at that time anyway, but I can pretty easily say that I communicate directly with far more people now than I did pre-text.
As long as you don't engage in many one-on-one dinners or conversations with people, it's much easier to maintain seemingly meaningful friendships in the texting world. I'm probably a little outside the meaty part of the bell curve on this, but think about your own list of regular communicators. I dare you to tell me that you would talk all of those people as regularly if you actually had to talk to them every time. No chance.
When you are in college, you have lots of "friends" who are such largely because of ease and proximity. They aren't actually your friends, because as soon as you or they move away you stop talking to them. Sure, it's easy to reconnect every once in a while and you would probably still get along fine, but they aren't on your speed dial. There are certain people who are your friends in college who truly are your friends and you in fact do keep in at least semi-regular contact with them afterwards, but there are more who you don't.
The text message allows a lot of those people who are fringe friends to stay in your inner circle. They aren't simply proximate friends like in college but their existence is your life is just as lazy for you. Because you don't have to really invest or engage or share those awkwardly intimate moments of direct one-on-one verbal communication, your dissimilarity or true standing with each other never has to be confronted. The text message lets us all be cowards. Which is fine with me, as long as I don't have to tell you that to your face, with actual spoken words.

Value: The Other Fat Gene

I have some kind of an imbalance that predisposes me to gaining weight, at least later in life. No I am not talking about genetics and my dad's 5'9" 225lb frame. I'm talking about my neverending desire for efficiency, in any situation.
I've been trying to eat a little healthier and get in better general shape lately. The workouts and such have been a slight success so far, and I've managed to cut down on the bad foods a little bit, but the problem I continue to unconsciously have is portion size. I eat like an orphan, like I don't know when my next meal will be. When I'm standing over the stove, looking into a pot of boiling water, mentally deciding how much pasta to put in, the only thing I'm thinking is: don't have not enough. Too much is ok, but for some reason I feel like it would be a grave tragedy to have just a little bit less than I need, that the missing 150 calories would kill me. And then after I've invariably made too much (but not quite enough to set aside a full leftover portion I could take to work for lunch), instead of saving the remainder for a side to eat the next day, I will pile it on my plate just to ensure nothing goes to waste.(1)
So anyway, I was sitting at a diner on Saturday afternoon looking through the wondrously massive menu and facing a quandry. The breadth of options and combinations was making it very difficult for me to decide just what was the most amount of food I could get for the least amount of money.(2)
When I'm at a diner I've never been to before, I like to order a turkey club with fries, and if I'm feeling frisky a bowl of soup, just to see what kind of establishment I'm dealing with, and also because I like all of those things. Well, since my trip to Baltimore/Philadelphia, this time I was guaranteed to get the mozzarella sticks,(3) but in addition to that, the Apollo Diner on Livingston Street had a turkey club with fries, pickle, and slaw for I think $9.69. So I was all set to get those two things, but then I noticed that they also have a philly cheesesteak with fries and a cup of soup for $10. I'd sacrifice the pickle and slaw but also get a cup of soup for just a small amount more. So then I started thinking I ought to get the turkey club as planned and then just add a whole bowl of soup, because a cup of soup is really small and you need a bowl if you really give a damn about value. In rationalizing this decision I reminded myself that while a cheesesteak is certainly delicious, it's actually a little smaller than the turkey clubs you get at diners, and my wife interrupted by being reasonable and reminding me I'd have plenty of cheese in the mozzarella sticks. True enough. I'd have plenty of everything, in fact, and that's the whole point of this. What kind of a human being ever needs to come close to clearing his plate of turkey club and fries, let alone a whole order of cheese sticks, to say nothing of an entire bowl of soup? At 2:00 in the afternoon, probably half of the turkey club and just a handful of fries would be appropriate. But then you'd have half a sandwich of waste, and not get the goodness of the cheese sticks.
My brain looks at a restaurant menu like it would a Sam's Club store. It's rarely ever taste or desire that guides my order, but the opportunity for a deal. Why buy three 24oz bottles of ketchup for the same price as one 128oz tub? Why buy two six-piece chicken mcnuggets for the same price as one 20-piece? The 500+ calories contained in the extra eight nuggets is just the delicious side effect of my successful efficiency, at least until I get on the wrong side of 30, when it will become a delicious fat effect.


1. I remember my dad used to be the same way about not letting food go to waste, and I used to passively fight him on it all the time. I hated leftovers, and I had an irrational fear of food being spoiled. But most of all I had (and of course still have) a literally unhealthy love of potato chips. I loved them so much that I hated to eat even remotely stale or smashed up or otherwise imperfect chips. And so I was always opening a new bag before the old bag was totally empty. This drove him nuts, naturally. The point is, I better start pre-conditioning myself toward compassion and understanding right now because I will probably end up seriously abusing any wasteful kids I'm destined to have.
2. This little game leads me to mistakes like the one I committed Friday night on the way home, when I ordered both a large fry and two Big Bufords, because the Bufords were 2 for $6, or something like $4 for one. For just $2 extra I could have a whole extra sandwich? Yes. But not so good directly before sleeping.
3. Seriously, how good are mozzarella sticks? Does it count as a guilty pleasure, just eating fried cheese? And am I wrong, or does it seem that this mighty appetizer has unfairly gotten labeled as a mere kid food?

A Very Short Story

She was tall and lean with a wide sweep of hair falling obediently across the left side of her face. In the mirror she observed it as her right side. She dressed quickly but thoughtfully. When all else was done she slipped on her green flip flops matching her large green straw handbag. Her long unpainted toes hung just barely over the front of the too-small shoes. She didn't want anyone to notice her imperfectly long feet.

A Nice Run

(As promised, here I am going to talk briefly about something nice.)

A city as big and populated and well-known as New York, so much so that a lot of its imagery is little more than cliche at this point, can still amaze. I'm going to say thank you now to Red Hook for giving me something different to see, and doing it so close by.
Yesterday I started a run near dusk, planning to head toward the harbor waterfront and then south into Red Hook for a little bit, then return home. I did this, sorta, only my mind was in just the right place so I got swept up in the sights and I went farther than expected. A lot of times when running I glaze over and simply cover the appointed ground, but sometimes my eyes are wide and my course is spontaneous and any turn can be exploratory.
I ran south as close as you can get to the water (which, until you've gotten through Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens and into Red Hook, is not that close. Good-sized chunks of land that look no better than parking lots separate the road from the water) until starting to zig-zag westward until coming onto Imlay Street. This is a very unattractive street but in my state it was so barren and desolate that it became fascinating. The very long continuous warehouse running along the west side of the street for a while impressed me. In my horribly gentrified way, I wondered what it would be like to live there, turning one of the upper floors into a huge flat. Think of the sunsets, at least.
Continuing south and west as the darkness started to come in earnest, I think I had a little sense of freedom, the kind a city-dweller gets when confronted with openness or aloneness for the first time in a long while, just running along the blocks, seeing no one, warehouse after factory passing empty and quiet, the sidewalks getting rougher, Brooklyn seeming to keep jutting farther and farther into the still-unseen water. What must it be like to spend parts of your day or even your life in that corner of the borough, so obviously unlike so much that surrounds it (what's the antonym of aloof?). Does any of that industrial footprint see honest use anymore? I finally took a right turn on Wolcott Street and got very near to the water next to what might be a Snapple factory. There was a chain link fence that I stopped and stared through just about 15 feet from the powerful water. I was standing just across a narrow channel of harbor from the bottom end of Governor's Island, so the currents were fairly imposing, almost as much as the large sharp rocks lining both shores. This is not some place I'd want to take a swim. And yet the scene was at the same time very peaceful, and the view was certainly stunning. Straight north up the channel was a perfectly framed image of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. And out across the harbor, with little Governor's Island acting as a shield, whatever quicker pace might be represented by downtown Manhattan was totally drowned out and spread thin and wide across the entire harbor, absorbing itself into the shores of Jersey and Staten Island.
Finally I turned from my trance and for the first time on the run, headed away from the water. I was close to the bottom of Red Hook and decided to keep following the curve of land, into more and more desolate surroundings, which is why it was so odd to see, on Van Dyke Street, a very small sign and driveway (yes, a driveway) leading off to a place selling key lime pies. Maybe they're imported pies from Europe, I don't know. Straight off the boat, you know.
A few blocks further, near the corner of Conover and Reed, after having not seen another human for probably ten minutes, I improbably came upon a youngish woman carrying grocery bags. To my shock, I discovered a full-size Fairway market around the corner of Reed Street. With a full-sized suburban parking lot and everything.
Just a block or more away from the Fairway, on the other side of yet another big long warehouse on a pier, there was an inlet coming right up to an open chain-link fence that offered me a clear view of the waterfront scene. In the deepening dark and stagnant water it was entirely decrepit except for the odd sight of perhaps ten large and expensive-looking private boats. Like a marina in Connecticut, only amidst the Red Hook wasteland.
At this point, I was just a block or two away from having the whole scene open up thanks to the brightness of Ikea. Here though I made yet another surprising discovery: Ikea did an amazing job of revitalizing the waterfront behind their massive store. There is grass and a little waterfront parkways for walking or biking or whatever. They even left the massive docking machinery on the long skinny piers (hell, it may even still be in use). I ran and weaved my way along the water all the way to Columbia Street, stopping once to be almost confused by the low buildings out a few hundred meters across the water. I knew it was too close to be the rest of Brooklyn, but it seemed way too far away to be a pier. Lo and behold, after I got home and checked a map, but there is a huge hook-shaped pier at the bottom of Red Hook. It was too dark for me to tell if the pier was itself red, but I'd like to think that it must be.
Anyhow, I meandered home along a more familiar route, enjoying the cool air of early fall, even if that air conspired with my warm sweaty body to chafe my nipples. The point is that I spent maybe 45 minutes and traveled no farther than about 1.5 miles (as the crow flies) from my apartment, and yet I was able to feel like a little kid exploring new places.
This is a thing that I'm sure most New Yorkers take for granted. Our city houses 8 million people, and has been crowded for many many years. So there are experiences--both to be had to be remembered--all around in every corner of every neighborhood on every foot of land. You just can't get that in many places.
So thanks New York, thanks Brooklyn, thanks Red Hook.

A Very Short Story

He shot himself through the head a week ago. He was 25 and had his heart broken a few months before.
She didn't take it well, but she knew it wasn't her fault.
The mother was a different story. "He belonged to me," she strained weakly through the embrace of her consoling husband.
Everybody belongs to someone.

The Worse and Worst

How horrible are people?
How much more horrible are we now than we were before?
How much of a reinforcing factor is the media in reporting horribleness?
Does this reinforcement work more strongly for negative stories than positive ones?
Is the media responsible for horribleness, if even slightly?

My kneejerk answers to these questions would be: pretty horrible, noticeably so, a lot, yes, and yes.
I'm not going to link it because the contextual facts of the story are irrelevant, but what got me thinking about this is that I stumbled onto a story about a 35 year old woman who had given up her child for adoption about fifteen years ago. It seems she tracked down this biological son via the internet, befriended/manipulated him, and actually had sex with him.
This story is so absurdly horrible that I at first have a hard time believing that a human being is possible of that kind of depravity all on his/her own, that some vile stew of contemporary evils must have swirled around in this woman's conscious and unconscious beings to create the possibility for her actions.(1)
My next thought was about the old cliche how the major news outlets only report on negative stories and not positive ones. I also thought about how the still-adolescent internet media seems to cycle through stories in an exponential desire to find the most extraordinary or most amazing or most horrible one, as though the hyper-competitive nature of internet news forces that media to deliver greater and greater shock value to slice off whatever attention it can from its overstimulated audience. And how could this constant yearning for extremes, coupled with the clear and longstanding negative focus of these news stories, not lead a consuming humanity into at least unconsciously worse and worse behavior.
It's like the psychology behind copy-cat crimes, only with a baser, least-common-denominator competitive streak.
I think this effect does exist. I think this is a form of radical social evolution that is sped along by the brute power and speed of worldwide web connectedness.
I think as a general rule that the media is definitely complicit in this, but on a macro level and not a micro one. I don't specifically dislike media outlets or forms or any people associated with or responsible for them, but I do with some consistency dislike the observable effects of "media." In a way, you could say that not everyone is prepared to be exposed to infinite information.(2) You could definitely say that not everyone producing media is prepared for the responsibility of infinite information.
It's nice to know things. It's nicer to know that you can know something if only you decide to. But the near-infinite experiences of the world population are too much for any one person, especially when being handily distilled by media into only the wildest and most unbelievable.
I guess in a secondary and indirect way I'm saying to you not to leave out the banality of the world. Indeed, if media only to focus more on the amazingly positive stories that abound in the world, then that would only partly remedy the situation.
Nonetheless, as a consequence of this strain of thought, here in this blog I'm going to try to consciously make note of the wonderful things that I see, both inherent in the world and of course those which come from people.


1. Big time disclaimer here. I'm in no way excusing this woman from blame here. I'm also not saying she did what she did as part of some natural escalation of society. Every crime is unique because every criminal is unique. What I'm saying is that the maybe 0.01% of crazy that got into this woman thanks to her absorption of other negative media stories might be enough to push her ever slightly to ever-worse acts. And if lots and lots of people are absorbing the same tiny sliver of acceptance of depravity, then eventually dominoes will start to fall. It's like the parable if you put a million monkeys in front of a million typewriters and give them a million years, eventually one would produce Hamlet. But if they were all watching a continuous loop of Shakespearean tragedies while sitting in front of the typewriters, you can be very sure that it would take a lot less longer.
2. Naturally, no one could ever be prepared for infinite information, though the thought, as mere theory to consider, is an interesting one.

Our Honeymoon Journal

Monday, August 10th
Sara:
Honeymoon Day 1 ~ Luna de Miel ~
Oh flying! You delay us so, but even with my Xanax we booked it and made our connecting flight.
Grand Palladium Royal Suites
+ Food at El Jardin
- Little booze in fruity drinks
- Wine was mediocre
+ Lots of beautiful walkways
+ Big plans for tomorrow: free, fancy dinner and lots of swimming
+ Service was "forced but friendly" (Josh's words)
+ At El Jardin: tortilla diablo soup was excellent!
+ Room is Huge and has a hot tub on deck. It's fabulous.
+ Lots of extra special things, as we are "Royal"

Tuesday, August 11th
Josh:
We discovered the private "Royal" beach area today and although I've had some slight bourgie disdain for our own special "Royal" status, the private beach spot was wonderful. Big padded wooden shade beds with pillows and fine loose drapes, all encircled by spectacular tiny sand grains and authentic (looking at least) foliage.
The water is super clear and greenish. In many spots there is flora growth on the seabed, even right up at the shore, and in some spots there is scattered coral.
Enjoyed the buffets today and actually didn't over-eat at either. Morning fare was mostly average, I'd rate it a 7 in a vacuum but only a 4-5 because we are in Mexico and the Mexican stuff could probably be better. A real treat was the beautiful quesadilla filled only with ham and cheese. The red and green sauces were very good and same with the bean mixes. I love Mexican style beans. Lunch was similar. Good chips and sauces (excellent salmon ceviche) but surprisingly tame jalapenos. I couldn't tell if the fish was really really good or just water-soaked so as to seem perfectly fresh and moist. Sara's fish last night (a la carte) was truly good while my spaghetti bolognese (I know) was expectedly average. I did have a soup--tortilla diablo--that was superb. This slices of chips with chunks of guacamole and cheese plus this odd spinach-looking substance were all piled salad-ish in the bottom of the bowl then the waiter ladeled on the thick broth over the top. Awesome. Chips stayed chippy, other ingredients weren't faded, and the broth was delightfully spicy. I will recreate this at home.
Also at lunch I dropped Sara's wedding ring in a pile of beans. Afterward we excitedly went to play mini golf but disappointment isn't nearly strong enough a word to describe the terrible conditions or the mosquito nest in which the holes were located.
I did experience my first swim-up bar and while I can say it was exciting in the same way a grilled cheese sandwich would be if the added peanut butter to it, by the third time I wanted s drink I was wishing there were a terra firma bar option at the pool because wading around a kid's water volleyball game while holding bloody marys at eye-level is just non-sensical.
The drinks are horribly weak. Tasty, I mean, but light on the hooch. Each 8oz plastic cup full of concoction contains about one shot's worth of booze. It's only about 7:00pm right now and I've had maybe four frozen drinks plus six or more beers lus one shot of tequila and I'm nowhere near drunk, or buzzed. You really do just sweat it out. Oh, and I had two mimosas with breakfast. A real treat that was to serve myself. Two bottles of champagne were available with myriad juices and I think Sara and I were the only two smart enough to put two and two together. A number of fools were sitting and drinking plain flutes of champagne at 10am.

Friday, August 14th
Sara:
I want to paint our bedroom the colors of Tulum. The sand is so light, almost white and the ocean ranges from bright blue to green to a dark almost purple. The furniture on the beach is brown and natural. The sort of furniture we could build. The palm trees look like paintings with their gray trunks and dark green leaves that stick straight out from the lime green spine of each one. No blues are the same here and the grey is a pale harmless shade. Today there are scattered clouds, maybe ten. The are puffy and perfect.
From the hammock on our porch we can see all of these colors. I want to wake up every morning to all of this.

Josh:
Today is Friday morning in Tulum but I'm returning to our stay at the Palladium for a minute. Tuesday evening we had our "luna de miel" dinner, in which we shared a table with another honeymooning couple--the woman from Pittsburgh actually. While it was fun to be served a five-course meal, the food was underwhelming. That's a theme from the all-inclusive experience: average-at-best food. The buffet quality was good for a buffet but the a la carte restaurants were not as good. Wednesday night we ate at a Brazilian-style place which means the waiter comes around and serves you meat directly off a large skewer. Unfortunatley almost every meat I had was overcooked, though the breadth of this carnivore experience was hamsgiving-esque.
We figured out how to properly expose ourselves to the sun and so are not much burned (though my lips are in tough shape). Maybe 20-30 minutes on one side, turn and get 15-20 more on the other, then a 10+ minute dip in the pool and then pause for shade for at least 30 minutes. This will be tougher to adhere to (I mean in the self-discipline sense) here in Tulum because it's all beach all the time.
The pools at the Palladium were spectacular: ridiculously clean and with these built-in lounge chair things that Sara took a serious liking to (see left).
Interestingly, it was the pools that tipped us off to the sad truth (for them--it was great news for us) of the resort: that it was very empty. In our 40ish capacity building, there were not more than 10 residents. And yet everything was open all the time. This created a surreal ability to get anything I wanted whenever I wanted, the ideal of an all-inclusive resort. We were even served fresh fruit skewers by the pool totally unsolicited.
Finally, on Wednesday evening I had my first ever spa experience, including a 50 minute Swedish massage (masaje suecos). This was very nice in parts but all in all nothing to write home about (Yes I get it. Thanks). I guess I'm just not a massage guy. I even tried deep breathing during, to what I think was moderate success.

Friday, August 14th - still pre-noon
Josh:
Went into Tulum pueblo last night and although it's strewn with little knick-knack stores for tourists, it had a good authentic feel. One main street and no building taller than 3-4 stories. Lots of locals, especially couples riding together on little motorbikes. Pretty sure we were the only Americans eating at the very full restaurant: Don Cafeto's. This place is well known and was even recommended to us by a taxi driver who claimed to eat there himself "every time I stop through Tulum." Food was fairly good, maybe 7 out of 10. Almost perfect fish ceviche, nice crisp chips, this odd bowl full of spicy pickled carrots/onions/garlic/peppers (see pic). Sara ate too much of one of the peppers (a habanero?) and was inpain for five minutes. I found it largely agreeable. Sara had a dish of whitefish heavily seasoned with a kind of garlic breading. I got the "Plato Mexicano," which may have been a mistake, but was exactly like what you'd get in the sampler dish at any crappy Mexican place in the U.S., except mine was for real for once. It was more food than I could eat and not as spicy as I'd have liked but otherwise good. Had that odd almost blandness of mostly authentic Mexican cooking.
We were going to go to the ruins today but were told to go very early to beat the crowds and the heat, so tomorrow first thing we will try our luck with some of the bikes.
Today I saw the sun rise and out of a sense of obligation and to tease others with two mere dimensions of image, snapped a few photos.
Our room is lovely with a captial L. (Hmm. Smirking.) There is a mosquito net around the bed that is vaguely magical. No AC so it's pretty hot but still a little breezy. The breeze during the afternoon and evening is almost miraculous though. Reduces the temp by maybe 20 degrees.
The water is quite warm but if you go out about chest-high there are scattered swirls of quite cool streams.
I ran 2-3 miles down the beach today and we might have nicest rooms on the whole beach. You'll see the pics but we are literally on the sand facing the water about 150ft away. It's exactly what I wanted, and quite perfect. (Ok, me being me, even when on vacation, I just stepped off the distance and it's 55 steps from door to water, so 150-175ft probably.)

Friday, August 14th - after 7:00pm
Josh:
I just saw a couple--honeymooners, perhaps--get up and walk off the beach back toward their bungalow set a little bit back from the beach. (I was reclining in the hammock, reading on our porch. Note: I now love hammocks, took a 30 minute nap in it earlier this afternoon. Impromptu, it was that comfy.) So, watching this guy go off toward his less-nice room than ours, I had a feeling rather opposite from my bourgie-reticence of earlier this week. I felt proudly superior to this man, reclining on my perfect porch perfectly located on the perfect beach, thinking what a shame it was for this man that he wasn't able to provide for his wife in quite the same wonderful way as I was for mine.
Yes I felt better than him. Yes it felt good. I will just keep telling myself this emotion is related to pleasing Sara, and not my ego.
Also, the sun is setting as I write (no I can't see it, the beach faces East) and there is a marvelous wind blowing in my face. It's stronger than yesterday. There is barely a cloud in the sky. A gray cloud drifted over us in the pueblo last night for maybe 20 minutes: that was the only moment of non-perfect weather in the five days so far. I know I'm jinxing us by writing that. It has been idyllic. This hotel is totally idyllic.
Since I'm waiting for Sara to return from sunset yoga to eat dinner at the hotel's restaurant and have food on the brain, I'll mention lunch. We took two bikes out for a ride today and ended up at what my trip research told me is a very good spot: Zamas. I can now confirm this. Naturally, I got the seafood tacos, and they were excellent. Spicy and totally delicious. I hate to keep using this word again, but perfect, in a way. They reminded me of the best tacos I've ever had before: Mercadito in the East Village. Since today I only had the seafood variety, I must give Zamas the nominal edge now, but still it's pretty amazing what great and authentic food of all sorts you can get in NYC.
Sara:
My experience with Yoga: It was hard. It made me want to do more because it feels so good.
Other things that feel so good:
Great ceviche
Blue water and clear water
Being married
Honeymooning
Wine with a good meal
Expansive showers with dual showerheads
Jacuzzis on a balcony - used in the AM
Pizza at Om (Tulum)

Saturday, August 15th - noonish
Josh:
Last night we ate here at Ocho's restuarant and it was the best food all-around so far. Everything was easily above-average. Sara said the fish tacos were better than yesterday, the ceviche was easily the best so far (and bonus points for a great presentation), and my roasted shrimp was amazing. Delicious and yet somewhat subtle, that's what I like.
The ceviche (sara diving into at right), by the way, brags of containing "just eight ingredients." I looked at the menu again this morning; they are: shrimp, grouper, octopus, avocado, onion, corn, ginger, and coriander.

Sunday, August 16th - 4:00pm
Yesterday in Tulum we also got around to checking out the "ancient" Mayan ruins. The experience was neither good nor bad. It just was what it was. We had to guide and so may have missed some of the detail, but I would not have been totally distraught to have missed it completely, knowing then what I know now.
A problem might be that as you walk around, the remnants of buildings are just there, so close and tempting, and yet you can't go up close and explore or intimately experience them. This was especially pronounced with the Castle, the area's centerpiece. There was a wonderful little beach immediately below this Castle, maybe 75 feet down some craggy rocks. It was very nice and the photos we took may end doing it some justice. Another note: because the ruins are raised and sheltered by rocks, there is almost no wind, and therefore the area, in August, is a huge sweatbox.

Monday, August 17th - something AM
Josh:
Hotel La Palapa, our domicile here in Isla Holbox, is not even close to as nice as our first two places. Maybe I should remark that those two did set the bar pretty high. It's not as perfect when I see numerous tiny ants in various corners of the room, or I lay down on a bed that's equal parts hard, lumpy, and crooked, or I notice that the seeming cleanliness is sortof an illusion caused by the white paint and if I look closer I can easily see evidence of disattention, or finally if my room's AC doesn't work on the first night. This last difficulty proved not to be an issue, remarkably enough, as yesterday and last night stayed somewhat cool. A fellow and many times more numerous traveler mentioned that yesterday it was the coolest she's ever experienced it in Mexico.
Now let me tell you why, as I sit on the beach amidst one or two too many flies but in a rather pretty setting of gentle water lapping and slowly departing fishing boats.
There was a large downpour here yesterday, lasting maybe 45 minutes and timed to coincide exactly with our arrival here. I could guess that as much as 2-3 inches of rain fell in just 20-30 minutes. The streets on this island are all sand, and since it looked like it may have rained recently as well, they were waterlogged with over six inches of standing water. Because of this, our golf cart driver had to move at a snail's pace through the town, further ensuring that our bags, and mostly just us, got fully soaked. And so we did. At the time, I was agitated for numerous reasons, but now I have no ill thoughts. It's what happens in places like these. There was still multiple inches of standing water on most of the streets as of 10pm last night, too.
Two striking things about the Holbox beach: long and shallow, and little wind. The former will provide a pleasant wading experience while the latter I fear will encourage bugs. Now, around 8am and so still coolish, there a lots of flies in my vicinity but I can't tell how many mosquitos. The flies are simply annoying. Also the beach here is more what I'm used to in terms of consistency and shell presence, so it's a bit rougher. Tulum's beach was a remarkable softness and not disturbed at all by shells. I can't believe but it seems I managed to take it for granted while there.
Our meal last night was very satisfying. It started with a chorizo queso that used this mozzarella-like cheese that was goupy and oily. Needless to say, it was delicious. (I think this is the oaxaca cheese, very prevalent on every stop so far, Wikipedia will confirm this in a few days, I'm sure.) Then Sara and I both got a fish dish, purportedly different but they looked pretty similar. Both excellent and quite large--my portion was about triple what you'd get in NYC. We also had a tequila with the meal: Don Julio, which was very smooth, not requiring the salt/lime routine. And I've finally made a firm decision on which Mexican beer I like best: Sol, by a lot.

Monday, August 17th - 1:00pm
Josh:
I can't believe I haven't yet mentioned my rash. I've had it since I woke up on Saturday morning and it's worried me on and off at various intensities since. At first I was a little terrified that perhaps somehow I'd improbably gotten poison ivy on my honeymoon on the beach in Mexico. Then I was sure the rash on the insides of both forearms was from scratching my arms on the bed frame when I was tucking in the mosquito netting in Tulum (not a simple task when done alone). Then a local told me in very slight English that it was some kind of sun or sand rash that he's seen before, that I only needed to put a "cream" (I think he meant lotion) on it and keep it out of the sun. That was Sunday afternoon. Since then it hasn't gotten worse but also not better. I've put plenty of sunscreen on it when going out in the sun. His diagnosis makes some sense because that's about the only exposed part of my body that I haven't been lotioning. So I'm going to live with the itch and keep it from sun as much as is possible and hope it goes away. It's spread up my forearm toward my elbow just a little bit but the first spots near my wrists are faded so I'm not yet alarmed. One thing I am is very slightly looking forward to be back in the sheltered safety of NYC so this can pass in peace. And that is kindof a sad commentary from a man on his honeymoon.
This is day 8, and I'm still definitely enjoying myself. Holbox today in the sun has revealed itself to be a lovely little town. Sara and I walked a mile or more down the beach to the West to one end of the island and there was the most beautiful beach there. The beach along the main coast is only average and mostly occupied with small fishing boats. On this far end there were no boats and only one house/hotel/structure set a ways off the water. The currents were sheltered from the main waveline and so the water was remarkably still. The most still I have or likely ever will see for open sea, in fact. The bottom was also very shallow pretty far out. I was lying down in calm clear water less than two feet deep easily more than 50 feet from shore. The fact that we just stumbled onto this little haven made the experience exponentially more enjoyable. The way traveling is meant to be, I suppose.

Sara:
Time for a reflection on why we are here. As much time as we spend together in NYC, and have spent together on various travels to the Midwest, Josh and I have never been alone together for this amount of time.
(Of course we are coming off our wedding, so this may be colored by newlywed bliss.)
It has been great. We love eating, drinking, sleeping together, but we also have the same idea about how we want to spend our time (eating, drinking, sleeping together). Neither of us are extreme thrill seekers and so we have done things such as taken walks, played in the water, and befriended local dogs (that's Paco to the left). All this while just having fun being together. There have been some tense moments such as when we debated if it was appropriate for Josh's dad to have brought up God in our ceremony after strict directions not to (I said "no way," he said "if it makes him happy"). This conversation led into a talk about religion and our family. The end of it was extremely positive even if the middle was tough. We talked about how we make the rules for our family and how now we have to look to each other first and foremost. This was a big and wonderful conclusion to draw. How exciting to be in a place and with the person that you get to establish and define this next part of our lives.
We had another uncomfortable conversation when Josh said some things that sound sexist AND racist to me. (Josh editing note: come one thing we can agree on is that Frida Kahlo is overrated. The cause of that overrating is certainly up for debate.) Although it heated me up it allowed us to talk about our differences and how we might have those differences play out in our family. (Yes, I can expose our children to the terrible inequalities and injustices out there but no I cannot force them to be activists. The verdict is still out on if I can ensure they vote Democratic--I come from a long line of families who won't support conservative bullshit especially in regards to social programs. To be honest, there are some definite socialists on my maternal side. This is of course the antithesis of Josh's family.) So we are learning to talk like husband and wife. This is especially important as we are talking about having a little Folger sooner than later. Everyday we are growing closer and becoming a better pair. As fabulous as the sunshine and beautiful surroundings are, maybe this is what the honeymoon is all about.
A list of our most used phrases:
1. Dos cervesas por favor. Con limon.
2. La cuenta por favor.
3. Cuanto cuesta? (Or: Cuantos pesos?)
4. Hay uno pato del mar!
Other important phrases:
1. Tengo hombre.
2. Anything with "esposo" or "esposa"

Tuesday, August 18th
Sara:
Holbox gets better with time. Josh and I have been steadily falling in love with the town, the stillness of the ocean, the restaurants, and the local animals (dogs!).
Last night we ate at a terrific place (something with Pirates in the name). The pasta was made fresh and the seafood was excellent. The meal started with a shrimp-mayo to dip our bread in. Excellent! This morning we set outside at a restaurant and had eggs. Josh had huevos rancheros and they were unlike what we are used to. The tomatoes are incredibly sweet and the tortillas we had to accompany our meals were fresh, as is they were just made. We drank beer, played cards, ate great food, and marveled at our surrounding. There is something very intimate and immediate about this town. It feels like a "no-pretense" town. Often beautiful beach towns have really decrepit interiors where the locals live. In Holbox you see it all. By that I mean that you even see the interiors of the houses.
The temperature has probably hit 100degrees every day we have been here so windows and doors are always open. From what i can gleam, people live in hammocks here. They are used as beds and as seats. It makes me want to chuck all the unnecessary things we have--wait, we have none.
Which reminds me: today we bought ART! The nesting part of me went crazy. Finally! We have items that have artistic and sentimental value (not prints in frames--such as how our current home is decorated). And I bought bowls yesterday. I looove them.

Wednesday, August 19th - 7:00am
Josh:
Terms to wikipedia: sun rash, Roberto Borge, whale shark, oaxaca cheese, camaron ya'ax, pescado a la veracruxana, Isla Holbox, Tulum ruins, sol beer. And I know I'm forgetting a ton. Will try to remember on the way to the airport. Also, I want to go back and re-read descriptions of places on sites like Trip Advisor. And I definitely definitely want to go to Google Earth and have a field day with 9+ days of new locations to orient myself with.

Notes on a Weekend

Last weekend, eight of us traveled to Baltimore and Philadelphia to take in two baseball games and otherwise enjoy ourselves.
1. Camden Yards ("Oriole Park at Camden Yards") is amazing. A lot of people have said Pittsburgh is the best baseball stadium. I haven't been back there in a few years, but I'm not so sure I can say that PNC Park in Pittsburgh is better than this one. Camden Yards is beautiful both for baseball and for pure aesthetics. It's a great place for both the intense and the casual fan. It is great for staying seated or for wandering around. Everything is well done and well spaced. The food could maybe be slightly better but I'd still rate it no lower than a 7 out of 10.
We arrived in the area of the stadium about 40 minutes before game time and went into one of the handful of bar/restaurants across the street clearly catering to gameday crowds. The fact that there were just a few of them immediately around the stadium was a small negative. We only had to pay $2 each for 16oz beers so that made up for the somewhat expected but still hugely douchey patrons. We then entered the stadium on time only to learn that the start of the game was delayed nearly an hour due to rain. This ended up being a good thing as it allowed us to wander around the stadium and soak it all in (no pun intended). I particularly like the section (which is part of the stadium) outside the seats but shy of the famous warehouse. They did a small but awesome thing out there: put little circular bronze plaques at the landing spots of almost every home run hit onto that terrace, including one on the wall at the spot of the only ball to ever hit the warehouse in competition: Griffey from the HR derby. I loved walking around and standing on the little plaques, looking back toward home plate in the distance and being amazed anew by the prowess of these big sons of bitches hitting home runs. Btw, that pic wasn't taken by me but was basically our view, except we were closer and slightly further up the base line.
2. Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia is pretty nondescript. It's new, which is nice, but there wasn't anything about it that was noteworthy. I think I said that if someone had the intent to make a new stadium but to conform to the same principles that gave us the old shitty PIT/CIN/PHI cookie-cutter stadiums, then that person would build Citizens Bank Park.
3. Yes Tom, it was great and all, but the water taxi that some of us managed to board in Baltimore was not in fact free.
4. I was not prepared for the amount of crab that appears on menus in Baltimore's restaurants, and not just the tourist-baiting ones. I'm aware they are known for the critters, but crab is everywhere in their food. I'm not complaining. Crab--or any seafood, for that matter--isn't hard to get here in NYC either, but you still rarely see it on menus. I'm impressed, Baltimore. You embrace that beast.
5. I got a crabcake sandwich at a place in Fell's Point late on Friday night. I don't harbor illusions that it was a top-notch crabcake, since those places likely aren't open past midnight, but it was mighty good. Very high percentage of crab so it didn't taste like fried filling. Very good, though it did cost me $15.
6. I don't know if it was the neighborhood we stayed in (Olde City), or the people we happened to encounter, but jesus, Philadelphia seemed to be inhabited with a very high population of jackass/douche/obnoxious people. Walking down Market Street late Saturday night looking for a cheesesteak (#7), even drunk I was taken aback by the floods of horrible people. Maybe it is a city with more college kids than I'm used to in slightly-older-dominated NYC, but the cool people in Philadelphia either don't exist or were somewhere I wasn't.
7. The other locally famous food item of the trip was of course cheesesteaks. I had two, one at Ishkabibbles, which I think is supposed to be a good one, but what the hell do I know. That one was indeed good if not exactly a difficult culinary item to produce. I did make the rookie mistake of not specifically indicating that I wanted cheese whiz, so I got simple cheese melted over the steak while on the griddle, and therefore my sandwich wasnt dripping with cheese like you would hope. Later that night the second one I got at a generic-looking place on Market St was a "classic:" with both onions and the whiz. A very important note about the cheesesteak is that though it was not nearly as "special" as the crab I got in Baltimore, I have been craving one pretty much ever since Saturday. I will try to find a reputable one in the city and see how it compares to the authentic version.
8. Bolt buses are a pretty good deal. Clean, relatively comfy, your seats are reserved, and cheap ($16 all the way to Baltimore). They remade the chinatown bus idea so that a white, middle-class, non-collegiate married guy could enjoy it.
9. Shit, the first time I wrote this post, I can't believe I forgot this one. It may be the highlight of the trip. It may be a top 5 baseball stadium experience. I came up with the great idea to heckle the Indians' third-base coach, a one Joel Skinner. Mr Skinner was a former player with a lifetime batting average of .228 (a fact Drew made sure to remind him of on one occasion). He also has an unfortunate tendency to position himself well outside of his chalk-outlined coach's box. And that is what gave me the inspiration to make his night a little less comfortable.
I think it started in the 4th inning maybe, after I'd consumed enough booze to start screaming in the company of thousands of otherwise mostly quiet people. I saw Skinner positioned about four feet outside his box and yelled: "Hey Skinner!.....................Get back in your box!" There is something simple and honest about that yell that appealed to me. So about two seconds after I yell that, Skinner (whose back is to us obviously) straightens up a bit, looks down, and sheepishly--but with pride like he didn't want anyone to notice that he'd heard me--actually took a couple steps back to the corner of his box. His turning around and running into the stands to fight me wouldn't have been a better response. He never even turned around, just those little steps toward the box made by a man who is caught in front of maybe a thousand people and trys to draw as little attention to himself as possible.
So over the next few innings I let fly with a few more differently worded reminders (never using profanity) to Mr Skinner about the rules of baseball, plus Drew joined in with the .228 shame, punctuating it with a "that's bush league" comment. During this time, I put the blackberry to work and was able to figure out the third base umpire's name, which led naturally to my adding this to the final heckle: "Come on, Nelson, keep him put, that's your job. Wake up!" Unfortunately, the umpire was a little more stoic and so I didn't get a response out of him, but I did notice him talking to Skinner in between the next inning. Skinner kept standing outside the box though, so I guess the moral of the story is that Skinner is a lawless degenerate whom Major League Baseball is powerless to stop.
(Note: again that isn't my picture but that is the man himself, probably standing outside his box and maybe even kicking a dog.)

10. "This trip was a real home run." - Ryan

A Very Short Story

The Hurt
Defeated, but with intent, he inhaled deeply and plunged himself under the above-ground pool's water line. He tried to stay motionless but submerged while he stared at the girl's slowly swinging legs. In this way, she couldn't make eye contact with him, and also his vision was blurred just enough to restrict his ability get an effective mental picture for that evening's fruitless masturbation attempts. The expanding pain in his lungs rose up into his brain as she floated naively three feet above.

Squalorism

I stated that I'd have a vacation blog upcoming but this won't be it. Soon enough I guess. Being that I was on my honeymoon I didn't go out of my way to write things down, so it's clearly not a 10-day full log of the proceedings. My intent though was to type up all of what I do have, which is substantial, and then fill in the gaps while typing with more remembrances. So that bit of ambition is slowing me down, naturally.
Also is the fact that I'm having a hard time reassimilating into "world" and "life" and "normal." Returning home Wednesday night, going to work for two days, and then having two weekend days seemed to be close to a perfect path, but here I am nearing the end of Monday workday and I don't have any feel for how to effectively or efficiently or industriously complete a day. Nor do I have the usual vague sense of excitement that I ought to be having to finish up here and head home, because I haven't staked out a half-decent evening flow either.
I can't decide if I just want to hide out in my apartment for a couple weeks or hide out anywhere but my apartment for a couple weeks. Complicating the matter of course is the fact that my status in terms of life-sharing with Sara is both assumed and official now. And so the old coping mechanisms really aren't as relevant. I usually like to put off everything and vegetate, sorta temporarily embrace the squalor, but that's no way to live with someone else. Probably I ought to slap my reflection in the face and tell it to act like a man. And maybe I ought to just step back and stop moping about feeling normal. And be patient. And stop starting sentences with conjunctions. Grammatically poor is no way to feel sorry for yourself, not when you know better.

Arriba!

Clearly, I'm going to provide a much longer perspective on my honeymoon to Mexico, but here now are a few quick mostly non sequitur thoughts:
1. Mexicans: not good drivers. Actually, more than just poor but unconcerned with basic rules of the road.
2. Yes, the Yucatan in August is hot. Very hot. But it wasn't all that humid. Hot heat though.
3. The only dickhead Mexican person I encountered was at Cancun airport. A guy dressed to look like official jumped out as we got out of our car and took our large bag into the airport and showed us the clearly-marked Jetblue sign. Since it took all of 30 seconds to get from point A to B I gave him the 5-peso coin I had in my pocket. Sara didn't even want me to give that because he was clearly preying on ignorant tourists, but I figured what the hell and I'm going to do with a 5-peso coin? So the dude shows his gratitude by saying in English: "what is this, like 50 cents? That's it?" With great restraint, I replied: "Sorry that's all I've got." So he says, while opening his wallet and rifling through some bills: "Hey I've got change for American, anything?" Are you fucking kidding me? The guy is trying to scam people and when someone shows up and doesn't play his game he has the nerve to get offended? Also, fucker moved my bag no more than 50 feet total, half of which he rolled it, and had to climb zero steps. The most unbelievable thing is that he wouldn't be getting an attitude if other tourists don't actually succumb to that shit. Damn. If his countrymen hadn't previously built up a ton of goodwill, I would have been very much soured by this last interaction.
4. Bottled water is so ubiquitously present, even in the smallest towns, that the old "don't drink the water" bacterial fear Americans have been parroting back and forth to each other is essentially irrelevant. I also ate fruit and fresh vegetables at every stop of the trip and never got a stomachache. In fact, on only two days did I even take any Immodium, and those were two mornings after the heaviest drinking days of the trip: not necessarily caused by the food.
5. The "jungle" wilderness of the Yucatan is very very rocky. Not bumpy rocky like in Central Park, but like a normal forest that had been subjected to a snowstorm in the form of 12inch diameter rocks.
6. A frightening number of local Mexicans in the tourist areas spoke very functional English to us even when we started the conversation in Spanish, whereas in the non-touristy areas, anytime we started a conversation in English, the locals would force us to use what turned out to be very functional Spanish.
7. Sara is pretty much afraid of fish.
8. Staring at iguanas doesn't get old.
9. Being married is great.

Some Film Thoughts

Sunday I decided I was going to have some time and I watched a couple of movies. I watched another last night, actually. Only one of these three was new to me, but the other two repeats I feel like I gained enough new perspective to revisit them here.

The one of the movies that I hadn't previously experienced, if you can believe it, was The Dark Knight, a movie that I'm relatively sure is as good as a comic book movie can get.(1)
The Dark Knight is very good movie, and an even better movie experience. But make no mistake: it isn't nearly as good as so many people have claimed over the last couple years. It's far too long, it suffers from the contemporary action movie syndrome in that its plot is needlessly complex and twist-errific, it's presumed main character isn't much of a character at all and is further burdened by an absurdly affected stoic and gravely voice, and, ultimately, it fails to become more than a comic book movie.
The question to ask then is threefold: why did it fail to become a great film--period--instead of just a great comic book movie; did it in fact ever even aspire to be more; and finally, as a general (non-comic-book-centric) moviewatcher and reviewer, should I forgive it this humility and appreciate it more for what it is and less for what it isn't?
Those are difficult questions, mostly because it is such a standout of its genre. It's a very good film in the general sense, even, though I won't go farther than "very good."
First of all, even though Christian Bale has nothing to work with and does nothing with it, whatever has been said of Heath Ledger here is deserved. I hate to sound cliche but the man brought a dignity to his part as the Joker. He wasn't just a "villian." He didn't just scare or amuse or disgust with his performance, like so many others may have; he enthralled and he aroused and especially he made us understand to the highest degree that that was possible. In a weird way, a fine acting job stops being a great study of a character and reverts back to its basest form: a great performance. We can always watch a merely good actor today like George Clooney or Tom Hanks do excellent work in portraying characters, but it's a far smaller percentage of the profession who can go above and deliver performances.(2)

Last night's viewing was There Will Be Blood, a film I saw once in full and another time broken up over a few sittings.
I'm pretty sure I had strong things to say about the music in this film the last time I talked about it but what struck even more this time about it was just how much the music really dominates the film. I mean "dominate" in every facet of the word. Jonny Greenwood clearly did a great job with the music and should be lauded accordingly, but for music to dominate a film such as this,(3) it had to be a very deliberate decision by the filmmakers.
In large part, There Will Be Blood really is a filmed opera. And this is a good thing. This realization caused me to enjoy and appreciate it a little bit more than before. To clarify, I'm saying that the film isn't just metaphorically operatic (though it is that as well), but literally.
The film notably begins with lots of silence--but only spoken silence--there is plenty going on audibly: long bits of normal and repetitious sounds (a pickaxe cutting into rock, a rope on a pulley turning, and finally a man struggling one move at a time to drag himself) interspersed with crescendoes and slow build-ups. Many of the finer visual moments of the film are operatic as well. The camera following a man in frame (and accompanied by wonderful fitting music) as he passes by whole scenes that tell us without words exactly what has happened and will happen. Everything is very clearly staged, not just so that the cameras can pick it up nicely but so we the audience can experience what we are seeing in a greater more enhanced way. One of the greatest ties to the opera in There Will Be Blood, though, is Daniel Plainview, a character well suited to an opera house and a full orchestra. He is a tragic hero prone to outbursts of violence and confrontation, and yet he is constantly lonely, offering not so much visible as just understood vulnerability.
I also that this operatic viewing of the film can help to explain its shortcomings, for anytime the structure departs very much from it, at best it loses impact and at worst it loses credibility. I can still say that I don't terribly care for the last 30-40 minutes of this film, and the almost constant dialogue is one big reason why. Also try to remember the more memorable speaking moments from the film. I think you might agree with me that these are not the moments of interaction but more of Daniel Day-Lewis, with the assistance of a sweeping score, larger than life facing the audience and projecting his character through direct force.

The last film I've just watched (not chronologically last, in that regard it was in the middle) is The Wrestler, one that I really loved the other time I saw it, which was in a theater last Christmas. I didn't quite like it as much this time. Not much more to say about Mickey Rourke, he's just as good the second time around and it's a poor shame that Sean Penn beat him out for the big prize in what can only be explained by politics. The film as a whole didn't quite come off as well in the rewatching, though. Let's say that it dropped from a truly great film to a sorta great film. The realism of the filming style, the intensity of the story, the perfection of the multiple POV shots, and definitely the ending are top notch, but it seemed like a lot of the smaller things dragged it down. Evan Rachel Wood should be barred from accepting serious roles for three years for her efforts here, like a probation. And, once the incredibly pleasant shock of Marisa Tomei's nudity wears off, so too does most of what seemed to make her so impressive. I guess a lot of the story details seemed a little too cliche the second time around. Oh, he lives in a trailor park. Oh, he can't pay the bills and sleeps in his car. Oh, he's estranged from his daughter. Oh, he works part-time stocking a warehouse. Oh, he hangs out at a strip club--and befriends a single-mom stripper with an internal crisis. Oh, he does steroids. Oh, older wrestlers have beat-up bodies. Oh, he gets down on himself, does coke, and bangs a chick in a bar bathroom.
In light of all this, I have to say that the big Oscar scene for Rourke when he's sitting and talking to his daughter by the beach was a little tough to take at face value. Sure he still did a nice job but the set-up was just a little too hacky and unoriginal. That's why I'll go back to what I said before and say that the best moments of this film were those in which the story diverted from expectation. When he took the job at the deli counter was about my favorite part. And all of the post-coronary stuff. And definitely all of the ending sequence. Basically the last 45 minutes was excellent: everything after the heart attack with the exception of anything involving Ms. Wood.(4)



1. If you know my tastes, you'll know that this statement is both more and less meaningful than it might normally be. More meaningful because I can't stand those types of movies and yet here is one that I admire. Less meaningful because I can't stand those types of movies and so there a bit of a tallest midget effect.
2. I'm trying not to give voice to this thought because it seems silly but I can't put out of my mind Marlon Brando from Last Tango in Paris. There's not a ton that's truly impressive in that film, and if you were to watch it for interesting character you might appreciate but not revere it, but the bluntly great acting performance on display there was as good as I've ever seen. To a much smaller degree, that is what I was seeing with Heath Ledger in this movie.
3. I mean, a good film. You could say that something as loathsome as Armageddon was dominated by music and sound, but that is completely irrelevant to what I'm saying now. And Armageddon was a train wreck of massive proportions. Truly one of my least favorite movies.
4. Some of my disappointment with watching The Wrestler a second time might reasonably be credited to my own huge disappointment in there not being any bonus materials on the DVD. I heard that there was some stuff on the Blu-Ray. Fuck you, technology. It's way too soon to be neglected the DVD. But to the point, there aren't a lot of recent movies I can think of that I would be more excited to go through the bonus materials than this one. And nothing. A commentary track with Aronofsky and Rourke (maybe even through in whoever was responsible for the wrestling realism) would be gold. A look into the lives of former pro wrestlers, and how their stories relate to The Ram's would be gold. Even just a stock making-of would be great. Come on, guys.

There is a guy at work, one of our subtenants actually, that always phrases his requests thusly: "Will you please kindly......." Fucking please kindly. That agitates me to no end. To make matters worse, the guy is a very mild-mannered Korean who speaks delicately, so the utter pretension of "please kindly" is even harder to pin down on him. Son of a bitch. It's not the aggressive type-A assholes that are hardest to deal with in offices, it's the calm ones who have the fortitude to keep up appearances.

My subway ride takes at least twice as long now that I live in Brooklyn. Also, I get on a busy line at the last stop in Brooklyn, so only about twice in the month I've been doing it have I gotten a seat.
Standing on a train is not so bad either in spurts or at irregular times, but every single morning is grating. So all the little subway etiquette annoyances are noticeable.
My absolute "favorite" subway pet peeve(1) is people not moving to the center of cars and jamming up the areas near the doors. This morning was a classic example of this: the car was very crowded right by the doors but empty over at the end. I was able to fight my way through and got to a roomy spot.(2) At the next stop a youngish Asian woman got on and replicated my path, taking a spot right behind me. What made it memorable is that this woman made a disgusted facial gesture while pushing through the assholes by the door. Watching this, I gave her a knowning smile followed by a shake of my head. She responded in kind. Thanks, lady, you made my morning.

I'm going to say here for the record how much I'm looking forward, not just to my wedding and honeymoon, but simply to having a chunk of time off from work. My work is not such that I actively dread coming in (sometimes I do but those times are relatively rare), but piling week and week on top of each other can burn out even the best of us. It's been almost a year since I've had anything more than a four-day weekend. Counting weekend days, I'll have 13 consecutive days away from the office.

Finally, a potentially unfortunate note on the weather. We are now inside the 10-day window so that weather.com has an actual forecast for the wedding day. As of now, they are predicting rain showers for both the day of and the day after (60% chance for each day), while the day before is sunny. There is a chance that the day-before sunniness proves to be the actual way the weekend shapes up (it's hard to tell this far ahead you know), but more likely the consecutive rainy days have more predictive power. I haven't said it to even Sara, but all along I've had a pretty strong feeling that the weather was not going to be good for this thing. And really, the weather is the only thing outside our control in the whole enterprise. More than that, it could be said without too much hyperbole--since we are getting married and having the reception outside on a beach--that the weather is single most important thing about the whole day.
I am a person who does pay attention to weather. My morning alarm is set to exactly coincide with the radio daily weather forecast. When I have an outdoor event coming up, I will check in online and hope the weather is nice. I did this twice recently for our canoe trip and then especially for my trip to Ohio. Both times there was this sense of holding my breath in hopes for good fortune. Well, you can take all the bated hopes I've had for any specific date to have good weather and the combined potential angst of all of them over most of my adult life might barely equal that which I feel for this one day, August 8th. And here it looks like it will be for shit. Nice. I know some of this may seem melodramatic. Maybe from your perspective it is. But you have to understand they way I approach my life. I'm happy to let the chips fall where they may for lots of occasions; I feel like it's a nice way to keep things interesting and spontaneous to not pin hopes on certain things sometimes. But most of the time, I try to organize myself so that every little thing that I can control is prepared for in the most positive way. So that then if something goes wrong, I'm never upset cause I know there is nothing I could do about it.(3) What I'm trying to say is that I don't ever ask for much from things I can't control, so it's kinda disheartening for it to (potentially) not go well this one time I do.
I'll try not to whine much next time. And maybe by then the forecast will have changed.

1. Narrowly outplacing these dickbag acts, from a longer list: barging into a car as soon as the doors open and not letting people out first, talking really loudly, and inexplicably standing up from a seat in the middle of a packed car while still at least half a stop away from his/her destination (you have the seat, so stay you ass in it and don't crowd up in my fact while I'm dangling from the bar above you, motherfucker. You lose the right to get a head start on the exit if you are seated while many others are not).
2. A corollary to this pet peeve is when the ignorant dicks who clog up the doors area have the fucking nerve to give me a dirty look or god forbid even say something when I bump them as I fight past. If I am ever to get into a physical fight with a stranger, this will be the cause.
3. A lot of this attitude comes from years of training for and competing in distance running. Running is a funny game in that the talent/effort dynamic can swing wildly from one side to the other. Meaning: some sports are dominated almost solely by the most talented (basketball) while some don't reward pure talent nearly as much (wrestling), bestowing success instead on the best combination of preparation, effort, and/or learned technique. Great runners come from both camps. Some are born and some are made. I was never quite good enough to know which category I belonged to, and so I always felt like if I did what I needed to do that everything would take care of itself, and even sometimes when I did everything perfectly, I could still get beat by better talent. Get your own shit in order and let the other guy worry about what might happen. No matter what anyone tells you, running is about the most individual sport there is.

So the knee is not 100% at all but it's pretty good. Ran 3.5 miles last night consecutively, though the first half of it was pretty slow. Once it got warm I was running almost unencumbered.
I do have a new injury to note now, unfortunately. And it's the kind of injury that will keep this post short, since it's my hand and it's slower typing. I jammed my left wrist pretty good but the more pressing concern right now is the large amount of skin that the Williamsburg sidewalk took from me when I slammed into it. I had a large section of my palm rendered as an open wound, which makes using the hand quite difficult but also the size of the wound makes the healing process a little more complicated than just covering it with some ointment and a band-aid and letting time do the work. This special powder stuff Sara gave me successfully got about half of the area of the wound covered in with fresh skin pretty quickly, but the other half (the inner rings naturally) is proving a little more resistant. Top priority is getting the palm side healed over so that I can fully grip or run my hand over something and also to prevent me crying like a baby when I jump in the ocean eleven days from now on my honeymoon. Having an open wound is sorta stressful but having an open wound for days and days is maddening.

I'm also gearing up for Sara's departure tomorrow, not to be seen again til next Friday, the day before the wedding. She's purposefully packing a big bag and so I had to sit down last night and make packing decisions for two weeks from now. My dresser is now lighter by several pairs of socks and underwear plus a handful of shirts and shorts. I have been strolling along in the planning phase for this wedding, not having to mentally or emotionally invest myself yet (that's the beauty of getting things mapped out and done in proper time: it's as if someone else is doing it for you since you can do it on auto-pilot), until last night when suddenly I was packing for it as though it were tomorrow. All along I've known how much time I have, and could ramp up accordingly. For instance, I haven't spent more than five seconds thinking about my vows (we are writing our own), knowing full well that I'd wait until a couple days before and then write them all at once. I knew I would likely do my laundry next Tuesday or Wednesday and then pack up my clothes then, saving the smaller items like books or suntan lotion for the last minute. I knew I would go get my hair cut next Wednesday. I knew how to plan out my work schedule for the last couple weeks so I got everything done in plenty of time. Anyway, packing up 75% of my clothes for the trip last night--ten days before the wedding and twelve before the start of the honeymoon--was not part of my nice smooth timeline. I'm glad I got it done; I mean, I'm not going to miss those five pair of underwear in the meantime, but still it's changed my mindset, if only a little. It's I'm no longer engaged, now I'm actually getting married. Which is a good thing of course.

Cold Calls

Due to a vacation of the regular person, I've been covering the reception desk at work a lot the last few days. I'm doing it right now, in fact. This entails pretty much what you would expect but in the contemporary world, where most people use email and any calls will often be made directly and not to a generic main company number, the types of calls we receive at reception skew heavily toward the cold calls. Cold calls, if you don't know, are calls wherein the caller doesn't have an actual contact at the company and instead is making the call in an attempt to acquire a contact which will then presumably lead to some sale. Cold callers are always trying to sell something. They are also often outsourced employees, meaning often they are foreigners,(1) and almost always that they are making the calls from some large room full of people with headsets all making similar calls.(2)
I have been covering reception for short stretches of each day for me entire tenure at my job and have gotten good at dealing with these callers to the point that it's like an autopilot switch. The basic is that no one gets through to the desired party. If the caller has a name, the best they will get is that person's voicemail. If no name (the most common start to a cold call is like this: "I need to speak to the person in charge of........."), the best they will get is an opportunity to leave a message with me, which consists of me reading something sports-related online while they dictate their callback number(3) to me slowly and sometimes twice so I can presumably transcribe it correctly.(4)
Anyway, the reason I'm writing about this now is that if you don't just sit back and mindlessly accept the practice for what it is, and instead think about it in a larger way, it becomes rather interesting.
1. What is the business model for the companies that make these calls?(5) Do they really think that this kind of old-school contact-gathering still works in 2009? How much time are they really willing to invest? Many of these are basic questions pertaining to marketers, but I guess I can't even begin to figure out how it could be profitable to market yourself this way.(6) The more you think about this, the more you can realize that there must be something, which leads me to:
2. Why would a business being solicited by a cold caller ever play into the sale?(7) It's extremely easy to pick out these cold calls and almost as easy to get rid of them. Still, there must be enough instances where recipients of these calls take the bait and the seller ends up with a client or at least just a one-time sale. As someone who has dealt with their menace for years now, I can still say that I am dumbfounded daily by the futility of the whole enterprise. Further, I often pity the poor souls who are making the calls. Usually, they are just following a script and doing their jobs. I try to let these people down easy or to be somewhat respectable or professional. I can't imagine what it would be like to fish around for leads constantly like that. It's about the worst thing I can imagine having to do from a personal-dignity standpoint.


1. Yes, the stereotype is true: lots of cold calls are made from Asia and of course especially India. Often, the caller can't really speak the language very well and/or the call quality will be so bad I have to hang up. This can't be good for the seller's image. What I find particularly amusing is when the callers have been taught only enough English words and phrasing to get through a basic cold call. I mean, they have certain word cues that allow them to understand but if you answer a question differently than they expect, they will be totally lost. This happens more often than you might expect actually. And I can sorta respect that aspect of this whole enterprise: why waste time teaching people more than they need to know. Efficiency. Of the perhaps 10% of the calls where the caller will go blank because the party will go off-script, those will surely not outweigh the cost and effort to further educate the workforce.
2. A recent wrinkle of the last year or two is that more and more of these calls are now automated, so you can simply hang up on them.
3. Many times the cold callers won't have a callback number. I mean, literally they are calling from a dialing center that doesn't have the function activated to receive calls. This happens with the outsourced callers primarily, and I can have fun with it because the clueless callers will usually have a tough time explaining why it is that I can't just call them back when it's convenient for me.
4. I think I actually write down the person's info maybe 5% of the time. Perhaps 1% of those times is the info actually ever used. So one out of every two thousand times a cold caller is patient enough to actually leave a message with me will the message actually get to its recipient. No, this represents me doing a good job and not a bad one.
5. I'm talking not about the outsourced calling groups but the sellers themselves.
6. I share similar disbelief for anyone who still pays money to advertise in the actual physical yellow pages. If you do this, you are too far behind the curve to be saved.
7. Pause now for your regularly-scheduled arrogance: I know I'm not the typical receptionist who would be fielding these calls, and that the people who do can't analyze this stuff as sufficiently and just generally are more prone to doing dumb things. But surely simple receptionist stupidity can't explain this?

Embracing It

Jesus. I just realized it's been more than two weeks since my last post--nearly five weeks since the incident--and still I feel the need to provide another knee update. I ran about 3/4 of a mile on Monday and was proud of myself. I was home in Steubenville for a walk with Sara and decided to run the uphills and walk the rest, since the uphills are ok. Actually I even ran backwards down one hill too, but I'm not counting that distance. The interesting thing is how naive I was through the whole process about the need to rehab; I just assumed the knee would heal and I'd hop back into running. Well, the knee has 98% healed(1), but the couple weeks of stiff limping sent my too-weak patella into a tailspin, and since I wasn't doing anything to keep those muscles and tendons active, I'm now recovering from a patella problem. Fortunately(2), I had tendonitis in my right patella in college, so now I know how to handle my balky left one.

Now, I would like to address something that I never do, and my never addressing it has been not just a conscious decision but almost a defensive mechanism to keep from embracing what is to be my destiny. That's a lot of bluster there but when you find out what I'm talking about it will make sense.
I don't ever, with anyone, talk about kids. Let's consider why this is:
A. Because I am not a kid
B. Because I don't know many kids.
C. Because my daily routine rarely ever includes kids so why talk about them.
D. Because I am afraid of kids.(3)
Technically, those answers are all correct, but as we all know from the SAT, there is always one best answer, and here it is:
E. Because at some point in the semi-near future I will myself produce a kid, and until that time comes I am not terribly interested in having my conversation be dominated by the topic of kids.

Sara is very much interested in kids ("babies," specifically). She's interested in other people's kids, kids she knows, kids she sees on the street, kids on TV, and kids she will have with me. She has known, for quite a while now, that she wants to have a kid more or less as soon as possible.
I haven't exactly shared this enthusiasm. I don't particularly care for kids. That sounded harsh. I mean, I am not interested by them. Sure, I like a little kid playing with a dog as much as anybody, and I can appreciate an attractive baby, but I don't get much out of them personally. And as for my own kid-having prospects, let's just say that I'm patient.
I haven't liked to talk about kids basically because it's coming closer to a tangible thing in my life. The step between liking/dating/loving to getting married has never really meant terribly much to me. When dealing with your life mate, they're all just labels because it's the same person and the same feelings. Moving into an apartment together was a little step and moving to another city together will be another little step. For some reason (who am I kidding--for giant and very good reasons), the step between where I am now and having a kid seems vast, like here I am now in America, and there I am with a kid in Africa.(4)
It's an idea that has taken and will continue to take time to become real for me.
As a secondary concern, not addressing the kid issue is one last way for me to continue to embrace the collegial part of my life. It's the last domino to fall. Also, not any of my friends would ever really want to hear me or anyone else talk about kids. Kids are what happens to other people, people on the other side of the age divide. We are New Yorkers, after all, and New Yorkers around our age don't have kids.

I don't know why I'm choosing now to mention any of this. I guess I've crossed enough ground and gotten just comfortable enough with the idea that I can say it openly. I don't know exactly when it will happen, but it's gonna happen. I will have a kid with Sara at some point not too far in the future(5). It's kinda nice. I guess I'm a big boy and everything.



1. What the hell do I know? 75%? 99.5%? 83%? The ligaments are better enough that I don't think about them.
2. Fortunate now. At the time, that little injury that popped up in the third race of my junior year cross country season proved to be the first in a series of things that caused that third race to be my last organized competitive race. Alas.
3. This should probably read "kids' parents." I think we can all agree that kids' parents are pretty goddamned awful.
4. Note to unborn, unconceived kid: no, you can't go to Africa. First, it's expensive, and second, it's dangerous. You could get eaten by a lion. But mostly, it's too expensive.
5. No, she isn't pregnant or anything and she isn't going off the pill. I'm being vague. But I'm not talking about several years from now

Let's start with a knee update. I've reached the phase in my recovery where the healing stops accelerating, so while I continue to get better, it's not at the same speedy rate as before, so I can get tricked into feeling like I've taken a step back.
I'm getting more little pops and cracks in the knee in the last several days, and I'm pretty sure that's actually a good thing, meaning that the swelling has finally gone down so much that the tendons and ligaments are actually sliding directly over bone and such, with the pops representing the inflammation still there.
I tested it out with some running-like activity(1) on Monday (that's 16 days post-injury) and to my dismay, the patella tendon is nowhere near strong enough to support real running. It is strong enough to support all the weight it receives when walking, but running requires each leg to absorb almost all of the body's weight with each step, and I'm not ready for that unfortunately. I'm going to give it until perhaps next Tuesday or Wednesday and try again.
Sara actually took the time to ask her doctor about my knee during a visit this week and the response(2), while typical, actually reminded me that I was forgetting something: therapy. Since I'm no longer an "athlete," it's easy for me to forget that when I hurt myself like I did, I actually need to rehab the muscles and tendons around the injury or else I will never fully heal.
But I did notice this morning for the first time that I'm back to being aggressive with the flashing Don't Walk signs, so at least my head has come all the way back.

Our move to Brooklyn finally happens this afternoon. I say "finally" because Sara started packing things about a week ago, so it's felt like a neverending exercise. Basically, Sara moves backwards from everyone else: she lives out of boxes for a week prior to moving, then unpacks all at once as soon as she moves in. Clearly this is exactly the opposite way I do things so it's been a little stressful lately. Also, I'm a little unsure about how everything will situate itself. We've gotten used to extra space over the past year and suddenly it will be an issue. To complicate things, my sacred measurements were just a few inches off in a couple spots but those few inches will be enough to wreck some havoc.

Finally, from the Please Move Out of NYC file: a younger woman called out from a point where she could not be seen to "hold that elevator" this morning just as the doors were closing(3). So the other guy in the elevator with me reaches out and saves the damsel from a purgatorial 20 second wait. She barges in with two large purses/bags flailing and a large coffee in one hand and a bottle of water and a large set of keys in the other. Exactly two seconds after the doors finally close she sneezes twice, both times with mouth open and naturally without even feigning like she was trying to cover it. Thanks.


1. I did three round trip jogs from the front to the back of the apartment. This may sound pathetic but remember our apartment is huge, especially front to back.
2. Huge props to this doctor for actually answering Sara's question, since most doctors would naturally straight refuse to consider giving advice outside of the comfort of a billed visit. The actual advice given was far less impressive: for me to come in so she could show me therapy exercises. No shit. As luck would have it, I actually had tendinitis in my right patella in college and so already know exactly the right exercises to work it properly, so I'll do it myself. Josh Folger: keeping FMCG's insurance premiums down, zero doctor's appointments at a time.
3. Please note there are six functional elevators in my bank serving a total of 17 floors. What I'm saying is that missing an elevator ain't like missing the L train back in the day.