Instant karma

By popular request, I've opted to at least temporarily reactivate this dusty old blog. We'll see how it goes.

I've often thought of myself as a bad (fill in the blank with your choice of: lay, friend, neighbor, son, brother, uncle, boss, boyfriend, writer, customer, etc. etc. etc). I don't usually think of myself as a bad person as a whole package. Yesterday, though, I had one of those moments where I thought that I was a terrible person. And karma came to bite me on the ass. And she came pretty quickly.

For those of you who don't know (and assuming that anybody at all is reading this after more than a year of inactivity), the bar&grill that I manage in on a university campus. From what I've heard, we are the only bar that is actually on the campus of any of the seventeen schools in the University of North Carolina system. Thousands of students pass by our door every day. Some, but not many, are in wheelchairs. Even more, but still not many, are deaf. Some, but not many are blind.

Yesterday, during a moment of downtime, I observed a blind girl who had wandered WAY off the sidewalk and into our parking lot. She kind of walked around in circles for a little while, then went back in the direction she came from. Then she stopped when she almost ran into an ATM machine and did another 180. She continued to walk, off course, though our parking lot, then ran into the fence that separates our patio from the sidewalk and parking lot. She was using a cane, and using it very badly. I was watching her through a window, just feeling sorry for her, but at the same time thinking "she's almost doing that so badly that it can't be real". Still, I just stood there and watched. I could have easily walked out and at the very least guided her in the right direction if not walked her all the way to her destination. Instead, I just watched. Instead of using this opportunity to do something thoroughly unselfish, I only watched her and thought "wow, I hope she doesn't get hit by a car". Eventually, a couple of people did stop to point her in the right direction, but nobody walked with her. Over the years, I've seen a lot of blind kids walk past, and I've never seen anything quite like the way this girl was struggling just to stay on the sidewalk. I kept thinking that it was too ugly to be real.

But who would do that? Who would pretend to be blind and lost? Unless this was some sociological study intended to prove that people don't help strangers or people with disabilities, the answer is that nobody would do that. This girl really was blind, and she, for whatever reason, couldn't keep herself on the sidewalk. And I watched the whole thing as she hopelessly and helplessly meandered around.

I got sort of an instant karmic payback last night. Not anything huge, but a little nibble on the ass.

Late last night, I had to get something from my car, which was parked on the street. I noticed a small dent in the front left fender. A fresh one. Someone clearly backed into my parked car or in some other way gently hit it. The damage isn't enough to make me go out and get it repaired right away. It's so insignificant that I might never get it repaired. It's not much, but it's an unsightly blemish.

Perhaps coincidence, perhaps a karmic message. I dunno. All I know is that I felt rotten about myself after I had time to reflect upon the situation with the blind girl, and by the end of the day, I had something unfortunate happen to me.

A challenge

I want to present you, dear readers, with a challenge. I challenge you... I dare you.... I double dog dare you to get this song out of your head. The R&B/B&R video of the day: "My Year in Lists" by Los Campesinos!.


Seriously, try to get it out of your head. You can't do it. Sure, you might be able to shake it for right this second, but maybe later today, maybe sometime tomorrow, there it'll be. In your head.

I'm a fiend for all the stuff on the Arts & Crafts label, and although I don't own anything by these guys, I like what I've heard. And this damn song, which is just under 2:00, won't leave my head. I can't help but laugh, though, at the fact that they're trying so very hard to look emo, or twee, or whatever you wanna call it. I mean, nothing screams "I am twee as fuck" quite like an office green zippered hoodie. Except maybe a yellow t-shirt under a purple hoodie with a yellow badge pinned to it (especially if it's a badge of your own band). Oh, and a girl with a star tattoo on her wrist playing the bass for you. Oh. And self-reference. They've got that in spades. The only thing that would make this band more twee is if they were all wearing black-rimmed, tiny-lensed glasses.

Another thing that I think is funny about this video is that the drummer, Ollie Campesinos (wearing the green t-shirt in this video), looks alarmingly like a circa 2003- Eric Staal.

Anyway, enjoy the video. Try to keep the song out of your head. Good luck.

moving through the netflix queue

Since the hockey season is over, I have reached the point that I reach every summer where I get incredibly bored. Oh, sure, the Entry Draft came and went, providing me with about two hours of entertainment. The free agent signing period begins tomorrow (July 1), and that should provide me with a couple of days of excitement, but for the most part, the period between mid-June and early October is boring. So I've been putting a pretty good dent in my Netflix queue. In a half-assed effort to keep this thing afloat, I'll enlighten you (all two of you) with some of my recent selections.

• Days of Wine and Roses (1962) Starring Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick, Jack Klugman. Directed by Blake Edwards.
  
  Holy shit! What an excellent movie. Jack Lemmon plays a PR guy who happens to be a drunk. He falls in love with a girl from the office who is a goodie-two-shoes. He converts her to alcoholism. They battle demons and each other. Jack Lemmon is phenomenal in this role. He was nominated for best actor, but unfortunately, it was the same year that To Kill a Mockingbird came out, and Gregory Peck rightfully walked home with the Oscar. The greenhouse scene is sensational. I've got goosebumps just thinking about it. Highly recommended!
  Normally, when you hear "Directed by Blake Edwards", you would think zany sex comedy. This isn't even remotely a comedy.
  This movie just skyrocketed all the way to #2 on my list of favorite Jack Lemmon movies. #1 is, and will always be, The Apartment.
  
  
• loudQUIETloud: A film about the Pixies (2006)
  
  I wouldn't really say that this is a film about the Pixies. More accurately, it's about their short-lived reunion in 2004. It's not terribly enlightening, and certainly not very Edddddd-uuuuuuuuu-caaaaaaaay-shunnnnnnnnn-aaaaaaaaaal, but it's entertaining. It definitely reminded me that the REAL genius in the Pixies was Joey Santiago. Unfortunately, since he wasn't the singer or the girl, he didn't get talked about.
  It was sort of strange to see them all at 40, living responsible lives with families and whatnot.
  I feel like the filmmaker went out of his way to point to the fact that Kim was just out of rehab. Part of her healing is that she demanded that their dressing room be clear of all alcohol and drugs. In an 82-minute film, it seems like 30 minutes was spent covering Kim's nowfound sobriety. The other side of the coin was David Loverling's abuse of Valium and red wine.
  
  I feel like the director set out to make something a lot like I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. He didn't succeed.
  
  It was okay, but I wouldn't see it again, and I can't really say that I would recommend it.
  
  
• Screaming Masterpiece (2005)
  Another music documentary. This one touts itself as a look at the 2000-year history of Icelandic music. Honestly, with that description, I wasn't quite sure how much of the ancient history I was gonna get. The answer : none. There was very very little mention of traditional or "folk" music of Iceland. No explanation of where it came from or why. Only that, just as any other culture, the traditional music is based in poetry.
  As should have been expected, the main focus of this film was Björk, Sigur Rós and Múm. There were dozens of other bands, but all of them were contemporary and none of the others are worth mentioning. I learned absolutely nothing from this picture except these "facts". Icelanders don't consider themselves to be Scandinavian. They are, simply, Icelanders. They have only, just in the past 30 years or so, realized (according to Björk, anyway) their own identity. They just now realize that they are Icelanders rather than Danish colonists.
  Iceland is a country of just over 300,000 people, and there are an insane number of rock bands. Most of them suck.
  As much as I wanted to love this, I actually hated it. I found myself bored to tears, fast-forwarding through bits. Even the live footage didn't do much for me. I didn't imagine this would be the case, but I was really glad when it was over. Even if you're a huge fan of any of these Icelandic bands, I wouldn't recommend this movie, except as a cure for insomnia.

There have been a few others recently, but those are the most recent. The next six or seven will be seasons five and six of Scrubs. I can't wait for those.

If you really like me, you'll buy me this...

I've come out of hibernation only to say that if you were really my friend, you'd buy me a ticket to this.

It's only a little over $400 per person, so if you've got that much extra dough burning a hole in your pocket, feel free. Actually, by now, the whole thing is prolly sold out, but it sure would be sweet.

Sunday night alone would be well worth the price of admission.

I'm in the New York Times!

The New York Times has given my hockey blog some love!

I've been asked to be the Carolina Hurricanes blogger representative in an ongoing q&a thing being hosted by the New York Times hockey blog. Each team has one blogger representing it, and we're all asked the same set of questions. It looks like they'll be posted division-by-division.

The first installment is here, and it'll be a regular thing at least until the regular season ends in early April. Keep checking back to the New York Times: Slapshot blog, as well as my hockey blog for more.

just one cold look from you can knock me down

After a few months of silence around here, I've decided to make another run at keeping this thing up. Like I always do, I'll make grand promises to be more devoted to this blog, but I doubt that I'll hold true to those promises.
I've been thinking about a few different posts for this place, and instead of cranking them out old-school style, I'm mulling them over.

A few months ago, I was "tagged" over at the hockey blog and asked to name my top five songs of all time. I can't possibly do that. I named my top five songs by bands starting with the letter B, and I pledged to do a top five for every letter of the alphabet, but that project ended before it started. I was gonna (and still might) try that over here.

I haven't bought very much new music in a long time. I don't have disposable income, so it's a real treat to buy a new record. When the new Radiohead was "released", I downloaded it and didn't pay anything. I know. I know. Lame. That's not the point. The point is that after probably 40 listens, I keep having different responses to it. Not all of them are good. Eventually, I'd like to write something about that.

Without further ado (or as my friend Kevin says, further "adieu"), I'll use the cheapest of cheap tricks. The old "Here's what's in my cell phone text message inbox before I clean it out"

These are some of the better ones. The names have been changed to protect the innocent

• No no. Yesterday my glasses were only a sign of a hangover. They only look good with a power dyke outfit.
  
• If it was up your ass, you'd know it
  
• We just called my sister to sing "Leaving on a jet plane". Thanks for the inspiration. Hehe.
  
• Cksw
  
• I love waffles
  
• You escaped without a hug. Jerk.
  
• I think you're wonderful. That is all.
  
• That's coz she wasn't raised on irony like us
  
• I'm scared to talk to you because I suck, so I'm doing this instead. Good to see you, love.
  
• mad horseshoes! come on down!
  
• You've got nice eaves.
  
• Did you know that bryan and ryan share a birthday? and that I am kinda into the new avril record?
  
• Move 2 raleigh
  
• You made me cry.
  
• Best cd yet. Hands down.
  
• Lucy fucker.
  
• If we're still doing lunch tomorrow, you better call and wake me up!
  
• Daaaaaaang. the Hardees in Martinsville ain't on fire no more.
  
• Baby pool party at vince and whitney's at 3. bring something to drink you yur swimmin' costume. call for directions.
  
• whisper in my mouth
  
• (you're like an) oak tree
  
• I called you, jerk. What gives?
  
• ...violently erotic
  
• What's your tomato basil soup recipe?
  
• I'm listening to fox in the snow, which makes me think of you
  
• I just got hit on by a 21 year old while studying at denny's. he had to leave when his dad came over to get him.

Many of these are from the same two or three people, and many of them have some reference to some joke, but it's sort of fun to share them with folks completely out of context. For the record, I have no idea what "cksw" means.

Here's my favorite, which came after I failed to return a large number of voice mails and text messages:

• Are you hibernating, watching hockey and drinking guinness, growing a beard and reminiscing about Throwing Muses shows past?

That's it for now. I'm also going to immediately work on a post about my latest Scrabble tournament.

Now playing:

Beta Band The Three EPs

...

...

Ten thousand dancing girls kicking cans across the sky

Yes, I'm still alive.

I haven't been around these parts lately, and I'm hoping that that'll change. I'm not going to make any promises, as all of my promises heretofore have been empty. However, I'll try to keep this thing alive.

The other day at work, we played a fun game that reminded me of something I did on this page a few months ago. Way back in October of aught-five, I played a band name game where you mash band names together to get things like

G Love & .38 Special Sauce
or

Busta LeAnn Rimes

That whole post is here, and it was inspired by a post I read at a friend's blog here.

Anyway, the new game is to combine the name of a band with the name of a fish. Here's some of the better ones we came up with (it helps to say some of them out loud):

Cod Stewart

Koi Division

Tuna Live Crew

Skinny Guppy

Nine Inch Whales

Carp Shoot Carp

No Trout

Backstreet Kois

Squid Vicious

Catfish Power

Eel O

My Life With the Thrill Krill Cult

Belle and Sea Basstian

Ase of Bass

Public Anemone

Betta Band

Moray-ssey

The Housemarlins

Salmon Dave

Barry Minnowlow

Then, because we really wanted to be able to use this one, we stretched the rule to allow the use of an album title. That's a whole nother can of worms, but the one in question was

Flounder Than Bombs

Any additions to this list are welcome.

now playing:

Explosions in the Sky All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone

you changed all the lead sleeping in my head to gold

It's been a massively long time since I've written in this thing, and I wanted to try to get the cobwebs out, so here I am.

To be honest, not much has been going on around these parts. I've been working two jobs and most of my free time is devoted to hockey.

This past weekend, I played in a Scrabble tournament in Raleigh: my second career tournament. I played well enough to take third place in my division, and although I felt like I should have taken second, and could have won, I'm still okay with third.

On the first day, players are randomly placed into groups of four, and they play a round robin. I easily defeated all three opponents (504-251; 441-290; 375-295) and had a cumulative point spread of +484 after three games. Unlike college football, the margin of victory is important. You never call off the dogs when you're crushing someone. You never play "third string" words. By the end of the tournament, cumulative point spread might be a deciding factor in whether you take home any prizes or how your rating changes.

On the second day, eight games are played using a modified Swiss pairing, followed by a king of the hill. I'm still not 100% sure about all the complexities of the modified Swiss system, but it basically means that players go against others players with similar win-loss records. The pairings are re-seeded after each game, and they are based on the previous game. To be more clear: While game six is in progress, the pairings for game seven are posted based on the results of game five. It isn't necessarily the case that winners play winners, but those who are doing well play each other.

So I started game four as the overall #1 seed in my division. I had good games for games 4-6, beating everyone (including both players who eventually finished ahead of me) and building my point spread to a stout +745 after six games. I was drawing well, I was "seeing the board" well, I was bingoing with ease, I was hitting hot spots. I was doing everything right.

In game 7, my opponent, who had a reputation for being an ass (and a bad player), didn't show up. He broke for lunch early. Or he was scared to play me. I don't know. Anyway, I sat there while his timer ran down to zero, earning a forfeit win. I think I would have beaten him by a bunch if we had actually played, but the rules are that a forfeit is a 50 point win. I took it, and at the lunch break I was still undefeated and in first place.

After lunch, there were four more games. As the leaders started to separate themselves from the pelloton, the games got tougher. The people who had ended up in the top four by freak accident got beat down. There would be no more easy victories for me. In those last four games on Saturday, I won two and lost two. One of the losses was bad, but they were both to the guy who ended up winning. Even after losing two, I was still in first place at 9-2. However, I knew it wouldn't be easy to keep it. I knew I would have to play Jeffrey at least one more time. Although I had gone 1-2 against him, I felt like he had an upper hand.

I played the #3 guy, and lost a very close game that went back and forth for the whole game. In the later portion of the game, he played ROUX for 57 points (x on the double letter, the whole thing tripled). He told me later that he would not have known that word except that he was forced to study his list of short words ending in -x after I played ILEX against him for big points the previous day. A well played game for both of us, ending in a 403-383 loss for me.

Next, I played the #4 guy, and had another barn burner. Back and forth for most of the game with a really closed off board. Very late in the game, with a very favorable rack, and in need of a bingo, I took a big gamble playing off a single letter in a place that made my intentions obvious. Because I was tracking the tiles, I knew what was left, and I knew that my opponent couldn't block my set-up (AL - to which I wanted to hook an E). I was left with AEEINR0 . Since I study dorky lists, and memorize mnemonic devices, I knew that my options were to make that blank either a T or a G. If I made it a T, my options were ARENITE, RETINAE and TRAINEE. All of those are very common to Scrabble players. I knew that if I made the blank a G, the only valid seven letter word is REGINAE. The last E hooks on to the aforementioned AL. REGINAE is a pretty uncommon word, and I guessed that it might draw a challenge, which would give me more breathing room. After some consternation, there was no challenge. The play put me barely in the lead. Fortunately, I was able to play off the last three tiles on my next turn, winning the game 412-382.

I was 10-2 and Jeffrey was 11-1. I would have to beat Jeffrey twice in a row to get first place. I would have to win the first game to guarantee a second place finish. I was already locked into no lower than third, but the pressure was on. Jeffrey and I both played poorly, but thanks to a strategic error on my part where I was greedy, I left the door open enough for Jeffrey to win 352-313. Meanwhile, John lost to Mark, leaving me with a chance to finish second.

They tried to make me play Jeffrey again, but I demanded that he be Gibsonized so that I would have a chance to win second place. Jeffrey had already secured first place. The 15th round game was moot for him, so it doesn't make sense for him to play the #2 guy. He could go in collusion with the #2 guy, and lose on purpose, which helps the #2 guy and screws the #3 guy out of his chance. Gibsonizing means that the #1 guy is taken out of the mix. The #2 and #3 guys play each other, and the #1 guy plays the highest seeded person who is out of the money. In this case, there were only three prizes, so he played the #4 guy.

After all that commotion, I lost my final game badly. I got behind by a bunch early and played like a desperate player trying to get it all back on one play.

Still, getting third out of 19 isn't bad. I walked out of there with $90 in prize money, and after all the red tape is taken care of, I'll have a better rating with the NSA than I did before. Most likely, I'll get to play in one more tournament in the low "novice" division before I get moved into the next highest division. The competition will be a bit tougher there, and It'll take me several tournaments to work my way up those ranks. So my last shot to win some money will be in late January in Charlotte.

Up soon : a post about a crazy set of dreams I had on Friday night.

Now playing:

Bettie Serveert Palomine

Superstar in your own private movie; I wanted just a minor part

Here's the thing.

I like to make games of just about anything. Fortunately, at work, there are a bunch of other guys who like to make games out of the same things. We have several games involving the radio. The oft-mentioned "Two-fer Tuesday" game used to be the only one, but now there's a new one. The way we play this game, though, is a sad indicator that we spend WAY too much time playing fantasy sports.

The way this game works is that we get to pick songs we think the station will play. The format of the station we listen to isn't important here, but let's just say it's a pretty specific format. Before we start working, three of us select ten songs that we think will be played in the course of the day. We have a slection order (a "draft order", if you will), and the selection order reverses order in even numbered "draft" rounds. Just like fantasy sports drafts. After the "draft" is over, all remaining songs become "free agents" and can be picked up. It's not that simple, though. There's a waiver wire priority, just like in fantasy sports. Once I pick up a "free agent" and drop a song to even my roster, I move to the back of the waiver queue.

Trading is permissible, only if the other player(s) approve. It's quite complex, and if anyone working that day doesn't play fantasy sports, they're really confused by these rules, which have not quite been fully developed.

If any player gets two of their songs played back-to-back, the other players have to give him $1 each. Three songs = $2 each, and so on. So far, nobody has made any money off of this, and as you might imagine, the scoring is pretty low.

In comparison to the "Two-fer Tuesday" game, where the scoring might go something like 7-5-4, the scoring of the "music carousel" is often 2-2-1.

However, the "Two-fer" game has an added dimention that has nothing to do with the radio. Bonus points can be had for being proficient at a carnival-style game of chance.

Don't ask me. I just work here.

Coming soon -- a post about "new car shower-offers" and commentary about TO.