Virtual Thanks

This year I am most grateful for all the friends I have met through the internet. As unlikely a method as it is, I love that there are so many interesting people I would never have the chance to become friends with if we were restricted to mere spatial proximity. It's a large, large world and anything which can connect people in so many ways is something worth cherishing.

Most surprising to me is the wide of variety of people I have met. Rather than just finding shodows om my own interests and tastes, I have met people with an infinite variety of backgrounds and perspectives. I want to thank each and every one of you for enriching my life and broadening my horizon.

BooksFirst - September-October 2010

Books Bought
Zero History by William Gibson
Star Island by Carl Hiaasen
Don't Vote by P. J. O'Rourke

Books Read
The System of the World by Neal Stephenson
Hella Nation by Evan Wright
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Commentary

There may only be three books on the listfor the past two months, but they fill be with a huge sense of accomplishment. I have been nibbling away at Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver Cycle for nearly two years now and I got determined to finish it off. The final volume, The System of the World, takes place in 1714, a few years after the events that end Confusion. All the players are in and around London where most of the action takes place, if by action you mean endless set-pieces about currency and wealth and philosophy. The focus of the book is on Daniel Waterhouse, now and old man dragged into intrigue concerning destabilizing England's currency. This takes him into contact with his old roommate Isaac Newton, guardian of the Mint by day and mad alchemist at night. Also involved are Jack Shaftoe and Eliza and the dozens of minor characters they have accumulated, including future kings and queens.

Stephenson is playing a long game here. While there are certain phantastical elements at play, much of it is swashbuckling historical fiction. The slightly anachronistic style is tough to keep up with for over 2000 pages and certain verbal twitches just become annoying after a while. While any historical era can be seen as pivotal when viewed in the right light, the case for the early 18th century is made subtly but very strongly. There were a lot of different elements at work in that time.

Overall, the trilogy is to tour de force but Stephenson is a writer seriously in need of an editor. The exciting parts are amazingly gripping but the meanderings can be tedious. This is all just churlish nitpicking on a work which truly earns the word 'epic'.

Hella Nation is a book which came highly recommended by my dad and our tastes don't always overlap much, but he raved so much about this book I had to move it to the top of the to-read pile. Evan Wright got his start in 'journalism' as the movie reviewer for Hustler magazine and it flavors a lot of the book. Perhaps a third of it relates directly or indirectly to his years on the fringes of the adult entertainment industry. What is clearly a sleazy industry at all levels is captured with just a hint of winsome affection.

But the stronger pieces are the pure character studies where Wright captures the some of some peculiarly American subculture whether it be professional skateboarders or white supremacists or combat soldiers. The subjects are never patronized or ridiculed but always shown full-figure, warts and all.

The writing has a slightly Hunter Thompsonesque gonzo feel but seems to be more in line with the early writing of Tom Wolfe before he became an old man telling kids to quit hooking up on his lawn. There is a passion and compassion found in each of the rather oddball subjects he features.

Perhaps no book not involving precocious British wizards has gotten as much hype as Freedom. Jonathon Franzen even made the cover of Time as if he were a politician or rock star. The book itself is very good even if nothing could possibly live up to the rather elevated expectations. Like his earlier near-Oprah selection The Corrections it focuses on a rather dysfunctional family with widely divergent personalities. And while the characters and situations in Freedom are completely different from the ones in The Corrections, there is a certain familiarity and lots of easily drawn parallels.

I checked this book out of the library where it had a rather long waiting list meaning that I had exactly three weeks to get through all 560 pages. I set myself a pace of 30 pages a night and easily rolled through it. And while the plot and timeline do meander, by the end there is a clear concise satisfying if not wholly happy ending. In this respect, Franzen has more in common with Stephenson than most people would notice. Franzen works at a much closer level, but much of what they both do is the same. Small points have large meanings and everything connects to everything.

There is a lot of sex in Freedom. Underage sex, non-consensual sex, adulterous sex, make-up sex, even passionless sex. But none of it is prurient. There is always something else going on. The sex is always about more than just sex. Indeed, everything is about something else whether it be a bird sanctuary or a rock song or a war profiteering business deal. As for 'Freedom', well, let's just say that it means having nothing left to lose.

Rally For Inanity

If you are going to the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert rally on the Mall tomorrow, make sure you have a witty erudite sign to wave in front of the cameras. If not, just use this one:



You can download a printable pdf version by clicking on the image below:

I hope to see all my fellow radical moderates there.

Mini 500

While the Ramblin' Wreck Parade is one of the premiere events of the Georgia Tech Homecoming weekend, another activity has gotten more recognition as the result of a PSA being aired during Georgia Tech ACC football games.



While that video involves some Hollywood magic, the real race is just as bizarre. Teams are given an unassembled stock tricycle which they have to put together and paint. The teams consist of four riders and three in the pit crew. Here is the team from my son's fraternity with their tricycle:



The racers have to push the tricycle around the course. The most common posture is to put one knee on the trike seat and push with the other leg.



Although some people take fancier poses.



The other common technique is to sit on the tricycle backwards and push with both feet.



The race is between 10 and 15 laps of Peters Parking Deck which is easily a half mile around. This takes an enormous toll on the trikes and the riders. Wipeouts are frequent.



The front tire in particular is prone to blowouts and many trikes run on rims.



As the tricyles fall apart beyond repair, the teams just give up and resort to silly stunts.



Or just run around with the remaining parts.



The event draws a huge crowd and I was far from the only photographer grabbing pictures of the racers and wrecks.



Eventually someone comes up with enough laps to win. I have no idea if this team won, but there sure are showing some enthusiasm.



For lots more (perhaps too many more) photos of all the wackiness, check out the Flickr set. And if you are ever in Atlanta for Georgia Tech's homecoming check out the race itself.

OctoBra

Times are tough for a certain single mom of fourteen. As reported on Celebritology and elsewhere, Nadya Suleman, also known as the Octomom, had to hold a yard sale just to raise a little cash for all her little ones. Among the many personal items she sold off was one of her nursing bras. And to ensure its authenticity, she autographed it. While the buyer has decided to remain anonymous, Foma Central has captured an exclusive picture of this unique undergarment.



I just feel sorry for her once the little rascals start teething.

Vampire Weekend

The price for growing up in Florida and having a family that went waterskiing (and one of the verbal quirks that distinguishes me from a native Northener is that I call it snowskiing as if it were an equally likely alternative activity) every weekend. My dad would want to hit the lake about 8 a.m. so that he could get in an hour of skiing while the water was still 'like glass' - the super smooth mirrory texture of calm water. As soon as all the rubes in their speed boats showed up, the water just got too choppy.

We would head home after a picnic lunch and put the boat back in the garage. Meanwhile I would have fried to a deep lobster red crisp. For the next week, if I was bored following my mother around the commissary, I had some built in entertainment. I would play games with my peeling sunburn. The best one was to see how big a piece of skin I could pull off all at once. Sometimes I could do the entire length of my arm.

So for me the risk of developing skin cancer is a 'when', not an 'if'. After years of doing Male Habitual Doctor Avoidance, my wife booked me an appointment with a dermatologist, which is no mean feat. I've gotten a table at Babbo easier than a time slot with a skin doctor.

The appointment included a Full Body Scan, which is far less sophisticated than I thought it would be. The doctor looks over my whole body while a nurse writes down the rapid fire jargon-filled observations. The only thing slowing the doc down from her voluminous tracking of conditions was her stopping to zap scaly areas with her liquid nitrogen gun. A quick peak at my pale white ass confirmed for her that all the skin damage is sun related. Thank goodness I never became a nudist.

All the dry flaky spots on my skin which I thought were just a lack of moisturizing were actually pre-cancerous actinic keratosis conditions. While the cold gun burns off the surface cells, the doctor told be to come back for the Blue Light Treatment, or it's more technical name, Photodynamic Therapy (PDT).

PDT involves applying a chemical that takes away the natural UV resistance of the skin. To get the chemical absorbed into the skin, they wrapped my forearms with cheap Target brand saranwrap and then had me sit in the waiting room for 90 minutes with my arms looking like they were being marinaded, which I guess they were.



After being thoroughly basted, they then stick my arms into an open ended EasyBake oven of lights that put off a preternaturally blue light. During this time the skin gets warm and some spots begin to tingle.



But the most disruptive aspect of this treatment is that you then have to stay out of sunlight for 48 hours afterwards. Like indoors away from windows. My tech even cautioned me against standing in the kitchen with the blinds closed. So that began what I am calling my Vampire Weekend. Normally my house is kept dark enough to meet London Blitz darkout conditions anyways, but I took extra precautions.

Rather than use my desktop computer I set up a laptop in the dining room which is equidistant from the rather sunlit kitchen and the living room which has perfectly opaque vertical blinds. I even turned the overhead lights down on the dimmer.

Normally, having to stay indoors all day on a weekend is not a problem. But when you are told not to do something, it's all you can think off. All day yesterday, I was itching for the sun to go down. Finally, as twilight began to glimmer I begged my wife to go to the movies with me just to keep me from going stir crazy.

Today, as my 48 hours are to expire, the skies are rainy and overcast, but I am going to wear a thick long sleeve shirt just to stay on the safe side. I was given some topical creams just in case my skin gets irritated, but so far all I feel is the warmth of a mild sunburn, which just brings back the memories of those summer days of my youth blissfully ripping the blistered skin from my arms. Now I leave that to the doctors.

And just in case you feel misled by my post title and were expecting some tweeny pop band, here is a link to make up for it.

Pigtown Races

Fall is festival season and one of the cuter small neighborhhood ones is held by the Washington Village Community Association aka Pigtown. It got its name because the trains would offload livestock and run them through the streets to the butcher shops in the area.

So to celebrate the refound heritage of the area, the annual street festival holds pig races. Five times a day they have four heats of races. Two with pigs and two with 'ugly pigs' which closely resembled ducks.



And the losers of the races went straight to the barbecue vendors. Which were delicious. And between races they had a live entertainment stage. The band we saw was The Dutch Cousins who played an energetic country folk mix of originals and covers.



The Pigtown area is now a slowly gentrifying area with luxury townhomes where a housing project used to be, but there is plenty of Charm City character left as well. I love seeing those uniquely Baltimoron formstone faces.



But the slickest house was this rowhome with a trompe l'oeil mural on the side which perfectly matched the preternaturally blue sky.



The perfect day. Good music, fine food, and fast pigs.

Prater Power

Some of the best things we did on our tour of Central Europe were not on the official itinerary. For example, in Vienna we were told about an amusement park. Not having anything better to do that evening we hopped the subway and headed out. We got to the park just before dusk. We weren't really expecting much, but we were quickly overwhelmed. What a blast we had. It was as if Coney Island had been dropped in the middle of Austria.



Our group of five first headed to the large ferris wheel near the back of the park where we got a great overview of the park. It went on for acres and acres.



After a couple more thrill rides, three of us decided to tackle the Prater Tower (or Praterturm in German). We had no idea that at over 100 meters tall it is the highest swing ride in the world. Check out the video. It does tower over everything else in the park.



After a few more thrill rides (including one I was too chicken to try), it was time for some liquid refreshment in the beer garden near one of the many funhouses.



But before we left, I insisted we ride the Riesenrad, a Ferris wheel that dates back to 1897 and which has been featured in several movies including The Living Daylights.

We didn't leave the park until nearly midnight and the fairgrounds were still going strong. So when in Vienna, make sure to take a turn on the Praterturm.

For more picture of the Prater, check out the Flickr set.