happily holiday-ing

I opened presents on this, the first christmas I have spent away from my family, in the company of the Yule Log. A New York tradition, the Yule Log is broadcast with carols from 7-11 on christmas morning. If the picture looks a little funny, it's only partly because it's a photo of the television: the Yule Log, according to the indicia and warped colors, was taped in 1970. It's hypnotic to watch, though.



Afterward I headed to St. Parick's Cathedral for Christmas mass. Man, what an absolute ZOO that turned out to be. The cathedral holds around 2,500 people, and was packed full for both the 12 and 1 o'clock masses. I arrived about halfway trough the noon mass - hoping to avoid some of the crowds - and managed to get a seat for the 1 o'clock. The music was very moving, and the homily was surprisingly good. The cathedral is gorgeous, and I'd like to go back when there aren't so many people so that I could take a look around.



Through great effort, Athena convinced me to have christmas dinner with her big greek family. I was not too keen on being with a family that was not my own, but her family was very welcoming, very funny, and, in the words of her granmother, "very different" from what I was missing. The food was really good, and afterward I crashed at Athena's and we watched stupid movies on TV. This, somehow, turned into a 2-day event complete with a tour of her hometown, the ordering of pizza, and more movies. The view from her hometown is pictured here - that's NYC way off in the distance. All in all, this turned out to be one of the best times I have had since leaving Michigan. I am tremendously grateful to Athena and her family.

On the way to NJ for dinner, I passed this, which will become the first entry into my new book, Things That Should Not Have Their Own House.

Narnia and cupcakes

...it's late, I'm at work waiting for a reaction to finish, and I just watched this again for like the tenth time because I think it's hilarious.

Engaged! also: Otolaryngolojam!

Ain't no party like a scientist party...because they're always just so awkward. Athena and I attended my department's Holiday shindig the other day, and it was a pretty pleasant time in an otherwise foul week (thanks, strikers!). It took us about an hour to go twenty blocks in a cab after the party, but, whatever, the strike's over now and things can get back to normal.

OR CAN THEY? Um, no.

And I'll give you what are possibly the two most unrelated reasons:


1) My sister hilary got engaged!
The ring, designed by him just for her, is made of rose gold and other terms I don't understand. But what I do know is that she and her gentleman suitor are happy together and will continue that way and, therefore, so too am I happy. One sister married and another engaged? Weren't they just twelve and fighting with me over the front seat?


2) This bear poops prime numbers!

Tonight I'm going to see "A Christmas Story" at the Landmark Sunshine Theatre with Athena and her little sisters. I hope I don't shoot my eye out...

Yes, the strike remains on.

But the good news is the internet still works.

http://cuteoverload.com/

EDIT: what does anyone make of this? I think it's either a crazy hoax or rather frightening. And there's going to be a movie? Wha--? I loved Chappelle's show. I think it was, as Charlie Murphy once said, the Tu-Pac of television.

It hits the fan

It's about 3:45 a.m. I've been up for a while, tensely checking and re-checking the news since the passing of the 12 midnight deadline for the transit workers union's negotiations with the MTA.

And now I know - as of about half an hour ago the 37,000 workers of the MTA have gone on strike. Lord only knows how long or how bad this will get, but I am aware of a number of folks - middle and lower class workers from across the five boroughs - who will have to endure great hardship as a result of this strike. Many workers who cannot get into the city will risk losing their jobs, and heaven help parents who have to coordinate their kids' movement as well. I saw one hotel manager on the news who has said he expects his employees to reside temporarily at work. This city is all kinds of shutting down, at the cost, I'm told, of roughly 400 milion dollars a day (a figure which does not reflect the increased business that should accompany the week before christmas).

I'll be the first to concede that I know only what I have read about the cause of this strike. But when Toussaint says the workers in his union will strike and that "this is not about money, it's about respect," I don't find myself on his side. It's the week before Christmas, it's cold out, and this will be very hard on a lot of people who really don't deserve it. Is it any wonder that this strike is illegal? All I ask is that it end soon. This could get very ugly.

Official Christmas Fun

This past Saturday, Mango Pancakes, Athena, Zac, and I headed out to an unexplored area of Queens to a little factory late at night. Why?

For the FluxFactory fake office holiday party, of course! Everyone dressed for a debaucherous office party, and we were given fake name tags and, occasionally, letters of reprimand from our superiors while enjoying live music, dancing, and, of course, office-party-themed shennanigans. One of the highlights, besides the spectacular view of the city from the roof of the factory, was the video installation at the party that played those old christmas claymation specials - you'd never believe how well Mrs. Claus's song matches with one of Beyonce's. This was a great weird event. New York does it again.

So much has happened!

I've been terribly remiss in keeping up-to-date with this. There's been so much going on!



First of all, I had dinner with the fabulous Susie Schutt. I am so glad she's back stateside, because she makes me happy and we could use the help fixing the place up. Are those selfish reasons? Yes.

Second, Thanksgiving. I celebrated Thanksgiving eve with my classmate Julia at the balloon inflating for the Macy's parade. Surreal? Oh hell yes.





"The good news is, we caught Mr. Potatohead. The bad news is, the killings haven't stopped."

Thanksgiving was spent with the relatives in Connecticut. It was a very relaxing, very warm holiday celebration, and I was very glad to have been able to spend the day as I did.

In the next weeks I presented at work on homomeric vs. heterotypic gap junctions and two different models of transgenic inserts with inducible expression I had characterized. I also headed out on the town as much as possible, even visiting secretive bars on the lower East side such as this one with super-rockstar Athena. There's no sign outside, but it's a swingin' joint inside.



Then, my cousin heather came into town and we went out dancing with the Andrew and Jaina (pictured here in a ridiculous pose, for some reason looking like she has a black eye) until 4 in the morning at Plan B.

The next day, we strolled around the city and took in part of the Met - they have this Egyptian temple, the whole thing, on display. It is amazing and you must see it! - before settling in for a huge Italian dinner at Positano in Little Italy. We got back to Brooklyn at around midnight, and were too tired to do anything more than watch SNL and pass out. On Sunday, Heather had to leave early to make it back to Boston in time for a dance rehearsal, and I went to a surprisingly opulent brunch at the Medical Center. The afternoon was spent having pastries and walking around Riverside Park with the gorgeous Maria Politano, my friend from Italy, who said I could come and stay with her when she returns home this summer!

...and I think that brings me up to date. Oh, and I finished grad school. Again. Hopefully this time it'll stick.

p.s. three new Japan days are up! Check them out!

What do you mean, "update?" + update! (no, the irony is not lost on me)

Cah-razy busy right now. Work is pretty frustrating, and has been for the last while; I adduce my having to go in on Thanksgiving morning and every day that weekend to keep to a time table that is unreasonable while running experiments that are redundant. I further offer as evidence the fact - but keep this on the QT - that the other employees in the lab have all recently decided it is time to move on to other jobs because they tire of working here.

In the meantime, as I struggle to find the energy to update about having dinner with Susie and Thanksgiving dinner and the rest of my trip to Japan, I offer you the following exemplar of horrendous pseudo-science for your laughter and gnashing of teeth.

Behold: Hetracil!

Now do yourself a favor and go back to PandaCam.

EDIT: Super-awesome internet-ster Naomi found out the real deal on Hetracil, which makes the story not an awful one but rather really, really interesting. Check it out here.
Consider me fooled, and impressed!

Goodbye, productivity!

Hello, PandaCam!

[hint: the camera is controlled by the zoo, so if you don't see our little pal Butterstick, wait a minute and they'll move the camera]

She said, "that neck brace makes you look fat."

I work in a giant medical complex. There are always patients and families mulling around, sometimes waiting anxiously, sometimes just sitting together and laughing or testing an uncomfortable silence. And every now and then I overhear really funny stuff.

I've been having a particularly time lately making sense of interpersonal relationships, whether romantic or otherwise, my own or my friends'. Right now it seems like hurting each other is an inevitable human behavior, and when we are hurt, we turn right around and take it out on someone else. So the cycle goes on, whether we are aware of our part in it or not. "We are all just big wounded responses," says Carol Churchill.

And occasionally we embrace it, rush headlong into taking someone down a few notches with zeal. The daughter was being brought, bandaged, through the lobby in a wheelchair by what looked like her brother and father. They stopped next to a woman who was seated, facing the other way. The daughter said, "hey, mom," weakly. The mother turned around, gasped, and opened her mouth to speak.

Why this woman is one of the greatest people I know

The name Lindsey Sherline is one most of you will recognize, and if not, it's really only a matter of time before you do. Although forced to share the title of most creative person ever with my father and my often-institutionalized friend Jim from high school, Lindsey creates through her work and her daily life a world that is uniquely stylized and entirely captivating. Anyone would be hard pressed not to want to live there.

Over the years and many changes they brought, she and I have had our good times and bad times. But as she unveils a new and very public project, I am happy to invite you to take a look (she would ask me to remind you that it is still a work in progress; the explanation is at the bottom of the page, so you might want to work backwards):

http://tu-tutimes.blogspot.com/

Who needs "pink is the new black" when "grossly incompetent and dangerously corrupt" is the new "re-elected?"

That's twice i've bet on the wrong horse. The horse of reason. The horse of getting your job back and being able to declare where you are from without making people cringe.

So first it was GWB back in the White House, and now Kwame's back for four more years as mayor of Detroit. My only consolation is that because his mismanagement thus far has earned poor Detroit a crippling 50 million dollar a month debt, he may not have a city to be mayor of for the full length of his term. According to the accountants, insolvency - or, as my grandfather predicts, good old fashioned bankruptcy - is just around the corner.

At least we've still got the Lions, right, guys?

Two short ones

a) I neglected to mention my having gone with the fabulous Ms. Pancakes to a WAAAYYYY too hip fundraiser. Our friend Alex works at Kid Robot, which organized the event, and it was both great to see her and the incredibly creative work people had put up for the charity auction (you can read more about it at the kid robot site). That someone I think is so great finds herself working at a place that really seems to fit with her style, and that charity results, makes me happy.

b) Last night I saw Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. While yes, this is a documentary with a clearly stated bias, it does do a very good job of collecting the facts about Wal-Mart and the stories of the people affected by all levels of the corporation. If you haven't wised up to the evils of Wal-Mart yet, or if you're just interested in learning more, I strongly suggest you see this movie. [Is it out in theatres anywhere other than NYC? I'm not sure.]

Thank you, giant corporation. Oh, and I brought you a sandwich.

What happened to customer service? And what happened to Apple? My computer starts having problems, and Apple wants to charge me -upfront - $49.95 so that they can try to help me over the phone, although by their admission my problem may not even be something that can be fixed over the phone. Either way, $49.95. Thankfully, the guy on the phone mistakenly suggested that they wouldn't be able to help me, and I told them I'd figure it out myself. The Apple store here in NYC has a policy of taking reservations for tech support on the day of, but you need to go online early in the morning. I tell the apple store employee that I can't get online easily because my computer isn't working, which is, as i had already said, the reason I need the tech support. She tells me I can show up at the store to be seen as a walk-in at 6 a.m., but that I should probably show up around 5 because "a lot of people want to get help and can't get appoinments." When did Apple become Microsoft?

One brief discussion with a nerd at an electronics store later, I find out that Powerbook batteries tend to go bad after two or so years, and I needed to change mine.

Then our internet in the apt. goes out, and after making me wait several hours for the guy to show up, he tells me he can't fix it - why? who knows? - and I will have to schedule another appointment so another repair guy can try to fix the problem. My favorite was the repairman's astonishing announcement that "your internet doesn't work." Oh, really? Man, am I glad you're here.

I am so sick of the implicit corporate assumption that I have nothing better to do with my time and/or money. As I can't post about Japan or anything without going somewhere for internet, things will be slow on that front.

Perhaps the only consolation thus far today was the one pre-packaged "gourmet" sandwich in the hospital cafeteria that stood out from the rest - it lacked the usual printed label and was marked unceremoniously with a piece of tape, on which someone had written in magic marker the thoroughly baffling one-word description "EGGBEEF."

Mmmm....EGGBEEF.

Japan!

Don't call it a comeback. Call it: The Dr. Science Crazy Funtime World Adventure! Only the first day's worth is up, but I hope you like it!

No hallow left behind

Halloween is sort of the high holy day in my family. Normally, there'd be outrageous and extravagant decorations and our lawn (spilling over to the neighbor's), and hundreds of people would come from miles away to see our house. But this what not a normal year.

This year, had you traveled to our house, you would have found a simple, yet quietly ornate sign, explaining that "we, the pirates who gather here each year" were, in an act that recalls the courageous pirate captain Jean Laffite's aid in the battle of New Orleans in 1814, donating the money for decorations to Hurricane Relief in New Orleans.

Let me assure that for our family this was, indeed, a sacrifice. We still had a great Halloween time, though, dressing up as dead Gregorian monks and scaring people at a local Halloween haunted village. The folks there just assumed we were part of the show, I guess.

So it was a great Halloween, a lot of fun was had, I was once again reminded of just how much I have to learn from my parents, and we got the best Christmas card photo ever out of the deal.

gone 'til November

"Now and again, it is necessary to seclude yourself among deep mountains and hidden valleys to restore your link to the source of life."
-- Morihei Ueshiba, founder of Aikido, in "the Art of Peace"

To this end and others, I will be travelling to Japan next week for 14 days. I will see Nagoya, Tokyo, Kyoto, and hopefully a few other places. And I will be climbing the Japanese Alps for a few days. I will, of course, take many pictures and have much to say, but I'm not sure what my internet access will be like once I'm there. So I may post again soon, or it may be the end of October when next I get the chance. I hope you'll keep checking back. And now, as is my style, I will offer an incentive in the form of a picture of the hamburglar. It's an odd one this time.

Goin' to the Chapel...

Tomorrow morning I (accompanied by my dear friend Monica) will take the first of many flights to come in the following weeks. This one, though, has a certain sentimental weight to it. We will be headed to Montreal for my dear sister Patience's wedding, an event so sure to be outstanding that it had to be held off of U.S. soil. Far, far from civilization in the land of moose-riding beavers and french fries with gravy, inside a very fancy chateau in a tiny little town called Montreal, the Atkin family will welcome (indoctrinate) a new member to its motley ranks. Welcome, Brian Jamiriquai Lufthansa Jones...now how about helping to clean the garage?

You gots to be kidding me

Yeah I said "gots." And I went to college, too. And I've begun not one but two sentences with conjunctions. Why such a nightmarish approach to grammar? Because if we've learned anything today, kids, it's that if you know the right people, you don't have to know anything else, or even be qualified for the job. OH, you headed a corrupt lottery commission, AND you're Bush's pet lawyer? Hey, that's perfect.

Seriously, Harriet Miers? What, did Laura pass on the job? Andy Card too busy? Does no one rememberthe Ohio gang? Or that we used to have three branches of government?

If the Senate confirms Miers, I might have to start cheering for the other team...

Um...are you sure you're a doctor?

This sign (you can click on the pic to make it larger) was posted on the door of a nearby conference room at work. It hung there for about a week - notice there is no date on the sign - and was the absolute first thing I took a picture of with my new camera.

Ah,science. Wooing the ladies with questionable, handmade signs since last thursday.

Oh, SNAP!

I was tentatively thinking of titling this post "Bobby Digital," and then reflected on the fact that nobody does or should get RZA jokes. That being said I bought a digital camera for my trip. I went to B and H, which is the largest camera store in the world and was certainly a sight to behold. Oddly, it is staffed almost entirely by orthodox jews and also the whole store is connected by conveyor belts. The staff guy I talked to was SUPER helpful, so I guess he earned this cheap plug I'm presently putting in. Go to B and H!

Con(cert)ey Island

Last night yours truly could be found in Keyspan Park, home of minor-league baseball team the Coney Island Cyclones. Oh, and the Shins and the White Stripes were there, too.

I was treated to a fabulous concert as I stood in center field; a stage was constructed in the outfield, and was open in the back to let in the night sky and the breeze coming off the Ocean.

The first band, M. W. something, was terrible. The Shins, however, were solid and terrific. They performed a lot of their hits, but, truth be told, were so very much themselves as they are on their albums that it doesn't really make sense to see them live. It's exactly like listening to their music on mp3.

The same could not at all be said for the White Stripes, however. The difference between the music of their albums and the music of their live show last night in Coney Island is like the difference between seeing a tiger in a zoo and seeing a tiger devouring a gazelle in the wild. Jack White is a maniac, a Robert-Johnson-esque guitar devil who must be seen to be believed. He flew from instrument to instrument and from song to song, stopping only to take polaroids of himself and Meg (which he then threw out to the audience) and to make a few suitably bizarre comments like "This morning Meg had breakfast with Dennis Hopper. (pause) No, that's not true."

Speaking of Meg, she is far more impressive a musician than anybody gives her credit for. With a very proper air about her, she's able to keep up with and adjust to Jack's almost feral perfomance. When Jack broke a string for the second time, he merely tossed aside the guitar he was playing and picked up another and started playing a totally different song, then, when his roadie has fixed the string, Jack took up his now fixed guitar and continued the first song where he'd left off. This was done without pause, and Meg never missed a beat, despite there passing no apparent cues between each other.

Even the songs from their newest album that I don't like sounded incredible last night, to the point where I was made to think "oh, that's what that's supposed to sound like." Score another one for the Detroit music scene...

Oh, hey, that's just great.

For months - months! - I have been laboring over this problem at work. I have two mice, each with a different genotype. PCR done by my coworkers shows one mouse has a transgene, the other does not. However, I keep getting results over and over again that say that both these mice have the transgene. So either the tests I'm doing are wrong, or something's going on with these mice. I assumed it was my tests that were failing somehow, and I felt stupid and like a really bad scientist.

Today I learned that the both mice have the transgene, and that our PCR method of genotyping gives false positive results. So, there's no way I could have gotten the results I was hoping for. It is these sorts of time-wasting experiences I sincerely hope will not find their way to the forefront of my mind as I lay on my deathbed...

Regarding my boy Kanye, Paul Krugman, and President George W(hitey) Bush

Now that I have found a way around paying for the NYTimes' stupid "Times select" program for Op-Ed content, I tremendously enjoyed reading Paul Krugman's new column about the effects of race on the response to Katrina.

Personally, though, as happy as I was that Kanye said what he did when he did, I think he may have been dangerously oversimplifying the matter. George Bush doesn't care about black people, but his record would seem to show that he doesn't really care about anyone other than his big rich corporate friends. Why else would he offer FEMA and HUD positions as favors to friends, rather than qualified professionals? Those are vitally important gov't agencies, who primarily serve the people who need federal assistance (i.e. those other than rich white men). This gets me back to the problem, though, which is that if the public gets fixated on this notion of its being largely an issue of race that slowed the Katrina reponse, we won't fixate on all the factors that led to a slow Katrina response. Thoughts?

Der Kommissar IS in town. I know, I partied with him last night.

My first clue was running into my debutante socialite friend there. You know, the one who knows all the fancy New York people and introduced me to the correspondent from Al Jazeera. By the end of the night, I figured I might just be in the running for 2nd Fanciest American; you know, silver to ole' Jimbo's gold standard. Why so fancy? Well.....

Last night I attended a special invitation-only soiree at the Guggenheim, held to celebrate the opening of an exhibit of never-before-seen-outside-of-Russia collections. There were performances by musicians and dancers, as well as free drinks (including some kind of vodka that's apprently not even on the market yet. How very.). As for the art, some of it was incredible. The icons - which I came to learn made up the most expensive part of the collections and were from as far back as the late 12th century - were breathtaking. Some pieces of the later work - in particular this mixed-media sculpture piece of a man on a train - were fantastic. Some others, not so much.

I like dressing up, I like art, and I like weird parties. Check, check, and check.

This is amazing

This clip right here shows MSNBC newsman Olbermann saying what needs to be said. You should really check it out!

Now and for the rest of my life...

...I'm on hold. A stupid jerk at the medical center broke an instrument I need to use, then went on vacation, and now the stupid jerks at tech support have me on hold. The real problem, though, is the hold music. A terrible sax solo "da dum dee doo dweeee!" plays, and then a message interrupts to tell me my call will be answered in the order it was received. Through some cruel glitch, this message re-starts the hold song. "Da dum dee doo dwee!" over and over again for the past 20 minutes.

SOMEONE MUST PAY.

Brooklyn, number one!

The largest parade in North America is held a few blocks from where I live. I went last year, and darned if I was going to miss it this year. The West Indian Cultural Festival Carnival Parade is a gigantic costumed extravaganza that stretches on for as far as the eye can see. Giant flatbed trucks covered with speakers blast dancehall reggae music while ornately-decorated performers dance their way along. It is nothing short of incredible. Of course the streets are packed with spectators, but everyone seemed really well-behaved, the food smelled terrific and the pageantry was unmatched. I have it from a reliable source that this event is a major one in the world of competetive carnival dancers, and contests are held in Trinidad, Jamaica, and elsewhere just for the right to come to Brooklyn to show their stuff. DO NOT miss this event next year if at all possible!

the name is a swear word.

MotherF*cker is one of NYC's biggest dance parties. Held every sunday evening of a three-day weekend, it has been brought to my attention on a number of occasions by a great many different people as something I had to try. I was jonesing for something like the Bang at the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor, so I had high hopes going in.

Stepping into Mf'r was like stepping into the NYC you only see in movies. The NYC where all the pretty scene people get together to have decadent parties and get on one another. I didn't think this actually existed, but I have been there, and I have seen it. The event was held on several floors of this club that was entirely too small for the hundreds of people there, and the music was ridiculously good.

The problem, however, was that the event was made to get people orgiastic and sloppy drunk in a very tightly packed venue. Right about the time I could feel my Caged Animal Syndrome getting worse, some guy passed out onto me. I caught him, picked him up and leaned him against a pillar on the dance floor while his friend giggled. "Are you okay?" I asked, only to be greeted with that glazed-over forty-yard stare I know from my Emergency Room days. "Your friend is messed up, you'd better get him some help." I tell the giggling scenester next to me. "Oh, he's fine" the guy says, as his friend slumps down against the wall. This goes on for several minutes, my checking on the passed-out-with-his-eyes-open guy and pleading with his stupidly grinning friend, who has taken to dancing with the guy's arm a la "Weekend at Bernie's."

I tell one of the event staff about it on my way out the door a few minutes later, and he sends a bouncer over as my company and I head for a diner. Granted, the music had been fantastic and a completely attractive stranger told me that we might be soul mates because she had a boy scout shirt like the one I was wearing back at her home, but I'm played out on that stupid-kids-who-can't-take-care-of-themselves scene. It wasn't fun in college with the frat kids, and it isn't fun now.

I'm going to be on national TV!

By now there are people in this city who know I'm always game for strange adventures, and one of these fine cats forwarded an e-mail to me asking for volunteers for an "experiment" to be televised on ABC. And so it was that this past wednesday I went to ABC studios on the west side for a taping for ABC Primetime.

The "experiment" was supposed to consist of looking at pairs of images depicting three-dimensional geometric shapes, and trying to discern whether the two shapes were the same. We were to write our responses to ten of these questions, and then to speak our answers aloud to an additional twenty such problems while sitting with five other people. It took a bafflingly long time for me to get called in to be tested and taped, and I soon found out why. They weren't really testing all six people in each group, they were only testing one - the other five were there to provide peer pressure. The other five would all give the same answer as each other, and were right 50% of the time. The idea was that the group could pressure a person into picking the wrong answer.

The theory behind this experiment is actually pretty interesting: apparently the areas of the brain involved in visual perception are colocalized with those involved in conformity, and the doctor who was running this experiment postulates that enough pressure to conform can affect visual perception. The area of the brain involved with nonconformity, the amigdala, is also the fear center of the brain.

I was one of two who tied for highest scores on the test, and my scores actually improved when the group was trying to lead me astray. Unfortunately, others who were tested did really badly, so on the day the accuracy dropped to something like an unspeakable 5%. I just hope this is not the only thing talked about on the TV show. I don't know when it's going to air, but they said it should be on in the next few weeks. I'll let you know.

P.S. There's another story involved with this one, about one of the participants hiring mercenaries to extract his daughter, who was stranded in New Orleans, but I'll leave that for another time. Suffice it to say, the day was very strange on the whole.

(unintelligible yelling, then) "The giant is awake!"

Never count the beast out until you're safely back at home, I guess. The bureaucratic leviathan has reared its head, spurred on by my shouts of triumph.

My master's degree is not done with me yet.

Apparently my first graduation application somehow disappeared, and my second - put through after an hour on the phone with the registrar this morning - came with an unsettling footnote: I am 3 credits short of the number I need. Why? Well, to my limitless dismay, it has come to light that the approval of my advisor for a course means nothing if the school doesn't agree. And they don't. My advisor says he should have checked.

It was a fine course, though. A fine-goodbye-three-thousand-dollars-and-now-I-have-to-come-up-with
-some-way-to-get-three-credits-and-can't-graduate-until-January course.

Have I mentioned lately how I hate everything?

Update: I will be getting my necessary credits through a practicum, for which I will be doing some writing and reading I kinda wanted/needed to do anyways. As for you, Ms. McDingo Pancakes, this issue arose largely because of my taking classes outside of our program/school, so do be EXTRA careful if attempting to do the same. Granted, had a full array of classes been offered in the summer term, I might not have had to go outside the program...Ah, well. No time to worry about this all now...

A tale of two bear tales

Bear-related news item the first: Our little friend Butterstick
God Bless the internet - apparently a fellow named Tom over at Unrequited Narcissism had devised a way to hack the National Zoo's online voting system, currently being used to select the name of a new baby panda, such that you can now add the option "Butterstick" to the list of choices. See the news note and a ridiculously cute picture of the panda in question here or learn how you can vote for Butterstick here.

Bear-related news item the second: DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE.
I have greatly enjoyed, over the years, those documentaries where people who take themselves or their passions too seriously are held up for all to see and find hilarious. Something like Spellbound might be a good example, or large parts of Michael Moore's films. In the case of Grizzly Man, however, the joke is on you - this movie dares you to laugh at it while making you the most uncomfortable you'll ever be while watching a movie. Grizzly Man tells the story of Timothy Treadwell, a failed actor who abjures the company of man to live amongst those he claims as his true friends - grizzly bears.
Now I have worked with schizophrenics, and this guy tops them all. His life with the bears, as he recorded it in a sort of video diary, is punctuated by wild mood swings and thoroughly bizarre ramblings. The high point of the film for me was when one of the bears - who, in a manner apparent to all but Timothy, struggle to tolerate his presence - does what a bear does in the woods and defecates. Timothy rushes to the fecal mass and begins petting it, saying, as though to the bear, "I'm touching your poop! I'm touching your poop!" and then begins weeping.
I won't carry on much more with this. Timothy's friends are as strange as he is, and the whole documentary is like watching a surrealist car accident in slow motion. One might rightly ask why such a movie was made, and that question is answered at the movie's onset: Timothy's story was brought to the attention of a filmaker when, recently, Timothy was eaten by a bear.

Weirdness abounds...

The Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi Show!

Whoa.

If you were to take Cibo Matto and legendary Japanese rock band Guitar Wolf, get them both really hopped up on sugary cereals, and mate them together with Hello Kitty as the midwife only to then raise the resultant child exclusively on cartoons, you would get Puffy AmiYumi.

I attended their show last night at Irving Plaza. It was, in a word, INSANE. Despite a terrible opening band with three white guys whining about something, the crowd - which was surprisingly diverse both racially and in terms of age - was fantastically invested in the show. When Ami and Yumi took the stage, the audience went ballistic; I thought everyone there was going to explode when the band rocked out on a song called "Energy" and then slipped into the opening organ riffs of the Teen Titans theme song.

I couldn't stop smiling for the duration of the concert. They played the theme song to some new Pokemon movie, a cadre of really fun and energetic songs, and finished with the theme song for their own show on the cartoon network, "Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi." Of course the audience wanted an encore, and Ami took the mic and said, "Thank you for the encore. We'd like to play our favorite song." Which, oddly enough, turned out to be "Basketcase" by Green Day. I'm not complaining.

This was ridiculously fun, and I cannot encourage you more strongly to see this group live if you get the chance.

T-e-e-n t-i-t a-n-s, Teen Titans, Let's GO!

Almost Mugged! (albeit by squirrels)

I was enjoying thoroughly Monday's respite from our oppressively hot weather; having left work around 5:30, I stopped off at the farmers' market to buy some pumpkin bread and raspberry apple juice, and then seated myself - juice, bread, and book in hand - near my dearly beloved statue of Garibaldi in Washington Square Park. A few pages in, I was struck with that undeniable sense of being stared at. I turned my head to the right, and there, not six inches from my side, was a squirrel. He was poised as if to pounce, and had on his squirrel countenance a look that could only say "give me the bread and I might let you walk away unharmed."

"No deal, " said I, trying to stand up to walk away. I found, however, that two more squirrels had moved right up next to my feet. One was on his hind legs, and the other crouched; the latter squirrel's sentiment was clear: "Stop screwing around, whitey, and give us the bread."

How could a person even punch a squirrel, if they had to? They're all teeth and little claws, and they practically breathe rabies and, I don't know, chlamydia, probably.

"I don't negotiate with terrorists," I told the one crouched on the bench near me. "And tell your racist friend that his act is played out. Even if it is squirrel racism. " Reminding myself that I was miles above these filthy creatures on the food chain, I rose and started to walk away. But they followed fast - almost too fast. I choked, and acted out of fear for the worst. "Heathens!" I yelled, throwing a small chunk of bread over their heads. I quickly walked the other way to the Kimmel Student Center. The guard inside had apparently seen me yelling. "Trouble with the squirrels?" he asked. Then, not waiting for an answer, he added, solemnly, "they tried to take my friend's taco, right out of his hand" and stared off, thoughtfully, into the park.

Big in Japan

Any post whose title is an Alphaville reference has got to be full of goodness, right? Right. So it is with great pleasure and a modicum of "am I really about to do this?" that I announce to you, dear readers, that I shall be taking a trip to Japan for two weeks in October.

This, my first ever trip outside the 51 states (U.S.+Canada), is made possible by a grant from the Hilary and Luke Foundation for a More Japanese Graham, to whom I am tremendously grateful.

I'll be by myself over there, although there are a few folks I'll be looking up. Mainly old doctors like Sho Kanzaki with whom I worked at Kresge. I imagine the trip will be transformative and a thoroughly broadening experience. If you have any suggestions for things I should do while over there, please do not hesitate to let me know!

Act II - The Apartment in Crisis?
Is the famed fourth floor apartment in crisis? If by "crisis" you mean "andrew finally came back from the navy and then left again to go to Nantucket after he, Jaina and I had a very pleasant dinner at that one place I like" then yes, yes it is.

Dr. Science - an underwater denizen?

I went back to Michigan this weekend, both to see my immediate family all together for the first time in a long while and to volunteer at the 156th annual Highland Games. The games are a major event for the St. Andrew's society, which is the Scottish benevolent society of which I became a third-generation member earlier this year. Just what did I do to volunteer to help out? Well, let's put it this way: I'm one of the three in the following picture to be holding a golf club:

Yep, in my spare time I'm the Loch Ness Monster. This little girl kept hugging me. Constantly. All day. I had my photo taken with about a thousand small children while in that beautifully-made-but-still-really-hot-inside costume. But don't worry, I also found time to taken advantage of the finer things in life...
...like visiting with highland cattle...
...having a staring contest with a baby...
...and answering the age-old question: how well can the Loch Ness Monster dance like a robot?

I ended up having a pretty fun - albeit strange - time as Nessie, and I even got to lead the march of the scottish clans during the day's main events. I think the kids there had fun with me, and it was for a good cause, so who's complaining?

This day in history

Important Announcement Number One - On The Status of Grad School

me = done

Important Announcement Number Two - On Living in New York

As of this evening there will have passed one full calendar year since my arrival in New York city (an event marked by a blog post two days later)

Important Annoucement Number Three - On Pecan Pie

There are conditions of temperature and age which result in pecan pie tasting just like bacon. I do not encourage you to find these conditions.

Momma said knock you out

At Jaina's suggestion - a detail which further serves to show how cool she is - the current residents of the fourth floor headed to Rumble On the River, a 12-match boxing extravaganza, or boxaganza, at the Hudson River Park last night.

The event showcased some really fun matches, although the outcomes were sometimes predictable - every person who pranced around in their corner before the fight inevitably lost.

Anyways, the Jainasaurus and I had a wonderful time, and even managed to snag two free, matching T-shirts for some boxing website (and you know how I am about free t-shirts). Serious roomate bonding? Check. Now if only andrew would come back from retainer camp...um, I mean...the navy. Right. The Navy...where he is proudly serving humanity and NOT attending workshops about proper headgear maintenance...

Gotta go!

The whole system is out of order!

Yep. "Never don't commit a crime" is about as much sense as criminal justice seems to be making these days. I get stopped for nothing, and later a good friend of mine gets traumatically slapped on the head by some kids rushing off the subway, only to have the majority of those on board with her laugh at her misfortune as the kids get away scott free. Today I read that a double-decker tour bus at 51st street (those big red ones with all the goofy tourists) was suddenly surrounded by 100 ARMED POLICE OFFICERS, and all the passengers were forced off the bus and searched for the sole reason that a bus dispatcher called 911 after seeing "three arabic men with backpacks" get on the bus with all the other tourists. Yep, that was the entire threat. Elsewhere, other new yorkers have begun volunteering to have their bags searched at Grand Central today as a show of patriotism - the cops were happy to spend their time searching those who volunteered, and together both parties insured the safe, unchecked passage of anyone with anything to hide. Up is Down! Left is Right! The world sinks further into a head-slappingly bad comedy routine.

Oh, how I've changed...and one pill makes you smaller...

The first thing that most people say when I tell them about my recent run-in with the law is that I do, indeed, look suspicious (even though I was wearing the science belt at the time). And at first I didn't believe them, until a certain kitty-chan e-mailed me photographic evidence of my having grown since moving to new york. My hair is much longer, too. Here I am in downtown NYC, feeling a little grumpy.





Yep, looks like somebody needs a nap.

Trouble looks like this

The good doctor and his elder sisters. I pity the fool who ends up on the other side of this table - cheery, disarming expressions aside.



(And look at that sloppy half-windsor knot. For shame, Dr. Science.)

Did I almost get taken to jail today? Yes.

Okay, okay. Let me start this off by saying that when I flew back to New York on Sunday, I got picked, at random, for a thorough security search (if your boarding pass has "SSSS" in the upper left corner, congrats, you're today's winner). The security agents went through everything I had, and opened all my belongings and searched me. I was quiet the whole time, I was patient, and I was as helpful as I could be. I understood what was going on and I was fine with it.


So today I'm walking down St. Mark's Place, with my iPod on, music blaring, when this overweight, sweaty guy in a t-shirt walks right up to me and, very irritated, says "I need to see your ID, sir." At first I assumed he was a homeless guy. "And you are...?" I said. "I need to see your ID, sir, let's go." "Um, what is this about, and who are you?" At this point he takes out of his pocket this mangled, rusty-looking badge, but he's holding it low against his side, so I can't really see it. I tell him I have no way of knowing whether it's real or not, and ask to see some more ID. "What do you mean whether or not it's real?" He asks angrily. "There are reports all the time in the news about fake cops. You must have more ID than that." "You'll see it in a minute, and I don't like your attitude!" he snaps back. He continues, "Now I need to see your ID, and I need to take this" - and at that point he starts to put his hand in my pocket. Now this is the pocket where, for years, I have carried a knife, for largely utilitarian purposes. So it freaks me out a little when some dude who has yet to establish in my mind that he is a real cop starts putting his hand in my pocket. So I start to say "whoa" and push his hand away when his partner - who, thankfully, is clearly more level-headed than anyone at this point - comes over and shows me his badge and ID. The fat cop holds up my knife and says "this is illegal" and I say, "no, it's not."

He claims it's a gravity knife, which is a particular model of knife that is illegal and is NOT what I am carrying. I tell him so, but he doesn't care. "And you better watch your attitude" he says, "because I could lock you up for this." I give him my ID and tell him that as far as I am aware, mine is not a gravity knife, and is within the legal length limit. The fat cop takes my driver's license and gets into the front seat of a waiting taxi cab.

"...um, what? Why are you in cab?" I ask the partner, who is still standing with me and who is now PLAYING WITH THE KNIFE ON A CROWDED STREET, OPENING IT AND TWIRLING IT AROUND. He tells me, proudly, that "we're undercover." He then asks me if I use this knife for fishing. Huh?

I talk with the partner for a while, and explain to him why I carry the knife, and why it's so beat up, and what I'm doing in NYC. Then he sits in the cab with the fat cop for a while. Finally the partner comes back and hands me my ID and my knife. "Okay, I'm not supposed to let you have this.." And here I interject, "If it's a problem, keep it." "Well, you need it for work, so it's fine. But my partner really wants to lock you up, so just keep it in your pocket, and don't let anyone see you have it from now on." I thank him and am on my way.

And do you know what I learned from this? What lesson could I have learned? That it's totally okay by the police to have something they believe [albeit mistakenly] to be illegal, as long as they don't see you with it? Oh, great lesson, guys. All I have conclusively learned from this is that there is some truth to the stereotype that cops get off on having power over people. Hooray for lessons I didn't need.

Ye olde news roundup...now with less olde news!

Okay, kids. Mango Pancakes has hit new york! Everyone should applaud and welcome her. We had dinner this evening and I went with her to buy books. Considering she arrived late last night, I'd say she's handling it like a pro. The heart of a champion, I tell you. With Susie soon to follow, that will be a total of two new wonderful kids in New York, which should make the place feel that much more comfortable...

except...

...well, so, I went home for a week, right? And while I was there I met with some folks from the University of Michigan's residential college who are basically offering me the opportunity to design and run my own program training students to go and do community-based theatre in detroit, as part of a collaboration with Matrix Theatre Company. Even though the money's terrible (does ANYONE in michigan have money anymore?), the opportunity is incredible and the work is something I really believe in. Also, there's a good chance I could use this work as the basis for a doctorate degree. Also, I visited the folks at my old science stomping grounds and received several heart-felt "we'd love for you to come back and work here, even part-time" sort of statements, so I could add to my funds that way. Anyways, although I'm not yet 100% decided, it looks strongly like I'll be moving back to the great frozen tundra of ann arbor come January/end of december.

I can't decide how to be both happy and sad at the same time, though, so here's a picture of the Hamburglar and Grimace about to eat a small child.



Seriously, look at Grimace all rubbing his stomach like, "I sure do love baby." For the record, in my head Grimace sounds a lot like Slingblade. And the hamburglar and I both need a haircut.

...more like firedayofffromworks...er, um...

Boy, Jim and Andrew weren't kidding when they said our roof was the place to be for the fourth of July. Tilotama joined me for some traditional Independence Day fried chicken and roof-sitting, and then we watched as the entire horizon was dotted with fireworks from miles around. We were in just the right place to see all three big New York displays perfectly, and most of our neighbors were on their roofs having parties to celebrate the occasion. As Tilotama's unofficial guide to America, I think this was a pretty good way to spend the day.

Photographs and recuperation

pairofsadscientists
Originally uploaded by the once and future dr.science.

As I attempted these past few days to sail past the rough patches of sea described in a recent post, I was still kinda feeling down. Yes, I found out I got an A in my really tough class, but it was also one of my most enriching classes to date, and now it's over. The costume dance party on Friday night, about which I was very excited and ready with a bizarre costume, was a complete bust and totally lame. So when it came time for Saturday's "Mad Scientists' Ball," I found my luck had changed - I was going to be accompanied by a tall, blonde bolt of lightning named Monica.

It's really tough to stay sad when she's your company and you're both dressed like a mad scientists, on your way to dance your brains out. Monica and I have had a lot of the same woes lately, but, as any good scientist can tell you, if you put the right reagents together in the right conditions...

Bang, pow!

oneofthesethingsisnotliketheotherone
Originally uploaded by the once and future dr.science.

...exciting things can happen. Here we are at the scientists' ball, playing with some of the installations and whatnot left around for atmosphere. Then we went upstairs and taught those kids a lesson or three about dancing, and soon the whole place was jumping. A live techno band (you'd have to hear them to believe them) came on, and we rocked out for a good while before heading home.

And furthermore...

She blinded me!

Originally uploaded by the once and future dr.science.

...if my good spirits were't quite apparent enough in the last photo, here it is again, in SCIENCE-VISION! Or, um..blue.

Anyways, a fantastically good and much-needed time was had, and I'm tremendously grateful to Monica. I do get a decent amout of liars and jerks in my life, but I'm certainly blessed to have them counterbalanced by such good friends. I really am a very lucky guy (knock on wood).

Good Judgement

There's been a lot of dumb news lately. For example, a woman tattooing the address of an internet gambling site on her forehead in return for $10,000. The invention of the robot lobster. A stupid publicity stunt resulting in a giant popsicle flooding Union Square.

Then I read that in the frenzy of this morning's supreme court news, one of the first names to be tossed around as a possible successor was Alberto "Torture is A-Okay, Mr. President!" Gonzales. Suddenly, all that other stuff seems like comparatively good ideas.

Snaggletooth is King of the Stupid...too much of anything is bad...pride is what comes before

Well, gentle readers, the following is an admission never once before truthfully uttered by the good Dr. Science: I have simply reached the limit of how much stuff I can do at once. That's it. No more. You want proof? I got proof.

First, despite my dentist's repeated warnings to this effect, I have, in those few hours of sleep I get a night, been grinding my teeth so hard that I broke off the corner of one of my fillings. And over the next few nights, I ground down the jagged edge to a smooth one.

Second, with my unceasing "i can do anything all the time and don't need to eat well or sleep well or focus on a few things" behavior, I could not stay on top of all I had going on. Between new experiments at work causing me to spend weekends in the lab to classes 5 to 7 days a week to trying to have some sort of social life and not be lonely and deal with the fact that I am in the most active and strange city in the world, I flat out missed one of my weekend classes. Yep, just missed it outright. I thought it was next week. It wasn't.

Thankfully, my advisor, the teacher, and I were able to work something out (their exact words were, "hey, stuff happens."). I realized my horrific screw-up at eight in the morning on Monday, while I was preparing the last bits of data for a presentation i had to give to the head of my dept. that day.

Threre's good news and bad, therefore. The bad news is that I can't do this anymore, this whole school and work and living in a new place thing. I just can't do it anymore. My emotions and nerves are a wreck, and the littlest thing can ruin my day now. My health is in the toilet (which phrase is extra-funny for some of you who know me). I just can't do this. The good news? I don't have to. As of today I have two more 1-weekend classes, and I'm done. No more weekday classes screwing with my job. I have (most of) my nights and weekends back, I will have FAR less stress, and I'll be able to stop digesting my own body in lieu of eating food. Soon I'll even be able to have fun without feeling horribly guilty afterwards!

It was my own pride that did me in, honestly. I took on too much. I'm not looking for absolution; I just wanted to write this down and post it publicly in the hopes that I'll actually believe it and remember it for the future.

Well, if you'll excuse me, I have to go prepare the apt. for the arrival of Jaina, our new roomate, with whom I have arranged to have a slumber party to make smores, talk about boys, and paint nails. You know better than to think I'm kidding.

Clowns are Nature's Terrorists

I'm in the middle of a crazy week, but wanted to relate the following:

Sunday I happened into a street fair on 7th avenue, one long block from home. There were stalls with vendors and food. And clowns. One very nervous little girl's parents brought her up to a booth where some clowns were standing around. "Come on, honey! Clowns!" said the parents, dragging their child. One clown approached the family. "And who's this special shy girl?" he asked, in a voice that, for some reason, made me instinctively put my hand on the knife in my pocket. "Don't worry," the clown assured the parents, "kids just LOVE clowns. Hey, Bill!"
Bill was a much larger clown, fully made up, who responded to the call to action. He smiled at the little girl, towering over her, and then began to - and I am not making this up - dance around her, cackling. It was like watching some sort of horrible voodoo ritual: the girl held helpless by her smiling parents. Finally, she had had enough, and erupted in screams and tears. That was enough to drive the foul painted monster away, but the girl kept screaming and crying until her parents took her from the clowns' booth and bought her ice cream.

Exciting news from the sideburn state

Who is the strongest man in the world?

If the first answer that came to your mind was "Artie," then boy, have I got good news for you. Much to my tremendous joy, one of Nickelodeon's strangest shows ever has had its first season released on DVD: The Adventures of Pete and Pete. Among its fans the wacky stories of the brothers Pete are revered with an almost fanatical zealotry usually reserved only for marvels like the Goonies. I bought the first season and watched several episodes while trying fruitlessly to write more pages for my play (which, like an 800 pound gorilla, has been successfully doing whatever it wants and avoiding my efforts to stay on schedule). The writers for Pete and Pete somehow manage to create exactly the kind of strange, off-beat world I try to come up with whenever writing (I adduce the dancing bear play, or the pirate play, etc.)

Anyways, these DVDs are calling you like a giant funk magnet, and you need to check them out.

would you say I have a plethora of news?

There's big news from the boys on the fourth floor, and here it all is, for you. Just for you.

1) The Fanciest American has moved out of his Fancy Cave and into a new place in Manhattan with his sweet baboo. As a result, Andrew and I have searched a great deal to find a new roomate, because more and more it looks like I'll be here until at least January, and Andrew's here for at least another three years. For those of you who have ever spent time with Andrew, Jim, and I, it can be a little frustrating and unintelligible, so finding someone to fit with us was tough. After interviewing several candidates of varying coolness, we selected Jaina, a recent college grad from St. Louis. She came to the interview with her mother, which was nice, and mentioned that she really liked that Andrew and I seemed like such good friends. We're glad to have her onboard for a July 1st arrival.

2) Speaking of Andrew and things being onboard, Andrew is going into the Navy for the summer! He's been accepted to a summer chaplaincy program through his rabbinical school, and our littlest rabbi makes his way to boot camp either tomorrow or the next day. He'll be gone about two months, and it'd be nice if y'all could send him good wishes and whatnot. I intend to torment him by sending inappropriately addressed letters, for which he can receive all sorts of punishment.

3) I'm making the trip home to Michigan for a week, July 10-17. It's been far too long since I've seen the parents, and had some decent mexican food - which I have yet to find in NYC. If any of you cats on the homefront read this and want to hang out, let me know!

And that, I believe, is all the news I've got.

Danger Dancing

I'm going to guess that there are a few of you out there - although I actually have very little sense about who sees this stuff - who recall a time when I was romantically entangled with a dancer and costumiere named Angela. Unquestionably one of the most creative people I have ever met, she will forever be represented in my mind by a single piece she did called "the danger dance." An interpretive dancer by training, she used to perform at this open mic thing called the Wide Open Floor, and one night she danced on this really precarious stack of objects - chairs and blocks and whatnot - playing with how she could move right there at the edge of causing the whole thing to come crashing down. The audience was totally silent, as I recall, and I don't really remember breathing while her dance was going on.

We'd fallen out of contact over this past year, and the last time I saw her was at her wedding - which was the first wedding of someone I'd been involved with that I had been to (a very odd experience, to be sure). Subsequently, she moved to Tennesee and opened a bakery with her husband. Well, I got a message today from her, and it seems the danger dancer has had herself a baby boy!

I'm telling you this perhaps in large part because it's 6 o'clock on a sunday morning and I'm still awake and thinking about how the exemplar of youthful daring goes from dancing precariously on the edge with a sort of morbid curiousity to settling down and having a baby (which, of course, has new dangers, but certainly not the same kind). It happened, this change, and I see it now happening to other peers of mine. One of my friends owns a house. Somehow it has come to be that If I were asked to list words to characterize my closest friends, one of the first words would be "responsible."

It creeps in on you, I guess. Am I next? Am I behind the curve already? How many days remain for yours truly to go to sleep unable to remember where I've left my pants? How much would the circus have to offer me today to run away, and how much six months from now?

Malirhubarbie Dreamhouse: where I am right now

I finally found some rhubarb this weekend at the farmer's market, thereby allowing me to silence with deliciousness the inexplicable and nagging sense that I really wanted to have this rhurarb dessert my mother makes. It turned out really well - although, of course, not quite as good as my mother's. The story of my finding rhubarb and making the dessert is really boring, but I'm including the recipe in the comments section because making it is both easy and the right thing to do.


...."silence with deliciousness?"

The slick get weird

A few months ago I was on the subway, when a rather disreputable-looking fellow - what some might term a "player" - approached a respectable, well-dressed young professional woman and asked her where her stop was. She responded, somewhat unsure of why this guy was asking her. He replied, "how about instead you get out at the next stop with me and we go get some kentucky fried chicken?" Her reply? "Yeah, okay!"

I assumed that what I'd witnessed was an odds-maker's nightmare - that outcome you could only get once if you asked the same question twelve billion times. I was comfortable in that assumption, until yesterday.

As I walked to my class from the subway I passed a Wendy's. A really attractive, professional, well-organized-looking woman was walking the other way, and this guy just walks right up to her and says,"Hey! Let me holla at you! You need to come with me and get some wendy's." Her reply? "Um, sure, sounds good!" And off they went.

This makes me think even more that I'm just not understanding something. Sadly, if my confusion drove me to drink, I could find the same inexplicable oddity there: on saturday I came across flasks at a chinatown dept. store that had, engraved on the front, the words "YOUR FISH SAMPLE." Is that like, "your feet stink, your feet sample," or "here in this flask is your fish sample," or what?

Sigh...

One sister..TWO sisters?

In a slightly belated celebration of my birthday, I was taken to brunch at Balthazar- a New York institution, I am told - on saturday by not one but both of my sisters and their significant others. This, dear readers, was a most unusual event - so much so, in fact, that it escapes my memory as to when the last time was that the three of us kids were in the same place. It is incredible how time passes here - it's like no other place I've been in that regard. Weeks and months pass by in a flash, and brunches such as the one on saturday can give rise to a moment's pause to consider how much time has passed.

Oh, he waxes philosophical, does he? No need for that, when there was a parade in chinatown worth mentioning instead. Admittedly, it was the first time I'd heard chinese drumming combined with bagpipes, but hey, it worked surprisingly well. Hilary and her beau wanted to walk around chinatown, so we did that (with the assistance of one Fanciest American) and then I went to work. On the way home i stopped by little Italy only to find - gasp! - another parade. What is it with that part of town?

Today Hilary, Luke and I walked the Brooklyn Bridge and I got to show them the apartment.

At a time of great school, work, and personal life-related stresses, this was a great weekend. And now to ruin that weekend by staying up late doing homework! Huzzah!

Dearly missing the Russian

Not all change is good. In fact, I'd go so far as to say most change is bad. Change bothers me in myriad ways: he is no longer alive, she is no longer in love with you, it is now an expensive high-rise, and so forth. One of the things that bothers me most, though, is when construction claims my normal walking route. I get used to my routes for walking places, and I do a lot of walking. These routes become my havens of mental decongestion and it is while walking them that I carve out my history.
I used to walk past this building on U of M's campus where I could see directly into a man's office. I did not know his name, but he looked very much like a mole with glasses. And he had, on his desk, a miniature russian flag. So, in my mind, I called him The Russian. I'd see him every day when walking from home to work and back again, and over the years I invented dozens of stories about who he was and where that flag came from and so forth. Then, one day, he just wasn't there anymore. His office was empty, and within a week or so his building was torn down. I was mortified - where had my comfortably predictable russian gone? I would never know.
Just the other day construction workers started tearing up the street on which I walk to work now, and it made me think of the Russian and how much I don't appreciate change. On the way back from work, there was new cement poured, and these two little kids were talking about how they were going to write their names in the cement so that "people in the far far future would know them." Impractical though their plan may have been, for a brief second it was really appealing. So I stooped down, and, with the cap of my water bottle, wrote a big, deep "G" in one corner of the newly-poured area. That was the first time I'd ever done that, and now I kind of hope this kids are right.

i don't usually do this...

...but I'm in a playwriting class and it'd be kind of fun to share my idea - you can comment on it if you want. I am always very tight-lipped about these things, but I'm trying something new with this play, so, why the heck not? Don't pay attention to how the treatment is written, or that the name of the town is stupid, please. You can tell how good it is by the phrase "after a minor catastrophe," which is purposely nebulous because I have yet to figure that part out...sigh...

Taking into account the relatively small size of Dusk, Michigan, and the worsening economy, the County decides to close the Dusk Police Department and place the town under the umbrella of a nearby town’s police department. Upon hearing this, long-time Dusk resident John “The Turk” Delacerna – renowned in both underworld and criminal justice circles as the “biggest small-time crook of all time” for his characteristic overly-complex Rube Goldberg-esque crimes for utterly pedestrian spoils like watches and toasters – declares that in seven days, as a final coup de grace to the police who arrested him so many times without ever securing a conviction, he will commit his greatest crime to date, and then vanish for good. Lucy, a cop in her late forties with ties to the Turk stretching back to her grandfather and father – both of whom were policemen and were obsessed with trying to put the Turk away for good – announces that, before the seven days are up, the Turk will finally be behind bars at the Dusk Police Station for good.
To achieve her goal, she hounds the Turk, who agrees to let her keep an eye on him every evening, provided that she will join him for dinner. Over the course of the week, the Turk’s demands rise: first dinner, then dinner and drinks, then a dance after dinner to his favorite record. In turn, he agrees each night not only to allow her vigil, but to answer her questions, and reveal his secretive past.
Each night as he tells his story, scenes from his past as a child of the carnival are presented to show how as a child the Turk, after much persuasion, got his father, a carnie swindler famous for his techniques, to teach the young Turk his most effective and famous trick, “the Big Steal.” There is one catch to the instruction, however: that the Big Steal is never to be used to bankrupt a man, or to leave him without a nickel to get home on. The Turk, in his youthfulness and desire to impress a young woman, beings swindling customers for all they have. After a minor catastrophe, the Turk’s father casts him out, and the Turk vows to never again steal anything a person couldn’t afford to lose.
Over the course of the week, Lucy becomes swept up in the Turk’s stories and finds herself becoming attracted to him and his larger-than-life mystique. As the week comes to its close, she begins to assume that the Turk’s greatest crime was, in fact, to steal the heart of his most fervent police pursuer. She is, of course, wrong, as the Turk successfully absconds with the entire now-redundant, soon-to-be-closed Dusk Police Station and vanishes.

Thoughts?

Birthdaypaloozamaniafest spectacular '05

Well, as you all seem to be aware, my birthday was this wednesday past. After a long and frustrating day of work and class, I was lucky enough to spend the evening with Andrew and my two very good friends Monica Hunken (scroll down on the linked page for a great picture of her as the Starbucks' mermaid, or google her and be amazed at the amount of stuff one person can be involved with - she IS activism in New York, kids) and the lovely and talented Tillotama Shome (she's on the left in that picture; she played Alice in Monsoon Wedding, and is horrifically intelligent). Why these people agree to spend time with me, I WILL NEVER KNOW. We tried to go to several different restaurants before settling on one we liked, and then we had outstanding-yet-vegan desserts at a place on the way to Rice to Riches, an all rice-pudding place styled to look like it's from the future, where we had more dessert.

Oh, I should mention that my birthday celebration technically began at 12:01 a.m. on wednesday, when andrew and I ate ice cream cake and played videogames.

So thank you, one and all, for your good wishes, e-mails, calls, and presents - there were even some from people I hadn't heard from in months, who didn't even know I was in NYC! For all this, I am truly grateful.

Oh, my stars and garters!

Q. What do several hundred people, forty or so Burlesque performers, brunch, and a ride on a showboat through the hudson river have to do with my Sunday afternoon?

A. Nothing my mother should be told about. (take that hint, mom) Certainly not the New York Burlesque Festival, in which one of Andrea K's friends was a performer.

After Friday's circus fun, Saturday was spent wandering the city, doing work (ugh), catching the new and ridiculously bad-tastic new Christian Slater and L.L. Cool J movie Mindhunters, and partying on the roof of an abandoned schoolhouse next to an inflatable bed, a coffin, and some razor wire with about a gazillion people. Sunday, therefore, had to be extra-bizarre, and so it was that we attended the Burlesque festival on a boat. Several of the acts were really, really funny and cool (Andrea's friend's act being one of those), and some were just kind of boring. Of course, if my twelve-year-old self ever heard me say that seeing any woman take her clothes off was boring, I'd beat myself up. But, well, here we are.

Cirque that

So, what would happen if you and your friends decided you really wanted to put on an evening of circus acts, but you didn't actually know any, and your talents were limited to paper mache and jumping rope? And what if you knew some cool kids in a cool band, who'd play music for you, and you had a great space, and you just thought, "well, why the heck not?"

You'd get a D- for skill and an A++++ (that's A quadruple-plus) for effort, and you'd give me a hell of a time on Friday night.

The Brooklyn Hotel

Even though we're down one roomate (RIP, James Thromboidimous Heably), it seems like we've had enough people come through for a weekend here and there that the place is always full of folks. And by "full," I of course mean, "nowhere near full" because this place is huge. We've had the lion's share of visitors, and that makes yours truly a happy camper. This weekend it was Andrea K, a friend from my U of M days (who is on the poster for, and performed in, this event) crashing at our place, and a good deal of fun was had (see above). Anyways, my point in writing this is that I really, really love the fact that our apartment can accomodate visitors so easily -- especially when some of you NYC cats be living in shoeboxes, showers all up in your kitchens so you can make eggs while shampooing and what not. That's just wrong. Wait---what was I saying?

Nice to know I'm not the only one

Read this story! Pirates! (NYTimes registration required)

The Nuclear Option, or, remember when we had three branches of gov't, and we liked it that way?

I don't really understand why, but for some reason there has been almost no coverage of Bill Frist's intended dismantling of the filibuster. I can't overtstate the significance of what he's trying to do - which, incidentally, is why some refer to his plan as the "nuclear option" for the scale of effect it will have on our constitution and congressional procedure. Quite simply, Frist wants to change the rules of the senate so that all that is needed to stop a filibuster is a simple majority vote. Therefore, if a single party controls the senate and the white house, there is nothing to stand in the way of the white house's judicial nominees, because the minority party can't block their approval by filibuster. Even though a president's nominees are by and large usually approved, there is a fraction whose approval is vociferously blocked by filibuster. Now, with Bush re-nominating some of those who were blocked last time, Frist wants to weaken into impotence the best chance the minority democrats have to save the courts. If I'm not explaining this well, which is probably the case, you can read a pretty good article on it here.

As I write this, a dinner of wild duck is being prepared for Bill Frist and his staunch opponent, Harry Reid. They will sit down to dinner tonight and decide whether there can be a compormise on this issue, what many are calling the climax of a "culture war" in america between the religious right and the left. These are dangerous days...

Having Fun and Cake in NYC

This weekend I forced myself (with some help from andrew) to get in some fun. And while said "fun" ended up including housecleaning and the purchase of new roach poison (woo-hoo!), there was still time to watch movies and enjoy 2 - TWO! - different kinds of cake.

Other highlights from this weekend include going bowling (which New York has turned into a club scene - complete with VIP area - and done away with the usual fat, smoky men under bright fluorescent lights I was looking forward to seeing. Thank you, new york, for once again screwing up something that was fine to begin with); also, last night I took in a one-man musical show about the genocide in Rwanda. Hoo-boy, let me tell you now: on the Grand List of Good Ideas, a one-man musical about the genocide in Rwanda is WAY down on the bottom with setting your own hair on fire and trying to eat a hive of angry bees.

Going to work in NYC

I am not good at being on vacation, I have learned. This week, instead of kicking it around town, catching up with friends, and sleeping all day - this being my break between semesters and those being perfectly acceptable activties for such a time - I worked more hours than usual at the lab. My new classes start Monday!

No, no, you were right...it WAS more like "thrilladelphia"

I had been planning to go to philadelphia since, oh...august. So when I turned in my finalest of finals on friday, I took myself and my newly-incurred sense of post-semester levity down to 88 East Broadway and hopped on a twelve dollar bus going to philly. One of my oldest and most dear friends in the whole wide world is a brilliant firecracker of a woman named Sarah, who's studying historic preservation at Penn. She and I walked all over the city on friday night, and I had my first real philly cheese steak just after watching a friend of one of sarah's friends get arrested for urinating in public. The next day Sarah and I ate ribs for breakfast at a food festival we stumbled into. Ah, vacation.

I absolultely love that city, though. I had never been before, and was astounded to see how, despite its being a major american city, it still feels like a small town. In that sense, it was a diametrically different experience from being in NYC. I also got to hang out with two of my other friends who live in philly, and I ate some really incredible food at this restaurant that boasts "eclectic south american cuisine." I went to a party with some really fun activist kids (who work with a friend of mine at Design for Social Impact), walked a ridiculous amount, hung out in a super-posh apartment building where one friend resides, and generally just kicked it around town.

The real highlight of the trip, though, was not only seeing sarah but having her take me on a tour of the site where she works as an intern doing historic preservation: the ultra-creepy abandoned prison known as Eastern State Penitentiary. I can't even begin to describe how cool this was. The only thing that might possibly come close is if you've ever played Castlevania for the old NES. Anyways, it was great to see Sarah and all the good times philly has to offer. I'll definitely be going back.

And now I'm going to get in the bathtub with my Gameboy.

I have appeared in the staged reading of a play based on interviews with recent immigrants to the United States about whether they feel they could ever truly become "American"; created and conducted (after a first failed attempt) an interactive audio tour of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, based on interviews with residents of that area and their understanding of the brutal impact that gentrification and development are having on their neighborhood; created and performed a show about the disparity between the employment rates of men and women in science and engineering in light of recent comments made by the president of Harvard University and the incredible life story of Rita Levi Montalcini; gone on two auditions; worked through no fewer than ten hours of group meetings; attended a performance of "Arabian Nights"; written more than twenty pages' worth of papers; taught someone how to extract cochlea from mice; participated in moving our entire lab from one room to another; purchased an LCD projector; said goodbye to some really incredible people and did the dishes...

...in the past seven days.

The Pirate at a Crossroads, or, A Conclave of My Very Own

Well, campers, there's big news afoot. Feeling left out from the recent papal conclave? Fear not!

As many of the six of you who read this blog may know, I was offered a job from a certain unnamed alma mater and a certain unnamed theatre company in SW Detroit to organize and run a collaboration between the two. This proposed collaboration was contingent on their securing the funds needed - a task, I was informed yesterday, that remains unfulfilled, as the major grant application they had submitted was denied. An empty coffer precludes more than my being paid; that money would have covered transportation expenses for participants, materials, staff costs, etc.

With the end of my master's program coming at the end of July, this places yours truly at a strange point of decision making: what, gentle readers, am I going to do with myself? I'm way too stressed to think clearly about this, and yet the stress will also not allow me to leave off of thinking about it, despite my being knee deep in an horrendous three week death march of finals. So I'm asking for your advice, folks.

There is no "bad" choice among what I see as my available options: 1)to return to Michigan and take a job with the aforementioned unnamed theatre company, with whom I have an open (and funded) job offer; 2)to stay in NYC and continue to work as a scientist to pay rent, and use my free time to continue studying and working in theatre (there are fantastic opportunities here); 3) to do something else entirely (like trying to get a teaching artist job in another country, or something). And yes, I realize that there are people starving in the world and that I'm a whiny baby for even concerning myself with the difficulty of this decision.

I'm asking you to contact me, by whatever means, and let me know what you think. I'm asking because I want to know, so feel free to suggest whatever. You can e-mail me, call me, post here, or just come see me. Help me out!

[EDIT]: My brain feels like this!

A scene from work (don't worry, I washed my hands before typing this)

(Characters: Dr. Science and a travelling microscope salesman
The time is about 10 minutes ago.)

Him: Hey there, how's it...whoa.
Me: Yep.
Him: Um...
Me: Yeah, I'm kinda in the middle of something.
Him: I can see. Is that dead?
Me: Oh yeah. It'd have to be.
Him: That looks, um...interesting.
Me: What I'm doing is easily one of the most bizarre things I've had to do in the name of science. It's important that you know that.
Him: Have you done this before?
Me: No, this is a first.
Him: Huh.
Me: In fact, I'd love to tell people about how weird this is, but I'm pretty sure I'd rather they just didn't know how I spent my afternoon.
Him: So, why are you...no, never mind. Well, I'll, um...go. Good luck with that. (awkwardly sidesteps his way out)

Hat trick! Hat trick!

"Ramshackle," with an emphasis on "shack," might be the most accurate way to conjure for you the image of the site of last night's fun. A loosely-confederated and architecturally questionable structure built inside a concrete warehouse in a post-industrial part of Brooklyn was home to "The Hang," a party, musical performance, and feast. For six bucks you got a plate of hot, to-die-for Senegalese food and a comfy seat from which to watch visiting African musicians jam with local artists. Everyone was invited to take part in playing music (sadly I did not have my bass, because why would I have been carrying that around?), and there was a really nice, at-home sort of feel, despite the odd surroundings.

I'd like to point out that in one weekend here I saw a brass band performing Bjork, pretend wrestlers and punk bands from japan, and some incredible african music for a grand total of thirty dollars (which would have been twenty-four if I hadn't wanted to eat at the Hang). Although it'd be nice to have some company (did you know that the majority of stuff I write about doing on here, I do by myself?), I have to say that New York never ceases to offer great chances to have weird fun.

Rock.

Dr. Science meets Dr. Cube

Kaiju Big Battel (no, that's not a typo) held a DVD release party at CBGB's last night, with performances by five cah-razy Japanese Punk Bands and appearances by Kaiju wrestlers Kung Fu Chicken Noodle, the American Beetle, and that evil incarnate himself, Dr. Cube. The punk bands were nuts, honestly out of their minds with drive to offer the most intense, fun show possible - and they did a pretty fine job. Peedlander Z dressed up like what you'd get if fruit, the Village people, and the costume dept. of your high school's drama group had babies who only spoke japanese and played guitar really well. The bizarro-award of the night went to MC Manmoth and DJ Eagle, though, whose act consisted entirely of dressing in different cotumes and inviting people from the audience on stage to dance with them and drink tequila as they played old, obscure songs from the seventies. They, themselves, played no music, and did not sing. Oh, and sometimes they'd ask people to hit them in the face with this giant rubber band they had.

The song titles from the various bands were usually the only things said in English, and favorites included: "I dance because I want to eat your smile," "mystery animal: rock n' roll," " thrash thrash thrash," and my favorite lyric of the evening, "we know we can't change the world, so can we just please rock now?"

The highlight of the evening had to have been meeting Dr. Cube, though. I was wearing a Dr. Cube shirt given to me by my sister, and when Cube was walking through the audience, he saw my shirt, walked over and put his arm around me, slapped me on the chest and gave me the thumbs up before turning away and shoving somebody else out of his way. Oh, that Dr. Cube.

I managed to pick up the new Kaiju DVD and a sweet "Danger Can Happen" T-shirt, too.

Bjorkestra

I'm beginning to think that New York is a lot like the internet. It has everything you could possibly ever think of, and some stuff you wouldn't; you either have to know what you're looking for, or you have to stumble on it.

And so it was by stumbling that Andrew and I came to attend a performance last night of the Bjorkestra, a twenty-or-so-person brass band that does big band versions of Bjork songs. Honestly, I never would have thought that "enjoy" needed a bass trombone solo, but boy does it ever benefit from one. "All is full of love" with saxophones was incredible, too - which was on par for all the other songs they played. They're playing again on my birthday, so maybe I'll have to check that out.

EDIT: if you go here, and click on "mp3's" you can check out their version of "Army of me."

Dr. Science vs. a mob of frenzied, screaming six year-olds

For a minute, I thought they were going to kill me.

A fellow student here at NYU asked me to pay a visit to the career day going on at the middleschool where she volunteers. "They've seen a rabbi, and a daycare worker, and an ombudsman, and it'd be great to get someone to interest them in science. They don't get much of that." I agreed, only then to learn that by "middleschool" she meant "a group of 18 six year-olds." I quickly donned my light-up science belt.

They were bouncing off the walls when I got there, and my plans for trying to teach science quickly turned into just trying to get them to think that science was cool. I showed them some pictures of what normal objects look like at high magnification, and (with remarkable resonance with my audience) related what I do to what Pokemon scientist and cartoon character Prof. Oak does. Next I showed them this substance you can make out of cornstarch and water and green food coloring that doesn't appear to follow Newton's third law of motion (it's a liquid that turns solid when you touch it, then back to a liquid), and that quickly turned into my being quite literally mauled and/or bum rushed by small children. Suddenly, everything was covered with the green stuff, including myself, the floor, and the kids.

We washed up, I made a play-doh and tissue paper volcano erupt, and then answered some more questions about being a scientist. The questions included "will we ever see you again?" and "can we see your belt again?" This was a nice break from their previous question, "what is it?!", screamed almost constantly whenever they saw something they were interested in.

Me: So you, this subs-
Them:WHAT IS IT?
ME: Well, it's -
Them: WHAT IS IT?
Me: Hang on, I'l tell -
Them: WHAT IS IT?
Me: It's cornstarch and-
Them: WHAT IS IT?

Ugh. Children'd!