Back in the Field (Sort Of)

Given how miserably cold it has been, I haven't been doing much birding over the past two months. Since it was a balmy 38 degrees today, and I was near the Long Slip Pedestrian Bridge, anyway (a long walkway that goes along the water and takes you from Hoboken to Jersey City), I decided to go and see what was going on with the birds.

This area has tons of seagulls. There are usually also some cormorants further out, plus some ducks, and the occasional geese or other birds (I even saw two least sandpipers there over the summer).

Today, the gulls were present, as always, and very sassy. One picked up a big chunk of ice, flew away with it, then came back, landed next to me, dropped the ice, and started screaming at me until I left. So I went on a little further to my usual duck-spotting site to check the duck levels.

I was not disappointed! In addition to five Canada Geese gliding by, and the usual cast of gulls, there were two mallards, sleeping on a bit of wood. Two gadwalls also glided by (these seem to be the most common duck around when it's warm; I've seen over a dozen in this spot at once during the summer/fall), and, for the first time, three ruddy ducks, who looked to be asleep and just letting the current carry them around. Ruddy ducks are apparently cold weather visitors to the area. I saw a group of them at Liberty State Park in November in the harbor, but I didn't know they visited this part of Hoboken, so I was pretty excited. Because I am a big nerd.

The experience was capped off when I was walking back home and passed the spot of my seagull confrontation. A couple was walking by and sent down on a bench facing the water. A big group of seagulls came up and landed on the rails, facing them, all at once. One of the seagulls began to scream. The woman freaked out and got up to leave. The man went with her, but he was laughing.

If we get another bearable weekend like this one, I'll have to go back to Liberty, in search of hawks. My husband-to-be saw one over our street about a month ago as he was leaving for work, but not all of us are so fortunate!

Maybe You Should Have Thought About Whether You Wanted to Have a Child Before You Let Yourself Get Roofied

Some wealthy old men are pretty sure that you didn't fight hard enough, slut!

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/republican-plan-redefine-rape-abortion

Badass Bird

I Hope I Don't Grow a Hump

Sometimes I wonder if I am going to develop a hump. For as long as I can remember, my back has seemed to reflect every moment of stress I have ever experienced in my life. There are my shoulders that my ballet teacher used to bark at me to relax. There are the little aches running along each side of my spine that come out when fidgeted. There are the weird, crunchy little knots behind my shoulder blades that I only discovered a few months ago during a chair massage.

But there is also a particular spot, midway between the bottom of my left shoulder blade and my spine, that is always ominously tense. When probed, it feels somewhat fibrous. Pressing it yields the painful pleasant feeling you would expect from a stress knot, but it also seems to quiver, like it has been sitting there, tense, for years and years and will not be dislodged.

I wonder if it will just get more and more tense with every work emergency, apartment search, cat surgery, and family crisis, until the mucles are so bunched in on themselves that I will no longer be able to straighten my back. And it is under these circumstances that I wonder if I will wind up a hunchback.

It was sort of an idle thought before, but now that I am about to have a husband, and may one day have kids, I hope it doesn't happen. Who wants to be married to a hunchback? Especially a female one? And I bet the kids would get all kinds of teased for having a hunchbacked mom.

Identity

Today, I called to make an appointment to look at dresses.  The woman on the other end asked if I was the bride.  I had to answer, "Yes."

It was so very, very weird.

Engaged

A while back, my significant other pointed out that I had not updated this blog in forever.  I said that I couldn't think of anything to write about.  He said, "You just moved in with a dude!"  He was right!  And now, nearly a year later, I still haven't updated, until now.

Anyway, I went to Kyoto and, under the cherry tree in the Imperial Gardens shown to the left, got engaged.  Or, as one commenter on my now-fiance's Facebook page put it when he updated his relationship status, "ENGAYDGED."

It is weird, because I had never really considered myself a marriage person, and if I had considered myself a marriage person, I had not considered myself an engagement person, but here I am.

We are still nailing down a few small details, like when it will happen and whether or not to serve our guests a Qdoba buffet at the reception(s).

In all seriousness, I have no idea how to put a wedding into effect.  Not even a low-key, non-princessy affair like the one I think we're trying to pull off.  I picked up a bridal magazine at the corner store a couple of days ago and started looking through it, then put it back on the shelf a few seconds later in horror.  The dresses were all so very, very white.  I don't think I am that publication's target audience.

Home Surgery

Yeah, they look really cute, but I think the one on the left tried to kill me. She likes to claw at my cheap Ikea kitchen table, spewing splinters about the apartment. Tonight, as I walked through the kitchen, one such splinter drove through my sock and embedded itself in the bottom of my foot.

It was huge! After a fair amount of sniveling, digging around with a needle, and internal speculation about what would happen if I showed up at the emergency room with a foot splinter, I removed it. But not before some panic. One internet site told me to soak my foot in water to soften the skin and aid removal. Another warned against soaking a wooden splinter for too long, because it can expand. Adding to my frustration, it took me forever just to get this photo that doesn't even come close to showing the horror show that was my foot after I washed it, post-removal:

On the plus side, my soles are looking pretty smooth today. Thanks, overly pushy nail salon owner!

Anyway, here it is. The splinter that almost took me down, along with the tools I used to remove it, and a dime for scale:


I'm pretty sure I am now qualified as a surgeon in certain states.

Another Report From the Field!

The pronouncement from the vegan bistro at 1st Avenue and 6th Street.

Anyway, as you probably already know, Obama won! As soon as NBC and pals called it, I started hearing shouts from outside like when the Giants won the Super Bowl. Eventually, I wandered outside, and in fact, it was more like New York had won a whole bunch of Super Bowls and even the hipsters cared!

Crowds of people were at the intersection of First Avenue and St. Marks, many of them banging on pots and pans. Every time cars would go by, the crowd would cheer, and the cars would lay on their horns:

At one point, an ambulance went by, lights flashing. The driver picked up his microphone and announced, "President Barack Obama!!"

Virtually every time people passed one another on the sidewalk, cheers and high-fives were obligatory. Among the people I high-fived was this guy:

There was, not surprisingly, a still larger crowd at Union Square:

As well as vendors cashing in on the result:

Hangover factory Lilly Coogan's had this to say:

And this building on St. Mark's Place offered its own verdict:

When I walked by, they were blasting "Happy Days are Here Again" out of the windows.

So, good job, everyone! Democracy worked!

Report From the Field!

I woke up around 6:30 this morning, and, because I am a big dork, I was too excited to get back to sleep. So, around 7:20, I pried myself out from under my cat Spider and went to vote.

The line at my polling place was the longest I've ever seen it, and I usually just go around 8:45 a.m. on my way to work. I think the only other time there has been a line at all was for the 2004 presidential election, and that was pretty short. Today's line got still longer while I waited. I was still out in about 20 minutes, but the big turnout is a good sign, no matter who you support.

But especially if you support Obama.

Anyway, people, vote!

Baracktober

In case you hadn't heard, Election Day is upon us.

Already, the ridiculously small town of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire has voted, and the returns are in: for the first time in 40 years, Dixville Notch has gone Democratic. Barack Obama beat John McCain, 15 votes to 6. Everyone else: don't forget to vote! Even if the line is really long and you live in New York or California so that, despite what everyone says, your vote will make absolutely no difference. Vote, or spend the rest of your life lying about how great it was to vote in 2008.

To be honest, the whole Young Everyone for Obama contingent (*cough* especiallyamongmycolleagues *cough*) is often obnoxious and makes we want to write in Hillary Rodham Clinton, but I won't do that. Despite his supporters, I like the cut of our next president's jib and most of his policy positions. Unlike everyone in the middle of the country, I don't think he's an elitist jerk just because he went to prestigious schools and apparently did his homework while he was there. Unlike everyone on both coasts, I don't think the middle of the country is a bunch of slobbering buffoons incapable of voting for someone who isn't white.

In short, I find virtually everyone in America highly objectionable at this point, but it still seems pretty obvious that the best man (by my measure) will win. So calm down, everyone! It's like I've been saying for months:

Seriously, the Republican Party is not organized enough to mount whatever weird scheme involving black helicopters and Bolivian cocaine that would be required to steal the election absent a Bush v. Gore style virtual tie. Luckily, Oliver Stone doesn't get to direct our actual lives. And if you're a McCain supporter -- well, I won't lie. I think you've backed the wrong horse, but at least his SNL appearance was entertaining.

So, at this time tomorrow, this neverending campaign season will finally, finally, finally be over. Then let us never speak of it, or Sarah Palin, ever again.

Tomorrow's Bookshelf...Today!

One day, some talented Washington Post-type will write a book about the inner workings of McCain's 2008 campaign. I will read that book the instant it shows up in the Review Copies section in the basement of The Strand.

I don't know what is going on back there. I just know it is entertaining.

They Called Me Mad at the University

I have probably told this story somewhere before. If so, bear with me.

September 11, 2001, happened right at the beginning of my final year of law school. My school had, in addition to the fall and spring semesters, a winter semester where the 2Ls and 3Ls would take one course concentrated into the space of something like three weeks. In the wake of the terrorist attacks, Professor Philip Heymann, with a couple of others, offered a winter semester course called "Terrorism in America." I took the class.

One morning, I was sitting in the back of the room with my coffee, still waking up, and Heymann decided to cold-call me. "Can you think of a situation," he asked me, "Where the world would face a threat that would cause all countries to band together to oppose it?"

I'm paraphrasing, but that's in substance the question he asked. I assumed (and still assume) that he was fishing for some sort of terrorist threat as an answer, but even in my days at Harvard, I was not so naive as to think that any earthly threat could get all nations to band together. So I gave him the only answer I could think of:

"Well, maybe if a large asteroid or comet or something was headed toward the earth."

The class laughed at me. Heymann was not impressed, and said that he had been looking for a more realistic response.

He moved on, and I said nothing further, but in my mind, I was sort of incensed. A comet or asteroid threatening the earth was unlikely, was it? The way terrorists hijacking planes on U.S. soil and crashing them into major landmarks might also seem unlikely on September 10, 2001?

Anyway, fast forward to a few weeks ago, when The Atlantic Monthly ran a cover story on the threat of asteroids hitting the earth. To say nothing of the various news pieces that have run about the threat, both before and after 2001.

What I'm trying to say is that I was right, and Heymann was wrong, however however far-out the threat may appear. If you'll forgive my pessimism, I still think we're far more likely to get smacked with a huge asteroid than to bring all countries together to fight a terrorist threat, and now that I think of it, I don't even know that I believe the Asteroid Menace would bring world unity. And if we do get hit with an asteroid or a comet, it will suck, but at least chances are that those who laughed at me or dismissed my concerns will go down in the same extinction event that takes me out.

I would never wish asteroid-related harm on anyone, but if large numbers of mankind are wiped out, it would be infinitesimally preferable for it to happen in a way that proves me right about something.

We May Be Through With the Past, But the Past Wants Us to Watch Its Videos

I got an email from an ex the day after my birthday. We had dated, or whatever you want to call it, for about a year and a half. It was always sort of unorthodox, but finally, in August of this past year, I had just had enough. So, because among our problems was his persistent inability to return phone calls, I wound up having to break up with him via email, and then it irritated me further that he had turned me into a person who breaks up with people via email.

The breakup email was, I thought, pretty nice, its main points being: (i) goodbye, (ii) good luck, and (iii) if you want to discuss this in rational fashion, we can.

Months passed. I heard nothing.

So, my birthday comes and goes, and the day after my birthday, I wake up, and there is an email from the guy, really short, wishing me a happy late birthday and saying he hopes I'm well. I replied, thanking him, and left it at that. It was nice of him, I guess, though I couldn't help but wonder at his motives. This is a person who, even when things were good with us, couldn't be bothered to communicate with his voice most of the time, and this wasn't a tendency that was specific to me. Certainly, had he remembered my birthday this year and had no access to email, he would not have called. He has given no sign that he seeks closure or wants to be friends or anything similar. Nevertheless, the magic of email is allowing me to occasionally hear from someone who would otherwise have faded from my life through his own sheer inaction. Bizarre.

As a postscript, I may have found out his true motive -- broadening his audience. Earlier this week, he included me on a mass email linking to a new video he made. Aiiieeee! I am a content recipient!

The A-Bomb Begins

I have long held the belief that a large part of being successful lies in just showing up. Nowhere has this been more true for me, personally, than the day I was born.

I was not the first baby born in my city in 1976, but I was the first baby born in the South Hills area, leading to my winning the community newspaper's First Baby contest that year. In fact, I crushed the competition: I was born at 4:08 a.m., and the runner-up didn't show until noon. I hope she's enjoying life at age 31. I'm sure she's manning the fryer at Burger King or something, having showed up for her lawyer interview 8 hours late.

Naturally, I won a king's ransom of prizes for having the good sense to be born on the right day at the right time. According to the press clipping, these prizes included:

Accompanying that clip was, perhaps, the best photo ever taken of my immediate family. Here we are, in all our Bee Gees-era glory:

Argentine Tango

As most of the two or three people who have ever read this blog probably know (because you are probably one of my parents or a close friend), I have been gradually staggering my way into learning Argentine tango since the beginning of the year. At first, this took the form of me going to a milonga (the best way to describe a milonga is to call it a tango party) with Andrew, who has been dancing for about eight years, and taking the little introductory lesson that many milongas offer at the beginning. This enabled me to look decent while standing still, and to locomote back and forth. I got pretty tired of sucking and only knowing the basics, though, and I was starting to feel bad about Andrew being saddled with me, so I decided that the time had come to sign up for some formal lessons.

After having to take July off because I just had too much going on to get to class reliably, I have started up again this month at Dance Manhattan. I have been working on types of walking, ochos (a zigzaggy figure eight-type of step that you can do forwards and backwards), and various other bunny slope things. Not surprisingly, two of my biggest obstacles are relaxing, and letting someone else lead. I'm working on both issues.

Last week, I even danced with one or two men who weren't Andrew and did not horrify them!

One thing you should know about Argentine tango is that some of the shoes the women wear are absolutely amazing. Comme il Fait, a brand out of Buenos Aires (as, duh, most brands are), prides itself on making only about 20 of each design. Comme il Fait is so worried about competitors copying its awesome designs (and some of them really are gorgeous) that it doesn't permit its shoes to be photographed -- like vampires! Anyway, I don't really think I am qualified to buy such fine shoes, yet, but I did order a pair that's slightly flashier than the plain black practice shoes I have been wearing. We'll see if they inspire me to dance better, or just make me wobbly because the heels are so high.

May 13-19, 2007: The Week in Review

Since I spend lots of time at work, this is mostly last Sunday and yesterday in review. Anyway, a friend from work is watching her sister's dog for the summer. Since she already has a dog, she knew there would be issues with introducing them to one another. Apparently, some dog expert said that it would be easier to introduce them outside of her apartment, because of territoriality issues, so I agreed to hang out in front of her building with the new dog when it arrived last Sunday while she went up to fetch the other dog so that she could walk them together:

After walking them around Tompkins Square Park for a while, we stopped off at Zum Schneider for beer and pretzels. And, for the dogs, weiners.


Last night, I stopped in at Death & Co. After my first glass of port, the following conversation ensued:

ME: Can I have another glass of the Sandeman 20 year?

BARTENDER 1: We're all out. In fact, I think you drank the entire bottle.

BARTENDER 2: We should have saved the empty for you.

ME (to man sitting next to me): Well, I didn't drink the whole thing tonight!

The following photograph is meant as a memorial to the bottle I killed:

Zombies Overrun a Very Small Section of Union Square

I found out around lunchtime today that people were going to be dressing up as zombies and hanging out in Union Square tonight before going to a showing of "28 Weeks Later." Initially, I had planned to shred up an old suit, dye some corn syrup red, slap both on me, and go as Zombie Lawyer. But, I would have been really pressed for time, since I didn't leave work until around 6, and the zombies were gathering at 6:30. Also, it looked like rain. So, I did not join in, but I got a few pictures.

When I first arrived, I was pretty disappointed, because I couldn't see any zombies. Of course, part of that is my fault, since I was one of the lame individuals who knew about zombie day and didn't bother dressing up. However, if you look very carefully in the middle of the photo, you can see one lone zombie's bloody shirt in the crowd:

As I got closer, I saw more zombies. As it turns out, they like their cigarettes:

As with all great cultural events, Fangoria showed up and gave away t-shirts. But they only gave them to people dressed as zombies.

This zombie was nice enough to interact with both civilians and Goths:

New Format!

It occurs to me that if I ever get up the motivation to write another review of something, I will probably put it on Batman Must Die, so I think I'm going to do a bit of a format change here. Yes, from here on in, this will be my picture blog. A while back, I used to do a thing where I'd sum up the week in review in photographs, so maybe I'll bring that back.

In the meantime, please enjoy this photographic evidence of Beaker's love for America:

Stars are Blind

Check it out! I am blogging from vacation. In honor of my present location a block away from the beach, I thought I would review Paris Hilton's prefabricated summer single, "Stars are Blind."

Not surprisingly, "Stars are Blind" will probably not change your life, and it is also unlikely to make enough of an impression to change your CD collection (though, it may change your iTunes playlist, since one function of the online music revolution is the ability to download at a moment's notice nearly any embarassing schlock for people to later find and mock). Last week, during a party in the courtyard in the building next door, I heard somebody put this song on, and several voices protested the awful choice. I suspect the owners of these voices to be pathetic, conformist hipsters, because...

...to be honest, I was disappointed in the song. I wanted "Stars are Blind" to be William Hung horriffic, but instead, it was just inoffensive disposable pop. The vocals are sugary and breathy, and I question how much of actual Paris Hilton voice we're hearing. Assuming a recording of Hilton's voice is the basis of this song, I applaud the producers and engineers and other technical and creative types that generated the final product. I would never be impressed by someone putting this song on, but if I had a few drinks in me, I would probably dance to it.

On the other end of the spectrum are those claiming that "Stars are Blind" is pretty good and infused with a Gwen Stefani feel. I suppose this is true, in that Gwen Stefani is another scantily-clad blond backed by the occasional reggae-esque beat. The comparison still smacks of pathetic, conformist nerds self-consciously separating themselves from pathetic, conformist hipsters, but I agree that the song can be played without anyone breaking into hives over it.

The video matches the song in bland-and-inoffensiveness. Mostly, Paris Hilton lolls on the beach, or on some anonymously-attractive man who is in turn lolling on the beach. Ms. Hilton's performance is fine. I totally believe, in watching the video for "Stars are Blind," that Paris Hilton enjoys hanging on mute, muscled boys on the sand.

And that is one more thing Paris Hilton and I probably have in common.

So You Think You Can Dance

Despite my status as a gainfully-employed chronological adult, I find myself easily mesmerized by competitive reality TV shows. This summer, as it did last summer, Fox is running "So You Think You Can Dance," which is sort of like American Idol, only with dancing instead of singing.

The grand prize? Apparently, a background dancing role in Celine Dion's Brand New Day show in Las Vegas. Which means the show's winner can experience all of the magic of Showgirls (and Sock Puppet Showgirls) without the humiliation of the nipple-icing scene.

Like American Idol, the show started off with a series of episodes showing the good (and wonderfully bad) initial auditions. I admit that I did not see most of these episodes. At any rate, after some cuts, the field was whittled down to 20 finalists -- 10 men and 10 women, who were paired off into 10 couples.

Each week, the couples pick dance styles out of a hat, and that's the style they have to compete with that week. This has resulted in the awesome spectacle of a ballet dancer trying to pull off hip-hop, a hip-hop dancer standing ineffectually while his partner whips around him like a salsa badass, and lots of comments from the judges that begin something like, "I know you were way out of your comfort zone there..."

The viewers vote, and the members of the bottom three couples have to dance individually on the results show. The judges then choose one man and one woman to get kicked off. They can pick a man and woman from different couples, meaning that the couples can in theory get sort of shuffled around as more people get the boot.

In practice, this has meant that Dmitry the Hot is now on partner #3. I should explain that Dmitry is a Latin dancer who was born in Russia and is apparently incapable of wearing anything that covers his chest. Not that I am complaining. Dmitry generally dances well in his solos, and while I would hate to see him go and miss seeing The Chest every week, one of his solos did yield the EXTREME CROTCH CLOSE-UP SHOT that, frankly, has made the entire show for me. I really should have Tivo-ed it.

Having lost his first two partners, Dmitry is currently paired with "pop-locker" Ashlee. I was not aware anyone under 28 or so even knew what pop-locking was, so good on her. Last week, Dmitry and Ashlee did this cracked-out contemporary routine to "Dance Dance" by Fallout Boy that was apparently about a doll brought to life by a ringmaster or something. It is now among my favorite things ever. So far as I could tell, all they did was chase one another around the stage, punctuated by some weirdly-angled lifts. They somehow stayed out of the bottom three. So, thank you, America, for keeping them on the show!

A few other couples of note include:

• Allison and Ivan. Ivan sucks at pretty much everything except hip-hop. Allison is lyrical and beautiful, and I want a minitaure Allison to carry around in my pocket. Whenever I get sad, I could take out mini-Allison and watch her dance for a few seconds, and suddenly I'd be happy again.
  
• Benji and Donyelle. Donyelle is lovely, but on the big side for a dancer. Despite this couple's skill, Benji lifting her up and spinning her around reminds me of the end of Victor/Victoria. I think the problem is that Donyelle needs to be matched with someone less scrawny if they want her to look delicate and lift-able. Also, at least one source with absolutely no direct knowledge insists that Benji the Mormon swing dancer is gay. Which would explain his mad dancing skills.
  
• Natalie and Musa. If you like watching attractive people have sex (and hey, who doesn't?), you'll probably like watching them dance, even when they don't actually dance particularly well. Just put a condom over your TV or something before having direct contact with it.
  
• Heidi and Ryan. These two are notable solely because Heidi, Benji's cousin, looks sort of like if Reese Witherspoon had grown up in a trailer park and infused a tanker's worth of espresso directly into her veins every morning.

Is the show any good? Sure, if you like watching people occasionally dance very well, and more often stagger through unfamiliar genres. The judges are sort of hit-or-miss, and Mary Murphy, without fail, always uses her horribly nasal voice to deliver the first half of her critique in a normal tone...AND THHHEEEEEEEN SCREECHES OUT THE REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEST. Do yourself a favor and mute her out before the end of her first sentence.

I note that this show tries to pack about 20-25 minutes of content into an hour for the results/solo performance show. This means, yes...musical guests. The musical guests run the gamut from bad to horrid. The absolute low point came in the form of Nellie Furtado badly lip-synching "Promiscuous" with Timbaland. For the love of God, the song has about 30 words -- she couldn't just sing them? Ms. Furtado would also do well to fire her stylist, since I've seen dying crack whores who look classier than she did on the show.

Finally, I don't blame the show for this by any means, but would it kill them to tip their hat to the South Park "You Got Served" episode? Every time they start one of those group dance numbers at the beginning of an episode, I yearn to hear, "Let's see you daaaaaaaaaaaaaance, sucker! You got nothin' on me!"

Sweet.