Category: General

unsolicited aerogrow recommendation

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

rarely am i impressed enough with a company and a product to give a shout-out. i’m pretty anti-commercial, in spite of my employment in the marketing department of a fortune 500 media mega-conglomerate.

so it goes, as our lost friend kurt vonnegut would say.

but i am so impressed with the aerogrow that i’m going to tell you all about it.

i ordered one of these contraptions for kirk after seeing it described in the pages of a magazine. it’s a one-piece grow light and hydroponic feeder for plants. you fill it (and refill it) with water, add the provided nutrients, and in a few weeks’ time you have herbs or tomatoes or strawberries or whatever you chose to grow. it is absolutely foolproof–built-in indicator lights tell you when to add water and all, and the lights cycle on and off to provide just the right amount of light and whatnot.

kirk had tried to cobble together a grow system in our dark apartment kitchen with little success. this thing works perfectly, though. we started with the herb schmear, though on the second go-around we’ve decided to grow just basil because that’s what we use the most.

and the aerogrow company’s customer service is outstanding. we had a dill failure the first time around, and they sent us a replacement at no charge. and our second round of herbs (the basil exclusive) came with explanations of just what to do to replace the old stuff and get a successful second wave.

the company really has thought out every thing you could possibly want to know or do, and has you covered. and they’ve thought out every way you could screw it up, and engineered the product, packaging, and instructions to avoid the problems. it’s the best-designed system imaginable. when we move to riverdale, we will probably buy a second one, so we can grow tomatoes along with our basil.

kudos to you, aerogrow.

we have a contract

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

the seller of the coop we are trying to buy returned the signed contract. we have a verbal commitment to a mortgage with the letter forthcoming.

next stop, the coop board.

fingers crossed.

if this all works out as planned, we could be in our own apartment [that we actually own] by early fall.

notes regarding the site

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

first, and most obvious, is the site design. i’m a great fan of scott wallick‘s design philosophy and his wordpress themes that arise from it. i used a modified version of barthelme since i moved the site to wordpress from greymatter, but i thought it was time for a change.

enter plaintxtblog, another scott wallick theme, which is what you are seeing now. i like the three-column design, which allows you to see more sidebar items more quickly. and with minor modification here and there, the theme is working quite nicely for me.

i’ve even left the all-capital letters in the post headings, though i’ve taken care of capital letters everywhere else via the theme’s css. you know, the lack of capital letters is a queerspace tradition since my site went live in 1998, and i can’t change now. but i can make a small concession to modernity via the headings.

scott, paypal coming at ya, as soon as kirk explains how to do it. he has a paypal account. i don’t. i’m like a technological idiot savant in so many ways. i can tear apart website coding like nobody’s business. but the concept of paypal confounds me.

secondly, my host, invision power services, has had some uncharacteristic server problems that they promise will be ironed out today. if you’ve been having trouble accessing the site, the problem should be gone shortly.

finally, i’m all a-twitter now. you can see my latest doings in the sidebar to the left, under “what i’m doing”.

god help me for following trends.

the office basketball pool, part deux

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

third place this year–$70 cash, baby.

for the second time in three years, i’m in the money.

i would have been in the money last year, but even though i suspected florida would do well, i didn’t have the guts to pick them to go all the way, and i should have.

i didn’t make that mistake this year. i nailed the final four, the two teams that went to the final, and the winner. i messed up a bit in the early rounds and lost crucial points that kept me from winning, but i’m happy with third.

let me make this clear.

i know absolutely nothing about basketball. i hate the game, and i never watch it, and i don’t follow the results, and i couldn’t name five nba players if you had a gun to my head.

i do, however, have a system. it’s really complicated, but i’ll try to explain it.

download the odds.

fill in your bracket according to the odds.

pick the underdog to win the final game.

i pick the underdog to win the final game because so many people in contention at the end will have picked the favorite, and that can make the difference between winning it all if you get down to the wire.

this year i picked florida, even though they were the favorite. i lived in gainesville for several years, and i couldn’t dispassionately abandon them again this year.

i’m glad i didn’t.

the millenium the music died

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

there’s an unbroken line that runs from frank sinatra, to elvis, to the beatles, to david bowie, to the sex pistols, to u2, to nirvana, to eminem.

someone was always around to shake things up and make music interesting again, when all was looking irretrievably lost. the sex pistols had sid. u2 has bono. nirvana had kurt. the beatles got lucky and had two people. well, maybe, two and a half, if you count george.

i wish someone would come along and make music interesting again. and don’t tell me about the arctic monkeys or franz ferdinand or whatever the flavor of the month band is now.

you know what i mean, and the scale of influence to which i’m referring.

npr is getting boring.

i’m not buying an apple tv

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

at least not yet, i’m not.

i know–heresy.

i have my reasons.

the apple tv is a not-unattractive box that wirelessly connects your computer to your widescreen hdtv. that allows you to listen to your itunes music, and watch your itunes videos, all on your tv. pretty cool, huh?

really i think it is pretty cool.

and i have a widescreen hdtv, and i have a mac, and i have itunes with lots of music and even some purchased video (notably, season one of wonder showzen). and i recently cancelled my cable television subscription, retaining only a 768k broadband internet connection.

so what’s stopping me?

i went to the fifth avenue apple store and looked at one, that’s what. and i watched a few seconds of lost, and a few seconds of the incredibles. and it looked like crap. i’m no videophile, but there were noticeable blocky areas and jaggies and dark indiscriminate areas and i’m not paying for that.

and i’m too honest to limewire content. it feels like stealing to me, even if there’s a good argument that it’s not. plus it takes forever, it takes up enormous gigs of hard disk space, and then you watch it once or twice and have to figure out what to delete and what to keep. too much trouble.

and i am far too lazy to rip my own video content from dvds to watch it later. i honestly don’t see the point in that. and all that crap would still litter my hard drive. it’s much easier just to put the netflix dvd in the player, and send it back when done.

and you can’t watch video on the internet. oh, i know. you can hack your apple tv so it can play other video formats, and run joost to watch internet tv, and all that. but apple tv doesn’t do that out of the box, and i’m not a hacker. i want a solution that works, not one that i have to fiddle with and void my apple tv warranty to get going.

the apple tv music streaming would be nice, and i’m sure kirk would love to have a break from the constant drone of npr, which i listen to non-stop since there’s no tv to watch. but the truth is, just like i’m too lazy to rip video, i’m too lazy to rip my cds too. i would probably listen to more music if i organized it digitally. but i have hundreds and hundreds of cds, and the thought of ripping all of it is just too daunting. and the vinyl? my god, the vinyl. and the cassettes.

ugh.

some weekend i’ll get up the gumption and set up an assembly line of sorts and rip all the cds i own. and i’ll selectively make mp3s out of some of the vinyl, at least the stuff that’s ultra-rare. that day is coming soon. but music is different than movies and tv. music, i’ll listen to many, many times. it’s worth the time investment to digitally organize it.

movies? tv? i can count on one hand the number of movies i watch repeatedly.

and don’t tell me to buy an xbox, or a slingbox, or a media center pc, or whatever. i could care less about all the tinkering i’d have to do to get those things running. i want an apple solution, because i know it will just work easily, and work right. that’s my prerogative as a consumer, to wait for what i want and do without until i get it, even if that’s never.

i want democracy tv, or the equivalent, to work through my apple tv.

my point is this: at some point, i’m betting the apple tv will be a conduit for all manner of online video content. some of it will be crappy and free, and some of it may be decent and free, and some of it may be hd content from the itunes store.

when i have better apple tv video options provided by apple, they will get $299 or $499 or whatever from me. i hope i don’t have to resort to buying a mac mini to hook up to the tv. that would be an ideal solution, but it feels like expensive overkill.

for now i’m taking a raincheck.

and if, as i suspect is true, the apple tv will only ever officially be tied to purchased video content at the itunes store?

i might still buy an apple tv, if the content looked good and the price was right.

and if it was rental video content at the apple store?

sold. one apple tv in jamie’s living room.

wal-mart gives up on manhattan

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

from the ny times this morning: wal-mart has given up efforts to locate a store in manhattan

it’s a free country and they are free to try to build in manhattan if they can.

and it’s a free country and manhattanites can do everything in their power to stop them.

and i’m glad they did. i hate frigging wal-mart. one of the things i love about new york is that there are so many mom-and-pop and local chain stores, and it’s easy to spend money knowing that money will stay in the local economy. you could live your whole life here and practically never spend money in the local outlet of a national chain. i don’t need wal-mart coming in and ushering those locals out of business.

especially with morons like lee scott in charge of the company:

During the questioning, Mr. Scott repeatedly referred to New York, but after the meeting a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, Mona Williams, called to say that Mr. Scott was referring to only Manhattan, not the entire city.

hey mr. scott, you freakin’ idiot. news flash. new york has five boroughs.

later in the article is this choice nugget:

Speaking about what he sees as snobbish elites in New York and across the country, Mr. Scott added, “You have people who are just better than us and don’t want a Wal-Mart in their community.”

not better, mr. scott. probably just better informed.

hacking john mccain

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

apparently john mccain doesn’t quite get how those internets work, with all the tubes and whatnot.

or at least his staff doesn’t.

turns out that they stole their my space page design, and linked back to the original page for their artwork. which meant that the poor original designer had to foot the bill for the bandwidth for the images every time someone hit john mccain’s my space page.

but, it gets better. that also means that, if you substitute a new image on your server, it will magically appear on john mccain’s my space page.

which the designer did. you can see the results here.

for those of you too lazy to click through, here’s what the image says:

Dear Supporters,

Today I announce that I have reversed my position and come out in full support of gay marriage…particularly marriage between passionate females.

John

ok, so i could do without the straight-boy take on hot lesbian sex.

but you have to admit, this is brilliant.

hopefully mccain’s staff has learned their lesson.

everything’s coming to a grinding halt

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

bonus points to me for the lyrical reference to the cure. the mood i’m in, be glad i didn’t quote “sinking”.

we made such good headway with buying the coop apartment. we found a place we liked. we made an offer and it was accepted.

stop.

full stop.

we’ve been waiting for a week and a half now, with no word from the owner, who needs to sign the papers so we can get going on the mortgage. apparently he’s in korea and can’t be contacted. and his relative, who is living in the apartment and has power of attorney, isn’t signing until he talks to him, or something like that.

the waiting. my god, the waiting.

we really like the apartment, and we think the price is fair to both sides.

but something’s gotta give. soon.

daylight savings time, and the mac

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

you just lost an hour, if you’ve forgotten.

at work, it’s a major headache. microsoft somehow botched the transition to the new congress-improved version of daylight savings time. so we have to go back and reschedule outlook appointments for a certain time period, because microsoft couldn’t figure out the transition. and everyone who booked conference rooms for meetings may lose those conference rooms, because the time didn’t move properly, so someone else may have booked the room for the time slot they needed, in the interim.

among other glitches. geez louise, those guys are idiots.

at home, i have a mac. got up this morning, the time was displayed properly in all applications, and everything just worked.

tell me again why you don’t use a mac?

update: in addition to all the other issues, after the microsoft “fix” of outlook, all of my “all-day” appointments (the reminders at the top of each day) now span two days. microsoft is truly an idiotic company.

me, a homo-wner?

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

should, of course, be homeowner. but i wanted to drive the lame joke to its breaking point.

yes, kirk and i are thinking about buying a coop. seriously thinking, to the point of realigning our finances to put things in motion, and looking at places.

now, let’s get this straight. i didn’t suddenly win the lottery. i can’t afford to buy in manhattan–not even in inwood, where we live now. so we’re looking in riverdale, which is just over the harlem river in the bronx. a very nice old neighborhood, with lots of affordable places, and not more than 15 additional minutes commute away from where we are now.

more to come as the story develops.

jello biafra at the knitting factory

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

my god, what a show.

i’ve seen some amazing spoken word performances in my life. henry rollins. utah phillips. hunter s. thompson. jim carroll.

nothing compares to jello biafra, i have to say. although all those other guys come close, in their own way, jello edges into the lead due to sheer stamina.

onstage at 8:45 PM. one fifteen minute break, two and one-half hours into the show. offstage just after 1:00 AM. by my count that’s four continuous hours of dialogue.

and every damn minute was compelling.

you got some “greatest hits” (loved the imitation of his weirdly swedish high school geometry teacher), but also an awful lot of extemporaneous conversation, mostly about iraq. it’s tough to say what was the best, or what was wonderful, because of the sheer volume of ideas. the best i could do was to take away a general feeling of reflection and renewed commitment and enthusiasm for doing the right thing again.

it was an affirmation, too. i’m doing the right thing in a lot of ways. giving back a significant portion of my income to microloans via finca. registered to vote, and actually voting, and actually voting in all the odd primaries and local races. and just generally giving a shit.

i admire people like jello biafra, and larry kramer, and all the other people who can keep that fire burning intensely for so long. the normal human tendency is to soften with age, become more conservative with age, compromise with age.

seeing someone like jello biafra gives me hope that everything might not be completely lost. thank god he’s still fighting the good fight.

dinner at mocca espresso lounge–loved the food (fried halloumi cheese, veggie burgers, tilapia, house-made cheesecake), great service, excellent italian sodas and espresso martinis. worth stopping by if you are in the area.

what i wanted to do

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

coming to work this morning, i made the usual trek from subway to building. it’s all underground, and the entrance to my building is a revolving door in the lower level concourse of rockefeller center.

i’m assuming you know how a revolving door works. you push, and walk forward, and the door spins.

unless, of course, you are the type of person who doesn’t push the door.

the type of person that doesn’t do your part.

here’s how that works. it’s a busy door, and there’s someone ahead of you pushing, and there’s usually someone behind you pushing, and so you just stand there and walk forward, and let someone else do all the work. there’s a possibility that if there’s no one behind you, the door could stop revolving and you’d be stuck. and then you’d have to push, or stand there until someone behind you pushed.

and that’s what happened this morning. this woman just walked in the door in her slot without pushing, the person in front of her pushed the door, and she depended on me to push from behind so that she wouldn’t have to.

call me picky, but i think that behavior like this is indicative of a deep personality flaw. whoever she was, i’d bet she carries that attitude over into her everyday dealings, and that wouldn’t be pretty.

i so wanted to not push the door, and leave her standing there. but i’m a basically nice guy, and so i pushed.

maybe i shouldn’t have.

the meat tray, part 2

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

nearly two years ago i wrote about my joy in receiving an enormous tray of meat as a prize in a raffle.

kirk and i were in reading, pennsylvania visiting his parents, and returned to the scene of the crime. the local fire company has an occasional sunday breakfast as a fundraiser. it features salted mackerel (can’t say i’m a fan of salty fishy breakfasts) but they have normal breakfast food as well.

and they sell chances for meat trays, a dollar a chance.

it was my first time returning since winning my original meat tray. i bought my one dollar ticket.

and in a room of at least a hundred people, i’ll be damned if i didn’t win the meat tray again. i’m two for two in the meat tray prize department. can’t get much better than that. what are the odds? at least 100-to-1 for winning each one. and lightning striking twice? pretty cool.

so sitting in my fridge, i have sausage, hamburger, pork chops, chicken, and steak. some of it is destined for the freezer, of course.

i think that eating meat must be my destiny.

justin bond and the monks

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

sunday and monday, i attended back to back theatrical events that showcased the variety of opportunities for fun in new york city.

on monday night, i was at joe’s pub for the inaugural talk show with justin bond. justin bond is the performer who portrays kiki of kiki and herb, who i write about all the freaking time. his guests were michael musto the gossip writer, jay brannan from shortbus, and jane adams, an actress who most recently starred in “little children”.

it got off to a bit of a slow start but got progressively more interesting and hilarious as the evening wore on. the highlight? most definitely justin’s performance of “god hates fags”, a song he got off a (who knew?) anti gay “christian” website.

don’t get me started.

anyway, here’s the clip in all its glory, straight from you tube:

jay brannan also sang a song, but it’s not up on you tube yet. it was called (i think) “half a boyfriend”–he has a gorgeous voice and plays impeccable guitar. someone sign this kid up!

we’re going back next week as well–it’s john cameron mitchell from hedwig and shortbus, debbie harry from (of course) blondie, and someone else whose name escapes me. well worth the $20 + two drinks to see.

sunday night, at the polar opposite of the spectrum, we saw the gyuto monks from tibet at town hall. not what i would have picked for myself, but kirk wanted to go so i went too. and it was marvelous.

they do this deep-throated guttural chanting that sounds like three notes at once. and when you get twenty of them doing it at once, and throw in some native instruments like drums and bugle-y horns and steel drum-y things, you get a very unusual and surprisingly calming sound.

i loved it.

not as much as i loved justin bond, but still. two great nights in a row. can’t ask for more than that.

we have wii, and you can too

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

i couldn’t stand it any more. i’ve been wanting a wii for months, and my hit-and-miss approach to various nyc stores wasn’t working. and i wasn’t about to pay the ebay premium for a console. so i visited the nintendo store in rockefeller plaza on friday, and asked how to go about getting one.

“show up at 7am on monday morning and get in line,” i was told.

ok then. ok then.

cut to this morning. thinking that the coldest morning of the year, the day after the super bowl, might be a good time to wait in line to get a wii?

maybe a bit foolish. there was some logic. i thought there would be fewer people than usual.

boy was i wrong.

i got there at 7:15am–close enough, right? it was, i think 14 degrees, with a wind chill on top of that. and there were already 10 people in line ahead of me. some of them had been there since 5:30.

in chatting with them, though, i was assured that i was there early enough, and i’d get one.

i’ve waited in lines in freezing weather before, most notably when i bought mets tickets at shea on the first day of ticket sales. my reward that time was meeting former met ed kranepool. cold weather waiting has been good to me.

so i decided to stick it out.

it wasn’t too bad. i’d worn several layers of thermal clothing, so i was pretty warm. i thought two pairs of socks and a thick pair of shoes would be adequate, but my feet damn near froze standing on the cold concrete. i took to standing on one leg at a time, like a frigging flamingo.

and i chatted some more with the other people in line. they were young, of course, and enthusiastic, and had all kinds of advice about which games to buy and which accessories to buy and why to buy a wii and not a playstation or an xbox and all that.

the young woman in front of me was particularly interesting. she used to work in direct action for greenpeace, and so we chatted about greenpeace versus peta and their direct action methods. which ended up in a conversation about the evils of corporate america, and greedy people, and the loss of small business in new york. a pleasant conversation.

several people walking by asked us what we were in line for. her response? we’re waiting for wiis, she said. it shows a level of commitment, she said. it’s like a little community, she said. you enjoy it more when you wait for it, she said.

and then, at about 8:30, a guy walked down the line of people, handing out rolls of cash. he gave a wad to the young woman in front of me, too.

he skipped me.

“i’ll be waiting outside,” he said to them. “bring them right to me when you get them.”

oh.

sometimes, when i think i’m older and jaded and worldly and nothing can surprise me, i get surprised, and i realize that i’m not as clever as i think i am.

the doors to the nintendo store opened at 8:45. an hour and a half wait. not bad.

there were four cashiers inside, waiting to sell the small stack of wiis behind the counter. clearly the majority of the people in line (a line that by that time stretched nearly a block) were going home empty-handed.

three of those four cashiers were taking cash, from all the shills in front of me. the remaining forlorn cashier spoke, quietly, evidently not expecting a reply.

“is anyone paying with a credit card?”

no one in front of me was, so i stepped past them all, got my wii, got an extra controller and an extra nunchuk, bought an extra game called “trauma center” which looked fun, and was out of there.

i’m looking forward to playing my wii. i’ll let you know how it is.

i’m sure that all those wiis bought with cash will be eventually be enjoyed as well, when the profits are made and the premiums are paid.

i’ll bet i enjoy mine a bit more, though.

must be something in the dirty water

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

oh, boston. i’m glad you aren’t my home. the home of public officials so stupid that they can’t tell the difference between a lite-brite and a terrorist bomb device.

basically, it was guerilla marketing in a couple of dozen cities over the past few weeks. none of the other cities were idiotic enough to think that al-qaeda was disguising their next attack on america as mooninites from aqua teen hunger force.

and so the great city of boston arrests the terrorists, i mean, the guerilla posting guys, who then give a press conference the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the beatles came to america. from cnn:

Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens were released on $2,500 bail, said Mike Rich, their attorney. The next pre-trial hearing is scheduled for March 7.

Both men were cooperative with authorities, and neither has a previous criminal record in Massachusetts, Grossman said.

In a news conference, Rich told reporters he had advised his clients not to discuss the incident. Stevens and Berdovsky took the podium and said they were taking questions only about haircuts in the 1970s.

When a reporter accused them of not taking the situation seriously, Stevens responded, “We’re taking it very seriously.” Asked another question about the case, Stevens reiterated they were answering questions only about hair and accused the reporter of not taking him and Berdovsky seriously.

Reporters did not relent and as they continued, Berdovsky disregarded their queries, saying, “That’s not a hair question. I’m sorry.”

now that’s some classic stuff. john lennon would be proud.

update: here’s the video

58% of americans are complacent, selfish idiots

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

that’s one way to look at the results of this poll, which compares the reactions of americans to their counterparts in other countries.

from the article:

People in Latin America were most worried while U.S. citizens were least concerned with just 42 percent rating global warming “very serious.”

The United States emits about a quarter of all greenhouse gases, the biggest emitter ahead of China, Russia and India.

Thirteen percent of U.S. citizens said they had never heard or read anything about global warming, the survey said.

how sad is that? 58 percent of americans don’t think global warming is a very serious problem. and 13 percent of americans have never even heard of it.

the story isn’t perfect. i’d like to know how many americans rated it a “serious” problem as opposed to “very serious”. still, we have a long way to go in this country to catch up to the awareness level of other countries.

on the other hand, as i’ve said many times, the earth ain’t going nowhere, and life on earth ain’t going nowhere either. the virus known as people might, though.

la casserole–18th arrondisement, paris

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

this is the restaturant where kirk and i sang, ate, drank, socialized, and had an enormously good time until 5am. here are the pictures:

« click on thumbnails to view pictures »

“cerf”, a.k.a.
rudolph

huge filet
of beef

liquid
refreshment

la casserole
food fest

birthday
cake

birthday
cake

la casserole
food fest

la casserole
food fest

la casserole
food fest

la casserole
food fest

la casserole
food fest

more details to come!

i’m still here

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

i know, it’s been a while. it’s been quite a month.

first, my group of five people at my place of employment was cut to two. just my boss and me. so, as you can imagine, i’ve been quite busy at work, which spills over into quite busy at home.

you get the picture.

and then kirk and i were gone for a week and a half on vacation. paris and strasbourg. lovely, fun, and too many stories. i had the night of my life at la casserole in the 18th arrondisement of paris. i’ll tell you all about that. suffice it to say that i had an 8pm dinner reservation, and left at 5am. the next morning.

lots of pictures, lots of stories. lots to tell.

we’ll get caught up.