Category: General

nothing worth defending?

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

the nimrod head of homeland security, michael chertoff, has basically announced that there are no monuments in new york city worth defending, and has disproportionately cut new york city’s homeland security funding.

actually, he’s not a nimrod. he’s an asshat. or an asstard, if you will.

anyway, new york’s senator hilary clinton has come up with the bright idea to send michael “asshat” chertoff postcards from the various monuments he’s not choosing to protect.

i think this is brilliant and witty and subversive in just the right way. i’m going to send a few postcards, and i think you should too.

text-transform: lowercase

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

i learn something every day. today i learned a new css property.

css, for the uninitiated, is a way to control the way your site looks. you put all of your styles into a file, and then each page refers to that file. and so if you want to change the look of your site, you change one file, and the changes roll out to your pages.

so today i used “text-transform: lowercase” to permanently ban capital letters from this site. the whole capital letters ban is silly, i know, but i started my site that way back in 1998 and i’m stubborn that way.

lots of times, when i cut and paste quotes from other sources, i laboriously replace all the capital letters. or let it go, when i’m lazy. now i don’t have to worry about it. i can leave the capital letters in place, and my css file will tell your browser to remove them all. invisibly. in the background. with no work needed from me or you.

it’s a small thing. but it’s cool and it saves me some time occasionally. i can even type in all caps if i want, and you’ll never know i’m shouting.

a thank you/shout out to stex on the greymatter forums site, who mentioned this in a post there.

semi-useless tag cloud added

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anyway, if you ask me they are semi-useless. it’s my new tag cloud.

it’s in my sidebar, off to the right over there, right under my rss feed links. the tag cloud is a constantly updated alphabetical list of words and topics that appear frequently in my blog titles via my rss feed. and the more times something appears, the bigger the font. and you can click through and there’s a list of the links to the places that topic appeared on my blog.

and, of course, you get lots of associated google ad sense ads.

apparently, according to my tag cloud, piss is a hot topic on my blog. i don’t remember mentioning piss, but there you are. click on a word that interests you, even if it’s piss.

the thing is free to me, from the (i’m assuming) nice folks at zoomclouds.com, and it takes up space in my sidebar, and it certainly looks cool, and it graphically conveys the information it’s supposed to. and if you click through they make lots of money on the ads, i guess.

everyone tells me that, with the traffic this site gets, i’m a fool not to put google ad sense ads in my sidebar and collect the dough-re-mi every month. i guess i just think it’s a bit tacky, and i think more of you than that.

but the zoomclouds people have no such compunctions, so click away on my tag cloud if you wish.

bird flu awareness night

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

via gawker:

newark bears bird flu awareness night.

from the site:

Bird Flu Awareness Night featuting a pre-game chicken wing eating contest presented by Planet Wings and a Post-Game Fireworks Spectacular presented by Saint Barnabas Health Care System/Clara Maass Medical Center

bird flu awareness celebrated by a chicken-eating contest. this is pretty much the dictionary definition of irony, n’est-ce pas?

only in new jersey, says the manhattanite.

lunch hour at the new apple store

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apple opened their new nyc store at the top of 5th avenue last friday, with a lot of hoopla, press coverage, and red-hot hype. it was lousy weather and there were tons of people, so i didn’t bother going. although the first 2500 people got t-shirts and that would have been cool. anyway, i headed uptown on my lunch hour to check it out.

the distinctive design element is the much-discussed enormous glass cube at the entrance of the basement retail space on 58th and 5th. first impression of the cube–very, very cool. i was walking east across 58th st., which has a lot of construction and scaffolding and such right now. and when you reach 5th avenue, your view opens up and there’s the cube. there’s an island of space between you and the cube, and it’s still enormous and a very impressive sight. there’s glass elevator access, the glass stairway down, and i spotted an unobtrusive security guard standing off to the side. there may be more–the area is a popular hangout for tourists, so some crowd members may have had a more official capacity. being a new yorker, i worry about the glass cube. i ride the subway every day, and see the effects of etchall on glass windows. and pigeons, and whatnot.

that glass cube is going to be a lot of work, i think.

the gm building basement has always been a dog of a retail space, even with its amazing location at the top of the 5th avenue. to mix a metaphor, apple has taken lemons and made lemonade. the cube draws you in, even if you have no idea what’s at the bottom of the stairs. and the suspended apple logo is classy and elegant.

i’ve never been to an apple store (i’m a tekserve kind of guy). but it’s an exciting retail environment, to be sure. there were hundreds of customers milling around an enormous open room, with stations of dozens and dozens of apple product to try. even with the crowds, there was so much product on display that i had no trouble at all trying the new macbook (unexpected love of that chiclets keyboard), a mac mini hooked up to a 23″ apple display (i may have to put my philips 23″ hdtv to better use), an ipod w/video and a nano (never used anything other than a shuffle), and other stuff as well.

this may be the place i’ll take my apple stuff if i need a genius bar experience. there are a lot of staff at it, and it seems to be a bit better organized than the tekserve “take a number” approach. plus i can go at 5:00 in the morning before work and avoid the crowds–the store is open 24/7.

interestingly, even with the enormous number of customers, i still had very pleasant apple salespeople approach on two separate occasions and offer help if i had questions. definitely an atypical nyc retail experience–i could wander around an empty best buy for hours without an offer of help. even the guy at the bottom of the stairs with the bottle of windex and a rag (there’s a lot of glass in that store!) smiled when i came in.

on 5th avenue, where the abercrombie and fitch store employs a shirtless chelsea boy at the store entrance, and the sirius store has a model dancing in the window with her headset on, it’s nice to see that apple can attract much bigger crowds with a simple, elegant, and cool presence.

update: photos of some of the celebrity attendees at the apple store opening. a couple of a-listers, some b+ listers.

grey gardens–best broadway musical of the season

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ben brantley, in a ny times roundup of the broadway musicals of this year, has called “grey gardens” the best musical of the season.

problem is, “grey gardens” wasn’t a broadway show–it was an off broadway show. as he acknowledges, while making his point about the dearth of good musicals this year.

still, he’s right, from what i’ve seen and read. i loved the show. congratulations to everyone involved with the show–it was my favorite theater experience this year. and it’s broadway bound, so go see it when it arrives.

hopefully by then they will have fixed the howard hughes “spruce goose” anachronism.

ipod shuffle shuffling off?

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

there’s rumors on the internets that apple is killing the shuffle as soon as current inventories (supposedly high) are depleted.

i hope these rumors aren’t true. the shuffle is the only ipod i own, and i love it. it’s perfect for the gym, and the damn thing is indestructible. i have a feeling that i’m the exception, and that most ipod shuffles are owned by people who have another “big” ipod, which makes this a curious marketing decision by apple.

i hope this rumor isn’t true.

new macbooks from apple

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in the absence of having anything else more interesting to say, i’ll just mention that apple released their new entry-level notebooks today.

read all about them, for they are interesting, and buy one if you can afford it, for they are a good value.

except for the black one. you basically pay $150 just to get a black one, instead of the standard white. that’s quite a style premium.

henry ford, who would give you a model t in any color as long as it was black, must be spinning in his grave about now.

it’s a style premium that i’m sure a lot of people will be paying, though. apple is going to sell these new macbooks, black and white alike, by the truckload, or bushel, or whatever measure you prefer.

stealing my subway sub

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which, by the way, i didn’t do, but got accused of this morning.

i should explain.

i’m famous among those who know me for my even temper when dealing with customer service issues. i’m pretty good at getting what i want from customer service people, and the first rule of dealing with them is to never lose your temper. if you do, you give them an excuse to ignore you, hang up on you, or ask you to leave.

anyway, this morning i went on an errand to the post office, and took my subway stamps to get a free sub. it takes eight stamps to get a free sub, or what used to be a free sub but now they make you buy a drink for $1.25 which costs them next to nothing, so they probably break even on the sandwich. and they have stopped giving out stamps, but they are still honoring them.

and i had six stamps, and a card signed by an employee in the spaces where i would have had stamps, except that on that day they had run out of stamps, so they gave me that.

but as far as i was concerned, i had eight stamps.

just to be safe, i asked the counter person on the way in if they still took the stamps. yes, was the answer, but looking at what i brought in, the guy said, “we can’t take this, because it’s not all stamps.”

i explained that the store, this very store, was out of stamps that day, so this is what i got instead of stamps. he wouldn’t budge.

so i asked for the manager, and nicely reiterated my problem. her response?

“this isn’t an employee’s initials–you must have done this yourself.”

now, i’ve been accused of doing many things i didn’t do. and i’ve done tons of things i’m not proud of. but i guarantee you that i’m not going to forge a set of initials on a subway card to fraudently obtain a $5 sandwich i can afford any day of the week. and something about being accused of that, by an obviously idiotic store manager, just triggered a reaction.

i asked her, rather loudly i admit, if she was accusing me of trying to steal a $5 sandwich. she said nothing.

so, after a few awkward moments of silence, i let her have it. man did i really let her have it. it was about ten in the morning, so there were only a couple of employees. but they both stopped serving their customers to watch this guy tear their boss a new asshole.

and i did. i’m not especially proud of it.

who am i kidding? i’m damn proud of it. who does she think she is? suffice it to say she got a lecture on the proper way to deal with a customer, and a run down of all the dining options i had in the rock center concourse, and a detailed description of my recent visits and the sandwiches i had purchased, and the members of my family who were former subway employees (that would be my ex, caitlin), and other choice details too numerous to list. i didn’t curse, though. i know better.

it took me about two minutes, i’d guess. the guys behind the counter had smiles on their faces, so i’m guessing they can’t stand her either. i’m happy to have given them a couple of minutes of vicarious enjoyment.

my final question to her was, “do i get my sandwich or not?” knowing i wouldn’t–i know enough about customer service issues to know that i’d passed that point long ago. i got my no, and i walked out, leaving her with my six stamps and the signed card.

will i patronize subway in general again? of course–it’s a fine company and i like their sandwiches. they are a somewhat healthier alternative to crappy fast food. and each subway is franchisee-owned, so the problem i had here doesn’t carry over to other locations.

will i go to that particular subway franchise again?

what do you think? my high dudgeon will last quite a while.

amazing street art

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

virtual street reality.

follow the link above to see some amazing street art. here’s a description of it, from the site:

Julian Beever is an English artist who is famous for his art on the pavements of England, France, Germany, USA, Australia and Belgium. Its peculiarity? Beever gives his drawings an anamorphosis view, his images are drawn in such a way which gives them three dimensionality when viewing from the correct angle.

coolest thing i’ve seen on the internets in quite a while.

back to number one

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i’m back to the number one position on google for jamie howard, ahead of jamie howard the professional wrestler, and jamie howard the swimming machine, and jamie howard the alderman in davenport iowa, and jamie howard the former ceo of excite, and all the rest.

it’s about damn time. enough of this number two and number three nonsense.

in an effort to figure out google and how it works, i signed up for google sitemaps. you can then get a plethora of info about how google sees your site, and all that.

for instance, i learned that the number one topic i have blogged about is kristin hall. if i just turned this site into a series of blogs about kristen hall, i might get some action around here. and certainly she is an interesting topic.

but i wouldn’t subject her to the vagaries of my attention. she deserves better.

the second hottest topic? peeps pie. come on people. that wasn’t even a blog. it was just a picture, with no words involved.

of course, as i’ve mentioned elsewhere, the number of people subscribing to my rss feed rises with each day that passes that i haven’t blogged. howard’s law, i suppose.

which tells me that you all just want me to shut up, or just talk about peeps pie or kristen hall incessantly.

i get the message.

and on a completely unrelated topic, i found my post containing my american idol prediction. back in early march, i predicted elliot would go all the way.

i think i’m sticking to that. before last night, i thought he was gone. but after last night, he’s around for one more week anyhow. he may be a dark horse, behind chris and taylor, but i think he’s the only performer left who has actually improving somewhat, if only marginally. and i think people are going to notice that, and reward it.

update: all those google hits for kristin hall? i was spelling her name wrong. it’s kristen hall. here’s my mea culpa on the matter.

an evening at carnegie hall

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

kirk and i had tickets to the new york pops 23rd annual gala last night. there was a playbill discount email, and liza minnelli was performing and elaine stritch was hosting, and so i walked up to the box office the next day and got a pair of inexpensive tickets.

glad we did. it was sold out and people were begging for tickets. as well they should have been–it was a great show.

marvin hamlisch was the guest conductor–he did a credible job, and was generally genial, witty, and entertaining. i wonder if he’s auditioning for the job now that skitch henderson is dead. i’m not in the loop on that one–he may already have the job.

anyway, elaine strich was her strich-y best. she sang two numbers, the second of which was the best performance of the evening. i don’t know the name of the song–perhaps kirk will be kind enough to post a comment (hint hint)–but she can deliver a lyric with better phrasing to convey emotion than anyone else alive, for my money.

liza sang “i love a piano”, as the theme was piano stuff what with the evening being a tribute to skitch henderson who was a real piano guy. she wasn’t in the best voice but with liza it really doesn’t matter, as she too can deliver with style that overcomes it.

i also liked bob lappin, who leads the palm beach pops. he led the new york pops orchestra in some well-chosen numbers and really made them sound good. when i retire to palm beach, i may have to buy a ticket.

the gala honoree was ahmet ertegun of atlantic records, so we got to hear two of his recording artists perform with the pops, which was a real treat in both cases. the first was a young scottish guy named paolo nutini–i’m going to have to buy a song or two on itunes. he had a very expressive voice–the crowd really loved him. and the other was kid rock, of all people.

now you’d think that kid rock at the pops would be oil and water, and he self-disparagingly said as much at the beginning of his performance, but he was fantastic. he sang one of his songs, and then sang “rock and roll” by led zeppelin.

and he was the only performer to get a curtain call. how about that.

now i have to gripe a bit. evidently the pops has some kind of program to give tickets to kids who sit in the balcony, and it exposes them to art and all. and the balcony above us was full of kids.

and they were perfectly behaved. they were quiet as church mice when the concert pianist played and when the pops played their pop, and they were appropriately energetic when, say, darlene love sang “da do ron ron”. good to see it.

so what am i griping about?

well, the old biddies in front of me, who, quite the opposite of the kids, sat like stone through kid rock, and paolo nutini, and darlene love and all, but couldn’t keep their fat mouths shut during, for example, the cole porter medley. in loud voices, they discussed whether or not they had seen “de-lovely” and whether or not they liked it, until i nicely asked them to stfu.

kirk thinks that’s true in general, and i’m inclined to agree with him. i think old people tend to be more clueless about appropriate public behavior than young people. you can disagree, but i don’t care.

when kirk and i get our finances more in order, we’re going to get season tickets to the pops or something similar.

we had a great time.

update: paolo nutini’s site has free downloads of his music, but they are pc only. bad form, paolo nutini.

small town city

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new york is a small town.

in fact, it’s probably more of a small town than the small town you live in.

because you walk everywhere in new york, there’s more opportunity to get to know people, and see people you know. and because there are few large megastores (although this is slowly changing), a lot of your shopping tends to take place at small independently-owned mom-and-pop type stores. this leads inevitably to your knowing these people as well.

do you know the cashier’s name at wal-mart? don’t lie to me. most times you don’t. and i know you too well. if you have a wal-mart or the equivalent available, you shop there. kirk and i have a target within walking (15 minutes) distance, but the vast majority of our shopping is still done at small stores. when you don’t have a car and have to physically carry everything you purchase, it makes a big difference in your shopping habits. no going to the grocery store or the box store or the wal-mart super center and filling up the car with crap to last you weeks.

you have to be judicious.

so, out of necessity, you make lots of frequent shopping trips. pick up a few things after work every day. and when you make a purchase of a large, heavy item, you have to factor in the price of the taxi to get it home, which admittedly makes internet shopping for big things very attractive. but oddly, most times we buy large heavy things locally. and most times, we make lots of little trips to dick’s hardware, not home depot. we go to c-town, not kroger’s or publix. we go to grandpa’s pizza, not pizza hut.

all of this is to explain that all these frequent shopping trips to the same places makes you friendly with a lot of people. some you know their names, some you don’t. but you still know them, and they know you. going to macy’s to get my razor fixed today reminded me of that.

i have a norelco razor that’s at least 10 years old, probably more. i’ve forgotten how old it is, but i’ve had it a long time. and every year i take it to macy’s and get the blades replaced and the razor cleaned and lubed and whatnot, and it costs me about $40. every few years i have to get the rechargeable batteries replaced, and this trip i had to get that done too, so it was another $30. so with tax, $80-ish. still cheaper than a new norelco razor, which i have no idea if it would work well or last a long time.

and $40 a year is less money than people spend on disposable razors and all the accompanying accoutrements and the like, so i think it’s $40 well spent.

and every year, i spend it with james on the top floor of macy’s, in the razor department. he’s an older gentleman who remembers what it means to give good customer service, and gives it, and remembers you too, or at least does a good job of acting like he remembers you, which is in effect the same thing anyway.

and james is just one in a long line of people i know in new york, and see on a regular basis, and interact with, and it’s because i live in a small town.

it’s a small town because i got my ass out of a car, and started walking around and interacting with people. ian mckellen was on the hbo bill maher show recently, and he made this exact point, and everyone was generally dismissive of him.

but he’s exactly right. people spend their lives in their automotive bubble-of-unreality, and people become less human to them, and their interactions with others become more and more strained.

and if you are saying “well, i live too far from everything and have to drive,” my response to you is that you have made a conscious decision to put yourself in that position, and you have options.

and if you are then saying, “well, i can’t afford to live in a large city like new york that is dense and walkable and has public transportation options”, my response to you is that you could damn well afford it if you weren’t paying so much for that car of yours. i’ve lived both lifestyles. you can’t fool me.

at the very least, i think you should park your car and walk as much as you can, and stop going to wal-mart and start going to neighborhood stores even if it costs you a bit more, and start cultivating regularly scheduled inconsequential interactions with regular people on a regular basis.

i think you should endeavor to make where you live a small town, no matter where you live.

a small town much like new york city.

the 9/11 memorial

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this post will probably piss off at least 13 of the 14 readers i have. but it’s what i think, and so be it.

i ran across this quote from the uk guardian on salon today. it’s from an older story about the terrorists bombings at the atocha train station in madrid, and how the spanish government chose to memorialize the victims:

“The Atocha memorial lacks any hint of artistic grandeur. Yet its very banality is also somehow appropriate — for this war will be won or lost not in some grand showdown but in a trillion tiny everyday encounters, like those of commuters pouring off a suburban train.”

as the salon article notes, “there’s a simple and discreet memorial to the bombing victims.”

i completely agree with this sentiment. every time i take the subway in the morning, it’s a thumb in the eye of both the terrorists who want me to be afraid to take it, and the u.s. government with their completely ineffective fearmongering “war on terror”.

so why then are we spending a billion dollars on a memorial to the 9/11 victims? or even $500 million, for that matter?

build a nice secure train station at the world trade center site, and put up a simple and discreet memorial in it.

and take the difference between the cost of that and the billion dollars, and do something constructive with it.

when the freedom tower is built and is full of occupants, that’ll be the most effective memorial anyone could wish for.

american idol? feh.

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i’m getting bored with idol.

three or four weeks ago, it seemed that this was the best crop of talent ever. i was geniunely looking forward to the weeding out process.

but the song selection has sucked, for the most part. and not a single idol has progressed past the point where they started. each remaining idol sings just like they did when they started.

no growth.

and i haven’t been blown away by a single performance in weeks. when i say blown away, i’m talking at the level of fantasia singing “summertime”, which was for me the high water mark of idol performances. no one is even close to that this year.

hell, no one has even approached the level established by clay aiken when he sang “solitaire”. and that’s saying something, because i am not now nor have i ever been a claymate, and i laughed my ass off at his attempt to be a sincere neil sedaka. that performance though, in retrospect, seems toweringly godlike in comparison to what i’m suffering through now.

although i must admit i do find clay’s video chat escapades quite amusing.

so we are left with taylor, who i like quite a lot but needs to get serious and stop goofing around with crap like “play that funky music”. taylor, you need more tom waits and more ray charles, not more wild cherry.

and chris, who i have never liked. i like his voice but his phrasing drives me bonkers. and stylistically he just rips off so many people, and brings nothing original of his own to bear. it gripes me that no one calls him on this–so many of his performances have been rip-offs of lesser known versions of songs (red hot chili peppers, live, and the list goes on from there).

and catherine, who always sounds slightly off-key or pitchy to me, and is sometimes tolerable and once in a while pretty good. but then she stops singing and opens her mouth to talk and i just can’t stand her. i did like her second song on tuesday, though–the one with the drums.

and elliot, who please please please needs to stop looking at the camera in that amish-boy-just-off-the-farm way. he has zero charisma, or less than zero. if i close my eyes i love him. if i open them i’m aghast.

so i guess i’m left rooting for taylor, but only by default.

the final weeks? elliot goes next, then catherine, then taylor wins the taylor vs. chris showdown to be the next american idol.

but i have a feeling that people are really fickle this time, and a really crappy week or a brilliant week by anyone, but especially by taylor or chris, could dramatically change the balance.

oh by the way, here’s a great place to get caught up on your yiddish, if you don’t know what feh means.

apple adds ads

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apple has started to advertise the mac.

it’s about time.

if you haven’t seen them yet, head on over to the link above. they are marvelously done, with the slight exception of the “better” ad, which is not my favorite.

the rest of them, though, have a perfect tone. there’s a geeky guy (john hodgman from the daily show) who plays the part of the pc, and a younger, hipper guy (justin long, from ed and dodgeball, among others) who plays the part of the mac.

the way they set these up is brilliant. past apple ads have been condescending toward pc users, the very people they are trying to attract. these ads are set up so that the pc guy admits his own (or, by proxy, his computer’s own) mistakes. and the mac guy is always cute, never threatening or insulting, yet gets relatively obscure geeky points across in a humorous way.

whoda thunk that viruses, or networking, or the horrors of constant restarting, could be explained in such a humorous and cute way?

i saw the ads on tv last night for the first time, during “american idol” and “house”. i’d watched them all online before that, though.

and i would have seen them during “24” on monday night and would have been completely surprised by them, which would have been really cool. but kirk the asshat had to keep jumping up and running to do things during the commercials on “24”, which meant that i paused the show on the pvr and then hit the live button, thus missing the commercials.

kirk isn’t really an asshat. but isn’t that a great word? i’ve seen it online a few places recently. great word. so i just wanted to use it, even though it wasn’t an appropriate use.

anyway, my favorite is “network”, followed by “viruses” and “ilife”.

go watch them.

and then go find out all about why and how to switch to a mac

and then switch, dammit. it’ll be the best thing you ever did.

by the way, assuming that i actually post regularly, i’m going to start putting the entire post on the front page, rather than putting a teaser on the front page and then making you click to read the rest.

let me know what you think.