Category: moods

that obnoxious chevy trucks ad

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

you’ve probably seen it. the one with the john cougar, i mean mellencamp, song, and the pictures of rosa parks and martin luther king, vietnam and nixon.

and 9/11.

fucking chevrolet. using imagery of 9/11 to sell a gas-sucking pickup truck. that’s wrong, wrong, wrong, in so many ways. the first time i saw this commercial, i screamed at the frigging tv. i was in the city when 9/11 happened, i experienced the ensuing chaos firsthand (though, thank god, i was in midtown and not downtown).

and, as i sat on a bus crossing the pulaski bridge from queens to brooklyn, i cried looking at the shafts of light reaching to the sky. the same image that chevrolet is now callously using to merchandise their spectacularly craptastic consumer product.

slate has a longer piece on this subject, a great read and far more coherent than i’ll be on the subject. check it out.

and don’t go buying any chevy trucks, or chevy anything for that matter. chevrolet can try to wrap themselves in faux patriotism all they want, in order to try to sell trucks to the clueless.

but no one is that clueless, and i’m certainly not.

weekend wishes

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

the weekend can’t come quickly enough.

is that sad? i’m on the third day of a four day work week, because of labor day. and i’ve been spoiled with summer fridays since june. next week is a five day week…i’ll have to mentally buckle down. thank god i have a great job with a good company and an outstanding boss.

so it’s not like i’m wishing it was the weekend because i hate work. i’m just looking forward to the stuff we have planned.

during the day on saturday, we’re going to see the mets play the dodgers. and it’s sports bag day, so i get a freebie to use when i go to the gym. emblazoned with the mets logo, of course.

saturday night we’re seeing the orfeo duo at church. from their site:

We are a sister and brother violin and piano duo known for our close rapport with each other and with our audiences and for our power of communication. Our mission is to encourage and inspire people of all ages through music-making that expresses the breath of life. We’ve performed throughout the Americas as well as in Europe and made numerous recordings. Our repertoire ranges from Bach to music by young composers from our neighborhood, including the complete sonatas of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, and Bartok, many beautiful early twentieth-century pieces, and short pieces, including our own arrangements of songs and arias. We perform from memory, and our performances are colored by exploration of historical performance practices and kindled by a spirit of improvisation.

sounds good to me–i’m in the mood for some culture. stop by (Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Inwood, call 212-222-2101 for more information) if you get the chance–i think it’ll be a great show.

and sunday is the first birthday party for our godson. kirk and i are godparents…how cool is that?

now, if you had that weekend, wouldn’t you look forward to it?

cranky about my crankiness

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

i have been cranky, to be truthful, for days now.

and i’m getting really cranky about it.

thankfully, i have friday off. my last summer friday of the year. it’s a wonderful new york tradition. do they have them where you are? all summer (memorial day to labor day) we get a total of seven fridays off.

i’d never heard of them until i got to new york. sure do love them.

and they are probably the only thing saving me from lunacy right now. work is a pita. not the bread. it’s an acronym. figure it out.

it’s really bad when you are so cranky that just the mere thought of how cranky you are makes you even crankier. and i lost sleep over work issues last night, which is a big no-no for me, and that made me, you guessed it, cranky.

i need to stop, and take a deep breath, and take stock, and take a chill pill, and take five, and take my time, and take it easy, and take it as it comes.

except that i’m kind of enjoying my cranky mood. don’t tell me to cheer up.

finding my voice

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

this is the most disorganized schizo blog on the planet.

well, maybe that’s overstating things a bit. i’ve seen a few myspace pages, and they have more than lapped me on the track of incoherence. but most people who do this sort of thing semi-seriously have a theme, and a point of view, and they talk about things consistently and cohesively.

and they play the blog game as well. that is, they find other like blogs and comment on them, and link back to them, and then that person does the same, and everyone logrolls (the nice way to put it) or circle jerks (the non-euphemistic way to put it) themselves to lots of comments and feedback and trackbacks and such.

i just don’t do that, because, to be frank, this is more of a personal diary than a blog for you to read. if you find it interesting, more power to you. read away. but i really find this more of a way for me to be able to look back over time and see what concerned me, or what i found interesting.

when i started the blog part of queerspace.com, in october of 2004, every other blog entry i wrote was political. heat of the moment, with the election and all, i suppose.

now i could care less. or couldn’t care less. i forget which is correct. couldn’t is certainly more logical.

and i’ve been feeling a bit guilty over the past little bit, because a lot of my blog entries have been little more than collections of links that i saw online somewhere, and linked to and commented on a bit. that’s really lazy.

but it accurately reflects my level of involvement at the time, so that’s useful for me.

useful for you? maybe. maybe not.

like i said, read it if you want to. evidently at least a few dozen people do.

which puts you, i suppose, in exclusive company of a sort.

today’s silly links? reviews for kiki and herb, which were nearly uniformly positive glowing raves. ben brantley at the ny times, whose opinion probably matters the most, had the biggest rave of them all.

ny times review of kiki and herb alive on broadway (free registration required)

ny daily news review of kiki and herb alive on broadway

ny post review of kiki and herb alive on broadway

i’m definitely going back, assuming i can get tickets. these reviews, in combination with the extremely limited run, might make well-priced seats scarce.

say it ain’t so, floyd

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

are you telling me that i can’t even trust a mennonite now?

apparently floyd landis, the tour de france winner, has flunked a drug test administered after stage 17.

i saw his mother interviewed on tv. she was a charming mennonite woman, full of stories about his childhood in pennsylvania dutch country, and was so proud of him.

i hope for her sake this is a false positive test. she deserves better than having barry freaking bonds for a son.

update: the ap story was updated to include a quote from his mother:

Arlene Landis, his mother, said Thursday that she wouldn’t blame her son if he was taking medication to treat the pain in his injured hip, but “if it’s something worse than that, then he doesn’t deserve to win.” “I didn’t talk to him since that hit the fan, but I’m keeping things even keel until I know what the facts are,” she said in a phone interview from her home in Farmersville, Pa. “I know that this is a temptation to every rider but I’m not going to jump to conclusions … It disappoints me.”

now there’s a classy woman.

hey, floyd. call your mother. she deserves a call.

update #2: he called his mom. from the updated article:

Efforts to reach Landis were not immediately successful. But Arlene Landis said her son called Thursday from Europe and told her he had not done anything wrong.”He said, ‘There’s no way,'” she said in an interview with The Associated Press at her home in Farmersville, Pa. “I really believe him. I don’t think he did anything wrong.”

from what i’ve read, this may be a tempest in a teapot, caused by his approved use of cortisone for his degenerating hip.

i sure hope so.

wonderful weekend

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

back to work today, although the weekend was, as the title says, wonderful. there’s a lot of residual happiness carryover, so it’s been a good day at work. children were the theme of the weekend, to some extent.

not that we had children. or took some with us. or found some there, and brought them home. but our interactions with them.

the first day was at six flags great adventure, in new jersey. as you’d expect, the park was full of kids. and even more than usual probably, because it was inner city camp day or something. there were hundreds of kids running around in matching “camp fill-in-the-blank” t-shirts.

and they were uniformly well-behaved, polite and a joy to be around.

you’d think they’d be going ape-shit, with little to no adult supervision and a park full of mischief to get into. and they had fun, don’t get me wrong. but they said “excuse me” and “please” and “thank you”. and when there was a group that wanted to ride a ride together, they’d ask people if they wanted to go past them in line. and when you let one or two go ahead of you so they could catch up to their group, they’d smile and thank you politely.

don’t tell me kids can’t be well behaved in public anymore. these kids were far better without their parents around than i ever was with my mom right beside me. someone’s doing something right there.

someone’s doing something wrong in mount laurel, new jersey though. after our six flags visit was cut short due to inclement weather (a definite theme for the weekend, unfortunately…), we checked into our hotel and drove to a nearby movie theater (the amc marlton 8) to catch a friday evening showing of “the lady in the water”, which was the best pick of the lot.

theater full of kids, all probably dropped off by their parents in lieu of paying a babysitter. and the kids were a terror. running up and down the aisles, screaming and yelling, talking on their cell phones and to their friends in adjoining seats and aisles. wouldn’t come close to being quiet, even after being shusshed politely and after loudly being told to shut up (that was me. i’m not shy about that sort of thing).

i know i sound like an old fart here, but it’s a public place and i expect, after having paid ten dollars, to be able to concentrate on the movie. i guess i’m spoiled by movie theaters in new york and by going to more expensive imax theaters, where people in general make only appropriate noise.

honestly, i’ve read all about the horror of going to movie theaters these days, and how people just have stopped going and use netflix instead, and i’ve never really experienced it.

now i have.

and the theater staff was useless. some kid not any older than the noisy ones stood there in the front of the theater listening, said nothing to anyone, and left. of course he’s not going to say anything to anyone. he’s a kid, and these are his friends. there needs to be an adult sent in, for adult supervision.

we left, and they did refund my money, though. i’ll give them that. but if i lived in that town, i’d never bother going back. i’m sure there were some kids in there that wanted to listen to the movie, too. i feel sorry for them.

don’t tell me that “they were just being kids”.

so were the kids at six flags.

quick followups

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

earlier i wrote about a guy who thought an onion article on abortion was real, and wrote a scathing blog about it.

he’s interviewed on salon. it’s a great read.

also, i wrote a couple of days ago about the idiocy of the government’s terrorist target list. turns out that, as a further example of the nuttiness, times square is not on the government’s list of targets. read that in this week’s time magazine.

amazing.

now i’m just waiting for someone to pick up on the india/pakistan story. i have a feeling that, although this is being ignored by the media, it might still pop up to haunt us.

i hope i don’t have to follow up on that one.

extremely dangerous amish popcorn

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

apparently we don’t need to worry about protecting assets like “major business and finance operations or critical national telecommunications hubs” from terrorists.

we do, however need to protect old macdonald’s petting zoo, the sweetwater flea market, the mule day parade in columbia, tennessee and the amish country popcorn factory.

sorry. no link to the amish country popcorn site. for some strange reason, the amish country popcorn people have no website.

anyway, the new york times has a great article about this today (free registration required). apparently, the government keeps a list of possible terror targets.

a list on which the government bases homeland security funding for each city and state.

a list which has, for example, 8,591 possible terror targets for indiana, 50% more than new york’s 5,687. which is why new york’s homeland security funds were cut by more than 40% this year, while hotbeds of terrorist activity like louisville and omaha saw their funding increase dramatically.

the times article quotes the department’s deputy press secretary jarrod agen thusly: “we don’t find it embarrassing. The list is a valuable tool.”

odd statement, jarrod agen, given that you apparently are a valueless tool.

how in the world does the government get away with turning the defense of our country into a pork-barrel feeding frenzy for “1,305 casinos, 163 water parks, 159 cruise ships, 244 jails, 3,773 malls, 718 mortuaries and 571 nursing homes”?

infuriating.

national (league) disgrace

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honestly, i think i’m giving up on watching the all-star game. probably not really. i’m sure i’ll watch next year. but right now, i can’t imagine watching it.

it’s an exercise in frustration.

if you missed last night’s game, the american league won 3-2. the national league had a 2-1 lead, in the ninth inning, with two outs and two strikes on the last hitter. and trevor frigging hoffmann, the vaunted san diego closer, couldn’t get the third strike.

he instead gave up a two-run triple to blow the save and lose the game.

there are multiple issues to discuss here. the first, i guess, is that the issue is less that trevor hoffmann blew the save than phil garner (the national league coach) sent in a closer who relies not on powerful fastballs but on offspeed pitches, and then didn’t send in defensive specialists to back him up. miguel cabrera misplayed what should have been the third out. if scott rolen had been in, like he should have been, the game is over and the national league wins.

next up is the inherent stupidity of giving the winner of the all-star game world series home field advantage. the american league, because it doesn’t play real baseball and instead fields the abomination known as the designated hitter, has a built-in advantage because they have a bigger pool of offensive stars from which to pull. i understand that you can’t have the pitchers hitting in the alternate-year national league-based all-star games–the game is for all of the fans and god forbid a yankees fan should be made to watch a pitcher actually play the game as god intended.

but, given that, the american league is always going to have an advantage, and that is unfair. so give world series home field advantage to the team with the best record.

duh.

finally, i’d like to point out to everyone that, but for the mets players on the national league team, we wouldn’t be having this discussion at all. they provided nearly all of the offense and all of the scoring for the national league. david wright’s home run, and carlos beltran’s double, followed by stealing third, followed by scoring on a wild pitch. and beltran got into scoring position on second base in the bottom of the ninth, against mariano rivera no less, and no one could bring him, the tying run, home.

either wright or beltran would have been the all-star mvp.

should have been.

two outs. two strikes. top of the ninth. one run lead.

aaaaaargh. i’m still fuming.

i do not look like anita mui

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

whoever the hell she is.

myheritage.com is a cool-ish new (new to me, anyway) geneaology website that has face-recognition software that, i suppose, is supposed to be useful in tracking down just who the hell that person in the back of that old photo is, or something.

but to attract mass amounts of users of the interweb, they let you upload a picture and they compare it to a database of celebrities, so that you know which famous person you resemble.

hypothetically speaking.

here are my results.

i do not look like anita mui. but, having read the title of this blog entry, you already know that.

i also do not look like dolph lundgren. or mustafa sandal, or kareena kapoor, if you ask me.

but i didn’t ask me. i asked myheritage.com–which is, if you ask me, sorely in need of an upgrade to their facial recognition software.

i guess the theory is that, as people upload and compare pictures, the software learns and gets better or something. i certainly hope, though, that some poor schlub doesn’t get told that he looks like jamie howard, queerspace.com’s famous webmaster.

nice try, myheritage. but no cigar from me.

not colorblind

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

well, i am colorblind in that i do not care about the color of the skin of my fellow man/woman and all that politically correct happiness and light.

but i am not colorblind in the physical sense. you can go here and see if you are. i can see all the numbers in the dotty circle things, so i guess i’m ok. and i have better than 20/20 vision, uncorrected. there should be a job for me there somewhere, with my perfect eyesight.

anyway, today i ran across a fascinating link to a reverse colorblindness test. there are pictures there that test the color perception of people without colorblindness. if you are colorblind, you see the “hidden” image right away.

if you aren’t colorblind to some degree, you won’t see the image at all. i didn’t.

i like things like this–things that give you a different perspective on the “normal” take on things. i like that there’s a test that makes the “normal” person understand how a colorblind person feels.

here’s another cool link along those lines–a colorblind webpage filter. you can put in a url and a type of colorblindness, and the site will render the page to show you what that page would look like to a colorblind person.

the internets are a wonderful place, aren’t they?

the national priorities project

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

here’s a page that will get you fired up and cranky for sure. at least it got me fired up and cranky.

it’s the national priorities project. there you can, for instance, find out how your tax dollars could be better spent, either nationally or in your area. ever wondered how many cops could get put on the street in your state if bush didn’t waste so much money on “star wars” missile defenses? if so, this is your place.

maybe you are completely happy with the way that the government is collecting and spending your tax dollars. if you are, then don’t bother clicking. but i have a feeling that, no matter what your political persuasion is, you’d be happier if your money was spent more wisely.

and anyway, who the hell is happy with the government? certainly no one i know, republican, democrat, or otherwise.

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.

small town city

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

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.

american idol? feh.

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

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.