should the legal drinking age be 18?

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

it’s a topic that came up during the last democratic presidential candidates’ debate, which took place at dartmouth college.

of course, the college students’ logic started with “well we can fight in iraq, so why can’t we drink?” not flawless logic, but they do have a point. it might be a better point if they were actually fighting in iraq, instead of buying drinks anyway at an ivy league college with money from the trust fund, but still, not a bad point.

from the article:

“Legal age 21 has not worked. Most people at the age of 21 have already consumed alcohol,” said John McCardell, the former president of Middlebury College in Vermont. McCardell now heads a nonprofit organization started in January called Choose Responsibility.

The group is calling for lowering the national legal drinking age to 18 combined with education about the effects and risks of alcohol.

“The current drinking age has just driven the drinking out of public view,” McCardell told ABC News. “It has meant that instead of drinking in bars or restaurants where there is supervision, it’s happening in dorms and dark corners.”

He argues that young people should be given alcohol education, much like driver’s education, and then rewarded with a drinking license, for which they become eligible at 18.

i agree. people are going to have their vices. might as well have them be publicly acknowledged and supported. prohibition didn’t work in the ’20s, i mean the 1920s, so why would a prohibition of a segment of society that will find ways to drink anyway work any better now than it did then? in fact, because it’s a segment of society rather than all of society, you could argue that it would be expected to be even less successful.

and it is. ever heard of a college student that couldn’t find alcohol if they wanted it? personally i think other countries are far more enlightened on this subject. rather than make the consumption of alcohol a bogeyman, many foreign kids grow up having a drink or two, a glass of wine with dinner, a celebratory belt now and then.

and there’s no mystery surrounding alcohol then. lots of kids, myself included, grew up using alcohol, and i’d bet that the rate of alcohol abuse among that group is lower than the average.

i was 17 when i went to college, and the legal drinking age was 18. i had no problem getting served in bars, without i.d. how? i went to bars for lunch, sat quietly and had a sandwich and a single draft beer at a time when the bar was glad to have the business and could not have cared less who was buying. and then, when i returned at night, they didn’t card me. because they knew me from lunch.

if you want to drink, you’re gonna drink. you’re gonna find a way. might as well bring it out into the open, and stop criminalizing normal human social behaviors. if 18-year-olds are drinking legally, you have a far better opportunity to ensure that they are drinking responsibly, because they will be drinking publicly rather than privately.

aging and gay, and facing prejudice in twilight

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

in the ny times this morning, this story about the homophobia-based mistreatment of gays and lesbians in nursing homes and assisted-care facilities.

from the article:

Elderly gay people…living in nursing homes or assisted-living centers or receiving home care, increasingly report that they have been disrespected, shunned or mistreated in ways that range from hurtful to deadly, even leading some to commit suicide.

Some have seen their partners and friends insulted or isolated. Others live in fear of the day when they are dependent on strangers for the most personal care. That dread alone can be damaging, physically and emotionally, say geriatric doctors, psychiatrists and social workers.

i hope that i don’t end up in a nursing home or assisted living. but the odds are that i will.

i hope i’ll have enough money to be in a nice, nonthreatening place. but the odds are that i won’t.

maybe i should look into long term care insurance for kirk and myself.

memories light the corners of my mind

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

kirk and i had a wonderful evening last night with our mortgage broker from chase, dinika, and her friend luigi. it had been a long day, and i was a bit tired and slightly cranky, but thankfully kirk was sparkling and witty and carried the day for both of us. we met at the black pearl, had a few drinks (me: newcastle brown; kirk: espresso martinis), finally ordered the much-vaunted lobster roll which was indeed quite yummy, and talked about a wide range of subjects: shanatram, the book dinika loaned us and that we both love; movies; new york living; past and present loves; our lifelines (dinika reads palms).

and kirk and i told the story of how we met. short version: me in south florida, kirk in nyc, i see hedwig in nyc, i leave message on hedwig.com message board, kirk the webmaster responds, the rest is history.

except that apparently wasn’t it. kirk has put his old design for the hedwig.com site up on his site, thestagingarea.com, and after the events of last night, i was poking around that site this morning and found this:

Name: Jamie
E-Mail: picaman_AT_csi_DoT_com
City/State: Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Home Page: https://www.queerspace.com
Date: Mon Mar 22 14:50:12 1999
How you found us: Too much Grain and Brita; I don’t remember
Wrote…
HATAI was the last of 7 shows i saw on my just-ended NYC trip and DAMN i’m pissed cuz if i’d seen it first i would have just seen it again and again. it’s the most amazingly well-done show i have EVER seen….i’m a complete hedwig convert

so apparently i didn’t initially find the message board — i just left a brief message in the guestbook. and truly, if kirk hadn’t been so diligent in emailing everyone who posted on the site, and hadn’t taken the time to make it more than a cursory email, we might never have met.

i wish i had that email, but i don’t. it must have been a great email, though, for me to bother to reply with something thoughtful that kirk then in turn responded to.

and so on.

thanks, kirk, for taking that moment. it changed my life, and all for the better.

SNL Digital Short – ‘I Ran’

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

another in a series of andy samberg shorts for saturday night live, in case you missed it. this one’s called “i ran”, and imagines a love story between samberg and mahmoud ahmadinejad of iran, where by ahmadinejad’s account there are no homosexuals.

hilarious stuff, and i love how samberg does this without a trace of irony and with no knowing winks, which of course makes it all the more ironic, and definitely not homophobic.

and a hell of a catchy tune as well.

unsolicited recommendation: buynlarge.com

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

via kottke, the “secret site” for the upcoming new movie “wall-e” from pixar.

i generally hate it when companies do crap like trying to make me “discover” their site to accomplish their guerilla/word-of-mouth marketing campaign objectives, but this site is exceedingly well done and a riot to click through.

it interests me that the movie will have no dialogue. i’ll have to see how they accomplish that, but given the complexities of a worldwide movie release, it’s a strategy that’s brilliant in its simplicity.

t. rex, scruffy the cat, lloyd cole, and the perils of aging

~ jamie ~ 3 Comments

sometimes you get little reminders that your brain ain’t what it used to be.

kirk and i had a fantastically fun time last night at joe’s pub in the park. joe is joseph papp, the guy who started doing the shakespeare in central park thing, and his public theater has an adjacent performance space for bands and cabaret and performance artists called joe’s pub, but it’s downtown, and sometimes they produce joe’s-pub-style shows in central park at the delacorte, which is where shakespeare in the park is, and last night was one of those nights.

whew.

that bit of explanation aside, we originally went to last night’s show because justin bond was covering the carpenters’ “close to you” album in concert. you know, kiki and herb justin bond. the combination of justin and karen carpenter being, of course, too irresistible to resist. and he did not disappoint. their registers and resonance sound remarkably similar, and he engagingly covered all those bacharach tunes. also did “superstar” as a bonus, and told a chillingly effective story about being a kid and being forced to play softball. it went badly, and he took solace in listening to the “close to you” album with a young relative, and feeling loved and accepted regardless of his inability to hit a softball. it was a favorite childhood memory, and that relative was in the audience, so it was full circle for justin. a lovely moment.

justin was done, but he was just the opening act. two more sets: a guy doing covers of some guy’s music that i’d never heard of, and a t. rex tribute on the occasion of marc bolan’s sixtieth birthday, which was also the thirtieth anniversary of his death. i never knew that marc bolan died on his thirtieth birthday. wow.

i had no interest in the penultimate set, but i’m a bit of a t. rex fan, and kirk was into it, so we decided to stick around. so glad we did.

the second set turned out to be songs by scott walker. i’d never heard of him, but i’m now a huge fan. he predates the beatles — he’s an american singer who got his start as an teenage expatriate in london in the ’50s. if you can imagine it, his music sounds as if englebert humperdinck did a set composed entirely of leonard cohen songs. fantastic stuff, and the singer, david driver, performed it wonderfully. i’m a david driver fan now, but a bigger fan of scott walker. i love it when something surprising, new and cool gets unexpectedly thrown at you — you gotta be open to that possibility, though.

the evening wrapped up with the t. rex tribute. quick t. rex story from back in the day: when i dj’ed at einstein-a-go-go in jacksonville beach in the mid eighties, there was a huge t. rex poster behind the booth. some kid came up to me and asked, “who’s trex?” pronounced as one word. evidently he missed the period. i told him that “trex” was robert smith’s first band before he formed the cure. so he went and told all his friends, and word spread like wildfire, and suddenly all the black clad youth were requesting “trex” songs to be cool. so i got to play lots of marc bolan, and the younguns were none the wiser, at least for a while.

anyway, the t. rex tribute was so much fun. patti smith did “children of the revolution” — how perfect is that? lots of new york rock royalty performed — here’s a list from the joe’s pub site:

An All-Star Collective of musicians including Clem Burke(Blondie/Drums), Tony Shanahan (Patti Smith/Bass), James Mastro (Ian Hunter-Patti Smith/Gtr), Jane Scarpantoni (Lou Reed/Cello), Dave Amels (Mary Weiss/Keys), Tish & Snooky (Manic Panic/Back Vox), Geoff Blythe (Dexy’s-Black 47/Sax), Rob Youngberg (Honeycomb/Percussion), and Claudia Chopek (Violin) will back a glittering array of special guest singers. Performers who will be singing the praises of Bolan & T.Rex include Sylvain Sylvain and Steve Conte of the NEW YORK DOLLS, Richard Lloyd of TELEVISION, Tony Winner Michael Cerveris, Jake Shears (Scissor Sisters), Justin Bond (Kiki of Kiki and Herb), Ragga, Robert Gordon, Richard Barone, Lloyd Cole, Willie Nile, Ivan Julian (The Voidoids), Keanan Duffty (Slinky Vagabond), The Bedsit Poets, Screaming Orphans, Justin Tranter (Semi Precious Weapons), and Marc’s son Rolan Bolan and featuring special guest of honor the legendary T. Rex/David Bowie/Morrisey producer Tony Visconti.

ivan julian was especially good — he sang and played the guitar while seated, and it’s been a while since i saw someone command a stage like that. the chair barely contained his energy, and he was a kick-ass guitarist.

and lloyd cole was there, with his son william. william is a great lead guitarist and has perfect emo hair — the kid is going places. i used to play lloyd cole’s music a bit at einstein’s and i sat there racking my brain trying to come up with the song i loved. and it popped into my head this morning. the song i was so desperately trying to think of?

“you dirty rat”

by scruffy the cat, not by lloyd cole. jeebus. i’m getting old.

but “you dirty rat” is an incredible song — one of my favorite einstein’s-era songs. listen to it — catchy as all hell.

anyway, aging brain notwithstanding, it was a fantastically fun evening. gotta do more stuff like that. david driver does lots of loser’s lounge stuff — maybe i should check that out. i’ve always wanted to.

update: hilary, who stage managed the show, has pictures, a detailed set list, band info, and more on her blog. check it out.

our iphone is updated and perfectly fine, thank you

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

we updated kirk’s iphone on thursday night. completely without incident. he synced, the update installed, it restarted and relocked itself, and it now works perfectly with lots of added functionality. as we expected, because we didn’t ever attempt an unauthorized hack. not even the so-easy-a-child-could-do-it ringtone hack. however begrudgingly, we paid 99 cents for the ringtones on the phone.

i treat my mac the same way. applications only. i try not to install anything that modifies the system, even though these mods are authorized, as opposed to the iphone, where all mods are unauthorized. self-contained apps only, as much as possible. less trouble that way, come update time.

of course, the media coverage of the update makes it seem that the vast majority of iphone users are howling, wailing, and bemoaning the loss of their precious at the hands of the evil apple empire, which willfully turned their functionings into non-functionings.

give me a break.

if you are savvy enough to be able to unlock your iphone, which is in itself not the easiest of processes, then you should have been savvy enough to have found and read the admonitions of apple, who implored people not to update modified iphones lest they become unusable. that news was all over the internet for days before the update was issued.

and you are also savvy enough to have found and read the news that the dev team that produced the unlock method implored people not to update unlocked phones lest they become unusable, until they come up with a workaround.

and you are also savvy enough to realize that, if your phone is locked but you have installed third-party apps, you should heed apple’s advice, not install the update, and wait to see how everything shakes out. or, at the very least, restore your iphone to pristine condition before updating.

so, in spite of apple’s warning’s and in spite of the dev team’s warnings, these people updated their iphones anyway. guess what happened? in some cases, their iphones were unusable. unlocked phones were definitely unusable. gee, what a revelation. if only they had, somehow, been able to know.

oh, that’s right. everybody on the internet told them, but they didn’t listen.

if you don’t update your modified phone, will it still work? yes it will. the people with hacked phones who didn’t apply the update are still merrily using their iphones on tmobile or using their third-party apps or whatever, and are completely unaffected.

is apple legally responsible for the non-functioning iphones? hell no they are not. you can argue whether or not apple should have been a better corporate citizen in all this, and i personally think that it’s not only bad form but bad business for apple to have done what they did, but the fact remains that no one held a gun to anyone’s head and made them update.

is it legal to unlock or modify your phone? sure it is. it’s your phone. you paid for it. do what you want to with it. but when you modify your iphone, you are taking a step down a lonely road. no matter how small or insignificant the hack may seem to be, the first mod you make means that you are assuming full responsibility for maintaining the hardware and software, with whatever assistance the unauthorized third-party developers who produced the hacks you installed choose (or choose not) to provide. and it’s your responsibility, once you have hacked, to keep yourself updated on the status of that hack, and how the hack affects your use of your iphone.

responsibility. you assumed it when you hacked. you can’t then whine because apple bricked your iphone. apple didn’t brick your iphone. you did.

from the ny times article:

Jennifer Bowcock, an Apple spokeswoman, said that when people went to update their software with their computer through iTunes, a warning appeared on the computer screen, making it clear that any unauthorized modifications to the iPhone software violated the agreement that people entered into when they bought the phone. “The inability to use your phone after making unauthorized modifications isn’t covered under the iPhone warranty” Ms. Bowcock said.

from the same article:

Ross Good, a student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, had added several programs, including one for instant messaging. After the upgrade, the phone went into a semifrozen state.

When Mr. Good called Apple, the reception was cool. “They said I put third-party software on my phone, and so it was my fault no matter what.”

Joel Robison, a systems network engineer near Seattle, said his phone stopped working immediately after he installed the upgrade. He said that when he took it to an Apple store, he was accused of having unlocked the phone. But he said that with the exception of one aborted attempt to install a piece of outside software, he had made no modifications to the phone.

“Their accusation was very damaging to my opinion of Apple’s service,” Mr. Robison said.

stop whining. start taking responsibility. apple did. the producers of your hacks did.

you didn’t.

update: daring fireball’s john gruber and i arrive at the same conclusion at independent times, but of course he states it more elegantly. hopefully his broader reach will prompt some people to think twice about their entitlement.

going to the picture show

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

tickets for a 6:00pm showing of “into the wild”, the sean penn movie about the guy who starved to death in the wilderness of alaska. that shorthand version of the story, of course, does it no justice whatsoever.

i vaguely recall reading a long piece about this guy, maybe in the new yorker, and being absolutely fascinated by him. it’s the old ditch-your-possessions-and-escape-the-world story, taken to an extreme. and sean penn is an artist i respect, even if i think his politics are themselves a bit extreme at times. anyway, reading about the movie made me want to see the movie.

and that happens less and less, lately. there was a time, not so long ago, that i went to the movies several time a week. now, not so much. maybe once a month, probably even less. i watch a lot of movies at home, via netflix, but rarely go to a theater.

i don’t have the standard complaint about noisy awful obnoxious audiences. for the most part, new york movie audiences are well behaved. i go at odd times, and i (for the most part) don’t go to movies that attract large crowds of teenagers. but even when i do, i find that those teenagers are noisy and rowdy in context of the movie. you can hoot and holler all you want if it’s appropriate, and that’s fine with me.

maybe i’m being provincial with this next comment, and i’m the first to admit that my sample size is small to be making it. but the bad experiences i’ve had in movies recently have been outside the city. kirk and i saw that last awful m. night shyamalan movie “the lady in the water” somewhere in new jersey about a year ago. the theater was so full of kids running around talking to each other, talking on the phone, running laps around the theater, etc., that we went and got our money back about 20 minutes into the movie. it was clear that they had been dropped off by the parents on the way to dinner or whatever — no supervision whatsoever and the theater management could have cared less. it was impossible to hear the dialogue in the movie over the din — that’s how bad it was.

but i’ve not had similar experiences in the city. yet, anyway.

hopefully all will go well tonight, and i expect it will. and hopefully, “into the wild” is as good as i think it will be.

briefly noted

~ jamie ~ 4 Comments

» the last piece of the kitchen renovation puzzle is almost in place. the final cabinet (the one that replaced the microwave cart) has been assembled, and rafael our super cut the countertop to size. he did an incredible job — you can’t tell which is the uncut side and which is the trimmed side. kudos, rafael. we just need to screw it on, along with one side trim panel, and it’s done. except for replacing the fluorescent lights in the header. that comes much later. pictures to come.

» upgraded to the new version of wordpress, which includes tags. zim, who in a brilliant bit of thinking sees the world as a series of tags, rather than being separated geographically, will be pleased. if that thinking took hold in a widespread way, there’d be hope for us all.

» had a great dinner with our real estate attorney on tuesday night — she’s become a good friend. she says we were lucky to buy our apartment when we did. the mortgage situation is really touchy right now, and if we were trying to get the same deal now it would be difficult or perhaps impossible. thankfully we had good timing.

checking out my google stats

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

i use google analytics to get aggregated info about the people who come to my site.

aggregated means that i’m not gathering personal info about you, just to clarify. i could care less about you, really. it’s just an interesting snapshot of where site visitors come from, how long they spend when they get here, the pages they like to visit, and so forth.

here are some fun facts about my traffic:

» by far, the most search engine traffic comes from people looking for info about kristen hall. there’s not a lot of kristen hall info here, other than my voluminous mad ravings about how wonderful she is. but if you googled “kristen hall”, odds are you already know that. still, i guess people hopefully click through and, if nothing else, get some affirmation of their opinion. a lot of the visitors spell it wrong, as “kristin hall”, just like i used to.

» i get a good share of hits from people searching for “celeriac disease”. the term is “celiac disease”, but i jokingly referred to it as “celeriac disease”. so i get a bunch of traffic from people who can’t spell, or alternately from a tiny subset of the world population allergic to an obscure root vegetable.

» 15% of my new visits come from an semi-obscure portal page at home.bellsouth.net — i’ve searched the site trying to figure out why to no avail. there must be some reference to this site somewhere, because the hits keep on coming and have been for several years. but i’ll be damned if i know why.

» the other weird post that’s rocketed to the top of google results is my post about benjamin moore paint. i listed the part numbers for the shades of paint that we bought, mostly so when i repainted i’d know what went where. still, that level of specificity seems to attract people looking for information about aura paint. hope i helped, paint lovers.

» the rings and the tattoos are still very popular items as well. amazing to me that people still are such hedwig fanatics, all these years on.

» i get traffic from five continents. i learned in school that there were seven continents (north america, south america, europe, asia, africa, australia, antarctica) but at some point either the rules changed, or google just decided to remap the continents. as powerful as they are, it wouldn’t surprise me. according to google, from what i can tell there are six continents, and i get traffic from five (americas, europe, asia, oceania, africa). maybe there are 5 continents, and they are lumping antarctica in with oceania. who the hell knows. next you’ll be telling me that there are only eight planets. i don’t like that south america is evidently no longer its own continent — zim should rightfully be upset.

» the daily search term list (which of course changes daily) is a nonstop evolution of amusement. here are a few search terms through which people found my site within the last couple of days:

— Lawnmower killed cat (never did such a thing!)
— “standing on cold concrete” (definitely did that!)
— why does my cat poop outside of the litt (i’m assuming they meant litter box and got tired of typing)
— liza minnelli gay fans (finally, some accuracy!)

anyway, the fun never stops. get a blog, and do some aggregate tracking. you’ll be glad you did.

distracted easily by shiny objects

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

now that the coop renovation is nearly complete, kirk and i are trying to get our financial house back in a bit of order. nothing outrageous, but we want to watch it a bit on the large expenses. don’t eat out so much, don’t buy expensive electronics like an iphone.

things like that.

anyway, we did pretty well over the weekend. didn’t spend much at all. helped along by my sickness and i didn’t feel like going anywhere, but that’s a minor point.

but, self-imposed rules be damned, there are times when money must be spent. and when one’s name is drawn from the magic hat, and one is given the opportunity to buy playoff tickets for one’s favorite baseball team, then one must buy tickets.

one must buy four, to be exact, and sell two at cost to a friend. which we are doing. and they are great seats, relatively: game two, loge reserved section 18. nice sightlines. you can preview your seats’ sightlines on the mets website.

assuming, of course, the mets get to the playoffs. given the team’s abysmal play recently, that is by no means assured.

but it’s probable.

probably.

Lessons on the surge from economics 101

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via daring fireball, an economics professor explains a dollar auction:

Economics professors have a standard game they use to demonstrate how apparently rational decisions can create a disastrous result. They call it a “dollar auction.” The rules are simple. The professor offers a dollar for sale to the highest bidder, with only one wrinkle: the second-highest bidder has to pay up on their losing bid as well. Several students almost always get sucked in. The first bids a penny, looking to make 99 cents. The second bids 2 cents, the third 3 cents, and so on, each feeling they have a chance at something good on the cheap. The early stages are fun, and the bidders wonder what possessed the professor to be willing to lose some money.

The problem surfaces when the bidders get up close to a dollar. After 99 cents the last vestige of profitability disappears, but the bidding continues between the two highest players. They now realize that they stand to lose no matter what, but that they can still buffer their losses by winning the dollar. They just have to outlast the other player. Following this strategy, the two hapless students usually run the bid up several dollars, turning the apparent shot at easy money into a ghastly battle of spiraling disaster.

sound familiar? ghastly battle of spiraling disaster, indeed.

kinda loving the iphone

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

even though it’s kirk’s iphone and not mine, he’s generous and shares, and i get up before he does, so i get some time to monkey around with it. and i know his passcode.

i made a ringtone out of “stigmata” by ministry and kirk’s under strict orders to use it for when i call. actually, of course, i asked nicely.

it’s still tough to type on it, i have to say. but i also don’t use it that much. i’m sure if i had one and used it constantly i’d get used to it.

of course, there’s tons of crap being written about the iphone on the internet. and i’m contributing to that, in a noneffective and useless way. the macalope had the most interesting comment i’ve seen in a while:

Here’s the one thing that makes the horny one think that Apple might announce a 3G phone before the end of the year: the iPhone was still selling briskly at $575…when the company cut the price to sell even more. There’s plenty of room at the top end of the market for more features.

If you were having a hard time imagining what the so-called “iPhone nano” would be like, all the while laughing yourself silly at the idea of a rotary-dial scroll wheel, maybe it’s because the iPhone as we know it is the “iPhone nano”, at least for 2007.

So, iPhone Pro anyone?

that makes sense. i’ll bet you all the iphone buyers thus far did buy the iphone nano. i’ll be damned.

but it matters not. we’re enjoying what we have. you can’t delay a purchase of technology because the gadget might get better. if you did that, you’d never buy anything. you have to pick your point of entry, and jump in. i think that right after the $200 price cut wasn’t such a bad time.

and i know i always swear that i’ll never buy version 1.0 of anything, but this is a bit different, because it’s a gadget that’s infinitely upgradeable via software. the gadget itself might be 1.0, but it’s as polished a 1.0 gadget as you’ll ever see, and it’ll just get better as apple pushes out new uses for it.

and i promise not to get envious when the next, speedier, better version comes out.

i promise.

no, really.

fucked without a kiss

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

i had to laugh at this quote from a ny times story about distraught iphone customers who feel that they overpaid:

“I just felt so used as a consumer,” he said. “They hyped up the iPhone for six months and built up our expectations, and then they grabbed our extra $200 and ran.”

leave it to some random apple fanatic with a blog to “feel so used”. it’s like the hooker stole his wallet while he was in the bathroom or something.

god knows i’d never waste my time obsessively blogging about a company and its products.

and just because kirk and i bought an iphone last night doesn’t mean that i buy into the hype.

and just because we wasted $69 on apple care for it doesn’t make me a mindless fanatic.

and just because we spent the entire evening oohing and aahing over it’s fantastically well-thought-out capabilities doesn’t mean that i have lost my perspective.

and just because the first thing i did this morning when i got up was rush to turn it on, baby, doesn’t mean that i don’t have a well-honed sense of life’s priorities.

it, after all, was a very practical purchase. made perfect sense. no other alternative, you know.

steve jobs is a marketing genius

~ jamie ~ Leave a comment

don’t tell me that apple and steve jobs didn’t have this whole thing planned.

» step one: sell hundreds of thousands of iphones at $599 to enthusiastic early adopters.

» step two: lower the price by $200 two months later.

» step three: wait for the outraged early adopters to blather their outrage all over the internet and in the msm.

» step four: a day later, issue $100 store credits to all those early adopters, ensuring that they’ll buy yet another apple product.

» step five: bask in the love from all the early adopters who once again love you unconditionally, and from the bloggers and the msm and the analysts and so on.

apple tweaks the consuming public better than any other company. but with that said, at $399 we’re probably taking the plunge and buying kirk an iphone. his motorola razr is dying a slow death, and it’s as good a time as any.

goodbye snap guy

~ jamie ~ 1 Comment

just walked down 6th avenue to the bank, and the snap guy has been replaced by, to all external appearances, grandpa jones.

no one passed out flyers like the snap guy. hopefully he’s moved on to something better. perhaps in an advisory capacity, or training. spreading the snap gospel, as it were.

unsolicited aerogrow recommendation, part two

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

i’ve previously sung the praises of aerogrow, an exceedingly well-run company. and now i have to again.

we bought a second aerogrow. it’s a hydroponic growing system — perfect for a new york apartment. we’re using one to grow tomatoes, and a second one to grow various types of basil. the tomato-laden aerogrow was working fine, but the l.e.d. readout was a bit wonky. it kept telling us to put in water, but it didn’t need it.

now i’m not such a helpless idiot that i can’t grow the tomatoes without the l.e.d. readout. or, more accurately, kirk isn’t, because they are kind of his baby anyway. but we like things to work properly, and we know how wonderful the company has been in the past.

so kirk sent an email, explaining what was happening and asking what to do.

aerogrow tried to call him with the answer. and when he didn’t pick up, they followed up with an immediate email, pinpointing the problem — a cracked water detector thingy inside the aerogrow. who knows how it got cracked? more importantly, they diagnosed the problem accurately with a minimum of information and no fuss whatsoever.

and what’s more, they are sending the replacement part at no charge. and they also supplied us with detailed instructions on how to work around the wonky l.e.d. in the meantime.

i deal with crappy customer service all the time. we all do. and never have i seen a company so responsive, and so proactively out in front of any possible problem. i’d buy a hundred of these things, if i could afford them.

once again, kudos to aerogrow. keep up the good work.

riverdale garden: outstanding cuisine in the bronx

~ jamie ~ 2 Comments

Here’s a reprint of a post I put up on chowhound.com:

We gave the Riverdale Garden a test run a couple of weeks ago. We were very happy with the service, atmosphere, and food on the regular menu, so we returned last night to celebrate my partner’s birthday with a 15-course meal with wine pairings (available by advance arrangement with the chef). It’s a really lovely setting inside, but the best seats are outside in the garden, weather permitting. And last night, it permitted.

Here are the courses, along with a few general comments. I didn’t manage to get details for most of the wines, but I know that there was a heavy emphasis on Long Island wines — I know there was a Martha Clara chardonnay that was really nice.

Smoked trout with marinated peaches and onion.
Wine: champagne
— Very cool, trout lightly smoked and not at all overwhelming. Nice balanced start.

Heirloom tomatoes with chives, viniagrette
Wine: sauvignon blanc
— Tiny, thin slices of three different varieties, with light vinaigrette. Really understated and delicious; I could have made a perfect summer meal out of this and the cheese grits which came later.

Corn chowder with marinated olives, hot pepper
Wine: rest of sauvignon blanc
— Served in a tall thin shot glass, with the olives layered in and the hot pepper on the bottom. My partner’s favorite course.

Rosemary bread with Jerusalem artichoke, balsamic vinegar dots
Wine: Martha Clara chardonnay
— Very earthy, good combination of textures. Artichoke a bit stringy in spots.

Smoked duck with chanterelle mushrooms, light sauce dusted with ancho pepper
Wine: pinot noir
— Duck was lightly smoked, and the mushrooms cooled off the balanced heat from the ancho. The wine overpowered the dish a little, but the dish itself was one of my favorites.

Pine Island oyster with finely grated horseradish, pickled shallot mignonette
Wine: champagne
— I love oysters, but these were briny to the point of being slightly malodorous. Personal preference, but this was my least favorite course by far.

Slow roasted red and golden beets with camembert, friseé, toasted hazelnuts
Wine: Rosé
— Best flavor combo of the night for me was the camembert and the beets. The sweetness of the beets melded wonderfully with the creaminess of the slightly warm cheese.

Grilled squid, avocado, scallion, habañero
Wine: Rosé continued
— The sauce was spicy and the avocado cooled it off, continuing a theme. Great textures and taste combo–one of my favorites.

Smoked salmon on brioche with radish, chives, creme fraiche, caperberries
Wine: Rosé continued, I think. This is where I start losing track of the wine ; )
— Gentle, balanced, very nice.

Summer salad of mountain greens, jerusalem artichoke, corn, flat-leaf parsley, fennel, radish, pepper, favas
Wine: something white that continued through the cod
— Refreshing, light break from the action.

Soft shell crab, sauce with corn
— Flavorful but just a bit too tough and chewy for me.

Cod with saffron, eggplant, kale
— We talked with the next table while eating this course; I remember liking it but not the details of it.

Ostrich, pickled cherries, green roasted garlic, snap peas, parsnips
Wine: something red for this course and the next
— The ostrich/pickled cherry combo was awesome. Just enough acidity to give some snap to the meat.

Lamb porterhouse, pickled ramps, house made BBQ sauce, cheese grits
— At this point, three hours in, we were so stuffed that we split one plate and took the other home. I haven’t had cheese grits that good since I don’t know when. Incredible. The pickled ramps and the BBQ sauce gave the same acidity to the lamb that the cherries did for the ostrich — nice echo.

Dessert for me: Lemon tart with blueberry sorbet, hold the blueberry sorbet (I had the blueberry sorbet on the last visit anyway). My third favorite lemon dessert in NYC, behind the lemon tart at Le Madeleine and the lemon cake at Del Frisco.

Dessert for the birthday boy: buttermilk sorbet and coconut sorbet with a coconut tuile. The buttermilk sorbet was for me the best of his dessert lot. But I really love buttermilk, so I’m not a fair judge.

Two espressos
— Very welcome caffeine!

As I reread this, it would seem to a reader that the evening devolved a bit as it progressed, due to the overindulgence. Maybe so, but it was a celebration, and the food and wine were, with a few noted exceptions, absolutely marvelous. I think too that the atmosphere (good service, nice outdoor setting, convivial dining companions, regulars seated next to us) made us relax and enjoy ourselves far more than one might ordinarily, given the expectations of a 15-course meal. I also think that, given the quality, quantity and variety of the courses and the wines, $150 per person (pre-tax and tip) was a good value.

It’s great for us, as it’s two blocks from our house, but I firmly believe that Riverdale Garden is worth the schlep from anywhere in the city.