Super Bowl et alia

Well, it’s over. The quest for perfection has ended at 18-1. Quite simply, the Giants outplayed the Patriots tonight, on offense and defense, and the Pats just couldn’t make the clutch plays they needed to hold them off. Oh well. It was still an incredible season, with a plethora of records broken, and the only 16-0 regular season ever. Besides, it’s less than two weeks until spring training starts.

A few miscellaneous items that I’ve been meaning to get up:

It’s old news by now that Scrabulous might be going away, but it’s still an alarming thought that lives at the back of my mind. At this point, I have no idea how I’ll get through the workday without it. I picture myself huddled under my desk in the fetal position, shaking as the withdrawal runs its course. What will really be interesting to me is whether Facebook will lose some momentum if Scrabulous goes away. I know a number of people (including myself) for whom it was a primary motivator for joining in the first place.

I’ve been working on a personal project lately, and it’s been a fun change of pace to turn the apparatus on a problem and really get into working on it. When work requires that depth of involvement, it’s usually because I’m staring down the barrel of a deadline, which tempers the exhilaration somewhat. Working on something that’s just for my own personal use takes that stress away and leaves only the pursuit of the High.

Sheryl remarks on a phenomenon that I’ve been experiencing as well: people I haven’t talked to in years suddenly cropping up again. Has this been happening to anyone else? It’s a little eerie.

Favorites

It’s funny in a way…I have a deep gut feeling that the time from late November to New Year’s Day is the downswing of the year. The days get shorter and shorter, darker and colder, but I always feel that once I get into the new year, that the world is back on the upswing. Inevitably, this feeling is somewhat deflated by the fact that the coldest weather of the winter seems to hit in January. On the other hand, there was light in the sky at 4:30 today, which was definitely not the case a few weeks ago. The world turns.

For a while, it was our habit at work to bring a top five list to our weekly project manager meetings. We assigned ourselves a topic (favorite books, music, etc.) and shared our favorites. It was an illuminating peek into our coworkers’ minds. I dug a few out the other day and thought I’d post one, with some annotations on why I made my choices. I’ll post a few more in future. These are circa mid-2006, for those as might care.

Top 5 Favorite Songs
5) Men at Work — “Down Under” Colin Hay and company’s stirring evocation of Australian patriotism has always struck a chord with me. Also, in college, there was an accompanying dance. That, I’m not going into.

4) Jethro Tull — “Thick as a Brick” After running across a cassette of this album/song in my Dad’s collection, it lived in my car’s tape player for a month or more. The lyrics, the flutes, the operatic scale of the thing…to an adolescent pretending to intellectualism, it was heady stuff.

3) Arlo Guthrie — “Darkest Hour” Guthrie is a great storyteller in prose or song, and this sweet little dreamscape centering around an assignation with a mysterious lover hit my ears around the time I really fell in love for the first time. ‘Nuff said.

2) They Might Be Giants — “Ana Ng” Everyone’s heard Flood, but the listening to the geeky anthem of disconnected love that opens Lincoln was, I think, the first time that I really rocked out, to the extent that a 14-year-old in Converse high-tops and a beret can do so.

1) Paul Simon — “Boy in the Bubble” I’m generally skeptical of the idea of a book, movie, or song changing someone’s life, but hearing Simon’s Graceland for the first time was a revelatory experience, and the opening accordions and lyrical depictions of a world of chaos and miracles still bring that back to me.

Closing note: As I wrote these up, I noticed that my reasons for choosing most of them harked back to my adolescence. Since I hated adolescence, I found this puzzling. I suppose that each of the songs above represents a formative moment of some sort for me. Perhaps if I try the exercise again in another decade, I’ll be writing about the songs I listened to in my mid-to-late twenties.

Irrelevant note: It just occurred to me that when you’re ordering a latte, specifying small, medium, or large just indicates how dilute you want your espresso. The only thing that’s changing there is the amount of milk. This is obvious, sure, but not the obvious kind of obvious.

Bememed

Looks like I’ve been tagged for a meme by John, so here goes. Apparently what we’re doing here is a mix of random facts about me along with near-brushes with fame.

1. I was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, when it was apparently nicer than it is today. I grew up in Manchester, New Hampshire, which means that until I went to college, I had spent my entire life in former mill towns in New England. It is my opinion that I have not yet fully explored the effect that this had on my psyche.

Digression: My alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, hosts a symposium each year, and one of the guests one year was the famous Jerry Springer (he totally brought Steve with him, too). It was the only academic talk I’d ever been to at which the audience chanted the speaker’s name before he got up on stage. Afterwards, through the machinations of a fellow Mancunian, I was invited to an event where I got to shake his hand. I still have his autograph on a cocktail napkin somewhere.

2. Since graduating from college, I’ve been working in the field of educational publishing. As I’m now in my second job in that area, I guess it qualifies as a career now. I guess I’ve now answered the question of what one does with a degree in creative writing. I was asked that once by an English professor at Hopkins, and to this day, I kind of regret not asking him what he thought the English majors under his tutelage were going to do with their degrees (English and the Writing Seminars are separate departments at Hopkins, and they don’t get along at all).

Digression: I once shook Al Kaprielian’s hand, which was my reward for answering a question he posed correctly. If you didn’t grow up in New Hampshire, that means nothing to you. If you did grow up in New Hampshire, you’re probably wondering why in the hell I think that’s worth mentioning. Forget you. Al’s cool.

3. As I’m writing this, I’m listining to Van Morrison and the Chieftains singing Star of the County Down. Sometimes I wonder if Morrison can sing without sounding like he’s drunk. Somehow I don’t think it would be as good.

Digression: I once had dinner with Ben Stein and a woman who wasn’t his wife, but with whom I later received hearsay evidence that he was intimate. I got to choose the wine. It was a Zinfandel. Oh, and there were about ten other people there, and my contribution to the wine choice was more along the lines of saying that I didn’t like Merlot. This is my favorite story that is both completely true and totally misleading.

4. I was once present at a theft on an overnight train between Switzerland and France. People just walked into our compartment in the middle of the night, and while I argued sleepily with one in broken French, the other took my friend’s wallet and passport. This is one of my favorite travel stories.

5. I sometimes think that I’m the only New Englander who doesn’t like lobster and the only Jew who doesn’t like rye bread. I do love me some fried scallops and a good knish, though.

6. Watching Northern Exposure on DVD has made me wonder whether I really would enjoy living in Alaska. Generally, at this point, I decide I need to get out of the house more often.

7. Aside from two overnight business trips to the Chicago suburbs, I have never been to the midwest. As I generally believe that civilization extends north to Concord, NH; south to about Providence, RI; and west to Worcester, MA, I don’t really regret this.

At The Last Trump

Good Lord.

The Patriots had every chance to lose that game, and took pretty much all of them. A bad time out call by Baltimore and a fortuitous penalty kept them in the game, and even then, the touchdown was reviewed, and then, finally, Baltimore made a catch not more than a yard outside the end zone. If there had been any time on the clock, the perfect season still could have been ended.

Of course, to me, it was obvious what was happening. The Ravens had summoned up the tortured spirit of Edgar Allen Poe, and were using its power to affect events on the field (hence Brady’s sudden inability to complete passes). Sometime in the second half, Belichick performed some similarly hideous act of black magic in order to conjure up supernatural assistance of his own. Personally, I’m betting that he called up the dark imaginings of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

A Bard Passes

Tommy Makem died yesterday at 74. Like most descendants of the Irish diaspora, my first exposure to Irish music (taking aside my grandfather’s renditions of “Danny Boy”) was a CD of the best of Makem and his frequent collaborators the Clancy Brothers. The music they played plucked at my soul in a way that I hadn’t experienced before, despite its occasional over-heartiness.

It was years later that I first heard Makem live in concert, in the annual shows he gave on St. Patrick’s Day at St. Anselm College in my home town of Manchester, NH. Hearing him sing “Four Green Fields”, a simple plea for Ireland to be left to her own devices, couched in terms from Irish folklore, was one of the few times I can recall being moved to tears by music.

I was privileged to see Makem in concert on a few other occasions, and remained just as impressed. He could tell a rare story, and a rolling baritone that could intone Yeats’ The Lake Isle of Innisfree in a way that could make a whole auditorium hold its breath. For me, personally, his music sparked a lifelong love of Irish music that has enriched my life.

My thanks to you, Tommy Makem, for all you have given, and I hope that you’ve found a place where “peace comes dropping slow.”

Germany Roundup

DAY 1
MONDAY
Spent the day in packing and other last-minute preparations before leaving for the airport. On arrival, stood in lines, where I ran into Matt and Janet, friends of Kirsten’s I know from her get-togethers, who were headed to Paris for a week.

While going through security, I was called back by the TSA staff member running the metal detector (never a good thing), and asked if I was “the” Brendan Short. Turns out he was thinking of Brandon Small, but I was flattered nonetheless. Sort of.

On the plane, the woman across from me blogged, while the guy next to me told me about his upbringing in New Hampshire, and how he was moving to the Bay Area to be with his girlfriend, who was attending school there. Apparently, this trip is all about encountering my alternate selves.

Observation for the day: I’ve always said that Small is stealing my schtick.

DAY 2
TUESDAY
Arrived in Frankfurt, met up with Scott and Justin, and checked into the hostel. Dazed from traveling, we grabbed a döner kebab and took a look around. Dinner of Apfelwein and other Frankfurt specialties…I had the Frankfurher Grüne Sasse, a melange of chopped herbs and yogurt over potatoes and eggs. Apparently Goethe loved it. Called it an early night, what with going to Munich tomorrow.

Observation for the day: If there’s an English menu to order off of, does that automatically mean you’re at a tourist trap?

Roundup

Spent a long weekend in Berkeley with Sheryl. California’s like another country to me, and while Berkeley’s not quite as different to me as LA is (you can walk places worth going to, for example), it’s still always a broadening experience for me. I’m not used to hole-in-the-wall restaurants offering information on the provenance of their flour, or being asked by default if I want regular or soy milk in my smoothie, or having to request water in a restaurant for conservation reasons. It’s not good or bad, just different.

A roundup of miscellany below:

Lots of scooters in the Bay Area, but almost none of the smaller Hondas (Mets and Ruckuses) that you see so many of in Boston. From having to run my Met up Beacon Hill with the throttle all the way open just to keep from backsliding, I can see why the topography here favors something a bit more robust than a 50 cc engine.

I maintain a mental list of the best shrimp that I’ve ever had, and I got to add an item last night: the tandoori prawns at Breads of India. Let me say this: These are giant prawns. Colossal prawns. Prawns on the scale of the clams immortalized by Arlo Guthrie. In short, they’re the biggest fucking shrimps I’ve ever seen. At the same time, they were downright succulent, and flavorful in ways that I don’t know if we have names for in Western culture. Really good.

I saw hang gliders for the first time on Sunday (after a lunch of dim sum with dear friend Bonnie), and it was better than I could have hoped for. People just show up at this cliff overlooking the Pacific ocean and a stiff breeze and assemble giant kites, which they then proceed to strap themselves to before basically running off the cliff. And then they soar, swooping over the brush along the ocean, hanging almost motionless as they fly into the wind, and finally, with a slight jump into the air again, landing with a few steps in the sandy ground. And they make it look easy, the bastards. I’ll post pictures if any came out.

Dinner tonight with some of Sheryl’s friends. I’m a little on display this weekend.

Conundrum

So I’m in this middle of nowhere Chicago suburb for business, and in the interest of not starving to death (and since the hotel lacks a restaurant), I ordered a pizza. A small pizza. Since I’m in the vicinity of Chicago, I went for broke and got the deep dish. Now I find myself with half a fucking pizza that I can’t finish, for fear of throwing up and then dying. Not that it’s bad, of course. Just that the small is way too much.

What do I do with half a pizza? Leave it for the maid? FedEx it home for a snack when I get back? I’m at a total loss here.

They Might Be Political

“Scientists have found that the sun is a huge atom-smashing machine.
The heat and light of the sun come from the nuclear reactions of a failed foreign policy, a failed domestic policy, and a failed presidency.”

- John Flansburgh, They Might Be Giants, 5/5/07

The show was great. They rocked out, and I got to embrace my geekdom. As always, “Birdhouse In Your Soul” is pretty much the only think that can bring back my junior high days in a good way.

Lunch Vox

One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons depicts a group of men marching along a ruler marked off in 45-minute intervals, bearing a banner marked “Lunch”. To me, it’s the ideal depiction of a phenomenon that many have remarked on before: the centrality of lunchtime to the conceptual framework of the working day.

Things have been slow here at the office lately. Projects are finishing up, or are running along so smoothly that they need just a light push now and then to keep them cruising along on their greased rails. Combined with the increasingly clement weather, that’s led to longer and longer lunch breaks. Most days, I go to lunch with John, and many days, that involves an expedition north from our South End location, up into Chinatown or Downtown Crossing. We’ve both commented at times that it would save us a significant amount of money to bring our lunches rather than go out every day, but we always come around to the conclusion that leaving the office for a while every day is one of the things that keeps us sane. In busy times, it gives us a chance to relax, to vent, and to get away from things. In slack times, it gives us a way to kill some of the afternoon, so we don’t tear our teeth out from boredom.

It also gives us a chance to soak in the city. Downtown Crossing, in particular, is one of my favorite areas of the city. It’s not big on what’s conventionally called charm (although there are architectural details on some of the older office buildings that deserve notice), but it’s long on a sort of pulsing urban life, from the street preachers shouting salvation from the corners to the lunching office workers standing in line for Chilean sandwiches to the carts selling (bootlegged?) videos. It’s got something that places like Beacon Hill and the Back Bay, for all their advantages, lack.

The route north takes us past the musty temptations of used bookstores, the culinary exotica of Chinatown, the misleading incongruity of the western wear store, and the shiny shabby newness of the all-devouring Macy’s. It takes us over the Mass Pike and the commuter rail tracks, past the patients at New England Medical with their wheelchairs, IVs, and cigarettes, and through a noontime throng of our fellow Bostonians, each on their own errand, their own reason for being out on the street at midday. A million stories in the naked city. A thousand wandering lunchers, looking for satiety.