Community My neighborhood is slowly being overtaken by free wireless coffee shops, tea-houses, and wireless-enabled bars. In six blocks, I can pass seven of them. They fill up with armies of 22-35 year olds hunching over their laptops, mostly ignoring one another, but occasionally you'll see the laptop people using instant messaging, email, or social networking websites. They are, in essence, coming to a social setting to socialize with non-present people.  ¶ 5/29/2007 09:00:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

Media scare inducement? I'm fairly sure the airport security shoe removal requirement is too much. The collective inconvenience it imposes on us is just not justified by the "Shoebomber part II" threat. And besides, the floors are nasty and I don't want to walk on them shoeless. So I'm hoping one of my faithful blog readers knows somebody who knows somebody who has gotten athlete's foot or some other foot malady from walking shoeless on the airport floors. And then I can recruit one of my reporter friends to do a TV news segment on the subject, whip up a public hysteria about it, and thereby change the TSA rules. Any takers?  ¶ 5/28/2007 02:33:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

Fleet week Funny how the appearance of hundreds of sailors in their immaculate white dough-boy uniforms reminds me of my anniversary. I arrived in NYC three years ago, staying in a temporary sublet apartment, whose windows overlooked the dressing room of a strip club across the street, and which was a mere five block from the Naval piers which poured sailors into my neighborhood streets in their thousands. I guess they dock once a year as a sort of R+R excercise, and also as a recruitment thing. My suspicion is that the two missions collide, since the poor sailors just want to get drunk and chase women, but they have to look respectable and be polite to their fellow club/bar denizens. What's interesting about this three-year anniversary is that it's the longest I've been continuously in one city since 1996. Before that I was in eight cities, between five countries and three continents in a seven-year stretch.  ¶ 5/26/2007 07:31:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

Everybody dance now I saw C&C Music Factory this weekend--accidentally. I felt bad for them. It was the first annual NYC Dance Parade, which ended up on a stage in Washington Square Park. Most the performers were local dance studios, ethnic groups, or little kids, but the surprise guest was C&C Music Factory. When they were announced, the audience actually groaned. They had sound problems, and sang over recorded music (and back up singers) for about three songs, trying in vain to get heads nodding or audience participation. They actually wanted us to get our hands in the air and wave them like we just don't care. You've got to admire that kind of early-nineties hip-hop tenacity. Their set ended to mild clapping and was promptly upstaged by the next group of performers: three middle-schoolers banging on drums with a little hopping routine.  ¶ 5/20/2007 06:33:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

Burqa? One thing that isn't often mentioned about Islamic women's head gear is that, in dusty third-world countries, it keeps the dirt away.  ¶ 5/15/2007 08:40:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

Elle eh? I went cruising the eight-lane highways of Los Angeles this weekend in a convertible sports car. This ought to be on everyone's lifetime checklist. Who knew you could get a sunburn just by driving around?

In addition to my LA jaunt, I also spent a couple days in glorious Las Vegas. One of the things that always impresses me about that place is the efficacy with which they extract money from your wallet. You can just feel, walking around, the collective effect of hundreds of MBA's and environmental psychologists who've built every light fixture, beeping machine, and bar display perfectly to lure you into a money bleeding stupor. Soon you're mildly drunk, haven't slept much, are buzzed from second-hand smoke and have no idea what time it is, but you know that putting another $100 on the table is just the right thing to do.

I however, have fooled them, and I'm up $2.00 from a good run on the $0.25 slots. Sweet revenge.   ¶ 5/14/2007 11:43:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

Gossip My theory on women's gossip magazines is that they fulfill a primal female instinct for matchmaking and social engineering. I figure that primordial woman, in her ambition to marry her offspring with those of higher status, must have constantly kept tabs on the relationship status of everyone in the tribe / village. To match ones offspring well was to futureproof your genetic lineage.

In modern western cultures with less villages and more social isolation, this instinctual need goes unmet--leaving women casting about looking for someone's, anyone's, relationship to keep tabs on. Hence, psuedo celebrities like Paris Hilton whose sole function is to be gossiped about.

Adding to this, media fragmentation, Tivo, DVD's and the like mean that on a given morning at the office watercooler, there's no guarantee that your coworker would've seen the same TV show you saw last night. Fictitious drama no longer occurs at a specific time and place. So women need *real* people about whom they can small-talk. And those people's stories can't be copyrighted, because coverage on them needs to originate from a variety of sources.

In this way, Brangelina is helping people fill an ancestral void, and is making the world a better place.  ¶ 5/08/2007 08:30:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

Orange My bedroom, having been recently reconstructed and repainted, is now orange. This is a boon in many ways, as it greatly improves upon the elementary-school lemon yellow that preceded it. The color is fairly trendy as well, and was approved by my spouse. However, seeing as how many of my other wall-hangings and linens and such are blue . . . I'm now confronted with the fact that I, as a Denver native, have subconciously created a Broncos bedroom.  ¶ 5/07/2007 11:27:00 PM 0 comments links to this post

Loser There was a time where staring at your cell phone screen in a bar / party might be excusable, even cool insofar as you might be rallying more people to the venue. In the age of balckberry work e-mail and internet-enabled devices, however, having your face illuminated by the pale glow of the cell screen for any length of time is to announce your social isolation. You, in a social setting, are surfing the net. Lame.  ¶ 5/01/2007 10:06:00 PM 0 comments links to this post