Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Will be in Raleigh (the city that hates me) for the next few days. Will try to blog, but ...

Friday, May 25, 2007

DROPPING BY

When I was a child, Sundays were for visiting friends of my parents. Our visits were always memorable, and often long discussed in my hometown. Here's something that comes close to the savoir faire that we would bring to our hosts. The first visitor -- in sense of humor especially -- comes closest to me.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

AH, NOSTALGIA

At this time of year, Europe marches to the front of the global sports stage. The Tour of Italy is in its second week, and the Tour de France, the greatest bike race in the world, is not far behind. Today is the Champions League final, which is the Super Bowl of European soccer.

The coverage of these events, especially the bike races, often makes me nostalgic for a trip I made to France four years ago to watch the second half of the Tour de France. It was a thrilling race that gave Lance Armstrong is fifth TdF title by his slimmest margin of victory, and the trip was worth every penny I paid. But it was also a little disorienting, as travel to foreign parts usually is.

I think the first jolt came when I saw the Museum of Shirts and Masculine Elegance listed on a tourist map. For the first few days of my trip, I had seen a globalized France of super-highways (like interstates) and convenience stores that would have been perfectly at home at the Bass Road exit here in Macon. But this was a museum that had an unmistakably Gallic touch. I could not imagine finding a shrine to male vanity in Middle Georgia -- unless “masculine elegance” is elastic enough to encompass loafers, shorts, polo shirts and baseball caps.

That was not the only time I was left agog by the French emphasis on style and aesthetics. I was in France to ride my bike as well as see professionals ride theirs. That meant being able to decipher French road maps, an ordeal that made me yearn for some way to call in a retaliatory strike on French cartographers. The maps were splendid to look at -- they had vivid colors and bold brush strokes. But I couldn't read the damn things to save my life. I often crumpled them up in disgust, but looking back I should have saved at least one. I might have been able to sell it in SoHo for $10,000.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

I'm in the middle of a vacation week, so naturally I have been running myself ragged trying to relax. And I have been spending so much time with my mechanic that I might as well propose marriage. (Car is becoming a serious problem child.) I think next time I need a rest from work, I'll just spend a week washing down Valium with vodka. And throw in a little hypnosis and cryogenics

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Money's kind of tight right now, so I tend to pounce upon free food like a wolf going after a lame caribou. However, my survival skills could use a sharper edge, as I learned this week.

The Telegraph's teen board (high school kids, almost all girls, who produce a features page each week full of youthful insight and reportage) had its last meeting of the school year this past Monday, and the staffers who work with the teen board arranged to have a pizza party. bare cupboards can push a man to do a lot of strange things, and for a second I thought about knocking out one of the young women on the teen board and switching clothes with her so I could sneak into the pizzafest. But I had no wig to help me pull that off, and I knew that there would probably be several slices left over.

And I was right. Surplus pizza was brought into the newsroom, provoking an unseemly scrum that would have been understandable among vultures descending upon carrion but was less so among humans. (But then on the other hand, we do flounder about in the low-wage part of the journalism pool, so I guess a little grasping is pardonable.) When the swarm had moved on, there was nary a crust left. But there was a sense on my part that we might have been able to get more free food if I had been able to get in the party.

It would have been child's play, really. Just a few sharp intakes of breath and distressed expressions whenever a Teen Board member reached for a slice, followed by the old, reliable warning, "Do you really think you should have another piece?" Or maybe I should have gone straight for the jugular: "Wow, I guess high school boys nowadays like a little heftiness in their girls, the way y'all are tearing into the food!" But I didn't ruin the pizza party, which meant no pizza for me to take home for the next day.

I wonder whether other species play the fat card when competing for food. Has a lioness ever stopped devouring an antelope carcass because one of the pride told her she was looking fat? Conversely, has a grandmother ever been jettisoned from the Thanksgiving feast because her hunting skills have eroded?

Sunday, May 06, 2007

Found this on YouTube recently. You've probably already seen it somewhere, but I think it's still funny.

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

More on 24

So Audrey comes back and she's in a fugue state. She's good for looking about skittishly and parroting what her Chinese captors have told her to say, but aside from that she's got all the personality of a bowl of oatmeal. Considering that at least three of the other women who have had sex with Jack Bauer have been killed, Audrey's getting off light.

Unfortunately for the fate of world peace, a vital clue that might help avert World War III is stuck in the bubbling mush that is Audrey's mind. CTU's first impulse is to prise that clue out with psychoactive drugs, but it might push Audrey into the land of Babble forever. Jack decides that where science might harm, love can triumph, so he takes it upon himself to interrogate her. Amazingly, he does not start sticking needles under her fingernails and shout, "Dammit! We're running out of time!" Instead, he speaks to her gently. And she responds ... sort of. He gets one word out of her, which points CTU in the right direction.

But Jack has missed a golden opportunity here. He has a girlfriend who is willing to say whatever he tells her to. He should have taken a few minutes and programmed a few of these into her head:

"I want to have sex with you all the time, Jack."
"You were awesome last night, Jack. Nobody's better than you."
"You were right, Jack. What was I thinking?"
"(Gasp) It's bigger than a baby's arm."
"No, I don't mind if you hang out with your friends on the anniversary of our first date."
"Of course, you can see other women. But I just want you."

As he's being led away, Jack could have then smirked swinishly and said, "Hey, you trying shutting the broad up. She just got a little too much of the Bauer power. Just put her in my bedroom and she'll be fine."