lest anyone thinks my last post was over-the-top or unwarranted.

i love the 'brewster's millions' theory, and josh r. from joisy city's note.

a quick note on isiah thomas.

i just have to take a shot at isiah, officially, on my blog. b/c really, this is too much already, and im not even a knicks fan.

it's not just that i think isiah thomas is the worst GM of all time. it's that im starting to suspect that as GM of the knicks, he's the worst ANYTHING of all time. ie, he is doing this job worse than anyone is doing ANYTHING, ANYWHERE.

i mean, how how how can you think pairing stevie franchise with stephon starbury is gonna be anything other than an unmitigated disaster? this is a glaring truth. as the times's howard beck puts it, "a 29-year-old point guard with a shooter's mentality, francis will join stephon marbury, who is also 29-year-old shoot-first point guard, in a dynamic, pricey, and potentially combustible backcourt."

believe me, "potentially combustible backcourt" is a euphemism for "backcourt that has no chance of being anything more than the biggest pairing of egocentric, immature primadonnas since paris hilton met tara reid."

(and keep in mind, the knicks, also thanks to isiah, already have jamal crawford and quentin richardson--two players whom, based on their positions (both shooting guards) and overall contributions (not much), might best be likened to nicki hilton and nicole richie.)

to sum up, if isiah thomas, after getting dressed one morning, saw that his socks were mismatched--one red, one blue--he'd take the red one off, and keep putting other red socks on, for eternity, continually expecting one of the new red socks to change color once it was on his foot.

for me, this trade is the final straw in a tenure that has had nothing but final straws.

there's not a cabbie in nyc--or the world--that drives worse than isiah runs the knicks; there's not a subway 'sandwich artist' that makes a sandwich worse than the moves 'zeke' makes for the knicks; there's not a wet nurse out there with worse milk; there's not a lawyer that has a worse won-lost trial record; there's not a manicurist who gives a worse manicure; there's not a shoe salesman that's less knowledgeable about feet and footwear; there's not a lazy construction dude who is being more anti-productive on some job site; there's not a beaurocrat in any gov't being more wasteful.

zeke is the worst by far. actually, maybe he does belong in nyc, the home of superlatives.


from the nytimes: "Larry Brown, left, with Steve Francis, center, and Isiah Thomas. The Knicks dealt Penny Hardaway and Trevor Ariza to get Francis."

one more thing. poor(?) larry brown is, of course, forced to endorse all these boneheaded trades. as quoted in the times, referring to the francis acquisition, he said, "We just want basketball players. I don't get caught up in position. When I got the job, everybody talked to me about Steph playing off the ball, and Steph wanted to do that a little bit. I think they both can just play."

translation: "when zeke first injected my scrotum with gonorrhea, i wondered what he was doing. i had, after all, spent my whole life thinking i DIDN'T want gonorrhea. but now that he has followed that up by injecting my rectum with chlamydia, im starting to see his grand plan. i'm now quite certain the two std's will coexist well together, and ultimately lead to some very healthy, robust loins. ill be back in the saddle in no time."

a man of class. an overrated burger. the realization that im a moderne-day marie antoinette.

i know i spread the word classy around like cheney spreads buckshot (i know, lame), but stanton truly is classy. i mean, look at his birthday shout-out to moi.

be sure to check out the rest of his blog, which is shaping up to be a law-current events-policy-personal potpourri of class and substance.

in other news, last night i went out to dinner with my rents, sis, and anika at DB Bistro Moderne for my birthday. it was a nice time all around. the food was predictably great. BUT id be remiss if i didnt admit that i was disappointed in one key aspect of the dinner.

the reason i specifically wanted to go to db bistro was because i fancy myself something of a burger connoisseur, and foie gras is prolly my favorite food, and accordingly id always been highly intrigued by the buzz surrounding the 'THE ORIGINAL db BURGER' - a Sirloin Burger filled with Braised Short Ribs, Foie Gras and Black Tuffles, Served on a Parmesan Bun. but i had only heard descriptions of the burger. i had never seen a picture of it; if i had, i think i would have known it would be disappointing. the thing is, i thought the short ribs, foie gras and truffles would be ground and mixed in with the ground meat, to create some kind of seamless, godly-ground meat, wherein the whole would be so much greater than the sum of its parts. it turns out, the parts are all too apparent as separate entities, as you can see. so the burger thusly tastes like a great burger with somewhat obtuse toppings, rather than a godly burger. naw mean? dont get me wrong--it is a great-tasting burger--it's just not amazing. id still prefer a pm burger, no matter what jeannie says.

and i have officially written my most snobbish post of all time. whoomp there it is. complaining about the foie gras in my burger! that kinda makes me more than a chotch. id say 'asshole' is more like it.

nevertheless.

birthday haiku.

im 27 today. as diego would say: "crazy." to commemorate, i wanted to write a birthday haiku, which, as you can see, is a poetic form that is a bit more complex than the ol' 5-7-5 rule we learned in school.

(am i the only one [and yes, that's rhetorical] who, with the advent of the internet, feels the need to look everything up, to make sure i have it correct, to the point where this becomes a detriment? case in point--i just looked 'haiku' up, and it induced in me a desire to write a haiku that follows the technique and spirit of true haikus to the 'letter of the law,' whereas if i hadn't gone on wikipedia, i could have just written whatever i wanted, no one would have challenged my haiku's legitimacy, and that would be that. i feel that having all these resources at my fingertips [and i just looked 'fingertips' up on m-w.com to make sure it's one word!] makes me trust my own intuition for these facts less, because i know there are references out there that i can trust 100%, that have answers. if you have a desk job, or any job where you're at a computer all day, the internet becomes this silent, omniscient proctor, watching over you.

hey--im not gonna say the internet is god, but it did help me save a bunch of money on my car insurance.)

anyhoo, i will sculpt my haiku according to the tacit guidelines of the "Contemporary English-language haiku," which apparently can be just as simple as 5-7-5.


Q train up for air

between two boroughs i see

rivers don't repeat

living in fort greene: such-and-such dollars-a-month.

a huge pic of people sledding in fort greene park on the front page of the nytimes: priceless.

FEBRUARY 13, 2006, from the times:
A total of 26.9 inches fell in Central Park, the most since record-keeping began in 1869, the National Weather Service reported. In what weather experts called a remarkable and relentless fall that began late Saturday afternoon and ended late yesterday, it eclipsed the legendary blow of Dec. 26-27, 1947, which dropped 26.4 inches and killed 77 people. It also easily surpassed the memorable No. 3 and No. 2 storms, of Jan. 6-7, 1996, which left 20.2 inches, and March 12-14, 1888, the notorious Blizzard of '88, which dropped 21 inches.

...Oddly, the record snowstorm in New York City was not technically a blizzard there, although it met the criteria on Long Island and elsewhere: winds of at least 35 miles an hour for three consecutive hours, and visibility of less than a quarter mile.

i dunno--it didn't seem as big a deal to me as the blizzard of '96, but then again, i was younger and smaller back then. in any case, it was a pretty cool storm. good work, god.

i do feel bad for the morning breakfast food puchcart vendors--whom i usually get my morning tea from. they seemed totally diced. i didn't see a single one on my way to work today.

i dont know if i believe in god, but i believe in these guys.

thanks to jph for showing me this.

son of doulas.

1. im am working on new postings 'behind the scenes,' but i will admit that although life has been busy recently, i currently have a weird 'blogger's block' regarding what to ultimately post.

the brady saga will definitely have to go up soon, but i haven't even started that one, so please be patient. the key thing here is that brady is safe and sound and cutely meowing and, not so cutely, but very normally for her, periodically puking, at home, as she should be.

2. in the way of actually putting something up right now, some food for thought, i offer a key slice of a wall street journal opinion piece that my dad clipped and mailed to me recently. the article was in the issue of jan. 24, titled 'We Must Change Policy Direction,' and authored by Robert Rubin. im not gonna bore you by summarizing the article; i think this paragraph, though not necessarily indicative of the main point of the article--which is how we must change our economic policies, while the paragraph more illuminates one of the reasons why we must change--stands well enough on its own. i think/know this section was the main impetus for my dad to send the clip to me in the first place, as he highlighted it himself:

The seeming inertial tendency of our economy toward less and less broad-based participation is startling and too little discussed. Median real wages, household incomes and family incomes have increased relatively little over the last 30 years, except during the last five years of the 90's. Thus, a study showed that in 1979 [c-note: the year of my birth] it took 44 people with average earnings in the bottom half of the population to equal each person in the top 0.1 of 1%, while in 2001 [c-note: the year in which my favorite movie, a total fantasy, takes place, though also an actual year that has passed], the last year in that study, that number was 160. Our economy is not working for too many of our people, and that is a problem for all of us.

the main thing i glean from this and the article as a whole is that the classic republican economic doctrine of catering to the rich rather than everyone--seemingly applied to our economy by dubya more than anyone ever--is not only altruistically shallow, but also pragmatically bad for our economic well-being as a nation. so dubya--pull your head out of your ass, man! (ok, maybe this premise, like cursing dubya, is nothing new, but, like cursing dubya, it's worth repeating, no?) true, as a former member of clinton's cabinet, rubin is inherently biased, but he clearly has the economic chops/cred; im gonna venture that he's right on the money. pardon the pun.


3. i call this post 'son of doulas' (pronounced doo-lahs, not doo-luz) because for some reason i was recently reminded that one of my favorite teachers used to call me 'colby, son of doulas.' his name was mr. goldberg, and he was our social studies/archeology teacher in third grade (yes, dalton actually is pretty cool, or at least it used to be; hands-on archeology simulation in third grade = classy). one day that year, our teachers had us make name tags for our parents, who were coming to an open house, or parent teacher conference maybe, that night. apparently, being a third grader and all--not that i wouldnt be capable of this now btw--i wrote 'doulas' on my dad's name tag instead of 'douglas.' so after that, mr. goldberg, who, like our house teacher, mr. meyers, was fond of medieval lore--and accordingly would call us 'so-and-so, son/daughter of so-and-so'--began calling me 'colby, son of doulas.' i think it's funny. good times.

was i thinking about this recently because of all the 'doula' talk by palm hedcatt? (again, i have always preferred the spelling 'dula') maybe, but in that case this talk only served as a reminder, rather than a catalyst; ive periodically thought of mr. goldberg making that joke in my own right, ever since third grade. is the coincidence of doula/dula/doulas funny? you bet your ass it is.


4. SUPER BOWL. i recently read an article talking about how the bye week is mainly for the gambling industry. ie, right after the conference finals, one super bowl team looks much stronger than the other one, and the bye week kind of lets everyone forget that, hence facilitating betting on both teams, which is crucial for vegas to make money.

well, i haven't forgotten that although seattle looked good, the steelers looked like the stronger team. and no team that wears so much teal should even be allowed to win. so i'll go with pittsburgh, 31-24. mvp: big ben.