even cuter...

than my last post on baby pandas. click here.

mone's scarf pattern.

another visual from ma soeur. i like the happy dude. it's like matisse meets our dad.

hes a vick and hes drowning slowly.

ike vick finally plead guilty yesterday. from espn.com: Vick admitted to helping kill six to eight pit bulls and supplying money for gambling on the fights. He said he did not personally place any bets or share in any winnings. He also said monkeys frequently fly out of his butt, and perhaps they placed some bets and shared in some winnings, without his knowledge. Ok, I made that last part up.

to recap, i interviewed him on may 18. at that pt, the controversy was just beginning to leak out. it was obvious to everyone that vick had engaged in something illegal involving dogfighting, but i dont think any of us could have imagined he would soon admit to such depravity. and i especially dont think any of us could have imagined that not only would he not be playing in the nfl at all this year (he's been suspended indefinitely), but that furthermore, vick might never take another snap in the nfl again. and that hes gonna go to prison for at least a year!

i had little time with him, and it was a puff-piece to be sure, but i was prolly one of the last journalists to have a live, one-on-one interview with the man before all this went down. pretty cool. the q & a is never gonna be published now, so whoomp here it is. who woulda thunk it:

When did you first realize that you were faster than everyone else?
When I was a young kid. I was about fourteen years old. When you got talent, you just stick out. When you’re playing with a group of guys, you know what guy is special. I could always run faster than everybody, I always had the arm, and when we played football in the neighborhood, I was always the first guy to be picked.

What goes on on the field that we’d never know watching at home?
The game just moves so fast. You would not be able to imagine, in your wildest dreams, how fast the game moves. When the ball is snapped, you see guys, it’s like a Chinese firedrill! But it’s not everybody running away. Everybody’s coming at you. It’s different. At the same time, until you experience it, you would never know.

When was the first time you saw someone faster than you?
Sophomore year in high school playing against Ronald Curry. I thought I was the man. I saw Ronald, it was just a totally different athlete. A freak of nature. Unbelievable skills. Skills that were unimaginable. I had people bowing down to me, but I saw him, and I felt that way myself. (Curry is a receiver with the Oakland Raiders.)

How did you feel when you heard about the Virginia Tech news (Vick attended college there)?
I was shocked. I honestly didn’t believe that that happened on our campus. I knew exactly where they were. I knew where it took place. I had a class at Norris Hall. I just started thinking about a bunch of things. There but for the grace of God. If it happened in 2007, it could have happened in 1999, when I was there.

What other sports do you like to play?
Basketball. I’m a shooting guard. But I can play the point too.

How do you inspire your teammates in the huddle?
I give them words of encouragement. Unless I need to jump on somebody. Sometimes you need to jump on somebody. You can’t jump on someone for missing a block, because that’s gonna happen. But there are times when things aren’t going well, you gotta jump on someone.

How do you enjoy your money?
Things that I like. Cars, fishing poles. I like jewelry too. Different golf bags, clubs.

What do you like to watch on TV?
I like to watch comedies, fishing shows, a lot of golf. But my favorite TV show is Martin.

Which wideout would you most like to line up with?
I would love to line up with Terrell Owens. He’s one of the premier receivers in the game. I still think he’s got a lot left in him.

Which defensive player scares you the most?
The defensive back that scares me the most is D’Angelo Hall. I’m glad he’s on my team! If I had to choose somebody else, it would be Sean Taylor. He’s big, fast, strong, and if he can get his hands on you, he’s gonna hurt you.

Which other QB’s do you admire?
First and foremost, Peyton. Brady.

Does winning a ring change the way a QB is looked at by his peers?
Winning a ring changes your status, it’s true. You’re in that elite group. In that higher echelon with those guys who have had an opportunity to win a Super Bowl, and it’s special. Everybody can’t do it. There’s been millions of quarterbacks who have come through the league, and it’s so hard to accomplish that. When you do it, you’re looked upon as great.

Is there a QB fraternity?
Yeah, we all know what we have to go through as quarterbacks. How tough our job is. The type of responsibility we have. The weight we carry on our shoulders. So we all respect each other. We all can relate because we know it’s not just about the quarterback, it’s about the players around you too.

knowing what we know now, his mentioning of fishing (twice!) strikes me as a bit bizarre. i mean, a dude who has all this action on pit bulls ripping each other to shreds is gonna get pumped at the prospect of sitting in a boat holding a rod, hoping an earring at the end of a string is gonna catch the cheek of a trout? i dunno about that.

ps - the miss teen thang i posted yesterday is even better with subtitles.

i believe the teens are our future.

apparently this is from the miss teen usa 2007 competition. thank you matt:

perfection.

I was reminded of the following event by david schoenfield of espn.com, who lists it as number one in the greatest beatdowns in [sports] history. (the 30-3 baseball game i posted about earlier today came in at #8.)

anyway, this has long been one of my favorite sports moments of all time - if not my single favorite - so im gonna set it up romantically.

zeus used to inhabit animals in order to carry on sexual affairs outside the watchful eye of his wife hera, or to trick his lovers into fooling around with him in the first place.

this is an example of god inhabiting another animal for a few minutes. secretariat, finishing his triple crown, at the belmont stakes in '73:

le eye.

ately ive done posts about the hand and the ear, so i thought id do another sensory organ: the eye. this is my first stab at jack handey-esque humor:

of all the senses, the eye is the most important, because without it you would be eaten by some kind of bear. you wouldnt smell him with your puny nose, and you wouldnt hear him because the footfalls of any bear are drowned out by the sound of rain, and it is raining now. and if bears love anything, it’s a good downpour. really gives em an appetite. so you need your eyes to see the bear coming, then to run without bumping into a tree or another bear - they like to travel together. this is why everyone has two working eyes - because everyone needs a spare. or at least everyone has one working eye and a glass eye. they are doing marvelous things with glass eyes nowadays, but i still wouldnt suggest switching to two. it’s not like capping your teeth.

just think about where youd be without the use of your eyes. youd be like stevie wonder or ray charles or the creepy blind woman who lived in the building i grew up in. see, pardon the pun, there's a 66 percent chance youd be a musical genius, but there’s also a 33 percent chance youd be a creep. and who likes those odds? and what happened to the final one percent?

i am the type of person where, if i was blind and needed an eye transplant, id wait until my favorite color was in stock. im patient.

any linguist worth his salt will tell you that the eye is the most important part of the body – else, why would we choose its homonym – i – as the first-person subject? and what kind of a word is homonym anyway, you should then ask the linguist.

some people think the eyes are the window to the soul. this means that compared to asians, other people have bay windows. but what they dont tell you is that the mouth is the door and the ears are the chimney. unless you live in an apartment, in which case the ears are central air ducts. or in some cases, wall units.

care of the eyes is very important. when not in use, you should always cover your eyes with a dry cloth so the oils inside your eyelids don’t slowly erode your corneas. this may not be comfortable, but neither is getting eaten by one or two soaking bears because you have no corneas. remember, everything is to some extent a compromise.

the eye is made of many parts, but the funniest parts are the vitreous humour and the macula. ironically, the aqueous humor is quite surly. some people think the lens and the retina are the most important parts of the eye, but that is only in terms of vision.

some animals have multiple lenses in their eyes, like the common housefly, which has thousands. this is why flies are not as afraid of laser eye surgery - all those lenses to burn.

the bald eagle supposedly has vision that is eight-times better than that of humans. and yet amazingly, people have protested against its extinction. i for one depend on the use of spectacles to avoid bears, and i don’t need the eagle showing me up. i mean, he can fly, what does he need that great vision for? the point is, the lord works in mysterious ways. the lord, by the way, has millions of lenses in each of his five eyes. and in four out of those five eyes, his vision is better than or equal to that of any eagle, but in the fifth, he is legally blind. so unless he is wearing those ‘crazy’ glasses, do not get in a car with him. (do not tell him his glasses look crazy, either. he paid a lot for them, and he thinks they look retro-cool. what a tool, that guy.) should you decide to say ‘eff it, it’s god, what could possibly happen’ and get in the car anyway, you should also know he is indeed an organ donor.

you can tell if someone is lying by looking in their eyes. blue means a lie, brown means truth, and green eyes mean ‘not enough information.’

many people think eyelashes are meant to keep gook out of the eye. these people are imbeciles.

there are many great songs about the eyes, including ‘lyin eyes’ by the eagles, ‘bette davis eyes’ by kim carnes, ‘eye of the tiger’ by survivor and ‘girls girls girls’ by mötley crüe. eye doctors generally keep a mix of these types of songs to play in their waiting rooms. if your doc is not playing an eye pop song when you come in, id wonder how the rest of his preparation is going. and is he even in-network? and would it bother you to go to a female doctor once in a while, you pig?

the eye is also a fundamental part of law. hence the term, from hammurabi’s code, ‘an eye for an eye.’ the original draft called for ‘a tooth for a sandwich,’ but it was felt that that didnt seem serious enough. (there were no glass eyes back then, btw. sh*t was serious).

many people like to say that hindsight is 20/20, but these people are usually not using any vision correction in the first place. my personal hindsight is 20/100, but my foresight is 20/50.

until chrissy columbus, everyone and their mother thought eyes were flat. then columbus plucked one of his eyes out to give to ferdinand and isabella as collateral, and everyone saw that eyes were round, and eye sockets were filled with lots of 'salsa rojo.' the first glass eye was actually invented for columbus as the spanish didn’t want homeboy showing up in the new world looking like a freak. upon his return to spain, the king and queen offered columbo his old eye back, but he much preferred the new one by then. plus, the original eye had been pecked at by a hawk, and kept slipping out. sometimes cc wore it around his neck though, until he realized this only encouraged more hawks to peck at it, often missing and pecking at his adam’s apple, which was very painful.

i mean, really.

this is a baseball score? incroyable. not for nuthin, but eff what i said about the homerun king benchmark. a major league baseball team hasnt scored 30 runs in a game since 1897. in other words, none of us are ever gonna see a team reach 30 runs again in our lifetimes. (not that any of us saw it last night, mind you. i understand that.)

the opposite of text.

all it what you will - 'rapid text,' 't9,' 'e-z text'; my phone calls it, simply, 'word' (word up!) - but under any name, the predictive text message entry function on the cellie provides for some interesting wordplay. for example, 'me' and 'of' come out of the same keystrokes.

ive long quested for the two words (let's call them textonyms*, shall we?) that are actually linked in some poetic way, definition-wise. like, 'cycle' being 'awake,' and 'jordan' being 'korean' are funny coincidences, but they're not quite meaningful. unless jordan is korean, or is dating some korean lady. 'book' being 'cool' is not bad, but there must be something better out there.

well, there is. last night i serendipitously discovered that 'proud' and 'prove' are the same keystrokes in predictive text. these are the most fitting textonyms i have seen. if anyone else has some faves, id love to hear about them.

*also, will someone else write the word textonym online somewhere? i smell my first wikipedia entry...

ps - right after i posted this, i did a quick search on the google, and found out im too late. the urban dictionary contains txtonym. damnonym!

lastly.

it should be noted that today is my half-birthday.

two for tuesday.

just l and i in the office today. you best believe 104.3 fm has been BOOMIN - with two for tuesdays, of course. we just had double doses of hendrix, the doors and bon jovi, and zep is starting out. it may be sh*ttay out there, but sh*t is tight in here.

l, it's only been two days, but youve been cracking me up the whole week! what would i do without you, besides go crazy and spill lots of coffee all over everything?

wiggle it. just a little bit.

ont even front like you dont remember this song. (ill admit i had never seen the video before, but now that i have, i must unequivocally state that it's one of the worst videos of all-time - UNTIL the 4.24 mark, that is, where it all of a sudden goes wes craven/twilight zone craisins on a most unsuspecting viewer. so now i dont know what to think of it. perhaps there's more to 2 in a room than meets the eye. no, prolly not.) back to the post.

the results of the ear wiggle straw poll are in, and at least as of now - with 34 total votes, it would appear that slightly less than one out of four people can wiggle their ears, with the non-wigglers suffering from slightly below-average IQ scores.

can you wiggle your ears (without using your hands, obv)?

Selection		Votes
yes	24%	8
no	76%	26
34 votes total

so bottom line: im not as special as i thought i was, and d is more special than he thought he was. in the end, it turned out to be a zero-sum game. if not a lose-lose scenario.

btw, here's what i would classify as a solid wiggle:

all that having been said, i did a bit of research on the interweb, and would you believe i couldnt find a single study stating, simply, what percentage of headz can wiggle their ears? that was a rhetorical question.

my googling did unearth some ok stuff:

wikipedia doesnt even mention the subject, save for a link on the bottom of the 'ear' general entry. from Ear wiggling mechanism unmasked:
"The mechanism behind ear movements is sophisticated," says Bastiaan ter Meulen, who led the ear wiggling study, accepted for publication in the journal Clinical Neurophysiology.

Unlike other facial muscles, ear muscles have their own accessory nucleus, a control area for muscle function, in the brainstem, says ter Meulen, a researcher at Erasmus MC, a university medical centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

"Compared to animals, especially bats and cats, this nucleus is rather small in humans," he says.

however, wikiwhat, wikihow does have a tutorial on how to wiggle. jeannie, you dont even need that, young grasshopper. prince, you have some work to do. note from the tutorial: "Approximately twice as many men as women can wiggle their ears." ladies, not to fear. the same could be said for scratching one's nuts.

and as long as i have you 'warmed up,' here are some more laughs regarding ear wiggling, at the expense of no less than aristotle (the first two comments on Did Aristotle really not know anyone who could wiggle his or her ears?).

lastly, a fairly anti-climactic discussion thread on this very topic. (i know, i know, who am i to throw stones?) one small morsel of info there; search for the word 'bair.'

in other news, it's goddamn fall outside already. i wore a jacket to work, and it's august!

the wiggles.

everal nights ago chez moi, i mentioned to d that i could wiggle my ears. (i honestly cant remember what brought this to mind at the time.) much to my surprise, he was like, 'so can i,' and proceeded to prove it. but to my even greater surprise, he thought most people can do it. it's never been a source of pride for him.

not so with me. i have always been under the impression that we ear-wigglers are a rare breed. in my life ive known other people who can do it, but theyve been few and far between. so im taking this poll. im sure ill get a miniscule sample size out of this, but whatevs. the pt is - am i special, or what?

Free polls from Pollhost.com

can you wiggle your ears (without using your hands, obv)?

yes no

the idol of my idol is my idol.

woody allen on ingmar bergman, and generally, art.
fittingly (for this blog), he mentions catholocism!

this is the most wednesday-feeling tuesday ive experienced in a long while.

naturally - yesterday was the most tuesday-feeling monday ive felt in a long time. i wonder what happened. i wish every day felt like thursday. kind of.

quote deuce-deuce.

INT. MY GRANDFATHER'S APARTMENT - NIGHT

Grandfather, Father and Bean eat dinner at the dining room table. Father and Bean debate capital punishment. Hard of hearing, Grandfather eats in silence - for the most part.

BEAN
(to Father)
So you're pro-capital punishment, then. I can't believe it.

GRANDFATHER
(to Father)
Is he accusing you of being pro-Catholic?

ps - the last installment of the coney post will be continued.

poem 1.

The Hand That Signed The Paper

The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death.

The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder,
The finger joints are cramped with chalk;
A goose's quill has put an end to murder
That put an end to talk.

The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever,
And famine grew, and locusts came;
Great is the hand that holds dominion over
Man by a scribbled name.

The five kings count the dead but do not soften
The crusted wound nor pat the brow;
A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven;
Hands have no tears to flow.

-dylan thomas

incidentally, the photo above is a 2003 shot of the hand of then 102-year-old rosa frau, from sardinia. i saw the image in the times store, and immediately thought of the poem, one of my all-time faves. some day i hope to write a poem called 'the hand of god,' and i think that will go even better with frau's hand.

freedom!

China to drop its ban on anonymous bloggers (click for story).

i spy - vol. 7: buddies - part 2.

forgot acupla additional incidents at coney.

stevenson. i stupidly played one of those carnival games where you have to sink one solitary basket - which stands about five feet from the ground - from no more than two yards away. i say stupidly because invariably, the rims have absolutely no give, and are just barely bigger than the ball. but the dimensions of the shot are so much smaller than youre used to (ie, seem easier), and the price so tempting ('one shot for two dollars, three for five!'), that it's impossible to resist.

needless to say, i threw up three bricks.


but then the guy running the booth (pictured behind my elbow) offered ari one shot for free. also needless to say, without a moment's hesitation, she banked that shot in. cold-blooded. she won me a stuffed bear, which i clutched like the antidote to hair loss.


eisenhower. then we all went on the bumper cars. they were pretty fun, but the best part was before we even started. it was only the four of us in line, and the dude running the bumpies took our five-in-one ride ticket and hole-punched it several times. ari immediately told him: 'i think you punched it too many times.'

he just shot her this cold look, and without saying a word, held the ticket up in front of her face. only four punches, to be sure. that cracked me the hell up! i wish i had gotten a pic of the dude, but after that, he frightened me (for the same reason i loved him so!).

me

jay & palm

STILL TO BE CONTINUED.

wha?! (i always thought we dont have those here.)

National Weather Service Confirms
Tornado Touched Down In Brooklyn (click for NY1 story)

image 1.

i just got reminded of one of my favorite paintings ever. wyeth's christina's world. it's the perfect combination of title/image.

** breaking news ** - 756.

have to interrupt the 'i spy - buddies' two-parter (which actually is now gonna be a three-parter, fyi) for this. this is definitely an obligatory post.

because last night, barry bonds hit his 756th career round-tripper, becoming the homerun king, taking the crown from hank aaron. (the record for career homeruns in the major leagues is considered the de facto greatest record in sports, i should add. and i am one of those who consider it so.)

now, im not gonna use the basilica as a forum for opining on the controversy surrounding this event. im not even gonna link to it (although it is hard resisting!).*

i bring this up b/c it is a benchmark in all our lives - whether you realize it or not. ill explain.

when i was born, the homerun king was henry aaron. when i was a kid growing up, the entire time, the homerun king was henry aaron. (once i began to appreciate and feel passionate about sports, the video of aaron breaking babe ruth's record would always bring a tear of joy and awe to my eye, i might also add.) when i was a teenager, the homerun king was aaron. and when i was a young adult, and then ostensibly an actual adult - up until last night - hank was the homerun king. (i meant that the homerun crown changed heads last night, of course, not that i am no longer an ostensible adult. ostensibly, i still am.)


get the picture? teachers changed. friends changed. the cities in which i lived changed. presidents changed. even at least acoupla el niños came and went. but the whole time, hank aaron had the homerun record. my whole life. now, it's someone different.

now, i happen to think a-rod will eventually break bonds's record, but whether or not he does, the following will still be true.

there's a good chance youre gonna have a kid that's into sports. (trust my dad on this one - it doesnt matter if youre into sports or not. which is why my kid will most likely abhor sports.) and that kid is gonna know one homerun king most of his life, and then one night (or day) a new king will ascend. and the kid might not be a kid by then. s/he might be in his/her thirties or forties. or might even be a grandmother/father! or, this record transfer might not happen at all, his/her whole life!

but if it does happen, if that benchmark does take place, you should remember last night, aug. 7, 2007, as the last time it happened. because we should take note of the (pop) cultural events that are only gonna happen a few times (at most) during our lives.

and maybe (actually, prolly) your rare benchmark person isnt the homerun king. maybe it's the pope. same thing there - ive only had two. or maybe it's the chief justice of the supreme court - ive had three.

or maybe it's not a person. maybe it's the triple crown winner of horse racing. ive had none, despite the fact that there were three in the seventies. and it's worth mentioning that prior to 1973, the last triple crown winner was in 1948.

those last few benchmarks are all signposts of time my dad likes to hang his life's hats on. poor dad, he might never see a new chief justice. roberts is eight years younger than he. :/ by the time i see a new chief justice, i wonder where ill be. my life will have taken most if its shape by then, ill bet. anyway, dad and i both salivate at the prospect of my first triple crown winner.

ive outlined all of my benchmarks below, to visually represent the rarity. (click to enlarge in a new window.) and dont forget - barry lamar bonds, august 7, 2007.



* - ok, i couldnt resist opining at least. for the record, i think barry bonds is a charlatan not fit to scrape the dirt off hank aaron's cleats, and as far as im concerned, there are two homerun records now: the legit. and the illegit.

i spy - vol. mickey mantle: buddies - part 1.

for ariela, my oldest buddy (yes, i know i get a lot of mileage out of that), and one of the most effortlessly classy ladies i know.

disclaimer: this post is highly self-referential in its linkiness, and very linky in general i might add.

The theme for this post - buddies - developed quite organically, which means that no animals were harmed and no pesticides were used in the process, and it is in no way financed - directly or indirectly - by corn subsidies. except that i am drinking not-kosher-for-passover cherry coke right now, what with its high fructose corn syrup. f*ck, you got me again, uncle sam! come save me, terrorists!

kidding!

anyway, this 'i spy' actually took place last weekend (jul. 27), as opposed to this past weekend (aug. 3). and i have thusly established a much-needed, solid system of weekend differentiation, analogous to the already-established system of future day classification. (this wed. is this week, aug. 8th; next wed. is next week, aug. 15.) i mention the latter b/c not enough people employ it. as far as im concerned.

ok, without further ado...

while going out to lunch that friday, i spotted this motorbike on the street. goes well with another one ive 'shot,' and serendipitously set the tone for the rest of the day (and post).

while walking to palm's pad in prospect heights after work, i passed derek on 7th ave. and some street i forget, and i bought a 75¢ cup of lemonade from him. i think he said he was twelve (i texted all the relevant info. to myself, but my inbox later filled up and i sadly erased everything).

then, no sooner am i walking away from derek, than i notice two other kids selling lemonade at the same intersection, diagonally across from him! my first thoughts were 'damn - this is a cut-throat area for tweenies!' and 'these boys have some balls!' so i went over to investigate. lo and behold, these tweenies were identical twins. twinnies! names were ian and patrick, and turns out they were friends with derek and they were all splitting the profits three ways (much to my relief). i didnt buy another cup, partly b/c the 'ade was mediocre.

not that i cared about that, mind you. how can you not buy a cup of lemonade from some kid (or consortium of kids) on the street? i mean, even mone and i sold lemonade outside our old apt. building on the les a coupla times. at least, i think we did. i honestly cant tell if im remembering my own life here, or some short story i read - kids selling lemonade is such a staple of americana. im pretty sure we at least had a yard sale one time. what do you remember mone?

(btw, mone, mom & dad - and maybe someone else, though i doubt it - will find the link to 'kips bay court' [the last link above] hilarious. it's quintessential proof of the gentrification of manhattan. when we lived there, the complex was called 'phipps plaza west,' and it was specifically middle-income housing, with some fairly dilapidated and smelly 'parks' [asphalt spreads punctuated by random, post-apocalyptic-looking jungle gyms] spread around it. now, apparently, it's '8 towers of 'luxury-lite apartments' within a garden complex.' i cant even begin to explain the hilarity of that description. it's way too much to comprehend. i mean, you just had to be there - for the entire 18 years! i mean, pops and i are gonna laugh about this website forever.)

after turning onto tenth st., towards palm's pad (towards the park), with the 'i spy - buddies' theme already in my mind, i was excited when i saw a classic pair of old maids sitting on the stoop of a classic brooklyn brownstone - lawnchairs and oversized sunglasses and all. they were just sitting there, straight out of a flippant 'visit your grandmother, she loves you' postcard. they looked like the oldest buddies around, so naturally, i asked them if i could take their picture for my blog. kind of not surprisingly, one of them said 'id rather not.' i was fairly shocked, so i didnt try to turn on the charm and try to convince them. actually, i was fairly annoyed - that might be a better way of putting it. so i walked away, and captured their essence (darkness) by putting my finger over the lens and snapping. i wonder why that woman wasnt down. was she once a tweenie, whose trust had been irrevocably eroded by experience in the interim years? or would she have been just as opposed to having her photo taken when she was twelve? i gotta wonder.

once at palm's house, over video conference, jay, ari, palm and i decided, on an inspired whim (is there another kind? well, yes, prolly - the foolish whim), to go to coney island for the night. on the way there, on the f train, i asked palm if he thought i could put both my contacts in, without a mirror, on the moving train. knowing my overall grace, he logically guessed not. but he did take his own camera phone shot of the attempt, to text to jay, ari and hales. as you know, palm doesnt like his face appearing on my blog, so i have seamlessly replaced it with that of one of his heroes. long story short, i got both contacts in, each on the first try!

finally, we were all together: palm, me, and jay. (and ari behind the camera) none of us had been to coney island in over a decade at least, despite all having grown up in manhattan.

first stop was obv. nathan's, where we indulged in hot dogs, corn dogs, fries and cheese fries. (the cheese fries were all me, b/c that's what i used to get when my dad would take mone and me to coney in days of yore.) there was a cheese 'dispenser' behind the counter, and above it a sign that instructed the employees as to how many 'pumps' of cheese each size order of cheese fries required. i got a large cheese fries, thinking wed all split it, only to learn i was the only one who wanted cheese on them at all, and had therefore been given way too many pumps. needless to say, the 'how many pumps do you need?' joke had legs. and also needless to say, i made the joke that an extra-large order of cheese fries was really just code for the woman coming from around the counter and giving you an 'as needed' number of pumps.

anyway, after eating, we went exploring.

the wonder wheel is truly a wonder. i mean, have you seen this thing? it's not a ferris wheel, it's a friggin gondola wheel. it makes other 'ferris wheels' look like bicycle wheels. and not for nuthin, but i cant think of the wonder wheel without thinking of ray allen and rosario dawson having sex on it in he got game. he def. had game on the wonder wheel, that was for sure.

jay & ari




palm & colbs

one of our incentives for going to coney was the friday night fireworks, which were supposed to be at 9pm and i think finally went off closer to 11. we were in the thick of the throng on the boardwalk just in time. anyway, the first eminently noticeable thing about these pyrotechnics was that they were literally being shot up right above our heads, at a height that seemed a bit too low for comfort. palm immediately voiced some concern to this effect, to which i responded, 'they always appear to be too close, but it's not like they ever hit you or anything!'

can you see where this is going?

shortly after my claim, i began to feel little bee-type stings on my face and arms. it was ash! not only that, but looking up, you could see we were just blanketed in smoke. we could barely make out the successive fireworks behind the thick cloud of smoke that preceded them! those fireworks were actually too close! my mind's best ralph wiggum voice kept saying to myself: 'hey, these fireworks hurt. :/ ' (and that's right - i can voice an emoticon. im stepping up your evolutionary ladder, jaime.)

anyway, we moved further down the boardwalk, so we could view them 'works at a comfy distance.

after we were able to just safely stare up and watch, we all grew quiet. i was struck by a particular thought. for the most part, whenever i see fireworks, my life has undergone a paradigmatic change from the last time i saw fireworks. this is so, i suppose, b/c i dont always see them on july 4 (didnt this year, for example) and sometimes i see them on some random summer day, like this time. so i end up seeing fireworks roughly every 1.2 years or so, which is just enough time for things to really change. the last time i had seen fireworks, they were being shot over the long island sound, and i was in scarsdale for chrissakes.

palm was also deep in thought. after they were over, palm made the excellent observation that whenever you have ideas while watching fireworks, they seem like really great ideas.

palm: 'I thought about how much more classy it is to invent the paradigm and parameters of an intellectual subject than to work within those parameters. Like how much classier Euclid was for inventing geometry than the dula who solved the most difficult geometric proof...or how much classier it is to invent a language than it is to be a great writer or speaker...'

the cyclone. jay and i braved it - each for the first time. lemme tell you something about the cyclone - it is effing scary. it is just as scary as any of the upside down loop-filled coasters ive gone on throughout this fair land (although i admit ive never been to the mecca, cedar pt). and it's not scary b/c it's wooden and 'rickety' as some might lead you to believe. the wood is a little jarring, but once youre flyin, it seems stable enough. it doesnt shake or anything. the thing is terrifying just on account of the many surprisingly steep, and surprisingly placed, drops. i mean, the heads who went on this thing in the twenties must have absolutely flipped their black and white sh*t! then again, they were about to ride the most famous roller coaster of all time, right? i mean, the people who had gone on the cyclone, then lost their shirts in the crash - they were prolly thinking 'all of a sudden, that cyclone doesnt seem too scary. sure beats not eating!'

and guess what! this michigoss isnt even over yet. TO BE CONTINUED...

ari, hold your water.

there is a new, longish post in the works.

spumone - part deux.

Are you sensing a pattern here? (couldnt resist.) she made me my very own line! the second one is my fave.

ps - ari, coney post next week.