Hello World

( If you can't deal with some irreverent photo-commentary about the bombings in London, don't click here )

In light of yesterday's post on iPods and how lame the media coverage of them is, it's pretty funny that I (and my friends*) ended up on TV for going to iPod Jukebox Night last night. Click here for the story--check out the video, I'm the handsome devil in Carolina blue.

FYI, my playlist was:

NWA - Express Yourself
R. Kelly - Ignition (Remix)
John Marr - Toxic Rhythm

Also of note is that as usual by the time most of the world noticed this trend it was already over--there were only about 20 people there last night.

^*My friends included: DCaffeinated (Fletcher) DConstructed (Lauren), Evan, and Catharine. Click on those links, especially if you live in DC, which is what they mostly write about!

DCist wrote about it.

This is true.

When I was about 10 years old, my parents made me answer the phone like this: "Hello, this is Jacob--may I help you?"

Their friends thought it was really cute. I thought it made me sound like the house concierge.

Yesterday, I met a couple of friends in Adams Morgan for dinner. It was warm, and there was a vendor on the street selling water-ice (sort of sorbet-ish stuff), so after we ate we stopped and picked up a few cups. My friends got tamarind/mango and mango/coconut, and I got RAINBOW. Rainbow, to be fair, is less a flavor and more a color scheme, so I guess the best description of what kind I got would be sucrose.

Anyway, we were walking with our water-ices, and after a while a bunch of mine had melted into a mufti liquid subsuming a rapidly-diminishing mound of pale sugary ice. I decided to get rid of the sweet ichor, and started to pour it onto the sidewalk, when suddenly a voice cried out, "No!"

The plaintive yell came from a woman in pink--dry hair like old wheat, faded skin, a trace of a moustache perched jauntily above her sashimi lips. Possibly a transvestite, almost definitely a drug-addled shell. I was confused, but thought that perhaps she was upset with me for wasting food.

"I'm still eating it, just getting rid of the melted part," I explained.

"Give me it," she said, holding her hand out, palm up, expectantly.

"No, I still want the ice. I'm pouring out the liquid."

"I know. Give me the liquid."

I looked at her, dubious. "You want the liquid?" She nodded, her animal desire for melted sugar-water gleaming in her glassy eyes. "Well, all right."

I tipped the cup, my spoon poised just above its rim as a sieve. Blood-red fluid streamed down into her palm, and after a few seconds she said, "okay, that's enough." I stopped pouring, and she walked away, her hand still in front of her like she held the holy communion. Although I don't believe any translation of the New Testament suggests that melted street desserts can be a part of Christ's transubstantiation.

We walked the other way, to sit on the porch and drink some beer while the fireflies did their thing.

Just another day in our nation's capital.

^* I do not always win.

I went to Atlantic City on Sunday. My roommate and I hit the road at 7:45 and were throwing dice at the craps table by 11:15.

For future reference: wearing a blazer is really overkill for the Trump Taj Mahal.

Almost as soon as we got to the craps table, it was my turn to throw, and I immediately lost us each some money. Then my roommate lost us some money, and after 20 minutes we were each down close to a hundred dollars. Mmmmm, gambling.

After that debacle, we were pretty well soured on craps. We sat down to play some blackjack. My blackjack philosophy is pretty damn stupid--I don't make any effort to keep track of high cards/low cards, I take stupid risks, I put too much money down at once, I play two hands at a time, etc. But the cards must have been on our side, since after an hour or so we had both gotten back to even, and were both actually up a little bit (I think).

My roommate decided to go hit the poker room, but I was feeling so good about blackjack that I told him I'd meet him over there later. After he left, I spend the next 2 hours steadily pissing away my winnings, and then pissing away the rest of it.

I love that feeling, when you're at a casino, where you realize, "well, I've lost all the money I brought here. I should just stop now, before I lose any more. But there's an ATM right over there, and a few good bets could win me my money back, and then some..." The first dozen times you're in this situation, you vacillate between the ATM and the Right Choice for an hour, and then end up giving in and taking out some money. The thirteenth time, however, you just skip the guilty conscience stage and immediately hit the ATM.

So I took my crisp $200 and sat down at a different blackjack table. I'm not superstitious, and I know it's fundamentally random, but are you seriously going to go back to the same cards and same dealer to whom you just lost all that money? No, no you are not.

After half an hour, I was up $30, and they were about to raise the minimum bet to $25, so I vamoosed, happy that I hadn't yet lost all the money I really shouldn't have even taken out of my bank account in the first place.

I headed over to meet my roommate in the poker room, but since there were no spots at his table they stuck me all the way on the other side, with a few other young guys and a bunch of old folks with wattles and no obvious tells.

I lost $50 in three hands.

Then, thankfully, a spot opened up at my roommate's table, so I moved over there. The other people at this table were a lot friendlier than my previous neighbors, and my roommate and I were trading hilarious barbs across the felt, and it just seemed a lot more comfortable to me.

A sidenote: if you're thinking about playing poker at a casino, bring your iPod. You spend most of the hands sitting around waiting for the next one, anyway (you fold at the first round of betting a majority of the time), so you really need something to fight the boredom. Just so you know.

Almost immediately after sitting down, I got dealt A-10 suited, and started throwing some money into the pot. Ultimately, it came down to me and the guy next to me, and I ended up beating him with Aces and 10s--he had Aces and 9s, and was emphatically not happy about this, and left the table. So that was pretty cool.

Over the next 90 minutes, I won about $325 (only a little bit from my roommate), which got me all my money back as well as $50 of the Donald's hard-earned cash. It felt good.

Then I stopped playing, because I may not be the most perceptive person in the world but I can recognize an appropriate stopping point (sometimes).

The drive back to DC sucked--driving home from the casino always sucks. But we did see a pickup truck ablaze on the other side of the interstate, stopping traffic for a couple of miles behind it. That was pretty cool (we saw the driver chatting with the police, so it was all right to enjoy the sight).

Yesterday I spent 5 hours playing frisbee, which got me a lot of sore muscles, a borderline sunburn (despite actually using 45 SPF--what a ripoff!), and did I mention the sore muscles?

In summary: if you are losing money, just throw more money on the table until you win. And sunblock is a total crock.

I went to a Nationals game on Monday evening with a bunch of friends. We sat in the front row of the left field bleachers, which was really cool--we spent half the game taunting the humorously-named Placido Palanco, who is balding. It was fun, although the Nats lost the game because of the incompetent Cristian Guzman.

But sitting directly behind us was a nice family comprising a mommy, a daddy, and two little boys, ages 4 and 6 (or something, I dunno). This was a problem for 3 reasons:

1) We felt bad screaming cursewords, and so we didn't do it. Lucky for Placido.
2) We felt bad getting violently-drunk, and so we didn't do it. Truly, this wasn't really a problem--my days of getting hammered on watered-down 6 dollar beers are pretty well and gone.
3) Did you know that 4-year-old boys' voices share pitch and amplitude with the wrenching screams of vultures?

To expand upon 3: For the first 6 innings (until his parents dragged him off to the dungeon in which I hope they usually keep him) this little tow-headed cherub sitting right behind me screamed words of encouragement to the Nats and biting criticism to the hapless Phillies.

I am sure you know what it's like to have an ambulance siren blaring directly into your ear from 2 feet away, so I shall not go into further detail about why this was irritating. But there was another problem, and that was the child's lack of variety in chosen phrases.
There are a lot of things one can yell at a ballgame. "No batter!" "Come on, Nats!" "Plaaaaaaaaaacido... Plaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacido... Plaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacido... YOU SUCK!" Et cetera.

This kid knew just two phrases. The first one was "Let's go Nationals." This one, which he didn't use too often, was okay with me, except that the meter was WAY off. You really need a one- or two-syllable word to finish that cheer, so it's either "let's-go-meh-ets" or "let's-go-red-sox." When you try to force a three-syllable word in there, things get really awkward. But, okay, he's just a kid, and he's cheering on his team. I can dig it.

But when he decided to give muckraking a try, things got truly aggravating. I don't know who it was who taught this kid the phrase "you stink!" but I am very upset with whoever is responsible for the child shrieking those words over and over, averaging three instances per minute, for 2 hours. His understanding of situational cheering was, apparently, limited. He would wail the phrase in any situation, including but not limited to: a Phillie was batting; a Phillie grounded out; a Phillie hit a stand-up double; a National was batting; a National struck out looking; the purple car won the animated race on the jumbotron; nothing happened whatsoever.

My friends and I, we're not ill-natured people. We found it funny that this kid basically seemed to know a single phrase, and that phrase was "you stink!", and that he was using it so often that it seemed like an unconscious reflex akin to breathing. We found it funny, that is, for the first half-inning or so. After that, though, we were regularly going from making unkind statements to each other about his parentage under our breath, cursing the worthless Cristian Guzman loudly (but not actually cursing, remember, because we respect the sensibilities of those around us, UNLIKE SOME FAMILIES I COULD MENTION), and chanting "Rogaine" at Placido "the scapegoat" Palanco.

Aside from the screaming child, the hot dogs sucked, the pretzels were cold, and the beer was expensive. It took an hour to get home because the Metro was so crowded (thank god we figured out that we could take a bus home instead). But there's something about watching a baseball game from the cheap seats on a cool summer evening that makes it easy to overlook all the annoying things that come along with it. It was really fun. Let's Go Nationals!

(PART I HERE)

PART II:

I left my friends' party, hoping to avoid any more annoying behavior by Katie, the drunk nympho who had thrown herself at me, tongue first. I went across campus to another gathering, where I had a quiet good time. I came home to my room around 2:00 am. My jackass roommate was already asleep, but woke up to give me a "hey buddy" when I came in. I quietly got in bed and went to sleep.

The next (late) morning, we were eating brunch and I told him about the girl who went boiled bunny on me the night before. Laughing, I said "she didn't come by last night, did she?" My jackass roommate said, "well, actually..."

Apparently, here's what happened afer I left the scene of the crime the night before:

My jackass roommate was in our room, eating a sandwich, sitting in my deskchair, watching an episode of Family Guy on my computer. He heard a knock at the door, and said, "the door's open--come on in."

The door swung open, revealing... Katie! Sweet, tiny, stinking drunk Katie.

You can imagine how confused she must have been. I'm sure she was very proud of herself for remembering my room number, considering her BAC. Standing, or perhaps swaying, in the doorway, her interrogation began:

"Where's Jake?"
"Jake's not here; I don't know where he is."
"Are you Jake's jackass roommate?"
"Yep."
"Are you... are you funny?"

You've got to believe this conversation was getting fairly weird for my jackass roommate, but he's pretty quick on his feet, even when incredibly high.

"Uh... I guess I'm pretty funny. Yeah."
"Are you funny like Jake?"

He looked at his sandwich, then looked back at Katie. Incredibly high or not, he knew the answer to this one. He set down the sandwich, paused Family Guy, and swiveled the chair around to face Katie.

"Yes. Yes, I am funny like Jake."

Katie stepped into the room, closing and locking the door behind her.

I'm not going to detail the specifics of the next hour or so, but all of the following occurred, I'm semi-reliably told (I think this is the right order): Katie performed a striptease, then gave my jackass roommate a lapdance. They defiled our couch, and then (or maybe at the same time) engaged in some definite sexual intercourse. When it was all over, she left. Then my jackass roommate finished the sandwich and the Family Guy episode, and went to sleep.

Sidenote: Considering my jackass roommate was known to a) take naps in my bed b) sleep in the nude and c) have no respect for me or my belongings (remember, he was sitting in my chair, and watching Family Guy on my computer), I think there's a better than even chance that he slept with her in my bed and didn't tell me.

PART I:

Note: All names (save mine) have been changed to protect the INCREDIBLY GUILTY.

( Sex post spectacular )

It gets worse/better. Continued tomorrow (link).

You may be asking yourselves, what did calamityjake do after work on Tuesday night? You'll never believe it. I met bloggers! I went to Sette Ostoria in Dupont Circle, where I reconnoitered (or perhaps I just connoitered) with Aaron, Brandon, Kat, and Supine. To be honest, I was really only familiar with Brandon's blog (and he was the only one familiar with mine). Now, of course, I have to start reading everyone's and pretend I like them! Just kidding, guys, I think you're great! Maybe! HAHAHAHA!!!!

Anyway, we talked about blogs (predictably), crazy Utah (not entirely unexpectedly), Dexy's Midnight Runners (we think Dexy moved on to form Air Supply), and our indescribably-painful self-loathing (this was after a couple fancy drinks). It was fun, and everyone had a lot to say, and not a little to drink.

The most discomfiting thing, really, was how normal everyone was. I miss the good old days, when you could count on internet people to be anti-social geeky weirdos. Back in the day, it was not so easy to FIND AN ONRAMP TO THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY. I mean, you really had to put in some work to illegally download intellectual property, you coded your website in vi and checked your email via PINE, you actually had to worry about ping timeouts. And you know who was willing to put in the effort to do these things? Total losers, that's who--total losers who lacked the capacity to form satisfying real-life relationships, who desperately sought out a medium of communication that took appearance and personality out of the equation, leaving pure intellect and angst. Now those were some fun people to meet.

Nowadays, every Tom, Dick, and Harry--even people with serviceable social skills--can mosey over to blogspot and start a blog. Which is fine and good, I suppose, but you know, at this rate I'll never achieve my goal of being the Coolest Guy on the Internet. I knew this was a serious problem when Zach Braff started a blog for Garden State, and now that Matthew McConaughey has (or had) one I think I might as well just give up. I could probably still lock up the title of Coolest Guy Who Still Plays Magic: the Gathering. I'd have to start playing Magic: the Gathering, but I've stooped lower before, to boost my self-esteem.

At any rate, I had a good time talking to the bloggers and definitely recommend that you check out their blogs, which are all much more interesting than this self-indulgent nonsense.

In other news: My next post is #500, and I promise you it will be filled with soul-baring and disarming honesty. Also, it will be about sex.

Yesterday, I went to the ASNE (American Society of Newspaper Editors--not to be confused with ASME, the American Society of Magazine Editors)'s annual conference, to eat surprisingly-edible chicken and hear Rupert Murdoch speak. For those of you too lazy to click on that link, Murdoch is the CEO and founder of one of the biggest media empires in the world. He owns News Corp, which owns Fox, Fox News, Fox Sports, DirecTV, a bunch of local Fox stations, a ton of newspapers (including the NY Post, that bastion of objective journalism), and lots more. He had a lot to say about the future of newspapers, and the future of news in general, so I thought I would do my best to recap the speech, as well as give you my thoughts on what he had to say.

( click here to read it )

Today I see George W. Bush speak. I probably won't write so much about that, unless something awesome happens.

This review of a.k.a. Friscos dredges up some of my most positive memories. This was the cool place to get lunch when I was in high school here in DC (longer ago than I can really believe). These days, now that sandwich shops are the next big thing, a place like a.k.a. Frisco’s doesn’t stand out that much, but back then my other lunch options were the school cafeteria (like, omg, tater tots again????), Popeye’s, and McDonalds. There was the bagel shop, too, but that was really more of a place to smoke cigarettes while skipping study hall.

It felt like being an adult, leaving campus, strolling right past the kids waiting for their super value meals, and sauntering into a real lunch place, frequented by grown-ups. They had fancy sodas, like IBC root beer and Orangina, and baked potatoes and side salads. They had tables in the back where people on lunch breaks from the Fannie Mae Foundation (pre-scandal) would sit, talking about more important things than how hard the next day’s bio test would be.

I remember being astounded by the exotic sandwich names, taken from San Francisco landmarks and neighborhoods: the Alcatraz, the Nob Hill, and my personal favorite, the Presidio. California was far away, and as mysterious as Oz--I knew it existed, and had my own ideas about the specifics, but when it came down to it I saw it as a land of free spirits and counterculture. Those place names were just empty signifiers to me, like “Arabia,” or “solipsism,” and I gave the allure of their geographic and cultural distance free rein. I imagined wandering around Haight-Ashbury, tie-dyed, pot-addled hippies holding hands and singing songs of freedom and love. Curvy hills stretching up and up, obscuring the horizon with townhouses and a neverending stream of streetcars. Professors in Berkeley and flaming homosexuals, corduroy-coats with elbow patches coexisting peacefully with leather chaps and G.I. Joe moustaches.

Of course, a lot has changed for me since then. I’ve been to California, even lived there for a while, and saw my (in retrospect) ridiculous expectations fall to the wayside, only to be replaced by more subtle and far more fascinating realities. I’ve taken up and given up bad habits, I’ve flown across an ocean to walk on ancient ground, I’ve read books written centuries before I was born. I’ve made great friends and lost them. At some point I became an adult, I suppose, for lack of a more meaningful term. I’m pretty sure there aren’t any adults who really feel like they’re all grown up, though, and probably that realization is the best indication that I’m not a kid anymore.

I miss the days when I could walk down the block to a sandwich shop and enter another world, and the days when this kind of crap sounded like real profundity.

Yesterday I got the worst haircut in the entire history of the world, and I'm including white guy dreadlocks. The nice old asian lady (Sue) had me sit down and she asked me how I wanted my hair. I requested a little trim (my sideburns were getting bushy and generally things had just gotten a bit out of hand in the back), and before I knew it I was getting The Haircut That Knew No Shame.

First of all, I'd just like to say that the use of the electric razor has gotten absolutely out of hand. When you want a buzzcut or a really keen bowl cut, sure, bring out the Flow-Bee (tm). But when you want an actual haircut, involving more than one length of hair, please just humor me and use scissors. Because, often, when you don't, you cut my hair so close you can see my scalp (note to the dumb: this is bad). And when I say "not too short on top" I do NOT mean "don't cut the hair on top at all and just shave the hell out of the back and sides, so that I look like a 4th grader from 1992." I guess I should have said these things to Sue, but I didn't know I needed to do so until it was way too late.

So she treated my head like a lawn to be mowed, and I looked really stupid, and I had to break down and ask her to cut the hair on top, too, because otherwise I basically just had a do-it-yourself-prison-quality haircut, but without the street cred. She didn't really screw up the top, and she even used scissors a little bit, so I was pretty pumped about the way the momentum seemed to have turned in this encounter. She asked me how I usually parted my hair, and I said "I kind of comb it forward and up in the front." The end was in sight. All she had to do was get a little gel or mousse or whatever and give me a trendy "just out of bed" look and the haircut would come to a close. It had been awful, but at least it was over, right?

Wrong.

Because, you see, she had yet to bring out the HAIR SPRAY or BLOW-DRIER. Now, you know how a lot of barbershops have those hilarious old-school 80s glamour shots of pale men with makeup and wavy blow-dried flattops? Usually, that's just colorful decoration. Questionable feng shui, but sort of fun. At this place, those posters turned out to have been harbingers of haircut hell to come. Looking back on it now, it's clear that Sue cuts hair the same way a child traces--her goal was to make my hair look exactly like the hair on these kitschy, preposterous, cultural time capsules.

She pulled out the blow-drier. I thought she was just going to use it to blow the stray hairs off my face and neck, but no! she started giving me a hilarious-were-it-not-happening-to-me Zach Morris wavy, flippy, catastrophe. At this point I had given up on having a good haircut; I was just hoping to get out of there without screaming at the well-intentioned buffoon who was still messing around with that damned blow-drier and/or breaking down into desperate tears.

After several minutes of thinking it had to be almost over, I finally lied, "all right, I think that's enough blow-drying. It looks great." Sue said, "OK." She proceeded to blow-dry my hair for literally another 7 or 8 horrific minutes, until I finally just said "That's perfect, please stop."

I ran away to the bathroom in my office and looked in the mirror and for a second I swear to god I saw a flash of acid-washed jeans, slap-bracelets, and those ridiculous sunglasses with all the horizontal blinds built into the frames. I threw water all over my head and messed my hair up with my hands as best I could, but the front hair wave above my forehead would not subside. Still it stands, mocking me with its carefree, irreverent stature.

I look like a fool.


Virgil's Haircutting Studio, 614 Polk St., San Francisco. Appointments available. (415) 673-3617

This is what I did on Sunday. Basic summary: I got up at 8am, walked a few blocks to meet up with my friends, watched thousands of athletic people run past while I drank a can of Steel Reserve malt liquor (the hobo's choice based on its exceptional booze/dollar ratio). After the real runners went past, my friends and I joined the mass of naked people, costumed people (superheroes, nurses, pirates, roman gladiators, and much much more), elaborate floats incorporating full-size tiki bars, phallic papier-maché, diesel-powered margarita blenders, and of course hundreds of kegs.

We made lots of friends, drank dozens of varieties of beer from rolling home-made vehicles (and some jello shots courtesy of the nurses), got sunburnt, and walked our asses off. It was 7.5 miles to the end of the race, and then another couple of miles to get back to civilization, and once I got home I took a much-needed nap while my legs cramped up.

Despite all of the wrinkled old nudists, it was a really fun time and I highly recommend it.