I hate apple

Apple recently announced a new mouse design. It's being dubbed Mighty Mouse or as I like to call it, gay. While the thing looks great and all, I get bugged by apple's take on the whole mouse thing. They've been adamantly one button mouse for years, forcing people with applications that use a right mouse click to make do without. Now suddenly they come out with a pretty redesign of a mouse that has been available for over 5 years, and Apple makes it sounds like they are the innovative ones.

The scroll button and the touch-sensitivity sound neat but it's essentially old technology being passed off as high design. And is anyone else getting bored with the whole white motif?

Apple's deal is also charging way too much for way too little. The Mighty is retailing for $50. Want a mouse with a horizontal scroll wheel, 11 configurable buttons and is WIRELESS (something the mighty mouse ain't)? Try this. Oh, and it's only 43 bucks.

Are you feeling Randy?

The Ayn Rand bit I mentioned in the New York post wasn't just a throwaway joke. I'm rereading Atlas Shrugged for the 4th time right now. It's not a small feat toting the 1000 page tome around NYC. Luckily, I was able to scavenge a yellowed paperback copy from 1985 and didn't have to resort to carrying my hardcover copy.

I decided to reread the book because, in all honesty, Ayn Rand makes me feel like a man. I first read The Fountainhead when I was 15 years old. All of my teenaged self-esteem issues melted away as I learned about how Howard Roark lived his life free of other people's criticisms. I followed it with reading Atlas Shrugged, which showed a much wider view of Rand's Objectivist philosophy.

The characters in her books are surrounded by people who are incompetent. Not just incompetent, but they suck the energy and production out of the people who have talent and ambition. They suck the energy in order to feed the machine of their own ineffectual lives. Which is pretty extreme, Rand's books do a great job of using extremes to prove a point.

What they mean to me: reading Atlas Shurgged make me feel that producing something is the most moral thing a man can do. Making something from nothing is exactly what sets apart man from animal. And anyone who prevents you from doing that is merely sucking energy.

The last time I read the Fountainhead was in 2000, I hadn't picked up Atlas Shrugged since my junior year in college. I used to pick up one or the other when I was feeling down. When I was feeling like I was a piece of shit who never does anything. And in my recent depression, I suddenly realized what would pull me out. Reading about Dagny Taggart and Hank Reardon fighting the moochers has indeed given me a jolt of pride. I know that I can make something. I am making something right now. And that's all that fucking matters.

Been meaning to post this for a while

This game is really addictive. It makes a mosaic of pictures gleaned from Google's image search and you have to guess what the search term was. Sounds complicated but it's really intuitive and fun.

Score is all based on time and there's a listing for the top scores of the day. See you on the list.

Little warning: I just played a game of this in my cubicle and one of the pictures in the mosaic included a woman's naked breasts! How scandalous! The search term was beer.

NYC, cont'd

So, back to what I was saying about Paris, Fran-- New York. I remember, don't worry.

Let me start be addressing the illustrious Bernadette and her comment. In no way did I mean to suggest that anyone living outside of New York (of which group, incidentally, Bern is a part) was acheiving less important things. As she said, there is nothing wrong with living your life the way you choose. And there are millions of people who acheive very great things outside of New York or any other urban center.

What I love about the city, though, is that you are forced to make something great. Because so many people flock here, the deed that distinguishes yourself must be superb. Average doesn't work, neither does pretty good. You have to be great to make it in New York.

This is not always the case, not all 10 million people in the 5 boroughs are great at anything. But all of those 10 million people consider themselves New Yorkers, which means something. And the reason it means something is because of this underlying need to acheive something great.

Can you tell I've been reading Ayn Rand?

But on to the second thing I'd like to discuss, why I get angry when people curse the city. The main reason I get pissed when someone says, "I hate the city," is that usually they are damning it for the exact same reasons that I love it. They hate the feeling of competition. They crave the slowed down, "easy" lifstyle of the suburbs, where everyone is perfectly happy taking their 6 kids to soccer practice in their new minivan. They wish they didn't have this need to acheive.

What people are really saying when they blame the city like that is that they feel inadequate in the face of so much greatness. Which is understandable. Which is totally ok. I'm sure that the same people who acheive the great things also feel like they are inadequate. It's what pushed them to acheive what they did in the first place.

But don't curse the city because it makes you feel inadequate. It's not an external source that is making you feel the way you feel. It's something internal. The people who say, "I hate the city," are going through their own personal issues. Whether it's loneliness, or lack of a career, it is not the City of New York that is making you feel bad. Everyone has problems. Everyone can be unhappy, even people in the suburbs. My dear wife Mephistopholes likes to imagine that if we move out of New York, life will be peachy and nothing will ever make us sad. That's a vicious case of Grass Is Always Greener Syndrome.

Yes, in the suburbs, you would probably be a big fish in a small pond. People will look up to you for even having been in the city for only five years. You could have the easy life of BBQs and blowjobs.

But isn't it better just to have that chance at greatness. To be a part of a truly magnificent community. To live in view of the Chrysler building. To walk down fifth avenue just to find a sandwich. To not only be able to eat good cheap Thai food but have a choice of at least five Thai restaurants in one neighborhood. To be able to go to movies with Jimmy Fallon behind you in line by himself (this just happened to Mephistopholes.) To be able to perform at open mics with people that you know will be on Comedy Central one day.

Isn't that better than saying, "I hate the city"?

New York, New York

I live in the city.

I moved down here in June of 2000, with the wide eyes of a 22 year old who's most vivid memory of NYC was a school trip in the 6th grade. The city seemed large and magnificent compared to my little beach hometown in CT. It was also really hot, but more on that later.

It's been a little over five years of living here. Mephistopholes and I elected to settle in an up-and-coming part of Brooklyn all those years ago and we haven't strayed far. Williamsburg and the L train have meant home for five years, even though we've lived in 3 different apartments. My neighborhood is 1 part hipster, 1 part Polish immigrant and 1 part other (being the general city mix of black, latino, homeless, junkie, Asian, prostitute). Williamsburg is just an East River away from the majestic skyline of Manhattan and I like that.

Friends of mine moved down to the city with me or shortly after. There was a sharp transistionary period for most of them as they figured out how to cope with the hardships of urban life. I think most of this hardship had to do with not knowing exactly what to do with their lives, something that I even grapple with now. Each one of them got over the Six-month Hump and now lives a somewhat productive life either taking away my hazardous waste or teaching children how to make movies or keeping money out of the hands of accident victims.

But I've noticed a recent trend amongst my circle of friends, even infecting my dear Mephistopholes. "I hate this city." "Nobody cares about anyone here." "This is not how people are supposed to live." "I would never bring up a child here." "This place sucks your soul." I honestly do not understand these sentiments. This is not to say that I don't feel unhappy sometimes. Any reader of this blog will know that I haven't been a Smiling Sam these last few months, but I never once accused this great city of being the cause. When I hear these accusations, I get upset. There is a physical feeling of hurt that contracts my chest when I hear, "I hate this city." I've been trying to understand a couple of things, why people say these things, and why I get so affected by it.

There is so much oppurtunity in New York. Maybe too much. If you want to be a musician or a publisher or an actor or an investment banker or a construction worker, New York is the place to do it. It is a city of superlatives. It is a city of acheivement. For many years, I considered merely living in the city as an acheivement. But all of the possibility for acheivement also makes this city feel extremely competitive. There are no longer any small ponds. There are only big fish eating the smaller ones in the largest pond in the world.

So I can understand feeling that there is a lack of compassion in the City and that is because everyone you meet is trying to acheive something. They don't care if they step on you on the subway or in their climb to the top. This can be frustrating or hurtful but I got over it during the Six-Month Hump. It is precisely what makes the city so great, this need to acheive. Without it, there would be no skyscrapers or Broadway shows or New York Yankees (yes, I hate the bombers but you have to admit they are a part of the greatness of this city.) The alternative is a podunk town in Montana with one gas station and a second-run movie theater. People are nice and happy as punch in Montana but they don't really do anything, do they? (This is in no way an indictment of Montana and if anyone from Big Sky Country actually reads this, please note that I could just as easily use Michigan or Missouri or any other state that starts with an M.)

Now as to why it bothers me so much when people curse the city, this enters the grey area of public opinion.

**********************************************

I have to stop here as I am now about to go home. As much as I like blogging, it is not enough to keep me here at work past 6pm. I will pick up this discussion on the morrow. Farewell.

Posting for the sake of Posting

Haven't had a lot of free time at work lately. I still owe you guys a treatise on Star Wars, but that will take a while. Some news:

• I got another couple assignments from Next Generation. They finally ran my modding article but the editor added a bunch of stuff about the GTA Hot Coffee Mod that's in the news. The first few paragraphs aren't by me but the rest of it is. Check it out anyways.
• The short film I produced last year is going to debut at its first film festival in a couple of weeks.
• I am not gay.

More on this later.

What the Fuck?

Not that I'm an angry or jealous person or anything, but when blogmate Savage takes an unannounced month-long leave of absence from blog-writing, he's suddenly bombarded with comments when he posts a few pictures of Belize. And from stangers too! At least people that I don't know. And here, I've been pretty prolific in the last few months and yet the comment-train on this blog has stopped pulling into the station, even from my "friends."

What gives? Do I need to start posting more pictures? Or posting less about angry basketball games? I ask you, my faithful readers, what do I need to do?

Blog as anger management

Strong feelings always make me come back to blogging. When something bad or stupid or frustrating happens to me, blogging about it is sometimes the only respite I receive. Or if someone does something and I can't respond or come to any resolution through conflict, ie. yelling at the person, blogging is all I can think of doing. It's as if immortalizing the incident in the printed word is retribution enough. Or at least it's the only retribution option left to me.

So, this is what happened. Ill Wind is midway through the summer season. I wasn't going to play on the team this summer, remember how I was getting frustrated with their lacksadaiscal play. But they approached me because they didn't have enough players to form a team. I hesitated, but it was a way to get more of my people in. I brought in Brit, a lanky 6'4" center, the one position that I thought we were severely lacking. All was well and good for the first few games. We were 2-1, the loss coming from a highly skilled team.

Then last night, we had to play against a team with only 4 players. They were missing some guys. The rules state that we play for the first 10 minutes 5 on 4, and then we have the option to call a forfeit. So the game starts and, here's the kicker, we are losing from tip off. They have one less player than us and they were outscoring us, outdefending us, and outhustling us from the first shot. The team had one excellent player, a black guy with a sick shot. He was everywhere, getting rebounds, shooting threes. I felt that our team was playing at half-mast, with one hand on our dicks trying to frig ourselves into some respectable formation. We had nothing.

Ten minutes pass and we're down by 8 or so. Then, incredibly, one of their teammates leaves the gym. Suddenly, it's 5 on 3. And we're still losing. Badly. I suggest going man on the remaining three and Ill Wind just looks at me blankly. "Huh? What's man?" Eventually, I go man on the black dude while the rest of them do a zone, a little box-and-one. He got a lot less shots off, but that kind of defense falls apart when the other two get wide open shots slicing through my illustrious teammates.

We were down by 12 at the half. I didn't know if we wereforfeiting or not because the captain, Jason, hadn't made a decision. He was just as aggravated as I was but he wouldn't do anything about it. I suggested talking to the other team and giving them two of our players so that we could at least have a five on five. Once again, I was met with, "Huh?" Christ, we were in a lose-lose situation. If we won, we beat a team of three. Big Whoop. If we lost, then we lose to a team of three. Winston actually says to me, "If we lose to three guys, then we deserve a loss." Well, yes, of course, but then let's go out and make sure we win.

I forgot to mention one thing. The main guy on their team never stopped mouthing off. He had words with the refs, with me, with everyone else on my team, even people on his team. That's not uncommon in this league but with him there was a sense of maliciousness, of derision. He was unsportsmanlike, basically. He was a dick.

So the second half starts and it's more the same. Some shitty playing from Ill Wind, and the black dude making absolutely sick shots from three point land. Then the real incident happened. I didn't see this but apparently the dude actually threw the ball at Han in response to being fouled or something. Robert told the black dude to cool off. Walking down the court with the ref behind him, the dude said to Robert, "If you get in my face one more time, I'm going to punch you in the face. I'm going to put you in the hospital." He said it quiet enough that the ref didn't hear him. But I did.

I came up to the two of them and tried to get the ref's attention. "He's threatening us," I said. The ref didn't listen but I continued to try to get him to hear what's going on. Finally, the ref whistled, turned towards the scoring table and made the T with his hand. "Technical foul. Black 33. Unsportsmanlike conduct." My number is 33.

What the fuck? I get tagged with the techinical? What did I do? A player is threatening my teammate with physical violence and I get a technical. Where is the justice in that?

I didn't know what to do. I walked off the court. Told someone to go in for me and I started getting ready to leave. What's the point? I could not continue playing this sham of a game. If I had made a huge scene and screamed my head off like I felt like doing, I would have been the asshole. But if I left, I felt like I was abandoning my team and I was also being an asshole. I didn't know what to do. Eventually, I walked over to the scoring table and kept score for a long time.

We made a late game surge but still lost by 3. I made a beeline for the ref to discuss what happened. I was very clear and concise. My voice may have been high in decibels but I didn't feel like I was yelling or anything. Robert and Jason come over and try to get in on the discussion. But all they end up doing is telling me to calm down and not to yell at the ref. I a little bit flipped out at Robert, "No, I'm not going to calm down. The game is over, we're not losing anything by talking to this guy. He fucked up and I'm going to tell him why." Then I walk away, letting them handle it.

I'm boring myself talking about it. It really made me think about anger and resolution though. I don't know what made me more mad, the ref bungling or my teammates telling me to calm down. I mean, really, the only reason I stayed after the game was to yell at the ref. I felt like I earned it. Yelling would have done nothing but I craved some form of conflict, some resolution. But that was thwarted by my teammates. I found myself arguing with them instetad of with the goddamned ref.

The whole ride home I was thinking about the incident. I will never get any closure from it. The ref will never say, "I made a mistake." My teammates will never say they should have let me yell at the ref. I will never "win" this fight. All I can do is rant. I can tell others about it. I can blog about it.

And that makes me feel better, I guess.

Even more ...

Go to this: http://www.theonion.com/2056-06-22/. An issue of The Onion from 2056 that is making me laugh outloud in my cubicle. A couple of headlines:

• We Need A 4th Law of Robotics: Stop Fingering My Wife
• Tips For A Successful Marraige: As tempting as it may be to use time travel to resolve marital arguments, the approach is not recommended, as it tends to alter the history of mankind in spectacular and unforeseeable ways.
• Tokyo Quells Dance Dance Revolution
• What Do You Think? A Female Dolphin President?

The Onion has always been funny but this one is fucking hilarious.

More links

One of my "Go to" websites for the last few years has been Civfanatics.com. It's been a great resource of Civilization related news and mods with a vibrant forum community. It was really cool to check back there last week and see this. I got linked on civfanatics.

Some people complain about inlaws but not me. My brother in law has been a blog presence for a while now and I thought I'd give him a shout-out here. He had a Star Wars party recently where they watched episodes I - VI all in one day. That's a marathon. I wasn't able to attend but maybe it's for the best. My growing hatred of Lucas and general disappointment in the prequels would have probably put a damper on the event. Why do I have to ruin everything? Anyway, it looked like a lot of fun.

My first byline

http://www.next-gen.biz/ Click on the Civ 4 profile.

On the front page, no less. I don't know how long it will be there. They say they update it twice a day but they haven't been that regular. The site just went live on Monday. This link should last a lot longer. I'll try to keep up as long as possible.

Hopefully, the modding article will go up soon. And I hope I get paid sometime in the next six month as well.

Typical for me to look on the downside, but that's just where I've been for the past few weeks. I've already expounded about my depression. I just wanted my faithful readers to know that although seeing one's name in print may make another person feel somewhat proud, I am not that thrilled. I am, in fact, an asshat.

I Hate Star Wars Now

I'm in the process of composing a treatise on what went wrong with Star Wars. It's taking a while, more because I haven't found the time to write ten pages. Let it be known that I am thinking about it and will drop the bomb at some point, maybe this week.

For now, be satisfied with little web gem: http://yirmumah.net/vader/

I think that sums it up. You should hear some audio on that page, it doesn't seem to work with Firefox so try it in explorer.

Hmm...

Once again, its seems I am not alone.

This article interviews a couple of people who live in Williamsburg. While they are morons, all of them, I can't help but feel that their general feelings of malaise and unhappiness are similar to my own. Incidentally, I found this link by googling for "Dungeons and dragons players in new york city."

And my friend, Wil Wheaton, talks about being spread too thin in his various projects. He even references one of my favorite REM songs. If I'm not mistaken, I chose Driver 8 as one of my many nicknames for my senior blurb in the yearbook. See, I'm just like Wesley.

Last night I made a list of all the projects that I am variously involved in, whether personally or collaboratively. For lack of anything else to write about, I'm going to paste the list here.

Projects currently in development:

Idea Stage:

Getting home from School (teem comedy movie)
Fantasy Triliogy of books
Brooklyn Movie (about how I feel right now)
Jesus Christ Superstar movie set in NYC

Partial 1st drafts:

Road Trip movie (Brad and Mark in VW bus)
Erin Short film
Complete Works (apocalypse play)

Completed 1st draft:

Creation Play
This Place
Gogol (with ian)

Completed but still being work on:

The Barista (producing)
Work (movie script)

Ongoing:

Standup comedy

That's 13 fucking things, people. And none of them are in the completely polished stage. Not one of them is something that I would feel 100% happy handing to someone who would ultimately decide if I am good or not based on that one project. That's too much stuff. I need to start concentrating on one thing and finishing it. That's kind of hard though when I can't talk to anybody about my writing. I had conversation with both Mephistopholes and Ian about that. Hopefully, they will now be more of a sounding board for me. Even if they tell me I suck, it would get me talking about the movie/play/book and get me excited to write more. And if you two bastards want to help (the only two people who read this) that would be awesome too.

And then we could give each other blowjobs.

Yes, I know...

I have been lax with posting lately. I was working very hard on those articles for Next generation last week, spending two or three hours a day on them while trying to pretend that I was working at my real job. That was time usually spent blogging being spent on potentially money-earning writing. So you can sue me for that $250 I may or may not receive from that crazy online magazine.

Writing the articles was extremely enjoyable. I don't know, maybe I'm a journalist. The Civ 4 one was pretty easy, the base of it was written in a couple of hours. I left holes in it where I thought I would insert quotes and I contacted Soren Johnson, the lead designer on Civ 4. It took a week or so but I finally got my questions answered, which was really cool to see. I wish I could post the article here but I don't own it anymore (heh, rules). I will link it though as soon as it goes live, which the editor said was June 20th. He had his fingers crossed so I'll believe when I see it.

The modding article was a little bit harder. I had to capture the entire history of modding in less than 800 words, which is difficult when you are as verbose as I am. Most of my time was spent coming up with more concise ways to say something. It was a real exercise in cutting unimportant words or paragraphs. I threw away topic sentences, concluding sentences and anything that was repeated. I eventually turned in an article that was 870 words, knowing that they would edit it down to whatever they wanted anyway.

And you know what? I don't think anything prepared me better for writing these articles than blogging. Doing this blog thing totally honed my skills of getting ideas across with the written word. I've concentrated on writing scripts and such for the last few years, it was good to write prose again. And as Mephistopholes told me last night, maybe I should go back to writing stories. I think she's trying to tell me that the various plays, movies, and standup comedy I've written aren't very good. Thanks, honey.

This leads me to my story of last night. I went to two open mics. I sucked. Awful. I didn't write anything new until right before the first one (at the Village Lantern) and it was stupid. I tried to tell jokes about the goddamn subway voice guy. It didn't go over at all. Maybe it's because I was reading from a notepad, or maybe it's because I'm a god damned idiot. Then I go to this other one and it was a sausagefest. Tons of guy's guys. Gangbangers and tit jokes were abound. My friend, Superjew, was the only girl there and she was constantly harassed for having a huge rack. I can berate these assholes all I want, but the truth is, they are all funnier than me. They may be chauvinist pricks, but they made me laugh. I go up there and bomb from the first thing that exits my mouth. "Any Yankees fans in the house?" Silence. A room of ten to twenty guys and none of them are Yankees fans? Or did they just not like me? I think it was the latter. I stumbled through my material, not even bothering to try anything new for fear of being murdered. I get off as soon as the light goes on. Fucking discouraging.

Ian (i don't know why I'm linking him, he hasn't blogged in a while) was there, he wanted to see what these open mics were all about. He got an earful of comedy. And he didn't fail to give me pointers on my totally nonrepresentative set. Thanks for the constructive criticism, Savblog, but seriously, I just wanted to shoot myself rather than be told that I put my hand in pocket. I KNOW I PUT MY FUCKING HAND IN MY POCKET ON STAGE. I do it real fucking life, why wouldn't I do it onstage? It's who the fuck I am. But I digress all over your face.

I feeling pretty dejected. I was arguing with Mephistopholes yeasterday, too. She got it in her head to tell me to quit smoking after I told her that I hadn't smoked in like 10 days. She kept saying how unhealthy it was. No shit, i never heard that before. So I told her to stop talking about it. Don't jinx it. Don't tell me to not do something that I haven't done in 10 days. Don't blow the streak. Don't talk about it. I don't want to quit because she's yelling at me to stop, you know? But did she listen? No. She kept bitching. So I hung up on her. Twice.

There I was, a failure. Walking to the L train to go home and talk to my wife who hates me right now. All i wanted to do was go to sleep and never wake up. Just one little subway ride away. But guess what? The fucking L train isn't running past midnight this week. What time is it when I get there? 12:15am. Great. I didn't want to spend the last 15 bucks I had on a cab. And I was feeling like a huge piece of shit.

So I decided to walk across the Williamsburg Bridge. It took me about 90 minutes to walk from 6th ave. and 14th street to my house. It was a hot night, still over 80 at midnight. Plus I had a jacket on from doing comedy, which was promptly taken off after it got soaked through. Overall, the walk was nice. I had gone to the gym earlier so I was already sore in the legs. It really started to burn once I got to the middle of the bridge. I had only walked over the bridge once before, during the blackout. Back then, Mephistopholes and I walked on the car traffic lanes with hundreds of other people walking home. This time, it was the foot path which hovers over the car traffic.

Whatever. I thought that if I did something crazy, it would clear my brain of doubts and low self-esteem. It didn't. I thought I would get some crazy inspiration and write an awesome stand up act in the middle of the bridge. I didn't. I thought Mephistopholes would be more forgiving when I got home. She wasn't.

I have no confidence in myself. I immediately think everything I do is awful and will be criticized by my peers. The only supportive thing my wife has told me is to write more stories, which of course I interpret as meaning that I'm not good at all this other stuff I do. I am a hack. A talentless fuck with delusions of grandeur. And not even walking across the bridge will make me feel any better.

I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya'...

Been using the spare time at work to write the aforementioned articles. If I have to choose between writing something here, or the potentially lucrative journalist career, I'd have to choose the latter. But seeing as I can't seem to write a sentence with running it to death, I seriously doubt that I will get anything for my time. Hooray. No seriously, I get really long-winded in the articles and it's hard to figure out what to cut. I'm anticipating the editor being like, dumb it down you english majoring twat.

Some tidbits:

• I went away for the weekend. I went back to Montauk, where I spent last September, with Mephistopholes. We had a great time staying at a Bed and breakfast run by this crazy old Jewish woman. She let us use her bikes and we rode all around town, checking out the beach, the marina and the Lighthouse at The End. It was a well-needed break from the City.
• Comedy show tonight at Gotham. I'm devatatingly ill-prepared. I just wrote about half my set on my lunch break and I have yet to practice it or even say it out loud. I hope I don't suck too hard.
• I have to take a shit.

That's it for now. Hopefully, I'll be able to write more next week.

Quick Exclamation!

Last week, I read about an online magazine on Slashdot.org called Next Generation. It's geared towards game developers, producers and business guys. I wrote a quick email in response to their call for freelance writers. As I was writing it though, I realised that I wanted to write from a consumer point of view more than the business side of the industry. I gave up editing the email (I even left an unfinished sentence in there) and clicked Send, thinking I was never going to hear from these people.

Today, I did. I need to write a profile of Civ 4 and a brief history of modding. Two articles! I'm even getting paid. It's not a lot, but it's something. How fucked up is that? I've never gotten paid for writing before and I get my first job without even trying very hard.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go write some kickass copy (that's what they call it in the industry.)

Siesta

I've always been a big proponent of naps.

When working at Ivoryton Playhouse in my younger years, I would often stay up late doing various illegal activities. Working all day building sets in the 90 degree humid Connecticut summers would seriously deplete my energy reserves. To combat that, when I finally was in charge of my own crew, I implemented nap time after lunch. It wasn't any formal decree or anything. I would just nod off in the cool basement of theater surrounded by ancient props and furniture and left my crew to either join me or suffer in the sun. Over time, it became an institution unto itself, much to the chagrin of the production manager, one Arthur Pignataro. He was an aging queen who believed his sole purpose at the theater was to rob it's mostly sub-20 year old work staff of any kind of enjoyment in the workplace. Did he think we were doing this job for the money? No, we did it so we could drink until the wee hours on someone else's property and sometimes put on some shows.

But I digress.

I continued this trend of taking naps during the day while working at various theaters in the City. One especially, NYTW, had great couches and I worked there off and on for years simply because I could take naps. That's not exactly true, I loved the group of people I worked with simply because of their semi-carefree demeanor matched my own. But the naps were key, because I reasoned that a 15 min. nap in the middle of the day was the equivalent to four hours of sleep at night. That way, I could stay up till 4 in the morning and still work the next day by getting a nap during lunch. Most of the workers didn't get my drift but soon I was competing for space on the dressing room couches with my coworkers.

It seems I am not alone in thinking naps are great for increasing productivity. The Spanish and most Latin American countries, according to what I learned in school (I have no idea if this is true or not anymore), have employed a mandatory siesta for years. I've heard Japanese businessmen can rent a Pod for 15 minute intervals which plunges them in complete darkness and even pumps in the music of their choice. I thought this was only limited to Japan but a quick google search brought me to the attention of MetroNaps. There's one right near me in the Empire State Building, but the $15/nap price tag may be too much for daily nap consumption. And this article from the BBC states that British corporations are looking into incorporating nap-rooms or napnasiums into new office floor-plans.

Since joining the office workforce a year ago, I've had to curtail my midday napping. There's just no way to properly conceal the fact that you are sleeping at your cubicle without someone bigwig noticing. And there's nothing I'd rather do after big lunch then close my eyes and grab something close to 40 or so winks. Perhaps I eat too much but that's another story. I haven't been able to participate in my chosen lunchtime pastime. But as it began to get warmer these last few weeks, I've wanted to curl up in the sun. By my building at 320 Park Ave., there are a few public areas. One even has a fountain which adds a nice ambient gurgling to the normal aural cityscape. I have to admit on the more sunny days recently, I have lain on the often bird shit-speckled stones and slept in full view of the thousands of pedestrians on Park Ave. While this is somewhat enjoyable (the sun om my face is nice), the hard marble surface is not very conducive to a restful sleep. I wake up rubbing the places where my body was in contact with the stone.

Luckily, I've found an alternative. Right across the street from my office building is St. Bart's church. I am an atheist, so I have a natural aversion to churches. It took me months before I ever wandered into St. Bart's, just to see what it was all about. Admittedly, it is a very beautiful specimen of Byzantine architecture. Something about it's interior is very peaceful, maybe it's the stones, maybe it's the huge sweeping arches, maybe it's the fact that it's an Episcopalian church so it doesn't have all the trappings of guilt and doom that Catholic churches do for me. I walked in and out and didn't think much of it. That is, until I began my unconscious search for a place to sleep at 2:30pm every day.

This week my routine has been this: get out of work around 2pm, get some udon noodles from the cafe, chow down while reading John Irving's Son of the Circus (a surprisingly great book, not one of his better-known), escape onto the streets of Manhattan to smoke (I quit today) while making my way to St. Bart's, choose an out of the way pew (this took a while to discover, I tried to pick one behind on of the many columns which would provide the least amount of view to any passerby), lay down and sleep while listening to the organ being tuned or whispered conversations or the very faint sounds of the New York City streets. The pews are not very comfortable, they seem to be covered by ancient cushioning that is only marginally less injury-inducing than the marble outside. They are kind of thin so one arm is always sliding off. I've discovered the answer to this today though as I moved the kneelers (eight inch thick cushions, something which would never be seen in catholic churches) and stacked them so my right elbow has something to lie on.

It's the perfect napping place, without having to pay a cent (fuck you MetroNap!). So far, no one has asked me to leave or even to sit up. There are always homeless people in there so I guess they must think a guy in a suit isn't much worse. And I get my 15 minute nap and get back to work refreshed so that I can blog with more efficiency. Every day this week.

Titles, Titles, Titles

So I put some more links on the sidebar. Rain Delay, who I've linked enough already, was added to the blogs. PVP by Scott Kurtz was added because I've talked about him before, but never got around to putting him on the illustrious sidebar.

But the real gem is the Thundercats Outtakes. Remember that old cartoon from the 80s with the furries running around fighting evil? This site has 11 mp3s of the actors screwing up the voiceover for the show. To hear Lion-O swear or Mumm-ra get a little frisky, I have to say that it breaks down every thing that I thought was good or wholesome in the world.

I'm starting to hate my basketball team

Seriously. Ill Wind sucks. After crawling back to .500, we've flat out sucked. Actually, that's not quite true. We got a win last night, despite being blown out 95-54. Yeah, you read that right. 41 points separated us from the victors and yet we still won. Sound confusing? Yes, it does.

The team in our league, Ramsa I believe (the team that we best despite losing 2 players to injuries), forfeited because they didn't have enough players. Rather than just not playing the game, the NYURBAN league said we could go to a different gym to play a team at 9pm. We would already get the win in our league, and still be able to play a game. What fun!

Except that this team we played consisted of 6'9" guys who could dunk. Within 5 minutes, we were down by 20 and it became a rout. They were swatting our shots, stealing the ball from our sub-par ball handlers, tossing outlet passes and generally running us to death. That's not that big a deal, I kind of expected it after seeing them warm up. What pissed me off was their constant banter. They wanted to run up the score on us. They were competing to see who had the most points between them. They were laughing and cheering each other on to the point where it became disrespectful.

I got mad. Early on, one guy was bouncing the ball above my head while I was trying to grab it. He was toying with me, like we play with fucking cats with a string. Whatever else I am, I am not a pussy. After he got better control and passed it ahead, I elbowed him in the chest. Hard. The refs didn't see it, but their super tall center did.

"I saw that man. Just play the game." He had a good point, but I had to get something off my chest.

"I just feel like I'm being played with, not being played against."

He nodded and said, "Just have fun."

I said ok and gave the guy who I originally elbowed my hand and he took it. "No worries."

After that, it was a little more tolerable. They didn't block every shot or score everytime down the court. The big guy, the center, I could tell was letting me drive in the lane and score. That was a little frustrating too (what's the point of playing if they LET you score?) but I guess it's better than nothing.

The banter and yelling and laughing didn't really stop though and that's what really bothered me. The worse part was that they brought their 2 girlfriends to the game to keep the score and those bitches wouldn't shut up. They were more disrespectful than everyone else. At one point, near the end of the game, I got fouled going to the basket. All of them were complaining to the ref, "Don't bail him out!" True, I prolly wasn't going to make the shot that I took over 3 defenders but I did get fouled. The two "ladies" on the sideline were the worst about it though, they actually screamed as I was taking my foul shots. As if we were playing in a college game or something and the student section was going to break my concentration. That kind of shit is just not done in this league.

To top it off, this shifty Asian guard decided it would be funny during a fast break to put a lay up in one of the practice hoops on the sideline. Hilarious. The refs called it out of bounds but I screamed at her (a women ref, rare) "Can we get some respect from the other team? Give em a technical" She didn't say anything and gave the ball to Robert to inbound. Robert had some words for me, however, telling me to cool off. What?

Let me back up with a little bit about Robert, our four-foot tall Italian point guard who shoots left-handed but can only dribble with his right hand (figure that one out). He's been taking the stance in games lately that whenever we bitch at the refs, we lose our composure and, subsequently, the game. In some ways, he's right, but in most of the ways, he's full of shit. Getting fired up is what sports is all about. To have that constantly taken away and deflated by a teammate gets a little annoying. And this time, I wasn't even btiching at the refs about their calls. I was pissed that this chick wasn't doing anything to curtail the disrespect. If anything, she was encouraging it by laughing with them. That's bullshit and I have a right to get fucking pissed about it. Don't tell me to cool down, you fucking fuck. Why don't you go turn over the ball by dribbling into the corner again?

Well, whatever. We still won the game.


I would like dedicate that last paragraph to Rain Delay and his treatise on swearing in the workplace. I hope I made up for it by painting this blog as blue as Lenny Bruce in a women's prison.

And if I didn't say it well enough...

Here's a guy from Sony Online Entertainment (Everquest, Star Wars:Galazies) who expounds on his theory of fun in an Op-Ed piece in the LA Times.

E3 is this week. I wish I could go. I'm going to make it my goal to go in 2006, no matter what else goes on. Even if I have a baby and Mephistopholes has some strange form of flu and can't take care of the baby herself, and I have no more vacation days, I will call the in the Nanny 911, fake a stomach cramp at work and get my ass to LA.

Just look at all the goodies on display for E3 2005. That Xbox 360 looks badass. Time to start saving for that $400.