Fort Worth has closed its schools, for a full week, due to swine flu.

Every day, in every way, I am ever so thankful I left that awful place.

Geen reactie’s, je kan de eerste zijn »

You remember how I took some computer programming classes in the aerie of the Galleria?

Well, I’m back for more.  This time for instruction in how to use “structured query language.”

Don’t ask.  It’s all too boring for words.

Only this time they moved offices, and now I’m across the river.   Across from Cost+/World Market, and Taqueria Garibaldi (erh?  Do they serve antipasti with theri fajitas?  This in the space that used to be Souplantation.  Or maybe it was Salads+More.  The strip-mall retail eating establishment brands all run together after awhile).  A block from what used to be the Bank of Alex Brown before it was bought up by Wells Fargo.  In one of those featureless suburban office buildings that, by virtue of having a dramatic water feature in the courtyard, plus an abstract bronze sculpture in the lobby, plus ample parking, not to mention a laser-sighted manicured lawn, somehow manage to signal nothing so much as their fundamental interchangeability with similar buildings in, say, Reseda, or Cherry Hill, or Naperville, or Dunwoody, or (wait for it) Las Colinas.

Needless (no really) to say, the instructors for this course flew in yesterday from the Irvine and Dallas offices.

UPDATE: Taqueria Garibaldi is the sister establishment to Taqueria La Fiest, on Alhambra.  There was joy in statsville at noon today.   Of course, the whine from the high-tension power lines added a little je ne sais quois to the adventure of jaywalking across Howe Avenue for lunch.

Geen reactie’s, je kan de eerste zijn »

There are times, it is true, when snark is simply not called for.

This is somewhat hard to admit, even for a fellow that’s been known to cry at movies (this is a genetic trait, actually, and entirely beyond my ability to control).

Even more so for a fellow that’s been known to engage in grand gestures of total purposeless, such as divesting himself of a years-long accumulation of B&W portrait postcards (originally gathered to adorn the walls of his college dorm room, which he did in an attempt to match the decorating style of his then-not out roommate), purely for the purpose of serving as invitations to my 30th birthday.

I think by that point I had had some of those postcards for 10 years.  _That_ takes a kind of ironyless-ness — or at least a studied ignorance of how ridiculous it might look to an outside observer that one might cart postcards all the way across the country simply to turn around and send them right back at $0.34 per.

Or when you ask a drag queen to register to vote as a Democrat in Texas, and not only does she say “yes,” but in the course of registering her you realize that she is, in fact, actually a woman.   A 70 year-old woman, to be precise (not to mention the mother of the reigning grand empress of the Imperial Court De Fort Worth/Arlington; did I mention that we were in an irony-free zone?).  Who takes a yard sign and hides it under her skirt (later to be revealed in the course of her act, with the bravura gesture “Fuck Bush.”  This in Texas.  This in 2004). 

This is hard to admit even for a fellow whose moment of crowning glory as an undergraduate came in an oral exam, the gist of which consisted of me, an unchurched Protestant frosh, attempting to explain to a middle-aged Jewish professor that the Holocaust was the antithesis, rather than the logical extension, of Enlightenment values.

Yes, it turns out that sometimes irony is simply a set-aside, best checked at the door and left entirely unattended for the evening.

One of those times, it turns out, occurs when you are attending an otherwise undistinguished conference and the guest speaker during the lunch hour is Steve Young.

Yes, that Steve Young.

I had to set aside my snark at a motivational speech.  By a football quarterback.  Who just happens to be a direct lineal descendent of Brigham Young. 

I had to set aside a lot of shit.  Because it was an excellent speech.  A straight-up outstanding speech worthy of a standing ovation.

Because there are some times when you simply need to check your irony at the door.

Geen reactie’s, je kan de eerste zijn »

So I went to a conference last week, in my capacity as a minion for A Large Government Bureaucracy.

Oh, speaking of which, I passed my civil service parole period.  Huzzah to me.  I think da partner may be getting me a set of gnome ears in commemoration.

Anywhoo, back to the matter at hand.

So I went to this conference.  It was fine.  Contacts were made.  Awards were given.  Speeches were made and powerpoints presented.  Products were vended  by the exhibitors.  Orange juice and coffee and croissants were consumed.  At some point, by someone, I am sure, things were learned.

As reader(s) of this blog already know, I find conferences amusing.  Or bemusing.  Or simply fodder for musing.   This particular conference was…bemusing, mostly  in regard to how it showed up the fact that I am a freak.  A freak as in, someone outside the norm, someone who does not (apparently) partake of normal tastes and habits.

The reader will recall, for instance, that I was reprimanded by the accounts payable at my agency for having a hotel reservation that was prima facie too cheap to believe, and so automatically rejected for the purposes of receipt of a travel advance.  Evidently, it is simply inconceivable that someone would not want to stay at A National Hotel Chain Owned By Fecking Mormons, and so choose to pay less of the taypayers’ money in order not to do so.

Although I vouched personally for the cleanliness, safety, etc., of this particular hotel – a hotel, I might add, with operable double-hung windows, deliciously comfortable platform beds, knotty pine headboards with IKEA-rific reading-light fixtures, basic cable, and a restaurant with honestly quite fine pizza and perfectly decent wine; all of which is simply, oh, I don’t know, “local color” or some such for the a-holes at the New York Times — only one other member of my branch chose to avail themselves of the opportunity to save the state a few dollars.  This person described the hotel as “rather like a Japanese businessman’s hotel,” and while the description may in fact be accurate (I wouldn’t know) I think the simile was not entirely intended to be flattering to the establishment at which we were staying. 

Our first night there, I distributed postcards at various coffeehouses and independent bookstores in the Mission.  While I was doing so, I had cause to reflect upon the fact that while J St. is by no means Valencia, I am not at present convinced that Sacramento automatically loses in this comparison.  In fact, I think that a comparison would be as against two things of different substance and style, but ultimately of similar nature — so, for instance, somewhat akin to comparing a sapphire to an amythyst.  While it is true that one is purple and the other is blue, that is really as far as it goes; the “value” of the one really inheres in its demand on the market, not in the quality per se of the thing itself.  The point of difference, in other words, is not between San Francisco and Sacramento, but between those two cities and, oh, just to pull a random burg out of the air, Fort Worth, Texas.  The former are precious gems.  The latter is paste. 

My colleagues, meanwhile, spent two hours figuring out where in the hell they wanted to eat.  They ultimately asked the concierge, who pointed them to someplace in North Beach– the name of the which they never managed to report to me — known for its calzones.

I, meanwhile, did what anyone I know would do: I called my brother for a recommendation.  His advice led me to Chez Papa (behind the old Mint on Mission) where I had my usual birthday meal (a week early, ’tis true) of mussels and white wine (supplemented this year by an asparagus salad), followed by a double espresso, creme brule, and a glass of grappa.   There I was entertained with a little retail guerilla theatre when the maitre d’ had to bounce a 45 year old woman for being too drunk to take care of herself.  This was a cause of minor regret for me, as I was included in the group of people for whom she was offering to buy rounds.

It was only later that I reflected on the possible disjunct between the no-longer-so-new hire in the branch eating a $60 meal while his boss (and, in turn, his boss) likely spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $20.   While I was at first tempted to conclude that I was a fool in spending a premium of $40 for the pleasure of sitting at a black granite bar and drinking a manhattan, I later concluded that $40 was a bargain at twice the price for the pleasure of not having to converse with someone whose first thought when staying at a hotel that caters to the German elder hostel/Swedish youth hostel trade is to draw a parallel to the Japanese equivalent of the Comfort Inn.

The next evening the branch chief suggested that we eat, as a group at Greens.  Now, having eaten certain recipes out of their cookbook, I immediately signed up for the outing.  As one might imagine, the food was quite good.  The view was fucking spectacular.   Because it sits in Building A of Fort Mason, one entire wall of the restaurant consists of a window looking out on to the Golden Gate.  I submit that there are few things in life that can match eating a fine meal while looking out at the Golden Gate.

Few things that I know of, certainly.

Apparently there are still some things of which I am unaware, some things that are better than eating a fine meal while looking out on the Golden Gate while — and to be sure this must certainly be of secondary importance — one’s boss, the fellow who signs off on one’s promotion, etc., sits right next to some guy that signs off on the grants to which you will apply in the coming cycle, both of them sitting across from someone who thought that one was simply on the hook for an evening eating good food under spectacular scenary. 

I don’t know what those things are, to be honest.  And I’m not sure I care to know.  To be sure, there must be something to whatever was on offer; after an evening telling southern gothic stories to the grant-signee fellow — because one of the benefits of attending family reunions for all of one’s life is the ability to call forth amusing stories at a moment’s notice — said grant-signee fellow pursued, the next day, one of my colleagues (conspicuous by his absence at the evening at Greens) for the purpose of co-writing an article with his (grant-signee) data but ‘tother’s (colleague too cool to eat veggie) methodological creds (which involve a fancy sort of statistics that one applies to time series data).

The disjunct between my tastes/habits/etc. and those of my colleagues came to a head later that evening.  For the purposes of appearing collegial I agreed to meet the other two younger folks in my branch.  They proposed to meet at the Starlight Lounge.

Now, I am a fair-minded fellow.  Even when drunk.  And because I am a fair-minded fellow, I would admit from the outset that, to quote my good friend Steve’s grandfather, if everyone liked the same thing they’d all be chasing grandma.

Well, Harry’s Denton’s Starlight Lounge is the grandmother I do not care to chase.

Why?  Because there are too many fecking bouncers. 

This is a problem, for any one of a number of reasons, not the least of which are that (a) either you have too many bouncers because your establishment is (ahem) disorderly, or (b) you have too many bouncers because you want to establish the appearance that your establishment is (ahem) disorderly, or (c) you have too many bouncers because the type of person whose patronage you wish to procure is titillated by the idea of patronizing a disorderly house.

I, for one, do not patronize disorderly houses, real or simulated.  And I certainly wouldn’t think to take my wife to one.  As my colleague with the time-series speciality did.

I do not care that you have an incredible view — an incomparable view, even, of the fireworks at the end of the Giants game, of fireworks reflected against the glass of the Transbay Terminal (I can get that from the apartments of friends).  I do not care if you have waitresses with skirts slit all the way up (I can get that from cousins).   I do not care if you have martinis as dry as the Atacama desert (I can make that with my own gin).  And I most certainly do not care if you have a dj who plays music that one can hear on 107.9 The End.

Evidently, I am a freak.  Evidently preferring to go to bars in the Mission, or to places with crazy fantastic custom drinks, over places that advertise themselves as “where the cable cars meet the stars” (wtf?) makes me, in a word, a freak.

This, I do not understand.  But whatever.

Oh, and to anyone who’s afraid of urban life and all those scary homeless people in San Francisco — much less all those (whoa!) people of color — I have this to say: when a man can text-message while walking three-quarters of a mile back to his hotel, drunk (somewhat: two martinis), and never once be hassled, that is a safe city.  I would not try to pull that in Roseville no matter who much you assured me that it was “safe.”

2 Reactie’s »

Snoop Dogg, hawking a cell phone plan, in German, as a lounge singer.

I love this even more than I love being witnessed to by evangelists for vegetarianism, not once (at Sac State) but twice (at Second Saturday).

Geen reactie’s, je kan de eerste zijn »

So this weekend da partner and I went to Truckee with some of his friends from work, and their friends, and their friends’ SOs, etc.

There were many things that amused the shit out of me about this.  Starting with: I think I may have been the oldest person present.

It’s hard for me to overemphasize how troubling this is for me.  I have spent my entire life being the youngest person in the class, the prodigy who skipped a grade, the guy that didn’t take time off between college and grad school, the youngest prof in the department, the guy that got hired straight into a pay grade that you normally have to be promoted into, etc.

This weekend?  I was the guy trying to keep up with the “power hour” (one shot of beer ever minute) with a crowd that included a lacross player and at least three gentlemen that if they weren’t in fraternities at Large Land Grant Universities I will eat my hat.

Needless to say I drank them bitches under the table.  But I digress. 

Really the age indicator came in the fact that da partner and I chose to expose ourselves as geezers and go cross-country while everyone else went snowboarding.  Which, when we came back and said something about having done 10k and 16k, respectively, impressed people (really?  it’s only 6 miles, people.  Half of which was downhill.  Oh shit, you’re flattering the geezer again, aren’t you?  Crap). 

I suppose I should take comfort in the fact that I didn’t go snow-shoeing.  Which the two youngest people in the crowd (23, I believe, and graduates of Colorado and Cornell) chose to do, throwing my entire balsa-wood structure of the La Grand Theory of age-cohort leisure choices out the effing window.

Sigh.

The second most amusing thing was the house.  Or manse.  Or, perhaps to state the matter in precise terms: heaping pile of steaming Vebleniana.  First one parks on the drive.  One could, if one chose, park in the two-car garage.  But one doesn’t.  Then one walks into the entryway — paneled in granite and oak (oh just you wait) — and with a window seat for one to take off one’s shoes.

Because this is a shoeless household, you see, and we need to spare the hardwood floors.  Even if it is an effing rental. 

Then one proceeds into the great room.  And boy howdy how great is this shit: 30′ ceilings if they’re an inch, with one wall consisting entirely of windows (with, on the lowest set of panes, tiny handprints made by toddlers wanting to play in the snow.  Or wanting to escape a lifetime of excess, pill-popping harridan step-mothers, brunches, and over-scheduled afternoons), a stair on the immediate left leading up to the loft with a pool table and bunk-bed nook (oh, you think I’m making this up?),  the loft overhanging the formal dining area (the centerpiece of which is precisely the kind of 9-unit faux-craftsman chandelier that makes one think “gee, I’ve seen that piece in Home Depot and always wondered who on earth could have a dining room in which that would fit.  Now I know.”), directly ahead of one the formal living room (with one leather couch, two easy chairs, the kind of coffee table that opens up to reveal a coffin-size space in which on stores, oh, atlases.  Or severed heads.  Whatever, it’s all the same).   On one wall an oil mash-up of Rothko and Johns facing a large mirror (15′ up the wall — because some giantess, of course, might need to check her coiffure).  An on every available flat surface a houseplant.

Real, not plastic.  And, needless to say, dying from not being watered by the cleaning service. 

Rule #2 of being a house-guest: don’t water the houseplants.

Oh, and did I mention the fireplace?  Of course there’s a fireplace.  With a beaten copper chimney.  Beaten copper, and quarried granite. 

Shit, I’m forgetting the wet bar.  The wet bar in the living room.  The wet bar with the beaten copper sink, mirrored backing, and a bottle of Balvenie doublewood that is, apparently, there simply for show. 

Off to the right is the kitchen.  With (really, at this point needless to say), the six-burner professional range, double-doored fridge, all-stainless steel appliances, ganite on almost all available horizontal surfaces (beaten copper on the rest) and stained green glass (with variable surface texture, the better to resemble bamboo) on most of the available non-wood vertical surfacing.

Oh, and a breakfast nook. 

I may have forgotten to mention the various bedrooms: the master suite (off the entry hallway, with its own jacuzzi tub and [ahem] double-headed shower, guest bedroom #1 (off the living room), and guest bedroom #2 (off the kitchen).

Guest bedroom #2 featured pictures of (a) a farmstead in the snow, (b) a thoroughbred racehouse, and (c) a map of Sanbornton, New Hampshire. 

The house went on (a family room, with a flat-screen TV as well as a second fireplace) and on (the aerie, above the garage, complete with yet another flat-screen TV plus its own 3/4 bathroom).

What does one do in a house this large, one might ask?

Drink, one might answer. 

Every party that brought a car brought a case of beer.  Three bottles of wine were stashed in the fridge, including two bottles of white zinfandel ($2 chuck, natch) plus a bottle of frighteningly sweet Mirassou chardonnay).  Many bottles of hard liquor were stashed in the freezer.

The prodigious quantities of booze was much commented upon, and many persons were shocked.

Not so shocked that they didn’t participate in the power hour, of course.  But shocked enough that they kept to beer and stayed away from the hard liquor.

Except for the Jim Bean.  I and some frat boy from South Florida made a partial (but decorous) dent in that. 

Over, I think it was — my memory of the evening is a little hazy at this point — apples to apples.  Or maybe it was Settlers of Cataan.

I think it was approximately at this point in the weekend that I reflected on the fact that when I lecture my students on Weber’s concept of “status” and make references to ” the consumption of status honor” that giving examples such as (a) knowing how to play Carcasonne might be so self-referential as to not make the lecture useful, and (b) even the general example of knowing how to play board games is really only useful for people for whom watching television is an option, no a necessity.

2 Reactie’s »