Random Thinking

File this under “the good old days”. I love this picture. Beth was almost three and I didn’t have a beard. Aren’t we both cute?

Beth and her friends went to Projekt Revolution at Jones Beach Theater today. The concert started in the afternoon at an outdoor theater on a hot day in the middle of August. So guess what they were doing at the entrance? Did you guess that they were confiscating water? If you did then you win. They didn’t want the theater polluted with outside water so everyone was required to drink the extra-special water that was provided at the bargain price of only $5 a liter.

Beth’s two favorite groups at the concert were Taking Back Sunday and Mindless Self Indulgence. Taking Back Sunday is a Long Island group. The girl who colors Beth’s hair has known the members since before they were famous. The guy in the blurry picture is Little Jimmy Urine, the lead singer of Mindless Self Indulgence. He has a reputation of being a bit of a performance artist and is well-known for his crazy on-stage antics. Beth said he was throwing water at the crowd which was probably a relief under the hot August sun.

When you go to a concert like this, you really don’t get to see very well. Beth is used to going to clubs where even from the back of the room you are closer than you can get at a big concert like Projekt Revolution. She complained about that and about her seats which were too high up for her… my fault, I should have kept her fear of heights in mind. So I don’t think she will be in a rush to go to another big concert anytime soon.

Tags: music, Projekt Revolution, capitalism sucks

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

• bomb (4x)
• death (1x)

Meanwhile over at Unringing the Bell she got a PG-13 because she used the word “poop”. So “poop” is worse than “bomb”?

One of our cats (pictured here) has adopted the printer as his bed. The cat’s name? Wait for it… Inky.

The printer is also a copier… I hope he isn’t planning on cloning himself with it!!!

The book section of today’s NY Times contains an essay by Paul Greenberg about the fishing habits of Ernest Hemingway. Greenberg reminds us that Hemingway loved to fish, especially for the big game, tuna and especially marlin. Greenberg, using Papa’s writings estimates that Hemingway caught more than 800 marlin in his fishing career. Greenberg isn’t doing this to tell us that Hemingway was a bad person for killing all those fish.

Greenberg is doing something much more important… he is telling us that what Hemingway could do in the 30′s, 40′s, and 50′s no one could do today because the marlin have been fished to nearly their destruction. And it isn’t the sport fisherman who have done it (although they contribute), it is the people who eat cans of tuna that have destroyed the marlin.

Marlins don’t taste very good. They are an oily fish and their corpses are usually dumped back into the sea when they are caught by commercial fishermen. Their bad luck is that they generally hang out with bluefin tuna. Bluefin are caught by long-lining, the process of running lines with millions of hooks behind large fishing boats. Long-lines catch everything, including unwanted fish like the marlin. So to feed the insatiable appetite of the American tuna eater, the marlin population is being destroyed. It won’t be long before the marlin and bluefin tuna will have gone the way of the Atlantic Cod. The spawning grounds in the western Atlantic need to be closed now but the commercial fishing industries have big lobbyist groups in Washington, DC and are fighting it.

Think about that the next time you are taking a bite out of a tuna salad sandwich.

Tags: marlin, tuna, extinction, Ernest Hemingway

So I finished my first week of work at my new company, Clever Devices. What a great company! Although it is very busy. No taking a month to get up to speed… you are expected to start producing as soon as they sit you down. I am working on a very interesting and fun project so the week just sped by. I had lunch with my team on Tuesday. One of the members was in the World Trade Center on 9/11. Her and her husband worked on the 77th floor of Tower 2. On Wednesday I had lunch with my old friends from Fala. I also came home for lunch twice (it’s nice working 5 minutes from home).

On Friday, it was raining hard so I decided not to wear a suit and instead wore khakis with my NYC subway map tie. Michel had bought it for me years ago and I never wore it but it fits with Clever Devices. Bill, the owner of the company, brought bagels and muffins in on Friday so everyone was hanging in the lunch room. Bill saw the tie and had to compliment me on it. Only someone in the transit industry could truly appreciate this tie!

Yesterday was flower day at our house. It was that last day of school at AHRC so it was also Beth’s last day of volunteering. They gave her lunch, a balloon, and flowers as a way of thanking her for helping over the summer. Beth was very sad to have it end as she had a lot of fun in her class. She said the kid’s with autism were more fun and nicer than the kids at her high school!

It was also Michel’s birthday and although I didn’t give her flowers (I gave her Godiva chocolate), her sister, Eileen, sent her these beautiful flowers. Thanks Eileen!

Tags: flowers, birthday, volunteering

Here is the end of my high score game from yesterday. I scored a 28. Read it and weep! When I play on our laptop, the flash player doesn’t show the whole screen so I can’t see what my score is during play. I have to zoom and then scroll to that side of the screen after I’m done to see what I scored. So I really had no idea how I was doing until I looked up and saw a little bit of the “2″. Maybe not knowing what I scored helped. During the game I had one shot clear 8 balls! It was at that point that I realized I must have a good score and noticed the “2″.

Tags: addiction, fun, games, friction

Today was Michel’s birthday. Here is a picture that I took today of Michel on the phone with her cousin Tina who was born the same day as Michel. As you can see in the picture, Michel is wearing her special birthday hat. Actually, Michel is having a 48-hour EEG to determine if she is having seizures. What a wonderful way to spend your birthday.

So I went to Godiva to get chocolate for Michel and found out that they no longer make the milk chocolate starfish (with raspberry filling) that she loves. The book store didn’t have Johnny, the Homicidal Maniac which she had loaned to her boss at AHRC and never got back. The bagel store didn’t have any rye bagels or black and white cookies. I think Michel is cursed.

Anyway, I love her and I hope she had a wonderful birthday in spite of everything.

The Thin Man
by Dashiell Hammett

If you ever saw the movie The Thin Man starring William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles, then you already know the basic story. It’s the worst part of the Depression and Nick and Nora are a fabulously wealthy couple living in San Francisco. For business reasons, they are spending Christmas in New York City where Nick was once a first-class detective. Clyde Wynant, a man that Nick once helped, is missing and his daughter Dorothy (played by Maureen O’Sullivan in the movie) asks Nick to help find him. Nick isn’t anxious to get back in the detective game (although Nora wants to see him in action) but when Clyde Wynant’s secretary (who is also his lover) is killed and Wynant is suspected, Nick is dragged into the investigation.

All the players are here, Mimi Jorgenson, Wynat’s ex-wife who is desperately in need of money; Chris Jorgenson, Mimi’s current husband; Dorothy and Gilbert Wynant, Wynant’s two grown-up children; John Guild, the police detective stuck with this baffling case; Herbert MacCaulay, Wynant’s lawyer; Nick Morelli the gangster and speakeasy owner; and Arthur Nunheim, the police stool pigeon and blackmailer. The problem is that none of these characters are in the least bit likable which makes it hard to care about them or even care if Wynant is found. Unlike the movie, Dorothy is a floozy who drinks too much, Mimi beats her children, and Gilbert is beyond eccentric and is simply unbelievable. And the book drags on with side steps into discussions of cannibalism, for example, that really have no point nor do they move the story along.

But the main failure of the book is in failing to do what the movie does best… make a couple of Nick and Nora. There is no Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson feel in the book. Nora mostly hangs around comforting Dorothy and keeping Mimi from smacking poor Dorothy around. When the killer is revealed and the case solved, Nora isn’t even around… she’s back at the hotel. Rarely is a movie better than the book it is based on (Jaws come to mind) but this is one book that is poor compared to the movie. I should add that the book has a gratuitous use of the n-word and stereotypes lesbians as man-haters which made me like the book even less. Yes, I know the book was written in the 30′s but still it grates on the modern reader and probably quite a few readers even back in the 30′s.

Tags: book review, Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man