Yesterday, all our troubles were so far away

Digest: Space is Awesome, or lessons from a rainy day woman #45
So, it's official: Space is awesome. Pretty amazing. After a small dispute with my roommate this morning about whether or not space was in fact the way to bind humanity in a a common cause of peace, exploration and learning, I decided that despite her pessimism, I would believe that Space is the shit, and ain't nobody going to tell me different. The launch was beautiful and amazing.
Buying presents for your sister or you female life companion is hard, especially when your tastes overlap.
Chicago has a proposal to build a hellsa tall building near Navy Pier. Why? Who cares? When? Who knows? To what end? Promoting terrorism. We will not always be the Second City. Once we have the three tallestbuildings in America, and the busiest airport, we will be a major target too.
NPR for black people teaches me a lot. Heidi Robberbaron likes me to call is News and Notes.
Our friends made out with Jennifer Aniston outside the shop for some movie. Vince Vaughn then totally bought them a beer. Or something. Go tell your friends.
I briefly considered becoming a prostitute. Damn you, Craigslist. Damn you, paycheck.

"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."
--Dorothy Parker

"What can I say about that coat that hasn't already been said about Afghanistan?" --Dave Chappelle

Climb Every Mountain

As most of you know, I am not a mountain climber at heart. Or at soul, or, really, anywhere.

So it was with some trepidation that I agreed to accompany my brother, his wife, and 13 of their closest friends on a camping trip up a mountain to celebrate his 30th birthday.

I survived, however, and by some measures actually had an amazingly good time.

Here is an excerpt of my account of the weekend. Names may have been changed to protect the innocent. Or not.

My brother, sister-in-law and I left Park Slope at 8am.

Our first stop is at a starbucks in Chinatown, which was the rendezvous point with another camper, as it was deemed halfway between my brother's apartment and hers. She arrived late, something about a lost wallet, $10 in quarters, paying a cabbie via check, and an awful hangover. She spent much of the rest of the trip trying to shake off her new nickname-'hangover girl'.

Not long after we picked her up, a cell phone rang. Here's, essentially, a transcription of the conversation:
Sister-in-Law (SIL): Hi, What's up?
Brother's oldest childhood friend (BOCF): Hey, so, I have a logistical question, one which is actually shared by everyone in my car.
SIL: what's that?
BOCF: So, are we, well, are we camping by where we leave the cars, or do we need to bring all our camping gear up the mountain?
SIL: the latter.
BOCF: hmmm. So, we uh, probably need big backpacks. huh.
SIL: yes.

*please note that this car was also coming from Brooklyn and was supposed to arrive at the mountain at the same time as our car. We were already out of the Holland tunnel, they weren't packed*

I instantly felt better about my chances of surviving the weekend unharmed.

We had an uneventful drive, listening to ipods and telling stories, and stopped at a diner around 10:30am. While there we called at least one member of the other 5 cars to check on progress. 11am was the theoretical meeting time, but we expected people to be late.

We got a status update on all the cars.
BOCF estimates a 12:30 arrival. Another NY van estimates 11:30, and the new haven group says 12. The Boston car, meanwhile, says "just turning onto . Should be there right on time".

We finished our coffee, used the last real bathroom we'd see for quite some time, and drove on. We arrived at the starting point at about 11:15...and there was no Boston car. Also no cell reception. So, we waited.

Around 11:30 SIL asks "where, exactly, did he say he was turning?" We discuss this and, once we look at a map, realize that
the Boston car is on the wrong side of the mountain. So bro&SIL drive off to find cell reception and make some calls, leaving Hangover Girl (HG) and I to greet the others.

Of course, HG and I between us only know 6 of the 16 people expected on this trip, all of whom are in the cars running the most late.

The New Haven car arrives next. HG and I cautiously establish identity and make idle chit-chat while a musician friend of my brother sets up a speaker outside his car and blasts Brahms' requiem. Clearly, the tone has been set.

Another car arrived around 12. Those of us who were on time were beginning to get a little grumpy, but also enjoyed being on flat ground. We played 4 square with a tennis ball, etc. Bro periodically wanders off to use a cell phone to contact the others.

A van pulls up around 1. At 1:15 the Boston car pulls up, looking chagrined and miserable. We reassure him that he was only last by 15 minutes.

We then decide to redistribute the food and booze to everyone's backpacks. We all end up with heavy loads; my brother's backpack was the biggest, but my sister-in-law's backpack might have been bigger than she is.

We all took a bracing swig of bourbon, and started off at 2:00. Only 3 hours behind schedule and only 1 hour behind my brother's "assuming everyone's late, worst-case" scenario.

About 20 minutes into the hike...oh, you need more info about the actual hike.

5.9 miles to lake. Drop gear. Hike 3.4 more miles to top of mountain, hike down to lake. Eat, drink, camp, 5.9 miles back to the car Sunday AM. That's the basic plan.

so, about 20 minutes in we run into some park rangers. Here is my attempt to remember the exact conversation. Characters are:
PR1=Parkranger #1.
B=my brother
FFOB=female friend of brother
MFOB=male friend of brother.
AFOB=athlete friend of brother (gender not relevant to exchange).

PR1: howdy folks. You headed to echo lake? How many of you are there? What's the occasion?
MFOB: yup, 16 total, his 30th birthday
PR1: May I see your camping permit?
All: camping permit?

*negotiations ensue. Result is a one night camping permit issued on the spot*

PR1: Some advice, though it may be too late. Cans crush, bottles are almost as heavy on the way down as the way up. Not that you will be drinking. Now, do you have enough rope?
FFOB: rope?
PR1: for the bears
FFOB: bears?
AFOB: yes, I have plenty of rope. Will hold up to 300 pounds.
FFOB: 300 pounds? Rope?
MFOB: we might have to hand our gear from the trees so the bears don't eat it.
B: I thought the only problem was bobcats?
PR1: oh, no. we get lots of bears. Any food, drink, deodorant, sunscreen, insect repellent, food wrappers...All that you need to hang from the trees. Also your hiking boots because they like the salt. Anything you have that has any scent at all you should hang.
FFOB: really?
MFOB: well, we can just, like, climb the tree and put our stuff there, right?
PR2: if you can climb it, so can the bear. If you leave anything with any scent in range, the bears will come. And you probably don't want a mama bear in your tent.
B: what about things like epi pens and snake kits, we can keep those, right?
FFOB: snake kit?
PR1: no. hang those. The snake kit won't help with the rattlers.
MFOB: rattlers?
PR2: The only snakes you need to worry about are the rattlers.
MFOB: there aren't rattlesnakes in NY (guffaws)
B: actually, this is the one mountain where there are
PR2: Yup
PR1: if someone gets bit, you send the fastest person to run to the cars and get a doctor while the rest of you help the injured person back. snake kit won't do anything
MFOB: (jokingly) well, couldn't we just suck and amputate?
PR1: that's TV stuff. Last person who tried that...lets just say it didn't turn out well.
FFOB: dear god, you're kidding, right?
PR1: do I look like I'm kidding?
B: what about the bobcats?
PR2: with luck you'll hear them coming. Have fun, and happy birthday
AFOB: come on guys, don't be such wimps.
FFOB: ummm.......


The actual hiking was fun. Nothing shockingly hard or easy. Some of my brother's friends who were college athletes are no longer athletic...so I wasn't last.
I also established that of the 16 people on the hike, 15 were either invovled with the law or with the arts.
On the law side were 2 public defenders, 1 law student, 1 Spitzer employee, 1 human rights lawyer, 1 corporate tax lawyer, 1 ex-corporate lawyer writing a novel, and 2 legal journal writers. Representing the arts were 2 dancers, me, 1 trumpeter, 1 guitarist, and 1 artist. I think I have that count correct...

conversations were varied and interesting.

We got to the lake at 4:30, left our stuff at the campsite with a couple. They opened a bottle of wine and set up some tents. We hiked to the top of the mountain and enjoyed the view, once again passing the flask.

We ooh-ed and ahh-d and then came back to the lake.

We had dinner (sandwiches from whole foods), wine, and whiskey. we had cake, which had been carried up in two containers--one with cake, one with frosting. Brilliant!

We lay by the fire, eating, drinking, and listening to the three guitarists. One pretty much knows Johnny Cash and folk music, my brother pretty much knows acoustic guitar songs that he wrote, and the third pretty much knows classic rock.

We had a sing-along for a while. The people camped across the lake requested Free Bird, we obliged.

Hoisting the backpacks up into the trees was an amusing endeavor, but we were ultimately successful and then went to bed.

As we were beginning to drift off, however, my 2 tentmates and I heard something that sounded a lot like a bear, but was actually just someone snoring.

We were up early (the sun intruded), but only my brother went running.
Breakfast was granola and soy milk, but there was only one bowl, which caused some logistical issues.
We had lots of soy milk left at the end, so there were some soy-chugging contests as pouring it out for the bears seemed like a bad idea, as did carrying opened cartons.
Most people went swimming in the lake, I declined.
Then we hiked back down.

Lots more was fun(ny), but probably only if you were there.

A Biographical Sketch

Ms. Fliz was born from the foam of the ocean off the isle of Crete in the wine dark Agean Sea. She was, as a child, a prolific playwright, often penning plays under the pseudonym Aeschylus. After briefly serving as a boat-rower in an Athenian battle ship fleet, Ms. Fliz deserted the navy and adventured around the Middle East. After settling in Jerusalem, and working for a while as a kindergarten teacher, Ms. Fliz decided to abandon the educational arts in favor of a career as a movie star. Her first three films, all directed by Michael bay, were flops. She was engaged to Ben Affleck, though the pair split amicably after she found out that he was not, in fact,
Jewish. Her fourth movie, "Rushmore 2," co-starring Owen "The Butterscotch Stallion" Wilson was both a commercial and critical success, and vaulted Ms. Fliz to instant fame and wealth. After a dangerous bout with malaria (which she contracted on location for her
film "Malaria"), Ms. Fliz moved to Buenos Aires, where she opened a modest antique and interior design shop. While in Argentina, she played for their national soccer team, and received a degree in English Literature with a minor in Astrophysics from the Universidad de Buenos Aires. Ms. Fliz returned to the United States with her adopted son three years later, sparking a country-wide adoption craze. She returned to acting, staring in several feature films, including "Pride and Prejudice Reloaded: Revenge of the Uglies" and a film version of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. She now splits her time between Chicago, where she is an ensemble member with Steppenwolf Theatre, Los Angeles, and a hut in rural Cambodia.

Biographical Note

Heidi X. A. Vanderbilt-Robberbaron was born to a wealthy coal mining, steel producing, computer chip inventing family in the wilds of Connecticut. She spent much of her young life on boats, as her grandfather was a great maritime man, and sailed everyday of the year except Christmas. Heidi’s sea legs guided her to the Sorbonne at the tender age of 16, where she earned a degree in Economics while also working at the Opera Française. She soon became a part owner of the Shakespeare and Co. bookstore on the left bank, where she pioneered the great literary careers of Jack Kerouac, Michael Chabon and Jane Austen. She is also credited with the discovery of uranium in secret lab in the basement of her bookshop. While in Paris, she met and married a direct descendent of the Emperor Napoleon. Heidi fled Paris after the student uprisings in 1968 and settled in Morocco, where she lived in the desert and traveled with a caravan through the desert. After discovering the lost kingdom of Zanzibar, Heidi returned to the Western world to begin one of the greatest creative marriages in the history of the American musical. Her work with Stephen Sondheim has been called “transcendental,” “inspired” and “homosexual.” Heidi now lives in Aspen, Colorado, and teaches skiing.

Biographical Information: Calamity Anna

Calamity Anna grew up on a cinnamon plantation in Sri Lanka after the War. With only a small suitcase and the clothes on her back, she set off to London to make her fortunes in the fast evolving world of car racing. Though London was by no means an epicenter of traditional high performance car racing, Anna quickly found herself in the upper echelons on the sport, and often spent weekends cavorting on yachts off the coast of France with dignitaries, businessmen, actresses and politicos. Because of her high profile position, Anna was subsequently recruited into the KGB, and for years was a Communist spy. Her work with the KGB took her all over the world, notably to the Andes mountains, where she recruited indigenous Americans to the Communist cause. Disillusioned and tired after years of secret service, Anna retired from the KGB by faking her own death shortly after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Anna then bought a VW van, replaced the seats with cushions and blankets, a few clip lights, and a projector, and drove around the country making theater in parks, backyards and vacant lots. She amassed a devoted following, and eventually founded what would come to be known as the Nomadic School of acting and theater technique, influenced in equal parts by The Gilmore Girls, Anne Bogart and Modigliani. She currently resides in maritime South Haven, but keeps a home in New York City, where she is a part time venture capitalist and full time exotic dancer.

A Biography of Ann Marie Antoinette

Ann Marie Antoinette was raised by a family of wild Peregrin Falcons in the moutains north of San Francisco, California, in the late 1950s. Her untamed upbriging left in her a streak of wild abandon which was cultivated when she joined, at the age of 9, a travelling circus that toured with the Grateful Dead and other counter-culture musical acts. As Jerry Garcia's first wife, she was instrumental in enocuraging Bob Dylan to go electric, a move which made her rather unpopular in her folk-rock-drug-anti-establishment group of companions. Outcast from the travelling circus after a disastrously embarrassing fall off the trapeze at the Monterey Pop Festival, Ann Marie went to New York City, making money posing as a nude model for art students at the new School of Social Research. This lead her to a Biology teaching post at Columbia University, where she simultaneously acheived advanced degrees in Chemistry, Environmental Engineering and Ancient Greek History and Literature, which lead her to found and finance the world's first full sized recreation of the Library at Alexandria, which she painstakingly built over the course of a decade outside of Cairo, Egypt. She returned to the United States and was briefly involved with the Black Panthers, but chose to pursue a career in finance with Goldman Sachs in Chicago, Illinois. This move lead her to reconnect with her birth parents, Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson, with whom she founded the 'Starshiv Enterprise' not for profit AIDS research and charity foundation. Fleeing to Berlin in 1988, Ann Marie was briefly a cross-dressing nun and smuggled East Germans across the border to U.S. occupied territory. She then moved to the Congo, Rwanda, Bosnia and then Iraq, before returning to the U.S. in 2000 to manage Al Gore's unsuccessful presidential campain. Saddened by their narrow loss, Ann Marie retired to her estate in Palm Springs. She now splits her time between Palm Springs, Duluth, MN, and Boston, where she frequently acts with ART. SHe enjoys reading, baking and raising panthers.

Assignment

ode
n.
A lyric poem of some length, usually of a serious or meditative nature and having an elevated style and formal stanzaic structure.
A choric song of classical Greece, often accompanied by a dance and performed at a public festival or as part of a drama.
A classical Greek poem modeled on the choric ode and usually having a three-part structure consisting of a strophe, an antistrophe, and an epode.

examples: Keats' famous Ode on a Grecian Urn and Ode to a Nightingale

Draft an Ode, modeled on the samples above, to an everyday experience.

For example, Melanie might write "Ode to Scrabble" and talk about bug cafe, and I might write "Ode to the New AC in my Office".

These are just suggestions. I expect lyricism and rhyming. You may visit Rhyme Zone or similar engines for assistance.

There ain't nothing like bad poetry.

My list of caveats

1. Don't ever work for venture capitalists, or for that matter anyone who has 10,000 times as much money as you do and is 30 years older than you, or who lives on the other side of the Atlantic and spends $14,000 on a single flight from London to Chicago.

2. Don't ever write 2800 S. LaSalle Suite 2800 on an agenda when you really mean 190 S. LaSalle Suite 2800.

3. Don't ever book a hotel room for other people and assume that because you and your travel agent have called 3 times to make sure that it is non-smoking, that it will in fact be a non-smoking room.

4. Don't ever work for someone who needs you to make hotel reservations for them often, who has a severe allergy to cigarette smoke.

5. Don't ever assume that because you are better than your horrible job that you are actually good at your horrible job.

6. Don't ever think that you're not worth a reimbursable cab ride home on the company.

What to Wear?

Okay, kids:

For the job interview at the museum:

A) Black knee length skirt and black jacket that can pass for a suit, with nice shirt and fun shoes
or
b) Orange and brown print Diane Von Furstenburg vintage wrap dress with jacket and heels

Vote!

Assignment

We need bios

OT continued

Well, early on we lost 2 oxen (They wandered off) causing a 2 day delay. However, we successfully crossed the first river. then we shot a buffalo which weighed 963 pounds, but were only able to carry 100 lbs back to the wagon.

Because we are weak. Indoor kids.

We forded the second river, but our supplies got wet, costing us 1 day. I switched to "grueling" pace.
we passed the gravesite of "diet coke" (april 9th). We mourn appropriately.
one of the oxen is injured (April 10th)
Jon has dysentary (May 7th)
Wrong Trail (may 24)
Inadequate Grass (may 30th)
(hmmm. who needs the grass?)
Very Little water (june 14th)
Anna has Typhoid (June 20)
Successfully cross the snake river (June 30th)
Impassable trail . lose 8 days (July 11)
Anna has a broken leg (july 20)
Anna has died (July 25th)
ok, gotta quit for the night. Time to leave work.

more OT in the future, though probably not tomorrow.

I left my home at 6:34. It is now 11:04. Is mentioning that breaking the rules?

Oregon Trail: 7/5 Edition

We interrupt this 50th Anniversary of the birth of improv comedy to bring you

The Oregon Trail

You may:

1. Travel the trail
2. Learn about the trail
3. See the Oregon Top Ten
4. Turn sound off

What is your choice? 1

Todays travelers are
Ann Marie
Anna
Jon
Margo
Melanie

"You are currently using the evaluation version of Virtual APPLE IIE. You will be interrupted for 1 minute every 5 minutes until you buy a license..."

and we're off...

more later, when I know how we've fared.

Assignment #1

To Jon:
Write a one page essay based on either of these two sentences, both of which were a part of an actual phone conversation:

"It's not that I'm ignoring you, I just really want a popsicle."
or
"I'm drinking both wine and apple juice, and I'm not really sure if that's okay."

and, go.

Digest: Life is All About Tough Choices

Oil change or nap?
Halibut or monkfish? (4 to 2, monkfish, fyi)
Starbucks or single-payer health insurance?
work or play?
party on or stay home?
Elvis or The Beatles?

To some, these answers are obvious. Like how halibut is so much better than monkfish, duh.

But to others, the complexities of this world are such that one cannot make such a finite choice. In other words, as we all well know, the world is not black and white. Tom Cruise: crazy or sane? Well, he worships aliens, so that's not a good sign. But his movie just made, like, $120 million over the weekend, so that ain't bad either. So perhaps no matter what way you slice it, your blessings and your curses pretty much count for equal at the end of the day. And no matter how hard one tries, some people will never win online scrabble.

Perhaps even more importantly, today we also learned about willpower. About the moral strength inside us that got us to work on time (or relatively so), that helped us stare down our fears and addictions, that finally convinced us that vegetarianism is the only ethically sound form of food consumption, that bolstered our self-esteems in times of darkness, that allowed us to survive NPR related work fiascoes, among other difficult tasks.

Lesson of the day: Always tip your pizza delivery man!

P.S. Happy Birthday, America. The H. stands for Freedom.

Explainer: Why don't people care on the weekends?

Take a moment to relax and sit back in your chair, close your eyes, and think about what you did this weekend.

Are you comfy? Can I get you some juice?

Take this weekend, for example: a National holiday centered around food and blowing up stuff, excellent weather, tennis on the telly, friends in from out of town, parties in hipster lofts with bathrooms bigger than my apartment, a wedding reception, plays, man-love, friendship. So much to do, and so little time in which to do it and get over the 7 vodka tonics you ingested "by accident" on Saturday night.

And so, internet, we have no time to placate you. Our attentions were elsewhere. We were doing. We were participating. The weekdays, the workdays, these are the days when our unmitigated boredom and distaste for effort are apparent.

So our apologies if you missed us, I suppose, but this is the way the cookie crumbles. Now I need a nap and about a month on the elliptical runner, so if you'll excuse me, I'll be off now.

--the management

monkfish vs. halibut

If you had the option of the following two entree's which would you choose:

Poached Atlantic Monkfish
Asian Coconut Nage, Mussels and Clams
Plaintains, Gingered Pancake

or

Pan Roasted Alaskan Halibut
Confit Fingerling Potato and Rocket Salad
White Anchovy Cream, Acidic Mustard Jus

They both cost the same, but to you they are free.
Let me know your thoughts. Thanks!

The OT: Day 2

I did brilliantly at OT, except that Anna picked up dysentery and then got bitten by a snake. I revived her only to drown her when I crashed the barge twice and she drowned along with some oxen, a shit load of food, all the wagon parts I had traded for and the clothes. I finished the trail August 24, 1848, with a score of 7,494 but did not make the List of Legends.

With Love,
Margo

Digest: The Day the Music Died

It started off like a pretty regular day, and had so much promise: the three day weekend fast approaching, less than 80 degree weather for the first time in two weeks, fewer than half the people I know were at work, and Tom Cruise was about to make an ass of himself on national television...Simpler times, my children.

Then Sandra Day O'Connor decides to quit her job. Come on, Sandra, we all hate working. But we do it anyway, and you has the added benefit of being able to save America from self-destructively annihilating every ounce of freedom we have fought for and achieved over the last two centuries. Yeah, whatever. It's cool. I love horseback riding as much as the next girl.

So, I suppose the lesson is twofold: 1) never, ever plan your day around daytime television because it is always, always pre-emptied by something you could just as easily find on the internet; and 2) burn flags, worship mushrooms, have abortions, transport a person of color across state lines and spit chewing gum on the sidewalk now, because Bush is going to replace Justice O'Connor with all due haste and speed. If only those pesky Senate Democrats keeps their filthy, Hollywood blood-money-stuffed, terrorist-loving mouths shut.

But seriously, can you think of a more disheartening and jarring way to start your day? You are supposed to get to see the most unfathomably insane person on Earth talk about how aliens think you should get the hell out of therapy while simultaneously ignoring the fact that he paid a straight girl to be his professional beard, and instead you are greeted with the news that civil liberties as we have known them since All in the Family,M*A*S*H*, the Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Bob Newhardt Show compromised CBS's Saturday night laughin may very well be over. (oh, I looked that up online, btw.)

In other news: the best way to get to the 3rd floor of a building is to take the elevator. Stairs are also a good option, if the elevator isn't immediately available. Remember that, if you ever get another job interview. Also, a clean shirt never hurt anybody.

But no matter, for this is a holiday weekend. The Fourth of July can mean a lot of things to Americans in this time of war and conflict both at home and abroad, but really what it means is that we all get Monday off. I bet even Starbucks is closed on Monday. But somehow I feel in my heart that Reckless Records will remain open.

Rock on, Crocodile Rockers.