We Get Into Trouble When We BBQ

Last week somebody put up a little photocopied sign on my apartment building’s front door:  BLOCK PARTY THIS SUNDAY.

At the bottom of the sign someone had scrawled a handwritten note: We get into trouble when we bbq.

I was away from the apartment all day on Sunday.  When I returned at 11pm there were random, broken knickknacks scattered around the sidewalk in front of my building.  Apparently the now-concluded festivities had included a garage sale.

Also, there was an unattended fire in a plastic garbage can.

I went inside to fill a spaghetti pot with water, and when I returned the Crazy Angry Lady from upstairs had already come out with her own pot.  I convinced her that I hadn’t set the fire and that she and I were on the same team, and she expressed her view that the fire was the fault of those people, because god knows where they come from, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if they’d just go back there.

I ignored her theory, and muttered something about how it is not a good idea to leave an unattended fire in a plastic garbage can in the middle of the sidewalk in a residential neighborhood.  Which really should go without saying, but apparently sometimes needs to be said.  Or possibly scrawled on the bottom of a BLOCK PARTY sign:

You will probably get into less trouble if you don’t leave any fires behind.

This story (and that moral) will be included in my upcoming motivational self-help book.  Except in that version I will call out the Crazy Angry Lady on her xenophobia, and she will have an ephiphany and apologize and offer me some of her famous apple cobbler.

Chase and WaMu and Me

Banking with Chase was terrible.  Every couple of months they’d screw up, and blame it on me.  Eventually things would get straightened out, but not before several employees were given a chance to be rude and dismissive.  The subtext was always, “Wow, we’re really scared that you’re going to be so dissatisfied that you’ll move your accounts to another bank!  After all, you’re so poor, and it will have such an insignificant effect on us!  Wow!”

I stuck it out for 10 years, then finally got so fed up that I switched to WaMu last year.  WaMu has been a tad incompetent (e.g. spelling my last name “Philllips” on my checks, then making me we wait a month for replacement checks, then spelling it the same way on the replacements), but unfailingly polite.  Overall, I’ve been satisfied.

A week or two ago, Chase bought WaMu.  I just got a letter: At some point in the near future, all WaMu branches will be transformed into Chase branches, and my debit card and checks will be replaced with Chase-branded versions.

. . .

Please forgive me, Chase.  Trying to leave you was foolish.  I will never defy you again.

National Pizza Month

Do you know Sean Taylor?  Do you know what he’s been doing every year since 2002?  I’ll give you a hint:  It involves eating at least one slice of pizza a day, every day in the month of October.

(In retrospect, that was an overly generous hint.)

I think Sean’s quest excites me for two main reasons:

1. Pizza is delicious.

2. Sean’s level of commitment.  It’s one thing to say, “Hey, this year I’m going to eat pizza every day during the month of October.”  It’s another thing to actually follow through.  And it’s yet another thing to do it for SEVEN YEARS RUNNING.  This year he’s even making a pilgrimage to Chicago (from his typical hunting grounds, the New York metropolitan area). [Edit -- Upon rechecking his blog, I was reminded that he'll also be traveling to New Orleans, New Haven and Philadelphia this year.  Folks, the man is on a mission.]

Here is his blog.

And this is a video recounting day one, 2008 — De Lorenzo’s Pizza, in Trenton, New Jersey.

Sean: May the Gods smile upon you and your awesome quest.

Odd x3

This afternoon at the corner bodega I saw a slightly frazzled Muslim woman who was looking after five or six energetic young children.  She was wearing a tightly wrapped headscarf, and sticking out of the side of the headscarf was the lower half of a pink Motorola Razr.  Though the phone was open, she did not seem to be having a conversation with a person on the other end.  My first thought was, “Wow, somebody’s begging for brain cancer,” which was a strangely hostile thing to think.

Tonight I walked into a Starbucks, and immediately knew that something was amiss.  Everyone, customer and employee alike, had a slightly stunned look on their face.  Nobody was saying anything.

Eventually somebody giggled.  The silence having been broken, I asked the man standing next to me what was going on.  It turns out that moments before I walked in, someone had entered, grabbed a bag of coffee beans, then run away in a bizarre, cartoonish fashion.  “Knees all wobbly,” is how the man described it.  My first thought was, “I guess Starbucks employees won’t run after me if I ever decide to steal a bag of coffee,” which is a naughty thing for me to have thought.

An hour later, standing in line for a comedy show, another thought: “Hey, I’ve had two odd experiences today.  I wish something else would happen, because three odd things would feel more narratively complete.”  Five seconds passed, then a guy walked by me — having a casual conversation on a cellphone, and wearing these things:

I didn’t notice if the cellphone was a Razr.  I’m going to go ahead and assume that it was.

New York City = nuts.

Muxtape-ish

Not sure how long this will last, but there’s a new muxtape-like site that takes the audio from youtube videos and makes a playlist out of them:  MixTube.

Here’s a playlist with the songs from my a cappella rock band’s latest album:

http://mixtube.org/playlist.php?id=150

Thumbs Up

Who’s got two thumbs and a clean bill of health from his one-year-post-cancer-treatment checkup?

This guy.

Tiny Little Birdies

A series of thoughts I had on Sunday while waiting on the sidewalk outside a rehearsal studio:

1. Look at the tiny little birdies hopping around the base of that tree. They’re adorable. As adorable as kittens and puppies? Possibly.

2. Why do I find tiny little birdies so adorable? What is it about them, specifically?

3. Well, if you anthropomorphize them…

4. Wait, is it anthropomorphize or anthropomorphisize?

5. Anyway, if you think of their appearance and actions in human terms, they’re intrinsically cute. Quizzical little head movements, hopping around everywhere, not having arms.

6. Wait, do I find a lack of arms cute? Is that weird? Is that offensive to the limbless?

7. Oh, here comes a father with his young child. Is that child missing an arm?

8. Yes, that child is missing an arm.

9. That kid was cute, but the missing arm was not a factor in the cuteness. It was irrelevant.

10. Coincidences are weird.

Falin

A little something for the kids to use in their internet discussion groups:

Scrabble Nerd

I have never been to a Scrabble tournament. I don’t belong to a real-world Scrabble club. I don’t play Scrabble in public places. But in almost every other way, I am a Scrabble Nerd.

I play online, usually 10-minute timed games, via the free software available at <www.isc.ro>. ISC = The Internet Scrabble Club. And, yes, that “ro” means it’s hosted in Romania. I play Scrabble on a Romanian website. Why is it Romanian? I have no idea.

At one point, years ago, I memorized all the allowable two-letter words. I made a stab at the “threes,” but never quite got comfortable with them. I also tried and failed to memorize certain subsets of seven-letter words (SATINE_ and SATIRE_, in case any fellow Scrabble Nerds are curious). At this point I’ve pretty much given up on the memorization thing, because it’s incredibly boring to stare at lists of meaningless letter combinations.

However, I still keep a list of crazy (legal) words my opponents use against me. Words they have no business knowing. Words that prove I am less of a nerd than them. Definitively!

Here, for your edification, is a sampling of the four-letter words from that list:

unco, gleg, liri, nark, haet, yowe, nogg, migg, gadi, ambo, zebu, lowe, nome, adit, sago, corm, mabe, bort, flic, rynd, pice, nene, curf, fley, sorb, hade, cedi, chao, birl, soja, knur, azan, peri, ohia, cete, axil, puli, naoi, unai, vagi, agio, mity, neep, diel, kiva, joss, gite, tate

Get a life, people!

So that I have a better chance of beating you at Scrabble.

On the Romanian Scrabble website.

On which I’ve played several thousand games of Scrabble.

Literally.

(My current username is “mophi,” if any of you are up for a beating.)

Monsieur Mittens