Yikes!

Procession

I'm fascinated by funeral processions.

I don't mean the processional of people leaving a funeral chapel.

I mean the procession of cars on city streets or highways, following a hearse, accompanied by cops.

There's something that draws me to these slow-speed chases down the streets of LA. Dozens of cars and cops (usually on motorcycles) following a dead body riding in the back of a ridiculous looking car. Hearses aren't really limos, and they aren't station wagons or pick-up trucks. They're like El Caminos for dead people.

Nice Airport, Disgusting Passengers

I'm sitting here in the JetBlue terminal at the Long Beach airport, waiting for my flight to Chicago for Thanksgiving.

(I'm usually a pretty loyal American Airlines customer, but JetBlue was way cheaper this time, so here I am.)

It's a very nice airport. Parking was a breeze. Checking bags and getting through security was a breeze. We even got exit-row seats on the plane. And they have free wireless internet access on the plane. Note to other airlines: Offering your passengers free access -- instead of crappy $5/second through t-Mobile NotSpot or something like that -- is a great way to keep people pretty damn happy. It's not like providing free internet is that big of a cost in the greater scheme of airline economics. And there can't be that many people who actually pony up the $900 for eleven minutes of checking their email.

So the airport experience has been pretty good thus far, with one exception: the guy sitting next to me. Now, I would get up, except for that I'm sitting here with Sara and Mike and Erin, who are all perfectly happy to be sitting right here. Also, I have a very comfortable seat on a couch next to an outlet (in the back of the room at Gate 3, if you're familiar).

Sitting on my left (he can't read my screen because his bag is between us) is this very disgusting man. I was first introduced to him when I came back from the bathroom. I had left my bag on my seat (Mike is sitting on the other side of me and could watch my stuff), and when I came back, this other guy had sat down next to my seat, spreading his giant computer bag and his big leather jacket and his plug running right across my seat. This one guy -- who isn't obese or anything -- was taking up almost four seats of prime terminal real estate next to a big bank of electric outlets.

He just kind of looks at me as I look down at my bag. Finally, I say, "Would you mind moving your stuff so I can sit back down." He makes this look like I've just asked him shove a hot coal up his own ass.

I finally sit down, plug my own laptop in, and begin reading the news online and browsing through my email.

The entire time, this ass hole is sitting next to me burping loudly. Then he starts coughing all over the place, not covering his mouth. Then he starts farting. Far be it from me to criticize a person for having loud or profuse bodily noises. The problem is that this guy is sitting in a public terminal in an airport, in close proximity to many people. This has been a very disgusting last twenty minutes.

crackberry

Many many people have asked if I have an iPhone or if I have plans to get one. The truth is that I'd love to have an iPhone, but at the moment I'm very happy with my new Blackberry Curve that my work gave me.

First, I have no complaints about the keyboard, which has tactile feedback. Second, it works on T-Mobile's 3G network. Third, when I'm connected to a WiFi network, the phone uses VOIP to place calls.

And the Blackberry works fine for posting to my blog. And yeah... it was a lot cheaper than an iPhone.

Take that, iPhone.

A Tip

Don't leave your GPS unit in the car. Someone could shatter your driver's side window, reach in, and take it out.

Then the window won't be covered by insurance because it will be less than your deductible. So you'll be out $208 for a window, and you will no longer have a GPS.

Trust me on this.

"I'm not SUPERstitious, but I am stitious."

I watched The Office and Earl last night. I haven't had a chance to see my other Thursday night favorites (ER and CSI) yet, but they're waiting on the DVR. My takes:

1. My Name is Earl was good, though not necessarily excellent. Sara says that she misses the original pace of the show, when Earl would cross one thing off of his list in each episode. I think I agree with her.

Nevertheless, the episode showed hints of brilliance.

The show's willingness to mess with the opening sequence (in a previous season, they did an episode where the opened each segment with a different character doing the opening monologue bit and announcing, "My name is Joy," or "My name is Darnell," or whatever, and last night, the show opened with, "My Name is Inmate 28301-016") is refreshing and funny. It's evidence of the irreverence that makes the show good.

Earl joining the white-supremacist and old-guy gangs was excellent. So was Randy showing up and asking questions off of flash cards. Randy as lovable moron is hilarious, mostly because Ethan Suplee is brilliant. I think the writers have to be careful not to take this too far... It's hard to believe that the guy doesn't know how to cross the street but he does know how to drive a car. I don't need this show to be über-realistic, but I do need to be able to maintain my suspension of disbelief.

The poster on the wall was a funny way to write Giovanni Ribisi off the series (for now, anyways... I guess he had other projects to work on), but I would have enjoyed it if they took the Shawshank Redemption joke a little further. Ribisi standing in a drainage ditch yelling at lightning would have been great, or at least Earl throwing a rock through the poster.

Joy calling Randy "big-headed hillbilly Linus" was great. So was her stained-glass Earl (Darnell: "It looks just like Earl would look if he were made of glass."). Jaime Pressly is great on the show, and she deserved her Emmy. I think it should be noted, however, that when she's given too much screen time on her own, Joy gets grating and annoying. Her comedic pairing with Darnell gets better and better as the show progresses. At this point, their contrast makes for perfection.

2. Things The Office got right:

• Including almost every character in the episode. We missed the gang at Dunder-Miff all summer, and getting to see everyone again was like coming home after a vacation. Creed got lines, Oscar got lines, Angela got her own plot line, Darryl and Pam are co-religionists, and the whole-ep revolved around Meredith. Each time we saw a character for the first time, my face lit up.
• Pam and Jim. They didn't make Pam-Jim the center of the episode, and they didn't play the kiss as this giant dramatic moment with exciting music and all that crap. Using Kevin to vocalize what's going through the audience's minds was brilliant. Making their characters respond to their kiss in instant replay was brilliant. Not messing with their flirtatious friendship while at work was brilliant. The subtlety of the whole thing was brilliant. Their relationship played as being sweet and innocent and beautiful without being nauseating. Brilliant.
• The perfect dose of Andy. Enough to get across that he's still the same old Andy, but not so much that you wanted to strangle him. The whole nipple gag was laugh-out-loud funny.
• Dwight and the cat. You know putting Angela's live cat in the freezer is exactly what Dwight Schroot would really do. Perfect.
• The entire race sequence. From the big check and the stripper nurse (and the T-shirts, which I expect to see on NBC.com any second now) and the pasta to Michael barfing, the whole 5k part of the episode had me cracking up. Andy drafting behind Kevin, the guys driving to get a drink then meeting up at the end, and Toby taking it all too seriously was all comedic genius. Toby's character is exceptionally written. On one hand, he's Michael's arch-enemy, the only voice of adult sanity at D-M. On the other hand, he has that small bit of Michael in him that pops out once in awhile, like when he was genuinely upset that he didn't get a robe, or when he took the race seriously.

That's all for now. Stay tuned for my thoughts on ER and CSI once I've had a chance to see 'em.

D'var Torah: Chayei Sara

Things might have been easier for Eliezer, Abraham’s servant, if he’d had the assistance of GPS.

He had a long journey to go on. He was a man with a mission.

GPS – which stands for “global positioning satellite” – is a technology that allows a device, which can be held in someone’s hand or mounted in a car navigation system, to communicate with specially designed satellites. Using trigonometric calculations, the device figures out your location anywhere on the globe, and can help you map a course to your destination.

I learned a lot about GPS this weekend, when Dan Medwin and I participated in a global treasure hunt called “geocacheing.” People who participate in the game leave “caches,” little treasure troves, in out-of-the-way spots around the globe, then post the GPS coordinates on a website. Using a handheld GPS, geocache hunters trek through wilderness, looking for little plastic boxes hidden under rocks.

Eliezer is on a mission, too. He’s taken an oath to his elderly boss to find Isaac a wife among Abraham’s own people. According to Midrash Rabbah, Eliezer isn’t on the treasure hunt we think he’s on. When he journeys to Aram-Naharaim and brings his camels to a well, he’s trying not to find a wife for Isaac. Abraham has given Eliezer an out. If he cannot convince a women to come back with him, “you shall then be clear of this oath to me,” Abraham says in Genesis 24:8.

Eliezer, seeing opportunity, is hoping that his journey will end a certain way. He hopes not to find a wife for Isaac, according to the midrash, because he wants Isaac to marry his own daughter. Eliezer is a man on a strange mission. He must fulfill his master’s wishes, but he’s hoping to fail.

When Eliezer arrives at the well, he prays to God, asking for a woman to present herself. But as he speaks, the word vayomer in verse twelve is marked with a rare shalshelet. According to Rabbi Lee Buckman, the shalshelet indicates how “apprehensive, how worried, how desperate” Eliezer is. He’s a man on a mission, and it’s a little scary.

On our treasure hunt, Dan and I embarked on a mission to find a geocache at the top of Cuyamaca Peak in eastern San Diego County. We trekked straight up the hill, gasping for breath as we approached 6500 feet above sea level. Using the GPS, we found the location of the cache, a tree on the hilltop, located a few feet from where a fire lookout station used to stand.

But the geocache wasn’t there. We dug around. We uplifted rocks. We reached under branches and leaves. The plastic container we were seeking was missing.

A similar thing happens to Eliezer. A moment after uttering his half-hearted prayer to God, Rebecca appears and gives him and his camels water to drink. The Torah recounts an interesting moment in Eliezer’s consciousness: וְהָאִישׁ מִשְׁתָּאֵה לָהּ מַחֲרִישׁ. “The man stared at her, silently.”

After our mission seemed to be a bust, Dan and I wandered around the mountaintop, hopelessly trying to not be failures. It was then that we found our treasure. It wasn’t the plastic box we were looking for, but a blind man named Crazy Dave. Dave, who has no eyesight at all, has hiked to the top of Cuyamaca Peak dozens of times. He told us that the mountains heal him, and he recounted stories about his life.

וְהָאַנָשִׁים מִשְׁתָּאוּ לוֹ מַחֲרִישׁים .We stared at him, silently

It was at that moment that Eliezer’s true treasure became apparent to him. His mission was not about marrying his daughter to Isaac, but about connecting Isaac with his b’shert, this woman of kind heart who just-so-happened to be from Abraham’s clan.

According to the Midrash, one lesson of Eliezer’s journey is that there are moments when you need to take a deep breath and realize that you might have to redefine your vision of success. For Eliezer, this meant fulfilling his oath to his master. For Dan and I, it meant meeting a clear-sighted blind man.

Crazy Lunchtime

Two crazy things happened at lunch today.

I was walking through University Village, which is a giant strip-mall with a food court adjacent to the USC campus. They have a bathroom there. I needed to use the bathroom. So I entered.

I'm standing at the urinal, doing my business, and a woman walks out of a stall. Now, I'm sure I was in the right bathroom (it says "Men" on the door and it has urinals). I do a double take.

The woman is holding a bucket, cleaning supplies, and a mop. She is there in order to clean the bathroom

I say, "Excuse me."

She says, "No problem. Do what you gotta do."

She then continues to clean, as if it would not be bothersome to someone that a woman is hanging out in the men's bathroom while he's trying to, you know, do what he went there to do.

Thankfully, I have no problem using the facilities while there's someone in the room. So I went ahead and did what I had to do.

Then...

I went to Subway to get a sandwich for lunch.

I had never been to the Subway at University Village before. This is a giant Subway. It has two counters, arranged perpendicular to each other. One is a normal Subway counter, where you go up and make your sandwich and then watch them make it.

The other counter is magical. It looks like a normal counter, except it has these touch-screen kiosks in front of it, kind of like the self-serve kiosks at the airport.

You order your sandwich from the kiosk. They make your sandwich. Then they call your number, you grab your sandwich, and you leave. The kiosks let you do all the customization -- for any vegetable or condiment you can tell it to put on less or more -- and it even lets you add things like avocado or bacon, or have your sandwich toasted. This is the coolest technology I've ever seen.

According to a press-release from Pro-Tech Kiosks, the company that makes these technological wonders,

The Kiosks provide an intuitive touchscreen interface with large buttons, enticing graphics/photos of the food options; from fresh subs to salads, as well as a full array of toppings and assorted condiments. A pleasant, and encouraging, voiceover assists the customer with the ordering process, each step of the way.

Customers are able to order quicker, minimize order errors from poor communication, choose from a number of upgrade options (value meal, double meat, extra cheese) and to be able to pay at the Kiosk with their credit or debit card. In addition, the software, text and voiceovers are able to switch to a different language, such as Spanish, with the touch of a single button such that Subway can better serve different demographic markets.

So I ordered my sandwich at the kiosk. The voice was pleasant. The interface was easy to use. Two minutes and thirty-seven seconds (I checked) later, my order was ready. Wow.

Excellent Signage

There's a no-smoking-sign on the Coke machine on the patio at school.

This means that smoking is not allowed inside the Coke machine.

Thank goodness. I hate smokey soda.

The Wrong Mindset

It's time for my regular rant about the Mindset List.

In case you're unfamiliar: Beloit College, a liberal-arts school in Southern Wisconsin (that's in Ripon's conference), puts out this thing every year called the Mindset List. A few humanities or social sciences professors sit around and list a whole bunch of cultural references that, while familiar to adults, are not familiar to 18-year old freshman. To read the mindset list, click here.

A few years ago, I wrote a long rant explaining how stupid this list is. (You can find it here... It was back in the days when this blog was far more expletive-filled.) Basically, it came down to two big problems with the list:

1. It assumes 18-year old students can't relate to cultural references to anything that happened before 1990 or so.
   
   
2. It places far too much importance on relatively meaningless trivia. For example, this year's list explains that to this year's incoming freshmen:

   12. Smoking has never been permitted on U.S. airlines.
   15. They have never had to distinguish between the St. Louis Cardinals baseball and football teams.
   25. Phantom of the Opera has always been on Broadway.
   29. Computerized player pianos have always been tinkling in the lobby.
   42. Ken Burns has always been producing very long documentaries on PBS.

   Do these things have anything to do with the mindset of 18-year-olds? With the exception of those 18-year-olds who are huge Arizona Cardinals fans, I think not.

Anyway, this year's rant is a short one because I got beat to it by Chris Heard (who is himself a college professor), who trashes this year's list in a snarky blog post. The highlight:

Okay, I don’t want to through each of the 75 items like this. Most of the rest could be grouped into such categories as “false,” “overstated,” or “irrelevant.” What the list really boils down to is this: the members of the class of 2010 take for granted some things that earlier generations lived through. Wow. What a revelation.

Amen. As I wrote two years ago, if college professors really cared about the mindset of their new students (and not just the fact that they grew up riding in minivans and listening to canned lobby music), then maybe they'd sit down with these (presumably bright) 18-year-olds and ask them, "Tell me about the world you live in."

Ode to PGD

Last night was Ben and Amanda's engagement party (Ben and Amanda are my roommates). Seeing as they're from the South, and seeing as Ben loves Pabst Blue Ribbon, the party prominently featured Southern Comfort and PBR. I like both SoCo and PBR. This means trouble.

I don't drink that much anymore, but last night was kind of an exception.

Ben emailed me this morning from work. "i still feel like i'm moving through molasses," he says.

I lost track of SoCo shots at six... Then the two PBRs and two PGDs pushed me over the edge.

"PGD" stands for Pabst Genuine Draft, which is sort of like Pabst Blue Ribbon, but crappier. PGD is what happens when you ask Blitzstein to buy the beer.

Though her name might suggest that she'd be a great drinker, it turns out Blitz knows about as much about beer as I know about wedding dresses.

After drinking too much, acting a little silly, and apologizing to Sara, we ended up stopping by Rachel's on the way home. I apparently had a long conversation about wedding dresses. I don't really remember this conversation, nor, for the life of me, can I imagine that I had anything of substance to say about the topic of wedding dresses. But it happened, and here I am with nausea and a headache to remember it all by.

Thank you, Pabst Genuine Draft.