You Can Call Me Al

I don't like to talk about work too much here, but I'm being elevated to a position at work which requires me to manage people. That said, I'm wondering if anyone has any recommended reading in regards to best practices and/or practical advice about people management OR how to best effectively manage time when you're working on your own tasks and managing others. Would appreciate any feedback or recommendations.

Bob Lefsetz Is The MAN!

I hang on Lefsetz's words now. I check Bloglines too much anyway, but whenever I do, I'm hoping beyond hope he's posted a new diatribe. His post tonight is so righteous and spot on that it makes me insanely jealous that I can't articulate it like he can. I read his stuff and I think to myself, "Copetas, you are a shit writer."

His post tonight is about the ITunes Music Store and I couldn't agree more. Just look at this quote:

"Then stop buying into the hype. Ignore ridiculous pronouncements of well-endowed vaporware and get down in the pit with the proletariat. Eighty million people have iPods, not because they’re tied to the iTunes Music Store, but because they work best. Most people fill their iPods with music they’ve acquired anywhere BUT the iTunes Music Store. It’s a circle jerk to see the iTunes Music Store as the future of acquisition and it’s even more of a circle jerk to believe you can deliver less, for INCOMPATIBLE DEVICES, and people will want these new services more.

A lot of unprotected music for a low price that you own permanently. This is the only solution. To think otherwise is to be ignorant."

The bolding is my doing. Right on, baby!! Right on the nose!!!!

I Like The Night Life, Baby

I remember an instance back in my 20's somewhere, when I was at the apex of my club-attending, beer drinking, ravenous music phase, when I said to myself "I don't think I will ever stop going out, seeing bands and drinking beers. People are really missing out." I remember another time also thinking that I would never (EVER!) be one of those guys who lived in the suburbs, trapped in a box house driving a Saab or whatever. Nothing whatsoever wrong with that, either - I was just a city guy, man. I couldn't imagine having to drive more than 10 minutes to see bands! Never!

Today, I live in a box house in the suburbs and I definitely do not feel trapped (though we do miss the city). I get into things like interior design, which blinds will look good on the front porch, what kind of artwork to buy for the walls and what can I do about those goddamn birds who ate that tomato in my garden last night? No Saab, either, but admittedly it's way more boring than that - I drive a 2002 Toyota Camry. Shit though, things change. Goals change. The idea of what is fun changes. What felt so right back then, so automatic, so much a part of me - is frivilous now. And more-or-less gone.

So it's very rare to pull off a weekend hat trick like I did this weekend: Friday, Saturday AND Sunday, I was out attending some kind of entertainment event. You can see my write-up below of Friday's trip to see Little Miss Sunshine. On Saturday night Steph and I went up to the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom in New Hampshire to meet up with my parents and sister to see comedian Lewis Black. If you don't know him, he's the guy who occasionally appears on The Daily Show ranting and raving about.....whatever.

He's become a renowned, national touring comic who is selling out all the places he goes and he's a pretty funny bastard. I can only assume that before Bush became president, he was just another comic, slugging it out, depressed and high on something - just like the 98% of other unknown comics out there. But Jon Stewart saw something in the guy and when Jon Stewart sees something in you, he's almost always right. Hello, Steve Carell and Colbert. Lewis Black's angle is largely venting about what is wrong with America, the government, the president and basically anyone else in position of power, political parties be damned. And he plays it to near perfection. He's a one-trick pony, but his horse is Secretariat. Government has done for him what whores, cigarette snaps and "ohhhhhh!" did for Andrew Dice Clay. Oh yeah, one more thing: it wouldn't surprise me one bit to open the newspaper one day to find out that the guy had a massive coronary right there on stage.

So it was quite a good show, but the funniest thing about the night was just outside the club: Hampton Beach itself. You see, Hampton Beach is a place I used to go as a kid and at the time, going there felt like you were trapped in the late 1950s. Skee-ball, cotton candy, fried dough, cheesy babes, lots of iron-on t-shirt stores, run-down condo rentals and plenty of Iroc-Z's. I'm pretty sure there was even a store that sold nothing but roach clips and bandanas back then. Seriously. And while I didn't see that particular place on this trip, the best part of Saturday was seeing Hampton Beach, eighteen years after my last visit, had not changed one iota. You can still walk the boardwalk and find stores that sell Judas Priest and Iron Maiden shirts. I shit you not. I couldn't help but laugh. My dad put the icing on the cake when he said "We used to come up here in high school all the time and NOTHING has changed." See? That place is truly trapped in another dimension. So interesting.

Sunday night put the icing on the cake, though, when Tim Easton and band played in Cambridge, MA. Easton is, unquestionably, one of this country's best songwriters, period. If you are looking for something new to listen to, I can (and will) find at least five songs by Easton that I will guarantee you will be humming to yourself within hours of hearing. Typically, he tours acoustic/solo, but when I saw he was toting the band for this one, I wasn't going to miss it for the world. How good is Easton with a band, you ask? My wife Stephanie, she of the (roughly) 10pm bed time most nights, attended the show with me, which lasted until 12:30 - the night after seeing Lewis Black with me and having to stay up until after midnight! Bless her soul. That's how good Easton is. And he delivered knock-out blow after knock-out blow last night, about as raucous and good natured as a troubadour can get. We left that show on a high that I personally still haven't come down from yet. So I dare you to take the Easton challenge: let me know if you're up to it and I'll make you a mix of five Tim Easton songs. And then you'll be a fan. Sound good? Of course it does.

Now, though, I'm paying the price. I'm exhausted after 3 straight nights, whereas before, in another life, that would have been "ho-hum big deal let's do it again next weekend." Not anymore.......not anymore. Yet here I am, at 11:59, typing a blog post. I do it for you, reader(s). For you.

I've Been To The Edge....I Stood & Looked Down

Little Miss Sunshine
Originally uploaded by rustedrobot.

There's SO much to love about Little Miss Sunshine that I don't even know where to begin. It is simply one of the best movies I've seen in years.

Part goofy sitcom and part painful irony, the film explores a family teetering on the brink, a barely middle-class group of six whose characters are played so brilliantly that you can't help but root for each and every one of them, despite their individual idiosyncrasies, which, in real life, would border on the annoying and/or officially disturbing.

I can't really point to one particular actor who shines here, because all six do it so convincingly - Greg Kinnear's portrayal as the self-appointed patriarch makes you want to kick him hard in the shins, yet I couldn't help but feel just a little sparkle of sympathy for his character. Steve Carell's turn as a suicidal, gay academic is not what you'd expect - nearly every word that comes out of his mouth is dull and almost pathetic, yet he actually appears to be the most stable, until you really meet Paul Dano's "Dwayne" about halfway through the film. Dwayne, at 15 years old, is on a self-imposed vow of silence until he gets to fighter pilot training in three years. Enough said, right? No pun intended.

I found myself begging for way more of Alan Arkin, who plays the hilarious Grandpa, the potty-mouthed, drug abusing, been-there-done-that cantankerous fool - he's really a bit player here, but all of the greatest moments in this film center around his influence or his presence, whether he's physically there or not. There's one moment in this movie between he and Greg Kinnear that almost makes you cry, because it's so heartfelt - and so unexpected - and there's two other moments in the film that involve him when he's NOT there that are the two funniest lines in the whole movie.

Although there is no one central character here, the title of the film is actually the name of a 10-and-under beauty contest in California held for little girls. The gang of six are on their way to the pageant in their Volkswagen van because Olive, the forever optimistic, slightly rotund and hugely spectacled 7-year old girl of the family, has won the chance to compete for the national crown.

Often times she steals the show just with her oft-bewildered facial expressions, but the envrionment surrounding her, particularly at the pageant itself, is where the movie turns to pure comedy. Underlying those guffaws, though, is a serious and biting cannon shot to the gut of a particular arm of our society today. I'm not going to go into detail there as you simply must see the movie. Suffice it to say that Olive wins the regional pageant because the real winner was disqualified due to her taking diet pills and during one scene, an eight year old is being sprayed with bronzer by her preppy mother in preperation for the pageant.

It's not just a shot at the bombastic and ridiculous pageant life, though, it's just a microcosm of how America is starting to feel to me. That's just my perception, by the way, but I do believe the filmmakers aren't just taking shots at pageantry - that would be way too easy.

I've said enough - you really should see this movie. Trust me.

Take A Bite Out Of Vague

A funny, but not funny brief NYT article (no password needed) on how the world of venture capital is looking at "enviromentally friendly companies" and how the term "cleantech" is largely being abused by companies who are seeking funding. The idea here is that since cleantech is hot, these companies who are looking for investment basically dream up ways to qualify themselves. This is certainly not unexpected. Much like all business, it's always about the money. No surprise there. It's no different, really, then Whole Grain Fig Newtons being positioned as healthy or food companies slapping "organic" tags on food when it's actually not USDA organic. Caveat emptor, friends.

I used to walk into the bathrooms at offices I worked in to see people flossing their teeth after lunch. In general, the first thought that entered my head was "okay, that's just a little obsessive." But time does strange things to people (people = me). I don't floss after every meal, but I've lost the gut feeling of thinking that task may be obsessive in nature. Teeth are just bizarre. I am no stranger to the dentist's chair, myself - spent nearly five years in braces and various mouth contraptions from sixth grade until junior year in high school, did everything they told me to do and just a few years later, my teeth aren't crooked or anything, but I definitely don't feel like the orthodontist did their job.

Since then, I've been in the dentist's chair for many procedures and these days I go for cleanings every 3-6 months because I'm the one who's obsessed with keeping these things as long as I can. Flossing? That was a foreign concept to me when I was young and virtually indestructible. For the last five years, though, I floss every night and then follow it up with Listerine, no matter what. Each time I go to the dentist now, I'm rewarded with "your maintenance is terrific" or something similar. I'll take it.

The other wierd thing about teeth is that no matter how hard you try to keep them clean, heredity plays a major role. You could be that guy (obsessively?) brushing and flossing after each meal, but if your parents have bad teeth, there's a damn good chance you will as well. That's not terribly fair, but I guess it's better for that to be hereditary than, say, being a dick.

What's your policy on flossing?

Pucks 'N'.......Sucks?

A week or so back, ex-Blogger Matt asked me for a post regarding my contention that basketball is boring, but hockey is not. A few thoughts on this topic, which I should remind everyone, is not based on any factual research I've done. Just my opinion.

First off, hockey is a far more athletic game. It doesn't mean basketball is not an athletic game, it's just less athletic. Sure, burying a 3-pointer with a lanky 6'10 human quickly bearing down on you takes an athlete, but doing it on skates against a guy who is actually allowed to try and knock your head off takes more of an athlete.

Which leads me to my next point: hockey is less boring because there aren't frigging fouls called every fifteen seconds. There's an ebb-and-flow on the ice that makes it a far more exciting game to watch (and participate). Basketball just has too many whistles and it slows things down. Just last season, the NHL finally realized this after 10+ years of a subpar, sleepy product. The "new" NHL still has its problems, but the product last year was so obviously superb compared to any of the last 10 seasons. Now, if they could only get rid of ten teams I just might become the hardcore fan I was during my formative years.

Hockey has blistering slapshots and wristshots - and defenders who actually dive in front of them and/or largely insane goaltenders whose job it is to stop them. Basketball has.......shots. And yes, basketball has dunks, but the majority of those only come when the guy who has the ball has no defender in front of him. A dunk is largely an exhibition to show off a move. A slapshot (and some wrist shots!) is a 90mph-plus attempt to locate a puck into a very small open space, covered by a skilled defender. That is far more exciting to me.

There can be no doubt whatsoever that hockey is a faster game. Just go to one and you'll really see the difference. I'm smart enough to admit that watching hockey on television will never deliver the product the way it should be delivered. For whatever reason, watching it on television just doesn't do it a lick of justice and it never will. HD helps, but it doesn't solve. Once the NHL realizes this, they'll be better off. But anyone who tells you basketball is a fast game is not telling you the complete truth. Basketball has moments of speed, but the main ingredient of hockey IS speed.

Anyway, there's probably more. My point is not that basketball sucks. It's just that I can't watch it because it lulls me to sleep. Even when the Celtics were winning in the 1980's, I didn't care because the games just didn't excite me. I readily admit there's a certain skill involved in playing hoops and that game is filled with tremendous athletes. I just can't deal.

He's A Pinball Wizard.....

Nauset Beach, Orleans, MA
Originally uploaded by rustedrobot.

......and I'm the pinball. I sit here on Tuesday night in a bit of a confounded haze. The last 10 days have been the strangest jumble of work, vacation, travel, rushing and relaxing I've probably ever encountered. I've already detailed some of it in posts below, but part deux can be neatly summed up this way: last Saturday night, I realized that the bed I was sleeping in was the fifth different bed I'd slept in the previous seven nights. That makes me sound downright prostitute-ish, doesn't it?

Truth is it went like this: from the Argent Hotel in SF to Meadowood in St. Helena, to the La Quinta Inn in Oakland (talk about a transition!) to my house for a night, then to Yarmouth/Cape Cod, for what turned out to be an oft-frustrating exercise in half vacationing, half-working. Of course, it wasn't intended to be that way, for when I'm on vacation, I am usually on vacation (see: don't f'ing call me. ever). But a deal came down to the wire on the two days that I just happened to be vacationing and I simply had to be present, unfortunately. Highlight: walking around beautiful Nauset Beach (pictured above) trying to find suitable cell phone coverage.

It's not the best feeling to have your wife sitting there by her lonesome while I'm off on these calls, so I felt a little crappy and frustrated about it, especially because I'd been gone the previous week, too. Luckily for me, my favorite lady is a keeper - an extraordinarily understanding and patient person. She's not crazy about the whole work-during-vacation thing (nor am I) but she understands and consoles. It's also very rare for me.

But it definitely wasn't all work, either. We found our way to a couple of great beaches and wandered around a few extremely quaint and beautiful Cape towns where we found ourselves continuously driving by houses, exclaiming "I'll take that one!" as if we were multi-millionaires. We also found (and cooked) some terrific food, to boot. I should add there's great chowder in those parts. Obviously.

Pics here. Next: mow the lawn, weed the garden, pick some vegetables, catch up on work, ignore the Red Sox. Definitely ignore the Red Sox.

On vaca, be back Wednesday

Day of Days

Day of Days
Originally uploaded by rustedrobot.

So, any of you who might have been thinking that it was all fun and games up in beautiful St. Helena, California - think again. Sure, we had some time during the day yesterday to play, but not before 4.5 hours of more meetings. We did have the afternoon to ourselves, though and I spent it with a co-worker and good friend playing my first round of golf since 1994. Twelve years have flown by since I swung a golf stick, and hoo boy did it ever show! I had a few nice little shots, but by and large played many holes east-to-west instead of north-to-south. We didn't keep score, so I can't really tell you how I did numerically, I can only tell you that it was well, well north of bogey. I'm thinking I may try to find a way to play again this summer or fall as I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would.

Today, though, was the day of days, as the title of today's post indicates. More meetings from 9am-1pm, then it was a race against time and Bay Area traffic to get 105.6 miles down to Cupertino, CA for more meetings from 3:30-6pm. We made it there by 3:35. In order to be even five minutes late, we had to sacrifice lunch, meaning at 8:30am I had some granola and fruit and that was all until about 7:30pm tonight when we finally hit downtown Mountain View for some Vietnamese at the obnoxiously yummy Xanh. Tired + hungry = ugh. Finally got back to the hotel tonight around 10pm and it's a 7:30am Jet Blue back to Boston tomorrow. Day of days.

Sidenonte: As I looked around Mountain View on my way in and out (first time there) I kept thinking the same funny thing: "sponsored links built this town!"

We Had Oysters And Dry Lancers

I'm not quite sure what I've done to be able to stay here, but I'm not arguing it. Greetings from St. Helena, California, in the heart of wine country and Napa Valley. After spending all day - and I mean ALL day - cooped up in a conference room for an internal work meeting, we've moved things about an hour-and-a-half north of the city. Suffice it to say, it's way nicer here. Way. Exhibit one: the amazing piece of lamb I had last night here. Rock on, Beavis! I'm probably the only one who's ever typed that in this cottage.

Along with all these meetings and moving around through comes an extra level of exhaustion. I hit the bed last night with a fierceness which only a marathon runner knows, probably. Thank god I don't run marathons. Only crazy people do that. If I need to get 26.2 miles away, I take the damn car. Of course, the madness will continue soon, to the tune of a near-three hour drive south tomorrow after our meetings adjourn here. Yes, another meeting.......there I go, turn the page.

There I Go, Turn The Page

San Francisco, from top of the Mark Hopkins
Originally uploaded by rustedrobot.

I've been doing a healthy amount of bitching lately about all the work traveling I've had to do this spring & summer. I've literally been on a plane every week for the last six weeks. Anyone who's done it knows how fast this shit gets old. Whenever I come to San Francisco, though, which is my home for this week, it softens the blow a little bit. It's probably my favorite city to travel to.

Tonight a few of us Ask.com'ers dined at an rather unbelievable restaurant called The Slanted Door, where the service was outstanding and food was spectacularly fresh and delicious. Sometimes you forget how important a truly great waitstaff can be. Case in point: we ordered too much food - and they actually told us to pare it down. That said, don't go there without experiencing the Japanese Yellowtail or the Meyer Ranch Shaking Beef (it wasn't literally shaking).

Beforehand, my boss and I took a quick one hour spin through the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which is always an intelligently spent $12.50. It wasn't as great as last year's Robert Bechtle exhibition (yes, that's a painting), but the MOMA is always time well spent. Then we sat outside in the sun for a bit and just shot the breeze. Traveling for work isn't great, but days like today - great weather, beautiful sights - make me realize that a lot of people would kill to be able to come to San Francisco now and then for their job. Give and take, right? Tomorrow it's off to HQ to see some close friends and co-workers whom I haven't seen in some time, then it's off to the A's-Mariners game with The Fort, featuring tthe marquee pitching matchup of Tim Corcoran vs. "Speedy" Esteban Loaiza. Heck, who cares who's pitching, it's a major league ballgame, always love those.

Now, off to bed in one of my faves.

Update: I stand corrected. It's Jarrod Washburn (SEA) vs. Barry Zito (OAK) tonight.

Now Go! Walk Out The Door

Over the years, a lot has been said about Harry Sinden, who's held just about every position of power for the Boston Bruins. Having been with the team since the early 1960's, Sinden more-or-less bowed out yesterday. Sinden's tenure was unquestionably up-and-down: the Bruins made the playoffs each year for 20+ years at one point, with trips to the finals in 1974, 1988 and 1990. More recently, however, the team has been average at best, infuriating at worst.

I'll let all the professional writers eulogize his time with the Bruins, though. One particular event stands out in my mind and that's the Joe Juneau holdout spectacle from the early 1990's. The details may be foggy, but if I remember correctly, Juneau was a highly-rated prospect coming out of college (where he was a 4.0 student in aeronautical engineering, by the way) and his rights were owned by the Bruins. Juneau was holding out and refusing to report to Boston because he didn't want a two-way contract. In other words, if he was sent to the minors, he felt he should have been paid NHL money. Sticking to his guns, Juneau then threatened to shuffle off to Switzerland to play hockey there until the Bruins acquiesced.

When Sinden was asked by a local beat writer about Juneau's threat to go to Switzerland, his response was an unforgettable classic: "then I guess he'll have to learn how to yodel."

That is definitely one of my all-time favorite GM quotes. All that said, I probably won't miss Sinden much and I know for sure my dad won't.

I Am The Official State Male

You know what makes me laugh? When I see or hear things becoming "The Official State _______." This morning, I couldn't help but snort when I saw an article in the paper that basketball is now the official state sport of Massachusetts. At first, I began to think about the many reasons why basketball (yawn) shouldn't be the official state sport and then it hit me: why am I even weighing this? Who cares? Nobody is forcing me to watch or play basketball, right? That's a good thing, too, because I'd die of boredom. Nobody is forcing me to line my front yard with the state flower, right? (the Mayflower, for those of you keeping tabs at home).

Anyway, upon further investigation, I've discovered that our state has a lot of completely ridiculous "official" stuff. The State Bird is the Black-Capped Chickadee. We have a State Game Bird - Wild Turkey. Can you guess the State Dog? It's the Boston Terrier, naturally. Who the hell determines this stuff and why? We have a friggin' State Horse!!! You hear that? A State Horse.

We also have a State Shell, a State Insect, a State Mineral (??) and a State Fossil. Yep, a State Fossil. Some may argue that the State Fossil is actually Edward Kennedy. That is not true. The state fossil is actually civility. And get this, not only do we have a State Rock, but we also have a State Historical rock, a State Building Rock AND a State Explorer Rock! FOUR State Rocks! Just what the hell is an explorer rock??? We have a State Heroine, Deborah Samson, who undoubtedly was the wife of some assface in the state government who probably spent more time coming up with state symbols than governing. OK, OK, the truth about our State Heroine: she fought in the Revoloutionary War, disguised as a dude named Robert Shurtleff. Huh?

Oh, it's not over, either. We have a State Marine Mammal, a State Gem, a State Dessert and a State Cat. My two favorites: the corn muffin has been designated the official Massachusetts State Muffin and you'll never guess what the official Massachusetts State Dance is........it's the square dance. Goodness.

Realizing all this, I can only guess that "wasting time" is the "official state goal" of politicians and although that can't be found in any official state scribe, you can see examples of it in your daily Boston Globe each morning. Speaking of which, I've successfully attained this goal with today's post.

Update: funny. I just checked AOL.com's home page and it is honestly pure coincidence that this story was one of their lead news stories.

Flushing Out The Old....

I figure it's about every six-to-eight months that this blog gets a redesign. In this case, I was just tiring of the old look and it wasn't all that professional. This new design might make me seem like I know how to do this web design stuff, but truth be told, it's just a template provided by Blogger. All I really had to do was click a button and it switched it over for me. Yes, I did some fiddling with the right side bar, but it was about an hour's worth of work late last night. This might be temporary, too - I'm thinking about moving away from the whole Blogger platform, but I'm thinking that's probably a day project and I'm not sure I'm willing to give this beast a whole day. So it goes.

A couple of other housecleaning issues with the new design: I've switched to the Blogger comments system. Initially this was rife with comment spam, but I think Blogger has cleaned that up enough to give it a shot. If it starts getting filled with spam, I'll switch back to the old comments engine, provided by Haloscan. Also, there's now a little email icon down there below each post in case you want to email a certain post to someone. Of course, it would be great if I could get enough readers to come here in the first place, but that's another issue. One thing I'm trying to figure out is how to enable single post links. Usually if you click on the headline it would bring you to a particular post, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. Anyone know how to enable this?

Hey, on a totally different track, I need to tell you all about our new toilet. I know, I know, I'm reaching down into the depths of idea generation when I have to talk about toilets, but that's the way it goes. Feast or famine, people. Anyway, it's not that big a deal, we needed a toilet replaced in our upstairs bathroom, so we got one, the one totally cool thing is that when you put the seat down, it doesn't slam! It's built with this feature where you can slam down the seat as hard you want to, but about halfway down, it just stops and then eases it way silently into position. Sweet! I suppose it's a lot like velcro shoes - it's not totally necessary, but it really makes life easier. So there you have it.

Domo Arigato

Child Robot
Originally uploaded by rustedrobot.

I had planned to write today about my long weekend in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a town that I've been wanting to visit for some years now. I love towns that get most of their support from large university populations, for that's where you're sure to find cheap food of varying quality, great music scenes and little boutique stores that don't smack of Wal-Mart and Lowe's. But that's not what I'm going to write about. If you want more information on Chapel Hill, I highly recommend you just go visit - there's plenty to do and see and it's well worth your time.

Instead, I'm going to share a story of a little girl we met on the plane ride home yesterday. In short, you really do meet the damndest people sometimes. Steph and I took Southwest Airlines from Raleigh up to Manchester, NH and even though our intinery said "direct," it wasn't a non-stop flight. That's one of the little (annoying) quirks about Southwest - if you stay on the same plane, but stop 14 times, it's still a "direct" flight.

Regardless, our "direct" flight stopped in Baltimore, which gave us the opportunity to move up near the front during the switchover. We got up to the third row and planted ourselves nicely, anticipating a nice, quick exit off the plane when we got to New Hampshire. Since they always let children traveling alone on the plane first, it came as no surprise that a small girl, probably about 11 or 12 years old, took the third seat in our row (the window).

We didn't really know one way or another if this was her first flight or if she was nervous, so Steph and I engaged her in some conversation that might help her take her mind off the idea of traveling alone. We quickly realized she was perfectly fine. For the next hour and fifteen minutes, we were treated to a very robotic-like conversation where the little girl was very careful to pro-nun-see-ate every word to utter perfection and a display of level of politeness and grammar that is extremely rare these days in adults, much less children.

The girl was a sixth-grader, on her way to her grandparents house in Massachusetts and she proceeded to tell us that she had seen all six Star Wars movies five times each. She showed us her Queen Amidala dolls, of which there were four and also let it be known in no uncertain terms that she was addicted to Star Wars. She had a 635 page book with her, including a bookmark that actually had a timer on it. Yes, a timer. She could press a button when she started reading so she could gauge how long she had been reading. When she stopped, she could set it again so that she knew how much time had elapsed since she stoppped reading. "I love HUGE books," she she told us proudly.

Stephanie, clearly much better at general conversation with pre-teen girls that I am, then asked her about school and what she liked to study. I predicted very quickly in my mind that she would say "reading" and almost immeadiately after that thought entered my head, it came out of her mouth. I could have never predicted the next subject, though.

"I can't take this class until eighth grade I think, but I really like anatomy," she said, then added "most of all I like studying the human brain." As you might imagine, it came as no surprise that she wanted to go to medical school. Her mother was also a doctor, so she very matter-of-factly told us that she's already read through her mother's adult anatomy books at home.

It wasn't long at all before we were being methodically schooled on the many different sections of the brain and where they were located within the skull. Steph, impressed, jokingly said "wow, it looks like you're ready for medical school now!" The girl looked at us, nary a smile on her face and said "Yes. Except for the cerebral cortex. I don't know much about that part yet."

I couldn't help but laugh to myself. Here's this little girl, on a clear path, obviously intelligent, well-spoken, painfully polite and yet I found myself wondering if the poor little thing has ever had a fun day in her entire life. I couldn't, for the life of me, picture her screaming with glee on a roller coaster. Instead, I pictured her sitting on it expressionsless, pondering the effects of kinetic energy or what formulas to use to calculate the gravitational effect of the roller coaster car turning upside down.

Alas, a smidge of humanity became evident when we found out that she did actually have a best friend who was also coming to visit in Massachusetts during her vacation. Thank god. Unfortunately, all I could imagine were the two friends sitting at the library, engrossed in discussion on the complexities in the Middle East or the latest studies on the impact of Pharmaceuticals and prescription drugs in the healthcare business.

Truth be told, she's probably a regular, intelligent kid with a keen interest in learning who may have been a little guarded talking to two people she'd never met. And I'm pretty sure she has her share of fun. I hope. It also gave me a little hope in the next generation, after all the articles I come across about how the next-gen are nothing but a bunch of pre-stoned kids whose eyes are constantly glazed over in classrooms because video games and the internet are dancing in their heads.

Time will tell, of course. We may very well have been sitting next to a future president or leader of the medical world......

It's Time For Some Name Droppin'

You know how when you stop looking for something, you actually find it? A couple of years ago I remember looking for a certain cassette tape and not being able to find it. I figured it got lost in the shuffle of moving or something and just begrudgingly accepted it was gone. Thankfully, I had a made an exact dupe of the tape for a friend and she made me a copy and sent it back to me - upon receiving it, I put it somewhere in a place I would remember. And then I forgot where I put it. Again. Well, on Monday I found it. The story:

Back in March of 1996, I was 24 (and there's so much more?) and trying to crack the music business. No better place to do that than to fly down to Austin, TX for South By Southwest (SxSW) - the granddaddy of music conferences and industry schmoozing. A friend of mine from college joined me for what promised to be four days of beer, beer and music. And beer.

Luckily, a friend of mine was renting a sizable house in Austin at the time and she welcomed my friend and I with open arms - much appreciated for a guy pulling in $5.15 an hour working in the warehouse for a notoriously stingy record label in Cambridge. She was a cool cat as well - we shared similar music tastes and she was dabbling in band management as well - she had just agreed to manage a North Carolina band whose growth curve was getting quite sharp. The band was called Whiskeytown. I had received a copy of their debut album Faithless Street and needless to say, it had been getting abused on my stereo. It remains my favorite Whiskeytown album, not because it was their best set of songs, but because it was the hungriest music I'd heard in some time. The songwriter, this KID Ryan Adams, all of 19, was also supposed to crash on the floor next to us, with the rest of the band.

Without getting into too much detail, it was a weekend of utter debauchery. The kid was a bit of a wild man, but really no different than any other 19 year old looking for beer and fun. He (and the rest of the band) was incredibly nice and affable, Adams himself was slightly obnoxious but not - in any way - annoying. He was obnoxious like a little brother is. We all had a great time, really.

It was that weekend that Whiskeytown's course changed dramatically. Their showcase was at a rather horrendous venue called The Split Rail and while nobody would have ever guessed it at the time, it probably will go down as one of the more famous SxSW gigs of all time. The band was sloppy, drunk and just having fun, but at the end of the show, the sharks came out. As legend has it, Ryan Adams retreated to the band's van after the gig and was surrounded by record label execs who were literally pressing their business cards up against the windows of the van. Now, I don't honestly know if that really happened and it very well might be one of those myths that gets more melodramatic with time, but I do know this - every major label was seeking them out after that show.

That night back at the house, I have one very sharp memory of lying on the floor with someone listening to Ted Nugent's "Stranglehold" at nearly top volume, rather unable to move. For some unknown reason, this is one of my clearest memories - and with the state I was in, I shouldn't have remembered anything that night.

The following morning (early afternoon, actually) we were all milling about in a relative haze when my friend and I went outside and saw Adams, alone, sitting on the porch with a cigarette dangling from his mouth and his acoustic guitar strapped around his shoulder, humming to himself. We asked him if he would play a song and he obliged. Some relatively inane banter ensued for about 30 seconds and he launched into a new song he had recently written, which is the only time I've ever heard it. It was called, we think, "Drunk & Fucked Up."

The best part of all this: my friend always carried around a tape recorder and we got it all on tape - the song on the front porch, the show at The Split Rail.....all of it. That was the tape I kept losing and finding. And now I've found it again and this time, I'm not going to lose it.

As for Ryan Adams, well, he's gone onto much, much bigger things. I ran into him a few times after that and we always had a friendly hello for each other and maybe a beer or two, but I haven't seen him or talked to him since the late '90s. It's not like we were great friends, either, so I wouldn't ever profess to truly knowing him. Unfortunately, it appears he may never get past "the next big thing" status that he had going and his prolific output as a solo artist has been spotty at best. Some of the stuff is undoubtedly great, other stuff really makes me wonder what happened. But it appears as if he's making the music he wants to make and he's trying his best to stay true to himself, which has to be commended. He also dated Winona Ryder and Parker Posey, two definite celebrity crushes of mine, so for that I am rather envious.

Over the past few years, he's become more well-known for his bratty tirades, however, and that makes me a little sad in light of the fact that he never appeared that way at all in person with me. I guess the machine can do that to you.

It Is Officially Corn-on-the-Cob Season

The Onion had me laughing this morning with their humorous final word on Enron's Ken Lay. The picture is definitely good for a chuckle.

This is one of those days when you probably have to feel a little bad for baseball players. I mean, it's hard to feel bad for them at all since most of them are grossly overpaid and childish, but to have to don those (polyester?) uniforms and play in the stifling heat that currently sits over us, that cannot be much fun at all. It might even be dangerous. Good thing they don't exert themselves too much.

Question time: what's your favorite cereal? For us lately, it's been the Cascadian Farms Hearty Morning, but we've gone through other phases as well - HoneyCombs and Honey Crunch Corn Flakes, to name two.