Amarillo, TX.

Shamrock, TX.

El Reno, OK.

Tulsa, OK.

Oklahoma City, OK.

Coffeyville, KS.

Goodbye, pt. 3. (No. 500)

Woke up at eight, started the fire
Had a few drinks, we all felt inspired
Jumped in the stream, our shoes and canteens
The water was bitter cold
Laid in the raft till it started moving
The current just sang, the song was so soothing
We stopped along the way
On a beach, in the sun, on a beautiful day
Our boats collide, we feel the breeze
We stay afloat and make the most of everything

Let's take the moon and make it shine for everyone

–Get Up Kids, "Campfire Kansas"

They...talk....this.....slowly....pt.2.

All that being said, it does have the best love scene and the best end scene of any movie I can recall. And because it bears worth repeating again, Claire Forlani is stunning.

They...talk....this.....slowly....

Is it me, or is Meet Joe Black about the slowest movie ever? I've never seen a film in which each line of dialogue requires a good twenty seconds of silent ramp-up time. It's easily the worst Brad Pitt performace; does he even use more than one facial expression? Claire Forlani, though, is sublime; always been on my top five celebrity crush list.

Nine hours until liftoff.

TV.

On television all day today I have, concurrently, a Law & Order:SVU marathon, a M*A*S*H marathon, and several hours of US Open tennis. I'm surprised I've been able to function at all so far.

Steve Irwin, 1962-2006.

There's a reason they call it a fucking stingray. But the man was as fearless as they come, and that is indisputable. Rest in peace, mate.

Futures.

Although I loved the previous template for this not quite a lonely poetry blog because of the simplicity of the look and the feeling of spaciousness, I had to change it because I needed to bring the linkie back up top. Why? Because my best friend and the smartest and funniest man I know deserves it. We're gonna take over the world, one podcast, hedge fund, or prefab pizza shack at a time.

Nonetheless, I've been thinking about making some changes for a while, but I had been waiting for a couple of reasons. First, I wanted to wait until Tuesday, 5 Sept., when I move out to Santa Fe for the rest of the calendar year. Obviously that's a big step for me, as both this internship and change of scenery will be a test of just what I want in a career and a lifestyle. But second, I was waiting because I wanted the 500th post on this site to be the big bang. As it stands, this post is 495. I was trying to time things just right so I'd use up enough posts this weekend to have 500 be some 'Goodbye, pt. 3' type of deal, but oh well.

Course, there's no telling how long this will last. As I mentioned above, and Lee also mentions, there is preliminary talk about a podcast (as well as other, TBD projects). We'll have to iron out the technical side of this, and it may be that we would need a new home for blogging, possibly even Apple's .Mac service. I don't know what the near future holds for this site, and I will make any transition (if there is to be one) as painless as possible. But no matter what, you can always expect the same insightful social commentary that has led to rave reviews. After all, you dance with the one that brought you. And four hundred and ninety-five posts later, she's still holding up.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.

FOOTBALLFOOTBALLFOOTBALLFOOTBALLFOOTBALLFOOTBALL
FOOTBALLFOOTBALLFOOTBALLFOOTBALLFOOTBALLFOOTBALL
FOOTBALLFOOTBALLFOOTBALLFOOTBALLFOOTBALLFOOTBALL
FOOTBALLFOOTBALLFOOTBALLFOOTBALLFOOTBALLFOOTBALL
FOOTBALLFOOTBALLFOOTBALLFOOTBALLFOOTBALLFOOTBALL

First entry in the 'I Shit You Not' category.

Found this in the latest issue of Business 2.0: The Bugatti Veylon. According to the article, the 1,001 horsepower was achived by

melding two V-8s, four camshafts, 64 valves, and four turbochargers into a titanium-laced W-16 engine. ... Slip the jeweled key into the ignition, pause five seconds as fuel pumps spritz the 16 cylinder walls with high-test, and the engine ka-whomps to life, generating more than 1,500 kilowatts of energy (enough to power an average American home for a month). And therein lay Bugatti's biggest bugaboo: how to keep the car from melting into a pricey puddle of carbon fiber, stainless steel and aluminum. Early prototypes utilized 27 radiators in the effort. (The current Veyron has but 10.)

... Did I happen to mention that it does zero to 60 in 2.4 seconds? That you can give a McLaren F1 (the previous fastest road car) a head start to 120 mph and still beat it to 200? That, in theory, you could drive the Veyron from Canada to Mexico in five hours?

... At top speed the car will drain its gas tank in 12 minutes. The engine has 3,700 parts, and its tachometer goes to 11,001. Bugatti engineers shredded 57 transmissions before perfecting a dual-clutch all-wheel-drive system capable of transferring the Veyron's enormous horsepower to the road. Michelin was forced to invent a massive road tire able to survive potholes at 252 mph. Wind resistance at such speeds is so severe it takes 500 horses to overcome it; the Veyron uses the remaining 501 horses simply to keep moving down the freeway.

Sticks, Statham, and stereotypes.

Ryan: And apparently she said "She wasn't really interested in being a lesbian anyway."
Lee: That's one of the most amazing sentences I've ever heard. My friend Owen had a lifelong quest to find combinations of words that are just so absurd they're amazing, and my favorite was "There's something in the water in Britain that makes the men look like women, and the women look like horses." But "She wasn't really interested in being a lesbian anyway" is incredible.
Ryan: Speaking of the British, I was watching tennis earlier today, and Tim Henman was playing. He was returning serve, and he was bent at the knees, but not really, and he was hunched over a bit, but not really, and he had his racket straight out in front of him and I thought "He looks like he has a stick up his butt. Oh, he is British." Like "Yep, he's English! No doubt about that one!"
Lee: *laughing* Oh god.

Ryan: You know my favorite scene in the Transporter 2–
Lee: Careful Ryan. There are a lot of good scenes to choose from, so think about this before you commit yourself.

Lee: They have an infielder named Coco Crisp. I don't care anything else about the team at that point.
Ryan: And you could take a defibrillator to the game and hold up a sign saying 'David Ortiz, I got your back!' *laughing* 'Jason Statham said I could borrow it for the evening. Don't worry!'

Lee: I'm sure I can find some way to make money on the Nikkei while I'm in Japan.
Ryan: You take a bottle of Jack Daniel's and you say the magic word "karaoke."
Lee: I wouldn't mind being a professional karaoke singer in Japan. Oh god, you remember that band Mr. Big? They had that song, something like 'Hold on little girl'? They were an 80s hair band.
Ryan: Uh, no?
Lee: I can't remember the song! I had the CD Monster Ballads and I still can't remember it! Anyway, they were really bad. They were terrible, and they were hyooge in Japan. But I've got to have more talent than them.
Ryan: They're to Japan what Hasselhoff is to Germany! Holy crap, that's the effect of World War II on nations!
Both of us: They're– Ryan!– This is– Wait Ryan!– Lee!–
Lee: It's written into their constitution! When we occupied Japan and Germany, we mandated that they take our pop music refuse!
Ryan: You know what we have here, right? What we just discovered?
Lee: What?
Ryan: My doctoral dissertation in history!

That's it, pt. 2.

So they took it, again. And they're going to fix it, again. And then ship it to me while I'm in Santa Fe, being as I'm leaving Kansas early Tuesday morning. Luckily I still have this eMac; otherwise the Genius Bar would be a Genius Burnt-Down Motherfucker tonight.

Don't let them fool you, either; they are geniuses. When I presented the problem to the guy at the Apple Store, he said he was sure it was a software issue. Then he realized that no combination of keys being pressed down during bootup was going to work, and he quickly changed his prognosis to a faulty logic board. When I said "That's what got replaced," he said "Hmm." Thanks, Cupertino.

Meta-something.

Yay for blogging, and questions on the meaning of being human. Yeah.

That's it.

From Wednesday night through last night, my MacBook was working perfectly. It wasn't shutting down unexpectedly, and thus my fear of having a still-defective computer was melting away completly. Until this morning. Now the problem isn't the MacBook shutting off; it's that it won't even start up! If I had another two weeks to dick around here, perhaps I would let Apple have another go at it. But I don't, and I won't. I've heard that Apple has replaced MacBooks for people due to the paint job wearing off. Surely they'll consider a replacement for a computer that won't even start. Hmph.

Fool.

Andy Roddick is an idiot. And it's a shame too, because I actually don't hate his new 'Pong' commercial. Dude, moving up from Mandy Moore? That's a cross-court forehand winner if I ever saw one.*

* I don't know how that really plays in this context, but I had to end with an obligatory tennis reference.

Poisoned.

I feel like I may have food poisoning. I've never had it before, so I'm not sure. But this is for sure: fish and chips always have consequences, friends.

Back from the dead.

I never thought I'd hear this again.

Also, I got my MacBook back. So far, so good. Sadly though, I'm still cringing and waiting for the first sign of failure.

On Pizza Hut being my only option for a slice.

I've been getting cravings lately. I wish I could have this airmailed to me.

Course, he forgot to add in the dual $2000 cinema displays.

Suck it, Dell, and suck it hard. Not that this will actually make more people buy a Mac, but still.

"I can't tell you how good that is."

Thus sayeth the commentators on CBS during the 2nd playoff hole at Bridgestone just now, when Tiger had a downslope shot in the tall rough behind the green. He rocked it, of course, and after finally getting a birdie on the 5th playoff hole, won the tournament. It wasn't the prettiest round of golf; hell, with that shot over the clubhouse Friday and the four straight bogeys yesterday to surrender the lead, and giving up a three-shot lead today on the back nine to be forced into the playoff, it was not even close to being a pretty tournament. But it was a gritty tournament, and Tiger has cemented the message he's been driving home all summer: I don't have to outdrive you. I can beat you straight up, short off, in the trenches, and everywhere else you can imagine. Forget the naysayers; dominance is fucking exciting to watch.

Jerry Orbach would be proud.

So I wasn't going to post this morning's dream because it was truly bizarre, but hey, that's what makes it interesting. In the first half, I was watching an assassination happen in Manhattan, from one skyscraper across into another one late at night. It involved some high-ranking female executive who had to be taken out, and after watching the assassination and piecing together the whodunit, I was able to go back in time and stop it. Then I followed along as Tiger Woods, in addition to being an incredible athlete, turned into a detective and while running and ducking through the NYC subway tunnels, investigated allegations of rape against the entire USA national basketball team by a group of Muslim women. Long story short, Tiger knows the entire history of subway systems, and was able to prevent the team from being executed by a couple of large fellows with axes.

This couldn't possibly have anything to do with watching five hours of Law & Order: SVU last night, could it?

James Earl Jones ≠ Frank Sinatra.

Latest dream: After a weird run-up involving celebrating the Everest expedition of Sir Clive Owen in Central Park (as well as his PhD hooding in astrophysics) with Marjorie and other CPCers, Mischa and I take to the skies in a 50's style airliner that is hijacked by James Earl Jones and a couple of other members of the NAACP. I single-handedly take back the plane by swinging those plastic chairs with the metal legs, only to discover that it's not James Earl Jones, but Frank Sinatra! After seizing both handguns from his lackeys, I try to restore order, but then a bunch of male flight attendants, while serving food to the passengers, pull out machine guns and pump my body full of bullets while I try, unsuccessfully, to shoot my assailants with pistols that turned out to be empty, thus leading me to realize in my dying breaths that I was set up. My last thought is to hope that Mischa doesn't have to step over me on her way off the plane.

All kidding and puns aside, a dream like that just takes the life out of you. I woke up simply thinking, "Shit."

Hoff.

Yes it's been the better part of two decades, but rewatching this video is like getting a fresh look at the Zapruder film: questions naturally and inevitably arise. Notably:

What's with the keyboard scarf?

If you're buying a jacket covered in lights, why not get one in which all the lights flash at once?

How many Berliners started rebuilding the damn thing right there?

And seriously, why was he there in the first place? Peter Jennings, yes. But the Hoff? To invite him there on *that night*, put him on a hydraulic lift, plant a camera in front of him, and think 'Yes, a German people who have been separated for 40 years will appreciate this'?

Dear Audioblogger,

I've made four attempts at an audio post to truly capture the experience of walking out of the Only Movie Worth Seeing, and you will not put them on my blog. Thus my readers are deprived. Technology sucks. You suck. I hope you get a ping-pong paddle shoved up your ass.

~Ryan.

But is the bread ever worth it?

I just had another dream right now as I was napping that I was in NYC with friends from Kansas, but I got separated from them and was doing my own thing. I get a phone call from one, telling me to go to a police station and sign a report for something that happened to him because he's too busy, and that they'll have all the details. While waiting outside the precinct for a fight to subside, a perfect, sweet redhead that I had seen earlier in the evening with her friends walks by and recognizes me. She comes back out of a bar, alone, to sit and talk and we're flirting. Soon afterwards a cop comes out with the report, but with lots of details (including names and phone numbers that I don't have) blank and underlined for me to fill out. As I'm filling that out, and trying to keep the redhead from walking away, Howard fucking Stern walks up and starts hitting on her! So now I'm trying to fight off Howard Stern while filling out a police report that is apparently about a fight over free Italian bread in a restaurant. Fortunately, she's not interested in anything the King of All Media has to say, and keeps nibbling on my ear until I decide 'Fuck it, the bread's not worth it.'

I'm going to go see Beerfest now.

Jezebel.

I just had a dream in which I had started a magazine, and one of the cover lines was 20 Hottest Women of the Bible: Genesis through Isaiah! I mean, what?

Footy.

THIS is what ESPN should be broadcasting in the middle of the damn day.

In Defence of the Greatest Movie Ever.*

Cal: Shake and bake.
Ricky Boby: Did that blow your mind? BECAUSE THAT JUST HAPPENED!

Ricky Bobby: I wake up in the morning and I piss excellence.

PA Announcer: Girard is sitting on the pole position, which is a statement of fact and in no way a comment on his sexual orientation.

Reese Bobby: There's nothing more frightening then driving with a live goddamn cougar next to you.

*Clearly a madman wrote this title, knowing that it would only be a couple days until Beerfest!

Record breaking, pt. 3.

And if I was in NYC right now, I'd be cheering these guys on.

On watching ESPN in the middle of the damn day, pt. 2.

I watched it. The whole thing. And while there is indeed much I could say about this aspect of youth life that I never even knew about until an hour ago, I'll just stick with this:

In the head to head 3-6-3 relay competition, the teams switch sides for each race.

THEY SHARE THE SAME TABLE!!!!

There is no wind advantage to take into account here. It's not tennis and you have to stare into the sun on your serve. You're not in the Swamp, trying to call audibles in the student section. It is literally a sheet with a line drawn on it, spread over a table. I think no further comment is necessary.

(Oh, and forget the Xbox 360: I'm buying this little baby with my first paycheck! Wouldn't have known about it had I not been watching teh stackin'.)

On watching ESPN in the middle of the damn day.

World Sport Stacking Championships? Are you shitting me? Is jump rope and putt-putt out of season right now?

Of course the Germans are dominant. They're wearing the best team jerseys. Don't worry though; we'll get 'em back at Beerfest! Only two more days!

Lee, that salad bowl of jello ain't nothin' anymore.

Introducing the hamburger than could kill you where you sit.

The most brilliant music video you'll ever see?

Easily the most brilliant use of treadmills.

10,000.

I'm nothing if not a sucker for a good, comprehensive list.

Rock & Roll Government, pt. 2.

It occurs to me that I hadn't posted this, despite coming up with it in class one day this spring. Imagine that you must replace the top government officials with music stars. Enjoy.

President David Bowie
VP Tori Amos
SecState Joni Mitchell
SecTreasury Bono
SecDefense Henry Rollins
Attorney General Ice-T
SecInterior Simon & Garfunkel
SecLabor Bruce Springsteen
SecTransportation Tracy Chapman
SecEnergy Jimi Hendrix
SecEducation Pink Floyd

Speaker of the House Aretha Franklin
Senate Pres. Pro Tempore Bob Dylan

First Lady ABBA

Inspiration from who else?

Rock & Roll Government.

Hypothetical question: If you were president, and could also play a mean bass, what would be the name of your cover band?

For me, it's a close call between Pocket Veto, and Millard & the Fillmores.

"He's a freak." "Yes, he really is."

Thus sayeth the commentators on CBS right now, regarding the most dominant athlete of any sport, ever.

ETA: Okay, I probably wasn't the first to ever claim that, but I did say it before this guy.

Speed.

It's like that classic photo of the bullet and the apple, only with eggs and light bulbs and shit.

It's true.

Don't deny it.

Practice.

Four and a half hours driving within a span of seven hours, 250 miles covered in a triangle over eastern Kansas, and I'm right back where I started, minus $35 in gas, my MacBook that is in for repairs ("Oh, we've heard about this from many other people. We'll just go ahead and take it in; you can pick it up next week."), and several minutes of my life spent lipsynching to 'Hips Don't Lie' by Shakira while stuck in traffic coming off I-35. If nothing else, it's preparing me for the full-day drive in a couple of weeks. That is, if my car doesn't melt before that.

Shutdown.

Almost exactly two months to the day I bought it, the MacBook is failing me. Yesterday morning it began randomly shutting itself off, exactly like it would if the power suddenly cuts out. There are no error messages when I restart it, but it does it whether it's starting up (twice it's shut down in the middle of bootup), soon afterwards, or it may even go several hours, with no rhyme or reason to it. AppleCare phone support was a joke, and from reading the Apple.com forums last night, I see that this is a problem that plagues anywhere from 12-20% of MacBooks. Serves me right for buying a first generation portable; I should've stuck with my instincts and waited to get an iMac. Anyway, I'm gonna trek up to the Apple Store in Country Club Plaza in KC tomorrow and see if they can diagnose this; I'm thinking/hoping it's a power supply problem rather than logic board, and that I can get this fixed before I leave for Santa Fe. For now though, I've set up a makeshift desk (small coffee table) for my old eMac. This sitting on the floor thing is already getting old.

WD40.

And to continue on the point from last night, these guys too. Although in many ways superior to the solar death ray, you literally couldn't pay me enough to do this.

Borat.

Of all the unanswered questions still out there in the universe, how this man is still alive is definitely at the top of the list.

Fantasy.

I just did my first ever fantasy football draft on ESPN.com, and it. Was. Awesome!

My team's name? GoFast. I think I'll start another team and name them the HurtinBombs. You knew I was gonna.

My starters are: Carson Palmer, QB; the Edge and Dominic Rhodes, RB; Santana Moss and Roy Williams, WR; and Todd Heap as TE, with Kellen Winslow, Curtis Martin, Big Ben, and Joe Jurevicius on the bench.

On the glory of sport.

If you read nothing else this week, do read this piece by Greg Garber about sportsmanship and Little League. Up to now I've never had a beef directly with Little League, as I've directed my ire towards the general landscape of the parents, coaches and multi-million dollar industry pushing young athletes into year-round, one-sport mindsets. Traveling teams for big sports start in elementary school; I heard that one magazine has even started ranking the top national football prospects in fourth grade. Clearly the system has gone out of whack, in which children and teens are not allowed to play for the sake of play, to enjoy sport, or to even play a couple of sports; apparently cross-training is now confined to yogilates and swiss ball crunches. The vast majority of kids in my high school, if they played one sport, played another; hell I would've gone out for football in addition to track had my mom not come up with a 'rule' that I couldn't play if my dad wasn't at home that season.

The point is, the very same people who decry all of the bad things about sports today–the steriods, the cheating, the assholes–are the same ones perpetuating those things by twisting our youth in an absurd and slavish devotion to the bottom line: if I send him to five sports camps in a summer, why not six? If her team has a weeknight game, then surely her sixth-grade teacher will understand, right? In the era of Halo and Maddenoliday (don't ask), I think the proliferation of sport academies, along with the AAU and other leagues filled with poachers and conmen, has contributed to the upward trend of youth obesity in at least two ways. First, with specialization at younger and younger ages, starting spots and varsity teams are slotted automatically for a select few who attend the aforementioned six camps a summer; other school-age athletes sense this, and believe that if they have little or no chance of advancement, then why even go out for sports? Second, when you are, shall we say, encouraged to play a single sport year-round, then chances are you will not be going out and playing a pickup game of soccer or flag football afterschool or on the weekend; when the best athletes are thus taken out of the neighborhood talent pool, those pickup games no longer exist, leading to all of the other kids' downtime being spent on Xbox or PSP.

How to rectify this? I don't know. Because in the end, we want the best athletes on the field when we root for our division 1-A schools or our professional teams, and we don't care how they got there (we're actually getting more interested in how they get taken off the field, if only to revel in our mock disgust). However much I feel and want to root for the young boy in Utah with the cranial tumor and a chance to tie the game, I can't fault the opposing manager. Why do we play? We play to win the game. I just wish somebody knew what the hell winning is supposed to mean anymore.

Makes you long for the days of "We must protect this house!"

Under Armour, in their infinite wisdom, has decided to do away with actual words and use just simple sounds that really have no relationship whatsoever to cleats on hard floors in advertising their apparel and gear. But if their commercials don't get you jacked for football season every year, then you have no heart.

Seriously, between 'Click clack', 'Go-fast boats', and 'Hurtin' bombs', I am very optimistic about the state of testosterone-injected catchphrases in this second half of 2006. Come on Beerfest; don't fail me now!

Lee, be careful what you wish for.

Disclaimer: The preceding clip does not constitute an endorsement for Roll Tide, Charles Barkley for Governor, or Ohio-class nuclear submarines carrying Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington.

Readership.

So since my last week in NYC I've gotten an inordinate number of people saying "Oh I'm reading your blog!" To which my standard response is "Wow, I thought only three people in the world read this thing, and I was two of them."

This has had a disconcerting side effect though in that I find myself invariably doing some self-censorship on here, which I rather dispise. The whole purpose of this blog was to be a creative outlet for all of the things going on with/around me, or the detrius I find on the internet. There wasn't going to be a topic off-limits, and my life was to be an open-book (though admittedly, one that only I would write). Anyway, I'm now walking the tight-rope that accompanies being famous. If anybody has something they would like for me to talk about, I'm taking requests.*

*First person to 'request' Freebird will get and I mean pummeled with their own shoe while they sleep. Lynard Skynard, my ass.

Game theory.

So my dearest friend in the entire world has been going through a guy situation. I don't know the guy well, and I really don't care to. I just know that they have had quite a history for almost exactly a year now, and he's pissing me off even more with each passing day.

Basically, he comes across as your average emo guy, the one who wears his heart on his sleeve and then proceeds to tell you all about it. On his Myspace page. His blogs over the past few months have devolved into screeds about how good of a guy he is, and how that should be good enough for my friend, and she's just put him through the wringer, and he's tried to protect her and tried to be worthy of her religion and so on. I've pretty much heard the story from only her side, admittedly, but Myspace is a primary source, so I feel confident in my scholarly advice for this gentleman: Dude, grow a pair.

To be true, I myself have gone through the period of darkness that engulfs a man when he can't understand the realm of relationships. But the main thing that every guy in that situation has to do is to get past the 'magic formula' belief: that idea that as long as are you kind enough, and sweet enough, and buy dinner and pay attention to her birthday, that she should be falling all over you. It's called treating relationships as a checklist, and it doesn't work.

The simple truth is that girls suck. And guys suck. The only hope that any of us have is that we will know enough not to go into every mating ritual with a set definition of what constitutes a good and working relationship. Do you have to change who you are? Of course not. But a person is measured, and rightly so, by their actions; that's the manifestation of what's inside. I won't ever think that because I'm a caring, affectionate guy that I should get brownie points. At most that should earn a 'Good. Then you're off on the right foot.' This is the NFL, ladies and gentlemen, and if you're not willing to get your shirt dirty, then get out of the game.

Anyway, I just hope this guy will get the message and soon. My friend deserves to be able to concentrate on her new job and her sparkling, fabulous future without this guy popping up every other week or writing long messages to her that she'll never read on Myspace. Blogging is so emo.

Casita.

I got a place in Santa Fe, and will move down there on or about the fifth of September.

Lists, pt. 2.

I'm always a sucker for these kinds of things, but this is a really good list of ways to change sports for the better. I've been calling for American leagues to adopt relegation for a while now, if only because I cannot stand putting the words 'Devil Rays' and 'Major League' in the same sentence.

Is blood money just money to you?

Cause it's not just a kick-ass song, it's also free for download.

I left New York City much too early.

And I have yet another reason to wish I wasn't in Kansas.

No need to bring physics into this.

Tonight on the phone:

Lee: So I figured out how we're going to make our money Ryan.
Ryan: Shoot.
Lee: It's not going to be a publishing house. We're going to get some 'go-fast boats' and smuggle people from Albania into Italy.
Ryan: I love it!
Lee: Seriously, the best part of that movie was having these trained professionals refer to them as 'go-fast boats.'
Ryan: Every weapon and vehicle has its own technical name or acronym, but we're just going to name the boats by a general term for speed.

Ryan: I was just watching a special on the weapons of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and they were showcasing this new bomb. Now it's 1,000 pounds, but it splits into ten–
Lee: Wait wait! Did they call it the 'go-boom bomb'!?
Ryan: You just made the rest of my story irrelevant.

Ryan: You like your new apartment?
Lee: I do. Not all of my furniture fits, so my breakfast bar is also my desk.
Ryan: Nice.
Lee: I have a sink, and next to that is the microwave, and behind that is my printer!
Ryan: That's efficiency.
Lee: I just have to make sure I'm not microwaving and printing at the same time, which was always a concern before.

Ryan: Did I send you the link to the top five things to do with your MacBook?
Lee: Let me guess, the top one was cook a steak?
Ryan: This guy turned his MacBook over, put some foil down on the battery, and cooked an egg!
Lee: Wow!
Ryan: He might have done some hash browns too, but I'm not sure.
Lee: See, it's the best machine in the world. Not only can you connect to the internet, you can make breakfast!
Ryan: So when you said your breakfast bar was your desk, I thought "Hey, Lee's on top of that!"

Lee: But it should be a nice quiet place to learn to love the law.
Ryan: But you're not just going to be learning the law, Lee. You will be the law. And I apparently just turned you into Judge Dredd.
Lee: Hey, another Stallone reference.
Ryan: That movie is going to be the end of me.
Lee: "To beat this guy you need speed. You ain't got it. You have calcium deposits on most of your joints, so sparring is out. We're gonna rely on blunt force trauma!" That's just incredible.
Ryan: Because any sane trainer would've just stopped at the first statement. "To beat this guy you need speed. You ain't got it. So, um, thanks for coming in!"
Lee: That pretty much takes care of it!
Ryan: "And if you want to know where I'm going with this next, two words: calcium deposits. Think about that, while I go get a sandwich."
Lee: *laughing* Oh god.

Lee: I also loved how they were looking at the two boats coming in on satellite feed, and immediately knew who it was that was behind the shipment because they were using 'go-fast boats.' Because the guy obviously wasn't stupid enough to use the 'go-slow boats'!
Ryan: In a pinch he would use the 'go-reasonably speed boats.'
Lee: *laughs*
Ryan: And they were talking about the skill involved with driving these boats to make them show up as one on the radar, but I'm sitting there like "But you're watching the two boats on the screen!"
Lee: The satellite imagery kinda takes care of that! And the thing with the plane, making the one go up so that it gets the same radar signature, and the guy in the tower just looks at the plane, on a vector from Columbia, disappearing and says "Oh, it's just a ghost!" and walks away.
Ryan: They told the second plane to check the airspace to his right and look for them, and the guy glances out his window and says there's nothing there. I would be like "Hey, there's nothing else within 100 miles of you, how about you actually lean over and take a look?"
Lee: "I mean, it's only another airplane literally on your wing."
Ryan: "It's not like it would cause turbulence or anything due to the airflow from the plane being right below or on top to you."
Lee: "I've studied Bernoulli's effect. I know the physics behind this, but hey, don't worry about THAT."

In Defence of the Best Action Movie Ever.

People keep complaning about the lack of character development in the remake of Miami Vice. About how there isn't one real line of dialogue in the entire script. About the way the plot moves along without seeming no regard to whether it should.

Let me make this very clear: WHY THE FUCK SHOULD ANY OF THAT MATTER? HM? If I see the names Michael Mann, Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell involved in a production, I'm not expecting Pride and Fucking Prejudice. Once the words 'go-fast boats' are uttered, that's all the dialogue I need. Hell, Mann even managed to pull off my one pet peeve about action movies–love interests–without fucking up the movie; indeed, the inclusion of Gong Li was an inspired choice, and I believe the way that Isabella and Crockett managed their affairs were entirely in tune with their characters: bold, brutal, and fleeting. Besides, with the digital production, the cinematography, and thus the action scenes, had a feel to them that made this movie very unique; you could almost taste Miami in this film in its lightning-backed, mojito-fueled grittiness.

Was Miami Vice the most intricate action movie I've seen? That honor probably belongs to Ronin. Batman Begins was astounding in its retelling of a much-familiar story, with great action and toys to boot. And Jason Statham of the Transporter fame is, in the words of your humble correspondent, the greatest badass in the history of badassery. But for wrapping it altogether and making me want more, for making the tactics and gunplay so believable I almost couldn't stand it, and most impressively, for making me think that perhaps South Florida wouldn't be a bad place to live after all, Miami Vice is the new standard.

Vice.

Michael Mann, you magnificent bastard. Thought you could make the best action movie I'd ever see? Well you were right. By the end of the movie I was even contemplating growing out a mustache, Colin Farrell-style. Anyway, good call on the digital film. As well as the whole 'minimal dialogue' thing.

Sweet mother of all that's righteous.

Staggering. Stupifying. I can't believe it's actually going to be a movie.

I can't wait to watch it!

Seriously..

Why the hell did I willingly choose to come back here for a month?

Here, in this case, being Humboldt, or as I like to call it, the boil on the asscrack of America.

You know you've been dying to see it.

It's called 90 square inches, bitches.

The Ultimate Finale.

And on the 45th and last night of the Summer of Ryan, it ended with a jumbo slice of pizza. In fact, that's not what I had wanted; I had just wanted a small slice, but they were out, so I had to get the jumbo. If that's not a sign of something, I don't know what is.

Anyway, it was a fantastic night. The reception was great; I got to see most everybody from the course, and I talked quite a bit with the coolest professional couple EVER (she used to work at Outside, and he's a freelance illustrator). Then we went out to a bar on the UES and I got to have a beer with everybody and say goodbye to those still around. These people are amazing; they're talented and smart and determined and we're going to run this fucking industry in ten years, if not sooner. Anyway, I love them all, and I can't wait to get back to this city to see them again so we can get and I mean blitzed. Goodnight all; get some sleep tonight, cause we know the city won't.

The Ultimate Run.

This morning I took my last workout in NYC for the summer, and for the occasion, I chose the ultimate test: circumnavigating Central Park in the already 80-degree heat of daybreak. I saw parts of the Park that I never saw before, and revisited places that I've come to love. I ran down the Literary Walk (you know that tree-lined boulevard you see in your dreams? This is the reality), by the Ramble, and took one last lap around the Reservoir. But perhaps the most poignant part of the morning was finding the bridge over the Pond, at the southeast corner of the Park on 59th and 5th Ave. In this tucked-away part of the Park you can look out over a magnificient landscape in the foreground, and yet your eyes are automatically led up. Running and walking through the Park, I realized that while I've enjoyed my summer in New York more than I could've imagined, I still don't feel welcome here. Though I've walked among the skyscrapers of Manhattan, I'm still not part of them or what they represent. That will change. I won't come back to New York City until I'm ready, but when I am, watch out. This is gonna be a sight to see.

All a matter of degree.

They were running a fire alarm test while I was out getting some lunch, and when I came back to the building, feeling the drops of sweat start to build up in my pores, the lady informed me to wait outside for a few moments. I thought of responding "Why don't you just ask me to cook an egg in my underwear? It's about the same request."

Harder than it looks, pt. 2.

It's all for naught at this point, but my favorite books, redux.

Notes on a Shared Landscape David Bayles
Division of Labour in Society Emile Durkheim
Soccer in Sun and Shadow Eduardo Galeano
The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway
The Fountainhead Ayn Rand
Points Unknown David Roberts
The Fire Within Salt Lake Olympic Committee
Rolling Stone: The Complete Covers Jann S. Wenner & Fred Woodward
To the Finland Station Edmund Wilson
Nonzero Robert Wright

Yet more places I would love to work at.

Even if you're not 25-years-old and have just spent $10M to buy one of the most talked-about yet least-read newspapers in the world, this is fabulous advice.

Also, some fine folks have started what reads to be a great, and needed, political journal. And the design is amazing!

On publishing and softball.

Is there any doubt I'm coming back to New York City? Even the softball write-ups are hilarious.

Layovers.

Just now, on the phone:

Ryan: So Whit took off already?
Lee: Yeah, she's in Dallas on her way to Boston; I sat with her until she left. But yeah, Dallas, what an odd layover. You'd think that there'd be a flight that went from KCI to, say, LaGuardia and then on to Boston.
Ryan: At a certain point, you almost consider flying to New York and then taking the train up. Because then at least you have the piece of mind of knowing you're going, you know, north. "Hey, northeast, that's a good direction!"
Lee: "Towards New England! What a fantastic idea!"

Ryan: We had our career fair this morning.
Lee: Did you start buildin' some hurtin' bombs?
Ryan: God I wish I had said that just to create some excitement in the room.
Lee: Actually, I watched that trailer and I love the whole 'To beat this guy you need speed. You ain't got it. You have calcium deposits on most of your joints, so sparring is out. We're gonna need some, uh, raw physical strength to beat him.' And I'm just like "what?"
Ryan: *laughing* Exactly! How do they make that connection from 'calcium deposits on your joints' to 'blunt force trauma'? We're talking about the physiology of a 60-year-old man!
Lee: How about, you know, not fighting a 25-year-old!? I think that gets around the concern for calcium deposits.
Ryan: And if he can't spar, then how can he box?!
Lee: It should be fun to watch though.
Ryan: Yeah, but I keep reciting that scene to people here and they don't even respond. And I'm like "Come on!"
Lee: Rocky IV ended the Cold War; this is going to end the crisis in the Middle East!!
Ryan: *falling down from laughter*
Lee: [He's saying something really fucking funny here but in our laughter, I couldn't hear it.–Ed.] *continuing laughter* Oh, god.
Ryan: *can't stop laughing* Wow.

Ryan: Is yours a direct flight to Atlanta? Or do you have a layover in Minneapolis?
Lee: No, heh, it's direct. But Minneapolis would not be out of line, probably.
Ryan: I like a good layover in Boise when I'm headed out east, myself.
Lee: Whit was telling me about a flight her brother was taking, I guess, from Boston to the city in South Dakota [Note he said "THE city in SD", which is fucking funny.–Ed.], uh, Pierre, and he had a layover in Salt Lake City, and I think one in DC, and maybe another one.
Ryan: South Dakota is *in* the contiguous 48 states, right? I mean, I'm not imagining that?
Lee: I don't know man.

Shameless plug.

For those of you new to this "not quite a lonely poetry blog," or who just don't check out the linkie at the bottom, the smartest man alive wanted to create a blog with me, and I said fuck yea. We'd be much obliged if you read it. Trolls will be executed, according to SOP.

Things I Love, #81.

All nine minutes of my new favorite song, "Thin Blue Line" from Josh Ritter. It's about the most amazing songwriting I've ever listened to. And then I read the lyrics, and I couldn't contain myself.

At night I make plans for a city laid down
Like the hips of a girl on the spring covered ground
Spirals and capitals like the twist of a script
Streets named for heroes that could almost exist
The fruit trees of Eden and the gardens that seem
To float like the smoke from a lithium dream
Cedar trees growing in the cool of the squares
The young women walking in the portals of prayer
And the future glass buildings and the past an address
And the weddings in pollen and the wine bottomless
And all wrongs forgotten and all vengeance made right
The suffering verbs put to sleep in the night
The future descending like a bright chandelier
And the world just beginning and the guests in good cheer
In Royal City I fell into a trance
Oh it’s hell to believe there ain’t a hell of a chance

I want these motherf***ing dogs off this motherf***ing road!

This morning, in Central Park:

Cyclist: Keep that fucking dog on a leash!
Bystander: Hey buddy, not until 9am.
Cyclist: *to officer nearby* Is that true?
Officer: Yep, 9am.
Cyclist: Dogs can go without a leash until 9am?
Officer: Yeah.
Cyclist: Next time I'm running that goddamn dog over.

I won't be your last dance, just your last goodnight.

And if I never kiss her, at least I'll have her words of "I love you sweetie." And I'll know she meant it, at least for that moment.

The Best Line I've Ever Heard While Helping a Girl Walk Down a Street in New York City From One Bar to Another.

Tonight, on Amsterdam Ave:

*realizing that Ellen's knee is bleeding*
Ellen: Do you think they'll have a band-aid at the bar?
Ryan: Oh we can just get a bottle of vodka to disinfect it.
Marjorie: Yes, because we're stranded here on the Russian front.
Ryan: *doubled over in laughter*

The Last Night.

Tonight is the end of CPC|NYC06, except that it isn't. We have our final Sherry Hour, then a Special Banquet in our cafeteria. They better not think they can distract us into eating yet more chicken and rice by 'decorating' the place. Champagne, though, could do the trick.

Monday morning is the career fair, which I haven't decided yet if I'll go to because it's already awkward enough; it might be even more so for me to hand over my resumé and then be like 'Oh, but don't consider me until the end of the year.' Then Wednesday night is the reception at a house on a Upper East Side, where we've been told to wear as slinky and low-cut of clothes as we dare to because of how hot and packed the place gets. Oh, that advice is just for the women? Then I guess the Interpol outfit makes a reappearence.

The Future of Publishing.

The editor of the Guardian has been quoted as saying that the brand new presses his paper bought for their conversion to the Berliner format will be the last presses they will ever buy. That's because they know the future is online, and to demonstrate this, the coolest feature I've yet to see from a newspaper. Updated every 15min., these free, letter-sized PDFs are an incredible idea for a print publication. Now if only the rest of the industry could grasp the 'vision thing'.

B&N.

Went to the Barnes & Noble at 66th–Lincoln Center tonight to buy a couple of books to get me through the next week and the flight home, but ended up buying one and four magazines. At least now I have an excuse to be a magazine whore.

Now if I can just find one for all these damn brownies I eat.

For the record, I bought Nonzero by Robert Wright, along with the latest issues of Wired, Paper, Fast Company, and Orion.

Santa Fe.

Tonight I accepted a three-month, full-time paid design internship in the art department of Outside magazine. It will start at the beginning of September, meaning that after returning to Kansas next Thursday, 3 August, I will have about a month at home to rest before I embark on my publishing career.

A career that should be considerably enhanced by a meeting this morning with Luke Hayman, the creative director for New York and the winner of this year's Magazine of the Year award from the Society of Publication Designers and, one week later, the National Magazine Award for Design from the American Society of Magazine Editors, therefore conferring on him 'The Man' status (the good kind). He encouraged me to take the internship (which I was already 99.8% certain of taking) and to join the SPD as soon as possible. This. Is. Exciting.

Egosurfing.

I found out tonight that not only have I been republished by an organization I didn't know existed, but I was quoted–in Spanish!–by a blog whose author had to actually look me up and find out that I was a student at KU. Google is seriously a highlight of Western civilization.

Response.

Tonight, on the phone:

Lee: When you left Kansas, Ryan, everything really just fell apart. The heat wave, the crises at Duke TIP..
Ryan: It fell out of balance.
Lee: Exactly, the place is literally not the same without you.
Ryan: Dare I say, I disrupted the force?
Lee: Um, okay.

Lee: And I realized that this end of term report will probably be about 12 pages.
Ryan: You should do the entire thing as printouts of a Powerpoint presentation.
Lee: "This is how the hierarchy of Duke TIP Kansas handled this."
Ryan: And every third slide is an upside down smiley.
Lee: I should do the entire thing with emoticons like Jeremy last year.
Ryan: I don't know how to respond to that.
Lee: I've reduced you to one-word answers responses again, like 'Yeah' and 'Okay.'
Ryan: That should be the benchmark of all of our conversations.

Ryan: We have this job fair on Monday, which I don't have to worry about because of the Outside thing, but I'm still gonna go and hand out my resumé and meet these people.
Lee: That sounds good man.
Ryan: But I think I should use that quote from the Rocky Balboa trailer in my personal, 90sec. pitch.
Lee: Oh god.
Ryan: Like I'll hand them my resumé and then lean in and say "Let's start buildin' some hurtin' bombs!"
Lee: "So Ryan, how do you see the Columbia Publishing Course as building your career?" "I see it buildin' some hurtin' bombs!"
Ryan:I should bet people that for every recruiter I say that to, they owe me a slice of pizza.
Lee: You mean, the pizza larger than your head.
Ryan: I've actually started describing it another way. I measured it the last time I went, and then I measured the circumference of my skull, and the pizza could literally wrap around my head.
Lee: That's incredible!
Ryan: So what I want to do next time is take a sheet of tabloid sized paper and trace around it–
Lee: No, you get somebody to wrap it around your head and take a picture of it!
Ryan: Or I could just use the grease stain imprint on the paper, and anyway bring that paper back to Kansas and just unfold it and be like "Look at that you sons of bitches."
Lee: Show it to Papa Keno's and be like "That's how they do it in Fuckin' New York!"
Ryan: "And they don't slice it either; they serve that shit whole!"
Lee: God that's so huge.
Ryan: We had a guy who thought he could eat an entire jumbo pizza, of which these slices are 1/10th.
Lee: That cannot be possible.
Ryan: That's what I said, but I'd sure like to see him try.
Lee: Pull out 10 slices of pizza and say "Let's start buildin' some hurtin' bombs!"
Ryan: *literally falling down from laughter* That's going on the blog.

Ryan: It'd be really great if I had a copy of Wingman to peruse this week.
Lee: Someday, Ryan, someday it will become a reality.
Ryan: The best article idea we had, well not the best idea but the best execution, and I'll leave you with this for the evening, was about Asian fetishes.
Lee: Okay.
Ryan: The premise was a guy moving to Boston for college and soon dating only Asian women. And the tagline for the article was "Find out why this Caucasian will only put his cock in Asians."
Lee: *30 seconds of laughing* Now you've reduced me to one-word answers!
Ryan: I knew you'd appreciate that.
Lee: How do I respond!?

"Let's start buildin' some hurtin' bombs!"

Am I the only person excited about this? Yes.

I can't help it; I hear that music, set to a training montage, and I want to become a fighter too. I also want to look as fit as Sly Stallone when I'm 60 as well. Jeebus.

Vanilla.

For the past couple of years, whenever I went to an ice cream shoppe, I told people I was on a never-ending search for the most sublime vanilla known to man. That search ended tonight. And it ended in, of all places, Brooklyn.

Actually, that's not so surprising. But before I can get to Brooklyn, I have to take you through the rest of the week leading up to it. As you may have noticed down below, this week was our magazine workshop. There were far fewer hours required than the book workshop, and it was much less intense, but the frustration level was considerably higher, due to the fact that this was one project, compared to six, and we had to make it absolutely precise. Being the men's magazine group, we decided to walk the fine line between Maxim and Esquire: beyond frat boys, but still irreverent and with boobs. Thus 'Wingman' was born, with an idea towards being Men's Health, but for dating & sex. Anyway, it was never a problem to design (as you may have guessed, I was the art director; one of the few this year to complete the designer sweep for both workshops), but it was a problem to pin down the idea; Wednesday night I made six different covers–three sets of two each–that set out different visions of the magazine. Once we picked one, I was on my way. Though I battled against the Jenny McCarthy photo until the last possible moment.

The workshop ended, for me anyway, early Friday afternoon, but I didn't do anything the rest of the day beyond going to the Rec. That's because I was really deep into The Fountainhead. Now I know, I know; I've had a love-hate relationship with Ayn Rand, especially when love in this context means hate. But since I started designing in the book workshop, I could not get that book out of my head. Last weekend, when coming back from my museum trips, I stopped and bought a second copy of Fountainhead and started reading. During the week I would steal 10-30min. during meals and in the mornings to read it, and finally finished it last night. It remains one of my most favorite novels ever, and like any of her works, it will be cause for a lot of thought about what I do and why I love it so much.

Yesterday morning I woke up determined again to have a great weekend. I took off for the tip of Manhattan with umbrella in tow; it was overcast and ugly all day. I took the subway down to Chambers St., farther south than I've ever been in this city. Arriving about 30min. later, I stepped out and walked down Broadway until I reached the World Trade Center site, which I walked past with great tenderness, until I saw the street vendors with their t-shirts and their hologram pictures. Then I seethed and walked away, looking straight ahead until I crossed Vesey Bridge to the other side of West St. and the World Financial Center, which has been made into about as much of a mall as you're likely to find in NYC. The WFC sits at the north end of Battery Park City, a planned park and private development on top of the landfill from the construction of the Twin Towers back in the 70s, and it is the site of some of the newest, 'greenest' apartment buildings in New York, which you wouldn't know if you hadn't visited the Skyscraper Museum in the south end of the park (as I did). Walking along the Hudson Shore, I came around a corner and saw the Statue of Liberty standing against a grey sky. It was magnificient nonetheless.

Dodging the sudden rainshower, I walked around the area where all of the ferries and boat tours launch from, and going nuts from the sheer horror of tourist traps run amok, I headed back towards the WTC site as a wayfinding measure to get to the rest of Lower Manhattan. Deciding that I was already down here, I walked around, trying to divine my way towards Wall St. and the New York Stock Exchange. That area of Manhattan is really neat to walk through; I've never been to an old European city, but I've seen them in the movies, the narrow alleys of odd, one-way streets that start and end in the wrong places with buildings shooting up practically from the sidewalks. That's how the Financial District is; I ended up walking past the NYSE by a block, when I should've known to turn when I saw the huge gold lettering for 'Trump Building.' (Because he doesn't have enough of those in this city. Hmph.) Anyway, I walked past the Exchange and Federal Hall up the street where G-Dub (as in 'I cannot tell a lie, which means I never invaded a nation because I needed an excuse to win an election that I couldn't possibly have won otherwise.' That G-Dub) was inaugurated. By this time I was getting hungry, and set out to find a place to perhaps get some Chinese food, but pasta was a second choice. I happened to pass by a Borders, and though it contained no food, I spent a good 45min. in there anyway. I was really very hungry, and settled for spaghetti and chicken parmigiana. Full of bad pasta and tired of walking around on this crappy day, I headed back to the subway, defeated by the city yet again.

[Bonus story! Last night I went out to get some Chinese while doing laundry, and while waiting for my take-out order of orange chicken and white rice to come out, I was staring absent-mindedly out the window towards the intersection of Amsterdam Ave. and 106th St., which is a major intersection (two ways, both ways). All of a sudden I saw a taxi come through and sideswipe a huge 15-passenger van that already mostly through; the taxi came over to the side with some front bumper damage, the van had been turned 90 degrees in the intersection with damage to its left side, but the right side, when it turned, slammed into a car service sedan. The front of the restaurant flooded with the cooks from the back yelling in Chinese about what happened, but I just watched it all with bemusement while hoping this wouldn't postpone my order. I quickly got it and walked out and across the crowded intersection, between the vehicles involved; the sedan, which I hadn't seen yet, got the brunt of it, it seemed like: the entire rear of the car was obliterated. Which is now my new favorite word. Mom called while I was walking down the block, and I told her that I love a city where car crashes are themselves a spectator sport.]

Enter this morning. I woke up after 10am and after getting a good measure of food for breakfast and lunch at the market, and a Sunday New York Times, I spent about three hours in the lounge reading the paper and watching Tiger Woods win the Open Championship like the bad-ass that he is. I came up to my room to do some reading for a few hours, and then decided that if I was ever going to go to Brooklyn to see the skyline of Manhattan, this was the time to do it: it was warm, it was sunny, it was perfect. After eating another of the slices that dare not speak their name, I got on the subway and 45min. later, I emerged on Clark St. in Brooklyn Heights. Immediately, walking through the streets, I was in love. Brooklyn was everything I liked about Lawrence, but ratcheted up about a dozen notches. The tree-lined roads with few stoplights at the intersections, the brick buildings and townhouses, the cafés and bars that just appear out of nowhere, they were all amazing. My goal on this particular trip was to stay there long enough to see the skyline at night, all lit-up. To facilitate this, I set out to find the Brooklyn Ice Cream factory. In a word, unbe-fucking-lievable. The Factory sits on a pier almost under the Brooklyn Bridge, from where you can see the buildings of Lower Manhattan to the left, and the buildings of Midtown, to the right underneath the span. Add to this the bluest sky I've seen in quite some time, and I was enchanted. Enchanted enough to spend 25min. in line for ice cream. And when I got the counter, they were out of the vanilla chocolate chunk. So I took a scoop of vanilla instead.

I never thought ice cream could be as smooth, mellow and transfixing as this was. Had I not had to wait another half an hour I've gotten another scoop; damn myself for only getting *one* after all that time in line! But seriously, it was great, and I walked back up through the Heights and found the Promenade, where one can stand and overlook the same vista, but with the added bonus of Lady Liberty in your sightlines as well. It was getting to 7:30pm, but I didn't want to wait another hour to see the skyline at night, so I headed back to the subway, falling even more in love with Brooklyn with each turn onto another, not-crowded street. This, I could most definitely get used to.

It was probably 50min. back to Manhattan on the subway, but I neglected to transfer from the 2 to the 1 at Times Square; the 1 goes straight up the Upper West Side underneath Broadway and stops right at Columbia University at 116th St.; the 2 branches off at 96th St. to curve underneath Central Park and come out at 110th and CP-North. I didn't know this. I emerged from the station, and knowing it was not far to get back to Columbia (indeed, I'd be making the same trek tomorrow morning to go for a run before class), I had to decide between going ahead and coming back to the dorm, or trying to see at least some skyline at night, which I could by going to the north edge of the Reservoir to look at Midtown. My sister had called while I was on the subway, so I talked to her while I hiked it through Central Park, a little lost at some points in the dark, but promising Sheree that I would not step off the main road (absolutely not; I'm reluctant to even go into the woods in the daytime) and eventually got to the running track.

If it was my favorite spot in New York City in the daytime, then for the love of God you must see it at night. Even better, it wasn't fully nightime yet, so you get all of the lights of the buildings plus the dying sunrays of dusk illuminating the clouds, and reflecting all of it, the calm waters of the Reservoir. I'm in love with this place all over again. Now I just need a camera.

I came back to Broadway along 97th St., and then walked the 18 blocks back up to Columbia where I've been typing this for literally the past hour. I've downed a thing of Gatorade and some fruit to balance all of the stuff I've eaten this weekend. Like I said, tomorrow morning is my return to Central Park; I think we have Victor Navasky, the former editor/publisher and now the owner of the Nation, at 10am. That should be interesting. I'm gonna try to come up with an Ayn Rand-themed question.

Covers.

Contents.

Features.

From the Department of Duh.

Capitalism is at its most glorious when it is at its most inefficient, overproductive, wasteful, and absurd.
–Momus, Wired Tech Podcast

On how much Central Park totally rocks.

Way more than I could possibly describe here. I spent over an hour running through it today, and was just amazed by the scope of it. With 58 miles of jogging paths, you could run there every day and never take the same route twice. Last week it was the Reservoir running track with the skyline of Manhattan; today it was running north up trails I didn't know, gaining in elevation when I thought there couldn't be anymore elevation left, until I came out at the Observatory, overlooking the Great Lawn, the Delacorte Theater (Shakespeare in the Park) and 5th Avenue on one of those fucking gorgeous Sunday mornings that make you realize that as long as there is Central Park, there is always a reason to live here.

Explode.

Tonight on the phone:

Ryan: But that was only the second most absurd thing to happen this week. The first was the exploding building in New York City.
Lee: Yeah I heard about that.
Ryan: What really took it to the next level though was that the New York Times was using 'blew up' in their descriptions. Like 'Doctor so-and-so, who has been in a coma since his townhouse blew up this week, succumbed to his injuries today.'
Lee: Because in that situation you wouldn't use 'exploded' or 'burnt down.'
Ryan: We're the paper of record, and we record this building as having 'blew up.'

Ryan: And I had that argument with the guy in the headquarters of Condé Nast and I was like "Wait, how did I get into this?"
Lee: "What happened!?!"
Ryan: I literally was walking back to the subway thinking "One step in any other direction, to any other group of people, and that never would've happened."
Lee: This doesn't sound like the kind of guy who you will persuade or calm down anytime soon.
Ryan: That'd be a hell of a lunchroom conversation though, if we talked again.
Lee: "Hey, remember that night last week when you acted like a complete jackass? Me too!"

Lee: We did do the jello snarfle, but there was waay too much jello. They used the black bowls from the cafeteria, and it was just–
Ryan: Wait, the black bowls as in the big plastic ones? As in, the ones we used to eat our pasta from?
Lee: Yeah man.
Ryan: You're snarfling jello out of salad bowls.
Lee: I looked at them and just thought "You cannot be serious."
Ryan: So eighteen hours later when the kids finally came down from having sugar flowing through their brain cavity...this is like our plan for having the kids eat their dozen Krispie Kremes last year from the Royals game–
Lee: And just letting them run around until they puke. That would've been awesome.

The Day of the Three Museums.

I don't want to walk anymore today. I'll go find some lo mein somewhere tonight for dinner, but other than that, my legs have checked out.

Instead of going to Central Park this morning for a run, I slept in until 9am. Deciding against just dicking around until I could go to the Rec at noon, I chose instead to get breakfast and head out to the Cooper-Hewitt. I got there just before 11am and spent probably no more than 20min. inside; it sucked. Art is not design, so why the entire second floor was devoted to landscape paintings is still beyond me. There was only one display I liked, and that was modern utensil design. But they did have a nice selection of typography books in the shop.

Leaving there, I walked down to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as it's along 5th Avenue and it's free for Columbia students. I took a good hour and a half in the exhibits and probably covered, at most, an eighth of the Met; it's hyooge. And that was by walking at a brisk pace through most of that. At first I thought it would be a bore, with all of the classical and ancient stuff; that kind of stuff has just never interested me. But then I got to the Modern Art, and boy was that fun. Picasso makes me so happy. I heart Stuart Davis. de Kooning and Rothko are simply wonders to behold. Miró freaks me out. Modigliani is probably my new favorite painter. And Peter Bonnard, a Frenchman I had never heard of before, can suck it. Seriously, I got to the point where I could recognize his style before I even saw his name, and every time I just felt this intense loathing bubbling up inside me to where I wanted to scream 'Goddamn it, I just want to burn you, you son of a bitch!' Art rocks.

Seeking to capitalize on this experience, I walked the rest of the way down 5th to Midtown to go back to MoMA, as I found out yesterday from a classmate that with our Columbia cards we can get in there for free too. Nearly hunched over, exhausted and with a sore lower back from traversing half of Manhattan by foot, I nonetheless made my way through the floors and exhibits I didn't make it to last week. The paintings were very nice, but I'm still not getting the sculpture. The Dada special exhibit was somewhat interesting, but I don't think a movement that was meant to showcase the absurdity of humanity can be properly presented in a manner that is itself not absurd. For example, they could've had the exhibit exactly set up like it is, but with all of the lights out, so that you couldn't see it. That would be Dada at its finest. There was also a special project from Herzog & de Mueron, architects who were given free reign to collect and comment on the Museum's works. The centerpiece was an auditorium of wooden benches in the middle of a darkened room, with slots in the walls on three sides so you could look in at mid-20th century products like chairs and such. The benches, though, existed to help you watch the 16 flat screen TVs mounted on the ceiling; I counted one showing Goodfellas, one with Deer Hunter, two showing Apocalypse Now at different points in the movie, and at least half were showing porn films of varying age, quality and subject matter. Hmm, I guess that's modern?

So maybe I don't really get art. Which is why I'm a designer at heart; I like things to have purpose and reason for existence. There is a problem, and through proper application of taste, creativity and logic, the problem is solved. Though the gallery that showed the evolution of Cubism by Picasso was sweet, and I think Rothko made a pretty good decision to leave behind the whole portrait thing.

One last thing: for any young homeless people who happen to be reading this blog, please please please do not walk up and down a subway car, begging for money while carrying a Starbucks cup. I don't care if it is just water inside, it's just not a good visual. Again, the designer's mindset is kicking in here. Have a great day, all.

Still can't sleep.

Of course it's mostly because Peter Kaplan may have changed my life tonight. But I'm also trying to come up with a new name for my magazine idea.

I would've posted the idea down below, but the thing is that I accidently saved over it when I did a subsequent assignment while still in Lawrence; the only copy of it that remains is what Kaplan had in front of him tonight. We will get them back this weekend, upon which I'll promptly retype and save again. But I'll give you the basic gist.

The magazine was to be based upon one that I used to follow avidly for, like, the three issues that it existed. Starting out as Racquet, it was a tennis magazine that rarely did the kind of athlete bios and slam-pow! features like Tennis does today; instead, it was a more relaxed and refined magazine that focused on the leisure and participation side of the game. Indeed, my best memoy is of a piece by a man recalling his summers playing tennis on the Maine coast. It was the kind of literature that one rarely saw in a sports magazine then, and almost never sees now. Racquet then changed after I subscribed and relaunched as TSL, or The Sporting Life, and sought to expand to such activities as flyfishing and driving. I remember one issue coming in the mail, and then no more.

So my idea was to take this magazine and relaunch it with an even broader base, but with the same spirit intact: to be not a sports magazine, but a sporting magazine. To again highlight and enhance the participatory nature of athletics and the outdoors, while also reclaiming sports from the likes of ESPN, SI and the 24-hour media that is trying to desperately to put the same fans they claim to be "watching out for" in the seats to watch the players that are suspected of steroid use or negotiating contracts with built-in trade clauses. As such, my magazine would try to feature athletes from international and alternative sports, but that is not the main draw; neither is the product or style guides that would bring an aspect of Outside and GQ into the fold. No, the draw of the magazine is in making sport–as a pastime, as a pursuit, as an ideal–back into a literary form. Our readers may get SI, but they're also reading Esquire as well as Play and the New York Times Magazine. They want their passion for their particular athletic activity, whether for fun or competition, on the weekend or a vacaction, to be reflected by fine writing. They want to know about new fitness trends, but without the 'Get your six-pack abs while having sex 78 times a week!' attitude of Men's Health. They want reviews of golf resorts, but also want to know about other leisurely or athletic activities in the area. And they could care less about Terrell Owens. Seriously.

Originally I wanted to re-use The Sporting Life, but that's almost too old-school; there's 1950s, and then there's 1950s. On the last possible morning before I sent the assignment in I changed it to Glorious, which undoubtedly sucks but I loved the way it sounded and looked; I could see it in Gotham Ultra all across the top of the cover, with an amazing photo of a tennis player on a rooftop court in Manhattan. But even Kaplan said it was 'feminine', while this magazine would be very much masculine. So I need a new name. I've Googled 'Pursuit' or 'Pursuits', and found no magazines; I also did a Yahoo! directory search and didn't find any by just that name. I'll probably spend the next hour in bed thinking about this, so don't be surprised if I keep posting after waking up my computer with the latest entry, which I'll delete just as soon as I wake up in the morning. God I love publishing!

Is it a coincidence?

That the movies that make you most glad to be alive seem to star Gael Garciá Bernal?

Peter Kaplan said he would subscribe to my magazine in an instant.

He's only America's foremost expert in magazines and media. Too bad the magazine doesn't exist.

Kaplan, the editor of the New York Observer and an authority on media in all of its forms, came to speak to us tonight as one last primer before we begin our magazine workshop this weekend. I knew he'd be talking about the history and mission of magazines (which he did in superb fashion), but I didn't know he had also read our magazine ideas. He wanted to call out the better ideas in front of class, for those students to explain their ideas and then he would say why they had potential. Now, the guy who was brought in expressly to discuss our ideas, which happened the other day, pretty much dismissed ours, and never mentioned mine at all.

Tonight, after about six others, Kaplan called my name. I stood up and tried, a couple of times, to explain my magazine idea. I say a couple of times because he kept stopping me and telling me that I wrote it down better than I was saying it out loud. Eventually he stopped me for good and read what I wrote. He then proceeded to explain why he loved it: because it had enthusiasm. Because it was about being a participant in sports again, after years of being spectators (which is what ESPN plays into almost exclusively). Because it was about having that same passion for athletic pursuits that we imagine our fathers having. Because the articles practically assign themselves, and you can do the kind of literature that writers will line up for. Because the photography and art could be magnificient. And, as a bonus, because it has one hell of an advertiser base.

Over and over again, he told us that the inherent existence of a magazine is in its editors; they are the blood that flows through the idea of the publication. Through their committment to a certain and distinct worldview, they bring catharsis to society through constantly challenging and bonding, seducing and nailing the magazine's readers. This was the message he wanted us to have, going into our workshops, where he dares us to make a magazine, not based on cold calculations of finance, but on our sensibilities and interests, indeed on our 'own best instincts.' "You have to beguile the reader with something that matters, and create a staff that knows they live in service to an idea. Anything you do less than that is dead."

Afterwards, I went up to shake his hand and have a quick word. He quickly smiled when I stepped up and said that I should absolutely take this idea and however possible, make it happen for real. He asked where I was from, and I said Kansas. He goes "Where in Kansas?"
"Lawrence."
"Oh, I know what they did there."
"Well, I wrote a paper on it. The Union fire, right?"
"Yeah. Where did you go to school?"
"The University there."
"Did you like it?"
"Very much so."
"Are you moving to New York?"
"Um, I will if I have to?"
"Are you a writer? If you write, you should keep doing it because this was good."
"Actually, I want to be a designer. Do design and editing."
"(with a surprised, inquiring look on his face) Really? (picking up newspaper) Well if you're in New York and you get stuck, email me, if we're still around."
"(with a surprised, embarassed look on my face) Thank you, and I will. And seriously, tell Bobby DeNiro to commit already."
"He hasn't yet!"

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what I like to call one hell of an evening. Tomorrow morning is running in Central Park, followed by my customary croissant and orange juice, and then a trip to the Cooper-Hewitt. And then a nap, because there's no possible way I'm gonna be able to sleep tonight.

Disausted.

Seriously, the most absurd evening I've ever experienced. We sat in a most interesting lecture this afternoon with the online editors from American Express Publishing (Travel + Leisure!!!), but we didn't care because everybody wanted to get out and start getting ready for our big night out. It did not disappoint.

We had to leave here by 4:30pm to get down to headquarters in Times Square in time for the party, but half of the guys in the course (which means seven of us) were ready to go by 4:10, so we took off. I was clad in my 'Interpol' clothes: my black/red pinstriped suit pants, black textured shirt, black with silver belt, and silver tie. Thankfully I never got hot during the entire evening (girls at the party would exclaim that they were hot and I'm like 'Um, I'm looking at and down your dress. There's not enough there to make you start sweating.' But I digress), so I was able to keep my calm composure (which proved most necessary later). We got to Conde Nast and entered the party lounge, where black-suited waiters and waitresses really did pass around fantastic food (the most tender steak skewers you can imagine) and the two open bars contributed to lots of stumbling on the way back uptown. We toured the new Frank Gehry-designed cafeteria, and had the chance to take armfuls of free magazines on the way out.

The party itself was fun; I stood and listened to various Conde Nast execs talk about their path to the towering heights of magazine journalism, but I missed the VP/Creative Director for CN, who was like the one person I actually would've liked to talk to. Several girls in our course came up and said 'Ohmigod, I just shook hands with Anna Wintour! And she was nice!' A colleague and I have been tasked with designing the thank you card to CN, and I took pictures throughout the proceedings, but despite the first-hand account of Anna's personality, I was still afraid of taking a picture of her for the collage. Oh well.

Anyway, we had to leave by quarter after seven to come back and listen to what was easily the most entertaining lecture of the course: Mickey Boardman of Paper. He. Was. Fabulous. In every sense of the word that you dare to think of. He took us through his favorite covers of the 22-year old magazine, and dished out a LOT of gossip about working with celebrities in cover shoots. He was a dream to talk to afterwards too. I've collected more business cards in one day than in my entire life up to now. I absolutely must get some sleep now, but I need to stay up and think of ways to email my resume to these guys.

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you. At the end of the party, I got into a near-shouting match with a fellow classmate over whether capitalism can actually help save the world (I was on the pro-side; don't laugh) with a guy who believes that all capitalists are to blame for the current destruction of the planet. I don't mind fervent discussion; I do mind when you can't get through a single sentence without the other guy sticking his face in yours to tell you what you were 'actually' saying. I even walked away from him at one point and he followed me. I've studied Marx and I've read more Ayn Rand than anybody should ever have to; I'm not gonna be lectured by some goddamn philosophy major by what I really mean by 'my own self-interest.' Buying organic food isn't capitalist? Fuck you.

Camp Conde Nast.

The magazine behemoth is hosting a cocktail party for us this afternoon. There will be a hyooge banner across the lobby welcoming us CPCers, and then upstairs in the reception area, two bars and the finest hors d'oeuvres we may ever try will be fueling 100 students schmoozing with the editors of GQ, Vogue, Glamour, Self, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Details, Wired, etc. I mean, it's not like we're doing it just for fun; it's practically a class requirement at this point. After all, career fair is in two and a half weeks.

More than cute.

I just downloaded my first album on my MacBook tonight, and I'm getting even greater vibes than I got when I bought Panic! At the Disco. Cute Is What We Aim For has the same spirit in their song names and lyrics and their pop sound, but on a much more refined note. It sounds both restrained, and yet more expansive then Panic!; comparatively, Panic! feels like they rely on gimmicks, while Cute focuses on a straight-up, fun, yet biting tone. They're like Saves the Day but without the underlying darkness. Whatever the case, to use Mischa's words, I approve. Oh most definitely.

ETA: I also just bought Reinterpretations by the Shanghai Restoration Project. I am going to have some damn good music to design to next week during the magazine workshop.

Unprofessional.

Last night, on the phone:

Lee: I was in the office the other day when you called, and Michelle got quite a hoot out of it.
Ryan: She told me she was still at work and couldn't talk, and I'm like 'Come on. I'm quite certain this is not the most unprofessional thing to happen there this week.'
Lee: Yeah, I can't see us getting in trouble for it.
Ryan: 'Uh-oh! A personal phone call with 20min. left in the work week! Shut down Duke TIP Kansas!'
Lee: 'We're moving it to K-State!'
Ryan: Holy shit that's funny.

Forza Italia! (pt. 2)

So Italy came through, as I, um, predicted. Yeah, I totally did. Though I hate hate hate penalty kicks to decide a match, let alone the championship of the world. It's just so unsatisfying. But I loved this Italian team, and I think the cursed Frenchmen are a bunch of a brutes. Seriously, head butting someone in the chest?

I got up a little after 7am this morning and headed out towards Central Park for a good run. I ran up the Great Hill along West Dr., going south until I pulled off onto a sidewalk past the tennis courts. Then I realized I was at the running track for the Jackie Onassis Reservoir. Oh. My. Gosh. It's my new favorite place in Manhattan. The reservoir stretches across a good quarter or so of the park, and at the north edge, the skyline of New York is arrayed before you, with the grand apartment buildings of 5th Ave. and Central Park West guiding your eyes to the whole of Midtown, Hell's Kitchen, and Gramercy. I loved the view so much I took a second lap, and then came back to watch the Wimbledon final.

After the first set I felt very sleepy, so I came back up to my room and listened to the BBC feed while resting (I love a good 10am nap). I watched the final set with Kristina who is way super cool, and then set out to find a barbershop to follow through on my decision of last night. It felt so good to get rid of all that stuff and get back down to my 1/8th of an inch; I need to remember that my hair looks much better as a Wimbledon court, not a fairway rough.

I got some juice and a big cookie to hold me over until lunch, which I was going to eat with some classmates while watching the World Cup final. When I found out they were going to the other side of the isle, I said that I was going to be fine right here. I got a crappy beef burrito across the street, which barely lasted through regulation, let alone overtime and penalty kicks.

Afterwards came the highlight of my weekend (MoMA excepted). I went down the street to Le Monde, a "student-priced" brasserie, in the words of the Not for Tourists guide (I actually found the restaurant on my own the first week I was here, and then looked it up later). For $28 it may not sound all that spectacular for a burger and frites with a beer, and some vanilla ice cream for dessert, but it was truly sublime. I can't wait to go back next weekend for a true brunch.

Now I'm in for the night; I'm supposed to be doing a homework assignment tonight, but there are a lot of us who never got the assignment on Friday (which should have been expected, considering that everybody couldn't wait to get out of that building after being stuck there for an entire week). I'll just read and listen to the internet radio station from P.S.1, a MoMA-sponsored museum/center in Queens; they play great techno-lounge music, and I hear the museum is fantastic. Just another listing for another weekend.

Meh.

Forget this whole 'hair' thing. I'm gonna try to find a barber tomorrow. After what should be spectacular finals at Wimbledon and the World Cup, of course.

The problem with this city.

I've only been here for three weeks, but I think I've got this one nailed down: too many restaurants. Seriously, when any given block in this city has, by my estimate, approximately 15,000 places to get food, then where am I supposed to eat?

I woke up this morning with a renewed drive to turn this into Ultimate New York Weekend. I should've stuck with Friday. I went out to get a croissant and an orange juice, then walked across Morningside Park (which is really very cool) to the C train at 116th, which I took down to 23rd, in Chelsea. I wanted to go to the Center for Book Arts and look at their exhibits, but I went west when I should've gone east. Forty minutes later I entered the CBA, and walked out within five minutes, thoroughly disappointed with their concept of a 'book.' Going back to 7th Ave., I got on the 1 train at 28th to Times Square, then transfered to the N and took it to Lexington and 59th. I thought I could salvage the morning by stopping by Serendipity, where Tiffany had told me about the frozen hot chocolate. Unfortunately, you can't get it to go, and the waiting list was stretched out to the street. Trying to remain undaunted, I pressed on towards my ultimate goal for the day: the United Nations headquarters. I entered the main building and realized that MoMA has more of a security presence than the UN (and maybe there's a good reason for that). Deciding against a guided tour, I bopped around the gift and book shoppes before leaving to come back to 53rd so that I could at least have the option of going back through MoMA to see the floors that I didn't look at last night. I was getting very tired, as I was in my tenth hour of exploring New York City in the last 24 hours, and, after realizing that the Museum of Arts and Design across the street was primarily furniture and interior design, decided to scrap my Ultimate Weekend. I went back to 49th and Broadway, caught the 1 back up to 110th where I got out and tried to pick one place to finally eat some lunch; had to settle for a slice of cheese pizza that I could bring back to the dorm with me.

I'm going to rest and watch Germany:Portugal this afternoon, and then decide if I should go for a run tonight or tomorrow morning. With all of the walking I've done, I'm content to wait until tomorrow; I'm not planning on much this evening anyway. New York, you won this round.