What happens in Vegas...

What happens in Vegas... really should stay in Vegas. I recently went back for a second annual east-coast-west-coast reunion weekend. We had a ball, and you can see the highlight video in my blog's video box or on youtube. Drinking and gambling and stuffing your face with steaks and riding ATVs in the middle of the desert and the lights and the fake décors and breasts is fun, don't get me wrong, but there is no getting around the fact that Vegas is a crazy place and that being there as a sentient being you are sort of morally obliged to vacillate between states of extreme titillation and nausea, energy and exhaustion, winning and losing, control and addiction.

Vegas runs a Carnival atmosphere year-round, a Carnival that never leads to Lent. Or rather it's a very private form of Lent as you board your plane home and sink into a small row of seats to pray for redemption and better luck next time and a decent night's sleep in the next eight high altitude hours. Carnival has always been a reversal of rules, an important time when the poor can don masks and parade as the royal and powerful and the wealthy can do the reverse. And then everyone copulates in the streets, without regard to race, creed, color or blood alcohol level. It has traditionally, and perhaps in more spiritual and respectful forms, played an important escape valve function for many societies. It can be such a relief to blow off a little steam and not be yourself, in your skin, for a little while that we are happy to return to our problems and start daily life fresh again... even if that means being a servant to the fat guy on the hill with all the beans.

And so it is that after four days in Vegas (which is equivalent to like six days anywhere else if you count waking hours), I return home tired and happy to have gotten out alive. Yes, let me shove into a crowded subway car where everyone ignores each other and hides behind newspapers and ipods--at least they're not white-trash, wearing ridiculous clothes, staggering around and yelling things like "Who's the man? Who is the man!?!"

There is definitely something to be learned from poker. Sure some of the games are pure chance like roulette or slot machines, but playing them can be a lesson in the ups and downs, the cycles of life. Poker, particularly Hold'em, is a real interesting study in risk analysis. You can analyze the possibilities (how many cards or hands can beat mine), the people, the odds, the position on the table. People say that playing poker is all about bluffing, but that is so wrong. It's about playing the cards you are dealt, in the position you are in, with the people at your table, with the amount of money you have to the best of your ability. And that, without stretching it too much, is life. Whether you are getting a job, a house, or a date, you are going to have to do some risk taking, or at least risk assessment. Playing poker gives you some practice in assessing and taking risks. You learn not to put all your eggs in one basket, to play a strategy over time. May be you win some, may be you lose some, but hey get used to it, that's life. The one thing you can control is making the right moves that are right for you over the long haul, and you want to be in it for the long haul. It's great to splash the pot now and again for a little excitement and Shamwow! fun, but you want to be able to martial your resources so that you can stay at the table for as long as possible. It's another case of walking down the hill and... seeing some flops, my friends. So let's get stuck in there!

But I digress. Let's just say that I think you can really learn some valuable life lessons from playing some poker.

You definitely see a lot of different types of people in Vegas, but especially people who like free alcohol, bad entertainment, and the chance to win big. Maybe because of it's geographical location, there are a higher percentage of people from the midwest and maybe because they have the time and can afford to spend a little of their nest eggs, you see a fair number of older couples. Unfortunately, you don't find a lot of people displaying good taste, sensitivity, compassion or culture. This is definitely the downside of Vegas and the part that can get you a little depressed about this great land and people of ours.

The thing that really grosses me out is the excess. There is definitely this trend towards the cattle-ization or chattel-ization of people. First there are the omnipresent electric walkers, which reminds me of the movie Wall-E where everyone is overfed and overstimulated and confined to perambulating barka-loungers. Then there are the strap-on containers of alcohol. You actually see people stumbling around drunk out of their gourds, their eyes as large and glazed as any bovine with large containers of Margarita strapped and dangling from their necks like feeding troughs (I am modeling one at the top of the page--they also come in 3' Eiffel Towers!). Finally, there are the people who tether themselves to slot machines (see photo above). You get these cards on a bungee cord around your neck which automatically tally up your winnings and losings from the machines, and which cut out that whole annoying step of adding more money to the machine. To paraphrase Dean Wormer addressing the Delta house: "Tetanized, drunk and tethered to a slot machine is no way to go through life, son."

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Wasting away in Margaritaville (a little thing we call life)

The funny thing about life, all life really but let's take human life for example, is that if you pick it apart, limb by limb, cell by cell, molecule by molecule, what you end up with is a big pile of protons and electrons. In the words of Gertrude Stein, "There's no there there." I mean where's the life in that, right? Try asking a pile of protons to pick up the dry cleaning or drop the kids off at soccer practice.

It makes you wonder if most of what we consider to be life is nothing more than an emergent phenomenon--a simple byproduct of complexity. It's a numbers game. One guy with a beer and facepaint is a nuisance, 30,000 of them and you've got a stampede at the Giants Game or the Colliseum. All of the things we cherish about life then, friendship, family, joy, a good cappuccino at the mall, all of this would be sort of an afterthought, a nonessential detail to the fundamental truth of angle, vector, force. This type of deconstruction of life may be elemental but it lacks a certain elegance. It's just not the kind of thing you want to snuggle up next to at night or pen a love poem to!

Looking at life in this way can certainly double-down your faith in something greater, something spiritual, that something that is more than the sum of its parts. Or it can just make you say what the hey, charge me another round of margaritas on my mastercard buddy, because I'm going out of this senseless soup in style.

Soup, actually, is not a bad way of looking at it, because if you delve down a little deeper and start spelunking at the quantum scale, the protons and electrons become quarks differentiated only by their color, spin and flavor (and, yes, that is technical talk). A couple of scoops of quarks then resembles less a pile of discrete particles and more like a cloud of mathematical probabilities, particle~waves of energy twinkling in and out of existence, periodically dancing around each other to create the illusion of matter. Mrs. Gump says that life is like a box of chocolates, but that's at the emergent level, it's really, fundamentally speaking, more like a Baskin Robbins store in a blender... on acid!

Back to some Everyday Immortality though. Deepak writes, "When I decide to observe the quantum soup of the Universe, made up of non-stuff, it manifests in my awareness as a physical body that I experience as mine, and other bodies that I experience as the Universe." Matter, he goes on, is the birth of particles from waves, it's momentarily frozen waves of energy. And we're back to the margarita description of life! What separates us the tequila then from them the lime and it the ice is a quick spin in a blender and a dash of salt.

"Personality is time bound," you see, "It comes about when the present is identified with the past and projected into the future." The sense of continuity, that things are happening, that causes lead to effects, that we're making headway on that pile of laundry in the corner, is a mere linguistic trick, a tromp-l'oeil changing of tenses. In short, time is also an emergent phenomenon; it's a secondary effect of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or entropy. Because protons can attract and repel, go forwards and backwards through all their interactions with no problem.

Time is perhaps an illusion of memory, a game that grey matter likes to play when it's not helping us dodge cars on the BQE and crumbling equity markets, but wait and see if the headphones to your ipod ever spontaneously untangle and you will begin to believe in the power of these little emergent phenomena we call time and life.

So what are these quarks? Heisenberg will tell you that it's not too certain. The better you know where they are, the less you know where they are going (momentum). The better you know where they are going, the less you know where they are. The more precisely you try and weigh them, the more their mass varies. They are particles and they are waves. They are energy and they are matter (which Einstein has already gotten us confused with). They are fields and forces. They follow one path or both paths through a slit in the wall depending on which way you are looking. Talk about quantum decoherence! You say wave, I say particle, oh let's call the whole thing off...

It's at this point when you go back to reading the sports page, or take a vow of silence. I guess Joni Mitchell had it right:

I've looked at clouds from both sides now,
From up and down, and still somehow,
It's cloud illusions I recall,
I really don't know clouds, at all.

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Poet predicts end of science - Universe answers

In 1915, Einstein publishes his general theory of relativity. It's a simple idea that creates a big bang in the world of physics. When, or perhaps more appropriately if, fully understood, the theory describes a world where space and time evolve dynamically: no longer absolute and eternal, but relative, no longer a fixed stage on which the great dramas of life play out, but non-Euclidean and non-Newtonian sets constantly changing and being changed by the actors and their actions inside them. Man, no longer a play thing to immutable and inscrutable fate, has cut the strings and is executing a mathematical and cosmic dance with the gods. Le point fixe qui bouge, in Lecoq terms.

Perhaps you are thinking that this is a bit dramatic or poetic for a description of modern physics, but then you would be forgetting that Einstein himself was a dreamer. In fact, he describes a vivid dream involving cows, a farmer and an electric fence as the inspiration for his special theory of relativity. "Science does not know its debt to imagination," writes Emmerson, and so it is that we owe a debt to the artists, to the writers and dreamers who travel and trade in the land of imagination, for nothing can be theorized or studied that hasn't first been imagined.

Beyond the big bang (tautology? is there anything before the big bang?), Einstein's theory creates the theoretical and mathematical framework which predicts and describes black holes, gravitational lensing and much more. In terms of gravity as geometry, people offer the image of a rubber sheet stretched out with bowling balls and other balls rolling around on it. If you visualize how each ball would create it's own dip and pull in the rubber sheet around it and what effect that might have on a nearby object, then all you have to do is add two more dimensions (one in space and one in time) to understand general relativity's description of the world.

Though it may be hard to understand now, one of the most revolutionary ideas inherent in general relativity was that the universe (space and time) might not be fixed and eternal. When you start plugging in the numbers out pops a picture of the universe which includes a big bang, i.e. a beginning, as well as expansion. And this beginning and expansion leads to an obvious question. If the universe starts at the big bang, 'how does it end?'

Remember that people have been burned at the stake, or worse, for asking similar questions, or worse, proposing answers to them. Take Giordano Bruno for example. He was burned just for suggesting that the earth rotated around the sun and not the other way around (thus displacing man from the center of the universe). Even at the late date of 1915, and to a man of logic and reason like Einstein, the idea that the universe could have a beginning and an end is quite inelegant, frightening even. You have to be a real sensitive type or extremely paranoid to worry about a problem that is, by all reasonable calculations, billions of years in the future!

But worry he does, until finally he is led to commit what he considered the biggest blunder of his career. In order make the equations of general relativity describe a static world where the universe isn't expanding or contracting at the drop of a photon, Einstein inserts into them what he calls the Cosmological Constant. As it turns out, the universe is expanding and this has repeatedly been confirmed by observation. Moreover, the Cosmological Constant is not even mathematically very, well, constant, as it still tends to result in descriptions of an expanding or contracting universe when you start adding it all up.

In a further twist, it turns out that an accurate mathematical model of the universe, i.e. general relativity, may need a cosmological constant, not for aesthetic reasons about whether we think it makes sense for the universe to be able to expand or not, but in order to take into account the effects of the vacuum, or ground-state energy, which act to push against the pull of all the matter. Although this isn't what Einstein had in mind, it does sort of mitigate the blunder. In fact, it might make it one of the more inspired, and dare we say, creative acts of theoretical legerdemain in the history of physics. It was certainly a leap of faith. But, wait, we're talking about science! Next thing you know you are going to be telling me that Darwin was an intelligent designer...

So, did general relativity change the world? One might say that it didn't change it at all, just our fundamental understanding of everything in it and how it all works. And that, as the poem goes, has made all the difference. To continue the Frosty metaphor, it's two roads diverging not just in a wood but because of the wood and by your traveling there (and let's not forget the effect that roads and the wood have on you either).

But the whole sha-big-bang does leave one wondering, how is it all going to end? Well theoretically speaking there are basically two possibilities: continuing expansion or contraction. Either there is not enough matter and energy, and therefore gravitational pull, to stop the expansion of the universe and it keeps on going until there are nothing but vast distances between every soon to be cold and extinct particle, or there is enough and the universe's expansion is eventually slowed down and stopped, at which point it begins to contract back in on itself into a final fiery and dense singularity (aka big bang bis or part deux).

Interestingly, a year after Einstein publishes his theory, our friend Robert Frost publishes the following poem:

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Did Frost subscribe to scientific journals? Did he somehow understand Einstein's general relativity (before anyone else) and what it implied about the beginning and end of the universe? Probably not, but actually that is what makes this poem even more prescient (as in preceding science as imagination always must), Frost has correctly described the two possible ends of the universe, fire and ice, and their anthropomorphic equivalents, desire and hate. So which is it?

Well in 1998, observations of supernovas have shown us that the universe is not just expanding, it's accelerating! More precisely the rate of its expansion is accelerating. While there is still room for new discoveries or understandings, like the effect of quantum gravity on these calculations or the whole dark matter thing, this acceleration pretty much tells us how it's all going to end, I'm talking about life, the universe and everything. In the words of that immortal poet Robert Van Winkle, it's going to be "ice, ice, baby."

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The light in me honors the light in you

Who are you? What is your essential and infinite divineness? Are you nothing more than a body and stream of conscious thoughts? Is the person thinking the thoughts, giving the orders, the same one who feels lonely? Hungry? Or is there a deeper you? If you are the person thinking your thoughts, then who are you when you are not thinking? When you are sleeping? Unconscious?

Who is the person thinking your thoughts? Who is the person in between the thoughts, the silent self, the watcher? The experiencer? “You cannot experience the experiencer by thinking thoughts because when you are thinking thoughts you can no longer be with yourself, the thinker.”

This is Deepak Chopra’s Everyday Immortality which offers no less than a path to immortality in everyday, to become de-i-vine, the deification of self and the devine which means guess in French and your guess is as good as mine as to how to get there. But if you ain't looking, who is?

In a quantum leap of truth he reminds us that, “The essential nature of material body and that of the solid-appearing universe is that they are both nonmaterial. They are made up of non-stuff.”

“When I make the choice to observe the subatomic world of mathematical ghosts, the ghosts freeze into space-time events or particles that ultimately manifest as matter.” This guy knows his stuff. He is talking in the interstices, the borderlessland where physics become meta-physics.

But what are we, what is matter, you ask? “My physical body and the body of the physical universe are both proportionately as void as intergalactic space,” comes the answer. So the Buddhists are correct in seeking the deeper self, the truth that pierces the illusion of duality and material existence in the silences of meditation, in the spaces between thoughts. This is the place where knowing happens. The knower resides in the timeless void between the thinker’s thoughts.

Physics tells us that this is not a dead or empty space. The void is filled with energy, and this vacuum energy, similar to the person you are or find when you are not thinking or doing is the deeper all-encompassing you, the cosmological constant. What some people might call the higher self or the eternal soul.

“The experiencer changes, but the experiencer remains the same. The thought comes and goes, the thinker is always there; the scenery transforms, but the seer remains the unchanged, eternal.”

Yes, and...

“Only through silence, only by Being can I know myself.”

Namaste.

One more thing, "Coffee is for closers".

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and we are NOT in a hurry...

I was just Shanghai'd by the infamous International Photo crimper Jesse Long. I wake up on a 24-hour American Airline flight to Shanghai, where I will spend the week working in child labor... aka taking pictures of school kids.

One week is not a lot of time to spend 12 time zones away from home, and I'm legitimately worried that I will only get over the jet-lag just in time to find myself on the plane back to New York--dead awake with nothing to do but watch the on-board movies a second time through.

Although I do end up awake and watching the same movies on my return flight (this time in Spanish to mix it up), I pretty much avoid that 'my head feels like it has been turned inside out' type of jetlagged feeling. The flight from Chicago to Shanghai is fairly empty and although I only sleep four or five hours, I think there is something about being horizontal which helps resets the bodies circadian rhythms.

It's a good thing too that I arrive with my wits about me, because there is no driver to pick me up at the airport, which leaves me all alone with a blurry internet printout of my hotel's location and a limited vocabulary for getting there.

We are actually sort of proud of ourselves linguistically speaking, as we manage to pick up a few key new Chinese phrases this year. In the first few trips, I learn how to say a few numbers and "that's too expensive" to vendors in the knock-off markets, then "right", "left" and "straight on" (the fun to say, eedrizzaow) to taxi drivers. This year I have fun with the kids inventing mandarin tongue twisters like, "Does your mother scold the horse with hemp?" which is basically the same phoneme, ma, repeated over and over with different intonations--very difficult to reproduce.

We also learn how to say restroom this trip. Yes, it's kind of pathetic that we have made it this long without learning it, and we learn the word when we realize that in some restaurants it is just not appropriate to put your hands to your crotch and mime micturating all over the jade goldfish pool.

The most important Chinese phrase that we have not learned, however, and that may be even more life saving than ce suo (restroom or toilet, click for pronunciation), would be something like "slow down, this is suicide" or "and we are NOT in a hurry". In fact, I would recommend that anyone traveling to China and planning on taking taxis learn both and practice saying them on a roller coaster.

But back to the travelogue. This is my third visit to Shanghai, and once again, Jesse and I will be working at a big international school called SAS (see this previous post for our famous SAS cover story). The school is split into two campuses, each of which could pass for an Ivy League campus. It's really something to see flat screen TVs in every hallway announcing girl's volleyball tryouts and a stage that could house Miss Saigon (with the fly-away sets, act III helicopter entrance and all) with eighth graders jamming out a version of "Born To Be Wild".

Perhaps this isn't surprising to those of you who have been to the ultra-urban Shanghai, but what you have to realize is that both campuses are out in what my friend Olive-tree Faliez calls pétaouschnock. Imagine your best friend inviting you to come work with him in New York City, all expenses paid, then finding out that you will be splitting time between Jersey City and Flushing. Now add in more pollution and about 100 more people per square paddy and you've got the idea.

I leave on Friday the 13th and arrive on Valentine's day. Jesse rolls in a few hours later and since we are both feeling like we have dodged the jetlag bullet we decide to go out and get some beers. We stop at a little noodle shack run by a Uighur guy that we have been to before. In a prestidigitation defying act, he twists, rolls, stretches and spins out fresh homemade batches of noodles from a few lumps of dough. These ramen (pronounced 'lamen') are served in a big bowl of hot soup with meat or vegetables for about one dollar. In a nod to the local expat community that has sprung up in this area, there are even disposable wood chopsticks. The first time I went to China, a sino-veteran recommended I bring my own chopsticks to avoid the plastic ones that sit in little cups in most restaurants and which have been rinsed in the tap water you are trying to avoid ingesting. The reality is that the bowl the soup is served in probably has been rinsed in it too, but you hope the hot soup and chili sauce will take care of that.

It certainly takes care of us. In no time we are next door at a semi-local bar drinking down copious amounts of pijo, or just Tsingtao if you prefer to ask for it by name and avoid the other beer brands that have noxious amounts of sodium or even formaldehyde in them--no kidding. We are playing this game of liar's dice with the barman and a random Chinese woman. The woman's job is to play this game with patrons to keep them and her (and the barman in this case) drinking. They drink us under the table and we leave, or rather, weave, happy with our first night in China.

We are staying at a new place this year, the Citadines, which is a French line of hotel-cum-apartments. It's nice, but in classic export style, our cozy chez-nous has been perfectly replicated right down to a couple of missing details. For example, it has an all-in-one-washer-dryer, but the dryer doesn't work.

As you can see from the photo, I found this out the hard way one night and spent the rest of it blow-drying my clothes. This thing about replicating things but with that je ne sais quoi local touch reminds me of something Madame Irma says in "The Balcony" about creating theater, "They all want everything to be as true as possible... Minus something indefinable, so that it won't be true." She is actually talking about the customers to her brothel and the revolutionaries outside its doors, but aren't they, like theater audiences basically entering a "house of illusions"?

During the week, when I am not helping Jesse solve the world's problems one 'B' package at a time I meet with some local theater teachers and producers to feel out the idea of bringing Floating Brothel to Shanghai.

I come prepared with DVDs of the show and several letters of introduction. I am lucky that one contact, a great gal named Alison who went to China on a Fulbright several years ago and has been choreographing shows and working for Tan Dun (the guy who did the music for Crouching Tiger) ever since, knows the general manager for the main theater in town. There is a concert with José Gonzales nearby, so we decide to go see the show together and organize a meeting with the theater manager beforehand.

The manager is very kind and agrees to meet with us, even though he has three shows running and has to come straight from a wedding. His English is pretty good and he has come prepared. After we introduce ourselves and sit down, he smiles and asks me, "So what can you tell me about your show? Do you have a DVD?"

"Yes, I do," I reply, handing him the DVD. "I wrote our website on the disc so you can check that out too when you get a chance."

"I've seen your website," he says.

"Oh great," I continue. "Then you've seen we got some really great photos of the show. We were lucky, actually, because the photograher/"

At this point he interrupts, smiling again and asks, "Yes, I've seen your website too, but I have to ask: what is this supershit?"

Jesse and I laugh, nervously, and I say something about how my mom has been asking me the same question, but I think folks that this is the beginning of the end of what could have been the Floating Brothel 2010 Making Shanghai Viewer Happy Tour...

Well, I'm back in New York now and have been getting down to the serious business of preparing for nurse practitioner school--starting with picking out my stethoscope and reflex hammer color. What do you think about garnet? So long, and thanks for all the fried shrimps.

And finally, for those who want a Shanghai surprise, click here.

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Eat, Love, Pray!

I've just updated my facebook status to read, "Kevin is eating, loving and praying!" because that is that exactly what I have been doing recently along with reading the Elizabeth Gilbert book by almost the same name.

The joy I am feeling to be eating, loving and praying with this new awareness is well captured by the exclamation point that I generously append to my new electronic face--it's nothing less than my typographical being, the 'i' in me, doing a handstand!

Gilbert writes that "when you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt--this is not selfishness, but obligation."

As much as I malign facebook, it does serve its purpose. It's the face you decide to share with your not-so-virtual friends. So today I've decided to put on a happy, dirt caked face. It's not selfishness or an obligation to share this light of joy, and we are not diminished by the giving of it. On the contrary, the light bulb does not decide where or on whom to shine, it just shines in every direction. So here is my ray of the day:

Today I open wide the doors
rejoicing the sun in flight
singing A bas les abat-jours !
bowing as day to night
praying hey-hey, ho-ho,
these bulbs of joy have got to grow.

Yes this little light of mine, I'm gonna let it...

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Now, That's Funny - Bye-Bye Bush

I want to emphasize the comma in the title. Like Lynne Truss' zero tolerance approach to punctuation in "Eats, Shoots & Leaves", I used to have a zero tolerance for Bush humor. I would find myself watching, for example, Stephen Colbert skewering Bush and the neo-connneries (connerie: nf. French meaning silly, stupid, rubbish, bullshit, and from the root word con meaning idiots, lousy, dumb, foolish and designating the female sex organ) at the 2006 White House Correspondant's Dinner and I would find it hilarious, but involuntary angry constrictions of my chest would always choke back the laughter. In legal terms, I guess you would call this my Executive Gag Order Humor Reflex.

But that was before Obama took office and Bush got on what many of us hoped was a helicopter to nowhere... Now, I find his buffoonery (bouffon, nm. French the clown, the imbecile, the fool) really funny. So as I sit here today, February 9, 2009, watching the aweful (as in 'inspiring awe' and disgusting) and incredible compilation of Bush gaffes from the Letterman show, and the tears stream down my cheeks, I am saying to myself Now, (comma) that's funny! with the emphasis, thanks to the comma, on the Now.

Now, I understand why clowns can be so scary and funny...

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Expand This...

If you like my new expandable posts...
What expandable posts you say?

Capiche?C'est la bombe de balle, c'est chanmé!, as my friend Olivier might say in his dark and mysteriously French way.

Anyway, if you like the effect and want it for your very own, then check it out here at hackosphere.blogspot.com.

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A Good Year in Wine

A glass of wine a day keeps the doctor and blues away...

This corkboard represents the result of my year in Province... and Italy, the Rioja region of Spain, several right-banks of Bordeaux and even a few reasonably priced places in Chile. It actually would have taken me several years to save-up enough corks to make this corkboard, but my girlfriend grew up in Rome and really accelerates the collection process--as well as making it a lot more fun!

The corkboard, which I made as a gift, will soon be adorning the wall's of Debbie's office at Legal Aid. I told her that she didn't have to tell her clients how much time it took her to collect the corks.

This reminds me of a joke that I used to know in France which went something like, What do you call 365 Michelin condoms? A Goodyear! I told it one time to my Spanish friend Roberto , a guy who liked to party so much and had so much energy that he used to fidget even in his sleep. Really, one of his feet would be tapping away as if he was dreaming about drinking wine and dancing at the discothèque--which he liked to do.

A month or two after I told Roberto the joke, I overheard him telling it to someone else, except that he couldn't quite remember the number in it. So he ended up saying something like, What do you call 675 Michelin condoms...? And then it struck me that it was a culturally biased jokes, because why not, once a day might seem like just an average year or even a slow year to some people.

Well for me, 2008 was a GoodYear--at least for drinking wine.

Cheers and chin-chin!

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Comic Genius

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La bouffe vietnamienne.
On nêm où on nêm pas.

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I love it when a plan comes together

When I first moved into my co-op I had big plans to redo the kitchen and bathroom, build a platform in the office so my desk would sit up at window height, put a stained glass window in the wall between the office and bedroom and I don't know what else.

At first I was going to have all the work done before I moved in or right after I moved in while I was in China, figuring that it would be good to get it done quickly, but was working on my impulsiveness in 2008, so I decided to just move in and wait. Plus my mom, who has a lot of experience in home construction and remodeling jobs, told me to.

I'm not sure whether it was the chaos of moving in or my first mortgage bill that did it, but I decided that she was right and that I would just settle in to my new home for a while before making any big decisions.

I moved in at the end of June and by the 4th of July was happily sipping a glass chardonnay on my roof, chez moi, watching fireworks light up the Brooklyn skyline. I loved my new home. Even today, I often wake up each thinking that I'm on vacation and that I'm going to have to leave soon or something. Then I realize that I'm home and that I don't have to leave. It's so wonderful!

One funny thing about going from a renter to a homeowner is how it suddenly makes you really feel old and responsible, like an adult or something. It does, it changes you. One of the first few times I had the boys over to hang out and jam, I found myself worrying if we were making too much noise for the neighbors on a weeknight. I had always been a respectful renter, paid my rent on time, kept things clean and maintained. In fact, I think that is part of why I felt I had the right to have people over and make some noise from time to time, even on a weeknight.

And now here I was, an owner, worrying about whether we were being too loud. What's great is that it should have been the exact opposite, right? It's not like I can lose my lease if someone makes a noise complaint. I can understand wanting to take better care of the place, and I do, but this. I felt betrayed by my own feelings of guilt and responsibility. Finally, I suggested we keep the playing down to a mature mezzo piano...

Regarding my big plans to redo the kitchen and get rid of the crazy orange counters from the 70's and modernize the bathroom to bring in more light and better fixtures (though it does have a bath already), I finally decided if ain't broke don't fix it. The one idea I followed through with was to open up the wall between the office and bedroom. It took me a while, but some friends of mine recommended that I check out this store called Olde Good Things in Chelsea which recovers things like stained glass windows from churches or old mansions, and doors, and fixtures and tables and, well, old good things...

After a few visits, I found a piece I liked. Then I waited a few weeks for winter and the economic crises to really start setting in and I made my move. Finding and booking a carpenter was actually a bit more complicated. When you ask and call around, you quickly realize that carpenters, plumbers and electricians, at least ones that are being recommended, all have more work than they can handle and are doing small jobs on weekends and evenings. The one I found said he could probably install the stained glass window in two or three days but wouldn't be available until early next year. It reminds me of the joke about the cardiologist whose plumbing backs up. When the plumber gives him the bill he can't believe how expensive it is. He tells the plumber, "This bill is unbelievable. I'm a doctor and even I don't make this much money!" And the plumber responds, "Neither did I when I was a doctor."

Well, it's early next year and we, as in the royal 'we', we've just finished installing the window. The carpenter was great, he even came in exactly on estimate (feel free to contact me for his number). I did sort of a timelapse slideshow of the installation process which you can see in the video box to the right (if it's not visible, you can select 'stained glass' with the pull down menu bar button or watch it in high definitions directly on YouTube.

Hope you enjoy. If you are in the neighborhood of Prospect Heights, stop by for a tour and a cup of coffee, I make the best esspresso in the tri-state, but that's for another blog...

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This is not very PC,
but you know what they say,
Once you go mac...

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Obama Inauguration Weekend

Some of you may have already heard about what NPR, facebook groups and Youtube are calling the “Purple Tunnel of Doom” or “Purplegate”. Some-odd thousand people like myself have traveled from around the country with tickets to the inauguration (I have mine through a friend who was crunching data at an undisclosed campaign location in Missouri) only to find ourselves squashed into several square blocks unable to get through the Purple security gate to see the inauguration of our 44th president.

But let me rewind a few days, because this is really part of a big weekend and beyond that a bigger socio-eco-political movement that has been sweeping America off it’s barka-loungers…

Our journey began on Saturday when Kate, David, baby Alice, Johnny, Debbie and I drove out of town in a Budget mini-van, destination Camelback, PA. We arrived in time to check in to our local ski lodge-cum-hotel, before heading to a Japanese restaurant called Shiro, a huge hibachi and sushi house with like 50 tables, a dance floor, a magician/animal balloon specialist and more. Kind of crazy in the middle of Pennsylvania, but it was packed and quite good. If you build it, right? And if there is one thing that I can eat a lot of, it’s sushi. Now, I’m not in a Claudia French league, but if she (at her Italian 5’5” and 105 pounds) represents the NBA slam-dunk championship of sushi eating ability, then I’m probably hitting final-four levels. Allez-hop!

After stuffing our faces we returned to the hotel where we slipped under our cozy comforters for a cup of hot cocoa before bed. The snow had already begun to fall and we woke up Sunday morning to 4" inches of “freshie” and more gently falling from the sky. After we gorged ourselves on a breakfast of scrapple (Pennsylvania's answer to Spam) and pancakes and bacon and waffles the like (Johnny even had a piece of homemade pumpkin pie), we hit the hill. I mean this, the hill, literally and metaphorically. Camelback has something like 400' of verticalish feet of skiing. There are double-black diamonds, but they’re something like blue squares for us west coast ski snobs, so I have to think of it as a ski hill and not a ski mountain.

It was Debbie's first time, which was fun, but I quickly realized how difficult, and probably pointless, it is to explain a complicated physical choreography like getting two big sticks strapped to your feet to run smoothly over snow and ice (and the occasional ski pole or thigh). I should have used the inner game of skiing approach, I guess. In the end, everybody had a good time and Debbie looked incredibly cute in her ski gear.








There was also a kind of a funny moment when we were renting our equipment, if you consider my clenched cheeks (top and bottom) combined with a sort of wheezing sound and slow head bobbing as a sign that I was finding it funny. Debbie didn’t have her purse with her so both sets of rentals went on my credit card and ID. The whole thing was computerized, with a special scanner for the driver’s license and everything, so all you had to do was give your height and weight and it automatically spit out your name, address, rental agreement and even binding settings and suggested ski lengths for the kid behind the next counter. After giving them my information, it was Debbie’s turn. As if telling the girl her weight wasn’t bad enough, her information immediately popped up on the screen based on my account which the girl showed us and asked us to verify. It read DEBBORA LAPIN along with the address etc. etc. When the rental girl asked if everything was correct, we both went into the wheezing and head bobbing thing which I describe above and which the rental girl took as a yes. Camelback Mountain Resort, PA now pronounces you man and wife!

David, who is responsible for that last line, had a great fall that we wished we had caught on film. We were trying to cut across runs through a closed path and there was one of those orange mesh fences with closed signs that was on the ground across the entry. We figured we would just pop over and be on our merry way, so we pushed off and David was first to cross but he didn't realize or wasn't able to jump his skis, especially the tips, all the way over the fence. When his tips got caught in the fence and quickly decelerated to a stop, David was flung forward into the snow in what skiers like to call a yard sale. It would have surely been an instant YouTube classic (more hits than Jesse Long falling off a camel guaranteed!), if only we had perfected the 24/7 inner-eye recording device that I'm sure will make future generations all stars of their own reality shows. When I stopped laughing and offered to film it, David was not gracious enough to replay the event.

After skiing, we headed off to Hagerstown, Maryland, home of the Hennebergers. David had called ahead and they were preparing a big après-ski fajita feast for our arrival. David warned us not to ask his dad about his days as a swinging disco owner, but told us that he used to be in the hotel industry and his step-mom had a side business with her daughter “Dobbie” as bar-tenders for private parties and the like. Let me say that the Hennebergers lived up to their reputations as hospitality industry professionals. We ate and drank and talked ourselves silly until the wee hours in the morning, only stopping to bathe our bloated bodies in the Jacuzzi.

We got back in our mini-van Monday morning and headed off to the sweet sounds of xylophone U2 lullabies which we often had to play for hours at a time in the hope that it would drive baby Alice to nap before the rest of us to pushed long sharp metal objects deep into our eardrums.

Nevertheless, we arrived in one peace at the Rope’s residence, in the heart of DC, a few blocks from the National Cathedral (everything in DC is the National something), St Albans and The Sidwell Friends School where Kate’s Mom will soon be helping little Malia memorize the names of all the presidents and other such oh-so-sixth grade activities--she’s already 1/44th of the way there without even opening a book, right? After a light lunch of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, Kate-n-David took us on a little tour of the capital. Although it was the day before the inauguration and you could sort of sense the excitement hiding behind every faux ionic column, the streets remained fairly crowd and closure free.

Fast forward through dinner, another early night to bed and a veritable monastic morning of Odwalla Superfood (the perfect balance of juice puree, artichoke dust and thistle, with a little prairie grass thrown in for flavor that would get me through the big day without needing a restroom. I mean, hey, it's called super food, what could be better than that?) and you are now in the same gastrointestinal-psychological-spiritual state as I was on Tuesday morning, January 20, 2009, aka O-day.

We left the Rope’s house at about 8 am and jumped on an already crowded DC metro to Judiciary Square. The atmosphere was charged with excitement. Complete strangers were making room for each other on the subway cars, smiling, talking and sharing stories. Some of them even New Yorkers!

After getting out of the metro, Debbie and I parted ways with Kate-n-David and Johnny. Our tickets directing us to where we needed to pass through the Purple security gate which was scheduled to open at 9am.

We walked up E street and turned the corner onto First St. NW to discover that there was nothing between us and the security gate except about four blocks of completely packed human bodies. Well, I thought, the security gate hasn’t opened yet.




Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…





It’s now about 10:30 am and we have only moved 100 feet, I think to myself that they must be really screening people carefully or maybe they don’t have enough screeners. This is making the TSA look like the Mossad, right? Pretty soon though, rumors start to circulate that the street is barricaded and the security gate a block or so after that isn’t even open. People are saying that it is closed because people have sneaked in over night and they are trying to clear them out. Later the story is that people with other ticket colors have broken through a barrier and gotten into our section.

As time passes and people’s begin losing patience and feeling in their extremities, attrition sets in as people decide to leave and look for a warm room with a television or maybe just another crowded area that at least has a view of a JumboTron. Some come from the front of the crowd reporting that they have been there since 5:00 am. They can’t take it anymore, “abort, abort.” Others explain that they have gotten stuck in the crowd and don’t even have tickets, but are just trying to get to the Mall or to the other side of the street. The stream of people leaving allows us to periodically move forward, giving us the illusion of progress, and then the progress is lost as someone in the crowd passes out or calls for medical attention and the ambulance parked half a block back turns on its lights and tries to plow its way to the rescue. Most of the time it doesn’t make it and the EMTS settle for passing a medical bag across the crowd to a waiting doctor or good Samaritan.

At about 11:15, 15 minutes before the ceremonies are scheduled to begin, the barricade at 1st and C is removed (or shoved aside?) and the crowd surges forward. Finally we think, our patience has been rewarded. We feel sorry for the people who were there before us and have given up, but we understand that they were about 4 hours more cold and hungry than us.

As the crowd moves ahead, we are happy to be making real progress, but it is also scary to think what would happen if, god forbid, we were to fall or faint. As it is, landscaping, flowers beds and even whole sections of shrubbery are being trampled without remorse. A big black woman who is bushwhacking her way in front of us yells for anyone who cares to listen, “I ain’t holdin’ no bushes for nobody, I ain’t holding no more bushes. I tell you I’ve been holding bushes for 8 years and I’ve had it!” It’s a good line.

The crowd has been pretty friendly up till now, with different groups of people joking amongst themselves or trading ironic observations about the lack of organization, the stupidity of crowds, the cold and so on, but people are starting to get frustrated. Most people just want to know what the heck is going on, so we continually ask people pushing their way out of the pack what they have seen, did they have tickets, have they seen the gate?

Once again the crowd is stopped and I have the idea of starting an information tree. I ask the people in front of us to pass the message along to the people in front of them and so on to the front of the crowd asking them to send information back down about just what the heck is going on. The people in front of us ask the person in front of them to find out what was going and she says over her shoulder, “I can’t see anything.” And that is it. It’s too many instructions for a big crowd. I consider explaining the system again, but realize it probably won’t make it half a block. Another foliage casualty to add to the list; the information tree has just died on the vine in front of our eyes.

As the minutes pass, my bladder and ankles begin to swell and it doesn’t look like we are going to make it in time. People are giving up hope and courtesy and begin shoving rather than sliding their way out bringing with them word that the security gates are still not open. Nobody is being let in. Some people are saying that the CIA hasn’t given the word to start the screening process and that it is just a miscommunication. Others say that people have snuck in to our section so they have it closed it in order to clear them out. Whatever the explanation, we are clearly in the process of experiencing a cluster-fuck.

At about 11:30, Debbie and I have made it to the front of the crowd to see that, indeed, nobody is getting into the purple section. By this time, my bladder is really pressing in on me and Debbie's toes are numb. We make the decision to give up, figuring that we have experienced the crowd, though not the happy, inaugural party crowd we had pictured. We figure we might as well get somewhere where we can see and hear the ceremonies and speech rather than just the frustrated chants of “no second term” and “let us in” that are starting up around us.

Before we head off to find Kate-n-David and Johnny who are sitting with glasses of champagne and roast beef sandwiches in front of a plasma TV on the 12th floor of a swanky, but more importantly warm condo overlooking Pennsylvania avenue, I find an un-trampled shrub behind which to relieve myself.

We arrive at Kate's aunt and uncle's place just as Obama is taking the oath and giving his speech. It is great. We all stand with pride for the National Anthem, some of us for the first time in 8 years. We watch every second, even the c-span coverage of the coat-check before and after the luncheon. We drink the moment down with cups of French onion soup until the juice runs down our chins. From the roof, we even have a direct view of the parade, right where the Obamas get out of the car to walk.

In the end, our inauguration isn’t quite the popular, of the people and with the people type of celebration and experience that we have imagined, but hot toddy's and plasma screens have their appeal as well.

O, O, O-bama!
From far and wide,
from around the world,
from states north and south
of colors red and white and blue,
we stand with pride and sally forth
saying thank you, thank you, Thank You!

And we pray, “Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead man, and when white will embrace what is right.”

Amen.

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The Man Watching

The Man Watching, by Rainer Maria Rilke

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming,
and I hear the far-off fields say things
I can't bear without a friend,
I can't love without a sister

The storm, the shifter of shapes, drives on
across the woods and across time,
and the world looks as if it had no age:
the landscape like a line in the psalm book,
is seriousness and weight and eternity.

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler's sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)
went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.
Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

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Make Art Not War

Most "civilized" countries have Ministers of Art or Culture, yet here in the "greatest country on earth" we do not. Why? We in the arts need this and the country needs this--now more than ever.

Making art is cheaper than nukes and much more effective at changing hearts and minds. Studies show that kids in school who partake in arts programs (where they haven't been canceled due to budget cuts) perform better and are happier. There is no reason to believe that this would not be true of adults too. We need more support, organization and promotion of the arts and culture on a federal level.

I know we are in a recession, but this department could probably be funded if we just dismantled and stopped paying to maintain a couple nukes. Moreover, arts and culture are great recessionary activities that will help unite red states and blue states, the rich and the poor alike.

Sign this important petition and then pass it on to your friends and colleagues.

http://www.petitiononline.com/esnyc/petition.html

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Purplegate Superfood

Dear Friends,

Those of you who have had the opportunity to attend a Dave Matthews/Bazan/Harper/Makana/insert-crunchy-white-college-dude-guitar-player’s-name-here concert with Jesse are probably familiar with his technique of dehydrating in preparation for the big event to be sure that he doesn't have to leave the front row and make his way through throngs of L.L. Bean clad guys and girls who are also rocking out just to go to the bathroom and thereby risk losing his place and more importantly his slow head bopping groove.

Well, I realized that attending the inauguration of our 44th president in D.C., aka O-day, would represent a similar biological challenge (20 port-a-potties at a distance of 3 security checks across one and a half million people and multiplied by a small bladder, you do the math). The thought of self-catheterizing myself or having a colostomy bag break open right as Obama stepped away from the motorcade to shake my hand on national TV, made not eating or drinking for 24 hours seemed like a good option. But I didn't want to pass out from the extreme cold or long hours standing on my feet and dreaming of a new and better tomorrow, did I? So I had to eat something... but what?

A quick trip to the National Safeway (I know it's bizarre but everything in DC is the national something, I swear we even passed a building that said the National Tiddlywinks Society) and I had my answer, Odwalla Superfood: the perfect balance of juice puree, artichoke dust and thistle, with a little prairie grass thrown in for flavor that would get me through the big day without needing a restroom. I mean, hey, it's called Superfood, what could be better than that?

Well, maybe it was the weekend's indulgence in sushi, scrapple, pancakes, pizza, fajitas, a bagel with oleo, tomato soup and grilled cheese, a snack of fried chicken and half a corn dog and then dinner Monday night of caesar salad, pasta and meatballs (I passed on the balls) that did it, but I like to think that it was the Superfood, because after getting stuck in a crowd for 4 hours in what NPR, facebook groups and Youtube are calling the "Purple Tunnel of Doom" or "Purplegate", I took what can only be called a post-inaugural, celebrational...

Take care,
Kevin

--
From the Heart,

Kevin Lapin
"Appreciate beauty in all its forms."
"Get stuck in there!"

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Arithmetic, Population & Energy

Some simple and sobering arithmetic for the New Year. A great lecture (part 1 of 8 on youtube). It's time to curb our enthusiasm for drilling and energy. Conservation, reduction and renewable energy are the only answers that add up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5iFESMAU58

-K

PS I'm typing this with the lights off.

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Happy New Year!

May all of your labors be fruitful.

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The Path With Heart

The Path With A Heart, from 'Don Juan A Yaqui Warrior'

Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any condition. To have such clarity you must lead a disciplined life. Only then will you know that any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on the path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition.

I warn you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question. This question is one that only a very old man asks. My benefactor told me about it once when I was young, and my blood was too vigorous for me to understand it. Now I do understand it. I will tell you what it is: Does this path have a heart?

All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. There are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long, long paths, but I am not anywhere. My benefactor's question has meaning now. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use.

Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.

The trouble is that nobody asks the question; and when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him. At that point very few men can stop to deliberate, and leave the path.

A path without heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy; it does not make you work at liking it.

For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length.

And there I travel looking, looking breathlessly.

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