Remains of the Day

Summer road trip pics

During my road trip from Seattle down to Los Angeles to deliver my car to Karen, I snapped a few photos. Many were shot blind as I drove, right hand on the steering wheel, left hand pointing a compact digital camera out the car window. By the way, I don't advise doing that unless you have multiprocessors in the brain. I swerved on to the shoulder a few times.

My last game at Safeco Field. Sang took me to see the Mariners play the Twins. I looked at the lineup and thought two things: "Johan Santana is pitching, and he's filthy, and Justin Morneau is a good young hitter." Santana pitched one run ball for 7 innings, and Morneau hit two homers. Santana went on to win the Cy Young, and he was the best pitcher in baseball this year. I was grateful to see him during his amazing second half run, to see major league hitters flail over the top of his daffy duck changeup. How does he grip it, I wonder, and how crazy is it that he can throw it 75 mph out of his palm when I can't throw a baseball at that velocity holding it normally?

Maelle and Sadie, at my going away BBQ. Maybe babies really do appreciate their awesome complexions.

Eric and Christina bought me this cake. It reads "NYC Ya Later Euge!" The entire outside of the cake was one solid layer of marzipan. Sinfully good.

Frankly, Otto found my imminent departure inconsequential. I pointed out that he had three chins. We reached an uneasy truce.

Taking this photo, I almost drove off the road.

Great weather for my drive down to San Francisco.

I think this is Mt. Shasta, though to be honest I can't remember anymore.

Almost thirteen hours later, I finally crossed the Bay Bridge into San Francisco, my legs having lost all feeling. Another thirteen hours later, I found a parking spot in the city.

Jon took me to catch a game at SBC.

Look where Barry Bonds' bat is relative to the ball. Would you believe he pulled this one foul? That's how ridiculous his swing speed is.

In Los Angeles, Karen took me to a concert at the Hollywood Bowl featuring music from MGM/UA movies (Sept 5). For some of the movies, film clips played on screen while the orchestra played. Maestro John Mauceri would introduce each movie and piece. For some reason, his voice reminded me of Phil Hartman, never more so than when he came out for an encore and then said, "Ladies and gentleman, we are honored to have with us here, Sheena Easton." And then she walked out and sang "For Your Eyes Only." If you had only heard this scene, you'd swear it was from an episode of The Simpsons. Of course, they played bits from Pink Panther, James Bond, Rocky, and West Side Story, but the highlights for me were the clips from Spellbound and City Lights.

Finally, I arrived in NYC, where I stayed with James and Angela. Gorgeous weather blessed us my second weekend there, and I met them in Central Park for a picnic.

Tough beats

I like Annie Duke. Not only does she have a great poker name, she doesn't sit at the poker table with a poker face all the time. It's the same reason I enjoy watching Phil Hellmuth, even though he's a cocky SOB. His running monologues at the table are awesome. Watching Annie take down Phil in the 2004 Tournament of Champions (ESPN2 will be replaying it for months, I'm sure) was good theater, and I really wish I could get a tape of Phil's tirade when Tobey Maguire drew a four of a kind to beat Phil's full house. When she showed him the 9 but not the K after he showed her his K (the flop had K and 9 among them), his reaction was awesome. "You played a pair of 9s? That's so reckless."

Notified in advance by Jason Kottke, I set my Tivo to tape Ken Jennings' defeat on Jeopardy today. He lost to a woman named Nancy, who I liked because she had just returned from China where she'd adopted a little Chinese girl. Jennings would have won if he had nailed both his Double Jeopardy questions in round two, but he missed both of them, and that cost him about $10,000. He went into Final Jeopardy with $14,400 to Nancy's $10,000 (the third contestant, some college student, ended up in the red and didn't even make it to the final round). The Final Jeopardy answer was: "Most of this company's 70,000 seasonal white collar employees only work 4 months a year." I personally didn't know, and neither did Ken, but Nancy knew it was "H&R Block" and placed a bet of $4,401, which, if Ken had bet nothing, would have given her a $1 victory. When his answer came out wrong ("Fed Ex") Nancy gasped and put her hands to her mouth, the crowd gasped, and then they stood to give Ken a standing ovation.

Sundance announces its 2005 lineup of movies
Giddyup! Jason and I had so much fun there last year that we've planned a return trip.

My Kato Kaelin period

Since Thanksgiving weekend just passed, I feel it's appropriate to wrap up a post I have had sitting in draft form for a long time, ever since I moved out of my house in Seattle. It's one part travelogue, three parts thank-you note to those who opened their doors to me while I was homeless this summer. So let's hop into the George Michael Time Machine (okay, so he has a sports machine, but it looks like an old science fiction time machine, and it's conceivable that his hairdo is from an older time) and pretend I just arrived in NYC...

Now that I've finally arrived at a home base, and especially since today my sofa finally arrived and I no longer have to sit on the floor, it's time to reflect on my past months as a houseguest. It's an unsettling feeling, to wander the earth like Kane or Bruce Banner, living out of a suitcase and wearing the same clothes week after week, but my transition has been eased by the hospitality of friends. If you find yourself in the same situation and wander through some of the same towns I've passed through, I recommend all my friend's homes as places to crash. Tell them I sent you.

A quick summary:

Peter and Klara's flat in Marylebone, London

Amenities: massive living room with tall ceilings and magnificent floor to ceiling windows that overlook a park. A huge sofa (we're talking Alice in Wonderland proportions) to crash on. Easy access to the Tube (Marylebone Station just 1 block away). Notify Peter and Klara ahead of time and they'll book you tickets to the latest and greatest in theater. Owner Peter is a former actor and will entertain you for hours with lines from Shakespeare.

My experience: In London, I first stayed with Peter at his flat in Marylebone. Peter has learned how to manage expectations, as they are so fond of saying in the business world. He apologized to me many times before I arrived about the modest living room where he'd have to put me.

This modest living room turned out to be larger in and of itself than most apartments in NYC, with high ceilings and three massive windows to welcome the sunlight from outside. The sofa I slept on, left behind by the previous tenants, was perhaps the largest sofa I've ever sat on; leaning back in the sofa, my knees didn't reach the edge of the sofa, leaving the ends of my shins and my feet to jut out in the air. In fact, everything in the living room was so massive that I felt like Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in the scene where he's back in his mother's kitchen from his childhood and he has shrunk down to a child-like size relative to his environment.

Whenever Peter and I hang out, we spend all our time discussing movies (few people see as many movies as I do, but Peter may actually have surpassed me these past few months in London, a great cinema town. We tried to find a movie that neither of us had seen and were left with the Garfield movie and 16 Years of Alcohol; we opted for the latter) and theatre. We discuss Shakespeare, of whom we're both huge groupies, and recite some of his soliloquys. Peter knows many more by heart, and he certainly can deliver them with more verve than I can.

Where be your gibes now, your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning? Quite chop'fallen.

Of course, we caught a play. Peter bought us tickets to see Hamlet at the Old Vic theatre (Kevin Spacey is artistic director there) in the last weekend of the much-acclaimed production by Trevor Nunn (who is now producing the new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, The Lady in White.

The most controversial decision Nunn made was to cast very young actors to play Hamlet and his peers. He had noted that the word "youth" occurs again and again in Hamlet and felt that other productions had cast actors much too old. Nunn's other surprising choice, and the real revelation of the show, was to cast Ben Whishaw, a young and unknown actor who had only done one show previously, as Hamlet.

Whishaw offered one of the most memorable Hamlets I’ve seen, and it will be difficult in the future to accept middle-aged Hamlets. Nunn noted that the word “youth” appears in Hamlet over and over, and he thought previous Hamlets had been much too old. After all, Hamlet is still in school when his father dies. Whishaw’s Hamlet is a frail rail of a young man, pale, awkward, preternaturally intelligent and introspective. A mopey, sensitive youth dressed in black, hiding and muttering beneath a dark skull cap.

It works, for the most part, though I had a hard time buying that from this self-tortured and physically fragile intellectual would emerge the ruthless judge and executioner that is Hamlet. After all, Hamlet is a man who excoriates his mother, abandons his girlfriend, murders Polonius and two of his childhood friends, and ultimately assassinates the king of Denmark. In between, he draws intellectual moustaches on everyone around him. He is one of the most dangerous protagonists in Western fiction.

But Whishaw is otherwise brilliant, tapping into the humor and wit of Hamlet with an appealing glee, and some of his movements on stage lent the part a physical humor that I’d not seen in the role before.

The rest of the production was interesting, if uneven. It was cast in modern times, with machine guns, music by The Strokes, and electronic A/V equipment on stage, yet the play within a play had male actors playing female parts. Ophelia was played as a bubblehead, not someone one would imagine Hamlet doting upon. Imogen Stubbs, Nunn’s wife, played Gertrude as a middle-aged sexpot socialite, bringing more camp to the role than I’d seen before. Nicolas Jones was excellent as Polonius.

What the play reminded me of was how difficult and challenging a work Hamlet is. For one thing, it’s long: a full production would last four hours, but Nunn’s reductions brought it in just over three hours. The sequencing is odd. In the most widely used version of Hamlet, the famous “to be or not to be” soliloquy occurs just before a staged encounter with Ophelia with Polonius and Claudius eavesdropping. Nunn chose to move the speech way up in the play, at a moment when Hamlet is alone, deciding whether or not to commit suicide with a bottle of pills in his hand.

Trevor Nunn stood nearby us during the play, surveying the proceedings with wistfulness? Oddly, at one point during the play he spent several moments tearing open a candy wrapper, causing Peter to miss several lines of dialogue. Later I'd read a Kevin Spacey diatribe against noisy audience members and chuckle at the irony.

Peter and Klara both have close ties to the theatre world, Peter as a former actor, Klara as a leading set designer. Spending time with Peter in London, then, means rubbing shoulders with actor Cillian Murphy, star of 28 Days Later, and soon to be most well-known for playing Scarecrow in the upcoming Batman movie Batman Begins (goofy title, even worse than Batman: Year One, the classic comic on which it's based) opposite Christian Bale as Batman, directed by Christopher Nolan (Memento). It means visiting acclaimed Irish playwright Enda Walsh (Disco Pigs) at his flat and then taking a walk across half of London, ending with a Lebanese dinner.

I didn't spend much time frequenting tourist sights in London, but Peter and I did walk just about every street in that town. One day we must have logged nearly eight miles on foot. I suspect someday Peter and I may reunite in New York City, where Klara still keeps a flat...err, apartment.

Hart to Hart in Notting Hill

Amenities: Huge, modern flat. Guests get their own bedroom down one level. Owners Greg and Kristin have a cute baby named Jenson. Kristin has been taking cooking classes and will often treat you to a home-cooked meal. High speed Internet access via Ethernet. Nearest Tube station just a few blocks away.

My experience: The second half of my stay in London, I crashed with Kristin and Greg at their flat in Notting Hill. Let me tell you, expats live large. Their flat had two bedrooms, three bathrooms, and another room down a set of stairs that acted as a basement/third bedroom where I stayed. The kitchen was gorgeous. I was stunned.

I met 9 month old Jenson for the first time. He has a sly grin; perhaps he looks around and contemplates inheriting the flat someday. We took several walks around London, Jenson in his pram (I guess that's English for stroller). That's most of what I did in London, just stroll around the city.

Chateau Kilar

Amenities: a Frasier like view of the city from the deck. Personal parking space. Separate guest bedroom with deck. High speed internet access via Ethernet. Gym in the basement with treadmill and ellipticycle.

My experience: Fresh off a jaunt through Europe, I returned to the States in style by checking in at Chateau Kilar, as Eric dubbed it. I'd wake up, don a bathrobe, and go out on my own balcony overlooking the city and pretend as if I owned the house and everything that fell beneath my gaze. "Do you like what I've done with the place?" I'd ask the neighbors, and they'd run into their houses to call the police.

Of course I spent a lot of time with Sadie and Jamie, and Jamie's brother Jared was in town as well. Yes, that meant Jamie had three kids to watch over. Sadie was just in the early phases of walking, and she'd motor around with her arms held up for balance (held up higher than Frankenstein used to do in old black and whites; more a "boo" pose than a sleepwalk pose).

She also had begun speaking her own language. She's just a bit younger than Ryan, and what's useful is how so many kids share the same childhood curriculum. They all can point at the appropriate part of themselves when you ask them where their nose is, or ears, or head. What a little cutie! I'll miss being able to keep track of her development in person.

I began my marathon training here. My first time out running with Jason we ran 3 miles around the crown of Queen Anne in the rain. At the end, I thought I was going to throw up.

1739 Bradner

Amenities: Deck with view of Seattle from the Southeast and a grill the size of hatchback. Sweet modern kitchen with all those shiny, modern appliances. Garage parking spot. Wireless internet. Home theater in the basement.

My experience: Ah, old familiar 1739 Bradner. With Sang having bought my sofa and TV from me, it's like I never left that basement. How appropriate that my last days in Seattle were spent in the place I spent the most time. All things come full circle.

How many times I rode out of that driveway on my bike on my way to loop around Mercer Island or Lake Washington? Countless. I wasn't on my bike this time, though I did jog down to Lake Washington to run along side the water. I'll miss eating burgers off the grill, especially since I can't have a grill of my own here in Manhattan.

Seeing some of my artifacts still in the basement gives me the feeling that I did leave my imprint on one small space in Seattle.

Nob Hill peak

Amenities: Step outside for great views of the city in all directions, and what a beautiful city it is. Walking distance to a whole slew of neighborhood eats. A short jog takes you to the water for a scenic run to the base of Golden Gate Bridge. Strangely addictive electronic Trivial Pursuit handheld game. Nice, homey, young-couple-lived-in feel.

My experience: Justin and Betina rent this sweet little pad at the top of Nob Hill. Rent prices in SF are so low relative to NYC, I almost wept. I walked out one morning down to a local cafe and read the paper while having breakfast, and it was like being home again back in the Bay Area. Another day, Betina charted out a marathon training run for me, and I followed it one day out to the base of Golden Gate Bridge and back. The familiar San Francisco gales were in my face on the way out, but on my return, with the wind at my back, I floated over 3 miles like wing-footed Mercury. Those hills on the way back up nearly killed me.

L'il Jon

Amenities: Internet access. Sweet view back on the SF skyline. Walking distance to SBC Park. Leather sofas, big tv, personal guest bathroom.

My experience: I've stayed with Jon in SF before. Last time was when I was down visiting Gap headquarters. Jon's still in the same sweet bachelor pad. No need to change a good thing. We'd been plotting a visit to SBC (formerly Pac Bell) for some time, and he came through big-time, scoring a block of tickets from some co-worker. Awesome seats, right on top of the field. We spent half the game trying food from just about every concession eatery in the place. Awesome ballpark.

Polly and Ed's: a true home office

Amenities: A guest bedroom, wireless Internet, dozens of eateries just a few blocks south on Castro St. A heavy dose of nostalgia for Stanford alums. In-house exercise equipment.

My experience: I finally got to meet little Emily, the tiniest of newborns. Polly and Ed were worried that she looked like a little boy, but seriously, that's way too much pressure for a girl in her first four months in this world. What's really cool is that Polly and Ed started their own business and run it out of their home, using a separate garage building as headquarters. Seeing packages piled up inside, waiting for twice-a-day pickups from the local UPS truck, reminded me of stories of early Amazon, run out of Jeff's garage.

Karen's new pad in Manhattan Beach

Amenities: My little sis. Wireless internet, walking distance to Manhattan Beach and all its restaurants and stores. Los Angeles weather. Skinny, beautiful people everywhere.

My experience: My time with my car was at an end here, and if we had to leave each other, I'm glad my baby was passing on to family. Karen was in Hermosa Beach last time I visited, and she'd moved to Manhattan Beach. Cleaning out the car was like cleaning out an office in the movies: everything you need to take with you inevitably fits inside one cardboard box.

I went for my first 12 or 13 mile run while down here, leaving the apartment one night at around 6:45pm. I ran along a soft trail for a few miles but found that it was causing a lot of arch pain, so I migrated to the boardwalk on the beach, and hit my stride. For about seven miles, I felt like I had finally achieved some form of runner's high. I ran to the south end of the beach, and beyond. At around mile 11, my legs turned to lead, and the last few miles were a slog. Karen called me once because it was past 9pm and she was worried I'd run to Mexico. At the time, that marathon seemed a long, long ways away.

Karen put up with me one afternoon when I had to borrow her computer to join in on my fantasy football draft for a few hours. We also drove down to Temecula one day to help our parents unpack some of their furniture and to preview their new house. They kept driving me by the Indian casino nearby, asking if I wanted to go in. For some reason, I felt like a recovering alcoholic being driven past the local pub over and over, even though I'm not yet guilty of being a gambling addict.

James and Angela's: A preview of coming attractions

Amenities: Physical manifestation of what a well-furnished, spacious NY apartment can be. Samsung DLP-LCD Projection HDTV. Internet access. Occasional home-cooked meals by Angela.

My experience: James and Angela were kind enough to put up with my presence for nearly two weeks while I apartment-hunted in NYC. Sharon came with me two days to look at places. Apartment hunting in NYC is just as bad as everyone says it is. Truly miserable.

James and Angela have a great apartment, though, in a great location, and ultimately spending time near their place convinced me to try and live near Union Square as well. Many of my early impressions of Manhattan came through them; I saw the city through their eyes. And talking with Angela about her first years in Manhattan (everyone here has a story of first year tribulation) helped to convince me that things would only get better once the apartment hunt was behind me.

Through Angela, I was introduced to the corn fries at Mandler's Sausage, Shake Shack, and brunch at Pain. Through James, I found several local poker rooms. Illegal, of course, which makes them all the more irresistible. Once through the front door, it's tough not to feel like Mike McDermott, especially since Rounders screenwriters David Levien and Brian Koppelman frequented many of these places.

Ultimately, I ended up with an apartment just a few blocks from Union Square and James and Angela's apartment. One long trip behind me, and another one just beginning.

Phonak fires Tyler Hamilton

Phonak fired Tyler Hamilton, but the UCI still banned the team from the 2005 Pro Tour. Just a tragic story all around.

Anyone who thinks expansion adds too many new teams to leagues like the NBA or MLB would be shocked at pro cycling, where the average life of a pro team must be around two or three years before the team's sponsor pulls out for financial or (as in the case of Phonak) legal reasons.

Meanwhile, Tyler continues the fight to clear his name.

Some of that new extended ROTK footage...

...from the forthcoming DVD is here, including a humorous cameo by Peter Jackson himself. Boo yah. Seems like Christopher Lee is still bitter that his last scenes were cut from the theatrical release.

The Boston Red Sox named Sports Illustrated's Sportsmen of the Year

New article by Atul Gawande

Haven't seen an article by Atul Gawande in The New Yorker in some time, but this week's issue brings relief. Really good stuff. The essay draws attention to a fact few doctors, hospitals, and patients like to acknowledge: quality of health care follows a bell curve, with mediocrity in the center.

Gawande's book Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science collects many of his earlier New Yorker essays and is one of my favorite books.

Heritage turkeys

I read an article about Heritage turkeys in Fortune. These turkeys take longer to raise than the Large White turkeys that make up most of the turkeys eaten in the U.S., especially at Thanksgiving. But Heritage turkeys taste better (more dark meat...mmmm), and the way they're raised conforms to the principles of the more ecologically-concerned.

Heritage turkeys almost went extinct, but ironically, they've made a comeback because organizations like Slow Food are encouraging people to eat them. That in turn means more farmers have economic justification to learn how to raise them.

Heritage turkeys cost more, but if you're only going to prepare a turkey once a year for Thanksgiving, seems like a worthwhile cost premium. Here's a list of farmers and mail-order sources for Heritage turkeys.

Aliens of the Deep

Aliens of the Deep looks really cool (click on the trailer link). I wish more good material came out in IMAX 3D. I also wonder why, with all this expensive underwater exploration gear, we haven't seen footage of a live giant squid.

How do movie theater chains decide which movie trailers run before which movies, and when?

Do not call, write, pass go, or collect $200

I'm always receiving financial privacy updates and notices from my credit card banks. I'm not sure if these actually do much, but it's worth a the cost a few stamps. From the back of the latest one to hit my mailbox:

If you prefer not to receive pre-approved offers of credit, you can opt out of such offers by calling 1-888 5-OPT OUT

If you want to remove your name from many national direct mail lists, send your name and address to:
DMA Mail Preference Service
PO Box 643
Carmel, NY 10512

If you want to reduce the number of telephone solicitations from many national marketers, send your name, address, and telephone number to:
DMA Telephone Preference Service
P.O. Box 1559
Carmel, NY 10512

Of course, most people have already heard of the National Do Not Call Registry. Once your number has been registered there a few months, telemarketing calls should become a rarity.

Free U2 Concert in Fulton Ferry State Park

Yesterday, U2 played a free concert in Brooklyn as to capture some video footage for their new album. I had heard about this rumored gig in the middle of the night through Gothamist, and when I woke in the morning, I just had to take a break from my grad school apps. So I hopped the subway and took a field trip out to Fulton Ferry
State Park, just north of the Brooklyn Bridge.

With the Internet and cell phones, rumors spread quickly. Thousands of people were already there when I arrived. Half the people had printouts of tickets, perhaps from 1iota.com. I stood in line with the general admission masses for about an hour and a half under overcast skies, reading a magazine.

U2 had been traveling through Manhattan on the back of a flatbed truck, playing songs along the way, and that same flatbed brought them across the Manhattan Bridge.

The crowd went crazy, and U2 waved and played Vertigo.

It was a long time before I made it through the gates into the park, and another hour, at least, before U2 actually made it to the park and onto the stage.

The track list:
Vertigo
All Because of You
Miracle Drug
Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own
City of Blinding Lights
Original of the Species
She's A Mystery To Me
Beautiful Day
I Will Follow
Out of Control
Vertigo

Whenever Bono would announce the title of the next song they were going to play, the crowd would cheer.

"Hey, how do you all know this shit?" Bono asked. One particular fan screamed in response. Bono added, "Hey Edge, I think I know who got hold of that CD."

They finished playing in the dark, the city skyline behind them.

I didn't now many of the songs because so many were off of their new album, but with the exception of Vertigo, many of their new tracks were more solemn, wistful. I'm not a die hard U2 fan like many people I know, but I've always admired the near secular spirituality they bring to every song. There's no denying their status as rock icons, and a free concert? Anything free in NYC is a blessing.

The Complete U2 is available at the iTunes Music Store, and it may take you a lifetime to work through it.

At long last

Netflix finally adds a search box to its queue page:

An early something to be thankful about, though it should have been there all along.

Like this and like that

The sequel to Popular Science's list of the Worst Jobs in Science, which amused me last year

Christo and Jeanne-Claude are going to wrap Central Park

In a world where the costs of prescription drugs and health insurance are rising, one procedure has bucked the trend: laser eye surgery. In fact, it has decreased in price. How can that be?

Howl's Moving Castle, Hayao Miyazaki's latest animated film, set a Japanese box office record with $15 million in its opening weekend. I can't read Japanese, but you can guess what most of the links are by hovering over them with your cursor and reading the link name in English in the browser status bar. Studio Ghibli's online site hosts an extended preview (Quicktime).

Football Outsiders will produce Pro Football Prospectus 2005
That's good news, as the team at Football Project put out by far the weakest of the three Prospectus books.

Java-powered Monkeys trying to write Shakespeare
While I watched the simulation run, the record was the first 22 letters of Cymbeline. [From an article in the NYTimes about computer programs that can write fiction]

V-Girl
A 3G virtual girlfriend, supposedly driven by artificial intelligence. She'll send you text messages asking "Do I look fat on your cell phone VGA screen?" and throw a hissy fit if you take a discreet camera phone pic of some hottie wandering by.

Mint Lifestyle
For just $12,000 a year, and with just 200 members in every city, this luxury personal concierge service will set up just about whatever your filthy rich little heart desires. Examples on their site include:
"I want a Porsche GT Coupe. Can you get me to the top of the list?"
"I would like to have dinner with President Clinton. Can you make it happen?"
"Can you put the kids on the G5 and send them down to Cabo?"
"There's a really beautiful Miro on display at Christie's. Do you think I could borrow it for the evening?"
"I think Wynton Marsalis is fabulous. Do you think he could play at a small dinner party I'm planning?"

UpSnap.com
Like Google SMS, except you can simply reply to a template they send to you so you don't have to remember any numbers. For those of us who can't afford Mint Lifestyle, I guess we could try sending "Porsche GT Coupe 212" as a test message and cross our fingers.

The DNA of Literature
I've been reading some of the archived Paris Review interviews, which they've announced they'll be putting online for free over the coming months. Some are already posted. I've always been a huge fan of the Paris Review interviews of writers at work, and they seem even more relevant now that I'm back to writing regularly. A quote from Faulkner's interview (PDF):

Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failng at that, only then does he take up novel writing.

The current issue contains an interview with Tobias Wolff. You'll have to buy a copy to read it in its entirety, but it's worth it for those who are interested in writing as a way of life.

I dabbled with Google Scholar

I dabbled with Google Scholar this morning and snagged a few interesting PDFs, though I couldn't find any more Steven Levitt papers than I have by just using Google itself. In this area, the selection isn't overwhelming yet, but it's useful for those times when you want to get academic.

Speaking of Steven Levitt, he has a new book being published in the spring: Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. I suspect his publisher added "rogue economist" to the title.

Running long distances set humans apart from primates

And there was the gluteus maximus, the muscle of the buttocks. Earlier human ancestors, like chimpanzees today, had pelvises that could support only a modest gluteus maximus, nothing like the strong buttocks of Homo.

"Have you ever looked at an ape?" Dr. Bramble said. "They have no buns."

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the marathon makes the man.

ABC aired Saving Private Ryan on Veteran's Day in 2001 and 2002 with no incident. In 2004, though, over 60 ABC affiliates chickened out and aired programs like Hoosiers instead. Why? Fear of the F.C.C. Of course, it will surprise no one that I find this ridiculous, but I'm also shocked that people still watch movies on CBS, NBC, or ABC. I haven't done that since...I can't even remember anymore.

Blue streak

I bought a NY Times this past Sunday, but when I got home, I discovered much to my dismay that the Sunday magazine was missing. I could see from browsing on line that the articles were about movies, which was great, but what I couldn't do online and the reason I really wanted to run out to buy another copy was that I wanted to do the crossword. It's a Sunday ritual for me. But it was really late, and I didn't feel like changing to trek to the nearest newsstand in the evening chill to spend another $3.50.

Monday or Tuesday, when I brought my recycling down to the basement, I spotted a brown grocery bag full of NYTimes. On a whim, I started to flip through them, and I had just about reached the end when, much to my delight, I found a fresh copy of the NYTimes Magazine.

Rachael and I often confer on the Sunday crossword via e-mail, and she called today to ask about a few clues. I hadn't started, but while we were on the phone, I got sucked in. Whenever I had to take a break from the computer and my grad school applications, I'd sit on the couch, brow furrowed, pen in mouth, staring the puzzle down. This was a tough one because at first the theme didn't register with me. My frustration just drove me to greater levels of determination and concentration.

Rachael gave me one big jump start by letting me know that...

[MILD SPOILER AHEAD...Don't read ahead if you are determined to solve this one on your own]

...this was a puzzle in which some of the squares contained more than just a single letter. Those appear from time to time, though sometimes it takes some time to recognize it.

And just about an hour ago, it finally struck me. Holy #@%*&! Of course! Brilliant! I inadvertently unlocked the puzzle for myself when I had to abbreviate the answer to a particular square because I couldn't write small enough. My abbreviation proved to be the visual clue that unlocked the entire puzzle for me. And if you peruse this post again, you'll find an answer key in plain view.

Definitely one of the cleverest crosswords I've ever done. Immensely satisfying to finish. Bravo to Harvey Estes and Nancy Salomon.

Battle of the bulge

Odd, this fascination with Republican bulges. First it was the bulge in Bush's back during the debates, and now it's Cheney's bulge. Either it's a wardrobe malfunction and we need to recommend a new tailor for senors Bush and Cheney, or we may have found one of the WMD.

A few years back, I bought Pink Martini's Sympathique and saw them in concert once or twice. That phase passed, and I haven't touched the CD since. They just came out with a new album, Hang on Little Tomato, and you can listen to it in lo-fi in its entirety on their website, through Pink Martini Radio. Time to put them back on the playlist for a bit and reminisce about daydream about travels through South America and Europe.

First was DJ Danger Mouse's Grey Album, a remix of the Beatles White Album and Jay-Z's Black Album. Now comes the video mash-up, the Grey Video, of the track "Encore" from the Grey Album. Is that John breaking it down? I just got served.
(We crossed some technological and artistic line a while ago and it's the golden age of remixes. iTunes now sells the remix of Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On"--the MPG Groove Mix)

I was just thinking, yesterday, about the inadequacies of Mapquest for walkers/subway riders in NYC, and then today I read about HopStop. The site provides combination walking/subway directions. Now they just need to add checkboxes options so you can ensure you see a Chinese guy playing the erhu somewhere along the ride.

K-Mart acquires Sears
One must feel a sense of happiness for the two, the type of relieved joy you feel for two people you never thought would find love.

James sent me a link to the board game our family will be playing this Christmas. Wasn't this in a James Bond movie once? James saw a Hot Dog, Spiderman, and Mister Miyagi playing this at a Halloween party.

Half-Life 2 looks like a lot of fun. Too bad I don't have a PC anymore.

This Room Defender looks really cool. Too bad I'm not a kid anymore.

Review: The World, and Together

China gets its own indie/mainstream cinema dichotomy

In October, I caught a screening of Jia Zhangke's The World at the New York Film Festival. I'd never seen any of his movies before, though Unknown Pleasures was atop my Netflix queue just before I suspended it for my move to NYC. American audiences eat up foreign movies that are foreign, but familiar, like fusion Asian restaurants. Movies with happy endings, like Amelie, or rapid-paced action scenes, like House of Flying Daggers, well-received at an earlier NYFF screening.

The World has none of that going for it. The ending is not happy. The pacing is deliberate. The narrative is a collection of loose plot strands, rather than the tight three-act arc Western audiences have been raised on. The soundtrack does not cue the audience in to how they should react to the events on screen, unlike the transparent, sweeping themes of the latest Hans Zimmer score. Not surprisingly, a steady stream of spectators, many of them elderly, walked out during the screening, their patience exhausted.

Weaned on a diet heavy in American flavors, I needed nearly the full length of the movie to find my footing and absorb the director's vision. Not only is the movie foreign, but so is the story. The movie follows the lives of young Chinese who've moved from the countryside of China to the big city of Beijing, where forces of modernization are moving faster. The main character, a young woman named Tao, works as a performer at The World Park, an amusement park filled with miniature recreations of famed monuments from around the world. The Eiffel Tower. The great pyramids of Egypt. Big Ben and the London Bridge. New York City, including the two towers of the World Trade Center ("Ours are still standing," remarks one visitor, drawing a sympathetic laugh from the New York audience; the healing has progressed). The park is setting ripe with visual puns, and Jia resorts to them perhaps a few times too many.

Tao carries an on-again, off-again relationship with Taisheng, a security guard at the park and also an emigrant to the city. China is modernizing, but Tao and Taisheng feel trapped, adrift, and disillusioned in Beijing. The most they will ever experience of the world is these reproductions of famous locales, exacting but hollow cultural artifacts. Not only can they not connect with the world, but they can't connect with each other, a common theme in movies set in Communist China. We see one other couple fight bitterly over perceived betrayals, the boyfriend going so far as to set himself on fire at one point to catch her attention. However, since they have only each other, in the very next scene they proudly announce their engagement. Ironically, the most emotionally lyrical communications between youths like Tao and Taisheng are in the form of simple text messages sent to each other via cell phone. Jia emphasizes this by depicting the text messages with colorful, expressive, animated sequences. Perhaps the closest two characters, Tao and a Russian woman who is forced to work at the theme park, don't even speak each other's languages and communicate with hand gestures and body language. Jia doesn't pass on many opportunities for irony, both visual and narrative.

A series of emotionally charged episodes arrive later in the movie, but just when you think they'll lead to some climax or closure, Jia releases the tension again. The movie's stark realism induces in its audience the feeling of aimlessness and disillusionment that the characters themselves feel. It's a style a Hollywood studio would never approve of. The American movie machine believes its audiences want to laugh, cry, cheer, or scream in terror, but never to leave in an existential gloom. That makes The World an ideal entry for a film festival: a movie that will never find American distribution.

A deeper exploration of these characters' emotional origins would relieve some of the movie's dramatic stasis, but on one front the movie is wildly successful. The movie makes no attempt to speak English or to fit in with its American audiences, yet it broadens our conception of the universality of film as a language. Prior to seeing the movie, I had no familiarity whatsoever with emigrant youths to China's major cities, like Shanghai and Beijing, yet by movie's end I felt the bars imprisoning their souls, pushing in.

If The World is representative of China's indie cinema (and in China, that is a tougher economic curse than the title implies in America: it means the government doesn't allow your movie to screen in theaters at all), then Chen Kaige's Together might signify the Chinese movie mainstream. Ironically, in China the mainstream has to emerge from the underground since most of China's most famous directors have had their movies banned by the government (after my description of The World, you might suspect it is another of Jia's underground productions, but in fact it is his first government sanctioned piece).

In Together, another pair of peasants from the countryside make their way to Beijing. A father, Liu Cheng, brings his son Xiaochun to the capitol to compete in a violin competition. The young boy is a gifted player who has won many local honors, and his father harbors high hopes of seeing his son achieve a better life.

The movie is surprisingly, unabashedly sentimental for a Chinese drama. From very early on, the machinery of a familiar plot announces its intentions to run the audience over: simple, honest, and naive country folk eaten up by the big city and corrupted by the pursuit of fame. At times it feels like populist propaganda, especially with the stone-faced acting of real-life violinist but non-actor Tang Yun as the young violin prodigy (his violin playing, on the other hand, is splendid, especially considering how ridiculous how most on-screen violin playing looks), but the movie plows forward with the earnest and pure-hearted determination of a children's fable. Along the way, some welcome humor arrives, unexpectedly, from the director Chen himself playing a ruthless but perceptive and successful violin instructor and by the director's real-life wife Chen Hong as a Lili, a woman who supports herself the beautiful plaything of wealthy society men. She befriends young Xiaochun and adds some much-needed levity with her flamboyant personality.

The movie crescendos with melodramatic plot twists and one grand revelation, but the movie earns those emotional peaks. Anyone watching the entire way will feel them approaching, and those uncomfortable with such a passionate, tearful embrace will have had ample time to turn from the welcoming arms and ample bosom of this open-hearted tale and flee for the exits.

Colin Powell resigns

Colin Powell resigns as Secretary of State
I met him briefly in New York City a long time ago, after the first invasion of Iraq. He was a hero back then, immensely popular, and people were just beginning to hope he'd run for office. What a long, strange road he's walked since then.

Jonathan Franzen wets his pants over Alice Munro
I understand, though. In fiction writing in school, every other story we studied was by Munro. She is one of the masters of the short story.

Salon publishes Cory Doctorow's short story "Anda's Game"
A wink to Orson Scott Card's immensely popular novel Ender's Game, which has over 2000 customer reviews at Amazon.com.

Lots of Gladwell articles in The New Yorker recently. New one this week, in fact. Always a good thing.

Yevgeny Kafelnikov quits pro tennis to become a poker pro

Kobayashi eats 69 hamburgers in 8 minutes to win eating contest
Since he's already the reigning hot dog eating champion, perhaps this qualifies him as a two sport star.

The Leopard

Criterion's DVD containing the new digital transfer of the original 185 minute Italian release of Luchino Visconti's The Leopard is stunning, both in video and audio (yes, despite being simply Dolby Digital 1.0). I've seen the movie twice now, and every viewing leaves me ineffably sad, nostalgic for the end of an age I never lived in. I'm not sure it's possible for me to tire of the Nino Rota score and the performance of Burt Lancaster.

The final ball, lasting nearly an hour, is the perfect showcase for the quality of the video transfer, the colors of the lavish tapestries ravishing the eyes. And Claudia Cardinale? Just plain ravishing. Only someone with her beauty could convincingly win the heart of someone as handsome as Alain Delon. The scene in which she invites Burt Lancaster to dance with her, and their subsequent waltz together, is one of my favorite movie scenes of all time. It is so charged with meaning and emotion that it spills off the screen and overpowers the viewer. The movie is also a master class by cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, from the start to the final poignant shot.

Have you ever been to a museum or palace and been entranced by a painting or sculpture or an old piece of furniture, in the rapture of a nostalgia for a way of life that you never lived? That's how I feel when watching this movie.

[If you rent the movie from Netflix, note that the first disc contains the original Italian soundtrack. That means the voices won't match the lips, but it's much less obtrusive than usual, thanks to Lancaster's incredible physical acting. Disc 3 contains the English dubbed soundtrack, allowing you to hear Lancaster's actual voice, but that version is the shortened, 161 minute American release. Your first time seeing the movie should be the 185 minute Italian release.]

Cold snap

Did I complain about how warm it was during the marathon? I take it all back. Yesterday evening temperatures dropped below freezing, and today the high was 41 degrees Farenheit. To run on a gorgeous autumn day through NYC was a blessing.

Today, I can walk normally again. Everyone told me the first two days post-run would be the worst, and they were right.

A thousand empty paper cups

I've been reading the 9/11 Commission Report, and the 9/11 timeline at Center for Cooperative Research has been a useful copmarison. More and more, I doubt the former and trust the latter. Paul Thompson is also planning to publish his terror timeline in book form.

A treasure trove of SNL transcripts

It was a great year for humor books

Halo 2 sells $125 million in its first 24 hours
I...must...resist...

The Grand List of Console Role Playing Game Cliches (sent from James)

Trailer for the remake of the Japanese suspense flick Dark Water
The remake is directed by Walter Salles. I saw this with Bean at the Seattle Int'l Film Fest a few years back and enjoyed it. Unlike Ju-On, the creepiness of the original didn't derive just from camera tricks and audio. At its root the mother in the story is haunted by her own feelings of maternal abandonment, and that overpowering sorrow pervades the movie. I'm not high on these remakes of Japanese horror movies, though. I love Jennifer Connelly, once a dormmate of mine, but having highly recognizable Hollywood stars instead of relatively unknown Japanese actors in these roles reduces the sense of everyday horror by a crippling amount.

Interesting quiz on population and health and economy - I only scored 60%. This quiz, on agriculture and food, was even tougher. I only scored 50%.

Amazon follows in BMW's footsteps with a series of short filmercials.

Informative graphics illustrating the ebb and flow of the electoral vote from 1940 through 2000.

The trailer for the videogame based on Star Wars III: ROTS gives away more about the action scenes in the movie than the trailer for the movie itself.

Now that the nearest snowcapped mountain is further away for me, maybe I need to turn to alternatives to snowboarding, like Freebording. Seems like it would be a lot more fun in San Francisco, where there are hills, than New York, where you're likely to end up as a multi-colored advertisement on the side of a cab. Looks like fun, regardless. Clever design.

David Foster Wallace reviews the new Borges biography for the NYTimes, using 7 footnotes in the process.

Ramen restaurants in NYC
Mmmmmm, just in time for the winter cold snap.

Through the 5 Boroughs

A marathon post about my marathon

Today, my body is tied in knots. Some ligament or tendon on the outside of my left knee is throbbing, and my legs are so sore and my hips so stiff that I have trouble walking up and down stairs. My back is stiffening, and I've been on Advil non-stop since yesterday morning. I went outside today to run errands, and I walked down the street like Kevin Spacey playing the part of Roger "Verbal" Kint in The Usual Suspects, my left leg dragging behind me like bag of dirty laundry. If I'm standing, it hurts to sit down. If I'm sitting, it hurts to stand up.

The way I feel this morning (physically), I can't help but try to understand why it is that I ran the NY Marathon yesterday. Human bodies, with the rare exception of some outliers on the edge of the bell curve, are not optimized to run that distance. But whereas most animals might be willing to push their bodies to the limits for survival (to find food, procreate, escape predators), only humans do so for recreation. Only a human could transform such a physically traumatic experience into something transcendent.

I wasn't thinking about that when I tried to fall sleep the night prior to the marathon. I'm normally a night owl, so even to lie down at 11 p.m. was an odd feeling. I didn't have high hopes of getting much sleep, but I didn't worry about it as much as I had in the past. I've never slept well before big endurance events like Seattle to Portland, RAMROD, or riding up Mont Ventoux, whether from jet lag or excitement or anxiety, or all of the aforementioned. For single day events, one night's sleep is not as important as all the nights leading up to the day. So I didn't stress about the thumping bass from my next door neighbor's Saturday night party (the funkiness concluded around 1 a.m.) or the blaring of horns from eternally impatient cab drivers on the street (their impatience never ends). I finally fell asleep sometime around 2:40 a.m., and just as I did, my phone rang.

Who could be calling at this hour? I looked at my phone. It was my phone alarm, and it was 5:00 a.m. already. I showered, dressed, skipped breakfast, and cabbed over to the NY Public Library to meet Jenny and Jason for the buses to Staten Island. Thousands of runners snaked along several blocks to load hundreds of buses. On the over hourlong bus ride, we all knew it would be a warm marathon day. The sun, not filtered by a single cloud in the sky, heated up our bus like a sun room and had us all stripping out of our outer layers.

Jenny was in the Orange start group, Jason and I in the Blue (all marathoners were split arbitrarily into three groups--Orange, Blue, Green--to split the traffic flow into three manageable streams during the first several miles of the race). Jason and I spent most of that time waiting in line for bathrooms, applying more sunscreen and BodyGlide, and snacking.

I felt calm, though anxious about one decision: should I wear the black, long-sleeved Under Armour shirt my sisters and brother-in-law had purchased for me as a gift, or should I wear one of my regular short-sleeve running shirts? My long-sleeve had "Go Eugene" ironed on the front, and to distort a Steve Martin line from The Jerk, "This is the kind of spontaneous publicity I need. My name in print. That really makes somebody. Things are going to start happening to me now." Namely, people would cheer for me by name. Never underestimate the power of personalized cheering. On the other hand, in that sunshine and heat, a black long-sleeve would probably be too warm. Temperatures would reach the mid-60's by mid-day. Jason suggested I pin my number to my shorts, allowing me to switch between the two jerseys. I took his advice and started out in the hometown black.

Jason started further up in the line, in the 8000's, while I was near the back with my 36137 race number. When the cannon fired, I stood among strangers alongside a fence, far from the start. As we walked towards the start, I saw, in the distance, the first throng of runners streaming across the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge like an army charging towards its enemy. A steady drizzle of runners left line to run to the fence to relieve themselves, and I felt sympathy for the women, who had to have friends devise creative means to offer them some privacy. A veteran marathoner to my right asked me what my goal was. I really had no idea, but I wore a 4:30 NikeRunning pace bracelet that felt about right. Our line wound through an opening in a fence into a parking lot, and at the end of a row of buses, the line opened up and everyone began to run. Several minutes later, I crossed the official start line, about six minutes after the opening cannon.

The first mile to mile and a half was uphill, to the midway point of the longest suspension bridge in the world. Runners were full of energy, and runners stopped to climb onto the low wall separating the two halves of the bridge for photos. Runners whooped and hollered in French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Russian, Swedish, Japanese, Chinese, and some other tongues I didn't recognize. Helicopters circled us from above and both sides. If there's one thing that always adds excitement to any event, whether it's a sporting event or a police chase, it's helicopters. So much cooler than blimps. The frantic pulsing whooshes of the helicopter blades brought me back to race day on Alpe D'Huez,

I had no idea how fast I was running, but the second half of the bridge, I tried to run as fast as possible to pass as many runners as I could. Because everyone was running different paces, everyone was accelerating and decelerating, weaving back and forth, bumping into each other, apologizing, trying to shoot through temporary gaps. I wasn't sure how I'd feel during the run, but by now I knew. My heart rate was higher than normal, and I was more worked up than on my solo training runs through the darkness of Central Park at night. Not a huge surprise, but could I sustain this for the entire run?

The first crowds appeared at the end of the bridge, in Brooklyn, lining both sides of the street, cheering passionately. I moved to the right side of the road to soak in their energy, to see their faces. I felt the urge to accelerate and pass people much more than usual. I realized later, talking to Bill, that it was in part because with so many runners, you could always spot someone who you felt like you should pass. Someone overweight. Someone much older. A group wearing rhinoceros heads. Scooby Doo and Batman. A transsexual wearing a tutu. Superman, wearing an afro. It's only after you finish that you realize unless you're a 110 pound Kenyan, you're likely to be surrounded by such people the entire race.

So many runners were pressed so close to me that I couldn't even see the road. I kept my head high, soaking in all the sights. So I didn't see a pothole emerge under the runner ahead of me, and when my left foot reached out for that next meter of pavement, it caught just a millisecond of additional air, and my foot landed at an angle. I stumbled and felt that yet-to-be-named ligament or tendon on my left knee scream in pain, and I hobbled for a few steps as the runners behind me swerved to either side like a stream flanking a boulder. This same tendon had been bothering me during the final few weeks of my training, though never enough to put me out of commission.

I panicked. I immediately thought I was done, and the anxiety overwhelmed the rush I had been riding just moments ago. I rubbed the muscle and tried to walk a few steps. Lots of pain. I bent my leg at the knee several times, standing in place, and the joint felt stable. My watch ticked out hundredths of second with a furious speed. So many runners were passing me by, and without thinking, and only with the thought to chase, I began to run. The first few steps hurt, but I realized that the injury bothered me much more when walking or starting to accelerate than it did once I achieved my natural pace. I melded back into the pack, and my heart rate settled back down. I learned, eventually, to stay to the right side of the road, because a road that slanted down to the left bothered my knee.

The crowds in Brooklyn were fabulous. One high school band played the theme from Rocky, numerous people, young and old, of all races, held out their hands and high-fived me as I passed. When people cheered my name, I'd always turn around to take a mental snapshot, because I'd pass them before I could get a good look at their faces. At the first rest stop, just past mile 3, I hit the first Gatorade or water stop and spilled an entire cup over the front of my jersey trying to drink and drive. I recalled Bill's advice to me, to pinch the cup to form a narrow spout and drink through the side of my mouth. My second cup was more successful.

At mile 6 or 7, I had to stop and change out of my long-sleeve jersey. I was roasting in the heat. It didn't help that I am a profuse sweater. I pulled on my short-sleeve and tried to tie the long-sleeve so my name still showed, but after some thirty seconds of fumbling, I gave up and just jumped back in. I wasn't racing, so I don't know why I was so anxious to keep going. In the moment, I was being swept up up in the race against the clock even though the difference of just a minute here or there would mean little to someone like me over such a long distance. When I crossed the 10K sign, I thought about my race alert e-mail flying out to my friends and family around the country (more on that later).

Arya had said he'd watch out for me by some tower. I couldn't remember if it was a clocktower or some other type of tower, but I looked for him at every tower-like structure. At mile 8 or so, I spotted him on the right side of the road, talking on his cellphone. I high-fived him, and he held out his cellphone. "Say hi to Karen!" I shouted a hello and surged on, too scared to try the stop and start with my knee the way it was.

At mile thirteen or so, when the leading men and women were facing the finish line, I had to face my second crisis. I had to use a portable bathroom. You wonder why I, a guy, wouldn't just find a bush or tree, like all the other men. Here's where I say, why do you think? And then you nod, in recognition. I had been running with the 4:30 pace group, the leader a girl who held a bunch of blue and white balloons marked "4:30." Dancing in place in line for the bathroom, I saw them round a corner and disappear, and I wanted time to stop, but I had no choice. I tried to stay calm, and after what felt like an hour, I sprinted out of the portable bathroom in hot pursuit. I didn't hold out much hope of catching them, but what I didn't realize was that they had been ahead of pace, and the pace group leader was slowing them down.

I sprinted through Queens, passing people left and right, and when I turned onto the Queensboro Bridge, the sharp incline allowed me to see far up the line of runners ahead. I spotted the 4:30 pace group balloons, several hundred yards up. This gave me a huge boost of confidence, and I began a desperate attempt to chase them down. The tight passage on the bridge made it difficult to make up long stretches of ground at a time. The hill went on for a while, but I didn't feel it. I powered on. Up ahead, I heard the a group of people singing happy birthday. At the end of the bridge, during the 180 degree turn back towards First Ave., I caught them. And for another mile on First Ave., I stayed with them.

The protracted chase had sapped me, though, and at mile 18 or so, the 4:30 balloon began to drift away, meter by meter. This time, when I tried to call on an excess reserve of energy, to press the burst button on the video game controller, nothing happened. Those several miles up First Ave. were depressing. I could see way up ahead, and First Ave. seemed to run forever, off into Canada. We were also running the wrong direction, away from the finish line, so every stride I took was another one I'd have to duplicate on the return trip. The crowds lining First Ave. were amazing, but my pain and exhaustion were pressing in on my consciousness, and I started to lose touch with the my environment.

The Bronx and Harlem were quieter than Manhattan. Around mile 20, I ran under a giant orange Nike billboard on an overpass that said something like "Run through the Wall like it's a street, 6.2 miles long." An earlier Nike billboard, at mile 14 or so, had read "Run like all of Queens is behind you." I passed Batman, whose full-body dark outfit had left him well done. There's a reason Batman only works at night and why Robin's outfit got him killed all those times.

Somewhere in this stretch, I missed Scott at the Willis Bridge. I may have passed before he arrived. I'm not certain. Back on Manhattan, the crowds burgeoned. I didn't hit a wall so much as a gradually rising incline. At mile 21, I stopped to open a packet of PowerGel. When I tried to run again, my left knee wouldn't bend. I had to limp along, swinging my left leg out wide, because it was locked straight. For a few steps, I sloshed and hobbled through a lake of Gatorade and empty paper cups, and just like the right leg of "Verbal" Kint transforming into Keyser Soze, my left leg metamorphosed from a useless stump to a working leg. I decided at that point it was too risky to stop any more until the finish line.

When we reached the northeast corner of Central Park, the crowds were in a frenzy. The screaming of the crowds lining both sides of the avenue was hypnotic. The sounds, along with the visual cacaphony of boldly designed signs, vibrating noise sticks, and wildly waving arms, reminded me, for some ridiculous reason, of the concluding fight in Karate Kid II, when Mr. Miyagi and all the spectators are twirling those hand drums. "Daniel-San, this not tournament. This for real." It pulled me into a trance in which my awareness narrowed. A few times I closed my eyes, to avoid seeing how long and endless the street looked, and to simply feel myself running. I could distinguish the occasional individual face, maybe one of every twenty people.

When I turned to enter the park, I recognized the road. I had run it many times during my training. I locked back onto the energy and incredible enthusiasm of all the spectators and race volunteers, and it lifted me along. For them to spend hour after hour, cheering, for the most part, complete strangers, meant so much to the runners.

I put my long-sleeve shirt back on when we reached the southern end of the park and turned right towards Columbus Circle, both in the hopes of some last minute crowd support, and in case James and Angela were nearby. I looked down and realized that most of the ironed-on letters had fallen off. What remained was "G Eug." Very cryptic. Many spectators looked at my chest, ready to scream, only to scrunch their faces up in confusion. But one girl, just past Columbus Circle, used her Wheel of Fortune skills to see the hidden message and shouted, "Go Euge!" I could have kissed her, but I could only manage a backwards glance and a smile, a much-needed smile.

I tried to summon one last kick as I saw the finish line, but even with so magnetic an oasis before me, I had none. I raised my arms as I jogged under the finish clock. I could finally release my poor body from its task, and I slowed to a halt. Twenty seconds passed before I remembered to stop my watch. I looked at the time. 4:36 and change. A volunteer handed me a foil blanket which I wore like a cape. I kept walking, and another volunteer handed me my race medal, and another placed a bottle of water in my hand. I stopped for a race finish photo and then joined the throng of finishers in the long walk to pick up our start-line race bags from the UPS trucks parked along the road.

On both sides of me, runners were leaning against faces or hunched over on the curb, vomiting. Numerous runners lay on stretchers, medical personnel massaging their legs, asking them questions like what is your name? Do you know where you are? Yet others were embracing, and many were weeping from what I surmise was an overpowering cocktail of elation and pain. Those of us still standing staggered along like a procession of refugees from a war, wrapped in our foil blankets like so many ballpark hot dogs.

My UPS truck, number 72, turned out to be the last of all the trucks, and so I had to hobble along for what felt like another 26 miles until I retrieved my bag. I changed out of my running clothes and walked out of the park to the friends and family greeting areas. I didn't see anyone in my area which wasn't surprising because I hadn't told anyone which group I was in, so I headed on south towards subway stop under the Museum of Natural History. While walking, I turned on my cell phone. Ken had left me a message during the race, having followed my splits on the marathon website. I tried calling James and Angela to see where they were, but all cell circuits were busy.

Just before I walked into the station, James got through to me, and they met me at 81st and Central Park West. I had missed them at the turn near Columbus Circle, but I was really thankful I didn't miss them now. I could barely walk, my legs were so sore and stiff. We couldn't find any cabs near the Park, so we took the subway down to 14th. They escorted me home, holding me up as I struggled up and down subway stairways, and they took me all the way back to my apartment in a cab. As with cycling, once the race stops, all that race hydration becomes excess, and I had to go to the bathroom every five minutes for the next half hour. I was starved by now, and the banana and apple and granola bar they had given me at the finish just didn't appeal to me. Angela walked to a nearby deli and bought me a roast beef sandwich, and it was the best roast beef sandwich I've ever had.

I checked online and realized that none of my race alerts had reached my friends and family. The Google Group I had set up was private, and only members of the group could send messages to the group. Since the NY Marathon e-mail server wasn't a member of the group, its messages had all bounced.

I saw my race splits for the first time:
1:08:05 10K
2:19:49 Half marathon
3:32:05 20 mile
4:36:12 Net time*
4:41:51 Finish time
*Net time is adjusted for when my chip actually crossed the start line, while Finish time is not

Almost everyone who called to congratulate me asked if I would run another. I don't know yet. On the one hand, with enough time to complete a full training schedule, on a flatter course, on a cooler day, I'd love to see how much I could improve my time. When I had ran my 20 mile long run, several times around Central Park, on a cool night, I had run a 9:12 pace for every mile, and I felt strong the whole way. If I could peak like that on race day, maybe I could even approach a four hour finish time. And the experience of having millions of people cheering you over 26.2 miles and five boroughs is something you can only earn by being on the road, not the sidewalk.

On the other hand, I've never felt so beaten up after a sporting event. I'm worried about my left knee, my right knee, my ankles, my arches, and my hips. 26.2 miles of pounding them against the concrete was a cruel thing to subject them to. And the training, even though I only ran for two and a half months, seemed like an eternity, mostly because I did almost every run alone. So I'm uncertain whether I'll run another one, and for now, I'm in no hurry to decide.

Almost anyone can finish a marathon. That I'm convinced of after having seen all the different types of finishers, from octogenarians to the overweight to the physically disabled. I saw a man with one leg, and another on crutches, and one man with cerebral palsy pushed himself backwards in a wheelchair from 8 a.m. until 6:49 p.m. to finish in darkness. But is it worthwhile? Some say that running 26.2 miles changes you, extends your belief in what you can accomplish. Others argue that running such distances is unhealthy and needlessly so, especially in pursuit of feelings one can achieve in safer ways.

They're both right, perhaps. An event like a marathon is difficult enough that every person must answer that for themselves. Running 26.2 miles has become, in our culture, the world's pre-eminent incarnation of a trying physical and mental quest, a walkabout for the modern man. I don't love running, and I find long distance running boring and extremely painful, but the marathon put me back in touch with a mental toughness I wasn't sure I still possessed. There's strength in feeling like you can endure discomfort for longer than the next guy, and that translates into all aspects of life. I had never run more than four or five miles before I began training for the marathon, and in just eleven weeks, I worked up to 26.2 miles. Most everyone of reasonable health can do the same; the most significant barrier to doing so, for me, was mental.

Just past the finish line, I saw a middle-aged man, bald except for hair on the sides of his head. He wore a long beard, lined with grey, and he was lying on a stretcher on the sidewalk while medical personnel attended to other delirious runners nearby. The man's legs splayed out awkwardly, and his eyes were shut, but not enough that I couldn't see that his eyes had rolled back into his head as if he was unconscious. His breathing was shallow. His right arm lay to his side, hanging off the stretcher, limp. If he had been in a hospital, one might think he was near death.

His left hand, though, clutched the medal that hung from his neck. And his lips curled up ever so slightly at the edges, offering a hint of a smile like Mona Lisa's, as if he had just discovered an unexpected treasure locked away in the darkest corners of his heart.

Review: The Incredibles

What's amazing about Pixar, and what uniquely identifies their brand, is not the stunning 3-dimensional computer generated animation, though certainly all their movies share that. Other studios can imitate that, and have.

No, what's unique about Pixar is that somehow, they consistently root their movies in stories that manage to be both funny and heart-warming, with appeal to people of all ages. They've bottled the innocent joy that used to be a property of Disney and pass it on to every next director. In the process, they've become the only Hollywood studio whose brand stands for something in consumer's minds, having stolen that honor, ironically, from their sister studios Disney and Miramax. Other studios have all but forsaken hand-drawn, 2-D animation in an attempt to duplicate Pixar's success, but they're chasing a false idol. The true secret sauce is much trickier to reverse engineer.

The Incredibles is a departure for Pixar from their heretofore successful animated creature/animal stories. The characters here are all human, albeit superhuman in many cases, and some cartoon action sequences earn Pixar it's first ever PG-rating. One trait of the Pixar comedy routine remains: no matter how different these characters are from the rest of us, they have the same human problems and emotions. It's one reason that audiences feel such strong emotional resonance with Pixar characters.

In this case, a family of superheroes (the Simpsons mold: father, responsible mother, mischievous son, precocious but socially maladjusted daughter, and as-yet personality-less infant) struggle to overcome suburban ennui in a world that has banned the use of their powers. Of course, it isn't long before a threat to society requires them to unleash their powers. Okay, you know all that from the trailer. Any more plot detail here is unnecessary.

The voice work is excellent, as usual, especially from Holly Hunter. And the humor, unlike that of movies like Shrek, is not grounded in time-stamped pop culture references that will be stale within a decade but in classic family relationship issues. The improvement in animation quality from one Pixar movie to the next are not as dramatic as from old-school animation to Toy Story, but a few sequences showed some new tricks. The rendering of water and ocean waves in motion is gorgeous, and because these are superheroes, one of them able to move at super speed like the Flash, some chase scenes are shot and rendered at hyper speed. We're talking "Leia and Luke on speeders flying through the forests of Endor in Return of the Jedi" speed. These action sequences are dizzying, breathtaking, and exhilarating, the kind that leave an audience clapping at the end out of sheer delight.

The moral of the story is somewhat fuzzy. Let all people use their natural abilities to the fullest? If Terrell Owens scores a touchdown, let him do his dance? I was pondering the issue early in the movie, during a momentary lull, and then I was having so much fun I forgot all about it.

[Footnote: Prior to the movie, Pixar trailered Cars, their next movie, due out in 2005. Just a tease. I thought of it as Pixar does NASCAR. And of course, Pixar showed a short, Boundin', about a dancing sheep. It's clever, like Pixar's other shorts, with an infectious rhyming verse.]

Tinyprints.com

My friends Ed, Polly, and Laura run a website called Tinyprints.com that specializes in unique baby announcements, baby stationery, and holiday cards. Busy parents (is there any other type) can source unique baby stationery products at the site. Until the end of the year, they're offering a 20% discount off all orders with the friends and family promo code FF1.

I stayed with Polly and Ed during my transition period between Seattle and NYC, so I got a firsthand look at their operations. Good stuff. Check them out, and say hello for me!

Ultimate movie lover's holiday present

The Criterion Collection Holiday 2004 Gift Set (an Amazon.com exclusive). Costs $5,250 and contains 241 movies across 282 DVDs.

Star Wars Episode III teaser trailer

Of course, the Star Wars Episode III teaser trailer is leaking all over the web today. It seems a bit stilted and rough, but my first reaction in the wake of the election is that Anakin's conversion to the dark side, and Emperor Palpatine's evil voice summoning Darth Vader, "Rise..." all feels quite appropriate.

If you want to track down a copy, use your favorite search engine. I found a Quicktime mirror and a BitTorrent, though I'm sure it's spread much wider by now. Or catch a midnight showing of The Incredibles.

Yuta Tabuse

I was trying to problem-solve my Time Warner cable box last night, and I had ESPN on as my test channel. I was behind a rack entangled in wires when I heard the ESPN announcer proclaim the name Yuta Tabuse. Apparently, he's the first Japanese player to make it onto an NBA team.

How did I miss this? They proceeded to show a higlight of Tabuse at the top of the three point line, doing a little head fake and side shuffle behind a high screen and nailing a three pointer. He ended the night with 7 points and 1 assist. He's only 5'9", and what's even more amazing is that I think he served me a Rainbow Roll at the sushi bar last week. Either that or I saw him in The Last Samurai.

Who is Yuta Tabuse? According to this article, he's the "most famous basketball player in Japan" and has a flair for no-look passes on the break. Does Chris Berman have a nickname for him yet? Has he found any decent sushi restaurants in Phoenix? When he matches up against Earl Boykins of Denver, does he signal to clear Stoudamire and Marion out of the post so he can post Boykins up? When will see the SI cover that puts Yao Ming next to Tabuse?

He's the third-string point guard behind Steve Nash and Leandro Barbosa, so we won't see much of Tabuse except at garbage time. What an exciting, quick little trio of guards that will be, tossing alley-oop passes from all over to Stoudamire and Marion. If you're trying to pick a package of games for your local NBA team, you could do much, much worse than catching the visiting Suns.

I also like the Jazz, who just thrashed Kobe Bryant and the Lakers last night. Andrei Kirilenko is now a household name with more than just fantasy hoop players. He's looks like a skinny Ivan Drago on the basketball court, just swatting balls with arms the length of yard rakes, and off the court he's married to a Russian pop star. He recently read Master and Margarita by Bulgakov (good book!). He wears #47 because some of his teammates call him AK-47. He's 23 years old. Good times.

Looking backward, looking forward

Why are so many people blaming the youth vote? I looked at the numbers, and the 18-29 age group was the only age group to prefer Kerry to Bush. On turnout, everyone is criticizing the fact that youths accounted for the same % of the total popular vote as in the last election. What they're missing is the fact that in 2000, only 105.4 million votes were cast. In 2004, we're already over 115 million votes with provisional and absentee ballots still to be counted, and by the time all is done the total will be closer to 120 million. The youth vote made a significant leap forward this year. It just happened to be masked by an increase in turnout across older demographics as well. Given that the youth vote has always accounted for a minority of the total vote, it had to grow by a larger percentage to maintain the same share of the total vote as in the past. I'm sure there's room for improvement, but even though I'm officially not part of the youth demo anymore, I don't think it's fair to scapegoat them. Don't blame the youths, or mock youth vote turnout movements like Rock the Vote or P. Diddy's Vote or Die, for Kerry's loss. If anything, blame the older folks who turned out to support Bush.

[NOTE: This map shows what the election results would have been if decided by 18-29 year olds]

Depressed Cubs fans know there's always next year. Unjustified and exaggerated optimism are an effective numbing agent for the pains of today. Sammy Sosa whining? Let's dump him and replace him with Carlos Beltran.

That mental coping mechanism can work here, as well. In 2008, it's time to pull out the all the stops. Time to match the hot new rookie Barack Obama with established superstar Oprah Winfrey. What a historic ticket that would be, in so many respects.

It may also help to visualize the mathematics of the popular vote across states as a continuum. In that respect, America is spectrum of purple, not a sea of red hemmed in on the West and Northeast by two walls of blue [via BoingBoing]. Come to think of it, though. an arbitrary mixing of red and blue may be just another distortion layered on top of the blue-red dichotomy distortion. Some reds and blues (I know a few myself) just don't mix. To truly find common ground, we need a way to visualize individual issue where liberals and conservatives share common views. I believe such a space exists, though you can only stand there if you really stand there. You can't fly to Paris, stand under the Eiffel Tower, and call yourself a Parisian.

There's also humor. Sad, but true, from The Onion. And again. We're one of the world's most advanced civilizations, but we can't hold an election without suspicions of tampering.

And there's the drink. I'd resort to that old standby, but I have to run that marathon Sunday.

Kerry concedes election to Bush

Kerry concedes, Bush wins with a majority, and Republicans extend their majority in the Senate and House. With Rehnquist ill, Bush will likely appoint the next Supreme Court candidate.

It will be a few days until I can stabilize my emotion center. With the popular vote going Bush's way, I experience again, for the first time in a long time, what it feels to be a minority in my home country. I've read a lot of calls from liberals to keep a cool head, to band together to support the president after this election is over, but what does that mean? Did people expect us to riot and loot? Are we supposed to roll over now and agree with Bush on everything he does?

No way. Bush doesn't get a "get out of jail card free" card. With four more years, we should be able to see, definitively, the outcome of his stewardship of the country.

What is going on?

CNN has reported that some Iowa voting machines have gone down, and many of their polling site staff are exhausted, so they won't be able to issue a final count until tomorrow morning. CNN also reports that Red Sox owner John Henry has been told to prepare his private jet to fly Democratic lawyers to Ohio. There also may be as many as 250K provisional ballots in Ohio that won't be counted for 11 days. 11 days!

I like C-Span's election map (though why does Hawaii show as having 0% of precincts having reported?). Using it, I've created a spreadsheet to help me track the remaining states in play. Why I have no idea. Only Ohio matters now.

Is it too early to think of Obama in 2008? 2012?

It's increasingly clear that I need to go to bed, because no official announcements will come anytime soon. Even if Bush wins, which looks highly likely now, it may be a while before Kerry concedes. I'll give Nevada and New Mexico to Bush, Wisconsin and New Hampshire to Kerry, and leave Ohio and Iowa undetermined (though Ohio looks to be Bush's to lose). That leaves it 259 to 259 by my count.

But someone is conceding this evening, and that's me. I concede that I need to go to bed.

Put us out of our misery...and into more?

Are people still standing in line to vote? How is this possible?

NBC and Fox have given Ohio to Bush. CNN and other stations are still holding out on Ohio. With 93% of precincts in Ohio, CNN has just turned Ohio green. Green? Another color? Has Ohio been overrun by radioactive waste? Turned into a giant garden?

Oh, Wolf Blitzer explains that green means too close to call. In other words, nothing has changed in CNN's opinion. They just wanted to make full use of their color palette.

I'm exhausted, and depressed. I don't know how long I can stay up.

Voter turnout rates

From my limited perspective, it feels as if interest and participation in this presidential election is at an all-time high. I know so many people who helped raise funds, threw political parties, watched the debates, drove to other states to go door-to-door, volunteered to patrol polling sites, and of course, cast ballots. I received two phone calls at home today, urging me to go vote, and was accosted on the streets of NYC by clipboard-toting youths about once a day up until the voter registration deadlines. Online, I encountered countless links to Rock the Vote, a site that made it simple for the Internet-saavy (read: youths) to register to vote. I'm not a huge fan of any motto that begins with "Rock the..." but that huge red checkmark logo is burned into my brain.

But these are just my impressions. Will turnout actually be record-breaking? This paper by Michael McDonald at The Brookings Institution shows that if voter turnout rate, though it was lower on average from 1972 through 2000 than from 1952 to 1968, wasn't as dire as people commonly believe. Rates were artificially depressed by not removing a growing pool of ineligible voters from the denominator. The turnout rate in 1992 was about as high as that in the 60's.

This year's voter turnout rate would need to exceed 63% to break the record set in 1960. A quick glance at the headlines would seem to indicate record turnout, and I've seen estimates of 60%+. Maybe the modern record will be broken. I suspect, and hope, it will.

Still, it's nothing compared to voter turnout rates in other countries around the world (another table and chart).

How can the U.S. raise the turnout rate? For one thing, the voting experience needs to be simpler. I voted absentee in Washington state, where about half the ballots are cast via mail. Oregon votes entirely by mail. Roughly a third of ballots in California are done by mail. I called a toll-free number, a ballot was e-mailed to me, I printed it, filled it out, and dropped it in the mail. Here in NYC, I've heard quite a few stories of long lines, long waits, disorganized polling sites, and voter confusion. That may true of only a few sites, but overall the process of voting at a polling site can't be any easier than voting by mail. Why should working folks and parents with young children have to re-arrange their schedules to wait in line at a polling site they may or may not be able to find when they could simply fill out the form at home and pop it in the mailbox? How about the elderly, who may not be physically able to stand in line for such a long time? It's a sign of how low our voter turnout rates have been historically when people express joy at seeing the staggering length of the line they have to wait in.

I've read articles claiming that voting via the Internet wouldn't significantly increase voter turnout rates. However, in the interest of simplifying the process as much as possible, especially for today's youths who've grown up with the Internet, it needs to happen. People should be able to register, update their addresses and information, check their registration status, and vote online. The commonly cited problems with Internet voting (security, user interface, scaling, etc.) are all solvable.

The goal should be that even the laziest voter should have little excuse not to vote.

The other problem to solve, then, is the problem of objective information (if it's achievable) on all the initiatives and candidates on each state's ballot. The U.S. has one of the longest ballots in the world. The Washington state ballot covered two pages, and I had to vote on all sorts of initiatives and candidates I knew little about. It's easier to find objective information to help someone select a digital camera than a public official. Here, again, the Internet can help. Sites like Vote-Smart are a good start, but their database of information is very thin. Even a simple issues grid for each candidate would be an improvement on what's available today.

Beyond that, perhaps the election process itself should be altered. Heightened interest in the election is good, among other reasons, because it raises scrutiny of current election processes. Many people have been decrying the Electoral College. Perhaps it will be reformed or done away with. To push it even further, would the U.S. ever consider Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) or Ranked Choice Voting? The case for IRV is strong, and San Francisco has implemented it.

Ideas for another day. Today, the ship has sailed. Living on the East Coast, I may have to stay up until tomorrow morning, if not later, to find out the election results. I've been trying to wake up earlier every morning in preparation for the marathon this Sunday, but it will be difficult to keep that promise tonight.

Footnote: The Iowa Electronic Markets Presidential Winner Takes All has made a late shift, and at this momentpredicts a Democratic victory with somewhat less than 52% of the popular vote. I believe Kerry will win.

Chuckle

Crossword aficionados should make sure to complete today's election-themed NYTimes crossword. There's an extra box today, and it's a clever wink at election snafus past.

CNN's Lou Dobbs introduced their election night coverage by describing "an election that pollsters are calling the closest presidential election in years." Was 2000's election not close enough for everyone?

Ryan's first Halloween

Sunday, the weather was gorgeous. I needed the surprising dose of sunshine, and fortunately my schedule contained a morning outing in Central Park with Sharon and my little nephew Ryan. With the marathon coming up this Sunday, deadlines for grad school applications hanging over my head, and the election tomorrow, I haven't been sleeping that well. The sunshine, family, and autumn-hued mosaic that was Central Park was a refreshing break.

I asked Ryan for a GQ pose, and he turned to the side, took a knee, and flashed the "For relaxing times, make it Suntory time" look in this first pic:

In the early evening, Ryan and his playmate Zoe went trick-or-treating in the building. Ryan was dressed as a Chinese man from olden times. Both of them are at the age where they can imitate everything they're taught to say, so they were able to say "trick-or-treat" at every door, though it sounded more like "twickrtwee."

Children's costumes sure have come a long way. The first costume I remember wearing for Halloween was one of those molded plastic masks with two eyeholes and a thin rubber band to secure it to your head. I was Darth Vader, with a mask and plastic cape. Good times, except for that lady who was giving out lone pennies. Even at the tender age of three or four, or however old I was, I discerned that little pleasure was to be had from a single penny, either directly or in barter.

Scaled electoral map

Even though it doesn't make a difference, I find it much more reassuring to look at colored electoral maps scaled based on share of electoral votes than geographically scaled maps.

Because you can't get fat enough from going to McDonalds and picking up a meal, McDonalds offers free delivery in NYC in partnership with Delivery.com.

Another note from my eagle-eyed vigilance for all things giant squid: squid biomass now exceeds that of humans. I keep expecting we'll get footage of a giant squid alive in the ocean one of these days. That or a Cubs World Series victory first? In my lifetime? Please?

Physicists have solved the falling paper problem. It reminded me of the solution to the billowing shower curtain problem.