Endangered Coffee

Stars Fall Down Like I Am Writing Some Kind of Ryan Adams Song

2012-01-18T00:33:00.000-05:00

Stars Fall Down Like I Am Writing Some Kind of Ryan Adams Song

The nights I slow my steps

to stare at the stars,

and think of the time,

and it was perfect -

with you - and you will

never know. And when

I am home, listening

to the same sad songs,

you lift me up, my

heart, for a moment,

my heart, it aches.

And it is perfect.

This was not like being John Cusak in that movie where Jack Black was still funny at all...

2011-10-14T16:07:00.001-04:00

Yeah, I'm kind of a big deal. I worked in the music industry once. For three days. That's right, I wore the red vest of Strawberries Records and Tapes (even though there were definitely no records and very few tapes) for three entire shifts. And it was still only the second shortest job I ever had.

Now had I worked at a record store when I was 17 or 18, even one as steep of a crash course with irrelevance as Strawberries was at the time, I would have thought it was the greatest thing in the world, or at least nearly as great as getting paid to shotgun beers and provide in-depth annotated lists of the 30 greatest Ramones songs (which is still a search query I fire into monster.com every now and again, because, hey, you never know, sometimes dreams can come true).

By the time I did work at a music store, I was just a bit older than that, and had no illusions about it other than the fact that I needed a second job to help pay some bills. And, hey, music. Still could be a lot worse ways to work a few extra hours per week for short money, right?

(This is the part in the narrative where I am supposed to answer my own question above with Wrong! I was considering leaving it an implied wrong, but...)

Wrong!

Now, I freely admit I have worked a lot of jobs, and true, very few of them have involved operating heavy machinery or performing overly complicated surgery, but the one thing that linked all these jobs was that not one of them required me to piss in a cup. Except for the one where I wore a red vest and had to dust Creed CDs, obviously. Although I am typically opposed to drug testing, I am even more opposed to not having enough money to pay my bills. So I sucked it up and pissed into the cup. And since it wasn't 1989, I passed the drug test with flying yellow color.

So, day one, being appropriately drug free enough to operate a cash register, I began my second job. The first thing I noticed about my boss was that she did not have any eyebrows. I mean, there were those pencil mark things where eyebrows once may have been, but since she was under the age of 80, I was assuming the real eyebrows were lost in some kind of industrial Walkman type of accident, so I tried not to stare. The second thing I noticed about my boss was that she was not very bright. I also did not hold this against her, on the off chance that the accident that caused the eyebrow loss may have also caused some minor brain damage. She obviously had no plan for what to do with me as a new employee. I did get her lunch at the Pizza Hut next door. And I had to nod my head sympathetically as she babbled on about how before she worked at Strawberries she had never heard of bands like Puddle of Mudd, and since she had started working there, she had heard of bands like Puddle of Mudd. I should have stayed at Pizza Hut.

But at least my eyebrowless boss who was amazed by the existence of extremely crappy faux-metal bands talked to me, which was a step above what I got from, oh, every other asshole who worked in the store. But really, that was okay, them being assholes and all.

Other than making runs to Pizza Hut, my three days on the job consisted of me walking around the store, helping the confused masses locate the latest Celine Dion holiday CD. (Big display over near the register, ma'am. Big display over near the register, sir. Can I interest you in the new Puddle of Mudd Chanuakauh CD sir?)

This lasted for three days. Somehow, I was never put back on the schedule. Somehow, I did not raise a fuss about this.

But, before I end this tale of a short chapter in my working life, I will provide you with an actual transcript, from memory, more or less, of an actual exchange between one of my coworkers who did not speak to me and one of Saugus' finest musicophiles.

CULTURED SAUGUS MUSIC SHOPPER: Can you tell me where to find Da ZZ Top?

ASSHOLE COWORKER WHO DIDN'T SPEAK TO ME: Ummmm, what kind of music is that?

CULTURED SAUGUS MUSIC SHOPPER: You know, dose guys with da beards, Da ZZ Top.

ASSHOLE COWORKER WHO DIDN'T SPEAK TO ME: Oh, Da ZZ Top, well they must be under D.

Rocknroll show

2011-09-20T01:03:00.000-04:00

I am old and creaky and have jobs and responsibilities and need naps and don't get out to the rocknroll shows as much as I did in my younger days. But that doesn't mean I don't get out at all.

Last week I took the trip into Allston Rock City to see the Biters, seven bucks, free parking, and all the sweat and leather and hooks and ringing guitars and ringing ears and denim and good times to make me once again believe that, yes, rock and roll is a living breathing thing that needs to be experienced on occasion up close and without earplugs and with amplifiers less than five feet from your ears.

If it had been a lesser band, it might have been a pleasant enough night that faded from memory after a day or two. But it was the Biters, most likely my favorite new band since the Exploding Hearts tragically met their end about five years ago (and major thanks to Greg Munroe for pointing me in the direction of both the Hearts and the Biters).

In short, the Biters are everything that is eternal and good and loud and now about rocknroll. They are the '76 Ramones, the early Mats, Thin Lizzy, T. Rex, Cheap Trick at Budokan. And if you want to take off points for a lack of originality, then go home and listen to your radiohead bootleg demos on your headphones alone in your bedroom. Because real rocknroll is playing your ass off in front of 50 people in a corner bar on a Tuesday night, and knowing that at least 30 of those people have no fucking clue who you are. Real rocknroll is knowing that it doesn't matter if it is a basement or headlining Madison Square Garden. And the Biters were real rocknroll, god friggin' bless them.

Letter never sent

2010-10-21T20:27:00.000-04:00

I have your address
with the exception of
the zip code. But I
can look that up.

And the envelope, I
may be out of
envelopes, but if I
find an envelope, the
stamps are behind
the bills in the front
hall.

And I had so much
to say, enough to easily
overcome the lack of the
zip code, but perhaps not
enough to find an envelope.

On the Road, again

2010-10-09T08:36:00.000-04:00

I'm sorry, Jack. I gave it one more shot. When I was 20, I was convinced On the Road was one of the enduring testaments of American Literature. The freedom of the road, discovery, love laughs and bacchanalian days and nights. Since then, I have come back to the Road approximately once per decade. Around the time I was 30, I was convinced you were just not a very good writer. At the time, I feared the old Truman Capote axiom about you typing and not writing was true.If I made it more than halfway through on that go round, I would be surprised.

So here I am at 40, willing to give your tale of the Road one more try. The good news is, I believe you were a much more talented writer than I gave you credit for, for pages at a time it is easy to get lost in rush of the cross country journeys, the search for, the search for...

... well, this is where I fear I won't be signing up for this journey next decade. I can feel your yearning, your search for, for something, but I am convinced you were never really sure what it was, Jack. At the end of the day, you were searching for an America that had passed you by, just as in future decades, thousands of readers were searching for the America they though you represented. But you risked almost nothing. There was also another check for the Aunt to send cross country. Your love for Thomas Wolfe was established from the early days, but in On the Road, you always could go home again. You were a sad man, anyone who thinks On the Road is a joyous story hasn't taken a close look at. Maybe if you had done more to tap into that knowing sadness, the novel would have more resonance, but instead we are left on a journey with the you disguised as Sal Paradise, and you are a cipher, a not very interesting outlier in the stories of others.

Which leaves us with Dean Moriarity, the holy fool of the American Road. As the years go by, it's easier to see poor Dean as more fool than holy, an egotistical manchild only looking out for his own insatiable desires.The more Kerouac built up Moriarity as the spirit of the American road, the more I realize Kerouac may not have understood America at all.

The dorkiness of the long distance runner

2010-09-20T18:21:00.002-04:00

— For the love of god, they are not starting the boys and the girls race at the same time, are they? This is not going to look good, not one bit.

Long, long before I made my exercise bones as the dude at the walking track giving the head nod to the old-timers with canes, I was a high school runner of some modest, very, incredibly modest ability. Which means I could handle practice runs of varying lengths without much of a struggle and during races I could somehow manage to not embarrass myself by crossing in the middle-back of the pack.

Being the open-minded liberal guy I was, starting the boys and girls races at the same time wouldn’t have been that big of a deal. Sure, chances are some really fast girls would have finished ahead of me, but I could live with that as long as I could have crossed the finish line with a respectable contingent of similarly anorexic looking comrades.

But during the last race of my senior year, I knew damn well that me starting the same time of the girls was going to result in me finishing hand in hand with a gaggle of pint-sized ninth grade girls slowly shuffling along in their Hello Kitty sneakers.

Which means it is time for a flashback. I know, I know, I’m already in the fall of 1987, but I still need to flashback a month or two before that. To the slightly earlier fall of 1987. Hold on tight and try not to get motion sickness.

That’s when I suffered my one and only sports injury. I was running the loop behind the high school when I planted my ankle conveniently inside a tree stump as I turned my entire body, with the exception of my ankle and foot that were stuck in the tree stump.

It kinda hurt. I sat on the ground and watched my ankle assume the color, shape, and size of something in the eggplant family. Perhaps an eggplant. Several of my teammates ran by and asked if I was okay. I told them I was fine as long as I wanted to spend a pleasant fall day sitting under a tree behind the high school and didn’t need to walk anywhere. I asked them to let the coach know what happened, just for kicks. I sat under the tree. I waited for someone to give me a hand. No hand was forthcoming. I hobbled back to the high school on my eggplant ankle. Went to the hospital where the general consensus was that I had a sprained ankle which could prevent me from running for a while.

After a week or two, when the size of my ankle shrank to the size of pretty much your garden variety, noneggplant ankle, I started practicing again. During my first race back, I discovered that my normal moderate, not attracting any undue attention pace was replaced by a much slower, I’m making everyone wait in the bus while I finish the race type of pace.

Which brings me back to the final race of my senior year. Where I would be leaving the starting line at the same time as a bunch of 14-year-old girls wearing pink pom pom running socks. And the older girls who would have probably beaten me even on my best day.

Gun goes off, the first couple hundred yards is good, because I am using my typical race “strategy” …

Unfortunately though, for my three years on the cross country, I had just about the most asinine race strategy in the history of running. During practice runs where no one bothered to time me, I could keep up a healthy pace for six or seven miles, run side by side with the best runners on the team, and not feel like someone had taken a sledgehammer to my guts by the end of the race. Somehow, all this attention to pacing and stamina went out the window on race day. I’d hear the gun go off and automatically think I was a ‘roided up Ben Johnson trying to run the 100-yard dash in under seven seconds. I may have had the best 50-yard cross country splits in the history of MHS, head bobbing legs flying through the air as I took the early lead. By the 100-yard mark, I was neck and neck with the best runners, by the 200-yard mark, I was in the middle of the park, by the quarter-mile mark, I was usually doubled over in pain clutching my stomach as all but the most ploddingly of the plodders passed me by. After that, I would be able to pull myself together enough to get back in the race, actually pass a plodder or two, and find me back towards the back of a pack of skinny guys who at least looked like they were runners.

So, the big race, I sprint out and, much to my amazement, having a bum ankle does not improve the “Running like a drunken asshole from the police” cross country strategy. Within a quarter mile, I am doubled over in pain, clutching my stock with the added bonus of having a throbbing ankle and I am eating the dust kicked up by a half-dozen pairs of Hello Kitty pop pom socks.

I right myself enough to get going into a nice slow jog groove, cursing my ankle, cursing the damn stomach cramps I had never figured out how to avoid. (Which I know realize I may have been able to at least partly avoid had any of the coaches bothered to mention that — Hey, you might want to drink water and not coke from the soda machine before a race, staying hydrated could help you.)

Somehow, I finished the race not quite in last place. Despite having gotten off course and charging through the decorative hedges at the entrance of whatever high school we happened to be racing at that day and not on the official cross country course. At this point, the bus had been running for a while and the officials were probably just happy to have me off the course.

And so ended my glorious high school athletic career.

Random particle blogcelerator

2010-09-13T22:32:00.000-04:00

I have the alarm set early so I can head out to the track tomorrow morning. Just so you all don't think I'm getting all Roger Bannister four-minute mile on you, I am heading to my town's local walking track. Seemed prudent not to get too carried away with this running thing too quickly. Well, running might be too strong a word, seeing as I have mostly been walking the track with the occasional jogging lap thrown in for fun, usually ending up with me clomping around like a slow, drunken Clydesdale.

The benefit of hanging out at the walking track at 630 am is that it makes me seem relatively spry and athletic compared to my fellow workout fanatics. It helps that I am the youngest person on the track by a good 30 years. And that I don't have a cane. In all fairness, my third of a mile splits have totally blown away cane man's time.

I'm also pretty sure the regulars are suspicious of my newfangled Ipod technology. Just so I don't raise any hackles tomorrow morning, I may have to leave it at home and bring my AM transistor radio. But God bless the old timers, at least they are exercising, which is more than I've been doing until last week.Hopefully my knees will hold up and I can graduate to the running track. And I'll be damned if the guy in the Rascal laps me again.

Daily affirmation, inspiration, or some such crap like that

2010-09-08T20:34:00.000-04:00

Inspiration is a wonderful thing, you never know when it will hit you. Only problem is, the bastard doesn't like to waste a lot of your time. For me it's writing, for some of you it might be making music, cooking, painting, turning over a new chapter in your life, and for all of that and more, 'tis a great thing when inspiration strikes and we make the most of it.

The only problem is, we may only be inspired in our pursuits once a week, month, year, etc. Unfortunately, a lot of the rest of the time involves sitting on our asses eating potato chips waiting for that magic moment. But you know what, there is a little secret that can help get those inspirational juices flowing, ready to strike down out of the heavens (or evolve over time if you prefer a Darwinian world view). Are you listening Oprah. A Secret! I expect to be on your coach by November at the latest.

Well, the only problem with this secret for finding inspiration is that you might not like it. I know I sure as hell don't like it. It's called working, schlepping, plugging away, putting in the hours when you would rather be sitting on the couch eating potato chips, and good goddamn, I love me some potato chips, especially when you throw a container of french onion dip next to them.

You see, I really, really didn't want to write today. I was thinking I might have something more interesting to say tomorrow. Maybe my license plate will fall off again, maybe I will need to have my blood drawn, you know, the truly inspirational stuff. But just because something that MINDBLOWINGLY exciting might happen tomorrow, it does mean that I shouldn't put in the time today. Too often for me, putting something off for a day leads to two days to a week to a month, to a, well, you get the picture, I feel I may not be alone in this particular quirk.Nothing worthwhile in this life comes easy, comes for free, blah blah blah.

Back soon with more inspirational uplifting crap. (Oprah, send me a message to my inbox, we can work out the details.)

Reformed glue sniffers and words you shouldn't say, even in an overgrown field with old cars

2010-09-07T21:54:00.000-04:00

Camped out at a volkswagen show once, somewhere in a field. Somewhere far enough away that it seemed worthwhile to stay overnight, but not so far that we left the confines of Northern New England. Don't really remember, think it may have been Vermont, or Western Mass.

I believe Randy had the late 70s bus for this trip, which Spencer also joined us on. Mainly, I remember Spencer being there only because he wanted to prevent any misfortunate use of the word "snatch" at the Volkswagen show, which, if I have failed to mention it yet, was a bunch of old volkswagens parked in an overgrown field someplace in New England where less people live than I am used to. Where was I? Oh, that's right, before we got to the designated overgrown field, we were hanging out in a parking lot, which is much like a field, only with slightly less overgrown grass and slightly more pavement, and we were playing hackey sack. (Don't judge, it was the early 90s, kids did it, even good kids. Or something.) Apparently, somewhere along the way, Spencer made a good catch, or as I referred to it, snatch, of the hackey sack, which, although etymologically correct, also denotes a certain female body party. He went off on a five-minute harangue about how I should not say that certain word during the show or I would get slapped in the face. It was duly noted.

Now, before we got to the overgrown field, I was picturing something a little more camplike, with lots of people, fires, maybe some cookouts. Turns out it was about a dozen people drinking beer in a field and sleeping in their cars and vans. No, sorry, make that 11 people drinking and one crazy middle-aged guy who kept talking about how all the kids in his town were sniffing glue. For some reason, he thought me, Randy, and Spencer were very interested in how these kids in town were polluting their bodies with the glue sniffing. Polluting their bodies behind the hardware store, polluting their bodies outside the sub shop, sniffing glue in the convenience store parking lot. The longer this guy talked to us, the more I was convinced he had sniffed a lot of glue. Reformed glue sniffers are always the worst.

Eventually, the reformed glue sniffer left us alone to pollute our bodies with our beer, which is normally a good thing. Except when you are sleeping in the back seat of a VW bus and are convinced you have to get up to pee every five minutes. Which means either trying to hold it and not sleeping, or trying to sneak out of the bus quietly and not wake everyone up to take care of business in the wilderness. I don't think I slept for more than two hours that night as I faced that moral urinary challenge.

Which means I may have been too tired to enjoy the actual volkswagen show the next day. Which, if I haven't mentioned it yet, consisted of a bunch of old Volkswagens in a slightly overgrown field somewhere that was most likely still in New England.

He's leaving home

2010-09-03T21:10:00.000-04:00

There is a certain bittersweetness when your friends move when you are older. When I was younger, I didn't seem as big of a deal when I lost touch with friends or when they moved cross country.

When I was 22, my best friend moved to Oregon, minimally to go to college, and, well, 18 years later, he's still there. At the time, I'm sure I was a little melancholy about his leaving, but it seemed like he could be back any day. When you are young, there is nothing but days ahead and chances to see everyone gathered happily back together once again. And this was in the days before the wide use of e-mail, before Facebook and instant messaging and video calls and a million ways for the world to stay in touch from South Middleboro to the top of Mount Everest. Irregardless, I was lucky that my friend who moved to Oregon was an accomplished letter writer (and may be now the last person to send handwritten letters stuffed in envelopes affixed with stamps through the US postal system). And he came home to visit often enough that its likely I stayed in touch with him much better than I did with many people who still lived much closer to me.All these years later, we see each other once or twice a year if we're lucky, we use all the fancy techy doodads to communicate as much as we can, and it feels as natural a friendship as it ever did, despite the distance.

But about a month ago, a close friend of mine took off on a cross country trip of indeterminate length and destination. Even though I had gone almost 15 years without seeing this friend, over the past year or two we've become pretty close, once again, thanks in part to the wonders of technology, and more importantly through seeing him on a regular basis. But his departure seemed to hit me a little harder than my best friend's leaving had nearly 20 years before. And this is with knowing that with all the IMs and FBs I would still be in touch with him much more than I could have ever imagined being in touch with my friend who left decades earlier.

As we get older, the impermanence of time becomes more of a reality. I'm still expecting to be around for a very long time, but there is a realization that what can be lost might not come back, or if it does, it could be years, or even decades away. Just as youth brings promise, age brings reflection.

Been a while

2010-09-03T12:37:00.001-04:00

In all fairness, I did have the 2c4s thing going on the Facebook, which has only been withering on the vine for a month or two.

The big treat of coming back to blogger today was deleting about 100 spam comments. While I've been gone, EC certainly grew in popularity with those promoting lesbian gambling penis growth sites. Considered going back to comment moderation, but I think I will try to fill in the box with the nonsense phrases route for a while, see if that works.

Will probably link this to the ol' facebook. So far, this may be the most uninteresting post to ever mention lesbians and penis enhancement. I apologize. Hopefully back soon with more better stuff.

By request, 2C4S, 3/02

2010-03-03T10:12:00.001-05:00

I can tell by the message on my wall that it has been a few days. Possibly a week, or even more, since I last bedazzled you all with a fresh Too Cool. At this time, I find myself looking back a little bit to one of my first missives, the one, I believe, where I railed against the inanities of making New Year’s resolutions, while, most likely, I was compiling a list of things in the back of my mind that others might somehow consider resolutions. Hypocrite? Sure, why not. I guess there might have been a part of me that was trying to come at things a little more organically, rather than starting from scratch with some kind of New Year’s Powerpoint presentation on January 1.

So here we are, a little more than two months into the new year, far enough that it has lost some of that fresh, new year smell, but not so far that we should feel that we have not accomplished enough, not checked enough of our personal to do lists for the year. It is also sneaking up on slightly more than a month to go until my fortieth birthday, as good a time for personal stock taking as any other, as good as yesterday, as good as a 37th birthday or a 73rd birthday. And, as the year has progressed, it has been clear to me that there have been some changes, some slight reorganizations of my everyday life that seem positive and worth a mention.

I am still not exercising. Just thought I would get that one out of the way. But I have made some changes to be more aware of my health. The journey of a thousand steps begins with taking your vitamins everyday. Or something. Yes, I have been taking vitamins, I have tried to pay some attention to making dietary decisions that my heart will hopefully thank me for many, many years from now. I have gone at least one month without eating red meat. Since Carrie does not eat red meat, this typically translates to me not eating cheeseburgers from drive-throughs. I have not totally abandoned the Happy Meal place, but the prospect of chicken nuggets or a filet-o-fish is far less likely to pull me in. I do wish the suburbs of America were enlightened enough to have Falafel drive throughs. Other cultures do so much better at providing healthy eating options that actually taste good. In the US, seems like there are few options between eating a garden salad with flavorless chicken lumped on top or deep-frying something in lard. I’m feeling the no red meat plan should sail smoothly at least until grilling season. Cheeseburgers on the grill are about all I see myself craving at this point. I’m not even hankering for a steak. Frankly, steaks are one of the most disappointing foods on the planet. A great steak is a great steak, but 95 percent of the time, when I’ve had a steak, I’ve just felt it failed to live up to how good I wanted it to taste.

Successfully making the transition from afternoon coffee to afternoon green tea. Also eating at least a serving of nuts per day. Both those things are good for the heart. At least that’s what some article I read on Yahoo said. I’ll go with it …

Well, with the twin goals of not boring you too much in any single given day, and having something in the bank to write about real soon, I’m going to keep today’s musings strictly to the oh so exciting dietary changes I’ve made, and save the other random tidbits for another day. I gotta be able to respond quicker before KenNY comes after me on my wall again.

Today's rant

2009-12-21T10:39:00.001-05:00

All hail the myth of the lazy ass American student. Reading this article, I couldn’t help but think, that yes, there are lots of college students who spend too much time with their x-box hoohaa gadgety things and stay up late and party and don’t study like they should.

Then again, I’m sure some harried college professor could have written this same article in the 1950s and simply replaced x-box with crazy Elvis Presley rock and roll LPs. Do the foreign students who come to American colleges outperform American students and show more interest? I don’t necessarily doubt that. But that is not the same as saying that all foreign students outperform all American students. After all, the very small percentage of foreigners who are educated in the US are making tremendous sacrifices, traveling thousands of miles from home, often learning a new language and plopping themselves down in a foreign culture. Are the study habits of these very committed students the same as those who travel a couple of miles from the suburbs into St. Petersburg or Ho Chi Minh City Community College? If we take the reverse case, and look at the American students who travel to foreign countries to go to school, are they still the lazy video game players who can’t get shit done on time, or are they the ones who are dedicated and taking advantage of a rare opportunity?

Through the magic of Facebook, I am friends with two people who I have never met in person, who are probably on different ends of the political spectrum and live on different sides of the country. What do they have in common? They both teach at the college level? What else have I noticed about the two? They are both filled with praise for their students at the end of each semester.

Now I don’t doubt that all students could benefit from studying more, better time management, and a little time away from the beer and video games, but using a lame, age-old argument that’s probably been around since they popped the cork on the first keg of ale back in Harvard in 1640 is not going to convince me that the country is going to hell in a handbasket.

The weekend that was

2009-12-20T19:14:00.000-05:00

We are almost recovered from our Saturday out in the belly of the beast, also known as the Market Basket on the Saturday before Christmas and the day before a snow storm. Oddly enough, it was far from the worst I have ever seen the place. Sure, negotiating the corners around the aisles still took nerves of steel, stopping to spend more than three seconds in any one spot meant some nearsighted 90 year old would ram a carriage up your ass, and a sleeping bag was probably still needed= if you were going to take a number at the deli, but over all, it was not the apocalyptic end of days I was expecting. Still, even the best of days at the Market Basket can leave you scrambling to figure out just how much whiskey you have left in the cupboard when you get home.

Just some other randomness to throw out there, as the year comes to its natural calendar-imposed conclusion, it seems as good a time as any to make lists, take stock, look ahead, look back, etc., etc., etc. Not tonight, but there should be enough evergreen topics to grasp onto in the coming weeks. (I know somebody in the EC household loves the resolutions.)

Stopped by the Used Book Superstore (in the Market Basket plaza, by the way) the other day, and picked up a couple books for the unbeatable low price of $1.99 each. The UB Superstore isn't the sort of place you necessarily go when you are looking for a specific title, but with a pretty big selection and way cheap prices, it's hard to not find something worthwhile. This week, I picked up Adventures in the Buddha, an anthology of western writers who have gone to the East to study Buddhism, and a Donald Hall poetry anthology. Once again, poetry, religion, both fertile topics for future episodes, but not tonight.

Today's report

2009-12-18T18:09:00.000-05:00

1) So, there’s no half and half in the fridge at work today. Usually, when this happens, I am split down the middle as whether to drink my coffee black or add the nondairy creamer powder that comes in the industrial size BJs containers. Really, I should just stick to the black coffee in these situations. Even if I can’t really tell the difference in taste between the half and half and the powdered stuff, I inevitably spend my whole time drinking my coffee thinking “Wow, this stuff seems just like something that would cause cancer in lab rats.”

2) A good percentage of the time when I am debating the benefits and pitfalls of black coffee versus the white nondairy death powder at the coffee machine, there will be two or more of my coworkers discussing their fantasy football teams. I don’t know, I guess I don’t really get the appeal of fantasy football. It eats away at the concept of the team versus the individual when it comes to appreciating sports. Or maybe I just have enough other inane pursuits to eat up my day.

3) I need to read more. Books I mean. I’m thinking of coming up with some kind of position paper on my stance on Kindles and Nooks and other electronic book reading gizmo-type things. The Ludditte in me seems like they will never be able to replace the feeling you get from holding a tome of some weight and heft with actual moving pages in your hand, but the part of me that likes bright shiny things seems like it would love the chance to carry around a library of 100s of books in my back pocket and having instant access to hundreds of thousands of titles within a minute. Something to mutter to myself about at a future date, I suppose. Right now, I just need to read more books, no matter how they get to me.

Cookie DJ

2009-12-17T18:38:00.001-05:00

As the cookie baking extravaganza in our kitchen rolls toward C Day, I have begun to comfortably settle into my role in the whole flour- and sugar-encrusted process.

I am the cookie baking DJ.

Yes, occasionally I am entrusted with some other ancillary duties, such as drying dishes, digging spatulas out of the baking drawer, or unwrapping Hershey Kisses from the foil for insertion on top of the peanut butter chocolate kiss cookies, but my primary responsibility is as the late night Youtubin’ DJ who finds and plays the tunes that keep the kitchen moving and grooving along. (At this point, I must also point out the important role KenNY plays as the sous DJ, following along, sometimes leading with his own awesome tunes [minus 311] that make the whole holiday baking experience even more groove-worthy. I am fairly certain that he is also at home, virtually drying virtual cookie sheets and virtually finding virtual spatulas in the virtual baking drawer as the baking evening progresses.)

So what lessons have we learned when it comes to mixing baking with music? Without a doubt, there has to be a big groove and some kind of danceable aspect to the baking music. Giant cookie success has been had thus far with the beats of old skool hip hop and classic ska and reggae. We have also discovered that while the Grateful Dead may be a good choice for baking some kinds of brownies, not so much for the kind of brownies that don’t make you hungry for Cheetos.

But, you might ask, why not just play Christmas music while making Christmas cookies? Good question, glad you asked. For one thing, there may be a burnout factor of having listened to too much Christmas music too early in the season, which can quickly numb the brain when the two radio stations that play Christmas music play the same 25 songs over and over. Plus, it is a total waste of my kitchen talents if all I do is turn on the radio and then stand around and hope there is a heavy volume of cookie sheets to dry and spatulas to be found. (At this point, I should mention that Ethan has actually spent more time than I have this year using the mixer, adding ingredients, etc. I take this only as a validation of my awesome skills as a kitchen DJ, and not a knock at my actual cooking and baking skills.)

You might also ask, at this point, with many cookies left to bake, has the well run dry? Let me just tell you, I am still filled with ideas. I am thinking there will be at least one night of big band swinging cookie baking fueled by the sounds of Frank, Dino, Tony, Al and the boys. When you are entrusted with such awesome baking responsibilities as I am, after all, you have to keep the ingredients fresh.

Random thoughts, 12/15

2009-12-15T19:33:00.003-05:00

Devils Night Radio, available online and on iTunes radio under the alternative stream, is the greatest thing since sliced radio bread. Is it too obvious to say commercial radio sucks? Well, okay, sometimes I am obvious, it sucks and is dying a tortured, drawn out death. Satellite radio, iTunes, Pandora, and Lastfm are all viable options, but there is still something about an actual radio program, station, programmed by real people that can surprise you in ways that listening to your own record, mp3 collection can't.

And the fact that there is a radio station out there streaming over the waves of the internet that will play Dean Martin, Fear, Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny Cash, the Church, and the Real Kids within the same hour, and it wasn't programmed by me, warms my little musical heart, gives me hope that there is one small bastion of musical good taste holding strong against the forces of the GaGas, jonases, chris browns, ad whatever the hell sells for big time rocknroll these days.

I actually had higher hopes for this article about why one sports fan decided to pack it in, but it just kind of sat there and fizzled.

In short, I enjoy watching sports, but I do not belong to that segment of the sporting population that lives and dies by how the local team does. Red Sox on? Beats the hell out of three hours of reality crap programming on television. Red Sox blow a playoff game in astoundingly dumbfoundingly puzzling fashion? Well, I'll sleep tonight. The endless fascination over who will rotate in and out of left field or who will bat sixth during road games? Yeah, well, I've killed enough brain cells on my own and don't really feel the need to puzzle that one out in my spare time.

End of the Rock

2009-08-10T13:09:00.000-04:00

I was listening to the end days of WBCN on the way to work today, and it almost made me sad to lose something that hasn’t really been what they would like to think they’ve been for at least the past 15 years.

As they played The Kinks, into the Flaming Lips, into Johnny Cash, I was thinking that this would have been a really good radio station. Too bad that for more than a decade, WBCN was nothing more than a shadow of its former self, a station with a constant identity crisis. I’m pretty sure that the final benediction for WBCN won’t feature much Limp Bizkit, Korn, Creed or the other dregs of the 90s that they glommed onto for a time.

This is a station that found its only success in the wilderness years by paying for syndication rights to Howard Stern and lucking into New England Patriots game rights as the Patriots began their run of NFL domination. This is a station that turned to the heinous Opie and Anthony on several occasions in an attempt to make itself relevant. In a recent years, it has gone to playing a mix of the same old tired tunes, not too alternative, not too classic rock, that you can probably hum in your sleep.

So while I will miss all they stood for, maybe, and feel a little sad about missing out on the much cooler station many people who worked there perceived it to be, I’m sure there are plenty of other stations out there that can feed us a dispiriting mix of Foo Fighters songs and interchangeable DJs.

One quick venting thought

2009-07-24T08:28:00.000-04:00

I am friggin’ sick of the whole Gates mess from both sides. For people who think incidents like this open up a good debate, bullshit.For 99% of people, this is just an excuse for them to retreat to their respective political points on the spectrum and bang at the fucking thing with a hammer and try to make this square peg of a screw up on all sides fit into their round hole of belief.

The musical wall

2009-07-08T12:46:00.000-04:00

One of the benefits of working quietly in a windowless cube is that I get to put on my headphones and listen to my music, pretty much continuously, eight-and-a-half hours per day, if I so choose. With my iTunes collection approaching 3,000 songs, there’s typically something I feel like listening to, or I can simply hit shuffle and let the computer do the work.

Today, however, as occasionally happens, I hit the musical wall. I scrolled up and down my library, and not one blessed note was there that I wanted to listen to. Replacements, Ramones, Pulp, Miles Davis, way too much Grateful Dead that I had downloaded on the off chance that I someday would feel like listening to way too much Grateful Dead. Punk, jazz, classic rock, Britpop, rap, reggae, even some country stragglers. Nothing. I just stared blank-eyed at it all and was not moved.

Maybe it’s just the brain’s way of telling me we could all use a little quiet now and again. Or maybe it’s that there is something out there that I have enver heard before that will fill me with such musical astoundishment that the angels singing at the Pearly Gates will pale in comparison.

I’m open to suggestions.

Aaarrrghhh....

2009-06-18T17:18:00.000-04:00

When did low-hanging fruit become an overused business management term? The phrase, if in fact I have ever used it before, is now officially banished from my vocabulary, where it can feel free to drill down and think outside the box.

Great, the low-hanging fruit is followed up not just by a "win-win," but a "win-win-win."

[Shiver, shudder]

I might be even lamer than you think I am

2009-06-04T13:39:00.000-04:00

It is gorgeous out today.

I just took a ride to Starbucks, windows down, sunroof open, in my family-sized mini-SUV with the baby seat in back, blasting midtempo country rock, and got a flavored frozen drink.

That’s right. I’m a badass.

This is probably a good indication of why I never became the next Einstein

2009-05-28T12:42:00.000-04:00

As I'm sure was the case in many schools, my junior high science fair was pretty much the highpoint of the academic calendar when I was growing up. Curious kids competing for the right to win a blue ribbon and have a grainy picture with the school superintendent taken for the local paper.

Volcanoes made out of silly putty, baking soda, and red Jell-o. Working scale model versions of the space shuttle. Genetic DNA strands made out of paper clips and construction paper and coconut flakes, sentient robot dogs that can do the New York Times crossword puzzle, all the standard cool stuff.

And then there were my projects. I was never in any danger of having a grainy photograph taken with the superintendent.

Not only were my projects half-ass and uninspired, they also caused undue grief for my mother. Let me explain:

Seventh grade: Photosynthesis. Not a bad choice, although I think I chose it because it was the first topic that I came across in the 25-year-old science book I had been given by my uncle. Oh yeah, and because all I needed to do was take one of my Mom's African violets. And put it near a window. And forget to water it. There was also somehow a ruler involved, which I measured how much the plant grew due to the wondrous effects of the sun. Somehow, even without water, the plant managed to grow enough, or at least lean in the direction of the sun enough, for me to finish my paper and cart the thing to school on the bus.

Even though I was no where close to being a science fair winner, what with a half-dead plant plastered in front of a white poster board with the word "Photosynthesis" scrawled across it in an unsteady green marker while robot dogs were doing the New York Times crossword puzzle next to me, I did manage to score a gentleman's B for the project, largely due to the fact that, although I couldn't conduct a science experiment to same Madam Curie's life, I was more capable than most at stringing coherent thoughts together for the written portion of the project. (Wow, that was a really long sentence, sorry.)

Oh yeah, I also forgot to take the half-dead African violet home, much to my mother's chagrin. No strike that, not chagrin, more like anger. I believe my mother had to call the school and stage a rescue mission for the plant.

Which meant that my science fair project for
Eighth grade: Would not involve the use of any of my mother's possessions. Yet somehow, my mother was not all that pleased with this project, either.

Probably because my room stank like vinegar for a month. Once again, I chose a project which required little to no actual effort. Instead of watching a plant die through the magic of photosynthesis, I measured the evaporation rate of water versus the evaporation rate of vinegar.
That's right, basically, I stuck a ruler in a bowl of water and a bowl of vinegar every couple days as my bedroom began to smell more and more like a sauerkraut factory. I'm sure it was the same method Dr. Salk used to cure polio.

For this project, I'm pretty sure my mother was happy to never see or smell the offending bowl of vinegar again, even if it did mean that she lost a couple of Tupperware bowls in the bargain.

Once again, I got the gentleman's B for a project that consisted of two plastic bowls sitting in front of a poster board with the "evaporation" scrawled unevenly in blue marker.

And I never did get that scholarship to MIT.

I ain't got crap to eat for lunch

2009-05-21T12:46:00.000-04:00

This morning, I am getting ready for work, packing up my lunch, putting my bags near the door to take out to the car, trailing behind the toddler and picking up the pieces of cinnamon bread he is leaving around the house, when I notice a certain distinctive smell emanating from said toddler’s backside.

Put down my lunch, change the toddler, throw the offending diaper in the trash, and put the trash bag to go outside, since today is trash day. The missus finishes getting the toddler ready for daycare, and I take our bags out to our cars. Mind you, I have the smelly diaper trash bag in one hand, my delicious fish and chips that the missus made in another plastic bag in the other hand.

I’m pretty sure you can now see where this story is heading ...

I’m driving to work, and I notice a certain distinctive smell emanating from the plastic bag which until recently I had assumed contained the missus’ delicious fish and chips.

I suppose the only upside to this story is that I caught this mix up before getting to work, saving me the embarrassment of carrying the said bag with the distinctive smell into the office, putting it in the refrigerator, and then opening it up at the lunch table.

The Jazz Age

2009-05-12T10:03:00.001-04:00

Even back in high school, I had been a dabbler in jazz. Had some Monk, Miles and Coltrane. Good stuff, but not enough to take up any significant percentage of my record collection. And when Mrs. Ec and I started dating, I'd usually throw on the jazz show on WGBH at night if we were just hanging out. Nice background music, but just as easily could have been classical music.
And that's about where the jazz stayed in my musical universe for about the next five or six years, an enjoyable but occasional change of pace. And then something changed. I don't know if it was the change of the millennium, turning 30, or what, but I began turning to jazz in a big way.

Miles, Monk, Mingus, Brownie, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon. It was a time in my life when I still loved music, but rock had lost some its luster and spontaneity for me. Even though the jazz I prefer is at least 40 years old, I found the same kind of excitement I that I had when I first discovered punk rock. And while punk was fast and exciting, the hard bop jazz I learned to love had those attributes with the addition of being played by musicians with incredible technical skill. Listening to the Clifford Brown/Max Roach band is to hear music that is at once incredibly powerful and played at the highest level.

Jazz, at its best, combines the thrill of improvisation within a tightly honed group. While I doubt I'll ever be someone who listens to only jazz—I just love too many types of music too much—it does take up more of my listening time. While I am happy these days to download a rock song or two here or there if I like it, jazz is now the one genre where I can still be a little obsessive about owning complete albums and knowing who played with who on what session.

My life as a reporter - the high

2009-05-07T12:37:00.000-04:00

I sat next to him on the couch as he slowly flipped through a yellowing scrapbook filled with newspaper clippings and black and white photographs.

He would have been a great small town paper interview subject for any number of reasons. Lifelong resident, former school committee member, respected doctor, amateur jazz musician. Hell, he was even the uncle of a famous professional wrestling champion.

But what brought me to his immaculately kept home on that day was the images in that scrapbook and his memory of the events he witnessed the day a number of those photographs were taken. December 7, 1941. He had been attending a church service when the first Japanese planes began they're deadly run. Within hours, nearly 1,500 American servicemen were dead, the American naval fleet laid in tatters, and any pretense Americans had of staying on the sidelines while war waged around the rest of the globe was gone.

And I was sitting next to a man who was there, who had seen his friends die, who had experienced what had started as a day much like any other and ended as a traumatic milestone in American history.

Honestly, I don't remember a lot of the details he told me about what happened On December 7, 1941. But there is one thing he told me that I will never forget.

"I still have trouble sleeping at night sometimes. I have nightmares about that day that wake me up," he told me.

A week later, after the story ran in my paper, I got a voicemail from the man's wife. She told me that her husband had teared up when he read the story, that of all the newspaper stories that had been written about his experience at Pearl Harbor, mine had been the one that told it the closest to the way it had actually been.

Of my several modest achievements as a reporter, that is the single one that I am proudest of. For all the countless opinions that have been bandied about lately about the importance of journalism, in my opinion, it boils down to one thing: Telling an interesting or important story, and telling it well.

The Day the Music Died

2009-04-30T15:10:00.001-04:00

As a child, I had two brief forays into actually learning how to play music. In fourth grade, I took trumpet lessons in school for about half the year. Luckily for my parents, I didn't practice much. This may be one of the times when my parents were glad that I didn't put too much effort into something, given the ungodly racket a fourth grader with a discount school-issued trumpet can make. About all I remember from my trumpeting days is the spit valve. It was even messier than it sounds. It would take about 20 years, when I started listening to a lot of Miles Davis and Clifford Brown, before I had any misgivings at all about giving up the instrument.

Around the same general time frame, I also took guitar lessons from my uncle's friend Jim. This is the one which should have been an inspiring story, but instead, became just another vaguely amusing footnote. What songs was I badly mangling? Beatles songs. And what year was it? 1980. I remember I had a guitar lesson on December 8 of that year, the day John Lennon was killed. Should have inspired me to reach great musical heights.

But, once again, I didn't practice and quit taking lessons shortly. These days, BB EC has a better shot at playing an in-tune She Loves You on the acoustic guitar. And my destiny of being the guy who plays a very bad version of Imagine in the neighborhood bar was never realized

My life as a reporter - the low

2009-04-12T20:35:00.000-04:00

I was soaking wet, ringing a doorbell in the a torrential storm, looking to get a quote from a man accused of raping his granddaughter.

No immediate answer. Then I hear a dog barking. For the first time in my life, I am going to get a pack of dogs set on me. Standing there, soaking wet, without an umbrella, because I never remember to carry a god damned umbrella, waiting for someone to open the door, so I can then ask him for a comment about allegedly raping his granddaughter and preparing to be mauled by a rabid Rottweiler.

Did I miss the fucking class in journalism school that would have explained how to handle this situation, about what made it worthwhile to get paid less than most migrant workers for the honor and the glory of spending hours in a courthouse, reading unimaginably lurid details of a supposed crime that made me want to vomit all over the clerk of courts front desk. Not to mention the fact that my overall gut instinct was that this could all be some horrible family dispute that got way out of hand, that the guy likely didn't do what he was accused of. If it was clear he was such a monster, why had he been released on $1,000 cash bail? Why wasn't he locked up in the cargo bay of a pirate ship off the coast of Somalia, waiting to be used as shark bait?

Another added bonus that was part of the whole situation. The accused grandfather rapist lived directly next door to my newspaper's office. Meaning that from here on out, coming to my office meant not only would I have to put up with my odious prick of a boss, but I would also have to worry about some revenge-crazed accused rapist jumping out of the bushes and attacking me with this garden weasel.

Why the fuck hadn't I majored in accounting?

I ring the doorbell one last time. Now I can see the dog, and it's a golden retriever, slightly easing my fears of being mauled.

But behind the dog is an even more awful site. The accused rapist's wife is coming to answer the door. A sweet-looking, gray-haired lady of about 65. At this point, I would have given anything to face the imaginary rabid Rottweiler and the garden weasel-toting rapist rather than asking this woman for a comment on her husband assaulting her granddaughter.

"Can I help you?" she asks.

"Ahh, yeah, umm, I'm from the newspaper next door and I was wondering, ahhh, if Mr. X is home and has a comment on his, his, uhhh, legal iss..."

"Get Out of Here and Don't You ever Come Back!"

Door slams in my face. I am left drenched in the torrential rain. I drudge through the puddles, back to my office, back to my odious prick of a boss.

In which me and my best friend think about rocking the world, then drink beer instead ...

2009-04-03T13:31:00.003-04:00

It was a brilliant idea. Okay, we probably didn’t even think it was that hot of an idea when we first came up with it, but it was an idea. Randy and I, true connessiurs of all non-Living Color music, would rock the world with our own band. Of course, the path to fame and glory is never easy, and Randy and I confronted several problems right off the bat. But we were not deterred from our dreams of one day creating the music that would serve as the soundtrack to some crappy laser light show.

First problem, neither one of us knew how to play, or even owned, an instrument. Somehow, our addled brains got us far enough to determine that I would play guitar, and Randy would play drums. Or Randy would play bass and I would play drums. Or I would play the washboard and Randy would

blow into an empty moonshine jug. As for learning to rock, Randy decided that his brother Roger would teach whichever one of us was the guitar player how to play guitar. I preferred the option of having Kenny teach us, so we could hit the stage and play a neverending loop of the first 30 seconds of Sweet Child O’ Mine.

Second problem we had was that there were only two of us. In those heady pre-White Stripes days, a two-person rock and roll combo was virtually unheard of, unless we decided we wanted to be the Everly Brothers. I think we recruited our friend Dave to play whichever instrument the two of us weren’t going to pick up and master in a matter of weeks. I don’t think it ever got to the point that Dave knew he was in our band. He would have just slowed us down with a desire to play Rush covers, anyway.

And that’s as far as it got, although I think I did suggest the name Slaughterhouse Five for our band. Randy thought it was a stupid name. And he was right. I’m hoping someday we can put our artistic differences aside and launch a reunion tour.

Radio from a different time

2009-03-28T08:16:00.003-04:00

Boston radio legend Larry Glick died last week. I was pretty much a young'un when I listened to Larry Glick on WBZ radio, so I don't have a lot of memories of his characters or what he talked about to while away the midnight hours, but I do remember the thrill of listening to my transistor radio under my pillow when I should have been sleeping. While a lot of kids would sneak in the flashlight and comic books after lights out, I was definitely a radio guy.

I do remember that listening to Larry Glick when I was 10-years-old was like being let into a secret grown-up world that mixed a good amount of silliness and gentle absurdity into the issues of the day. Unlike today's talk radio world filled with yelling, screaming and rigid talking points from the left and the right, Larry Glick was kind to his listeners and callers, almost to a fault. He was a friend to insomniacs and third-shifters of all sizes and stripes all across the Eastern seaboard. Some nights, it seemed the show served as a sympathetic ear for some lonely people who may have had few other friends. And God bless Larry, not only did he provide an outlet to let a lot of people feel better about themselves and their lives, but he could also make it interesting radio for all of us listening in the dark.

I'd hate to think what Larry would have thought of all the current crop of political and sports shouters and haters that muck up most of the current air waves. Who knows, maybe he would have taken it all with a grain of salt and been able to get them to calm down a little bit. Next caller ...

A very short post for those of you who are still trying to finish my last one, or who ignored it altogether because it was too freakin' long

2009-03-25T20:06:00.002-04:00

If the economy is in the tank, how come it took me longer to find a parking space at the Burlington Mall on Saturday than it does on the weekend before Christmas.

See, with pithy observations like that, I'll be doing open mike night at the Giggle Hut any day now.

This may very well be the original Endangered Coffee post, even though it was written years before I had heard of this thing called a "Web log"

2009-03-19T20:13:00.005-04:00

So here it is, a little something I wrote back about a decade ago, which I have misplaced on numerous occasions, but which my best friend has kindly kept in his e-mail file for nearly 10 years. I don't think Winner's Advertising is around any more, but there I think there are still a lot of similar "promotional" companies out there ...

I should have known.

I should have known right from the get-go that interviewing with a company that schedules anyone who can ready the Sunday paper and dial the phone was a bad idea.
But what the hell, it was a slow Sunday, the future Mrs. EC was working, the football game was on but Bledsoe was doing his best Tony Eason impression, hitting Bills defenders between the numbers when he was getting decapitated by slow-footed linemen, and the help-wanted section of the Globe was sitting in front of me. Why not circle some adds, make some calls and see what happens?

So I get an interview scheduled with Winners Advertising. Winners Advertising. Another sign. I should have known that any company that has to call itself Winners Advertising has some sort of serious corporate esteem problem. Kind of like if I started my own newspaper and called it the Really Excellent Gazette. Who the hell would I be fooling?
Mass interviews. I should have known. One o’clock? Fill out this form and sit with the other half-dozen prospective employees also scheduled for a one-o’clock interview. Christ, I think, this is going to be one of those standing in the mall, holding a clipboard, asking people what they think about Pepsi commercials jobs.
But hey, the actual “pre-interview” went well and helped shoved the initial warning signs to the back of my addled mind.
“You’ll get trained in all aspects of the business- sales, marketing, public relations and management,” I’m told. I’ll be creative, I’ll have people working under me. If I get the job, I’ll be handling accounts and could be moved up to an entry-level management position inside of six months.
Not bad. A job where I can pick up some skills to complement what I’ve learned in my five years as a reporter. Make myself marketable down the line for a wide-range of business and public relations positions.
I get the callback for a second interview later that night. All the warning signs -the mass interviews, the desperately placed phone number in the help wanted section, the cattle call interviews -are a distant memory.

I drop my suit off at the cleaners, I put in for a personal day off from work, I get a haircut, shine my shoes, pick out the best tie to go with my charcoal-striped suit coat. I am ready. I have an extensive eight-hour interview planned so I can view the inner workings of a growing advertising company and have them judge my worthiness for employment.
I am prepared.

Yet still.

I should have known.
Friday morning, 11 a.m. Time has come for my all day interview with Winners Advertising. Still excited, thinking I have a real chance to get somewhere with this company. It’s all due to a positive attitude. See, I tell myself, you really don’t need to carry that protective layering of cynicism around with you.
From this point on, the warning come rumbling back and erupt into a full-fledged code-red, nuclear panic. Within an hour, I’m weighing the possible injuries associated with ditching out of a moving car in Cambridge with the benefits, namely, getting away with everyone and everything that has to do with Winners Advertising.

Within the span of this first hour is when I first realized my guide into the world of Winners Advertising for the day, Todd, was not taking me to meet with high powered business clients about their latest corporate campaingns. Oh no, I was heading to Cambridge to knock on people’s doors to ask them if they were interested in buying coupons good toward free meals at some new restaurant in Kendall Square.
When Todd handed my the little coupon books and made perfectly clear what the day would consist of is when I knew I wouldn’t take a job with Winners Advertising even if I was offered my own Winners automobile and a Winners mansion with a panoramic view of Lake Winner.
And the warning signs before I got to the streets of Cambridge with Todd intent on selling coupon books to all the domestic help and trusting old ladies who happened to be home and open the doors of some very exclusive Cambridge addresses?

Yeah, they were there. Perhaps I’m to blame. Perhaps I had more than enough warning to get back in my Hyundai and putter out of the parking lot before becoming a promotional foot soldier for an afternoon.
Perhaps the fact that Todd looked younger than the student representative on the School Committee I cover. Most likely the fact that when Todd asked when I could start working, giving a two-week notice at my current job didn’t seem like a good enough answer.
“We’re looking for people who can start immediately,” he told me.
Of course. All the best companies are looking for help who can drop their current job at a moment’s notice. If you want to work for a winner, I guess it helps to be unemployed or a transient who can jump right into the high-profile advertising world.
In the car, the warning signs came so fast I quickly advanced from slightly puzzled to dazed to angered to total lack of interest in anything winner-like.

This is all happening while I’m stuck in a car with Todd heading toward Cambridge. Todd quizzes me about my business knowledge in a vaguely condescending way that makes me want to vaguely put my well-polished shoe up his ass. Later, I’ll figure out that this is most likely part of the expert training he has received and that I shouldn’t take his artificial and condescending manner too personally. He was probably scarred with it as part of his Winner training. When I ask him questions, he sees like a reasonably pleasant kid who graduated from URI with a general business degree last spring and started working in the world of winners in August.
Which of course brings up further troubling questions, such as if Todd has only been with the company for three months, hell, if he’s only had a job in the real world for three months, and he’s already far enough up the company ladder to interview prospective new employees, should I worry about how long this company holds onto workers?
At some point shortly after this, I’m suitably unimpressed with the story of how a Winners Advertising saved the New York Yankees for George Steinbrenner by handing out free tickets to 100 home games in 1996.
“Do you know what was going on baseball in 1995 and why baseball attendance might have been down?” Todd asks me in the condescending advertising voice.
Umm, war, strife, disease… a baseball strike perhaps?
Long story short, Winners Advertising saves the day by somehow reaching out to 99% of the people in the New York area and Yankees attendance increases by a huge percentage. Silly me, all this time I thought it was because the Yankees started to put together a killer team in 1996 and won the first of three championships in four years. But, as Paul Harvey would say, now I know the rest of the story.

And on my day to follow one of these saviors of the corporate world around, we are going to establish a new Italian restaurant in Cambridge as the next Olives. By knocking on every goddamn door in Cambridge. During my pre-interview, I was told that Winners Advertising doesn’t do telemarketing. Nope. They go the extra mile in pissing people off by actually knocking on people’s doors in the middle of the day. Why give people the opportunity to hang up on you when you can actually draw them away from whatever their doing in the privacy of their own homes and make them answer the door.

Before leaving the advertising office in Woburn, when I still think I might be applying for a legitimate job I might be qualified for, some exceedingly cheerful manager named Liz tells me to ask lots of questions and gather as much information about the business as possible. Once I’m on the street with Todd, one of the first important lessons I learn from Todd is that Jehovah’s Wintesses usually travel in pairs and are usually well-dressed young man. To combat the negative connotations of being sterotyped as Jehovah’s Witnesses, Todd has me take off my suit jacket and put on a fleece. He also tells me that Jehovah’s Witnesses also stand side by side when they knock on doors, so I’m instructed to hang back a little when we go to houses. Apparently, it’s better to look like a shifty-eyed criminal who is casing a building for a break-in than to look like a religious fanatic. Granted, that probably is a toss-up, but I digress.

By the time I’m wearing Todd’s fleece and being instructed on how to avoid acting like a Jehovah’s Witness, I’ve decided there is no way in hell I’ll ever do this job. I start looking around for any T stations in the area I can make a break for if only I hadn’t left my suit jacket in Todd’s car. I also definitely piss away any chance I might have at getting this job by launching into a rambling monologue about how I like it when Jehovah’s Witnesses come to my door because it gives me someone to talk to about my Pembroke Welsh Corgis. I think I also offhandedly use a profanity during the telling of this story, shit, I think. Because I certainly don’t give a shit how I get evaluated by Todd

..and I never did get the job. Todd had to break the news to me that I would not be a winner. Along the way, prior to crushing my winning dreams, Todd tries to sell the coupon books to a grieving family preparing for a funeral, as well as to many housekeepers at some of Cambridge's finer addresses. I am also let into the secrets of selling, which as far as I could figure at the time, consisted of nodding your head up and down in a yes-like fashion whenever you were asking someone if they wanted to buy something.

Oh yeah, we didn't unload one damn coupon book, either.

10 possible thoughts going through the mind of a coworker I caught pulling my Swanson's Hungry Man box out of the trash in the lunch room

2009-03-18T13:03:00.005-04:00

Hungry Man? Well, I'm a man, and I'm hungry, where would I go about finding one of these things?
What the hell kind of idiot still eats this kind of crap? The sodium alone will probably send him into a coma.
Chicken Parmigain? Everyone knows the only Hungry Man dinner worth two shits is the Salisbury Steak with mashed potatoes.
What kind of moron threw away this perfectly recyclable box?
I wonder if they make these for women?
Oh, shit. This guy just caught me going through his trash. Just act natural and keep reading it like it's the sports section or something.
Six to seven minutes? Who has that kind of time?
Here I am with my Budget Gourmet. What kind of preening Mr. Moneybags is showing me up with a full-priced frozen dinner?
I wonder if they use free range chicken?
What? Chicken isn't even one of the top six ingredients?

I'd be willing to take any other suggestions on the matter.

Where Mommy's coffee?

2009-03-13T20:30:00.007-04:00

There's nothing more heartwarming and heart tugging than being a parent and having your two-year old shed a tear at the prospect of you heading to work or out of the house for a while.

Unless you're the dad who gets left behind.

I was home with Big Boy EC for the morning while Mrs. EC was heading off to a meeting at work. The tears started almost as soon as she put on her coat to go while BB EC was strapped into his booster seat nibbling on a banana and some cinammon swirl toast.

"Where's Mommy going? Mommy stay here!"

We tried to answer by explaining the American capitalist system, that Mommy and Daddy have to work to be able to buy him toast and bananas and Thomas trains. BB EC was not taken in by our Cliffs Notes economic lecture.

"Mommy Don't Go." Tears. Mommy explains that she will be home for lunch. No go.

Finally, as all good parents do, we broke out the big guns.

"Mommy will bring you home a happy meal," the missus told him.

"Happy Meal?" BB EC sniffles. "Fries?

"Yes, fries."

"Cheeburga?"

"Yes, we'll get you a cheeseburger, but we have to wait to lunch time."

"Shake?"

For a two year old who, I swear, doesn't have fat food that much, BB EC is intimately familiar with the McDonald's menu. I expect him to start asking when they are going to bring back the McRib sandwich. Once the Happy Meal negotiations are squared away, Mrs. EC is able to get out the door with a minimum of tears.

This lasts for maybe four or five minutes. Once BB EC realizes that Mommy isn't coming back immediately, at 8:30 in the morning, with a Happy Meal, the crying starts again. "Where's Mommy?" We run to the front door and show how far our motor skills have advanced by undoing three different types of lock on the door. We run crying to the window, looking for Mommy's car. I try to distract him with books, but its a no go. We recreate the island of Sodor on the living room coffee table, but someone is just pissed that Mommy isn't waiting with Thomas at the train station. "Where Mommy? Happy Meal?" I once again make the mistake of using logic with a two year old, telling BB EC that Mommy is at work, and that McDonald's won't be making Happy Meals for at least another two hours. I keep Egg McMuffins out of the discussion, for fear of future morning repurcussions. The logic doesn't work, more red-faced screaming. I think that some music might help calm the situation, so I throw some Beatles in the CD player. Who doesn't like the Beatles? When Mommy is away, apparently BB EC doesn't like the Beatles. He runs screaming to the CD player, hits the tuner button so it changes to a staticky radio station, and cranks the volume up to about 30, and runs back to pout on the couch.

After about a half-hour of similar fun toddler activities, BB EC starts to simmer down a little, and brings me one of his favorite Max and Ruby books for us to read. As we snuggle on the couch and read, about halfway through Bunnycakes, he looks up on the top of the TV cabinet and sees my coffee mug.

"Daddy's coffee," he tells me.

"Yes, very good, that is Daddy's coffee." Good sign, he is quiet and interested in Daddy's things.

Suddenly, he lets out a little cry.

"Where Mommy's coffee?"

Luckily, this is one of the parting shots of the missing mommy meltdown morning, and we spend the rest of the morning playing happily until Mommy and his Happy Meal come home. After lunch, I head to work and get home around six.

BB EC runs to see me as soon as I get in the door.

"Did you miss me when I left?" I ask, wondering if he carried on for 45 minutes, pining for my missing coffee mug."

"For a minute," he tells me.

I am not exactly what you would call smooth on my feet.

2009-03-07T20:41:00.002-05:00

Mrs. EC and I took swing and salsa dancing lessons in Medford a couple of years ago.Mrs.EC was very good. To say I had two left feet would be an insult to left feet everywhere. Let’s just say that after four weeks, Mrs. EC was ready to do all sorts of swooping, jiving, spinning moves. I was happy that I had almost mastered the rock step. One, two, three four and back two three four. And this was only with Michael Jordanesque amounts of concentration, sweat and focus.
The instructors were very sweet, but for the first time in my life, I was in a “classroom” setting where I was the one who needed the extra help.
Once per class, the dance teacher would take my hand and try to show me how not to trip all over myself.
“There, loosen up, listen to the groove of the music,” she would say.
Every week, I would make the same spastic steps and lurch toward the center of the dance floor. Whatever groove was going on in my head apparently had more to do with some kind of Devo song than with whatever swing classic was playing over the sound system.For someone who loves music so much, missing the beat that badly was a source of great embarrassment.

Eventually, the instructors must have felt bad for Mrs. EC, so I got stuck in the remedial dance group while Mrs. EC got to go off and dance with people who had graduated beyond the modified stutter step. The missus got to do the advanced moves while I swayed gently back and forth with a group of middle-aged who probably hand’t left the house since the Carter administration. Having almost mastered the box step, I was far and away the Baryshnikof of this group.

“That’s good,” the instructor would say to the ladies. “You’re moving your feet one after the other. It’s called DANCING. Good job. Those sounds you hear with your ears are called MUSIC. Very good ladies. And EC.”

Eventually, I got to dance with Mrs. EC again, and although not up to her level, at least I didn’t hurt her or myself.

Sometimes, we’ll be at weddings, and people will comment on what good dancers we are. Guess my remedial lessons paid off.

If Mel Gibson makes another Mad Max movie, it will be set in a Market Basket on a Saturday

2009-03-01T19:34:00.008-05:00

First, let me speak in praise of the Market Basket. It is a store with a good selection and prices that are considerably lower than any other supermarket around.

Of course, those low prices are countered by the fact that it feels like you went 12 rounds with Mike Tyson, circa 1985, in order to save that $30 off your bill.

The fun starts in the parking lot before you even get in the door. Cars line up on Friday night to snag spots on Saturday morning. Cars litter the side of the road like its the second day of Woodstock while stalkers with their directionals permanently on

slowly circle shoppers heading back to their cars, hoping to land a valuable piece of asphalt real estate.

Once you're lucky enough to snag a parking spot and a carriage, it's time to enter the crucible. Since, to its credit, the Market Basket constantly has all of its registers open, along with some satellite registers located somewhere down between the cheese shop and the flower display, every customer coming into the store is faced with only one way into the main part of the store. Anyone who has tried to leave Foxboro after a Patriots game or a concert can appreciate the frustration of the funnelling effect that seems to send thousands of cars or customers through a single four-foot opening. Except that in the case of the Market Basket, that four foot opening is surrounded by mile-high stacks of pastries, cookies, Ho-Hos and Ring-Dings. Just perfect for people like me and Mrs. EC, who are trying to push a grocery cart through the eye of a needle. Soon as Big Boy EC sees the cookies, he's into snack mode hyper overdrive.

"Cookie, Cookie, Cake!"

Depending on the parenting mood for the day, we either try to gently explain that you can't always get cookies everytime you ask for them as lines of angry shoppers trying to get to the dairy section bottleneck behind us, or, as more likely is the case, we grab a container of donut holes as we fly by, and let BB EC dig in as we try to find a little bit of breathing space nudged up against the display of two-pound Velveeta blocks.

The rest of the shopping trip is a blur of attempting to cross off all the items on the shopping list while staving off a constant barrage of shopping cart attacks from customers young and old. Retired folks meander through the aisles, making sure to gently run their carts over the tops of your toes. Anytime you think there might be a little running room in an aisle, some family of 12 comes careening around the corner, parking their cart in front of you and arguing about what kind of Pop Tarts they should buy this week. For good measure, employees will also wheel out towering pallets of breakfast cereal during the busiest part of the day, drop them in the middle of the floor, and then stare idly at the shelves.

By far, though, the worst crush of humanity in the store is at the deli counter. Trying to buy some American cheese and a half-pound of turkey turns into an endurance contest, as Market Basket may be the only grocery store in the world that has deli tickets that run into five digits. I'm pretty sure that one week, by the time I got my roast beef and muenster, Mrs. EC had finished shopping, gone home, and come back next Saturday for the next week's shopping.

And once all the shopping is done and whatever grab bag of groceries you might have been able to pull off from an open space in the shelves is in the cart. It's time to wait in the checkout line. Because of the great hordes waiting to pay for the groceries, Market Basket has very specific rules for making sure there is room for everyone in the lines, such as making sure everyone is standing on top of their carts.

By the time our endless shopping excursion is over, I'm not sure if we need an oxygen mask or a stiff drink.

I have not become any less idiotic during my absence

2009-02-25T21:04:00.003-05:00

I'm a doofus, I make no secret of this, although I generally try hard not to publicize my more oafish ways while I'm at work. You know, I try to stay professional and such. Which typically works out fine for me, until I am faced with a task as complex and mind-bendingly difficult as opening a door.

In my defense, my office has a very convoluted door situation. We all have keycards that open about one-third of the doors, some doors are always left open, one door has a keypad lock, and some doors are closed but have no locks.

So, the other day I am walking down the hall and am confronted by a door which has always been open, yet is now closed. Looks just like the last door I went through, so I try to open it with the handle. No go.

"What the hell," I mutter to myself, continuing to jiggle the handle. Doesn't look like it was locked at the handle. Getting nowhere, I begin to inspect the top of the door. Looks like it should open. I begin banging on the door, thinking it may be stuck. I look around for large pieces of wood that I could use for leverage.

I'm about five seconds away from throwing my shoulder into the damn thing, when a coworker comes up behind me.

"Ummm, I think you need your keycard to open that," she tells me.

"Yeah, ah, okay. I'm an idiot."

Sported out

2008-08-01T13:03:00.002-04:00

I'm afraid you'll think of me as being less manly if I admit I am sported out. To make up for it, I'll probably have to wear a toolbelt while grilling strip sirloins on the top of my Dodge-hemi pickup truck. But I really don't care one way or the other that the Red Sox traded Manny or that they've lost 36 straight games to the Angels. I don't care that the Patriots have started training camp and will try to make amends for the most disheartening near-perfect season in the history of sports.

I'm just tired. Maybe I'm spoiled by all the success Boston teams have had over the past decade. Maybe I'm sick of the insane focus and importance that is placed by the media on a bunch of men playing games. But I'm just not feeling it this summer.

Granted, I've never been the rah-rah, yell at the television sort of sports fan, but chances are, if I had a remote in my hand and no complaints from the gallery, I'd be switching to the ballgame. This year, I don't think I've watched more than two or three innings of any Red Sox game.

Trading Manny likely won't help draw me back in. I've always been a big Manny fan, not so much because of his skills, but because he sends the chattering classes of sports reporters and fat, dopey, middle-aged sports radio hosts into apoplectic seizures.

HE'S RUINING THE INTEGRITY OF THE GAME!

What integrity? The integrity of the game that's been overrun by steroid monkeys for the past 20 years? The integrity of the game the didn't let black people join in the fun until after World War II? A game where grown men wearing pajama pants held up by leather belts try to hit a ball with a stick?

I've always found it ridiculous that the pundits are so willing to praise the hardworking, blue collar types who are as boring as a concrete post. What the hell? Even the blue collar ballplayers make millions of dollars a year. If you really like hardworking overachievers, go outside and cheer the next time the garbage man picks up your trash. Try to sell me that crap about some guy who makes more for an at-bat than I make in a month, I'm sorry, but I'm not buying.

But even Manny lost me, as I'm sure he did a lot of fans, when he smacked around a 60-year-old man. If he had stuck to belting Youkilis around, I probably could have lived with it.

Of course, I've felt like this before about sports, but it's usually been after some bonecrushing defeat, like in the 2003 ALCS. This time, it feels like things have run their course for a while. I guess there's always the chance that Jason Bay will grow dreadlocks and get into a fight with Jason Varitek, but it seems like a longshot.

Back to the future

2008-07-18T10:32:00.006-04:00

Maybe it was the Celtics-Lakers final, maybe it was (thankfully) missing my 20th high school reunion, or maybe it's just my inability to keep up with all the IPhoning, Facebooking, Twittering and Plurking technology, but lately, I've been getting kind of wistful with the idea of finding a manual typewriter and a turntable and locking myself up back in the 1970s somewhere. I know that if I did make this fantasy a reality, it would last for about two weeks before I realized why technology, maddening as it can be, has moved us forward. After all, it can be damn hard to e-mail, blog, or hell, even cut and paste with a Smith Corona (unless you actually, you know, use scissors and paste). And vinyl records are notorouisly hard to play in cars and even in the best of situations, you have to flip the darn things over every 20 minutes.

Still...

There's something to be said for the sensory experience of holding a vinyl album or watching it spin around and around (BB EC would love that) on the turntable. Or clacking away on typewriter keys late into the night, feeding individual pieces of paper into the machine, crumpling up bad drafts and tossing them into the trash barrel. In both instances, it feels like we've sacrificed something material for convenience. When you listen to a record, there is something there, when you finish typing, there is physical evidence of your work. With mp3s and computer files, it's just a bunch of blips and numbers that we trust in the machines to save and keep safe for us.

Which all sounds nice, but if I did lose my iBook, I'd be pretty damned depressed.

Reunion

2008-07-10T20:58:00.006-04:00

There haven't been a lot of updates from the world of EC lately, so it might seem odd that I'm suing this opportunity to write about something I didn't do, rather than something I did do.It was tough, but I managed to avoid my 20th high school reunion. Normally, avoiding a high school reunion is not such a tough thing for me to do, since I see, or at least have some type of contact with, everyone I graduated with that I care to keep in touch with on occasion, and it doesn't cost me $120 to eat appetizers and listen to music I hated the first time around played very loudly by an obnoxious DJ. But this year, I almost made it, mainly because my best friend was driving out from Oregon with his family to attend and had offered to stay at my house, since I live in the same town where the reunion was to take place. Unfortunately, (for the most part), Mrs. E.C. got sick near the date of the reunion, and that was the final push for me to stay home.

"Oh no, honey, you're under the weather, we must not risk venturing out of the house and having your condition worsen, which is a distinct possibility if you are exposed to bad 80s music and a bunch of people I didn't care for too much 20 years ago," I told her.
Mrs. EC, who usually doesn't put up with too much of my BS, was happy to stay home and recuperate on this occasion, since she was probably even more averse to attending the fiasco than I was.

Fortunately, I did get to see my best friend and his family. While he did make it to the reunion and didn't have a horrible time, he didn't exactly leave me kicking myself that I had missed out on the fun. For the time being, I'm trying to arrange a get-together with a few of my other friends from the class of 88 who somehow, someway, like me, found a way to avoid the reunion. When we do get together, I can guarantee that there will be no drunken singalongs to 'Living on a Prayer.'

If that does happen, I will have to seriously reevaluate some 30-year friendships.

How about that

2008-07-07T15:18:00.002-04:00

Hello...

Is this thing still on?

[tap, tap, clears throat]

So yeah, it's been a while. How you doing?

Since we last met, I got promoted at work, moved and have begun to experience the wonders of a toddler who has discovered that he can run very fast, if not so steadily, while carrying large wooden spoons.

And whether you like it or not, I promise to be back a little sooner with some more inane patter.

Endangered Jazz

2008-02-21T09:49:00.002-05:00

Please join me for the grand opening of my new blog, Endangered Jazz. It's about, you guessed it, jazz music. So, if you have no interest in that sort of thing, that's fine too, you can pass along quietly.

To date, I have some videos pulled from YouTube featuring Miles Davis and John Coltrane, Hampton Hawes and Shelley Manne, and Gerry Mulligan and Art Farmer. For the time being, I'll probably keep it to videos and some links and random thoughts, since my music criticism skills basically exist at the "I like it because it sounds good" level.

However, if you are looking for more in-depth discussion of the music, be sure to check out the comments, since the "anonymous" commenter who has already discovered the blog can say a whole lot more a whole lot better than I can.

Not so-Super Bowl

2008-02-04T19:03:00.000-05:00

When do pitchers and catchers report?

If the Pats had gone 14-2 and lost the Super Bowl, I don't think I would have cared much at all that they lost. As it is, I just feel like, blahh, I've wasted my whole fall and winter watching them break records for that? Christ, I could have read a couple of books or something.

With baseball, I'd rather watch regular season games anyways. Something about knowing there's a game on almost every night to fall asleep to on TV or to listen to on the radio while you're out on the grill that is very soothing and refreshing.

So, yeah, I guess baseball is kind of like valium.

Half-assed Political Analysis

2008-01-04T19:24:00.000-05:00

Hey, how about that? For the past year, all the talk has been about how far away the presidential election is, then last night, 300,000 corn-fed Midwesterners dance around high school gymnasiums and libraries and suddenly, the race is all but over.
I watched a couple of hours of MSNBC coverage of the Iowa caucuses, and was struck but how desperately everyone wanted to stretch the importance of Campaign 2008’s first vote. Hillary is out of it, Huckabee is on the way to the nomination with only a cranky McCain standing in his way in New Hampshire.

Uhhh, let’s step back a minute people.

Here is my promise. If Mike Huckabee gets the Republican nomination, I will vote for him, even though he is a social conservative who makes W look like a foreign policy genius. I will vote for him because there is no way in hell he will get the nomination. I mean, I wish he would, just because it would amount to handing the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to whichever Democrat comes out on top. I think Kucinich could even give Huckabee a run for his money in a general election.

But instead of stating the obvious, everyone jumped on the Huckabee bandwagon, airing every possible scenario where he has the nomination locked up by February.

And the Obama love? Let me just say, Chris Matthews is not a well man, and I say that as someone who usually doesn’t mind Matthews. For two hours, I watched a very confused and confusing man shouting about how Obama’s victory was the greatest moment in history since Lincoln freed the slaves. If Obama does win the nomination, I might be more inclined to accept the Matthews hyperbole, but we’re still a ways from that.

As for Matthews partner on the MSNBC desk, well, Keith Olbermann kept looking at Matthews like he was the crazy uncle who got into the Christmas eggnog and stayed too late at the table. Olbermann, who I also typically like on Countdown, was over his head, out of his league, pick any other cliché you want, I just hope MSNBC doesn’t stick with him as the face of Campaign ’08.

TV Boy

2008-01-03T19:32:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I know what I said about BB EC and the television. Yeah, I say a lot of things, and if you believe most of it, you're a fool.

So we bought some Baby Einstein videos for the little guy, and know what, he loves them, it's about the only television he watches (with the exception of the Fox Morning News) and I'm pretty sure it won't turn him into a lunkhead.

So far we have two of the videos, baby Beethoven and baby Mozart. Not quite the full orchestra versions of the music, but what the hell, it beats Barney and the Wiggles, I'd imagine. The videos themselves are filled with random puppet action and spinning toys. They're actually kind of trippy, and if you threw a little Dark Star in the background, you would have a perfectly serviceable Baby Grateful Dead video. I know the videos won't turn BB EC into a genius (genetics should take care of that, hahaha) but I really can't believe that watching puppets and listening to Mozart is harmful to babies. It's not like I'm going to shove him in front of the tube and make him watch Kickboxer with Jean Claude Van Damme just to keep him quiet when he cries.

Oh yeah, the crawling thing is also proceeding along nicely, really getting the knack for it, so good in fact, in one day he fell on his face and bruised himself and closed his finger in a drawer.

Ready Set Crawl

2007-12-19T18:20:00.000-05:00

Baby Boy EC, eight-months old, is getting pretty good at the crawling thing.

The only caveat to that is that he is getting pretty good at crawling when he is butt naked. Oh sure, when he has pampers, a onesie, and pants on, he can scooch a bit, get up on all fours and rock around.

But strip him done so he can feel the breeze of the fresh air on his little boy bits, and he suddenly becomes Carl Lewis at the '84 Olympics. Which can make changing pampers a bit of an adventure these days. Soon as the second velcro latch is undone, he's pivoting like Kevin Mchale in his prime and is halfway to the dining room, pumping his little arms and legs as fast as he can, bum up, scooting straight ahead like a little man with someplace to be.

It's all very cute, and you want to call the wife and the grandparents and uncle over to watch BB EC go, but at some point, you realize you're playing with fire. Or more accurately, playing with pee. Because, although theoritcally BB EC has been stripped of a freshly peed pamper and there should be a urine-free grace period, I have discovered that eight-month olds don't always like to stick to the theoratical world, and don't give a darn about when or where they pee. And since we are all living at grammy's house for the time being, the issue of where he pees becomes even more of a third-rail issue, even if we can always blame the barely house-trained corgi.

Once we get the pamper back on, it's like BB EC has been exposed to baby kryptonite, and he's suddenly back to barely rocking in place.

Who knows, maybe BB EC is on to something. If I'd only run my cross-country meets with no shorts on... well, I guess I wouldn't have been doing anyone any favors.

Seasons greeting

2007-12-16T18:40:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas all

I have a very bouncy BB EC in one arm, so I'm typing the best I can with one hand.

Hopefully be more updates soon, including the story of our almost finished(I think) housing hunt.

Endangered Coffee

2007-11-20T17:32:00.000-05:00

Living on the outskirts of civilization, Mrs. EC and I are forced to take drastic action when it comes to getting a good cup of coffee. Of course, there are the Dunkin Donuts at every corner, and in every gas station and supermarket, but drinking DD just smacks so much of defeat - okay, I have a caffeine addiction problem and I'll drink this mass produced zombie brew like everyone else - that we try to stay away from it whenever possible.
Back when we had lives in a civilized area, there was always a Starbucks within reach, not to mention Paneras and Au Bon Pains and a number of independent bakeries and shops that sold high quality brews. Now, we consider a Starbucks close if it's less than 10 miles out of our way. And the one independent coffee cafe in the next town over? Well, Mrs. EC tried it once, and the only words I got out of her about it were "dirty dishwater."
Oddly, enough, Mrs. EC and I almost found coffee salvation in the unlikeliest of places at nearly the same time. Something along the lines of - Hey, I tried the coffee at McDonalds and its not half bad. And indeed, for a short time, it seemed we had at least a mildly palatable option to the onslaught of DD. Unfortunately, Mrs. EC and I both also learned around the same time that to get coffee at McDonalds, you must in fact deal with the people who work at McDonalds.
Mrs. EC's was the less spectacular but more consistent reason why we are now more hesitant to head through the Mickey D's drive-through on a regular basis. On at least three occasions, she fell victim to the classic pay for the coffee with a $20 bill, get $3.12 in change routine, complete with surly managers bringing up the dreaded specter of Counting the Drawer and dimwitted teenagers convinced she had paid with a $5 bill. Because we are well known grifters who make our living off three-card monte games and shortchanging drive=through attendants.
So if Mrs. EC's was the annoying side of drive-through living, McDonald's style, mine was the hot coffee in the lap, all over my trousers and the interior of my car side of the McDonald's drive through experience.
Yeah, that pretty much explains it, I reached for the coffee with the unsecure lid, because obviously, securing lids on scalding hot beverages is not in the drive-through job description. Now, I am normally a mild-mannered man, except when I have been bathed in scalding hot coffee. I made a bit of a scene, but most of it involved me screeching to a halt at the trash barrel about 20 feet past the drive through window, jumping out of my car, screaming obscenities, wringing coffee from my pants, going to throw my spilled coffee cup in the trash, then deciding to hurl my coffee cup at the trash barrel and splattering the rest in the parking lot.

Take that multi-billion dollar corporation, I littered on the grounds on one of your thousands of restaurants! Littered! Power to the People!

Yeah, so if anybody knows where I can get a good cup of coffee on the South Shore of MA without it getting spilled in my lap, feel free to let me know.

Break time

2007-11-05T20:57:00.000-05:00

I am slogging my way through one of my final stories of the week for work a little before 9 p.m. As you can guess, since I am taking a break to write something that isn't what I'm supposed to be writing, the writing of what I am supposed to be writing isn't going all too wonderfully. And I just made myself dizzy with that sentence.

Sometimes, my job is great and the words just fly out of my fingers. Other times, I feel like I'm swimming in Jell-o, and spend half my time hitting that word count button until I grunt and groan and tap out enough words to hit that sweet spot between 500 and 600. At least I've never used The End in the word count (although I do count my byline).

The story of the moment is up to 376 words. Since I am feeling both tired and guilty for avoiding work, I am going to go back to writing the other thing that isn't this thing that I'm writing now. See you on the other side.

Hoop dreams

2007-10-30T18:20:00.000-04:00

BB EC just had his six-month check up, and we found out that he is the 100th percentile for height, making him the Wilt Chamberlain of the infant world. I know there will be pressure for him to jump straight into the pros from high school, but I’m hoping he takes the scholarship. Later tonight, I’m planning on shooting some video of BB EC going to town in his jumparoo and sending it to Coach K at Duke. For a little guy who can’t stand on his own yet, he has a pretty impressive vertical leap. He’s also able to go to his left, although it’s usually for pulling off my glasses or grabbing his little bag filled with pear pieces, not driving to the hoop. That’s okay, I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time for practice.
Of course, I don’t want to be one of those pushy sports parents, barking at the officials during T-ball games and sending BB EC off to basketball clinics at the age of 2. Because the doctor also said BB EC was very developmentally advanced, I would have no issue if he decided to become a brain surgeon.

Live blogging the ALCS

2007-10-12T20:41:00.001-04:00

8:45 p.m. Okay, I'm not really liveblogging the game, but it sounded good, didn't it.

Actually, I forgot the game was on until about the fourth inning. Mrs. EC went out for dinner with a friend, so I was planning on some quality Green Eggs and Ham time with BB EC. After that, I was planning on doing a little reading of the more grown up variety, or possibly updating my woefully neglected blog (which I am doing now, so I guess I wasn't too far off). By the time I tried putting BB EC in the crib, I remembered the game was on. Of course, BB EC boycotts the crib these days, so right now he's sleeping beside me on the bed, and the game is on, the Sox up 5-1 by the time I started watching.

With Sabathia in the hole right off the bat, I'm calling the series, Sox in 5. The series was effectively over before I even started watching. Bring on the Rockies. The only down side to that is that losing to the Coors Rockies would be about the most depressing thing ever, probably about the only thing that would come close would be losing to the Devil Rays in the ALCS.

At least the Red Sox master plan is now apparent. Come out like gangbusters in April and May, build a 30-game lead, coast for four months, and then wake up and smack everyone around in the playoffs. Not bad, if you can pull it off.

Sox now have the bases loaded and I'm feeling like all I will ever blog about again is baseball and donuts. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing...

9:30 p.m. The Sox are up 8-2 in the sixth with the bases loaded, I finally got BB EC into the crib, and I got myself a bag of chips and a Corona Light. It's officially a party! (Sadly, this is as wild as my life gets)

Random sports trivialities

2007-09-20T18:27:00.000-04:00

I don't know about you, but I'm much happier that we don't have to put up with the Patriots as the exemplary class organization that should serve as a model for every other sports franchise, political campaign, or religious leader. It's football, dagnabit, and as long as the players aren't riding down the street in pickup trucks shooting my neighbors, I don't really care what they do. The only thing that matters is pounding the thugs from other professional football cities into submission, and it looks like the Pats will end up doing that better this year than any other team has done for quite some time. If they end up becoming the East Coast version of the Raiders in the process, fine by me. I sincerely doubt Tom Brady or Rodney Harrison are going to be stopping by the EC manse anytime soon for dinner.

As for the Red Sox.....PANIC....just kidding. The Red Sox were a great team in April and May. In case you haven't noticed, they've been pretty darn average since then. About all the late season flop proves to me is that 162 games is a very long season. And don't forget, the Cardinals weren't exactly setting the world on fire when the playoffs began last year.

Finally (because, like everyone else, I'm ignoring the Bruins here), I'm kind of intrigued by the All-Star Celtics lineup this year. I grew up in the 80s, when roundball was king around these parts, and for the past couple years, the overall NBA game has been improving. So, yes, I will have to find out where Fox Sports New England is on the cable box.

Depressin' Donuts

2007-09-20T15:25:00.000-04:00

If George Orwell had created a chain coffee shop to mix up the plot a bit in 1984, it would have looked a lot like Dunkin' Donuts. In fact, I'm not totally convinced that Orwell didn't create Dunkin' Donuts.

It's not like I never go to DD, or that I think their products are an affront to coffee and donutkind, but Dunks makes its mark by being everywhere and being just good enough to get people to come back for more.

The ubiquitousness of Dunkin' Donuts is pretty frightening. There's no need for Big Brother when there's a Dunkin' Donuts on every corner, in every supermarket, and in every gas station. Before long, Dunkin' Donuts will be opening up a franchise in your dining room.

The overall quality of Dunkin' Donuts is fair at best. Sure, a lot of people profess to love their coffee, but that's likely due to the brain-altering chemicals they add to the beans. Dunkin' Donuts coffee is no better and no worse than the coffee at any other number of chains or supermarkets. As for the food, the donuts seem to come out in the morning stale, and they don't get any better from there, and I'd take an Egg McMuffin over their breakfast sandwiches any day.

Finally, Dunkin' Donuts seems to have perfected some kind of Eastern Bloc communist ideal of utilitarian drabness. What makes this even more impressive is that they have managed this even while using a pink and orange color scheme. So, If I need a coffee, and that's bound to happen sooner rather tan later, there's the chance I will be one of the DD drones waiting in the drive-through line, but dammit, I won't feel good about it.

Crabby time

2007-09-19T18:19:00.000-04:00

Someone is not happy in the exersaucer. Baby Boy EC has a very determined look as if he is going to bash the stuffing out of the circus seal toy.
Hopefully, I'll check back in a bit when BB EC (normally as happy a little guy as you'll find) either perks up or heads to bed.

Online

2007-08-27T22:34:00.000-04:00

Work, work. Baby, baby.

On top of that, a finicky computer with a sketchy wireless connection. To get on the internet, I basically have to recite the alphabet backwards, draw a pentagram in the sand, cross my fingers, make sure I'm not on the wrong side of the house (dividing line is at the staircase), go downstairs and drink a glass of milk, come back upstairs, wait, wait some more, then check the computer and hope I got lucky.

Oddly enough, the same process is also needed at times to feed Baby Boy EC, with the added bonus that BB EC can scream very loudly.

Of course, he is also much cuter than my computer and he can touch his toes. Top that ancient Toshiba 2100 CDS.

Promise of funnier days to come

2007-08-01T20:49:00.000-04:00

Wow.

I looked at the date of my last entry, and it was only eight days ago. Man, it feels like it's been months. I was afraid I was going to end up on Suldog's list of bad bloggers who should be filled with shame.

Since the last time we met, I've had myself one hell of a crappy time, so I haven't felt much like making with the funny haha. Also, I started my new job on Monday, so a lot of my time has been spent learning how to do a lot of old things in a new way. On the plus side, the folks at my new job seem as friendly and easygoing as the coworkers at my last job. On the not quite negative but maybe not wholly positive side, my new job means I am now totally separated from the North Shore, so it does seem like a chapter in my life that was slowly coming to a close has now slammed shut.

Well, I apologize for the lack of laughs, but I promise I will be back soon as I can with more better stuff, possibly even the long-awaited tale of my Cub Scout talent show, where my troop did a sign language version of Barry Manilow's "I Can't Smile Without You." I promise, I am not making that up.

Oreos are a fruit

2007-07-23T20:37:00.000-04:00

Good news for all of you junk food fiends looking for creative ways to get your five-a-day of fruits and vegetables.

Every morning, I go to Honey Dew Donuts (which kicks Dunkin's butt) for coffee. This morning, I noticed a sign advertising their new fruit smoothies.

One of their flavors: Oreo Cookie.

I wonder if Double Stuffs count as two servings?

Hell of a time to be a professional sports fan

2007-07-20T15:45:00.000-04:00

And I'm not just talking about the Red Sox laisez-faire approach to protecting a 14-game division lead.

The NBA has mobbed-up officials possibly fixing games.

The NFL has one of its marquee players accused of running a vicious blood sport. (Burn in hell, Michael Vick, burn in hell).

Jeez, Barry Bonds and Major League Baseball's look-the-other-way pursuit of Hank Aaron's homerun record looks like the feelgood story of the year when stacked up against the competition.

And in the NHL ... Do they still play professional hockey around these parts?

A vast wasteland

2007-07-20T11:15:00.000-04:00

The latest scientific research recommends not allowing children under the age of two to watch television, so as not to let their little brains rot at an early age (only put into more scientificy words).

Early on, the missus and I decided that it would be a good idea to heed the sciencey reports and keep Baby Boy EC away from the idiot box for the first couple of years of his life. I'm not sure about the missus, but I mistakenly assumed that this was a decision we wouldn't have to worry about too much for the first year, since I couldn't imagine BB EC would show all that much interest in the boob tube til that time.

But, like much else in life, I was sadly mistaken.

Since BB EC turned two months old, he has taken every opportunity possible to sneak a peak at the evil black box, no matter what's on - Food Network, Red Sox game, test pattern. A couple of times, we've even caught him staring at it while it's been turned off. The first time we caught him watching TV was about a month ago, when he was screaming as babies will do and I was walking him around the room singing songs about monkeys and diaper pails, as dads will do when babies cry. Suddenly, BB EC stopped crying and his eyes turned big as saucers as he stared across the room.

"Good boy," I said. "Daddy knows how to make you ... Hey, are you watching 'So You Think You Can Dance'? No, no, no."

Since then, whenever we're in a room with a television on, we have to make sure to turn BB EC in the opposite direction, lest he be lured in by the magical allure of Alton Bown's Good Eats or another barnburner of a Terry Francona press conference (You know, our guys played hard, sometimes the other team just gets that extra opportunity, blah, blah, blah). And because BB EC shares a room with his mommy and daddy, when we put him in his crib, we have to make sure his eyes are closed before we turn the TV on. On more than one occasion, we've thought he was asleep, only to discover he was faking it and watching Househunters instead.

Unfortunately, BB EC has some allies on the TV front in the form of Grammy and Grampy EC. When we were over their house for Sunday dinner, we told them that we don't plan on letting BB EC watch TV until he is at least two.

"You and your father watched TV when you were little," she tells us. My dad and I also have the attention spans of gnats, so that might not be her best argument.

Try as we might, however, there is always the temptation (on my part at least, don't tell the missus) when BB EC is especially fussy or screaming, to walk by the television verrrrry slowwwwly and let him catch those bright colors and frantic movements out of the corner of his eyes. So far, I've done my best to resist and stick to my improvisational songs about monkeys, pampers, and spaceships.

A chronological list of my jobs over the past 23 years

2007-07-13T13:38:00.000-04:00

- Furniture store (three hours)
- Elks Club washing dishes
- Catering business
- Drycleaners
- Purity Supreme/Stop and Shop (nearly eight years through high school and college– longest held job ever)
- Newspaper – South Shore (where I took a pay cut from what I made at the Purity Supreme/Stop and Shop)
- Another newspaper – South Shore (where I also delivered the newspaper)
- Newspaper – Metrowest
- Delivering newspaper (Brookline)
- Johnny’s Foodmaster (this job and previous at same time as Metrowest newspaper)
- Construction reporting (Actually, neither construction nor reporting)
- Assorted and various freelance reporting assignments
- My wife’s company (part-time for one month)
- The produce section at BJs
- Trader Joes (where I was denied promotion because I was not chipper enough)
- Newspaper – North Shore/part-time
- Another newspaper – North Shore
- Newspaper – Back to South Shore

I’m sure there’s at least one job I’m missing somewhere along the line. And once again, I apologize to any Brookline Tab subscribers who did not get their papers reliably in 1999.

Dress in layers

2007-07-06T11:22:00.000-04:00

It is generally better to wear too many pairs of pants than not enough.

Or

Somehow, I ended up at work today wearing a pair of running shorts under my trousers (and over my boxer shorts).

Or

When trying to rush off to work while trying to soothe a crying baby and taking the dog out, it is always best to take an extra minute to make sure your wardrobe won't get you scooped up by the men with nets and plopped in the funny farm.

So yes, it is a warm, humid day, and I have one too many layers of clothing someplace where it isn't all too easy to remove while at work.

Could have been worse. When I called up the missus to tell her about my 'wardrobe malfunction', I'm not sure she was convinced I had actually taken the extra step to put on trousers.

"Yeah, so I'm wore my running shorts to work," I told her.

"You're wearing pants, too, right?" she asked, none too convinced.

Guess I could always go for a jog after work.

Regression is a wonderful thing

2007-06-26T14:02:00.000-04:00

Now that I have a one to two hour commute to work each day and I can't make it home for my lunch break, I've been packing up my lunches at the beginning of the week and stockpiling food in my desk and in the company fridge. Pretty smart idea, right?

Yeah, well, except for the part where I'm turning back into an eight-year-old.

It started with the juice boxes, and I will admit, they were my idea. Hey, a guy gets thirsty, and juice boxes, they have the straw attached and everything. Convenient, no? Plus, it's not like I'm carting the Ecto-coolers to work. I've been getting those Vruit juice boxes, the fruit juice mixed with veggie juice. Veggie juice is pretty grown up. I mean, I would have gotten my ass kicked if I tried pawning off carrot juice on the other kids on the playground when I was in third grade.

Still, juice boxes are just one of those inherently funny things in life. Drink a fine Bordeaux out of an 8 ounce juice box, and it will still look like your mother should be dressing you up in Garanimals.

So the juice boxes are one thing, but I did not realize how far I had fallen until the other day when I opened up my snack drawer at work (technically, I now have more drawers for snacks than I do for work) to get a package of Cheez-Its.

Now, lets back up to the weekend, when the missus, BB EC, and I went grocery shopping. The missus has control of the carriage while I'm making sure BB EC remains napping by keeping his stroller in constant motion. The missus likes very detailed grocery lists, while my needs are usually broken down into Breakfast, Lunch, and Snacks on the list, giving a lot of leeway for potential purchases. So I'm pushing the stroller back and forth while the missus heads down the snack aisle. She comes back with a package of nutter butters and a package of Cheez its. Decent choices both, but honestly, once something is in the cart, I'm ready to move on. She could have bought me jellied octopus rings and sugar free pork rinds and I would have been - sure, sure, that's great, honey - lets get the bread and get out of here.

Which brings me back to the Cheez-its. Or should I say, the Fun Shrek Shapes! Cheez-its. Oh lord, first the juice boxes, now this. Before I know it, I'll be reading Spiderman comic books and eating SpongeBob Jello pops in the break room while wearing striped tube socks hiked up to my knees. And I wonder why the missus is convinced I'm going to end up being a crazy old man.

Kicking computers

2007-06-20T17:22:00.000-04:00

The loud humming sound you hear coming from next to my desk at work? Glad you asked. I believe it is my work computer vainly battling its imminent demise.

Now, I was out of work most of last week as Baby Boy EC was in the hospital and had various doctors' appointments (he's doing just fine right now, by the way),but I did come in for a few hours on Friday morning, figuring I could catch up on what I've missed and get ahead a little bit for the coming week. Instead, I spend three hours staring at a blank monitor (which isn't always the most unpleasant activity, but more appropriate for a week when I'm in everyday) and crossing my fingers that the 87th time I unplug and reboot my computer will be the one that does the trick and kicks it back into gear.

Long story short, computer gets taken away to the repair shop for misfit electronics. I go home and forget about my computer for the weekend. I come in Monday morning, and have no computer at my desk. There is some work I can do without using a computer, but ultimately, using pencil and a pad of yellow legal paper is not a longterm solution. I am told that computer will be back later in the day, and I am given my choice of even creakier, crankier, more misfittier computers to use for the day.

Which is fine for about two hours, long enough for me to type about 1,200 words of a report into the computer before I get the bright idea of restarting the computer to see if it will help it run faster. It does not help. In fact, computer does not reboot again. As I did on Friday, I dutifully unplug and replug the older computer multiple times, all to no avail. I am now convinced that my desk sits on top of an old Indian Computer Burial Ground.

Next day, still no computer, but I'm told my computer will be back from the body shop later in the morning. In a rare moment of good thinking, I had brought my laptop into work, giving the ability to get some stuff done while waiting for work computer. As an added bonus, a detached cubicle wall falls on my head. In a rare fit of work rage, I toss the 6-foot cubicle wall into my coworkers area (he isn't in yet) and yell some profanities. But eventually, I get computer back, work gets done, and all is well.

Until today. Computer starts up fine, and I leave it on when I go out to lunch. I get back from lunch, and computer now sounds like a Sherman tank chasing Rommel through the desert and my screen is once again blank. Today, I have moved beyond the unplugging and replugging and proceeded directly to kicking the computer. That doesn't work either, but it at least makes me feel a little better.

3,526...

2007-06-18T12:13:00.000-04:00

...too many.

Creature Double Feature II

2007-06-05T16:08:00.000-04:00

Okay, this is mostly a shameless attempt to direct more traffic to Endangered Coffee, but I hope you will find it to be a noble shameless attempt.

Through the wonders of sitemeter, which I finally added to the site last month after nearly two years of blogging, I've found that, far and away, the most hits I get through Google are from people looking up Creature Double Feature and pulling up an entry I did about a year ago. I won't rehash that entry now, other than to note that there are still a lot of people of a certain age in this part of the country who still have a remarkable fondness for vegging out in front of the television on Saturday afternoon and watching Gamera and Godzilla.

So let's use this as an opportunity to share our favorite Creature memories in the comments section. As I think I've mentioned before, the Japanese monster movies get top billing in my book, followed by the American flying saucer movies of the 1950s, with the Hammer films bringing up the rear in the mind of an oversugared ten-year-old.

I also think there's a fondness for Creature2Feature because it was offered up free from the ironic subtext that later popped up with Elvira and Mystery Science Theater 3000. Sure, even a 10 year old knew these movies weren't Hitchcock or Citizen Kane, but we were able to appreciate them on their own merits, bad dubbing and all.

Rasta baby

2007-06-02T11:01:00.000-04:00

I know it's only a matter of time before Baby Boy EC falls under the hypnotic sway of the Wiggles, Barney, or some other parent-grating musical entertainment act. For the time being, we can take solace in the fact that BB EC seems to dig the reggae. The missus is convinced its because she listened to lots of reggae in the car while she was pregnant. I'm hoping its because BB EC was born with a fully functioning good taste gene.

We've actually been trying to play BB EC a good mix of music, from jazz and classical to reggae. We tried, we really tried to expose him to a CD of baby lullabyes, but it sounded like folk music with what little energy that type of music might have sucked out, and then mixed with a heavy-duty valium cocktail. I know the point is probably to relax babies and get them to sleep, but I would feel bad if he was nodding off not because he was relaxed, but because the songs were boring him to pieces.

When it comes to reggae, BB EC is especially fond of Toots and the Maytals, and he likes dancing around his room with his mom to Funky Kingston and Reggae Got Soul. Reggae also soothes the little guy. One of the last nights before we moved out of our apartment, the college kids next door had a party with a live band that specialized in hippy-dippy type of music. BB EC was starting to get a little fussy, until the hippy-dippy band broke into a pretty decent cover of Stir it Up, causing BB EC to immediately calmly sigh and fall asleep.

Now, we will play BB EC the Toots and the Marley and the Jimmy Cliff, but I draw the line at dressing him up in little tie-dye onesies or getting him a little baby rasta cap. We've got enough to do as new parents without trying to be hip and cool by dressing our baby up like a little hipster. Plus, the dinosaurs and little trucks are just so darn cute...

A quick note from the other side

2007-05-29T05:33:00.000-04:00

We have successfully completed the move from North of the city to South of the city. All of the boxes have been unpacked. Well, all of the boxes except for the hundred or so being stored in the garage for the immediate future. I'm trying very hard not to look in the garage. It scares me.

For the time being, I am still working on the North Shore, so I can enjoy a very long commute and a limitless supply of "World Famous" roast beef shops. I think the North Shore has all the famous roast beef in the world, because the only roast beef you can find on the South Shore is in a sub roll and slathered with mayo. Of course, the South Shore has a much better supply of linguica, so it has that going for it.

So that's the update for now. Hopefully, I'll be able to get back to stories of embarrassing childhood incidents or of Baby Boy EC's pee and poop production in the not too distant future.

Buried under boxes

2007-05-21T07:18:00.000-04:00

The movers come Wednesday. Life for the EC family for the past week has revolved around boxes. Many, many boxes. Emptying boxes, making boxes, filling boxes. And bubble wrap. Wrapping things in bubble wrap and putting them in boxes. I'm pretty sure I've already spent at least a week's pay at Public Storage buying boxes. And bubble wrap. And tape to make the boxes. My biggest worry now is that Baby Boy EC or the Endangered Corgi will end up swaddled in bubble wrap and in a medium box. All so that the movers can come take the boxes so that they can be unpacked at our new location. At least we have movers this time. The thought of moving all of our furniture again, with BB EC's furniture on top of it, would make me want to crawl up inside a large box in the fetal position.

So that's the moving update for today. I just have to stop on the way home from work and buy some more boxes.

Not quite according to plan

2007-05-15T16:36:00.000-04:00

Things are in a state of general upheavel and chaos on the EC homefront right now. Looks like the missus, BB EC and Endangered Corgi might be making a totally unplanned move back to the hometown much, much sooner than we had ever planned to, putting a premature end to our 10 years of wandering in the North Shore desert. This is the second day of me dealing with that likelihood, which means I am many times over more pragmatic and reasonable about it than I was at this time yesterday.

General rule - Give EC a day to sulk and feel sorry for himself and he gets it out of his system.

May sound corny, but everything will likely turn out for the best sooner than any of us may expect. Plus, it's hard to feel too bad about one's lot in life when Baby Boy EC lights up our days with a seemingly infinite array of poop faces and incredibly loud farts and belches.

So pack up the dishes, call the post office, looks like we're heading home. Maybe for a short time, maybe longer.

Don't talk to me about your fancy-pants pitcher

2007-05-14T07:09:00.000-04:00

I'm a Sox fan and have no reason to grouse about the second-best Japanese pitcher on the roster, but I think Jim Leyland hits the nail on the head here. Of course, I'm partial to grouchy old men.

And yesterday's game reminded me why I love baseball. Three hours of tedium capped by a half-inning of incredible drama and tension. I'm not the type who yells and screams about managerial decisions, but if I were an Orioles fan, pretty sure I wouldn't be too happy with Sam Perlozzo right about now.

When I am a rich man

2007-05-08T17:22:00.000-04:00

About a month or two back, I signed up for Google ads, not so much because I thought it would make me rich, but because I thought, hey, why not?
So far, it's working like a charm, the not making me rich part. To date, I've pulled in a whopping 45 cents in profit. I can now afford to buy a stamp, with enough change left over to, well, to save for a second stamp.
Even though I'm not making the big bucks yet, Google ads does give me one more website to obsessively click and check, and it does provide stats on page impressions and whatnot, even though i'm sure I generate about 90 percent of the impressions clicking on my own site. I'm sure there are other blog-type programs that keep track of visitors and such much better than Google ads, but hell, it took me over a year before I mastered the art of linking to other blogs from my blog. Generally, I can handle the minimal amount of technology I need to get by.
Otherwise, I am tring to hatch some kind of socialistic web based economy where everyone gets all the money they need by doing nothing more than clicking on each other's Google ads all day. If anyone has a more concrete plan, I'm happy to hear it out.

Mr. Poopie Pants

2007-05-01T15:45:00.000-04:00

Baby Boy EC is home and doing well. Napping, pooping, staring at black and white targets and the lights on his play gym and all of that other totally adorable baby-type stuff. The Missus and I totally love him and I'm fairly certain that BB EC is getting used to us.

As expectant parents, the Missus and I probably got a lot of advice and tips, some solicited and some not. Most of the the little tidbits I heard broke down like this - your life will change forever, get use to not sleeping, and you will get peed on. Sure enough, two weeks in, and it's all pretty much true. Of course, it was all pretty blatantly obvious advice - what, you mean there is a little person who can't do much on his own and is going to depend on me and my wife 24 hours a day and you think my life is going to change - well golly gee, and I was really hoping to start training this spring for that ascent of Mt. Everest I've been putting off for years.

The lack of sleep and the getting sprayed by the peepee is also kind of obvious, but nobody bothered to tell me that there are two less obvious derivations of those old standbys.

First, the sleep. BB EC obviously needs to be fed and changed every couple of hours, so there is a decided lack of sleep. But, luckily for me and the Missus, BB EC has been a pretty good sleeper, and we've all been able to get back to sleep during the night after the 30 minutes of the feeding and changing ritual. What may actually be the bigger shock to the system isn't the lack of sleeping, but the lack of any kind of coherent eating schedule for the grown ups. If Mrs. EC and I can get the window to throw together a sandwich and wolf it down for lunch by 4 pm. its a good day. Doing the math, that pushes dinner time back somewhere between 8 pm and breakfast the next day. About the best advice I can give to ensure you don't waste away while your newborn is eating everyday is to make sure there are plenty of foods around that can be eaten with one hand. Pop Tarts and granola bars are high on the list.

And for getting sprayed, it really isn't the pee that's the biggest shock the first time it happens (although it is pretty amazing that he can send a stream clear across the changing table to the other side of the room). Nope, it's the stuff shooting out the back end. Apparently, the fresh air on a baby's bottom acts as a kind of laxative. Luckily, being a baby is about the only time when everyone is thrilled that you're pooping, no matter where it lands, and BB EC is making the most of it.

Piling on

2007-04-13T07:18:00.000-04:00

Really not a whole lot I can add to the whole Don Imus debate, other than that I probably haven't thought about the man that much in more than 10 years.

Did he deserve to be fired? I really don't know, but I know that I don't feel sorry for him at all. What does drive me crazy about this whole debate is the people who try to confuse it with freedom of speech issues and the roles played by Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Imus has a right to say whatever hateful, racist, misoygnistic things he wants to, just as the private company that signs his paychecks has the right to fire him. As long as the government stays out of the picture, the Constitution, freedom of speech thing doesn't come into play.

Otherwise, I've read a bunch of other articles that articulate some of my thoughts a lot more clearly than I can. You can find them here, here, and here.

There's also a good Ellen Goodman column in the Globe today.

WBZ nightime talk host Paul Sullivan also deserves praise for his recent shows on the Imus subject. Unlike the majority of radio hosts, Sullivan listens to his guests and callers and does his best to inform people rather than spout rhetoric. He uses his everyguy persona well, and is especially effective at being a voice of reason during the discussion of divisive issues, whether it's the Iraq War or the Imus firing.

Battle of the cardboard wills

2007-04-12T08:25:00.000-04:00

Yes! I won! Take that, evil recycled-goods picker uppers!

Ever since the baby shower, it has been a battle of the wills between myself and the city's curbside recycling contractor. And this week, they blinked, picking up all the cardboard piled in front of the house with the exception of a single, oversized Graco stroller box, which I will except as one small, final act of defiance in an other wise total victory. And only yesterday morning, as I was lugging the boxes of cardboard out to the curb for the third recycling pickup in a row (recycling is picked up every two weeks), I was convinced that it was all going to end badly. The only conclusion to the contest I could imagine was my running down the street, red-faced, in my bathrobe, pajamas and slippers, dragging smushed up boxfuls of Fisher Price Rainforest Collection bouncy seats, tummy gyms, and swingy things behind me, and tossing the smaller boxes that held rattle, winkles and Glo-worms at the back of the recycling truck.

Me screaming - "For God's sake, have a heart - we're having a baby!" Braveheart-style at the truck while the other workers attempted to slow me down by tossing empty five-gallon Poland Springs jugs at my head.

Luckily, that scene was avoided, although I'm sure it would have been a tremendous hit with Mrs. Nosy Neighbor down the street.

I suppose I should provide a little history and context for my imaginary battle, since, according to Mrs. Endangered Coffee, I brought this upon myself, Don Quixote style, tilting at cardboard windmills. I was told that the city sent us a notice in the mail several months ago explaining the new recycling procedures - the main point being that cardboard would no longer be picked up unless it was neatly broken down and tied together into some sort of two-foot by two-foot square. Around the same time as the receipt of the recycling notice, we had our baby shower. which means we got many, many lovely things, almost all of which came in cardboard boxes.

Recycling week one - I pretended that I had either not heard or completely forgotten about the recycling notice. Huge mounds of boxes stuffed in other boxes - all obviously larger than two-feet by two-feet - dragged to the curb. I cross my fingers and head to work. Come home on my lunch break - trash gone, little blue recycling boxes emptied, huge mound of boxes spilling everywhere on the sidewalk. I kick boxes, shake my fists at the long-gone recycling truck, and drag the boxes to the back of the house.

Recycling week two - I take a slightly neater approach this week, although still refusing to break boxes down to a two-foot by two-foot neatly tied square (what the hell, don't they just crush all of the boxes anyway), I try to package them a little bit neater. Also, there is a very slight chance that I may have left some plastic and other noncardboard type trash peaking out of the top of the boxes during recycling week number one. Leave slightly neater mounds of cardboard boxes on the curb, cross fingers, and head to work. Come home for lunch, and slightly neater than first week pile of boxes are left blocking the sidewalk. I actually take things a little more in stride this week, with no kicking and only moderate cursing.

Recycling week three - Almost give up before I start, and consider backup plan to take cardboard to offstreet site for (legal) disposal. Instead, I decide that I will keep lugging those damn bouncy, swingy, strolly thing boxes out to the curb every two weeks, until BB EC graduates from high school if need be, until they are taken away. I am not normally that competitive, but given a petty and juvenile challenge, I will prove up to the task. So, once again, try to make boxes look a little neater, drag, cross fingers, work, etc., etc. Come home from work, and all the boxes are gone with the exception of the aforementioned stroller box, which, seeing as I have declared total victory, I happily breakdown into a two-foot by two-foot square and put in a recycling bin.

Slowly being pulled into the web

2007-04-10T16:18:00.000-04:00

Okay, I'm slightly more interested in the Red Sox season now.

Of course, it helps that today is the home opener.

And the Red Sox are winning something like 37-1.

God, I'm such a homer.

Anyone else have any thoughts on the new radio play-by-play guy? I don't find him too offensive although he does sound like he has what Mrs. E.C. would call the "fake man voice". Also, even though I haven't listend to a lot of innings on the radio yet, I've noticed that he uses "so and so is cartwheeling to the plate" a bit much.

It's still nothing like really being pregnant

2007-04-06T18:14:00.000-04:00

Oh lord. I was going to do a post on how blogging has become my form of nesting over the past few weeks as Mrs. E.C. gets ready to give birth to Baby Boy E.C., but I was thrown all out of sorts when I came across this website.

I did the normal Google image search to find just the right picture for this post, when I came upon the above image. HaHa, I thought, someone else has a sense of humor about this becoming a Dad thing. Then I clicked on the web link, and discovered that the photo of the "empathy belly" was meant to be taken seriously. Further proof that, as openminded as I try to remain, there are all kinds of alternate universes out there that I know nothing about.

So now I know, if I fail as a dad, it will be because I didn't have an empathy belly. In all fairness, I have been doing a decent job of gaining an empathy belly the old-fashioned way - through the heavy consumption of cheeseburgers and marshmallow-filled candy bars.

The worst highway in America (or at least the North Shore)

2007-04-05T20:27:00.000-04:00

Any road with a speed limit over fifty miles per hour should not be a quaint reminder of olden days. Any road with a speed limit over fifty miles per hour should be a well-honed marvel of engineering designed for nothing more or less than getting vehicles from point A to point B as quickly and safely as possible. One such road that meets this criteria is unwieldly sounding conglomeration of Rtes. 95 and 128 running from the South Shore to the North Shore.

Now, it may be a bit tricky to explain to out-of-staters that this highway with two designations is one road for a good stretch of miles, but as long as Rte 128 is piggybacking on that wonderful Interstate of Rte. 95, I have no other complaints.
But once 95 and 128 decide to go their separate ways, 95 sleekly whizzing north toward New Hampshire and 128 lazily winding its way up to Cape Ann, that's when the problems start. You've been driving north along on a three-to-four lane superhighway and suddenly the road splits, with Rte. 128 North merging down to two lanes. Now, on a non-rainy day, traveling in the lefthand lane isn't all that big of a deal, if you can overlook the fact that a highway probably shouldn't have banked curves strasight from Daytona Speedway,but as soon as that first drop of rain falls, you're screwed.
Potholes quickly fill to the depth of Lake Erie with a steady stream of feeder rivers taking up at least half of the lane. For safety's sake, you consider moving over into the righthand lane, where at least the water isn't rising up to your windshield.

But driving in the righthand lane of Rte. 128 is never a good idea. Apparently, whoever designed this road during the Truman adminsitration didn't feel the need for acceleration lanes. Which means that every car traveling in the right lane has to battle merging traffic that has, on average, ten to fifteen feet, to get up to speed. Now, I'm no expert in mechanical physics, but I'm pretty sure that most cars, even really fast red sports cars, need more than ten or fifteen feet to hit 60 miles per hour. There are even some onramps where there isn't even the ghost of an acceleration lane. Nope. There are actually stop signs. Stop signs to get onto a major highway. Nothing like testing your reflexes trying to judge when you can go from a deadstop into speeding traffic.

I have no idea if the state has any plans to turn Rte. 128 into a modern highway, but I have a feeling that if it does, it could be a very long and annoying project. Last summer, MassHighway spent months on a project that caused miles-long back ups during the day for several months as they took down old highway signs and replaced them with virtually indistinguishable new highway signs. I can only imagine what kind of confusion a real construction project would cause.

Red Sox half-hearted season preview

2007-04-02T15:27:00.000-04:00

Dice-K mania, curt's blog, J.D. Drew and Julio Lugo.Honestly, I can't remember the last time I was this unexcited about a Red Sox season.
It's not all that unusual, for the past couple of years, it's taken longer and longer for me to get hooked on the imminent season, although, there is usually some point during spring training, everything will click, and I'll let out a big Ahhhh, Baseball ... sigh.

One of the big things that comes me more and more from giving myself over every year is the constant change of players from year to year. Like Jerry Seinfeld said, you're not rooting for players, you're rooting for laundry. Since Nomar was traded in the middle of 2004, the Sox have been on a seemingly endless quest to sign every ballplayer who has remotely considered playing shortstop. But, whatever, that's the price you pay for being a modern baseball fan.

Then there's the fact that I don't particularly find this year's edition of the Hometown Team very likeable. As opposed to most of the blowhards who call into sports talk radio (another topic for another day), I like Manny, and not just because he's good at hitting a baseball. I'll take Manny and his mid-inning bathroom breaks and Ebay salesmanship anyday over the boring "hard work and dedication" of Jason Varitek. Seriously, if Manny gets traded away this year, David Ortiz is pretty much all that separates me from being a Mets fan.

As for the non-Dominican players on the roster, well, there's Schilling. As Mrs. Endangered Coffee says everytime she sees him on television, "I don't really like that guy", and rather waxing poetic about the bloody sock and how the curse would have never been reversed had he not bravely sallied forth to the mound that fateful October night, I just go "yeah, he's kind of a blowhard". And there's Jonathan Papelbon, the wonderful young closer who could be the next, well, the next Curt Schilling, I guess. And Josh Beckett, who comes across like an older Jonathan Papelbon, or a younger Curt Schilling.

Finally, there's the way the media treat the Red Sox (especially when the Yankees are in town) like they cured cancer and landed on the moon. Which is fine on the sports pages, but when even the local newspapers use the top of the fold on the front page to do man on the street interviews on why the Yankees suck, it gets to be more than just a bit embarrassing.

And still, there is a certain poetry to the game, the green grass on a summer day, the crack of the bat, etc. that will unfailing draw me in. After all, I've been rooting for the same laundry for 30 years. It's probalby too late to stop now.

Bad parenting tip of the day

2007-03-29T16:04:00.000-04:00

Not officially being a parent quite yet, I hesitate to criticize others for their parenting techniques. Even still, I think I'm not going very far out on a limb when I say that it probably isn't a very good idea to jack on the brakes and completely stop your car in the middle of the street to yell at your kids.

Which is pretty much what I saw happen today as I got home from work and pulled into my driveway. I walking up my steps to get the mail, when I hear brakes and screaming coming from the street. I turn around expecting to see some kind of minor accident, or near miss, and all I see is a red car stopped dead in the middle of the road, with a young mother turned around to yell at two small children in the back seat. Now, I don't live on the busiest street in the city, but I'm sure that one of those big tree removal trucks that comes barrelling down the street on a regular basis don't have to be on the autobahn to cause a lot of damage to a small red Honda.

I will give screaming mom credit for having the kids in carseats, but on the other hand, that makes her stopping dead on the road to have a conniption fight even more ludicrous. I've heard that little buggers can be troublesome at times, but since they both appeared to be strapped into their car seats, I'm sure there was a lot less risk that they would start an accident than there was that crazy mom would get rearended by screeching to a halt.

Reluctantly doing my part to help the environment, kind of

2007-03-26T18:15:00.000-04:00

Did you know that every year, the discarded styrofoam coffee cups from a single Dunkin' Donuts are responsible for the melting of 3,500 cubic feet of the polar ice cap? You didn't? Good, because I just made that up. Still, damn, those styrofoam cups can't be all that good for the environment.

And since I have a certain reputation with certain people I'm married to as being an environmental terrorist, I have actively, if somewhat grumpily, begun to think of ways that I can help the environment and the polar bears and the future generations and everyone and everything else that doesn't want to spend the rest of eternity living in a green house. So, at work, I have decided to stop using disposable styrofoam cups when I get my really bad fifty cent cups of coffee. Of course, I haven't broken down and bought my own cup, so right now, I'm using a coffee mug from the local bank that I'm hoping the previous owner washed well.

The only potential snag in my plan is that I'm not always that on top of rinsing out coffee cups at work after I use them. Which means that eventually, even the ceramic coffee mugs become disposable for me. Which means that I'm probably not helping the environment. And, if anyone at the office is missing a Donald Duck coffee mug, uhh, sorry. You wouldn't have wanted to see what it ended up looking like, anyhow. But I will try to be better, with the rinsing, and the saving of the polar bears and all. I'll let you know how it goes.

A brief note from the management

2007-03-20T18:43:00.000-04:00

There has been a decided lack of amusing anecdotes in Endangered Coffeeland over the past month. I have failed to break any household appliances, I haven't driven the Corrolla into any solid objects, and I have not had any blood drawn, thereby ensuring that I get woozy and pass out.
While all of this is good news in the course of my eveeryday life, it kind of sucks when it comes to posting amusing anecdotes on the interwebs. About the worst thing I've done lately is get in trouble with Mrs. Endangered Coffee for my recycling rebelliousness. Yes, I would like to save the planet, but sometimes, damnit, I just want to throw the plastic Swiss Miss pudding containers in the trash when I'm done eating them. Oh yeah, and I had a letter to the editor printed in my hometown newspaper where I may or may not have insulted the town manager. I haven't seen the actual copy of the paper yet, so I'm not sure if the full brunt of my stinging wit was kept intact.
There is also other big news brewing in the Endangered Coffee household that will undoubtedly lead to many embarrassing moments/stories, but I will hold off on mentioning anymore about that until some time next month.

Whistle while you work

2007-02-16T12:22:00.000-05:00

I enjoyed this article from the Globe. I have no other comment on it.

Breaking the law, breaking the law

2007-01-25T17:33:00.000-05:00

About two years ago, I had to attend traffic school. This is funny in and of itself to anyone who knows me, since I'm not what you would call a speedy driver, and if anything, I'm ’overly cautious, sitting at intersections long enough to let potential traffic from the Interstate in Kansas come barreling through.
So how did I end up spending a Saturday in a classroom at Salem State College learning how to be a safe driver? I got about three tickets within a one-month span for having an expired inspection sticker. I may not drive fast, but that doesn't mean I'm responsible when it comes to things like driving to a gas station and shelling out $29 so the fuzz will stop trying to bring me down. In an interesting little side note, I did manage to rack up each ticket for driving with an expired inspection sticker in a different city, one in Lynn, one in Beverly, and one, if I remember right, in Salem.
So I get the letter from the registry telling me I'’ll lose my license if I don'’t pay another $100 and attend a remedial driver education class. Okay, my bad, whatever it takes.

I show up to class early on a Saturday morning, and learn that I may be the only person who has been forced to take remedial driver's education for having an excessive amount of inspection sticker violations. Class begins with each of the 20 or so state-mandated bad drivers telling the instructor what they did to get themselves into the class. After about three or four of the students tell their stories. It becomes very clear that I am going to be the '“one of these things is not like the other' guy.

Guy number one: I was coming home from the bar after drinking about 15 Bud Lights, I spun out across the highway, and ran into a cop car going the wrong way.

Instructor: Can you see where that might not be a good thing?

Guy number two: I have a new Mercedes SL and I like to drive really fast.

Instructor: Do you see behaviors you might be able to change?

Woman number one: More drunk driving, speeding, driving with a suspended license, etc.

Instructor: Be more careful, think before you drive, be courteous, etc.

Truly scary bald guy with tattoos sitting next to me: I just got out of prison for stealing cars and I'’m hoping this will help me look good in the eyes of the state when I try to get my license back.

Instructor: Isn't it good to obey the law?

Me: Uhhh, I got a lot of tickets for driving without an inspection sticker.

Instructor: They can send you to driver's ed for that?

Me: Registry said they would take my license away if I didn'’t complete this course.

Instructor: I'’ve never heard that one before. So, okay, maybe you should get your car fixed and get an inspection sticker.

The rest of the afternoon consisted of breaking into groups to discuss possible good driving behaviors that could help us on the road. Every time the discussion rolled back around to me, it was more of the Yeah, I should really get an inspection sticker.

I don'’t really remember too much else about the class, other than being on break and scary tattoo guy relating how he hid underwater in a stagnant pond for a couple of hours before the police dogs found him and he was busted for stealing cars.
After that there was a test that everyone in the class passed and the ceremonial signing of the RMV form by the instructor, making the roads once again safe for the drunks, the speeders, the thieves, and me.

A warm winter's day

2007-01-05T15:20:00.000-05:00

It took me until nearly 3:30 this afternoon to fully realize that it is 65 degrees outside, the warmest January 5th on record in the state, and that the very large heater that sits five feet away from my desk at work has been on full blast all day. After about three hours of sweating, turning red, and beginning to feel faint, it suddenly dawned on me that it might be a good idea to shut the heater off and open the window just a crack.
Sure enough, the auto temperature reading on the blast furnace was reading 82 degrees when I went to shut it off. Of course, now there will probably be some kind of interoffice memo kindly reminding all employees not to touch the thermostat at any time between the months of October and April, unseasonably balmy winter weather be damned.

By a popular demand of one

2006-12-06T17:30:00.000-05:00

So here it is, an excerpt from my 'novel', as requested by the much too kind Dave W. This is the Cranberry Bog monster section. Sadly, it is probably the best part of what I wrote in November and it has almost no connection to the rest of the 'novel'. Enjoy, if you dare.

I grew up in the heart of cranberry country, The Cranberry Capital of the World, even. And in 1980, that capital was undisputed, the great bogs of Wisconsin and southern New Jersey were still more than a decade away. If you didn't have a family that owned a cranberry bog or lived on a cranberry bog, you at least had a friend whose family owned a bog or worked on a bog. The demand and price per barrel was high, and cranberry crop was commonly referred to as red gold. While my familydidn'tnÂt own any bogs, when I was ten we moved to a new house on the edge of several bogs, protected by native woodlands on one side and an abandoned rail bed on another. Having moved from the more densely populated center of town, the woods and bogs fascinated me. Although my parents warned me against going too deep in the woods on my own, whenever I was playing outside, I would naturally be drawn to the edge of the property line, and at no time was I drawn more than in the early fall, when the small fruit would begin to ripen and turn red and the growers would begin to flood the bogs for cultivation.
Now, mind you, as I try and relate the rest of the story, a story that I struggle to keep from eating at my thoughts, that I had a very active imagination as a child. If I had met Stan and Oliver when I was ten, I would likely have worshipped them as gods. My normal reading regimen was a combination of hand me down flying saucer tomes from my uncle, and newer books of Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle, and the Loch Ness Monster that I had bought with my own hard earned allowance money. My parents would later wonder why I had suddenly packed up my books on the supernatural and replace with Scholastic Books WorldÂs Greatest Running Backs 1981 and dog eared, used copies of Stan Fischler's Hockey Stars of 1974 (Go Stan Mikita!). It was because of that night on the bog in November of 1980.
My parents had gone to the Friday night supper at the local Elks Lodge and left me in the care of the WorldÂ's Sleepiest Babysitter. Now I loved the WorldÂ's Sleepiest Babysitter for several reasons. First of all, no matter what my parents left in the refrigerator for dinner, WSB would always order us a pepperoni pizza. Second of all, WSB would always doze off on the couch about fifteen minutes after we finished the pepperoni pizza. On most nights when my parents were out, this simply meant that I was in control of the television until my parents pulled into the driveway, at which point, I would switch the channel back to Dallas, and gently nudge WSB awake as I shuffled off to bed.
On this particular Friday night, however, I was determined to have a bigger adventure than watching the Friday Night Big Event movie. I was going to sneak off to the edge of the cranberry bog and see what it looked like under the night sky. Sure enough, fifteen minutes after the last piece of pepperoni pizza had been digested, WSB was snoring on the couch. I laced up my high top imitation leather Nikes, put on my Pittsburgh Steelers windbreaker, and softly made my way out the back screen door. I wasn't then, and still am not, an expert on the weather. But that day, there must have been a warm front that moved through the region. The sky was still slightly cloudy and the grass was still wet from the dayÂ's sudden downpours. A nearly full moon hung low in the sky, partially obscured by a medium haze. Even from the back door, I could see that there was a heavy fog rising off of the bog. This was going to be great, I told myself, heading through our neatly trimmed back lawn into the heavier brush at the edge of the woods. The straightest shot to the bog itself was along a dirt path that cut about one hundred yards through the woods. By the time I made my way to the edge of the bog under the hazy light of the moon, I might as well have been on the Scottish moors, or at the very least, on the set of a movie that takes place in the Scottish moors, the light of the moon and the foggy bog were so perfect. Being ten years old and alone in the woods, I wasn't exactly sure what I hope to accomplished, but I did know that as much as I was drawn to the woods and the bog and the daytime, the area at night held any even greater spell over me. I stuck my hands inside my Pittsburgh Steelers windbreaker and fished out my last piece of Bazooka Joe. I found a decent sized, flat rock near the edge of the bog, sat down, unwrapped my gum, started chewing, and soaked in the atmosphere.
And then I heard a slight rustling of the leaves from my right, from the area where the bog headed off even deeper into the woods.
No big deal, I thought, just the wind.
And then from a little closer, a twig snapped. And then another.
Squirrel maybe? At the worst, a dog, I thought. I nervously chewed my gum faster and sat up from my rock, prepared to make a fast getaway.
The noises were coming from my right, I edged closer to my left, back toward the path through the woods and my backyard.
Then what sounded like a much larger branch cracked to my right. Then another twig to my left.
The temperature felt like it had dropped suddenly from the inside of my body, while the outside of my body broke out in rapid sweating. The sounds of twigs and branches breaking had temporarily ceased, but a sudden smell hit me, causing me to gag on my gum and nearly knocking me over. My eyes began to water from the acrid, sulfur like smell, and as I wiped the tears from my eyes, they were replaced by the sweat dripping from my forehead. I had begun to run, but I was half blind and dizzy from the horrible odor and unsure of what direction I was heading in.
And then I saw it.
Two red eyes glowing in the night fog, as dark as, as dark as fully ripened cranberries. They danced and glinted at what I estimated to be a good seven feet off the ground. The creatureÂ's eyes were so mesmerizing, and my own eyes still wet with tears and sweat, that it took me a moment to take in the rest of its features. Aside from the crimson red eyes, the rest of the creature looked to be a shade of gray only infinitesimally darker than the fog that rose off the bog. While I took it to be over seven feet tall, I may have overestimated the creatures size, since I had crouched down low to the ground and begun sprinting off in the opposite direction. As I began to run, the creature took a swipe at me, barely nicking my Steelers windbreaker. The creature had abnormally long arms, longer than a human's, though thin and knobbed like a dog's leg, with a large, padded claw at the end.
With the creature cutting off my escape route home, I figured that my best chance for escape was to make a beeline though the undergrowth to the abandoned rail bed. I was hoping my small size would work to my advantage getting through the heavy brush and buy me time to get to the rail bed, which dumped out onto the street about a half mile from my home.
I assume that my heart was pounding, but I couldn't really tell you for sure. All I remember was that I was running like I was in a nightmare, feeling at once like I was running faster than I ever had in my life, yet at the same time, feeling like I was drowning in quicksand. Somehow, I managed to make it to the railbed, the cacophony of snapping twigs and branches had been replaced by a low full throated howl coming from the area where the undergrowth got measurably denser. My plan had been a success, but I was in no state to slow down and admire my Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys-like strategic victory. I sprinted as fast as I could to the street, and by the time I made it to the street, the only reason I slowed down on the last half mile to my home was because I was exhausted. When I got to my front yard, I didnÂ't want to go in the front door, worrying that I would be more likely to wake up WSB. But I also didn't want to go in through the back door, scared that the bog creature would be waiting there to snatch me up with its spindly arms and glowing cranberry eyes.
I decided to take my chances with the back door. I snuck back into the house, careful not to wake WSB yet, washed up and changed into my pajamas. About ten minutes later, I heard my parents pull into the driveway, so I changed the television back to her station, nudged her awake, and crawled underneath the covers of my bed, praying I was safe from the creature who had appeared out of the fog on the edge of the bog. I never mentioned what happened that night, and I was careful to never explore the cranberry bogs alone again, and I never, ever traveled back out there at night. When my parents asked me how I had ripped my Pittsburgh Steelers windbreaker, I told them it happened after school when I was wrestling with a couple of kids in the neihgborhood.
"How are you guys on cryptozoology?" I asked Stan and Oliver as we continued to make our way down the highway.
"It's not our biggest area of expertise," Stan said. "But in the circles that we travel, we do pick up a lot of overlapping conversations that tie some of your more exotic creatures in with government experimentation. What are you interested in?"
"Have you ever heard of some kind of a cranberry bog monster or creature?" I asked.
"Are we talking about the American Northeast?" Oliver asked.
"Yeah, you know, typical New England bog country," I said.
"A lot of the talk of creatures living in the woodlands near the bogs in New England is tied into Native American folklore," Stan said. "Most of the legends revolve around spirits or the occassional hairy ape. The amazing thing is, that even with the modern reported sightings, even among those who claim to have absolutely no knowledge of the Native American legends, are pretty spot on with the descriptions from as many as 500 years ago."
"Have there been any reported sightings of these hairy apes?" I asked.
"They are pretty intermittent these days, maybe one every three or four years," Oliver said. "The last real big spate of sightings was back in the 1970s and early 80s."
"Really. So if it's a Native American legend, what's it about?" I asked.
"Remember, we're not experts on this," Stan said. "But I'm pretty sure the legend revolves around a displaced peoples myth. To the Native Americans of the area, the hairy ape is known as the Ho Booka, and represents a race of large, not quite human creatures who were driven off the land by the Native Americans ancestors. The Ho Booka was commonly described as being nearly seven feet tall, covered in gray fur with long arms that looked almost canine. The Ho Booka would supposedly sneak up on unsuspecting indians who had wandered off in the night and try to drown them in the bogs or marshes."
"What about the sightings thirty years ago; did anyone drown in a bog or marsh?" I asked.
"No drownings, but there were probably about three or four reported sightings a year for about five years," Oliver said. "Almost all of the reports were dismissed because they were made by teenagers or children, but practically all of the descriptions were pretty close to the descriptions of the Ho Booka. There is also some thought, that because of the creatures supposed gray fur, red eyes, and long, thin arms, that some reported alien sightings may have actually been Ho Booka sightings. There is even one school of thought that the Dover Demon was really a Ho Booka."
"Did you ever know anyone who saw a Ho Booka?" Stan asked.
"No, not personally," I said. "Just growing up in the area, you know, there were always some whispers about a bog creature."

I'm a winner! Explaining where I've been for a month

2006-12-03T19:24:00.000-05:00

So, as all two or three of you may have noticed, there was a decided lack of Endangered Coffee in November. But don't worry, other than some intermittent cramping of my left hand, I have not lost the ability to write badly. In fact, I spent the entire month of November writing very, very badly. For the second year in a row, I took a shot at National Novel Writing Month, and unlike last year, when I brashly announced my intentions right here on this very space and then crashed and burned after about 11,000 words, this year, I kept the novel writing on the down low so as not to embarrass myself with my inevitable failure. And this year, my reverse psychology paid off, as I crossed the 50,000-word mark a whole day early on November 29. So now, according to the whims of a silly website, I am a novelist. The only embarrassment I'll feel this year is if I actually let anyone read my so-called novel.

Let's just say that this blog posting is vastly more entertaining and better written than my novel. Hell, typing random words like kielbasa pelican oboe trans am over and over again would be vastly more entertaining and better written than my novel. Let's just say my novel did not have much in the way of plot, character development, or action. It does, however, have several incoherent transgressions about cranberry bog monsters and the alien plot to assassinate JFK that actually end up having nothing to do with the main story, which is about an encyclopedia salesman who is falsely accused of kidnapping and murder and then must find a rare hockey book and return it to Roswell, New Mexico.

At the very least, I'm thinking I might spell check the sucker and print out a copy for laughs. But for the most part, I'm going to keep my embarrassing musings to the internets.

Is that some kind of shorthand?

2006-10-25T18:05:00.000-04:00

I've been a reporter for the better part of a dozen years, and there is one question I get asked over and over.

Is that some kind of shorthand?

Now, as part of my job, I regularly get to cover thrill-a-minute zoning and city council meetings, meet a host of state legislators, lieutenant governor candidates, and even some interesting people, but almost all of the questions about my job boil down to someone watching me scribble furiously in one of my pocket-sized notebooks and asking the above-mentioned question.

And the answer is typically that it is kind of some kind of shorthand. Mostly, I use my own made-up abbreviations combined with a natural tendency for aggressively bad penmanship. My answer doesn't always fill my interview subjects with the utmost confidence (although I typically play up the abbreviations and play down the bad penmanship).

"Well, as long as you can figure it out, I guess," was the most recent response I got.

Rest assured, figure it out I usually do, although there has been the odd case or two when a word I've tried to decipher turned out to be Oreo cookie crumbs. I have occasionally tried the typing my notes directly into the computer approach when I've been talking to people on the phone, but that ends up being even more indecipherable than the handwriting. At least with the handwriting, I have years of learned bad penmanship patterns to fall back on, while the typewritten notes usually look like a horde of angry monkeys have gotten hold of my keyboard.

Running on empty

2006-10-21T13:30:00.000-04:00

There are few experiences as disheartening in life as having your high school geometry teacher yelling at you to run faster as you're out of breath, stumbling toward the finish line of the state cross country meet.

I can't remember exactly who talked me into running cross country my sophomore year in high school, but I'm pretty sure it was a Peter. It was either the Peter who had been one of my best friends in junior high school who I had gradually started to drift apart from, or it was the Peter who I was casually acquainted with on junior high school who would go on to be one of my best friends in high school and beyond.
Whichever Peter it was, he didn't get me hooked on running for life, but he did get me to join the only team I would stick with for the rest of my high school years, a team with which I would experience both my only non-losing season as an athlete and my only election as a team captain. Although even those modest achievements were not as impressive as they first sound, but the year I was (tri)-captain and the non-losing season did happen to coincide, so maybe I should take a little credit for my unparalleled leadership skills.

Now, to understand the dynamics of a cross country team, you have to understand that it is a collection of teenagers who think it isn't such a bad idea to run for miles at a time. That's it, the entire sport consists of running from one point to another. There are no balls, sticks, helmets, pads, goals, touchdowns, or hole-in-ones. All in all, not a lot of excitement. Just running. Every other sport (well, except for golf) involves running, but they all have the good sense to throw some other activity into the mix. Not cross country. Just running.
So it goes without saying that cross country runners aren't exactly the big men on campus when it comvarsityaristy athletics. More like the tall, gangly, slightly off men on campus who think it sounds like a good idea to end the school day with a seven-mile run.

Enough background, I'm starting to bore myself. I promise that coming soon will be funny anecdotes revolving around having one Peter constantly vomiting, another Peter sizing himself up for a lifetime of knee braces, the wearing of orange polyester tank tops, me being a tri-captain on a team that only had seven runners to begin with, and of course, getting yelled at by my Geometry teacher will coming in next to last in the state cross country meet.

As I have done before:

To Be Continued...

Weekend plans, redux

2006-10-16T19:49:00.000-04:00

So it is now Monday evening and I managed to successfully not paint the bedroom and the bathroom over the weekend.

But before you start thinking me to be too much of a lazy slug, I want you to know that I did complete several unexciting home projects over the weekend and the decision to not paint went down pretty painlessly.

On Saturday morning, I emptied out all of the tomato containers and brought all of the pots and stakes down to the basement. Did I mention that we had at least 15 individual containers of tomato plants this year along with a few pepper plants? This task was kind of time consuming but not all that unpleasant. It was kind of like working on a very dirty assembly line while sidestepping rotten tomatoes. After pulling out the stakes and dead plants and bringing a couple of pots down the stairs and outside to dump the soil, I actually started to get into a groove where I felt myself to be a man of the soil, tilling (or, in this case, untilling) the soil. A few heavy terra cotta pots later, this feeling went away, but it was nice while it lasted.

Unfortunately, Carrie wasn't feeling all that hot on Saturday, so I selflessly suggested that we not try to worry about painting both rooms over the weekend and just try to start the bathroom on Sunday. This gameplan is quickly agreed to and we spend the rest of the day productively watching most of the programs that have begun to get backlogged on our DVR.

On Sunday morning, there is still the potential for us to get paint for the bathroom and begin that project. That potential begins to decline when it's 10:30 and we're still in bed reading the Sunday paper. We do manage to get moving shortly after that and make it to the laundromat, which is then followed by grocery shopping. By the time we get home, it's close to 5 p.m., and nary a paintbrush has been lifted in anger all weekend. But, in the course of putting away my laundry, I do undertake the task of putting away my summer clothes, hanging up my winter clothes, AND cleaning out my bureau, a process that largely consists of matching like socks and throwing out any T-shirts with unsightly stains. I figure that undertaking the total clothes rearrangement project with little prodding should earn me some points.

Of course, we still have two rooms that need to be painted, but there's always next weekend.

Weekend plans

2006-10-11T17:39:00.000-04:00

It is one of my charming (or annoying, depends on how you look at it) little tics that I have to be given ample warning time for any task that I may find unpleasant. Seeing as I'm not always the most ambitious person around, these tasks can cover a pretty wide area. However, the early warning system usually boils down to home improvement chores or moving furniture.

If Carrie wakes up in the morning and suddenly decides we are moving the bedroom into another room and moving the living room into the bedroom (as has been known to happen) it can bring on waves of sullenness and childish tantrums that are just plain embarrassing to witness in a 36-year-old man. And I know that. But it still won't stop me from sulking like a three-year-old. Moving furniture sucks!

Other tasks likely to set me off include heavy-duty spring cleaning (which usually involves the switching around of wardrobes and the moving of items into and out of the basement) and painting. Honestly, I wouldn't mind painting so much if it didn't also involve the moving of furniture.

So for the coming weekend, I have been given ample forewarning. We are painting both the bedroom and the bathroom. I have know this for weeks, so I have been trying extra hard to grin and bear it whenever the subject comes up. Sure, hon, painting, it won't be so bad.

Unfortunately for me, I have also been put in charge of taking in the garden on the front porch this weekend. This consists of finding a way to empty out 15 tomato plants that are in large pots along with at least that many flower and herb pots. Since we live on the second floor, and our new neighbors probably wouldn't appreciate me dumping all of the soil from all of the pots over the railing of our porch, that means I will have to find a place to deposit the dirt and a way to deposit it in said location. And I will have to bring all 30 or so pots down to the basement. So far, I am being a trooper and only sulking to myself about this, since I am told that the pots cannot be left outside to crack and break during the winter.

Fortunately for Carrie, I am also cheap, so the prospect of hundreds of dollars worth of tomato and herb pots biting the dust doesn't sit well with me, either.

So that's pretty much what I've got planned for the weekend. I'm just praying that we can at least ignore putting my summer clothes away for another week.

Really bad post for therapeutic purposes

2006-10-05T07:02:00.000-04:00

Does it really count as writer's block when I can't put together a blog entry for more than two weeks? Kind of makes it sound like I'm trying to do something much more important and artistic than I really am. It's not like I'm working on the Great American Novel and I've lost my focus just as Ahab is about to harpoon the whale or Gatsby does, well, something Great or whatever the hell it was that Gatsby did.

Nope, for me, writer's block just means that I haven't had the focus to update the nearly dozen of family and friends who are waiting for me to spin a tale of something stupid, embarrassing, or funny that has happened to me in the recent or not so recent past. God knows, it's not like I've run out of material. I still have the marriage blood test story in my back pocket, and I probably have years of fun-filled hilarity to relate just focusing on my many cars and the inevitable breakdown and/or disappearance of said cars. For as long as I take breath on this planet and I am either positioned behind a steering wheel or forced into awkward situations with other human beings, there will be an Endangered Coffee.

Maybe I've been thinking too much about writing. Maybe I should just put my computer away for a little while and pick up another hobby.

Like woodworking or home improvement.

Who I am I kidding? At least with writing, there is little chance that I'll ever saw off one of my fingers.

Although that probably would make a great story if I did have some sort of home improvement accident involving a ladder, a bandsaw, and a bucket of spackle. After the bleeding stopped, of course.

The reason why I am not allowed to make coffee at home anymore

2006-09-20T17:20:00.000-04:00

For the best cup of coffee you've ever tasted, it's essential that you use a french press. Freshly brewed coffee made in a press tastes far better than that made with the drip method that is predominately used today in homes and restaurants.

Unfortunately, it's also far messier than the drip method.

At least it is for me.

Even in the best of circumstances, I'm using the sleeve of my bathrobe to wipe small congregations of runaway grounds down the sink.

And a week ago Saturday was far, far from being the best of circumstances.

Carrie was still in bed and I had coffee duty. I grind coffee, boil water, pour into press, and set the timer on the stove to four minutes to allow the coffee to steep. Other than a stray coffee ground or two on the counter, I'm doing alright.

Then the timer goes off, I go to plunge, and all coffee hell breaks loose. It takes me a second or two to realize what had happened. All I know is that one second, I was pressing down on the plunger (okay, I'll admit it, maybe, just maybe, the plunger wasn't going down easy and I just might have, perhaps, forced it just a wee bit too hard) and the next second I am staring at a shattered french press that is empty of hot water and soggy coffee grounds. The second after that, I begin to realize that while the hot, soggy coffee grounds are no longer in what was once the french press, they are in pretty much every other conceivable location in the kitchen. Down the front of the cabinets below me, dripping from the cabinets above me, on the kitchen table, on the floor, in the spice rack, blender, and food processor, in the sink (that part was kind of okay), on my T-shirt, on the front of my pajamas, God knows how but even on the back of my pajamas, on the coffee pot I wasn't even using (if I had only been less ambitious and stuck to the autodrip, this would have never happened), on the refrigerator. You really have no idea just how many coffee grounds it takes to make a pot of coffee until they are covering your entire kitchen.

At this point, I'm pretty sure I yell Shit! or Crap! or some variation. Carrie asks what's wrong.

"Nothing"

"It sounds like something"

"I'm taking care of it"

"Taking care of what?"

I stomp into the bedroom, covered in coffee grounds, clutching a wadded up ball of about six paper towels that I managed to wipe up a very small amount of soggy coffee grounds with.

"Goddamn french press exploded," I explain.

"How did that happen?"

"I don't mumble, mumble, grumble. I can clean it up!"

Carrie gets out of bed and commandeers the paper towels and the cleaning operation.

"I can clean it up!" I pout.

"If you clean it up, we'll be finding coffee grounds all over the kitchen for the next three months."

"I can clean it up!" I stomp.

"Sit down somewhere away from the coffee grounds and eat your bagel."

"I can clean it up," I whimper.

Two hours later, the kitchen is clean, and by the tail end of the operation, I'm even allowed to take over some cleaning duties, such as washing all the pots and pans that a large contingent of coffee grounds were able to locate even though the pots and pans were inside the kitchen cabinets.

Then I went to Dunkin' Donuts (which, in retrospect, like using the autodrip coffee maker, would have been a much less painless first option for making coffee)after being told that I was no longer allowed to make coffee at home.

Which is really not much of a problem, considering the french press is broken. Though, I tell you, the french press does make a tasty cup of coffee.

Paperboy, Version 2.0

2006-09-15T11:26:00.000-04:00

Let's begin at the end of my days as a paperboy, version 2.0. I am across the street from the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline, the back of my 1996 Hyundai Elantra filled with stacks of the Brookline Tab. I am attempting to pull out onto the street, but my car is bucking and can't get out of first gear...

No, let's begin even after that, after my car has been at the Aamco Transmission Shop on the Lynnway for a week (actually, the second time my car had been there, the first time the car was out of commission for over a month, an all-around horrendous situation that even I don't think I could make seem funny) when I get the call asking me what they want me to do with the 500 copies of the Brookline Tab in the back of my car. After they dumped all the papers in their dumpster (so if you didn't get your copy of the Brookline Tab one week in the fall of 2000, I apologize) they tell me my car rose about a foot higher off the ground.

"Could carting all of those papers around screwed up my transmission?" I asked.

I am told that the Hyundai Elantra probably isn't the best vehicle to use to make frequent stops while carting around hundreds of pounds of cargo in my back seat. And thus ended my second, and to date, last hitch as a newspaper delivery boy.

But how did I end up delivering the Brookline Tab door to door on Thursday mornings in the first place? If you've read the first part of the story, I'm sure you'll figure it out - working for a newspaper, low pay, looking for a second job to make a couple of extra bucks, etc.

So at the time, I'm writing for another newspaper in the Brookline Tab chain when I inquire about the possibility of delivering newspapers to make an extra buck. Sure thing, I'm told by the head of distribution, come on down to the main office in Needham and we'll see what we've got.

So I get down to Needham at 6 a.m. on a Thursday morning and find out that I can have a route delivering about 500 tabs in Brookline. I get a map and a clipboard with the addresses of all the customers and I start loading up stacks of papers in the back seat and trunk of the aforementioned Elantra.

"There's only one problem," the distribution guy tells me. "Technically, you're not allowed to hold two jobs in the company. But are you married or do you have a girlfriend. If you just get me her social security number, we can put it under her name."

So okay, not much of a problem, but if the IRS ever mentions it, be sure to tell them that my wife delivered the Brookline Tab.

After clearing up the legal mumbo jumbo and finishing loading up my car with papers (slowing leading to the death of my transmission) I am off on my first morning of delivering the Tab. Distribution guy tells me it should take about an hour, hour-and-a-half to finish up my route.

Distribution guy is full of shit.

I get into Coolidge Corner around 6:30. Shortly before noon, I have tossed the remaining dozen papers in the general vicinity of some door steps of an elderly housing complex where the senior citizens may or may not subscribe to the Brookline Tab. After a few weeks, I am able to pare about an hour off the total delivery time. And in good weather, I don't even mind taking most of the morning to slowly cruise/stroll around Brookline.

But during crappy weather, not so much fun. From the purely technical newspaper delivery side of things, every paper has to be put in a plastic bag, further slowing down my already pathetic delivery time. On the personal side, I could get soaking wet. One Thursday morning. I get caught delivering the paper in a tropical storm. Now, I don't think I've owned a raincoat since I was seven-years-old, and trust me, I am not coordinated enough to handle a clipboard, stuff a newspaper in a plastic bag, and hold an umbrella, even if I had managed to remember to bring an umbrella with me. So I am caught in a tropical downpour, sticking newspapers in plastic bags until nearly 1 p.m., wearing jeans and a sweatshirt - jeans and a sweatshirt that were totally soaked through by 7 a.m. I start hallucinating, forgetting what street I am on. I go down one street I am convinced I have not gone down yet, and there are already Brookline Tabs on all the front porches. I call distribution guy and leave a babbling message about how someone else must be out there delivering the Tab along my route. About three hours later, I realize that I had already been down the street and that there was no phantom rival paperboy trying to take my job. I am wet and miserable and feel like I am going down on the Pequod with only the September 23 issue of the Brookline Tab with which to spear the Great White Whale.

And still, I come back the next week for more, until my car bucks, and won't go into reverse, and, well, at this point, I think you know the rest.

Paperboy, Version 1.0

2006-08-31T17:02:00.000-04:00

I never had a paper route as a kid. I also never played Little League baseball. Somehow, I managed to grow up without becoming a communist.
As a adult, however, I have twice attempted to make ends meet while living on a reporter's salary by taking up a paper route. Both times, I survived, but I did send one overpriced 1996 Hyundai Elantra to an early junkyard grave.
Of the two paper routes, the first one wasn't all that bad of a deal. I'd pick up a bunch of stacks of papers at the office of the newspaper where I was a reporter and deliver them to about 20 convenience stores and gas stations around town, collecting the returns and money. Other than having to get up to pick up the papers at 6 a.m., it was a pretty low-stress way to earn a little extra money for about three hours of work. Except for the manager of the Extra Mart, the people at the stories were friendly enough.
But yeah, the manager of the Extra Mart. I've worked as a reporter for about a dozen years, and the only screaming match I've ever gotten into was with a red-faced little tyrant who was mad that I dropped off his stack of newspapers too early in the morning. I think what really set him off was that one week, he told me he didn't want me to deliver the papers until after 7 a.m., so the next week, I showed up at about two minutes past seven. I think he thought I was being a wise-ass, but really, this time, I wasn't.
Red-faced guy starts screaming at me that my paper is the only one he's ever had problems with, that I don't listen, I yell back that he told me to show up after seven and it was after seven, his face gets even redder as he yells that I know that's not what I meant and to just take the damn papers out of the store, he doesn't want them, I yell back, fine, I'll take the damn papers, scoop them all off the floor and slam the door behind me, inserts spilling out onto the floor of the Extra Mart behind me. I bet friggin' Woodward and Bernstein never got yelled at by the owner of the Extra Mart.
But, you know, other than that, delivering stacks of papers to stores wasn't all that bad. Of course, it was either near the tail end of being delivery man or shortly after that the transmission in my Hyundai gave out. At the time, I did not realize that one was related to the other. That revelation would hit me during my days as Paperboy, Version 2.0.

To be continued...

Remaining willfully misinformed about the news of the day

2006-08-26T09:35:00.000-04:00

I subscribe to the Boston Globe, and most mornings I manage to fish it out of the shrubs in front of the house and at least scan the headlines while I drink my coffee. Typically, scanning the headlines gives me at least some idea of what's going on in the world. The Israel-Hezbollah war? Terrible, terrible thing. That guy who confessed to killing JonBenet Ramsay? Terrible,terrible thing.

But there are times when scanning the headlines only leads me to confusion. Two weeks ago, I was scanning the front page of the Globe where there was a top of the fold story, complete with colorful graphics, proclaiming that not only did scientists consider Pluto to be an official planet in our solar system, but they were also adding three other outer space locations to the official roll of planets, bringing our solar system's total to 12. This was quite a bit of news to digest, although I didn't really bother to read much beyond the first few paragraphs of the story and check out the colorful graphic that showed the three new planets floating like proud new balls of hardened ice out around Jupiter and Neptune.

This just all goes to show how utterly confused I was only days later when newscasts everywhere started proclaiming that scientists no longer considered Pluto a planet, but rather some kind of auxiliary near-planet. What the hell had happened? Only days before, not only was Pluto a planet, but there were also three other new planets that I had never heard of. Had the Globe lied to me? Or are there competing factions of scientists who battle daily over the number of planets in the solar system?

Not seeing any brightly colored graphics on the front of today's Globe, I may be doomed to a life of never knowing what the real story is with Pluto. Honestly, I'm not all that put out by the issue, since I have never been nor I am I likely to ever go to Pluto. Of course, the same thing could be said for Russia, or Kalamazoo, Michigan. Is it possible that these places could disappear from the map, too, if I've never been there? It's a terrible, terrible thing.

The worst thing that has ever happened ever

2006-08-21T18:15:00.000-04:00

It is the saddest day in the entire history of historiness, the Red Sox have just been swept in a five-game series by the hated Yankees and now thousands of New Englanders are desperately searching for the closest, highest bridge from which to fling themselves.
I could not believe my eyes this weekend as I watched ... well, okay, I didn't watch one single inning of it. Please forgive me if I'm not all broken up because the local nine looked like the Bad News Bears. It's not like I'm not a sports fan, not a Red Sox fan, because I am. I went to my first game at Fenway when with my dad in 1977, I was ecstatic when they came back to beat the Yankees and then won the World Series in 2004. If anything, this weekend was probably pretty unusual in that I went five straight games without watching a single inning.

But the bottom line is that the Red Sox, and every other professional sports team, is played by a bunch of really rich people you and I don't know. Seems to me that the reasonable, healthy thing to do is enjoy the game, feel a little up when the home team wins, and change the channel, shut the TV off, or just basically move on with your life when the home team loses. Yeah, I know, that's not the way it ends up working most the time.

Professional (and college) sports is a great form of entertainment, and at its best, it can rise to be something more. But in the end, whether or not the ball goes through Buckner's leg in the sixth game of the World Series, whether or not Ali knocks out Foreman in the eighth round in the jungle, whether or not Flutie hits Phelan in the end zone of the Orange Bowl, our lives go on pretty much unchanged.

Then again, if the Red Sox just had a %$*&^(*& bullpen...

A new old computer

2006-08-16T18:33:00.001-04:00

Very exciting news, I bought a new old computer today to replace my old old computer. For the past year, Endangered Coffee has been created, for the most part, on a previous 3400 that had virtually no memory. When I say for the most part, I mean that about all I could do on the Powerbook was write my entries in Appleworks and then cut and paste them into blogger. That's right, my Powerbook was too slow to handle the actual typing on Blogger itself.
As for downloading photos, well, that was a total lost cause. All the corny graphics you've seen over the past year actually had to be downloaded through Carrie's computer.
On the plus side, I did get the powerbook for under $50 on Craigslist, I eventually found a compatible wireless card, and it did get me through the past year. Of course, between the old operating system, use of nonOffice software, and lack of any USB ports, it was basically incompatible with the rest of the world.
So what kind of shiny new computer did I get? A flashy new MacBook Pro or a one of those fancy new Dell alien looking laptops?
Nope.
Once again, my computer comes courtesy of Craigslist, this time spending in the stratospheric $60 range for a Toshiba Satellite 2100CDS. There's no CD burner or DVDRom and only one USB (1.0) port, but it did come with a fresh copy of Office 2000, I've got the wireless hooked up, and it runs at a very respectable and unembarrassing speed. I can now download goofy artwork for my blog, listen to the Sirius radio stations and even check out the weather videos on Boston.com.
It's almost like I'm on the cutting edge.

Happy birthday to me

2006-08-03T17:03:00.000-04:00

Strike up the band, bake a cake, and light a candle; Endangered Coffee turns one-year-old today. To celebrate this auspicious occasion, I offer a new post hewing closing to my philosophy of giving my close to dozen readers more of the same - mainly embarrassing stories about my recent and not so recent past and random thoughts about things that tick me off.

Over the past year, Endangered Coffee has met all my expectations of success, mainly because I have always kept my expectations low. Most importantly, I have updated the site on a fairly regular basis, pretty much guaranteeing that Endangered Coffee is much more successful than my attempts at learning karate or how to play guitar many years ago or more my more recent attempt to write a novel during National Novel Writing Month (although I reserve the right to attempt to scale that mountain once again when November rolls around). Almost importantly, I’ve been pretty happy with the overall doofus quality of what I’ve posted, and most of the handful of friends, family, and random strangers who’ve stumbled across these posts seem to agree. Now, if I could only get them to give me money for writing about stupid stuff I’ve done.

If I had to pick my favorite post, I’d have to go with Stickboy and Mustache Guy. Least favorite, well, the whole Like A Rolling Pin deal hasn’t been updated in months, so I’ll just leave it at that.

So, anyway, I promised, embarrassing story. I’ll keep it short. I was off from work for a week. Coming back on Monday, apparently I was out of practice on some of the finer points of my job, such as drinking for the water cooler. I poured myself some water into one of those little Dixie cups, went to toss it down my gullet, and missed badly. Somehow, the contents of the Dixie cup ended up on my shirt and tie. Man, work can be tough.

I also promised a random thought on something that ticks me off, but honestly, tain’t much bothering me right now, not even the heat. Really, people, it’s summer. I wonder if the people who complain about the heat are also the ones who are shocked when we get a foot of snow in the winter.

Tour de Annoying

2006-07-31T18:10:00.000-04:00

I am pissed off at the world of cycling and it has absolutely nothing to do with the Tour de France (or, as I apparently pronounce it, the Toor do Frantz) and doping. Really, I never had the skills or desire to become a professional athlete, and I’m now getting toward the age where fiber supplements would be more useful to me than testosterone patches (Okay, maybe I’m not that old, but you get the point). As for the use of performance enhancing setting a bad example for children, well, if I ever have kids and they inherit my hand/eye coordination and fine motor skills, the entire contents of Barry Bonds’ medicine cabinet won’t do them any good.

No, the reason I am pissed off at the world of cycling is because I leave off of a very scenic road. And by scenic, I also mean narrow and not well paved. And apparently, bicyclists very much enjoy going for rides down scenic roads. I know riding a bicycle is fine exercise and cuts down on the use of fossil fuels and pumps up the economy for makers of power bars and sports drinks, but goddamn, when I am coming home from work and take that exit onto Grapevine Road thinking about firing up the grill and opening a fine adult beverage, I don’t want to have to worry about making the choice between wiping some Lance Armstrong wannabe off the side of or staring down the grill of one of the neighborhood tree service trucks coming right at me.

Although the odds are stacked tremendously in favor of me taking out the guy in the yellow shirt and the tight spandex shorts.

And one more thing, Mr. Bicycle Guy, although I’m sure there are aerodynamic and comfort reasons for the silly-looking bicycle outfits, please, please, DO NOT go pedaling down the road in a yellow jersey unless you actually have won a stage of the Tour de France. It’s kind of like me going around wearing a fake Pulitzer Prize medal around my neck just because I happen to occasionally tap out paragraphs on a keyboard.

Otherwise, happy cycling.

Idol thoughts

2006-07-12T18:59:00.000-04:00

I really have nothing against American Idol. Honestly. It’s the most popular show in the country and tens of millions of people seem to enjoy it, God bless’em. It’s not my cup of tea, so I choose not to watch it.

Sounds pretty simple, right? Live and let live. You do your thing and I’ll do mine.

Only problem is, see, I do enjoy watching the local baseball team. Much like American Idol, I understand that the Red Sox are quite popular, and like millions of folks across New England, I catch my fair share of games on NESN. And when there is a game on every night, there tends to be the same commercials every night.

And who is the star of the one commercial that seems to be on a continuos loop between every half inning? None other than American Idol winner Taylor Hicks.

Why Ford thinks I’ll be inclined to buy a pickup truck because this spastic gray-haired Karaoke singer is stumbling and spinning across some sort of Vegas truck showroom, shouting I GET WHAT I NEED .... possAbillATEE!, I do not know.

But I really, really, do not like it. If anything, the commercial could convince me to buy a Chevrolet pickup, just to spite Ford, even though there is no good reason why I even need a pickup truck. Seriously, the commercial almost makes me nostalgic for the Curt Schilling pickup commercials (I’m here to break an 86-year-old curse). Calm down, I said almost.

Please, whoever is responsible for this commercial, please just make it go away, so I can go back to enjoying my baseball games while happily letting the world of American Idol go on without me.