Fall 2009 at a (long) Glance

Some of you (at least, those of you bored enough to be checking this blog) may be wondering what the heck I've been doing this fall. It certainly hasn't been writing blog entries. While it's true that wedding planning has taken up some time, it's equally important to remember just how much of that workload Shelley is taking care of.

Something interesting happens to me when Shelley leaves me along for too long. I develop a condition that is better described as Jekyl-Hydism, than simple bi-polarism. In one state, I sequester myself in various enclosed spaces (studio apartment, library stacks) where I spend hours and hours in solitary servitude to the demigods of academia. I scribble clever little comments in red ink on the margins of xerox'd articles about the language policy of the Soviet union in the national delineation of 1924 (it's fascinating!). And I think to myself, "How could I have lived 28 years on this Earth and never thought about this before?"

Whether this state counts as Jekly or Hyde is a matter of prespective.

On the other side of the coin, I venture out into the big City with my wonderfully unorthodox buddies and stumble down the various rabbit holes they tend to encounter. It's generally a good pairing. We all tend to fall down (to carry the metaphor), but I usually keep my eyes open and land on my feet (metaphorically, and usually otherwise).

As a result, Fall 2009 has been an almost endless chain of dull stasis broken on rare occasions by flashes of hyper-dynamism. The camera tends to tag along on such occasions, but alas not always, and over the past two weeks the drudgery has become temporarily absolute as I prepare for writing term papers and prep my M.A. thesis for next spring.

But here is a very brief recap of what I have been doing, via the few photos that are on my Sony.

This is from the West Indian American Day Parade, and annual event out in Brooklyn celebrating New Yorkers "of the Islands." According to my friend Holly, who lives Directly on the parade route, the party starts about 2 am the day before, with street drumming, etc. then people sleep it off from 5-10, before coming back out for the main event. We're talking dozens of semi-trucks stripped down and packed full of sub-woofers, banners, politicians, and evangelists. Plus there's slaw, fried chicken, beans&rice, and Coconuts!

Did you know that Milwaukee Airport has modern art sculture in the shape of fishing tackle? Well, now you do. I want to tell you that the place was empty because I was passing through late on a week day evening, but I kind of got the impression it was never a very high-traffic zone.

Which is a good thing: more time to appreciate the art.



This is actually how I usually look: tired, slightly confused, and just a bit skeptical about whatever it is I'm being told at the moment. Oddly, I'm not actually tired (my college friends would be Shocked to know how much I'm sleeping these days), and the confusion comes and goes. Skepticism, I'm sorry to say, is getting thoroughly entrenched. Is that because of grad school, New York, or not being 21?

Well, whatever the cause, please know that if you ever see me make This Face (right) it probably just indicates I'm running low on caffeine. Time for a refill.


My employment with the Grand Poobah, Mr. Phil Schaap, continues to go well. We now have 2 books in print (and in need of selling... hint, hint, holiday present), with a 3rd one on the way as soon as I can finish tracking down some rare photographs. Sales have been off and on, but I'm using a lot of the skills I learned at KRTU, and we a totally redesigned website (philschaapjazz.com) coming on-line soon which should help.


Even though it's just me at home, I do end up cooking dinner just about every night, though the temptation of $5.25 cheap chinese just around the corner is a constant Jezebel to my David (but not my Davey, of course). The Buc-ee's shirt is something of a plug; but I have had several compliments from dance students. One in particular stands out, "Man, I really appreciate all the stuff you were showing us tonight, but like, I could barely even listen I kept looking at your t-shirt." "It's a Beaver" I explained.

And then sometimes I get a call to go clubbing down in the West Village at a no-cover converted parking garage with an army of suspended gord-lamps in the open space around the first floor staircase. This picture was actually taken while seated on a bench carved out of a giant gnarly tree trunk. The hot tub upstairs didn't stay empty all night. My buddy practically ripped her skirt in half on a particularly enthusiastic expression of awkward contempt for all the sexy people in the room. And that was about the half-way point of the evening. I turned in early at 3.





Not sure if this was as big a deal where you live, but apparently we just had "off year elections," including the NJ Governor and the NYC Mayor. Apparently, those are both important positions in our National Government, or at least so one would assume from the coverage they received. It doesn't help that both incumbents (Dems) are men of extreme personal wealth, and backed prominently by Obama. The fact that one (Bloomberg) also pushed through an amendment legalizing a third term added some Third World color. In the end, NJ's Corzine took a fall, and Bloomberg gets 4 more years (apparently 8 was not enough), but with a voter turnout of about 10%, is it really a victory for anyone? Oh, and NYC just elected its first Asian-American to city office. Way to go, progressives.

And sometimes I stop it all to go and get a bad haircut.

No matter how much $ I spend, there just doesn't seem to be any other kind. For those of you who just noticed, yes, my hairline is not what it used to be. I'm trying not to hyperventilate on a daily basis.

The rest of it, I hope, will grow back in time for the wedding.






Speaking of which, here's a final (silly) tally of who's "winning" the great RSVP race of 2009:
(assembled in only approximate order, but feel free to brag nonetheless)

1. Jordan Forbes
2. Pat & Kathy Laabs
3. Ken & Linda Abraham
4. Judye & Larry
5. Pete & Amy Rahn
6. Terry & Karen Smith
7. Ben Stull
8. Doyle Weber
9. Paul & Peggy Laabs
10. Craig & Anna Stalcup
11. The Moores
12. Neil & Sunita Crittenden
13. Audrey Reader
14. Dan & Kathy Schewe
15. Carl & Deborah Rubenstein
16. Richard & Judy Lambert
17. Mike & Laura
18. Jim & Carolyn Weber
19. Ray & Sheila Stevens


If this were chemistry, I would estimate there are about 2 parts per million of useful information in this post. I guess the volatility has a lot to do with what kind of parts those are.

Weber
::(lame) Texpatriot

You Might Have Won $0.00: Wedding Progress is a Zero-Sum Game

It's not really my desire to convert this into a wedding blog, but since my current workload has virtually ground my extra-curricular activities to a halt, I really don't have anything else to report on other than the various brilliant and/or sophomoric things I overhear on Columbia Campus, or the best nooks and crannies of CU's various libraries (they have a dozen!).

So wedding chat it is.

As I mentioned quite some time ago, Shelley has already finished most of the wedding planning. In fact, she's been done for 2 months. I, on the other hand, have languished in my few responsibilities, sometimes for reasons of personal negligence, and other times through disastrous conditions beyond my full control.

Luckily, in the past week this trend has (finally) started to turn around. Though I have not yet made a single one of them aware of it yet, I do have a plan for the attire of the Groomsmen; tuxes are rented, ties are purchased, boutinerres selected, and shirts ready to be ordered. Further, I've finally made contact with 2/3 of the musicians (In total, we are employing a small army of San Antonio jazz regulars), booked the date, and am working out the logistics. I even have the musical "style" if not the exact music with which we'll walk down the aisle. First dance music is still being... finicky.

But the big coup de grace so far has been the completion of the now 22-day late Wedding Invite Mail-Out. I won't walk you through the entire fiasco, but let's just say it involves a former "business associate," a sudden inability to operate a cell phone, a discontinued crucial part to a manual printing press, and something about the decoding of Platypus DNA. Well, at least 3 of those 4 anyway.

As of October 6, I was back to the drawing board, or Plan A, or whatever. The point is, by Oct 22 the invites were all printed, stamped, addressed, stuffed, sealed, and in happy, if temporary, residence at a New York City Post Office. Since Shelley wasn't around for the *joy* of this whole process, I documented it thoroughly in .jpg format, and present for you a quick glimpse below:

Oh thank goodness they finally arrived!!!

Wrapped in Orange celophane! How could they know???

Invites


RSVP Cards

Soooooooo Happy to Finally have them Printed


Ready for Stuffing

Making "Plus 1" Cards

Stuffing station (while I watched Firefly... this is the scene where Jayne sings, "the Hero of Canton, the One they Call... Me!")

The lady at the Post Office insisted on selling me these stamps. I was thinking more of a floral, but my options were these, the Liberty Bell, or the Gary Cooper collection.

Stuffing time! This isn't actually the final order in which things were packed...
but it certainly was the most photogenic.

Done. Now they just need to be sealed. I know there are clever ways to do this - glue sticks or some sort of semi-wet rag... Well, you should know that all 87 of our invites are not only going out straight from our hearts, but are indeed carrying a small amount of my DNA.
My tongue still feels funny.

Believe it or not, there are actually even more photos, but none more interesting than what's above. While I will promise to keep (those interested) up-to-date on our wedding progress, I think I can also guarantee that this is the most thorough documentation of our wedding you'll get until the day itself. For one thing, I'm getting burned out, and for another, it's really hard for me make photos of myself hunched over a computer writing e-mails look even slightly interesting.

So the invites are out. Watch your mailbox, and if Ed McMahan shows up, keep the door locked. No matter what he says, we didn't send him; you haven't won a million dollars, and he's not wearing pants. (would you believe me if I swore that I didn't know he died this summer when I wrote that? Sorry, Ed.)

Weber
::(lame) Texpatriot

Fall Semester Shake-down

Some of you have expressed a curiousity about what courses I'm taking this fall at Columbia. Others of you may have such a curiousity, but have chosen not to express it out of politeness. The majority of you probably don't care.

But ah well.

Officially, I'm enrolled in the Islamic Studies M.A., a Liberal Studies program within Columbia's Graduate School of Arts & Sciences (GSAS) - that is, the academic wing, to be differentiated from Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) - a practical/policy institute for recent graduates and veteran professionals alike.

Now, due to the nature of my particular program, I am allowed to take basically any class I want - in GSAS or SIPA - so long as I can make an argument that it is related to "Islamic" studies, or in some way relevant to my upcoming (and still not formally declared) M.A. thesis.

So I'm a kid in a candy store, and the only treats I'm not allowed to touch are the bland ones. This does make narrowing the field a bit difficult, but with a thesis focusing on Central Asia in the 19th and 20th centuries... well, let's say I may have over-represented just how much of the goodies are within arm's reach.

Still, it's never hard to put together a good semester when you only need 4 classes to win, and here's what I'm looking at for the next 3 months:


SOCIOLOGY - State & Nation in Multi-Ethnic Societies
Doesn't sound like a shoe-in, I know. In fact, I attended the first day of class just out of curiousity, wondering if I could somehow adapt what I might learn to fit with the topics I'm working on (Central Asia is a confusing region for "ethnology." Technically, most modern countries contain one ethnic majority, but that's not always the one afterwhich the country is named, and all such categories are Russian inventions from the 1920s).
Much to my surprise (and I think basically all the sociologists & SIPA kids in attendance), this is a class on historical sociology, specifically one that considers the multi-ethnic empires like Russia, the Ottomans and the Hapsburgs. Not only am I already familiar with some of Prof. Barkey's work, I've actually based a term paper on it. Home Run.

HISTORY - US, the Middle East, and the Cold War
When I came to Columbia, I was hoping to focus on the Non-Levant (Israel) Middle East in the mid-20th century to present; basically, Egypt-Iran-Iraq-Gulf during the Cold War. As it turns out, my attentions & curiosities led me in other directions, but I wasn't going to pass up the chance to take a course with Prof. Khalidi, especially not 4 months after he just published a critically-acclaimed new book on the subject. I must admit I do feel a little guilty - the class was more than double-booked (40 students for 20 spots), and there are a lot of very qualified students who would sacrifice a kidney to get my seat. But what do I need a 3rd kidney for?

INTERNAT'L AFFAIRS - Elections & Political Development
To be honest, this class has very little to do with my thesis (as it stands now). This isn't so much about learning more stuff as it is being able to apply some of my experience from this summer. Having been an active witness to a "semi-democratic" fixed election in Kyrgyzstan this summer, I'm eager to put my "on the ground" experience to academic use. As an added bonus, the course is taught by Prof. Lincoln Mitchell, who is actually one of the people I interviewed this summer while he was in Bishkek. Should be a great opportunity to hone my observations and put together a paper of real weight - at least, within the heavy subject matter of Kyrgyz democracy promotion.

HISTORY - Central Asia: Imperial Legacies, New Images
What seems like the most obvious choice on my schedule was actually the last, and least likely, addition. In the entire GSAS-SIPA matrix, there are a total of 4 courses that exclusively deal with Central Asia. Two are taught each semester by Prof. Rafis Abazov and Gulnar Kendirbai. Last fall I took Abazov, last spring Kendirbai. Due to the minimal level of student interest, all four courses are essentially introductory to the material, though with some different focuses and directions. As a result, I wasn't initially too excited about taking a second course which will cover 70% of the same material. But then I got thinking. While introduction to new concepts and new authors is an important part of grad work, I'm going to get to take this class (mostly full of undergrad seniors with no background in Central Asia) with the benefit of just a little personal experience, and frankly a lot of background knowledge. There will still be a lot of reading, but since I'm already familiar with the historical contours, I should be able to relax a little and take it all in like a book on the beach. At least, that's the theory. Plus, I can make the paper as new/challenging as I want. And I needed a 4th class.


Other options which I declined for various reasons (which I won't go into now) were:

"Post-Soviet Politics & Markets," "International Politics of Iran since 1979," "Mughal India," and "Political Identity, Civil War & State Reform in Congo."

It's a rough life.

Weber
::(lame) Texpatriot

Wedding Biz Update

As those of you who follow the personal details of my life already know quite well, I am getting married to my long-time girlfriend Shelley in January. I proposed in May, and then promptly left for Kyrgyzstan for the next 2 months. Not the best way to bask in the post-proposal glow, btw.

While I was abroad, Shelley was not adequately preoccupied - professionally or otherwise - and decided to go back and visit family in Houston, just a (very long) stone's throw from our wedding site in San Antonio. Whatever the chemical formula for (Shelley) + (time) - (distractions) is, it needs to be plastered in all places of employment right alongside the beloved Choking Ahogo placards.

By the time I returned to the states, Shel had virtually the entire wedding planned. Venue, menu, reception, officiants, flowers, cake, even her dress was done. What remained were those items designated as my responsibility: Invitations, Music, and Groom's attire.

So how's all that coming?

Let's just say that (Ryan) + (time) tends to = (distractions).

What can I say? I'm a curious little critter.

Or, as I like to say, "Hey, I already did the proposal..."

But progress has been made, and without giving anything too juicy away, I thought I'd post a few whatnots for anyone who might be curious.

This is what our Save the Date looks like (go go VistaPrint) when tacked to my bulletin board - a constant reminder that I have a girl I love even when she's far away - and a helpful reminder that even happy things like weddings still have deadlines.

If you haven't received one of these yet... well, I don't know what to tell you. It's either lost in the mail, we simply don't have room even though we love you to death, or we're just jerks.

The invitations themselves will be printed in San Antonio - hopefully by a former business contact... if he'll ever get back to me! We scoped out a lot of wedding invitation specialists, but most of them wanted to do much fancier details than we cared about ("will that be Letter Press, or Thermography?"), and all of them were beyond the budget we set up.

So we just designed it ourselves. We could have gone with a pre-made design - there are certainly lots that look excellent - but what's the point of having a working knowledge of Photoshop and a very talented Graphic designer as a close friend if you can't pull off something custom when the occasion warrants? (btw - Thanks to Laura Glaess, for creating our key graphic element).

Here's a tasty teaser for what the Back of the invitation and response card should look like.

While we sort out the specifics of getting the invitations printed, preparations continue on the other miscellany of sending out an old-fashioned snail-mailing to 150 of your closest friends/relatives/etc. We've been checking, double-checking, (and no small amount of fretting) over our invite list, confirming spellings and getting addresses. Then there's the issue of envelopes.

Finding and purchasing the right ones was no big deal (thanks to paperandmore.com), but they all still need to be addressed, including return addresses. Lots of wedding stationary people will print this info directly on the envelope for you... for a price.

But I'm marrying a former elementary school teacher. "Why don't we just buy a custom rubber stamp for $10?" Most useful M.A. degree ever?

With the addition of a black ink pad (for the "soft orchid" return envelopes) and some super-cool silver ink (for the main "deep purple" envelopes), I was in business.

Pronouns switch from "we" to "I" because at this point Shelley left New York for a 2 month tour based out of San Antonio, and thus my responsibilities became exclusively mine to achieve.

I won't bore you (further) about the difficulties and delicacies of working with silver ink, attempting to maintain horizontal stamping, or finding enough work space to lay out 200 envelopes to dry in a New York studio apartment. Instead, I'll let the visuals (and results) speak for themselves:



And how are we/I coming with the music and Groom's attire...

I'll have to get back to you on that on. But I'll promise not to watch the ink dry, if you promise not to hold your breath.

Weber
::(lame) Texpatriot

New to Newark

As some of you know, since January I've been fortunate enough to be gainfully employed as a part-time assistant to Phil Schaap, Curator of Jazz at Lincoln Center. My Phil-duties are varied, and rely much more on my knack for figuring out new things than on any particular professional experience I happen to possess. The thrust of our efforts thus far has been into the realm of independent Jazz book publishing. In fact, I'm quite proud to announce that our first book - a republication of This is Ragtime by Terry Waldo - is just being released and we're very happy with the end result. I guess I should probably post something more formal about it, but for now you'll just have to live with this link to our sales portal (soon to be rebuilt for the 21st century).

With This is Ragtime now on the shelves, my duties swell to include marketing and academic/library sales, but my core job is still book layout/design/research/production. Our next project is a biography focusing on the early period of Duke Ellington by the late Columbia professor Mark Tucker.

Part of bringing a book (that never existed digitally) back into publication is reassembling the original material. For text, this means a lot of scanning and copy-editing. For music scores this means new transcriptions. For images, it usually involves either access to the author's personal collection, or digging through one of only a handful of nationally-recognized Jazz archives.

One is at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in DC, and another is the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, Newark NJ.

And so last Wednesday, with the author unfortunately no longer around to help us reassemble his sources, I set out on a field trip to the distant (mythical?) land of Newark.

For those not familiar with the geography of NY/NJ, they are separated by the Hudson river, but not actually very far apart. In fact, WBGO, one of the biggest Jazz radio stations in the world, is broadcast from Newark into New York (it's cheaper). If commercial FM radio can reach, you understand the limited distance we're talking about.

To accomplish this travel (one-way) required in total 10 minutes of walking, 20 minutes on a subway, and another 20 minutes on the NJTransit Northeast Corridor train. Grand total: $6.25

When the NJTransit train emerges from under the Hudson, about 4 minutes from NYC, you are immediately struck by the transformation. Grass! Space! Sky!

While I got the impression that Newark wasn't exactly the pearl of New Jersey (if NJ has a pearl...), I must say I was struck by how nice it looked in my brief time there. Newark Penn Station (left) is great, and the downtown area was thriving - if only 10% as manic as Manhattan.




Rutgers University is located practically within downtown Newark, so I had another short walk on a beautiful September afternoon - no sweat there. Much like the city in which it is enveloped, Rutgers is a great campus. In the dead center of it is the Dana Library (at left), on the 4th floor of which you will find the famed Institute of Jazz Studies.


IJS is a storehouse for a variety of Jazz archive material, from sound recordings and photographs to physical documents like concert posters, personal correspondences, and even musical instruments played by famous musicians. In the world of Jazz Miscellany, IJS is a very humble but holy Mecca.

My task was to locate 5 photographs from the Driggs Collection which were featured in the original publication of my Tucker project. To achieve this, I was handed two piles of photographs, and I got to flip through them - carefully - until I found what I was looking for. Unfortunately, the effort was only a partial success. By the end of the day, I left with digital scans for 3 of the 5 I needed, and one potential alternate photo to replace another, in case I wasn't able to find the original. That's progress, but it leaves me with few options to find the remaining images - - looks like I might be DC bound in the near future.

So long as I was in Newark - and enjoying the lack of noise, crowds, and general NYC grime - I decided to have dinner and explore downtown more thoroughly. It was really wonderful, though I suspect Newark is only a wonderland to those looking to escape New York. I happen to be just such a person.


when it was finally time to go, I got another $4 ticket back to NYC, boarded a slightly-less upscale train, and braced myself for reintegration into the press of humanity. Newark was in no way like "going to the country" or any other true escape from the metropolitan mash, but it was certainly the type of excursion that makes one want for more excuses to do archival research.

Weber
::(lame) Texpatriot

NY Return / Summer Freebies

After a summer of writing exceptionally long, and frankly rather boring, posts about politics and social issues in Kyrgyzstan, I am approaching my return not to the states, but to state-side blogging, with a great deal of apprehension. I've put off writing even the smallest little posts, for fear of ballooning into swollen tomes of the everday doldrums.

So when I confess that, in fact, I've had a very eventful 2 weeks since returning to NYC on Aug 10, and that after an equally eventful 2 weeks romping through Oklahoma, Houston, San Antonio and Austin, I hope to have conveyed enough promise for you to stick with what I assure you will be a very brief recap of the individual high points.

August 10:: Return to NYC

My plane was delayed, then on-time, then delayed, then magically somehow early. All of that was quickly negated by the much longer-than-usual bus ride to my apartment, where I finally arrived around 10 pm on a Monday night. As I've mentioned earlier - and often - I don't really mind living in New York, but I absolutely HATE returning to New York. After a few days, the various smells, noises, and other little annoyances fade into the background of your scowling NY existence, but fresh off the airplane, NYC always makes me want to run away. It's something like the effect of the humidity wall that greets you on the jetway at Houston International, except that it attacks all of your senses, and AC doesn't cure it. On the plus side, our darling subletters left the apartment in great shape, including the addition of several new cleaning tools, and more sea salt than I've ever seen outside a health food store.

August 11:: Shelley's return

A little less than 24 hours after I touched down at LaGuardia, it was shelley's turn. She was not delayed, but was packing 3+ months of clothing and other supplies in one ginormous piece of luggage, so I made my way out to the airport to pick her up and manhandle the thing home. Good thing too, that bus was crowded and I was happy to give Shel one less reason to stress out -- she like wise reacts aversely to the sudden odors, grime, and lack of personal space.

August 12:: The Great Unpacking

Around this time last year, Shelley and I were driving across the country with most of our wordly possessions in a much-too-large Penske truck. This time around, with no where new to move into, we nonetheless had some unpacking to do. In light of the summer sublet, we decided to get as much of our stuff out of the way as possible, and I must say I'm quite proud of how densely we managed to pack our studio. Of course, we had no idea what had gone in which random cubby hole... The scene was quite a disaster, but it didn't take us more than a few days to get it sorted (as the British would say).

August 14:: Flex the NY Muscle

Except for the weather, Summer is a great time to be in New York. There's free stuff everywhere, from film screenings and outdoor folk festivals to dance parties, bizarrolympics, theatre, and all sorts of live music. Having missed 90% of the season already, Shel and I endeavored to make the most out of the various "final event of the season"s going on. In this case, we caught the last act of the River to River NYC festival: School of Seven Bells at the South Seaport. It's not a band that rolls off the tongue or hits the billboard Top 40, but I heard one or two SVIIB songs on my trusty KRTU Nocturnal Transmissions webcasts, and thought they might actually be to Shelley's liking. The Seaport itself is bizarre and wonderful. Something of a mixture of a mall (the shopper's unicorn in Manhattan), a pier, a boardwalk (not to be confused with a pier) and an old town square renovated in the late 1990s. Because we were in the area, we took the subway over to Brooklyn and walked across the B. Bridge to get there, enjoying a scenic stroll, some good-natured meandering, and a sunset en route to what turned out to be a really fantastic concert (the same cannot be said for the opener, "XX," who managed even to make Dos Equis lamer by association).

btw, if you want a great new source for freebie events in the metro, try prximity.com

August 15:: NYC Museum

Some advice. 1) While it may not be much of a draw for the average tourist, it is STRONGLY ADVISED for anyone living in NYC to make a visit to the Museum of the City of New York post haste. Not only does it have some fun insight and history into the city's origins (like, why it's called Wall street), and its lingering Dutch legacies, but currently they have an exhibit on the reconstructed natural history of Manhattan circa 1600. That may not sound fascinating, but IT IS! Really great exhibits show what this island of 2 million looked like when it was population 600. Crazy cool.

Advice #2 - Don't get so absorbed with the Natural History part that you don't realize the museum is closing momentarily, and neglect to see the other 2/3 of it. Bummer. Free for Columbia students, $10 general admission.

I would point out that we planned to next visit the Guggenheim on their special Saturday night "Pay What you Want" session, but after we spotted the 2-block line of tourists waiting to get into the max-capacity building, we decided to pull a "Guggenheim Abortion," a term I find it hard not to love despite its unintentionally controversial innuendo.

We capped it all off with a walk through Central Park - Shelley's first look at the Resevoir, and our mutual discovery of a cool bridge lacking only in a friendly troll.

August 16:: India Day/Summer Stage

Parades are another of the small miracles that make living in NY not so bad, and provide employment for I'm guessing millions of otherwise introverted high school band geeks. Whether it's ethno-national (India Day Parade, West Indies Day Parade, etc.), patriotic (Thanksgiving) or just drunken fun (St. Patrick's), parades entail a wealth of horribly-amplified music, gaudy SUV embellishments, face painting, low-tier politicians, and cheap street food. They not only bring out the crazies, but they celebrate their participation. India Day Parade was relatively tame, but the flock of teenage girls hurredly keeping up with the Jay Sean float (he's so hot right now!)

provided ample entertainment.

Later in the day we hung out along the East side of Central Park for the last concert of the Summerstage festival, with reunited underground rock stars Dinosaur, Jr. We got there just as the Walkmen - my odds-on favorite for the best act - were starting, and were not the least disappointed. It didn't sound much like the 2 Walkmen albums I own from a few years back, but it still sounds fun and creative. Dino-Jr, on the other hand, bless their tired, pioneering souls, just weren't blowing our socks off. Shelley quietly commented that the lead singer sounded like the Counting Crows, and while I rose to his defense - "you mean, the Counting Crows sounded like Dinosaur Jr," the similarity was unfortunately undeniable, regardless of which way the river flowed. We left about 1/2 way through their set. Sorry guys.

August 17:: Skywalk(er)

We elected to skip the Bryant Park screening of Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind (shelley has an on-and-off alien phobia), and then, at the last minute, ditched a screening of North Korean Propaganda films at one of the more *cough* Communist of theatres in the West Village. This left us along the Hudson for a sunset over New Jersey, then we stumbled into a new NY landmark I'd been trying to hunt down - The Skywalk. Any

connection to Mr. George Lucas is, I'm sure, legally unbinding,

but converted elevated train track that runs North-South along the Western edge of lower Manhattan is really a triumph of Parks&Rec. It's retro-cool lines are made all the bolder for its pleathora of flora, ikea-esque wooden benches, and fluid use of textured concrete panels. It runs up 10th Ave from 10th to 18th street, and is really a spendor for all its simplicity. Highly Advised for tourists and locals alike.

August 19:: Pineapple Expr-ASS (or How Freebies Sometimes Bite Back)

Had you asked me the day before, I would have confessed to thinking Judd Apatow a modern cinematic genius, Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg bards of our age, and the combination of the three an unstoppable force for irreverent, but ultimately intelligent and entertaining movies. Knocked Up. SuperBad. Forgetting Sarah Marshall. As much as she hates to admit it, these are even some of Shelley's favorite movies. Her favorite joke? In FSM when Paul Rudd asks, "Does the Carpet match the pubes?" See! If they can make Shelley like something THAT low-brow, they must be onto something.

But whatever they're onto, it's clearly not the creative potential of marjuana. I don't know how much they smoked while writing Pineapple Express, but I'm sure that you'd need to toke twice as much to enjoy the end product. Shelley and I were actually pretty excited to go watch a free outdoor screening at Pier 54 on the Hudson just after nightfall. Accomodations weren't amazing - it's a big concrete slab on the water - but they had a big projection screen and decent audio setup. While the movie came out last summer, neither of us had seen it at the time, and were rather excited about the possibility: A pot movie that isn't just about baker humor, but adds a more developed human angle!

wrong. I won't further pummel a movie you've already learned to shun, or never planned to see anyway, but let's just conclude that the best line in the movie is, "He's punching my bum." Best. Line. It didn't help that we were surrounded on all 4 sides by people discretely lighting bongs and bowls in their laps, as if they were pulling a fast one on the cops sitting there in the dark watching them do it. Seriously - bong hits at a Pineapple Express screening? Are you the people who wear the band's t-shirt to their own concert? That's Lame, even for me.

Weber

:: (lame) Texpatriot

New York Hiatus

Finish first year of grad school - check.
Propose to girlfriend - check.
find a productive way to spend the summer between grad semesters??

Check.

As many of you already know, I will not be in New York this summer. At Shelley's urging I went searching for opportunities to improve me knowledge in the areas of my graduate studies during the summer break, and through one very helpful university contact, and my practically patent-pending system of dumb luck, I landed a whopper.

Based on my prior experience in radio operations/management, and my current academic/social interest in the region of Central Asia, I was approved for an internship with Radio Attazyk, the Kyrgyz branch of "Radio Free Europe," now re-branded as Radio Liberty. For those not familiar with RFE/RL, it is an international news/journalism organization with certain functional similarities with the BBC or NPR. Like the BBC, it has a strongly international focus for its news content, but like NPR it is actually a confederation of independent news organizations which share resources and content. It is also, it must be admitted, funded by the US Congress as a carryover from its days as a propaganda machine pumping in "free press" via radio to Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe.

Since the collapse of the USSR, the main office has moved from DC to Prague, and the mission has shifted to more generally support freedom, democracy, etc. around the world. Continued US funding of course requires at least a critical eye, though not necessarily skepticism. In addition to radio news, they also support vibrant web coverage from all the countries in which they are involved, and I would encourage you to flip through the articles and judge for yourself. www.rferl.org

As for myself, I'm nominally going as a radio intern, though it seems more likely at this point that I'll be conducting training in radio copy writing (essentially, high-level english training), and also be assisting with a youth (15-20s) radio program. I will find out more when I get there.

That's the long version, now here's the relevant detail:

the (lame) Texpatriot is setup to be a blog about my life, but specifically my life as a Texan Expatriot living in New York. Moving to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, transcends most of what I would usually write in this blog. I will no longer be a Texan - or even a New Yorker - I will now be living as an 'American' representative, dissolving the fun nuances this blog is built to discuss.

Luckily... I happen to have another blog, which predates this one and addresses exactly the issues at hand: what do I experience when traveling outside my comfort zone and beyond the territorial borders of my own prior experience. I started this last summer when I spent almost 3 months touring around Europe, first alone and then later accompanied by my girlfriend. It was a tremendous experience, and I had a lot of time to think deep and write about it on the blog.

I have my doubts about this summer resulting in such ephemeral contemplations, but it's a close enough fit that I'll be documenting my Kyrgyz adventure on this alternate (previous) blog chain. You can follow along at http://weberonthelamb.blogspot.com

The name doesn't make much sense, being both a euphemism for "legal fugitive" and a (not very) comical allusion to a (formerly) recurring segment on the Colbert Report. Since the creation of that blog, Colbert dropped the bit, and I realized that I wasn't fleeing anything, but rather searching for things.

Nonetheless, the blog (and its mis-nomer) took on a life of its own. It became personified, and I've come to think, in a very weird way, about 'the lamb' as my companion in my travels. It is an honest, occasionally brutally honest, confidant as well as a catalyst to push me further beyond my comfort zone when the opportunity arises. In a sense, it has become my 'journeyman's conscience,' reminding me of my purpose to explore and the friends and family who await an update.

Having said all of this, the primary purpose of this post is only to inform you that, in all likelihood, I will not be reposting to this blog until I return from this particular engagement. When I get back to NYC in August/September, and my regular life and TX:NY comparisons again become relevant, the (lame) Texpatriot will return.

Until then, I would love to have you follow along in my digital footprints at Weber on the Lamb, and I wish you the very best wherever your summer may take you.

Weber
:: (lame) Texpatriot

How to be a Badass

Finding the person you want to spend the rest of your life with is a pretty wonderful feeling, conveying that sentiment to the person by presenting them with a symbol of your lifelong commitment is even better.  But if you really want to graduate to the level of 'badass', you've got to take it one step further.

Common options include grandiose proposal circumstances (Jumbotrons, sky writing, name etched into their souffle', etc.), ridiculous diamond sizes, and celebrity guest appearances (yes, Snoop, I'll marry him!).

As with so many choices, this lame texpatriot opted for d) None of the Above.

Besides, how could I hope to choose the right ring for Shelley without letting her know that I was looking?  We've been dating almost 7 years, so certain key features were set: no yellow gold, nothing impractical, no pink stones.  But that's all I had to go on.  What the hell else HAD we been talking about for all those years?

I could have just proposed, and then let her pick out a ring she loved... But I think part of proposing is 'doing the best you can' and then being accepted, whatever you've got, for all your good & bad choices.  In other words, if you really love the guy, and he has bad taste in jewelry or anything else, that's something you'll have to accept if you plan to be with him forever.

So letting Shel choose the ring was out.  Equally, me choosing a ring from a catalogue of several hundred generic rings didn't really sound too intimate either.  What ring says, "Shelley"?  Option 143b or option 338c?  Again, I deferred to option d).

Luckily, this time I actually had an option d): NewYorkweddingring.com

This is a small business run by a goldsmith named Sam Abbey in downtown manhattan, just a block or two from the World Trade Center site.

It's a simple setup: 1 room live-in apt, tons of specialized jeweler's tools, a few precious metals, and a computer.  After a few planning meetings to discuss design elements, materials, and to purchase a diamond together, you show up early in the morning, and 

over the course of an oh-so-brief 16 hour day, the two of us made Shelley's wedding ring.

That's right.  

I made Shel's engagement ring.  

From scratch.  Like a biscuit.  

Because she deserves it, and I was being bonafide badass.

Here's how:

Take the band material (a solid platinum cylinder) and cut it down to the appropriate length.

Flatten to the desired width.

File the ends.

Annealing with blow torch - basically, super-heat until it glows orange (pretty!); this makes it more pliable.

Bend into a ring, then shape & bend more and more until 2 ends touch.

place on a cone to set size/shape; hammer until ring is a circle.

Annealing again, this time to "lock" the ring shape.

File more.

Torch-Solder (actually, brazing)the 2 ends together (now a complete ring).

Practice engraving on a silver dud piece.

Engrave decorative elements onto platinum band.

Cut an "x" into the top of the ring for the setting to fit into.

File the X smooth.

Drop in the Setting.

Torch-Solder (again, braze) the setting in place.

File / sand / polish the interior.

Super-polish the exterior, especially the setting.

File down interior of setting (to "catch" diamond).

test diamond fitting, remove, re-file setting, test, re-file, etc etc etc.

Once diamond is snug-fit into setting, gently bend-over top of setting arms.

Submerse the ring in quick-hardening plastic.

Put ring+plastic in a vice, let cool/harden.

Use hammer firmly bend/lock setting arms down on top of diamond.

file/sand/polish setting arms, reduce size as desired.

remove plastic in boiling water.

polish polish polish polish polish polish polish.

POLISH.

P-O-L-I-S-H.

Buff it.

Box it.

Badass.

You can find more photos here (if you're still interested after all that!)

The proposal, pre-proposal plans, post-proposal happiness; all of these are good and perhaps even more impotant than all the sillyness outlined above.

You can find Shelley's perspective of the actual proposal on her blog

Everyone's fiance is special - if they weren't, no one would bother with all the work of proposing. So when I say that Shelley is special to me, that she's one of a kind, this should be no surprise given the time we've been together, me proposing, etc.

But we now have a lifetime together, and it's a life we're going to have to make together.  And I got it off to a good start by making the symbol of that commitment with the same two hands that (sporadically) type this blog.

I haven't rebuilt her a car.  I haven't constructed her dream house.  I don't have any idea how to go about sewing her wedding dress.

But I did make her engagement ring, and that's at least a good start... 

at being a badass.

Weber

::(lame) Texpatriot

Nature Strikes Back

Another Earth Day has come and gone, and while some of us may have celebrated by participating in a recylcing drive, a carbon emission boycott, or a polar bear rescue excursion, the vast majority of us just sent a few virtual plants on facebook and called it good.

Here's a reflection for the day: 

When you hug a tree, 
it never hugs you back, 
but when you kick a tree,
you're left with the bruise.

I for one am a great appreciator of the Earth in the way that I appreciate my family: it's the only one I've got.  That doesn't mean (either one) isn't amazing, but it's not really the quality of the entity that earns it my respect/love/patience.  Rather, it is (structurally), that encapsulating conceptual and physical space that literally circumscribes everything I know.  I'll admit the comparison drops out eventually; some families are easier to escape than others, but with the continued development of space travel perhaps someday we can all be bratty teenagers and leave Earth in a huff too.

Until then, we're stuck with it, so we'd best make the most of our situation.  To what degree the Earth needs our 'protection' I remain quite sceptical.  Let me be clear: I don't generally question the 'science' of global warming - I do believe that in the past 250 years the exploitation of (non-renewable) fossil fuels has elevated mankind as a whole to a new level of existence known as geologic force, and correspondingly I allow that we now live in the anthroposcene era.

BUT, I also recogize that the mass exploitation of those carbon resources is not just a, but perhaps, the defining characteristic of our modern lives.  I'm not even talking about modern comforts, the discoveries of plastics, techno-electric societies... go back further.  If England hadn't been a small island (lacking the primary resource of food/fuel competition - land), and if that island hadn't happend to be sitting on top of a giant pile of accessible simple carbon (coal), then the 'industrial revolution' as we conceive of it may never have happened.  Ever.  Not 50 years later, not 100 years later.  Progress would have happened, but it wouldn't have brought us to where we are today.  Period.

So ok, fossil fuels - specifically the ability to extract radically more energy at a dramatically lower rate of land consumption - are the only reason we've become masters of our own fate.  They may also lead us into self-extinction.  You win some, you lose some.

But even now, big geologic force that we are, the Earth doesn't really need us to 'protect it' as if from some outside threat, but simply to stop killing it; or at least decrease the rate at which we are changing it.  We can't 'kill' the Earth - it isn't 'alive.'  It is a complicated system of many parts - geologic, meteorologic, hydrologic as well as the biologies of flora, fauna and pisces we more often discuss - most of which will change dramatically after the human species becomes extinct, but which would require even more dramatic changes than we can affect to bring about their annihilation.  We can't kill this planet, we can only kill the ants muddling about on the surface.

Still, when a scientist says, with mixed wonder and fear, that the changes we're imparting on a global level have consequences beyond his/her ability to predict even within the current generation's lifetime (not to mention the several centuries/millenia in which we hope life continues on Earth), that should scare at least a small amount of food waste out of you rectum.

I'm no champion of doom and gloom, but let's look at this from a perspective about 100 times deeper than buying a canvas bag just in case you ever remember to use it again (btw - canvas requires cotton, which in the current agribusiness is no eco-friend).

Industrial revolution required an enormous amount of coal to get started, in fact most recent estimates suggest the huge pile of carbon energy that England started with, and depleted in just 100 years, is almost exactly the same as the most trusted estimates of Saudi oil reserves.  It's not renewable.  It will all get used up.

Since the (first) British cultural invasion of steam power and industry, the world has started moving much faster.  More people industrialize, more carbon is needed, and more gasses flood the ozone layer.  But how can one country, whose 'modernity' was only possible by grotesquely 'unenvironmental' methods criticize the use of those same methods by others?  Especially when those others lack of 'modernity' is cited as the primary reason for their political and social subjugation to the 'modern' world?  It's not a lollipop.  We can't lick it first and thereby deny the prize to everyone else who has a fair chance to grab it.

Luckily, when weighty issues such as these set upon my shoulders, I'm reminded of just how small we humans are, and how fragile our toys can leave us.  Asteroids, Earth quaks, Twisters, Tsunamis.  There are a lot of phenonmenon, rare and common, incidental and catastrophic, that 'ole Mother Earth can pull out from time to time.  These aren't punishments - there is no correlation to what we've done and what we reap - it's just irrational consequences.  There may be a cycle of weather activity we call El Nino, but the complexity of factors involved in determining how many people it will kill with mudslides will likely remain beyond our grasp for eons.

Then there are the more down-to-Earth examples.  The harrowing tale of countless heroes following the noble example of a canadian goose patriotically tacking down a US Airways flight, or a pod of whales flexing their Atlantic might against a Volvo-sponsored sailboat armada.

Do we still want to save the whales once they've realized that it's us or them?

It's hard to conceive of a world in which not only the international economic system, but even the chemisty and geology are entirely fluid concepts, but it's even harder to deny the reality - if you're willing to think about a topic rather than be told about it.  So stop reading this, and do some reflection of your own.  We know that our use of fossil fuels changes the world at a fundamental level.  We know of nothing in human ability that can reverse these changes, and more to the point, we seem incapable of even slowing down the rate at which we employ the tactis that we know are making these changes increase, much less begin reducing the amount of change we impart.

Earth is not a static ecosphere, and as great as it is to 'think green' and 'do our part,' considering the ramifications of even the generally acknowledged 'facts' means confronting the serious likelihood of our self-extinction.  While this was a harsh potential we had to face during the Cold War, then it at least relied on human agency - someone had to be willing to push the button.  Was there anyone that crazy?  Yes, there was.  Good job humanity, we survived that one.  What about this?  What about when all x Billion people are contributing to global annihilation?  No matter how many cans you recycle, bikes you ride, or dollars you give to charity, we are all contributing, and we will all be culpable.  On the plus side, there won't be anyone left to sue us. 

So happy Earth day.  

That's sort of where I'm going with this.

Weber

::(lame) Texpatriot

Techno-Transmission

I had a conversation with a friend last week in which he mentioned that his new job required him to learn how to drive a stick shift, and this somehow  sparked in me a tirade about the dangerous side effects of technology as a mechanism by which we insulate ourselves from reality.

Stick with me.

I'm not a car nut, ranking behind both brothers and my father in the zeal, knowledge, and skill of automechanics.  I do know how to work a manual transmission, though all 5 cars I've owned have been automatic (and full disclosure - my next car will doubtless be automatic as well).

But here's the argument.  

A Manual Transmission is a mechanized aparatus that makes the shifting of gears possible by a human operator, but not without removing cognizance and control of that operator from the process.  As a result, reality - the consequence of the driver's actions - is transmitted through a connected linear process from the wheels on the pavement and the combustion in the pistons to the pedals, feet, knee and brain of the driver.  While the driver may not necessarily understand the exact construction and operation of every link in the chain, the process is not outside his/her comprehension.  Sure, driving stick gets to be 'automatic' in that we stop thinking about it, but no more so than we stop thinking about our fingers when we type - we are still aware of our indivisible control.

Compare this to the automatic, where by pressing one pedal with no concern for other factors the car "goes" - as if by magic.  We could easily replace the pedal on the floor with a button on the dash - the Go Button - or for those of my generation and after, the "a/x" button on most video game controls.

The car moves forward.  It changes its own gears through the undecipherable process of bearings, transmission fluid, and hydraulics.  This causes a schism between the act of driving and the reality of the car's movement (we could even joke that, technically, we lose our sense of auto-mobility).  

My point is that there develops a gap between how a thing works, and how we perceive it as working.  And this I think might actually be a problem.

Without getting too broad, consider other examples.

How does democracy work?  What about the Internet?  We know what both of these things are, and we can certainly describe the results they produce, but how do they work?

These institutions and technologies have become "black boxes," a term developed in the field of Scient and Technology Studies (STS) by people like Bruno Latour and Michel Callon.  We don't recognize how these technologies work; we put in command/item A, and we get result/item b.

When you put a tomato in a shredder, this isn't really a problem.

When you put a tomato in a microwave, the results might surprise you.  

Go ahead and try.  

I'll wait.

I'm not sticking too close to Latour's argument, because this isn't about all technologies, just those that I deem create or exacerbate a rift between reality and cognition.

It is interesting to me that most instances of engineering technology fall into this category.  Again, hydraulics, steam power, even simple devices like gears and pulleys to some degree separate us from reality in that they alter/mitigate the amount of work required to achieve a certain effect.  Yet a pulley is not beyond my ability to recognize and understand as an instantaneous cognition.

On the other hand, the Automatic transmission, which I've been able to operate (legally) for 11 years now, is a complete mystery to me despite opening one up, and then later having the distinction of paying to replace it.

What does it mean to have our actions/control divorced from the reality of their effect?  While I'm sure it's done a lot to make driving easier, it hasn't actually made cars any safer or appreciably more fuel efficient, has it?  It's now possible for us to eat a Big Mac or put on our mascera while we drive.  It's finally possible to get up to an unsafe speed while drunk.  Progress?

The incredible jump in the use of unmanned aerial drones by the US military, originally for surveillance, but now increasingly for offensive strike missions also comes to mind.  We now have 19 year old "pilots" sitting at their desks in Arizona controlling expensive military hardware on the other side of the globe and killing people - hostile or civilian doesn't really matter for this argument.  

We've all been horrified about the "finger on the button" of US-USSR nuclear arsenals - that one man could effect the death of millions from an isolated bunker without directly doing anything.  The scale of nuclear winter is obviously dramatic, but the isolation from the reality of the act it implies I find disturbing, and progressively more available not just in our military, but also in social aspects.

Medicine technology, until very recently, has not followed this trend of anti-reality.  Dissection, EKGs, fiberoptic cameras.  These technologies all seek to either bring the doctor into closer direct contact with what I'm calling 'reality,' or to create a more accurate representation of that reality.  This representation is frought with its own complications (re: 'Virtual Reality'), but for now, I'm just stressing that the point in this technological process is to bring the operator closer to reality, rather than further away.  New prospects in computer-controlled lasers represent one divergence from this trend.

So what's the point?  Clearly I don't think technology is a bad thing (I'm blogging) - in fact I'm quite the technophile.  I think the 21st century is an astounding time to be alive.

But I wonder if maybe we're accepting our drift away from reality just a little too complacently. Maybe it's not a bad thing in and of itself, but have we stopped to consider the consequences, the side effects?  Perhaps there aren't any, then again...

We aren't sacrificing virigns to the Blue Screen of Death (yet - wait, would that work?), but the more we allow ourselves at an individual and social level to become dependent on instruments and institutions that we don't ourselves understand (functionally or historically, to bring it back to Bruno), the closer we come to a civilization of mystics and soothesayers.  

If we accept that just rebooting our computer one more time is going to (magically) make that error message go away, how much better are we than the alchemists of yore?

So learn to drive a standard.  Make your kids learn.  Because when the apocalypse hits, it'll be the MacGuyvers, not the Neos, that keep the experiment of humanity ticking along.

Yes, RFE (and R.E.M.) Are Still Around

It's Official.

Kygryzstan - Summer 2009.

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty Internship

May 25 - Depart for London

May 28 - Depart for Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

                *MAGIC*

July 27 - Return to NYC via London

Future travel-related blogs will be diverted to weberonthelamb.blogspot.com

Weber

::lame (Texpatriot)

The Elephant in the Room

Given the extreme sharpness of the wit involved, and the tremendous wealth of unusual experience from which it sprung, I'm more than a little hesistant to begin a blog entry by quoting from the immensly quotable Mark Twain.  I will instead simply quote from the considerably less daunting Samuel Clemens, who said, "Of all the things I've lost in life, I miss my mind the most."

It's practically become an American proverb, showing up in a variety of pop culture mediums from bumper stickers to Techno-Hacker movies.  Oddly, I've yet to see the twisted post-modern use of the term in a dark schyzophrenic animated muppets-from-hell scenario, but I'm sure Jason Segel is working on it.

Point is, there's something irrestibily, even childishly, attractive about the absurd.  As far as humor goes, the Absurd has always been one of my favorites, ranking alongside if not above dry satire or bitter sarcasm, and certainly in competition with tried-and-true slapstick.

Why we enjoy the absurd, either as imagined in stand-up comedy routines, or as witnessed in those rare sublime moments of reality, is well beyond my ability to answer.

But we do - I certainly do - and if you put up with this blog, Absurd must be something you get too.

So I must admit, I was a bit disappointed when I went to watch the Elephants march into NYC.  It just sounds so... ridiculous.  Sure, NY has TONS of parades, occasionally involving livestock, and always with more pomp than necessary.  But the Elephants aren't (in theory) a public event - taking place on a Monday night starting at Midnight.  The event - now annual - marks the beginning of the residence of the Ringling Bros./ Barnum & Baily circus at Madison Square Gardens in the heart of midtown Manhattan.  And while MSG is located right on top of Penn Station, a major railway hub, apparently none of the circus' regular freight cars can fit through its tunnels.  

What is a gigantic circus corporation to do when their elephants can't get shipped to the venue?  They go for a walk.  The pachyderms get off-loaded at a railhead in Queens, and then they march the elephants through the midtown tunnel (presumably the bridges would scare them?), and then across the island of Manhattan on the major thoroughfare of 34th street (like the Miracle) from 1st to 7th avenue (actually terminating at Macy's - sadly, months after the last elf has departed). 

It's become quite the event - apparently last year saw the first widespread protest by PETA members - "Circuses Abuse Animals" ; "Free the Elephants" ; "Kids Don't Want Elephanticide"; etc.

But when I got down there, along with a small crew of swing dance acquaintances, all seemed in order and frankly a bit too well orchestrated for my taste.  The elephants emerged from the tunnel right on cue at 12:30, did a long press conference/ photo op with flood lights, clowns, local news people, and local newsclowns before starting the cross-island trek.

It was cold out - just above freezing - with a very slight dewyness. Not ideal, and it's hard to imagine the elephants being any more comfortable than the rest of us.  And so they started walking at standard elephant pace, just faster than a walking stide, and the small crowds of people lined up along both sides of 34th, gripping their starbucks for warmth, cheered and whistled.

Then, finally, something interesting happened.

We're not talking about a lot of elephants - maybe a dozen all told, with a small group of ponies in tow and a variety of plainclothed handlers at the front and rear.  The result is that it takes about 45 seconds for the entire "parade" to pass by the average on-looker.

Once this happened, taking into account the temperature, the time (now after 1 am), their jobs the next day, etc.  many people turned and went home.

But not all.

For every 10 or 20 people that the elephants passed, 5-7 of them, for reasons I doubt any of us understand, would peel off from the street and start darting up the sidewalk until they reached the front of the parade again.  For the first block, this was barely noticeable, but each block there were more people along the street, with more people peeling off, and adding to those who, having made the efforts since block 1, weren't about the stop now.

It was a snowball of 'Elephant Chasers', giddy with the adrenaline of an absurd purpose and sharing, knowingly, in an experience that was both immediate, communal, and intrinsically worthless.  Once you've seen 1 elephant, suffice to say you've pretty well seen them all.  Once you've seen the same 12 elephants, seeing them time and time and time again does not make the experience any more informative. 

But the idea of chasing them, with scores of other serious, insulated, high-fashion, no-BS New Yorkers was surreal, and that's not just an observation.

One of my closest fellow chasers said, with no small touch of surprise, "I'm high on Elephant."

Indeed.

So here's to a spectacle which was invented of practical necessity, grew into a mundane-but-glittery spectacle, and somehow catalyzed the absurdity of innocent, even adolescent, joy in the cold, dark heart of Gotham at 2 am on a Monday morning.

Weber

::(lame) Texpatriot

P.S. in digging up Twain quotes, I found one more, perhaps familiar to you already, but which given our current economic whatever seems apropo: "Buy Land.  They've stopped making it."

clever bastard.