Is That a Train Whistle?

First, let me just say a few quick birthdays:

Happy Birthday to Katie Sullivan.

Happy Re-Birthday to Shelley.

Happy Birth Anniversary to Thelonious Monk.

With all that out of the way, the quick update is that I'm now more than 1/3 of the way through my first semester of Graduate study at Columbia University.  As a result, I'm just getting comfortably with my weekly reading requirements, only to now be confronted with the looming aspect of mid-terms.

Ok, I'm in academia, so paper writing, etc. is part and parcel.  What has me on edge is actually how not-on-edge I am.  With about 3 weeks before my first mid-term is due, I'm watching most of my classmates start to freakout about whether or not the topic they've chosen (with prof. oversight) is appropriately broad/narrow.  If they have enough research leads, or if they need to go dig more.  How they will possibly be able to slim the final draft down to a mere 10 pages...

In short, they're freaking out, and I'm not.  Why am I not?  Is it perhaps because, as a slightly older student with some real world experience I've been able to more accurately assess the situation and plan accordingly?  Or is this really a horrifying, brain-melting process that I'm just not aware of yet?  Am I standing on a train track and wondering why everyone else is running the opposite way?

Mid-Terms will be a good trial - I only have 2 of them - for my eventual 4 term papers.  No finals, no tests, no quizes, and no homework.  The days of small, safe grading are well past.

So that's what's on my mind with a full working-weekend ahead.

Hope you're all weathering this world-wide financial crisis, by the way.  Sure, everybody else is freaking out, but I'm sure your accounts will be fine.  That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Until I can't.

Weber

::(Lame) Texpatriot

Bush Invades Olmos Pharmacy

"Uh, you see, what we have here is what I like to call bhreakphast, he he."

George Bush invaded the sovereign nations of Afghanistan, Iraq, and now my (former) local corner drug store. In what can only be described as an equivalent show of relative force, the Decider descended on Olmos Pharmacy on the corner of McCullough Ave & Hildebrand in San Antonio, TX. The combined might of coalition forces (including Secret Service, ATF, FBI, SAPD, and I'll bet one or two Trinity DCS) surrounded and subdued the former bastion of independence. Greeted, not as customers, but as occupiers, Mr. Bush cleared the former clientelle and quickly ordered his favorite Texas breakfast, "Gimme a bagel and one of them taco things."

As for exactly how close this hits to home, this particular Texpatriot formerly resided within 100 yards of this location, or within the established "Perimeter of Freedom" established for the occasion. Not only was this a favorite breakfast niche, it also served by night under the auspices of the Olmos Bharmacy, featuring such specialty drinks as the almost-unheard-of-brilliance of the Beershake. Believe it.

Asked what brought the President to San Antonio, he dodged, stating instead, "What's important is that the American people know how hard we're working to solve this financial crisis." To a confused press corps, he continued, "By flying Airforce One all the way to San Antonio for cheap, greasy breakfast, I'm saving the American Taxpayers my usual catering costs. And we all know how hard it is to solve self-perpetuating financial cluster-Fu@ks without a hearty breakfast."

Local residents were not impressed - a poor choice of location for Mr. Bush who managed to visit one of the only neighborhoods in San Antonio without dominant Republican support (no evidence of Presidential trips planned to the East side), and certainly marked a serious departure from his otherwise military-heavy agenda.

The trip was brief, serving mostly to promote the locations new paint job, new ownership, and new "Sunday Bhrunch," which Mr. Bush made of point of stressing, "Is the Bhest Bhrunch in San Antonio. You'd Have to be Lo-Co to Miss Out on the Savings, With Meals Starting at Just $4.99"

At a time of intense political discourse throughout the country, and an even more intense campaign of politician personal debasement between Mssrs Obama, McCain, Biden and Palin, this reporter remains confused as to why Mr. Bush felt the need to glad-hand and grovel with the meek of Texas's 3rd largest city while, closer to home, Wallstreet continues to implode and Washington grinds to a halt over rhetoric.

Perhaps he's just fondly recalling the days when he could afford to run around the country campaigning and eating cheap chow without a care in the world - just 4 years ago.

As for me, next time Airforce One is headed South, let me know. With two of the premier taco huts within sight of Olmos, I could use the cover of invasion to make a real Chorizo plunder on the side.

Weber
::(Lame) Texpatriot

Almost-Free Grows in Brooklyn

Having recently finished A Tree Grows in Brooklyn as a prerequisite to moving to New York, I was more excited than most New Yorkers to learn that Shelley had an upcoming meeting in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Better/Worse yet, the meeting was set for noon on an otherwise open Saturday. Already planning to make the "trek" with Shelley in a show of solidarity, we logged onto Google Maps to double-check out route.

As most of you know, Google instigated a technology called "street view" a little more than a year ago. While simple in concept, the project involved photographing 360 degree shots from the road for all streets in a given city. This was made possible through some fancy optical logarithms, and more than anything a TON of data collection and organization.

From the comfort of your own cubicle, you can now not only navigate subways and fly through the aerial view, but you can actually re-trace (or, actually, pre-trace) your intended route and note all the appropriate land marks from a pedestrian-eye view.

In this particular case, we discovered that Shelley's rundown warehouse-turned-experimental-theatre was almost directly across the street from the Brooklyn Brewery, which offered seasonal brews on tap and an hourly tour.

Surprisingly, as much fun as the brewery was (the Pumpkin Ale lives up to its accolades), the greatest discoveries came earlier and cheaper. First was Anne Marie's pizza (8th & Bedford), which gets to put its hat in the enormous "best pizza in New York" ring. I'm not backing up the assertion, but I'm putting it out there.

But the best-in-show of this wickedly fun weekend was, in the spirit of the times, just across the street from Anne Marie's: the Salvation Army.

Thrift has always been a _____ (blank) of mine; where blank can alternate between several meanings: hobby, passion, joy, obsession, or weakness.

It's a marriage of both my childish wonder at discovery and my crotchedy-old-man penny-pinching.

Rather than continuing to delve into the psychosis of my second-hand fetish, I'll put forward the results, and you can test the pudding (to see if the proof's in it).


Here's what I scored for $30:

Snazzy Brown Corduroy Blazer
Debonair Khaki Corduroy Hat
Dances with Wolves VHS
Star Wars original (pre-CGI) Triology
The Beginning Stages of... The Polyphonic Spree CD


What makes this most awesome is that:
1) I have a friend in NYC who is among the few anglophones on Earth not to have seen the original trilogy - an offense that shames us all by association.
2) I was just telling Shelley how badly I wanted to see Dances with Wolves, to which she groaned and took solace in the fact that I (at that time) had no possible way to inflict such a proposal upon her.

In short, I made out like a Somali Pirate, and let me tell you, they're making out well these days.

But hey, even if you're just scraping by, at least thrift can help you do so in style.

And Kudos to Brooklyn.

Weber (the lame texpatriot)

Copy, Right?

I have no idea what other graduate work is like in Med School, Law School, or practical fields like Engineering, or Biology, but I can sum up a humanities/liberal arts education in 4 letters. Or I can use a nice 4 letters: read.

For the past 4 years, I kept talking about how I really, "wanted to get back into reading." Whenever I did pick up and obsessively devoured a novel, I'd think, "this really is fun, I should do this more often."

Well it's not like that.
I've gone from reading 2 novels a year (summer and christmas breaks) to an average of 2 full academic texts per week plus articles, something on the order of 700 pages per week.

But hey, it's just a function of time. And for the honor, I am going deeply into debt. No complaints there, at least that part I entered intentionally. But I can't just sit on my hands - I've got to fight economic ruin as best I can: hence, Federal Work Study.

I've never done FWS before, and it has been a fascinating experience. Not the work itself, that's simple and repetitive (see below), but the scenario. I'm a former radio station manager working on an advanced degree in Islamic Studies, and I'm making copies. OK, I'm also a classics major - perhaps we should have seen that coming, right?

But what about my "peers?" A lot of the doctoral candidates get to do cool things (so called only because I don't have to do them) like teach classes. But there are a fair number of bright, even brilliant, scholars and professionals of much higher calibre than myself grinding out a living (or at least spending coin) running faxes and retyping end notes.

Personally, I assist two different profs, and my duties are:
1) Prof A, gofer: run to one of Columbia's 15 libraries (or off-campus) and bring books back for a prof's research; about 7-10 books/week.
2) Prof B, scan texts. Not articles, not chapters. Full books. 300+ page books.

The first part is not challenging, but gets me familiar with campus, and lets me set my own hours, so it's OK.
The second is a real mind job. I'm conflicted. You see, I get paid $12/hour for however long it takes to do these scans, so the more the better. But I'm also in that prof's class, which means eventually I have to read whatever I scan, and his expectations are high even for Columbia standards. One of my other teachers declared, "at Columbia, we generally prefer not to give more than 100 pages per week for each course..." Well, bully for him. But Prof B (who is still awesome) expects all students to read 2 full books each week, after I scan them in first.

So I spend 2-4 hours standing over a copy machine, scanning in page after page, re-assembling the files, and posting them for the class. Then I spend 5-10 hours reading the stuff I just "created."

On the plus side, it puts me in an opportune position to overhear office gossip. Of course, in the office I work in (Department of Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures), that gossip is as often in Arabic, Turkish or a variety of other tongues I cannot follow.

Mostly, I think about that which is closest at hand - Am I really going to read this entire book I'm scanning? Is it even legal to be digitizing on this scale? These are expensive books ($35-$125 for most), aren't I disrupting to global academic industry somehow? I don't care - the juciest detail is that by scanning a $35 book, I profit $24 in payment for the 2 hours it takes, and I save the $35 I would have had to spend - but I wonder how widespread this is. When I tell the office staff that I need to scan in the full book, they look at me like I'm crazy, so maybe it's not too common. And hey - why would they assume I'm the crazy one? I'm just FWS, I obviously didn't come up with this idea on my own.

When life gets too dull, or I get frustrated with what's coming up, I just back off for a moment and shuffle papers. Sooner or later, some aspiring scholar of classic Hindi literature is bound to come in and get ambushed by a paper jam. The real world inevitably thrusts itself back into my line-of-sight.

Ah, Refreshing.

Weber

Journey to the Center of an Egg

It is said that there are two things which all peoples of any culinary ability should be able to do.
1) Make Toast
2) Boil an Egg
To these I would humbly add a modern 3) Cook Ramen.

So why is it that I, who am certainly no Alton Brown, but likewise above the level of nuke-it-and-chew-it-chef, have so much difficulty with item #2?

The first time I failed at boiling an egg, Shelley very kindly reminded me of the basics: Don't put cold eggs in boiling water. Don't leave the heat on hi for 20 minutes. Don't throw the eggs into the pot from a distance of more than 3 feet.

Thus, for my second attempt I enjoyed a much firmer foundation. Still, the results weren't impressive. I can get the things cooked, no runny yellow seepage here, but in the process of doing so I must be doing something else wrong, because they just won't peel.

At this moment, at this exact moment, at least 2 to 5 of you reading this know exactly what my problem is. But I don't.

I'll point out that for me, this ova-pocalypse is in spite of my regular and consistent success with the same procedure in other environments. I've boiled eggs on a 1960s era electric stove in Oklahoma, a Soviet gas stove in Estonia, and numerous propane grills and open flame cooking fires across the wilderness of the American Southwest.

But not in New York. Here, *something* is different. What may never have been totally correct elsewhere still managed to work itself out. Here, it's by-the-book, and even that's not a guarantee. My third attempt I broke down and googled "how to boil an egg."

My shell still gets stuck. If you want to do something truly frustrating, try super-gluing an egg shell to a semi-solid membrane and then picking it off one flake at a time. For a more entertaining version, just watch someone else try the same.

I'm getting better, but this experience (as you may have guessed) has parallels outside the kitchen.

Returning to an academic environment has presented many challenges. Some of these are due to the obvious difference between graduate humanities studies and the "real world" of my former employment, while others are due to the specific nuances of either the NYC environs, or the Columbia expectations.

Put short, I'm at my best when I can resolve a problem through trial, error, and an almost MacGuyverian synthesis of alternate solutions. (Note: if I could actually achieve Guyverian solutions involving Japanese organo-body armour, that would be much cooler. And 5 bonus creds to anyone who's still with me).

But 'Mac was a man of the (mid?)West, and certainly not a New Yorker. I won't lay claim to summarizing the character of this enormous and diverse Metroponormity, but it's clear from my time already that while NYC may encourage creativity and improvisation, it doesn't care much for my parochial jerry-rigging.

Another good example is my continuing involvement with WKCR, the jazz radio station at Columbia. As I reported in another post, the initial contacts were rough. Despite working 8 years in radio, the powers-that-be decided that I need classes to learn how to be a DJ. It's what they expect of all their students, so why would I deserve an exception? OK, fair.

But today is a special day; today is the birthday of jazz legend John Coltrane. WKCR has a great tradition in which, on the birthday of certain jazz notables, they override all other programming and regular DJ shifts to present exclusively the music of that artist for 24 hours. Special DJ assignments are made, people fill in, etc. Very cool idea, and one which we stole and implemented monthly at KRTU in San Antonio.

Birthday Broadcasts represent my favorite aspects of local independent radio. They serve to highlight the less-famous works of an artist's career and they demonstrate a commitment to unique programming that larger, more formal stations cannot risk. I love them, both in concept and in practice, and for the past 5 years I've been able to be a part of many, many such broadcasts.

This year, KRTU was conducting it's regular annual event, and I wasn't there to be a part of it. It's my own fault - I moved away. WKCR is also doing a Coltrane broadcast, but because I am not yet certified, I was not permitted to participate. In San Antonio, even if I wasn't assigned a shift, I could work something out and get some air time, even long before I was Station Manager. In New York, no amount of reasoning or logical triangulation accomplishes anything. There are rules, and I must follow them. It's not tyrannical; it's not even unfair; but my complete inability to creatively circumvent the situation is very new and I'm still adjusting.

So I'll keep practicing my patience and adherence to actual rules. I'll remember that I'm not special, and that somethings must be done in a certain way.

Put another pot on the stove, get back in line, and pay close attention. This Texpatriot is learning your heathen ways, big city.

+ Weber (feeling semi-Lame)

P.S. you can hear the complete KRTU Coltrane Birthday Broadcast anytime in the next week from this page (pick any Tuesday 5am-10pm show)