After much delay, finally took my photo for the firm website. Should have taken as soon as I started, particularly because I have regained what I lost in Switzerland, i.e. my corpulence.
Photo came out well. Looks like I am aiming for Teen Beat centerfold, legal eagle style.
You can’t buy good will, but you can probably lease it.
“I bumped into Johnny this weekend at Piano’s. How random is that??”
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“I know. Sherry’s so random. Yesterday she asked to borrow my black miniskirt, a hot glue gun, and a diaphragm.”
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Friends, let us reduce our use of the word “random”. This catch-all expression has pervaded our conversations and left other, more apt adjectives to lay fallow. Please note this protest is not a nerdy sniggle about the distinction tween random and pseudo-random (that inquiry is left for mouth-breathing basement wizards in between dice rolls).
No, this is about using all the crayons in your box. I acknowledge the source of the random’s popularity: a true random result or event can seem unexpected, arbitrary, sudden, and odd. That said, “unexpected”, “arbitrary”, “sudden”, and “odd” are precisely the terms one can use to describe an encounter with a rarely-seen friend, an unusual exclamation, a quirky individual. So do so.
Word Maven out.
Some facile observations on That Borough, made on one evening.
1. Everyone is friends. Particularly patrons and service staff. Hugs, kisses, queue jumping abound.
2. The men are weak and ugly; the women, strong and beautiful in ways beyond cheap tricks and baubles.
3. Food is delicious.
4. People ride bicycles without fear of dying.
Last week I house-sat for my travelling parents, who had made one of those returns to the ancestral village, a homecoming tour replete with life fulfillment and awkward greetings with persons unknown but familial.
The house is in fair shape. Everyday, I walked the grounds, checked the fixtures, appraised the shrubbery. That I am a barely-housetrained bachelor is immediately clear from my homemaking skills. Strategic plate re-use is no matter for novices. Considerations must be made to minimize MTBC (Mean Time Between Cleans). Avoid messy sauces. Bowls are versatile; plates, shallow beings. Cereal to soup to rice bowl. Air dry it intertween and the flavors carry over! Of my trademark dinners in which I eat sardines, straight out of the tin, with my hands, someone once quipped: “Good when the end of the world comes, you’ll be ready.” See, I am just a pragmatic croc to your fanciful fox.
. . . inordinate haunting of great multitudes of people, especially youth, to plays, interludes, namely occasion of frays and quarrels, evil practices of incontinency in great inns having chambers and secret places adjoining to their open stages and galleries, inveigling and alluring of maids, especially of orphans and good citizens’ children under age.
…regarding the old Elizabethean theater.
“It makes our heroic players seem like regular guys, and we like them to have 90 seconds of insipid postgame interview capped by the pricking of the gonfalon bubble.”
… regarding the celebrations of world champions.
[Not sure from where]
From: Hong Kongers. [One of those words that you would only learn from the hyper-technical, hyper-exacting Wikipedia. (see also, "snowclone")]
My favorite part of concerts is the interstitial banter, those moments between songs where the singer says whatever he feels, part-confessional, part-flirtation with the crowd.
Cantonese pop singers have a strong tradition of concert banter. The formula is largely prosaic: a greeting, a thank you, an innocous interaction with a fan involving a flower or a teddy bear, a showing of modesty to honor one’s ancestors, a confession that this next one’s, in fact, their favorite song.
At the recent Treasure Island Music Festival, The Streets recently said, “What day is it? Saturday, yeah? I tour so much that I don’t know what day of the week it is. Sad but good, yeah?” Sad but good. The artist sounds as if he is reassuring himself, or worse, passing a secret coded message crying out that he is a captive. He’s talking to himself.
He continues: “I don’t love Saturdays but I do love San Francisco. Are you with me, SAN FRANCISCO?”. And with that the needle drops, the music starts, and that portalized glimpse into their world, held open momentarily ‘tween the cantor’s song, closes.
Halloween. That moment of liberty, where the oppression of other people abates, and out shoots a gasp of sartorial freedom observed by women precipitously close to public nudity and by men in full cross dress.
The casual sidewalk parade provided my evening’s entertainment. The fantastical embraced the mundane, sometimes literally– there: a caveman walks with his girlfriend, a peanut M&M. There: a loose nurse necking with Big Bird. In a group: Batman, Robin, and, improbably, Steve from Blue’s Clues (though I suppose this would make a fearsome troup of crimefighters).
This year there were no Michael Jackons– it’s too soon– and, my god, in a sure mark of a cultural nadir, that Halloween staple, VAMPIRES, are completely absent this year. Did anyone see a single one? The fabric of our lives is so soaked with fake blood that it’s not even considered “dressing up” to flare up the hair, smear on moody cosmetics, and swing around with elongated canines.
Those uninspired dolts that normally reach for the fangs and cape have all migrated to this year’s Worst Costume of 2009: the Pirate. God, is there a costume that takes more effort (blouses! wench skirts! tricorn hats!) yet remains so bankrupt of originality. The choice of Pirate represents the minimal level of discernment possible in human beings, the toe-in-the-pool mentality that establishes Bud Light as a viable beverage option.
To end on a positive note, I did, then, enjoy these costumes:
Favorite home-made costume: Chinese Takeout, with a large takeout box, hair as noodles, with chopsticks, and even handed out fortune cookies to kids.
Favorite couple: Energizer bunny. Boy wore a large drum, girl wore a pink bikini with bunny accoutrements and sunglasses.
Favorite use of what your mama gave you : He-Man. The guy’s he-body made this costume. Put all those 300 spartans to shame.
Favorite minimalism: Man eaten by a Shark. Man wore a hat that was basically a small shark eating his head. The rest was a bloody t-shirt and jeans.
Other notables: T-1000 (store-bought cop costume plus silver splashes on chest), Billy Mays (beard, dark blue shirt, khakis), Jared the Subway spokesman (light blue shirt with khakis, oversize jeans taped to his side).
