TC's Ministry of Propaganda

Channel Surfing

1020070945.jpg
Originally uploaded by chaostheory

I was heading to the Children's Museum this morning to be part of a focus group (fathers who go to the Museum with their kids; great conversation after with another dad there named Terrence who's a teacher in the Boston Public Schools.) Today was also day 1 of Fort Point Open Studios and while I didn't have the time to go see anything, this installation by Lisa Greenfield was right there in the water on the way to the museum. Despite any pretense I have to being creative, all I can say is what went through my mind when I saw it: "That's cool." Because the figures are in plastic bubbles floating on water, they move slightly as the bubbles bob in the water, giving the illusion (especially at a distance) that these are actual people in the bubbles.

Except, of course, for the horizontal one-- a body floating face down in the water is creepier when it's actualy floating face down and hovering four feet above the water.

I don't know anything else about Ms. Greenfield or her work, but if you can't get to Fort Point Channel and see this up close and personal, she's got a website. So check it out.

Cleveland: I spend a week there one afternoon...

OK, full disclosure: like pretty much everyone in Red Sox Nation, I am not happy about Games 2 & 3. But honestly, my views of Cleveland were formed long before the 2007 ALCS ever became a factor in my life.

I've been to Cleveland three times. One of my fondest Cleveland memories was the time many, many years ago when I ended up having something like a six hour layover at Cleveland Hopkins Airport. Just me and another guy from my hometown, sitting at the airport bar, taking full advantage of the "Get a Double for a Dollar More" promotion. I think we were drinking Killian's. (You expected Guinness in an airport bar in Cleveland?)

Whereever that bartender is today, I still remain grateful for her truly adept buzz management-- the unprompted large glasses of water, the Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizzas that she comped us every couple of beers... Sigh. When a woman touches your life in that way, you just can't help but remember her fondly. I think we ended up leaving her a tip equal to whatever our tab was before we got on our flight home. Now I'm back in my hometown and that guy is... well, according to Google, he's the guy who wrote this. Clearly one of us liked sports more than the other... more to the point, clearly one of us is doing a much better job of being a professional smartass.

But truly, if the highlight of three trips to Cleveland is six hours in a hotel bar, that tells you something about a city, doesn't it? It tells you "This city is not like Boston. This city is not even like Columbus or Cincinnati."

The airport bar was trip # 2. My first trip there was for a tradeshow. I stayed at the luxurious... uh... I don't remember. Whatever the official "airport" hotel is. That's where I was. Airport hotels are rarely memorable. The tradeshow was at the sprawling I-X Center. If you've never been there, then Whoa! You have truly missed out on one of Cleveland's greatest attractions. See, it's a big-ass building. They used to build tanks there. Then some years later, and nobody could really explain why to me, they cut a hole open in the ceiling and built a Ferris wheel there.

Could I make that up? The single permanent structure of note in this sprawling convention facility is a Ferris wheel that take the rider through the roof, protected by a giant transparent Ferris wheel, uh, cap. And has no other context for being there. If James Bond ever faces a villain who is into carnivals-- think Pennywise the Clown crossed with Blofeld-- then this is the ideal place to use as a film set for that guy's lair... if they want that guy's lair to look like a Super Wal-Mart on the outside.

And this? This was an attraction in Cleveland then. When the people who worked the trade show booth with me talked about what there was to see in Cleveland, the giant Ferris wheel 30 feet away from our booth was on the short list. That, the Browns training facility, and The Flats. (To be fair, this was before the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame opened.)

Oh, The Flats. So here I am, all alone in Cleveland, and some friends of mine from Cincinatti and Columbus come in to see me while I'm stuck in Cleveland for a week at this trade show, and we ask where there is to go. And we're told "The Flats". Bostonians, never again should you complain about the bars closing at 2 a.m. Until 2 a.m., we have myriad bars we could go to and drink, eat, dance and generally be merry. At the time I was in Cleveland the only game in town was "The Flats". Imagine Lansdowne Street. Now imagine that instead of it all being owned by somebody named Lyons, it is all chains-- Friday's, etc. Now imagine that THERE IS NO PLACE ELSE TO GO TO HAVE FUN.

Back then, that was The Flats. I mean, I was young, I was single, I was with two good friends, brilliant and attractive young women at that. (Seriously, brilliant-- one is CEO of a company now, the other is an attorney.) Even then, we had to actively work at having fun in Cleveland, Ohio.

So guys, listen: you cannot lose this series. Hey, I'll give Cleveland the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the city has improved since then. The small part I saw on my third trip- which did include the by-then-opened Rock & Roll Hall of Fame-- wasn't bad at all. Hell, they had a Hard Rock Cafe last time I was there, which means that they finally embraced.. uh, the late 1980's. Though, of course, the Indians are still using that big grinned Chief Wahoo which I suspect they'll have until the tribes that own Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun team up to buy the Indians, rename them the NASCAR Dads and replace the mascot with a big grinned white guy holding a can of Coors Light.

Though that's kinda been done...

(Note: The writer is well aware of the irony in the guy from Boston commenting on the state of race relations in Cleveland.)

Look, seriously. You can't lose this. Losing to the Rockies (which I do not recommend or condone, by the way) would actually be less painful than losing to the Cleveland Indians. Do whatever it takes. Imagine they're all Jeter or something. Tell Gagne the bus is leaving at 7, and leave at 6:45. But for the love of all that is good and holy, don't lose to Cleveland.

Now, get out there and show me some hustle.

K-Mart and the Voyage of Discovery

For reason not worth elaborating upon, I had reason to call a K-Mart tonight and ask what time they closed tonight.

K-Mart lady answers the phone: "Thank you for calling K-Mart. What can I help you discover tonight?"

Say what?

Naturally, I replied "What I'd like to discover is what time you close tonight." But now that I know that a simple call to K-Mart will become a voyage of discovery, my world is full of possibilities. It's like the Starship Enterprise in convenient retail form-- "Captain, we have a Blue Light Special on deck 25!"

Caveat Emptor: Laughs will not abound.

If you act now, you can still get yourself a Hillary Clinton Nutcracker at a whopping 50% off list price from the fine folks at Overstock.com.

Disclosure: I own two watches that I bought through Overstock.com. At least I think they were both from there... at least one is. The other might have come from SmartBargains.com. The point is this: I did not pay full price for either of them. Not even close! And I think I got free shipping. But I digress.

The Hillary Clinton Nutcracker is alleged to have a list price of $60.00. But you can get it for $29.95, and Overstock.com promises in the product description that "Laughs will abound with this novelty Hillary Clinton nutcracker".

Now, I have had some experience in both comedy and retail (including stints at two different Lechmere locations back when the world was simpler and there still existed such a thing of brown and orange Optima Bold-clad beauty as a Lechmere location... though I think I was at one of them during the red and blue redress, but again I digress.)

I can tell you this, without fear of being wrong: Laughs will not abound with this novelty Hillary Clinton nutcracker. Oh sure, it's funny. Even my pinko liberal ass will admit that. And it's an admirably crafted bit of funny; the thing looks like Hillary, if Hillary had sharp metal teeth lining her upper thighs. Go ahead, insert your own joke there. You know you want to.

But laughs abounding? No. The most laughter you'll get from this is viewing the page on Overstock. Maybe you don't like Hillary and you'll buy one for yourself. Maybe you'll buy one as a gift, to needle a liberal friend or bring a smile to the face of your favorite Republican. But believe you me, laughter will not abound. Why? Because the joke is right there in the name. This isn't a $60 dollar joke, friends. It's barely a $5 clearance item at Spencer Gifts kind of joke. This is a bit, a bit that would get a big laugh on Carson if Carson was still alive and hosting a late night talk show.

Nor will it ever be "collectible that will be remembered for years to come". It'll end up in a drawer somewhere, dusty and unused until Thanksgiving rolls around and you're trying to crack walnuts or filberts or something, and your child or grandchild pulls it out while fishing around for a garden variety nutcracker and comes up with Hillary and asks very innocently why a woman would crack nuts between her thighs and you decide this really isn't a conversation you want to have on Thanksgiving with your child or grandchild and hey kids, look! Macy's Parade on TV!

Now if somebody can animate that Hillary nutcracker and get it to do a plie or pas de deux, set it all to Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker with a Mickey doll as the Mouse King and post it on YouTube then maybe-- MAYBE-- laughter will abound.

Maybe.

Orange Line Woes

1005070849a.jpg
Originally uploaded by chaostheory

It has been ages since I blogged. More about that another time. This time, more fun with public transportation. I started a new job recently and have been carpooling in to the new place with my brother, who works for the same incredibly large institution but in a completely different building, division, and maybe even time zone. But he was at home waiting for a nice older couple to deliver him a new sofa. (Surprising, because most of his furniture came from these two brothers up the road, but I digress.)

Today, I was at the mercy of the T. I find myself at Oak Grove, where there are two trains in the station which is never a good sign at rush hour. One train is mostly full, and I hear an announcement that there are severe delays on the Orange Line due to a disabled train downtown. This train will only go as far as North Station, then there'll be shuttle buses. I can work with getting off at North Station so that part, not so much a problem. A minute or so later, the doors close and we're on our way to Malden Center, so I figured that "severe delays" meant five or ten minutes overall.

Then I get to Malden Center... where the platform was wall to wall commuters. Angry, surly commuters who clearly had been waiting far too long for a train, and were not pleased to see our already-mostly-full train pull up. Angry commuters who had long ago decided to ignore the laws of physics and wanted to all get on THIS TRAIN RIGHT NOW. So the usual pushing and shoving and "Can you people move all the way in?!?" starts up, except that of course we all are already all the way in, and pushing any further means we're only moving away from one door to the other door that also has people pushing in, until finally people can't move any further and we're all nose to nose angry surly commuters who, for the most part, still haven't moved.

Time passes.

Five minutes.

Ten minutes.

Another announcement explaining about the disabled train.

Finally, the driver gets on the speaker, explains again about the train, then says "I've been told that there's a Commuter Rail train coming in at 8:54, and that's going to get you to North Station a lot faster than this train will, because we're still waiting for clearance to leave the station."

Predictably, the train and the platform empties and everyone heads over to the Commuter Rail platform. That photo above is the crowd in front of the escalators that are already jammed, trying to get to the already jammed Commuter Rail platform.

Me, I start looking for the next bus to Sullivan Square, thinking I can get the 86 from there and avoid all of this. I hit the bus platform to find people arguing with the bus driver, who a) is vaguely aware of some problem with the train but clearly doesn't know the specifics of the issue, and b) is trying to explain to the aforementioned angry surly commuters that "No, this is not the shuttle bus you heard about on the announcement, it's the 105", and "No, I will am not going directly to Sullivan Square because I have, y'know this actual route I'm required to take, and maybe you should think about the 104 which might get you there faster", and "No, I do not have time to explain this all to you a fourth time because I was supposed to leave five minutes ago in order to keep this particular bus on-time." All dialogue paraphrased.

Having left my house at 8:00am to catch the 8:05 bus from the suburbs, I arrived in Harvard Square at 10:00am. Two hours. On a usual day or when driving in rush hour traffic? 45 minutes to an hour, tops. I have submitted a claim as part of the T's "On Time Service Guarantee"... we'll see if that actually gets me anything. They've improved at least-- last time I tried to use that form, it just plain didn't work. At least this time I was able to submit a claim.