Boring Nostalgia Weeks

A swing team member was recently in a regional production of Grease, which dredged up some memories of the movie for me. In the late 1970's, my family was living in married student housing in Riverknoll apartment complex at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Not long after we moved in, the neighbors moved out, and in moved a family with two kids named Chris and Chad Boring. I never saw Grease. To this day, I haven't seen it. But I can identify when it came out by when the Boring kids lived next door to me and Chad would run around, yelling, "Tommy Moore, Tommy Moore, Tommy More!"

I always assumed there was a character in Grease named Tommy Moore.

At the other end of our townhouse building was my best friend, Rachel Weeks. I have a vivid memory of walking to the school bus stop on our first day of kindergarten, doing yoga for kids, and all kinds of other crunchy, granola activities that our 70's influenced mothers thought up. Rachel's mother made her own Playdough, for example. My first exposure to a Magic Eight Ball. Rachel singing the lyrics to Air Supply's "The One That You Love" to me. Us looking at magazines with the four members of KISS on the cover and thinking it was a sequential makeup job, not four different people, trying to figure out what order the pictures should go in. Recently we reconnected via email and now ... facebook, and she posted a picture of her with her two kids.


She wanted me to make sure I emphasized that they had green noses because of their St. Patty's day celebration, not just randomly. :-)

Our family moved away from the area in the middle of third grade and we only saw each other once after that. Yet, she's totally recognizable as the girl I remember. Well, she also looks like her mother. Yikes, we must be as old as our mothers were at the time. And her oldest is pushing the age that we were when we met...

Banana Fanna Fo-Fonny

Attended a dinner hosted by catBonny on Wednesday evening. So much fun! Met the roommates, met the friends and associates, met some of Anima Umbrae's gaming buddies, had some good eats, good conversations. Surprise appearance by RyanH!!! Funny we live 20 meters away from each other, but never see each other.

Initially sat away from the table, chatting with roommate and her boyfriend. catBonny brings it up, so we have a chat about dating friends. They all think it's a good idea. I hope so.

I move to the main table and joke with those people. Time flies by, and it's a weeknight, so we leave at 11. Hey, isn't Strutter's Ball still going on? I stop by, and dance for the last 30 minutes. See Sarah, who's new on the team, as well as Will and Jenny. Lovely to get some dancing in.

Hippocracy

Okay, follow along now. pilgrimgirl posted a reference to a not-so-silent Quaker meeting, and I followed the link, read it, teared-up a bit at work, then did some push-ups to re-assert my manhood. Then I read the author's previous entry on supporting civil union right for same sex couples and her conversation with and Orthodox Jew about the people who were against it.

And it reminds me about my standard defuse-the-situation joke when faced with questions about my views on homosexuality. I think we black people should be on the forefront of supporting the rights of same-sex couples and hate-crime legislation. We just went through the exact same thing.

Okay, here's the dark joke part. Why don't you ever see black guys harassing gay men the way that white guys seem to? When you see a group of guys harassing a gay man, why don't you ever see one or two black guys sprinkled in the group? They'd be worried about who they'll turn on next.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to actually work that way. Homophobia is just as alive in the black community as ever. We're not on the forefront of policing sweatshops or other slavery conditions. And we're not alone. Jews seem more concerned with anti-defamation than calling out world governments on ethnic cleansing and genocide. Is there an outcry from the Japanese-American community on racial profiling of American Arabs post 9-11? Maybe it's not fair to put the responsibility on these particular groups. But I think we should be reminding each other of these issues in the general sense, not as they applied directly to us or our ancestors.

48 Laws of Browsing the Bookstore

Monday evening was spent browsing Barnes & Noble. Excited employee takes my interest in Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power as an opening to recommend specific translations of The Prince (Machiavelli), Life's A Campaign (Chris Matthews), and The Game. He seems a bit overeager, and rushes to get another copy of Laws (for me to carry around, I guess). Maybe there's a contest to sell the most copies of this book? Is it one of the laws to get me to buy it?

When he walks away, an attractive woman who witnessed the exchange whispers to me:

That guy always talks to me about books whenever I come in.

Really? After reading Self-Made Man, I want to translate for her that this is probably that guys way of hitting on her. But that's presumptuous of me. I wouldn't personally use the book discussion method, but ... Wait, I'd totally do that. In fact, let's take a tour of a bookstore! And we do.

Wandering upstairs, I see some old favorites from my youth. A Spell for Chameleon, Cyteen, Ender's Game. She swoons at my description of Cyteen: "There aren't any cybernetic teenagers in it." Swoon as in she looks indifferent. I still think the "clone the genius and re-create his/her life stresses to re-create the genius" is a cool plot. And she's read Ender's Game. Wow.

Biographies: Team of Rivals
Only later do I remember that I haven't actually finished it.

Amusing to read more of The Rules. I'd carefully wandered into the relationship section hoping to randomly see it an re-use my "rule 23 is don't date a married man! there were 22 more important rules!" joke, but she totally steals my thunder with the exact same joke! Maybe it's just not that original. Who cares, it was still hilarious!

Where's the science section? I want to push all my cool science reading:
The Botany of Desire, Collapse, Freakonomics, Guns, Germs, and Steel, The Omnivore's Dilemma, Oranges, The Tipping Point

Hot drinks and pumpkin cheesecake in the cafe. They've changed the recipe to be more about pumpkin spice instead of pumpkin. Still good, but not as good as it used to be.

Continuing the chat, and she's willing to talk. Time flies, and the announcement sounds that they're closing up. Wow. I wonder later if I should have been more flirtatious or maybe even gone for the physical contact. It hardly ever occurs to me in the moment. Maybe I should read Greene's other book, Art of Seduction, again. I'm never comfortable being that calculated.

Do we say something about "doing the bookstore" again? Maybe not, but we should have. I should have formally set something up with her. Darn.

Later, at home, I look though the 48 Laws, I'm struck by Law 45:

Preach the need for change, but never reform too much
Everyone understands the need for change in the abstract, but on the day to day level people are creatures of habit. Too much innovation is traumatic, and will tend to lead to revolt. If you are new to a position of power, or an outsider trying to build a power base, make a show of respecting the old way of doing things. If change is necessary, make it feel like a gentle improvement on the past.

Nice. Sounds like every organization that everyone's ever belonged to. Quakers are definitely this way. :-)

New Neighbor Issues

No, I don't have issues with my neighbors, but one of the characters on Mary Worth did back in 1998. And this group produced some video acting out the comic strip. Genius!

Who reads a daily serialized soap opera?! Oops, I guess this guy does. But it seem like he's doing it ironically. And he's stealing Joe Mathlete's thunder, too.

SSC2

Short Shameful Confession:
After a fun dinner party hosted by catBonny, I didn't go home, I went dancing first.

WTF?

What happens if the government can't re-create the case against you?

I am not addicted to outrage.
I am not addicted to outrage.
I am not addicted to outrage.
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