How can I 1) watch how well Jeff Gordon races in Charlotte and 2) dance to the music of Claire Lynch and friends at the same time?
Life is a series of happy dilemmas!
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A special nod to Greg and Carolyn at Cook & Company; the friendly folks at L’Rancho Restaurant; Travis and cooks at Broken Clock Gastropub; whomever I’ve forgotten to mention lately in my rush through life.
Okay, I just had to repost this guy’s one-star review of Gladwell’s new book. Hilarious!
Read on:
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I witnessed, in no less then three incidents, the derision that followed when Malcolm Gladwell’s “David and Goliath” was mentioned.
The first occurred in a bookstore with a stock of works from all over the world. They have two floors. It is located on 21st Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan. I asked the clerk for a copy of Gladwell’s latest. Even though the store was crowded he laughed out loud. I asked him what was so funny and he promptly yelled out, “The register is closed, everybody out!” Once the customers exited, he said he wanted to show me something.
In the back, he ushered me through a door. It was the stockroom. Far in the corner he showed me a stack of “David and Goliath” books. He explained a number of patrons returned it, vitriolic in their epithets against the work. He had to refund the unhappy customers and he was left with the aforementioned wobbly stack. When I asked how he could laugh about his loss of revenue he replied: he had read a copy and thought that his five year old nephew’s letters from his homeland of Pakistan showed more talent and imagination then what he had read in D & G. That said, he broke into uncontrollable laughter.
Last week, I was invited to a luncheon at Columbia University. One of the professors, Dr. Garibaldi, had set it up with my agent. At Columbia on the day of, there was a smattering of perfunctory small talk. Garibaldi went on about how I hit it (New Yorker essay) dead on and how the New Yorker hadn’t received a dressing down like that in at least the last twenty-years. I moved on to a new subject and told of the bookstore episode. At first a dead silence. Then one of the more easy going (I thought) professors, Dr. Wing, shouted out, “Why must this pseudo-fact-fiction Gladwellesque be published?! I simply sat back and thought. What is with this book?
The last incident happened at an internet café aptly named, The Cave. Located under the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, one is in perpetual darkness.
At another table, I overheard two young women talking about “David and Goliath”. The louder of the duo fairly shouted about the work, “It is truly a spectacle. A more annoying, cloying writer could not be assembled anywhere else. God bless the Queen and save us from her subjects!”
At that she broke into peals of laughter and with the glow of the computer monitor lighting her face and the dark back drop, she had much the look of a cackling witch. Her friend joined in and an employee came over to ask them to settle down. When they told him what they were laughing about, he started chuckling too. Then it was a contact high; people were literally rolling on the floor. By the time I left, the place was ready to come down in a cloud of raucous laughter.
Chris Roberts, Patron Saint of the Cackling Ones
How do I distinguish the difference between fact and fiction? Sometimes it’s hard to say if a leaf is a leaf or an insect.
Fame brings you praise and derision.
Self-serving oneself is an industry all its own [warning: embedded link is NSFW].
Sigh…if only the WordPress app on my iPad 2 would quit crashing!
A masked ball at Pier One…
…for my peeps peers eating pears, of course!
Today, I held in my hand all of my life’s savings in one check (well, most of it, anyway) — millions and millions (of pennies, at least).
I walked into an office building and handed the check to a woman I’ve seen maybe five times in my life for a total of 10 or 15 minutes.
She kindly made a photocopy of the check and wrote my phone number down.
I turned and walked out of the office building.
What that an act of artful thinking?
Guess it’s time to start thinking ahead now that I’m fully into the second year of the second 50 years of my life, virtually penniless.
My second childhood is in full bloom.
Waaaah! Smack me, Abi, I’m being a bad boy! 😉
Time to memorise some dance moves — my inexperienced description of them below —
Well, it has been an interesting time here at Project Xceed Xpectations.
As you may remember, or not, when last we updated you about our ongoing effort to kickstart a Kickstarter campaign, we had high hopes of showing you the latest robot-in-a-notebook prototype sketches.
Unfortunately, an argument broke out between the Creative Arts Department and the Impractical Science Department over ideas detailed by the unprofitable Engineering Design Centre.
When you manage a bunch of independent sorts who generate their own income and have no golden handcuffs, cooperation is a funny business.
But why bore you with personnel problems?
The facts are these — we were going to show you how our paper robots were going to be powered by one of three methods: a) tether, b) coin batter(y/ies), and/or c) solar cell.
Then, our buyers down in the Manufacturing Department ran into a small problem of paying our suppliers for the power parts we needed.
Never fear! Our military veterans on staff came to the rescue. Turns out they had friends who had connections with unnamed sources in an unmentionable country who could get us an unlimited supply of nuclear-powered energy cells if we’d just give them 51% ownership of the project.
Therefore, we’re in negotiations at this point and cannot with confidence show you our engineering drawings without knowing for sure whether we need to add a radiation shield to protect your loved ones from “batteries” with a half-life longer than your estimated full lives which would be quickly shortened based on the hazmat/MSDS sheets written in Russian Chinese Izbekistanese a nonstandard international language.
Are you an affluent person looking for a place to throw your wealth at? Well, look no further!
Join us if you’re interested:
The thing about getting older — a three-year old talking about when she was two, or a 51-year old talking about when he was 14 — is the mental taste, the texture, the feel of the memory.
We can consider ourselves fortunate to be alive during our times or not.
I am fortunate.
I got to hear some of the jazz greats while they were alive, even if they were past their prime and out of the mainstream media spotlight.
My memories feel so good!
And one set of those memories centers on the brass section.
Hey, I was a baritone horn player (and euphonium, too!)…what can I say except I’m biased toward cold mouthpieces and valved musical instruments?
Take some of these jazz players I heard, regardless of instrument — Sun Ra, Pete Fountain, for instance. They were all great.
But the trumpet…well, it’s a special instrument. Sure, I’ve written about this before but some topics are worth remembering again and again, especially hearing live performances.
and now John Harner.
Imagine the ones I’ve/you’ve missed. The best thing about missed opportunities? Well, more room for opportunities ahead of you! The legacy continues, thank goodness.
A portly stout bull for lunch…dee-lish!
treetrunkdings 