Trivia

Bank of Kaukauna wins again. God bless ye.

Fog

This is a view of the Met Life building, which strangely sits smack in the middle of Park Avenue, perhaps indicating its real or percieved importance in the financial world. The road literally goes around the building, which has to be an urban planning nightmare.

Often times in NYC, fog will roll in and obscure the tops of skyscrapers. It makes them seem infinitely tall and makes you realize how tiny you are in comparison.

Computer Music Radio

My buddy is running a podcast with some pretty amazing one-ish hour sets of older soul and random/eclectic tunes along with some one-off great songs. I highly recommend it and I'll keep a sidebar of the tunes on the right for your convenience, you lazy bastard.

Reunion recap

So I went to the nerd reunion and it was pretty great. Everybody seems to be doing well and has good lives - careers, marriages, kids, etc. The one thing I wouldn't have predicted is the crash that it took for many people to get there. For this group, much more so than other people I know from school, it seems like many people seemed to have some sort of breakdown or very drastic reevaluation of their lives before they settled in on their current lives.

I think it makes sense in a way - when you raise kids under the guise of being the "smart" ones, an undue amount of pressure to succeed is going to come along with that, and when people realize they're not going to make Supreme Court Justice, or really even *want* to, it can be a little rough. I know I definitely had several periods of reevaluation and I'm better for all of them.

All around, I feel happy to have seen so many of my old friends and they're all doing so well.

Watching Hipster Love

You know when girls are best friends in NYC because they dress the same way when they go out and are super excited because they realize its ridiculous but don't care, which of course makes them superhot. When guys dress the same, it just instantly transports you to the moment when the item was purchased:

"Dude, I love this hat with the feather in it. It's fucking sweet"
"Yeah, I've been thinking about getting a hat for a while, but I'm not sure if I'm a 'hat guy'"
"I'll get one if you get one"
(silence)
"Okay"

Nervously awaiting a reunion

I am, to be frank, a nerd. That's okay, and I'm good with it. I actually have been for a long time. As a young man, I was for years in the Talented and Gifted program (TAG)in our local school system as a result of some test I took, from which I really only remember the freeform drawing section. As a result, from 4th-9th grades, I took classes with the sameish group of about 50 people so we all were pretty close by the end. In fact, I still keep in touch with a handful, and a few of them were roommates in college or married other friends of mine.

The experience was, I imagine, a lot like school for other kids, except we had teachers that were much much wackier. Mr. Z was the ex-hippie English teacher who had us reading Salinger at 12 and was the first to teach us about recycling, meditation, and Barbie Doll mutilation. Ms. S was the science teacher who thought the symbol for hydrochloric acid was "HCI" (its not) and had a huge mole on her face which distracted from learning in a way that really doesn't matter when you are in public school. Mrs. F was the authoritarian social studies guru who taught us about reading and making graphs as well as mini-society. And so on.

To say that this educational experience had a profound impact on my life would be an understatement. It was a strange time where we were given a lot of very adult material to think about and lots of room for creativity. We had very deep and complex relationships with our teachers, some of whom we saw in their weakest moments, another passed away suddenly. It was a pretty intense educational experience, I'd imagine comparable to going to boarding school but less structured.

When I sporadically have seen people from this group we often crack jokes about classmates or recall the strange goings on of our youth, as I'm sure most do. However the whole time, I questioned our designation of being the "smart" kids and constantly wondered what people would turn out like in the future.

Well, tomorrow I find out.

Three of us who kept in touch usually meet up over the holiday for beers as of the last few years, the most recent of which we decided to try to remember who we went to school with and see if we couldn't google/friendster/e-stalk them and get them together sometime. It was one of those "man it would be hilarious if" ideas, which I wouldn't have expected to work out, if it weren't for Spencer.

He decided to make this work and has been putting together a TAG reunion for about a month with some minor help from me. The planning group found people in far-off locales: Working for NPR in MN, small town lawyer in KY, pet store owner in the same city, etc. Almost instantly, people began to make plans to travel to my hometown for the reunion. It became a big deal.

So I'm curious to know tomorrow what everyone is up to, if in fact we were the smart kids, and what we got out of that strange educational experience. I'm very nervous for some reason and I'll post the report after the fact, along with pictures of how fat/bald everyone got.

Hope you all are having a good holiday and taking 'er easy.

at the Triple Crown

I joined friends over at Triple Crown, a place that usually features Ali Shaheed Muhammed of a Tribe Called Quest Thursdays on the tables. He is apparently elsewhere now, and it was evident from the complete deadness on this particular Thursday.

That being said, the place is supercool and the music is solidly in the Native Tongues vibe. The bartender is a guy named John who offered us shots quickly after entering made of chocolate soymilk and various vodkas. Skeptically, we popped them and they ended up actually being enjoyable.

"I've been working on this for a while, but I don't have a name for it yet."

In a flash, something jumped into my head and I blurted it out

"How about a 'vegan slut'?"

John was immediately satisfied and told me the shot would be on the menu next time I came through. I suggest you stop by and check.