The world wants your junk

A friend of mine is moving, and yesterday partially emptied her refrigerator into my hands. She also wanted to give me a two-liter bottle of Sprite and a three-pound box of kosher salt, but I don't think I could have used them. So, we put them toward an experiment: If the two items were bundled together on Craigslist's free-stuff section, would someone actually want them? The answer, not to my surprise: Yes.

I am in love with Craigslist's free-stuff section. There seems no limit to the crap that can be pawned off on other people, leaving me without the guilt of having to throw away large things. I first discovered it a few months ago, when moving to Boston. We had two mannequin busts sitting around the apartment (long story), and they weren't moving with us. I posted them online with a picture, and had a woman at my door within an hour. We chatted for a good 15 minutes about our plans -- mine to move, hers to use these busts in a haunted house she runs for charity. When she left, I thought how nice and natural that felt -- sharing stuff, getting together, a happy little community of givers and takers.

While in Boston, I found another need for Craigslist's free-stuff section: We bought an Ikea desk, put it together, and then discovered we don't need it. Within a day, a guy was at my door to pick it up. I walked down three flights of stairs with this desk and handed it to him, and he replied, "Thanks for the desk." Then he turned and walked away. It felt abrupt and cold: Unlike the mannequins, which I had set down gently into the world, this desk was swept into the raging river that is Other People's Stuff. Where was the chat? The happy little community of givers and takers? And then I realized: Wait, what do I care what he does with the desk? "So, uh, gonna use that for art supplies?" "Nope, I'm going to put some books on it." "Oh."

No, it made more sense for him to just take it. That's how these things are supposed to work. The mannequin lady was the anomaly. We shouldn’t have spoken that long. It didn’t make any damn sense. Just take the mannequins and go, lady. Go do whatever it is you do.

That Sprite and kosher salt? My friend’s going to leave it in the foyer of her apartment building. And when she comes back one day, it’ll be gone.

Permalink: 07:49 AM | Comments (1)

You love to fly, and it shows on your chest

I recently saw my friend Sara, who, along with her boyfriend George, runs a great little T-shirt business called Hubwear. The shtick: To celebrate that special airplane route in your life, you can order custom shirts displaying its airport codes. The shirt pictured above, for example, would be mine: It’s Boston to Ft. Lauderdale, my new home to my childhood home, the route I most fly. Fun stuff. (The return flight is on the back.)

Anyway, Sara was telling me about how she and George spent considerable time and money updating Hubwear’s website, and how she’s so excited with how it came out. The first chance I got, I went to my computer and checked it out – but found no sign of t-shirts, and plenty of bouncy music and a little cartoon man running in place. I paused, a little panic-stricken: This website, while amusing in its own right, wasn’t a very good way to sell T-shirts, and now, I thought, I’d have to lie to Sara and say it was worth all the energy they put into it. I clicked around, trying to find the shirts. No luck. Then I looked at where I was: I had typed Hubear.com, not Hubwear.com. What a difference a W makes.

The actual Hubwear site is quite good, which is a relief for everyone, I’m sure. I showed Hubear.com to Sara and explained my confusion, which she enjoyed, and just e-mailed her to say I’d give both Hubwear and Hubear some love on this site. Ever the classy competitor, she replied, “Yes! Hubear NEEDS more publicity too. That poor guy. He just keeps running.” And that he does.

Permalink: 10:38 PM | Comments (1)

Penguins in Palestine?

Humor has never been Mallard Fillmore's strong point, but, in the interest of learning something about how writer/drunk driver Bruce Tinsley thinks, let's dissect today's strip:

Panel one, the set-up: "Pointy noses? Beady eyes? Hey, it sounds like I hate the Jews!"

Panel two, the pitch: "Using the word 'bigot' will erase any doubt: I'm hating on the Jews."

Panel three, the punchline: "Hey, turns out it only sounded like I hate the Jews! Wakka wakka wakka! Stereotypes sure are fun."

I don't know, Mallard. I'm not convinced.

Permalink: 11:39 PM | Comments (7)

The secret weapon

AP photo

It's still a shithole over there? Time for Plan B in Afghanistan: Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will punch every Taliban in the face.

Permalink: 08:51 AM | Comments (1)

Table Scraps:

♣AT A RED Sox game the other day, some friends and I were talking about how great it is when coaches go bonkers during interviews. A friend said the all-time great freak-out came from Lee Elia of the '83 Cubs, and then he tracked down the audio of it. He's right.

♣HAVE YOUR HAN Solo and eat him, too.

♣FROM A REAL estate magnate’s perspective, why waste space on a piano lounge when you could put in a Starbucks? The long and storied tradition of hotel music is going the way of the vibrating bed. (Question: Were those vibrating beds actually ever popular? I have no idea.)

♣AT SOME POINT, it's not even worth taking the sobriety test. And in other wacky video news: Possums!

♣KID TO OFFICER: "I'd like your business card." Officer to kid: "Let's take you to jail instead." City to kid: "Sorry about that. Here's $8,500."

♣YOU KNOW THOSE new UPS commercials, with the guy at the white board? I don't like 'em, mostly because I think the points they make are lame. It's like UPS just discovered new forms of transportation, and the guy at the whiteboard is explaining it: "Say you want to get a package from China to the U.S. Can't do that in a truck! But with UPS, you can use... an aaaaiiirrr plaaaannneeeee." Slate has an interesting piece about them and makes a good argument for their effectiveness, but I still don't like 'em.

♣DO YOU LIKE cat poop with your coffee? Because, uh, a lot of people do.

♣AND THEN, THERE'S this.

Permalink: 02:11 AM | Comments (2)

Wackyworld's Greatest Hits

Things I've always found amusing: kooky public access tv shows, kids doing wrestling stunts, goths. Things that I had to try to speak intelligently about for my latest art review in Boston's Weekly Dig, when they turned up at an exhibit I went to see: kooky public access tv shows, kids doing wrestling stunts, goths.

Oh boy.

Permalink: 12:57 PM | Comments (0)

Lyme disease: It's complicated

I have a piece in today’s Washington Post about the battle over Lyme disease. Mainstream science says it’s a readily treatable, tick-borne bacterial infection, but patient advocacy groups and some doctors say it can become a chronic, debilitating ailment. The groups have organized themselves like political activists and aren’t hesitating to wield their strength, much to the chagrin of mainstream medical groups.

One Lyme blog has already posted my e-mail address and a four-year-old photo of me. (Those sideburns? No more.) Should be interesting to see what the day brings.

Update: I should have anticipated this, but this blog has gotten a lot of visitors from people upset by the Post story -- as you can see in the comments, which, of course, people are more than welcome to make. So, in the interest of not being misunderstood, I removed the flippant tone that generally defines this blog. (The original version of this post was titled "Ticked Off?" and had a picture of the cartoon character The Tick -- something I later worried could be considered a taunt, instead of how I meant it, which was a lame pun to describe all the frustration portrayed in the story.) Nobody’s actually contacted me about this, but it seems the right thing to do. If you want flippancy, please direct yourself to anywhere else on the site. Thank you.

Permalink: 09:04 AM | Comments (19)

That's a mighty large forehead

What was my mom doing on Mother's Day? Why, taking pictures of strangers for her son's blog, of course. This was snapped at a rest stop on the Florida Turnpike:

But wait, aren't his sunglasses on backwards?

Permalink: 01:07 PM | Comments (1)

Hi, I'm your landlord. You can call me Big Daddy.

If you're looking to move to Boston, well, boy oh boy, I've got the living arrangements for you right here. This Craigslist post promises a room across the street from a "laundry mat," is in "the nice neighborhood," has a huge living room, dining room and patio, and, oh, you have to be a girl. To be specific: "*~FEMALE PREFERED!!! (Somewhat Professional-or whatever...as long as a near Clean Freak like myself & Roomie)!"

At the bottom are three pictures of the apartment and then this one, which sheds some light on the roommate-gender preference:

Also in the lease, just below the rent and security deposit: "Manditory naked time, 6 p.m. to 3 a.m."

Permalink: 02:46 PM | Comments (2)

Bill Richardson: Now with less Bill Richardson

After Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson’s bland showing on the Daily Show, Daniel Radosh declared, “Bill Richardson for Secretary of State.” He also nailed the candidate’s problem:

Honestly, the guy has a great résumé, an appealing philosophy and, to my limited knowledge, decent policy proposals, but he is so uninspiring. He can't even handle the "why do you want to be president?" question. He repeats his meaningless phrases, runs through laundry lists, and seems to miss the point of his own stories. He's the definition of unelectable. Charisma isn't the most important thing for a president to have, but passion does count, and I don't see any here.

Looks like the Richardson For President committee agrees, and is throwing in the towel. Take a look at the new commercials they’re running for him:

Wow. Richardson’s committee sat down and asked itself, “Who’s a better pitchman for our candidate -- a self-important, sandwich-eating jerk, or our candidate?” The decision was unanimous: The jerk. They have him list off Richardson’s resume, while Richardson sits dutifully and dumbly. When Richardson does speak, the jerk interrupts him. Talk about faith in your candidate.

Meanwhile, who exactly is this jerk supposed to represent? He’s interviewing Richardson for a job, and he says, “What makes you think you can be president?” Surely, that’d mean he’s interviewing Richardson for the job of president -- and seeing as that’s the role of the American people, is this guy supposed to be the voters? Hey Bill Richardson, meet the people you hope to represent: They’re all a bunch of self-important assholes. Good message, guys.

Update: I got an e-mail from the Bill Richardson campaign on Thursday, asking me to check out his upcoming appearance on Jay Leno. I did on YouTube, and it didn't help his case. I'm not saying I dislike Richardson; he seems like a fine, smart guy, and I've liked what he has to say. I just wish he would say it in a way that makes people pay attention.

Permalink: 12:03 AM | Comments (7)

This is going to be a loooong book tour

Pop quiz, hot shot: Let's say you're going to see a reading by David Talbot (right), founder of the left-leaning Salon.com, who's out promoting his new book about Robert F. Kennedy's quest to learn about John F. Kennedy's assassination. Say that he gives some prepared remarks, reads from the book a little, and then takes some questions from a Boston-area audience. What does the crowd ask?

A) Instead of asking a question, a man simply uses a Kennedy transition to identify his politican leanings. "Nothing's changed much in politics," he says. "I despise everything Bush has done, just like those people despised everything Kennedy has done."

B) A woman says that George H. W. Bush has said he doesn't remember where he was when JFK was shot. Furthermore, she wonders: Wasn't Bush working for the CIA around the time of the shooting? And wasn't the CIA suspected to be involved in the shooting? You don't think...?

C) A young guy with large sideburns in the back of the room asks if either of the Kennedy brothers ever did LSD.

D) The crowd spends the rest of the evening asking very specific questions about the who's-who in the JFK shooting conspiracy.

If you answered "All of the above, and in that order," you're right! I went last night, and the crowd really outdid itself in living up to stereotypes. Go Boston!

On the upside, Talbot's a nice guy. I don't have much interest in the Kennedy story, but went just to see what he's like, because Salon was the first major outlet I ever wrote for. He seemed happy to chat, despite me not buying a book.

Permalink: 11:21 AM | Comments (0)

Hooray for school!

My friend Emilie is a high school English teacher, and can tell alarming tales of youth writing abilities. I once spoke in a journalism class she teaches, and quickly learned most of the kids weren't thrilled hearing me opine on the finer points of the profession. I got a lot more interest when I switched gears and told them about how I had to research elderly sex practices.

But, success is had: An essay written by a student in her class last year was aired on NPR's "All Things Considered" yesterday, as part of its ongoing "This I Believe" series. Exciting stuff, great essay. A+ for everyone.

Permalink: 03:13 PM | Comments (2)

This crap would never fly at the Daily Planet

Was “Spider Man 3” an endorsement of Jayson Blair? Let’s look at the evidence.

One of the many plotlines fighting for attention in “Spider-Man 3” is the black goo, the origin of Venom, which falls from the sky and is looking for someone to latch onto. So says Peter Parker’s science professor, who studies it and determines, with remarkable speed and clarity, that it “amplifies characteristics of its host.” The reviewer from the New Yorker does the best job at telling what happens next:

The joke about Peter has always been how uncool he is. “You are such a nerd,” his girlfriend, Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst), sighs, thus giving a breath of hope to all the nerds in the audience. Once infected by the black stuff, he should by rights become an übernerd, but the movie can’t decide what it wants. One moment he is being eyed by girls in the street, and the next they are shying away from him, as he struts along like John Travolta at the start of “Saturday Night Fever.” You laugh, but the sound of it dies in your throat. Peter then dances in a night club, but unveiling a mean and moody Tobey Maguire is roughly as convincing as asking Norah Jones to rap. Dumbest of all is the change of hair style, as Peter stops combing his bangs sideways and lets them flop down over his brow. He looks like the bronze medalist in a teen-age Hitler-impersonation contest. Spider-Man, meanwhile, gets his own makeover, oiling into a different outfit (black is the new red), and hanging out moodily on church spires. What is being amplified here?

Good question. Left out in that recap, though, is a scene when Amplified Peter struts into the newsroom at the Daily Bugle and outs his competition -- a fellow photographer named Eddie Brock -- for fabricating a photo of Spider-Man doing something nefarious. The shot has landed on the front page and won Brock a staff photog job, but AmpliPeter has done his homework to refute it: He’s got a copy of the original shot, with a little diagram of how it was manipulated. Brock, confronted with this, pleads with AmpliPeter, saying that his exposing this would ruin his life. AmpliPeter says something snarky and then hands the evidence over to the newspaper, which promptly fires Brock and blasts him in the next day’s pages. (Jayson Blair got a similar treatment, although less tabloidy.)

This little sequence takes place among many sequences designed to show how the black goo has made Peter a jerk. (Later, we’re to see what jerkiness hath wrought: Brock seeks vengeance and is conveniently wrapped up in the goo, and becomes a Spiderman-seeking ball of fangy death.) But wait: Is the movie saying that Peter did the wrong thing by exposing a co-worker who fabricated a photo -- and not just any photo, but one that claimed to bear witness to something shocking and maimed the good name of the city’s hero? Are we to say that Peter, had he not been AmpliPeter, would have forgiven Brock, or perhaps found a way for him to escape from this untainted? After all, it’s not enough to just let Brock quit; the photo damaged the credibility of Spider-Man, and it would have to be retracted.

Does this mean the folks who outed Jayson Blair and Steven Glass were, in a way, amplified? I don’t think director Sam Raimi meant that, even though that’s what he said. But then, this was symptomatic of the largest problem with “Spider-Man 3”: It was so hurried in bringing its many elements together -- the goo, the enemies, the romantic drama -- that its premises barely made sense. It’s not that we need to believe radioactive spiders can change someone’s DNA, but, well, I’ll just defer to the New Yorker’s reviewer, who once again nails it: “The fact is that if the fantastical is to flourish it must lay down the conditions of its magic and abide by them; otherwise, we feel cheated.”

Permalink: 10:36 AM | Comments (0)

The problem here is that they didn't win more games

The Miami Heat and the Dallas Mavericks, who battled gloriously last year in the NBA finals, were both eliminated in the first round this year. The Heat had a lousy regular season and the Mavs had a great one, and now the teams are trying to figure out why they lost. So, what do we learn?

Lesson: Work hard during the regular season

Heat coach Pat Riley vowed Wednesday to instill a culture in his team that shows more respect for the regular season.

"The notion that you can always turn it on, because you're talented or you're a veteran team or you've done it before, I think, for once and for all, for this franchise will never be uttered again or thought again," Riley said. "It's an attitude that is pervasive, and it's an attitude that will not prevail at all anymore here." -South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Lesson: Don't work so hard during the regular season

First, [Dallas star Dirk] Nowitzki said, the Mavericks maxed out in the regular season and couldn't gas up their tank when the playoffs arrived.

"We played on a high level for a very long period of time," he said. "I thought we kept the focus and the pressure and the intensity high for basically all the regular season.

"And once you get to the playoffs, you should be able to raise the intensity another level. But the way we pounded through the regular season, it was hard for us to go to another level." -Dallas Morning News

So, we learn nothing.

Meanwhile, with no Heat to root for and no Dallas to root against, I'm just about out of things to care about this year. Time for the ol' standby: rooting against the Nets because Jason Kidd beat his wife.

Permalink: 12:39 PM | Comments (0)

She’s a 34D -- D for Dog, that is

A friend bought Stella some doggie treats, which were quickly gobbled up. As we were throwing away the box, I looked at it and noticed, for the first time, that the dog on the front appears to have breasts:

Am I wrong about this? I first thought it might just be an angular rendition of the dog’s ribcage, but it’s a little too round for that. This seems like an odd addition to the illustration. I understand that, in fusing the idea of “Zen” and “puppy,” it’d make sense for a dog to be doing some sort of Yoga pose -- and that, because dogs aren’t quite made for that sort of thing, it’d be better to just use a humanoid form and add some dog qualities like a paws and a dog head. It’s communicative. It says, This treat will soothe your dog the way Yoga soothes the mind. But then, strangely: Your dog is a sexy babe with a tail. I sure hope not.

Permalink: 12:52 PM | Comments (1)

I don't have time for this

I was on the phone with a friend last night, and after a few minutes she said she had to get back to work. It was past 11 p.m. "There's not enough hours in the day," she said.

I've thought that a lot recently. It's been a hell of a busy week. But every time I think of that line -- and I do, often -- a song pops into my head and I can't place it. It's very annoying. Not only am I low on time, but my brain's preoccupied with a mystery song repeating the same line. This morning, I Googled my way to an answer:

That's Gomez. Catchy tune. I have no idea where I first heard it. In any case, I hope to find more blogging time soon. In the meantime, if you happen to care what I think about art about war, here's your answer.

Permalink: 10:35 AM | Comments (1)