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The Robot Maker

(This picture is of Max, about 4 o'clock on the morning of Abby's birth.)

"Pretend that you're a robot maker, and that I'm your robot."

"Okay."

"I'm the best robot, because I can say my ABC's, and get you sodas, and play 'squish.' 

"I love 'squish'."

"I can read a little bit, and sing songs.  I give the best robot hugs.  Also, also I can kick a ball and play squirt guns, and figure things out inside my brain.  So can I be the best robot?"

The rest of this conversation is not your business.  Max's reaction to his little sister is apparently taking the form of robotic queries.  I assured Max that I loved all my robots, and that he was way more advanced than any of the other robots that I, the Robot Maker, had made.  Shortly after this, we kicked the ball around a little more, got some lunch and ice cream, and spent some good bonding time together.

I never had siblings, and I was glad.  My parents were divorced and my dad traveled on weekends, so trying to navigate the life I had growing up would have, in my opinion, sucked a lot more if I had had to do it with someone else.  I preferred to be self-reliant.  My wife has a brother, and almost everyone I know has some sibling experience.  Not me.  I have no idea how this is going to shake out, but I'm going to find out.  Max is used to having all my attention, and now he has to share.  He is four and a half, and while a good kid, sharing is not his strong suit, not yet.  He seems to like Abby in theory - he wants to make funny faces and duck noises to make her feel better and give her presents - but he's also tired of being asked about her already.

Yes, it's only been four days.  But it's hard not to read anything into this.  Should be an interesting summer.

Abigail Louise Crowell

Born way ahead of schedule, May 24th, 2006.  Why are you only hearing about this now?  Well, it's been a bumpy last couple of days...weeks.  Years.  Regardless, at 2:09am on Wednesday, C woke me up, her water having broken.  We dressed Max, packed quickly, and drove over to the hospital.  Without going into stuff C should probably write about, our new kid was born at 11:17am (fulfilling C's prediction that she would "be a mother of two by noon" - I think we have to use the word, "prophestic") and weighed 6 pounds, 8.8 ounces.  She's like, a month early.

Two "funny" things: They brought C a birthing ball (an enormous red ball you sit on, bounce, and lower the baby, in theory) and in my 4am state of mind, I said, "Look honey, they've brought you a Rambaldi device."  Additionally, if you want hospital staff to jump and find a delivery doctor for your wife who really needs to push, and you hear something like, "it might be another fifteen minutes," look at them steadily and say, "You've got to be fucking kidding me."  It works.  We had a doc real quick after that.  Dr. Tucker came, took one look at the situation, and jumped into her booties.  We had a new kid shortly thereafter.

There's a lot of detail missing here that you'll get over on C's blog when she feels like it.  (If you don't have and want passwords, email me.)  I will tell you that everyone is home and happy now, one of C's fellow teachers made us a Mexican chicken and rice thing for a coming home dinner, Max is drawing on the desk and has decided his new favorite super hero is Static Shock, the in-laws are still completely nuts, and Brian and Kate are on their way into town.  Thanks to everyone who's called concerned and congratulatory, and who have sent things.  Much love & more pics later.

Alias: The End

Thank you, Colleen.

I would not have been watching Alias at all had it not been for Colleen Butler, who signed on to watch this thing back in 2001.  I didn't start in on it until 2003, when we moved to Pensacola, started officially hating it, and I bought the whole first season at Blockbuster for twenty bucks because we had no friends.  We watched that one and the second one on DVD, then picked up with the third season on TV.  The show ended last Monday (I've been distracted), and though I know there have been detractors (Milwaukee Vowels, I'm looking in your direction) and some of those since season two, I have steadily liked this show, felt used up by it, given it thought, and gotten emotionally involved in what the fuck is happening to the characters.

SPOILERS AHEAD: DO NOT READ IF'N YOU DON'T WANT SPOILAGE.

Rambaldi had discovered the secret of life eternal.  But we knew that, because of the wizened clock maker from early on, and because of the old guy in the Italian prison. 

Sloane gets his in the best way, trapped under a fucking rock to live eternal life trapped in a dusty-ass chamber like some kind of Greek punishment.  Sydney kills him, so she gets that satisfaction she's needed since Danny's death, and then Jack traps him forever in a private and lonely hell of powerlessness and pain.  What could be a better legacy for Sloane than - nothing?  Ha!

Tom Grace - saddest TV death, ever.  It's not like we were really all that attached to him, but hey - they wrote him out really well, and if you were tolerating the whole Rachel/Tom thing at all, it makes you really sad for Rachel and feeds her motivation.  I liked Rachel's arc, even if she is Sydney v.2.

And the baddest motherfucker on television goes out in the most consistent way I can imagine.  Jack Bristow has become probably my favorite character on television, maybe ever.  A throughly compromised human being with a steel trap for a mind and a heart open only for his daughter (and more recently, his granddaughter).  Who goes back to make sure Arvin is dead?  Who rejects eternal life, and takes the only action available to protect Syd?  Jack Bristow, the baddest motherfucker on TV.  R.I.P., Jack.  I just hope Victor Garber isn't typecast by this.  He used to do Broadway and comedies.  And he played Jesus.  No, really.

I liked the end, if it seemed a little rushed.  The harbinger of what might be, in the form of the 3-D puzzle being done by Isabel, and the visit from Dixon (including the departure from the location screen beforehand, which I particularly liked) summed up where I wanted these characters to be.  No, it's never REALLY over.  We got Vaughn back, which I was pulling for from way back, Sark is still out there, which I called and am glad for, and Irina...well, I don't know.

Now I'm just waiting for the last season to come out on DVD so I can watch it without the four month gap in there.  I hate the way ABC treated this show during it's last season.  Fuck ABC!

Book to Movie

"The movie is never as good as the book."

Yeah, I guess, kind of, shut up.  In a completely formless, vague, unexamined way, I suppose that's true.  In a book, there is more detail, almost always more backstory, and usually more subplots and descriptions of a thing.  However, experiencing an emotionally charged event in a book can take as long as you'd like it to take - even repeatedly - whereas in a movie you're on someone else's schedule, which I would argue is a strength as well as a weakness, since it enhances tension by not allowing the viewer to control the action.  (In a way, PAUSE and STOP buttons cheapen the experience because they grant us too much control - yet another argument for keeping cinemas around.)  A movie can be a more visceral ride, something that - if we applied the same imaginational energy to them as we do to books (and we only don't because we're lazy and they don't make us do it) could just as easily be filled with pain, smells, apprehension, fear, joy, and raw feeling as any book. 

Movies have an additional chore that comes of this, too.  Suspension of disbelief is easier when you just read it.  You can turn it over in your brain like a Rubik's Cube (dating myself) for a dog's age until it works for you, and then keep reading.  We're also much more willing to say to ourselves, "...maybe I'll give them a few more pages to make that make sense.  If they don't pull it off, I'm out of here."  A movie has to woo and wow you right this very minute, or it loses most of us - "Oh, that was so fake."  Well, of course it was, but because you as a moviegoer didn't buy it with a bare minimum of effort from two of your five senses, it didn't work.  Also, you probably weren't making the effort, since movies are supposed to be a "sit back, relax, don't think" kind of thing for a lot of people, which marginalizes them as art.  Yes, they are art, lest we forget.  We have this idea that Hollywood churns out a lot of crap these days (which has always been the case) and that somehow, that means there's less art.  Well, that's bullshit.  In any given museum, there are works that have less to them than others, you just don't spend as long on them.  Some of them are in the basement.  You skim a book that's weak, instead of giving it your full attention.  We judge movies harshly in part because of the time investment.  I have walked away from end credits and thought, "I want my two hours back," but not very often.  Only twice have I demanded my money back - got it, too.  Digression.

I just don't buy this universal idea that a movie is somehow less than the book that spawned it because it loses scope, depth, or detail.  It has to capture essence to work for me, and that's all.  I know people get attached to different kinds of things - or ideas/situations in books - and can't accept the movie without them.  I view them as one project inspired by another, and I think I'm happier - and enjoy more movies - that way.  Mood helps; I'm often in a different mood for a movie than I am when I feel like a good read.  I can't watch a movie at a stoplight, for instance.  Some people read themselves to sleep, but reading is active for me, and almost never works that way.  It's a disservice to the movie, but I can fall asleep in front of one, provided I've seen it, because that can be passive if I allow it.  (Director/cast/et cetera commentaries help in this regard, because it sucks the "I am there" element right out of a film.)

Mostly, I'm tired of hearing this old chestnut as people walk out of theatres.  I saw two movies this weekend, the DaVinci Code and Over the Hedge, and people said it as I was leaving both of these films, which says something about the comment.  It really has nothing to do with literary excellence (though I could make the argument that the comic strip and the novel are about par) and has more to do with expectation.  By the by, I enjoyed both films, especially when it was revealed that RJ the Raccoon was the bride of Christ, and that Opus Dei had hired the exterminator (voiced by Thomas Haden Church playing an albino) to work with Doctor Octopus and Gandalf to get rid of the bear (played by Nick Nolte), thus supressing the truth.

I bet I qualify for my own black turtleneck sweater now.  Wonder who they can get to play me in the Squidbag Movie?

Punishment for Democracy

The Palestinian Authority is out of cash.  They haven't been able to pay any of their government workers or civil service people in about three months.  Think you could go three months without a paycheck?  Grocery stores were accepting IOUs of the "I'll pay you at the end of the month" sort, but have had to stop doing that, since it doesn't look like anyone's getting paid at the end of the month, and you can't eat IOUs.  The reason that this is happening, of course, is that after being encouraged by the world to hold free and fair elections, the Palestinian people rose up and elected a Hamas-based leadership.  Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization by the US government, (but then, so is Comedy Central) and since Hamas has as part of its ideology that Israel should cease to exist, the Israelis are kind of hacked off about this whole thing, too.  In retribution for deomcratically electing what most of the world considers to be the wrong governing body for Palestine, the rest of the world has stopped sending in money.  Hence, the current financial crisis in Palestine.

The Israel money plug is perhaps the most interesting one to me, since it just seems like modified bullying.  The government of Israel controls the ports in and out of the region, and so collects the fees and tariffs which are generated by the export and sale of Palestinian goods.  They're just holding on to this.  No IRAs or interest-earning CDs, just, "nope - we'll just hold onto your money for now."  This is different from people pulling out aid - you don't agree with what a country is doing, pulling out your financial aid is your inherent, if callous and nasty, right - no, this is just keeping someone else's fucking money because you don't agree with them, and because you can.  Which seems to be at the heart of a lot of Israeli motivation.  It would be something, wouldn't it, if Israel were to take control of the region through foreclosure, instead of armed conflict or negotiation?  How'd John not see that coming, huh?

Do I agree with Hamas?  No.  But I live in a country where we have supposedly fair and democratically run elections, and I didn't vote for any of those fuckers in charge right now - and lemme tell ya, they have some pretty crazy ideas, many of them involving zany religious ideology and flexibility when it comes to the rights and privileges of sovereign nations.  It's lucky the rest of the world is dependent on our economy or somebody so would have yanked our funds by now.  So people are in charge, in Palestine, who got voted in there by the will of the people - I assume, or there likely would have been a huge public outcry by this point - and they might be nutso.  Certainly they are extremists.  I'm sure the solution is to punish the entire nation of people by collapsing their economy.  I'm certain that hungry people with guns will bear no resentment to the rest of the world over this.  I'm positive that this will not create yet another incubator for a group of people hell-bent on getting something back from the world for what they've endured.

So let's punish them for being democratic.  While we're at it, let's create more tension in Kashmir, extend diplomatic recogniton to Libya, and see if we can enrage another Mideast country that starts with the letter "i".  This can only be good for the world, yeah?

Matt Olson: Winer

That is what they call those wine guys, right?  Winers?  Big bunch of cork-sniffing, sloshing around, knowing more than I do about vintages, refinements and adjectives, Winers.  Anyway, this was long overdue to appear here, Matthew Bloody Olson's public debut into the civilized and educated society that is the world of the sommelier.

KULERS UNCORKED: Conversant with a world of seasonal choices
Gil Kulers - For the Journal-Constitution
Thursday, May 4, 2006

Consider the plight of the poor sommelier, otherwise known as the steward or the wine guy/gal in a restaurant. He must get to work at 2, sometimes 3 in the afternoon to taste wines, then he's got to polish some glasses before serving guests who typically are very happy to see him.

OK, let's reconsider the "plight" of the wine guy. It's not the worst job in the world, but for some it can be a bit more challenging. In most instances, the manager of the wine program is responsible for maintaining a stock of wine that jibes with the restaurant's character and that changes three, maybe four times a year, more or less in tune with the seasons.

Then there is the wine list at Woodfire Grill, a restaurant with a menu that changes with the time of day, or so it may seem to Matt Olson, the new chief wine picker at Woodfire.

For the uninitiated, Woodfire's chef, Michael Tuohy, is the sultan of fresh and seasonal cuisine. Whether it's white asparagus, wild Alaskan salmon or artichokes, Tuohy practically meets the tractor, truck or boat halfway to Atlanta before running back to his kitchen with visions of new menu items dancing in his head. Then it's Olson's job to have a selection of wines that whirls and twirls with Tuohy's lead.

"Our menu is so timely that it can't help but be one of the most unique in the city on any given day," says the 29-year-old Olson. "I have a responsibility that my list reflects that. It's going to be different and unique."

Olson views his ever-changing wine list as a blessing and a curse. Sure, he has the phone numbers of all the wine distributors on speed-dial as he tries to keep up with Tuohy's rapid menu reinventions. On the other hand, a constantly changing wine list requires customers, even regulars, to ask for a suggestion or two. This offers Olson and the dining room staff, who are regularly debriefed on the comings and goings of the wine list, to nudge diners toward a wine they otherwise would not consider.

"That's when you get them to drink a vernaccia di San Gimignano or a xarmont txakoli," Olson says.

A native Georgian born in East Point and a graduate of Druid Hills High School, Olson traveled far afield to learn about Basque wines that start with the letter X (and how to pronounce zar-MANT cha-KOH-lee). He graduated in 2005 from the Dubrulle International Culinary Arts program at British Columbia's Art Institute of Vancouver. Not that he doesn't know his way around a saute pan; his instructors encouraged Olson to pursue a career in wine because of his capacity for the subject. It came as a surprise to no one that he finished at the top of his wine studies class.

An internship with sommelier Barbara Philip at the Fish House in Stanley Park in Vancouver sealed the deal for Olson. "She taught me about the fine points of wine and food, but she also showed me the practical aspects of running a wine department," Olson says. "She was willing to look past my lack of experience and give me a chance."

A scenario that doesn't sound a lot different from Olson's story at Woodfire. Olson started at Woodfire in January as a bartender. Tuohy saw the same aptitude and energy as Philip and the chef-instructors at Dubrulle. When Woodfire wine director Greg Koetting left in March to work on chef Paul Albrecht's latest project, Tuohy gave Olson a chance.

"He's got a real good approach to wine," Tuohy says.

"He's real articulate, and it's easy to see when someone has the fire and passion. I'm really looking forward to a long-term relationship with Matt and I'm excited to have someone like him on staff."

While still adapting to his new responsibilities, Olson remains realistic about what he can and can't do with customers, regardless of the season or the seasonality of the 3-year-old restaurant's cuisine.
"It always amazes me when businessmen come in and say I want your best Napa cabernet and it's 95 degrees out," Olson says with a laugh. "But my No. 1 philosophy is you got to give people what they want. A lot of people only want what they are comfortable with. Some people leave you no opportunity for discussion. They want the Silver Oak Cab and that's it."

It's the other customers who pause to ask about Woodfire's wide breadth of selections from far-flung corners of the earth that get Olson up in the morning --- or the afternoon, as the case may be.

"If people are open to asking a question, then that is the opportunity to lead them," Olson says.

"When it comes to wine, everyone wants to feel like they have good taste and a strong palate and a sophisticated sense of what is good. My job is to help them achieve that."

Gil Kulers is a wine and food educator based in Stone Mountain.

WINE RECOMMENDATIONS
We asked Matt Olson, Woodfire Grill's wine guy, to give us his top six wines of Spring and his impressions of them. Most of these wines are widely available in the metro area. We've suspended the thumbs up/thumbs down ratings system for this week.
---
2004 X Chardonnay
Carneros, Calif.
$16
Light oakiness and a creamy, rather than buttery, mouthfeel make this a perfect spring wine for folks who can't live without California chardonnay. Tropical fruit flavors keep you coming back for more.
---
2004 Castano Rosado
Yecla, Spain
$10
Buy a case of this easy, dry spring rose for backyard cookouts. Nice light cherry flavor, with enough spice to stand up to the grill, and you can't beat the price.
---
2002 Gramona Grand Cuvee
Cava, Penedes, Spain
$16
Looking for the flavors and textures of champagne, but just a little bit different? This is your wine. This cava's peachy, nutty, toasty goodness practically begs for fried chicken.
---
2000 Jean-Baptiste Adam
Cremant d'Alsace, France
$14
This fantastic bottle of spring bubbly punches way above its weight class. A fine, creamy mousse unfolds over the tongue into flavors of pear and apple.
---
2003 Icardi,
L'Aurora, Cortese, Piemonte, Italy
$11
This lean and crisp white wine made from the cortese grape is from northern Italy and brings a touch of elegance to the picnic. Like a decent chablis at half the price, this bottle will satisfy wine snobs and regular people alike.
---
2004 Fireblock Rose,
Clare Valley, Australia
$18
A top-shelf rose that refreshes like a white wine but satisfies your inner red wine drinker. Berry fruit galore slides into a long, peppery finish. Full-flavored enough to handle your brother-in-law's fiery barbecue sauce.

So there you have it.  Vats and vats of wisdom from the Mattster.  Still, I wonder what is the best wine for shotgunning a bottle and then pitching over the backyard fence onto one's head.  Matt doesn't really cover that here.  Also, if Matt invites you down to his personal cellar for a taste of a particularly fine Amontillado, don't go.  Especially you, Josh.  He's still pissed at you over that horse racing/Cuban exile thing.
 

Smack my Bush Up

I make lunches and breakfasts for my wife and son in the mornings.  During the swirl of green tea, fruit, yogurt, PB & J and the occasional pudding cup or Cheez-it, my mind tends to wander, because I do this same thing almost every day.  This morning (about twenty minutes ago now) I got to thinking about meeting the President of the United States, George Dubya Bush, (shown here squishing up a baby bumblebee) and how, if such an opportunity were to come my way, I would almost assuredly punch him right in the face.  At least, this is what I like to think I would do.  I also like to think I would have the presence of mind to shout "sic semper tyrannis" or "I'm just a patsy" just after the punch, but one never knows what one will say while being wrestled to the ground by over-zealous employees of the Treasury Department.  Probably something like, "Ugh," or "Ow, my civil rights!"

So yeah, punching the leader of the free world right up the bracket (which is a bit lower, but sounds cooler).  The problem with this is that I would go to jail, and people would take to the media waves, decrying my act as unpatriotic, violent, and pointless without ever entering into dialogue as to why a tax-paying citizen, husband and father of almost two would want to punch our chief executive in the mouth, forcing him to hit the deck, aspirating teeth.  I'm not claiming to be law-abiding by any stretch, but there's worse than me.  The point here is that we as a culture would overlook any potential motivation for what is certainly a warranted act, focusing only on the act itself, as we always do.  And I think that's sad.  It doesn't speak well for us a culture.  A punch in the face is not an assassination, an act so shocking and horrific that it stuns us into blankness and precludes rational discussion about motivations until conspiracy thoeries arise.  No, this would just be a punch in the face, and maybe a little kicking, time permitting.

It should be an option on the table.  You meet the Prez, and there's humble toadying (like someone I know who I could mention) and there's just avoiding interaction entirely.  There's also town-hall-like settings with Q & As, but none of that accurately conveys what I feel.  I guess I would make history, like every Presidential assailant - after all, everyone's heard of Sara Jane Moore and Sam Byck, right?

Right?

Meg's Meme

From P-Loaf; an original meme as far as the author knows.  This author and the one what wrote it.  Pictured to the side is the author herself, in a picture stoled right out of her Flickr.  I would have thought I would have had one, at least one, but I had none, so I had to up and steal one.  I'm not sure what the deal is with all the non-standard English I just used...

Four things I saw today:
- x-rays of my teeth
- REALLY green grass
- autopsy photos
- my boss's email in Outlook

Four smells I smelled today:
- cinnamon
- old book
- flatulence (someone else's, unfortunately)
- my son's hair

Four things I ate today:
- Wen's chicken
- anticipation and frustration
- fish sticks (an' I was wearin' this green hat...)
- diet sodas, Vault and Mountain Dew

Four things I heard today:
- Eddie Izzard's "Circle" album
- a Heidelberg QM 425
- a remixed mash-up of Eminem and Daft Punk
- my family sleeping

Four things I touched today:
- my wife's back and neck and hair and pregnant belly
- lots and lots of booklets with questions in them about drugs
- a turtle
- foam rubber balls (heh-heh)

"One of those Circle of Life...Ooh."

So in Amsterdam on Sunday, families arriving at the Beekse Bergen Safari Park's Barbary habitat were witness to some Sloth Bears eating a Macaque that had been stunned by an electric fence.  Apparently, the monkey plowed into the fence, was stunned, and bears being bears took advantage of the situation, chased him down and ate him in front of what one would presume were horrifed and strangely riveted onlookers.  The zoo guys said this:

"In an area where Sloth bears, great apes and Barbary macaques have coexisted peacefully for a long time, the harmony was temporarily disturbed during opening hours on Sunday."

Man, they didn't disturb the harmony, they re-wrote the song, returning to the original version before all the stupid remixes.  You Dutch folks would still have the monkey if A) it were smarter, and B) you didn't have the electric fence there.  I realize this is becoming a popular theme on this blog, but that's how life is, baby.  I love my friends, but if one of them gets stunned a little, I'd think about eating them.  Nah, only kidding - but then, I'm not a bear, either.  They eat fuckers dead.  I would hope that the educational value of this zoo just jumped in the minds of Dutch teachers.  My first thought when I read this was "What would I do if I were at the zoo with my kids and this happened?"  Incorporate it, probably, and maybe screen out the really gruesome parts.

This is still not as good as the story you want to read; the one where they introduce poachers into the "Safari Park" and some enraged elephants stomp those bastards flat.  I wait for that headline.

Phase One?

From 6pm to 8pm this evening (Monday) we met with a lady who made an offer on our house.  She took us up on our counteroffer, and we have a deposit check and a contract in our kitchen.  So I suppose, provided nothing goes egregiously wrong, we have sold our house.

Our buyer is a piece of work.  We'll call her Madame Chattairboques.  No, but seriously - we'll call her Mary.  Mary talks more about herself than any human being I've ever met, and I know bloggers.  She talks more than my Grandmother, and WAY more than my mother-in-law.  I felt energy being sucked out through the pores in my skin as she broke down how she lived through the Depression (which began when she was six, by my count), and people are lard sandwiches, how she had met the man who put the gold linings in astronauts helmets (though she could curiously not remember his name), how we should buy gold and silver because the government would eventually nationalize EVERYTHING, how the Jews stole her idea to put whole houses into Econoline vans, (???) how the immigrants were responsible for the current real estate boom but we still can't afford to have them here, and finally, how Nixon fucked everything up when he took us off the gold standard.  Despite all of this, and her bloody-minded negotiating techniques (which involve endless storytelling and horror stories about unsold houses) she was not entirely unlikeable.  Currently, I am washing my mind with Foster's while C watches a documentary about Catherine the Great.  This is what we have become.  No, wait - this is pretty much who we've always been.

Best parts: While she was going on and on about how we should knock off more money for a carpeting allowance, I had this thought, in full sentences: "I have done business with Fundamentalist Christians, Hasidic diamond merchants, and Armenian gold dealers.  All of these people had God on their side.  There is no way you talk me out of a thousand dollars."  She didn't get her carpeting allowance.

Max had been in the office with the shades up, playing on the computer as we talked.  At one sticky point, he came in and said, "Dad, there's a person on our lawn!  Taking one of the pieces of paper!"

"Out of the sign?"

"Yes!"

"Well, that's a good thing - that's what they're there for.  Thanks for keeping an eye on the house."

Nothing like your kid telling the prospective buyer that someone else is interested in your house.  This did a lot to take the heat off of Emmett the cat jumping up on the screen right behind where I was sitting while Mary was talking (of course she was) and pulling it off the fucking house into the yard.  Mary seemed to take this well enough, but it's kind of high on your list of things to have not happen while you're negotiating - shit falling off of the home.

So yeah - tentatively, phase one complete.  At the end of the longest goddamn Monday of my life.