Totally Tom!

For the love you bring won't mean a thing, unless you sing, sing, sing

2006-09-01T02:02:00.000-05:00

Perhaps I should say a little bit more about my birthday celebration. The night of August 30 began at a local restaurant called Barbarossa. The menu was very Western and actually written in English. This often presents a problem, because although you speak English, and the menu speaks English, the waiter often does not. So, suppose you settle upon the Spaghetti Bolognese (which I did). You will then have to figure out a way to communicate to the waiter that you want that item. Thankfully a number of Chinese people were at the dinner and helped me out. Usually you just ask for a copy of the Chinese menu and find an item that costs the same price as the spaghetti, and hope that's it. So far this method has worked for me.

After dinner, we had a karaoke room reserved. I had never done karaoke in my life, let alone Chinese karaoke, so I didn't know what to expect. We arrived at a decadent lobby, full of marble floors, gold things, and hand-made furniture. Honestly, it looked a lot like a place a king might live, or at least Donald Trump. We got on an elevator where I noticed that the building had 36 floors! I really hope that there is karaoke happening on all of these floors, though deep down I know this couldn't be.

Our room, number 512, was confusingly on the fourth floor. The helpful employees shepharded us in to the room which consisted of: a rather large tv, a rather large couch, two microphones, and an excellent sound system. One of the natives amongst our group began to fiddle about with the karaoke computer. We mistakenly believed that, because he Chinese, he would have an innate understanding of how it worked. We would soon regret putting Yang Zhun at the helm.

In the meantime a cake was brought in, in addition to some Chinese beer (as it was my 21st birthday). Everyone sang happy birthday. This would not be the last time.

After enjoying the delicious cake, and watching the Chinese chess players on TV for many minutes, we began to grow impatient with Yang Zhun. He kept asking for one more moment, and eventually the karaoke system whirred to life. His first song choice: Happy Birtday.

Everyone sang along again, laughing at the strange video playing in the background, which consisted of a bunch of people running around in giant bunny suits. As it turns out, this would be one of the more normal videos of the night. (The least normal video of the night was the three minutes of rugby footage that played over a Chinese song called "Friendship")

Just as we finished singing Happy Birthday for the second time, the song's tempo picked up and started again from the beginning. At this point we were beginning to grow weary of its simple melody and lyrics, but sang along anyways. The happy birthday song proceeded to play 6 more times. Towards the end of the last rendition, Yang Zhun pressed a button and the machine skipped to the next song. It is unclear why he did not press this button much, much earlier.

After that, the karaokeing improved dramatically. I did many songs that night including a couple of Backstreet Boys numbers as well as "Drop it Like it's Hot" and "Dancing Queen" which, I've decided, is the world's hardest karaoke song. I learned a number of important karaoke lessons that night:

a) Do you know the VERSE of the the song? It is not enough to know just the chorus, as this will result in lengthy periods of embarassed mumbling.

b) Does the song contain high notes that you will never ever be able to do justice to? Coming upon a note like those found in many BSB songs presents a decision: do I go for it, or do I switch over to the falsetto. Either way, it's probably not going to go well.

c) Is the song a rap song? It's pretty much impossible to do a rap song well on karaoke. Dont' think that I didn't give "Drop it like it's Hot" everything I had, but the words on the screen came with such speed and persistence that I was doomed from the beginning.

d) Is the song in Chinese? I can read Chinese fairly well, but definitely not when it's Taiwanese Chinese, which means infinitely more complex characters. I would say I had about a 10% hit ratio on the Chinese songs, and that was only because of the occasional English word that cropped up. As for the melodies, I probably hit an average of two notes a song, under the theory that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

So that was karaoke. It was extremely fun, and I'm so glad that my boss, Fay, was able to organize it.

The next day I was hoarse from singing. A Chinese intern named Kevin invited me to an intern celebration and on the way over explained that we would be singing the Weird Al song "I Bought it on eBay" (to the tune of "I Want It That Way") in front of a crowd of roughly 200 people. It was the sort of pleasant surprise that makes living in China such an adventure.

The event that day was a send-off for the roughly 100 interns who had worked at eBay that summer. The crowd was done with the work, and giddy with excitement. Even the lamest joke got a big laugh. At one point, an intern showed a video presentation and the crowd erupted. I was confused, he hadn't even told a joke. I asked Kevin why people were laughing.

"The lighting in the video was not very good".

It was in this environment that I decided to do some Backstreet Boys dance moves in front of a crowd of 200 chinese people that I had never met before. As the Weird Al backing kicked in, I began the pointing and shimmying that had made all the girls scream in the "I Want It That Way" video.

The Chinese reaction was substantially more subdued. Not a single person laughed. Or even reacted. It was as if they had all decided to pretend that the lonely American up front was not doing hilarious things, WHICH I WAS! I quickly gave up the dance moves and finished the song with the rest of my group awkwardly.

I sat down dejectedly as song finished, and another act took the stage. An eBay intern played backing on an out of tune guitar, while his friend sang cheesy pop songs. The crowd loved it.

(untitled)

2006-08-30T11:15:00.000-05:00

Being that this is my 21st birthday, and being that this was my 100th blog post, I was planning on writing something grandiose.

But I just spent three hours at the karaoke bar, and I am exhausted.

tom rocks

Why do you, you seem so afraid? But I can't figure you out

2006-08-26T01:10:00.000-05:00

My apartment in Shanghai is about 4 miles from where I work. Still the commute can present problems. Before I got here, my gracious host, Jeff, suggested that I take the subway into work. So I tried this on the first day. The first subway car to pull up was so full that when it stopped at the station, people that wanted to keep going actually got squeezed out. I finally managed to get in on a "spacious" one, but quickly swore off the subway.

So I started taking the taxi to work. I should mention that Shanghai taxi drivers are the most amazingly inept group of people in the world. You would think that if you're job was to drive people places, you would learn tricks of the trade, such as not going on the immensely crowded freeway, or stopping when I say to. One of my taxi drivers stalled at the end of the ride, gesturing wildly and acting confused for roughly 30 seconds, so the meter would roll over and he would get an extra kuai. One kuai is worth 12.5 cents.

My 4 mile morning commute usually takes about half an hour.

In the evenings, I decided to start walking home. I usually walk to the gym, which is on the way home, and then stop at whatever restaurant catches my fancy, before finally making it back to the apartment. It's about 5 miles all told, and usually takes about 2-3 hours after the workout and the dinner, but its fun, because I get to see some of the back alleys in Shanghai.

Today on the way home, I was feeling lazy. I had some leftover Indian in the fridge, and I just wanted to get to the gym quickly, so that I could enjoy my delcious dinner. I left work and began hailing taxis. Shanghai is a desperately under-taxied city, even worse than New York. It was rush hour, and it didn't look like I was ever going to find a ride, so I began to walk in the direction of the gym, hailing any taxi that drove by.

Suddenly, a motorcycle with a taxi medallion, pulled up beside me. I'd seen these before, apparently the Chienese government has decided to allow some motorcyclists to ferry people around town, but I would have none of it.

"No thank you" I said, and the man drove off.

Instantly, I regretted it. I had come to Shanghai for adventure, and here adventure had shown up on a motorcycle and offered me a ride, and I had the temerity to refuse him. When the next motorcycle taxi pulled up, I asked the driver how much it cost. He held up two fingers. I got on.

"Two kuai," I said, adjusting the seat as best I could, "how cheap!"

He laughed, "not two kuai, twenty kuai!" By now he had begun to accelerate, and I was in no position to bargain.

I should say now that I have never been in a motorcycle. Years of brainwashing from both parents have convinced me that motorcycling is a truly evil activity, on par with killing a man or putting your elbows on the table. So when he hit the gas I had no clue what to do with my dangling legs. They hung limply from the side of the bike, until my driver began to yell, "Put your legs here!" pointing to foot holds.

He was a talented driver, but I quickly realized the mistake that I'd made in getting on that bike. Shanghai streets are the craziest in the world, full of unexpected and ignored one-way signs. There are large bike lines on either side of the road, but cars will plow down them if the traffic is bad.

On multiple occasions, the driver would pass cars by weaving through oncoming traffic. The whole time I sat on back, thinking "please take your time, there is no rush, and life is precious". At one point I screamed. The whole experience was straight out of some cliched action picture where the well-meaning nerdy computer geek (me) gets onboard some spaceship/racecar/motorcycle with the take-no-prisoners follow-no-rules hero (the driver) and hilarity ensues. Only it's not so funny when you're the guy whose life's in danger.

Finally we arrived at the gym in one piece. The driver had a huge grin on his face when I handed him the money which means that either he was ripping me off or he had enjoyed the sounds of the muffled screams coming from the back of his bike.

Either way, I'm never doing that again.

I know we're gonna meet someday in the crumbed financial institutions of this land

2006-08-24T08:26:00.000-05:00

Well, it's been awhile.

Since my last post, I've done my internship in New York City, come to Shanghai for two weeks (so far), and learned ever so much about life. This summer has been one of the busier one's in my life, and I'm looking forward to my one week home in California, where I'll be able to enjoy my In 'n' Out, and Panda Express while I watch Tivo'd Blind Date.

That's another thing that happened since I've been gone...they cancelled Blind Date. I'd like to be more upset, I mean I've seen at least 500 episodes of that show, but to be honest I think it had run its course. And after all, I'll always have Elimidate...what they cancelled that too? This is very bad.

Look at this, my first blog post in three months and half of it is about awful television shows. You're probably wondering what I've been up to in these two metropolises I've called home for the summer.

Well before that I had to move out of Princeton. A lot of funny stuff happened during packing up. For example, because I have to fly home, there are just huge amounts of boxes that I end up putting into storage. There's supposed to be a two box minimum in the free storage, so I sort of put on disguises and space out my trips so that I don't get recognized. But eventually the guy who runs it, Tony I think, caught on. He sighed, and said, "fine just bring up whatever you got". Big mistake, I put my fridge, guitar, and boxes upon boxes into the hot attic where it is probably all melting right now.

The second thing that happened was that I had to spend the change jar that I had accumulated over the year. All told, I had more than 20 dollars in change. The first 5 dollars, I made a huge tactical error on, by going to the school cafeteria and buying a salad. My second tactical error was insisting on "getting rid of some of the dimes". The cashier soon lost her patience as the line behind me piled up.
I spent the next 10 on boxes for the previously mentioned packing. The rest of it was really hard to get rid of. I'm not sure what the moral of this story was, except for, change jars may seem like a good idea at the time, but there really kind of annoying when it comes down to it.

So then I went home for a week before going off to New York. As college juniors are wont to do, I worked at a bank for the months of June and July. For two months, every week day, I woke up at 6:15 in the morning, put on the New York top 40 radio station, took a shower, and went to work. I'll say this, the only music I have any patience for that early is top 40 radio. Of the 45 days I did this, I probably heard Panic! at the Disco 20 times and Gnarls Barkley 25. I have no problem with this, because when you're that tired you're just looking for something familiar to grasp on to. And this is exactly what you get when you tune into the Z100 morning zoo. Aside from the exact same songs, you also got a prank phone call at about 6:30, as well as some wild stunt from a guy they call "Roundhead", and stupid news with John Bell at 6:50. That was what the bit was called "Stupid News". I swear it was the same, predictable anecdote every morning.

So a guy goes into rob a bank. He gets away, but accidentally leaves behind his wallet. With his name in it!

So you're probably wondering how I was able to listen to stupid news at 6:50 and make it into the office by 7:00. Well this is where I got really lucky. When we were hunting for apartments earlier in the year (we started far too late, are you surprised) my friend Rob and I got very lucky to draw a short straw from the NYU housing department, which lead to our eventual placement in Bryant Park Place, a lovely 12 story building located smack dab in the middle of Manhattan. The best part of all this was my 100 yard commute to work every morning. My big mistake was telling the boss that I lived 100 yards from work. I lost basically any excuse I had right there.

Blogging is fun! I don't know why I stop like this sometimes. Blog let's never fight again.

I had two bosses at the bank, Sarah and Scott. Both were great. Sarah was my boss on paper, but I saw her a lot less than Scott. Scott has a desire to teach and lead, which was great for me, because it meant lots of hands-on instruction. One of my tasks was to capture more interns for Scott to control. I got three, which was a number that satisfied Scott.

I won't get into too many details of the job, for fear that I might somehow violate the extremely thick non-disclosure agreement I signed, except to say that it was nothing like what they lead you to expect from I-banking. It did start off a bit rough, but by about week five things started to click into place. The bank did make me an offer to work there after graduation, so we'll have to see what happens. The offer would include time in London and Hong Kong as well as New York, so it would be hard to say no.

A couple of highlights from outside of the office:

Getting literally knocked to the floor in a jousting style event with my boss at an off-site. They had set up some mats, but I flew well-clear of those.

Seeing Jessica Simpson at some event at the New York Public Library. I could've sworn it was Ashley, but the papers proved me wrong the next day.

Bumping into at least five Princeton students randomly on the streets on New York. I tried to calculate the odds of this and they were...pretty high actually. There is a mass migration of Princeton students to New York every summer. It's much like geese, or antelope, or other such migrating beasts. But if you wanna hear something really strange, I randomly ran into a Princeton girl in Shanghai. And she was from my grade. And I'd never seen her before (I recognized because she was wearing Princeton shorts). I spend three years on a 4,000 person campus and never once see this girl. My first week in a city of 10 million and there she is. Wacky!

Going to the gym every day. I've become a bit of a fitness nut. One day I was there for about three hours. I tend to stay longer when there's something really good on TV. In this instance, it was a Fear Factor marathon.

Meeting up with some old favorites from the St. Margaret's era. I saw more of Erin Sale this summer than I had in the three years before it. We never did make it to any concerts together as planned, but we still had fun. I also saw Ryan Baker and Brooke Bircher. Sorry, I don't mean to drop names.

Being depressed by pretty much everything that happened in the World Cup.

Seeing a couple of great movies (Little Miss Sunshine, The Descent), an ok one (Talladega Nights), and the worst movie ever made (You, Me & Dupree, which I saw after my roommate, Rob, guilted me into it. He had been working 100 hour weeks, and his bosses let him off early one night. He was so excited that he insisted we go see this movie at 10 pm. I felt bad and agreed. Never will I do something selfless again).

Being visited by Matt Sauter who was in Maine at a summer camp and getting turned away from a sold out Upright Citizens Brigade show, but seeing one of the members of the act, the guy with the curly hair.

Going on a cruise around New York City, sponsored by the bank, which featured lots of line dancing, and in which I was asked to perform in a terrible Cabaret show in front of 200 passengers, and accepting, and vowing to never accept such a thing again.

Seeing a dissapointingly few number of shows. Let's see there was Smoosh & Eels, Lady Sovreign & The Streets. Wow, I think that might be it. A far cry from the greatness of two summers ago, but if I'm being perfectly honest, the whole scene was pretty slim pickings. I mean how many times am I going to have to see Bloc Party, before something new will come around. Twice? Too many.

Clubbin' with Jay-Z and getting signed to his record label. Well, actually this one isn't true.

Obviously a lot more happened this summer. At one point I declared Chipotle Grill my favorite restaurant of all time before visiting the nutrition section of their web page and adding their burrito to the list of things which are tasty, but which I must never eat. Marie Callendar's microwavable chicken pot pies are also on this list. Rob and I had a number of casual get-togethers at the apartment, and much fun was had by all. Overall, a smashing success.

But I wanted more. Sometime during my NYC jaunt, I got this offer to come to Shanghai. Who was I to say no? I spent all of my hard-earned money on a plane ticket to China and now here I sit, in the amazing apartment of a family friend, writing this blog. I've been riding his bike around the city, exploring, and realizing how much Chinese I forgot. One day I'm gonna snap and just lock myself in a room until I'm fluent. Hopefully soon, because this whole gesturing and grunting thing is really wearing me out.

I will have much to say, hopefully, in the next two weeks. Step one is fixing the awful digital camera alloted to me from the Knight family collection. Let's just say of the roughly 6-7 cameras circulating through my immediate family, I got stuck with the very worst. I am in China. The remaining three are in San Juan Capistrano. This, to me, does not seem like an efficient allocation of resources.

Tonight, I discovered an Indian restaurant that is dangerously close to this apartment. They speak English there, serve ridiculously good food, and accept credit cards. They do also expect a tip, unlike every other restaurant in China, but, also unlike every other restaurant in China, they seem to adhere to some sort of health code. I fear that I may consume the rest of my meals in China at this restaurant.

Has anyone made it to the end of this post? I'm guessing my mom has. Maybe my dad. If you have, let me know, and I will feel as though my life has not been in vain. Thank you and goodnight.

Oh My

2006-05-05T18:26:00.000-05:00

They just announced the big concert of the year. It is this Saturday. It is Ghostface Killah. Oh. My.

Update

2006-05-04T21:03:00.000-05:00

Here is a media intensive blog entry for once. Today was Frist Fest, which is this fairly lame festival that they throw every year for now particular reason. They served Cajun food, presumably because of hurricane Katrina, which to me seemed like a bizarre and almost completely pointless tribute.

If you can't tell, I got a new digital camera with which I took that picture. Well, not so much got a new camera, as took the old camera from home. Anyway, I decided for no particular reason to make a video tonight. From start to finish it took one hour, which is a lot faster than, say, Steven Spielberg. Anyways, here's the result, hope you like it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs3g3kouqiM

Two Important Realizations

2006-04-19T23:46:00.000-05:00

My last blog entry was called "few and far between", which was meant to describe the number of good writers at Princeton, but could just as easily deal with the state of my blog entries. Recently I haven't had too much to write about, but today I had two major revelations worth documenting.

The first is that I discovered today that the entire point of my life is to gain better and better technology. It struck me when I was browsing through CNET and found a very excellent feature called "show us yours" where various readers send in pictures of their amazing living rooms, home theaters, etc... If you're name is Chris Knight or Justin Khalifa and this sounds interesting to you, the link is right here. The second I saw real life examples of the gorgeous plasma screen TV's and surround systems I had gawked at in Best Buy for so many years, all I could think was:

"I need that. I will get that by working hard at a job, and then I will buy it with money."

I realized that the only reason I'm going to school is to find a good job, and the only reason I want a job is so that I can afford to buy good technology. This may seem sad, but I'm just glad to have purpose.

I have big dreams too. Even if my house is only two rooms, one of those rooms is going to be a home theater. My entire life my parents refused to get a TV larger than 24 inches, and my desire for big flat screens is overwhelming at this point. You might call this behavior shallow, literally, because the TVs I'm planning to buy will be no thicker than 3 inches.

The blog will now take a quick turn to the Clemmonsian as I point out another article that I found on CNET about a new Christian mp3 player. Turns out the only thing "Christian" about it is the fact that it comes preloaded with an audio bible. It also is one of the bulkiest mp3 players I've ever seen, and holds only 4 gigs of music, so we'll see how many Christians fall for this marketing gimmick.

Onto my second revelation of the day, which is, simply, that Chinese is such a godawful language. I was already upset that our teacher has given us no less than 8 substantial assignments due this week. Yes, that's right 8 assignments, including roughly 100 new vocab words, an online oral presentation, 1 test, 2 quizzes, and a United Nations simulation on Friday that I am dreading with every bone in my body.

But this isn't what set me off. That came when I searched an online dictionary for a word I needed to use in one my many papers. The word is "he" which, I found out, in Chinese has 40 different meanings! 40 meanings for a single little word like "he". I know what you're thinking, well at least there are the four tones so that we can tell the different words apart. No! The second tone version of "he" still has 26 completely different meanings, including cereal, nuclear bomb, mandible, and to respond by singing. You must be kidding me. You guys actually thought this would be a good way to communicate?

I've decided to start my own language. It only has one sound. Let's say the sound is "dee". "Dee" means everything, and everything is "dee". The way that you understand what some is saying? That's simple...context.

Few and Far Between

2006-04-03T17:49:00.000-05:00

Princeton has surprisingly few great writers, but they're out there. In my opinion the two best are Kendall Turner and Powell Fraser. Powell writes an always outstanding column for the Daily Prince that used to be published on the same day as mine. Fortunately, he moved to Monday, so that I no longer seem like a hack in comparison. He has the most distinctive voice of any Prince columnists: every column is about alcohol and how the administration is ruining the campus by not letting him drink alcohol and by lowering his grades. It's a tactic that could backfire terribly, but Powell makes it work by filling his articles with hilarious pop culture and inside jokes. Hmm, I've made him sound like a bad episode of Family Guy. Let the writing speak for itself:

Operation Enduring Employment

Kendall might be an even better writer than Powell. She writes good poetry, which is something almost no college students can do. She also wrote the best article in the already excellent "Foss" issue of the Nassau Weekly. Every year the Nass picks one student in the Princeton student body and they dedicate 20-odd pages to telling the story of his life. This concept transforms a normally so-so publication into compelling reading. For her article, Kendall went on a date with Foss and wrote about it with style and grace. Here it is:

Dating Ryan Foss

Another writer who aspires to the greatness of these two is Tom Knight. Though I wouldn't dare link my story in the presence of such greatness, but it does come out in the Prince tomorrow. Check it out if you want.

Not Fit But I Know It

2006-03-30T18:55:00.000-05:00

For my whole life I've been a very active guy. My sports peak was definitely high school where I played a sport every semester for all four years. I think I got some kind of commemorative pen for my achievement at my final sports banquet.

The fact that I was playing so many sports tricked people into thinking that I was actually good at them. One day, probably Junior year, Bobby Larsen was at my house and we were skateboard when all of a sudden he realized and told me, "Hey I'm better at sports than you". I protested as any guy would, but he was right. I was never really that good at any of my three sports. But I had been there from the beginning and I always showed up, so I was grandfathered into all-league titles and CIF Championships.

The disadvantage of never getting really good at any one sport is that college varsity athletics are an impossibility. I have joked around about playing special teams for Princeton football, but I'm not actually that interested in an endeavor where the percentage chance of death is in the double digits.

What was left, then, were the club sports. My sophomore year I gave rugby a try for one quarter. Back when I lived in England I had loved the sport and one of the top ten achievements of my life is knocking a kid unconscious during practice one day. In college, though, I found that I would no longer have that opportunity. With the average college rugby player roughly twice my size, my only goal was to avoid injury. After 10 minutes of playing time during which my sole achievement was a foul that I didn't understand, I called it quits.

This year I had considered playing Frisbee, but I found it hard to force myself into a sport with a name as stupid as "Ultimate".

In the absence of organized team sports, I had started working out. By sophomore year, I was running or lifting basically every day, usually with my friend from Physics camp Rob Biederman. We began a routine replete with broken record catchphrases like, "Go big or go home...literally". Before a really heavy lifting exercise one of us would request an inspirational song, Rob liked "Enter Sandman", I usually preferred "Lose Yourself". I never got to bodybuilder stature, but I was in good shape.

And then I went to China. China is full of workout equipment that you would expect to find in one of those black and white 1930's weight loss documentaries. I'm not sure if you know what I'm talking about, but if you do that's exactly what they're like. Some of the workout equipment actually included a giant swing and seesaw. Or maybe I was just at the playground.

So when I came back to school this year, I was a bit out of shape. It didn't help that I never got back into a workout routine, or that every week Quad celebrated Fried Fuesday, with Onion rings, mozarella sticks, and chiken nuggets. At the start of this semester my fitness had reached a new low.

Thankfully I received a phone call from Rob over spring break. He had fallen into a similar situation, and decided that it was time to do something about it. I asked if there was any one thing that pushed him over the edge, and he said yes. The other day, he said, he had taken a long look in the mirror. He then claims to have begun weeping. If the story is true or not, the fact remains, Rob and I were on a highway to obesity and we both wanted off.

And so, this past Monday we headed back to the gym for the first time in a long time. On tuesday the range of motion for my arms and legs was approximately 10% of normal, which is to say we had a good workout. We have pledged to continue our workout into the summer, as Rob will be in NYC as well. So, if you don't recognize me the next time you see me, yes that is me Tom Knight, I'm just that buff (or at least I will be).

From the Basement of a Library

2006-03-28T21:22:00.000-05:00

I have been holed up in Firestone library for quite some time now, ostensibly working on my "Junior Paper", but mainly getting sidetracked way too easily. Here is one of the many hilarious things I've found on the web instead of working:

Excellent NCAA tournament article

Speaking of which, I am not faring too well in the St. Margaret's alumni pool, with a current rank of 13 out of 14. Chris Knight is surprisingly in the lead right now, though his prospects are somewhat dim, having incorrectly picking all of the final four teams. To be fair, only one person in the pool really has any chance of improving his standing at all. With everyone else have played it safe with Duke or Uconn as champs (and Riaz mysteriously taking Texas A&M), Joey Kelly can stand proud in his support of the UC's, as his UCLA pick gives him a chance for glory.

Here is something else that is funny:

Making Fun of the Family Circus

Mr. Warren used to have something of an obsession for this cartoon, and he had one posted in his classroom that was really disturbing, but which I'm having a hard time remembering anything about. Apparently the author has a kid at St. Margaret's.

Well, I have much work left to do and much dinner to eat. In closing let me present you with the file names from the project that I'm working on. It involves a really annoying piece of software that I have spent many hours trying to understand. These go in chronological order:

Custom1.sdc
Custom2.sdc
Custom3.sdc
Custom4.sdc
It'5.sdc
pleasework.sdc
fortheloveofgod.sdc
it'sgettingbetter.sdc

So that's where I'm at right now. I think I might have actually figured something out, but the way these things go, I'm probably more doomed than ever.

Viva Loss Vegas

2006-03-24T02:04:00.000-05:00

Oh, hey there? How are you? It's been a long time since I blogged, and I'm not really sure I remember how all this works. But as the weeks have gone by, my readership has dwindled pathetically and my ego won't have it. Let's see, maybe I should talk about technology or emotions or something.

Yesterday I went to a marketing conference in Las Vegas with Kip, my dad. I suppose you might say it was sort of a pointless thing to do, but it was fun nonetheless, despite the fact that I'm still not allowed to gamble. Here's the thing though, I think not letting 21 year olds gamble in Vegas has to be one of the most pointless laws of all time. Even if they let me, there's no way that I could afford to play at the $25 minimum black jack tables that are the norm there. Anyone under 21 who has amassed a fortune enough to wager 1000 dollars at will is probably as mature as the mass of elderly Asians that populate the Vegas tables.

Maybe they're worried about me playing slots. Well too late. In an act of uncharacteristic rebellion I played 1 dollar of video poker in the airport lobby. I got a pair of 2's which I think should count for something, but left me with a net earnings of 1 dollars for the trip.

Kip got it even worse. After a dinner with a bunch of business people, Kip and I walked over to the new Wynn casino which was supposed to be amazing, but was really just a bunch of palm trees and flowers. If I spend billions on a casino, I guarantee there will be waterslides everywhere. Anyway, I cajoled Kip into playing video poker, despite the bad luck I'd had earlier. A short 5 minutes later, Kip had lost 5 dollars, and we left dejected.

The actual conference started the next morning. It was a number of speeches on marketing, which is what you'd expect given the title of the event: "THE conference on Marketing". I made a hilarious powerpoint which is a gentle parody of the events that unfolded there, but I can't really figure out how to put a power point on a blog, so you will have to take my word for it that it was hilarious.

Kip gave a nice speech about how great eBay is, and afterwards he was swarmed by a large group of people. I thought it was nice that they were all congratulating him, which apparently some of them were, but apparently there were a number of people trying to sell eBay on their great marketing techniques. I was approached by one of these people later, who set in with a handshake and a "Mr. Knight..." It was my first time being called Mr. Knight.

For whatever reason the Venetian decided to upgrade our hotel room for the one night we stayed there, so we got to stay in an awesome sweet, which, because of the "frugal" nature of my parents will probably be the nicest hotel room of my first 30 or so years on earth. In order to make the following story work, let's say that we had paid for a 1 dollar room, and the hotel room they upgraded us to cost 2 dollars. Obviously this is not true, but I couldn't not write about this story.

Check in Lady: Hello welcome to the Venetian.
Kip: Hi, we're checking in, last name Knight.
C: Ok, great I'm going to give you a free upgrade, the room you're going to stay in tonight would normally cost 2 dollars.
K: Wait! How much does it cost.
C: Normally 2 dollars.
K (turning bright red): Now hold on a minute, we reserved a room for 1 dollar, it says so right here.
Tom: KIP NO! It's okay checkout lady, he's had a lot to drink.
C: Ok here are your keys to your 2 dollar room.
K: (passes out from rage)

I can't think of anything else to write about this event. I might have some pictures posted later, but then again I might not. The way things have been going with this blog lately, you should be grateful for anything at all.

Update!

2006-02-28T18:37:00.000-05:00

So much has happened since my last blog:

1. Hired for a summer internship with HSBC! June 5-August 12. Exciting!

2. Toenail of second toe on left foot just came completely off. Very gross.

3. Rehired for SAT prep after one semester hiatus.

4. Two trips to NYC. One with Kip including a viewing of Johnny Cash Musical, and one to retrain for SAT prep.

5. Another e-mail from the Wrens:

Hey Thomas,
Thanks sooo much for the kind words (both that night and in th email)! We had a wonderful time last weekend as well....charles

I think they are starting to come off as desperate. Just kidding Wrens, if you are reading this.

6. Youth Basketball Team I co-coach seeded 3rd of 10 after heartbreaking loss in final regular season game. First play-off game on Thursday.

7. New column about Apollo and other things:

New Column

8. That is all.

My Correspondence With The Wrens

2006-02-21T19:06:00.000-05:00

Hey Tom,

Thanks man...glad you had fun...we had a blast!

cheers

Greg Wren

Thomas Knight wrote:

Hey guys, I saw you last night at the Terrace Club at Princeton, and I
just wanted to say that it was really, really fun and definitely the
best show I've seen during my three years at Princeton. I was the guy
that came up to you after the show and said that "This is not what you
had planned" was one of my favorite songs, which it is. Then you said
that I should e-mail you if I wanted, which is what I'm doing right
now. I really don't have much else to say, except thanks for the great
music. Talk to you later.

Tom Knight

How to Improve the Olympic Ratings

2006-02-18T21:41:00.000-05:00

So the Olympics aren't getting the best ratings. Is it any wonder why? NBC's commercial-packed melodramatic presentation is testing even the most devoted Olympics fans (ie me). So I've put together a simple list of suggestions for NBC to improve the quality, and hopefully ratings of their Olympic Broadcasts:

1. Stop pretending we don't know what happens:

As long as the Olympics are taking place outside of the US its gonna be hard to show events live in primetime. So why does Bob Costas pretend that we don't know what's going to happen. "Will Bode Miller win the downhill tonight? Let's go to Mt. Baldacci to find out!" Why wait Bob? Anyone with a computer knows how the event is going to end. Just be honest with us, or else maybe tell wild lies to create confusion.

2. Put some civilians in the events to give us an appreciation for what's going on:

I was watching the biathalon today, which is the 13 km cross country ski race with breaks for target shooting. It was fun to watch, but with the flawless performances and immense talent of the participants it was easy to lose track of the impossibility of the task they were performing. NBC would enhance people's impressions of the winter athletes by entering a couple of randomly selected people in each of the olympic events, so that we could see how hard these events really are. But maybe not in the biathalon. I could see that going terribly, terribly wrong.

3. Simon Cowel as an ice dancing judge:

This one's obvious. American Idol is the Olympics' number one ratings threat and for obvious reasons--people love Simon Cowell. It wouldn't be hard to sit him down in a judges chair and ask him to critique the ice dancing. He'd do it for the ego boost, and people would tune in to watch him cut down the athletes with his trademark phrase "absolutely dreadful". Possible problems with this idea include: the judges don't actually say anything in the olympics.

4. Ditch the constant melodramatic vignettes:

Is there any way that every single Olympic athlete fought their way out of a poverty-stricken childhood to compete in these games? Considering the high percentage of Soviets its possible, but surely things couldn't be this dire. NBC broadcasts are peppered with countless numbers of these documentaries, drenched in overwrought strings and redemption against all odds. These pieces do nothing to add to my viewing experience, and usually mark the time when I change channels. I should also point out: how poor could you really be if you're able to afford the thousands of dollars of winter sports equipment and training necessary to become a competitive skier or skater. I'm not impressed.

5. Applebees must die!

These commercials fill me with so much rage. In them, Applebee's employees do good works in the community after coming home from work. Have you ever met an Applebee's employee? They are some of the most angry, unfriendly people on the planet. Who can blame them though? They work at Applebees. This is one of those rare ad campaigns that I hate so much that I will now intentionally avoid Applebee's for a while.

6. And the final, best way to improve the Olympics...

One Word: Broomball

Tom Knight Strikes Back

2006-02-15T02:17:00.000-05:00

After something like a 3 month hiatus from the Daily Princetonian I have a new column. They have put my column on Tuesdays with Powell Fraser, who is much funnier than I am, but no worry, this just means that I have to raise my game a little bit. I think I might have with a recent article, written with helpful revisions from my writing buddy Allan Phillips:

JURY DUTY

This Weekend

2006-02-11T22:34:00.000-05:00

My dad was in town for business which meant a trip to NYC for some good eats. We went to the Oyster Bar at Grand Central, which had been closed due to protestor the last time we had walked by it. The employees had inflated a giant rat on the sidewalk and were chanting, "Boycott the oyster bar!" at passers-by. It has since entered the lexicon of the Knight family, so Kip and I jumped at the opportunity to finally see what the fuss was all about. I tried there, for the first and last time of my life, Oysters Rockefeller. In an act of stunning bravado Kip actually asked a waiter what all the fuss had been about. A lengthy, awkward conversation followed during which we discovered that the employees had wanted an increase in their health benefits. I didn't even know that oyster bars had health plans.

Today we went on our semi-annual pilgrimage to the Lehigh Valley Wal Mart. After pikcing up Chris P. Knight from his dorm room, we drove to this mecca of white trash. Honestly, it is a miracle that this building has not collapsed into the earth, what with the stunning weight of the people shopping there.

I was looking through the electronics department when I noticed a girl about my age asking one of the employees about a cd player. She wanted to know what 60 second shock protection meant. The guy said, and this is a direct quote, I kid you not, "Let's say you get in a car crash while you're listening to music and you're bumping all around the place. Maybe then it's gonna skip." The girl look scared. I don't think she bought the cd player.

Let the Games Begin!

2006-02-10T22:43:00.000-05:00

I am sitting here watching the winter olympics ceremony. In spite of the greatness of the olympic games, this is some of the worst television I've ever seen. Maybe its the fact that I just finished the great Arrested Development finale, and anything else is bound to seem weak in comparison, but I don't understand the appeal of watching a bunch of athletes in coats walking down a little pathway and waving their digital camera toting hands.

And yet here I am watching it. My dad and I have made a game of it, trying to guess the number of athletes random countries will have. For anyone interested in playing this game, most of the time a safe bet is 1, especially if the country ends in -stan. Also, do not make the same mistake I did...despite its location in the midst of what I presumed to be a healthy cluster of mountain ranges, the Luxemburg olympic team is not the powerhouse that you would expect. They fielded a one person team, consisting of a 52 year old luge superstar, called grandma luge, which made my 20 person even more embarassing.

As the athletes came out, the ceremony organizers decided to play, as Bob Costas described it "a seemingly random collection of 80's pop hits." Costas was in fine form as he openingly mocked this decision, especially as Slovenia came out to the tune of YMCA. In his words: "I wonder if the Slovenia delegation approached the IOC and said 'listen the Olympics really mean a lot to our nation, we were wondering if you could play YMCA as we're introduced".

I will now describe what is happening as I type. They just had a bunch of people tossing flags about, somewhat like a high school drill squad. A couple of thoughts crossed my mind, the first being imagine how embarassing if a guy dropped one of these flags, and they had to burn it right there because it touched the ground, and secondly, good lord this is boring.

If they needed to burn a flag or two, at least theyd have a flame handy, they just cut to a live feed of the olympic torch which seemed surrounded by way too much security. It is a little known fact that I actually went to see the olympic torch in 2003 as it was carried through some random car dealership in orange county. I guess its one of those things that you should do once, but would never want to do again.

There is now a guy dancing a reenactment of the future. Bob Costas just said that he is known as "The pride of Milan" which is to say Milan should feel very very ashamed right now. The guy has a giant mohawk wig on and he is prancing around the stage to embarassing techno music. There are groups of 20 or so women that are covered in a giant parade type float so that all you can see is the legs, and he is dodging them as they creep around the stage. It is even worse than you would guess from this description.

In my rush to describe this dancing travesty, I was forced to gloss over the brief re-enactment of rennaisance paintings that preceded the dance, an event which merits no mention outside of this sentence.

Ok they just re-enacted a ferrari pit stop which has to qualify as some of the most blatant prodcut placement I've ever seen, especially since the announcers felt obligated to mention the brand literally 100s of times. I'm not sure how effective this advertising move is going to be; I can't imagine someone seeing this little display and thinking, "you know what, I think I'm going to go buy a ferrari". Especially since the driver guy just apparently got his foot stuck on the accelerator and he is spinning in circles spewing smoke everywhere. Ok so that was probably intentional, but still I asked Kip, what if this was all a terrible accident and the car was completely out of control and rammed a bunch of athletes. He didn't think that was likely.

The bold, boring artistic statements of now concluded and now it is time for the bold, boring speeches. The president of the IOC just called for the end of doping and hatred based nations. Come on, man, get real, you honestly expect athletes to stop using steroids. Not even George Bush could tackle that problem, what with his bizarre SOTU reference two years ago.

Toting the olympic flag are Sophia Loren and Susan Sandon among others. I don't get it. Oh, apparently they have taken a woman from each of six continents, leaving antartica woefully under-represented. The flag-raising is immensely dull, and I welcome the chance to rest my fingers.

Soon, they are going to light the olympic torch. I asked Kip earlier what the best torch lighting ever was, and he said the Atlanta one, where that guy fired a flaming arrow to light the giant torch. I think that one is greatness as well, but it makes me so nervous just thinking about it. I mean what if that guy missed? There is no way that he was able to sleep the night before the event. Even the most stressful things in life don't have stakes like that. If a figure skater completely wipes out and ruins their chances, big deal, one person gets a little upset, and life goes on. In fact, I was once watching the summer games and a diver just completely lost it. For whatever reason he could barely even jump off the board. He was hitting the water in belly flop position, and getting scores of 0.

But noone even remembers who that guy is. Now imagine what happens if the archer misses the torch! The arrow containing the olympic flame pitifully flails to the ground and burns itself out as millions watch. The guy hangs his head in shame and wishes he had taken up riflery instead. I really hope tonights torch lighting is a little stressful.

I must admit this is cool. 28 people hanging from wires just arranged themselves in the shape of a dove. Any momentum they had accumulated has just been blown. Yoko Ono has taken the stage, and she is reading an immensely stupid speech about peace or something. First of all you think that she could memorize a thirty second oration for an event like this, but she is not only reading it from a sheet of paper, but she is also constantly stumbling over her words. Not only that, but you would think that after decades in America her English would be somewhat intelligible. You would be wrong. Maybe that was an exercise in avant-gardism, but if not I just witnessed a train-wreck.

Peter Gabriel now sings "Imagine". This is one of the easiest songs to ruin, and he's doing a great job. I controversially believe that this song is actually not that good to begin with. When you throw in an plucked electronic double bass, synthesizers galore and a voice that only a mother could love, I begin to feel queasy.

An Apollo Anton Ohno commercial! A group of scraggly guys practice a well-coreogaphed dance routine.

Leader: What do the other teams say when they see Apollo?
Guys: Oh no! It's Apollo!
All: Oh yeah

I've been in conversations with Hutch recently, and he suggested that Bode Miller might have replaced Apollo as his favorite winter games athlete. I was pretty impressed by Bode during the opening ceremonies. He was walking apart from the rest of the US delegation and just sort of sulking. It was such a contrast to the picture-taking, hand-waving attitude of everyone else, that I couldn't help but be impressed. Still it would take a lot to replace Apollo. Does Bode have what it takes...oh no.

They are now doing the final stage of the torch lighting, passing it between a bunch of Italian winter athletes who I've never heard of. Anticipation builds. Wow, this woman won 10 medals.

The torch was just lit. It was pretty ok, Kip says it was weak. The 10 medal winner lit a fuse which ostensibly set off a series of pyrotechnics leading to the giant olympic flame. Clearly those fireworks were going off no matter what, and the lighting of the giant flame, fueled by massive gas pipes had nothing to do with the flame.

They're airing a promo for a bunch of the upcoming events. Man I'm excited.

Bob Costas had promised a "big surprise" at the end of the ceremony. We have just found out that it is an opera performance from the very fat Pavarotti. There is a giant chandelier, a full orchestra decked out in tuxedos, and a giant stage complete with a dramatic red curtain and all I can think is: It is going to be such a pain to clean all this stuff up.

He hits the high note though, pulls forth his handkerchief and, as the crowd goes wild, the curtain drops. It is impossible to deny the majesty of the moment. As Kip says, "the fat lady sang".

But it is not quite over. They are now launching hundreds of extremely well-coreographed fireworks, as NBC fades to commercial break. I realize that the people actually at the event are being forced to sit there in the freezing cold as NBC airs commercials. They must love that.

A final scene with Bob Costas (who was amazing) and friends. Someone named Mary Carilllo says that she likes the fact that the ceremony involved so many women. I'm guessing that this means that she is a female, though that is not immediately obvious.

As cheesy music plays, NBC replays clips from the just finished ceremony. As the voice of Andrea Bocelli booms and the Mohawk guy dances in replay, as the lone athlete of luxemburg walks proudly onto the stage, as the flag is raised and the flame is lit, I can't help but feel that I didn't waste the last two hours of my life.

Wikipedia Update

2006-02-09T19:44:00.000-05:00

The St. Margaret's Wikipedia is an unqualified success with something like 400 page views in the first day of operation. Tell your friends and more importantly write down something you remember from the school. Right now about five main contributors, Adam Osth, Jack Bartlett, Shannon Dardashti, Chris Knight, and Joey Kelly, have been writing a lot and the result is great. That link again is:

www.atstreetlevel.com/smes.htm

St. Margaret's Wikipedia

2006-02-08T19:39:00.000-05:00

There is an idea I've had for awhile: an SMES wikipedia. Well I finally sat down and made one. Now I know many of you are gonna think that this is immensely pathetic, and to you I say, yes, it probably is. I just wanna see where this goes. The address is:

www.atstreetlevel.com/smes.htm

Add it to your bookmarks and contribute whenever you want to. Anyone can edit whenever they want. I'm hoping that it's no-holds-barred, but not to the extent that I'm gonna get in trouble, or someone is going to be devastated by the entry under their name. Right now, it is admittedly a skeleton of a website. The more entries you write the better it gets. Also, tell your friends that aren't reading my blog, that went to SMES. I think it could be cool if a lot of people get involved.

I've also added a new album and a pretty lengthy entry on it at the "Albums" page of my website. Enjoy!

I'm It

2006-02-08T14:58:00.000-05:00

Though I sincerely doubt there is anyone out there (except maybe my parents) who care about my life enough to find this fascinating, this is an excuse to restart the blog. S here are my ten things, as you may have seen on Chris Knight's blog and others:

Ten Things

1. The second line of something that I read today
"A weeknd is complete if I"

A weekend is complete if I:

put off homework until Sunday 7 pm, and then get really upset at myself for doing that.

They’d be surprised if they knew:

I met Conan O' Brien, but at the time I didn't know who he was.

My favorite airport is:

Long Beach Airport where the motto seems to be: "convenience first, security second".

My least favorite airport is:

JFK, located a convenient four hour commute from my dorm room .

I’d like to visit:

Antartica

I’d like to revisit:

Amish Country, Hershey, PA, and Gettysburg, PA (sarcasm)

(Can be true) Something I could send to PostSecret is:

Sometimes I wish I hadn't deleted the new Coldplay album from my iTunes.

I envy this blog design:

www.atstreetlevel.com...What a brilliant website.

I felt emotional after this movie:

Spellbound.

Website Update

2006-01-29T04:23:00.000-05:00

This'll be a treat! My website has been thoroughly cleaned up, and I added a bunch of features! Please check it out:

For Hours of Fun and Entertainment

I have cleaned up all the links and added two new features. The first one is a chess viewer where you can view some of my best chess games. Right now there are four quality contests, I especially recommend "Sacrifice Fly"; when I rewatched that one I couldn't believe how well I played! The second feature I added is called "Books and Albums" where I'm gonna hopefully put up an album every week, and write about any books that I have finished reading.

These are great features and lots of fun, trust me.

Two Pounds of Iced Tea

2006-01-28T20:55:00.000-05:00

It's been exam week, and it's been tough. I won't dwell on it, except to say that I am extremely glad that it's over. During the month of January, I have consumed two pounds of powdered Lipton Iced Tea, two pounds of powdered raspberry kool-aid, one pound of Tang and a couple of Crystal Lights. Impressed?

I Shot the Sheriff

2006-01-20T03:56:00.000-05:00

Wow, three blog posts in one night. Pretty sad I guess. But basically Chris Knight has fired the first shot in a blog war, in a recent post claiming that his blog was the best, and that he got more hits than me and THIS MEANS WAR! I would link to his blog so you could read it, but that would sort of defeat the purpose.

Here is the first grenade that I will lob in what should be a mighty war (by the way, one day I have to blog about the time that Chris and I waged a giant pitched battle on the fields of our elementary school. It was one of the most epic moments of my life). Anyways, back to the grenade, it is actually a grenade which, when it explodes sends a bunch of little tiny grenades flying in all directions and then those grenades explode, that's how powerful it is. What could possibly be that good? How about a clip from last night's American Idol? If that doesn't generate hits then I don't know what will. Actually, I do. A picture of a Lindsay Lohan catsup bottle. But that's been done.

Anyway, you can find it at my website, specifically here. It's at the bottom, called "I Shot the Sheriff". I'm not sure how this whole internet thing works, but if you wanna recommend it to your friends, maybe it will get on Google or at least Yahoo! That sentence wasn't meant to end in an exclamation point, but I felt obligated to use the full brand name in describing the popular search engine.

Bigging Up H.O.V.A

2006-01-20T03:04:00.000-05:00

My favorite website, by far, is Metacritic. Basically, they compile reviews for music, TV shows, etc... so you don't have to waste time on, for example, the new Coldplay album. Typically they do a good job at transforming various reviews into a number and then crunching out a final grade. But occasionally they stumble.

I noticed one of their mistakes when they assigned a score of 90/100 to a review proclaiming "The Blueprint" by Jay-Z as "a masterpiece". The decision shouldn't have been that hard: the reviewer gave the album a 10/10 at the end of his review.

Not wanting Jay-Z to be cheated out of a well-earned metascore, I wrote a brief e-mail to the music director, and his score was quickly changed! I hope Jay-Z noticed and that he raps about this on a song sometime soon:

"Turn me down, turn the music up...
uh uh uh
Metacritic tried to keep my score low, so
My Man TK had them change the 9-0
to a 1-0-Oh!
He's so smart, but sometimes wastes his time on stupid things though.
I feel bad for him, so
I'm gonna give him a rap contract, and he will become famous in no time at all!"

Also, I recently helped out The Futureheads in a similar manner. Maybe they can write some sort of a-capella thankyou.

Microwave and Bruckheimer

2006-01-20T02:20:00.000-05:00

There is nothing worse than when I am studying in the common room, and some jerk comes in to microwave his food. The Bloomberg common room is not only small; it also lacks any kind of ventilation. So, long after the hungry jerk has absconded with his tasty treat, I am left with foul odors that pierce my very soul and prevent any kind of studying.

This wouldn't be too bad if the foods being microwaved were conventional fare, but for some reason my dorm is packed full of international kids. This means that I was being forced to inhale an unholy conglomeration of enchilada, curry, and a Korean kid's dish which was disconcertingly difficult to identify. The worst is actually when someone makes popcorn, because the smell lingers for hours.

So, I got fed up. After about three days, I went searching for a study area without a microwave. And I couldn't find one! What kind of planning is this?! I can't think of two things that belong together less than studying and food preparation. Desperate, I came up with a cute little plan. I unplugged the microwave. Unfortunately the next person that came in saw right through this, plugged the microwave back in, and proceeded to foul up the room.

I had to go further. I tore a sheet of paper from my notebook, scrawled a hasty "OUT OF ORDER" and put it in front of the microwave. I then unplugged it again and for good measure hid the plug.

My new plan is working great. People come in with their nasty little dinners, look at the sign, and scurry away to someone else's room. I hate to admit it, but I get a pathetic little burst of joy every time I see the dissapointment on their faces.

Also this. I beg of you, it's very important so I will put it in all-caps. READ JERRY BRUCKHEIMER'S iTUNES CELEBRITY PLAYLIST! It is beyond description. There's so many countless jokes that I could make, but none of them will beat the real thing. So read it. Just go into iTunes celebrity playlists. His is on the first page right now. Let me know what you think.

Mark Burroughs: Superstar

2006-01-14T22:10:00.000-05:00

A while ago a group of us attented a taping of Adam Carolla's talk show, "Too Late". Before the show, Mark was singled out to read off Adam's phone number on the show, due to the fact that "he looked interesting". Upon prodding, the producer of the show admitted that Mark seemed "more weird than interesting", due mainly to his, "Canada t-shirt and Lincoln Beard".

Mark read the phone number well enough, and for my OC friends and I, it was a significant mile-stone...we were now nationally famous. Wanting to immortalize the moment, Matt Sauter wrote a hilarious Wikipedia article on the subject. Over time it has evolved into a lengthy if somewhat untrue biography of the enigma of MIT:

Mark Burroughs featured prominently on episode 1F09 of "Too Late with Adam Corolla" starring as himself in the segment 1-866-HEY-ADAM. With verve and tenacity he delivered his line to a rousing ovation from the audience. Clearly moved Adam responded, "I haven't heard enthusiasm like that since the last time I had sex." His acting career then stalled for approximately 6 hours, but work is on the way his manager reports.

In July 2005 Mark was engaged to long-time girlfriend Erin Sale. The two are raising a one-year old baby boy with another on the way. "I couldn't be happier," Mark was recently quoted as saying to InTouch magazine.

Update: On September 11, 2005, Mark and Erin filed proceedings for divorce, citing "financial dificulties", possibly caused by Mark's lengthy unemployment. Though Mark fought hard in the court battle that followed, his inability to afford lawyers cost him, and Mrs. Sale was awarded full custody of both children, without visitation rights for a dejected Mr. Burroughs.

Mark now lives alone in a studio apartment in Culver City, "The heart of the screenland". A recent business venture ended in disaster, when the market for "leaf-blowing services" in southern California proved virutally non-existant.

For many months the entry stood proudly. But now, it seems, a controversy has erupted. I checked Mark's wiki today and this is what I saw:

This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia's deletion policy .
Please share your thoughts on the matter at this article's entry on the Articles for Deletion page.

Here's the debate that has taken place:

I'm gonna vote to keep this one, as Mark appeared "prominently" on a nationally broadcast television show.

Was tagged for speedy deletion by Nifboy as nn-bio, but IMO does not qualify as the person appeared on a TV episode as himself. However, outside of that he has notability whatsoever. howch e ng {chat} 07:53, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Delete but not speedy Segv11 ^{(talk/contribs)} 10:06, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
Delete not notable, fails WP:BIO. Kcordina 10:20, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
Delete completely non notable. --Oscarthecat 10:26, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
Delete. Nifboy 18:32, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
Delete as non-notable vanity biography. Recommend the article author see WikiMe for writing biographies and/or WikiTree for writing genealogies. —Quarl ^(talk)

Btw, that first one was me. Although I find it hilarious that so many people consider Mark "completely non notable" I think that we need to fight for his rights on this one. Act now, before it is too late. Save Mark Burroughs! Go to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Mark_Burroughs

and speak your mind.

UPDATE:

On January 16, at 2:54 am, I took matters into my own hands, and simply deleted the html code that had been tagged onto Mark's page. So far noone has noticed. These wiki guys are very easy to trick.

My Top 5 Radio Talk Shows

2006-01-13T20:32:00.000-05:00

I'm a huge fan of talk radio. On any given day I will listen to 5-6 hours of it usually downloaded or streamed from my computer. Because bloggging requires that I assume people care about my opinion, these are my top 4 talk radio hosts or teams:

1. Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew- Together the duo used to host the hilarious "Loveline", a show which served as a forum for Adam's hilarious theories and ideas. One of my ideas was when Adam suggested that every can of Mountain Dew and Grape Soda should contain enough birth control, so that anyone who drank more than a liter in one month would be left sterile for a year. When Howard Stern left FM, Adam took over and is no longer on Loveline. Now both shows suck. A lot. Here's hoping he goes back soon. http://www.ehansen.us/Loveline/

2. Ira Glass- This American Life is an amazingly well-produced show that I find is best in small-doses. I think everyone that reads this blog is already a fan so I will say no more. www.thislife.org

3. Phil Hendrie- So talented at what he does that a lot of people don't actually believe that he could be doing it. Phil conducts interviews with outrageous guests, like Ted Bell, the restauranteur who claimed to have served an autistic kid a large serving of alcohol in order to "calm him down". The twist is that there is no Ted Bell, Hendrie does all the voices for his show, in essence talking to himself for three hours. According to Hendrie the show is a parody of talk radio, and serves mainly to mock the irate callers who will call in to yell at the guests. I think it's more than that--the characters that Phil has created are amazing comic acheivements on their own. www.philhendrieshow.com

4. Dunham and Miller (and the Great Gordo)- My favorite show from my favorite Radio station, 1310 The Ticket, in Dallas, Texas. Dunham and Miller are good as hosts, and they know a lot about sports, but the real reason to listen is Gordon Keith, who is second only to Phil Hendrie in his ability to do voices. http://www.gordonkeith.com/

5. Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, and Karl Pilkington- This is one of the funniest radio shows I've ever heard. It's nothing like "The Office", with Ricky and Steve relying mainly on the idiocy of their producer, Karl, for laughs. It definitely works. Some of Karl's beliefs:

You'll never see an old person eating a Twix, but they always buy ornaments.
Some bacteria have better lives than Intuits.
A group of monkeys were able to learn the value of money and go shopping, one of them even managing to pick out particular deals to save cash, showing a preference for slightly older veg.

I personally think that Karl is playing a bit of a part, but that doesn't take away from the humor. The podcast of these three is popular, but the real classic shows are from the London radio station, XFM. www.xfm.co.uk/ricky

I'm actually pretty excited for my own radio show this next semester. A friend from middle school, Bill Foran, who is also a huge fan of The Ticket is claiming that he is gonna do a show with me. I hope he follows through, because I'm bored to tears with my current format. If Bill comes on though, get ready for a great show. Maybe I'll crack my own top 5.

What's New With Tom Knight

2006-01-03T01:40:00.000-05:00

For Christmas I got a new iPod video, not for the video, but for the 60 gigs; and let me say this: booya! So much great music that couldn't fit on my old iPod has finally been set free, so that, for example, my eyes have at last been opened to the greatness of Notorious B.I.G. Also, because the new iPod displays the album art for every song I have been on a frantic quest to find pictures for every album, so that I'm not embarassed if anyone ever looks at my iPod and, is all, "Hey Brosef where's your album art for Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!)?" So far I'm in the "e's".

If anyone is worried about what's going to happen to my old iPod, the ever-faithful third generation that has served me so well for so long, worry not. I would never consider selling her; she's been to good to me. I can say without a doubt that over the last two years, I have spent more time with my iPod than any person, or, for that matter, machine (this laptop is a close second). I had to ship her to Best Buy three times, but somehow she always found her way back home. I have decided to frame my old iPod and place it on the wall of fame next to my first rubik's cube (also framed).

For this past week I was at Mammoth with my family, Drew Marticorena, and Matt Sauter. Time was split evenly between skiing, "24", and "Winning Eleven 8" one of the greatest video games of all time. Though the weather was poor, the fun was plentiful. In a moment that should rank as both a high and low point in his life, Drew ate nearly two pounds of chili at lunch one day.

Pics and videos will be available quite soon, and they will be quite worth it. They will include me falling down on skis and getting an impressive bruise, and Drew eating nearly two pounds of chili.

Just now, I have just returned from a marathon gaming session at Howie's Gaming Shack, at the Kaleidoscope, where we played video games in a sea of nerds. Tomorrow I have Jury Duty. I'm expecting to get a monster blog out of it (a highly unconstitutional live blog perhaps?!), so it better be good.

Stay Tuned!

Break

2005-12-24T05:17:00.000-05:00

Best of the Break:

1. Howie's Game Shack: My new favorite place in the world is a cybercafe the size of a small NBA gymnasium. This place is sort of what I imagine heaven must be like
2. Four episodes of Blind Date on the Tivo every morning: Speaks for itself.
3. "Call on Me": How did I not hear this song earlier?
4. Cereal Galore: Except for a certain deadly mistake (see below) the cereal has been v good.
5. My First Ever Successful Trip to Guitar Center: The guy fixed my guitar gave me free strings and gave me not one condescending look. He must have been new.

Worst of the Break:

1. The Downfall of Justin Khalifa: So it seems like Justin is simply too cool now. What is this guy trying to hide?
2. My Unfortuate Alarm Clock: Every morning at 10 am, Jeff runs into my room and screams, "Wake Up" at the top of his lungs.
3. Reduced Sugar Cinammon Toast Crunch: A warning to cereal-buyers everywhere: do not grab your cereal haphazardly! Apparently the "health nuts" have managed to sneak this suck-fest onto the shelf. If you're wondering what Cinnamon Toast Crunch tastes like without sugar, go to a local farm and eat a bale of hay.

That's all for now. Hopefully Mammoth will be full of first column moments.

Firestarter

2005-12-23T02:56:00.000-05:00

The Thursday before I left for home, I was pulling an all-nighter studying for a music quiz cruelly scheduled on Friday, when I heard a pounding on my neighbors door.

"This is the police! You are under arrest!"

I tried to see as much as I could through my peephole, and from what I could make out they were escorting this kid, who I barely knew out of the building in handcuffs. The next day, two detectives had fingerprinted everything in his room and placed it in plastic bags marked as evidence.

Today I finally found out what happened. Apparently my neighbor was an arsonist: Read Article Here. Hot...

Encore!

2005-12-15T17:01:00.000-05:00

When it goes right, the end-of-semester ovation for a college professor can be a great tradition. It's one of my favorite things to see a teacher take their final bow and exit the classroom as students applaud, so I make sure never to miss the final lecture of any class that I'm enrolled in. This means that I've also seen my fair share of disasters.

There are two ways that the applause can go wrong, I'm not sure which is more tragic. The first happens when the students simply don't like the teacher. This past Tuesday, my Chinese Economy professor made the mistake of mentioning the final exam towards the end of his final lecture. Students suddenly began to accost him about the extremely unfair midterm. The shouting match ended with the professor proclaiming at the top of his little Asian lungs, "You deserve to fail!"

Moments later he ended the semester to a thick, uncomfortable silence.

The second way that things can go wrong is if the professor doesn't give his students a chance to clap. This happened just today in my music class. Our teacher handed out the student evaluations, and sort of slunk out of the room, clearly expecting some sort of acknowledgment, but receiving none. She made two mistakes. First of all the evaluations need to be done at the beginning of class. No way are students going to clap if they are focused on a Scantron. Second, and please listen closely teachers, you need to end with a flourish. I don't care how marginal the subject you are teaching is, there is no degree of melodrama that won't be welcome in those final few moments of a lecture. I had an econometrics teacher who gave dry lectures that raised the boldly answered the question, "Can a semester of learning be reduced to 400 power point slides" with a resounding "yes". But he knew how to finish. Wrapping up his final lecture to his small audience, he paused for a moment and said simply, "you guys are extraordinary". The 12 of us in the class cheered like our team had won the super bowl.

By far the best final lecture I've attended was given by Uwe Reinhardt, my freshman year microeconomics teacher. In the course of his 90 minute tour de force he didn't once mention economics. The whole thing was about his son who had graduated from Princeton and immediately enlisted in the army. His was the only standing ovation I've seen for a teacher.

In other news the window of opportunity for me escaping this god-forsaken tundra known as the east coast is slowly closing. Not only is a massive storm predicted in the upcoming days, but a transit strike in New York city looms. Will Tom Knight make it home, or will he be left to languish in 0 degree wind chill? Stay tuned to find out.

Bizzare Memory

2005-12-12T22:11:00.000-05:00

Last summer, Jay, Justin, and I were going to go to an SMES football scrimmage, for lack of something better to do. Before we got there, Jay made us stop by his gun club, because he had left his hat behind. We stopped at the gun club, and while we waited for Jay to get his hat, I sat in the car with Justin while he sang "I Luv U" by Dizzee Rascal.

More Like the SHAM-mys

2005-12-08T19:51:00.000-05:00

2005 was a banner year for music. I dont need to list names but I will: Sufjan Stevens, New Pornographers, The Decemberists, The Eels. Even Bright Eyes, a band a swore never to like, released an extremely strong album, "I'm Wide Awake It's Morning". The situation is so overwhelming that I haven't even gotten to half of the acclaimed albums released this year.

So it makes sense that Mariah Carey would receive eight grammy nominations for "The Emancipation of Mimi". Though I recently stopped caring about the Grammy's (I think the turning point was when they awarded Brian Wilson, the greatest vocal arranger of the 20th century, his first and only award for an instrumental performance) this may be a good chance for hilarious comedy, so let's sit back, relax, and take a look at the best music of 2005:

Best Album

The Emancipation Of Mimi
Mariah Carey

Chaos And Creation In The Backyard
Paul McCartney

Love. Angel. Music. Baby.
Gwen Stefani

How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb
U2

Late Registration
Kanye West

Already we have a problem. I've heard only one of these albums, Late Regristarion, extensively, so it's going to be hard for me to comment. It's possible that I've got Mariah all wrong, and that Mimi is truly a classic album. But no. That's just not true. Mariah Carey is a plauge, and I celebrated her downfall. These celebrations, apparently, turned out to be pre-mature. As for U2, this album was just about as bland as you could get. After sitting through an entire song called "Yahweh", I decided that it was time for evasive maneuvers and quickly deleted the album from my computer. I have no regrets. Late registration was about half as good as College Dropout and it will be a shame if it wins, because, I, for one, want to see another Kanye West meltdown.

Best New Artist

Ciara
Fall Out Boy
Keane
John Legend
SugarLand

It would be easy to point out that Keane has been around since 1997, and as such, is not technically a new artist. But this is a well-worn journalistic path, and my time would be better spent telling you that Fall Out Boy has to be one of the most unremarkable bands I've ever heard.

Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal

Don't Lie
The Black Eyed Peas

Mr. Brightside
The Killers

More Than Love
Los Lonely Boys

This Love
Maroon 5

My Doorbell
The White Stripes

I would love to know how Jack White feels about being nominated for the same award as the other four bands on this list, but I'm afraid if I asked him he would just start crying.

Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals

Gone Going
The Black Eyed Peas & Jack Johnson

Virginia Moon
Foo Fighters Featuring Norah Jones

Feel Good Inc.
Gorillaz Featuring De La Soul

A Song For You
Herbie Hancock Featuring Christina Aguilera

A Time To Love
Stevie Wonder Featuring India.Arie

This is the second nomination for The Black Eyed Peas. At this point, I honestly can't tell if they're kidding. Also, an interesting question for Herbie Hancock would be to ask if Christina Aguillera is as talented a musical partner as Miles Davis.

Best Rock Song

Best Of You
Foo Fighters, songwriters (Foo Fighters)

Beverly Hills
Rivers Cuomo, songwriter (Weezer)

City Of Blinding Lights
U2, songwriters (U2)

Devils & Dust
Bruce Springsteen, songwriter (Bruce Springsteen)

Speed Of Sound
Guy Berryman, Jon Buckland, Will Champion & Chris Martin, songwriters (Coldplay)

You may be surprised that this is the first nomination for Coldplay, meaning that they completely missed out on Best Album, Best Record, and Best Song nominations. This would seem to violate the formula used by Grammy voters of Album Sales/10^6 = Number of Grammy Nominations, but apparently even the voters found the lyrics on "X&Y" too much to take. But wait, let us remind ourselves that the Black Eyed Peas slipped through, so for now this one remains a mystery. Also notice the interesting trend that every artist on this list recorded their best music long ago. This is an interesting technique used by Grammy Voters, called nostalgia. Because it rewards musicians who were once good, it is the least offensive of their tactics.

Best Alternative Music Album

Funeral
The Arcade Fire

Guero
Beck

Plans
Death Cab For Cutie

You Could Have It So Much Better
Franz Ferdinand

Get Behind Me Satan
The White Stripes

Is it just me, or is this group of nominees titled wrong. I think what they meant to write was "Best-Selling Alternative Music Album". Otherwise there's no explaining how "Guero" or "Plans" made the cut. Also, I'm a big fan of Franz Ferdinand and The White Stripes, but I am not going to pretend that either of these albums was in the top 5 for 2005. Finally, there's the small issue of "Funeral" being released in September, 2004, but I'm not one to nit-pick. After all, it's the best album on the list.

Best Rap Performance By A Duo Or Group

Don't Phunk With My Heart
The Black Eyed Peas

The Corner
Common Featuring The Last Poets

Encore
Eminem Featuring Dr. Dre & 50 Cent

Hate It Or Love It
The Game Featuring 50 Cent

Wait (The Whisper Song)
Ying Yang Twins

For those of you keeping score, this is number three for The Black Eyed Peas. I'm not going to make excuses for the voters, but at least this song is extremely catchy (please see earlier entry). Furthermore, The Corner and Hate It Or Love It are actually good songs! What's going on here. Oh there we go, Eminem and the Ying-Yang Twins. Much better.

Best Country Album

Fireflies
Faith Hill

Lonely Runs Both Ways
Alison Krauss And Union Station

Time Well Wasted
Brad Paisley

All Jacked Up
Gretchen Wilson

Jasper County
Trisha Yearwood

We can't really blame the Grammy folks for this one. Trying to pick the best country album or 2005 must be like trying to pick your favorite ruthless dictators or fatal disease. How can you pick just 5!

Best Hawaiian Music Album

Slack Key Dreams Of The Ponomoe
Kapono Beamer

Sweet & Lovely
Raiatea Helm

Kiho'alu - Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar
Ledward Ka'apana

Slack Key Guitar: The Artistry Of Sonny Lim
Sonny Lim

Masters Of Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar - Vol. 1
Various ArtistsDaniel Ho, Paul Konwiser & Wayne Wong, producers

Can someone please explain to me why there are awards for best Hawaiian Music, best Polka Album, and best Traditional Soul Gospel Album (as opposed to contemporary Soul Gospel Album). I'm the last guy who would want to try and cheat Mr. Ka'apana out of his glory, but as long as we're gonna let him have a chance, who's it gonna hurt to include a "Best Album Produced on a Laptop Computer" award?

Best Opera Recording

Britten: Death In Venice Richard Hickox, conductor; Michael Chance, Philip Langridge & Alan Opie; BrianCouzens, producer (BBC Singers; City Of London Sinfonia)

Conradi: Ariadne Paul O'Dette & Stephen Stubbs, conductors; Barbara Borden, Karina Gauvin, EllenHargis, Jan Kobow, Julian Podger, Marek Rzepka, James Taylor & Matthew White;Renate Wolter-Seevers, producer (Boston Early Music Festival Chorus; BostonEarly Music Festival Orchestra)

Strauss, R.: Daphne Semyon Bychkov, conductor; Johan Botha, Renée Fleming, Anna Larsson, MichaelSchade & Kwanchul Youn; Michael Haas, producer (West German Radio SymphonyOrchestra (Köln)

Verdi: Falstaff Sir Colin Davis, conductor; Carlos Alvarez, Bülent Bezdüz, Marina Domashenko,Jane Henschel, Ana Ibarra, Maria Josè Moreno & Michele Pertusi; James Mallinson,producer (London Symphony Chorus; London Symphony Orchestra)

Vivaldi: Bajazet Fabio Biondi, conductor; Patrizia Ciofi, David Daniels, Ildebrando D'Arcangelo,Elina Garanca, Vivica Genaux & Marijana Mijanovic; Nicolas Bartholomée, producer(Europa Galante)

Egads! How can Grammy voters refuse to acknowledge Sergio Fallagoni's timeless production of Madame Butterfly, let alone Mme. Dellafonte in Verci Villagioni. This time, Grammys, you have gone too far.

Website

2005-12-08T03:59:00.000-05:00

It's a well-known secret that I have been working on a new webpage. I have finally put up some content worth seeing so I will reveal the link now:

www.atstreetlevel.com

Check out the videos section. Right now I'm subcontracting nearly all parts of the site (thanks to podomatic, webshots, and blogger) but I would eventually like to get everything centralized. For now I'm going to continue blogging at this location, because I think it has momentum and sentimental value. If you think this is a bad idea, let me know. In the meantime, check out the site!

The Black Eyed Peas

2005-12-06T01:28:00.000-05:00

It began, as things like this do, with a bit of inappropriate curiosity. I frequently check the iTunes music store, to see what hot new singles are making waves, and what crappy unreleased B-sides major acts can dump on the public in the form of "iTunes exclusives". About two weeks ago, I began to notice the Black Eyed Peas complete domination of the singles chart, with a song I'm sure most of you have heard called "My Humps". After it had been at number one for what seemed a month, I had to hear this song.

I loaded "Launch" music video player, found the song, and was hit almost instantly with a tidal wave of complete suck. This song is awful. It is one of the worst songs I've ever heard. It is definitely worse than anything Billy Ray Cyrus or 50 Cent could conjure in their mixing pots of mediocrity. I reckon that a trio of Fred Durst, Vanilla Ice, and Ricky Martin could manage something better than "My Humps", though this thought experiment shakes me to the core. (Aside: Vanilla Ice will be performing at Princeton sometime in the near future. I don't think you need to ask if I will be there).

Here's the thing though. I couldn't look away. It was, as the say, like watching a train wreck. A very generic, awful train wreck, but a train wreck nonetheless. Since then I have been hopeless. Though I refuse to pay for their album, I seek the Black Eyed Peas wherever I can find them: myspace, launch, 30 second samples on iTunes. Two weeks ago, it made my day when I was standing in the Virgin Megastore and "Pump It" came on over the PA.

Let me get one thing clear. I do not like the Black Eyed Peas. I REALLY do not like the Black Eyed Peas. And yet I can't quite explain my bizzare fascination. If it was really about celebrating shocking mediocrity, that would have gotten old by now. On the contrary, my fling with this band goes stronger by the day. Maybe I am obsessed with what the Black Eyed Peas represent. Is it possible to like something ironically when it is still extremely popular? I was under the impression that the waiting period for those type of things was at least 5 years.

So now I am left with this. There is a band that makes awful music, that I keep listening to. My name is Tom Knight, and I have a problem.

New Website

2005-12-04T05:58:00.000-05:00

Alright, so I've built this new website. And it's really great. But it's not quite done. So what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna make you wait. Build up the anticipation. If you've already seen it, lucky you. If not, and you really want to take a look, then email me and I will let you know the link. But in the meantime, I'm gonna get it ready for prime-time, so that it really knocks your socks off when it's posted. Until then...

Test

2005-12-04T05:15:00.000-05:00

A McSweeneys-esque List of Things That Must Have Been Said at Jay-Paul's Recent Thanksgiving Get-Together, Judging by his Online Photo Album

2005-12-01T18:20:00.000-05:00

"Hey dad, get a picture of me with Sylvia"

"Hey someone get a picture of Jeff and I with Sylvia sitting in a chair"

"Come on guys, are we gonna let this table of people go unphotographed? Smile Sylvia!"

"Hey what about a picture with Sylvia and Amy?"

"Uhh...Jay don't you think that's enough pictures of you and Sylvia?"

"Jay, can you please stop taking pictures with me?"

"Sorry Jay, the memory card is full, it only holds 512 pictures."

"THIS PARTY IS OVER!"

Youth Basketball

2005-11-30T22:44:00.000-05:00

A couple weeks ago, I found out that a local basketball program for middle schoolers was looking for Princeton students to volunteer to coach. In what I am sure will stand as the best decision of my college career I signed up. I also recruited an old middle school friend, Bill Foran, to coach with me. Bill and I played on the same YMCA team, "The White Aggies", and he single-handedly carried the team to a championship on the strength of his unbelieveably consistent baseline lay-up play.

We had our first practice today. It was really fun; I will be posting more on Saturday after our first game. For now let me just say that Bill Foran was born to coach youth basketball. I am quite happy to stand back and let him work his magic.

In other news, someone has written "stop..." on my white board, and this is causing me to have a nervous breakdown. Stop what?! I think I'm going to just stop doing everything and see if that makes them happy. But how will I know. If the person that wrote that is reading this, can you please tell me what to stop. It would save me a lot of grief.

My week 2 podcast is up and running at click here for virus. I'm just kidding, you can click it. Enjoy!

Kip Knight: The King of Vacations?!

2005-11-29T17:48:00.000-05:00

My dad prides himself on his ability to plan a good vacation. For a number of years at least, it seemed true. When I was a kid, he orchestrated successful trips to Yellowstone, Montana, and New York City, all of them free, thanks to a glut of frequent flier miles accumulated through the policy of "Never Say No to the Bump!". Getting bumped was a favorite past-time of my family's, and every trip on an airplane was preceeded by a trip to the front desk to ask the inevitable question, "So how's the plane looking today"

"Quite full actually"

These words were music to my dad's ears and as well as mine; I was well-trained to love getting bumped. Looking back, I'm not sure why. I never paid for the airplane ticket, so it made no difference to me if we paid for it or not, but still it somehow felt good to win a tiny victory over the airlines. In hindsight, it is easy to see that it was my family's frugality that started the downfall of the airlines. Because the entire state of Montana has but one airport, we got bumped every flight, and literally never paid for a ticket. This was good, too because it meant that our vacations lasted that much longer. For a kid, this was enjoyable; back then, my brother and I were naive and didn't know that Montana was a state to be mocked and not enjoyed.

When we moved to England, my dad's track record only improved. We visited countless European countries and the action was non-stop. He would schedule 5 museums in a day, and four countries on a trip. I was even able to overlook the catastrophic trip of Prague when a trip to Paris was right around the corner.

Back in America, Kip had a hard act to follow, but uncovered a new solution that would all but guarantee his legacy: the ski vacation. The whole family loved to ski, though one of the flock would later go astray (Chris and his snowboarding). Still he'd found something that everyone could enjoy, and for awhile everything seemed ok.

But recently, things have started to go wrong. The first big misstep came this September, when we were taking Chris to school. I didn't have to be at Princeton for awhile, so he decided that we should spend some time seeing Pennsylvania had to offer. The answer now is clear: not much.

We first visited Hershey Pennsylvania, a pathetic little town not fair from Lehigh. It was in Hershey, of course, that a Mr. Hershey once said, "let us create a chocolate factory and fill the world with delicious treats" and shortly thereafter, "now let us create an incredibly boring tour of that factory. Only its not the actual factory it is a PRETEND FACTORY, created solely for the purpose of that tour."

The Hershey Factory Tour was full of people who I pray were gathering evidence for their upcoming obesity trial against the company. The actual tour contained some of the most hilarious propaganda I've ever come across. For example, the jungle from which Hershey collects their cocoa beans is apparently pristine and lush, untouched by the human hand. They would also have you believe that no rodents have ever accidently gotten mixed in with the Hershey's Kisses, which we all know is simply not true.

Outside the rich chocolate hell of Hershey, my dad was in great need of redemption. And so, he decided that we would go to Gettysburg. For those of you who don't know Gettysburg holds the impressive distinction of being the one place in America worse than Hershey. We bought a 3 hour (!) compact disc and embarked on a self-guided tour of the many battlefields. For anyone considering a trip to Gettysburg, let me save you considerable time and money. The battlefields in Gettysburg are large grass fields. Yes they are quite large and yes some even contain picket fences, but that's about it! People often bemoan the state of America, nothing that the more people go to Disney World each year than Gettysburg. Let me be the first to say that this is a distinct sign of improvement!

The final leg of our journey was to Amish country. I'll let that sentence speak for itself.

Over Thanksgiving weekend, Kip achieved a minor redemption with a mini family reunion in NYC. Some might question the decision to return to the NBC studio tour, which we had been on before, but this was a minor error in comparison, and was redeemed by two things that happened on it:
1. Kip and Chris managed to get seperated from the tour group in the FIRST MINUTE of the tour. Despite continued prodding, neither would confess how this happened.
2. A demented old woman kept harassing both our tour guides. At one point Jay Leno's name was mentioned, at which point she screamed "WHO?!". I later found out that she was taking notes.

Next is a trip to Mamoth, which should completely redeem Kip. Let us not forget that brief, perilous moment, though, when everything went so terribly wrong. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, "Remember the Amish!"

Podcast

2005-11-22T18:16:00.000-05:00

My stranglehold over the internet grows ever-stronger. Today, at the urging of countless fans (unless you can count to 1), I have posted a podcast of my weekly radio show: America's Favorite DJ Show feat Tom Knight. You can listen to or download the show here:

http://ttknight.podomatic.com/

I'm also trying to get it onto iTunes, although it has to pass the inspection of some mean Apple man, and I haven't been kind in my recent newspaper columns. Hopefully he doesn't read the "Daily Princetonian". Also, I probably shouldn't have given this as the description of my show:

This is a show that contains no illegal songs, or copyright violations. Nope, nothing to look at here. Just move along officer.

Will I make the cut? Very soon we shall see!

The Worst of Tom Knight

2005-11-19T23:05:00.000-05:00

Well, I just got an e-mail from my "boss" at the newspaper and apparently they will not be "needing my services" this week. What a shame, because I had a HILARIOUS article all about socks ready to go. It was literally just a little story about socks. And funny. And it contained words and paragraphs. And punctuations at appropriate stuff. And the woman that wrote EATS, SHOOTS & LEAVES is writing a new book all about manners. One of the manners is not correcting peoples grammar. It's just not polite. Another of the manners is not being that woman, and another is having a life and not writing a book about punctuations, which is just a complete waste of time.

I apologize for the incoherent nature of the preceding paragraph. I blame the increase in ADHD diagnoses.

I know that the faithful readers of my newspaper column are going to be going through "Tom Knight withdrawal" without their fortnightly dose of my column, and this is actually a pretty serious condition. Symptoms include crippling diarrhea and sore throat. So, here you have it: a column that I wrote three weeks ago, that even I deemed "not good enough" to make the cut. For anyone that reads my column with any regularity, you will know that this article must be REALLY bad. I wrote two articles in a row on iPods for heavens sake.

Note: You may have noticed that a really hilarious article I posted to the blog about a certain eating club has been removed. This article was removed in light of some surprising information that I obtained, namely that certain people in said eating club actually read my blog. Not wanting to burn any bridges while I'm standing on those bridges, I decided to remove that post until a certain "date" in the "near future". If this made no sense, then please to ignore. Just know this--further hilarity on the way. As if you didn't already expect that.

So without further adon't here is the article "they" don't want you to see:

Michael Brown Stinks So Much
By: Thomas Knight

I just don't see what the big deal is.

This past week Michael Brown, former FEMA director, has received much criticism for a series of e-mails that he wrote during the Katrina disaster. Though the topics of his missives vary from dog-sitters to fashion tips, the rallying cry from “the left” seems to be a clear, if somewhat juvenile—“Down with Brown!”

Well, I beg to differ. Anyone who takes the time to actually examine Brown's e-mails, will uncover a hero at work; a man engaged in fierce battle with the forces of nature. To paraphrase Bush, Brownie was doing a heck of job.

In one e-mail, a FEMA worker, Marty Bahamonde, wrote Brown to describe the desperate situation in New Orleans and seek guidance from his leader. Brown's response was short and sweet, “"Thanks for update. Anything specific I need to do or tweak?" Though the syntax leaves something to be desired, the message is clear. Brown craves information, and he is grateful for an update! As November 30 draws near, we would do well to learn a lesson from this man and his “thanks” giving.

The second half of this note is where we really get a glimpse of what makes Brown tick. It is too easy to dismiss his question here as an example of his uncertain leadership, and miss the real significance behind his words. Michael Brown is a master of the Socratic method, and he knows that, were he to simply reveal the solution to the Katrina crisis, Marty wouldn't actually learn anything. What kind of FEMA director would that make him?

"He needs much more that [sic] 20 or 30 minutes, we now have traffic to encounter to go to and from a location of his choise [sic], followed by wait service from the restaurant staff, eating, etc. Thank you," wrote Brown Aide Sharon Worthy in another Katrina email. If we set aside Sharon's decidedly unworthy grammar and spelling, it's clear that she makes a valid point. Anyone who expected Brown to complete an entire dining experience in 20 minutes was simply being unrealistic. I recently dined at the Olive Garden. and it was 45 minutes just to get a table. Furthermore, traffic at the time must have been awful, considering the nasty weather.

Worthy also gave the following helpful advice a few days later, "Please roll up the sleeves of your shirt, all shirts. Even the president rolled his sleeves to just below the elbow. In this [crisis] and on TV you just need to look more hard-working.” This one is a no-brainer. Not only do rolled up sleeves give the appearance of hard work, but in case Brown ever visited the flooded area, it would ensure that his sleeves would be less likely to get wet. Also, let's face it, rolled up sleeves look really cool. For a self-proclaimed “fashion god” like Brown, this would clearly be an important factor.

Just when did Michael Brown decide that he was a so-called god of fashion? If you guessed not during Hurricane Katrina, then you were wrong.

As you probably know Brown is no longer in charge of FEMA, which means that the talents of a great leader are being wasted right now. Might I recommend some type of job for him in Iraq. We can give him a Blackberry. I'm sure he'll have a lot to say.

Birthday Song

2005-11-18T22:59:00.000-05:00

I'm so happy. I just checked Wikipedia and the #1 song in America when I was born was "The Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News. I love that song!

Check out what song as playing on American radios everywhere the day you were born:

Birthday Song

New Song

2005-11-18T21:41:00.000-05:00

Amie

All The Wrong Reasons- Thoughts on The Simpsons

2005-11-16T22:30:00.000-05:00

In Middle School I read an article, in the school's god-awful student paper, that has stuck with me to this day. It was only about five hundred words, but had three authors, all of them popular girls. It was about The Simpsons, though I forget the title. It was probably something like, "The Simpsons is, Like, So Lame".

It was some of the most atrocious journalism ever published, worse even than Maureen Dowd or Thomas Friedman (though admittedly not much). The girls' prose was meandering and vague, but their general point was this: "We don't understand why this show is considered funny." As a dedicated fan of The Simpsons, I didn't even need to feel angry. These girls had decided to take on one of the greatest achievements of our generation and their greatest argument was that they didn't get it?

There were a couple of guys, however, who didn't feel this way. Their response came in the form of a rebuttal, "The Simpsons is an Awesome Show!!!", which, if anything, was worse than the article that prompted it. The guys got all the facts wrong, claiming that Homer was named after the author of The Odyssey, and then using this as evidence of the shows intellectualism. If they had done 5 minutes of research they would have known that Homer is simply the name of Matt Groening's dad, just as Lisa is his sister, and Marge is his mom. But I can forgive this. Back then the internet hadn't been invented and the DVD was just a glimmer in the eye of some Japanese guy, so these facts were a bit harder to come by

The real problem, then, was that the guys completely missed the point of the show. I should mention that these guys were, like the girls, quite popular and quite stupid, so their idea of a good Simpsons joke was Homer falling down a staircase and saying "d'oh". Don't get me wrong, I'm as big a fan of "The bit my bottom and now my bottom's big" as the next guy, but that wasn't really what the show was about. What did make the show great was stuff like this, which comes at the end of Streetcar!, the musical adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire that the town of Springfield puts on in season 4:

Cast: You can always depend on the kindness of strangers. To pluck up your spirits, and shield you from dangers...
Blanche: Now here's a tip from Blanche you won't regret...
Cast: A stranger's just a friend you haven't met. You haven't met. STREETCAR!

How could anyone get Tennesse Williams so wrong? The scene seemed like pure, impossible fiction until I read that newspaper article, and realized that people get it that wrong all the time.

The ultimate insult was the final article that appeared in the school paper a few days later, written by the girls that had started the whole contorversy. In it, they completely retracted their initial opionion and went on to lavish praise on a show, which, only two days ago, they just didn't get.

What was the cause for their turnaround? They claimed to have watched an episode after reading the rebuttal, and quickly realized the error of their ways. Their excuse was weak. I knew right away that they had seen an article written by some popular guys, and they saw their chance to do some social networking. It didn't matter if they liked the show or not. As long as they claimed to like it, it gave them common ground, and a chance to become even more popular.

A couple years ago, when "The Simpsons Fan Club" was still a thriving, powerful organization, I chose to play an episode about censorship, entitled "Itchy & Scratchy & Marge". This episode is a true masterpiece, definitely one of the most politically charged Simpsons. And it's extremely funny.

In it, Marge protests and effectively shuts down the pointlessly violent "Itchy & Scratchy", but refuses to do the same when Michelangelo's David comes to Springfield. As the show reaches it's important climax, the bell rang and all but three of us ran out of the room. It was then that Matt Sauter, Mr. Warren, and I watched the following scene in which Marge and Homer visit the statue alone:

Homer: Well, there he is. Michelangelo's `Dave'. Pretty soon, every boy and girl in Springfield Elementary School is going to come and see this thing.
Marge: Really? Why?
Homer: They're forcing 'em! [laughs]

I felt like a professor must feel when his students rush out of class at the end of a lecture, before I had finished speaking. It didn't feel good. What point was "The Simpsons Fan Club" if there was only three real fans in it? But we kept it going. We provided an important service to the school for 2 1/2 years, and, maybe, because of us, there is an SMES kid somewhere who can watch the Simpsons looking for more than catch phrases.

In closing let me say that anyone who says that Family Guy is a better show than The Simpsons is not my friend. Really, I want nothing to do with you. Family Guy is a very, very mediocre show, that pretty much does all the lame stuff in the Simpsons, without any of the comedic skill. My number one complaint about Princeton is probably the number of people who like Family Guy here. I can see what appeals to people about Family Guy. It's a big, dumb comedy with about 10 jokes a minute. But I think we need to ask for something more than that.

Maybe this comes off as popous, or pointless, or long-winded. Oh well. This much I'm sure of. Somewhere, on the campus of some junior college, are two guys I went to Middle School with, watching Family Guy, and laughing like crazy.

Acid 4.0 vs. Sovay

2005-11-15T01:35:00.001-05:00

For some reason, my awesome Acid 5.0 software stopped working, which has thrown a wrench into my recording career. In desperation I have downloaded an Acid 4.0 demo version and done my best to make it work. This hasn't gone too well. Not only does this program stop you from recording a song over a minute, it also inserts a loud buzz every 10 seconds to ruin whatever short song you managed to scrap together. Actually, the finished product is an interesting metaphor for my relationship with music and technology. Or something.

You can hear it here.

This American Life

2005-11-14T22:04:00.000-05:00

I resisted this show for as long as I could. Chris had found it first and so caving in and listening would have been a sign of weakness. But, knee deep in Chinese flashcards, and in need of audio entertainment, I caved in and visited the show's website, two weeks ago to see what all the fuss was about.

I can't believe I waited so long. From my very first episode, "Notes on Camp", I have stood in complete awe at the stories being told by Ira Glass and friends. I am amazed by this show. "This American Life" is one of those rare discoveries in my life, up there with "The Office" and "The Beach Boys", where I just stand back and marvel at the skill on display, and then get slightly depressed at how good it is, and then just feel grateful that it exists. There are at least 300 episodes of TAL online. I must have listened to about 30 so far. Hopefully the rest will last me until Christmas.

Along with Sufjan Stevens, this makes two big Knight family discoveries for Chris Knight. Is it possible that I, the ultimate trendsetter of the Knight family, am being replaced? Having invented the boop and brought rap music into 30986 Steeplechase, it was inevitable that I had nowhere to go but down. But now the reality is setting in, it hurts bad. I need a new discovery, and fast.

(Of course, Chris seems to have found out about TAL from Mr. Clemmons, and Sufjan from Roland. If I am to stay innovative, I guess the moral is I need to check their blogs more often. Is this possible?)

No Joy in Princeton

2005-11-12T23:55:00.000-05:00

I showed up late to the football game. After about 45 minutes of a WPRB presentation on FCC rules and regulations, I had decided that I wasn't going to miss a once-in-a-decade opportunity to hear a thirty year old man tell me, for the tenth time, that shout-outs were a bad thing.

The once-in-a-decade opportunity I was missing was the chance for Princeton football to finally win an Ivy league championship. Thanks to an onslaught of press (practically the entire Friday edition of "The Daily Princetonian" was dedicated to the football team) it is now common knowledge that the football team hasn't won the Ivies in over 10 years. But having beaten Harvard and UPenn, the two perennial favorites, a win over lowly Yale today, would have all but guaranteed an end to this unfortunate tradition.

So I discretely snuck out the back door of the meeting and walked briskly towards the game. On the way over a ran into a girl I know.

"How much time left?" I asked hopefully.

"2 Minutes"

"What's the score??"

"14-7"

I couldn't understand how someone could abandon a defining moment in their college career with two minutes left. I later found out that she had left to watch a club volleyball game, which I think actually makes it worse.

When I showed up, things looked good. Yale had the ball on the 34 yard line, but there was only 1:30 left on the clock. And before long it was 4th down for Yale, 4th and goal, and they had to go for it. And they scored. 14-14.

I stuck around, despite the obvious fact that I was jinxing the team, because if we were gonna storm the field, then I was gonna be there. The field was never stormed. Two interceptions and 1 minute of game time later, Princeton had lost.

Though the campus had seemed filled with anticipation before the game, it didn't seem to be filled by any sort of melancholy at the result. Even right after the game, students jovially discussed Pokemon and Digimon Cards. But maybe those weren't University students.

Some of the football players looked pretty depressed, and I'm certain my former roommate, Brett, is among them. I thought of a good plan to cheer him up. Before the game all the students wear wearing "BEAT YALE" buttons. My joke is to write "by" in between the two words, so it says "BEAT by YALE" and then he could wear it as a little ID badge. Just kidding Brett, please don't hurt me.

This was homecoming week and Quad, my eating club, celebrated by serving an elaborate buffet for all the alumni that would be on campus. The buffet raised a lot of questions for me, such as why does Quad have a chocolate syrup fountain? This is a club whose steak tastes like, and possibly is, old shoes. This is a club that regularly runs out of skim milk. It is your duty to serve me good food and skim milk Quad! My parents pay you good money for that skim milk. They do not pay you for a stupid fountain that spews chocolate syrup. That is a stupid, stupid thing that noone wants. I watched that stupid fountain for half an hour and not even one person used it. Not one person! I just checked and we can sell that bad boy for at least 300 bucks. Thats 100 gallons of skim milk baby. Let's get the ball rolling on this one, and not everything today will have been for nought.

Just Lose It

2005-11-11T13:33:00.000-05:00

Just now, in music class, I completely lost it.

We were supposed to have prepared some singing exercises for class, but nobody, NOBODY, had even glanced at the music. So, when he asked us to sing these exercises, things got extremely ugly. It was truly pitiful. And hilarious.

The first person to go was an Asian kid named Wiley. He started about two octaves above his range, and it got higher from there. But things would soon get worse. Observing the train wreck of Wiley, the teacher decided that it would help if two people sang at the same time. So now, instead of one painful melody, we had two, going in and out of tune, clashing, at times in odd, painful disonance.

It was at this point that I started to crack up. People had already been laughing beneath their breath, but were able to keep things under control. I was not so lucky. I started giggling and suddenly I knew I was doomed. I tried to cover my face, to think sad thoughts, to just not laugh, but this only made it worse. At this point I was laughing very hard to the point of crying.

The teacher decided to press on, aware of the hopelesness of the situation, but trying to punish us for our failure to prepare. The next kid to sing was a short guy named Neil, who sings like a Gregorian monk. I was gone. I screamed like a little school girl. It's hard to explain to someone that hasn't been through this, but I think everyone in their life has. I simply had no control over my body. Desperate I grabbed a pencil from my backpack and stabbed myself repeatedly in the hand. This had no effect.

It was now my turn to sing. The teacher pointed to a group of three of us and told us to start. We didn't even get a single note out. I started laughing like a hyena and the two other people in my group started cracking up too.

I got control eventually, but it was too late. The fun had been had. The damage was done.

Regarding the Rock Snob

2005-11-10T17:10:00.000-05:00

I used to think I was a rock snob. I didn't own a single "Sublime" CD. I scoffed at SMES kids who were happy with Blink 182. Nobody is happy with "Blink 182", I thought, you only think you're happy. Half-jokingly I named "Self Portrait" as my favorite Dylan album, thinking that it made me seem deep and mysterious.

Then I met Dan Ruccia.

Dan Ruccia worked at WPRB, the campus radio station where I now have a show. I'm sure if he ever got a glimpse of my music he would have had a good laugh, though this is pure conjecture as I never even saw him smile. Dan couldn't stand acts like "The Arcade Fire" or "The Shins". He dismissed them as "hipster", but what he really meant was that they had too many fans.

Dan was music director for the station for a year, and probably the most active reviewer in its history, so I got a good glimpse of what he looked for in music. I can tell you that one of his favorite bands of 2004 was Man Man, a motley crew of homeless men, screaming and playing trash cans. I can also tell you that he dismissed Sufjan Stevens, out of hand, claiming that he "lacked bite". There had to be something wrong here.

The problem here was that Dan was a rock snob. Not the faux-rock snob glorified by Chris Knight in a recent article, "The Plight of the Music Snob". Dan was the uber-snob that allow bands like "Xiu Xiu" to exist. He simply couldn't like acts with fans, or at least admit it. Before X & Y I used to confess to close friends that I liked Coldplay. Dan would sooner fall on a samurai sword than to let those words escape from his lips.

Being around Dan made me feel uncomfortable. One time I was starting a new show when he was in the room. Seeking approval, I grabbed the new "Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds" cd, entitled "Abbatoir Blues & The Lyre of Orpheus".

Nonchalantly, I asked, "Is this any good?"

"Yeah," he said.

So I loaded the disc and selected a track. The second it started playing, Dan said, "Oh, you chose the single"

Ok, first of all, someone like Nick Cave probably doesn't even release a single, and, even if he did would it make a difference? It's not like I was spinning "Stairway to Heaven"; this is a song that 99.9% of America had never and would never hear. And yet it wasn't enough for Dan. He was only happy with the most unpopular. It didn't matter that the track I chose was probably the best on the CD. Quality, to Dan, was an afterthought.

My interactions with a real rock snob led to some serious introspection. If this was how I saw Dan, was this how others saw me? The rock snob, even if he is right, is doomed to a lonely life. I would like Nickelback, I decided. People would like me.

I couldn't like Nickelback.

This is an unfinished story. Right now, I am in limbo, refusing to submit to the rock snobs or the rock idiots. If I asked the rock snobs, though, they would probably say that I've already made up my mind and offer me a Nelly CD. If I asked the rock idiots, they would probably get confused and vote for George Bush. Then I would tell them it wasn't an election year, which only complicate the situation.

All this has left me with a sour taste in my mouth when it comes to rock music. Maybe it's time to consider the alternatives. I've heard good things about Jazz.

The Dreaded 50th Post

2005-11-08T20:59:00.000-05:00

As some of you may have noticed, I haven't blogged in a long time. A really long time. I would probably guess that probably noone is even reading this, due to the fact that I haven't blogged in such a long time. Which raises an interesting metaphysical question, in the vein of the tree of falling in the wood.

But today I cruised onto Roland Allen's blog, and found that I had been added as a link. This is a pretty big deal for me. You see, for quite some time my brother has had a link for his blog on Roland's site. Not that Chris didn't deserve it, but as the guy that had got him into the blogging world I was jealous. Now that the link is there, I prepare to let the hits roll in.

Another thing that had me hung up is that this is my 50th blog entry. I wanted it to make it special, epic, something that people would tell their grandkids about. I realize now that every one of my entries is like that, so why worry about the 50th?

This is the third or fourth time that I've killed the blog and brought it back to life. It has become a resilient, mighty thing. As you stand, humble in its shadows, add it to your favorite places and prepare for great things. And then eventually abandonment again. But first, great things...

Jet Blue

2005-09-22T22:12:00.000-05:00

I just saw a news story that a Jet Blue plane had malfunctioning landing gear. The pilots found out so they called for help, and of course the news crew showed up. This means that as the plane was making its emergency landing, the passengers were watching it happen on the TV's on the plane. Amazing!

Goodbye China

2005-08-14T09:36:00.000-05:00

I am sitting in the Singapore Airlines lounge right now, snacking on "pizza" and enjoying my last hour in China. That the Chinese interpretation of pizza is some sort of doughy bread with green peppers and artichokes baked in, has done little to take away from my extreme relaxation.

Last night Phil and I, having heroically taken on both the Fobidden City and the Temple of Heaven after having woken up at 3 pm, enjoyed a mighty feast at the Jiaotz Goan. The English Translation of this restaurant is "Dumpling Restaurant", but this doesn't seem fair. They have dumplings yes, but their menu is so much deeper than that, full of delightful dishes of chicken and beef that please even the American tongue. I would say that I go there with friends at least three times a week, and owing to said friends unhealthy obsession with sweet and sour pork, have eaten that every time.

For our final meal though, Phil and I were free from the overwhelming influence of a certain Garret Traub and John Snyder, so we were finally able to branch out. I hadn't eaten since lunch the day before, so it was with a ravenous apetite that I decided that I would settle for no less than Chicken with Hot Peppers, Potatoes with Eggplant, and 15 dumplings. There are a couple meals that I've had in my life that hold a special place in my heart, and this was one. This final Chinese dinner, the Last Supper, was an instant classic.

Today I went to Wang Fu Jing to try and find gifts for family members. Upon arriving, I made the giant mistake of wandering into Beijing's largest bookstore. I don't know if anyone else has this problem but I will wander through a bookstore for hours and hours, completely losing track not only of time, but the concept of time itself. It is fortunate then, that this bookstore was so large, and so stocked full of various tomes, that they had a massive collection of Stephen Hawking books translated into chinese (a Brief History of Time? Ah yes.), to remind me, that, with the way the universe worked, if I did not hurry I would miss my flight.

I got some good gifts for my dad and brother, but my mom said she didn't want anything, so I will hold her to it. Not that I didn't try. I looked near and far for the kind of thing that a mom who didn't enjoy cheap, awful trinkets would like. As of yet, that market in China is still relatively vacant.

Two months ago, I set foot on Chinese soil, and after the first day of class, I decided that, I probably wasn't going to make it. Relazing that, actually, going home at this point was probably not going to happen I had to come up with some sort of plan. In my suitcase I found a tin of chocolates that my dad had given me, and counted them. 38, the exact number of days of class that I would have to make it through. Every day, after class I ate one piece . As long as I was eating chocolate I wasn't giving up. How American of me.

For the first week, I would stare at the mass of chocolate still in the tin. It taunted me. How was I ever going to make it through a pound of this stuff. About half way through is when it stopped seeming so awful. After the last day of class I noticed that something strange had happened. There were two pieces of chocolate left. Looks like I had finally overcome my fears and stopped dwelling on my stupid little routine. Either that or Princeton in Beijing only had 37 days of class.

Either way, I gave my roommate the extra piece, and we ate our chocolate together.

"Wow, that's good," he said.

Chinese Tables

2005-08-13T06:15:00.000-05:00

Princeton in Beijing is over and gone with it is my excuse to not write in the blog. The last week has brought with it great joy and great angst. Every time I do something now, I can't help but think of it as the last time I will be doing it in China. This is the last time I will buy some fruit from a Chinese guy. This is the last time I will brush my teeth with bottled water. This is the last time I will visit the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven. But considering that today was also my first time visiting the Forbidden Palace and the Temple of Heaven, this particular thought didn't make me too nostalgic.

Actually a year ago, when I came here with my dad, we visited these places and enjoyed them greatly. Going back was good, though I am completely exhausted and today was Celebrate the Sun Day in China, which is celebrated by making the weather 100 degrees. Unfortunately Celebrate the Sun Day coincided, this year, with Unbearable Humidity day.

The Fobidden City/Palace Museum is where the emperors used to live. The further you walk into the palace, the holier it used to be considered to be. In the old days, there was maybe 1,000 people that were ever allowed to even go inside, which is ridiculous considering that when I visited today there at least 5,000 tourists packed in. Also, I was considering what the emperors of yore would say if they saw the status their palace was currently in. Fat Americans and sweaty Europeans shuffle around its hallowed ground. At the holiest center of the palace, where only the emperor was allowed to go, there was a trash can full of water bottles and a naked baby. If I get a time machine, I know what I'm gonna do.

The Temple of Heaven, our second destination of the day, is where the emperor's used to go to pray for good crops and even more extravagant palaces, presumably. It is a pretty cool place, the highlight being the two accoustic marvels located in the back of this massive park. The first is a "center stone". This is a stone on the roof of a building designed so that if you yell then your voice is "particularly resonant and sonorous". I don't think the Chinese people understood though. They would just stand on it, get a picture and step off. Realizing that this behavior certainly failed to honor the spirit of the ancient engineer who took the trouble to perfectly design the accoustic properties of a giant stone building, I took to the stone and shouted at the top of my lungs. This seemed to catch a couple of the Chinese people off guard. Another thing at the Temple of Heaven, which I have called possibly my favorite thing in China is the echo wall. An ancient and perfectly round structure, the echo wall gets in name, because it is a wall on a building. That it lets your voice echo around its massive diameter seems to be a mere coincidence. I stood on one side of the echo wall, and Phil stood on the other side. I shouted "wasssup".

Our taxi cab driver on the way home today was amazing...by far my favorite in China. His taxi cab was immaculate and when I told him that I'd never seen such a nice taxi in China, he looked very proud. He told me that there were a million taxi drivers in China, and he won an award that put him in the top 100. They announced his name on the radio and gave him a plaque which he showed us. It was gold and had some Chinese characters that I didn't understand. Let's just assume that it said: "Bless this Mess" and move on.

In China, there are a number of people who make their living by collecting used plastic bottles and trading them in for whatever nominal amount of money the government uses to encourage recycling. You may think that this is an unfortunate situation and I agree, but for different reasons than you might expect. You see that people have chosen this occupation will not take no for an answer when they want your bottle. More than once, including today, I've been forced to chug a liter or two of iced tea, just so they could trade in my bottle for a couple of cents.

There are also countless people whose job is to sell stuff on the streets or the sidewalks. In general these guys sell about one of four things: DVD's, Chinese trinkets, watches, or clothing. I think there just must be some central warehouse in China where poor quality rip off goods are created at an impossibly cheap cost and distributed to various salesman. Otherwise, I just can't understand what kind of distribution mechanism is allowing for the current in situation. How is a sketchy looking guy at the great wall selling the exact same poor quality rip-off Rolex, as the sketchy looking guy in Shanghai? It's almost as if these rip-off brands have become brands in themselves: they're bad indeed, but at least they're consistent.

One of the favorite places for the salesman to hang out is in bridges and underground passages. They lay out a blanket and then lay their wares out on them. Apparently this is illegal, because whenever a policeman is spotted, a lookout guy starts shouting and everyone grabs their blankets and starts to run away. This tends to cause a veritable stampede of Chinese merchants, though the method seems to work--I have yet to see one get caught. I'm still not certain why the policeman aren't able to spot the merchants from the non-merchants. An open letter to the Chinese police force:

The ones carrying massive blankets that look like their full of rip off watches and running away from you are almost certainly the ones breaking the law.

Sincerely,
A Concerned Citizen.

We've had three Chinese tables in the last week. The first was for all of the second year students. I had been sick for the days before it, but I was able to eat some of the food they brought for us off a surprisingly well-considered fixed menu. After dinner we were supposed to practice for the upcoming talent show, at which every second year student was going to perform some Chinese songs. Though the dinner was enjoyable, two and a half hours into it, and one plus hours into practicing Chinese songs, when one of the teachers proposed to begin with the kareoke, I decided it was time to begin the walking back to my dorm.

The Talent Show suffered from the similar problem. Clocking in at nearly four hours, I think that, although the untalented student's courage was admirable, we did not need to humor every one of them with a spot on the program. Maybe if we could have put them all up there at once and just let them go for five minutes everyone would be a winner. One of the truly enjoyable skits of the night was written and performed by the teachers, and provided us an insight into their mind that no conversation could have. Basically the sketch was an impression of us students. The rage was palpable and the mockery enjoyable. I'm not too sure it was even intended to be funny, it played more like a polemic, but I laughed long and hard.

I enjoyed the second Chinese Table with a couple of teachers and students at an excellent restaurant. But when it's not a set menu, ordering food with Chinese people is always an ordeal. First of all, everyone always says one thing that they don't like, and the teachers fail to understand that just because one person doesn't like something, this doesn't mean that the rest of the table won't eat it. A typical ordering session might go something like this:

"Joe, what do you like to eat."
"Well, I like everything except for pork."
"Ok, no pork. Steve, what about you?"
"Well actually I really like pork, but I don't care for beef."
"Sorry Joe doesn't like pork, we can't order it."
"But there's 10 other people here, they all like pork. John probably wouldn't mind if we got one pork dish."
"You have offended my family's honor."

In order to not add to the confusion, I tend to keep my mouth shut during the ordering process, but once I let it slip that I don't like fish. Quickly all the teachers learned of this situation. Now every Chinese table begins with the proclamation that Tom Knight doesn't like fish. The teachers nod their head, an air of dissaproval in the air, and do their best not to order fish.

Another obstacle on the road to ever getting any food at Chinese table is what I have come to call "the spicy food problem". I am convinced that every Chinese person has had some sort of traumatic experience with spicy food in their life, because whenever you try to order anything spicy, they intervene and urge you to think carefully before you make that commitment. An attempt to order something spicy in the presence of a teacher might go something like this:

"I'll have the Kung Pao Chicken."
"Hmm. Interesting choice. That dish is awfully spicy you know."
"Yeah, I like spicy food. No problem."
"This one is actually really spicy, I think you might want to try something else."
"Ok, fine...How about this one: Mild Chicken Dish."
"Again, very spicy. Less spicy than the Kung Pao, yes, but still quite spicy."
"Well then, I'll just have a glass of water and some rice please."
"Ok, but just be careful."

We graduated from the program on Friday, and after the ceremony we had our final Chinese table. Every teacher and student from the program was there. It was truly a great time, and thanks to the massive amounts of photos taken (I contend that it was one of the most well documented in the history of mankind) I don't think anyone will be forgetting it anytime soon. Did I mention that we could speak English? Conversing with our teachers in a language that confused them as much as Chinese confused us was the ultimate revenge. I tried to explain to a teacher what this felt like, "It's like in a movie when the good guy gets his gun taken away and the bad guy is torturing him, but then the good guy somehow gets his gun back and then he looks at the bad guy, and the bad guy knows something is wrong. Then the good guy, he just flashes the bad guy a little grin for a couple seconds and then, BANG!" The teacher, fortunately, didn't understand, but the rest of my table had a good laugh.

This was one of the few Princeton in Beijing events that I wish could have lasted longer. As I left the restaurant bound for my dorm, and soon America, I mourned the end of my last Chinese table.

It's Time To Get Ill

2005-08-05T08:08:00.000-05:00

After going 7 weeks with reasonable health, Tuesday morning hit me like a brick wall. I don't know what it was (I'll get to that in a little bit), but I felt awful. Still wanting to keep my perfect attendance I went to class and fought the hard fight. Generally, I've found it's a bad sign when people look at you and then look like their gonna cry out of fright. During break I fell asleep for 10 short minutes in the dark corner of an empty class. Not surprisingly, I skipped Chinese table that day.

Trying to determine the cause of the illness is a fruitless and futile task--practically everything I do at this point would cause illness in a normal person. I've been eating food filled with bugs. I haven't done a load of laundry in China. I sleep infrequently and then for the entire weekend. I thought I had found the cause the other day when I looked down at my Iced Tea and noticed that the expiration date was three months ago. I went up to the storekeeper and, risking the great friendship that we've developed, asked him what was the dealio? He told me that was the date the product was made, not when it expired--a likely story. Now I sip iced tea with fear, if his story his true than the dates are all necessarily in the past. If his story is but a cover for a friend who owns a warehouse of expired iced tea, than I am certainly doomed.

For all the worrying family members, 24 hours of consecutive sleep (including through Wednesday class) seems to have solved my problem. I feel great and just played two hours of basketball with Chinese people. For the record, a grabbed a monumental number of rebounds.

Oh The Places I've Been!

2005-08-01T08:35:00.000-05:00

On a radio show I listen to, the host constantly makes a point that women have a hard time gauging any kind of distance. It was a funny point, but it didn't become real to me until, in class the other day, one of my Chinese teacher asked the hippy girl (she's been in my class the last three weeks!) how far it was from her dorm room to our classroom. Now bear in mind that our classroom isn't in the same building as our dorms. In fact, it is a good 3-5 minute walk depending on how late you are to class.

"I don't know" the girl said.
"Just guess" said the teacher.
"I have no idea. I'm not sure." said the hippy. She was beginning to look nervous.
"Just guess, go on" pleaded the teacher.
"Ummmmmmm..." the hippy girl stalled, apparently doing some sort of unholy mental math, because after about 10 seconds she seemed to have figured it out: "10 meters."

So, using the hippy girls scale, I can safely say that over the last two weeks, my travels have taken me, at most half a kilometer.

They gave us a mighty generous "midterm break" which was all of three days. Those of you that have seen my online photo albums already know the basic outline of the story. We bought train tickets to Shanghai on the overnight, apparently for Thursday--the train was scheduled to leave at 7:30. At about 5:30, John Snyder, one of the four amigos that was going, claimed "back pain" and said that if he didn't make it to a masseuse, it would be a big issue. Now, as far as I know, John has lived in America for the better part of 19 years, where masseuses (massi?) are not so readily available as in China, and he has made do. But as I soon learned, John can squeal like a stuck pig, so I wasn't going to stand in his way. In fact, to emphasize my constant hypocrisy, I decided to go with him.

At the massage parlor, with the best Chinese we could muster, we tried to get some information about how close the train station was. Now, in China, in order to become a masseuse, you have to be blind. I'm not saying that a blind person can't know their way around a massive city, but generally you probably shouldn't rely on them for detailed directions. With this in mind, we rejected their suggestion, out of hand, that we take the subway instead of the taxi in order to avoid rush hour traffic. The subway? Where were we New York? Anyways, everyone knew that traffic jams were an urban legend, and we were taking a TRAIN too. Who ever heard of a traffic jam on a train? Geeze no wonder they had to be massesuses. Nice people, but no common sense.

When we got in the taxi at 6:30 and told him that we had a train to catch at 7:30 he just started laughing. This was probably a bad sign for us. Hoping that maybe he had just heard a funny joke on the radio, or else was a mentally ill cab driver (oh please let him be a mentally ill cab driver) we asked him if we asked again if we had enough time to make it to the train station.

"Oh no," he said, "not even close. You should take the subway."

That again. Well I guess we had no choice. We had the taxi driver drop us off at the subway station which was about 10 meters away but took about 15 minutes to reach due to rush hour traffic, so this was probably a good use of our time. When we got there he gave me a look like I should tip him for all of his great advice. It would have taken to long to try to explain that I would give any money owed him, for services rendered, to the masseuse who had already suggested a similar brand of advice. So, I just said thanks and gave him exact change.

The trip from the subway to the train station is a bit of a blur, but I do know that we arrived at our platform the instant the train was supposed to leave. A big surprise was in store though, as Garret and Phil, the other two amigos, and the purchasers of the tickets, had bought seats for the wrong day! Way to go guys! We can't blame them though because the arabic number system can be hard to adjust to.

In a shockingly non-beauracratic moment, the women at the train station decided to let us board and worry about the details later. What a gal! Might I say, if she happens to be reading this: thankyou so much, your sincere generosity will never be forgotten

As soon as we got on the train we tried to work out some sort of plan to mail our tickets back to Beijing before next day's train left, so that our tickets could be resold.

The train ride was fun, reminiscent of a trip that I had taken in grade school from London to the south of France with all my British classmates. The main difference was that all the people on that train were French and all the people on this train were Chinese. The main similarity was that they both smelled terrible.

We played Chinese Chess with one some of the locals and John ordered a small plate of honeydew melon, which I knew right away was a mistake: never order exotic fruits in China! The bill came and his little fruit plate had cost a little more than his last three meals combined.

In the dining cabin, we also met a guy who was from Norway, who played some cards with us. He was a pretty fat guy, and pretty annoying.

"Did you hear," he asked, "that America is less popular in Europe than China? A communist country more popular than a deomcracy!"
"Did you know," I felt like asking, "that you are less popular in this dining car than Chumbawumba's second album?" though I fear the allusion might have been lost on him.

We were going to be staying with my dad's friend and our former China tour guide, Jeff Noles. For quite some time, my dad had been telling me about this grand architectual innovation that he had made with regards to Jeff's apartment. Upon arriving and being greeted by Jeff, I was shown to the Kip Knight Wall, which was similar to the Great Wall, except for the fact that it was not impressive.

"You see," Jeff explained, "the wall was gonna be here," he pointed to a spot on the ground. "But your dad said that it should go here," he pointed to another spot on the ground 6 inches from the original spot. I feigned surprise and delight in a picture that we then took, though who am I to judge. This single innovation might one day be seen as the turning point of modern architecture. Also, that Norwegian guy might turn out to be a world famous politician, but I'm not holding my breath.

I had expressed a desire for an "ultra-local" breakfast, but my friends, with a ravenous look in their eyes demanded American food, and Jeff obliged. We went to the Hyatt in Shanghai where a spread of croissants, sausage, bacon, omlettes, hash browns, and Frog eyeballs caused first, looks of extreme satisfaction, and then, briefly, a look of extreme confusion on my friends faces. Quickly, I imagine, they resolved to avoid the frog eyeballs, and in no time at all the sublime happiness had returned. We stuffed ourselves like never before having found in Jeff a hero, savior and role model forever more, and having found in croissants the first edible breakfast food since ariving in Beijing. You see the Chinese idea of a hearty breakfast is a delicacy known as "rice with juice", no not orange juice, though I can't be too sure about the specifics. Let's just say it involves an animal in some capacity. About an hour, and at least 4000 calories later we set out to see Shanghai.

The first day we hit a lot of the typical sites, including the Shanghai museum, the Jinmau tower (tallest hotel in the world, and featuring, at 5 dollars each, the most expensive moon pies as well). In general, we found Shanghai to be much to our liking, containing many of the modern amenities that you grow accustomed to America such as massive plasma television screens, invisible cell phones, and an ultra-powerful ray gun. They even had Starbucks, the knowledge of which caused John to return to his pre-massage state, until he was filled to the brim with overpriced coffee.

In the course of our preambulation about the city, I caught a glimpse of something that I remembered from my first visit to Shanghai. The Tourist Tunnel! My favorite part about this "ride" is that they pretty much confess to its tourist trap nature right in the title. As I said in my photo collection, I won't try to describe this thing to thoroughly, words can only detract from it's overwhelming suck. But if you are in Shanghai and feel like wasting 30 kuay on a 2 minute ride through a tunnel decorated with Christmas lights, than this is the ride for you.

The next day we went to the Yuyuan gardens and did some shopping around Beijing. In the course of all this we got into a taxi with an obviously suicidal maniac. During two of the most harrowing moments of my life we actually drove through an antique market. There was no road! In another instant we were pinned between two giant trucks and missed being squashed by about a second. John later named this ride as his favorite part of the trip.

We also went to the Bund, and a number of famous buildings and streets in Shanghai, which by this point I have forgotten the names of. Overall, the trip was a total result of a holiday. Because the trains only leave at night and arrive at the morning, it ended much as it began. Our train pulled into the station at 7:15, class started at 7:30...

Last week, the PIB coordinators organized a trip to see the Chinese acrobactic show. This spectacle is similar in many ways to the American circus, although it is so awesome that it makes Cirque de Soleil look like Cirque de So-lame! ZZZZZZZZZZZing!

Having been to one of these shows on my first trip to China, I thought I knew what to expect. Oh, I was wrong! The first couple acts were impressive visually, but overall unmemorable, a sort of Matrix Reloaded of the Chinese Acrobactic world. The first thing to really catch my eye was the group of 6 girls doing the little top thing. Don't you know what I'm talking about, you hold the two sticks and there's the string and you spin it and then toss it into the air and then catch it. These girls gave the most flawless performance I have ever seen. It was amazing and depressing at the same time. They were so good that it was kind of mysterious how they were able to have any time to do any school work when they were constantly rehearsing for this show. Also, if your gonna have a skill set, I can think of only one more useless than this. That is, of course, solving the rubik's cube.

So, I got to thinking, what would the crowd say if I was to get up on the stage and solve the rubik's cube. I guess they probably wouldn't be too impressed. I mean, the other acts generally risked peoples lives in some way, with tiny women being thrown around and gymnasts hanging from thiry foot high poles and spinning from a strand of dental floss. Maybe if I could solve the rubik's cube while reciting the names of the 50 states, I would have something going. Only time will tell.

At intermission, one of the girls from the top act came out to the audience to sell DVD's. I didn't wanna buy one, but I tried to give her a five, which caused a fair amount of confusion, and, in hindsight, was a regrettable act.

An interesting thing about the Chinese acrobactic troupe is that, for the amazing amount of skill that each of the performers has, the production values of the show are amazingly low. On multiple occasions I noticed construction paper costumes. The background music was almost certainly midi, and was blared from some of the most pitiful monitors this side of St. Margaret's "Lunch on the Lawn".

The final performance of the night featured the entire male ensemble clinging, in one way or another, to a giant pole contraption that had been set up, rather shoddily in the center of the stage. This is the dental floss thing I was talking about earlier. Maybe if they couldn't come down till I solved the cube? I'm gonna have to talk to someone about this.

The last thing I will write about for now was the Chinese zoo, which, like the acrobactic show presented some amazing things in a less than amazing setting. I went with my roommate and two friends, and the first thing we decided to see was the Giant Panda. It was an amazing, and amazingly lazy, creature but the habitat they had it in was not too impressive, poorly kept up, and littered with trash. At first I was somewhat dissapointed, but then the Panda started eating a giant stick of bamboo and all my troubles vanished.

The zoo was as large as any I've ever been too, boasting rhinos (what a godawfully ugly creature) hippos (at least 10x lazier than the panda) monkeys (one of them could dribble a basketball!) and derranged dogs. When I say derranged dogs I mean it. One of these hyena type things had apparently completely lost his mind, because, for the 10 minutes that we watched him, he walked in a perfect loop, always rolling over in the exact same spot. But this begs the question, which is worse, the dog walking in circles, or the college students watching it for 10 minutes and giggling every time he starts again?

The other day, I had dinner at a dingy, cramped Chinese restaurant. Unable to make out the smudged menu, I told the waitress I wanted a spicy Chicken dish and she brought out Chicken with hot peppers, which tasted surprisingly good. I had eaten about half of it when I noticed a medium sized bug in the midst of rice and chicken. Quietly I threw the bug on the floor, and finished my meal.

I am The White Stripes

2005-07-30T12:20:00.000-05:00

I haven't been blogging at all lately, truly a dissapointing development for all of my loyal fans, but I have been keeping track of all the things I want to write. Right now, I have saved up about 10 blog entries and tomorrow I think I will finally get around to it, but something happened tonight that I feel I should write about before the adrenaline dies down.

John, Garret, and I were getting sick of eating the same three Chinese dishes that we're comfortable with, so in order to take a step out of our "comfort zone" we were going to go the Pizza Hut in Beijing. The closest one was about 20 minutes from our dorm, but that was no prob Bob. Now a felt a little guilty about eating a lot of pizza, so I decided to start running at 8 pm. When we were getting ready to leave at 9:30, it occured to us that the Pizza Hut's in China might not be open 24 hours a day, so we decided to get a move on. At 9:55 (apparently it closed at 10, how Communist...), we skidded in the door and demanded that they make us a peperoni pizza or face the wrath of America. They did, and there was much rejoicing.

This is where things start to get interesting. They made us go outside to eat it, so they could close the restaurant. While we were eating outside we noticed a woman singing in front of a decent sized Chinese crowd at some sort of sidewalk bar, but at the same time wondered what was going on, because she was a pretty awful singer. When she went to go sit down with her friends, we realized that it was some sort of open mic night, and they had a guitar sitting right there. John said I was thinking:

"Do it man. You gotta do it."

At first I was pretty petrified of the idea. It didn't seem like I could just waltz up to the stage and start playing, but in the end, after about 15 minutes of debate, that's exactly what I did. In front of about 100 Chinese people, I walked up and asked if I could go, and they handed me a guitar. At first they tried to tell me that it cost money, but this was obviously a bluff, because they didn't care at all when I said no.

The first thing I realized when I was in front of a crowd of 100 Chinese people is that the only guitar songs I know well are White Stripes. I tried to think of anything else, but all the my fingers would allow were Jack White's blues. I was possesed, and the White Stripes it was going to be.

"Hello!" I shouted, and then for good measure "Nii hao!" which means hello in Chinese. "I'm gonna be playing a rock and roll song for you by the White Stripes. Who likes the White Stripes?!"

Dead Silence.

From this point on, I decided to keep audience interaction to a minimum and just show them what my sould looked like. Before I had walked up, I was planning on playing "Fell in Love with a Girl", but I just didn't think it would go over that well on the accoustic guitar that they gave me, so I went with "Hotel Yorba" and it was a mighty good choice. For the most part the Chinese people were eating it up, though there was one little kid that didn't seem to be into it--he stood about 5 feet from me with his hands over his ears. I sold the act as much as I could, yelping and dancing and pretty much making a fool of myself. When I finished, if I might say so myself, the crowd went wild.

When I had decided to go up there, I had planned to play one song and get the heck off the stage. But when I went to leave the owner of the place told me I couldn't go. The funny American was attracting a ton of people to his bar. By the time I was about to start my second song there was at least 200 people that had gathered around.

For round two, I went "Fell in Love With a Girl", because I had located an electric guitar on the stage, and figured that if I was really gonna rock them out this is what it was gonna take. This was probably a mistake, because the electric guitar sounded awful. Furthermore I started forgetting the lyrics about half way through the song (is that even possible for this song?), and as anyone whose ever song in front of other people knows, this is a problem that just gets worse and worse. Also, my pick broke, and I accidentally unplugged my guitar while dancing around the stage. This was actually kind of perfect, because the same thing happened to the White Stripes when they were on Conan, so I felt like I was truly in their shoes. Also I handled it like a pro, plugging it back in and then shouting out:

"1234!"

and then finished rocking them out, though again, this performance was not up to the same standard.

But they didn't seem to care. They cheered me on, and I was again forced to continue. I slowed things down considerably, playing Blackbird, and I think this one went really well, although Garret said he thought that the failure to continue rocking was probably a mistake. Blackbird, by the way is a song that literally every American who's ever picked up a guitar seems to know, but in China that didn't matter. I gave a good vocal performance and the couple of British guys that were sitting on the right side of me, seeed to enjoy it thoroughly.

By now, I had given up on leaving any time soon, so I went into a funny little White Stripes medely, because with Blackbird out of my system, they were again all that I could remember. I kicked it off with "Lord Send Me an Angel" and then moved into "Let's Build a Home/ Memphis". This was by far my craziest moment up there, but the nuttier stuff I did, the more they seemed to like it, so that by the end of the song I was on my knees thrashing the guitar and screaming. I knew this would get a reaction, but artistic integrity was important to me to, so I decided to go out with a bang.

"This is my last song," I told them, and let ring the opening riff to "Dead Leaves in the Dirty Ground". I absolutely destroyed (in a good way) the song, because it is one of the few White Stripes songs that never ventures out of my range. Although, when I finished, and told them goodbye, the bar owner vehemently protested (there had to be 300 people at this point), I had learned long ago to leave them wanting more.

"Thankyou!" I shouted to the crowd, and for good matter added the Chinese word for thankyou, "Xie Xie!" to a roaring round of applause.

So what did I learn from my Kareoke experience? First of all, rocking out in front of people is lots of fun. Who knows how many times I've stood in my music room playing the guitar dreaming of thousands of screaming fans hanging on my every word. This wasn't thousands, and, ok, they didn't understand a word I was saying, but it was great. I amazed myself a little, too: I wasn't nervous at all.

Second, and I think this is a big one, I need to get really well-rehearsed at something besides "The White Stripes". Yes, this worked in a setting where noone had any clue what I was playing, but I think, should the opportunity ever present itself again, then it would be good to have a couple other tricks up my sleeve. After the show was over, I realized a couple other songs I could have played (The Shins!), but as they say no regrets.

Finally, and most importantly, this experience led to me to realize something about myself. Though I have had doubts along the way, though at times my vision was blurred and this truth seemed strange and impossible, though some might have protested, and to this day may continue to, there is one thing in this world that is, in the end, undeniable: I am the man.

When It Rains, It Pours

2005-07-24T10:08:00.000-05:00

Yesterday a mighty rain came to wash the filth from the streets of Beijing (Taxi Driver anyone?) Unfortunately it washed the majority of that filth directly onto my socks. You see, Beijing has the worst drainage out of any city that I've ever seen. I contend that they must employ some sort of anti-drainage system that makes things worse than if there was nothing at all. If they're not pumping resevoirs into the streets as soon as the rain starts, then I don't know how else to explain the spontaneous formation of veritable lakes and rivers on what once were streets and sidewalks.

Anyways, as I said, my socks got very wet and very dirty, so what better place to go than the Silk Market. In spite of it's name, the silk market does not sell very much silk, but instead offers myriad ripoff goods, and things that are designed to break the second they leave the silk market. It's amazing that they were able to design this technology, and that it is actually cheaper than just selling stuff that works, but they've obviously done the math.

Although I only had 40 kuai I love the art of the Chinese bargain, so I decided to pretend like I was interested in just about everything the merchants were offering. In China the concept of a set price is non-existant, a typical exchange with a shopkeeper might go something like this:

"Excuse me sir, how much is this chess set?"
The guy will then size you up, apparently performing some very complex mental math.
"1ooo kuai"
"Hmm, that's a little too expensive. I think I'll pass."
Then your supposed to walk away, although the gesture is usually cut very short.
"Please, please. What is your price?"
"Hmm, well it's a little beat up isn't it. I'd say a fair price would be 10 kuai."
"Surely you gest! 500 kuai is my absolute final offer!"
"20 kuai"
"I begrudgingly accept."

When you actually wanna buy something this routine can get kind of old, but if you have no money, then it can be a lot of fun. I played a game of seeing how much below their original price I could get the shopkeepers to go down before I walked away. I thought 25% was good, until I got a 2000 kuai sweater down to 150 kuai. It almost made me wish I could buy it, but then I realized that the sweater was one off the crappiest looking garments that I'd ever seen.

One time we decided that we were going to play a little joke on a shopkeeper. We expressed some interest in a Mao watch, which is probably the most common piece of junk sold in China.

"How much?" We asked.
"How much you want to spend?"
"2000 kuai" which is about 300 dollars. Bear in mind that she was probably ready to sell this thing for about 10 kuai. She paused for a second, either out of surprise, or to try to make it look like we were getting a deal, and then said:
"Ok, I will give you two"

At the Silk Market I started buy some cheap stuff. At the video game store a hilarious misunderstanding got me a good deal on the soccer game, Winning Eleven 8.

"How much for this one?" I asked.
The guy showed me five fingers.
"Five kuai?" I asked.
"Fifty kuai!" He said but his girlfriend/business partner didn't hear him.
"Ten kuai, final offer" she said, and he gave her what I will call a dirty look. This could have all been an act to get me to feel like I was getting a deal, but the embarassed look on that girl's face was so palpable that I have a hard time believing that it was anything but sincere.

I also but a Mao pin for 1 dollar american, as well as some lovely yellow socks with pictures of lambs on them. You are probably wondering where I got all the money in order to afford these luxurious items, and so I will tell you. On Saturday morning, we had the option to go to a class to help them evaluate teachers for next year's Princeton in Beijing program. If we went they would give us 100 kuai (about 12 bucks American). Well, in spite of the fact that I had slept an average of 3 hours the previous two nights (though averaging seems somewhat inappropriate in that one night I got no sleep and the other 6 and why am I talking about this anyway, I can't stand people that talk about how much they slept: earth to them...I don't care!), I still cannot turn down a chance to make money that I can quickly waste.

The class started at 8 am, and I was appalled to see that I was assgined to the same classroom as an infamous Korean girl, who is widely believed to be the absolutely most annoying person in the history of planet earth. This girl seems to have no idea how loud she is speaking, because she literally shouts everything. I have never met anyone like this before. And if you hesitate for one second in your response she will cut you off and start answering your question. She made those four hours for me a complete hell on earth.

One of those questions that I had a hard time answering was when the teacher used a vocab word that I had forgotten. She said a sentence about "Baozi" and I panicked when I realized I had no idea what "Baozi" was, and apparently the annoying girl didn't either, because she made no effort to cut me off.

"Baozi?" I asked, and the lady that was trying to be a teacher here next year, formed her hands in a circle and said "Baozi". Now I'm sorry but if I have no idea what something is, showing me that it is about the size of a CD is not going to help me, unless that thing is actually a cd.
"Sorry," I said, watching the trainwreck unfold before my very eyes "I don't know what baozi is" at which point she repeated the gesture. This went on for about 30 seconds, and I fear that I might have severely hurt this poor woman's chance of ever teaching with PIB, which I have deduced is the absolute holy grail for Chinese teachers (by the way, baozi is stuffed bread. I feel so stupid for not knowing that, especially with the helpful hint!)

Another quagmire that I got myself involved in during this Saturday class was a teacher getting me to practice the pattern "As soon as I start doing something, I do it for this long" She asked me "As soon as you start reading, how long do you read for", to which I responded "As soon as I start reading,I can't help but read for 10 hours!" This hilarious exchange gave me an idea:

Hello, my name is John Turkington, and I have a problem. As soon as I start reading something I cannot help but read it for 10 hours. It is a serious flaw with my brain, that medical science has yet to explain. You may doubt the severity of such an affliction, but please imagine, even if the thing I am reading is but a single line, I will read it again and again for 10 hours. When it comes to cereal boxes and name placards, this can become most uncomfortable! I have been to numerous doctors, to no avail. At first, they gave me some pamphlets to read, although almost instantly they realized that this approach was ill-conceived.

Please tune in next time for the story of Shanghai, Chinese acrobactics, and to hear how my adventures with audioscrobbler are going.

Losing iTunes

2005-07-21T09:30:00.000-05:00

My friend Parisa lost her entire iTunes library, which scares me more than a little bit. I'm not too worried about losing my songs, Chris has got me backed up on that front, but there's another issue: Play Counts. As readers of this blog know, I'm currently knee deep in "Operation: Dumbo Drop" which is my mission to get a play count of 1 on every song in iTunes. If I were too lose my iTL it would be devistating: hours and hours of listening for nothing! But then, I asked Parisa how she lost her Library, and she told me that she accidentally dropped her computer into a tropical fish aquarium. I'm not too sure how this happened, but I really don't think I have to worry anymore.

Complaining

2005-07-21T00:41:00.000-05:00

I realize that I'm in China, and I'm very grateful for everything, but there are just a couple things that I have to get off my chest.

First of all there is this insufferable girl that I am sitting next to during all my classes right now (oh cruel fate!) She is sort of a hippie with an identity crisis. For example, yesterday at Chinese Table, she said that she didn't eat meat and ordered all manner of disgusting Chinese vegetables for the rest of us. Then when the food came she ate most of the one beef dish that I had managed to lobby for. The other day, she somehow managed to steer a class conversation about ping pong into an outrageous argument about abortion. Debating this issue in English is hard enough, but in Chinese it becomes sort of surreal. However, what basically emerged from the discussion-- that some of my classmates liked babies and some liked freedom--was eerily similar to the euphemisms spewed from the mouths of many Americans.

Then today, we were talking about schools in America, and my teacher asked me if I thought poor students and rich students had the same opportunities in America. I said definitely not, that poor students often have to have a job during high school, and have a hard time with school. The girl chimed in and said that it didn't matter, as long as your grades were good you could go to any school you wanted...The American Dream. I then invited her, in Chinese, to spend some time in Compton, which seemed to shut her up.

Another thing was that today my teacher had a horrific accent. I could definitely tell that her mangled pronounciations were not orthodox, but I tried to not make a big deal out of it. We got caught up though when she kept correcting my obviously correct pronounciations refusing to budge until i mimicked her. This would be like a Bostonian scolding their student for refusing to "pahk the cah" After a while, the other students were growing restless so I caved in. This marked my second run-in with a teacher in as many days, because yesterday I was genuinely struggling with this one word, and after saying it incorrectly about 50 times I told the teacher "Enough! I will practice on my own". We ended that individual session a little early.

I think I was getting a little impatient, because I was pretty tired. But this afternoon things started looking up, when I found a miracle elixir: Japanese Coffee. Chinese coffee is a pitiful little drink, more water than grounds, and stimulates at best a 15 minute buzz. Japanese coffee on the other hand comes with a little pot of honey, and a lot of love. I'm still riding high on the tsunami of energy that it has awakened in me. I feel like a new man!

Maybe I'm just excited that during Chinese table today I wore my "Singapore is a Fine City" shirt and the entire table spent a good 15 minutes discussing and laughing at its many charms. This, for me, was a dream come true.

For Crying Out Loud

2005-07-20T07:22:00.000-05:00

WOULD EVERYONE IN THIS PROGRAM THAT IS GOING TO GO TO LUNCH WITH THE CHINESE TEACHERS AND ME PLEASE LEARN THE CHINESE WORD FOR LAMB SO THAT THE TEACHERS WOULD STOP SAYING "BAAAA" WHENEVER ANYONE ASKS WHAT THAT ONE ITEM ON THE MENU IS. ITS NOT FUNNY! IT IS ANNOYING!

Ricky gervais is a genius:

Funny man Ricky Gervais made a bit of a boo boo yesterday - when he told the vast Live 8 crowd that Tony Blair and George Bush had agreed to quadruple aid for the third world.

The tubby celeb told the crowd that as their goal had been reached the concert could stop there and then, before adding:

“I’m joking of course…they haven’t quadrupled aid, we can carry on.”

Embarrassingly the joke fell on its arse and was greeted with silence and then booing.

The audience soon perked up though and asked him to do his notorious Office dance routine.

Probably already feeling like a bit of a twat, Gervais obliged but not without declaring it would be the last time he ever performed it in public.

Richard Curtis, one of the event’s organisers is reported in the Sunday Mirror as saying:

“Ricky Gervais doesn’t know his arse from his elbow. He was using world poverty for a gag. I don’t know who invited him here.”

Can someone please Tivo "Extras" for me?

Domination

2005-07-18T00:06:00.000-05:00

Shanghai post coming soon.  In the meantime, enjoy this chess game played against the self-proclaimed "Chess Master"


Tom Knight v. Chris Knight
July 18, 2005
Yahoo Chess

1. d2-d4 d7-d6
2. c2-c4 c7-c5
3. d4xc5 d6xc5
4. d1xd8+ e8xd8
5. c1-e3 b7-b6
6. g1-f3 c8-b7
7. f3-e5 d8-e8
8. b1-c3 g8-f6
9. o-o-o e7-e6
10. e3-g5 f6-d7
11. e5xd7 b8xd7
12. c3-b5 a8-c8
13. b5xa7 c8-a8
14. a7-b5 a8xa2
15. b5-c7++

If you want to watch this masterpiece unfold, then go to:

http://www.chessclub.com/chessviewer/pgnform.html

And copy and paste the following into the textbox:

[Event "Complete Domination"]
[Site "Yahoo Chess"]
[Date "July 18 2005"]
[EventDate "?"]
[Round "1"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Thomas Knight"]
[Black "Chris Knight"]
[ECO "A02"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]
[PlyCount "30"]

1. d2-d4 d7-d6
2. c2-c4 c7-c5
3. d4xc5 d6xc5
4. d1xd8+ e8xd8
5. c1-e3 b7-b6
6. g1-f3 c8-b7
7. f3-e5 d8-e8
8. b1-c3 g8-f6
9. o-o-o e7-e6
10. e3-g5 f6-d7
11. e5xd7 b8xd7
12. c3-b5 a8-c8
13. b5xa7 c8-a8
14. a7-b5 a8xa2
15. b5-c7++





If anyone actually takes the time to do this please let me know, so that we can make fun of Chris together.

The Mile Swim

2005-07-12T11:33:00.000-05:00

Back when I went to summer camp...uh boy scout summer camp, they always ended the week with a mile swim that everyone could choose to participate in. My first year there, I was the scrawniest kid in the whole camp, but with little other reason than I was growing tired of archery and electrolyte slurpee beverages I decided to go for it. Noone thought I could finish, and they told me to my face, and this includes the adults. But, I made it, bravely performing an unholy rotation of strokes that consisted only of the doggy paddle and the float.

Now, I think you see where I'm going with this. Chinese is my new mile swim. Except now I have giant concrete blocks tied to my feet, and there are no lifeguards, and actually my arms and legs were removed before they threw me into the lake. And the lake is lava. And the lava has fire proof sharks in it.

But today I managed to move a little towards that buoy in the distance. You see, when people fail during Chinese class and stammer on an answer, and things get really desperate...I mean really desperate, I've seen a student-teacher stalemate that lasted the better part of 10 seconds, the teacher just standing there as the student helplessly quivered in his seat...but when things get real bad, there's usually a go-to guy, who the teacher can depend on for quick assistance. Today it was me! I knocked my first answer of the day out of the park, and then when another student was getting destroyed, I got pointed to by the teacher. She might as well have been saying "you, go board that space ship to explore Mars and cure poverty and remove The Killers from the face of the planet". And the best part is, I didn't screw up the go-ahead goal! And then, I pretty much sucked the rest of the class.

I did have one other highlight moment. The teacher was asking us what we look for in a girlfriend. And this teacher was pretty good looking, so I planned out a little joke. I could see that my buddy across the room was scheming something to, so I had to hope that I would get called on first, before he stole the glory. The waiting was tense, but, thank heavens, she chose me, and I let rip.

"For me, it is important that a girl be not only smart, but also Chinese" I said and laughter filled the room.

I could see the look of dissapointment on my friends face: his time had passed.

Two days earlier I bought a ping pong paddle for 8 bucks, and we went to the facility here where ping pong champions are made not born. It was a lot of fun, but I was a sweaty mess by the end of it, and, besides chess, I feel that pingpong is probably the most embarassing sport to sweat because of.

That night we decided to go get a massage. In China, massage is done almost exclusively by blind people. We knew that going in, but what we didn't know was that these would be giant, strong blind Chinese people that could inflict severe pain with a single finger. My friend that I went with...not coincidentally the same lad whose joke opportunity I would steal two days later (not coincidental in that I don't have too many friends, so if I'm gonna be with a friend it's gonna be about one of two people)...had had some severe back problems, so he was pretty terrified that the guy was gonna do some damage. I had only had one very minor back injury which was the result of one too many battles with the football hitting dummy affectionately known as "Tall T". There was no way, I thought, that he would find that little injury, buried somewhere in the deep recesses of my spine.

Oh, he found it.

In discussions later, my friend and I agreed that the real joy to Chinese massage is the relief that you feel once the pain has stopped. Some of the more grueling moments came during the butt, calf and shin "work". What this was was this giant chinese man basically beating you up on these parts of your body. The main point of the game is to see if they can make you cry in front of your friends, which I did but only for a little bit. Kidding! Please don't make fun of me.

We got back late from massage, but I decided to watch my pirated DVD of "Friday Night Lights" which put my bed time at an estimated 3 am. The next morning I was to wake up at 730 for a trip to a giant gorge (longqing gorge, though I don't know why you care), so I was surprised to awake to the sounds of my roommate frantically packing at what my clock told me was 805. We had forgotten to set our alarms in act of either stunning bravado, or unfathomable stupidity. In the rush, I managed to pack my camera, with no memory card, my ipod, with no headphones, and my wallet, with no money. Remember this last one, it'll be important in the story later on.

At the gorge there was bungee jumping, but because I had no money I couldn't do it (at last the careful foreshadowing pays off). Actually I had American money, but the stupid people running the bungee jump would not accept, no matter how favorable the exchange rate they were offered. I was going to pay them twice the price of admission, in American, but they were so stupid that they said no. And we wonder why the Chinese were once referred to, by Rudyard Kipling as "the heathen Chinee". Note to Chinamen everywhere: if I am offering you a chance to double your money, take it! This is called doing business...welcome to capitalism!

So, instead, I went with a small group up a little mountain trail and took some pictures, which will be posted as soon as he sends them to me, because as I mentioned I lacked a memory card. Because I was in the forgetful mood, I decided to leave my really nice sun glasses behind that day. I hope they find a happy home.

That night, I decided to go my first Chinese night club with the aforementioned friend. Let me just say this, in spite of everything you may think you know about me, in a sea of Chinese people, I actually look like a pretty good dancer.

A Little Behind on Blogging

2005-07-11T08:19:00.000-05:00

There's quite a bit of stuff that happened that I haven't written about. We went to a giant gorge. I bought a ping pong paddle and played ping pong. Went to some really nice district of beijing with super nice restaurants and lots of foreigners. Right now, I don't really have time, but I will get to it. Stay tuned!

Compliment

2005-07-07T11:36:00.000-05:00

Today was a milestone for me-- I received my first ever compliment on my Chinese. Well, technically I've gotten compliments before. Whenever you go shopping in China, the shopkeepers will try to butter you up by complimenting your Chinese, but they're gonna compliment you no matter what. They are the Paula Abdul of spoken Chinese evaluation. No, today was big. I was in one-on-one session with Mr. Pan, the head teacher, when he told me:

"The first day you were a very poor speaker of Chinese, but today you are doing much better."

Ok so it was a bit of a backhanded compliment, and ok, I proceeded to blow the rest of the lesson, on account of getting nervous at ruining his compliment. Probably the worst thing was, I didn't even understand the compliment at first. He had to repeat it about four times. But, it was a compliment, and you can't take that away from me.

I decided yesterday that I was going to beat this language. It can be a brutal foe. Today class was a pounding swell of 1o ft. waves, and my teacher refused to toss me a lifejacket. I was starting to get pretty frustrated, so I decided to give some "creative" answers to her questions. She asked me what my strangest habit was, and I told her eating beef. She said that wasn't too strange, and I told her that in America it was considered to be terribly strange. She has never been to America, so she had to believe me! Then, I was looking through my backpack for a pencil and I found a little toy frog, to which you can open and close the mouth. I used the frog to talk for me, but after about 10 seconds of this, even I was too embarassed to go on.

Ok, so I was reading Lost Fan Fiction the other day. Uhhhh. Yeah. So, anyways, I got to the comments section on one of the forums, and a fan had posted something along the lines of "your post was so beautiful, I was crying for such a long time." I could not believe me eyes. Someone was actually crying about a fan fiction post, which, by the way, was just god-awful.

Speaking of play counts, I am currently in the middle of "Operation Dumbo Drop". It's an unfortunate title, because it does nothing to describe the nature of the operation, but what can I say--blame the beauracracy! Anyway, the point of operation dumbo drop is to listen to every last song in my iTunes library. As some of you may know, I have about 6,000 songs right now, and have only listened to about 2/3 of them. So, I programmed my iPod to autoupdate to a smart playlist which contains every unlistened song. Now, whenever I'm listending to the iGod (that's my nickname for it, because it's so great) I have no choice but to hear unheard songs. Right now, I have 8.5 days of music left to listen to. I'll keep all my reader's posted on my progress, because I'm sure you would like to know!

Guitar

2005-07-06T07:55:00.000-05:00

Today was a marked improvement over yesterday, which really wouldn't take much, but I went on and got myself a guitar. The store was originally asking 110 for the guitar which is some Chinese brand, but I got them down to 40 with a case, two extra sets of strings a strap and some picks. I probably could have got it for a little cheaper, but I still haven't mastered the art of the deal here. Anyway, I brought it home at around 6 pm and began to play when I noticed that it sounded absolutely terrible. I would completely tune it up, but then the second I would play a chord, it would detune and sound absolutely awful. This perplexed me, but not for long, when I looked down and noticed that the stock strings were so poor that each strum was actually bending them into a new shape. I added the fender strings that were a part of the deal and it sounds absolutely great. The problem is, I've been playing for the last three hours. You see, I really like playing guitar, I really dislike studying Chinese. This has created somewhat of a problem, but I came up with a solution. Whenver I need to stop playing guitar, I'm going to play the song "After Hours" by the Velvet Underground, after that I can't play until I've studied for a really long time. Back home, Chris and I have something like this, where we will play some songs and always end on the White Stripes' "Let's Build a Home". So far, my little plan has worked out, except that instead of starting to study, I've started to blog. Oh well. Hey look at that the action my guitar is looking a little high, maybe I can fix that...

Oh Me Oh My

2005-07-06T01:26:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I had a truly disgusting experience. I had been to this noodle restaurant before, called Malan Noodles, and had a pretty good expereince, so I decided to go back yesterday. Right away things started to go wrong, when the lady reached to get me a bottled water she knocked over a coke and it went off like a bomb spewing coke everywhere for, I'm not kidding, at least 30 seconds before it finally ran out of steam. I think that she might have blamed me for her misfortune, because 20 minutes later, after seemingly every person that had ordered after me had received their food, I was still waiting for them to start making mine. When I finally got it, I took about three bites before I noticed a fairly large dead bug in their. I really can't write about this, it is absolutely to vile. The lady at the coutner gave me back my money, but 1.50 American was simply not enough to erase the horror from my mind.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail

2005-07-04T03:58:00.000-05:00

Let me give a shout-out to my fellow bloggers: Mr. Clemmons, Chris Knight, and Roland Allen, you can find links for all these blogs on www.rolandallen.com. I especially recommend Mr. Clemmon's post on Nordstrom's. It will make you laugh out loud!

Ok, peep this. First, I wanted to mention the great Chinese expression we learned today, which is supposed to mean "when in rome...", though their expression is literally "enter border follow custom". This one really puts the idio(cy) in idiom.

Just a couple of things that popped into my mind during class. First of all mechanical pencils. I'm tired of all the mechanical pencil companies (I'm looking at you bic) cheating us out of that last centimeter of lead. You know what I'm talking about, you work your way through the little piece of lead and then when you get to the end that last little bit won't write. Now I've been using mechanical pencils exclusively since college, so these little piece have been adding up, probably for a total of about 1 kilometer of wasted led. You're telling me we can't put a man on the moon, but we cant make the last little centimeter of led useable. Come on, now scientists, let's get to work on this.

Ok, another thing that's been on my mind is how when we were kids, video games kinda sucked and I didnt even have any video games. I didn't mind playing board games, but I have a serious problem the board game Sorry, or should I say bored game. This game was absolutely the worst. It was basically just roll a die and and see if you get around a board. Then the designers must have realized that their prototype was absolutely the lamest game ever so they added a little dice popper and a rule that if you landed on someone else you said sorry and moved their piece back. I have a theory that the name "Sorry" has actually nothing to do with the game, and is an actual apology from manufacturer to customer, in a feeble attempt to atone for their failure of a creation. I had a real eureka moment when I was looking at the video game store in Singapore airport and saw Sorry: The Video Game. You could have knocked me over with a feather.

Ok post cards. Postcards are such a waste of time. Here is a sentence that the English language will never allow: "Geeze Louise, I am so happy that I got this post card!" Whoevers bright idea it was to add four lines for an address on the back of a picture and charge 75 cents was an absolute mastermind. Whoever's idea it was that they will brighten their friends/lover's day with a post card doesnt deserve to use up my air.

In class today, we were practicing our gramatical structures and the teacher asked me a question: "I think Chinese and America are the same, because they are both free countries. What do you think?" she said. The second I responded "I think that Chinese and America are different, because..." I know I had walked into a trap. I stopped myself and she asked "why? why are they different" thankfully I managed to fake a seizure just in time.

I wrote my uncles and aunts a note, and I got this back from one of them:

Tom,
> 
> Thanks for the note.  I saw the webshot photos of your new haircut and
> you are now as good looking as your dad.  Congratulations!  The
> Chinese will be intimidated by American business savvy and style. 
> That should
> keep them off balance long enough to get the trade imbalance under
> control. 
> 
> Those were interesting shots on the Great Wall.  I noticed the muscle
> shirt you were wearing didn't come with any muscles.  I believe a stew
> of mushrooms grown on yak dung, tiger testicles and curry of elephant
> placenta can address that issue.  Check at your local Cantonese
> deli for a bowl that can be microwaved.  Eat half of it before slathering the
> balance on your seminude body----- a Kung Fu(tm) jock strap is
> sufficient--- then do a 20 minute headstand in an inverted Lotus
> position.  You'll soon be known as the InTomidator. 
> 
> Enjoy the rest of your trip.  When next we meet, I'll show you my
> patented Kung Fu grip and Pouncing Lion knee buster.
> 
> Your favorite uncle,
> Kevin

As I mentioned I bought some glasses at a Chinese Market, and then I hopefully figured out how to use photos on my blog. This is a deadly combination if it works. However, in China you can only post to blogs, not view them (the government's crack squad of 50,000 internet watch dogs makes sure of that), so I have no idea if this is working or not. Let me know and keep checking back for more updates!

Food Poisoning, The Night Market, and Beijing Opera

2005-07-03T08:13:00.000-05:00

While jogging through the streets of Beijing the other day, I noticed what I looked like an interesting restaurant. On my first trip to China, I had eaten at a hot pot restaurant, which is, for you idiots out there where they bring out some boiling water to your table, along with a bunch of raw meat that you cook in the water. I had very fond memories of this restaurant and was excited by my discovery, which was similar, except that each table had a little grill instead of boiling water. When a group of us were trying to decide where to eat dinner tonight, it came instantly to mind.

Now suggesting a restaurant to a large group is always risky business. Anyone who disagrees with that has never been on a MUN trip with Mr. Parker. "Affordable and delicious?" I can remember him asking many a student post-meal. The sarcastic nod that followed cut deeper than any unclean steak knife at that restaurant could have. But, I took the plunge, and off we went.

The menu handed to us offered a myriad of exoctic meats alongside the more commonplace. Dog meat, which is surprisingly rare in China (usually medium rare actually, ba dum chhh) was available, and I joked that we should try the ram testis. The waiter who was presiding over all this tom foolery began to scrible in her notepad, at which point I frantically explained that we didn't actually want that, and I was only joking. She motioned to erase the writing, but the rest of us were a little wary of what we were eating from this point on.

We settled on a massive platter of beef, potatoes, and some nice slabs of bacon, which were quickly brought to our table. This is where the food poisoning bit comes in. Because all told we had five pairs of chopsticks and a grill space no larger than a sheet of notebook paper, there was massive cross contamination. At one point a young man was heard to utter:

"This potato tastes like beef"
"McDonald's French Fry" came the reply.

Personally, I found the whole experience to be rather enjoyable, although there was some muffled complaining amongst the group. In one clear incident, I berated a companion for not eating a large majority of the bacon on his plate, to which he replied "it's all fat". You see, this poor misled soul had never learned that bacon fat is the best part of bacon. The look of horror on his face when I ate all his fat, matched the look of horror on my face when I learned that the "artichoke" I thought I had been eating was actually cow's tongue.

Earlier today, I went to the store to buy some index cards and ended up walking out with a Chinese Chess board and a ping-pong paddle. The storekeepers really looked like they thought they were getting away with something, but the joke was on them, because everything combined cost about 13 american dollars.

Speaking of ridiculously cheap things, I went to the night market with my roommate last night to peruse various and sundry junk that I might want to buy. We went to a place right outside of Tianamen square, that was everything you expect from a Chinese market: dirty, cramped and items that would be overpriced if they were free. But I found some hilarious glasses that I bought, and plan to wear to class everyday, claiming that I was diagnosed with cataracts by the nearby Chinese eye clinic. Hopefully I will get some pictures up shortly of these bad boys, because they are hilarious. I also continue to buy dvd's which cost all of 1 dollar here. If anyone has any requests, I can probably bring you back some dvd's. Did I say one dollar? I meant five.

Speaking of dvd's I spent a large part of this weeking finishing up "Lost" which I am now convinced is one of the greatest TV shows of all time (better than 24?) The only thing that upset me is how they answered almost none of the big questions and are making us wait until the next season. And just now I realized that Chris and Joey are the only ones who even care about this.

On Friday was the Beijing opera, which has about as much in common with real opera as something that has nothing in common with it's name (I tried to think of a joke here, I really did). I was really skeptical at first, as it seems that every theatrical venture in China has the production values of a fifth grade Christmas pagent. Surprisingly the night proved somewhat enjoyable, as we were provided with snacks during the performance.

The actual production went something like this. A weird guy wearing make-up would prance out onto the stage, and every time he took a step or moved, the "orchestra" would make a calamitous sound, which the program identified as "music". To get a better understanding of what this sounded like you should know that the orchestra consisted entirely of percussion and string instruments with one string. In fact this one string instrument is quite prevalent in China, which might explain why the West has produced Mozart and the Beatles, and the East has produced Mandopop.

Though the story lines for the two plays were uncomfortably similar (scrappy underdog fights massive army and triumps), the provided english translations laughably poor (the second play was entitled "stealing the filthy pelf"), and the dramatic arcs of the two acts left much to be desired (at the end of the first act, the two main foes who have been viciously "battling" for the better part of 45 minutes suddenly decide to stop and [and I quote] "have a chat besides the old barn"), I found myself not despising the whole experience, which was much more than I could have hoped for coming into it.

Alright, during class, I've made a bunch of notes about other things that I should write about. For example, every day, EVERY DAY, the electricity in our classrooms short circuits and we lose lighting and air conditioning for about 15 minutes. They then turn on the power, go around and turn all the air conditioners and lights, and then act surprised when the power shorts again. This cycle repeats intself about 4 times each day. One day, they came by to turn on the air conditioning and the lights again, though in an act of pure strategical genius left one of the lights off. The worst part is, this actually solved the crisis! For about three days there were no power shortages. For some reason they abandoned this strategy though, and we now get to enjoy warm, dark classrooms again.

Two things completely unrelated to China, but that have been on my mind. First is the saddest radio call-in I've ever heard, which is saying a lot, because I listen to a lot of talk radio. Anyway, at the turn of the century, Einstein was named man of the century, and they were discussing it on KFI. They went to the phones and the first guy said that he thought the Einstein's importance lay in the theory of relativity. The host seemed thrilled that someone had called to discuss this and probed further.

"Yeah, for example," the caller continued "I'm sitting out here on my fishing boat, drinking a beer, and all of life's problem's seem to go away. It's all relative."

The caller was dead serious, and the host was speechless.

The other thing is that in 7th grade, I had to take this class which was kind of like shop with you computers. We used AUTOCAD software to run a lathe for example, which sounds cool, until you learn that our biggest accomplishment of the year was taking a large block of plastic and making it slighty smaller. Anyway, my lab partner for one of these projects was an absolutely ugly girl, probably the most disgusting girl I've ever met. I introduced myself as Tom, and then she told that I should call her "boys over books, because her sisters think that she spent all her time talking with boys on the phone instead of studying". My time with boys over books will haunt me for the rest of my life.

And the blog just keeps on going. Three last things. First of all if I had a time machine (speaking of the theory of relativity), I finally decided what I would use it for. I would go back to the creation of the Chinese language, and I would teach them the joys of phonetic spelling. "You mean we don't have to create a unique combination of little tiny pictures for every single item on the planet?" they would ask.

"No, you idiots, no."

And while we're talking about Chinese characters, I must say that I am a little miffed that my college Chinese teachers decided to teach me a type of characters that hasn't been used since 1947. They claimed that it was so we could read "ancient texts" which on my list of why I'm taking Chinese ranks about 1043rd, right below "Being able to negotiate for cheaper soap at various Chinatowns across the United States", but right above "being able to watch Chinese Soap operas". So, now I've had to relearn a whole bunch of characters, completely ruining a number of pnemonic devices that I had crafted for the old characters. Thankfully though, I've been able to salvage a few. You see, to help myself memorize the characters, I create little stories for each one. For example for the word "dean", I imagined that the character was Howard Dean in front of audience with a microphone to his left. Now, appropriately, in the simplified version, the microphone has been taken away.

Ok, something I was thinking about was that if I was teaching English to a bunch of bratty Chinese kids, I think I might intentionally slip in a few "mistakes" into their vocabulary. This is why I'm always a little afraid to speak Chinese. That, and I'm terrible at it.

As time wears on, I've been attempting to craft the perfect metaphor to describe what Chinese Class here is like. Right now I'm stuck on baseball, with the teacher as all time pitcher, and the students as somewhat unwilling batters. What happens is that the teacher will throw a random pitch to a student, and the student will attempt a respond, doing so well (homerun) or terribly (strike out). The difficulty of the questions often varies, allowing for the fastball/curveball/etc... metaphor. The one problem with this metaphor is that it fails to capture the truly devistating nature of an all out student wipe-out. Whereas a strike-out in baseball is commmonplace, and hardly shameful, I've seen many students be reduced to stammering idiots on questions they probably knew the answer to. But once you get going down the wrong road, things can get ugly. I tend to call these the "Train Wrecks".

Why is it that when you have the most to do, you have the most to blog about? This is a great mystery of the 21st century, that some great thinker must tackle. Though not me, the night is young and much homework awaits me. Farewell brave readers, if you've made it this far. And if not continue reading, because there's alot of hilarious jokes in this one.

GRRR

2005-06-27T02:32:00.000-05:00

First of all let me say that blogger software pretty much sucks. I wrote a really long entry and then when I went to post it, it told me to enter my password, then when I did, it accidentally deleted my entry. Also, let me say that webshots software is incredible. Using only my digital camera and this amazing software I have posted a bunch of pictures with hilarious captions at:

http://community.webshots.com/user/skcormot

Please take a moment to enjoy these pictures, as I spent a depressing amount of time writing the captions for them.

Ok, so if I had posted my post that blogger deleted, you would have known that the most traumatic dining experience involved some Mongolian Barbecue, and a hilarious story that only a priviledged few will ever hear. But last saturday I had a close second. For a little background let me say that on Friday all I had was a small chicken sandwhich from McDonalds and some Raman noodles. Then Saturday we went to the Great Wall, where the only food they had all day was a lemon-cola popsicle, which was actually quite tasty, standing in sharp contrast to the frozen slime popsicle of my previous experience. Nonetheless, I was starving upon returning to Beijing Normal University and in need of a truly hearty meal.

I went with a large group of kids, that included my roommate and the "RA" of the trip, to a restaurant that smelled strongly of paint thinner. This foreboding omen aside, the place looked pretty decent, they even brought us up to the private dining rooms upstairs. Unfortunately there was only room for about 10 people in each room, and our group was at least 20. The student's randomly split up into the two rooms, which meant that I ended up in the room with all the Asians that were in fifth year Chinese.

As the RA went off to order for the group, I sat quietly as everyone talked and laughed, greatful that no one was trying to drag me into the conversation. Suddenly, though, my good luck came to an end, as some kid engaged me and began speaking gibberish. Thankfully, by this point, I've learned that all introductory Chinese conversations will proceed the same, in the same order, and with the same questions. First they will ask you your Chinese name, then your English name, what university you go to, and what grade your in. Rarely, they may ask you major, but never more than this. With this in mind I confidently "conversed" with my new friend:

"dfanm,vc?"
"Wu shyh chau" I said which is my Chinese name.
"dafv cmz?"
"Thomas Knight"
"eiokldmv?"
"Princeton"
"Eadsfav?"
"Junior"
"vmn,z ws?"
"Economics"
"Dfc,mzvn?"

I panicked. This guy was breaking all types of protocol. There wasn't supposed to be a sixth question! He was supposed to ask me my major, and then smile and nod, and find someone that actually spoke Chinese. I was saved by the waiter, though, who brought in the first course of the meal and distracted everyone's attention.

Now remember, at this point, I am completely starving, having not eaten a decent meal in two days. I am ready for the orange flavored chicken, and the beef with brocolli, and the shrimp fried rice! The first course is roots. Not one kind of root, two kinds of root. One is red, one is colorless, though they suck equally. Worry not, I think, this is but the first course, to clear our pallettes and ready us for the inevitable feast that is to come our way!

The next course was crawfish with the eyes still attached, and it only got worse from there. After the "Chinese Meatball" and "Tofu Stew", I grew hopefull as they brought out some sort of noodle dish. But I knew better than to dig in right away.

"Mian?" I asked the person sitting next to me, which means noodles.
"Eel" he said, breaking the no English rule, though this must go down as one of the more noble acts of civil disobedience ever. Repulsed, I sat and ate a small bowl of white rice.

I managed to pay for my share of the meal (at 4 dollars, the most expensive yet, by far), and break away to the local KFC. There, I enjoyed a delicious spicy chicken sandwich, and fries with eel sauce.

As I mentioned, we went to the great wall on saturday, which was truly a FINE experience. I mean, truly a great experience! The fine thing was from the shirt I got a singapore which you would know about if you looked at my pictures!

The great wall is a marvelous spectacle that you can visit, and its in China. When you first get there you have to walk through a crowded marketplace set up for tourists like you, where the items for sale include cold water, cheap t-shirts, and the horribly butchered english language.

"Cod wala!" they shout, and you have to wonder, do I sound that dumb when I speak Chinese, and then you have to stop wondering, because the answer is probably yes.

After you walk through the marketplace you have to walk through a bunch of confusing rooms and gardens that have large stones and "Stalactites" in them. From my many childhood visits to mammtoh caves in Kentucky, I had learned that stalactites are typically formed from the mineral sediment in water drops dripping from the ceilings of caves over thousands of years. Apparently the Chinese definition of stalactites is a mound of ugly concrete hastily poured in an attempt to impress naive tourists. Well, I can say this much, it worked! I was in complete awe of the amazing "Stalactite Garden" and decided to spend my day there, rather than going to the Great Wall.

But, my teachers told me I had to stick with the group, and the group decided to keep going. On the way up, we saw a sign that said that at this section of the Great Wall, you could walk 3,000 meters before conditions deteriorated. I immediately had my goal and began a light jog up and down slanted stairs and dodgy stones. I soon made a friend, by virtue of the fact that he was the only other one jogging on the great wall, and we began to encourage each other as they going got rough.

I can tell you this much, it is no wonder that the Chinese are all so healthy if they are using the Great Wall for their work out regimen. This thing is an absolute beast, with tons of elevation change and sweltering heat to boot. I truly regretted bringing my heavy backpack, filled with a sweatshirt, two 500 page books, and a xbox gaming system with bose surround sound speakers, and a full-sized dolphin.

By the time we reached the top, we were dead tired but happy to have made it. We were considering going past the "do not go past this sign" sign, but there was a guard there guarding it. The guard was listening to a radio actually. "Crazy in Love". Beyonce.

We made our way back down to the bus, where we noticed on the way, and this was a truly surreal experience, a slide going from the top of the Great Wall to the parking lot. I was supremely interested in doing this, but none of my classmates seemed to excited about dying so early in their Princeton in Beijing experience. If you wanna know what I mean about dying, I will show you the video when I get back. People were going at least 20 mph and the only safety measure was a Chinese guy with a megaphone shouting "GO SLOWER!" in broken english.

Right now, it is two days later and my calf muscles are still absolutely killing me. Stairs have become my mortal enemy and aspirin my only friend. I am about to go on a little walking tour of the campus so that I get some good pictures of what Beijing looks like, and then it's time to hit the books. Zai jian!

Communism Rules!

2005-06-20T07:40:00.000-05:00

Oh the things I have seen!

Tonight I was planning to go to McDonalds, because I did not feel like walking to a far away Chinese restaurant. Then a friend showed me a bunch of Chinese restaurants that were very close to the campus, leading to my profound thought: "dinner is what happens when you're planning to go to McDonald's". The best part of this whole thing was that the restaurant we went to was serving "spicy rape". McDonalds only has sweet and sour rape.

Then on the way back we saw a kid with a pet duck walking around.

I also forgot to write that on Saturday I went to Tianamen square with John Snyder and we saw some sites and so on. When you go to Tianamen square it is just flooded with tourists and so there are a bunch of Chinese people looking to make a quick buck. One guy tried to sell me a book of Mao's quotations for 10 dollars american. I wanted to practice my Chinese, so I told him it was too big. It was a proud moment for me.

There is a guy that plays Sim City 1 every day, on the dorm computers, which cost 50 cents an hour to use (maybe this pricing scheme is how the rapper got his namesake). I figure he's sitting there 8 hours a day, which comes to 4 dollars a day, but overall I think it's not a bad way to live your life.

I'm sure this thought has occured to every foreign language student, but I really wish that I could just get plugged in like Neo and instantly know Chinese. It would be awesome, they would put the chord in the back of my neck, punch a couple of keys, and then I would sit up and say, "Je connais le Chinois", because it is a big program and it also teaches you French.

China

2005-06-20T02:11:00.000-05:00

So here's what I did. I found my worst class and my worst subject, and decided to spend the summer doing only that for 8 hours a day. I got into Beijing a on Thursday, and I have taken a couple of pictures so far which I will post. When I went to New York City it inspired me to write a lot in my blog, but I'm not sure if I see that happening here. For one thing, I am very busy and distraught here, because, as I said, I am not very good at Chinese. One of the things they make you do here is speak only Chinese, except on phone calls home and blog posts, so come to think of it, I might end up writing a lot.

For the flight here, my dad somehow decided to put me on business class. Now I'm not saying my dad is cheap, but when he sits around the house, he sits around the house and refuses to throw away foodstuffs well past their expiration date! (thankyou jokes.com) As it turns out though, he had a whole bunch of Singapore Airline frequent flier miles that he wanted to ditch, because these days airlines tend to go out of business rendering frequent flier miles as worthless as the paper they're printed on, which, for Singapore air, is actually solid gold papyrus. Maybe this explains his concern over their financial well-being.

I flew in a day before the program started, so I was to stay in Beijing Landmark Towers. My mom had found a little currency for me in a chest of drawers, which I hoped was enough to get me to the hotel. The amount was 65 RMB, which is about 8 bucks. I hailed a taxi and got in with a massive, sweaty, Chinese man, whose religion, presumably, forbade the buttoning of a shirt.

"Beijing Landmark Towers" I said.
"vcdahjpgeinv" he said.
"Beijing Landmark Towers" I said.
"Hen hao" he said, which means very good, though I must admit I didn't feel very good. I felt very bad. As the Chinese would say: not hen hao.

Miraculously, he took to me to the right hotel. I looked down at the meter. Wow, I thought 65 kuay exactly! What are the odds that I would have the exact right amount of currency from some random drawer in my house?

"Hen hao" I said, and motioned for him to stop. But he decided to drive about 6 inches farther as the meter ticked to 66 kuay. God was sending me message. Your best isn't good enough, god said. I gave the driver 65 kuay and an American dollar which I think he really liked, because he was giggling with joy.

The next morning I walked to a Chinese supermarket, and stopped at a Chinese bathroom on the way. Let me say this: the only thing that smells worse than a Chinese bathroom is a Chinese supermarket. I saw such things in this store that I would not wish eating them upon anyone. The aquarium in the back, though was truly impressive, featuring eel, lobster, giant fish, and a scale model of the Titanic disaster, which we can only assume was somehow edible, or else was wasting valuable space that could have been used to house at least fifteen slime fish.

Now I am at Beijing Normal University, in my comfortably appointed dorm room (excepting the matress which must have been constructed from some unholy alloy of granite and steel). There is an air coditioner and power outlets and everything you'd expect in an American dorm room. Beijing, is in fact, very similar to New York City, right down to the thick layer of filth which coats the streets and sidewalks. I must confess that I have even been to the local McDonalds, which featured the Big Dog Burger, an allusion, I hope, to the size of the dish, rather than the more likely alternative (note for PETA: there is actually no such thing as the big dog burger, it is only a joke! To eat dog, you must go to the KFD, next door. hi-oh!)

There are some things different that you notice though. For example, my friend John and I didn't see a police car for our first two days here, and when we did see one, it was a beat up old VW. We guessed that even a civic driver could succesfully outrun a police chase, if his heart was into it. Also, at first, we noticed a suspicious absence of pets. Recently I've seen some people walking dogs, although they all look the exact same (the dogs, not the people...actually both) causing me to wonder if it is just the same dog being walked over and over.

We also hadn't seen a gas station until yesterday, and when we did find one, they fueled their cars not with petroleum, but with bamboo and ancient Chinese poetry. It was truly a magical scene to behold, although things took a turn for the worse when we were spotted and forced to pay the ultimate price, by getting the infamous Chinese bowl haircut. That's another thing you will notice. This town has at least three barber shops ever city block. But that's what you get, I guess, when your nation is so populus and said population has such exotic tastes in hairstyles.

I am now going to the library, now, to see what Chinese books look like, and, if I'm lucky, how a Chinese librarian scolds.

My New Job

2005-06-11T05:21:00.000-05:00

You should know that I've been busy on account of it's break, and during break you must do things like get your ipod fixed, buy cereal, watch 10 episodes of 24 waiting for you on Tivo, and get sick.

Why I got sick is an interesting story. Whenever I come home there is always the pressure to make money. My mom is always reminding me to make money with helpful reminders like "get a job" and "If you don't get a job then I will stop buying you tappiocca pudding" which she says, or spells in magnetic poetry on, you guessed it, the fridge (containing the tappiocca pudding).

So, we look in the phone book for what place would possibly hire a 19 year old with no skills who is available for about 4 days. There is one job typing and one job doing manual labor for a company called Labor Ready. Now, one thing I've learned in your life is that you have to play to your strength's so my first choice was obviously the labor. Manual labor appealed to my main strength: my strength! If there was an application I WOULD HAVE WRITEN THIS.

But there wasn't an application. When I arrived at the "office" which was really a large empty room: half carpeted but fully depressing, I found a morbidly obese women listening to "If you don't know me by now" and eating Taco Bell. The song was appropriate, because in an instant I knew more about her than I would ever have cared to.

She told me I had to fill out a 73 question survey to see if I qualified for the job. The survey was a laugh riot! Here's an example of some of the questions:

1. When was the last time you smoked Weed?
a) today
b) within a month
c) never

2. When was the last time you were in a fist fight?
a) today
b) within a month
c) never

3.When was the last time you did angel dust
etc...

The questions rotated between drugs and fist fights, and I was doing well until this bizzare question:

16. If you got in a fist fight right now, would you win?
a) yes
b) maybe
c) probably not
d) no

Answering yes would suggest strength and perseverance. Also, if it was a fight over safety, for example, my boss is instructing my men to transport hazardous waste in their bare hands and I go "not on my watch" and then he starts fighting me, it would probably be good if I could win the fight. But I put no. I was just trying to be honest.

They called my house at 8 am the next morning with my first assignment. I was going to be moving boxes into storage. I got to the work site and I met my disgruntled Eastern European boss named Emil. Emil was the kind of guy, that when I meet people like him I wonder what it's like to have no joy in your life. Emil's favorite word, I think, was "idiot", and his favorite sentence was "don't put that there you idiot".

I was not too much help moving as it turns out, because I'm actually not strong, but my coworker got the job done. I felt bad when he shouldered the brunt of a 300 pound granite table top from a moving van, but not bad enough to not accept the exact same pay as him.

When we were done unloading the boxes I figured the job was over, but Emil had one more task in mind. We were to help him fold his filthy, infested moving blankets and put them back in the van. These blankets were like nothing I'd ever dealt with, invoking sneezes galore and a near vomit experience, discretely supressed but foul tasting nonetheless. Speaking of taste, my taste test of a white powder upon one of the blankets was inconclusive with regards to anthrax, but I remain highly suspicious.

At the end of our work shift (9 am-2pm) Emil was to fill out my workslip. Under hours worked he wrote 5, whispering kindly, "the extra hour is your tip". I didn't have the energy to teach emil the concept of arithmetic then and there, so I got into my car and drove to hq. There, I received 33 dollars in cash at hq and headed home.

The next morning I woke up with an aching sore throat and a runny nose (please note: two symptoms of anthrax). I used the money to pay back my mom, because I owed her 30 dollars from the night before. All in all, an awesome experience and I would definitely do it again. Thanks Labor Ready for making my dream come true!

The Things The Carried

2005-05-09T02:31:00.000-05:00

They carried laptops: Dell, Sony, Mac. Some weighed 10 pounds, desktop replacement units, as they were known. If you were lucky you had an ultraportable machine, which weighed maybe 5 lbs. Ultraports, though, never got too much respect.
They carried carrying cases for the laptops, full of accessories. Power charger, 24 oz. , USB memory stick 1 oz., a couple of sheets of loose leaf, .1 oz. If they were writing a paper, which they almost always were, they carried books. Stacks and stacks of books. I once saw a young woman buried under the complete works of James Joyce and the Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook. Thinking about these things could drive a man crazy.
The third floor study lounge was the closest thing on Princeton's campus to Vietnam. There was no central air, so in the heat of the midday sun, it could get to feeling hotter than hell. Also, for some unknown reason, the entire bug population of Forbes college had migrated there. Maybe it was the heat.
There was one time, I can't forget it, I saw a girl lose it. The place was packed, but she didn't care. She just started yelling "I can't do it! It's so hot in here!" over and over. But that's not what gets me so many years later. What get's me is that as she sitting there, losing her mind, the guy next to her doesn't even take off his ipod ear-buds. He sat there, humming along, and dreaming, no doubt, of home.

After you've lost all energy or interest in school anymore it's the fear that keeps you going. You've gotta imagine the test and getting your grades back and then energy isn't a problem anymore.
For me at least. I wondered how everyone else did it, so I asked this guy who everyone called Slick Rick.
"You ever see The Ring?" he said
"Yeah"
"Good movie."
"Slick Rick, I don't see what that has to do with my question."
"You know that scene where the girl comes out of the TV after everyone thinks she's gone?"
"Sure, I remember it."
"I love that part."
Later we found out that Slick Rick wasn't a student at Princeton, at all, but rather a functionally retarded homeless man, living in the study lounge. This explained a lot.

One day I had to go in for shots. I was going to China, and just to be safe they were gonna pump me full of vaccines. What did I care? To me it was a chance to get away from a daily grind. My brain was starting to hurt anyway, maybe a nice jab in the arm would take my mind of the pain.
When you're out there, in the study lounge, you tend to forget things. So, I made a mark on the back of my hand. Dragged my number two mechanical pencil up and down till the skin turned red. When I saw the mark, I would think of my vaccines, and I wouldn't miss my appointment.
But making the mark had distracted me. I couldn't focus and started to mess around with my mobile phone (6 oz.). I noticed a feature that I hadn't seen before: quick text. You could program in common text messages and then send them with the click of a button. I got goofy all of a sudden and programmed in the message "please pass the milk please" as the number one quick text. Classic, I thought, I have to remember to write about this in my blog. But how to remember? I glanced down at my hand, and multitasked the mark.

To Be Continued...

iTunes Library

2005-05-06T19:53:00.000-05:00

I have this recurring nightmare where Steve Jobs gets a hold of my computer and takes a look at my iTunes library. He starts yelling at me saying how poorly organized it is, without album art, and with messed up genres and some songs that don't even have albums. No! I say, it wasn't supposed to happen like this. It wasn't always this way. There's just too much. You don't understand...I'm working on it, it just takes so long. Then Chris is standing off in the background, and then people start checking my play counts, and laughing that I haven't even listened to London Calling! I have, but then my play counts got cleared! Please believe me.

All I want is to have the best iTunes library in the world. My humble goal is driving me to madness.

05/05/05

2005-05-05T19:44:00.000-05:00

This is my third blog post in as many days. At what point do I leave the realm of the mere mortal and become a "blogger"?

Today is 05/05/05. The Mexicans must be thrilled. To celebrate Cinqo de Mayo de Cinqo our cafeteria served a fine assortment of self-proclaimed Mexican food including fried cod and broccolli. As we all know these two dishes practically define Mexican cuisine and the Mexicans get a good laugh out of the Gringo's who asscoiate tacos or burritos or Enchiritos with Mexico.

I was thinking that it was pretty neat that it was 05/05/05, and felt bad that I wasn't celebrating, so I performed a modest, but mildly impressive jig and hummed a merry tune. The tune was "The Power of Suds" by "Weird" Al Yankovich. It is a hilarious parody of "The Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News.

Today was Chinese Table, which is where the Chinese students all gather around the table at Forbes and speak Chinese with another. I'm a little nervous for going to China, because if you speak English once there you get an automatic "B", and if you speak english twice they send you home. Here is a humorous scene I imagined of what my time in China will be like:

(Tom flying on plane, reading a book. The book is a "choose-your-own adventure", but a pretty mediocre one. Tom's has chosen his adventure such that in the book he is also sitting on a plane reading a choose-your-own-adventure. Thinking about this is making Tom's head hurt, so he takes a nap. Fade to Tom arriving at Beijing University. Tom approaches check-in.)
Tom: Hello there
Chinese Person: Automatic B!
Tom: Oh crap.
Chinese Person: And now you leave!
(Cut to Tom flying back on the plane as humorous music plays in the background).

Right now, Chris is making a comic strip that we wrote. It's pretty funny, and I'll post it here when he's done.

Ice-T and Ice Cube

2005-05-04T23:39:00.000-05:00

As I've mentioned previously in the blog I got a bunch of snapple iced tea at the Fristfest. Too much in fact. So to get rid of the Snapple Iced Tea that was clogging up my refrigerator like so much bad cholesterol I decided to throw a party called: "Tom's Iced Tea/Ice-T Party". The theme was that I would play Ice-T songs and everyone that came would get a free iced tea (or two if they were greedy!) Well right away we had a problem--I had no Ice-T songs! To my chagrin, noone was even streaming Ice-T over iTunes. Thanks to some quick thinking, and the Princeton populations general ignorance of the subtleties of gangsta rap, I was able to play Ice Cube and noone noticed. The party was a mild success, with several people coming. I will not try to claim that it was a blowout, but I think if you asked my guests to list the top 5 moments in their life, you would see this party on a number of lists.

Chris just showed me that Mr. Raibon's cd is on iTunes now, but then I noticed that noone has bought it. Depressing.

Speaking of iTunes, I have something to say to bands making albums nowadays. This is directed at Green Day, Brian Wilson etc... the bands that make their albums designed to be one constant song so that the end of every song is the beginning of the next song. Stop it! iTunes and iPod's do not have gapless playback meaning that the end and beginning of every song sounds stupid and ridiculous. Actually maybe I should direct this at apple. To all the apple exec's that read this blog (Steve Jobs, I'm looking at you) please add gapless playback to iTunes. How long could it possibly take? A couple of seconds? And don't give me that "use the cross fader" nonsense. How dare you even invent the cross fader. How dare you!

Now the part where I write about music, and seem pretentious and noone reads. Nashville Skyline is great. Much less depressing than "Blood on the Tracks" which I can hardly listen to anymore, because it's so sad. I listened to "Velvet Underground" today for the first time, and was quite pleased (not the band, the album, you idiot). The end of this one reminds me of the end of "Flood" of all albums, because the second to last track is experimental, followed by a very slow soft song. Come to think of it, that's how the Beatles ended the white album. Before that album they put the experimental song at the end (see Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's). When critics look back at this blog, they will probably say that it follows in the tradition of "The White Album" in that the penultimate paragraph is very experimental and technically wild, while the last paragraph is slow, soft, and ultimately dull and pointless. How Meta.

Andrew WK and Banquets

2005-05-03T00:21:00.000-05:00

Andrew WK came to perform here on Sunday. It was so ill and offensive that I was freaking out. There was a giant mosh pit, where people danced agressively and wildly and people not in the mosh pit were probably thinking, oh how I wish I could dance with such moves. If they tried they quickly discovered that the mosh pit was full of mud and violence, and was not the place that they had imagined it to be. At one point I noticed that Andrew WK and I both have the same shoes, namely Asics Duomax Gels. I sorely wanted to share this fact with him with the hope that he would then become good friends with me, and key me in on his party animal lifestyle as described in such hits as "Party Hard", "It's Time to Party", and "Party 'till I puke". To do this I had to fight my way to the front of the mosh pit, which was exciting in itself and resulted in me getting a confusing footprint on my upper thigh. Then when I got to the front, I noticed that when anyone confronted AWK, he would make them sing along with his songs. I got nervous that he would put the mic in front of my face, and to be honest I don't really know the lyrics of his song too well. I decided that I would have to show him our identical shoes later in life. Also, my shoes were so covered in mud that he probably couldn't even recognize them even if I did know the lyrics.

I've been listening to a lot of audiobooks lately. Such as Artemis Fowl, which is a children's book so packed full of cliches that it amazes me that the binding doesn't burst at the seams. Then, I remembered it's an audiobook, and you can't well expect mpec encoded bits and bytes to burst out of the ipod shuffle. Also, it's very simple and easy to listen to on tape, unlike Sense and Sensibility, which is what I'm on now. Jane Austen amuses me.

Today for lunch I had 10 minutes before Chinese, so I had to eat in about two minutes. I got a messy beef pita sandwich, egg salad, and peas. What followed was a spectacle that attracted the attention of the majority of the people in the dining hall. I felt sick for the entire class.

Dinner was quite different, as the Daily Princetonian was holding a banquet celebrating my accopmilshments as a COLUMNIST (as well as all the other stuff to do with the paper). Dinner was brought out at the breakneck pace of 30 minutes per course, so that although the banquet began at 6, I nearly missed my radio show at 9 o' clock. Congratulations to Laura Sillers and Leslie Lee for winning awards for their work at the Princeton. Obviously there was some clerical error that explains why I didn't get a prize, but I'm sure it will all be sorted out in due time.

I Am So Famous

2005-04-29T16:30:00.000-05:00

Today I got an another article in the Daily Princetonian. This makes three fore me, but I think this was my best one. You can read it here:

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2005/04/29/opinion/12814.shtml

So far people have said they liked it, which is always nice, and I even got an email from my friend Rob's mom. Hopefully next year I can write for them a little more regularly, but it seems like a lot of people try to write for the Prince, so I'll take what I can get.

Right now they are having a filibuster to protest Bill Frist trying to get rid of the filibuster. Students are just standing up in front of the Frist Center (built by Frist) and reading variuos random things. You can read about it if you do a search in google news, I don't feel like putting up any links. Anyway, today Rush Holt came by. He is a congressman from New Jersey. He came by and did some filibustering by reading from Aesop's fables and then giving a little speech.

Someone asked him why democrats couldn't just stop the filibuster by filibustering, and he seemed to become confused. I asked him why he was making it seem like the filibuster was being entirely dismantled, when the "nuclear option" concerned only legislative appointments". He said that as soon as the first type of filibuster was removed the second would quickly follow. I think there's a lot of misinformation going around on both sides, as is typical of any issue anymore, but Rush seemed like a nice, if slightly nervous guy, so vote for Rush.

Tonight they are having house parties, which is basically some parties at the eating clubs where everyone gets dressed up. They were a little too expensive for my limitied budget, so I decided to opt out this year. Tonight my plan is to play some online chess and drink 10 cans of snapple iced tea which I was given at Frist Fest yesterday. Should be a blast.

Build-A-Monkey

2005-04-29T00:44:00.000-05:00

Today was Frist Fest, which is basically a chance for them to waste the equivalent of one student's entire tuition on an event about which literally noone cares. They have cotton candy and bands and a ring toss, and hundreds upon hundreds of feet of sub sandwiches. I asked my friend, Scott, if he would enjoy making a 10 ft sub sandwich. He said "Eating one or making one?" which is a stupid question so I scolded him. Then I said "making one." He said it wouldn't be fun making a 10 ft sub sandwich which is obviously something stupid to say. The only thing better than making a 10 ft sub is making a 10 ft diameter quiche, because the surface area is larger.

The one event worth doing at Fristfest was build-a-bear, which for you idiots out there, is where you build a bear. How long was the line for build a bear? There were more people in line for build a bear than at the rest of the festival combined and combine that with the number of people that have been into outer space and the people who have ever used a space bar in their life, or been to the space bar which is a lounge on top of the Casino Morongo. But I decided to get in line for build-a-bear with Leslie Lee, and make a bear that I could beat up when I got nervous for finals.

We played chess as we waited in line. I had to go set up for quad at 8 o clock. We got in line at 715/730, I'm not exactly sure, but needless to say, I didn't think it would become an issue with my meeting. We had a conversation with a guy that might have been homeless and was pretty excited to build a bear. Things took longer than expected and we got to the front of the line at about 815.

I had to pick between unicorn, purple bear, or monkey. I chose a monkey, because monkeys are funny. But when I got my cute little monkey, I knew I could never eat him, because he was made out of cloth. I should have expected this.

For you idiots out there build a bear is done by stuffing the bear full of stuffing and then closing him up. But here's the thing. They don't limit the amount of stuffing! When I got the monkey I just started stuffing him full. I stuffed the monkey for an hour, using nearly an entire box (4 ft tall) of stuffing. Then the build a bear lady started to interfere.

"You're not going to be able to pull the strings closed" she said
You close the bear by pulling on the strings that are built into him. My bear was so fat that she thought the strings wouldn't close. But she was wrong! I managed to squeeze the bear really tight and pull the strings and voila. I handed it over and the stupid woman, what she did, she pulls the strings really hard and they snapped.

"See I told you they would break"

This is why the woman is building bears and not acheiving anything with her life. So now I had a bear overflowing with stuffing and with a huge hole in my stomach. Also I was now an hour late for quad decorating. I thought about it, and if my excuse for arriving an hour late was that I was a building a monkey then I might not be an officer for much longer. So, I sneaked in and noone noticed, and I decided to show everyone my monkey and talk about how to fix it.

Some viable ideas were thrown around: sewing, staples, tape. Some less viable ideas were thrown around: human skin graft. It turns out that sewing and stapling didn't work, so now I have a stuffed monkey spewing stuffing all over the place. I decided to name him big fat monkey, on account of his size and his fatness.

Only Everyone Survives

2005-04-21T01:26:00.000-05:00

People have started walking around campus wearing these T-shirts. There's a picture of the state of New Jersey and then it says "Princeton: Only the Strong Survive". The people that wear these shirts don't deserve the precious gift of life.

Ok, first of all there's a serious problem in the logic behind these shirts. For, in an effort to improve their US news and world report ranking, Princeton makes sure that everyone graduates. The graduation rate here is literally 99%. I know kids that have been suspended two or three times and they continue to let them try again. I know a girl that is 25 and still a student. I know a young man who submitted "The Great Gatsby" and claimed that it was his original thesis. No, this is not quite true, but would be quite amusing.

There is another problem with this T-Shirt, that lies in that rare 1% of Princeton students unable to be pushed kicking and screaming through the front gate. Without fail, this elite strata of scholar is occupied nearly exclusively by the atheletes of Princeton. Perhaps you can see where I'm going with this, so I will simply suggest a more appropriate slogan: "Princeton Only the Strong Don't Survive"

On the agenda is dealing with this:

come to:
Audrey's Shana-hand-me-a-beer Party!

SATERDAY, APRIL 23, 2005
San Diego...

Live at the Comedy Club

2005-02-22T17:22:00.000-05:00

MC: Ladies and Gentleman welcome to the Tom Knight comedy club. And now here is, he owns the place so we have to watch him: It's Tommmmmmm Knight!
Tom: Thankyou, thankyou. I just swam here and boy are my arms and legs tired.
Crowd: (applause)
T: Yeah, so anyways, the other day, I was minding my own business, when all of a sudden, this guy does something totally unexpected and hypocritical. And I was like, what? But, ok, I go on minding my own business, when all of a sudden another guy does something hypocritical, but, BUT in the exact opposite way as the first guy. I was like, woah, how ironic! Hellllllloooooo!
C: How Ironic!
T: So, what's the worst part about the common cold?
C: How cold was it??
T: The fact that there's not a cure for it.
C: (Sneezes)
T: Why did the person go to IHOP, the International House of Pancakes?
C: Why?
T: So they could get crippling diahrreah and lose enough wait to fit into that prom dress.
C: Thats practical and hilarious!
T: If I opened a chain of Mexican Restaurants, hey fuggedaboutit, all we would serve would be rice drink!
C: (Confusion)
T: Hmm, sorry about that one.
C: That's ok.
T: So, let's see...Why did the student become outraged?
C: Pourquoi?
T: Isn't it obvious? Grade Inflation!
C: Now it's time for the political part of the routine.
T: Right, how'd you know?
C: What's the worst part about George Bush?
T: The gas prices! I'm so tired of PAYING AT THE PUMP! Good thing I DON'T OWN A CAR!
C: "A breakthrough comedian, the finest of a generation"
T: What's the worst part about being in the band the Arcade Fire?
C: Having Erin Sale as your number one fan!
T: Why did member's of Rock and Roll band the Walkmen burn their master tapes and recite a vow never to make any more music.
C: Because Erin Sale became their number one fan after seeing them featured on an episode of The OC.
T: Thankyou, everyone, you've been a wonderful audience.

Back Again

2005-02-18T23:02:00.000-05:00

I decided to start writing in the blog again for a lot of reasons. First, I'm hopefully getting a column in the school newspaper, so I need to start writing again. Second I have a lot of new ideas about how to make fun of Erin Sale in creative new ways. Finally, the broomball season has started again, and I feel I owe it to the general population who won't be able to attend our games to provide a lively synopsis of what you missed.

The new blog will hopefully be entertaining and aggressive, and there will be no holds barred, so if I write something and someone wants me to take it down, that person should contact me, so that I can mock them in the blog and feel guilty and take down the original post and the one mocking them. Most, importantly, as is tradition with my other blogs, I will write about twenty entries, and then get bored and stop. So enjoy while you can.

The first thing I want to write about is the amazing broomball game that took place last Wednesday night and the heroic efforts of an unlikely underdog.

For those of you unfamiliar with broomball, i t's basically a combination of curling, hockey, household chores, brooming, mopping, hitting girls at full speed, and fun. It is unquestionably the greatest sport ever invented, even beter than table broomball (yes, that's exactly what it sounds like). Last year we entered a team and had the time of our lives and along with every other team we made the playoffs (If every team qualifies, is still a playoff? As the MLS has shown us, the answer is yes.)

Well, we met a worthy foe in the first round in the all Russian Team representing Charther, the Engineering Eating Club. They dealt us a humiliating defeat of over 50 goals to 0 putting on a veritable clinic of broomball skills and successfully demonstrating the pressing need for some kind of mercy rule.

But this year the Russian's are all graduated or back in the USSR, which means that we decided to enter a team and win the championship. Our team name, selected by the enthusiastic team manager, Ann Vale, is Team Tonya Harding and our team chants have something to do with Crowbars and Blood.

This Wednesday, we had our first game. The opponent: Grad College. The good news: grad students are some of the most feeble uncoordinated human beings on the planet. Generally their muscles have atrophied from hours of performing chemcial experiments our typing in computer code. The Bad News: They were probably gonna have at least one Russian.

Our team this year contains some familiar faces and some talented newcomers. In no particular order:

1. Ann Vale (Year 2, Defender) Effective wall passer and shirt maker. Team manager who composes lengthy emails to rally the troops. Considered the heart and soul of Team Tonya Harding.

2. Courtney Smith (Year 2, Defender) The all-star female. Courtney has a "tradition" of sustaining a mild to serious injury every game. This tends to keep things exciting as players wait to see how she will become crippled with each new game.

3. Kane Something (Year 1, Offense) Kane is an up and coming talent who should make a big impact this year. And he also wears a bikini on the ice.

4. James Somethign (Year 1, Offense) James showed up late to the game, but don't you dare tell him to show up on time. James plays by his own rules! This was made clear enough when he tried to score by putting the ball in his pocket and walking into the goal. If only it had been the opponents goal!

5. Del Wong Something (Year 1, Offense) Del Wong is highly talented with a broom and quick on the ice. He has all the fans asking, Is there anything Del WON'T Do?

6. Kirsten Ruch (Year 1, Defense) Kirsten was effective as a sub, no not a sub sandwhich. After coming off the bench, she made the coaches question why she was ever on it.

7. Meg Gallagher (Year 1, Goalie/Defense) After "strugling", to put it politely, in goal, Meg Gallagher redeemed herself on defense. She is also the official art designer for Team Tonya.

8. Miles (Year 1, Goalie) The team's goalie last year was Tom Brown, an aloof but affable young gentleman who amused and annoyed teammates by refusing to show up to the rink until one minute before the game. This year he took the prank one step farther by not showing up at all. After a brief stint by Meg, Miles stepped it up and tended goal earning his first clean sheet.

9. Tom Knight (Year 2, Offense) The self-proclaimed King of Broomball, Tom was once asked "Are you the Michael Jordan of Broomball" to which he responded "Michaelf Jordan is the Tom Knight of Basketball players".

MIRACLE:

When the United State's Olympic Hockey Team defeated the Russians in the 1980 Olympics, few thought that the feat would ever be topped. Well last Wednesday it happened. In what critics quickly dubbed "The Miracle On Ice 2: And the Legend Continues" Team Tonya Harding overcame every adversity imaginable and then some, but would they win? Yes, they would. Or would they? Read on to find out.

Yes, they would.

But, it wasn't always so certain. The trouble started when Tom Brown, the teams goalkeeper in the previous year failed to show up to the ice. In a moment of valor and bravery defender Meg Gallager volunteered to stand between the posts. For the first half of play the Grad School dominated, firing countless shots on goal eeking two in. Meg gave it her best, but Miles was sent in to replace her with five minutes left in the first half. Team Tonya Harding managed a few shots on goal and came unlucky striking the woodwork at least once. But, by half-time, the grad college led 2-0.

In the huddle at half time inspiration words were exchanged, and a general plan was agreed upon. Team Tonya Harding would score goals and prevent the Grad College from scoring goals. A flawless plan, yes, but as they say in Chinese, shuo.chii.lai rong.yih, tzuooh.chii.lai bu.nemm jandean.ne. Translated: at first hearing that easy, at first doing that not simple. (I knew taking Chinese would come in handy. Thanks Professor Link!)

So the team took back to the ice with impossible odds. All but one of the fans had already left, leaving the lonely, faithful Teresa to cheer the team on. That Teresa was the only fan from the beginning should not detract from the dramatic effect of this description.

For the first five minutes Team TH struggled to do anything with the ball treading water and playing defensively looking like anything but a team that would score goals. Then, on a breakaway Kane fired a perfect pass past the reach of the goalie and I connected with the broom. Team Tanya's first goal of the season made the score 2-1.

The next goal will go down in the annals of broomball history as one of the most controversial scores of all time. With five minutes left Tom Knight, Del, and Kane where all pressuring the Grad School's goalie, a stray ball squirted out of a face off and made contact with Tom Knight's foot, rolling into the goal. Unaware of the broomball rule disallowing scores by foot, the goal was counted. Already, cynical critics have dubbed this historic flubb "The Foot of God" goal.

With 20 seconds left, the score remained tied at 2-2. Realizing that they had but one chance left to win the game the offensive trio charged Grad School's goal and Tom Knight put a flukey shot in the lower right corner. As grad school fell to their collective knees, one announcer was heard to shout "Do you believe in Miracles 2?" just asking for some sort of movie adaptation.

Team Tonya Harding was now undefeated for the first time in their franchise's short history. The victory was celebrated with slurpee's at the Wawa, which Brett threw mine away, when I clearly wasn't done. Thanks Brett.

I hope everyone has enjoyed this Broomball update. Tune in next week and hopefully read about another Team Tonya Harding victory.

Italian Ice

2004-09-01T19:18:00.000-05:00

Here is something I wrote in New York City. It is my food critic review of a food stand called "Italian Ice and Pretzel" in Penn Station:

Opting to steer clear of the lonely baking pretzel for sale at this vendor, I settled for the Italian Ice, reasoning that anything with the word "nice" hidden in it's title couldn't be that bad. My choices in size and container were an Arby's ketchup conatiner or one of those paper cups you spit into at the dentists. Confused, at first, I said that I did not require a sample to which the vendor kindly informed me that, no, these were the actual portion sizes. Chosing the dentist cup ($2.25!) I now had the uneviable task of picking a flavor.

What originally would have been four choices was limited to a cruel two, but a famished public that had already consumed the tubs labeled "rainbow" and "vanilla". What remained was "Cocunut" and "Chocolate". Skeptically, I chose "Chocolate" which turned out to be cocnut with a few small chocolate chips sprinkled in.

The Texture of the treat was smooshy, against all conventional Italian Ice convention. I scrambled to consume as much ice as I could before it became Italian water, and my punishment was an "Italian Ice Cream Headache". The dish was quite bland with occasional blasts of overpowering sweetness provided by the woefully out of context chocolate chips.

Overall, the Italian Ice teetered perilously upon the border of the edible and the inedible, and I would reccommend that any potential diner steer clear of "Italian Ice and Pretzel" in Penn Station. If you must visit, take a risk...try the pretzel.

Poker Diary (Part Two)

2004-08-13T04:11:00.000-05:00

At the end of "Garden State" which a group of us saw on Monday, Zach Braff's character asks, dramatically, "What do we do now?". For our group, at least, the answer was simple enough--now we play poker.

Two nights earlier I had hosted a modest game at my house, marred, but not ruined by the inclusion of Chad Heger. Chad brings a special brand of pessimism and negativity to the poker table, thinly masked in his second rate sarcasm and inappropriate simile. Left to take his pick from any snack in my house, he refused, commenting, "A Rwandan family of 10 has better snacks than you." Though I could have easily countered his attack by mocking his now massive fro, it was just too easy. It would have been like shooting fish in a barrell or trying to bluff Joey Kelly out of a big pot.

Later Chad steered the conversation toward x-boxes, and it quickly became clear why:

"My X-Box is so much better than yours!" Chad boasted.

"All X-Boxes are the same, Chad" Chris reminded him, but apparently he had 'souped up' his x-box by adding some memory and some SNES games. Wow, could you waste any more time or money, than by adding inferior games an x-box. Chris told him so with a quick, sarcastic:

"Wow! That's impressive, why don't you brag about it!"

Chad was clearly hurt, and he was suspiciously quiet for the next five or so minutes. Then, as I launched into a story about how messy my apartment in New York City was, he saw his chance to strike.

"My floor was covered in trash, you couldn't even see the carpet" I joked.

"Wow! That's impressive," Chad scoffed, "why don't you brag about it?!"

Chad had been saving up, waiting for his moment, and he had thrown a ball. And he had struck and killed a fan. And the fan was his brother.

"It was a story Chad. That's all, a story."

"Oh," Chad realized, "I gotta go."

Needless to say, Chad decided not to come to Matt Sauter's house to play poker two days later, but we'd managed to get an interesting crew together nonetheless. Riaz, Jack, and Matt Waller didn't see the movie, but showed up for the game afterwards. Shannon, Matt and I made up the old guard that had seen the movie, and young blood came in the form of Chris Yokota, Joey Kelly, Kevin Fathi, Lee Redmond, and Andrew Burroughs. Mark Burroughs was making a special guest appearance, in his first attempt at poker since he lost for the tenth consecutive time almost half a year earlier.

We decided to play at Matt Sauter's house for two reasons. First, we felt that he had made the commute down to southern orange county enough, and he deserved a break. Second, about two weeks earlier we had built a rumpus room, and figured it was time to use it. Well, when I say that we built a rumpus room, I mean that we pushed some boxes out of the way in his garage and put a table where the boxes had been. It sounds simple, and it probably was, but at the time, I decided that it would be more fun if we pretended that we were robots on an assembly line as we moved the boxes, adding at least three hours to the project, and costing timmy a broken leg, and three shattered vertebrae.

I will never forget the screams of "Meh!" that escaped from his mouth as that box full of shipping peanuts crashed down upon his fragile frame.

We completed the rumpus room, however, and it was now ready for rumpus to take place in it. And what rumpus there was.

Locating Matt's house was a fiasco for many of the players, who apparently had never wandered north of Mission Viejo. At one point, Kevin Fathi was talking to Matt and Shannon getting simaultaneous directions from them on where the house was. Stereo directions, I mused, and then suggested that they each recommend a left and right turn at the same time, causing Kevin's car to split comically down the center, like Herbie the love bug, or Joey's pants when he bends over to pick up some food.

A geologist might try to tell you that the most reliable natural phenomenon is the eruption of the "Old Faithful" geyser in Yellowstone National Park or the return of the swallows to Capistrano, but don't believe them. Mark Burroughs loses at poker night more reliably than "Old Faithful Spews" anyday. People set their watches by Mark, it happens so reliably, but these people are usually not very punctual. The person that does this is me.

Now that Mark was out of the way, the rest of us could play for real. With Ace 10 of Clubs in my hand, I was quite thrilled when the 9, 7, and 4 of clubs came down like manna from heaven on an early flop. I got a call from Matt Sauter early on and doubled up to about 50 bucks in the first ten minutes.

Slowly though, after my three of a kind was beat out by Andrew's straight, and I pushed all-in with my queen's against Fathi's Aces, my good fortunes started to dwindle. I was so scared that I laid down pocket Jack's to a four dollar raise pre-flop. Speaking of Jack, he had one of his more successful nights, turning a movie pass and four dollars that I had leant him into about 3 dollars profit. He had to leave early, cuz his worked started early next morning.

Andrew Burroughs started to go up big, along with Chris Yokota and Lee Redmond. Fathi rebought often as did Matt Sauter, and eventually I was forced to as well. At my table, we decided to mix up the action by playing some Omaha hold 'em, in addition to the traditional Texas version of the game. I won't delve into the mildly complicated rules here, but let it be known that if a group of guys doesn't understand a game, they should not wager medium amounts of money on it. In a disastrous series of events, Shannon accidentally won a pot, then was forced to give back probably more than he had won in the first place. We decided, then, that Omaha was probably a bad idea, until the average IQ at the table was >= 34. Why 34 you ask? This is the number of IQ points needed to understand Omaha.

Onto the wonderfully tragic downfall of Joey Kelly. I was slightly upset at Joey, because he had pocket 10's that devistated my 8 10 with a board of 8 8 10 J 3, so if my tone sounds vengeful or mean-spirited, know that it is only poker revenge. In the words of Joey, I'll issue a pre-emptive "I'm Sorry".

Now, Joey chose to listen to his ipod mini as we were playing poker. I can understand why the pro's do this. Hours spent playing satelites and tournament tables could get monotonous, and music could break up the monotony. But a large reason we got together was to talk, laugh, and be social. But, what can I say. Some people really need their daily dose of Hillary Duff and BSB.

As the night wound down, Joey explained to everyone his predicament, "You see guys, here's the problem. I'm very easy to make fun of. I'm fun to make fun of. But I don't mind, I just let it happen." It's very lucky that Joey had this attitude, because, I kid you not, as he said this a large amount of drool accidentally dripped out of his mouth landing on the table in front of him.

With 27 dollars in hand, Joey announced that he had to leave after this hand. Noone objected and the board came up 10 J 4. A bet of 2 dollars by Joey was called by Joey's friend/poker nemesis Chris Yokota. Joey didnt look happy to be called, he just wanted to get out of there, so when an Ace came on the turn, Joey made a very dubious all-in push. Chris called instantly with the nut straight, and Joey quickly mucked his cards, too embarassed to show them. When it was later revealed that Joey held a 10 8 in hand, he expalined, "It's pretty basic really. I don't wanna leave with only a 7 dollar profit. I'd rather leave with nothing at all. Y'know?" Now, I don't want to read too much into this, but Joey is a staunch conservative. Is the sort of reasoning that republicans apply to economics. All I know is that Joey's "Supply-Side" poker chip plan, giving each player 100 extra poker chips to help stimulate "demand for betting", was a catastrophic failure.

As the night drew to a close we decided that it had to go out with a bang, so that the only bets allowed were fold or all-in. Matt Waller gave us quite a show when he put 20 bucks on the line with an A 4 against Yokota's K Q with a board of 4 K Q. A Jack on the turn was meaningless, but an Ace on the river provided much merriment and cheering by all.

With that, the Newport poker odyssey ended, and the poker players, like the swallows before them, returned to Capistrano.

The Streets (Part 2)

2004-07-14T15:39:00.001-05:00

According to my weekly email which tracks website statistics, I now have 0 visitors to this website per week. That's pretty bad. It means that I'm basically writing for myself, but I imagine that someday when I become very famous, people will regard this blog in the same light as Anne Frank's diary or Captain Kirk's Log. I betthat when they got their start these diary heroes had 0 visitors per week as well.

Here is the conclusion to my "The Street's Story"

"Easy Street"

When last we left our hero (me), I was standing out on the sidewalk in front of Irving Place, feeling very sad. I had just blown 50 bucks on a fake ticket and realized that the 10 dollars left in my pocket probably weren't gonna get me in to see Dizzee and The Streets. At this point, a kid wearing a red shirt walked up to me and asked:

"Got an extra ticket?"

In my mind, I imagined a sinister plan. He wouldn't know the ticket was a fake. This was my chance. I would sell him the dud, at a small loss and then buy a real ticket with the proceeds.

"You are in luck!" I told him.

He was not in luck.

"Oh yeah, you got one?

"Well, I've got this ticket here," but at this point my conscience set in. I couldn't sell him the ticket with him thinking it was real. But I had another plan, "Well, it's a fake ticket, but do you wanna buy it."

The red shirted kid did not think that he wanted to buy the fake ticket but thanks anyway, and I was back to square zero. Standing outside the venue, I began to go through my options. As I saw it, there were four feasible courses of action I could take:

1. Climb on to the roof of this three story building and then see what happened.
2. Try to sneak in.
3. Beg the bouncer to let me in.
4. Buy a ticket for 10 bucks.

Well after being told I couldn't sneak in, I wasn't exactly on the bouncers good side, leaving option 4. Amazingly, an opportunity materialized before my eyes, as a girl walked by offering to sell the ticket at face value (20 dollars). Suddenly though, a scalper (whose name, I came to know was Alfonzo) swooped in with a 20 and was about to buy it from her.

"Wait!" I screamed, "Don't buy it from him. He just wants to resell it. I actually want to see the show! He's a bad guy, I'm a good guy!"

Alfonzo did not like this. Not at all.

"Shut up man!" he told me. Oh, did I mention that Alfonzo is a 6'6" very strong black man. Then he put forth a very bizzare threat:

"I'm gonna give you a wedgie man! I'm gonna give you a wedgie in front of all your friends"

I will never understand Alfonzo's threat, but I think he had a rough childhood.

The girl, by the way, frightened by this confrontation ran away quickly to find a calmer customer.

At this point, a miracle happened. A man standing there had seen what I had been through, and he called me over. At first I feared that he wanted me over there so that he could have front row seats for the wedgie of the century, but he then pulled a ticket out of his pocket.

"You wanna see the show?" he asked.

Why, yes thankyou, but i didn't exactly have enough money.

"I'll make you a deal" uh oh "I'll give it to you for nothing"

I really couldn't think of a way to repay him, so I just told him that something good would happen to him because of this, and I think it probably has.

Inside I saw the red-shirted kid, who told me that he had found someone with a real ticket and bought it for $75. I told him I had found someone with a ticket and bought it for free, so red-shirted kid, it seems had been beaten by 25 dollars, and he knew it. Then the red-shirted kid said something really sad:

"Guess what! I found 25 dollars on the floor"

I offered him congratulations on his good fortune, and settled on a spot on the floor to stand and watch the show next to him.

Well, the show was good, and Mike blew the roof off the place. What really struck me as awesome was that he had a live band playing all his songs with him. For anyone that's listened to The Streets this would be amazing, but as I've already established, nobody reads this thing anyway.

After the show, people were starting to clear out, and I noticed the red-shirted kid going over to buy a t-shirt. The price was right, 25 dollars.

Epilogue: "Life on the Streets"

As I got off the subway and started for my apartment, a police car drove up on the sidewalk and missed hitting me by about a foot. I was understandably scared, and I demanded of the police officer to know what was happening.

"SHUT UP!" he screamed at me, and I was quickly reminded of Alfonso.

"Excuse me, I just want to know if it's safe for me to be out here"

He then hurled a string of expletives at me, and ran down the stairs of the subway. A squad of about 50 cop cars roared down the various streets around me, so I figured it was time to get out of there. The entire way home, I saw a cop car prowling every owling, lights on searching for something.

At first, this troubled me. What could possibly have posed such a threat that it such a valiant force. Then it hit me. They were after the scalpers that had taken my 50 bucks. They were searching every nook and cranny to catch those con artists and restore justice to the mean streets of New York City.

I walked along the sidewalk and crossed the street in front of my apartment, as a novel thought crossed my mind:

50 bucks don't come for free.

The Streets (Part 1)

2004-06-30T16:52:00.000-05:00

Preface: The Superhighway

Early in the afternoon yesterday, I was surfing the information superhighway, when I paddled into a tsunami of a discovery; 'The Streets' and "Dizzee Rascal' were playing a show in New York City that night. These are two of the hottest hip-hop acts in the last ten years. As they are from England, they rarely come to the United States and this was my big chance to see them in person.

This is the story of my attempt to see The Streets and the overwhelming experience that followed.

Act I: Irving Place

Irving Plaza is a gig at the intersection of 15th Avenue and Irving Place, where 'The Streets' were playing that night. The show had sold out a long time ago, so the first part of my plan was to go up to the box office and attempt to buy a ticket.

"Sold-Out!" a muscular bouncer told me as I approached the box office. This was the beginning of my topsy-turvy relationship with this bouncer.

Well, my only other option was to look for someone selling an extra ticket to the show. I was willing to pay up to 50 bucks to get in, so I figured that it wouldnt be difficult at all to find a willing seller. At this point things start to get ugly.

A thirty year old bald British woman walked up to me and asked me if I had any extra tickets. I told her no, and she said she was desperate to get to the show. I told her I was too, and we decided to work together and try to get tickets for ourselves. As we waited for scalpers to hone in on the venue, her boyfriend walked up and told her that "Hurray!" he had gotten one ticket. I asked him if I could see it, so I know what a real ticket looks like and he quickly obliged.

Suddenly, an incredibly shady looking character bumped into me and asked "You looking to buy tickets?"

"Of course," I told him, "how much?"

"Fifty Bucks," came the quick, nervous reply, and it like he's read my mind.

The British woman's boyfriend also tells me he wants one, and the mysterious black man tells us to walk quickly at his side.

"Hurry man, there's police around here." Against all my better instincts, I hurry. Why should selling a ticket be illegal though. I know, certainly, that a New York policeman has better things to do, than to break up a $50 ticket transaction. But I'm desperate to get to the show, and the presence of the British guy assures me that nothing shady is going on.

As we walk quickly down the sidewalk, I hand the man $50 and he hands me a ticket.

"Is this real?" I ask, although what could I have possibly expected him to say in reply.

The boyfriend also gives the guy 50 bucks and the guy, in the first of many signs that I'd been taken practically sprints away. I look down at the ticket that I just spent 50 bucks on, and I'm dissapointed to say that it looks a lot like Kindergarten arts and crafts project by a semi-retarded child. That is to say, it is not very good.

"Hey," I tell the British girl's boyfriend, "I think we got conned."

He then stares at the ticket for what seems like an eternity, and I wonder why he does seem more upset.

"Let's go after that guy!" I suggest.

"Hold on," he says, and then stands there for a few more moments.

"COME ON!"

"Alright," he finally agrees, and he slowly walks in the general direction of the guy that had just taken our money.

Needless to say, we never found the guy, and needless to say this wasn't an accident. As soon as we gave up seeking him out, and as soon as the couple had left, I realize that I had been the victim of a medium sized con. In the history of cons, it didn't compare to "The Sting", but was much more painful than the time we convinced Timmy that they were giving out free laxative at the supermarket.

In hindisght, I realzied, that the couple had convinced me that it was safe to buy from the shady character, and then stopped me from chasing after him when I realized I'd been conned. I found my only consolation in the fact that they would have to split their take three way, and 50/3 dollars wasn't much of a salary to live on.

At this point, I was devistated. I was now the proud owner of an obviously fake ticket and no money. Sulking outside the plaza, I was just trying to stay positive.

In the next episode: my hilarious run-in with Alfonzo, the red-shirted kid, and a surprise twist!

Some Things

2004-06-28T20:24:00.000-05:00

Nothing substantial has happened really in the last week, and, sadly, after two weeks of filing and scanning, I have exhausted all the work they had for me for the entire summer. Yep that's right, after two weeks of filing and scanning , I have done everything they had planned for me for the whole summer. It makes me wonder what the big boss was thinking when he accepted me for this internship. Maybe he figured that I only had one hand, or at least was missing some fingers which would explain why he expected filing a moderate stack of papers to take 8 weeks. But no, I came in for an interview, so he would have probably seen my hands.

At one point in the last two weeks he did mention his ambitious plan which involved me scanning and re-filing every single sheet of paper in the companies vast file archive. That certainly would have taken a long while, but he gave that idea up, because after I scanned about 50 documents, the computer's memory overloaded and crashed and the techy in the office had to reformat the hard drive on the computer I was using. It wasn't even my computer, it was Ann's computer who is a lady that works here and was on vacation for the week, so I felt pretty guilty. But not guilty enough to not change her desktop background to a picture of a faded old newspaper headline-"Knight-The Pirate that Breaks all the Rules" when her computer finally sputtered back to life.

I had to use Ann's computer, because I don't have a computer. Some things they forgot to give me when I came to work here were a computer, a desk, and a chair to sit in. I sit on two cardboard boxes which I placed in a corner of the room.

But there is some silver lining to the cumolo-nimbus cloud that is this internship. The other day Bill Clinton came to town and signed a whole mess of books at the local Border's book store. Well I showed up a little late to the signing so I didn't get to meet him, but I got one of the autographed books. It was slightly suspicious how Bill Clinton "left behind a pile of signed books before he left the store", but if I didn't see the forgery take place, it's real to me!

I went to Time Square the other day, with no particular plan, because I heard that fun things happen there. I wasn't dissapointed, because they were carrying the olympic torch through the streets of New York City that night, and I could spectate. But, imagine my surprise when I ran into a girl that I remembered from high school, Emily Henahan (?) and Ally Powell (?). Talk about a coinky-dink!

Also, I went to the Mets game the other night, and that was something!

Files (Part 2): Let the Scanning Begin

2004-06-21T15:25:00.000-05:00

It's Thursday, and the big boss in the office approaches me to discuss my accomplishments so far.

"Yep, I've just been filing away, taking pieces of paper and transfering them to these rectangular metal cabinets, sometimes in alphabetical order, depending on my mood," I tell him.

"Mmm hmmm, good good. Glad to see that things are going well so far," and then he begins to smile, as if he has good news. "Next week we're gonna mix things up, and start throwing some of the files away."

He pauses and waits for me to thank him for introducing this exciting new wrinkle to my career. What I'm wondering, though, is why I would be filing papers that are destined for the recycling bin anyway. It's like when the manager of the Boston Red Sox shuffles up the batting order. Sure it gives him something to do with his spare time, but wouldn't have been easier just to toss the whole thing away, without wasting time on the order.

I manage to utter, "Good! Nothing will give me more pleasure than throwing these suckers away."

That's true at least. In the span of a week, I have grown to hate the files. These files are not exciting like the X-files (The X section of the filing cabinet is empty), they are boring, boring, boring! All day I put them in alphabetical order, with a sneaking suspicion that I will be the last human to ever read them. Fox Mulder will not uncover these files and make a Fox TV series about them, because there is really nothing interesting in them. A TV show about these files would be called CSI: Bad Files or Law and Order: Especially Uninteresting File Unit (EUFU). Noone would watch them, and they would be cancelled during week two and be replaced with another sequel to Big Brother, which , let's face it, would actually be an improvement.

What I'm trying to say is that filing is not my favorite thing. Imagine my excitement, then, when I came in on Monday, and they told me about my brand new assignment.

"Today you will be scanning," the boss says, and I am giddy with joy. Anything to stop the filing, even if it is scanning.

They sit me down at a computer and tell me how the scanner works. It's pretty basic really, I put a paper in the scanner, press a button, and save it into the computer's hard drive. Then they present me with a massive stack of papers.

"Here are some papers to get you started."

I begin scanning, and decide that it's actually not so bad. Very little physical exertion required, just clicking a mouse and typing on a keyboard. No more impossible drawers and walking back and forth. But slowly, the scanning starts getting to me. The scanning program takes an eternity between documents, and the computer seems to be constantly teetering between functioning and crashing. Scanning is even more mindless than filing, because I don't even have to think about the alphabet anymore. I am a robot, putting papers in a machine, and then putting them in a pile on the floor. Truth is, I realize, I hate scanning more than I hate filing.

Looking for some purpose, I ask them, "What exactly is the point of all this scanning?"

The big boss tells me, "We are trying to get all of our records on the computers. We are going to scan all of our documents and eventually get rid of the filing cabinets."

I think about this highly illogical plan. All told I would guess that this company has about one million files stored in their filing cabinets. Each sheet of paper takes about thirty seconds to scan, so working at a steady pace, for eight hours a day, it will take me about three years to scan all their documents. Furthermore, the company is generating hundreds of thousands of files a year, so according to my calculations, I will be scanning until I die.

Furthermore, the big boss undermines the logic of his plan when he tells me to "go ahead and file those scanned papers anway...just to be safe".

"Fine," I say, and head to the cabinets, forgoing any attempt to understand corporate logic. I'm just happy not to be scanning.

Files

2004-06-18T15:46:00.000-05:00

My name is Tom Knight and I am a filer.

On the first day of my summer internship in New York City they asked me, "Could you file these documents please?".

"Sure," I said. Who was I to turn a task down on my first day? And after all, how bad could it be? I would just be putting papers in little files. In my country we call that easy as pie.

Immediately, it was a bit harder than I had anticipated. The filing cabinets, unfortunately, had been dropped recently when they were moved down the hall. So now, opening them required Herculean Strength, and the coordination of Jesus, and if you haven't read the bible, Jesus was very coordinated.

"Basically, what you do," they told me, "you apply some pressure to the left, just sort of nudge in that direction, then you push down and simaultaneously pull out on the drawer. Also, the secret password is 'open sesame'"

To make matters worse, the drawers were built in such a way that once one drawer was open you couldnt open any of the others. I tried really hard to figure out what jerk engineer decided that this was the best way to build a filing cabinets:

In an office supplies factory far-far away:

Jerk Engineer (looks a lot like Timmy): Hmm, I will design this filing cabinet so that only one drawer can be open at a time.
Sensible Boss (looks like me): Could you please explain why.
Jerk Engineer: Could you please stop standing on my foot?
Sensible Boss (looks down, he is accidenatlly standing on the engineers foot): Oh sorry, I didn't mean to (lifts foot).

And so the sensible boss was distracted and embarassed because Timmy's foot was now broken on account of his incredibly fragile skeletal system, and the engineer got away with his diabolical plan.

Basically what this means is that every time I file a paper I have to heave open the impossible drawer, place the paper in the appropriate file, and then, tears freely flowing, undo my work and close the drawer.

Day 2, they eased my pain, by bringing in some fully functioning cabinets, and then brought the pain back by telling me to move all the files from the old cabinets to the new ones. This took about three hours. I made myself feel better by telling myself that what I was doing was actually not that different from what stock brokers do. The old cabinets were people selling their stocks, and the new cabinets were buying them. My imaginary brokerage firm did a really good job, and all of the stocks were being quickly bought up. These are the pathetic self-deulsion of a professional filer.

To be continued...

Franz Ferdinand

2004-06-16T16:16:00.000-05:00

I am in New York City doing an internship, if you're wondering where I went. Yesterday something funny happened to me, so naturally I will write about it in the blog.

After work ended at about 5 o' clock I decided that I wanted to go swimming. Walking around in NYC in a button-down shirt in 90 degree weather made me feel disgusting, like I'd just been covered in Gak (you know, Gak from Nickelodeon?). I got on the subway after one of the workers here at the office told me how to get to a public pool. Well, when I got there it wasn't open, and I was a bit dissapointed, but I was determined to have a good time. I noticed a HUGE line at Virgin Mega Store, so I wandered over to see what pathetic pop act they had come to see.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the crowd had gathered to see none other than "Franz Ferdinand" the hot new band out of Glasgow, that had won me over with their delightful eponymous debut. I couldn't believe it at first, so I asked the guard, "Franz Ferdinand is really playing here??" . "Yes. But you have to buy their cd and go wait in that line." Well I'd already downloaded their cd, and the line was about a few kilometers long, so forget that! I noticed that the stage would be easily visible, and hopefully audible, from the DVD section of the store which did not require a ticket to get into. Pretending to be interested in purchasing the "Friends: Season Finale DVD" (a difficult acting job indeed) I staked out a spot and prepared for some awesomeness.

Let me just say now that I hate Virgin Megastore more than any other store in the world. I hate it more than Best Buy, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Bob's Big ol' Boat Barn. Combined! The jerks at Virgin decided that only people that had bought the CD and waited in line deserved to see the show, so they wandered around the DVD section yelling "IF YOU ARE NOT SHOPPING FOR DVD'S, YOU NEED TO LEAVE THE DVD SECTION". Also, they turned up the background music playing in this part of the store (Jessica Simpson) so that the show would be inaudible. Their methods closely resembled those of an effective anti-terrorism unit. I decided that I would rather hear the band than see them so I left the DVD section and was quickly herded to the second floor by a group of very large security guards.

On the second floor I could hear the show perfectly, but not see the band. Noone was dancing downstairs anyways, but I really wanted to see the band play. I decided it might help my chances if I tried to strike up a friendship with one of the securtiy guards.

"So why won't you jerks let us watch the show?" I asked.

"Fire Hazard," he replied like a robot from "I, Robot".

"So what you're telling me is that there are 500 people down there, crammed into a fairly small space, and as of now they are perfectly safe?"

"Yeah, there's two fire exits."

"And also, you claim that if the rest of us, all 50 of us, go down there, that creates an immediate and deadly fire hazard?"

"Yep."

So, what I did for the rest of the show, I just stared at the guy. I could tell this made him very uncomfortable.

Well the music was good, as expected, and after the show Franz was sticking around for some autographs. Excitedly, naively, I ran outside to join the autograph line.

"You got a ticket?" some jerk asked.

Well, that was it, I had just about had it with all of this. I walked over to where the band would be sitting, and noticed a window that looked directly in on the band. I quickly thought of a plan for my revenge, pulled out a piece of paper and marker from my back pack, and wrote a message for the band:

"I illegally downloaded your album!"

I don't exactly know what I was trying to accomplish with this, but I knocked real loud on the glass, held up the paper to the window, and they looked over. The lead singer laughed and so did the bass player, but it looked like a real angry laugh. I had then imagined that they would pull me inside sign an autograph, and become my friend. But, pretty much, they just turned around and started signing autographs for the jerks with tickets again.

That night, Franz was on Conan, and I decided to watch. As they played, I imagined myself their best friend, waiting backstage to exchange high-fives. Then I opened my eyes and remembered that I was sitting alone in a small one-bedroom apartment in NYC. As despair set in, though, I noticed the paper from earlier that I had posted on my wall as a trophy for my accomplishments, and, again, all was good with the world.

Poker Diary (Part One)

2004-06-02T02:50:00.000-05:00

As a regular feature on my blog, I will be doing a hilarious diary about our poker games: the funny things people say and the funny things that happen. First, though, I've got some catch-up to do, giving the history of our game, and reliving the classic moments.

Introduction:

The ol' gang got together for their first game in awhile as a semi-complete entity. The gang is Shannon, Riaz, Timmy, Panda, Mark, Matt, and Tom. Also as far as the young kids go Chris, Andrew, Brendan, Fathi, Joey, and many others sometime play. Occassionally Jack, Adam, and various others join along. We have played poker for about a year, and been through many fun poker moments. All we ever play is no-limit Texas hold 'em with a 20 dollar buy-in, but maybe someday that will change. When we first started playing, we watched "Rounders" and thought it was the coolest thing ever, which I think happens to anyone who starts playing poker these days. We quoted the movie constantly while we played until we realized that this is THE MOST ANNOYING THING EVER. Anyone that quotes "Rounders" while playing poker is not welcome to sit at our table. Rule 1 of poker club is "Don't Quote Rounders". Rule 2 of poker club is "Don't Talk about Poker Club". Rule 3 of poker club is "Don't make stupid jokes about Rules in a tired allusion to Fight Club". Our rules, as the careful reader may realize, are quite contradictary!

An accusation often leved at our group is that we are just being trendy and playing poker like every male between the ages of 15-21 these days is doing. For some reason the World Series of Poker, which is a great event, has become immensely popular recently, attracting band-wagon fans faster than a succesful sports team attracts Erin Sale. But we played before poker got so big! We got our first idea for a game after Ryan Dunlop told us how much fun it was. We played with plastic chips at Mark Burroughs kitchen table. I was the big winner that night. Justin Khalifa, in the first of a string of stinging losses was down 30 dollars for the night.

We got hooked quickly. We started playing weekly games, and they became twice a week games, and eventually started playing every night. It became clear that the addiction was dangerous when, after Jay Paul made us stop playing at his house at about midnight, we drove to Shannon's house to play a quick 5 dollar game.

Poker replaced essentially all other forms of social events. We read poker books, we watched the World Series on TV and dreamed of the day when we could become professional poker players. But who were these Mavericks of poker? These young guns shaking up the world of poker like never before? I'm glad you asked...

Shannon: One of the original members and most dedicated players, Shannon plays a conventional, skillful style of poker. His catchphrase at the table is undoubtedly the noise he makes when an amazing hand unfolds on the table. He exhales real loud. Not much of a catchphrase huh?

Riaz: A true maverick who plays very loose, because "he loves to see flops". Because of his incredibly risky style, Riaz will often loose huge amounts of money, but lately, because of unbelieveable luck, he has made hundreds. His catchphrase is an uncanny impersonation of Dareck Monteron, aka "Panda".

Timmy: The laughing stock of the table. Timmy brings joy to the table with his complete lack of knowledge of the game, and keeps everyone elses spirits high by continually losing his money to them. Timmy's image began to change when he won the first major tournament (more about that later), but he's still always good for a laugh. Catchphrase- MEH!

Panda: The "rock" of the table, Dareck Monteron, known affectionately as "Panda" will only call a rasie if he has two aces in hands. After the hand Q9 got Panda second place in the tournament, it was named after him. Panda doesn't have a catchphrase, because he does not actually speak.

Mark: Mark has taken over the role once occupied by Timmy, loveable loser. Mark has gotten much practice dealing cards as he is constantly defeated in every game of poker he has ever played. Fortunately, he is backed by the deep pockets of his dad, so he is always there ready to lose more money. As he is always performing the functions of a dealer, Mark has adopted the catchphrase "Changing 500".

Matt: One of the "Big Three" Matt is truly dedicated to the game. Upon winning over 100 dollars on a single hand (royal straight), Matt set the record for biggest win on a single hand in the history of the group. I can't remember if Matt has a catchphrase, which means that even if he did it's not that memorable.

Tom: The leader of the gang. Handsome, brilliant, and a master of the game. In a word...Perfect!

That's all for now. Please come back later, for some more poker diary!

Jack Attack

2004-05-27T02:09:00.000-05:00

Here's my list of Jack's greatest convo performances and his true duds. Please comment if you disagree!

Greatest of All-time:

5. "Lord of the Rings Dance"- Criminally underrated. A true tour de force modern interpretative dance with Andrew wood. Best moment: Jack carries Andrew across the gym like a ballerina.
4. "Have you Seen My Head"- Jack pulls his shirt over his head and asks the audience where it went. Classic.
3. "Dr. Heath's Pen"- Jack teams up with Sahill Ghandi to sing a song about Dr. Heath's pen and attempt to get it back. Best Kazoo solo: The kazoo solo during this song.
2. "Eye of the Tiger"- Arguably Jack's greatest moment. I put it at number two because I was at a golf match and didn't get to see it, and also any moment that got beat by Sarah Campaigne's lip-sync group should not be number one. Worst Thing Ever: Missing this performance for a golf match.
1. "Senior Say-What"- Everyone was wondering how Jack would top "Eye of the Tiger" but he did. In an unlikely medley he danced to "Dashboard Confessional", "Andrew W.K." and most memorably, "The Little Mermaid". Best Thing of All-Time: The Bit with RJ.

The Duds:

4. "Dodgeball Challenge"- Jack challenges the seniors to a game of dodgeball. Jack vs. the Entire Senior Class. Things take a turn for the worse when he begins cussing. Punishment: One lunch detention.
3. "Campfire"- On senior retreats Jack attempted to play the role of motivational speaker, but when the crowd refused to perform a 'human wave' on cue things got ugly.
2. "The Becky Hug"- Jack walks to the gym floor and asks Becky Yoo for a hug. Funny concept, poorly realized.
1. "Spring Cleaning"- In an attempt to recreate the magic of their LOTR dance, Jack and Andrew paired up again and attempt to dance to a song about spring cleaning. Conflict of schedules, arrogance, and generally poor planning meant that this piece was performed with literally no rehersal. A true fiasco.

Annagrammar

2004-05-24T01:21:00.000-05:00

This is something I wrote with my friend Allan Philips from Middle School. He goes to Stanford:

Dear Mr. Reilly,

We appreciated and enjoyed your submissions to our upcoming volume, Anagram, Anagram! Some of your entries may well be used. However, we rejected the following for reasons I trust you will agree upon.

A man, a plan, a canal, Panama -> A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.
(Though this is technically an anagram, it is more impressive when presented as a palindrome.)

Principals Emeritus -> Pale Princes Merit Us
(Makes assumptions about audience; could be included with minor revision.)

Jibbety jabbety rat-a-tat-tat -> Ribbety tabbety jat-a-tat-tat
(Scat is cheating. You are abusing anagrammar.)

Rock the Casbah -> Cash the Baroque
(I agree with you, it should work but it does not. I must deny your request for poetic license. Ours is a written medium; phonetic anagrams will not do.)

Closet but no cigar -> Cigar Butts Console
(Here you compromise a popular cliché and still arrive at a banal recombination. Desperation has begun to seep into your work.)

Pol Pot is an evil man -> Pol Pot is a vile mann.
(Does not even warrant comment.)

Yggdrasil, Thy Rhythmic Myrrh! -> ??????????????
(You've got balls, Reilly, I'll give you that. Still, execution is key, and your pandering to my Nordic heritage seems almost sycophantic. Dont bite off more than you can chew.)

William Makepeace Thackeray -> Carapace Althea Meek Kim Wily
(This came towards the end of your submission, amid myriad similar entries. I hesitate to level what is the greatest insult in our field, but I believe you resorted to an anagram generator)

Sincerely,

Niklas Forslund

P.S. Your proposed nom de plume, Anne A. Graham, is trite. We know you can do better.

X Marks the spot

2004-05-21T22:49:00.000-05:00

I forgot a funny story that I have about leaving Princeton.

When everyone leaves here to go home, they obviously put there stuff into storage over the summer. Well, my roommate, Brett, offered to store my stuff at his house over the summer and he took most of it away yesterday which is great. Except, theres a few things left here (sheets, lamp, books) that I forgot to give to him and that are too big to take on the plane. So, what I did is hide them in funny places that noone would look all over the college. I put all my extra books on an unused shelf in the library and I hid my guitar behind a desk in the music room. I'm still looking for a place to put my lamp and a bunch of cheese that I've saved up, but so far the plan is going great. And the best part is, I'm going to draw up a treasure map so that I remember where to find everything in Septmber when I come back. And it's going to be written in Pirate-type languauge (To find ye notebook and index cards stand on the X and march three paces aftward!). That reminds me, I have to go draw a big X on the ground. Shiver me timbers what fun it shall be!

Well Done

2004-05-21T21:12:00.000-05:00

I am all done with school for the year. Tonight I have a radio show. www.wprb.com if you want to listen, but it should be pretty bad. I will be home tomorrow. Boop!

Be Right Back

2004-05-18T16:39:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted for awhile, because I have been mad busy studying and packing up. Still busy, but very soon, everyone can look forward to some very hot features, including:

A hilarious history of the conflict between Will Benjamin and Forbes 207
A hilarious history of the "greatest band of all time"...Cow Misting Room
Some of other stuff

Ryan Seacrest, out!

Competition

2004-05-15T19:11:00.000-05:00

So Chris Knight has brought back his hit internet site at the exact same time that I decide to bring the blog back. Coincidence?? I think so! I mean...I think not! He is clearly trying to steal my fans, who like to laugh and have a good time while surfing the information super-highway. Well, let me say this, if you enjoy well thought out jokes, and carefully written humor pieces, then this is the place to be. If you like being assulted by 30-40 flash animations, loud midi songs, and poorly selected clip art, then, by all means please frequent Chris Knight's webpage. He's already got twice as many visitors as me. Never underestimate the American consumer.

Find Love Today!

2004-05-15T10:57:00.000-05:00

There's this software that some got on my computer now, and it would make me really mad if it weren't so hilarious. What it does is it goes through articles that I'm reading and it finds a bunch of keywords (money, love, etc...) in the text of the articles and turns them into links to advertisers selling their products in these various fields. Thinking that the links are part of the article I foolishly click on them and am presented with a pitch about how I can make 10,000 dollars a month out of the comfort of my own home (though I'm not sure that a 150 square foot dorm room full of dirty clothes and insects is that comfortable). What so funny about it is the context in which these ads appear. I was reading an article today about an FTC comission had found that miracled diets don't actually work! Not the revelation of the century, but an interesting article. Then, I noticed in the text of the article whenever the word diet was mentioned (remember in the context of "these diets dont work") was a link to a miracle diet program! I quickly ordered 100 pills.

This sort of the thing has happened to me a bunch with this program, and the only reason I'm leaving it on my computer is the laughs I get from seeing these unfortunate juxtapositions or reality and advertising. That and I don't know how to get it off my computer.

Just the other day, I came across what quickly became my all-time favorite example of this software taking it one step too far. I was reading an article about Michael Jackson's upcoming trial and included was a quote from Michael's attorney saying something to the effect of "Michael loves children too much to ever do anything to harm them". The word love was linked to an online dating service. Now that's marketing.

Back in Black!

2004-05-14T16:41:00.000-05:00

Dear Diary,

Today I got accepted into a comedy writing class taught by a famous writer and you even had to apply for it. This must mean that I am really funny! So with all this new confidence, I'm bringing back the blog (pause for standing ovation).

What you can expect to find in the upcoming weeks and months are some humorous accounts of things that have happened to me! All this and its free. I have even made it so that you are allowed to comment on my stories and tell me if they are somewhat funny or really hilarious.

What you shouldn't expect to find is really boring stuff about every tiny little detail that happened to me and also probably no poetry (I make no guarantees!) If you want to see that kind of stuff, I recommend that you make lots of emo friends, and you can all write in your diaries together about your emotions.

So, I hope that you enjoy my blog, and if you don't then I hope you get a mild illness.

Love,
Tom