Humor is zero sum?

I remarked to my friend Glenn yesterday that often the best humor is unfortunately at the expense of others. In fact, there's not really a symmetry to it -- you can't really make fun of someone in "positive" way because it probably means praising them indirectly. I suppose there's situational comedy as well - ala Seinfeld or something of that sort. But the biting satire that makes you wince inevitably involves someone else. You sort of feel bad for them, even as you smile or laugh. So it goes.

Because we all need a groan...

Came up with this one yesterday lunch and am now quite self-satisfied:

Q: What do you call a scandalized guy carrying a coffin?
A: An appalled bearer.

Came up with this one a while back:

Q: What do you call a chick who is into S&M and linear algebra?
A: A domimatrix.

The Music Hunter and Gatherer

I've found myself, of late, pursuing interesting music. It all started when I took up a recommendation from a guy on the NY NOLS email list who works for a small record label. It was for Josh Ritter's Hello Starling. The music has a real pure sound to it. His voice really hits many different moods. The songs tells stories that can transport you. Track 3, Kathleen, tells a story of a boy pursuing a girl at a party; and for those few minutes, you're there. You feel his yearning, his excitement, and the joyous consumation. There's that nostalgia of growing up. Like the Wonder Years without that painful awkwardness of Kevin Arnold. Highly recommend it.

Pretty cool stuff. The album really reminded me of how much good music is out there if you look. I caught a whiff of the excitement of turning over a stone and finding that gem. It's great how part of the satisfaction is the search. Just like food, where the context around the meal can matter just as much as the food itself -- cooking with friends, how you caught the five-pound bass, or how you hiked all day long before getting to camp -- how you found the song, who you share it with, and what you were doing when you heard it first can mean more than inherent quality of the music.

Of late, I've been stringing together various means of obtaining music. My best method, so far, is a Napster subscription. Now I have an amazing wealth of music searchable by artist, song, album, and genre. It's great -- I can listen to full songs which takes care of my big complaint about trying to buy music based on 30 second clips on Amazon or Tower Records. Napster actually has a subscription where you can download as much as you want to an MP3 player -- I might hit that up, it's a great deal. I also use Sirius radio, although it still suffers from being a "push medium" which can be problematic if the stations don't match your tastes well. Finally, one of the better means is recommendations from friends. One co-worker, Martin, is a very avid fan of music. He lent me his iPod for a week which has been great for listening to all sorts of eclectic tunes. He also gave me a great idea -- have a potluck music party -- everybody brings their music collection. You start by playing one person's favorite track. Then anyone can follow that with another track, maybe something that the first track reminded them of or perhaps just a nifty track that they like. Totally free form, but it sounds like a great time.

Well, off to listen to more tunes. I just heard a great one, Paper and Stone by Willis. Cool rhythms!

New York City and Birthdays

One thing that you discover when moving to New York City or the greater city area (Connecticut and New Jersey being suburbs) is that every weekend is someone's birthday, particularly if you observe friends' of friends birthdays. Even within your own circle, you're probably hovering around a dozen birthdays. What this amounts to is that if you wanted, pretty much every weekend you could have an excuse to be in the City drinking and revelling.

My personal experience of this routine of going out to birthdays every weekend lasted about a year after I moved here, and led to a partial overdose on city life. Most of the time, what happens is that you give one of your buddies a call on Thursday night to see if they want to do X, and they say, "Oh sorry, it's blah blah's birthday tonight. Can't make it." Then they either say something like "But if I get done early, I'll give you a call" or "Yeah, I'll be done in Soho if you're there, give me a call" or "If you want to meet us up for drinks after..."

Don't get me wrong, I'm not exactly cynical of the routine of NYC Friend Birthday Revelry. It's actually quite an enjoyable pursuit, as long as you follow a few ground rules:

1) Don't participate in friends of friends birthday dinners (in which you'll be that guy who everyone wonders whose friend you are.)

2) Try to be capable of paying an even split of the bill (with a party of 15, there's nothing worse than everyone trying to figure out their fair share -- which reminds me of a funny story about "bistro math" that my friend Tony told: his friends had come up short paying for the bill, so one guy said "ok, everyone take all your money back and we'll try again." And they came up short on that, too.) A notable exception to this rule is when you have someone in the group who doesn't mind making up the difference between money owed and money collected, in which case it's all good!

3) Don't make plans to meet someone else after dinner. The birthday-ee, I notice, takes pleasure in seeing that a huge horde of drunken people stumbles from the restaurant to a more drinking dedicated establishment. Splitting right after dinner is a clear sign of NYC Friend Birthday-itis.

As it turns out, in fact, this weekend was our good buddy, Glenn's birthday and we celebrated two nights -- last night was the real celebration, though. We hit up Azafran, a cozy tapas place down in Tribeca. I'd made reservations a few days earlier for 15 people and amazingly, exactly 15 people showed up. This never happens for groups larger than 5. In fact, the restaurant was so dubious of a reservation of that size that they phoned me in the afternoon to reconfirm. And when we ordered, it was more efficient just to order two of everything plus some paella and skewers. Family style eating is really quite fun.

The piece de resistence of the evening was The Patrior bar. After efficiently paying the tab at Azafran, we quickly raced the block and a half through the rain to the bar John V had spotted earlier that evening. A masterpiece in the mold of a Pittsburgh watering hole, I would say. It even served Iron City brew. We knew it was perfect when, upon opening the door, we were greeted to the three note baritone of Johnny Cash singing the Folsom Prison Blues. The rest of the night was a mosaic of pitchers of beer, darts, Jimmy Buffet, CCR, kamikazes, and dancing.

Ah, birthdays in the City. You never know where you'll end up.

Also, a few previous birthdays...

Theresa's 25th
Good wholesome fun for Tareq's bday

Marking your Territory

Ah, the comfort of home. I'm sitting at my computer, freshly showered, shirtless, drinking a Laphroig scotch-no ice. I've got Leonard Cohen strumming out of my speakers and my bed beckoning with a fat copy of Anna Karenina about halfway read. Carpet freshly vacuumed massages my recently climbing shoe cramped feet.

I'm sure glad I'm not a consultant. We just started using consultants to address some of our capacity shortcomings. One guy that I work with, David, commutes daily to his company's apartment in Manhatten, and bi-weekendly back home to Toronto. Today he remarked to me how much of a pleasure it is to return back to your own sheets. I wonder what other amenities of home he misses.

There's an amazing peace in creating a nest of your own. I read an interesting book, The Life of Pi which deals with, among other things, zoology. It remarks at how the home is an effort to bring together all the necessities that in the wild are located far away. Running water replaces the river for drinking, bathing, and cleaning. The stove replaces the fire. The walls around you the cave. No need to roam the wide savannas to hunt or to forage through the forest when it's all in your pantry.

Interestingly, the book remarks how, to be a successful zookeeper, it is necessary to recreate an animal's natural surroundings. As animals are creatures of routine, the animal must have all the important things mentioned above, albeit in a smaller radius. And that smaller radius, too, is an issue as animals have a prescribed "comfort zone" that when breached will cause them to move away in order to re-establish it or as a last resort, attack. In any case, successful management of these will result in the animal drinking and eating. A job very well done will result in the animal being well adjusted, falling into its normal routine of waking, hunting/gathering, and sleeping. The ultimate success, of course, is procreation. Heh. Martha Stewart never mentioned that as a benchmark on her show.

And I suppose human beings are no different. Not that I've procreated yet, mind you.

Being feces-ish this Weekend

From past near misses, I know that my bowels are generally, shall we say "looser" when I'm out climbing. I'm not sure if it's the constant abdominal flexing that's part of vertical movement on rock, if it's being "scared shitless" as the saying goes, or if it's now a pavlovian reaction prompted by the thought of climbing. In any case, I'm aware of it, so as a matter of practice, in the morning before climbing I clear the system. Then, I'm free to spend the day facing all the various challenges lighter and unencumbered by waste product.

Saturday was no different. Well, up until mid afternoon, thirty feet into a climb, that is. All of a sudden, the belly had that impending feeling. Yup, this wasn't just one of those "Just wanted to give you a heads up: I'll be coming out soon." This was more like "Your water just broke! I think I see a head!"

Still, I briefly considered ignoring it. Climbing hard generally keeps one pretty focused, so I thought that maybe I'd forget about it as I got into the harder section. But for that same reason, I thought better of it -- why have to worry about digestive problems when thoughts of gravity and forearm endurance will be more pressing?

So I notified Theresa of the situation and she lowered me to the beginning of the climb. But here's the catch - all the climbs where we were climbing started up on a ledge a hundred or so feet off the deck. And that ledge was only several feet wide. So voiding the loins was not simply a matter of running off behind a tree a safe distance away from the crowds. The solution -- pretty simple: I needed to hang my bum over the edge and do my business. My climbing sense of safety, however, dictated that such a position meant that I needed to stay tied into the rope. Sooooo, I fashioned a chest harness so that I could remove my normal climbing harness from my waist.

All tied in, I assumed position, Theresa politely (or fearfully) averted her eyes (and nose), and I went about my business. All proceed normally until I realized that I miscalculated how far my bum was hanging over the edge and how much projectile motion my waste would obtain upon exit...so it ended up landing a just barely avoidable six inches below me. Wherefrom a breeze rocketted into the wall and upwards, wafting the scent to the party climbing above me. They gamely called down to me that I needed to find a different updraft to do my business. A little late I thought.

Anyway, I then finished my climb in good style. After climbing hiked a beautiful, if somewhat misnavigated, two hour route back to car.

Photos re-uploaded

The previous attempt to show the photos kind of bombed. Instead I'll just give direct links. Knock yourself out....