Meme Dream

Dan and I are with a group of people on a tour in a tropical destination near the beach.

The tour leader is discussing mediocre memes and we are bored.

Tour Leader (speaking to the brothers Berger): "Fine, I'll destroy a perfectly innocent meme and we'll see what you think then! See that Lincoln penny sitting on that girl's beach towel for good luck? I am gonna pick that up and throw it into the ocean."

Tour leader throws the penny into the ocean.

Dan and I look at each other, smile and say, "NOT A MEME!"

Give me a Smith & Wesson, I'll have niggaz undressin'

No, really.


This picture is from the Fall, but I had been meaning to post it for awhile. See below for the results of some of my target practice:

Changing an old canard

People always talk about great stories (getting arrested for public urination) and moments (first hand job from a prostitute) that they can't wait to tell their kids and their grandkids about one day. Well I'd say that it's about time that we admit to being excited about telling our robots (first our robot servants, then our robot overlords) about these little miracles.

Come to Mama

Funny, this is exactly how I want to be photographed for the Delino swimsuit issue:

For a photo to accompany this article, his publicist, Pamela Johnston, suggested the following: “Layfield in a beach chair, wearing a suit and tie on the top and swim trunks on the bottom. N.Y.C. skyscape in background. Cabana girl serving him Mamajuana Energy on a silver tray.”

Read more about the potentially incredible effects of Mamajuana (sounds suspiciously like...) here.

The Sign of a True Patriot

I have set all of my clocks to automatically skip the time 9:11 both times that it occurs every day. It's just too soon to deal with the emotions that come up when I see those digits. So 9:10 always becomes 9:12 and I can glance at my clocks without worrying about my day being ruined.

Catching up is hard to do

After being on vacation for a week, then having to do a lot of stuff at work and then go on jury duty I have fallen very far behind on my Google Reader. Can someone please make a new feed of the best of my friends' shared items? I'm not sure whether finding an apartment or getting caught up on Google Reader is more stressful.

Is there something in the water?

Or maybe they are just having too many babies over in India...

In case you were curious...

This is what a medium rare steak looks like at Luger's.

I woke up early on my born day...

I'm twenty-five, yes I made it, I beat Contra this morning,
a bet you should have faded. Squash at the YC, Tang Pavilion for lunch,
MoMA in the afternoon, catching an Italian movie on a hunch.
Ended up at Luger's, where steak is the thing, a rare treat of meat
and a meal fit for kings, or just another birthday for the Berger twins.

April Fool's Day

Basically it just gives everyone a good excuse to do something mean and then say "April Fool's!" Now if only I could think of something mean to do...

Hola chicos y chicas

A LOT has happened on this trip down to good old Argentina...but I don´t have time to tell you about it now. As I sit here, the sounds of honking horns and clinking pots and pans is incessant because of the huge strike going on down here. Tomorrow brings a day trip to Uruguay, so we´ll see how things develop.

Luckily I haven´t been affected at all by the beef shortages...yet.

It's all in the family

A few people must have read my last post about cast members from The Wire being at the HBO Shop and found out about today's event because the line was much longer and the crowd was much whiter (j/k!). While waiting on line a black guy walked by and said: "Why are you all waiting on line to see some TV characters who sell drugs? Just come up to my hood and you can see it live! We shoot each other too." The little girls in front of us (Berger père, mère et moi) said that they too had drugs in their neighborhood.

Once we got inside and got over the panic of realizing that the posters were all sold out, we got two of the last three Wire books, and set out to get them signed by Omar (Michael K. Williams), Carver (Seth Gilliam), and Marlo (Jamie Hector). I convinced my mom to ask Omar to sign "It's all in the game," but HBO said no personalization. So when she asked, he said "No" and she was crushed...until he flashed that big smile and changed his mind, bringing much joy to our little enclave of fandom. Next, my dad told Omar that he was "the best gay, black stick up artist on television," to which Omar replied that he was the ONLY one. Finally, I snuck in and got Omar to sign "Man's gotta have a code" and all was well in the world.

My dad congratulated Carver on making rank, I told him that I loved his story arc and then I was face to face with Marlo for first time since January. As he was signing my book, he looked over my shoulder and said: "Is that your father?" To which I replied: "Yeah, is it that obvious?" Marlo finished: "The resemblance is there no doubt."

Get those old folks off the road

This is not "odd," it's actually logical and I would expect it to appear on an econ blog, not on the "Oddly Enough" ticker in my Gmail. Basically, for those too lazy to read the link or the title of this post, Japan is offering incentives to people over 65 to get them to give up their drivers' licenses. This makes a lot of sense and I have been arguing for this for years. I think that there should be a re-testing mechanism in place as well, but overall I really like this idea. A car in the wrong hands is a death machine, so the fewer death machines on the road, the better.

This problem of old people on the road was most forcefully driven home for me when an elderly driver drove into the lobby of my hotel at the Fashion Mall in Ft. Lauderdale sometime in the late 1990s because he or she could not tell the difference between the gas and the brake pedals.

Eric, you're welcome for the gratuitous Florida reference...I hope you enjoyed it.

Destructive Behavior

I really hate it when people hold open subway doors during rush hour. The worst offenders are people who do it as a favor for someone else, thinking they are doing a good thing. In reality, they are delaying hundreds of other people! Classic tragedy of the commons?

There's still hope

The fact the Times would even mention the idea of Romney as VP should excite all of us! Mittmentum is growing...