Where feminine hygiene is no laughing matter ...Rick's Cafe Americain

Read More...

PHONE: [plays “Linus and Lucy”, by Vince Guaraldi].

ME: Hello?

DAWN: Hi!

ME: Dawn! Hi!  Where are you?

DAWN:  I’m not sure.  I’m lost.

ME:  Oh no.  Do you have any idea where you are?

DAWN:  I see trees.

ME:  That narrows it down.

DAWN:  And little Brady Bunch mini-houses.

ME: Uh-huh?

DAWN:  And a silver Mazda RX-8.

ME:  You’re at my house?

DAWN:  I guess.

ME:  Oh.  Did you ring the doorbell?

DAWN: Yes.

ME:  Did anyone answer the door?

DAWN: Um, no.

ME:  Then we’re not home.

DAWN:  That’s OK.  I’ll just steal some of your neighbor’s children.*

Why was Dawn three hours early?  Because she didn’t get lost.  Yes, that’s right, Dawn added 3 hours to a 45-minute drive to account for the likelihood of her getting lost.  Needless to say, we left that Outback right were it was until it was time for Dawn to go to the airport.  Since she left at ten on Sunday morning, I can only assume she’s boarding the plane about now.

The first thing Dawn saw when she walked through the door was our cat, Guru.  All I can say is, to quote Dawn herself (though not at that particular moment), “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA”.  While I sympathize with Dawn’s very real discomfort with most non-human living things, watching her jump every time the cat brushes against her just never gets old.  Nor do her frequent conversations with the cat:

DAWN: You’re not that big. I could take you.  Just remember that.

GURU:  [blink]

The second thing Dawn saw was the Scrabble box:

DAWN: Oooooh, can we play Scrabble?

RICK: Sure.

DAWN: Can I win?

RICK:  It’s possible.

DAWN:  I want to win.

RICK: OK.**

I was about to set up the board when Ilsa pointed out that Dawn might want to go out and “see” Palo Alto, since she was only here for a day.  Intrigued, I asked what was worth “seeing” in Palo Alto.  And, for the record, if you’re planning a visit, here is the short list:

Number 1: Stanford University. Here, I employed a touring technique known as “drive into the middle of it and get lost, then drive around till you’ve found your way back out.  It was highly effective, and we saw all the key Stanford sights, including the Famous Bell Tower Thingy, the Parking Lot In Front Of The Rodin Sculpture Garden, the Fake Mayan Ruins, the Bike Racks (Dawn’s personal favorite—I’ve never seen anyone get so excited and nostalgic over bike racks) and Panama Street (where Dawn mocked me for referring to the U.S. as “the States”, instead of “here").  25 minutes later I was wondering what else to show her:

RICK: Oh, Stanford has a linear accelerator—want to see that?

DAWN:  Here’s what I heard:  “Ooooh, Stanford blah blah blah blah blah.”

RICK:  It’s the physics equivalent of saying that Stanford has a TV studio filming WB shows.

DAWN:  Ooooooh!!!!  Now THAT I’d like to see!

Number 2: Downtown Palo Alto.  Otherwise known as University Avenue, this is a long drive down a short, congested street lined with restaurants and shops.  Highlight:  Citibank.

DAWN:  Oh, wow, look!

RICK:  What?

DAWN:  A Citibank!

RICK:  So?

DAWN:  That’s my bank!

RICK: Um, great, I’ll be sure to drive by the McDonald’s on the way home.

DAWN: Why?

RICK:  Because they are about as rare.

DAWN:  I get excited when I see a McDonald’s in a foreign country.

Number 3: New LLP’s Palo Alto Office.  We didn’t go here, because I forgot.  And because I don’t know where it is.  And because, why would anyone want to spend their weekend out of town visiting their office?  But if you want to see it while you’re here, Ilsa knows the address . . .

Anyway, after The Tour there was dinner, at Francis Ford Coppola’s restaurant:

DAWN:  I wish I had David Blaine’s powers.

RICK:  Why?

DAWN:  So that I could make this table disappear.

RICK:  Why would you want to do that?

DAWN:  Then they probably wouldn’t notice if I stole my wine glass.

After dinner, Ilsa went bed and Dawn and I sat down to play some Scrabble.  Now, this happens to be the time of night when Guru likes to fly around the living room at full speed, flinging himself onto one of the couches and scrambling about spider-like on its vertical surfaces, so Dawn was a bit distracted.

GURU: [flies past Dawn on his way to the nearest couch arm, where he hangs momentarily suspended by his claws]

DAWN: Eeeeeyyyaaaaahhhh!!  [deep breath] I think you should go be with your mommy, cat.

GURU: [blinks]

DAWN:  You’re not so big.  I . . . could . . . take you?

GURU: [blinks]

DAWN:  Eeeeeyyyaaahhh!!!

I won’t bore you with the details of the game itself, but I will share the final board, which shows how Dawn earned the title, “the [Salvador] Dali of Scrabble”:

For those of you who are interested, according to Dawn a “jif” is a “hurry”; “bonrelaxer” is “a very good relaxer”; and “zariy” is an adjective that refers to something that makes the Baby Jesus cry (for example, the word “bonrelaxer"). Apparently, “Zariy” is also a popular name in the world of pre-pubescent cartoon fan-fiction.  I have no idea what a “codet” is, but I think it was featured in the DaVinci Code.

Needless to say Dawn won (as per our prior agreement), and a good time was had by all. 

We can’t wait to have Dawn back, and I only hope that the next time she comes out this way she won’t be lured by strangers with Bavarian candy.  After all, the doors on a Bimmer all open the same way.

* OK, she didn’t actually say that.  But that’s what Dawn thinks our neighbors thought as they peered from behind their blinds to watch her loiter on our street for half an hour.

** I meant “OK, we’ll play”.  Dawn heard, “OK, you’ll win”.

Read Less...

Read More...

Although I would certainly prefer Condi to be VP than Secretary of State, I hardly think Condoleezza Rice is the best choice to represent (politically or metaphorically) the women or the African Americans of this country. But it is Karol’s typically mangled logic that really bruises my forehead:

It’s more of a want for Bush (and Condi) to make history in this way. The first black person, the first woman, the first single person in some time to hold the office of Vice President. It would break through conceptions on what a president or vice-president must be. That’s something that makes me smile every time I think about it.

Huh!?!?  Karol even concedes in her own comments section that Condi would not win a national election.  So what about a single black woman being handed an office she could not get on her own makes Karol smile?  After all, I thought Karol hated affirmative action?

Read Less...

Read More...

Whenever something horrible happens to innocent people, like the Holocaust, the recent tsunami, or the presidency of George W. Bush, someone pipes up to exclaim that this disproves the existence of God.  It doesn’t, so stop saying it does (you know who you are).

When good things happen to bad people, it can mean one of three things: (1) there is no deity pulling the strings, protecting the weak and promoting the righteous; (2) there is a deity, but he/she/it is a wicked deity and takes pleasure in the suffering of mankind; or (3) there is a just, loving deity who is waiting to punish and reward each of us in the afterlife.  Each of these scenarios is consistent with reality as we perceive it, and the third is consistent with the Judeo-Christian belief system.  In fact, belief in an afterlife allows the faithful to reconcile virtually anything with their belief in God.

In the case of bad things happening to good people, imagine a family of righteous, good-hearted people.  Now imagine the father (Bob) is actually a serial pederast, but his wife and kids, who are as pure as the driven snow, have no idea.  It is hard to imagine a way to punish Bob in this life without also punishing his wife and children, who don’t deserve it.  Multiply that little dilemma by several billion, and you begin to realize that it is mathematically impossible for any God to mete out punishment justly in this life.  Hence, the afterlife, where Bob is sodomized with barbed wire for eternity, while his wife and children sing in a choir of angels.

So, if you believe in an afterlife, lucky you!  If you don’t, well, then you probably don’t believe in a just and loving God—but that doesn’t mean others can’t.

Read Less...

Read More...

A “bringer” show is the sort of scam that P.T. Barnum or Tom Sawyer would have loved. To get stage time at a comedy club, you commit to bringing five (or ten or twenty) people paying the cover or two-drink minimum. It costs your friends roughly $30 each to subsidize your stage time. In exchange, you supposedly get a large, “real” audience (high civilian:comic ratio) and sometimes the opportunity to perform for industry representatives. It was the latter promise that convinced me to break my vow and left me raging against the club, the industry and myself on the drive home.

I have to start by saying that I don’t blame the producer, Buddy Flip.* He has been very honest with me and he organized a show that, when it started, was sold out. He promised that there would be people there that book road gigs, and there were people there that book road gigs. Unfortunately, despite Buddy delivering on what he promised, it was still a disaster.

The quota for this show was five people. There was a time that getting five people to a show wasn’t a problem. That time appears to have passed. First, my mother - who is usually able to convince her friends to come out - is in Florida. So not only do I lose the reliable “1” of my mother, I lose her marketing power. Second, not surprisingly, the novelty of having a friend who is a comic has mostly worn off. Begging my mailing list has been suffering diminishing returns for a little while now, and the response from the list for Wednesday’s show was nil. So I had to conscript Zinester and Brother of Ugarte into coming. (They come willingly, but I hate to keep imposing on them. They can do most of my stuff from memory.) A sad, desperate face got my friend Frank to come along and Frank’s date made four. But I needed five.

Before sending my posse in, I talked with Buddy and he told me that he would let me on with four AND he would tell the bookers to stick around for my set. Which he did. Unfortunately, he wasn’t going to put me on until after all of the people that brought five went up first. I understand it from his perspective, but with so many comics ahead of me, I probably would have been better off just saying thanks, but no thanks. The audience dwindles throughout the night as people see their friends perform and then leave; last night was no different. By the time I went on stage, a full house of ~120 had dwindled down to 12. A crowd with an average age of 25 had shifted to an average age of 40. A mixed crowd in a good mood had become an almost entirely black crowd** that was grumpy because they had to sit through two hours of (mostly) dreck to see their relatives.

Needless to say, it didn’t go particularly well. My first few jokes connected (one connected very well), but it went downhill rapidly. One joke missed by a mile. I followed it with a chunk that I have about skiing. It would have gone really well earlier in the night when most of the crowd were Philips Exeter graduates (seriously); not so well when they were the relatives of a comic that premised part of his set on his recent parole. Then I screwed up both of my Paris Hilton jokes and closed with a corny joke that is designed for smart crowds to groan at (and will soon be a blog entry when I retire it). A minor disaster.

Someday I’ll write a manifesto on how to improve bringer shows so that they work for comics and clubs, but today I just wanted to bitch about a performance gone awry. And announce that I have done my last bringer show.

Until I cave again.

* WARNING: The music on his homepage is really annoying.

** DEFENSIVE ASIDE: Ordinarily I really like playing for a mostly black crowd. That is why I love performing at Ripple. But there is a difference between a black crowd in a neighborhood bar and a black comic’s family watching you in a mainstream club while you do a set for the benefit of mainstream bookers. A BIG difference.

Read Less...

Read More...

A.M. tournament

I thought that maybe the fates were with me. I went to Otto’s to perform in their 8PM open mic, but only Matt Taylor and I showed up. The host arrived late and surly. With no audience to perform for and a host that wasn’t interested in hosting, we decided to leave. Matt had a spot at The Duplex, so I tried to sneak myself onto the bill. Nothing doing. So we headed over to the Village Lantern and I tried to sneak on over there. Again, no dice.

But wait… host Steve Rosso came bounding up the stairs to tell me that someone had cancelled and he could put me up last! I had a good set and figured that fate was smiling on me after spending the early part of the evening mocking me. It turns out this was just a set up so it could mock me again. Fate is like that.

Early in the tournament I caught pocket tens on the button. There was only one limper ahead of me, so I raised to 4x the big blind. Both of the blinds called me and asphnxma made some snarky comment about the type of respect my raises get. The flop was ten high and rainbow. The blinds checked and I made a modest bet. The small blind called, but the big blind folded. The turn paired the rags on the board. The small blind bet, I raised him and he called again. The river was a brick and the small blind pushed in his stack. I quickly called. He showed his once-powerful aces and I doubled up with Tens full.

The tournament was mostly uneventful for a while. I was playing aggressively (for me) and was doing a decent job of holding onto my chips. I pushed Paula, a new player at A.M., out of a pot with a big bet on the turn, and she called me a bully. I doubled up through her when she called my bluff bet on the flop with nothing but a gutshot draw. It didn’t come for her and she just shrugged. Paula didn’t care because she was in the middle of a generally unsuccessful attempt to dump her chips. She kept calling from behind and sucking out. It was actually painful to watch. Poker lost over and over and over again.

Meanwhile, asphnxma was getting cold-decked like nothing I’ve ever seen. He got 52o three times in a row. It was in the middle of two orbits of no cards higher than nine, nothing suited and no connected cards. He was shortstacked and just wanted to push, but had nothing. Finally I told him A watched pot never boils. Don’t look at your cards, just push. After a few more shitty hands, that is exactly what he did. I don’t remember his cards, but he tripled up. He doubled through again, courtesy of Paula - still trying to lose. All of a sudden he was sitting on one of the larger stacks when two tables collapsed to one.

When we got down to 6 players, Paula ended up on my immediate right. When I saw AQo, I raised it up. Not surprisingly, Paula called. The flo was T-9-x and Paula checked. Paula hadn’t slowplayed anything all night, I didn’t want to see anymore cards and she had shown a willingness to lay down her cards after the flop. So I pushed. And she called. And turned over T9. I had her outchipped, though, so I had at least one more hand to play.

I was left with 9000 in the SB when the blinds were 6000/12000/1000, so everyone knew that all of my chips were going to be in the pot. Still, there were two other limpers, meaning that I had a chance to quadruple up. The flop was T-7-x, rainbow. asphnxma and the other limper checked and Paula bet into the 1BB side pot, forcing the limpers to fold and grumble about the wisdom of checking it down. I hadn’t looked at my cards yet, so when Paula and I were heads up, I was pleased to see T3. Paula turned over A♥7♥. Wow! I was going to quadruple up ... until Paula went runner-runner for the heart flush and I was gone.

I dropped another $15 in the ring game, mostly on a hand that asphnxma discusses more cogently than I would here. Let’s just say that the guy with aces isn’t a particularly deceptive player and I have no regrets about how I played the hand.

Tropicana

For all of my poker playing over the last two years, I had never played in a casino. I’d played blackjack in AC, Verona and Deadwood, but not poker. When asphnxma and Bkyn Plague decided to head to AC for President’s Day, I figured this would be as good a day as any to make my first trip. Deke decided to join in as well.

I started the day $5 in the hole. We opted to take the 9:30 Academy bus from the Port Authority to the Tropicana, since that is apparently the poker room of choice. (Why not the Borgata? I don’t know. asphnxma?) That meant I had to be on the train before 9. Which, in turn, meant that I would be dragging my fat ass out of a warm bed much earlier than I am used to on a weekend (or, lately, a weekday), so I was bound to be a little confused. I knew as soon as I stepped off the train at 34th Street that I made a mistake. Unwilling to wait for another train, I headed above ground and grabbed a taxi. Like I said, still in New York and already $5 in the hole.

I had two hours to kill, so I read a little fiction, a little non-fiction (to prepare to interview the author) and the introduction to a friend’s draft novel. The bus arrived in AC at 11:45, we were given $17 (in cash!) by the tour operator and headed to the cage. I got cold feet about playing no limit in a cash game (probably because of this), so I put my name on the list for 4/8 and bought in for $200.

The table was ridiculous. No fold ‘em hold ‘em. People were playing ATsC and calling off all the way to the river with nothing but a three card draw. Even with so many people in the pots, I just didn’t feel like there was any way that people were getting the odds to draw the way they did. I lost so much money to people holding 53s or J4s (that one was runner-runner) or similar crap that I almost cried. Early on, I was down $30 and told asphnxma about the table. He said that I had to start playing more suited cards and connectors. It sounded too much like “when in rome” for me to follow his advice, but on reflection he was probably right. Once a tight player, always a tight player. If I never going to improve, of course.

I quickly reversed fortune when I got into a pot with pocket eights. I caught my set on the flop and a boat on the turn and a loose player in the four seat capped the river against me. Sweet. After another hand where I hit my gutshot on the turn (7 way action preflop on a pot I raised with AQ and only one small bet on the flop to call those same seven people. I had the odds here, right?) I was up over $100 and feelin’ fine. Then the flushes started coming for the chasers and I started playing poorly.

I didn’t have breakfast before I left and I didn’t break for lunch. I spent the last two hours with my stomach growling, but unwilling to slow down and have a sandwich. It was a mistake. A combination of bad rivers and ill-advised calls blew off another $230. If didn’t win the last hand of the day (which I played horribly, by the way), I would have lost over $100 playing against a table where I respected only two (maybe three) of my opponents. Instead I lost $99. I guess it could have been worse. Also, it could have been better. Plague finished +$200, Deke about the same.

That is a juicy game. I’ll be back.

Read Less...

Read More...

Only one league - the NBA - has ever made a credible case for a salary cap. They did it by opening their books, allowing the union to audit them, proving that the league was on the verge of collapse, and inviting the players to become partners in the revitalization of the league. The salary cap in the NBA is soft enough that it doesn’t really act as a drag on salaries and, as long as the well-oiled marketing machine of the NBA keeps printing money, will never be much of a drag anway (the cap number is linked to league revenue). 

Baseball shouldn’t have a cap. Neither should football. Both leagues are highly successful, highly profitable enterprises. Teams that lose money in baseball earn that red ink through stupid decisions in the general manager’s office and the marketing department. The NHL - purportedly bleeding money - is not quite the cash cow that the other sports are, but there is no way that the teams are losing as much as ownership claims. First, the owners are all savvy businessmen who have proven themselves to be - if nothing else - rational economic actors. I refuse to believe that they keep making the same “mistake” over and over again. It appears that other savvy businessmen don’t believe it either. Every time a team is up for sale there is someone willing to purchase the franchise at a substantial profit for the selling owner.

The league offered the players a bum deal and the players turned it down at substantial cost to themselves. Papers across the country are dutifully squawking the same sad refrain: the players are “greedy” (the owners aren’t?) and “owe it to the fans” to just sign and play (is this a professional gig or a charity appearance at a senior center?). The conventional wisdom of the press is unvarnished horseshit and I for one am glad that the union stood strong.

Of course, I’d rather watch college hockey anyway. Cornell is currently #3 in the country (or, if you are a pure stathead, #7).The ECACHL conference tournament is coming up in a few weeks, so I’ll have plenty of hockey to enjoy. Plus, I got to see Cornell blow out league rivals Princeton and Yale last week. They continued to roll this weekend. Cornell is a virtual lock for the NCAA’s, so I’ll have plenty of hockey to watch. 

Read Less...

Read More...

Department officials said they were preparing a news release and were waiting for Wal-Mart to pay the $135,540 before making the settlement public.

$135,540?! Way to make them dig deep, DOL.

Wal-Mart can’t claim ignorance—even though they did. The defining characteristic of Wal-Mart is its unmatched information management system. Every time a pair of tube socks is dragged across a register scanner the entire supply chain immediately feels the ripple. If an assistant manager in the Spokane cookware department farts, someone in Bentonville smells it and sends a memo back to Spokane. Wal-Mart rigorously monitors employee hours to optimize staffing levels (not to mention minimizes its health insurance costs). There isn’t even plausible deniability here. $135,540?! Maine fined Wal-Mart over $200,000 just a few years ago for the same thing - and that was for the violations in one state with only 20 stores.

Even if you want to argue that Big Brother doesn’t know everything, Wal-Mart knew:

A weeklong internal audit of 128 stores found 1,371 instances in which minors apparently worked too late at night, worked during school hours or worked too many hours in a day.

Wal-Mart claims the report was mistaken because it counted a holiday as a school day, but do you think Wal-Mart would conduct an internal child labor audit on a non-representative week? Neither do I. Wal-Mart is a repeat offender and the fine they have to pay is the corporate equivalent of a speeding ticket in Montana.

That however, is the second most appalling part of the settlement. Number one?

A provision also promises to give Wal-Mart 15 days’ notice before the Labor Department investigates any other “wage and hour” accusations, like failure to pay minimum wage or overtime.

To be fair, the NYT has run a correction because the article in the print edition inadvertently edited out a response from the Department of Labor. The spokesperson claims that the “15 days” provision only applies to child labor violations. I don’t believe the spokesperson—the article indicates that the reporter and the experts quoted in it were working off of a copy of the settlement agreement and I trust their basic reading comp skills. But let’s take her at her word and assume that is what the parties intended the contract to mean: it is still insane.

In the world of commercial contracts, this is known as “notice and opportunity to cure” provision. It is a standard way of preventing people from trying to invalidate contracts over small, easily remdied, technical breaches. This isn’t a commercial relationship, though. It is an agreement between a law enforcement agency and an accused violator of the law. This is the first I am aware that the cops needed to ask permission before they investigated. I assume this will become standard in all criminal investigations:

A search warrant will be executed in two weeks. If we don’t get a note from you assuring us that you currently have no crystal methamphetamine or crystal methamphetamine production facilities. If you happen to be making crystal methamphetamine, please correct this violation and send us a report of your plan to avoid such mishaps in the future.

Is that really how we want federal law enforced?

I have no idea how Wal-Mart pulled this off. OJ’s Dream Team lawyers are a bunch of ambulance-chasing hacks compared to the folks Wal-Mart is using.

Read Less...