ian glazer's tuesdaynight

If W’s statement about running this country like a business holds out:

• The dollar will be worth about 60% less than the Euro
• He and Disappearing Dick will get zero interest government backed loans so that they can buy T-bills.
• Female federal workers will start posing for Playboy’s Women of Federal Government issue.

Why is it that this administration has decided to isolate America from the rest of the world? We won’t back the Kyoto accord. We waffle on supporting the War Crimes Court. We decry other countries for abusing the basic freedoms of its citizen while ours are brushed aside by an Attorney General so afraid of the human body that he has nude statues covered. Self-interest. This national is firmly wrapped in itself. Certainly, that is what our leadership displays. And in this day and age, that kind of self-interest imposed isolation is dangerous. It’s time for someone to it this nation’s leadership down and teach them about the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Mathematician Albert Tucker created the prisoner’s dilemma and it has become the classic zero-sum game example used in biology (see Dawkin’s The Selfish Gene), computer science, social science, etc. It boils down to this: You and I have been arrested for supposedly committing a crime. The guards put us in separate interrogation rooms. We have the following options, taken from this website, a very good description of the prisoner’s dilemma and discussion of its implications):

I’m back. I’m very sore, but I am back. I have returned from Estonia, specifically Narva-Joesuu. What was I doing there? Would you believe learning a new sword form? Check out http://www.grtc.org/swordfestival for a bit more info. Basically I worked out for eight hours a day for six days straight. We stayed at a Russia worker’s paradise… if given the options to stay at a Russia worker’s paradise, turn it down. Did you know that Gritte is a brand of toilet paper in Estonia? Estonia is a very nice country. Things are extremely cheap. The people are friendly enough. In the summer they get about 20 hours of real daylight which is nice… except it rains, consistently, twice a day, everyday, in Estonia.

So the Poo Poo Palace has a bit of a plumbing issue. My rental unit (a.k.a. Den of the Chef) has a bathroom. (This, apparently, is law. I guess you can’t rent someone a cement cell with nothing more than a chamber pot. I, as a newly minted slum lord, am in to oppressing tenants.) At any rate, the bathroom had a nasty old vanity in it. Joe and I were ripping it out when we discovered the walls behind it were a bit soft… like t-shirt material soft. We explore a bit. To our horror, we discover that the numbskulls who installed the vanity drove a nail into the drain, thus cracking the drain and causing an undiscovered leak… a very damaging one. Enter Kenny the Plumber. I am at the new place one day. I am upstairs writing some pl/sql in German (more on that later.) One of the, in all likelihood illegal, immigrants who were painting my house comes running upstairs quite excited: Painter: “Meester Glazer, there is a man.” What a truly deep thought. So I follow him downstairs to discover a guy that looks like a character actor whose name I forgot. Short white dude. Tattoos. Earrings. Plumber: “I’m the plumber.” Did I mention the Lenox Lewis look-a-like assistant who didn’t say a word? That would be, I later learn, Joey. Joey was far more eloquent that Kenny. Ian: “The plumber?” Plumber: “Yeah.” Needless to say, I was expecting someone in a dirty coverall, a la, the plumbers in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. We eventually establish that, yes, these two guys were in fact the plumbers I called. So Kenny and Joey take a look at the drain. The damage is worse than expected. The crack runs under the concrete. Kenny: “You’ve got three options: bootleg plumbing, trying to seal this one, or dig up the floor.” Ian: “Bootleg plumbing.” Kenny: “Yeah. You know… bootleg plumbing.” Bootleg plumbing, I learned, is essentially illegal plumbing. Things that don’t meet code. Things that may have severe sewage laden repercussions. I have also learned there is the analogous cowboy carpentry. All of this gave me images of Robert DeNiro in the aforementioned Brazil… the Renegade Plumber. Forward ahead a few days… picture Ian, Joe, Fitz, Todd, Big John, Sarah, and Dianne all at one point or another looking in the bathroom, attempting to fix it. Notes from the repair job:

First, San Sebastian was awesome. (No, I wasn’t in Oklahoma as Josh (A big thanks for Josh for the PanAm Tuesday Night) suggested; I was in Spain.) It was an incredibly relaxing vacation. We pretty much ate, walked around the beach, ate some more, and then drank very good cheap wine. Walking about San Sebastian, a town which does not really cater especially to the tourist crowd, I found two stores that were too funny not to mention. The first being a burger joint called La Vaca. (La vaca means cow in Spanish.) They had a cute cow as their little mascot. This is clearly a marketing campaign that would not work in the States. PETA would be on any place calling itself The Cow serving meat… it just wouldn’t happen. The second funny store I found was Don Huevos. Yes, that’s right a greasy spoon run by Sir Egg. The mascot (I took a picture and will post it sooner or later.) was a regal looking fried egg. I guess that’s like the British having a store call Duke Fish N’ Chips. BTW, while in San Sebastian I did travel to nearby Bilbao to see the Gugenheim Museum. The building is amazing. The collection is okay. The city is fairly boring. Second, Paris is extremely expensive. But, Ian, you are saying, Paris is always expensive. True. But after the introduction of the Euro (Euro, spelt E-U-R-O, pronounced D-O-L-L-A-R) the Parisians in true capitalist fashion, jacked up prices. Had a great time there though. In Paris I mostly ate, walked around, ate some more, and then drank expensive good wine. Third, the home jouryen was interesting. I get to JFK and stare out the windows as hundreds of bags get loaded on to the plane. Then I realize there are a lot more bags still sitting outside and the crew is getting ready for take-off. Clearly, there is a problem here. Eventually, the captain comes on a says that they are having a bit of a problem with the aft cargo section and will have it fixed in 10 minutes. 15 mintues go by and the captain says, we need to redistribute some weight in the cargo sections. They have to move some bags and, get this, load 2500 pounds of sand into the back of the plane. This is a MD-88 for god sakes, not some puddle jumper. Needless to say, I have been picking sand out of my luggage for most of the day.

Good afternoon to all of you on the east coast, and good late-maorning to all of you on the west coast…Drea, you’re in the middle, so good whatever time it is there. As the east coasters know, Ian’s out travelling in some exotic place (I think he’s in Okalhoma or someplace fun) this week and asked me to do the weekly east coast e-mail. So I hereby deem this the first Pan-American Tuesday Night e-mail invite. Let the games begin. So whether you’re at Toledo at 9:30, or the Tunnel Top around 6:30 or 7, think of your cohorts on the opposite coast. Again, if you’re in the middle, think of people on both coasts who are simultaneously enjoying the joys of a Tuesday night out with friends (and cheap beer). Through these simple steps, maybe we can work to end the tragic east coast/west coast (aka Biggie/Tupac) fighting that has kept us apart for so long. Now there is a certain irony to the fact that neither Ian nor I are likely to be at our respective bars (and no, we won’t be at each other’s bars…though that would have been amusing) because I don’t know if I’ll be back from Sacramento in time (you east coasters are really missing out on the glory of California’s state capital), but the rest of you should definitely enjoy. On a personal note, my long educational nightmare is over. I’ve decided on a grad school and will be joining the Penn posse (a large part of this joint list) in January, but that’s a long way off. Also, from a shameless self-promotion standpoint, Tom Daschle has named my boss Democratic Leader of the Week. Check him out at www.dashpac.com. We’re all very proud of him.

It’s protest time in DC. It’s that wonderful season right after Cherry Blossoms that indicates that summer is almost here. The tourons are in town. Traffic has gotten gummy. The weather (we’ll get to that in a moment) is pleasant enough. Kids on titanium Treks are protesting globalization. Dude, you want to do something productive?… sell the bike and donate the cash to the Peace Corp. Better yet, join the Peace Corp and stop bunging traffic around Dupont. I saw a Ford Taurus with a bumper sticker that read, “I’d rather be smashing imperialism.” Um, hello? You are driving a piece of the cultural imperialism. You want to smash imperialism, fine, that’s your perogative, but I think you ought to do so wearing sack cloth and ashes, not a dirty J Crew outfit. On that subject, a great number of the protestors running around DC these days look like members of Clown College out on Spring Break. It’s hard to be taking seriously if you look like a juggler from some third rate touring circus. You want to change the world? I think Eat Static really summed up the best strategy to change the world. “We’re not dropping out. We’re infiltrating and taking over.” It’s 39 degrees in Boston right now. There’s a good chance of snow throughout New England. It was 94 three days ago. Heck, it was 101 last week here. Trying driving to Norfolk, VA in a suit in 100 degree weather… it just ain’t fun. You want to fight something… fight what we are doing to the environment, use public transportation, walk more.

I have returned from LA and I can get Tom Waits’ “I don’t wanna grow up” out of my head. Why, you ask? Well, I spent then weekend in Palm Desert, a sleepy retirement community outside of Palm Springs. My cousins now live there and my parents were visiting. So there was a large BBQ while we were there. Fifteen or so fifty, sixty, seventy-something year old couples descended in their golf carts on my cousin’s place. Conversations ranged from golf to golf to what their sex life used to be like to golf to golf. “How do you move in a world of fog That’s always changing things Makes me wish that I could be a dog When I see the price that you pay I don’t wanna grow up… Open up the medicine chest And I don’t wanna grow up” When my cousin mentions that he, at age 60, is the youngest guy in his poker game by ten years. That his bowling league starts place a 3pm and is done by 5. That his poker game starts at 6pm and ends by 10. That the flag is almost always flying at half mast over some of these developments due to dying residents. “When I see the 5 o’clock news I don’t wanna grow up Comb their hair and shine their shoes I don’t wanna grow up Stay around in my old hometown I don’t wanna put no money down I don’t wanna get me a big old loan” My dad though at the outset of the weekend that he would love to live in a place like that. My mother was skeptical. After that barbeque, Dad was disgusted by the whole place, golfing aside, and swore he would never live in a place like that. Go Dad!

My tour of the finer malls of America continues. I am at King of Prussia… again. I am staying at a different hotel. For $179 a night, I’d expect a lot more. No chocolates. No minibar. Nothing really fun at all. (Though I did just have a great Chicken Pot Pie.) For those of you interested in real estate, I have sold my house… took about three days to get the offers and three more days to make it vaguely legal. So it looks like this will all work out after all. I’ll be moving into the Poo Poo Palace sometime in June. Orgo joko? What? You’ve never seen a orgo joko festival? Well, trust me, don’t try searching the web for it… the best I could find is some random Polish web pages. And what is orgo joko? It is an old Basque wagon-lifting contest. These are the mysterious people who did in fact invent jai lai. (BTW, they also have a sport called aharitalka, which roughly translates into… wait for it… sheep fighting.) It is nearly Passover. This came as quite a shock to me… I have lost all sense of time and especially those days related to Jewish holidays. Before cracking the Kedem with Elijah, you could have a drink with a different kind of visitor… Josh Nanberg. He’s back. Yes, he’s back and staying at my house. Still moving out, yes, but here for a visit. Hopefully, I’ll be back in DC tomorrow night in time for Tuesday Night at Toledo Lounge, but I know that Josh will be there.

Yup, that’s good advice from Mr. Waits. Warning, I’m in an odd mood, which does not bode well for you Reader. I want to talk about the Cut Up technique. William S. Burroughs gave it a name. Hugh MacDairmid used it extensively. DJ Spooky uses it… another disciple of Burroughs. In a nutshell, the Cut Up Technique is taking one piece of work, slicing it up, rearranging it, and creating a wholly new work. Burroughs did this by folding papers and using scissors. MacDairmid was said to simply slice off lines of his never ending poem and give them out like Tic-Tacs. Spooky takes fragments of songs and pieces them together. Offices are perfect places to practice and witness the Cut Up Technique. Take, for example, my office. Next door we have two 23-ish year olds from Maryland. They work with yet another recent grad of Maryland. They provide Ken and I endless amusement, listening to their conversations. Recently, I walked into my office to see Ken, quite pale. When I inquired, Ken swore he just heard one of them say, “I was like, Oh My God!” Thin walls and loud neighbors equals endless fun. The following is a rough Cut Up from the offices on the Friday after Valentines Day:

So last week, I had a headache. Seems minor enough. Just a headache. But it grew more intense and moved a bit around my head. By the end of the day this mobile command center of pain had centered itself over my right eye. I got home, swallowed a couple asprin, and tried to ignore the searing pain. The next morning the mobile command center of pain has shurnk a bit, was less intense. I thought I had beaten it… oh no, the headache was just sleeping. By the time it woke up, it was around lunch. And this is when I realized why I was in such pain… I hadn’t had any caffeine in a few days. It seems that may usual coffe intake had slowly crept upwards. I think I had level out at around three cups (large ones) per day. This isn’t a huge amount of coffeee, I admit, but it was more than I usually drank. And now my body did not have any and was grumpy. So I was left with a decision: try and push through this and remind my body what it was like without caffeine or just have a Coke and a smile. I like pushing my body around a bit. So I decided to grin and bear it. Which, writing this now, was a good decision, but during the process was an extremely painful one. If kicking caffeine is that hard, I am not planning on developing any new tough habits.