Tweed Ride - Yogi is famous!

Who would've thunk that. Apparently if you hang around a Penny Farthing long enough you get your mug in the local paper. Either that or the combination of the Indian dude and the U-Haul was too much for the editor to resist. Anyway, just so you know, I am now officially a celebrity, so buy me a beer, will ya?

Yeah, I know, I got sandwiched (for eternity now) between Janet Jackson and Khaled Fucking Sheikh Mohammed. But you know how it is, you got to grab all the opportunities you have to tell everyone how awesome you are...

DC Tweed Ride photos

Finally, a chance to upload some photos that don't really do justice to what was a really awesome event. There's this peculiar little group called Dandies and Quaintrelles that decided that this fall would be a great time to go out and reclaim the streets of downtown DC for bicyclists. When wearing our best tweed, of course. Because that's how we roll.

The event was called the DC Tweed Ride, and a solid 500 people (at the every least, I should think) showed up on what was a beautiful fall morning. Yogi is not quite a morning person, especially in the absence of caffeine, but still I showed up to see this:

Yep. Absolute mayhem in some alley chock-full of nattily dressed DC locals in tweed, somewhere in Northeast DC.

There were accessories too. Pipes -

Moustaches (some fake, some real)

And a couple Penny Farthings. Awesome.


We took DC by storm. Well, we biked through a bunch of lights and used up all the lanes, which made us feel invincible (not bad for a couple hours a year). We doffed our hats often, waved our parasols, and there was a bunch of "Hellooo there"s and "Good Morning to you Sir"s and "Hip Hip Hoorah"s being dished out by the riders to somewhat dazed onlookers, who fell neatly into one of three categories:

1. What the fuck. Get out of my way, assholes. (These, to DC's credit, were few and far between)
2. Aw, sweet. Antique bikes and Tweed! And doesn't that Indian dude look cute. Clap, clap, and/or honk honk.
3. Man, what the fuck did that dude/chick slip in my drink last night...

But we rode on, undeterred.



We stopped over at the white house. The big man wasn't in, unfortunately... Schmoozing with the Chinese so we can still live happy debt-ridden lives, apparently.

And since no event is quite complete without a bunch of beer to wet parched throats (warm day + physical activity + tweed? Phew!) we went and got plastered at a local bar. I thought Marvin's looked like a speakeasy packed with one hell of a good-looking crowd that day... Good times.

Also, for photos that don't suck, and for English that's a lot cleaner, you really should check this link.

Back after a HUGE break

Like you care, pushupreader... Like. You. Care.

But still, I feel like I need to explain the absence. Just so I can get those rusty fingers working...

1. Work after sailing has been bad. Not busy bad. Worse. Not-Working bad. Nothing- Fucking-Works bad.

2. Got a talking to from the boss-man based on work being Nothing-Fucking-Works bad. Boss-man seems to think Nothing-Fucking-Works = Yogi-Ain't-Working.

2a. Getting a talking to from Boss-man is bad. As in, not I'll-cut-off-your-funding bad, but I'm-cutting-off-your-balls-in-front-of-everyone-let's-see-how-smart-you-are-now-asshole bad.

3. Surprisingly though, this hasn't spurred me into working harder. I just get pissed off a lot easier. And stew in my juices, instead of writing.

4. Also, there have been adventures, as always. These have kept me sane. Sure I'm going to blog about the pushy mother, ghetto cabin and broken axle. Of course.

But first, a nice pic from Seneca Aqueduct. it's a great place to go for a hike in Maryland on the banks o the Potomac, even if it's in frigid conditions.

There you have it. OK, enough of all this bearing my heart out bullshit. More writing coming.

Halloween this year...

... was a repeat from way back. Cheating. But fun. Yogi is nothing if he isn't classy.


Worried you might get let down on that important date???
Scared that your mojo might go AWOL in times of need???
HAVE NO FEAR, BONERMAN IS HERE!!!


Boner Man's Power Belt had Viagra and ExtenZe (fake packs. Of course.), K-Y, 5-hour energy drinks, something I bought from Target that was battery driven and guaranteed "20 minutes of quivering pleasure. Batteries not included" (no I don't know what it was; I gifted it to my roommates lady friend) and, as a last resort clearly, a wrist exerciser.

Great reception for the costume, absolutely shredded inner thighs because of walking with the prop. Yes it's a prop. No, there is no subliminal psychological compensatory thinking here.

(Same) Rat Fail. Dog Win.

No, we didn't feed the rat to the dog. But we did let it play around with it for a bit. Are we bad people? Dunno. Seemed fun.

Rat Fail. Trap Win.

Looks almost like he's still alive, doesn't it? He's dead though.

Best Halloween Invitation EVER

HeyYogi,

I just sent you an evite for Halloween. Please don’t feel pressured to come by – you won’t know too many people, and I know you have plans that night – but I figured if you want to stop by before you head up it would be fun to see you and your costume (if you’re putting it on before you drive up). If not, no worries! Hope you’re doing well!

Gotta love it.

Iceland Air - my personal saga

So last week's little trans-Atlantic trip reminded me of a very different, but almost equally memorable trip that I made when I was a bit younger; the background is that I'm this young, broke student, and I'm trying to visit this lady-friend of mine back in England. The whole romantic affair was a waste of time, but the actual flight there turned out to be rather eventful. Here's an email I shot off after I got back, with some edits (the writing was horrendously tacky - I was a young and jilted lover who had just had a bad flight experience...)

With all the money I had made, the only airline I could afford was Iceland-air. Now if there's one thing I learned after this trip (and you should learn after reading this), it's never to fly Iceland-air. First of all, they buy all their 737s second-hand from Ryanair (which buys all their aircraft from the worn-out Ghana-air fleet, which in turn buys Kyrghyz-air rejects, which are basically the planes that the pilots of Air India have reduced to wrecks after 20 years of semi-drunk flying). So we get into this shell of a plane which looks like its just been in a demolition derby and spray painted by Andy Warhol off his meds. The insides are worse - bad karma all around. It looks (and smells) like the last trip involved horses, alcohol, frayed tempers and many, many upset stomachs. I say so to the old lady who sits to my left; she nods somewhat dreamily; I look to my right, and there's this cute thing (the one bright spot in the trip) that sits next to me, and we look at each other nervously as the plane shudders down the runway and eventually decides to heave itself into the air inches before we all get dumped into Chesapeake bay.

I look at the in-flight mag. Eidur Gudjohnssen is the first Icelander to play footie in England. You get good fish in Iceland. Icelandic water is clean. Icelanders bathe in open air pools and hot streams. Iceland has good fish. Icelandic water is healthy. Eidur Gudjohnssen has a wart on his left toe. Hm.

I turn talk to the babe, but the old woman on my left gets to me first; turns out she's on her way to meet her girl-friend. I make the mistake of looking at her quizzically, because she enthusiastically tells me that they indeed are dating. I also learn in quick succession, that
a. she was married,
b. her husband beat her every night,
c. she had kids (many),
d. her husband beat her every night,
e. her many kids had kids,
f. her husband beat her every night,
g. she eloped with her grandkid's governess.
Also jokingly, she adds that septuagenarian lesbians are, sadly, hard to come by. I laugh uneasily, and decide the only way to shut out the visual images that keep popping up in my head is to focus on the in-flight magazine (the TV closest to me was 12" across and a good 20 feet away, and they were showing Icelandic 70s pop). The two women on either side of me continue to have a spirited conversation about woman power.


Before long (I had time to read about Eidur Gudjohnssen's up-to-date love life twice over) we reach some stable altitude and wobble there. This is when Icelandic airhostesses appear with food. Each one of these ladies look like they can smother Hulk Hogan between their ample bicep and forearm fat pads. And they wear lipstick like it's been painted on by a 12" brush. As I quiver in fright as their body looms in front blocking all cabin light, they ask "VOT DO YOU VANT" in a decidedly you-better-tell-me-quick-you-dipshit-i-need-to-go-put-my-lipstick-on-again kind of
tone. So I ask for the pasta and get some glop that looks like its left over from the last ice age. Plus it has bits of what looks suspiciously like walrus meat, but I don't want to antagonize my friendly Icelandic airhostess. So I let Ms Hagar go bleach her bushy mustache and apply more green/orange eyeshadow, and I swallow the glop (carefully avoiding the meat - it has bristles on it that look just like walrus whiskers. I'm sure it was walrus meat). Fortunately they follow it up with alcohol (aqvavit - Iceland's national drink. Of course). I decide I need a stiff one, so does Etta (the pretty thing - we were close pals by then). So we down a couple, and then the ageing beast (the plane, not the airhostess) decides to do an all out death dance in the middle of the atlantic. Lights go out, alarms go off (REALLY loud sirens), and we all panic a bit. I decide to cash in, and turn towards Etta to comfort her, but glop + aqvavit was too much for her delicate tummy. She turns green, and before I can whip out the barf bag, she shoots out projectiles of half eaten walrus meat (though her nose too, I swear I saw it) all over a radius of six feet.

I turn green now, and turn away (hey, there's only so much I can do ok? besides I had a girlfriend back then - or so I thought - and judging from this babe's pro-lesbian tilt, I could be heading for a big letdown). Meanwhile Ms Hagar comes around, yells in Icelandic to her minions (I could see a vein throb in her temple); they wipe up the mess hurriedly and squirt some airfreshner that smells like a horses backside pretty much in our faces. As I clear my throat to let out a whimper of protest I get the eye from the lady, so I swallow the rising bile and shut up. It suddenly dawns on me about how it all makes sense. The horseshit, the vomit and the bad karma; it all fitted in... Feeling enlightened, I fall into dreamless sleep for about 30 seconds when the bloody sirens go off again. We're landing this time.

We land in Iceland (its quite brown and barren) on a rutted landing strip, we all shuffle into a lounge as big as my uncle's bathroom. exactly 17 minutes later (I understand that this is the minimum time gap between 2 legs of a flight in the same carrier) we shuffle out of the lounge and back into our seats. They shuffle seats though, so this time I get empty seats on either side. They shuffle airhostesses too, so this time I get a brunette Ms Hagar. But I've had enough of all this shuffling, and my enlightened mood manages to linger on so I just squeeze my eyes shut and dream of anatomically inaccurate viking babes till we get to Heathrow...

Top Ten List -Sailing trip

No, this isn't one of those informative Top Ten lists; just a few things I feel compelled to write about. Sailing in the Solent was freaking awesome, so why not round it off with some blather. It's more like a list of highlights. Whatever.

10. Top one liner of the trip (from Paul, the skipper, upon sighting a somewhat less than ravishingly beautiful lady at the marina): "You know, I understand all women have the right to ugliness, but really, some of them do abuse the privilege."

9. Top Medicine I took along: No, not Stugeron for sea-sickness (well, maybe if you have a really quick gag reflex it might be what you need). Pepto Bismol. Two days of rice and beans + lots of milk in my many cups of tea = case of shits at sea. It could have been very very unpleasant, except for Pepto, which made it only marginally unpleasant.

8. Top accessory that was of no use: Waterproof Silicone ear plugs. The wind and water on deck wasn't crazy, so I didn't need it for that. However, I had to break them out at night, but to no avail. Turns out Silicone ear plugs are no match for pushupdad's window-rattling, tide-turning, eardrum-tearing snoring.

7. Top icky moment: During a somewhat choppy run, I had to go below deck to empty a kidney (see what those endless cups of tea do to you?), and I was told not to be a hero, but sit and pee instead. Not willing to clean up urine from the floor and possibly walls, I sat. Except we turned tack and simultaneously hit a giant wave, and the contents of the toilet bowl (fortunately devoid of any input from yogi) went WHOOSH, right up my ass-crack. We didn't hit a shower until two days later.

6. Top Unfortunate Visual: Speaking of ass-cracks, the skipper has THE hairiest I have had the misfortune of having to inadvertently lay my eyes on. Being the skipper, he was also the plumber on the boat, and he wore his pants low. Bad combination. Great guy otherwise.

5. Top Limerick (from a watch mate):
"There was a lady who begat
Three kids - Pat, Matt, and Tat,
The fun was in making 'em,
Not so much in nursing 'em -
There was no tit for Tat."

4. Top new skill: Tying knots. I had a phobia of knots (I knew the reef knot, and that was it. I have never been able to tie anything in my life. Honest); that has now been downgraded to just a deep ineptitude at tying knots. I still completely screw stuff up - it took me 4 days to get the most basic of them, the clove hitch - but at least now I know how to tie a few knots with fancy names: The double clove hitch, the bowline, the sheepshank... which I will now proceed to forget, I'm sure

3. Top reason to hate technology: A guy in my cabin had his iPhone alarm go off at 4:00 am, and then at 4:10, and then at 4:20... I had to hit him each time to wake him up because he could sleep right through it, and he'd hit snooze instead of off, and it would go off again. After a rough day's physical work and pushupdad's thunderous snoring, it was enough to make me want to throw it overboard.

2. Top reason to go back ashore: The beer. The food's alright, but the beer... mmh. Of course, too much beer will give you a case of the shits at sea, but as long as you have pepto, you'll be fine. As far as the whole prostitutes at ports theory goes, I didn't see any. Maybe they were there but just avoided the Indian guy chugging beer like a maniac. Maybe it's just a thing of the past. Or I don't know where to look. Either way, I didn't get acquainted with any, Oh and also, you get to eat desserts with names like Spotted Dick. Presumably named after what you get if you do get acquainted with prostitutes at ports.

1. Top reason to do all this is the first place: Because you can. It's that simple. If you can, do it. The Solent is beautiful, the Isle of Wight is beautiful, but even if you don't get to go all the way there, sail somewhere else. If you want to have an ocean adventure, don't go on a cruise and sit on a deck chair to get a tan, go sail to wherever you want to go. It is truly enjoyable (even if it's hard work), and time, energy and money well spent.

Back from Sailing in the Solent

Yep, that's why there wasn't much writing - I was on a sailboat with pushupmom and pushupdad. Good times. Yes, yes, more detailed post coming up, as soon as I get over some serious jet-lag...


At the Needles, at the very western tip of the Isle of Wight.


Anchored at Alum Bay, on a very quiet day.


Sailing at daybreak, heading back towards Portsmouth


At the bow of Sarah. The waters of the Solent lie below.

Interpretive dancing at the Shakespeare Theater

So I reconnected with a long-lost cousin this past weekend (yes, yes, I know, all of us Indians are related and we only have two degrees of separation as opposed to six for white people). Anyways, she decided that we should go check out some interpretive dance show at the Shakespeare Theater. I'm always up for stuff like this, so I said yes. And then realized that I had double-booked my Saturday (again). I had a football (soccer) game to watch at the stadium. So I went with my buddy to watch my team - the absolutely hapless DC United get thrashed again - this time the most awesome play they managed was when Benny Olson was fouled hard, and as the ref was handing out a yellow card to the offending player, good old Benny decides to kick the ball in the players face, earning him an immediate (an absolutely well deserved) red card, which means automatic ejection. This got us all happy, but of course, with a man disadvantage, we got our asses handed to us. This manner of losing is seemingly constant in all United games.

So I'd been jumping up and down and yelling with the group for three hours, and I realized I had precious little time to get back to the theater, so I rushed back after chugging my ($7.50!!!) Harp. I made it in time, but not soon enough, so I found that while my cousin got herself awesome orchestra tickets, I was stuck in the nose-bleeds. Which was fine, or so I thought, because I could blend in with the riff-raff.

Turns out no one who goes to see interpretive dance on a Saturday night is riff-raff. The women are all dressed like ostriches that have dived into fruit bowls and then ran through a GAP store to pick up mannequins for dates. I mean, I showed up in my soccer jersey, all out of breath and sweaty and beery, and I was huffing and puffing and I ran into this foyer, and then I saw the people. As I was processing the sight of thousand-dollar outfits and swept back hair and cuff links, they caught wind of an admittedly semi-drunk yogi. Champagne flutes stopped mid-clink, gloved hands went to grasp throats, cowlicks went unswept-back, there was a collective gasp, and things generally came to a somewhat shuddering and unceremonious halt.

I made the best I could of the situation, gave a cheerful wave, pointed to my jersey, and said something about United sucking. My cousin, bless her heart, stepped up and ushered my to a corner and gave me the ticket she had bought for me. Most people went back to what they were doing, and so I kept a low profile, and went in to see the show (which started a good half hour late). There are a bunch of things that I would like to point out about the whole getup, now that I've had the time to think about it:

1. The seats have as much space as economy seats on a Southwest flight from DC to NYC. If you are anything more than waif-like, you better get used to your neighbors elbow in your groin and your knees blocking the bottom half of your vision.

2. They rise really steeply, so I hope you don't suffer from vertigo. If you do get waves of vertigo induced nausea, fortunately you can bite into your knee caps (they're right there, hovering below your chin), which helps.

3. Funny people show up for shows. The lady sitting in front of me was blind. I don't know maybe she was listening to the footfalls during the interpretive dance show. She sure looked like she was having a swell time. There was also this dude who was given to moderately loud flatulence. I mean, they weren't thunderous, but they were noticeable, especially because they kept coming in fits and starts (he must have been trying to hold it in). No, fortunately, no bite. Only bark.

4. The dance part of the show was a let-down. They made a big deal about how it was all "late-night" and "18 and above", and so I was expecting some serious avant-garde shit, you know, like naked women (yeah...). So when they announced the first piece and say that "people will be dancing in the flesh" (I'm not making that up), I was thinking "Oh god, please no naked fat men. Please, make them hot women." I wanted to see me some boobies.

And then out walked these three girls (so far so good) dressed in gowns (positive development - they're easy to take off), and they executed some writhing moves on stage. I was starting to get a little impatient, but then they stared disrobing. I think everyone sat up a little straighter (riff-raff or hoity-toity, we're all the same), and then the robes came off to reveal....

...
...
...

SKIN COLORED TIGHTS.

SKIN. COLORED. TIGHTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There was a palpable sense of dismay that swept through the seats. I mean, what the fuck. You've GOT to be kidding me. Come ON Shakespeare. If you're making me pay to see some bullshit interpretive dance, and then you get me all tingly and excited by telling me there are going to be naked people, then GIVE ME NAKED PEOPLE!!!! I am not here to see some bullshit dance moves by people who weren't good enough to make it into a real dance troupe to some bullshit music mixed by some jock who was too unhip to mix at the local club. You know what I interpreted it as? Fully clothed people who had forgotten their latest dose of phenobarbital. You know, I really like artsy stuff. I do. But I want people to be honest. If its going to be people in tights, tell me its going to be people in tights. Also, if it's going to be interpretive, don't make us do ALL the interpreting, OK? Give us a hint here or there. Some skinny dude prancing around the stage in his pajamas is exactly that - a skinny dude prancing around the stage in his pajamas. The people were obviously in great shape and had decent talent and training, why not put them to better use?

5. The stuff in between the pieces was pretty good. Awesome poetry, very funny (and really sexually charged. The lady next to me kept going "Oh boy. Ooh boy. OOOH boy." until I wanted to hit her. But she was huge and already had an elbow right by my testicles, so I desisted.)

So overall, it was an eventful evening. Worth doing. Just dress up a bit. The ostriches are few and far between (there was some hyperbole up there I'll admit), and they generally make giant fools of themselves. You're there for the art, not to show off your Blahniks. Oh and also, if someone tells you their dancers are going to dance in the flesh, ask for a conditional refund.

Someone who wants to get REAL close to Obama

Outside a Home Depot somewhere near DC. Man, I've heard of hero worship, but this...?

Yeah, that's an Obama decal. And all those things are Obama stickers.

ps: The guy was an Indian dude. I'm taking this photo from my cell phone, and he stops by me and says "Photo? - thet vill be vunn daallar, hahaha", and revvs off giving me a peace sign as I stand there dumbfounded and wondering what the hell hit me.

Closest I'll ever get to Obama

Yeah, now I feel special.

Speaking of Stats... Check out Nate Silver

I'm sure you will have heard about the recent study that said that only 2.8% of Oklahoma High school kids passed a basic civics (citizenship) test.

Well, Nate Silver (or Poblano, as we used to know him) has a superb take-down of the statistics, and his analysis strongly suggests that the entire study was fabricated. You may know Nate from his electoral statistical wizardry - he got almost everything right, and he shows up every so often on MSNBC. "Are Oklahoma students really this dumb?" is WELL worth a read. This is how a stats dork should write.

Of course, this IS the deep red state Oklahoma, so I wouldn't be surprised if there's a bit of, ahem, an IQ issue here, but still...

Update: Apparently StrategicVision, the pollsters behind this study, is a REALLY shady outfit, and is taking some serious heat from all around.

Indian Ancestry on Nature's cover. Awesome!

I just got this week's Nature magazine. (Yes, I have a personal subscription. There are copies of Nature and Science on my TV tray. Yes, I am a dork.)

And this is what is on the cover:

The actual article by Reich, Thangaraj, Patterson, Price and Singh (and a really neat "News and Views" section written by Aravinda Chakravarti at Hopkins) basically looks at the variation in genomes of individuals from India. Without getting into the weeds, what they did was to analyze DNA from 25 different groups in India, from different geographical areas, from different castes and language groups, and then do some statistical heavy lifting to look at how similar/dissimilar simple variations in sequences (SNPs) are across these groups.

What these studies reveal is something that anyone (myself included) may have intuited just by growing up in various parts of India. There is an amazing breadth of established groups/communities. I mean, anyone who has seen Indian currency will know that we have 15 national languages, and it is quite commonplace to cross state lines and have absolutely no idea what the hell is being spoken (upon which broken English and furious gesticulation will work). But what this study says is that there are basically "Ancestral North Indians" (ANI) and "Ancestral South Indians" (ASI) who have two distinct lineages (Indo-European and Dravidian, respectively), and current day Indians are basically a melange of these two lineages, with ANIs strong in the North and fading towards the South, and vice-versa with ASIs (the other language groups - Austro-asiatic, Tibeto-burman, and Andamanese are sub-variants of ANI and ASIs). This spectrum is reflected in skin color (light to dark), languages, and even caste structure. (Upper and middle tend to be more ANIs, lower castes tend to cluster with ASIs.

The group also makes a case for "founder effects" (basically, genetic bottlenecks) well AFTER 3000 BC when the Dravidians showed up, and 1500 BC when the Indo-European speakers showed up, suggesting that many dispersed communities were established and then they stayed put. The paper also reveals little nuggets - the Santhal and Kharia tribes, which are Austro-asiatic, are descendants of people that arrived 60,000 years ago? Yep, sixTY thousand. The groups also makes the case for marriages within communities (endogamy) has been happening for many centuries, resulting in some interesting disease predispositions.

Overall, this is one really cool study, which you should read (even if the stats may be somewhat inaccessible). As Chakravarti points out, this is only the start - many more detailed analyses should be done on the Indian population to get a true picture of the genetic tapestry that is India.

But that being said, the concept of ANIs and ASIs brings me back to something I have always said : North and South India are two different countries, man...

When grown men do the plie

For those of you who might not know, here is a video of a dude executing a basic ballet move, the plie (plee-yay; there's an accent aigu on the e)



The title is not about the grown dude in the video. This is about a professor I had, way back. I mean, WAAY back, when I was still young and impressionable and things could scar me for life (some things still do, like when I saw this on my ex coworkers' desk):



Anyway, the point is that this professor was a lousy dude. I mean, he was a bad teacher, but he was just simply disgusting as a person. The guy used to have a huge potbelly, and he was one of those guys who "went under" - you can either wear your pants above your belly, or below. This guy chose to go low. Which is fine by me, except that he would wear his shirt with the last two buttons undone, so you would see his hairy underbelly and frayed undies each time he lifted his arms in the air (which was often) right at eye level.

And you know how (well if you're a dude you'll know this) how your shorts every once in a while, get all bunched up, and things aren't where they should be and everything is uncomfortable in the groinal region? Well, when this happens to me, I usually walk it off, and if that doesn't work (it almost always does), a little tug here or there fixes it. Major operations are undertaken in the men's room if need be. But here's what this guy would do:

You knew something was coming because he would be fidgeting for a while and bouncing around more than he needed to. And then he would face us, while lecturing, get a faraway look in his eyes (the kind that you get when you let go of a long-held packet of joyous flatulence), give a robust tug at his inseams, and then execute a slow and drawn out plie. And then he would finish it of with a little groinal jiggle.

Just thought I should share that with youfolks on a beautiful Saturday morning.

The new movie about Darwin - nope, you can't see it

Why, oh why, oh WWWHHHHHYYYYY are we like this????

The Darwin movie (which has been getting pretty good reviews, and from what I gather is more about the man than making the case for a lack of a god/gods), is apparently "too controversial" for audiences in our blessed country of the United States of Am-oh-we-don't-want-to-piss-off-Jesus-and-his-devout-non-evolution-believing-followers-erica. So THEY AREN'T EVEN DISTRIBUTING IT.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THONK, THONK, THONK.... (sound of yogi's head slowly hitting wall)

Here is the clip. It gives me the goosebumps. I'd love to have seen it. Except of course, I can't now because of how the assholes that quail in fright at the thought of Jesus' army picking up their knives and guns and capping their asses for screening a movie that chronicles the life of a dude, who, you know, changed how we think about life. Idiots. And cowards.

WHO SAID NERDS AREN'T AWESOME???

Did you hear about this??? A Hopkins undergrad (one of those nerdy pre-med types apparently) capped an intruder WITH A SAMURAI SWORD. A FOUR FOOT LONG SAMURAI SWORD. Here's the news report:



And here is what it reminded me of. Of course.

Lab retreats are fun - in a really sad masochistic way

Here's the deal, apparently. If you are in a lab that is big and well funded and sufficiently hard-core (which big and well funded labs tend to be), your boss will sometimes decide that the best way to get group morale up is to go for a little lab retreat. Now this isn't the kind if retreat that your corporate types will relate to. No fancy yacht, champagne and strippers.

What we do is ensconce ourselves a secluded place and talk science amongst ourselves for two days straight. Which, if you really think about it, is like any other two days at work. Except with less comfortable chairs, unbearably cold air conditioning and catered food (to be paid for, thankyouverymuch).

Of course, the formality of the entire occasion demands that you actually prepare for a good week or so in advance, so you don't make a damn fool of yourself. And then your presentation gets ripped anyway with glee, either because it's way too ambitious or it isn't ambitious enough or the controls aren't quite right or the time line for experiments are incomplete. In other words, its almost exactly like a thesis committee meeting, except with more thesis committee members and no threat of failure. Of course, in this case, you just get fired for incompetence. Still, the whole thing while being incredibly tiring, was surprisingly fun (yes, yes, that means I'm a gigantic dork. I know)

Anyway, all of this is to explain away the absence for a week. And the incredibly hungover feeling this past weekend.

Like you all care. But still, there you have it.

DC United Soccer at RFK. Crazy.

OK, so I've been to a bunch of football matches, but this was my first pro "soccer" match at a stadium. (Yeah, I'm getting used to calling it soccer, blasphemous as it may be).

There are many things to be said about watching DC United play at RFK, just outside DC. Here are my observations, in chronological order. More or less.

1. The eastbound Orange line sports a VERY different feel compared to the westbound line which goes into Virginia. You'll know what I mean if you make the trip.

2. There are a bunch of surprisingly ardent fans going to watch DC United play
These fans can be divided roughly into the following groups:
a. Italian Gen2 immigrants trying to pretend that MLS is in the same league as Serie A.
b. Latino Questionable immigrants thoroughly disappointed that MLS is worse than Mexican football.
c. Brothers who are tired of being lumped with ballers.
d. Crazy hot soccer chicks just being themselves. Which was swell.

Plus of course you have bewildered Yogi types who are going for the first time with their England National soccer jerseys instead of DC United.

The rest of my observations can be more or less encapsulated by this photo.

3. The bunch of surprisingly ardent fans is pretty small. The top two tiers of RFK are totally empty.
4. I'm glad most of RFK is empty; any more people and the damn thing was ready to collapse.
5. The whole stadium actually QUAKES when people jump up and down, singing football songs and DC Utd anthems.
6. Fortunately, we didn't hit a resonant frequency - there were enough drunk people (even at 7.50 a beer) that there were enough people out of sync. Even so, there were times when I was lifted a solid 3-4 inches off the ground because of the shaky floors.
7. Beer - expensive. Hot dogs - lousy. Pupusas - awesome. Although be warned, the hot sauce will kill you.
8. Speaking of singing football songs and DC Utd anthems, there were a bunch of SERIOUSLY ardent football fans. There were two sections filled with fan club folk, and Barra Brava are the fucked up crazy ones (Screaming eagles moderately so). I mean, there were the crazy flags and banners and NON STOP singing. Also streamers and firecrackers and smoke bombs. AND a CRAZY shamanesque performance in the concourse at half time, featuring a mosh pit formed around a crazy brother wearing a top hat, an old geezer in a wheelchair, and a giant wearing a kilt and playing the bagpipe. Awesome. Bat-shit insane, but awesome.

Overall, I'd say it's a must go. Sure ticketmaster screws you by charging you an extra 15 bucks for various "convenience charges", but it's well worth watching. Its quite boisterous, and pretty fun. We saw some pretty exciting play; 3 goals in the last 15 minutes, a keeper got sent off, and there was a lot of screaming at opposing players and fans. And the ref obviously. Plus of course, the hot chicks almost made me weep. So all in all, a great evening. Unfortunately three things remind you you're in the US:
1. There are 2,000 people in a stadium that seats 40,000.
2. There is a mascot (Talon, I think. A sad looking Eagle). Sigh.
3. The level of play sucks balls.

Oh, DC Utd lost. But hey, who cares?