The author (hereinafter "the author") of this electronic media (hereinafter referenced as "Blog") hereby wishes it to be known that, despite several literary passages in the aforementioned Blog that might after due and full consideration be construed to form a critique or rebuke of a certain corporate entity providing hot beverages imbued with caffeine and possessing a distinct coffee-like aroma - perhaps augmented by a certain quantity of the dairy product commonly known as "whipped cream" (hereinafter "whipped cream"), mmmm, oh yes - and on certain strategic occasions fortified by known quantities of sugar and/or cinnamon and/or a dash of vanilla powder, that the author is, in actual fact, it witness hereto this I affix my seal and a few other colorful stamps, not criticizing the operations, management, the baristas that sometimes mumble and the complete lack of free drinking water for the coffee anymore, for God's sake, of the publicly traded entity commonly known as "Starbucks" (ticker symbol SBUX, Nasdaq closing price 18 Nov. $23.17, down 0.9% d-o-d). In fact, the author maintains, as sworn hereto in a big house with a completely fabulous living room, that he, contrariwise, factually enjoys said beverages, albeit the author would be moderately happier if they'd put just a little more milk in their grande cappucinos.
As duly sworn forthwith, mea culpa, Vincebus Eruptum, etc. etc.
The Management
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Waterworld
(these days pretty far away from) SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
I don't know why, but long before I began to travel significantly I was interested in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. My tastes from those days don't make a lot of sense to me now. What was it about Washington State and its most popular city? Big trees? Mountains? Large bodies of water? A cool name? I honestly cannot remember.
Whatever the reason(s), Seattle happened to be at the end of the train line I was taking from Minneapolis, so ride #3 was the last - Whitefish to here. It was also the most pleasant. 85 bucks these days buys you a "roommette", Amtrak-speak for a small sleeping compartment. Now this might seem kinda pricey to those of you 45-dollar-a-night-at-the-Super-8 types (full disclosure: I stayed at the Super 8s in Williston and Whitefish). But first of all those beds are mighty comfortable, it's quiet save for the whoosh and hum of the train, and sleeping through the night is a fine way to burn through 12+ hours of travel time.
I slept well, oh yes I did. I usually sleep well; I'm pretty good at it. When I woke up, we had flown through Idaho and were in Spokane. Hmmm, interesting. I then went back to bed for a good nap and woke up next to a big body of water. My Seattle-area geography isn't good - the only waterous area in the neighborhood I knew of, save for the Pacific Ocean, was Puget Sound. This couldn't be Puget Sound, I told myself with no basis in experience whatsoever. Puget Sound was on the other side of the city.
The slightly doddering and perhaps too old train conductor came around to ask if she could make my bed for the next passenger. Sure, I said. And by the way, what body of water is this?
Puget Sound, she answered as she went to rip my covers off.
There is a reason I rely on maps so heavily rather than my own sense of direction and geography. Because the latter sucks rocks.
The great advantage of train travel, as most Europeans can tell you, is that you usually get dumped nearly in the middle of the target city. Seattle's King Street station - for you architecture groupies designed by the same company that did New York's Grand Central - is a short walk from the Pioneer Square district, Seattle's "old town" (relatively speaking, of course). My first few hours or so were spent on a walking tour of the district's underground. Americans, you see, had a fetish for stubbornly building cities on terrain that pretty much guarantee disaster (hello, San Francisco!). Seattle was no different - its original center was constructed on several acres of mud well watered by the adjoining Elliott Bay. Since the bay had an inconvenient habit of flooding the low-lying marshland nearby, the city fathers wisely decided to raise the overall level of the city. Today, the sidewalks and building facades of Original Ground Floor Seattle are one level underneath the modern city. Though the tour through the old brick alleyways wasn't all that informative or deeply fascinating, it was a good and appopriately unusual introduction to an unusual city.
Modern tourist Seattle can be covered quickly and easily. A few hours will take in Pioneer Square and the city's first skyscraper, the white plaster Smith Building looming overhead. A few hours more provides enough time to explore Pike Place Market (home of the original Starbucks! Oh boy!) and the waterfront district, freshly revived and chain-stored in that American Historic Waterfront District sort of way. Central Seattle ramps up strenuously from the waterfront, so your average 37-year old blogger, for example, will probably hump and puff a bit getting up to the downtown monorail station. The resulting quick ride brings the traveler to the Seattle Center. This is a clump of sports arenas and museums home to the Space Needle, a fine 605-foot (184 meter) piece of tourism planted deep in the landscape.
The Space Needle is the best spot to absorb the odd Seattle geography. The city's surroundings are basically big chunks of land scattered around water flowing from and to the Pacific. To the west, Elliott Bay, basically a small coastal village in the city that is Puget Sound. A thin waterway leads from the Sound and cuts the downtown areas off from the northern suburbs. This canal is interrupted occasionally by fatter blobs of water like Salmon Bay and Hydroplane Central, otherwise known as Lake Union. To the east, Puget Sound little brother Lake Washington surrounds and borders some of the better city suburbs.
One of these was home for me. Mercer Island is a rich slice of land in the middle of Lake Washington. Have you ever heard of Redmond? Sure you have - Redmond is the global headquarters of Microsoft, the world's least-loved buggy software manufacturer. Anyway, Redmond is a short drive east across a bridge then north from Mercer Island. Which means it's home to a lot of Microsofties and those fortunate enough to provide services and supplies for Bill Gates and co. One of these service providers is my co-host, Eva, several years ago a co-worker at the Prague Post. At the time, she had the unenviable grunt job of translating for the Czech linguistically-challenged journalists like Your Correspondent. She's moved pretty far up the ladder - she's now making quite an effort as one of the legion of PR execs handling the Big M. Which must be quite a challenge; Microsoft has never worried or cared much for the kind of press they get. Maybe Eva will help change that.
Mercer Island was a pleasant, coastal and comfortable place to be based in. I did like the Eastside of the city, but an overnight west across the water was a lot of fun too. More about that in the next entry; stay tuned, sailors.
I don't know why, but long before I began to travel significantly I was interested in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. My tastes from those days don't make a lot of sense to me now. What was it about Washington State and its most popular city? Big trees? Mountains? Large bodies of water? A cool name? I honestly cannot remember.
Whatever the reason(s), Seattle happened to be at the end of the train line I was taking from Minneapolis, so ride #3 was the last - Whitefish to here. It was also the most pleasant. 85 bucks these days buys you a "roommette", Amtrak-speak for a small sleeping compartment. Now this might seem kinda pricey to those of you 45-dollar-a-night-at-the-Super-8 types (full disclosure: I stayed at the Super 8s in Williston and Whitefish). But first of all those beds are mighty comfortable, it's quiet save for the whoosh and hum of the train, and sleeping through the night is a fine way to burn through 12+ hours of travel time.
I slept well, oh yes I did. I usually sleep well; I'm pretty good at it. When I woke up, we had flown through Idaho and were in Spokane. Hmmm, interesting. I then went back to bed for a good nap and woke up next to a big body of water. My Seattle-area geography isn't good - the only waterous area in the neighborhood I knew of, save for the Pacific Ocean, was Puget Sound. This couldn't be Puget Sound, I told myself with no basis in experience whatsoever. Puget Sound was on the other side of the city.
The slightly doddering and perhaps too old train conductor came around to ask if she could make my bed for the next passenger. Sure, I said. And by the way, what body of water is this?
Puget Sound, she answered as she went to rip my covers off.
There is a reason I rely on maps so heavily rather than my own sense of direction and geography. Because the latter sucks rocks.
The great advantage of train travel, as most Europeans can tell you, is that you usually get dumped nearly in the middle of the target city. Seattle's King Street station - for you architecture groupies designed by the same company that did New York's Grand Central - is a short walk from the Pioneer Square district, Seattle's "old town" (relatively speaking, of course). My first few hours or so were spent on a walking tour of the district's underground. Americans, you see, had a fetish for stubbornly building cities on terrain that pretty much guarantee disaster (hello, San Francisco!). Seattle was no different - its original center was constructed on several acres of mud well watered by the adjoining Elliott Bay. Since the bay had an inconvenient habit of flooding the low-lying marshland nearby, the city fathers wisely decided to raise the overall level of the city. Today, the sidewalks and building facades of Original Ground Floor Seattle are one level underneath the modern city. Though the tour through the old brick alleyways wasn't all that informative or deeply fascinating, it was a good and appopriately unusual introduction to an unusual city.
Modern tourist Seattle can be covered quickly and easily. A few hours will take in Pioneer Square and the city's first skyscraper, the white plaster Smith Building looming overhead. A few hours more provides enough time to explore Pike Place Market (home of the original Starbucks! Oh boy!) and the waterfront district, freshly revived and chain-stored in that American Historic Waterfront District sort of way. Central Seattle ramps up strenuously from the waterfront, so your average 37-year old blogger, for example, will probably hump and puff a bit getting up to the downtown monorail station. The resulting quick ride brings the traveler to the Seattle Center. This is a clump of sports arenas and museums home to the Space Needle, a fine 605-foot (184 meter) piece of tourism planted deep in the landscape.
The Space Needle is the best spot to absorb the odd Seattle geography. The city's surroundings are basically big chunks of land scattered around water flowing from and to the Pacific. To the west, Elliott Bay, basically a small coastal village in the city that is Puget Sound. A thin waterway leads from the Sound and cuts the downtown areas off from the northern suburbs. This canal is interrupted occasionally by fatter blobs of water like Salmon Bay and Hydroplane Central, otherwise known as Lake Union. To the east, Puget Sound little brother Lake Washington surrounds and borders some of the better city suburbs.
One of these was home for me. Mercer Island is a rich slice of land in the middle of Lake Washington. Have you ever heard of Redmond? Sure you have - Redmond is the global headquarters of Microsoft, the world's least-loved buggy software manufacturer. Anyway, Redmond is a short drive east across a bridge then north from Mercer Island. Which means it's home to a lot of Microsofties and those fortunate enough to provide services and supplies for Bill Gates and co. One of these service providers is my co-host, Eva, several years ago a co-worker at the Prague Post. At the time, she had the unenviable grunt job of translating for the Czech linguistically-challenged journalists like Your Correspondent. She's moved pretty far up the ladder - she's now making quite an effort as one of the legion of PR execs handling the Big M. Which must be quite a challenge; Microsoft has never worried or cared much for the kind of press they get. Maybe Eva will help change that.
Mercer Island was a pleasant, coastal and comfortable place to be based in. I did like the Eastside of the city, but an overnight west across the water was a lot of fun too. More about that in the next entry; stay tuned, sailors.
Monday, November 12, 2007
A gambling nun, the Rice Krispy Treat man and...Montana?
(at the moment not anywhere near) WHITEFISH, MONTANA
Montana - this end of it, anwyay - is pretty damn cool. Surprised? I certainly was. In the popular American imagination, Montana is a vast, unpopulated, flat pancake of a state only occasionally enlivened by mountains and scattered groups of livestock. Poor Montana, if it's mentioned at all, is usually the tag end of a joke. Frank Zappa had a memorable song about moving there to become a dental floss tycoon. Like going to Montana was the worst fate imaginable.
It isn't. Whitefish, anchoring the northwestern border with Idaho and neighboring Canada to the north, is a mid-sized western town with that same frontier feel as Williston (see below)...but fresher, richer, happier, less morose and more fun. Those boxy two-story buildings that used to house general stores and saloons now hold skate shops, Starbucksy cafes, sushi restaurants and, er, saloons.
But maybe Whitefish always had an unfair advantage. It was one of the centers of the old Northern Railroad, whose officials probably lived pretty well and lavishly. No wonder the town prospered.
I spent two days in Whitefish, and was glad that I did. It was good to experience that oh-so-mystical thing in the American imagination - the hallowed Small Town. Unlike the cities that I'm used to (save for, on this trip, hometown Huntington and dad's nest of Agawam) I ran no risk of getting lost wandering around Whitefish. I even took a recommended walking tour around the top of the town to the nearby eponymous lake - which had a beach. (Beaches in Montana?). Then back again, hugging the - again eponymous - river curling down from the lake and forming the western edge of the town. I didn't really do much in Whitefish, but that was the good part of it. I was happy to walk around, do little of anything, and breathe in clean, high-altitude air (particularly at Big Mountain - see my captivating nature video below).
But Whitefish can really hop. That was probably the biggest surprise. I was there over Halloween, and apparently the town is the hottest destination in the area for celebrants of the great holiday (underrated, in my opinion, but that's an argument for another time). I was hanging out with a few new local friends at one of those downtown saloons - which also, by the way, housed a few game tables...so I guess you could slap a "casino" tag on the place too.
The costumes were excellent. Possibly one of the best collections I've ever seen at any Halloween gathering, and I've been to more than a few good ones. Let's see, there was a Frida Kahlo (with uni-brow and mustache, of course), a nun, a couple of priests, four young British guys dressed as several varieties of women, fewer cowboys than I would have expected, sexy girls costumed as...ah, who the hell knows, I was too busy checking them out. And a nun, who spent most of her (his?) time calmly winning at one of the poker tables. But the prize, in my eyes anyway, goes to the Rice Krispy Treat Man for audacity, imagination, dedication, and just plain frickin' weirdness.
"What's a Rice Krispy Treat?", might you ask, a lost and distressed look in your face, if you haven't had the benefit of our wonderful American junk culture. Rice Krispies are a cereal made of - yes - baked rice. Melt some marshmallow and dump a lot of Rice Krispies into the mess, let it cool, cut into squares and you have the Treats. What this guy did was strip down to his underpants, cover his body with some kind of sticky crap (probably - hopefully - not marshmallow) and in the grand finale, dump a box or several of the yummy cereal over himself. How impressive is that? The best I ever did was an ant costume. And that didn't involve any breakfast cereal.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
We have a winner
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
Ladies and gentlemen, ahem ahem (clear throat).
I am proud to announce the winner of this year's Cool Contest, the Re-Name This Blog competition. And the winner of our little game is Mr. Stewart Kenneth Moore of Prague, Czech Republic, Planet Earth, Milky Way Galaxy. His entry, "Route 666" will now become the official name of this blog. Congratulations to Stewart, who is now obligated to root for the LA Dodgers, as he will be a new owner of one of their baseball caps.
Please pass along your congratulations, best wishes, dirty looks of jealousy, etc if you see Stewart in Prague sometime. And compliment him on his new hat.
Also, do check out his website. It's pretty cool: www.opipop.com.
Ladies and gentlemen, ahem ahem (clear throat).
I am proud to announce the winner of this year's Cool Contest, the Re-Name This Blog competition. And the winner of our little game is Mr. Stewart Kenneth Moore of Prague, Czech Republic, Planet Earth, Milky Way Galaxy. His entry, "Route 666" will now become the official name of this blog. Congratulations to Stewart, who is now obligated to root for the LA Dodgers, as he will be a new owner of one of their baseball caps.
Please pass along your congratulations, best wishes, dirty looks of jealousy, etc if you see Stewart in Prague sometime. And compliment him on his new hat.
Also, do check out his website. It's pretty cool: www.opipop.com.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
We interrupt this regularly scheduled broadcast...
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
I went on strike today.
Really.
This is, of course, difficult to do, as I have no job. But those writers aren't like, say, the Teamsters, i.e. a big mega-union that can marshal thousands of sign-waving workers by giving a single order. No, the ranks of the Writer's Guild are thin, which is maybe why they were so grateful when I showed up to volunteer to join them in front of Universal Studios today. I held a dramatic sign with blood-colored ink...or maybe "held" is an exaggeration. For much of my (almost) two hours on the line I propped it on top of a WALK traffic pole. Universal's a good spot for this sort of thing, as not only is the company one of the chief Bad Guys, its entrance is at the junction of a freeway entrance/exit and one of the widest boulevards in the San Fernando Valley.
We strikers (unionize!) stood on opposite sides of the entrance boulevard to Universal "City", or complex, and pretty much just held the signs. Occasionally, a group would break off and march across to the other corner when the walk light turned green. The strike occasionally became noisy, but we weren't the ones getting loud; several signs asked the thousands of motorists to honk in support as they passed. An encouragingly high number did so, with some even giving us multiple blasts or whooping out the window in our general direction. A Teamster shirt-wearing guy in front of me, paraphrasing hyperactive agent Ari from the show "Entourage", had a sign reading, "Honk it out, bitch!"
There weren't many strikers when I got there (like I said, the ranks are thin). Things fattened up later; conveniently this occurred near 5 pm, which is when the second of the two-hour shifts scheduled by the union ended. Ha! Lightweights. Dedicated worker man, salt-of-God's-Earth Eric put in an entire hour and 45 minutes. Power to the People!
After which, of course, I drove to buy needed supplies like calf socks, laundry detergent and sunglasses. And, oh yeah, went to a Coffee Bean for a tea latte and some reading.
I have a feeling the union experience was vastly different in the 1930s.
Enough wordage. I'm on strike, and I'm a writer! Except, uh, I have no job and the only Evil Producer in my life at the moment is myself. But I'm gonna follow the example of my brother writers (heh, this union stuff is seeping into me) and starve Mr. Big Producer Man of fresh content for this blog. In a manner of speaking.
By the sheerest of coincidences, I've promised you, my faithful readership, details of my previous stops on the way to LA. So these re-runs will air in place of current episodes of The Life of Volkman, US Edition. Hope you find these entertaining. Of course, since they're on the Internet I won't be getting much in the way of residuals. Still, I hope you at least like the content.
Onward, workers. You have everything to lose, including your chains. Plus those large vanilla tea lattes at Coffee Bean.
MEANWHILE
My "For God's sake please give this blog a better name contest" is OVER. Naturally, we have a winner. One of you out there is going to take home the prize, and be the pride of his or her neighborhood. No, city. No, dammit...he/she/it will be the envy of his/her/its ENTIRE NATION, not to mention the Galaxy. Their family will be so proud. This huge victory will probably even find its way onto a tombstone somewhere, it's that momentous.
Okay, maybe not. But this person WILL win a nice baseball cap, colored the pleasant shade of Dodger Blue. One size fits all, so as to avoid any head trauma from an improper fit.
I'll announce the winner tomorrow (November 9). Clear your schedules and sit by the PC monitor for this oh-so-important announcement.
P.S. - Song tip - "I Want You So Hard', The Eagles of Death Metal. Funny video for the tune as well - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe6p-5tUh3M
I went on strike today.
Really.
This is, of course, difficult to do, as I have no job. But those writers aren't like, say, the Teamsters, i.e. a big mega-union that can marshal thousands of sign-waving workers by giving a single order. No, the ranks of the Writer's Guild are thin, which is maybe why they were so grateful when I showed up to volunteer to join them in front of Universal Studios today. I held a dramatic sign with blood-colored ink...or maybe "held" is an exaggeration. For much of my (almost) two hours on the line I propped it on top of a WALK traffic pole. Universal's a good spot for this sort of thing, as not only is the company one of the chief Bad Guys, its entrance is at the junction of a freeway entrance/exit and one of the widest boulevards in the San Fernando Valley.
We strikers (unionize!) stood on opposite sides of the entrance boulevard to Universal "City", or complex, and pretty much just held the signs. Occasionally, a group would break off and march across to the other corner when the walk light turned green. The strike occasionally became noisy, but we weren't the ones getting loud; several signs asked the thousands of motorists to honk in support as they passed. An encouragingly high number did so, with some even giving us multiple blasts or whooping out the window in our general direction. A Teamster shirt-wearing guy in front of me, paraphrasing hyperactive agent Ari from the show "Entourage", had a sign reading, "Honk it out, bitch!"
There weren't many strikers when I got there (like I said, the ranks are thin). Things fattened up later; conveniently this occurred near 5 pm, which is when the second of the two-hour shifts scheduled by the union ended. Ha! Lightweights. Dedicated worker man, salt-of-God's-Earth Eric put in an entire hour and 45 minutes. Power to the People!
After which, of course, I drove to buy needed supplies like calf socks, laundry detergent and sunglasses. And, oh yeah, went to a Coffee Bean for a tea latte and some reading.
I have a feeling the union experience was vastly different in the 1930s.
Enough wordage. I'm on strike, and I'm a writer! Except, uh, I have no job and the only Evil Producer in my life at the moment is myself. But I'm gonna follow the example of my brother writers (heh, this union stuff is seeping into me) and starve Mr. Big Producer Man of fresh content for this blog. In a manner of speaking.
By the sheerest of coincidences, I've promised you, my faithful readership, details of my previous stops on the way to LA. So these re-runs will air in place of current episodes of The Life of Volkman, US Edition. Hope you find these entertaining. Of course, since they're on the Internet I won't be getting much in the way of residuals. Still, I hope you at least like the content.
Onward, workers. You have everything to lose, including your chains. Plus those large vanilla tea lattes at Coffee Bean.
MEANWHILE
My "For God's sake please give this blog a better name contest" is OVER. Naturally, we have a winner. One of you out there is going to take home the prize, and be the pride of his or her neighborhood. No, city. No, dammit...he/she/it will be the envy of his/her/its ENTIRE NATION, not to mention the Galaxy. Their family will be so proud. This huge victory will probably even find its way onto a tombstone somewhere, it's that momentous.
Okay, maybe not. But this person WILL win a nice baseball cap, colored the pleasant shade of Dodger Blue. One size fits all, so as to avoid any head trauma from an improper fit.
I'll announce the winner tomorrow (November 9). Clear your schedules and sit by the PC monitor for this oh-so-important announcement.
P.S. - Song tip - "I Want You So Hard', The Eagles of Death Metal. Funny video for the tune as well - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe6p-5tUh3M
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Land of the writerless
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
Skipping ahead a little bit...I arrived! Yesterday was my triumphant return through the victory arches of Los Angeles. Apologies for the lack of blogonality over the past few days. I'll fill in the gaps (yes, I know it's cheating). But I'd really like to compliment the video below with a word or two about my stop in Montana. Plus there was an extended weekend in Seattle and western Washington that involved Norwegian food and boxing an 11-year old black kid. Stay tuned for the graphic details. Oh, I might as well also write an entry or two about Brooklyn and Long Island, my first stops on this trail.
Los Angeles. I've moved in to the guest room of pal Ines's apartment, as per the plan. She lives a block away from a freeway and across the street from a 7-11. But then again, pretty much everyone in LA lives near a freeway and a 7-11. The weather is mild and calm, the streets are full of cars...
Oh yes. And the writers are striking! As everyone in the entertainment business knows by now, the Writer's Guild has called a work stoppage. This is because the writers, as ever, aren't being paid enough by their employers (yeh, try working in Central Europe for a few years, guys). In a supreme example of fine timing, I arrived in LA the very day the strike started. So, looks like no writer job for me for a while. Guess I'd better practice cooking eggs and making toast, as I'll likely have to take a job at the local Denny's to get some income incoming. Would you like a milkshake with that order, sir?
Skipping ahead a little bit...I arrived! Yesterday was my triumphant return through the victory arches of Los Angeles. Apologies for the lack of blogonality over the past few days. I'll fill in the gaps (yes, I know it's cheating). But I'd really like to compliment the video below with a word or two about my stop in Montana. Plus there was an extended weekend in Seattle and western Washington that involved Norwegian food and boxing an 11-year old black kid. Stay tuned for the graphic details. Oh, I might as well also write an entry or two about Brooklyn and Long Island, my first stops on this trail.
Los Angeles. I've moved in to the guest room of pal Ines's apartment, as per the plan. She lives a block away from a freeway and across the street from a 7-11. But then again, pretty much everyone in LA lives near a freeway and a 7-11. The weather is mild and calm, the streets are full of cars...
Oh yes. And the writers are striking! As everyone in the entertainment business knows by now, the Writer's Guild has called a work stoppage. This is because the writers, as ever, aren't being paid enough by their employers (yeh, try working in Central Europe for a few years, guys). In a supreme example of fine timing, I arrived in LA the very day the strike started. So, looks like no writer job for me for a while. Guess I'd better practice cooking eggs and making toast, as I'll likely have to take a job at the local Denny's to get some income incoming. Would you like a milkshake with that order, sir?
Friday, November 2, 2007
Rocky mountain, hi
BIG MOUNTAIN (really, that's the name), MONTANA
Here's a little video of me, ah, NOT doing a long, restorative, satisfying hike through one of the Rocky Mountains. Starring myself, a bag of food, a brittle stick, and my double chin.
Here's a little video of me, ah, NOT doing a long, restorative, satisfying hike through one of the Rocky Mountains. Starring myself, a bag of food, a brittle stick, and my double chin.
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