Addition to the Blogroll: Stuff White People Like

The folks at Stuff White People Like know my mind all too well:

White people love rules. It explains why so they get upset when people cut in line, why they tip so religiously and why they become lawyers. But without a doubt, the rule system that white people love the most is grammar. It is in their blood not only to use perfect grammar but also to spend significant portions of time pointing out the errors of others.

Looks like I've just been called out. Mazel Tov, Christian Lander! You've just made the Blogroll (Hat tip: Chance Bliss).

Come on, Eileen ... Loneliest Girl in the Store

Via Gawker:

"The Dexys Midnight Runners as pictured on the saddest iTunes store list."

And via Your Monkey Called:

"The One Hit Wonder Finds Its Starkest Graphical Expression ."

86th Street Subway Station

As we've been living in a month-to-month rental during the last phase of our renovation, I've been boarding the 1 train (for you old timers, the Seventh Avenue IRT) at the 86th Street station (a different stop than my normal route). The 86th Street station has a beautiful series of glazed murals - over 30 by my count - that each depict unique scenes of street life on the Upper West Side. I'll be posting additional shots of the murals over the next two weeks.

New Yorkers at Home

The Gothamist has a great post featuring a snippet of Rick Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt's a book, America At Home. The post also includes several fascinating photographs from the book - a Chinese family of 5 crowded into a 2 room apartment, artists lofts in Williamsburg, an apparent disposophiac on the UWS, a rhinestone & jungle apartment in Peter Cooper Village, and more. Check it out.

Top Seven VP Picks for Senator McCain

With Obama looking ready to wrap up the Democratic nomination after tomorrow's Oregon primary, the MSM's turning to reporting the next important topic of beltway speculation: Who is going to be John McCain's pick for the VP slot?

Frankly, with all off the flotsam that has accumulated during Barack's primary fight with Hillary (Rev. Wright, Bill Ayers, Michelle Obama, Tony Rezko, Rashid Khalidi, Hamas, et. al.), McCain could name a pet rock as his VP and still win the general election. But just in case the McCain team hasn't decided, I though I'd offer the Sherman Square pundit's top picks:

1. Former NY Governor George Pataki – A good looking, relatively charismatic and scandal-free centrist Republican. He can help McCain with the historically true-blue northeast vote. And putting him on the 2008 ticket will prevent Pataki from being tempted to launch a rescue effort to recapture the NY governor’s seat from trainwreck-in-waiting Gov. David Paterson.

2. Robert Downey Jr. – The New York Times recently reported that Downey may be a secret conservative (NYT registration required). True or not, his $100.8 million opening weekend for Ironman proves he can at least play a sucessful and muscular capitalist force for good. Plus, the movie star and indie film maverick can help McCain capture the ex-brat pack vote, been-to-prison celebrity vote, grown- men-who-still-read-comic-books vote, the male-hookers-for-coke-money vote, and the all important not-afraid-to-do-blackface vote.



3. Barack Obama – Always keep 'em guessing. Plus, Obama would be a good choice just for the Rovian pleasure of seeing Maureen Dowd perform compositional acrobatics as she explains why adding Barack Obama to the ticket proves once-and-for-all that all Republicans are unabashedly racist.

4. Jack Donaghy - We were pretty upset when CEO Don Geiss fell into a coma just hours before announcing to the Board that Jack would be his hand-picked replacement. Now Jack's stuck in a no-end office deep inside the Beltway while Geiss' flamboyantly gay son-in-law Devon Banks runs the show. Jack is credentialed to the hilt - "bow hunting Polar Bear, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, once driving a rental car into the Hudson River to practice escaping, showering with Greta Van Susteren and, claimed to have overcome a peanut allergy through sheer willpower." And, like McCain, he's got experience reaching across the aisle ... usually to get his arm around scandalicious Senator C.C. Cuningham (D. Vt).

Bonus: Naming Donaghy to the VP slot may prevent Jack’s real life alter-ego, limousine liberal Alec Baldwin, from pontificating on his wacko-theories of government in the pages of Vanity Fair for at least a couple more months.

5. Erica Rose Campbell – This busty Playboy and Penthouse model with a smile of gold and a farmer's daughter charm has renounced the world of cheesecake and found Jesus (links may be NSFW). Her recent emergence as a Born Again Christian would help bolster McCain’s appeal among the Pat Robertson / Ralph Reed set that keeps threatening to stay home on election day. Needless to say, if Obama with his shirt off can pull co-eds away from MySpace and Facebook, Erica with her shirt off could lock-up what pundits are calling the single most important voting block in the 2008 election: heterosexual men with a pulse. Plus, McCain has an opportunity to show real bi-partisanship here, as the opposition research should be a real cinch (she's already been worked over, and we've got the pictures to prove it).

Bonus: Erica for VP just might cause Gloria Steinam’s head to explode in a fit of feminist pique.

6. General Tarkin – Every Republican president needs his Fixer – the guy who hides dead bodies, launders the kickback cash, stages the photographs of political opponents saluting the North Korean flag while feasting on the barbequed corpses of endangered artic seals. Nixon had G. Gordon Liddy. Regan had Oliver North. Bush has Dick Cheney. Of course, Cheney will be a tough act to follow. I can think of no one better for McCain than the Imperial commander of the Death Star. This is a guy who, despite possessing no discernable hand-to-hand combat powers or familiarity with The Force, is so jaw-dropingly evil that he can haughtily boss around Darth Vader in a conference room full of subordinates and walk away totally unscathed.

Bonus: He makes McCain look young in comparison.




7. Trogdor the Burninator – Actually, Trogdor would be a pretty terrible choice. Virtually no on-camera charm. And what's with the arm coming out of his back? Trogdor would alienate almost every conceivable segment of the electorate. But I’ve been looking for an excuse to link to this YouTube clip, so what the hell. (Hat tip: Chance Bliss).

Renovation Update: Walls and Doors

There's exactly two weeks left for the renovation and I'm beginning to feel the tension. We have to leave our temporary / rental apartment May 31st, so if the apartment isn't ready for us to move back in, we'll be screwed.

The good news is, I stopped by the apartment over the weekend to check on progress and was pleasantly surprised. Most of the doors in the new half of the apartment (master bath, master bedroom and bedroom hallway) have been installed. Here's a shot from the new hallway looking into the bathroom with the outer door open and the inner sliding pocket door fully closed.



Here's the same shot with the outer door partially closed. As you can see, we're still waiting for the frosted glass insert for the outer bathroom door.

Here's a shot of the narrow double doors for one of the four closets in the new bedroom hallway.

And here is a close-up of the sliding pocket door that will separate the outer (sink, vanity & linen closet) room of the bathroom from the inner (shower and comode) room.

Meanwhile, plastering and prep work of the drywall is continuing.

This week, we'll hopefully have shots of the bamboo floors to share (right now, the finished floors are covered with cardboard and tape for protection while the rough work continues) and some more finished rooms. Plus, moulding/framing of the new doors, new door hardware (IOW, handles), ceiling-mount light fixtures, and wall-mounting the plasma TV.

Renovation Update: Floors and Master Bedroom

We've picked a soft metallic blue-grey (Benjamin Moore AF-695) for the master bedroom walls, offest by AF-10 white for the moulding. The contractors have been patching and smoothing over the walls for over a week (looks to me like the functional equivalent of skim coating).

Pretty soon it will be time to order the new (queen size) bed. I had promised that, once we started the renovation and moved out of the old apartment, we would never sleep on my bachelor-era concave backbreaker 2000 TM. I bought that mattress ages ago from my sister's then-boyfriend's family (they owned a mattress factory in North Philly). To give you an idea of how old this mattress is, my sister's married now (to someone else) and has 2 kids. One of them wants to learn how to drive already. The ex-boyfriend is a shuffle board instructor on a cruise ship. North Philly, on the other hand, is still North Philly. And somehow I'm the only one left with any evidence of their relationship.

The prep work on the floors continues ... the black sheets are a micro-fiber plastic material that works to insulate, soften, and sound-proof the bamboo floors.

Next up: bamboo floors and closet and shower doors! Stay tuned!

Blind Faith: Can't Find My Way Home

Here's a juicy clip of frequently overlooked British supergroup Blind Faith (Eric Clapton, Steven Winwood, Ginger Baker and Ric Grech). Besides being a pretty rockin' clip (the clip starts out with Steve Winwood introducing their "new number" Can't Find My Way Home), this version is omits the acoustic arpeggios from the album version to much greater hard rock / pre-First Wave British metal effect.

I'm repeatedly amazed at the depth and diversity of clips that fly under the radar on YouTube. This is what the Internet if for, and why the intellectual property / copyright rules of old media just shouldn't apply, dangnamit.

Renovation Update: Master Bath

The contractors have hand-cut the edging around the bulkhead on the shower. With that detail out of the way, we're almost done with the shower in the master bath.


They're also close to finishing the detail work around the recessed shelf above the shower bench.

Our bathroom hardware vendors measured the space for shower doors last week; although they had told us they doors would be here already, they now estimate installation will be finished by the end of this week.

Not the Best Poker Player in the House

Less than a week after she eked a minor victory in the Indiana primary (where she announced that she had joined the John Birch Society wing of the Democratic Party), Clinton has adopted a new strategy to secure the presidential nomination:

Yup. The pundits all agree. She's played the RACE CARD. And wow, for a veteran, did she flub it. See MSNBC's take here. And the New York Post's take here. And the New York Daily News. And over at the WSJ Online, pundit-licious Peggy Noonan.

What to say that hasn't already been said? I defer to Kenny Rogers:

You've got to know when to hold 'em
know when to fold 'em
know when to walk away
know when to run.

Who knew? All this time, the Gambler was actually a metaphor for the topsy turvy world of a 21st century presidential campaign!

Thanks to RighsideVA for the "race card" image.

Law Students Can be Well, Um, Dumb

A while back I received an email from a law school buddy looking for some friendly alumni advice. Being a good friend, I took the time to respond in proper law school format - the good ol' Issue, Rule, Analysis, Conclusion (IRAC).

ISSUE PRESENTED

If you were friends with a stripper - who you met before she became a stripper - and she asked you to act as security for a private engagement where she would be making $100 an hour, do you think your wife or girlfriend ("gf") would have a valid argument that you shouldn't do it?

RULE

The rule is, husbands and boyfriends are to strippers what paraplegics are to pogo sticks. That is, they should be enjoyed only safely from a distance and no touching is allowed.

ANALYSIS

If you're in something that either one of you thinks of as a committed relationship, then (a) you shouldn't be anything closer than two-arms-length acquaintances with a stripper; (b) if B doesn't apply, she should be so hot that she charges at least $500 an hour; (c) if (a) and (b) are satisfied, you shouldn't be present when & where that stripper friend is stripping; if (a) and (b) are satisfied but not (c), your gf/wife must also be present; (d) what on earth makes you think you're qualified to act as security to a stripper? do you know have a five point exploding heart death grip that I don't know of?; (e) remember, "security" for a stripper at a "private party" is rat's hair's distance away from "pimp"; (f) while some partners around here may disagree with the above-analysis, [firm redacted] could revoke your offer if anything negative sprang from that activity.

CONCLUSION

(a) Apologize immediately & profusely to gf/wife for asking the question in the first place, (b) buy her something big and shiny and (c) promise to not to be such a bonehead in the future.

This might be unfair, but after the North Carolina and Indiana primary results, I'm in a celebratory mood. And what better way to celebrate the demise of Hillary's campaign than with a little Ziggy and the Spiders from Mars?

But She's Really, Really Needs It

David Kahane at NRO has a knock-down metaphor-ladden piece on Hillary that pretty accurately fairly captures the Clintonista dynamic that is being inflicted on us by (who else?) the Clintonistas. How many metaphors? A quorum. A plethora. In short, more than metaphors than China has nipples.

Imperial Presidency

So, what will our country's verdict be about this president: the elitist, alcoholic blue blood scion of a Mayflower family, educated in the best schools of the Northeast and who never worked an honest day in his life; who amalgamated power to the executive branch to a unheard of degree, changing the basic constitutional balance of the nation in the process; whose federal programs were time and again struck down by the Supreme Court but who refused to moderate his vision for a new America; who trampled on constitutional freedoms by rounding up individuals on trumped charges of "national security" and put them into a prison camp with no access to lawyers or rights to appeal; recklessly alienated millions of Europeans, Asians and Africans with a Manichean, "us versus them" foreign policy; ran up the national debt to record levels; and diverted public funds for his own personal gain?

Sounds awful. So will history's verdict be? Good enough to put him on the back of the dime?

Yeah, cheap shot, but I'm talking about liberal demigod and patron saint of the Democratic Party, good ol' Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Anyway, FDR came up in this interesting MSNBC story about a long-forgotten subway station situated under the Waldorf Astoria.





Via: Ace of Spades.

Renovation Update: Major Changes

I stopped by the construction after a long weekend away and was thrilled to see the progress we've made. First, the master bath: they've added a dark grey grout around the quartzite tiles in the outer water closet and have installed the custom-bathroom vanity. They've designed the vanity to match the new doors we're installing in the closets and bedrooms throughout the apartment (hopefully early next week).

After a bit of back and forth with the tiler, and my wife's six trips to different tile and marble retailers throughout New York City (she actually hand picked a dozen tiles from over twenty different lots of marble), the bathroom floor looks great. Since we had had a few misfires with the tiler, my wife and I actually laid out the marble exactly as we wanted them last Thursday night and numbered each tile on strips of blue tape:

Meanwhile, aside from flooring, an overhead light fixture and some painting, the master bedroom is substantially complete:

The main (old) apartment looks rather bare with the furniture moved out and the old floor ripped up. They've delivered our bamboo flooring to be installed this week.

A view from inside the living room out towards the entry hallway and door.

Finally, they've started work on the pre-existing bathroom by ripping out the shower doors, full length glass mirrors (cracked since the day we moved in) and old medicine cabinet (never fully opened, another broken relic that we had been living with for years).

The biggest difference that we've noticed is the greater sense of space and flow. From a bare 600 square foot single bedroom, we now have sufficient space where one person can stand in one end of the apartment and have no idea what's going on in the opposite end of the apartment. As a guy, I am really looking forward to the greater amount of elbow room (although as a father, perhaps I shouldn't be too excited that I won't be able to tell what's going on down the hall...).

Those Wall Street Money Brokers

The New York Post reports today that Senator Hillary Clinton announced that she knows who’s to blame for our current economic woes: Wall Street money brokers. Get the full quote here:

"I stood up to Wall Street, calling on them to take responsibility for their role in the home mortgage crisis ... Why don't we hold these Wall Street money brokers responsible for their role in this recession?" [emphasis added].

Hmmmmm.

The former first lady (two times) and the junior senator represents the Empire State, where the financial services sector (“Wall Street”) accounts for 20% of the state’s total revenue. She is a former partner of the Rose Law Firm - a firm whose practice includes complex commercial business transactions and whose website boasts the Coolidgesque mission statement: “The needs of business are our primary concern.” She has sat on the board of Fortune 500 companies such as Wal-Mart. Her husband has partnered with perhaps a half dozen private equity shops, investment funds and consulting firms. Her daughter is a former McKinsey consultant and now works at the hedge fund Avenue Capital. Where I work, we call all of those professional and familial contacts with the financial system “institutional knowledge”.

The point being, she’s well positioned to know that there is no such thing as a money broker. Stock broker? Check. Mortgage broker? Sure. Insurance broker? Yeah, why not.

But there simply aren’t any money brokers on Wall Street. There aren’t any on Main Street, either. No one with an ounce of financial acumen uses the term "money broker."

Now let me think. When did we last hear about money brokers?


So we have a would-be president shucking her way through the cornfields of Indiana, tellin’ them farmers who to blame for their troubles (nevermind that corn is up 60% since 2005). Maybe we can find a better image to illustrate the point.

Well, I'm certainly glad that problem has been solved. Now where is my passport and suitcase?

Final point: lest you think I'm being a little over-sensitive, Hillary chose her words very carefully here. How carefully? Carefully enough that her campaign put out a correction last night when she was originally misquoted as saying "money grubbers" instead of "money brokers."

Morning views from the terrace

The new (temporary) apartment has a beautiful terrace with eastern, western and southern views. The morning sunlight really draws you out of bed in the morning.

Moving Out

We've hit another milestone in the story of our apartment renovation. Work has progressed in the studio to the point that the contractors want to start work in the main apartment. With that milestone, we've had to pack up seven years of accumulated stuff and move out of the one-bedroom for a month. We moved out on Friday (big thanks to our family who helped lug boxes downstairs and let us borrow their cars).

The amazing thing is, even after crating 30 boxes or so of stuff, there's still a fair amount of furniture that we've decided to leave behind (the contractors will just have to work around it all).



The other striking thing is, now that we've removed our books, clothes, plants, rugs, chairs and sofas, the imperfections in the apartment that we've been living with for years now really stand out. For example, we suffered water damage to our floors over a year ago; with the rugs rolled up and out of the way, its pretty obvious how much we've needed to redo the floors:

We've been living, too, with broken closet doors for who-knows-how-long. I don't think it has bothered me so much in the past. But looking at them in these photos, I've pretty excited to think we'll be installing new paneled doors that actually stay closed.

This week we should be in for some dramatic improvements. We'll be ripping a hole through the wall to connect the apartments; adding floors; and installing the glass for the master shower. I'll try to drop by the old apartment mid-week to shoot some new photos to post.