fling93 loves fishies

Busy Week

Update 8/24/04: Whoops, I’d left out a bunch of stuff on Sunday I meant to mention. Added that, plus a few other odds and ends.

Well, apologies for yet another slow blogging week, but this time I had an excuse, since it’s been a fast and furious week out in meatspace (uh, that’s the “real world”, for you people not addicted to blogging). Let me recap it.

Saturday afternoon, as you might have noticed, I did finally finish off a post that was a long time in the works: my review of Suburban Nation. It promptly became the post with the highest traffic ever at over 800 views, thanks to a link from Planetizen.

Saturday night, I went to a bachelor’s party for an old Berkeley pal I hadn’t seen in some time. Sadly, there was no nekkidness, but we did enjoy some beer and played some Texas Hold ‘Em poker. Or rather, everybody else played, and I got cleaned out since I’d never even heard of the game before.

Sunday, I finally watched a few episodes of Celebrity Poker Showdown on Bravo for the first time. So now I know exactly how badly I played (man, I had no idea you’re supposed to fold that often). Not that it would’ve helped, since, as someone who wears their heart on their sleeve, I have no poker face whatsoever. But damn, it’s a surprisingly entertaining show.

Later that day, a friend of Erika’s came over and we played some Scrabble. I normally do pretty well against Erika, since I tend to make quite a few parallel words forming a bunch of 2-letter words, but as this results in a dense and hard-to-play board (which Erika hates, which is one of the bonuses) and Erika’s friend doesn’t play very often, I thought this would be bad form, and so I played to open the board when I could. Of course, Erika quickly demonstrated why I try to keep her from having room to roam. It’s not very often that we see somebody put down a bingo (play all 7 tiles for a 50-point bonus). But when’s the last time you saw someone do it (albeit with 2 blank tiles) and hit the triple word score? And with the word, “alveoli,” no less.

We also all went to see Collateral at Camera 12 in downtown San Jose. It was a decent film with fine acting from Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx, but nothing special. But I probably would’ve liked it better if I hadn’t just seen the Six Feet Under episode where David was carjacked by a psychotic crackhead, which I thought was one of their better episodes (although later it seemed more like a plot device to bring Nate back into the business).

Late Monday night, I wrote a quick campaign finance post in the hopes that some readers might show up for some meetings of the California Clean Money Campaign that week. And of course, that was my last post thus far, since the week was just getting started.

Tuesday, I crashed the American Sociological Association conference in San Francisco to see Paul Krugman talk about the future of Neoliberalism. I was also hoping to meet up with Brayden King, but we missed each other, probably partially because it was a lot more crowded than expected for the last day of the conference. But I was still able to see Krugman speak, and it was really interesting. I think I got it all on my wife’s digital recorder, so maybe I’ll bother transcribing it someday (but don’t hold your breath). For now, Kieran Healy has a recap.

Wednesday, I went to the Giants-Expos double-header with Rich Thomas. Had a great time, even though Alfonzo didn’t play in either game (aside from one pinch-hit appearance where he got plunked), and Dustan Mohr ruined the first game by inexplicably getting doubled off on a pop foul ball. But the Giants came back to crush the Expos’ emergency starter in the second game, and we left with the Giants up 10-1 (with Giants pitcher Wayne Franklin having twice as many runs batted in as the entire Expos team), eventually winning 14-4. But I’ve gotta say that the crowd at a weekday day game is a welcome change from the usual SBC Park crowd — they actually watched the game and definitely know their baseball.

Thursday, as I mentioned in my post on campaign finance, I attended a South Bay meeting of the California Clean Money Campaign (caclean.org). I’ve always been more of a talker than a doer, but this has, for a long time, been the key issue for me, because I believe it holds up progress in almost every other area. So I figured it’s about time I got off my lazy arse. It turned out that this was only the second meeting so far, and while it’s obviously going to be an uphill battle against some strong vested interests, it looks promising. I hope I can convince some of you to join the fight.

And of course, my ol’ New York Mets are in town this weekend for a three-game set, Friday through Sunday. Yes, as we do every year, we’re going to all of them (and goddamn that Dustan Mohr for blowing another game, argh!). The always-awesome Alfonzo has had a pretty good series against his former team so far, going 4 for 9 with a home run, 4 runs batted in, and 2 runs scored. Hopefully he can come through again in the rubber match tomorrow (Update: indeed, yes he did, going 2 for 4 and hitting what was so obviously the key hit of the game to get on base in the first inning, setting up the obligatory 2-run homer by Bonds).

And to top it off, we went to a barbecue at another friend-in-law’s place on Saturday night after the game.

I was hoping to finish off a “real” post tonight, but I’m tired, so I figured it’d be easier just to slap this up and call it a week. This is not a real typical week for me, so I’ll hopefully have something more substantial within the next several days.