October 31st, 2015

Heard a new term that some Asians, mainly Japanese, use to describe the smell of Westerners.  As we use more butter in our diets than they, the term bata-kusai, or butter stinkers is used to describe our odor.  That said, I have seen a version of ramen where an entire stick of butter is melted into a single bowl.   I like a good racial stereotype as much as the next guy, but love finding the places where they are not linear.

One of the first things you notice in Asia are the quantity of people wearing face masks.  If I heard it once, heard it a thousand times that the reason they do so is that they want to prevent the spread of disease by containing their own illness within the confines of the mask.  Always suspected this was bull shit and that they wear them to protect themselves from everyone else (and the nasty ass pollution in some parts), but what cinched for me is watching them when they sneeze.  I have yet to see one local cover their mouth/face when they let one go.

And in this weeks "the person that is bugging me lately" file is the person that listens to music off his phone speakers in public instead of using head phones .  These people are not confined to one culture as I have seen every color of the rainbow doing this, and the popularity of it seems to be increasing.  It is far less intrusive than the dudes that used to bring the giant boom boxes around with them in the 80's, but at least there was better fidelity with those and you had to respect their dedication as it cost a small fortune in batteries to power one of them for a couple hours.  However, I find the phone speaker guy (and it is always guys) far more annoying as when one does this, they are showing two things to the world.  First, there is no concept that other people might not want to hear your crappy choice of music especially being played out of dinky ass speakers.  Second, that you have zero taste in music anyway as you are able to enjoy it coming out of said crappy speakers.  I understand that I am in a minority here as I love music with a passion.  Similar to the wine aficionados (or whatever aficionado you are) that spend a good chunk of their life researching, thinking about and engaging with their passion.  That is me with music.  But when you are attacking me with your shitty pro tools created mindless top 40 Disney developed "music" out of your iPhone on the street, it would be the same as me knocking down the wine guy on the street and giving him an enema with a bottle of Two Buck Chuck.   When one of the wine dudes is spouting off about some bottle or vintage and I tell him that I am happy drinking wine out of a box, they get the same disgusted look on their face as I do when people say that the Beatles (and their music for Montessori daycares) are the greatest band of all time.  In thinking about this, I wondered if I was being hypocritical as I will play music as loud as it will go when I am driving around, usually with the windows rolled down.  Was sitting at a traffic light yesterday and the scooter rider's heads all turned to see who was playing The Replacements 'Gary's Got a Boner' at 120 decibels.  Me?  Hypocritical?  No way Johnny boy, keep on truckin'.

Taiwan weather update.  Crappy SE Asia weather to continue indefinitely.  The highlight from this week was the 4 day stretch with no measurable wind, which culminated in pollution reaching a level that forced the cancellation of all outdoor activities at school.  To be fair, this was the first instance since we've been here where that call out has been made, but 3 years of looking out the window, suspect it should have happened a lot more and people are just getting more attuned to looking out for it.  And in looking at the forecast, the best looking day is next Tuesday when a dazzling Seattleite like myself is looking forward to a "dreary" day.

I want the job of writing the recaps for these...77 as a high and 72 as a low is Dreary?  I would have gone with Heavenly.

To button up last time's recounting of the lost keys episode, as we were telling the story to friends, I became pissed at both the rental car industry and the Chrysler corporation.  I hadn't noticed until this mishap that the rental car places always give you two keys, but they are affixed by a ring that is in a soldered closed loop that makes taking them apart impossible.  Obviously they don't trust their clients to be able to handle the prospect of having two keys in different places at once.  The only reason I can think of that they would give two keys that are basically one is that if the battery goes out in one, you can still use the other to start the car, but is another example of a society that does not treat adults like adults. 

As for the Chrysler corporation, we were originally issued a 2014 Chrysler 300.  The book on them is that they are the car company for old people, and our 2014 model not only had no USB outlets (I mentioned that the car was made for people living in 2014 right?), but the dashboard had a clock that looked like it was from 1960, with hour and minute hands.  I meant to take a photo of it, but in all the nuttiness of the key in the storm drain forgot to do so.  Am sitting at the airport like a kid on Christmas morning, wondering if I am going to get the new BMX bike that all of my friends had, and what comes rolling around the corner but another Chrysler 300.  By the way, I didn't get the BMX bike either, but something low budget my dad found that was called a Philipus.  I was the envy of Singing Wood Dr. to be sure.  This 300 was a 2015 edition and low and behold, there was USB outlets but in true testament to the inept decision making processes of the US auto industry, who think that clever means good, you have to see the dashboard for this rig.

Check out the location and design of the PRNDL  Sorta where they traditionally are located, but is a twist knob that has no heft and little resistance, like the volume control on an old stereo.  And it is positioned right below the car radio controls, in similar feel and size to those controls and out of the sight lines off the road.  You know why people like German and Japanese cars so much, other than the fact you get better mileage when they lie about emission controls, is that they make their cars ergonomically classic with controls that are solid and smart.  Can't recall an American car that I've been in in decades where the dashboard wasn't either crappy and things broke, or too cute and things broke.  As the great David St. Hubbins once said, "there is a fine line between clever and stupid."

We had a great morning in Baltimore, visiting a school there and then having lunch with some old college friends, John and Jodi Miller.  Hadn't seen them since their wedding in the early 90's, by far the best wedding I have attended (will have to recount that amazing weekend in Cleveland some day).  My folks come from Baltimore and we had a lot of relatives there, so visited often over the years but hadn't been for a few decades.  There is a lot to love about Baltimore but it was city in crises when we visited.  The amount of obviously impoverished neighborhoods stretched for longer than I can ever recall seeing anywhere, and the night before we arrived was at the height of the police pullback due to the Freddie Gray clusterfuck and there were 11 murders.  But that is no reason to give up as there are great people there and it has a lot to offer but by far the most awesome thing about it are the crabcakes.  If you've ever had the blue crabs from the Chesapeake, you'll know that it is hard to enjoy any other type of crab.  And the way they make a crabcake in Baltimore is to mix the crab with as little other filler as possible and then broil them instead of frying.  It is an art form that has never been equaled anywhere else I've tried and to say I was looking forward to having one that day is an understatement.   I challenged John and Jodi to find the best crabcake place in Baltimore to meet for lunch and they freaking slam damn a jamma'd it by taking us to a place called Alchemy On 36.  It is rare when you anticipate something so much that it exceeds your dreams, and maybe it was that I hadn't had a real Baltimore crabcake in years, but the crabcake that day was an 11.  Thank you John and Jodi.

Next stop was DC...a lot of history in that town for Betty and I as we both spent many years there as students at The American University.  The things we wanted to relive aren't necessarily on the typical Things To Do In DC lists, but we did take a day to ride the Hop On/Off Bus around the Mall.  DC is such a unique town and the vistas you get there are iconic. 

DC also had the second of Carolyn's "must do's" for the trip...a visit to Georgetown Cupcakes (from the show DC Cupcakes). 

We didn't see any of the "stars" of the show, but the cupcakes were truly amazing.  We took the opportunity to buy a couple of dozen to take to a party and felt like conquering heroes

DC also afforded us another opportunity to continue our MLB stadium tour with a visit to Nats Park.  We were lucky (OK, maybe not lucky as these things are carefully orchestrated months in advance) to see my beloved Dodgers take on the Nats.  We got extra baseball as the night before we went, they had a power surge at the park and the game was suspended, so we caught the last 4 innings of that game (a Dodger defeat) and then our regularly scheduled game, which was a glorious Dodger win behind a stellar Kershaw outing.  The crowd had a collective "oooh" the three times that Clayton struck out Bryan Harper looking on some of the sickest curveballs you'll ever see.

Nats park is nice as all of the new stadiums are.  Would put the food in the middle of the pack.  The location is weird in that it is in an industrial zone, but is within walking distance of the Capitol building so has a ton of potential.  Is kind of boring now, but you can see it becoming cool (in contrast to where the Mets play that is likely to be a dump for the foreseeable future).  As for the fans, they suffer from the same problem that a lot of institutions do in DC, which is the transience of the population.  A sizable chunk of the locals are transplants so while they will follow the Nats, and even don their gear, their true allegiance lies elsewhere and are quick to abandon the team when things go wrong.  And a lot has gone wrong for that team in the last few years.  We were there just as the Mets caught them in the standings and you could feel the disdain of the team by the fans as they entered the "here we go again" stage of the season.  I should add that the only two teams that have never appeared in a World Series are the Nationals/Expos and the Seattle Mariners, so I know me some loser fanbases.

Paul and I went to the game with my college friend Laurie, who has partial season tickets.  Great seats, which happened to be two rows behind another college buddy (the Beeze) of mine and we arranged to all hang out for the game.  Hadn't seen Beeze since 1995 when he visited Seattle to catch the Dead shows at Memorial Stadium (which was the last time I ever saw Jerry).   There a many memorable Beeze moments, mostly related to Dead road trips, but the most classic was the night we went for Chinese food after some show somewhere in the mid-80's, and he orders tripe.  The waitress, in classic Chinese accented English says to him, "That's organ", and his face lights up in a huge smile and he says, "Extra spicy please!".  Good times.

As the trip was designed to take the Boy to many college campuses as possible, a visit to our alma mater was a must.  We made reservations for the 10AM info session followed by an 11AM tour.  The school even sent us a letter confirming our 10AM reservation and included a parking pass to help ease our visit.  We were impressed as it is not easy getting mail to Taiwan and was eagerly anticipating seeing old AU. 

We show up 15 minutes early to check in and the lady behind the desk, who's title is New Student Liaison, says that the info session started at 9AM but that we could still join the tour at 10.  What?  I have the letter dated only a couple weeks previous showing a 10am start and she says to us, "looks like somebody made a mistake."  The blood in my brain boils like it's in a microwave on high and I am about to lay into her about she being the face of the school to new students and that she IS the school to prospective freshman whose first impression is her taking zero responsibility for a pretty significant screw-up and this is typical of the poor post graduate experience we've had with American University (I have a list).  I turn to start my diatribe and stop in my tracks cause she is black.  You tell me, is it racist that I didn't lay into her for  fear of being considered a racist?  That decision in the moment has had me puzzled ever since.

The tour was a ton of fun for us (the boy wasn't impressed but American isn't strong in the areas that he wants to concentrate).  A couple of highlights...this is the amphitheatre on campus that was home to our annual Spring concert.  My first year there was going to be an awesome one...The Alarm (who were smoking hot at the time), Stevie Ray Vaughn and the Pretenders (who had just released their Learning To Crawl album which was the first since the deaths of Pete Farndon and James Honneyman Scott and was the  album of the moment).  Word got out as to who was on the bill and there were reports that bus loads of people from as far away as Ohio were coming to the free concert.  The rumors started that they were considering canceling the show as the school couldn't handle the expected crowd and we stayed up all night talking about it only to learn at 3AM via the colleges radio station (that could only be heard within a 500 yard radius of the tower) that the show was off.  Devastation.  They tried to make it up to us a couple of weeks later with a double bill of John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band (the Springsteen sound-alikes from the Eddie and the Cruisers movie) and Chaka Khan (who was, is and will always be cool).

These are the steps in front of my dorm that I jumped down and fractured my ankle that would ultimately disintegrate to the point where I had to have it fused with a graft from my hip 15 years later. 

I tried not to be the annoying alumni by telling our student tour guide about the school, but couldn't help share a couple of fun facts from back in the day.  One was how an acquaintance of mine stole the huge stones that read American University as they were installing them.  Was quite a controversy at the time and he still cannot believe how he was able to get these massive and heavy concrete slabs down to his off campus apartment.  They were buried in an unmarked grave at some point and to our knowledge, are still resting in peace.

Another fun fact was that the centerpiece of the schools buildings, The Graydon Center, which houses the gym, admin offices and a ton of other stuff, and was built in the 4 years I attended AU and naturally opened the semester after we graduated, was originally named the Khashoggi Center for the man that donated the money to build it...Adnan Khashoggi.  It was renamed one year later after Khashoggi was indicted as a center piece in the Iran-Contra scandal.  His name appears now only on the list of doners over $250K. 

There are so many more scandals, stories and embarrassing moments I would love to share, but have to end this trip down memory lane somewhere.  I will say that this is where we noticed the guy that seemed to have been on every campus tour.  Not the exact same person, but they guy.  Am talking about the dad who looks like he just came from/is on his way to a bird watching outing.  There was one on every tour and his uniform without exception included short sleeve plaid shirt, expensive digital camera with a lens not to be less than 6 inches long, urban hiking boots with black socks, very expensive hat from The Walking Store and cargo pants complete with something looking like a huge pile of crap in the cargo pockets. 

Oh yeah, was just looking over my notes and was reminded of the girl on our tour from New Jersey.  At one point the guide was discussing the food options at the school, which has organic/vegan/gluten free everything options as opposed to the institutional slop we were fed in the 80's, and NJ girl (we would have called her a JAP, short for Jewish American Princess back in the day) pipes up with this question.  "Can I get a real New Jersey bagel cause I can't live without a real New Jersey bagel.  You would have needed a stick of butter to cover our eye rolls.  Real bagels are from New York City, everyone knows that. 

 

One more thing...this is where I formulated a multi-million dollar product idea that I now offer to you freely.  Not necessarily a product, but a product name.  So-Like-Ums.  This product would be marketed to teen-age to early twenty something girls that say "So", "like" and/or "um" before, during or after every sentence.  For example, So like um, do they like have um real New Jersey bagels here?  Am thinking this product could be a type of yogurt or food offering that sounds healthy but is loaded with sugar and chemicals that make you stupid(er).

 

Briefly, in the neighborhood tour after AU, stopped by Tenley Market, which still stands as it did back in '86.  About a mile away, this was the closest place to get food off campus and was open 24 hours.  For a certain period, we had acquaintances that worked there and would charge us pennies on the dollar for our purchases.  The amount of bean and cheese microwave burritos that were consumed between the hours of 1 and 3AM is incalculable.

And this is our Ellicott St group house, which looks exactly as it did when we rented it for the year.  Too many stories to share here, and many more that can never be told to outsiders went down at this place.  A petition signed by the neighbors in a 3 block radius to have us evicted was rumored but never seen.

A couple of the girls in that house still live in the DC area.  Laurie (from the Nats game above and whose car was the one in the spin out in rural Pennsylvania from last time) is one. 

To close out that story, after Monica and I drove in silence back from the Pennsylvania/W.VA border in a car that was cracked in half, I had to break the news to Laurie, who was still blissfully enjoying her Spring break in Florida.  Obviously, this is before cell phones and for some reason that I can't recall, the phones in her place, where I was also staying, thanks again Laurie, weren't working, but I do remember having to change 5 dollars worth of quarters and walking across Connecticut Ave to the Chevy Chase Café pay phone to call her (how we knew numbers and where people were at any given time back then seems so antiquated). 

I call her and tell her the news and at some point she asks where the accident happen.  I say honestly, "Pennsylvania" and she replies "Pennsylvania Avenue".  It is unclear and still debated whether she said it as a question or as a statement but I do recall replying in the negative with something that must have sounded like, mmmrrrargghaarrrggh. 

She ultimately got a new car, albeit one that was far shittier than the nice 280Z that we wrecked, I think I paid (or rather my mom paid for me) for her rental car while the insurance claim went through, and then a couple of months later I get a call and Laurie starts yelling at me, "You crashed my car in fucking Pennsylvania!"  Not a time that we see each other goes by where we do not recount those more innocent times.

Another of the Ellicott house residents was The Hen.  From this point forward, I will refer to all people by their nicknames.  We were not in a fraternity, but everyone we knew had one.  I was talking to my nephew, who graduated college a few years ago, about how excited I was to visit my old school.  He asked if that is where I got the nickname Gomez and told him yes and that it is hard to remember a person that didn't have one.  He said proudly that his nickname was "Post", which is actually his last name and I scoffed.  Kids today are SO lame. 

Anyhoo, we talked the Hen into having a party for us one night while we were in DC at her place.  A lovely time was had...we beat up some crabs and settled in to an epic game of "do you remember so and so".  The AU alums in attendance that night, clockwise from me in the middle were Z.I.F., Hen, Spoo and Sucky.

One of my high school buddies son is a current AU student, and he and his wife and son came over too and they got a peek into AU life from 30 years ago.

 

 

A great night.  I will love those people forever.  I know that it is a cliché to say that they were the greatest days of my life, but they were.  During the evening as we were recounting the good times, a lot of nicknames came up and I wrote down what we could remember and list them now for posterity

Gomez/Yogi

Beeze

Hen

Spoo

Sucky

Z.I.F.

The Turd (formerly the Fat Turd)

The McDowell Drunks

Maura Fuck You

Bill Loves Beer

Burn Victim Bill

The Rat

The Hammer

The Myth

Wiggy/Twiggy/Plants

Legs

Ann with the Sensuous Lips

The Penis

Penis Menkes/Massamenkes

Doc

LP

The Study Punks

Cowboy/Cowpie

Tonto/The Cadaever

Sweat Thing

The Ball Guy

The Worm

Art Russ Jr.

Rip Off Rog/Rehab Rog

The Comet

Skippy/Chicken Head

Mike TV

The Sea Urchin

Dan Dan the Gummout Man

The Attitude

Cosmic Ray

Big Jim McBob

Smooth Bottom

Boots

Bootessa

The Rail/The Pear

Billy Tool

Goldfinger

AmBo

The Chissler

Davey Mo and Howie Mo

Storm/Twanda

Super Dave.

 

These are your American University alumni (or at least they attended AU for a period of time).  And remember our motto, AU Apathetic University...Love It or Transfer