Gratuitous night shot of Seattle

Everywhere I've ever played golf (that I can remember)

Google Maps is pretty much da bomb.


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While I've played a lot of courses, I haven't actually played in that many places (15 states so far). I feel a big road trip coming to knock off a lot of the midwest.

Chef recommends

Two things I've been enjoying a lot recently:

1) Okkervil River. I feel like I get burned most of the time I take a risk and buy something recommended by Pitchfork, but something told me I'd like these guys. I do. Obviously I'm pretty behind the times (they've been around for some time), but if you like Spoon or newer Wilco then pick up both their new album (The Stage Names), and their older one (Black Sheep Boy).

2) The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Um, wow. For a plot that is kind of like Beyond Thunderdome I didn't expect much, but I nearly missed my bus stop yesterday morning, and then again yesterday evening, and I could barely make myself put it down and go to sleep last night. I'll finish it this evening, but it's incredibly powerful writing. I've not read McCarthy's other's stuff, but if it's half as good as this it'll be worth the time to go through his collection. (Normally I wouldn't recommend something on Oprah's Book Club list, but it's really that good.)

The question is what sense am I losing?

I figured that turning 30 would mostly be a bad thing. I get jet lagged easily. Three beers turns me into a wreck the next day. I keep scaring away girls by telling stories about Europe that involve lots of different currencies.

But there have been two upsides:

1) I'm getting hairier.
2) My sense of smell has become remarkably acute.

With respect to Upside #1, let me not overstate things. I would estimate that the time it would take me to grow a full beard has declined from somewhere around "half-life of a carbon atom" to "duration of the reign of a communist dictator", and I might have double my chest hairs from 7 to 14. Baby steps. Baby steps.

With respect to Upside #2, I can't tell if I am developing this sense globally, or if I'm just noticing the incredible range of odors of the people in Seattle. I've blogged about this previously, but there are some really terrible smelling people here. I can now not only spot these folks a mile away, but I feel like I can predict if they will only smell bad when I walk by, or if they are leaving a trail of their scent. Kind of like a shadow of stink. I can detect the difference between "booze only" stink and "booze + piss" stink.

I've also become more aware of women and the perfume's they wear. For the most part I think I just appreciate anything that is feminine and not gross, but I find my head spinning when I pass a group of young ladies who are slathered in various fancy perfumes. This isn't always a good thing. The other day I was sitting on the bus when I had the overwhelming sense of panic... I was sure that the girl next to me was going to start yelling at me or crying or asking me if I thought her jeans made her look fat. It took me a while to figure this out, but she was wearing the same perfume as Crazy _____, a girl I used to date. Luckily there was no drama.

And this is the point in the post where I don't have anything else to say, nor do I have a cute way to wrap things up. So I'm done.

Gone, but apparently not missed by all

This guy. As most blog readers know, Huan moved across the pond (the other pond) a couple of weeks ago, and is now running his own rickshaw business in Shanghai. Or doing biz dev for a semiconductor company. One of the two.

Anyways, Huan's parting shot to Seattle was a story on the, um, "urban cougar". Needless to say that everyone with an actual sense of humor who read the article found it hilarious. Everyone I know who reads the Weekly has mentioned how much they enjoyed the article. Obviously it isn't going to win a Pulitzer, but hey, it traces the roots of the term cougar. How great is that?

However, because Huan is the most controversial writer in Seattle alt-weekly history, the story doesn't end with the story. When Huan's name disappeared from Seattle Weekly's masthead the competing paper's news editor ran a blog post that insinuated that Huan had been fired. This was followed up by crappy local blog "Seattlest" posting an article that discussed both alt-weeklies. They felt the need to call out Huan specifically, and asserted that he got canned:

Newly-former staff writer Huan Hsu initiated a seeming race to the bottom. Back in April he started the trend by attacking Real Change's newspaper vendors for not being homeless. But it was sex--the nastier and raunchier the better -- that did him in. On May 16 he wrote an article about dirty-dancing high schoolers. On June 13 was the now-infamous story about a Ballard High School tennis coach and his pseudo-spiritual sexuality, shared with his teenage female wards. Despite the grotesque pun in the title ("Break Point: Ballard High School's New Age Tennis Coach and the Bad News Beavers"), the article led to the coach's dismissal and seemed to vindicate the teen girl navel gazing. On July 11, Hsu wrote a pseudo-environmental piece about new-agey sex-toy sellers protesting phthalates in dildos. Then there was the July 25 attempt at muckraking that recounted wacky, disgusting and lewd stories of Metro Transit buses. But the final nail in Hsu's coffin was the bottom-of-the-barrel Aug. 8 cover story about NW "cougars." Since that story appeared, Hsu has disappeared from the Weekly's masthead.

the Stranger didn't quite seem to know how to spin the story. On Aug. 8, news editor Josh Feit posted a brief announcement on the Slog stating simply that, "Seattle Weekly staff writer Huan Hsu (rhymes with "who?") has left the paper after a brief 5-month stint." No doubt Stranger staffers would have loved to make an issue of Hsu's dismissal following the story, but they're hardly in a position to talk: their editor Dan Savage made his name as the louche sex columnist behind "Savage Love."

(Sorry, I refuse to post a link to Seattlest, since they and their relative city -ist blogs blow.)

There are plenty of holes in the arguments here, but the one that is most absurd is thinking that Huan would get fired because of the stories that had been published. So let me get this straight: the editors assigned him the story, edited the story (it was 5000+ words), put it on the cover, and then decided that Huan's writing was "racing to the bottom" and fired him. Um, writers get fired for lying or not writing stuff good enough to get published. Obviously that wasn't the case. Good thing I'm one of 25 people who read that blog.

Anyways, join me in wishing Huan the best of luck in China. I'll miss him, even if the city doesn't.

Soul Man, and I don't mean the Isaac Hayes song

So I was watching Soul Man this evening on the MOJO Network*. It's really one of the best movies ever: a kid from LA gets into Harvard Law but needs to find money in order to attend. He decides to take lots of tanning pills and gets a scholarship intended for African-Americans. Then he goes off to Harvard and learns about racism. Hijinks ensue. It is really one of the best movies made in the mid '80s.

Anyways, I spent some time on IMDB looking up the cast when I came across an incredible discovery: Jan from the Office is the crazy white girl who wants to sleep with a black guy (and later, an American Indian) in Soul Man. Turns out that she (Melora Hardin) was also supposed to be the girl in Back to the Future, but when they cast Michael J. Fox she got canned because she was too tall for him. This pretty much cements Jan as my favorite minor celebrity... Soul Man and The Office is a combo that few people can match.

(Her website is also priceless.)


* If you don't get the MOJO network, you should figure out how to get the MOJO network. Among the awesomeness it contains: Wall Street Warriors, a show about d-bags on the Street; The Game, a show about baseball; Three Sheets, a show about global drinking habits; and various other great shows in HD (like Soul Man).

Peach-O-Rama

Apparently it is Peach-O-Rama time here in Seattle. What does this mean? Well, the peaches are quite good, so that's fun. Plus, there is some sort of new/fake metric that determines exactly how sweet the peaches are. The "Brix" rating is technically a measure of the specific gravity of a sucrose solution, but apparently it is also seen as the best way to measure whether a peach is going to be any good.

When my folks were in town I had some peaches that were 13-14 on the Brix scale, and they were very good. Today I had one that measured 14.5, and it was phenomenal. The little stand at my market states that some peaches can reach 18-19, and are "transcendental" in flavor. Given that both peaches I've had recently were WAY better than earlier peaches discussed in this blog I can attest that an 18 Brix peach would just be unspeakably good. So if you find one, peel it, and then eat it.