Jesus! I have horrible luck. I got into New York last night for two days of meetings, and had a fairly successful day today. Unfortunately, I got sick this evening, so instead of having an awesome night in The City checking out a cool local band or maybe doing something tourist-y… here I am, stuck in a hotel room next to a  24 hour construction site, occasionally Pushing The Big Reset Button, and trying to watch  a rerun of NCIS.

I have horrible karma.

I took part in last weekend’s 2006 Idiotarod, a shopping cart race across the Brooklyn Bridge. Here is the Wall Street Journal article about it. This appeared on Page 1A of today’s WSJ:

On Brooklyn Streets, Shopping Carts Roll In a Renegade Derby

Teams Dodge Potholes, Police In Race to Manhattan; Cobra’s Bag of Dirty Tricks
By JOE BARRETT
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
February 2, 2006; Page A1

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — Tom Grise and his team had high hopes for their shopping cart. They attached 10-foot metal bars to make it easier to pull and placed a scary plastic skull on the front. They girded it in cardboard, painted to look like a mining cart. The five members of the team decked themselves out in Indiana Jones costumes.

When they crested the hill of Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park last Saturday afternoon, they realized what they were up against: nearly 200 rival teams including a group of 7-foot bananas and a barrel full of naughty monkeys. Vampires escorted a bat with a 12-foot wingspan. An Old West saloon featured cowboys, a busty barkeep and a working keg of beer. A team from the “Mayo Clinic,” dressed as doctors, smothered themselves in mayonnaise.

Mr. Grise, a 25-year-old engineering consultant, had arrived at the starting point of the third annual Idiotarod, New York’s answer to Alaska’s Iditarod race, with shopping carts taking the place of sleds and human beings taking the place of dogs. Instead of more than 1,000 miles of snow-covered back country, the course features about four miles of snarling traffic, crowded sidewalks, nasty potholes, stern police and a chaotic crossing of the Manhattan Bridge in which entrants sabotage one another with body checks. They also throw fruit.

Shopping-cart races are popping up in cities around the country, offering an outlet for on-the-edge creativity and urban anarchy. San Francisco will hold its 12th “Urban Iditarod” on March 4, the starting date for the real Iditarod race from Anchorage to Nome. Racers will leave downtown San Francisco and go a little beyond Fisherman’s Wharf, about three miles away. Portland, Ore., and Ann Arbor, Mich., have similar events.
[Members of the Cobra team push their cart through the streets of Manhattan.]
Members of the Cobra team push their cart through the streets of Manhattan.

Jeff Stark, a 33-year-old film-production worker and handyman, and Maureen Flaherty, 31, a buyer for a maker of recycled glass and concrete countertops, were looking for something fun to do at the end of a dreary January. The Brooklyn roommates are part of a loosely knit community drawn to the borough for its somewhat cheaper rents and low-budget, participatory art scene. They decided to steal the idea from the San Francisco event and import it to New York, redubbing it the Idiotarod.

“Art is one of the reasons that people will accept for doing things in New York,” Mr. Stark says. “You can get away with all kinds of creative high jinks.”

They promoted the event on the Web and through Nonsense NYC, an email list Mr. Stark runs highlighting “independent art” and “strange happenings.” The first year drew about 150 runners pushing 30 carts. The second year, 600 runners showed up and about 1,000 turned out this year, according to Mr. Stark.

Like their counterparts in San Francisco, the New York organizers had no interest in going through official channels and getting permits to close off streets along the route. Concerned that police were onto the published starting point in an industrial section of the Williamsburg neighborhood, organizers called participants the morning of the race and told them to assemble at the top of Fort Greene Park, a steeply sloping spot with a view of the Manhattan skyline.

Racers didn’t even know where they were headed. They were given one checkpoint at a time and were free to chart their own course.

Luke Stiles, 32, a Brooklyn software engineer at MTV, says his team, “Double Down — Red Squad,” acquired their cart from a store parking lot the night before the race. The morning of the event, they stenciled some white T-shirts with the logo from Mr. Stiles’s bicycle-racing team. Red bandanas completed their outfits. Short a fifth person, they recruited a friend’s girlfriend at the starting line.

Richard Garcia, a 38-year-old carpenter, spent six weekends building a cart with a cobra theme in his Jersey City, N.J., basement. With his girlfriend, Anne Silvernail, a 25-year-old sculptor and member of the Brooklyn Bombshells roller-derby team, Mr. Garcia enclosed the cart in plywood and installed a battery and a propane tank. The finished product had working headlights, a hot-rod paint job and a sculpted 6-foot-high, fire-breathing snake head.

The couple got swept into the race last summer by Oscar Owens, a 31-year-old Brooklyn music producer. He heads a 40-person “team of teams” called Cobra, or Carts of Brooklyn Racing Association. The group had five teams in the race, including Mr. Garcia’s and one with “anyone who admitted to having run before,” Mr. Owens says. An additional 15 team members with no carts at all were on hand simply to disrupt the other racers. Says Mr. Owens: “Our goal was a clean sweep.”

At 2:30, small explosions and a rain of confetti marked the start of the race. Contestants picked up their carts and scrambled down several sets of steps before descending on the city — taking over sidewalks on both sides of the street and dodging cars to cross.

It took only minutes for a passing patrol car to notice something amiss. Their lights flashing, police cars shadowed the racers for much of the day.

A few blocks short of the first checkpoint, Cobra laid a trap. Team members had set up a folding table with a sign that said “CHECKPOINT.” Runners scrambled to hand the bogus officials their paperwork, seeking a stamp to show they’d completed that leg of the race, Mr. Owens says. Many of them didn’t get the forms back, he says.

At the real checkpoint, Mr. Garcia says he tried to send flames out of the cobra’s mouth, but the bumpy ride had jarred loose some wires.

Leaving the checkpoint, contestants ran a gantlet of hurled bananas, maple syrup, ketchup and other goopy stuff. “We got pelted with everything,” Mr. Garcia says. “Eggs, whole fish, pudding, Silly String. I couldn’t stand the smell of myself.”

The tight quarters on the Manhattan Bridge walkway set up a free-for-all of cart bashing, shoving and other mischief. “It was the closest thing to ‘Mad Max’ I’ve ever experienced,” says Mr. Grise, the Indiana Jones team leader.
[Temple of Zoom: Maggie Grise, Lars Russell, Tom Grise, Jason Lee and Adam Duerson (left to right) at the finish line of Saturday’s Idiotarod, with their Indiana Jones-themed shopping cart.]
Temple of Zoom: Maggie Grise, Lars Russell, Tom Grise, Jason Lee and Adam Duerson (left to right) at the finish line of Saturday’s Idiotarod, with their Indiana Jones-themed shopping cart.

Mr. Stiles’s team fell victim to a well-worn Idiotarod trick: Someone cut the ropes they used to pull the cart.

Police were waiting on the Manhattan side of the bridge, urging participants to slow down for a tight turn and handing out citations for drinking in public. The police “couldn’t have been nicer about it,” said one recipient, who said it carried a $25 fine.

Police later said the race caused only minor problems. “Police officers were called to marshal traffic and pedestrians,” said Detective Bernard Gifford. The group really should get a street-closing permit for future races, he said.

Mr. Stiles’s Double Down team picked up speed after the bridge. One of his fellow teammates knew Chinatown and the Lower East Side well, and the team reached the second checkpoint in first place.

The race ended in East River Park, just across from Brooklyn, where it all had begun. The first team to cross the finish line, “Scout Troop 666,” a bunch of guys in scout uniforms, was disqualified because it hadn’t stopped at any of the checkpoints, Mr. Stark says. The team did pick up a prize for best-in-sabotage. The second team to finish, “Hawaii Five-0,” was penalized for being rude to the judges at one of the rest stops, he says.

That left Mr. Stiles and the Double Down squad, who crossed the finish line third, to take the first place prize by default, winning $500.

After walking the last leg of the race with all 25 of the Cobra team racers and crossing the finish line in style, Mr. Garcia finally succeeded in letting loose with a 3-foot-long blast of flames for the judges. The Cobra team was rewarded with the $500 best-in-show prize and the honor of organizing the event next year.

Hey Mercedes - Stay Six

In the summer of 2000, I pulled up stakes and moved from North Carolina to the District to work at Away.com. I’m a bit of a nester, so it was a big deal for me. Working at a start-up was tough, with long hours and huge expectations. I was fortunate enough to work with a great group of people who made the transition easier; chief among them was Patrick, a music hound music hound like me. In the winter of 2000, Pat lent me the first Hey Mercedes EP, and I was immediately hooked, especially the song “Stay Six”. That EP stayed glued in my stereo throughout the winter and into the spring; I must have listened to those four songs 50 times a day.

For me, Stay Six is about that time — my first cold winter, living in a one bedroom apartment with my then girlfriend, trying to adjust to adulthood and life in the city. Like the song says, “Somehow I made it through”.

Stay six, dear.

Last weekend I drove down to Cheraw for an event of Great Import — my ten-year high school reunion. Back in the summer of 1994, I left that town in a hurry, and I honestly never thought I would ever see any of those people again. I was glad for it; I was always just a little bit outside of that world, never quite ostracized, but never quite welcome either. I never got beat up, but I wasn’t the prom king either. I was a little person, mostly invisible to the Big People, and when I was visible, my presence was tolerated, but never really welcomed.

I’m not going to bore you further with the particular details of my high school geekdom — you either lived through geekdom or you saw it in John Hughes movies. You were on one side or the other, and you know which side you were on. Nothing I can say here will change that, and I don’t really care to try.

Ten years later, just last weekend, I went back, and I’ll still not sure why. There was no one that I particularly want to see. No one that was on short list of people to say hello to. I didn’t even have a list. I guess I went back there partially to prove — to myself and others — that the Real World hadn’t eaten me alive. I went back there to boast. I went back there to show how much distance there was between the person they knew in 1994 and the person welcomed in 2004.

A strange thing happened. Those people, the people who I ran away from in summer of 1994 welcomed me back. They were glad to see me. I was shocked. I’m still shocked. And I was glad.

But I’m also thinking… were they glad to see me back in 1994? I wouldn’t have been glad to see me back then. I spend so much time in my teenage years trying to get away from people, trying to get away from that town that today — looking back — I realize that I never welcomed them in the way that they welcomed me. I thought that I was invisible. Maybe I was invisible, or nearly so.
but there were some people who were trying to see me back then, and they are still trying to see me now.

That’s good I think. That was a lesson worth waiting ten years to learn.

Hey Michael, That was Cheap Trick.

Yeah, Cheap Trick played at the 9:30 Club last night, and it was a rock and roll show, and Holly and I were there to see it.

The opening band was a Brooklyn-based quartet called the Damwells. I’ve always been a sucker for a leader singer in a striped suit jacket, so you know, they had me at hello.

Furthermore, the drummer looked exactly like Husker Du era Bob Mould, and the bass player bore a most unfortunate resemblance to Carrot Top. The sound? Imagine the Replacements plus the Gin Blossoms — frenetic drumming over three-chord songs about girls. They were excellent, if you’re into that sort of thing, which I am.

Cheap Trick. OK, Wow.

First off, let me just say that it’s not really possible to review a Cheap Trick show. At least, I can’t do it. I mean, it’s Cheap Trick. I can only tell you what was cool, and then deliver a fanboy rant.

Of course it was amazing. Of course it was stupendous. Of course it was loud. Of course they played the songs we came to hear — Surrender, Dream Police, I Want You to Want Me, etc etc.

OK, Wow.

Holly and I were debating afterwards who put on a better rocknroll show, The Mooney Suzuki or Cheap Trick. She cast a vote toward Mooney Suzuki, while I chose the boys from Cheap Trick.

My reasons are these:

In my last entry, I mentioned the ill-fated Ned’s Atomic Dustbin show. Here then, is the story of that night, and then events that transpired.

Spring 1992.

Michael got wind of a rock show happening in the Great Northern Metropolis of Charlotte, North Carolina. After a fair bit of ticket wrangling and cajoling, he convinced Amy, Pam and me to travel and see the mighty Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. Mind you, this is God Fodder era Ned’s. . . pre-”Not Sleeping Around” and well before the trainwreck that was their cover of the Bay City Rollers’ Saturday Night on the So I Married An Axe Murderer soundtrack.

The SIMAAM soundtrack(!) which includes two versions of “There She Goes“; one by The La’s — which made them very famous — and the other by The Boo Radleys, which should have made them very famous.

Anyway, we traveled on a rainy Friday to the legendary 1313 Club. Legendary. . . every club in Charlotte was lengendary at that point, because they were all owned by Bill Flowers, a fifty year old burn-out who couldn’t hold a decent conversation, but was an idiot savant when it came to booking a venue. Bill also owned The “Legendary” Milestone club, a rat-infested hole-in-the-ground which was the place to play in Charlotte between 1988 and 1997. Speaking of “legend”, legend has it that J Mascis carved “Dino Jr.” into the bathroom wall the first time that Dinosaur, Jr. played the Milestone, then Lou Barlow scribbled “J Mascis sucks” on top of it during Sebadoh’s first engagement there. I’ve seen both, but who knows how the scrawl got there.

Where was I? Oh yes. . . we four traveled to the 1313, and on the way Michael kept bugging Amy to pop in the new Gin Blosssoms album, but Amy stood steadfast in her resolve to play only the compilation that Mark had given her, featuring Polvo’s Channel Changer and Pegboy’s Through My Fingers, and also Jawbreaker’s Bivouac.

In any case, we went to see Ned’s and Hot House Flowers (this is the part of the story where I introduce the central conflict) only to discover that it’s an 18 and over show.

DRAT! For Amy was 17 and I was a mere lad of 16, so we were not allowed into the show. We made heartfelt promises and pleaded and begged, but the doorman stood firm. Michael and Pam went into the club, while Amy and I scalped our tickets, hopped into the Saturn, and set off with a little pocket money and four hours to kill in Charlotte, NC.

Let me take a moment here to kill the suspense and answer the question that each of you is asking in your heart-of-hearts. . . no, I didn’t kiss the girl. In retrospect — and when I say retrospect I mean two weeks later when she dumped her boyfriend — I realized that I should have kissed her, because she was the sort of girl who looked like she wanted to be kissed, and I thought I was the sort of guy who could do the job properly. But, I didn’t.

Gentle reader, I’m not sure how much you know about Charlotte, but in aside from being the financial center of the Southeast is a sleepy little burg, where the street lamps shut off at 10:30 and the sidewalks roll up around midnight. It was well past 10pm and all the movies had already started, it was league night at the bowling alley, both Milestone Records and Repo Records were closed — Repo Records, Charlotte’s only punk rock record store/adult bookstore, owned by Jeff Clayton of Anti-Seen.

So, what are a boy and girl to do? That’s right, we rode around the beltway listening to Bivouac, and stopped at every Taco Bell we could find. There are alot of Taco Bell’s in Charlotte and I think we visited every single one that night, finally returning to the 1313 with time to kill. We sat in the parking lot of the club, laid the seats back and blasted. . you guessed it, Bivouac, until Michael and Pam arrived.

To this day, I’ve never seen Ned’s live, and I don’t know how that show was. Amy and I wouldn’t let Michael and Pam talk about it, so if you have any Ned’s bootlegs circa 1992, pass them my way. I’d appreciate it.

The moral of the story is two-fold. . that means there are two morals, a pair of lessons you should learn from this tale:

The first is that listening to Jawbreaker, while perhaps not actually solving any problems, causes any problems in the foreground to dissolve into the background. It helps to have a cool spring night and a pretty girl around, but these are not strictly necessary.

Which brings me to the second moral, the important one. If the opportunity presents itself, Kiss the Girl. It will probably go poorly, and you may wish you hadn’t, but in the balance it’s much better to wish you hadn’t that to wish you had. And sure, it might make things bad and it might make you miserable, but you’re probably going to be miserable anyway, so you might as well be miserable for a reason. Think of it as Pascal’s Wager, but with lips.

Postscript: Three years later, in the summer of 1995, I kissed Amy. Once. It was like kissing my sister. But at least now, I know.

So, this is it. The new Simplemath. Enjoy.

I took a vacation last week and visited some friends. I read a few books, mostly about programming, watched alot of A-Team reruns, and somehow avoided getting a tan.

It was a week in stasis.

All of my friends are great people, they just seem a little. . . aimless. I guess that comes from being twenty-something waiters and waitresses in a small town. There is really nothing to do except and drink. Heavily. So, that’s what they do, and most of them don’t seem to want anything else. I don’t understand it, to be so. . . content to do nothing. . so blank, surrounded by so much sameness. I love them all dearly, I just don’t understand.

Vacation was interesting though. I spent July 4th on a lake, and saw some great fireworks. I also saw a great fight on the pier between a collection of rednecks and a collection of steroid-bound muscle heads. We’d stopped in to re-fuel the boat. A group of rednecks in a red cigar boat christened “Dirty Deeds” were dancing rudely with these stripper/model/actress types who, apparently, were “with” a collection BGH injecting bodybuilders. I mean, serious meatheads.

Long story short, the meatheads started beating on the rednecks. Seriously banging heads. While I watched from the comfort and safely of our boat, my friend JR decided to go be “the peacemaker”. He stepped between the combatants, and caught a beer bottle in the ribs for his trouble. Idiot.Soon enough, the rednecks, their women, the meatheads and the S/M/A types were all being questioned by the local 5.0.

All in all, I’m glad to be back in DC, where all I have to worry about is terrorists.

Speaking of Whisketown — check the Now Playing — I was watching a few episodes of Buffy :Season 2 last night, and realized that the set was decorated with posters featuring the album cover from Stranger’s Almanac, the very album I am currently listening to They were in the locker room, the hallway, the library, everywhere. Either someone over at Buffy has a serious jones for one David Ryan Adams, or Mood Food records paid a bunch of money in product placements. I sense the handiwork of one Alyson Hannigan at work here.