Dancing At The Eclipse

Friday night was kind of fun. Akemi was still out of town, so I along with my brother and sister-in-law decided to kick it old skool and go out for some Middle Eastern cuisine followed by dancing at probably the only club around that still has an "Old Wave" night, The Eclipse. In rare form, Lysa and I pre-partied at the house first with a few drinks (Tony was the DD), then headed to Kasbah, a great little pan-Arabic cafe for hummus and kibbi (sp?) and also to share a hooka. We smoked a lemon/strawberry/orange hooka that was really refreshing. It's usually a relaxing ambience there, complete with belly dancers, with the crowd being mainly college students. Following, we went to The Eclipse and caught the final hour (1am-2am!) of the night - normally the best. It was a little bittersweet though because the place wasn't so crowded like in its heyday of 15 years or so ago. No more real Goths, 80s freaks, or art-school kids - just kind of generic lounge patrons that would be just as at home at a sports bar. The music was pretty predictable (a good thing!) with the prerequisite Smiths, Siouxsie & the Banshees, R.E.M, etc. etc., but also Wu-Tang Clan - huh? Don't recall hearing them in the 80s! We had a good time but it was a little sad. Or maybe I'm getting too old for that sort of thing. All things must pass!

Birthday Blues

Today I turned 37 years old. It was a pretty uneventful day. Akemi is out of town for one week doing the Hot Vinyasa yoga training in Ft. Lauderdale. I ended up not seeing any patients today. I took an afternoon nap and attempted to watch a Netflix movie, which was unviewable because of a scrape on the disc. I went to an hour yoga class, then my brother took me out for dinner at a Thai restaurant along with my niece and mom. I'm 37 and physically I feel great. Mentally, though, I've been in a lot of distress this year. I think I've made a series of bad decisions which all began with separating from active duty last December. The economy is bad, work is deathly slow, and I don't want to be in this town anymore. I grew up here but I feel the equivalent of culture shock. I'm considering my options, but I'll have to make some kind of decision on what I want to do ultimately by the end of this year.

Some Recent Music

Hi again. There's a couple new albums out now that I downloaded that are pretty notable:

"Dear Science" - tv on the radio - A fantastically, funky Prince-meets-Beck creation that is really unique. Highly recommended. I caught on to them via NPR. Hey, it may be the "liberal media elite", as they say, but I betcha Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity aren't listening to cool, new music like this!

"Re-Arrange Us" - Mates of State - Married couple Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel put together a collection of songs with a poppy Lush/Blonde Redhead sort of sound. Very happy and boppy, but endearing. Apparently they've been around for a few years, providing a track for an AT&T commercial as well as the house band for the touring version of "This American Life" with Ira Glass (another NPR staple). They caught my interest from an ad on my facebook profile. Damn popups!

"Way To Normal" - Ben Folds - If you're new to Ben Folds, this is no masterpiece, but if you're a pretty ardent fan of his like me, you'll still appreciate this album. Some of the tracks (almost all are labeled "explicit") seem to have curse words in them just for mischief's sake, but there are a few moments reminiscent of the genius of "The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner" (e.g. "Cologne"), as a well as a great live track entitled "Hiroshima (B B B Benny Hit His Head)" which sounds like a bizarre fusion of "Private Eyes" by Hall & Oates with "Benny & The Jets" by Elton John.

Enjoy!

Some Recent Movies

In the past I've donated money to NetFlix just because I haven't been watching the movies fast enough in my plan. Lately, however, we've been trying to catch up so I've seen a few interesting flicks:

Black Snake Moan - An interesting morality play on confronting our personal demons (as well as Christina Ricci walking around in her underwear for half the movie). Both her, Samuel L. Jackson, and Justin Timberlake do a fine job and I was pretty well entertained. It's a pretty good portrait of the Deep South as well.

Bourne Ultimatum - We own the first two movies on DVD, but for some reason it took me over a year to finally get around to watching the 3rd and final installment. It's basically more of the same fights, car chases, and Jason Bourne scaring the hell out of Julia Stiles' character, but it's definitely just as enthralling with some well-received closure to the Bourne mystery. I'm wondering if they'll continue the franchise...

White Light, Black Rain - The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Of course you know from this title that this is no easy fare. Of course it's very depressing and sad, but it does not lecture to the U.S. or to Japan. It is very informative, though, and it was also interesting to see how little Japanese youth know about the course of events in 1945 (from the Tokyo street interviews at the beginning of the movie).

Hot Dog!

These images are from a recent posting from the Shichirigahama site I always check. The photographer is a local there that always takes lots of photos of surfers. He must commute up to Ginza quite a bit too because there are pics from the city and the train on there too sometimes. I wonder if this miniature dachshund is really enjoying this? This would freak me out taking one of my tiny dogs out there and attempting to surf!

Baggage

The weekend before last I flew up to Bethesda, MD for a two day Navy Reserves symposium for medical/dental officers. The meeting was good because I got to see a few people I haven't seen in years and years (kind of like Facebook!). The flight left something to be desired though, not so much because of the 3 hour delay departing DC, but because of the new rules for baggage. If you haven't flown in a few months, you may not realize that most airlines charge you a fee to check a piece of baggage in - i.e. $15 per bag! What a rip off! Long gone are the days of checking multiple bags (not that I regularly did anyway), but what this is now doing is creating a new class of cheapskate passengers who, in order to forego paying this fee, don't check any bags in and instead lug all their shit onto the plane and cram it into the overhead bins occupying every square millimeter of space. Their baggage may pass the maximum size allowance, but it's still pretty damn big nonetheless. I've learned not to stow anything in the overhead bins, especially if its fragile, but God forbid if you have to put a laptop computer up there. You can pretty much kiss it goodbye! What it boils down to is that people bring way too much crap with them, even for domestic travel. My solution is that they shouldn't charge for checked baggage, which goes into a cargo hold, but instead they should charge according to how much volumetric space inside the cabin you and your bags occupy. Yes - that means obese people pay more! Extra-large bags and extra-large people are directly proportional to a less comfortable flight for me and plenty of other small/slim people who can pack a little more frugally and take up less space. How many times have you been on a flight and had a beefy arm or thigh of a neighboring chunkster taking up to a quarter of your space? Oh, and get this - when the beverage cart came out, they charged not only for beer and soda, but also for water! WTF!! And God love the flight attendants - I really empathize with them because they don't make these rules, yet they are often the targets of the wrath of ignorant, inconsiderate people.

Hey, enough of my ranting!! Here's a pic of me and my buddy Paul, and Paul and his wife Efrat, at the Dogfish Head ale house in Gaithersburg, MD. Paul's currently in his anesthesiology residency at NNMC. It was quite the weekend of ethnic foods. Friday night we had a menu of Israeli dishes prepared by Efrat and a neighbor (both are from Israel); Saturday we had Indian; Sunday we had Ethiopian. Gochisosama deshita!!

"It is what it is"

Yeah, I was away from the states for a couple years, but when did this expression become the phrase sensation that's sweeping the nation? It seems like I hear it everywhere now! Who came up with this? Was it in a commercial or a movie? I've overheard somebody saying it at least five times in the past two weeks. It sounds like such a cop out, to be used when you can offer no real insight into a matter or situation, kind of like "c'est la vie" or "call a spade a spade". It's an automatic conversation ender. Maybe that's a good thing. The next time I'm in line at the bank or the grocery store or on a plane and a stranger tries to spark up meaningless conversation, I'll just offer up "it is what it is" and turn away or close my eyes and pretend to nap. I predict it's going to become as ubiquitous as the expression "dude", being applied to everything from high school exams to traffic fender benders to presidential debates (e.g. "Senator McCain, what are your views on the $700 billion bailout of our country's largest financial institutions?"; "Well Mr. Moderator, it is what it is" (cue relentless applause)). Just wait, "IIWII" is going to replace "WWJD" on bumper stickers. They'll be T-shirts, buttons, motivational posters. America is becoming the "It is what it is" culture! "It is what it is" fever -- catch it!!