The Marryin' Man

Saturday, January 21 12:03 AM

Okay, #*@% it. I'm leaving for Mexico on February 4. I will post something every day between now and then. And I'm going to lead off with a doozy of a post.

About two weeks before Macworld Expo, I got a wonderful email from my pal Shawn King. Shawn had met his girlfriend Lesa at Macworld Expo and he had proposed to her at Macworld Expo, and after lots of deliberations about dates and venues, they had a brainwave: they ought to just go ahead and get married at Macworld. Of course! All of their friends would be converging on San Francisco anyway, and he'd already rented out a rather magnificent music hall for a party he was hosting...it was perfect.

I couldn't have been more pleased to hear the news. I instantly lofted an RSVP in the man's direction, along with an ample supply of "Mazel Tov"s.

I was raised Catholic, not Jewish. But "Go in Peace, to love and serve the Lord" probably would have been misunderstood so I had no qualms about misappropriating the line.

A day or two later, Shawn asked for my cell number so he could call me to discuss something. This automatically made me a suspicious. Lide has taught me not to associate analog communication technology with Good Things. Conversations with friends, discussions about opportunities for new projects, invitations to spend a week cruising the Mexican Riviera on someone else's dime...these things almost exclusively happen via email. When I let my focus slip momentarily and accidentally answer the telephone, I wind up talking to a PR person who refuses to believe that I really have very little interest in a 40-minute briefing about an Indiana insurance agency's switch from Microsoft Outlook to the DiscoMail client/server solution.

But the resulting conversation with Shawn made up for a hundred PR harangues: he and Lesa wanted me to perform the wedding service. Not "participate in," not "help arrange"...in every wedding only one person gets to face the back of the room, and Shawn and Lesa thought about it and chose me to be That Man.

I hardly knew what to say. I immediately thought back to the previous Thursday, when I failed to successfully heat up a microwave burrito. It was dried-out on the outside and had a crunchy crystal center. In my own defense, there's no "Burrito" setting on my microwave, so it's down to luck and experience, but it's precisely the sort of skill that I really should have mastered by now.

And I was going to be trusted with the task of bonding two souls together for all Eternity? Really? Who thought that was a good idea?

Yes, yes, Shawn and Lesa. But they can be forgiven for this lapse in judgement. Three years of making goo-goo eyes at each other had filled their brains with pixie dust and chocolate moonbeams, tragically eroding away their cynicism and obliterating their faith that the hillside of human existance slopes steadily and irrevocably towards Disaster.

But what was the State of California's excuse? The territory had been through a messy divorce from France and Mexico, followed by a shotgun wedding to the United States which, from the looks of things, had brought little pleasure to either party. Truly, the Golden State had seen fire and rain. Literally...along with earthquakes and the infestation of both Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger in its Governor's Office. The deals for both of the "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo" movies were made there. If any entity could be trusted to foresee the worst-case scenario, it was the State of California.

And yet, they were cool with it. I had sorely underestimated the blackness of the state's soul. Clearly, California had quickly appreciated the caliber of disaster indicated by my involvement in a wedding ceremony, and their first action was to instant-messages the neighboring states of Nevada and Oregon. "Watch this," the state said. "This ought to be rich. >:)"

As a matter of form the state insisted that I possess the proper legal standing required to perform a wedding service and formally execute the marriage license. Sheer bureaucracy. At this very moment, little girls are marrying Barbies to Kens...and they aren't even mammals, let alone a couple who've had a blood test, bought a marriage license, and sat through a sex talk with a priest. Does the State step in to do anything about it? Of course not; they're too busy making honest, pious men like me fill out paperwork while thousands of dolls all across America are living in sin.

Shawn suggested that I become an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church (your basic "Visit a website and print off an ordination certificate" solution) but I dismissed this idea immediately. The ULC is a punchline to a bad joke, and there was a far more dignified solution available: I could become a Deputy Commissioner of Marriages in the City of San Francisco, County of San Francisco, State of California. By coincidence, I'd heard of this gambit last summer. It's a fascinating concept: You show up at City Hall, you sign some papers, and just like that you become 007, Licensed to Marry for a single 24-hour period.

Alas, it wasn't quite that cool: it turns out that you only get to perform one wedding. The state further bleeds the fun out of it by demanding that you call your shot beforehand. I had entertained fantasies of being on a city bus somewhere when a pregnant lady a few seats away started going into labor. "Is there a doctor on the bus?" her panicky boyfriend would yell, desperately scanning the passengers for somebody listening to an iPod through a stethoscope. My eyes wouldn't leave the "Picks and Pans" page of my copy of "People." Five minutes later, when the realization finally struck the parents-to-be that their son or daughter was about to be born as a bastard child, the call "Is there a Deputy Commissioner of Marriages on the bus?" would go out. At this point, I'd put a bookmark in my magazine, adjust my hat just so, and strike a heroic pose.

Becoming a Deputy Commissioner requires a $107 licensing fee, but I generously allowed Shawn to pick up that expense. After all, I was already putting a lot on the line just by taking my Oath of Office.

Yes, my Oath of Office. There was paperwork, and there was a sample marriage license that I had to properly execute and witness, and then the clerk at City Hall handed me a piece of paper to read and told me to raise my right hand.

"I, Andrew Ihnatko," I said, obediently following the script, "do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California, that I take this obligation freely, without mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter."

Clearly, there's an excellent chance that sometime by the end of the month, I will be chloroformed, thrown into the back of a van, and shipped off to Iraq.

I mean, isn't this the Presidential Oath of Office? Or is it possible that the Chief Justice got his paperwork mixed up on Inauguration Day, and George W. isn't authorized to do anything more complicated than wed Raven Morningsleeve (aka Maryellen Humadecker) to Frodo Merrynocks (aka Larry Czrvzroki) at a Greenbelt, Maryland rennaisance faire? One can only hope.

I confess that I sputtered just a bit when I got to the "support and defend" line. I wasn't prepared for it, you see. The same sort of thing killed Houdini, if you'll recall, although in his case he wasn't prepared to demonstrate his "taking a punch to the stomach without flinching" ability and died of appendicitis as a result. In my case, I wasn't anticipating that as a requirement of being granted the legal authority to marry Shawn and Lesa, I would have to promise that if anyone were to speak ill of the Governor in my presence, I would be duty-bound to beat that filthy stinking hippy with a broken pool cue.

But only until I'd performed the ceremony. And the good news was that as a duly-sworn Deputy Commissioner, I was entitled to a five-year federal gun permit. That bit of paperwork cost an extra seventeen dollars, but I happily picked up the expense myself. I waved the orange permit at Shawn after it was stamped and signed, waggling my eyebrows in a way that I hoped he would correctly interpret as "Now you know what to get me as a thank-you gift."

Shawn is Canadian, so for good measure I mimed the slide action on a Glock 9mm pistol. I had no idea how to mimick "with a box of those magnesium-coated tracer rounds" but I supposed that he had enough to go out and do this week already.

Tomorrow: Making a Marriage.

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The Marrying Man, Part 2

Sunday, January 22, 2006 7:12:36 PM

I've got a whole gaggle of older sisters, each of whom have gotten married. Which was all well and good for them, naturally. But it's impossible to wage a family wedding without inflicting some collateral damage and thus I had to attend all four weddings and stick around from start to finish. Such is my love for my siblings that when orders came down from HQ that I was to actually participate to some extent, I forged right ahead, pausing only briefly to write one last letter home and reflect that this was one of those "never have so few sacrificed so much for so many" moments.

It wasn't so bad. Usually, they cast me as one of the groomsmen, which doesn't involve any heavy lifting. Though it did put me right in the line of fire, placing me at at the head table where I had to make my way through a chicken breast while on full display to a roomful of guests. This left me wide-open for snickering comments about little things like the fact that I accidentally used a salad fork on my entree, or that I appeared to be operating a Game Boy during the round of toasts.

It was a hard way to grow up, but as the hero of the fine film "Shaft" would attest, the most valuable lessons are the ones you learn on the streets. You do what you got to, to survive. And all of these experiences served me well during all my friends' weddings to come. During the rehearsal for one wedding, the mother of the bride had asked the priest one important question ("Is there a secure room here at the church where we can store the bride's gown overnight?") but not the important follow-up ("...and will someone be here tomorrow morning to unlock it?"). I was the best man at another wedding where it was just fifteen minutes before showtime and only a handful of the guests had arrived. Turned out that the little slip of paper with the directions to the church on it had transposed two exit numbers. Forty or so people landed at a Dairy Queen three towns over instead of at the designated venue.

But I'd lived through the weddings of all those older sisters, which meant that I was able to calm any frazzled nerves. As I worked my lockpicking skills on the door, I assured the bride that in any wedding a great many things were certain to go very right and a great many things were certain to go very wrong. But no matter what happened, she could absolutely count on the most important thing of them all: that by the end of the day, she'd be married to the person she loved.

And as if to certify my fundamental wisdom, that was when my improvised pick managed to nudge the deadbolt's last remaining pin into position. The screwdriver in my hand twitched clockwise five degrees, and after a moment's worth of careful twisting, the door was open and I was being shoved aside rather roughly by the maid of honor.

I think about this every time I attend a wedding. With the exception of Shawn and Lesa's because from my own perspective, that "One thing is guaranteed to go right" was absolute bollocks. If the wedding cake was supposed to go on a round table adjacent to the buffet but instead, it wound up on top of the statue of St. John adjacent to the icy stairs leading down to the banquet hall, well, that's unfortunate. But what does it matter, really? The wedding still came off, and years later, everyone will be laughing about it.

But the officiant gets no free passes. He's like the electrical wiring in the church and the function hall. If he's defective in any way, there are no small consequences.

Yes, if the officiant screws up, there is no wedding. If he leaves his notes for the service back in the hotel, then that's the ball game. And even if he somehow managed to remember to bring those crucial pages with him, success is still by no means a lock. He must remember not to arrive at the venue drunk or partially-nude or both, for example, and while the he can probably get away with addressing the groom as "Mommy" once, the service is largely a pass-fail proposition.

And this particular performance came with a particularly high degree of difficulty: Shawn and Lesa's faith in my judgement was absolute. I tried very hard to sound them out on what sort of service they wanted. Were there any special vows they wanted to say, any friends or family that they particularly wanted to involve? Any basic template that I should follow?

No, no, and no. It was all up to me. "So if you arrive at the site and find that there are two Klingon costumes waiting for you," I asked them, "you'll slap on the combination wig-and-rubber-forehead happily, willingly, and without complaint?" I was just hoping to shock them into some discussion, but nope...they were certain that I'd put together a fine service.

It gave me cause to add another entry in my little list of Reasons Why I Know I'm Getting Older. One of the differences between being an Full-On Adult as opposed to a Young Adult is that you can find real pleasure in taking on an enormous responsibility. There comes a time in your personal evolution when keeping a low profile and avoiding trouble are no longer attractive. If you've made a consistent series of Correct Choices in life, you will find that you're regularly called upon to be The Guy, instead of being The One Who Runs Out To Pick Up The Guy's Lunch Order. One of the nicest compliments I've ever received is the simple fact that Shawn and Lesa thought of me as someone whom they could trust with the most important day of their lives together. No "here are some notes," no "could you have something to run past us by Tuesday?" Just a date and a time, and consensus with my suggestion that the service follow the three "S"'s: Short, Sweet, and Secular.

The warm and fuzzy feelings lasted about forty minutes, which was when i realized that I had to go ahead and actually write the damned thing.

Even the State of California is vague on what should or shouldn't happen during a wedding service. To make it legal, the service only has to feature that familiar scene in which Person "A" and Person "B" explicitly and publicly state their desire to marry each other, and at the very end, the officiant has to read the "And now, by the power invested in me..." line word-for-word.

Other than that, it's a blank sheet of paper. Google and my local reference library came to the rescue. I immediately immersed myself in the genre. By far, my biggest allies were the dry technical manuals that the armed forces issue to their chaplains. These folks have to be prepared to officiate at all kinds of different denominational services, so these books cover absolutely faith, from each of the Heinz 57 flavors of Christianity all the way to -- no joke -- Satan-worshiping faiths.

Google's eventual contribution to my research was to paint a picture of the nuts-and-flakes kind of weddings. I mentioned the Klingon wedding service a few paragraphs ago and I assure you: it's no joke. Well, of course it is a joke, but what I mean to say is that it's real. I distinctly remember watching the episode of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" in which the series' first Klingon wedding took place. "What a transparent and pathetic attempt to keep the Trek franchise alive," I thought. The service was depicted slowly, carefully, line for line and action for action, almost in the style of a how-to video. Clearly, the show's producers were hoping to inspire hundreds if not thousands of "Trek" fans to marry, the better to spawn a new generation of viewers. Hopefully one that would be genetically predisposed not to question the hammy overacting and lame ongoing social commentary that seems to be Item One of Page One of the series bible. How sad.

I read about weddings that thought of God as the best man, weddings without any mention of God at all, and weddings that only mentioned God so that the participants could openly deride Him (or Her or It). Weddings involving pyramids, weddings that included pets, even an underwater wedding. I felt as though I'd seen the alpha and the omega of the subject, and after spending a few days with Wedding Research as my usual mental screensaver, I was now ready to forget about everything I'd read and write something from scratch.

Shawn and Lesa needn't have harbored the slightest concern that I'd be holding a dagger over their heads and growling "DaHjaj mobHa' tlhIH!". I have absolutely no appetite for "wacky" weddings. Mind you, I think that a couple shouldn't hesitate to choose a service that best expresses their own preferences and desires. The wedding of Sister #3 was a guerilla-style affair, performed by a justice of the peace on a gorgeous spot of lakeside public land without securing any sort of permission from the City of Chicago beforehand. They couldn't count on the indulgence of the park police so yes, efficiency was certainly of the essence, but all the same, it was as beautiful as any church wedding I've ever attended.

But when anybody has to get in some sort of costume, or remains on horseback or on a motorcycle, or if the couple only has a fixed amount of time to say "I Do" before they either run out of air, need to pull their ripcord, or before the mild sedative that keeps the tigers at bay starts to wear off...clearly, that's a Wacky Wedding and I want no part of it. I think a Wacky Wedding is like a tattoo that you get during Spring Break. It's a big thrill at the time, and maybe for as much as a year afterward you'll proudly tell people the story. But as the years go by, the shiny veneer starts to wear off, revealing the tacky core of Dumb that had been lurking just a couple of millimeters beneath the surface all along.

And a Wacky Wedding is actually far worse. At least a shaky Tasmanian Devil Flipping The Bird tattoo can be burned off with an ultrahighfrequency laser in a long series of painful and expensive treatments. No, even if you get divorced and your spouse gets to keep the house, you can't force them to also take away your crystal-clear recollection of standing in front of an extremely white Justice of the Peace wearing a rented feathered bonnet, who awkwardly worked his way through an alleged Sioux wedding ceremony that you personally transcribed from an episode of "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman."

Again we get back to the terrific compliment implied by Shawn and Lesa's wholehearted faith in my judgement. It's like I was going to be deciding what town they spent their childhood in, how their first kiss went, or where they were and what they were doing when they heard that the Germans had surrendered and the War was over. Sitting there in my office, I was going to be crafting a memory that they'd carry with them for the rest of their lives; truly, it was important that I bring some Game.

After the wedding was over with, many of the guests came up to me and asked how much time I spent writing the service. It was hard to give them an answer. I knew immediately what the road map was going to be. Begin with a secular homily, then Shawn and Lesa swap "I Do"s, then they swap rings, then I give a blessing, and I cap it all off by applying the official mojo that renders the marriage legal. A rough sketch took shape after just an hour. But I spent the rest of the week making small adjustments. Sometimes I'd change a few words. Sometimes I'd rework a whole paragraph.

The vows, for example, were especially tricky. There's the obvious problem of trying to write something that's so obviously central to the whole undertaking. Their entire marriage was going to be based on whatever words I put in their mouths. "Do you, Shawn King, agree to begin each day by sticking pretzel rods up both of your nostrils, knocking on the door of a random neighbor, and greeting whoever answers by saying 'I'm a walrus! Ruff-ruff! Give me a mackerel!'...for as long as you both shall live?" All I had to do was type it and he'd have to do it for the rest of his life, or else his years of wedded bliss would be forfeit.

And even when I got the actual vows sorted out, that part was still far from finished. I soon realized that although the content was spot-on, the form needed a little work. The hitch: I would have the luxury of reading this stuff from a text in my hands (plus I wrote the thing, so I was already familiar with it), but the happy couple would have to successful navigate the Repeat After Me challenge. So I sent the vows back to Rewrite so that they could be broken down into chunks of no more than ten syllables apiece. Ten was the right answer. More would have been too much of a memory quiz and too few would have had these two poor people sounding like Tonto:

Take ring,
Love,
Promise lots,
Promise forever,
Oooo!
Shiny bird!
Shiny metal bird in sky!!!

In fact, the tweaking continued off and on right up to about 2 AM on the morning of the actual wedding. The text sat there seductively in a window on my PowerBook, as I stretched out in my hotel room and idly answered emails and monitored the sad and steady progress of Larry King's dementia. I was happy with what I'd put together. Still, there are always places where three words can do the work of five, and ways to make something clearer and stronger.

Most importantly, I took every last opportunity to scrutinize the text and reconsider every decision. Writing a wedding service brings with it the same considerations as buying a gift for someone you truly care about. You can't give them something that you would want for yourself, or even something that you want them to have. The ideal is to give them the thing that they themselves would have chosen, if had they known that such a thing existed.

Were any of those lines in there simply because I knew that I'd enjoy saying them? I thought the homily was an important section, but would Shawn and Lesa be thinking to themselves "What the bloody hell is Andy going on about?" And while there was some humor in the service -- I had to believe that one of the reasons why they chose me was because they wanted something a little bit different -- would the humor steal some of the focus from the only true star of the show...Shawn and Lesa's lifelong commitment?

I've said my piece about Wacky Weddings, and I think the photos from that online Klingon Wedding filled in any gaps I might have left in my argument. But you know what? If that's what Shawn and Lesa wanted, I would have been right out there on eBay buying the right sort of ceremonial dagger and gargling salt water to make sure that my throat could withstand all the glutteral demands of the language.

It was going to be their wedding, not my wedding, and I was determined to make them happy even if the results filled the Internet with photos of me wearing the Mullet of sci-fi fandom: the combination rubber forehead-with-integrated wig. I would probably have broken character and snuck the pretzel-rod vow into the service simply out of spite, but overall, I think I would have been a good sport about it.

Well, if all true art can never truly be Finished, there's certainly a point at which you have to stamp it "Done" and send it to be shrinkwrapped and shipped. I was confident that I had a wedding service that would deliver the goods. The focus of my worries then shifted to practical, sitcom-ish scenarios, such as accidentally leaning up against a freshly-painted latticework minutes before the start of the service, and proceeding with the ceremony blissfully unaware that I appeared to have an enormous swastika on my back.

Yes, it seemed unlikely. But I have not led an unblemished life, and I had to be concerned that somewhere in Karma's day planner there was an entry for January 12 marked "7 PM: Ihnatko (defrauded school of disk drive, 10th grade) officiates wedding, San Francisco, CA."

Tomorrow: Doing the Deed.

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Watson, come here!

Monday, January 23, 2006 8:59:29 PM

Okay. Let's see if I've done Something Productive vis a vis fixing up my blogging code.

Push the button, Frank...

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This Time, For Sure (Or Perhaps Not)

Monday, January 23, 2006 9:35:52 PM

Okey-dokey. The previous test had a problem that I couldn't figure out and it was one of those things in which I was able to play the Arrogance Card. "I know how this standard file handler works," I insisted. "If it's screwing up the way it seems to be screwing up, then the code can't possibly be at fault."

I think there was a file screwup. Have restarted, forcing the OS to close anything that I can't see. On the plus side, all of this scrutiny of the code and the results it was generating caused me to find and correct a bunch of trivial, cosmetic, but nonetheless annoying problems.

Fingers crossed. Push the button, Frank...

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TV, G5, and Pancakes

Wednesday, January 25, 2006 5:19:55 PM

It's early afternoon and I'm back home, after one of those "We do more by 2 PM than most Andy Ihnatkos do by 4 the next morning" days. I was up at the crack of 7:34 so I could be at a TV studio by 8:15 and do something for the morning newscast. My hope was to shine a beacon of Light, Truth, Knowledge and Understanding over a populace thirsty for all four commodities. My only promise was that I wasn't going to drop the F-bomb. Not more than twice. Maybe three times. No, no: it's all about professionalism and discipline: twice, tops.

It was a particularly good one this morning, I thought. I've been doing these things a couple times a month since August, but it's only in the past few outings that I've felt like I've really found the groove of the five-minute format. I can now spend five minutes putting across a lot of important information without making it look like I'm trying to put across a lot of important information...all while finding plenty of room to have fun and try to make the anchorpeople break up off-camera. I don't overprepare and I don't try to wedge in every fact, line, or idea that I came up with on the drive over. I simply arrive with an ample mental inventory of things to say and then I pick and choose from them as I go.

The preceding is a peek of each of the problems I'd chastise myself for on the drive back home, up until my fifth or sixth broadcast. I'd be muttering like I'd just had a spectacularly bad argument with a girlfriend. "Why did I say that? What I should have said was...and I can't believe I never got to say..."

(And then I'd get home, and find a message from my Mom telling me how great I was and how my aunts called to tell her they saw me. Good ol' Mom.)

One thing has been constant throughout, though: at some point between the time I'm seated and the time the segment starts, I do still think of that bit from "Broadcast News" in which the slick anchorman (played by William Hurt) is coaching the smart but nebbishy reporter (Albert Brooks) on how to anchor an upcoming weekend newscast. "Sit on the tail of your jacket," he commands. "It'll improve the whole line of your suit on camera."

Brooks resists, forcing Hurt to overpower him and administer a sort of anti-wedgie. "Niiice tip!" Brooks finally says, when he sees the results in the monitor.

I've never worn a jacket on the newscast but nonetheless, I hear those two words in my head every single time.

Anyway. These appearances are a lot more fun, now that the "Don't look like a jackass" software runs itself and doesn't have to be the frontmost mental app. No, I don't get paid for 'em. But this is one of those rare occasions where the kiss-off line "We can give you something far more valuable than money: experience" is actually true. TV is another opportunity to tell people about Things That I Think Are Important, certainly a venue to talk to people I normally wouldn't reach, so I'm happy to have a chance to get a little better at it.

And I don't want to be arrogant about my progress or anything, but I confidently state that after three more appearances, I will be quite qualified to sub for Matt Lauer. If I don't get the call by my third or fourth or fifth, I'll give you an address to write angry letters to because man...that ain't right.

Afterwards, I took my dual G5 tower for a little ride to the Apple Store at the North Shore Mall. The poor dear has been ill since that power outage a few days ago, refusing to boot or even take any clear chicken broth.

But I won't say that I had to go to the Genius Bar at the North Shore Mall. That would be a fib:

1) I didn't even try to boot off of a volume other than the internal drive, even though the startup process was clearly getting hung up at the "locate a bootable volume" part of the bootup pageant;

2) Peabody, MA is almost an hour's drive away. There are three Apple Stores that are closer to the TV studio, two of them less than twenty minutes away.

3) My tower's chief role is to act as a server for media and backups, and to handle those rare apps that actually require top-of-the-line performance. When Lilith (my PowerBook) goes south, I need to get a solution in place within 24 hours. When something happens to the G5, fixing it is something I'll Get Around To Eventually. No rush.

So the absolute truth is that I was baldly exploiting the fact that Peabody is near Salem. If you drive east for about six miles after leaving the mall parking lot, you wind up at Deb's Diner. I'd learned about Deb's while researching the New England Ironman Diner Decathalon last year and ever since, I've been waiting for a chance to give it a try. But it seemed wasteful to make a two-hour roundtrip just to sample a diner.

And so, filled with the same carefree spirit of fraud and self-deception that inspires the lovestruck to judiciously pluck daisy petals by twos and threes until he's left with a single petal and a slightly-soiled determination that "She loves me," it just so happened that I was going to be ten minutes away from Deb's Diner. On that basis the detour was clearly a shrewd investment of my time.

Bobby the Genius (nice guy; he also took care of Lilith last summer) agreed with my diagnosis of the G5's problem. Hardware was pronounced A-OK and the patient would fully recover after either (a) I carefully navigate a complex net of diagnostic utilities and tools, or (b) I booted off another drive, backed up the G5's few files that I needed to keep, and then refo- the mo-fo. Twenty minutes later (following a couple of wrong turns) I was parked behind a rather fabulous breakfast.

A thrilling photocommentary is available for your kind perusal on my Flickr blog.

Incidentally, do check out the Flickrblog if it hasn't popped up on your radar yet. There's lots of good stuff there and even with Yellowtext back up and running, I'll continue to use Flickr for those stories that are told best with pictures.

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The Oprah-Line Is Open

Thursday, January 26, 2006 11:50:31 PM

Lots of email from people anticipating upcoming chapters of "The Marrying Man," and also asking for a copy of the wedding service I wrote. Both are forthcoming, I assure y'all. The words you are now reading are in the frontmost window of BBEdit; Chapter Three is in the window right behind it and as of ten minutes ago, it has me in my hotel room getting dressed for the service.

I need to finish and post something in the next 110 minutes and odds are that it won't be Chapter Three. And I must post something tonight. I forgot how pleasant it is to receive blog-related email that doesn't feature permutations and combinations of the words "update," "you," and "bastard."

So I'll drop a quickie on you. Progress on CWOBber continues to move at a cheerful clip. In fact, during a break from work work yesterday afternoon, I added a new feature that I've been meaning to get around to for a long time, now: automatic asides. You know,

It's a nice little stylistic conceit that lets me indulge the occasional synaptic misfire without completely derailing the narrative. But for technical reasons, I had to pre-format the HTML and CSS style tags manually and the entire aside had to be fed to CWOBber's text-to-HTML code as one mooshed-together paragraph.

Meaning, they were a pain in the butt to code (often I'd have to go back in and fix an unbalanced tag after the page had been posted), and it's hard to keep mental track of the flow of the thing when it looks like a big run-on sentence to begin with.

But no more! See, I just select the text, click "Make An Aside," and presto: all of the dull drudgery is a thing of the past.

I'll be damned if I can think of anything to Aside at this point. Can I say "See, I just select the text..." if I'm not actually selecting the text and clicking the menu?

I have genuine cause for concern. I want my next title to be an Oprah's Book Club selection and after watching today's program, I guarantee you that the one thing that'll piss this fine woman off more than selling her a knockoff handbag is claiming that something is Nonfiction when it's actually only Based On A True Story.

And at this writing, CWOBber manipulates its own files without any help and updates everything on its own. That's why some of you reported problems with the RSS feed. Made a dumb error in which CWOBber updated the XML file with the date and time when the blog was last updated, but in doing so it obliterated the placeholder for all future date-and-time updates. So many newsreaders would be unaware that new content had arrived.

Okay. I still haven't written the bit that automatically updates the remote server, so I suppose I should budget five minutes or that manual task. Push the button, Frank...

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The Marryin' Man Part 3: "I Feel Pretty"

Friday, January 27, 2006 11:03:58 PM

Historically, Thursday is the day of Macworld Expo when things go seriously wobbly.

A smooth Day One is a lock. How can you not get through Day One with both your sense of elan and your spirit of joie de vivre intact? Tuesday starts early, yes, but 90 minutes after showering and shaving you find yourself at a Steve Jobs keynote and I dare, simply dare you not to find the whole experience exciting.

You'll get through Wednesday all right because you knew that you were going to have an early day on Tuesday, so you didn't make any early appointments for the day after. Thus, you laze around until 9 or 10, and because you're still on East Coast time (sort of), it feels like 10 or 11. Besides, you haven't really had time to stroll around the show floor yet and you're eager to get cracking. The show floor is still a bowl of Hershey's Miniatures, and you know that there are still plenty of Hershey Milk Chocolates and Hershey Milk Chocolate with Almonds lurking among the Mr. Goodbars and the Hershey Darks.

But on Thursday, the butt-kicking that had been waiting so patiently for you as you repeatedly ducked its phone calls and emails finally gets sick of it, and it fells you with a blurry hockey-stick to the back of the knees. You finally have to deal with the after-effects of the past two long days of rushing between appointments and the late nights of dinner and nightlife, all done on way too little sleep.

Yes, at Macworld Expo, no Thursday can possibly go well. And troublingly, this was the day I was to officiate my very first wedding ceremony.

As if the Universe needed to underscore the fact that Thursdays Mean Trouble, it turned out that I had to speak at 9:30. 9:30 AM. Nine days earlier, the producer of this event had emailed me to request that I be at the venue absolutely no later than 8:30, so they could do a sound check and a run-through.

By 8:20 AM on Thursday, I had finally finished chuckling about that as I got out of bed and shuffled into the shower.

There's another reason why a Macworld Expo Thursday is likely to be recorded into the Suck ledger: the stakes are far higher. Cover lots of ground today and you don't need to come back at all for the half-day on Friday. This was my day to convert pages of notes into actual visits to actual people to collect actual information. It was actually doubly-important to close the books on Macworld early because for the first time in years, my Macworld week wasn't going to include a full weekend stayover. I had to fly home on Saturday, and thus if I wanted to prise even one single day off for walking around the city and finding yet another reason to love the damned place, it was going to have to be Friday. And I could only manage that if by 5 PM on Thursday I stood upon that craggy precipice near Room 140 at the Moscone Center overlooking the show floor and, like Alexander looking out upon the ocean, realized that there were no lands left for me to conquer.

I strode the show floor with purpose and focus. Clearly, word had gotten out over the past few days because "Are you really performing a wedding service tonight?!?" became a familiar greeting. By the third such question, I could activate a mental macro key and spit out a clever-sounding response:

Indeed I am. You are addressing a duly-sworn Deputy Commissioner of Marriages, City of San Francisco, County of San Francisco, State of California. No need to curtsy...though that would certainly show a certain amount of class.

I don't deny that there was a sort of a halo effect around me and I did absolutely nothing to stifle this sort of reaction. During my last trip to London, I needed to do a bit of work and so I applied for, and received, a photo card granting me Researcher access to the British Library's holdings. This credit card-like pass is easily among the Top Three coolest items in my wallet and I keep it in the Double-Diamond position in my wallet. I pay for a Coke and a Snickers at the CVS, pull out my debit card and whoops! Out it flies. Sorry about that...what? Oh, it's my British Library research card. Nope, actually, you have to apply for it. I'm a working journalist, so they gave me a three-year card, of course, instead of a one-day temporary...

And yet to date, in the past three months, two weeks, and two days, nobody has asked me about my British Library research card. Not even one. I was therefore quite relieved to find that the wedding had become one of the true Buzzworthy(tm) memes of Expo. Usually when someone lobs a "So, what've you been up to?" in your direction, the best you can return with is your recent decision to do all of your laundry together on the Cold setting from now on, instead of running a separate hot wash for the whites. On the one day when you have the full legal powers and responsibilities of a Deputy Commissioner, you're grateful for any chance to take that conversational gun out of its holster and squeeze off a few rounds. If only "What's My Line?" were still taping. And its producers had any earthly idea who I was.

By 5 PM, all of my professional missions were accomplished. I had met with everyone I needed to meet with, had covered the show floor within an inch of its life, and just as importantly I went another day without paying for a single meal. As for the man who had screwed one of my business partners in a publishing deal, he still lived, but I was watching invisibly as he ingested the toxin and I was certain that in two days' time, he'd be found dead in his hotel room with symptoms that a baffled coroner's office would ultimately ascribe to an acute allergic reaction to cleaning products.

And so I climbed into that stalwart little raft dubbed Kon-Tiki and commanded my oarsmen to pull away from the Moscone Center's shores for the final time, wiping a single manly tear as I plotted a direct course to my hotel two miles away.

My mood changed the moment I passkeyed myself back into my quarters. Gone was the carefree Maurice Chevalier attitude that I normally bring to a major trade show. I immediately shifted into For God's Sake, Don't **** This Up mode. Starting here, starting now, everything I did would make some sort of contribution towards creating either A Heart-Touching Moment That Would Last A Lifetime, or A Shocking Display Of Irresponsibility, Poor Judgement, and Bad Taste. Which would also last a lifetime.

I needed to make a great many Right Choices before leaving this room. Although for all I knew, I'd already made my most critical Bad Decision on Sunday night back home, when I pulled different outfits from my closet and laid them on the bed. What to wear, what to wear? I was like an 11-year-old girl getting ready for the first day of school, only without the help of a clique of mindfreak-happy peers offering inflexible guidance based on arbitrary rules that I couldn't hope to understand.

The obvious candidates:

Formalwear. I do own three tuxedoes. Four, if you count my tails as a separate outfit. But it didn't seem suitably...cleric-like, and if I were to make a guess, Shawn wouldn't be wearing a tuxedo. Rule One of attending a wedding: don't show up the bride or groom.

A black judicial robe. Absolutely classic. Technically it was a graduation gown. If you want to get extremely technical, it was a part of a Halloween costume I put together eight years ago, and I actually wore it around my waist as the bottom half of a Prospero-like ensemble. But even if I put it on to create the dignified impression "I am formally recognized by the state as a marriage officiant," would the guests take one look and think "Oh, isn't that cute; Andy dressed up like a judge"?

Moving on,

The kimono seemed to demand serious consideration. A unique and wondrous garment, truly. A gift from a generous and skilled member of the Mac community, it was sewn from nylon iMac promotional banners and bore images of every color iMac under the sun, back when iMacs actually had colors.

It would have been a fine choice. It would have embodied the inescapable Macintosh undertone to Shawn and Lesa's relationship and the wedding itself. And it easily could have been mistaken for a bathrobe. It was grudgingly returned to the closet.

The Steve Jobs ensemble. I do own jeans and a black mock-turtleneck. It would have been hysterically funny, even as far as forty seconds into the relentless beating I would suffer at Shawn's bare hands. For the remaining eight minutes and twenty, though, I probably was going to be regretting that I hadn't chosen something more sensible.

The black sport coat. Over a black shirt and a black pair of slacks with my black shoes. Come to think of it, I have everything I need for a simply smashing Johnny Cash costume. Why have I never tried that before? Did Johnny Cash have a Fat Elvis phase? Not that I consider myself fat, mind you, but I'm definitely at least fifty pounds too heavy to portray an amphetamine addict.

Hmm. No. It had a bit of a "defrocked priest" vibe about it. Plus, what if I wound up looking far dressier than the bride and groom?

I tried to picture what Shawn and Lesa would be wearing. The invitations only went out a little more than a week earlier. That seemed to say "nice-but-casual" attire to me. Plus, two weeks wouldn't be nearly enough time for Lesa to get a bridal gown, which would force Shawn to dress slightly down as well so as not to upstage her. The smart money was on a tasteful-but-casual new white dress for Lesa, and a dress shirt and slacks for Shawn.

I surveyed the rest of my closet and the more I looked at this garment, the clearer my choice seemed to be:

Aloha shirt.

All right: I sense your unease and I understand it. Experience has taught us that a typical Aloha shirt looks like what you'd wind up with nine months after a Jackson Pollock painting boinked all of the condiments in your fridge.

As an article of clothing, it embodies the act of strolling into a four-star restaurant in Paris and asking two questions: "Does any of you speak American?" and "Where's the nearest Burger King or whatever the hell you call 'em over here?"

It's the weird smell that hits you when you open the trunk of a rental car. It's the taste of the water inside a souvenir snow globe from Atlantic City. It is the skimpy phrase "The Three Stooges" in the TiVO electronic program guide that tricks you into recording an hour's worth of Joe Bessers and a Curly Joe DeRita, forcing last week's "My Name Is Earl" to be deleted from the hard drive to make room.

It is never wanted, it is never welcome, and it is never the right answer.

I agree. These things are true of a conventional Aloha shirt. But this was no random specimen: I bought this in Kauai. It's the genuine article, designed and made in Hawaii, and more than that...it's a formal Aloha shirt.

Black. Black, black, black. A single cascade of tasteful orchids spills down from the left shoulder. If the light hits it just right, you'll notice that there's a subtle texture of black orchids woven right into the fabric. Worn over a black tee shirt with black pants and black shoes, it would say "I have dressed up for this occasion" while still putting a few freestyle points on the scoreboard. But not enough to show up the stars of the show.

For good measure, I added a rather pretty art-glass pendant...also purchased in Kauai, straight from the artist. In fact, a quick poke through my webserver turns up the following photo taken of me in Hawaii, wearing almost exactly what I packed for the big night:

As if to seal the deal, it suddenly hit me that although I've known Shawn for at least as long as he's been doing Your Mac Life (which is a mighty long time), I first really got to know him a few years ago, when we spent two weeks in Dallas taping an instructional DVD about the Mac OS.

The title of the series? "Tackyshirt." We all wore aloha shirts throughout the shoot.

Done and dusted, then. Even if I was the only one in the room who got the joke, that fact would still have worked. It would have given me a final dash of arrogance and superiority. These qualities really ought to be part of the package, as The One Man Who Can Perform The Ceremony.

Back at the hotel, I pulled the shirt out of my combination Closet/Dresser/TV Stand/Minibar and gave it a final once-over. Hanging it up in the bathroom as I showered the day before had knocked nearly all of the wrinkles out of it and 24 hours of steady Earth gravity finished the job.

Showering twice in two days should have put me ahead of my usual personal-hygiene schedule by weeks but to hell with it: this was a special occasion and I popped into the shower a third time. Fifteen minutes later, after donning enough clothing to protect my modesty, I kept a towel-turban balanced on my head and navigated the artifacts arrayed on my bed. When you take up Marriage Officiating as a hobby, you find that you start to acquire a bewildering array of accessories. It's a syndrome familiar to anyone who golfs, skis, or re-upholsters livestock.

Amongst the evening's required weaponry were such diverse elements as:

1) License, comma, marriage, comma, one. If I left this behind, I would have screwed things up rather badly.

2) The information packet that the clerk gave me after I was officially deputized. If I skipped over any of the formal procedures required to properly execute the license, I would have screwed things up rather badly. I had read over the packet a few times by now, but what the hell: I'd take it with me.

3) Two fountain pens and a ballpoint. One was a fine-point, perfectly-suited for filling out a municipal form, while the other was a thick Medium, filled with a rich blue-black ink that would look like a million bucks on the second, "ceremonial" license to be framed and displayed...

Um, oops...

2a) Second, "ceremonial" license, which Shawn and Lesa would no doubt frame and display in their home. The clerk had taken me aside and warned that oftentimes, the disparity between the number of official witnesses required to sign the license (two) and the number of friends and family members who just assumed that they'd be tapped for this important task (more than two) can lead to some bent egos, bruised feelings, and the odd bridesmaid being thrown into a hotel pool near the reception hall. "Have some of the overflow witnesses sign the ceremonial license instead," she advised me, conspirationally. "They'll never know."

(Great tip. It'll definitely make it into the Officiating A Marriage For Dummies book proposal that I intend to submit to Wiley Press when all of this is over with.)

I fished the ceremonial license from the stack of papers on my desk added it to the "To Go" pile.

The ballpoint was there in case there was an unexpected screwup with the use of Fountain Pen technology. "Belt and Suspenders" should inform each of your choices in a life-or-death situation. Because if I had made it all the way through the service and through all of the bits after the service and then I had to panhandle the building for a Hello Kitty pen or anything with which to make it all official...I would have screwed up rather badly.

At this stage, I was relieved to see that nearly all of the items that had earned the "If X, then I will have screwed up rather badly" tag were present, accounted for, and in working order. Onward to the electives:

4) Leatherman WAVE multi-tool. This had nothing to do with my duties as officiant. But as an earlier chapter of this tale bears witness, there can indeed be times during a wedding in which being the only guest in the hall who thought to bring a pair of pliers, or a wood saw, or an eyeglass screwdriver makes you the MVP of the entire event. And if Shawn and Lesa had a last-minute change of heart and wanted the Klingon wedding after all, I would need a knife. Bringing the WAVE was therefore a shrewd decision and the mark of a committed professional.

5) Blister-tab of aspirin. Similar to Item 4, with the added attraction that in any large social gathering, it's not at all impossible to encounter a woman who will happily trade sex (time, place, and terms to be negotiated later) for a factory-sealed dosage of a name-brand headache remedy. It's not at all likely, mind you, but when the perky cute redhead stops suffering in silence and announces "I will **** the first man, woman or animal who can get me some freaking Tylenol right now," the memory of the full bottle sitting uselessly in your shaving kit miles away will mock you, for now and forever.

6) Handkerchief. It just seemed that offering one to a blubbering participant was the sort of thing that the officiant ought to be prepared to do. That wasn't in the State of California's information packet but it's going to be in the Officiating For Dummies book, believe me.

No, I hadn't forgotten the single most important item of all:

7) My iPod.

I wasn't going to be rude or anything. I was just going to watch it with the sound off during the ho-hum moments when the focus wasn't on me, where it belonged.

Ha ha. No, actually, I'd be reading my wedding service off of it.

Call it a strength or call it a weakness, but all of my editors have to tell me not just what day something's due, but what time it's due. If there are was to improve something and there's time left on the clock, why not use it? I don't understand why, for instance, director Robert Rodriguez actually brags about how far underbudget his last film was. Why the hell would you leave eight million dollars on the table when that cash could have been used to make a set a little better, or to bribe your way into a better location, or to spend a few more days shooting? Yes, the balance sheet looks better but not your movie doesn't. And your audience isn't paying ten bucks to see a spreadsheet, you know?

So although I could have printed the service before I left Boston, or even copied the file onto a keychain drive that morning and ducked into a Kinkos' or something, I was fairly sure that I'd be making little tweaks right until it was time to leave. The iPod would allow me to make as many revisions as I wanted up until the last possible moment.

Plus, the angel on my right shoulder conceded that I'd been very, very good about not inserting anything silly and unfortunate into Shawn and Lesa's wedding. It also conceded that reading it all off an iPod was both appropriate and pretty cool. I can't even tell you how much this pissed off the devil on my left shoulder, who'd suggested the idea in the first place. Despite a frustrating week of effort and the use of creative and seductive ideas like performing the serviced dressed like Keynote Steve Jobs, it had scored only this one Win...and even so, the angel had managed to ruin it. Jerk.

Indeed I did make some last-minute edits. I bumped into Lesa on Thursday afternoon and asked a critical question: "Will you or Shawn have any family there at the service?" My service referred to "friends and family." It was a very fine point, but I was pleased that I was able to make the correction. I finally ejected the iPod from my PowerBook's desktop and checked, double-checked, re-checked, and double-re-checked to make sure that the file was on there intact and that the battery had a full charge.

Ten minutes later, after I had finished dressing, I folded my Formal Aloha Shirt carefully, slid it inside a protective bag with the rest of my gear (so it wouldn't get messed up in transit) and zipped my complimentary Macworld Expo Speaker windbreaker over my Revenge of the Sith tee shirt (here filling the important role of "a black tee shirt with a decent collar and no design that would be visible under the Aloha shirt"). I touched my pants pocket for the (n+1)th time to make sure that the iPod was there...and with a final look in the mirror and a muttering of the same empowering mantra that filled me with confidence before my successful assault on the Jeopardy! Contestant Exam, I touched that pocket again, walked out the door, and touched the pocket twice more before the elevator arrived.

It's possible that a fair percentage of those people you see on the Health Channel don't actually have OCD. It's possible that they're just on their way to officiate a wedding.

Next: The Deed.

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My name is COY-o-tay. Wile *E* COY-o-tay.

Saturday, January 28, 2006 10:49:27 PM

Go ahead...call me a Genius. I deserve it:

What you see here is not a piece of rejected set dressing from the "Logan's Run" TV series. You are looking at a vindication of a fundamental lifestyle choice. Friends, the next time you tell a spouse or business associate "Don't throw that away! I'm saving it, just in case it comes in handy some day" and they respond with a mixture of pity, impatience, and anger, direct them to this here photo. It'll shut 'em up right quick.

Last week, I got Blue Microphones' Snowball USB microphone. First off, this thing is absolutely aces. Ever since GarageBand 1.0, I've been trying, and abjectly failing, to make a sound recording that doesn't sound like complete and utter crap. It didn't matter what sort of microphone I was using or what sort of thingamabob I plugged it into. The result would always be (a) pure, lovely sound that was way too faint to do anything useful with, or (b) nice and loud, which made it all the easier to hear all the buzzing and static and gaps and the fact that I sound like I'm speaking through one of those things that laryngectomy patients hold up to their necks.

Plug the Snowball straight into any USB port and you're off and running. It's terrific for speech and it's terrific for music and best of all, it can be successfully used by someone who doesn't know how to work a microphone and doesn't really care. That's me. I actually have those words on my driver's license. I had to peel off the "Organ Donor" sticker to make room for it, but it was time well spent, I think.

But back to Sweet Vindication. The Snowball comes with a nice little foldable weighted tabletop stand. Which is fine if you can actually keep a hand-sized area of your desktop open and clear, but what's a sensible person to do?

Simple: you take that broken camera tripod that you've been holding on to for the past four years, and then you go find the gooseneck microphone stand that you bought five years ago at a clearance sale and haven't used in three. Remove the gooseneck bit from the stand, disassemble the remains of the tripod, remove the post, and substitute a thicker collar using parts from the Home Depot's plumbing department. Presto: now you have a folding gooseneck microphone floor stand.

At full extension with the Snowball going straight up, it's good for recording an instrument. With the tripod mostly collapsed and the gooseneck bent forward and down, it's perfect for podcasts. I can set it in front of me on the sofa and the microphone extends far enough over my lap that I can sit comfortably without having to lean forward.

This inspired bit of re-engineering has led to dizzying new leaps in productivity. Last week, in a scene that would have done Homer Simpson proud, I recorded a MacNotables podcast while lying flat on the couch, my head propped up on the armrest with a couple of pillows, my silicone earbuds in, and with the microphone in perfect position.

What a glorious moment in sloth. In terms of a ratio of productivity to caloric expenditure, it was exceeded only by the day years ago when I got my classic Apple Split Keyboard out of the closet and figured that by lying in bed with a half of the keyboard on either side of me under my hands, a mini-trackball on my thumb, and the PowerBook balanced on my chest, I could put in a full day's work without having to move anything but my fingers.

So, Myth most definitely Busted: you should not throw something away just because it's broken, and/or because you haven't used it in more than a year and have no idea when you ever will. I've held on to the spring-tension arm from an old desk lamp for nearly seven years now and I just know that its day is finally near. I can feel it.

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Sometimes There's This Guy, And You Gotta Go Straighten Him Out, Right?

Sunday, January 29, 2006 11:58:43 AM

I was walking through Boston Common about an hour after sunset, taking pictures, when I had one of those "Oooo! That'll make for a nice shot!" moments. I walked hurriedly to get to a new position and although I did indeed note the presence of fallen tree branch on the sidewalk, I failed to notice a pencil-thin twig sticking straight up out of it.

Here's how the CSI boys reconstructed what happened next:

1) Foot hits twig. Meeting no resistance, foot continues moving forward, causing entire branch to rotate.

2) Branch has a slight curve in it. Rotation causes right half of branch to raise upward.

3) Right leg moves forward, catches on a raised branch that wasn't there a moment ago. With other end of branch immobilized by twig under left foot, progress of right foot is halted.

4) Body's center of gravity continues to move forward due to momentum. Right foot is unable to correct. Heel of left foot gets caught on left half of branch before it can compensate.

5) Collision with pavement. Camera is still gripped tightly in right hand, so the hand/pavement interface is entirely knuckular.

It took a moment before any pain could really force its way through the rush of adrenaline, so of course my first concern was the camera. I almost didn't want to look at it, but I was immensely relieved as soon as I did: the camera was just a loaner. Phew!

As for my right hand, it looked like I'd been down on the docks collecting for one of the Five Families. The skin was broken open in three places. Blood trickled down my fingers and in every nook and cranny in between.

In short: it looked awesome.

Yes, it also looked pretty damned nasty, and for the first half an hour after the fall, I'd respond to queries with a dismissive "S'okay...I just tripped and fell a little while ago. As soon as I pass by a CVS I'll pick up some disinfectant and some bandages and take care of it." But it wasn't long before I found myself smirking and replying "S'okay...it's not my blood."

And the kicker? It was my birthday. I was meeting some friends for dinner and decided that as a little gift to myself, I'd head into town a couple of hours early. I would buy myself that nifty fountain pen that I'd admired at Harrods two weeks earlier during my London trip, and then spend an hour or so taking pictures. I'm still using and enjoying the pen every day so it's not like the afternoon was a total wash. Nonetheless, all of the pictures I took before the fall were crap and the ones that came afterward consisted of two test shots to confirm that the camera was still A-OK and then a brief sequence that collectively will be referred to as the artist's Angry phase.

I'm not the sort of guy for whom every birthday is an opportunity for an emotional crisis...but a nasty and embarrassing injury on your birthday is fertile soil for the general "What, Precisely, Have I Done With My Life?" field of thought.

Fortunately, dinner at Zaftigs in Brookline and some good company soon put that right. Plus, while my hand was pretty sore for a bit, within the hour it didn't hurt a bit and the next day, to my relief, I found that my ability to play the violin was completely unimpaired. But it's now more than two months later, and I still have a scab on my pinky knuckle. This picture was taken about five weeks ago, and is all the explanation you need as to why I'm glad I didn't have to go on any job interviews or meet a fiancee's parents for the first time.

It's been fun. Don't get me wrong. For example, all I had to do was make sure that I handed over my original receipt using my knuckle-bruised hand and all of a sudden, that chinless bastard at Wal*Mart was willing to bend the rules and give me a full refund on those tube socks.

But it's getting old.

I wonder how long it takes before an eye patch no longer makes you feel dashing and mysterious? I suppose I should hope never to find out.

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I Do and I Do and I DO for you kids...

Monday, January 30, 2006 11:56:04 PM

Last week I had one of those low-grade sniffles that turned into one day of bona-fide Sick In Bed followed by another couple of days of sniffles. A very polite illness, all told. Announces its intentions and gives you 48 hours to get your affairs in order. Didn't enjoy the sniffling much, of course, but I thought that was an acceptable burden, in the spirit of Compromise.

Nontheless, although I did post twice (three times?) the day before, on the day that I was sick I didn't post at all. Which -- as many of you have emailed me in true Poindexter fashion -- means that I have compromised my pledge to post something every day until I leave for Mexico on Friday.

To all Poindexters: you were right to call me on this. You were also right, back in junior high, to desperately alert your math teacher that he had dismissed the class without assigning any homework for Christmas vacation, and when the rest of your classmates inserted you into the nearest receptacle that seemed to be at least 15% smaller than a kid your height and girth, well, they were right to do that, too.

But I'm busy busy BUSY busy. Much to wrap up before I can close up my office. I'm hoping to finish "The Marryin' Man" this week, but that's just Good Intentions at this point.

I can't remember the last time I set out on a trip without reflecting how much simpler my life would be at that moment if I weren't spending a week away from home. Partly this is due to the hour of the day when I usually have to depart (6 or 7 AM) and how much sleep I got the night before (anything more than two hours is a miracle and something less than one hour isn't unusual).

But the fact remains that while I love travel...I hate traveling.

Phun Phact for this Mexico cruise: I intend to take advantage of the many opportunities to harass underwater wildlife as we make our way down the coastline. A Well-Known Camera Company has lent me an underwater housing to try out. This was quite generous on their part, but now it's been a week and I'm sort of curious to find out if they're going to send along the actual camera that goes inside it.

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Finally, A Good Reason To Get Up Early

Tuesday, January 31, 2006 11:55:11 PM

I guess somehow, I just sensed that the Oscar nominations were coming up. My eyes fluttered open at 8 AM and sometime during the thirty-second window before I'd go back to sleep for another hour or two the penny dropped and I was activating the autotelevideo console for the 8:45 live presentation of the list of nominees.

And let me say something: it's possible that this is the only part of the whole Oscar procedure that hasn't been tainted yet. The Oscarcast got blown way out of proportion ten years ago and the air hasn't been let out of it since. The run-up to the actual show is absurd and the meaningless Golden Globes -- the collective opinion of less than 90 people some with very dodgy credentials -- has been puffed up into a sort of Academy Awards Fantasy Camp for publicists and that peculiar subspecies of mammal known as the Entertainment Reporter, aka Actors Too Old For Soap Work But Still Young Enough To Be Marketable.

The last straw came a year or two ago, which was the point where the simple phrase "the red carpet" started to send little electric shooting pains down my spine. Look: "exclusive Red Carpet coverage" is nothing more than people talking about their clothes and pretending to tolerate Star Jones. It was fun back when it was just a montage of the Most Expensive Crowd Scene On Television: you could see Julia Roberts chatting with (of all people!) a print journalist in the foreground, Gene Hackman in the background, and Salma Hayek bumming a smoke off of George Clooney somewhere in between.

But now? Well, again I cite the presence of Star Jones in the proceedings and trust that my point has been made.

I wonder how many years we have left before the announcement of the nominees becomes an embarrassing pseudo-important Ceremony as well. "Wait," some entertainment mogul said, using one of his pseudolimbs to tap the Reverse button on his TiVO remote while another carelessly fished an unidentifiable sea creature from a small tank near the chair and dropped it whichever body cavity he wasn't speaking with. "One executive from the Academy and one celebrity...and they simply read a list of information in a speedy and efficient, and overall dignified manner?!?"

To the sort of person I'm picturing, just the word "dignified" produced a massive disconnect and a need to fire someone. It is the entertainment-industry equivalent of a divide-by-zero.

This is going to be an interesting Oscar race to call. Here I'm using "interesting" as a synonym for "boring." There's no controversy, no "critically-beloved message film versus box-office smash" matchups...just a lot of awards for "Brokeback Mountain."

But geez, poor Paul Giamatti. As a Supporting Actor nominee, he's in a prime position. Historically, the Supporting categories are often used to correct past oversights. Such as, oh, being snubbed for both "Sideways" and "American Splendor." But the studio behind "Brokeback" (shrewdly) decided to split its Best Actor nominations, promoting its stars for both categories, and I can't imagine voters deciding to give an Oscar to one but not the other.

All of Giamatti's 2006 luck seems to have been handed over to anybody who released a feature cartoon in 2005. With Pixar releasing nothing all season and no CGI films at all in the roster, it's open season. Would love to see "Corpse Bride" or "Wallace & Gromit" win...and this is probably the only situation in which a clay or puppet-animated film could have had any sort of chance.

And if they both lose...then it goes to Hayao Miyazaki. Which (despite his previous feature win for "Spirited Away") would also inspire a small spate of dignified Happy Dancing.

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