Trippin’ USA

Interesting.

The alternative title is “The Fat In The Hat”

Deja vu.

The Hipster Elite and Their War on You will begin when the navel gazing ends.

Fred Phelps is dying. I’ll drink to that.

@CaptHowdy: Shirley is draining his life force.

That’s some weak sauce right there, Selection Committee.

@mellbell: Suddenly realizing why Nate chose tomorrow to relaunch 538…

@Mellbell: I tried to set up my bracket but Yahoo won’t let me do it on an iPhone unless I download the Yahoo Sports app. I’ll be at a computer by Thursday though.

I imagine our favorite San Franciscan Libertarian Tool will be by soon for his annual visit to trash talk and play the pool.

That book is child abuse.

@blogenfreude:
I think this book will be submitted as exhibit 1 as to why Johnny and Suzie put daddy in the old folks home that was featured on 60 Minutes and investigated by the State for mistreating seniors.

One theme in the reviews is “Lighten up! It’s a children’s book! No politics!”

Which leaves Self-Promotional Blather to be addressed. The tell is Rush starring in his own story.

I think the most shocking thing on that amazon page is that Brian Kilmeade wrote a book. Or at least wants to think he did.

Last night’s full moon is known as the Worm Moon.

Carry on.

@Benedick: which is not nearly as unpleasant as it sounds it turns out

@CaptHowdy: I thought it might have to do with the ground thawing and earthworms appearing. Either that or dragons.

@Benedick: The Worm Moon occurs whenever I shine my flashlight across the yard at night.

@Benedick: it sounds like something Tor Johnson would celebrate

@Manchu: From your lips to FSM’s ears that Rush would be so incapacitated.

I’ll show you guys a worm the size of a moon, amirite?

Now I must google teh term.

As the temperature begins to warm and the ground begins to thaw, earthworm casts appear, heralding the return of the robins. The more northern tribes knew this Moon as the Full Crow Moon, when the cawing of crows signaled the end of winter; or the Full Crust Moon, because the snow cover becomes crusted from thawing by day and freezing at night. The Full Sap Moon, marking the time of tapping maple trees, is another variation. To the settlers, it was also known as the Lenten Moon, and was considered to be the last full Moon of winter.

I’m actually kind of disappointed. I was hoping it was dragons like Benedick said.

Any guesses on why they call the November moon the “Full Beaver Moon”?

@Tommmcatt Au Gros Sel: I know it as the Lenten Moon from ye Olde Country. Here in the North East there are local names for this stuff. Snow is still on the ground here (for WCS: snow is what we call white frozen water that falls out of the sky), still thick in places, but thawing. I’m sick of shoveling the stuff though it’s very good for the lats. Too cold yet for robins though the deer were outside the house this morning for the first time since Nov. They’re all shaggy with their winter coats. Needless to say, once the pugs were unleashed they fled. I’m expecting bears any day.

I think they call it that because that’s the time you’re most likely to spot beaver in the lakes.

Quick question. Am I required to humiliate myself in the NCAA pool this year? Or am I permitted to skip it?

@Benedick: Beaver in the Lakes DING DING DING DING! You are a winner, sir.

Kinda literal minded, these generic Native Americans in the Almanac.

We got brown bears in my hometown. The sound of them running in the woods is terrifying.

@libertarian tool: Do what I do every year: Win by not playing.

@libertarian tool: Your only requirement is to wonder what the hell Orygun is doing there.

We need more sex.

Spanking. Assless chaps. Juice.

I’m big in New Zealand.

@libertarian tool: Required? No. Expected? Yes. Anticipated? Definitely.

@mellbell: I’m in. My friend Barrington Chadsworth IV would like to know if he can play this year. You summarily banned him the last two years even though he is PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and has flying robots that can find you and kill you. Just sayin…

@libertarian tool: Sure. As he acknowledged just this morning, he hasn’t exactly covered himself in glory with his past picks, so what’s the harm?

@Benedick: I’m big in New Zealand.

And who isn’t? Nothing but Hobbits.

@nojo: Don’t forget about 37-year-old Lorde or the favorite musical duo of mine (and mellbell), Flight of the Conchordes.

@nojo: They’re renaming the country Avatardia as the next 19 sequels will be shot there.

TJ/ Fred Phelps kicked the bucket, finally. Excommunicated from his own damn church.

Any losers yet?

@nojo: I win!

@Benedick: Tolkein is spinning in his grave over this last set.

@nojo: No, I’m sure everybody had Harvard to advance. I think the big loser of the tournament is the selection committee that set up Wichita State to face Kentucky, Louisville, and the Duke/Michigan winner just to reach the final four. I call the Midwest Region the NCAA’s “For God’s sake won’t somebody keep a non-elite Missouri Valley conference team from winning?” bracket.

@Tommmcatt Au Gros Sel: Yeah apparently they excommunicated him for saying they should try to be kinder to each other. His church members were also his family members. Somehow it’s good to know that somewhere there is a family where Thanksgiving is even more miserable than ours.

@CaptHowdy: Can you imagine what the menu must be like at the Phelps thanksgiving? How many different ways can you serve bile?

@Tommmcatt Au Gros Sel: Tolkien was a big old queen. If you can bring yourself to read those hideously boring books you’ll see he was one of us.

His work was introduced to me by my third-form math master: Mr. Bansen. About 6’4”, gorgeous, camp as tits, big old broad-shouldered jock-strap wearing rugger player made desperate by a life in hiding. We all thought he loved the willowy Mr. Christie who taught Eng Lit and Greek.

A pause to think of Messrs Bansen and Christie doing greek.

Bansen would camp about the classroom calling us his passion flowers, smacking the back of our heads as he passed. As he went up and down the aisles between the rows of our desks we flicked our dip pens loaded with ink from the well in our desk to make a stripe up the middle of the back of his tweed sports coat he’d had cleaned that year. The closet is a terrible place to be but the men who came before the closet didn’t even have the luxury of coming out of it. They became the butt of schoolboy jokes.

I daresay he’s dead now. One wants to go back and apologize. Take him out for a cup of Bournevita on the esplanade. We tortured those men. Because we didn’t want to be them.

That’s what Tolkien means to me. The smell of damp wool and cold feet. Mr. Bansen in mind (he was my boy’s dream) why would anyone read the Hobbit nonsense when they could read a real book like War and Peace?

@Benedick: I read the books right around the time I was coming out. In spite of all the master/servant upstairs downstairs twaddle used to excuse the Sam/Frodo relationship no one could convince me there was not some diddling of wee things on those long nights on the trail.

@nojo: Dayton! Because of all the awesome bands from there…

@SanFranLefty: I love the Conchordes. The tall, dorky one was in something recently, but my mind is a jet-lagged, pain medicated mess.

/end note/

FUCK YOU, HARVARD

But of course Dayton. They’re playing in Dayton. PITT! I wish St.Joes would be playing Nova. I wanted to see that.

@nojo: Not happy

PULL IT OFF, North Dakota!

@CaptHowdy: Should we diddle wee things?

@Benedick: we work with what we have

Man, I hope AZ busts some brackets.

Whoa, Manhattan. WTF?

Damn.

I knew I shouldn’t have picked Oklahoma. Should have gone with my heart wanting to take them down instead of my brain.

@JNOV: Arizona State went down, after my Horns gave me the vapors. Tree versus RML’s Lobos should be interesante.

@Beggars Biscuit: He was in something besides the New Zealand National Ukulele Band?

@Dave H: Did mellbell send you the linque to the Stinque-y braquet? If you didn’t sign up in time, let her know and she’ll let you in for the second chance round where HomoFascist and I again will compete for last place.

@SanFranLefty: Not so fast — Manchu, nojo, and I might all be going down in flames soon.

@mellbell: If Nojo goes down, Nate has a lot of splainin’ to do.

@SanFranLefty: Brit, I mean, Bret is in Austenland, which looks kinda lousy, but the combination of Austen and Jennifer Coolidge virtually guarantees I’ll watch it at some point.

@nojo: Disaster averted! Go team!

@mellbell: Sandy Eggo might still severely fuck me up. Which is only fitting.

TJ/ Where should I go for my birthday, early August, with all the money Imma win from our pool?

How is Homofascist the loser if his bracket isn’t busted? Well, until Baylor plays… :-P And major props for knocking out Creighton so early.

@JNOV: Losers are Last.

Although I’m changing the procedure this year. If HF remains last today, I’m shaming next-last.

@nojo: I miss the basement of shame where the losers could hide.

The Dukies are on the verge of losing to 14th seeded Mercer.

Mercer. I don’t even know where Mercer is.

@libertarian tool: Georgia?

@libertarian tool: I don’t mind a team like Duke going down. Busts everyone equally.

But who’s copping my Birks? If you need shaming, you can’t hide under my smelly sandals.

@libertarian tool: @mellbell: Macon, GA. And my day is made, even though I had Duke going to the Sweet 16.

All of Yahoo’s “leading” brackets have fewer possible points than everyone here except HF.

@Mistress Cynica: My brother had them in the Final Four. Talk about busted.

I’m so proud of you all. It’s all so madly butch.

@Benedick: Except for today’s “Cinderella” team. Who let that into locker rooms?

@nojo: You have heard of the process of elimination?

So much for the sentimental pick. GW loses to Memphis by five measly points.

@Benedick: I rather like Tolkien. The genre is so ubiquitous it’s easy to forget he invented it. Plus I like the language:

War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.

or

The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”

or even

I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve

I like the ostentatiousness of it, and how sly it is. Plus I love monsters and elves and giant spiders and redemption and mercy and all that. All of it.

Manchu, the Gators are going to bust your bracket.

@Tommmcatt Au Gros Sel: Meh.

I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of stars makes me dream

@JNOV:

Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

@Tommmcatt Au Gros Sel: You’re not gay, are you? That would explain it.

Thing is, for me he comes under my whole umbrella loathing of Oxbridge High Limey. Of course you’re right and I’m a dolt. I would only say that he didn’t invent the genre. He was pillaging the Icelandic sagas (a selection recently published in new translations in 2 paperback vols by Penguin) and more particularly William Morris’s spectacular retelling, The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs. Plus Tolkien was a scholar of medieval studies was he not? And he writes a fine English.

The true modern reworking of those Norse legends in my opinion is to be found in Independent People by the Icelandic novelist Haldor Laxness.

[ Patiently awaiting an Ossian reference. ]

It all comes back to Thor.

Dude. Stephen F. Austin?

Speaking of which, I remember when D&D hit my high school in 1974, taking the nerdiest of the nerds with it. Never saw the point.

This is a great year.

@nojo: Steve played War Hammer God Knows What for awhile. He created a, what, campaign(?) based on Lovecraft’s scary ass books. Then he was done.

This is the year of the underdog, and I think the awesome is contagious.

AAAHHHHHH! My bracket is about to go BOOM

@JNOV: The D&D nerds were also heavily into Lovecraft.

Oh, and computers. After spending a year around them, I avoided the infernal contraptions for fifteen years. The D&D crew was a couple years older than me, and I deeply feared turning into them.

The Tolkien quotes are making me want to punch elves. Though I would not turn down a date with Strider of Aragon (known to his friends as Sheldon)

@nojo: I think he’s afraid of being a hipster. I thing he’s okay with “geek.”

@Benedick: Is that Orlando Bloom? Elvish is such a lovely language…

I have University of Phoenix in my final four.

@nojo: Were you Birksnsox last year? I thought I made it up.

@JNOV: Changing times. Unlike forty years ago, Geeks rule. Then, a “computer” was a teletypewriter in the math closet.

Hipsters, on the other hand, deserve all the scorn they get. Nothing more than pack animals.

@JNOV: No, it’s all yours.

BREAKING: All “Billion Dollar Brackets” go bust in the round of 64.

Warren Buffet be like: “In your dumbfuck faces motherfucker.”

@libertarian tool: Given the quintillionish odds, Buffett showed some unexpected marketing savvy. You couldn’t even corral a network of Russians to cover all the possibilities.

@libertarian tool: My kittens be like: “Childproof locks? AYBABTU, beyotch. YOLO SWAG”

I’m back from the Land o’ Dumplings, trying to stay awake for the UCLA v. Tulsa game. Where is Cyn? What do we know about Tulsa?

My lovely wife recommended that I download The Goldfinch to read on the long flights to/from Beijing. She and pretty much all of her friends liked it and it has the virtue, for an airplane book, of being looooong. I suppose you literatskis have already read it? I’m about halfway in, as the Bishop said.

@nojo: Good. I thought I’d lost the funny.

@Dodgerblue: Did you see the other plane?

@Dodgerblue: You didn’t throw your hat into the ring. Don’t you usually play with us, bishop?

@JNOV: No, but security was unusually tight at PEK. Re hat, I had trouble logging in, then tried w/FB and Yahoo wanted my FB friends contacts and I thought no, thanks.

@Dodgerblue: Mr Cyn and I picked UCLA to win. Tulsa’s more an NIT team. I loved The Goldfinch. Even Mr Cyn, who never reads books, liked it–but not as much as The Secret History, which is his favorite book.

@Dodgerblue: I’m enjoying Doris Kearns Goidwin’s Bully Pulpit right now, although Taft is something of a bore.

@Dodgerblue: Congratulations on the win. Just out of curiosity, had your hat-throwing succeeded, how far would you have taken them?

@Dodgerblue: On my interminable flight from Asia to Ess Eff this week I read I am Malala, the autobiography of the 16 year old Pakistani girl shot in the head by the Taliban. Cheery stuff, jeez.

I also got caught up on all of the Oscar winning movies I hadn’t seen except 12 Years a Slave, I just didn’t have it in me. And I think that Judi Dench was robbed, Cate Blanchett got a trophy for staggering around drunk in a San Francisco that only exists in Woody Allen’s mind (after he rips off Tennessee Williams to no end), e.g., no Latinos, no gheyz, no Asians, no hipsters, no fleece, no fog, all the working class people live in giant three bedroom apartments deemed “homely” and have South Joisey accents, they use plastic bags at the grocery stores, Marin County residents wear suits and dresses to Sunday afternoon parties and drink champagne (versus wearing clogs and sparking a bowl) and people have phones with cords that attach to the walls. Oh, and in Woody Allen’s Ess Eff, a crazy lady wearing a Chanel jacket talking to herself in South Park is stared at. Nope, we don’t stare at the crazies in the street here.

Philomena was amazing, and I really liked Dallas Buyers’ Club even though I was meh going into it.

@SanFranLefty: Woody Allen hasn’t written an honest movie since Stardust Memories.

All the “recent” ones — past twenty years — take place in the same hermetically sealed universe where humanity doesn’t exist. He used to be an acute observer of the (constrained) world he lived in, but he no longer even bothers to try.

Which is why the debates over his personal life are meaningless to me. I just don’t care either way.

Really, his movies these days are lame dramatizations of unpublished New Yorker pieces he should have left in the drawer. I don’t get the enduring cult that surrounds him.

TJ/ The kid never comes here anymore, so I feel safe asking you this question. Odds are, and by “odds” I mean 75%, that he’ll graduate Winter 2014. I need ideas for presents. I’m not rich by any means, but if I start saving now, I might be able to swing a trip to Japan or a used hybrid.

Trip to Japan (10-14 days plus train and local transpo passes).

Pros: This kid is still playing Pokemon. Seriously. He started teaching himself Japanese when he was 14 and has been reading Manga and watching Japanese versions of cartoony things since he was 10 (NOT age-appropriate — I blame my eldest brother).

Cons: It’s going to be cold as hell (I think). Maybe he doesn’t want to go to Japan. I don’t know his schedule. I can’t get logistical information from him without blowing the surprise. I’ve been bugging him for a year to get friggin’ passport photos so we can go to Vancouver.

Car

Pros: We sold his car when he got into college to save money. He also gave up his license <– he passed the parallel parking thing on the third try. He deserves to receive what he sacrificed.

Cons: Trite, trite, trite, trite, trite.

I’ve also thought about paying his student loans. Pragmatic, but I’ll probably do it anyway. Kind of a suckass non-surprise.

Do you have any other ideas? This is new to me. I’ve missed birthdays and wintertime holidays because I was unemployed. He never complained and told me I shouldn’t feel guilty. I want to do something nice.

NB. Hell can be cold if I say it’s cold because it doesn’t exist. Mkay?

@JNOV: A classic wind-up Rolex. In the same price range.For the rest of his life he’ll wind it and think ‘Mom gave me this’. But in the good way.

@mellbell: Loser in the second round. We don’t have a center, we don’t even pretend to have one, and our forwards are two middling-slow white boys (brothers). Who do you have in the Final Four?

Add: I just noticed that, if we get past Stephen (Stone Cold) Austin, we play Florida. That won’t be fun.

@Benedick: I haven’t worn a watch in thirty years.

Too busy at work to pay attention the last couple of days.

HAHAHAHAHAHA Duke!

Fuck Hahvahd.

@Benedick: Take your pills, Dear.

I’ll buy him a cake.

My bracket is a sea of red.

@SanFranLefty: Just gotta say…

Best. Blue Jasmine. Review. EVAH.

Harvard gives me agita.

Sorry to cheer Orygun’s loss, but hey, I’ve got a bracket to protect.

@nojo: Fucking cheese heads.

That’s what I get for going Mainline. baked would be proud, though.

@Dodgerblue: I had Louisville, Arizona, Florida, and Villanova, but, well.

@JNOV: I prefer to think of it as a warm pillow of pink, but a guy can dream, can’t he?

@JNOV: What awesome graduation ideas! I like the trip to Japan, but then I’m biased since I had such a great time there on a study abroad program. Would the trip be after Winter Quarter, during March? The weather should be fine in central and southern Japan by then. It may be a bit chilly in the mornings (30s), but comfortable by the afternoon (50s & 60s).
Pros: The people, language, and culture are totally delightful. Best mass transit in the world makes it easy to get around.
Cons: Holy beejeezus, everything in Japan is insanely expensive. Hostels, capsule hotels, and buying food from grocery stores rather than restaurants will save a fortune.

Tree is up by 7 in the second half. I think I can hear Lefty yelling at the TV from 400 miles away.

@libertarian tool: I drive through the intersection of 14th and South Van Ness every morning (and saw Woody filming scenes there last year) where the characters allegedly lived above the Salvadorean restaurant, so my main reason for watching was to do the location spotting. I forgot to mention two other clearly not-Ess Eff correct things: female characters walking around Ocean Beach and the Beach Chalet wearing tank tops, and a friendly helpful cab driver not driving like a maniac from SFO and assisting in bringing suitcases up to an apartment.

@JNOV: What about paying for a study abroad thing in Japan? Does he want to live/work there? Any post-graduate plans yet?

@Dodgerblue: If they won that would fuck with my bracket, but I’d be happy. Kind of like Duke’s loss.

@SanFranLefty: @Dodgerblue: Those smartypants are screwing up everyone’s bracket.

Hey @mellbell: Here is an idea. Next year, how about we run the bracket where the fewest picks win? It might be more satisfying.

@SanFranLefty: Nice win. Does SFO have any English-speaking cabbies? Last time I took a cab there (BART was down), the guy didn’t speak English and didn’t know where the Embarcadero was.

Heh… Stanford Athletics trash tweet.

@SanFranLefty: So you’re saying Ang Lee’s Hulk was more realistic?

@nojo: Walt Disney’s Fantasia was more realistic.

@Dodgerblue: Jesus. Even I know where the Embarcadero is.

@¡Andrew!:

I just spoke to him on that contraption that we call a “phone” but don’t use for audible communication. He’s picking up a math minor, so he won’t graduate until May 2015. That kinda works and it kinda doesn’t.

I told him that he amazes me. He’s working his ass off at three jobs while going to class and trying to have a life outside of school.

He told me that sometimes when he’s walking around campus, it hits him that when I was his age, he was nine months old. I told him that sometimes it was hard because I was in the Navy, but picking him up from daycare made everything wonderful.

He said that he liked that I grew up with him. I wouldn’t change anything unless it would have been better for him if I’d waited until I was older. We agreed that it’s all we know from experience, and it’s working pretty well.

We talked about my painful adjustment to no longer being The Cool Mom. He said that had I not been The Cool Mom when he was younger, I would have dealt with this issue earlier in my life, and I’ll be okay.

I’ve adjusted to not seeing him every day. I’ve adjusted to texting him twice a month. I’ve adjusted to hearing his voice twice a semester. Boundaries exist, but sometimes they’re permeable. We’re still growing up, and I like him. Love was never in question.

He’s going to Japan. I told him to think about what he would like to do as if he will never go again. We’re going to work on a budget. We’re claustrophobic, so we agreed that he won’t be sleeping in a drawer.

I wish I were more like him.

@SanFranLefty: He’s talking to his preceptor next week. He said that he doesn’t know what he wants to study in grad school, and they’ll discuss whatever G-WTF test(s) he has to take.

As of now, he hasn’t talked about working in another country. He won’t study abroad unless the GF goes. ;-) This one seems sane enough.

@flypaper: I have no idea what that means, but I completely agree because I like you.

@JNOV: Spent a couple weeks in Japan with a friend who was teaching English there. Always liked doing it that way, since (a) he ran interference on local customs, and (b) it allowed me to get a sense of life as lived.

Also, the nice ladies at the bento stand were highly amused by me, pointing at the plastic food for lunch every day.

Aced my GREs, by the way. Studied the test in advance to get a handle on strategy, then got wasted the night before and showed up hungover.

@nojo: Heh. Re: GREs – IIRC, they are like the SATs and schools take your highest score. If that’s the case, test run before review course.

Re: Japan. Steve has a high school friend in South Korea, but that’s it. I’m starting with Lonely Planet’s On a Shoestring books and their Thorntree boards. STA fucked me when I went to Africa. Breaking up flights rather than booking straight from Philly to Tokyo should save ~$1K. I’m also going to look at flying him out of Vancouver. This sounds doable. Customs. Yeah. That’s where he’ll become a man.

I’ll try the hidden city trick to see if that’s cheaper. ANA flies direct from SFO to Tokyo. Alaska has decent fares to SFO. Flight dates are too far out right now, but we’ll see.

Stanford and UCLA go to the Sweet 16. It’s like an alternate universe.

@Dodgerblue: An alternate universe where Stanford and UCLA are both in the “South”.

Well, I’m down to a “Sweet Sixteen Eight”. But miraculously, my Elite Eight Six, Final Four, and Championship game remain intact.

Thanks Dad.*

*I rely on my 92 year old father for my bracket picks. He spends all winter watching college ball and making bets with his on-line Caribbean bookie.

EDIT: Scratch that. I did not have either Dayton or Stanford making it and meeting in the round of 16. It follows therefore I did not have the winner of that game in the round of eight. Fixed. I also did not expect Iowa St to advance.

This (apart from boding ill for Louisville’s chances of reaching the Elite Eight) is why I love college basketball:

Andrew Harrison, the Kentucky point guard who almost did not play because of a sprained elbow and ended up with 20 points, said he considered it an honor to be a part of the game.

“It was just a joy to be out there,” Harrison said. “Even as it’s going on, you knew it was a special sort of game.”

Love of the game, plain and simple. Also, it’s pretty hilarious how many times the writer manages to work in the words “freshmen” and “young.” I’m no fan of one-and-done, but if it works, it works.

@mellbell: Agreed. The NBA is a high-priced pickup game in comparison.

@Dodgerblue: And Orygun’s florescent green uniforms are no longer there to blind us! Pac-8/10/12 represent!

@JNOV: I was on ANA’s SFO to Tokyo flight three weeks ago. Best 13 hour flight ever. Asian airlines are so superior to US carriers in every way. Plus who knows, maybe he’d want to kick around the Bay Area for a few days, go wander around the Farm and his elementary school haunts.

To bring it back to the original topic of right-wing blowhards, how much do y’all wanna bet some nutters are ragging on Michelle Obama for wearing head-to-toe red on her visit to Commie China?

@mellbell: It’s a really pretty dress when you see the close-ups, but sweet 8 pound 7 ounce baby Jeebus, can Shelley Oh’s dressmakers PLEASE not put the waist of the dress approximately one inch under her boobs? As a long-waist/big shoulders tall woman, I understand how 99.999% of off-the-rack dresses don’t fit girls like us properly, but if it’s a custom-made dress, there’s no excuse for not dropping the waist three inches down.

P.S. The Chinese president and his wife are much taller than I expected. Shelley and the girls aren’t towering over the two of them like they do with a lot of other foreign dignitaries.

P.S.S. Malia is smoking hot (wearing flats and she’s still taller than everyone, including her mama), and Sasha is looking mighty fierce!

P.S.S.S. I wish they had close-ups of the Chinese first lady’s jacket. It is intriguing.

@SanFranLefty: That’s a very elegant frock she’s got on. There seems to be two schools of thought on how to dress a woman not in the first flush of youth blessed with handsome proportions. Tailor the shit out of everything to emphasize curves. I think this of requires Spanx to pull off. The second is to raise the waist and give the skirt a bell shape. Personally I think it’s a more elegant line. Plus, state functions: it has some formality without being at all Laura Bushish.

Saw some of 12 Years a Slave. What has happened to acting in the movies? I thought the white actors uniformly terrible: the kind of perfs you see in showcase productions or acting classes. The very handsome man was almost entirely incomprehensible. They were so busy demonstrating how much they deplored the characters they were playing you couldn’t see the story. The black actors seemed to fare better though I couldn’t understand why they were saddled with dialogue more at home in Trollope. At no point was an attempt made to recreate the speech of the Georgia people which is a great pity. I know that Northrupp wasn’t from that region but Patsy was. I don’t think that deploring the past really gets us anywhere. Will we fare any better? I thought that by embracing the horrors, pumping up the lurid, Django Unchained was in every way superior.

I also thought Lefty very funny about the Allen film I have no intention of watching.

Late to the party, but @SanFranLefty: agreed, Asian airlines do long haul very well. So do, as a matter of fact, the ME ones like Qatar. I flew 15 hours coach routed through Doha a few times and the roominess of the cabin along with the phenomenal in-flight service (so civilized that if all you want to do is sleep well, they actually leave you alone to do so) made me want to thank Allah.

My recent return from Asia, on Manchu Air, was fine except for the fact that they kept rudely waking me up from my Vicodin dreams to ask if I had ever tried gimbap and would I mind it if the thirty noisy ajuma on board could huddle around my seat in order to do their in flight calisthenics.

Re: the tourney. Feh.

@Benedick: You’re actually lucky. It’s the part of San Francisco where they bilk the tourists. You can get terrible cioppino there at almost any time of day.

Avoid at all costs.

@mellbell: Premier Li wore an updated Mao jacket to some function with royals in Holland.

@Dodgerblue: So now it’s a Nehru jacket?

@SanFranLefty: Yeah. All the flight configurations come up best with him flying here and letting me annoy him for awhile and then SEA->SFO->Tokyo. ANA is partnered with UA to get him to SFO. If he lived in the Bay Area, it would cost more to fly him straight from SFO to Tokyo. Bizarre. Flying him from Philly means train from NJ to Philly->O’Hare (fuck that) -> SFO -> Japan.

I flew from SFO -> NYC -> Heathrow -> Kenya. I slept the whole trip. (Thanks Ativan and vodka!) All that sleeping pissed of a 3L who wanted to chat and kept waking me up. I arrive in Kenya wide the fuck awake, and what do I do? Get drunk. Then I realize that not only am I drunk beyond belief but I forgot about that whole altitude sickness thing I get.

3L fucktard WAKES ME UP the next day so we can go to the game park in Nairobi because, “You need to see everything while you’re here.” Okay.

Hungover altitude sick (esp because I was dehydrated) me gets in a cab bouncing along dirt roads sitting behind the driver with a massive case of BO wanting to shoot 3L and donate her body to the circle life. But we didn’t see any wildlife besides a monkey with blue balls begging for snacks.

ETA: The driver had the massive BO, but I probably did, too.

@JNOV: I believe that it’s cheaper to go SEA->SFO->Japan than SFO to Tokyo. We used miles to go to Spain and it was fewer miles to go SFO->JFK->MAD roundtrip than to book just a SFO->JFK or JFK->MAD flight.

Your trip sounds so delightful. You should have opted for the law school spring break trip to Cuba instead…

@SanFranLefty: Yup. Leaving from SeaTac wins.

Re: Coobahhh – we were in Kenya for a wedding. All the 3Ls had graduated – it was their bar trip. It was my OMG WTF SHE’S A BILLIONAIRE?! trip. Week-long awesome Indian wedding, and then I went to Egypt. Good times except for wonky-eyed peppy nagging no snooze button having human alarm clock.