A Frolic of My Own

Jazz, Books, Food, and the Writing Life

Blogging from New Orleans, La

29 May 2004

John Cleese has launched a blog. For the moment, unfortunately, he’s only written a not very funny post promising to write more soon. Is Cleese gently mocking the many bloggers who fill their sites with teasers for future content? No, I think he’s being sincere. [via Pullquote]

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I’ve been unimpressed by Washington’s natural disasters. We were promised a plagues of cicadas. Instead, we find a few dead, red-eyed bugs on the sidewalks. Hurricane Isabel was going to ravage our city. Instead, some strong winds pulled down a few tree limbs.

If the local Fox affiliate announces the imminent arrival of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in our nation’s capital, I would expect to find the next day a quartet of boys trotting down the National Mall on ponies.

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After work at a Washington bar, a young professional man was chatting up a young professional woman. “What would your dream job be?” he asked. “My dream job,” she said, “would be a position at the Commerce Department.”

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23 May 2004

Last weekend I traveled to Virginia, the fourth of eleven states on my early summer itinerary. You might argue that residents of D.C. haven’t left home when they enter Virginia. Somewhere well past the state border, around the point where the length of the commute outweighs the savings on the house, you do leave the Washington metro area. As houses get more expensive, this points further encroaches into central Virginia.

Andrea received her J.D. and I picked up the Ph.D. diploma that UVa officially granted me in January. We had a good time making the rounds in our matching doctoral robes. After six years in Charlottesville, we’ll both miss the town. I’ve been in Washington for the last year while she finished school, and I realized I didn’t appreciate Charlottesville enough when I lived there. Soon, though, we will be moving on to a new city, the final state in my travels.

We spent this weekend shopping and exploring Washington. We owed a few couples wedding gifts, so we headed to the cluster of upscale chains–Crate and Barrel, William Sonoma, the Apple Store–in Arlington, VA. It feels like a college campus, since everyone is the same age and spends Saturday morning jogging. In fact, it feels a lot like the University of Virginia.

We had hoped to check out Silver Spring, Maryland, an increasingly more interesting neighborhood. Without a map we could only guess how to get there, and in the end found ourselves driving in circles around Howard University. Maybe we’ll find Maryland another day.

Posted by Todd at 6:24 pm | Comments (2)

20 May 2004

We were walking through the Kalorama neighborhood and we heard a young woman ask a young man, “Now tell me again why you decided not to get a Ph.D.” People have conversations like this all the time in Washington.

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18 May 2004

Stop by the Chronicle of Higher Education and read my column on searching for a non-academic job.

If you came here from the Chronicle, welcome. Towards the bottom of the right-hand column, you will find links to past entries arranged by topic. Feel free to leave any comments here about the Chronicle article or send me an email.

If you Googled my name, you should also know that I am not the campus activist, the FBI Special Agent, or the anesthesiologist.

Posted by Todd at 7:47 am | Comments (13)

13 May 2004

At work, I often speak on the phone with jovial members of South American armies. They spent the winter bragging about the sunshine in Buenos Aires and Santiago. Recently, they’ve been quiet about the weather, and Jonathon Delacour, an Australian blogger, reminds me that winter has arrived in the Souther Hemisphere as he examines six recent chills to see which might have given him pleurisy.

Delacour is much more than a blogger, really. He periodically publishes essays that make me realize how much my own writing needs to improve.

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Steve Jones, the Sex Pistol with the least interesting name, gave up heroin and started hosting a mid-day radio show in Los Angeles. If the Washington Post’s description of his eclectic playlist and rambling tales of stealing other musicians’ instruments are accurate, L.A. listeners should tune in on a regular basis. The rest of the world –or at least those people with broadband–can hear the show rebroadcast on Indie 103.1’s website.

Posted by Todd at 8:07 pm | Comments (2)

12 May 2004

Do you ever wonder who really runs the country? They Rule maps the connections between corporate boards, foundations, and government. The site recently added data for 2004. Since it is 2004, they have also added a blog.

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Andrew Kohut, Director of the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, tells us in a New York Times Op-Ed to ignore the current poll numbers for Bush and Kerry. Strange advice from the director of a polling center. Kohut believes, though, that voters must first decide if Bush deserves a second term, then they will see if Kerry deserves their vote.

Like many pollesters, Kohut also notes how dramatically the numbers can change when only “likely” voters are considered. Who are these people that have an opinion about the election but know six months in advance that they won’t bother to vote?

Posted by Todd at 10:29 pm | No Comments

11 May 2004

During May and June, I will set foot in 11 states and one foreign country. Over the weekend, I crossed off the first three locations–Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York–when Andrea and I attended a wedding in Rochester, NY.

As we traveled from the Washington to the Canadian border, the seasons reversed. We left D.C. in early summer and arrived later that afternoon in Rochester’s early spring. Having visited Rochester last January for the first time, I was prepared to still find snow on the ground in May. Instead, it was merely rainy and forty degrees. Luckily, the wedding and all its attendant events were inside.

Rochester was wealthy in the period when people built with stone. Now, although its industries are dying and its people leaving, the city boasts elegant building from the age of the robber barons. We wanted to visit lake Ontario while in town, but for some reason we could only find a bay. I’m sure the great lake is much like the ocean, but with fewer waves and less sharks.

On the way home, driving through the New York and the Pennsylvania countryside, the temperature slowly rose and the trees sprouted more leave with each mile.

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9 May 2004

I keep a wary eye on the ground, waiting for the first cicadas to arrive. Brood X, the 17-year invasion of cicadas, will arrive any day. Tonight, taking advantage of the warm weather and lack of insects, we had dinner at an outdoor café in Woodley Park. We may not be able to eat outside again for weeks.

Why do these cicadas, which emerge every 13 or 17 years, have prime-numbered life-cycles? The Economist found some theories. [Thanks Crooked Timber]

Posted by Todd at 8:55 pm | Comments (1)

6 May 2004

Other People’s Prose:

Yeah, I just heard. That’s good. But I can’t talk. I’m actually on deadline. . . . What can I say? I’m glad blah blah blah, garbage, garbage, blah blah. But I’m working.

Seymour Hersh, quoted in the Washington Post, on winning a National Magazine Award for his work in the New Yorker.

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5 May 2004

What will thirty day of eating McDonald’s do to your helath? After one month of Big Macs and Egg McMuffins three times a day, Morgan Spurlock, a formerly healthy young man, gained twenty-five pounds, suffered chest pains, and lost his libido. In the film Super Size Me, he documents the willful destruction of his good health.

I knew fast food was unhealthy, but I was shocked to hear how quickly burgers and deep fried potatoes can sap your energy and make you sick. Meanwhile, the New Orleans’ Times Picayune, the paper of record in one of America’s fattest city, defends the Super Size.

Update: After seeing the film, I learned that New Orleans doesn’t even rank among the ten fattest cities. My old hometown of Tulsa, OK, often lands at the top of the list, though.

Posted by Todd at 10:59 pm | No Comments

4 May 2004

A guy I know has worked for Google since their early days. During the job interview, they asked if he had any suggestions for the company. Being something of a smart ass, he said, “Well, you’ve got almost eighty employees, maybe you should get an HR person.” They were so impressed by the idea, they hired him.

He will soon be one of Google’s paper millionaires.

Posted by Todd at 8:07 pm | No Comments

2 May 2004

The Columbia Journalism Review takes a look at the recent Washington Post profiles of Red and Blue Americans. It turns out that the author, David Finkel, found his subjects by walking around neighborhoods with poll results and asking if anyone knew a person who fit the description. That sort of biases your results, doesn’t it?

CJR remains skeptical “about the value of confirming readers’ preconceived ideas of how a right-leaning Texan or a left-leaning San Franciscan looks, eats, reads, and relates to his family, and what this adds to readers’ understanding of election 2004.” While Finkel learned nothing he didn’t already know about his subjects, the critical emails he later received did reveal a little more about our divided nation. The emails of liberal critics include “lowercase letters, like ee cummings, clauses, semicolons,” while conservatives write “simple declarative sentences, ‘Mr. Finkel, you are an idiot.’”

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