Last weekend, I found myself walking towards the Fenway area in time for Neil Diamond to open his set with "Sweet Caroline." I could hear the delirious crowd singing along, loud and clear, and it nearly made up for my failed attempt to get tickets to the show.
My father was surprised to learn I'd even considered it. I asked him why. "Because I thought you'd think he was too --"
"Schmaltzy?" I said.
Perhaps, but my father wanted to set me straight. "Do you know what 'schmaltz' even means?"
I hadn't a clue, and was bracing myself for a lesson in anatomy (see "schmuck", noun). Fortunately, my father's childhood was characterized more by trips to the Bronx, when his grandmother would hand his mother a greasy bag containing a jar of chicken fat. "That," my father said, "was schmaltz."
Schmaltz was actually in the news this week, as part of the Obama/Biden campaign's first post-convention stop. I wonder what my great grandmother and grandmother would think of that.

Early media reports from the DNC in Denver say that disparate protesters are uniting against the Iraq war and Fox News, apparently.

The local synagogue in Bath, Maine was having a book sale over July 4 weekend. With time to kill before an afternoon wedding, I wandered in. All books were 50 cents. I was surprised to find a paperback version of a title I've been meaning to read, so I tossed the cashier a dollar, said "keep the change," (she was nonplussed), and stashed my new-to-me copy of The Tender Bar in my tote bag.
I'd forgotten about the book until this weekend when I started to read it. Thumbing the pages, I discovered a green index card, onto which someone had written in penciled script:

Staples
Talbots
Sams
Curtain Shop

Our adrenaline was high as we approached our destination aboard a tiny commuter jet. We may have been too engrossed with peering out the window at the passing mountains to notice our perky flight attendant's brusque instructions to securely store our belongings for landing. She seemed particularly concerned about items in the seat pockets. "She's strict," remarked LBC, minutes before the plane began a seemingly endless and sharp corkscrew dive.
We held onto our armrests and managed some nervous smiles. I said aloud, "this must be what it's like to fly into Baghdad." Yet, the face of our flight attendant remained beatific. Did the mountains necessitate such a dramatic approach? We landed with a jaunt -- business as usual, I guess -- and taxied to a tiny terminal. Welcome to Medford, OR, 270 miles south of Portland.

The 4:30 p.m. bus is 45 minutes late, and we gaze apathetically at the passengers piling up for the 5:00 and the 5:30, each with varying miffed expressions as giant raindrops fall intermittently. The bus eases out into traffic, and although we are settling in for a long, muted ride, the city carries on. A man with an in-turned foot moves against sidewalk traffic; his awkward gait clearing a wide swath around him. Tourist schlep backpacks, girls in oversized sunglasses talk on cell phones. Under mostly cloudy skies, the neon glows. We pick up speed and I catch a glimpse of an oversized banner on the side of MSG, advertising Tropic Thunder.

From the moment we arrived, it was clear that The Uncle was prepared for this year's water rocket festival. What had been in past years empty hyperbole (gaining clearance from the FAA, notifying ground stations in Mecox Bay) had turned into solid planning, complete with a PA system and a playlist.

When the discussion on the eve of the festival (Erev Launch, if you will) turned to the need for a windsock, The Uncle was ready, at dawn, fashioning his lightbulb changing rod and strips of a plastic tablecloth into a workable solution. Although we still lost many a rocket into the bushes, trees, and (gasp) the neighbor's yard, we barely cared; we were having too much fun.

Recently I, um, interviewed a virtual robot, and toyed around with an AIBO. I decided I wanted an AIBO of my own, with its impressionable, artificial intelligence that I could re-boot if the dog started to develop a personality I didn't like. However, maybe I should just make one of these:

From its grassy knoll along a Kennebunkport, Maine back road, an MBTA bus seemingly transplanted from yesterday's commute beckons visitors into the Seashore Trolley Museum. On past drivebys, it might have been a Red Line train or ancient open-air car, but the effect was the same. Finally, on a sunny drive up to Bath, I was answering its call.

We glimpsed the museum's vast collection of subway cars from all over the world as we rode a functional 1930s New York trolley along a portion of the abandoned railway line to Biddeford. Volunteers maintain the track and contribute to the painstaking restoration of these relics, and the finished products sit like shiny ghosts in dusty sheds scattered throughout the train yard.


From its inception, the museum has been a place for train lovers to preserve the things they love, and each passing of the seasons ages the cars scattered outside around the grounds -- each awaiting its turn in the restoration shed.

Dead veterans happy to rock again for Obama

"How can they rock if they're d-- oh."

Last night, as I watched news clips of Robert Mugabe vowing to uphold Zimbabwe's scheduled election runoff, despite political violence that allegedly includes the deaths of some of his opponent's supporters, it suddenly dawned on me: the man has a toothbrush mustache.

Holy crap.

It's been a slow week. Why don't you vote for JDiggity's submission to someone else's blog?


more fail, owned and pwned pics and videos

It was a coincidence that we were in the vicinity of the Garden today; an office birthday, a trip to the Fours on Canal St. Still, we expected to feel the charge in the air, perhaps spotting Kobe chowing down on a taco salad at the bar, or Stuart Scott leveling his searing teleprompter gaze on a menu in the back corner.
Instead, there were usual North Station scrubs; a man and woman picking up spare change scattered on the ground in front of a doorway; the ubiquitous sleeper outside Dunks; cab drivers racing through yellow lights, nearly mowing down anything in sight.
Still, we popped over to the box office, just in case. Sold out.

Recently, my mom told me that she sometimes pictures my sister and me sitting together as old ladies in a nursing home. In her hopeful imagination, we've both outlived our (optional) husbands and are still enjoying each other's company, well into our 80s or 90s.

Since the moment that LBC and I have started planning a summer trip out west, my parents have updated their perception of us, to Thelma and Louise, despite my efforts to remind them that those ladies were not related.

However, after seeing the Breeders on Thursday night, I hope that instead, LBC and I wind up more like Kelley and Kim, with their good-natured ribbing and genuine encouragement of one another (but minus the drug problems).

• In the parking lot for the new Greenwise Publix (the local supermarket chain's answer to the Whole Foods down the street), a teenager driving a gas-powered golf cart asks us if we need a lift to the door, 50 yards away.


• The mall is sleepy on a Friday afternoon, but at the Saks Fifth Avenue shoe sale rack, ladies are buzzing like worker bees; $345 is a bargain, after all, for a pair of Prada flip-flops.


• At a 7:20 p.m. screening of The Visitor, I am the youngest person there by 20 years, and the key facts of the film are repeated in whispered stereo around me.


• It's 10:45 a.m., and I've already sweated through my shirt on the tennis court, but sending aces whizzing by my father's head, followed by lunch and a pedicure with mom, make it totally worth the trip.

At my first job, I sat in a cubicle adjacent to the sales department. Perhaps by design, they were all women, headed by a Diet-Coke-chugging mother hen type who would yell, “sell like hell, girls!” from her office. She had a hyphenated name, but for some reason, I remember her as a divorcee; perhaps it was her take-no-prisoners attitude towards selling ad space that made me think she possessed an equal level of animus towards an ex-husband.

Regardless, I occasionally would hear her harem of sales reps refer to her as “SGV”*, the acronym formed by her initials. Every few hours I would hear SGV toss another Diet Coke can into the garbage; I had it on good authority from the janitor that she went through a case a week.

I sat close enough to hear most of their conversations, but the high cubicle walls (and my department’s relative silence, by comparison) made me feel invisible, and I’m pretty sure that SGV and I had never even had a conversation until the afternoon when she appeared in my cubicle.

It was late in the day, and most people had left the office. She greeted me like we were old friends and, in her sweetest, albeit husky, voice asked me if I had a tampon. Girl Scout that I am, I fished one out of my bag and went back to work.

Two minutes later, SGV appeared again, saying, “You’re not going to believe this, but I dropped it.” I paused, confused for a moment, but she didn’t have to spell it out for me; the janitor, God bless him, was no match for the nastiness of that ladies’ room floor. Plus, I really didn’t want to know how a grown woman manages to drop a tampon in between unwrapping it and using it.

Lucky for SGV (and me), I had another, and I handed it over with some bewilderment. I’m not sure SGV and I ever spoke again (let alone about this), but for some reason I am reminded of this exchange every so often.

*name changed