April Fool's Day

I've been hidden aboard a Tajik frigate for the last 5 months and only recently escaped by way of sheer trickery and merciless cunning. I'm slick like that.

With April Fool's Day still here for another hour or so, I just couldn't help myself, I had to post something.

I'm in Detroit today. Dearborn actually, but whatever. This place sucks.

I'd guess that most coastal people probably would think that all rust-belt cities must be the same. Well, just like every short guy can quickly point to a guy shorter than him, I know a bottom of the barrel rust-belt town when I see one. Being in a huge, spread out, depressed, crappy city with the worst roads I have ever seen this side of DaNang (circa '67) makes me long for my provincial, allergy-riddled, economically splintered, racially divided, Ikea-bearing, mid-western town.

See, that's the joke. It's on me! When you're in a place that sucks you dont dream of paradise, you just long for the place that's one notch lessy shitty than where you are. Sucka! (proclaimed while looking at myself in low-budget hotel mirror).

Seacrest, out.

Lost in Translation

My posts about our recent vacation will not necessarily go up in a linear fashion as far as date goes. Some things I'm just going to post as they come to me. Like this little goodie!

In most touristy places like Greece and Italy, restaurant menus are usually written in English, French, German as well as the native language. As a native Greek speaker I'm always interested to see how certain things get translated. I like to do this with subtitled tv shows too.

Anyway, my wife and my mother and I were dining at a quaint little seaside taverna in Mitilini (see picture above)- which is the main town on the isle of Lesvos, Greece. Yes, that Lesvos. Along the harbor there are several restaurants which serve fresh seafood, grilled stuff made to order (tis oras) as well as usually a rotating selection of more complex baked items (magirefta). That's the standard model for Greek restaurants. This menu was packed with items over like 8 pages, all with fairly small print and set up almost like an excel spreadsheet. Needless to say, I had to review the menu very closely. Now normally I would be looking only at the Greek menu but since my wife doesn't speak Greek, I tend to look at the English menu with her more often than not.

Well, as we were perusing the long list of delicacies my eye came across an unusual listing. I sat there looking at it, taking it all in and then asked my wife and mom if theirs said the same thing. Much to our shock, it was. Clearly written in all caps. It read "FAGGOTS IN RED SAUSE". (Here's a picture if you dont believe me!)



Never mind the shock of what it said, what could this possibly be a translation of?!? I'm feverishly flipping back and forth from the Greek to the English to make sure I had the right item, all the while my wife in tears laughing and my mother positively horrified and planning how to point out the inequity to the proprietor. I looked and looked and then there it was. A dish with Ottoman roots called Souzoukakia. Souzoukakia are sort of elongated meatballs cooked in the oven in a kind of cumin flavored red tomato sauce with potatoes. The "...IN RED SAUSE" part they got right spelling aside, but not quite sure how they came up with the other part.

By studying the menu it's quite obvious that there are several other errors and misspellings, but none quite so perplexing. When the server woman finally came back to take our order, my mom pointed it out whispering (in Greek) [excuse me, uh, there seems to be some sort of an error here. Somehow whoever translated your menus for you wrote "faggots in red sauce" for souzoukakia. Not only does that not make sense, but they said "faggots" not "homosexuals in red sauce", which is really rude. I think someone's played a prank on you!]

If anyone has any clue how this may have occurred, please let me and your local GBLT group know.

Nose Hair Trimmers

I've mentioned before that I am by education a designer of products. In my field, one of the things that we do quite frequently is what's called a "product landscape audit". This is sort of fancy industry jargon for going to stores and looking at stuff. I really enjoy product landscape audits.

I could actually write alot about this sort of activity, if only because it is one instance where I have found a common sweet spot that satisfies both my soul and my bank account. I will save that for another time and really just talk about one thing I find funny, nose hair trimmers.

First off I'm completely blown away at the number of makers and variations of these magical little grooming devices. Pretty impressive. Wow, this one does nose hair AND ear hair, awesome! They're truly technological wonders that our foerfathers would likely have fought wars over.

Why is it though that typically, when you look at the picture of the guy on the package, you dont see that glee conveyed? Is he not super stoked to finally not have a second mustache creeping out of his nostrils? Are these little mechanical friends not also the saviours of the tear inducing hair pluck? Take a look at these pictures and see for yourselves.



or




These guys seem more frightened than empowered. Maybe it's just extreme concentration. Who knows?

Here are a couple of my favorite versions though. The 1st one appears to have a glowing end that will light its way into your sinuses. The second one, well....look for yourself. Well summed up.

10 Things About Me

I was officially "tagged" last week by my friend Misplaced. Aside from gaining loads of notoriety and a fat pay-day, being tagged also gives me the opportunity to share a bit about myself, rather than my usual whining, raving or judging of something, someplace or someone. Time to turn the Hubble around and focus it back on myself and the 10 interesting (and not so interesting) things about me.

Sadly, even in such a simple writing assignment as this, I have been racking my brain about how to arrange or arrive at these 10 things. After spending much time considering things about my past, my present and my future, many of my fondest memories and experiences seem to have often been set in New York City. With that then, I give you my 10 New York stories.


1. My first visit to NY I was about 3 years old. We were living in Ithaca, NY at the time where my dad was working on his PhD, and we had come down for a visit to the big city. As young as I was, I have no actual recollection of that particular trip, but what I do have are a handful of photographs from then which fortunately captured what my tiny little mind couldn't. One such picture was of my brother (who was about 9 then) down at Battery Park with the Statue of Liberty situated just behind him. Sure there is an iconic symbolism to the immigrant boy standing next to Lady Liberty but this provided a more interesting juxtaposition being a family of immigrant academics in the 1970s as opposed to a family of laborers in the 1870s. The thing that gets me about this picture though is that cradled in my brother's arms is a stuffed Hamburgler doll from McDonald's. There's all sorts of irony there, I mean he's standing in front of the global symbol of freedom holding a figure from the most globally recognized brand on the planet and it's sadly not even Ronald McDonald he's holding! It's the Hamburgler! The outcast! Actually, this picture ultimately makes me feel guilty to this day. My brother loved his Hamburgler doll and like all things that older siblings outgrow, Hamburgler eventually became mine. I too loved the Hamburgler doll....until I somehow lost him. My brother was far beyond doll age by that point, but I could tell he was sad when I told him. That made me even sadder.

Ok, I have to get to the point on these quicker or else I'll have to do my 10 things over 10 days!

2. I went on a school trip to NY with the art club when I was 14. That was my first time I had been back since I was 3 and yet even with no real recollection I felt such a connections that to this day I feel almost more at home in NY that I do in any other city in the world. Anyway, I spent the entirety of my teen years as a leather jacket and combat boot clad angst ridden punk rock art kid. My walkman constantly blaring Black Flag, The Exploited, The Misfits, GBH or the Sex Pistols. This trip felt like I had been brought to my punk mecca. More shops catering to my kind than I could ever dream! I was on this trip with like 15 other kids and 1 lazy chaperone who could give a shit what we did for the 4 days we were there. At 14 that is some sweet liberty indeed. The most memorable of the things that we did that trip involved a failed hair dying incident. My friends and I had purchased a fire engine red hair dye by Manic Panic and we were all prepared to set our locks ablaze. This worked for most of us, except I have black hair and it was very short at that point (as I was leaning a bit more mod then). Anyway, imagine a small hotel room with 6 kids all trying to use a very messy and vibrant red dye that wasn't quite working as planned. Needless to say we soiled many a hotel towel. What's one to do with such towels? They'll never get clean! Well, the answer was right in front of us providing a splendid view down Lexington Avenue. "Quick, throw them out the window! All of them!" We did, then waited until the cleaning ladies came around and we stole a batch of fresh ones from the cart when she wasn't looking, replenished the recently jettisoned sets and all was well. My dye job didn't go quite as smoothly, leaving me with red splotches on my scalp that looked like eczema for like 3 weeks or so. Lesson learned! Funnier even was when we left the hotel later that night and we ended up seeing all the towels strewn across the street, they almost looked like the aftermath of a horrific accident scene with the red dye bleeding into the wet, snowy pavement.

3. During that same trip a couple of my friends, Greg and Rich and I, decided to take a stroll down to Times Square to see if we couldn't catch a nudie film! Back in the mid-eighties you could still do that there. So we wandered down and around the area in what one could consider the "Off Broadway" of adult film and ended up at a theater called The Regent which was playing a film called The Casting Couch, starring the one and only Ron Jeremy. We walked up to the ticket booth where within the glass pod sat a disheveled looking older guy and in a very Simpson's-like moment, he asked if we were 18. To which we replied in unison a resounding YES. "That'll be 5 bucks" he said. We paid and made our way in. Walking into the lobby and then into the theater was not at all what I expected. I had imagined that this was going to be no different than if we had decided to see like Return of the Jedi or something. You know, there'd be pimply faced teens selling popcorn and M&Ms. I wouldn't expect families per se, but maybe several couples and groups of friends. Well, what we really saw was what looked more like the set of Escape From New York, which is another 80s classic. The place was a wreck, stuff turned over, garbage everywhere and that was just in the lobby. Oh yeah, and no popcorn. So we made our way into the theater and tried to find seats in the crowd. As our eyes adjusted, we realized that the seats weren't actually full of people, it was more occupied by row with hobo after hobo and several bags of their stuff. Puzzled, we walked down the central aisle to find a clear row, stepped around the projector (there was not a proper film projector, but rather a vcr connected to a projector and set on a stool in the aisle strategically aimed at the screen) and found some seats. As we went to sit we realized that none of the seats had cushions on them anymore so we had to just sit on the metal part that was remaining. Anyway, having settled into our metal seats, we began watching Ron Jeremy interview young starlets and giving them their "big shot" to be in his upcumming feature film. Likely story. We noticed that in the row in front of us there was a guy near the wall who kept lighting up every couple of minutes or so. After a bit, he leans back towards me being the closest and asks "hey dude, you wanna buy some crack?" I sort of freaked out so I leaned over to my friends and asked them "uh...guys, do you want to buy some crack?" They looked at me sort of stunned too so I just turned back to our hobo friend and kindly declined, "no thanks mister, we're good". I couldn't recall the protocol from my Emily Post etiquette book on what to do in a situation like that, so I just had to go with my gut.

At this point I will post these 3 and continue with 4, 5 & 6 in the next day or 2.