The Short, Stubby Arm of the Law

I know that yesterday I announced a new schedule for my updates, but now just twenty four hours later I am already deviating from it. This is because I received a $100 ticket for a "Distracted Driving Safety Act" (sic) at the corner of Euclid and 17th around 6:30 pm. Specifically, I was answering my cell phone while both stuck in traffic and stopped at a stop sign.

First of all, I had no idea it was illegal to use a personal communications device while driving in the District -- the law was passed in August, and I honestly didn't know about it. I know that New York and New Jersey have similar laws, which require the use of hands-free equipment, but I guess I figured that if you can still smoke in bars in DC you could probably drive and talk at the same time as well. But this is neither here nor there.

More frustrating was the circumstance -- and location -- of my offense. I routinely drive across Euclid Street on my way home, as it passes right by Halfzie's house. Yesterday we had made plans to visit the supermarket -- he was calling to see why I had not yet arrived to pick him up, when I had told him fifteen minutes earlier that I would arrive in three or four minutes.

Why was I detained for ten whole minutes, even before being pulled over? Because of the terrible traffic on Euclid, which was so bad, in fact, that I was forced to make a small detour even to make it across 16th Street. Such congestion was perplexing, but as I neared the corner of 17th I noticed two police cars and a bicycle cop partially blocking the intersection. Just as I was beginning to understand the cause of the delay, my phone rang. The caller was Halfzie, of course, who was standing exactly one block away but out of view of the situation. As I answered, the policeman was standing perhaps three feet from the driver's side window of the car.

"Do you know what you're doing?" he asked.

Thinking he might be warning of some potential danger or obstacle ahead, I answered first in the affirmative. Then I realized what was happening, but it was already too late to indicate my ignorance of the law. I was immediately pulled over, right in front of a corner store known as a meeting point for drug-pushers. Several weeks ago a man was shot nearby. On more than one occasion, I have witnessed a policeman get out of an unmarked car at that corner, wearing a bulletproof vest, immediately causing all of those standing there to scatter.

But yesterday, justice was done: I got my ticket.

I know I broke the law, and that is the end of it. However, I cannot help but complain. I consider myself to be a relatively safe and competent driver -- I never fail to signal, or to come to a full stop, I seldom exceed the speed limit by more than five or ten miles an hour, and on the whole, I manage to avoid driving like an utter and complete idiot, unlike so many other drivers out on the roads. What I did, while technically illegal, was no more dangerous than lighting a cigarette while driving, or, for heaven's sake, watching television on one of the 9 LCD screens in a Lincoln Navigator. But these things are perfectly legal. Answering a phone without a hands-free device, while stuck in traffic and stopped at a stop sign, on the other hand, constitutes a distracted driving safety act.

Don't get me started on this quaint turn of phrase. If you ask me, it's either a distracted driving act or an unsafe one; throwing the word "safety" in there makes it sound like I was doing a good deed by, say, honking at the asshole in front of me watching Barbershop 2 in his sun visor.

But I am contrite and I know how reckless and dangerous I must have appeared. I have even done my homework, reading up on cell phone driving safety at smartmotorist.com. My favorite tips:

Do not engage in distracting conversations
Stressful or emotional conversations and driving do not mix -- they are distracting and even dangerous when you are behind the wheel. Make people you are talking with aware you are driving and if necessary, suspend phone conversations which have the potential to divert your attention from the road.

Avoid long social calls
Keep conversations short and sweet. Develop ways to get free of long-winded friends and associates while on the road. Don't use the cell phone for social visiting while you drive.

I still haven't decided whether to contest the ticket, which I would do mainly to force the officer to show up in court. As I was leaving, he advised me such a course of action would be futile, and also said that if I were to resume using my phone as I pulled away, I would be issued another ticket. I might be a distracted safety driver, but I'm not an idiot.

Update: Hang onto that iPod!

Another gem from NYT, but a topical one at least: "Ears Plugged? Keep Eyes Open, Subway's IPod Users Are Told."

Synopsis:

Subway crime on the rise! Actually, iPod-related subway crime on the rise. Actually, this is the first month that anyone has reported having an iPod stolen in the subway, but it's already happened 50 times! Cell phones get stolen too ... because of techno-envy -- young people need certain things (namely techno music) to feel young, apparently.

Last word, from LAPD Chief (and former NYCT Police Chief, NYPD Commish) William Bratton, who visited New York last week and was apalled by the "shabby" condition of the subway cars: "When you have subway cars that are filthy -- and the ones I was riding in were a mess -- and it looks like there's no one in charge, the temptation to commit crime is more significant."

Over the Hump

In recent weeks, Halfzware has shared two documentary films with me, both of them addressing the rather nebulous subject of subterranean culture (against the more tangible backdrop of trains and railroads) in New York City. These are the 1983 film Style Wars, by Henry Chalfant and Tony Silver (click here for the official site, which requires flash), and Mark Singer's Dark Days (2000).

That I would have seen these two films -- both of which I had heard much about but never seen until now -- at this particular point in time seems appropriate, given the current fiscal (and other) problems at Amtrak and NYC Transit.

While it is true that recent headlines have suggested a general decline in the quality of service on both railroads, it is also true that things are still much better than they were fifteen years ago. Equipment is newer and (excepting Amtrak's disastrous Acela trains) subject to fewer breakdowns than in the 1980s, when I can remember being stuck on an Amtrak train in New Jersey for several hours without explanation. Its cars were old, smelly, and in terrible repair.

The New York City Subway system has likewise improved since the 1980s. Watching the first 30 minutes of Style Wars last night brought back faint memories of the subways of my early childhood: filthy, dimly lit, and in some cases, barely functional. Thankfully, those days seem safely behind us. But alarmingly, NYC Transit is now being denied its full budget by an increasingly cash-strapped MTA, which makes up for its own state-inflicted budget woes by passing the problem on to the city, keeping Metro North and the Long Island Railroad running smoothly but threatening to return NYCT back to its own dark days.

One might easily become nostalgic for the grittier aesthetic of 1980s subway trains, but the fact is this: token booth clerks are being replaced by machines, trains and stations are being cleaned less frequently, and NYC transit lacks the budget to make necessary improvements to its infrastructure. Without a change in this pattern, a return to a transit dark age becomes increasingly likely. Amtrak, for its part, has never run smoothly or even come close to turning a profit, and its days finally seem to be numbered.

On a lighter note, from now on, I will try to update twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays (coming as they do after the weekend and the Wednesday hump, respectively).

Must-Read Mondays

I had to do it, folks: a second post about baseball, and a link I must insist that you follow. Jeff Merron's all-fat baseball team is not to be missed. My personal favorite? Gates Brown (pictured above, hatless), who in 1968 was called to pinch hit while he was sneaking a few hot dogs in the clubhouse. The dogs went down his shirt; a head-first slide later he was covered in ketchup, mustard, and mashed franks.

Baseball could use a few players like Gates nowadays, if only to deflate the ubiquitous steroid suspicions. To think there was a time when extra power was thought to come not from mysterious creams and clear liquids, but from the creme donuts and beer that gave some players a few surplus pounds to put behind their swings.

Surely this is the pattern in Little League, where (as I'm sure we can all remember) the largest players are invariably the most potent hitters, and are able to deflect jibes about their weight with one swing of the bat. But remember also that such players can be hamstrung by the absence of outfield fences. One player on my Little League team routinely hit the ball further than 300 feet, sending the much smaller outfielders bounding across the hills toward Flatbush in pursuit; without a fence around the field, sadly, he seldom reached beyond second base under his own power.

Of course, the indiscretions associated with weighty players are not limited to those who manage to reach the Major Leagues, either. That player from my youthful days on the diamond was also a teammate in high school. When his weight kept him of out of the starting lineup, he once alleviated his boredom by offering to eat a ball of mud for the right price. Even the umpire anted up $20, but escaped quickly to his car when the deed was done and the large young man came to collect his fee.

Baseball N. Beers

As you can no doubt see, we have switched to our summer whites in connection with our promised site redesign. After all, baseball season is approaching full swing, and the Mets and Nationals will face one another for the first time tonight (7:10 pm ET; check your local listings).

I thought I might take this opportunity to introduce readers to one of my most cherished, albeit embarrassing, pastimes: statistical simulation fantasy baseball. Before you reject offhand that this might be an enjoyable diversion, allow me briefly to make my case.

First of all, conventional fantasy baseball is out of the question for me. Success in such leagues requires slavish attention to the ebb and flow of Major League Baseball. I'm happy to root for my favorite team, but I'd rather not lose sleep over Aubrey Huff's batting average. In addition, fantasy baseball is usually a pay service, and why pay for something that should be free?

By contrast, stat-sim baseball involves entirely fictional players, and can therefore be enjoyed year-round. At SimDynasty, managers set draft preferences prior to the start of the season (or, in the pay-per-play "Dynasty" mode, the start of the career), and within 48 hours the team is set and ready to go. Each manager can then set his lineup, pitching rotation, and strategy settings before the first digital "pitch" is thrown.

Now, this system is not without its disadvantages. For one thing, there is no real-time or visual component to the games, which can either be viewed as box scores or "played" inning by inning as a kind of primitive gamecast. And while there is plenty of variety to the games -- even the best players can fall into slumps, and bench-warmers can come through as heroes -- there remains the fact that everything is determined by numbers being churned out by a computer.

But the game still has plenty to recommend it. Each team plays three games per day (at 4 am, 2 pm, and 7 pm), so a 162-game season breezes by in under two months. It is always 1950 in this simulated world, with two 8-team leagues and no designated hitter. Throughout the season, top-performing players from both leagues are assigned to all-star teams, MVP and Cy Young races, and so on (with "votes" changing day-to-day based on performance). The top two teams from each league advance to a league championship series, which is followed, of course, by a world series.

Best of all, managers are able to change their imaginary players' names for the first week of the season. (I generally prefer to leave my players be; where else but simulated baseball could you have players named "Neifi Squires," "Jose Skaff," or "Armando Farmer"?) Managers can also arrange trades with other managers, but this is difficult in the free single-season leagues, where many managers abandon their teams early in the season. There is also a waiver wire, a full minor league roster, and random injuries.

I'll admit, SimDynasty isn't for everyone. Inattention to a team can cause one to plummet quickly in the standings. Given the playoff format and the formulaic nature of the matchups, a team that falls behind early in the season is unlikely to make up much ground. However, it's a great way to avoid doing work, and provides a moment of happiness (or depression) three times a day.

Right now, my team is hanging onto second place in the A.L. but is 14 games out of first, with just 53 games left in the season. Left fielder Hugh Thornton is batting .338 with 13 homeruns and 73 RBI, but his numbers have fallen off sharply from the beginning of the season, when he looked like a shoo-in for MVP. My closer’s name is Baseball N. Beers. LET'S GO, CLEVELAND!

Word to the wise: with 53 games to go in the current season, the next season won't start for three weeks. If you sign up for a team now, you'll only get to play a 53-game season. The other option is to take over an abandoned team in mid-season, but you won't know whether the league you're joining started at the beginning of the 162 games or was created later. Still, with a free service I think such minor inconveniences are tolerable.

The Pig Man Cometh

The nice thing about warm weather is that one can dine al fresco (read: grill up some delicious meat) every single night without feeling foolish in the slightest. For one thing, this scheme allows one to eat on the cheap and to minimize that most unpleasant of evening chores: doing the dishes.

Fourteen dollars, for example, recently bought me a 2.2-lb. side of spare ribs and one pound of ground buffalo. This would have been an ample meal for three, and was princely for two. Great care must be taken, however, in grilling the ribs, as Halfz and I learned (the hard way) on Sunday.

First off, you'll want to ensure that your grill has been emptied of ash and spent charcoal. This way, the vents on the bottom of the grill will be kept clear, allowing the fire to burn steadily and down to a very low heat without extinguishing itself. A large quantity of charcoal is not necessary, even to cook ribs for the requisite two hours.

It's a good idea to start the fire as early as possible, then, in order to avoid eating (as we did last night) after 10 pm. This task having been undertaken, the next step is the preparation of the pork itself. Season liberally with a dry rub consisting of any or all of the following:

Bay leaf (whole)
Celery Salt
Coarse black pepper
Cumin
Garlic (fresh cloves, either whole or minced)
Ground chili (or, in a pinch, chili powder)
Paprika
Sea salt

Once these spices have been rubbed gently into the meat on both sides (ideally there will be some meat even on the bone side), wrap the ribs tightly in two layers of aluminum foil, making sure none of the meat is exposed. This will keep the juices from escaping and producing flames.

When the fire has reached a heat that is slightly lower than what you would want for grilling hamburger or steak, place the wrapped meat directly on the grill, bone side down. If you are unsure of the temperature required for hamburger, a good rule of thumb is that one should be able to hold one's hand about three inches above the grill for several seconds without too much pain. For ribs, then, you'll want that distance to be closer to two inches.

For the first 30 minutes of the operation, keep the grill covered but the air vent fully open. Then remove the cover and continue grilling, without turning, for an additional half-hour. Finally, once the meat has been cooking for a full hour, carefully unwrap the package with a spatula or tongs (the foil will be too hot to touch) and apply the barbecue sauce of your choice with a brush or spoon. Re-wrap the meat and flip it over, and cook for 30 minutes with the meat side down.

Finally, one hour and thirty minutes into the cooking, unwrap the meat entirely. If you have used an appropriate amount of charcoal, the heat of the coals will be quite low but there will still be a great deal of heat retained in the meat itself. Reapply your sauce on both sides, turn bone side down again, and cook for a final half hour. If the coals seem to be dying, cover the ribs with a sheet of foil and put the grill cover back on.

If everything has transpired as it should, the meat will fall right off the bone at the end of this two-hour period. Cut into four-rib sections and serve, making sure to remove any stray bay leaves first.

This is more or less how Halfzie and I approached things last night, with reasonable success. Not so on Sunday, when an unfortunate miscalculation led to the meat actually catching fire just 15 minutes in. This was due to our clearing the lower vents after already having lit the charcoal (and far too much of it). The meat was insufficiently wrapped, the fire too hot, and the juices dripping down only made it hotter. We had to remove the ribs from the grill and heat up some hot dogs while the flames subsided. With such prodigious heat, each round of pre-cooked dogs was done in about 30 seconds.

Still, once the fire reached an appropriate temperature we were able to finish the ribs in about an hour, and found them suitably edible and delicious, if a little bit firm and dry.

A Tale of Two Newspapers

Well, things are generally going well down here in Boomtown. As Halfz has already reported, the weekend saw efficient German parties, countless beers, and more than a few Vietnamese eateries. My job has been reasonably tolerable, which is all one should really expect, and yesterday my officemate M. explained to me that our energy (whether positive or negative) has been proven to affect the molecular structure of water: "It's all geometry," he explained. "DNA, science, energy. Our bodies are like 90% water, you know? Everything is connected." Indeed.

But as far as utter nonsense goes, I think Jennifer "8." Lee's piece on "The Man Date" from Sunday's NYT Style page takes the cake. Not suprisingly, the article remains the #1 most emailed even now, three days removed from its original publication.

Now, I recall a similar Times piece of an equally silly nature addressing "drunk dialing" -- the practice of getting sloshed and proceeding to call a series of random associates, even well into the wee hours of the morning. This was all well and good -- a harmless if pointless item that was surely of great interest to older New York types, who would have been entirely unaware of such a phenomenon.

However, the piece on "Man Dating" did little else but confirm two things: 1, the Times has hit rock bottom; and 2, an awful lot of men (or at least those quoted in the article) are fucking pathetic.

Ms. 8. Lee writes:

"Cooking for a friend at home violates the man date comfort zone for almost everyone, with a possible exemption for grilling or deep-frying. 'The grilling thing would take away the majority of the stigma because there is a masculine overtone to the grill,' [Rob] Discher said."

Thank God, Halfzie and I are in the clear! While we routinely engage in such acceptable (i.e. non-man-date) activities as watching sports, playing video games, drinking whiskey and/or beer, and talking shop, it is rare indeed that we indulge in such transgressions as sharing a bottle of wine, dining by candlelight, or eating non-grilled vegetable meals.

Meanwhile, I was delighted to find the New York Post for sale this morning on 14th St. as I was getting my morning coffee. Compare Ms. Lee's drivel to this item. Diff'rent Strokes for diff'rent folks, some would say; I'd say a meat-and-potatoes paper for men who not only avoid sharing wine and visits to art galleries with one another, but who also refuse, on principle, to discuss such activities with a "reporter" who uses an Arabic numeral as a middle initial.

The Office (Part Two: Archictecture, Like the World, Is Flat)

While we were all sleeping, our worst fears have been realized. It seems that a 10-year-old child in Bangalore can now do your job more effectively than you can. What's more, he's willing to do so for mere pennies an hour. Luckily, the profession that I have chosen is insulated from the effects of this "flattening" by such constraints as the need for proximity and supervision. But don't hold your breath just yet, men. Soon enough, even the best Sharkitect will need to keep an eye over his hunched shoulder; within a few scant years, all of our skills will be appropriated and applied remotely from Hong Kong.

Here is why: as I learned today, architects who cut their teeth in the 70s and 80s are literally awe struck when a person can, say, find zoning information on the internet within a matter of minutes. They are used to a system in which it is necessary to make endless telephone calls and arrange countless appointments only to find out that the building in question is zoned R-1-B after all. Moreover, they are aghast at the notion that anyone could more or less imagine how the schematic design of a 400-square-foot addition might play out without needing to burry themselves under a mountain of trace paper.

I am no Leonardo. But I can tell whether or not a reasonably sized bathroom will fit within a given area. As for why: I have used computers since 1985. The same cannot be said of my employers.

The Office (Part One)

Well, it's been a week already here in Chocolate City, and I'd be lying if I said that I am thrilled with my new job. Publishing thoughts about one's employer can be a delicate matter, but given the demonstrated computer skills of my coworkers, I don't anticipate being caught anytime soon.

To wit: there are just four other people in my "office," which is housed temporarily in the home of the head honcho. The one with whom I interact the most -- we'll call him "M." -- is a 30-year-old from New Jersey who spends his spare time burning incense, dreaming of bamboo, and dedicating himself to the evolution of his soul. Ordinarily, I do not tend to consort with such people, but under the circumstances a little light entertainment is not to be lamented.

The tasks with which I have been charged thus far do not merit detailed description, but I have already explained to my boss that computer files are not physically stored in the software applications that created them. Compared with other places I have worked, where I was treated either with reluctant patience (for my blundering errors) or utter reverence and awe (for my alacrity and keen attention to detail), my new boss has been surprisingly impatient and schoolmarmish. Each time I am reminded to show more information on my drawings ("Don't just tell me that the computer knows how high the ceilings are..."), part of me wants to scream, and to deride the childish appearance of our company letterhead and the second-rate quality of the design work itself. But a job is just a job and I should be happy, I suppose, to have one.

The above photograph shows what I see each morning on the final leg of my 40-minute commute -- a quarter mile walk along a creek.

We'll have to see how this develops; more to follow soon.