Blog of Chris

Warning: Contains extreme profanity.  (Mom, don’t watch this video)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z93Kvl3YMWQ&feature=related[/youtube]

I just finished a four day combatives instructor certification program.  Combatives is the Army’s martial arts/hand-to-hand combat program, which is based largely on wrestling moves and submissions.

At the end of the class, the testers must complete clinch drills, where they enter a padded octogon, facing an opponent wearing boxing gloves.  The tester wears padded headgear, and must “close the distance” with the opponent and get him in a clinch, in preparation for taking him down.  The opponent, of course, is trying to avoid getting clinched and is taking every opportunity to punch the tester in the face.

Basically, I’ve spent the week getting tossed, rolled, flipped, pinned, beaten, shaken and stirred (you should have seen the other guy).  It hurts.

Oh yeah… the point of this post was to talk about what I did this afternoon as a result of said clinch drills.  From a shot to the head this morning, my glasses broke.  I took them off to finish my series of clinches and then realized that dodging head punches with no depth perception is probably not very easy.  I managed to prop them into place long enough to finish the tests.

So I hit LensCrafters in Canton to get an eye exam and buy some frames.  As the commercials go, I am left with “about an hour” to wait until they are done.  It was not quite long enough to drive home, so I figured I would just drive around the city and explore.  I get to the corner of President and Lombard and see the entrance to the subway.  I had always wanted to see what the Baltimore subway was like, so I parked at a nearby meter and took the escalator down.

As was expected, the subway was filthy, shabby looking, and had far less people than I would expect during Friday rush hour.  There were some pretty neat displays of artifacts that were recovered at the site of the Shot Tower station when they built the subway.

I wanted to buy a ticket and realized that I didn’t have any cash.  So I exited the station on the other side of President street, near Power Plant Live.  I tracked down an ATM, got a 4 piece nuggets at the McDonalds to get some change, and headed back to the subway.

I took a train to State Center…  I didn’t know where I was until I took the escalator up and was facing the Fifth Regiment Armory.  I then turned right back around and caught another train back to the Shot Tower.

This, like many other oddities of Baltimore transportation (such as the interstate that goes nowhere in West Baltimore), seems so silly to me.  The subway goes from Hopkins Hospital  to Owings Mills.  I have seen the trains that run along I-795 every day this week while I was coming home from Reisterstown, and there is never anyone on them.  Who had the idea of building a one-line subway that only has one stop in one suburb?  Why Owings Mills?  (I assume, because of it’s placement in the median of 795, that it was built at the same time, and was an attempt to encourage development in that corridor…)  Why not Timonium, or Glen Burnie?

Growing up with the D.C. Metro, I guess my standard for subways are pretty high.  In all of the places you would normally find advertisements on a subway, Baltimore’s has announcements from the MTA (I did see a few shoe city ads, and ads for lawyers, but that was about it).  There were ugly metal sculptures from the 80’s, and security cameras as far as the eye can see (even in the cars).  These weren’t subtly installed, they were out in the open with miles of unsightly metal conduit running to them.

They’re not making any money on advertising, and they’re not making very much on fares, so I assume taxpayers are footing the bill for this thing.

The question is, if it were more robust and actually went anywhere, do you think Baltimore  is big enough to support a subway?

-C

After spending Friday meeting with accountants and clients, and doing some business development, I headed down to Georgetown to meet up with James. Naturally, I threw on some not-quite-modern dance and techno and raced down 95. I take 295 down into the city, cross the river at South Capital Street, hit 395, cross the river again, take the parkway to Rosslyn, cross the river a third time into Georgetown and then head west to MacArthur Blvd. As much as I dislike DC sometimes, I love urban parkways and interstates, particularly in and around the Potomac.

Wilson came over and we headed to The Tombs, a Georgetown University bar which seems to be in some way affiliated with the crew team. There were paddles everywhere, and this place looked like it’s been an establishment for college drinking for decades, if not longer.

The bar was covered in little engraved brass plates, the likes of which you might find on a circulating trophy. They bear peoples names with date ranges; presumably students will purchase a plate when they graduate and leave their legacy on the bar for those that follow. Some were as old as the early 1980s. The walls were covered with vintage military recruiting posters, most of which were from the WWII era from what I could tell. There was a lot more cool stuff on the walls that I didn’t get a chance to inspect, but there were more pressing priorities at hand.

I crashed on James’ couch and got up bright and early to meet up with Mike in Rockville at 9. Charm City Networks and Reblis are joining forces to create custom designed template-based websites, and we spent most of Saturday creating one for our first client. I pulled my hair out messing with PHP, but dealt with it.

Mike’s brother Len, Buu Linh, Steve, Jennifer, and Jean came over to watch the fight. We hit Noodles for dinner (one of my favorite places back in College Park, but the closest one to Baltimore is in Columbia) and I got my beloved pesto cavatappi. Jean made rice crispies treats, Mike made wings, and we watched people punch each other until the wee hours.

On Sunday I got up bright and early again to hit the road for Lexington Park, where my folks live. My brother Jason and his wife Erin couldn’t make it down on Christmas, so my mom assembled this pseudo-Christmas-in-January so we could exchange presents in person. I got Jason a poker set, Erin a Trivial Pursuit game (80’s, 90’s, and Pop culture all in one), Mom a travel scrabble set and Pop a telescoping walking stick. We had lunch, played some board games and I headed back to Baltimore.

Thanks to my roommate for taking care of O.P.

Now I’m watching There’s Something About Mary on HBO (It’s a sumo culture… they pay by the pound over there), and waiting for The Wire to come on. I need a weekend from my weekend.

-C

I stumbled upon a hilarious posting on the best of Craig’s List that compares presidential candidates to characters in Star Wars, with side by side picture comparisons. My favorite is Obi-Ron Paul Obi.

Obi-ron Paul-obi

Widely respected for his stubborn belief that the whole universe should be run just like his neighborhood on the backwater planet Tatooine, Obi-ron spends a lot of time wistfully remembering the Old Republic. He practices a peculiar interpretation of The Force, in which reducing government to only local control and returning to the gold standard is the answer. Obi-ron reluctantly returned the contributions of the Tusken Raiders and Jawas, whose politics of ethnic slaughter and droid slave trade he justifies as “states rights”. While his anti-Empire foreign policy excites the Rebel Alliance, it’s pretty much a Jedi mind trick. He’s still a crazy old guy living in the desert.

Look how BA this guy is. He’s a robot, made of other robots. He’s the best kind of transformer there is. He shows no mercy, and kicks autobot ass on the daily.

Here’s the burning question: Why is he subordinate to Megatron when he could totally demolish (or devastate) him?

-C

That’s me and my mom.  I’m not fat, I’m big boned.

-C

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww[/youtube]

Chuckie: Are we gonna have a problem here?

Clark: No, no, no, no! There’s no problem here. I was just hoping you might give me some insight into the evolution of the market economy in the southern colonies. My contention is that prior to the Revolutionary War, the economic modalities, especially in the southern colonies, could be most aptly described as agrarian precapitalist.

Chuckie: Let me tell you something -

Will: Of course that’s your contention. You’re a first-year grad student; you just got finished reading some Marxian historian, Pete Garrison probably. You’re gonna be convinced of that ’till next month when you get to James Lemon. Then you’re going to be talking about how the economies of Virginia and Pennsylvania were entrepreneurial and capitalist way back in 1740. That’s gonna last until next year; you’re gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talkin’ about, you know, the pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization.

Clark: Well, as a matter of fact, I won’t, because Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social -

Will: “Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social distinctions predicated upon wealth, especially inherited wealth”? You got that from Vickers’ “Work in Essex County,” page 98, right? Yeah, I read that too. Were you gonna plagiarize the whole thing for us? Do you have any thoughts of your own on this matter? Or do you, is that your thing, you come into a bar, read some obscure passage and then pretend – you pawn it off as your own, as your own idea just to impress some girls, embarrass my friend?

Clark: [looks down in shame]

Will: See, the sad thing about a guy like you is, in 50 years you’re gonna start doin’ some thinkin’ on your own and you’re going to come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life: one, don’t do that, and two, you dropped 150 grand on a f***in’ education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!

Clark: Yeah, but I will have a degree. And you’ll be servin’ my kids fries at a drive-thru on our way to a skiing trip.

Will: That may be, but at least I won’t be unoriginal. But I mean, if you have a problem with that, I mean, we could just step outside – we could figure it out.

Clark: No, man, there’s no problem. It’s cool.

Will: It’s cool?

Clark: Yeah.

Will: Cool.

Chuckie: Fuckin’ damn right it’s cool. How do you like me NOW?

Morgan: My boy’s wicked smart!

I am going to try my hand at making Duk Man Doo Guk tonight.  I found a recipe on the internet and it’s not rocket science.

-C