Archive for the “Stories/Observations” Category

Most of you know I am a basketball freak. I would play everyday if I could, and right now, being unemployed, I do just about that.

I am very particular about my basketball shoes. They must be black with high arches and good ankle support. I am ashamed to admit I often gladly pay over 100 bucks a pair….usually Nikes.

I generally went through a pair a year, replacing them at Christmas. Then, about 5 years ago, in a moment of serendipity, I ran across the finest pair of shoes on the planet. I loved them so much I wouldn’t play outside with them…..which is why they lasted 5 years.

They were/are the perfect shoe….and as Nike floods the market with new shoes every year they age like a fine wine….still the most perfect kicks ever to grace the hardwood.

Sadly, my shoes are dead. They will soon go to basketball heaven, which is the part of my closet that houses my worn-out high-tops….an assortment of sneakers that would make any collector proud.

Buying new basketball shoes is a little traumatic for me. I admit it. In fact, I didn’t want a new pair at all. I wanted the same pair, not a new, improved model but exactly the same shoe.

So I called Nike and it went like this:

Me: I want to buy a pair of shoes.
Them: Uhh….ok. What kind?
Me: You don’t make them anymore, but I think we’ll be able to figure it out. They’re really unique.
Them: Ok, tell me about them.
Me: They are a pair of black basketball shoes….(dramatic pause)
Them: …………..
Me: I pretty sure they’re the most expensive shoes you ever produced. They have a foamposite shell that surrounds a neoprene sock. They cost $180 when I bought them new about 5 years ago.

She couldn’t search by price, so she gave me the phone numbers of the largest outlet stores in the US (SF, NY and Miami). The dude in Miami was really knowledgable, so after one more call to Nike corporate I knew the shoe name and stock number: Foamposite Pro 630304-002

Problem was they didn’t have any left….anywhere in the United States.

So I did some research on the shoe. It turns out this shoe has a cult following and a history that reads like a Behind the Music.

It is the most expensive shoe Nike ever made. Management almost shut down development when they thought the shoe would have to retail for $400. The foamposite material took two years to develop, the molds alone cost almost a million dollars apiece and new machinery had to be invented to mass produce the shoe. Extra stability is provided through a carbon fiber base plate, the same material used in bullet proof vests.

Shoes are made in pieces and then stitched together to correspond to different sized feet. The Foamposite is the first (and still the only) unibody shoe ever made. Every size needed a different mold. The shoe is not stitched together; it is molded whole from liquid foamposite. The sole is simply the bottom part of the upper; the shell is one piece. The inside of the shoe is a neoprene glove. The foamposite materially is built to mold to your foot, literally. The longer you wear them, the more comfortable they get.

Nike brass almost axed the shoe once more when they said it would kill the footwear industry. Costs were out of control. No one would buy a $400 shoe so they would have to sell them below cost. Consumers would get accustomed to the unbelievable comfort and support and wouldn’t buy other shoes. The footwear industry would be stuck selling shoes at a loss.

Of course that didn’t happen, but they never really did get costs under control, so they quit making the shoe and, in effect, the footwear industry took a step backwards in quality and technology……but not me. I want the same pair.

So I bought a pair off Ebay for the excellent discount price of $144 (including shipping). It is nuts that someone is willing to pay 140 bucks for a shoe that originally came out in 1997 (I won the bidding in the last minute by $1).

Here is a picture of the Foamposite Pro:

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Today I saw a woman in a wheelchair begging for money on the subway.

I was sitting next to a mexican laborer. He was dirty, in a t-shirt, with plaster on his hands and dirt under his fingernails.

He gives the woman a dollar. It was a crisp, new bill with a small corner missing.

She got angry and asked for a different one.

And they say beggars can’t be choosers??

Then I was sitting on the bus going to Golden Gate Park for a blue grass festival.

The woman beside me had no front teeth and drank almost a fifth of vodka in 40 minutes.

The man across from me shook his head and the children all laughed.

She kept talking about the dictionary and how fun it was to read. “Electroencephalitis: E-L-E-C-T-R-O-E-N-C-E-P-H-A-L-I-T-I-S.” Her spelling was eclipsed only by her prowess as a drinker.

Everyone was trying to ignore her. “The dictionary is great, just great. It can tell you the meaning of everything,” she professed while trying to sneak a sip of vodka.

I wish. Can it tell me the meaning of a toothless woman drinking a fifth of vodka in 40 minutes??

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This is from an email I sent to a friend about SF:

The bay area is cool. There is a lot to do. The city has a festival or organization for every interest possible. It is extremely easy to find a group to promote whatever fantasy or obsession you wish to indulge.

I couldn’t find a support group for the shiftless and disaffected so I went to a leather S&M and Bondage festival instead. They closed off Fulsom street and were selling leather and sex toys and ass fucking machines. There were chicks with their titties out and dudes walking naked except for a cock ring. There were public displays of spankings and floggings. And the police were making sure the whole thing didn’t get out of hand. Out of hand???? If ass fucking machines and naked dudes in cock rings ain’t out of hand, well…..

On the flip side they did have excellent thai chicken sandwiches and plenty of safe sex booths giving out free condoms and personal lubricant. And the people were all pretty friendly.

I stayed for about an hour and a half…then left. It was cool to look at, but hanging out made me feel a little too close to the fire. I mean, I’m all for self-expression…as long as you keep it to yourself.

I like it out here in SF. If I could get a job I would probably stay. I like the South too. I am from there and it feels homey, but I haven’t really enjoyed being there since I was in college.

Of course, depending on how you look at it…I haven’t really enjoyed being anywhere since college. I enjoyed camp (3 months), Spain (4 months), Israel (4 months) and the movement of travel. That isn’t enough time in any one place to allow it to get on your nerves.

Its like I said, I’m not sure if I know how to be satisfied. I think I do, but I’ve never actually done it for any amount of time.

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More on SF:

There aren’t any fat people in SF. In the South everyone is fat. At home all women are on a diet that isn’t working. Here everyone is obsessed with fitness, and they actually seem to stick to it. I have theories about why that is so.

No one is actually from SF. It is a city of foreigners, people that moved here for a tech job or because they were misfits back home. The only thing permanent in SF is the land it sits on.

They speak about the city as if it were its own entity. The city of SF itself is often a topic of conversation aside from the people, the buildings or the weather. They talk of it with a sense of reverence even. Can a city be a thing in its own right??

SF is a city of acceptance and tolerance…..which is a remarkable achievement. The bums are friendly and the gays, the techies, and the suits all pass each other in the streets with a minimum of disaffection. The strong anti-establishment population remains so without being hateful. However, the line between tolerance and ambivalence is dangerously thin.

It is great to be single in SF because there are lots of other singles. But I’ve noticed SF tends to keep you single too. Because it is a city of foreigners, it is a city of searchers; everyone came here looking for something better.

I applaud better, but it is a symptom of my generation that we don’t know better when we have it….because we’re always looking for something better. And so these people remain single and thin and preoccupied, overworked and forever striving….stuck between the passions of youth and the responsibilities of adulthood…unable to commit fully to either.

SF is proud of its achievements and searching and acceptance, but also dissatisfied with it. It is a little spiritually bankrupt too….a product of the people living here….a reflection of the preoccupations of my generation.

(Bear in mind that I am a part of my generation and so only see the things that reinforce my own neuroses. SF is truly a great city and contains a little of pretty much whatever you’re looking for. I just see what I want I suppose.)

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I re-entered the world for a few days after having been at camp for about 2 weeks and learned some interesting and important things.

The world is loud. Cars make lots of noise and so do people. Its like a bunch of flies buzzing around your head.

People always have places to go. And when everyone is going in different directions and some of them are in a hurry it adds up to a big mess, bad attitudes and little patience.

People are fat. I’d forgotten how big and poorly kept people can get. I know its sort of normal, but I don’t like it.

Its just a bunch of loud, fat people with no patience running around everywhere trying to do stuff that never subtracts from the total amount to be done.

My dad is working a lot these days. He said that business is sort of bad so they have to hustle to keep things going. But it is obvious that if business were better the work load wouldn’t decrease.

I know the strength of camp is in the community. But there is more to it than that.

There is nature: clean air, shade trees and mountain views.. The absence of cars eliminates noise pollution and forces you to be around trees, dirt, and birds. All that stuff is comforting.

And there is no sense of hurry and desperation….no rush. Your own stress is stressful, but other people’s stress affects you too, like second hand smoke.

And how nice it is to walk! The only place most people walk is to their car. Walking promotes talking to other people you pass along the way. Walking is exercise. It raises your heart rate and makes you feel better. Walking can make you tired. Driving just makes you restless.

Everyone is all about diversity these days. Its like some kind of mantra: Embrace Diversity. I say embrace it if you like, but never forget that there is strength in togetherness. Connectedness is achieved by common threads and shared values, not diversity. There must be common ground. At camp it is all common ground, literally.

There is a sense of place that speaks to you directly: This is good. That other stuff is distracting you.

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Easter Island is over 2,000 miles from the nearest population center, Tahiti and Chile, making it one of the most isolated places on Earth. It is best known for the giant stone monoliths, known as Moai, that dot the coastline. Scientists are baffled by the question of how and why the inhabitants carved and transported the massive statues. And its a good question. But I have a better one.

The Easter Islanders settled an island that was originally forested, and those forests included the world’s largest palm tree. The Easter Islanders gradually chopped down the forest and used the wood for canoes, firewood, transporting statues, raising statues, carving and also to protect against soil erosion. Eventually they chopped down all the forests to the point where all the tree species were extinct, which meant that they ran out of canoes, they could no longer erect statues, there were no longer trees to protect the topsoil against erosion, and their society collapsed in an epidemic of cannibalism that left 90 percent of the islanders dead. Good fun.

My question is this: How the @#$&! could a society make such a horrendously bad decision as to cut down all the trees on which they depend? I mean, what did they say as they were cutting down the last palm tree? “Gee…..” Actually, I can’t even make anything up. No one could be that stupid.

Surely the Easter Islanders, capable of making those amazing statues, must have realized the consequences of destroying their own forest. It wasn’t a subtle error. Easter Island is very small. No one could have made the mistake of cutting down the last lonely tree in front of them while thinking there were others elsewhere. It would have been obvious.

People are smart, but they can be really dumb too. I wonder whether, centuries from now, people will be as astonished about our blindness to reality as we are about the Easter Islanders’.

I would point out what those blindnesses are, but, of course, I’m blind too.

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I have a cold. I wanted to go sing karaoke tonight, but alas…even that small pleasure is taken away. Instead I have to resort to another boring night of trying to figure out mysql and php. Hopefully I’ll sleep ok tonight. I couldn’t sleep for shit last night.

I don’t know if any of you read my entry about Mr. BigFatBlog that I posted on 2/8/2003. I actually wrote Mr. FatBlog an email asking him what he thought of what I thought.
This is what he said (excerpts from my email to him are in gray):


Hi Elliott,

Thanks for writing.

> However, there are some other points he makes that brought me to my
> final opinion: “The only thing that’s ‘wrong’ about a fat person
> wearing a belly shirt is that society sees it as ‘wrong’.” What???
> You could make that argument about anything….the only thing ‘wrong’
> with a dead person as a best friend is that society sees it as
> ‘wrong’. The only thing ‘wrong’ with sleeping with blood relatives is
> that society sees it as ‘wrong’.

I think you’re exaggerating to the extreme here, and really comparing
apples to oranges. The idea of having a dead friend, or sleeping with
a blood relative, is really a sociological more; fat people wearing
belly shirts is just a value. The value is something that has been
simply promoted by modern society, although it may be based on some
Puritanical roots (at least in America). There are definitely two
types of “wrong” here.

> Here is my favorite: “You should love your body, no matter what it
> looks like.” Really?? I tell a slight variation of that to all the
> really hot girls I meet.

That’s a personal stance that you have to deal with, then.

Loving one’s body is the key to acceptance, no matter what size one is.
For women, this is something that is entirely different than men;
there are many levels of pressure, mostly societal, encouraging them to
hate their bodies. The size of clothing is inconsistent; diets are
promoted as a way to really live and enjoy life. There is absolutely a
lack of people loving their bodies, and they should. You should, too.
So should any girl you date, but chances are very good that she really
doesn’t.

> “You should like me even though I’m not as hot as the guys you usually
> date.” Or how about potential employers: “You should hire me, no
> matter how lazy I am.” How about the NBA: “Don’t discriminate
> against me just because I’m short, white and have no talent.” It just
> isn’t realistic. And if realism isn’t your bag, it isn’t desirable
> even in that perfect world we’ll never find.

Again, these examples are wildly different. Loving one’s body at any
size is a lot different than not meeting requirements for a job – these
are two different things.

If anything, people in the fat acceptance movement are very much into
realism. We deal with the realism on a daily basis: discrimination in
the workplace, discrimination in society, a littany of outmoded
stereotypes, mass ignorance… if that’s not realism, I don’t know what
is.

> And here is my final opinion about fatness: All things being equal,
> it is better to be skinny than to be fat. Being fat usually creates
> problems. Being skinny can occasionally create problems. Fatness
> isn’t always the worst of personal issues, but it can add to whatever
> is. So…all things being equal, it is better to be skinny than to be
> fat.

In our modern society, it is “better” to be skinny than fat. But have
you truly questioned why that is so? I have, and continue to do so;
millions of others are doing the same. “Being fat usually creates
problems” is a woefully vague and undersupported argument. Why? How?
When? Where? The same goes for being skinny.

Thanks for writing,

– Paul


Woefully vague and undersupported argument??? Maybe….but that doesn’t make it a wrong argument.

And finally I’ll say this: If Mr. FatBlog spent as much time and effort trying to lose weight as he spends trying to convince everyone else on the planet that its good to be fat……..well I think we’d have ourselves a solution =)

Am I unsympathetic? I can hear it already: “I can’t lose weight. My body is built like this.” Ok. I will accept that you can’t lose weight if Mr. BigFatBlog accepts that you can’t convince everyone else that it is ok to be fat. In fact, I am confident it is possible to lose weight long before it it will be possible to change the opinion of the entire world.

The third, and most desirable, option is to accept that you are fat and accept that it will always put you at a disadvantage. I think that is what the fat acceptance movement should be about: Fat people personally accepting their disadvantage, instead of trying to convince the rest of the world that it is acceptable. We all have our disadvantages.

Actually, I think fat is ok. I admit it. I have no strong anti-fat feelings…..but its fantasy to believe that fatness is simply an issue of perception…that if somehow you percieve fatness to be acceptable that it is. The fat acceptance movement will always be about fat people secretly resenting the fact that the world shows favoritism towards skinny people…and that they are not one of those skinny people.

It smacks of sophisticated whining. Didn’t they all learn in High School that whiners just get beat up and laughed at?

In fact, it is just like High School. There is always envy of that group you’re not in that is cooler than you. You want to be in that group. They are more fun, smarter, better…whatever. But no matter how many times you try to convince everyone that your group is actually the cool group or that you are now a part of that group…no one buys it. And they never will. The fat group will never be the cool group.

I would also like to thank Paul for returning my email. It has been a fairly civil exchange about a very sensitive topic. I respect that.

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Edward O. Wilson, world-renowned Harvard biologist and founder of Sociobiology, writes this in his new book, Consilience: “Philosophy, the contemplation of the unknown, is a shrinking dominion. We have the common goal of turning as much philosophy as possible into science.”

Good luck Mr. Wilson. I am a fan of science for the most part.

I have two things to say. 1) Science is a largely rational effort. 2) People are largely irrational efforts.

Science can allow you to put someone on the moon, but only contemplation of the unknown can inspire you to do so in the first place.

I guess I am a skeptic when it comes to the promises of science. It may one day let us live hundreds of years…but it will never tell us what we are supposed to do with all that time.

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I said if I ever had a weblog that I wouldn’t just put quotes from other people and links to other pages. I guess there is a value in aggregating other people’s stuff, but if you keep a weblog, most of your visitors prefer to hear something about you.

So I should say something about me right?? Well, another thing I always said….hmm. Better to tell a story:

I met this guy in Romania. He came to the hostel to drink, but stayed in town at a private residence…five bucks a night, which was 5 bucks less than it was to stay at the hostel, which gave him the 5 bucks to come to the hostel and drink.

He was living in Prague teaching English…..30something, unassuming, easy to sit with but a little unengaging…..overall harmless and unchallenging. He drank well and was an aspiring writer….liked to waste time. I tend to attract those types so he always talked to me.

(I’m eating a pizza and drinking a beer. He is just drinking.)
me: Why are you in Prague?
him: I can’t go back to the states.
me: Why?
him: I never paid back my student loans. That was almost 10 years ago.
me: How is life in Prague?
him: As good as it ever was in the states…which isn’t saying much.
me: What kind of stuff do you write about?
him: Usually I rant. You know, just talk about stuff and rant about it.
me: Yeah I know. How is that working out?
him: Not well at all. No one wants to read it.
me: Yeah….I try not to rant when I write. Other people don’t seem to care how much you hate the world, no matter how well its written. There is a super fine line between pointing out amusing inadequacies and sounding tired and bitter. Its hard to rant well.
him: The stuff I write is really good though. Everyone I ask tells me its good. I have some with me if you want to read it.
me: Uhhh….no thanks. I’m in a good mood sitting here drinking my beer. Why would I want to get all ruffled and have to think about some injustice or whatever? Ranting is fun to write I guess, but its like if you have a friend thats always in a bad mood. You quit calling them. Who wants to hang out with someone that always has something negative to say?

So we kept talking and stuff, but the moral of this little snippet is that I refuse to rant about stuff in my weblog. A little ranting is ok, but a lot is annoying. Keep it to yourself. There is way too much “sharing” of feelings going on these days. I like all that too, but there is a limit. Not everything buried is treasure.

Its odd how much there is to rant about and how little there is to inspire you. Have you ever read The Brothers Karamazov? Dostoevsky wrote Ivan’s little diatribe about “everything is lawful” in two weeks. It took him months to write the soaring religous wanderings of…….who was it?? Father Zossima I think. Its telling that I remember who ranted and what it was about while I remember the other only because it was the foil of the rant.

All this being said: I am now starting to rant about ranting….how annoying.

Maybe I should just be silent??

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