The greatest Boston Globe article of all time?

Ladies and gentlemen – seems like my recent style is to blog up a storm on Wednesdays. As my brother would say, no shame in that. Oh yeah, today is technically the last day of summer. And it’s like 80 degrees outside, can you believe it? this summer rocked. Best summer ever(?). possibly. It was very fun, plenty of hanging out and partying. I’d do it all over again.

I had a massive scare last night when my brand-new tv wouldn’t turn on. Panic! Or, as the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy reminds us, “DON’T PANIC.” So I didn’t. but I wasn’t happy about it. we got on the horn with customer service. Eventually the tv actually did turn back on, but we’re still gonna have a guy come over and reset it or something (apparently the problem's not isolated to us). Fingers crossed over here…

Well, what’s been going on? Hmm let’s see. In eight days it will be illegal to text while driving in Massachusetts. You ready for the change? Don’t sleep on that one. Detint your windows and stuff your phone in the trunk from now on would be my advice.

Saturday I went to the union sq farmers market (only a handful of them left, sad). I then went into Boston with a friend where we stumbled upon a gathering (ask me if you want details). We then went to “Serb Fest” aka the Serbian Festival in Cambridge. My friend from the former Yugoslavia invited us. Turns out that her mom was the lead singer of the band. We showed up a little early and ordered up some lamb on a spit, delicious. Ate some adjvar too (not pronounced the way we thought of course). There was a ton of music and dancing, it was really cool! The people sitting at the table with us threw a plastic knife at me to get my attention so that I would take a photo of them. It took four tries, but I think I got a good one, I hope they like it!

Ok, well now on to the real reason for this post. Folks – I think the Boston Globe peaked today in terms of breakthrough journalism and excellent writing. That’s right – I have uncovered the single greatest news article in New England journalism history. Don’t believe me because it sounds too good to be true? I wouldn’t joke about this kind of thing.

Best quote – “I never get anything more than a numinous tickle from the Cheez-Its display. It’s not magical, but rather obliquely legendary.”

Where shopping becomes a roller derby - Somerville - Your Town - Boston.com

I lived in Somerville til I was four years old or so, so of course I can relate.

Cheers everyone, and happy end of summer (that just does not sound right for some reason).

The TV, or Borderline

I finally got my own HDTV. The past year I was lucky to have a roommate who had a nice LCD. But he peaced, and el Jefe no tiene a nice TV. So I managed to avoid driving outside of state or shopping at the evil store by shopping online. I ended up going with an LG. The one I got I didn’t even think was gonna be that big, but it’s huge! It’s borderline too big for my room. I nearly had to rearrange everything.

But it’s up, and lookin good. I’m feelin it. 1080 LCD. Initially I thought that I would just go with 720 plasma, but got convinced otherwise.

Q: What recent TV episode has Dave recently watched three times, including twice showing other friends?

A: “Beyond Survival with Les Stroud”, episde – “Sea Gypsies of Malaysia”.

I might have to devote a whole post to the sea gypsies. I'm still blown away by the episode and the people. More on that soon.

-Dave

I don’t think so, do you?

I thought that you had heard, that’s why I asked. Do I still need to look elsewhere? The connection from eye contact overwhelms the wary. Glance averted, crisis diverted.

Instructions for not getting ahead of yourself, as scrawled on a pillowcase – realize that you cannot predict the future. If that doesn’t work, think about the incredible things that have happened to you and ask yourself if you predicted those events.

Ride It

Hey folks. What’s up, it’s been too long. Hmmm one post a week isn’t that good. But whatever, I’ve been busy, and better late than never.

Well, it was a good weekend. Birthday party Friday night (hit up bluefin and tavern in porter), then Saturday I went to the bc weber st football game. Great game! What a beautiful day. I forgot to bring my crazy creek chairs to sit on during the game (the metal benches aren’t very comfortable), but it was still a blast. We stayed for the whole game, and even got there on time. Success.

Then I went to buddy’s backyard pong fest for a bit. I won a game, then was about to win another game when it started raining. Then I went to another get-together in the burbs, hung out on the porch outside and joked around in the kitchen. Sunday I got good mexican food with some amigos, played some hacky-sack, and hung out. Monday I was pretty worthless, should have been doing stuff outdoors, but was instead worthless indoors for most of the day. Weak play outta me.

I’m really bad at starcraft. I can’t seem to win a game, even the practice games. I’m probably getting beat by 7 year olds. It’s so frustrating! Oh well.

Ooooh I got a link for ya. Not sure if you saw or not, but yesterday google had an interesting little gimmicky HTML 5 thing on their homepage. It was pretty cool. What they’re showing is that html 5 can do a bunch of cool stuff. At first you’re like “oh wait that’s just flash”, then you realize that it isn’t flash. Dope! Anyway here’s a page with a bunch of cool examples, drawing programs and games and such. Check it out!
www.phpguru.org: HTML5 examples

also, here’s an article about one of my favorite restaurants around Boston. This is possibly because I am friends with the sous chef. But it’s also in one of my fav neighborhoods, the interior is lovely, and the food is fantastic. Nytimes called it “solidly excellent” I think. Haha. Well, the owner got written up, and they talk about the restaurant too. Side note – I don’t think I could live on a houseboat. Maybe for a night or two!
A Cambridge, Mass., Chef in His Getaway Galley - NYTimes.com

college football started this past weekend. I watched a bunch of it. nfl starts this wknd, I’ll watch a bunch of that too. Team usa is dominating in the world basketball championships, I hope they win the whole thing.

Ok folks, I’ll talk to you soon. Peace.

Jokers Wild

RA: Clubbing in Boston

Resident Advisor article presumably about the dance music scene in Boston. I’ve been to a bunch of the places and a bunch of the nights. There’s always a bunch of stuff going on, which is really cool, and certainly a good variety.

I was actually at enormous room (see above) last night for the monthly installment of SSLLOOOWW. Or whatever it’s called. We had to leave a little earlier than I would have liked, but the slowed down music was awesome. They were totally playing all of my jams! Good times. I went home with a free bottle of “DRANK” too. Sweeeet.

I’m still watching the world basketball championships, which are a lot of fun. Oy I’m definitely horribly busy, with nary a moment to breathe. I guess I like it this way, but I wish that I had less things to do, and that someone would do stupid little things for me. I need a clone, or I gotta stop complaining and do it myself.

It has been so, so, so hot. mid 90s for multiple days in a row. Tomorrow’s gonna be the same. We’re supposed to get touched by the hurricane on Friday. Going to the football game on Saturday should be sunny and beautiful, just might be windy.

Oh yeah the revs lost their super liga game. I have not been on the revs bandwagon this year, thankfully. Oh yeah, and sox aren’t gonna make the playoffs. Remind anyone of the matt cassel-led patriots not making the playoffs a couple years ago? Exactly.

Oh yeah I upgraded to snow leopard. Snow leopard rules! Recommended, three thumbs up. It saves your computer like 10 gigs and makes it faster and fixes stuff. It doesn’t get any better! Sheesh I should have upgraded earlier.

Wow I just read an article about pirates in somalia. When you become an avid nytimes reader you become a reader of the subjects that the nytimes writes about a lot. Some things that I feel like I have read a lot about on nytimes – iraq, afghanistan, somalia, pakistan, facebook, autism, internet privacy, and health. I mean, I guess these are covered in most newspapers, but the kind of international coverage that the nytimes gets usually seems unparalleled to me. Level of 1-10 – how biased am I?

One last thing – if you need to buy an hdmi cable, save yourself a lot of money and buy it on firefold.com -- HDMI to HDMI Cables

Ok, peace.

cutting it short, and inspiration

recent massively depressing and heart-breaking book that i've read -- "A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery". oh man. this one was tough. haiti, miami, sudan, romania, india were some of the places i read about. this is not an issue that's discussed in the media much, although an aspect of it has been highlighted in recent years. i'll leave it at that. may modern-day slavery be abolished immediately.

well, it's a bummer to say it, but i cut my vacation short. i had 5 blissful days not thinking about important things, but then all of a sudden everything came crashing down and i realized that i wanted to be productive. there are a lot of things i've been putting off for a long time, and i thought it'd be a good idea to at least get the ball rolling on some of these things, and cross them off my list.

i'm not making this up. i was on the cape for 4 full days, and it rained every day. yeah, it's pretty weak. last year it was the best weather of the summer all week, but not so this year. so, part of me wanted to stay and hit the beach today, but i decided to pack it in and just deal with my life.

but hey that's not such a bad thing. i've already crossed 6 things off my list, and it's not even 1pm. nice Job dave, keep up the good work.

so yeah, i wanna keep my momentum, and just deal. of course on top of all this is cleaning my room, cleaning my apt, rearranging things, and looking to maybe do some new decorations. i figure i've been here a year, my brother Jeff is moving in and my old much-loved roommate is moving out, so it's time for some change. i'm not doin a bad job of it.

there's a preseason pats game tonight and a new episode of jersey shore (the only mtv show i watch, i couldn't even name any other mtv shows to you, i guess the real world never stopped playing right?). not sure what else i'll get up to today, i really wanna exercise, but that takes major motivation.

oh yeah, the best part of the news? we took out the recycling. in my town they only pick it up every two weeks, and two weeks ago they showed up earlier than normal and we weren't prepared and missed it. what a relief!

also, thanks for the kind words Rebecca. you got me fired up.

later

in the rain

heyyyy yall whats up. well, it's day 5 here on the cape, and it's day 5 of lousy weather. which i guess isn't that big a deal, but it's not great.

so far i've been reading and watching movies. i've seen "the kids are all right", which i liked, and "inception", which i didn't really like. but i'm glad i got to see some movies.

i'm thinking about cancelling my netflix account. i don't really rent movies from them anymore, and the only person that was using the instant account was my roommate, watching instant movies on the ps3 with the included disk. should i do this? i've had netflix since 2006. as a movie fanatic, it would be a massive decision, but i think i might just cancel it.

oh yeah and the wireless here is lousy. i'm hard wired right now, with an ethernet cable that i think i may have actually brought down here last year.

been eating some good local food. local pears, peaches, tomatoes, parsley, lettuce, fish. all very yum.

ok well i'm gonna get goin. i'm reading this book called "Sailing Alone Around the World" by Joshua Slocum. it's a 100+ year old account of this crazy guy who really enjoyed leaving his family on martha's vineyard and going on epic solo expeditions in a rickety boat. good stuff.

ok be well, Dave

these are images from a recent boston.com big shots gallery of some rowing race that involves carrying the boat on land. hah! good photos.

wellfleet for the week

i'm on wellfleet. it rained a little today. weather isn't as good as last year.

i watched solitary man with michael douglas. good movie. better actor. get well Michael!

cape cod is cool. i went on an adventure today to orleans to get an audio cable so that we can plug in ipod/computer to the speakers. saw a bad accident on rt 6 on the way home.

the traffic out here is crazy during the summer. tons of ct and ny license plates. gets dangerous on the roads too. gotta be careful.

ok time to sleep, peace

Thinking before sharing

"In the meantime, as all of us stumble over the challenges of living in a world without forgetting, we need to learn new forms of empathy, new ways of defining ourselves without reference to what others say about us and new ways of forgiving one another for the digital trails that will follow us forever."

-Professor Jeffrey Rosen

The Web Means the End of Forgetting - NYTimes.com

Jeff's thesis is better, but Rosen drops MANY genius bombs in this essay. A good read. I hadn't even heard of some of the websites he listed. I won't ruin it for you.

Scary stuff though! Enjoy.

the sky might fall

but i'm not worried at all, at all, at alllllll

hi out there in blog world. what's the word? everything's good over here. sorry for the lack of caps right now, but oh well.

ummmm it's getting toward the end of august. blast! time's goin too fast.

uhhh not sure what to talk about. i could give you the recap of my wknd, but...eh.

oooh how about this?! -- i'm planning on rowing in head of the charles with my dad in the father/son doubles race. it's technically the "parent/child" race. what this means is that i've gotta train for the next two months and get myself in shape. i'm in ok shape now, but i gotta erg more.

so yeah, that's exciting. head of the charles is awesome. i've only raced in 8s before. the father/son race is pretty mellow, but i still wanna have a good piece.

Whether that’s right or not, I won’t ever know -- Drake lyrics. Too many Drake mixtapes. Nattymari is my new favorite chopped and screwed producer. Name of his latest mixtape? – “Orange Mocha Frappucino.” Sheer genius.

peace

World record!

The Virgin GB Row 2010 team celebrates completing their rowing challenge around Great Britain - becoming the first female crew to complete the feat - on the River Thames in London July 23. (AP Photo/Gareth Fuller-pa)

BBC News - All-female crew first women to row round Britain

"During their journey, the women have been swamped by huge waves, survived storms, almost sunk and navigated some of the most treacherous tides on the planet.

At one point, Ms Madsen broke her finger when she was setting off a flare to warn off a ship that was on a collision course with Go Commando.

She carried on rowing by strapping her hand to her oar."

Hit the road Shaq

Song that I’m currently obsessed with – “You Neva Know” by Husalah

Good stuff. So whatup yall. Summer’s winding down. Omg did I just say that? What a horrible thought.

But whatever it’s been a great summer. Great weather, plenty of cookouts, plenty of parties. A lot of hanging out, a lot of productivity. Many fruits and vegetables, many sports games. All good things.

So yeah. Shaquille O’Neal is going to be a Celtic next year! Ridiculous! Should be fun. Green Diesel, biofuel style.

Hmmmm. So what other stuff is going on. Did I tell you about the new glasses that I’m looking at? I wanna get the drill-mounted kind that don’t have any rims. Then it’ll look less like I’m wearing glasses, which is what I’m going for. I like the ones by Silhouette. Anyway, new glasses are a big deal cause I wear them everyday (albeit very begrudgingly).

In two weeks I think I’m gonna be on cape cod, lovin life. Wellfleet=joy. So many nice beaches and the water on the bay side is so warm.

Don Wyper is running a marathon and raising money to beat cancer. It’s a Wype Out Cancer campaign! He’s gonna try to do it under 3 hours. Keep in mind that Don is 6’ 4” and 200 pounds and is a natural rower and swimmer, so going out and trying to do something like this is very impressive. Read about his journey and donate at his blog -- "Wype" Out Cancer

The first patriots preseason game is tomorrow night, very exciting.

Last night I went to a friends place in Lincoln and we made homemade pesto with basil from their garden. Yummm. Side note – I got peaches and blueberries from the farmers market this weekend that were outrageously good.

Ok, take it easy, Dave

jolly green

just had my second dartmouth reunion of the summer. incredibly fun. this summer is flying by! i cant believe it.

have i not mentioned that august is my favorite month? is it because eight is my favorite number? unclear.

naw i like august cause it's summer (my favorite month), and it's nice and lazy. it's before school starts, before football starts, so it feels like there's not a whole lot going on. it's just a time to relax and take things easy.

the only problem is that i'm pretty bad at taking anything easy. i do everything way too fast sometimes. last night i wrote a letter and i actually had to rewrite it because i realized that my handwriting is so horrible because i write so fast. of course i'm typing really fast right now too, but i can't really control that.

t y p i n g s l o w i s n o t f e a s i b l e i n t h i s d a y a n d a g e

also, regardless of how fast i type, my handwriting online is always impeccable :) though my capitalizing and punctuation leaves something to be desired

happy august everyone, i'll be in touch

peace, Dave

freestyle blogging

folks, what's happenin. i'm feelin the bloggin in my fingertips. i want to feel prolific and boundless. looking upward i see the top of the hill and there is likely another hill beyond.

recently i've been guiding cupcake franchises into new growth spurts. i tell them -- look, if you charge 3 dollars for a cupcake and it's not that big, well then it better be really, really good. do they listen to me? whether they do not, they'll soon find out if it was worth it.

listening to rinse 11 by oneman right now.

i focus a lot on sports and music. but do it too much? is there an answer? is there a right and wrong answer?

ps i really need new glasses. i've been driving around with a new prescription in my car for months. DAVE GO TO THE GLASSES STORE TMRW AT LUNCH.

hit up two farmers markets this weekend. yesterday i went to the winchester farmers market. i bought cilanto and pok choi (i didnt realize it could be spelled with a p) from the dude at the hmong farmstand. their farm is in lancaster. i've gotten pok choi from them before in union sq and i asked the guy why they were always so clean and he said that he didnt know but his mom cleaned him

i made guacamole with local cilantro and local tomato and it was delicious. everyone loved it at the bbq that i spent the day at. success. i ate garlic cilantro scrambled eggs today which were good, got the recipe from allrecipes.com

today i went to the charles sq farmers market in harvard sq. got green peppers, hot peppers, potatoes, onions, apples, peaches, heirloom tomatoes. now i just gotta eat em all! i think i should just chop up the potatoes and onions and peppers real small and just try to cook em with some oil in a skillet. i dono tho we'll see i'll make some consultations.

football at fenway and die antwoord

i went to see football at fenway wednesday night, sporting vs celtic. unreal. once in a lifetime experience.

last night i saw die antwoord (and sleigh bells, who also rocked) at the royale. also unreal. also once in a lifetime experience.

i'll try to rally and write up some more detailed recaps

summer is my favorite season, and i'm just trying to enjoy myself, but i miss blogging

peace

-Dave

i am still here

i promise

considering coming back from sabbatical

twas a good world cup, viva espana

a title that does not have a negative word in it

i can't stand negativity, even a blog post that has a negative word in it

it's summer, let's celebrate with keggy the keg

sending you positive vibrations...

-splatman

disgraceful

that goal that england scored not being a goal. _____ you fifa. get it together. i feel bad for english fans. give germany credit.

scary stuff. i might have to give up fancy sushi tuna permanently:

Tuna’s End - NYTimes.com

"On the high seas, the bluefin is being hunted into extinction. Will we ever be able to think about seafood the same way?"

blogger on quasi sabbatical

until further notice. usa won today tho.

blogger at reunion

i'm at reunion for the weekend. let's go celtics, let's go usa

check this out, nuts! -- Sailor artist Reid Stowe completes record 1,152-day voyage | Sport | The Guardian