KingLou Drops Science 2.0

yesterday we had a little BBQ action in the courtyard. It was nice. It almost didn't happen though. As usual we kind of thought about having a BBQ and talked about it and waffled until the day before. Yes! We'll do it! So we bought all this stuff to eat and called some people. I broke out the Oaxacan Grilling Paste from Williams Sonoma. We were SERIOUS! So after brunch at the Cadman Plaza Diner, a favorite with local defendants of the Brooklyn Court System, we decided to break out the bikes and drag ace around Brooklyn some. When Jodi went to get her bike she noticed a sign that said "Court yard reserved for BBQ today." WTF! We never saw that sign! OH MAN! We were so bummed. After our ride, a six point six mile ride around Prospect Park and Cobble Hill, we calmed down and called the people who were having the BBQ to see how serious they were about hogging the patio. Sometimes people hog it for a crazy party, like 20 people or something crazy like that. But sometimes they hog it for themselves and 2-3 other people. If it's only a few people we've successfully jumped in without too much protest. Luckily it turned out to be a good situation. They were actually done way before we even needed to go down to start cooking. The downside of the day was that Ace fell near the end of the BBQ and really scraped his knee. Like bad. He was kind of pointing to it and hobbling and we lifted up his pants and it was a little bloody smear. So I took him upstairs for first-aid. I applied some hydrogenperoxide. It fizzed up and apparently it stung quite a bit. Ace was shaking with pain. It was a real downer. Of course he also peeled off the band-aids and all the neosporin that we applied. We didn't get a band-aid on until we slapped it on right before we jammed his PJ's on. That sort of thing makes Jodi really sad but luckily I am pretty good with it. Tomorrow we're going to try to ride our bikes to Prospect Park and actually have a picnic or at least a nice snack. Then Gunshow is rehearsing to accomodate my short memory for all things related to Jodi's friends wedding. Thank you Gunshow.

I am watching "The Day After Tomorrow" What a fucking drag. Seriously, I don't know how much misery I can handle in a movie anymore. There is some serious death and misery going on in this movie. Of course it has a happy ending for those who live. Those types of movies fill me with absolute dread. Certain of my friends would scoff at my obsessive thinking when it comes to those movies. What would I do? How would I survive? The answer? I wouldn't. I would die like 80% of the other idiots. It's fleet week. As usual I have no idea until I am surrounded by dudes in sailor suits. Since I started riding my bike I have had very few days that were interrupted by some sort of river commerce. But it's rare. And when it happens it's always like a cruise ship. A giant ship towering above the pier. But I had no idea what was coming when I left for the west side on my bike today. First of all I was griped with an insane need to empty my bowels as I crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. Normally once I am on my bike I am fine as far as going to the bathroom goes. My body goes into bike mode and I don't have to go until I get to my destination. I won't go into details but it was a good thing I decided to come home. After that I got back on the bike and headed uptown. The ride was pretty devoid of cyclists because the forecast was for rain. It was a miserable ride just because of the wind and my general attitude after having to turn home. As I approached the Intrepid things got really crazy. There were barricades everywhere. Mainly one cutting the bike path into two seperate lanes. I chose the lane that should have been, like a car road, uptown. Except it didn't matter which lane I was in. There were people thick in each lane going any way they liked. At the middle was a clot of army dudes in camoflage. They were obviously supposed to be on some kind of watch but they were all shooting the shit and they were all just standing in the middle of the path. Once I was past them it was easy going until I got to the final check point where a soldier who was REALLY on guard, with a machine gun and so on, gave me a very military gesture indicating it was okay for me to pass. It was kind of a sharp chop across the chest in the direction I was going. It was very clear. The sketch run at the People's Improv Theater is right around the corner. I am a little nervous. We have only had one rehearsal and now I just found out that I might have to miss the last one because I fucked up and forgot that Jodi's friend is getting married that day and I said I would go to the reception. URGH... Now I am going to go to bed. Tomorrow

I was installing some new software recently when I noticed that I only had about 10 gigabytes of space left on my system drive. I don't like to run out of space so I started to look for stuff to throw out. Jackpot. I found old files I had archived since 1995. Programs that only run in OS 8. Crazy old emails from my AOL account. For some reason I chose to archive all these emails with subjects like "MY COCK!", "Chronic Crotch Rot" and "Hey Faggot." Here is the content of an email entitled "Rectal Anuerism" It was written by my cousin in response to some email I wrote him I guess. I don't have the original emails for these but you can imagine what I wrote. He IS a DOCTOR. I DIDN'T have a rectal anuerism. Sir, I have a waiting room full of patients who don't take kindly to your whining! You think you know pain! You know nothing! I'll cauterize your aneurysm with a red hot poker! Seriously, though, since you need quick relief and I'm tied up right now, why don't you sit on an icepick? It will burst the dilated blood vessel (the aneurysm) and immediately relieve the pain. Then,as long as the hemorrhaging is not too severe, you can be on yourmerry way. Try stuffing something up there to apply local pressure in order to tamponade (as we say in our medical jargon) the bleeding site. If it doesn't work, you may start to feel dizzy, in which case you should call 911. Otherwise, to stave off infection, insert neosporin suppositories twice daily for two weeks. Fever or painfulr ectal swelling, or drainage of pus from the anus, should be regarded as ominous signs of a serious infection. If these should appear,give my office a call to set up an appointment. Any questions? Good luck! All the emails I found had similar gists. Not much has changed in 10 years. I also found an old video I edited for my friend Guy Smit. It's like a 11mb download and the audio is blown out but I still enjoy the rawness of it. The songs lyrics are hilarious. In work land I keep getting conflicting info about how things work at the end of the year. Today I got an email specifically mentioning that this group understood that the AV office keeps regular hours and wasn't expected to stay late. Then suddenly at the last possible moment someone was like "You're staying for the event, right?" They told me that there was free beer if I stayed to which I replied "I can't pay my nanny in beer. Luckily my boss offered to stay. If I hadn't gotten to leave then the nanny would have been stuck here until close to 10pm. Next is the year end show. People keep telling me it's crazy. When I ask for specifics they just say it is. Sigh. I guess we'll see. I also got a shitty snooty letter from a Real Estate class professor who basically demanded that his needs be met at the last minute. His email rudely had lots of CAPS for EMPHASIS. I will need the equipment EACH AND EVERY blah blah blah. It made me pretty angry. Off to bed.

Just wanted to make a quicl post in the spirit of making posts at all. I seem to have hit a weird patch where I keep thinking "Why the Hell would I blog about that?" Maybe I am growing up? God, I hope not. More likely I am just going through the usual self-esteem valley in the sine wave of my life. Anyway.... Here is a picture of Ace in his baby cage.

We put it up and he actually seemed excited by it. Like we were tricking out his crib with some new super entertainment gadget. Like "Pimp my Crib." but an actual crib and not a euphemism for a place to live. Damn you hip-hop and your reassigment of word meaning. I'm libel to bus' a cap in your dome. You feel me? Ace actually asked me to put him in his crib today so he could jump around like crazy with the tent zipped up. This hasn't quelled his desire to crawl out at all. The minute the tent is unzipped he is throwing his leg up to the lip of the crib to escape. He's still freaking out a bit at bed but now we think it's because he has 2 new teeth coming in on the bottom. That'd make anyone crabby. Work is about to get crazy and then good again. Classes are over and now it's time for the end of year show. From what I understand it's just crazy chaos the whole time. Why? Because no one gets their shit together until the last minute. I gave a list of equipment available to the dean's office. The first request that came in wanted 1/2 the available stuff. How's that for planning. Dear Archi-jerks: How about scaling down your retardedly over-reaching, over ambitious show-offery. After that is the graduation. I actually have to sit through 2 seperate sessions of graduation. It's probably going to take all morning - afternoon and talk about boring. My own graduation was pretty boring. Having to sit through someone else's is just terrible. After that we have about 2 weeks of down time to fix things that are broken. The list of things to fix isn't actually that long but much of the list involves things I don't actually have control of. Like making cabinets and stuff. If I can resist the urge to sit in the sun and do nothing I think we can really streamline some seriously irritating stuff. The bike ride to work has been fantastic lately. Since my crash I have been ringing my bell a WHOLE LOT. Better that I give you a minor scare with my bell than lay you out. And laying out is what will happen to the next person who steps into my path. TRY ME!

On friday as Jodi and I were just settling in for the evening we were shocked to discover a new wrinkle in the Ace matrix. We had just put him down to sleep and he reacted as he sometimes does by wailing husterically. He really only loses his shit like once every 3-4 months. Sometimes he is awake in the crib and babbles to himself. Mostly he talks about how he would have done things differently if he had the chance to go back and do them again. But sometimes he just doesn't want to go to bed and wails like he is on fire. We've only had to go and comfort him like 2 times. Usually he cries really hard for a second and then falls asleep. But this night he was just going and going. I decided I would go in and explain to him that it was bedtime and that he needed to go to sleep. I opened the door and found Ace right in the middle of a crib jail break. He was hanging half out of the crib. When he saw me he let go and fell to the ground. I... FREAKED. He was fine. But Jodi and I were freaked. #1) Because he fell from about four feet in the air. #2) Because he was crying like crazy. #3) Because he can get out of the crib! I immediately got some tools and lowered his crib as low as it can go. It was something that was long overdue. Obviously. Saturday was without occurance of crazy behavior. Ace and I went to storytime at Barnes & Noble. I chased Ace for about an hour in the store then we went home. He went to sleep that night without a peep. Now on to Sunday. We went to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden to see the Cherry Blossom Festival. It was very pretty.

It was a pretty tiring day for all involved. After the usual bath and bottle Ace was ready to go down... or was he. As Jodi closed the door to Ace's room she indicated that he wasn't asleep and sure enough as she reached the couch he started wailing. Jodi and I sat on the couch discussing our options for dealing with this. It sounded like Ace was jumping in the crib, which is something he does occasionally so we didn't thing of doing anything. Suddenly Ace's door popped open. It had been doing that lately due to all the cross drafts in the apartment. But this time it was making more noise than just popping open. Suddenly, there was was Ace. He was walking towards us in his PJ's and smiling. Jodi and I were like "AHHHHH!!!! HE GOT OUT AGAIN!!!!" We didn't know what to do. I took him back in and lay him down again. He was very compliant. He lay almost perfectly still as I stroked him. After about 10 minutes of stroking I decided he was probably mellow enough to leave. I stood up and walked out. No sooner did I close the door that Ace began to scream again. I was talking to Jodi for a second and decided to peak back into the room. To my horror Ace was almost fully hanging out of the crib again. I rushed in and scooped him off the side of the crib and lay him back down. He complained for a second then went back to being mellow and just lying there. All the while I could see his eyes staring at me in the dark. Finally I felt he was on the verge of sleep again. I stood up. I made it out of the room again and again he started screaming. I peaked in again and sure enough he was half out of the crib AGAIN. He really picked that up fast. This time Jodi stayed with him for I think close to twenty minutes and he finally fell asleep. Holy Moley! Did that suck. Well tomorrow Jodi is going to go to BuyBuyBaby and see if she can pick up a crib tent. I think my mother told me that they had to put something over the crib to keep me in. Of course that was Puerto Rico in the 70's so it was probably some kind of animal or left over military ordinance. Work continues to be weirdly mellow. I had to fire one of my assistants who was pretty regularly too lazy to show up for her morning shift. Since she wasn't there I often got the joy of being yelled at by some irate professor. I should have done it sooner but I kept hoping she'd shape up. I need to get more managerial. YOUR FIRED, SHITBAG! I like the sound of that.