Two Easy Pieces

Often, when I am confronted with something that strikes me as unlikely or strange, but which nevertheless can be verified to be quite true, I find an immediate need to create, or concoct, for myself a suitable explanation or rationalization for why this thing is the way it is. Take, for example, the following statement:

Theo Epstein recently sat down with Scott Boras, agent for both Alex Rodriguez and Jason Varitek, to discuss, among other things, the possibility of A-Rod joining the Red Sox next year.

This statement, apart from the immediate bout of nausea and vomiting that it inspired when I first read it, also made me aware of one unlikely fact: Alex Rodriguez and Jason Varitek have the same agent. Many Red Sox fans may wonder, and in fact have wondered, how this could be possible. Well, never fear, for I have rationalized this crazy situation to my own satisfaction. So read on, and sleep better for it, my friends.

Scott Boras, is, as far as Major League Baseball is concerned, first and foremost, an Agent. He may be a father, he may be a husband, he may, for that matter, be a complete asshole and a cockring. But he is still an agent. And, let's face it, he's one of the best agents available, which is why both A-Rod and V-Tek pay him a significant slice of their annual salary to represent them. Here's how I imagine Boras operating:

Scott Boras walks into a room where one of his clients sits. He extends his hand, smiles widely, and says "Hi, I'm Scott, your agent. I'm here to do everything in my power to make sure you make as much money as you can possibly make, no exceptions, no excuses."

Now, say the client is someone like Alex Rodriguez. At this point in the conversation, Alex takes Boras's hand, smiles even more widely, and says "Sounds perfect, Scott. Do whatever you have to do." Then A-Rod reaches down and presses a button on the table (a button that he brings with him everywhere he goes), which results in a sound like that of a cash register drawer opening (k-ching!), at which time A-Rod's pupils turn to dollar signs, and his tongue rolls out of his mouth, down onto the table, and continues to unroll like a red carpet, down onto the floor and out the door of the room.

Sound good so far? Okay, now imagine the client is someone more like Jason Varitek. Scott Boras walks into the room and gives the same intro about making Jason as much money as he can possibly make. Jason smiles meekly, takes Boras's hand, and says "Sounds good, Scott, that's your job, but I want to play with the Red Sox again next year. I love the city and I love my teammates. If it's not possible, then you do what you have to do, but staying in Boston is my first priority."

And what does Scott Boras, premier agent extraordinaire, do? He does whatever Varitek says, is what he does. Because, at the end of the day, he is still an agent. He works for Varitek, not the other way around. Which is why, when Alex Rodriguez turns down an option to make more money than God for three more years, working in the Second Greatest City in the World, for the formerly Greatest Baseball Franchise in the League, and people say "Oh, that's classic Scott Boras," they are wrong. They are fucking wrong. It's classic Alex Rodriguez. End of story.

Don't ask me why I'm so angry about this.

~ n e w s e c t i o n ~

On an unrelated note, I went to the grocery store yesterday. The shopping went largely without incident, so I won't talk about that. I'll assume that everyone reading this has been shopping at a grocery store and knows how it works, or, at least, has seen it done on television. Instead I would like to relate to you what transpired after I arrived at the checkout line.

When I pulled up, I chose a register where there was one couple about to finish paying, and nobody else waiting. I commenced to unload my groceries onto the belt. Meanwhile, the cashier (for sake of anonymity, and because I purposefully forgot his worthless name, let's call him George) is trying to clear up some confusion about a pair of rolls that the couple has picked out for themselves from the bakery.

"What kind of rolls are these?" asks George.

"I don't know, they were four for a dollar, I think," says the woman. A reasonable response, given that George should know how to charge fifty cents to someone without knowing what kind of rolls they are, along with the fact that they were obviously just fucking rolls. But no, George tells the couple that they need to go back and find out what kind of rolls they are, or he will risk overcharging them, which he, of course, doesn't want to do. So the man trying to buy the rolls goes all the way back to the bakery and looks for the name of the fucking rolls. Meanwhile, I have emptied my entire cart onto the belt, and am looking at George.

George is just fucking standing there doing absolutely nothing.

This is a good time to mention that George is about seventeen or eighteen years old. He could be as old as 21, but I'm still not willing to accept that as being completely possible. Soon, the man comes back and gives George the name of the rolls: "Tapeta rolls. T-A-P-E-T-A," the man says in a clear voice and in English.

"Ta...what?" says George. The man repeats the nonsense word, followed by a slower version of the spelling. After repeated attempts, George's ability to repeat the word that he has heard, but not to spell it out, convinces everyone within earshot that he has a learning disability. He is also unable to find the Tapeta rolls on his little magic screen of foods. George calls over his supervisor to help. The supervisor sees the problem immediately, and also solves it swiftly by charging the couple fifty cents and sending them on their way. Thank God for George's supervisor.

This would be a good time to mention that George's supervisor is a fifteen-year-old girl.

Finally, it's my turn. Before he starts to scan my items, I hand George a coupon for $1.50 off of a gallon of milk, which he sets aside for later. He then asks me a question that I am ready for: "Do you have a membership card?"

This is my first time at this particular chain of supermarkets, and I anticipate future visits, so naturally my answer is "No, but can I get one?"

"Oh, no, I'm sorry," is George's response. "I mean, I could scan mine for you, but . . . you'll have to go over there to the desk and get one after you check out."

"Well, can't I get one now?"

"Well, no, I mean, unless you're already a member, I can't . . . you know what I mean?"

"No. What do you mean?" George, of course, can't tell me what he means, because he doesn't even know. At this point, I am amazed he is standing on two legs all on his own. He begins to scan through my items, which he places on a small platform surrounded by plastic bags. Not in a bag, on the platform. The bags are closer to him than the platform, but he continues to reach past them with every item, to place it on the small platform. There is no bagger present, so I start to take the items down and put them in bags. George comes to a bag of romaine lettuce. He knows he is supposed to do something, but he is not sure of what. He looks at me.

"Is this celery?"

"That's romaine lettuce?" Are you from another planet?

"Oh, romaine lettuce. What are these?" He holds up another bag.

"Those are jalapeno peppers," you fucking retard. It goes on like this.

Then, mercifully, we are at the end. George reaches down to the register and picks up my coupon. He looks at it. "Oh, oops." He forgot to scan it. He looks at it for longer. You've got to be fucking kidding me, George, I think, just scan it in, or type in $1.50 off or something, and let me leave. But no, George has other ideas.

"Well, it's good until '08, do you want to just keep it, and use it next time?" No, no I do not, but I can see that I have no options here, George. At this point, I would like nothing more than to call over your supervisor and demand my $10 that you have cost me by 1) denying me the ability to apply for a membership card, and 2) neglecting my coupon, except that your supervisor is a fifteen-year old girl, and, frankly George, I am already so embarrassed for you that I can't take the scene that it would cause. No, I will pay the bill and leave quietly, George, but be warned: I will tell your story. I will tell it on the internet for all to read. I will change your name (unless it really was George, in which case, I apologize), but that is more than you deserve.

Good day, George. Good day.

Everything is Funnier with a British Accent

Some time in the past year, when I was still attending school in the bustling metropolis known as Houston, Texas, before the icy fingers of adulthood came silently through my bedside window to pull me from the relative comfort of my graduate student bed (mattress on the floor) and deposit me unceremoniously into that void known in some circles as a "transition period," but which may be more accurately described as "unemployment," I checked a book out of the library. A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell, volume one. I began to read it, but found that it did not keep my interest. It was long-winded, meandering, and about as British as bangers and mash. For the few months until graduation, it did little but hold down the corner of my new rug nearest to the mattress on the floor. Then came graduation, along with a laundry list of things to do during the week before the big day, which included, but was not limited to: laundry, cleaning, passing the remaining required classes, packing all of my belongings, seeing those last things I would always wish I had seen, saying goodbye, reflecting on two amazingly fast years, wondering about all that could have been, and, somewhere in there, returning books to the library. In the chaos, I forgot about Anthony Powell.

Three months later (three days ago), about when the weight of living once again in the house where I spent my formative years started to really be felt, I found the same book on my parents' bookshelf. For some reason, it once again appealed to me as it had before I had begun to read it, and I decided to give it another try. This is how I made my most recent profound discovery, which I have related to you in the title of this entry. As an example, or perhaps an illuminating exercise for you readers, consider the following passage, taken from A Buyer's Market, the second book of the first volume or "movement" of this massive work (there are four "movements," each one containing three books, for a grand total of approximately ten gajillion pages). Read it once normally, as you would read any book. Go.

"She turned to the sideboard that stood by our table, upon which plates, dishes, decanters, and bottles had been placed out of the way before removal. Among this residue stood an enormous sugar castor topped with a heavy silver nozzle. Barbara must suddenly have conceived the idea of sprinkling a few grains of this sugar over Widmerpool, as if in literal application of her theory that he 'needed sweetening,' because she picked up this receptacle and shook it over him. For some reason, perhaps because it was so full, no sugar at first sprayed out. Barbara now tipped the castor so that it was poised vertically over Widmerpool's head, holding it there like the sword of Damocles above the tyrant. However, unlike the merely minatory quiescence of that normally inactive weapon, a state of dispensation was not in this case maintained, and suddenly, without the slightest warning, the massive silver apex of the castor dropped from its base, as if severed by the slash of some invisible machinery, and crashed heavily to the floor: the sugar pouring out on to Widmerpool's head in a dense and overwhelming cascade.

"More from surprise than because she wished additionally to torment him, Barbara did not remove her hand before the whole contents of the vessel - which voided itself in an instant of time - had descended upon his head and shoulders, covering him with sugar more completely than might have been thought possible in so brief a space. Widmerpool's rather sparse hair had been liberally greased with a dressing - the sweetish smell of which I remembered as somewhat disagreeable when applied in France - this lubricant retaining the grains of sugar, which, as they adhered thickly to his skull, gave him the appearance of having turned white with shock at a single stroke; which, judging by what could be seen of his expression, he might very well in reality have done underneath the glittering incrustations that enveloped his head and shoulders. He had writhed sideways to avoid the downpour, and a cataract of sugar had entered the space between neck and collar; yet another jet streaming between eyes and spectacles."

Okay. Kind of boring, right? I mean, maybe funny if you're there, but the description is so long and detailed that you lose interest almost immediately.

Now comes the fun part. Go back and read the passage again, but this time, read it as if you have a thick British accent, and are reading it aloud. Read it aloud, if you like (and if you are alone). If your British accent is terrible, then imagine it is being read by John Cleese or someone of that ilk. Go ahead, do it now. I'll wait.

Results? Hilarious! Suddenly, a boring description of a humorous event becomes unbelievably funny. And why? All you did was read it in a funny accent. Well, it turns out that the entire book works like this. If you read it like any book, it's boring and you lose interest. If you read it as if it is being read aloud, in a ridiculous British accent, everything is funny. I think this might be because the book is written mostly in those sarcastic, aloof tones that one associates with high-brow British humor (no, wait, "humour"). This particular episode with the sugar castor came at the end of about ninety pages of build-up, and is without rival the funniest moment of the book up to that point. So it's a lot of material to push your way through, and with little reward, but, mercifully, if you stick to the accent, it becomes much more fun and interesting.

This was, incidentally, not the only discovery I made about A Dance to the Music of Time upon picking it up again. I also discovered that the contents of the first volume, though written from the perspective of a young British aristocrat in the '20s or '30s, speak fairly directly to my present situation. A former student, with few job prospects, ventures out into the real world and finds it not as inhospitable as he would have thought. Transition periods, wherever they occur, always seem much shorter once they are over than they did at the time. Familiar faces, often completely unexpected ones (such as our hapless Widmerpool), pop out of the crowd repeatedly and at every turn. And, once in a while, something hysterically funny happens. It is difficult, while caught in the limbo between school and a job, wanting both to return to the former and, at the same time, to fast-forward to the latter, to appreciate the big picture, that these things do work themselves out with time. Maybe Anthony Powell can help me to relax and enjoy this transition period.

Or maybe I just enjoy reading aloud in a ridiculous accent.

Beer is Good for Me

Last week my best student auditioned for Region Orchestra, and he placed fifth! Unfortunately, they only take four trombones for the orchestra. But he was so close! He was pretty disappointed, so I tried to tell him that he did really well. Especially since last year he didn't even make Region Band, and they take about 25 trombones for Region Band (I think they then split them up into two bands, this stuff is a really big deal in Texas if you couldn't guess). Now he's top five in the region! Athough I guess not everybody auditions for the orchestra, so he might not do quite as well in the band audition, but I think he probably will do very well. I feel a little bad for him, because he is by far the best trombone player at this High School where I teach, but, as High School trombone players go, I can tell he's not among the very best overall. Still, he expects himself to place at the top of everything, because he's used to being the best at it. So I don't quite know what to say to him when things don't go his way like this.

But I'm excited because this year I have two students who have, I think, a good shot at making region band. They're both seniors, and they both have been taking lessons with me now for a year and a half. If I can get them both to make regions this year, after they didn't come close last year, I'll feel pretty good about how much I have helped overall. For a school to go from zero to two Region Band trombone players in just one year, that's got to say something about the school's trombone teacher, right? There's one more student who could be a sleeper, but I doubt he'll make it. He really wants to get in, and he practices a lot, but he still kind of has that 7th Grade sound, like a mix between a trombone and a duck call, and I'm not really sure how to get rid of it. Still, he's just a sophomore, he has time.

I sang in the Percussion Ensemble concert tonight. That's right. It was a command performance, if I do say so myself. So if anyone is looking for a singer to round out their traditional folkloric Afro-Cuban band, you know who to ask. I'll be waiting by the phone.

And thus begins my "five concerts in six days" Pre-Thanksgiving extravaganza. Tonight was the Percussion Ensemble (doesn't really count, because I just belted out some repeated phrases in a language I didn't understand while other people banged on things), tomorrow and Sunday are the Brass Choir with Organ concerts (complete with fifteen brass players blasting the hell out of the smallest, most reverberative organ hall you will ever find...really, really bad idea), Monday is the Studio Recital, and Tuesday is "Grand Pianola Music" by John Adams. So when the vacation finally comes on Wednesday, I'll definitely have plenty to be thankful for. Like not being in fucking Texas, if only for a few days out of the year.

Latest addiction: lonelygirl15.com. No, it's not porn, though it is slightly voyeuristic. I found some of the videos somehow on YouTube and thought they were real people, and then by the time I found out they weren't I was hooked. Even though it's fake, you gotta hand it to the people who make the videos, they're pretty realistic. And the acting is pretty good.

Oh my God. Awesome.

Haven't you ever wondered, what would the bottom of the 10th Inning of the 1986 World Series look like, if it was played on RBI Baseball? I know I have. As painful as it may be, you absolutely have to watch this video.

Genius at Work

I am a genius! You know why? Because I fixed our toilet!

Our toilet, in recent weeks/months, has decided to let certain essential mechanisms cease functioning properly. Usually, after using our toilet, one would pull the little lever which is normally used to "flush" the toilet. This lever is connected, inside the upper tank of the toilet, to a chain, which is in turn connected to a rubber stopper which is keeping the water in the upper tank from going down into the bowl. Usually, pulling this lever causes the rubber stopper to rise, thus releasing the water held in the upper tank. As the water level in the tank goes down, a flotation device connected to a water flow mechanism also goes down. When it reaches a certain point, the flotation device triggers the water flow mechanism to begin to refill the upper tank of the toilet. Assumedly, by this point, all the water should be out of the tank, and the rubber stopper should have assumed its original position, thus blocking the new water from leaving the tank.

Our toilet was getting this process wrong in two ways. First, when one would pull the lever, the stopper would rise, but then, because the chain connecting the lever to the stopper is way too long, it would drop down below the stopper and get stuck, thus leaving a way for the new water entering the tank to escape. Normally, this would mean that our toilet would never stop trying to refill the upper tank after a given flush, that is until one fixed the chain and replaced the stopper. But our toilet wasn't even bothering to try to fill the upper tank with water after a flush. Upon investigation, it was decided that this was because the flotation device that was supposed to trigger the water flow mechanism was not doing so. It was not heavy enough to get itself down to the point at which water would start to flow back into the tank.

The result of these two separate but equally devastating mechanical failures was that, after each time one flushed our toilet, one would have to execute two extra maneuvers, an extra jiggle of the lever to release the trapped chain, as well as a slight push on the flotation device to trigger the water flow mechanism, in order to ensure that the toilet would be ready for its next use. Because of the constant need to access the flotation device inside the tank, the lid to the upper tank had been permanently removed, and we had been living in this primitive way for some time. Well, this morning I decided that enough was enough.

First I had to address the problem of the chain, which wasn't all that difficult. I just had to shorten the chain by changing which link of the chain was connected to the lever. In fact, this wasn't even really my idea, I think our landlord's plumber had performed this trick previously.

So that just left the mystery of the underweight flotation device. There was already a counterweight attached to the floater, which obviously wasn't doing its job, so my first idea was to get something else that was heavy but small that I could attach to that counterweight. But the problem was how to attach an object to the counterweight. If it was something I could get on a safety pin, that would work (safety pins were among the first things I found when searching the kitchen). But anything small and heavy would probably be solid metal, like coins or batteries (I did consider a 9 volt battery. Bad idea? Hard to say...). This got me thinking, what else do I know of that is heavy for its size? What besides metal can take up a relatively small space but weigh a substantial amount?

Water. Water is heavy! And yet, water floats! In water! I began to hatch a plan, a plan so simple and yet so elegant that it could not possibly fail. I found an empty (and clean) plastic yogurt cup. I stuck a large safety pin through the side. I put the safety pin around the metal bar connecting the counterweight to the flotation device in the upper tank of the toilet. At first glance, there's a yogurt cup in the toilet. But upon closer inspection, what is its function? When the tank fills with water, so does the cup. When you flush the toilet, the tank empties, but the cup does not, and the heavy water pulls down on the flotation device, enough to trigger the water flow mechanism. When the water in the tank begins to fill back up, the cup floats back up with it, allowing the flotation device to once again rise, and cut off the flow of water until the next flush.

So there you have it. Our toilet is once again functioning as it once did, in a consistent and flawless manner which will allow us to put the lid back on the tank, and go about our lives secure in the knowledge that each trip to the toilet will require only one push of a lever, and nothing more. You can't put a premium on that kind of peace of mind.

Oh, and I will now begin answering to "MacGyver."