Bronce Braezeale

What, or who, is Bronce Braezeale?

A scientific name of a dinosaur? A famous cyclist? The world's tallest man? The guy who finally caught Billy the Kid?

Nope. With a name like Bronce Braezeale, how do you become a member of the Fidelity Bond Claims Department at AIG? What a bad ass name, though. I had to pick up and deliver some files from him today at work. Nice guy. I also had a run in with one of the higher ups at AIG. He said it was a pleasure to meet me. I reminded him that we had bumped into each other one time earlier, when I got him some files during the fire drill at AIG. I explained that he'd help me escape.

Actually, what I said, verbatim, was, 'I've met you once before, when you helped me escape the rat race during the fire drill'.

There are two things that are good about this statement. One is that my brief journey into free style rapping has given me a knack for the meter of a sentence, as well as throwing in some internal rhyming. Silky smooth.

But more importantly, I've learned from working here with a bunch of big wigs is that they love love love cliches (hence the term big wig). I think you could guess the hierarchy of people by having a five minute conversation with each of them and counting the number of cliches they manage to throw in. If you order from most to least, you'll get from the Big Cheese to the Secretary with unerring accuracy. Or at least this is my hypothesis. Would someone fund me to see if this is an accurate statement. At my office, without question, you could rank the seniority of the lawyers by the amount of hackneyed things they say. Its really bizarre actually. Maybe some strange rite of passage or something.

I'm guessing I'm the only person who has any idea what I'm talking about at this point.

So, I'll leave you with the tidbit that it is a whopping 60 degrees (F) in NYC today and the fair weather also brings home V from Vilnius, hopefully with all sorts of goodies for me.

Thanksgiving Weekend

Interesting weekend. After Thanksgiving dinner, me and a bunch of friends headed up to the Poconos for an intense 3 days of board gaming and card playing. I got to sleep just before sunrise every morning. But, just barely.

At first, I was completely unexcited about this trip as I was going to be the 5th wheel. I had visions of me sitting in a corner by myself with a beer and a frown on my face. But, with Vaiva in the Motherland (Lithuania) and my local bars overflowing with college kids home for the weekend. I thought I'd have nothing better to do than sit in the corner and frown, so what the hey. Luckily my friend Matt hopped in last minute, and James drove up the next day. With two other unattached hombres the good times began to roll. Unencumbered by the non-choice of playing with your girlfriend in board games, I was able to amass a large number of victories among the weaker teams.

The cold temperature outside (in the teens for most of the trip) trapped us inside for most of the weekend and as cabin fever began to set in, freestyle rapping spontaneously arose as a method of entertainment. The only one that sticks in my head, though, is 'I put my boozie inside my koozie and I go searching for floozies'. The record execs won't be knocking on any of our doors in the near future.

Anyway, the best part of the whole thing was how enjoyable the good night's sleep I got on Sunday night before work was. I think I'm a little shot for the next week or so, though, so I don't expect to be leaving the house much.

Jon...Jon are you out there?

The concert I attended this weekend exceeded my expectations. What a diverse musical seen it provided

The first band were some weak teen chick band from Ithaca who was met with responses of indifference to threats of homicide if they didn't leave (I actually saw one guy in the pit dancing, but I'm not sure if it was for comedy or if he was just feelin' it).

A complete 180 as AntiFlag came on. A politically charged punk/core band that started out with a mindless, albeit catchy, song (You gotta die die die die die for your government, die for your country. That's shit) and quickly degraded into hardcore music that I no longer have the stomach for (I used to love that scene, I'm not really sure why anymore) and extreme leftist interludes between songs. Meh.

However, when Greg and the other 40 somethings of Bad Religion the concert made a sharp upswing with the insight and poetry of Bad Religion. It had everything. Energy, humor, sing-alongs, and a consistently stellar performance that you'd suspect a band that's done this a thousand times before would bring to the table. I moshed, I sang, I got banged in the knee. Just like the good ol' days. Although I can't describe the music other than saying its really good, there were two moments that may give you some insight into what the band is like.

After a brief equipment failure, to kill the dead time, the lead singer first instructed everyone who was taking pictures to get their cameras ready as he was going to pull off some poses (thumbs up, laid back, tough, angry, inspired, laughing) so the crowd could get some good 'action shots' of him. To check to see if the equipment repair had been successful, they had to play their instruments, but they spruced it up by asking if 'Jon was out there' and then started playing the first verse of Dead or Alive by Bon Jovi. The Central New Jersey crowd went wild.

Another interesting moment happened during the song Epiphany, someone inexplicably threw an open cell phone up on the stage. At first, Greg batted it away, not knowing what it was. But when he realized it was a phone with someone on the other end, he picked it up and without breaking from his song, placed the receiver by the microphone to give the caller a brief taste of what he was missing. The caller was lucky, however, the owner of the phone was probably not, as after singing the chorus, he looked around to see if he knew where the phone came from and wasn't really sure. So, he haphazardly shrugged and hucked up a free souvenir to someone in the front row. I hope the phone eventually made it back to its original owner.

Anyway, I'll wish the crowd an early Happy Thanksgiving as I tend to forget about this thing sometimes.

Punks and Evolutionary Biologists

This Saturday I'm going to see one of my favorite bands, Bad Religion, perform at some small venue in New Jersey. I'm pretty excited because I haven't seen them perform in 3 or 4 years, I'm going to see my friend from college Ted (first person I met at college and first conversation was about Bad Religion) and get Vaiva to listen to some good punk music. She pretends she likes it but then she never listens. It'll be hard to ignore when there are 8 foot tall speakers several feet away.

I have a long history with the band. My first album was their Stranger than Fiction. They probably helped to raise my SAT Vocab score by 30-40 points. When I chose Cornell as my college, it was with hopes that some day I would meet the lead singer, Greg Graffin, who resides in Ithaca. I met him twice. Oddly enough, my friend Ted who is more obsessed with the band was my conduit to meeting the man in the first place. Ted wound up on the same Men's League Ice Hockey team as Greg Graffin. He assisted him on many goals. He got beers with him after games. He ate cake at his house for his 21st birthday. Why couldn't I have taken up hockey instead of Cross Country?

Aside from being one of the founders of Punk Rock in this country (they released their first EP before I was born, and first full length album several months after) Greg is also very close to completing, if not completed with, his doctorate in evolutionary biology from Cornell University. I read somewhere that he is one of the leading Bone Tissue Paleontologists in the world. I don't know if it is entirely true, or if it is, I don't know how many Bone Tissue Paleontologists there are on this planet. Either way, it's pretty sweet.

Anyway, tickets are still available for Saturday and can be reserved here for $20 if you want to see a great Punk Rock band perform, albeit past their prime. Their show Sunday in Times Square is already sold out (where they are headlining with Pennywise).

Recorded Messages

Is anyone else getting phone calls on their cell phones from pre-recorded messages informing you of all the great things that you have won? I think I won some sort of car today. Two weeks ago: a dream vacation.

I don't understand who really buys into these, 'You've just won!' pre-recorded messages about prizes and contests that you won that you didn't know you were in the running for in the first place. I think I put my cell phone number on the Do Not Call list. But there are two problems. First, the people who call me are crafty enough to use restricted numbers, so there is no way I could possibly do anything about it. (Why do I pick up? A bunch of my friends have restricted house phones.) Secondly, and I'm not sure on this, I think the Do Not Call List may have simply been converted into a free source of numbers for these people to call. Since they call from restricted lines, how can they be identified as calling #'s from the DNCL? Then again, I'm not positive that the list has become such an auto-antonym (Thanks dictionary editor guy).

Either way, I hope I stop getting so lucky and winning all this good stuff soon. I wonder how they got my digits. If not from the Do Not Call List, I wouldn't be surprised if the cell phone outlet I brought it from wouldn't sell this kind of info to interested parties. They once tried to waive our cancellation fee from Verizon by telling the company my dad was shipped overseas to Iraq, and cancellation was not a breach of contract.

Tight Pants

In accord with heightened security alerts (Orange!) on the subway system in NYC, there has been a larger and extremely more overt presence of armed guards at each subway station for the past several weeks. However, I have never seen them do anything except sit around, chatting, and occassionally swivelling their heads to check out a girl's butt in form-fitting pants. I've not once seen them attentive to a passing member of the same sex. Which leads one to wonder, what do the female police/national guardspeople do. I'm guessing they just sit around and chat. Male business fashion tends to leave suit jackets or coats that obscure the posterior.

More importantly, I think these people may be doing their jobs to the best of their ability. The threat of force, I'm guessing, means little to someone willing to blow themself up. You point a gun at them, they blow up a bomb on you. Is there presence simply supposed to deter people who are not steadfast in their desire to ignite their explosives?

Yes, this may be a little late, but I heard two cops chatting about attractive passerbys this morning at the Flatbush Avenue stop and was stunned that in the 5 minutes I was within earshot, I heard nothing but them picking girls out of the crowd. We should just put some construction workers down there.

Anyway, this entry was kind of an excuse to put up this article from Slate Magazine today about a recent change in the administration's stance on the War in Iraq. I thought it was pretty nifty.

Kneel Young

I was at the Stingers last night celebrating my dear friend's 23rd birthday. Only one problem, he did not show up. But, even if he decided to poop his own party, I sucked in the scenery (and pints) and enjoyed Wild Wing Wednesday until 11PM, where wings are only 10 cents a pop (go with the teriyaki, they are a cut above) and they have this internet juke box with every song ever made on it.

Or so I thought.

Since its installation the internet juke box has been a smash hit. Way out of the park. On Friday and Saturday nights you have to wait two hours to hear your picks, but its worth it when you can make the entire bar listen to punk rock to hardcore to funk to Mexican Radio by Wall of Voodoo. I normally try to get a little of everything out of my $5.

Last night though, the queue was very short and my tunes got put on right away. I started out with Take 5 by David Brubeck, followed with a song by Xavier Rudd (a famous digeridoo-ist) then to Aces High by Iron Maiden. I then expected to play Hey, Hey, My, My by Neil Young.

But, despite the fact that they have 17 Iron Maiden albums, they do not have a single Neil Young album on there. I scrolled through at least 8 Neil Diamond albums to figure this out. This isn't happening to me. I had to look over my shoulder for Rod Sterling doing an intro to an episode of the Twilight Zone. For a second I thought maybe he spelled his name Kneel Young until I realized he wasn't a total jackass.

What gives? They had two albums from (in my opinion, vastly inferior) CSNY and one from Crazy Horse, but no Neil? It's Mr. Young's birthday on Saturday, which my friend Ted reminds me constantly as they share the same one (why he tells me this I do not know. I share a birthday with Herman Munster but I don't shout that from the tree tops). They had music by a guy who plays the digeridoo. They have Iron Maiden albums in the double digits. They have unheard of albums from Ithaca bands and other no names.

So does Neil Young hate Internet Juke Boxes or do Internet Juke Boxes hate Neil Young? Since I love the IJB so much, I don't think it matters. I can no longer support him.

Water Cooler

At my office, no one ever talks at the water cooler. Although, plenty of people here drink plenty of water. I bet we go through about 1 of those big jugs a day. I know this because I, pretty much exclusively, replace the water. Today someone else did it. I wonder who?

I'm pretty sure most of the lawyers here pretty much feel that they are above doing it. They have JD's, what would they be doing lifting a jug of water? I know I've never seen it since I started here. That leaves the Secretaries and the paralegals. I'm not sure that any of the secretaries in today could move it (the only able bodied one is out today) as they move more like dinosaurs than people. The jug would run a serious risk of tipping them over.

And the other paralegal? I don't think she uses the cooler, although I think she at least could feasibly lift it.

I don't think I'll ever know.

Election Day

Election Day at the Rockville Centre Rail Road Station was pretty nuts. For the past month or so, with increasing regularity, one or several politicians for Nassau County government positions would greet me at the bottom or top of the escalator, or both. Now, maybe I'm a bit strange, but shaking a person's hand who has been sitting around around shaking hands for the past 2 hours is not my idea of a great first impression. The plastic smile tattooed to their face, the practiced firmness of the grip, the canned 'I need your support on Tuesday, November 8th' all left a bad taste in my mouth up until today, when it is finally all over with. Well, I'm guessing they'll be there when I get home from work, too.

My least favorite is Counselman Santino, who's big, sweaty hands have grossed me out on several occassions. I don't know what he stands for, but, despite all of his efforts to win me over in the past month, he will not receive my vote at the ballot box. No one will, actually. I have no knowledge of local government officials. All I know is that I hate the campaign as every day I see several garbage cans overflowing with unread flyers, etc. Knowing that this process isn't unique to Rockville Centre leads me to believe that every year around campaign time several (hundred) miles of trees are cut down for unread information on politicians on a nationwide basis. I really wish they could just give people cash. They've given me tic-tacs, they've given me donuts, they've given me pens. I used the tic-tacs and the donuts. I never read their ads, but they pay people money to design them and they pay money to print them. I wish they could just total the amount of money they'd spend on me and hand me that much money. I never read the info anyway, and I'd be much more inclined to vote for someone who gave me $5 or $10 then someone who is basically asking me to take this thing from them and put it over there in the garbage for me. I don't want to read a biased appraisal of someone at 7:30 in the morning.

I'd take a 5 Spot, though.

It'd be better for the environment, it'd be easier for the candidate, and people would appreciate it more. In a capitalist democracy, I really don't understand why this would raise such a red flag. The money wouldn't have to guarantee that you vote, just like you aren't guaranteed to read their flyers. I think everyone would be happier. The candidate with the bigger budget tends to win anyway.

How much money is wasted on a losing campaign? At least this way it'd be spread out more equitably

Oooo Rah

The weekend is coming, and for the first time in quite some time I really want to see a new movie. Although, I'm pretty sure that I've been duped by a successful trailer. Not even the trailer. The 2 syllables uttered by Jamie Foxx.

Oooo Rah.

If you haven't seen the trailer, it's emotionally and visually intense images of soldiers trekking through the desert with operatic, apocalyptic music playing (I actually think it's Kanye) followed by a moment of stillness (visually and audibly) with Mr. Foxx emitting such a primal and jarring sound that hearing it in the context of the movie is probably worth the price of admission itself.

Then again, upon reading reviews, it seems like the trailer may be quite deceptive as to the actual content of the film. Not much action and a whole lot of inaction. I'll probably feed 'em my $10 anyway.

Punch Day

Today is my least favorite day of the week. No, not Thursday. Thursdays are great. It's also pay day for me. Which is sweeter than any normal Friday, Saturday, or Sunday (Football season included.)

Today is Punch Day. Let me assure you, it's not as bad as it sounds. As a daily commuter on the LI Double R I don't have to jump through the hoops that the lesser commuter has to. My interaction with the conductor involves me sleeping/reading/playing PSP and placing my wallet open on my right knee, proudly displaying my monthly ticket. "Thank you, sir" and "Great" are the comments I usually receive. But on Punch Day, things are totally different.

Like the normal patron, my monthly pass has to be 'punched' for reasons I have yet to determine. Once a week they disturb my normal state of aloofness and surprise me. "I need to punch that" they tell me, and being snapped into the real world throws me for a loop. My fingers fail as I try to slide my pass from it's compartment with my ID. I smile weakly as I hold up the whole process and the conductor taps his toe impatiently among the splatter of credit cards and other gizmos I keep in much easier to access areas of my wallet.

I think the conductor knows me now, and is no longer surprised at my futility on Punch Day. At least I've got 7 days before I've gotta do this whole thing again.

Literally

While checking out my comments today, I noticed something.

Lithuanians.

Well, labas to all you crazy lugans and acieu for your comments. And at this point I've exhausted my Lithuanian vocabulary and there will be no more impressing you with my bilinguality (Bi-linguality? Maybe my English needs some tweaking as well.)

Speaking of words and such, I found this article quite interesting. Well, as interesting as anything ever penned by an Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. What a prestigious/undesirable job. I mean, he's pretty much editor of the English language. But editing definitions has got to take a toll on your creativity and I'm going to have to guess your general will to live. The fact that he even pulls out the word auto-antonym is enough to give you some insight into this man's life. Oh yeah, the article is about the (mis)use of the word literally.

*Insert lame sentence using word literally improperly here*

Or as it turns out, perhaps it's a proper use after all. I find it amusing that people are such sticklers against the term literally that I have been called out (and, probably have called other people out) for similar usage, and the Editor of the OED doesn't have a problem with it. This guy edits definitions. Who's got a stick up their ass now?

Oh yeah, went to the Islander's game last night. Ridiculous seats. Could have spit on the ice (or any one of the Boston Bruins) but resisted.

4-3 Isles, OT.

Because that would be the POLITE thing to do.

This morning while riding my daily escalator up at Wall Street, there was a slight snag as people used both sides of the escalator to stand still, not opening up a lane for the movers & shakers who like to walk while escalating. I can understand, if you happen to be one of those movers, or shakers, how it could be a slight inconvenience for you. However, one particularly brash rider standing 4 people deep on a stagnant side of the elevator interrupted my normally quiet elevation with this exchange.

"Excuse me, some people like to walk on this side"
Silence
"You could always just step to your right, people"
(The escalator was saturated, no possible way to step to your right.)
"Well, that would be the polite thing to do"
"I guess that doesn't apply for you guys"
He really laid the emphasis on thickly, and after those 4 quick thoughts of his, the ride had finished.

Bear in mind I was on the proper side of the escalator, so these comments were in no way directed at me. Regardless, I don't understand this man's frustration. He seemed genuinely upset, upset enough to vocalize his displeasure, that he couldn't get his 3 or 4 steps upwards in during the elevator ride. The whole ride takes no more than 8 seconds. If it's the speed that is your issue, you are getting to work at a maximum of 3 seconds earlier with those steps. If it's the exercise you crave, take the stairs.

But, far more interesting to me is the fact that he believed that the other riders were being extremely rude, while he was completely in the right. If he were being polite, as he was begging others to be, he should have kept his mouth shut and sucked it up. What's good for the goose, pal. I hope that man stubs his toe.