greece, the vacation

this is not another unexplainable absence from updating my blog.  my reason for not writing is solid this time.  i spent the 8 days immediately following my last post daydreaming about leave, and the next four days traveling to Athens, Greece, where i now find myself, sitting in a rented apartment, plowing through random bottles of greek wine, and listening to a supermix of miles davis, belly and moby.  kind of strange how music you never thought would mix merely needed the opportunity…

i am here with melissa, who i first met when she was handing out room keys at santa clara soccer camps in 2005.  she did such a fine job of ensuring all of the coaches had uncomfortable, painfully spartan rooms that i knew she would be an important person to befriend. 

after arriving last night, and while waiting for melissa to arrive and open the apartment, i found a bar called, simply, “handcrafted beer”.  obviously, i went in.  after some initial difficulty communicating with the bartender, she gave me a beer, and i sat down to wait.

just as i was finishing the first beer, another appeared, and the waitress assured me, “no money”… apparently i had impressed her with my huge backpack and inability to speak a single word of greek.  when i headed to the bar for a third beer, she asked me where i was from.  i answered “california”, which excited her, and she said, “ah! california!”  so i asked her if she had ever been to california, and she said, “no, it’s very nice!” 

i was confused, but impressed by her tight jeans and lip ring, so i smiled and went back to my table. 

for dinner, melissa and i headed to an italian restaurant called Ciao, and split a pizza.  ordering a beer proved complicated:

me: oh, you don’t have mythos, that’s ok, what kind of beer is aeschius: light, dark, etc?

waiter guy: i don’t know…it’s green.

me: ok, i’ll take one. 

turns out only the bottle was green, not the beer, which was a slight disappointment.  i thought maybe st. patrick’s came early in greece.  additionally, we were treated to the waiter’s opinion of america (you start wars everywhere, the balkans, etc..) and his opinion of us (you’re ok, though…)

point of order…if the balkans had been able to keep slobodan milosevic from massacring people, the US wouldn’t have cared.  plus, it was a NATO/UN mission.  but that seems to escape a lot of people, especially given recent US actions.  blaming the US is easy.

more to follow.  greece promises much to discuss.   

cheers.

Mustache Five

before even beginning this entry, credit must be given where it is due.  the idea of high-fiving someone while stating the reason for the high-five, i.e. “no-panties Five, Ms. Spears”, or “my-head-got-this-big-naturally Five, Mr. Bonds” was originally used in the TV Show “Scrubs”.  The proponent of the five is Dr. Todd Quinlan, known simply as “the Todd”.

 (giving an “I Miss You Five”…)

given our strange fascination with facial hair (see the post “growing honor” in the Fort Riley category) which has been with us since we were just young pre-deployees at Ft. Riley, and our persistent recognition of outstanding beard and mustache prowess since then, it was only a matter of time before the “Mustache Five” was unleashed.  (note: none of the so-called “mustaches” grown by your favorite reservists-in-Iraq while in Kansas would have been deserving of a Mustache Five, except for maybe Kevin’s)

the Mustache Five is not just a concept, it has been carried out with unsuspecting air force majors, navy chiefs, and various and sundry contractors.  to their surprise and confusion, i might add.

point of order: it is OK to recognize a particularly notable milk mustache, but the term must be modified to reflect the slightly diminished stature – “Milk Mustache Five”…

even women (frida kohla in this case) can be worthy of a Mustache Five.

the Mustache Five does not even require physical contact.  i was watching an arabic news channel the other day, and they began interviewing an iraqi general.  needless to say, his mustache was impressive, and also needless to say, i gave him half of a Mustache Five, palm extended toward the TV.

in an effort to propogate the practice of recognizing tremendous whiskers, i offer the following examples of people who should be given the Mustache Five, whenever they may cross your path…

 Oatmeal Five.

 Smokey & the Bandit Five.

 i’d-never-belong-to-a-club-that-would-have-me-as-a-member Five.

 scary Five.

 Magnum Five.

 human-cyborg relations Five. (that one’s for you, Colin)

is this absolutely hilarious to kevin and me right now?  yes.  will it still be as funny in 4 months when we’re home?  unlikely.  so don’t be shy, give your civil-war-era mustachioed mailman a high-five today.

for more on the art of high-fiving, check out www.highfive.me.uk.  and thanks to them for the Todd picture.

cheers. 

short-attention-span theater

far from letting the routine dull our senses, i find that we strive harder to invest even the most mundane discussion with some sort of intellectually stimulating content.  as the following will illustrate.

1) the scene: dinner yesterday.

the catalyst: i had just drunk a diet pepsi and a carton of soy milk in quick succession, and the inevitable mixing in my stomach was turning out to be somewhat uncomfortable.

the question: in a war between soy milk and diet pepsi, who would be victorious?

the discussion: in order to evaluate the martial prowess of each food product, we found it helpful to pick a celebrity most like each one, and then transfer the results of that battle to the actual conflict in my stomach.  for diet pepsi, we chose Iggy Pop. 

diet pepsi is healthy (relatively speaking) but not in the wholesome way you would associate with a fruit juice, for instance.  no, diet pepsi is more like that guy who is really skinny, but only because he is strung out, not because he is fit and trim.  hence the choice of Iggy Pop, who doesn’t have an ounce of fat on him, but won’t be finishing a marathon any time soon.

soy milk was more difficult, because the healthiness had to go hand-in-hand with the slightly-less-than-heterosexual nature of drinking milk made from beans.  therefore, a compromise – the obvious athleticism of a figure skater, and the conclusions that are frequently drawn about men who wears skin-tight singlets and glitter.  i give you the soy champion, Brian Boitano.

the discussion has not progressed past the choice of respective champions, but will no doubt engender lively debate for the next few days.

having uncovered the finer points of the ages-old diet-pepsi vs. soy milk debate, we moved on to lunch today, where a new opportunity to affect the world in a positive way presented itself. 

2) the scene: lunch today

the catalyst: discussion of a drinking game known as “Thunderdome”, which Tom was introduced to during a glorious weekend at Notre Dame.

the question: could the “Thunderdome” drinking game become a viable system of governance?

the discussion: first, the rules of Thunderdome.  imagine, if you will, that an argument has broken out at a party.  not your average, everyday squabble, but a dispute of epic proportions, with far-reaching consequences of global magnitude - for the sake of this forum, we’ll say you and your best friend disagree on the best candy ever…you, being right, say Peanut M&Ms, while your friend, being wrong, says - well, it doesn’t matter, they didn’t say Peanut M&Ms.

as the volume of the argument rises, so does the chant from the surrounding crowd… “Thunderdome…Thunderdome…Thunderdome!” at which point your fate has been sealed.  you will resolve your differences by Thunderdome. 

Thunderdome is quite simple.  you pound one cup of beer ever minute until one of you pukes.  puker=loser.  the results of Thunderdome are legally and pecuniarily binding.  it is black and white, does not require excessive legal histrionics (are there any other kind?), and at the end, everyone is drunk. 

the real meat of the discussion came when the implications of such a system of government began to be revealed.  being a good lawyer would require an entirely new set of abilities.  that guy you found passed out on the floor of the frat house every saturday morning in college?  the new johnny cochrane.  the guy you knew in the army who was the last man standing at Oktoberfest?  president of the united states.  lindsey lohan? still a mess (it’s a great system, but it can’t work miracles…)

of course, there would have to be weight classes for lawyers at each level of legal appeal…you couldn’t have a 300-pound district attorney bringing his case all the way to the supreme court without a real challenge.  i believe in checks and balances, after all. 

something to think about as we near the 2008 elections, and are force-fed endless debates and nonsense about “new directions” and “the time for a change”.  take a moment to ponder hillary clinton and john mccain, beer foam spilling down the front of their carefully chosen neutral-but-self-confident business attire, finishing a red plastic cup of beer, slamming it down on the podium, and yelling, “what now??!!??  debate that!!!”

cheers.