LAST BLOG POST ‘TIL THE NEW YEAR?

Let’s make it a good one, then.

Yesterday, I attended a Christmas party for the staff of Addiction Prevention Clinical Partners of Boston. It was sponsored by a drug firm—one of the largest in Japan. Perhaps ironically, most of the stuff they sell us is for treating eating disorders or compulsive shopping.

No, actually we purchase large quantities of a sleep aid. And while a buffet-style lunch probably pales in comparision to our annual contribution to the Gross Domestic Product of Japan, it was still a nice gesture. And say what you will about the Pfizers and Eli Lillies harming cute little animals or overcharging their domestic customers, they know how to put out a good spread. Our rep showed up at noon with boxes full of take-out from a really good Szechuan restaurant; the amount of sweet and sour pork, egg rolls, beef and broccoli, green beans, and potato salad (Beats me) left us all feeling mighty food-drunk afterward. But don’t worry, this was the good kind of intoxication, the type that brings complete strangers together, as opposed to the less glamorous type where we go pick a fight with a meter maid or slap our children.

If there was any downside to yesterday’s festivities, it was the gift raffle-type thing that just about every Christmas party has to have. Not that I am opposed to the giving away of presents in and of itself, especially when the clinic purchases them and I don’t have to bring my own. But this year’s gift exchange sucked because it was a Yankee swap; if the Yankee swap teaches us anything, it’s that Yankee swaps run completely counter to what Christmas is really about.

Let me elaborate: The way a Yankee swap works, all the particpants draw a number out of a hat (or in this case, a wicker basket), then select a gift in the order that they draw in. After one round of draws, there’s a second round, where everyone gets the option of swapping their present with somebody else’s. It’s a good way to make an enemy for life, or to end up with something you really want.

Out of thirteen participants, I drew eleventh. By the time my turn came around, I opted for a plain-looking envelope. Luckily for me, however, it contained a crisp, new ten-dollar bill.

As the second round started, I determined to hold on to my present. Nothing else in the swap appealed to me; not a gift certificate to Dunkin Donuts that the office manager snagged, not the body lotions in the nurse’s possession, not the loofah the secretary coveted. But then I saw one of my co-workers, T., standing in the corner with this really cheap-looking pen set. Out of thirteen players, T. had drawn the last. It was hardly surprising that she ended up with the pen set, since it clearly looked like a pen set (in spite of the gift wrapping), and no one really wants a pen set for Christmas.

I really felt bad for T., who helped make my job tolerable during the past week. But I didn’t sympathize with her because she plucked a pair of pens. No, it’s because, earlier in the day, her car got towed, and combined with several unpaid parking tickets, it cost her hundreds of dollars to buy her car back from the impound lot.

This terrible series of events brought tears to her eyes. I mean it; I saw them. She cried. So here I was with ten dollars that, while I certainly appreciated them, I didn’t feel I needed more than somebody else. I also had a sneaking suspicion that, given everybody’s relatively polite nature, she wouldn’t swap her pen set for my ten dollars in the next round. No, she would play the martyr to its hilt, and learn to love her two cheap-ass looking pens.

I think you all know where this is going. That’s right; during the second round, I decided to swap my ten dollars with T. for that cheap-ass looking pen set. When she found out that she was getting money instead of the pens (Given that the person going twelfth did not seize them. But even then, with the thirteenth turn, T. could have always gotten them back), she nearly broke into tears again. These tears, however, were of the joyful variety. And strangely enough, I felt oddly satisfied. This is what Christmas should be about, I thought to myself. Not temporarily appeasing my own transient wants and desires—for example, I wanted to buy “Infinite Crisis” #3, and ten bucks could have paid for that and more—but doing something nice for somebody less fortunate.

Because in the end, what’s the point of owning material possessions, if the sight of someone in trouble fails to prick us in our souls? The day we cannot rise above our own self-serving impulses is the day those impulses define our lives, and we become no better than Sims (Or that guy on HSN who seems to sincerely believe that I. MUST. HAVE. Whatever he’s shilling).

So I ended up being out ten bucks, but fulfilled in ways that go beyond mere fiscal numbers. At least, I felt that way until T., with the last turn in the entire game, traded the ten dollars I was kind enough to give her for a loofah. A fucking loofah! That was when I realized that Yankee swaps represent everything that Christmas shouldn’t be about. I shouldn’t be forced into situations where I want to perform good deeds, because I will, only to feel like a sucker afterwards. I mean, T. could have traded those pens for the loofah, and I could have kept the ten bucks, and everyone would have been happy. Okay, the person with the pens might not have been happy, but unfortunately, the way things ended up, that person turned out to be me.

Yeah, I know none of that argument makes any sense, but Christmas is about doing something nice for somebody less fortunate. For example, certain family members I’m going to visit tonight. I could have bought them something nice with the ten dollars I originally garnered (Or the five dollars, minus the cost of “Infinite Crisis” #3. All they’ll get now is a couple of cheap-ass looking pens. What a disaster! Bah-hum-bug!

WONDER WHY THAT PEANUT BUTTER SEEMS CRUNCHIER THAN USUAL?

Today was pretty much an average day for me, except I might have eaten a cockroach this morning and a cat climbed on my head late in the afternoon.

How the cockroach thing happened: I decided to make myself a peanut butter and sliced banana sandwich for breakfast. So I grabbed the multi-grain brain from off the top of the refrigerator, undid that twist-tie thing on the bag, took out two slices, tied the bag back up, and prepared the aforementioned sandwich. I ate it. It was delicious.

But, when I went to put the bread back where I got it from, I happened to glance down at the bag, and something from within the layer of translucent plastic managed to catch my eye. Guess what it was. That’s correct, it was a cockroach. A small bugger, about the size and shade of a watermelon seed, only scampering around the outside of the bread (A feat I have yet to see a watermelon seed duplicate).

Feeling somewhat disconcerted, I turned the loaf of bread around and around in my hands, not in an attempt to render the cockroach dizzy and nauseous, but to check whether other roaches also happened to be living rent-free in my primary source of breakfast starch. Much to my dismay, I spotted two more. Since it seemed too early in the day to feel disgusted, I simply tossed the bread in the freezer, and hoped the insectoid freeloaders would find the sudden climate change unbearable, and conveniently die.

Now I know what you’re going to ask me: Phil X, could there have been a cockroach living in your peanut butter and sliced banana sandwich? Well, there’s every chance a fourth roach had wandered onto either of the two slices that went into my sandwich. However, I do like my peanut butter on toast, so I browned my bread thoroughly, to give it that extra dry texture.

So I really don’t know if I inadvertently digested a side order of toasted roach with my breakfast. But if I did, doesn’t that mean I got extra protein, which is good for me, anyway?

THE CAT ON THE HAT

I was walking home through Allston after work, and I passed by this interesting-looking boutique near the corner of Harvard Avenue and Gardner Street. “Maybe I can find something for K.,” I said to myself, feeling all festive-like and Christmas-ey, albeit dirt poor-ish.

I quietly browsed for about fifteen minutes, when something atop a display case caught my eye. As I examined it, a cat, which apparently had been lurking in the shadows all the while, crept over and started purring and rubbing itself against my legs.

“Hey there, little friend,” I said. The cat took this for an invitiation, and leaped atop the glass case. It had black fur, with yellow eyes in their midst, which kind of hynotize a person the way a star does when it’s viewed through a telescope, if it sits alone amidst a sea of tranquil darkness. I will admit, the cat was pretty cute.

The proprietress of the boutique said the cat’s name was “Aura.” I gave Aura plenty of attention, but then settled back into the particular item which drew my curiosity in the first place. Sensing that she had become second banana, Aura treated my ungloved hands like toys, thwacking them with her paws and cheeks, before settling into a curiosity of her own choosing: My ski cap-adorned noggin.

Basically, the cat, very quickly and stealthily, put her two front paws on my shoulder, then jumped on top of my head. Why she decided to do this, I cannot say. Perhaps she looked at my black ski cap, and the swirls of equally-obsidian hair that peeked out from underneath, and saw something she felt simpatico with. Or maybe she wanted to eat me. All I know is, before I had a chance to recoil from her sudden physical contact, Aura managed to balance herself atop my head. She dug her claws like tent poles into my winter coat, but I could feel her rapidly settling onto her new nap cushion, the brunt of her weight pressing down on my neck, her fuzzy tail tickling my ear.

“Oh! Oh, no,” the proprietress started to say, followed by about a half-minute of, “Aura! Aura, you stop that!” I might have also started shouting at the cat on my head, but the whole thing happened so fast that I was really quite stunned. I can only imagine the look on my face; wait a second, I saw the look on my face, through one of those little round mirrors on the nearby display case. I looked like some kind of comic-relief witch doctor—not necessarily a good look for me. But oh, the cat’s furry little arms pressing against my face felt so nice and soft, and her body warmed the top of my head like a hot water bottle.

And she purred—a hushed, incessant purring, the way car engines rev up in an environmentalist’s wet dream. Even though I looked fairly ridiculous, and Aura was probably more weight than I should have had perched on my head, I decided to let the cat have her fun. It was the holiday season, after all.

“You don’t have a problem with her doing that, do you?” the proprietress asked. I envisioned her swatting at Aura with a broom, and clobbering me on the melon instead.

“Oh, I guess not,” I said, and asked to see more of the boutique’s wares. She invited me to the opposite end of the store, which took me a while to get to, since I still had a cat on my head.

I won’t say whether I bought anything from that boutique—it’s only a week and some change until Christmas, and it’s totally incidental to the story. But I will say that, on the way out, the proprietress told me to crouch next to a jewelry case, guessing that the cat might take its leave of me there. She guessed right; Aura disembarked near the doorway, and scampered off from whence she came. But before leaving, I called after her, and mentioned that although I had fun, I had clearly been an off-duty cab. “Next time, keep an eye out for whether the light on top is on,” I said.

BOLD PREDICTIONS (AND OTHER DICKY THINGS)

Okay, I’m about to do something I normally wouldn’t, which is make a bold prediction about the 2006 Oscar. Here goes:

Based on the following, mildly compelling evidence—Best Picture awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Circle, the New York Film Critics Circle, the Boston Film Critics Circle, the National Board of Review, and the most Golden Globe nominations for a motion picture, including Best Motion Picture (Drama)—I predict that Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain” will, in fact, be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar come next January.

Yeah, I know I’m gambling with my reputation here, but that’s why Kenny Rogers wrote a song about me.

But what about Rob Marshall’s “Memoirs of a Geisha,” Steven Spielberg’s “Munich,” and Stephen Gaghan’s “Syriana,” three films that, just a few days ago, seemed like potential Oscar powerhouses? While they weren’t collectively ignored by the Foreign Press (Spielberg, in particular, received a Best Director’s nomination), none were among the five finalists for Best Picture—Drama (which were, incidentally, "Brokeback Mountain," "The Constant Gardener," "Good Night, and Good Luck," "A History of Violence," and "Match Point") or the five finalists for Best Picture—Musical or Comedy ("Walk the Line," "The Producers," "The Squid and the Whale," "Pride and Prejudice," and "Mrs. Henderson Presents"), announced this morning.

Have the Golden Globes, in effect, killed all three films’ hopes of a Best Picture Oscar nomination? I thought the best way to figure that out would be to look up the Academy voters’ choices for Best Picture over the last few years, and see which of those had also been Golden Globe nominees. This might have been a lot of work; luckily, imdb.com, like most other things on the Interweb, shares the same tagline as “Syriana:” Everything is connected.

2005
Oscar Best Picture nominee: Golden Globe Best Picture nominee?
“Million Dollar Baby:” Yes
“The Aviator:” Yes
“Ray:” Yes
“Sideways:” Yes
“Finding Neverland:” Yes

2004
Oscar Best Picture nominee: Golden Globe Best Picture nominee?
“LotR: The Return of the King:” Yes
“Master and Commander:” Yes
“Lost in Translation:” Yes
“Mystic River:” Yes
“Seabiscuit:” Yes

2003
Oscar Best Picture nominee: Golden Globe Best Picture nominee?
“Chicago:” Yes
“Gangs of New York:” Yes
“The Hours:” Yes
“The Pianist:” Yes
“LotR: The Two Towers:” Yes

2002
Oscar Best Picture nominee: Golden Globe Best Picture nominee?
“A Beautiful Mind:” Yes
“Gosford Park:” Yes
“In the Bedroom:” Yes
“LotR: The Fellowship of the Ring:” Yes
“Moulin Rouge!:” Yes

2001
Oscar Best Picture nominee: Golden Globe Best Picture nominee?
“Gladiator:” Yes
“Chocolat:” Yes
“Traffic:” Yes
“Erin Brockovich:” Yes
“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon:” Yes (Foreign Language Picture)

2000
Oscar Best Picture nominee: Golden Globe Best Picture nominee?
“American Beauty:” Yes
“The Cider House Rules:” No
“The Green Mile:” No
“The Insider:” Yes
“The Sixth Sense:” No

1999
Oscar Best Picture nominee: Golden Globe Best Picture nominee?
“Shakespeare in Love:” Yes
“Saving Private Ryan:” Yes
“Elizabeth:” Yes
“The Thin Red Line:” No
“Life is Beautiful:” No

1998
Oscar Best Picture nominee: Golden Globe Best Picture nominee?
“Titanic:” Yes
“As Good as It Gets:” Yes
“The Full Monty:” Yes
“Good Will Hunting:” Yes
“L.A. Confidential:” Yes

1997
Oscar Best Picture nominee: Golden Globe Best Picture nominee?
“The English Patient:” Yes
“Fargo:” Yes
“Secrets and Lies:” Yes
“Shine:” Yes
“Jerry Maguire:” Yes

1996
Oscar Best Picture nominee: Golden Globe Best Picture nominee?
“Braveheart:” Yes
“Apollo 13:” Yes
“Babe:” Yes
“Il Postino:” No
“Sense and Sensibility:” Yes

As the stats for the last ten years show, is it possible for the Academy to nominate one, two, even three films that were neither Golden Globe Best Picture—Drama nominees, nor Golden Globe Best Picture—Musical or Comedy nominees. However, for the last five years, it looks like the Academy has been letting the Foreign Press tell them what movies to go see. Will the trend continue into next January? Or will “Munich,” “Memoirs,” “Syriana” or another film catch fire, and somehow sneak into the pack?

And will “Brokeback Mountain” finally catch serious Oscar buzz by taking home the Lackawanna County Film Critics Prize?

Stay tuned!

YAY, 'CRUEL WORLD!'

This morning, I was perusing the weekly newspaper "Dig," which is sort of like Boston's answer to "The Onion." An item in the write-in column "Oh, Cruel World!" caught my eye, and I feel the need to reprint it. Something very similar happened to me on Puerto Rican Day a few years back, when I refused to buy a dinky toothpick flag from some shit-eater who was probably on his way home from drunkenly molesting white women in Central Park.

Whoever wrote this letter should try taking a walk through Union Square on a weekend.

"Dear racist, activist poseur,

I was on my way to work and you were parked outside my building holding a ratty clipboard, harassing people. As I went by, you stopped me and said, 'Help fight racism.' I politely told you that I needed to get to work, at which point you turned into Angry Black Man and started talking shit about how 'Asians are all prejudiced against blacks.' What. The. Fuck? Until you revealed your own ignorant, racist ass by making that comment, the fact that you were African-American and I was Asian-American was completely incidental. Normally when fuckwads say shit to me on the street, I just keep on walking, but I pointedly said, 'Excuse you?' at which point you actually proudly repeated yourself, shouting, 'I SAID, WHY are all ASIANS prejudiced against BLACKS?' Yeah, I heard you the first time, asshole. How dare you claim to be 'fighting racism' when all you do is stand there, publicly spewing racist assumptions at people? What's the matter, does it hurt your ego that people may be in a hurry on a weekday morning and not be able to stop and listen to you?

You're not a part of the solution; you're an active contributor to the problem. Even more offensive, you're a racist in activist guise. You're an embarassment to your supposed cause. No, I'm not prejudiced against blacks. I'm prejudiced against any hypocrite motherfucker who thinks he has a right to a piece of my time."

SOMEWHAT FAST, NOT EXACTLY CHEAP, BUT DEFINITELY OUT OF CONTROL

As many of you probably know by now, I am the defacto office manager for a drug clinic in Brookline. That means I order office supplies, call the electrician when our power goes out (which is frequently), assume an authoritative tone to people who are actually smarter than me, and call out for lunch from the local sub shop.

The food from the sub shop (pizza, calzones, subs) isn’t bad, but it really isn’t worth having every single day. Yet we continue ordering from them day-in and day-out. The reason? We have an account there. And I’m sure they appreciate our business. Last month's bill, which nearly gave our accountant a coronary, added up to slightly over $3,500.

But pick your jaw up off the ground, folks, because me and my crew ain’t exactly foie gras-swillers. On the contrary, ‘twas the clinics themselves who racked up that much in take-out. Apparently, nothing brings people together during addiction withdrawal quite like a communal meal setting. And believe me, the Brookline clinic breeds a lot of togetherness. With Narcotics and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings taking place every day, a couple pizzas or sandwiches here and there really does tend to add up.

Over here at the administrative wing, meanwhile, we try hard not to abuse our power. In fact, more often than not, I go pick up the food, rather than have it delivered. This may seem strange to you, that I, the office manager, would deign to pick up lunch. However, there’s actually a lot of practical advantages to this strategy. For one thing, the noon-1:30 pm block represents the busiest time for the sub shop. Why wait 30 minutes for the food to arrive when we’re located a mere block-and-a-half away?

Secondly, I don’t know about you, but I usually feel like taking a walk outside at about midday (Not on a day like today, of course, when there’s more white powder lying around than on the glass table in Phil Spector’s living room). Finally, the local sub shop has a stand-up “Galaga” arcade game. It’s paired with “Ms. Pac Man,” but more importantly, it has “Galaga!”

You remember “Galaga,” don’t you, folks? It was like “Space Invaders,” in the sense of being a low-tech, vertical shoot-em-up that never really ends. The main difference: “Galaga’s” alien insects didn’t scroll side-to-side. Instead, they flew around in connected loops, and could suck up your fighter jet with tractor beams.

Like I was saying, the sub shop has that particular arcade game, and I really get a kick out of going down there and standing in front of the machine’s slightly-concave-shaped monitor. Looking at the images just sends me back in time. Only yesterday, I made such a visit, and it got me thinking of how, back when I was a wee lad living in South Florida, I would take monthly jaunts on Sundays to the nearby strip mall. Sunday would be the day that the arcade would give you double-tokens, and they already had a policy of $11’s worth of tokens for every $10. So my brother and I would cobble together whatever funds we had—usually $10—and that would waste a whole afternoon. No wonder the place went out of business by the time I graduated high school.

Long before then, however, I had discovered books and comics, which seemed vastly more interesting. Also, I grew disillusioned during the 90’s, as the arcades filled-up with one-on-one “Street Fighter” clones. Still, it was fun while it lasted, and I guess it was probably better for me than dealing drugs or participating in drive-by shootings. “Which of those arcade games did I like the best?” you ask. Please, don’t ask me such a question. After all, how does one qualify a medium that, in its heyday, contained such variety? Well, can you tell me? A TOP FIVE LIST, you say? Why, that’s brilliant! Here’s mine!

TOP FIVE ARCADE GAMES:

5. “Galaga." During the bonus round, you get to smash a watermelon with a wooden mallet.

4. “Ninja Gaiden." The arcade game differed from the popular Nintendo series from the late eighties. I liked being able to flip over people, grab them by the neck, and toss them into stuff. But for a ninja, the main character sure moved slowly…

3. “Willow." Based on the 1988 movie directed by Ron Howard. A great fantasy/adventure game, even if it wasn’t as good as the Nintendo game, which my brother used to have (It featured one of the greatest opening sequences ever).

2. “Captain America And The Avengers.” Wheeeeeeeee! Play as Captain America, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Vision, and sometimes the Wasp. As a big comic book geek, the chance to take on the Red Skull, Ultron, Crossbones, the Mandarin, the Grim Reaper, even the Wizard was impossible to turn down. Also, it looked really cool.

1. “Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder.” Only played it once, at a mini-golf/go-cart track in Ft. Lauderdale. For a long time, I assumed it was just a dream, albeit a seriously-fevered one.

What arcade games did you use to play?