44th Inauguration

January 20th marked the inauguration of the 44th U.S. President, Barack Obama. It also marked the first time I have gone to a Subway since arriving in D.C. over a year ago. Both events have their place in history but this day was Barack's day. The masses gathered in from all over the nation totaling roughly 1.9 million people. In ancticipation of the event I reserved spots in the conference room where I work (10th & Pennsylvania, between the Capitol and the White House) so my guests, Val W. and Andrew W., and I could be in the middle of the goingson and partake of the energy of the atmosphere. Due to the road & bridge closures we thought it best to arrive the night before and sleep at the office. The idea seemed flawless except for two setbacks. One, we were grossly underprepared with one pad, one sleeping bag, and two towels between the three of us. This made for a very uncomfortable night of repose, not to mention the awkward exchange with the Mexican cleaning lady when she came in around 11:00p and just emptied the trash as if we weren't there. Two, we failed to take into account that my office and The Mall are on opposite sides of Penn Ave. which meant that we were trapped on the wrong side of Penn until 11:00a--the ceremony started around 11:30. Needless to say, we crossed at 11:00a and pushed our way onto The Mall by about 11:25. We ended up between the Washington and The Capitol just behind the Smithsonian Castle. For those of you who don't know D.C., this just means that we were close enough that we could tell that there is a Capitol, but far enough away that we definitely couldn't make anybody out. Fortunately, they had speakers and jumbotrons there so we could all tell what was going on. Bush was introduced and all the crowd around us started booing. I felt bad for "dubbya". I decided not to join in on the "hey hey hey, goodbye" chants. Then Obama came out and the crowd got excited. The announcer asked the audience to "please stand", and about a million people laughed in unison at the irony since they had been standing for about 4 or 5 straight hours. Then some crazy guy gave a prayer followed by Yitzhak Perlman, Yo Yo Ma, &c doing a cool rendition of 'Air and Simple Gifts'. Then Obama was sworn in and he gave a speech. I thought the speech was superb. He touched on most all of the points that I find important for a President to address and he provided the masses with a vision of refining America and uniting to achieve something great and restore our place at the top. In the words of the great Ricky Bobby, "We? No, we are not French. We're American, because you're in America, okay? Greatest country on the planet."

Wrist Watches

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.  ~ Henry David Thoreau

I'm fed up with people saying they are going to stop wearing wrist watches just because they can always tell time from their phones.  The way I see it wrist watches were invented as an alternative to the pocket watch so people could tell the hour just by looking at their wrist, without having to dig into their pockets.  The pocket search is further complicated when any one of the following variables is in effect: a) tight pants, b) overcoats in cold weather, c) proliferation of pocket goods (e.g. keys, candy, etc.).  

The invention of the wrist watch is analogous to the new technology of the keyless entry and ignition.  This key was invented to help people avoid the trouble, and occasional injury, of always reaching into your pocket and exposing your cuticles to the harsh materials.  Ironically, by abandoning the wrist watch and reaching for the cell phone, people are literally rejecting science and technology.     

Specs

It looks like my computer-screen-intensive lifestyle has finally caught up with me... and not a moment too soon. On the east coast, you're a nobody if you don't wear glasses. You have to be a nerd to be heard. The experience at the eye doctor was all so sudden. He ran some tests and told me to respond "clear" or "blurry" and next thing I know, this young sales associate is telling me which frames look good on me and which don't. Suddenly, I now belong to this new society where you talk about books that you have read while wearing a vision-improving apparatus on your face. I was kind of nervous about the new look but preliminary feedback has been overwhelmingly positive--one person even plans to feign blurred vision at an eye exam. I think as long as I just continue wearing V-neck sweaters I'll be OK.

Fall TV: 30 Rock

30 Rock has been crushing it so far in Season 3. The Oprah episode was wonderful. My favorite part was the ethical dilemma theme with Kenneth ("scenarios are like lying to your brain", and the elevator scene [tripped wire, hermetically sealed, oxygen enough for 8 people, unfortunately there are 7, I have replaced the emergency phone with a pistol loaded with 1 bullet] where Kenneth can't pull the trigger fast enough). So far this season has been pleasantly comical. I'm not sure if you saw last week's episode with Kathy and the soap operas but the scene up in the top floor where Jack and Liz were acting out a passionate soap scene and were on the brink of kissing was pretty fantastic.

Season 1 is definitely on par with (if not better than) what we've seen so far in season 3. Season 2, as with so many other sitcoms, felt a bit interrupted, possibly gimmicky at times (thanks to the writers' strike) but the raw wit and the character interaction and the topical satire remained strong. I highly recommend renting/acquiring season 1 (and 2). If you're looking for some greatest hits, I think my favorites from Season 1 were 'Jack Meets Dennis' and whatever the episode with Thomas Jefferson is called. They pretty much all have at least something redeeming about them.

Financial Meltdown

As the financial markets came to a near collapse during the early part of this week, I, like so many others, found myself with head in hand. The Dow dropped nearly 500 points on Monday after Lehman's bankruptcy, Merril Lynch's merger, and AIG's troubling balance sheet came to light. Then, on Wednesday, stoked by investor pessimism, it dropped 450 points (4.1%) to finish at 10,609.66, its lowest closing level since Nov. 9, 2005. This led me to hastily sell off a sizable portion of my stock portfolio on Thursday morning--ironically, the market jumped about 400 points after I sold. The Fed announced that it plans to enact a bailout program which would take the bad assets off the balance sheets of financial companies, freeing them up to resume conducting business in a somewhat regular fashion, and restore some sense of trust and confidence between institutions. The market has reacted positively over the past 2 days but we'll see how this plays out long term.