eric nuzum dot com

Cheer and good tidings! Now! Whoo-hoo!

"OKAY!!!!!" Everyone! Come to the 3rd floor conference room. Christmas Karaoke is about to begin!!!!!!! Whooo-hooo!!! Come join us!"

This what screamed from the overhead p.a. speaker--while I was in the middle of a phone call--yesterday afternoon.

As part of our holiday celebrations at work, the 3rd floor hosted a karaoke party. They had put up fliers, sent "All Staff" emails, and were now advertising by screaming into the building-wide p.a. system.

"ATTENTION EVERYONE!!! Christmas caroling and karaoke is starting in the 3rd floor conference room. It will be fun!!!!! Where are you!?!?!?! Come join us!!! Fun!!!!!!!"

I have a general rule. If someone has to go on a public address system and declare how much fun something is going to be...an assumption should be made that said event will, more than likely, be extremely un-fun.

The announcements continued to come every few minutes. Two things were becoming increasingly apparent from these messages: (a) no one had shown up to the 3rd floor conference room, and (b) the party hosts were becoming increasingly desperate.

"Where are you guys?!?!?! Whooo-hoo! It's holiday singing time!! We need your voice!!! Join us in the 3rd floor conference room! Ho ho ho!!"

and

"Hey! Come join us!! We have food too!! Free food!!! Whoo-hoo! Come to the karaoke party in the 3rd floor conference room."

I'm sure many people have many varied holiday traditions. It seemed kind of apparent that standing in front of a group of sober co-workers in the middle of the day and singing "Silver Bells" was not a popular choice among my co-workers. Perhaps the organizers of the 3rd floor Christmas Karaoke should have considered this before decorating and setting up a karaoke system. In Japan, karaoke bars are often filled with small rooms so that people can karaoke in private. Many people like to sing karaoke. Many people like to watch karaoke.

Few like to be watched singing karaoke.

Happy birthday Katie

So my wife Katherine's birthday was this past week and we decided to celebrate as part of a combo-party along with my friend Matt's housewarming.

Now, few things bring Katherine more joy than spending time with her friends, but I wanted to try to raise the bar...just a little bit.

So what would you do to make a girl's birthday party special? A pony? Problematic at Matt's new apartment, seeing there is a 24/7 attendant in the lobby. A clown? No, Meghan...has a thing about clowns.

Then, of course, my mind went to getting...a magician.

After some searching, I found just the right one, Vick. He was great.

Below is some video of him using our friend Meghan as his assistant.

I am a DIK man

Rush Hammersmith Odeon 1979
Originally uploaded by ~It's_me!

I'm not a big "joiner."

I tend to shy away from organized groups or clubs. Nothing wrong with them, it just isn't my thing.

When I was in college, I did hang out with an informal group of friends, most musicians or artists--or wannabe musicians or artists. We just basically sat around one of our decrepit rental houses, drank beer, listened to post-punk and goth music, and demonstrated how cool we were.

On a particularly slow night, we were sitting around, drinking beer, watching TV, when one guy stood up and said, "I think we should start a fraternity. Not a real fraternity, but a really really fake one."

The idea grew so out of control, so quickly, that less than one week later we had representatives of our school's actual fraternities gathered in the front lawn, threatening to turn us into ground meat if we didn't stop immediately.

Within minutes of the first suggestion, we had already decided on our Greek name: Delta Iota Kappa. The DIKs.

Two days later one guy came home with white DIK shirts with pink letters.

The next day huge pink DIK letters were nailed to the front of my buddies' house.

The day after that an ad appeared in the student newspaper promoting the DIK Rush party, including the line "All Bettys welcome!"

The next day we nailed a giant poster for the band Rush to the front porch of the DIK house, put out speakers to blare our Rush albums 2112 and Moving Pictures, bought a keg--and had a Rush party.

The party was great, though momentarily disrupted by the angry Greeks, who didn't quite get the joke. We promised to make sure everyone knew we weren't trying to be an actual fraternity and all ended well.

As with many college pursuits, we eventually forgot all about our DIK fraternity, thought the pink letters did stay on the front of that house long after my friends moved out.

At the time, we thought our idea for a fake fraternity, called the DIKs was very original. It may have been at the time, but it seems that some others have caught on to the idea, even making t-shirts.

I guess there are other DIKs out there in the world, more than just my friends.

That's Mr. Vila, if you're nasty

Paint Chip
Originally uploaded by Cardboard Astronaut

Last night I was painting my porch floor. Last night, as in, after dark. I had to use a flashlight to make sure I was getting the paint on evenly. That's because I wanted to wake up this morning to a dry porch, so I can bring all the porch furniture up from the yard, so I can put everything back together and start enjoying spring...okay, it is really so that my neighbors will stop asking me, several times a day, every day, what I am doing.

Last spring I spent three weeks on my hands and knees on our 10 x 18 cement porch, scrapping off nine layers of marine-grade enamel paint. This paint was so tough that, at one point as an act of mercy, one of my neighbors tried to help me get it up with a blowtorch--and this crap didn't even bubble.

But I had to do something with it. All those layers of paint had built up into a pretty slick surface. According to the neighbors, one of the previous residents had fallen and broken an ankle after the porch got wet from some blowing rain. So I got some paint remover and lifted up 2 or 3 layers at a time in one foot blocks, over and over and over again.

For awhile, the white guy scrapping early in the morning, late at night, when it was raining and 43 degrees and generally awful, became the buzz of my neighbors. They'd all stop by to look, check progress, offer advice, and jokingly say I was crazy for putting in all that effort.

I was, if I knew how much work it would have been, I would have rethought how to do it (or if to do it).

After I was finished, the porch was covered with two coats of porch paint with super-fine sand to provide some traction. It looked awesome.

Towards the end of the summer I noticed a few bare spots and I slowly started to realize that I had fucked up. Two reasons: (a) I put on two coats of paint, this wasn't a bedroom wall, it needed to be thicker, and (b) I should have paid more attention to the directions on the grit additive. While it owned up that the grit would make the paint more susceptible to wear, it also advised to only add grit to the top coat (I had added it to both).

I knew I'd have to do something to it this year, too. After we had our porch roof replaced this spring, I knew I'd have some painting and clean up work to do, so I thought I'd sand down the floor paint and apply a few more coats. Almost immediately, the curious neighbors started to wonder what I was up to this time:

"Didn't you do that last year?"

"What happened to the work you did before?"

"Are you going to repaint that every year?"

I'd make a little chuckle, offer up a reasonable but short explanation, then go back to work. Then I really began counting down the time left on the project, not because I wanted to get done, but because I was really tired of explaining this over and over and over and over. Especially to some of my neighbors, who have porches that haven't seen a paintbrush since the 1950s (I'm not kidding) and emit one of their few remaining tiny lead paint chips into the air every times a stiff breeze comes by.

So this morning I will walk out on the porch, put everything back together, and sit and stare as my neighbors work in their yards. Maybe I'll even ask them what they are doing, and why they are doing it that way.

And now, to end things on the right note, is a video of a kitten on a turntable.

Like looking in a mirror

mirrors
Originally uploaded by °flo

I was walking through Chinatown the other day when this guy walked up between me and the guy who happened to be walking next to me (yet slightly behind me).

"Oh my God," the approaching guy exclaimed. "You two could be brothers."

I was in a hurry and just kept walking along. However, I wanted to find a coy way to turn around and look at my suggested brother. What did he look like? Would I be happy to be compared to him? Would he be happy to be compared to me?

Eventually, curiosity got the best of me and I faked checking my cell phone and turned around. He was rail thin, about six foot six, and probably in his mid-60s.

My first reaction was to look him over good. My second reaction was to check for my wallet (it was there--I don't know why, but whenever I have a weird experience on the street I always check in back pockets).

But then the tall guy suddenly turned around and started walking in the other direction.

Maybe it was our eyes.

No, carrots don't taste like birthday cake

I recently was invited to two "taste tripping parties."

In short, this is how it works. Everyone chews on a Synsepalum dulcificum berry, aka "the miracle fruit." The juice of this berry alters the receptors on your taste buds so some foods taste different. The party concept is simple: everyone comes to the party with a food item for everyone to taste (vegetables, candy, olives, sauces, etc) and after chewing the berry for two minutes, everyone tastes food and compares results.

The buzz on miracle fruit started via a New York Times article last spring. Some colleagues at work ordered some of the berries ($90 for a bag of 20 berries) and decided to host a party. The berries were spoken for almost immediately, so my friend Meghan decided to host a rogue taste tripping party at her house. I talked my way into both.

Some things did actually taste different: lemons tasted like sugar candy, radishes tasted like celery, soy sauce tasted like maple syrup, beer tasted like, well, beer, but a different kind of beer, and sour candy tasted like regular candy. But, in their enthusiasm, a few people got carried away.

At one point during the work party, one woman was walking around saying to everyone and no one, "Carrots taste just like birthday cake! Carrots taste just like birthday cake" Since I love birthday cake, I headed straight for a carrot and threw one in my mouth.

It tasted like...a carrot.

"Excuse me," I said after tracking her down. "Carrots taste nothing like birthday cake."

"Oh well," she chuckled, shrugging me off to head off elsewhere.

My friend Andy took some video of the taste tripping party at work, which features a lot of his reactions and those of our co-workers. It will definitely give you the vibe of what happened--and didn't happen.

Postage Due

Postage Due
Originally uploaded by josephgene

So back in August I wrote about a new thing I'd fallen into doing--sending postcards. For awhile there, it was hot and heavy--one a day. Now I've settled into sending 3 or 4 a week, which is still fine.

As I travel, I buy postcards to send out. I even had some mailable postcards printed when The Dead Travel Fast came out in paperback, though I forgot to leave any room for a message on these cards.

Not that the message is terribly important to me. Often the messages I write have nothing to do with me, but are just random pieces of trivia and fun facts I stumble across: like Donald Duck's middle name (Fauntleroy), the origins of rye bread, or the name of the first woman to guest host Saturday Night Live (it was Candace Bergen). No updates on how I am or what I'm doing--just...stuff.

Well, I always put a 27-cent postcard stamp on them and send them off. I never even think that some of the larger postcards are too big for a 27-cent stamp. In fact, unless a postcards is 4x6 or smaller, you have to pay extra.

"I really appreciate learning about Jupiter and all," my friend wrote me the other day. "But the stupid card came postage due for 13-cents."

"But isn't it worth 13-cents to know that Jupiter is twice the size of all the other planets combined?" I responded.

"No, it is not," came the reply.

I'm sure this has happened more than the two times I've heard about. Oh well.

Come to my birthday party

Beloved blog readers:

Before I get into all the hoohums and fancy talkin', let me give the bottom line:

Wednesday night is my birthday party at Looking Glass Lounge here in Washington, DC. I've hired an Elvis impersonator to entertain. You are invited.

Okay, now for the back story...

I don't know how your summer has been, but mine has SUCKED ASS.

You name just about any awful thing that could happen to someone and I know a person that's experienced it this summer. I mean, in addition to the fucked up state of our economy and world. And in addition to the death, cancer, lay-offs, surgery, and other assorted terribleness that's happened to the people I care about--I have not escaped myself. My beloved asshole cat died two weeks ago.

One evening I was sitting around sipping a few drops of liquid comfort (i.e. Yukon Jack), saying to myself, "Woe is me," when I had a moment of clarity and enlightenment.

I knew that there was only one thing that could set all this straight. I knew there was only one thing that could make things right again. I knew there was only one thing that would take the frown of the summer of 2008 and turn that fucker upside down.

That thing is Elvis. Or at least a close approximation of Elvis (with "close" still being a rather loose distinction).

That's when I called my new friend Elvis E and said, "Elvis E, you have paid tribute to The King in contests in Dewey Beach, Delaware (4th place in 2006); Pigeon Forge, Tennessee (5th place in 2007); Branson, Missouri; Buffalo, New York; Baltimore, Maryland; Frankfort, Kentucky; among hundreds of other retirement parties, weddings, and other occasions. Is there any way I could compel you to help my friends, neighbors, and me rise above our oppressive summer? And I ain't talkin' about the heat!"

Elvis E looked at me and said, "Son, Elvis will be in the building."

I said, "That's alright a momma."

And that, as they say, was that.

Now if I were you, dear reader, sitting at my desk surfing blogs while pretending to be doing something meaningful and important, and I read about this dude who was throwing open his birthday party for all readers--for free--I would question his...motivation.

It's very simple, really.

It's like that old bromide: drama is easy but comedy is hard. Sitting around and bitching about politics, gas prices, evil people, and terrible shit is easy. Deciding to rise above and make something fun happen out of nothing--well, that isn't exactly hard. It is what makes life worth living.

When I see a stranger sitting there smiling at the Elvis impersonator--I'm sorry, I mean "tribute artist," then the stranger starts singing along with "Suspicious Minds"--well, I guess we aren't strangers anymore. Then I know it's time to stop being sad and that everything is going to be okay.

The King becomes cathartic.

Plus, I kind of think with everyone going so apeshit with joy--we'll make this one of the most interesting gigs that Elvis E will ever play. It would be awesome if it was memorable for him, too.

So come on down to Looking Glass on Wednesday night at 7:30pm. Trust me, there will be plenty of Elvis to go around.

When I'm gone, use my cremains to season chicken

memorial now serving barberton chicken, originally uploaded by ericandkatherine.

This weekend I stumbled upon a memorial to some guy named Mike--in the parking lot of Jake's Restaurant in Wooster, Ohio.

The best part of the photo: Regardless of their fond feelings for Mike, they didn't want to let go of some prime drive-by advertising space.

Unless you've been to Barberton, Ohio, you're probably unfamiliar with the phenomenon of Barberton-style chicken and the associated restaurants. It is so greasy and nasty that it wouldn't surprise you to learn that the secret ingredient is the cremains of some guy named Mike. Perhaps Mike had some secret chemical combo in his body that resulted in his murder, simply to use him as chicken seasoning. Thus, they constructed a memorial to his sacrifice. Thanks, Mike.

The second best part of the photo: the way the light shines across the pix, it gives you the impression that God approves of both the memorial and Barberton-style chicken.

I win and I win, then I win some more

congratulations winner
Originally uploaded by ericandkatherine.

Whenever I get a fancy new piece of technology, the first game I go looking for?

Solitaire.

I love Solitaire--always have. I play with cards, on the computer--and could happily do so for hours and hours.

When the new iPhone 2.0 software came out, I installed it and promptly bought my first game: Solitaire.

And I won my first game. And I won my second game.

In fact, I have played probably two dozen games of Solitaire and I've won every one.

Now, even though I love Solitaire--I'm not particularly good at it. I win occasionally, and I mean occasionally. So...am I any better at playing on the iPhone--or is, somehow, the iPhone version easier than others?

Safe to say, I'm pretty sure it is the latter--though I'm completely lost as to how that could be. Perhaps the game manufacturers believe that if you are going to throw down a few bucks for a game, that you'll be really happy if you constantly win.

The rub: now I'm bored with playing Solitaire on the iPhone. I think winning all the time has completely sapped all the joy out of...winning. And playing for that matter.

There are several things I wouldn't mind winning at all the time, like slot machines, Russian roulette, and Trivial Pursuit (thus implying that I'm smart enough to know all the answers). However, as I've recently discovered, Solitaire is not one of them.

So just as I was finishing this post, I decided to try a round of Solitaire on Windows--and I won it handily. Who knows, maybe I have suddenly become some kind of Solitaire prodigy or something.