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Saturday, March 26, 2005
Email of the Week:Subject: Guide To Girls dear adrian, you're great yada yada yada. this is my thrid time writing you please reply. why don't you write us guys a "guide to girls" i'm sure you're wisdom will be laughed at which, if you think about it, is the whole point anyway. do a series like your 8w missions (which are some of the funniest things i read ever). Eric, New Haven, Connecticut Okay, let's be honest. If I were to write a "Guide to Girls", I could only tell you what doesn't work. What actually works is beyond me. It's like if I tried to teach someone how to play the cello: I can give you basic suggestions like a) don't hold the bow with your feet, b) don't wear oven mitts when you play, and c) don't try playing if you have no torso. Helpful things like that. But I'll give it a shot. Eric, I've decided that girls are preoccupied with two main things: Whether or not they should cut their hair and whether or not they're fat. You must smell this danger ahead of time and empty out of your mind any opinion while mapping out the quickest escape route. A girl asked me if she should cut her hair just last week. She was contemplating really short hair. What you're supposed to do in this situation, Eric, is run away. Instead, I said, "No." This is like Neo in Matrix, when he turned around to face the agent. Don't do this. "Why?" she challenged. "I don't know. I like girls with their hair long." "No you don't. You think Halle Berry looks great with short hair." "Yea, that's Halle Berry, though. That's different." The amazing thing about me (and all of you should start your sentences this way) is that I will often begin to talk and everything about the situation -- from the steam billowing out of her ears to the lightning shooting out of her eyes -- tells me to stop, but I, for reasons outside of myself, simply cannot. Without thinking at all, I said, "She looks good with short hair because her face is really small and skinny." "What, so you're saying my face is big and fat?" "..." This is when you know you're in trouble. When a girl starts summarizing for you what you've just said, you've already lost. Just a little thing you might want to avoid when talking to girls: Never say that anything around you is skinny. Don't even point out a skinny lamp post; they might start thinking they're the reasons why the lamp post looks skinny. Now, it could just be me, but I find talking to girls is always a delicate and potentially dangerous matter. I sometimes wonder if my success with the opposite sex hinges entirely on whether or not I'm talking. So my advice, Eric? Don't. The first item in my "Guide To Girls" is to avoid them at all costs. Tuesday, March 22, 2005
My friend Frank took some great pictures of the recital last Sunday. My using the adjective "great" pertains only to Frank's ability on the camera and not, say, my general appearance. I honestly thought that I had gotten better when it came to my "stage-face". Apparently, not only do I make as many faces as before, I am now capable of grunting at any given moment when I play.Someone please save me from my spiral down to Gross.  Judging from this picture, you'd think someone puked inside my cello and, at that precise moment, it was really starting to bother me. I'm also sure that you love my pink tie. This shot was taken during the last piece of the concert, and I was getting hot and sweaty. My tie took this opportunity to loose itself from its knot; I don't know if it did this to reflect the Tango's relaxed nature or because it simply wanted to leave at that point.But, to tell you the truth, I remember this exact spot from the concert. I don't know if you've ever done something where your hands are preoccupied and you have no way of making sure your sweat doesn't get into your eye. If it's never happened to you, you should know that it creates a burning sensation that is, all at once, distracting and not pleasurable. I felt the sweat coming as it trickled down my forehead, making a bee-line for my eyes. This is where eyebrows come in handy. Unfortunately, mine don't work.  Yes, yes, this is a great and dramatic shot, but the real question is why I'm losing all my hair. My mom says it's because of the lighting and gel. But I think my mom's willing to blatantly lie in order to avoid hearing me gripe about it all week. Luckily, in lauding Frank's abilities once again, he saves the day with this touch-up. Jon, who took this picture, feels this rivals Zoolander's "Blue Steel" look. It was actually my frantic attempt to whistle the note I was attempting to play. Usually colour commentators keep up play-by-plays to let the audience in on what they may have missed; I find it much more prolific to notify the audience what I've missed. I actually have no idea why I look like this.  Jon, who got fed up with how crappy the pictures were turning out, decided that taking a picture of just my chair was the best solution. Works for me.Okay, so the other pictures are unpublishable. If I ever have a concert in your area, try your best to come out; you don't realize what you're missing. There's this one picture where one of my nostrils looks outrageously bigger than the other. If you asked me right now to flare only my right nostril, I couldn't do it. But give me a cello and anything's possible. Tuesday, March 01, 2005
There was a time in life when I was updating Irrefragable nearly everyday. I don't know what happened to my creative energy; I hope it's being funnelled somewhere productive because, if you've read the chicken poem, it sure isn't here.I've decided that I like salads. They are a miracle food for my conscience. I eat a salad and I suddenly feel like I'm healthy; in my mind, a salad cancels everything bad I've eaten since 1998. I was on the Greyhound on my way back from Boston. The bus driver decided that we would stop at a Roy Rogers. Roy Rogers is a fast-food chain that serves fried chicken, cheeseburgers, and fries. The only things there that don't involve deep-frying with vats of grease are the salads. Knowing that I would be sitting for the next few hours and burning as many as 0.2 calories, I, with careful foresight, ordered a garden salad (with a side of cheeseburger, fries, fried chicken, gravy, and Coke). Teetering on the edge of death, as it were, I didn't even ask for salad dressing (that's what the gravy's for). Only as the bus started moving -- and I was happily gorging myself on vast and glorious amounts of fat -- did I realize that I didn't get a fork for the salad. I suppose it's a testament to how often I buy salads. At that point, the one thing I was depending on to save my life was sitting in the seat next to me happy to be going to New York. I spent the rest of the bus ride trying to figure out how to eat the thing. I contemplated the possibility of my eating the salad with my hands, but something about it seemed wrong. I don't think anyone in the history of the salad went at it with their hands; some things just scream for civility. A salad is one of those things. I imagine offering a salad to a 12th-century Barbarian and, amidst the fistfuls of roasted boar halfway to his mouth, gravy in his hair, and gristle dripping down his beard, he would ask me whether or not I had a fork. My next thought was asking the bus driver to pull over, since he said that he could pull over in the case of an emergency. I was sad to be informed by the nine-year-old girl in the next row that salads rarely headline as such. Then an idea hit me. I had always said that forks were stupid utensils compared to chopsticks. I mean, what does knowing how to use the fork get you? In a way, you're learning how to kill someone in a very inefficient and minuscule manner. The intellectual concept behind the fork, which is essentially to look and stab, can also come in handy when you're trying to pitch a bale of hay. Other then these great uses, the fork stays in the dining room. But if you know how to use chopsticks, you have learned how to manipulate extensions of your hand and fingers. If you can use chopsticks, you can retrieve that stray cap off a tube of toothpaste that always gets caught half-way down the drain. Last month, I found a dish sponge, bottle of detergent, and an old roll of paper towels because I was using chopsticks to retrieve a spoon that fell behind the fridge. The ability to use chopsticks, essentially, is a skill that multiplies in its dividends. You eat your dumplings, your toothpaste stays fresh, and you end up washing dishes. Not only that, you can also use two ballpoint pens to eat your salad. Which, incidentally, I didn't do, because I was already at Port Authority when the idea came to me. 
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