a cow orker claimed that the most common birthday was October5. Ask.yahoo.com confirmed this.
I think even under normal circumstances I would have noticed the similarity between this story and this story.
Meanwhile, you all know we named our cat after this guy, right?
(No sign of labor yet. Due date was yesterday. I continue to work.)
The attempt at a bank bailout, of course. (Megan McArdle expects doom. I fervently hope she's wrong, though of course so does she. The difference is that I honestly believe she's wrong.) And the first McCain-Obama debate.
My parents watched the end of this game and together we saw parts of the fourth quarter of this game.
Despite living in the East Bay and having family in Chicago, I felt no allegiance towards either home team.
In theory my rooting interest was sealed by growing up with the John Elway era Broncos (a favorite of Tulsa's NBC affiliate - there's no way I could have become a Dallas Cowboy fan), though these days it's hard to feel that strongly about a team that manages to win under such sketchy circumstances.
If anything I feel affinity for the Pennsylvania teams despite having no ties to that state at all. My cat's namesake is a Steeler now (and Dwight sent us a Terrible Towel) and my fantasy teams of the past 3-4 years have been unusually likely to get Stillers/Iggles. (No Roethlisberger for me this year but I have McNabb, Parker, and Westbrook on different teams.)
I wonder which will come first between the kid's birth and the 2008 AL Central being decided. This game is still not under way as I type.
The only catch is that you have to fill out a request form. Of course the form requires you to answer a few pressing questions. Such as, "What do you want the Song Girls to do?" I'm sure you can manage that. In fact, there's a good chance you were thinking of what you'd like the Song Girls to do, before you knew you could get the Song Girls to do anything at all.
In no particular order:
Mayonnaise. Funny because it rings true, sad for the same reason. (I cannot emphasize enough my virulent dislike for mayonnaise.)
Slate women on sports, part one (presented without comment):
A few minutes in, we began to wish we were watching back home. "Where are the up-close-and-personal segments?" my sister asked. Sure, there was a bit of commentary, but none of the polish and packaging that you'd get from the folks at NBC. Not much history or background on the contestants beyond where in China they were born. And certainly no visits to hometowns and no proud, teary-eyed parents. Sure, these stories of sacrifice, injury, and adversity are cheesy, but they serve a necessary function, allowing you to identify with athletes whom you've never heard of before and probably won't hear from again.
Slate women on sports, part two:
The kids on the other team had made up the "you're safe if you fall down" rule midgame. They didn't seem inclined to apply it uniformly—no one on Eli's team tried to invoke it, and he didn't think it would have flown if they had. Still, we were a bit uneasy about urging Eli on in his fight for the rule of law. [...]
The problem is that the point of playing games isn't only to win, most of the time. It's also to hang out with friends, have a good time, while away a sunny or rainy afternoon. Viewed through that lens, it's important to tolerate a little rule bending. Did the dice fly off the board? OK, roll them again. Game playing takes a lot of that kind of compromise and improvisation.
It's important to tolerate a little rule bending, WHEN THE RULE-BENDING SERVES A PLAUSIBLE PURPOSE. The point behind "dice that fell off doesn't count" should be obvious to anyone who's ever played dice games. I'm completely baffled as to how a "if you fall down you're not out rule" would serve any purpose in kickball other than the naked interest of the team that pulled it out of thin air.
Anyone who can't tell the difference between "if you fall down you're not out" and "dice that fall off the table get re-rolled" is someone that I fervently hope isn't the sole philosophical mentor of his or her offspring.
And last but not least: Olympic gymnastics judges who give a zero ("no exercise score") to someone who didn't wait for a red light to turn green are the moral equivalent of quiz companies that rule an answer wrong if the player who rang in "didn't wait to be recognized."
...is the appropriate place for whoever designed those social networking ads that use the names and head shots of your own friends?
("Is [X] is funny as Ed Asner?" "Which of [E], [F], [G], [H] is more likely to listen to the new single by Burl Ives?")
I've never understood the people who think of text-correlated ads within their e-mail as a privacy violation. (The only thing that "knows" what the text was was the automatic process itself; in theory whoever owns the process could infer things about your e-mail, but in theory you could accomplish the same thing by packet sniffing, and about as tediously.) This practice of using one's own friends' names and likenesses, though... I'm not going to claim it's deceptive (anyone with half a brain will realize that these friends aren't actually endorsing those things) so much as violative.
It also inexplicably reminds me of the voice a kindergarten teacher might use. "Does a COW like to eat grass? Does a DUCK like to eat grass?"
Anyway, there is already one movie (plus a handful of music acts whose names fortunately escape me) that I will make it a point of going a lifetime without seeing.
This column led me to this blog and in particular this post.
He's dead-on about both the anecdote in the opening paragraph and the fifth item on his list. Especially the fifth item on his list. That video singlehandedly delayed my Metallica acceptance/appreciation by at least five years.
The diversity in U.S. baby names has exploded since the 1950s. Back then, a quarter of all boys and girls got one of the top 10 baby names, according to Laura Wattenberg, author of "The Baby Name Wizard" (Broadway, 2005). In recent times, the top 10 names account for only one tenth of all baby names
--Yahoo! News via Reason
(link below also via Reason)
If you're wondering what new stories The Onion will post tomorrow, compare this list to what they've already posted this week.
UPDATE: Through Friday, we're still waiting on Closeted Father... and ...thinks he's still in the closet. I suspect carload of... won't make the cut because of the bad word, which is a shame given the real thrust of the article is the ignorant slack-jawed kids working the drive-through.
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!
Love,
Party A
Postscript #1: Congratulations also to the thousands of other Party A's and Party B's who finally became eligible for official recognition today.
Postscript #2: Party B figures that the "B" stands for "Bride" but wonders whether the "A" stands for something obscene.
Postscript #3: Country music fans urgently need to keep their own marriages intact (and I suspect whatever problems they face have nothing to do with anybody else's relationship or marriage), because songs like this and this are way too depressing.
Postscript #4: And of course, as you know, it was two years ago today that Italy drew the U.S. (1-1) and this game outlasted our reception.
(That's two more than before this past weekend.)
Saturday we went to visit friends who have a new baby. They also happened to be watching gymnastics (live from the Boston University campus!) on NBC, on HD. I wonder if I'll ever get used to seeing close-ups of athletes where you can also clearly see the person in the front row idly sucking 32 ounces of Pepsi through a straw.
Anyhow, Shawn Johnson reminds me of someone (facially) but I can't place who. Near the end of the first page of results for Google Image Search for her name also happens to be, even with Moderate Safe Search on, an image of a bare backside (yet completely unrelated to the gymnast herself).
The other name I know is Nastia. She's in her teens (I presume), she's a gymnast, and her name is Nastia. Ten years from now she'll be a 20-something named Nastia who'd been a gymnast ten years ago. She'll probably be way too rich and famous to have to resort to being a stripper, yet that's a stripper name if I ever heard one.
If the picture that the NY Daily News and UK Telegraph both host is the one that got everyone in a tizzy then I'm completely dumbfounded.
1. Celebrities have backs? Who knew?
2. Don't most teen swimsuits show more skin than that?
3. The two most offensive elements of that photo are her Medusa hair and whoever butchered her makeup. I'd let a kid wear an outfit that skimpy (i.e. a toga) long before approving of that much lipstick.
Despite the italicized phrase in the last line of this post, as far as I can tell, the images linked from this article (in theory there exist workplaces where those images are NSFW) don't actually depict any body parts, naughty or otherwise.
They depict erotic toys, to be sure, but they come no closer to representing "images of penises" than would a photo of the Washington Monument.
(In no particular order)
Radio interviewers who take way too much time (and too many words) to ask an athlete a question, especially when the second half of the question is all but giving the guy's answer for him. He's already taking time out to talk to us listeners, why make him wait even longer to open his mouth?
People at large restaurant tables who are too busy with whatever conversation they're in to recognize the name of their main course when the harried waitstaff brings it out. "Santa Fe chicken? Santa Fe chicken?" And then just when the waitstaff are about to give up, Mr. Talky finally gets a clue. "Oh yeah, that's mine."
1. Google "Frank Thomas" pillow fight site:youtube.com -- you will see my favorite baseball promotional ad ever.
2. One of the Related Videos will involve Lyle Overbay -- click on that
2a. Another Related Video somewhere in there will involve Torii Hunter -- this doesn't relate to the post at hand but you should watch that as well
3. One of the Related Videos to the Overbay promo will bill itself as "bouquet catch of the year." It really isn't, though it's not bad.
4. The videos related to that take you into "I want that minute of my life back!" territory.
Anyway, welcome back.
Men who see sexually explicit images go on to take bigger risks.
If I ever ran an underground poker room, I'd show pornos to make sure the pots (thus the rake) were that much bigger.
Usually I can spot a satire pretty quickly, but last night Slate briefly had me convinced that Jenna Jameson was a virgin. (Actual article is an exercise for the reader.)
I suppose thousands of people think they've seen video evidence to the contrary (unless the special effects were just incredible). Would you believe I'm not one of those people? (As far as I know, I'm not.) I've seen very few adult movies.
1. Debbie Does Dallas (loved everything about it)
2. Behind the Green Door (hated the last few scenes, when they decided to just pretend to be Doc Edgerton)
3. Some guy recruited women into a cult. (Soft-core, despite the potential there.)
4. The meta-concept was recruiting college co-eds to do first-time adult movies.
5. Some French thing from the 1930s.(?)
6. I remember when (hotel room, during a blizzard that canceled a bunch of flights) but couldn't tell you a thing about the content.
Will Saletan quotes a study. But Alex Tabarrok downplays the study results, correctly pointing out that correlation is not causation.
Megan McArdle cites both posts, and adds a delightful YouTube link from the TV series Coupling.
Let's say for the sake of argument that tying kids up were about as widespread a punishment as spanking is. Would anyone be truly surprised to find a correlation between people who were tied up as a childhood punishment, and who tie each other up as a sexual kink?
I'd like to suggest as a general rule that you SHOULD NOT USE AS CHILDHOOD PUNISHMENT anything that adults use for sexual pleasure with any degree of frequency.
(Even though this is surely common sense, there's a problem with how to craft it, inasmuch as I know there are random (e.g.) diaper fetishists out there, and you surely wouldn't use them as a reason not to give your kids diapers. But as far as I can tell, "don't use it as punishment" is the simplest, most effective workaround.)
By all rights this video should make me livid. You know how I feel about cruel pranks, and it's hard to think of anything more cruel. And yet I enjoyed it.
The most plausible explanations for why I enjoyed it are all beyond creepy.
(It was a Sunday if that jogs your memory.)
I was helping a friend move from Berkeley to Oakland. I actually have a much more satisfying answer to the deeper question involved there, but it would be about a 1,500-word essay whose best medium might not be this weblog.
Even though a minor element of the story is a bit bittersweet, on balance I am significantly better off now than I was four years ago.
As I drove from Berkeley to Oakland I made (took?) at least two phone calls. On one, a friend sought romantic advice; that friend is now happily married (wedding was a few months ago) to just the right spouse.
On the other call I arranged for a ride to the airport, to avail myself of what seemed like an incredible opportunity. For convoluted reasons, that "opportunity" became the most frustrating situation I've ever been in, and yet if I'd never had that initial opportunity then I have no idea what other circumstance would have led me to reach out to the most important person in my life.
And hey, the friend I helped move is now happily married also (got married this past July)! -- that couple were still a long ways away from even meeting as of February 29, 2004.
[adjective] [singular noun that refers to performance] with [female celebrity name] + [number] [plural noun that refers to people in a kinky way]
Sadly, none of them have been all that compelling or even unintentionally funny.
Happy belated birthday (turned 18 on February 11).
Something something Colin Farrell etc.
But everyone knows the real milestone this year is April 15.
Middle school issues ban on intentional flatulence.
...is androgynous (probably on purpose), despite what you may have inferred the first time you saw it.
(Yesterday I took it to be a boy. Today I realized either interpretation is plausible.)
So it turns out I don't weigh almost exactly 500 kg after all.
It's hard to think of a better-looking Internet insta-celebrity.
"Lovely Lisa is throwing a girls-only slumber party at her new home and she has invited some of her hottest and wildest girlfriends over to help her celebrate. Whenever these lovely ladies get together you can be assured of two things: the gossip is going to be hot and steamy; and the clothes are coming off at some point along the way."
--peachdvd promo for Girls Night In 2*, as just hit my work e-mail inbox
"Georgina throws a sleepover party for her friend Jamie, a moderately successful actress, on the night of Jamie's fiancée's bachelor party. Jill, Jamie, Marcy, Rachel, and Georgina have been friends since childhood, and as the evening progresses they talk about a variety of topics: Georgina's heterosexual fantasies and her uncertainties about Chris, her live-in lover; Jamie's doubts and insecurities about marriage; and all of their attitudes toward sex and sexual fantasies."
--IMDB synopsis of Live Nude Girls (1995)
The latter has (all links are Google Image Search: any Safe Search settings should just be whatever you've already set up on your local machine) Dana Delany, Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Stevenson, Laila Robbins, Lora Zane, and Olivia d'Abo.
The former has Erica Ellyson, Lisa Daniels, Hannah Harper, and Valentina Vaughn.
*- I missed the original?
"High school girls usually carry textbooks and binders in the up position, against their chests; high school boys usually carry textbooks and binders in the down position, on their hips. If you have a theory on why this is so, propose it using the address at Reader Animadversion."
--Gregg Easterbrook
In the words of Bob Seger, something something "tight pants, points" something something "way up firm and high."
"So instead of being a local rocker, he's a local rocker who The Man won't let play because he's too dangerously sexy. He'll never attract 15 year old girls now."
--a reader of this post succinctly demonstrates the problem with an unusual judicial order.
Isn't this exactly the right place for a strip club?
Easy to get to (and monitor), yet difficult to discover by accident.
I never smoked, didn't play the guitar in college, didn't wear sandals, and certainly didn't eat dining hall ice cream (rather, I ate several helpings of those seasoned curly fries). But that's just nitpicking.
This story is just crazy. (As is this comment thread.)
(Fark had the same story a week ago if memory serves, but I didn't look too closely.)
Replace the picture on this profile with the infamous (NSFW) photo seen here.
Also, I agree with Mickey Kaus (from November 23) that the last sentence of this column is absurdly inane.
Gosh: some single guy likes to get drunk and pick up women. Scandalous!
Speaking of books found in the children's section of a local bookstore (in blog posts with unsavory framing devices), this might have been the other book that caught my eye a week ago. I can't really tell for sure, but for purposes of this post the point is the book in question had cover art of a smiling girl in a leotard.
Whichever picture it was reminded me of part of this SVU episode (which aired as a rerun some time during the 2005 Christmas week) where as part of undercover work, Stabler had to take a test given to paroled sex offenders to determine to what extent non-sexual images of children [still] arouse them.
Speaking of sex offenders, [bangs head against wall]. Where sound public policy and well-designed data models intersect: Blow up the entire sex offender registry system and replace it with something that makes sense. Among other things, don't treat high school kids caught in oral sex the same way you treat rapists.
This substitute teacher had issues.
Not quite on-topic (the only link is age group), I saw this book in the children's section of a local bookstore and didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The "Home Run Heroes" in question (McGwire and Sosa) are a bit less highly esteemed now than when the book came out in 2001.
Despite being a sports fan I'm deeply averse to teaching children to think of athletes as heroes. Maybe they will anyway, but my preferred choice of "heroes" would include anything from firefighters to Founding Fathers.
(Even at that, Thomas Jefferson owning slaves is orders of magnitude worse than any given ballplayer using needles or pills. People do terrible things sometimes; explaining that to children seems to be an interesting challenge of putting everything in the right perspective.)
Oh hey, the Amazon page claims that this book is for ages 4-8. Yet the page I randomly turned to in the bookstore contained the phrase "tremendous binge." By contrast it says here Dr. Seuss' publisher supplied him with a sight vocabulary of 223 words which he was to use to write his books, a sight vocabulary that was in harmony with the sight words the child would be learning in school.
Theodore Geisel 1, Major League Baseball 0.
Cheating Offsets: I can only assume this is brilliant satire.
Your mission, should you choose the time-suck, is to find at least one sexually explicit image on Wikipedia. The one I saw just now has clearly visible nipples. (If I told you it was someone related to a historical figure, that would probably give away who it was.)
"...so fat she went on It's a Small World and it sank!"
I rode the Orlando "It's a Small World" once. It did not end well. (This was right after dining at the Epcot food court.) I was not, however, ordered to drink the water.
(I feel special sympathy for Lisa for her traumatic experience on the analogous ride. One of many (at least 10!) reasons why "Selma's Choice" is my favorite Simpsons episode.)
So for legitimate work reasons I'm on the e-mail list of Peach DVD, an adult video company whose talent is 100% female. Every so often they send promo e-mail for new releases.
Girlfriends: Brazilian Lovers 3
The cover models both look flat chested. From the camera angle no idea what their backsides are like. This seems to be a historically inaccurate depiction of Brazil's standards of beauty.
Secrets of the White Room
"Something inexplicable happens to women when they enter The White Room: they are overcome with a powerful erotic energy and lose all of their inhibitions." There was actually a Get Smart episode (guest-starring Carol Burnett!) with a room exactly like that (30-second gag, not central to the plot).
The Jenna Jameson Gold Collection
Forgive me for being naive but what's so special about her? Is she just the pr0n star whose name everyone happens to know? Which well-known athlete has a career arc in his or her sport that most closely resembles Jameson's?
Maribeth has brought to our attention that Garrison Keillor has a stalker, whose letters described "graphically making love to" him.
I'd pay to hear Garrison Keillor recite obscene stories. I'd pay even more to hear him narrate obscene stories of his own creation.
I wonder if Frank of "Frank TV" has a Keillor impression.
This Wikipedia article isn't half-bad (the text is not necessarily work-safe). It succeeds on both levels: Informative at face value, and unintentionally funny.
This article was useless without a picture (co-ed columnist writes about trying out for Playboy but refusing to pose nude).
This article was worse with a picture (pants lawsuit judge not reappointed) -- I'd previously assumed that anyone that maliciously litigious had to be white.
On the other hand, this is the best picture I've seen today.
One is from recent news, the other is from a couple weeks ago but I never got around to typing it:
1. Just wait a few months, he'll use the same melody for another car commercial.
2. You'd know if it were real because the action would be mechanical and uninspired but eerily on-rhythm.
The only part I can leave "above the fold":
You may remember the McDonald's coffee case, on first impression a textbook "frivolous lawsuit" (plaintiff holds coffee cup between legs while driving, spills hot coffee, sues because the coffee was too hot) except that there's much more of a case than people (including me) credited, just because McDonald's kept its coffee so much hotter than anyone else did.
McDonald's just lost a different multi-million dollar suit, one that I think it deserved to lose, based on its failure to warn managers/franchisees not to fall for a hoax that had become surprisingly common. (You could argue that companies shouldn't have to pretend their affiliates are idiots; even so, the magnitude of harm here very high, and very foreseeable.)
1. The next time you hear about any given sexual assault trial, shudder to think that statistically, a good chunk of the jury will approach the evidence the same way some of these Fark commenters did. Their ability to infer consent from the facts on the ground is just a jaw-dropping lack of common sense.
2. I can't remember the last time a story that didn't involve death, dismemberment, or child abuse left me so horrified.
3. And yet, maybe because it's so horrifying, it works disturbingly well as a fantasy scenario. (The Houston Chronicle didn't help matters by putting the employee's picture prominently above the article itself.)
It's a vicious cycle of being creeped out, intrigued, even more creepd out, even more intrigued, etc.
UPDATE: I also share Joshua's outrage about the other lawsuit.
...does not have a Brazilian wax.
I'd been aware for some time now of a picture with the face of Hudgens and a body that fits the above description. This is the first reliable confirmation that it's a real photo and not a retouch hybrid.
But I should have suspected its veracity given (counter-intuitively) that in the picture her face isn't as attractive as you'd expect. It's recognizably her face but apparently she wears a lot of high-end makeup to look so fetching on screen.
(But like the example two posts below it's from ESPN.com)
No, thank you, I'd prefer not to think of U.S. gymnasts as "Golden Girls." (Nor the converse.)
I read things very quickly, and have come to realize that this mainly involves my mind filling in context and syntax from a series of words without consciously parsing the exact order in which they appear.
In any case banner ad + "Dick's Sporting Goods" + "Wear Your Team Out" + the layout + how I read things = "wear your [...] - HUH?!?"
"Nothing makes a straight man question his sexuality more than the sudden realization that he just wrote gay fiction."
--John, of The Dugout
I shouldn't have enjoyed this baseball story nearly so much.
(By the way, did I ever mention the irony that the Onion AV Club had this review of Chuck & Larry up at the same time as this other bit of gay Yankee fan-fic?)
While we're posting links to The Dugout: this continuing saga just killed me, especially an extended bit on the third "page."
It took a libertarian blog for me to learn that People named Drew Barrymore as the most beautiful person of 2007.
Ten years ago I knew someone who thought Drew Barrymore's appearance (black-haired at the time, for some horror movie I think, namely this horror movie) looked like her. Coincidentally, I thought of that same person after a Google Image Search on Lily Allen.
You too can write such gems. Your mission, should you choose to accept it: Come up with one-paragraph treatments of hypothetical adult DVDs (no plot is necessary beyond some convenient framing device), then promote them in the writing style you see below.
Even though I no longer focus on video, my work e-mail is still on some studio lists, including at least one adult video vendor. Synopses (written by the studio) for two titles to be released in September:
"Synopsis: It starts with a look: two beautiful girls making eye contact from across a crowded room. They sense something in each other's eyes: a burning desire that only their moist lips can quench. They are drawn to each other by an uncontrollable sexual energy. It ends with a night of incredible passion. Take a glimpse into the world of female eroticism... it begins with the Look of Passion."
"Synopsis: What if you had a magic vending machine that offered nothing but the sexiest super models you had ever laid your eyes on? A sensual selection of the world's finest female playthings, all available to you at the flip of a switch or pull of a lever. And what if each of these luscious ladies were determined to fulfill your every wish and indulge in your wildest fantasies. Well your dream has come true my friend, courtesy of Peach DVD. So settle in, break loose the change, and make your choice."
The weekend before last we went to LA to see our niece and nephew. We don't get cable TV at home but there we had access to it. After everyone else had gone to bed, and even though we were exhausted ourselves, Julia and I had a battle of wills over the choice between Man vs. Wild and the Sarah Silverman Program.
Should I feel vindicated after learning (via Cooch's World) that Bear cut some corners (as Cooch points out this is more interesting)?
Is it strange that I even find "How fake is Sara Silverman?" to be a more interesting question than "How fake is Bear Grylls?" (For instance the supposed obsession with poop screams out gimmick.)
Ironically, something I said a long time ago about Silverman's sex appeal might also apply to Bear's sex appeal: She's (or "He's") not at all sexy on a first order but is so good at pretending to be sexy that you end up convinced.
I'm mildly surprised it took me this long to get around to raving about Silverman's show: with the specific exception of poop jokes everything she does almost seems calibrated to seem funny/just wrong to me personally. But maybe only up to a point -- from the next morning onward I felt no strong inclination to go out of my way to see more episodes.
"Restless Leg Syndrome," that is. The severity of my symptoms is closely related to how much (read: how little) exercise I'd gotten that day.
Aside from my own experience (I feel no need to take medicine for it), I can't say anything better than Virginia Postrel already did.
Sort of along those lines, Julia and I were catching up on previous Sundays' New York Times yesterday. She came across an article about a new name for repetitive stress injuries caused by Wii overuse. Strictly speaking Wii elbow isn't a "new disease" but just a new way of achieving a well-known injury. Years ago I'd do something similar to myself by playing too much pinball.
The source of mine is obvious (but no less embarrassing):
"participating"
"McDonald's"
It would be Alanis-ironic if Danica McKellar turned out to be my Isabella Rossellini.
It would be even more Alanis-ironic if Alanis Morissette did, but she's not as close a near-miss (nor as plausible an "actually end up meeting her": I claim Danica could randomly turn up by way of other math geeks I know).
The last time (and only meaningful time, i.e. only time I'd be getting dispensation from someone) I was asked to put my "list" together, Danica didn't even occur to me, which is actually real-ironic given [redacted but should be obvious to an insightful reader]. Alanis did occur to me but just didn't make the cut.
She and Meg White would both be reasonable candidates if the cutoff were 10 instead of five.
This is probably as good a time as any to add McKellar to my "list" (the celebrity who drops from fifth to sixth doesn't play on the appropriate team anyway).
I realize Cooch is in a steady relationship (his better half refers to him as her "future husband") but if it were possible to break the real-fictional boundary then I'd still try to set him up with Margo from Apartment 3-G. I think he'd find her enjoyably bitchy.
Your turn. (This works better if the real half is someone we know, for some vague definition of "we.")
BONUS COOCH MOCKERY: The picture at the end of his July 27-29 entry is crying out for a LOLCAT-style caption.
I have no idea (for obvious reasons). Similarly, I doubt MySpace has any real idea how many sex offenders are on their site.
As long as the service is free, there's no foolproof way to check (text matching is problematic enough when it doesn't involve people's name, some of which could be ID theft), and trying to remove them just results in travesties like this.
While we're here, I have no idea what to make of this story. I was once a "butt-grabbing middle schooler" (three times, give or take). It's reasonable for that kind of harassment to be illegal, not so reasonable for it to be charged as a felony.
It looks like one of Chad's favorite Congresspeople recently got married.
(Last installment of many.)
Chicago-Oakland. I reduced my e-mail backlog. Julia did laundry and showed my mom pictures. The four of us had brunch at a Cracker Barrel and then home-grilled dinner on the patio.
Our previous Midway departure we'd carried everything on. This time, the heck with it: Four checked bags (one of which was entirely Julia's parents': Julia watched her mom pack it so that she could answer the airport security questions truthfully).
The Midway skycap has a posted sign making explicit that bag handlers do accept gratuities. Well, if you value your luggage, that pretty much dictates your plan of action. Our guy looked like he'd been in the sun awhile: Blond hair, skin getting a bit pink. I gave him a fin; he gave me directions to Terminal A that I appreciated but didn't need. (After he finished: "So, left at Harry's?" - that intersection, just past security, might be the only place in Midway where your terminal letter affects which way you go.)
The guy in front of us in the "A" line had used his (thin and valuable-looking) computer case as a placeholder while he sat down. The guy in front of him accidentally knocked it over right as we were approaching. I was paranoid that Julia and I would step on it. I say this was bad airport etiquette of him and that it's on him if anything bad happened to his bag (nothing did): Can we get a ruling?
Uneventful flight (I slept?) followed by an emotional reunion with our kitten. She'd been cared for well in our absence, with daily visits, but that's no substitute for the people she'd shared her life with. Eighteen nights of nobody getting into that bed.
She was suspicious when we came back. (She'd also left us a tiny present just inside the front door.) Every little noise made her skittish. Most of all she talked at us. Maybe she was telling us what happened while we were out, maybe she was lecturing us about how she'd worried that we were dead. She eventually forgave us and has been sweet, affectionate and adorable ever since.
London/Detroit/Chicago: Our mission for the day was to catch our London-to-Detroit* flight after waking up in a hotel immediately adjacent to the terminal. To that end we got in line with three hours to spare.
*- in previous entries substitute "Detroit" for "Chicago" on references to the transatlantic flight.
After waiting 45 minutes in the baggage check line we learned that our (re)booking, though supposedly confirmed, wasn't actually in Northwest's computer yet (the attendant got a "Wrong Date Error") and that we'd have to go around the corner to the ticket counter to pay our rebook fee (even though we'd given a credit card number the day before).
At the ticket counter we were next to a couple (+ baby) trying to get from Dublin to Idaho so that the American's mom could see the grandkid for the first time. They'd had the same Heathrow-to-Gatwick missed flight problem today that we'd had the day before.
After half an hour at the ticket counter of the lady trying and failing to get the system to process our payment, she found that the only option was just to waive the payment and book us. She did that and also put us in the Business Class line (albeit still our normal seats) so we wouldn't have to wait through the whole line again.
From among our dining options we opted for Garfunkel's (same ambiance as Friday's) where Julia finally got her fish & chips and I had a cottage pie.
We were told to be at our gate at 12:50 to board. We were walking to the gate at 12:54 when we saw a message flashing in red on the departures screen: CLOSING. No way... but when we got there the line was processing routinely.
As previously mentioned, I thoroughly enjoyed Wild Hogs but was ambivalent about I Think I Love My Wife. (Julia also watched them both, in sync with me, and had similar reactions.) On the music side of things I highly recommend First Message (huge in Japan). Whoever directed the NY Philharmonic recording of Pictures at an Exhibition, however, is in sore need of a few cups of coffee: It's called "Promenade," not "dirge"!
Customs in Detroit was pretty routine. We learned that they don't allow Fabergé eggs back in because those are literally made of egg (and there's a bird flu issue). (Since we'd mentioned both Czech Republic and Ukraine on our form, we had to go through a special security screening but even that only took a few seconds.) My least favorite thing about customs was the security screening that everyone had to go through, I suppose because the U.S. is tighter than European countries.
(For example, at no European checkpoint did I ever see anyone remove their shoes.)
In our three-hour layover we walked from one edge of Detroit's Terminal A to the other. On the phone with Chad I correctly inferred that a Michigan pitcher had a no-hitter going in the College World Series. (He and I both abide by the same tradition/superstition that yesterday the A's TV guys and radio guys all flouted.) I sat at an airport bar to see whether the Michigan guy would hold on (he didn't). Next to me was a guy in a Met jersey who'd just seen Tom Glavine get clobbered.
Northwest's 19:38 from Detroit to Midway wasn't in much demand (it was right around the same time as the Detroit to O'Hare). The gate was sparsely populated, no attendant, then she came up and picked up the PA and phoned in the usual verbiage ("Welcome to flight [pause to look up at the placard]") and announced boarding for all rows, etc.
We actually did have a seat mate, one of the last guys on the plane, who was in a Seventh Day Adventist seminary. "We're Jewish" is a good way to circumvent the obligatory salvation conversation. (It's half true, and since any children we have will have a Jewish mother...)
Between the somewhat late departure and the early landing, I think we actually did arrive "before we left." Speaking of time zone issues, you could say we'd been up since 3 a.m. Chicago time or you could say that we were still up at 4 a.m. London time. Either way, we slept soundly but got a nice earlyish (8 a.m.) start to the final day of our vacation.
London: How to miss your international flight, the silver lining being a night on the town after all.
By the by, this is the best Tube map I've ever seen even though it's not the standard diagram. It's much closer to scale (the "real" map is distorted, more the shape than the size).
Maybe the difference is EU point of origin vs. U.S., or the lack of haggard red-eye syndrome, but the Heathrow customs weren't as time-consuming as Gatwick's 11 days earlier. We got through shortly before 11:00, needing only to find the Express Bus terminal and get to Gatwick in time for a 13:50 departure. No problem, right?
I'm not sure how this happened but we didn't make it down to the terminal until 11:26. Based on the departure screens Gatwick buses seemed to leave every 20 minutes (11:25 [we watched this one pulling out], 11:45, 12:05, etc.). It turns out there was an 11:35 bus that we would have caught if the bus driver simply accepted cash payment (as train conductors do, though obviously the bus driver can't just wander the aisle while en route). We knew the fare was 20 pounds per person but didn't realize we needed to literally buy tickets.
(If you know how Gatwick departures work, you know we're already in trouble here. If you know more now than we did then about the commute length, all the moreso.)
The earliest departure time the kiosk would give me was 12:05, berth 15A. Well, a Gatwick-bound bus pulled into berth 15 at 11:57. We moved up to board it; the guy took our luggage, looked at our ticket, waved us on. Then I saw that there really was a berth 15A next to the 15. A Gatwick-bound bus pulled into it around 12:02 -- with the same number on it as our tickets. Sure enough, that bus left at 12:05, ours at 12:15.
That's when the driver told us our estimated time of arrival was 13:35. Moreover, once that stressful (despite there being nothing we can do about it) I got off at the wrong terminal. Future mnemonic for Gatwick: If you're flying on Northwest, then naturally you're leaving from South terminal. Julia hailed me back just in time to not miss the bus itself (driver even restowed our luggage).
So finally, South terminal. As promised, 13:35. No sign of our flight on any Departure screen. Worse yet, no sign of Northwest anywhere. We finally found their ticket desk: Completely empty. Security couldn't let us through without boarding passes. By the time we got a hold of a Northwest rep on the phone, she told us that according to her information the flight had just taken off. For a small fee she could (and did) rebook us on the same flight 24 hours later.
Long call with my parents, who arranged for our Chicago-to-Oakland (on Southwest) to be 24 hours later.
Now, where to stay? As it happens, Gatwick's South Terminal is physically connected (you don't even go outside!) to a Hilton Hotel. The posted room rate (on a sign at the check-in counter) was 250 pounds (about $500!). Not as shocking on a Saturday night as it would be otherwise. So I went up to the check-in counter and I told him honestly, "We'd been interested in staying here but it turns out to be out of our price range. Do you have any recommendations?"
How WASP am I that I assumed his answer would be a list of cheaper hotels, rather than the better offer that I'd inadvertently solicited? He told me they could give us a room for 133 pounds (tax brought it to 145). That works. And that meant we got to go out on the town!
We picked up maps from the Concierge and figured out the plan on our Gatwick NON-express train (10 pound all-zone day passes good for trains, Tubes, and buses). Here's your Tube map for reference: Our theater, like most of the other West End Theaters, was closest to Leicester Square. We got into Victoria and learned that the Circle and District lines were both closed for weekend maintenance. No problem -- just take the Victoria Line north to Green Park (one stop) and the Piccadilly Line two stops east (through its namesake). They even had an official Half Price Ticket window in the Leicester Square stop itself.
We meant to eat Indian food at The Red Fort but before we actually walked to/past it, we happened across this charming hole in the wall nearby and figured, this should also be fine. It was. Tasty food, just the right amount of spice, good use of potato in the dishes. I should note, though, that the cheese on the cheese nan was cheddar: So they may be vegetarian but they're a bit less than authentic!
Julia had wanted to see Mary Poppins on stage since she was 3. It was everything she'd hoped for. So did we inadvertently see anyone famous? Maybe.
Real-time update: The Mary Poppins London Cast recording is on Amazon for $10. Same CD was sold at the theater for 15 pounds.
Julia had been somewhat interested in fish & chips after the theater but my goodness, SoHo on a Saturday night is streets full of soused Londoners. We had a minor Tube adventure (a result of my forgetting about the Circle/District closures until we already got to Embankment) but made it to the Gatwick train without event.
On the train back we were across the aisle from ladies returning from a bachelorette party. The bride to be was in her 40s and one of her companions was her mother. They were all delightfully drunk, and trying to reach their husbands by cell phone. "Hubby wubby..." "It says 'call failed.' It says I'm a failure." My favorite was, "Hubby, did you just go into a tunnel?" -- when the train itself went into a tunnel.
From the train station to the hotel took us through the place where all the check-in stations were.
Prague.
The Marriott runs a shuttle every half-hour between its locations in central Prague (V Celnici) and at the airport. The brochure we got quoted a price of 90 crowns per person, though we learned that the price had been raised to 120. (That is, $6 a person instead of $5.)
[The point at which a cab would make more sense is probably at least four people.]
Breakfast at Coffee Fellows following a silly argument about whether we'd go back to the same place as yesterday. (I'd assumed we would; I was wrong.)
Then we made the 10-minute walk to the airport pickup place. Julia's parents speak very highly of my ability to find things armed only with a map. We bid adieu and as the van pulled away we were again two instead of four. En route we saw the same McDonalds (Nonstop McDrive) again: You can't miss it because the lot is so big.
British Airways scheduled departure of 12:40 (Europe = PDT + 9), arrival 13:50 (Greenwich = PDT + 8). Well, 12:40 came and went. The first acknowledgment of our delay was a patently false claim about the departure window assigned to us. Then the captain admitted that a maintenance light was on and they weren't sure what to do about it. They'd attempt a fix and try to get us off the ground; if it worked, great, but if not...
I'm not sure when/where the rumor began that BA would send a replacement plane from London, but implicitly that turned out to be false. Nor could they do anything useful in the short run with the scheduled plane. We couldn't even return to the departure lounge until shortly after 15:00. This is about when I changed from fretting about our evening plans in London to fretting about making our flight out of London the next day.
I learned that our flight was actually canceled from waiting in line for more information at the departure lounge (where they couldn't rebook people: as you might guess anyone with a cell phone was making frantic arrangements). I said something sarcastic about how I must have missed the PA announcement; sure enough, 90 seconds later they made it.
Was the best part of all of this:
A. We had to go back through passport control, wait in line there, and then to the baggage claim?
B. They did not begin off-loading baggage until at least 17:00 because this was unanticipated labor for which they didn't have extra workers?
Julia and I decided to split up. She would wait for our baggage while I stood in line at the BA customer service counter. That counter was staffed by two employees; the plane itself had around 180 people (about 30 rows, A thru F per row), so probably about 90 flight plans?
There were only 7-8 people in front of me when I got to the line but each transaction took on the order of five minutes, since most people had connections. (Technically Julia and I also did, but not on BA; for their protocols we did not have a connection to make.)
I stood at the Arrivals meeting point for about an hour before Julia emerged. We walked past a very, very long customer service line (Smart Cart after Smart Cart of baggage...) and across the way to the Marriott, where we decided to make one last foray in the city -- just in time to miss the 18:00 shuttle.
This is where we took the cab whose driver had an open beer can in the cup holder. He spoke very little English (and we spoke no Czech) but we communicated okay auf Deutsch.
If our cell phones had worked maybe Julia and I could have spent a bit more time with her parents. We went to their apartment and rang the bell, to no avail. This missed connection was among the most frustrating parts of the cancellation.
Instead, one last dinner in Old Town, and this time I had the best mixed grill I'd encountered there.
Back on the Marriott shuttle and eventually to a fitful sleep. I should note that contrary to what I claimed at the time, the movie on TV was not Beverly Hills Cop: It was actually Beverly Hills Cop II.
Prague.
After a bit of a money-changing adventure we ate breakfast at a bakery with very nice sandwiches.
Our first stop on "my" walking tour was this metronome. It's a neat installation but my biggest point of frustration was the complete lack of descriptive information (does it work? the Internet says yes; how does it work? what is its period of rotation? no idea).
Onward and (literally) upward to the castle. Contrary to what you might think from the skyline, the building in the middle is a church. The surrounding structure is the castle.
Julia and I parted ways with her parents here so that we could catch the 15:00 Jewish Ghetto walking tour. From the castle back to town took us directly across the Charles Bridge (pedestrian only). We were going to find the place, catch a bite to eat, then go tour, but in the middle of the Old Town Square we found a guy with a placard for his 14:30 Jewish Ghetto tour at a fraction of the price of the one with the glossy flyer. We stopped at a mini-mart for water and then joined him.
Seven tour customers: Us, couple from Manchester, couple from Germany, and recent McGill alumna. We saw synagogues, memorials, and the grave site with up to 12 layers of bodies.
Jewish history in Prague, general overview: Everyone got along OK until the Fourth Lateran council decided Jews were official to blame for Jesus's death. From that point on they were sequestered, in Prague and other cites (actually expelled from many other European cities). Things got a bit better with the Toleration Edict of 1781 (HRE Joseph II). By the early 20th century, all but the most impoverished Jews had vacated the Ghetto: But the ones left over experienced squalor and sanitation issues, so they gentrified a bit.
Everything fell apart in the 1930s with the Nuremberg laws: If you had any drop of Jewish blood the Nazis considered you Jewish and confiscated most of your property (and prohibited Jews from most jobs and schools). Things got worse from there, as you're well aware.
The Nazis inadvertently created a museum of Jewish artifacts by gathering them all up, storing them at a synagogue in Prague, and opening their own museum on the conceit of ridiculing the ugly [sic] art of an "inferior culture."
One of the synagogues had a very sobering memorial, with names of the fallen and children's artwork from Theresienstadt. (Stark contrast to Monday's tour of the Odessa Jewish Museum (if you're ever in the neighborhood, don't go), where the room that explains how 250K Jewish Odessans died in World War II is immediately followed by the room where you can get your photograph taken with your head on a horse-riding Cossack's body.
At the end of this tour, the tour guide saw his rabbi on the street and the rabbi engaged him in conversation.
We were supposed to meet Julia's parents at our place at 18:00, after they took care of a cell phone internationalization among other things. Somewhere along the line they got bad directions. They ended up cabbing back to us, arriving at 18:55.
On the plus side, our tour guide gave us discount coupons to an Italian restaurant (also right near where we were staying) on whose name I've blanked. I had an excellent mixed grill. After Julia's parents called it a night, she and I walked around the Old Town area until after midnight, and took in a beautiful view looking across the bridge just north of Charles Bridge.
From Odessa to Prague, after a morning spent packing.
(By the way, back in the present -- i.e. Tuesday, June 26 -- Julia's parents returned to the U.S., ending a 45-day odyssey that included Israel, Odessa and Prague (with us), and a Czech spa.)
There are McMansions in the U.S. larger than Odessa's airport. I previously mentioned the cramped passport control room, the "find it in a pile" baggage reclaim, and the lobby full of would-be taxi drivers & tour guides. On the flip side there's one check-in area (four lines), one security check-point, one duty-free shop, a smokers' area (enclosed in glass), and one duty-free shop.
We checked in remarkably quickly, then the ladies went duty-free while the men sat waiting. Every PA system announcement was preceded by, so help me, quasi-Tetris music. Every announcement was given twice, the second time in English, delivered very melodically. At one point they announced boarding for Warsaw and my father-in-law briefly, inexplicably thought this was our flight: Several years ago he'd spent time in Warsaw.
As with the deplaning five days earlier, boarding involved getting on a bus that took us maybe 200 feet to the plane. This time, though, the Prague deplaning involved a covered walkway. (On the plane itself, we'd been assigned seats 17A, 17B, 17C, and 17E. Bad: The woman in 17D adamantly refused to switch seats with my father-in-law. Good: Seats 18A-18C were all unoccupied, so he just lounged behind us. While on the plane I read about the G8 summit and felt glad that Bush was out of Prague by the time we got there.)
A driver had been assigned to meet us at the airport. We managed to make it outside without seeing him, but found him upon doubling back. Prague's airport, like Odessa's, has something you'll probably never (again) see in the U.S.: A small set of parking spaces right across from the entrance, with free spaces (in both senses of "free").
On the ride into downtown I noticed the same McDonalds (with "Non-stop McDrive") that I'd previously seen from the bus to the airport. One of the first places I noticed once we'd crossed a bridge into the city was a Belgian restaurant. We never got around to trying either of the aforementioned eateries.
Julia and I were given four keys to our apartment and told we'd figure out what key fit where. The pink key was for both the outside door and an interior gate; the black key was for our second-floor apartment door, though it did not work on the analogous first-floor door (being American, I went up one floor from the Ground Floor to what I briefly, mistakenly, thought of as the second floor); the white and green served no obvious purpose. Conversely, at least two locked doors within the apartment were not accessible to us. I presume the people who usually live in that apartment had put valuables there.
Julia's parents' apartment was here, on the north side of the street. The one-way streets foil Google Maps (since I'm really giving pedestrian directions) but Julia & I were on the west side of Kozi, a half-block south of Hastalska (so two quick block from her parents). At the corner of Kozi & Bilkova was a Mexican restaurant, of all things (another place we didn't try). Next to our place was a sports bar with a banner promoting French(?) Open coverage.
When we asked around about getting authentic Czech food we were directed to Kolkovna, right around the corner from our place. It was crowded (not a chance of eating outside) and the service a bit slow (interesting reviews here: it certainly wasn't this bad!) but my father-in-law and I both got some pretty good lamb out of it.
Afterwards we strolled north. Made it as far as the Intercontinental Hotel but not as far as the bridge. Back at the parents' place we mulled over what tours to take. Julia had her heart set on a Jewish walking tour, leaving in the afternoon, but her mom was only up for so much walking. For flexibility (and to avoid some sticker shock) we agreed on the "Motya tour" (Motya ["MOYCH-uh"] = me), where I'd look at a map, figure out a route, and play it by ear for how people felt and where they wanted to go. Tune in tomorrow for how that worked out (very well, if I say so).
Odessa: Day 4 of 5
In the morning Julia and I joined her mother in seeing more of the city center, particularly places that didn't exist until long after the 1970s.
One shopping center spanned six stories, with 2-3 stores per floor (mostly clothes) and nothing especially interesting. On the plus side, in a book store Julia found all sorts of bilingual (Russian/English) children's books. That this was the same store where they charged money for a bag (after asking if she'd like to have her books bagged) was at most small annoyance.
Around 13:30 we stopped at a cafe, not for lunch (we'd had a late breakfast) but for ice cream (them) and a "nice to sit down and get off my feet" beer (me).
Last round of shopping involved some local music at a CD store and a shaving razor et al at a grocery/drug store.
We'd been supposed to meet back up with Julia's dad at the host's house at 15:00. Things ran late enough that we got back at 15:30 -- yet were the first ones back. So instead of meeting one more old friend between meals (someone whom I'd initially understood to be an old friend of Julia's brother, but apparently more of a mentor than a friend given his age), that meeting instead took place over dinner.
In the evening Julia's dad took us to the country dacha that he and his own father had built themselves. It's vacant now but the landlady gave us explicit permission to visit. Julia and I climbed over the fence (locked gate), took pictures/video, and picked a lot of cherries.
Immediately after that the four of us (Julia and I, her dad, and our host) went to a beautiful beach. We spent maybe an hour there. It frustrated me in hindsight that we hadn't gone there sooner or spent more time there.
Odessa, day 3 of 5.
As became our custom, in the morning Julia and I walked 20-25 minutes from our apartment to our hosts, then had a hearty breakfast.
Julia and I went with her mom to meet an old childhood friend. We walked around and saw the places those two spent their childhood, leading to conversations like:
"Why are you taking pictures inside our school?"
"I went here, [round number of] years ago."
"Oh, welcome back."
(But in Russian.)
Then we went to the physical headquarters of The World Odessit Club. Julia's dad explained his sheet-self-changing hospital bed invention to a potential investor, whose daughter (coincidentally) will be at Hayward State Cal State East Bay.
Further exploring required a car, so the usual quintet piled in. We stopped by the apartment where Julia's dad spent most of his life. He knocked on the door. He knocked again. He knocked again. A dazed-looking man in gym shorts (and no top) answered the door. Julia's dad explained that he used to live there and wanted to show his daughter around. They went in together. Julia's mom and our host and I stayed back, idling in the fresh air of the courtyard-facing corridor.
(Have I explained yet about Odessa's literally crumbling? Apartments that were state owned are now privatized but apartment buildings -- courtyards and stairwells -- are a no man's land about whose maintenance obligations nobody can agree. Services in general (plumbing, say) are abysmal. It's as if the outgoing Communists said "You don't want us to take care of everything?!? Then screw you, we'll take care of nothing." One piece of graffiti in the stairwell where Julia and I stayed name-checked The Eminem Show.)
After enough time passed that I wondered about a potential rescue (you never know which parts of the world "Americans" = "ransom opportunity"), father and daughter emerged. As Julia recounted to me later: Three young adults had been inside (counting the guy who answered the door), all either hung over or drugged out or both. When Julia's dad pointed out the place on the ceiling where the apartment had been bombed during World War II, they got a bit creeped out. He did also show off the bathtub fixtures he'd built himself, and other examples of his handiwork.
Our last activity of the day was dining out. I knew only that the well-to-do winery guy had organized this and that it was "the best place to eat in Odessa" and that we'd meet at 18:00 to ride there. The ride was in the van ("Autobus") I mentioned earlier: Chauffeur, room for two adults (and a child in their lap) in the front, then three (or four tightly squeezed) in the traditional back seat, then up to four in the very back (bench seats facing each other sideways).
Between 18:00 and 20:00 our wine magnate showed more things that involved multiple instances of "stop, get out, walk around a bit, get back in." One was a mall whose ambiance reminded me of Stonestown. Then there were some condos (we looked out the window but didn't disembark), a boardwalk/amusement park area, and finally the dacha where an old friend was picked up.
Dinner itself (party of 10) was on a converted boat deck on the Black Sea shoreline. I think we were literally on the water but moored tightly enough that the ship (ship fragment?) didn't rock. I had beef Stroganov, Julia's mom had chicken Kiev, Julia had a dish involving chicken stuffed with crab.
Many toasts ensued, stories told, notes compared about what August 1991 was like as viewed on televisions in San Francisco vs. as experienced behind the falling Curtain.
Today's Odessa highlights: Cemetery visit, Black Sea cruise.
When a Russian host serves guests a meal (or a course of a multi-course meal), the custom is to fill the table with various dishes of food and let no taste desire go unmet. Along with this, nobody starts eating until all dishes (and the host) are at the table. So meals are very good, but quite long.
A note on driving in Odessa: On two occasions (to be narrated as they come) the well-to-do winery owner had his driver take us places in a van. The rest of the time, our host Mr. G drove the four of us in his Fiat while Mrs. G stayed at the house. He's like a Boston driver to the nth degree: The space in front of his car was his, by golly, and if anyone threatened to trespass on it he'd honk twice and speed up.
Anyhow, after breakfast, the five of us went to Odessa's main cemetery to pay some respects.
The last thing we did before exiting was, of course, to wash our hands. (Even if you're not familiar with this custom, you understand why, right?) The next-to-last thing I did was find restrooms. I won't say it was a hole in the ground -- since Men and Women were separate it was basically two holes, though each did have walls and a ceiling.
After the cemetery we went out to the pier to gain information about the Black Sea cruises. Not to take one (not yet), but just to learn when they left (basically on the hour).
Meanwhile back at the hosts' house: June 3 happened to be our host's birthday and they were having a party there starting at 16:00. The dilemma: We're in Odessa for four days (actually five days, four nights). Julia's parents didn't want to burden their friends, but it turns out their friends really wanted them at the party. Some indecision (and dead time) later, the consensus was to give me and Julia the rest of the day to explore by ourselves while her parents did attend the party.
At about 14:45 we wandered back over to the top of the Potemkin Steps. Hungry for lunch, we ended up dining outdoors at a place with a view straight down those steps. It might have been a tourist trap, but hey, beautiful day, prime location, we had leisurely fun. Julia had an elaborate salad; I had a chicken dish that turned out to be breaded. A bit like chicken Kiev but with the butter on the side instead of squirting out.
We expected to take a 16:00 boat but with our late lunch running long (we split a bottle of wine and felt no need to rush), no worries, we took the 17:00.
The Black Sea is beautiful. We sat on the top deck of a double-decker boat. Across the way from us a young couple (pregnant wife), and a few feet away a couple Americans talking a bit too loud (Americans talking loud?! - never!) about what they'd been drinking and would drink later.
Back upstairs, through the park, past a pole with bronzed arrow signs with mileages to cities around the world. And then hey: There we were right by the apartment. Might as well take a nap.
Fast forward to around 20:30 (sun still up), and the quest for yet more outdoor dining took past several overpriced places and/or tourist traps, to Top Sandwich (oddly, this dining guide describes it as a "snack bar chain") on the pedestrian mall. I had a hot skillet with pork, tomatoes, et al -- one of the most expensive items on the menu. Julia had a "Julia kebab" (beef). (Since they named it after her on the menu, how could she not?)
Julia had asserted before we left that nearly everywhere we went, nearly everyone would take Visa. That wasn't quite the case but we did find enough places. The problem in Odessa, though, was that they told us they couldn't process a tip with Visa because the money would go straight to the bank. Instead any tips would have to be cash. As a result we stiffed the lunch place (sorry people! - but in fairness you were distinctly slow anyway) but I did make some change to enable a respectable cash tip. (On most of the continent, unlike in the U.S., 10% suffices.)
We strolled a bit after dinner and next thing we knew it was 22:30, 22:45. Would her parents and their hosts still be up? Would they want us to visit? (Our cell phones weren't working so it was in-person visit or nothing.) We decided to stop by, and had plenty of late-night conversation. We agreed we'd walk over there for breakfast the next day, and eventually called it a night and walked back to our apartment.
The rest of this entry includes a decent map of Odessa city center, but this page has a much, much better map, put out -- ironically -- by the people two doors down from the apartment Julia and I used.
From Sunday onward our days typically began with a walk to Julia's parents' friends house and ended with the walk from there back to the apartment. One way to do that (the trip there) involves going west on Deribasov or Lanzheronov until the City Garden, then north on Gavann and jog over to Gogol. The better (shorter AND more scenic) way that I wish I'd discovered sooner, took us through Moon Park from the west edge of Dumskaya Square.
Last in a series of included-with-the-hotel-price breakfast buffets, this one most notable for the amazing sausage.
The morning desk clerk at Hotel Golf (Prague) was much friendlier and more helpful than the previous evening's. She told us we could take the Metro (any Metro) two stops outbound and then connect to the 178 bus going to the airport. It would cost us 20 crowns (about a dollar) each, with a free transfer.
We walked out to the Hotel Golf's namesake Metro stop and waited about ten minutes. We got on: Despite my expecting a cash slot by the driver, he was behind Plexiglas. There was a box that looked fare-related, though it was unclear what if anything would happen if we put our money there. Nobody asked us for a fare; two stops later, oh well. We got off.
Now what? We were at an intersection where it wasn't immediately clear where to catch the transfer but then three things became clear at once:
1. On our left (coming from the south), waiting at the light, was a bus with the correct bus # and with an airplane dot logo
2. On our right (to the north), just past the light, was a bus stop (for northbound traffic)
A rather long trip to the airport but we still made it in plenty of time. The Prague airport numbers its check-in stations, for example British Airways 141-144 or Czech Air 161-167 (maybe only certain flights at a time). They also have a stand where people can saran-wrap their checked bags for greater security: This was really popular, though we did not use it. But like Stansted, Prague had weight restrictions per piece of carry-on, lead us to check more than we'd intended.
Our passport stamper lady (passports stamped in the place one might have expected the security checkpoint to be) was the more bored human being I've ever seen. It was as if every passport she stamped reduced her will to live.
There were several Duty Free shops between that point and our gate, and the X-ray security was gate-specific, or at least 2-3 gates at a time. (Kansas City has the only U.S. airport I've ever seen with this set-up.)
At our gate, when boarding began, the object boarded was a bus. The count of people on our flight required two of these. We were among the last people on the first, which was barely under way before it had to slam on the breaks and send a bunch of us tumbling (including a little kid who got hurt enough, or surprised enough, to bawl/howl the rest of the way).
From the bus straight onto the plane, which had both a front entrance and a back entrance. (Might as well mention here that our Nuremberg flight had deplaned on the tarmac and we'd walked a few feet, under the watchful eye of security.)
Unexpectedly many Germans on this flight, including our row mate and his colleague across the aisle, both of whom read the same sports magazine. We read the in-flight magazine, whose articles all had an English translation immediately after the original Czech.
Like the departure, the arrival in Odessa involved a bus trip, this one embarrassingly short (maybe 200 feet: why they couldn't have just let us walk it is beyond me).
The space after coming in from outside but before passport control was a room not quite large enough for its intended purpose, full of people many of whom didn't quite understand (or philosophically disagreed with) the logistics behind forming separate queues. A bit frustrating but this turned out not to take as long as I'd feared.
Next step: luggage. But not on a conveyor! In Odessa you pick out your bags from the pile.
Then through one last door, the sort of door that every time it opened a crack there seemed to be people waving their hands if not trying to get in. Once we were on the other side, in the throng, at least three people offered their services as cab drivers before we found Julia's parents and their friend.
Things I noticed on the ride from the Odessa airport, in no particular order:
1. Hot day
2. Trees lining all the streets
3. Sidewalk construction/rubble everywhere, kicking up a bit of dust
Next stop, the apartment where Julia and I would lodge the next four nights. My impression had been that the drive from the airport was mostly south with a bit of east (I may have been 90 degrees off, or even 135 degrees off), with a sharp downhill grade going "south" to our door. Even though ours was a side block there were tiny restaurants on either side of our apartment entrance, plus one at the north end of that block.
(We later discovered that something called an American Business Center was two doors up, and that every restaurant on our block was laughably overpriced.)
If this map is to be believed then we were also on the same block as "Continental Hotel": Deribasovskaya, between Pushkinskaya and Polskaya.
Misleading things about that linked-to map:
1. It shows streets but not easy pedestrian routes, including (ironically) the Potemkin Steps themselves (which run from Primorskyy Blvd. downward to Primorskaya).
2. It shows neither which streets are one-way nor which streets are pedestrian-only, e.g. Deribasov itself from Rishelyev to the City Garden.
The car trip from our place to her parents' friends place: Deribasov for half a block, left onto Puskins for one block, right onto Greche for two blocks, right onto Yekaterinin (if you're wondering, at the time I had no idea what any of these streets were named but did build up a map in my head), over the Sabaneev Bridge and finally right onto Gogol (which Julia points out had previously been named for a Communist).
From this point on, "our hosts" = Julia's parents' friends, with whom they stayed. Her parents had arranged for us to stay in a nearby apartment but our hosts opined that the cost (maybe about $65 a night?) was what a palace should cost, and found our actual digs at around $35 a night, albeit a 25-minute walk away.
Anyway our hosts served us a wonderful multi-course dinner, then we went walking through the city center with various landmarks from Julia's parents' previous life pointed out to us.
On the map I linked to, between the Primor* streets, is a beautiful walkway/garden that runs to a fountain at the end of Pushkin street. On a Saturday night this quite popular, and where I first noticed that most of the guys were dressed straight out of the disco era, with most of the women in fabrics that were short and tight. Also, so many women in heels, despite all the cobblestone!
We walked back and forth and back and forth, pictures all around, Julia's dad making phone calls. One particular old friend, who now owns a winery and is fairly well off, agreed to meet us at the Garden within minutes of that conversation. He showed us around a bit. Before long it was 23:30, and for me nature called. As we happened to be near our apartment they simply dropped us off with the plan to meet Julia's mom in front of the Opera House the next morning.
Between Nuremberg and our brief cameo in the non-touristy part of Prague we probably did more walking that day than any other.
After another fantastic breakfast buffet this included 90 minutes walking around the sunken perimeter of Old Town. We got as far as the Castle but then cut across (overall path a backwards "D") to make it back to check out in time and catch our train.
We saw so many dogs (on leashes), everywhere we went in Nuremberg! Didn't see (m)any animals in London or Prague, but Nuremberg was all about the dogs. Odessa would turn out to be overrun with stray cats, especially tabby, all of the amazingly well-fed. Nobody took them in, spayed them or neutered them but by golly they ate to the point of contented fatness. But that's Odessa, and here we are still in Nuremberg.
Checked out around 11:15, carried our stuff with us to the Hauptbahnhof, easily caught our 11:40 train. Pick your own second-class carriage, room in each berth for five people (three facing forward two backward), luggage over our heads.
A mother and daughter shared our berth from Nuremberg to the small German town where they lived. The latter is an Iron Lady triathlete. Both spoke a tiny bit of English but we conversed in broken English and broken German. Apparently I told them our life story.
We had a 20-minute pause at the border. A young man with a dirty blond mullet (think of the Family Guy vignette with Stewie at a diner in Nebraska) asked us if he could put his luggage in our berth while he went for a beer. (He also offered to get us drinks.) Julia was asleep when I assented to this. She was certain he was using us to reduce the risk of taking weed across the border, but he did come back and retrieve his luggage well before the passport check.
(I'm still not sure why he couldn't have left his luggage in "his" berth. It wasn't empty. Apparently he just mistrusted his own berth-mates yet didn't want to disturb our privacy?)
The passport officers were a distinct East-West clash. The German Fraulein had a very neat-looking uniform, bright face, cheerful but businesslike. The Czech guy had an unkempt beard, wrinkly uniform, and my wife suspected he'd been drinking.
Shortly after the border crossing an older woman sat in our berth and almost immediately fell asleep. Shortly after that we went through Plsen and saw, right by the tracks, this beautiful synagogue with a star of David up top.
Later on a professor joined us. He apparently taught history but spoke very little English and was eager to improve what little he had. He asked us in pidgin English what we thought of Bush, Democrats, et al. We were going to get hotel directions from him (maybe even a ride?!) but we got separated in the crowd.
...and I mean CROWD of people, all going the opposite direction from us trying to catch trains out of downtown Prague at almost exactly 17:00 on a Friday. With little if any English signs to be found, I helped us get out of the hustle and bustle and into the outdoors. We saw a map. Since our hotel (Hotel Golf ("close to the city centre" my ass!)) is the namesake of a metro stop, we saw exactly where to go.
Julia says the map was not to scale. I think the problem is just I made either a bad thumb-finger measure or a faulty conversion. Either way, each of the four times we asked directions we were going the right way (and would have continued to go the right way), just significantly further away than we thought.
At the electronics store downtown (we were on a very business-oriented street, walking southwest, it turns out just 3-4 blocks southeast of where the tourist friendly things would be) the staff didn't speak much English but a customer in a suit and tie helped us out. He told us we should take the #14 train (from the bajillion metro cars on the track along our street -- by the way these all had the exact look and feel of San Francisco's Muni cars, except red instead of orange) and thought we were crazy to walk.
Across the bridge and onto Plzenska. A bartender also told us we were crazy to walk, even though the distance figure he gave was just 2 kilometers remaining.
Once we figured out the street number discrepancy (blue signs numbers in ascending order, larger red signs with numbers with no rhyme or reason), we watched the numbers ssslllooowwwlllyy ascend two at a time (each side of the street) headed up to 215A. 71, 73, 75 [...] 155, 157, 159 [...] 199, 201, 203 [...], then 215. And then a whole lot of grass/park on the side of the road.
A group of people who'd just parked the car told us we were two tram stops away, but as it turns out just getting from 215 to 215A was about a third of the 7.5-kilometer walk.
At the hotel itself an indifferent (rude?) man checked us in and told us that the best way to get to the airport the next day would be to call a cab. I asked him about taking a train to the airport and he told us the trams went direct to city center (quite unhelpful since I already knew the airport was even further outbound in basically the direction we'd been going).
In our hotel room the toilet and shower were behind separate doors. Towels were hung inside the shower area in the later.
We were insanely dehydrated, so of course dinner (at the hotel restaurant itself) was one of those European places where you can't easily get water, to say nothing of American-style free water refills. Julia had a tiny amount of bottled water. I had a beer and kept getting refills (obviously not free).
We sat down at 20:45 and were done at 21:45. Place closed at 22:00 (when we got there the dining area was full of older people who may have been having a banquet: all were served the same dessert cake) but the guy who gave us the 565-crown (about $28) bill told us the cash register had already been closed so paying by Visa was impossible. Julia wanted to hold out (Visa or nothing) but I foolishly said "does that mean I should go exchange some money?" and exchanged it at the front desk.
Drifted off to sleep boiling mad at the hotel. Like in Nuremberg our bed was actually two twins pushed together; unlike in Nuremberg, they were on wheels and kept wanting to push apart (I almost fell in the crease a couple times).
Nuremberg (map).
The day began with the best free breakfast buffet we experienced on the whole trip: Fresh meats, fresh cheese, fresh tomatoes and cucumbers and most of all these huge fresh rolls, perfect for European-style breakfast sandwiches. This was the day of cherry juice; Friday's juice specialty would be black currant.
The level of resolution in the link is just enough to show you Old Town. The Hauptbahnhof is just south of the picture and a quiet creek runs west to east. You can also see the pedestrian street running through the heart of Old Town (it comes up from the southeast). You probably can't make out the sunken walkway running around just inside the perimeter of Old Town.
We were going to go to the Trial Museum, but... we didn't. It was a couple of U-Bahn stops away and we opted to walk everywhere. Instead we went to the German Museum (Germanisches, and NOT Deutsches) for a whole lot of Central European anthropology: Old silverware, medieval musical instruments, neat stuff. The last exhibit we saw had a lot of Albrecht Durer, as you might imagine.
Outside the museum were 29 pillars representing articles of the United Nations declaration of Human Rights. We walked through Old Town a bit and even ducked into a Woolworth's!
A brief afternoon nap and we were right back out there, first to buy our train tickets to Prague and then in search of good food (preferably outdoor dining). As it happens, Nuremberg's outdoor cafes are overwhelmingly coffee-and-ice-cream places, so we kept walking and looking around (the wife found very inexpensive Birkenstocks!) and finally headed downstairs into a Franconian place that specialized in asparagus. Julia got asparagus soup and Nuremberg brats; I had potato soup and pork cutlets with spaetzle.
Then we walked around a lot more, including up to the Imperial Castle, some rooms of which appeared to be in use as dormitories for a summer camp(!).
Finally we drank on the creek-front: Beer for me, Irish coffee for her.
We almost drove across Europe; we would have if it weren't for stick shifts. But first: There were two flaws (one minor, one major) in my plan for us to see more of London without having to schlep our luggage around.
The day started with a fantastic breakfast buffet (included in the cost of the hotel), with both Western-style hot food and the more European meat/cheese/bread.
After checking out and storing our bags we took the DLR into Tower Gateway around 9, all set to take the city cruise from Tower Pier to Westminster Pier... except that (minor issue) the first cruise wasn't until 10:10. We walked around the Tower of London, decided not to pay the high admission fee to see inside, strolled leisurely across the Tower Bridge and back, and then it was close enough to 10:10 to sit tight and wait for our boat.
From Westminister Pier (Big Ben! Parliament!), a walk through busy city streets to Trafalgar Square. Past the Buckingham Palace guards and the people who inexplicably crave having their pictures taken with security people who aren't allowed to have a facial expression. Past the Scotland Office inside whose locked door a large black security guard stood (it probably wasn't Idi Amin). Past the pigeons in the square itself.
The National Gallery is free and has a lot of wonderful art, except that every room smells as though somebody recently passed gas. (The actual smell is probably paint/varnish, in a building that just needs better ventilation.)
We saw everything we wanted to see in just under two hours, then retraced our steps, crossed Westminster Bridge, and used the ride on the Eye as a half hour break from walking.
Moving right along, on the south bank of the Thames we passed (I may have these out of order) the OXO Building, the Tate gallery, and the Globe Theater, where we stopped and looked around a bit. We crossed the London Bridge for the sake of crossing it, and pressed on to reach the Tower again right on schedule (15:00).
DLR back to the hotel, five-minute walk from the stop to the hotel itself, grab bags, five-minute walk from the hotel to the stop, DLR inward, downstairs from Tower Gateway to Tower Hills, Tube two stops over to Liverpool Station, train northbound to Stansted.
For our 18:50 Air Berlin flight to Vienna we walked into the Stansted terminal and... wait, what? (Major problem.) Check the paperwork again, as the flight was really 6:50 that morning. When I was still angry and flustered, Air Berlin initially claimed we were SOL. So: Other options? No trains to continental Europe but the guy at the train information desk suggested an overnight cruise to Amsterdam.
Europcar does not do one-way rentals, yet their 10-day rate was surprisingly reasonable under the circumstances. We would have only been allowed one driver, and would not have been allowed to drive to Prague (or into any other former Warsaw Pact nation), but we were quite willing to give lip service to both of those restrictions. We walked out our assigned vehicle, Julia suggested I grab a map, I went in to talk to the guy who turned out not to have maps for giveaway, I got back to a wife in tears: Neither of us drive stick!
That was our sign that maybe the car wasn't the right idea. We went back to the counter, got the buyer's remorse refund. While I was standing by for a confirmation number on the credit card non-charge, Julia made her way back to Air Berlin. Once the customer in question was sweet and hopeful rather than flustered and angry, they credited our initial airfare towards alternate travel. They had one flight left that night... to Nuremberg.
This worked out surprisingly well given that our travel to Odessa was round trip from Prague, and that Nuremberg is the closest major German city to Prague (Vienna is actually an eight-hour train ride away!). On the last flight into Nuremberg that evening, we were almost the only English speakers.
Got through customs lightning-fast (the guy was basically stamping passports and waving people through), claimed our baggage around 23:30 continental Europe time. Now, where do we lodge? (And for two nights, since we'd decided not to bother traveling on to Vienna.) The hotel information kiosk had touch-screen navigation, and an English option, though booking a room any given place would require a phone call.
The call in question (Best Western, near the Hauptbahnhof) took place in rapid-fire German (yes they had a room, two nights, single bed, no smoking, 109 Euro, yes I want it), until the point where he asked for my Vorname and immediately clarified in fluent English that this was my first, or given, name.
"Sprechen Sie Englisch?"
"Yes -- of course."
From that point onward, English it was. The U-Bahn airport stop was immediately outside the airport entrance, and the end of the line at that. (Nuremberg has two subway lines, U1 and U2, which intersect at the Hauptbahnhof.) So a routine trip to the main train station, from which of course we walked the wrong way and briefly got lost.
Finally checked in around a quarter to one. For the location and the price, this hotel was an amazing deal. Kudos to Best Western.
Tomorrow: Nuremberg.
London: The most miserable line I've ever been in was the customs line at Gatwick Airport. We spent more than an hour filing through the serpentine path, surrounded by people who desperately needed to brush their teeth and/or bathe. A piped-in announcement repeatedly apologized for the inconvenience caused by an evacuation earlier that day.
Directions from Gatwick to our hotel, as given to us at an Information desk: Take the Gatwick Express to Victoria Station. Take the Circle or District tube line east to Tower Hill. Transfer to Tower Gateway and take Docklands Light Rail (DLR) to Prince Albert. That is, train to subway to train. With one notable exception we actually followed those directions.
The exception: At Victoria Station, still laden with our luggage, we encountered a throng of people going in all directions, making their Tuesday midday rounds. Neither of us could deal with a subway ride at that point, so we used our already purchased Big Bus tour tickets as a form of transportation. It only took us 2.5 hours to get from the stop outside Victoria Station to the stop next to the Tower of London.
We saw just about everything you'd expect to see on a London tour bus. We sat on the upper level, exposed to the elements, despite intermittent drizzle. The length of the trip resulted mainly from intense traffic, especially in the City of London around St. Paul's Cathedral, apparently construction-induced.
(Maybe I should adjust my standards for what was possible in the 17th century, but even for how long we got to stare at St. Paul's, I didn't see the majesty.)
Our hotel was a bit east of ExCel Center, which five years removed from the Olympics is still itself very much under construction. We also inadvertently saw a lot of it as a result of getting off the DLR a stop too soon.
Mid-afternoon check-in, very long nap, late dinner at the hotel restaurant (I had lamb with lentils; the wife had tuna), and then on TV we found the strangest, but most enjoyable game show I've ever seen. (The Wikipedia writeup clears up a plethora of points of confusion I'd had.)
(Incidentally, this was also Memorial Day.)
We walked from my parents' house to a neat little brunch place and back. Perfect weather all day, especially to sit on the back porch and look at photographs, i.e. move pictures from camera to computer and put new memory into camera.
Pop quiz: You're flying from Chicago to London on Northwest, so of course you change planes in Detroit. Where does the leaving-the-U.S. passport processing take place? If you thought "in Detroit" then you're like me but you're also wrong.
We printed out our boarding passes on a home computer and carried on all of our luggage (two green backpacks as carry-ons, one black backpack as my personal item, Julia's purse as hers), thus went directly through security to the Chicago departure gate. We were among the first people in the boarding line, but upon scanning our passes the gate agent needed to see our passports and frantically type a lot while most of our fellow passengers walked past us to board. Oh well, still found the overhead space we needed.
Detroit-to-London was already boarding when we got to that gate, yet many of the fellow passengers for that flight boarded after we did. The plane had a 2-4-2 row configuration and we had window seats, i.e. nobody next to us. Passengers behind/around us were mainly girls from a high school class. Three weeks later I've forgotten what was so annoying about a couple of them.
Northwest's TV monitors are on the seat-backs and the in-flight entertainment system is menu-driven and magnificent. Gone are the days when you'd sit through Big Bully with or without headphones whether you like it or not. The "in-seat yoga" demonstration (immediately after the safety instructions) was a bit tedious but only because it felt like a strange choice for the last vestiges of captive audience.
(I presume this is a ploy to buy the system time to boot up, etc.)
Julia did not like Because I Said So. By contrast, I was blown away by Monsters, Inc. Not even the animation (which was also impressive, but by now everyone knows what to expect of Pixar) so much as the story itself: The best of both worlds is to get a Tim Burton-style story but without the gratuitous Gothness of Burton-style animation.
Somewhere over the Atlantic I fell asleep (which is my blog post ends about here). Julia did not sleep (if this were her blog you'd be reading about "Monday/Tuesday"?) but instead watched The Bridges of Madison County. She had very low expectations but was pleasantly surprised.
We got married on June 17, 2006.
In theory I should log that, but what is there to say? Obviously it's the best wedding I've ever been to, since I'm biased that way.
Five interesting things about our wedding:
1. It started late because our band was running late. But better late than never!
2. Both wedding and reception took place at a magnificent banquet hall run by an Afghan gentleman. But you wouldn't expect a place this beautiful to be in the same strip mall as an Albertson's.
3. Our interfaith ceremony was presided over by a rabbi and had very traditional overtones. Among other things I wore a yarmulke.
4. Chad was a fantastic emcee.
5. This game was still going as of when most of our guests left the reception. It ended in the bottom of the 17th with a walk-off walk. Time of Game: 5:02 Attendance: 35077
(If you happen to be apathetic to quiz bowl logistics, take heart: Every Trip Log entry subsequent to this one does actually involve European travel!)
The previous two HSNCT playoffs (with fewer than, but close to, 48 playoff teams) had reached a "cross-bracket" situation going into Round 7: That is, one team still undefeated and exactly five teams with a loss apiece.
To save time we'd had all six of those teams play that round. If the undefeated team took care of business then it would still retain the one-game finals advantage, and round 8 the other two teams that won round 7 would play each other for the other finals spot. If not (the "upset," but it never came to pass), then we'd have four teams at a loss apiece, and basically single elimination from there. So far so good, right? Not terribly confusing, I hope.
Onto 2007: For roughly 64 teams, something similar happens in round 8: An undefeated team (who had a round 7 bye while the six single-loss teams faced each other) plus the three single-loss teams who'd won in round 7. No matter what, the former team has a finals berth and the latter three teams are each three wins away from a championship.
Let's call the teams A (undefeated), B, C, and D, with B thru D ordered by initial seed. So round 8 is A vs. D, B vs. C. And then with no loss of generality let's suppose B beats C. (If C beat B then the next two paragraphs would still be analogous, just with the letters flipped.)
If A takes care of business then A is still undefeated, B has a loss, C and D have two losses apiece. So C and D play the 3rd-place game for trophy size; A and B are the finalists, A with an advantage.
If A doesn't take care of business then A, B, and D have one los
