Shipping up to Worcester: A Pseudo-Live Pseudo-Road Trip Blog

I spent most of this weekend visiting grad school friends in Worcester, Massachusetts. The details of the visit are only secondary with regard to this blog post; it was great seeing my friends and I definitely killed a few thousand brain cells in the process. I ate a bunch of junk food and had some great conversations. It made me kind of miss being a grad student... kind of.

When I lived in Boston, my girlfriend lived in central New Jersey. Approximately twice a month while school was in session, I would make the eight-hour round trip to visit her for the weekend. I always enjoyed the drive (in both directions, although the drive to NJ was better than the drive to Boston), because it gave me lots of opportunities to work through shit in my head.

Depending on how you do it, the drive from New Jersey to Boston can consist of near-constant car rock, lots of scenic views, and the company of lots and lots of other cars. Everyone around you is going somewhere, and that makes long-distance driving lots of fun. My creative streak runs amok on these drives, and lately I thought to myself that it might be interesting (if incredibly narcissistic and self-serving) to blog some of these creative thoughts.

Below is such an attempt. All dates, times, and locations are approximate.

10:55 AM, Saturday, New Brunswick, NJ. Having picked up a bottle of "Sopranos" Pinot Noir (a taste of New Jersey for $12.99 that easily could have been sold for $3.99), as well as three Rocky Patel Robusto cigars for the weekend's festivities, I am off to the races.

It is about 85 degrees and rainy out, and I dread the idiots who will be driving on the Interstate highways of the Northeastern U.S. this weekend. We shall see. On Radio 101.9, "Backwater" by the Meat Puppets is on.

11:10 AM, Saturday, Bloomfield, NJ. Fast highway driving is like playing the stock market in the sense that there are two types of talented highway drivers/stock investors. There are the rare ones who know enough to "get it right" and then there are ones who are (a) aware that they're not the first kind of genius but (b) able to spot them and imitate their every move. I am this second type of talented highway driver.

The Garden State Parkway today is a mess; weekend drivers are retarded in general, because they don't drive often. Additionally, there are lots of weekend drivers on the road and it's raining. We're stop-and-go, and I would be content to chill out in the fast lane (aka low-cost index fund investing) but instead I notice a late-model Toyota Camry that really seems to "get it". I pull behind this car and do really well for about 10 miles, until they exit the highway.

I worry about the day that I pull this move and get myself shot by a paranoid meth addict, but so far, it hasn't happened yet.

11:20 AM, Saturday, Mahwah, NJ. The disc jockey on 101.9 just pre-empted a Silversun Pickups song by referring to how "heavy" it was with respect to most of the radio station's playlist. Two songs later, the same DJ played Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song." With a sigh and a shake of the head, I turn over to 104.3.

11:30 AM, Saturday, West Nyack, NY. I feel bad that I really dislike "Freebird". It just goes on and on and on and on. If "Freebird" were five instead of eight minutes long, I would probably like it all right, but I can't tell you the last time I caught it on the radio and haven't turned the dial. I switch back to 101.9 FM, easily my favorite radio station at this moment, and catch MGMT's "Kids", easily one of my favorite new alternative rock songs at this moment.

Meanwhile, I'm going 47 mph in the left lane of the Tappan Zee bridge and I'm getting absolutely dominated by Buicks, Penske rental trucks, and drivers from Maine in the right lanes. There is someone ahead of me in the left lane whom I would quickly murder, if given the chance. They need to give out special licenses for the fast lane.

11:35 AM, Saturday, somewhere between Rockland and Westchester Counties, NY. I may have ranted about this before, and if so, I apologize for my duplicity. However, it's absolutely ridiculous that the Tappan Zee bridge has signs reading "A Life is Worth Saving, Suicide Help Line Ahead."

Let's assume you're the average, severely suicidal person who has already managed to walk halfway up the East Coast's highest bridge, because you're intent upon killing yourself. You see this sign, imploring you to continue walking up the bridge in order to reach a pay phone which may or may not be working.

They're suicidal! How about working to get them off the fucking bridge, where the value proposition of killing yourself isn't so obvious! If I were in charge of writing these signs, I would make them say "Attention Suicidal Person, Suicide Help Line 500 Feet Behind You (on Dry Land)."

I am now in bumper-to-bumper traffic because the people in front of me should have killed themselves years ago but, unfortunately, did not.

11:55 AM, Saturday, Brewster, NY. The pavement on Interstate I-684 in New York is in horrible shape, which is strange because approximately 99% of this year's federal stimulus money has been used on re-paving projects. I know that very meaningful road in New Jersey is either getting widened, repaved, or both right now, which is very annoying when you're sitting in traffic but I guess it makes sense... somehow.

I am now officially leaving the New York City radio market and entering the Greater Connecticut radio market. I listen to rock radio for the most part, which (these days) is like saying "I study 13th-century Norse philosophy." Since January of this year, I've lost my two favorite rock stations in New Jersey (106.3 and 92.3), and I recently heard that WBCN in Boston turned into a Top 40 station, as well.

The one remaining rock station in New York broke the news about WBCN by stating, in essence, "Rock radio is in a panic state, everyone's losing their jobs, and I'm lucky that I get to work right now." Only a decade ago, rock radio stations were institutions; they hosted concerts, had long-running promotions, and you felt like you had a relationship with that particular number on the dial. Now, you're lucky if you have a radio station that plays music that you like.

The issue here is perhaps three-fold. One, smart people have more money than dumb people. Two, smart people listen to rock music, while dumb people listen to Top 40 music. Three, as a consequence, smart people have moved en masse to satellite radio, where they don't have to listen to annoying commercials and retarded disc jockeys who think the Silversun Pickups are heavier than Led Zeppelin.

Because of these three factors, you are now faced with two choices when you're sitting in your car and want to listen to music: (1) buy satellite radio, or (2) be prepared to listen to shitloads of Lady Gaga.

Although I was scared when the first song I heard was from No Doubt, Connecticut's alternative rock station (Radio 104.1) still exists. It will be my musical accompaniment most of the way through CT.

1:00 PM, Saturday, Tolland, CT. Exit 68 off of I-84 in Connecticut is AMAZING. There is a Dunkin' Donuts, a Subway, two gas stations, and a strip club -- basically, everything a dude traveling alone could possibly ever want, all in one stop.

I am currently waiting in line inside the aforementioned Subway, while an entire boys' soccer team (and both their coaches) order subs, one at a time. Whatever is in the water in Tolland, CT, it seems to promote healthy appetites. Each of these children, although they can't be any older than ten, is ordering a foot-long sub with double meat.

Oh, and did I mention that no one on this team (players or coaches) spoke English? They all only spoke Spanish, and no one was available to translate. As you might suspect, this was a complete and utter disaster. Kids ran away without paying, the orders got mixed up, some of the kids didn't have the money to pay.

Because of the language barrier, it was difficult to resolve this issue. The young couple in front of me left a $10 bill on the counter and walked away; I thought about doing the same thing, but I'm way too nice for that. After about ten minutes in line, I am finally munching my toasted 6" Subway Club on Golden Italian.

1:15 PM, Saturday, Union, CT. If I were to name the most desolate place on my drive from NJ to Massachusetts, it would be Union, CT. There is an exit here, but besides a boarded-up Christian book store, there seems to be no signs of life. Maybe there's a town back there somewhere, but I bet it's haunted like Silent Hill.

It's not surprising that in August 2009, the CT Dept. of Transportation has decided to repave this entire section of I-84. As I sit and wait in traffic (the traffic would keep up until the Mass Pike, 7 miles up the road), I think about the most surreal traffic jam I ever experienced.

It was 11:00 PM on a Thursday in August 2008, and I was heading in the opposite direction on I-84 (but at about this same point). Highway crews were (surprise!) re-paving the highway, and three lanes were going to be cut into one, so naturally there was lots of traffic.

It was a warm evening, the ground was very misty, and I had a cigar prepared for this very situation. As I sat in my SUV and slowly smoked the cigar, inching forward on the highway extremely slowly, I started to think about my life.

On one hand, I'd just finished my first year of graduate school with great grades and excellent research. On the other hand, I was miserable and craving something that felt real. Because I needed some, I played the "Clarity" CD by Jimmy Eat World. Between the smoking and listening to emo music, I started to think and feel like I used to when I was nineteen, and this was no good.

For a split-second that night, I could almost touch the past. It didn't feel like a dream, but I didn't feel like I was sitting in traffic, either. I felt like I was anticipating something, even though I had nothing to anticipate at that time. As it were, everything turned out OK, of course. I made it home and eventually left graduate school.

I haven't smoked while driving since. Back in August 2009, I'm playing one of my favorite albums of the 90's -- Guster's "Goldfly" -- because there's no radio reception in Union, CT.

2:30 PM, Saturday, Worcester, MA. It's hard to describe exactly why it's tricky driving on city streets in Massachusetts. It's some combination of the roads being poorly signed, the number of lanes being poorly indicated, intersections being at odd angles, and other drivers constantly pressuring you to drive faster than you want to.

Twice so far, I've been instructed to be in the right lane even though I was about to make left turns. This is not normal.* (*NOTE: Says the kid from New Jersey, where there are jughandles that lead people to do the exact same thing.) Then again, very little is standard about driving around here - you just have to fly by the seat of your pants, and be creative.

You know, kind of like how this blog post was creative. Stay classy out there.

"Mad Men" and the Meaning of Life

I'll admit it: I was originally hesitant about "Mad Men", and it wasn't until my third attempt to watch Season 1 that I made it through. The first two times, I stopped watching because I felt the same kind of uneasiness that makes "Office Space" something less than one of my favorite movies. I felt it was just too realistic a portrayal of white-collar work - it hit too close to home. I don't like it when pop culture makes me feel that my life is meaningless, and I was worried that "Mad Men" was going to make me think that my life was meaningless.

Like always, my initial impression was wrong. To me, what makes "Mad Men" awesome is that it makes me realize that everyone's life is meaningless, regardless of their levels of wealth, beauty, and outward-looking happiness. And also the following, other things:

1) Making smoking look cool again. Because all the Surgeon General's warning shit hadn't happened yet in 1960, everybody on "Mad Men" smokes. (*ASIDE: Because of stupid Hollywood rules, the actors are only allowed to smoke herbal cigarettes on the show. This is ridiculous because it's not the fact that it's a Marlboro that makes smoking dangerous; it's the fact that smoke inhaled into the lungs causes a bunch of health problems. It doesn't matter if it's tobacco, herbs, cloves, hookah, bong, or whatever toots your noodle -- it's bad for you.) This reminds us all that, despite the obvious health hazards, smoking makes everyone look cooler.

I quit smoking cigarettes years ago, and haven't lapsed once since. Recently at a company event, my girlfriend, who ordinarily doesn't smoke, smoked a few cigarettes. When she told me this, it pissed me off -- not because I care that she smoked a few cigarettes (I suspect she won't get hooked), but because I'm incredibly jealous that I could never stop at just one cigarette. I would have 10 Marlboro Lights down within an hour, because they're delicious, they make me look cooler than I am, and because smokers have better random conversations with people. I also kind of blame "Mad Men" for this.

2) The 1960's are an invisible character on the show. A temporal context shouldn't feel like a character, but in "Mad Men" it does. The 1960's were a time of incredible change and turmoil, and you get the sense after watching a few episodes of the show that the world was a cultural powderkeg at that precise moment. Everything was about to change, and everyone seemed to sense this in a very vague sense. The old guard was about to become irrelevant, replaced by a younger generation with radically different ideas about stuff. Somewhere in the middle (both in age and in ideology) is Don Draper, who is fighting always to maintain his own identity. I have no clue where he'll end up, but I'm sure it won't be pretty.

3) Who is Don Draper? No, seriously, who is he? I'm only less than halfway through Season 2, and I can't figure it out yet. As far as I know, no successful TV show has managed to base an ensemble drama around a main character who has no past. Artsy movies like "Memento" have pulled this off (kinda), but on TV? No frickin' way, man. There's a lot of stupid TV out there, but "Mad Men" is the kind of show you can feel smart about watching.

4) It reminds you that being at the right place at the right time is extremely important. Don Draper, like a dinosaur at the dawn of the Ice Age, is going to become culturally irrelevant at some point during "Mad Men" -- it hasn't happened yet, but it will at some point. Mark my words; Don Draper is not going to go gently into that good night. This is a shame, because his personality would have been a perfect fit for the generation just before his own. Other characters on the show, such as Salvatore and Peggy Olson, have personalities that would be perfect fits for the generation just after their own. These people will not be as successful as they would have been, had they been born just 20 years sooner or 20 years later.

I get the sense that this is the case for lots of people. For instance, I am convinced that, had I been born in 1973 instead of in 1983, and had every other aspect of my childhood been exactly the same as it was, I would be a 35-year-old, insanely successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur instead of a 25-year-old, moderately successful Project Director. My life right now is happy, but I've always had the sense that I was born at the wrong time.

5) The overall portrayal of work juxtaposed with "What Life is Supposed to Mean." I mentioned at the beginning of this post that "Mad Men" reminded me too much of "Office Space", which I said is probably why it took so long for me to get hooked on the show. Now it's one of my favorite aspects of the show. Every single character on the show is both vaguely miserable and morally compromised. Marital fidelity is the exception, not the rule. Account managers at Sterling Cooper would sell their own mothers down the river for the next big deal.

Everyone -- even the Mad Men whose job it is to construct artificial realities for people -- are striving to obtain an artificially-constructed reality, which must include a smiling wife, two kids and a dog. What "happiness" is is never mentioned, because no one on the show can even come close to understanding it.

6) Misogyny and the overall objectification of women. Don't get me wrong; I feel like women are (at the very least) the equal of men. In fact, I think women make better bosses than men do, for a bunch of reasons that aren't worth elaborating here. This doesn't mean that I can't find the fact that it wasn't always like this hilarious.

In "Mad Men", a show with a writing staff comprised mostly of women, women are almost always the secretaries. In addition, they will always be the secretaries, and their careers have one of two possible endings. They will end up either as head secretaries, or as housewives. They will fetch coffee for their bosses and hang up their (expensive, stylish, and awesome) overcoats. They will type and take correspondence, and they will conceal their bosses' inevitable affairs. They will answer to things like "Sweetheart" and even "Sweetcheeks." Men will crack hilarious jokes at their expense, which leads me to the next (and final) item...

7) Extremely high levels of quotability. In addition to dozens of snide lines directed at women (watch the focus group scene from Season 1 -- each line is better than the one that precedes it), Don Draper's often asks his wife and his bosses, "What do you want me to say?" The quintessential middle manager, his job is to please. There's significance here, but I'll leave it up to you to watch the show and figure out what it is.

He also uttered my favorite line of the show, "I have a life, and it only moves in one direction: forward." (I realize that if you haven't seen the show, these lines may lack some context. You'll help yourself greatly by watching the first two seasons on DVD, preferably before Sunday night, when Season 3 begins on AMC.)

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My dad, having obtained a reasonable level of professional success and financial flexibility, decided to retire a few years ago at age 58.

Since then, he's gotten to know the guy who delivers the mail and he goes for walks on the beach every day. He serves on a couple of directorial boards and travels a few times a year, but basically he lives the life of a Floridian retiree --he has a very nice lawn, since he's now obsessed with mowing it approximately every two days.

On a visit last year, I was struggling with not really liking being a graduate student. I never felt comfortable with the Kabuki dance of academia, the idea of a lifetime spent struggling like academics struggle, and numerous other aspects of my career at that time. However, because I was a good student and a good researcher, I felt I could make it through until the Ph.D. (at that point).

I think I was trying to convince myself that sticking around to get the Ph.D. was a good idea when I started to think out loud, listing all the benefits of obtaining the degree to my Dad. When I ended with "...and at the end, I'll finally get some kind of peace of mind," my Dad responded with, "I don't think you'll ever find peace of mind."

But hey, at least my life has only direction, and that's moving forward.

An Ode to the Jersey Diner

Tired of eating Chinese food and pizza, my girlfriend and I just visited the local diner. Tonight I did something I don't often do; I ordered off the dinner specials menu. Typically when I go to a diner (and now that I've moved back to Jersey, I eat at a diner every couple of weeks), I'll order a burger and fries, or a buffalo chicken wrap or something. Tonight, because one of my favorite all-time meals (chicken francese) was on the menu, I went for it. I went whole-hog.

For $11.95, in addition to the chicken francese (which was really nicely sauteed and had a white-wine butter sauce that scored at least an 8 on the 1 to 10 scale of deliciousness), I had matzo ball soup, a salad, and three scoops of chocolate ice cream for desert. With my girlfriend's help, I successfully consumed about 50% of the food that was placed in front of me. I wrapped up the rest of the main course, which will be my lunch at work Monday.

There are two aspects of this diner experience which were awesome, and worth writing about. The money aspect of this meal is one thing, the existentialism is quite another. I'll discuss the money first, and the artsy-fartsy bullshit later in this blog post.

People may have varying opinions about what it means to eat a four-course meal for under $12. There are probably other parts of the country (Vegas comes to mind) where a similar meal can be had for even less. Other people may think that such a cheap meal must be low in quality, and I must be a cheapskate or not really appreciate food in order to enjoy a $12 meal.

I've had low quality food before in my life. McDonald's, for instance, is still low quality food. Very little has changed in their food preparation over the past decade -- it's just that through creative marketing, they've positioned themselves as a quality food brand. It's brilliant in its simplicity. Just throw a few pictures of fresh tomatoes and a few punchy catch-phrases on the side of a 1,100-calorie Quarter Pounder with Cheese, and all of a sudden people think they're eating health food. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese itself has not changed -- it's still a mediocre hamburger (you'd be better off going to a Jersey diner). McDonald's food is low quality, and diner food is not (at a good diner, at least).

Money also interacts with geography. New Jersey is not a cheap place to live; some time in the near future, I will put a down payment on a "starter home", and this home will in all likelihood cost nearly half a million dollars. There is nothing strange about this; in fact, it is par for the course. There is a great deal of money around here, and the standard of living is (as a consquence) quite high. We simply deal with it, and somehow the diner cost structure still thrives.

It probably does cost a lot of money to run a diner, but smart proprietors realize that crazy-high markups are going to drive people away from eating at an otherwise-solid establishment. With food costs and labor and overhead combined, it probably cost less than $5 to prepare my meal - so why charge $20?

Some people think that good food needs to be expensive. This is an incorrect assumption, even though quality and cost are positively correlated. (I would rather eat at Peter Luger's than Taco Bell, and I think you agree with me on this point.) To be honest, I definitely sat there and internally debated for a while whether or not I should purchase a "nice" item at the diner tonight... but then I did. The next time you're at a diner, you should, too.

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"My" diner growing up was the Middletown Diner, and it had all the important Jersey diner characteristics. What are the important Jersey diner characteristics? Let us list them, one at a time. Taking the sum of the parts, we shall establish what is the Jersey diner experience.

1) Proximity. A good diner shall be no less than 2 miles from one's place of primary residence. This makes travelling to said diner easy enough under any set of circumstances which may arise: freak snowstorm; a late-night drinking binge (also see point #2, below); becoming exasperated because dinner was just destroyed by evil magical elves; and etc.

2) Flexible hours. A good diner shall have the most flexible hours of operation possible. No excuses; a good diner must be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There is absolutely no wiggle room for this characteristic. A number of times, even in New Jersey, I've been surprised to see a "diner" closed at a ridiculously early hour. I'm embarrassed to admit that there's a "diner" on LBI (named after me!) that closes after lunch, even during the summer! This is simply unacceptable. A "diner" that closes, ever, is not a diner -- it's a restaurant. There's a difference.

3) Price. Lately I've noticed a new breed of diner popping up in New Jersey; this type of diner attempts to be ironic and/or cool. You can tell when you've mistakenly arrived at such a diner because the waiter will hand you a martini list, and you will hear a cover band playing in another room. A good diner should not even hold a liquor license - diners are where you go after you get drunk somewhere else. You know, like a bar. Additionally, a good diner shall not have an average menu item price higher than $8.00. A "diner" that charges $16.95 for a dinner special or $8.95 for a burger is not a diner -- it's a restaurant. Again, there's a difference.

4) Superior quality and inferior price of deluxe cheeseburger. This is sort of an extension of item #3, above. The deluxe cheeseburger (which, for the uninitiated, is a cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato, and onions, with a heaping of steak fries, cole slaw, and pickle on the side) shall have the following characteristics:

• It shall cost no more than $6.50;
• It shall contain at least 6 oz of beef;
• It shall be cooked to order, even if the order is "extremely rare". (Making the purchaser sign a waiver before eating the burger is acceptable, as long as the waiter agrees that doing so "is ridiculous".)
  
• It shall contain at least twice as many french fries as a large McDonald's order, and each individual fry must be twice as wide and twice as thick as a McDonald's french fry;
• Each and every bite shall taste delicious.

5) Gruff service. You will be served by a "diner waitress", whose overall attitude and level of professionalism will be questionable. You may not get everything you ask for, and you may not be smiled at even once. Why is this a good thing, you ask? Because it adds ambience to the experience. The whole point of going to a diner is that it's no-frills. You're sitting there drinking Diet Coke (with free refills, assuming you ever get the free refill) and eating greasy food - do you really need to be treated like Akeem, Prince of Zamunda? I think not. If you want a thumb up your ass while you eat, you shouldn't go to a diner -- you should go to a restaurant.

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There you have it, devoted blog readers -- the Jersey Diner. Everyone should have the experience, at least once. I've been to a hundred diners a hundred times, and I still consider myself someone who likes fine things. Liking fine things (like Johnnie Walker Blue Label) and liking good things (like a delicious, greasy, six-dollar cheeseburger) need not be independent of each other. To be someone who is awesome, I think you need to be both types of person at once.

Stay classy out there.