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Old Friends
2008-07-18 16:23:00
#28 -- "The Burglar on the Prowl" by Lawrence BlockBack in college, I spent a couple unscheduled days, broke and broken-down, in a rough part of Albuquerque. I didn't drink at the time, and most of my possessions were in the car in the mechanic's, so I stayed in my hotel room with one book: "The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams," by Lawrence Block. Having nothing else to do, I read it three straight times, cover to cover. It didn't get old.Since then, I've always been a Bernie Rhodenbarr fan, though I haven't paid much attention in recent years. I picked this up recently for a quick read, and it's still fun. At first I found it enjoyable but not as funny as I found the books some years ago; by the end, though, I was laughing out loud pretty frequently.If you're one of the people who likes to be able to figure out a mystery while you're reading it, you're screwed. Half the crucial characters don't appear until the end. And if you've read any of the previous novels, you'll ...
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Lobster Lovers
2008-07-18 09:12:00
I'm on a four-day weekend right now, which is pretty nice. When I was a kid four-day weekends would stretch before me, promising great delights, and then I'd spend all four days watching TV. I don't really watch much recreational television these days, but other than that I'm proving myself just as adept at wasting time as I was at eight.I had a rather pleasant ethnic day yesterday, going to a little Mexican joint out on Buford Highway for lunch (finally found Mexican food that didn't taste like TV dinner, after living here for a mere nine years) followed by a trip to the Russian grocery that I occasionally frequent. At the Russian grocery, I found my new favorite beer, even if (as I suspect) it turns out to taste not that great:My first thought was that it was lobster-flavored beer, which sounds awful, but that doesn't appear to be the case (I haven't opened it yet, so it could still surprise me!). This is great marketing all around: the name "Lobster Lovers ;" the art showin...

Brnout
2008-07-16 19:43:00
I'm paying jack shit attention to hockey these days -- other concerns, and the Avalanche and Thrashers have done nothing (Darcy Tucker? Ron Hainsey?) to make me giddy about the upcoming season.But I'm always up for a good jersey, especially when it's an old Czech jersey. This lovely ensemble is a HC Zetor Brno jersey, from the late 1980s. I've wanted one of these for a while -- a couple have gone up for auction in recent years, but I've always missed out. Until now, baby. Until now.Brno is the Czech Republic's second city, and for a while HC Brno was the class of Czechoslovakia -- from 1955 through 1966, they won 11 out of 12 league titles. Not bad! But like another once-proud team, Dukla Jihlava -- they've fallen on hard times, and they've only been in the top Czech league once since 1992. Not good!There have been some signs of a turnaround. Former St. Louis Blues defenseman Libor Zabransky (of course I own a Libor Zabransky jersey) has taken charge of the team, and has had...

The West I Liked Best
2008-07-15 11:21:00
#27 -- "Marking the Sparrow's Fall" by Wallace StegnerAs soon as I started reading this, I started loudly complaining that no one had ever tipped me off to Stegner's writing before, since it's right up my street. Which was a lie, of course -- "Angle of Repose" is pretty famous, and my friend Pete recommended Stegner to me a few years ago. I think I just concluded that it was probably boring.But within the first lines of "Marking," I was saying "yes! That's it!" as he summed up in a few words something I've been struggling to say for years. This is a collection of Stegner's non-fiction writings about the western United States, and as (have I mentioned?) a child of that part of the world, it hit dead-on for me. Whenever I start rhapsodizing about the beauty of Colorado, rest assured Stegner's done it better (ok, usually about Utah).It's more-or-less divided into three sections -- an appreciation of the West in general, environmentalism and conservation, and a sort-of combinati...

My Personal Waterloo
2008-07-14 10:14:00
It's going to be the quest for a good pork green chili recipe. I tried it again this past weekend, with similar results to last time: tastes pretty good, too liquidy. I'm going to figure this out if it kills me (which it probably will).The first time I ended up mixing in flour, which gave me big clumps of congealed pork fat and flour floating in the chili. Unappetizing. This time I opened the cupboard to find the flour bag full of ants. That might have given it some more consistency, but I'm not that brave an eater.Any tips, world? Anyone just surfing by and happen to have a great pork green chili recipe to share? (If it works in a crock pot or slow cooker, bonus)
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Atlanta Citizen of the Year
2008-07-12 10:56:00
I meant to post this a while back -- this cracked me the hell up.The Krog Tunnel's graffiti isn't really harmful and is even something of an attraction -- it's often creative and makes the tunnel interesting instead of dull. The stuff in the surrounding area is occasionally inspired, too.The image of that guy sitting in a tree, waiting for people to come by with spray paint, cheers me to no end.I was gonna walk down to the area and shoot some photos this morning, but it's July and I failed to get up before 8 a.m. So never mind. And, anyway, I shot some photos down there some years back, and (as far as I can tell) I never posted them. (If I did, I can't find them, though since my memory's shot that means nothing.)
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Build Your Own Country
2008-07-09 18:17:00
Have I ever raved about NationStates? I suspect not, but my memory is getting rather shoddy. I learned about it some years back from ICJ, and I've periodically returned for brief spells of addiction.Basically, you set up the style of country you want, answer a few questions to give your thoughts on various social issues, and away you go. Twice a day (or less, if you prefer) you get new issues, and your rulings will gradually affect things like tax rates, civil liberties, the environment, and so on.It's a real kick, though as I recall it has a brief play-period -- the questions start repeating themselves eventually, though maybe they've added a lot more. In any case, it always makes me laugh, and I've just started again. So come on by and say hi -- at Kloucekvania!
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Fuel Crisis ENDED
2008-07-08 15:15:00
At the Peachtree race, there were a variety of booths for political candidates along the route -- we've got a primary election next Tuesday, so this was a pretty easy way to reach 100,000 or so. None of them really kept my interest, except for one voluble fellow: he was enthusiastically touting the virtues of Senate candidate Rand Knight, devoting most of his spiel to one subject:"HE CAN TURN KUDZU INTO GAS! AND HE WILL SHOW (pause) YOU (pause) HOW!!!"Right there, cool stuff. If Atlanta's got anything in abundance, it's kudzu, and the idea of cramming it into my gas tank is extremely appealing. It sounds like I could get a year's worth of fuel for my car just on Ralph McGill alone. I figured this must be high flake value -- the name "Rand" conjures up "Atlas Shrugged" images, and, well, kudzu into gas?The reality is far more grounded, though -- he just touts kudzu as a source for ethanol, which is hardly weird, and he seems like a pretty right-on guy, at least going by the PPA'...
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Independence Day
2008-07-05 19:50:00
I took part in the local Peachtree Road Race 10K race yesterday. That's a bit misleading, because just by saying that I kind of imply I ran it (which would be wholly out of character). I walked it, though still managed to lose half my body weight to sweat (gained back in the following hours through a steady diet of beer and buffalo wings). It was a pretty interesting experience -- in retrospect I want to say fun, though when I finally finished up that wasn't the first word that came to mind. This is a goddamn hot city, and very humid. Not news, I know, but it's instructive to occasionally get a reminder of just how hot and humid. Over the years I've met people who claim to find humidity invigorating, and all I can say to them is that they are sick, sick people. I'd be less bothered to find out they were into necrophilia. There's nothing good about humidity and it should be avoided at all costs.Still, I'm glad I did it. My entire body still aches, nearly 36 hours later, but I...
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Sy Hersh and the Knuckleball
2008-07-01 21:50:00
A few days ago, a coworker came across the happy news that she shares a birthday with Seymour Hersh. We all agreed that was very cool -- if you've gotta share a birthday with someone, Hersh is a good, respectable choice. It prompted me to look mine up -- something that, honest to god, I don't think I'd ever done. The results are a mixed bag -- the honorable (author Neal Stephenson, composer Franz Schubert, writer Zane Grey), the suspect (Rudy Giuliani's kid, a Jesus Jones member, Justin Timberlake), and the unknown (Finnish hockey player Pavi Sald). Sticking out are three baseball players: Jackie Robinson, Ernie Banks, and Nolan Ryan. I knew about Jackie, not about the other two. That's a pretty awesome baseball triumvirate -- I'm sure there's someone somewhere who keeps track of such things, but I'm going to go ahead and declare January 31st "Awesome Baseball Day" because it's hard to imagine that any other day produced three players that can outshine those guys. Obviously...

Feeling Older Faster*
2008-06-28 09:02:00
I've been enjoying the hell out of Double Cross recently -- it's a real kick to read stories about all the bands I worshipped as a teenager, see pictures of groups I'd long forgotten, find out more about names that were just mysteries on a lyric sheet thank-you list.One of the posts got me to listen to Bl'ast! (or BL'AST! or however you prefer to type it) for the first time in ages. Probably 15 years at least. I was almost trembling with excitement as I put "It's In My Blood" on, sure that this was gonna kick my ass like it did when I was 18, and then, uh, I didn't like it. It sounded pretty awful in fact. I know a lot of people hold them up as fabulous, and once I did too, but they didn't age well. (In eternal optimism, I've half convinced myself that I just needed to get back in through "Power of Expression" instead.)But it got me started on a mini-kick of revisiting the stuff that I listened to when I was much, much younger. Not stuff that I've listened to pretty consis...
More About: Feeling

Vacation Reading
2008-06-26 07:32:00
What I read on my summer vacation, by Greg#23 -- "Letters From London" by Julian BarnesBarnes is one of those guys that I've always sort of known I'd like, but I've never bothered picking up any of his books for whatever reason. Maybe because he had some sort of spat with Martin Amis and I used to think Amis was really hot shit before he got kind of crazy, so it was misguided loyalty to Marty. Maybe there was just something that I always wanted to read a little bit more, sort of the same way Iceland is annually my #2 choice for vacation but I never actually get there.But I found this in the travel section of a used bookstore back in Boulder, thought "perhaps this will be good," and since I hadn't spent my usual $400 on books, got it. And it's really, really good. It's a collection of columns from Barnes's time as the London correspondent for the New Yorker -- early '90s, roughly the end of Thatcher's time in office to the ascendancy of Tony Blair. Barnes is quite talented a...
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Banned in DC
2008-06-25 08:08:00
That title makes no sense, but this is the first time I've had occasion to travel to Washington since I started this blog, so it stays. Rest assured that I will be repaid with the slings and arrows of angry people who were looking for info on the Bad Brains or Cynthia Connolly.In the early part of this decade -- and holy crap, it's getting toward over! I swear the '90s lasted longer -- I traveled to Washington a lot, sometimes as often as once a month. Two of my closest friends from old Boulder days had relocated there after the Boulder Planet imploded, and I found the city invigorating. There's a sense of something in the air, something happening on every block -- that even though it's relatively small, you could wander all your life and not see anywhere near everything that Washington has to offer. I was pleased to see that feeling still there, after five years away. Pleased to see other things too -- most of the places that I used to go when visiting Washington were still ar...
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The Balkans Be Letting Me Down
2008-06-22 07:29:00
I'm in DC for a few days of frolic with the Ski Bum and Fidel, so I haven't been on this at all. I arrived at the hotel just in time to catch the extra time and penalties in the Croatia-Turkey Euro 2008 game, when Croatia snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, followed immediately by defeat from the jaws of victory. People in rooms next to me were undoubtedly entertained by my screaming "YES! YES! YES!" followed by "NO! NO! NO!" two minutes later.After Croatia fell, I adopted the Dutch, with predictable results. At this point I'll just pass on rooting for anyone, to save myself disappointment. If I weren't so personally scarred by their last two wins, I probably would adopt Turkey -- their scrappy comebacks are endearing. I wonder if people are getting really hot and bothered about their advancement in Euro 2008, in an Ottomans-advancing-on-Vienna sort of way.The night of the Croatia debacle, Fidel and I went to the Brickskeller beer bar, a longtime favorite of mine, best kno...
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Bücher
2008-06-18 22:02:00
#21 -- "The Professor and the Madman" by Simon WinchesterI've read a bunch of Winchester's books, but ('til now) not the one that probably drew the most attention. If you somehow missed this when it was all the rage a decade ago, it's the parallel stories of the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, and one of the OED's main contributors, who happened to be mad as a hatter. It's livelier than a lot of Winchester's books, and good fuel for big nerds like me. Enjoyed it a whole bunch. He strains a bit to draw connections between the two characters early on, but so what? It manages to make the creation of a dictionary sound exciting as hell, which is no small feat.#22 -- "Tortilla Flat" by John SteinbeckProbably hadn't read anything by Steinbeck since high school. I just remember overwhelming depressing-ness, rightly or wrongly -- this, in a stack of books lent to me by the Ski Bum last year, is lotsa fun though. Drinking and carousing among the poor of depression-era Califo...
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Ruination
2008-06-15 22:08:00
So Sunday's Turkey-Czech Republic match was one of the best soccer matches I've seen, while also throwing a giant wrench into my Euro 2008 rooting interests. I had to watch at work, meaning lots of muffled cheers (early) and groans (late). It was a hell of a good game, ruined a bit by the fact that it was my number one rooting interest folding like a card table. I freely admit I don't know enough about soccer to say anything intelligent, but the Czechs did seem (to my untrained eye) really, really passive in the tournament, concentrating more on keeping the other guys from scoring (until the last 20 minutes of this match, ha ha!) than scoring themselves.Anyway, the hell with it, I'm cheerfully slutty about my sports affiliations so I'll be rooting for Croatia to win now (if the Czechs had won today, they would have faced Croatia in the quarters -- now, at least, my Pan-Slavic loyalties won't be divided). And the Netherlands if the Croats go down.Sad, time-to-rethink-things mom...

Village of Lead
2008-06-14 09:21:00
When I was a youth, we'd go camping in the mountains of Colorado most summer weekends, largely to my chagrin. My appreciation of the mountains was limited to seeing them from afar, and my feeling was firmly that if I was truly meant to spend weekends up there, then there would be televisions attached to every tree. It didn't help that my father and I had significantly different ideas of "roughing it" -- he thought plumbing was an extravagance on these trips, I thought I was undergoing unnecessary hardship if I couldn't find arcade games.So my heart was not in it, and I realize now that I saw lots of cool stuff all over Colorado, but mostly I just responded with the sigh of a world-weary seven-year-old, and trudged back to the camper to drink orange soda and read Street and Smith's NFL preview, trying not to think about the episodes of the Baseball Bunch that I was missing.One of the trips was up to Lead ville. I remember nothing of it -- small town, no video games. This last trip...
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Kloucek Lands
2008-06-12 13:54:00
I've been meaning to do a few posts, one on the trip up to Leadville (now a week and a half old), another on Euro 2008, but those will have to wait as we've got some sort of breaking news: Tomá? Klou?ek has signed with HC Barys Astana in Kazakhstan. They'll be playing in the new Continental Hockey League next season, and I think we've all got to admit that this signing is a pretty big coup for the new league.The downside: it's probably hard as hell to get Barys Astana game-worn jerseys.HCBA will, of course, now be the PPA's official non-NHL rooting interest in the coming season. You can follow them here, if a) you read Russian and b) they ever update the page again (last update - May 21st).

Crazy From the Heat
2008-06-07 15:44:00
Not much good to say about the process of leaving nice, cool, pleasant Boulder for hot/sticky/humid as hell Atlanta. Most of yesterday was spent on the wrong side of 90 degrees and today it's already sweltering before 10 a.m. It may be easier if you use this handy kit to imagine this blog over the next few months: start off with "it's hot," add a line about how said heat makes it too uncomfortable to do anything (including writing about anything other than the heat), then say "I'm headed to (the bar/work), where at least it's cool." That pretty much takes care of it, other than the requisite "Kloucek has found a new team" post sometime in late July or August.Thankfully, today, Euro 2008 kicks off, giving me the excuse to spend the day in the aforementioned bar. It's also the last day of vacation, so I'll feel no guilt. The Virginia-Highland fest is also today, but it's outside. So, soccer it is -- I'm supporting the Czechs (who face host Switzerland today), with backup plan...
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Sources of Confusion
2008-06-05 18:03:00
Found while digging through the parents' basement -- my Mom's college atlas, which I devoured as a child. It's the same atlas that once befuddled me with maps of Atlantis and Treasure Island. No sign of the Atlantis map -- the binding's shot and some pages seem to be missing -- but there's Treasure Island (along with an elevation map). To add to the confusion, it's on the same page as straightforward maps of real-world elevation and such. Leave here in a few hours. Boo hiss. It's been nice. (it's also 49 degrees right now, a temperature I won't see again in Atlanta 'til November.)
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Winding Down
2008-06-04 21:49:00
Vacation is almost over already? Is this fair? I had visions of the trip spurring this blog to new intellectual heights, but aside from a scrawled note reading "Chris Osgood/Sam McPheeters = separated at birth!!" I've got nothing. I did find some of my old high school literary magazines in the basement, so if I'm low on material and lose my remaining shreds of dignity, I'll probably be reduced to posting my essays from those.I feel pretty fantastic, despite a Colorado diet that treats pork, beer, cheese, and coffee as the four main food groups. It's been very very relaxing. It kind of drives home what an unrelenting grump I've been in recent months. For lack of anything better, here's the PPA Colorado playlist:Rocket From the Crypt "Circa Now!"Easy ActionMastodon "Leviathan"The Mekons "Fear and Whiskey"Lungfish "Pass and Stow" and "Artificial Horizon" Lifter Puller "Fiestas and Fiascos"The Jesus Lizard "Goat"Sobering realization of the day: "Circa Now!" is as old today as "Hou...
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All the Colorado You Can Eat
2008-06-02 01:25:00
Hey, pictures. I managed to secure the use of a USB cord so tragedy has been averted. I spent the morning up in the old mining town of Leadville, about which more tomorrow; in the meantime, pictures around Boulder.The Boulder Book Store's "Bookend Cafe," the place I usually go to drink coffee in the morning and perhaps my favorite coffee shop on earth. Not because the coffee is particularly spectacular, but because sitting out there in that setting is pretty goddamn relaxing.The Boulder Theater. For several years, the now-defunct newspaper that I toiled at was located next door to this place. As a result, I never really thought much about it -- getting in to just about every show for free (we shared restrooms and an owner with the theater) makes places a bit less special -- but it's really a pretty cool theater. Nice art deco design, and holy cow, that's the largest and least subtle depiction of male genitalia ever.Don't worry: the females are equally represented on the inside c...
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Rocky Mountain High
2008-05-31 20:09:00
I was waiting to do a post until I got my photos uploaded, then I just now realized that Commandant Genius (that's me) either forgot to pack his digital camera USB cord or packed it so well that it can't be found.So, I'm back in the homeland. I had a dawn flight yesterday, which rendered me more or less useless for my first 20 hours here. When I was a kid, the PPA family was split regarding vacation departures: my Dad and I went for the wake up at some ungodly hour, depart before dawn choice, while my Mom and siblings preferred to sleep in. After getting up at 4:45 am yesterday, I think I've finally defected and left Dad as the only pro-early family member. But, now, I'm refreshed and awake. I timed it pretty well (if there's tornadoes tomorrow, this may be rescinded) -- the weather's amazing and this life without stress is not bad. I spent a couple hours on the parents' patio yesterday, drinking Fat Tire and reading Pynchon, staring at the clouds and feeling pretty good. Th...
More About: Rocky , Rocky Mountain , High , Mountain

Writer's Block
2008-05-26 18:00:00
It's a sad day when you're sitting in front of an empty Blogger screen, unable to even match the intellectual level of an entry about eating a giant hot dog. Up until the last week or so, I was at least doing a considerable amount of writing off the site, but even that ran aground this past weekend. Once again, I'm looking to Colorado (Friday!) to solve all my problems, inspire me to write, get me fit and healthy, and so forth.I have a vague idea for a music-related post but it ain't happening now, a vague idea for a presidential campaign post but it probably won't happen ever -- there's not a lot of new ground to be tilled on that subject. Once upon a time, jobless just-out-of-college, at the same time that I was daydreaming about going off to be a war correspondent in the Balkans, I got on a real Hunter S. Thompson kick. I lucked out in that I got into him through "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail" and "The Great Shark Hunt," which I'd still consider to be his best w...
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The PPA's Life-Affirming Tips
2008-05-25 00:59:00
If you're planning on spending your day off being really super-productive, a human productivity machine the likes of which the world has never seen, then don't -- I repeat, don't -- order something called a "Loaded Dogzilla" for lunch.And also don't wash it down with three pints of Red Brick Blonde Ale (which may be my pick for best Atlanta beer now, though that's not exactly a fierce competition).Regular blogging to resume sometime soon, after I (hopefully) get myself off the couch.
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I May Not Do Much Else...
2008-05-18 16:52:00
...but I do read books. #15 -- "The Dark is Rising" by Susan CooperNot too hard to guess that after I read "Over Sea, Under Stone" I'd go ahead and read the next book in the series. This was actually the first I read when I was a kid and I remember being really unsettled by it -- can see why, it's a bit darker and spookier than the first book. Really satisfying, but I think it's time to put the Cooper books aside for a bit and write my own.#16 -- "On the House" by Simon ReadEh. A true-crime book concerning the really bizarre murder of a depression-era drunk -- one that took the rather inept killers multiple tries. The problem is that you know most of the bizarre elements by the time you've read the back cover and the introduction, and you know who's responsible from the start. So 95% of the book is just explaining how it came to pass.#17 -- "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" by Michael ChabonI feared that all the raves about this might put my expectations too high, but this is so...
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Too Lazy to Think Up a Title
2008-05-16 20:26:00
2008 winner, Laziest Homeless Guy in Atlanta award: the guy who sat on a curb and yelled "hey! man! Give me some money" across half a parking lot today. As someone who's rather lazy himself, I applaud his commitment to energy conservation, but it didn't pay off here since I'm also too lazy to walk across a parking lot.I haven't exactly been Captain Fun Super Blogger lately -- work is a killer and when I'm not working I'm tied up with various project-type things that don't make for good blogging. And then when I'm not doing those I'm staying up til 4 a.m. drinking Maudite (which is apparently Quebec-language for either "skull-cleaver" or "don't drink four of these right in a row, merde-head") and, seriously, playing Worldwide Soccer Manager, which is about as addictive as heroin and about as productive (though since FC Brno are now Czech first division champions thanks to my leadership, maybe all the naysayers will back off). I saw my friend Sherri yesterday, and she gently...
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Service Interruptions
2008-05-12 22:48:00
Things have been pretty busy down here, to the point where I haven't even been able to break away from Worldwide Soccer Manager had enough time to post a lazy photograph. Hopefully I'll be back on it in a few days.In the meantime, here's the sights of Atlanta! (link via Atlanta Metblogs)
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History Lesson
2008-05-07 21:01:00
Not much from me lately, I know. I've been constantly slammed and just really haven't had anything to write about. I'm three weeks away from a direly-needed trip back to Colorado, which will hopefully make life bearable again.As is often the case in these situations, I turn to a hockey jersey.Dukla Jihlava is one of my favorite Czech clubs based solely on aesthetics. Yellow is not one of my favorite colors, but somehow, Dukla's pairing of it with purple/red/burgundy (the shade seems to have evolved back and forth over time) looks really nice. Well, usually. I've got several Dukla jerseys, and some of them are among my favorites in my collection. This one's dating back to the final years of Communism -- it looks much older with the cheap material. When I bought it, it was advertised as 1970s -- it almost definitely is mid- to late-1980s, though.The only Vyhlidal I can find in my books about Dukla (yes, I have books about Dukla. Two of them. In a language I can't speak or read)...
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Looking Forward to Euro 2008
2008-05-03 02:00:00
I meant to sprint out of work last night and join Tapeleg and Meg to see the Avalanche's last hurrah, but things got busy and I stayed an extra 45 minutes, then I got stuck in Bon Jovi traffic, and so I arrived at the bar, sprinted into the back room, and looked up at the screen:7-1. (it ended 8-2.)I'm glad I missed the majority of the game; that was the hockey equivalent of Super Bowl XXIV for me. There's no team left that I really feel anything for -- maybe the Canadiens, but they're about to bounce out; maybe the Penguins, but only because I like penguins. The Wings look too good to lose (though their fans continue to indicate that Detroit was used as a thalidomide testing ground; that's some comfort), so I'll just set my sights on soccer. Go whichever Slavic team does best!
More About: Euro 2008 , Euro , Forward , 2008