Ponderings and Musings

Like many, many people in the U.S., last night Earl and I watched “American Idol”, where 12 guys did their best to earn a spot in the final dozen contestants (six girls and six guys). Going into last night’s episode, I wasn’t really sure what to expect of the guys and while there were some really bad performances (Bobby Bennett’s rendition of “Copacabana” was absolutely dreadful), I was thoroughly impressed by four performances. They would be Ace Young’s “Father Figure” (he makes Earl swoon), Chris Daughtry’s “Wanted Dead or Alive” (he gets a “woof”), Elliott Yamin’s “If You Really Love Me” (excellent performance) and my absolute favorite, Taylor Hicks’s “Levon”. While this was not Taylor’s best performance of the show thus far, it was an excellent, entertaining and memorable rendition of the Elton John classic. What I especially enjoyed was Taylor’s banter with the ever-present Ryan Seacrest after the performance. Taylor is absolutely consumed by his passion for music. It is a mighty rare thing to see someone so engulfed by what they love. His body is ever-moving to his own rhythm. He feels joy while he sings and he conveys that to those that he’s performing for. It’s obvious that he loves being in front of an audience. And he’s great at it.

I don’t know if Taylor is going to be the next American Idol. In many ways, he doesn’t fit the image painted by today’s pop music demands. He’s all real, there’s no façade and he’s extremely talented. I would hate to see the pop music machine get it’s hooks into him and try to cookie cutter him into something he’s not.

He’s too good for that.

Last month, Gillette released the latest in shaving technology to the consumer masses. Introducing the Gillette Fusion, five blades packed really close together with a sixth blade on the back so you can trim under your nose or around your stylish goatee.

It clocks in at $11.99 for just the razor. As a plus, the razor is powered to vibrate so that you can really get in close.

Five blades. Wow. Isn’t that a bit much?

When the Mach III came out a number of years ago, I was hesitant to pick one up. After all, my trusty Sensor (without the Excel part) had done wonders for me for a number of years and why did I need an extra blade? Then I started shaving my head and admittedly the Mach III made the task a little bit easier. I’ve been content for the most part with the Mach III ever since. The price does throw one into slight sticker shock, but once you grow a beard so that you use the blades as little as possible, it’s not too bad on the budget. For the most part I’m happy with the Mach III.

But five blades? I don’t think my head could take it. Refills for the new Fusion are $13.29 for four blades. They say a blade lasts three or four shaves, so that’s over $100.00 a month for a clean, close shave. Not including shaving cream. One has to wonder if the money would be better spent by going to a barbershop with a really hot barber doing the honors.

In an effort to make this marketing campaign successful, Gillette has also released a new line of shaving gels, foams and other accessories with the “Fusion” name. Has shaving gel or shaving foam changed that much over the years that there needs to be more and more versions of it? I mean, it’s either a foam, or a shaving gel that turns to foam when rubbed. How hard can it be? As a teenager I borrowed my father’s Barbasol and found that to be more than sufficient. I was a diehard Barbasol user for many years and still use it on occasion. I must admit that as I’ve grown older I’ve expanded to an environmentally safe shaving cream for my head. Have you ever looked at the ingredients in a can of shaving cream? Small wonder my face always felt like it was on fire after shaving.

I think I’ll keep the beard.

Sweetheart Corner.

Originally uploaded by macwarriorny.

This sign has stood at the corner of Route 11 and Taft Rd. in North Syracuse, N.Y. for at least 60 years. At this location was a locally owned grocery store, Sweetheart Market, that closed in 2003 due to competition from the big, corporate owned supermarkets. If you listen to the traffic reports on the radio, it’s Sweetheart Corner. If you’re going to one of the area businesses, you’re going to Sweetheart Corner. It’s a landmark of the Syracuse area.

Shortly after the closing of Sweetheart Market, the building was demolished and Eckerd built a brand new store on the site. I believe Eckerd had a store next to the original Sweetheart Market, most likely it was a Carl’s Drugs that became a Fays Drugs that was bought by Eckerd in the 1990s. I was happy to see that they decided to let the landmark live and they kept the original sign from the grocery store.

It shall always be “Sweetheart Corner.”

I’m making like a real internet café junkie today and hanging out at a local Barnes and Noble, enjoying a Tazo Chai and a granola bar. The internet connection is acceptably fast.

One of the things that I love about hanging out in a café like this is the people watching. I’m fascinated, and often frustrated by the general public. The folks seem rather tame in this Barnes and Noble though, there obnoxiousness level is at a minimum.

Three tables ahead of me there are two women, which I would describe as “two old broads” because that’s what I do, who are wearing a lot of hairspray, a week’s worth of makeup and those fancy coats that look like floor length ponchos. They carry an air of “old money”. Not the regal type, but the “we just dragged those old two dollar bills out from under the mattress” type old money. They’ve rearranged their chairs twice, moved the table east and west a couple of times, knocking their neighbor, who was content reading his book entitled “The Emperors’ New Mind”, and now they’re cackling more than the hens I heard at last year’s State Fair. The blonde (not really) woman is reading a book called “The Jell-O Collection”. I bet tonight she is going to make one of those jello concoctions where they put lettuce salad in clear jello. Just like in high school. You know the type of salad, it’s a few shreds of lettuce, a hunk of carrot and radish, all engulfed in a clear or green colored jello, suspended right there in mid-air, suspending your belief that anything like that could taste good.

They just turned their table counter-clockwise 90 degrees. Ponchos are swaying and the Emperor guy just gave them a nasty look. They’ve now left the building and have mounted their brooms parallel parked outside, ready for take-off.

Meow. I’m vicious.

To my right is a very good looking bearded young man. He’s very intellectual looking. I would upgrade his “very good” to an “exceptional” if it wasn’t for his floor length pony tail hanging behind him. Oh well, there’s always scissors.

Straight ahead is a young student banging on his laptop keyboard in a seemingly frustrated way. Let me check again, yep, it’s a Dell running Windows.

Gosh, I love my PowerBook. Have I mentioned that recently?

I see another woman in the far corner using an IBM ThinkPad. I don’t think I’ve seen one of those in use for a while. Every PC-centric person in this area seems hell bent on owning a Dell.

Sip check. Tazo Chai made with soy milk, not as sexy as whole milk. But a whole lot healthier.

A group of four older women have installed themselves in the back corner and have set up a Scrabble game. They look to be having a good time. I hope to be able to retire someday to do the same. I’m pretty good at Scrabble.

Jones The Owl.

Originally uploaded by macwarriorny.

While we were visiting Rick and Helen today, getting ready for our trip to Atlantic City, our nephew Jones decided to entertain his Uncle J.P. by doing animal impersonations.

“But Jones, you are an animal”, I said to him, feeling the need to point out the obvious.

“But Uncle J.P., actually we are all animals”, he responded.

Since he felt so wise (and I agreed with him after thinking about it), he decided to do an impersonation of an owl.

One of my biggest pet peeves is being pigeon holed. I don’t like to be perceived as predictable. When I move on from this life, I want to be remembered as spontaneous. “I wanna be impulse. Reckless.” (When’s the last time someone quoted a Wilson Phillips song in a blog?) “That J.P., he was zany. Zany, I say.”

As I’m sitting here eating lunch, I’m realizing that I’ve adopted a routine that may border on mundane. I come home, lunch pail in tow and lay out my lunch. I pet the cat on the top of the head and then let him out the back door. I then eat my lunch and surf the same pages, every day, in the same order. I have a handful of blogs that I read, and I always read them in order, regardless of who has posted the latest entry. I check a few usenet discussions and then I read a few message boards about various, often entertainment, interests. Then I write in my blog. As I letting Tom out before settling down to eat, I realized he was waiting by the door because he knew what was to happen next.

I think this routine is a product of the time of year. I imagine once the weather breaks and really means it this time that I’ll walk or sit on the back deck or run around the house with my hands in the air going “Let the sunshine, let the sunshine, let the sunshine in!” I don’t think the neighbors would mind, they often do the same thing. Except crazy cat lady. She just calls neighborhood cats by banging an iron skillet on a cow bell. She’s whacky like that.

Long ago I was told by an ex-fling that I was very predictable and I worked in a three-week cycle. I had my high points, I had my low points and you could set a calendar by the schedule. “J.P.’s giddy, time to pay the electric bill!” Unpredictably, I hung up the phone while he was telling me what my problem was and predictably I dumped him in a curt, yet colorfully worded e-mail. Mind you, back in 1989, dumping people over e-mail was rare so maybe that wasn’t so predictable after all.

I think I’m going to do something very spontaneous this weekend. On purpose. I don’t know what it’ll be, I don’t know when it’ll be. I have a five day weekend ahead, this is the perfect opportunity to be zany.

I have to think about the details.

I was going through some of the stuff in the “wreck room” closet this evening looking for the documentation for the video camera when I came across a box of old photos. I hadn’t seen these in quite a few years, I thought I’d drag them out and share them.

Up first, my publicity shot from 1997. This is from when I worked at the radio station as a Program Director. It’s important to have a snazzy publicity shot in case your peers shower you with acolades in a trade magazine. I can’t even type that sentence without gagging.

And the second little gem I found was from July 1994 when I worked at a station called Hot 107. We all got together and hung out with the Fly 92 crew in neighboring (and much bigger) Albany at their summer jam. Here I am with Sherman Hemsley, Brian Cody and Matt Hubbell from Fly 92 and my co-worker from Hot 107, Becky Myers. I don’t know who the woman in shocking pink is, she just sort of jumped in the picture. Must be she wanted to be in a trade magazine too.

I wonder if being pictured with George Jefferson made me Weezy for a day.

I am desperately trying to be in a good mood this morning as I get ready for work. I am not an early riser. I don’t even pretend to be. But occasionally I have to bite the bullet and get up before the sun rises so I can work the early shift at work.

I can be very cranky in the morning, but that’s a habit that I’m trying to break. So far, so good.

As I look out towards the east, I can see the beginnings of a beautiful sunrise. There’s no sign of red, so the sailors needn’t take warning today. The sky has a few puffs of clouds scattered amongst the deep, dark blue giving way to brilliant sun.

As I look at the weather forecast, I notice that it’s going to be near 50 for the next couple of days. That news just perked me up a little bit. My crankiness is now officially gone. It’s going to be a lovely day.

I read this morning that 26.9 inches of snow fell on Central Park in New York yesterday. Personally, I find it kind of neat that downstate got to experience a typical Upstate N.Y. winter storm. New Yorkers are tough and they’ll handle it just fine, but I’m sure they’re probably a little shocked from the amount of snow that fell. It’s the most snow that’s fallen since the late 19th century. I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times that we’ve had that sort of snow up here.

It’s funny to think that New York is in the same state that we live in. (By the way, I refuse to refer to New York, N.Y. as “New York City”, it’s not the “City of New York City”, it’s the “City of New York”, unlike Oklahoma City which is the “City of Oklahoma City”.) It’s so different down there. They speak differently, the pace of life is much faster, politically the regions favor opposite ends of the scale and what is taken for granted down there (taxicabs and knishes, for example) are very scarce up here. I’ve often wondered why New York and Long Island aren’t in their own state. I’m not trying to kick them out of the Empire State or anything (they’d take most of the population with them!) but let’s face it, there’s not much in common between a person in Maspeth (Queens) and Cheektowaga, N.Y. (outside of Buffalo). Well, they do have some things in common; high taxes, decaying roads and a state government strangling itself with red tape.

When we visit people in other parts of the country and they find out we live in New York (the state), we often are asked about the twin towers being hit (“Did you see it?” “Yes, on television just like you, we live four hours away”) and sometimes we are asked if we’ve been mugged recently. (I’ve been chased by a cow on several occasions, if that counts for anything.)

I sometimes wonder if the same situation exists in Illinois, with Chicago at one end of the spectrum and Carbondale, Ill. at the other. Do they have the same differences though they live in the same state?

So here it is Sunday night and time to gear up for the work week that looms ahead. Earl is off to his weekly poker game and I just finished watching six consecutive episodes of “Isis”. (Thank goodness for videotape.)

As I sit here thinking back on the weekend, I have to wonder what I’ve really done to make the time pass so quickly. I’ve spent a lot of time working on my little video projects in an effort to better learn the software and to improve my videography skills. We often discuss at work that it helps to have some sort of hobby to engage yourself when you’re on call. It’s kind of hard to get out and about when the pager could go off at any moment, so doing something at home that you enjoy, that isn’t work related, makes the on-call time more bearable. I still complain about it though. It’s just my way I guess.

Earl and I have stuck to our healthy eating plans this weekend and we both feel much better for it. I started actively searching out better foods around January 10th, and I’m proud to say that I’ve already lost 14 pounds because of it. I’m really looking forward to hitting the roads and trails by cycling this spring and the nice weather can’t get here soon enough.

So it’s time to tackle another work week. Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and Earl and I are doing a little celebrating at the local casino Tuesday night. Next weekend we’re taking a few extra days off and visiting his family in Pennsylvania.

Sigh. Who knew extra spinach in my diet could make me feel so centered?