Are my eyes really blue?

Gustavo Dudamel Conducts the Israel Philharmonic at the Kennedy Center

27 years old. What am I doing with my life?

Once again, the trouble remains where it has for the last two years: there are not enough words in the English language to describe what a feckless, incompetent pushover is the Senator from Nevada. Joe Lieberman campaigned against Barack Obama, questioned his patriotism, questioned his willingness to defend the country – and now will be left to chair the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Oversight.
Lieberman can now sandbag the administration at will. He will get the routine praise accorded anyone in Washington who routinely shits on the head of their own party, and any attempt to dislodge him for questionable actions will be painted as an attempt to stonewall or cover up misdoings in the administration. Holy Joe shouldn’t even be in the caucus – and now he gets punished for eight months of sabotage with…nothing.
Harry Reid just kneecapped Obama two months before he even takes office. If Congressional Democrats had any sack at all, they would pick a new Senate Majority Leader when they convene in January. Ironically, though, the only Dem in Congress with any sort of testicular fortitude is Nancy Pelosi.
Obama could learn a thing or two from Reagan: trust, but verify.

I would love to see one year where the SNL cast includes Justin Timberlake, Alec Baldwin, Christopher Walken, and the Killers as the house band.

Could you do an entire cast just with people who have killed as guest hosts?

I have never in my life seen three calls in such quick succession that were so flagrantly intended to bail out one team. First the Redskins down the punt at the 1 only to hear that Rock Cartwright was in the end zone when he touched the ball. HD replay shows green grass between Cartwright and the end zone when the ball is touched dead…but even after a replay challenge, the call on the field stands.

Then the Dallas ball carrier is stopped at the 1. Replay clearly shows his elbow hit before the ball broke the plane of the goal line…but the call on the field stands.

Then Clinton Portis makes the catch and rolls out of bounds…but is called down before going out of bounds, causing the clock to continue to run, despite replays showing that he apparently crossed out of bounds before being touched. In college, he would have been down, certainly, but this ain’t college ball. Which is obvious, as most college ball still attempts to maintain the appearance of integrity.

At least the refs in the Pac-10 are just utterly worthless all around. The NFL and its semi-pro officiating corps have an agenda, though, and the care, feeding and protection of “America’s Team” is at the top of the list.

I thought that election day would mean an end to the eternal tongue-bath of all things Texan, but apparently it’s going to take a nuclear bomb to rid us of this troublesome state. Then again, given the survivability of cockroaches, I’m sure the Cowboys will get by just fine, so maybe not.

So the problem I had with my Clarks muckers – the duck-boot-looking things that I got for the trip to Europe last fall. The problem I had was that at some point, they started with that squishy sound as described earlier. So while at Valley Fair today, I stopped in and asked if they had any idea what I should do…and the fellow on duty said to bring them in and they might be able to do something for me.

Because I will do literally anything to avoid going grocery shopping, I actually drove all the way home, got them, and brought them back to the mall, where we discovered the problem: a hairline crack on the left side of the heel on each shoe. Not only did that cause the air-squishing, water had shipped in through the crack and been absorbed by the sole material; they were legitimately slightly heavier than a new pair of the same shoes.

And I know this because after consulting with the other employee in the shop, the guy marked up the old pair as “damaged” and gave me a new pair free of charge, apologizing that he could only give me an even exchange since I didn’t have the original receipt. Which, you know, is just freakin’ fine by me.

So yeah. If you need some good comfy shoes, go by Clark’s in VF and buy from our man Gilbert. (They also have a sale on – buy one, get a second pair 25% off, which means I finally have some black upscale-casual shoes other than Docs for the first time in five years and for only $53, which is pretty damn good I think.) So yeah. Clark’s FTW.

It can rain now. =)

OK, in the cold light of…midnight, let’s have a look at the reality of the situation, and acknowledge one truth: this is a down year for the SEC. Under normal circumstances, this Vandy team never breaks 5 wins all year, let alone beats SC and Auburn and knocks off Kentucky on the road (only the third win in 13 tries against the Mild Cats, who we actually pwn much more in basketball these days…my God did I just say that!?). And yet, the Mississippi State and Duke games were winnable…under optimal conditions, we could be sitting on 8 wins with 2 to play and that would probably put us…but no sense worrying about that. So let’s look at the SEC:

1st tier: ALABAMA and FLORIDA. National championship contenders; the BCS Semi-Final is basically the first week of December in Atlanta.

2nd tier: GEORGIA and LSU. Each lost to both teams above; both are legit top-25 teams and nothing to hang your head over, but they are clearly the next level down.

3rd tier: honestly, at this point, it’s a bunch of skells. South Carolina, Kentucky, Ole Miss…and Vanderbilt, which has beaten all three of them.

4th tier: Mississippi State, Arkansas, and (warm glow of joy) AUBURN, which has to beat Bama on the road to be bowl-eligible, and TENNESSEE, the worst team in the conference, who has already fired their coach, lost to Wyoming at homecoming, and is guaranteed a losing season and their worst record in decades.

Now, if you look at the bowl tie-ins, it goes like this (Cassius Clay rules in effect for names of bowls)

1st: BCS

2nd: Citrus

3rd/4th/5th: Cotton/Outback/Peach

6th/7th: Liberty/Music City

8th: Independence

9th: that nubbins bowl in Birmingham named after a pizza website

The way it works is that the Citrus bowl gets the second-best team in the SEC by record. They can also pick a team within one win of that record. This is basically to allow some flexibility if the SEC title game loser is legitimately worse than the second-best team in the other division.

Then the Cotton Bowl gets first pick of the SEC West’s remaining teams, the Outback gets first pick from the East, and the Peach gets a pick left over from either side.

Then the two Tennessee bowls rank the remaining bowl-eligible teams in order of preference, and if their first choices are different, they get them. If they want the same team, that team basically picks whether they’d rather play in Nashville before New Years’ Day or Memphis after.

Then the sludge bowls pick. Honestly, the odds that the SEC will have nine teams eligible for bowls…well, it’s actually still mathematically possible, as Vandy made 8…but never mind that.

Now even if the Dores don’t win another game the rest of the way, they are legitimately at least the fifth or sixth team in the conference, based on the tiebreaks they have with the other 3-conf-win SEC teams head-to-head.

But if the Dores win out to hit 8-4, they would definitely be 5th in the conference overall, at the top of Tier 3. And right now, it looks like both Bama and Florida will wind up in the BCS bowls irrespective of the SEC title game result, assuming they beat their principal rivals Thanksgiving weekend. (I’m taking as read that Florida will do unspeakable things to Citadel next week.)

Long story short (too late, I know): if the SEC gets two teams in the BCS, and Vandy wins out, the Commodores could break their 26-year postseason drought playing on January 1, 2009.

Read that last sentence again.

I feel faint.

PAY TO THE ORDER OF: Mephistopholes

SUM OF: 1 Soul

DYNAMITE GO VU!!!!!!!!

One other thing I forgot to mention – the interest in additional footwear came from the following process. First, I put away all the specialty footwear (the dress shoes, the cowboy boots, the saddle bucks for strategic swing-dance purposes). This cut the numbers down quite a bit.
Then, I put away the Clarks muckers from last year’s Europe trip. There is something wrong with the soles – the left one pops when I walk so loudly that I can hear it over my iPhone podcasts while walking on carpet. On any surface harder than mud, the squish-squish-squish sound of air is plainly audible and incredibly annoying, and I expect to have a blowout any second. Shame, too, because they are right comfy, but they also do this weird thing that will randomly result in a massive shooting pain in one big toe or the other as I push off with that foot while walking.
Then, I put away all the Docs.
(Pick your jaw up off the floor.)
This left me with the following:
* Oxblood Bass loafers, which date back to undergrad days. I put some shoe trees in them to try to stretch them out to the point I can comfortably wear them again, as they are a bit snug and I am retaining liquor.
* Brown Ecco lace-up casuals, from the honeymoon. Again, very comfy, but they also do that weird toe-thing from time to time. They also feel like they might be just a hair too big, which may contribute to the toe thing…any podiatrists or shoe-horses want to comment?
* New Balance 680 gray athletic shoes. I think they are walking shoes, bought for the B2B one year, and I still wear them when I need the Steve Jobs look. (Or today, for instance.)
* White Adidas Stan Smith 2s, bought in a moment of madness and rarely worn because the Seinfeld is not a good look for me. It’s not 1991 any more.
* Brown Clarks loafers, bought a few years back and then largely forgotten about. In fact, I thought I had donated them, or those probably would have been the honeymoon kicks and the Eccos would never have been bought. Definitely comfortable, but also definitely banged up a little, and the combination of roundish shape and pebbly leather just doesn’t quite look right somehow.
And that’s basically it. Take the Docs off the table, and I am left with two or three not-quites and a couple of not-hardlys.
The thing is, my shoe…problem…largely stems from my time in DC, where I had to have something that would look mildly presentable (for IT, anyway), would be comfortable enough for a couple miles’ walking every day, and would stand up to rain and snow. When I got to California, the snow and walking issues went by the boards, to be replaced by the necessity of steel toes (and ideally ESD, but good luck getting all that in one shoe) for the next three years.
The point is, I am not really at a point now where I have to take the “horses for courses” approach to my footwear. All it has to do is be comfy and look good. (Not causing random inexplicable pain falls under “comfy”.)
I don’t know what the point of that is, but that’s just by way of explaining where I’m coming from with the whole “why is he taking his day off to look at shoes?” question.

Tuesday I had breakfast at Fraiche in Palo Alto, then went walking in downtown Los Altos to enjoy the fall colors, then headed for Santana Row and Valley Fair to do some looking around. For some reason, I have in mind that I need new outerwear and shoes, which if you know me at all is a completely preposterous assertion.

A lot of stuff has happened this week, mostly stuff I’d rather not publicly discuss yet – my health and my family are fine, so no panic there – but it’s been a grueling week in a lot of ways and I pulled a couple of really stupid moves that have added complication to my life. And yet, just like it feels sooooo good when you stop banging your head on the brick wall? I feel tired, depleted, exhausted – but I’m OK. I just have this quiet, diminished sort of feeling, like I need to sit down in a big leather chair with a cup of coffee and read something absorbing and just chill myself out for a while. Fortunately, circumstances are such that I can do a little bit of that right now – it’s not great, but it’s adequate for the moment.

The thing is, I caught sight of my reflection in the window on the light rail home last night, and it was a bit surprising, because I didn’t recognize myself for a bit. The same thing happened to me several years ago on another coast, about the time that I really ramped up and started what would eventually be my MVP year at my first job. Now, I’m not sure what it means, other than I’m just getting older and accustomed to the lack of hair.

Many years ago, as I was leaving the East, I said that there comes a time in everyone’s life when you have to stop trying to be the person you were and let yourself be the person you have become. I don’t think I really grasped at the time that it’s not just a one-off incident. Obviously, I’ve accepted that a lot of things I originally wanted are not going to come to pass – and don’t think for a minute that I’m not a little bit salty that a certain jug-eared beanpole from Chicago has MY CAREER PATH that I plotted out in high school and I don’t even get a story credit – but now I think that what I have to do is summon up my inner Doris Day* and say “OK, I’m done fighting it, just go along with the universe and quit trying to swim upstream for a while.”

This is not an easy thing to do, especially for an enneagram-6. You’d think that “Screw it, let go” would be the easiest thing in the world, because how hard is it not to do something? But trying to not think about the future and make sure everything is secured and the path is known, for me, is exactly like trying to hold my breath. I can do it for a little while, but eventually I turn blue and there’s gasping and shrieking.

I don’t think there’s really a point to this, but I haven’t posted since Monday and I just thought it bore writing down somewhere…

* I know what you’re thinking, dear sister, and you can keep your “It’s Raining Men” cracks to yourself.

One Velociraptor per Child (OVPC)