Tinhole

You work in an office, you get bored. That's how it is. So my buddy James and I invented a game to keep us from bagging it all and taking off in a Cadillac and going on a crime spree and running from the cops across Arizona and clasping hands and gunning it over the Grand Canyon. It's called Tinhole.


Brief Tinhole Rules:


1. Find a 10'x3' conference table with a cable hole in the middle measuring 1.75" in diameter

(ours looks like this:)



2. If no hole, drill one

3. Form a tightly packed ball of tinfoil measuring 1" in diameter, slightly larger for more challenging play



4. Two players, each sitting on either end of table -- no leaning

5. Remove random crap from table, wipe surface to a sheen. Take turns shooting ball across the table using the following point system, playing to 11 or 21 points, depending on slack time:


Tinhole Point System:


1 pt: shot across hole

2 pts: shot across hole causing bounce or trajectory adjustment

3 pts: shot across hole causing bounce or trajectory adjustment off table (2 pts. if caught by opponent before hitting the floor [without leaving chair])

5 pts: Tinhole (shot in hole; extremely difficult)

-2 pts: shot off side of table without hole interference

-2 pts: inability to receive opponent's shot when in range (between sides of table)


Rule Addendums:


1. To determine first player to shoot, each player attempts Tinhole. The player with the closest shot to the hole goes first, unless a player successfully Tinholes. Upon Tinholing, that player starts the game with 5 pts and the first shot. If there is a tie, each player shoots again until there is a tiebreaker. The winner of each game goes first in the next game.

2. Players cannot gain negative points. Missed saves are therefore null and void until that player accumulates at least 2 pts. The shooter misses his turn and the blocker shoots next.

3. If the ball caroms off a player’s hand, arm, or sleeve and drops to the floor while attempting a block, it counts as a missed save, regardless of the placement or range of the ball at the time.

4. The ball may never leave the table at any time unless a bounce is caused by the hole. Failure to abide by this rule will be corrected with a severe 2 pt. penalty.


Our discovery of Tinhole makes us very happy and keeps us coming back to the office every day. But we're thinking of bagging the job anyway and taking this on the road. Next stop Beijing.

A More Perfect Union

I come across these things too late - it's a week old - but you must watch this in its entirety, particularly if you're considering watching a rerun of America's Next Top Model instead. Whether or not you're voting for him, take a look.

Assimilation

1. I was on the train back home last night and there were a bunch of assholes at the 57th stop keeping the doors open for one of their friends for an obscenely long time (#5 in the "How to Be Rude on the Subway" photo below).



It went on for awhile, and of course the train can't leave when there's an idiot holding the doors open. They do this all the time, and everyone else on the train hates it and groans and mutters to themselves (the cardinal rule for commuters in NYC is to remain anonymous), and the train conductor usually yells at them through the speaker, never to any avail. But out of nowhere I screamed "GET OFF THE TRAIN!" and the one holding the door looked at me, stopped grinning, let the doors go, and got off the train.

2. Walking to work today, I came to the corner of 2nd and 70th and saw one of those huge industrial hampers on the corner amidst a pile of trash, and there were legs sticking out of the top of it. There was stuff piled in the hamper, so I couldn't see if the legs were attached to anyone. They had some Nikes on and white socks, and jeans. Definitely human legs. There was no smell, so I figured he wasn't dead. I walked on and forgot about it until just now.

Assimilation, baby!

40/sushi

Drank a 40 for the first time in about 11 years last night. It was surprisingly refreshing. Probably because it wasn't genu-wine malt liquor, like King Cobra or Colt 45 or Crazy Horse or Ballantyne or Olde English or Mickey's or Ice Man:



It was Bud Light, which probably doesn't count. But it remained fresh for the hour and a half it took me to drink it, which runs counter to everything I remember about drinking 40s in the 90s. They were usually stale about halfway down, and if you gestured while drinking, completely undrinkable after 2/3rds. That didn't stop us.

Saw an old friend in San Francisco last week and it brought back some memories of the good ole days when we used to go up to Bobby's garage attic, drink 40s, play darts, and start trouble. One of the other regulars at The Cave, as it was called, was Kate, who wildly and coincidentally now lives about 3 blocks away from me in Brooklyn. We got together last night and decided it was time to revisit the concept of the 40. We ordered sushi and downed the heady brew and discovered, to our utter delight and amazement, that it pairs deliciously and quite perfectly with a spicy tuna roll.

I was going to wrap this post up with an insightful paragraph about the pairing of 40s and sushi and how it's an apt metaphor for the youthful abandon and tightly-wound responsibility of married life without children in NYC at age 33, but I couldn't pull it together. Sometimes 40/sushi is just 40/sushi.

Pick your candidate

Got this one from David Byrne's ever-fascinating blog:

http://www.dehp.net/candidate/index.php

It's a Pick Your Candidate site where you check off how you stand on two dozen issues. Based on your responses, it tells you which candidate you should go for. It also has a sliding scale showing you how insane the other candidates are.

Kucinich in '08!

Errr...

The big letdown

I had the urge to get a huge oatmeal raisin cookie after lunch today.

When you haven't bought a cookie in about 14 years and you get one and it's a big, stale, tasteless piece of shit, you start to lose faith in the power of cookies to brighten up your day like they did when you were small.

Well okay then

My wife has a remarkable ability to forgive and forget. I come home last night and she's cooking in the kitchen. She turns around, says "Hi hon." and asks me how my day was.

She was more upset about me airing our dirty laundry than she was about anything else. Which means she'll probably be mad at me for writing about this also.