Ma And Pa Kettle Visit Gomorrah (or Our Weekend in Atlantic City)

March 2, 2010 — jamieumbc

This past weekend, as a birthday present for my wife Laurie, we spent the weekend in Atlantic City. I’m not much of a gambler, mainly because my competitive nature makes repeated losing difficult to endure, but Laurie enjoys it (the games, not losing), and since it was her birthday, off we went. (Bear in mind that my birthday trips take us to battlefields and historic sites, so I guess it all evens out in the end.)

The first part of the adventure was the drive up on Friday morning. All week we had heard that we would likely be driving straight into a massive blizzard; we had even considered renting an SUV to make the trip. Instead, basing my decisions on forecast maps, I decided to stay with our Nissan Rogue, but to leave 95N just after Wilmington, taking 40E across southern New Jersey. My hope was to skirt the heavier snowfall by staying south of Philadelphia.

Luckily, the storm underperformed and the drive was uneventful. By 1PM, we were in Atlantic City, and by 1:30 we were in our room on the 16th floor of the Chelsea Hotel, which was conveniently located next door to the Tropicana. We may have slept at the Chelsea, but we lived at the Tropicana.

The Tropicana is part Las Vegas, part Mall of America. The main floor has thousands of slot machines (mainly video), gaming tables, restaurants and small bars. Branching off of the gambling area, it has a small mall called The Quarter, and a number of nice restaurants, sports bars and rooms for live shows. One restaurant, “Red Square,” sported a 15-foot tall statue of Lenin by its front door.

The Trop also has its own IMAX theatre, which was showing Avatar while we were there (no thanks).

The casino, where we spent most of our time, is a cacophony of sounds and lights. There’s pop/rock music playing from the speakers, the voices of dealers, waitresses and gamblers, plus the din of a million bells, horns, recorded voices, and digital melodies. Every machine and cluster of machines comes with its own light show, like little Christmas trees on amphetamines.

And then there are the people. When I was growing up, what I knew of casinos I learned from James Bond movies, where tuxedoed men and fashionable women played expensive games, and winners and losers each accepted their fates with understated emotions. Notice: This image is nothing like the casino I was in.

At the Tropicana, from what I could tell, there were mostly middle class people from all walks of life, some old, but many young; some well dressed, but just as often not. It was a predominately caucasian crowd, but not exclusively so.

There are two kinds of people at the casino: those who are there for the entertainment, and there are those who are there to make money. It’s easy to tell who’s who by the games that they play. The serious gamblers play “the tables.” These are games of chance such as roulette, blackjack, poker and craps; minimum bets range upwards from $15 per play. We pretended to be serious gamblers for a few minutes on Saturday. Laurie was alone, holding her own betting at a $15 roulette table. Being the only player at the table allowed her to live the fantasy for a few minutes, until other players soon crowded around and began placing bets that put hers to shame, causing us to slink away from the table, back to the safety of our 5¢ video slots. That’s another key to the “high rollers.” They prefer the real slot machines that play for $1 or more and forsake cute animation; the risk/reward is higher on these and there’s no entertainment value to offset the ugly reality of losing. We mostly stayed away from these.

Being the lightweights that we are, we were attracted to glitzy video slots with familiar themes, such as the following:

Indiana Jones (Laurie did OK, but I lost $35)

The Wizard of Oz (I did really well on this one; Laurie not so much) In this image, a "bonus" has been hit, and a flying monkey has appeared on the screen to change certain symbols to "wilds." If you're unsure, this is usually a good thing.

The Wizard of Oz, again. Here, a "bonus" has triggered an onscreen tornado.

Remember "The Match Game" from the 1970s with Gene Rayburn? Well, now this classic piece of television history is immortalized as a slot machine. By the way, "Vicki" is Vicki Lawrence, one of the regulars on the show.

"Wheel of Fortune" comes complete with voiceovers from Pat Sajak and Vanna White. If you hit the "bonus," the big wheel spins and you get the number of "credits" that stops in front of you.

Playing "I Dream Of Jeannie"made me feel like a kid again, watching reruns on Channel 45. Except my parents' old console TV never took $17 dollars from me in 12 minutes. Not that I can remember, anyway.

The "Happy Days" block was almost always filled. We finally got two open seats, but the Fonz just took our money like everybody else.

I loved this machine. When you hit the "bonus," a stick-figure, with Dino's head perched atop, would sing the song "Go Go Go Go" for as long as your bonus held out.

If you want to hear Dean Martin sing “Go Go Go Go” like I did at Atlantic City, click here.

On Saturday night, we witnessed a scene straight out of “Jersey Shore.” On the ground floor of the Tropicana, there are a number of sports bars (and slots, of course). From what we could gather, a group of young men in tight tee shirts had gotten into a fight over one of the young ladies in their group. The ladies were all uniformly dressed in tight miniskirts with heels so high that they could barely walk without falling. We missed the fight, but got to see the twenty minutes of expletive-laden shouting and pointing as security guards herded the knots of combatants toward the exit.

We experienced another eye-opener on Sunday morning. As we were walking across the street to the Trop, we saw a tall young lady dressed in knee high leather boots, fish net stockings and a leather jacket walking ahead of us with a much shorter man. The man was dressed in rumpled, baggy pants and had his gray hoodie pulled over his head, totally hiding his face. The two walked together without acknowledging the other. Laurie and my curiosity was piqued as we tried to figure out this odd couple. As they entered the casino, they drifted apart, still not talking, while keeping the same deliberate pace toward the hotel elevators. That was when we figured it out: what we had been seeing was a “John” escorting his prostitute through the casino toward the elevators (and presumably up to his room). We were amazed; it was like watching reality television come to life, right in front of us.

On that Sunday morning, we decided to give the nice casino folks a little more of our money before leaving, and because it was relatively empty at the machines, we became emboldened and sat at the “big boy” slot machines. These machines even had pull-arms. We were both making conservative bets, but then Laurie decided to throw caution to the wind, hitting the “Max Bet” button, which bets 180 nickels on a single spin. I watched in horror as she lost her $9 in 2.3 seconds. We looked at each other for a moment, and then resumed our conservative play – except that Laurie forgot that since her last bet was $9, that had become her default bet. Thus, when she reflexively hit the “Repeat The Bet” button, she saw another 180 credits go away. Before she realized what had happened, though, a New Jersey miracle occurred. Laurie hit her big score – $100 (as it paid out, we had no idea how much she had won; we just hoped it would never stop. But this was true all weekend. The rules for winning at slots are so confusing that it’s almost impossible to know how much you’ve won, you just have to trust the machine. I gave up trying early on, but Laurie always dutifully tried to figure it out, in vain.) We laughed as the dinging of the credit counter rolled on and on – it took about ten minutes to stop. Finally, we felt like winners. And that was when I understood slot machines.

Slot machines take all of your money, and then slowly give part of your money back, all the while making a big show of the partial return of funds. Because you’re getting something and the machine’s making such a fuss over it, you feel like you’ve accomplished something, when in fact, the machine still has most of your money. Even after our “big score,” we were down about $500 to the machines. When I brought up unpleasant details such as this, Laurie gently reminded me that we were in Atlantic City to have fun, not to save our retirement. Yes, we had lost money, she would say comfortingly, but we had fun doing it. Yes, of course, I would say, that’s what’s important – but I’m not a very gracious loser, and she knows this, so we tended not to speak of the money so much.

After we had checked out of our hotel on Sunday, we grabbed lunch at White House Subs, a historic landmark in a rather tough neighborhood near the Convention Center. We had been told that we “had to eat there before we left,” and since I appreciate local history and culture (if you could call it that), we parked uncomfortably on the street and walked a block or two to the corner of Arctic & Mississippi (nice dichotomy, eh?), where we saw a line stretching out into the street. Groaning, we took our place at the end, but then a few minutes later, another New Jersey miracle! The counter lady came outside and said that they had two seats at the counter; we jumped at the opportunity and were soon seated amidst the wall-to-wall crush.

As we waited to eat, we took in the “ambiance.” The old, never-remodeled walls were covered with photographs and signed portraits of all the celebrities who had eaten there, from Sinatra to Seinfeld to Donny & Marie. Near us, behind the counter, there was a framed montage of photos showing the Beatles holding a six-foot submarine sandwich; it was later explained to us that the Fab Four had played the Atlantic City Convention Center in 1964, and the owners had sent over the sub and a cameraman – smart guys.

While we were waiting for our food, we watched one guy use a $20 bribe to cut in front of everyone else; no one seemed to mind.

We were served a half sub and a can of soda each. Laurie said that her Philly Cheesesteak was very good; I thought my steak sub (with nothing but hots) was OK, but just that. After we had finished, I bought a souvenir tee-shirt for $10 and we headed home, saturated with local charm and culture.

WE MEET THE FAB FAUX

On Saturday night, we saw a performance by the Beatles tribute act “Yesterday.” They have their own little theatre inside the Tropicana called The Liverpool Club, which is decked out on the outside with huge photos of the Beatles (while the Beatles first British LP, “Please Please Me” plays in a continuous loop in the hall). Inside, it has a Cavern Club look and feel. The theatre is intimate, seating no more than a hundred, and Laurie and I got in early enough to grab center seats in the third row, about ten feet from the stage. It was a full house, so we felt lucky, and there was a nice mix of young and let’s say…older.

As I inspected the stage, I was impressed by the authenticity of the instruments and the equipment, right down to the tiny Vox amplifiers the Beatles had to contend with early in their career. One thing I don’t understand is why “Ringo’s” drum set was behind a plexiglas half-wall. Television monitors on the side walls played old videos of Gerry and the Pacemakers and The Dave Clark Five while we waited for the show to start. At the appointed time, an Ed Sullivan impersonator appeared on the monitor and announced the act.

The cast is Bobby Potter on drums (as Ringo Starr), Jim Lett on lead guitar (George Harrison), Don Bellezzo on rhythm guitar (John Lennon) and Paul Sacco on bass (Paul McCartney).

We had seen the players earlier that evening, as they gave an interview in The Quarter on “Trop Radio,” and the first thing we noticed was that, having been together since 1986, they were easily in their fifties, which was a bit disillusioning. (Fortunately, they have nice wigs and makeup to give the proper look; although Jim Lett’s hair appeared to be his own.) What struck me as I watched from ten feet away was that, had the Beatles all survived, and not been as mythically successful, so that they were forced to relive their act every night in let’s say, Las Vegas, and replaced Ringo with Seymore Skinner from the Simpsons, this is what it probably would have looked like. (Don’t discount Seymore Skinner: remember his experience as a member of the Grammy Award winning vocal group the Be Sharps.) I suddenly became very appreciative of the fact that the Beatles quit in 1969 while they were still on top, choosing to go their separate ways rather than risk sullying perfection.

They were all musically very good (watching Lett play made me even more appreciative of George Harrison). Vocally, Sacco (Paul) and Potter (Ringo) were pretty good, Lett (George) was OK and Bellezzo (John) was, well, not as good. Bellezzo makes the common John-error. (I’ve seen four different Beatles tribute acts: Beatlemania [twice], 1964, Rain, and now, Yesterday, so I know of what I speak.) John sang with a somewhat nasally voice, and many Lennon impersonators so focus in on this that they become shrill and off-key. Bellezzo was, at times, so nasally as to be difficult to listen to, with lyrics that were impossible to hear clearly. He just about completely wrecked “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” At other times, depending on the song, it was less noticeable. Potter surprised me by doing a very good Ringo imitation on “Matchbox,” although, honestly, Ringo’s lack of range makes him a less challenging task.

The three guitarists were excellent in imitating the mannerisms of the Beatles during the two sets of the show: the first set was circa 1964 and the second was Shea Stadium in 1965. Laurie and I both noticed that the band’s Wells Fargo badges were misplaced, but this is fairly trivial. As a last critique, Sacco (Paul) may have been pushing Paul’s onstage playfulness into caricature at times, but the audience seemed to like the interplay. During the show, the side monitors played videos of the actual Beatles, which I found distracting, and considering the age difference between the then-youthful Beatles and the now-old Yesterday, a persistent and sad reminder that these were definitely not the Beatles.

After the show, and two encore songs, the players appeared in the lobby to sign autographs and to help sell the few pieces of merchandise they had for sale. I bought a black tee-shirt for $20, which they cheerfully signed. Potter (Ringo) put a lot of work into his autograph, which, had there been a crush, would’ve actually become awkward.

Because I’m such a fan, and because I know so much about the Beatles, it’s hard to watch a tribute band without seeing the flaws. Still, it was a good show (especially considering that all seats were $25), and I enjoyed it.

As a bonus, while we were there, we lost no money to the machines. (As far as I know.)

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Follow @umbchelpdesk on Twitter!

March 1, 2010 — jamieumbc

Why endure an information blackout when you can be the first to know?

You can stay on top of breaking news involving UMBC’s information systems and technologies by following us on Twitter @umbchelpdesk.  From security alerts to system outages and restorations, @umbchelpdesk will keep you informed about what’s going on, as it happens!

Curious? Here we are!

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Protected: Facebook Test

February 24, 2010 — jamieumbc

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On Doug Fieger And The Knack

February 15, 2010 — jamieumbc

The front cover of their debut LP

It was announced today that Doug Fieger, the singer/songwriter behind The Knack, had lost his battle with cancer at age 57. For me, this is another one of those moments when I feel a little bit older; when I feel a little bit closer to a stage of my life that I’d rather not have to think about just yet.

Doug Fieger, like me, was a huge Beatles fan, and that came across in his music, which is probably a major part of why I found the Knack so appealing. He even crafted the band’s image to be a reflection of the Beatles, which ironically was part of The Knack’s undoing. A lot of musicians cite the Beatles as a huge influence on their work, but in the end, Fieger took it just a little too far. Because of this, even as the Knack dominated the charts in 1979, there was already a growing “Nuke the Knack” backlash movement, just waiting for them to fail.

The band’s records were even on 1960’s vintage Capitol labels.

I was five when the Beatles last recorded together, so I had pretty much missed them. As a result, I had been expectantly waiting for “the next Beatles” of my generation to appear (and still naive enough to believe that there would eventually be a “next Beatles”). When The Knack exploded onto the charts in the summer of 1979, I was taken in, not just by the image, but also by their Beatles-esque sound. Don’t be mistaken, The Knack, with Doug Fieger writing and singing their songs, were very good.

That summer, “My Sharona” topped the charts and went on to be the #1 single of the year. “Good Girls Don’t” and “That’s What the Little Girls Do” also climbed the singles chart, and “Get The Knack” shot to the top spot in the album charts. I though “the next Beatles” had actually arrived. I also liked that Fieger’s lyrics were naughty, which gave them a slightly rebellious feel, even in their black ties.

The Knack’s next album in 1980, “But the Little Girls Understand” was also good, but, I uneasily admitted to myself, not quite as good.

This album’s big single was “Mr. Handleman,” which like the LP, didn’t hit quite as big.

Here’s a couple more from their second LP:

Disappointed, I anxiously waited for their third album, which would sort of be the tie breaker on the “next Beatles” thing. In 1981, they released “Round Trip,” which was utterly forgettable, and for me, officially relegated them to the “what might have been” category. It also made me realize, maybe for the first time, just how difficult it is to be the Beatles, even for two albums.

With that, I moved on, and so did the music industry. The Knack was suddenly passé, a relic of that awkward time between disco and New Wave. The Knack wouldn’t release another album for ten years.

Years later, as a husband and father, I began purchasing CDs to replace my old records, and I made sure that “Get The Knack” was one on my early acquisitions. Listening to it again for the first time in years, I remembered how good that album was; nowadays, a couple of times a year it will occupy one of the six spots in my car CD changer. A few times I heard about Knack reunion tours that I planned on going to, but nothing ever seemed to come of it. In 2005, The Knack was scheduled to appear on the NBC reality show Hit Me, Baby, One More Time, which was supposed to be a chance for old bands to get a fresh chance on TV, but the show was so terrible it got canceled right after A Flock of Seagulls were on it.

A year later, Fieger was diagnosed with cancer, for all intents and purposes closing the books on The Knack. And now, with Fieger gone, the band is literally a part of the past.

As for me, I still have “Get the Knack,” which will console me, and date me somewhat, as I drive to UMBC in the morning. Man but that was a good album.

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The Origins of the Olympic Biathlon

February 14, 2010 — jamieumbc

IOC Member A: Geez, cross country skiing is so boring. What can we do to make it at least watchable?

IOC Member B: What if we made the skiers stop every now and then and shoot stuff?

IOC Member A: Shoot what?

IOC Member B: Who cares? Just shoot stuff.

IOC Member A: Yeah, I guess that would certainly help. Good; let’s go with that.

IOC Member B: And then, at the end, they have to fight a bear with a knife.

IOC Member A: The bear has a knife?

IOC Member B: No, genius. The skier has the knife.

IOC Member A: Nah. I think you’re just taking it too far now.

IOC Member B: Fine, we’ll drop the knife fight.

IOC Member A: Although I am intrigued by the idea of a bear with a knife. We should try to work that into something – like maybe figure skating.

IOC Member B: I’ll get right on it.

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Snowmaggedon 2010 or 40 Hours Without Power

February 9, 2010 — jamieumbc

Having a history degree, it’s always been a dream of mine to experience life in a time before modern conveniences. This weekend, I got to live the dream – sort of.

We all knew that a snowstorm of historic proportions was headed our way, and this one didn’t disappoint. On Friday, as the storm loomed, the only real worry I had was getting home before driving conditions became dangerous. Thankfully, UMBC closed at 1PM, and I and my family were safely ensconced in our home by mid-afternoon. All that was left to do was watch and wait to see how big this snow would really be.

We weren’t concerned about boredom, because there were plenty of things at home to occupy each of us. My wife, the office manager at a large podiatry practice, brought home loads of billing that could be done online; my children had their video games, social networking sites and television to see them through. Me? I was prepared to help monitor the UMBC Help Desk online, and I had brought home textbooks to read for my two graduate courses. And, of course, there would be shoveling to fill the hours.

When we went to bed Friday night, the heavy snow had begun in earnest and was beginning to accumulate. But we were prepared, so there were no worries. At 3:30AM, however, our weekend changed. That was when a tree at the top of our street toppled onto a power line, plunging our neighborhood into darkness. My family and I slept through the moment, not knowing what was ahead.

At around 6:30AM, my wife stirred long enough to see what time it was, but our electronic clock was dark. Soon, I knew it, too. The power was out.

Our neighborhood almost never loses power, and when it does, it’s usually not for long. But when I looked outside from our bedroom window on Saturday morning, I quickly realized that this time might be different. Calling BGE confirmed my suspicions – they had no ETA for our power outage.

The snow was already at least a foot deep, and it continued to snow hard. When we went downstairs to let the dogs out, there was a minor problem:

The snow was already piled up higher than our dogs; I would have to dig out a path for them before I did anything else. This I proceeded to do, while my wife started a fire in our living room fireplace (the temperature in the house had already dropped noticeably). Until Saturday morning, our fireplace existed to provide ambiance or perhaps a romantic evening when the kids were away; for the next 36 hours, it would be the key to our world.

It took me about an hour to finish the dog path, and then I came inside to get warm (in a relative sense). Here’s a picture of my backyard; if you look closely in the middle, you can just about make out the dog path, turning at the left side and crossing toward the bottom right:

Here are some other shots from Saturday:

As we gathered around the only heat source in the house, my wife grumbled about not having a cup of coffee. At that moment, I had a history-inspired moment of inspiration. Not to worry, I told her; we’ll boil water in the fireplace and then use the Folger’s Singles (this is basically coffee in a tea bag). In order to build the rig that would turn our fireplace into a ready-made hearth, I had to retrieve a number of discarded bricks and pieces of bricks from just outside our front door, now covered in over a foot of snow. This took about twenty minutes of stretching over a pile of firewood and digging through snow, but soon we were proudly cooking, just like living historians at Williamsburg.

As you’ll notice in this picture of the first attempt, the pot is uncovered. Tip – uncovered pots in a fireplace attract ashes. Future attempts featured covered pots. Still, it worked. I enjoyed a lunch of Campbell’s Chunky Soup (New England Clam Chowder, seasoned with Old Bay); my son and daughter also had soup, which seemed like the easiest thing to make in the limited space of the Harrison Hearth. My wife focused on lots of hot coffee.

Once we realized that we were going to be without power for a while, we knew that the food in our two refrigerators was in jeopardy of spoilage. Since it was “like an icebox out there,” the snow covered deck became our refrigerator:

As the snow began to wind down toward late afternoon, we decided to start the digging out process. I dug a path from the front door to the street, and my son Zack got to work on the sidewalk.

After that, we focused on clearing off my car and opening the driveway to the street.

We continued shoveling until it was too dark to see (no street lights) and then came into our cold, cold house, now illuminated with a couple of oil lamps. Our lives now revolved completely around the fireplace, and we only left its warmth to recover some needed item and then quickly return to its side. We started to worry about my wife’s 120-gallon saltwater fish tank, which was happily located in the living room, directly across from the fireplace. If the oxygen became depleted in the tank, or if the water temperature dropped too low, her beloved tropical fish, some a number of years old, would die as we watched helplessly. I decided to keep the fire hot and hope for the best.

Outside, our street had been repeatedly plowed, and was clean to the pavement. Beyond my neighborhood, we had only anecdotal reports about road conditions.

As the cold, dark evening wore on, boredom set in, and my preteen daughter, Sarah, began to crack. Before long, she was alternately complaining, arguing with her older brother or begging us to play board games; all we wanted to do was to sit by the fire. Around 9PM, my mother-in-law offered a oasis, however distant. She told us that if we could get her there, she could spend the night with her grandparents. We knew that it probably wasn’t safe to drive yet, but the other option, spending the night with our increasingly frantic twelve-year old, seemed more likely to result in lasting injury. I told Sarah to pack an overnight bag.

Driving slowly, in a circuitous route that took advantage of major roads, we made the two-mile trip to Mom Mom’s in about twenty minutes. On the way home, I stopped at the Giant at Cromwell Field Shopping Center, incredibly open for business, for supplies. There were only a few other cars in the freshly plowed lot.

There was one cashier on duty, and one front-end manager. In the aisles, I saw two other customers and plenty of junk food, which I greedily snapped up. As I made my way back home, I noticed a car on a trailer abandoned on the ramp to northbound Route 97. Keeping to main roads as long as possible, I made good progress and arrived without incident. The car’s digital thermometer read 21º.

Our living room had been converted into a bedroom. My wife had used couch cushions and blankets to make a bed for us on the floor in front of the fireplace; our son had opted for a large circular chair that was pulled up just beside. I noticed that it was only slightly warmer in the house than it had been outside, and that our three dogs and two cats had migrated to the living room. The room was dark, but we were cheerful, perhaps because we recognized the historic nature of what we were experiencing. We knew that we’d be sharing stories about this weekend for the rest of our lives, and the novelty of our circumstances provided us with mild amusement. On the other hand, looking uneasily across the room, I knew that time was running out for the tropical fish. (One of the student-staffers I work with at the Help Desk, Andrea Mocko, had once told me about her fish dying under similar circumstances. Every time I recalled her story, a feeling of dread came over me, so I tried not to think about it, but this was impossible.)

One of the things I bought at Giant was Jiffy Pop, which we made in the fire, and that was fun for about fifteen minutes. By ten o’clock, there was nothing to do but settle down in our beds for the night. This was when I realized that the fire, our sole source of heat, would soon die out if left untended. Not only would sleeping become a frosty nightmare, but the fish would certainly freeze to death. Someone had to keep the fire going, and I decided that it would be me. I spent the night dozing, feeling my face grow cold, waking up and then fixing the fire. This cycle was repeated in about 45 minute blocks throughout the night. Sometimes getting the fire going was easy, sometimes hard, but I never let it die. When morning finally came, I was relieved.

It’s hard to sleep late when you’re miserable, so everyone was up and about by 7AM, except the fish, which, while alive, stayed out of sight at the bottom of the tank amidst the rocks. I touched the glass of the tank and wondered how much longer they had left. It was around this time that I looked over at Samson, our collie-shepherd mix, and noticed that I could see his breath.

Once the hearth was reconstructed (it had to be taken apart for the overnight, as the rack restricted how many logs could be put into the fire), coffee was made for my wife, while I had a cup of tea. We called BGE for an update and were told that our power would be restored at 3:30PM. After that, I went outside to resume shoveling. Here’s what I saw:

Our neighbor's house

I started working on my wife’s car, which was in the driveway in front of mine. When that was done, my wife and dug out a space for another car on the curb in the street, so that when my oldest son, Ryan, returned later that night, there would be adequate parking. As we worked, the sun shone brightly and it actually felt a bit balmy (I guess after what we had tried to sleep through, 35º and sunny is a heat wave.) My wife and I shoveled in sweatshirts alone, and I found myself sweating; soon the spot was cleared and we were exhausted. Calling for another update, BGE was now estimating that we would have power at 7PM – not good for the suffering fish.

For dinner, we decided to see if there were any fast food places open. As it turned out, the nearby Wendy’s was, and that became dinner. By the time we were done eating, it was getting dark again, and the oil lamps were relit. Once again we huddled miserably around the fire; by now the charm of living in the nineteenth century had vanished. We just wanted our power back. (I also knew that there was a good chance that I would not only miss the Super Bowl, but more importantly, miss The Who. I sadly began preparing myself mentally for this eventuality.)

At around this time, my wife started to feel nauseous, and I spent about twenty minutes groping around the medicine cabinet by oil lamp, until I found some Tums. Freezing to death, it occurred to me, is probably not a healthy living choice.

Once the Super Bowl was underway, I followed the game on my Droid, via ESPN. The Colts jumped out to a 10-0 lead, and I was not surprised. I called BGE again, but they had no further updates for us; looking over at the black saltwater tank, I didn’t think the fish would last the night. I went back to my 3.7″ digital rendering of the Super Bowl. It was almost halftime, and the Saints were making a game of it.

And then, without warning or fanfare, the 21st century returned. The lights in a few rooms were suddenly on, and most importantly, the fish tank roared to life. I quickly scanned the now illuminated water for floaters, and relieved to find none, turned my attention to the next order of business: getting the Super Bowl on TV before I missed The Who.

So, in the end, we survived, albeit wearily. Monday was spent recovering physically, restoring order in the house (like finding our buried food on the deck) and catching up on missed chores, such as laundry. I also spent a good deal of time cleaning out the fireplace (our new center of the universe) and digging fresh firewood out of the snow, in preparation for tomorrow’s “snow event.”

All that’s left now is to go to the strip mall and find myself a “I Survived The Snowpocalypse” tee shirt to commemorate our weekend adventure. Awesome.

Posted in Current Events, Personal, Uncategorized. Tags: , , . Leave a Comment »

It’s Hockey Season (and you probably don’t care)!

February 5, 2010 — jamieumbc

My team - The Buffalo Sabres

As soon as my NFL teams, the Ravens & the Vikings, are eliminated from competition, my attention shifts to the next sport on my schedule: ice hockey. (My team is the Buffalo Sabres, but I’ll save that story for another day.)

Now, I know that there aren’t a ton of hockey fans out there in Maryland, and for perfectly understandable reasons. First off, it’s almost never cold enough in Maryland to safely skate outdoors, which means that if you learned to skate, it probably happened at an indoor arena. Skating at an indoor arena in this area is inconvenient (there just aren’t that many of them) and, if you get serious about skating, can be expensive. As a result, very few Marylanders are good skaters, and if you’ve never experienced the thrill of whooshing along at 20 miles per hour on a sheet of glass, you’ll probably find it hard to relate to hockey.

That having been said, there is a second, and I think larger, barrier to acceptance of ice hockey in America: television. Some sports really benefit from television; the NFL is the perfect example. Before the NFL became a packaged product of the broadcast networks, it was a niche sport in the United States (that’s why the 1958 Colts-Giants game was so huge – it created interest in the game from television networks). As color broadcasts of the NFL became the norm in the 1970s, the sport exploded in popularity, because frankly, football is much better on TV. It’s true. Slow motion replays, reverse camera angles and extreme close ups of the action make the game much more entertaining on your couch than in the stands. It’s like someone designed football in the late 1800s knowing that one day someone else would create a medium to exploit it. It’s no wonder that most of the revenue NFL teams depend on for survival comes from their TV contracts.

Hockey, on the other hand, exists at the opposite end of the spectrum. As a hockey fan who regularly sees televised games and has also been to many in person, I can testify: hockey live is 100% better than hockey on TV. The NHL has wracked their collective brains for decades to figure out a way to translate the electricity of the game to the small screen, but without any real success. When I was a child, they had apparently decided that education was the key, so I was treated to a series of cartoon interruptions by Peter Puck, who explained the rules of the game in a way that might appeal to fans of Scooby Doo.

In the 1990s, when Fox took up the NHL banner, it was decided that the problem was that people had a hard time following the puck. The answer? A strange, glowing puck that changed colors depending on its speed.

More recently, rules have been change to promote scoring, cameras have been placed closer to the ice to replicate the intimate feel of a hockey arena, and rink-level microphones have been added in an attempt to capture the intensity of the game, with varying degrees of success.

The truth is, if you want to be converted to ice hockey, go have to go to a rink and see a game. As soon as you walk in, and that rush of cold, dry air smacks you in the face, something changes. The small arenas let you get closer to the athletes than you may be used to, and the way the sounds of the game (pucks being slapped by sticks and then ricocheting off the glass, bodies driven into the boards) echo inside the building are completely unique to the live experience.

It’s been thought that Americans can’t accept games that finish at 2-1 or 1-0. Honestly, the tension of a low-scoring game, where everyone knows that the next goal will likely decide the outcome, is about as much drama as you could hope for. And when your team finally, suddenly, unexpectedly puts the puck into the net (because that’s the way goals are scored in hockey – unlike the inevitable, relentless feeling of a scoring drive in football), the explosive release of emotion by everyone in the arena is unsurpassed in sport. (At a Caps-Penguins game last year, my pre-teen daughter nearly had a heart attack every time the Capitals scored, such was the reaction of the crowd.)

Hockey is a game of speed and endurance (the physical toll taken on players is so great that that they need to be switched out every minute or so), played almost without interruption (take that baseball & football), and is mercifully short, with games rarely going over 2:30 hours.

Hockey also has one element that no other team sport has – fighting as an accepted part of the game. Once, twice or (if you’re lucky) maybe a few times per game, players will drop the gloves and spend a few minutes wailing away at each other’s faces. Please understand – these are not baseball or football fights. When the referees decide that the contest has been settled and they start pulling the fighters apart, well, (to quote a recent film) there will be blood. Fighting is considered a natural part of the game, in effect the self-policing of the more violent tendencies of the sport, by the participants. What I mean is, let’s say that one of your guys has just absorbed what you think is a cheap (and maybe dangerous) hit from an opponent. You’re angry, you want to settle the score, and you want the other team to know that this kind of dirty play won’t be tolerated. You could try to injure the other player as retaliation, or, you could just skate up to him, push him into the boards and rub his face into the glass. Of course, he’ll resist, and then the two of you will drop your gloves and try to break each other’s noses. When it’s all said and done, the anger is quenched, the message has been sent and no lasting damage is done. All in all, I’d say it’s a pretty good emotional venting system for a pretty violent sport.

But alas, once again, fights are so much better when observed live.

So my advice to the uninitiated: get thee to a hockey game. Don’t know where to go (without dropping several hundred dollars in D.C.)? No problem. UMBC has the best college hockey team in Maryland, and they play a lot of home games at Piney Orchard Ice Arena In Odenton. Students are free, but otherwise, you’ll pay a few dollars for great seats and a totally fun ride.

But try to get out there soon; it won’t be hockey season forever.

Posted in Hockey, Television, UMBC, Uncategorized. Tags: , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment »

Why the Pro Bowl Will Never Catch On

February 1, 2010 — jamieumbc

Like most Americans, I completely ignored the NFL’s Pro Bowl yesterday. This, despite the fact that I’m an NFL fan and a Ravens’ fan (four Ravens played in the game).

The NFL changed both the venue and the timing of this year’s Pro Bowl, hoping to somehow change the overwhelming odor of irrelevancy that hovers around the game. The truth is, no matter when or where the game is played, the game lacks any compelling drama, and the fault lies within the nature of football itself.

The reason that the baseball all-star game (more so when I was a kid than now, however) and the NBA all-star game are entertaining is that they work in harmony with their respective sports. Baseball and basketball are very much games played by individuals, where one-on-one match-ups often determine the outcomes, and always create topics for debate.

Baseball is little more than a series of individual contests, strung together so that everyone has a turn in the limelight. Batter vs. pitcher, runner vs. pitcher, runner vs. catcher, runner vs. fielder, etc. Almost half of a game’s put-outs are registered by an individual acting alone. It’s very much the type of sport that benefits from an all-star atmosphere, where the game’s titans battle each other one at a time, allowing the spectator to savor the glory of the triumphant and the agony of the vanquished. The faces of the combatants are uncovered, allowing us a look into the emotion of the sport, pitch by pitch.

Basketball benefits similarly, as the giants of the NBA sprint, leap and fly past each other, all the while laughing and taunting each other. The field of play is small, and the participants are in close proximity to each other. More important, however, are the individual competitions within the game that can be focused on by the announcers.

What these individual contests do is to give a weightless game a small bit of mass. You can almost hear the announcers: “Yes, the game doesn’t count in the standings, but it’s matter of pride between these players; no one wants to be shown up by another.” The personal nature of the individual match-ups creates tension where they should be none, and thus a meaningless game becomes watchable (once the egos get involved).

But football, unlike baseball and basketball, is a team sport. This Sunday, we’ll be looking at how Drew Brees and the Saints will perform against the Colts’ defense, not Gary Brackens. And while Drew Brees might be at the top of his game, if his left tackle, or center, or running back misses his assignment on a given play, that play’s chances of succeeding are greatly diminished.

The drama of eleven players, pushed and tested over a period of months together, with each depending on each other on every down, is almost impossible to replicate in an all-star game. As a result, the Pro Bowl, with its collection of week-old teammates, seems like a farcical, synthetic reproduction of what football really is – the ultimate team sport. And that’s why no one watches it.

The truth is that there’s nothing the NFL can do to fix the Pro Bowl because the character of the game condemns it to perpetual insignificance. Its existence is an anomaly in the NFL, an embarrassing failure in the midst of unparalleled successes – a professional sports version of Coca-Cola with Lime. We are only left to wonder for how many more years the league will persist in foisting this monstrosity on the public.

I put the over/under at 4.

Posted in Baltimore Ravens, Football. Tags: , , . Leave a Comment »

JamieUMBC Joins The MyUMBC Development Team!

January 26, 2010 — jamieumbc

The MyUMBC team is Collier Jones, Bradley Tinney, Billy Schneider, Kevin Somers, and now – me!

As many of you know, I’m fortunate enough to be a staffer at UMBC’s Department of Information Technology. And many of the folks at DoIT know that I like to write stuff, as evidenced by this blog. Now, in a wonderful synergy of two things that I love (technology and writing), I have been asked to assist the awesome team that works behind the scenes to make the magic that is MyUMBC.

Now, if you remember an earlier post of mine, you know that I’m not nearly smart enough to do what the MyUMBC team does on a daily basis. Fortunately, I’m not being asked to do any of the heavy lifting (read: coding). What I’ll be doing is writing about all of the nifty and useful things that are happening with MyUMBC, and helping the UMBC community to get the most out of the great tools they’ll find there. It sounds like I’ll be having a lot of fun, and I’m really looking forward to it.

Last week I had my first meeting with team leader and coder extraordinaire Collier Jones, and as he gave my a quick tour around the beta version of MyUMBC, I just couldn’t believe how great it looked. The Events area, for example, is designed with many clever tools and yet is is so easy to use, I find it hard to imagine how much work must have gone into making it happen. If you’d like to have a look yourself, here it is. Or, you can just admire this screenshot:

So now I get to both enjoy our new tech tools and write about them, too.

Sweet.

Posted in Education, Student Life, Technology, UMBC. Tags: , , , , , . 2 Comments »

There’s Still The Who

January 24, 2010 — jamieumbc

The Who circa 1975

For me, the NFL season ended yesterday, when my other team, the Minnesota Vikings, fumbled away the NFC Championship Game.

Adrian Peterson Puts Another One On The Ground

Not that they deserved to win. If a team has five turnovers in a championship game, they should be prohibited, by rule, from winning the game. It’s sort of life having a certain number of “lives” in a video game. When Brett Favre threw that last interception in the waning moments of regulation, the words “GAME OVER” should have immediately flashed on the screen.

It is probably just as well, because I’m not sure if I could have taken the sight of Payton Manning rolling up 40 plus points on the Vikings in the Super Bowl. If there’s one thing I learned this weekend, it’s that Indianapolis is much better than the other playoff teams. I know, “on any given Sunday…”, but let’s face it: the only way the Saints win this game is if the Colts have a meltdown, and considering the experience on that roster, that’s very unlikely. I would make Indy a 7-point favorite.

That means that Jim Caldwell will probably get a Super Bowl in his rookie coaching season, though I suspect he’ll not get all of the glory. It’s reminiscent of the Super Bowl George Seifert won with the 49ers in 1989; that team was considered to be Bill Walsh’s team that Seifert was just fortunate to have inherited. For Caldwell, this team is still considered to be Tony Dungy’s team, plus there’ll be a lot of “Who couldn’t win with Payton Manning?” talk, as if Manning had ten rings.

With Manning and Drew Brees on the field, I expect it’ll be an exciting game, but what I’ll be really looking forward to is the halftime show, featuring rock’s second-greatest band ever, The Who. (For the record, my top three goes like this: Beatles, Who, Rolling Stones.) The Who also authored what I believe to the best album of the rock era, Who’s Next (and remember, I’m a Beatles fan, first and foremost).

While I realize that it’s really only half of the Who now, with Keith Moon and John Entwistle being dead, but honestly, it was always Pete and Roger’s band, wasn’t it? The Who has always been a great concert band, and it crosses my mind that this may the last time I ever see them play a live show (albeit on television), so I’m really jazzed.

My son Ryan, who will be 21 in a month, is a Who fan too, and we’ve been discussing with what song they should open the show. I can’t imagine anything other than Baba O’Riley, but he wants it to be Pinball Wizard. So, I’ll put it to you, faithful readers. What song should open the Who’s set?

Posted in Football, Music. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 4 Comments »
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