We went to see Jersey Boys last night. This is a truly fantastic show. I'm not much for musicals, unless they have a really compelling story, but this one had both great music (it's the Four Seasons' Greatest Hits), but also the story of the rise and fall of the band, told through the eyes of each of the four original members.

I haven't been to Broadway in a long time, but when did tickets get so expensive? Sweet Fancy Moses! These seats were $120 and it was something of an obstructed view.

Labels: Jersey Boys, musical theater

Look, I get it. Everyone is reachable everywhere they go these days. I've long since given up that fight. Everyone has tons of important business that they need to talk about all over the place: while they're driving, while they're crossing the street, whenever they have even a single free second, and sometimes even when they don't. Fine.

Why do you have to be on the fucking phone while you're standing in front of me on line? Worse, why do you have to be on the fucking phone while the cashier is trying to ask you questions? Hang up the phone for 30 seconds, finish your transaction, then get back on the phone. Everyone behind you doesn't have the time to wait while you half listen, ask questions on tape delay about things that have been entered into the register 10 seconds earlier, and then complain to the person on the phone about it.

Seriously. A little common courtesy is all I'm asking for. A modicum of respect for shared common space, like the bus or the crosswalk.

Dear god, there's so much to catch up on.

- I saw Hair at Shakespeare in the Park on Sunday night. I know what you're thinking: When did Shakespeare write an anti-establishment, anti-Vietnam musical? The answer: around 1967. I could spend some time here, railing all over the Baby Boomers (again) and discuss how those greedy, selfish fucks basically pissed away the last chance this country had at true change, because their parents stopped paying for their pot and they needed to get jobs to support themselves, so they just sold out to the highest bidder, got fat and became the people they swore they never would when they were in charge. But I won't do that.

Instead, I'll just tell you that the production is outstanding, even if it does come off a little dated. And if you're inclined, wake up early, get your ass on line, and get some tickets for this bad boy. You won't be sorry.

- They finally shut down Scrabulous. That'll make people buy the board game. Thanks for ruining Christmas, Milton Bradley.

- In a horrific turn of events, the external hard drive that contained 90% of my music was completely erased. Now I'm in the unenviable position of having to rebuild the entire collection from scratch. To be fair, I'm not entirely free of blame in this situation, I am looking forward to getting reacquainted with Frampton Comes Alive and Jerry Vale's Greatest Hits by re-stealing them.

- In case you forgot, I've got a book on the shelves. You should consider purchasing this book. I believe that you would enjoy it very much. If you don't like the book, I'll personally come to your home and tell you the story about the time I asked Sally Field if I would write her biography.

- I wanted to say something about the election: since I already know who I'm going to vote for, is it possible for me to vote now and then stop paying attention? I consider myself a news guy. I watch the cable news channels. I read the Times. I just can't take anymore of this. People actually said, out loud, that it's a bad thing that people outside of the U.S. (in addition to 54% of the U.S. electorate, as polled by Quinnipiac University) like Barack Obama. This is the attack? People abroad like him, so we shouldn't vote for him? Someone's going to have to clean my brains off of the wall, because my head just exploded.

** Update: It should be noted that I don't *actually* hate my parents. They're lovely people who raised me very nicely. I just have an unfocused hatred of their whole selfish generation.**

Labels: books, Hair, iTunes, music, politics, Scrabulous, Shakespeare, Underrated

Rather than regale the three people reading this with the story of my complete nightmare trying to get home (beginning Wednesday at 5:30pm and ending when I crossed the threshold of my apartment at 7:00pm on Thursday), I'm just going to say this: I walked into my apartment 24 hours after I was supposed to take off from Chicago. Also, I'm tired and my brain hurts.

In other news, the wife's birthday is today, so last night, we went to the River Cafe in Brooklyn. We had a great table with an incredible view of downtown Manhattan, and the food was great. Tonight, we'll be heading out to Keats on the east side for some karaoke. If there's one thing that I do better than brain surgery, it's sing karaoke.

Labels: brain surgery, Chicago, Happy Birthday

Who the hell's been keeping me away from Chicago for this long? Sweet Jewish god, this place is really friggin' great.

It's a cleaner, more compact version of New York with nicer people. Even though I'm on the record saying that New Yorkers don't get enough credit for being nice, if not a little gruff, the people here are so friendly. And not in an uncomfortable or sexual way either. Just regular nice.

Last night, I had a great meal at a local steakhouse. Tonight, I'm off to US Cellular Field (which I understand is surround mostly by crack houses) to watch the White Sox of Chicago take on the Rangers of Texas. The Cubs of Chicago are out of town or I would have headed up to Wrigley Field (which I understand is surrounded by yuppies).

Hey, why not buy my book? It would make a great gift for your graduate or perhaps your best friend who really likes pop culture or maybe even that girl from the mini-mart that you clumsily flirt with when you purchase cat food. All of those people would enjoy it.

Labels: baseball, books, Chicago, Underrated, White Sox

But don't look at the date it was written until you're finished. It's pretty eerie.

Labels: New York Yankees, public funding, Sports Illustrated

I know I could look this up pretty easily, but I think I'm more comfortable not actually knowing.

I just saw her a clip of her talking nonsense on VH1 about how she should have done a guest appearance on WKRP in Cincinnati, in which she takes over the station, and she looks exactly the same as she did 25 years ago when I saw her on The Love Boat.

According to Wikipedia, she drinks the tears of Venezuelan children to stay that young.*

*This isn't actually true, but it should be.

Labels: Charo, WKRP in Cincinnati

What did you do today?

Labels: bowling, Wii

I don't know what this means, but Woody Guthrie was born on Bastille Day. Not on the actual day, of course. That would make him very old, if he were even still alive at all.

Woody Guthrie played a guitar with a sticker that said, "This machine kills fascists." That's so deliciously 1960s optimistic that it tickles me somewhere unmentionable.

As for Bastille Day, it's basically the last time the French fought with any kind of success, so they deserve to have a day to recognize it. I kid the French. Why? Because I love. The sense that I get is that it functions as their Independence Day, and good for them. If there's anything that the French need, it's more days off.

Happy Bastille Day! And also, Happy Birthday, Woody Guthrie!

Labels: Bastille Day, France, Happy Birthday, Woody Guthrie

We've got a couple more events surrounding the book, so if you were unable to join us for the launch party on Tuesday, definitely head down to one of these events. Also, if you were able to join us and feel like seeing us again, please come on by as well. And to sweeten the deal, I'll open mouth kiss anyone that buys ten books.

August 11
Borders
Time Warner Center
10 Columbus Circle
New York, NY 10019

September 25
Barnes and Noble
The Palisades Center
4416 Palisades Center Drive
West Nyack, NY 10994

These events have both been posted in "Where's Wolinetz" in the right rail as well.

Labels: books, events, Underrated

I was informed today that, for whatever reason, my blog's individual posts don't include my stylesheet, which means that there's no formatting there. Somehow, in the year and a half that I've sporadically been writing this horrible excuse for a Weblog, I didn't notice that. Now, I'm in the horrible position of having to figure out how to fix this. This may prove difficult, as I'm not very bright. Not very bright at all.

All of this suggests that it may be time for me to move off of Blogger and onto Wordpress. Does anyone have a blow by blow of how to do this? Keep in mind that, as stated earlier, I'm not very bright.

There's a free book in it for you.

To all the people that showed last night to support our book and party with us, thank you so much.

For those of you that did not, make up for it by buying our book.

Labels: books, Underrated

We've set up a blog for the Underrated website. We'll be blogging on the fly, on a reasonably daily basis, about stuff that doesn't appear in the book.

Check the blog here.

Labels: Underrated, YPR

I can't believe that it's been ten years since I spent my last summer as a counselor at Nah-Jee-Wah. For those of you who think I might have a speech impediment (or typing impediment, I guess), Nah-Jee-Wah is a New Jersey "Y" camp located in Milford, PA. The camp is for children aged 6-11 (or so). I had always assumed that this was some sort of Indian name, but clearly I'm some sort of paleskin racist jerk. The name actually comes from what the people who named it thought a young child would sounds like when he/she said "New Jersey Y." I wish I were kidding.

Incidentally (but not coincidentally), it's been ten years since I graduated college as well, which frankly is far more surreal than the camp thing. Camp never felt like one of those things that I'd do forever. I knew eventually that I'd have to get a real job that didn't give me summers off, and my time there would end.* But being in school seemed like something interminable. I remember driving out of the parking lot on the last day of high school and blasting Alice Cooper's "School's Out," but that fact is that it wasn't out forever. Not even close. At that time, I wanted to be an attorney (I know, I'm very creative with my "what I want to be when I grow up" choices), which meant that I would have potentially had seven more years ahead of me when I drove away from that horrible building with the pastel paneling out front.

*This is not entirely true. There was a long period of time that I thought I was going to be a school teacher. I even had a reasonably permanent substitute teaching gig during the first year that I was out of school. In hindsight, I've got no idea why I wanted to be a teacher or even how I thought I'd be able to handle it since I have zero patience for stupidity and tend to resort to sarcasm when I'm frustrated, which I understand is not so good when you're teaching children.

True story: Subs get called to come into school at about 5:45am, which is not only insanely early, but also insanely early. One time they called me and said they needed me for a 4th grade class and I said, "They're almost 10 years old. They can handle it themselves," and I hung up.

Then, I graduated. And I had no idea what the fuck I was going to do. So I made a last minute call to the camp people, and oddly, they had an opening because one of the division heads had shredded his knee and needed surgery. They dropped me into his spot, and again oddly, it wound up being one of the best summers that I'd had there.

It is now ten years later. I've spent about 95% of that time in the same job that, as predicted, doesn't give me summers off. I've barely been back there since, but I do maintain a fantasy from time to time that has me quitting my job and spending one last summer up there, just for the hell of it. But that's unfeasible for some many reasons, not the least of which is that I'm married and about, well, 10-12 years older than all of the other counselors. I don't think it would be much fun to be the old person at camp that everyone loves during the day and then laughs at when they hit the bars at night.

It's not the youth that I'm looking to capture (or recapture), though it would be nice to be forty pounds lighter and ten years younger. It's more the feeling those years engendered. Let's not be mistaken: I love my life. It's turned out about as good as I could have ever hoped, considering that I didn't do anything that I thought I would. I have a beautiful wife who loves me (I think) and a dog sleeping in my lap as I type this. But man, didn't it feel incredible to be that young and that relaxed all the time? Sometime between age 17 (when I was diagnosed with severe stress-related acid reflux and the beginnings of an ulcer) and 22 (when I started working), it all just didn't matter. All I did was live.

There was one time that I remember when was an O.D. at camp, meaning that I had to stay on camp and make sure there were no issues with the campers while all the other counselors in my division went out on the "town."*

*I put town in quotations because I don't even think Milford qualifies as a town. It is literally a one stoplight town. It had a laundry, two pizza places, two bars, a Turkey Hill gas station, a liquor barn and about two or three restaurants. And that is it. The rest of it is wide open space. Oh, and a rock quarry.

I sat at the picnic table in the middle of the lawn in front of the bunks, and just stared at the sky. After about 20 minutes, one of the kids either woke up and said, "O.D.," and I went over to see what was wrong. The kid couldn't sleep, so I brought him out to the table with me for a bit, figuring it would get a little later, the kid would get tired and I'd bring him back to the bunk and put him down. We're sitting at the table, and I tell him to just look up at the sky like I am and not to talk too loud. After a few minutes, he says to me, "Is this all there is to do?" And it was true. That was all there was to do.

Suck on that, adulthood.

Labels: adulthood, camp, school, stuff

Friends, it's been a busy few weeks around the parts. Let's run it all down, and then we'll resume our regularly scheduled programming.

Since the last posting on this site, my work life has been consumed with the ad server migration of NASCAR.com. That's right: during the daytime hours, your humble working boy spends his time making sure the paid advertisers of a major media company are functioning properly and getting their just due.

From there, it was to majestic Rockland County, where I went to my brother's high school graduation. In classic Wolinetz fashion, he made it out of there in just 12 short years, not the 13 or 14 minimum that I assumed it would take him. He's off to Boston in the Fall.

How about those New York Rangers? It's going to be a completely different team next year. Good-bye to Sean Avery and Jaromir Jagr. Hello, Nikolai Zheredev, Wade Redden, Markus Naslund and Dmitri Kalinin. I think the jury's out on how these moves will work out, but the did get younger and faster, and that's the way the NHL is going.

That brings us to today, the Fourth of July. The wife and I did a little shopping, took the dog out for a walk. She's on her way to Jersey to hang with her granddad, and tonight I'm going to see The Wackness, a Sundance selection that I talked about in this post here.

Finally, the Underrated launch party is Tuesday. Come on down, and bring the kiddies, why dontcha?

Labels: Fourth of July, NASCAR.com, New York Rangers, Underrated