Category: Personal

Bococa.com, the fine little website that provided restaurant menus and event listings and the like for our beloved neighborhood (that’s BOerum Hill, CObble Hill and CArroll Gardens, of course), is getting ambitious. They’ve changed their name to BrooklynNow.com and plan expand their coverage to the Columbia Street Waterfront District, Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO and Park Slope — just in time for summer, when I can indulge in my favorite New York pastime of exploring new neighborhoods and then eating in them.

In 1901, while the subways were still under construction, New York City converted its streetcars from horsepower to electricity, which allowed them to move much faster — especially in Brooklyn, where the traffic was less dense. So frenetically did these new electric cars hurtle through the streets that Brooklynites began to call themselves “trolley dodgers.” Around that time, a local baseball team that had been known as the Superbas, the Kings, and the Bridegrooms, became the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Words fail.

According to Slate’s reading of Bob Woodward’s latest political gossip-fest, Plan of Attack:

Karl Rove, a Norwegian-American, is obsessed with the “historical duplicity” of the Swedes, who seized Norway back in 1814. This nationalism manifests itself as hatred for Swedish weapons inspector Hans Blix.

So if you were wondering why our intelligence was such a mess, now you know: blame Sweden.

And come to think of it, wasn’t Hans Blix not only entirely right but entirely successful at ridding Iraq of WMDs via the inspections regime? Because they didn’t have any, actually, so I guess all that heavily disparaged Clintonian sanctions-and-swatting-flies stuff was in fact wholly effective. Boy, I’m glad we traded in those policies for our Glorious Liberation!

Today is April 20, popularly known as 420. If you’ve ever wondered why the number 420 is associated with marijuana, Phish.Net FAQ has answers. Unfortunately, they have too many answers, which is not much better than none at all, at least epistemologically. Nevertheless, what better way to celebrate 420 than with piles of ludicrous, contradictory hypotheses?

And yes, I have my own theory to add. The Phish site mentions Salman Rushdie’s reference to 420 as a number of chaos and trickery. In Hindu mythology, Shiva is the god of chaos (or destruction). He is also an inveterate dopehead who whiles away the millenia getting high atop Mount Kailash and engaging in cosmic nookie with his consort Parvati. So my crackpot (emphasis on the latter syllable) theory is that 420 became associated with the ascetic followers of Shiva, who wander India in loincloths and matted dreadlocks, smoking marijuana chillams, increasing the average holiness of the population, and making respectable folk just a tad nervous.

Whatever your theory, have a happy 420.

After a splendid week in California, I’m back again in New York, which switched from drizzly, crappy early spring to hot and sunny early summer in my absence. The ginko leaves are peeking out, as are the occasional bare legs beneath a short skirt. Ah, summer!

In this new season, I may have to scale back a bit for work-related reasons — i.e., I need to actually do some — but I’ll try to get out a couple of good posts each week. So keep checking in!