bigtiny sez....

I live in New England where toll roads are quite common. I hate toll roads. I hate the very concept of a toll road. Why? Because toll roads are a cheap hustle foisted on people by local, state and national gov'ts, who ought to be more interested in serving the general public, not hustling them. Most toll roads start out with the idea that there's a location that would be really well served by a new road, or bridge, or other piece of infrastructure.  Trouble is, there's no money in the budget for it and no politician wants to propose a tax hike. So, a proposal is made for a toll road. A road will be built at location X, stretching to location Y. It will be of n number of lanes, blah blah blah. It is quite common, at this stage of development (proposal) for a statement along the lines of "the total costs for the road should be covered by collected tolls over a 20 year period". When's the last time you saw a toll road lose its toll? There are roads like the...

As I watch various food shows and read food blogs, and see reviews of local restaurants, I continually run across some bozo who is selling a 'cuban sandwich'. Except, they're NOT selling a cuban sandwich. There seems to be a lot of confusion about the cuban sandwich. The classic cuban sandwich was born in Tampa Florida during the 1880s and was consumed mostly by the cigar factory workers in the Ybor City section of town. It is a very specific thing which I will describe below. Before I do though, let me explain why I feel it necessary to do this. All my life I've been seeing cooks, institutions, writers and various other folk mislabeling all kinds of different concoctions as the cuban sandwich. I mean, even going to school in the Tampa Bay area, they would serve us bologna sandwiches on longbread for lunch and call it a cuban sandwich. When one cares about food, and when one experiences this kind of thing long enough, one feels the need to set the record straight. S...

The ships arrived at dawn and by 8:00 AM it was clear that wherever the aliens were from, they were far, far ahead of us technologically. They demanded not a world or national leader or statesman, not a poet laureate, but a common person to whom they would explain their demands. I had spent the night passed out at the laundromat after a party at Sullivan's. It was there that the UN Security Force found me and hustled me onto the alien shuttle. There were hordes of politicos, strategists, academics, etc. all babbling incessantly about what I should say and try to learn. I was just thinking of a cold Heineken and some sardines and crackers.  On the ship I was led to a smallish room with a huge dais sized couch thing and a smaller, humanform chair. I took the chair. Shortly our alien invader appeared. It was big. REALLY big, like elephant big. It's body would be best described as fish like. Its head was a sunken cavity in the large end of the fish body that had two e...

It was such a cliche, I meet a mysterious woman in a seedy bar, she accepts my offer of a drink and my small advances, until many drinks and several hours later we stand together in the mouth of the small, dirty alley sharing a warm embrace. I can smell her perfume and the bourbon on her breath as I lean in for another passionate kiss. We've been here for at least half an hour, and one of us should suggest retiring together to somebody's apartment or hotel room. I hesitate to speak. My mouth is occupied. But that's not it. Her name has slipped away in the cloud of bourbon that's surrounding the inner folds of my brain. Was it Nancy or Heloise? No, something more modern like Britney or Madison? That's not it either. We end our kiss and I lean into her body, my face nuzzling the side of her neck as I drunkenly struggle for words. What was her damned name? She hugs me tightly and it heightens my frustration as I again try to remember her name. Suddenly, it comes to me....

I was in 10th grade and things were rocky at home. My father and I had never gotten along well. How does one get along with an abusive megalomaniac? Dad was a foreman with a company that installed underground utilities for other companies, the majority of the work being digging trenches, burying conduit, and pulling cable through it for the phone company. He was a proud blue collar worker. After 8 years with the company and a reputation as one of the toughest, most productive foreman, he was head of a large crew and taking down a cool $5.60 an hour. We didn't get on well, and as I grew older and matured, our relationship deteriorated. He was particularly unhappy about my aspirations as a musician and took every opportunity to let me know about it. I could never understand what his problem was until I grew old enough to realize that music was one thing (maybe THE one thing) that I could do reasonably well, but that he had absolutely no ability to do. He couldn't carry a t...

I've mentioned it in this blog before, but it's an amazing technological time we live in. Everyday, people from all economic strata use and benefit from amazing technologies. It's also a great time for design and the meeting of design and techology. iPhones, iPods, computers, medical devices, cars, you name it, these devices are ubiquitous and influence peoples lives in ways that I think we as a society, don't fully understand. There's one industry though, that I've noticed for the amazing leaps in design and function in the past several years. No, it's not sports cars, it's not the Segway, it's not Apple. It's the baby products industry. I live in a neighborhood that contains, well let's face it, a lot of yuppies. These couples are having kids left and right these days, and because I live in an urban environment, it's possible to observe them out walking or running errands, all with their kids in tow. The first thing that caught my e...

Most of us, as we travel through life, acquire a nemesis or two. Holmes had Moriarty, Superman had Lex Luthor, Tom had Jerry. I've had my share of them, schoolyard bullies, underpaid bosses with Napoleonic complexes. But one of the worst I ever had was my sixth grade teacher -- Miss Murray. Miss Murray and I were chemically predisposed to hate each other. You know the feeling, you walk into a room and meet somebody you've never seen before in your life and the hair stands up on the back of your head and you just don't like the motherfucker! That was me with Miss Murray. It was a crappy school year and we fought, oh we fought, tooth and nail throughout the year. I was upbraided for talking in class, my grades were all above "C"s (which was demanded by my crazy father, but that's another story) and since the numbers couldn't be made to lie, report cards always noted problems with my 'attitude' and 'comportment'. I hated that bitch! T...