Turtle Turtle Turtle

In the summer of 1994, as American televisions were tuned into O.J.'s harrowing slow-speed police chase, a slow-speed chase of another kind was talking place right in my backyard.

A few months earlier, a giant snapping turtle dug herself into my grandparents' garden and layed her eggs. The day they hatched, eight baby turtles started off on a long and perilous trek, presumably to the river to which their mother had returned after burrying the eggs in the dirt. Actually, it's not such a long and perilous trek. In fact, if they'd just gone in the opposite direction, the river was about ten feet away. But I guess instincts hadn't quite kicked in yet. So instead they traveled down the driveway, onto the path in the woods. Once they were in the woods, they once again could have made it to the river by taking a left, but instead followed the path into my backyard, where my dad found them.

He called me and my brothers outside to show us. They were tiny. Even with their tails they were still not much bigger than a fifty cent piece. We found a long windowbox to keep them in and put it on the front porch. We put some food and water in there, added something they could crawl in; everything we thought we would want if we were turtles.

That night, I heard what sounded like a cat screaching and whaling. I'll never forget that sound. My parents were downstairs watching Love Potion #9. My mom said the noise was the cat in the movie. Still, it sounded like it came from outside, and even though our doors were hollow and not very thick, I didn't hear any other part of the movie. The next morning one of the turtles was gone.

And then there were seven.

It would have been easy to just name them after the seven dwarves, but we had named them when there was still eight, although I couldn't tell you which one mysteriously vanished. They all looked the same, but they each had a characteristic that separated them from the rest. We did name one Sleepy, but not after the dwarf, but because it was always asleep. We kept thinking it was dead, only to have it wake up momentarly to prove it's still breathing before nodding off again. One of them had a larger lump on it's shell than the others, and was given the approriate name of Lumpy. The fastest was Speedy. I think there was one called Daredevil, because it was always trying to climb the walls and escape. And one was Gamera, friend of children, just because.

After a few days, we decided to let them go, except for two. So we brought them down to the river and realeased them. The other two were put in a small container while my dad took us out to the store to buy a bigger tank for them.

When we came back, one of them was gone. The one remaining was Speedy. It's more than likely that this wasn't the original Speedy, since he didn't try to make a run for it like his brother while we were gone. But Speedy seemed like a good name for a turtle, so that's what he was called from that day forward.

It may sound strange, but I was able to teach Speedy some tricks. I set up a circle of the clamshell Disney video cases around him and he could remember which ones were empty and therefore light enough to knock down. If he fell on his back, he'd use his long neck to flip himself over. He was a smart little guy. One day I put my finger on his eyebrow and he shut his eye. Then I put my finger on his other eyebrow and he shut that one. I went back and forth making him close different eyelids until he got pissed off and tried to bite me. He was in my lap at the time, and when he snapped, I jumped up and he flew in the air. No more messing with the eyebrows. Point taken.

I took him out to walk around every once in a while until he started snapping more. Then I just left him in his tank to do his own thing. He never came close to biting me, but it doesn't hurt err on the side of caution. The little bowl I gave him to swim around in eventually got too small for it's purpose and became a drinking bowl. He got a lot bigger than he was when he first found him wandering around in the backyard, but since he was confined to a 10 gallon tank, he didn't grow to be as big as he would have if he'd been in the wild.

I kept Speedy in my room for ten years. My mom always told me to let him go, but I said that he didn't have a chance out there and the other turtles that we let go were probably eaten long ago or didn't survive the harsh winters. Two summers ago when I moved to Quincy, I finially realised it was time for him to return to where he came from, so I brought his tank out to the bottom of the waterfall (because letting him go at the top would just be cruel) and let him walk out. He sat on a muddy patch and looked around at his new home. He stayed there until I left, but when I came back to check later on, he wasn't there.

Last summer my grandmother found a snapping turtle crawling up the steps to her pool. Sure enough, it was Speedy! His stunted growth due to years in captivity gave him away.





We gave him some bread and he started following me around, like a dog. A really slow dog. I walked over to the same path he'd traveled eleven years before and he followed. I lead him right back to the river where I'd let him go the year before, and stayed to make sure he went back into the water. It was a weird day, but it was good to know the little guy was still around, and seemingly even remembers me. That's pretty cool.





So here it is another year later, and what should I see down at the waterfall but my old friend, a completely different turtle! Even freed of the constraints of his tiny tank, Speedy couldn't have gotten this big in a year, unless Barry Bonds dumped his steroid stash in the Mill River. And anyway the shell is a different shape. But who's to say this isn't one of the babies I released in back in '94? It's still not anywhere near big enough to be the mother, but it could be one of Speedy's teenage non-mutant siblings.







It wasn't until after I took the pictures that I noticed something strange. Seems our little turtle friend has a few unwelcome visitors. And by that I mean disgusting freaking LEECHES!!!




Look at those things! Sapping and impurifying all of its precious bodily fluids. Holy crap that's gross. If I didn't value all my fingers, I would have tried to take those suckers off. As it is, I'm content just feeling bad about it. Poor turtle.

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It's Friday!

Wow, this is some Friday, huh? Yup. Some Friday. I can't wait for the weekend that hasn't happened yet. I hope I see a snapping turtle and a Pink Floyd laser show. That'd be neat.

When I left work yesterday, (you know, Thursday) I saw a CBS Channel 4 News truck drive by, followed by a couple of police cars. Some people standing on the sidewalk turned their heads, and I even saw a couple of guys running to see what was going on. Obviously I had no choice but to check it out and see what was going on.

I turned the corner onto Boylston Street and heard music and a muffled voice over a loudspeaker. It sounded like it was coming from the other end of the garden. As I approached the other end of the block, I saw a cheering crowd lined up along both sides of Charles Street and the muffled voice became more clear. The voice was announcing a name and a time, followed by another name and time. Then I remembered those guys that were running. I think they had numbers on their shirts. It was a race. The JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge, and those two guys must have had a pretty good lead on the rest of the pack, because I didn't notice any other runners until I tried to cross the street. That's when they all came pouring in.

I kept looking for breaks in-between runners so I could cross the street. I couldn't just cut in front of somebody and screw up their finishing time. So I waited for my chance. There were a couple of times where I probably could have gone, but I took too long to figure out if I had enough time to run across the street. I called my mom to tell her I was going to be late because I couldn't cross the street. I wasn't about to wait for 12,000 people to cross the finish line, so I walked up the street to find where the race ended so I could cross the street.

I'd never been at a finish line of a race before. And now that I have, I can safely say that it's not one of my top five favorite smells.

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This Guy Needs An Agent

Okay, first of all, this was originally meant to be the June 7th entry, but Blogger went on strike or lapsed into a coma and otherwise refused to cooperate, so it was left in the queue until Blogger decided to play nice. Then I forgot about it.

But here we are, so let's get to it: Paris Hilton is completely useless and needs to go away.

She's famous for being famous. She was born into money, and used her wealth to make sure she was seen at all the right places, making her more famous, and even more rich. The fact that she has no talent and looks like a foot doesn't seem to matter.

Meanwhile, there's poor old Spare Change Guy. You've got to have a gimmick if you want to make it in the crowded market of eccentric street people, like the Asian lady that barks or the Even Better Guy. Yet Spare Change Guy stands head and shoulders above the rest of the pack, and he does it by simply asking if anybody has any spare change.



Panhandlers the world over have been asking the same thing for as long as there's been minted coins, but it's Spare Change Guy's delivery that makes him special. He meanders downtown, disheveled and disoriented, with arms extended, asking each individual he encounters if they have any spare change. And that's all he needs to do. Sure, some may know him as Spare Change Man, or Spare Change Dude, or as one MySpace page put it, "that guy who screams does anybody have any spare change," but everyone in Boston knows Spare Change Guy (not to be confused with Spare Change Newspaper Guy, the guy that sells the Spare Change newspaper.) He's practically a local institution.

Just how well-known is he? A quick internet search brought up a man-on-the-street interview with him in the Weekly Dig, a hip and edgy free newspaper for people too hip and edgy to buy actual newspapers. For people who refuse to click on links, the interview went as follows:

The "Do-You-Have-Any-Spare-Change" Guy
Spotted scratching lottery tickets in Downtown Crossing

Do you have any spare change? Sir?

Hey, can I ask you a couple questions for the Dig?
Sure, that's a good paper.

Do you read it? What do you like about it?
I like the cartoons and some of the articles.

Some? Are there some you don't like?
You have to be interested in it to read it.

That's a nice beard you're sporting. Do you think they're coming back?
I don't know.

Why do kids listen to that rap music?
That's the music that's going down on the streets right now. I listen to some of it.

Really? Who?
I don't know their names. Do you have any spare change?

John M. has frequently seen Spare Change Guy ambling around in the background on Fox 25 News in the mornings. They even mentioned him a couple of times. And the new freelancer even directed us to a fan-made Ween video featuring the guy. The song's pretty creepy, sort of like Bobby McFerrin meets Sesame Street, but sure enough, there's Spare Change Guy walking around the opening scene, repeating his trademark phrase.

Basically, he's reached a near-Paris-Hilton level of ubiquity, but what does the poor guy have to show for it? A mangy beard and some scratch tickets, that's what. There's something wrong with the world when someone who had enough money for a lifetime to begin with is given even more money by the idiot masses who buy all the crap with her name on it because a magazine told them to. People know who Paris Hilton is, so they give her money. People know who Spare Change Guy is, so they walk on the opposite side of the street when they see him. What do you think he got, if anything, for the interview or that video? A couple of bucks? What do you think Paris Hilton commands for an interview? Given that they have arguably the same level of talent, it hardly seems fair. Spare Change Guy needs better management.

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Better Than Batman & Robin!

Well, here it is. Today is 6-6-6. If my bible knowledge is correct, this is the day that Gozer the Destructor takes corporeal form and reigns fire and death upon mankind. In what little time we have left, I guess it would only be fitting to talk about a certain movie that came out recently; a movie that is as good a sign as any that the end of days are near. An omen. I'm referring, of course, to X-Men III: The Last Stand.


Number of the Beast

Alright, it wasn't that bad, but it wasn't that good, either, and that's the problem. I'm not sure how it's possible, but you could actually hear the collective moan of the internet when it was announced that Brett Ratner would be helming this installment. I enjoyed the Rush Hour movies, so I thought all the negativity was a bit premature, and I reserved my judgment until after I'd seen the movie.

And now that I have seen it, my first reaction was "Man, Brett Ratner must really hate Cyclops." The poor guy's on-screen for less then two minutes, all of which he spends crying, before getting sucked into oblivion as the flim's first casualty. Maybe that last sentence should have been preceded by a spoiler warning. Okay, if you don't want to spoil the movie, hit yourself on the head repeatedly until you forget what you just read. That should do it.

Anyway, the movie starts with a brief flashback to twenty years ago, to Jean Grey's first meeting with the Professor and Magneto (who were all chummy back in the 80s). then the movie flashes to present day, or rather, the "near future," making it unclear if the flashback we just saw was twenty years ago in real time (1986), or twenty years before whenever the near future is. The near future could be next week, or several years from now. It's all pretty vague. Well, some time in the near future, Cyclops, aka Scott Summers, is riding his motorcycle, the pinnacle of masculinity, out to the lake (where Jean died in the last movie), while very un-masculinely sobbing uncontrollably. As he's weeping and yelling, Jean appears. They embrace, and she says she can fix his heat vision so it can be controlled. Then she kills him. No more Cyclops. Seriously. He doesn't even get a funeral, or even a headstone, until the very end where it's almost thrown in with the rest of the movie's casualties as an afterthought. Oh, hey, Scott's dead, too. I guess we should give the whiny bastard a headstone. The fact that they never mentioned him again made me think that he'd be alive and return at the end of the movie, but nope. He's really dead.

I've never read the comics; all I knew of the X-Men outside of the previous two movies was the cartoon that used to be on Fox. And I'm pretty sure Cyclops was the leader of the X-Men on that show. Maybe in the comic mythology Jean, who's now "Dark Phoenix," kills Scott. But it seems like even if that were the case, the movie could have handled it a bit better. No one even mentions him for the rest of the movie, except for Wolverine, who casually mentions that Scott's dead. Way to respect the team leader, guys.

If Ratner hated Cyclops, then he had a mild distaste for Mystique, who avoids getting whacked, but loses her mutant abilities and reverts to simply being a hot naked chick nearly as early into the movie as Cyclops' demise. She was injected with "the cure," the new chemical extracted from a young mutant boy that can turn mutants into regular humans. The cure serves as the plot for the movie, as factions of mutants split about what to think of this "cure". While most of the characters are opposed to the cure, especially Magneto and his followers, a few, such as Rogue, who can't touch anyone without killing them, are lining up for it.

Meanwhile Jean, who has emerged as one of the most powerful mutants on Earth, teams up with Magneto to wage war on the humans who wish to destroy their abilities. Just in case we didn't catch on that she was Dark Phoenix, there's a particularly morbid scene where she vaporizes Xavier. Naturally, he gets a funeral scene, with somber music and everything.

Between the demutation guns and the awesome destructive force of Dark Phoenix, half the mutants in the movie are either turned into average Joe's or zapped into dust by the third act. And with the professor, Cyclops and Jean gone, it's time for some of the young blood of the X-Men team to step up to the plate, right? Well, that would have been nice, but instead we get a promising fight showcasing Colossus (who had a bit part in X-Men II) and perennial background character Kitty Pryde battling Sentinels that turns out to be a Danger Room simulation. Any hopes that they'd play a role of any significance in this movie are slowly drowned as the story progresses, and it's clear that the we should be happy we even got the Danger Room scene. With the previous movies' love-triangle angle literally vaporized, Kitty does serve as a potential new love interest for Iceman, who's getting frustrated that he can't so much as touch Rogue. They don't see much time on the battlefront, though, and Rogue doesn't join them at all this time around.

So that leaves the new characters. Beast, who I don't actually recall ever being referred to as such in the movie, and Angel. Both members of the original group of X-Men when the comic launched, but in the movie, Beast has long since left the tights behind in favor of a business suit, and Angel, who also is not called by his comic book name, doesn't even show up until the movie's nearly over. And even then he does little more than save and thereby reconcile with his father, the man behind the mutant cure. Beast on the other hand, had a lot more screen time (about as much as Nightcrawler had in the last movie), and even though the thought of Kelsey Grammar covered in blue fur seemed ridiculous at the outset, he looked pretty good and I thought was actually one of the few things Ratner did right.

To review, Xavier and Cyclops are dead, Jean's joined the dark side, the young padawans are busy with there teen drama, Beast is on a human-mutant relations committee and Angel is still two acts away. All this boils down to the Wolverine and Storm show. They're the only ones left that can run the school, and they initially decide to just shut it down until wing-boy pops in and asks if he can go there. Everyone knows that Halle Berry requested that she have a bigger role in this one and it looks like she got her way. It's not that I don't think she did a good job, it's just that we went from having not enough storm to almost exclusively Storm. And as for Wolverine, yeah, I he's the most popular character and all, but the first two movies were already saturated with the guy and this movie was practically all-Wolverine all the time. And I heard he's supposed to be getting his own spin-off movie. What would be the difference? How much more Wolverine could we possibly handle?

Now let's talk about the villains. Magneto lost his right-hand woman early on, but he's got Pyro now, and some new muscle in the form of Juggernaut. His comics counterpart is impossibly hulked-out, with what looks like a giant upside down salad bowl on his head. The movie version, played by Vinnie Jones (Bullet-Tooth Tony from Snatch) is bulky, but not as big as the comics version, and his helmet doesn't go all the way to his shoulders; it's more like a bucket. He looks more like Ram-Man from He-Man.



From what I understand, when Bryan Singer left the franchise to direct Superman Returns, he took his writers with him, and Brett Ratner brought in his own guys. That's probably why Juggernaut inexplicably says "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!" I'm hoping there will be a deleted scene on the DVD where he confronts Storm. "Darkness! Darkness, everyone! Darkness is spreading!" (Note: it's more likely a reference to the "Juggernaut Bitch" viral video, but it still seemed totally out of place in the movie.

There's a bunch of other pierced and tattooed baddies among Magneto's ranks, whose names take up a good chunk in the credits but are never actually said on-screen. It doesn't really matter though, because by the end they're all either dead or minus their super powers. The final battle features the mutant biker gang against the dwindling forces of the X-Men, who are rejoined by Beast, who breaks out his old jumpsuit for battle time. There's a confrontation of old nemesises (nemisi?) Iceman and Pyro, and the climactic showdown between Dark Phoenix, and the one mutant who can stop her; that little kid who can recess mutant genes simply by standing near them. No, just kidding, that would have been too easy. It's WOLVERINE! Because of his regenerative ability, he can get close enough to her to have one last glimpse at the old Jean before sticking his forks into her. So she dies. Again.

The movie looks cool, and if Singer had directed it, it could have very well surpassed the first two. Instead, it's disappointing and doesn't seem to care about the characters and relationships developed in the other movies. And this may sound weird, but it seems like he just threw some swears in the movie for no reason, like the aforementioned "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!" For example. It's a shame, really.

Even so, it's still better than Batman & Robin.

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Room with a View

Ever since we moved into the new office on Newbury Street, every day has been rife with excitement. Or at least, rife with the potential for excitement. Actually, I was just looking for an excuse to use the word "rife." But there has been plenty of times where I almost saw someone famous on this street, dating back to college.

Katherine Gibbs is just a couple of blocks down the street from the office, and while I was going there, I just missed Stephen King walking out of 7-11. I read about it in the paper the next day. This wasn't too long after his accident, so he still had crutches. How do you miss Stephen King hobbling down the street on crutches? By the way, not only is it appalling to realize that was six years ago, but the name of the school, which apparently sounded too stodgy and grandmotherly to it's target daytime-TV-watching market and has since been rechristened "Gibbs Boston". Blasphemy. Oh, and the auditorium I graduated in is now an H&M clothing store.

Granted, celebrities aren't as common a sight on the street as, say, Tricycle Man, but during my time at this address, I've seen everything from Gwen Stefani's body guards standing outside the Armani store to the Legend of Zelda-style view of the top of Steven Tyler's head. One of the guys I work with saw Michele Kwan walking out of the Ritz one day. Maybe if she'd won the gold, she could have stayed at the Four Seasons. Gee, that was kind of harsh. I hope she doesn't know Jeff Gillooly.

Anyway, as I mentioned last month, Condoleeza Rice stayed at the Ritz recently, and police escorts swarmed the building. When I saw the bomb squad truck, at first I honestly thought it was because the Yankees were in town. The truck wasn't for them, but a big yellow Yankee bus (which doesn't seem to be affiliated with the team, the names are just a coincidence) pulled up in front of the hotel later that day around 2:00 to bring them to Fenway.

My bosses are siblings, and the sister's best friend is a huge Yankee fan. She'd mentioned to her friend before that some of the players stayed at the hotel across from us when they were playing the Sox, and we always saw a small group of fans huddled around the front entrance waiting for autographs or simply glimpses of their favorite players. A group of about a dozen or so people started to form a little after noon, and my boss, who we'll call Lucy, thought it would be a good idea to go down across the street and ask those guys what they knew, (i.e., who stays at this hotel, what time to they leave for the field, etc.) She also thought it would be a good idea to bring me along.

So we walked over to the group, and she interrupted two guys that were in the middle of a conversation with, "Okay, guys, what's going on here?" Thinking she was some authority figure, they asked if they were doing anything wrong.

She explained that she just wanted to know when are the players coming out, and started making small talk. Where are you from, do you come here every time the Yankees are in town...stuff like that. A guy in sweatpants and a knit cap with the Yankees emblem embroidered on it who had been standing a few feet away came over and things took a turn. I couldn't smell it on him, but the nature of his banter suggested that he'd recently tied a few on. She told him that her girlfriend was a big Yankees fan, and he quickly interrupted.

"Girlfriend? Are you a lesbian?"

"Excuse me? Look at the ring, I'm a married woman!"

"Hey, that don't mean anything anymore!"

It went on like that for a while, before she motioned to me, suggesting that she brought me along in case things got out of hand. Let's just pretend for a minute that the idea of me being a body guard isn't completely laughable, and that, when coerced, I strike down with great vengeance and furious anger those that would attempt to poison my brothers. Let's pretend. Even so, like I get paid enough to confront a bunch of big guys with baseball bats. Keep dreaming, lady.

Anyway, the conversation went back to her girlfriend being a Yankee fan, and the guy started asking her all these questions to test her mettle.

"What was Joe DiMaggio's batting average in 1941?"

"I don't know, but my girlfriend would know that."

"How many RBI's did Matsui have last year?"

"My girlfriend would know that, too. I'm telling you, she could talk you guys up and down all day."

Somehow, the conversation shifted to what he did for a living. He told her that he doesn't work because he won the lottery ten years ago and he's a millionaire. Then he pointed at the Asian guy standing next to him and said the Chinese are the richest people on the planet, before adding, "Oh wait, that's the Jews."

I was stuck somewhere between being extremely uncomfortable and highly entertained. I'm pretty sure he called her a lesbian a few more times before she mentioned that she had seen Condoleeza Rice that morning.

"Did you shake her hand?"

"No, she was heavily guarded, but she waved...."

"I bet you would have shaken her hand if you weren't a racist."

Standing there while my boss was called a lesbian and a racist--not sure if I'm supposed to step in and trying as hard as I can not to burst out laughing--has to rank up there as one of the most surreal moments ever. She took the guy's mostly good-natured jabs in stride though, and as his grand finale, he asked which floor our office was on, because he wanted to know if it was high enough for him to jump out and kill himself. Why? Because "No woman will marry him."

As we were departing back to the office, he told her that if her marriage doesn't work out, they should get together. And with that, we went back to work.

When the Yankee bus pulled up to the building, I got a few shots of some players from our seventh-floor window. It was hard to see who's who from my window, but I was able to spot Joe Torre signing autographs, Johnny Damon, and guy I'm pretty sure is A-Rod (The knit cap guy said he was staying at a different hotel, but then again he said a lot of things.)









There were a couple of guys who I'm sure were someone but I'll be damned if I could tell who they were. One guy looked like O.J. walking out of court.





As if that wasn't enough excitement, Friday a cloud of smoke drifted past the window. Hold on, that wasn't the exciting part. When we opened it to see what was going on, a thick smoky smell filled the room and black smoke was rising from a car down the street. It was hard to see exactly what was going on, because there was a tree in the way. But several fire engines quickly and loudly arrived at the scene, followed by a woman who appeared to be the car's very surprised owner. It looked like it could have been deadly if anyone had been in the car, but thankfully it was empty and the fire department handily kept the fire contained. And, in what is probably the coolest part about being a fire fighter, they smashed in all the windows with axes. Who wouldn't want to smash in windows with big honkin' axes?

















And today, there's a giant fiberglass cow sitting outside the hotel entrence.

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