kenwheaton

Another day in Fiji

Posted on February 28, 2012 by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

Why yes, I only brought one shirt. — At Le Cafe, in Fiji

One of the things that has always worried me about resort travel is the prospect of getting stuck in an isolated area on a resort with nowhere else to go. Sure, having people cater to you all day is nice and all, but I do get restless. Not only do you miss out on the actual feel for the place you’re visiting, but on a practical level the resort can charge you ridiculous prices for food and drink. It’s like a cruise ship without the seasickness.

So one of the first things we did upon arrival was walk up the beach in either direction to see what else there was. On either side are a few more hotels of varying levels – from adult summer camp to fancy. There are also aggressive cab drivers walking the beach and the road to the west. One, in fact, tried to sell us on his cab services, his tour services, his rental car services and a “real” Indian meal cooked by his wife—for a charge, of course. Some might jump at the chance of such a meal, but I’m not a huge fan of Indian food and the guy kept getting us to go with him to his car so he could show us a brochure. And his car was behind a fence.

Of course, his name was Ken.

We declined.

But last night we did venture to Le Café, an open-air ramshackle place with a couple of cats, some wobbly bar stools, a limited menu and cheap beer. We spent about three hours there, the first half of which was in conversation with an elderly British couple, Derrick and Hazel, who’d just spent some time travelling, Hong Kong, Singapore, three weeks driving around New Zealand, and were now unwinding at a hotel up the beach that had no phone, TV or radio. Both retired, Derrick is 71 and Hazel 60-something. They were knocking back beers and telling us of the schooner trip they’d made the day before. I hope I’m that cool and active when I’m that age. Ah, hell, I hope I’m alive when I’m that age.

We also did a bit of snorkeling yesterday morning. We are on what is known as the Coral Coast. So, the white sand beaches you see on the outer islands of Fiji are not what we have in front of us. What we do have is coral. There’s a dead patch right off the beach, but a short swim beyond that and there were plenty of fish, starfish, sea cucumbers, even a couple of eels. It was a little cloudy so visibility wasn’t the best in the world, but we might give it another shot today.

Still trying to get a picture of one of those damned bats. You think something that big would be easier to photograph, but they’re faster than you think — and flying in low-light conditions. Instead, we leave you with toads on the moon.

Not a Bad Way to Start the Week

Posted on February 27, 2012 by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

It’s 6 a.m. on a Tuesday morning and I’m sitting on a balcony drinking the sort of in-room instant coffee served by even some of the best foreign hotels that would shock the sort of American who’s used to staying in at the Motel 6.

But I am in Fiji, so this is perfectly fine with me. The truth is the instant isn’t so bad and, unlike some other foreign hotels I’ve been in, the coffee in the restaurants is actually delicious. Besides which, we are not here to drink coffee. We are here for vacation, we are here to relax.
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The Poodle Problem

Posted on February 24, 2012 by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

PoodleInfestation — How did this happen?

When the man sang that some enchanted evening, you will see a stranger across a crowded room, he didn’t mention anything about a couple of yappy lap dogs. But on a July night at Grant Street Dance Hall in Lafayette, Louisiana, I was only in town for two more days and wasn’t exactly thinking about the future consequences of current actions. All I knew was that I was talking to this curly-haired blonde who I’d noticed an hour or so earlier — and I hadn’t lost her attention yet.

I already knew her name was Cara, that we had a couple of mutual acquaintances, that she’d dropped a ton of money to go to the Super Bowl earlier in the year and was also a rabid LSU fan. Those things, along with her — how do the French put this, “smoking hotness” — were more than enough to drown out any alarm bells that might have gone off when she whipped out the iPhone and started showing me photos of her “babies,” a couple of small poodles. Sure they were cute, boy they were fascinating, yeah I love dogs, yadda yadda yadda.

Of course, I paid attention — enough, at least, to notice that there was a black one and a white one and that sometimes they wore clothes. But, like I said, in town for a couple of days. If I was lucky, we’d make out and then we’d never see each other again, so a couple of high-maintenance yipsters were of no great concern.
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Dear @NYRR, About Your Site Redesign

Posted on February 10, 2012 by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

I’m sure you’re proud of your shiny new toy, but it’s not so good. New York Road Runners, you’ve fallen into the trap of going for form over function.

Okay, it’s not THAT bad.

You’re a great organization. We love your services. But this redesign needs some work. First and foremost, you need to edit your top bar. “Run With Us” and “Run For Life” are silly and don’t tell me anything. Want to know what you should do? Look down the bar a little bit at “Get Stuff” and “Get Training.” PERFECT! Plain English that tells me what I get.

You only need two simple fixes that would make this redesign go down like sugar — even among cranks who hate all redesigns because they hate change (like me!). “GET CALENDAR” and “GET REGISTERED.” Or maybe “GET RACES.” This whole “Run with Us” sounds like you’re trying to trick me into a timeshare.

Oh, and make sure the calendar works. When last I tried that ridiculous “MORE” button (the top one), it wasn’t working at all. And there was nothing wrong with a month-by-month look at races. Many of us were trained by paper calendars and that’s how we like information.

The pictures and stuff are nice, but keep in mind that you’re an organization used by people on the go, looking for information. You’re not a publisher or a marketer who should be trying to create “sticky” websites, which is marketing speak for leading users down a damn maze so that you can later brag about the time-spent-on page metrics.

This is running, after all, and your site should reflect the spirit of running: clean, simple and, if possible, fast.

Child Abuse Stopped by Power of Twitter

Posted on January 13, 2012 by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

Child abuse was stamped out this year after a concerted effort to “raise awareness” on social-media platform Twitter.

Abusive parents everywhere commented, “You know, I just wasn’t aware of my behavior until those people twatted about it.”

“Twitter can do everything,” said Twitter users.

A internet user who uses only Facebook, however, pointed out that Twitter didn’t do as much as people are claiming. “Uh, hello. Our effort last year to post pictures from our favorite childhood cartoons totally cut child abuse by, like, 70%. So how much did they really have to do on Twitter? It’s like when I loosen up the jar and then my wife finishes opening it. And she’s all like ‘Ha! You suck!’ And then I have to teach her a lesson.”

After eradicating child abuse via Twitter, there are plans to cure AIDs with FourSquare check-ins.

Latke! Latke! Latke! Latke all night long!

Posted on December 16, 2011 by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

The best latke recipe in the world has returned to the web.

Remember last year’s post, “A Whole Latke Loving Going On“? I told you all about NYCNosh’s awesome damn recipe and wanted to link to them but they had disappeared from the web, so I basically just copied their recipe out of my notebook? Well, I’m happy to report that the Noshers are back–well the site is. And so is the recipe. If you have a love for latkes, use this recipe.

Like a Honey Badger on a Beehive

Posted on December 15, 2011 by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

That’s my approach to reading other people’s manuscripts. It’s exhausting for me and terrifying for them, which is why I don’t do it often. I have more thoughts on the subject of giving and receiving constructive criticism over at Jacquelin Cangro’s blog.

This summer I turned in a manuscript to an agent. She sent it off to a reader. A couple of weeks later, I received an email saying, “Here’s the report. Take some time to digest it.”

“Take some time to digest it.” That simple phrase told me everything I needed to know. That simple phrase should also be stamped on the hand of everyone aspiring to be a writer. It’s not easy. But it’s necessary. If you think writing is a realm of inspiration, positive-feelings and pure artistic expression with little regard for the reader, you should stick to posting your free verse to LiveJournal.

Read the whole thing here.

Anyone Know a Good Cat-Poisoner in Park Slope?

Posted on December 14, 2011December 14, 2011 by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

Okay. I’m joking. Obviously. It upsets me–yes, now I’m the one upset–that I even have to write that I’m joking about this. My friends and family get this, I’m sure. And people with a sense of humor. But there are some people out there who can somehow decipher these long lists of words we call sentences yet can’t, for the life of them, detect the overall context of a paragraph. One of those idiots might stumble across this post. Of course, it doesn’t help my case that those sorts of idiots are the most easily offended and now I’ve not only set them off by asking for a cat-poisoner, but I’ve insulted them as well.

See what the cats have driven me to!
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Gossip Bloggers in Hell

Posted on December 13, 2011December 13, 2011 by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

Here’s one vision of hell:

And so he stands in the mouth of his alley and waits as a megabyte of Internet gossip bloggers lurches by, the men in starlet-at-the-beach bikinis with celluloid-ravaged thighs and acid-seeping hard-ons, the women paunchy droopy naked but for Speedo trunks, weighed heavily about their necks with molten-hot gold pop-star bling, and all of them—a thousand or more—pass by in a long, dense gaggle, pinching and punching each other. Hatcher’s neighborhood has many journalists, and this gossip-blogger group lives at the very edge, at a distant turning of the Parkway where other denizens never actually go in person, where only this subset of bloggers huddle together over laptop screens, zinging each other.

From Robert Olen Butler’s novel, Hell, which is set in, well, Hell. But before you start developing strong feelings either way about the inclusion of gossip bloggers in Hell, in Butler’s version, EVERYONE goes to Hell. Every. One.

Consistency Is Overrated

Posted on December 12, 2011 by kenwheaton in Uncategorized

This morning while at the cafe stirring things into my coffee, I did what I usually do: Before taking the lid off the cup, I grabbed a napkin and placed it on the counter so that my overturned lid — you know, the part where you put your mouth — would not come into contact with a surface covered with spilled sugar, drying dairy products and, perhaps, the footprints of flies. Basic sanitary precaution, right?

Well, two strange things about it.

1. I rarely notice other people doing this. Even that women who walks around with Purell in her pockets will just put the lid on a plain counter.

2. Why the hell do I do it? It’s not that I don’t follow basic sanitation practices. I wash my hands after going to the bathroom, after all. But thinking about it, I don’t think I’ve ever washed my hands after getting off the subway and before going to Popeyes–a food I not only eat with my hands, but that eventually leads to some hardcore finger licking. Hell, I’m the kind of guy who will lean his face against a subway pole (only if the car is mostly empty, because otherwise pole-leaning is rude). I’m also the sort who’s left food out of the fridge for an extended period of time and eaten it anyway. And, with the exception of dairy products, I tend to view expiration dates as a rough guideline — Hey, these eggs still SMELL fine.

Also, I don’t get a flu shot.

But, you know, that one piece of paper on the cafe counter will save me every time. Or something.