Monthly Archives: February 2010

Life In These United States

Workplace Condiment Etiquette and You

sriracha.jpgI keep a bottle of Sriracha in the kitchen at my office. Sriracha is also known as THE BEST HOT SAUCE CRAFTED BY THE HAND OF MAN. I don’t use it too often, but it’s a nice thing to have handy when your lunch needs an extra kick.

Today, as I went to the kitchen to fetch my lunch, I saw my bottle of Sriracha on the countertop. I knew it was mine because it has my hand-written note on it instructing the cleaning people not to throw it out (because they can and will throw out everything unless instructed not to).

The top was opened (it has an attached cap that unscrews like an Elmer’s glue bottle) and some of its contents were dripping down the side. I also noticed that a lot more of the sauce had been used since I last used it. I’m pretty sparing in my hot sauce application, but it had obviously been applied liberally–by other people–since I last used it.

A coworker was in the kitchen at the time, waiting for his lunch to heat up in the microwave. It was unclear to me if this person was responsible for using my Sriracha. I didn’t recognize him, either, because there are new people in and out of the place all the time.

I pondered what would be the correct approach to this situation. After all, using someone else’s condiment is not like eating someone else’s lunch (which has happened to me more than once at my current place of employ). But I personally would not use somebody else’s condiments, and I felt like it was a little uncool that someone would just something that does not belong to him/her.

As I wondered what to do, the coworker removed his lunch from the microwave and left, leaving the Sriracha untouched. Now, again, I don’t know if this particular person availed himself of my Sriracha. But whether it was him or someone else, he/she did so and just left it on the counter, unopened, with hot sauce dripping from the cap.

That is definitely unacceptable. So I grabbed my Sriracha and deposited it my desk. You’re supposed to refrigerate it, but I’ll sacrifice freshness for the sake of not having thieves and slobs pawing and mistreating it. Sorry folks, but you lost your Sriracha privileges.

I’m not nuts, right? I am totally within my rights to be stupidly pissed off about this, yes? Please reassure me.

Warm Thoughts for a Cold Winter

Warm Thoughts for a Cold Winter: Organ Music

janejarvis.jpgLast week, Jane Jarvis passed away at the age of 94. Jarvis was Shea Stadium’s first organist, from 1964 all the way through 1979. She’s still remembered by fans who heard her as a delightful and witty practitioner of that uniquely American art form, stadium organ music. Marty Noble wrote a remembrance of her, and shared the tidbit that during the 1977 blackout, Jarvis entertained the sweltering Shea crowd with such ironic song selections as “White Christmas” and “Jingle Bells”

I’m not old enough to have enjoyed Ms. Jarvis’ stylings, but I do miss ballpark organists. Most MLB teams still have an organist, but their playing time has reduced significantly in favor of prerecorded music instead, which is a shame. Both New York teams still have organists, but I can not tell you the last time I actually heard one play at either stadium.

I’m not too old school when it comes to most things in baseball; I think the game is more often hurt by its emphasis on tradition than it is helped. But there are two points where I see eye-to-eye with the Get Off My Lawn crowd: the DH is an abomination, and stadium organists are vastly superior to any other form of in-game entertainment.

In the long history of baseball, organs are a relatively recent feature of the game experience. The first stadium organ didn’t appear until 1941, when the Cubs installed one in Wrigley Field, and they didn’t really catch on elsewhere until after World War II. But the organ has become a sound as associated with the game as the crack of a bat. Playing “charge!” on an organ is musical shorthand for “there is a baseball game being played right now”.

I have a feeling that the almost exclusive use of prerecorded music is a relatively recent phenomenon, one that crept slowly into the game in the last 15 years or so. While compiling The 1999 Project, I listened to and watched a whole bunch of games from that season, and noticed that Shea was still very organ-centric back then. Pitchers and batters entered the game to their own hand-picked tunes, but all other musical cues came from an organ.

In that spirit, please enjoy this video about Lambert Bartak, the man who has manned the organ for the college world series for the last 50+ years.

Seasonal Fare

Groundhog Day Fun Facts!

  • groundhog.jpgGroundhog Day was developed by Punxsutawney, PA in a desperate attempt to employ its notoriously shiftless rodent population.
  • The holiday dates back to a dark time in American history, when only groundhogs were allowed to study meteorology.
  • If the groundhog sees emerges from its hole, expect an early spring. If he sees his shadow and goes back into his hole, there will be six more weeks of winter. If he scratches his nose, we skip the rest of winter, spring, and summer and head straight into autumn. And if he eats a small, juicy carrot, pray for your mortal soul, for the end is nigh.
  • Did you know the ancient Egyptians revered the groundhog as a god? You shouldn’t have known that, because it’s not true.
  • In 1943, Punxsutawney Phil became involved in an elaborate OSS-sponsored plot to assassinate Hitler. The plan never came to fruition, however, because the spy agency couldn’t figure out how to get the Fuhrer to visit Pennsylvania.
  • The officiants at Groundhog Day dress in turn-of-the-century garb not for ceremonial purposes, but as part of an elaborate fetishistic ritual whose details you are better off not knowing.
  • February 2 is also the day when Bill Murray reminds everyone who approaches him that if they ask him about nothing but Groundhog Day, they’ll get a roundhouse kick to the throat.