Manlio Rules

i just realized that my site had its 2 year anniversary last week. in honor, my favorite internets site ever.

We all had high school jobs, right? some of them involved scooping things, or painting things, or grilling things, or selling pointy things door to door. they built character. they were supposed to show us why an education was so important, so we wouldn’t have to do this stuff for the rest of our lives. I personally worked at the local Dry Cleaners. It was called “Our Cleaners”.

Chapter 1: How I got this job

My parents were (and i guess still are) convinced that idle time was indeed poison to a young mind. starting at the age of 12, my father gave me 2 options: summer school or working. since the legal working age in MA was 15, it took me awhile before i was able to fully commit to one of these choices. When i was 15, my mom mentioned that she had stopped by the dry cleaners that day and that he was looking for help. the next week she took me in for an “interview”, and for the first time I met Joe Rizzo, who would be an important character to my adolescent development. i use ironic quotes because the interview went like this:

Joe Rizzo: what’s your name?
me: Manlio.
Joe: can you add up these numbers?
me: yeah, it comes to $20.80.
Joe: wow. ok, you’re hired.

The next saturday, i got to the store at 8:30AM and started work.

my job consisted of a few different tasks. primarily I was in charge of tagging clothes, which meant that when we got an order, i was supposed to separate the pieces out, take a few colored paper tags from the spindle, and staple them to the clothes, then indicate on the invoice which ones i had stapled. Easy enough. of course, when i screwed up, there was the unpleasant task of trying to guess whose skirts went with which order, which can be delicate “no sir, i didn’t mean to imply that you seem like the type who would wear that pink striped shirt, i just was wondering if it was yours because it was mistagged near your order. no sir, i’m not being fresh with you.”

I also had to answer the phone. courtesy dictated that i pick up and say: “our cleaners”, in an earnest and helpful voice, the reply to the question at hand. the 2 most common questions by far were:

1. What time do you close? (7PM on weekdays, 5PM on saturdays)
2. What do you charge for a pair of pants? ($3.30)

I will note that while the frequency of price checks on pants confused me, years later it allowed me to conduct maybe the best economic research I did in my entire career (narrowly beating out my analysis of why Philadelphia needed less ambulances that could handle heart attacks), when i surveyed 25 cleaners in the Philadelphia area (chosen randomly) and examined whether or not pricing for pants was indeed constant among them in hopes of analyzing a market that in theory, should be in perfect competition. Of course, prices were not constant because i didn’t break the cleaners down by wealth of neighborhood. regardless, i got myself a “check plus”. you may think it’s odd to be proud of this, but considering my economics thesis was a bland mishmash of statistical theory and excuses for data that didn’t make any sense with the final conclusion that “more people will be on the internet in the future”, i stand by my dry cleaning paper as the apex of my work.

anyways, my boss would occasionally call and in response to my “our cleaners”, say “no, it’s my cleaners! my cleaners!”. this was sort of funny. of course, it was less funny the one time i picked up the phone, and, distracted by something that may or may not have been the cute girl who worked at the deli next door crossing the street, i answered the phone: “Yeah?”. there was a short pause, and joe’s voice slowly said: “uh… yeah? is that how you answer the phone?” whoops.

far and away the best part about the cleaners was, as my dad would put it, “having a buck in your pocket”. i can’t remember how much i made, but it couldn’t have been more than maybe $5.00 an hour. but after 8 hours on a saturday, i’d walk out with $40, and for a 15 year old who still had no “real” expenses, that was good money, to be spent on… well, actually i have no idea. it’s not like i was going out a lot or had a girlfriend or anything. let’s say for the sake of argument that i spent it on books, or more likely, candy. in either event, it was great.

on wednesday, we rented ourselves a little room at a place called Do Re Mi in koreatown and decided to be rock stars. and somehow some of it got caught on video. i don’t know how this happened.

and if anyone wants to know why i’m not on this, there are 2 reasons:

1. someone has to shoot the video, cause i don’t see YOU doing it.
2. i shot my vocal chords within 10 minutes. a little thing i like to call “18 and life”

As some of you know, i love baseball.

As fewer of you know, i enjoy playing softball quite a bit.

And as even less of you know (luckily), i’m borderline terrible at it. here’s why:

A. Someone (possibly Noam Chomsky) can’t keep his mouth shut. A lot (all) of this paragraph is heresy, but i remember being forced to quit baseball twice in my youth. The first and most crippling time to my future development was when i was about to graduate from the “farm” league to the “minors”, where the kids started pitching and things got a little more competitive (i was maybe 10). My mother heard a story that there was a fight between a coach and one of the parents in the minors, and decided she didn’t want me exposed to that level of competition, because chances were i’d be getting yelled at by other parents for sucking. so i wasn’t allowed to play the next year or ever again in the town leagues. Years later, i was told that the person who started the fight was Noam Chomsky, but it’s very, VERY ,possible that this is untrue, and i have no evidence aside from someone else’s story. But my development was cut off way too early because of the incident. this is the primary reason i am not a major leaguer as we speak.

B. I’m a left handed infielder. My high school coach, before he relegated me to the practice squad, told me that my best positional fit would be as an infielder, because i wasn’t so great at tracking fly balls and was much better fielding grounders. but i’m left handed, which means i have to play first base, and i’m not really enough of a power hitter to justify that, even at the high school level. sidenote: after i got demoted, my dad forced me to quit the team altogether. this led to me skipping one trimester of sports at my high school and having to double up sports credit the next year. to my knowledge this was the only time this had ever happened at my school. so in some ways, i’m a pioneer.

C. I’m not athletically gifted. at all really. i used to think that i just hadn’t found the right sport. now i know that the right sport is probably Wii tennis. and Jay kicked my ass at that a few weeks ago.

so that’s my story. tune in next time when i explain why my high school’s lack of a football team has certainly robbed the patriots of their best cornerback since Ty Law left.

well, i don’t usually wake up early on vacation days, but Aubrey had the smashing idea of going hiking, and Ron had the insider info on where to go, and Alice set the pace by hauling ass up and down the mountain as i gasped for air. so there we were.

and then i went to a very nice barbecue and saw fireworks everywhere. which i have to admit, is pretty cool

last weekend i went with Jay and Dori to Angel Island to do some biking. it was fun, aside from the monstrous hill and the old women who were trying to cheer me on as it became clear that i wasn’t going to make it up. here are the photos, using Diego’s PictoBrowser app.

I made this quick video to test some of the effects of the graffiti app from a company called Vidavee. it’s a decent idea, i’m excited to see what happens when they let you add your own effects. i found the effects scrubbing interface to be a little bit clunky, it was difficult to figure out how to scrub the video back and forth so i could see where my effects were located.

i mean, i always have weird days. i constantly feel like i’m in the middle of a talking heads song, and someone is screaming at me: “this is not your beautiful house!”. and that can be unsettling.

this morning i received a court citation for failing to stamp my caltrain ticket before getting on the train. i will now either go to court or pay a fine of not more than $250. considering that my court date is at 8:30AM on a weekday morning, guess which one i will choose. so that’s how my day started, with a very apologetic woman giving me my first ever citation. i’ve never even gotten a speeding ticket, though as michelle will tell you, i’m probably karmically due for a few.

my apartment hunt has dwindled down to an apartment wish. i have come to the conclusion that it is going to be almost impossible to find a place that is in the location i want to be in, has the space that i want to have, and is still somewhat affordable. so the question is what do i give up? or do i stay in the place i’m currently in that is in the right location, affordable, and has enough space but smells like a coney island haunted house? and is it odd that i essentially live like a vagabond, taking bags of clothing from one place to another and always thinking about where on earth my sneakers reside?

trish is in cabo right now so i’ve been house sitting, which means i’m selling all her stuff that i don’t like on ebay and buying new stuff for her that she doesn’t need and will almost certainly not want, which means i will take it back to my “house” when she comes back from vacation and then promptly never use it again. also i have grown to not trust things that claim they are 2 in 1, like the food processor/blender i saw at Bed, Bath, and Beyond over the weekend, which i imagine does neither particularly well. and what’s more of a mindfuck is that i’ve been to Bed, Bath, and Beyond twice in the last 6 weeks and haven’t been to Guitar Center in over a year. and sometimes i feel like i dress like my stepdad and would look more out of place at a rock show than i would at an investment bankers party. and of course the other disturbing thing is that i would probably look out of place at both of them, given my recent penchant for talking about money management and then segueing into some diatribe about why i don’t play guitar anymore.

blah.

ok,

so,

one of the things i really wanted to do when i was in NY a few weeks ago was play music. i dont’ get much chance to play out here, for a few various reasons, most of them job related. so i booked some time at an old studio space in NY and rented a guitar, and brought mike, matt, and neil along to make some music. we played for 3 hours, and the results of it can be seen here:

http://www.mloco.com/files/june07jam/

sorry i don’t have one big zip file for all of these, i can put one up later tonight, but for now you’ll have to settle for listening and downloading one at a time…

some of these are pretty good, track 8 is the only one with lyrics, and we’re switching instruments around, though the basic lineup is:

Neil: Drums
Matt: Bass
Michael: Guitar, vocals on track 8
Me: Guitar

on 2 tracks i’m playing drums and neil is on keyboards, i think michael is on drums for one song and i’m playing bass on the last track that gets cut off, matt is on keys for that…

UPDATE: the zip file is on the server, here