I'm a lasagna boy!

on the catwalk

Found out that a friend of mine is a successful model:

Swinging on the flippity-flop

Sometimes I do get the feeling that reporters are lazily picking up memes and framing stories around them.

"Rock Paper Scissors: The Movie," a documentary about the 2003 world championships in Toronto, is to be released in January.

I feel so culturally cool: Tom Frank and I use the same logo for our "Contact Me" pages.

September 5, 2004

Rock, Paper, Scissors: High Drama in the Tournament Ring
By JENNIFER 8. LEE

MY opponent and I faced each other across the white lines, separated by an arm's length in the dark, smoky bar. He planted his feet firmly, shoulder-width apart, while I fell into a fighting stance, right foot forward — a natural response from years of tae kwon do. The referee stood between us. The crowd looked on expectantly.

The rules were deceptively simple — rules that people all over the world grasp as young children.

Paper covers rock. Rock crushes scissors. Scissors cut paper.

But like the game Othello, another childhood favorite, Rock Paper Scissors takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master.

Rock Paper Scissors has gained a cult following in much of the English-speaking world over the last few years. The World Rock Paper Scissors Society, based in Toronto, says that its history dates to London in the mid-1800's and that its membership has grown to 2,300 from 5 since its Web site, www.worldrps.com, first appeared in 1995.

Word of mouth generated by the Web site, and by the world championships that the society has sponsored since 2002, have led to a spread of formal and impromptu tournaments in bars, fraternity houses, homes and high schools. A bar in Chapel Hill, N.C., for example, held a tournament on Aug. 15 that drew 40 competitors. A tournament held for the past two years at the Roshambo Winery in Healdsburg, Calif., has attracted hundreds of spectators and competitors.

"The Official Rock Paper Scissors Strategy Guide," by the brothers Douglas and Graham Walker, the society's directors, will be published next month by Fireside Books, and "Rock Paper Scissors: The Movie," a documentary about the 2003 world championships in Toronto, is to be released in January.

When I decided to compete in a local tournament and started training, some of my friends scoffed at the idea that the game could involve strategy. But this was not the Rock Paper Scissors of the playground, a hurried competition to see which team got the ball first, or even of the fraternity, to see who would go and buy the beer. This was tournament-style Rock Paper Scissors, in which the stakes are high, and expert players do well over time only because of skill and hard work.

There were 128 of us competing for the top three places in the D.C. National Rock Paper Scissors Tournament at DC9, a Washington bar. The first prize was $1,000 and an XM satellite radio, a significant haul — although modest compared to the $31,000 BMW that was awarded at a tournament in Vail, Colo., last April, or to the one million shekels (about $220,000) that a 13-year-old boy won by beating 700 other competitors in an Israeli tournament on Aug. 5.

Advice came to me from all directions. An office-mate offered wisdom gleaned from his days at the frat house: "The key is to throw scissors early and often." Aaron Hoffman, a math graduate student at Brown University, suggested that I counter the risk of overthinking my throws with a seemingly random sequence of numbers. "You could memorize the digits of pi in base 3," he said. "Zero is rock, one is scissors and two is paper." Sure I could.

I called experienced players to ask for tips, and learned about the common tells that can reveal an impending throw. For example, many people will open up paper early. I was told that most people have a go-to throw, reflective of their character, when they are caught off guard. Paper, considered a refined, even passive, throw, is apparently favored by literary types and journalists; I found I was no exception.

I started going up to people at parties and in the office and challenging them to quick matchups. I even attended a training session with the tournament's organizer, Master Roshambollah (also known as Jason Simmons), and some local players.

Over time, my game was getting sharper. I was winning more than I was losing.

But now that I was here in a Washington bar on a Saturday night, surrounded by a crowd of onlookers in their 20's and 30's, I was nervous. Tournament Rock Paper Scissors proceeds a bit like a tennis competition: game, set, match. The first to win two games wins the set, the first to win two sets wins the match. The winner moves on to the next round; the loser, generally, is eliminated. I had never played under the stress of tournament conditions.

Earlier, in my effort to size up and profile the other people in my heat, I had spoken with an opponent, Ryan Taylor. I had been warned of the importance of understanding his personality and level of experience. Mr. Taylor was 23 and had a shaggy 70's-style haircut, and he said he had never played competitively before.

The referee put his hand between us and asked, "Ready?" He reminded us that vertical paper (which resembles a handshake) was a no-no. Many people had fouled on vertical paper over the years. We nodded.

I decided that I would try to psych out Mr. Taylor, using a a technique I had learned from the strategy guide.

I arched my eyebrows, looked him in the eyes, and said slowly, in a flat voice, "I'm going to throw rock."

He seemed momentarily thrown, but then regained his composure.

The referee lifted his hand and we started pumping our fists in sync, the part of the game known as the prime.

"One. Two. Three. Shoot."

Mr. Taylor was wondering, as he later told me, if I was really going to throw rock: "If she is, she expects me to throw paper, in which case she would throw scissors, in which case I should throw rock. If she really will throw rock, then at worst we would tie."

He threw rock. I threw paper. I won.

What Mr. Taylor didn't realize was that I was playing a defensive rather than offensive game, on the advice of one of the experienced players I had spoken with.

"If you are trying to beat them, you only have one throw" that will work, said Benjamin Stein, a 25-year-old computer programmer in New York. "If you play a defensive game, you have two throws. You can either tie or beat them, and you are successful." Draws are valuable, he explained, because they give you the chance to get more information about your opponent's mindset and strategy. If I could eliminate one of my opponent's three possible next throws, Mr. Stein said, I had a pretty good shot at staying alive.

In this case, I had a strong hunch that Mr. Taylor wouldn't throw scissors, just in case I did actually throw rock. So that left him paper or rock. So I played paper, because that meant I would either tie him (if he played paper) or beat him (if he played rock).

It was logic worthy of "The Princess Bride."

The referee raised his hand to ready us for the next throw.

I tried to divine what Mr. Taylor was planning. I decided he wasn't going to throw rock again after I had just beat him, so scissors was a safe throw for me.

I threw scissors. He threw paper. Game and set were mine. I was only one set from advancing to the next round.

But then I lost the next two throws in rapid succession. Knowing that novices tend to cycle all three throws, I threw a rock, thinking it was time for him to throw scissors. Instead he splayed his hand in flat paper formation. Then his scissors beat my paper. A one-two punch.

We were tied. My heart beat faster. How had I lost a set so quickly?

I gestured for a time-out, to break his momentum and regain my senses. I was disoriented. In the strategy guide, I had read about predetermined three-throw gambits used in competition. I considered a few — Paper Dolls, Fistful of Dollars, the Bureaucrat — before settling on the Avalanche: Rock, Rock, Rock.

I threw my first rock. He went with paper. Ugh. Now it was down to match point.

I breathed deeply. Everything was on the line with this throw.

I threw the second rock. He repeated paper. I was out, eliminated from the tournament.

I saw Mr. Taylor later that night, after he had made it to the top 32. I learned that he had just moved to Washington a few months ago to work at a local theater. (Theater! If I had known that about him, I could have profiled him as a paper guy.)

He offered to buy me a drink, and asked for my number.

I gave it to him. But only because I want a rematch.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Sucks to your derailleur

Chuck Shepherd writes:

Least Competent Criminals: Two men were arrested in Dearborn, Mich., in July and charged with robbing a Bank One branch, done in by a glitch in their getaway plan. They had hopped on mountain bikes to make their exit (which bank robbers have used with success from time to time), but they were apparently unfamiliar with the concept of a gearshift, and both men rode away in first gear (or perhaps second), so slowly that one witness followed them easily on foot, and a bank guard got close enough to shoot one of them in the arm. They were quickly arrested.

One Tree

According to FraudFrond,

There are 130,000 cel towers in the USA alone. A whopping 25% of these are "stealth" towers -- i.e. Lying Lumber -- so that's over 32,000 fake trees.

Wrong place, right time

Protestors in NYC (that's the USA ... ) were being arrested for having a bicycle*. And, of course, Joshua Kinberg was arrested.

The right to assemble peacefully is what separates us from them? They're all going to hell.

I've eaten at that restaurant. Mediocre, indifferent, the fish was no good. And it's right across from the
2nd Ave Deli! How could anyone pass up a meal at that place? Mmmmm, pickles.

Multi-modal, with mousse

Aram points out the word on the street: that fixed-gear stylee has jumped the shark. Well, duh. Some guy on the CalTrain this morning was chatting up a girl with his track bike as bait. She said, disdainfully, "It looks so plain". I was riding a bike with gears this morning.

A woman who spent a year student-teaching my 6th- or 8th-grade English class works here: http://citiesthatwork.com/ as an urban planner. I wonder why the city of San Francisco, despite its much-vaunted, voter-approved 1999 mass-transit plan, insists on have bicycle lanes overlap with MUNI bus stops? This only further delays bus service on busy streets.

The Music of Chance

A quiet morning, re-re-re-reading Paul Auster's Book of Illusions. Is this to modern fiction what math-rock is to rock & roll?

Word of the day: span.

Me and the Tenth Commandment

I want a(nother) bike. Dammit.

No Man's Land

Edward Burtynsky in Charleston, as part of a three-man exhibit, "No Man's Land".

From the Charleston Net, reported by DOTTIE ASHLEY:

The term "no man's land" first was used to describe the ground between two opposing trenches during World War II and implied that neither side in the conflict was safe in this zone.

Landscape photographers Edward Burtynsky, Emmet Gowin and David Maisel believe there is a kind of trench warfare being carried out today between the environment and the demands of humans.

In their exhibit "No Man's Land: Contemporary Photographers and Fragile Ecologies," which opens Thursday at the Halsey Gallery of the College of Charleston, photographs reflect the results of years spent chronicling the state of the environment. The exhibit is said to exploit photography's power to entice the viewer to see the beauty and the fragility of the Earth, while illuminating seldom seen landscapes currently under siege by development.

Through their work, the artists say they wish to draw attention to the precarious, yet interdependent nature of our relationship with the Earth.

"Initially, their works draw us in by the seductive beauty of the photographic print itself; it is only after this initial reading that we begin to comprehend the content of each image," says Mark Sloan, director of the Halsey Gallery.

The photographs will be on display Thursday through Oct. 16 at the gallery in the Simons Center for the Arts, 54 St. Philip St. A reception honoring the photographers will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. Sept. 17 in the gallery.

That same day, Gowin will lecture on his work in the Recital Hall of the Simons Center at 2 p.m., followed by Burtynsky at 4 p.m. and Maisel at 6 p.m. All events are free.

For 25 years, Burtynsky, a Canadian, has explored obscure sites where industrial activity has reshaped the surface of the land. His surveys of the man-made terrain of quarrying, mining, rail cutting and oil refining are said to remind us that these incursions into the land arise from human needs and desires.

Recently, Burtynsky photographed the world's largest engineering and construction site, the Three Gorges Dam project along the Yangtze River in Hubei Province in China. His work focuses on the explosive growth of Chinese industrial sectors and the resulting transformations of landscape as that country evolves from rural agricultural to urban technology.

For more than 20 years, Gowin has taken aerial photographs of the landscape in the United States, Mexico, Czechoslovakia, Asia and the Middle East. In his collection, the viewer witnesses how man's footprints have visually scarred and continually altered Earth's surface. His most recent book is "Changing the Earth," (Yale University Press, 2002). His work will be shown at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Yale University Art Gallery and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, among other galleries.

The work of San Francisco artist Maisel also is composed of aerial photographs of environmentally impacted landscapes. Looking down on these damaged wastelands where man's efforts have eradicated the natural order, one sees that the views are spectacular and horrifying. One series of images shows Owens Lake, the site of a formerly 200-square-mile lake on the eastern side of the Sierra Mountains. The diversion of the Owens River into the Owens Valley Aqueduct began in 1913 to quench the thirst of the citizens of Los Angeles. By 1926, the lake was in essence destroyed, with vast expanses of mineral flats exposed.

The photographic exhibition is accompanied by a catalog.

Halsey Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

... a girl's best friend?

After Shawn, forever singing the virtues of audio books, praised Diamonds, I picked up a reading copy and sat down with it yesterday afternoon.

Alexander the Great, on his march into India, is said to have heard about a pit filled with diamonds. The pit was guarded by serpents whose gaze would kill a man. Alexander, eager for the diamonds, ordered that his men be given mirrors. When they approached the pit they held up the mirrors and turned the reptiles' gaze back on the snakes themselves, killing them. Alexander then ordered sheep to be slaughtered and their carcasses flung into the pit. The diamonds stuck in the fat. Vultures swooped down and devoured the diamond-studded flesh, and afterward, as they flew away, expelled a rain of diamonds into the hands of Alexander's men.

Although the writing falls short -- the author, a reporter for Rapaport Diamond Report, doesn't compose graceful or rhythmic sentences; unlike the impact of a newspaper story, which is ephemeral, a book's paragraphs and chapters deserve structure and composition -- the books capably tells the story of diamond exploration and of the De Beers cartel.

Sleeping Beauty

Re-read Danny the Champion of the World, in an edition illustrated by Quentin Blake. Although I'm particular about illustrations, Blake's idiosyncratic pen-and-wash style illuminates Dahl's wise story of a boy being raised by his clever father. The father enjoys poaching, and what's bred in the blood means that the boy invents a new approach, so fiendish that it means that they will eat their pheasants and wreck the reputation of the local land-lord / capitalist. Not quite a party-line parable, but the villagers do defeat the local tyrant and celebrate in the quiet, studious way of village-folk.

Also made into what sounds like an excrescence of a television movie.