She puts the Seoul in South Korea

When I was a little kid, I loved geography.

One of my favorite shows (in addition to 'Today's Special' and 'Square One TV') was "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?"

It was a great tool for kids to learn geography. I bet you that every fan of that show knew exactly where places like Kentucky, Kinshasa, Kilimanjaro and Kalamazoo were located thanks to Greg Lee and Lynne Thigpen.

I would have totally ruled on that show. I would have found the loot, the warrant and the crook really fast. And I would have run all over that huge map and put the markers in the right spots and won a totally awesome prize.

But I never made it, and the show is now gone. I still can sing much of the theme song, though, but that just means I'm a total loser.

(P.S. I have a blog. That might have been the first clue.)

People don't know where things are nowadays. I'm not talking about the grocery store or the post office, but I'm talking about where things are happening in the world.

From now on, for the rest of our lives, we're only going to learn about a foreign country or capital city like based on whether it's just been bombed by some other country.

Last generation, it was Saigon and Moscow, but this generation, we're talking Kabul and Tikrit.

I miss the Lynne Thigpen way. Even if wars had theme songs done by Rockappella, I'd take "Carmen Sandiego" over any battle any day.

Speaking of battles, I almost got into my first real fight over the weekend.

That's for next time.

Better than Burkina Faso

After much thought, I've decided that Ghana is my new favorite country.

This is for a number of reasons. The weather is good, they speak English, and the country is a constitutional democracy. What's not to like?

And boy, do they speak English. It's totally awesome to hear someone from Ghana speak English, much like it is to hear an Australian or Indian, even though they don't use y'all.

Ghana is located in western Africa and is about the size of Oregon, which is where I'm moving if I don't get a job in the northeast next year. Or in Ghana.

I have only met three people from the country, but based on this small sample size, I think I can make generalizations on the entire population.

Ghanaians are very happy people. They are always smiling. They laugh at jokes before you tell the punchline, as if anticipating that what you're going to say is funny. That's great, because not everything I say is that funny. But not to Ghanaians--they think I'm hilarious!

The three Ghanaians I have met are hard working. One is a cab driver, one is in charge of the parking garage in my building, and the third, Mohammed, worked in the kitchen of my summer camp.

I got to know Mohammed in the summer of 2004. He was on a work visa program in which he worked legally in the United States for a time before deciding to become a citizen here or go back to Ghana. He went back to Ghana; but his brother, who did the program a few before him, is now a cab driver in New York.

Mohammed lived in a small house with four other people on the same program and he served food to snot-nosed kids in the middle of nowhere in the Georgia woods. The money that he earned in the U.S. was a lot better than what he was earning in Ghana. Mohammed is intelligent and talented and loves to travel, and he decided that while he was still young, he would give a year or two in the U.S. a chance. Most of the money he made he sent back to his wife and infant in Ghana.

Mohammed is also a great soccer player. I think everyone in the world--save the 300 million of us who live in between Maine and San Diego/between what's left of Key West and Seattle--is a great soccer player. (I learned this last year when I'd get schooled daily by small Ethiopian children who lived at the same absorption center where I lived.)

Mohammed would always come up to me and say "hi" and tell me about whether or not the food was going to be good that day and how his family was doing. It was always nice to see him, especially in a kitchen full of southern Americans who talk as if they were from another planet, save a foreign country.

Another reason to like Ghana: they have jokes on their website. Imagine a joke on whitehouse.gov. I think not.

Anyway, here's the joke:

Wife: Why are you home so early?
Husband: My boss told me to go to hell.

See, I told you Ghana is totally awesome.

Dear sir

A few days ago, I was riding the bus on my way to work/school (those of you who know where I go every day probably also have difficulty figuring out which it is) as I usually do, and near the end of the run, I received a phone call.

It was the secretary of a lawyer with whom I had been trying to get in touch, and she wanted to set up a time I could talk to the lawyer. I wasn't in any trouble with the law (if I were to be, I'd have Aaron Spiwak 1L/attorney-at-law/same diff. represent me); I was just working on an article on a Supreme Court death penalty case.

At the end of the conversation, the bus driver (I was the only one left on the bus and was near the front) said to me, "I didn't mean to eavesdrop or anything, but I couldn't help but notice that you were using 'ma'am' a lot during that phone conversation."

Guilty as charged.

"Yeah," I said, "I'm from Tennessee--what can I say?"

I never used to say "ma'am" or "sir" or "y'all" for that matter. I hated those terms, much as I hated how by living in a certain area of the country meant that one had to use a specific, and in this case genteel, vocabulary.

I remember my first few days of seventh grade at MBA (that's Mamma's Boy Academy for those who don't know), my ultra-preppie, must-wear-a-belt/collared shirt/no sneakers, named- after-a-slave-owner school, in which I was repeatedly told that "we use 'ma'am' and 'sir' around here."

These same people--my friends, my teachers--called their parents "ma'am" and "sir," too.

And I thought you call your mom "mom."

Who are these people? And where did they come from?

My parents thought this was funny but expected. They didn't want me to call them "ma'am" and "sir," but when in Rome...

So somewhere between 1995 and today, I picked up the "ma'am/sir" when talking, but only under the following conditions:

1. I'll say it on the phone
2. To someone I don't know
3. When I want/need something from them

Basically, it's used when talking to the cable guy, the guy from Dell, and the woman who takes mysterious purchases off my credit card bill.

Or when I'm interviewing someone for an article or something else related to work and people who are obviously older than me.

What's weird is when someone calls me "sir."

For the first time in my life, I am living in a big city. I appreciate many of the amenities that come with living in Chicago, such as public transportation, civic services like parks and beaches, and many, many professional sports teams.

However, this is the first time that I've had to face the daily bustle, crowded commuting and the poverty that is also a part of big cities.

While it's the first two that I complain the most about, it's the third one that should really bother me. When I get shoved on the train, or someone takes my seat on the bus, the offending person doesn't say to me, "Excuse me, sir."

Rather, it's the guy on the corner holding a cup, the woman in a wheelchair overflowing with bags, and the man bouncing up and down and rubbing his hands trying to stay warm who try to warm up to me by calling me "sir."

"Sir, can you spare some change."

At first when I saw the panhandlers, I didn't notice them. I mean, I did, but I didn't. I was just rushing to home or work or school and didn't care.

"Please, sir," they'd say.

I'm not their cable guy, their computer guy, and they're not about to interview me. So the whole "sir" thing threw me off.

I don't want to be called "sir." Also, I don't want them to be poor.

What's annoying is that it's my mood and whether I'm late for something that determines whether they get the spare change in my pocket.

Also, they're a lot older and have gone through a lot more than I have.

So maybe I should start calling them "sir" as I drop my change in their cups.

Priorities

I'm not posting this week due to a West Wing marathon on Bravo. They're showing season six (the one that aired while I was in Israel last year) every night during the time that would be blogging time.

Also, tomorrow is my dad's birthday. He is as old as the Marshall Plan, the UN's Declaration of Human Rights, Israel, and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Way to go, dad!

Call him Josh

Last night, I went to a hookah bar/restaurant in Lakeview called a la Turka. A Turkish and not a strictly Muslim place as many hookah bars are, this bar serves alcohol, including this Turkish lager called "Efes" ("zero" or "something kinda lame" in Hebrew but "really tasty," or something like that, in Turkish).

But as corny as it sounds, this eatery/smokery specializes in service.

Turkey is three percent in Europe, 97 percent in Asia and 100 percent Middle Eastern. About half an hour into our visit there, while two friends and I were smoking "mix fruit," complaining about the weather and trying to determine the ethnicity of those sitting near us, the owner of the bar, a middle-aged Turkish man named Joshkun, or "Josh" for short, sat down in the empty seat at our table.

Joshkun has short spiked gray hair, a thick black mustache and the body type of a restaurant owner/cook--a little heavy in the paunch.

Jovial and passionate, as soon as Josh sat down, he began to recount his life story: how he grew up in the mountainous northeastern Anatolia (the Asia part) raising horses and cattle. When he came to the U.S. in 1974, he wanted to settle a big, flat city and chose Chicago.

(He said that he doesn't like New York. "Every time I drive on the George Washington Bridge, I think, 'With one bomb...., forget about it.'" Not only would he dead, he added, but those poor people would all be stuck in New Jersey. [The Lincoln Tunnel is out of the question. He doesn't like to drive underwater.])

After working numerous jobs--janitor, cook, cab driver (is it required that all Middle Eastern immigrants drive cabs in big cities? Am I being insensitive or observant?)--he took a job with Federal Express, where he learned the company's philosophy for success. "PSP it's called--"people, service, and success." You have to get the right people around you, teach them how to give a good, reliable service, and then the profits will come.

Simple enough, right?

When Joshkun open his high-end Turkish restaurant in 2001, it was the beginning of our "bagel," or "recession," as it is usually called. He had two very difficult years but then began turning a profit in 2003.

He believes he has achieved his success because of taste of his food--he adds a secret ingredient to lamb and chicken dishes that only his wife knows and makes his cooks turn away for a few minutes while he adds it--and his ability to teach 20 employees how best to serve customers.

Turkish food, he explained us, is recognizable to a large audience, especially in the multi-cultural North Side of Chicago, because there are a number of ethnicities who cook meat in a similar way with their kofta, kebabs, shawarmas, etc.

But what separates his food from others is that Turkish meat melts in your mouth--it doesn't have the lemon juice and garlic or Greek food or the crazy spices of Arabic food--the meat speaks for itself. His meat, killed in accordance with Halal laws, is delivered to his restaurant every other day. What his patrons do not order, he gives to a nearby church.

"We get a tax write-off, the church feeds hungry people, and everyone wins," he said.

Josh has two talented daughters, one a singer still in high school and one an actress who is currently serving as an assistant producer in Hollywood.

(You think your rent is bad, Joshkun's daughter in paying $1800/mo. for a loft in L.A. "But it's very nice," he said.)

Towards the end of his visit with us, Joshkun, in addition to forcing my friends to try his baklava while exhorting them to "open their mouths wide, wide!" as if to swallow the piece whole, gave us bracelets as momentos. These beaded bracelets, one of which is sitting near my computer on my desk, have small, blue eyes that are supposed to guard against the wearer of the bracelet and bring him or her good luck.

"Wear it on your next date," he said to us.

When dining or smoking at the restaurant, Joshkun wants his patrons--his guests--to feel at home: That is the Middle Eastern and Turkish way. Giving guests bracelets as gifts is just another facet of that hospitality.

I can only hope that the good fortune he has had rubs off.

Anyone but the Yankees

I'm thinking of bringing some New York attitude to the Midwest. Everyone here is nice and passive, and I feel like the happy, fat Midwesterners need a little push every now and then.

That's why I'm here.

The weather--and maybe the Yankees' participation in another playoffs series--has made people edgy. For example, I almost got hit by a car that was inching into a pedestrian crosswalk as I was crossing. The little white man (not my roommate) said I could cross, he had a red light, and I almost get hit. The nerve. So we exchange choice words, and he makes like he's going to follow me and kill me with the gun I'm sure he has stored in his glove compartment specifically for these. (Mind you, I was about to walk into a synagogue--so what was he going to do, hit me with a machzor?)

And on the bus today, this lady didn't like the fact that I coughed (I covered), or that I had to read my paper close to her face because it was a crowded bus. So she whined at me, and I told her to get off the bus if she couldn't handle the crowd. Hey, lady, I don't care if it's the slow-as-poop Midwest, there are still 8 million people in this city. So deal.

Take that, Midwest.

Anyone that knows me, though, knows that I'm a softie at heart. I don't like yelling at people, I don't like getting in fights, and I don't hold grudges. I don't like disciplining campers or the kids I teach, and I'm always a mediator between friends.

My positive attitude may seem naive, but I have spent most of my life in the Midwest/ Southeast corridor, and we think like that here.

No matter how much I feel my personality will be partly New York, forever, though I've never lived there for more than a week at a time (does three years in Princeton, N.J., count?), I believe that people--even if they are boring, plump Midwesterners--mean well and have the best intentions in most situations.

Except when they try to hit me with their cars. Idiots.

Apples and Newton for the New Year

It's that time of year.

The leaves are changing. The temperatures are dropping. The New York Mets are watching the playoffs from home.

And some people up in Pennsylvania are thinking that we didn't come from monkeys. What nerve.

For anyone who was an anthropology major in college, took Richard Smith's Human Evolution class at Wash U, or lives in blue state, this is an outrage.

For anyone who's from Tennessee, where the Scopes monkey trial took place 80 years ago, it's par for the course.

"Intelligent design" is the new "creationism." Like in fashion how "black" is the new, well, "black."

The thing that's self-evident about evolution--because it's called evolution--is that certain details of the theory are constantly changing because of new discoveries. An australopithecus here, a aegyptopithecus there, a Taung child down in South Africa (I know; I'm showing off), and the timeline of human-ape divergence gets all messed up by, well, hundreds of thousands of years.

About 2o0-some years after Newton's death, a guy named Einstein came around and disproved certain principles within Newton's three famous theories (which, if I remember correctly without using Google or Wikipedia are 1. gravity!; 2. f=ma; 3. conservation of energy...that whole "blah blah equal and opposition reaction" thing).

But guess what, (proverbial) Einstein, the apple still fell from the tree.

So, intelligent design is dumb. Just like Scientology, the way Chicagoans put cheese in their caramel popcorn and the new shootout rule in the NHL (the hockey season starts tonight).

I'm not sure what the long term effect of the intelligent design debate is, but it brings up another interesting topic that never gets discussed.

Newton, like other Enlightenment-era philosophers and scientists, was a deist. Deists believed that G-d was like a watchmaker--he made the world and then just let it run, like a watch. When it breaks, it breaks, and some wonderful people come along every now and then to fix it.

Those in favor of teaching intelligent design should take a page out of Newton and leave the whole debate behind.

Evolution ain’t broke, so stop trying to fix it.

It's not like you have anything better to do

I want some hours of my life back.

I feel like I spend most of the day doing worthwhile things. I go to school, I hang out with friends, I eat/sleep/bathe.

But every week, every night I go out, there are two hours that are completely worthless for absolutely no reason: The hours of 8-10 p.m.

Take a typical Saturday. Whatever you do during the day, you're usually eating around 7, and you're usually done by 8 or 8:30. But no one goes out until 10 or 10:30. At the earliest.

This phenomenon is something I like to call the dumbest thing ever.

It's not like there's this glut of people, especially in my age group, that gets too much sleep. By putting back our nights back two hours, we're getting two fewer hours of sleep.

If we all went out at 8 pm, we'd have two more hours to be out, or two more hours of sleep. It's a no-brainer.

Of course, this will never happen. In fact, people have started going out later. I used to go out at 10; now it's 11; in Israel it's 12; I think they're up to 12:30 or 1 in Spain.

But in Spain, they have siestas. There are no siestas in America. And because of that, I need my sleep.

See you at the bar at 8.