Uh-ungawa we got the powah

Just a quick update so I remember that this thing is here.

Plodding along on the Step 1 studying as the calendar continues it's march to June 12. Somedays I think it can't come fast enough and other days I don't ever want it to come. I've convinced myself that I can get an average score no problem. The question is if I can a standard above the mean ( about 85th to 90th percentile). I think that would be a rather large feat for myself. :cueannoyingcliche: Only time will tell.

April 2008 has a nicer ring to it than October 2007. Plus it has the added bonus that we'll know where we're spending the next few years (I'm not entirely sure why that matters) and I'll be about 100 fold calmer. October just had this impending doom feeling surrounding it. Residency applications are due by November 1st and if I want to take Step 2, late Sept or early Oct might be one of the best times. So to say I might have other things on my mind is an understatement. I'm of the mindset that I'd like to get married when it can be at the top of my priority list. I'm sure you agree.

I had an interesting exam today with the SPs (standardized patients) where I had to counsel a female patient who just found out she was HIV positive on why she should inform her husband, get informed consent for a 55 year old patient to have a screening flexible sigmoidoscopy, and tell a 34 year old alcholic that he had pancreatic cancer. Oh and I had to diagnose a headache case. One of the more entertaining exams I've ever had in my life. There's something rewarding about being given information and then being asked to tailor it on the fly to a particular situation. It's, like, they wanted us to use our analytical and problem solving skills. Will wonders of higher education never cease.

Before we go back to the grindstone, I'll leave you with some pop cultural type musings.

Music: The Gnarls Barkley album, St. Elsewhere, is nice but it doesn't really impress outside of Crazy. If you enjoy Cee-Lo or Dangermouse I'm sure you'll find things about it that you enjoy. The new Ghostface album, Fishscale, on the other hand is brilliant through and through. Ghost gets back to his early Wu-Tang roots talking about the streets, drugs, and NYC. It doesn't hurt that he finally linked up with some beatsmiths who do a great job of complementing his unique flow and delivery. Going to see A-Trak and The Rub on Saturday night as a 'congratulations to myself on being completely done with two years of medical school' since practicum is over on Friday.

Movies: Thank You For Smoking was thoroughly enjoyable. Aaron Eckhardt and Rob Lowe gave great performances and Katie Holmes was surprisingly non-intrusive. She was boderline enjoyable to watch. A lot of good, dark comedy and some excellent dialogue. 16 Blocks was a nice little thriller, if perjorative in it's predictability. Mos turned in yet another brilliant performance. If you're reading this Mos, it's time to give up the rap game and devote yourself full time to this acting thing. You've found your calling. Akeelah and the Bee was a cross between formulaic success from the ghetto stories and the Matrix. That's right. Fishbourne was Morpheus, Akeelah is Neo, Javier is Trinity, Darryl Chiu is Agent Smith, his dad is the Architect, Akeelah's mom is the Oracle, and Derek T the neighborhood dealer is Cypher. I think. I won't lie, I found myself a little misty eyed at the end.

Books: This Opal Mehta business is out of hand. I'm supposed to believe the ignorance of yet ANOTHER publishing company this year? I think not. I don't doubt for a minute that these 'packagers' had at least a suspicion that Opal Mehta bore a striking resemblance to another chicklit tome. Why you ask? Because all chicklit bears resemblance to each other. Wayne Marshall over at wanyeandwax.blogspot.com (sorry hyperlinking is broke and I'm too lazy to do it the long handed way) brings forth an interesting argument that perhaps Opal Mehta is more original than we think. He compares the culling together of various literary sources as analogous to a DJ culling together various audio sources for a mixtape or liveset. As someone who's a proponent of DJ culture and bringing together sources that might not normally be thought of as going down smoothly together, I'd love to agree with wayne. Unfortunately, I think it's somewhat different in this case. That's not how the book was marketed and no credit was given to the sources borrowed from. When a DJ does a mixtape he makes no pretenses about the originality of his presentation. And the tracklisting acknowledges that very fact. Opal Mehta contained no such tracklisting. But I'd be interested to see an original work that culled together reconstructed passages from other literary sources in an attempt to create WJ (word jockey?) mixbook.

That's it for now, join us next week as we explore the mating rituals of the yellow throated warbler. Or I'll just give yet another exciting update on my Step 1 studying. It's a push as to which topic would be more enthralling for the two people who read this.

Lunar cycles

Seems like that's how often I update this beast. Back in January I said to myself "Self, look at all these blogs out there. You too could write a blog and keep the 3 people who might be interested, updated on your life and your current interests ." It seemed like I wasted a lot of time online as it was, so I figured I'd leave a little something behind. Turns out I'm better at being a passive particpant in the interweb than an active one. Oh well.

For those who ever read this and are curious: I'm doing alright. Finished the second year of med school. Two years left and it's all clinical from here on out. I'll be excited as soon as I get these pesky boards out of the way. June 12th is my personal day of doom. Unfortunately, the brilliant administrators at my fine institution of higher learning have us spending the next several weeks in the hospital -- not that we need the time to study or anything.

Trying to nail down a date and locale for the wedding. Might be October 2007, might be April 2008. 95% certain of the locale. If you want to know more and you're reading this, holla at me.

Things I'm currently enjoying:

1) Books on Tape (the band, not the object)
2) Jamie Lidell's live show (combining his more recent funk musings with his earlier work as Supercollider, amazing performer, you can find some videos at YouTube)
3) The Mixing Bowl (bit torrent site for all things DJ mixes)
4) Big Love (only HBO could pull off a family drama involving polygamy)
5) Wax Poetics (my favorite music magazine out right now, I pull it out to read in the hospital during downtime and get reactions such as "Hip Hop, Funk, Soul and Jazz? You like that sort of thing?")
6) Williams-Sonoma cookbooks (my knowledge of culinary texts + Alex's culinary skill = tasty food for us)
7) I Am 8-Bit Art Show (and another gallery for you to peruse)
8) Apple's new Boot Camp (bye bye PCs, all about a triple boot - Windows, OS X, Linux - on a nice MacBook for me)
9) The Newsvine (it's like a combo of meta-news and blogging with the added benefit of having several news wire services, recommended if you like to comment and debate as you read your news)
10) Buying Disney Classics on DVD. Nothing like falling asleep while watching The Sword and the Stone. Merlin owns you.

Thought I was done for a minute there

I typed so much and so long in that last post, I guess I figured that would hold everyone over for a month while I took an unforseen sabbatical. I'll try no to do that again, but I make very few promises.

Dishes are done, man! Or midterms. Same thing. You can use a shotgun to finish both. Or not. They seem to have gone well, but I won't really know until I see my grades.

Just one more month of actual classes and then I'm done with M2 year. There's this pesky issue of boards, but I'm going to continue to ignore that for as long as I can. (Translation: I've already started reading the damn Kaplan books... sigh)

Alright time for more exciting things.

1) Dave Chappelle's Block Party. Directed by Michel Gondry (you may remember him from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and several amazing music videos including the Lego video for The White Stripes - Fell in Love With a Girl) and featuring The Roots (with Kool G Rap and Big Daddy Kane on Boom!), Mos Def and Talib Kweli (performing solo joints and Blackstar songs), Common, Kanye West (with a damn marching band... what?!?!), Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, dead prez, and a Fugees reunion.

There are so many things that make me happy about this movie. I've wanted to see it ever since I heard about the Block Party back in the fall of 2004. Dave Chapelle says it was the concert he always wanted to see and I can strongly echo that. There are some phenomenal musicians in that group and they all have worked with each other in the past.

I can't say much without spoiling the film, but I will hit some of my favorite highlights: anytime Dave Chapelle has a megaphone in hand, You Got Me with Erykah Badu and Jill Scott, Dave in not one but two battles, Wyclef making a song up on the spot with some members of a university marching band, Dave on congos, Dave and Mos Def's comedy act... the list goes on and on and on and on.

I'll be buying this on DVD when it comes out and I'll be hoping for footage of the concert in it's entirety. I don't care how many discs that takes. I'll find money for it. Oh and the soundtrack drops next week.

The film's gotten rave reviews. If you're a fan of music, comedy, parties, hope for the youth, or just life... see this movie. You'll love it. And if you don't you can come back here and complain to me. And I'll refund your money. Or I'll apologize and question your tatse in the arts. Either one, my choice.


2) NPR has mp3s of the New Pornographers and Belle & Sebastian concert from the 930 Club in DC. Both are excellent and are highly recommended.


3) Discobelle stole Chris Lemon-Red's idea on the mixtape front and this month they have Caps & Jones in the mix. As good as the mix they had on Lemon-Red last year, if not better.


4) Saw Walk the Line and North Country over the weekend. I was really impressed with both films. Some fantastic performances in both -- but I felt the story in both movies was lacking, which strikes me as evidence of a larger problem in most of the movies I've seen in the last few years. Even if the performances are good/great and the film is beautifully shot, the story is often lacking. Not so much the dialogue as the plot. Both films were entertaining and I'd watch them again in a heartbeat but I had real issues in the way the story unfolded. Which I guess Hollywood saw too since neither film was up for 'Best Picture award' but both had several of their performances nominated.

My issue with Walk the Line was that the entire film revolved around Johnny and his love for June and how it ultimately drove him to drugs (although that's not entirely true) and how June saved him in the end. Great story... except that I've heard it before and I've seen it told better before. I know it's hard to cover Johnny and June's entire career in 2 hours, but it would have been nice to focus on aspects other than his drug addiction and their love story. I just think it prevented a good movie from being a great movie.

I don't know where to start with North Country. I really enjoyed every single performance in the film, but by intertwining the trial with the backstory I felt that both got downplayed. I'm not saying they shouldn't have told the story that way -- but I think it could have been done better if that's the way they chose to tell it. It was a powerful film no matter how much you critique it... again I'm just nit-picking. It pains me to watch a film and see that it could have probably been even better than it was if certain changes were made here and there.

We're waiting to watch Do the Right Thing (a film that Crash wishes it was), Proof (it best be as good as other said) and Howl's Moving Castle (I saw the first five minutes and was very impressed, then again it's Miyazaki so how could it not be?). Reports on those in the next few days.

5) My requisite medical blather for the week/month/whatever: There's a nice cover feature in Newsweek's current issue on the new nutritional recommendations and research: Diet Dilemma. Basically it says that it's not just your diet that controls your health destiny and that science still doesn't know everything about how one's diet affects one's health. Shocking news. Really. You may have to get off your rather rotund ass and exercise too. They don't say that in the article, but I'm telling you it's true. Don't worry, you can trust me. I'm almost a doctor. But really, read the article. It's smarter than I am.

125 Days Until Hell

After staring at a hideous, orange piece of paper for enough weeks you finally take it upon yourself to do something about that hideous, orange piece of paper. What's my hideous, orange piece of paper all about you ask? Scheduling my exam date for Step 1 of the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE). That hideous, orange piece of paper has been sitting on or near my desk for about 4 weeks now. The idea was: if I ignored that piece of paper long enough, maybe I could devise an ingenous plan... the culmination of that plan being a way out of taking Step 1. As it turns out, Step 1 is sort of an important requirement. Something about ensuring all future medical professionals know the difference between a Bartholin cyst and a Nabothian cyst blahblahblahblah. Whatever. It's done and now I have 125 days until the test that will ultimately determine whether I get a residency I want. The more subtle (and much more dire) part of that equation is that i have about 90 days until I have to be serious in my preparation for Step 1. Enough medical talk. Or maybe we should have some more medical talk...

I was fortunate enough to attend an interesting meeting today with several members of my school's administration and our IT people. I've always been interested in education methods whether they were my own, my colleagues, my siblings', or simply educational theory in general. Today's meeting covered bringing our medical school curriculum into the 21st century with the aid of podcasting, wireless PDAs, and tablet PCs. My greatest gripe: Apple had several prime seats at this alleged roundtable. Now I don't have anything particuarly against the Apple Corporation. In fact, my fiancee has a 12" iBook that I 'borrow' rather regularly. But I have a problem when Apple tries to interject themselves into an open discussion on the use of technology in (and out) of the classroom, especially when it comes to the topic of audio/visual learning modalities. I have a hard time believing anyone who has their fist thrust deeply into the proprietary filetype honeypot (as Apple does with their AAC audio format and the ironic Windows-like domination of iTunes over the digital music world) could truly have the greater good of education at the forefront of their mind. But I digress (mostly I rant, but I'll label this as a digression).

We began with discussing the recent shift from streaming-only to 'podcasting' of the Anatomy Saturday reviews. Last year the 4 hour long (and often longer) reviews were recorded and then posted on to the Blackboard site so that students could review it at their leisure. Due to all sorts of logistical nightmares they couldn't support podcasting of these reviews... until recently. Several M1s were present who told of a mythical land where one could download these files and then watch them on their video iPods during their daily bus or L commute. For a moment I thought I was attending a private school. It was that exciting. After a debate on whether this should be approached across the curriculum it was decided to start with 'content reviews' and then slowly move toward systematic recording and podcasting of every lecture. The main obstacle to all of this is lecturer concern over presenting copyrighted photographs during their lectures. The obvious way around this would be to allow access to the podcasts through a university ID & password protected site (say... like... maybe... Blackboard?!??!?!!!?). Then the professors were concerned that their no-good students might decide to share these files with the world. Fortunately one of our deans pointed out that maybe our main concern shouldn't be whether or not the students were going to distribute these files worldwide (I can't tell you the number of times each day I get a request from Norway for one of our Pharmacology lecture mp3s) but whether providing the students with this service would a) improve their ability to learn the information presented, b) foster a better relationship between the administration and the student body, and c) challenge the faculty to present the highest quality lectures (since it may be available to a scrutinizing world wide audience).

It seems like anything that's offered up for podcasting is going to be available through iTunes U which is Apple's new education and university specific portal they've been working on with Duke, Standford, and Michigan. And they're not going to be utilizing and DRMs and everything should be available in formats that are non-proprietary. I can live with all of that. Steve Jobs you have my blessing (like you needed it).

Two of the best ideas that I heard today involved the clinical curriculum. The course director of our Essentials of Clinical Procedures and Professionalism wants to podcast video demonstrations of all the core procedures that M3s and M4s need to perform. Again this was presented as quick review before you have to perform it on a patient, not as first-time learning. These files could then be played back on a video iPod or capable PDA. That's pretty exciting in my mind. I always felt I would be much better at doing a one-off blood draw if I could quickly review the procedure before I had to do it. He's also looking to do something similar for his OB/GYN interns and the rarer procedures they're called on to perform. Another course director is talking about podcasting an entire fourth year elective course in medical safety, almost in the same vein as many of the Continuing Medical Education courses currently be offered. The best part is that they're being designed in an interactive fashion: after several minutes of video a question is asked and based on the student's response you're taken down one path or another. It's the Choose Your Own Adventure of medical education. Maybe I'm just geeking out here as someone who is both a student and a teacher, but I know that anytime you can make learning more interactive, you have a much stronger guarantee of the student retaining that knowledge.

I think that's about everything. The head IT person for the college of medicine and I had a nice chat about requiring laptops (instead of either a desktop OR a laptop). I think it would be the smart direction to move things especially considering that almost the entire college supports wireless and the amount of versatility that a tablet PC gives you. Unfortunately, the administration doesn't see it that way and they also want to mandate that if you want full school support for your laptop (if it was to be required) that you'd have to purchase one of three brands (Apple, Dell, Toshiba, etc). I don't think that's too horrible of a proposition. First of all, we can get any computer purchase covered by financial aid loans as an academic expense (when you're looking at $160,000 in debt what's $2Gs more?). Secondly, the vast majority of my class uses a laptop anyway. I imagine that percentage only growing as the years wear on. They could even hold several sessions during the fall M1 semester with the goal to show students how to get the most out of their 'academic expenses'. Oh well, it's a public school and change happens slowly. I'm almost willing to put money on that mandate being in place by 2010. Almost.

Of Arena Football and Swahili Phrasebooks

Sometimes you actively have to try to make your weekends happen... and other times things just fall into your lap. Last night was one of the latter. The Chicago Rush game was a pretty good time. Arena football reminds me of watching a high school football game: lots of guys who seem to be playing somewhat out of their position based on body type and athletic ability. Anyway, there were several highlights of the evening both on and off the football field. We get to the Allstate Arena and take our seats behind a rather rowdy local high school football team who's coach apparently plays for the New York Dragons. It's always fun watching a game with people who for one inexplicable reason or another are emotionally invested in the outcome. Jenny got rather agitated about something at one point and tossed some of her beer on me followed by Kathryn making a comment that caused Jenny to spew the rest of her posse with the EtOH in her mouth. I'll take fresh beer on the clothes over backwash on the head anyday. King High School's marching band was in the house and they did a pretty nice rendition of "Don't Phunk With My Heart" and followed that with one of the numbers from Drumline. I found out that Jenny has seen Drumline about 10 times; and I thought my love for the movie was excessive. The Rush ended up losing the game on the last play: they were down 4 and driving from about the 3 yard line with 9 seconds left. The play looked like a bust, but somehow the QB managed to wrangle his way around a few NY defenders and scored as time ran out. But then the flags game out and the refs called a 'block to the back' penalty on one of the Rush's offensive lineman. Game Over. More excitement than any NFL game I've ever attended. Still not touching a Duke-Carolina game in Cameron.

Afterwards we headed to the car and here I have to give some love to the Rosemont PD. Best traffic management I've ever seen with 15,000 people all trying to leave the same place at once. We didn't wait in a line at all. Good on them. After we got back home we headed to Arturo's for some much needed margaritas and mexican. Some friends of Kathryn's were throwing an early birthday party for her so Reuben and I tracked that down (Alex begged off because of a wondrous work obligation early the next morning). I wish I could tell the whole, sordid story of what happened at that party, but let's just say in a two hour time span it managed to run the gamut of "Let's steal some liqour and blow this pop stand" to "We can't leave yet, I've put in too much time to leave empty handed." That's all I'll say. I'm not gonna blow up anyone's spot on a blog. But I will say it was by far the best house party I've been to since finishing undergrad. The Unintentional Comedy Scale topped over 100 several times.

The agenda for tonight is getting some more Pathology done, grabbing a burger (Alex is experiencing a red meat craze or she's iron deficient... fielder's choice), and heading over to Sam's to partake in their 6 pack sale.

Even if you don't like reggae I've got to say DJ Eleven's mix (see the Lemon-Red link in the Feb 2 post) might change your mind. I don't think it's possible to listen to good reggae and not imagine yourself inna JA during the balmy yet beautiful summer. Which is a far better mental picture than the dreariness of Chicago in February.

Day 2 on the Alien Planet

Some interesting things from around the horn:

One of the posters over at OkayPlayer came up with this hilarious concept for a Snakes on a Plane comic strip. If you're not familiar with SoaP... then you need to spend more time on the internet. Seriously? Snakes on a Plane? It can only be described as the greatest movie of next year. All you really need to know is that it involves Samuel L Jackson, snakes, and a plane. How can this movie not make money?

Pandora vs. Last.fm Picked up on this via Waxy. I did a bit of my own testing but it's still in the preliminary stages. I will say that I like Pandora's business model better than Last's. And by business model I mean that I don't have to download any software from Pandora like you do with Last. That's a big plus in my book. It's also a plus with my over-the-hill laptop (4+ years old). The biggest thing that Last has going for it is that you're almost assured to find someone who is familiar with an artist you're looking for. When I typed in 'Breakage' on Last.fm I got a nice list of drum n bass producers who have a similar sound. Makes sense because dnb is a rather small scene so if someone listens to Breakage they're also bound to listen to Fracture + Neptune, Paradox, Pieter K, Seba, etc. However, when I tried Pandora... well they just gave me the gas face. Or at least the search engine equivalent of the gas face. Pandora's one limit right now is the amount of music it can realistically license and categorize. I was pleasantly surprised when I added Diplo, RJD2, and DJ Shadow to my 'favorite artists' and ended up with tracks ranging from Plaid to Squarepusher to Cex to Funki Porcini and about a dozen artists I had never heard of. And that's the whole point of these two websites: to help you find more music. Now whether that's just blissful altruism for those of us who can't get enough music or a good business model (Here's a new artist and here's a link to their album on Amazon. No the RIAA had nothing to do with this. Look here's a Prefuse 73 song to keep you happy.) is the topic of another post. In any case, I'm going to keep testing out Pandora so expect some further updates.

On the movie front, I'm really intersted to see Bubble. It's gotten some relatively favorable reviews from well known critics (not that it should mean anything... but it does) and it's Steven Soderbergh. He always manages to bring something interesting to the table. Not something I'd rush out and buy though since there's going to be at least 5 more volumes in this experiment, all in the same vein: shot on HDV on locations around the US with amateur casts. I like the six volume idea if only for the fact that it leaves room for improvement each time around. On the bright side that should ensure at least two more Ocean films. Hey the man's gotta make a living somehow.

And to music. Now if I had the ability (I have no idea where these audiobloggers find these digital dubplates), money (for webspace), and time (blahblahmedicalschoolblahblah) I'd love to be the one lacing the internet with the newest newness that's out there. But I'm not. So for now I'll resort to yousendit, rapidshare, and megaupload and 'borrowing' songs from other bloggers. Not without full credit of course.

This one shouldn't be such a surprise to me: Diplo remixing the Yeah Yeah Yeahs new single. Who would have thought Diplo likes toying around with New Yorkers and their guitars? If you said everyone who had ever heard one of his Hollertronix mixes you would be absolutely correct. But it's not the pairing here that's news. It's the quality of the final product. I've been a big Diplo fan for a year now and I'm always suprised at his ear for layering musical styles together that have as much in common as pork tenderloin does to olive loaf. But there was no mash-up here, just a straightforward remix. And the man absolutely smashes it. I think it's his best work to date, but don't take my word for it (c) Lamar Burton.

Chris over at Lemon-Red continues his amazing monthly mix series, this time with the Rub boys. And not just one but three mixes: reggae from Eleven (nothing better to help you forget it's the middle of winter), old school jams from Ayres, and Cosmo Baker's remix-a-thon. It's like Christmas but in February. And with mp3s instead of real, tangible presents. I'd say more but everything you need to know is over at Lemon-Red.


Think that's it for this evening. Tomorrow I've got a focused physical exam workshop to look forward to and an arena football game with the oddest mish mash of people to ever pay money for a sporting event: the fiancee, the roommate, the Spainard, the 28 year old M1 with her MPH, her friend, and some other assorted M1s. Basically you have a truckload of med students (some of whom don't even like football) and some crazy people who agreed to go to said game with med students. Clearly I no longer value my sanity.

First times the charm

Well I took a leap. Not a huge leap for myself or man kind or the space program. More like a leap for me to have yet another way of wasting time while I pursue this medical degree. Because I need more of those (ways to waste time, not medical degrees... you only need one MD... I hope). This can't hurt right? It's not like I'm two organ systems behind in studying or anything. Oh wait... yeah I am.

Before I forget, don't fall for my "woe is me, I'm a poor medical student" bullsh*t. In fact, don't ever let any med student bitch to you about how much work they have to do. We all like to complain about how hard it is. And yes there is a fair amount of learning and studying involved, but we wouldn't be doing it if we didn't want to. At the end of the day though, most of us will be getting paid a pretty large sum of money to go to work at a job we love. Where we get to help people and maybe even save some lives and improve someone's quality of life. Sounds like the kind of job everyone would like to have.

In all honesty, I'm probably happier studying medicine than I would be in any other career... except maybe music or film. And I don't have much natural talent in those areas. I have a lot of opinions on both, but no real skill with either medium. I'm like an untalented version of Kevin Federline *shudder*

So for anyone who's managed to stumble upon this work in progress, drop a bookmark and check in on the daily. I spend a large amount of my free time online just mucking about(when I'm not planning a wedding or spending time with my fiancee). If we're all lucky I'll remember to drag some of that muck back this way. You can expect a decent amount of talk on music (with links to some of the better stuff that I can help you get your hands on), films, and other pop culture madness. But wait there's more. In my inestimable generosity, I'll also be waxing philosophical on science/medicine/technology and anything else out there that I think people should give a damn about. I'll try to stay away from politics and religion in order to keep this thing dinner-table friendly. Hopefully it'll reach some level of entertainment. Oh and there'll probably be some sports talk as well. Don't look at me like that. I have a Y chromosome, it's a gift and a curse. Learn to love it.