Quick note on Rahm Emanuel

Today has been rife with coverage on White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's degree of influence in the Oval Office. See this, this, this, this, this and this (from a week ago). No real comment on this at the moment, but after seeing all of these articles and the accompanying pictures of Emanuel, one thing stuck out in my mind: Boy, does he look like Vincent Curatola, the actor that plays Johnny Sack on The Sopranos. Photo evidence:

 

 

 

And hey, they even share similar anecdotes:

Phil Leotardo: Jesus Christ...that's like forty grand. You gotta be fuckin' kiddin' me, John.

Johnny Sack: Am I smilin'? 

Johnny Sack: You either deliver that prick to my door, or I will rain a shitstorm down on you and your family like you have never fucking seen.

Johnny Sack: You know somethin' Ralph, not only are you a thief, you're a lying fucking prick. I should've let Tony chop your head off a year ago.

Rahm Emanuel: [You liberal activists are] fucking retarded.

I rest my case. Rahm Emanuel = Johnny Sack.

Welcome to Calyzstan

Well, here it is: my initial foray into the writing side of the blogosphere. As such, this first post is obligated to be a meta-post. Blogging about blogging. I can't promise that this will be the last post in this vein, but maybe it will be. Later on, more (or perhaps less) substantial matters will appear, and blog about them I shall.

At any rate, I've been getting more interested in blogs lately, so I figured it was high time for me to try my hand at blogging. So far, so good.

I initially envisioned that this site would be called www.calistan.blogspot.com. Turns out that someone already has this domain. And you can see for yourself what great things they have done with this. After a brief panic (how could I possibly think of a new name for my blog?!) I looked into WordPress. Yes, I admit it; rest assured that I never posted there. Flash forward five minutes and presto, I tweaked the name a bit and am now the arbiter of www.calyzstan.blogspot.com. Welcome.

A brief note on the name. Throughout parts of my younger years I have been referred to as "Cal" or "Cals"/"Calz." The nickname of "Calvin" has also been thrown around (by one person), but I can attest that none of these are actually my name. This lineage also produced the term "Calistan," and its current spelling of "Calyzstan" I believe reflects the proper pronunciation best. For clarification, that's Cal (as in Cal Ripken Jr.) -istan (as in Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, or Kyrgyzstan -- sorry, Kazakhstan). This will most likely be a point of confusion going forward.

The significance of naming this blog after an old one-off nickname came to me a couple of hours ago while eating dinner at The Spotted Pig in New York. Perhaps it was the cheeseburger and shoestring fries, or maybe it was the Old Speckled Hen on draft that got me thinking that this would be the right name for the blog I was soon to give life to. The idea as I recall now was that the blog would be my domain of sorts, or my territory. Given that "-stan" derives from the Persian word for "place of," I figured that Calyzstan fit the bill.

As for the content of this blog, it will be an assortment, a mish-mash, a potpourri, a minestrone blog soup, if you will. I intend to post an "eclectic" mix of content ranging from what's going on in the world to what's going on in my life. Not too descriptive and purposefully vague? You betcha. Future posts will speak for themselves.