8/12/10 A Comedic Epiphany

This sounds impossible, but my son Ian figured out how to "fart with his neck," as he so eloquently phrased it . . . he raises his shoulders to his ears and creates the suction that is normally generated with the classic "cupped hand under the armpit" fart, but this way he can produce fart sounds when his hands are occupied (and he has found that this only works when the humidity level is over 75%).

A Fishy Meal

A few weeks ago, we were eating cod from Costco-- each fillet is frozen in its own plastic pouch-- when Catherine discovered a long pink worm in her piece, and this skeeved her out so much that she refused eat any of the other pieces of that batch of cod, but though she wouldn't eat the fish herself, she had no problem feeding it to our kids . . . who ate it without a problem . . . and someday, if the internet doesn't implode on itself when the singularity arrives, Alex and Ian will read this and either laugh or decide to seek revenge.

8/10/10 A Horticultural Surprise

It's rare that something actually lives up to its expectations, but my wife's butterfly bush almost always has a butterfly on it.

8/9/10 Nap Etiquette

I waited until the air-conditioning repair guys went to lunch before I took a nap on the couch; it's embarrassing to sleep in the daytime in front of people who are working with their hands.

Huey, Willie, and Bill

The classic novel All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren, is ostensibly the fictionalized story of Huey Long, the amoral populist Louisiana demagogue known as the "kingfish" . . . Warren embodies him in Willie Stark, known to his men as "the boss," and the novel delves deeply into the corrupt politics of the South and into the paradoxical soul of "the boss"-- he wants to do good for the poor, but he's got to get his hands dirty to do so (Stark is also reminiscent of Bill Clinton-- the arc of their ascent and their rhetorical strengths are similar) but really the book is about the narrator, Jack Burden-- he is an advisor to Willie Stark-- and how Jack grapples with the forces of history and slowly moves from believing in a detached deterministic universe (his Great Twitch theory) to finally believing in something larger (and there's also a scene right out of Star Wars: in between the philosophizing and politics, there's quite a bit of melodrama . . . a tour de force and a great read: ten sugar cubes out of ten).

8/7/10 Are You Average?

The average Facebook user has 130 friends . . . but how many of these people would you lend money to . . . or invite to a party at your house . . . or trust to take care of your dog/ gerbil/ kids . . . or allow to drive your car?

8/6/10 Larry David is Funny

Two throwaway bits from the first episode of Season 7 of Curb Your Enthusiasm that I loved: 1) Larry calls the apricot a "low percentage fruit . . . only one in thirty is any good" 2) Larry is informed that the neighbors have been talking about recent burglaries in the neighborhood, and he is far more paranoid about talking to the neighbors than the robberies . . . "the burglars want your stuff and the neighbors want your time; I'd rather lose my stuff than my time."

A Political Thought Experiment

If we could divide our nation into two, and all the Red State Conservatives lived on one side and the Blue State Liberals lived on the other, and you had to choose where you were going to live and you couldn't switch . . . would you live on the unregulated, low taxation, abortion is illegal, few social services, health care for those with jobs, non-unionized, lobbyist empowered, large gap between rich and poor, underfunded public education Red side or the high taxation, plenty of social services, abortion is legal, marijuana is legal, universal health care, unionized, regulated markets and financial institutions, pro-public education Blue side?

Just Say Your Sorry!

Another tip from social scientist Dan Ariely:  saying "sorry" really does have a beneficial effect . . . Ariely proved this by setting up a simple experiment where the technician running the experiment takes a cell-phone call in the middle of questioning the subject-- and rudely ignores him for a time-- but later the subject has a chance to exact "revenge" when the technician over-pays him for his efforts; if the technician did NOT take the cell phone call, then the subject usually gave back the overpayment, but the times the technician took the call, the subject usually exacted pecuniary revenge for  the rudeness . . . unless the technician said, "Sorry, I shouldn't have taken that call" afterward . . . but, of course, if Ariely simply watched this scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (when Lancelot storms the wedding and kills the best man and many other guests, but ends up getting along smashingly with the King because he apologizes for his violent actions) the he wouldn't have had to go through all the trouble of running the experiment.

Bonus at Gheorghe:The Blog . . . The Internet is for Corn-Hole

If you want to learn more about corn-hole performance during Outer Banks Fishing Trip XXVII, check this post out . . . you will also learn about the true purpose of the internet.

OBFT XVII

Highlights (and lowlights) of the Outer Banks Fishing Trip XXVII . . . worst water ever, cold and full of sea lice and jellyfish, which led to the most corn-hole playing ever, my right hamstring and back muscles actually started to get sore from tossing those beanbags . . . after a sound beating by the Bill/Whit corn-hole dynasty, Jerry and Chris go inside and Google "how to toss a corn-hole beanbag" and then return minutes later and drub the dynasty . . . Bruce a.k.a. "Windy Buttocks" gives an extemporaneous wind report off the deck of the Martha Wood . . . T.J. tries to leap the chair, although "leap" probably isn't the correct word . . . a fantastic sit-com called "T.J. and the Weave" also featuring "Jerry" . . . two guys with mustaches . . . Lacey the bartender is pregnant so we do the math (and also try to name the baby "Whitney" but she says it sounds too snobby) . . . a discussion of The Book of Mormon . . . Bruce tries to change seats at Tortuga's because of the "menu game" . . . the advent of the Tortuga's "bar crawl" and a cyber-method of persuading someone to pick them up . . . thanks again for another successful trip,Whit.

Bonus : A Pertinent SNL Skit

Here is a related SNL skit (thanks to Greg) that is almost as funny as the last sentence:  "How Much Ya Bench."

8/2/10 This Won't Help What People Think Of New Jersey

My friend Bruce runs Kittyhawk Kites down on the Outer Banks, and he often teaches hang-gliding lessons at Jockey's Ridge, and this was his unfortunate experience with a Jersey guy a few weeks ago:  the guy was built well, he certainly worked out, but he was having trouble flying the glider (actually, a lighter touch works much better) and not getting half the distance the rest of his group was getting, so Bruce took him aside and gave him a few pointers, and then when the guy walked back over to his friend, and Bruce clearly heard him say: "Yeah, so that guy knows a lot about hang-gliding, but how much can he bench?"

8/1/10 Family Life: A Portrait

A snapshot of our family life:  my lovely wife agreed to sugar-wax the disgusting patches of hair off my back, which really hurt, so my youngest son held my hand during the process, and while my wife ripped and teared away I told my other son that if I was a movie star, they'd depilate my entire body, which would really hurt and he said, "But do they let fat guys be movie stars?" and then he qualified it and said, "Not like you . . . even fatter, like THIS fat" and he mimicked being really fat with his hands and I said, "Sure, John Candy and John Belushi and Chris Farley and Jack Black were all fat movie stars," and he said, "Oh yeah, if you had a fat movie star you could paint him brown and he'd be like a piece of poop, that would be funny" and this image of painting someone like John Candy poop brown made us all laugh really hard (despite the fact that Catherine was dripping hot wax on my back and then yanking it off) and then Catherine said, "Our son is weird."

7/31/10 A Metaphor for a Large Dead Jellyfish

I followed a link about a "large dead jellyfish" that my friend sent out on Twitter-- I am a sucker for that sort of thing-- and found out that a large Lion's man jellyfish broke apart near a New Hampshire beach and stung nearly one hundred people, but what interested me more than the actual jellyfish was the metaphor that State Park Manager Ken Loughlin used to describe the size of the jellyfish:  he said it was the "size of a turkey platter," which grosses me out, because he's associating a delicious land animal with a giant aquatic sac of poison, and now when I think of Thanksgiving, I think of a giant seething jellyfish on a silver platter and I blame Ken Loughlin for this and I'm sure he's ruined Thanksgiving for everyone else who read that article . . . and so I think he should be fired-- or at least put on probation and have to do a hundred hours of dead jellyfish picking on the New Hampshire beaches.

7/30/10 A Musical Analogy

Brent Mason's instrumental "Hotwired" is the country analogue to Eddie Van Halen's "Eruption."

Ouch!

Last week I used the gift certificate my brother gave me for a massage-- it wasn't at the usual Asian place I go to, instead I went to a girl my brother knew from high school and she hurt me-- it was not relaxing at all-- and I feel like as I've gotten older I've built up a tolerance for deep tissue massage and I sort of pride myself on being able to take some pretty rough body work, but I had to say uncle a couple times to this chick, who was built like a power lifter and liked to stick her elbow deep into recesses in my back and buttocks until I cried like a little girl, and I know in the end it's worth it, after a day of being very sore, but I remember the days of going and getting a nice light oily rub and napping . . . and this sort of reminds me of eating spicy food, it starts as something fun and exotic, you use some hot sauce or order something a bit spicy for variety, but then suddenly your ordering things as hot as they come just to prove you can take it and then it's not about enjoying the food any more, it's about withstanding the pain . . . but I think I'll go back to her, she played cool bhangra music while she tortured me.

Spandex: Pros and Cons

These are the pros of wearing spandex under your shorts during a run on the beach: 

1) no chafing 

2) when you're finished running, you can strip off your shorts and put them high and dry on the sand, your iPod and condo keys safely tucked away in the pockets, and jump in the water wearing just the spandex . . . and then you can put your shorts back on for the walk home and enjoy the benefit of #1 . . . 

and there is only one con but it is a major one, if you happen to be an early riser and you are serenely walking down the beach, collecting shells or watching for porpoises, you might run into a hairy man coming out of the ocean, stuffed into a pair of slightly too small spandex shorts, like a sausage bursting from its casing, and that hairy man would be me . . . but sorry early risers: there's no way I'm risking chafing.

Bonus at Gheorghe: The Blog!

I've just created a new Oscar category over at Gheorghe: The Blog . . . if you've got the time, check it out.

7/27/10 An Antagonistic Encounter with a NAVY Seal . . . or maybe not.

After dinner, I was waiting outside a sushi place with a friend when an SUV whipped around the corner of the parking lot and nearly hit a middle-aged guy walking across the road, and the middle aged guy yelled "Asshole!" at the SUV and the driver of the SUV yelled "Suck my dick!" and the middle aged guy yelled "It's too small!" and the driver, a young guy got out and started advancing toward the older guy and my friend Mike said, "Get back in your car" and we did what teachers do-- we positioned ourselves in between the two parties-- and the driver's friend entered the scene now, with an unlit cigarette in his mouth (flipped the wrong way)  and the young guy looked at my friend Mike, who's pretty big, and said, "Where did you guys come from?" and Mike said, "Get back in your car" and then the strange thing happened-- the young driver opened his wallet and flashed a card or something and said, "You're lucky I didn't kick all your asses! I'm a NAVY Seal" and then he jumped back in his car and drove away . . . but he was sort of pear shaped for a young guy and he didn't really look like a Navy SEAL at all . . . and then the middle aged guy, who had walked into the restaurant, poked his head out and said, "Thanks guys" and then the other two guys we were with, who were in the bathroom and missed everything (isn't that always the case?) came outside and we got to tell them the whole story (and I thank Mike for sending me the details for this sentence, because I missed the beginning of the exchange because I was just sort of spacing out).