Gene Hackman Needs to Coach My Kids (on How to Enjoy Hoosiers)
We watched Hoosiers this afternoon-- my kids just completed a week of basketball camp, so I thought it would be the perfect flick . . . plus it streams free on Amazon-- but I think I waited too long to show it to them; all the things that I find moving in the film: the scrub making his free throws, the town drunk rising to the challenge, the coach's unorthodox methods, the last second heroics in every game-- my kids, jaded and ironic teenagers that they are, found these tropes cliched and hackneyed, and were constantly predicting the next beat, instead of appropriately enjoying the cheese (and while even my annoying children agreed that the basketball is shot fairly well . . . it almost looks like they let the kids play and then cherry-picked the best moments for the movie, the music is atrocious 80's synth-pop, which does not fit the 50's timeframe whatsoever).
The Subtle Art of Naming a Canine (part II)
My son Alex and his friend Jack decided they approve of dogs with human names-- so our dog Lola and Jack's dog Walter fit the bill-- but the human name should be old school and not particularly common: you can't have a dog named "Michael," for instance . . . that's weird; every time you called for the dog people would think you lost a child.
Facebook Doesn't Want You To Read This (or Does It?)
Many liberals believe we need the government to protect us from the power of corporations and corporate lobbying, and many conservatives believe we need corporations, capitalism, and competition to protect us from unchecked government power-- and, in modern America, whether you think the corporations or the government is winning this battle is often determined by your political persuasion; Republicans are desperate to repeal Obamacare and end this heinous government intrusion into our personal lives and the Trump administration has given corporations a healthy tax cut, meanwhile Democrats lament the death of the EPA and how corporations will now be able to pollute with impunity, no check on externalities such as lead, carbon emissions, toxic air pollutants such as benzene and dioxin, and the return of invasive coal mining and believe the government is the only referee who can prevent greedy business and lobbying interests from destroying our air and water . . . and obviously there is truth to both sides and-- ideally-- there will be checks and balances between the two (although conservative economist Luigi Zingales argues that big corporations and the government are one and the same in America now, especially under Trump, who is running America the same way corrupt business tycoon Silvio Berlusconi ran Italy) but Franklin Foer, in his ominously titled new book World Without Mind: The Existential Threat of Big Tech believes that in the realm of technology, the scale has irrevocably tipped towards the giant corporations (referred to as GAFA in Europe . . . we all know them: Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon) and their power and consequence is unlimited and while these companies promote a utopian ideal of efficient networks and unfettered information-- and argue that monopoly is the only way to realize this-- they are actually moving us towards a drone-like existence in a hive-mind, where there is no individual genius; here are a few of his points and rhetorical methods:
1) he compares the industrialization of the internet to the industrialization of the food industry-- while the technology of convenience produced wonder and efficiency, it also contributed to obesity, diabetes, our sedentary lifestyle, and a terrible environmental toll . . . Nabisco and Kraft and such food conglomerates studied us the way Facebook and Google do now, figured out how to create processed foods that would never sate our appetite and sold them to us for next to nothing (for a great book on this subject that will totally freak you out, read The Dorito Effect) and these companies essentially created food that was not nutritious but pandered to the taste of the masses; Foer sees the content of GAFA, especially in journalism, as analogous to this and worries their dominance and monopolistic tendencies will squash diversity and create homogenization . . . think about how hard it is to buy actual free-range tasty chicken now, it's impossible . . . chicken flesh has become an industrialized homogenized hormone laced water filled nutritionless fungible commodity . . . and he is worried that the same is happening to our arts and culture;
2) he also sees hope in this metaphor . . . the counter-culture food movement, which has now pervaded much of middle-class America (or at least around here) and lauds organic, local, home-grown, slow-food and encourages people to really think about and understand what they are eating offers an alternative to the industrialized food industry . . . he hopes the same can happen with the internet;
3) he worries about the power of algorithms and the fact that "data, like victims of torture, tells its interrogator what it wants to hear"
4) he points out that the "Victorian Internet," otherwise known as the telegraph, followed a similar pattern as today's internet; Abe Lincoln was obsessed with commanding his armies in the Civil War by telegraph-- the Union army strung 15,000 miles of wire, to the rebels paltry 1000 miles, and this proved to be an enormous tactical advantage . . . Western Union was best positioned to privatize this network and did so, swallowing "the weaker firms" and becoming an "implacable behemoth" that dominated for the next hundred years;
5) Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon want the same sort of monopoly and they are lobbying hard to do so . . . they barely pay taxes, they are monopolies, the government does not seem interested in breaking them apart, they own our data, they own the media, they produce the journalism that most people read on a daily basis, they have pushed the value of the written word down to free, they don't particularly care about intellectual property or copyright law, and their hope is to produce AI that denies us our autonomy . . . but they sure are easy to consume;
6) Foer certainly has his own axe to grind-- he witnessed the demise of print journalism first-hand, from the inside, and he laments this; he notes that the New Republic paid $150 dollars for a book review during the Great Depression, and it still pays the same amount today for the same length review for the Web Site; in 1981, the average author made 11,000 dollars a year (35,000 when adjusted for inflation) and by 2015 that amount dipped to 17,500 a year . . . and he blames the big companies that run the internet and promote small news stories written for free and push anything that is behind a pay-wall down the search list . . . who has the time for that?
7) his solutions are fairly simple and practical, though they may never happen . . . the government needs to enforce anti-trust laws again; we need a new agency to protect us from these monopolies-- we got one after the 2008 crisis (the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to protect us from rapacious banks determined to make a profit in any way possible) and while this can't happen under this administration-- for some reason, Republicans hate consumers and the rights of citizens to be protected from corporations (just look at what's happened with the EPA) but perhaps it will happen soon enough, it will just take a big enough hack, or enough foreign meddling in our news and elections, and it will have the political impetus to move forward;
8) his final solution is one I espouse-- the refuge of print on paper; Americans are still reading books-- and the Kindle has not supplanted the actual book-- and when you're reading an actual book, the big companies can't get to you . . . you are alone with your thoughts, without advertisement, distraction, and consumer agenda; he hopes that perhaps this can happen again with journalism, that Americans will find room for long-form, intelligent, paid journalism . . . with intelligent gatekeepers, lots of gatekeepers, not just four big ones, some method of vetting and editing, and some moral purpose behind the print . . . so stop reading my stupid, poorly edited blog and pick up a copy of the New York Times or a good book and sit down and think your thoughts, without the all-knowing eye of GAFA watching your thoughts . . .
9) Franklin Foer also wrote How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, which I recommend.
1) he compares the industrialization of the internet to the industrialization of the food industry-- while the technology of convenience produced wonder and efficiency, it also contributed to obesity, diabetes, our sedentary lifestyle, and a terrible environmental toll . . . Nabisco and Kraft and such food conglomerates studied us the way Facebook and Google do now, figured out how to create processed foods that would never sate our appetite and sold them to us for next to nothing (for a great book on this subject that will totally freak you out, read The Dorito Effect) and these companies essentially created food that was not nutritious but pandered to the taste of the masses; Foer sees the content of GAFA, especially in journalism, as analogous to this and worries their dominance and monopolistic tendencies will squash diversity and create homogenization . . . think about how hard it is to buy actual free-range tasty chicken now, it's impossible . . . chicken flesh has become an industrialized homogenized hormone laced water filled nutritionless fungible commodity . . . and he is worried that the same is happening to our arts and culture;
2) he also sees hope in this metaphor . . . the counter-culture food movement, which has now pervaded much of middle-class America (or at least around here) and lauds organic, local, home-grown, slow-food and encourages people to really think about and understand what they are eating offers an alternative to the industrialized food industry . . . he hopes the same can happen with the internet;
3) he worries about the power of algorithms and the fact that "data, like victims of torture, tells its interrogator what it wants to hear"
4) he points out that the "Victorian Internet," otherwise known as the telegraph, followed a similar pattern as today's internet; Abe Lincoln was obsessed with commanding his armies in the Civil War by telegraph-- the Union army strung 15,000 miles of wire, to the rebels paltry 1000 miles, and this proved to be an enormous tactical advantage . . . Western Union was best positioned to privatize this network and did so, swallowing "the weaker firms" and becoming an "implacable behemoth" that dominated for the next hundred years;
5) Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon want the same sort of monopoly and they are lobbying hard to do so . . . they barely pay taxes, they are monopolies, the government does not seem interested in breaking them apart, they own our data, they own the media, they produce the journalism that most people read on a daily basis, they have pushed the value of the written word down to free, they don't particularly care about intellectual property or copyright law, and their hope is to produce AI that denies us our autonomy . . . but they sure are easy to consume;
6) Foer certainly has his own axe to grind-- he witnessed the demise of print journalism first-hand, from the inside, and he laments this; he notes that the New Republic paid $150 dollars for a book review during the Great Depression, and it still pays the same amount today for the same length review for the Web Site; in 1981, the average author made 11,000 dollars a year (35,000 when adjusted for inflation) and by 2015 that amount dipped to 17,500 a year . . . and he blames the big companies that run the internet and promote small news stories written for free and push anything that is behind a pay-wall down the search list . . . who has the time for that?
7) his solutions are fairly simple and practical, though they may never happen . . . the government needs to enforce anti-trust laws again; we need a new agency to protect us from these monopolies-- we got one after the 2008 crisis (the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to protect us from rapacious banks determined to make a profit in any way possible) and while this can't happen under this administration-- for some reason, Republicans hate consumers and the rights of citizens to be protected from corporations (just look at what's happened with the EPA) but perhaps it will happen soon enough, it will just take a big enough hack, or enough foreign meddling in our news and elections, and it will have the political impetus to move forward;
8) his final solution is one I espouse-- the refuge of print on paper; Americans are still reading books-- and the Kindle has not supplanted the actual book-- and when you're reading an actual book, the big companies can't get to you . . . you are alone with your thoughts, without advertisement, distraction, and consumer agenda; he hopes that perhaps this can happen again with journalism, that Americans will find room for long-form, intelligent, paid journalism . . . with intelligent gatekeepers, lots of gatekeepers, not just four big ones, some method of vetting and editing, and some moral purpose behind the print . . . so stop reading my stupid, poorly edited blog and pick up a copy of the New York Times or a good book and sit down and think your thoughts, without the all-knowing eye of GAFA watching your thoughts . . .
9) Franklin Foer also wrote How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, which I recommend.
Meta-tears
Once again, the season finale of GLOW got me all choked up . . . which is ridiculous, considering I was watching a completely fictitious representation of a real women's wrestling league from the '80's . . . which was itself fabricated, of course . . . and so the wedding/battle royale in the final episode was not only contrived and plotted within the show but it was also plotted by the writers of the show; despite all this meta-manipulation, the underdog story still got the better of me (plus there are some amazing plot twists) and so whether it's South Korea knocking Germany out of the World Cup or (spoilers ahead) a chick in a weird leotard with a fake Russian accent and a broken leg cruising into the ring on a zip-line, it still gets me teary-eyed.
Shooting the Shit (head) at the Dog Park
One of the joys of having a dog is visiting the dog park and chatting with the weird mammals that bring their pets; a few days ago, during an early morning visit, I spoke with a nice heavyset lady with a frilly white hat, who was accompanied by her demurely dressed teenage daughter; the nice lady with the hat informed me that her dog's name was Bash-- short for Sebastian-- and she said that Sebastian was the name the shelter gave this Bassett hound but that was NOT a good name, too long, but that Bash was a good name, so they shorted it-- but I thought to myself, that's not good name . . . a good dog name has two syllables, so when you call the dog you don't sound like an idiot: Lola is fine . . . LOOOO LAAAAAA . . . but Bash doesn't work . . . BAAAAA -- AAAAASH . . . it's awkward-- and then she alluded to their original idea for a name for their hound, and she called this original idea the "bad name" and she turned to her daughter and said, "Should we tell him the bad name? No, we probably shouldn't," and I left the comment alone-- it was weird-- but the lady in the frilly hat seemed determined to perseverate on this topic of the "bad name" and though I feigned disinterest, she told me anyway; "We were going to call him Blow-Dog but we decided that wasn't very nice," and then she turned to her daughter and said, "Right? Blow-dog wouldn't be a nice name . . . but it's funny!" and I didn't know how to react-- it was 6:45 AM and this nice lady in a frilly hat was talking about fellatio in front of her daughter, so I said, "Reminds me of the name of the dog in The Jerk . . . that movie with Steve Martin?" but the allusion was lost on them so Lola and I beat a hasty retreat out the gate.
You're Welcome, David Sedaris!
The new David Sedaris memoir/essay collection Calypso is darker and perhaps more candid and sincere than anything he's written previous; it may be his best work (though not his funniest . .. that would be Naked or Santaland Diaries or Me Talk Pretty One Day) but be forewarned-- you're going to deal with death and the afterlife and eldercare and mental illness and suicide . . . you'll still laugh and there's plenty of wry observations on mundane events (plus he feeds his benign fatty tumor to a bunch of turtles . . . though not to the exact turtle he wanted to feed his tumor too, the turtle with a tumor on his head because that turtle died before Sedaris could toss his tumor off the bridge) and I'm also pretty sure that Sedaris has either been reading my blog or stealing my thoughts, because his essay "Boo-Hooey" is about how he can't stand people talking about ghosts and dreams and how he does not believe in the significance of either topic and fans of Sentence of Dave know I've been writing about the same for many many years.
Where Is Kurt Russell When You Need Him?
Yesterday, we drove to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, wandered around a bit (I had a green tea donut at the Doughnut Plant) and then went on the 11:15 "Shop Life" tour in the Tenement Museum-- I highly recommend doing this, whether you have kids or not . . . the tour is immersive and fun and there's plenty of sitting . . . I especially enjoyed sitting in the replica of John and Caroline Schneider's 1870s German lager saloon-- and then we walked over to Chinatown and ate at the Nom Wah Tea Parlor, a famous dim sum place that has been operating since the 1920s and looks like a vintage Asian diner inside (the food was good and cheap for New York, but I would say you go more for the ambiance than the dumplings . . . my kids and I agreed that the food is better and more authentic at our favorite local Asian joint, Shanghai Dumpling) and then we got caught in a storm, drank some coffee and bubble tea, played Connect Four (I crushed both my kids), browsed dried sea cucumbers (too pricey) and went to Mission Escape Games and did the "Escape the Nemesis" room, which my kids thought was the greatest thing ever-- while the room can hold eight people, no one else had booked in our time slot, so it was just the four of us and there was a lot to do: we finally completed the mission, but needed a few hints-- you get three-- and an extra two minutes (thanks to the staff for that!) and it was fairly frantic and very fun . . . but while we were very proud that we came together as a family and solved all the mysteries, puzzles, and riddles inside the brig of the Nemesis, escaping from that situation was nothing compared to escaping New York City on a Friday afternoon at 4:45 PM . . . it took us an hour to drive the .6 miles from the lot on Allen Street to the Holland Tunnel and then it was fairly brutal all the way through Jersey City but the traffic broke up once we got to the Turnpike . . . and I really can't decide the best way in and out of the city: we made great time in the morning (and driving in is far cheaper than buying four train tickets) but leaving Manhattan on public transportation is kind of nice because you don't have to worry about traffic and--more significantly-- you can nap.
Put the Secret Token in the Phantom Tollbooth?
Andrew Lawler's new book on the Lost Colony of Roanoke is far more intricate than I imagined; I thought The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke would be an archaeological mystery in the vein of The Lost City of Z and it is, complete with hoaxes, red herrings, buried treasure, amateur sleuths, cryptic maps and invisible ink but I didn't realize that the book was going to use what Lawler calls "the Elizabethan equivalent of the Apollo program" and the surrounding history and mythology surrounding Sir Walter Raleigh's venture to create a permanent settlement in America as a lens to look at America itself; at times the story is confusing, the history is far more variegated, complex and violent than the boiled down version-- there are aborted missions, Algonquian assassinations, deserted slaves, shipwrecks, Sir Francis Drake, Spaniards, disease, reconciliation, two Indians of opposite purpose (Manteo and Wanchese) and a host of other history before we get to the simple story of a bunch of colonists, left to themselves for three years while their supplier and governor (John White) was waylaid in England by war with the Spanish and when he returns, with the hopes of being reunited with his daughter and grand-daughter (Virginia Dare . . . first English person born on American soil) he finds them gone, and a secret token on a tree (Croatoan . . . which we now call Hatteras) and so I'll leave you with a few quotations from the book to whet your appetite for the layers of whirling insanity layered on top of that archetypal American story:
1) According to historian Brent Lane, "The Roanoke voyages have nothing to do with Virginia Dare and the poor lost white people-- the lost cause of the sixteenth century and all that gothic shit . . . the real story is geopolitics, colonization, the advancement of science, and development of investment"
2) The bickering of historians, professional and amateur, over the fate of the Lost Colony resembles the scene from Life of Brian about the People's Front of Judea and the Judean People's front . . . "Willard's dramatic outburst-- 'I will fucking run you over!'-- seemed to sum up the relations among the researchers . . . Lucketti and Horton were quick to criticize each other's research, while Noel Hume and the National park Service had fought to a bitter standstill about the earthwork . . . Evans's First Colony Foundation had refused to participate in a public panel that included Horton and Prentice, and organized their own symposium . . ." etc. etc . . .
3) some folks currently living in this area of North Carolina are consumed by their family trees and genetic history; Lawler describes genealogy obsessed Clyde Miller as a man "engaged in something more than a quixotic effort to trace his relations back to ancient Judea via Tudor England . . . it was as if, using his convoluted and tangled family tree, he were attempting to stitch together the black, red and white parts of his splintered past, the "mongrel" remnants that so many Americans share to some degree, a reality largely lost amid the nation's standing racial divides";
4) most historians now accept the fact that the Lost Colonists, if they survived, simply "melted" into the Native population . . . and this could have been true for the serval hundred abandoned African and Indian slaves abandoned by Sir Francis Drake, the three men abandoned by Lane in his haste to leave the area, and the fifteen men left by Grenville . . . the colonists were only "lost" to the Europeans who searched for them-- the Algonquians absorbed them (and they may not want to have been "found" by the white folks . . . it's embarrassing to be found when you've gone native, taken a native husband or wife, and are living in native ways . . . and this happened quite often in this time period-- white folks went native, but the reverse was very very rare)
5) despite the fact that the folks living in the area are a "mongrel" mix of black, Native American, and European, white supremacists and racists adopted Virginia Dare as a symbol of white unsullied American purity and turned her into a chaste and beautiful huntress who survived on her own and did not mix with the "half-naked Indian savages"
6) Lawler analogously points out that there are people "in eastern Europe who were born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, grew up in Czechoslovakia, spent their teenage years in the Third Reich, lived out middle age in the Soviet Union and died in independent Ukraine-- all without leaving their village" and the people of Roanoke are similar-- they were designated English, white, black, Native America, and they designated themselves whatever was politically or practically expeditious, without worry over the truth of the matter . . . and so no DNA test will ever untangle this knot and no story will ever make everyone happy . . . the truth will never out on this and the legends will be shaped by the context: a great read, especially if you are headed for a vacation on the Outer Banks!
1) According to historian Brent Lane, "The Roanoke voyages have nothing to do with Virginia Dare and the poor lost white people-- the lost cause of the sixteenth century and all that gothic shit . . . the real story is geopolitics, colonization, the advancement of science, and development of investment"
2) The bickering of historians, professional and amateur, over the fate of the Lost Colony resembles the scene from Life of Brian about the People's Front of Judea and the Judean People's front . . . "Willard's dramatic outburst-- 'I will fucking run you over!'-- seemed to sum up the relations among the researchers . . . Lucketti and Horton were quick to criticize each other's research, while Noel Hume and the National park Service had fought to a bitter standstill about the earthwork . . . Evans's First Colony Foundation had refused to participate in a public panel that included Horton and Prentice, and organized their own symposium . . ." etc. etc . . .
3) some folks currently living in this area of North Carolina are consumed by their family trees and genetic history; Lawler describes genealogy obsessed Clyde Miller as a man "engaged in something more than a quixotic effort to trace his relations back to ancient Judea via Tudor England . . . it was as if, using his convoluted and tangled family tree, he were attempting to stitch together the black, red and white parts of his splintered past, the "mongrel" remnants that so many Americans share to some degree, a reality largely lost amid the nation's standing racial divides";
4) most historians now accept the fact that the Lost Colonists, if they survived, simply "melted" into the Native population . . . and this could have been true for the serval hundred abandoned African and Indian slaves abandoned by Sir Francis Drake, the three men abandoned by Lane in his haste to leave the area, and the fifteen men left by Grenville . . . the colonists were only "lost" to the Europeans who searched for them-- the Algonquians absorbed them (and they may not want to have been "found" by the white folks . . . it's embarrassing to be found when you've gone native, taken a native husband or wife, and are living in native ways . . . and this happened quite often in this time period-- white folks went native, but the reverse was very very rare)
5) despite the fact that the folks living in the area are a "mongrel" mix of black, Native American, and European, white supremacists and racists adopted Virginia Dare as a symbol of white unsullied American purity and turned her into a chaste and beautiful huntress who survived on her own and did not mix with the "half-naked Indian savages"
6) Lawler analogously points out that there are people "in eastern Europe who were born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, grew up in Czechoslovakia, spent their teenage years in the Third Reich, lived out middle age in the Soviet Union and died in independent Ukraine-- all without leaving their village" and the people of Roanoke are similar-- they were designated English, white, black, Native America, and they designated themselves whatever was politically or practically expeditious, without worry over the truth of the matter . . . and so no DNA test will ever untangle this knot and no story will ever make everyone happy . . . the truth will never out on this and the legends will be shaped by the context: a great read, especially if you are headed for a vacation on the Outer Banks!
The Test 112: What's in a Name?
This week on our podcast, Stacey proclaims that this is the "stupidest test ever," but I still found it very difficult (unlike Cunningham, who decided it was her favorite and awarded herself a perfect score-- seven out of seven, though there were eight questions).
Hot Potato
There are studies that show that female teachers with math anxiety pass that anxiety to their female students and I get that-- because right now I'm trying to teach my kids to make tacos and I'm passing my cooking anxiety unto them (we only had to call my wife once).
Gourmandise
My 88 pound son made and ate one dozen fresh strawberry/raspberry-blackberry jam/chocolate syrup/whipped cream crepes this morning (meanwhile, Catherine and I are are forging ahead with the low carbs and no sugar diet, so we ate zero fresh strawberry/raspberry-blackberry jam/chocolate syrup/whipped cream crepes this morning).
OBFT XXV
The 25th Annual Outer Banks Fishing Trip is in the books, another fantastic one-- thanks Whit!-- here are some of the things that happened:
1) we spent Wednesday night at Whitney's mom's place in Norfolk-- he is living there now-- and his mom and step-dad had just rolled into to town from Florida, but were sleeping elsewhere because we had a house full of fishermen, and so they were showing up in the morning and Whitney's step-dad said he needed to do some work on the house, out back in the little courtyard connected to the garage, so when I woke up at 7:30 AM and heard some banging I figured he was doing aforementioned work, but I also heard the TV, and I figured I would go downstairs and and say hello and help with whatever was going on-- I turned in early and no one else was awake so I went downstairs and the TV was on and no one was watching and the banging was coming from the back door-- it was Johnny G. who yelled "Dave! My savior!" when I opened the door-- he went out for a cigarette at 3 AM and Whitney had just locked the door-- so Johnny was locked out and had to sleep in the car in the garage . . . shades of the McGrant incident at the Weeping Radish;
2) many of us ate salad with a slab of rare tuna on it at Tortuga's and it was good;
3) Hookey was a popular new addition to the usual array of games-- you throw rubber rings at hooks on a circular piece of wood that is hung on the wall and then do lots of math to figure out who wins (and many people, including myself, said the line, "I was told there would be no math," which is paraphrasing, and though I said it, I had no idea where it was from . . . here's the actual origin)
4) the water was NOT good . . . cold and rough;
5) Bruce painted a picture (or commissioned someone to paint a picture-- same difference)
6) Jon (Yes-man) showed up, after a twenty-three year hiatus (he attended the first trip and never came back until this year) and Billy interrogated him as to why;
7) Jon (Lunkhead) attended for the first time ever;
8) Charlie brought back the cooking-- we had fish one night and a tenderloin the next-- there were also some bacon wrapped scallops . . . the long and short of it was it was easy to avoid carbs (and vegetables) because there weren't any;
9) Johnny woke up Friday morning and couldn't find his pants or his wallet;
10) the debut of the pantsless griffin;
11) Rob slept next to his mattress on the back porch;
12) Marls brought his tennis racket but I did not;
13) Scott and I played some guitar together . . . he's really good so I kicked Whitney out of the band;
14) Bruce told a joke and I reciprocated with the Willie Nelson joke (which I also apparently told last year . . . these things are really starting to blur);
15) we all made playlists but I don't think anyone played their playlist;
16) Whitney was a fabulous host for the 25th year in a row . . . already looking forward to XXVI.
1) we spent Wednesday night at Whitney's mom's place in Norfolk-- he is living there now-- and his mom and step-dad had just rolled into to town from Florida, but were sleeping elsewhere because we had a house full of fishermen, and so they were showing up in the morning and Whitney's step-dad said he needed to do some work on the house, out back in the little courtyard connected to the garage, so when I woke up at 7:30 AM and heard some banging I figured he was doing aforementioned work, but I also heard the TV, and I figured I would go downstairs and and say hello and help with whatever was going on-- I turned in early and no one else was awake so I went downstairs and the TV was on and no one was watching and the banging was coming from the back door-- it was Johnny G. who yelled "Dave! My savior!" when I opened the door-- he went out for a cigarette at 3 AM and Whitney had just locked the door-- so Johnny was locked out and had to sleep in the car in the garage . . . shades of the McGrant incident at the Weeping Radish;
2) many of us ate salad with a slab of rare tuna on it at Tortuga's and it was good;
3) Hookey was a popular new addition to the usual array of games-- you throw rubber rings at hooks on a circular piece of wood that is hung on the wall and then do lots of math to figure out who wins (and many people, including myself, said the line, "I was told there would be no math," which is paraphrasing, and though I said it, I had no idea where it was from . . . here's the actual origin)
4) the water was NOT good . . . cold and rough;
5) Bruce painted a picture (or commissioned someone to paint a picture-- same difference)
6) Jon (Yes-man) showed up, after a twenty-three year hiatus (he attended the first trip and never came back until this year) and Billy interrogated him as to why;
7) Jon (Lunkhead) attended for the first time ever;
8) Charlie brought back the cooking-- we had fish one night and a tenderloin the next-- there were also some bacon wrapped scallops . . . the long and short of it was it was easy to avoid carbs (and vegetables) because there weren't any;
9) Johnny woke up Friday morning and couldn't find his pants or his wallet;
10) the debut of the pantsless griffin;
11) Rob slept next to his mattress on the back porch;
12) Marls brought his tennis racket but I did not;
13) Scott and I played some guitar together . . . he's really good so I kicked Whitney out of the band;
14) Bruce told a joke and I reciprocated with the Willie Nelson joke (which I also apparently told last year . . . these things are really starting to blur);
15) we all made playlists but I don't think anyone played their playlist;
16) Whitney was a fabulous host for the 25th year in a row . . . already looking forward to XXVI.
Shit I'm Watching With the Kids #3
If you want to scramble your children's brains, sit them down and watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind . . . my son Alex's favorite movie is Inception, and I promised him that this was a combination of Inception and Romeo and Juliet . . . both Alex and Ian really enjoyed it, once they figured out that Clementine's hair color is the key to following the plot.
Shit I'm Watching with the Kids #2
The kids and I watched Breaking Bad this winter and then I got sick with the flu and watched a few episodes of Better Call Saul and I loved it but I decided to wait to continue until the kids were ready for more of the crew from Breaking Bad . . . we're now three seasons in and we've decided that in some ways we like the show better than Breaking Bad because it's so much less stressful-- it's a prequel, so you know who's going to make it through the show, which makes it a lot easier to enjoy the exploits of Slippin' Jimmy.
Shit I'm Watching With the Kids #1
I hope I'm in Norfolk by now, and here is some promised drivel to peruse while I'm attending OBFT XXV . . . I consider TV a social experience and the only thing I'll watch alone is a sporting event (you're part of the crowd) and I'm not watching The Handmaid's Tale with My Wife (not enough jokes) so I'm watching stuff with the kids-- I'll dole out exactly what we're watching day by day until my return from the Outer Banks; right now we're hooked on The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt . . . it's my second time through and it's just as funny and-- despite all the 90's references, which I'm constantly explaining-- my kids love it.
The Joe DiMaggio of Something
I always get a bit anxious right before I make the trip down to the annual Outer Banks Fishing Trip at my buddy Whitney's place in Kill Devil Hills-- this is year XXV and I've never missed one . . . it's a streak only matched by the host himself and our fraternity brother Rob (aka Squirrel) and I know that streaks are made to be broken and anything could happen-- I nearly missed last year's, I got sick on Friday and drove home Saturday with a 102 fever . . . if I had come down with that virus a few days earlier, I wouldn't have gone-- and since I don't believe in voodoo or jinxes, I'll be honest: anything could happen between now and tomorrow: I could break my leg at soccer practice tonight, or get hit by lightning; someone in my family could come down sick or worse (I have a 95 year old grandmother) and there's car troubles and house troubles and dog troubles . . . this is a solo trip, not a family vacation, and so it's dispensable if need be . . . so wish me the best of luck-- I'm getting all packed up today; I just purchased the giant sized bottle of Espolon Tequila-- my wife says it looks like a joke prop-- it was on sale and the sale was so good I'm not going to reveal the location, and when the young lady with a nose-ring behind the counter got a look at the bottle, she said to me: "Planning to get messed up?" and I'm bringing lots of other leisurely beach stuff as well: guitar, tennis racquet, Spikeball, corn-hole bags . . . so hopefully things will go well and I'll make it down without incident . . . thirty-one more years and I'll equal Joltin' Joe (and I apologize in advance, there will probably be some drivel here for the next few days).
Forget the Media, Keep Your Eye on Andrew Wheeler
The phrase that keeps running through my mind when I hear all this Trump insanity on the news-- the Iranian posturing, the Russia investigation, the trade war with China, Scott Pruitt's inane corruption, the immigration issues, and the latest and greatest . . . Trump's dismissal of U.S. intelligence about Russian meddling in the election and then his Orwellian reversal of the word "would" to "wouldn't"-- all I keep thinking is "wag the dog . . . wag the dog," because all of these things are smoke and mirrors, barely important, compared to the policy changes happening beneath the 24 hour news cycle veneer: the new EPA administrator, Andrew Wheeler, is a coal lobbyist and was a legislative aid to Senator Jim Inhofe-- who referred to global warming as "the greatest hoax ever perpetuated on the American people" and Wheeler is better politically prepared to wage the attack on our air, water, and land than Pruitt, and so much more scary; National Geographic is keeping a running list of the anti-regulatory changes and agenda of this administration, which seems determined to roll back pollution standards, auto emission standards, car mileage standards, the endangered species act, the clean air and water acts, and a host of other . . . long after all this other bullshit is forgotten-- immigration is an issue that doesn't effect very many people, it's just a great metaphor for bipartisan America; the Russia investigation is going to point to things we already know-- Trump is corrupt and crooked; if you're a true liberal, then the trade war with China is fantastic, because it means people are consuming less stuff; of course Trump is beholden to Putin; we're not going to go to war with Iran; etcetera . . . none of it matters, but it's all making people miss the existential stuff, the stuff that will take years and years to reverse . . . if the damage is reversible at all.
Ant-Man is no Einstein
We went and saw Ant-Man and the Wasp today and while it's certainly an entertaining movie-- Paul Rudd does his usual spot-on job at playing a charmingly ditzy do-gooder dad/minor-superhero-- there are some black hole magnitude plot holes though out (and teenage boys are quick to spot these . . . you can't just magnify a building on any piece of land, large buildings need foundations . . . and plumbing and electrical hook-ups; you also can't shrink a human body down smaller than its constituent molecules, that makes no sense) so if you want something a bit more technical and profound on the topic of the infinitesimal then I recommend Jim Holt's collection of mathematically inspired essays When Einstein Walked with Godel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought; he discusses incredibly tininess, the infinitely large, the expanding universe, the Copernican logic-- which asserts that we are very likely not special at all, in any way-- quantum physics in a nutshell (don't look: waves, look: particles) quantum entanglement and spooky action, lots of Alan Turing and Charles Babbage and Leibniz and the philosophical development of the idea of a computer (my wife and kids made fun of me when, struggling with my son's cellphone, I said, "I can't turn on this little computer!" but I contested that little computer is way more accurate than "phone" and I'm going to start calling cell-phones "little computers" as a regular practice in my classroom, to hammer home just what they've got distracting them) and there's also an essay on the weird and slightly scary behavior of moral saints and Holt coincidentally (from my perspective) mentions a book I was recently discussing with a British friend Ashely-- Nick Hornby's How to Be Good-- but much more interesting than that conversation was that Ashley revealed to us that when he was growing up in Zambia-- his dad worked in the copper industry and so he lived there until age 13, until it got too dangerous for white people to be in the country . . . several of his neighbors were executed-- but until this time he had a pet monkey, which would drink tea with sugar and had the run of the house . . . anyway, Holt mentions the speech at the end of The Incredible Shrinking Man (the book came out in 1956 and the movie in 1957) and it's quite a different tone than the fast-paced action of Ant-Man and the Wasp . . . while there are moments when the Marvel folks try to capture the madness at the heart of the universe (there is some mention of "quantum entanglement" to explain the connection between Scott Lang and Janet Van Dyne but it's not explained in nearly the detail or tediousness of Ghost's backstory) but there's nothing to compare to the pathos of Scott Carey's final speech before he shrinks away to a scale imperceptible to humans:
"So close - the infinitesimal and the infinite. But suddenly, I knew they were really the two ends of the same concept. The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet - like the closing of a gigantic circle. I looked up, as if somehow I would grasp the heavens. The universe, worlds beyond number, God's silver tapestry spread across the night. And in that moment, I knew the answer to the riddle of the infinite. I had thought in terms of man's own limited dimension. I had presumed upon nature. That existence begins and ends is man's conception, not nature's. And I felt my body dwindling, melting, becoming nothing. My fears melted away. And in their place came acceptance. All this vast majesty of creation, it had to mean something. And then I meant something, too. Yes, smaller than the smallest, I meant something, too. To God, there is no zero. I still exist!"
You Are Where You're At
I finished two powerful and poignant books (and thoroughly enjoyed both) on vacation that hammered home the exact reason you go on vacation-- because when you locate yourself to a different place, you become a different person-- there are many conservative folks that bristle at this, people who believe in choices and autonomy and free will, and while I will acknowledge that it certainly might be good to believe you have control over your life, it probably isn't true;
1) Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America by Jill Leovy, uses one South Angeles murder to look at the big picture-- black-on-black violence in traditionally African-American enclaves like Watts and Compton are generally under-policed and justice is rarely meted out . . . Leovy turns cause and effect on its head, proving that it's not because these places are inhabited by gang members that make them difficult to police . . . instead, because they have never been policed with much intensity and intent-- unlike white neighborhoods in the same city-- the denizens have learned to solve their problems outside the aegis of traditional authority, witnesses-- fearing injury or death-- have learned not to testify, and it has come to be understood that in these places-- whether it be the Wild West, the territory of the Yanomami, or South LA-- that the state does NOT have a monopoly on force and violence . . .
"take a bunch of teenage boys from the whitest, safest suburb in America and plunk them down in a place where their friends are murdered and they are constantly attacked and threatened . . . signal that no one cares and fail to solve murders . . . limit their options for escape . . . then see what happens"
and if the book sounds depressing, in the end it is not-- because there are select police that work homicide in the ghetto in an inspirational manner, and this details such a case and the men that solved it-- and this is a case that has to be solved, because it is the murder of Bryant Tennelle-- 18 years old-- the youngest son of a highly respected Los Angeles detective Wallace Tennelle . . . a principled officer that chose to live where he worked and paid the ultimate price for it; the book might change your mind about how gangs work (far looser and more disorganized that you might think) and how murders are handled when they are insular and comprised only of African-American men, and it will remind you that you really can't control where you are born and where you live . . . or often not until it's too late;
2) Sherman Alexie tells a similar story of growing up in a difficult, possible barren and futile environment in his YA novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian . . . my wife coerced me and the kids to read it for a family "book club" and we all loved it; Alexie tells the semi-autobiographical story of Junior's life on the Spokane reservation and his daring "escape" to the nearest white high school off the rez-- 22 miles away-- because Junior recognizes that though he loves his family, his people, the land, and his best friend Rowdy, that the setting is inevitably hopeless, fostering alcoholism and endless repetition of the same losses and drama . . . this is the story of his commute and his very real adaptation to a new setting-- Alexie says the book is 78% true and it rings true, it's gross, sincere, candid, hysterically funny, and really moving (plus it has lots of basketball, so I was getting choked up fairly often, because sporting stories are the only ones that make me cry).
1) Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America by Jill Leovy, uses one South Angeles murder to look at the big picture-- black-on-black violence in traditionally African-American enclaves like Watts and Compton are generally under-policed and justice is rarely meted out . . . Leovy turns cause and effect on its head, proving that it's not because these places are inhabited by gang members that make them difficult to police . . . instead, because they have never been policed with much intensity and intent-- unlike white neighborhoods in the same city-- the denizens have learned to solve their problems outside the aegis of traditional authority, witnesses-- fearing injury or death-- have learned not to testify, and it has come to be understood that in these places-- whether it be the Wild West, the territory of the Yanomami, or South LA-- that the state does NOT have a monopoly on force and violence . . .
"take a bunch of teenage boys from the whitest, safest suburb in America and plunk them down in a place where their friends are murdered and they are constantly attacked and threatened . . . signal that no one cares and fail to solve murders . . . limit their options for escape . . . then see what happens"
and if the book sounds depressing, in the end it is not-- because there are select police that work homicide in the ghetto in an inspirational manner, and this details such a case and the men that solved it-- and this is a case that has to be solved, because it is the murder of Bryant Tennelle-- 18 years old-- the youngest son of a highly respected Los Angeles detective Wallace Tennelle . . . a principled officer that chose to live where he worked and paid the ultimate price for it; the book might change your mind about how gangs work (far looser and more disorganized that you might think) and how murders are handled when they are insular and comprised only of African-American men, and it will remind you that you really can't control where you are born and where you live . . . or often not until it's too late;
2) Sherman Alexie tells a similar story of growing up in a difficult, possible barren and futile environment in his YA novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian . . . my wife coerced me and the kids to read it for a family "book club" and we all loved it; Alexie tells the semi-autobiographical story of Junior's life on the Spokane reservation and his daring "escape" to the nearest white high school off the rez-- 22 miles away-- because Junior recognizes that though he loves his family, his people, the land, and his best friend Rowdy, that the setting is inevitably hopeless, fostering alcoholism and endless repetition of the same losses and drama . . . this is the story of his commute and his very real adaptation to a new setting-- Alexie says the book is 78% true and it rings true, it's gross, sincere, candid, hysterically funny, and really moving (plus it has lots of basketball, so I was getting choked up fairly often, because sporting stories are the only ones that make me cry).
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