Dave vs. The Looming Specter of his Mortality

I was in a lousy mood last week. January really dragged-- lots of gray and damp weather. No joyful snowfall. The park is a muddy goose-shit filled swamp. The ticks haven't even gone dormant. And I was scheduled for an MRI on my shoulder on Friday. I expected bad news, as the doctor suspected a tear in either a rotator cuff injury or a labral tear. A rotator cuff injury would require serious PT and a labral tear would most likely need surgery.

My shoulder has been injured since the summer. I hurt it during a tennis match, screwing around with a topspin one-handed backhand. I can't get any juice on my serve (and I can't chuck a football with any velocity either). This shoulder injury (and my impending 50th birthday) have been really weighing on me. I'm not ready to hang up my racket yet. Beating my kids is too much fun-- and I've only got a few years left where I'll be able to do that (consistently). Or perhaps my run is over-- my shoulder burnt out-- and I won't get a chance to fade away.

I played indoor soccer well last Sunday, which should have bolstered my spirits-- but when I was crossing the ball, I caught the lip of a gym door with my toe-- and while I didn't hurt myself enough to stop playing, my ankle and knees were sore for days. I felt really old all week (until I drank too much Thursday night . . . oddly, Friday morning my knees were no longer sore).

I'm no dummy, so I started preparing for the worst a couple weeks ago. There's only one way to fight the looming specter of mortality: keep busy. My first project was to use my left hand as much as possible. Brushing my teeth, driving, pulling the wet laundry out of the washer, etc. I even started shooting darts left-handed-- which actually works fine unless I'm trying to hit the bullseye-- and I played tennis left-handed a couple times with my son Ian. My groundstrokes are pretty much the same-- I could always hit a decent lefty forehand and a lefty two-handed backhand is similar to a righty forehand-- but learning to serve lefthanded is a bitch. I went down to the park and practiced and I felt like a spaz. This article inspired me to keep at it. My left shoulder still has a lot of gas left in the tank, but I'll need a lot of mental fortitude to develop the fine motor skills necessary to play well lefty.

I've been preparing in several other ways for my impending midlife crisis. I don't want to resort to the typical shit: prostitutes, alcoholism, drag-racing, and dog-fighting, so I've implemented a preemptive strike on my mid-life crisis.

Project #1:

I've switched my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) from a PC to an iMac. I'm using Logic now instead of Cakewalk Sonar. I'm watching tutorial videos at the gym and learning a lot. I still don't know what I'm doing with Smart Tempo and Flex-Time, but I'm trying. Learning the new platform is keeping me off the streets and keeping my brain away from early onset dementia.

Project #2:

I'm reading some big books. I normally value quantity over quantity (aside form War and Peace, Brothers Karamazov, and Infinite Jest). I'm barrelling through Uncle Tom's Cabin-- it's gripping-- and then I've got Tom Jones queued up on my Kindle.

In meatspace, I'm reading this absurd book.

This is mainly to irritate my fellow Philosophy teacher Stacey-- I've claimed that once I finish the book, she's not allowed to teach the class any long (unless she refers to me as The Philosophical Overlord). When I know Stacey's about to come into the office, I like to put my feet up, read something obtuse aloud, and brandish my new knowledge. A.C. Grayling is actually pretty entertaining-- for a philosopher-- although I skimmed the section on Empedocles.

Project #3:

Apparently, Google Play Music is going extinct. I've already been through this once with Rdio.

Remember Rdio?

No?

Serendipitously, my buddy Whitney just gave me a gift voucher for Spotify, so I've switched over. It's great, but I'm transferring playlists and massaging the algorithm-- so I'm spending a lot of time "hearting" songs and putting them on various playlists. I'm impressed with what Spotify spits out once you spend a little time on it. This project is not keeping me off the streets-- I use Spotify while I'm walking and driving-- so I'm working hard not to screw around with it while I'm driving and to look up once in a while when I'm crossing the street.

Project #4

So I was all depressed Thursday, because of the MRI on Friday. I drank too much and stayed out too late, and by the time I raced out of school and got to University Orthopedics, I was groggy and tired and hungry. They had a cooking show on in the waiting room. Guy Fieri ate various kinds of barbecued meats. By the time they called me, I was salivating.

They took me in, I put my valuables in a locker, and the guy told me the machine was a little loud. He handed me a pair of earphones. I lay on the sliding bed, my shoulder in the cup, and he slid me in. He gave me a little emergency switch and told me if I had any problem, to press it. I wondered why. Until I got in there.

I'm not sure if being tired and hungover was bane or blessing. The top of the cylinder was an inch or two from my nose. And the machine was LOUD. Not a little loud. SUPER-LOUD! Science-fiction loud. Weird grinding and banging and revving noises. And the music in the headphones was awful. Cheesy piano, occasionally interrupted by ads. Yuck. I didn't press the little button (or move at all) but I wanted to. Twenty-five minutes later, I was out and on my way to talk to the doctor.

While I waited, I could see the inside of my shoulder on the desktop. Looked fine to me.

Turns out I was right. Sort of. Fairly good news. No labral tear, no serious rotator cuff injury. Some arthritis, some bone cysts, and some swelling. Routine stuff. I didn't even need PT. I just had to do a bunch of exercises. And the doctor said I could play tennis! Right-handed! He said it might hurt a bit, and we could try a cortisone shot-- but I wasn't going to rupture anything. I would just be sore. If I really hurt it, I would know it.

This made me happy enough to get back to a project I've been putting on hold. I need a new tennis racket, an arm friendly one. If my right shoulder still hurts with the new racket, then I may still pursue playing left-handed. But I don't have to. I went to the gym today and did a bunch of shoulder exercises and I'm sore as hell. But I've eluded the looming specter another day.

I also think I need to make a doctor's appointment-- the appointment you make when you turn fifty-- and I think this is the appointment when the doctor will stick his finger up my ass.

Can't they just stick my ass in the MRI machine?

Ideas Are Cheap (and Often Dumb)

When I was in high school, I had this absurd idea about making a guitar effects pedal that runs the electrical signal through water-- or some kind of liquid-- and that sloshy impedance creates distortion. My friends thought this was ingenious and silly. I had no electrical engineering skills, and so that was the end of the idea-- and I think most ideas meet the same pathetic demise. Ideas are a dime a dozen

But David Rainger (who might be Nigel Tufnel's doppelganger) not only had the same idea-- thus making me Alfred Russel Wallace and him Darwin-- but he had the engineering skills to implement it. Yes!

While I never brought that liquid pedal idea to fruition, I have fully implemented my "year as a week" metaphor with great success. Yesterday was the day after the end of mid-term exams, and so I pointed out to my mid-day classes that we were experiencing a "convergence." We had just climbed over the hump of mid-term exams-- and so we were just past halfway through the school year-- and we had also just moved past the middle of Wednesday-- the hump of the week. My arm hairs stood on end as I described this parallel coupling of both the week and the year. Heady stuff. 

The Club (Women Need Not Apply)

If you had your druthers (and you were a white man) where would would you choose to hang out on a Friday evening in the late 18th century?

The Turk's Head Tavern, a venerable London establishment located at 9 Gerrard Street-- just off the Strand-- would be a good choice.

This is where-- starting in 1764-- intellectual and artistic notables such as Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, Edmund Burke, David Garrick, Edward Gibbon and Adam Smith met regularly. Quite a crew.

Leo Damrosch describes this era in his tour-de-force book the Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age. He also includes a group excluded from club membership, but constantly present in these lives: the women.

Especially the prostitutes.

Boswell frequented a lot of prostitutes. And he recorded the encounters in his journal, which his wife would sometimes inadvertently stumble upon and read. He had a very forgiving wife.

 Boswell is the author of Life of Johnson, which is considered to be one of the greatest biographies ever written. A game-changer. It is a highly entertaining book. Boswell is Dr. Johnson's drunken sidekick and records everything that the great man says and does. But there's much more to this pair than meets the eye.

                                       

Damrosch thinks Boswell may have been bipolar. His mood swings are wild. He often self-medicates with copious amounts of alcohol and "promiscuous concubinage." Dr. Johnson exhibits symptoms of OCD, depression, and rheumatoid arthritis-- which leads him to become an opium addict later in life.

This is one of those books that I started thinking full well I wouldn't finish. But I made it all the way through, mainly because of Boswell's misadventures. Stuff like this:

Boswell seldom frequented the brothels around Covent Gardens. His usual practice was to rush out into the night after having plenty to drink, pick up a streetwalker, and grapple with her briefly in one of the parks or some dark alley. he may have enjoyed the sense of risk.

                                 

Boswell really struggled with his inveterate transgressions. He wanted to believe "in an authentic core of self," but David Hume's Treatise on Human Nature taught him otherwise. Boswell was happiest just going with the flow of impressions and perceptions of the moment, which made him such an amiable companion (but often a buffoon). Boswell's biographer insists that he wasn't a full-blown alcoholic-- because he could abstain from alcohol for long periods of time (as did other members of The Club . . . overindulgence and sobriety seem to be a pattern that has been around for a long time). But there are a lot of blackout injurious episodes that sound like they happened at a fraternity party.

After consuming five bottles of claret with just one companion, "I walked off very gravely, though much intoxicated. Ranged through the streets till, having run hard down the Advocate's Close, which is very steep, I found myself sudden bouncing down an almost perpendicular stone stair. I could not stop,but when I came to the bottom of it fell with a good deal of violence, which sobered me much." A later fall damaged his ankle so badly he was hobbling around for months.   

Boswell is constantly swinging between intellectual pursuits-- the law, writing, and pondering free will and determinism, and concupiscent and inebriated episodes, such as getting caught by his wife while fondling a "fresh, plump, and comely" fifteen-year-old.

While Johnson and Boswell are at the heart of the book, I really liked Damrosch's portrayals of David Garrick and Edward Gibbon. Garrick was the greatest actor of the age, and he perfects a naturalistic style that was quite different from the typical strutting and speechifying player of the time. "He could make every thought and gesture seem perfectly spontaneous." This sort of acting was appreciated by the critics, but out in the country, "naturalistic acting would strike provincial audiences as no acting at all. Garrick is also remembered for organizing the Shakespeare Jubilee of 1769, which put Stafford-upon-Avon on the map and demarcated when Shakespeare went from being a competent playwright to a god. It also rained so much that Damrosch's description of the event smacks of a festival that happened two hundred years later: Woodstock.

For all their curiosity and intellect, Johnson and Boswell were men of their time. Johnson could often be religiously and politically conservative. His take on the American settlers was: "They are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging." Oddly, Johnson sympathized with the Native Americans more than the colonials (though he didn't think the colonists should give them their land back). He felt the same about the Irish, and Irish rights. Rebellion was to be punished severely, he explained to Irish clergyman Thomas Campbell. When they had the chance, the British should have burned the Irish cities and "roasted you in the flames of them."

Boswell wrote a weird poem extolling slavery, in which he surmises at the end "For slavery there must ever be, while we have mistresses like thee!" And both Boswell and Johnson loathed Edward Gibbon, who wrote the classic historical treatise History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. They found this work scandalous because Gibbon was skeptical about the spread of Christianity due to miraculous events. Gibbon argued that there were plenty of "secular explanations" for Christian promulgation. Boswell and Johnson referred to Gibbon as "The Infidel." This is too bad, because Gibbon changed how history was written in the same way that Boswell changed how biography was written. They laid bare the sources and the journey to knowledge, the personal references and ambiguity that accompany all non-fiction writing, which many authors tried to hide under the guise of omniscience. 

                                 

Damrosch's tour of the times is accompanied by many historical pictures. There are color plates in the center and various drawings, caricatures, portraits, and sketches throughout. This helps set the scene so much. The book alternates between great doings and anecdotes, so you get compelling portraits of men who are certainly great, but also flawed and silly (at one point, there is a description of Dr. Johnson imitating a kangaroo). And this is the same time as the framers were writing the Constitution. King George III actually makes a brief cameo. So it's a great view of what was happening on the other side of the ocean, as we were preparing to rebel. And there are a lot of prostitutes. What's not to enjoy?

The Straight Dope on Fake-Handwashing: You Can't Fake-out a Coronavirus

The Wuhan coronavirus is making its way out of China and spreading throughout the world. And my friends aren't helping matters. Last night I learned that several close compadres of mine, when they go to the bathroom, occasionally engage in "fake hand-washing."

After flushing the toilet, they run the sink for the appropriate amount of time that it would take to wash your hands . . . but they don't actually wash their hands. No soap. They don't even put their hands under the water.

I will preserve the anonymity of these folks, in case they wish to someday go into food service.

The male fake hand-washer does it out of laziness and social pressure to leave a wet sink.

The female fake hand-washer does it for more complicated and contradictory (and crazy) reasons. Just like a woman.

Here are her four reasons:

#1 Laziness.

#2 Dry Skin.

#3 The belief that germ exposure builds tolerance.

#4 The tactic that not washing your hands reduces your contact with bathroom fixtures-- faucets, soap dispensers, towels, blowers-- and thus lowers your chance of getting sick. Though contradictory with reason #3, logic is reasonable. Especially in winter, when viruses live longer because of low humidity.

Now I don't want to come off as a hypocrite.  I don't wash my hands every single time I go to the bathroom. Most of the time I do. This might be because I work in a giant filthy overcrowded bacteria-laden high school, and if I'm around a sink, I recognize that it's a good time to engage in some hand-washing. But there are the times when I'm in and out. I pee, nothing splatters, and I've got to get to class. So I leave without washing. It's rare, but I'm not going to lie and say it doesn't happen.

But when it happens, I don't pretend to wash my hands. I either do it-- the whole hog: soap, hot water, and singing "Happy Birthday"-- or I don't.

Hand-washing is such a simple way to prevent illness that it seems insane not to wash your hands when you have the chance. But that's how people are. They smoke cigarettes, do opiates, drive drunk, and watch The Bachelor. There have been numerous campaigns to get doctors to wash their hands. Doctors! They've always been a bit reluctant to wash up, and they work with sick people. Humans-- even highly educated humans-- are bizarre.

In 1846, Ignatz Semmelweis realized that his staff was dissecting cadavers and then delivering babies-- without washing their hands in between-- and this was killing both mothers and children. He launched a crusade to get doctors and nurses to wash their hands with soap and a chlorine solution. It worked. But Semmelweis got too angry when folks didn't comply with his rules, and he berated them. Eventually, he got fired, and the staff stopped washing their hands. Things went back to normal. Dirty stupid normal.

The CDC is STILL trying to get doctors and nurses to wash their hands. Apparently, emotional pleas work-- you can point out that patients are vulnerable and this might motivate doctors to scrub up. And they wash their hands when they are being watched (and hopefully they aren't faking it). And they wash their hands if they are shown pictures of gross bacteria. 

But they don't wash their hands because it's scientifically proven to help prevent infections. So we might as well welcome the Wuhan coronavirus with open arms.

And open (grubby and unwashed) hands.

Fair Play Tennis and Dirty Money

Lately, I've been reading more spy novels than usual . . . like David Mamet, I'm a big fan of well-executed genre fiction, but I tend to consume a lot of crime fiction: mysteries, thrillers, and Elmore-Leonard-esque stuff. And sci-fi.

But I'm trying to branch out.

I just finished John le Carré's 2010 novel Our Kind of Traitor. 

The last le Carré novel I read was The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. That was 25 years ago, and I'll never forget it (there's also an excellent movie starring Richard Burton which has helped to cement this as THE archetypal Cold War narrative, in my brain, anyway).

In general, I really enjoyed this newer le Carré tale. He sets it in the aftermath of the financial crash, and while Russia is involved, it's in a more modern, financial way. Money, money, money. That's how politics work now that the Berlin Wall has fallen.

There's also plenty of tennis. Perry and Gail-- a young, educated British couple-- are on a tennis vacation in Antigua, and they get sucked into the world of a Russian money-launderer that wants to defect. He's willing to talk if it buys his family amnesty.

The Secret Service swoops in, and an unsteady alliance is made between the lovely British couple, the Russian criminal with valuable information, and a couple of morally complex, partially compromised agents. There's no Jack Bauer or James Bond stuff. It's slow and steady, with occasional exciting flashes. It's very well researched. It's the kind of stuff that happens when the billions of dollars floating in the black market surfaces in the financial system.

Crime fiction is generally about microeconomics. Decisions made on the individual level, that usually involve money. it's easy to get into the characters and their psychology. Spy novels tend to be macroeconomic. Large scale stuff. So it's harder to develop the characters. They are dwarfed by the enormous stage. Le Carré does a superb job handling this. It makes me want to go back and read some of his other Cold War classics.

Tragedies, Cars and Phone Etiquette: A Bad Combination (for Dave)

Yesterday while I was driving to pick my son from track practice, my wife called me. I'm not very good on the phone when I'm not operating a motor vehicle, and I'm even worse when I am. I shouldn't talk and drive. 

We had terrible news to exchange, so the conversation proceeded. I told her about the poor 8th-grade boy from East Brunswick-- the town where I teach-- who fell through the ice and died. Police and firefighters formed a human chain, but he slipped under. Awful awful story. 

She told me about a house fire in Edison, right by where she teaches. A five-year-old girl and her grandmother both died in the blaze. It turns out that in 2006 my wife taught the mom, who was at work when the fire occurred. My wife was pretty shaken up about that.

And then, while my wife was mid-story, my son walked up. And I had just pulled up to a busy intersection. The light turned green, and he was still throwing his bags in the back of the van and I got overwhelmed. Apparently, I was very rude to my wife. Apparently, I am a "jerk" . . . and the worst kind of a jerk, a jerk without phone manners. Because I said something in the manner of "I GOTTA GO!" right in the middle of my wife's tragic story. And then I hung up. 

My defense is that I was driving and things got hectic. My wife has decided that it is her fault. She knows the deal. She has promised never to call me again. 

I did send her a nice text today, thanking her for my salad and giving her some encouraging words about a parent meeting. I even included an emoji. But I struggle in real-time, and I certainly can't multi-task. So If you want to communicate with me, send me a text (or even an email). 

Dave Figures Out His Cellphone, OCR Technology and the Internet

Yesterday, I learned that Google Drive has a "scan" feature, and that you can scan a document and convert it to editable text in a Google doc. This is extremely useful to me as both a teacher and a blogger. And no one else in the department knew how to do it! Even the millennials . . .

You press the little "plus" button on the bottom right and select "scan." Then you adjust the parameters so that the doc is within them. Then you go on the computer (of download Google docs for your phone) and you find the photo in the drive and click the center "open with" button.

You open the PDF with Google docs (on my phone, I make the PDF a docx) and you get an editable text. Initially, the fonts are often a little crazy, so you need to remove the text formatting. At first the converted piece of the John le Carre novel I'm reading looked like this:

But I hit the little t with the slash through it, and then selected the portion I wanted. It's from le Carre's novel Our Kind of Traitor, which I am thoroughly enjoying. Here it is:

‘Unfortunately, I do not believe in God, but this is irrelevant in life it is frequently necessary to simulate religious conviction. I like best art. Max also is very artistic. Maybe we shall both study art together at St Petersburg or Cambridge. It will be decided.' 

'Is he Catholic? 

'In his practices Max is compliant with his family religion. This is because he is dutiful. But in his soul he believes in all gods.' 

And in bed? Gail wonders, but does not ask: is he still compliant with his family religion? 

I tried this with a fifty-page PDF and froze my computer, so I'm not sure just how long a document you can convert. But it's free OCR technology and it's easy and fast.

OCR stands for "optical character recognition." I learned that yesterday as well.

What is the Opportunity Cost to Listen to Three Podcasts?

I'd like to humbly recommend a few podcasts. I understand-- because of the first podcast that I am recommending-- that there is an opportunity cost to listening to these. You could be listening to the radio. Or some banging tunes on Spotify. Or some other podcast. Or you might choose to meditate in silence, repeating some mantra in your head at an extremely high internal volume (which no one else can hear . . . which strikes me as crazy).

LUMEN DE LUMINE! OM! 

So if you don't listen, that's your choice. You might have something better to do.

1) Planet Money: Episode 963: 13,000 Economists. 1 Question.

The folks from Planet Money  visit the American Economic Association's annual conference and ask one question: "What's the most useful idea in economics?"

Here's what international economic advisor Lisa Cook has to say:

GOLDSTEIN: What is the most useful idea in economics?

COOK: It is, I think, opportunity cost.

GOLDSTEIN: What is opportunity cost?

COOK: It is what you give up in order to engage in some activity.

GOLDSTEIN: What you give up in order to do something.

COOK: Right.

GOLDSTEIN: Opportunity cost tells us the cost of doing any one thing is giving up doing anything else. So the cost of going to college is not just the tuition you have to pay. It's all the wages you give up by not working or by working less because you're in college. Businesses also think, or should think, about opportunity cost. You know, the cost of, say, building a new factory is not just the money the business has to pay for the factory. It's also whatever other thing the business doesn't do with that same money, right? It's, say, giving up on that new R&D plant that might've yielded the billion-dollar idea.

FOUNTAIN: And in a more personal sense - you know, day-to-day life - opportunity cost means the cost of doing something at any given moment is not doing something else at that exact same moment. And literally at this moment, Lisa Cook is giving up the opportunity to do so many things.

GOLDSTEIN: Can you just, like, rattle off a few of them?

COOK: I could be at the session on the economics profession's race problem.

GOLDSTEIN: OK.

COOK: And I could be running. I have my running shoes with me. I have lunch in my bag. I could be finishing lunch.

GOLDSTEIN: So sorry.

COOK: Oh, there's one other thing that I really want to be doing, and I am binge-watching "Chernobyl."

GOLDSTEIN: That is not even to mention, like, all of the just meeting, talking with a thousand other economists, every happy hour, every talk, every poster. All of those things you are not doing right now...

COOK: That's right.

GOLDSTEIN: ...Because you're standing here talking to me.

COOK: That's right.

GOLDSTEIN: The opportunity cost of this interview is incalculable.

COOK: That's right (laughter).

GOLDSTEIN: Thank you so much for talking with me.

COOK: The pleasure's all mine.

2) Crimetown's "The Ballad of Billy Balls"

Just started this series. Three episodes in. Compelling, gritty, and already lots of twists and turns. But don't trust me. The Atlantic ranked this as the #2 podcast of 2019 . . . runner up to a series about Mr. Rogers. Mr Rogers? Weird. 

Here's what they said about it.

CRIMETOWN PRESENTS: THE BALLAD OF BILLY BALLS

You might think you know what to expect from The Ballad of Billy Balls. It opens in 1970s New York City and describes the death of the titular musician, before launching into an audio montage of conspiracy theories about what really happened. The host iO Tillett Wright tells you the goal is to find out the truth, 37 years later. You might think you recognize this story’s shape: a narrative of sex, drugs, rock and roll, and murder, kicked off by love at first sight. But there’s no way to explain why this first impression is wrong without ruining the joy of listening to the show unfold. Dumb luck made this podcast possible on so many levels—the magnetic attraction that brought a young couple together, the fact that they recorded themselves for us to hear, the senselessness of Billy’s death, the way he was interned in a mass grave. But luck isn’t the reason to listen. The show was made by storytellers who not only found the good stuff when they went digging, but also knew exactly how to use it.

3) The Indicator: "How Trade Wars Fill the Swamp"

I love this short (usually) breezy podcast on economic indicators. But this one will make you angry. Capitalism at its worst. The Trump administration at its worst. The small businessman being punished for being small. Lobbyists, lawyers and corruption at every turn. All in 9 minutes.

Kid in the Store Reversal!

There was a time when my wife and I would NEVER bring the kids shopping. We were always flabbergasted when we'd see a family of five in the grocery store, on a convivial and chaotic outing, leaving a wake of overturned merchandise.

Why? Why bring EVERYONE to the store? Why not divide and conquer? Send one person to the store and let the other person bring the kids to the park or the trampoline village or the go-cart track.

Then our kids got a bit older, and while we'd never bring them into a grocery store, once in a while-- once in a long while-- we would take them sneaker shopping. They were both into sports. Alex has wide feet, like me. Ian has weird skinny feet, like my wife. So they needed to try stuff on.  It would be awful. Kids can't do shopping. I can't do shopping.

But now the tables have turned. I've been putting off buying running shoes and low top indoor soccer/tennis trainers for over a year. I hate shopping. And I have to try stuff on. And I hate paying full price. So there's only one place to go: the Jackson Premium Outlets. Nike, Adidas, Reebok and Asics. But there's never a good time to go. It's always a zoo.

Today seemed to be the right day. It was cold and it was supposed to snow. I asked Ian if he wanted to come with me, because he needed running shoes and indoor soccer shoes. He said yes. I told him I needed to go to three different stores. THREE. I asked him if he was up for it. It was going to be crazy. The most stores I had been in for the past two years in a single day was one. The most stores I had brought Ian into was one. But we were going to do three.

Ian is 14 now. I'm 49. We could handle it.

It turns out the tables have turned. Ian has zoomed from being a detriment in stores to being essential. He buzzed right by neutral.

On our way there, we listened to podcasts. No traffic at all.

In the Asics store, the clearance rack was buy one, get a pair free. I tried on shoes while he tried on shoes. We ended up both buying the same pair of GT-2000s. No line. In fact, no people in the store. Awesome. In and out.

Then we went to the Adidas store. Ian quickly found some indoor shoes that fit his weird feet. I struck out.

So we had to go to Nike. I was really looking for low cut trainers that I could wear both for indoor soccer and outdoor tennis. Ian found a great pair of indoor soccer shoes on the clearance rack-- he has  great eyes-- but they didn't have much support and would be useless for tennis. Then he found exactly what I was looking for. The Nike Lunar Prime Iron II. They were so cheap that I grabbed a black pair and a gray pair.

I would have never found them. I can't find the ketchup in the fridge.

At the register, just as I was about to pay, Ian noticed that one pair was less expensive than the other. The black pair was marked down to $27.97. The gray pair was $39.99. A great catch.

He ran back into the store and grabbed the other black pair and saved me a few bucks.

On our way home, it started snowing. Hard. It was nice to have company, driving in that. It was nice to have the company for the entire trip, and quite frankly, if he wasn't there, I might not have bought anything. 

My Wife is a Tough M#therf&cker

The other night I fell fast asleep before 9 PM. I woke to the sound of fisticuffs in the hall bathroom. Apparently, Alex was trimming his toenails and would not let his younger brother enter to get his toothbrush.

I'm not sure why Alex took this position-- in my book, brushing your teeth trumps cutting your toenails-- but Ian forced his way in and they went at it. This woke me up from my slumber, but I didn't have to intervene. My wife heard the commotion from downstairs, where she was watching TV, and summoned them.

As I was falling back to sleep, I saw Alex come into the room and grab a full laundry basket. I learned the next morning that my wife had immediately assigned them some chores; reparations for the fight and waking me up. I really admire this about my wife: she can immediately think of an appropriate consequence for bad behavior and execute the punishment quickly and justly. Plus, she's got my back when I'm sleeping.

When I'm left in charge of discipline, I tend to lecture the kids for a while, as I process what they did wrong. In doing this-- the long lecture on expectations and behavior-- I work myself into a greater and greater frenzy. This furious lather doesn't help anyone, and the punishment I eventually mete out in no way reflects the crime committed (or even correlates with sane behavior). I'm either too angry or too empathetic or too flabbergasted to think straight.

My wife is feeling even more confident and powerful than normal because she has joined a kickboxing gym. She comes back from these sessions energized and amped-up. Yesterday she was practicing her roundhouse kicks on my legs, pretending to kick me over and over. Lola, our dog, came to my rescue. She inserted herself between my wife and me.

This made me happy. I've got two tough bitches in the house.

Monkey God, Jaguar City, Sandfly King

I thought Douglas Preston's The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story was going to be the usual archaeological/adventure/travel story-- in the vein of The Lost City of Z and the works of William Dalrymple-- and the first half of the book lives up to that promise.

There's some history of pre-Columbian Honduras-- which is at best obscure-- and then some embarrassing colonialism-- United Fruit and worker exploitation and outside government manipulation and all that-- and then an excellent tale of Theodore Morde. In 1940, Morde declared that he found the fabled White City of the aptly named Mosquitia region of the country, but this was actually a deception. He was prospecting gold and didn't want anyone to jump on his claim.

Then in 2012, surveyors in planes used LIDAR and located several sites in the jungle that looked very promising. In 2015, Preston accompanied a rugged archaeological expedition-- by helicopter-- int the valley where La Ciudad Blanca is located.

And they found stuff!

Preston's descriptions of the hardships of the jungle are just as entertaining as the archaeology: sink holes and dense foliage, brutal biting insects and the greasy flow of cockroaches on the jungle floor.

And snakes . . .

The fer-de-lance is a main character in the book, and Preston's descriptions of this large poisonous serpent really resonated with me (you'll see why in a moment). Apparently these snakes are truly dangerous. Preston calls them the "ultimate viper" and they reputedly kill more people in Central and South America than any other snake.

At one point in the book, a British commando enlisted to help the archaeologists, filmmakers, journalists, and organizers survive in the inhospitable jungle has to deal with an irate fer-de-lance that has crept into camp. He uses a forked stick, but the viper sprays poison onto his skin-- causing it to bubble-- and so he has to decapitate the creature and rush off to wash the away the venom before it drips into an open wound on his hand.

Fer-de-lances inject a tremendous amount of venom with razor sharp fangs that can penetrate leather boots. People often wear "snake gators" in areas where they are prevalent. At the very least, in the jungle, you should never step all the way over a log. Step on top first.

When my family went to Costa Rica in the summer, I knew that the fer-de-lance was a poisonous snake native to the area. I had seen them hanging from trees years ago when my wife and I traveled to Ecuador. But I didn't think they were actually dangerous. In my experience, snakes want nothing to do with people. But apparently the fer-de-lance is much more aggressive than your typical snake.

When we were hiking in the Tirimbina Rainforest Wildlife Refuge-- an astounding network of jungle trails and suspended bridges along the Sarapiqui River-- we encountered a couple of snakes. We would have never seen them if it wasn't for my son Ian's sharp eyes. One of the reasons we were at the reserve was because you can hike without a guide. Guides are great, but expensive-- and also, sometimes I like to walk fast. And it's fun to just explore and look for things without someone pointing them out. You can always identify them later with your phone.

Unless you're dead.

One of the snakes was right on the path, camouflaged in the mud. It was either a baby fer-de-lance or a small hog-nosed viper. Both venomous. I was smart enough to be wearing pants but my wife was in shorts. Here's a video of my moving the snake off the trail with a stick.

Just below the trail, in the brush, Ian spied a big fat snake. It did not seem bothered by us at all. It just lay there, coiled and ready to strike, staring at us. I clambered down a little bit and got a lousy photo. Judging by the size and coloration, this was most definitely a fer-de-lance. We did not actually know how dangerous this critter was. In retrospect, I would have made everyone wear pants. And I would have walked slower and watched my step.

My fer-de-lance photo!

This stuff all occurs in the first half of the book. Preston does the prerequisite history lesson. Then the city is discovered-- using cool technology-- the jungle is (sort of conquered) and artifacts are unearthed. I should warn you that spoilers (and devastation) lie ahead.

Next, there's some archaeological beef-- some folks think that this crew was another branch of the colonial white conquerors (even though they were working hand-in-hand with the Honduran government) and some other archaeologists and native tribes lay claim to the sites. But none of this holds any water. It turns out that some academics "would rather discuss ‘hot’ issues such as those of colonialism, white supremacy, hyper-masculinity, fantasy and imagination, [and] indigenous rights" rather than give credit to a serious academic expedition to a place that hasn't been inhabited for 500 years. These are the times.

Then the book really picks up steam again. Preston starts having some weird symptoms and gets a big sore on his arm. The same happens about half of the other folks that went on the trip. After much study (and visits to the NIH) they are all diagnosed with Leishmaniasis, a leading NTD (neglected tropical disease).

Leishmaniasis is the second deadliest parasitic disease in the world, behind only malaria. It is spread by infected sandflies.  Twelve million people have it. 60,000 a year die from it. Even if you can get medicine for it, it's terrible stuff. In fact, many doctors actually call amphotericin B "ampho-terrible " because it often makes patients feel terribly sick and can damage the kidneys.
 

Leishmaniasis is so awful because the the parasites don't devastate the body for a while before being summarily killed by the immune system. Instead, they “try to have tea with your immune system,” which is so much weirder and grosser. And they live on and on, doing awful things all the while.

At this point, the book has transformed into a combination of clinical medical descriptions of the author and his colleagues trying to combat this awful disease and Guns, Germs, and Steel . . . with an emphasis on the germs. Europeans and Asians had been living in cities in close proximity to livestock for thousands of years before they went to the New World. And so they had strong immune systems and were full of wacky diseases. This a 15,000 year pathogenic time bomb ready to explode, as soon as contact is made.

Once in a while, an animal pathogen will change in such a way that it suddenly infects a person. When people in the Near East first domesticated cattle from a type of wild ox called an aurochs, a mutation in the cowpox virus allowed it to jump into humans— and smallpox was born. Rinderpest in cattle migrated to people and became measles. Tuberculosis probably originated in cattle, influenza in birds and pigs, whooping cough in pigs or dogs, and malaria in chickens and ducks. The same process goes on today: Ebola probably jumped to humans from bats, while HIV crashed into our species from monkeys and chimpanzees. 

THIS is what mainly killed the natives of Honduras. There were other atrocities, of course, but nothing was as devastating as disease. Once the Europeans came,the New World became apocalyptic.

The nineteen people closest to you: All but one will die. (This of course counts you also as a survivor.) Think what it would be like for you, as it was for the author of the Cakchiquel manuscript, to watch all these people die —your children, parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, your friends. Imagine the breakdown of every pillar of your society; imagine the wasteland left behind, the towns and cities abandoned, the fields overgrown, the houses and streets strewn with the unburied dead; imagine the wealth rendered worthless, the stench, the flies, the scavenging animals, the loneliness and silence. 
 

The book turns from jungle adventure to cautionary tale. Why did the people of Mosquitia disappear? Old World diseases. This is "what destroyed T1, the City of the Jaguar, and the ancient people of Mosquitia."

And while there is some irony in a New World disease attacking a bunch of mainly white people with Old World heritage, that is not really the situation. It is really a "Third World disease attacking First World people. The world is now divided into Third and First, not Old and New. Pathogens once confined to the Third World are now making deadly in roads into the First."

God forbid you get a combination of leish-- this is the affectionate diminutive for leishmaniasis-- and HIV.
 

HIV and leishmania become locked in a vicious cycle of mutual reinforcement. If a person with leishmaniasis gets HIV, the leish accelerates the onset of full-blown AIDS while blocking the effectiveness of anti-HIV drugs.

As of now, leish is still a Third World Disease, and thus neglected.

Leishmaniasis is a disease that thrives among the detritus of human misery and neglect: ramshackle housing, rats, overcrowded slums, garbage dumps, open sewers, feral dogs, malnutrition, addiction, lack of health care, poverty, and war.
 

But maybe not for long . . .
 

Leish continues to spread as predicted in the United States, by the end of the century it may no longer be confined to the “bottom billion” in faraway lands. It will be in our own backyards. Global warming has opened the southern door of the United States not just to leish but to many other diseases. 
 

It's seriously scary stuff, made more so by an author that is suffering from leish. And the leish is inspiring him to morbidly prophetic heights of prose. I expected more jungle excavation, not the end of civilization, but that's what he is portending. It's heavy and wild.

And it made me realize that we were awful lucky on our Costa Rica trip. The snakes are the tip of the iceberg. And you can SEE a snake (if you're Ian). We did a lot of jungle hikes, wearing shorts and not enough bug spray, and we were lucky not to get bitten by an infected sand-fly. It seems a lot of folks in Costa Rica were not so lucky. Mainly folks doing yoga in the jungle. There are loads of stories like this one and this one. Yikes.

This probably won't stop me from returning to Costa Rica. I loved it there. But i will slather on the DEET and wear long sleeves and pants, even when it's hot. And if it's my time to get leish, then leish it is. It's been like this for people for a long long time.

New (to me) Music

I think I might make this a recurring bit.

I don't keep up with new music, nor do I want to. I don't need another chore. I can barely remember if something is new, old, or medium old anyway. It's all a jumble.

But I do love when I "discover" some artist that's already well established and has a catalog of stuff to listen to. This happened to me two days ago while I was driving. I used my phone to identify a funky instrumental guitar song playing on WBGO, the jazz station.

The track was "A Shade of Jade" from Steve Khan's album Patchwork. 

The album is pretty mellow, but up my alley. It turns out Khan is an accomplished veteran jazz guitarist, and he also made this awesome funky 70's album "The Blue Man."

It sounds like super-funky Satriani. Very fun. Listen to the whole album.

Anyway, I was talking about Steve Khan with my musical friend Bob, and he recommended that I listen to Vulfpeck, which I thought was odd. I don't really like German hair-metal. 

But it turns out that Bob had me pegged. Vulfpeck is not German hair-metal. The band is a bunch of music theory guys from Michigan who formed a rhythm-section which they imagine to be the fictitious German version of backing bands like Muscle Shoals and the Funk Brothers. Weird. But really good.

I don't like their songs with lyrics, but their instrumental stuff is fantastic. Whacky keyboards, wild solos, and amazing bass and rhythm. "Vollmilch" is my favorite album by Vulfpeck. Give it a shot. They've got a whole catalog of stuff, dating all the way back to 2012. Which is new to me.

                                       

Are Dogs the New Black Dudes?

Once upon a time in America, horror and war movies often implemented the Black Dude Dies First trope. But times have changed, for the better. Audiences won't stand for that racist bullshit. You can't go killing off Denzel Washington or Morgan Freeman or Will Smith just because they're black. While this is absolutely a good thing, someone has to pick up the slack in these kinds of movies. Someone has to die in these movies.

So who suffers?

My family doesn't watch many scary movies because my older son Alex is a sniveling coward. Catherine, Ian and I like them, so it's always a treat when we get to hunker down and put one on. I'm definitely not a horror movie aficionado though. Usually when I mention a horror movie I've seen to someone who really likes horror movies-- usually one of my students-- she'll be like: "That's not scary!"

I get scared by pretty much anything (especially Blair Witch and Paranormal Activities).

The other night, Alex elected to go upstairs and pirate some Star Wars spin-off series called The Mandalorian (which sounds like a citrus fruit) so Catherine, Ian and I watched The Babadook.

It's really scary!

Terrifying.

It's the story of a mom who is possessed by the physical disembodiment of her tragic grief. And her super-creepy kid. And an even creepier children's book. There are some mean Australian moms, too-- a macabre Liane Moriarty milieu. It's well acted and vivid, and-- in the end-- profound about death and loss. A good scare and a good film.

My only complaint is the use of the dog.

There's all kinds of creepy shit happening around this house. Doors opening and closing, odd figures lurking in the shadows, sleepless nights, etc.  Most of the time, the dog is nowhere to be found. That's not how dogs are. They are investigative. They take up a lot of space. They are always underfoot. And whenever there's something weird happening, your dog is there. Loyal, curious, and wanting to be involved. But not this dog. Not Bugsy. Bugsy is rarely in the scene, and never when the shit is going down. And the boy and the mom aren't actively bringing the dog into the room when things get scary. 

Bugsy is barely even mentioned in the full cast on IMDB. It's a shame.

One of the main reasons to have a dog is to ward off ghosts and demons. There's no better feeling than going to sleep on the same floor as a trusty canine. If a burglar, or -- far worse-- a shadowy death-creature arisen from repressed bereavement, comes a-knocking, your dog is going to get after it. Or at least bark and run around in circles.

Not only does Bugsy not act like a dog, there's also no accurate portrayal of dog ownership. No walking and feeding the dog, no picking up its poop and all that. 

Soon enough, you realize why the dog is in the movie. 

                      

To die. 

It's not that sad, because the dog hasn't been a main character. It's not like what happens in I Am Legend. That's tragic.

                                  

The death of the dog in The Babadook is more perfunctory. And inevitable. The dog is the new black dude. I guess that's progress, but instead of being racist, the movie is speciesist. 

Ian and I also had this complaint about another horror movie we loved, The Conjuring. Early in the movie, Sadie the family dog refuses to enter the new house . . . because she knows the house is haunted. At this point, the family should up and leave. Trust your dog! But instead, they leash her outside the house and enter. 

When they check on her in the next morning, she's dead.

                           

As if this isn't awful enough, they barely mention her death the rest of the movie. I actually think they wrote the dog into the script after the movie was finished and then added the scene in post-production, just so they could have an early death. 

If this were my family, and we spent a night in a spooky new house-- a house that our dog refused to enter-- and then the next morning our dog was dead, that's all we'd be talking about. We'd be broken up and upset and angry and investigative. Every time something weird happened in the house, we'd be bringing up Sadie and how she died and how she wasn't around the protect us. That would be THE topic of conversation.

I know it's tough to use children and animals in movies. Horror movies often employ both. The kids are great in both The Conjuring and The Babadook. And neither movie kills off any black dudes. That's great. But now it's time to show respect for our four-legged friends. They require a lot of work. They take up a lot of space. They investigate everything. And they will protect you from the supernatural like nobody's business.

Pain Turns Dave into A Troglodyte

At Midori-- the sushi place in town-- they give you green tea in a squat, thick-walled cup.

When I picked it up to take a sip, I burned the palm of my hand. It hurt so much that all I could blurt out (to the amusement of my family) was, "Rock-bowl hot!"

My son Alex said that the pain turned me into caveman. 

Staunton and Beyond: A Deadly Hike, Breweries, and Cider Houses

The rest of our trip to Staunton was a bit more relaxing than the first two days. The day after our epic hike up Elliots Knob it rained, so we headed east past Waynesboro to hit some of the many breweries and ciders that litter this area.

First, we went across the Blue Ridge Parkway to Route 151 to visit the Blue Mountain brewery. The fog was epic. No visibility. Pea soup. We made it, but it was scary. The Blue Mountain set up is impressive: great beer, huge restaurant, several bars, indoor and outdoor seating, etc. The place was packed! Great atmosphere.

I only had exactly one beer though because I wanted to get back to Waynesboro in exactly one piece. The bartender was helpful-- he had comprehensive knowledge about every bar and brewery in Staunton and Waynesboro and beyond.

We took his advice and we headed back through the fog to Basic City Beer. This place is in a metalworks warehouse on the outskirts of Waynesboro. The beer is excellent, I especially liked the 6th Lord IPA. The warehouse is huge and has shuffleboard, corn hole, giant TVs, ping-pong, pinball machines, video games, etc. Great place to bring the family.

And they have a kitchen cooperative, a place that was once a food truck and had now moved into the warehouse. Hops Kitchen.

I broke my New Year's Resolution (even though it was before 2020) and had some pork, on these pulled pork nachos, which were ridiculous.

I also beat my wife at Bananagrams, which is not easy.

We then walked across the parking lot to Blue Toad Cider House. Good stuff. We bought some to bring back. Jersey hasn't started making good cider yet (that I know of).

Then back to Staunton. We ate at The Mill Street Grill. A low-ceilinged wood paneled place that feels quite high end, attentive service, great menu, and all that, but the prices are reasonable. Highly recommended.

The next day the weather was ridiculous. It was drizzling, but over 60 degrees. The weather report said the rain was going to stop, so we packed up the dog and headed to Crabtree Falls. We were a little worried about the state of the trail because so much rain had come down, and apparently people die on this hike all the time. All the time! Over thirty people! And pets die too.

We took the scenic route, which may have been 30 seconds fast on Waze, but was also 30 times more dangerous. Incredible windy road.

The rain stopped as we started hiking. I was in shorts and a t-shirt. While you can see how people die on this trail-- as there are a lot of really dangerous spots to take selfies-- if you follow the advice on the signs then you most definitely will not die. The trail is well marked and there are overlooks with sturdy railing intermittently. People must really do some sill stuff on a regular basis to keep up the death toll.

I was able to let Lola off the leash for a good portion of the trail, and just reeled her in and leashed her at the spots that looked like certain death. Catherine proclaimed that Crabtree Falls is her Number #1 Waterfall hike in the world. It is impressive. A lot of viewpoints and the falls are endless. It is billed as the longest waterfall east of the Mississippi.

After hiking the falls, we headed to Devil's Backbone Brewery Basecamp on 151. This is an amazing location: restaurant, meadows, outdoor seating, cafes, etc. The weather had become spring-break-like.  The staff was NOT prepared. The outdoor bar wasn't open and the place was utterly packed. The poor bartender was in the weeds! We were able to grab a beer and sit outside with the dog. Beer was great, this would be a great place to return when it's fully staffed and ready. 

                             

Next stop was Bold Rock Cider. This was our favorite place. We returned the next day-- it was colder as you can see by my wife's attire-- and sat and tasted ciders. 

                       

We eventually sat by the fire and talked to a pretty older mom--a Southern belle-- and her firebrand of a daughter. People in the south are so chatty. The mom had a nursing story about a quadrapelgic who was put into that tragic state by . . . you guessed it: Crabtree Falls! 

We also visited Wild Wolf Brewery, which had great beer and food. You could make a whole vacation of hiking and visiting breweries and cider houses on 151. The places are all spacious, and kid and dog friendly.

This was the only sad part of our vacation. 

Here's a shot of Staunton from above the train station. Really a great town to wander, with so many historic sites and buildings.

On our way to the breweries on 151, we did some driving on Skyline Drive through Shenandoah National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway. 

It was windy.

Lots of scenic overlooks.

A great winter break trip with my lovely wife . . .

And our silly dog . . .

We made great time driving back to Jersey (because we left at 6:30 AM on New Year's Day . . . that's the way to do it). We walked into the house and it smelled weird. My parents had picked the kids up after we left for Virginia. They closed up the house. Ian left a bowl full of noodles on the counter, which had gone rotten. It smelled upstairs as well. One of them had urinated and did not bother to flush. That stuff fermented, yuck. Back to reality.

We picked the kids up that evening. My wife, myself, and the dog were happy to see them (and smell them). But the break was nice.

Duct Tape and Banana Man vs. Dr. Octopus Shoe

You've probably heard about Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan's piece "The Comedian." If you haven't, here's the skinny on it: it's a post-modern absurdity consisting of a ripe banana duct-taped to a gallery wall. 

It sold for $ 120,000.

Very silly.

Last night, my son Ian also artistically expressed himself in a playfully post-modern way. He painted an octopus on his shoe.

Perhaps if he duct-tapes an apricot to the other shoe, the pair will be worth some dough.