The Required Amount at the Prescribed Rate (Handcrafted From the Finest Corinthian Leather)
Refrigeration and Sanitation are Winners
When Are You Too Old For This Sort of Thing? When You're Too Hungover to Do the Mini?
This Thursday evening at the Park Pub was exponentially more pleasant than last Thursday evening at the Park Pub. Last Thursday, it was so hot that I couldn't stop sweating for the entirety of my pub visit. I had played tennis just before pub night and my shower didn't take. We played some cornhole in a very hot parking lot, and I left early.
This Thursday the weather was balmy. Paul and I ruled the cornhole board for so long the guys actually kicked us off because we were too good. Pathetic. Pete-- the owner-- agreed with us and said, "That's what's wrong with America today."
I lost track of time and how much beer I drank. The pitchers were endless. Pete stayed open later than usual-- there was quite a crowd. He kept serving us and we kept playing cornhole. As Connell, Paul, and I imbibed more and more, Tom got better and better. Weird.
After midnight, we finished our last pitcher and did some late-night breaking and entering that I won't divulge. Then I stumbled towards home. On the way, I walked into a cop. He told me to watch out for the downed-powerline ahead. We chatted, and he was very pleasant, especially considering the state I was in.
I made it home and found myself locked out. It was 1 AM. Someone had locked the glass sliding door on the back porch, which was supposed to be open. I had no keys. I didn't want to wake everyone, so I texted Catherine that I was locked out and then lay down on the wooden recliner on the porch. I was out like a light. I woke up at 3 AM. It was raining. I wandered around to the front door, thinking I might ring the bell or call, and our dog Lola heard me. She shook her collar, waking Catherine who noticed I wasn't in bed. She came down and let me in.
I felt pretty hazy on Friday but still put in a fine effort on the NYT mini crossword.
G is for Grunge?
Sue Grafton's mystery novel "H" is for Homicide is the second book I've read this summer that was published in 1991
I had never read a Kinsey Millhone story before . . . I always assumed Grafton's books were kind of cutesy, but that was a sexist assumption. Millhone is a gritty and clever master prevaricator-- she normally investigates insurance fraud (and it takes on to know one) and it seems that she always gets involved in the seedy underworld that she often investigates. There's a Millhone book for every letter of the alphabet except Z (a sad fact that Whitney pointed out to me . . . Grafton lost her battle with cancer before she could write number twenty-six).
Grafton's description of The Meat Locker and the other bars in the book really brought me back to the early '90s. It was a gross and grimy time to come of age.
The Darkest Educational Race of All
Frustrating Stuff
If Your Friends Jumped Off a Bridge, You Would Too (3x)
We were sort of annoyed that he didn't check with us before he took off on this adventure-- and we added a new rule to the parenting handbook: if you can't contact us, you are not allowed to leave town on a dangerous adventure!
Dave Does the Work of THREE Journalists
The Risk That Students Could Arrive at School With the Coronavirus
The Funhole is No Fun
High School + COVID + Math = Hot-Zone Mess
There may be ten times as many people with the virus as the testing indicates, but I can't even get into those numbers . . . they would be nuts.
Teachers had six times more germs in their workspace than accountants, the second-place finisher, with slightly cleaner desks but five-and-a-half times more germs on their phones, nearly twice as many germs on their computer mice and nearly 27 times more germs on their computer keyboards than the other professions studied.
The reason for all the germs is, of course, the reason why the teachers are there in the first place.
"Kids' desktops are really bad, too," Gerba said. "Probably the dirtiest object in a classroom is a kid's desktop."
Conclusions and Relevance: Excess deaths provide an estimate of the full COVID-19 burden and indicate that official tallies likely undercount deaths due to the virus.
I know people don't want to hear this. I'm not happy with my math. It's inconvenient and awful. But that's the story, right now. If we want schools to open, we're going to have to get the case count way, way down.
The Biggest Game in the Wildest Town
The mix of cards and golf and high-stakes gambling reminds me a bit of the Jordan documentary, "The Last Dance."
This is the attitude you need to be a great gambler:
This is how you keep score:
The book is full of adages like this:
“The way I feel about those pieces of green paper is, you can’t take them with you and they may not have much value in five years’ time, but right now I can take them and trade them in for pleasure, or to bring pleasure to other people. If they had wanted you to hold on to money, they’d have made it with handles on.”
Sorry that I'm not attributing quotations, but you get the idea. The old-time poker guys like Alvarez, who is a British poet-- something foreign and innocuous. They love bending his ear about poker strategy and philosophy.
It’s the downside of a gambler that ruins him, not his upside. When you’re playing well, you can be as good as anybody, but how you handle yourself under pressure when you’re playing badly is the character test that separates the men from the boys.
Funny and true.
Perhaps the Freudians are right, after all, when they talk of gambling as sublimation. In the words of another addict, “Sex is good, but poker lasts longer.”
As to why I enjoy poker, Alvarez nails it on the head. I'm playing for small amounts of money, but I love the competition.
My knees are only going to last so long, but hopefully, my mind and my nerves will last a bit longer.
This accords with Jack Binion’s theory that the top poker players are not only “mental athletes” but also former athletes, who turn to gambling when they no longer have the physical ability or the inclination for sport. “It’s a question of excitement,” Binion said. “Gambling is a manufactured thrill—you intensify the anticipation of an event by putting money on it.
Reading . . . Books and Otherwise
Nothing Says Welcome Home More Than Spoiled Cheese
Everything is More Difficult Than It Looks on YouTube
I got some help from my artistic son Ian, but this still proved harder than it looks. There are many, many YouTube videos on the subject. The guys in them are enthusiastic and competent. Like this guy:
We found some yellow spray paint, so we reset and repainted and then made a stencil of a sun. A sun seemed perfect because if you screw up a bit and the paint bleeds then it still looks like a sun, just with some extra photons racing away from the gigantic explosive ball of hydrogen and helium. The sun should also prove to be a good target for the bean bag. Hit it and the bag will slide at the hole.
The last step is ridiculous. You need to seal the board with either polyurethane or polyacrylic. I chose polyurethane because though it is uglier and gives the board a weird amber sheen, it makes it impervious to water.
Folks recommend five to ten coats of the stuff. It takes about two hours to dry in between coats. TEN COATS? Fuck that. I did five. I'm always impressed by the time and patience these DIY folks possess.
You have to sand the board before you apply the last coat. My boards are fairly (but not perfectly) smooth. You use a foam brush and it's hard to apply an even coat. Polyurethane is thick and gooey. The only way to get it off your hands is with vegetable oil. Grossness all around.
I hope I don't have to do this again anytime soon.
Now I'm supposed to wait 72 hours before using the boards. 72 hours! This is insane. I really want to throw a beanbag at my newly finished board, but I'll have to wait until Sunday to do so.
Do Not Resuscitate (the voice of Kurt Vonnegut)
I myself am surprised at how quickly a sense of humor can atrophy with age. I can’t think of anything more important to keep in tip-top shape than a sense of humor, especially after your knees and hair and sight and taste and smell and even little parts of your mind are gone. Even after most of the people you knew or ever could have known have died.
Whoever said one person can make all the difference didn’t live in a world with seven billion people.
The next passage describes the kind of economic system that inevitably falls apart in an apocalypse. We are seeing it to some extent right now. Our economy is based on stability, extra-cash, good health, consumption, and extreme specialization. When everything works properly in a modern economy, you only need to know how to do one thing . . . or, if you're rich, less than one thing!
Today I write from a folding chair on my patio, watching some person I don’t even know wash my windows. It amazes me that we have come to this: a person who specializes in mopping floors, and another who specializes in washing windows, and another who mows lawns, and yet another who balances finances, and another who calculates risk, and so on. We are each a cog in some giant cuckoo clock, one man among many in a Fordist assembly line.
Sometimes my reading reflects this next thought. If I were perfectly logical, it probably should. But I'm glad when I switch back to fiction. Fiction is more satisfying, especially in times of great unrest.
I myself, prefer nonfiction. I have enough trouble wrapping my head around all the things that have actually happened on this planet. I don’t have time to worry about all the things that happen in other people’s imaginations.
The moral of Ponticello's story . . . and the moral for right now.
I didn’t know then that life never stops dealing you surprises and that the biggest surprises always happen when it looks like everything is finally settling down.
Dear Ms. Etiquette . . . Deer, Ms. Etiquette?
What is the protocol if an old Asian lady is in the middle of the running trail by my house, taking pictures of some deer?
Do I have to stop and wait for her to take the pictures? Or am I allowed to run past her, scaring the deer into the forest?
I should point out that in my neck of the wood, white-tailed deer are nothing special. In fact, there are deer everywhere! They roam the streets, they stare at my dog until we get two yards away, they gnaw on everyone's gardens, and they transport ticks.
This is what I did: I ran right past her before she could take her photo. The deer scattered, frightened by the juggernaut that is me running. If she said anything, I didn't hear her . . . I was wearing headphones.
I don't want to be rude to old ladies, but come on. If it were a moose or a bear, that would be a different story.
Thanks for helping me understand that I did the right thing.
Sincerely,
Dave "My Manners Matter" from Jersey
Double Beach Vacation (During a Pandemic)
Oops! Dave Did It Again (time is a flat circle)
We then waited for a few minutes, killing time with our new family obsession, the NYT crossword app, and then Alex and I completed the pick-up.
Catherine was still on her Zoom meeting when we got back.
The food looked amazing. I was hungry. I opened the box containing my sandwich-- I had gotten the same thing as Catherine-- and then quickly checked the other box. Same thing. Mahi-mahi wrap with bacon and greens. Lightly breaded and fried.
Alex mumbled something about the color of my fish as I started eating, but I was so hungry I didn't hear him.
Catherine's meeting finished and she came down the stairs, opened her styrofoam container, took a look, wrinkled her nose, and said:" This is your sandwich. This is tuna. Where's mine? Did you eat mine?"
Oh no.
It was at that moment that I realized I did NOT order the same thing as my wife. I was GOING to order the same things as my wife, but then--at the last moment-- I switched to the fajita grilled tuna wrap.
It was right on my order sheet. I had written it down. You can see this for yourself in the document I have provided.
When I quickly opened the other box, to make sure we had the right stuff, I saw a wrap with some fish in it. And some green stuff surrounding the fish. I looked too quickly to notice that the fish was tuna (and this is why Alex made the comment about the color of my fish . . . mahi-mahi is whiter than tuna) and that the green stuff was avocado salsa, not greens.
Unfortunately, Catherine doesn't eat tuna.
I apologized a hundred times over. I had really really wanted to make lunch smooth, easy, and delicious for her. Instead, she made a salad.
My punishment was severe: I had to eat the fajita grilled tuna wrap for dinner. I shared it with Alex, who does like tuna. It was superb. The whole thing was totally unfair, and it was completely my fault.
Looking back, it seems insane that I did this. I had WRITTEN DOWN my order and it wasn't the same as my wife's order. I looked at the sandwiches. But my brain reset to the first thing I decided upon, which was to get the same thing as my wife. And I was hungry. And stressed from making a phone call.
The worst thing is that I have done this before. Twelve years ago, I ate someone's sandwich in the English Office. And while she was pretty and blonde and a teacher, she wasn't my wife. The circumstances were equally absurd, and I had plenty of chances to NOT eat her lunch. But I suppose it is my destiny to repeat history over and over . . . Nietzche's eternal recurrence. Rust Cohle's "flat circle."
All I can say to these people, these people whose sandwiches I have eaten, these people whose sandwiches I will eat, is this: I'm sorry . . . I wish I could control this, but everything we've ever done, we're going to do it over and over again. Some combination of low blood sugar and intense hunger and airheadedness and difficulty with auditory communication without visual clues and the fact that I do things too fast, especially eating, is going to set up the same circumstances. Again and again. Over and over. It is my destiny, to eat your sandwich.
Warning: Requires Ancillary Brainpower
Respect the Community Garden
Gods of Tennis? Hello?
What do I have to sacrifice, in order to hit my two-handed backhand the same way in the match as I do in the warming-up to the match?
How can I loosen my grip and my mind under pressure?
What if I stopped eating french fries? Would that be enough?
Or do I have to give up something dearer?
Like egg sandwiches?
I am waiting for a sign.