There Are Too Many Fucking Shows

We signed up for a free Apple TV trial so we could watch Slow Horses (and because my wife is stuck at home healing from foot surgery) and last night we sampled some other Apple TV shows: Smigadoon!-- which was mildly entertaining (from my perspective) and hysterically funny (according to my wife) and two episodes of Mythic Quest-- which we both found witty and compelling-- and then I had to bail out when my wife started some Irish show called Bad Sisters . . . I know this is a first-world-problem, but the amount of shows on all the platforms is actually stressing me out-- we have text threads of recs from our TV-watching friends and while I understand this is the time of year when everyone is watching lots of TV-- it's cold and gray and the holidays are over-- and this is exponentially magnified this year because my wife can't leave the house-- plus there's the Australian Open and college basketball . . . I'm barely reading anything . . . but it appears that winter is over and my wife might get her stitches out tomorrow, so maybe instead of "dry January"-- which is a terrible month to quit drinking anyway-- but maybe instead of that silliness, we need to do "no wifi February" and release our brains from this digital capture.

Completely Curb Your Enthusiasm

You may have been tough enough to handle the cringeworthy antics of Larry David on Curb, but can you withstand the exponentially uncomfortable dynamics between Emma Stone, Nathan Fielder, and Benny Safdie on The Curse . . . my advice is to give it a shot: my wife has bailed out, but I am hooked (and this is the first TV show I'm watching all by my lonesome since Saxondale).

You'd Like to Go Second? No Problem . . .

THREE . . . count them, THREE-- that's right, I generated three great moments in education over the past two days-- for an average of 1.5 great moments per day; so without further fanfare-- because this is already too much fanfare-- here they are:

1) yesterday, a girl in my College Writing class asked me a strange question: she wondered if I knew anything about the PE mid-term . . . and though I told her that I did NOT know anything about the PE mid-term-- why would I know anything about the PE mid-term?-- but I told her I was totally willing to hypothesize about what I thought should be on the PE final, and then I went into an impromptu monologue about something I am fascinated with-- the sundry and miscellaneous rules of in-bounds and out-of-bounds in various sports . . . and while the girl that asked the question tuned out immediately-- before I even finished contrasting tennis and basketball!-- some of the athletic boys in the class got involved, and we went through a number of sports, hashing out when a ball or player was considered in-bounds or out-of-bounds and we agreed that knowledge of these rules would make an excellent PE final and we had a generally excellent time speaking on this topic-- especially because our hypothetical final monumentally annoyed the girl who originally asked the question;

2) in Public Speaking class this morning, we were about to present informational speeches and when I asked for a volunteer to go first, once again-- and this happens all the time-- a girl asked if she could "go second"-- this is a common and logical request in Public Speaking class . . . the kids are great-- they actually signed up for Public Speaking so they like to speak in public . . . but they still don't want the pressure of leading-off, so I'm always getting requests to go second or third-- but someone has to go first . . . and today, in another great moment of teaching, I finally solved that dilemma-- a girl asked if she could "go second" and another student quickly claimed "going third" and someone else actually claimed the fourth spot-- so we were all lined up and ready to roll, but someone needed to go first and then I had an epiphany, a stroke of brilliance and I said: "Ok . . . I will go first" and the kids looked at me like: "Wtf?" and then I drew a line on the board and I said: "Tennis" and, once again, they were like "Wtf?"

3) then I did an informational speech on the topic of "In? Or Out?" and first I went through sports where the ball is "in" if it hits the line-- soccer and volleyball and tennis-- and then I discussed the anomalous nature of basketball, where the ball is "out" if it touches the line-- and we also reviewed how the sides and top of the backboard are in-bounds-- but not the supporting braces up top; we talked about football and the fact that if your foot hits the line, you are out; I outlined the complication of pickleball: the ball is "in" if it hits the line, unless the serve touches the non-volley zone line, then that serve is "out"; I brought up darts and what happens if the dart splits the wire (you get the higher score) and that started a whole debate on if darts and bowling were even sports at all (they are) and then I broke down the weirdness of baseball-- the ball can roll foul but if it rolls back into fair play before the base, then it's a fair ball-- and if it hits the foul pole then it's fair, so yu should call the foul-pole the "fair-pole" and then I actually learned something new from the lacrosse girls in my class-- and this rule seems plumb-fucking-crazy-- in lacross, if the ball goes out-of-bounds after an unsuccessful shot, when the ball crosses the end line, then the team whose player/player's lacrosse stick is closest to the ball is awarded the ball . . . wild stuff-- and now I'm making this extemporaneous informational presentation into a Google slideshow, entitled "Is it IN? Or is it OUT?" so that next semester, when a student asks to "go second" the class will be in for a real surprise (and perhaps no one will ever ask to go second again . . . but maybe I need to prepare a number of these boring and technical speeches, so that any time I don't get a volunteer to go first, the entire class gets tortured . . . there so many great topics I could present on: Transcendentalist Philosophy in American Literature, How to Keep a Salubrious Sleep Schedule, Here Are Some TV Shows Old White Guys Like, Seven Ways to Improve Your Pickleball Game, and -- of course-- How Robert Moses and the Automobile Destroyed Our Once Great Nation).

Tanks a Lot

I brought my son Ian to New Brunswick last night so he could get an MRI on his ankle-- he may have a lacerated tendon-- and when I arrived home, sleepy and ready to watch some TV and fall asleep, I found my wife in the basement, spewing profanity and amazement because not only had she discovered a large and growing puddle of water on our basement floor, but she also discovered the source of this water-- and it wasn't due to the rain storm-- our tankless water heater and the surrounding pipework was leaking from all sorts of places-- so we got the wet-vac and some towels, put a large container under the heater, and got up several times during the night to wet-vac the water from the container and dump it in the sink . . . hopefully we can get a plumber over today, but the lesson here is: just because it doesn't have a tank, that doesn't mean it can't leak.

Our Hero: Pickleball

A priest, a bunch of med students, some frat guys, the requisite old dudes and ladies of various races and ethnicities, and a guy with a mullet walk onto a pickleball court . . . and everyone gets along and plays pickleball-- this sport may just save America from polarization, tribalism, fake news, misinformation, income inequality, obesity, and reality TV.

The Usual Vaseline-Coated Shit-show

I played pickleball this morning, then mowed the lawn, then helped my son Alex move a TV and some furniture to New Brunswick . . . forgetting that I should have been conserving my energy for the traditional Labor Day pool party greased-watermelon-rugby match; this year's match was more epic than usual-- and it's usually fairly epic . . . after jumping out to an early lead, my team eventually lost 3-2 but it took far longer than usual and by the end, most of us were gassed-- from treading water; from wrestling and dunking folks; from trying to keep our with our fully grown, athletic children, and mainly from diving into the murky depths of the deep end in pursuit of the neutrally buoyant melon-- -- with dozens of legs kicking above you, blocking your path to oxygen-- and while most of the match was the usual Vaseline-coated shit-show, I was proud of two particular moments:

1) Alex had the watermelon a yard from the end line, but when he rose up to toss it over the side of the pool and tie the score, I rose up with him-- and like (a very short and hairy) Dikembe Mutombo, I cleanly blocked his scoring attempt . . . it was fucking sweet-- and when Alex scored on the next possession, he said, "Thank God I scored, or I'd never hear the end of that block"

2) during a frothy chaotic melee, I ended up clutching the watermelon to my belly, but my back was turned to our opponent's end-zone and I was holding the melon below the surface of the water-- and no one knew that I was in possession of the melon-- so I channeled Daniel-Day Lewis, looked around frantically, and said, "Where is it? Where did it go?" and I simultaneously started kicking my legs and proceeding very slowly into enemy territory-- and I made it a couple of yards utilizing this deception, but then Alex jumped on me and pushed the melon loose, and he claims "you were making that face that you always make when you're doing something stupid like that."

The 1970s . . . Characterized by Four Crime Novels

 

If you lived through the 1970s, but were too young to remember much of it-- aside from the absurd commercials and network TV-- then this episode of We Defy Augury should be helpful and entertaining-- I take a look at how four crime novels characterize the zeitgeist of the 1970s (and I also take a few trips into the fuzzy abyss of my own memories of my first decade existing on this planet).

Do Germans Make Sitcoms?

The German sci-fi TV series Dark lives up to it's billing-- every house, building, path, and road in the fictitious forest town of Winden is baleful and menacing; it's almost always raining (which has got to be difficult to film) and each and every character has something sinister in their past . . . it's like a bizarro version of Stranger Things where all the adults are adulterous and damaged and sketchy and the children have internalized this trauma from the previous generation-- Stranger Things is about kids going on adventures independent of adults, Dark is about kids and adults intertwined in some sort of time-traveling madness-- and while Catherine and I love the show (so far . . . we're almost done with Season 1 and it's supposed to get even better) sometimes we have to laugh at how dire every scene, person, and scenario becomes-- and I feel like I need to watch a German sitcom once we are finished with this: there are German sitcoms, right?

TV . . . It's What's On TV

Catherine and Ian were resistant to watching a new show-- they wanted to forge ahead with Money Heist (which is good, bit it's five million episodes so I wanted some variety) but I reminded them that in the old days you might watch a different show every day of the week and my wife conceded that point (although Ian didn't know what we were talking about) and so we started TWO shows-- both seems similar:  The Society and From . . . both shows are about being trapped in a town, both shows are creepy, and both shows are compelling-- I like From  a little better-- we ended up watching two episodes-- the pilot is pretty amazing-- and I think they will both provide a nice diversion from the infinite money heist.

Whatever You Believe, Please Try To Climb the Political Ladder

Blogger, author and illustrator Tim Urban doesn't think right/left expresses the politics and polarization in our great nation-- first of all, he doesn't think that most people are actually into POLITICS . . . he thinks they are into reality TV based on politics-- narrative with main characters and epic conflicts and no room for boring, rational people who go to work, pass bills, make progress, impede stupidity, and think like a scientist-- but his "ladder" of thinking puts things on a much clearer spectrum; you can have some deep convictions but as long as you're willing to think like a scientist and weigh evidence, good things can happen-- and even if you think like a sports fan-- even if you are rooting for your team but still want to maintain the integrity of the game and respect a good play or a smart --game plan even if it's not your home team-- then that's not so bad . . . but once you go below that it doesn't matter what you believe, it's how you are believing it-- and down there, it's a mess (I still haven't read Urban's new book but Sam Harris has a great conversation with him).

 

Things I Learned Recently (For the Next Time)

I've now hit the age where I can have three alcoholic drinks and feel okay the next morning, but if I have four alcoholic drinks then I'll feel pretty awful the next morning . . . so that's how I felt this morning, but I took some Advil, shook it off, and went to the gym with my son-- I lifted weights but he got involved in a pick-up basketball game so we stayed for a while, and I watched the first half of the Rutgers basketball game while I was working out-- lifting weights, walking backwards on the treadmill, rowing, etcetera . .  and it was stress free-- so that's what I learned-- when you watch your team while you're working out, you don't yell and scream and curse at the TV-- you release your stress through exercise . . . but then we drove home and caught the second half, and I yelled and screamed and cursed and Rutgers totally collapsed and I should have stayed at the gym for the entire game-- next time: three drinks and I stay at the gym, next time.

Uh . . . Wow . . . TV?

The third episode of The Last of Us-- the HBO show based on the video game with the same name-- is some very ambitious, very emotional, very amazing TV . . . the episode is really a film unto itself (it reminds me of the Station 11 episode Baby Boom in that respect) when the show takes a worthy detour in time and place to show us Nick Offerman as a survivalist prepper bizarro-world version of his most beloved character, Ron Swanson, with a compelling twist (the other fabulous cameo appearance is Murray Bartlett, another great actor who absolutely stole the show as Armand in White Lotus).

Feral Hogs + Atlanta = Awesome

 

We just finished one of my favorite TV shows ever: Atlanta . . . my son Alex finished ahead of Ian and me, but Alex watched the last few episodes of season four again with us (while annoyingly pointing out all sorts of stuff about the background music) and though I loved the last episode-- which is loads of fun and might explain the surreal nature of the show-- I enjoyed the penultimate episode most of all; Paper Boi has some wild adventures with a tractor and my favorite villainous creature-- a feral hog!-- what more could I ask for?

Too Many Sports . . .

Big Rutgers win over Indiana Friday night, then I settled in at the bar with some friends to watch the Giants, Jets, and World Cup game Sunday afternoon-- Giants should have won but tied-- nothing like watching an entire football game and it ending in a tie-- Jets fell apart on the one-yard line, and England crushed Senegal . . . in the end I don't know how to feel (although I was excited that Argentina moved on, I love that little Lionel Messi chap) but there might be too many sporting events on TV right now for me to handle.

Sick Sucks

Sickness . . . it's so fucked up-- the Friday after Thanksgiving was turning into one of those wonderful holiday break days-- on Wednesday night, we dealt with the college son returning home and still behaving like he was in college, but we straightened that out and we had a lovely Thanksgiving at my parents-- but I didn't drink or eat all that much-- I don't like Thanksgiving food and I didn't really trust my kids to drive us home because there are a lot of drunk yahoos on the road post-Thanksgiving, plus I was saving my servings of alcohol for the USA/England World Cup Match-- Friday morning I rose early, and got my go-to-chili recipe simmering in the crockpot and then Ian and I went to the Piscataway Y and played some two-on-two hoops against some high school basketball players-- and beat them in two hard fought games-- my two point shot was on and Ian has learned to roll to the basket and his arms are so long that it hard to guard him . . . the Hispanic kid was calling me "Pops," as in-- "make sure you guard Pops outside" which was an absolute delight-- then we went home, got the house set up and thirty or so people of all ages came over for the game-- we had three devices streaming (we had to calibrate the iMac in the kitchen because it was a couple seconds ahead of the smart TV in the living room, because folks were very serious about all cheering being in unison, even though said cheering was totally apostrophic, as the players can't hear us) and the party was great-- a perfect result since we had a number of Brits over . . . and people stayed a bit late and some Scotch was consumed (thanks Adrian!) and then it was time for bed . . . and two hours later I woke up shivering and I've had a fever and a cough and a headache-- which really hurts when I cough-- and body aches and sleeplessness and all kinds of other gross symptoms-- so all my plans to go out with Terry on Tuesday to watch the USA/Iran game have come to nought-- especially since Terry came down with a wicked case of COVID yesterday-- so we'll both be watching the game on our respective couches, cheering softly . . . usa . . . usa . . .usa . . . and I'm headed to the doctor today so I can avoid this typical sequence of events and perhaps I'll get some kind fo drug or diagnosis that will get me better sooner rather than later-- this is the first time I've been really sick since February 2020, and I'm shocked it's not COVID-- but the test was negative so maybe it's RSV or the flu or just some weird virus like I had three years ago.

Costa Rica Shocks Japan

I always root for the Central and South American teams in the World Cup (and Mexico and Canada . . . proximity rooting) and so I was excited to see Costa Rica redeem the nation, after losing 7-0 to Spain, by coming up with a dramatic 1-0 win over Japan this morning . . . and I know it's got to be tough to announce an entire soccer match-- there's a lot of dead time and a lot of just knocking the ball around, but I still think that the announcer should not have called Japan "shell shocked" after Keysher Fuller's change-up chip shot goal, because of the firebombing of Tokyo and the atom bomb . . . "shocked" would have been enough-- that would be like saying, if the US team were to beat Iran, that it looks like the Iranians have been roasted by the Great Satan-- and I don't think you can say that on TV-- but soccer does bring out the hyperbole in many of us (my favorite adjective used by an announcer in this cup was a "tantalizing" pass).

Sports Potpourri

Catherine and I inhaled a lot of sports in the past two days-- with a mixed bag of results-- yesterday we stopped at the HP soccer game, just in time, to see Ian score a wild back-heel flick volley goal off a long shot . . . and this was an easy 6-0 win so we left at half-time to go to the Rutgers/Nebraska game-- we parked at the edge of town and decided to walk over (we had subs and drinks and we were meeting our friend Dom at the Greek Church lot to tailgate) but someone told us the entrance to the park was flooded, so we hightailed it through the train trestle tunnel (which has no walking path) and then walked on the muddy rutted path parallel to River Road-- and Catherine wiped out in the mud and banged up her knee (before even consuming any alcohol!) and then we realized that the walk along River Road to the church lot was not only miserable and muddy but also really long (3 miles?) and we were walking next to all the game day traffic-- but we made it to the tailgate, cleaned up Catherine's knee, had some food and drinks (Cat made our drinks in ziplock bags, so we could dispose of everything once we were done drinking!) and then walked back to the stadium and met my buddy Haim and his wife (who gave us the tickets) and watched an absolutely awful football game-- a million penalties and TV timeouts, just slow as fuck-- but Rutgers was in it so we stayed until the end, only to see them throw an interception on their last drive, down by one point-- blech-- and then because we stayed so late, the traffic was insane, so we walked back to the car . . . after a nearly four hour game (and I was only wearing a t-shirt because it was so hot walking over, but then it got really cold-- I've been to two Rutgers games this season and that might be it for me, football is fun to watch on TV, when you can do other stuff, but it's pretty drawn out in person (although it was fun to talk to all the Nebraska folk at the game . . . I only know one thing about Nebraska-- that the Ashfall Fossil Beds are one of the greatest paleontological sites in the world, just astounding-- so I brought them up and the guy sitting next to us said he lived an hour south of them, so I had something to chat about-- then this morning I went over to see HP play Timothy Christian and this was a wild and exciting game, which HP finally won 4-3 . . . and Ian scored a great goal, he received a through ball, took a couple dribbles, and then finished nice and early-- before the defense converged on him, and shot a rocket past the big keeper from the eighteen-- he should have scored a couple other but the keeper made a great fingertip save on one headed to the upper corner and he was about to finish a follow and got clobbered (no foul) so Ian is having quite a season-- he scored the game winner the other day against Wardlaw-Hartridge-- and most importantly, he's playing a lot of minutes and his speed and defensive hustle look really good, and-- knock on wood, because he's only 130 pounds-- he hasn't gotten hurt.

 

Pirates? Not the Disney Version

Great non-fiction writers can make any topic interesting and Steven Johnson is one of the great ones, he's done it over and over with various topics-- innovations and ideas, cholera, the history of air, organized complexity, decision-making, video games and TV, etcetera-- and in his new book, he astounded me by taking a topic that I always thought was kind played out and juvenile: pirates-- but Johnson's take on pirates is different . . . he puts  them in global context, but I should warn you, Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt is not a book that focuses on swashbuckling and sword-fighting-- although that stuff comes up-- instead it portrays pirates (specifically Henry Every) as a bundle of contradictions: democratic rapists; multi-cultural xenophobes; contract abiding torturers; free-spirited slave traders . . . it's a lot to take in, but Johnson does it in a fast breezy style and the history of the Mughal Dynasty and the East India Company goes down fairly easy.

The Only Way to Make it Through a Colonoscopy: TikTok

I survived my colonoscopy today-- and last night's utterly disgusting colonoscopy prep-- and I will NOT be doing this procedure again for a long time . . . though Dr. Plumser wants me to come back in three years because some of the colon viewing was "suboptimal"-- but I had no polyps at all and he just couldn't see inside some fold because of stool residue-- although I don't know how anything was left in there after last night's purge-- yuck-- and the procedure wasn't too bad . . . a lot of lying around I a gown and I got my first IV in my life (I didn't look) and when they give you that anesthesia, wow do you pass out quickly . . . it's pretty bizarre-- but now I'm eating food again and drinking coffee and perhaps I'll eat a full meal tonight, but I think I'll do the mail-in version next time (since I don't have a family history of colon cancer) especially because I was so bored last night, just walking back and forth to the bathroom, downing the gross liquid laxative, that I downloaded TikTok and I can see why that app is so addictive-- if you're sleep deprived and too distracted to read or watch TV, those short videos really pass the time.

Trip to Possumtown!

My wife and I took a road trip to the Possumtown Firehouse last night for what I thought was going to be a two hour CPR class-- I need to update my certificate for coaching-- but the course also included First Aid and the lady running the class was a bit disorganized and a bit tangential, so we were there from 6 PM until nearly 10 PM, learning about tourniquets and nosebleeds and impalements and all kinds of things that make me dizzy-- luckily there was a large couch in the very comfy Possumtown Volunteer Firehouse (the lady's dad was the chief) and this place really had small town firehouse character: a big TV and a kegerator and a soda machine that you could just open and take the soda out and a fish tank with some big fish in it (I watched these fish when the videos got too graphic about blood) and the class was quite intimate, just me, my wife, and a young dude-- it was kind of stream-of-consciousness, with lots of anecdotes from the teacher's EMT experiences and the main thing I learned-- which no other class was so blunt about-- was that you don't need to worry about breaking someone's ribs when you're doing CPR because they are CLINICALLY DEAD . . . once she put it that way, it assuaged a lot of my fears about pressing too hard or whatever, you're literally trying to resurrect someone when you're doing those compressions (and we always have an AED nearby when I coach, so hopefully that machine will do the trick . . . although if someone like me goes down, you'll need the razor in the accessory kit top deal with my excessive chest hair).