Why Not Just Carry a Boombox, Asshole?

Here's something that bothers me. People--like the girl this morning--riding on the subways (it could be any confined space, really) wearing headphones with their music turned up so loud that it distracts nearby people. I'm not talking about merely being able to hear the noise, or even being able to make out the tune, I'm talking about so loud that it's distracting, like they put the ear nodes in backwards or something.
I despise very loud music so being in the proximity of one of these ultra-loud headphone people grates on me like fingernails on a chalkboard. It's not just the noise, either, since I have gotten good over the years and tuning out music. It bothers me more that the people between the headphones really think it's necessary to play their music that loud. Can they be so socially oblivious to not know that the loud scratchy treble-fest that emanates out from their headphones is annoying? I think that some people are that oblivious, which is itself quite enough to elicit some deserved scorn. The worst ones, though, know exactly how loud their garbage is to the rest of the world, and do it anyway. Psychologically, I'd like there to be a study done on what motivates these people. Surely for some they think it's cool. For others, it's attention-seeking. No matter the reason, a person who consciously will play his headphones that loud and knows the consequence is a person that I hate. And hate is not something that should be spread around indiscriminately, so I really would like to understand what the fuck is wrong with these people. (Then, once these specimens are effectively cataloged, they can be properly sequestered. That's what science is for, right? Not helping the misfits but keeping them away from the blessed few?)

Fear

It's in the title of the blog, after all. Even if the title is just vague pastiche, I still might as well slip a little in.

I never had any intention of writing anything about Tiger Woods. I try to stay as far away from celebrity crap as possible, after all. Something does not become interesting to me merely because it happens to a famous person, and very rarely are the things that happen to famous people in any way relevant to my own existence.(1) But this Tiger story just won't go away. It's become almost fascinating, even to me.
Of course, I'm not going to get into any of that stuff, because even if gossip trash becomes fascinating to me, my take on gossip trash will never be interesting to anyone else and I will never ever subject people to it.
So then what am I doing here writing now? Fear--I am acknowledging fear and how Tiger Woods scares me.
First, I will commit the sin of making an assumption about a famous person that I actually have no idea about. For illustrative purposes, though, let's go with it. Tiger Woods seemed like he had his shit together, so much so that if you find out that in fact, he did not at all have his shit together, you'd wonder how can anyone have his shit together? If this seeming paragon of austerity can be exposed in such a comprehensive way, how can a mere mortal expect to succeed in life?
That's being a bit heavy-handed, but my point is that you can't take things for granted in this world. I am not a philanderer. Just the idea of cheating gives me the willies. I think I have extremely strong self-control, stronger than anyone I know actually. I can say with complete confidence that I will always be completely faithful to my wife and my future family.
But. How can I really be so sure? Humans are human, after all. Mistakes are made, and if you crack open that door even a little, it's not hard to slowly let it slide open completely.
That is the lesson I take from this Tiger scandal: fear. Fear of what anyone, including myself, is capable of. I need to be mindful of that and to always be prepared to answer to anyone. It's almost like being a role model for yourself.


1. Weird, I know, but I don't do drugs, don't fly in planes more than a handful of times a year, don't have my picture taken anonymously, don't spend much time on beaches more exotic than Rockaway, don't dress well, don't have a publicist or an assistant, don't wear big sunglasses, and don't go to clubs or indulge in bottle service. Also I don't have grudges or fueds and don't have a dysfunctional family. Oh, and I'm not bisexual, as far as I know, because I've never been in an orgy or even in the same room with other people having sex.

Magic Victims

I was watching something about the Madoff scandal last night (yeah, I don't really know why either). It reminded me about how angry I used to get when the scandal first broke and all those news pieces came out with such pitiful stories of all the people who lost so many millions of dollars.
First, am not a completely arbitrary cynic. I appreciate that any loss of money by any person is unfortunate, even if we are talking about a billionaire losing one million dollars. It's an extreme example, but for him, it's a tiny amount, though it's still a loss. That said, the key for this man is not to focus on the million lost but the $999,000,000 that he still has. The million is not important. The 0.1% loss is.(1) This is the first extremely important to remember when hearing about all the huge monetary losses in this scandal. A large chunk of the "losers" were very very wealthy to begin with.
Second, and most frustrating to me, is the issue of dividend payments and annual returns.
Madoff began his scheme most likely in the late 1980s. At that time, the Dow Jones was at about 2,000. A year ago, when he was jailed, it was over 8,000, but just about a year before that it was at 14,000. The point here is that over these 20 years, the stock market as a whole increased between 400-700%. For a fund that was "successful" enough to lure as many big fish as Madoff's you would have to assume he was claiming better-than-average returns and thus beating the simple Dow numbers.
So, now, who wants to play with Excel?(2) Actually, first we need to make a few assumptions. The first I will make is that our initial investment into Madoff's fund is $1,000,000, mostly because it's a round number. Secondly, for illustrative purposes, I'll assume this investment is made in 1989. That is in the fund's youth and also allows us to have a full clean 20 years of investing. Next I assigned a 10% annual rate of return and a 5% annual dividend payment. I'm no CPA so all I did was google and find that these are roughly standard amounts. In fact, after thinking about it for a second, I added another column for 15% annual returns, due to the market success over the period.(3)
In cell D4 I inputted 1,000,000. In cell D5 (representing year 1990 here) I inputted "=(D4*1.15)-(D4*0.05)." This covers the 15% increase less the 5% dividend payout. Our $1,000,000 becomes $1,100,000, a nice increase, plus the $50,000 we pocket in the dividend. You play this out for twenty years and the total account balance goes over $6 million. But remember that because this is a ponzi scheme that number is meaningless because there were no actual trades to increase the fund value, so the effective total of the balance in 2008 is not $6 million but actually $0.
In a lot of the reports about huge losses but the Madoff victims, the numbers cited were either this $6 million or if they were trying to be more simply truthful, the initial $1 million, plus any inflation adjustments, if they were being especially diligent.(4)
In addition to this D column of my spreadsheet, I also have another column which sums the dividend payments only. After 20 years, this amount totals $2,863,749.97.(5) Yes, really. This is how rich people get richer. A mere $1 million almost tripled, and that's just the dividend payments. Most importantly, pertaining to the Madoff "victims," this $2.8 million is real money that was given to them. This is some of the money that those rich people--sorry, "victims"--lived on. If you can follow the basics of a ponzi scheme, you also realize that this money was stolen. Old Bernie and his wife weren't the only ones getting fat off the poor souls who invested in his fund, many many of the actual investors were profiting as well. If you want to be fair about it all, you'd have to go and find the earliest investors and repossess their precious luxury items too.
Even for those folks who weren't early investors, any returns or payments they were receiving were fraudulent. They were living a lie. Sure, they were lied to, but they went right along with it because anyone likes a free buck. The only true victims were those people who only joined the scheme shortly before he was shut down (though I imagine for them the paper trail would be easier to follow and they might have a much better chance in court to recoup their losses).
It's a simple statement, but one that bears repeating for people dealing in the market: you can't make assumptions. You can't lose money you never actually had.
If you walk down the sidewalk every day and find a twenty dollar bill in the same spot and pick it up and use it every day, then whatever you buy with that money is a tangible benefit to having found it. But then what if you find out that some foolish person had purposefully left that twenty there every day for someone else to pick up. Obviously this person should not leave his money out on the sidewalk like that, but still if you pick it up it isn't yours. Perhaps you haven't officially "stolen" the money, but ethically you have deceived and manipulated someone and benefited at his expense. I'm not sure how you could be innocent in this case, let alone have the audacity to call yourself a victim when the fool stops leaving his twenty on the sidewalk.(6)



1. For comparison's sake, if you are a middle-class schmo who invests $10,000 in the stock market and you lose 0.1% of it, then you would have lost $10. Sure, it's a loss, but come on, now. We're not calling this a tragedy.
2. For work, I've been dabbling more and more with excel sheets, and curiously I've got to say I enjoy it a little. Figuring out how to best write a simple function to capture what I'm looking for tickles my efficiency bone. And using copy-paste over and over and watching the numbers fill themselves in is oddly satisfying. Of course--disclaimer--I am a complete novice, and only really know how to use the SUM and AVERAGE functions.
3. A 10% return increases our intial million by 250% over the 20 years, while a 15% return increases it by 600%. The latter here would be the more likely for an exclusive and successful fund such as was this one.
4. Even this is not so simple as I'm making it, because you could technically argue that in addition to the real million dollars lost, there is also an opportunity loss, since if they weren't investing with a crook like Madoff they could have been doing so legitimately and actually made money. In this case, the loss amount would be somewhere between $1 million and $6 million. I personally think that's a bit unfair because anyone can claim "losses" this way. Just because you aren't winning doesn't have to mean you are losing. There a tons of investors who don't make large returns or even any returns; these people can't complain about "unfair losses" any more than a traditional gambler can.
5. I have another two columns that track what happens if the person, instead of pocketing the whole dividend, keeps only 25% of it and reinvests the rest. This is perhaps closer to the truth for the financially savvy investors, but I'd hardly say it was the norm. You've seen the interviews with lots of these people. They don't often strike me as responsible about their wealth. For your curiosity, the dividend re-investors make only $1,139,392.96 in dividends over twenty years (still higher than their initial investment), but their total fund balance is an enormous $12.2 million. While I'm at it, lowering the annual return estimate to 10% would change the total balance to $2.56 million without dividend reinvestment and $5.0 million with reinvestment. The total dividend profits would be $1.65 without reinvestment and $0.62 with reinvestment at this 10% return level.
6. Again, this is a simple analogy. To be more fitting, the person picking up the twenty would have to also be leaving something like $18 on another sidewalk and have another person "steal" that from him. The point is, whether or not you know at the time that you are stealing from someone else, that doesn't change the fact that someone is being stolen from. And that outrage is hardly an appropriate response when the too-good-to-be-true stealing ends. Shame is closer to it.

Self-Preservation

Some son of a bitch fruit seller is trying to gain my acquaintance, and I'm not at all happy about it.
There is this pretty standard guy with a pretty standard sidewalk fruit cart who sets up on Boerum between Joralemon and Livingston, right in the path I take to the train every morning. I have a fairly rigid fruit-buying regimen: I get all of it either at the corner grocery store (which is excellent, by the way, corner of Court and Pacific) or at a sidewalk cart near my workplace. It doesn't make a lot of sense for me to stop at a place on the way to the train and have to hold the fruit during the whole trip, so I've never given a thought to actually buying fruit from this guy in Downtown Brooklyn. I made the mistake of making eye contact with him a couple times within a week, though, and the guy must have realized that I walk by his cart every day at the same time and figured he might have a potentially steady customer. That is all fine by me, but he's taken to saying "good morning" to me most days now. The first time it took me off guard but my social instincts prompted a return greeting. The second time he said it I was in a stream of people and was able to act like I wasn't paying attention. The third time was this morning, when I was walking alone, staring ahead, conscious of his prescence, and simply ignored him. I'm going to continue with this action until he gets the idea. I don't begrudge him trying to warm up to a person in order to increase his sales. That's his job. But I also don't like being guilted into buying fruit. Me and this guy, we are not friends. I don't want to be friends and neither does he. I carry on in accordance with this fact; he does not. And so it must be.
This situation is not dissimilar to another one I've found myself in several times in my life, that of the unintended uninvited romantic interest. Clearly, I'm an attractive figure for people. Perhaps not as clearly, I'm very rarely interested in others. Most often what I've done when a potential paramour begins to make her true intentions known (almost never overtly) is simply to ignore that person, or at least ignore her more than would be natural given whatever level of social acquaintance we had before the development of the crush. This might be a touch immature, but it is effective. And, because the person isn't viewing you or the situation in an unbiased manner, she won't be offended by the ignorance, so her image of you won't be tarnished by what are really kinda rude actions by you. Assuming you are disciplined and patient (two skills I possess), it's just a matter of time until the nuisance disappears and things carry on with you no worse for wear.
It's about controlling the borders of the land of you. Some people have bigger fences than others.

Gary Patterson's False God

I don't usually get off on nitpicking idiot statements, but this story really hits on a few of my interests and drives me nuts at the same time. Here then are my comments interspersed with the story:

On a day when Gary Patterson received a contract extension through 2016, the TCU coach stated that the Horned Frogs can win a national championship despite not being in a BCS conference.

Mr Patterson, you have done a nice job with your team this year, but the ridiculous things you're going to say in this article pathetically prove that you have no business receiving a 7-year contract extension.

And he thinks they can do so without a playoff system.

No, you can't. You're like a black person voting for George Wallace.

Patterson, whose contract included salary increases for his assistants, maintains that he's in favor of the bowl games and not a playoff system.

"Is it easier to win one game for a championship? Or to have to win four?" Patterson asked. "If you have a playoff, you practice and get on a plane and play. And if you lose, it's over. If you go to a bowl game, you're there seven days and the kids can enjoy a place and get rewarded."

Let's set aside the stupid comment about his players enjoying themselves at a bowl game since that's irrelevant and he knows it. He pretty clearly is admitting here that his teams will never be good enough to win a title through a playoff system because it would require them winning multiple games against top competition. He knows that it's far more likely for his team to catch lightning in a bottle and upset one elite team than it is win four in a row. This proves he understands probability. Good for him. I can't get past the fact that he knows his teams aren't good enough to be considered legitimate national champions and that he feels it's ok to continue the current system because it leaves the door open for a non-legit champ to sneak in.

Patterson noted that there's still a chance his 12-0 team -- TCU's first undefeated squad since 1938 -- could play for a national title this season. For that to happen, No. 4 TCU would need Nebraska to upset No. 3 Texas in the Big 12 Championship on Saturday at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington.

Then, the Horned Frogs would need the BCS formula to work in its favor.

Good luck with that, Gary. But hey, that's the way you want it. Go ahead delude yourself.

"We had a vision nine years ago of reaching a BCS bowl and going to a national championship," said Patterson, who is 85-27 after completing his ninth season. "A lot of people laughed and shook their heads and said, 'Well, that's nice.' We're now crossing that threshold.

"We feel like we're very blessed. I do not feel like our work is done. We still have a mountain to climb, a championship to win."

Patterson, who has led TCU to five 11-win seasons in the last seven years, believes that playing for a national title is as much about reputation as anything.

Of course. Which is exactly why a system that was created by the big schools for the big schools will never benefit a non-reputable program like Texas Christian University.

"You have to show that you can play with everybody consistently," he said. "You have to establish you can do it every year."

Last season, TCU finished No. 7 in the Associated Press and USA Today polls, the highest-ranked two-loss team in the nation. If the Frogs win a BCS bowl this season, they could begin 2010 in the top 5.

Gary wouldn't have a clue about this because he's an idiot, but that would be unprecedented, by far. The highest preseason ranking for any non-BCS school in the BCS era (since 1998) is 14th. TCU could begin 2010 in the top 5, sure. I could swim across the Atlantic Ocean in 45 minutes, too.

That means fewer teams to leapfrog on the way to a possible BCS national championship berth. TCU started this season 17th in both polls.

Told you so.

Patterson said even though TCU is not in a BCS conference, the program is gaining national respect and is proving it can play in the big games.

"Ninety percent of the teams [in the BCS] don't have an opportunity to win a national championship," Patterson said. "It's the same 10 teams. We've now gone to a BCS over 80 percent of the Big 12, 80 percent of the SEC, 80 percent of the Big 10. We've achieved something that all those other teams talk about because they are part of a conference that can get there. We've now jumped over a hurdle by going to a BCS game."

Gary, first, you're talking gibberish so who knows what you're actually saying; second, you don't know what the hell you're talking about. Since 1998, there have been 94 slots open for teams in BCS games. 90 of those have been filled by BCS teams. There have been 22 berths into national title games, and of course all 22 of them have gone to BCS teams.

Those 90 berths from BCS teams have come from a total of 37 different schools. 37 schools out of the 65 total BCS schools. That's 57%. 11 different schools playing for a title, out of 65. That's 17%.

The three non-BCS schools that have taken the four total non-BCS team berths (TCU this year will be the fourth non-BCS and 41st overall school) come from a pool of 52 non-BCS schools. That's 6%. And 0 title game berths is 0%.

Patterson quickly said the BCS bowl wasn't official, as bowl pairings will be announced Sunday.

"We're going into houses and everyone knows about TCU," Patterson said. "The only thing that was held over our heads was we couldn't play in a BCS game or play for a national championship."

Patterson believes strongly that isn't the case anymore.

Ol Gary is saying that he prefers a system that has never ever given a team such as his even a chance to win a title. He's using blind faith that this system is different now, even though you could find zero evidence this is true and even less of a motivation from those who control the system to change it. I think this is similar to Ralph Nader saying he loves the two-party US political system because it gives him, a third-party candidate, the best chance at winning an election.

If, however, the system itself were something like a 16-team playoff, which is what Gary uses as the opposing view to his dear simple 1 vs 2 BCS title game, then teams like TCU would have far more access (I know, anything counts as "far more" than zero, but we're playing Gary's game here). In the BCS era, 12 times a non-BCS school has finished in the top 16 of the final BCS standings, which is presumably what would be used to populate a playoff. An unaffiliated committee might actually have granted even more spots. But that's at least 12 chances for the little guys. 12 opportunities to "play for a national championship," which is the whole point of what Gary is saying here.

Go Skin

Yesterday afternoon I was hanging up our office holiday(1) decorations and I was thinking about clothing. I was wearing a sweater yesterday on top of a buttoned t-shirt,(2) and since I was going to be working with pine needle-covered items I naturally removed the sweater before starting. Naturally, as in I didn't even think about as I was doing it. In fact, none of this occurred to me at all until I was finished and washing my hands and I noticed those tell-tale red dots on the insides of my forearms. You see, if I had been wearing the sweater, then those dots wouldn't be there, but then I probably would have numerous nicks and pulls in the fabric, which would be almost unfixable. Instead, I had very small spots on my skin that would disappear within hours.
Maybe you haven't noticed, but what I'm getting at here is that our skin is plenty strong and durable on its own, much moreso in fact that the clothes we spend so much money to cover it.
One thing I learned over time as a runner is that if it is raining and the temperature is remotely warm (anything approaching 70 degrees), you are much better off running shirtless because your skin is far better at dealing with water than any textile. This is only worth mentioning because for most people their approach is just the opposite: to put on more layers of clothes when it rains.
Our skin is pretty impressive on its own. Protection from cold is really the only biological reason to ever wear clothes.(3)(4) Remember that as you're standing in a mall looking at all the ridiculous price tags this season.


1. I put up a fake pine tree and decorated it with lights and ornaments. I also put up pine-roping things and draped them in the elevator lobby. These are "Christmas" decorations. There is no reason to act otherwise. I don't really mind respecting others by using the "holiday" designation when referring to the season in general, but I do get a little pissed when someone says we are not supposed to call things what they are when what they are is "Christmas." Next time I hear someone call something a "menorah," I will correct them and say, no, that is in fact a "holiday candle."
2. At this point in my life I know both that wearing button-up t-shirts is scorned and that I will never ever stop doing it. Try to think about the many times in your life that you've been happy to have a sleeve buttoned tight around your wrists. Anytime I wear a fully-sleeved shirt, I will always just unbutton the wrist and roll up the sleeves anyway. Give me comfort.
3. Shame or embarrassment are not a biological reasons.
4. Socks and shoes being the only exception.

Here We Are Now

On November 20, 2007, Sara and I met for our first date at a restaurant in Ft Greene called Olea. It's on Lafayette St just a couple blocks from the school she was teaching at that year. It's a simple but thoughtfully put-together place with actual cushions on the chairs and pew seating along the walls. The noise level is somewhat quiet but not in a stifling way, and the lighting is moderate. The food is good and the menu encourages you to order tapas. Basically, it's a perfect place to have a first date. I had never been there before, and--prior to last night--I had never been there since.
In addition to working up street on Adelphi St, Sara also used to live in the vicinity, maybe a 15 minute walk away. That was one job and two moves ago for her, though, and so neither she nor I ever had a reason to be in the area. However, since she both liked the restaurant and is a sentimentalist, she always wanted to return. Last night we finally did.
I am not to be confused with a sentimental person, but it was certainly a nice experience to relive what turned out to be a very important moment in my life. I say "what turned out to be" because it wasn't at all so obvious at the time. I'm going to go ahead and speak for her a little now, but we didn't have anything like the love-at-first-sight experience(1). And then, while we both had a very nice time at the first date, it was far from apparent that we were on the march toward a lifetime together.
I'm fairly certain that her basic motivation for approaching me was to help move on from her previous relationship. Two years later, my motivation is still unknown to me, but whimsy no doubt played a large role.
The point is that there's more than one way to skin a cat, and sometimes the cat still gets skinned even if you aren't trying.
Too often people too strongly use either societal generalities or their own experiences or to explain or understand others. I really enjoyed re-doing our first date last night, not because it reinforced my love for Sara, but because it reminded me how delicate and unpredictable fate can be. There was an impossible sequence of extremely tenuous events that unfolded just perfectly to leave us in the happy place we are today. I met her when I'd just turned 27. Perhaps 60 years of my life then were laid out before me, on the basis of very little. So much of who we are is castles made of sand. No, I'm not being rueful, I'm being impressed. And feeling very fortunate.


1. We didn't first meet at the restaurant, of course. That happened at a bar called Moe's four days prior, but that connection was far less memorable. I mean that literally, since I was quite inebriated. In fact, when she texted me the next day I did not initially remember her at all and only after great effort was I able to recreate what I (fortunately, I can now say) deemed to be her cute face.

The Man Who Scoffed at Everything

I try to avoid the fanboy-type posts but that's probably what this is.
I used to be a pretty big Food Network addict. When I lived alone and had only 6 channels, every night my default station was Food Network. I had my favorites, but really I watched everything they aired(1). It was good because not only did it entertain me but usually it also inspired me to actually cook things, and specifically to cook things better. Cooking appeals to me for two very fundamental reasons: because it's basically an unreachable pursuit of perfectionism, and because after a certain point you can mostly just wing it as you go.
Anyway, marriage and devoting time to things outside of myself and whatever else has caused me not to watch Food Network as much. Also, quite frankly, watching the same type of those shows gets tiring. The only ones I still watch are "Good Eats," and the contest/straight cooking shows like "Iron Chef" and "The Next Iron Chef"(2). I watch these because Alton Brown is still ridiculously informative, and because I like watching the absolute pros during "Iron Chef." And, because I love Jeffrey Steingarten.
Steingarten is the lumpy grey-haird frequent judge of "Iron Chef" and constant judge of "The Next Iron Chef." And he's a son of a bitch. He talks with an arrongance and a lisp as though he forgot to swallow his oyster, and I can't pin down if either are at all affected. He's the most knowledgable and nasty judge I've ever seen on those shows. He's like what Simon Cowell could be if Cowell didn't always operate as though he were his own media empire.
There is always one truly great moment of every "Iron Chef" episode: when the Chairman unveils the secret ingredient with his hyper-aggressive arm-waving style, followed by the super-intense bulging-eyed stare from one contestant to the other. It's all pure theater(3) but by god I can never get enough of it. Someone should make a youtube video of just all the secret ingredient reveals one after the other. I would be mesmerized.
The more times I watched "Iron Chef," the more I realized that there was often another great moment of many shows, the moment when the judges are introduced and Jeffrey Steingarten is one. That's right. Part of the reason I watch this very competitive cooking contest show is to see a somewhat obscure judge. To my great enjoyment, he usually tears to shreds whatever celebrity-type judge they have with him, but I've also seen him and Bobby Flay butt heads numerous times during the food presentations. He's a very tough critic who doesn't seem to care what others think, and he doesn't begrugde people their inferiority. I like that.



1. I even watched the one show that even then I hated: "Unwrapped." Mark Summers used to be awesome when I was nine and he was on "Double Dare." Now he's very lame and unbelievably annoying. He's the host/narrator of "Unwrapped," which is basically a half-hour version of the Mr Rogers segments where he tours the factories, except the only factories Summers tours are ones that make licorice or peeps or fritos--junk food. Summers&co apparently missed the fact that what made Mr Rogers's forays into industry were great because they were so short (yes it gets boring just watching a machine assembly line) and because his target audience was dumb little kids. I should mention now that "Unwrapped" usually airs around 10pm. However, none of this is what makes me want to hurt myself while watching the show. It's Mr Summers's delivery. He can't go more than three or four words without making a huge inflection, like he's constantly doing a radio advertisement for a big sale at a used car lot. Watch one episode and you might not notice, watch a handful over a week and you definitely will, watch a dozen and you'll want to slap that son of a bitch every time his smiling face appears in that old-timey diner booth surrounded by jujubees.
2. I always thought you were supposed to italicize TV series and quotate individual episodes, but just now did a check of nytimes.com and they are quotating series. I've got my eye on you, Sulzberger, don't lead me astray.
3. For instance, The Chairman isn't actually the nephew of the Japanese Iron Chef guy. He isn't even Japanese and he's just an actor named Mark Dacascos who was born in Hawaii to a Hawaiian-Filipino father and an Irish(!)-Japanese father. Sorry to crush that illusion.

Internet Entrepreneur: Me

And now for something quite different. I have an idea for a website. This might absolutely amaze you, but it would be a social-network type of site, where people have friends or followers or whatever. But unlike all the bullshit you get on those sites, mine would contain only one thing: links to people's personal calendars.
Take the upcoming thanksgiving holiday. If I wanted to know what my friends are doing then, I could simply login into the site and open up their calendars. No need for multiple emails. If I am staying local and I see that any of them are going out of town, then I don't bother with including them in the planning.
Sometimes when I'm thinking about upcoming events (such as holidays or big sporting events or just a happy hour) I wish I could just post my plans and/or my desires for all to see. It would save me lots and lots of time. Also, like the more traditional social sites, it would also serve as a way to keep other people informed. It would helpfully eliminate the seeming infinite status updates such as: "watching Mad Men," "sleeping in on a dreary Saturday," or "wishing I were at the beach." Really? No one fucking cares. There is way way too much crap on those sites, so that it all becomes white noise.

My site could be color-coded, too. Green events would be scheduled and confirmed. Blue events would be something you are looking forward to but have no plans for. Yellow events would be tentatively scheduled. Black events could be private. Then if one of your friends joins you in an event, their little icon or name or whatever would appear in that box as well. Of course you would be able to invite people into these events, too.
Many of my friends have talked about going to Madison Square Garden to see the Buckeye basketball team next Thursday night. People could go to my page and open up that date and see the game listed in its proper time and color-coded yellow because I don't yet have a ticket. There would also be a few of my friends' names. Then if a couple names who I would assume should be there are not, I could go to their pages and find out why. If the time is open on their pages, only then would I need to send an email just to them. If their pages are occupied at that time, then I would know why they won't be at the game. So simple. So organized. It helps both you and your friends. It lets people be self-centered. It lets people be pervy and leer at other people's calendars.
I only need a name (YouCalendar, YouCal, InLife, MeLink, etc--these are weak but you get the idea). And much more net savviness than I will ever have.

Josh ______ Folger

While I can find no good reason to go into any detail here about what happened yesterday(1), there is something of note for me to report. I changed my name today. Legally and everything.
Today being my 29th birthday, it is also the day my New York state driver's license expired, and so naturally I waited until today to get it renewed(2). I used this opportunity to enact the plan I decided on while waiting in the airport heading to my honeymoon: to change my middle name to Mallett, which is my new wife's maiden name. So now as far as the state of New York is concerned, I am Joshua Mallett Folger. And she is Sara Mallett Folger. Synchronicity.
In a previous generation, a wife assuming her husband's last name was relatively automatic, but over the years more and more womyn, for a variety of good and silly reasons, have made more and more choices to keep their given names into married life. I'm not going to pass any judgement on that, but I will say that it really meant a lot to me when Sara decided that she would take my name.
For something so ultimately arbitrary, it's a rather big life choice, and I don't take it lightly that she made it. For me (us), it's a commitment not just to each other, but to the new family that we have become. We are now the Folgers. Our kids will be Folgers. I know this might seem trifling to someone inexperienced in this way, but it's an amazing feeling.
So I got to thinking a little. Sara had a lot of identity in her previous name--Mallett--so what she did was drop her old middle name and keep Mallett as her new middle name. And if she was prepared to sacrifice part of that old identity in order to help make a new one with us, why shouldn't I? There is a family history in Mallett, a history that I am now also a part of. My middle name up until about 11am this morning was Ryan. Ryan is basically just a name(3), so why not drop it and embrace a piece of Sara's family history, even if mostly just symbolically?
I'm not the same person I was before I met and married Sara, so why not let my name reflect that? Sara doesn't have to be totally modernized with her name choices, but neither do I have to be old-fashioned.



1. After five weeks of rolling along at a reasonable pace of about five NFL bets per week, which were coming back at an exact 50% success rate, something unknown to me caused me to place 13 bets this week, just in time for a gigantic outlier of a 15% success rate performance. Of course. The gambling gods are still paying me back for one of the greatest days of my life: Friday, March 21, 2003, when as a college senior I watched from inside a couple of Las Vegas sportsbooks as my first eight bets of the day all won, and only the shot of the tournament by Drew Nicholas stopped me in the ninth game, which was UNC-Wilmington to win outright on a line of +390. I had my very own cheering section of degenerate gamblers who were actually pulling for me, and not simply the teams on the tv screens. Quite an experience. Sure beats looking down at a blackberry app as it refreshes with steadily worsening news of failure.
2. Did you know it costs $80 to get a license renewal? When the woman told me that, I asked if the name change caused the price to go up and she said no that was the basic cost. A license is valid for only five years. That's $16 per year. I think we ought to charge more to Jersey and Connecticut people who drive into the city, so people like me who only require a license for ID don't have to pay so damn much.
3. This isn't 100% forthright. Ryan was a normalization of Reinhart, which was my paternal grandmother's maiden name. So while it isn't technically devoid of meaning for me, it was a far far weaker bond that Sara had with hers. Anyway, I never ever used Ryan.

1. Yeah, I know. Thanks to every person who saw me Saturday for reminding me that Ohio State actually did in fact cover that 44-point spread. 45-0. With trick plays and on-side kicks. Sometimes you eat the bear........

2. Not only did I not have a costume to wear for Halloween this year, but I also got tired and decided that a trip to the netherlands of Williamsburg would be too much of an effort at 11:00pm on a Saturday. Granted, I had to work and was up at 5:50am that morning, but still that is pretty bad. I've got my third straight working Saturday this weekend, but perhaps after that I will be able to return to some normal level of social activity.

3. I almost feel like I should apologize to most of my friends before I say this but as of now I don't consider It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia to be a good show anymore. I vocalized my opinion a month ago that I felt like a few of this season's episodes were pretty weak. Then I saw a good one and resisted the urge to overreact. At this point though, I've seen six or seven episodes of this season and I think that's enough to pass judgement. It needs to go away and let us fans enjoy the goodness that it was. I'm not sure how to explain that it's possible, but the show is both trying too hard and mailing it in at the same time. I've found myself noticably uncomfortable (not the kind of uncomfortable that is cool from the show being edgy but from it being bad) several times this season. They clearly don't have enough good ideas to get through a whole season, and unfortunately the idea of a two or three episode TV season is unacceptable to people who make those decisions.
I'm going to keep recording the episodes this season and watching them when I get around to it but I've abandoned hope that I'll get anything as good as I used to, and I'm not going to lose any sleep if I miss an episode or two entirely.

4. Yesterday was the New York City Marathon, and since I'm a poor supporter of things even personally interesting to me, I didn't watch any of it, even though it passed just three-quarters of a mile from my apartment, and I was awake for all of it. I don't know, I did laundry.
But Sara did go, and she told me something that will never ever fail to disappoint and agitate me. Apparently, not only were people using electric-controlled wheelchairs during the race, but the crowd was also cheering these people on.
A long time ago, I came to peace with wheelchair divisions in marathons: a marathon is a hugely inclusive event, and not just a race for fast long-distance runners, so including a division for wheelchairs and having them start early so they don't get in anyone's way is perfectly fine. Sure, succeeding at pushing a wheelchair for 26.2 miles isn't even close to the same accomplishment as running the same distance, but the purity of the race is still there, so bully for them.
HOWEVER.........a wheelchair that is electrically-powered is just ridiculous. Not only that, but it's offensive to every other regular wheelchair participant, and especially the thousands of bipedal participants.
I understand fully that large marathons in 2009 often devolve into little more than parades, but still within those floating happy masses are many many people who are pushing themselves physically--much slower than those at the front of the field, but inside their weaker bodies the punishment they are inflicting and the stress they are struggling to overcome is at least in the same ballpark. If you are being powered along in an electric wheelchair and accepting the admiring cheers of all the supporters along the way, then you are really just a soulless embarrassingly self-centered asshole. Thousands of people wouldn't turn up, and the city wouldn't block off miles and miles of roads to traffic, and big companies wouldn't pay millions of dollars to sponsor the race, and many many countries arond the world wouldn't pay attention if the "New York City Marathon" were just a parade or a contest for people in electric wheelchairs. The reason this person received a warm response was thanks to the great effort and sacrifices made by so many other people.
I'm doing my damnedest not to analogize this situation. To do so is my wont, but in this case I think it would almost subtract from the absurdity.
Again, I don't care if this person was the reincarnated carcass of Pat Tillman, or an AIDS patient just hours from death, or Mike Bloomberg's adopted daughter who was saved from a North Korean sex slave trade. Any of that would be totally irrelevant. He/she had no business in the race. The marathon is about achievement--physical achievement--and the presence of an electric wheelchair debases the whole damned thing. It disgusts me immensely. Assuming this person had an actual number, someone at the NY Road Runners, or ING, or whoever allowed him in, should either be fired or never allowed to work with the marathon ever again, and then subjected to Reality courses, the same way drunks are required to attend AA, or domestic abusers might have to attend anger management classes.

A Little Harmless Fun

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Vows

Here, in the interests of both posterity and sentimentality, are the wedding vows that Sara and I gave to each other on August 8th, 2009. (Both of them are completely sic'd meaning that I didn't edit any mistakes because a mistake on a normal day is just another beautiful thing on your wedding day.)

Sara:

I was never someone who dreamt about what their future spouse would be like, and I certainly was never anyone who dreamt about weddings. And so when I found you that fateful night at that bar in Brooklyn I didn't recognize you as the man I would want to be with forever. But the moment when I did was not long after. Since the beginning of our relationship you have shown me love and committment in a way I didn't even know how to dream about. When trying to think about why I love you and how to articulate it all I can say is that I love you for all the parts of you. I love your patience, your dry humor, your skills in the kitchen, how you take care of things, how you plan everything and how you surprise me every now and then with your spontaneity, your frugality, your intelligence, your interest in numbers and statistics, I love you for all these and all of the other parts of you. It is because of all of these parts of you that I am standing here today.

You are everything to me.

As we move into our next wonderful stage of life together I promise to continue to make you laugh, to try to be patient, to support you and let you support me. I promise to continue to work on our relationship and I promise to wake up every morning grateful that we have made this choice to be committed to each other for the rest of our lives. I promise to love you no matter what challenges the future may hold. I promise to always try and make our life together exciting. You are and always will be my number one.


Josh:

Even though I may now be nervous,
The reason I'm standing here today
Is how peaceful and comfortable
You have always made me feel.
Right from the start
You made my life seem suddenly real.

I love you so much.

Thank you for coming into my life
When I was most ready.
Thank you for opening your life
To me and our future family.
Thank you, Sara, for opening my eyes
To how very easy love can be.

I have always loved you so much.

I love you because you're always happy.
I love you because you're so neat.
I love you because you call me lovey.
I love you because you have pretty feet.

I will always love you
Because you are you
And I am me
And that's all we'll ever need.

I will always love you.

Now, finally:
Thank you so much my baby
For allowing me
To fulfill my destiny
Of becoming myself.

Your husband, with love, forever.

A Lesser, Better Me

But first, a Film Review. It's been over a week now but I saw Synechdoche, New York. This isn't of any consequence, but it actually was the last Netflix I watched before canceling my subscription.
I don't have anything groundbreaking to say about the film, but I was both impressed and disappointed by a few things. First, this being a Charlie Kaufman script, the plot was very complex. The problem with this one is that the oddities and meta-isms didn't really serve to advance the overall story much. The whole didn't equal the sum, that kind of thing. I'm also not really sure how confident I am in this assessment, but I think the almost-beyond-reproach-at-this-point Philip Seymour Hoffman was not very good in this film. He had a tough task in trying to carry this scattered story as a kind of anti-heroic lead, but still he didn't succeed. He's a kind of scumbag, which seems to be more and more revered in artistic pursuits lately, and he never really created much more. I felt sorry for him, but never ultimately cared.
Now, some things that I liked. Since I often watch from the point of view of the writer, Charlie Kaufman's movies are always somewhat personally exciting for me. This one was no different. If not autobiographical it was clearly and fundamentally at least a self-referential story, and the most interesting thing he did was to strip away most of the facade the story, leaving underneath a display of both the simple process of artistic creation and the whims of the author. If 8 1/2 is a masterpiece of directorial metafilm, then this would be it's less focused and, to borrow a usage from the film, less-Karamzov screenwriting counterpart.
Most fascinating is the realization that all the actions around the main character are fantasy, that everyone is acting just as he wants them to. Women plainly ask him if he wants to have sex with them. His side jokes are almost perfectly set up for him by the settings or the other characters. People often tell him exactly what they are thinking, but only in ways that advance our understanding of the main character, not the speaking characters. A character is even created whose sole purpose is to follow him around for 20+ years so he can understand himself better. I'm in real danger of pretension here, but these are all the things you think about when you are living your life if you're also thinking about writing. You see the world as just another character to be crafted and adjusted in the story of your life. You want your attractive young stage talent to be infatuated with you. You want the secretary-type at your office to have seemingly no other interests in the world besides you (she is a mere desired object for you, so why should she have a deeper history?). You want to indulge in your neuroses, be they mortality, sexuality, or whatever. You want to believe that you can encapsulate your whole world in fiction. And all of this is exactly what Kaufman, as a writer, lets himself do in created this film. He took all of this totally went with it. No matter if he fails or creates uncomfortable films, you must always completely respect him when he commits himself to a theme or a concept. He's also starkly in the minority on this, which makes him stand out even more.

Now that I have that out of the way, let me get to the more seriously personal part of this post, an indirect impression I had after watching this film. The main character is, like many characters before him, concerned mightily with death (and of course with it's sister emotions loneliness and longing). In the end he seems to perhaps accept that he does in fact have an interest outside of himself, but that unfortunately for him she has already died. That's classic theatric tragedy.
As I was left with this, my mind, as it will almost always do, turned to thoughts of myself. Through so much of my life, I have had a harsh fundamental pride in being in command of myself, of owning who I am and how I emote. I've never feared events because I have had my shit in order. Why worry about fate if you've taken care of yourself? This is no small thing.
Well I can announce now that things have changed. In the last couple years the solid-fucking-brick walls of me have been slowly and utterly breached. The foundation is still set in granite, but the house is laid open. (Down, metaphor.) I have a wife, and she has made me vulnerable. In almost every possible way, this is a wonderful thing. For one thing, complacency can be dangerous. And in the great flow of humanity, cohabitation and the blending and sharing of two sets of emotions is an exaltant and ultimately necessary advancement.
And yet she will always be my achilles heel. I don't meditate on this with any frequency, but I now fear death. Selfishly, I fear her death. I and we are far too deep into each other. I fear what would become of me without her. It's the only thing in my life that I'm unsure about, that I can't even think to control, that instead owns me.
And still I happily submit. It's more than love. It's biological.
Like I said, this is a new thing for me.

A Very Short Story

The Flaw

She wasn't sure if she liked him, but still worried about what he thought. She'd learned to be self-conscious about being the kind of person who talks to empty spaces instead of faces.
"I hope he doesn't think I'm not interested," she thought to herself.
He tried to make a real effort to seem a good listener, but still he was distracted.
"I hope I'm not visibly sweating," he thought, "because this pretty girl doesn't seem to want to look at me."

Fuck you, winter. I'm not afraid of you and you can't bully me with this crap. High temps of 40 degrees in mid-October? That's not fair--taunting, 15 yards. I'm taking the kick back past midfield, you son of a bitch.
(ps- nice touch with the barely-above-freezing rain. Some sadists might throw some horrible unseasonable cold at an unsuspecting region, but you finish the job with a nice cold rain.)

You know what else is agitating? I went into the McDonalds near my workplace yesterday for the first time in a long while, and discovered that McChicken sandwiches are now priced at $2.29. $2.29! It's just a skinny piece of breaded chicken between two pieces of white bread. Only two or three years ago at this same location, the McChicken cost $1.00. So apparently McDonalds' Madison Street manager doesn't understand the concept of a recession.
I used to go to this McDonalds regularly when I first moved here and didn't have a lot of money. Back then, it was a legitimate deal. They had a real value menu which I ordered from exclusively: 5 McNuggets, Small Fries, the aforementioned McChicken, and even a double cheeseburger for $1 each. That last one was the real steal. I don't think they were making too much profit selling double cheeses for $1. And so of course I exploited that inefficiency. I was (still am, but less so) a big lunch eater and so a standard order would be one of each of the items I listed, but when I was particularly hungry, I'd go with two or three doubles plus a nuggets and maybe a McChicken. I weaned myself off the fries after a while. The McChicken to me was always the luxury item of the four, the one I'd order with a hint of frivolity, mostly because it was so much less of a deal than the double cheese, or even the five nuggets.
So imagine my surprise yesterday when I instinctively ordered one McChicken and one double cheeseburger (see, more responsible eater now), only to afterward look up at the board and see that the double now costs $1.99 and the McChicken $2.29. There are 360 calories in the McChicken and 440 in the double cheeseburger. Either there has been a global fowl shortage that I don't know about, or El Diario recently ran some articles about hombres finding twenty-dollar bills in their chicken sandwiches at McDs.
Paying more for a McChicken in this case actually offends me. There must be a reason for it, but knowing that only makes it worse. $1.99 is still not a bad price for a double cheeseburger; I will pay that now and still feel ok about it. If I had to put a fair price on the McChicken it would be maybe $1.49. Where does the extra 80 cents come from? This is McDonalds for crying out loud. There is transparency. I can literally see all the ingredients being piled on the sandwich while it's being made.
Anyhow, I shouldn't care so much what the fair price of a McChicken is. I shouldn't be eating them often enough for it to matter. Just this once, in fact. Even when making a late drunk-stop, you'll never see me with a McChicken again.

Cleveland Is the Worst

Totally Pathetic. I mean in the nice way. The dictionary way: evoking strong pity and compassion. Pathos.

I was watching a documentary the other night about the Colts moving away from Baltimore in 1984, and naturally about how tragic that was for Baltimore.(1) It was a good documentary in that I related to the story and it caused me to think. Though the first thing I thought was: this still pales in comparison to when the Browns moved out of Cleveland. So I stewed on that for a second and the next thing I thought was: good lord, Cleveland is by far the saddest sports city there ever was, and people have never come close to appreciating the depth of that fact.

Chronicling the woe and frustration of cities and their sports teams is a favorite pastime of sportswriters. A couple generations of Boston writers made their careers off the "cursed" Red Sox, and with the recent proliferation of endless lists in various journalistic mediums, there have been plenty of efforts to capture the futility and the tragedy of certain cities (ESPN actually had one recently that ranked Cleveland #1). Still, none of these has ever given Cleveland its due, so to speak.

Let's get right to the facts, then. Cleveland has three major pro sports teams. The Browns debuted in 1946 and joined the NFL in 1950, the Cavaliers in 1970-71, and the Indians in 1901 along with the rest of the brand new American League. Through 2008, in 203 seasons,(2) these teams won six championships: the Browns in 1950, 1954, 1955, and 1964, and the Indians in 1920 and 1948. You may notice that the most recent of these occurred 45 years ago. If you (unfairly, but it helps the theme here) throw out the Browns' four titles because they came before the Super Bowl era and therefore before the modern era (really no one ever counts pre-Super Bowl titles when listing football championships), then you are left with the Indians' mere two wins in 187 team seasons. That's epic. 185 times out of 187, Cleveland fans have had their hopes crushed. That has got to wear on you.

But it gets better (worse). Since 1965, Cleveland has won zero titles in 128 seasons. They have played in exactly three championship finals, losing each of course. If you assume that the average league size in those 128 seasons is roughly 25 teams, then simple randomness would dictate five titles won and 11 top-2 finishes. For comparison, let's use Boston, another well-known (formerly) tragic city. Even if you subtract the last ten years of huge success, plus the dynasty 1960s Celtics from the equation, Boston still racked up seven titles and nine runner-ups since 1965. How about another city? Minneapolis: since 1965, two titles and seven runner-ups. Seattle: one title and three runner-ups, but in only 108 team seasons. Finally, Houston has just two titles and three runner-ups in 122 seasons, something that surprised me because you don't hear much moaning about poor Houston team performances. No one else really comes close for both longevity and futility.

So we've established that Cleveland sports teams have the worst record of success in the country, but it's not just failure to win titles that tears at the soul of the Cleveland sports fan. It's the thing which originally spurred this post: relocation.

The way Cleveland connects with its Browns may not be the strongest bond between fans and team across the four major sports, but if not, it's certainly in the discussion.(3) A real description of what I'm talking about might be difficult, but one way to look at it is to consider which teams' potential moves would be most devastating for their fans. Of all of the 15 teams I listed below in #3, as far as I know, none have ever come even remotely close to moving in the last half-century, with one exception. The Browns moved and then didn't exist for three years. After that they were replaced with an expansion team that won just 54 games in its first ten seasons, including a 3-18 record against their main rivals. In just the fifth season after the team moved, it won the Super Bowl for Baltimore. The man who moved the team, Art Modell, has almost been voted into the Hall of Fame on a couple of occasions. Any one of these facts is just impossible. The Browns are the ultimate star-crossed football franchise. And they just up and left the city. Unbelievable. Unconscionable.

And that's just the Browns. For anyone under the age of about 50, the main identifiable thing about the Indians is the movie Major League, which used the omnipresent culture of Indians losing and their general status as a joke as an essential plot detail. No one really complained about this. In fact, of the Indians fans I know, most actually took the fictional Indians' success in that movie as a point of pride. In 1997, the Indians went into the bottom on the ninth inning in Game 7 of the World Series with a lead. They were two outs away from winning it, and ended up losing, to a team in just its fifth year of existence. Only the 1986 Red Sox have ever come closer to winning a World Series and lost.

The Indians have the second-longest current title drought in baseball.
The Browns have the second-longest current title drought in football, and are one of only two teams (Detroit Lions are the other) to have been in existence for every Super Bowl year yet never participate in one.
The Cavaliers have the fourth-longest current title drought in basketball, and trail only the Suns by two years in terms of longevity amongst teams who have never won a title.

This is serious futility, people. I haven't even mentioned Ernest Byner, Jose Mesa, Craig Ehlo, or any of the endless string of terrible Browns first-round draft picks.(5) You add all of this to what is by far the most tragic franchise relocation ever, and no other city should even be in the discussion. Cleveland fans at this point are almost beyond reproach. They've suffered enough, so that it's just not funny anymore.

(Two caveats to this whole thing: 1) Lebron James. If he stays with the Cavs and wins about 5 titles, then that will make up for a lot of things and change the discussion completely. If they lose again this year and he leaves, then you can just chalk up another big notch in Cleveland's sorrow belt. 2) The Ohio State Buckeyes football team. They've won two titles since 1965, have been wildly successful for many years, and are currently sporting a five-game winning streak over their desperate rival. I mention this because most Cleveland fans also root for OSU. Takes a tiny bit of the edge off.)


1. The documentary about how good a business decision it was to move the team because Indianapolis gave the Colts a great stadium deal and the metro area was better positioned to financially support them would never get made, even though it's almost always true.

2. I'm not counting the Browns first four years as members of the All-America Football Conference, because it disbanded after four years and the competition was subpar (though they did win the title all four years, for what it's worth). I also didn't count the 1901, 1902, 1902, and 1994 baseball seasons, because there was no World Series played in those years.

3. Here would be the list of what I think are the top fan-team bonds, in no order: Browns, Steelers, Packers, Red Sox, Yankees, St Louis Cardinals, Canadiens, Maple Leafs, and Celtics, with the Cubs, Bears, Knicks, and maybe the Eagles and Red Wings forming a close second level.
4. I just learned via wikipedia that Dan Rooney was one of only two owners to oppose the Browns' move to Baltimore, and that, during the last Steelers home game of the Browns last original season, Pittsburgh fans wore orange armbands to a game against the Browns as a show of solidarity with their tragic brethren, and finally that during that year, protests were held in Pittsburgh by Pittsburghers against the move of the franchise. That's at least mildly impressive. No matter what kind of horrible things rival fans say to each other, when it comes down to it, they need and respect each other.
5. Let's step away from the theme of sympathy for a sec and have some fun at Cleveland's expense. Here in order are the Browns first round draft picks starting with 1999: Tim Couch, Courtney Brown, Gerard Warren, William Green, Jeff Faine, Kellen Winslow, Braylon Edwards, Kameron Wimbley, Joe Thomas, and Brady Quinn. That's ten players. To date, they've accounted for a total of four Pro Bowls, and played just 39 seasons with Cleveland. Only three are still with the Browns, and three are out of the league entirely. Basically you have one good player (Thomas), 3 or 4 servicable starters (Winslow, Wimbley, Edwards, and Faine) and crap.
Now here are the Steelers first-rounders over the same time span: Troy Edwards, Plaxico Burress, Casey Hampton, Kendall Simmons, Troy Polamalu, Ben Roethlisberger, Heath Miller, Santonio Holmes, Lawrence Timmons, and Rashard Mendenhall. Also ten players. To date, they've accounted for one Super Bowl MVP, 11 Pro Bowls* and played 51 seasons with Pittsburgh. Seven are still with the team, and just one is out of the league.* All but two are currently starters.

*Burress got his Pro Bowl with the Giants, and I'm assuming he'll come back to the NFL, post-jail.

Citizen Hero: Blue Suit Man

I'm heading to work this morning standing waiting to cross Livingston Street. I'm up on the edge of the curb and to my left is a nerdish little man pulling a rolling suitcase and wearing a blue faintly-striped suit. A youngish woman is walking holding hands with her perhaps 4 year old son, and has done a terrible job of judging the light change, so that the green for oncoming traffic hits as she's only barely just crossed the middle double yellow line. First in line on both lanes of held-up traffic are city buses. Blue Suit Man sees the woman (blatant and harmful jaywalker at this point, inconveniencing scores of people, but let's not focus on that cold fact) and child and defiantly reaches forward toward the nearest bus and outstretches his hand, exhorting it to stop ("remain stopped," I should say, since naturally it was motionless to begin with) with unflinching seriousness. He doesn't move his body, however, and so during his moment of chivalry the woman and child are always nearer the danger of the bus than he is. The stopped bus driver never acknowledges Blue Suit Man, probably because he never saw him. Neither does the woman once she makes it onto the sidwalk, as it's likely she didn't either.
I saw you, though, Blue Suit Man. I know what a true gallant you are, you feebly aggrandist dickbag.

I'm More of an Addict

Yesterday I had an odd run. I didn't feel all that well and the knee that I stupidly smashed up this summer was feeling a little tighter than it has in the last few weeks. I wasn't going more than five miles and I was on one of my stock runs (from work up into Central Park, turning around at the garbage pickup spot along the bridle path). The weather wasn't even very notable: just a nearly setting sun and cool but not cool enough to be invigorating. I consciously started out slower to try to let the knee loosen naturally, I don't very much like to run slow. It was one of those runs that seemed to exist solely to provide me and excuse to write down "4.5" and "C-" on my paper.(1)
But then about a mile into the run something happened. My legs started behaving as though they belonged to someone else. They just loosened up and felt instantly more powerful. I was running high and picking up my feet with no effort. I honestly had to deliberately slow myself down because I didn't trust this sudden feeling of power.
It doesn't happen often but it happens often enough. The sensation of your brain being disconnected from your legs, of your legs taking over and dominating, dragging you along for the ride, is completely sublime. I won't say it's why I run in the first place, but it is definitely one of the reasons I run now as a 28 year old likely past the point of ever seriously racing again. It's maybe the one thing more than any other that addicts me to running.
I saw Chariots of Fire for the first time maybe a little more than a year ago. It was an ok movie but nothing really special and nothing that terribly inspired me to want to run any more than another movie. But it did have the single best explanation of running that I've ever heard. A woman (she's a singer) is talking about how she loves singing, and asks her companion, one of the main protagonists of the film, if he also loves running. He responds: "I'm more of an addict."
This is it. This strikes to the very heart of the relationship a runner has with his avocation.
Sure I like running a lot, but I'm more of an addict. I don't love it. There are those primal physical responses my body gives me that force me back to the sidewalks and the dirt paths, cause me to cross through levels of pain and discomfort in a curious but faithful attempt to reproduce the magic. Not to aggrandize the effect, but it can't be altogether different from a coke-head's mindless pursuit of another snort; no matter how many bad hits he suffers, he keeps clawing back.
I suppose there are some people who love running, that not everyone must be like me. But I have known enough over the years to suspect that in fact the connection many have is less emotional and more psychological and of course physical.


1. Yes, I keep a log. No, it is not much at all like the kind you see a recreational marathoner or a serious collegian keeping. I used Excel to print out three months' worth of calendar per printed page. Each day's box is just big enough to fit in a notation for the run's length, the letter grade I give to it, whether I worked out at all that day, whether I did leg exercises, and whether I did abdominal exercises. The best day possible, would contain these notes started from the top left and going clockwise around the square (assuming a six mile run): 6, A, A, L, W. It's a quick way for me to keep track of my fitness and of course an easy way to stay focused on being fit. I devised this system back at the turn of the year and made up calendar blocks for the whole year, but only followed along for about the first four months, before restarting with it in September.In five-plus months of logging runs, I've never given a run a grade of A. I've only ever given made two or three A minuses. I've also never given any Fs either. Until I get into better shape, the good- or badness of my runs is still rather limited.

There I Go

I guess this is the first time I've mentioned it. Had my ten-year high school reunion last Saturday and myself and the wife(1) made the trip back to Steubenville for it.
I'm not much for reunions, obviously. I sometimes don't even enjoy spending time with my current friends, let alone my rarely-spoken-to friends of over ten years ago, let further alone my don't-now-care-for-nor-did-I-even-ten-plus-years-ago classmates. Two things caused me to buy the plane tickets, though: Sara was curious, and one particular legit friend from that time requested the presence of a few people cause her parents moved out of the area and doesn't ever see anyone during the inevitable holiday meet-ups. Mostly, I wanted Sara to whet her appetite for all things relating to my stunning history, and especially I thought it would be hilarious for her to see a real live Ohio high school football Friday night.(2)
Once the plans were made I developed my own sense of curiosity and hope. Curious about how this very specific almost-right-of-passage experience would measure up to all the stereotypes, and hope that I'd walk away with a funny story or two.
I ended up rather disappointed, in a sorta comprehensive sense. Sure, I got to spend some time over two nights with the few people I actually enjoy seeing now. And any brief trip to my hometown is nice on its own. But the reunion itself was anticlimactic, subdued, overpriced, and just plain boring. Not boring in that I got bored, because I entertained myself, but boring on its own.
A small part of this might be my fault: I joked with a friend that we'd compete to see who could talk to the smallest amount of people, and to a large extent, upheld this goal. Only a couple times did I make a point of walking up and saying hello to someone, and even in most group settings I didn't bother to engage everyone there. But what was weird to me is that lots of other people there were doing barely more. Most everyone just kinda stayed in their groups. No one got obnoxiously drunk that I could tell. No one made a scene, no one chucked a drink in someone's face, no one let loose with any pent-up angst like the ex-girlfriend of Jerry's in that Seinfeld episode about George's chocolate-stained shirt. No one seemed intent on making up for lost slut time. No one was embarrassingly fat. No one was embarrassingly bald.(3) No one was walking around trying to brag about owning a yacht or inventing the E-ZPass. Everyone just sorta minded their business, like good midwesterners.
The food was bad but that was no surprise. The drinks were only free for the first two, then average-priced. The music was set to play nothing but late-90s hits, which was novel for about four songs but then got real old, especially when I heard the same song twice.(4,5) This cost me and the wife $75. Maybe I've got too much uppity NYC in me now, I don't know.
I did experience a moment of serious fascination after the official reunion ended. Most people decided to follow each other to a nearby bar called the Triple Play Cafe, located in the middle of a strip mall, just a couple doors down from K-Mart. The Triple Play Cafe is everything you might imagine, right down to the Guinness in a plastic cup and amazingly the same DJ working as handled the reunion, saying things like this before songs: "This one goes out to Indian Creek's class of '99." Anyhow, the fascinating aspect was that lots of people showed up at the bar who weren't at the reunion. At first I thought, well that's odd. Then I naively wondered why they come back into town just to go to a bar? Then I realized, shit, some of these people probably were embarrassed about going alone and so didn't, or, worse, simply couldn't afford the $75. Then it occurred to me that most of them were still locals and were just doing what they'd normally do on a Saturday night. A couple may have even turned around on their bar stools and wondered why in hell so many of their damn former classmates were there. Once my thoughts on the subject had come full circle, I came to somewhat envy those people, because here they were enjoying themselves on their own terms in a bar without having to go through the motions of a reunion and it's un-free-ness; but also to pity them because perhaps this amount of old classmates being back in town would represent a high point for them.
I can't decide if that thought is hugely condescending and presumptuous of me. I don't know the facts of their lives now anymore than I did a month or a decade ago. I didn't change much at all as a person from spending 12 years with them as a youth or spending a couple hours with them as an adult. I think that's the main thing I'll take away from the reunion experience.
Also, don't expect to see me at the 20, 30, 40 or 50th ones.


1. This might be the first time I've ever used the phrase "the wife" in print, or whatever this typed medium would be called. I'll let you decide and prepare accordingly, but I'm pretty sure I'm the type of guy to use that phrase a lot.
2. I was told my school would be playing at home last weekend. I was either lied to, or the AD selfishly switched up the schedule and left me with nothing. The only HS football tidbit I got was looking out over the outskirts of Pittsburgh as we descended below the clouds and toward the airport at about 7:00pm, seeing the little oases of lights denoting a football stadium in the throes of local pride. I spotted at least five or six.
3. You know my take on this, that "embarrassingly bald" is an oxymoron. I mean in the eyes of society.
4. Seriously, DJ-dude? The same song twice in a three-hour gig? On a related note, why in the hell do people still pay DJs to work events like this? Pay someone a small fee to rent and set up some speakers/amps and make a simple playlist. It's 2009, why do we need a live body pressing play or flipping records? These guys should go the way of typewriters.
5. I had no idea, but apperently my class song was/is "Turn the Page" by Bob Seger. Yeah. How would you feel if these were the same people that voted you Most Likely to Succeed? It's not even a big-fish-little-pond situation, more like sorta-average-sized-fish-little-pond.

No Dress Codes Allowed

I'm probably treading into unwelcome waters now but fuck it. I'll keep it confidentially vague. I have access to Outlook calendars for several of the higher-level guys at my office (it helps me to know when they are around the office and therefore what needs they will have that I should look out for, not just for the voyeur/hackeryness of it). On the calender for a guy tonight is a personal dinner appointment where his secretary has written in "business casual attire." This notation about proper/expected clothing appears in most of his dinner engagements, and please remember that these are personal dinners, not business or client related.
What I'd like to say relating to this bit of knowledge is: I sincerely hope that at no point in my life--no matter how flukishly wealthy or important I may ever become--will I ever require someone to consistently inform me what the proper attire is for my personal dinner appointments. First, I hope never to have another person subjected to scheduling my dinner-dates with my wife. Second, I hope never to frequent establishments often enough that expect me to be specificly nicely dressed. And finally, I hope that, even if I find myself regularly in nicer places, I will not ever be worried about how my dress will compare to those around me.

One More

I heard something on the radio this morning that's inspired me to make a notable addition to the list from yesterday. Notable enough that it gets its own post, and not just an editing addition to yesterday.
Captain Sully.
The radio blurb this morning was about how today will be his first flight (piloting, lord knows he traveled via plane since the incident for media engagements and what not) since the famous landing on the Hudson River in January.(1) Of course they carried on the tradition of liberally using the word "hero" in describing the man.
Now let's get this straight. What he did was impressive and admirable but not heroic. He was just doing his job, for chrissakes. I checked his bio and he joined the Air Force in 1969, so he's been piloting planes for at least 40 years. I'm pretty confident that any person licensed to fly commercial airplanes has the expertise to successfully land a plane on a smooth body of water, let alone one with 40 years of experience.
The act of flying is inherently dangerous.(2) People have constantly claimed that he saved the lives of the 155 people on board in January. If you accept that as truth you must also accept that every single pilot who ever captains a plane and lands it successfully then saves the lives of all passengers. This is not heroic, this is what these people do for a living. They take off, they usually kick it into autopilot for several hundred miles, then they land. Over and over. Oh, sometimes there is turbulence and they have to take it off autopilot.
Let me step back and say that clearly it's tougher to land a plane on water with no wheels than on land with wheels, but again, I'm sure all pilots are put through in-case-of-emergency training so that they know how to land on water and on non-runway land. I'm also not going out on a limb by saying that landing a plane with no engine power must be tougher than with, but then of course I'm sure they are all trained at that too.
And now a sidebar complaint about "heroes." A man doing his job is not by itself heroic, no matter what that job is. If heroism enters the equation (debatable but acceptable), then it exists only when the man decides to embark upon a career such as aviation, or firefighting, another profession that is constantly called heroic. It's a noble pursuit. It is admirable. It is not heroic.
Maybe my definition is just a bit stricter than others.


1. The radio blurb finished up mentioning that if anyone wanted to take his first flight back, you are out of luck because the flight is sold out. If there was any earnestness in that statement, then I really don't know what to think of our human society. To think someone would take a flight from NYC to Charlotte purely because it's the first one for the pilot after an eight-and-a-half-month layoff is beyond ridiculous.
2. Dangerous, meaning there is always a chance of death, not dangerous because death is likely. Sorta like walking on the yellow part of the subway platform while a train is coming into the station. But not dangerous like walking through a minefield.

Understanding Island

I have opinions like everyone. I don't think I get any more passionate about my opinions than a normal person. But I do tend to judge others based off of my opinions, and probably do that more than a normal person. This is likely due to the fact that I can be rather arrogant about things, that I'm very sure of myself.
In my own defense, I will not lapse into true arrogance about something unless I've gone over it in my head a few times and come to the conclusion that I'm just right, damnit, more right than you at least.
But lots of times these arrogant judgments aren't fair, or they are simply hurtful. Even in some very rare instances they may actually be wrong. Gasp. Sometimes I introduce an objective opinion into a subjective field. Sometimes I judge someone/something when it's not needed or welcome. Sometimes my opinions might just innocently diverge from another's, in which case a judgment(1) is both unnecessary and unwelcome.
The reason I'm thinking about this now is that I was reading something I think yesterday and John Cusack was mentioned in terms of how everyone like him. Well, I can't stand John Cusack. I don't like really any of his movies (particularly the 80s ones that he might be most famous for), and I don't really like any of his roles. People seem to think that he would be a nice guy in real life based on his acting. Setting aside for a second that that's a pretty stupid assumption to make, I feel like he'd be insufferable based on the same thing. It seems my personal opinion just severely differs from that of the general population. I might be tempted to make a judgment about the general population because of this (and have done similar things in the past, to be sure), but really why? It's ok for me to hate John Cusack and for everyone else to love him. Lots of times, there may be a subliminal explanation for this divergence, but not always.
On a vaguely similar note, I had an argument with Sara a week or two ago about the movie I Heart Huckabees. It seems she is a big fan, and she made me watch it when it was randomly on TV. I was less than impressed. Actually, I thought it was pretentious garbage, and offered this opinion to Sara, who naturally took some offense.
I say "naturally" because, while it's perfectly ok--actually very healthy--to engage in dissenting conversation about one of the arts, it's usually(2) not ok to do so as arrogantly as I did in this case. I led off with the judgment and never really backed off to the opinion, and that's an important distinction to make in a lot of cases.

Anyway, in the spirit of all of this, I thought I'd come up with a small list of topics in which my strong opinion/belief/judgment differs strongly with most people. I do this as a way of highlighting that yes it is ok to have differing viewpoints and not have anyone be "wrong," but also as reinforcement to myself to be more forgiving and benevolent.
So here, in no particular order, are some things I (sometimes improbably) have a strong but very minority opinion about, and where there is nothing wrong with that.(C) I only make a note where necessary:
1. John Cusack
2. Coffee -- don't drink it, can't stand it.
3. Music -- I've talked about this before, and I guess I'm still not completely ready to give up the idea that my viewpoint isn't a little more enlightened than others, but I include it here in a spasm of benevolence. To recap: hearing other people talk about music is utterly noxious to me. I appreciate it only for its innateness.
4. Tabasco sauce -- I love spicy things, but think the flavor of this is repulsive.
5. Sketch comedy.
6. Doctors -- not impressed.
7. Champagne.
--I just now realized that all of these so far are things I don't like--
9. Tofu -- no, really, it's not too bad.
10. Facebook/Twitter -- no.
11. Guinness -- if this is in fact an acquired taste, then I am in complete ownership of it.



A. You can't tell because this thing automatically highlights spelling errors and therefore notified me of the problem, but right here I spelled that word wrong for the second time in the same paragraph. That's almost unforgivable.
B. I don't care, if you try to claim that Ron Howard is as good a director as someone like Kubrick, then yes I am fully permitted to humiliate you. There is a line below which vaguaries don't exist. But then, I don't usually waste time in engage people making such dumb claims, so maybe this is moot.
C. Here is a list of things where my minority opinion is correct and the popular one is just flat wrong, and yes there is something wrong with the populous:
1a. Ron Howard -- hack.
1b. Tom Hanks -- overrated, very. Also frequent collaborator with 1a, which is a black mark.
2. American Idol/Reality TV in general
3. Celebrity worship -- I would say "obviously," but the fact that I think I fall in the minority about this rather amazingly means maybe not so obvious.