I don't know if you've heard, but the Democrats seem to have successfully hoodwinked most of America into allowing poor people to systematically harvest our organs. On top of that, they deviously exploited a loophole that allowed them to pass a bill with a horribly un-arbitrary simple majority, instead of the happily more nuanced 60%.
I haven't been on pins and needles following this whole drama along the way, so thankfully the NY Times site has a couple of handy "interactive graphics" that explain the House and Senate bills, though beware the caveat that as far as I can tell neither says anything about death panels.
The one that focuses more on the differences between the bills contain a delightful little passage detailing a House bill addition:
MEDICARE PAYROLL TAX: Would impose an additional 3.8 percent tax on capital gains, dividends, interest and other “unearned income.”
Heh. "Unearned income." You can argue all you want about the responsibility to the robustness of the overall U.S. economy and the admirable foresight required to actually receive capital gains, dividends, or interest, but you have to enjoy that someone has labeled these as "unearned." I agree that probably these incomes shouldn't be penalized because they are there to exploit by those capable to exploit them, but I wholly support calling a spade a spade here. Those incomes are not actually earned, they are exploited. It's like finding a $10 bill on the sidewalk. "Unearned."
Awesome, which leads me to my other curiosity: who is responsible for those quotation marks around "unearned income?" Was it someone at the Times? I doubt it. Was it Democratic congressmen, who actually wrote the phrase into the legislation? Maybe. I'd like to know though, because it was a very deliberate choice.
(On a more serious note, as with anything debated in a political setting or with political consequences, there are multiple very intelligent arguments to made for or against either side. It costs too much, it's socialism, we're behind the rest of the world, government is too big already, the current system is broken anyway, etc etc. But there is one simple immediate effect of this that I think can't be ignored no matter your stance: 32 million of the 54 million uninsured Americans would gain coverage. Isn't that really the most important thing? "I'll have to pay more for prescriptions, I might have to wait longer to see a doctor, I won't be able to pick and choose what I want all the time," and on and on. So what if the new plan isn't perfect? It's a huge and difficult issue and will take decades to successfully implement true changes, so you have to start somewhere. It would be easy for me or you to take a principled stance in favor of more thought or more discussion or more discretion on this matter (and we'd almost always be right). We can afford to do this. We can waltz into a hospital and be treated at little cost to ourselves almost whenever we want, but there are a lot of people who can't (54 million, evidently), and those are the people who probably ought to be considered first.)
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
The Joy in Riding the Wave
I said multiple times yesterday to "trust the system" and to remove emotion from the gambling experience, so as not to negatively influence my otherwise-sound wagering habits.
Well that's all very true, and that's how I'm navigating this stretch of wall-to-wall basketball games. But an important thing that I failed to note is that this system doesn't remove emotion from the equation, at least not post-bet, meaning I'm still very susceptible to the exhilarating and depressing swings that come with success and failure. I can still watch and follow with a fan's rooting (and sporting) interest, and betting on so many games each day serves to make every day like a first-round-NCAA-Tournament day, where it seems that every basket has actual meaning.
As prophesied yesterday, I had an up-and-down day with the wagers. I started off hitting four of my first five bets, for a net gain of $19. Then I lost my biggest bet of the day, a $44 loss, followed by a small $5 win. I had two games left and was down $20 for the day. Bad news was my last two bets were only about 50/50 shots each. I figured a split there and I'd only be out $20 for the whole day, not too bad. Of the first of the late doubleheader goes very poorly, my teams falls behind and never ever makes it interesting. The final game wasn't starting until 11:45pm though and as much I really wanted to follow that one live, I decided to turn in.
When I woke up there was a little anxiety over that last game. It represented a $45 swing in my daily performance, and my team was only a 52% likely winner. Surely karma would be coming back to get me. Surely I had to know what happened. Surely I was extremely happy to find out they'd pulled out a four-point win. Way to go, Cal Poly Mustangs, for overcoming a six-point halftime deficit and putting me in a very good mood this fine Thursday.
(All this after a net losing day yesterday, too. Thanks mostly to that big $44 loss, but moreso really to my 1-2 record in swing games. One thing my system has is inherent risk for large losses. A large portion of my bets sees me taking favorites, sometimes big favorites. It's hard to win much money on these games without making large bets. In order to bet on an 80% likely winner, I'll usually need to put up something like $20 to win only $7. The system also likes to tell me to place larger wagers on teams I'm only about 55-60% likely will win. The good news here is that I still have an edge and I'd stand to win virtually the amount that I put up, but of course if the numbers hold true I'll lose these bets almost half the time. You just have to stomach it.
To use yesterday as an example, I made nine bets. Three of them were basically gimmies, with expected win% of 85% at minimum. I actually lost one of these, but still broke even on them because the loser was the lowest bet amount. Three of the bets were medium favorites, with win% expectations between 69-81%. I won all three of these for a $26 gain. The last three were a little under 60% likely to win individually. I lost two of these and very nearly all three. But my net result was -$45. You see how the losses hurt more than the wins help.
Remarkably, I've been slightly unlikely on these swing games since starting the system, with just a 6-8 record in games where the price I bought was within 10% of a 50/50 shot. My financial balance on these 14 50/50 shots is -$149. That's a lot. So while I've had overall good luck, my small amount of bad luck on these highest-value games has balanced out the luck factor quite a bit.)
Well that's all very true, and that's how I'm navigating this stretch of wall-to-wall basketball games. But an important thing that I failed to note is that this system doesn't remove emotion from the equation, at least not post-bet, meaning I'm still very susceptible to the exhilarating and depressing swings that come with success and failure. I can still watch and follow with a fan's rooting (and sporting) interest, and betting on so many games each day serves to make every day like a first-round-NCAA-Tournament day, where it seems that every basket has actual meaning.
As prophesied yesterday, I had an up-and-down day with the wagers. I started off hitting four of my first five bets, for a net gain of $19. Then I lost my biggest bet of the day, a $44 loss, followed by a small $5 win. I had two games left and was down $20 for the day. Bad news was my last two bets were only about 50/50 shots each. I figured a split there and I'd only be out $20 for the whole day, not too bad. Of the first of the late doubleheader goes very poorly, my teams falls behind and never ever makes it interesting. The final game wasn't starting until 11:45pm though and as much I really wanted to follow that one live, I decided to turn in.
When I woke up there was a little anxiety over that last game. It represented a $45 swing in my daily performance, and my team was only a 52% likely winner. Surely karma would be coming back to get me. Surely I had to know what happened. Surely I was extremely happy to find out they'd pulled out a four-point win. Way to go, Cal Poly Mustangs, for overcoming a six-point halftime deficit and putting me in a very good mood this fine Thursday.
(All this after a net losing day yesterday, too. Thanks mostly to that big $44 loss, but moreso really to my 1-2 record in swing games. One thing my system has is inherent risk for large losses. A large portion of my bets sees me taking favorites, sometimes big favorites. It's hard to win much money on these games without making large bets. In order to bet on an 80% likely winner, I'll usually need to put up something like $20 to win only $7. The system also likes to tell me to place larger wagers on teams I'm only about 55-60% likely will win. The good news here is that I still have an edge and I'd stand to win virtually the amount that I put up, but of course if the numbers hold true I'll lose these bets almost half the time. You just have to stomach it.
To use yesterday as an example, I made nine bets. Three of them were basically gimmies, with expected win% of 85% at minimum. I actually lost one of these, but still broke even on them because the loser was the lowest bet amount. Three of the bets were medium favorites, with win% expectations between 69-81%. I won all three of these for a $26 gain. The last three were a little under 60% likely to win individually. I lost two of these and very nearly all three. But my net result was -$45. You see how the losses hurt more than the wins help.
Remarkably, I've been slightly unlikely on these swing games since starting the system, with just a 6-8 record in games where the price I bought was within 10% of a 50/50 shot. My financial balance on these 14 50/50 shots is -$149. That's a lot. So while I've had overall good luck, my small amount of bad luck on these highest-value games has balanced out the luck factor quite a bit.)
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Diaperpalooza
(I'll say up front that maybe this is a stupid post at the moment. Very high jinx potential. Maybe I should wait for the wave to crest. But kind the whole point is I don't believe in voodoo or superstition, so here we are.)
A few months ago, in order to try to erase that sad scrunchy face that Sara would get whenever I talked about my sports bets, I attempted to reframe the conversation. I spoke of the winnings in terms of diapers. A diaper costs roughly 25 cents. So if I won a $20 bet, then I'd say "We won 80 diapers today." Notice also the use of the word "we." I wanted to make her feel less icky about me gambling online while expecting a baby.(1) Also--genuinely--I wanted to convey to her that any winnings I might produce would go to the baby and not back into my personal pot.
This strategy has been about as successfully as I could have hoped. No, of course she doesn't ever support my degenerate efforts, but at least to a small degree she shares in my excitement with winning. Or at least she is happy when I have good gambling news, as opposed to rejoining with something like this: "That's great, maybe doing something legal would set a better example for our unborn."
That out of the way, I'm on a hot streak right now. "Hot streak" there being slightly misleading, because it connotes that it's been mostly about luck or guessing. I've got a system now. It's come from a couple months of relative immersion in the world of smart (analytical) sports gambling. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I find it all incredibly fascinating. I'm much more addicted to the theory behind exploiting an edge than I am to actually exploiting it. This might not be 100% healthy, but it's many times moreso than simply rolling the dice and hoping to win.
Anyhow, to the system. It pertains to college basketball and contains two components. First is a strong rating system. Taking a poll amongst your friends doesn't count. Neither does reading up on the subject and trying to rank teams yourself. From my extensive research on this matter, the best college basketball rating system is put out by Ken Pomeroy. The second, and equally important component, is a betting calculator set by the Kelly Criterion. The rating system will tell what team is most likely to win and the calculator will tell you how much to wager. Case closed.
The trick to the system is to trust it and to not think about it. If kenpom says that Ohio State is 78% likely to beat Illinois, and your betting website is offering OSU at only a 70% rate, then you take OSU, no questions asked, no subjective judgement allowed.(2) Elimination of the subjective element is of paramount importance. It prevents you from getting emotional and reacting foolishly to a hot streak or to a single unlucky loss. It prevents you from being just another gambler, basically. The computers are smarter than you are, so trust them.
--Important aside here. You ask, if the computers are smarter than me, then why shouldn't I also assume that the bookmaker is smarter than me? Shouldn't those cancel out? Yes and no. Bookmakers are usually even smarter than computers, this is true. A lay person will never beat a bookmaker on his own over a large sample size, and in theory a single computer should not either. Thankfully for me, it's not that simple for the books. They have to take into consideration public opinion because if they set a "true" line that disagrees at all strongly with public opinion, then they'd really be opening themselves up to risk, which they of course don't want to do. So, the books will shade their lines toward public opinion, meaning there is still room for value to be exploited. To a smaller degree, books will also sometimes put up initial lines just to take the temperature of the public; they will offer a line they know is off just to see what happens. Or they might not devote enough attention to a line by the time they put it up, so in the time it takes them to correct it, there is a window of opportunity.(3)
Let's talk for a minute about edge. Edge is really the key to the whole thing. Most point spread bets are sold at -110. This means you pay $110 to win $100. It also means that you need to win more than just half your bets, you need to win 52.4%. This is not insignificant. If you bet all 16 NFL games some weekend, and go 8-8, you did not break even. You lost. If you bet $10 on every game, you'd have won $80 but also lost $88 for a net of -$8. If you only go about 50% over a long time, the loss total adds up. That most people don't consider 50% a loss is probably what amounts to much of the money Vegas makes.
So a -110 bet requires a 52.4% likelihood of success to be a winner over time. If I have a system that tells me a team being sold at that price has a 60% likelihood of winning, then--voila--I've got a 7.6% edge. I should bet. This works across all types of wagers. My system only spits out a win% expectation for straight-up bets. It doesn't work for point spreads, so I don't bet on point spreads.(4) In every game where I have an edge, I run the numbers into the Kelly calculator, which requires inputs for the bet price, the win expectation, and your total bankroll. This last factor is basically what determines how much it tells you to bet. The Kelly criterion is meant to be "maximally aggressive," but it's not meant to bankrupt you overnight. If your edge is small, then it will tell you to bet small; if it's big, then it'll tell you to go big. It does the heavy mathematical lifting so I never have to worry about being bold or being timid.
Which brings us back to the point: trust the system. It's a very liberating thing, actually. I used to make bets based on personal preferences, maybe including stuff I've read or stuff I attempted to discern using some statistics-oriented sites. I would make almost all my wagers the same amount. I knew nothing about exactly what my edge was or when to hit the gas and when to hit the brakes. Of course I was going to lose over the long run.
Yes, I keep fairly detailed records of my bets. During the whole NFL season, I went exactly 42-42 and finished up about $30 (this thanks to often taking underdog moneylines, which pay out more than even of course. It also is thanks to getting lucky and winning $160 just on the Super Bowl). For college football, I went 39-46 and lost $113. Factor in my initial $300 deposit plus the free $60 bonus the website gave me, and after the Super Bowl, my balance was $291, but it fluctuated a lot in-season. Twice my total balance dropped below $60, and at one point it was over $500. I scuffled with college hoops too, running about -$80 before fully implementing the system.
As of right now, taking into account pending wagers, my balance is $415. Since starting the fully objective and analytical system one week ago, I am up $189.77. This is slightly higher than would be expected, because I've also benefited from some luck, but a majority portion of it is legit. Over the 58 bets placed during this time (yeah I know, it's a lot), the average price given me corresponded to a 68.8% break-even line, meaning my bets would have to win at least that often to break even.(5) The expected win% of these games based on the kenpom preditions was 75.2%. So you can clearly see that my average edge over this sample is 6.4%. That's good. My actual win% was 79.3%. I've been more than 10% better than the break-even line, which pretty easily explains why over 58 bets I'm up $189. Some small regression might be in order, but I'm extremely confident that over the next 58 bets I place, I will do better than 10% worse than break-even, meaning that in the end I will finish up.
The mutually happy part of this whole story is that next Monday I will be making my first-ever online gambling withdrawal. Depending on how the system fares between now and then, I expect to withdraw close to $200. That's 800 diapers. Over the first year, a baby will go through on average about 8 diapers per day. Those 800 diapers would last 100 days, or at least as long as we will be living in NYC after the baby comes. So, thanks to daddy's adoption of the system, baby girl folger will be shitting for free in NYC.
1. Granted, this is something I did think about. But then the money I deposited was from my personal stash and not our family's, and also I did so well before she became pregnant. Gambling online requires an upfront deposit, so in a sense the money was lost right from the get-go. Finally, by the time we were safely into the pregnancy, my initial $300 investment was down to like $100, so at that point, what's the use cutting and running? Might as well stick around and try to bump it back up to even.
2. Just yesterday I broke this rule of doubting the system. UConn was playing St John's in the first round of the Big East tournament. The system said that St John's was a 50/50 shot to win the game, and my suggested bet amount was $35 at a price of +170, meaning I would stand to win about $60. But it didn't look right to me. I couldn't believe St John's was as good as UConn. I let subjective analysis (UConn was playing without their coach for a few games, St John's was really playing at home in MSG, UConn is playing for an NCAA tourney bid, etc, etc) talk me out of trusting the system. So I didn't bet. This is the only time since starting the system that I overruled an output so deliberately (I have nudged my bet amounts slightly up or down based on my perceived risk avoidance, though). I'm sure I don't have to tell you that St John's won the game by 22. Of course they did. This "loss" made me angrier than all the others I've suffered combined, and I didn't even technically lose any money. I lost the opportunity to collect $60. Because I didn't trust the system.
3. This paragraph is actually why it's often better to bet on obscure games. Books don't pay as much attention to them and so you're more likely to get a line that is off. Obscure lines are also more susceptible to shifts in movement based on small samples of bettors, so not as many idiots can move a line farther in your favor than if the whole public is watching it. Just last Friday, I made plays on all of the following: Yale, Hofstra, Citadel, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Harvard, Drexel, Bradley and Long Beach St. My first wager Saturday was on Stony Brook. Trust the system.
4. I've placed at least 75 straight moneyline bets since my last point-spread bet. No, I'm not missing them, thank you.
5. This is roughly true, because a loss in a -700 line is not the same as one on a -130 line. Over a large sample though, this is a good shorthand.
A few months ago, in order to try to erase that sad scrunchy face that Sara would get whenever I talked about my sports bets, I attempted to reframe the conversation. I spoke of the winnings in terms of diapers. A diaper costs roughly 25 cents. So if I won a $20 bet, then I'd say "We won 80 diapers today." Notice also the use of the word "we." I wanted to make her feel less icky about me gambling online while expecting a baby.(1) Also--genuinely--I wanted to convey to her that any winnings I might produce would go to the baby and not back into my personal pot.
This strategy has been about as successfully as I could have hoped. No, of course she doesn't ever support my degenerate efforts, but at least to a small degree she shares in my excitement with winning. Or at least she is happy when I have good gambling news, as opposed to rejoining with something like this: "That's great, maybe doing something legal would set a better example for our unborn."
That out of the way, I'm on a hot streak right now. "Hot streak" there being slightly misleading, because it connotes that it's been mostly about luck or guessing. I've got a system now. It's come from a couple months of relative immersion in the world of smart (analytical) sports gambling. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I find it all incredibly fascinating. I'm much more addicted to the theory behind exploiting an edge than I am to actually exploiting it. This might not be 100% healthy, but it's many times moreso than simply rolling the dice and hoping to win.
Anyhow, to the system. It pertains to college basketball and contains two components. First is a strong rating system. Taking a poll amongst your friends doesn't count. Neither does reading up on the subject and trying to rank teams yourself. From my extensive research on this matter, the best college basketball rating system is put out by Ken Pomeroy. The second, and equally important component, is a betting calculator set by the Kelly Criterion. The rating system will tell what team is most likely to win and the calculator will tell you how much to wager. Case closed.
The trick to the system is to trust it and to not think about it. If kenpom says that Ohio State is 78% likely to beat Illinois, and your betting website is offering OSU at only a 70% rate, then you take OSU, no questions asked, no subjective judgement allowed.(2) Elimination of the subjective element is of paramount importance. It prevents you from getting emotional and reacting foolishly to a hot streak or to a single unlucky loss. It prevents you from being just another gambler, basically. The computers are smarter than you are, so trust them.
--Important aside here. You ask, if the computers are smarter than me, then why shouldn't I also assume that the bookmaker is smarter than me? Shouldn't those cancel out? Yes and no. Bookmakers are usually even smarter than computers, this is true. A lay person will never beat a bookmaker on his own over a large sample size, and in theory a single computer should not either. Thankfully for me, it's not that simple for the books. They have to take into consideration public opinion because if they set a "true" line that disagrees at all strongly with public opinion, then they'd really be opening themselves up to risk, which they of course don't want to do. So, the books will shade their lines toward public opinion, meaning there is still room for value to be exploited. To a smaller degree, books will also sometimes put up initial lines just to take the temperature of the public; they will offer a line they know is off just to see what happens. Or they might not devote enough attention to a line by the time they put it up, so in the time it takes them to correct it, there is a window of opportunity.(3)
Let's talk for a minute about edge. Edge is really the key to the whole thing. Most point spread bets are sold at -110. This means you pay $110 to win $100. It also means that you need to win more than just half your bets, you need to win 52.4%. This is not insignificant. If you bet all 16 NFL games some weekend, and go 8-8, you did not break even. You lost. If you bet $10 on every game, you'd have won $80 but also lost $88 for a net of -$8. If you only go about 50% over a long time, the loss total adds up. That most people don't consider 50% a loss is probably what amounts to much of the money Vegas makes.
So a -110 bet requires a 52.4% likelihood of success to be a winner over time. If I have a system that tells me a team being sold at that price has a 60% likelihood of winning, then--voila--I've got a 7.6% edge. I should bet. This works across all types of wagers. My system only spits out a win% expectation for straight-up bets. It doesn't work for point spreads, so I don't bet on point spreads.(4) In every game where I have an edge, I run the numbers into the Kelly calculator, which requires inputs for the bet price, the win expectation, and your total bankroll. This last factor is basically what determines how much it tells you to bet. The Kelly criterion is meant to be "maximally aggressive," but it's not meant to bankrupt you overnight. If your edge is small, then it will tell you to bet small; if it's big, then it'll tell you to go big. It does the heavy mathematical lifting so I never have to worry about being bold or being timid.
Which brings us back to the point: trust the system. It's a very liberating thing, actually. I used to make bets based on personal preferences, maybe including stuff I've read or stuff I attempted to discern using some statistics-oriented sites. I would make almost all my wagers the same amount. I knew nothing about exactly what my edge was or when to hit the gas and when to hit the brakes. Of course I was going to lose over the long run.
Yes, I keep fairly detailed records of my bets. During the whole NFL season, I went exactly 42-42 and finished up about $30 (this thanks to often taking underdog moneylines, which pay out more than even of course. It also is thanks to getting lucky and winning $160 just on the Super Bowl). For college football, I went 39-46 and lost $113. Factor in my initial $300 deposit plus the free $60 bonus the website gave me, and after the Super Bowl, my balance was $291, but it fluctuated a lot in-season. Twice my total balance dropped below $60, and at one point it was over $500. I scuffled with college hoops too, running about -$80 before fully implementing the system.
As of right now, taking into account pending wagers, my balance is $415. Since starting the fully objective and analytical system one week ago, I am up $189.77. This is slightly higher than would be expected, because I've also benefited from some luck, but a majority portion of it is legit. Over the 58 bets placed during this time (yeah I know, it's a lot), the average price given me corresponded to a 68.8% break-even line, meaning my bets would have to win at least that often to break even.(5) The expected win% of these games based on the kenpom preditions was 75.2%. So you can clearly see that my average edge over this sample is 6.4%. That's good. My actual win% was 79.3%. I've been more than 10% better than the break-even line, which pretty easily explains why over 58 bets I'm up $189. Some small regression might be in order, but I'm extremely confident that over the next 58 bets I place, I will do better than 10% worse than break-even, meaning that in the end I will finish up.
The mutually happy part of this whole story is that next Monday I will be making my first-ever online gambling withdrawal. Depending on how the system fares between now and then, I expect to withdraw close to $200. That's 800 diapers. Over the first year, a baby will go through on average about 8 diapers per day. Those 800 diapers would last 100 days, or at least as long as we will be living in NYC after the baby comes. So, thanks to daddy's adoption of the system, baby girl folger will be shitting for free in NYC.
1. Granted, this is something I did think about. But then the money I deposited was from my personal stash and not our family's, and also I did so well before she became pregnant. Gambling online requires an upfront deposit, so in a sense the money was lost right from the get-go. Finally, by the time we were safely into the pregnancy, my initial $300 investment was down to like $100, so at that point, what's the use cutting and running? Might as well stick around and try to bump it back up to even.
2. Just yesterday I broke this rule of doubting the system. UConn was playing St John's in the first round of the Big East tournament. The system said that St John's was a 50/50 shot to win the game, and my suggested bet amount was $35 at a price of +170, meaning I would stand to win about $60. But it didn't look right to me. I couldn't believe St John's was as good as UConn. I let subjective analysis (UConn was playing without their coach for a few games, St John's was really playing at home in MSG, UConn is playing for an NCAA tourney bid, etc, etc) talk me out of trusting the system. So I didn't bet. This is the only time since starting the system that I overruled an output so deliberately (I have nudged my bet amounts slightly up or down based on my perceived risk avoidance, though). I'm sure I don't have to tell you that St John's won the game by 22. Of course they did. This "loss" made me angrier than all the others I've suffered combined, and I didn't even technically lose any money. I lost the opportunity to collect $60. Because I didn't trust the system.
3. This paragraph is actually why it's often better to bet on obscure games. Books don't pay as much attention to them and so you're more likely to get a line that is off. Obscure lines are also more susceptible to shifts in movement based on small samples of bettors, so not as many idiots can move a line farther in your favor than if the whole public is watching it. Just last Friday, I made plays on all of the following: Yale, Hofstra, Citadel, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Harvard, Drexel, Bradley and Long Beach St. My first wager Saturday was on Stony Brook. Trust the system.
4. I've placed at least 75 straight moneyline bets since my last point-spread bet. No, I'm not missing them, thank you.
5. This is roughly true, because a loss in a -700 line is not the same as one on a -130 line. Over a large sample though, this is a good shorthand.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Being There
We're less than four months from Sara's due date. We're a little more than seven months from our approximate moving date, which doubles as my job-quitting date. I'm maybe four-five months from starting to send out my resume and about five months from thinking seriously about going to Chicago for interviews. It's this last thing that has me just very slightly concerned.
I'm not "worried" exactly, since I know that when the time comes I will have the confidence and the ability to find a suitable job, but right now, this far away from the process, there is space for me to be concerned. I blame this wholly on my upcoming fatherhood, meaning that I wouldn't be concerned if it were just me I'd be supporting.
When we move, our baby will be about three months old. Sara will have no insurance even before the move. I will have mine, but that will end as soon as I quit. There will be COBRA to float us along, but that's not ideal and I hear it's not cheap. Me finding a job will be about more than just income, it will be about protection. For once, I will have to concern myself with benefits. I'll also have a real sense of urgency.
When I was on my last job search, I was right out of college and so the mere idea of urgency was a little foreign. I searched in earnest for a while, but it wasn't until I approached my self-imposed deadline that I bothered much with really getting it done, and then even when I did, I wasn't very picky. This time I will have to be picky. I will also have to find something relatively quickly. You can see how this might create a conflict. I want to have a high-paying job with good benefits, but I will be under pressure (both the real kind and the unnecessarily self-imposed) to take whatever I can get.
There is also the important matter of availability. For me to get a job that pays higher than my current one, it's quite likely that I'll have to take on both added responsibility and added hours, with the former being basically a prerequisite. The problem here is that with a newborn at home and a wife that will at some point be trying to re-enter the workforce herself on a part-time basis, I will have a very very strong desire to be home to help and just to enjoy my family. I have no desire to be one of those dads who gets home late and is too tired or too preoccupied with thoughts of work to be of any use. My priority will always be my home first and my job a distant second. (Not something I'm going to put on a resume, but that's a shame, because isn't that kind of loyalty/devotion/responsibility something that a company would value? Sure it is, just not in the bottom-line corporate world we live in, where all employees are meant to wholly exist to serve the company. At least that's how it works in NYC. Maybe Chicago will be different. Probably not.)
One of those TLC home-improvement shows was on the other day. One of the couples doing a full renovation had a newborn child, and the father was doing most of the renovating himself. The work was so comprehensive that they couldn't live in the house during, so for multiple months the mother and child stayed with a family/friend. During this time, the father worked his full-time job, then spent the evenings away from his family renovating the house. I will always admire a man willing to make that kind of sacrifice, but I'm not sure at what point it would be an acceptable trade-off for me. I don't want to ever be a hands-off parent. I don't want to ever leave my wife to care for the kid alone, even if I'm away doing something to make us more comfortable in the future. Some people can do it, but I'm not sure to what extent I can. I'm thinking I'd have to figure out an alternate solution if I were ever in the same situation.
I'm not "worried" exactly, since I know that when the time comes I will have the confidence and the ability to find a suitable job, but right now, this far away from the process, there is space for me to be concerned. I blame this wholly on my upcoming fatherhood, meaning that I wouldn't be concerned if it were just me I'd be supporting.
When we move, our baby will be about three months old. Sara will have no insurance even before the move. I will have mine, but that will end as soon as I quit. There will be COBRA to float us along, but that's not ideal and I hear it's not cheap. Me finding a job will be about more than just income, it will be about protection. For once, I will have to concern myself with benefits. I'll also have a real sense of urgency.
When I was on my last job search, I was right out of college and so the mere idea of urgency was a little foreign. I searched in earnest for a while, but it wasn't until I approached my self-imposed deadline that I bothered much with really getting it done, and then even when I did, I wasn't very picky. This time I will have to be picky. I will also have to find something relatively quickly. You can see how this might create a conflict. I want to have a high-paying job with good benefits, but I will be under pressure (both the real kind and the unnecessarily self-imposed) to take whatever I can get.
There is also the important matter of availability. For me to get a job that pays higher than my current one, it's quite likely that I'll have to take on both added responsibility and added hours, with the former being basically a prerequisite. The problem here is that with a newborn at home and a wife that will at some point be trying to re-enter the workforce herself on a part-time basis, I will have a very very strong desire to be home to help and just to enjoy my family. I have no desire to be one of those dads who gets home late and is too tired or too preoccupied with thoughts of work to be of any use. My priority will always be my home first and my job a distant second. (Not something I'm going to put on a resume, but that's a shame, because isn't that kind of loyalty/devotion/responsibility something that a company would value? Sure it is, just not in the bottom-line corporate world we live in, where all employees are meant to wholly exist to serve the company. At least that's how it works in NYC. Maybe Chicago will be different. Probably not.)
One of those TLC home-improvement shows was on the other day. One of the couples doing a full renovation had a newborn child, and the father was doing most of the renovating himself. The work was so comprehensive that they couldn't live in the house during, so for multiple months the mother and child stayed with a family/friend. During this time, the father worked his full-time job, then spent the evenings away from his family renovating the house. I will always admire a man willing to make that kind of sacrifice, but I'm not sure at what point it would be an acceptable trade-off for me. I don't want to ever be a hands-off parent. I don't want to ever leave my wife to care for the kid alone, even if I'm away doing something to make us more comfortable in the future. Some people can do it, but I'm not sure to what extent I can. I'm thinking I'd have to figure out an alternate solution if I were ever in the same situation.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
How to Be Great
Installment Three: Buy It
This will be disconcerting for all my fellow middle-classers out there, but yes of course you can buy greatness. "Greatness" perhaps not being the perfect word, but I've got a theme going here in case you couldn't tell.
I'm talking about vision. Not 100% of the time, but lots of it, I can see better than just about anyone, and the way that I've "achieved" that was to buy it.
Two and half years ago I had laser eye surgery, surgery that not only did away with the poor vision I used to have, but also took me past normal and into a heightened level of sight. I'm talking past 20/20, into the realm of 20/15 and even 20/10. It feels good, a hell of a lot better than the struggle I put up with to have contacts in my eyes.
Of course there a
re some slight drawbacks to the surgery. My eyes are much more sensitive to drying, and since I don't like to put drops in as often as would be optimal, my vision can tend to fluctuate, not just daily but minute to minute. Sometimes it seems like I can even feel my vision sharpening as I look at something, which is different. The weather can affect my eyes, too. Large temperature swings can put me slightly out of whack for a few minutes, and extreme humidity can do the same but more muted and for longer.
I will put up with all these little things though because (in addition to their being both minor and inconsistent problems) sometimes the pendulum swings back the other direction. Maybe a week ago I had one of those experiences. I was walking in downtown Brooklyn toward the train on a sunny afternoon and it seemed like there was no end to the sharpness. I didn't stop and count the blocks but what caused me to notice was the fact that I could make out the different parts of the little pedestrian stick man on the walk signs from several blocks away. Thinking about it now, it seems impossible, but my memory places me just below Atlantic Ave, and clearly seeing the sign at Joralemon or even beyond.
So, you too can have robot eyes, as some of my friends used to (not always genuinely) call me shortly after the surgery. You just have to pay for it. Simple enough, right? At least a lot easier than pumping up thousands and thousands of free throws.
This will be disconcerting for all my fellow middle-classers out there, but yes of course you can buy greatness. "Greatness" perhaps not being the perfect word, but I've got a theme going here in case you couldn't tell.
I'm talking about vision. Not 100% of the time, but lots of it, I can see better than just about anyone, and the way that I've "achieved" that was to buy it.
Two and half years ago I had laser eye surgery, surgery that not only did away with the poor vision I used to have, but also took me past normal and into a heightened level of sight. I'm talking past 20/20, into the realm of 20/15 and even 20/10. It feels good, a hell of a lot better than the struggle I put up with to have contacts in my eyes.
Of course there a
re some slight drawbacks to the surgery. My eyes are much more sensitive to drying, and since I don't like to put drops in as often as would be optimal, my vision can tend to fluctuate, not just daily but minute to minute. Sometimes it seems like I can even feel my vision sharpening as I look at something, which is different. The weather can affect my eyes, too. Large temperature swings can put me slightly out of whack for a few minutes, and extreme humidity can do the same but more muted and for longer.I will put up with all these little things though because (in addition to their being both minor and inconsistent problems) sometimes the pendulum swings back the other direction. Maybe a week ago I had one of those experiences. I was walking in downtown Brooklyn toward the train on a sunny afternoon and it seemed like there was no end to the sharpness. I didn't stop and count the blocks but what caused me to notice was the fact that I could make out the different parts of the little pedestrian stick man on the walk signs from several blocks away. Thinking about it now, it seems impossible, but my memory places me just below Atlantic Ave, and clearly seeing the sign at Joralemon or even beyond.
So, you too can have robot eyes, as some of my friends used to (not always genuinely) call me shortly after the surgery. You just have to pay for it. Simple enough, right? At least a lot easier than pumping up thousands and thousands of free throws.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
It's a Girl (!)
It has occurred to me a few times that what I write here about the pregnancy and my feelings about this new parenthood might have some benefit to posterity, and that potentially some day in the far future, my daughter will be able to read this. I don't of course write "to" her--because that would be weird--but sometimes I do understand that she may see it. That maybe makes what I'm about to say sound even worse.
I admit that I was a little disappointed when we first found out that our fetus's gender was female. That was three or four weeks ago, and only now am I completely sure that any and all disappointment has vanished. I'm very happy with our future girl and I can hardly remember that I was disappointed in the first place. I no longer think about any differences due to it being boy or girl or anything like that. It is a girl and it seems silly to think about it being anything else. But initially I had a strange reaction to finding out the news.
The last big thing to be anxious about in a pregnancy (beside the birth of course) is when you find out the gender, which is at 18 weeks, plus or minus a few. I was certainly very excited, so for one thing after we found out I had that normal post-anxious-excitement letdown. I guess that made me feel like I was more disappointed than I really was. Still, during the many weeks after becoming pregnant and before finding out the gender, unconsciously I mostly imagined it being a boy. I think as a man that when you first learn you're going to be a "father," your instinct is to think "son." That's what all fathers once were, after all. Probably this contains selective bias, but it has always seemed to me that a boy has a special relationship with his father, moreso than mother-daughter, mother-son, or father-daughter. What I'm saying is that there was a fairly strong default setting in me regarding expecting a boy.
The more important factor which caused me to hope for a boy relates to Sara. In her family there is something of a curse or whatever you might call it, so much so that it is something they openly talk and joke about. The women only produce girls. Sara's mother is from a family of just two girls. Her aunt had two children, both girls. Sara's mother had two girls. Her sister thus far has two kids, both girls, naturally. I don't believe in voodoo and am a religious follower of stats and probability so the idea that there is something fishy that causes her family to only have girls seems totally implausible. If a doctor doesn't confirm it, I won't believe it. Sara is not as staunchly scientific as me, though, and she has said many times that she wants to have boys (I'm sure she's very happy to have a girl, but for some reason she's shown a desire for male offspring). Being a wonderful husband, I am of course sensitive to her desires. So if she thinks that she's "doomed" to only produce girls, I want to be able to comfort or reassure her. What this all means is that it would have been much easier to have a boy with the first one when there is no pressure, so that the voodoo idea isn't allowed to get inside her head and create an unnecessary sense of anxiety about any future pregnancies. Basically, we are happy to have either a boy or girl with number one, but with any subsequent kids we will start caring much more that the little fetus be recognized as male.
I don't really want to be one of those couples that allows themselves to be disappointed by news of the gender of their fetus. There was a family in my church when I was younger that had 4 or 5 boys in a row to start. Every time the woman got pregnant there was more and more finger-crossing that this would be the time a girl came. Finally it happened, but being in the middle of that would be maddening to me. The specter of there being a girl-dominant gene inside Sara would make this anxiety multiply. So there you go.
Anyway, here we are now, 22 weeks in, more than halfway, and I'm happily looking forward to our future girl. I won't think much at all about having a boy until after she's at least a year old probably, if even then. It's way too early to consider something like this, but I'm actually starting realize that I wouldn't mind having three kids instead of always assuming it would be two (I come from two and so does Sara so it would seem that is the natural way). So whatever potential anxiety I talked about just now would really be deferred at least for a handful of years, so far in the future that it's irrelevant right now. Which it is.
In other baby news, Sara has decided to knit a blanket for the baby. I think this is a fantastic idea (I bought her the yarn for Christmas, after all). She had an excellent question a few days ago, though, wondering since she was spending so much time working on something for it, what was going to be my pre-birth baby-bonding exercise? Hmm. I can't make it a fast runner, that would already be in the DNA. I can't teach it how to appreciate baseball statistics. I can't organize or coordinate for it. I can't rationalize for it or break something down with logic and without bias. I could write something for it or to it, I suppose, but like I said I don't really like the idea of writing to it, and it would feel a little too Hallmark-y to purposefully write something for it. These are some of things for which I possess skill. Finally, I think I've decided that I'm going to build it a dresser. This is sorta cheating, because we need to buy a small dresser to store things anyway, so it's more a present for Sara and me. Nonetheless, it gives me something to do nominally for the baby, something to spend time on and therefore presumably something for me to do that is fatherly. In this way, it is wonderful, and I very carefully and even more pridefully will do it.
I admit that I was a little disappointed when we first found out that our fetus's gender was female. That was three or four weeks ago, and only now am I completely sure that any and all disappointment has vanished. I'm very happy with our future girl and I can hardly remember that I was disappointed in the first place. I no longer think about any differences due to it being boy or girl or anything like that. It is a girl and it seems silly to think about it being anything else. But initially I had a strange reaction to finding out the news.
The last big thing to be anxious about in a pregnancy (beside the birth of course) is when you find out the gender, which is at 18 weeks, plus or minus a few. I was certainly very excited, so for one thing after we found out I had that normal post-anxious-excitement letdown. I guess that made me feel like I was more disappointed than I really was. Still, during the many weeks after becoming pregnant and before finding out the gender, unconsciously I mostly imagined it being a boy. I think as a man that when you first learn you're going to be a "father," your instinct is to think "son." That's what all fathers once were, after all. Probably this contains selective bias, but it has always seemed to me that a boy has a special relationship with his father, moreso than mother-daughter, mother-son, or father-daughter. What I'm saying is that there was a fairly strong default setting in me regarding expecting a boy.
The more important factor which caused me to hope for a boy relates to Sara. In her family there is something of a curse or whatever you might call it, so much so that it is something they openly talk and joke about. The women only produce girls. Sara's mother is from a family of just two girls. Her aunt had two children, both girls. Sara's mother had two girls. Her sister thus far has two kids, both girls, naturally. I don't believe in voodoo and am a religious follower of stats and probability so the idea that there is something fishy that causes her family to only have girls seems totally implausible. If a doctor doesn't confirm it, I won't believe it. Sara is not as staunchly scientific as me, though, and she has said many times that she wants to have boys (I'm sure she's very happy to have a girl, but for some reason she's shown a desire for male offspring). Being a wonderful husband, I am of course sensitive to her desires. So if she thinks that she's "doomed" to only produce girls, I want to be able to comfort or reassure her. What this all means is that it would have been much easier to have a boy with the first one when there is no pressure, so that the voodoo idea isn't allowed to get inside her head and create an unnecessary sense of anxiety about any future pregnancies. Basically, we are happy to have either a boy or girl with number one, but with any subsequent kids we will start caring much more that the little fetus be recognized as male.
I don't really want to be one of those couples that allows themselves to be disappointed by news of the gender of their fetus. There was a family in my church when I was younger that had 4 or 5 boys in a row to start. Every time the woman got pregnant there was more and more finger-crossing that this would be the time a girl came. Finally it happened, but being in the middle of that would be maddening to me. The specter of there being a girl-dominant gene inside Sara would make this anxiety multiply. So there you go.
Anyway, here we are now, 22 weeks in, more than halfway, and I'm happily looking forward to our future girl. I won't think much at all about having a boy until after she's at least a year old probably, if even then. It's way too early to consider something like this, but I'm actually starting realize that I wouldn't mind having three kids instead of always assuming it would be two (I come from two and so does Sara so it would seem that is the natural way). So whatever potential anxiety I talked about just now would really be deferred at least for a handful of years, so far in the future that it's irrelevant right now. Which it is.
In other baby news, Sara has decided to knit a blanket for the baby. I think this is a fantastic idea (I bought her the yarn for Christmas, after all). She had an excellent question a few days ago, though, wondering since she was spending so much time working on something for it, what was going to be my pre-birth baby-bonding exercise? Hmm. I can't make it a fast runner, that would already be in the DNA. I can't teach it how to appreciate baseball statistics. I can't organize or coordinate for it. I can't rationalize for it or break something down with logic and without bias. I could write something for it or to it, I suppose, but like I said I don't really like the idea of writing to it, and it would feel a little too Hallmark-y to purposefully write something for it. These are some of things for which I possess skill. Finally, I think I've decided that I'm going to build it a dresser. This is sorta cheating, because we need to buy a small dresser to store things anyway, so it's more a present for Sara and me. Nonetheless, it gives me something to do nominally for the baby, something to spend time on and therefore presumably something for me to do that is fatherly. In this way, it is wonderful, and I very carefully and even more pridefully will do it.
Monday, February 22, 2010
How to Be Great
Installment Two: Focus
Michael Jordan did many amazing things as an athlete. Before he ever dreamed of playing for the Wizards, back near the peak of his abilities, he had a career scoring average of 32 points per game, the highest all time. Someone asked him how he could possibly score so many points, every single game, over and over again. Being a kind of genius, he didn't fully understand the incomprehensability of his feat and said something to the effect of: "Easy. I break it into quarters. It's just eight-eight-eight-eight." Indeed. No one is amazed at scoring eight points in one 12-minute quarter, so why should it be so hard to do it again and again? Focus.
MJ never allowed himself to relax in his pursuit of greatness. He had the strongest focus of anyone to the achievement of his goals. It wasn't good enough to get three straight quarters of eight points each, he had to have all four. And then he had to do it again, every game, it never stopped. It takes an amazing focus to combat your natural laziness, or to deal with the myriad obstacles that will crop up to derail this stoic approach. And yet he did it, for years.
Michael Jordan is of course an extremely rare talent, not just physically, but mentally with his determination and focus. Mere physical mortals though, can honestly strive to replicate some of his focus. You've got to start small.
When most people start shooting a lot of free throws, they will count their results per five shots, or ten shots, then make an observation of what's just happened: "Ok, that was 7 out of 10, 70%, not bad but a couple of those makes were a little sloppy." Then the person will try another ten and make another mental judgment. After some time and practice, this person's goal will be to make all ten in any ten-shot set. They will have built up the focus to make perhaps ten in a row before relaxing. Let's say then that a person succeeds and hits ten straight. What will likely happen then is that they will push on and keep shooting until they miss. The problem here is that their brain has been coached to focus for only ten shots at a time, so if they start mentally counting 12, 13, 14.......then very soon they'll be out of their element. What a person needs to do is stop and start over with a new set, while forgetting about the first ten. Eventually math probability will take over and the person will miss a few, but they'll keep their focus much easier by breaking the greater achievement into smaller more manageable ones.
When I was at the top of my shooting groove, I was recording with pencil and paper every 100 shots, and making around 95 of them. Of course keeping focus for 100 repetitions is too much to ask, even for a shooting savant such as myself. So I broke every 25 shots into sets, with the goal being to miss only one per set. This amounted to 96 out of 100, which is almost exactly what I made at my peak. (Of course this makes you wonder what more the brain would be capable of. With more practice and a revised goal of missing just one out of 50, could I then have made 98%? Who knows. As it turned out, I didn't devote enough time.) Counting 25 at a time required focus, but it also helped to instill extra confidence. It's one thing to say ok I'm going to hit 24 out of 25 shots right now, it's another to have to slowly do it one at a time. Mentally I knew I had to make at least the first ten shots in order to have a good chance to go 24-for-25. Of course I would pretty much always make those first ten, because I knew I had to, and because I was able to focus on the larger goal at the same time so that the single shots were merely inevitable. Before I knew it, I'd be up around 20, when it would take enhanced focus to make the five more to close off the set. Do that four times, voila, one hundred.
Of course no person is a machine, so it's never quite that easy. I plowed through robotically for a long time, but when I got up to about 80 in a row, the specter of what I was approaching started to become palpable. This is when you need to turn up your focus even more, since it's not good enough to overcome the banality and sheer volume of the task; you've also got to control your nerves and your brain.
There is a very small zone between being too tense and being too nonchalant, but that is the zone of focus you need to find. You're not merely shooting a basketball at a hoop, but you're also not letting your whole existence ride on the result of each individual shot. It's about trusting yourself as much as anything, and of course tuning out all the things that can cause problems.
I was able to do all this and keep chugging along, crossing over the magic 100 barrier and not stopping like I normally would but letting the string play out. Of course after I achieved it I started to ease up and my focus started to fall away. That I made 16 more after hitting 100 is a testament to the muscle memory I had built up more than anything, because my head wasn't locked in anymore.
Focus is a slightly tougher thing to master than repetition, but it is master-able nonetheless. Some of the trick is truly convincing your brain that what you are doing is the most important thing, so any random stimulus doesn't affect you as greatly as it otherwise might. I think that most of it is in your approach to the problem, having the ability to focus on pieces of the whole, and the discipline to hold that focus for a long period of time.
Michael Jordan did many amazing things as an athlete. Before he ever dreamed of playing for the Wizards, back near the peak of his abilities, he had a career scoring average of 32 points per game, the highest all time. Someone asked him how he could possibly score so many points, every single game, over and over again. Being a kind of genius, he didn't fully understand the incomprehensability of his feat and said something to the effect of: "Easy. I break it into quarters. It's just eight-eight-eight-eight." Indeed. No one is amazed at scoring eight points in one 12-minute quarter, so why should it be so hard to do it again and again? Focus.
MJ never allowed himself to relax in his pursuit of greatness. He had the strongest focus of anyone to the achievement of his goals. It wasn't good enough to get three straight quarters of eight points each, he had to have all four. And then he had to do it again, every game, it never stopped. It takes an amazing focus to combat your natural laziness, or to deal with the myriad obstacles that will crop up to derail this stoic approach. And yet he did it, for years.
Michael Jordan is of course an extremely rare talent, not just physically, but mentally with his determination and focus. Mere physical mortals though, can honestly strive to replicate some of his focus. You've got to start small.
When most people start shooting a lot of free throws, they will count their results per five shots, or ten shots, then make an observation of what's just happened: "Ok, that was 7 out of 10, 70%, not bad but a couple of those makes were a little sloppy." Then the person will try another ten and make another mental judgment. After some time and practice, this person's goal will be to make all ten in any ten-shot set. They will have built up the focus to make perhaps ten in a row before relaxing. Let's say then that a person succeeds and hits ten straight. What will likely happen then is that they will push on and keep shooting until they miss. The problem here is that their brain has been coached to focus for only ten shots at a time, so if they start mentally counting 12, 13, 14.......then very soon they'll be out of their element. What a person needs to do is stop and start over with a new set, while forgetting about the first ten. Eventually math probability will take over and the person will miss a few, but they'll keep their focus much easier by breaking the greater achievement into smaller more manageable ones.
When I was at the top of my shooting groove, I was recording with pencil and paper every 100 shots, and making around 95 of them. Of course keeping focus for 100 repetitions is too much to ask, even for a shooting savant such as myself. So I broke every 25 shots into sets, with the goal being to miss only one per set. This amounted to 96 out of 100, which is almost exactly what I made at my peak. (Of course this makes you wonder what more the brain would be capable of. With more practice and a revised goal of missing just one out of 50, could I then have made 98%? Who knows. As it turned out, I didn't devote enough time.) Counting 25 at a time required focus, but it also helped to instill extra confidence. It's one thing to say ok I'm going to hit 24 out of 25 shots right now, it's another to have to slowly do it one at a time. Mentally I knew I had to make at least the first ten shots in order to have a good chance to go 24-for-25. Of course I would pretty much always make those first ten, because I knew I had to, and because I was able to focus on the larger goal at the same time so that the single shots were merely inevitable. Before I knew it, I'd be up around 20, when it would take enhanced focus to make the five more to close off the set. Do that four times, voila, one hundred.
Of course no person is a machine, so it's never quite that easy. I plowed through robotically for a long time, but when I got up to about 80 in a row, the specter of what I was approaching started to become palpable. This is when you need to turn up your focus even more, since it's not good enough to overcome the banality and sheer volume of the task; you've also got to control your nerves and your brain.
There is a very small zone between being too tense and being too nonchalant, but that is the zone of focus you need to find. You're not merely shooting a basketball at a hoop, but you're also not letting your whole existence ride on the result of each individual shot. It's about trusting yourself as much as anything, and of course tuning out all the things that can cause problems.
I was able to do all this and keep chugging along, crossing over the magic 100 barrier and not stopping like I normally would but letting the string play out. Of course after I achieved it I started to ease up and my focus started to fall away. That I made 16 more after hitting 100 is a testament to the muscle memory I had built up more than anything, because my head wasn't locked in anymore.
Focus is a slightly tougher thing to master than repetition, but it is master-able nonetheless. Some of the trick is truly convincing your brain that what you are doing is the most important thing, so any random stimulus doesn't affect you as greatly as it otherwise might. I think that most of it is in your approach to the problem, having the ability to focus on pieces of the whole, and the discipline to hold that focus for a long period of time.
How to Be Great
Installment One: Repetition
When I was eighteen, I once made 116 consecutive free throws. In no attempt at modesty, I'll pause and make clear that this is a very impressive accomplishment. I've never met anyone who has ever made that many in a row. Still, the point of my writing now is to convince you that it's achievable with the right mental and physical approach.
Again, 116 free throws is a lot. I didn't have a watch on at the time, but since I was rebounding the shots myself, it may have taken a half hour. Doing pretty much any activity with binary results and producing the same result every time for a half hour is not easy.
What I'm trying to say is that in order to be able to hit than many in row, you've got to lower the mathematical improbability. You've got to take lots and lots of shots. It was early spring of my senior year in high school when I pulled off this feat. During the last period of my school day, I had what was called Senior Release, which was available to seniors with good enough grades and effectively shortened our days by about 50 minutes. In addition to that, because I was a successful athlete and pretty well-liked by the school's administrative types who for the most part doubled as sports coaches, I was able to rig my schedule so my Senior Release period was preceded by a Study Hall that was "taught" by an assistant track coach. Basically I had over 90 minutes of time to kill every afternoon at home before returning for track practice. Since I was a good kid and it never occurred to me to use that time indulging in illegal activities, and since the weather was just getting warm enough to be outside, and since I loved just shooting basketballs, I would shoot free throws.
It helped that I was fairly good with free throws to begin with, but shooting for an hour or more pretty much every day, made me much better. Additionally, since I'm a kind of compulsive stat-keeper, I kept a sheet of paper inside the garage and recorded my results for every 100 shots taken. It was not unco
mmon to rack up four or five hundred per day, and on the weekend sometimes more. Do that for a couple months, and your results will only get better and better. I got to the point where I was 95 or more out of 100. My total percentage from the beginning and covering many thousands of shots was 92-point-something percent. But there was a groove I was in near the end when it was hovering around 96%.
Just making pure assumptions on the math here, but if you're hitting around 96% every 116 shots, that means you're missing fewer than five per, which means that a perfect 116-for-116 result wouldn't require a huge improvement in standard deviations above the mean.
Repetition. Doing the same thing over and over again so that you get good enough at it to make the seemingly impossible become less impossible. This is achievable for anyone, whether or not you've got a beautiful Reggie Miller release like me or not.
When I was eighteen, I once made 116 consecutive free throws. In no attempt at modesty, I'll pause and make clear that this is a very impressive accomplishment. I've never met anyone who has ever made that many in a row. Still, the point of my writing now is to convince you that it's achievable with the right mental and physical approach.
Again, 116 free throws is a lot. I didn't have a watch on at the time, but since I was rebounding the shots myself, it may have taken a half hour. Doing pretty much any activity with binary results and producing the same result every time for a half hour is not easy.
What I'm trying to say is that in order to be able to hit than many in row, you've got to lower the mathematical improbability. You've got to take lots and lots of shots. It was early spring of my senior year in high school when I pulled off this feat. During the last period of my school day, I had what was called Senior Release, which was available to seniors with good enough grades and effectively shortened our days by about 50 minutes. In addition to that, because I was a successful athlete and pretty well-liked by the school's administrative types who for the most part doubled as sports coaches, I was able to rig my schedule so my Senior Release period was preceded by a Study Hall that was "taught" by an assistant track coach. Basically I had over 90 minutes of time to kill every afternoon at home before returning for track practice. Since I was a good kid and it never occurred to me to use that time indulging in illegal activities, and since the weather was just getting warm enough to be outside, and since I loved just shooting basketballs, I would shoot free throws.
It helped that I was fairly good with free throws to begin with, but shooting for an hour or more pretty much every day, made me much better. Additionally, since I'm a kind of compulsive stat-keeper, I kept a sheet of paper inside the garage and recorded my results for every 100 shots taken. It was not unco
mmon to rack up four or five hundred per day, and on the weekend sometimes more. Do that for a couple months, and your results will only get better and better. I got to the point where I was 95 or more out of 100. My total percentage from the beginning and covering many thousands of shots was 92-point-something percent. But there was a groove I was in near the end when it was hovering around 96%.Just making pure assumptions on the math here, but if you're hitting around 96% every 116 shots, that means you're missing fewer than five per, which means that a perfect 116-for-116 result wouldn't require a huge improvement in standard deviations above the mean.
Repetition. Doing the same thing over and over again so that you get good enough at it to make the seemingly impossible become less impossible. This is achievable for anyone, whether or not you've got a beautiful Reggie Miller release like me or not.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Prestige and the Olympics
While watching the Olympics this week I found myself accidentally in an argument with my wife. Accidentally because I thought I/we were just talking and then suddenly I realized too late that it was an argument. She knew this sooner than I did.
The point of the argument started with the idea of what is or isn't a prestigious sport/event, and it morphed into me being arrogant and biased (that's the part that I didn't realize, and the only part that I cared to dispute). I'm going to ignore the second part for now cause that's not really interesting to other people, but the first I think is.
People don't take the Winter Olympics as serious as the Summer Olympics. This is for a lot of reasons, but primarily we of the general populous can sniff out legitimate sports and are instinctively attracted to what we feel are more popular or "important" sports. We like to be a part of a larger interest, and we blindly seem to accept preconceived notions about what we ought to consider important. Just look at the Super Bowl. The Olympics of course are a perfect example of this too.
Who would ever care about a 16 year old girl jumping around on a beam? There is no intrinsic value in that activity to other people, and, more importantly, it doesn't really relate at all to anything we do in our regular lives or any of our sporting pastimes. And yet, every four years a large chunk of not only the American population, but also the world's, stops and cares about 16 year old girls jumping around on a beam. I'm going to go way out on a limb and say that the percentage of the population that either regularly participates in beam-jumping or watches same, is infinitely smaller than the amount that care once every four years. I think that's interesting.
It's especially interesting with the Winter Olympics, because those sports are usually much more exclusive or foreign to most people than are Summer sports. I heard an announcer mention that a U.S. female luge competitor was from Lake Placid, NY. Of course she is! How many luge tracks are there in the whole country? Salt Lake City and Lake Placid, for sure those two because they've hosted Olympics, but where else? Further, why would there be more than that? As a mere observer of the Olympics, it seems to me that the whole point of luge is just to be an Olympic sport. Its end is the same as its means, so for me it's hard to justify its existence.(1) It's not a recreational activity.(2) It's not even a regular competitive activity in the U.S., outside of perhaps a concocted national competition or something similar.
Even the WO sports that aren't utterly contrived are relevant only to very small minorities. Sure, most people have done it at least once, but who ice skates regularly? Cross-country skis? Ski jumps? How are any of these tied at all to most people's human experience? Alpine skiing is the only individual sport that can claim semi-regular recreational participants in non-trifling numbers. Even the only sport that functions as a high-level professional undertaking--Hockey--stands as the little stepchild of the major pro sports.
I think I saw it in Sports Illustrated, but somewhere there was a map diagramming where all of the 200+ members of the U.S. team are from. All but a handful are from the Northeast, the Upper Midwest, or California. That's ridiculous. It makes perfect sense, too, which makes the whole thing even more ridiculous. Here is a list of the top all-time WO medal winners, in order, along with their rank by world population:
Germany -- 14
Russia/Soviet Union -- 9
Norway -- 116
USA -- 3
Austria -- 92
Finland -- 112
Canada -- 36
Sweden -- 88
Switzerland -- 94
The southernmost of those is of course the U.S. Basically, if you live anywhere in the world south of Chicago, you'll never have a chance in the Winter Olympics. Sounds pretty fair, right? Sounds like the kind of thing that the whole world ought to unite to celebrate, right?
Ok, I've gotten slightly off-topic. I meant to discuss what is or isn't a prestigious Olympic sport/event. I'm going to define this by the perspective of the entire world, not just the U.S. So basketball could never count. Or swimming, which happened to be Sara's suggestion when asked what the most prestigious sport was. Outside of the U.S. and Australia, most of the world is much more ambivalent about swimming. Rightly so, since you've got to have the money to have access to pools. Also, you can't count soccer. Even though it's the world's most popular sport, the Olympic soccer competition isn't taken nearly as seriously.
To think of what makes something prestigious, imagine that you are a prospective father of an unborn child. You are told that your child will grow up to become an Olympic champion, but you can choose which event. What would be the most popular answer for people all around the world?
Really, it's no contest as to what is the most prestigious Olympic sport: it's clearly track & field.(3) In fact, I just perused the list of Summer Olympic sports, and it's not even close. It's almost more prestigious than all the other sports combined.
So what about the premiere event of the Olympics? Using logic, the answer must surely be the men's 100meter dash, but I'd be more willing to listen to arguments on other specific events. Maybe the men's or women's all-around gymnastics? Maybe something from swimming? Maybe the 5,000meter run, or the 1500? In my opinion, it's definitely the men's 100meter, though.
While I'm at it, just off the top of my head, let's make a list of the most internationally prestigious events in both the Summer and Winter Olympics.
Summer events
1. Men's 100m run
2. Men's 1500m run
3. Men's decathlon
4. Women's all-around gymnastics
5. Men's all-around gymnastics
6. Men's 5000m run
7. Men's freestyle swimming, 50 or 100m
8. Men's marathon?
9. Men's wrestling? any weight class
10. Modern pentathlon. Just kidding.
Winter events
1. Men's downhill skiing
2. Women's figure skating
3. Men's figure skating
4. Men's hockey
5. Men's speedskating? any distance
6. Women's speedskating?
7. Men's slalom skiing?
8. Men's 4-man bobsled?
9. Men's team cross country skiing?
10. Snowboard cross. Just kidding.
These look pretty sexist. What can I say? Sorry? Also, the Winter list is obviously much more of a crapshoot. Probably hockey should be higher, maybe even #1. Skiing is really popular all around the Winter Olympic countries, though, and the downhill is legendary.
1. Boy, without intent, but I'm putting on an it's-vs-its clinic in this sentence.
2. No, luging is not the same as sled-riding. Not even in the same ballpark.
3. Or, as official Olympic programs refer to it: athletics. Doesn't get any purer than that.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Stuff Your Sorrys in a Sack
This morning a guy deliberately stopped a full elevator car from closing so he could rush in at the last second. He knew it was already full but acted like he didn't. I was on this car, and when the guy got on he said, "Sorry, sorry about that guys." There was at least one woman in the elevator. It was first thing in the morning for me so I could be wrong but I think I showed no reaction to this (stopping a car like that is basically innocuous but still in the coda of big office building work, it's considered a dick move). No one else reacted to him either. I was looking glassily ahead at nothing when the guy, who was now standing right next to me, looked deliberately right at the side of my face and said "Sorry about that." Thankfully my floor was the first stop and so I didn't have to maintain it for long, but at that I very purposefully ignored him. What was with that follow-up apology? Jesus, dude. Some people are so freaking concerned with how their are viewed, even but total strangers they may never meet again, that they unwittingly create the problems that they're so anxiously trying to avoid. I hate these people. Just chill the fuck out, man.
I feel silly mentioning this, because the plot of the show dealt heavily with race relations, but watching "Memphis" last night, I experienced the black-movie-theater effect while in a Broadway theater. It was awesomely amusing. I'm not talking about whooping and "No she didn't!" and all that flamboyance, but several times during the show a few scattered people, including a couple just about 10 feet away, let loose with seldom-heard-at-live-theater exclamations. The first time a woman shrieked I giggled because I was amazed that she could be so amazed at such a fictional scene. I didn't realize until after a few more, when I did the half-turn and realized that it wasn't just a jittery individual but a member of a different race doing her very best to uphold a stereotype. At that point I couldn't stop laughing.
During intermission of the show, Sara started talking to the couple sitting next to us, the woman was also a teacher at her school, though in a different department or level because it didn't seem Sara knew her. We were all standing at our seats and they were talking and I exchanged a half-awkward look with the guy before doing a couple not-just-nervous-fidgeting-but-probably-looked-like-it stretches before giving up and sitting back down, where I was mostly obscured by Sara from the couple. Is it such a horrible thing of me to not put up the little social effort there? Is it so horrible for me not to be interested? I really don't care if the other person doesn't find me interesting. If I know an interaction will last no longer than five minutes and I have the option either to engage or not then I will always choose not to. I'm very socially lazy, which I think rubs people the wrong way. Though it shouldn't, unless these people are willing to accept that their offense-taking itself represents some irresponsible and ugly self-centrism. I guess that's a roundabout way of me justifying my aloofness. Whatever, it's true.
I feel silly mentioning this, because the plot of the show dealt heavily with race relations, but watching "Memphis" last night, I experienced the black-movie-theater effect while in a Broadway theater. It was awesomely amusing. I'm not talking about whooping and "No she didn't!" and all that flamboyance, but several times during the show a few scattered people, including a couple just about 10 feet away, let loose with seldom-heard-at-live-theater exclamations. The first time a woman shrieked I giggled because I was amazed that she could be so amazed at such a fictional scene. I didn't realize until after a few more, when I did the half-turn and realized that it wasn't just a jittery individual but a member of a different race doing her very best to uphold a stereotype. At that point I couldn't stop laughing.
During intermission of the show, Sara started talking to the couple sitting next to us, the woman was also a teacher at her school, though in a different department or level because it didn't seem Sara knew her. We were all standing at our seats and they were talking and I exchanged a half-awkward look with the guy before doing a couple not-just-nervous-fidgeting-but-probably-looked-like-it stretches before giving up and sitting back down, where I was mostly obscured by Sara from the couple. Is it such a horrible thing of me to not put up the little social effort there? Is it so horrible for me not to be interested? I really don't care if the other person doesn't find me interesting. If I know an interaction will last no longer than five minutes and I have the option either to engage or not then I will always choose not to. I'm very socially lazy, which I think rubs people the wrong way. Though it shouldn't, unless these people are willing to accept that their offense-taking itself represents some irresponsible and ugly self-centrism. I guess that's a roundabout way of me justifying my aloofness. Whatever, it's true.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Save Yourselves
On the only-80%-full 4 train this morning, I saw a woman reading the Daily News. The cover said "CHILD'S PLAY," and the sub-headline said something about how the city was "almost" back to normal today.
You may not have heard, but we got a little snow here the last couple days. That's sarcasm. The media blitz over this pretty standard winter event is embarrassing. I heard a group of three Australian guys in the elevator making fun of the wall-to-wall coverage of the snow on the news. Australians, for godsakes.(1) The storm is long over and the sun is out this morning, but I think the weather service is still trying to predict another 5-6 inches of BLIZZARD.
On Tuesday night, weather.com's special weather alert stated that until Thursday AM, total expectation was 10-16 inches. On Wednesday at about 9AM, when we had to that point only received perhaps an inch or two, it was the same. Wednesday at noon, maybe 2-3 inches total, and they upgraded the forecast to 12-17 inches, plus added a few disclaimers stating (paraphrase): "It may seem like the storm is over but it is not. Conditions will severely worsen. This is only the lull before the big one. Death. Destruction. Plague. Make sure to tune in to The Weather Channel for tips on how to survive the fallout."
I woke up this morning and there couldn't have been more than 6-7 inches in Downtown Brooklyn. Midtown is the same, though because of the shovel brigades from the office buildings, the sidewalks are already dry here.(2) So, spread out over about a 24 hour period, we received no more than 8 inches. I'm very confident that at no period did we ever exceed an inch per hour.
City public schools preemptively canceled classes yesterday. Sara's private school called Wednesday off as early as lunchtime Tuesday. I wonder how stupid these administrators feel today. Everybody loves a day off, sure,(3) but some discretion, please. It's a little snow. Not volcanic ash. Not a swarm of locusts. Not a tornado or a tsunami or an earthquake. Snow. I experience much greater annoyance getting around in heavy rain/wind than in a half-foot of snow.
1. I checked wikipedia. Trying to find a geographically diverse set of Southern Australian cities, I chose Perth, Melbourne, Canberra, and Sydney. Only Canberra ever receives any snow, but: "Light snow falls in the city in one out of approximately three winters but is usually not widespread and quickly dissipates." Here is what it says about Sydney: "Snowfall was last reported in the Sydney City area in 1836."
2. I've heard that snowfall within the predicted amount occurred in areas outside the city, that these areas received 2-3 times as much as we got here. I don't really know what to say. 8 million people live inside the city. I assume 100% of city schoolchildren and parents live inside the city. With some reasonable delays, all the commuting options have been running fine throughout.
3. Hell, I left the office early, at about 3:15 yesterday afternoon. The doom and gloom reports left the office virtually empty, so why stick around? One of my bosses sent multiple emails urging us to go home and avoid the fury.
You may not have heard, but we got a little snow here the last couple days. That's sarcasm. The media blitz over this pretty standard winter event is embarrassing. I heard a group of three Australian guys in the elevator making fun of the wall-to-wall coverage of the snow on the news. Australians, for godsakes.(1) The storm is long over and the sun is out this morning, but I think the weather service is still trying to predict another 5-6 inches of BLIZZARD.
On Tuesday night, weather.com's special weather alert stated that until Thursday AM, total expectation was 10-16 inches. On Wednesday at about 9AM, when we had to that point only received perhaps an inch or two, it was the same. Wednesday at noon, maybe 2-3 inches total, and they upgraded the forecast to 12-17 inches, plus added a few disclaimers stating (paraphrase): "It may seem like the storm is over but it is not. Conditions will severely worsen. This is only the lull before the big one. Death. Destruction. Plague. Make sure to tune in to The Weather Channel for tips on how to survive the fallout."
I woke up this morning and there couldn't have been more than 6-7 inches in Downtown Brooklyn. Midtown is the same, though because of the shovel brigades from the office buildings, the sidewalks are already dry here.(2) So, spread out over about a 24 hour period, we received no more than 8 inches. I'm very confident that at no period did we ever exceed an inch per hour.
City public schools preemptively canceled classes yesterday. Sara's private school called Wednesday off as early as lunchtime Tuesday. I wonder how stupid these administrators feel today. Everybody loves a day off, sure,(3) but some discretion, please. It's a little snow. Not volcanic ash. Not a swarm of locusts. Not a tornado or a tsunami or an earthquake. Snow. I experience much greater annoyance getting around in heavy rain/wind than in a half-foot of snow.
1. I checked wikipedia. Trying to find a geographically diverse set of Southern Australian cities, I chose Perth, Melbourne, Canberra, and Sydney. Only Canberra ever receives any snow, but: "Light snow falls in the city in one out of approximately three winters but is usually not widespread and quickly dissipates." Here is what it says about Sydney: "Snowfall was last reported in the Sydney City area in 1836."
2. I've heard that snowfall within the predicted amount occurred in areas outside the city, that these areas received 2-3 times as much as we got here. I don't really know what to say. 8 million people live inside the city. I assume 100% of city schoolchildren and parents live inside the city. With some reasonable delays, all the commuting options have been running fine throughout.
3. Hell, I left the office early, at about 3:15 yesterday afternoon. The doom and gloom reports left the office virtually empty, so why stick around? One of my bosses sent multiple emails urging us to go home and avoid the fury.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Hamsgiving IV
Yeah, fuck it, I'm using roman numerals.
I haven't talked about Hamsgiving yet, which is odd. Odd because I normally run out a liveblog of the occasion and odder because we hosted it at a bar this year, which added to the complications about tenfold. The weird thing though is that in spite of the prep, it was less memorable this year, at least for me. I did leave earlyish, so maybe I missed some things, but then everyone leaves early on Hamsgiving. You don't start drinking at 1:00 and expect to go all night. I should say, not anymore at least.
The big news is that our celebration was overrun by the Idiotarod. Dave said it first when breaking the news to me: that it was really the worst-case scenario. The fairly obscure and extremely out of the way bar we chose, Wunderbar on the fringe of Long Island City, which holds about 100 people with some comfort, just flukishly happened to be double-booked with us and a group of worked-up, aggressive and drunken fools. A few hundred of them. I've thought about it some since then, but I still haven't been able to think of a worse group to have "sharing" a space with Hamsgiving, especially starting as early as they did, like 4:00pm. I remember standing there outside the bar, tending the grill right after Dave broke me the news, and looking down the sidewalk a few blocks away, seeing the first few people snaking their way towards us. I'm sure it sounds hyperbolic, but the uncomprehending shock very legitimately paralyzed my judgment. I guess I'd be no good in a war, because my response to this stimuli is just too slow.
The truth of the matter is that the Idiotarod-ers weren't really as bad or as numerous as expected. In the heat of the moment we were forced to have our guards up, which knocked down the enjoyment level a little, but in actuality their presence ended up being almost a wash. They inconvenienced us for sure with our food spread and with their thievery, but having a huge number of people added to the "party" and their dumb-ass costumes provided entertainment. They did eventually force us to relocate and perhaps lose a few of our attendees, but we did end up getting slightly cheaper beer, plus use of a large grill, plus free cleanup, all without having to pay the bar a cent. That worked out ok. We should have even left much sooner, but whatever. I was happy with my shirt, I was happy with the Polish sausage guy on First Avenue, I was happy with the grill, I was happy with the drunkenness, I was happy with the ham and all the other great meat efforts this. The only thing relating specifically to the holiday that disappointed me was that in the confusion of the crowded bar I didn't get to sample as much of the food as I'd have liked. And I never did get a meat sweats shot.
Before I go on with this unorganized post, I want stop and focus on something very negative. it doesn't have to do with Hamsgiving exactly but more humanity in general. Sometimes I'm too much of an idealist I guess, but I was really disappointed with a couple of people that day. First is obviously the manager of Wunderbar. This guy never told us about his double-booking of a huge group. Ultimately he didn't ask for the bar fee and he sorta tried to make things up to us at the end of the night, but that definitely doesn't excuse his motives or his deceit throughout the process. It was just blind greed. (I think I should be proud that encountering this still shocks and appalls me, right?) I know a businessman needs to concern himself with business, but doesn't anyone have a conscience about money anymore? Maybe the capitalist system is to blame, I don't know. There isn't really any incentive to ever do the right thing, and the right thing very often isn't the most profitable. That's counter-intuitive. The simple fact is that if we knew he had double-booked us with the Idiotarod, we would have never gone there, no questions asked. And he knew this, and he knew we would be paying him $250 plus bringing in around 75 people to buy his drinks all day. So instead of doing the right thing and being honest with us (actually, doing the right thing would have been not even booking the Idiotarod in the first place), he said fuck it and followed the dollar signs. I should note here that Wunderbar isn't exactly the kind of place to pack in customers, and that really it was us that was doing him a favor from the get-go, giving him a shitload of business that he never would have had, so you really might have expected him to be grateful for it. There was a ton of room for us to have our party in relative peace and for him to have a very profitable day. But I guess when you have a whole tub of ice cream in front of you, if you are a dumb fucking robot then you'll just eat the whole thing, no matter what effect it has.
It was a similar story when we relocated to LIC Bar, a bar that I like. The bartender though was a raging bitch. Initially she cut us some slack and let us use their back room (which we didn't actually need but at the time was empty) until another scheduled group came in, but again, we instantly produced 50+ (I was drunk at this point so have no real idea how many people we had) people when before us she had about 10-15. You'd think she would be happy, but no she wasn't really shy with displaying her opinion that she was being more inconvenienced than anything else. 50 people x 2 drinks per hour x $6 per drink x 2-3 hours = $1500. You are a bar owner. On a normal day you have 10-20 customers drinking at the rate stated, between 4-8pm, then you have 25 people from 8-11, 50 from 11-12, and 15-20 from 12-2am. This is all just very rough, and I'm sure I'm being liberal with the numbers for LIC Bar. Anyway. Round the numbers a little and add them up, so that on a normal weekend night, you make a little more than $2000, including tips. When we walked in the door, we almost doubled her income expectation. Fuck that woman. I understand we should be happy we found a home there, but it was LIC, we could have stopped at basically any place and had plenty of room. She was very lucky that we happened to choose her, and really amazed me with her sense of entitlement. She found a hundred dollar bill on the sidewalk but got pissed that she had to bend over to pick it up.
So I said earlier it was more complicated this year, and it was, but I really hope that doesn't discourage people. Most of it was our fault in procrastinating with the planning, and then latching onto a half-assed idea of using a bar. Using a bar by itself is not a half-assed idea, but locking in on the specific one we chose for no really good reason probably was. With more lead time, and probably a slightly higher expectation concerning booking fees, we could very easily find a more convenient and more upfront location.
Two big things have happened in the last year: no one lives in a big shitty apartment with outside space anymore, and no one has the ability to just accept a trainwreck mess of an apartment afterward anymore. Plus, the pool of partygoers keeps increasing. Using a bar is really the only reasonable option for future years. We've got to get started earlier and we've got to treat it like a legit event with contracts and such, not like an informal agreement amongst us and the bar manager.
I say this all directly, but the fact is that I likely won't have much if any involvement in the planning for Hamsgiving V, since I'll be in Chicago. It's no guarantee I'll be able to even attend, although right around that time would be about perfect for my first visit back to the city. I guess I'm just really hopeful that the perceived stress of staging this event--especially when outside factors are conspiring against us--doesn't outweigh the actual enjoyment of the celebration. I hope it doesn't get in the way of things.
I do know that whether I'm able to attend next year or not, I'm going to initiate a Hamsgiving West in Chicago for sure. It's a perfect city for it, too.
I haven't talked about Hamsgiving yet, which is odd. Odd because I normally run out a liveblog of the occasion and odder because we hosted it at a bar this year, which added to the complications about tenfold. The weird thing though is that in spite of the prep, it was less memorable this year, at least for me. I did leave earlyish, so maybe I missed some things, but then everyone leaves early on Hamsgiving. You don't start drinking at 1:00 and expect to go all night. I should say, not anymore at least.
The big news is that our celebration was overrun by the Idiotarod. Dave said it first when breaking the news to me: that it was really the worst-case scenario. The fairly obscure and extremely out of the way bar we chose, Wunderbar on the fringe of Long Island City, which holds about 100 people with some comfort, just flukishly happened to be double-booked with us and a group of worked-up, aggressive and drunken fools. A few hundred of them. I've thought about it some since then, but I still haven't been able to think of a worse group to have "sharing" a space with Hamsgiving, especially starting as early as they did, like 4:00pm. I remember standing there outside the bar, tending the grill right after Dave broke me the news, and looking down the sidewalk a few blocks away, seeing the first few people snaking their way towards us. I'm sure it sounds hyperbolic, but the uncomprehending shock very legitimately paralyzed my judgment. I guess I'd be no good in a war, because my response to this stimuli is just too slow.
The truth of the matter is that the Idiotarod-ers weren't really as bad or as numerous as expected. In the heat of the moment we were forced to have our guards up, which knocked down the enjoyment level a little, but in actuality their presence ended up being almost a wash. They inconvenienced us for sure with our food spread and with their thievery, but having a huge number of people added to the "party" and their dumb-ass costumes provided entertainment. They did eventually force us to relocate and perhaps lose a few of our attendees, but we did end up getting slightly cheaper beer, plus use of a large grill, plus free cleanup, all without having to pay the bar a cent. That worked out ok. We should have even left much sooner, but whatever. I was happy with my shirt, I was happy with the Polish sausage guy on First Avenue, I was happy with the grill, I was happy with the drunkenness, I was happy with the ham and all the other great meat efforts this. The only thing relating specifically to the holiday that disappointed me was that in the confusion of the crowded bar I didn't get to sample as much of the food as I'd have liked. And I never did get a meat sweats shot.
Before I go on with this unorganized post, I want stop and focus on something very negative. it doesn't have to do with Hamsgiving exactly but more humanity in general. Sometimes I'm too much of an idealist I guess, but I was really disappointed with a couple of people that day. First is obviously the manager of Wunderbar. This guy never told us about his double-booking of a huge group. Ultimately he didn't ask for the bar fee and he sorta tried to make things up to us at the end of the night, but that definitely doesn't excuse his motives or his deceit throughout the process. It was just blind greed. (I think I should be proud that encountering this still shocks and appalls me, right?) I know a businessman needs to concern himself with business, but doesn't anyone have a conscience about money anymore? Maybe the capitalist system is to blame, I don't know. There isn't really any incentive to ever do the right thing, and the right thing very often isn't the most profitable. That's counter-intuitive. The simple fact is that if we knew he had double-booked us with the Idiotarod, we would have never gone there, no questions asked. And he knew this, and he knew we would be paying him $250 plus bringing in around 75 people to buy his drinks all day. So instead of doing the right thing and being honest with us (actually, doing the right thing would have been not even booking the Idiotarod in the first place), he said fuck it and followed the dollar signs. I should note here that Wunderbar isn't exactly the kind of place to pack in customers, and that really it was us that was doing him a favor from the get-go, giving him a shitload of business that he never would have had, so you really might have expected him to be grateful for it. There was a ton of room for us to have our party in relative peace and for him to have a very profitable day. But I guess when you have a whole tub of ice cream in front of you, if you are a dumb fucking robot then you'll just eat the whole thing, no matter what effect it has.
It was a similar story when we relocated to LIC Bar, a bar that I like. The bartender though was a raging bitch. Initially she cut us some slack and let us use their back room (which we didn't actually need but at the time was empty) until another scheduled group came in, but again, we instantly produced 50+ (I was drunk at this point so have no real idea how many people we had) people when before us she had about 10-15. You'd think she would be happy, but no she wasn't really shy with displaying her opinion that she was being more inconvenienced than anything else. 50 people x 2 drinks per hour x $6 per drink x 2-3 hours = $1500. You are a bar owner. On a normal day you have 10-20 customers drinking at the rate stated, between 4-8pm, then you have 25 people from 8-11, 50 from 11-12, and 15-20 from 12-2am. This is all just very rough, and I'm sure I'm being liberal with the numbers for LIC Bar. Anyway. Round the numbers a little and add them up, so that on a normal weekend night, you make a little more than $2000, including tips. When we walked in the door, we almost doubled her income expectation. Fuck that woman. I understand we should be happy we found a home there, but it was LIC, we could have stopped at basically any place and had plenty of room. She was very lucky that we happened to choose her, and really amazed me with her sense of entitlement. She found a hundred dollar bill on the sidewalk but got pissed that she had to bend over to pick it up.
So I said earlier it was more complicated this year, and it was, but I really hope that doesn't discourage people. Most of it was our fault in procrastinating with the planning, and then latching onto a half-assed idea of using a bar. Using a bar by itself is not a half-assed idea, but locking in on the specific one we chose for no really good reason probably was. With more lead time, and probably a slightly higher expectation concerning booking fees, we could very easily find a more convenient and more upfront location.
Two big things have happened in the last year: no one lives in a big shitty apartment with outside space anymore, and no one has the ability to just accept a trainwreck mess of an apartment afterward anymore. Plus, the pool of partygoers keeps increasing. Using a bar is really the only reasonable option for future years. We've got to get started earlier and we've got to treat it like a legit event with contracts and such, not like an informal agreement amongst us and the bar manager.
I say this all directly, but the fact is that I likely won't have much if any involvement in the planning for Hamsgiving V, since I'll be in Chicago. It's no guarantee I'll be able to even attend, although right around that time would be about perfect for my first visit back to the city. I guess I'm just really hopeful that the perceived stress of staging this event--especially when outside factors are conspiring against us--doesn't outweigh the actual enjoyment of the celebration. I hope it doesn't get in the way of things.
I do know that whether I'm able to attend next year or not, I'm going to initiate a Hamsgiving West in Chicago for sure. It's a perfect city for it, too.
Monday, February 8, 2010
A Showy Weekend
On my way to the train this morning I passed a woman on a phone in the middle of a seriously heated argument with someone. Yelling, repeated phrases, even a little unconscious foot-stomping. My question is: who in the hell has the energy to get that angry at 8AM on a Monday morning (the Monday after the super bowl, no less), all while standing outside in 25 degree cold? In the words of my father when I was an unstoppably energetic little kid: go run around the block a couple times, that'll settle you down. (Incidentally, that could have been the start of my running career, since frequently out of spite (yeah, little kids can have spite) I'd take him up on it.)
Friday, I went with Sara to see "Fela!" (exclamation theirs). We also had dinner at Bar Americain, which is one of Bobby Flay's restaurants. The restaurant was very good but not very great (Sara liked it more than me). The mayonnaise for the fries might have been the highlight, which is not the point of a semi-fancy place I don't think. We split an excellent crabcake that came with a remarkably good slaw, though the single crabcake cost a fairly ridiculous $19. I got the porterhouse cut pork chops, which were good. I'd never seen pork in that cut style before, so kudos there. It's a sloppy cut though, and a pork chop is not nearly as big as its beef cousin, so it was maybe a little more work than was necessary. Nice almost melt-away consistency of the meat though.
The show was at the very least interesting. I've now seen three very different broadway shows in the last 14 months. The first, "Pal Joey," was a revival of a pretty classic old-style show, the kind with the almost awkward stop/starts for songs and dances. Not my favorite. The second was a sort of very contemporary update of that classic form, "In the Heights." This was still not really in my wheelhouse, but it was very energetic and entertaining so the audience experience was distinct. "Fela!" isn't really like the others. It's not a standard "broadway show," instead more of a thought-provoking musical concert with staged interactions and realistic but heavily (and interestingly) choreographed dancing. That's the good. The bad is that--in this novice's eye--pretty much every facet of the show was just slightly lacking. The story was dramatic but not hugely so, the lead actor was entertaining and talented but not quite charismatic or engaging enough (this is a big problem, actually), the production started trying to be uniquely interesting but then sorta gave up, and the music was all very good but ultimately the songs were fairly weak. It's only been three days but I can't recall any specific tune from the show. Excellent and very danceable ambient beats but not a whole lot more. The best part of the show for me was the set and the visuals, especially in the second half when it gets mystical and the lights go out and there are about 4-5 layers of visuals with glowing dancers and even an odd sense of magnetic light. It's tough to describe it all but I think it was spectacular.
The second show of the weekend was entirely different. Saturday night, Lyndhurst, NJ, Medieval Times, dinner and tournament.
Before I say anything, I'd like to note that it's really hard to form a natural opinion about this spectacle because anyone experiencing it for the first time carries such massive preconceived notions going in. I'd also like to disclaim that I absolutely promise to keep my mouth shut any time in the near future that my friends and fellow attendees enthusiastically talk about it. I've thrown cold water on positive memories in the past, so I'm trying not to do it now.
Anyway, the whole thing was a little disappointing for me. There were indeed knights on horseback and sometimes aggressive swordplay and stupidly long bits of blustery proclamations from the "king" and others. And we did actually have to eat bone-in chicken with our hands. And they had big novelty-sized beer vessels. And we got to wear silly paper crowns. Basically everything else was underwhelming.
No one was in character except the participants during the actual show. Waitresses, cashiers, bartenders: they were all just normal people acting normally. Even the participants spoke to us as themselves after the show. I had thought the whole experience was the show, that people would be playing characters the whole time? I guess not. I can't believe I'm complaining that it wasn't nearly campy enough, but I am. I wanted to feel embarrassed by the awkwardness of the spectacle throughout, but it only succeeded in that accidentally, whenever the "king" spoke (the guy had the most ridiculous nerd-voice ever, and he wasn't doing it on purpose).
I was almost offended when they passed out individually-plastic-wrapped towelettes after dinner. What's the point of eschewing one modern convenience only to indulge in another? I looked around briefly after being given mine and then did what any 21st century man would do when surrounded by aborted disneyfied half-assedness: I accepted the fail and indulged.
Friday, I went with Sara to see "Fela!" (exclamation theirs). We also had dinner at Bar Americain, which is one of Bobby Flay's restaurants. The restaurant was very good but not very great (Sara liked it more than me). The mayonnaise for the fries might have been the highlight, which is not the point of a semi-fancy place I don't think. We split an excellent crabcake that came with a remarkably good slaw, though the single crabcake cost a fairly ridiculous $19. I got the porterhouse cut pork chops, which were good. I'd never seen pork in that cut style before, so kudos there. It's a sloppy cut though, and a pork chop is not nearly as big as its beef cousin, so it was maybe a little more work than was necessary. Nice almost melt-away consistency of the meat though.
The show was at the very least interesting. I've now seen three very different broadway shows in the last 14 months. The first, "Pal Joey," was a revival of a pretty classic old-style show, the kind with the almost awkward stop/starts for songs and dances. Not my favorite. The second was a sort of very contemporary update of that classic form, "In the Heights." This was still not really in my wheelhouse, but it was very energetic and entertaining so the audience experience was distinct. "Fela!" isn't really like the others. It's not a standard "broadway show," instead more of a thought-provoking musical concert with staged interactions and realistic but heavily (and interestingly) choreographed dancing. That's the good. The bad is that--in this novice's eye--pretty much every facet of the show was just slightly lacking. The story was dramatic but not hugely so, the lead actor was entertaining and talented but not quite charismatic or engaging enough (this is a big problem, actually), the production started trying to be uniquely interesting but then sorta gave up, and the music was all very good but ultimately the songs were fairly weak. It's only been three days but I can't recall any specific tune from the show. Excellent and very danceable ambient beats but not a whole lot more. The best part of the show for me was the set and the visuals, especially in the second half when it gets mystical and the lights go out and there are about 4-5 layers of visuals with glowing dancers and even an odd sense of magnetic light. It's tough to describe it all but I think it was spectacular.
The second show of the weekend was entirely different. Saturday night, Lyndhurst, NJ, Medieval Times, dinner and tournament.
Before I say anything, I'd like to note that it's really hard to form a natural opinion about this spectacle because anyone experiencing it for the first time carries such massive preconceived notions going in. I'd also like to disclaim that I absolutely promise to keep my mouth shut any time in the near future that my friends and fellow attendees enthusiastically talk about it. I've thrown cold water on positive memories in the past, so I'm trying not to do it now.
Anyway, the whole thing was a little disappointing for me. There were indeed knights on horseback and sometimes aggressive swordplay and stupidly long bits of blustery proclamations from the "king" and others. And we did actually have to eat bone-in chicken with our hands. And they had big novelty-sized beer vessels. And we got to wear silly paper crowns. Basically everything else was underwhelming.
No one was in character except the participants during the actual show. Waitresses, cashiers, bartenders: they were all just normal people acting normally. Even the participants spoke to us as themselves after the show. I had thought the whole experience was the show, that people would be playing characters the whole time? I guess not. I can't believe I'm complaining that it wasn't nearly campy enough, but I am. I wanted to feel embarrassed by the awkwardness of the spectacle throughout, but it only succeeded in that accidentally, whenever the "king" spoke (the guy had the most ridiculous nerd-voice ever, and he wasn't doing it on purpose).
I was almost offended when they passed out individually-plastic-wrapped towelettes after dinner. What's the point of eschewing one modern convenience only to indulge in another? I looked around briefly after being given mine and then did what any 21st century man would do when surrounded by aborted disneyfied half-assedness: I accepted the fail and indulged.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Dragging in the Void
My weekend hangover has been a little bit more vicious than usual this week. Probably because of the anticipation and then execution of Hamsgiving weekend (post upcoming), which included three days of drinking and walking long distances in bitter cold.
Not so long ago, when my life revolved not around a loved one but two consecutive off-days per week, I suffered weekend hangovers pretty regularly. Mondays were not fun. I'm not even really talking about physical hangovers (because those would happen on Sundays usually), but the emotional letdown. Much keeping with the hair-of-the-dog effect, a lot of times it seemed like the only cure was another weekend (fortunately our good friend Time ensured that I was never out of stock), and this one is only beginning to show signs of letting up mostly due to the Super Bowl coming up, and my current devotion to creating prop bets for our pool.
I only mention all of this because I haven't had a weekend hangover in a long time. Part of that is simply not getting after it as hard on weekends anymore, but a much bigger part is Sara's steadying influence, plus the not-insignificant fact that lately my life has had much larger anticipatory events than simple weekends. From the time I was engaged, I had about one year of steady build-up with wedding and honeymoon plans. Smaller cycles of months and weeks were washed under by the higher tide of the wedding. Then I had the afterglow from that for a while, and in short notice, Sara became pregnant and it kicked into another gear.
I have to say that--outside of a 2-3 week period of intense honeymoon prep--the depth of education/preparation for a pregnancy just blows away anything wedding-related. And this is how it should be. You get lazy and ruin a wedding and you've got one bad day and a few weeks of residual damage, but you fuck up a pregnancy and you've got a lifetime.
Starting in late October when I found out she was pregnant, through the pretty recent past, I immersed myself in all kinds of pregnancy- and baby-related things. How fast does a fetus grow? Why is a diaper pail different from a simple garbage can? How heavy is a 3-month-old baby? Is it really necessary to take four giant pills per day? Will it hurt my child's rap career to be born in Manhattan instead of Brooklyn? There is almost no end to the topics you can research in this area, and I only barely ever restrained myself. I think we have finally moved into a down period in this regard. We're 6+ weeks since we've told everyone, so that novelty is gone. We've had enough doctor visits so that they're becoming routine (so much so that I'm actually skipping one today). We're far enough into the pregnancy that we basically already know everything we need to know, so the actual labor and delivery is the only thing left (for me at least. Sara gets to deal with the restless nights, back pain, etcetc. Sorry about that). We're not close enough so that we can actually start buying things for after the baby arrives. And, sometime in the last few weeks, I've stopped automatically knowing how far along she is. She's almost 19 weeks now, but I had to stop and think about it.
I guess what this is all about is waiting. Nine months of a pregnancy is a long time, but given all you need to do, both internally and externally to prepare for that huge life change, it can be intimidating and seem like not long enough. Not right now, though. Right now it just feels like a time void between now and June, like I know my life will change and I'm ready for it but it's not here yet. I'm just waiting for the future to happen, a future that I mostly already know, which is weird.
Not so long ago, when my life revolved not around a loved one but two consecutive off-days per week, I suffered weekend hangovers pretty regularly. Mondays were not fun. I'm not even really talking about physical hangovers (because those would happen on Sundays usually), but the emotional letdown. Much keeping with the hair-of-the-dog effect, a lot of times it seemed like the only cure was another weekend (fortunately our good friend Time ensured that I was never out of stock), and this one is only beginning to show signs of letting up mostly due to the Super Bowl coming up, and my current devotion to creating prop bets for our pool.
I only mention all of this because I haven't had a weekend hangover in a long time. Part of that is simply not getting after it as hard on weekends anymore, but a much bigger part is Sara's steadying influence, plus the not-insignificant fact that lately my life has had much larger anticipatory events than simple weekends. From the time I was engaged, I had about one year of steady build-up with wedding and honeymoon plans. Smaller cycles of months and weeks were washed under by the higher tide of the wedding. Then I had the afterglow from that for a while, and in short notice, Sara became pregnant and it kicked into another gear.
I have to say that--outside of a 2-3 week period of intense honeymoon prep--the depth of education/preparation for a pregnancy just blows away anything wedding-related. And this is how it should be. You get lazy and ruin a wedding and you've got one bad day and a few weeks of residual damage, but you fuck up a pregnancy and you've got a lifetime.
Starting in late October when I found out she was pregnant, through the pretty recent past, I immersed myself in all kinds of pregnancy- and baby-related things. How fast does a fetus grow? Why is a diaper pail different from a simple garbage can? How heavy is a 3-month-old baby? Is it really necessary to take four giant pills per day? Will it hurt my child's rap career to be born in Manhattan instead of Brooklyn? There is almost no end to the topics you can research in this area, and I only barely ever restrained myself. I think we have finally moved into a down period in this regard. We're 6+ weeks since we've told everyone, so that novelty is gone. We've had enough doctor visits so that they're becoming routine (so much so that I'm actually skipping one today). We're far enough into the pregnancy that we basically already know everything we need to know, so the actual labor and delivery is the only thing left (for me at least. Sara gets to deal with the restless nights, back pain, etcetc. Sorry about that). We're not close enough so that we can actually start buying things for after the baby arrives. And, sometime in the last few weeks, I've stopped automatically knowing how far along she is. She's almost 19 weeks now, but I had to stop and think about it.
I guess what this is all about is waiting. Nine months of a pregnancy is a long time, but given all you need to do, both internally and externally to prepare for that huge life change, it can be intimidating and seem like not long enough. Not right now, though. Right now it just feels like a time void between now and June, like I know my life will change and I'm ready for it but it's not here yet. I'm just waiting for the future to happen, a future that I mostly already know, which is weird.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Stimulating Television
Lately I've developed a mild addiction to Man vs Wild. I don't feel compelled to seek it out, but if I'm scrolling and it is on, I am unable to not watch it. I think a new season has just started so the show is more visible, though just from watching the episodes, you'd never know if it was the newest or the oldest in the series. I'm not actually sure how they plan to keep running new episodes, actually, since it seems like every one follows a predictable pattern, and it's hard to tell the difference between the survival skills he displays whether in the Amazon, Panamanian, Chinese, or any other random jungle locale.
The thing that I noticed not long ago as I was watching one of them is that it isn't actually a how-to show. Sure it is somewhat informative, but for a show who's premise is teaching the viewer how to survive, it contains precious few moments of teaching. The real point of the show is to entertain, of course, to show Bear Grylls doing nasty things like eating snakes or rubbing mud in his ears, or wild things like jumping off a 50ft cliff or swimming under an ice sheet. I'm not saying they're not in there, but to actually ingest usable survival skills while watching the show, you have to be attuned to them and to already have a little knowledge of wilderness techniques to begin with. This from a show who's whole reason for being is presumably to teach.
What I'm getting at here is that there are shamefully few shows on TV that a viewer can learn anything from. There is a whole goddamn network called "The Learning Channel," but they fill up their hours with crap reality shows about midgets and irresponsibly pregnant women. Every so often there is something medical that might pass off as informative, but even then it's more by accident. Why is it that there are so few places to learn things on TV? Why does it all have to be for simple entertainment? Ideally, the informative shows would also be somewhat entertaining, but you never see any of these "entertaining" shows provide anything informative.
The only place where you see consistently informative programming (I means shows that are conceived and executed with a consistent focus on teaching) is cooking shows. Why nowhere else? Cooking shows aren't ratings gold or anything, but they've been around and heavily watching for a long time, prominently enough to sprout a whole network devoted to them. Their informative nature doesn't prevent them from succeeding as a business model. So why nothing else?
I feel like the History Channel used to be better and providing useful programming, but over the years has turned into the same kind of crap you see everywhere else: dedicated not to really captivate a viewer and give him a reason to watch TV, but more to simply hold his attention while he happens to be watching TV anyway. Someone is surely pulling the strings here. Some focus groups must tell network people that it's better for ratings this way. That's bullshit laziness.
The market for substantive TV is there. I know I'm not alone.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
A Folger By Any Other Name
We know now with almost complete certainty that Sara's fetus is a girl. Which is bad news because of the names that she has been floating my way. The girl ones have all been pretty terrible.
We decided that we wouldn't put much effort into names until we knew the gender, so I guess now the floodgates are open. The only thing that we ever did talk about was two names that we both liked: Theodore and Macdougal. Both boy names. Macdougal comes with a whole story involving her pet name for me, while Theodore has been my pick for a while. Both names are solid. Not totally unique but also not exactly popular. They pass the sound test, and work well with Folger. They also both shorten very nicely, to Ted/dy(1) and Mac. But again, they're both boy names; we don't have any legit girl names ready to go.
There are three names that Sara has liked enough to present to me prior to this gender-unmasking: Minna, Matilda, and Veda. Maybe you find those names attractive; I do not. The first one is to pay respect to a relative of hers. Fine, use it as a middle name. Matilda is just an ugly name(2), and Veda sounds like the name of one of Capt Kirk's conquests on Star Trek. I looked up Veda and it's an Indian name, as in India. I actually like Indian names(3), especially for girls, I just think my wife happened to pick out one the worst ones.
I'm sure we'll find a nice name for our future girl, it just seems a lot more difficult at the moment. Assuming you are not going the traditional route, girl names seem more complicated and diverse than boy names. Maybe I'm inventing this, I don't know. I actually like using masculine or neutral names for girls. Names like Dakota or Murphy or Bill. (Just kidding on the last one, wouldn't that be something.) It feels like cheating, and it's just my lazy brain playing tricks on me, but I actually really like Theadora for a girl. The shortened forms aren't as good though: Dora or Thea, I assume, with Thea being either "thee-ah" or "thay-ah." Not bad, but not perfect either. The big problem is that if we use Theadora now, we couldn't use Theodore on a future boy. No, we're not going to be those weirdo parents who name their kids all similarly (though Dora and Teddy disguise their root similarities nicely).
It's a lot to think about.
I used to be really good to coming up with fake names to be used as aliases. You'd think that skill would translate to baby-naming, but I'm not sure it does. My favorite personal aliases are Mordecai Sinclair, Sebastian Parker, and of course Chuck Swanson. Those are A+ names. They also don't include the one name that is a prerequisite for our kid: Folger. Folger is not a perfect surname to match first names with. Phonetically, it's kinda heavy with the g in the middle. I've never had a problem with my own full name except that if you use the long form it does whatever is the opposite of "rolls off the tongue." It seeps into the tongue like leaves in a compost pile. We'll need to keep that in mind.
1. Here is where we had an honest disagreement. We both like Theodore, but Sara was somewhat adamant that the diminutive should be Theo, while I was just as adamant in favor of Teddy. My main point of argument: you can't have a white kid going by Theo. A white adult, most definitely, but not a kid. "The Cosby Show" pretty much killed that for all caucasians. Plus, doesn't Teddy just sound awesome for a little boy?
2. No offense to Ryan or the waitress at Bondi's, who is herself not ugly.
3. I had an honest infatuation with a girl for a couple years a while back, and while she was certainly very attractive, hindsight forces me to consider that a big part of it was her awesome name: Rajika. That is an attractive name.
We decided that we wouldn't put much effort into names until we knew the gender, so I guess now the floodgates are open. The only thing that we ever did talk about was two names that we both liked: Theodore and Macdougal. Both boy names. Macdougal comes with a whole story involving her pet name for me, while Theodore has been my pick for a while. Both names are solid. Not totally unique but also not exactly popular. They pass the sound test, and work well with Folger. They also both shorten very nicely, to Ted/dy(1) and Mac. But again, they're both boy names; we don't have any legit girl names ready to go.
There are three names that Sara has liked enough to present to me prior to this gender-unmasking: Minna, Matilda, and Veda. Maybe you find those names attractive; I do not. The first one is to pay respect to a relative of hers. Fine, use it as a middle name. Matilda is just an ugly name(2), and Veda sounds like the name of one of Capt Kirk's conquests on Star Trek. I looked up Veda and it's an Indian name, as in India. I actually like Indian names(3), especially for girls, I just think my wife happened to pick out one the worst ones.
I'm sure we'll find a nice name for our future girl, it just seems a lot more difficult at the moment. Assuming you are not going the traditional route, girl names seem more complicated and diverse than boy names. Maybe I'm inventing this, I don't know. I actually like using masculine or neutral names for girls. Names like Dakota or Murphy or Bill. (Just kidding on the last one, wouldn't that be something.) It feels like cheating, and it's just my lazy brain playing tricks on me, but I actually really like Theadora for a girl. The shortened forms aren't as good though: Dora or Thea, I assume, with Thea being either "thee-ah" or "thay-ah." Not bad, but not perfect either. The big problem is that if we use Theadora now, we couldn't use Theodore on a future boy. No, we're not going to be those weirdo parents who name their kids all similarly (though Dora and Teddy disguise their root similarities nicely).
It's a lot to think about.
I used to be really good to coming up with fake names to be used as aliases. You'd think that skill would translate to baby-naming, but I'm not sure it does. My favorite personal aliases are Mordecai Sinclair, Sebastian Parker, and of course Chuck Swanson. Those are A+ names. They also don't include the one name that is a prerequisite for our kid: Folger. Folger is not a perfect surname to match first names with. Phonetically, it's kinda heavy with the g in the middle. I've never had a problem with my own full name except that if you use the long form it does whatever is the opposite of "rolls off the tongue." It seeps into the tongue like leaves in a compost pile. We'll need to keep that in mind.
1. Here is where we had an honest disagreement. We both like Theodore, but Sara was somewhat adamant that the diminutive should be Theo, while I was just as adamant in favor of Teddy. My main point of argument: you can't have a white kid going by Theo. A white adult, most definitely, but not a kid. "The Cosby Show" pretty much killed that for all caucasians. Plus, doesn't Teddy just sound awesome for a little boy?
2. No offense to Ryan or the waitress at Bondi's, who is herself not ugly.
3. I had an honest infatuation with a girl for a couple years a while back, and while she was certainly very attractive, hindsight forces me to consider that a big part of it was her awesome name: Rajika. That is an attractive name.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Another Kind of Love
Last week Sara was on the phone and her sister put on her two girls (our nieces). Sara--not on speakerphone--talked to them briefly and then said "I love you" before hanging up.
This might not be thought-provoking to you, but it really was to me.
If I had been on the phone then I would not have ended the conversation that way; in fact, it never would have even occurred to me to end it so. Part of this is because the two nieces are 2 years old and nearly 4 years old, so they were around both before the wedding and even before I really knew Sara. Also, they live 800 miles away from us and I've spent less than ten days in their presence at this point. I don't know them all that well and they don't know me much either. In fact, though they are very warm with Sara they mostly react to me like I'm a hairy-faced unfamiliar adult, which is exactly what I am. The older one is old enough so that she warms up to me after some time, but the younger is definitely not there yet.
And yet this is my family now. After we move to Chicago next year, they will be close family that we see often and regularly for an indefinite amount of time. They will become friends and frequent play-partners with our unborn children.
"Love" is an appropriate word to use, then, if you think about it in this macro sense, but that doesn't change the awkward feeling that I would have when presented with it in the moment. There are different kinds of love, and I'm not just talking romantic vs familial. There is the inner love that we effortlessly produce for other people, and there is also what I'd call the outer love that is part of circumstance that we pull from to give to other people. The love I have for Sara comes from within me that I created (or that her presence or my belief in her wondrousness created in me--deep romantic love can never be fully explained in words), while the love I have for any family member came originally from our shared environment.
My own aunt and uncle tell me that they love me, and nothing seems odd about that. They are family that I've seen consistently throughout my life. Of course we feel a love for each other.
Is it ok that I don't currently feel love for my young nieces? Is it ok to grow into it? I think it should be. Think about it another way: if you are either recently-wedded or have had a partner for a few years, how would you feel if one of your in-laws passed away? If you have not had the time to build up the natural feelings of love for the person, how do you react?
I guess I honestly wonder about this, because my disposition with regards to this stuff is reservedness. I don't quickly come upon love, and when I find it (with one big exception--thanks, wife) I am slow to acknowledge it, especially verbally.
I am a classic midwesterner is this regard. My mom always says she loves me at the end of phone calls, but I rarely return the comment (in fact Sara always pesters me to say it so I do it more often now). I of course love my mother. I have always loved her outwardly and very early on in life I learned to love her inwardly, too. But still I don't always like to offer it up: "I love you."
When my mom talks to me on the phone she does so via the speaker so my dad is almost always there too. At the end of the call, he hardly ever adds his own "I love you." My father of course loves me. But he doesn't always like to offer it up. When he does, I find it more amusing than comforting, because he'll deliver the words in a louder, clearer voice, almost like he's reassuring himself that he says it often enough, changing his cadence as an involuntary way of marking a change in substance, like a writer using CAPITAL LETTERS.
I feel like I need a summary of this post. Everyone loves their parents because they're mom and dad, but not everyone really loves them because they love them; but presumably every husband loves his wife because he really loves her.
A man can let his heart find him a woman, but not a set of parents.
To truly love a person is to not need to use empathy to have emotion for him. I think this is how you know if you love an in-law or a relative.
Is it ok to love a relative only as a relative and not fully emotionally?
Is it normal or acceptable to fully love some relatives and not others?
Does biological immediacy require clean demarcations of emotional attachment, or would it be normal to love a distant relative more than an immediate one?
Is there an initial grace period with new relatives to let love build naturally, and if so roughly how long do you have before wondering if it might not happen?
This might not be thought-provoking to you, but it really was to me.
If I had been on the phone then I would not have ended the conversation that way; in fact, it never would have even occurred to me to end it so. Part of this is because the two nieces are 2 years old and nearly 4 years old, so they were around both before the wedding and even before I really knew Sara. Also, they live 800 miles away from us and I've spent less than ten days in their presence at this point. I don't know them all that well and they don't know me much either. In fact, though they are very warm with Sara they mostly react to me like I'm a hairy-faced unfamiliar adult, which is exactly what I am. The older one is old enough so that she warms up to me after some time, but the younger is definitely not there yet.
And yet this is my family now. After we move to Chicago next year, they will be close family that we see often and regularly for an indefinite amount of time. They will become friends and frequent play-partners with our unborn children.
"Love" is an appropriate word to use, then, if you think about it in this macro sense, but that doesn't change the awkward feeling that I would have when presented with it in the moment. There are different kinds of love, and I'm not just talking romantic vs familial. There is the inner love that we effortlessly produce for other people, and there is also what I'd call the outer love that is part of circumstance that we pull from to give to other people. The love I have for Sara comes from within me that I created (or that her presence or my belief in her wondrousness created in me--deep romantic love can never be fully explained in words), while the love I have for any family member came originally from our shared environment.
My own aunt and uncle tell me that they love me, and nothing seems odd about that. They are family that I've seen consistently throughout my life. Of course we feel a love for each other.
Is it ok that I don't currently feel love for my young nieces? Is it ok to grow into it? I think it should be. Think about it another way: if you are either recently-wedded or have had a partner for a few years, how would you feel if one of your in-laws passed away? If you have not had the time to build up the natural feelings of love for the person, how do you react?
I guess I honestly wonder about this, because my disposition with regards to this stuff is reservedness. I don't quickly come upon love, and when I find it (with one big exception--thanks, wife) I am slow to acknowledge it, especially verbally.
I am a classic midwesterner is this regard. My mom always says she loves me at the end of phone calls, but I rarely return the comment (in fact Sara always pesters me to say it so I do it more often now). I of course love my mother. I have always loved her outwardly and very early on in life I learned to love her inwardly, too. But still I don't always like to offer it up: "I love you."
When my mom talks to me on the phone she does so via the speaker so my dad is almost always there too. At the end of the call, he hardly ever adds his own "I love you." My father of course loves me. But he doesn't always like to offer it up. When he does, I find it more amusing than comforting, because he'll deliver the words in a louder, clearer voice, almost like he's reassuring himself that he says it often enough, changing his cadence as an involuntary way of marking a change in substance, like a writer using CAPITAL LETTERS.
I feel like I need a summary of this post. Everyone loves their parents because they're mom and dad, but not everyone really loves them because they love them; but presumably every husband loves his wife because he really loves her.
A man can let his heart find him a woman, but not a set of parents.
To truly love a person is to not need to use empathy to have emotion for him. I think this is how you know if you love an in-law or a relative.
Is it ok to love a relative only as a relative and not fully emotionally?
Is it normal or acceptable to fully love some relatives and not others?
Does biological immediacy require clean demarcations of emotional attachment, or would it be normal to love a distant relative more than an immediate one?
Is there an initial grace period with new relatives to let love build naturally, and if so roughly how long do you have before wondering if it might not happen?
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Stress and Irritability and Marriage
When I went out to get lunch today I encountered a giant asshole trying to hail a cab. I mean like how people do it on TV, running toward the street and screaming "Taxi!" over and over. No one actually does it like that in real life, not even when they are in a big hurry. But this guy was different. He came bowling around the corner toward Park Ave, with his fat ass and big black jacket and flowing brown scarf, all big-faced and jowly with longish wavy hair slicked straight backward, like an asshole. He was maybe 50 and was also dragging one of those suitcase-on-wheels that assholes use in midtown to display to the world extreme pride either in their own laziness or their ability to acquire worthless and frivolous items. On top of everything, the two cabs that he was soliciting from 30 feet away were both very clearly about to be occupied by other more timely and discreet individuals.
As I saw this sorry scene develop, a real rage built up inside me very quickly and I had a sudden fantasy of picking up my walking speed and ramming the fuck into the guy's chest like a linebacker, just laying him out and watching his crap go sprawling while the crowded sidewalk full of people mocked him. I even had to physically bite my tongue to suppress the violent urge, something that I find myself doing every now and again.
So my question then is have I become a more stressful person? I don't remember ever really having to bite my tongue as a way of diffusing frustration. Is it possible that my lifestyle has finally gotten to be stressful? My disposition for all of my life has included the least amount of stress that I think any person has ever felt. I'm extremely reserved and patient and generally unconcerned of all outside stimuli. I always assumed that this was just a permanent character trait, something that I was born with, so that the idea that this might be slowly changing is interesting to me.
I think a general assumption would be that, if anything, a person's stress levels would decrease as he ages as he becomes more confident in himself, settled in his life, and generally wiser or more experienced. Maybe that is true in a linear sense, but from a little personal experience I can add to this, such that maybe the stress level through life is more of a bell curve.
Now that I am positively married I share most of my life with a reasonable person, which over time reinforces itself so that more and more I have interactions with a like-minded person (my wife). Also this thing called love will cause her to perhaps agree with me more often than normal. The effect that this seems to slowly produce with me is that I don't have as much patience with things or people that I find to be irrational or sociopathic. In addition, the amount of time I have to share with the world around me has been greatly reduced due to the added time I spend with my wife. This means that I'm much less patient with a person who I feel might be wasting my time, and can add to my irritability. Any enemy of logic has more often become a real enemy of me, instead of just a curiosity or a source of amusement.
I guess what I'm saying is that it seems that marriage has indirectly caused me to be a more stressful person.
As I saw this sorry scene develop, a real rage built up inside me very quickly and I had a sudden fantasy of picking up my walking speed and ramming the fuck into the guy's chest like a linebacker, just laying him out and watching his crap go sprawling while the crowded sidewalk full of people mocked him. I even had to physically bite my tongue to suppress the violent urge, something that I find myself doing every now and again.
So my question then is have I become a more stressful person? I don't remember ever really having to bite my tongue as a way of diffusing frustration. Is it possible that my lifestyle has finally gotten to be stressful? My disposition for all of my life has included the least amount of stress that I think any person has ever felt. I'm extremely reserved and patient and generally unconcerned of all outside stimuli. I always assumed that this was just a permanent character trait, something that I was born with, so that the idea that this might be slowly changing is interesting to me.
I think a general assumption would be that, if anything, a person's stress levels would decrease as he ages as he becomes more confident in himself, settled in his life, and generally wiser or more experienced. Maybe that is true in a linear sense, but from a little personal experience I can add to this, such that maybe the stress level through life is more of a bell curve.
Now that I am positively married I share most of my life with a reasonable person, which over time reinforces itself so that more and more I have interactions with a like-minded person (my wife). Also this thing called love will cause her to perhaps agree with me more often than normal. The effect that this seems to slowly produce with me is that I don't have as much patience with things or people that I find to be irrational or sociopathic. In addition, the amount of time I have to share with the world around me has been greatly reduced due to the added time I spend with my wife. This means that I'm much less patient with a person who I feel might be wasting my time, and can add to my irritability. Any enemy of logic has more often become a real enemy of me, instead of just a curiosity or a source of amusement.
I guess what I'm saying is that it seems that marriage has indirectly caused me to be a more stressful person.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Film Review: Crazy Heart
Two weeks ago I saw Crazy Heart, and now I'm finally going to share my thoughts. It should be noted that I didn't need to wait this long: it wasn't such a powerful experience that I needed to fully digest it before producing a reasoned response. It was just laziness.
Usually at the end of the year there are a whole list of awards-bait movies that I want to see, but this year was different. There was Crazy Heart, and then maybe Nine, though I've soured a little in my excitement for that one. That's it. Congratulations on being uninteresting and uninspired this year, movie industry.
Anyway, for a person who liked The Wrestler so much just a year ago, it's impossible for me not to compare Crazy Heart to it. A washed-up entertainer slumming around trying to reclaim past glory, while having hit-and-miss experiences with family/lovers, all held together by a dominating performance by the lead actor. Yes, Jeff Bridges really is pretty great in this. Unfortunately for the film, nothing much else about it rises above the level of average.
First, like a lot of people, I will always have a special fondness for Bridges thanks to his appearance as The Dude. (There is actually an obvious but great homage in this movie about thirty minutes in involving sunglasses and a trash can.) His Dudeness though tends to help obscure or marginalize the fact that he really is a good actor with interesting abilities, which are on full display here. He plays simple about as well as anyone, and by "simple" I don't mean dumb but rather uncomplicated. This is a lot tougher and nuanced to act out than you might at first think. One way to think about it is to conjure the stereotype of Oscar-bait roles: handicapped or other obviously-challenged people. Jeff Bridges excels in roles that are just the opposite: people who project no dominating characteristic, other than simply being themselves. That he may have succeeded in this task so much as to be an Oscar contender is all the endorsement you should really need.
Aside from Jeff Bridges, I can't really recommend much else in this film. It stands up as an average one, not a failure or anything but only notable for his presence. Unlike The Wrestler, there was nothing in it's style or delivery that I found interesting, and its ending was ridiculously inferior. As a side note, I'll comment briefly on Maggie Gyllenhaal, who is weirdly cast as Bridges's love interest. She seems to be a pretty trendy actress right now, someone for whom it is fashionable to say you really love and respect as a thespian. I don't see it. She's not bad or anything, and is perfectly capable of giving you a passable performance, but I've never been impressed. She seems to still be fairly young so maybe she'll become something worth talking about, but as for right now let's not make her out to be something she isn't. She's kinda like a less-accomplished female Matt Damon.
My final note here is only slightly relevant to Crazy Heart. Robert Duvall plays a small role as the friend of Jeff Bridges's character, and while he does a typically fine job with it, the role is small and the character is not very interesting or essential to the story. Ultimately forgettable, though that's not Duvall's fault, which brings me to my point. It's time for Robert Duvall to get a big lead role in a film, a role that should either be written specifically for him or that fits him like a glove. Duvall has been an excellent actor for a long time and I'm not sure he's really fully gotten his due. Even better, in his later years, his on-screen persona has really taken on a life of its own. I'd like to think that Duvall was choice #1A for Tommy Lee Jones's character in No Country for Old Men, because he would have been perfect for it. He's gotten to the point in his career where he doesn't even need to act much if you give him the right role. I mean that as complimentary, not like how you might disparagingly say the same thing about Denzel Washington. Duvall has an irrepresible screen personality, and he's clearly capable of using it to dominate a film.
So after I mentioned most of this to Sara she went to IMDB to check him out, and reported back to me that Duvall is scheduled to play the role of Don Quixote in an upcoming film. I can only hope that his part is the lead, because that actually sounds like exactly the kind of forum I'm hoping for.
Usually at the end of the year there are a whole list of awards-bait movies that I want to see, but this year was different. There was Crazy Heart, and then maybe Nine, though I've soured a little in my excitement for that one. That's it. Congratulations on being uninteresting and uninspired this year, movie industry.
Anyway, for a person who liked The Wrestler so much just a year ago, it's impossible for me not to compare Crazy Heart to it. A washed-up entertainer slumming around trying to reclaim past glory, while having hit-and-miss experiences with family/lovers, all held together by a dominating performance by the lead actor. Yes, Jeff Bridges really is pretty great in this. Unfortunately for the film, nothing much else about it rises above the level of average.
First, like a lot of people, I will always have a special fondness for Bridges thanks to his appearance as The Dude. (There is actually an obvious but great homage in this movie about thirty minutes in involving sunglasses and a trash can.) His Dudeness though tends to help obscure or marginalize the fact that he really is a good actor with interesting abilities, which are on full display here. He plays simple about as well as anyone, and by "simple" I don't mean dumb but rather uncomplicated. This is a lot tougher and nuanced to act out than you might at first think. One way to think about it is to conjure the stereotype of Oscar-bait roles: handicapped or other obviously-challenged people. Jeff Bridges excels in roles that are just the opposite: people who project no dominating characteristic, other than simply being themselves. That he may have succeeded in this task so much as to be an Oscar contender is all the endorsement you should really need.
Aside from Jeff Bridges, I can't really recommend much else in this film. It stands up as an average one, not a failure or anything but only notable for his presence. Unlike The Wrestler, there was nothing in it's style or delivery that I found interesting, and its ending was ridiculously inferior. As a side note, I'll comment briefly on Maggie Gyllenhaal, who is weirdly cast as Bridges's love interest. She seems to be a pretty trendy actress right now, someone for whom it is fashionable to say you really love and respect as a thespian. I don't see it. She's not bad or anything, and is perfectly capable of giving you a passable performance, but I've never been impressed. She seems to still be fairly young so maybe she'll become something worth talking about, but as for right now let's not make her out to be something she isn't. She's kinda like a less-accomplished female Matt Damon.
My final note here is only slightly relevant to Crazy Heart. Robert Duvall plays a small role as the friend of Jeff Bridges's character, and while he does a typically fine job with it, the role is small and the character is not very interesting or essential to the story. Ultimately forgettable, though that's not Duvall's fault, which brings me to my point. It's time for Robert Duvall to get a big lead role in a film, a role that should either be written specifically for him or that fits him like a glove. Duvall has been an excellent actor for a long time and I'm not sure he's really fully gotten his due. Even better, in his later years, his on-screen persona has really taken on a life of its own. I'd like to think that Duvall was choice #1A for Tommy Lee Jones's character in No Country for Old Men, because he would have been perfect for it. He's gotten to the point in his career where he doesn't even need to act much if you give him the right role. I mean that as complimentary, not like how you might disparagingly say the same thing about Denzel Washington. Duvall has an irrepresible screen personality, and he's clearly capable of using it to dominate a film.
So after I mentioned most of this to Sara she went to IMDB to check him out, and reported back to me that Duvall is scheduled to play the role of Don Quixote in an upcoming film. I can only hope that his part is the lead, because that actually sounds like exactly the kind of forum I'm hoping for.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Random Observations
1. I have a perhaps irrational hatred of Jack in the Box commercials. First, I don't get the Sleepy Hollow-like "pitchman." Why the stupid spherical head with the crooked hat on a normal body? What could be the meaning of that? I don't like his eternal smugness either. I'm not an advertising expert, but I can't think smugness field tests very well among fast food customers. Even the way he constantly gestures out with his hands the same way every time no matter what he's saying annoys me. I'm not sure I've ever seen a Jack in the Box store, but I'm sure that if I did, I wouldn't eat there. Assholes. You know who wasn't smug? Dave Thomas.
2. Colt McCoy's interview after the game last night was damned impressive. Either he's going to win an Academy Award for acting in his second career or he was as honest as I've seen an athlete in an interview in a long time, and the context made it all the better. The guy's whole career basically built up to that one game, and he goes out on a fluke injury five plays in, then he watches his team look helpless only to mount an ultimately failed comeback? Amazing. At this point, there is still nothing more than a lot of speculation about what happened or especially why he wasn't able to return, so I won't comment on whatever sinister or conspiratorial events were taking place in the training room that required his father's presence (ok maybe I will, because you have to at least wonder if ol dad was summoned because he could have played through the injury but it would put him at a greater risk in the future; ie he would be hurting his chance at more money in the draft). That aside, McCoy managed to answer every question both honestly and with the necessary acknowledgments of the other team's superiority. He did this while pausing to choke back emotion, emotion that didn't get in the way of his responsibility in facing the questions. That's a man that is fit to lead. I always figured him to not quite have the goods for the NFL, but maybe he's got a sneaky Brees-type career in him after all.
The secondary comment I have on this is about the interview itself. I generally hate postgame or halftime interviews with any athletes (especially the literally breathless ones given to track athletes--ridiculous), but I guess I'll put up with hundreds of worthless ones if it might eventually lead to something like McCoy's. That actually added to the broadcast in a meaningful way.
3. I have a friend who won $150 on one bet on last night's game. I won $20 on the same bet. This, along with general overconfidence and delusional thinking, is why I always end up losing overall when gambling online.
4. Jon Heyman is a dickbag. Read this and tell me you don't agree. There is a similarly stupid article on SI's site from Dan Shaughnessy, but I'd rather bitch about Heyman. They both are purposefully ignorant writers who are way over on the wrong side of history, and curiosly proud of it. Arrogant, actually. But that's just the baseball Hall of Fame vote. What makes me pity Mr Heyman even more is that he is one of a handful of guys who, over the last couple months of baseball's offseason, has constantly put out articles and statements and twitters trying to scoop about which free agent is signing with which team. Basically, Heyman's status as a journalist is that he is one of this small group of guys who comes up with these scoops. I'm sure the job is tough--he has to make phone calls pretty much constantly and always keep up on the latest gossip (let's face it, that's all that it is), but it's also totally unecessary and irrelevant. Maybe 10 or 15 years ago, there may have been an honest need for a guy to tirelessly monitor a group of contacts to stay informed, but in 2010 there is this thing called the internet which happens to have shrunken the news gathering timeline to zero. So what I'm saying is that scoops are a total relic of the past. The only thing that benefits from Jon Heyman being the first to report that Mike Cameron signed with the Red Sox is Jon Heyman's ego, because if he didn't report it, then someone else would have, usually within minutes. It's mid-December and you are a baseball fan. you learn that Mike Cameron has signed with the Red Sox. Really, what good is this information to you? What good is it to you right now? It's worthless. You could be lost at sea and only learn about the signing a month later and it would really make no difference. The whole enterprise of digging for scoops in the baseball offseason bothers the hell out of me, so when I see one of the posterboys of it write such haughty uninformed garbage as Heyman does in that article, it really gets me.
2. Colt McCoy's interview after the game last night was damned impressive. Either he's going to win an Academy Award for acting in his second career or he was as honest as I've seen an athlete in an interview in a long time, and the context made it all the better. The guy's whole career basically built up to that one game, and he goes out on a fluke injury five plays in, then he watches his team look helpless only to mount an ultimately failed comeback? Amazing. At this point, there is still nothing more than a lot of speculation about what happened or especially why he wasn't able to return, so I won't comment on whatever sinister or conspiratorial events were taking place in the training room that required his father's presence (ok maybe I will, because you have to at least wonder if ol dad was summoned because he could have played through the injury but it would put him at a greater risk in the future; ie he would be hurting his chance at more money in the draft). That aside, McCoy managed to answer every question both honestly and with the necessary acknowledgments of the other team's superiority. He did this while pausing to choke back emotion, emotion that didn't get in the way of his responsibility in facing the questions. That's a man that is fit to lead. I always figured him to not quite have the goods for the NFL, but maybe he's got a sneaky Brees-type career in him after all.
The secondary comment I have on this is about the interview itself. I generally hate postgame or halftime interviews with any athletes (especially the literally breathless ones given to track athletes--ridiculous), but I guess I'll put up with hundreds of worthless ones if it might eventually lead to something like McCoy's. That actually added to the broadcast in a meaningful way.
3. I have a friend who won $150 on one bet on last night's game. I won $20 on the same bet. This, along with general overconfidence and delusional thinking, is why I always end up losing overall when gambling online.
4. Jon Heyman is a dickbag. Read this and tell me you don't agree. There is a similarly stupid article on SI's site from Dan Shaughnessy, but I'd rather bitch about Heyman. They both are purposefully ignorant writers who are way over on the wrong side of history, and curiosly proud of it. Arrogant, actually. But that's just the baseball Hall of Fame vote. What makes me pity Mr Heyman even more is that he is one of a handful of guys who, over the last couple months of baseball's offseason, has constantly put out articles and statements and twitters trying to scoop about which free agent is signing with which team. Basically, Heyman's status as a journalist is that he is one of this small group of guys who comes up with these scoops. I'm sure the job is tough--he has to make phone calls pretty much constantly and always keep up on the latest gossip (let's face it, that's all that it is), but it's also totally unecessary and irrelevant. Maybe 10 or 15 years ago, there may have been an honest need for a guy to tirelessly monitor a group of contacts to stay informed, but in 2010 there is this thing called the internet which happens to have shrunken the news gathering timeline to zero. So what I'm saying is that scoops are a total relic of the past. The only thing that benefits from Jon Heyman being the first to report that Mike Cameron signed with the Red Sox is Jon Heyman's ego, because if he didn't report it, then someone else would have, usually within minutes. It's mid-December and you are a baseball fan. you learn that Mike Cameron has signed with the Red Sox. Really, what good is this information to you? What good is it to you right now? It's worthless. You could be lost at sea and only learn about the signing a month later and it would really make no difference. The whole enterprise of digging for scoops in the baseball offseason bothers the hell out of me, so when I see one of the posterboys of it write such haughty uninformed garbage as Heyman does in that article, it really gets me.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Reaching Out
Here is what happens when your wife is pregnant: when you go to CVS, in addition to buying such normal items as sponges and milk, you also buy a stool softener for her constipation (it is what it is, which isn't always pretty), a long-handled shower brush for when she isn't able to reach everything anymore, and a can of mixed nuts to help keep her vegetarian protein levels up.
We had our third visit with the obstetrician on Tuesday. She was in her 15th week(1). That's early in the second trimester. We will continue to see this doctor every four weeks for a few more months. I say "we" because I've attended all three so far. From what I gather, the standard is usually for the man to attend the first visit and then the big "anatomy" visit somewhere around the 18th week, when they do the only important ultrasound and you learn what the gender is. Sara is happy to have me at these visits and so far I've been happy to go, even though the last two have mostly been simple check-ups, consisting of "how are you feeling?" a weight check, and a quick look for the fetal heartbeat, followed by answers of any questions or concerns from us. I'm pretty sure I'll be skipping at least the next visit with this primary doctor. The big anatomy visit, conducted by a separate doctor in a different facility, is in just two weeks, and though we're going a little early so I'm worried we won't be able to find out the gender, I'll be attending that one for sure.
There was really an amazing amount of excitement leading up to our first visit, when Sara was only 6 weeks along. Probably unsurprisingly I'll say that I was waiting for some confirmation at that first visit because it didn't seem totally real yet. The doctor brought out the ultrasound and, not knowing what to expect(2), I was actually a little unimpressed. The doctor didn't hesitate calling it a baby when looking at the black circle in the sea of grey noise on the screen. She moved around the internal ultrasound probe, and the black circle moved around and sure I could see a few whiter smudges or streaks inside the circle, but nothing comprehensible. Finally she stopped moving it around and got out her pointer, making tiny marks on the screen in a couple spaces and claiming that she could see the heartbeat. Now, I was sitting across the table about eight feet from the screen, so I didn't see squat, but then she printed out the image and gave it to us. Sara framed it, naturally, but I still didn't see squat. I'd hate to say it was disappointing, because I had no real idea what to expect, so maybe I'll go with "underwhelming." There was nothing human in that image, and barely anything biological, only if you had an active imagination.
The second visit was different, both in my expectations (lower) and the results (wow). This time, the doctor did the more classic external ultrasound, and after some brief abdomen searching, there it was. A very noticeable fetus(3). It seemed almost implanted to the edge of the black circle, like it's back were pasted to it, and the head and neck were pretty distorted, but it had an honest-to-goodness body. The real kicker, though, was the arms. They were fully extended, like grabbing for something. By this time, with Sara at 10 weeks pregnant, I'd seen a lot of ultrasound pictures online. I don't think I ever saw one with outstretched arms. For me, those arms were important. Without them, the image was still mostly inert and abstract, but with them it became animated and very human. For the first time, I could see it and imagine that it was something, that eventually I would be able to touch it and speak to it. Pretty great.
1. I just learned that you don't say it like that, you count it like you do a person's age. So in her 15th week, she's just 14 weeks along. As of today, she is 15 weeks pregnant. 15 weeks and zero days, though you don't say how many days. Anyway.
2. My aggressive online research-gathering hadn't yet begun at this point.
3. Let me be extraordinarily and unnecessarily political now. As a pretty staunchly pro-choice individual, I think I'm going to try to stick with the nomenclature of "fetus," instead of lapsing into calling it a "baby." This will be difficult to sustain, so forgive me and try to remember the intention I'm laying out now. Pretty much the only logical (religious concerns are never logical) argument for a pro-life stance is to draw a hard line around the killing/life issue. So for you to call something that doesn't have independent life a "baby" would be misrepresenting it. Sure, if you have no intent of aborting it, then eventually it will become a baby, but so long as it's in the womb it's still a fetus. So that's done then.
We had our third visit with the obstetrician on Tuesday. She was in her 15th week(1). That's early in the second trimester. We will continue to see this doctor every four weeks for a few more months. I say "we" because I've attended all three so far. From what I gather, the standard is usually for the man to attend the first visit and then the big "anatomy" visit somewhere around the 18th week, when they do the only important ultrasound and you learn what the gender is. Sara is happy to have me at these visits and so far I've been happy to go, even though the last two have mostly been simple check-ups, consisting of "how are you feeling?" a weight check, and a quick look for the fetal heartbeat, followed by answers of any questions or concerns from us. I'm pretty sure I'll be skipping at least the next visit with this primary doctor. The big anatomy visit, conducted by a separate doctor in a different facility, is in just two weeks, and though we're going a little early so I'm worried we won't be able to find out the gender, I'll be attending that one for sure.
There was really an amazing amount of excitement leading up to our first visit, when Sara was only 6 weeks along. Probably unsurprisingly I'll say that I was waiting for some confirmation at that first visit because it didn't seem totally real yet. The doctor brought out the ultrasound and, not knowing what to expect(2), I was actually a little unimpressed. The doctor didn't hesitate calling it a baby when looking at the black circle in the sea of grey noise on the screen. She moved around the internal ultrasound probe, and the black circle moved around and sure I could see a few whiter smudges or streaks inside the circle, but nothing comprehensible. Finally she stopped moving it around and got out her pointer, making tiny marks on the screen in a couple spaces and claiming that she could see the heartbeat. Now, I was sitting across the table about eight feet from the screen, so I didn't see squat, but then she printed out the image and gave it to us. Sara framed it, naturally, but I still didn't see squat. I'd hate to say it was disappointing, because I had no real idea what to expect, so maybe I'll go with "underwhelming." There was nothing human in that image, and barely anything biological, only if you had an active imagination.
The second visit was different, both in my expectations (lower) and the results (wow). This time, the doctor did the more classic external ultrasound, and after some brief abdomen searching, there it was. A very noticeable fetus(3). It seemed almost implanted to the edge of the black circle, like it's back were pasted to it, and the head and neck were pretty distorted, but it had an honest-to-goodness body. The real kicker, though, was the arms. They were fully extended, like grabbing for something. By this time, with Sara at 10 weeks pregnant, I'd seen a lot of ultrasound pictures online. I don't think I ever saw one with outstretched arms. For me, those arms were important. Without them, the image was still mostly inert and abstract, but with them it became animated and very human. For the first time, I could see it and imagine that it was something, that eventually I would be able to touch it and speak to it. Pretty great.
1. I just learned that you don't say it like that, you count it like you do a person's age. So in her 15th week, she's just 14 weeks along. As of today, she is 15 weeks pregnant. 15 weeks and zero days, though you don't say how many days. Anyway.
2. My aggressive online research-gathering hadn't yet begun at this point.
3. Let me be extraordinarily and unnecessarily political now. As a pretty staunchly pro-choice individual, I think I'm going to try to stick with the nomenclature of "fetus," instead of lapsing into calling it a "baby." This will be difficult to sustain, so forgive me and try to remember the intention I'm laying out now. Pretty much the only logical (religious concerns are never logical) argument for a pro-life stance is to draw a hard line around the killing/life issue. So for you to call something that doesn't have independent life a "baby" would be misrepresenting it. Sure, if you have no intent of aborting it, then eventually it will become a baby, but so long as it's in the womb it's still a fetus. So that's done then.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Happy New Year!
Today was welcome back to work day for most of the people around my office. And since today is January 4th, it also means that it was "Hey! Happy New Year!" day for most people. "Happy New Year" as a greeting stikes me as very stupid, but when delivered in conjunction with an overall huge sense of excitement and energy by a person who has not worked in 10-15 days and therefore wants to burn five minutes mindlessly talking to you every time he/she sees you, then it can drive me crazy. First, to me that greeting loses it's novelty around 6pm on January 1st, so to hear it over and over in that forced chirpy way people deliver it in workplaces three days after the fact is too much. Second, I've been back in the office for a full week, people. I don't want to share details on how my holidays were anymore. I had a whole week to do it at work plus a whole three-day weekend to do it amongst friends and social acquaintenances. I don't want to do it anymore. Finally, and maybe the worst aspect of a seemingly banal phrase, "Happy New Year" has only one acceptable response, and of course that response is: "Happy New Year." What's the goddamned point, exactly? Yes, your vocal chords can pronounce four syllables in our shared language, and so can mine. I'm glad we just sorted that out. At my alma mater, Ohio State, there is a pastime among students and especially graduates to greet each other by spelling out the letters O-H-I-O. The first person calls out "O-H" and the second person responds "I-O." I hated this. I hated this from the first time I heard it. Even in the company of friends when a friend will start this greeting (to be fair--often out of spontaneous sports-watching excitement) I will go out of my way to ignore it or even say something disparaging about it. If how alumni choose to distinctly greet each other were the top criterion for choosing a school, then Ohio State would have been near the bottom of my list. The point here is that "Happy New Year"* is basically the same thing as "O-H-I-O." They're like telling a knock-knock joke but without the punchline. Terrible, stupid, a waste of time. Worst of all, people use them as excuses to pile on fake enthusiasm where it has no business.
*I'm excepting all exclamations within 15 minutes of midnight on New Year's Eve, of course. That's about the only time when it makes sense, and doesn't require a rejoinder.
*I'm excepting all exclamations within 15 minutes of midnight on New Year's Eve, of course. That's about the only time when it makes sense, and doesn't require a rejoinder.
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