The Unkindest Cut, Part I

In some ways I suppose I resemble Linus; while I never carried a blanket or sucked my thumb, he's kind of a nerd who wears glasses, seems pretty introspective and is comfortable with his spiritual side.  I'd also have to guess that, though I don't recall seeing this in a strip , like me he ended up with a TRS-80

That may even be a little flattering to me, but I also must confess that I identify as much or more with Charlie Brown.  Like the round-headed kid, I was not necessarily popular with my peer group; I always loved baseball even though I was not always noticeably successful at it; and I was more than a little crazy about a red-haired girl.

I wouldn't be surprised if Charlie Brown had the same dream I did as a kid, over and over.  I'm playing the outfield as the red-haired girl watches, there's a deep fly ball and I race back back back... at the last possible instant I leap to snag the ball as I crash into the fence.

A hush falls over the crowd as I am carted off the field and the red-haired girl rushes to my side with, you know, like shining in her eyes.  I think she smiles at me, maybe touches my hand, as they wheel me off to... I don't know, rebuild me, make me better than I was.  As long as I impressed the girl, I didn't much care what came next.

In real life, I never made that kind of catch and I didn't get very far with the red-haired girl, and I also never spent much time at the hospital.  Never broke a bone, never had my tonsils out, never even had a cavity.  I've racked up a couple of ER visits for kidney stones -- which, ouch, but pain meds for a few days and a lot of water, and the pain more or less, um, passes.

Then a couple summers ago, I noticed a sharp pain in my right wrist when I lifted or pulled something; one night I pulled hard on a heavy object and got a blinding flash of pain.  The orthopedist said I had injured the TFCC in the wrist, basically a repetitive-stress injury caused by the outer bone of the forearm (ulna) being longer than the inner bone (radius); the imbalance basically causes the head of the ulna to pulverize the cartilage.  This is called being "ulnar positive", which refutes all the people who have said I don't have a positive bone in my body.

I had a couple cortisone shots to stave off the pain, though the doctor made it clear that I was only postponing the inevitable -- since they weren't making my ulna any shorter.  Finally -- last Halloween -- I experienced the first medical procedure of my life.

When people hear "wrist surgery", they usually think (1) carpal tunnel, which this wasn't, and (2) arthroscopic.  My wrist actually was scoped to clean up the cartilage tear, but since the real problem was the length of my ulna...

The other part of my procedure was called an ulnar osteotomy, which like most uses of medical terminology is meant to camouflage the fact that they open up your arm, cut a small wafer of bone out of the ulna, and put it back together with a plate and screws.

Maybe your favorite ballplayer came back in a week or 10 days after a scope, but I ended up in a huge & cumbersome splint for 2 weeks, followed by 2 weeks in a cast running from my knuckles past my elbow.

I couldn't drive, or type, (that is, work) for the entire month of November, but I was OK with that because I figured I'd get the cast off at the end of November, do a couple weeks' PT, and be good as new by Christmas!

I figured wrong.

As I Was Saying...

One of Newton's Laws of Motion states that a body at rest tends to stay at rest (if I were a real writer, I'd look up which Law, but since this is a blog, I'm obligated only to link to it).  This Law is perhaps most clearly illustrated at nap time, but it also describes what's been going on with the blog of late.

I won't deny that my production had been winding down really for a period of multiple years, for several reasons, but the pothole that seemed to drop the transmission out was my surgery in October.  The irony, of course, was that I had nothing but time, suddenly... but typing was laborious (and handwriting all but impossible).

Looking back over the past 9 months it seems full of momentous events, both exciting and catastrophic.  I'm struggling a bit dealing with all of that in blog terms, first of all because the sheer volume of events really resists being summed up in 800 or so words -- but also because some of the individual events feel too big, too deep, too... personal.

One of the joys of this endeavor over the years has been creating little vignettes, glimpses into my life and the way I think, and trying to make it interesting or funny to someone besides just myself.  I appreciate also the cyberconnection I have with so many people who've been part of my life at different stages.  It makes for a kind of community that's frankly missing from my largely isolated work-from-home life.  I take particular pleasure in the fact that several of my Facebook friends that I interact with the most are people with whom I wasn't all that close IRL

I'm also aware, however, of a fundamental shortcoming -- whether in me or just built into Social Media World: when I'm going through Real Stuff, such as I have been lately, it's better worked through with Real People, and not where "just anyone" can see..And while I've been pretty successful in building a Friends list, I've been way less successful in building actual Friend-ships.

Even in the midst of such reflection, I still find it a bit ironic; I just wrote a blog about the limitations of blogging, in which the big revelation is that I'm fundamentally unable to reveal myself.

Call Me Cautious

I realize that a high percentage of my posts end up to be about music. I guess that's kind of like the way Eskimos are supposed to have so many words for snow, or fish tweet all the time about how the water is today. Not that I claim that level of expertise, but I seem to be surrounded by music so it seems to be on my mind more often than not.

It's not the same as it once was, I have to say. Actually in a way it is, because I seem to be immersed in the same music now that I was then... but what I meant was, in my younger days when there was something cool and hip and happening, I was aware of it (even though I was constitutionally unable to be hip) more or less right away.

Now when I am... less conclusively young... I am reminded of that fact over and over, because the new hot song comes to me through my children. Ouch, by the way. Quite often they say, "We heard this song and it's really cool and can we have it on our iPods?"

It is my intent as a parent, of course, to exercise a certain amount of quality control over what's going into their heads, so my answer is always "Let me look at it." I then head directly to Google (pretty often right that very moment, with some encouragement).

I know I have no grounds to be all that superior -- "She loves you yeah yeah yeah" is not precisely Shakespeare, and no one will proudly hail the ascension of "My Ding-a-Ling" to #1 in October 1972 as a cultural touchstone. But I also can't say that I've been overwhelmed with the literary quality coming out of top-40 radio these days either...

Maybe "literary" is the wrong angle. Now that I'm coming at it from the parental standpoint, I'm actually more interested in the message than the turns of phrase. Sometimes I can sort of get around "adult language" by making them get the Kidz Bop version, since it's sanitized for your protection (shades of Pat Boone), but other times it's more of a conceptual struggle, particularly in the way current music deals with male-female relationships.

With that in mind, I'd like to submit the following proposed lyric:

Hey, I just met you,

But I'm not crazy,

Can't have my number,

So let's meet for coffee sometime in a neutral and non-threatening public place where I can be completely sober AND see you in the light of day AND be able to hear what you're saying so I can figure out whether you're a normal guy or some kind of stalker,

Maybe

One for the Money, Two for the Show

There were over a thousand students at my high school, so my verification was surely not exhaustive, but to the best of my knowledge I was the only one around who ever wore blue suede shoes to school.

I'm also relatively certain that this removes the last vestige of doubt about whether I was ever "cool" or 'hip", as if that ship hadn't sailed well over 100 posts (not to mention well over 40 years) ago.

Here are the two things you really need to understand about that: first, I was probably 13 or 14 when I got them and surely can't be held accountable; and second, given the opportunity, I'd do it again tomorrow. Maybe tonight, even.

They were Hush Puppies and you know I just checked the website but they don't seem to have them these days. Those shoes were comfortable and I really loved them... and yeah, I also felt like I was really styling as well. It may be just as well that I can't get my hands on them any more, since there have been two major changes since those days -- Hush Puppies are now crazy expensive, and I am also now a married person.

I haven't thought about those shoes much in the past 30+ years -- although I must admit that they do tend to get mentioned at my high school reunions! -- but recently I actually found myself in a situation when a pair of blue suede shoes was exactly what I needed.

During our 25th anniversary cruise this summer, I fell victim once again (as, let's be honest, we all knew I would) to a more serious cruise-related virus than even Legionnaire's Disease (or the compulsion to impress your girlfriend by sailing too close to the coast). It must have been lying dormant in my system ever since October of 2005.

As I reported in one of my first blog posts ever -- in which I believe I established a precedent for being transparent about myself -- I was rather mesmerized that first time around by the opportunity to perform karaoke. I went in this time hoping that a bit of foreknowledge, and self-knowledge, would help me keep things in perspective.

Then I discovered that not only could I take a whirl at conventional karaoke, but they were also offering Superstar Live -- karaoke with a live band including backup vocals. I definitely relished the opportunity to perform, for the first time ever, with an actual rock band.

Despite all of that, I felt like I kept my infection pretty well quarantined; I sang a bunch of songs, in both formats, but I didn't feel like it dominated my life. That might have been the Great Trivia Contest Quest, but that's another story. I had another brief bout of worrying about which song would make me look good... but then I realized that if this was only going to happen once every 7 years, I'd better focus on singing songs I enjoy singing. And after that it was awesome.

Hanging around karaoke off-and-on for the week, I kept hearing about the "Carnival Legends" show featuring passengers performing on the main stage... as the week went on, however, I concluded that I must have no shot. After all, no one said anything to me -- until suddenly, the day before the show, I passed the karaoke host in a doorway and he said, "Oh, Mark, I was meaning to talk to you..."

And seemingly before I knew it (yet at the same time, after hours of stewing, re-listening to the audio, more stewing...) I was standing on stage in front of an audience, and a full band... dressed in full Elvis drag. At that point things are moving thisfast, and it can get away from you in a hurry.

The Elvis Legends number is a medley of "Jailhouse Rock" and "Hound Dog", and what I found immediately after starting to listen to the practice track they gave me is that despite the fact that "Jailhouse Rock" is older than I am and a certifiable 'rock classic'... I sure didn't know the words. And I worried about that non-stop till I got on the stage.

Sure enough, I got to the fourth line and "went up". All I could do is keep my mouth moving till the words came back, which they did (only to depart again briefly a few lines later) -- but I actually believe, or perhaps delude myself, that some of the crowd didn't even realize I had lost it. Hey, you can't always understand Elvis either...

And you know what? I got to sing on stage with a full band in front of hundreds of people... happily the house lights were off AND the spotlights were in my eyes AND I didn't have my glasses on, so I couldn't see past the band anyway. And I screwed up in front of all of them, and I will never never not remember that. But I had a great time, and the rest of my performance was pretty awesome :-), and given the opportunity I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

My other big regret was that, since I didn't pack for a stage show, all I had to wear on my feet was my old sneakers, which didn't totally fit the Elvis image, of course. Turns out that Mars Blackmon was right; I'll bet if I'd had those blue suede babies, everything would've come off without a hitch.

These Are the People in Your (Floating) Neighborhood

Quiet. Solitude. Contemplation.

These are just three of the words that will never be used to describe the cruise ship experience. Yes, my wife and I recently returned from an 8-day eastern Caribbean cruise -- the longest by far we had ever been away from our children. As I recall, we have two of those, and while I'm a little hazy on the names, I'm sure they will come back to me while I'm writing this.

This was a (slightly early) celebration of our upcoming 25th wedding anniversary, a romantic getaway for two marred only by the presence of over 2500 strangers... many of whom seem bent on affirming the worst stereotypes of residents of the Greater New York/New Jersey Metropolitan Area. I really had thought going in that the trip would include long stretches of quiet conversation, but to be in virtually any public area is akin to sticking your head in a jet engine.

From a sociological standpoint, there's fun to be had in observing your fellow cruisers and discerning their primary motivation for booking. There is a major cohort, for example, that spends every waking (at least) hour in the casino. These are easily identified on the rare occasions they emerge by -- in addition to their eyeballs rolling vertically before coming to a stop -- keeping their room cards on a lanyard around their necks. This affords convenience for sticking the card into a slot machine for hours/days at a time, which in turn supplies a neat visual metaphor for the hold the machine has on them.

A second group of cruisers is never more than a few yards from the pools. Mind you, they’re not often found in the pools, which are pretty small. This group spends their days sprawled on a lounge -- you can't get up if you want to keep your place -- catching some rays and, I suspect in many cases, angling to be seen and admired.

A similar group doesn't care about the rays, particularly, but can also be found in a lounge (often in what shade avails) stretched out with a book and/or snoozing. These people have clearly concluded, and I guess I can't argue strenuously with them, that vacation consists largely of doing, and moving, as little as possible. While this philosophy appeals to me somewhat, it only works for me in short bursts before something sounding very much like one of those old-fashioned alarm clocks with the double bell on top goes off in my head. Then I have to go find an Activity, lest I while away the precious hours of my vacation without Accomplishing Something Vacationy. OK, you got me, I'm struggling with all of that.

Incidentally, when it comes to reading material, even in tropical climes accustomed to bold colors, there were a lot of Shades of Grey to be seen.

Perhaps the largest cruiser group, certainly by mass, is the Buffet Enthusiasts. I suppose if you say "cruise" to someone who'd never been, the instant reaction might be "unending food"... and they wouldn't be off by much. The first problem with pizza and ice cream available at 3 a.m. is that the vestigial reptilian/teenage brain says, "Aha! If I can eat it, then I must eat it"... but that way lies madness, not to mention raging indigestion and ill-fitting clothing.

The dirty secret, of course, is that when cooking for a couple thousand people of varying backgrounds and palates (I don't think I'm being unfair to say, skewing toward unsophisticated), between sheer volume and least common denominator, it's almost impossible to put out excellent food. It's a Denny's that floats, is what it is.

OK, that's (marginally) harsh, but while they clearly aspire a bit higher for dinner service in the formal dining room, most of what you get wouldn't be out of place at your local neighborhood Golden Corral -- which operated on a similar charter for giving large numbers of customers acceptable food that really doesn't put anyone off.

I'm completely OK with that; I've made no secret that I'm no gourmet, so as long as I go in with the expectation that it's going to be hot and plentiful and pretty good, it's filling the bill. Note -- when discussing cruises, it is never advisable to use the phrase "get what you pay for".

Apple: Not Falling Far Enough

I guess everybody wants to see a little of themselves in their kids. I don't have the biological thing going for me, of course, so I do tend to study them closely to find those small reflections.

I've written before about my son and how I started out looking in all the wrong places for connections with him. It turned out he was not much for elaborate wordplay, and didn't care much about baseball -- but when we're riding in the car he always wants the oldies station playing, and pretty often he says, "Dad, do you have that one?" So we have a fair amount of overlap in our iPods. And I was happy to get him hooked on the finest in visual entertainment as well.

My daughter and I are pretty close in general, but the thing that we talk about the most (well, the thing I talk about with her; she talks about anything and everything with anyone and everyone) is baseball. Now that I'm helping coach her team, I like to try to teach her about the game... yeah, she's not really any more inclined to listen to dad when I'm wearing a maroon baseball cap than any other time. But even though it's somewhat frustrating, we can always connect on some level around the game.

Naturally I can't really expect them to share my preoccupation with the past... or least that's what I was counting on recently when I was able to recapture 8.5 oz. of my childhood.

I've seen a lot of those photos that look like posters on Facebook recently talking about how our lives were simpler when we were kids -- we didn't have seat belts or sunscreen and we stayed outdoors from dawn to dusk without posting armed guards -- but I can certainly testify that one thing was in fact way simpler, and that was breakfast. In my day it seemed as if nutrition was optional; the proper response to "Sugar content?" was "Yes, please!"

So it came to pass that in the fullness of time, and bowl, I started nearly every day with a heaping bowl of Quisp cereal. Like his cousin, Captain Crunch, Quisp was a jolt of sugary, sticky, corny goodness and I loved it. And I believe it was no coincidence that as I got a bit older and was slowly induced to eat a higher proportion of breakfast foods found in nature, Quisp was actually taken off the market.

In the 90s Quaker brought it back as an Internet-only product, and from there it gradually crept into scattered stores. You won't find it in your average Price Chopper or Hannaford, but it is perhaps ironic that I found it when browsing the more upscale Fresh Market (perhaps the only time "fresh" and "Quisp" have shared a thought).

Since it's such a "boutique" cereal now, and since the Fresh Market is so... well, I kinda want to say "snooty", but I'll try "esoteric"... an 8.5 oz. box of Quisp actually set me back more than a normal-size box of a normal cereal (for a real eye-opener, check this out). I was OK with that, though, because I figured one box would get it out of my system.

I bought it on a Friday night and basically wedged it into the back of the pantry shelf, then I went to bed. Saturday dawned bright and sunny and, as basically the only prerogative of the parent, I slept in a tiny bit. As I came down the stairs yawning and stretching, my daughter greeted me cheerfully, "Dad, this new cereal is really good!"

I had already planned bagels for the weekend and the Breakfast Blast from the Past for Monday; I decided to stick with that despite my feelings of foreboding...

... and so it was that on Monday morning I poured the last of the Quisp into my morning bowl. It was pretty good, but not as good as an entire box of Quisp.

Lost in the Pages

I'm sure that from the standpoint of most retailers, I'm probably not the ideal consumer. I'm pretty good with the coupons, I'll drive across town to save 20 cents on a gallon of milk, and it's not uncommon for me to "visit" a product multiple times before I buy it (if I ever do). When stores use "loss leaders" to get me in the door, I love to go in and grab just those sale items and not get sucked in to any of the surrounding regularly-priced merchandise. I'm a trifle on the frugal side, is what I'm getting at.

There is one commodity for which I am the target audience, however: books. I know that when I'm writing one of these, all I really want is for "all of you" to read it and enjoy it -- whether that's engaging with my premise, nodding in recognition, or just getting a laugh. The one thing I can promise from the other side of the reading experience is that I will throw my whole self into it. Sure, I have the tendency -- exacerbated by years of blogging -- to reserve a corner of my mind for the metacritical, "am I really enjoying this? why or why not?" sort of evaluation, but on some level I'm still able to disappear into a book.

I'm also extremely brand-conscious; once I've enjoyed your book, I'm camping on your doorstep waiting for the next one. So last week I got my hands on Faye Kellerman's 20th Decker/Lazarus mystery (OK, I should probably admit that as usual I got it at the library, so in that sense I'm probably not entirely what an author is hoping for) and, having read probably the previous 19, I was ready to dive in.

I was interested by the mystery but it was the 2nd plot, the love story, that really absorbed me. I found myself rooting, trying to anticipate where it was headed next, worried that something was going to go wrong; even when I was finished I found myself wondering what would happen to these characters after the book was over (am I the only one who does that with fictional characters?).

Now it's possible I was influenced by the fact that the romantic couple were... a 15-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl. When you combine my ability to pull a book up around my ears with my ceaseless fascination with my youth, I might have over-identified just a little.

Because when I started to come out of my tunnel, I started to think, wow, this is really sticking with me; I wonder what the rest of the world thought about it...

...and discovered that the world as a whole thought that the book wasn't that great. That the mystery wasn't that mysterious, and in any case got kind of short shrift. That the mystery story and the love story intersected in all too convenient ways. And all the more that maybe it wasn't too awesome to have a love story between a 15-year-old and a 14-year-old that... ah... perhaps took on more adult aspects than were strictly necessary. Not that I depend on the opinions of others to know what to think, but it was useful to get a little more rounded perspective (and maybe get my head out of my... book, a little).

We all bring our personal Stuff to whatever we read or hear or watch, even relationships with others -- or so I've heard from people who have relationships with others. But in retrospect I probably should have stayed sort of outside the book a little more. And by the way, if you happen to read the book: kids, don't try this at home.

Housework

I’m fascinated by the jobs people do. I mean, I know I have friends who are secretaries and teachers – and ministers, of course – but an awful lot of people kind of just “work in an office”. I wonder what their days are like; do they spend their time sending emails or typing documents or just thinking? Do they have a lot of control over what they do, or are they given a list of tasks to carry out today? And on top of all that: are they really good at their jobs, and how could you tell?

I guess I think about this in part because I don’t believe anyone really knows what I do. My title is “software engineer”, which is a euphemism for “programmer”, and I think most people who see that would probably think that I write computer programs all day. Put aside for the moment that I firmly believe that a lot of people (I won’t say “most”) really don’t even have a clue what a program is.

My own family is completely mystified by what I do. My mom used a 3-word title to "label" me in a Christmas letter one year; she got all 3 words wrong. My wife looks over my shoulder once in a while, and is convinced that I basically type random gibberish all day long. Not to mention the periods I spend staring at the screen, not moving at all... I don’t guess that looks much like work either. My daughter has said she wants to grow up and take my place when I retire, but I suspect she mostly wants to sit in a recliner all day in front of a screen while wearing slippers.

I tried to calculate it today, but I think it's quite possible that I spend fewer than 20 hours per week wearing shoes.

The truth is that while I write code now and then, my job description – or at least my job practice – is kind of all over the place. One of my major responsibilities is learning about some of the new software my company produces; at times that means I end up handling questions from colleagues and problems from customers. So quite often my day is spent poking through program code to try to figure out why things are behaving the way they are.

I work from home, also, and in some ways that doesn't work well with my personality. I can be easily distractable -- I like to think of it as multitasking -- and with easy access to a kitchen full of food and an Internet full of... everything but food, let's just say sometimes my concentration level is not a horizontal line. If all else fails, I can always take time out to pet the cat.

(Partially) as a consequence, my workdays lately have felt like episodes of "House"... I seem to stumble around for the first 49 minutes of the program, or even 53, but then right before the last commercial (or in my case, at the Outlook reminder that I have to do the Bus Stop Trip), I finally pinpoint the disease. Sometimes I even have time to start treatment before I go off the air, but a fair amount of the time I end up with a special 2-part episode, continued next time.

However, with "House" about to go off the air, I have to choose a new role model. I'm trying to decide between Martha Stewart, the Amazing Racers and the dudes on Project Runway.

Family Resemblance

Both of my parents are the youngest of their siblings, by a notable margin, and I’m the youngest of my generation as well. As a result, even my cousins have 10 years or more on me; we basically were strangers until well into my adulthood.

However, the arithmetic is bringing us together in recent years – we cousins seem to encounter each other at funerals. The rest of my immediate family has fled south, so I am the uncontested Northeast Regional Funeral Representative for the family.

Despite the fact that we were virtually unknown to each other, all the cousins knew who I was pretty much instantly, because they knew my parents – and I am a walking testament to the power of heredity. I look pretty much like what you’d get if you added my mom & dad together and divided by 2.

My hands and feet are definitely my dad’s, and they said that even as a toddler I walked like his father, even though he died before I was born. My face is mostly from my mother’s side, although I think a little of the paternal side sneaks in there, and my sense of humor and much of how I think is strongly reminiscent of mom as well. I’m sure there’ll be a future guest blog entry where she refutes that in the strongest possible terms.

I’m dwelling so much on Mendelian matters because it occurred to me recently that I also inherited something from my sister – a large swath of my iPod playlist. I’m not sure that there have been any scientific studies establishing music preference (or obsession, if you prefer) as hereditary, but the evidence is pretty strong in my case.

My sister was four years ahead of me in school, so she left for college as I reached high school… and started getting interested in music. And when she left for college, she left a tiny slice of herself behind: a really cheesy, beat-up record player – maybe not even worthy of being called a “hi-fi”; more like a lo-fi – and a small stack of albums (insert obligatory self-deprecating yet somehow simultaneously condescending crack about how some of my readers won’t remember large vinyl platters).

Fast-forward mmmmppph years – OK, 35, give or take – and here I am building a music library. Anyone who’s read any of my stuff, let alone my past music-related posts, will be unsurprised to learn that a lot of my collection comes from a long time ago. The backbone of the list is all the LPs and cassettes I bought all those years back, but thanks to a number of contributing streams (yard sale LPs & cassettes, cheap CDs, my somewhat winding emusic.com odyssey, and some gift iTunes cards), I’m slowly filling in the blanks.

Let me see if I can remember what was on that record player spindle: the Beatles’ “Yesterday and Today”. Gordon Lightfoot, Glen Campbell, and Peter, Paul, and Mary’s “Ten Years Together”. John Denver – “Poems, Prayers, and Promises”. Was the Carpenters’ “The Singles: 1969-1973” in there too? I think so, but I’m not 100% sure. I know there was an extremely warped copy of James Taylor’s “Sweet Baby James” that made me seasick to watch when I tried to play it. She also gave me an 8-track, for you archaeologists in the crowd, of some of the earliest of what would come to be called Christian Contemporary music; I kept it, later copied it to cassette (we didn’t “rip” in those days), and still listen to it in 0/1 format even now.

Further, in my never-ending quest to haul Yesterday into Today, I’ve bought the PP&M and Carpenters albums second-hand. I grabbed a nice Gordon Lightfoot selection at emusic, and I developed an unhealthy obsession with finding the actual Glen Campbell tracks I remember in their “original” state. It looks like the album she had might have been this one, but the cuts I got from emusic are live cuts recorded much later (*cough* ripoff cough). I finally grabbed the most recent Greatest Hits, when Amazon was basically giving it away for $5; this has allowed me a kind of “ahhhh… finally” moment, although at least one of the songs has been remixed almost till you can’t recognize it any more.

I started buying James Taylor in my first batch from Columbia House, way back in the day, so although I don’t have the SBJ album, I do have 40 JT tracks in my collection. And somehow, I ended up with the original John Denver LP, so that became part of Project Digitize.

I bought the Beatles’ Revolver some time back as a second-hand cassette, thinking that was the album I’d heard so many years before. But Beatles albums are an odd commodity; the same track often shows up on multiple LPs. Eventually I did a bit of research (can you claim it as “research” if it’s really just Wikipedia?) that I discovered that the actual record was “Yesterday and Today” and that it basically contained half of “Revolver” and half of “Rubber Soul”…

… but fortunately, the arrival of the Beatles at iTunes coincided roughly with the arrival of iTunes cards in my Christmas stocking, so I was able to snatch up “Rubber Soul” digitally to finish off that dream. Although I have to admit that I’m now trying to figure out where the most significant holes are in my Beatles collection, currently numbering 66 tracks.

I can’t in good conscience blame the whole thing on her, although I may still send her an invoice – a large percentage (I’m waffling between “impressive” and “disturbing”) of my acquisitions in recent times have been focused on the time period when I didn’t have to cook my own meals or do my own laundry. At least 1200 of my songs, or over 20% of my collection, are dated before 1980.

I find that for many of the really old tracks I have a memory, or at least a “memory”, of when I heard them first – and actually many of those have sisterly associations as well, like hearing “Hey Jude” for the first time at The Tower Restaurant in Lake Pleasant, NY (where the older kids hung out), or being instantly hooked on “It’s Too Late” by Carole King when I heard it in a car one late night in downtown Troy. And don’t get me started on “Indiana Wants Me”, which to be honest I haven’t bought yet because it’s hard to find the authentic one, plus I’m still a little bit conflicted about it.

Meanwhile I continue to get Facebook friend requests from high school classmates, and I made a few purchases several months ago to get my collection of 1973 Topps baseball cards within 9 of completion. My Today often looks a lot like my Yesterday, except with more TV networks.

Enjoying the View from the Third Row

When I was dating the young woman who was eventually convinced to become my wife, I wanted to impress her with my good taste, my worldliness, just my overall Catch Quotient. So in the finest tradition of the dandy who would invite a lady to see his etchings, I would at times bring her to my place to view… The Muppet Show.

I may be a little different than most Muppet fans of my approximate vintage because I didn’t catch the bug on Sesame Street; I don’t remember ever seeing it before my own kids were small (not only was I 7 by the time it debuted, but when I was a kid it was not a trivial matter to tune in a UHF station). In my teens, however, I was casting about for funny stuff, and that’s how I discovered Monty Python, SCTV, Benny Hill, Dave Allen, Saturday Night Live, Letterman… and The Muppet Show.

Sadly, when it comes to one’s own children, introducing them to Letterman or Python, to say nothing of the late Mr. Hill, is not usually considered exemplary parenting. So in an effort to entertain them, as well as in search of common ground, a few years ago I bought Season One of the Muppet Show.

I was mainly aiming at my son, who almost literally loves nothing more than watching a TV show that makes him laugh. Maybe watching it while eating Peanut Butter Pandemonium and having his feet rubbed, but still. At first he didn’t seem to care at all, then suddenly – maybe because he was just a little older – he wanted to watch one or two episodes a day.

He loves it. He loves it all, musical numbers, slapstick, one-liners, the whole deal. So when he saw there was a movie coming out (you might have heard about that), he began almost vibrating. Each time he saw the ad, if I was in the room – even if it had just run during the last break – he’d say, “We have to see that, Dad.” Even though I already saw my movie for the year!

I knew that if we didn’t get there on Thanksgiving weekend, he’d be vastly disappointed, so on Sunday we squeezed into a matinee… I didn’t even know it was possible to have seats behind the screen. Fortunately, the proprietors considerately provided 20 minutes of previews so I could get used to looking up everyone’s nostrils.

As much as I was looking forward to it, I was also a little bit worried. I have a healthy respect for the genius of Jim Henson, but this one was of course coming from a different source. Plus, I knew a new Muppet was being featured and I was skeptical about how that might affect the “group dynamic”, if you will. And I had read the articles raising some questions about whether this movie was truly in the traditional spirit of the Muppets.

When it was (finally) time to play the music and light the lights, I felt like I was holding my breath a little bit. But before the movie was more than a few minutes old, I found myself literally unable to stop myself from grinning from ear to ear. And since I can’t do anything like this without also monitoring my brain to see how I’m reacting, I was conscious that my second emotion was gratitude… to Jason Segel. It was immediately clear to me that he totally got it, that he understood what makes the Muppets funny and awesome, and that all he wanted to do was honor and carry on the Muppet legacy.

The secret of the movie, and in fact the secret of the Muppets themselves, I think, is that they don’t care about being cool, or even really about “doing comedy”. They just want to entertain you, whether with a laugh or a cheer or a musical groove or even a cry. And I’m happy to say that the movie absolutely delivers on that; it’s funny and touching and nostalgic and just totally likable. I’m not claiming that it’s the best or even the funniest movie ever… but I don’t remember ever leaving a theater just feeling any better than I did that day. Maybe it’s just easier for a movie to be heartfelt when it already has the felt going in.

Every Cloud Has A ... Lining

In one of my several previous lives, I taught math part-time at a bunch of different colleges, in both Upstate New York and Ohio. I was what’s known as an adjunct instructor; “adjunct”, as you may be aware, comes from the Latin meaning “to do what the real professors don’t want to”. So as a consequence, there were two separate instances when I taught a 7 am class.

It was annoying enough that I had to be awake at all, much less standing up in front of a class pretending I wanted to be there and there was nothing at all amiss about working at that hour. But since they were fall semester classes, for several weeks we were all* arriving at school when it was still dark – which just emphasized the middle-of-the-night feeling for me. *I say “all”, but certainly we did not set any records for attendance at those classes.

I’ve recaptured that feeling these past 2 autumns, because middle school requires our young scholar to be at the bus stop at about 7:20 am – which admittedly is much different from 5 am, but at the beginning of November is still all-but-dark and made me feel like I should still be in bed.

So it occurred to me that there’s actually something good about November: the time change means that it’s no longer dark when he & I are getting around in the morning, which makes it a tiny bit more tolerable. And I get an extra hour of sleep for that one night, which I always waste staying up doing nothing because there’s no hurry getting to bed.

Then I thought, surely someone with a sunny, optimistic, look-for-the-silver-lining outlook such as myself can find more than one good thing about November. Dark, damp, dreary, chilly November. So following is my attempt to redeem the month. I was going to say that it’s the kind of month no one ever writes songs about, and I’m still not 100% convinced that this guy is not making this stuff up.

>> The fact that it’s chilly means that I can swap out my spring/summer clothes for my fall/winter wardrobe. That mainly means corduroys in hues ranging all the way from tan to black – all the colors of the rainbow, if you live next to a steel mill. Of course, I have to bid au revoir to my summer pants in shades of electric blue, grass green, yellow and white (I’ll keep the red ones out in case I can find a Christmas-related application)… although it probably is safer to keep them somewhere my wife can’t see or get at them.

>> The colder weather also means the end of lawn mowing, and hopefully a respite before snow shoveling. I do have to admit I probably need to at least knock down the lawn at camp one last time; it’s a little brisk for that, though.

>> It should mark, as well, the end of the prime allergy season for me. At least that’s what I thought until I woke up Monday sneezing constantly. I couldn’t remember whether I had missed my allergy pill, or perhaps it was just that Sunday’s relatively mild weather had awakened something dormant like in a bad 50s sci-fi movie – so I took more drugs just to be on the safe side. Don’t worry, I’m

>> Gravy. I don’t really bother to make either a whole turkey, or gravy, very often during the year, so it’s not a bad thing that it’s compulsory on Thanksgiving (yeah, I know some of you are doing some other kind of menu, but just for the record, you’re wrong). Think about it: gravy is basically fat and salt, with a bit of flour to make it socially acceptable. Mark me down in the affirmative column on that one.

>> If nothing else, it marks the calendar period when it’s the longest time before Halloween, about which my sentiments are already on record.

Since I'm still me, all this sunshine and lollipops has not induced me to forget about frost on the windshield, the kids having five days off this month, radio stations playing all Christmas music starting two weeks before Thanksgiving, or the creeping pestilential scourge of invading marauders that is Black Friday – all the things that make November feel a bit like a prison sentence – I’m just saying that, while I still believe every cloud has a bunch of other clouds behind it, it’s possible that one of them has some shiny mineral content in there somewhere.

99 Cents Worth of Quicksand

I don't know if you'd say I've ever actually had a life. When I was in high school, on Friday nights when my peers were out... I don't know, hanging out at the malt shop or dropping acid or whatever it was the cool kids were doing in those days, I was home. In my bedroom. Watching The Rockford Files, or more precisely counting the moments until The Rockford Files came on. You can have your George Clooney or whoever, there's never been anybody cooler than Jim Rockford.

And don't get me started on the genius of Chico and the Man.

When I started to date the young woman who would later become my wife, it looked like I might have some sort of life; of course, most of our dates consisted of walking around the mall. Every once in awhile we'd really cut loose and I'd take her along when I did my grocery shopping. So let that be an answer to everyone who wonders why she married me.

Nowadays I have a job and 2 kids and plenty of stuff to do around the house, so it's not like I've got lots of time left over to spend at the discos. Generally once the kids are in bed, I can sit down... watch some TV, read a library book or one of the 8000 magazines I subscribe to, surf the web a bit. Once upon a time I even used to write a blog, which you might remember if you've been taking your ginkgo biloba.

So, you know, if it's not exactly a life that's going to be the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary or something, it's a decent semblance at least. Until that fateful email...

I wrote a while back about my experience with emusic.com, an online mp3 store that enticed me in with a lavish introductory offer with a somewhat more complicated reality. At that time it seemed like I might never extricate myself, but I was eventually able to get out with a pretty good haul of songs with regard to quantity, quality, and value.

Since then I've been mostly puttering with my iTunes cards, forever building lists but never buying anything, and also taking advantage of a deal from the library that allows me a small number of free weekly downloads from the Sony music catalog. I was concerned that I was getting a bit over-absorbed with all this music-mining, but I thought I had it relatively under control.

Then those devious folks at emusic sent me another offer: 99 cents for the first month, for credits that ought to allow me about 15 or 16 downloads (and the infamous "cancel at any time"). Less than 7 cents a song is a hard deal to turn down, and I would think it might be even for a person in full control of his faculties.

I jumped on it, and within minutes I had snatched up 9 tracks, many of which were already sitting on my iTunes wishlist. Now, however, I'm stricken once again with the dreaded paralysis by analysis. I've got maybe 6 or 7 bullets left in the gun, about 15 on the contingency list, and an infinite number more that I could add. There's not much logic in sticking around for a full-price month; even though it's not a terrible deal, it doesn't make much sense to pay money when I've still got iTunes credits, so it's this last handful and out. I promise.

So seemingly every day I go into emusic and wander the virtual halls, trying to figure out which of the songs on my list are the top ones -- then stumbling into a half-dozen more that I might enjoy slightly more. Or slightly less; who can say exactly? Music, money, OCD, and decision-making: a very dangerous cocktail for a guy like me.

I've seen this movie before and I already know how it ends: I take this 99-cent month down to the last possible second and click the mouse for the last song just before the clock strikes 12. Till then, you'll find me right here, clicking through the pages...

Tearing Down the MacGuffin

I'm really hoping that I don't meet the clinical standard of OCD, but frankly I wouldn't be surprised if I showed up on the scale somewhere. Recently I've gotten myself hooked into a brand-new obsession. One of our local radio stations has branded itself as "Legends", with the tagline "The Greatest Hits of All Time"... which of course is mainly a candy-coated way to say "oldies". I do appreciate the subterfuge, however; whatever can help me sustain my self-delusions is fine by me.

The first few times I clicked on the station, I was fairly amazed & amused that their playlist looks a great deal like my iPod library, and even the songs I don't have would fit neatly in the spaces between my songs. But instead of switching stations, since this one is almost redundant -- and instead of reflecting deeply upon what it says about me that all my music counts as "oldies" now -- I have, perhaps inevitably, made it a competitive sport.

Each time I listen, I keep score of how many I have already. My baseline is 33%: I estimate that one of every three they play is in my library, and more often than not, I'm right on target. In fact, on my last hour drive I hit 6 for 15... 40%.

I do write a lot in this space (or at least "a high percentage", since it's been years since I wrote "a lot") about the past. At first I thought that was because I'm just sentimental, or obsessed with my personal history, or somehow dissatisfied with my present... but over time I've come to understand that doing so helps me comprehend my past and fully absorb the lessons that maybe I didn't actually get the first time.

This weekend there was an event I've looked forward to, and dreaded a tiny bit, for months: a Gaslight Village reunion. It was a good-sized group of people from different eras, many of whom never knew each other, but all had in common a history at that place (and perhaps their own measure of obsession with the past). In a sense it was like a college Homecoming -- alumni from across the years, tied to the same location but with different experiences. So we tended to drift into our own "class years", creating reunions within the reunion.

I was excited about it, but also a little scared. It's been almost 30 years since we worked together, so we might be very different people; maybe we wouldn't remember it or value it in quite the same way; maybe we wouldn't have much to say to each other. That's a basic part of my nature: I'm always conscious of building something up too high and setting myself up for disappointment.

Imagine my astonishment when The Old Gang reassembled and it was like the years disappeared. I don't mean to say I thought I was 20 again, which God forbid; the talk was of spouses and careers and kids, mixed liberally with the remember-whens. But if you closed your eyes... we were still the same people, enjoying each other's company as much, and in much the same style, as we always did.

Here's how it wasn't like college Homecoming -- our alma mater doesn't exist any more. At one point we all walked onto the grounds, now just a big vacant lot. We did a lot of pointing and figuring out what had been where; we even found a couple of pieces of the Opera House building where we had worked. And it was in some ways a sad moment, remembering what had been and seeing what it was now. Some people were getting quite emotional, almost angry.

Alfred Hitchcock used to have a term for a device he used in his movies -- he called it the MacGuffin. The MacGuffin is a plot device, usually literally an object, that sets the story in motion (for example, the Maltese Falcon in the film of the same name), but it's really just an excuse for the characters to do what they're doing. The essence of the movie, of course, is the interaction among the characters.

So it turns out that while they closed the gates and tore down all the buildings, the buildings were just the MacGuffin, the objects that set that part of my story in motion. I stood there surrounded by Bill and Cindy and Jeff and Kim, and I realized that my Opera House was still standing, right there in that group. I had the memories, and I had the people to help me keep them alive in my heart -- because they helped me make them in the first place.

The physical location is gone, so instead I'll keep the memories, and the friends -- whether by Facebook or email or future face-to-face meetings. And we can cherish and celebrate and preserve the past together... but more importantly, we have the here-and-now together, and you know what? That's pretty cool too.

A Bracing Experience

I can’t say that I remember a lot from fifth grade – the first time around, at least. I do remember that Mrs. Willson seemed like she was at least 80 or something; I do remember getting in trouble for cheating (when all I did was turn around & ask the kid behind me if he was done with the test – is that a felony, or something???), and I do remember the red-haired girl that I was crazy about.

Never fear, however, since I get to relive each grade once more through my kids. My son is never going to be exactly famous for his study skills, so I spend a lot of time doing review with him. As a consequence I’ve become so expert on American history from pre-Revolutionary times up to the Civil War that I can almost help him study just from what’s in my head. At finals time I reviewed a list of 33 vocabulary terms with him without any notes, and he said, “Dad, how do you know all these things?” I refrained from asking him how it was that he didn’t know any of them, but I did let him know that, having reviewed it many times, I was pretty clear on at least that much of history.

He also spent much of his science year reviewing the systems of the body, which came in handy recently. Did you know that your joints can be classified into categories? Your shoulder and hip are ball-and-socket joints; the knee and elbow are hinge joints; the neck is a pivot joint; and the ankle and wrist are called glide joints. This last type is particularly complicated, because it’s designed to allow the bones involved to slide past each other. The wrist is especially involved, bringing a bunch of small bones together and permitting the hand to move in not-quite-but-almost-limitless directions.

In the ideal world, at least. If you ever want to be totally aware of all the marvelous things the wrist can do, one way – maybe not the recommended way – is to injure one and discover all the things you’re completely unable to do. I had been having soreness in my right wrist for several weeks – through hauling suitcases on vacation, and spending an entire day helping friends move – but then one night a couple weeks ago I was wrestling with something heavy when I felt a searing shot through it. I didn’t hear anything, exactly (apart from the sound of whimpering that seemed to come out of nowhere), but I knew right away I was In Trouble.

Now the injury was bad enough, but since then I’ve been subjected to something even more painful: Medical Care. This was complicated by the fact that I have historically done everything possible to avoid going to the doctor – or perhaps I should just say I’ve historically been male. I didn’t even have a doctor. So I chose a doctor (or actually, a nurse-practitioner; there are no primary care doctors any more) at the practice my wife has been using.

So I wrote my symptoms on the intake sheet, then I related them verbally to the nurse, which I guess is mostly rehearsal for telling the “doctor” all over again. You know, like preparing testimony. She had a notebook computer with symptom-digesting software, but in truth she diagnosed me as soon as I told her my job. As soon as she heard “computer”, she decided it was carpal-tunnel syndrome, despite the fact that the symptoms didn’t affect my hand at all and were the result of an injury.

Eventually I talked her down and she sent me down the hall for an x-ray. When the results came back, here’s the consultation I received: “It’s not broken. Buy a brace at the drugstore and see an orthopedist.” Thanks, symptom-digesting software, I probably could’ve figured that out on webmd.com.

The orthopedist they suggested said they could fit me in in a mere 12 days… but the more I thought about it, I wasn’t sure their recommendation carried that much weight. So I called another orthopedic practice and was able to get in just 2 days later.

I knew I was at home when the doctor (an honest-to-goodness M.D.) came in and said, “I’d shake your hand left-handed, but…” and held up his left arm to display his matching wrist brace. He poked my wrist and said, “It hurts right here, doesn’t it,” then took out his pen to draw a diagram of my wrist on the white paper cover. He showed me the ligament he believed I’d damaged and sent me right out to schedule an MRI.

Two days later I was in the MRI room wearing size XXL pajama bottoms (not mine, for those of you who haven’t seen me in awhile). I’ll admit I was naïve about the procedure; I’ve seen so many medical shows I’m at least qualified to operate symptom-digesting software, but I figured that since my body was fine – or so they tell me :-) – and it was just way out at the end of my arm we’re worried about, I could just… you know, sit in a chair and stick my hand in it.

Turns out they want you to be a tad more invested in it than that. So I ended up in the tube, flat on my stomach, with my hand straight over my head, for half an hour. And you know, as a professional computer programmer and a dedicated amateur reader and TV-watcher, I thought myself quite skilled at remaining motionless – but I certainly explored the limits of that when I was told not to move for 30 minutes. I was actually very relaxed about being in the machine, even with the cacophony, but I found that I had to concentrate hard every minute to keep from moving. Usually I have to concentrate hard to make myself move….

A couple days ago the results came back: I have an “injury”, which I took to mean a tear, to my TFCC (the ligament/cartilage in the ulnar, or outer, joint of the wrist). So now I have to meet with the hand guy to find out whether they’ll operate, or just stick me repeatedly with a needle.

Till then – and probably after then, and for almost 2 weeks so far – I am living the Braced Life. The injury has probably lessened by 10%per day, but of course that means my amount of progress has slowed. In its current state the wrist is pretty sound forward & back, but very touchy from side to side and rotation is not happening. The thing is, the wrist is designed to move all 3 ways more or less at once, and I quickly discovered that in everyday life there’s basically no such thing as moving on a pure forward/back axis. I can actually pick things up vertically – but as you raise the load, the wrist is always adjusting the angle… which, ow.

So I’m challenged in a lot of motions during the day: I’m learning to eat and brush my teeth left-handed, but nearly everything about driving is a minefield, and don’t even get me started about the shower. It’s possible my handwriting has improved, though.

The worst part, though, is that it’s probably going to be weeks or perhaps months before I’ll be able to serve as a parade Grand Marshal.

Putting Myself in the Picture

My niece was telling me just the other day how much she’s enjoying her Netflix trial period; my response was that I thought it would be hard for me to find enough I really wanted to watch to keep a Netflix queue going. I know I’ve mentioned before that movies are not exactly our thing around here.

There was one recent movie that I absolutely insisted on seeing, however: Toy Story 3. Not only am I a huge fan of the first two films, and of Pixar in general – plus for me, Tom Hanks is one of those guys where if he reads the phone book, I’m in – but I got the message that this film was very intentionally pointed at me.

Well, perhaps not the rather narrow demographic of 49-year-old man who loves baseball, eats a lot of junk food, and can sing from memory almost every song Barry Manilow’s ever recorded… but the reviews I read indicated that the movie had particular resonance for parents.

The plot revolves around, or at least is set in motion by, the fact that Andy (the toys’ boy), is now going off to college. All the reviewers seemed unanimous: judging the movie entertaining, but also feeling an emotional reaction. And I, as a guy who occasionally chokes up at a well-done Hallmark commercial, felt myself squarely in the bulls-eye on that one.

Knowing that – and even at this late date, always mindful of potential blog topics – I monitored my reactions throughout. The critics were basically on-target; it’s a terrific and entertaining movie, although there was something I couldn’t quite put my finger on that didn’t quite totally hook me in the way that the first two did.

I was, however, a little caught off-guard by my reaction to the emotional set-up. I came in forewarned that Andy was going off to college and that that was really going to affect me as a parent. Maybe it’s because my kids are miles away from that scenario (or at least it certainly feels that way from here), or maybe it’s just the way I’m wired – as I’ve proved in this space over and over again – but I really didn’t identify with Andy’s mom all that much.

I identified with Andy.

When he had to box up all of his toys… when the toys themselves realized that their time with him was irreversibly over… when he got in the car to drive away… all of that hit me like a nightstick to the gut. I wasn’t flashing forward to that sensation of “losing” my children forever; I was flashing back to the sensation of losing my own childhood.

I have to say that I think I envy Andy a little, even though he’s a fictional character (or maybe because of that, I guess). I’ve had all these experiences in my past that I maybe didn’t really “get” at the time, and I rehash them in this space quite a bit in an effort to redeem them, or attach some kind of deeper meaning to them – whether or not there actually was one.

But in the marvelous final scene of the movie, instead of waking up years later to realize his childhood is gone and he doesn’t really know quite where or when, Andy seemed to recognize that moment for what it was. He took it out of its box and looked at it, celebrated it, intentionally passed it on… and then moved forward to embrace the next phase of his life.

And now I know that when I grow up, I want to be an animated, fictional teenager.