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.

Parental Advisory?

When I was in my 20s and 30s I knew everything about parenting, which made it even more unfortunate that we didn't have kids at that juncture. Apparently that brand of expertise comes with an expiration date, sadly, because by the time the kids actually arrived I seemed to know a lot less about being a parent.

As it turns out, it's like everything else in the world: you can't really be taught, you have to learn it for yourself. Of course, over my 12+ years of experience, I've developed a few theories... but I'm reminded of a baseball quote. Charlie Lau, on catching the knuckleball: "There are two theories on catching a knuckleball; unfortunately, neither of them work."

Each of my children has in their own way provided a well-equipped laboratory for research and development in the field of study, but I thought it might be interesting to submit a case study for possible peer review.

Our daughter is prone to report a new ailment every day -- I'm always prepared for a litany when she gets off the bus, and she rarely disappoints. And despite her apparent athleticism, she seems to get bumped & bruised on virtually any trip across a room that's not completely empty. I've heard it before, is what I'm saying.

So this morning I was not completely astonished to find her with a long gauze bandage wrapped around her hand and halfway to the elbow. When I inquired, she told me that her arm hurt and she needed to protect it. I don't have a lot of patience with her... well, I don't want to say "hypochondria"... let's say "hypersensitivity", so I told her she would be taking it off before school. She said no, she needed it because her arm hurt, and she was to say the least not impressed by my contention that since it was neither cut nor broken, it wasn't doing her any good.

I am aware that you can't really win a war of wills with someone who's determined to be unreasonable -- I have often said that parenting is the ultimate proof that you can't ever really make another person do anything -- so I decided to retreat to the shower to consider my next move.

I knew that gym and recess are highlights in her schedule, so I decided to tell her that if she was that hurt, she would have to sit out of both gym & recess for the day. Maybe I was just waterlogged, but I really believe in natural consequences: if you mess up, the result of that should be related to the offense. So I thought it was a logical way to squeeze her... but she just shrugged and said, "okay."

I certainly didn't want this to devolve into me chasing her around the house with a pair of scissors, and I couldn't very well threaten not to take her to school, so I decided to up the stakes: I told her that since she had been argumentative and defiant in not removing the bandage, her consequence would be to lose her privileges for the day -- no evening TV, no bedtime snack, no video games or any "special" recreation after school. Surely this would tip the balance...

... except of course if it had, I wouldn't be writing this. She said, once again, "okay."

And of course she had an awesome day at school because everyone was all curious/interested in her Serious Injury, so it appears she, well, beat me at my own game.

I did tell her that if the bandage continued, she would be too injured to play in her Little League game tomorrow, so she did conclude this evening that it was feeling better after all. But I hate to lose to an 8-year-old.

I suspect that if by some miracle I get multiple readers for this entry, the snickers will be inversely proportional to the number of kids per reader -- some of you have Been There, I'll wager -- but I'm certainly curious to know whether any of you would've handled it differently (I can ask that because I'm reasonably cure my wife won't read this; I know she would, ah, have an opinion). Warning: if you get all know-it-all on me, don't be surprised if your doorbell rings and you find her standing there with me peeling rubber halfway down the block....

Diamond Mind

I never had any shortage of toys as a kid -- don't get me wrong, I wasn't pampered either, but I don't recall ever feeling like I was missing out on certain "stuff". I did my fair share of Sears-catalog surfing at Christmastime, and my parents will tell you that I always created an itemized list on lined paper with the columns carefully drawn in with a ruler: page number, item, description, cost. But I don't think I ever seriously expected to get three-quarters of the stuff, nor did I feel like I came up short when I didn't.

It was always kind of a moot point anyway; there were only a few possessions I really cared about. The vast majority of the time, I had a book in my hand (and it wasn't unusual for the other hand to be buried up to the elbow in a bag of chips, but that's another story), although I can tell you that may not be the best policy at times such as when riding a bicycle, for example. When it was dark, or there was snow on the ground, I was racing Matchbox & Hot Wheels cars. When I needed something portable that I could mess with for hours, I brought my baseball cards.

The rest of the time, anytime I could get outside, it was my baseball glove.

On my frequent trips to the drugstore down the street to buy baseball cards, I would also carefully evaluate the available rubber balls to find the ones that would give me the perfect bounce off the brick wall of the church next door, then off the driveway into my waiting glove. If only there had been a Little Brick Wall League.

Even as much as I loved baseball, as a small, skinny kid who (at least when away from the brick wall) did not demonstrate prodigy-level baseball skills, I was actually too scared to play Little League the first year I was eligible. Once I got started, however, I couldn't be stopped. I played 4 years of Little League, and when I graduated from that -- despite ample evidence that I had already, ah, peaked as a ballplayer -- I played 3 years of Senior League. Well, "played" is perhaps a little strong in the latter case, but I had a uniform, and I showed up for every game, and every once in awhile they'd let me out on the field until the good players showed up. There comes a point, unfortunately, when no matter how fiercely you love the game, it stops pretending it loves you back. Regardless, however, when I look back at my "career", what I mostly think about is the fact that I missed playing that first year.

As a parent, I have tried not to make my kids merely xeroxes of myself -- I want them to have their own interests and their own opinions. So my son is big on Legos, which I never cared about as a kid, and they both like Pokemon cards, which I find kind of weird. Still, I was certainly hoping that the boy & I could share baseball; when he turned out not to dislike it, but not be enthusiastic either, I won't deny I was a little bit disappointed.

I'll also concede I was a bit surprised when it was the daughter who started at a pretty young age to ask me to play ball in the yard, and before long to beg to play Little League. Life around here (especially in the evenings) can get a bit complex, so we held her back from playing for a couple years... but as she continued to ask, and I continued to remember that year I didn't play, it just felt like we had to let her play.

She's having a great time playing -- she shapes her whole week around games and practices -- and I'm having a good (although often nervous!) time watching. I try to be there all the time for her; I remember that in my later seasons, my dad would walk to the field... see that I wasn't playing, again, and turn & walk home. I want her to remember me there. And I resist as much as possible the urge to coach, although I do... ah... encourage her in very specific terms. Most importantly, I try really hard not to call her "honey", "sweetie", or "baby".

TFD: Holding Serve

It’s been quite awhile since my last post – in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever gone quite this long without disgorging something. In that time I’ve had ample opportunity to think about my favorite subjects, including of course me.

While I was pretty busy in the intervening weeks – including all my annual tasks connected to my fantasy baseball league; the beginning of both major league and Little League baseball; Holy Week; and the yearly Income Tax Ordeal – I don’t know that I was honestly too busy to write. In some ways it felt mostly like I didn’t have that much to say… maybe that’s an indication that I’ve already said everything worthwhile (I have been at this for more than five years!), or maybe at a deeper level I’m just not all that interesting.

There is for sure one aspect of my cosmopolitan, jet-set, on-the-go existence that I ponder quite often; I’ve hesitated to write about it because there are so many ways it can come out badly, but maybe if I can cross it off the list, something else will take its place.

I think that, constitutionally, I’m as selfish as the average person. I can confess – since my family never reads this – that if I bring an especially delicious treat in the house, I tend to store it in the most inconspicuous spot I can find. I’m not saying hide, exactly – OK, I did hide that 3.5 lb bag of peanut M&Ms… but I swear that was for everyone else’s protection… sort of. But I’m big enough to admit that I don’t usually call attention to such items either. In fact, I’m big enough to do most anything, since I quite often eat all the treats myself.

So what I’m getting at is that I certainly don’t see myself as Gandhi or Mother Teresa or anything. But there is no getting around the fact that in the structure of my daily life, I take on the role of a servant as much as any other role.

I have written about this before, and I’m sure it looks from some angles like I’m sitting here faux-modestly and stretching up my neck to receive a reassuring pat on the head. Hey, I wouldn’t put it past me to be a trifle mixed in my motivations. But I think mostly I’m just holding it up to the light and turning it around and trying to understand what it is. If it’s an ego issue at all, it’s probably more related to thinking that I can make it interesting to anyone else.

In fact, I think that if anything I’m finally starting to understand just how not-applause-worthy it all is. If I sort of cross-reference my life with Scripture, what I think I understand is that far from being up for the Nobel Prize in the husband/father category, it may be that I’m just meeting basic expectations (if that, even). After all, it says in Ephesians that husbands and wives are to submit themselves to one another; while that passage is often taken to mean something more like “obey”, I wonder if it’s not closer to the idea that in a marriage each partner may at times, or frequently, need to put aside individual ambitions for the good of the other.

So when I get right down to it, I understand that when I defer -- or even extinguish, so to speak -- following my more immediate desires, I don't get to take a bow. I have to say, I find that... really annoying. I like getting credit for stuff, and I love looking like the good guy. Instead I'm supposed to pull a Joe Friday -- "Just doing my job, ma'am."

Carrying it a little further, of course, I run smack into Philippians 2:

⁵ In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

⁶ Who, being in very nature^[a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
⁷ rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature^[b] of a servant...

So I apparently don't win the prize; all I get is the home version of the game...

House Arrest in HD

I've never seen the movie "A Clockwork Orange" -- in fact, after a brief exploration of the movie courtesy of our Wikifriends, I believe I'm actually quite grateful that I never have. It's also really gratifying that I'm actually too young to have seen it the first time around. At my age, and I don't believe I've ever used that phrase before, being "too young" for anything is not to be taken lightly. However, the most famous scene from that movie has been floating around at least as a concept for a long time, so I got the reference when Lost used a similar scene. Let's just say, if you're not familiar, that too much TV can be not good for you.

On the other hand, consider the postulate advanced by a noted,ah, lifestyles researcher: "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful." I have to say I've already had cause to wonder about that on more than one occasion, usually related to expense account meals or some other form of free food.

So taken all around, I'm having a hard time deciding exactly how I feel about this. OK, I know you hate it when I force you to follow a link (or as my wife says, how come you're underlining random words?), so here it is in a nutshell:

Major League Baseball is conducting a casting call for a baseball fan’s dream job. The winner of this Dream Job promotion will move to NYC to star in a baseball web series and be a part of a live interactive experience for baseball fans that will include watching every MLB game over the course of the entire baseball season (simultaneously when multiple games are on at the same time), blogging opinions, interacting with fans through social media and appearing in video blogs. The web series will be distributed on MLB.com and through social media outlets.

Well, sure, if baseball is good -- surely that is a fundamental truth -- then mo' baseball is mo' better, and ALL of baseball has to be awesome. So that would be a hard job to turn down... except perhaps for a couple of pesky obstacles. The list of skill requirements is pretty daunting, but it really gets crazy when you check out the "Responsibilities" section.

Even before that, of course, it would be a tough row to hoe for anyone who already had a ... you know... life. Not that there's ever going to be an action-packed reality series based on my life, although I suppose it might possibly appeal to the Agoraphobic Channel. But I'm fairly sure that my employers would notice I was gone after, say, a few weeks. And at home the laundry would pile up and there's only so much peanut butter you can stock ahead of time. So I'm not sure I fit the target audience of No Friends, No Family, No Job, No Particular Reason Not to Throw All Your Possessions in a Liquor Store Box and Take Off for the Big Apple.

As a matter of fact, looking a little closer, we discern that they are not explicitly promising a suite at the Plaza; to be precise, "Must reside in a location picked by MLB in New York City for the entire baseball season." I think it would likely be relatively difficult to find a steam grate with high-speed wifi, so the "location" probably has walls... beyond that, who knows.

Here's the one that really got me, though: "Must be present in the location to observe all MLB regular season and postseason games during the 2011 season." I take that to mean you have to be in your chair any time there's a game on -- even West Coast night games that start after 10pm New York time. I'm hoping that they supply a wide variety of delivery menus; it would also help if there were screens in, um, some of the less typical rooms of the house.

But at least you won't have to worry about keeping your dignity intact. The promotion is co-sponsored by Endemol USA, makers of quality television programming such as "Deal or No Deal", "Wipeout", and perhaps most appropriately, "Big Brother".

A Different Annual Review

Almost any website has the potential to ensnare me... I have to be very careful at baseball-reference.com, for example, because any player page or team page I visit always leads to 2 or 3 more, and so on, and so on...

Another fun read is at tvtropes.org. This site defines a "trope" as follows: "Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations." For example, in sitcoms everyone's familiar with the bumbling dad, the precocious kid, etc.

Practically every movie trailer is built around tropes, captured brilliantly here:

One you hear with some regularity in a movie ad, often quoted from the reviewer for the Cedar Rapids Weekly Shopper, is "If you see only one movie all year, make it this one." Of course, this is really relevant to me because the over/under on the number of movies I attend in a given year pretty much is 1, especially if you discount anything with talking animals and/or animated characters.

So when I do decide to go to The Cinema, particularly for the Valentine's Date, there's a certain pressure there... and as a result, I was particularly gratified to score an absolute bullseye with my choice.

I also found it interesting that the night after the movie date, I watched a movie on HBO that was the complete antithesis, and in fact the movie that serves as a virtual graduate course in tropes: Valentine's Day.

OK, I'm not saying it's not an entertaining movie. It's pretty fun in its own narrow genre, and hey, it's a romcom, it's really not meant to be a documentary. I am finding it slightly ironic that the ultimate disposable, forgettable movie has obsessed me for several days -- but as is so often the case, that may say more about me than it. You were ahead of me on that one, weren't you.

In the movie, there are a bunch of couples -- it's easy to lose track -- and along the way there are the usual misadventures and misunderstandings, but by the end every single couple gets their happy-ever-after moment; several Life Lesson Speeches are delivered. Each couple fits a particular demographic, of course, and somehow they all connect with each other in the course of the single day depicted in the film. But what struck me the most about the movie is that from start to finish, there's not a single instance of behavior that represents the way people actually behave in real life.

Try this: 2 high school girls, basically acquaintenances, are trying to find a time to have a meeting. One says, "I can't do it at lunch, I'm having sex with my boyfriend for the first time today."

Or how about this one: a man is visited by his fiancee in the morning; she's obviously having second thoughts but he's so excited he's oblivious to it. At lunchtime he goes home to find her moving out, and she breaks up with him; by midnight, he's kissing another woman who he realizes is his true soulmate.

Fortunately, that's not the movie we actually paid for*. And by the way, just let me say that I know I live in the past; it's true that in my head, you can buy a pair of Levis for $18 and a nice pair of shoes for $30, maybe even a new car for 10 grand. I fight against that kind of mindset every time I walk into a retail establishment... still, I was astonished to pay twenty-one dollars and fifty cents for 2 movie tickets.

* I have to admit that, with as little as we watch HBO, it probably cost even more than the one we "paid for".

I did have lots of time in the theater to recover from the shock, between the commercials and the coming attractions and the continuing harangues about not talking or texting (I'm no expert, but is it really impossible to text in a movie theater without disturbing anyone?), and then at long (long, long, long) last we got to see The King's Speech.

Just a lovely, lovely movie about relationships, with people who act like real people act. And filled with marvelous performances; it's a treat to watch actors who can show you what they're thinking and feeling just with facial expressions, communicating just as clearly as any big chunks of clunky dialogue.

I know it's already been around the block, and might even be difficult to find in the theater. But if you haven't seen it yet, it's worth your while to hunt it down, at least if you enjoy movies that are not explosion-based. Maybe I'll even be inspired to try to shoehorn a SECOND film into 2011.

You Kids Get Off My 50-Yard Line

A few weeks back, my daughter was annoyed at me for some reason -- it's possible she didn't even know herself, of course -- so as she came down the stairs behind me, she made a disparaging remark about a relative scarcity of hair on a certain spot that was directly in her line of sight. Don't get me wrong, I'm aware of what's going on back there... but I am content to keep it behind me (much like some of my hairstyles from days gone by).

In similar fashion, I'm as aware as anyone who sees me that I'm middle-aged, but as long as I stay away from mirrors and try not to exercise too much, I don't have to face up to the grisly facts all that often. In my mind, I'm still... I don't know, mid-thirties?

So it's pretty annoying when it gets flung at me as it did yesterday. I can remember when the Super Bowl was the biggest football game of the year, rather than a national holiday. The first one I can recall watching was Super Bowl VII, when the Dolphins beat the Redskins. As far as I know, 100 million people were not online immediately afterwards, debating the quality of the commercials; just to see exactly how much things have changed, note the following, courtesy of Wikipedia:

The pregame show was a tribute to Apollo 17, the sixth and last mission to date to land on the Moon and the final one of Project Apollo. The show featured the crew of Apollo 17 and the Michigan Marching Band.

Later, the Little Angels of Chicago's Angels Church from Chicago performed the national anthem.

The halftime show, featuring Woody Herman and the Michigan Marching Band along with The Citrus College Singers and Andy Williams, was titled "Happiness Is".

As far as I could tell yesterday, Andy Williams did not appear in the halftime show -- although there's no way to prove he wasn't one of those people with the white suits and LED lights (if you can get a jumpsuit over one of those wintery sweaters he seemingly favored). I read Entertainment Weekly, so I know who the Black Eyed Peas are; while I don't have a vast collection of their music, I actually do have a will.i.am song, thanks to the kids -- his version of "I Like to Move It", from Madagascar. It's fun, and I was thinking the halftime show might be kind of cool...

Then they came on and in about 2 minutes I was transformed, against my will, into my father. I instantly became the "you call that music?" guy. "That's not singing, it's yelling!" I could almost feel my hairline receding as I watched. Plus there was a part of me that was crying out, "No! Please don't be that guy! You're still youthful (pay no attention to that hair exodus)!"

I have since regained a little of my equanimity, finding that I was not the only one who was, ah, underwhelmed. And I'm not really calling for a return engagement for the Michigan Marching Band, or even Andy Williams. It's just... I love my dad, and I respect him, and for someone to say I reminded them of him would be an honor. But this wasn't the way I had in mind. Fortunately, instead of blaming myself for What I've Become, I can blame the Black Eyed Peas for yanking it out of me involuntarily.

Be It Ever So Humble

One of the topics I have mined pretty frequently for bloggish fodder is travel, both family and business trips. And in the case of the latter, I don't believe I've been very successful in keeping the secret that I look forward to business trips (and perhaps more so than vacations).

There's not too much to hate about it, really, starting with the fact that someone else is paying the entire tab, as well as hosting you at better hotels and restaurants than you would typically seek out on your own. Well, the restaurant thing not so much necessarily; when on the road and given a chance to choose the stereotypical Relatively Fancy Local Restaurant over the usual middle-of-the-road chain place, I go for predictable over chance for greatness basically every time.

I work harder, and longer, on the road than I ever do at home, but it's energizing to put your ability on the line in front of colleagues and clients. Or just to see colleagues and clients, since I spend 99% of my time isolated at home.

And I also have to admit that being away from home, and free from the domestic responsibilities that usually wrap themselves around work's demands, holds a good measure of appeal. Love my kids, love my wife, don't mind taking a break from it all once or twice a year.

This week I am on my first business trip in more than a year... and I am also clearly being punished for looking forward to it just a tiny bit.

If you are reading this more or less in real time, you're aware that travel throughout most of the country is in upheaval right now due to a severe winter storm covering almost all of the US that actually has a winter. Here are a few... ah... highlights of my trip so far.

* It's a 2-day trip from NY to MO, so I have to travel on Sunday to get there in time. It's hard to fly directly to Columbia, MO, so I have to fly into St. Louis, then drive more than an hour. I pick the latest possible flight so I can spend the most time with family... but I miscalculate the total length of the trip and there's no way I can get there before 11. Local time -- midnight body time.

* Southwest allows you to check in online 24 hours before takeoff, and I actually check in 23:59 before, putting me in the "A" boarding group. This allows me to get a really choice seat, but does not in any way prevent the mom with the crying baby from sitting across the aisle, one row back.

* Baltimore/Washington International is not known for even the level of cuisine I favor on trips. The best possible choice for fine dining turns out to be... Quizno's.

* I get to St. Louis and head for the baggage carousel; as I walk up, about 8 bags come tumbling out, none of them mine. I sit down to wait for the rest of them. I watch the carousel for probably 20 minutes until it dawns on me, with nearly lightning speed, that there ain't nothin' else coming. I go to the baggage office; they have no clue where it went but they take my contact info. They think they can get it to me sometime on Monday.

* Since I am delayed picking up my car by my absorption with luggage, by the time I drive halfway across the state to Columbia, I arrive mere moments before midnight. A good preparation for my 7:30 meeting the next morning. On the bright side, it won't take long to choose my wardrobe.

* We get to our meeting Monday morning, and practically the first thing our host says is, "There's an enormous storm coming tomorrow; if you don't get out today, you might not get to leave till Thursday." We stumble through the meeting till the first break, but instead of using the restroom, we all get busy trying to change our flights. I get a 4:15 out of St. Louis (and let Southwest know I'm coming to get my bag, so don't send it!).

* The meeting breaks up and our team takes off. I stop for lunch at the hotel, then I start out for St. Louis. As I get on the highway, my cell rings... it's an automated message from Southwest to tell me my flight's canceled. I circle back to the hotel but I can't reach the airline to reschedule; I can't even get through.

* It's pretty icy on the windows (the roads are surprisingly drivable), but the luxurious rental Toyota Yaris I'm driving has no scraper on board. I use a plastic bottletop. Oh, and here's a quote from right before I left the house on Sunday: "I'm not going to need a hat or gloves."

So here I am in St. Louis; I hope to be going out tomorrow afternoon (through Orlando, since at least there's no ice or snow there). In the meantime, here's a tiny measure of good news that struck me just a little while ago: I have no meetings tomorrow. I have no children to get me up tomorrow. I'm at least planning to travel virtually all day tomorrow, so while I intend to get some work done in the morning, there's really no schedule-based urgency.

In short, I need neither a mechanical nor human alarm, and I can basically get up whenever I want to. And I have absolutely no clue when that happened last.

The Best Kind of Sticker Shock

I was a genius when I was a kid.

I was reading before most kids my age even knew their letters. School came easy to me; I was always ahead of everyone else, always got the best grades. Gradually my pervasive awesomeness overcame most of my native humility and I got a little arrogant about how brilliant I was – rarely (although I can't honestly say never) as an excuse to act superior to others, but sometimes as license to goof off.

Then came the day I had to go home & tell my mother I was failing reading. “How can you be failing reading?” she retorted. “All you ever DO is read.” That was a Scared Straight moment for me and after that I resumed my previous trajectory, continuing at the top of my class all the way through.

It was really when I got to graduate school that I grasped the essential truth: that I wasn’t that special intelligence-wise after all. I was blessed with the ability to pick up new ideas pretty quickly; I was always very successful in testing situations; and I was motivated to succeed and/or scared to fail. Bright “enough”, quick-witted maybe, definitely faster with a punchline than was probably healthy (in multiple senses)… but no genius. I met people in grad school who had the sheer brainpower, as well as the will, to tackle complex problems and just chip away at them until they got to the other end. That was not me; I made it through my Master’s just fine, but no one was throwing incentives at me to get me to shoot for a doctorate.

Still, as kind of a geeky kid, and then adult, who loves to use big words, has a fairly (um…) complex sense of humor, and knows a fair amount of trivia about a variety of subjects, I’m probably most comfortable around bright, educated people – not because I’m a snob, but because they tend to “get” me better. Literally, they speak my language. And I always hoped that when my kids got old enough, I could introduce them to Twain and Thurber and O’Rourke, we could discuss the intricacies of baseball analysis, then sit around exchanging all sorts of obscure wordplay.

Then our son was born, and we gradually learned that he had some intellectual and emotional challenges. Not the kind that get you a telethon or label you “handicapped”… just the kind that ensure you’re always going to start the race from the back of the pack. And while nothing we learned diminished my love for him even an iota, it did kind of make my heart sink.

Not because I was disappointed in him. Not because I couldn’t point to what an awesome success my kid was. Because I thought it meant we’d never “get” each other. The things that make me who I am, in a sense, are things that will never be a part of him at all; the things I love are largely out of reach for him.

Or so I feared. He’s 11 now, and as a semi-part-time stay-at-home dad, I spend more time with him than anyone else and I know him better than anyone else. What I’ve learned is that he loves music, just like I do. He loves a good joke – granted he doesn’t always know why it’s funny, but he often seems to be able to feel the funny even when he can’t quite spot it. He has a particular facility for a very odd trivia subspecialty: if he hears a voice on a cartoon, he’ll often point out that it’s the same actor who did a different voiceover. In fact he’s almost infallible at that and at, “Hey dad, we heard this song last year when we were going…”

I wrote before about some of his school struggles and the way he was overcoming them or at least persevering. At this point he’s classified as Special Ed, so while he spends part of his day in the general classroom, he also gets extra accommodations and small-group instruction with individual help.

I was standing at the bus stop waiting for him one day several weeks back when a car went by with one of those “my kid is an honor student” bumper stickers and I thought, you know, if my boy ever came home with one of those, I think my head would explode. A few minutes after that, he got off the bus and we walked up the street to the house, where he pulled out his backpack and said, “Hey dad, look what I got at school today…”

Turns out it wasn’t that essential after all – but it’s sure cool having one more thing in common.

Yet Another Christmas Review

I guess I need to figure out (once again) whether it’s my life that’s out of whack, or my expectations.

Every year I have this vision in my head about how Christmas is going to look, and every year my actual mileage varies. By quite a bit, really. I’ve written about this before, enough times in fact that it’s probably time to wake up and smell the eggnog. I seem to be perpetually in danger of missing Christmas because our Christmas doesn’t look like the one I see in my mind’s eye.

After all, our Christmas is pretty entertaining in its own somewhat skewed way. But with three services on Christmas Eve, for example, and creating PowerPoints for 2 of them and providing all the music for the third, I may not ever get a profoundly spiritual experience out of it – at least not from sitting in church. Maybe, however, from incessantly cycling through over 300 Christmas songs on my iPod, or from sitting quietly in front of the tree, or from trying to help my own kids keep the meaning of the season front & center, or even from a paragraph in a Christmas letter – even if it’s my own.

Even though we may have fallen short, once again, in observing the rituals I’d like to see become our family-traditional Christmas, there are always events of the season that guarantee we won’t forget it. Such as:

· My son playing a Wise Man in a contemporary retelling of the Christmas story – in this case a Wise Man who was too busy at a conference to discuss “Celestial Signs of the Coming Messiah” to actually notice the birth when it happened.

· The kids deciding that the best way to give Santa a list is to wait till the last possible moment, and in fact revising the list as their last act before going to bed Christmas Eve.
· Dad hauling out presents to put under the tree, eating the cookies left for Santa (and a few more, just for the sake of realism), pouring the milk back into the jug, and then settling down – AFTER midnight – to compose the traditional Santa Reply Letter. Don’t ask me where Jolly Old St. Nick keeps the laptop and printer on the sleigh.
· In response to each child’s inquiries, the letter addressing subjects including (a) how the reindeer are doing, (b) what Santa’s favorite baseball team is, and (c) how exactly he can tell from all the way up there who’s been naughty and who’s been nice. Also, why you’re not getting any of the presents no one even knew you wanted because you just added them to your list on Christmas Eve.
· Watching on Christmas morning as the boy disappears in a blizzard of wrapping paper scraps, surfacing only to ask repeatedly, “Are there any more presents for me?”
· My daughter walking around the house all Christmas day in a ninja costume, playing a trumpet which someone with apparently a rather evil sense of humor has given her, while…
· Her brother spends most of his day trying to sneak up on people with a remote-controlled Rude Bodily Noisemaking Device that someone else with a rather evil sense of humor has sent us.
· The girl pausing in the midst of a soliloquy about all the cool stuff Santa brought her to look sharply at dad and say, “Wait a minute, did you…?” before stopping herself. “What were you going to ask me?” “Never mind…”

And of course there’s one other tradition that never misses – the hurried sprint out of town for vacation, since as long as she’s in the same town where the church is located, she can hear it calling her (this is the spot where I really wanted to include a sound clip of the slot machine in this Twilight Zone episode, but I couldn't find it as a standalone).

I have to say, this time it kind of worked for me too... once we got out of town, I forgot all about what was "supposed" to happen, and I just enjoyed my vacation. Maybe next year I can start that frame of mind before Christmas!