Entry 585: Halloween 2021

S and I went to a Halloween party last night. It's the first non-kid social event we've done since the start of Covid, I believe. It was fun. It was a costume party, which is really cool. I love costume parties. I love getting dressed up, even though I hate the idea of actually assembling a costume. I'm not artsy at all, and I hate shopping, so the idea of fashioning something is not very appealing to me. This is when I'm thankful for Amazon (and not being a poor college student), so that I can put an idea into action without needing to scour a bunch of clothing stores in search of costume parts that would work and are reasonably priced for a one-off event -- or trying to make something cool out of, like, cardboard, hanger wire, and poster paint. That never really worked for me.

This year I went as Billy Hoyle, Woody Harrelson's character from White Men Can't Jump. It's the same costume I used two years ago, but it was a different audience. It worked out well because I already had all the materials, and people have told me before that I resemble Harrelson (which is how I got the idea in the first place). The costume is spot on if you're familiar with the movie, but it didn't quite land as I would've liked . It was a slightly younger crowd, mid-30s-ish, and I think that ten years makes a big difference in terms of culture relevance of a niche classic released in 1992. Still, I got a few people who were, like, "Hey! White Men Can't Jump!" So that was cool.

I talked S into going as Rosie Perez's character, which she agreed to, I think, in large part, because it's easy, and she's been super busy with work lately, so she didn't want to deal too much with picking out a costume. We were jokingly wondering if she was going to be accused of cultural appropriation since Rosie Perez is Latina. But I posited that it's okay if you move up or laterally in terms of historically oppressed groups, so she was probably good, since she's a brown woman portraying another brown woman. It sounds silly to frame it that way (because it is), but that's kinda how it works.

 

It's always interesting to see how seriously people take costumes. They were explicitly requested in the invitation (as were vaccinations -- a good pairing for Halloween in the time of Covid), so some people went all out -- the host and hostess were done up in full-on makeup and dress as Pennywise and The Wicked Witch of the West, respectively -- but some people totally mailed it in. Like, one guy had the "sign costume," which amounts to just taping an identifying statement to your regular clothes. Another guy wore a lion's mane around his neck and otherwise normal attire, and then there were a few women with the little cat face and ear headband thing going on. (My favorite costume was my friend J's. He dressed up as a member of the secret society from Eyes Wide Shut. The password is "Fidelio.")

No shade, by the way. I've been the costume-not-costume guy before. One Halloween in college, I fashioned a crude triangle out of sticks, duct tape, and tinfoil, and wore it around my neck for the night. "What are you?" people would ask.

"A triangle," I'd say.

"A triangle?" they'd respond.

"Yes," I would explain, "it's a three-sided geometric shape."

And then they would either laugh, and we'd have a fun conversation, or they'd politely walk away.

It's funny how different parties were back then. They wouldn't even really start until, like, 10, and everybody would be trashed by midnight. Now it's like, let's get there by 8:30 so that we can be back in bed by a reasonable hour because our kids wake us up at 6:30 not matter what. I usually have much more of an appetite to stay out late than does S. But I'm often happy to go home when wants to because it saves me from being hung over in the morning. I'm a social drinker, and I mean that in the sense of actual drinking, not just drinking alcohol. I constantly sip at a party without even realizing it, and I don't get drunk easily, so if I stay too long, all the sudden I realize, Shit! I'm a six-pack in. It's going to be a rough morning. Actually, you know what really helps this -- the rise in popularity of canned seltzer water. Now, it's seamless to go one-for-one, a beer and a water, which basically cuts my alcohol consumption in half and makes it so that I can wake up the next day at a reasonable hour relatively painlessly.

In fact, the most painful part about last night was the Uber ride home -- $54! Fifty-freaking-four! (It was only $19 on the way there.) That's surge pricing for you. But before I complain too much, I should point out, we could have taken the Metro home for like $10, but that would have required 25 minutes of walking and probably just as much in wait time, which wasn't very appealing to us at that moment.

Also, before Uber came along the price of a ride home on any weekend night in DC was effectively infinite because you couldn't find a cab to take you.  When you tried to hail one, they would roll down their window and ask where you were going (in defiance of DC law, I might add), and if it was more than a block or two they'd drive away. Their goal was to burn through as many customers as possible because the flat fee per customer was way more profitable than the mileage rate. That's why when these ride sharing apps rose to prominence and the cabbies complained, my reaction was basically: tough shit. They had been illegally exploiting a bad system for years in a manner that did not serve the people they had agreed with the city to serve. I can't count the number of times I was turned down by a DC cabbie back in the day -- and I'm white! You should have read what Black people were saying about it online at the time.

So, when you take everything into consideration. The option to get a ride for $54 isn't as terrible as it sounds on first blush.

Alright, that's all for now. Until next time...

Entry 584: Are Jokes Funny?

I was planning on writing a longish post about the whole Dave Chappelle, Netflix brouhaha, but life (bike rides, the playground, Ted Lasso, pub trivia) kinda got in the way. Actually what happened is, I wrote a post for my word blog, and that really ate up my blogging time. You can read the post here if you like. It's kinda sorta tangentially related to the Chappelle drama in that it's about banning offensive words from word games.

Anyway... my quick opinion on Chappelle.

I haven't watched any of his Netflix specials, and doubt I will, but I have heard some of the bits from The Closer -- his latest and most controversial one -- and I was not particularly impressed with them. Some of it made me chuckle, but for the most part it really was super mean and very ignorant. I don't necessarily have a problem with the meanness (nothing is that mean when you can turn it off and literally make it go away), but I don't usually find ignorance funny, because the humor is in the truth for me. It's funny because it's true is a cliché for a reason.

With that said, I don't think Netflix should take it down or anything like that. This is not a situation in which somebody is spreading harmful conspiracy theories or planning a coup. It's just a dude telling jokes. If you don't like it, don't watch it. Or do watch it and tell everybody how awful it is; write scathing screeds and reviews; post on social media how awful a comedian and human being Dave Chappelle is. Those are your rights. What you don't have the right to do, in my opinion, is try to get it canceled for everybody. Free speech should also apply to speech you don't like, especially if it's just jokes (admittedly super offensive jokes) told by a guy who everybody knows is just telling jokes.

Also, if the goal is really to prevent Chappelle's speech from being disseminated, protesting it and calling for it's cancellation is the worst thing you can do. If it's really so dangerous and you don't want people to see it, you should just say nothing and let it quickly fade into the night, as it surely would do like every other comedy special.

But I suspect that that's not really the point of the protests. The point is, I think, to make Chappelle and Netflix suffer and atone for their sins of offending the wrong group of people. At the protests this goofy pro-Chappelle troll showed up and one woman even went up to him and repeated "Repent motherfucker! Repent motherfucker!" over and over. (I heard the clip on the latest Blocked and Reported episode.) It really does remind me of the indecency debates of my childhood where it would be a fundamentalist religious group against Frank Zappa on Donahue or something like that. 

And the irony is that a lot of the people who once supported Zappa are now, I suspect, the ones trying to cancel Chappelle. A large swath of the left went off the rails somewhere when it comes to free speech. It used to be a widely-held belief on the left that more speech was a net benefit to society -- that ultimately it helps the oppressed by giving them a voice. This was such an axiom of liberalism that the ACLU would defend the right of literal Nazis to hold marches. But it's not like that anymore. I wish it was, though, because the tides always turn, and at some point it's going to again be "the good guys" whom people are trying to silence.

Entry 583: To Wimauma and Back

The kids had a long weekend, this last one -- two staff days plus Indigenous People's Day -- so we took them to Wimauma, Florida, the census-designated place near Tampa where my in-laws live. It was my first time on a plane since Covid rules went into effect, and it was remarkably smooth. No problems with the flights and no asshole travelers. I spotted a few folks wearing their masks like chinstraps, but people were good about it for the most part. The guy sitting next to me on the flight to Tampa did have to be temporarily pulled off the flight by security because he was wearing a vented mask, which isn't allowed, and was keen to argue about it with the flight attendant. But he quickly came back on wearing a new mask the airline gave him and was chill the entire flight, so whatever the security officer said to him -- probably "Wear this mask or you aren't getting back on that plane" -- worked.

In fact, the most eventful part of our trip there came after we got off the plane. S's parents don't really drive on the highway anymore, so they sent a car to pick us up at the airport. I would have just as soon booked a Lyft (as would have S), but S's parents haven't really figure out ride sharing apps, and they are often overly helpful (which, of course, ends up being not helpful at all). So they asked this guy they know who drives old people around for extra money to pick us up, but he couldn't do it, so he sent another guy he knows to do it.

"So... we're getting picked up by some random dude who knows some other random dude who sometimes drives your parents around?" I asked S.

"Yes," she replied.

The guy's name was M, and he kinda resembled Al Michaels but with a bit of a mob-movie affect. Like, I don't remember if he was actually wearing a leisure suit with gaudy jewelry, but that's what I picture him in. To cap things off, he picked us up in a 1986 Lincoln Continental. This is not a joke -- he literally drives a 35-year-old boat of a car. To make things even less comfortable, he brought his buddy B along, so all four of us -- S, the kids, and me -- had to sit in the back. It's a pretty spacious backseat, but there are only two seat belts, which we used for the kids (we have these travel car seats for them), so S and I squeezed in between them and "free-waisted" it the entire 40-mile trip.

 

It sounds miserable, but it was weirdly interesting and kinda fun. Traffic was really bad almost the entire way, which I actually appreciated because it made me feel much safer (M was a very slow, cautious driver in general), and B -- the random friend of the random friend of the random guy who drives S's parents -- was a total chatterbox, but in a good-conversationalist type of way. He went on and on about his life and his family and he asked us all sorts of questions. Including, hilariously, asking S if she is a housewife.

"No, I'm a CFO for a major foundation," she replied. I'm not sure it landed with the impact it deserved because I don't think they know what a CFO is.

B came off as gay, like very gay, he spoke with the stereotypical gay accent, and he told us that, although now retired, he was a hairdresser when he worked, and since I'm stereotyping -- what's more gay than a male hair dresser? -- but he also told us about his ex-wife and kids, so I don't know. The most likely hypothesis is that he's one of those older gay guys who came of age at a time when it was very difficult to be openly gay, so he denied it, even to himself, and adopted a heteronormative lifestyle -- marriage, kids, military service, etc. -- but that didn't totally take (because he's not hetero), and so now he's divorced and out, but kinda on the DL, because it's difficult to totally overcome a lifetime of denial in your late sixties.

Furthermore, it seems likely to me that M is B's lover, as B mentioned that he was in Tampa visiting M as a "test run" to see if they could peacefully cohabitate. It's possible they are completely straight, platonic friends, just enjoying each others' company in their old age, but that is not the vibe I got. I'll probably never know for sure, as we took a Lyft on our way back to the airport. As weirdly enjoyable as it was to ride with M and B, it's also nice to have space and a seat belt and safety features mandated within the last three decades. Also, M played country music the entire drive, and I despise most country music.

A-l-l my ex's live in Texas...

There is not much to do in Wimauma, particularly in a gated community in which 80% of the residents are senior citizens. We also didn't want to do things in public indoors because of Covid concerns. I mean, we were in Florida after all. Although I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people wearing masks inside public establishments -- around half, I'd say. I was worried we were going to be pegged instantly as northern liberal elitists for wearing masks to pick up our mobile orders at Dunkin' Donuts. But that wasn't the case at all.

We spent a lot of time at the pool, which is just about the only reason the kids don't go totally crazy from boredom when we stay with S's parents. We are so close to the point where we can toss the kids in the water and relax on a pool lounger without having to monitor them every second. But Lil' S2 still needs some help in the deeper water. He can get to the wall by himself now, but things can get dicey if he gets a little tired or is goofing off or what have you. All it takes is a lapse of, like, a minute for a kid to drown, which is so scary, and it's why I still insist on an adult being in the pool with Lil' S1, especially when there are no lifeguards on duty. 

One night we walked to my in-laws' friends' house for dinner. (They have a bunch of friends in their community which is part of the reason they moved.) It was a good Indian feast. Event like this always decompose into a group of women in one room, a group of children in another room, and a group of men in a third room. I usually fluctuate between the kids and dudes. That's one thing children are good for -- if I get tired of gabbing politics with a bunch of "uncles," I can go check on the kids, which actually means hiding away for a few minutes by myself.

Sunday afternoon we met S's cousin and his family in Orlando for lunch (outdoors) and then we went to an outlet mall. I hate shopping, but it's a necessity, so I figured I might as well get a few items. I bought some nice V-neck sweaters, a polo shirt, and a thin rain jacket. It was all so cheap compared to DC prices, and then things were on sale even more. Nevertheless, I got bored pretty quickly and sat in the car for a long time watching football on my phone while everybody else finished shopping.

Afterward we went to a little cafe selling rolled ice cream and boba tea. I had never had rolled ice cream before -- it tastes a lot like normal ice cream, but it takes three times as long to prepare. It was fine as a novelty. There are all these ice cream variants -- rolled ice cream, fried ice cream, vegan ice cream, dipping dots -- but for my money you can't beat normal ice cream. Two scoops in a cone, a hot fudge sundae, a chocolate milkshake* -- there are no better desserts.

*It has to be vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup though. Sometimes you get places that make chocolate milkshakes with chocolate ice cream, but that results in a far inferior (though still good) product.

It was a pretty quick trip -- Thursday to Monday -- and on the flight back we randomly ran into our neighbors who also went to Tampa for the long weekend. It was a weird coincidence, but I wish we didn't see them because they told us of our school's quarantine guidelines, and apparently kids who leave the DC-area are supposed to quarantine for ten days or for three days followed by a negative Covid test. They said that they were going to keep their kids out of school for one day (Tuesday) and get a rapid test and then say they came back Saturday if the school asked any questions. So then S wanted to do that too. I said we should just send them to school on Tuesday without a test, because we were pretty safe, and they weren't showing any symptoms. I mean, if we are going to lie about when we got back, then why don't we just lie and say we didn't know the guidelines, if need be?

Ultimately we did the same thing as our neighbors, though, because S cared more about it than I did. (Both the kids' tests were negative, as expected.) I talked to a few other parents about this, and every one of them, literally, had traveled out of the DC-area and fudged the school's quarantine guidelines in some way upon their return. That's the danger in having overly cautious rules -- people will lie to get around them and that will cause more problems than if you just had more realistic guidelines in the first place. (My friend is an administrator at a middle school in Connecticut, and he was bemoaning this very thing last time I saw him.) I mean, if a family drives to New York for a long weekend and stays with vaccinated family members and doesn't do anything riskier than what they would do in DC and aren't showing any symptoms, it's not realistic to tell them they have to stay out of school, solely as a precaution, for a week or two.

Well, hopefully this will all be over soon. As I said in a previous post, cases have quietly been dropping, slowly but surely, across the nation, and the trend has continued. The vaccine being approved for children can only help. I talked to a scientist who's really on point with a lot of Covid stuff, and he's convinced the kids vaccine will be readily available to any parents who want it by the end of November. From his lips to the FDA's ears -- if we could get it before our Xmas trip to the PNW that would be awesome.

Until next time...

Entry 582: A Not All Politics Post

I haven't written about politics in a while, so I figured I'd lead off this entry with some thoughts on the debt ceiling and the "infrastructure" bills and the like.

The Dems recently passed a resolution to raise the debt ceiling to fund the federal government until December, which is good, I guess. The Reps made them do it alone, saying if the Democrats were going to be the ones doing the spending then they should be the ones to raise the limit. This is nonsensical because a) the Democrats haven't actually passed any spending bills yet (that's their whole problem); b) the debt ceiling applies to debt that's already been accrued (not future debt), and the Reps are responsible for more than their fair share of current debt, because, despite their rhetoric, they love the big-money programs (Medicaid, Medicare, social security) just as much as the Dems, but they also want to cut taxes, so their solution is to just not pay for anything and blame it on the blue team.

It makes no sense, but the point isn't to make sense -- it's to play politics. Although, I also don't really see what's to be gained politically, by making Dems go it alone. People hate shutdowns and it would be terrible if the US started defaulting on its debts (so say many smart people, at least -- nobody really knows for sure what would happen). So saying, Hey Democrats you have to avert disaster and take credit for it all by yourself, doesn't seem particularly smart to me.

The debt limit is such an absurd thing, anyway. It's a completely unnecessary annual political fight. Basically congress votes to run up the credit card and then also has to vote to pay it off. The much better way to do it: if you don't want to pay it, don't spend it in the first place. That's how it should be. I really wish the Democrats would just raise the debt limit to an unreachable number and effectively get rid of it.

And the debt limit was the easy vote.* The more difficult negotiations are going on right now with the Dems' dueling infrastructure bills. Basically there is a "moderate" bill for traditional infrastructure -- roads, bridges, and the like -- and a "progressive" bill for a bunch of stuff people like Bernie Sanders want -- basically a vastly expanded social safety net. The moderate bill has already passed the Senate and could pass in the House but for the fact the Congressional Progressive Caucus won't vote for it unless their bill is voted on first. They feel, probably rightly, that if the moderate bill passes, then their bill will basically be ignored.

*No, it’s not, apparently. I thought the suspension of the debt limit until December was law, but the bill only passed the House. Something still has to pass the Senate by October 15 and it’s not clear how that happens.

Meanwhile Biden is like, Please just pass something! My approval ratings are in the 40s, and I need some good news. That's where I am too, more or less. I'd be fine if the progressive bill passes, but I've become an ardently pro-compromise incrementalist as I've gotten older -- not because I think slow, little-c conservative fixes are inherently good, but because it's typically that or nothing. I've just become more of a realist. I mean, Joe Manchin -- one of the main senators against the progressive bill -- represents West Virginia. The fact a Democrat could win in such a deep red state is a minor miracle. He's not going to be Pramila Jayapal (Seattle shout out). You need to consider what you're working with. Maybe the progressives' gambit pays off, and they get their bill passed, but I think it's more likely that they don't, and they are then left to choose if they want a quarter loaf or nothing.

In non-politics news, I took another little trip to New York this past week. I rode the train up Tuesday afternoon, met some friends, saw a show, stayed the night, and then took the train back Wednesday afternoon. The train is definitely the way to go. I like it because DC to NYC is perfect movie watching length, so I get to cross a couple films off my (ever-growing) "To Watch" list, which is something I don't normally have the time to do. (Casino on the way there; Little Women on the way back, if you were wondering.) 

I got into the city a few hours before my friends, so I got a slice and then walked around a bit. That's really the thing I like to do in a city. The museums and landmarks and all that are cool, but they are mainly just an excuse to move through the city, watch the people, sense the vibe. The show was in Brooklyn, so I went down to Prospect Park and meandered my way through it.

After I met my friends DK and JR, we Citi-biked down to the Williamsburg waterfront, which provided some nice vistas and some nice places to have a beer -- we took advantage of both. We had an awkward moment in which we went to eat dinner at some sort of trendy Korean restaurant, lured in by their promise of rooftop seating, and then almost instantly realized it was a mistake. For one thing, we were the only patrons in the establishment, literally. For another thing, their "rooftop" was basically just another room, covered with a tent-like roof and walls. You couldn't see out over the city or anything like that; there was no rooftop feel to it. Also, they had a limited menu and everything was on the pricey side.

 

 

So, we just got up and left before we ordered. It was kinda embarrassing, but worth it. It's one of those things where you lean in to a few minutes of awkwardness now to put yourself in a much better situation in the future. I need to be better about making that deal. Too often I don't do something because it's temporarily awkward or embarrassing (in my head, at least), and then later I'm like, Damn, why didn't I just do that when I had the chance?

The place at which we actually ate dinner was much better, although not totally devoid of weirdness. The guy at the table next to us was drunk, seemingly for the first time in his life, and rambling on to us about this and that. He told us about how great the TGI Friday's by MSG is, so I snapped a photo of it on my out of the city. Something tells me it's a lot like the TGI Friday's I worked at in Tacoma, Washington in the summer of 1997.

The show itself was awesome. We saw a band called Deep Sea Diver, mainly because we know the drummer, but they legit rocked the house (Music Hall of Williamsburg). The band that played before them was pretty cool too. I forgot how fun it is see live music. I haven't gone to many shows the past few years. Even before Covid, I didn't go very often. It was super fun.

We actually ran into the drummer P randomly on the street (actually it was in the street, in a crosswalk), so we chatted for a few minutes. That was cool as we probably would not have seen him otherwise. The venue is pretty big, so the audience and band members can't really interact, and P and I aren't, like, BFFs or anything,* so it would be weird to try to impose on his band activities pre- or post-show. So, it was perfect to just give him a high five and say what's up for a few minutes.

*I've long said that we need a word between friend and acquaintance, and P is a perfect example of why. I have so many people in my life where it feels weird to call them a friend because we were never that close and we don't really make it a point to keep in touch or anything like that. But acquaintance is far too impersonal. I sometimes hear people fill this void by saying "we're friendly with each other," which is an accurate way to described it, but it would be nice if we had a single word for this type of relationship. Frequaintance? I don't think that that's going to take off.

On the train ride back, I sat directly in front of this dude, who I think had Tourette Syndrome or something like that. He kept making spastic noises and muttering to himself, saying completely inappropriate stuff. He didn't seem to have control over it because when people would glance over at him, as I did once, he would say "pardon me," and then go right back to doing it. It probably wasn't his fault, but it was still very discomfiting for me. (You can have sympathy for somebody and still not want to be around them.) Thankfully, he slept for most the trip, so I could fully engross myself in the exploits of Jo and Meg.

Alright, I gotta go now. We are headed to a farm to sit on tractors and pick pumpkins and play farm games and whatnot. S said I don't have to go, but she already bought me a ticket, so I suspect it wouldn't go over well if I didn't. Plus, it's probably better to get out of the house this afternoon anyway. If I stay home, I'll just be watching sports and staring at scores on my phone all day. The Seahawks are playing today, and the Mariners, very improbably, have an outside chance at making the playoffs, but they need like three games to break their way. It probably won't happen, so I'd rather not invest hours in following everything only to be let down at the end. Might as well spend time with my kids and not feel like a deadbeat dad.

Until next time...