Entry 634: Friday Night Blogging

It's a rare one, this Friday night. I actually have some time to myself before 9:30. S is having drinks with some mom friends, and both the kids are at friends' houses. So, what do I do with this bonus time? Write a blog of course. Actually, I've been thinking that I need a TV show to get into. I'm thinking White Lotus. I've been meaning to watch it, and now season two is coming out soon, so it's good timing. S watched it and said she thinks I would like it. It's a Mike White project, and I watched Buck & Chuck fairly recently and thought it was bizarrely good, so I'll give White Lotus a shot. Maybe I'll watch an episode later tonight during my usual alone time. I was also thinking of finally getting into Mad Men. It's the only one of those big early "prestige TV" dramas that I've never seen.* But it feels so daunting to actually get into it. It's like, I missed that cultural train and there's not another one coming.

*There's kind of a "Big 4" of shows in this category: The Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men.

The only show I've been watching of late is Love Is Blind, and it's pretty vapid. I mean, the vapidness is kinda the point. S likes those types of shows, and so it's something we can watch together. It's fine. I'll even go so far as to say I enjoy it, but it's only because I'm watching it with her. I assure you, I would never watch an episode on my own. Even now, mid-season, I'm not really that invested. If for some reason we couldn't finish the rest of the episodes, it wouldn't bother me in the least. I wouldn't even look up what happens online. If I never find out if Cole and Zanab actually got married, I'll still be able to die in peace.

And actually I have been watching one other show. The boys and I usually watch an episode or two of Bluey each night. It's a pretty good show -- very good by kids show standards. Sometimes -- often times, actually -- it gets too precious by half, but I suppose that's part of the charm. Interestingly, a bunch of the episodes actually get censored before they stream on Disney+. In fact, an entire opening sequence of an episode was removed because it centers on Bluey's dad Bandit possibly farting on her as he gets out of bed. I don't like that they change the writers' original work, but I do feel nostalgia for the time kids shows got censored for referencing bodily functions, instead of whatever Twitter is mad about this week.

Speaking of Twitter, ol' Elon has taken over, I guess. I really couldn't care less, and I don't get the freak out at all. Like, how could you make Twitter -- a cesspool of awfulness in its worst moments; an addictive, unproductive time-suck in its best -- any worse? Plus, I mostly agree with Musk's vision regarding what Twitter should be. I will say, life is slightly more pleasant without Trump being able to tweet, but he says he's not coming back anyway. That might not be true, but maybe it is -- who knows? That last thing I'll say is that if you invested a lot time and emotional capital into a soulless, mega-billions tech company that makes its money off of selling your data and forcing you see ads, then that's kinda on you. And if you fit this mold, getting off Twitter -- if that's really what you're going to do -- is probably a net positive in your life.

Actually, I'll say one more thing. Elon is a good example of what I was talking about in my last post about how Democrats are increasingly becoming incapable of building the coalitions needed to consistently win elections. He made an announcement a while back about how he was going to vote for Republicans in future elections because he felt Dems had become the party of "division and hate." This is extremely misguided, in my opinion -- I couldn't disagree with it more. But it is indicative of how the Democrats are losing voters by constantly making them feel judged and unwanted. The sentiment toward Elon should be "come back, we'll find come ground and work together," but instead it's "good riddance, douche." And the frustrating part is that it's not even the party leaders who are doing this. Many Democratic candidates seem to be reasonable people who want a broad coalition and don't want to engage in all this culture war stuff, but they can't escape their association with the nuttiness of left-wing media, social media, academia, and so on, that's become so prominent over the last five.

The reason I've become so critical of liberals is because we need a strong Democratic party to combat the derangement and danger of the Trumpist Republicans, which manifested itself recently in the form of a brutally attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband that was meant for her. The enablers of this type of violence -- the election deniers, the conspiracy theorists, the civil war agitators -- these people need to be roundly rejected at the ballot box, but they aren't, and part of the reason for that is that Dems have been so bad at branding and at focusing on things people most care about. And to be clear, the Reps aren't much better (if at all) at coalition building. When it comes to politics in this country, sometimes I feel like I'm watching that badminton match in which neither side is trying to win.

Anyway...

You might notice that this is not being posted Friday night despite me saying it's Friday night at the beginning of the entry. Shortly after I started writing, I got a message from Lil' S2's friend's dad asking if I could come get him. Well, he more implied than asked -- it was one of those "Looks like things are winding down here" texts. So I had to get him, and then I had to get Lil' S1 from his party, and I haven't been able to get back on to finish this post until now.

I guess Lil' S1 had an incident at the party. As I understand it, some kid was bothering him and trying to steal a cookie he was saving for Lil' S2, so Lil' S1 hit this kid, and then the kid's mom yelled at Lil' S1, even dropping an F-bomb. The mom later apologized to Lil' S1, and Lil' S1 apologized to the kid, and then the party went on as normal, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary when I went to pick him up. (The party host didn't tell me about the incident when I came to get him. She called S later. She told S it was too hectic to talk to me, but I think maybe she just felt more comfortable talking to S and not in person. Whatever. I don't mind.)

So many layers here to unravel. The first is that the adult needs to act like an adult. You shouldn't swear at a ten-year-old, especially it's not your child. That's a definite transgression in the parenting world. You can talk to them and tell to stop, but really laying into them and swearing at them is a no-no. (Ironically, in this case, the mom was modeling the exact behavior -- lack of self-discipline when responding to somebody you're angry with -- that she was mad about.) S, understandably, was quite upset about this. I was too, but not to the same extent. For one thing, I remember having adults who weren't my parents bitch me out when I was his age, and it sucks, but it's not like super traumatic. For another thing, we weren't there, so we don't know exactly how it all went down, and we don't know this mom, so unless we are going to get her number from the host and, like, settle her hash, which seems like it would only exacerbate things, there's not really much we can or should do about it now.

Then there's the other issue of Lil' S1 hitting this kid in the first place. He's been having problems with this, with not being able to get along with other kids. I can't even explain it. He's so sweet in so many ways, but he has this weird temper sometimes where he'll just start yelling at other kids or getting physical with them. It usually with kids who are younger than him, which makes it especially bad (he says the kid in this incident was his age or older, but we don't know for sure). It's to the point where if Lil' S2 has friends over, we have to tell Lil' S1 to just not play with them. I'm really hoping this is just an immaturity thing. He's still very much a "little kid" emotionally, and so maybe, probably, he'll grow out it.

The other thing is that he's not very big or strong physically, and I'm worried that one of these days he's going to do this to a kid who's tougher than him or has an older sibling, and they're going to fight back, and it's not going to go well for him. On the flip side of that though, I also don't want him to be a pushover. If some other kid is harassing him or trying to take his stuff, I want him to be able to stand up for himself. You can't always rely on adult intervention as a child. Like I said, layers, it's just a tough situation to navigate all around. We already have one kid in therapy, maybe we need to make it two.

Anyway, we are moving on to happier things like ghosts and monsters! Halloween is upon us. S and I went to a party last night. I dressed up as Walter White, and she donned a hazmat suit. It was a pretty decent costume pair -- not very topical, but easy without being a total cop out. We're taking the boys out trick-or-treating tomorrow night. It will be the first year that we split up. I'll take Lil' S2 with his friends and his friends' parents, and S will take Lil' S1 with his friends. I'm not sure if I'll wear my costume out. Without S to put things into context, I might just look like a guy in a pork pie hat.

Until next time...

Entry 633: The "It's All Politics" Post

I haven't written much about politics of late. Largely this is because I mostly write at night, and I don't like thinking about politics at night. (I follow the mullet strategy of content consumption: News in the morning; entertainment at night.) But also it's because I'm pretty much a "blue no matter who" voter, and I don't think the midterm elections are going to go well for people like me. There was a period a few months ago when things looked a bit more promising for the Dems, but that mini surge has faded, and it's looking like a red wave could very much be in the cards.

So, I'm doing my best not to invest too much emotionally (nor financially) into these upcoming midterms. Plus, none of the big races are occurring where I vote (in DC the primaries are typically more important than the general election), and I question how much outside energy and money can influence an election anyway. Anecdotally, all the Senate candidates I donated to in the last election lost, so I specifically didn't donate to either Dem in the Georgia runoff, and they both won. I know that it takes money to run a campaign, and every candidate will tell you they need more, but, after a while, I think the returns are seriously diminished and possibly even counterproductive, as voters might be resentful of outsider influence.

And if the Reps don't run roughshod over the Dems in the midterms, it will only be because, despite their reputation, they actually aren't all that great at politics, and they nominate bad, extreme candidates in races in which more normie Reps would probably perform much better. But it might not matter this cycle because the Dems have too many things working against them -- one of which is that their brand has become utterly poisonous to a large segment of the population.

I was thinking about why this is the case -- why so many voters recoil in disgust when they see a D on the ballot next to a candidate. It's easy to understand the other way. I won't vote for a Republican because of Donald Trump, full stop. Unless a candidate openly disavows Trump and Trumpism, I'm out. But there's nothing like this on the Democratic side -- there is no cult leader. Instead, I think there are several reasons why so many people see the Dems as toxic. One reason is that it's "white lash" against a party (and a country) that's becoming more racially diverse. This phenomenon certainly exists, but I now think it's a much smaller part of the picture than I used to. After all, Trump actually increased his share of the vote among non-white voters in 2020. Another reason is that this is the result of a now decades-long bad-faith assault on Dems by right-wing media, such as Fox News. This is indeed a huge factor, I think, and it seems to only be getting worse as "news" becomes even more siloed and less trustworthy.

I think liberals like to cite these reasons because they are mostly outside their control. But there is a third reason that should warrant some soul-searching among people who don't want to see red waves become a regular occurrence: Dems are increasingly becoming unlikable to, and unrepresentative of, all but a very narrow segment of the population -- urban, affluent, highly educated, and woke. Too often the messaging from liberal spaces implies that, not only is there no need to appeal to anybody outside this cross-section, but such people are morally bankrupt and only worthy of contempt. This is the big problem with woke liberalism as a political movement: It's terrible at building the coalitions needed to win elections. It unnecessarily alienates too many people. I heard Barack Obama on Pod Save America, and he basically said the same thing. He criticized the hyper-focus on language rules that most people, especially older people, can't understand, and he called Democrats "buzzkills". I unfortunately agree.

A great example of this is the Covid response. It's ironic that this is now such a liability for so many Democratic candidates in the midterm, as it was a huge part of why Biden won in 2020. But I think Dems took the wrong lesson from it. What people wanted was responsible leadership to take Covid seriously, mitigate the risks, yes, but return us to somewhat normal life as quickly as possible. Few signed on for seemingly endless shutdowns and nonsensical masking rules. (That weren't even always followed by the people who made them.) Then the Dems really lost the issue when they didn't universally get behind schools reopening even after teachers had the opportunity to get vaccinated. The was just a total gift to Republicans. (Glenn Youngkin says thanks.) And it wasn't just the policy, but also the attitude, that parents only wanted their "babysitters back" (as if the child care schools provide is a luxury service and not a vital public resource that millions of parents rely on to go out and earn a paycheck), and the learning loss wasn't that bad, and that anybody who was weighing priorities differently was being reckless or not believing the science.

Another thing is that many of the people who were hurt the most from Covid shutdowns were poor service industries workers (often non-white people), who didn't have any savings to fall back on and couldn't work from home. On a podcast segment, I heard this Hispanic woman in Florida who was talking about how she absolutely hated Ron Desantis' bullshit immigration stunts but was going to vote for him anyway because he kept things open when other states were shutting down and that allowed her to keep her job in a nail salon. Can you really say she's wrong? I mean, I would never vote for Ron Desantis, but I understand where she's coming from.

Dems did get a big Covid relief bill through to help ease some of the shutdown hardship, but nothing comes for free, and we are now seeing the inflationary effects of giving people all this money for staying home. This is certainly not the only reason inflation is high right now (there's also that whole war in Ukraine), but it is a contributing factor. And inflation is the issue right now that is giving Democratic candidates the biggest problems.

Anyway, I have several more examples of the buzzkill Dems, and maybe I'll get to them in the future, but I'm out of time for now.

Until next time...

Entry 632: Sunday Scaries

• Apparently, what I call the "Sunday Night Blues" have a "real" name: the "Sunday Scaries". I like my name better because the word scary makes me think of ghosts or serial killers or nuclear war and those aren't the things I associate with Sunday night. It's more a feeling of ennui and sadness, a little anxiety and dread, sure, but not, like, shutter-inducing fear. Now, Sunday Scaries does have the alliteration going for it, but Sunday Night Blues rolls off the tongue more smoothly. Also, you could come up with parody to "Summertime Blues" called "Sunday Night Blues".
  

  Well, I'm gonna feel sad and I'm gonna feel sorrow
  And I'm gonna have to go back to school on the morrow
  Every time I put my feet up and try to clear my head
  My brain says, no way, bud, and fills me up with dread
  Sometimes it feels like a terrible flu
  Cuz there ain't no cure for Sunday Night Blues

• The Mariners lost last night 1-0 in an 18 inning (!) game, which eliminated them from the playoffs and ended their season. It's kinda disappointing, but not totally devastating. Making the postseason for the first time in 21 years was enough to make it a successful season in my eyes.
  
  
• Also, the Seahawks won today to go to 3-3 on the season, which isn't great, but they were supposed to be terrible this year. They traded their superstar quarterback Russell Wilson in the off-season and replaced him with a longtime backup named Geno Smith. Everybody thought this would make them much worse on offense, but in a crazy twist, they've gotten better. They are much more fun to watch than they were last year.
  
  
• Speaking of football, Lil' S2 is playing flag football right now. It's going pretty well. He's actually a grade ahead of the other kids in the league. I signed him up for the 1st grade league (he's in 2nd grade) because I wanted him to play with his friends who are in 1st grade. He's right on the grade cutoff anyway. He's decent, but he has yet to catch a pass this season. There have been only two completions total on his entire team. The coach is the QB, and he's not great at the short passes the kids can actually catch. He has them running too deep. I'm watching from the sidelines like They're seven years old. They aren't catching the corner post. They don't officially keep score, but it's not hard to do the arithmetic in your head, and they haven't won a game yet. I was a bit apprehensive about putting him in the younger league, thinking if the team was good, other parents might raise an eyebrow, but that should have been the furthest thought from my mind. Lil' S2 seems to like it though, and he's pretty good, and he's always bothering me to play catch with him, so it's working out okay.
  
  
• Derry Girls is back with a new season. I love that show.

That's all I got today -- busy weekend, so short entry. Until next time... 

Update: I was reading the Wikipedia page for Derry Girls after I wrote this, and I learned that two of the actresses who play high school girls are 35 -- 35! I know that it's routine for actors in their 20s to play teenagers -- Ralph Macchio was 23 when he made Karate Kid, for example -- but 35? I've never heard of that. Not even Gabrielle Carteris was that old on Beverley Hills: 90210, and it was a huge joke how old she was back in the day.

No shade by the way. As I said above, I think the Derry Girls is great, and it's a testament to their acting ability that they can convincingly play teens. It's just surprising is all.

Entry 631: My Name Is Alexander Hamilton

S and I have apparently started a new tradition whereby every seven years we go see a show at the Kennedy Center that was super popular five years ago. In 2015 (we remember the date because S was pregnant with Lil' S2), we saw Book of Mormon, which was good-but-not-great, and last night we saw Hamilton, which was absolutely phenomenal. I now get the ridiculous amount of hype that has surrounded this show for the better part of a decade. I loved every moment of it. It wasn't the original cast, of course, but the music and lyrics and concept are so brilliant that it doesn't even matter. (And the actors we did see were really good anyway.) A few months ago, we almost watched the movie version on Disney+, but decided not to, so as not to spoil the stage version, and I'm very glad we made that decision.

The other thing is that it's just nice to go out sans kids and do "cultured" activities. The Kennedy Center is a cool landmark in and of itself (right next door to the infamous Watergate Hotel), so it's especially neat to see a show there. We got there early, which was nice, as we were both hungry, so we had a chance to get some overpriced charcuterie before the show. We had excellent seats, almost perfectly front and center, which I'm sure is part of what made it such a fun experience. Although I'm a little worried now that I can't go back to "normal" seating. Oh well, if we only do this once every seven years, we should be able to splurge for the good seats.

The Kennedy Center still has a mask mandate, making it one of the few non-medical establishments I've seen that has one. It didn't seem to be enforced at all, however, which is fine by me, as it's quite silly how they do it. It's only required (putatively) in the theater proper, so you are supposed to wear it when you are sitting next to the same few people, looking straight ahead, but it's not required when you're milling around, rubbing elbows with dozens of different people in the lobby or waiting in line for concessions or the bathroom. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But the Kennedy Center has a certain clientele, and rich liberals seem to be the last holdouts when it comes to nonsensical masking rules.

On the flip side, Covid is still going strong -- or at least strong enough that people I know are still getting infected regularly (if not virulently). S's sister, Sw, is that latest victim, testing positive earlier this week. This is especially bad timing as she was planning on taking Lil' S1 to some woodsy getaway for the long getaway. It was going to be a auntie-nephew bonding experience, and Lil' S1 was really looking forward to it. We decided to let him go anyway, which might have been irresponsible, I don't know. The thing is, it was a really mild case, and she isn't really feeling symptoms anymore (otherwise she would've stayed home herself), and it's right on the edge of when she's allowed to go back out in public, and they both said they'll do their best to wear masks in the car and when they're together indoors, so... whatever. We will hope for the best.

S is also out of town -- she took Lil' S2 to visit a friend in Boston -- so I have the house to myself for the weekend. That sounds nice, and it is, but it also is an obligation. I have a list of tasks I've been putting off, things that are too difficult to find the time to do when kids are around (or so I tell myself, so that I don't have to do them), and now I have no excuse.* So, while I would like to just spend the weekend watching sports, I at least have to make some progress on my list, so that I don't feel like a total goldbrick. But I definitely am going to watch sports too. The Mariners are in the playoffs (and ahead in their series!), and my old friend and fellow baseball lover RB is in town, so I'm going to meet her in about an hour. I am going to crack down on my list tomorrow though.

*Reminds me of this classic article in The Onion

Until next time... 

Entry 630: On Three Mostly Unrelated Topics

We had a birthday party for Lil' S1 today, even though he turned 10 over a month ago. End of the summer birthdays are tough. A lot of families aren't around -- we might not even be around -- and those who are often already have last-chance-of-the-summer plans -- pool parties and cookouts and whatnot. This year his birthday fell between our return from the PNW and our departure to Iceland, so we didn't really do anything for it. Well, actually we did. S's parents and sister were here, and we had an ice cream cake and sang and everything, but we didn't invite any other kids. He wanted to have a kids b-day party, so, sure, why not? Let's take some kids to play laser tag and pretend it's the end of August.

It went pretty well, I guess. I didn't actually play. I didn't really find laser tag that fun when I was a kid. They also have arcade games, but they're less fun than laser tag. And they're so expensive. Forget the price of gasoline, we should measure inflation by the cost of games of Halo: Fireteam Raven. Every kid burned through their card in, like, 15 minutes, and that's including a $5 refill. Arcades were so much better when I was a kid, and I don't think that's just nostalgia. Arcades now are basically casinos for children. In fact, some of the games are literally gambling. Like that one that's a bulldozer that pushes coins over a ledge. How is that anything but a game of chance? I do like pop-a-shot, but it was out of order.

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In my last entry, you might recall, I was pretty down on the Mariners, and thought they were going to blow their golden opportunity to make the playoffs for the first time in 21 years. Turns out I needn't have been so concerned. Those models saying they were virtual shoo-ins were spot-on, as the M's qualified for the postseason last night, rather dramatically, but quite easily, clinching with six games still on the schedule. I knew I was being overly pessimistic last week, but baseball will do that to a person. It's the weirdest sport, in that bad teams can look great for ten or twenty game stretches, and good teams can look terrible. The Mariners recently went 3-8 against the dregs of the league, including losing a game in which they were winning by nine runs, and then immediately after that, they won four in a row to make the playoffs. It makes no sense, and I've known my entire life as a baseball fan that it makes no sense, but knowing something and feeling something are two different things.

Anyway, I was so excited about the Mariners making the playoffs that I wrote a song about it. I'll only subject you to the first verse. It's a parody of Bill Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire", so get that tune in your head as you read it.

Alvin Davis, Ichiro, Kyle Seager, Zunino
Refuse to Lose, Harold Reynolds, Robinson Cano
Lou Piniella, Dustin Ackley, Richie Sexson, Kaz Sasaki
Alex Diaz, Edwin Diaz, Luis Castillo

I gotta say, it's pretty good. I listened to the original song verse-for-verse a bunch of times and got the cadence down for each line, and then I fit Mariners-themed lyrics to it. I won't say how much time I spent on it because I don't know, and also because I'm not sure I should be proud of how long it took me. I'm a 45-year-old man making up songs about a baseball team getting a wild card spot. And I can't even perform it. I don't know how to do that, and even if I did, my rhythm and voice are so bad, it'd sound like shit. So, I'm a 45-year-old man making a song about a baseball team getting a wild card spot that nobody will ever sing. I'm basically a character in the Beatles song "Eleanor Rigby". Well, I did post this magnum opus, in full, in the comments section of a Mariners blog, and it got 109 likes, which is the most I've ever seen, so there's that. Maybe if Father McKenzie had the internet at least a few people would have heard his sermons.

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Lil' S2 lost a tooth today -- or, I should say, Lil' S2 had a tooth yanked out today by me. It'd been loose for a few weeks now, but it was super stubborn, so we just left it in there, but it got to the point to where it was actually bothering him. It hurt, and it was bleeding, and it got in the way when he was trying to eat, so I knew it had to come out. But I couldn't get it. One half was almost completely separated from the gum, but the other half felt like it was bound by cement. I would yank and yank to no avail, and then my fingers would get slippery from the blood and saliva, and I'd lose my grip and have to start over. Lil' S2 was starting to wince and squirm, and he's the one who prides himself on being stoic when he has to get a shot at the doctor's office. (Unlike his older brother who screams "I can't do it" over and over and tries to run away.)

I wiggled and twisted it a bunch (which Lil' S2 did not like), and then finally I felt it detach a bit, like the end of a Velcro strap, and I pulled that sucker right out. It felt so satisfying. I had him put it in an envelope and then tuck it under his pillow, and then I set an alarm for later in the night to go swap it for some money. It's a good thing I did that too because I totally would've forgotten had I not. I actually did forget once, and the next morning he was wondering why the Tooth Fairy hadn't come. I clandestinely put some bills in the crack between his mattress and the wall and told him that she probably did come, and he accidentally knocked the money off the bed in his sleep. So, he went back in there and found the money, which only seemed to make him more confused. "Well, why didn't she take my tooth then?" he asked. I had no good answer.

Whatever. I don't really like tricking my kids into believing in things like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy anyway. I like the tradition and the story telling, and I want to participate in it, but I kinda think kids should know it's actually their parents. Like, would it really ruin things if you did the whole production and pretended like they were real, but then you told your kids in advance that it was all make-believe? I don't think so. I think it would still be super fun and magical for them, but you wouldn't have to lie to your kids, and you wouldn't prime them to believe in shit that doesn't exist. It's all fun and games until they grow up and start putting up posts on Facebook about guarding angels protecting them.

The other thing about kids' teeth is that I never know what to do with them after they come out. Do you keep them? I know a lot of parents do that, but I find it kinda gross/weird. I guess I should just toss them. I decided to keep this latest one for now, in case S wants it, so I went into my dresser drawer to put it there, and what did I find? A Ziploc baggy with the last tooth he lost in it. I think I previously went through the exact same thought process I just had, and then forgot about it. That totally sounds like something I would do.

Until next time...