Entry 686: Farkle, '90s Music, and Chips

Man, it was a dire news week -- war, more war, a mass shooting, and the election of a nutty right-wing Speaker of the House. See, that's the problem with current events right now, the bad isn't just bad, it's bad with no end in sight. The war between Israel and Palestinian extremists has been going on, in some form, almost nonstop for the last 75 years, and nobody has a workable solution. The indiscriminate killings in Maine illustrate, yet again, the devil's bargain we've made with guns in this country, and it's not going to get better anytime soon given our current political climate and Supreme Court makeup. I mean, just look at whom the Republicans finally settled on for speaker, a hard-core religious right-winger -- and this is their compromise guy. The dude who lost the vote before him was worse. Oh, and if all that stuff I just mentioned somehow gets resolved, there's always climate change to keep you up at night.

It's enough to drive you insane, if you let it, but you can't let it. You need to take solace in the good things in your life and find joy where you can. To that end, I shall shift gears and write about the game night we had at our house last night. It was super fun. Lil' S1 has a little crew of friends he's known forever -- they've been dubbed the D&D group, even though they rarely actually play D&D -- and we know, and get along with, all the parents of the kids, so every now and then everybody will meet at somebody's house, and the adults will play board games and kids will run off and do whatever it is kids do these days. We had one of these events at our house last night.

Game nights can go one of two ways, depending on the makeup of the participants and the games you're playing. They can either be game-first, where you play something requiring attention, like Scrabble or Catan, and then the other aspects of the night (music, gossip, food) are kinda in the background, or they can be game-second, where you play something requiring little attention, like Farkle or Sevens, and then the other aspects of the night are in the forefront. Last night's was very much the latter. It basically just turned into a '90s music nostalgia-fest.

Fran Lebowitz once said that she could only really understand people from her generation. There is something about living through the same cultural events at the same age as somebody else that can instantly connect you to them. (This fits in with a definition of intimacy I once heard: shared experience.) Music is a huge part of this. If you get people together who are in their mid-40s today and play certain songs for them, they are very likely to vibe to them in a positive way, even if they didn't even (and still don't) particularly care for those songs. There are the mega-hits, of course, "Motown Philly" by Boyz II Men, "Jeremy" by Pearl Jam, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana, "Wannabe" by the Spice Girls. But there are also the lesser hits and one-hit wonders that speak to people even more so: "Flagpole Sitta" by Harvey Danger, "You Get What You Give" by the New Radicals, "Add It Up" by the Violent Femmes, "Been Caught Stealing" by Jane's Addiction, "Linger" by the Cranberries. And then if you can find the niche songs that somebody listened to, that's when you really hit the nostalgia sweet spot. I put on some Ned's Atomic Dustbin last night, and one of moms there was like, "Omigosh! 'Kill Your Television'! This is so my jam!"

Another woman there said she was really into '90s gangsta rap, so I played a bunch of Dre and Snoop and some Warren G., and then we did that thing white liberals do, where you rap along with the song but get quiet every time there's a racial or gay slur. It's a skill I've really honed over the years. You should hear me do "Forgot About Dre." I can nail both Dre's and Eminem's parts without uttering a single epithet. It's kinda funny that this particular woman is into gangsta rap because she's a completely unassuming, kinda granola in appearance, middle-age mom -- the type who has a pride flag in her yard and a nonbinary child. But it just goes to show you the power of culture. If you were a 14-year-old in 1991, you probably smile every time "Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang" of "Fuck Wit Dre Day" comes on, even though they are largely about slapping bitches and imploring your foes to perform fellatio on you.

Anyway, I'm going to end this post with something that has nothing to do directly with '90s music: chips. It is apropos in that I ate some Ruffles last night for the first time in I don't even know how long. They were pretty damn good. Chips, like soda, are something I've largely cut out of my diet (with one exception, as noted below), but I still appreciate a good chip from time to time. Here's my top-10 list.

10. Doritos: Nothing was better as a child than Doritos. Cool Ranch was my favorite flavor, but I also liked regular Nacho Cheese and the now discontinued Jumpin' Jack. I definitely do not feel that way about them now, but the other day, the kids got some, and I had a few, and they weren't bad.

9. Fritos: I don't know that I will ever sit down and eat a serving of just Fritos ever again, but they're pretty good with other things. Throw some Fritos on chili, and that chili instantly gets 25% better. Also, Fritos are really good with bean dip.

8. Ruffles: Classic, delicious. The flavored ones are decent, and they are really good with French Onion dip, but I like them even as standalone.

7. Miss Vickie's Sea Salt & Vinegar: Salt and vinegar chips are an acquired taste, and I've acquired it. If you eat more than like five chips, though, your lips start to pickle.  

6. Skinny Pop Popcorn: Is popcorn a chip? Technically, perhaps not, but it certainly is in spirit. It's sold in the chip aisle, and if you bought a sandwich that came with a bag of chips, you wouldn't think it was weird if popcorn was one of the options. I like Skinny Pop because it's not too greasy.

5. Baked Barbecue: Same thing as above -- sometimes I'll go with baked chips because they aren't so greasy. Barbecue is the best of the baked flavors. There was a period in my life, circa 1998, when I was living at home for the summer and my lunch (which I would eat at 5pm because I didn't wake up until noon) was a hamburger, from a Costco chub pack of patties, and a pile of Lay's Baked Barbecue chips.

4. Tim's Cascade Jalapeño: This was my go to chip in high school. I could easily house an entire bag while playing NHL Hockey for Sega Genesis. They do light up your mouth, though.

3. Sun Chips: These are great for when you want a snack that probably is just as unhealthy as any other chip, but feels healthier. Garden salsa is the best flavor, but cheddar and French onion are both pretty good, as well. 

2. Kettle Krinkle Cut Salt and Fresh Ground Pepper: These are the most addictive chip on this list by far. As far as pure flavor goes, they're the best. The problem is that they are too good. I can't help but gorge myself on them, and then I feel like shit afterwards. 

1. Tortilla Chips: This is the one chip I still eat regularly. The thing about tortilla chips, however, is that they are extremely dip-dependent. Unadorned, they fall off this list completely. With salsa, they move into the top spot, and with guacamole, they belong on a whole other list altogether, as they are so much better than every other option. So, there is some debate in the chip world (the crisp world, in the UK) about whether or not tortilla chips should be ranked at all, since they do not rate as a standalone snack. I understand both sides of the argument, but I ultimately I think tortilla chips with dip do count. They're number one with a bullet.

Until next time...   

Entry 685: Less Important Matters

I've been contemplating doing a long post about the atrocities in Israel, but I'm not going to do it now. The main reason for my reluctance is that I would want to really get into the nuance and ambivalence of my thoughts, which would require thousands of words, and I just don't have it in me to do this at the moment. I've been mostly blogging at night these days, because that's when I have free time, and I've found I'm much less inclined to write about serious things at night. It's a corollary of my "mullet strategy" for news consumption: business in the morning, entertainment at night. That's the best way I've found to stay informed and stay sane. So, I'll just give you the tl;dr version of my thoughts on the whole thing: I agree wholeheartedly with President Biden.

Now, on to much less important matters.

We watched Napoleon Dynamite with the kids last weekend, and I gotta say, that movie is frickin' hysterical. I had only seen it once, when it first came out 20 years ago (!), so I had forgotten so much of it. It made my laugh all over again. S likes it too, and I think the kids mostly enjoyed it. There were some parts that went over their heads, like the whole thing with the breast enhancements, but it's a pretty good movie for kids their age, overall. The scene where Napoleon throws the orange at Uncle Rico got the most laughs, but the chicken factory was a close second. So, of course, after the movie, I had to show them the video of my favorite ever Scripps National Spelling Bee moment (although the kid fainting and then still getting the word right is pretty good, too).

Before we watched the movie, I saw online that Uncle Rico is played by Jon Gries, a name I recognize because he was Greg on White Lotus. That just about blew my mind. I watched both seasons of White Lotus fairly recently and did not recognize him at all. (He looks quite different.) I wish I had not seen the actor's name because it robbed me of the chance to make a great actor connection. I might have recognized him when we watched Napoleon Dynamite, and then turned to S and said, "Omigosh! It's Greg from White Lotus... You know, Jennifer Coolidge's husband... The guy who works for the Bureau of Land Management..."* And then she could have just stared at me blankly, before getting annoyed and telling me to be quiet. But I never got the chance for that satisfying moment.

*One of the funniest parts in the first season is when Greg says he's with BLM, and Jennifer Coolidge thinks he's talking about Black Lives Matter.

In other news, S is away for work again this week, and she's not coming back until late Sunday evening (or perhaps early Monday morning). Usually, she comes back Friday evening or Saturday morning, so it's a few extra days of solo-dadding for me. The good news is that it's domestic this time, so she won't be super jet-lagged. Also, Lil' S2's basically lives with his friends' up the street on the weekend -- today they took him to an apple orchard all day -- so it's just Lil' S1. He's pretty easy for the most part, but when he's home for too long, he just nags me for screen time. He didn't have school on Thursday or Friday because of staff days or something like that, so it was a lot of, "Can I watch now? How about in five minutes? Twenty minutes? An hour?"

That kid really needs to get a another hobby, preferably one that doesn't involve sitting on the sofa. He loves to read, which is great, and he loves doing screen time, which is fine, a few hours a day, but he's reluctant to do much else. So, when he's home from school and has 14 hours to kill, and only two or three of that is screen time, it can get to be a problem. For even the most avid readers, 11 hours in a day is tough. He used to make stuff with this 3-D pen, and he was getting pretty good at it, but he said he doesn't like it anymore for some reason.

What I would really like is for him to take up a sport of some sort. It doesn't have to be a team sport or anything competitive, just some sort of physical activity -- anything in which he has to exert himself and burn calories. The only thing he will do is walking and only if I reward him with extra screen time. Actually, this transactional method has been fairly effective -- he walked over a mile and a half almost everyday this week -- but that's only because I was around to walk with him and the weather was nice. There's no way that will continue once my schedule goes back to normal, and it gets too cold for walking. (If it gets too cold, I should say. With global warming, I no longer take that for granted.) 

He just needs something to counteract all the sitting and the garbage eating. Actually, his diet is getting a bit better as he gets older and likes more things. Now, it's Lil' S2 who's the bigger problem there. They both eat way too much junk food though. I've found it's basically impossible for a parent to limit the crap intake and still allow their children to have a normal social life. Even if you don't have it at home, they will just get it at school or a friend's house or buy it with birthday money, and you often can't say no without turning them into the weird kid who can't have cupcakes with the rest of the class, or what have you, and that might not be healthy long-term. I was kinda friends with this Jehovah Witness girl growing up, and she could never celebrate class birthdays, and then when she graduated and went off to college, she got way into partying and drugs and drinking and all sorts of self harm. I'm not saying the former caused the latter, but I'm not not saying it either.

Case in point, on Friday, we went to an ice cream social for this math club Lil' S1 does, and they got two massive servings of ice cream. If it was up to me, I would have given them about a fifth of what they got. But what was I going to do? Not let them get ice cream at the ice cream social? Not let them go at all? It was fun, and they had a blast. Plus, it's math. I, of all people, should encourage that as much as possible. (Lil' S1 once selected me for mathematician of the week, which was really sweet.) So, what to do? Just allow it and hope they don't get diabetes, I guess.

By the way, they are both getting pretty good at math. Lil' S1 tested into the higher level class, and Lil' S2 is like a little calculator. The other day, we were doing this thing where I started him with 1, and then I had him double the number each time: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, etc. I was using a calculator to check the answer, so he could see the number, but he wasn't allowed to use pencil or paper, just his head. He went all the way to 2,147,483,648 before we stopped. That's 2 to the power of 31, and he could have kept going. I really don't think most eight-year-olds could read that number correctly, let alone double it in their head.

Here's a video of him doubling 2 to the power of 25.

Until next time...

Entry 684: Overrated (*Clap, Clap, Clap-Clap-Clap*)

I want to talk about something particular today. It's not the most important thing in the world right now (not by a long shot). It's not the most interesting. It's not the newest. What's more, I don't have any original thoughts on it, no novel insights, whatsoever. But it's something I've been thinking about and wanting to write about for a while. And the other day, I realized the only reason I haven't written about it is because I've been apprehensive about social backlash, and once I realized that, I decide to force myself to write about it. So, here it is...

Taylor Swift is way overrated.

I don't say this to denigrate her as a person or a businesswoman, and I'm not even talking about her place in pop culture, writ large. I have no issue with her being popular and making lots of money. I don't care that so many people seem to have an oddly personal stake in whom she dates, and I don't even mind that you can't watch a prime time football game now without seeing her on-screen more than you see most the players. That stuff is all good by me.

I'm just talking about her music. It's totally mediocre, right? People are just pretending to like it because of social pressure, the same way I pretended to like Poison back in the day. That's the only way all this makes sense to me. I listen to her songs, and I'm like, this is it? This is what everybody is crazy about? I mean, it would be one thing if she was just a normal, of-the-moment pop star, one of those artists with a song you hear thirty years from now and quiz your friend on who sings it and then get nostalgic for that time in your life. But she's so far past that. She's like The Beatles, Madonna, and Garth Brooks rolled into one. I just don't get it.

Now, you might be thinking that I'm not in her demographic, so of course I don't get it. But actually I very much am. Middle-aged white family man is a huge piece of her audience. I have a bunch of dad-friends who started off listening to her with their kids and now are just straight-up fans of hers, and I seemingly can't go a week without hearing a podcast episode or reading an article about a father taking his daughter to a Taylor Swift show (and this is "sports" content I'm talking about). For some reason, guys like me love her, and they love telling everybody that they love her.

You also might be thinking that her style of music just isn't the type I like, personally. But that's not it either, because there are many pop divas I'm a huge fan of. Madonna, I've always loved her music. Gloria Estefan, I mentioned my affinity for her in a previous entry. Whitney Houston might have the best pipes of them all. Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Dua Lipa, Cardi B -- I like all of them. Even the artists I don't really know or am not super into, they have at least one song where I'm like, Actually, this kinda rips. I'll take Ariana Grande's "Into You" or Miley Cyrus' "Flowers" over any Taylor Swift song, and it's not even close.

I started listening to Spotify's "enhanced" version of my playlist when I run. So, it mostly plays songs I selected, but it mixes in some other songs it thinks I might like (which, I must admit, I usually do -- damn you, AI overlords!). Sometimes it gets on a little pop diva run, and almost always I'm like, Hell yeah, turn it up. Then I hear a Taylor Swift song, and halfway through, I skip it. Like I said, I just don't get it.

You want to know what else? I kinda feel the same way about Beyoncé.

And now I'm almost surely getting canceled. Well, at least I didn't say anything negative about BTS.

Until next time...

Entry 683: Just A Rant

FYI: this entire post is a totally pointless rant. I need to get something off my chest, preferably to an audience who couldn't care less and is just humoring me out of politeness, and, for reasons that will become clear later, S, my usual sounding board in such situations, is not an option this time. So, you, dear reader, are up.

Lil' S1 had a field trip a few days ago at a ropes course. I signed the permission slip and paid the fees but didn't think too much about it, until the night before when S told me he has to be at school by 8:10, so she was going to drive him instead of him taking the bus like he usually does. It's a city bus, not a school bus, and like most city buses, it's usually on time but sometimes a little late and occasionally a lot late. He typically gets to school on the bus around 8:00, but once he got there at 8:30, which is fine (first period bell isn't until 8:45), unless you are supposed to be there by 8:10.

The entire thing seemed kinda strange to me. It didn't make sense that they would schedule a field trip so that every student taking the bus (a lot of students) would have to find alternate transportation. So, if it was up to me, I would have just put him on the bus and taken my chances. But if S wants to drive him, fine, no skin off my back -- except that she checks her schedule and realizes she has a conflicting meeting and can't take him and wants me to do it instead.

I really don't want to do it, so I ask Lil' S1 how often the bus is late, and S overhears me and gets annoyed. She says that she will try to rescheduled her meeting, which, in effect, forces me to say that I'll just drive him. I'm thinking ahead to the next morning when she's rushing Lil' S1 out the door, after switching her meeting, and I'm still in bed or chilling, drinking coffee and playing Spelling Bee. That does not sound like a path toward marital bliss to me.

So, the next morning I get up and get ready. It takes about 15 minutes to get to Lil' S1's school when there is no traffic, but there might be traffic, so I check the travel time on my phone and it says 16 minutes -- good. I'm aiming to leave at about 7:40, but I mistime things a bit, and Lil' S1 is a little slow getting ready, and we don't get out the door until about 7:45. That still should be plenty of time, but when we get in the car, I notice a lot of yellow on the Maps app and the estimated travel time is now 24 minutes, making our arrival time 8:09 -- a little close for comfort.

Then, we back out of the drive, turn off our street, and immediately -- I mean immediately -- hit a backup that there's no way out of. There is nothing more infuriating than being stuck in a traffic jam on a residential street, a tenth of a mile from your house. You get this false sense of entitlement, like people should have to let you through: Get off the road, you interlopers! I live here! As we slowly creep along, I'm seeing the arrival time on the Maps app go up like that giant national debt calculator: 8:11, 8:13, 8:16, 8:17, 8:21, 8:25, 8:28...

I'm under the impression that the bus taking the kids to the ropes course is leaving the school at 8:10. I don't know if S or Lil' S1 actually said that, or if I just inferred it, but that's my working assumption. There is no way we are getting there anywhere close to 8:10, so now I'm thinking I might have to drive him to the ropes course myself, which would put me in another time bind, as I have to be in the office for a meeting in a few hours, and the ropes course is not close to his school or my office. I call S, explain we're stuck in traffic, and ask her if it's the same ropes course we've been to a few times for birthdays (it is), but she tells me to just go to school anyway (I am), because -- and this is actually what she says to me:

"You might still beat the (city) bus to school, and I don't think they will leave for the ropes course without all the kids coming to school on the bus."

I'm gobsmacked and blurt out, "That's exactly why I wanted him to take the bus in the first place!" before hanging up in frustration.

We finally make it to school sometime between 8:25 and 8:40. I honestly don't remember exactly when. At some point during the trip, I just stopped looking at the clock, trying to trick myself into being chill -- no use stressing about it now, we'll get there when we get there -- even though that never works. I park illegally because there are no spots in the lot, and we both hop out, frantically trying to figure out if the bus has left yet for the ropes course. We hustle through security (we basically just cut the line) and talk to somebody in the main office, and she's completely nonplussed as to why we're there.

"No," she says, "the bus hasn't left yet. It hasn't even arrived."

"Whew," Lil' S1 exhales, "I was worried I missed it."

"No," she half-chuckles, "you haven't missed anything. School hasn't even started yet."

As we're leaving the office, Lil' S1 happens to see some of his friends, who are going on the trip with him, walking down the hall, so he joins them. I hurry back to my car before it gets towed.

I head out to my office, stewing while I drive, wondering where that 8:10 came from. Clearly, the bus wasn't leaving then -- it wasn't leaving until after school starts (which is what I would have thought in the first place) -- so why did S say he had to be at school by then? At a red light, I pull up an email from one of his teachers about the field trip. It has a list of "important reminders" and one of them is 

• Students should arrive at school by 8:10 am.

So, it doesn't say the bus is leaving at 8:10. But still, WTF?! Why is that there? Why are you instructing kids to get to school 35 minutes before it starts? My working theory is that the teacher has to do a lot of prep before they leave for the trip, and if everybody shows up two minutes before class starts, it's much more difficult to do this. But 35 minutes early?! I just don't understand. Like, if it said, "Students should try to arrive to school by 8:30" then it would make sense to me. As it is, I don't get why 8:10 is the specified time.

And the thing is, when you do something like this, you disincentivize parents from following the instructions, or even reading them, at all. Something similar happened to me somewhat recently with Lil' S2. We wanted to get him a "Kids Ride Free" Metro card, which, according to the school newsletter, were supposed to be available after an open house. So, I went to the open house, waited around until the end, and went to the place where it said to go, and none of the teachers there knew where the cards were, or even that they were supposed to know. I'm admittedly pretty bad about carefully reading messages from the boys' schools, but this is part of the reason why. They are very often either not relevant or not helpful, and sometimes they make things worse. Actually, I just remembered an even better example of a time Lil' S1 did an entire poster board project for something that wasn't actually assigned, because of an erroneous message, but I think you get my point without going into the details there.

Anyway, back to my story, I'm super annoyed the entire drive to my office. I want to take it out on somebody, but there's nobody to really be mad at. I mean, I could be mad at the teacher who said 8:10, but what am I going to do about it -- write an email settling her hash because my son didn't miss the bus but I thought he might? Sure, that's sane behavior. And I could be mad at S for not letting Lil' S1 take the bus to school in the first place, but she was just doing what she thought was best, given the instructions in the email. Also, she could say I should've left earlier (which I should have). Also, also, I kinda already got mad at her on the phone, and I'm hoping she's not sore about that.

So, I try to let it go. But I do need to give S an update on the situation, so I think about what type of text I should send. Do I let on how annoyed I am? Do I rant about 8:10? Do I mention anything about any buses at all? I decide no on all accounts. I'm going to play it zen. I'm just going to let her know Lil' S1 made it, and then not bring it up again.

"All good" I text.

"Good!" she replies.

And that's that.

My wife and I aren't quarreling; my kid made it to his field trip; and I got some material for this blog. So, I guess this story has a happy ending, but it didn't seem like that at the time.

Until next time...

Entry 682: Seven-Year Itch

Actually, for me it's more like the 20-year itch. Once every two decades or so, I break out into hives for unknown reasons. I remember when I was about eight, I went to a banquet for my soccer team and ate a bunch of desserts and woke up the next morning covered in itchy red blotches. They were all over my body and didn't go away for over a week, as I recall.* There's a decent chance they didn't have anything to do with desserts or the banquet, but my parents thought I might be allergic to chocolate, so they didn't let me eat it for a few weeks. Thankfully, that turned out to not be the case, and it's a total mystery what caused them. 

*I remember trying to sooth them with a heating pad. As a kid, I utilized a heating pad somewhat frequently. But I can't ever remember using one in my adult life. I did try to use one once. I bought one for my shoulder, but it didn't actually get hot for some reason, so I threw it away and never bought a new one.

Then, when I was in my twenties, working construction for the summer, I got out of the shower after a long, sweaty day on the job, and again noticed my entire body was covered in hives. They were so multitudinous and uncomfortable that I had a friend take me to the emergency room. The doctor gave me a shot of something that made me super sleepy, so I went to bed early, and when I woke up the hives were gone -- no trace whatsoever. It was like a miracle cure. But again, it was a mystery what caused it. The doctor guessed it was "prickly heat" but admitted he wasn't really sure.

This brings me to a week and half ago. S was out of town on business, so I was sleeping alone, and I kept having this weird dream that wasn't a dream about my chin itching. After I woke up, I figured it was just a bug bite and didn't think about, but it didn't go away, and then I noticed in the mirror that I had a mini breakout on my left eye and temple and neck and presumably the back of the my head which was itching like mad. So, I went to the doctor, who unsurprisingly couldn't say what caused it, but he prescribed me a steroid.

But it still didn't go away. I took the entire does of the steroid over the course of a week, and the next morning I woke up with the back of my head feeling like it was on fire. I went back to the doctor at S's behest (she was back), but I wish I hadn't. It was a total waste of time and money. Somebody different saw me this time, and she was "just" a nurse practitioner. Normally, I wouldn't care about such labels that much, but it really did seem like she wasn't very good.  At one point, while I was describing my symptoms, she said, "now, you're making me feel itchy," which is funny in retrospect, but seemed pretty unprofessional at the time. It's like something Dr. Spaceman on 30 Rock would say. (Remember that show? I gotta go back and watch some of those old episodes. I remember it being hilarious.)

Eventually, she prescribed me some antifungal pills, but when she left for a moment I googled the condition she put on the scrip, and it was obvious I didn't have it. The symptoms looked nothing like mine, and I could tell she wasn't very confident in her diagnosis. When she came back I said, "I'm probably not going to take the medication for a few days and hope it clears up on it's own." And she replied, "Yeah, that's probably a good idea." The visit cost me almost $100 in copay, and that's not counting the copay from the first visit -- such a waste.

I didn't take the medication and eventually it did clear up on it's own. I think. There's still something funky going on with my eye -- it was kinda swollen this morning -- but I think it's unrelated. I'm just getting old is the bottom line. I also hurt my hamstring about a month ago -- the tiniest of tweaks, something that wouldn't have kept me out for more than a day or two ten years ago -- and it's just now starting to feel normal again.

Well, the timing was good, at least. I didn't really want to go to the gym with a splotchy face, anyway (although it wasn't super noticeable if I wore glasses). I guess if you're going to get hives, might as well be while you are nursing a sore hamstring. It's just like that old adage about killing two maladies with one rest period.

Until next time...