Entry 762: When Are Things The Best? Part I

I was listening to a movie podcast the other day, and the hosts were discussing the 1982 cult classic Fast Times at Ridgemont High. It's very much a movie of a time. If you are Gen-X, like me, it probably means something to you; if you aren't, it probably doesn't. One of the hosts was saying that the main reason this film resonates so much with people of my generation is because it's the perfect movie -- it has the right mix of  pathos, humor, and sex* -- to implant itself in the psyche of a young teenager, and, in general, movies are at their best when you are a young teenager. I think he's mostly right about this -- I saw Fast Times at age 13 at an older kid's house, and it kinda blew my mind -- but I have a quibble in that I don't think movies, in general, are at their best as a young teenager.

*In terms of both timeline and content, Fast Times at Ridgemont High is almost exactly between the campy, raunchy comedies of the late-70s/early-80s like Animal House and Porkies and the more "realistic", sentimental John Hughes teen movies of the mid-80s.  

When are movies at their best? Keep reading, and you will find out, as this question got me thinking not just about when movies are their best, but when all sorts of things are at their best. I break it all down in this post.

Movies: Late teens

Movies are excellent when you are a young teen, but I think they are even better when you are an older teen. At that age, you haven't yet become jaded by the realities of life -- you still have the capacity to fully ingest the magic and awe of film -- but you are old enough to appreciate more interesting concepts and themes that would go over your head (or terrify and traumatize you) as a younger person. My personal apex movie moment was seeing Pulp Fiction in the theater at age 17. I knew nothing about it or the director. I had no idea what I was sitting down for, but I was hooked from the get-go. In my memory, I watched the entire thing with my jaw on the floor and my eyes bulging out of my head like a cartoon character. I didn't blink for two and a half hours. I've never been more rapt in wonderment in my entire life.

Then I had almost the exact same experience two weeks later when I saw Trainspotting. Now, in actuality, Trainspotting did not come until 1996, so it was more like two years later, but in my mind's eye I saw these movies almost back-to-back. That's the hold they took on me -- they completely warped my sense of spacetime.

As an aside, allow me a moment to lament the current state of in-theater cinema. Going to the movies just isn't what it used to be, not only because I'm not 17 anymore, but also, and primarily, because the films that play in theaters just aren't that good now. I would say I'm superhero movied out, but that would imply I was ever in on superhero movies in the first place. I've heard Thunderbolts is really, actually -- no, seriously -- quite good, and I still have absolutely no desire to watch it. Since we moved back to DC in 2011, I can probably list the number of movies I truly enjoyed watching in the theater on one hand.*

*Off the top of my head: Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, The Shape of Water, Gravity, and I'll throw in a replay of Avatar in 3-D I-Max (but not Avatar: The Way of Water, which I didn't like that much). That's literally all I got -- three movies and a throw-in.

Music: Early teens

You could pick any age between 14 and 29, and I wouldn't argue with you. After that your tastes mostly calcify, and you find yourself mostly wanting to listen to the same thing over and over again, instead of exploring new music. But I went with early teens because that's when the nostalgia hits me the hardest. I heard Superman by REM the other day and damn near burst into tears. I don't even particularly like that song -- I mean, it's fine but nothing special -- but I did like it in junior high, and so it still really moves me thirty-five years later. This happens frequently -- if I chance upon a song I listened to between 1991 and 1994, I'm all in, regardless of how good or bad it is.   

Also, early teens is when your music most defines you. When I was that age CDs were emerging as the dominant musical medium, and they came in those long cardboard boxes, so I would collect them and decorate my school binder with them. I would rotate the band on the front -- Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Inxs -- depending on my mood and tastes at that particular moment, and I had Jimi Hendrix permanently on the back. My message to the world: I love alternative rock, and I am not a racist.

TV: Late twenties

This one is largely a function of when TV was at its best, in general. In my opinion, this was in the mid-twenty-aughts, and in the mid-twenty-aughts, I was in my late twenties, so TV-watching was the best for me in my late twenties. There are undoubtedly more good TV shows available now than at any other time in TV history, but the experience of watching TV is notably worse now than it was twenty years ago.

In fact, part of the problem is that there is too much on TV now. There is paralysis by analysis -- The Last of Us, The Pit, The Bear, Poker Face, Landman, Running Point, The Studio, Your Friends and Neighbors, The Rehearsal, Severance, The Agency -- these are all shows with new(ish) seasons out that I've heard are worth watching. And then even when I pick a show, there is the "online dating problem", where if it's not bad but doesn't rock my world immediately, I become overwhelmed with the feeling that there is something better out there for me, and I'm wasting my valuable time and energy with this not-as-good-as-something-else show, and that sentiment can totally ruin the viewing experience. As a result, I usually end up just watching sports or doing something else entirely.

I miss the days when when I could mostly keep up with the great TV shows just by watching an episode or two a night. Early Netflix, when they sent you DVDs in the mail, represents the peak of TV-watching for me. I only had one service, and with that and all the stuff I already had on disc (my brother-in-law used to check stuff out from the library and copy it), I was able to rip through almost all the great TV shows of the day -- The Sopranos, Sex & the City, Freaks and Geeks, The Office, Six Feet Under, The Wire, Arrested Development, Curb, etc. -- in short order.

And there was something ineffably wonderful about getting the physical discs in the mail. I would go into campus and teach all day or work on my dissertation, and then come home to a mailbox filled with the latest episodes of whatever great show I was engrossed in at the moment as my reward. With the two disc plan, the timing worked out perfectly too. I would watch one disc while the other was out, and by the time I was done, the other had arrived with the next batch of episodes. Well, the timing was almost perfect -- Sundays always threw off my rhythm. No mail that day.

Alright, I can see I have more to say on this topic than expected, so I'm taking this to a Part II. Why not? It's a holiday weekend. Let's go nuts.

Until next time...

Entry 761: Too Much

I sneezed this morning and pulled a muscle in my back and could not be more annoyed about it. It's not terrible, but it's definitely going to prevent me from doing my S & C class* on Monday, which really sucks, because I was finally ready to attend full-time again, now that my finger is on the mend. But no. I sneezed and felt a sharp pain shoot through my body, emanating from my left lat, and I knew instantly what was going on, because it's happened before. Goddammit, that's me out for at least four days.Then I had to go sit in bleachers with no back support for two hours, which certainly didn't help.

*That's strength and conditioning, to those of us who do S & C classes. 

It's just been that type of week -- one disruption after another. I just want things to get back to normal (even though there really is no such thing). For starters, work has been uncharacteristically busy, as we are trying to get a product out to market ASAP, and a lot of the bug-fixing falls on me and my team. Then I had three appointments for my finger (two therapy sessions, one follow-up with the orthopedist), and although it has gotten much better, it's still not 100%, and the doctor recommends at least another month of occupational therapy. Then I got a cold, and then I hurt my back because I sneezed because I have a cold. On the plus side, we had family plans during Lil' S2's baseball game this morning, so I didn't have to fight him on it.

The in-laws were here this week, which, let's just say, doesn't not add to the unsettledness. It used to be a big help having them come in, because they could aid in childcare. But as everybody, children and adults alike, have gotten older, that's less and less the case. The kids are faster and the grandparents are slower, and it's to the point where S doesn't like leaving her father alone with the boys, because she's worried about him. He's really getting frail. He has the physique of Montgomery Burns. We have an electronic deadbolt on our front door, and he can't press the buttons on the keypad hard enough to enter the code. He'll tap it in, but the lock will only register like two of the four numbers, and then it'll time out, and he'll get frustrated and start cursing it in Kannada. Toward the end of the trip, he wouldn't even bother with it. He would just wait on the porch until somebody let him in.

And I say all this with love. Dude is getting old. That's just how it goes. It's going to happen to all of us (probably). So, we might as well have fun with it while we can. If my kids aren't poking fun at me when I'm that age, I'll be disappointed... or dead already.

They left this morning. My sister-in-law gave them a ride to the airport, while the four of us (me, S, and the boys) went to S's graduation. She's been taking night classes for the past few years and just earned a master's in legal studies. It's pretty impressive, and she wanted to do the whole cap-and-gown thing, so we all went. It was cool, but the fateful sneeze occurred immediately before entering the auditorium, and we got there just as the last of the good seats were being taken, so we had to sit in the backless bleachers. We picked a spot at the very top, so that I could lean against the back railing, but it wasn't at all comfortable. And of course Lil' S2's iPad died within five minutes of being there, because he's terrible about charging it, so he was bored out of his gourd pretty much from the get-go.

But we made it through. There was a lot of pomp -- pomp and circumstance, as it were -- but we got that sweet payoff of hearing somebody you don't know say a loved one's name and then watching them walk across the stage, while you squint and say, "I think that's them right there... no, no, the one next to that one." Afterward, Lil' S1 said, "We waited for two hours for something that was over in a minute. That was worse than a track meet!" And Lil' S2 said, "It wasn't even a minute. It was, like, five seconds." He's right too. If you started the clock from the moment S came onto the stage and stopped it the moment she left, it would have been very close to five seconds.

After this past week, I would love a nice, chill normal night at home, but that's not happening. S wanted to celebrate (she also had a birthday recently), so she invited our friends over for pizza and cake, and then their kids are staying the night. It's a great idea… for a different weekend. I so don't feel like hosting anything, and I feel like chaperoning a slumber party even less. And that always falls on me, as S is zonked out by like 8:30. But I'll keep my opinion to myself on this one (other than putting it on this blog -- don't say anything). Unless I'm going to cancel everything, which I'm definitely not going to do, there's not much to be gained by saying something. It will only irritate S, and then I'll have a salty wife on top of everything else. That would just be cutting off my nose to spite my face -- at least I think that's what it would be. I have to admit, I've never really understood that idiom.

Until next time...

Entry 760: Kids Sports II

The woes with kids sports continue this weekend. This time it's Lil' S2. He's signed up for baseball, and every time he has a game, it's a death-battle of the wills to get him to go. Weirdly, he'll go to the practices (somewhat) willingly, but he hates the games. Actually, he hates going to the games. Once he gets there, I see him interacting with the other kids and having fun, and sometimes, if we catch him in the right mood, he will admit after the fact that he had a good time. But I've come to dread game-day morning because I know it's going to be a knock-down drag-out fight to get him to participate.

I so regret signing him up for baseball in the first place. He never asked to play, but I wanted him to try a sport other than football, and a bunch of his friends play, so I asked him if he'd be willing to try it, and he said yes, even though he now says he never said that (more on that below). And the problems began when he didn't get a spot on the team with most his friends. He got put on a different team with one of his friends and one other kid from school he's friendly with. Then he got moved off that team onto a different team with nobody he knows.

I knew that that wouldn't do, so I contacted the commissioner of the league and requested that Lil' S2 be moved to a team where he at least has a few friends on it. The commissioner kinda dragged his feet on the whole thing, so I asked for a refund for league dues. The commissioner was cool about it and said I could have a refund, but that he would move Lil' S2 back to the team with his one friend if we wanted to stay in the league. I think part of the reason he did this is because I mentioned everything to the dad I coach flag football with, and this dad, who is a bigwig in this baseball league, probably said something to the commissioner on my and Lil' S2's behalf. I immediately wished I hadn't said anything to the dad, as I think he felt compelled to say something to the commissioner, even though that was never my intent -- I only reached out to him to get the commissioner's contact info. I even told him straight-up that I didn't want to put him in the middle of it, and that he didn't need to do anything about it, but I'm pretty sure he did anyway.

Regardless, at this point, a refund was still on the table. So, I went to Lil' S2, explained the situation, and asked him again if he wanted to try baseball, and again he said yes. I signed him up, and then, of course, when the season starts, he says he doesn't want to play and that he never agreed to it in the first place. This is an ongoing issue with him. He does this with many things, big and small -- baseball, guitar lessons, Mathnasium, getting a hair cut, taking a shower, etc. It drives S and I crazy. It's gotten to the point where S will record him agreeing to something, so that we can prove to him that he actually said yes. Not that it matters. He's a nine-year-old without a fully formed prefrontal cortex, not a Superior Court justice.

It has gotten to be a huge problem, though, because it makes it so hard to sign him up for anything, and it frequently puts us at odds with him, which also sucks. (Although the flip side of being nine is that you snap out of bad moods just as easily as you snap into them.) I'm definitely not going to sign him up for baseball again, but we still have this season to get through, and letting him quit would a) set a bad precedent; b) put us out the league dues (yes, I know, this is the sunk cost fallacy, but still); c) make me look kinda silly, given all the finagling I did to get him on this team. So, I'm trying to tough it out -- we've got, like, two games and four practices to go. I got him to agree to go to the game today through a combination of bribery and guilt-tripping, but we still have three hours until game time, so... who knows?

The ironic thing is that he recently started playing pick-up baseball after school everyday with his buddies. I asked him why he like playing baseball then, when he hates being on a team. He said it's because after school you get to pitch and hit and play a lot, whereas on the team you mainly just stand around the whole time. And I gotta say, this is a totally fair point. I love baseball, as much as I love any activity, but I concede, it can be very boring at times, especially if you're a Little League participant who doesn't play one of the few premium Little League positions (pitcher, first base, shortstop). I completely understand why a kid wouldn't want to spend two hours standing in right field or sitting on the bench just to get two at bats and maybe field a ball or two. The people who say baseball is ill-suited for today's youth are probably right.

To be honest, I don't think I loved playing organized baseball either. I mean, I must have liked it, because I willingly did it for many years, but when I think about the reasons I like baseball so much today, very few of them involve structured league games in which I played. The things I like most about baseball are the history, the bond with other fans, the numbers, the trivia. When it comes to playing, I had way more fun playing Wiffle Ball or pickup beer-league softball than I did playing anything official. So, it doesn't bother me in the least that Lil' S2 doesn't like playing organized baseball -- or rather it won't bother me a month from now when this godforsaken season is finally over.

Until next time...

Entry 759: Kids Sports

Since Lil' S1 has been at his new school, we have been strongly encouraging (i.e., forcing) him to play a sport each semester. His outside interests -- books, video games, TV, D&D -- are all very sedentary activities, and a kid his age (a person of any age, really) needs to move. First semester he was on the swim team, which worked out quite well. Practices were at a pool very close to campus, and several of the meets were at a school a walkable distance from our house. It was usually SRO, because their pool bleacher area is so small, but that's not that annoying when it only takes two minutes to get there.

This semester he picked track and field from a rather unappealing (to him) list. As the start of the season got closer, however, he began really dreading the idea of doing the sport, to the point that S and I were wondering if we should let him off the hook and try a new exercise strategy. But we told him he only had to try it for two weeks, and then if he didn't like it, he could quit. And for the first week and a half of the season, he was counting down the hours until that two weeks was up, and then somehow, miraculously, when the time actually came, he decided to stick with it. There were two big things I think that swayed his decision: 1) He could do the throwing events (shot put and discus), which meant a lot less running; 2) I told him that as long as he does track I would let him listen to his headphones in the car when I was driving him to and from school instead of making him talk to me like I did before. That last one might sound silly, but I honestly think that it mattered.

So, he's in the midst of his season right now, and I gotta say, track and field is a rough sport for parents. The meets are in the middle of nowhere (most schools in the District don't have their own tracks); they are at least three hours long (often longer); unless your kid is a distance runner they're only actually doing their sport for like two minutes; and you have no idea in advance at what time exactly they will compete. I went to Lil' S1's meet on Monday. I arrived at 4:00 pm (driving through rush-hour traffic to get there), watched him sit around for a few hours and then throw a discus three times, and then left at 7:15 pm. Also, the stands were packed-full with the athletes, so I just stood the entire time in the blazing sun. Thankfully, I thought to bring sunscreen, and I saw this woman I used to know from Lil' S1's daycare days, so we chatted most the time (her daughter runs for a different school). Without that chance encounter it would have been so boring. I saw other parents sitting on the grass away from the action with their laptops and thought to myself, Ah, that's how you do it.

It also doesn't help that my son isn't exactly Al Oerter. If he doesn't finish dead last, I consider it a success. He probably could get decent. The throwing events are enough of a niche thing (he's the only middle-schooler at his school who does it) that I think you could be reasonably successful just through a little bit of extra practice and strength training. But I don't think he cares enough to do that. He likes throwing enough to do the bare minimum, but actually trying to get good might be a bridge too far. His favorite part of the season seems to be using an old chocolate syrup bottle as his water bottle. That's the type of kid he is. (It is pretty funny, though.)

He had another meet on Wednesday, which I missed because I had to go into the office that day, and S got it even worse than me. The event was further away, she had Lil's S2 in tow, and the throwers went first this time, so by the time she got there, he was already done. She drove an hour and a half just to give him a ride home.

Well, one silver-lining of Lil' S1 not being very good is that at least I don't have to worry about him getting on a serious travel team or anything like that. Doing this a few times every spring is barely tolerable. Doing it almost every weekend year round.... yeah, no. That's why whenever I hear those stories about the overbearing sports dad like Earl Woods or Marv Marinovich part of me is like, Well, you do kinda gotta appreciate the commitment to their kid. I'm way too selfish with my free time to force my child to do a hundred chip shots every day or wake up at 5:00 am and drive behind him in the car while he runs. Just coaching Lil' S2's rec league flag football team is more than enough for me.

Speaking of which, they lost their first game of the season today. It was a heartbreaker. We fell down 13-0 early and battled back to get it to down one, 26-25, and we had the ball on the five-yard line with six seconds left. Alas, incomplete pass and we lost. I was legitimately gutted for like an hour after the game. All the other parents and kids were getting ice cream and joking around, and I was just sitting there, despondent. It's completely because I'm the coach. I feel like I let everybody else down. It's silly. Nobody actually cares. It's fourth grade flag football, after all. And I know this, but I can't make myself feel differently. The best I can do is try not to let on about it, so that people don't think I'm a complete weirdo, and then write about it cathartically on this blog.

Alright, gotta go. Until next time...