Entry 737: Valley Girl

I'm experiencing a dilemma at the moment. It's an ongoing dilemma with this blog, and one I've mentioned before. One purpose -- arguably the main purpose -- of this blog is to record what I'm thinking about and feeling at a given moment in my life -- the good, the bad, and the ugly. The problem is that in recent years I've found myself much less inclined to write about the bad and the ugly than I was back in the day. There is already so much of that in the culture -- and it's unlikely to get better anytime soon, given the results of the election -- that I don't want to think about it during my "wind-down" time, and I pretty much only write this blog during my wind-down time. Actually, maybe that's the difference. I used to be able to find moments during the daytime to write, but now, as the kids have gotten older and their activities have taken over more of S and my schedules, I pretty much can only write at night, and that's exactly when I don't want to think about negative shit. Remember my mullet strategy for content consumption: business in the morning, entertainment at night. It's the best way for me to stay informed while also staying sane.

All this is to say, I want to put down my thoughts on the election without actually writing about the election. The compromise I've come up with is to outsource it -- or more accurately to glom on to somebody else's writing about the election that I mostly agree with. There are dozens of "What Went Wrong" pieces out there, and I've undoubtedly consumed more than my fair share of them, but the one that most resonated with me was this one by Sam Harris.

The post is lengthy, but I like it because I broadly agree with his criticisms of both parties. It’s very screed-y, but it’s a screed against both sides, with the Trump side deservedly getting the worst of it. The tl;dr version is that Democrats completely lost their way by putting identity politics over policy (and, perhaps more importantly, messaging) that addresses the concerns people actually have. Although Kamala recognized this, and notably did not run an identity-based campaign, it was too little too late (and she really struggled to explain her past unpopular lefty positions). With that said, she still was the best choice -- the only choice, really -- for people who don't wish to see our country slowly slide into something other than a democracy. That's a point I always want to make: As ineffectual and pious and intolerant as lefty Dems have become, they are still far preferable to a Republican party ruled by Trump. One side concedes elections and believes in the peaceful transfer of power; the other doesn't. You don't need to know much more than that.

One area where I think Harris gets it a bit wrong, however, is that he underplays the role of inflation in the election, in my opinion. It could be none of this identity-politics stuff would have mattered a lick if inflation would not have skyrocketed over the past few years. Covid played a huge part in sweeping Trump out of office; the aftershocks of it brought him back. It could just be as simple as that. The irony is that the US economy on the whole is doing okay right now -- much better than in other countries. So, maybe we need to modify James Carville's famous maxim: it's not It's the economy, stupid; it's It's prices, stupid.

People feel higher prices viscerally, and they don't like them. I know this because I often feel them that way too. I bought a box of Honey Bunches of Oats the other day, and it was $6.99, and my initial impulse was WTF?!, and it's not like I then thought, Well, yeah, but unemployment is low and most people's 401ks are doing well. No, I just thought, That's too expensive -- it should be half that. People have sticker shock -- they've had it the past few years -- and they're punishing parties in charge all over the world because of it. The US, unfortunately, is no exception.

Okay, a few other things before I call it a post...

• I'm reading Moon Unit Zappa's memoir Earth to Moon, and it's getting pretty good. There's actually a tie-in with what I wrote above, as Moon was high school classmates with Sam Harris (and she kinda had a crush on him). The book starts out really slow. The first third of it or so is about her early childhood, and it's like, C'mon, get to the part where you're going on Letterman saying "gag me with a spoon" or Michael J. Fox is setting you up with Woody Harrelson. There are not even many good Frank Zappa stories in it because she didn't know him very well. He was basically an absentee father. He was very often touring, and when he was home, he would sleep all day and work all night, rarely interacting with his children. He only recorded "Valley Girl" with Moon because she put a note under his door saying she wanted to work on something with him, and then he was kinda resentful that it was his biggest commercial hit. I do like the song, though (Moon is the best part).
  
  
• The boys and I watched the Mike Tyson / Jack Paul fight last night, even though it didn't start until after midnight for us. The fight itself was very meh -- turns out a 58-year-old wobbling around a ring for 16 minutes doesn't make for exciting television -- but some of the early fights were exciting, and it was fun to stay up. We were all dying when Tyson's bare butt cheeks made an appearance on the program. (I can't find a good clip to link to, but you can Google it, if you like.) The stream, however, was super glitchy. I constantly had to leave and reenter, and it would take a good ten seconds (or more) to buffer again every time I did. Netflix needs to step up its game if they are going to be a major player in the live content world. They tried to do a live Love is Blind reunion a few seasons ago, and it was an utter failure, and now this shoddy offering. They are doing a Christmas day football game, which I will almost certainly watch, so hopefully they get things worked out by then.
  
  
• Lil' S2 is having his friend JP stay the night, and they broke one of our TVs. It was an accident, and they weren't really being irresponsible -- they were building a little fort, and one of the blankets they were using pulled the TV off its table and onto the floor -- so we weren't that mad about it. But, it was the TV with the PlayStation hooked up to it, so now they don't have video games. So, instead they are playing a fantasy game with Lil' S1. He is, in effect, the dungeon master, and he's leading them through a quest in which football players are the characters -- like NFL players, like Nick Chubb and DK Metcalf. It's kinda adorable. I'm not glad they broke the TV, but I am glad they can't play video games tonight.
  

Until next time...

Entry 736: A Post That Is Only A Little Bit About The Election

Well, the election did not go the way I wanted -- not at all. Don't worry, I'm not going to write much about it here -- not now, anyway. I will at some point, just to get my thoughts down, but we don't need the millionth-and-first "What Went Wrong" blog post of the week. I'm much less despondent than I was eight years ago, so that's good, I guess. I'm not sure why that is, though. Maybe it's because I was ready for it this time. I didn't know for sure that he would win, but it certainly felt more probable than not. This is a stark difference from 2016, when it seemed completely unimaginable to me that he'd actually win... until he did.

I also have a different mindset this time around. The first time I was in a full-on resistance mindset. It seemed to me the best approach was to oppose Trump at every turn. But that proved counterproductive, so now I'm in much more of a ride-it-out mode -- take the L, get on with my life, find joy where I can, and hope my worst fears don't come true. That's the plan. I mean, he can't run again (...hopefully), and although I've heard it said many times by many smart people that there will still be Trumpism after Trump, I'm not sure that it's actually true. You've got Republicans who have a type of right-wing charisma (JD Vance); you've got crazies (Marjorie Taylor Greene); and you've got celebrities. But I don't see anybody out there with the right charisma-crazy-celebrity mix to replace Trump when he's gone. I'm eager to put the "Trumpism without Trump" theory to a test, anyway. 

Another reason that I might be taking it better this time around is because my parents happened to be visiting last week. It's hard to be bummed out when you are around family you love and don't get to see all that often. It was a great visit. They are slowing down, to be sure, but they are still in pretty good health, and most importantly, they still have their wits about them. I have many friends whose folks are in much worse shape or not around at all, so I feel pretty lucky in that regard. It was a lot of fun to see my parents interact with my boys. My dad and Lil' S1 did a lot of cooking/baking together, which was really sweet.

In other news, we finally finished watching The Office as a family -- all nine seasons. The last two, the ones without Michael, were a bit of a slog, but we got through them. Actually, some of Season 8, with Robert California, is legit funny, just because James Spader is such a good actor, but the final season is flat out bad. The stretch where Nellie is the manager and the focal point of the episodes is particularly painful to watch. The series ends decently, but that's only because they completely cater to viewers' nostalgia of the early seasons when the show was actually good. It's a smart move, but you can only really do it for an episode or two.

One thing that struck me during this months-long rewatch is the sheer number of episodes there are of The Office -- nine seasons, about 20-25 episodes a season, that's over 200 episodes. (In fact, there were 201.) I know that that's how most TV shows, especially sitcoms, were way back in the day (2005), but it seems so weird now. With that many episodes, there are bound to be some duds. Upon second viewing, you really notice the we gotta run something shows. They are the worst episodes, and, for some reason, they often involve the characters committing crimes--Michael framing Toby by putting pot in his desk (which was actually Caprese salad); Angela hiring a hit man to maim Oscar for having an affair with her husband; Dwight shooting Stanley with a dart filled with bull tranquilizer. There were more than a few "jump the shark" moments throughout the series.

On the whole, though, great show -- possibly one of my ten favorites of all time. If I ever finish my "Top 100 TV Shows" list, we will know for sure. I don't know if I'll do that, though. I sometimes start things on this blog and then peter out and don't finish them properly.

Speaking of which... Until next time...

  

Entry 735: Indian Wells Wedding

The wedding I mentioned in my last entry came and went. S and I were in attendance, and it was great. The entire trip was great. All the anxiety I felt about leaving the kids instantly melted when the plane touched down in Palm Springs. It was out of sight, out of mind, to be honest. Of course, we checked in on them from time to time, but I didn't worry about them once. My sister-in-law assured me that she had everything under control, and I took her at her word. I mean, it was only five days. And the kids probably would have extended it a bit longer if they could have. Auntie is much more lenient with the screen time and junk food than are the parents.

I went into the trip with the mindset that I was ready to do as much or as little as need be. I figured S would have some girl things to do -- makeup and hair and whatnot -- and she also might get tasked with some last minute logistical issues, being a close friend of the bride, so I might get left on my own or asked to help with said tasks. I was ready to go either way, and I got a mix of each.

Thursday night and Friday morning were the work shifts. E (the bride) wanted to print out a little Polaroid picture of every guest with their table number and dinner order, and then put them in little stands, and then that would be how people would know the seating arrangement. It's a very cool idea, giving people little mementos of the evening (most the pictures were of fun times with E and/or her husband; mine was from when we met up in Tacoma), but it's a lot of work and something that should be done a week and a half, not a day and a half, before the actual wedding. But there was some issue getting the right printer -- one that is compatible with a certain iPhone photo app -- so it got put off to the last moment. And so it got pushed onto E's (and S's) good friend M, and since M was staying in an Airbnb with us, that meant it also got pushed onto us. We put in a good, I'll say, seven hours on it, but we got it done.

It was kinda fun, actually. Well, not fun but satisfying. We had our system down. S and M were doing the hard work, labeling and printing the photos in the app and then sending them to the printer. I was retrieving them, affixing the food sticker (cow, fish, or carrot*), quality-checking them, and sorting them into envelops. In the struggle to get the right printer, we ended up with two printers, and that turned out to be a godsend, as we wouldn't have finished with just one. The main issue is that the battery would run down after a few prints, and it used more juice than the power cable could provide, so even keeping it plugged in all the time didn't work. We would have to print a few, wait a few minutes, print a few more, wait a few more minutes, and so on. Being that there were 170 photos, you can see why it took so long.

*S accidentally put me down for vegetarian, and I was super disappointed, until I realized that I could put any sticker I wanted on my photo, so I put on a beef sticker. I was some sort of brisket, and it was delicious.

The only "mistake" we made is that we organized them by table, but we should have put them in alphabetical order. At the reception, all the photos were put in little stands and placed on a big table at the front of the venue. So, when a guest would come in, they would find their picture and know what dinner table they were at, and then they would put the photo by their dinner plate so the servers knew what meal to serve. But since the photos were organized on the big table by dinner table, guests didn't know where to look for their picture, because they didn't know what dinner table they were at (because that was the entire point of the photos in the first place). If instead the photos would have been sorted on the big table alphabetically, it would have been perfect. But I put that on the wedding planner, not on us. We didn't know the exact system, and we didn't set up the photos on the big table. We printed them up and handed them over. It's out of our hands after that.  

Oh geez, it's 10:30 pm already on a work night (Halloween, and my sister's birthday, as it were), and I've only made it through like a fifth of the trip. I'm gonna have to go lightning round for the rest of it.

• The wedding and reception were wonderful. E is first generation Mexican-American, and her husband was born and raised in Iran, so it was an interesting mix of cultures. They had two ceremonies -- one traditional Catholic and one Persian.
  
  
• There was more dancing at the reception than at any wedding reception I've ever attended, including my own wedding, and we had a lot of dancing at my wedding. It was super fun, but I couldn't keep up. Also, if I'm being totally honest, I didn't love the music. I wanted more jams, and there were some (a good dose of Michael Jackson), but it was mostly Latino music (one side of the aisle would mob the floor) or Persian music (the other side of the aisle would mob the floor). Basically, I wanted more music I knew, which is a lot to ask, being that of the 170 people who attended the wedding, I was probably, like, 150th in importance.
  
  
• After the wedding, S wanted fries, so we went to In-N-Out burger at 12:30 in the morning, and I got a burger and a milkshake. Neither one was that great, to be honest, but it was still fun.
  
  
• On the flight home, I watch a movie called Snack Shack, which I found absolutely delightful. I was expecting a straightforward goofy teen comedy (a la Booksmart, one of my favorites), but it was a bit more heartfelt than that. I'm a sucker for teen stories set in the '90s (Derry Girls) because that's when I was teenager, and I'm a sucker for movies in which young dudes call each other pussies and bitches, but love and stand up for one another when the chips are down (Stand By Me), and Snack Shack falls into the intersection of the sets of such movies, so it's no wonder I liked it.
  
  
• I also watched the documentary Jim and Andy: The Great Beyond. It was weird but worth a watch.
  
  
• Some pics of the greater La Quinta/Indian Wells/Coachella/Palm Springs area, and then I'm out.

 Until next time...

Entry 734: Old Man Strength

Just finished up a 2-V-1* football game. That's when Lil' S2 and his friend JP beat up on me in our basement in the guise of a football game. It's basically just a brawl, and for the most part, I let them win, but every fifth play or so, I'll put them in their place, just to make it interesting, and just to remind them, you're not there yet, kid. You can't beat the old man just yet. Although, "yet" really is the operative word. They are only getting bigger, faster, stronger; and I'm, well, not. It's only a matter of time before our graphs cross--certainly within the next decade.

*This reminds me of a joke from The Onion, in which Thomas Pynchon was suing the makers of a 1983 sci-fi miniseries for the fifth time: V.-V.-V-V.

It's tough to say exactly when, however, because aging is not linear. People typically get older in bursts, not at a constant rate. One of those bursts is usually around 44, and now that I'm 47, I can say that that definitely happened for me. I feel so much older than I did just a few years ago. My body is more achy and recovery takes longer (if it happens at all); I'm slower and less mobile; I have less vim; and physical activity that was once really enjoyable has lost a lot of its appeal. With Lil' S2 and his friend, I've got about 15 minutes in me before I have to call it (okay, next touchdown wins). And I used to love my weekly wrestling class, but now I'm like, Uh... I think I'll do some weight training instead. Rolling around on a mat in physical combat against somebody who's likely to be 15 years my junior doesn't sound like a fun way to spend my time anymore. I can still hold my own, mind you, but the thrill is mostly gone.

One positive byproduct of this, however, is that I'm stronger -- in terms of sheer power -- than I've ever been in my entire life. Lifting weights is a great exercise for late 40s/early 50s people because you can go at your own pace, modify as needed, and keep up with the youngsters. Brute-force lifting ability is usually one of the last things to go. Old man strength is real! I might not be able to sprint 25 yards without blowing out my hamstring, but I can do a 5x5 bench-press workout with 185 pounds without needing a spot.

There are, however, limits to this. Father time is undefeated, as the saying goes. There is a guy at my gym, who I'd peg as early to mid-60s, and he's weak as shit.* I know this because I sometimes lift with him, and he says to me, "I'm weak as shit." He's clearly embarrassed by it, but he shouldn't be. He should be proud that he's still trying at his age. He does this thing that men do sometimes: He uses weights that are clearly too heavy for him because he doesn't want everybody to see him using lighter weights.** But this is incredibly silly, because, it's not like he's just telling people how much he can lift, he's actually doing it, so when he goes too heavy everybody can see that. Failing to press the 15-pound dumbbells is actually less impressive than successfully pressing the 10-pound dumbbells.  

*He reminds of my father-in-law. They both have brown skin, wispy, thinning hair, thick glasses, and are built like a chopstick.

**I've never once seen a woman do this. It's definitely a male ego thing. The instructor made the old man use lighter weights, and he said to me, "Aw, man, I feel like even more of a punk now."

It's also incredibly silly because he's clearly well past his prime, and because nobody cares how much you can lift, anyway. In fact, one of the keys to making progress in weightlifting is being honest with yourself and using weights that you can actually lift properly. If you go too heavy, you can't get the full range of motion nor can you do as many reps as you should, so it's very inefficient. Plus, if you stick with it, you won't be on the light weights forever. Even a mid-60s man who's weak as shit could get stronger. I mean, he's probably not going to go from 10s to 65s (which is what I do for dumbbell press -- no big deal), but he could go from 10s to like 25s.

In other news, this will likely be my last post for a few weeks because S and I are heading out of town for a wedding soon. Her very good friend E is getting married, and it's one of those events of which I want the experience of doing it without actually doing it, if that makes sense. I love E (platonically speaking), but her wedding is occurring at a very inconvenient moment in spacetime for me. It's in Palm Springs, which I've been to almost every year for the past decade, and it's one of the more annoying places in the contiguous United States to get to from DC. I mean, we have three major airports within an hour of our house -- how do none of them have a direct flight? And I always seem to have problems with the connecting flights.

Also, we are currently in the middle of the school year, so we have to do something with the kids. (S's sister has graciously agreed to stay at our house with them.) And, with the election around the corner, it's a time of high anxiety, in general, and there are few things better (worse?) than travel to heighten preexisting anxiety to barely tolerable levels. It definitely doesn't help that S and I will be on the same plane without our children, something that always makes me a uneasy, even though it's completely irrational on several levels. For one thing, I feel completely comfortable driving long distances with S without the kids, and you are much more likely to die in a car crash than a plane crash. For another, I feel comfortable when we fly together as a family, but if our plane was to crash, it would obviously be better if it was just S and I, as opposed to all four of us. So, it makes no sense.

But, actually, it does make sense, because it's about human emotion, not logic, and even for a half-robot like myself, the former can often trump the latter. Emotionally, it's perfectly reasonable to be apprehensive about traveling 600 mph in a relatively small metal tube 40,000 feet in the air. It doesn't matter how dangerous it actually is -- our evolution has not caught up with aviation safety statistics. And it's also perfectly reasonable to feel safer when your family is around you. That's the thing about so many irrational fears. They only look irrational when you zoom in to this particular moment in human history. If you look at the entire timeline of humanity, they make a lot of sense.

Until next time...

Entry 733: Sound Lags And Other Topics

I have a new thing to be annoyed by. When using certain streaming apps on our (supposedly) smart TV, the sound often gets out of sync with the images, so that you see people's mouths move and a few beats later you hear what they are saying -- or, if you are watching live sports, you'll see a great play, and then as everybody is celebrating you'll hear the announcer enthusiastically call the play that you already watched. It's extremely irritating. It especially happens with Peacock, and it gets so bad that by the end of an episode of The Office* the dubbing is worse than on an old Godzilla movie.

*We've been making our way through the series as a family. We are on the final season, and honestly, at this point, it can't end soon enough. It's gotten b-a-a-a-d. It took a big step down when Steve Carell left (how could it not?), but an even more extreme inflection point, I've come to find, is when Catherine Tate joins the cast. Her character is so annoying, and the (many) storylines centered around her are excruciating to watch. Somebody told me that Tate didn't even like her character, which would make sense, although I cannot independently confirm that through my extremely brief internet search.

I've tried to troubleshoot the problem but haven't been able to find a permanent solution. I did learn that it's the in-program commercial breaks that cause it, which could be why we only really see it with certain apps. Netflix, for example, doesn't have these types of ads (at least not with our subscription), so it doesn't happen when we stream from here. Also, if you leave the stream and reenter, it syncs up again, so at least there is a workaround. When I'm streaming football by myself, every half hour or so, when I notice the sound lag has gotten bad, I'll exit the stream and it enter again. It's a bit annoying, but there are plenty of breaks throughout a football game, so it's not like I miss anything. Plus, I frequently watch with the sound off and the game on in the background, so it's a nonissue.

When I watch The Office with the family, however, I don't do the leave-the-stream-and-reentry-it trick, because doing so annoys everybody else. I have no idea how this little hack, that takes literally less than 20 seconds, can annoy them more than the sound being completely out-of-whack, but it does. So, I just live with it. I mean, like I said, the show is pretty terrible now, anyway, so I don't feel like some great watching experience is being sullied.

I've noticed the YouTube app also frequently has a bit of a sound lag -- or at least it used to. I haven't tried it in long time. But I probably should because I don't like watching YouTube through the browser because the pause button for some stupid reason is directly below the start of the status bar. So, if go to hit pause, and miss by a millimeter, you'll hit the start of the status bar instead and reset the video to the beginning of the clip. I guess I have particularly fat fingers because I do this all the time. It's such a stupid layout, and I've noticed that it's not like that in the app. In fact, it might be such a stupid layout specifically because they want you to use the app. I've notice that with other Google products -- they push you toward the app by making the non-app version really annoying to use. Google used to be my default search engine on my iPhone, for example, but then every time I would go to search something -- every single time -- I would get a little pop-up saying that it was better to use their app, and I couldn't figure out how to turn it off. So, I just switched my search engine to Yahoo!. I won't be bullied into switching to the app!*

*Actually, I often will, and what I find, I must admit, is that I usually like the app better. But I'm still resentful when companies make me do it, and so sometimes I'll take a pointless stand against it.

I've been watching a decent amount of YouTube lately, because it's NFL and MLS season, so I will frequently watched extended highlights of Seahawks and Sounders games. I've also been hitting up Love is Kimes, the Love is Blind recap show hosted by my favorite football analysts (who also dabbles in reality TV) Mina Kimes. It's a great show, both Kimes and her cohost, David Dennis, are super funny. I'm not usually into reality TV, but I do enjoy watching Love is Blind with S, and the recap shows are a big reason why. This season has been pretty good too -- lots of fun couples getting engaged, and a few love triangles, including one prominently featuring this rich art dealer who turned into a great reality TV show villain (and who mysteriously left the show).

I feel a bit of compunction sometimes, however, because a big draw to the show is, of course, the drama, which is often caused by other people acting ridiculous. So, you get what I call the "American Movie Effect," in which you feel genuine empathy towards the subjects you're watching, but you are also laughing at their shortcomings, and let's be honest, feeling superior to them. What are the ethics behind this? I've come to the conclusion that it's okay with reality TV, because there is an informed consent in play. At this point, people know what they are getting into when they sign up to be on a reality TV show, and they still do so enthusiastically. I'm okay with being entertained by people taking risks, so long as they are fully informed of and fully consent to such risks. In football, you might get a debilitating injury; in reality TV, you might get mocked by viewers. We all know this by now, and you should only participate in these activities if you are willing to accept these possible negative outcomes.

Alright gotta go. Until next time...

Entry 732: Tryouts

Unfortunately, I got sucked into the VP debate on Tuesday. I didn't set out to watch it and successfully forgot it was even on, but then I turned on the TV to watch a baseball game, and the debate came on mid-discussion point, so I watched a bit to see what they were talking about, and then when I was ready to switch over to the game, one of the teams had scored a bunch of runs and made it a very uninteresting game, so I just watched the rest of the debate, even though I knew it would agitate me.

And it did.

JD Vance was agitating because I find him very smarmy and disingenuous, in general, and especially so when he's "sane-washing" Trump's extreme positions (abortion bans, repealing the ACA, election denial, etc.). And Tim Walz I found agitating because I don't think he did as good as he should have in rebutting Vance and selling himself. A perfect example of this is when he was asked about his apparently untrue statement that he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protest. What he should have said is something like, "Yeah, I misspoke. Sometimes when I'm telling an off-the-cuff story I get caught up in the moment and exaggerate a bit. But the gist of that is true. Here's what really happened..." And then he could have gone into a pro-democracy spiel, and used it to pump up Harris and take down Trump. Instead, he gave a rambling personal history that didn't really address the question and I doubt satisfied anybody.

Also, when they were talking about election denial, and Vance was trying to turn it around into a censorship issue, Walz engaged with Vance and gave lame mumbled responses like "you can't yell fire in a crowded theater." I would have liked him to say, "That's a separate issue, and I'm happy to discuss it later, but right now we're talking about election denial, and this clearly makes you uncomfortable, and so you're trying to change the subject..." And then hammered home all the points he wanted to make about January 6. It just wasn't a great performance by Walz. Honestly, I never really got the Tim Walz VP selection, and he looks even more like the wrong choice to me after this debate. He didn't seem adequately prepared or able to rise to the occasion. I would have much rather Harris had chosen Josh Shapiro or even Mayor Pete.

With all that said, Walz was not a disaster by any means. He did make some good points and get in some good soundbites on reproductive rights and Vance's refusal to say Biden won in 2020. So, most of what I wrote above is probably armchair quarterback palaver. The conventional wisdom is the VPs don't matter very much, and I think that probably holds true in this election. From what I gather, not looking at the polls but still kinda looking at the polls, the race has been relatively steady for the past few weeks, and I don't expect that to change before election. I think Kamala has a small -- uncomfortably so -- advantage. If the polls are accurate, she will win narrowly (Biden's states minus Arizona and Georgia). If the polls are underestimating Trump, like they did in both 2016 and 2020, Trump will win similarly to how he did last time. If the polls are underestimating Harris, the way they underestimated Dems in 2022, then she will win comfortably (Biden's states plus North Carolina). I'm hoping for the latter.

Enough about that though... In other news, Lil' S2 is going to try out for the "kids elite" flag football league this winter. If he makes it, we will get the privilege of paying a large chunk of money to take him to two practices and a game every week in the freezing cold (and by "we" I mean "I"). I could joke and say I hope he doesn't make it, but of course I hope he does make it, because football is his favorite thing right now, and he will be very happy if he makes it, and I want my kids to be happy. I think he probably will. He's pretty good -- he's big and strong for his grade (which is somewhat odd because he's younger than most his classmates, and I was skinny and weak at his age), he can throw decently, he can catch really well, and he's smart about tactics and whatnot. The only flaw in his game is that he's not very fast (which does make sense, I've never been particularly fleet of foot), and unfortunately that is a sizeable flaw in football. You can be bad at just about every other aspect of the game and still be good at football if you can run fast. We have a kid like that on our team now. He can't catch or throw well, and he often lines up in the wrong spot, but when we give him the ball and point him toward the end zone, Forrest Gump style, it mostly works out well for us. (He's not slow off the field, however, and I've never once heard his mom say "stupid is as stupid does.")

There's also a decent chance this tryout is more of a "tryout" than a tryout. As mentioned above, this league is not cheap, so there is incentive to keep as many kids as possible. I suspect anybody who comes to a tryout and shows they actually want to be there will make the cut, but I don't know for sure. It was cute, though, Lil' S2 told me he was "nervous" about his tryout, and it took me back to the time when meaningless shit seemed like the most important things in the world. I remember I got cut from the JV junior high football team in 7th grade and was devastated, even though only four kids from my grade made it,* and then I got cut again the next year (very unjustly, I might add), and I legitimately had never felt lower in my entire life. Then I made the varsity team in 9th grade and didn't even really like it.

*One of them died a few years ago under very mysterious circumstances. We were never close, but we were friendly with one another back in the day, and it's just an incredibly tragic story.

It's amusing to think that as children we put such import on things that seem so utterly frivolous now, but the truth is, I miss it. I miss the feeling of things mattering like that. I miss believing everything was on the line and the unabated ecstasy I experienced when things went my way.* I've found it's nearly impossible to recreate that sensation as an adult. Nothing really gives me that same unbridled joy any more. The good things I experience now fall somewhere on a spectrum between relief and satisfaction. On the one end, it's only solace that the bad thing that could have happened didn't (which is what I'll feel in November if Kamala wins). On the other end, it's gratification that I accomplished something cool, like, when, say, I get a crossword puzzle published. I'm happy about it, but it's a contented, job-well-done happiness. It's not an over-the-moon, you-just-single-handedly-diverted-an-asteroid-and-saved-the-entire-world elation. I haven't had that feeling in years, and I doubt I ever will again. 

*A few times I remember feeling this: When our team name got called because we won districts in Odyssey of the Mind; when my high school lacrosse team scored a goal in overtime to beat Lakeside High (Bill Gates' alma mater, incidentally); when I watched Edgar Martinez hit "the double" at my friend JP's house; when I was backstage celebrating with cast mates immediately after a performance of a high school play I was in.  

But this isn't necessarily a bad thing. So many of the pleasures of being young are a direct result of youthful naivete (I know the world isn’t on the line now), and so you should lose them as you get older. I miss aspects of being young, for sure, but I don't lament the loss. That's just part of living a completely life. I mean, I certainly would not want to have the mentality and emotional maturity I had as a schoolboy as a middle-age man. I've already been there; I've already done that. Now, I want to experience the things that old-ish age has to offer -- the wisdom, the autonomy, the comfort in my own skin, the arthritis. Okay, definitely not that last one, but the others are good.                

Until next time...

Entry 731: The Great Subscription Purge of 2024

We performed a recent audit of our subscriptions here at the G & G house and came to the conclusion that we were spending way too much monthly on services we barely use. I recommend every household do this. It's so easy now to sign up for a recurring charge, and then forget about it and continue paying months after you've stopped using it. Just by going through our accounts and toggling a few "auto-renewal" buttons to the "off" positions, we will save like $70 a month. That's not nothing.

I really hate that the subscription model has taken over our economy. It's one that favors the vendor much more than the consumer. I have no problem paying for something that I knowingly purchase and use. What I don't like is being duped into paying for something or having to buy a bunch of stuff I don't want in order to get the one thing that I do want. But this is often what happens when you buy a subscription. That's why I'm not above working the system -- using friends' credentials,* binge-watching during the free-trial period, and in some rare cases watching pirated streams. Although, you have to be careful with that latter one. You have to visit some shady sites in order to do this, and you're bound to get some weird viruses on your computer. I utilized these "shared" streams frequently when I lived in Australia because it was the only way I could watch NFL games without buying some crazy expensive package, but I did so with the knowledge that I would be buying a new laptop when I went back to the States, anyway. Also, toward the end of my time there, it got harder and harder to find these streams, as sites would frequently get shut down, and mainstream blogs started prohibiting users from posting free links in the comments sections.

*I've been streaming cable channels using my parents' cable credentials for over a decade. The beauty of this is that they canceled their cable subscription about four years ago. Their online credentials still work for some reason. Every time I enter them, I'm expecting to see a message telling me they're invalid, but that hasn't happened yet. 

The thing now that really annoys me is how all software has moved to a subscription model. I opened up Microsoft Word today, and I got a message saying: "PRODUCT DEACTIVATED On Tuesday, October 15, 2024, most features of Word will be disabled." This is particularly irritating, as I purchased Office years ago, and I thought I was actually buying it, like, the old way, like, you download it, and install it, and you have it forever. But apparently not, and now they want to charge me $99 a year to reactivate it. I'm not doing it. It's partly out of principle, but more so because I simply don't use the software enough to justify that cost. I might pay $99 if it's a one-time charge (I thought I already did that), but not as a recurring fee. I do use Word sometimes for my crossword puzzles, but I can figure out a different way, or use my work computer, if need be. I usually like to keep a separation between church and state, when it comes to my work and personal computers, but I'll allow an exception if it'll save me $99 a year.

I'm sure companies have done the math and come to the conclusion that subscription models are better for their bottom lines, but certainly not in every case. There have to be people like me who would pay a one-time flat fee, but a not a recurring cost, and so by insisting on subscriptions, you lose the flat fee for those customers. Or people will subscribe for a short period (maybe just the free trial) and then cancel. I did that with the fancy version of Adobe Acrobat. I needed it for a project I was working on, so I subscribed for a month or two and then canceled when I was done, and I haven't needed it since then. Had I purchased the software outright, I would have paid about twice as much, and it would have been sitting on my computer unopened for the past few years.

I think that's the way to gain the edge -- you have to be vigilant about canceling things you aren't getting enough value from them. When we went through and really looked at it, I was surprised by how many services we basically weren't using at all -- MAX, for example. HBO used to be my favorite, but I realized that there is literally nothing on it I watch anymore -- Curb is over; Succession is over; Winning Time got canceled; and their classic shows, The Sopranos, The Wire, Sex & the City, Six Feet Under, etc. are long gone, and nothing has replaced them. Yeah, it would be cool to have access to their back catalog and their movies, but that's not worth a monthly subscription. I could probably rent anything I wanted for a fraction of the price, and if I get a wild hair and decide I wanted to re-binge The Sopranos or something like that. I will just get a free trial and/or buy one month at that time. There's no need to give them a monthly payment right now.

The same is true for Apple TV. Once Ted Lasso ended, we weren't using it at all, so we dumped it. I might have wanted to keep it if it allowed access to all the MLS games, but that's an extra cost on top of the regular monthly fee, so forget it. We also recently got rid of Paramount+*, Slate Plus**, and PlayStation Plus.***

*This is a the classic forgot-to-cancel case. I signed up for a free trial to watch Jack-Ass Forever, but then I kept it for a bit because I could also watch CONCACAF Champions League games, and then a year later, S asked if we could get rid of it, and I'm like, "We still have that!" That's how they get you, and they got me with this one.

**I went to shut off auto-renewal for this, but it had already been shut off. Past me was apparently one step ahead of current me.

***Lil' S1 used this for a while, but then he stopped playing PlayStation altogether for some reason. Lil' S2 only plays the big sports games -- Madden, NBA 2K, and such -- and those don't come with the subscription. Still, they both told me they wanted to keep it, so I said that they could renew it with money they got for their birthdays, and then they didn't want to do it, of course.

And we still have a lot of subscriptions even after that. We have Amazon Prime, which we use frequently, both for the shipping discounts and for the Thursday Night Football. We have Hulu (the basic version) and Netflix because S watches shows on them all the time. We have Peacock because S's sister got it and gave us a profile, and we have Disney+, just because. I'd like to add Disney+ to the purge, to be honest, but S insists it's worth it for the kids, because of all the MCU and Star Wars content and what not. I don't think it is worth it, but I do like having access to the full The Simpsons catalog, so I'm not going to press the issue too much.

There are just too many streaming services now. The joke, of course, is that everybody wishes they could have cable back, but it isn't really about packaging; it's about volume. There's just too much content to consume, and it's spread across too many services. It's not just TV either. The same thing is happening with podcasts and blogs. Everybody wants you to subscribe to their thing -- their Substack or Ghost or Patreon -- and there is so much great content out there, I wish I could do this with everything I like, but I can't. So, I pick out the one or two things I like the best, and then for everything else, I get the free version, or, if there is no free version, I just don't get it at all.

It's a brave new world, and it's so much better than the timid old world in so many ways. In theory, we can consume whatever we want whenever we want. In practice, however, we can't, because everything requires a recurring financial commitment now. And it's hard to figure out what's worth it, and what isn't.

Until next time...