Entry 643: Christmas 2022

It's been a fine Christmas, this one, 2022. We did normal Christmas things -- opened presents, listened to Christmas music, ate too much. We got these Merci chocolates, and I've been hitting those things up hard. They're so good. This definitely isn't going to help my quest to shrink my waste line, but, on the plus side, I gained access to a gym. S's sister Sw has one in her apartment building, and she said I can use it whenever I want (and we have an extra fob, so I can just come and go as I please). It's good timing as it was 10 degrees here yesterday. They gym isn't very big, but it's got a few treadmills, which is all I need. I ran on one the other day -- got going pretty good, 7.5-minute-mile -- and guess what happened. Yep, I broke it. It just shut down on me and wouldn't restart. So, I've come to two conclusions: 1) A lot of treadmills just suck (there are four at this little gym and now only two of them work); 2) Because of number 1, if I'm using one of the other two treadmills, I don't go above 6 mph. I care a lot less about breaking a treadmill that doesn't belong to me, but it would be pretty lame if I wiped out multiple machines in my sister-in-law's building.

Anyway, we're at a bad age now for Lil' S1 when it comes to gift giving. He wants expensive hi-tech gifts, but he's not old enough yet to really figure out how to set them up and maintain them properly. So, it's like, if we get him what he wants, we are actually buying ourselves a package of stress and headache. Today, for example, he got a Fitbit, which is fine, encourage physical activity and whatnot. But you have to link it with an app, and he can't download apps on his phone without permission, so S has to set it all up for him. Then, the charger is just missing -- nowhere to be found. He claims it didn't come in the box. I suppose that's possible, but it's more likely he just didn't pay attention to it when he opened the box (I wasn't around), and it got misplaced or thrown away. Either way, now we either have to buy him a charger or he just never uses his brand new gift. I already put in an order on Amazon for a charger. Thankfully, they're not that expensive, assuming I got the right thing. (Is the Inspire compatible with Inspire 2, and is that the same thing as the Inspire HR?) Also, it's not coming until after the New Year, so maybe his original one will show up by then.

The best way to avoid all this would be to simply not get him any expensive hi-tech presents until he can actually figure them all out himself. But, the truth is, we're just not strict parents in that way. We are only willing to fight it for so long. I'm especially bad. If you ask me for something for long enough, chances are I'm going to cave eventually. S knows this and uses it to her advantage all the time. But the kids are learning it too. And even if we say no, they'll just ask S's parents, who will gladly say yes, so if we really don't want them to have something, we have to say no the grandparents too and completely be the bad guys. Unless it's something that would require a major lifestyle change (like a pet), I usually don't have it in me to do this.

And that's why we now have a PlayStation 5. Lil' S1 has been asking for one (or an Xbox) for like a year, so when S's parents said they wanted to get the kids something big, that's what we suggested. It seemed like a good idea, and it still might be, but the first day didn't go super smoothly. I don't play video games, so I don't now how consoles work these days, and I wasn't prepared for the amount of set-up and sign-in-age required to get things rolling. Each player needs their own profile which requires their own email address, and of course you have get the app, because everything has an app, and then it doesn't actually come with any games, except this kinda lame one-player game, so I bought them Minecraft which required me to register a payment method, which took like five tries to do for some reason, and then to play Minecraft, you have to sign-in to a Microsoft account for some other reason, and then they're trying to find their cousin on the game, and they're asking me how to do it, and I have no idea (and no desire to figure out).

Then, with all this going on, Lil' S1's chair collapses, and he breaks his headset on the first day he has it. It's one of those things where it's not exactly his fault, but kinda his fault because he's not sitting properly on an obviously rickety folding chair. (I felt bad though. He was crying and legit upset about it.) Then S finds out about it, and she gets mad at me for consenting to get this device and "not doing enough research," but really she's just annoyed that something we just got is already broken, and she's taking it out on me. Like, I said things didn't go super smoothly. But it's only the first day. My hope is that we will have this system for many years, and the kids (especially Lil' S1) will figure everything out with it as they get older, so that we don't have to worry about it at all.  We shall see.

Alright, time to watch my new show. I liked The White Lotus so much, I decided to stick with the Mike White theme and try Enlightened. I'm three episodes in and really enjoying so far.

Until next time...

Entry 642: My Top 100 TV Shows (100-51)

I finished season two of The White Lotus today. I really enjoyed it. I thought it was maybe just a touch below season one, but just a touch. I was wondering where I would put it on my list of all-time favorite TV shows, and then I just decided to make such a list. I did it for movies a few years ago and enjoyed the process. So, below is my rankings of my 100 favorite TV shows. The two criteria are: a) how much did I enjoy it when I first watched it; b) how much has it stuck with me through the years. And all the usual caveats with lists like this apply: They are impossible to make and heavily dependent on the mood and whims of the ranker at the time they did the ranking. If I made this list next month instead of today, it would look different.

Okay: The list 100-51. (I'm breaking this up into two parts because I remember the movie one taking me way too long.)

100. Love Is Blind: This is a good example of what I was talking about above. Probably the only reason this made the list at all is due to recency bias. It's not very good, but we just watched it and had fun, and that's fresh in my mind.

99. The Arsenio Hall Show: The only late night show I ever watched consistently, and I only did so for a very short period of time. It was a thing at my school for a hot minute. Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo!

98. He-Man & Masters Of The Universe: My favorite action-figure show as a child by far.

97. Game of Thrones: Watched a season and a half, thought it was okay, but never really got into it. I stopped watching when a woman shot a smoke monster from her vagina, and I realized I had no clue what was going on and didn't much care, anyway. Fantasy just isn't my bag.

96. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air: Very briefly my favorite sitcom, circa 1991.

95. Perry Mason: I think I've seen every episode without ever watching an entire one all the way through. It was my mom's favorite show, so it was frequently on at my house as a child.

94. Roseanne: It's funny how there was once a show that featured John Goodman, George Clooney, and Laurie Metcalf, but the star was Roseanne Barr.

93. Cheers: A bit before my time, but I still watched it and enjoyed it. RIP Kirstie Alley.

92. Lingo: It's not just letters; it's lingo! S and I used to watch this together back when we were just dating.

91. Scrabble: Another word game show hosted by Chuck Woolery. This was appointment watching whenever I was home sick.

90. Entourage: Watched the entire series, never think about it now.

89. Extras: Another one I watched and never think about. I couldn't even remember what it was called. I had to look it up on Ricky Gervais' Wikipedia page.

88. The Brady Bunch: I watched it as a child a bit, but then there was a summer when I was a teenager, and I watched it every day, half ironically, half as comfort content.

87. Parker Lewis Can't Lose: Some kids in my sixth-grade class used to watch this, so I started watching it too, so that I would be in on things. I remember it being kinda cute: "Synchronize your Swatches!"

86. Married with Children: I never really liked the cynical alternate reality of the show, but I really liked Christina Applegate. She's a big crossword puzzle fan, by the way. She's also had some crazy bad-luck with health issue -- breast cancer to MS. That's rough.

85. The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling: The actual original wrestling program, not the Netflix series based on it. I used to watch it religiously. It came on after...

84. WCW Wrestling: Which came on after...

83. WWF Wrestling: Every Friday night for a few years in the mid-'80s, I would watch three hours of wrestling and then sleep on the sofa in our living room.

82. Saturday Night Live: Never watched it regularly, always thought the full program was kinda boring, but can't deny that it has had some funny skits through the years: It's my dick in box...

81. Silicon Valley: The interplay between Kumail Nanjiani and Martin Starr was my favorite part of the show.

80. Call My Agent!: Halfway decent French drama/comedy about movie agents. It's called Dix pour cent in France, which means "Ten Percent." I've always wondered why they didn't just keep the title for the English-speaking audience.

79. The Last Dance: It's basically just Michael Jordan hagiography, but still fun.

78. Welcome Back Kotter: As a sophomore in college, I used to watch it at the same time everyday between classes. I don't remember a single episode, but I remember it fondly, nevertheless.

77. The Big Bang Theory: Really funny in the beginning, petered out more quickly than your typical silly sitcom, which already peter out very quickly.

76. Around the Horn: I went to grad school with this guy M who would always say the funniest, randomest shit, and one of his lines was, "Time to go home and watch Around the Horn and wish I was doing something else."

75. Pardon the Interruption: A small step-up from Around the Horn.

74. SportsCenter: It's been made totally obsolete by YouTube, Twitter, etc. Nobody wants to reserve a time in the day to watch sports highlights anymore. But it was a staple in my life for many years.

73. Star Trek: The Next Generation: Only watched it for a bit but did enjoy it -- not enough to get totally into it though.

72. Welcome to Earth: Very beautiful. Will Smith is a good host, and he doesn't slap anybody in any episode.

71. Drive to Survive: I liked the first few seasons, but probably won't watch it now that I kinda keep up with F1 in real time. Also, I don't really care much for Max Verstappen. I'm a Lewis Hamilton guy all the way.

70. Boardwalk Empire: I always felt like I should be liking it more than I actually was.

69. The Mandalorian: The only Star Wars spinoff TV show that S and I got into. We quit The  Book of Boba Fett after one episode (that was basically just a 45-minute torture scene), and can't get into Andor at all.

68. Sesame Street: A kid classic, which I loved, but my hot take retroactive to 1983 is that...

67. The Electric Company: ... was better.

66. In Living Color: The world's introduction to Jim Carrey. I used to do a mean Fire Marshall Bill impersonation: Let me show you something! Pretty much nothing on this show would fly today.

65. Project Runway: The second best of the reality TV shows S dragged me into.

64. Indian Matchmaker: The best of the reality TV shows S dragged me into.

63. Broad City: Solid raunchy comedy.

62. Batman: The original Adam West version. The same summer I watched The Brady Bunch I also watched this.

61. Family Guy: Never been a huge fan, but it's definitely made me laugh.

60. Ted Lasso: You can file this one in the "Good, But Way Overrated Because Everybody Acts Like It's the Greatest Show Ever, and It's More Like Top 100 But Not Fifty, Which is Still Pretty Good Because There Have Been a Lot of TV Shows" folder.

59. America's Funniest Home Videos: Super corny, but I loved this show as a tween. RIP Bob Saget.

58. The Beatles: Get Back: Does this count as a TV show? I'm counting it.

57. Lost: Really great show that totally fizzled at the end. I actually never watched the finale, which led me to formulate the Lost Principle of TV Watching: Never feel compelled to watch a show to the end of the series. Bail once it starts getting consistently bad. You will be so much more satisfied than you will seeing it through to the bitter end. Trust me, this principle can change your entertainment world.

56. Homeland: Excellent first few seasons. I heard it got bad at the end. I wouldn't know.

55. Friends: Never a big fan; somehow seen every episode. Well, it was like the biggest TV show in the world for a solid decade, during a time when everybody pretty much watched the same five channels, so I guess it's no mystery as to why I've seen so many episodes.

54. The Muppet Show: A favorite as a child. It's still pretty good when I watch clips on YouTube.

53. Unsolved Mysteries: The theme music still creeps me out a bit. I wonder how many of the mysteries would've been revealed as total bullshit in real-time if people had the internet back then.

52. Winning Time: One funny thing about this show is the name: Winning Time. It should be Showtime because it's about the "Showtime Lakers," but it's on HBO, so they didn't want to promote that name.

51. Atlanta: Really liked it the first few seasons, then S kinda soured on it, and I haven't been properly motivated to get back into it by myself. 

Until next time...

Entry 641: No-Kids Party

S and I went to a no-kids party last night, which is a rarity these days. Actually, I guess we just went to one for Halloween, but it was different because that was a party thrown by people who don't have kids. This was a party with our parent friends, whom we only know because our kids are friends, but it was without kids. And we haven't been to party like that since... ever?

It was pretty fun -- nothing too wild just hanging out and chatting but with great company. We stayed for about three hours, and I had three (maybe four) beers, which is the closest I come to tying one on these days. And I paid the price: I felt like a zombie all day today. That's how much my alcohol tolerance has diminished in middle age -- done in by a few Pacificos. Although, to be fair, my grogginess was as much due to lack of sleep as to beer consumption. I woke up this morning about 7:45 am with Lil' S2 jumping on me demanding I make him breakfast. Sometimes S handles the kids and lets me sleep in on the weekends but she was at Orange Theory this morning. That's one of the things about her travel schedule -- she's always like "it's just n days," but n is just the number of days between her flights. It doesn't take into account that her sleep schedule with be messed up for a few days after that,* so she will be going to sleep at like 7:30 pm before the kids even have on their PJs. Also, she'll want to get back into a good gym routine, so even on the weekends it'll often be on me to get up and make the kids breakfast. She got back from a huge trip a few weeks ago, and it seems like I'm still feeling with the reverberations.

*And this is getting progressively worse. She used to bounce back immediately and barely suffer from jet lag at all. Now, each time she takes a trip, you can add a half a day to her recovery time. Getting old is a bitch, man. Father time is undefeated, as the cliche goes.

But it's okay. I never complain (except on this blog, which she doesn't read) because she has to do it for work, and she has a good job, and that benefits our entire family, including me, so it just comes with the territory. You gotta take the bad with the good. Those are the facts of life. Plus, today it's entirely on me for not getting enough sleep. We were home by 11:00 pm, but I stayed up until after 1:00 am watching White Lotus. I've heard so much about season two, I figured I had to get rolling on season one and catch up. It's so good so far (four episodes in). I was pretty sure I would like it. People whose opinions I trust rave about it, and I'm a fan of Mike White. He does a lot of character driven stuff, which is typically what I prefer in a movie or "prestige" TV series. A bunch of weird, fucked up, rich people get together at a resort with an abundance of sex, drugs, and booze -- sign me up! Plus, the show has those little superfluous nuggets of mundanity that I find absolutely hysterical. (The Sopranos was perhaps the king of this type of thing: "I like the one that says 'Some Pulp'".) Like, on White Lotus there's a part when a guy says he's with BLM, and he means Bureau of Land Management, but Jennifer Coolidge's character thinks he's talking about Black Lives Matter. There's no real joke there, but it made me laughed out loud -- literally. I've done it a few times even though I watch it alone.

S and I also started watching Andor together, which is supposedly also fantastic. It hasn't reeled me in yet (S neither, I think), but I'm not giving up on it. Everything I've heard of it from critics is like It's the best of the Star Wars spinoffs by far! And I'm thinking to myself When does that happen? Like I said, though, we're only two episodes in -- you gotta give things a shot.

Alright, I'm still dragging, and I just heard a car door shut. A few of S's friends are in town and staying with us and they all went out to dinner, and I think they're back. I gotta socialize for an appropriate amount of time until I can abscond to a quite place and watch more White Lotus. This is when it's good to have a wife who goes to bed early. It's very unlikely they will be up and hanging out super late.

Until next time...

PS--Somebody messaged me this. Speaking of laughing out loud... https://mobile.twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1600150740235800576

Entry 640: Doc, Note, I Dissent, A Fast Never Prevents A Fatness; I Diet On Cod

Just watched the US get eliminated from the World Cup by the Netherlands. It wasn't an absolutely terrible performance, but it certainly wasn't a good performance. The problem with our country when it comes to men's soccer is that we aren't as good at it as other nations. That's very understandable when you consider that soccer is the most popular men's sport in most other countries by a huge margin, and here it probably doesn't even crack the top five. It's definitely behind football, baseball, and basketball, which are dominated by the US on the international stage, but also likely behind other big-money sports like hockey, golf, MMA, and even (somehow) NASCAR. Then if you toss in all the niche sports the US is good at -- swimming, track and field, lacrosse, skiing, snowboarding, skateboarding, etc. -- the resources/interest/attention in sports are spread very thin, so it's going to be tough to be really good at such an internationally competitive sport as soccer. (Australia, the only country in the world who rivals the US in terms of athletic depth and breadth, also isn't great at soccer.)

But I do think that the US is on the ascension as far as men's soccer is concerned. MLS is reasonably popular, and a lot of younger people are getting into English Premier League since access to its games are now readily available. Also, the women's team is the best in the world and becoming increasingly popular.  So, all that indicates the arrow is pointing in the right direction. On the other hand, we've been hearing about soccer's American takeover for the past 40 years, and it still hasn't happened. On the other other hand, sometimes we write things off because they haven't happened on the timeline we initially foresaw, but then they actually do come to fruition. I'm thinking of the electric car which was right around the corner at the turn of the millennium, except it wasn't, and so everybody was like, it's dead now, but 15 years later and it's very much alive and thriving and has been for the better part of a decade.

Along similar lines, I think (hope) renewable energy is following this same trajectory. Green energy has long been touted as a climate change solution by environmentalists, but we are currently in a "we can't get by on renewable energy alone" phase. However, it seems to me like we might actually be relatively close to doing just this. The reason I say this is because we have solar panels on our house right now that generate about 5 MWh per year. The annual average for a family is around 10 MWh. So, we generate roughly half of what the average family uses, and we only have panels on half our house (the other half is behind trees), and we live in an area where the sun doesn't shine brightly all year round (although it does shine more than in other parts of the country). If you take into consideration that technology is only going to get better and that this is just solar (not wind). It seems like we should be able to, at the very least, make a giant dent in fossil fuel consumption and be well on our way to phasing it out completely.

I mean, I visit my in-laws in Florida, a place where the sun in blazing like ten hours a day all year round, and I rarely see solar panels on roofs. How much energy could you produce by having a massive campaign to get everybody in Florida solar panels? Why don't they do this? I mean, I know why -- Republicans are in charge and only seem interested in fighting pointless "culture war" battles (solar power is probably seen as "woke" energy or some other such nonsense), but you'd think at some point pure pragmatism would win out over politics, and maybe it will -- or maybe I'm hopelessly naive. It could go either way.

In other news, I'm back on my 16-8 diet. I stopped at the end of the summer because we went to Iceland, and it was too hard to maintain while traveling, which is fine, but then instead of getting right back to it when we returned, I was like nah... I already messed it all up, which is a totally ridiculous rationalization that we all do for some reason. I call it the all-or-nothing fallacy. I almost did it again this time. After eating copious amounts of food over Thanksgiving break, I was thinking I should start intermittent fasting again, and then I thought yeah, but I don't want to do that over Christmas, might as well just wait until next year. But there's, like, a month between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Even if I want to pig out for a day or even a few days, I could still do my diet the other 25 days. But we all play these little games with ourselves to justify doing what we want to do in the moment, even though we know it's not what we want to do in the long run.

I got on the scale the other day, and I was the heaviest I can ever remember. To be clear, I'm definitely not a slave to the scale. I don't think it's an accurate measure of how healthy you are. I mostly subscribe to the healthy at every size philosophy. Some people are just fatter than others, and it doesn't necessarily mean they're less healthy.* With that said, gaining weight is an indication for some people (like me) that they should make some changes to be more healthy. A lot of times it's the symptom of the issue, not the issue itself. For me, it was proof I was eating too much crap -- housing entire sleeves of Ritz in one sitting, raiding my kids' Halloween candy for the mini Twix bars, downing spoonfuls of ice cream before I go to bed, cleaning up all the kids' leftovers at restaurants, etc. So, no more. Now, I'm back to only eating two big meals a day, which, for me, is the most effective and sustainable way to cut the crap.

*Within reason -- if you get to be too fat obviously it will adversely affect you health. Like, if you get to be so heavy you struggle with day-to-day movement then that's a problem. But that's well beyond what we typically classify as "fat." So, "healthy at every size" is a pithy way to convey a more complex idea, not an absolute truism. It's like "honest is the best policy." Sure, but we've all been in scenarios in which it's actually more ethical to lie.  

To be honest, the main reason I want to lose weight is because I don't like looking at my big belly in the mirror. That's somehow where all my excess weight goes. My belly isn't fat in the normal sense where it's soft and flabby and hangs over my pants. It's just massively distended. It's like I have a literal food baby. I've been hitting the weights pretty good, so I'm in decent shape and looking alright, but for this basketball I have stuck to my abdomen. There are other problems with having an oversize stomach -- for example, clothes that used to fit are now too snug -- but vanity is number one on my list.

What can I say, looks do matter. Often associated with the "healthy at every size" movement is the "redefining the beauty standard" movement, and I'm less bullish on that concept. It strikes me as seeing the world as you wish it was, not the way it is. Yes, people of all different shapes and sizes can be beautiful, and many people are into those who aren't conventionally attractive, but... there's a reason your best-looking friend gets more attention than you and hot people get all the best acting roles. Most people would rather gaze at Sofia Vergara and Joe Manganiello than the schlubby couple in the condiment aisle at Costco. It's like, go ahead and "redefine" things however you want -- my loins aren't going to get the memo.

That's the other thing: People can't help who they're attracted to. I thought this was well-established by now, especially among the type of people who would push back against traditional norms of beauty and attraction. I mean, all my life, a pillar of the gay rights movement has been the "born this way" argument -- the idea that sexual attraction is not a choice. And it's absolutely true. But it's true for boring normies too. Women who like tall men with chiseled muscles, and dudes who like slender women with big boobs, can't help that that's what they prefer, and nobody should be made to feel ashamed for being attracted to the "wrong" type of person.

What's more, there's no reason to make anybody feel this way because no matter what you look like or what you weigh, there is somebody out there who would really like to have sex with you, and the internet makes it possible for you to easily find them. So, let's not worry that most people would rather get with the person in the "after" photo of the Jenny Craig advertisement. There are more than enough lids for every pot.  

Until next time...

PS -- The title of this entry is my second favorite palindrome of all time. My first favorite: Tulsa nightlife -- filth, gin, a slut.