May 23, 2021
Today: Potpourri
This is going to sound like a humble-brag, because it is. Last Friday, I rode my bike 101 miles. A 100+ ride is called a century if you're into biking lingo. It was far from the most strenuous ride I've ever done because there was almost no climbing to speak of it. 99% of the ride was along flat trail - converted from an old railroad - rails to trails as they say. There was a climb at the end, because that's how I get back to my house. Anyway, the point isn't to brag that I do centuries. It's that the next day, I hung out with a good friend I hadn't seen in a long time - at least partly due to the pandemic. Our thing used to be tennis and I rarely get to play tennis anymore so that's what we decided to do. My 100-mile legs seemed to managed to get by ok except for the first practice rally, my feet go tangled up the first time I tried to move them and I took a spill. There were a couple minor scratches. Nothing was bruised except for my ego. We played a set, which I lost 6-1. I could blame it on the biking or the fact I haven't played tennis in 14.5 months (stay tuned to know why I know it's 14.5 months exactly) despite what they say about it being a socially distanced sport, but the truth is, I'm just not as good as my friend at tennis. On fresh legs, maybe I push him to 6-2, but it's not like he was super fresh either. He's a firefighter. His shift had ended that morning and he had gone for a run prior to our set.
The next moring after tennis I got out of bed and my right hamstring said unto me:
Mabye 100 miles followed by tennis wasn't smart
So I've forgone my usual swimming and running that I do to try and stay in shape so far this week. It's the only way I can eat the amount of sweets I do and not gain thirty pounds. This leads to its own set of anxieties. The only reason I have a gym membership is because I like to swim on occassion. I figure twice a week is enough to justify the gym fees. But when I shrug off swimming for whatever reason, I can literally feel the gym taking my money while I'm not making use of it. If I did go to the gym, I could just hurt myself worse, which in turn will keep me from going for an even longer period of time. It's a vicious cycle.
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When I first started college, every TV in the student activity center was contractually obligated to be on MTVU, which is like MTV except it was specifically geared toward college and aired only college campuses and actually played music videos. Contemplating my hamstring/decaying body, I put on some music from my youth (nostalgia!) and came across some songs that were forever imprinted on my brain due to their ubiquity as I trundled through the SAC to get food or maybe play some pool or a game of Punch-Out!! This in turn led me to try and find images of Port Moresby, Colombo, and Reykjavík as depicted in the game Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?
OK Go (from before they got famous for cleverly choreographed routines) - Get Over it
Andrew W.K. (for my new twitter follower Nick Melville) - She Is Beautiful
The White Stripes - Dead Leaves on the Dirty Ground
2 Skinnee J's - Grown Up
"Grown Up" deserves a few extra words. It's a really good song from a band that reached it's zenith in 2002 and faded away after being dropped by their record label. If I ever found a copy of their album Volumizer lying around somewhere, I'd probably buy it. But the odds of that happening are about the same chances that aliens will visit this planet in my lifetime. I have no idea if they ever did anything as good "Grown Up", which is close to pop-rock perfection. Also, the music video is a delightful send up of the Jaan Pehchan Ho sequence featured in very good/very depressing movie Ghost World, which co-starred a 17 year-old Scarlett Johansson. (The fact that I am older than older than Scarlett Johansson doesn't sound right.) The video for "Grown Up" features Andy Dick. Like all Newsradio fans, I have mixed feelings.
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My undergraduate collegiate years coincided with that brief period of time when you could find music through myspace. I remember rumaging through myspace from time to time to try to find a band that not even Pitchfork was covering, a band that was super underground that I could call my own and wasn't put forth by gilded tastemakers. But the truth is, if you just randomly rummaged through myspace most of what you'd find was pretty mediocre to bad music. While popularity does not confer nor confirm quality or taste, if something was good, people find out about it, right? But you don't want to be too popular, or you're a sellout. Anyway, the best band I even found on one of my random myspace searches was called Sea Ray. And just my luck, they essentially broke up right before I found them. (2 Skinnee J's didn't last much past my freshman year, which is the tenuous thread connecting the two bands.)
Anyway, before Myspace Tom smartly cashed in and bugged out, I was able to hear this song:
I'm a sucker for indie rock with a cello. Godspeed former members of Sea Ray. You made me happy then. You still do today. Your legend will live on.
And now for something completely different:
The CBS SUNDAY MORNING POWER RANKINGS
Look, even I'm going to admit that Teichner pulling celebrity interview duty is not SOP, although Erin and Ben Napier of the HGTV show Home Town are not exactly A-listers. Ben has solid "regular dude" energy. And Erin, "We like Erin too," as one lady from the story put it.
Even with the benefit of being a Teichner segment, you may sense a little incredulity on my part that this made it to #1. The committee factors in personal sentiment. I've seen exactly one episode of Home Town in my life and I can tell you the exact date. It was March 9, 2020.
At this point there may have been rumblings about people getting sick in New York. There were no cancelled NBA games and college basketball conference tournaments were about to start. I on March 6, I drove to my cousin's wedding. On March 7, I attended said wedding with family. On March 8, I went to church (Catholic), drove to see a friend from college, went to church again (Methodist) with said friend and his 3 year old son, and then back to his house. I brought a pie, which we baked, and his wife made spaghetti. At some point, we heard that the Indian Wells tennis tournament had be cancelled because someone at the tournament was positive for COVID. We mused about what was going to happen later in the week. My friend is a college professor (of economics!) and was planning to give his midterm later in the week. We knew what had happened in China and later in Italy. We wondered what was in store that week. Was campus going to get shut down? Was it going to happen before or after his midterm? Did the school have any plan at all? On March 9, we dropped his son off at his parents, we went for a run (his neighborhood is hilly), played tennis (the last time I had played until this past weekend), picked up his cranky son (the parents had failed to impose a nap), came back to his house, managed his son's ongoing meltdown (I don't really mind it, but parents would prefer their children behave) made something for dinner, ate once his doctor wife got home, relaxed.
I had a beer or two (maybe three), and at some point Home Town was put on TV. It was one of his wife's favorite shows, and I could see the charm of a pleasant show not having to occupy too much mental space after pulling long shifts. We tried to guess which renovation plan would be picked by a woman who wanted buy a house and have a porch. Having actually watched the show before, they were much better at than I was. Erin's sketches were particular noteworthy according to my friends wife. I couldn't make it through a whole episode - beer makes me sleepy and it was an early day tomorrow. So I retired to the air mattress in the basement.
On March 10, I woke up at 5ish and started my 7-8 hour ride back home as my friend started his 1.5 hr+ commute to another state. My lower back started to hurt pretty bad about 5.5 hours in (spondylosis).
Later that week, shit got real. I was working from home the following week.
God bless my friend, who was trying to run college classes remotely, while attending to other professorial duties and caring for his young children when there was no daycare. And his wife who, as noted, is a doctor and did have to continue going into work.
The culmination of this tick-tock of the last regular days of hanging out with friends before the pandemic hit the United States in full was watching an episode of Home Town. So, surprisingly, this top spot doesn't have much to do with Martha.
My friend may be the one regular reader of this blog. So this one's for you:
Well done, Dick Enberg.
2) Lee Cowan
I have a special place in my heart for Alaska. I went to Anchorage for an AAPT (American Association of Physics Teachers) conference in January 2006. Here's a picture to prove I was there:
I begged some faculty at Louisville to help pay for the trip and coming back with some pictures was part of the deal. Why would you have a conference in Anchorage in January? Because it's freakin' cheap in Alaska in the middle of winter. It's cold and there's only 6 hours of daylight and physicists are weird. I sort of went on spec - I did not have a hotel room booked, but I walked a block away from the Anchorage conventional center and found a hotel with plenty of vacancy. I got a business suite. I'm pretty sure it normally ran $270 a night, but I got it for $90. Anyway, I love the snow, so despite the cold I enjoyed looking out and seeing nothing but white and mountains. I'm a little disappointed that I missed out on being able to see the aurora borealis.
I did have a fun cab ride from the airport. I was driven by a Russian guy who seemed to be going dangerously fast considering I could see no pavement, only packed snow on the ground. I'm pretty sure he was driving a '93 Honda Civic, not exactly the platonic ideal of a snow faring vehicle, but I assume the natives know better than I. I got to where I was going in one piece, so who am I to judge.
Anchorage
is nowhere close to the arctic circle. There is no midnight sun, but in
January the sun rises in the south and sets in the south and there is a
feeling of perpetual dusk the 6 hours or so there is daylight. I'd like to go farther north north sometime, maybe to Fairbanks. Maybe in the summer to experience the midnight sun phenomenon firsthand, not sure Fairbanks is far enough north though. Someday I'll find my North.
America is a big country and everyone has their own idea of what it is and what it represents. I don't think anyone can take in the whole country in a single lifetime. I like that you can go to certain parts and feel like you're in a different country, while still being in America. Alaska is one of those parts. I'd say Key West is as well. I haven't been to Hawaii, but let assume. Someday, I aim to work my way back up there. I do have some Alaska related feelings that I would classify as being more melancholy in character, but that's hard story to get out of me. Another time perhaps.
Shout out to Anita from Alaska, provider of salmon.
3) Jane Pauley
For some reason, I thought Jane was in front of green screen to start the episode. Anyway, I love it when they tour historical building on Sunday Morning. It was lovely to have Jane as a guide through Lyndhurst mansion. During the tour, Jane presented random facts about the mansion. The kinds of things you might read in an encyclopedia or almanac. On a Sunday Morning. Like it's a Sunday Morning almanac. Speaking of encyclopediae, does anyone still publish hard copies of them? Are there still salesman? I remember going to the library as a kid and making my way to reference section to "research" something that I had to write a report on for school. I kind of miss that. If I could grab an encyclopedia set, I think I would. Going down rabbit holes on the internet feels like wasting time. But somehow it feels like it would be constructive to crack open an encyclopedia and decide I want to learn a little about the Phonecians. Or maybe about Lyndhurst and it's occupants over the years.
The best mansion/castle tour from Sunday Morning was Teichner's tour of Highclere Castle.
Every time there's a music segment on Sunday Morning it makes me want to go out and buy an album to listen to it. Even though I'm far from aficionado of CSNY, it's possible that I know every song on Deja Vu simply by osmosis. It's probably a great album. It's definitely a classic. Neil Young did not want to be interviewed for this story - imagine that. He's never had a reputation for being irritable or difficult. It's a little disappointing to know that everyone hates David Crosby. He's the most instantly recognizable of the trio/occasional quartet. It's gotta be the mustache.
I gotta admit that when Sunday Morning mentioned the song "Our House" in the intro, I thought the segment was going to be about Madness. It would have been a bit out of left field, but Madness are probabliy more deserving a segment than most one hit wonders. (They were much bigger in their native England than the US.) Them and Toni Basil. Only when Jane said "... is a very very very fine song" did I understand where it was going.
5) Kits
I saw a fox while on a run in my neighborhood once. It was maybe the most exciting thing that happened to my that day. Someone spots a fox maybe once or twice a year and they freak out telling everyone to lock up their pet as they equate foxes with coyotes. (I also thing the coyote issue is overblown. I live in the suburbs. I've never seen a coyote.) Anyway the kits were adorable. They deserved more than 30 seconds. I know they wanted to do "Our House" for the outro, but just run it over the kits. It would have been perfect.
For reasons that cannot (or should be explained) my aforementioned economist friend's favorite Disney animated feature is Robin Hood. I'm not sure for how many other people it even makes the top 10, but I think he had (maybe still has) a copy on DVD. In the Disney-verse, Robin Hood is a fox. My friend was quite amused by the fact that Maid Marian was specifically referred to as "a vixen" because she was a female fox. She is the neice of King Richard who is, naturally, a lion because England. Biologically, I'm not sure how much it makes sense.
I remember listening to a podcast about an alcoholic who was constantly being arrested for public intoxication. Jail was probably his most reliable shelter. It cost lest to have a single health professional essentilly work full time providing health care, treatment, and providing him real shelter than it cost to have him contiually arrested, in and out of jail and the hospital.
We're overly obsessed with fairness in this country. That person isn't working so they don't deserve money/shelter/food. It wouldn't be fair to given them what I worked for. The problem with this worldview is many fold. For one, it ignores the systemic issues that inherently advantage certain people/groups over others. Two, we equate fault and resposbility. Once something is not "our fault" we abdicate responsibility. For example, baseball has a lot of dumb, meaningless stats from a bygone era when the official scorer's job was to assign blame or credit. Errors and unearned runs are way up there. Don't blame the pitcher for the unearned run. It's the fault of the player who committed the error. The pitch is still responsbile though. Moreover, the more balls you get to on defense, the more chances you have to make errors. It's actually a system that rewards defensive apathy. If you don't try, it can't be your fault. It's all just stupid.
Anyway, I don't know how far the analogy goes. How do we solve homeless and poverty? Well, you could give shelter and money to those who need it. It's not hard. But what if they don't "deserve it". The idea that unemployment or free shelter is a disincentive to enter the workforce is mostly racist, debunked, Reagan-era BS.
Sunday Morning segments that tackle "hard news" or "issues" tend to suffer in the rankings, but I think Kelefa is maybe the best of the Sunday Morning crew at them. 6 seems too low.
Recommended viewing: David Simon's HBO miniseries Show Me a Hero. Oscar Isaac is great, but that's not really a surprise.
7) Mo Rocca
Speaking of too low, I think in a typical week, Mo's segment on very 1960's designer Alexander Girard would have been battling for a top spot. It's got an art angle. It's got absurd patterns and color. It's got what look like sets from a Wes Anderson movie. It's got fashion and style I wish I could pull off. (Mo probably could pull them off.) It's got sunken living rooms. For some reason it just got lost in the shuffle in this episode. The rankings committee relied on personal connection to the subject matter more than usual. Also statistical analysis has shown that end of episode segments tend to get ranked lower.
8) Seth Doane
Seth tours an old Italian castle? How is it not ranked higher? While the characters involved are all interesting enough. I do deduct points for overreliance on TikTok. Lee's segment on Whittier, Alaska also relied on a TikTok angle. Like the Highlander, there can be only one.
There's a British museum about living spaces. Where you can see an exhibit with an 12th century knife and fork and another with an Alexa (do not buy an Alexa). This doesn't seem like a real thing. But there's our man in London, Mark Phillips, with a bit of COVID shag to his hair, assuring us that it is.
10) David Pogue, Ben Tracy, Martha Stewart (tie)
With apologies to Pogue, who I keep yo-yoing around the rankings, I don't care much about real estate. Is the current market a bubble? I really don't care. Also, at the risk of alienating any realtors out there, I don't like the realtor profession too much. Maybe it's just that I don't like sales in general. The realtor from Florida had a jacket with a real use car salesman vibe. My personal dealings with realtors gave me a serious "What do you do to deserve all this money?" vibe. There I go contradicting myself. Deserving, undserving - no one is, everyone is.
Ben Tracy somehow gets ranked lower for 3D printed homes than he did for his Trump Farewell. I guess it all depends on the competition. I think that was his only other appearance. I feel bad because because the only reason I knew Ben Tracy had previously appeared was because he was already in my list of tags for the blog. I think you need more than 2 segments a year to move up the rankings.
Is Marth Stewart happy about being dumped into the #10 grab bag? You tell me:
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