Taking Comfort In Stars Crashing Into Stars

Tonight was our last league kickball game, and looking back at the season... at my strained quad, and my strained groin, and a very hurt right big toe (I don't even want to know what's wrong with it), and the left one too, and maybe a square foot of scabs, and my sore neck that kept me awake for a week, and some mysterious thing that somehow materialized on my left bicep tonight that looks like a demon scratch... maybe it's for the best that it's over? 

At one point tonight someone kicked a ball to me in left field and I lost it in the lights. I never had that experience before, but I flat out lost it in the lights. I saw it again when it was glancing off my fingertips and I threw it in. Right afterward, I think I was kind of stunned for a few seconds. 

I wasn't paying attention, I was kind of walking around in circles. I caught myself just before the next pitch, realizing I was in about 20 feet too close for a kicker who was about to blast it over my head. Luckily he fouled it off as I was running back, trying to figure out what the heck just happened to me. 

Then I realized, oh yeah, it's like 90° out, with maybe a heat index of 100°, I'm 50 years old now, and I'm pretty sure that people die this way!

I thought about the newspaper posting the story about the 50-year-old guy playing kickball at Clipper Stadium who died in the 100° heat, and I imagined all the crude comments under it.

"50 years old? Serves him right!"

"Duh-duh-duh-duh-dumba$$!!!"

"Thanx for thining out the jean pull moran."

"Well at least now he can relax, for eternity."

There will be several dozen gifs of Nelson Muntz HA-HA'ing me. 

And so forth and so on. Come on, my kids might be reading that!

I don't ask you people too much, but if that comes to pass, someone please write, "He died busy being born." My humiliated ghost will really appreciate it, forever, and ever, and ever.

July 8, 2024

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At the gym they're playing Been Caught Stealing by Jane's Addiction. That's the equivalent of being at a gym in 1990 when it came out and them playing It's Now or Never by Elvis.

July 8, 2021

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One of the all-time greatest albums, the Go-Go's Beauty and the Beat, was released on this day in 1981. Just an explosion of youthful pop energy. The first couple notes of We Got the Beat perfectly sets the time and place for Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Our Lips Are Sealed captures the feeling of the first days of MTV, there's no better example. The album could not be improved upon in 100 years.

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Can you think of a completely neutral way to measure whether racism is increasing or decreasing? 

Steven Pinker believes one measure is by looking at Google's data on searches for racist jokes. It's just one data point, but searches for racist jokes are on the decline. As a ridiculous aside, I was looking for a source and googled "Steven Pinker racist jokes." So I'll have to call Google and tell them to take one off their future tallies.

July 8, 2020

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Believe it or not, the world is becoming safer and safer. Anybody living today is much less likely to die as a result of violence than at anytime in our past. Don't believe me? I wouldn't either, but Stephen Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature might convince you otherwise. (Of course Trump's finger on the nuclear button could change things quickly.)

July 8, 2016

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I find it comforting to reflect on the fact that in 4 billion years the Andromeda Galaxy will crash into the Milky Way.

July 8, 2016

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Louis CK- "You don't have to be smart to laugh at farts, but you have to be stupid not to."

That runs through my head often, not unlike a mantra.

July 8, 2016

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Well it looks like Elon Musk's Twitter deal fell apart. Big whoop. Every time Elon Musk is in the news, which is quite a bit(!), I think of the Pete Holmes' bit about him wiping his ass. It's from his HBO special, Dirty Clean, and if you have HBO, I'd watch it if I were you.

Pete Holmes:

We are living in the future. Well, now we are– now. Now. Now is the future– now. Now’s the future. Now. You know what I think is fucking crazy about living now? Elon Musk, you know, the crazy billionaire dude, invented the self-driving car. It’s crazy, this isn’t something they’re working on, they made it. They have a self-driving car now. What I think is funny about that is it doesn’t matter how fancy an invention Elon Musk makes, he’s still just one of these. Does that make sense? Like he’s still– he’s stuck in one of these meat puppets. Just like you and me, just like a baboon, he’s just a guy just going around. There’s some things you can’t upgrade… is my point. Like, he’s working on impossible math to make a self-driving car, but when he gets hungry there’s no technology. He just goes, “Oh, there’s a rumble in my jumble.” Like, he just feels– (laughter) Just like you and me, just goes, “Oh, I gotta eat!” Then he gets a plate. That’s the height of technology, a plate. Just a level surface for his food with a piece of salmon on it, and he wants that salmon in him. It’s too big, so he gets a fork and a knife. That’s the height of the technology. And he cuts it into a mouth-sized piece and he goes, “That’s about right.” It’s too hot, so he goes… (blowing noises) He can’t upgrade this. He just has to go… (blowing noises) “Mouth-wind activate.” (blowing noises) And he puts it in his mouth and he gnaws it. (gnawing sounds) He swallows it like a fucking pelican, cause that’s the best he can do. (gulping noises) You understand? He can’t upgrade this. Like when he has to shit, he doesn’t have a contact lens that goes like, “Elon, shit detected.” (laughter) He just feels it like you and me. He just goes, “Oh, that’s not gas.” (grunting as Elon Musk) “I feel shame.” (laughter) “I feel shame and I want to be alone.” (laughter) So he makes an excuse with his egghead friends. He’s like, “Oh, I have to make a phone call.” But no, he doesn’t. He has to go in a little room and squat on a bowl that’s filled with water. That’s the best we can do. That is the height of the technology. Is a bowl filled with water, and he squats like an ostrich in the Serengeti and he bears down. He goes, “Elon, push…” (grunting) Don’t you back away from me right now, this is what he fucking does. He pushes and he hears, “Plop, plop, plop.” And that’s how he knows progress is being made. (laughter) And then when he thinks he’s done, and he’s not always right… (laughter) When he thinks he’s done, he gets paper. That’s the best we have, paper. You know, from ancient Egypt. And he wipes his shitty ass and then he looks at it. (laughter and applause) Don’t you fucking pull away from me. Everyone in this room knows there’s no better method than the wipe and the look. The old wipe and look. He goes wipe, wipe, wipe, and then he goes, “Oh, I got some work ahead of me.” (laughter) He goes wipe, wipe, wipe, “Getting there.” Wipe, wipe, wipe, “Clean but I don’t trust it.” Wipe, wipe, wipe, “Good thing I didn’t stop while I was ahead.” (laughter) And then he gets to what he considers an Elon-level of clean, he washes his hands, gets in his car, and goes, (beep sound) “Home.” (laughter) (cheers and applause)

July 8, 2022

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Elly De La Cruz stole 3 bases on 2 pitches today wow!

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On this day in 1932, the stock market hit its lowest level of the Great Depression, closing at 41.22. Fifteen years later, the country is carefree enough to be captivated by reports that a UFO had crash-landed in Roswell, New Mexico.

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I seriously love it.

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The Dutch mathematician, Christiaan Huygens, left us on this day in 1695.

"The world is my country, science is my religion." 

That is not a normal thing you hear people saying in the 1600s!

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English poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, left us on this day in 1822. 

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

The third to last breaking bad episode, one of the best episodes of television history, was named Ozymandias.

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Shipwreck Kelly joined us on this day in 1910. He was the guy who made flag pole sitting a national fad. Different time.

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Tony Sirico left us on this day in 2022. He played Pauly Walnuts on The Sopranos, it was featured in one of the other best episodes in television history, Pine Barrens.

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Vivien Leigh left us on this day in 1967 at the age of 53 due to tuberculosis. 

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The baseball player, Dick Gray left us on this day in 2013. Dick Gray is also a good reason to go to the doctor.

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Notable birthdays- Jean de La Fontaine (1621), John D. Rockefeller (1839), Louis Jordan (1908), Nelson Rockefeller (1908), Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926), Marty Feldman (1934), Kevin Bacon (1958)

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Another notable deathday- Tab Hunter (2018)

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Vladmir Nabakov, Strong Opinions- "My loathings are simple. stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. My pleasures are the most intense known to man: writing and butterfly hunting."

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William Faulkner, The Wild Palms- "Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain."

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Elie Wiesel, Night- "For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time."

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John Lurie, Painting With John:

What is this internet thing, "hahaha he's old." John Lurie, he's old now. They say it about everybody. I mean I survived some stuff in this world, and I put beautiful things into this world, and I hope to keep doing that. Isn't it kind of more like, "hahaha, you're young." Kid, almost without exception, your music sucks.

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Fyodor Dostoevsky- "Nature doesn't ask your permission; it doesn't care about your wishes, or whether you like its laws or not. You're obliged to accept it as it is, and consequently all its results as well."

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Carl Sagan, Contact- "Anything you don't understand, you attribute to God. God for you is where you sweep away all the mysteries of the world, all the challenges to our intelligence. You simply turn your mind off and say God did it."

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William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury- "...I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire...I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools."

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Hemingway- “No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.” 

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Rushdie- "Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn't exist in any declaration I have ever read."

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Robert McNamara- "They'll be no learning period with nuclear weapons. Make one mistake and you're going to destroy nations."

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