The Difficulty of Being a Parent- Not Laughing at the Wrong Time

If you can believe it, today Li Zhihao of China solved three Rubik's cubes while juggling them, in 3 minutes and 29 seconds.

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I'm 49 years, 5 months and 2 days old today, which means I have lived through exactly 20% of United States history.

July 29, 2023

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Never more prescient:

Isaac Asimov- "Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"

I'd add, "my prayers are better than your action."

July 29, 2020

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On this day in 1989, Ricky Henderson went 0-0 against the Mariners, stealing five bases and scoring four runs.

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Bill Burr: 

"I’m trying – I want to find an honesty guy. You know what I mean, some guy who’s just going to get on TV and be like, look in order for this whole thing to work at least two-thirds of you need to just go to the beach and walk into the ocean. There is only so much chicken and freshwater left. If you’re not in that upper third just be honest with yourselves, you know, they should have auditions. Whatever you do you got audition to still be here, right? You’re a plumber; fix that sink better than 70% of the other fuckers and that’s it, put some wrenches in your pocket, go to the beach and out you go. Yeah, straight across the board, dentists, comedians, I do it, I’d stand in the line with a bunch of clowns, all right, tumblers and shit. I wouldn’t make it. I wouldn’t. You know I take comfort in knowing that, there is no way I’m making it. I’m useless. I am. I’m 44, I’m not married, I don’t have any kids, why am I still here? Just another person taking up space, walking into a Starbucks, oh, Sheryl Crow CD, right, why am I here?"

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Gretel just came into the living room upset, very unhappy with Zuzu's picture of her. I asked her if I'd think it was funny. Gretel said she made her all purple. I couldn't laugh. 

Friends, withholding my laughter was the most difficult thing I've had to do in 5 years of being a parent. I think Gretel's unhappiness was justified. She looks like a magnified picture of some virus. (That's Emma next to her.)

July 29, 2018

Postscript: We all had a good laugh about it today.

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Here are their pictures of me.

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Anything strike you as odd from this quote from Roger Ebert's autobiography Life Itself? 

"Hollywood dialogue was once witty, intelligent, ironic, poetic, musical. Today it is flat. So flat that when a movie allows its characters to think fast and talk the same way, the result is invigorating, as in My Dinner with Andre, or the first thirty minutes of White Men Can't Jump."

White Man Can't Jump??? Somehow that's also one of Stanley Kubrick's favorite films, true story.

July 29, 2015

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Emma said I'm going to have to coach her on how to breath when she's having the baby. How do I know how she should breath? We haven't done any research at all! I told her we can look it up on eHow but I'm pretty sure I just have to sit in the waiting room drinking a fifth of whiskey. Father's still do that, right?

July 29, 2013

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Here I am in Rwanda on this day in 2011, sitting on an old Merry-Go-Round horse at some abandoned carnival, like I'm in some episode of scooby-doo.

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On this day in 1976, David Berkowitz (a.k.a. the "Son of Sam") killed one person and seriously wounded another in the first of a series of attacks that would invade the consciousness of every New Yorker.

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French historian and philosopher, Alexis de Tocqueville, was born on this day in 1802. He had our number back then.

"I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run."

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Screen legends Theda Bara and Clara Bow were born on this day in 1885 and 1905, respectively.

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It's the birthday of perhaps my favorite living director, Ken Burns, born on this day in 1953. how many hours of my life have I spent watching his films? I certainly spent 100 hours watching just the Civil war and Baseball.

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David Niven left us on this day in 1983. At his funeral the largest wreath was from the porters at the Heathrow airport. The card read, "To the finest gentleman who ever walked our halls. He made a porter feel like a king."

He also has one of the more memorable moments in Oscar history. As he was about to introduce Elizabeth taylor, a streaker ran past him and he said, "Isn't it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings?" 

It might have been staged to come but even if so, a life well-lived.

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Vincent Van Gogh left us on this day in 1890.

"You don’t know how paralyzing it is, that stare from a blank canvas that says to the painter you can’t do anything. The canvas has an idiotic stare, and mesmerizes some painters so that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the truly passionate painter who dares — and who has once broken the spell of ‘you can’t’. Life itself likewise always turns towards one an infinitely meaningless, discouraging, dispiriting blank side on which there is nothing, any more than on a blank canvas. But however meaningless and vain, however dead life appears, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, and who knows something, doesn’t let himself be fobbed off like that. He steps in and does something, and hangs on to that, in short, breaks, ‘violates’ — they say."

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The land lottery begins in Oklahoma on this day in 1901.

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Other notable birthdays- Booth Tarkington (1869), Benito Mussolini (1883), Dag Hammarskjöld (1905), Budd Boetticher (1916), Chris Marker (1921) 

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Other notable deathdays- Cass Elliot (1974), Raymond Massey (1983), Chris Marker (2012), Nikolai Volkoff (2018)

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Finitude is exactly what gives our life meaning. Without it our time would be worthless. Why do today what you can put off for a trillion years at no expense?

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From The Onion- The Pros And Cons Of Going Vegetarian

Pro: Increased energy for complaining about how shitty life is now

Con: "Many animals not slaughtered for consumption could go on to live long lives filled with heartbreak and disappointment."

http://onion.com/1AuUeIO

July 29, 2014

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Boy, that guy really likes Twizzlers!

https://youtu.be/2XAMtCtSAnY

July 29, 2015

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Mark Normand's perfect Coke/Pepsi trans joke:

There's a big debate these days. Are trans women the same as biological women, or are they different, boopity boop. I think it's like Coke and Pepsi. You always meet that one person that loves coke and hates pepsi. They ask for a coke and you say, "Well I got is Pepsi," and he says that he hates that shit. So you give him a Pepsi, tell him it's Coke, and he says, "Hey that's pretty good." And you say, "You just fucked a trans person." It's all fluid, right?

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Karl Popper- "True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it."

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Oliver Burkeman-

"Our finitude, the fact that we have to miss out on so much, is what gives weight to our choices. It's what means that something is at stake in what we choose to do with our lives. Think about it, if you knew that your life was never going to end, then the question, "Should I do X or Y with my day today?", Would always be, "Who cares?" It doesn't matter because there's always the next day, and then the next day, and the day after that. In fact why bother doing anything at all in a situation like that? So the fact that you need to miss out, isn't even something to necessarily regret. It's perhaps the thing that makes life juicy in the first place. I think one final way to help bring all of this into focus, is to see that there's something rather arrogant and entitled in the way we usually think about our finite time. We act like it's a huge problem that we only get a short amount of time, and like it's kind of an insult that it gets taken away from us by death, but when we say that our lives are short, short compared to what? Certainly short compared to a hypothetical immortal being, but it might make as much sense, or more sense, to compare our lives not to a hypothetical immortal being, but to all the countless hypothetical people who never got to be born in the first place. To see it from that perspective, it's not really cruel that our lives are not longer, but rather it's a staggering stupendous bonus that we get any time as conscious creatures on this planet at all. When you see things in this way, it starts to make more sense to think of all those inexhaustible experiences that the world has to offer, not as existing on some sort of endless to-do list, where if you don't make it through the list you will have missed out on life, but more like a different kind of list, a menu, a list of options you get to choose from. In that situation, having to choose, the necessity of choosing, it's not a terrible fate you've been sentenced to, but rather a wonderful opportunity, and a positive affirmation of the choices you do end up making."

Zowie, thanks for the reminder!

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Stanley Kubrick- "Observation is a dying art."

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Nothing's going to cause this guy to spin in his grave.