Dream-ers, Pray-ers and Do-ers

Hey all, thanks for the birthday wishes. I wrote this last year when I turned 50, and it still applies.

On Turning 50

Apparently, I will only ever eat Fruity Pebbles ravenously. I won't eat them often, but it'll always be ravenously when I do, and I will always need another partial bowl to "use up the milk," which will always be just a pretense to eat more. A 50-year-old man, imagine.

The arthritis in my wrists causes me to shriek occasionally.

Teaching Zuzu how to ride a bike wrecks me- bending over, running, holding her up. That's what happens when you raise small kids when you're grandpa-age.

I will always stick my finger in the mouth of any cat or dog that yawns, and I will just barely be able to resist if the creature is a human.

I will always grate vegetables down to the nub, and beyond, never stopping until I nick my finger.

I will forever feel the need to carve out more time to read non-fiction.

I'm at peace with the fact that I'm Wally from My Dinner with Andre. I get more enjoyment out of observing than participating.

I believe that I've retained a healthy apathy, where I don't care about things that don't matter.

I have a job where I don't have to tuck in my shirt, and which allows me to buy pretty much whatever food I want, but I take Thoreau's stance to heart, that if you do not require much, you always have enough, and you are indeed as rich as you ever need to be.

I'm now forever older than these people, who only made it to 49- Davy Crockett, Alexander Hamilton, Dale Earnhardt, Phil Hartman, James Garfield, Arthur Ashe, Jackie Wilson, Nico, Robert Fulton, Christian Doppler, Richard Marquand, and Joey Ramone.

I hope to live longer than these people, who died at 50- Michael Jackson, Bernie Mac, James Cook, Herve Villachaiz, Gustav Mahler, Steve McQueen, Jim Varney, Errol Flynn, Veronica Lake, Archduke Frans Ferdinand, Alan Ladd, Antoine Lavoisier, Dee Dee Ramone, Basho, Sergei Eisenstein, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, George Pickett, Roman Emperor Probus, and Joe Strummer.

That list of people who died at my age gets ominously longer with each passing year.

I'm still at the point that if I were to die this year, they'd say that I died young. That's good. I don't want to be morose, but Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living, and a life that doesn't examine its future death has not been examined at all.

Tomorrow I'm closer to 100 than my birth, and I'll take it.

Addendum 

-Note that I did live longer than all of those who died at 50, and I now hope to live longer than these people, who died at 51- Shakespeare, Napoleon, Captain John Smith, Roger Maris, Carl Wilson, Jack Swigert, Proust, Balzac, Moliere (what is it with French writers dying at 51?), Edouard Manet, Ranier Maria Rilke, Pliny the Younger, Ann Sheridan, Gustav Dore, Stanley Milgram, Alois Alzheimer, The Singing Nun Jeanne-Paule Marie Deckers, Empedocles, Calamity Jane, and James Gandolfini.

-Someone told me last year when I turned 50 that now everything was going to start hurting, and they weren't kidding. I seriously strained a quadricep last year, messed up my neck, tore my meniscus and had it operated on... yes, all in separate kickball-related incidents. Now when I get sick, I'm haunted by the ghosts of every injury I've ever had. This wrist arthritis still has me shrieking away occasionally. The 50's are not for the weak, yet are certainly destined to be the halcyon days of our future decades.

"Dying young." How does one define that? In my view, Don Rickles died young at 90. And we have to remember the old tombstone warning, "Here lies X, died at 40, buried at 80."

-Also note that after teaching Zuzu to ride a bike last year on my 50th birthday, this year on my 51st, she road bike about two miles while I ran with her. She crocheted two bees for me for my birthday, and Gretel took me to Splits and Giggles.

Good birthday.

February 27, 2025

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John Steinbeck was born on this day in 1902. From The Winter of Our Discontent:

“To be alive at all is to have scars." 

I was born on what would have been his 72nd birthday, 50 years ago today, and I have the scars to prove it. 

There's one on my chin from when I was 6 and tried to ride bike with no hands. 

There's one on my upper lip from when I was 13 and wiped out skateboarding, face-first in the street. The doctor give me a shot of novacaine, then another, then another, then another, on and on it went. It was the worst pain I've ever experienced. Something weird happened halfway through. I shifted from screaming to laughing. The more it hurt, the more I laughed. I swear that laughter is still ringing through my head. I've never heard a joke funnier than getting repeatedly jabbed with that needle.

There's one on my left knee from when I was 14 and went tearing down a rocky hillside with my friends. 

My dog bit my left ring finger when I was 16 when I tried to take her bone. 

My short-lived pet rat bit my left middle finger when I was 17. 

There's a scar on my left eyebrow from when I was 18 and got a big elbow to the head at the Chameleon. My friend took me to the ER. The doctors put a thing over my face so that they could see the wound, and I couldn't see anything. I heard one of the doctors say, "Whoa, I can see his skull!" Whoops, that wasn't a doctor. Turned out my friend was back there watching the proceedings, probably eating some popcorn. 

Look closely and I'm sure there are hundreds of cactus needle-sized scars all over my toes, feet and legs from when I was lost in a Texas desert at night when I was 25. 

I stuck my left elbow through a window at 26.

I cut my left pinky on a Smurf glass at 29.

I smashed my left pinky in the back door of a box truck when I was 33. Some of my meat came out the side. 

I was thrown headfirst into a foosball table when I was 34. 

Right Achilles surgery at 37, left ACL surgery at 38, right elbow surgery at 39, bashed my head on a steel girder at 40, right labrum surgery at 41, appendicitis at 43. 

I had a small chunk of something cut out of the left side of my face at 47. Know what the doctor said? "I assume you don't care about the cosmetic aspect."  

Actually, I kind of do care. I'm glad that I have scars. Maybe instead of marking our ages by something arbitrary like trips around the sun, we should mark them by something meaningful like our scars.

February 27, 2024

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Oh no, Richard Lewis died. How can that be? Just a week or two ago on Curb your Enthusiasm Richard and Larry were arguing over which one looked closer to death. There was a great scene in previous season where the two were kidding each other and Larry says, "When are you going to die? Could you please just die?" The look on Richard's face is subtle and hilarious. He's trying not to bust out laughing and ruin the scene. No doubt that was his kind of joke.

It's at the end of this hour and a half of banter and arguments between the two of them.

https://youtu.be/i2eXVkEFg7o

Larry said this today- “He had that rare combination of being the funniest person and also the sweetest. But today he made me sob and for that I’ll never forgive him”

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It's my 49th birthday. One more year to gather strength, haha.

"Until the age of forty it is best to gather strength. Is appropriate to have settled down by the age of fifty."

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An illustrated Jamie Silbaugh dream, given to me by the artist. Wonder what I could get for this on eBay.

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I heard a perfect story tonight at racquetball. I told someone about my choking scare from the weekend. He said he was at a wedding years ago and there was a big commotion. Someone had choked on a piece of cauliflower and passed out. Several ladies stood there praying, until someone swooped in and Heimlicked it out of them. 

Moral- if all anyone did was pray, she'd be dead! She needed someone to DO something.

February 27, 2020

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Happy Birthday Uncle Ben

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0pRg35cKmf53HwJ1cMESmLWa4Wp6ThPe8GU1fvhwBKmiiTdxN36YYKcxgHzQe5K2El&id=1428050285&sfnsn=mo&mibextid=VhDh1V

February 27, 2018

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From Emma:

February 27, 2018

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Trump: "Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated."

FINALLY! The emporer has no clothes moment... we ALL knew.

February 27, 2017

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I don't want to razz the president too much on his statement that nobody knew how complicated health care was. He SHOULD make it simple- single payer, decrease expenses 50% (no insurance companies to prop up), public ownership, admission that health care is a right. If one believes we are a government of the people, certainly we can give ourselves health insurance. Are our foundational principals too idealistic? He might lose some billionaire buddies, but after all of this he still has the capability of being a great president, somehow. His damage can be undone. He has the power to stop being a Scrooge and start being a Christmas morning Scrooge. 

(Btw, did he really think it was as simple as- people pay too much, so make it less expensive, but keep the same benefits? If he does the right thing, it doesn't matter.)

February 27, 2017

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Most surprising Oscar ending ever. A true fiasco, haha. Yeah we'll, this is still how I'll remember those two.

February 27, 2017

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These quotes keep turning up from Bush's interview...defeating ISIS requires showing the world we care, American freedom is based on religious liberty, we need answers concerning Trump and Russia, a free press is critical to democracy. If you aren't careful you might catch yourself considering him your new favorite political philosopher, until you realize he's simply stating the obvious. (But good for him.)

February 27, 2017

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Perfect! I need to remember this.

February 27, 2017

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Steinbeck's birthday. He joined us on this day in 1902. His beer milkshake has stuck with me for years.

"In Monterey before he even started, he felt hungry and stopped at Herman’s for a hamburger and beer. While he ate his sandwich and sipped his beer, a bit of conversation came back to him. Blaisedell, the poet, had said to him, “You love beer so much. I’ll bet some day you’ll go in and order a beer milk shake.” It was a simple piece of foolery but it had bothered Doc ever since. He wondered what a beer milk shake would taste like. The idea gagged him a bit but he couldn’t let it alone. It cropped up every time he had a glass of beer. Would it curdle like milk? Would you add sugar? It was like a shrimp ice cream. Once the thing got into your head you couldn’t forget it. He finished his sandwich and paid Herman. He purposely didn’t look at the milk shake machines lined up so shiny against the back wall. If a man ordered a beer milk shake, he thought, he’d better do it in a town where he wasn’t known. But then, a man with a beard, ordering a beer milk shake in a town where he wasn’t known — they might call the police."

February 27, 2016

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What I witnessed the other night seems like it must have been a dream- my 2-year-old daughter attempted to breastfeed her giant sock monkey. But it was real.

February 27, 2016

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Emma- Happy Birthday, Boyfriend! And congratulations on knowing me for half of your life!

February 27, 2016

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A friend of mine was going to give away this book as a joke but I convinced him to give it to me instead. After a year on half.com it finally sold for $40, cha-ching!

February 27, 2016

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Good birthday so far!

February 27, 2014

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From Emma:

February 27, 2013

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The Reichstag fire took place on this day in 1933, 41 years before I was born. Germany's parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, was set on fire, a pretense for creating unrest.

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On this day in 1973, the American Indian Movement occupied Wounded Knee in protest of the federal government.

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Some Kind of Wonderful was released on this day in 1987, my 13th birthday.

Perhaps the best cover song in the history of cover songs ran through the end credits: Lick the Tins with I Can't Help Falling In Live With You

https://youtu.be/7kORTAjFAWM

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born on this day in 1807.

"For after all, the best thing one can do when it is raining is let it rain."

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Elizabeth Taylor, was born on this day in 1932.

"One problem with people who have no vices is that they're pretty sure to have some annoying virtues."

Maureen Stapleton on her:

"She is a complete divinity. I don't know what else to tell you. One great broad, dame, lady, person, friend, sister. Dedicated to making sure everyone is happy and fed and cared for. Once you know her and all that she can do, you just sigh and relax when she's around, because things are in order; things are going to be okay."

Well hello there!

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Ralph Nader was born on this day in 1934, a personal hero.

"Ours is a system of corporate socialism, where companies capitalize their profits and socialize their losses…in effect, they tax you for their accidents, bungling, boondoggles, and mismanagement, just like a government. We should be able to deselect them."

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Former pitcher, Mike Krukow in Baseball Digest, December 2002, Page 26:

"Slowest runner now I think is Doug Mirabelli. I think the slowest runner that I ever saw was Ron Hassey. He admitted it, but he had a trick. He'd move his arms faster as he ran because he thought it made him look faster."

Ron Hassey was born on this day in 1952.

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Phillies legend Matt Stairs join us on this day in 1968. At 40 years old he had one of the most iconic home runs in Philly's history.

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Derren Brown, the best magician of our time, joined us on this day in 1971. Each special is a must watch.

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Other notable birthdays- Constantine the Great (272),William Alabaster (1567), Joanne Woodward (1930), Sir Roger Scruton (1944), Lee Atwater (1951), Nancy Spungen (1958), Chelsea Clinton (1980)

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Lillian Gish left us on this day in 1993.

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William F. Buckley, Jr. left us on this day in 2008. I have a big grudging respect for him because I know without a doubt that he would hate Trump.

His debates with Gore Vidal are for the ages. Gore really got under his skin, thus Buckley lost. But Buckley got under Gore's skin too. What proof? How about this eulogy.

"RIP WFB- in hell."

Watch him get trounced in a 1969 debate on the Vietnam War by an up-and-coming all-star of American dissidence. The level of dialogue in this debate is supernatural.

https://youtu.be/9DvmLMUfGss

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Other notable deathdays- Ivan Pavlov (1936), Frankie Lymon (1968), Fred Rogers (2003), Leonard Nimoy (2015)

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Best speech in oscar history... Dustin Hoffman, "winning" for Kramer Vs. Kramer. Those applause at the end are not for him, but for his speech. Skip ahead to the 3-minute mark.

https://youtu.be/EhDmNRQgKLM

February 27, 2011

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The Onion- Retiring Pope Vows To Continue Drawing 'Papalpuss' Comic Strip

A relief to all of us Papalpuss fans out there.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/retiring-pope-vows-to-continue-drawing-papalpuss-c,31458/

February 27, 2013

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New York Times- Trump Embraces ‘Enemy of the People,’ a Phrase With a Fraught History

SPOILER ALERT: he's not in good company.

"The phrase was too toxic even for Nikita Khrushchev, a war-hardened veteran communist not known for squeamishness. As leader of the Soviet Union, he demanded an end to the use of the term “enemy of the people” because “it eliminated the possibility of any kind of ideological fight.”

“The formula ‘enemy of the people,’” Mr. Khrushchev told the Soviet Communist Party in a 1956 speech denouncing Stalin’s cult of personality, “was specifically introduced for the purpose of physically annihilating such individuals” who disagreed with the supreme leader."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/26/world/europe/trump-enemy-of-the-people-stalin.html

February 27, 2017

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The Hill- Cyber chief says he hasn’t received orders from Trump to disrupt Russian cyberattacks targeting elections

Impeachable? Not really preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution to the best of his ability now, is he? Wait, I see my mistake. Maybe this IS the best of his ability!

http://hill.cm/bxjHxdJ

February 27, 2018

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CNN- Read: Michael Cohen’s opening statement to Congress

Holy cow... I get the feeling this might show up in future textbooks.

https://cnn.it/2TgRkZT

February 27, 2019

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This is part of the soundtrack in Hell- Smells like Teen Spirit mixed in a major key.

https://youtu.be/dVehv_LDWaE

February 27, 2021

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Trump: Putin Is Smart, Our Leaders Are Dumb

https://youtu.be/3CWagU2pkgo

Very glad to see shrinking numbers of conservative people supporting this kind of nonsense... saying "we should blow them to bits, psychologically," in the same breath that he's gushing over how smart a move it was for Putin.

Think about what he's saying was so smart- Putin starting a war of aggression over threat of nuclear world war. Sure, blow Putin to bits psychologically with so much praise that his speech is put on a repeating loop on Russian state-run media, helping him accomplish his ends.

February 27, 2022

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John Mulaney's brilliant monologue.

https://youtu.be/aUgzDqniZgo

February 27, 2022

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Transvision Vamp- Tell That Girl to Shut Up

https://youtu.be/Pl63n77Wl3I

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Richard Lewis- “Comedy is defiance. It’s a snort of contempt in the face of fear and anxiety.” 

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Thomas Bernhardt, Wittgenstein’s Nephew: A Novel- “The truth is that I am happy only when I am sitting in the car, between the place I have just left and the place I am driving to. I am happy only when I am traveling; when I arrive, no matter where, I am suddenly the unhappiest person imaginable. Basically I am one of those people who cannot bear to be anywhere and are happy only between places.

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Steven Pinker's favorite curse, from 1585- "Kiss the cunt of a cow."

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Plato- "The right question is usually more important than the right answer."

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Iris Murdoch- "One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats."

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Robert Anton Wilson- "The totally convinced and the totally stupid have too much in common for the resemblance to be accidental."

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Ricky Gervais- "Give a man a fish, and he'll probably follow you home expecting more fish."

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Pete Rose- "I haven't missed a game in two-and-a-half years. I go to the park as sick as a dog and, when I see my uniform hanging there, I get well real quick."

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Plutarch- "An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics."

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Richard Dawkins- "Faith is belief without evidence and reason; coincidentally that's also the definition of delusion."

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Arthur Schopenhauer- "The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him."

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Lincoln- "If this country is ever demoralized, it will come from trying to live without work."

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Hunter S. Thompson- "Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant."

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David Foster Wallace, Girl with Curious Hair- "We all have our little solipsistic delusions, ghastly intuitions of utter singularity: that we are the only one in the house who ever fills the ice-cube tray, who unloads the clean dishwasher, who occasionally pees in the shower, whose eyelid twitches on first dates; that only we take casualness terribly seriously; that only we fashion supplication into courtesy; that only we hear the whiny pathos in a dog’s yawn, the timeless sigh in the opening of the hermetically-sealed jar, the splattered laugh in the frying egg, the minor-D lament in the vacuum’s scream; that only we feel the panic at sunset the rookie kindergartner feels at his mother’s retreat. That only we love the only-we. That only we need the only-we. Solipsism binds us together, J.D. knows. That we feel lonely in a crowd; stop not to dwell on what’s brought the crowd into being. That we are, always, faces in a crowd."

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Chuck Palanhiuk, Survivor- "Did perpetual happiness in the Garden of Eden maybe get so boring that eating the apple was justified?"

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Mitch Hedberg- "I think Pizza Hut is the cockiest pizza chain on the planet, because Pizza Hut will accept all competitor's coupons. That makes me wish I had my own pizza place. "Mitch's pizzeria. This week's coupon: unlimited free pizza.""

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Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath:

Before I knowed it, I was sayin' out loud, 'The hell with it! There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of the same thing.' . . . . I says, 'What's this call, this sperit?' An' I says, 'It's love. I love people so much I'm fit to bust, sometimes.' . . . . I figgered, 'Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,' I figgered, 'maybe it's all men an' all women we love; maybe that's the Holy Sperit-the human sperit-the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of.' Now I sat there thinkin' it, an' all of a suddent-I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it.

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Michel de Montaigne- "Man is quite insane. He wouldn't know how to create a maggot, and he creates Gods by the dozen."

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Henry Miller, On Turning Eighty- "I don’t like to end on a sour note. As my readers well know, my motto has always been: “Always merry and bright.” Perhaps that is why I never tire of quoting Rabelais: “For all your ills I give you laughter.” As I look back on my life, which has been full of tragic moments, I see it more as a comedy than a tragedy. One of those comedies in which while laughing your guts out you feel your heart breaking. What better comedy could there be? The man who takes himself seriously is doomed."

Addendum

This podcast starts out with a bang, calling out much of the Republican party's recent love affair with Putin and Russia. 

Sam Harris:

"We see the full lunacy of the Republican Party on display- isolationist, willing to abdicate US leadership globally, unconcerned that they now have a candidate who openly supports dictators in wars of aggression, who said that he would encourage Putin to do whatever the hell he wants to our NATO allies if they don't spend enough on their own defense because they're, "delinquent in their payments," as though the defense of Western civilization has all the significance of a rental dispute over a condominium in Florida.

"It would be one thing to argue for American isolationism and to reconsider our involvement in foreign conflicts. I do think it would be easy to take the other side of that argument and to make the case that pulling back from the world that is failing to defend democracies against aggressive autocracies, failing to defend our traditional allies, losing NATO, etc., I think it would be easy to argue that all of that would be very bad, not just for the world but for American security, eventually, but what we see on the right is not merely an America first agenda. We see a totally amoral, and in many cases immoral fondness for dictators and for Putin in particular, and for the total eclipse of liberal values, for the outright destruction of liberal institutions. We see fellow travelers and useful idiots propagandizing for autocracy.

"And speaking of idiots, useful or otherwise, we have Tucker Carlson, this well-established liar and fabulist and crackpot, broadcasting his smug ignorance from Mother Russia to the delight of Putin, obviously, and of the populist right in America, but insanely also to the delight of some of the most prominent podcasters and tech bros who are not themselves right-wing idiots at all. I won't name names, but Jesus Christ. 

"These people are acting as though just sticking a microphone in front of Putin for two hours and looking servile was a heroic act of investigative journalism. Of course, many people have savaged Tucker, and in particular responded to his delusional comments about how much better life is in Moscow than in any American city. Fareed Zakaria had a great response on his show, and in the Washington Post, John Stewart did his bit, and this would all be hilarious because it's so ludicrous if so many people weren't taken in by it. 

"Needless to say, Trump's and Tucker's and the right wings embrace of Putin looks even more vile in light of the recent death of Alexei Navalny. In Putin, we're talking about a leader who imprisons and murders his political opponents. He even murders his critics in foreign capitals like London. He imprisons and murders journalists, even imprisons American journalists, and even Russian billionaires. 

"I mean, how did we get to the point that something like half of America can't see what's wrong with this?"

https://samharris.org/episode/SEE6E5C6298