That's Your Brother

Whenever Charlie does anything crazy, inappropriate, obnoxious, etc., Grace and I have this thing where we assign blame to our respective poor influence on him. One of us will invariably shake his/her head and sigh, "That's your son"/"That's your brother."

Last night we had these monster green beans hand-picked from our local CSA (give me beans flown by leaky Lear Jet from Argentina 'cause the beans we ate tasted like the junkyard dog of skunk cabbages). Charlie decided to forego the eating, opting instead to remove the individual beans and use the remaining tube as his milk straw.

While I have put many fruits and vegetables up my nose, I have never used food of any type as a straw. Or at least as a straw for milk. Grace, on the other hand, has done so on numerous occasions, particularly with pasta.

Our children will never be allowed to eat at a non-relative's home.

Not Last (This Time), But Probably Close

I was the last person I knew of to get a cell phone. Ditto for a DVD player. We still don't have cable TV, and I'm proud to say I've never heard a Britney Spears song.

Yesterday, after almost 25 straight years of starting my day with breakfast and The Boston Globe Sports page and having the Comics enliven my morning constitutional, I cancelled our subscription.

The idea to cancel was first planted by watching Marc Andreessen on Charlie Rose. Since then we've endured threats to close the paper down, union negotiations, putting it up for sale, etc. The biggest problem, however, was its incredible shrinking.

Back in college I delivered papers for spending money and some days (Thursdays in particular), those bad boys were monsters. I look at today's paper and it's about the tenth the size.

I feel a more than a little sad about this, like it's the end of an era. By getting my news fix online, I feel like I've joined "everybody else." I'll probably feel the same way when I'm the last guy to trade in his car for a new hovercraft.

The silver lining? Not having Dan Shaughnessy arrive uninvited on my doorstep every morning.

39

The car I drive (when biking is not an option) is a Toyota Corolla wagon with 144,000 miles on it. We bought it new in 1994, paid it off in 1997, and never suspected we would still own it in 2009. Yet here it is, still ticking.

A few years ago it needed some work, so I took it to the town dealership where we bought it. They estimated about $4,000 in repairs and said it wasn't safe to drive. Always a fan of a second opinion (and NEVER a fan of dealer repair shops), I brought it to our neighborhood mechanic who said he could get it running good as new for about $800. He did it for $670. Since then he's done a couple of other repairs, like replacing the gas tank, with each one coming in around $200.

I can tell my parents are slightly ashamed of this car. Their financing of an Ivy League education wasn't supposed to end up like this. They drive Saabs and trade in their cars every couple of years. Two recent trade-ins have both had less than 10,000 mile on them (fewer miles than my bike). Their reason? "Oh, they were going to go off warranty in a year." I remember when thriftiness was a virtue.

Anyway, the impetus for this post was all the hoopla over the "Cash for Clunkers" program. I was curious if the Corolla qualified as a clunker (it doesn't) and then started tracking its mileage more closely. My last tank, with half of it spent on the highway coming back from Maine, came in over 39 MPG!

So while I get wistful at passing Mini Cooper Clubmen and Honda Fits, my materialistic cravings quickly wane when I realize their mileage is less than my 15-year-old Corolla's. If I could get the 700 lbs of matted dog hair out of the upholstery, it might even hit 40.

Thanks for Stopping By

Back in college, there were about 15 guys from my dorm who all tried to join the same fraternity. The official rush was a two-night affair with some guys getting bids after the first night. Those that did got to stay on the second night and have some input on the discussions/debates about the remaining candidates.

I did not get a bid after the first night, so the second night rush wasn't quite as fun as it was for the people who were already in. Like the guy who lived right across the hall from me. Whom I saw every single day for about six months. Anyway, at the end of the second night, all the borderline cases file out and the brothers and first-night bids line up to shake their hands and wish them luck. The guy across the hall from me grabs my hand and says, "Thanks for stopping by" in a voice reserved for game show hosts and creepy uncles from Wisconsin.

It's a line that has stuck with me for years. We gave the guy endless shit about it. Maybe even to his face, I can't remember.

Yesterday, I was leaving a client meeting when the president walked me out and gave me the same exaggerated handshake and overly insincere "Thanks for stopping by."

Made me want to go chug a beer and smear mustard down my underpants.

Missing Icons

As a friend said to me this morning, "What are the chances of the #1 pop icon from the 70s and the #1 pop icon from the 80s both dying on the same day?"

I agree with his assessment of Michael in the 80s--no one was bigger, and Thriller was the biggest thing to come along, from the standpoint of taking over the whole nation and a big part of the world, in a loooong time. Has anything replicated it since?

As for Farrah, I can't say if she was #1 in the 70s. Mostly due to my poor memory of whatever else was going on. In terms of Charlie's Angels, I was more attracted to Kate Jackson's husky voice and Jaclyn Smith's syrupy sultriness than to Farrah--maybe because she was just so perfect and thus, unattainable.

I do remember, quite vividly, her famous poster. In fact, I had cut out a small picture of it from a magazine and was using it as a bookmark for a spell. One day it fell out right in front of my mother. Words cannot adequately capture her tirade. From that moment on, I never spoke to either parent about any girl again until I had to tell them I was getting married.

RIP, Farrah (and Michael). Whenever I look at my wife's picture from 7th grade with the side flipbacks, I will think of you.

Mary Poppins is a Beeyatch

I have seen Disney's 1964 film Mary Poppins probably a couple dozen times now, and every single time I've thought to myself, "Why is Julie Andrews playing her so MEAN?" I've also thought that LSD probably had a big role in the chimney sweep dance number, but that's a topic for another day.

Last week Alice's sister dropped off four of P.L. Travers's Mary Poppins books for Grace and whomever else to read. Between books, I picked up the first one and plowed through it in a couple of days. Very imaginative stuff, and very different from the movie. Such as:

• Jane and Michael aren't the only kids. There are twin babies, Barbara and John.
• Mrs. Banks is not a dancing, singing Suffragette.
• Bert only shows up once and it is obvious that Mary Poppins is more than smitten.
• No written job description and line of nanny candidates. Mary just appears one day.
• While the laughing/floating scene with Uncle Albert and the Bird Lady are in the book, the movie leaves out the compass trip around the world, talking John and Barbara, and the night visit to the zoo (which are great).
• The Banks don't seem to have much interest in their kids, but there is no Mary Poppins mission to get them to connect, culminating with "Let's Go Fly a Kite" in the park.

But believe it or not, another big difference is that Mary Poppins in the book is even MEANER than the Julie Andrews portrayal. Not a single nice word or smile the entire book. Other than the cool adventures, the kids should have been thrilled the West wind finally blew her away.

Chalk Up Another One for the Church

Somehow, I don't think this is what Jesus had in mind.

"Socially Horrifying"

I've never read any of Malcolm Gladwell's books, just the occasional article in The New Yorker, so I've never formed much an opinion one way or another. His recent article on underdogs, however, knocked my socks off. He looks around the corner and throughout history to see how Davids beat Goliaths--which they do almost 30% of the time--and whether there are any consistent patterns.

Turns out, there are. One is that underdogs simply work harder.

"We tell ourselves that skill is the precious resource and effort is the commodity. It's the other way around. Effort can trump ability--legs, in Saxe's formulation, can overpower arms--because relentless effort is in fact something rarer than the ability to engage in some finely tuned act of motor coordination."

The other consistent trait is that Davids often come from the "outside" and thus confront their superior adversaries using unconventional or unexpected methods. At one end of the spectrum, the adversaries mock these methods. At the other end, they find them "socially horrifying."

Gladwell weaves in stories of George Washington, Rick Pitino, Lawrence of Arabia, and a team of 7th-grade blonde-haired girls (among others) to make his point. Totally fascinating and somewhat inspiring.

I don't know if was intentional or not, but towards the end of the article, Gladwell begins using the terms "underdog" and "insurgent" interchangeably. It made me think the piece should be required reading for every member of the US military force in Iraq and Afghanistan.

How to Ruin Your House

Our town, like many around it, has undergone a pretty amazing transformation in the past 15 years. Little homes have either been renovated and greatly expanded or demolished to build massive new structures whose garage is bigger than the original house. Most of them have been beautifully designed with interesting roof lines, cool porches, etc.

And a surprisingly large percentage share a common color scheme. Pale yellow siding with maroon shutters. Other than displaying your rusty washing machine collection in your front yard, there is no better way to quickly and drastically reduce your home's value.

Doing Their Bit (at no charge)

Grace and some friends from school formed a club called Global Girls. Its mission is pretty loose, but involves little tasks like saving the world.

They had a meeting yesterday where they made dolls by stuffing socks with cotton balls and then drawing on hair and faces. The plan is to give them to sick children at the hospital to make them feel better. Apparently, some of the Global Girls didn't like the faces they had drawn and wanted to chuck their dolls, but were dissuaded by the others. "Kids with cancer and their hair falling out won't care if the doll's eyes are too big," said one.

After much discussion, the group decided not to charge the kids anything for the dolls.