CALL ME SNAKE

It doesn’t happen often in life, but it does happen. I’m talking about those times when a man needs to buckle down and buy a new belt. The one I’d been wearing for the past 15 or so years was wearing thin, fraying at the edges, and becoming somewhat of an embarrassment. So I needed to face up to this important, though easy to put off, task.

The Gap (product placement!) had an amazing sale, unloading their belts for $3.99 apiece. I took three. If I get 15 years out of each of them, I have to figure–even with the most optimistic actuarial assumptions–that I’m set for life, at least when it comes to belts. That, of course, raises the usual “good news/bad news” dichotomy–the good news being that after my $11.97 investment, I won’t need to purchase another belt in my life. The bad news is that I won’t need to purchase another belt in my life. And that is kind of scary, as it makes the whole mortality thing all them more imminent. And palpable.

Were I to do it all over again, I’d live my life in the present. And buy my belts one at a time.

I always felt that kids who are cut off from television are kind of out of it in a quaint, Amish sort of way. Which is why I’ve trained my children to become good TV watchers–or at least I’d thought they were trained as such. But now the strategy has appeared to backfire as my three-year-old is in open revolt. One night over the weekend we watched a family video (something about a dog?) and the next night the women’s figure skating on the Olympics (which I’d taped the night before). The next night, as we were getting ready for bedtime, my youngest upstart remarked: “I hope we don’t have to watch another movie tonight. That’s boring!” Instead, I was forced to read her a book before bed, all the while feeling like a total, unmitigated failure as a parent. So I ask you (at the risk of repeating myself): What’s the matter with kids today?

You know the old saying: The more things change, they more they get worse. That certainly has been the case vis a’ vis development in “the fair city of Cambridge,” as the Car Talk brothers call it. The colorful establishments that played a big role in making this a so-called “interesting” place to live are disappearing, one by one and score by score. The Plough & Stars, a legendary Irish pub (a few blocks from my house) that closed last year, is one such place. My wife and I had our first official date there (our first unofficial date occurred at the Brattle Theatre–another “colorful” Harvard Square landmark about to go under), and I’ve had a number of unusual experiences at the Plough over the years (though, truth be known, I’m not the pub type).

So we all got weepy last year, pulling out our hankies for the Plough and reading its obit. But lo and behold, the Plough is coming back! (Under new management; in fact, it’s being renovated now.) So things don’t always get worse, after all. Sometimes they get better. And if not better, well maybe they can almost get back to where they were.

In a 228-page report issued yesterday, the White House admitted that the federal response to Hurricane Katrina was badly “botched” and issued 125 recommendations to prevent a recurrence of the “comedy of errors” that transpired after the storm struck in late August. The most significant recommendation, from a policy standpoint, is worded as follows: “Henceforth, natural disasters shall not occur during the president’s ‘vacation’ time in Crawford, Texas.”

I’ve seen ads on TV for a new kind of show, “The Evidence,” that features a new kind of gimmick. “We provide the evidence,” the ad says. “You solve the crime.” That sounds like too much work for the average coach potato. (I’m not one yet but I aspire to be one soon.) Whatever happened to screenwriters? Are they all on strike? I’d like to suggest an alternative proposal to ABC: “You write the story. We watch the show.” (Well not me, actually, but maybe somebody will watch it–not that the world is actually hurting for another crime drama. Hence the gimmick, I assume.)

I was prepared to write my usual curmudgeonly bit about the decline of ice skating at the Olympics. The men’s competition, from what I saw, was dismal. The heightened focus on jumping–which has been the trend over the last several Games–has hurt the sport, in my opinion. Skaters, both male and female, are under intense pressure to perform jumps that are somewhat beyond their abilities. The result is frequent falls which are no fun (and sometimes painful) to watch. The grace and artistry (of someone like Paul Wylie) is mostly gone.

I was all set to write that until last night when I was lucky enough to catch the last few female entries in the “short program.” Sasha Cohen was marvelous–a revelation–and I’m now prepared to eat those words. We can only hope that Cohen and the other athletes will achieve similarly exalted levels during tomorrow’s free skate competition.

I watched a few minutes of the “freestyle aerials” last night on the Olympics and was struck by how much this sport has evolved. I spent a year as a ski bum in Vail in the early-70s, while I was still a teenager, and that was the year that “hotdogging” (as we called it then) really got going–with both aerial and bump skiing competitions. There was practically no coaching or supervised training, and people took reckless chances. One guy I know tried a gainer (back flip) on the first day he skied and dislocated his shoulder. Other people in competition, sadly, broke their necks.

One of the skiers last night did a triple-twisting triple back flip and the commentators called the degree of difficulty low–to give you a sense of how much things have changed. Personally, I find all those twists and flips hard to watch. I like the good old days–apart from the terrible injuries–when people did simpler jumps like sidekicks, daffies (a kind of spacewalking), spread eagles, and helicopters with great style and flair. I did all these jumps as well, along with cliff jumping–another thing we did for fun–though not necessarily “with great style and flair.”

It was a simpler era. There was very little money in the sport. And people were mainly out to have a good time. Now it’s a big-time Olympic competition and the purses have grown commensurately. But I’ll still take a good sidekick over a triple-twisting triple back flip.

I don’t normally reprint comments, but this one (sent by “hance” on 2006/02/11 at 02:39:38) seemed so important, I decided to break with my time-honored policy. Here’s what hance had to say: “We are the registered traditional culture group in tanzania dealing with various type of culture shows activities. moistly we are dealing with the shows playing with various type of snakes in TANZANIA and africa at all.we have been invited in some of eoropean countries for shows. Please we are looking for the groups all arround the world to have a relation in order to have an idea and even commercial agreements each other.”

The note seems straightforward enough–an appeal straight from the heart. The rest is up to you. Let’s make something happen. And remember, it all started here at Call Me Snake.

Donald Rumself scoffed at Kofi Annan’s call to shut down the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Rumsfeld claimed that the UN Secretary had never been to Gitmo and that he was “flat wrong” to suggest that prisoners there had been mistreated. Annan’s statements about Gitmo were “beyond comprehension,” Rumsfeld maintained. “That place is being run as well as any detention facility can be run.”

If Rumsfeld is so fond of the place, maybe he should spend his next vacation there. Or better yet, take up permanent residence at that jewel in the Caribbean. And while he’s at it, he could take his friends–Bush and Cheney–along with him.

Released from the hospital and calling himself a “very lucky man,” Harry Whittington took his turn before the media on Friday, apologizing for all the trouble he’d caused Dick Cheney by getting between a quail and Cheney’s gun and–as a result of his ineptitude–getting “peppered” with birdshot. “I’m deeply sorry for all that the vice president and his family has had to go through this week,” Whittington told the press corps. He wished Cheney a speedy recovery from all the stress he has been subjected to on account of his [Whittington's] exceptionally poor judgment about when to retrieve the fowl he felled.

By all accounts, Whittington is an uncommonly understanding individual–almost heroic in his efforts to defend his friend’s faulty aim. If you had to pepper somebody in a hunting accident–and I’m sure not recommending it, seeing as I’m not even a hunter–you probably couldn’t pick a better person.

Dick Cheney addressed the media (question: is FOX NEWS really the media?) on Wednesday, expressing contrition over having mistaken his friend for a quail and then pulling the trigger. (With friends like that, who needs enemies?) It was one of the worst days of my life, said Cheney–the new poster child for the “gang that couldn’t shoot straight.”

What a shame. Cheney had a bad day on the ranch. I really feel for him. And what about Whittington, lying there in the hospital with birdshot lodged in his heart? How do you think he’d rate the day?

What with all the furor over hunting lapses and familial misdeeds in Massachusetts, etc. over the past few days, I’m sorry to say that this blog has gotten away from its primary focus: coverage of the fast-paced developments in, of, and related to the inner game of volleyball. This post (part of a new feature here at Call Me Snake!) will, I trust, help get us back on track.

This week’s tip comes from no less a source than beach volleyball legend Sinjin Smith–courtesy of PARADE. (First a word about PARADE: This magazine, in my opinion, has it all. I mean, really, between the Personality Parade and the Intelligence Report what more do you need? If I were alone on a desert island and didn’t have those damn “others” to contend with, I’d be quite content to sit and read PARADE.)

Pardon that digression (product placement?), let’s hear what Sinjin had to say about volleyball: “Don’t be too fancy,” he suggests. “Just keep the ball in play.” Now we know why no less a source than PARADE Magazine considers volleyball a “lifelong sport,” for the words of advice from the distinguished Mr. Smith could just as well pertain to life itself. Now excuse me, but I’ve gotta run on account of a new idea I just had for a can’t-miss bumper sticker: “Volleyball is life.”

The Hopkinton, Massachusetts man I wrote about earlier, Neil Entwistle, has been upgraded from a “person of interest” regarding the murder of his wife and daughter to an outright suspect. Authorities believe they’ve found the gun used in the killings (though I’m still waiting for forensics on that) and now they’ve found evidence that Entwistle did internet searches on murder and suicide. (Note: Be careful what you search for!) The latest theory is that he planned a murder-suicide but quit halfway through the job.

Which brings up one of my pet peeves: “murder-suicide,” a trend apparently on the rise that I deplore. So the guy had some financial difficulties. Why did he think killing his wife and daughter and then, presumably, himself would make things better for them?

Here’s another thing that I deplore: Every time there’s a violent death in the family, who’s the first suspect? The father. Why? Because of jerks like Entwistle, that’s why. I’m not a proponent of suicide by any means, and it is a horrible societal problem. But maybe a guy like that should have just killed himself. I say that if you’re really intent on murder-suicide, kill yourself first. When you finish that job, you can see about the others.

I already mentioned how I’m not anxious to go cross-country running in the woods of Metro Boston, what with the current boom in suburban hunting going strong. Here’s another thing I won’t be doing soon: hunting with vice president Cheney. That’s where Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and I part ways: He went duck hunting with Cheney, while I refuse. Scalia emerged from that outing unscathed, so far as I know, whereas Harry Whittington wasn’t so lucky. Cheney “peppered” him “pretty good” with birdshot (injuring his right side from chest to check) while the two were quail hunting last weekend. Whittington, who was in the process of retrieving a downed quail at the time, never saw it coming.

During the 2004 presidential campaign, Cheney mocked John Kerry for being a “photo opportunity” hunter rather than a real hunter, but Cheney never said what he meant by a real hunter. Now we know.

We had a sizeable snowstorm last night, after I finally retired, and I slept better than I have in a long time. There’s nothing like a good heavy snow for sleeping, if you ask me (provided, of course you’re not forced to sleep on the streets. Fortunately I’m not.) The light powdery stuff came down quietly, sometime after 1 a.m., without the staccato fanfare of sleet and freezing rain, blanketing the entire town and virtually shutting down traffic in the process. I didn’t hear a peep all night until I woke at 7:14 a.m. to the spirited sound of my two girls fighting. Like music to my ears…

A Massachusetts man, who’s a suspect in a hit-and-run car crash, came up with the best defense upon being questioned by the police, and Alan Dershowitz wasn’t even there to represent him. He claimed his mother did it–an argument that underlies much of Sigmund Freud’s writing and kept him in business for decades. On some level, the guy (the Massachusetts guy, not Freud) may be right, even if his mother was not in the car at the time of the accident. And remember these important four words the next time you’re charged with a crime or find yourself in some other kind of legal jam: “My mother did it.”

Here’s a development, reported in the Boston Globe two days ago, that I find even more worrisome than someone piloting an aircraft while sleeping: More and more hunters are doing their hunting in suburban Boston, rather than traveling out to the wilderness, as was done in the past. The thought of rifle-toting hunters wandering around Greater Boston in search of quarry is unsettling to say the least, and there could certainly be a good movie in it somewhere. All I can say is that I’m glad I don’t live in the suburbs. And even if I did live in the suburbs, I’m glad I’m not a member of the local cross-country running team. If you are such a person, I’d recommend wearing orange (I hope that’s the right color!) and perhaps taking up a new hobby. Like prayer.

“BUSH PREACHES PEACE” was the headline in today’s METRO, the free Boston tabloid I get strictly for sudoku. I’m reassured by words of peace from a president who was hellbent on getting us into war in Iraq, using whatever lie it would take.

Then there was the lead story in yesterday’s Boston Globe about gaps in Bush’s budget: “Plan would cut funding aimed at conservation.” The budget advanced by the Bush administration slashed $100 million in federal programs promoting energy conservation–this on the heels of the State of the Union address in which the president admonished his subjects for their addiction to oil.

By now it’s painfully obvious that officials in this administration, Bush and Cheney in particular, will say anything–without regard to truth, logic, or common sense. There’s no point in complaining about it; that’s just what they do. But why do we listen?

I never met Coretta Scott King but I wonder what she’d think about having President Bush deliver a eulogy for her. What have his policies that favor rich (and predominately white) people done to further the causes of racial equality that she and her husband championed? How has the gutting of social services for the poor under Bush’s watch helped black people or the nation in general? Maybe the organizers of the funeral could have told the president: “Thanks for the offer, but we’d rather have our friends speak here today.” I don’t want to make light of Mrs. King’s death, but perhaps she’s lucky not to have lived to see the day when George W. Bush spoke at her funeral.

Sometime soon, maybe even today, Steve Rossett plans to take off in his jet glider and fly more than 27,000 miles in 80 consecutive hours. We’re all supposed to applaud his heroic effort to break the world record for long-distance flight, and far be it from me to stand between a man and his dream. Yet I’m not too enthused about Fossett taking “catnaps” during his solo flight. Call me old-fashioned but I prefer that people piloting planes at nearly 300 miles an hour be awake rather than sleeping.

I’m often chided for not writing enough about volleyball. I hope this post redresses that shortcoming, albeit in a small (short) way. In volleyball, we often talk of “kills,” which is short for kill shots–a hard spike that is not, or cannot be, returned. The one-sentence description of today’s CSI Miami (a show I never watch) refers to a dead body (or dead bodies) at a beach volleyball tournament, which, if you ask me, takes the kill shot notion one step too far. Like other professional sports, beach volleyball is a competitive business, and the contests can be hard-fought. All this is true even for occasional, non-professional players like myself. But when the corpses start piling up on the beaches, I’m going to think about taking up another sport–at which point Call Me Snake may no longer be the world’s only blog devoted to the inner game of volleyball.

For the year-plus that we’ve been meeting this way, I have made a point of not getting into bathroom humor. And I’m not about to start now, despite the title of this post. I can assure you it has nothing to do with bathroom humor because it’s not funny. In fact, it’s the opposite of funny.

I was at the YMCA the other day, changing in the locker room, when I had to attend to certain business that just couldn’t be put off. A guy I vaguely know was at the sink, shaving or something, and yelled over: “Hey Steve, how about a courtesy flush?” I resented the intrusion during what I considered to be a private moment and let him know I was in the middle of something.

Ever since, there’s been a certain awkwardness between us, as if we share a dark, shameful secret. As a matter of fact, we haven’t talked since. So the next time you think of asking someone for a “courtesy flush,” remember, there may be consequences. You might never look at that person in the same light again. Nor he you. Or she.

I’m often making notes to myself (NOTE TO MYSELF: Stop making notes to myself!). Yesterday, apropos of nothing, I made a note to call a physicist in California–let’s call him a string theory cosmologist. A second later, I checked my email and found, to my surprise, a note from somebody else asking me to meet with this same physicist next month when he passed through Cambridge.

So much for coincidence one. Next I was watching a BBC show about the multiverse (this was WORK, not just a guy sitting on a couch, watching TV in the middle of a weekday). My daughters were clamoring to watch Arthur. So I turned off my DVD during a discussion of gravity leaking into other dimensions and put on Arthur. That very second, a character in that show, “The Brain,” said something like: “Hey, want to learn something cool about gravity?”

Then, to top it off, a minute later Arthur talked about watching a science show on TV–the very same program for which I’m currently working. That project,in turn, was the reason I had the TV on in the first place to watch the BBC show and was also the reason I wanted to call the guy from California. That’s three cosmic coincidences in the span of an hour. Whoever said this universe–or multiverse–isn’t one weird place?

Last night, I watched a depressing documentary, “Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry.” What was depressing about it to me was that in the late-1960s, when John Kerry was galvanizing the antiwar movement (anti the Vietnam War, that is), he was really charismatic. He spoke in simple, forceful, and direct terms. Richard Nixon and his aide John Haldeman were scared of him. Haldeman said Kerry’s performance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was very impressive: “He looks like a Kennedy, he talks like a Kennedy, and he acts like a Kennedy.”

But 35 years have taken a toll on John Kerry. When he ran for president in 2004, he rarely seemed charismatic. Instead of the “simple, forceful, and direct terms” of his youth, his responses tended to be nuanced, complex, and sometimes contradictory. If he had acted like the Kerry of 1969, I have no doubt he would have beaten Bush in the election.

When he spoke about our dubious involvement in Vietnam before the Senate committee all those years ago, Kerry said: “How do you ask someone to be the last person to die for a mistake?” The same question, of course, could be asked about our current engagement in Iraq. The only question then would be which “mistake” are we referring to? Putting Bush in office in 2000 or reelecting him in 2004 after the whole world saw what a disaster he was?

George Bush just confirmed what Robert Palmer has been saying (singing?) all along: We’re a nation “addicted to love.” That’s a serious problem, and we need some research on the scale of the Manhattan Project to find news ways for people to relate. It’s great that an American president finally had the guts to face up to an issue that has stayed below the surface for so long.

Oh wait. I just read the newspaper more carefully. Actually he said we’re “addicted to oil.” OK, forget what I said before. Sorry Robert Palmer, sounds like you’re wrong after all. The problem is OIL, not love. And we need to break our addiction to it right away. The first thing we need to do is to resist any efforts to increase the fuel efficiency of our nation’s cars and trucks. And to deny vehemently that the carbon dioxide we’re pumping into the air might have anything to do with the Earth’s climate. When you’re done with that, come back and we’ll talk again. I love these little talks of ours, don’t you?