CALL ME SNAKE

Here’s a nifty website you’re all dying to visit, or will be dying to visit now that you’ve heard about it. Called “Ned Wright’s Javascript Cosmology Calculator” (http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/CosmoCalc.html), you type in a redshift (z), and it automatically converts that to the age of the universe in gigayears, depending on the assumptions made re. the Hubble constant, omega-mass, and omega-vacuum. In other words, it’s indispensable. Upon visiting the site and seeing for yourself what I’m talking about here, you’ll wonder how you got through life without it. But now you don’t have to. Consider this your “Helpful Hint” for the day.

The geniuses at Harvard have done it again. In a new study, researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (a Harvard Medical School teaching affiliate) have reached an astonishing conclusion: TV-watching lowers physical activity. What’s more, these intrepid investigators have carried their trailblazing findings even further: The more TV people watch, the less active they are. Which is exactly why I don’t watch TV; it would cut into the time I spend sitting at my computer, writing pithy homilies.

It was too good to last. My Danish friend flew the coop. If you can’t take the heat, as the saying goes, get out of the sweatshop, and that’s just what he did, hopping a commuter train to Providence. (Which to him, no doubt, seemed providential at the time.) He claimed he couldn’t take the heat–couldn’t take doing sudoku puzzles morning, noon, and night, from the second he opened his eyes in the morning to his last waking moment at bedtime. So he slipped out of town yesterday, and I’m on my own again. Doing sudoku by myself, as always, trying to work through that dreaded pile of clipped newspaper puzzles that I can’t seem to make a dent in.

My only hope, I now realize, is to train my daughters. My wife insists that four years old is not old enough, but I believe, in my heart, the girl is up to it. She has to be. Failure, as the other saying goes, is not an option. And when the going gets tough, as yet another saying goes, the tough do sudoku.

For the better part of a year, I’ve tried as part of my mental calisthenics to complete two sudoku puzzles a day–one from the Boston Globe and another (generally easier) from the Metro. But in recent weeks, I’ve fallen hopelessly behind, with the stack of clipped puzzles steadily growing. For the last few days, the nephew of a friend of mine is staying with us from Denmark. As part of the deal we struck, he gets free room and board. In return, he has to do several sudoku puzzles a day to help with the backlog situation. So far the arrangement has worked out splendidly. We sit side-by-side at the dining room table, each taking on a separate puzzle. The atmosphere is charged; there’s real synergy going on. And, as a result, our progress has been tremendous.

If you too are suffering from a sudoku deficit, a foreign aid worker may be the answer to your dreams. It certainly has paid dividends in my case. In fact, it’s hard to imagine going back to my old life of toiling on sudoku alone and never keeping up.

Of the many features we run on Call Me Snake (too many to enumerate), “Celebrity Guest Comment” is surely one of the most popular for it gives a chance for everyone to dream that someday their insightful comment will be showcased in this high-profile manner, for all the world to see. Today’s Guest Comment comes from a man who needs no introduction, the all-time bumper sticker competition winner (after me). Yes, that’s right, Gatemouth. So take it away, Gatemouth. You have the “conch,” as they say. [Editor's note: This comment is reprinted verbatim, in its entirety. All mistakes--errors of fact, syntax, grammar, and punctuation--are the responsibility of Gatemouth, not me.]

GATEMOUTH SPEAKS: Come on, Snake, you can’t blame the Republicans for the Big Dig. After all, Romney wasn’t even governor when the Big Dig was started. There was Swift before him, and Cellucci before Swift, and Weld before Cellucci…

Oh wait. They were all Republican governors, weren’t they? But I’ll bet the Democrats’ projects were just as bad. Like the Bourne Bridge, the Sagamore, the Cape Cod Canal, the Sumner and Callahan tunnels . . . Oh, wait. None of those fell apart, did they?

All right, but the Democrats’ national projects have been complete disasters, right? Didn’t Hoover Dam collapse two days after it was finished? Didn’t all those National Parks turn into desert wastelands as soon as the last cabins were built? Didn’t the Apollo space program result in the total annihilation of most of Florida? And WWII, we lost that, right?

No? All of those things were successful? Hoover Dam is still standing? We landed on the Moon several times?! We won WWII?

But the Republicans have been better engineers overall, I’m sure. I mean, SDI–that’s been a huge success, right? Keeping us safe night and day. And the B-1 Bomber, started by Nixon, cancelled by Carter (because of niggling problems like the planes crashing), then revived by Reagan. That’s going to go down in history as one of the great technological innovations. And you can’t tell me that the Bush administration didn’t have every detail of reconstruction mapped out when they started the war in Iraq.

What? 20 years and billions of dollars later SDI still doesn’t do anything? The B-1 bomber was outdated before it ever hit the assembly line? Iraq has less power, water, buildings, jobs, and schools than before the war started?

Jeez, maybe there is a difference between Republicans and Democrats after all. Who’d a thunk it?

[Editor's note: Well, that's our Celebrity Guest Comment for today. Until next time, the Celebrity Guest Comment box is closed.]

In the Y the other day, my trivia-spouting friend who has taken up residence in the locker room called out from the sink, where he was grooming, over to my “stall,” where I was taking care of business. “Hey Steve,” he said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “How about a courtesy flush? A LITTLE COURTESY HERE…” The first time this happened, I was offended, as if my private space had somehow been violated. But now I accept it as the price of doing “business” there.

In other news, I tried out one of those new thick-handled toothbrushes that I’ve avoided all these years, mainly because they don’t fit in ordinary toothbrush holders. I had no idea what I was missing. The engineering of these brushes is mind-boggling, as well as teeth-boggling (if that’s a word, and if not it sure ought to be). When you put one of these babies in your hands, you feel a surge of power, despite the fact that it is a strictly manual affair. After this electrifying experience, it may be hard to go back to the thin, old fashioned-style toothbrush again. So, ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seatbelts and start your brushes now. And while you’re at it, remember: “A LITTLE COURTESY HERE…”

Our man Mitt, the hero of the Big Dig fiasco (who has impressed everyone with his incomparable grasp of bolts and epoxy), ran afoul of the law by appointing too many Republicans to the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority board. This week Romney was forced to add a non-Republican to the board not out of any special regard for bi-partisanship, but because, as I mentioned before, IT’S THE LAW. Too bad there’s not a similar law to limit the number of Republicans in the Executive Branch (i.e., the White House) and in the U.S. Congress. That might be the only chance we have for a modicum of sanity in this once-great (but now psychotic) nation.

I don’t identify too strongly with Adam Sandler–not having been a waterboy on my high school football team, a pugilistic golfer, or a wedding singer–yet I thought of him briefly last night. I was watching the climax of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller when my wife came down to say good night. I asked her to wait a second, until I paused the movie. But just then, with remote control in hand, the thought crossed my mind: Couldn’t I pause my wife for a second, see the end of the movie (just a few minutes left), and then “unpause” her and say good night?

What an idea, I thought to myself. It could even be the premise for a good movie. But, more likely than not, it would be the premise for a horrible movie–such as the one I’ve already vowed not to see.

The abuse of drugs like cocaine, oxycontin, steroids, and ecstasy is a scourge on society. I’m not the first to have said that, and sadly I won’t be the last. But in Boston, at least, a few civic-minded policemen have finally found the way to make life miserable for drug dealers, who seem to have operated with impunity for years on end. Instead of going after the dealers directly, a tactic shown to be ineffectual over the decades, these enterprising law enforcement agents are buying and selling the drugs themselves. One cop, who goes by the nickname “Kiko,” stands out in this regard, and his antics make the Denzel Washington character in “Training Day” look like a choirboy. If more police officers would step up to the plate and help wrest the drug trade from the “forces of evil,” we could put those nasty drug dealers out of business, once and for all.

Last night, while we were stuck in a traffic jam on the way to a friend’s art show, my wife let go of the steering wheel as we crept forward, momentarily driving hands free. “Mommie,” our four-year-old called from the back seat, echoing advice she herself had heard many a time, “please keep your hands on the handlebars.”

Everyone knows about the exciting part of volleyball: the awesome spikes, the tremendous digs, and fabulous dives. But a lot goes into setting up the games that makes those more celebrated aspects possible–a lot of hard work behind the scenes, scheming, maneuvering, arranging… Take yesterday, for example. I spent the better part of my “work day” trying to get four people to meet at a park by the river in the evening. I was not setting up some kind of anonymous sex tryst. No, this was something far more exciting: volleyball doubles. But getting it done took a lot of correspondence, considerable back and forth, and a good deal of luck. In the end, it all hinged on a sick child. Or two sick children, actually. Allow me to explain.

I had three players lined up, raring to go. But we needed a fourth, given that the name of the game is two-on-two. (You do the math.) I pinned my hopes on one of our regulars, but she had to bow out because her son was sick and needed attending to. Another guy, a neighbor, wanted to play but his wife had made arrangements for them to hang out with another family that night. It looked like we were sunk. Then, after I’d given up all hope, the neighbor called back and said that their friends couldn’t come over to their house after all because one of their kids got sick. Which meant he was free to play after all. In the end, it happened (the game, I mean, not shit), and it was beautiful. All we needed to secure our fourth player was one more sick kid, which balanced off the other sick kid who had been working against our getting a fourth. It’s complicated, I admit, far more complicated than most people realize. Which is why most people don’t play volleyball doubles. They watch it on TV.

Last summer, this blog went through its high point and low point, all at the same time. The high point involved getting caught, quite accidentally, in the center of a maelstrom, which led to my being contacted by journalists from the New Yorker and a prominent New England newspaper for information I became privy to as a result of what I thought was just an idle post here at Call Me Snake. The low point was the fact that this same series of posts had, without my intending to, enraged several people from my college, who claimed I was needlessly harrassing a fellow alumnus (which had been the farthest thing from my mind). I was called an exemplar of the “gutter press,” and my writings were labeled “contemptible.” When I heard that I had inadvertently upset someone from my college whose opinion I valued, I took the unusual step (for me) of deleting all seven posts on the subject–a move I have since come to question, if not regret. (More than a few observers have told me that, on this score at least, I “wimped out.”) At the time, I promised not to mention the name of the person accused of malfeasance–a pledge I have stuck to.

A few weeks ago, an article in the New York Times that discussed the legal proceedings against this person showed, at a minimum, that I was not too far out of line when I used the term “shady” to describe him. Indeed, as reported in the Times, the individual in question has since admitted in federal court to having stolen, over the course of seven-and-a-half years, 97 items worth more than $3 million from libraries in Boston, Cambridge, New Haven, New York, Chicago, and London. This is not to say “I told you so,” which would, in fact, be “contemptible.” It’s just a matter of setting the record straight, putting a few facts out there, which is, in the end, what it’s all about. Or at least ought to be.

I had so much to teach her, a junior editor, who could have profited greatly from the suggestions of a more experienced practitioner in the field. I had slaved away on my article for weeks, honing it to perfection (well, almost!) and got it in on time to boot (after a mere three extensions). She responded promptly by email (which is good), informing me that she had received the story (also good). She said she’d get back to me soon with her impressions (also good) and let me know whether or not they would accept it (BAD, VERY BAD!). I was enraged by that last remark after all my hard work–years, in fact, of first-rate (dare I say “world-class”?) stories for the magazine whose staff she’d joined just a year ago. I had a lot to say on the subject. Boy, did I ever. But I kept it to myself.

A few days later, I heard from her again: The story was “excellent,” she said, a “great read,” and they would issue payment within the week. I was all set to suggest better ways of handling things, explaining that she needn’t have treated a valued contributor like myself in such a callous fashion–especially a hypersensitive valued contributor like myself who has money woes and doesn’t like hypotheticals attached to pending payments. Yes, I was about to let her have it (in a good way), letting her know of all the things she might have said instead–things that would not have set me off and contributed to my already sleep-deprived state (what with the heat and all and lack of air conditioning, not even one lousy window unit). But then she told me, in the same “acceptance letter,” that she was leaving the job in a week to take on new challenges in the world of academia. So I held my tongue and kept it all to myself. It’s hard not to share, especially when you have so much advice to dispense, so much to wisdom to impart…

Facilitated by the internet, that high-speed digital conduit formerly known as the “information superhighway,” the pace of online trading has never been faster. Nor furiouser. (I’m not sure if that’s a word, but as I’ve said many times before, it sure oughter be.) I’m not talking about amazon.com or ebay. I’m talking about my 4-year-old daughter’s preschool summer camp. Not a day goes by when some parent or another is not trying to sell one of their camp days or buy someone else’s camp days. If you like online action, and can take the heat, there’s no better place to be these days than on our summer camp’s email list. The camp is oversubscribed and I’ve been buying up days and selling them over the black market at inflated rates. Sorry, I gotta run. Another trade offer has just arrived and I gotta’ move fast.

We’re pleased to introduce a new feature at Call Me Snake called Great Movie Quotes. Introducing new features is one of the things we do best at Call Me Snake, and I’m sure Great Movie Quotes will soon become one of our most popular features (though the name may soon change, depending on the quality of the quotes, to: ABOVE AVERAGE MOVIE QUOTES).

But first a little background: Lately I’ve been getting a lot of DVDs from the local library, which has greatly expanded its collection of late. Libraries, it seems, have finally picked up on the fact that people have stopped reading books. If they want to stay in business, they need to go whole hog into the video market. If not, NetFlix may soon replace our public libraries in addition to replacing the swiftly vanishing neighborhood video store. As I was saying, I get a number of DVDs from the library, about five per week (which is the limit); since they’re free, I grab things somewhat indiscriminately and only get around to one or two of the five, at most. When I don’t know much about the movie, I check out reviews online at places like Movies.com. Here are some good (I mean “great”) quotes from reviews I’ve recently found there:

Under the heading, “MIXED REVIEWS FOR THE WORLD’S FASTEST INDIAN,” here’s what Newsday (21⁄2 stars out of 4) had to say: “… so amiably unrelenting in its quest to disarm, it sometimes feels like someone tickling your belly with a feather while holding a knife to your throat.” Here’s a so-called “mixed review” for the latest(?) Godard film, “IN PRAISE OF LOVE” from the New York Times: “the decorous prose, graceful penmanship and impressive paper stock cannot disguise the banality of what is written.” If that passes for “mixed,” I’d hate to be panned in the Times.

I returned “THE NOTEBOOK” sight unseen after reading this from Rolling Stone (1 star out of 4): “there’s no way to endure the movie without earplugs and a blindfold.” The Times was only slightly more charitable: “the movie veers between unbleached sugar and artificial sweetener. “

Well, that’s it for Great Movie Quotes this week. Be sure to come back for our next session of Great Movie Quotes. Until then, the balcony is closed. Kindly remove all candy wrappers, popcorn boxes, syringes, and used condoms.

This week’s “celebrity guest comment” comes from Daphne who wrote in response to “The Theory of Everything” that arrived unexpectedly on my doorstep a few days ago. “Just think of how good it would feel to know that when you’ve finished reading it, you would know everything there is to know,” she said. “No more learning to be done - so much time freed up for handball!”

Once again, I’d like to thank Daphne for the thoughtful note. (I often call them “thoughtful” notes, but this one really was, as the word implies, full of thought.) What she said about handball got me thinking. And the more I thought, the more I thought I’d better get reading that little treatise (81 single-spaced pages with appendices) about everything and more. Yes, Daphne’s note sparked a thirst in me. And a hunger–a hunger to learn. I want to know everything there is to know. And then have the rest of my life to goof off. And play volleyball, work on my inner game, take on evermore challenging sudoku puzzles, and watch mediocre movies and not even mind because now I have all the time in the world.

Years ago, a mediocre movie came out called “Bad Influence” about an innocent, played by James Spader, who comes under the sway of a psychopath, played by Rob Lowe. Many years later, my talented younger cousin has come under the sway of a mediocre blogger. He claims said mediocre blogger (me, not to be too boastful) inspired him to start his own blog. I don’t want to claim too much credit for this fateful decision. You see my cousin used to be quite a productive member of society. He accomplished things: started restaurants, struck deals, gave pithy quotes to newspaper reporters–a lowly class he used to be part of. What’s more, he just became a father, entailing a level of responsibility that even this successful businessman and employer cannot yet fathom. So why is he risking all that and starting a blog–one of the greatest time-wasters yet invented–at this of all times? I don’t know. It seems my family is holding me responsible for this misstep, but they’re not talking to me about it. So I can only imagine what they’re saying. And thinking. About one rotten apple (as the old Jackson 5 song would have it) now threatening to spoil the whole darn bunch.

If you had a new theory of everything you wanted to share with the world, what would you do? You’d probably do the same thing that an enterprising, bottom line-minded Chinese furniture exporter/wholesaler/retailer would do: You’d contact Call Me Snake, ASAP. Which is why, perhaps, I just received–out of the blue, without asking for it, minding my own business, you might say–”Macro-Micro Cosmos in Theory of Groups” or, in simpler terms, “A Theory of Everything.” The document, written by Julian Guzman of New York City and Lima, was shipped to me at a cost of $2.55, complete with a CD-ROM containing Macro-Micro Cosmos Animation. I have not yet read this new treatise–which I’ll probably get to just as soon as I finish Bobby McGehee’s equally weighty volume, “New Universe Theory” or NUT. As I said, I have not read Guzman’s white paper in its entirety, but I can say the work does have a rather catchy ending: “AND THIS IS EVERYTHING.”

China, as everyone knows, is the world’s largest country in terms of population, and we should therefore pay attention to China, if for that reason alone. But China, it seems, is paying attention to Call Me Snake too. In my inbox yesterday, I received a cool dozen comments to this blog, about 10 of which hailed from “antique furniture chinese” — an exporter, retailer, and wholesaler of Chinese and Tibetan furniture and antiques. This company, a powerhouse in the area of MingQing style furniture, wisely concluded that the best way to reach a lot of people fast was to post multiple comments on Call Me Snake. With a shrewd business plan like that, how can this outfit go wrong?

It’s the middle of summer, with the All-Star Game fast upon us, so thoughts naturally turn to basketball. In extolling the virtues of a player, pundits often talk about his (or her) ability to “move without the ball.” That’s something I never understood. Or maybe I understand it all too well. I never had much of a basketball career, but when I did play (back in junior high school), the thing I did best was move without the ball. In fact, I can’t remember ever touching the ball in a game situation. Maybe my teammates didn’t trust me (what we now call a “trust issue”), thinking perhaps that I’d grab the ball, run out of the gym, and never look back. For whatever reason, I became pretty accomplished at moving without the ball.

I’m confident, moreover, that if I ever made it to the NBA, I could make a name for myself with that same skill. You can be sure that Dwyane Wade and Shaq would never pass the ball to me. With some practice, I’m sure I could be the best there ever was at moving without the ball, possibly earning a Hall of Fame berth. I realize the NBA draft is over, and my number has not been called, but Danny Ainge and other league executives ought to know there’s another player ought there dying to break into the bigs, and unlike other show-offs lusting for their big shot, this guy promises not to hog the ball. In fact, if it comes toward me, I’ll run.

Like most people, I watch movies for the handball sequences. Prime, which I reported on recently, had a one-to-two second shot of a New York City handball game. Crossing Delancey (1988), which I heard about from Gatemouth, was even better in this regard: It had a one-to-two MINUTE scene in which a young Peter Riegert took on an old-timer. I only watched the movie because I gathered from Gatemouth’s comment that handball figured prominently in the story. It did not. Yet I’m glad to have watched Crossing Delancey all the same, because it was a nice story, despite the fact that the handball subplot was undeveloped, to say the least. And Riegert’s character, Sam the “pickle man,” was really winning. (As one character in the movie put it: “Somebody’s gotta’ sell pickles.”) So I’m still giving the picture two thumbs up, even though one of those thumbs is still sprained from an aforementioned handball injury.

If you’re like me, you like the natural peanut butter you can get at a place like Whole Foods. The trouble is, all that oil on top. It’s really a pain to mix it, and you can’t just pour it off or the peanut butter turns to rock. So what’s a poor consumer–one who prefers the natural blend to Skippy or Jiffy–supposed to do? For the answer to that question, Call Me Snake is grateful for the contributions of Pamela G. from Newton, Mass., who suggested turning the jar upside during storage, before you put it in the refrigerator. I was skeptical, having gone through hundreds of such jars in my peanut-filled existence, but gave it a try anyway. What did I have to lose? And guess what? It actually works. (Or “helps,” as Pamela G. modestly put it.) Which is the whole point of this new feature at Call Me Snake, appropriately named “Word from the Wise.” We try to help and aim to please. So far, not one person has complained. That’s not bragging. It’s just a fact. Which reminds me of another fact: There’s a peanut jar upstairs in my pantry that I forgot to flip over. Which means I gotta run. Signing off for now until it’s time for our next Helpful Hint.

The puddle kept forming mysteriously in front of our dishwasher. For days, I ignored it, hoping it was just runoff from the dish strainer. But it kept coming back, until I realized I had to deal with it. I looked at the pipe behind the dishwasher, and it didn’t seem to be leaking. But the wood along the side of the unit was soaked, which got me worried. Where was the water coming from? And how much would it set me back? The last time we had a puddle like this, it was time for a new refrigerator, and I had to shell out 600 bucks.

I was thinking about calling a plumber when I decided to clear out the area next to the dishwasher–which is filled with recycled newspapers, etc.–to get a better look. That’s when I discovered the source of the leak: a plastic jug of water that had somehow developed a small hole. This time I got off easy. I didn’t have to spend a penny fixing the leak. I just drained the water and put the container in our recycling bin. If only all home repair problems were this painless. Then I’d know I was dreaming. Or living in a place few of us ever experience–a place the TM cultists call “Heaven on Earth.”

I’ve never gotten into the ritual patriotism that is di rigeur on the 4th of July. That said, this was still, for me, just about a perfect day. I spent all day on the beach playing volleyball, swimming, and body surfing. This evening I watched a silly Disney comedy from the 60s with my daughter. (She laughed loudest during the ridiculous chase sequence.) Then, after helping to put the children to bed, I hopped on my bike and went to watch Boston’s fireworks display over the Charles River–the best I’ve ever seen. Afterwards, I raced off on my bike and got ahead of all the traffic–thousands and thousands of people–within just a few blocks, which is a very satisfying feeling, second only to seeing the fireworks themselves.

Today “At the Movies” will be reviewing “Curious George,” which came out earlier this year but, owing to a backlog, we’re just getting to now. Thanks for your patience. Richard Roeper of “Ebert and Roeper At the Movies” (a show that stole the name “At the Movies” from this blog) gave the picture thumbs down, saying he really couldn’t recommend it for adults. That was a rather dubious argument given that the movie was clearly not intended for adults. So what did the four-year-old expert in my household have to say about the film? She thought it was “pretty good.” Her main complaint, though she still gave the picture a qualified thumbs up, was that “Curious George wasn’t curious.”

I’m no Francophile, nor do I have anything against Brazil. I know several nice people who come from that fine country–some of my best friends, you might say. Still yesterday I was relieved (perhaps even ecstatic) that France beat Brazil in the World Cup, this from a person who has yet to watch a minute of World Cup action. Allow me to explain: Two weeks ago, coming back from the beach, my family and I got caught in a horrible gridlock, stuck in a virtual standstill for almost an hour, on Route 1A south. We finally stopped at a roadside establishment for some victuals where I inquired about the cause of the backup. “Brazil won their World Cup game,” the hostess explained.

In our town, when Brazil wins (even an early-round game), hundreds (or maybe thousands) of fans drive around in their cars, honking their horns, and tying up traffic all over the city. Yesterday, before going to the beach, I checked the World Cup schedule and found that Brazil was scheduled to play France at 3 p.m., meaning that if we left the beach at our customary time, around 5:30 or 6, we were likely to get slammed again. But all was quiet. And the trip that took nearly two hours two weeks ago took less than half an hour yesterday. Last night, when I watched the 11 o’clock news, I found out why: France won the game, 1-0, and, as a result, traffic flowed freely on the Boston roadways. Which is why I said it above and shall say it again: Viva la France!