CALL ME SNAKE

I think I blew my last post about Richard Dawkins. What I think he actually said was that some religious types claimed that without god, the universe would have no meaning. Dawkins replied: "The universe doesn't owe us meaning." Sorry about the last post. That was "my bad," as they say. And I promise it will never happen again. (Or at least it won't happen again today.)

My last sperm bank offering stirred up so much interest, I felt it was important to run an update without delay. So here it is, just a few days late, though I’m sorry to say that there is no news to report. The one thing I can mention is that some PR flak(???) responded to my post, saying that the Cambridge branch of California Cryobank was a “good neighbor” that always paid its rent on time. The implication was clear: I am not a good neighbor (debatable, as we shall see) and I don’t always pay my rent on time (true). As for my neighborliness, it depends on who you ask. If you ask the homeowner to our right, he’d probably say I’m an excellent neighbor. The people on the left, I’m sure, would vote for the sperm bank. So it looks like a toss up. In matters like this, according to an age-old convention, a tie goes to the sperm.

I've heard about Richard Dawkins for a long time but had never actually heard him speak until a couple of days ago when he was interviewed by Terri Gross on "Fresh Air." The author of, most recently, "The God Delusion," Dawkins makes a very compelling case and I wouldn't want to debate him. Fortunately, we seem to agree so I don't have to debate him. I can, instead, let Richard do the talking for me on matters related science, religion, and evolution. He said that some religious folks could not handle the idea of a godless universe because it wouldn't make any sense to them. People very much want an explanation, Dawkins says, "but the universe doesn't owe us an explanation," which strikes me as a very astute comment.

Dawkins hosted a TV show in Britain about religion called "The Root of All Evil." He tried to change the title of the show because he doesn't believe religion is the root of all evil. "It's the root of a good deal of evil, as I've explained, but that wouldn't be a great name for TV show."

 

How low the mighty have fallen. Although the Boston Celtics are still, I believe, the most "storied" franchise in NBA history, this season--which finds them sitting squarely in the cellar--has been largely irrelevant. Nothing exemplifies that better than last night's TV news at 11 on Channel 5 here in Boston, which featured the birth of Nomar Garciaparra's twin girls ahead of the Celtics' solid victory over a solid Orlando squad. Nomar has not been on the Red Sox for years, yet the editorial powers deemed his newly-born children a more important "sports" story. At the risk of repeating myself, I have to say: How low the mighty have fallen.

At some time or other, we all wonder what we are put on this earth for. I think about that all the time and did not have the answer until today. The answer came unexpectedly, as usually happens with great revelations, and in this case it arrived via email. I found the email this morning after dropping my daughter (quite literally) at her preschool. (Fortunately, she has cat-like reflexes and did not land on her head.) The message came from a friend who recounted the conversation she'd had this morning with her five-year-old daughter. This is a direct transcript of the exchange between the two characters, henceforth referred to as "daughter" and "mother." Not a single word has been changed, altered, or misspelled.

daughter: Steve sure is a great bike rider.

mother: Yes, he is.

daughter: He's a natural!

mother: Yes, I guess he is.

daughter: You know, everyone is good at something.

mother: That's right.

daughter: And with Steve, it's definitely bike riding!

mother: Absolutely.

For some reason my local library has a large collection of westerns on DVD. As this is a genre I follow, every few months I watch one. Last night I saw "3:10 to Yuma," a rather taut 1957 film starring Glenn Ford that's like "High Noon" with a twist. I was surprised to see a story credit by Elmore Leonard who has had an amazingly productive career--and is still turning out books 50 years later. I have read a large number of his crime novels and a few westerns like Hombre though I didn't expect to see his name on this film. But this isn't a bad story credit to have because it isn't a bad story. It seems rather conventional for most of the going but takes an unexpected turn near the end. So I recommend it, if you go in for this sort of thing, and afterwards you might want to curl up with a cozy little book like "Killshot."

I realize that if columnists did not butt into other people’s affairs, they might not have much to talk about. Still I think that Joan Vennochi's column in yesterday's Boston Globe (March 25, 2007) went too far in suggesting that John Edwards should pull the plug on his presidential campaign and focus, instead, on being “a husband.” The decision that John and Elizabeth Edwards have made is an intensely private one, despite the fact that for obvious reasons it had to be made public. I don’t claim to know any more about it than Vennochi or the other pundits casting their two cents worth, but I still believe there’s something to be said for going forward with one’s plans, carrying on in the face of disease if that’s at all possible, rather than making the disease, itself, the focus of life. If that’s what John and Elizabeth Edwards had in mind, I applaud their decision. If they pressed forward for other reasons, I applaud that choice as well. It’s theirs to make.

My column in the local paper, The Cambridge Chronicle, has recently taken a turn--and not for the better. I can tell by the reaction of John, a long-time Cambridge resident and former teacher who now works the front desk at the Cambridge Y. "I liked your column," he used to say when I came to the gym. Sometimes, if he was talking to someone else when I entered the premises, he'd point to me and say: "He writes a column for the Chronicle," which almost made me embarrassed. Now I'm getting embarrassed for a different reason.

A couple of weeks ago when I came in John said: "Your column wasn't too bad this week. Not too many mistakes." Yesterday the reaction was even worse: "Your columns are getting longer and longer," he said. "Like verbal diarrhea."

So that's the trajectory. I started out like Jimmy Cagney in WHITE HEAT: "On top of the world, ma!" And since then it's been a steady descent to the bottom. Which is why people always say: "Enjoy it while it lasts." What can I say? It's been a brief thrill ride. I enjoyed my 15 minutes. But now the motion sickness is starting to get to me.

A week or so ago, Scarlett Johansson graced the cover of PARADE Magazine, with a memorable quote beside her mug shot. (They're always memorable, which is one of the many reasons I love the magazine and would not mind being stranded on a desert island if PARADE came once a week.) "I think I look like a boy" is what Johansson said (that might not be an exact quote, but it's pretty darn close). I showed the cover to a friend who I know has the hots for the actress in question though she's never done much for me personally. (I liked "Ghost World" and that's about it.) "What do you think?" I asked him.

"What do I think?" he replied, staring at the cover with lust. "I think I'm a homosexual."

Some years ago, a friend of mine (Jungle Jerk, in fact) went on a kayaking trip up in Alaska and almost got trapped in an ice field near the mouth of a glacier. That experience (his, not mine) left a lingering impression in my mind. I never thought I'd see something like that right here on the Charles River near Harvard Square, and I didn't exactly though I saw something that came sort of close. It was a week or two ago. I was biking along the river to make an appointment in Watertown. We were having a bit of a thaw after a cold spell, and the ice on the river was starting to break up. Somewhere between the "Quentin Compson" bridge (aka JFK Street) and the Eliot Bridge, I saw a man in a small skiff stuck in the middle of the river, completely surrounded by ice--not your typical scene on the Charles.

An hour or so later, on my way back from Watertown, the man was still stuck in the ice but he'd made some minor progress toward Harvard Square. I thought of calling the Coast Guard but decided this wouldn't qualify as "coast," being several miles from Boston Harbor. Also there was a steady stream of runners and bikers going by so I never figured the guy was in great peril.

But I was still curious. As I had to pick up my daughter at preschool an hour later, I took the river route on my bike to check up on the man's progress, even though it was a slight detour. There was no sign of him, so I gather he made it through the ice to a safe harbor of some sort--presumably one of the nearby rowing docks. Or else, instead of Charley on the MTA we've got "Charley on the Charles" out there, somewhere, still picking his way through the ice.