CALL ME SNAKE

One of my jobs before going to bed on Sunday night is to finish reading the Sunday Boston Globe. I looked everywhere but couldn’t find the Globe Magazine. I thus went to bed unfulfilled, without completing my mandate. As I slept, I was vaguely aware of something lumpy underneath. But I never figured out what it was until the morning: The Boston Globe Magazine, which my wife had read in bed. I didn’t absorb much of the magazine’s contents during my sleep but some of the newsprint did rub off on me.

Where else but in Cambridge do you find a book like “Sex As a Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble” at a yard sale? I purchased it on an impulse not because I need a copy (I already own one) but because I was so surprised to see it there that I could not resist. In case you’re not familiar with the book, it’s a science humor collection (circa 1993) that I contributed to. And, to its credit, it’s the only book I know of that’s honest enough to issue the following disclaimer: “The entire physical universe, including this book, may one day collapse back into an infinitesimally small space. Should another universe subsequently reemerge, the existence of this book in that universe cannot be guaranteed.” I think cosmology now suggests a different fate altogether though I still appreciate the spirit of that disclaimer.

Yesterday, on the way to my regular handball game, I saw a ton of policeman near the Y and a big crowd across the street at Cambridge City Hall. “What’s going on?” I asked Pat at the front desk. She told me they were having a wake for an old-time Cambridge pol. “And the pool is closed,” she added.

“How come?” I asked.

“He got old and died,” she said.

I heard that Joe Biden had been saying some good things this year during the campaign but then I heard absolutely nothing about him for so long that I thought he must have dropped out. He’s still in the race but if 2007 fundraising statistics for the town of Cambridge, Mass. are any indication, he is way down. In fact, in this ultraliberal bastion, more money has been donated to the campaigns of Mitt Romney, Rudy Gulliani, Ron Paul, and John McCain than to Biden, which must be rather sobering to partisans of the Delaware senator. The only good news: Biden has raised $2,495 more than perennial candidate Dennis Kucinich.

Year after year, our kids complain about day camp, so next year we’re going to try something different: terrorist camp.

My wife told me that she’s worried about our seven-year old daughter who said earlier tonight: “There’s no heaven. It’s just sky up there.” I told my wife I wasn’t sure we should be worrying about the fact that our daughter is right.

Fortunately, I don’t have substance abuse problems. But last night I had a harrowing dream in which I was a drug addict. I work up at 4 in the morning, relieved that it was just a dream. However, I was so shaken up by the experience that I barely got back to sleep. My wife has chided me, at times, for being an exercise addict but after last night I’ve decided that’s not so bad.

My previous post, “I Almost Sprayed a Skunk,” seems to have struck a nerve and elicited the following response from one Marco Polo (aka Markus Polus and various other aliases), which stands as today’s Celebrity Guest Comment (slightly edited by the author):

That reminds me of a true story as a lad of 18 who’d taken a break from a ‘gathering of peers’ on the outskirts of our fair town: (the law’d changed the year before, so our “lubrication-of-choice” was now legal). As I submitted to Nature’s call, I noticed a small, striped creature waddling thru the underbrush, who must’ve been surprised at the outbreak of a … shower on a sunny day. As it cleared some brush, giving us both clear view, the creature looked back to examine the ’source’ of the shower and, by it’s reaction, was not too impressed!

THE AUTHOR’S REBUTTAL: One night about 10 years ago, when our city had been deluged with more than a foot of rainwater, I had to relieve myself in the back yard–during a downpour–as our basement was flooded and the drain all backed up. Before I’d finished my business, a little skunk wandered by and almost got hit by my spray (which was the first time I almost sprayed a skunk though not the last). The skunk just avoided getting hit and, fortunately, did not try to retaliate.

 P.S. This was accidentally deleted, along with some great comments. Sorry about that.

One of the nice things about blogging (at least for some) is the anonymity. But things are different when you are famous. Today I was at a playground with my 5-year-old and her friend when a dad at the park asked if I wrote a blog about Cambridge.

“Yes, but how could you know that?” I asked. He said he recognized me from the (rather hazy) picture on this blog. And there I was caught redhanded. Outed as it were–the first time it has ever happened, but it only takes once to be outed and then, as they say, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle again. So I can no longer walk around, unseen, chronicling the events in this town. I am now known. And apparently being noticed.

I used to go around saying, “I coulda’ been somebody.” Now that I am somebody, I’d just as soon go back to being coulda’.

My previous post, “I Almost Sprayed a Skunk,” seems to have struck a nerve and elicited the following response from one Marco Polo (aka Markus Polus and various other aliases), which stands as today’s Celebrity Guest Comment (slightly edited by the author):

That reminds me of a true story as a lad of 18 who’d taken a break from a ‘gathering of peers’ on the outskirts of our fair town: (the law’d changed the year before, so our “lubrication-of-choice” was now legal). As I submitted to Nature’s call, I noticed a small, striped creature waddling thru the underbrush, who must’ve been surprised at the outbreak of a … shower on a sunny day. As it cleared some brush, giving us both clear view, the creature looked back to examine the ’source’ of the shower and, by it’s reaction, was not too impressed!

THE AUTHOR’S REBUTTAL: One night about 10 years ago, when our city had been deluged with more than a foot of rainwater, I had to relieve myself in the back yard–during a downpour–as our basement was flooded and the drain all backed up. Before I’d finished my business, a little skunk wandered by and almost got hit by my spray (which was the first time I almost sprayed a skunk though not the last). The skunk just avoided getting hit and, fortunately, did not try to retaliate.

Last night on the local news, a dippy weatherman I’d never seen before talked about how oppressive it was outside (low-to-mid 70s though humid). “You’d better just crank up your air conditioning and try to get through it,” she said. Actually, it wasn’t uncomfortable at all. We don’t have air conditioning, and I didn’t even need to turn a fan on. But she said people better turn up their air conditioners without delay. There’s a thing called global warming, and we need to get smarter about our energy use. I’m not saying we should do away with air conditioning, but people ought to use some discretion, which is the opposite of what this weatherman, or “weatherperson,” was advocating.

Have you ever sprayed a skunk? I almost did last night (not that I advise it). I was watering some plants in our garden when a little skunk entered the yard, coming within a couple of feet of the spray from my hose. I turned off the hose and watched the skunk amble through the leafy vegetation. I didn’t spray it and, fortunately, it didn’t spray me either.

Here are a few shows I did not watch on TV last night: Sychronized Swimming: The Pursuit of Excellence, Shaq’s Big Challenge (Chef Tyler Florence revamps the school lunch at the cafeteria), The Tonight Show with special guest Phyllis Diller.

I’ve already written about competitive eating, and given my already delicate stomach, this is one sport you can be sure I won’t be doing. Nor will I enter any professional paintball competitions. I had no idea, until reading an article about it last week, that it even was a professional sport. (It’s certainly not a sport of the stature of rock, paper, and scissors.) And finally, count me out of the next bike polo game, which I just read about yesterday in the Boston Globe. I don’t know about you, but crashing into a bunch of other crazed cyclists/bike messengers doesn’t sound like my idea of a good time. Then again I’m often considered old-fashioned.

For actors from the previous generation like John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, playing cowboys came easy. But the cowboy sensibility is far enough away from today’s society that many contemporary actors are not convincing in the familiar cowboy role. They lack the requisite taciturn gravitas; they seem to much like “Young Guns” trying to play cowboys but you can see them trying. And playing cowboys without ever becoming real cowboys. Robert Duvall, Tommie Lee Jones, and Kevin Costner are three who can pull it off the cowboy roles well. Heath Ledger had a noteworthy turn in Brokeback, and based on his performance in “Broken Trail,” Thomas Haden Church of Sideways fame is another standout.

Yesterday I applied the term “lower middle-class” to describe myself and Gatemouth reacted to that. Maybe I misspoke. I’ve since amended the post to say “middle-class.” Still article after article suggests that middle-class people, even those squarely in the middle class, are struggling to get by. And that doesn’t just apply to people with extravagant lifestyles and tastes. But I don’t have to tell you that since just about everyone–save for the rich or poor–already knows that.

I spoke with a friend the other day who, like me, is struggling to “make ends meet”–struggling to get by as a middle-class person in America. He’s out interviewing for jobs as we speak. Yet my friend recently heard from a lawyer who told him he stands to inherit a good deal of money when a wealthy relative, whose health is failing badly, dies. My friend’s circumstances will change entirely, in a heartbeat as it were. Today he’s barely getting by. But tomorrow, or next month, or next year he will be rich man.

First I saw “Rocky Balboa” — a story in which an actor too old to play a boxer played a boxer too old to fight. Then last night I saw the latest “Die Hard” picture in which Bruce Willis plays a guy too old to be jumping off buildings, trucks, and jet planes–yet jump he does, time and again. I kept thinking that, apart from getting shot and smashed up in car wrecks, for a guy my age or Willis’s age, just jumping 10 feet onto cement would be enough to put me out of commission. But somehow Willis withstood two hours of such abuse and much more, though every minute I expected him to say: “I’m too old for this shit.” Sitting there, watching these ridiculous action sequences for what seemed like the thousandth time, I almost said the same. Despite that, I was entertained. And for the first time in as long as I can remember at a movie theater, my eyes stayed open for the duration of the film.

There I was at midnight with a gallon of milk in each hand while I saw my artist friend hanging out in front of the best local pub, the Plough & Stars. That summed it up pretty well. He, hanging with his pals, with pints to look forward to and me laden down with 16 or so pounds of dairy products. Who might you think leads the more interesting life?

Earlier tonight I received an email from a physicist friend at Stanford relating to the “Impeach Cheney” movement; he’d sent it to about 80 people altogether, most of them physicists. If you tend to be skittish, you might not want to be on an email list associated with a political cause like that. However, upon reviewing the list, I have to say I’m proud to be included. The list includes at least two Nobel laureates in physics and another physicist often touted as Einstein’s successor. In addition, there are a bunch of physicists who are quite well-known whom I happen to respect a lot. I don’t put much stock in email petitions and tend not to sign them since I believe they’re ineffectual. Nevertheless, I was happy to see my name sitting up there among a large number of noted scholars.

That “gorilla in the corner” we’ve been hearing so much about? I started wondering, just how much does it weigh? An internet search revealed a broad spectrum: an 180-pound gorilla, 300-pound gorilla, 400-pound gorilla, 500-pound gorilla, 250-kilogram gorilla, 600-pound gorilla, 800-pound gorilla, 900-pound gorilla, 2000-pound gorilla, 200 million pound gorilla, and the big one, the 3 billion pound gorilla. So, as you can see, there’s quite a range. And, all other things being equal, I’d rather not run into that 3 billion pound one on a bad hair day.

About 15 months have elapsed since I sent out a distress call in the form of a letter to the Cambridge Chronicle, alerting an unwary populace to the looming handball crisis. I don’t write letters to the Chronicle often and believe that was the first and only time I’ve taken such a drastic step. Yet desperate times call for desperate measures, and this surely qualifies.

In case you’ve been living in some sort of bubble or time warp and don’t know what I’m talking about, allow me to explain: Handball is a dying sport, especially here in Cambridge where it’s positively moribund. There’s only one place where the game is still played–the Cambridge Family YMCA–and the number of players has dwindled steadily over the years. There are now just six of us left, none younger than 50 and some considerably older. In the past 10 years, only one new player has joined the group and stuck around, while many others have fallen by the wayside.

That’s a far cry from the “good old days,” a couple of decades back, when the Y was brimming with handball players and court time was so hard to come by you had to bribe a front-desk worker to get a reservation.

Which is why I issued my SOS call last year, straightforwardly entitled: “Cambridge needs handball players.” To my surprise, that simple, heartfelt appeal created quite a stir. For once, people on the streets spoke openly about handball, rather than referring to it obliquely, furtively, or not at all. Total strangers embraced me without warning, claiming they hadn’t read such a stirring call-to-arms since Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense.”

I appreciated their kind words and wholesome embraces. We all need support to carry us through hard times. But looking back, 15 months later, one has to ask whether my 400-word treatise achieved its stated aim: namely, to save a dying sport.

Soon after the letter’s publication on April 20, 2006, an almost miraculous thing happened. I was in the YMCA locker room, changing after swimming, when a lifeguard (let’s call him “D”) stopped at a locker nearby. “Do you swim competitively?” he asked.

“No,” I replied. “I don’t think my shoulders are up to it.”

“That’s too bad. There’s a game I like to play but with shoulder problems you’d probably never uh…”

“What game?” I asked, suddenly curious.

“Well, I play handball,” said D. “I  used to play a lot in New Haven but haven’t played much since moving here. Though I sometimes hit it around with another lifeguard.”

I was dumbfounded. And even flabbergasted, which is not a word I invoke lightly. It seemed like divine intervention, as if an angel had magically appeared to answer my call. D and I played a few days later and a couple more times over the coming weeks. His game, a bit rough around the edges, clearly needed some seasoning. On the other hand, he was solidly built–a pugilist in fact–and hit the ball with raw power. Twenty years my junior, D represented just what we, and the sport at large, needed–some new blood.

But luck was not on our side. D’s buddy E lost his lifeguarding job, leaving the Y before I’d ever seen him on a handball court. D fared even worse: He ruptured his Achilles tendon, while playing a lesser game (basketball), and has undergone surgery three times since. I doubt he’ll be joining us for handball anytime soon. Nor should he.

Which leaves us, once again, at a half dozen–barely enough to keep things going. Looking ahead, it’s hard to see how the local game will survive over the long haul. One of the guys (“D senior”) likes to travel too much. R, who recovered from Achilles surgery a few years ago, has gimpy knees. W (who’s 30 years older than Curt Schilling) has shoulder problems that give him difficulties with high balls in the corner. J’s back acts up at the slightest provocation. His partner, also called J, works so hard at his university administrator’s job, I only see him once or twice a year. And then there’s me, the youngest of the lot and arguably the most injury prone. On top of all that, I’ve got to juggle multiple, competing demands–obligations to volleyball, for instance, and, if time permits, to my family as well.

In view of the above, it’s not easy to get enough bodies to field a handball game every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And the future, with the demise of D the younger and his sidekick E, only looks bleaker.

So consider this a last-ditch recruitment effort. Metaphorically speaking, we’re shaking some branches to see if any able-bodied handball players fall off and make their way to the Cambridge Y, hopefully with their limbs intact. We’re looking for a few good men but will settle for a few mediocre men if need be. Not to sound alarmist, but the future of a dying game is at stake.

Anne Bancroft had a “Turning Point” (or was it Shirley MacLaine?) in the movie with Baryshnikov of the same name, and I had one yesterday. I was playing handball–a three-way “cutthroat” game–rather poorly, and falling behind in the first game when it dawned on me that I didn’t have time for a second game and that I had gotten killed last week after turning in a mediocre performance. Snake, I told myself, “if you’re ever going to get started today, this is the time.” I immediately put together two good serving runs, establishing a lead I never relinquished. Was this the “inner game of handball” manifest? Was this the “power of positive thinking” revisited? That might have had something to do with it. But more to the point was the fact that one of my opponents was suffering from cartilage problems in his knees, while the other guy had strained his back earlier in the day giving his 120-pound dog a bath.

Yesterday there was something different about the Boston Globe. At first I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then it hit me. For the first time in more than a week, I didn’t have to avoid the first page to avoid seeing a nauseating picture of Mitt Romney. For the Globe, in its infinite wisdom, saw fit to run an interminable, 7-part series on “The Making of a Failed Presidential Candidate.” Only the Globe, in its infinite wisdom, didn’t call it that. They called it, I believe, “The Making of Mitt Romney.” I must confess that I am not exactly clear as to what they called it; I did not spend a second reading that article. Nor can I see how the Globe deemed him a subject worth two full pages and a column each day for an entire week. I guess the Globe is banking on him becoming the next president. Of course, if the Globe wins on that one, we all lose.

I’ve been on a tear lately with my new shredder and have worked my way through a couple of years’ backlog of documents. In fact, I’ve exhausted all the documents in need of shredding, which is a fact that ought to be celebrated. Yet I’m now suffering from shredder withdrawal syndrome. The only cure for that problem, I’m afraid, is patience. In a few months time, I’ll have plenty of paper in need of the services of my TECHKO Identity Guard. And me and my newly-honed document-destruction skills will be back in business once again.