CALL ME SNAKE

I'm honest enough to admit that not all trends in this nation get their start at Call Me Snake, although we've had our share--the national handball craze and bumper sticker contest competitions being just two recent examples. Here's something I wasn't the first to know about--the word "defriending," which may be common usage by now but I only learned of it a few days ago from a friend who happened to overhear two women talking in a coffee shop. One said, matter-of-factly, "Oh yeah, I'm defriending her." That's a fun word, and I'm looking forward to using it soon. But first I've got to figure out which unsuspecting friend (or should I saw unsuspecting former friend?) is going to get the ax. I'm spinning the wheel right now. As for where, or on whom, it will end up, no one knows. It could be you.

Not to boast but... (How many times have I started with those words?) Yes, I've been published again--this time in an extremely exclusive venue, my college's alumni newsletter notes section. And I was writing, ironically, about being published elsewhere, so we're dealing with many levels of publishing here, especially if you consider online publishing to be publishing. Anyways, this is what I wrote in the newsletter and I'm repeating it here for no good reason other than I'm feeling kind of tired:

Inspired by the letter-writing success and prowess of fellow alumn ____ ____ , I managed to get a letter printed in the Cambridge Chronicle on the burning issue of Cambridge’s dearth of handball players. There are only five handball players left at the Cambridge YMCA, and I’m one of them--the youngest, in fact, which gives you an idea of the future prospects for this sport. (For awhile it looked like there were going to be six until the new guy, Daniel, ripped his Achilles, which put us back to five again.) My letter attracted a lot of attention locally, though no book or movie deals yet. Nevertheless, I have since become a columnist for the paper--perhaps on the strength of my handball manifesto. The Chronicle, by the way, is pretty much where my freelance writing career began and now, it appears, pretty much where it will end.

Who is labor's greatest champion? Perhaps you might pick someone like Cesar Chavez, the former head of the United Farm Works who died 15 years ago. But if you picked Chavez, you'd be wrong for labor's true greatest champion is none other than Mitt Romney. Why can I be so confident? Because Romney said so. Campaigning in Michigan, he presented himself as the greatest friend labor's ever had, based on his experience at Bain Capital, where he was a job-creating machine the likes of which we've never seen before or since. But an article in Sunday's Boston Globe challenged that assertion. While some of the compaies that Romney promoted in his role at Bain did grow and create jobs, other companies he advised shut down factories and laid of workers. Employment and the livelihood of workers was the last thing on Romney's mind. He only cared about one thing--making money for Bain's investors--and in that area he excelled. And that's the one thing about the Zelig-like Romney (did you see him in the picture with Martin Luther King?) that you can bank on.

My wife and I met some friends at an upscale ethnic restaurant last night to celebrate two birthdays. It's a very elegant establishment, with great atmosphere and convivial surroundings for conversation. And the food, moreover, was delicious. But by the end of the meal, both my wife and I felt sick to our stomachs; she wasn't sure she could make it home on her bike (about two miles) owing to the fact that she thought she might die before we got there. But she did make it and gradually felt better; my general queasiness subsided as well. Taking stock of the experience, I said: "It's a great restaurant. You just can't eat the food."

Call me old-fashioned but I've never had a phone with caller ID until now. Last week, I used it for the first time. I got a call I was unable to pick up from England and did not recognize it. It wasn't my friends in Bristol or London, nor editors at London-based magazines I've worked with, nor physicists I know at Imperial College. So I did something I've never done before: I typed the phone number into Google to see what came up. To my surprise, the number came up at a website about unwanted phone calls called "800Notes.com" Here's what someone else had to say about my mystery number: "I have recieved (SIC) numerous calls from this number. they make you think it is one of your credit [card companies?]..." With that mystery solved, I did not bother to call the number in England to see whom or what I missed. Because what I'd missed was a nuisance call, and Caller ID--combined with the power of Al Gore's invention (aka, the internet)--spared me from some "important information concerning my credit cards."

Last night I saw "28 Weeks Later" with the same friend I saw "28 Days Later" with a couple of years ago. While it is a solid entry to the horror genre, it also has the most stomach-rending makeout scene every put on film. That gave me pause. And when I look back over my life, I'm forced to conclude that I've seen an awful lot of zombie movies, starting with "Night of the Living Dead" 40 years back and including Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead, Trouble Every Day (an obscure French one), the 28 Days/Weeks series, and several others I'm sure I'm forgetting right now. Although some of these movies hold a bit of fascination for me--Shaun of the Dead was hilarious, and the "28" pictures are extremely well made--I really don't like zombie movies. There's something about zombies; they kind of give me the creeps, especially the fast-moving ones of the 28 Days/Weeks saga, which are very nerve-racking. I prefer my zombies slow and lumbering, the kind you can easily outrun, although they do tend to be persistent. I'm thinking of doing something drastic here and swearing off zombie movies altogether. It's probably time for me to move on to something new, even if that just means a new kind of monster. And I think I will stick with that resolution, at least until "28 Years Later" comes out...

I want to tell you about something exciting. Last night I was doing the dishes (don't worry, that's not the exciting part) while listening to the final 15 minutes of the Celtics-Timberwolves game on the radio. In this era, when a single sports bar may have a dozen large TV screens, listening to sports on the radio may seem rather passe'. But I have to say, listening to the end of that game on the radio--which the Celtics won by a single point--was one of the more thrilling experiences I've had as a sports fan, and with what's been going on in Boston over the last several years, there's been a lot to choose from. So don't get rid of all your old radios in favor of large-screen, hi-def plasma TVs. Because that old radio can still deliver the magic upon occasion, as it did for me last night...

Who ever figured I'd be writing three posts about "3:10 to Yuma"? I never did. First I saw the original movie last year and made note of it (first post). Then I heard a new movie was in the offing (second post), which I finally saw last night (third post). Not as good as the original--a very shaky start--but it picks up in the second half and builds to a satisfying conclusion. The main reason I bring this up is to get back to our discussion of actors and cowboys. Some younger actors, I've argued, lack the gravitas to pull of a convincing cowboy turn. They just look like kids in a costume playing with toy guns. But Russell Crowe, who has been good in many other roles (the Irish-American boxing movie, for instance), is more than up to the challenge. Christian Bale put in a solid performance, as well, but it was Crowe's acting that held this picture together and made it worth checking out if you go in for the cowboy genre, which I do though I know it's not everyone's thing.

Yesterday a friend (call her "Karen") sent me a note I liked so much that I decided to reprint it here, essentially verbatim, save for a few minor tweakings, corrections, amendments, abridgements, and general wordsmithing:

"When you called, I think I was trying to feed C., get his bath ready, and assemble a pot of chicken soup that we could eat later this week. So I was a little bit harried.

I think I need to learn how to chill. I find that a lot of my time with C. is like that. Sort of like the mode you enter when you're getting ready for a party and guests will be coming. So you're running around trying to do 30 things at once...let me get this food ready, but first let me clean out the sink, oh, wait, let me mop up that spill, give me that plate, let me go to the basement to get more plates, well, if I'm going down there I should throw in the laundry, so let me change C. so I can wash his jeans, but first he should have a bath, and while that's running, I'll put away these newspapers, but only after I see if there are any recipes worthwhile in the Dining section, in which case I should cut them out and write the ingredients on the shopping list, and write on my to-do list that I have to go shopping, oh, yeah, I can't forget to take out the garbage, so let me empty the diaper pail, and I might as well restock the diaper shelf, it looks like we're running low on diapers so I should check to see if there are more in the basement, and what else was it I needed to bring up from the basement...? Etc. So. For me, life with a toddler is like constantly preparing for a party. A party that never actually happens."

Here's a novel idea: Let's prosecute real criminals for a change. I'm tired of hearing about criminal cases filed against people like Marion Jones and Barry Bonds for lying about steroid use. Jones has been shamed, stripped of her medals, and stripped of her cash. Isn't that punishment enough? The same goes for athletes like Bonds and others. The are real crimes against society that are going unpunished. Let the sports world deal with infringements of their reals, and let the criminal justice system go after people who are doing real harm to others.