CALL ME SNAKE

After watching the CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN remake with my daughters earlier tonight, neither of them hesitated for a second in answering the question, who is the funnier dad: me or the character played by Steve Martin? They picked the other Steve. And once again the kids were right.

I write a humor column for the local paper, The Chronicle, among my many jobs. But my youngest daughter seems to be confused about the various outlets for my work. "Who do you write for again, The Chronicle or The New Yorker?" she asked, as if there were a difference between the two.

You never know what's going to strike a chord but my post about towels clearly did, generating more heat than I ever expected--enough heat, in fact, to exacerbate global warming. Which is why I was inspired to reprint this comment from Carol who describes herself as a "regular reader":

"Have you tried buying a towel in a store, any store, lately? Brick & mortar or online, I don't know when it happened, but somehow the standard size is now 30" x 54" and as my husband says, nobody needs that much towel. They're HUGE, like a beach towel! I ended up ordering from a hotel supply place that still had semi-normal sizes (largely because of the laundry considerations you mention)."

And now--in keeping with CMS's equal-time policy--I present the dissenting opinion, or rebuttal, from Anonymous: "I wish I could get the minute back that I just wasted reading about that. Too many towels? Do you really have so little going on in your life that you fret about a guy liking extra towels? I'm going to go throw away some unused paper in protest of that lame post."

EDITOR'S NOTE: Nicely worded, Anonymous. But when you throw away that unused paper, could you please throw it into a recycling bin?

A friend who once used the moniker Turd Blossom (I’m not sure what he’s calling himself these days) told me that when he looked up my email message on gmail, he was bombarded with all kinds of ads related to sweat and perspiration. There was an ad, for instance, for "Burning Man Wet Wipes"  www.actionwipes.com and  for Music Festival Wipes: "Xtra Big Xtra Thick. Clean Body Odor Grime Sweat." Or this: "Excessive Underarm Sweat?Natural, Quick & Permanent Solution Easily Reduce Sweating By 95%. Now! StopSweating.NewReview.info."

So my friend asks: "How does Google know about my perspiration issues?" He adds: "If this is not blog-worthy, I'm giving up." This post was a testament to the fact that I did not want him to "give up." At least not yet.

I went to the Y to swim yesterday, arriving there at the same time as someone else I recognized from the pool. Upon checking in, he requested three towels. I believe he picked three because that's the maximum allowed under his membership plan. (The maxmum allowed under my membership plan is zero.) Maybe I'm making too much of it, but I don't know why a guy needs three large towels just to go in the swimming pool. I only need one, and it's a pretty skimpy one at that. But this guy somehow feels he needs three, as do many other members, I'm sure, under the same membership plan. On the one hand, they're not doing anything wrong: they're just taking what comes to them with their membership. But three towels per person per visit means a lot of hot water is going down the drain to clean them, which means a lot of energy is consumed as well. Americans use more energy per capita than any other nation on Earth and this is one of the reasons why.

SHAUN OF THE DEAD was the exception. Zombies in the 21st century ARE getting faster, especially compared to the labored movements of the NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD era. After seeing the two 28 movies, 28 DAYS LATER and 28 WEEKS LATER, which are exceedingly well-made but also incredibly intense, I decided to swear off zombie movies. But that didn't last long as I just saw I AM LEGEND earlier tonight. And, as I expected, the zombies were fleet of foot, if not fleet of mind. They moved as fast as the 28 zombies but they seemed to hesitate which the 28 zombies never did; they were nothing if not relentless. I had resolved to swear off zombie movies because, deep down, they give me the creeps, yet I watched I AM LEGEND for the sake of science and my longstanding studies in ZOMBIE VELOCITY. The movie is pretty good and much less intense than the 28 series. By comparison, it actually seemed relaxing. These zombies, by the way, were extremely light sensitive and might be stopped, or at least temporarily stunned, by a decent flashlight, though you'll probably need something more luminous than you can purchase at your average CVS. (Word from the wise: Spend the money on a high-lumens model. If LEGEND is to be trusted, it will be well worth the investment.)

I can't figure out what's wrong with my daughter's soccer team which I had coached to a perfect (undefeated) record in the fall; now we seem to be distinctly mediocre. Not only that, the girls seem uninspired and listless. And they don't seem to be getting any better. I'm inclined to blame them but my daughter is pointing the blame at the coach, hisself. Referring to our weekly practice sessions, she said, "No offense dad but when you do the same thing every week it gets kind of boring..."

Yesterday I got this note from a friend--the author of a popular children's action/adventure/fantasy book--who knows of which he speaks: Hi Steve, your book on string theory will be a lot easier if you put all the footnotes and appendices in other dimensions. That way you can say, "See Appendix E for a full explanation of 'D-branes'" and since Appendix E will be in the sixth or seventh dimension, no one will really know if you provided a full explanation or not.) Just a suggestion. -- C.

[Author's note: Thanks C., that's the best advice I've gotten so far. But I think I can take it one step further. Why not say the whole book can be found in another dimension? Just a suggestion.]

One of my astronomy articles came out last week that made me nervous. The crux of the story was that a paper that came out last year, which grabbed a lot of headlines, might have been wrong. Or at least overreached in its claims. I don't do a lot of articles like this where you're basically taking the biggest discovery of someone's career and shooting it down. Or at least casting serious doubt on it. On the other hand, I felt it was an important story to do on a subject that was pretty interesting in itself. So how could I pass it up? Especially at a time when I can use a bit of revenue.

Still I was worried about how the guy whose work was being challenged was going to take it. To make matters worse, he said he couldn't get a copy of the article and wanted me to send it to him as a pdf. So now I not only had to write the bad news but deliver it. (Don't shoot the messenger!) He had  trouble reading the first file, so I was off the hook temporarily. I tried sending it another way and received a note back from him soon. I expected to see something like: How could you betray me after making nice to me over the phone? But instead he said: "This time it worked. Thanks a lot."