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.

Yesterday’s dissertation focused on zombie velocity as a function of time. However, I neglected to point out another distinguishing feature of today’s movie zombies. Unlike the previous generation of ghouls (note: I think that’s the same thing), 21st century zombies are all too eager to use their heads as battering rams. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD-style zombies never did that whereas in contemporary films of this sort, that kind of behavior is, sad to say, typical.

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.”

I hit a rough patch with an editor regarding my humor column. At issue was my penchant for exaggeration and exercising poetic license. When I told a writer friend about our differences of opinion, he didn’t get what all the fuss was about. “Nobody reads a Steve Nadis column for the facts,” he said.

I was having a problem with an editor, and things seemed to go from bad to worse. I was hoping we could patch things up but his latest note suggested our differences were irreconcilable. It felt like a breakup. I had all kinds of well-reasoned arguments as to why such a decision was rash, why we could do great things together, but as in a breakup, the other partner in the conversation didn’t want to hear about it. He’d already made the decision and was ready to move on.

But I wouldn’t let it go and persuaded him to give it another shot. (“My next piece will be better than ever!” I promised. “Our ‘artistic differences’ are a a thing of the past!” I vowed. “Whatever doesn’t kill my article just makes it stronger…”) So for the moment the death sentence has been lifted and I am back to my usual position of being on probation. Walkin’ on eggshells. One slipup away from being back on Death Row. Or as they say in the journalism trade: DEAD MAN WRITING.

We’ve heard the junk food defense, the Twinkie defense, and now we get the … chemistry defense? Of course I’m referring to the case of the man from East Bridgewater (a town somewhere in the vicinity of Boston though as to where it is I have no clue) charged with storing an inordinant amount of ordinance–39 pipe bombs–in his garage. And what did his lawyer have to say about this? The man, the lawyer maintains, has had a long-time interest in chemistry and has been harmlessly building explosives since high school (this according to the Boston Globe. To which I reply: What’s wrong with stamp collecting?) “He just makes bombs, that’s all,” claims the lawyer John Creedon. “He is interested in chemistry… He never, ever set one off.”

Well I guess you can’t begrudge a man his hobby. And if I were the man’s next-door neighbor, the reassuring words of his attorney would be enough to set me at ease.

A friend recently turned me on to Joe Posnanski, a sports columnist from Kansas City who apparently likes to write. Fortunately he is a very entertaining writer. Somewhere he said he wanted to have the longest posts on the internet, and I’m sure there are other writers more longwinded writers out there somewhere, but this guy can carry on. He started one of his stories about an historic Greco-Roman wrestling match 10 different times and I have to say it was a lot of fun to read. I used to do longer posts but have been going in the opposite direction because time seems to be getting scarce. There is the old expression, “short but sweet,” and I’m hoping there’s something to it.

My five-year-old told me about all the animals she loved. Then it occurred to her that people are animals too. It turns out, I am one of her favorite animals–right up there after cats and dogs, bunnies, chipmunks, and barn owls.

Has there ever been a player like Manny Ramirez? In yesterday’s game in Baltimore, he caught a ball at the left field fence, gave a high five to a fan wearing Red Sox regalia (IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PLAY!), and then hurled the ball to first where he doubled up a runner. That shows, as much as anything else, that this extraordinarily talented player, who makes a ton of money, is in it for more than just money. He plays for fun, and, if you ask me, that’s what we need more of in professional sports.

Sometimes you get what you’re aiming for on a milk run, and sometimes you get something else altogether. I went to the 7-11 tonight at about midnight, which is part of my regular routine. I wanted to get a gallon of 1% and a bunch of bananas. I found the bananas OK but they were out of 1%, so I had to settle for 2. On the way back, with the gallon in one hand, the bananas in the other, I ran into an artist friend outside a pub who’d just got a new grant to develop his idea for creating artificial lightning over the Gulf of Mexico. (At least I think that’s what it was.) I would have heard more about the project had not the milk started getting heavy–on an arm already fatigued by doing too many Sudoko puzzles while my family watched American Idol. But as I was saying, that’s the thing about a milk run. You never know what you’re going to come back with. But it’s usually more than just milk.

Earlier today, I had a difference of opinion with an editor for whom I write regularly. I thought it was the kind of difference we could shrug off–not a big deal–but I was wrong. It turned out to be a big deal, and maybe even a deal-breaker. I’ve been served noticed. I’m officially on probation and it could be the end of the line for me, at least so far as this gig is concerned. Unless I shape up.

I was on probation with another magazine almost 20 years. (They’ve been out of business for more than 10 years; at least I’m still going.) I was writing about solar neutrinos and carelessly said that a neutrino could reach the Earth from the sun in about 30 seconds (far faster than the speed of light) when I meant to say 30 minutes. Well, an editor kept reminding me of that mistake for almost a year. But I didn’t blow it like that a second time and gradually worked my way out of the doghouse. Now I’m back in the doghouse trying to find my way out again.

For those who get all bleary-eyed over that Hallmark holiday known as mother’s day, consider this quote (or paraphrase of a quote) from Jimmie Carter’s mother, who said: “When I look at my children, I wish I had remained a virgin.” Let us contemplate those words as we celebrate the day designed to celebrate moms–and all their untold secrets.

I’m getting tired of Hillary’s act. I want her to face the music and get out. She is convinced that when the phone rings at 3 in the morning she should be the one to answer it. Fine. If that’s what it’s going to take, I promise to call her then.

I had a doctor’s appointment this afternoon. They got me in the room, took my blood pressure and temperature (98.1), and told me the doctor would be in shortly, which is what they always say. Forty-five minutes later he still hadn’t shown up so I decided to leave. Evidently the guy forgot about me and went out to lunch. As I left I saw a guy with a name tag bicycling up, looking nice and relaxed, and I was sure it was the doctor coming back from lunch. I was pretty irritated but knew it could be worse: A couple of years ago a doctor left the hospital to go to a cash machine in Harvard Square and attend to other errands. I forgot to mention: He did this in the middle of surgery. Compared to that, I guess I didn’t fare so badly.

I’d been planning to do it for two years but never made the time until about a week ago when I went online and signed up for “Fast Lane”–the radioelectronic tags that let you drive through tollbooths (at least locally) without stopping. The registration process  took just five minutes and it took another five minutes to install the device on my windshield. It’s going to save us time at the tollboths, and it’s good for the environment. What they call a win-win. So why did it take two years? Probably because I drive so rarely. But now I have it. And though I don’t really like to drive–and get almost everywhere by bike or foot–I do look forward to passing through that tollboth for the first time without stopping. A friend tells me the thrill never ends. If he’s right, it could be the rare gift that keeps on giving.
 

A prestigious astronomical research institution recently posted an ad tailor-made for me: “seeking an intermediate science writer…” At first it seemed on the mark but after some reflection I realized it was probably a bit of a stretch for me. Now if they had said instead–”seeking a mediocre science writer”–that’s something I think I could do.

I was having trouble with the aerator in the bathroom faucet so I replaced it and threw it out. But then I took it out of the trash to see if it was the same size as the aerator for the kitchen faucet which was also acting up. If so, I’d bring the old one to the hardware store to make sure I got one of the right size. Not only did that aerator fit on the kitchen faucet, it worked perfectly, whereas on the other faucet it barely worked at all. I cannot account for this anomalous behavior. It is one of those mysteries of life, mysteries of aeration, that we see from time to time but cannot explain.

In the current issue of a glossy science magazine, I have a feature article that immediately follows a feature by a well-known astronomer whom I’ve met on many occasions and written about as well. This is the first time we’ve both appeared, side-by-side, in the same journal. I commented on that coincidence to him, saying it either meant I was moving up in the world or he was moving down. “I would prefer to believe your first interpretation,” he said. Which means, rather definitively, that I am moving up. Who’d of thunk it?

File this under “Much Ado About Nothing”: There are a lot of reckless rumors circulating about Boston Celtics star Paul Pierce and his alleged use of “gang signs” to express his displeasure to a member of the Atlanta Hawks. I personally don’t see what all the fuss is about. For starters they were not “gang signs,” which is often said by people (usually white) who don’t know the first thing about such matters. In point of fact, they were merely hand signals for “I’m going to kill you.”

On a separate note, I’d like to apologize for yesterday’s entry, “Freaky Friday,” which was an otherwise excellent entry except for the fact that it was Thursday. But I was thinking that it was Friday, and maybe that was wishful thinking given that Friday is my handball day. To make a long story short, now it is Friday so why don’t we just file that one under the heading “One Day Early”?

I just learned that “Calabi-Yau” is the name of the starship captained by Jetfire and his crew of Technobots in the IDW Publishing Transformers comic, Stormbringer. But if you ask me, Stormbringer is pretty close to Strominger, which is the last name of the physicist who is credited with coming up with the name “Calabi-Yau.” Only Strominger was referring to the tiny spaces that, at least according to string theory, house the universe’s hidden “internal” dimensions. He was not talking about a starship in a comic book series. Still the coincidence is there. And, oddly enough, it reared its ugly head on none other than Freaky Friday. Which makes this a Double Coincidence, Extra Freaky Friday.