CALL ME SNAKE

I’ve been at a conference for a mathematician in honor of his 59th birthday, but I’d been puzzled as to why they didn’t wait a year for the birthday celebration. Last night I found out: He is Chinese, and in China you are one year old the instant you’re born.  We count 0,1,2, 3… They start their counting at 1. Which is why, at least in this category, China will always be ahead of us.

I didn’t figure the kid could go the distance. I guessed he’d only last one lecture at the most. And I ran into his dad, the mathematician, at the conference today and found out I was right. He only made it  through one lecture (45 minutes of dense, abstruse math) and then had to get out of there.

Not that I don’t sympathize with the kid. I sat through a lecture today given by a man considered perhaps the most brilliant physicist in the world. He was trying hard to make his talk on gauge theory understandable to everybody. Well almost everybody. I was trying hard to follow him but only got about half of it. Of course, not getting the other half was almost equivalent to getting nothing. A physicist afterwards asked me if  there were any new developments reported in the talk–any progress toward solving an important mathematical problem. I did not think so but told him he might want to check with somebody who had a clue as to what was said.

I was at a differential geometry conference today (for work) and ran into a mathematician I vaguely knew who’d brought his teenage son along with him for the conference. The kid had no particular interest in the subject, and these talks are incredibly technical—way beyond me for the most part. I’m sure the kid was glad dad had dragged him along for the day.

Call me a spoilsport, call me a curmudgeon, but I’m not fond of the kind of speeches that Michele Obama delivered today. Obama’s wife says he’s quite the family man, and she’s in a position to know. But tell me again: Why is that supposed to be relevant?

There’s a great exchange in the dumb/funny music biopic farce called WALK HARD. The protoganist Dewey Cox, played by John C. Reilly, tells his wife that it seems as if she does not believe in him. “I DO believe in you,” the wife insists. “I just know that you are going to fail.”

You never know how the threads of life will cross and tangle. Last week I wrote about the demise of the Lucky Shop–a Chinese knicknack store outside of Central Square that my children were quite fond of. A day or so later, a friend (my handball partner )called me, trying to find someone to help him move some heavy cabinets. As I’m not up to heavy lifting, I gave him the number of a friend of mine in the moving business. Later today, I walked past the Lucky Shop which might have been open for the last day. My friend (the handball guy) was in front, moving stuff into his store. It turns out a friend of his had loaned the cabinets in question to the Lucky Shop and with them going out of business he had to do something with them. I had tried to find someone to help him with the cabinets without realizing they were sitting inside the Lucky Shop. I went inside the store and got one last look. I don’t suppose you’d call that luck exactly, but it was a coincidence.

An NPR story the other day explained why players choose bikinis in beach volleyball. It’s all about comfort and has nothing to do with sex. “You don’t have an issue of sweat and sand collecting in places that you don’t want it to,” says three-time Olympian Holly McPeak. “It really is the most functional uniform for beach volleyball.”

That’s exactly what I’ve been telling people for a long time. And that’s exactly why I wear a bikini when I play beach volleyball.

As this is a volleyball blog, it’s only appropriate that I do write about volleyball from time to time. And I have to say, I am unbelievably impressed with the gold medal performance of Misty May and Kerri Walsh in this year’s Olympics. They are both incredible athletes and, game after game, they made one amazing play after another. Beach volleyball may not get respect in some quarters, but May and Walsh were clearly among the finest athletes in the whole Olympic games. I’ve probably played longer than either of them and it’s embarrassing to realize how much better than me they are. Occasionally, when my gang plays beach volleyball, I feel as if we know what we’re doing. But when you see players at that level of greatness, it is truly humbling.

I was racing on my bike to get to a meeting with a real estate lawyer to talk about construction plans next door. The guy charged $250 an hour, and I didn’t want to be late. He was racing on his bike to classes at MIT–or something at MIT–and, being an overachiever, he didn’t want to be late either. As a result, we crashed into each other at high speed on the corner of Mass. Ave. and Memorial Drive and ended up in a tangle on the pavement. I immediately asked him if he was OK, and he immediately asked me if I was OK. (I was OK but started to think I’m getting too old for bike crashes which is supposed to be something that kids do, not people like me.) He was OK too. Then we had to separate the two bikes. Mine did not move at all until I realized the handlebars and wheel had somehow twisted around more than 360 degrees. Once I turned it back, the wheels turned somewhat. I’m not sure about the other guy’s bike but I didn’t have time to worry about that. I had to get to my meeting and the meter–at $250 an hour–was already running.

I’m in the midst of writing a book and have received help from many quarters while pursuing this project. I’ve received help, for example, from a colleague’s secretary in Hong Kong who sent me the following missive, which I don’t know how to translate: “Thanks for your kindness,” she wrote. “I hope I can be functioned when necessary.” I hope so too even though I have no idea what she means.

Sorry. Although I am a faithful viewer of the 2008 Olympic Games, I apologize for not staying tuned for the interview with Michael Phelps and his mother. I’m sure watching all those events must have been nerve-wracking for her. But it was also nerve-wracking for us having to see her frantically sitting in the stands during all those events as well. So I’d call it a wash.

Michael Phelps is one amazing swimmer. (To paraphrase Walter Dix: “That man can swim.”) And Mark Spitz was one amazing swimmer–in his time. So if you put the two of them together, you should have some TV magic, right? Wrong. I sat through the painful conversation between Phelps and Spitz televised during last night’s Olympics coverage. Both those guys are/were phenomenal swimmers but they didn’t have anything to say to each other, and it was painful to watch them try. As a general matter, it seems, Phelps does not have much to say on camera. Except when he’s swimming. Then his unbelievable performances speak for themselves.

All of us have wondered about these odd little businesses that survive year after year with seemingly no business. One of the places I’ve long speculated about in this regard was the Lucky Store–a funny little outlet on Mass. Ave., near Central Square, that sold weird Chinese toys and knickknacks, some for as little as 50 cents. Our girls loved going there to get gifts for their friends. But we seemed to be the store’s only customers, yet this odd little outpost hung on for years. Until now. They are finally going “out of business.” But I wonder if they were ever really “in business”?

The statistics confirm that more people read this blog when I don’t write anything than when I do. Circulation peaked during a 3-day period when I was away in the Midwest taking a little break (“gone fishin’,” so to speak) and dropped off as soon as I returned and started posting. The numbers speak for themselves and evidently do so more eloquently than I can. I need to ponder the implications of this startling revelation and figure out how to proceed from here. Can I pick up the pieces of my shattered ego and move forward? Or should I go on another fishin’ trip? That, as a famous prince once said, is the question.

I’m back from my trip to the Midwest and ready to face the serious obligations that comes with managing, editing, and publishing Call Me Snake, which I’m pleased to note has thrived in my absence. According to the statistics I’m privy to, readership of Call Me Snake shot up during the days I was not posting. Perhaps that is telling me something in which case this missive may be like the proverbial party killer. But somebody had to do it.

Call Me Snake will be taking a little siesta–call it a kind of NATIONAL LAMPOON’S MIDWEST VACATION without the laughs. I’ll be filling in for the Chevy Chase character (Clark Griswold?), and the rest of my family will do their best as the funny/annoying/predictable bunch we’ve seen so many times before on screen. After we’re done with this shoot, we’ll be starting in on our sequel to the BUCKET LIST. I’ll see you next week for the early screening.

What if we crossed Blair Witch with Godzilla and set it in New York City only instead of populating the movie with the young scruffy types of Blair Witch we’ll populate it with young beautiful people–the type you’re likely to find at a hip New York loft party? Sounds like a movie. In fact, it sounds like a movie I ought to have been smart enough to skip. One of the few interesting things about Cloverfield was the presence of these oversized scarab-like mini-monsters (as opposed to the one giant monster terrorizing Gotham) which looked almost exactly like the oversized scarab-like mini-monsters in THE MIST. Is this a coincidence? A pattern? Or a conspiracy? If I told you I’d have to, you know, so, well, let’s just leave it at that…

I was in Central Square the other day–Cambridge’s gritty urban district–when a street-tough guy said: “Hey babe, got the time?” He said it a couple of times and I ignored him, as I figured he was talking to someone else. I’d never been called “babe” before, so far as I can recall. I finally realized he was talking to me and gave him the time. “Next time,” I said, “call me Snake.”

I’m often impressed by research on TV viewing (a subject about which I knew a fair amount), and I can say that a recent press release I saw from the University of Alberta fits well within this proud tradition. To quote the executive summary: “Researchers discovered students who reported medium or high television viewership snacked more frequently while watching TV and recognized more advertising than students who were considered low TV viewers.” That is pretty incredible. Who would ever have suspected that people who watch lots of TV would also tend to eat more while watching TV than people who watch a lot less? Even more amazing, who would have figured that people who watch lots of TV will be more familiar with TV ads than people who watch a lot less? It is studies like these that raise my undying awe for science to new heights. [DISCLAIMER: I didn't actually read the scientific study itself; I just read the press release. Or kind of skimmed it as I was kind of busy snacking in front of the TV at the time, trying to familiarize myself with as many ads as possible--just in case I ever found myself near a water cooler and needed something to talk about...]

We have been wondering whether a cat from our neighborhood that–spends a lot of time around our house and sometimes gets in our house–is going wild. He bit me twice today and also bit one of my daughter’s friends. I asked a neighbor about the cat this  home. “I know you write for the paper,” he said, referring to my monthly humor column. “You should know that lots of things are happening in this neighborhood besides cats and bunnies.”

John McCain has new ads claiming that a vote for Barack Obama is no different than voting for a celebrity like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. Fair enough but it makes me think the publicists for Lindsey Lohan and Amy Winehouse must have fallen asleep on the job. Why weren’t they also mentioned in the McCain ad, given that the comparison is at least as good?

I was at the hardware store, buying pantry moth traps which my kids don’t like because it’s wrong to kill animals. I don’t like them either but we’ve got an infestation and I don’t know what else to do. I purchased the item and the cashier, a young Asian woman I hadn’t seen before, asked me what “sugar-coat” meant. At first, I didn’t know what she was getting at. But then I saw she had written down a list of English (or American) colloquialisms and was trying to advance her command of the language while on the job. I defined the term as best I could without trying to sugar-coat it in any way.