You Guys Hear About This??

There was a huge blowout bash at the Waldorf-Astoria to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Manhattan Comedy Club recently. Everybody who was anybody in the humor business was there. Mr. Impressions was there, of course, along with Mr. Slapstick, Mr. Improv and Mr. Standup. Then, Mr. Pun walks in and immediately ten people collapse on the floor dead. The next morning’s headline in the New York Times was:

Pun In. Ten Dead.

AWAY, Season One. A Review

There’s a new show that is all the rage on Netflix. It’s called AWAY, and it’s about the first crew of astronauts to attempt to land on Mars. Pam and I were excited to watch anything about space travel and those crazy engineers who run NASA. A couple of nights ago we finished season one. So much for The Right Stuff, or even Apollo 13. This was more like This Is Us in space. It looks like the folks at NASA have gone through sensitivity training and gotten in touch with their feelings. I hated it.

So, the story revolves around the multi-ethnic, multi-national, multi-gendered, multi-sexually orientated crew of five, led by an American woman, Emma. We are led to believe that she wouldn't even be on this mission had not her husband, Matt, fallen ill with some genetic disorder that has left him in a wheelchair back in mission control. The rest of the crew checks off all the correct 21st century boxes, there’s the carefree second in command, Rahm—from India, Lu, the Chinese officer who gets outed as a lesbian barely 24 hours into the mission, the surly Russian cosmonaut, Misha, the most experienced guy on the crew and the only one with an old school spaceman personality, who naturally, goes blind during the trip and gets transformed to a fuzzy teddy bear right before our eyes. Finally, there’s the botanist from the Sudan, Kwesi, who has never been in space before, but serves the important purpose of not only representing the African continent, but also the community of faith, when we discover that he is the only crew member who believes in God via his “what are the odds” devout Judaism!! Back in Mission Control, the leader of NASA is a gray haired woman who is hailed as a great leader despite the fact that she shows zero qualities of leadership beyond frowning at people who bring her bad news and suggesting that everyone meet in the conference room immediately! Meanwhile, Matt seems to be the hero of the show since he is constantly coming up with Jerry-rigged solutions to the constant stream of malfunctions that plague the ship, all the while having to deal with his constantly disobedient 15 year old daughter and her Latino boyfriend. If that’s not hard enough, poor Matt has to fend off the growing affections of the stand-in mother, hand picked by NASA, to look after said daughter. Not to be outdone, we discover that Rahm has the hots for his commanding officer, Emma, setting up the question in all viewers minds...Which of them will be unfaithful first??

This show, in only ten episodes has broken the all time tear count set by its inspiration—This Is Us—by a country mile. Every five minutes, these highly skilled, meticulously trained scientists burst into uncontrollable sobbing at the slightest provocation. Emma, the commander, is the leader of these water works, constantly provoked to tears by her daughter, her husband, and her own feelings of inadequacy. Somehow, this woman has been chosen to lead this historic mission, to command the most significant human endeavor ever attempted by man and womankind, despite the fact that she clearly would rather turn the ship around and head back to earth to council her daughter about the dangers of premarital sex. She is a hot mess of regret, indecision, and self doubt...you know...the Right Stuff.

This is the thing I don’t understand about Hollywood. These are the people who are constantly lecturing the rest of us about our intolerance, our racism, our hopelessly provincial misogyny. And yet, this is what they serve up as an example of a strong woman...Emma. It is not possible to overemphasize just how uninspiring she is as a leader and a woman. When her flailing, mutinous  crew desperately needs a firm decisive leader, Emma gives them weakness, indecision and petulance. She is constantly having to be reassured by her husband back home that she’s going to be ok. It’s pathetic. Hollywood, it turns out, doesn’t know a damn thing about what a strong woman looks or acts like. I do. I grew up with a bunch of them. My sisters would have had the crew of Atlas doing their jobs without any belly-aching in five minutes, never mind my mother, who would have mopped the floor up with them the first time she heard any whining. Oh, and try challenging her authority? Good luck with that.

The worst scene in season one comes as the ship is about to be incinerated by what appears to be an unavoidable series of failures. We are treated to Emma and Rahm, sitting side by side in the control room plotting the proper coordinates to try to avoid disaster...and we are asked to believe by the script writers that they have time for a ten minute side bar about their nascent feelings for each other??

Houston, we have a problem!

We won’t be watching season two.

What’s In YOUR Garage?

One of the most significant casualties of COVID has been my gym membership at AMFAM. Although I’m still paying for that membership, I have not felt comfortable going against my doctor’s strong advice to avoid the place like the plague. So, I have adapted and become a road warrior, putting in roughly 18 miles of walk/run a week along with other exercises designed to keep me south of 200 pounds. When you spend this much time on the streets of your neighborhood, you begin to notice things. Then, if you’re like me, you begin to obsess over the things you notice. For example:

There are roughly 80 homes in Wythe Trace. It is very much a typical Short Pump neighborhood, well trimmed lawns (for the most part), nice homes, and decent people. And cars. Lots of cars. Over the past five months I have begun to notice something about these cars. Finally, the other day, I decided to test my hypothesis by actually counting them. My hypothesis was confirmed and now, lucky for you guys, I am here with the fascinating results. The conclusions I have drawn from the data are solely my own.

Either in the driveway or parked on the street, I counted 152 cars in my neighborhood. This was a typical day, so that number is a reliable one. Almost two per house. Nothing unusual about that, I suppose. But, here’s where it gets interesting, (READER: I sure hope so), I counted cars from 16 different manufacturers. We’ve come a long way since Henry Ford. Here they are in no particular order: Honda, Toyota, Mazda, Suburu, Mercedes, Nissan, Hyundai, BMW, GM, Ford, Chrysler, Cooper, Jaguar, Volvo, VW, and Kia. Of the 152 cars I counted, guess how many were made by American car companies? 35. That means that 77% of the cars purchased by the folks in my neighborhood, were bought from foreign companies. Here’s how it breaks down:

Toyota= 38

Honda= 29

Ford= 17

GM= 13

Nissan= 12

Hyundai= 9

Mercedes= 7

Subaru= 5

Chrysler= 5

VW= 3

Volvo= 3

Mazda= 2

Kia= 2

Cooper= 1

Jaguar= 1

There are a thousand conclusions you could draw from these numbers, proving that old adage that statistics can be bent into any shape to tell the story you wish to tell. Some might look at these numbers and say, “Wow, isn’t it amazing the amount of consumer choice we have courtesy of Globalization!” Others will look at these same numbers and say, “Toyota sells more cars to us than the top three American companies combined!! That’s economic suicide.” Some will see these numbers as exhibit A in the case of why we keep losing manufacturing jobs and the support they give to the middle class. Others will see the same numbers and bemoan the stifling effects of union work rules and contracts that have priced American cars out of the marketplace. Others will say that without globalization, we would be stuck with inferior American-made cars, insisting that we buy so many Toyotas and Hondas because they are better cars! 

What about me, you might ask? I live in Wythe Trace. What’s in my garage? Well, so far in the 35+ years of being married I have purchased a total of eleven cars. Three of them were from foreign companies, a Honda Accord, a Volkswagen Scirocco, and Pam’s current Hyundai. The rest have been American cars and/or SUV’s, including my current Cadillac. I must admit that the national origin of the manufacturer never really entered in to my buying decisions. Besides, in the world we live in things can get complicated. For example, my Cadillac XT5 is a General Motors product, but it was assembled in Shanghai, China with a transmission made in France. Pam’s Hyundai SantaFe? Montgomery, Alabama. So, that whole Buy American thing can be confusing as all get out!

But, what about American jobs?? When I bought my first car, I was 20 years old. Back then, the only foreign made cars I knew anything or cared anything about were the Datsun 240-Z and the Mercedes Benz 450-SL, neither of which I could afford. I liked them because they were hot and fast. What did I buy? A used VW Beetle, which I would probably still be driving today if the floorboard hadn't eventually rusted through. But, 40 years ago, the BIG THREE American companies dominated. Now they don’t. I’m not losing any sleep over it. The way I see it, if they want to regain their place of dominance they need to build better cars. What about American jobs? Which ones? The jobs of the guy at the Hyundai dealership who works in the shop? How about the woman on the assembly line in Montgomery, Alabama who helped put Pam’s SantaFe together? Do those jobs count?

Globalization is a complex and sometimes unsettling thing. There are negatives to everything, winners and losers in every economic upheaval. But honestly, would you rather go back to the days of the Chevy Chevette and the Ford Pinto? Those are examples of the total crap that used to roll off Detroit assembly lines before Toyota and Honda came along.

No thanks.

The Death of Optimism?

This morning, a headline from a story from NBC news caught my eye:

Fauci says U.S. must “hunker down” for Fall and Winter

Then the money quote in the first paragraph of the story:

“ Don’t ever, ever underestimate the potential of the pandemic. And don’t try to look at the rosy side of things.”

Somewhere, Norman Vincent Peale is rolling over in his grave.

Apparently, the Era of Optimism is officially over, the power of positive thinking, a thing of the past. All those corny songs from the old days about Accentuating the Positive and walking on the sunny side of the street are relics from a bygone era. Today is all about sober acceptance of the worst case scenarios of life.

Look...I get it. Constantly downplaying the seriousness of COVID is foolish. Breezily dismissing the deaths of nearly 200,000 Americans as some sort of hoax is ignorant and dangerous. But, my experience of 62 years informs me that things seldom if ever turn out as bad as predicted. Maybe this will be the exception, but better than expected outcomes have had an astonishing record of dependability for most of my life. So, with all due respect to Dr. Fauci, I will take COVID seriously, but I will not succumb to pessimistic acceptance of the inevitability of the “potential” of this pandemic. There’s another potential at play here, Doc, and that’s the potential of a vaccine, the potential of better outcomes than the models have suggested. If I have to make a bet on which potential wins, I’ll put my money and my energy on...success, not failure.

The Fall and Winter might very well be dark. But if all of us give ourselves over to the inevitability of the darkness, we guarantee its arrival.

Wear your mask. Wash your hands. Be considerate of others. Practice Social distancing. But remain positive and optimistic as the weather turns colder. Reject pessimism. Hold on fast to hope.

A Brutal Reminder

Every once in a while we humans are confronted with the inexorable passage of time and the debilitating impact it has on us. Most of the time we are too busy to notice. Then suddenly it appears, staring us in the face. We are always surprised, taken aback by the decline and fall. We shouldn’t be, but we are. It was that way with a friend today. He looked at me, straight in the face, as it dawned on him that his memory had completely failed. He had not remembered what we had just been talking about. His eyes became vacant, as if he was seeing someone else beside me, someone he didn’t know at all. He caught himself, realized that I had driven a long way to talk with him about something of which he no longer had any memory. He became embarrassed. His eyes filled with tears. We both fell into a painful silence. 

I had heard rumors of his decline, but until this awkward moment, I had no evidence that it was true. But now there is no ambiguity. He is no longer able to rely on his mind to tell him the truth. I can no longer council him with the confidence that he is comprehending my advice. It is a bitter pill for both of us. The moment when the realization of his diminishment registered on his face will be one that I will never forget.

The slow train of cognition winds its way through the mountains at its own pace, slowly for some, brutally swift for others. But it comes for us all eventually. Unfortunately for me, I get to observe its arrival more so than most because of the nature of my work. I hate it. I hate that its so arbitrary. I hate the unfairness of it all. I leave each of these encounters diminished, drained of something for a while, until life’s momentum sweeps me up again in its mighty current. Tonight, I think about my friend, the terrified look on his face, and the heavy silence that descended in that dark moment, and I am reminded of the words of the Psalmist, “Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth...”

With Friends Like Me...

So, my friend is having a colonoscopy today. She's had a rough couple of weeks, what with her reconstructive surgery getting cancelled last minute when the surgeon had to quarantine for COVID. Now, she’s been fasting for the last 36 hours leading up to today’s procedure. So, what do I do to encourage her through these dark hours? This:

Does this make me a terrible person? Perhaps. Showing someone images of delicious food when they are fasting and starving to death might be considered thoughtless and cruel to some. However, to others it will be seen for what it is...a fiendishly clever ploy to make the recipient of such photographs simultaneously amused and angry, and temporarily distracted from her hunger. Instead of obsessing over how starved she feels, she is now wondering what she ever did to deserve having a friend like me?! I think her personal favorite was this next one I sent her with the subtitle: You, on the ride home after your colonoscopy...

The Great Lake House Hunt

The Great Lake House hunt of 2020 is in full swing. It is at once exciting and frustrating, exhilarating and disappointing. The problem seems to be there are too many people like us—out of staters—gobbling up real estate in Maine, attempting to flee the big cities of the northeast and COVID. A house will go on the market and have a dozen offers in ten minutes, people perfectly willing to buy the place sight unseen. That’s not our style. So, the search continues.

Here’s the real dilemma. For us, especially Pam, the lake is the thing. Do we want a nice house? Sure. We have requirements of the house that are non-negotiable. But the house could be absolutely perfect but if it’s on a tiny uninteresting lake, no sale. To the contrary, if the house needs lots of work, but sits on the edge of the right lake, we would be all in. We aren’t the type of people who go to the lake to sit on the deck and enjoy the scenery. We spend the majority of our time in Maine either on the dock or on the water. We fish, kayak, paddle board. If it were possible we would take all of our meals on the dock! So far, we haven’t found the right combination of house and lake. But the journey has just begun. Our realtor insists that people will start listing their houses up there after Labor Day. That’s when more opportunities will appear. 

One more thing about this search. We have discovered that the region of Maine that has our heart—MidCoast—is home to the priciest real estate in the state. If we were willing to expand our search to include the Downeast areas of Bar Harbor etc.,we might find more properties at better prices. I’m sure this is true. But, here’s the deal...there’s a reason why we love the Camden/Rockland/Rockport area. It’s beautiful, yes, but it’s also less touristy. There aren’t any cruise ships docking in these waters. It calls itself “Where the Mountains meet the sea.” We have been enchanted for nearly ten years now. So, if it’s been our dream to buy a place here, we need not give up that dream too quickly being in too big a rush to buy a place. Patience is a virtue, or so I’m told. Although I have no first hand experience with the concept, I intend to test the truth of that expression over the next month or so when we return for our second 2020 trip.

Wish us luck!