今天是妈妈的生日，我想分享很多次妈妈送我礼物的故事。
My parents recently bought a Lexus SUV, possibly accomplishing their lifelong dream of purchasing a luxury vehicle. They were going for a Tesla for its electric abilities and suddenly more ample supply due to half the country boycotting Elon Musk, but the Lexus likely represents something my mom has always wanted as a status of making it in the world, coming as an immigrant after age 30 to a new land WITHOUT the aid of Internet and without much money to finally achieving that oh-so-elusive American dream, especially with her health not guaranteed, time to enjoy. I personally have a strong relationship with my Honda Accord, purchased 11.5 years ago, before I started my current vocation; before learning Japanese, before getting into trivia, before having even met MJ; I've had a longer relationship with this car than my wife. I often tell people that a car is just a machine to get from one place to another, which is true, but I've now developed an attachment this car, partly due to having gone so many places with it and so many adventures. I've lived in so many apartments, condos, my parents' house, and hotels over the years, so much that I view each place as a temporary location, but my 2013 Honda Accord? That's a permanent lodging situation when I need to drive. I might still be traumatized from the last car I inherited from my parents that I donated to Cars for Kids: one day the donation center just came with their tow truck and took the car, and I never saw it again, after taking out all the CD's and other personal belongings out of it like I was cleaning out my desk at my old workplace. One day I will have to do the same to my Honda Accord, but I just hope it won't be such an unceremonius goodbye with it being brusquely taken away from me. I guess I understand why so many Americans love their cars more than their family now.
Also, I'd try not to spend more than $50,000 for a car.....for a depreciating asset.
Today I played chess for the first time in a live tournament since high school......I felt the nervousness again, the adrenaline rush when the clock was ticking down towards the end, where I had to make a move or else, the sound of pieces on other boards and players hitting their clocks after making a move. It all sounded so familar...this must be what retired players miss about getting on the field, the competitive drive. Also...the incentive to get off your phone. Today was probably the first day in years I stayed off my phone for an extended period of time. Nowadays with everything digitial, basically everything on your phone, it never leaves my hand or my pocket. To put be forced to put the phone down and do something I like better than being on the phone was worth the $60 entry fee. It's fitting that tonight was Oscar night because I identify with the sediment Sean Baker, director of "Anora," said after winning the award for Best Director, which was basically "support local theaters." Theaters are where people can actually become totally immersed in a movie not only because of the huge screen and surround sound effects but also.....you have to put your phone away or get scolded/shamed. Watching a movie and slipping in that world feels a lot like sitting down at a chess board and playing for an hour, hour and a half. I miss the single-minded devotion in high school of winning the match right here, right now, staying in the moment, no worries about anything else in the world, just locked in the zone right now, which is almost impossible in our multi-tasking world. Also, I love the competitive fire, whether it was dodgeball or chess or playing basketball at the college fitness center, I've always gotten a rush from being in any competition, and I've suppressed it for so long that when it does come out, the thrill is real. Wooooooooo!!!!!!!!
It's Oscars weekend, and most of the attention will be focused on the Red Carpet, the major categories like Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress, and for the casual viewer, maybe expecting some drama like announcing the wrong winner LaLa Land instead of Moonlight? or maybe the Slap Heard Around the World Will Smith on Chris Rock? But one category I've only just started paying attention to was Best Original Song, which looking at its history has yielded quite a few memorable tunes. The one that I wandered into was "As Time Goes By" featured in the iconic movie "Casablanca," which I've only ever seen once but gets referenced in Jeopardy plenty of times down to where Laszlo and Ilsa are flying to at the end of the movie (Portugal), but I still remember Ilsa asking Sam (Dooley Wilson) to "Play it again, Sam" asking fro "As Time Goes By." You must remember this, A kiss is just a kiss......
And that's just No. 2 on the all-time list of AFI's list of best songs ever! No. 1 is hard to beat, "(Somewhere) Over the Rainbow" sung by Judy Garland in The Sound of Music. The top 10 list is probably hard to beat ever, just from the timeless quality and sheer number of people who know those tones and get exposed to them from a young age, like Pinocchio's "When you Wish Upon a Star" is in almost every Disney song collage as their iconic highlight music, Stayin' Alive by the Bee Gees (from Saturday Night Fever) has common usage like being used as the beat for performing CPR, those aren't going away. Also, MJ has this odd fascination for the song "Chim Chim Cher-ee" from Mary Poppins, singing it whenever it pops up in something we're watching or even when we're not watching anything, just singing it with wild unexplained exuberance.
One song that might push into history's lore might be Billie Eilish's "What Was I Made for" from the Barbie Movie, just because of how pervasive the Barbie movie was but the message of the song about why human beings are on Earth and if we're all just dolls in some Barbie world. I definitely had that song playing once per day for several weeks, capped off by hearing it being played in Mexico at a bar, attesting to the power of song but also the power of Barbie. Some years the Best Song is very forgettable and not even the most famous song in the movie (Naatu Naatu in 2022 in Encanto, over "We don't talk about Bruno?" but "Shallow" in 2018 with Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper still persists today in Youtube commercials and various montages, and on the negative side some songs have just become earworms destined to play on a loop like the Bad Place described in "A Good Place." I'm talking about "Let it Go," sung very well by Idina Menzel in Frozen, but nonstop, to the point of asking if that song can just let our eardrums go.
So yes, I will be paying attention to who wins the Academy Awards this year (a lot of buzz about the Brutalist and its brutal 3 hours 37 minute run time, with intermissions in between) as well as Emilia Perez, but add one other category I'm looking forward to: Best Original Song, because "As Time Goes By," there are more and more songs that enter the cannon that might pop up on Jeopardy one day that I will undoubtedly have trouble remembering.
The Minute Waltz, aka Opus 64 No.1, is by Frederic Chopin, a very recognizable tune that lasts a little more than a minute and baffled me when I plugged into Youtube and watched the version where someone's hands are actually playing the notes on a piano and showing how many keys needed to be played at the same time and how much both hands are doing at the same time. I used to play violin and prided myself on getting through some tough music with all fingers moving around the fingerboard at a dizzing amount of speed, but that was just ONE hand, the other hand was just in charge of going up and down, up and down. The level of 2-hand coordination by piano players is pretty impressive; I barely am able to play the 2-hand version of "Rock Paper Scissors, Minus One" shown on the past season of Squid Game, where each player throws out both hands and then has to take back one of them. All my hands are trained to do is put out 2 versions of the same item, either 2 rocks, 2 scissors, or 2 papers. It was never programmed to put out 2 different items in combination, there's like a mental block preventing me from doing so that I have to re-wire my brain to convince it that it's OK to have each hand do different things (they're so used to doing the same action at the same time). I imagine that would be a huge problem for me playing piano at this stage of my life, although I do like the elegance and clean dulcet sounds of a piano. Even at my peak violin skill level, I could always sense some scratching, some notes being off slightly, violin is just an imperfect instrument for an imperfect person like me. Piano creates some all time classics like "Claire de Lune" by Debussy, "Gynmnopedie" by Erik Satie, Bach's "Goldberg Variations," not to mention modern day classics like the whole "City of Stars" soundtrack and Michelle Branch's "One Thousand Miles." And if MJ and I have a child, I'd nudge him/her towards piano; violin just has a high learning curve and the first few years are going to sound a lot like cat scratch. (Not cat scratch fever, which is an actual bacterial disease transmitted by cats.
We'll never know exactly what happened in late August 2021 deep in Yellowstone National park between Gabby Petitto and Brian Laundrie, but the latest Netflix documentary gives a pretty good idea, even using AI to generate what might have been Gabby's last few hours before Brian (he claims in his suicide note that he didn't) strangled her to death. The whole story has been denounced as an example of "missing white women syndrome" in that the American populace only wants to hear about stories about missing white women and ignores the hundres and thousands of cases of women missing who are of other races, which to an extent is true, especially for an attractive young white woman like Gabby Petitto, but I'd argue that it was more of the special circumstances of her disappearance that really drew natinoal attention (Britney Griner's case of being detained in Moscow is one example I'd cite of not a non-white woman "missing" but at least getting constant attention for her to be brought home). I think it was the video in Moab, Utah of Gabby and Brian being questioned by police officers that really got everyone's attention. In previous generations, that video would not have made it to everyone's media feeds, the video might not have been available by the police, and it wouldn't have been available on-demand for anyone to watch it on video. As of today there are now 16 million views of that video, and I understand why, especially looking backwards: we're all looking for signs of abuse, that Brian gave away his evil intentions, that Gabby was silently pleading for help, and we've all seen doomed relationships before and want to see one that ultimately failed in the worst way possible. Sadly, I don't see that in the video, and I personally think the police handled the situation correctly.......the fact that they're blamed afterwards for what happened is, to me, confirmation bias and hindsight bias for knowing exactly what would happen afterwards. The problem with relatinoships is you never know who has the capability to kill or what someone will do in the heat of the situation......most people get through it without violence. Gabby was already seeing signs of it with Brian and had already reached out to other people to maybe help her if she needed it, but things escalated way too quickly from loving each other unconditionally to an act of violence so horrible she must have not seen coming despite knowing the guy for over a year, much more than the police could judge from that one interaction. Gabby's case is a cautionary tale, unfortunately, for many women: even if you are sure that the man you are with is safe and the one to be with, just know that life has twists and turns. Protect yourself at all times and be OK to walk away.
Alarm fatigue is not exactly the right word for what I'm trying to describe: We need a new word for the oversaturation of everything being a crisis and everything being of critical importance, which is particularly pervasive in today's world of news alerts and instant information. I've heard "fearmongering" and "news fatigue," but there's no exact term for when everything is sensationalized to be the end of the world or of pressing need to know. This is partly due to news being a business now and needing more eyeballs, and nothing gets more eyeballs than screaming news alerts in bold and in red, begging the reader to clickand care about the issue. It's also prevalent in American Red Cross donation solicitations, as I constantly get emails saying platelets are "critically low," there's a "critical shortage," as if the reason it's low is because I haven't donated, or if I donate there won't still be a shortage. News Flash: there will always be a critical need for platelets, because their shelf life is just 5 days, so you can get all the platelets you want right now, but in 5 days you'll still need a fresh round of platelets. I don't think the messaging is effective: it's like the Boy who cried wolf, an old parable about not exaggerating or lying about danger: you do it too many times, and nobody believes it anymore. (In this case, even if it's true that there is a shortage), people just lose interest.
It's the same thing with the news. My anxiety levels on a daily basis: high in the morning when I wake up to log in to my computer to start working, get into the flow of things, lower stress level during lunch, pick back up in the afternoon when I want to finish all the work and doing check-in calls when I realize I have to present something or speak on something, and drop much lower after the day is done, to zero or negative when I'm running and destressing, and then suddenly........BOOM there's a breaking alert on a news item, and the president has tweeted something, and it's going to be World War III, or we are going to be a dictatorship soon, or a fascist country, or on the other side there's a new trans controversy, or Nancy Pelosi sold her shares of Apple and Nvidia stock so what does that mean for the stock market, to the Eagles won the Super Bowl which the previous 5 times they did that, the stock market tanked massively later that year...... It's just too much, and it's all presented in this manipulative, emotionally controlling way to get your attention to play on your emotion. Certain words are triggers that the news and algorithms know how to trigger your inner fears, setting off some sort of internal alarm. (For blood donations it's the idea that patients won't be able to get the platelets they need, their surgeries need to be be postponed or cancelled, and I admit it works). Part of the reason I oppose Donald Trump becoming president again is not even that much about his politics, although there are some problematic areas, and it's not the litany of issues any Trump critic can rattle off from the top of one's head....no, it's the fact that him just being in the Presidency creates so much anxeity and alarm in everyone's minds, on both sides of the aisle, the liberals hate him and criticize his every move (sometimes with reason, sometimes somewhat exaggerated) and the conservates are busy defending and applauding his every move and trying to "own the liberals;" it just raises the temperature to a temp much out of my comfort though (even more than the 77 degrees MJ keeps our home at, a little high for me but OK in the winter) and feeling like a constant alarm going off at all times. You ever live in a building or work at a school or office of some kind where the fire alarm goes off constantly? It's so annoying. You can't get back to work, you're constantly distracted, the alarm is just constantly in your ear and your mind you can't even think. That's what news and information transfer is like now. And even when the alarm stops momentarily, before the next one starts, you can hear the reverberations of those alarms in your mind, like your body has adjusted to that sound and can't unhear it. That's also how I feel about the alarmist news now. I'm tired. I'm fatigued. I'm wait for it........"newstired?"
All my life I've been trying to get on TV, but why? Is it just the very human desire for attention, to show the world how great I am, because getting on TV somehow represents that "I made it" in the world, so I can share on my Facebook and broadcast that I will be appearing on a game show and to see how well I do!!! ( I personally feel like people secretly hate this, even if it's their friends, because we're all jealous of other people's successes, so we have to show up to support them but quietly seethe with rage). Yes, I do have some impulses like these, but recently I've theorized that it's a lot like the song "Cool Kids" by Echosmith, a great song that sums up essentially my whole life up to college and even now applies: "I wish that I could be like the cool kids, 'cause all the cool kids they seem to fit in...." this refrain repeats like 10 times in that song which usually is the sure sign of an earworm, but for me it fits, the song came out in a really formative time for me (2013), maybe because it's not that often played, every time I hear it resonates. I've always wanted to be cool but never got to experience it. I've always walked around with my head down (mainly cuz I was ashamed of my acne as a kid), not walking straight, always just sticking out. Always last to get the new games, the new technology, know the latest gossip, never wearing the right fashion......and it's carried over to adult life. In adult society I'm a nobody, just a passenger on the train, a number on a screen, a customer in line to check out. Nobody cares what I do, no one wants to "fit in" with me. Maybe, just maybe, if I do something cool, people will admire me and I get to be the cool kid for once. I think that's what motivated me as a camp counselor way back in the day; the kids looked up to me because they didn't know better, they're kids and any person older than them seemed cool. But I was cool to them; when I said something they paid attention, actually wanted to hear. I "fit in."
Is the 1986 movie "Stand By Me" one of the best movies ever? Jeopardy sure incorporates it as a clue often enough, mainly because it's also the name of a song by Ben E. King, which also is played in the movie, but it's also basically an autobiography of Stephen King's younger years, apparently King got emotional after watching Rob Reiner's rendition of King's story "The Body" because it was so real. The movie's only 85 movies long, which is a good start because I just can't sit through Oppenheimer's 3 hours again no matter how good it is, it's got a young kids cast who later went on to bigger things (Wil Wheaton, Jerry O'Connell who does NOT look handsome as he does in Jerry Maguire, and sadly River Phoenix) and nothing really happens plot wise.....it's a very basic "4 buddies go on an adventure" plot line that is probably as old as stories, (The whole Hangover and Harold & Kumar movie franchises are based on it, just to name a couple), and no big plot twists, no CGI, no love stories....just spending 85 minutes with representations of your 12-year-old buddies again, which some argue is the most valuable thing to have, and the most wonderful time of life: young, free, naive, your whole world in front of you, everything is new about the world, and time doesn't move so gosh darn fast). It's set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Oregon, but it might as well be generic Smallville, USA, or suburb like I grew up in, Darien, IL, or anywhere boys grow up.....we all go through that period of growth and making friends and sharing bonds. Not all of us have to outrun a train on a bridge or find a dead body to accomplish that bonding, but we've all experienced what it's like to be 12 years old. "I never had any friends like I did when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?" That is the iconic line of the movie, and should be one of the top movie quotes ever, replacing such drivel as "You had me at hello" or "Say hello to my little friend." I get it, the quote's a little long, but the idea is gold: I've had many friendships come and go over my adult life, and I don't even talk to some of my close friends when I was 12 years old anymore (much like the movie), but those memories are the best. Back then I didn't need me to be a cool kid or fit in.... I just needed my friends. Timeless movie.
Of all the fees, assessments, charges, penalties, taxes, and other little financial ticks that one has to deal with just to get through life, there's this concept of underpayment of estimated tax that I was sent by the comptroller of the state today. Today, February 10, in the middle of tax season, I got sent a nice letter that came in a pink slip (conjuring up bad thoughts right way) for the previous year's assessment, that I need to pay interest for money that I never even had, that was theoretically "theirs" by virtue of taxing me a certain amount, and because THEY didn't withhold enough money from money I made, I need to pay interest on it because technically I'm holding on to the state's money (like I'm manically setting fires around the world and living my best life with this extra money). It's just diabolical logic for the state to make more money, and the more I think about it the more I get upset, as well as subscribe to the theory that organized governments are just organized crime/ gangs but legalized. The whole concept of a sales tax is, when I buy something that I need, the state gets a cut of that purchase. Why? What is that sales tax being used for? I get being taxed for income coming to me so the govenrment can take a cut of it off the top, but sales tax is taking money that's flowing out, I'm not getting any of that.
I've really looked hard at living in states with no income tax, and I've narrowed it down to a few states that MJ would find (barely) acceptable and that I can, you know, find a job in: Texas and Washington state. Alaska, Wyoming, South Dakota- yea I get why there's no state tax there. If you think about it from the baseline of starting with no state tax, then each year I live in California and/or other states, I'm paying upwards of 5 digits on tax, just free money I deliver to the state government. Am I really getting compensated for that money through public services? Yes, highways, but they're always crowded. Yes, DMV but they're always mean to me. Yes, fire department but the fires showed public disasters can wipe out your home ASAP.
The concept of interest bugs me too, just the idea of the amount I owe ticking up like a clock each time a new hour strikes makes me lose sleep. It makes my stress levels go up, makes my blood pressure go up just thinking about owing money, kind of like Mr. Beast's challenges where the money count goes up incremenetly. I do NOT want to owe any money to anybody, a lesson American don't really understand otherwise credit cards wouldn't be able to charge an exorbitant TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT INTEREST RATE! Even my current mortgage that I got at the rock-bottom low rates of 2021 right after the pandemic when everything was depressed, I'm still fretting every month about paying that evil line that says "interest" and not "escrow" or "principal." At least I can justify having the 2021 interest rate because it's lower than what I can get through dividends or savings accounts (I get taxed on those by the way), but now with the federal mortgage rates on a 30-year mortgage at 6.833%, not an all-time high but definitely high considering the last decade, and about the rate my first student loan was charged at for law school, I'm not feeling on aking on more debt.
Who created interest? Apparently even ancient civilizations had this concept of interest, so human beings have devised ways to screw other people for thousands of years; it's nothing new. Just like the ancients, if anything, I want OTHER people to be paying ME interest...... which is what the bank (and Robin Hood and other financial institutions do), but of course they're taking your money and ledning it out at a larger interest rate to other people. It's all just a sick game in a world revolving around money. I really feel bad for the people who earn a lot less than I, who have just one stream of income, but so many greedy hands coming to pick at it through interest and other organized means. So I declare interest to be........one of the worst inventions of mankind.
MJ and I went to a bookstore this weekend and came away with $3 calendars, apparently some of the most depreciable items and very, very time sensitive, like Christmas ornaments selling for 90% off the day after Christmas, or Halloween costumes after Halloween. Calendars ironically lose most of their value after you flip the calendar on January 1st of that year. Except........MJ and I never bought a 2025 calendar, so it was prime time to swoop in, we went crazy and bought 3 different ones reflecting our interests: 1.) a nurses calendar (for MJ), 2.) a Jeopardy calendar (with updated 2025 questions! for me) and a 3.) Peanuts calendar, kind of for both of us. The best part was, since it was February 8, we've already had 39 days of 2025 so we flipped through 39 days quickly, with the consensus being that the Jan. 1 Peanuts day was the funnies, lamenting that it can't be 2025 yet, he wasn't even ready for 2024. Yea I wasn't ready for it neither, Charlie Brown.
Girl Scout cookies.....are good. I'm not a Thin Mints guy so I always stay clear, but Peanut Butter and Chocolate, suggested by one of the Girl Scouts (Trefoils) we met at a local food court today, was good. Chocolate and peanut butter cannot be bad, and this was it. I'm reminded of my Cub Scout days, apparently I didn't graduate to Boy Scouts as I didn't make it past 5th grade...it was a great way to get out and meet other boys in the neighborhood, though, and a good idea by my parents to try to get me to make friends. Sometimes when I pass a bake sale in the neighborhood or a lemonade sale, I go ahead and just get something, to encourage the kids that their cottage industry enterprise is viable. Girl Scout cookies aren't THAT expensive, they're like $6 a buck, which is probably marked up twice the retail price, but I got those $3 calendars for 20 cents on a dollar, so I could afford splurging a little.
Today I also played basketball with a dog- no I did not intend to do so, but I was shooting baskets in a park and a man of the neighborhood just came by and shooting with me during his afternoon walk with his dog. VERY friendly dog, and just wanted so badly to fetch the basketball and bring it back to his owner.....it was black lab or some sort, maybe some other dog mixed in, maybe a descendant of St. John's water dog, a Newfoundland, and didn't bark or anything when seeing me, which always brings up bad childhood memories. Unfortunately it couldn't bite into the ball to fetch it, it was just nudging it back to me. Also, buddy got super excited and jumped into my arms like it wanted to play, not in a mean way or anything. If MJ and I don't ultimately succeed at this baby thing, maybe that type of dog would be swell; our recent Seattle adventure allowed us to roam at a dog park and hang out with so many awesome dogs, all pretty playful and obedient and definitely changed my paradigm about having dogs, although it's still a bummer on traveling and free time and allergy season and taking care of them 24/7. St. Jude's Children's Hospital, great charity, recently has been running an ad of a cute baby kid running up to go greet his dad when he sees him from far away, definitely one of the attractions of having a kid, and I remember one particular time I did that for my dad too........and then within a couple years I stopped doing it, showing love or any affection at all. That's the downside with kids, they're cute and cuddly and so loving and depend on you for everything........until they grow up and don't. Dogs don't do that. So it's as they say in a familiar phrase but also the title of a 2020 documentary, "We Don't Deserve Dogs."
As you navigate through the congested grocery aisles at Costco looking for fruits that are going to be sweet but juicy, there's one that people overlook because of its rough exterior: the pineapple, usually going substantially lower than other fruits in quantity, where grapes will be $6.99, organic blueberries will be $8.99, strawberries will be $6.99, organic golden kiwis are like $11.99, heck even a container of Medjool dates are $7.99 or $10.99 depending on the quality......one whole pineapple is under $3. Under $3 for some of the most tropical tasting, watery goodness you'll get at any grocery store, but I often see customers, even the bargain-hunting ones at Costco scrimping off the free samples and $1.50 hot dog + drink combo, passing up the pineapple. I think it's the complexity of cutting the pineapple. In this day and age of "I want it now, streaming, and ready to consume for me with no hassle," people are probably lazy about cutting pineapples. I got news for those people: cutting pineapples is fine. There's something really liberating about cutting a pineapple, scraping through the exterior shell and getting to the juicy center, it's one of my favorite "pasttimes" (MJ had never heard of this word before tonight) I like doing, more than cooking food (just heating stuff up) or washing dishes, I like cutting pineapples. Possibly even more than cutting watermelon and the squishy sound of breaking through the rind into the exterior and looking for the sweetest-looking piece (hint: usually in the exact middle of the fruit). Refrigerate the remainder and they usually last about 5 or 6 different sittings, and all for $2.59.
Pineapple, for whatever reason, has also become the symbol of fertility for mothers trying to get pregnant, and it's big in the IVF community. There's no science or studies showing pineapples actually increase fertility, but it's more of a figurehead for strength and unity and hope in types of trial and tribulation for people who just don't seem to find the spark. There's also no evidence that pineapple DECREASES fertility, which is actually more than people can say for a bunch of American foods, with fried, greasy, microplastics, etc. Honestly, anything that provides a positive placebo effect is good with me, I've heard plenty of stories of people feeling better after just altering their mindset and tricking their bodies into getting healthy, maybe it works with pregnancy.
History of the pineapple: orginated in the Amazon rainforest, and native tribes called it "the excellent fruit," aka nanas, and Christopher Columbus brought it back to Europe ith him and spread it. That's like 3 Jeopardy facts right there. But still, as good as pineapple is, let's just keep it off any pizzas, okay? Two different ethnicites of food there, even though Columbas was Italian (but sailed for Spain).
Hopefully these excellent fruits stay out of President Trump's crosshairs and don't get the 25% tariffs for being imported in! MJ has already warned about certain foods we like going up like avocados. We must have our pineapples!
Sometimes you watch a good movie after not having sat through a good movie for awhile, and it feels like the best movie you've ever seen, even though you realize it's mainly because you haven't actually sat down and been engrossed in a movie for a long time. That's how it felt watching "Air" about the creation of the Air Jordan shoe, but the movie is so much more than that: It's another collaboration by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon (I know, we're probably all sick of them, but as of the release of this movie in 2023, they still got it), it's a movie about something I grew up with, basketball, it's a movie about strong mothers (Delores Jordan, Michael Jordan's mom), it's a story about a decade I just missed out on, the 1980's, with lots of bangers in the soundtrack like the Violent Femmes, ZZ Top, REO Speedwagon, Chaka Khan (Rufus), and Born in the U.S.A. by the Boss, Bruce Springsteen. It's about marketing and big business, where Nike was dueling it out with Addidas (of "My Addidas" fame by Run DMC) and Converse, and it's a story about living in Portland, something I've always wondered about with the mystique of the Univeristy of Oregon, Portland, Mount Hood, Voodoo Doughnuts, Powell's Books, Tonya Harding, and now......how Nike got its groove, thanks to the visionary leadership of Phil Knight, aka the Shoe Dog.
Nowadays billionaires have a pretty bad reputation, with the richest man in the world now delving into politics (rather ill-advisedly) and implementing "DOGE" (Department of Government Efficiency) while funding President Trump's presidential campaign, and others in the top 10 have similar drawn negative headlines, especially with the world increasingly turning into an plutocracy, government run by the wealthy. It's nice to see, from the surface at least, that there's at least one billionaire who's not consumed by amibition and power, and that's Phil Knight, net worth $60 billion, philanthropist to the University of Oregon plus various other charities, and apparently an avid runner. Maybe something about getting that runner's high and getting out into the world at least an hour today clears your perspective and gets your priorities straight: I find that running once a day keeps me sane, makes me enjoy the simpler pleasures of life, makes me feel better about myself, reminds me of who I am and the journey that I've taken to become who I am. Maybe that's Phil Knight, and maybe Elon Musk could use a run or two in his life (he reportedly is one of the best Diablo players in the world, which means he's not running around playing that video game). The movie "Air" definitely depicts Phil Knight in a good light as well as documents one of the biggest deals he made to get to that $60 billion, essentially becoming a partner with Michael Jordan, who was relatively unknown back in 1984 but is considered the G.O.A.T., and Phil Knight (and others at Nike) took a chance on him. And early shareholders at Nike are probably happy they took a chance on Nike too, from a 1985 price of $0.14 to $76 today, although the chart shows that Nike's hit another wall, similar to what they faced in 1984... maybe they need to make another seismic shift (this is the Nike shareholder in me talking).
I loved the movie from a sports perspective (John Stockton, Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley, and Michael.......these are all my sports heroes growing up!) From a business perspective, it made me lament that familiar phrase: all the best ideas are taken! And it always seems like someone is one step ahead, gotten into the game earlier and if I had lived in the 1980's, I'd found a way to get rich. Maybe, or knowing me I would have found a way to ease into a comfortable life and get hooked on something unprofitable like playing chess or getting on TV. What are today's untapped potential opportunities? They all seem to be in technology, an area I have no expertise in at all, and a big one everyone talking about now is A.I.: what is the next technological revolution going to look like, and how will humans interact with A.I. And if you're a Nvidia shareholder like me, WHAT THE HECK IS DEEPSEEK, and why did the Chinese company just make Nvidia shares dip 17% on Monday? (the stock tried to rally over the course of the week but the fears of its business getting taken over by China and China winning the A.I. race are real enough to keep the stock down). Maybe, though, just maybe, with all the hype about A.I. and the new race for digital supremacy, maybe the time is to zig when everyone else is zagging and there will be a backlash back to a simpler time of books, movies, and the good ole' days of the 1980's? Seriously, teenagers and Gen Z, if you haven't tried a time without the Internet, don't knock it until you try it......it is so much less stress and you get such a great high when you actually do get quality work like "Air" the movie.
I wonder what it was like in the days before the Internet for prospective home buyers- just driving around the neighborhood looking for "For Sale" signs? Then I remember that my parents DID take me house hunting in the Chicago suburbs back in the day, and it was kind of like that, except maybe with a selected realtor who knew what they were doing. Still, I feel like one of the most game-changing websites in the world is Zillow.com, started in 2006 by former Microsoft or Expedia employees, one of those, created the site with the idea of changing the real estate industry. (Side note: Doesn't it seem like most of the best ideas that people use today all spourted right after the Internet came along, and if you were at the right age to capitalize on that, you really made it big? I came along right after that sweet spot I feel like, either that I was too busy playing video games, chess, and doing homework for classes that I didn't really need for my future career while millionaires were being made with just some good ideas). The whole dot-com industry was formed while I was in my teens, and if I was a very precocious 20-year-old college student with foresight for what people would eventually want I could have come up with Youtube, Uber, AirBnB, Instagram, all that good stuff. Alas, I didn't even act quickly enough to get my own namesake email account: Robert.yan@gmail.com was already taken. There's definitely a cost to being late to the party for technology and newest trends: you miss out on the wave.
Zillow is a great example of it pays to be early on something, and one of its many features, price graph, show why that also applies to housing: all of the homes MJ and I are looking at in Southern California show pricing graphs that are essentially a straight line up, from bottom left to top right, almost without exception, and the ones that do have a blip on the radar or some sort of downward price action, I question whether what problems aren't show on the page or that there was an error in the price data. The pictures on Zillow really help visualize the space; it's almost like viewing tourist attractions on Youtube: you don't even have to actually physically be there anymore, you can just see it from your computer. MJ and I are constantly looking through different neighborhoods and seeing what we could afford, what kind of market is in different areas of the city, if there have been any "price cuts," and suprisingly for the first time in a while L.A. has some homes that are cutting prices, whether it's 1.) they priced their home too high in the first place, 2.) the owner needs to sell quickly so they want to garner more interest and bids, or 3.) High mortgage prices causing prospective buyers to be unable to afford expensive homes, or 4.) the affect of the L.A. fires? It definitely puts a little hesitation in your step when considering that fires could strike your home at any time and you lose everything, and it's hard to get fire insurance in L.A. A tough time to be thinking about these matters when there are still families trying to rebuild and get back on their feet, figure out their next plans after losing everything, but the reality is some of these people will need homes too, and the rental market has been drastically altered by the sudden demand in places for fire evacuees.
I've read stories about mystery buyers "putting in offers on houses sight unseen" and always scoffed at the idea, but with Zillow that doesn't seem so preposterous; who knows how much research rich people have done on the market and determined exactly what they want and what's a good price to buy it at. Zillow allows one to see the flooring (a big thing for MJ), how the bathrooms like, how high is the ceiling (low ceilings make me feel really crapped), how generous the windows are to letting in light, what the HOA fees are (huge component if you're buying a townhouse/condo, that could be comparable to rent!) shape of the staircase (MJ expressed admiration at a spiral staircase the other day), exterior feel of the home. Honestly they talk about "curb appeal" a lot and it's probably overrated, but just the way a home looks from the curb can make up a big part of whether I want to visit the place or not, much less live in it and pay up to a million dollars and live there for the foreseeable future. You'll be seeing that place day in and day out, so the appearance is a big selling point for us. Don't judge a book by its cover, and don't judge a home just by its exterior (location is also a huge point), but do judge it by its cover somewhat. If only because other people will judge it like that when you sell the home in the future.
Recently on the plane to Seattle I watched the sequel to the 2015 hit children's movie, "Inside Out." I can't believe that it's been 10 years since the first movie and that I'm now living in the Year of the Lord 2025, but every time I check my calendar, my emails, my Outlook, it's right there: 2025. There's so much I haven't done in my life! But I HAVE watched both Inside Out movies. They're not only funny and smart, but they carry a good message: we all have different impulses within ourselves that take over from time to time, and I see so many traits in the teenage Riley going to high school that I identify in myself looking back at 13-year-old me, but I still see some of those same traits taking over in 37-year-old me. My life is mostly Joy (played by Amy Poehler, which comforts me at least knowing someone older than me like Amy Poehler is still starring in movies) and a general status quo, sometimes with genuine bouts of fear which comes easily and suddenly (what will happen if Nvidia drops below its 52-week moving average?) to Disgust when weaving in and out of Costco lanes but they're all blocked by those giant shopping carts that crowd the space even though it's a giant warehouse, a logjam that backs up even to the parking lot where there are no spots..........anyone, to Anger which happens less often now but when it does escape the bottle it manifests itself in a violent way, sometimes at MJ's expense.....to Sadness, which I'm lucky to say I have a pretty good control over because my life isn't filled with sadness, but on days like today when I find out some difficulties in my mother's health I can feel the blue, shy teardrop-like character of Sadness (played by Phyllis from The Office, an excellent choice to display grief but in a cute way). The Inside Out series normalizes having all of those conflicting feelings at once, which is OK; we can't always be joyful, especially if something external happens, and sometimes we can let one or more of the other emotions take over. Sometimes after a bout of anger, I feel more calm. After fear, I feel a dopamine hit just being alive (this is what happens after a roller coaster, as well as after a favorite character survived in Squid Game). And sadness: it's OK to feel healthy levels of sadness, to know this world doesn't always go according to plan, happiness and sadness feel like opposite emotions but in many ways they are similiar in how strong they are and how much they embody the human spirit...we feel things and express ourselve.s Just as long as Anxiety and Ennui get in the picture and take over one's whole personality like in the second film......there are drugs for that. As I write this there is a fire alarm going off in our building because someone probably burnt their popcorn...I am feeling anxiety right now and want to set a foolhardy plan into motion to escape the noise!
Today on Jeopardy, a clue popped up that's common on Jeopardy about McMurdo Station, which is commonly associated with Antartica. There's this weird fantasy among the travel crowd of putting Antartica on the bucket list, some sort of completist necessity of going to all the continents in the world, and checking Antartica off the list. My local library even has an "Antartica" feature section like they do for February Black History Month or June LGBTQ month, laying out all the books they have about Antartica. One of the most common places to go is McMurdo Station, a research station operated by the US Antarctic Program, and the island has around 1,500 people. I paused right there when I read about it. 1500 is NOT a lot of people, it's about how many people are in my neighborhood Costco at any one time on the weekends, and I do NOT want to be stuck on a deserted island with just the amount of people that could fit inside a Costco. Just getting there sounds like a pain: first you have to get to one of the New Zealand cities Whitechurch or Auckland, and then take another flight in a special airplane, and land on something called a "Pegasus field" because of the icy conditions. I looked at pictures: it's like looking at one of those run-down houses on Zillow; doesn't really hook your attention, and who knows depending on when you go whether the days will be all light or all dark.
The other areas to go in Antartica are a little more aesthetically pleasing, but just as difficult logistically: go by cruise ship through the glaciers and then other camping activities. You'd have to start at the southern tip of South America, Ushuaia, then go through the Falkland Islands and down south through teh Southern Shetland Islands towards "areas that few people have ever gone to!" is the ad that I saw making it sound like a good season. Perhaps there's a good reason very few people have gone there: it's not for people. My skin just does not agree with ultra-cold weather: it gets dry, itchy, and tingly, and peels off more than it usually peels. MJ and I just went to Seattle in the winter and I already had difficulty with 40 degree days (actually a really nice weekend in Seattle, sunny but cold) and I didn't want to shower because the shower room was pretty cold. That's the thing they never advertise about cold areas: that brief 2-3 seconds after you step out of the hot shower and have to adjust to the cold temperature outside. Never have I ever liked that feeling. Also, I feel like my body preserves heat during the winter like storing blubber and fat to stay warm, so I naturally weigh more. And what about checking my cell phone? Not just getting no service or WiFi in Antartica, but taking my bare hand out to swipe on the phone feels like it'd be torture. I already constantly stuff my hands into pockets during 20 degree days, imagine when it's negative temperature! No, sir, I believe Antartica will be one of those places I will only go if it's the last place on Earth that's safe to inhabit.
Which brings me to all the space exploration and finding the next home on Mars or some other planet: Neil deGrasse Tyson has a great point about trying to live on other planets: If we have the technology to build a civilization on another planet, then we should have the technology also to rebuild everything here on Earth to make it habitable again if and when we've messed up Earth long enough that humans have to move. What is this fantasy about going to Mars? It sounds cool, it's never been done before, it's fantasized in the movie The Martian, but even if they figured out the basic problems of oxygen, food, how to get around, how to reproduce in space (how does sex even work up there without gravity?) why would anyone ever sign up to go? My skin feels dry just thinking about it.
All of those late-night blood sugar issues have been resolved this winter by the advent of cold weather: I've officially got a case of hypersomnia, having a hard time waking up in the morning, feeling sleepy during the day despite getting enough sleep, and generally just wanting to hibernate. It definitely feels better than lack of sleep and walking around like a zombie all day, but it still poses its own set of challenges: nothing like working on my computer on the train, closing my eyes for a second, and then waking up 20 minutes later almost missing my stop.
MJ is currently showing me various winter clothing choices that she might wear to a baby shower in Seattle (40 degrees in the middle of January is better than a lot of cold weather destinations! Did you know that Washington state does not impose a state income tax? Tempting! Except the housing market is pretty crazy there too and mortgage rates just went back up above 7%.) And winter clothing is another complication of cold weather areas a minimalist like me dreads. I have a hard enough time setting up a T-shirt rotation for a 7-day work week, but winter clothing requires at least twice as much clothing to keep track of, sometimes even more! MJ just showed off an outfit where she was wearing 4 different layers....undershirt, sweater, jacket, and winter jacket. It's like having tea time and 2nd brunch after your first brunch! Lots to keep track of.
Did you know that the lyrics to John Legend's most famous love song (inspired by his wife Chrissy Teigen) goes "All of me.... loves all of you?" Apparently I didn't and had been singing "All of you loves all of me" this whole time, a rather presumptious lyric and totally changing the tenor of the song (although I think a lot of loves songs nowadays have that sort of I'm better than you vibe like "Single Ladies" If you like it put a ring on it" or any of Taylor Swift's various breakup songs like "All Too Well."
Jeopardy reminded me of a sitcom that I barely heard about but like the premise of: 10 Items or Less, not the Morgan Freeman 2006 movie but a sitcom from 2006 to 2009 about events surrounding a grocery store. First of all, I am almost always at the 10 items or less counter because MJ and I just don't buy all that much stuff anymore.......MAYBE at Costco or Trader Joe's we'll get more than 10 items if it's been awhile, but definitely 15 items or less. And if it's Whole Foods, I literally cannot afford more than 10 items. I went to a Whole Foods hot bar the other day and tried desperately to get the cost down under the $12 or $13 meal I usually get and got it under $10 (making sure not to pick the heavy items like boned chicken that add dead weight to the total) but I was predictably hungry the rest of the day. Having worked at a grocery store as my first job, I'd say it's the correct setting for a sitcom or other type of comedy.... all walks of humanity walking in and out, the food itself can be funny, and the action might spill out in the parking lot; I had plenty of incidents out in the Chicago cold like letting shopping carts slide through the ice and barely catching them before they slammed into a customer's parked car. By the way, Costco cart workers, you guys are slacking! I know some Costcos are the size of football stadiums now and have the parking lot to match, but almost every time I go carts are spilling out of the carousels into the road. Disappointed!
Fire hydrants are like the interstate highway system: No one thinks about them until they don't work. (kind of like referees of NFL games). And I don't usually think about fire hydrants until the summer, when you see water flowing out of one when the temperature gets too hot, or dogs peeing on one, or you notice them when you're looking for parking and finally seem to find street parking but realize there's a fire hydrant in front of that spot and it's illegal to park there. (I think I once had to go to the impound lot because I got towed for parking at night in front of a fire hydrant I didn't see) One of the biggest themes of the past week with the LA fires was the lack of water in the fire hydrants, a cruel twist of fate that really impeded firefighters and made stopping the fires even more difficult (as well as the strong winds blowing the winds, see last entry). I think I'm echoing what others are thinking that, it's nice fire hydrnats exist and for emergency purposes, so I'll give up on that as a parking spot and respect the rules against parking there, but hopefully those hydrants work when they're really needed! Otherwise what's the point? I realize I've never actually see a fire hydrant put to work in person, but I think in movies fire trucks just come and attach a hose and water shoots out. Makes me want to become a voluntary firefighter, if only because firefighters have a pretty good reputation: no one ever wants to defund the fire department, they fight obvious bad guys of fire and smoke and bad situations of cats stuck in trees, and they're always the first to step up in times of crisis. It's an obvious net benefit to society, but according to some LA mayor Karen Bass did actually defund the LA Fire department so that they couldn't react quickly enough to the fires? It's like paying into an insurance policy: it seems like a waste of money until something really bad actually happens, then it's dire. That's the thing about this fire too: it happened in the dead of winter, when people on the East Coast had the coldest temperatures of the year, everyone's stuck at home, and even in L.A. it's not even fire season yet, no one expected it on January 7.
Fun facts about fire hydrants: they were invented in 1869 (or at least patented) by mechanical engineer Birdsill Holly (engineers doing good work! Every profession is better than lawyer, and I knew that before going to law school but now I understand what people were talking about, in terms of value of your profession to society) and still looks pretty much the same with the same design nowadays...no iPhone 15 or any newer, slicker versions needed, it's just water coming out of a pump. I did not know that not all fire hydrants are red, and the color actually matters: red ones have a lower water flow and other colors have a higher water flow.
By the way, there are apparently indoor service dog relief areas at some airports like Baltimore's BWI airport for service dogs to go pee, and there's a green patch there with a fire hydrant to emulate a real place dogs need to go pee. Well thought out! Comes in handy because I often walk past areas that have been HEAVILY visited by dogs on their walk needing to relieve themselves, and during the winter it's pretty obvious which areas are most populated because there's yellow (and unfortunately also brown) in the snow. Apparently dogs pee on fire hydrants not only to mark their territory, the normal reason they pee anywhere, but also because there are dyes on the hydrant that attract them! Never thought of that, dogs' lives are interesting. Speaking of which, the fires have caused many dogs to run loose within LA county after their homes were burned, another negative side effect of the fires, and dog pounds have gotten overloaded during this week with dogs loose in the streets with no homes to go back to. Dogs have homes too!
Many people know about Charles Darwin's famous journey on the Beagle (captained by Admiral Robert FitzRoy) in 1831 to study anmial species in the Galapagos leading to the theory of evolution, but that same ship was the first for another important reason: it was the first use of the Beaufort scale to measure winds, named after Francis Beaufort, a hydrographer for the British Royal Navy. For hundreds of years countries all around the world had been sailing with ships using wind power, but finally they created a scale to measure how strong the wind was, something that's important in weather conditions even in modern times, especially so in light of the LA fires this past week that hit various areas in devastating fashion including Altadena and the Pacific Palisades. The original causes of each individual fire (Eaton Fire, Hirsch fire, etc.) are still being investigated, but the big culprit for why it spread across so many acres (thousands, at last check) is because of the high velocity of winds, categorized as "hurricane level" that swept the fire quickly and rampantly through the mountains and down into residential areas. So unlike various disaster movies that depict earthquakes or fires or something tangible and obviously threatening, the invisible force of wind was the big villain this week. There are various levels of wind starting from "breeze" (the best kind, that warm soothing feeling on the skin) to gale, which start to get into the 20s mph, you don't want to scatter pieces of paper around in gales, to storm weather and then finally hurricane level winds, going over 100mph. I've encountered some tough winds before in my life and I did live for 13 of my adult years in a place called the "Windy City," but I don't think I've encountered 100mph winds before. I can tell you that the windchill makes a 20 degree day feel like negative 5 degree day and bitter cold slapping into your face does not feel good, but I feel like storm winds would be close to sweeping you off your feet and providing near-fatal conditions.
It's kind of amazing that in these times of modern technology, when we're trying to send humans to Mars, see driverless cars in major cities through Google's Waymo technology, and created AI that has millions times higher processing ability than humans, that we can't solve......wind. Or climate change, or use any of the ocean's water to turn into drinking water. Neil deGrasse Tyson once said about the last problem that it's just a matter of money: it costs a lot to change that ocean water into drinking water. But wind? Is there no way to create windbreaks or barriers or some sort of invisibile field into the atmosphere to slow down the speed of winds? I guess the sky is too large and air covers such a large area to be contained in that way?
I think these are all 21st century problems; I can imagine sailors now in the 16th century traveling around the world like Magellan or Francis Drake, at the mercy of the winds, thinking how lucky human beings have it now here in the 21st century. At least we're here on land, the explorers then were often in the ocean dealing with real hurricanes, not just hurricane-level storms, without any barriers like trees, mountains, or structures to stop those winds. No wonder you hear so many stories of explorers getting "blown off course" like Pedro Cabral who was trying to go through the African coast to get to India but somehow ended up in Brazil..... that's a pretty big loop, even for me who sometimes opts for huge loops off teh main road to avoid traffic. Whatever the case, whenever it may, Mother Nature always wins, and this week she definitely won against firefighting efforts and humans in one of the most populated areas of the world, Los Angeles County. Not many people died, but thousands of people are without their homes, losing everything. I asked my parents if they have fire insurance in California: they do not, and it's common not to have those covered in California due to the insurance companies knowing it's a big risk so not including it. Some homeowners lost everything.
Taken straight out of Squid Game Season 2, "Eoreum" is the directive Gi Heun gives to his fellow contestants in the squid game for them to "Freeze" every time Yeongmi, the large mannequin in the Red Light, Green Light game, turns around and "sees" if any of the players are moving, shooting anyone moving dead instantly. It's fitting that Squid Game was released in the dead of winter here in America because in many places, we're definitely feeling that "freeze." Despite it being a Monday, many offices and buildings in the Baltimore/ DC area were shut down due to "inclement weather" and the trains didn't run at all, and even the library was closed! Basically a day to forget with minimal economic activity...except snowboarders got a workout! The fresh snow allowed anyone within distance of a tall hill to get a board, snowobard, really any flat surface (some people used pieces of cardboard) to go down the hill along the smooth white slopes, not worrying about breaking their fall because the snow is a nice powdery pillow to collapse in.
The other idea of "freeze" is to tell someone to stop immediately in an emergency situation. I found at an early age that my parents do NOT respond well in crisis situations, usually when it comes to being lost on a road trip or picking me up from the airport, they get tense and frustarted easily. I tried to learn from that and take an "ice-in-the-viens" attitude of not cracking under pressure, as tha's the time that's actually most important to be calm and have all your wits about you. I think that's probably what separates the best performers in teh world from the rest of us: they have adated well to the idea of being in the limelight and actually thrive in it, they bask in the glory of it and want to do well, even when they know one small mistake can be amplified into something huge in front of billions of people. That's the impression I got from watching "Bohemian Rhapsody" for the first time all the way through yesterday with Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury and some other members of Queen I didn't know but should have, astrophysicist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor. I was reminded how big of an influence Queen has to my musical experience, as "We are the Champions" was an even bigger song than "Bohemian Rhapsody" during my youth of watching sports movies like Mighty Ducks, it was everywhere. "We Will Rock You" was one of the first band songs I played (I played clarinet.......which I later abandoned to play violin), "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and "Another one Bites the Dust" was everywhere in my youth even though I didn't attribute them to Queen, and we wouldn't have gotten the artist known as "Lady GaGa" without the song "Radio Gaga." (Stephanie Germonatta still would have likely made it big, just with a different moniker). Freddie Mercury, though, was apparently one of those stage alphas who was at his best when onstage, everyone was watching, and had that "eoreum" attitude of being the calmest and most liberated, probably why his performance at LiveAid in 1985 was so memorable. him bouncing all over the place, playing piano, dancing, and flexing in his white T-shirt the whole time. It was the "show stopper" ( a technical term for the piece in a performance that get a lot of applause and briefly pauses the show). I think we all want to be the show stopper on some level, but I think that's what I yearn to be, to finally have my talents displayed and in a positive light; I was born with a Freddie Mercury attitude but with a "average Chinese man's face" so have never made it into the spotlight to allow my inner Freddie Mercury to let loose on the world. But when I do....maybe I'll go gaga like Queen did at LiveAid. (hopefully without the dying a few years later part due to AIDS, I'm not that big into going out in a blaze of glory, I'd rather skip that part).
I ate too many TV dinners in my youth, and especially the one I regret now is Stouffer's Chicken Fettucine Alfredo with Broccoli. This used to be my staple when I went to Ralph's by myself to "stock up" on food for the week, and I was very unoriginal in what I wanted, basically anything edible and quick, which translated to fattening and low-quality. I regret those times because I suspect all those plastic containers and Parmesan cheese mixed in with the fettucine alfredo was probably filled with microplastics, not to mention the alfredo sauce being filled with fattening foods and consisting of 55% of daily intake of cholestrol and 35% daily fat, roughly, plus who knows how much the noodles were doused in butter, etc. Who knows if all of that consumed microplastic content has contributed to infertility. My diet is totally different now and the stores I buy food from vastly different........still some frozen foods, but from Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, and my first top on any trip is the vegetable/ produce aisle, something I avoided like the plague back in my bachelor days, probably why I still have trouble with chicory, endive, arugula, fennel, all good trivia material. I went to a Buffalo Wild Wing's recently with a friend and was just shocked at how salty everything tasted, almost unbearably dripping with fat and rich material. (That's the biggest problem with American food: how rich it is). The wings themselves dripping with buffalo sauce, plus what looked like a triple layer of cheese, plus potatoes..... no wonder I had weight problems! I'm glad MJ converted me to the world of healthy eating and vegetables, and what I realized is there's a hedonic treadmill with food too: if you always eat salty or fatty food, you keep craving those kinds of foods, and healthy food tastes bland. But if you eat bland (likely not tasting as good but good for your body) all the time, the really fatty stuff just explodes with flavor and you realize how much sodium + general badness there needs to be to make it have all that taste. Even BCD Tofu, one of the favorite restaurants MJ frequented all the time, has to be a once-or-twice-a-year thing now because I realize in that food is MSG up the wazoo, and it's not an exaggeration that I could be taking a few hours off the tail end of my life each time I consume one. Like fettucine alfredo, it's good but not worth it.
TIL that Alfredo sauce was created by an Italian chef to satisfy his wife in the early 1900's, a man by the name of Alfredo di Lelio, and adding it to pasta was just a natural combination, especially fettucine, Italian for "ribbons." For a lot of food names like "pizza," Chinese and Japanese don't even have equivalent terms because they're from Italian specific names, so the Asian languages just do an approximate translation of them, especially the -o and -i words ending in vowels are hard to get just right in Chinese. It's lucky for Alfredo and most Italians that his name was so melodious, because I think a lot of food is marketed through names, and in that way French and Italian dishes have such an advantage because you just want to have escargot, or vichyssoise, or bouillabaisse, or pizza, lasagna, mostaccioli, mascarpone cheese, etc, whereas in Chinese we just have "Mu shu pork," "mapo tofu," Chow mein," not exactly the most aesthetically pleasing words that you want to put in your mouth upon first listen, not to mention the Chinese/Hawaiian dish "pu pu platter." I also think Asians don't have a word for fettucine alfredo because it's just too rich; Asians can't deal with all that cheese and lactate, we just have soy sauce for that. Sorry Alfredo but your food is killing America.
Jeopardy clue on the last day of 2024 reminded me how quickly 2024 went; it was about the mayfly, which is a famous insect known for being alive for only a few hours (unlike its name which suggests it lives for a month). It's an aquatic insect with relatives like the dragonfly and the damselfly, and it's life is tragically short, but is it that different from humans? In the whole spectrum of the universe our 70 or so years of expected life span might as well be a few hours as it is functionally zero. 2024 definitely hammered that home; I remember distinctly it being 2024 and having to change all my date signatures to 2024 instead of 2023, just barely getting used to it being 2024, filing my taxes a few months after getting all my W-2s, seeing all the Google Year in Review videos of 2023, and then not having to worry about 2024 being over for a few months. But then suddenly......it was over. (although I did get through 104 blog entries, which is a personal high for this blog!) I saw a Facebook friend who posts videos of each year by sharing one second of every day of 2024.....a bunch of baby videos, driving in the car, short clip of playing dodgeball, snow days, etc.... that really hammers home how each day just passes by like a mayfly's life, you get about a few moments that you remember and then the rest passes into memory.
I ended 2024 by watching Squid Game Season 2 with MJ which is a global sensation, but following the theme of "finding underrated shows that aren't talked about enough," I watched "Man on the Inside" with Ted Danson, Stephanie Beatriz (voice of Mirabel Madrigal in Encanto) but notably a Michael Schur-run show, producer of The Good Place and "How to be Perfect," a book MJ loves and swears by. In addition to all the trivia references and beautiful scenery (Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco), Michael Schur always throws in some wholesome philosophical debates and ideas on life and death, where the Good Place is all about moral decisions but "Man on the Inside" is more just examining the lives of senior citizens at their live-in senior center. It's sad, illuminating, and hilarious at the same time, a stark parallel to that other "end-of-life" examination of Squid Game where players also have only a short amount of time to live but for ddifferent reasons. One of the characters on the show, Calbert played by Stephen McKinley Henderson (almost guaranteed to be a Jeopardy clue at some point) confided how fast his child went from a baby to an adult who was no longer cute and adorable.....that hit home, not only how little time babies are cute and listen to their parents (probably from 2 years old to 10 years old, at which point now they just become terrors and just sit around looking at their phones into oblivion, from what I understand) but also like a mayfly, how quickly we all just grow up and grow old, and eventually end up at the Pacific Living Center, the fictional setting of the show. Pretty soon I'll be ringing in 2026 (maybe after having appeared on Jeopardy, or MJ and I having a baby? Who knows what will happen in 2025, but much like 2024 it's all going happen too quick and feel like the year just went by like a mayfly's life.
