LaCrosse (长曲棍球, 라크로스, ラクロス)

Growing up, I never had a chance to play lacrosse, and I'm starting to realize that was a missed opportunity to do a sport that is pretty fun, like playing hockey but you don't have to skate, playing soccer but you don't have to dribble with your feet (I'm starting to realize feet were my problem with sports; I was pretty good with hand-eye and upper parts of the body, just the inability to jump high, run fast, or kick hard was a big problem). In suburban Illinois, it was a mix of tennis- (I recently realized pickleball has a Michael Jordan of the sport named Ben Johns? In tennis Alcaraz v. Sinner is the new Agassi v. Sampras, Nadal v. Federer, list all other comparisons, etc.) In the winter, it was swimming and driving us to a nearby bowling alley for...bowling. Oh and the indoor sport we did most similar to lacrosse was.....handball. I actually have some fond memories of handball and it's actually similar to lacrosse, just without sticks, and less facemasks. That's the one thing I don't appreciate about sports requiring helmets or other headgear: I wore glasses back then, would never have enjoyed putting glasses back on my nose and all the awkwardness. That's probably why I liked swimming back then: I was finally able o ditch my crutch and have equal opportunity in the pool. Lacrosse was just too hoighty-toighty, East coast for Chicago I guess. When MJ and I recently visited the National LaCrosse Hall of Fame, we learned that a.) Lacrosse is not an Olympic sport, but it was way back in the early 1900s, their international association is trying to lobby them back in, and I sympathize having been part of different campaigns to get dodgeball in as an Olympic sport, and b.) All of the national champions are schools in one part of the nation, mainly the Northeast, like Maryland Terrapins, Duke Blue Devils, Cornell Big Red, Virginia Cavaliers. Oh and it's coming back as an Olympic medal sport in 2028! Figures that the sport that started as an indigenous sport and since then became the national sport of Canada would be concentrated in the Northeast. Goes to show some games and sports are just cultural and limited to certain regions. Those of us who grew up in the Midwest missed out, I fear. We did also learn about Native American tribes that played the sport, including Iroquois nation of Onandanga, Seneca, Mohawk, Oneida, and....Cayuga. That's some trivia right there. More trivia: The American painter who depicted many Native Americans was George Catlin, in the 1800s. That's the great thing about having a child (or children) if ambitious: it's like giving yourself a second chance at sports, to live vicariously through your children, and let them figure out what sports or activities they want to do, let them have a shot at being really good at something. Whether it's dodgeball, pickleball, lacrosse, swimming, whatever, a child gets to start from scratch and is like an open book: the pages haven't even been written yet. (That's from a Natasha Bedingfield song). I wish for any child of mine to be able to get that chance from a young age and get as dedicated as possible, and I imagine a child of mine will want to be competitive and chase their dreams. Here I am, 38 years old, and still chasing my dreams, wishing for that one chance to be something great.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner

I was saddened yesterday by news of the death of Malcolm Jamal-Warner, the actor who played the role of Theo Huxtible in the now-forgotten comedy series "The Cosby Show." Why is it forgotten? Not because it wasn't a good show, it told a great story about a family of African Americans living in New York City growing up in an upper-class neighborhood, they were my TV family growing up: I always thought of myself as Theo, having to deal with various sisters but also the pressure of eventually becoming the man of the house. No, the Cosby Show was canceled because the gross acts of one man, the lead actor on the show, who abused his power as the star in gross ways, negating all the good work by everybody else done on the show, and now nobody will ever talk about the Cosby Show: Jeopardy won't have clues about it, it doesn't come up in any "top sitcoms in history" lists, it's like the show never happened, expunged from history. Except it will always live on as a part of me, like the first episode where Theo pierces his ear and might have an infection but doesn't want his dad to find out, like the episode Theo was given a harsh lesson by his parents about paying for rent and having to pay for everything in the real world. Another reason why I don't go in the ocean anymore at the beach (other than because I watched Jaws and who knows what's in there): people drown, like what happened to Malcolm Jamal-Warner: the official cause of death being asphyxia and drowning due to strong currents. It's always a little fuzzy with celebrities because the cause of death often gets tangled up with drugs or some sort of underlying causes (heart attacks that were drug-induced, etc, also see the weird circusmstances around the death of Gene Hackman) but this one seems to be a clear case of drowning by waves. Drowning cases in the U.S. are higher than I expect, with 4000 deaths per year, and a slight uptick recently since 2020-2022 (more people tired of being bottled indoors due to Covid and taking more risks at the beach?) The lifeguards are much more limited than at a swimming pool ( I always wondered why there are 3 lifeguards covering a small area of a swimming pool but just one lifeguard for what seems like a mile of beach), you're really on your own. I'm a pretty good swimmer from my youthful days on the swim team, but I will readily admit I would be no match for strong waves, and most people have an inflated sense of how good of a swimmer they are, which is the problem. They die because they think they can make it back; sad really. And said for Warner, who inexplicably was 54 years old (tempus fugit, aka time flies, I only remember him as the forever 13-year-old boy from the Cosby Show), which sounds old when I think about it as my 20-year-old self) but now that I'm getting older........that really doesn't sound too far away. He was still a young man! Sad. Every summer there is seemingly one headline that just comes out of nowhere to gain traction and because the trend of the summer. last year it was the Hawk-Tua Girl (who has since disappeared off the grid) and this year it's the Coldplay concert couple who were caught having an affair. Not sure if it's just because summer has slow news days, people are ready for anything to break up the monotony, the salacious headlines get more attention, or what, but it's everywhere since last Friday: people at baseball stadiums around the country are mocking the couple by hiding when they get shown on camera, doing spoofs. Here I am just wondering how it might become Jeopardy relevant and become a clue at some point (give the controversy a name! That would make it more likley to show up on Jeopardy). But then again, we're all delighting in the breakup of 2 families in the most public way possible, so there's that.

Musings on Reddit

I'm a big fan of Reddit, I own the stock (RDDT), I think there are genuinely good people who use Reddit and try to provide good advice, and I've gained a lot of good knowledge on the site from crowdsourced material and AMA sessions (Ask Me Anything) that you can tell is the actual person claiming to be who they are. That said......I think Reddit, much like the rest of the internet, can cause a lot of anxiety if you're on it too long. The same old adage of "anything is excess can be dangerous," and the Internet is rife with excess. MJ was a very diligent user of Reddit for her IVF process, and credit to her she really read every single comment, compared notes with different subreddits, found stories that aligned with our case. The IVF reddit, though, can be a breeding ground for trauma, horror stories, and jealousy.... MJ reported that eventually people who went on there to post about their successful IVF cycles received retaliation and backlash for "oversharing" or seeming too proud of themselves for having been successful while others were still having difficulties. It's such a difficult balance to have sympathy for those who are going through setbacks and frustration, but what's wrong with sharing successful IVF stories if they are genuinely trying to help other people going through the same process? Something beautiful and productive eventually devolved into doing harm. Similary with preparing for children, reddit can really cause anxiety with everyone posting special cases. I do wonder if the people who go on Reddit are the ones with extreme conditions or feel the need to share all the time; those who are just trying to help just stay calm and don't say anything. My suspicions were confirmed today at a "parent council" (one of MJ's friends had a pool party where tons of kids the same age came along with their parents) and multiple parents told me, "don't be alarmed by what you read on the Internet.") A lot of what's on the Internet is for pushing products or for commercial gain, as newborn parents are the most vulnerable to doing whatever they can to get this baby thing right (I'm already getting a lot of videos popping up in my feed about birthing classes and birthing products) and what better way to sell something than to appeal to fear and making people feel inadequate, or unprepared? If only there were a magic pill or get-out-of-jail free card that we can get for taking care of everything in the childcaring process. I often wonder also who the average user is and why they're so confident and assured in their beliefs; I often am not sure about anything I say and second-guess myself all the time, being convinced by something somebody else said I hadn't thought about. I notice this pretty often actually; I find in American culture people tend to say things with confidence a lot more even in cases where they shouldn't have had that much confidence. It could also just be the anonymity of the Internet and not having to face any social consequences; I also post on Reddit sometimes and I feel the freedom to post my strongest opinions (without need to post evidence) in a faceless forum where people are not reading my facial expressions or seeing who I am that they can remember me for next time. What IS good for reddit? The Jeopardy reddit, or reddit for TV shows. So much analysis and articles I never thought about, angles to explore, other shows to watch. The Jeopardy reddit is pretty chock full of former contestants (you can tell from the highlighted part in their bio when they appeared on the show) and future contestants talking about the show. Good resource for sure for all things Jeopardy, and not too serious as to render any trauma or drama like the IVF reddit.

Jaws (颌, 顎, 입 부분)

I recently got to watch "Jaws" at a live orchestral play-along of the classic summer blockbuster, first played in 1975 and still a classic today, its 50th Anniversary. It's just a summer classic: first released in the summer, the movie's set in the summer, right before July 4th weekend, it's in a summer resort locale of Amityville (somewhere near New York City, one of those beach cities), the main antagonist is a shark that only would cause problems in the summer (don't see many people going in the water during the icy winter), and the beaches evoke images of summer and long, endless days spent out at the beach under the sun. It's still got star power: the orchestral hall I attended, which normally does NOT seat that many people for a normal Friday night or Saturday night showing of a Mendelsohn or Bach concert, was pretty packed to the "gills" on a Sunday afternoon showing of Jaws. It reminded me of why I go to movies: the screen is big, the lights are dimmed, the audio is pumped up, you really get into teh movie, and also......for better or worse, the rest of the audience reacts to the movie, which can be great for a comedy when the laughter is timed correctly, horrible if someone is just not cognizant of others and yells out spoilers, coughs, sneezes, etc. Something about going to the theater, though, still retains its value and is a different experience than watching on my computer sitting no my couch: I can stop watching or pause the movie at any point, I can be on my phone, I can fall asleep, I can barely pay attention, I can be donating blood (!) but that's actually kind of the point now: theaters actually FORCE you to concentrate on the movie and get off your phone (the ushers made sure to remind those who still had them out) and thousands of people actually collectively did something together and shared in the collective community of the event, something that doesn't happen as often in a world where we're separted by our phones all the time. It doesn't hurt that Jaws was, is a good movie. Not MJ's cup of tea (although we did watch all 3 seasons of Squid Game together), with people being eaten by a shark and losing limbs and blood in the water (I've never liked diving into ocean water with all the salt and big waves, it just gives me even more reason not to now), but the tension is pretty high; the villian doesn't even show up in its full form (we finally get a glimpse of him) in the 2nd half of the movie (AFTER the intermission!) and of course the iconic line: "You're gonna need a bigger boat." People clapped at that utterance as well as Quint's speech about losing men to sharks during WWII. Luckily, Jaws isn't really a horror movie; the shark attacks are not scary necessarily, and watching it with orchestra allows you to know exactly when Jaws is going to reappear, soon after the conductor picks up the baton again and starts up the strings playing the daa-dum music again presaging certain doom. If and when civilizations devolve into machines and simulations, I'll remember experiences like watching Jaws with a room full of people and orchestra playing the score as one of the luxuries of real life, the epitome of the human experience. Nothing like sitting in an air-conditioned room watching a summer blockbuster shark movie during the dead of summer. Watching Jaws is somewhat similar to watching the newest Jeopardy superchamp no Jeopardy, Scott Riccardi, tear up the competition on Jeopardy. I recently learned that I have made it into the Jeopardy contestant pool (it's a dream come true) so I could be called anytime within the next 2 years to be on Jeopardy, so of course I've ramped up studying even more and gotten involved even more, and being a competitive person naturally but even more so with Jeopardy, compared myself to Scott. I'm not quite at his level yet, but I hope to be when I'm ready to be on the show. It's a little discouraging to find out that Scott is only 26, in a different generation than I am, and still getting all these questions right, but then I remember I'm a pandemic baby of Jeopardy, only really started watching every day in September 2020 soon after finishing less intellectually challenging shows like Tiger King and other Netflix shows. But boy would I be upset if I ran into a champion like Scott if I got onto Jeopardy.... he encourages me to study harder.

Are you there god? It's Me, Bobby

On the weekend that the blockbuster movie "Superman" (by James Gunn) came out that promises to be one of the "hit movies of the summer," I watched a less heralded movie called "Are You there god, it's me, Margaret, based on the novel Judy Blume. Sometimes the movie business gets so caught up in the marketing and the pushing of blockbuster films that the really good movies get lost in the shuffle, the ones that everyone really should be seeing that reflect the cultural zeitgeist and just make us feel good about ourselves but also have cultural relevancy and a deeply compelling story, back to feeling like we did when we were younger. In 2022 I remember that movie being "CODA," the story about a young girl being the daughter of deaf adults, a movie I had no problem sitting through and hanging onto every scene, and laughing the whole way through. "Are You There God" is very much the same and it definitely earned its 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, just the soundtrack itself is full of bangers and Jeopardy worthy material like Dusty Springfield "Son of a preacher Man," The Guess Who's "These Eyes," and "Signed Sealed Delivered" by Stevie Wonder. So why didn't I hear about this movie in 2023 when it first came out? The release date serves as a clue: April 28, 2023, just weeks before the summer movie phenomenon known as "Barbenheimer," when both Barbie and Oppenheimer were released within weeks of each other and everyone had to go see one or the other, leaving no time or attention for movies like "Are You There God." I really appreciate a movie about girls growing up, because as a boy I watched plenty of boys movies like Sandlot, Mighty Ducks movies, Free Willy, etc., that focused on the adolescence and growing-up on boys, so much so I never considered how girls grew up, like it's a totally different world as in Men are from Mars, Girls are from Venus. It's a whole different world of worrying about bra sizes, having crushes on boys, secret societies, making friendships as a girl, what to wear at all times.......all topics brilliantly depicted by the movie and through Margaret's life, portrayed by Abby Ryder Fortson. I specifically remember when I also asked my own conception of "God" similar questions, like helping me through a test, winning my next game of chess, hoping I would get into my dream school. I sympathesized with Abby who struggles with her religious identity of being in a family with a Christian mom and Jewish dad; I never really got into religion at all but had seen so many depictions of God through media and heard good reviews about him, yet I had no relationship with God or any way to contact God, so I came up with my own inner God to guide me. To this day, I still have inner thoughts to a very non-specific "God" (not really thinking about a white guy with a huge beard), more of an amorphous being that transcends the world we live in, maybe more of like karma or some other cosmic force, to just consider blowing the winds of fortune my way, which they already have in many ways throughout my life, but maybe just a little more with some upcoming events in my life. I only wish I could be as pure of thougth as Margaret in the movie wishing for selfless things for her family and for other people, than for myself. Watch the movie! Currently streaming on Peacock, where Poker Face Season 2 is also streaming, and 300+ old episodes of the Weakest Link! I swear the trivia shows of America all use some of the same material, a lot of the questions I see on Jeopardy come up in various forms on other shows like Weakest Link too.

Golf Cart (高尔夫球车, ゴルフカート, 골프 카트)

Using a golf cart on a hot summer day has to be one of the most indulging experiences in the world. Instead of carrying your own clubs around for 18 holes, up and down, under the sun, over rivers, uphill and downhill, through the fairways and onto the greens, you just use modern technology to get to to the next hole. It's one of the reasons I and others view golf as one of the more high-brow sports out there: guys walking around swinging pieces of steel or lumber and trying to get a little ball into a hole hundreds of yards away. Definitely not a sport I grew up with, and I remember getting bored in gym class when we went outside to swing golf clubs for half an hour. Where was the running? The jumping? The touching of a ball and making it go far? Golf seemed like it was just a mechanical process, not much resistance or dynamic play to it: just aiming your ball to a certain area. The other great thing about a golf cart is you can keep water and other essentials in the cart within arm's reach, which is great for cold drinks, snacks, and.......yes, I realize many golf courses are doing this now, alcoholic drinks that they have a nice lady come with a mobile bar to sell you. Now in my late-30s, though, I definitely realize the appeal of golf, at least the golf cart/ fancy golf course part of it. I'm still not very much into staying in one place and hitting balls, but getting out on the golf course and enjoying the great outdoors? That is something I can get behind. Americans reserve some of the best land for this recreational sport of golf for some reason, with tiny creeks and trimmed lawns just waiting for you to walk through. This weekend, my grade school buddies enjoyed a whole weekedn of golf (and even Mario Golf the N64 video game). They enjoyed it a little more than I did because they actually knew what they were doing having practiced their shots plenty of times before, but the few times I could actually hit the ball generally in the direction I wanted to? Great feeling walking with my chest puffed out feeling like a hundred bucks. It's weird, golf: such a sense of accomplishment for just the simple action of swinging a club on a ball that's not even moving....baseball players might say this is like hitting a sitting duck; a lot of moving parts go into hitting the perfect golf shot: your legs have to be in the right position, you have to swing your hips, rotate your arms, follow through, keep your head level, keep your eyes on the ball: I kept reminding myself all these things before every shot but even then I still messed something up at least half the time: it's one thing to know what to do, another thing to actually do it. In some ways, golf is kind of like trivia: it takes a LOT a LOT of reps before getting good at golf and being ready to get to the best golf courses: my buddy took me to the open-to-the-public clubhouse of Whistling Straits, one of the fancier courses in all of Wisconsin, home to a few PGA championship events over the years. There's no way I'm ever playing there at anywhere near a competent level, unless I work on it for years and years. Yes I could pay the $700 to get on a wait list or something to play, but I wouldn't be able to do well, wouldn't understand the intricacies of the game well enough to even enjoy the game, and I'd look pretty foolish for even trying. Getting good at trivia takes a LOT of reps. It's not hard to take practice and shoot a few shots, but really getting good at both golf and trivia? A lot of dedication is involved, but like the Malcolm Gladwell concept of 10,000 hours, if you dedicate yourself for 10,000 hours to the game, you will get good at it, because you just drill yourself with enough questions to know what to expect, condition yourself to know the answers, and to answer quickly. 5 years ago when I first started watching Jeopardy, I would NOT have been good at the game, and getting onto the stage would have made me look silly, and I wouldn't even know how much I still needed to know to get good. Now, almost 5 years later, I do realize how much I know and how far I've come, but it's like a neverending tunnel: the more I know, the more I understand how much I DON'T know.