What’s Up With Ping Pong? When I was a kid of about five years old, we lived in Costa Rica, which meant that many of the standard American games and conventions were missing from our daily lives. We had bikes and simple toys, but we would do crazy things that the local kids did for fun like dragging a dead snake behind a bicycle. I don’t really remember whether my mother remembered to bring things…
The Birkenstock Dream This evening we are watching a movie we know that we have seen before, but which is less than fully memorable to us since so much of it is subtitled. It is the 2022 film called The Swimmers, and it is a real story about two Syrian girls that are trained Olympic swimmers. It tells the harrowing tale of their escape from war-torn Damascus, leaving their family behind for the time being,…
Life As Imperfection I go down my share of rabbit holes while I empty my online inbox every morning. I am always on a kick to unclutter that inbox by unsubscribing from various emails and spam, but for one reason or another, like for most people, miscellaneous emails still find their way into or back into the inbox. If I am not in any particular rush at that moment or on that morning (like today,…
Trick or Treat Once summer ends with Labor Day, it’s a long run to Thanksgiving. In 1937, thanks to extensive lobbying by the Catholic organization, the Knights of Columbus, FDR declared October 12th to be the national holiday of Columbus Day, which supposedly commemorates the “discovery” of America by Christopher Columbus on October 12th, 1492. In theory, that holiday broke up that three month holiday dry spell nicely, but it never really took hold as…
The Fears of the Aged The older I get the more fearful I get. There was a time, not so long ago, after I had looked into the abyss of a career debacle, when I thought to myself that there really was nothing short of a random bear attack that would scare me. There is a bit of humor in the fact that my worst career debacle was while being the CEO of Bear Stearns…
To Infinity and Beyond! Who doesn’t love Buzz Lightyear? The guys at Pixar created him for the original Toy Story movie in 1995. Actually, Buzz comes from a movie within a movie and is the toy character that comes from that inner movie. He was modeled after G.I. Joe, which I sort of understand, but never really caught on to even though I was a big G.I. Joe kid. His voice is from Tim Allen,…
Sushiyama Sushi is, contrary to popular opinion, originally a Chinese dish and not a Japanese dish. The Chinese first discovered the appealing flavors of combining fermented rice and salted (not cooked) fish, which were introduced for practical reasons of keeping the food bacteria-free. They first did this in about 200 B.C. and in another 1,000 years, the concept found its way across the Sea of Japan and onto the menu of the upper class residents…
Better Betty Management Kim is away this week. Betty is confused. Betty is always a little bit confused, but she is especially confused this week. On a normal day when she is not sleeping, she will wander from here to there in the house with a modicum of purpose, seeking something I presume to be Kim’s presence. It reassures her that Kim is nearby. Lots of people, including Kim, anthropomorphize that as Betty’s love for…
The Day the Earth Stood Still I’m not that much on science fiction in my movie-going preferences, but there are some films that you can’t help but remember. One of the most famous commands in the history of film, one that is right up there with “Leave the gun, take the cannoli”, is that 1951 SciFi memento, “Klaatu Barada Nikto” that Patricia Neal is supposed to say to Gort, the robot with the power to…
Rejection and Regret You know I am an eternal optimist and while some might think that is either naive or tactically artificial (like Donald Trump claiming to always be a winner and never a loser), I actually believe that my system creates excess serotonin and that seems to be something that happens overnight. I am serious about that, why else would I be such a difficult and cranky person at night (never engage me in…