2009 MOFT of the Year: Mrs. Deadman (of course!)

Published December 17, 2009 Deep , Personal 1 Comment
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It’s been a long time since I’ve done one of these, but it’s that time of year when I must bestow the coveted My One Favorite Thing award of 2009. Last year, you may recall, Cottonelle Wet Wipes Toilet Paper won the 2008 MOFT, just edging out Barack Obama.

This year, there are so many worthy candidates. Certainly Obama was in the running again, as his January inauguration provided one of the more stirring moments of the year. But while infinitely better than what we had at this time last year, the Prez has been just a bit disappointing to me, so he’ll have to settle with his consolation Nobel.

Other early notable contenders for the 2009 MOFT included Reddi-Wip, the Oster Electric Wine Opener, Scramble (a perennial favorite), Phil Ivey, the St. Louis Cardinals, Dexter, our housekeeper Gloria, and Ingrid Michaelson. Meanwhile, a number of late dark-horse candidates in recent months have emerged, including the Wii (finally got one and it rocks), Modern Family, fantasy football, and even in the last couple of days, this hilarious, mind-fu** of a video.

But in the end, to be honest, it really was no contest. By far, My One Favorite Thing of 2009 is my brand shiny new wife! (She may in fact be even better than the Wet Wipes!)

For those of you don’t know, I married the now Mrs. Deadman on Halloween in Saratoga Springs, NY. It was quite a lovely and fun event if I do say so myself, with almost all of our closest family and friends in attendance.

While I so far am very glad I took the plunge, overcoming the commitment phobia that’s plagued me my entire life, i do have a couple regrets from that weekend. One is the DJ, who sucked so hard I am surprised there was any air left in the reception hall (she will certainly be a top contender if I get around to doing My One Least Favorite Thing of 2009 sometime next week).

Another thing I regret was not taking the time sometime during the night to give this little speech about my new wife. It was something I planned on doing, just like the Mrs. and I both planned on taking a brief moment to thank a bunch of people, but we wanted to try and spread out the speeches and toasts and let people eat and have fun, and then it just never seemed like the right time.

It really is amazing how crazy weddings are when you’re one of the key participants. The night just flies by, and you really feel like you have no control over anything. (Apparently, it wasn’t just the wedding night that didn’t go exactly as planned – Sorry Genghis!). No matter how many people warn you to try and appreciate the moment and be truly present, it’s basically impossible. You feel more like a character in a movie than a real live human being making perhaps the most important decision of your life.

But the truth is, we just should have done what we had planned. It was our wedding and our party, and we just should have found time to thank the people who helped make it all happen, and I should have delivered my little ode to Mrs. Deadman (which to be fair I had thrown together very quickly the week before.)

I guess instead, I will have to settle with posting it here and hoping people read it. So without further ado, here it is:

I just want to say a few words about my beautiful, brand-spanking new wife. Keri and I had our first date 2 years, 2 months, and 2 weeks ago from this very day. And I knew very early on, I had stumbled upon something special.

In fact, I remember one day, no more than a couple of months into our relationship, getting ready with Keri to go out and I found myself just staring at her for a few moments before eventually blurting out ‘How in the world did I get so lucky to have found you?”

“No seriously,” I asked, “how in the world have you stayed single long enough so that I could find you?!?”

I mean, here was this incredibly smart, extremely sexy and cool girl. Sensitive and sweet – with just enough spice and even a touch of the occasional vinegar to keep things interesting. Pretty and funny – not only appreciating my own sense of humor, which is tough enough, but also constantly making me laugh. And it all came bundled in this one little enticing skinny package!

So of course i thought there had to be a catch.

Now it turns out there was no catch, but as I said, this was very early on, so my question might have been a bit naive.

Because the truth is, it’s just that relationships are hard, very hard – and I think people in general – and especially as we get older – are too quick to throw our hands up in the air and throw in the towel when things get a little tough and the inevitable concerns arise. It’s so easy to just give up and move on.

But I think it’s OK when two people in a relationship sometimes have differences of opinions, competing philosophies. It’s healthy. Would be boring otherwise. It’s when we accept and maybe even embrace the differences that we grow as people and couples.

And there is no doubt I have learned so much from Keri over the past two years, especially about how to live a good life and be a better person. And honestly, it would have been impossible to move on because even during tougher times, there were certain things about Keri that stuck with me.

Like how genuinely scared and concerned she looked when she came to visit me in the ER after I had a little heart scare, tears welling in her eyes as I was hooked up with all these wires (probably worrying what the hell she was getting into).

Or like how she is with our dog, Oliver, the love and affection she showers on him – and this was most certainly not a dog person when we first met.

Or how she makes me laugh by breaking out into one of her silly godawful dances, such as the infamous one-legged south-facing boogie (which perhaps if you’re lucky enough, she’ll share with you tonight).

Or how warm she is with all of my family and friends, who will invariably come up to me after meeting her and warn me, “Don’t you dare F this up, Darren!!”

It was just always so easy to envision Keri as my wife because she is exactly what i’ve always pictured when I thought about my life in this stage.

And the more I think about my original question – “How in the world did you stay single long enough so that I could find you? – the more I wonder if the answer is not just that relationships are hard, but that perhaps, this is the only way it could have possibly been.

That it, and us, and today were always going to be. Had to be.

And I am just so happy and thankful right now, so excited about our future … and I love you very, very much!

Ennui’s a bitch … and then you blog

Published November 27, 2009 Deep , Personal Leave a Comment
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With a couple of exceptions, I’ve been gone from blogging for several months. I’ve rarely posted. I’ve barely commented. Heck, I’ve even stopped visiting the site on a regular basis.

I have a number of legitimate excuses – and some not-so legitimate excuses – for my time away. I did a lot of wedding planning. I picked up online poker again. I broke a wrist. I got married and had a minimoon. I fell behind work at my paying day job. Fantasy football started.

But mainly, my prolonged absence boils down to something much simpler, and in many ways, much more disturbing: I stopped caring.

I don’t know if it’s a case of issue fatigue or too much self-absorption, but I found myself getting increasingly uninterested with the world at large. Iranian election fraud? Hmm … Health care reform and town hall madness? Whatever. New Palin book? Of course. 10% unemployment? Them’s the breaks.

Lots of things going on right now that should have my hackles raised, my blood boiling, and my fingers typing in a mad blogger’s rage. But instead, all I feel is complacency and blahness. It’s not just dagblog.com I’m avoiding – it’s basically all news. The one event I got most excited about this week was Adam Lambert’s blatant display of homosexuality on the American Music Awards.

I’m trying to figure out why this is. My best guess is that the biggest news items of the day seem so familiar. The issues may be new – health care reform and Afghanistan strategizing, for instance – but the underlying themes – nasty partisanship and silly wars – seem so depressingly repetitive. I guess in some ways I feel cheated out of that change I thought I had voted for last year.

I’m not blaming Obama, of course, for my hacklelessness. I’m blaming myself for getting seduced by high and ultimately unreasonable expectations. Believing in change is a fool’s game. We are who we are – as people, and as a society.

It may not sound like it, but believe it or not, I’m pretty content personally. Sure, I wish I was doing something more fulfilling in my life (and is it cool for me to cop to both a healthy amount of excitement over Genghis’ new book deal and also a wee bit of envy??) but still, its Thanksgiving weekend, and I have a lot to be thankful for. Good friends, a decent-paying gig and a cool boss, lots of loving family members, a nice apartment, a winning fantasy football team, two new video game machines (wedding gifts that we still haven’t played yet – talk about complacency!) and especially a lovely brand-shiny-new wife.

So I figure this is as good as time as any to try and get back in the blogging groove. My Muse isn’t back yet really, but sometimes I guess you gotta force it. After all, being productive in life is mostly about establishing – or re-establishing – habits.

Now how about that Dubai debt crisis? That’s some crazy shit, huh? … Sigh, this will take some time. Ennui’s a bitch.

I’m back … and the Bear will be joining me shortly

Published October 8, 2009 Deep , Universal Leave a Comment
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OK, I know I’ve been a bad, bad, bad dagblogger for quite some time, but seeing as I’m getting married in less than four weeks, I’m giving myself a pass. (Today’s key word: ELOPE!!!)

I’ll be back more regularly by the end of the year, but for now, I just wanted to give you a ballsy prediction:

The market is nearing a significant short-term top. Nailing the exact timing is always difficult, but I expect we’ll be significantly lower by the end of the year, and certainly by the end of the first quarter of next year, I expect we will see market averages at least 15-20% lower than we have now.

Way back in March, on the day after the stock market bottomed, I wrote a piece predicting the rally could have legs. Now before I go patting myself on the back too hard, I must admit I’ve been surprised by how long the rally has lasted and how ferocious it’s been. But I suppose that’s the kind of combustible response you get when you combine a recovery from a near-death economic experience with trillions of dollars in government stimulus and bailouts and near-zero interest rates.

So why do I now believe the party is about to end? Well, for several reasons. First, my prediction is obviously influenced by my overall negative view of our economy. Employment is still ugly, consumer debt levels are still too high, the dollar is getting perilously weak while commodities like oil and gold are rising on an almost-daily basis. To stimulate the economy, we’ve pursued short-term measures like foreclosure relief, tax credits, and Cash for Clunkers, which have done little to resolve the structural imbalances in this country. The only thing we’ve really accomplished is burdening future generations of Americans with crushing levels of national debt. We may in fact see decent GDP growth for the next few quarters but that’s only because the comparisons will be so weak.

The overall bullish reaction to this better-than-expected – but still rather grim – drumbeat of news we’re getting is another reason I’m worried the good times are about to end. Take today’s action, for instance, with the market moving higher because of some new economic data. What are these promising green shoots of which I write??

Well, for one, tetail sales rose 0.1 percent for the month of September, according to a survey. This is the first sequential rise in sales in over a year, and apparently a cause for massive celebration according to the chief economist of the group that led the survey. “Let the retail recovery begin,” said Michael P. Niemira of the clearly unbiased International Council of Shopping Centers. “This is the start of a better performance and better fundamentals.”

Hogwash. With unofficial unemployment rates still in the teens and rising, I guarantee you this holiday season – and many holiday seasons to come – will be a big disappointment.

Speaking of unemployment, by the way, the market is also cheering the fact that the Labor Department reported that new claims for jobless benefits fell to 521,000 last week, the lowest level since January and, yes, ‘better-than-expected.’ Meanwhile, this still means that more than a half-million Americans lost their jobs, above the rate where overall unemployment would start falling.

i wouldn’t say the pundits and experts are universally bullish – which would be the ultimate contrarian indicator – as I do still see some skepticism out there, but I believe investor complacency is rising to dangerous levels while most of them try desperately to chase the market.

The final reason for my growing bearishness is more technical, but basically comes down to the fact that many of the stocks I look at are now approaching their 2008 highs. This is a little inside baseball, but basically it’s often the case that old highs for a stock end up being significant resistance points as investors who bought at those levels look to get out close to even. You see these ‘double tops’ often when looking at stock charts.

Since I believe that very little has been done to fix the economy structurally, I feel that 2008 levels will serve as a high watermark for the market for years to come.

Now don’t get me wrong. We’ve done a few good things to justify these higher prices. Inventories have been drastically reduced. Many companies have cut costs and yet kept efficiency and productivity levels high. The emerging markets like China and Brazil have shown a great deal of resiliency. And certainly the prospect for a total economic collapse – which seemed almost inevitable at the height of the panic – now appears very remote, at least for the foreseeable future.

But mostly what we’ve done is comparable to giving a sick, lethargic, malnourished patient a shitload of sugar and then celebrating the fact he seems more energetic. The sugar high crash is coming and it won’t be pretty.

MOFT: Episode 18 (Monk)

Published September 10, 2009 Personal , Trivial Leave a Comment
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I have to apologize for my prolonged posting absence, but things have been getting hectic. And with several trips upcoming, including two jaunts to Vegas (one my bachelor party!!), a pre-wedding party in my hometown St. Louis, a wedding (with still a millions things that need to be done), a minimoon, and various other things happening all in the next couple of months, I have a feeling it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

One thing I still amazingly always find time for, however, is television. Fortunately, it’s the summer so the Tivo is rather sparse, but one of my favorite shows – Monk – recently started airing new episodes. Alas, it is the final season for the underappreciated comedic detective series on USA Network, which wins the latest My One Favorite Thing of the Week award. I encourage everyone to check out the last few shows on Friday night 9/8c

The strong character ensemble team is easily the best thing about Monk. Tony Shalhoub has received well-deserved accolades, including a couple of Emmys I believe, for his performance as the title character – the lovable, OCD-afflicted, genius detective Adrian Monk. Monk, who was kicked off the San Francisco police force after suffering from mental illness when his wife was killed in a car bomb, is afraid of just about everything. And somehow Shalhoub has managed to keep all of Monk’s numerous tics and neuroses from getting stale and annoying over the years. Along with Hugh Laurie’s Gregory House, Shalhoub has created one of the two most memorable TV personalities of the past decade.

But truthfully, the rest of the Monk cast is just as strong, each of the main actors creating endearing, funny characters who play off of Monk’s oddities extremely well. The only other performer you’ll probably recognize is Ted Levine, Monk’s former boss Captain Leland Stottlemeyer, as he was Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. He’s terrific, gruff and perpetually exasperated with the antics of Monk and his own hilariously inept underling Lieutenant Randy Disher.

But my favorite non-Monk actor is probably Traylor Howard, who plays Monk’s assistant Natalie Teeger. She is tough but caring, patient but strong-willed, and she gives as good as she takes. And even more impressively, I honestly first hated her when she came on the show because she replaced a character I thought was awesome, Monk’s original assistant Sharona.

Now I don’t want to oversell the show. The writing is pretty good, but the plots usually aren’t much to speak of, and you’ll probably figure out most of the ‘mysteries’ (many of them taken from recent headlines) long before Monk finally solves the case near the end of the show. I’m sure fans of shows like Columbo and Murder She Wrote will often feel a strong case of deja vu.

But still, it’s top-notch entertainment, and I’m sure going to miss Monk and the gang when they disappear from the airwaves for good next month.

Questions: The Wedding Edition

Published September 10, 2009 Personal , Trivial Leave a Comment
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Oh man. I used to love weddings. I really did. I thought they were fun affairs where you got to see family and friends, drink and dance, and just have a good ole time. Plus, when I was single, I almost always got lucky at weddings – something in the air lends itself to sex and romance I guess.

So i always thought I wanted a big wedding because then it’s all the good things about weddings but you’re the center of attention and getting all the gifts!! What’s not to love?

Of course, now that I’m knee deep in planning my own wedding, I understand. They are awful, awful things. My family and my family-to-be are doing more than fair share in helping to plan and pay for the wedding (big shout-out to the parent-in-laws to be here!) and still the list of things to do and pay for is just about endless. Is it too late now to elope???

Anyway, in the spirit of wedding frustration, I present this edition of questions. Now in some of these, I’m appealing for advice, so please help a brother out.

As always, for a more active discussion, visit this post over at dagblog.com

1) What’s the one song you think should be played at every wedding? What one song should never be played? help us build the ultimate wedding playlist!

2) Think back to the weddings you enjoyed most. What did they have in common? What about the ones you enjoyed the least?

3) What number of people is the ideal size for a wedding?

4) What’s your ideal wedding: A) Small destination wedding b) Big, lavish affair c) Elope to nearest City Hall or Vegas d) Does not exist

5) If you’ve gone through your own wedding, what one piece of advice would you give someone about to plan/have their own?

6) What is one wedding tradition you would like to see obliterated forever?

7) Best part about the typical wedding meal: a) Cocktail food, b) main course, c) dessert, d) just the cocktails?

8) Ethnic weddings: Which ones are the best and why?

9) What’s a good groomsmen gift? (Do not say a fully loaded Mercedes, Genghis!)

10) Pick one: a) Band or DJ? b) Sit-down meal or buffet c) Chicken Dance or Electric Slide d) Pigs in a Blanket or Sushi? e) White or Chocolate Wedding Cake f) Templated or Individualized Vows g) Tux or Suit for Groom h) Prenup or not i) Complete Set of China or Big-Screen TV j) Menu choices on invitation or no?

Obama Disappoints Again … Health Care Reform Likely to Lose its Public Option

Published August 17, 2009 Deep , Universal Leave a Comment
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Boy, what a disappointment. According to published reports, the Obama administration is willing to give up a plan to create a government-run health insurance company – the so-called ‘public option’ – in order to get some sort of reform passed. Instead, they are now touting the creation of some kind of cooperative health insurance groups, which would be non-profit and owned by its members.

Now I don’t want to overstate the letdown I feel. If this is the only way some health care reform can get done, then fine. Something needs to be done, and the political realities on the ground are obviously quite tricky when you have a slim majority in Congress and even some of the Blue Dogs Democrats are barking like they don’t want to support anything that could increase our deficit.

And unlike getting pregnant, you can get ‘a little reform’ when it comes to health care. I’ll be relatively pleased if a bill passes that takes active measures to limit cost inflation by reducing waste or fraud or increasing efficiencies in the system and includes regulations forbidding insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions or dropping people when they get sick.

But I wonder how many other compromises will find its way into the legislation before it reaches the President’s desk. Already, DF pointed out a blog post that indicated the administration agreed to some fairly serious concessions to the pharma industry in order to get it to agree to close the Medicare doughnut hole in prescription coverage.

When it comes to this nation’s health care system, the patient is very sick and needs a very strong prescription. A placebo won’t do. If and when this plan finally passes, will it have any teeth in it?

Or will it just be another example in a growing list of measures that Obama has either avoided pursuing or gotten passed only after it was strongly watered down. A stimulus bill was passed, but only after its size had been slashed, and several of the more left-leaning initiatives removed. An effort to end military tribunals was abandoned. Energy reform and cap-and-trade (an interesting idea that will likely do far too little to reduce global warming) linger in legislative limbo. Meanwhile, Obama has been silent on immigration reform, avoids changing don’t-ask-don’t-tell, and decides to fight the release of torture photos.

The area where Obama has had his biggest successes has been in the economic arena, yet many of the initiatives there – such as forcing GM into bankruptcy and doling out hundreds of billions of dollars in bailout money to banks and Wall Street institutions – hardly qualify as furthering the liberal agenda.

Why are liberals so friggin afraid of their own ideology? Can you imagine the Bush administration hemming and hawing the way Obama’s team has? They wanted tax cuts, they got it done. They wanted authorization to go to war with Iraq, they got it done. They wanted the Patriot Act passed, they got it done.

Granted, there’s very little on a political level that I want Obama to emulate from the Bush team. As someone who finds strict, unwavering adherence to an ideology a bit disturbing, I like the fact that Obama is open to compromise. Often, many of the most successful initiatives a president will accomplish come by reaching across the aisle in areas not normally associated with their side’s ideology (like Clinton’s welfare reform or Bush’s AIDS relief work).

But look, the folks on the other side had their chance. They messed up, and Americans voted for change. Not just change in process – in how things got done in Washington – but voted for change in policy, too.

Troubling public opinion polls and frequent displays of hostilities at town hall meetings shouldn’t matter much if you think the results of policy change will be successful.

Democrats now control both houses of Congress. There’s no justification for deadlock or watered-down, half-assed measures.

For at least the next three years, the Left has been given the opportunity to lead this country. It’s time they do just that.

Twist and Shout: Why the Politics of Anger Makes Me Want to Cry

Published August 13, 2009 Deep , Personal , Universal 2 Comments
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“…it is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”

I was livid when I first saw video from the health care town hall meeting that took place last week in my hometown St. Louis.  I had already seen enough similar footage from other cities, but the fact that these were in some ways ‘my folk’ infuriated me.

Ignorant rednecks, I thought, the whole lot of them.

Judging by their age and apparent socioeconomic status (yes, I was stereotyping), I couldn’t help but figure that many of these folks were already receiving a substantial amount of government-financed health care in the form of Medicare and Medicaid. I was convinced many of them were either paid shills of the health-care industry or just sheep lathered up into an unthinking rage by the reactionary talking heads that now populate the airwaves.

These people are the ones who have been chewed up, spit on and totally ignored for years. They have seen their jobs shipped overseas, their communities neglected. They may have a right to be angry but they should be venting their rage at the fat cats on Wall Street, who plundered and pillaged this country for a decade and then received trillions of dollars of our money, bailed out of the damage caused by their own incompetency and malfeasance.

But instead, of all issues, the thing that finally tipped these people over the boiling point was the prospect of trying to find a better way to provide health care for all of our fellow citizens, of trying to fix a broken system that eats up way too much of our GDP, that doesn’t work nearly as well as other less resource-rich countries, and threatens to topple our nation’s already creaky balance sheet.

Fucking uncaring, unthinking, rude, selfish idiots. That was what I thought of these people.

But now I realize that by thinking this way, I was engaging in their game, letting my emotions get the best of me. I was demonizing them just as they were demonizing Obama and The Other that frightens them so much.

Because here’s the truth: I have bought into The Politics of Anger. How could I not? It is now in full force. Everywhere. We should just call it ImPolitics.

We can’t have a rational debate anymore about anything without feeling the anger, letting it seep into our thoughts and words to the point where we no longer are listening to each other but shouting at each other. And when the issue at stake is something as important and as personal as health care, the tempers run even higher and hotter.

And while the extreme right may practice this form of politics with much more enthusiasm and effectiveness than most, they don’t have a monopoly on it.

Admit it, you think the religious right are a bunch of hypocritical assholes. You thought Bush and Cheney were evil. You’ve compared them to Hitler and the Nazis once or twice, at least in your thoughts. And this was before they abused the power of their office, led us into a war on false pretenses, and took away a number of our personal liberties. Perhaps you felt this way as soon as they were elected, when they clearly stole the election, using their mob tactics in Florida (some of those scenes in the election offices in Miami-Dade County certainly do have an eerie resemblance to the rage we’re seeing now).

I’d like to think I’m better. I have a sensitive soul and an open mind, after all. I appreciate fine art and literature and film and music. I can appreciate nuance, see things in colors other than black and white. I am enlightened. I know and appreciate how precious and short life is, and how we too often get distracted by issues that don’t truly matter.  For whatever we may think lies beyond, if anything, we should at least agree that we would make our temporal lives a lot more pleasant if we tried to understand the common humanity that links us all, binds us to the same shared fate.

But then I see the terrifying rage at these meetings, and it makes me wonder.

I know it’s the insult of the day to throw out the term Hitler and raise the specter of  Nazism whenever you disagree with your opponent. Both sides do it, and the inappropriateness of the metaphor has rendered it all but impotent.

But I wonder if the rage you see at these meetings doesn’t indeed spring from the same place that led us to a world where such a thing as the Holocaust – and all the other holocausts, the Rwandas, the Cambodias, the Bosnias, the Darfurs, etc. etc. – became possible, perhaps even inevitable. That perhaps the rage at these meetings, and the rage that rises in me as I watch, is the true realization of the common humanity of which I speak, and of which binds us to the same shared fate.

And then my rage dissipates, and is instead replaced by a deep sadness. It is much less fulfilling. I hope it is just as inappropriate.

Is the Postal Service obsolete? And what does it mean for health care?

Published August 7, 2009 Trivial , Universal 1 Comment
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So apparently, the U.S. Postal Service is in a peck of trouble. Despite raising postage fees numerous times during the past couple of years, the USPS announced earlier this week that it had lost $2.4 billion between April and June and would be $7 billion in debt by the end of September.

Are you kidding me? $2.4 billion in losses in 3 months?? Are you sure the USPS isn’t making cars or selling subprime mortgages?

I know the economy is tough, and more and more people are communicating digitally nowadays, but there’s no excuse for this kind of performance. FedEx and UPS are still making money, after all.

If the USPS was a normal private company, changes would be made pronto to get its fiscal house in order. But because we’re talking about the government here, our lovely elected officials can seemingly do nothing but berate the Postmaster General John Potter for the agency’s performance while hemming and hawing over the implementation of some of the common sense changes he’s asking for – like the elimination of Saturday service, closure of hundreds of offices, and changes in retiree pay. Even certain Republicans – like Missouri congresswoman Jo Ann Emerson – are worried about cutting back too much. They’ve got constituents to think about, after all.

Of course, the union thinks Congress is already going too far and ‘declaring war’ on the postal workers. I’ve known a couple of people who work for the postal office and like most government workers, they have some of the most secure, cushy jobs out there. Anything that threatens the status quo is anathema to the postal union.

In the end, however, the union may have to accept certain changes, like the end of Saturday delivery. Meanwhile, I wonder if we even need residential 5-day delivery anymore? Why doesn’t the USPS do like the garbage folks and stop by two or three days a week. I know that 90-plus percent of the mail I get nowadays is either junk or not particularly time-sensitive. The rare items that I want to get as soon as possible – Netflix movies, magazines – could probably be delivered through one of the private couriers.

Don’t get me wrong. In many ways, I’m impressed by how well the postal service works. Sure, going to the post office and getting service is a nightmare, but when you think about the millions of pieces of mail that get delivered on time and to the right address every day, it’s a remarkable system.

In fact, when people have complained that a government-run health care plan would be a total disaster, the USPS was one of the examples I would give of government doing a big job pretty effectively.

Unfortunately, I’m not so sure anymore. Perhaps the naysayers have a point.

Questions: The Regrets Edition (Part II)

Published July 28, 2009 Deep , Personal 1 Comment
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Great answers to Part I of the regrets column. Here are my other 5 top regrets.

6) I regret being afraid of dying. In some ways, I feel my whole life’s purpose is to finally accept (at least on a Zen-like level) the inevitability of my death. Instead, the concept so terrifies me that it has clearly kept me from being as adventurous and/or productive as I could have been. A little caution can be a good thing, perhaps, but to live without fear of death sounds so freeing. (To be completely accurate, it’s more the pain of dying than the actual being dead part that scares me).

7) I regret being shy around girls. Ok, so it’s all good as I ended up finding this great awesome girl, but oh man, I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have caught the eye of a beautiful girl and wish I had gone up to her and introduced myself, make small chat, throw her a compliment, ask her on a date, etc. but instead only watched her walk away and out of my life forever. If I had chosen not to do any of those things because I thought it would be too forward and ungentlemanly or even creepy, that would be one thing. But me … I was mostly just scared, especially of rejection, and that’s just silly. Only the rejected can give rejection its power (Oh yeah, that’s like Tony Robbins good!)

8) I regret not being more serious about my writing. Even as a young kid, I fancied myself a writer. I remember creating a whole series of short stories, including a choose your own adventure (damn I loved those), about a porcupine named Kong. I had people who liked and encouraged my work, including a teacher I had in elementary school who took a bunch of my stories and compiled them in a pretty cool bound package and helped get one my tales published in a young children’s magazine (still one of my all-time great thrills).

I continued writing short stories and small pieces throughout college, but as time passed, I grew more discouraged. I would read stories by the masters, by authors I totally loved, and bemoan the fact I could never be as good as them. I experimented with longer forms of writing, including novels, but could never finish my projects. My imagination was lacking. My vocabulary was inadequate. My characters were cliched.

But if my writing was inadequate before, it’s only gotten worse. Writing is a skill that must be honed like any other and I unfortunately have written very little over the past five years – aside from these blog posts, of course. I think I convinced myself that writing was not as enjoyable as it used to be, but I wonder if maybe there’s something more going on here.

Because sometimes I think of how envious I am of the people who seem like they know what they’ve wanted to do since the day they were born, who have passion about something and pursue it with joy AND single-minded determination, a lethal combination for success. And then I think back to how I would spend hours as a young kid holed up in my room, composing stories, getting lost in the process, reveling in my own creations, and wonder if for me writing should have been that thing, and – note the emerging theme – I just was too afraid to pursue it. That my imagination was lacking, indeed.

9) I regret not doing more for my fellow man. This one is simple. I give to charity a decent amount, but not nearly enough. But more importantly, I should be more generous with my time. On this site, I’ve often complained about the lack of compassion certain members of society seem to have for their fellow humans, and yet I cannot honestly say I’ve done much to make a difference in this world. I talk a much better game than I do, and worry I just may be more selfish than I’d like to believe. Even when I try to do something charitable, I often do it begrudgingly and with the minimum effort, like the time several years back when I along with my brother mentored an inner-city student and helped sponsor his private Catholic school education. I did so little to really help that kid succeed, and embarrassingly, have since lost touch with him and his family.

10) I regret not going to California to watch the Northwestern Wildcats play in the Rose Bowl. OK, this is a small one, but when I was a senior in college, the Northwestern football team came out of nowhere – after decades of being the doormat of the Big Ten – to shock the world with a miraculous year for the ages. In one season, they beat Notre Dame, Michigan (in the Big House) and Penn State to win the Big Ten and earn their first appearance in the Rose Bowl in fifty years.

I saw every home game that year, and even a couple of away games, and that season easily stands as one of the top three sports fan experiences in my life. Many of my college friends went out to Pasadena during the Winter Break to cheer the team on, but I was a rather broke student and decided it would cost too much money. So I went home to St. Louis and watched the game on TV with some friends and family.

What a joke. You don’t get opportunities like that often, and when you do, money should hardly ever be the deciding factor. I know the advice to save and prepare for retirement or a rainy day has its merits – and especially sounds sage in tough economic times like the current ones – but money is merely a means to an end, nothing more. Be prudent, but have fun and take advantage of once-in-a-lifetime opportunities when they arise. Trust me, you won’t regret it.

Questions: The Regrets Edition (Part I)

Published July 21, 2009 Deep , Personal Leave a Comment
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In a post long ago, I talked about regrets and how I view them as a natural part of the examined life, something to be embraced, not feared. A person who claims he has no regrets is either a magnificent liar or an unreflective fool.

You can learn a lot from your regrets, and the only goal should be to minimize their occurrence as you grow older.

I didn’t go into much detail discussing the specifics of my actual regrets, but I’ve now decided to list the top 10 regrets of my life to date, thinking that it could actually be a useful exercise for me and an enjoyable, potentially educational, but very long read for others (so long in fact that I’ve decided to divide the column into two).

Over at dagblog.com, each regret will be accompanied by a related question in the comment section for you to answer.

Some of these regrets are small, some are huge. Some are in the past, where nothing can be done about them, and some persist today. All contribute to who I am, and as the new Senator from Minnesota was known to say in a previous life, “And that’s … OK.”

1) I regret not lifting weights when I was going through puberty. Let’s start off small. I think a bit of strength training – not a crazy amount, mind you, just a little weightlifting – is much more impactful when your body is developing and maturing. I’m not very body obsessed, but I think being stronger would have helped in a bunch of different ways. At the very least, it would have made me a better baseball player, which would have been nice as not making the high school baseball team is another regret of mine (although not worth a top 10 since I did try out 3 times, getting cut each year, and I give myself props for that).

2) I regret not making the top 10 of my high school graduating class. This is actually a bit of an anomaly because if anything, I think I cared too much about grades and schoolwork. But there’s a reason why this stands out as a regret. I remember going to my brother’s graduation as a junior high schooler and seeing the ten students with the top 10 GPAs get recognized for their efforts – they were asked to stand and the crowd gave each of them a significant round of appreciative applause.

For some reason, I decided there and then that that was something I wanted to accomplish. It became a goal – a ridiculous and nerdy one to be sure, but a goal nonetheless. And it was in my grasp til the very end, as I got all A’s until my final semester of high school. But I didn’t do the extra effort to sneak into the top 10, refusing to do the term papers that would have gotten me the ‘H’ honors (and 5.0) grades in history that would have put me over the hump. This sounds like a small, almost stupid thing but in many ways its indicative of a lack of single-minded determination, which I think the most successful in society seem to have and I clearly don’t (an issue that comes up later in this post). I had a goal, I should have worked just a bit harder to achieve it, plain and simple.

3) I regret not living an extended period of time in a foreign country. This is pretty self-explanatory and clearly, the easiest, best time to do this would have been in college, studying abroad for a semester or year. To me, it’s a sign of me living scared and nervous about trying new things.

As a side regret, though it isn’t necessarily my fault, I regret not learning a foreign language (or two) earlier in life. Like developing muscles, languages are so much easier to learn when you’re young, and I automatically give people an extra ten points of respect and IQ when I hear they’re fluent in multiple languages. Unfortunately, the arrogant American public education system didn’t include foreign languages as part of its early education curriculum back when I was a kid (I think it might now, but in any case at least American kids today have the bilingual Dora). In the end, I took 6 years of French in high school and college and still could barely communicate with the Frenchies when I was in Paris for a trip about ten years back.

4) I regret not being nicer to my mother through my teenage and young adult life. My mom is awesome. She’s funny and social and loving and sensitive and generous, and full of so many endearing quirks. Everyone loves her. I do, too, of course, but there was a time when she embarrassed me. OK, she still does, but there was a time when I was way too annoyed by my embarrassment and wasn’t always so nice to her.

Nothing major, just small cutting comments or a general lack of affection. I know where I was coming from and what I was doing – just trying to rebel a bit. Like all good Jewish mothers, my mom is a bit smothering and neurotic and for much of my pre-teen life I was a big mama’s boy, and I probably overcompensated in my attempt to shed that image. I can now fully embrace that I am and will always be a mama’s boy. But I know there were times I hurt her when she did nothing wrong, and for that I am sorry.

5) I regret giving up acting in college. In high school, I was in many of the plays, and had decent-sized parts in a lot of them, except for the musicals because I can’t sing or dance (We did Fiddler on the Roof, and I – one of the few Jews in the production – had to play a Russian because of my limited skills). I really enjoyed acting, and thought I was pretty good at it (I knew I had some talent when during a final exam in a freshman acting class I was able to cry during a scene in which I played a father who found out his wife had left him. The tears even surprised me.)

I wasn’t perfect,  by any means – watching old tapes, I cringe at some of the tics I brought to the stage,  but I would have liked to continue to pursue acting. Didn’t think that would be an issue seeing as I was, after all, going to Northwestern University, which was known for its theater department. Unfortunately, freshman year I got paired up with a roommate who was majoring in theater and it discouraged me when I saw his commitment to the profession. I thought about performing as a lark, not necessarily a career, and my roommate and his theater friends were approaching it on a much different level. So I chickened out and never pursued it further. I’ve taken a couple of acting and improv classes to try and rekindle the magic, but I’m afraid that dream may be dead.

MOFT: Episode 17 (Crocs)

Published July 20, 2009 Personal , Trivial Leave a Comment
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As devoted deadman blog readers with photographic memories know (a surprisingly slim sample size), I’ve never been a fan of being barefoot.

For much of my teenage, young adult and now creeping middle-age life, my bare feet have been a rare site, indeed, with notable exceptions being in the shower and on the beach. I’m not 100% sure of the reason for this, exactly – while they definitely don’t fall into the stunningly beautiful category, I don’t think my feet are hideously embarrassing either (photographic evidence to the right – my apologies to my photographic memory readers who will now be stuck with this image seared into their brain for all time).

I think my aversion to bare feet in the past has been partly due to bad circulation (there are times during the dead of winter when I have to soak my feet in hot water just to feel them), partly due to the way I hate the way toenails and skin rub against bedsheets (it reminds me of fingernails on blackboards), and partly just out of habit (as if I am anything, I am certainly a creature of that)

Whatever the reason, the conspicuous lack of naked, or even scantily sandal-ed, feet has been a notable trait of my life, so much so that some of my lovers have never even seen my feet (oh yeah, sex with socks – hot!!!), and the soon-to-be-Mrs. Deadman has endearingly nicknamed me Sox.

But all that has changed over the past two summers, and the reason for the sudden change of events is solely due to Crocs footwear, winner of the latest My One Favorite Thing of the Week award. Granted, I don’t yet sleep or shower or exercise in my Crocs (though I think it’s high-time I try sex with Crocs), but at almost every other time you can find me and my bare feet luxuriating in a pair of these bad boys.

These things rock. They’re so cushy and comfortable. Seriously, it’s a like a party with every step. They’re not the most fashionable things for sure, although many of the newer styles have abandoned the clunky atrocities of the earliest versions of Crocs.

I look at people now wearing Birkenstocks, or heaven forbid, regular thong sandals, and I feel so sad, like I’m watching savages who haven’t yet discovered fire, or heathens who need to be shown the Light and taught the way of the Croc.

Yea, once I was Sox. Now, just call me Crox.

Unfortunately, the company that manufactures these little rubber beauties may be in some operating trouble – its 2-year stock price performance, at least, has been a sheer disaster as the brand has passed that hot fad phase.

But I can at least feel good knowing me and my Beyonce have done our part to ensure the company’s survival, scooping up pairs and pairs of the shoes just in case we have to hoard them for the future.

Yet I don’t think that will be necessary. While the proliferation of reality TV may suggest otherwise, i still believe in the inexorable progress of evolution, and I just can’t imagine society ever going Croc-less again.

MOLFT: Episode 2 (Cell phone taxes, fees and surcharges)

Published July 14, 2009 Personal , Trivial 6 Comments
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I’ll get back to the regularly scheduled My One Favorite Things soon enough, but right now I got a bone to pick with my cell phone company, T-Mobile.

I mostly have positive vibes toward T-Mobile as their customer service has been very helpful and their network seems to have continually improved in New York City, but I’m annoyed with the numerous ’surcharges’ the company tacks on to my monthly bill.

T-Mobile probably isn’t alone here, but I think it’s a crime that these charges – which earn the dubious award of being My One Least Favorite Thing of the week – now add up to more than $10 a month, approximately 21% of the cost of my plan.

What’s worse, I just got a note in my most recent bill that T-Mobile was raising the rate of something they call a Regulatory Programs Fee to $1.21 a month. The company says the RPF is used to recover the costs ‘associated with funding and complying with a variety of government mandates, programs, and obligations, such as enhanced 911 programs, number portability and governmental requirements concerning the construction and operation of our network.”

Meanwhile, the other fees and taxes on my monthly bill include:

  • Federal Universal Service Fund
  • State Gross Receipts Tax
  • State Sales Tax
  • State Telecom Excise
  • County Surcharge
  • County Telecom Excise
  • MCTD Surcharge
  • Local Sales Tax
  • State 911
  • County 911

Are you kidding me? I mean, I understand that many if not all of these charges are due to taxes or other government-related charges, but why exactly has cell phone service – now basically a necessity for most Americans – been chosen as the revenue gravy train for state, local and federal governments.

I just have a few questions – Is it the same everywhere around the country or is it worse for me because I live in New York City? Does every wireless carrier charge this much in monthly fees or is T-Mobile being overly exuberant here? Please let me know what your carriers add on to your monthly bills.

And for anyone in the industry or familiar with its development, please tell me how and why this happened? Should I really blame the government as T-Mobile seems to want me to do??

Just looking at the menu … or ordering the rump??? (Obama and Mayara Tavares)

Published July 10, 2009 Trivial , Universal Leave a Comment
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So the media is all abuzz of this picture of Barack and French President Nicolas Sarkozy apparently checking out the rear end of a 17-year-old girl from Rio de Janeiro.

Gotta love the New York Post writers, headlining this important, hard-hitting story – ‘Tail to the Chief’ and leading the story with ‘Baby got Barack!’ Damn, they’re good.

Now we know Sarkozy is a total horndog (and the legal age in France is 15, I believe) so no surprise or problem there, but I kind of expected better from Obama.

Oh, who am I kidding?? Men were born to look, and it’s not like this girl had her age tattooed on her forehead (or her backside for that matter). Oh sure, it’s juvenile-looking, kind of fratboyish and probably unbefitting of a President, but I just can’t throw stones here.

Checking out women is one of the things I do best, and I’m not secretive about it – I usually point out the hotter ones to my Beyonce. My dad always said you can still look at the menu even if you can no longer order. I don’t see it as disrespect – I just admire beauty in all its forms. I would love it if girls checked me and my fabulous tushy out on a regular basis.

And maybe Barack was just comparing this girl’s rear to his own wife’s impressive backside. Clearly, the guy favors a healthy rump.

EDIT:  Video shows Barack may not have been checking out the goods at all. Sarkozy, on the other hand, not so innocent.

Obama’s Too Big to Fail Rules Too Late to Matter

Published July 7, 2009 Deep , Universal Leave a Comment
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The AP has posted an article detailing Obama’s new regulatory plan that would if enacted impose serious penalties on financial institutions when they get too large.

Although there aren’t many specifics in the article about what those disincentives would be or exactly how the government would define ‘too big’, this is a much-needed step back on the road to financial sobriety. We should never as an economy or a country be held hostage to the failings of one single entity.

As deeply as I hated all of the bailouts we’ve been throwing around to woefully (borderline criminally, in my opinion) mismanaged institutions like Citigroup and AIG, I do believe their balance sheets may have been so enormous, their footprints and obligations so intertwined in the world economy, that their failure could have crippled the entire foundation of our credit-based system and brought it to its knees.

Yet don’t be fooled – our problems didn’t lie with any one or two entities, but with the entire system. What we had instead was a complete failure by the market as a whole – and even more damning, by the regulators in charge of watching those markets – to recognize the emerging credit/debt/mortgage bubbles whose eventual bursting forced this country to its day of reckoning.

A law breaking up large financial institutions or disincentivizing them from forming in the first place will help make future problems easier to spot and solve, perhaps, but it won’t by itself save us from our own worst behavior.

And it will do very little if anything to impact our current situation and economic crisis.

In fact, the most ironic thing about the Obama plan is that the entity which may now be most accurately considered ‘too big to fail’ is our own U.S. government, which through actions taken by the Fed and the Treasury has taken on much of the bad debt and obligations (and added a bunch of new ones) that will be stifling our economy for years to come.

We can only hope that the Chinese and other foreign governments continue to agree that the U.S. government is indeed too big to fail and allow us the time to work through our issues and restore some amount of fiscal and monetary discipline without cutting off their support in one fell swoop.

Questions: The Concert Edition (Encore!! Encore!!)

Published July 3, 2009 Personal , Trivial Leave a Comment
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A couple of weeks ago, I went to see Regina Spektor perform at the Beacon Theater in NYC’s Upper West Side. courtesy of a gift from the soon-to-be-Mrs. Deadman.

What a disappointment.

I really like Ms. Spektor, could listen to her breakthrough album ‘Begin to Hope’ over and over again. But her live performance was uninspired and pretty boring, to be frank. Spektor just wasn’t connecting to the audience and it really put a damper on the evening.

My Beyonce and I were trying to figure out why the performance seemed so blah. Regina can’t be blamed entirely – I think her music and her modest (perhaps-too-humble) personality would just fit much better in a more intimate setting than the 2,600 seat Beacon. And I’m sure the fact I didn’t know most of the new songs which dominated her setlist certainly had something to do with my lackluster response.

I don’t think the quality of her musicianship was at fault. But while her voice was in fine form, and the newer music decent if forgettable, she did have her stumbles, most notably during a rap she performed near the end of the concert where she forgot the words. I felt like I wanted to be Simon Cowell, and tell her in my British accent that she should have just pushed through, as few people probably would have noticed the mistake if she hadn’t sat there awkwardly for more than a minute trying to recall the forgotten lyrics.

Regina got sufficient applause at the end of the show I guess to justify the requisite encores (another concert tradition that has totally lost meaning now that its become automatic), but it all felt empty and hollow to me, or maybe that was just my own letdown feeling showing through.

In any case, I’ve decided to post a concert questions column. Looking forward to your answers.

1) What was the first concert you’ve seen? How old were you?

2) What was the best concert you’ve seen? What do you remember most about it?

3) What was the worst concert you’ve seen? What do you remember most about it?

4) Who haven’t you seen perform at a concert but wish you could have?

5) What’s the best opening band you’ve seen? Do you usually arrive at a concert in time to see the opening bands?

6) Putting aside the quality of the actual music for a second, what’s the most important thing a singer or band can do to make the difference between a great concert and an OK concert or an OK concert and a bad concert?

7) Even during great concerts, I often find myself looking at my watch near the end. Do you think concerts are not long enough or too long?

8) What’s the most annoying audience habit at a concert: a) Yelling out ‘I love you’ or some other term of endearment to the performer b) Yelling out the name of a song they want to hear when the performer has not asked for such input c) Singing loudly the contents of a song when no one else is doing so to the point where surrounding concertgoers can hardly hear the real performer or d) Something else that annoys the shit out of you.

9) Why do you think audience members yell out to a performer during a concert: a) because they are swept up by the passion of the music and the moment b) because they hold out hope that the performer will hear them, notice them, and then invite them backstage c) because they like to hear the sound of their own voices and wish they had the talent to be a performer?

10) The encore: a) Like it as is b) Should be revised (How?) c) Should be eliminated.

11) OK, OK, stop your clapping. I’ll give you one more question. I give you $100 to spend on music-related items from your favorite performer – would you rather use that money to buy two tickets to a live concert or to buy a rare bootleg album from that performer that you don’t already have and why?

 

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