The Twelve Days of Gheorghemas: Day 12

On the 12th Day of Gheorghemas, Big Gheorghe Gave To Me:

12 Appreciations
11 Months of Gheorgheness
10 Awesome Auction Items and Much Much More!
Nine things worth dancing over
Three Genetic Tests on day 8.5
Eight Things I'm Thankful For
Seven Books for Reading
Six Top Episodes of Ted Lasso
Five Beers and Tunes
Four Resolutions
Three Gheorghemas Gifts to Give Yourself
Two Stones of Weight Loss (Your Mileage May Vary)
and Running Gags with Quatro Kitties

Welp, here we go.

December 2, 2008: In acknowledgment of our 1,000 G:TB post, the brains behind Gheorghe: The Blog brought you Gheorghemas I. The original. Teej in a "Simspon" jersey. Mustache photos. Breast milk. Videos that no longer work. Pictures of us from 1999. And Dennis!

December 31, 2008: I post the first of what will be a series of eventually redundant Day 12's, all focused around my appreciation for my life and what fills it, leaning heavily on you clowns. Set to my favorite tunes released that year. 

It's interesting to look back on that post from 13 years ago and think about all that has changed in my life. Turns out that one of those changed things is not my taste in music. And mired in the morass of the Great Recession, there was a general malaise, but a plea for optimism.

March 25, 2013: I drag my feet on closing out Gmas V until this hideously late date, cuing up the perfect Shel Silverstein poem in the process. My excuse? I got married that January! It's interesting to look back on that post from 9 years ago and think about all that has changed in my life. (Spoiler Alert: that marriage didn't take.) We had come out of the economic doldrums by then (we, not I), but there was a long road ahead. Thank goodness for G:TB.

So here we are at the belated close of Gmas XIV, and I'm feeling much better than I did in either of those eras. As such, there's no reason to depart from the 12 Appreciations (with 2021's Musical Accompaniment) theme for Day 12.

12 Appreciations During Extended Gheorghemas

1. A Christmas Story

"Mine Forever," Lord Huron

"I Don't Live Here Anymore (feat. Lucius)," The War On Drugs

"Face Down In The Moment," Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats

I had the best Christmas in memory, perhaps ever, and certainly the best in nearly 20 years. Some of you may recall my Xmas Eve-Eve post in which I eagerly anticipated the holiday with my college-aged daughters for the first time since they were in elementary school. In retrospect, I put lots of hype and pressure on myself to have make sure it was great.

We crushed it. The holiday was an absolute blast. The Christmas Eve party was tons of fun, well attended by family and friends, and despite a lot of work going into, we had more even revelry than our guests. 

The picture of the table doesn't even do the festivities justice, as there was a whole other table full of meatballs in the crock pit, bacon-wrapped scallops, pigs in a blanket with honey mustard/Tabasco ketchup/Chick Fil-A sauce offerings and more.

Christmas Day was beautiful. I overdid it on gifts for them, because of course I did. They were all smiles. And hugs. And gratitude. 

And then it was over. But I still feel like I'm basking in the last embers now. Happy to have waited on Day 12 if only to extend this warm feeling just a little longer.

2. Game for the Gamecocks

 "What You Say," Cold War Kids

"Bed Head," Manchester Orchestra

As some of you know, my girls go to the University of South Carolina. Had you asked me five years ago to put odds on where they'd be going, those odds would have been super long on USC. I'd have bet on a Virginia state school, maybe a DC school, maybe College of Charleston or even Rollins College.

Sometimes shit just works out well. I'm knocking on wood here, since I only have a freshman and a sophomore there, but wow, did I get it wrong... and they got it right. They both got 4.0's as first-year students, and when their grades came in during Gheorghemas, they shamed my my undergrad performance. They've made wonderful friends. They love Columbia and the campus, and football

games, and now women's basketball, and just good times. Plus they're together, which has meant more than I even realized it would.

If anyone wants to join me there for a road trip for weekend, saddle up. Last weekend Widespread Panic played there and I was a late scratch (owing in part to needing to save some scratch), but more shows are on the docket. And sports. And southern hospitality and cheap suds. Ask Mark.

Also, if you go, sometimes things like this happen:

3. Feels So Good Feelin' Good Again

"Heartbeat Of America," Billy Strings

"Come To The Ball," The Rolling Stones

Since just before Gmas started, I saw a football game in a large stadium. (Clemson 30, USC 0. Not good. more recently, I saw a concert in a fairly large arena. (Billy Strings. Fantastic.)

So either I'm phenomenally irresponsible or the the world is returning somewhat to semi-normalcy. Or

both, most likely.

Here's hoping there's more of this in our immediate future. Rob and I have tickets to a They Might Be Giants show in DC that was originally scheduled for 2020. (I just realized that they rescheduled it for the third time for March 5, which is not enormously convenient.) I made the tough call to forgo JazzFest this year and instead take my girls and gf and her kids to the City That Never Sleeps in May. That should be a good one. 

More to come, but for now, with 2020/21 in the rearview, it's a joy.

4. Once In A Lifetime

"Sanctuary," Hiss Golden Messenger

Building on that, in December I was invited to a shindig at one of my favorite spots, the local and historic Naro Cinema. I've posted before about times I spent there with Jerry, Fred, and Seth & Scott on the screen in recent years. But many moons ago, I used to hit the Naro every few weeks or so for their Friday Night Late Show at 11:30pm. When I was in high school, the Late Show rotation looked a bit like this:

• Rocky Horror Picture Show
• The Song Remains the Same
• Pink Floyd: The Wall
• Stop Making Sense

They'd mix a few others in on occasion, but that was usually it. And our gang of friends was good for being there for the latter two a few times a year each. I still remember getting busted trying to walk in with a jean jacket full of wine coolers at age 16. (They only took half of them... score!) The Wall still gets under my skin after some papal ballots, especially the scene where the orphaned kid (Roger Waters as a lad, presumably) gets rejected trying to hold another mom's hand on the playground. Yeesh.

And Stop Making Sense. So good. My buddy Dave yakked in the downstairs bathroom where I currently reside when we were sophomores post-SMS. Ruined a nice hand towel. But it was still great fun.

Anyway, they only play Rocky Horror at the late show these days, sad to say, but smack in the middle of Gmas, a good friend rented out the Naro and aired Stop Making Sense. I bought O'Connor beers instead of smuggling Bartles and Jaymes. We drank and danced and watched one of the great rock films of all time. Total blast. Let's do shit like that again, please!

5. From the Hague to the Wharf...

"Penny Baker On the Air," Les Coole and the Cukes

You know what else came back during this time? ORF Rock! Our little college radio show peaked some years back, and the past few years have presented a series of hurdles that have precluded us from getting into the studio at WODU. For a little while, my co-host Penny Baker and I definitely considered ORF Rock to be a thing of the past. 

Fear not, faithful fans. We have returned at long last to dominate the internet airwaves for one hour a week with 14 or so rock songs typically not getting radioplay and some goofy banter. Oh, and some music trivia and theme contests. We're now on the air on Tuesdays at 7:00pm. Tune in if you're otherwise unoccupied. We usually kick it off with the ORF Rock theme song:

6. Radio, Radio

"Virginia Beach," Hamilton Leithauser and Kevin Morby

And sometimes one thing leads to another, and worlds collide. We're friends with a "real" radio DJ with an even goofier DJ name than Les Coole. "Woo Woo" has been one-half of the morning tandem on local 94.9 The Point for many years. And on 2/22/22, a mash-up for the ages happened.

Les Coole & The Cukes · Penny Baker And Les Coole on 94.9 The Point - 2/22/22

Okay, so it was a lot cooler for us than for her and her co-host Mike. They humored us for 30 minutes of storytelling, silly banter, and talk about music. It was a lot of fun, and they promised to do it again soon.

In high school I was an intern for the on-air guy at the local public radio station, WHRO. In college, once or twice Dave and I sat in with our buddies Ethan and Dan at WCWM. (I mean they played Random Idiots, for Pete's sake.)  I've been interviewed for work on Norfolk State's radio station and a couple of others around the way. But this was different, a half-hour out of their show dedicated to our little radio show -- and some shameless plugs for Les Coole and the Cukes. Loved it.

7. So Very Less Cool

"The Bandit," Kings of Leon

In December, the aforementioned one of the several G:TB house bands, Les Coole and The Cukes, released our ninth single. This one continues the "beauty of modern technology" phenomenon. The bass track came from a buddy I grew up with, and the guitar work that serves as the basis of the song came from the man who serves as the inspiration of the lyrics, our William and Mary crony "Mayday" Malone, aka Mr. Misanthrope Haiku. Even though I saw neither of them in person in 2021. Pro Tools, Dropbox, etc.

Here's some more egregious self-promotion... Mayday.

8. Celluloid Heroes

"Walking at a Downtown Pace," Parquet Courts

Also to be filed under "Crawling Out of COVID," I went to see a feature film in a movie theater for the first time since... well, I honestly cannot remember. I'm reasonably sure that, apart from seeing a few documentaries at the Naro, I haven't seen a movie in the theater since The Hangover in 2009. That's saying something, right?

I saw Spider-Man: No Way Home. Neither a graphic novel geek nor an art house goon who eschews superhero films, I highly enjoyed it. And the way they intertwined old Spider-Men? Well, I'm a sucker for that. I half-expected to see the version of Spidey that I watched the most eagerly in my life... the one seen below. (Name the future star at 1:26.)

9. Giving the Gift of Gift Ideas

"I Don't Mind," Lindsey Buckingham

"What About Everything? [Live]" Carbon Leaf

Day 3 of this Gmas featured the much-heralded Zman bestowing upon us another round of what has become a recurring feature. (BTW, Z has done a really nice job of keeping multiple such features actually recurring, when this blog previously had a long history of launching recurring features destined never to recur.) The one I refer to was the gift suggestions for Mother's Day, Father's Day, and Christmas/Gheorghemas gifts.

I, for one, listen to Z. For Gheorghemas:

• I went in on a Peloton bike with the gf. It's at my house, since she'll travel to work out and I won't. I've hit a slowdown of late, but I'll get it back.
• I also bought her some Glerup slippers. She digs 'em. (She also digs her Ember mug.)
• I got both of my parents out of the dark ages and into Spotify subscriptions. Right before Neil Young and Co. made that seems less cool. (Not Les Coole.)

The Bonobos weren't available in my size, Maybe next time! 

10. Girlfriend Is Better

"Let's Talk About Love," Aloha Salvation

"Heat Waves," Glass Animals

Speaking of whom, if I'm reviewing the appreciations I had during Gheorghemas, the love of a good woman is up there. It was just three years ago that I described my romantic state of affairs in a not-so-appealing way during Gheorghemas XI. Anyway, another flurry of wonderfully thoughtful gifts came my way courtesy of mi inamorata. (She tried, but both the Bonobos and the '69 Butternut Yellow convertible Impala weren't available.) Among other great presents was a chunklet-style (also called Chick Fil-A or Sonic style) ice maker for my kitchen. It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend you picking one up.

We also made a formidable team (along with the young folk) for the banner Xmas Eve party... and then she treated us to an oceanfront hotel suite for NYE. Beyond the generosity, there's an element of being about the most decent person anyone's ever been to me, so I got that going for me. And I appreciate the hell out of it.

And that's all I have to say about that.

11. Appreciation x 10000000

"Freaks," Surf Curse

I can't thank the Gheorghe team enough for giving me Day 12 every year... and then letting me drag my feet and abuse the privilege. Feel free any time to allocate it differently next go-'round. 

But in the meantime I have sincerely appreciated the honor. Cheers, friends.

12. Johnny Was

"Japanese Trees," Modest Mouse

"Sinking Feeling," Wavves

"The Hardest Cut," Spoon

"BRIGHTSIDE," The Lumineers

"Ashes to Ashes," Boise Cover Band (Built To Spill)

Normally, I would close with the appreciation above. But some things are special.

We already spent some Gmas time memorializing our friend, both here and in Williamsburg. And when we did the latter... well, there's nothing quite like the visual. All I will say is that we dusted off a couple of our tried and true moshables from the late 1980's and early 1990's to appropriately usher our man Johnny into the great beyond.

You're welcome. And God bless.

Here's the full list of 2021's best for you...

Emergency 2/22/22 Filler

zson observed that today is Tuesday 2/22/22 and concluded "That's a lot of 2s."  That made me think of this:

Postcount!  Emergency filler!  Gheorghemas Day 12 is imminent!

This Week in Wrenball: The Dreckoning

I'm afraid, friends, that the time has come to ask an important question about our Wrens.

Wrong school. Right emotion.

As I type this, W&M is playing its final home game of the season. They'll likely lose to Delaware to fall to 5-24 on the season. If it wasn't for Northeastern have a nightmare of a season due to COVID and injury issues, the Tribe would be DFL in the CAA. As it is, they're relegated to the conference tournament play-in game, where they'll likely be bounced in the first round.

The squad is unquestionably young. 77% of W&M's points have been scored by freshmen or sophomores. The young kids have also grabbed 80% of the team's rebounds and handed out 89% of its assists. Those numbers hold at least the hint of promise for the future. 

The present, though, not great.

Dane Fischer had a stellar debut year, blending Nathan Knight and Luke Loewe with some excellent transfers and salvaging the wreck of the program left in the wake of Samantha Huge's administrative malpractice. That 2019-20 team went 21-11 and finished second in the CAA before losing a terribly disappointing game to Elon in the first round of the conference tournament. Last year was a write-off - no coach should be evaluated on his team's performance during the insanity of the COVID season.

Soph Ben Wight has been a bright spot

But now, it's fair to ask whether Dane can coach at this level. He seems by all accounts to be a terrific guy, a role model who operates with integrity. But there's no escaping the fact that this team is poor, and it hasn't improved over the course of the season. The Tribe has lost six in a row, all but one by double digits. They've been outscored on the season by an average of 9.9 points per game, have 125 more turnovers than assists, and allow opponents to shoot 46.4% from the field. 

The 2021-22 Tribe will have the school's worst season since 2011-12, which was Marcus Thornton's freshman year. If they lose all four of their remaining games, they'll set a program record for most defeats in a season, and at W&M, that's a damning record to hold.

Tony Shaver had the Wrens in the CAA Tournament final within two years after that dismal 2011-12 campaign. There's no Marcus Thornton on this roster, so I'm not counting on Dane Fischer repeating that feat. He might not even get the chance if next year isn't a substantial improvement on this one.

Samantha Huge's salting the fields of W&M hoops may take a generation to undo.

Mo' Money: A Dave Fairbank Joint

A little bit about money and inequality. I’ll keep it brief, since what I don’t understand about money and finance fills libraries. One of the few things I know about money is that having it is beneficial, while not having it is troublesome. 

The pandemic drove that home. 

The well-heeled and the wealthy are getting weller-heeled and wealthier. [Note: I appreciate that we've convinced our most-accomplished professional scribe to adopt the informality of our tenuous relationship with the language.] America’s billionaires increased in both numbers and wealth – from 610 at the start of the pandemic to 745 as of October 2021; from totaling just shy of $3 trillion in combined wealth to more than $5 trillion, according to Forbes and Inequality.org. In just the first three quarters of 2021, the wealthiest one percent saw their collective fortunes increase by $13 trillion, to $43.94 trillion, and they controlled nearly one-third (32 percent) of the country’s wealth, according to numbers from the Federal Reserve. 

Meanwhile, those at the lower end of the economic spectrum mostly feel the heel pressing on their sternum. They’re more susceptible to disease and unemployment and hardship. Though job creation numbers are trending up and unemployment numbers down, as of last November there were still 3.5 million fewer workers in the labor force than before the pandemic. A survey of several thousand people by Capital One Insights Center found that 40 percent of low-wage earners in two-paycheck households reported that at least one person lost their job or had to leave their job during the pandemic. 

Whatever gains from changing jobs or holding out for higher pay are now being eaten up by inflation. Consider that the bottom 50 percent of the U.S. population (165 million people) possess 2.5 percent of the nation’s wealth, according to the Fed. Our march down this plutocratic path has sparked discussion. Is protecting citizens of the planet’s wealthiest nation limited to weaponry and defense? Should it include affordable, accessible health care? Infrastructure that doesn’t crumble beneath our feet? Clean air and water? Climate change mitigation efforts? Living wages? 

Among measures discussed are Universal Basic Income and Guaranteed Income. UBI is a payout from the government to everyone, and it was a cornerstone of fringe presidential candidate and New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang's policy framework. UBI is likely DOA in state and national circles, as nothing gets tagged “socialist” faster than governments giving money to individuals – though notorious “lefty” Richard Nixon seriously considered implementing a nationwide UBI as part of the War on Poverty before he was dissuaded. Guaranteed Income, on the other hand, is payouts to specific groups, and programs have sprouted up in recent years. 

According to Business Insider, there are at least 33 programs around the country amid or recently concluded providing a guaranteed income to groups of people, nearly all at or below the poverty level. In Alexandria, Va., a D.C. suburb, officials allocated $3 million from the American Rescue Plan Act and will pay 150 households $500 a month for two years, no strings attached. St. Paul, Minn., launched a program that will pay 150 families affected by COVID $500 a month for 18 months. In Tacoma, Wash., a tech company geared toward worker empowerment co-founded by Shaquille O’Neal is footing the bill for 110 people to receive $500 a month for a year. In Shreveport, La., 110 families will receive $660 a month for 12 months. Richmond, Va., will use funding from the Federal CARES Act and the Robins Foundation to pay 18 working families that do not qualify for benefits but still don’t earn a living wage $500 a month for 24 months. 

One program in Gainesville, Fla., will target formerly jailed people, with an aim toward breaking the cycle of poverty and incarceration. It will pay them $1,000 the first month and $600 per month for 11 months afterward and track their spending and behavior. Organizers point out that the U.S. spends $182 billion per year jailing people and has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Florida’s incarceration rate is even higher than the national average, with almost two of every 100 Floridians (391,000 people) either jailed or under criminal justice supervision. Because of the costs of incarceration and supervised release to prisoners and their families, they coined a phrase: too poor to be free. 

Several programs cite former Stockton, Calif., mayor Michael Tubbs and the program he launched in 2019 that gave 125 residents $500 per month for two years. The program, mentioned in this space, helped stabilize recipients’ lives and did not result in a spike in the purchase of so-called “temptation goods” (alcohol, drugs, tobacco). Nor did it disincentivize people from working, as critics of government payout programs often claim. Tubbs lost his bid for re-election and relocated to Los Angeles, where he serves as an advisor to Gov. Gavin Newsome and recently launched a non-profit aimed at broadening the state’s safety net and addressing inequities in housing, wages and spending. 

Tubbs’ fingerprints also are all over the Mayors for a Guaranteed Income coalition, a group of dozens of mayors around the country already overseeing GI programs or exploring implementation. One of MGI’s mantras is: Everyone deserves an income floor through a guaranteed income. Tubbs himself was quoted about his non-profit: “I would argue that the government has a responsibility not to give everything to everybody, but to make sure the rules and the laws and regulations are just — so that the outcomes are just.”

Bite Me, Randy Newman.

Most of you know that I am, metaphorically, a basketball junkie. A huge part of that dependency was AAU basketball. If you came up playing basketball as a teenager in the 90s, you were a part of the early stages of the explosion of AAU basketball. That meant games and tournaments all spring and summer. All over the state and, if your team was really good, all over the country. The team I played for was good but not national tournament good. But, I live in Florida and Florida is a very attractive spot for a tournament for teams from all over the country to travel to. These days, the National Championships take place at the Milk House at the Wide World of Sports on Disney property. But back in the mid-90s, the U19 National Championships often took place right near where I currently sit. Melbourne, FL. Which is where and how this story begins. 

I was 16 and about to be a junior in HS. I was about to hit a growth spurt (relatively speaking) and become a decent player. I was constantly playing AAU basketball once my high school season ended. So when my AAU coach asked if I'd like to work the National Championships, I, of course, eagerly accepted. My first assignment was a game at the local college (Florida Tech). I was assigned the task of taking tickets and needed an adult to work and handle the money. My Dad agreed because he's an awesome dad who did just about anything his kids asked, especially when it came to sports. 

So we signed up to work the first game of a triple header. The first game was the headliner that evening. That's because one of the highest-rated, fastest-rising recruits in the country was playing. His name was Shareef Abdur-Rahim. The gym was packed with fans and, more significantly, college head coaches. Bobby Cremins, Coach K, Rick Pitino and many, many more. Since my Dad and I were working the door, we didn't get to see much of the game. Shareef balled out, his team won and many of fans and coaches headed for the exits.

After the conclusion of the first game, my Dad and I were off the clock. But I wanted to stick around and watch more basketball. Game 2 was a team from Pittsburgh vs. the Charlotte Royals. Pittsburgh featured a bruiser named Danny Fortson, and the Royals featured an unheralded recruit by the the name of the Antawn Jamison. Quickly, it became clear that Jamison was way better than advertised, as he hit shots from all manner of angles in very unorthodox ways that we'd also see him do successfully for many years to come. And, true to form, late in the second half, Fortson got into it with an opposing player, followed by a verbal altercation with a ref, and he got tossed as the Royals pulled away to victory.

At this point, my Dad and I would've been more than happy to go home having earned a little extra bread and having watched some good ball. But again, I could not get enough basketball at that point in my life. So we decided to stay for the nightcap. And that decision to stay for game 3 changed our lives.

The third and final game featured the #1 ranked team in the nation. They were from Memphis and boasted top 10 recruit Lorenzen Wright (RIP) and were coached by his father. They looked the part of a top AAU team. Big, long, athletic, and very well outfitted in some sweet Nike uniforms. Memphis was matched up against a nondescript team from Cleveland. When Cleveland came out they looked rag-tag to say the least. Their uniforms were old and well worn (reversible jerseys with faded, cracking numbers) and the were led by what my Dad and I thought was the coach's kid when they came out for layups. We may have even laughed at the scene of this small guard who couldn't be much more than 5 feet leading the team out for warmups (I was 5'6" at the time so I didn't have much room to judge someone on size).  I can only imagine what Memphis was thinking.

Then it came time for the tip and the "coach's son" walked out on to the court. I'm quite sure that my Dad and I weren't the only people thinking "What the fuck is going on?" I'm also quite sure that all of us quickly realized what the fuck was going on. The tiny guy (5'3") dominated the game from tip to buzzer, He was a one-man press. Hounding the Memphis guards all over the court and repeatedly taking the ball from them as they tried to advance up the floor. He was running the offense for his team and setting his teammates up all for easy buckets. He also managed to drop 40 points in the process while leading his unknown Cleveland team to a comfortable victory over #1 Memphis. At some point late in the game while my Dad and I guffawed over the game being played by this amazingly talented little guy, my Dad spotted a guy a couple rows from us (the stands were pretty empty at this point in the evening) wearing an Eastern Michigan polo in the stands and said, "I bet you'd like to have him." It just so happened that the guy was an Assistant Coach at Eastern Michigan. He calmly replied, "His name is Earl Boykins and he's playing for us next year." 

 

From that point on, my Dad and I had a new favorite player who we made a point to keep track of during his collegiate career. We followed him at EMU as he became a two-time all conference point guard that led his team to the NCAA Tournament and eventually finished second in the NCAA in scoring during his senior season. And then we lost track of him for a bit. Until my time in college when Earl made it to the NBA. I sent my Dad the ESPN article about him making the league and we followed his career intently from there out. Earl would go on to play 13 seasons in the NBA, even averaging double figure PPG for 5 straight years (a career high 15.2 PPG in 2006-2007 for the Nuggets) and bring my father and me much joy while doing so. 

I bought my Dad an Eastern Michigan Basketball shirt for Father's Day a couple years ago and he wears it all the time. I'm not sure what the point of this story is. Never judge a book by its cover? Little moments between a Father and Son mean more than you ever realize in the moment? Bite me, Randy Newman? Yeah, that's probably it.

Super Bowl Open Thread

It snowed in our area last night, and my dog did an impression of one of our old faves:

Which is as good a way as any to kick off our Super Bowl-related dipshittery. See you in the comments.

The Gheorghularity

You know how they say that couples that have been together for a while begin to meld into one another, finishing sentences, sharing memories, even in some cases looking more alike. That latter case, not operative here, as you'll soon see.

Here in the Gheorgheverse, some of us have been together, bloggily speaking, for more than 18 years. That's a long time in blog years. And over that time, we've learned each others' quirks, tastes, and go-to comedic rhombii fillers.

We had a glorious coming together on Twitter today that illustrated my point perfectly, and gave me and the Teej a great deal of joy.

First, @kiaspeaks kicked off a conversation:

And then I got to proposing a bit of a test of Gheorghian single-brainery:

Then, in our final act, Teej offered this:

WHICH WAS EXACTLY THE SONG I WAS THINKING OF!!!

Here it is, in all its gawdawful glory:

God bless the Teej. God bless G:TB. And God bless friendships that share a brain.

Happy International Clash Day

Read this. Listen to this:

My Experiences with Unions and Monkeys: The Commute

I graduated from college without a job so I moved home to zmother's house.  After about six to nine weeks I got a job at the aforementioned union shop so I commuted there from the Neck.  This involved driving on the Palisades Interstate Parkway, locally known as the Palisades or, more affectionately, the Pip (but not the Pip).

Although I have a handful of fond memories from the early 1990s relating to time spent in cars on the Rockefeller and Alpine lookouts, the Pip might have been the worst stretch of highway in the Northeast back then.  Neither New Jersey nor New York would invest any money in it, both asserting that the Port Authority was responsible for its maintenance.  It had so many potholes that it was like driving on the surface of the moon.  People would routinely get flat tires, so there often were cars on the side of the road.  And it's an ancient road with no shoulder or acceleration lanes, so people bomb onto it with a full head of steam.  It has a 50 MPH speed limit and tons of hidey-holes for Johnny Law so it's easy to get a ticket.  And it spans the NY/NJ border so, of course, many of the drivers who use it are raging assholes.

I had many bad experiences commuting on the Pip.  Some people drove below the 50 MPH limit because the road was so chewed up and it was not uncommon to get stuck behind two cars driving 47 MPH side-by-side in both lanes.  It was just as common to deal with maniacs doing 80 MPH, perhaps in a hurry to get to White Castle.  These maniacs liked to tailgate, and I would get out of the way when I could but sometimes there was simply nowhere to go--I was boxed in by the other cars and had to deal with being tailgated.

The Pip is a scenic road.  As the name implies, it rides atop the Palisades Cliffs so it has great views of New York City.  This means that it's right on the Hudson River so there are times when the cliffs, and thus the Pip fill with fog.  There were two or three occasions where the visibility was almost zero (even worse than that ride back from JMU in the snow, a reference for only two of us).  It was not fun.

All of this is to say that driving on the Pip sucks.  They've since repaved it so it's better, but it still has no shoulder, a 50 MPH limit, and NY/NJ assholes driving on it.

As a result, this Jalopnik article did not surprise me.  I recognized the Pip after not more than 5 seconds of video, and this is exactly what it was like commuting to work.

Here's another angle.

Yes, people drive like this on the Pip.  And yes, people who drive on the Pip cheer when other people crash on the Pip.

I'm sure TR will opine that I was an aggressive driver in my youth and I will agree, I drove faster than I should've.  But this is next level idiocy by everyone involved.  And this is how I used to start my day!  Luckily TR's homeboys' Aunt Fanny had a place to rent so we moved to Money Earnin'.  But then I had to commute on the Sprain which might have been worse.  Foreshadowing!  Postcount!

Commerce/Art Filler: Get Your Visual Stimulus On

If you did pop art, sports, comic books or any combination of those things, you'll geek out on Pop Fly Pop Shop. Words don't really do it justice, but the proprietors describe their wares as One Piece of Nostalgia at A Time for One Week at A Time. Pretty simple concept: they post one work at a time, and it stays online for week, never to return again.

Their stuff is generally baseball-themed, asking the visual question of what ballplayers might look like as comic book heroes. For example:

I'm kinda partial to this one:

And I wish I'd seen this one in time to get it for Whit and Marls:

The artists have posted about 70 works to date. Peruse them at your leisure while we wait for the end of Gheorghemas. Any day now.

That Was Then, This is Now

Speaking of Monkees, as we were, it seems that everything old is new again. 

When I was 16, The Monkees' first renaissance started with MTV doing what it does, and playing old episodes of the "band's" comedic television show. It hit me right in my silly teenaged pleasure centers. At least in one of them. I wore out the greatest hits record they released to take advantage of the phenomenon. 

Man, it really doesn't hold up that well, does it? Here's a little palate cleanser. Bubble. Gum. Pop.

The Monkees popped into my conscious this morning when I saw news of another band that takes me back. When I was in my early 30s and raising little girls, I was exposed to a lot of grating kids' music. But there were some artists doing palatable kid-rock. They Might Be Giants was an obvious choice for me. Laurie Berkner, for sure. Dan Zanes. The cool World music compilations from Putamayo - I liked that stuff as much as my kids did.

One band, though, was our joint favorite. We loved The Wiggles. Me, because they had a bit of a pop sensibility (they sang with Split Enz, for Chrissakes) and they absolutely took themselves less than seriously as people, if not as artists. The kids because they were silly and bright and fun. I mean, c'mon:

We saw them live as a family, and in fact they've played to more than one million people each year of the 2000s. They were Australia's highest-grossing musical act for four years in a row in the early 2010s. 

And like The Monkees did in 1986, The Wiggles are experiencing a most unusual come up.

Triple J, which is a youth-oriented radio station in Australia, hosts an annual listener poll called The Hottest 100. Since its inception in 1989, the list has been topped by Nirvana, Kendrick Lamar, Oasis, The Cranberries, and Mumford and Sons, among others. 

In 2021, the poll's voters chose The Wiggles' cover of Tame Impala's 'Elephant'. With a little bit of a 'Fruit Salad' riff in the middle. For real.

As you might imagine, this tickled my whimsybone just right. Long live The Wiggles.

My Experiences with Unions and Monkeys: Part 2

After a few years at my job in the union shop, I took a new job in a different facility.  It was a bizarro version of my previous job.  The facility was at most 10 years old.  It was not unionized.  Everyone hated the Yankees.  They also hated the parent company--the site was an independent company and was acquired about a year before I joined.  This was stupid, in my view, because all the senior people became highly placed in the parent organization and made so much money in the buyout that they all could afford to buy a house on Nantucket and their own plane to fly there (seriously, I know at least one person who did that) and they took care of their people to the detriment of the rest of the organization.  Everyone at every level in the company did well in the buyout.  While the Environmental Health and Safety guys at my previous job drove F-150s, all the EH&S guys at the new place had F-250s and some even had a dually.

But a lot was the same because Metro Boston is a lot like New Jersey.  North Shore/South Shore debates are much like Taylor ham/pork roll.  The majority of people spend their entire lives in a bubble with a 25 mile radius, including college.  New Hampshire is Rockland County.  The accents are not sexy.  No one cares about college sports but many people are overly passionate about their favorite pro sports teams and decorate everything with the teams' logos, including their faces.  

The new facility was similar to the old one in that it was in the middle of nowhere and somewhat self-contained so going out to lunch was almost impossible, trapping you there all day and forcing you to eat the same crappy food all the time.  The EH&S guys were similar too.  There was one EH&S guy in his early 50's with a bushy handlebar mustache, engineer boots, tattoos, a chain tethering his wallet to his belt, and a leather vest (a "cut") bearing various insignias from his NH-based motorcycle crew.  He swaggered around like a badass but he was 5'4" so it was a little silly.  One day he shaved his mustache.  A few hours later I saw him again and he had the mustache again!  I asked my boss if I was losing my mind and he laughed and said "No, dumbass, Peter shaved his mustache but Paul didn't."  Turns out there were two of this guy--they were twins.  So just like my old job, the EH&S guys literally came in twos.

The new site also similarly had manufacturing, quality control, research, development, and a big animal facility.  My new job involved developing new formulations and part of that involved testing the formulations in animals so I spent a significant amount of time in the animal facility.

It was some of the worst time of my life.  One of my primary tasks was gamma scinitgraphy.  We labeled the proteins we studied with iodine-125, or "I-125," a radioactive element, so that we could measure how long the proteins remained where we put them in the animals' bodies.  Everyone referred to the radioactive material as "hot."  As in, "we got more hot protein" or "we're out of hot" or "be careful with that syringe it's full of hot" or "watch out for that spill it's hot."  We made the measurements using a gamma camera, a massive device driven by a Unix computer.  I would design the formulations, mix in the hot proteins, and a veterinarian or a veterinary technician would implant the formulation in the animals.  Then, while the animals were sedated, I would make measurements using the gamma camera over time.  

This was bad for many reasons.  Iodine naturally binds to your thyroid--it's often added to salt to prevent people from getting goiters so that's typically a good thing.  It's a terrible thing, however, if the iodine is radioactive like I-125.  I-125 also has a long half-life, which means that it sticks around forever.  So working with the radio-labeled proteins was serious stuff and I had to wear lead gloves to handle it, and spilling any on myself would've been a nightmare because they I would've had radioactive iodine stuck in my thyroid for 25 years.  I had to be vigilant about this all the time.  

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To enter the animal facility you had to don a bunch of proper protective equipment or "PPE".  There was minimum amount of required PPE, much like flair.  It varied depending on who was running the animal facility, and that person varied with surprising frequency.  The guy in charge when I first got there was fired when they discovered he was sneaking into the ketamine, an animal tranquilizer that you might know as Special K.  It was that type of place.  Anyway, the PPE offered in the airlock to the animal facility was a hairnet, face mask, surgical gloves, booties, and Tyvek lab coats.  This was all disposable and thus great for the environment.  Because I worked with radioactive material I had to wear all that PPE.  When I hear people complain about wearing a mask I laugh--I used to have to wear one all day plus a whole bunch of other more uncomfortable stuff.

And I did this in a tiny room with a massive machine that generated lots of heat.  As some of you know I am a ridiculously sweaty guy so all that PPE coupled with the heat from the gamma camera had me soaked with sweat after 20 minutes.  I was in that room for hours.  Also in that room was a machine that sterilized equipment using ethylene oxide, a really nasty chemical that can kill you several ways.  It was a relatively small device but disturbing given its deadly nature.  It sat in the corner of the room, silently threatening to kill me.  I think they stuck it in the gamma camera room because we had the space for it and everyone figured the gamma camera guys were screwed anyway, what's a little ethylene oxide exposure when we already had thyroid damage.

Prior to this role I had never spent any time with rats or rabbits, and through it I learned that I am severely allergic to rats and rabbits.  Rats are actually pretty friendly creatures but they do have fingernails and if one of them scratched my skin the least bit the scratches would turn into welts.  Their dander made my eyes itch and water, my nose congest, my throat constrict, and my lungs cough.  They can also be mean so you had to watch out for the occasional biter.  Rats are typically used for early studies because they are small and cheap and thus a good model for a large sample size.  As a result, I typically spent 3-4 days a week in a room full of radioactive rats, carefully guarding my thyroid from radiation and the rest of my body from rat dander.  Once dosed with I-125 the rats were "hot rats" but remarkably no one I worked heard of Frank Zappa.

For anything larger than a rat I would have vet tech support so they handled the rabbits.  I think I'm more allergic to rabbits than rats, at least as far as my respiratory system goes.  I'm convinced that my chronic cough is due at least in part to four years of exposure to all these animals.

My days in the animal facility involved retrieving the rats, wheeling them into the gamma camera room, pulling them out of their boxes one at a time and dropping them into a large bell jar hooked up to this octopus of an anesthesia machine that pumped a mix of oxygen and an anesthetic gas (I can't remember the name).  Once the rats were knocked out I would put three on the gamma camera's imager and stick their noses into these little nose cones at the end of one of the octopus's tentacles.  This kept them asleep while I imaged them for 3 minutes.  Essentially I photocopied radioactive rats.  Then I would put them back in their box and turn to the next set of rats.  This could take hours depending on the size of the study.

At the end of the study I would "sacrifice" the rats, which means I killed them by dropping them into a box hooked up to a tank full of carbon dioxide.  Then I would empty the rats' boxes (full of bedding and radioactive rat excreta--after the animals' bodies metabolized the protein, the I-125 would be freed and excreted through the urine and feces, I had to deal with literal hot shit) and carcasses into a plastic bag which then went into a special radioactive storage freezer.  Every once in a while we did a study without radioactivity, and in those cases I had to dissect the dead rats to retrieve whatever I implanted in them for histological analysis.  You have not smelled nastiness until you've smelled the insides of a dead rat.

The gamma camera was a cantankerous device and its Unix operating system was indecipherable.  There was only one IT guy who knew Unix, Steve the Eunuch (because he knew Unix, not because he didn't have a penis, at least as far as I know), so if the Eunuch was on vacation and the gamma camera acted up I was screwed.  My group leader was completely humorless and very tightly wound so when I once told her "I can't get the data out today, the gamma camera is frozen and the Eunuch from IT is out" she thought I was disparaging Steve and gave me a stern talking-to.  The gamma camera computer wasn't compatible with our network so I had to manually transcribe all the data into my lab notebook and then enter it manually into an Excel spreadsheet back at my desk.  I never made any errors, nothing to worry about there. 

My fellow employees often added to the degree of difficulty.  Many were, perhaps rightfully, terrified of I-125.  Rats are natural escape artists and although their cages are designed against this there was the occasional jailbreak.  No one was happy with me when one of my hot rats got loose, leaving a trail of hot shit and hot piss behind it.  It was discovered by the guy with the Special K habit and he kept it in a box on his desk until I told him how I-125 works and the bit about the pee and poop and that he thus might not want to keep it near his morning coffee and danish.  Then he handed it to me and told me to put it back where it belonged.

via Gfycat

Some people were of the view that they shouldn't have to work near radioactive material and they were always looking out for people in my group to slip up and get some where it didn't belong.  This happened once, I don't recall how, but as a result they reported us for allegedly being sloppy and two EH&S guys (not the twins) rode shotgun with me in the gamma camera room for a day to see what we do and to recommend better practices.  They had to suit up in all the PPE and sweat it out in the hot (puns!) room with all the boxes full of rats and their excreta.  About an hour into the day, one of the occasional angry rats bit my finger pretty badly.  It went through both gloves (I wore two gloves on each hand just in case I got a rip) and there was a lot of blood.  My allergies kicked in almost immediately and my index finger swelled up like a salami.  The EH&S guys were excited.  They sprung into action to administer first aid, whisking me over to a sink to wash the wound.  I told them to "Get the fug offa me!" but they insisted on treating my injury.  I joked that Spider-Man got his powers from a radioactive spider bite so maybe I'll turn into Rat-Man with my radioactive rat bite.  They didn't see the humor but they had sympathy for my plight, and they were delighted that they got to use their walkie-talkies to radio my injury to the nurse's station.

This all sounds pretty miserable, right?  It pales in comparison to working with monkeys.  They are terrifying.  We used cynologous monkeys, which are also called crab-eating macaques or "cynos."  If given the opportunity they will rip your face off because they are exceedingly angry.

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Our cynos came from the wild.  Someone out there might breed them but our supplier got them from the original source.  Imagine you're a monkey out in the jungle, handling your monkey business.  You might have a girlfriend or two, maybe you have a family.  Maybe you're a young guy and you still live with your parents but you like to sow your wild oats.  Life is good.  One day you're over by the swamp, trying to catch some crabs for lunch when BLAM, you get hit in the ass with a tranquilizer dart.  You're instantly woozy, then some human throws a net over you and drags you over to a box, throws you in and you can't see anything.  You pass out.  When you wake up you're in a cage by yourself, but surrounded by many other cages with a cyno in each.  You're all put on a boat and shipped to Massachusetts.  All you have to eat is whatever monkey chow they give you and some fresh fruit.  You live in a cage for the rest of your life, away from your ladyfriend and your homeboys and your family.  You're poked and prodded and used in all sorts of experiments.  You would be angry.  Angry enough to rip the fingers off the hand that feeds you.

Cynos are expensive.  In order to get into the animal facility I had to take a tuberculosis test every six months, the Mantoux skin test.  The on-site nurse would inject a little nut of tuberculin between the layers of skin in my forearm and I would come back two days later.  If the nut disappeared I was fine.  If it was raised and inflamed I had TB, which meant they were very concerned for the monkeys and I would've gotten in trouble for exposing them to TB.

Cynos are pretty smart.  When you walk into the cyno room they all angle the metal plate on the front of their cages so they can see you in the reflection, like prisoners in jail.  Some of them are friendly enough that you can house two in a box, in which case they get a big cage.  Some of them are not friendly and will kill whatever cyno you put in there with them.

As in any prison there has to be an alpha.  Our alpha was Number 3.  He was exceedingly large, twice as big as any other cyno we had, and he had a ruff of head on his hair like a mohawk.  He had huge teeth and he rippled with muscles.  He lived alone because he would destroy his roommate.  All of the cages had a lever on the side that you could pull to make the back wall move forward, trapping the monkey against the wall so you could give it a shot to tranquilize it.  Number 3 was such a badass that when he saw you coming he would turn and put his butt up against the bars so you could knock him out.

We always had to wear safety glasses but when we were near cynos we also wore face shields because they can carry the herpes B virus.  You can get it from their saliva so you need to protect your eyes, nose and mouth.  It has an 80% fatality rate, so a halfway sedated cyno can kill you even if he's too loopy to rip your face off, all he needs to do is spit in your face.  

So when we had monkey studies, I was stuck for hours in a sweltering room, draped in layers of PPE, surrounded by thyroid-seeking radioactive material and a carcinogenic sterilizing machine, with an unconscious primate that might wake up and give me a deadly disease or bite my jugular.  

And that wasn't the worst of it!  After a day like that I had to go home to a woman who was a cross between the worst of Betty Draper (heartless high-maintenance ice queen from a fancy zip code who has a bad relationship with food) and Sammi Sweetheart (demanding mercurial Italian princess from the Tri-State area who has no sense of humor about herself).  

from January Jones GIFs via Gfycat

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I should've known better--she hated The Princes Bride.

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So if you ever wondered "What the hell was zman up to around the turn of the 21st century," you now have your answer.  And that's my story about working with monkeys.

A Few Words for Johnny G

As we relayed to you all a month or two ago, we lost our good buddy Johnny G to a bad ticker in December. A tough one, for sure. The William and Mary contingent decided to throw Johnny a reverent memorial in Williamsburg last weekend. 

Okay a boozefest with equal parts camaraderie, old stories, and bourbon. God bless us for never straying from that modus operandi. 

We did, however, add a tiny sliver of reverence amid the wistful fraternity party. Enjoy our speaking and singing (!).

If you're really good, maybe we'll show you the late night antics of three gheorghies and friends.

Solidarity Filler

My Hot Takes on the Bills and the Bills/Chiefs Game

1. Brian Daboll probably isn't a genius and he probably won't save whatever franchise he goes to.  This offense looks good because Josh Allen is phenomenal.
2. Leslie Frazier probably isn't a genius either.  The Bills played a bunch of offensively challenged teams this year (Jest twice, Fish twice, Jags, Texans, WFT, Panthers, Falcons) and the defense starts six first-round picks.  This helped him look good.  His defenses in Tampa were not good and he had a 39.8% win percentage as a head coach in Minnesota.  And he just gave up 45 yards and 3 points in 10 seconds to go to OT.
3. I miss Tre'Davious White.  No one can stop Tyreek Hill but White would've done better than Dane Jackson.
4. Why was Dane Jackson, the 239th pick in the 2020 draft, on Tyreek Hill?
5. Allen is a bad man.  When was the last time you saw a QB knock a defensive player out of the game?  But I don't think this is a good way to build a lengthy career.
6.  If they're going to continue to run designed rushing plays for Allen they should get a fullback.
7. At a minimum, they need to get a big thumping running back who can get 3 tough yards so that Allen doesn't always have to.  Guys like Leonard Fournette don't grow on trees but he was available for peanuts two years ago.  Guys like Alexander Mattison, D'Onta Foreman, Devontae Booker, Mark Ingram, Rex Burkhead and Carlos Hyde are always available.
8. The overtime rules are what they are.  Buffalo couldn't stop KC when they needed to.  If the Bills were playing the Colts or the Ravens it would've been different.  That said, the outcome feels somewhat inequitable, the fans want something else so the league should respond.  I have ideas.
• Make OT a 10 or 15 minute period.  Team with the most points wins.  If they're tied play another 10 or 15 minute period.
• Both teams get the ball once.  If they both score TD in their first possessions, the next team to score any points wins.
• Use the college OT system.
• Have a FG kick-off, moving back 5 yards at a time until someone misses.
• The head coaches wrestle Greco-Roman style at midfield.  First guy to pin the other advances.
• Each team designates one player to box at midfield.  First guy to knock out the other advances.
• Erect a cage at midfield and the punters have an MMA fight.  Winner advances.
• Each team designates one player to do the NY Times Mini.  Guy with the fastest time advances.
• A player is randomly chosen from each team.  Both have 15 minutes to complete as many questions as they can from the Analytical Reasoning section of an LSAT (which is also randomly selected from a book of ten practice tests).  Guy with the best score advances.  If they tie, the punters have a knife fight at midfield, first guy to draw blood advances.
9. Romo was probably right that Buffalo should've kicked off short of the endzone to run off some clock with 0:13 left.  I suspect, however, that McDermott did not want to be the second Bills coach to lose a playoff game on a kick return with no time left.
10. Only six punts, very few penalties, no gross injuries, receivers running free all over the place, QBs looking like superheroes, 5-5 combined on fourth down, lots and lots of points, defensive futility.  This is what the league wants.  

COVID-420

 SCIENCE!

There is no reason for me to be bumping down zman's epic tome, but I think Whit missed me a bit, so I thought I'd pop in here to GTB HQ before I return to the hellsite that is twitter dot com. And why actually produce a post for the first time in months now, you ask? 'CAUSE WEED, that's why. More specifically, how some recent scientific study showed that cannabis may prove useful in some cases fighting this fucking god awful never-ending shitshow pandemic.

"Compounds in cannabis can prevent infection from the virus that causes Covid-19 by blocking its entry into cells, according to a study published this week by researchers affiliated with Oregon State University. A report on the research, “Cannabinoids Block Cellular Entry of SARS-CoV-2 and the Emerging Variants,” was published online on Monday by the Journal of Natural Products."

Puff, puff, prevent folks. Think it's time to get Luniz to cut a new track.

My Experiences with Unions and Monkeys: Part 1

After graduating from college I got a job working in a laboratory for a large pharmaceutical company.  My site was over 100 years old and was responsible for many important innovations over the decades.  It was a throwback to an earlier time when companies did everything in-house.  For example, there was an eyeglasses shop on site.  You could bring your prescription and they would make free safety glasses for you.  The frame options were terrible and the lenses were bulletproof-glass-thick but they were free.  I got a pair of prescription sunglasses there.

They also had their own plumbers, electricians, HVAC repair, you name it.  It was almost like a little town unto itself or maybe a college campus.  All of these repair/support roles were unionized.

Like many other laboratories, mine had freezers that went all the way down to -80C, we referred to them as a "minus eighty."  You put things in a minus eighty to assure they don't degrade or break down.  You know how they find a frozen wooly mammoth perfectly preserved in ice once in a while?  That's what a minus eighty does.

One day I went to open one of the minus eighties and there were a bunch of lights flashing on the front.  The thermometer said it was only -60C or something like that.  So I quickly moved as much as I could from the broken minus eighty to my other minus eighty, but I didn't have enough room for all of it so I used space in another lab's minus eighty with the promise that I would get it out of there as soon as possible.

Then I called refrigeration.  They said they could fix it but I had to call trucking to get it over to them.  I called trucking and they said I needed to get it on the loading dock so they could pick it up.  So I unplugged the minus eighty and rolled it to the door (they're all on wheels).  It was too big to fit so I had to take the door off the hinges.  Then I rolled it to the freight elevator, went down two flights, and pushed it onto the loading dock.  I told trucking where it was and a few days later they picked it up and brought it to refrigeration.

Months passed.  I called refrigeration about once a week and they assured me they would get to it soon.  My colleagues were pissed that all of our stuff was smushed into one minus eighty and/or in someone else's minus eighty.  No one knew where anything was so they had to check two minus eighties to find their antibodies or whatever.

The other lab was pissed that I put stuff in their minus eight for months.  I told them the story with refrigeration but they didn't care.  They complained to the head of their lab who complained to the head of my lab who came to me and I promised him I didn't break the minus eighty, I'm just the stupid mope who found it thawing and tried to take care of the situation.  He liked me and didn't give me a hard time.  He was a frat guy and he was delighted when he told me I needed to take the annual sexual harassment training and I replied "I don't need sexual harassment training, I was in a frat and I know all about it."  He was fooling around with someone else in the lab so he knew all about it too.

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I walked over to refrigeration a few times to see where things stood.  I never saw anyone fixing any equipment but there was a lot of bullshitting and eating.  To be fair, the place was littered with fridges and freezers and air conditioners and lots of oddball lab equipment that involved a condenser so they had a lot to do, and the union didn't let them do much during the course of an eight hour day.  I was persistent and polite and told them how much grief I was getting over this freezer with the hope that they might move me up in the queue.

Finally I got a call from refrigeration--the minus eight was ready to come home.  Of course, they couldn't do anything about it, I had to set it all up.  So I called trucking and they brought it to the loading dock.  When I started to push it into the freight elevator the truck driver said "Oh!  Whut da fug do yoo tink YAW doin?!?"  And I replied "Bringing the freezer back upstairs."  It might have been better if I said "I'm fuggin yaw wife ya limp dick marmalook!"  He was apoplectic.  "Dat's a YOONyin job!  You can't move dat fridge!" 

I guess the look on my face helped him realize I had no idea what he was talking about.  He softened a bit and explained "Dis is a YOONyin shop.  Awl the diffrint depahtmints have a contract so dat only YOONyin imployEEZ can do spuhsific stuff.  Only trucking can drive tings from one location to anover.  Only mooving can moov tings.  Das how dis goes."

I thanked him for the clarification and left the minus eighty on the loading dock.  I called moving and asked them to move the freezer back.  They said it would take a week.  I said something like "I'm not asking you to push it to Chicago, just roll it 15 feet onto the elevator and down the hall to the lab."  That was not the correct approach.  Two weeks later they called to tell me they were on their way to move the minus eighty.  And of course I was still catching frequent shit from everyone I worked with over the situation.

via Gfycat

I met two gentlemen on the loading dock.  There were always two guys.  If you needed an outlet fixed, two guys showed up.  If a toilet was clogged, two guys showed up.  They would look at whatever needed repair, condescendingly tell you how stupid you were to allow this to happen, then one of them would take 90 minutes to fix it while talking to the other one about whether to buy an F-150 or a Silverado.  The answer was always F-150 but it was a popular debate.  When Iceman, the guy who delivered the dry ice, got a purple Ford Ranger it brought disgrace upon his wife and children.  Or they would debate what modifications to make to their motorcycles, or talk shit about some other guy's modifications to his motorcycle.  Occasionally the debate would involve Mustang vs. Camaro and they liked it when I chimed in (so they could mock me for driving a Miata, which honestly was great fun).  Then they would leave.

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It was not uncommon for the two guys to have the same name so one would be Big and the other would be Little (based on physical size not age).  Like Big Ray and Little Ray the electricians.  If they didn't have the same name the junior guy would get a shitty nickname.  Like if the senior guy was Lenny the junior guy was called Squiggy.

I don't remember the guys' names but the big guy was big, kind of a Rob Ryan look-alike only bigger.  He intimated that I was a wimp because I was not fat or tall and I did not move things.  He wheeled the minus eighty into the freight elevator while the little guy remained silent.  We rode up to the third floor and he pushed it down the hall.  When we got to the freezer room he realized it wouldn't fit through the doorway.  I said "Yeah, you have to take the door off the hinges to get it in."

He exploded.  "I can't take duh daw awf iz hinjiz!!  I'm moving!  Das a fuhsilluhdeez job!"

I couldn't hold myself together.  "Dis iz fuggin boolshit!" I replied.  "I've been waidin tree fuggin munts tuh get dis freezer back!  It's been siddin on da loadin dock for two goddam weeks while I waidid for you to spend tree minits rollin it up here!  I got everyone in dis bildin bustin my bawls about geddin dis freezer back!  I got every delivery guy in a hundrid mile radius bustin my bawls about dis fuggin ting blockin dem on da loading dock!  Now you're just gonna leave it in da fuggin hawlway until someone from facilities removes da door?  How long will I haveta wait for him?  Den how long do I haveta wait for you ta come back ta roll it trew da doorway?  And da whole time I'm gonna have Safety up my ass about da fire hazard from blockin da hawlway with a fuggin minus eighty!  Fug dat.  I'm takin da door off myself and you're rollin da freezer in.  You can tell whoever da hell you want dat I did dis, I don't give a fug."

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He was stunned.  I walked to my lab bench and got my electric screwdriver (I had to disassemble and clean our 96-well plate washer at least twice a month so I splurged on the screwdriver).  I started unscrewing the screws that held the door in place, mumbling stuff like "Deez fuggin mutts" under my breath.  The big moving guy sheepishly said "I kin do dat, but don't tell nobody I did.  I'll get in big trouble wit fuhsilluhdeez."  Eventually I relented so he could salvage his dignity.  The door came down, the minus eight went in, the door went back up, and I was able to get my group's stuff back in the deep freeze.

To put it more succinctly, but perhaps less entertainingly, what would've taken a week or less with almost zero effort from me on the free market took months of time and immeasurable angst through our on-site union shops.  That's my experience with unions.

Emergency Filler

Shlara asks, Shlara gets. I don't know when this turned into a Harry Styles stan blog, but I don't hate it. Came across this cover of Peter Gabriel's 'Sledgehammer' on the interwebz recently, though it was recorded in March 2020, in the Before Times. It's really good. And so you can enjoy it, too, while we wait on the final day of Gheorghemas.

What Premier League Club Should a Gheorghie Support: The Shlara Edition

Shlara is likely the most accomplished of the Gheorghies. First of all, she knows Gheorghe, for chrissakes.

If you start typing her name into the Ghoogles, it autocompletes it correctly. She's served in senior executive roles in multiple organizations, has been on the board of directors of several significant non-profits, and has founded her own business. As Guy Fieri notes, she's the real deal.

She's a serious person, indeed. She's got substance. Her career has been marked by a focus on communications, social purpose, and enterprise community relations.

Nobody could argue that Shlara is shallow. But she does have a weakness for a certain type of tall, handsome authority figure. Jay Wright, for example. 

Shlara needs a football side that's deeply entrenched in its community. One that takes its responsibility to its supporters and the people its local environs seriously. If it happens to be led by a handsome fellow who looks good in a suit, so much the better.

Shlara should support Aston Villa.

Villa are a solid side, the best team in Birmingham, which is a cultured and vibrant city in England's West Midlands. They were one of the founding members of the Premier League, only dropping out of the top division for three years in the mid-2010s. They're currently a solid fixture at the top level, though early season inconsistency led to the firing of head man Dean Smith in November. (Ironically, from a Gheorghian perspective, Smith was immediately hired by Zman's Norwich.)

Smith's departure opened the door for Villa to name one of England's legendary players to his first Premier League head coaching job. Stephen Gerrard capped a magnificent 18-year career with Liverpool in 2015. He played a valedictory campaign in MLS with LA Galaxy before beginning his coaching career in earnest. After a stint with Liverpool's U18 side, Gerrard led Glasgow Rangers from 2018 to late last year, taking the team to its first Scottish Premiership title in 10 years and going undefeated in the process in 2020.

He's also a handsome lad. Again, we note that Shlara isn't shallow. Not at all.

Villa also walk the walk in Birmingham. The club's relationship with Acorns Children's Hospice is unusually close in comparison with others in the sporting world. Villa has worn the charity's logo on its kits in games past and sold kits with that livery to raise money. The club's foundation serves a wide range of community needs, including food delivery, wellness training, and other educational missions.

In addition to Shlara, Prince William is a Villa fan. As is Tom Hanks - a good dude, for sure. So she's in fine company. Villa's claret and blue kits are distinctive, and the club's rampant lion logo is classy and cool. Like Shlara.

Up the Villans! Up the Shlara!

Shuteye Evolution

Most of us don’t think much about sleep, unless we aren’t getting enough or have to buy a mattress. In both instances, it costs, which seems the modern baseline for attention. Sometimes, however, subjects present themselves a little differently. 

In the past few days, sleep and history crossed my radar from uncommon directions. The takeaway is that present waking and sleeping patterns can be argued as relatively recent, products of the Industrial Revolution and modern conveniences such as electricity and the light bulb. 

Our window for sleep is compressed compared to our ancestors, some of whom slept in two phases during the night – what’s called “biphasic sleep” – with a two- or three-hour awake period in the middle, in which they tended to chores or business, prayed, socialized, had sex or simply relaxed. 

The notion first came to my attention while reading Colson Whitehead’s novel, “Harlem Shuffle.” In it, the main character, Ray Carney, recalls that one of his college business professors told students that, pre-Industrial Revolution, many people split their sleep segments during the night and got things done in-between. I thought it an interesting aside, but didn’t give it further thought. 

In subsequent days, though, I came across two other stories, one on CNN’s website and one on the BBC’s site, about historic sleeping habits and “two sleeps” and what they might mean for people and health today. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control, adults need at least seven hours of sleep per night, but a 2014 study found that 35.2 percent of adults were getting less than that. The CDC says that inadequate sleep is linked to an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity and depression, as well as diminished ability and chronic fatigue. 

A gent named A. Roger Ekirch, a history professor at Virginia Tech, was researching nocturnal life in pre-industrial Europe and America for a book. He scanned a 17th-century English court deposition in which a young girl described the evening when her mother left their home and was later found murdered. The girl said that her mother departed after “first sleep,” and made it sound as if it were routine. Ekirch had never seen the phrase. His curiosity piqued, he began to look for mentions of the practice elsewhere. He came across hundreds of references to “first sleep” and “second sleep” in letters, diaries, medical textbooks, newspapers, plays and songs. 

Biphasic sleep is included in his 2004 book, “At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past.” Since then, he has compiled more than 2,000 references to split-sleep schedules across many languages and cultures, going back to ancient Greece. In his research, Ekirch also came across a 1992 experiment conducted by Thomas Wehr, a psychiatrist and sleep researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health. Wehr tracked the sleep patterns of 15 men, all of whom had normal schedules – they turned in mid-to-late evening and slept straight through until morning. He reduced the number of “daylight” hours the men experienced from 16 to 10 each day, then put them in darkened environments for the remaining time. 

After 30 days, the men no longer slept in one long stretch, but gradually split their sleep periods into roughly equal halves, with a 1-to-3 hour awake period in the middle. In effect, Wehr recreated biphasic sleep. Reading about Wehr’s experiment “was, apart from my wedding and the birth of my children, probably the most exciting moment in my life,” Ekirch told the BBC, which conveys a little about how academics are wired. 

When he contacted Wehr and shared his own historical findings, “I think I can tell you he was as exhilarated as I was.” Researcher Benjamin Reiss, chairman of the English department at Emory University in Atlanta, is among those who think current sleep patterns have a capitalistic, mercenary component, a point he argues in his book, “Wild Nights: How Taming Sleep Created Our Restless World.” “The answer is really to follow the money,” Reiss told CNN. When it became more efficient and productive to have large numbers of people show up to work at factories, sleep schedules became squeezed and consolidated, Reiss says. Sleep also became associated with laziness, and productivity and working without sleep signs of strength. 

In Whitehead’s novel, a terrific read by the way, Carney toggles between respectable businessman and shady dealer. He adopts the practice of split sleep for a period. He uses the French word, “dorveille,” to describe it, but spells it phonetically – dorvay. “Dorveille” technically means the dreamlike, semi-conscious state between waking and sleeping, but Whitehead uses it as a literary device – he titles the middle segment of the novel “Dorvay” – and Carney uses it to mean the active, awake period between sleep periods. “Carney knew crime’s hours when he saw them – dorvay was crooked heaven, when the straight world slept and the bent got to work. An arena for thieving and scores, break-ins and hijacks, when the con man polishes the bait and the embezzler cooks the books. In-between things night and day, rest and duty, the no-good and the up-and-up. Pick up a crowbar, you know the in-between is where all the shit goes down.” 

Scholars and researchers find Ekirch’s work interesting, but stop short of concluding that biphasic or multi-phase sleep patterns were the norm. Brigitte Steger, a senior lecturer in Japanese studies at the University of Cambridge in the UK, said that she’s found no evidence or mention of “first” or “second sleep” historically in Japan. She thinks that daily behaviors and sleep patterns are cultural. Insomnia is a prevalent sleep disorder, particularly in the middle of the night when people wake up and are unable to get back to sleep quickly. Ekirch wonders if it’s a disorder or a physiological throwback to our ancestors. 

Modern life and conveniences probably make biphasic sleep impractical for all but a few. It may be simply a previous behavioral pattern based on what was known and available, such as changing clothes rather than bathing, or eating only two meals a day. Pace of life all but guarantees that we will continue to wrestle with sleep going forward. I promise that I won’t take offense if any of you use this post as a sleep aid.

Take Eleven Minutes and Twenty-Seven Seconds to Watch This

This won Bring a Trailer's Video of the Year Award.  It's worth your time.

Woke Up This Morning...

Day 12 coming soon. Cauc Hop II coming soon. Chinese Democracy coming soon. World peace coming soon.

For now... here's something Teej would have approved of back when he ran the show here.

Surprise Filler

I realize you're eagerly awaiting Day 12, whether you should be or not.  You could be basking in the glow of your team's national championship, or wallowing in the depths of despair after your school . . . bungled a 4th quarter drive to miss out on the FCS playoffs entirely. (Or lost last night after being utterly stymied on offense.)

You could be watching film and television, but these days the current trend is to take every lead character you've been excitedly following for years, if not decades, and either murder them off or ruin their lives beyond recognition. (Happened again this week.) What gives?

Eh. I guess that's life as well.

Anywho, one pleasant surprise was that neither my favorite weekly TV host nor his show was cancelled, and he even awoke from his annual January slumber to record an 8-minute piece in front of a life audience that could only be classified as pure dipshittery. So let's have a look.

For the record, I never read this book. I didn't see the movies. But I still found this silly and amusing.

Enjoy, and see you on Day 12.