The Boss

You know how in the 1960s popular music is said to have played a leading role in major cultural changes? It's a little hard for me to imagine that happening today. By and large, our music just seems so flimsy and meaningless. I mean, if Destiny's Child set out to destroy George W. Bush, how far do you think they'd get? (Would he even know?) Most of our top-selling musicians are, sadly, just not all that credible as cultural critics. They're hit-makers.

But holy cow--have you heard the new Bruce Springsteen album Devils & Dust? It plays pretty hard on God and fear and how bullying Iraqis is hard on our souls. And Mister "Born in the USA" might actually be the kind of guy politicians should pay a little attention to.

You have to hear the song to get the feel of its power. But just to give you a sample:

I've got my finger on the trigger
Tonight faith just ain't enough
And I look inside my heart
There's just devils and dust

But I've got God on my side
And I'm just trying to survive
But if what you do to survive
Kills the things you love

Fear is a dangerous thing
It'll turn your heart black you can trust
It'll take your God-filled soul
Fill it with devils and dust

The Chickenpox Vaccine

I'm against giving it to kids. Why? Because the chickenpox just isn't that bad for kids, and once they get it, they have perfect, lifetime immunity from the disease.

For adults, especially pregnant women, however, chickenpox can be extremely dangerous--fatal even. And we don't really know if the vaccine provides lifetime immunity. Researchers theorize it does, but no one was getting it fifty years ago, so we don't have the benefit of hindsight. No one knows for sure. We could, in theory, have a generation of adults who are vulnerable to chickenpox. Surely that's worse than a bunch of kids getting it.

To me the perfect plan is to hope your kid gets a mild case of chickenpox at some point, and if they don't, then give them the vaccine some time in the teen years. So that is why we asked our doctor not to give the vaccine to our 18-month old. The state requires it by the time she goes to school, but we were hoping she have already had chickenpox by then.

But today, the doctor's office made a mistake of some kind, and they gave it to her! They did so without our knowledge, and after we had explicitly said we didn't want them to do that on a previous visit.

I'm a little shocked and pissed off about it. No, it's not the biggest deal in the world. A lot of people love their kids getting this vaccine. Most likely it won't it will harm her in any way.

But as long as we are acting within the law, I absolutely think my wife and I should get to make those decisions--and if ever anyone at the doctor's office is unsure, they should double-check! And just imagine if in a few years they find the vaccine doesn't give lifetime immunity. What a disservice and hassle.

Also, one last bit of rant: even though it was clearly a mistake, you can bet we won't be getting an apology. Why? Because malpractice insurers tell health care professionals never to apologize for anything--it's an admission of guilt and useable in court. That's kind of sad. The truth is there's no chance I'd sue the doctor in this case, and an apology would make me feel better about them than ever. But as it is, I feel a little betrayed.

Quote of the Night

We just had a couple over. She's a vet.

"At the end of the day," she casually says, "that testicle is ending up in a bin somewhere."

What's Up With CNN?

There's a very interesting article on yahoo right now about House Speaker Tom Delay. (He's the corrupt, maniacal jerk who controls Congress.) He has been very high on his horse lately about Terry Schiavo. He has been shredding our Constitution, and Terry Schiavo's dignity, in getting the federal government very involved.

It has been unclear whether or not he did all that out of personal religious conviction, or simply to curry favor with a certain bloc of influential donors and voters.

Now an AP article on yahoo reports that Delay concurred with his family's pulling the plug on his own father in 1988. So that would seem to nix the personal conviction angle, leaving us with a clearly exposed fraud of a House Speaker.

I went over to cnn.com to see that they had to say about it, and for about the millionth time since Bush took office, here was a story that made the GOP look bad that somehow didn't make the news at CNN. Please, can we all now agree that the major news media are not all liberal?

The Upanishads

I think maybe I should change the name of this blog to "bear with me," because I am liable to change topics like crazy.

Case in point: a few minutes ago I wrote about diaper snacks. That's so goofy I don't even know what it is.

Now here we go with the classics of sacred Indian literature.

So, please bear with me.

It goes like this. When I was in high school, my academic advisor was the school librarian. Every few months we would meet in the library and talk about my academic career. It was nice enough.

One day either I was running early and she was running late, so I was killing a little bit of time in the library. I decided to linger in plain view, so that we could see me as she bustled about helping some students. The ideal spot happened to be in the religion section.

Eventually I grabbed a book off the shelf to peruse. It happened to be the Upanishads, which is about three thousand years old and the source of a lot of India's religious thought. (Don't forget, India is the home of Hinduism and Buddhism, so that's a lot of religious thought we're talking about.)

I read the book for maybe a total of fifteen seconds before she was ready to see me. I read a sentence or two. But they have stuck with me for all this time. The gist of it was this (forgive the horribly bad paraphrase that is doubtless muddied with time--after all, I'm a guy who can't remember making up the phrase "pantless weekend" a few weeks ago, and this thing happened decades ago) : there are some things in life that are honey at the outset, and bitter lemon at the close. There are other things that are lemon at the outset, and sweet honey at the end.

That's it. That's the whole thing.

But it's an amazingly handy bit of perspective. Let's take heroin. From what I've heard, it's about the sweetest thing out there when you're new to it. But after a while, being a heroin user tends to get pretty bitter, right?

Or let's take things like going to work, cleaning, exercising, or getting an education. They are very often the very bitterest thing imaginable, but when you're all done--that's sweet!

Before I read that thing, I used to be tempted to think of things in terms of "is it something I want to do?" or "is it something I don't want to do?"

(There's a TV commercial where a guy gets three wishes. He ends up on a desert island with his dog and a lifetime supply of beer. I see the appeal, but that's the classic example of something that would be good in the long run. If you have ever woken up in nature--far from running water--after drinking too much, would know that this is really not a dream scenario at all, but the kind of dehydration nightmare that might inspire you to trespass at someone's private cabin at 5 am to slurp from their garden hose, only to have them yell at you as you speed off in your friend's Subaru.. It could happen, trust me.)

But in truth, the categories aren't nearly as simple as that. Getting what you want--meaningful, lasting happiness, for instance--is much more complicated than getting what you want right now. I think this line from the Upanishads can help sort that out. It's like informed free will.

Bad Parenting Ideas

I carry a little notebook in my pocket and jot things down once in a while, like the kind of lock I need to buy at Home Depot, directions to a friend's house, or my mother-in-law's incredible banana cream pie recipe.

Then, every now and again, there is entry like this:

Things You Should Never Do With Your Baby

• Icy Diaper Wipes
• "Tequila Worm" Dinner
• Diaper Snacks
• Pantless Weekend
• Help Daddy Scrape Old Paint
• Catch the Strange Dog
• Poish the Shiny Staircase

The funny thing is that I have no recollection whatsoever of writing that down.

Kyrgyz

Now that's a word most American's can't pronounce.

I'm not sure whether to be mystified, or impressed, that it is nonetheless all over the news these days.

Terry Schiavo is Bad for President Bush

From the beginning I think we have almost all felt that this sad story was intensely personal and, right or wrong, feeding tube or no feeding tube, should not be trotted out in the media day in and day out. It seems to have the effect of making this poor personal family crisis into a freak show.

Why, then, do we hear so much about it? Because, I had thought, it was what evangelical Christians wanted us to hear about, and they hold sway over our government in many ways. Well, that's partly true, but now there is a new CBS poll that shows even the vast majority of evangelicals do not like the government's getting involved in the Terry Schiavo case.

This is heart-warming in two ways. First, it means we are all more alike than we realized (a huge majority of every group polled, from liberals to evangelicals, wants the government to butt out). Second, it means that the Bush administration's unprincipled obedience to a few errant nutjobs from the extremities of the religious community is finally catching up to them politically: The same poll finds Bush's approval rating down six points, to 43 percent, since a month ago.

Remember the Pepsi Challenge?

According to the book I'm reading, lots of people can tell Coke from Pepsi if they take a sip from two cups. But, interestingly, very few can succeed if you change the game slightly:

• Get three glasses.
• Put Pepsi in one.
• Pour Coke in the two others.
  
• Tell someone to taste them all and pick out the one that's different.

Most people can't do better than get it right a third of the time--which they would do from random chance. The truth is, most of us have a very hard time remembering flavors and comparing them to other flavors.

This book is full of interesting crap like that. And some of it is very useful. It's Malcolm Gladwell's Blink.

VOIP Update

As I have mentioned before, we are getting VOIP through Vonage, and I promised to keep you updated on our efforts to save hundreds of dollars a month by ditching the local phone company for an internet-based phone service.

We are still in the set up phase.

So far, so complicated.

I had our local phone company here moving phone lines all around. We have to keep one phone line to carry the DSL that we use for high speed internet access. I wanted to take our home, office, and fax phone numbers with us to Vonage. You can't move the phone number of the line which your DSL is on though, so I had the DSL switched from our old fax line to the one extra line we would keep from the phone company.

Then much later I learned that for some stupid reason, Vonage won't let you take your fax line number with you. This information was not in their marketing materials. But our fax number is all over our letterhead, which costs about $1000 to reprint, so I wasn't eager to let that number go. I was stumped for a while.

But now it has occured to me that the only thing to do is to have the phone company back to move the DSL exactly where it used to be, on the fax line. We can fax on it and access the internet at the same time, which we have been doing for years. So I never had to have the phone company here in the first place. Double hassle, and it costs money every time they show up.

So I complained to Vonage, and they have agreed to give me $50 off, and they sent me two free hats. So that's not so bad, I guess. I mean, hats.

By the way, if you are considering signing up for VOIP, send me your e-mail address. If I refer you to Vonage, we both get a month of unlimited free calling in the U.S. What a deal! Maybe we'll end up with matching hats.

I Nominate Clifford Ray

In the last few days I have been hard at work on a story about the 1975 NBA Champion Golden State Warriors. It has been a good reason to dig into the life story of Clifford Ray, who is simply one of the most incredible men in the NBA.

• Without a lot of God-given size or ability, he manned the inside as Golden State won a championship in a season when they were supposed to suck.
• His teammates credit him with creating one of the most harmonious and friendly rosters in the league, which is especially incredible when you consider that team was led by the famously cantankerous Rick Barry.
• As an assistant coach who specializes in teaching big men, he has had miraculous results. If you follow his career, teams where he has been an assistant have been among the league's best in rebounding. Before and after his tenure, they were often among the worst. (That's a big deal, especially when you consider rebounding is in many ways the single most important statistic in determining which teamswin in the NBA.)
  

Clifford Ray is also a cancer survivor and a complete straight talker. I have interviewed him, several of his teammates, and his former coach in the last few days, and I come away with the impression that he should be someone's head coach, and soon. Players listen to him and respect him, which puts him head and shoulders above a lot of NBA coaches.

As a lifelong Portland fan, I think the Blazers should think about offering him the job after they finish trying and failing to lure Flip Saunders or Phil Jackson. The timing is right, too. Orlando fired his head coach, former Blazer guard Johnny Davis, a few hours ago. Instead of letting Coach Ray fill the slot, they bypassed him for a former minor league player called Chris Jent. I don't know the politics of it, but it seems that Ray may not be feeling so loyal to Orlando just now.

My First Yoga Class

Not only am I man enough to go to a yoga class, but I am even man enough to admit it publicly.

For those of you who are now questioning my machismo, I will say only that if it's good enough for Michael Jordan, it's good enough for me.

I went to a swanky new place called Yogaphoria ("The Inner Health Club") which, you might notice on the website, comes with the recommendation of one Cindy Crawford. So there!

I had a great teacher in my beginning Ashtanga class. Her name is Shari and she knows when to gently push you into the proper position, just when to say nothing and let you sort it out for yourself, and just when to discreetly give you a block to sit on because your hips are so goddamned tight that you can't properly sit Indian style without falling over backwards.

A couple of tips for anyone considering going to their first yoga class:

• you'll spend a lot of time doubled over--a loose shirt will be up around your neck making you feel stupid the whole time
• plan on being barefoot, which means get that unsighlty athlete's foot taken care of before you go
• it's BYO sticky mat
• don't place said sticky mat too close to the woman next to you (it will be a woman) because you might then brush against each other from time to time, and she might think you're some kind of pervert

Sebastian Telfair

My beloved Portland Blazers are in the midst of rebuilding. According to almost anyone, there is little reason for hope--everyone is so preoccupied with how bad the team is this year.

But me? When it comes to this team, I'm a fan. So I believe. And the reason I believe is because they really are building for the future. An NBA team can only have 15 players at any given time, and Portland currently has six--Sebastian Telfair, Travis Outlaw, Zach Randolph, Darius Miles, Viktor Khyrapa, and Sergei Monia--who should all be good in three or four years. We will be getting another high lottery pick this June. If we keep nurturing this nucleus and adding to it when the right characters come along for the right price, we'll be fine.

In the meantime, I have stopped even reading the articles about the players who aren't part of teh franchise's future, preferring instead to devour any articles about those young ones. One of the most in-depth analyses I have ever seen of any of these players comes from famed coach Phil Jackson's buddy Charley Rosen. It's about Telfair, the point guard of our future, who was at high school in Brooklyn a year ago.

See you at the Rose Garden in 2008.

How to Stop Dave DeBusschere

Dave DeBusschere was a magnificent basketball player for the New York Knicks for years, including their most recent championship team (which was in 1973--before, I might add, all but four of the current Knicks were born). As a leader and a rebounder, he was simply unstoppable.

Although, it does kind of seem like my friend George might have figured out a way to stop him. He recently e-mailed me this story:

I was playing golf with my brother in law at his home course, West Hampton Country Club where Dave DeBusschere also played. We were teeing off on the tenth hole when my brother-in-law points out Debush. I am in awe to see this incredible athlete with shocking silver hair putting out. I turn and tee up my ball. I unload my drive and it hits the one telephone pole on the whole golf course just to the left of the tee, ricochets over our heads and hits Debush in the nuts.

We are at this point laughing hysterically while Debush is rolling around the green directly behind us in severe pain. About a year later I am walking down Wall Street to my office and Dave DeBusschere gets out of a limo, walks up to me and my brother-in-law and says to me "why didn't you yell fore?" I can't believe he remembers me and can only mutter, I'm sorry but I did yell "two." He laughs and invites us to lunch later that day. As it turns out he died about two years later in about the same spot he ran into me on Wall Street.

Bad News for Osama bin Laden

(Bear with me, I'll get to Osama bin Laden.)

In basketball, and in life, there are tons of times when you are outmatched.

In basketball, one great way to deal with bigger, stronger, faster players is to use your head. Rather than obsessing about the fact that you can't outjump or outrun your opponent, you can often find success by thinking about what it is that your opponent does not want you to do. Players who are much bigger than you, for instance, do not want a lot of contact, because the referees' calls tend to favor poor little guys who get knocked to the ground, instead of the big brutes who knock them down. Similarly, very fast players tend to get it in their head that they will win by beating you to wherever you want to go. They get twitchy with anticipation. A good fake can send them sprawling.

We need to think like that in fighting Al Qaeda. Those people who are involved in hunting down Al Qaeda have for a long time played into Al Qaeda's hands, by trying to match Al Qaeda strength for strength. In short, as Al Qaeda has demonized the west, our leaders have demonized Islam. But, of course, emphasizing that division only makes Al Qaeda's meatheaded, violent approach seem more sensible.

But in Spain, it seems, someone has figured out the smart approach. According to this article, leading Spanish muslims have condemned Osama bin Laden. That's exactly the kind of thing he does not want. That kind of action erodes his influence more than any missile ever will. Building a bridge to moderate Muslims is a powerful idea all of our leaders should embrace, both because it's what our opponents do not want us to do, and because it's the right thing to do.

In fact, we don't even need to catch Osama bin Laden. I don't think it'll happen this way, but imagine if we could get 99.99% of Muslims to condemn his boneheaded, excessively violent approach. Without broad support, he's just another Montana Militia-type wingnut huddled somewhere in the woods, promising his people over cold spam that one day really really soon it'll all be better.

Election Soul Salvation

I know, I'm about four months late in posting this, but for those of you who have ever felt directionless, dispirited, and perhaps even a little pissed off about the last election, I urge you to read this speech Forrest Church delivered the day after the elections.

If, on the other hand, you were thrilled with the last election, then I would argue it's even more important that you read the speech.

World's Worst Salesman

Moments ago I was working away at my desk, when a man called asking for my wife (and business partner). I asked his name, and he lost all confidence. "Oh, gosh," he stammered, "you'll probably have to take a message. I'm just calling about no-fee 401(k)s. She said she wasn't interested when we spoke about six months ago. I don't suppose she'd be interested now, right? Maybe I'll just send a brochure if that's OK."

If you own stock in whatever company he's representing, sell now.

School Food

Have you seen Supersize Me ?

It's a shocking documentary. The narrator, Morgan Spurlock, vomits on camera. He also has vital organs shutting down--just because he eats nothing but McDonald's food for a month.

But by far the most shocking thing of all, however, is the footage of school lunches. By 2005, we all know that eating deep fried, high-chemical soulless crap hastens us all to the grave. Agreed? Yet we actually pay our hard-earned tax dollars to encourage our children to not only eat but to also become addicted to exactly this kind of food. Our school lunch programs are shameful, and who knows how much various diseases and disorders (and ADD) could be reduced by offering only healthy food, like fruits, vegetables, whole grains to school kids.

People are finally starting to do something about it. Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver now appears to be on the case. Ditto Arnold Schwarzenegger. And Stonyfield Farm has an action plan for parents which is one of the coolest business/political buddy systems I have ever seen (from a company whose founder, I have read, was the biggest individual supporter of Howard Dean's run for president).

The school lunch problem is so central to the American obesity/health crisis, that I am suspicious of any chef, doctor, author, pundit, etc. who publicly purports to want to solve this problem but is not working to be part of the solution. It's the 800-pound gorilla in the corner. (Or is that somebody's kid?)

Fitting Long Things Into Cars

People who ski know how to fit something two meters long into a regular car. No sweat.

People who do not ski, on the other hand, get worried looks on their faces as they approach their sedans, with carts full of lumber in the Home Depot parking lot. They sometimes even have arguments about with their spouses.

In case you don't ski, it goes like this: Open the rear passenger door, ideally on the driver's side. Poke the feet of said long thing (could be a beanpole, ski, mannequin, etc.) between the front seats and into the spot where the passengers knees would go. Keep poking down into the foot area, until the ass end of the thing clears the door. Once the whole thing is in the car, back the ass end up until rests against the rear window, and center it straight down the middle of the car. The front will fall in nicely onto the passenger's side of the hand brake. There will even be room for four passengers, no sweat.

And if the skis still have ice packed into the bindings, then the kids who sit in the back (it's always the kids) will get dripped on starting about fifteen minutes after you start driving.

Maybe the Best Basketball Book I've Ever Read

I just finished reading My Losing Season by Pat Conroy. He's the guy who wrote the Prince of Tides, Beach Music, and some other books (including, I just noticed, a cookbook).

In other words, he's a serious novelist (who's not above the occasional cookbook). But he's also a former starting NCAA division one point guard, and it's clear that basketball is the great passion of his life.

This book is about his childhood, especially his senior year hooping it up at the Citadel. His life then was full of abuse. Physical and mental abuse from his nightmarish father, physical and mental abuse in hazing at the Citadel, and mental abuse from his boneheaded coach. It's a wholly depressing pile of hopeless tragedy and sadness. There is no joy in this book whatsoever, except in four of life's finest things: friendship, writing, reading, and basketball.

And he's a very good writer, and I don't think there's a better book out there to give a true, first-hand account of the joys and anxieties of being on a sports team. This book is the star of my fledgling collection of good books about basketball.

We're Going to Space

Speaking of the Big Ball, you know those images of earth from space that everyone loves so much? It's a view we all might actually enjoy one day.

I have never been all that into space. I mean, yes, of course I own the Star Wars trilogy and even watch it now and again even after all these years (and my dog is, in fact, part wookie). But I'm not one of those people who would give his eye teeth to go to space, and when you hear about nutty entrepreneurs spending millions to go to space, I see that like collecting tiaras--something you'd only do if you were absolutely demented with cash.

But I am writing an article right now about that nut Richard Branson, who has joined with some other poorly groomed billionaires to create Virgin Galactic. You can basically book now to go to space in 2008. Prices start at a cool $200,000.

You have to assume, however, that the prices for this kind of thing will drop pretty seriously as competition develops and the technology is streamlined. If the percentage drop rivals that of DVD players over the last few years, we might literally be going to space in our lifetimes. We really might all be astronauts. We might get to see the earth as a big ball. If not us, then certainly our kids.

It's a little hard to grasp.