bleepless in Boston

Well, truth be told, it should be cleepless in Cambridge but that wasn't nearly as funny. So I took a little bit of license with my location.

4:22AM in Harvard Square and I can't sleep. In the morning...well, later in the morning, I will be beginning a class at the Harvard School of Education. One week of continuing ed which will, no doubt, reinforce my long standing belief that grad school is useless unless your ultimate goal is to stay out of the workforce.

So I'm sitting around in the hotel's famously uncomfortable bathrobe (why are the sleeves so short). There is a sign that says if I like the robe I can keep it and pay $48. Really? I can? Gosh, lucky me. If you have a pair of pants that itches and rides up, I'd love the opportunity to pay you $67 to keep it.

I have the Police running on Youtube in the background and have been thinking about bands which consistently impress me. Not the classic bands, but more contemporary ones. Which groups keep putting out songs that join the pantheon of classics instead of being flashes in the pan or one/two hit wonders. I mean, no offense to the Georgie Satellites or Katrina and the Waves but they didn't have either the longevity or consistency that I'm talking about.

It strikes me that post-Tom Petty, I can name only the Foo Fighters and Weezer as groups that fit the bill. Maybe the Black-Eyed Peas. You know what I'm talking about -- when you hear a new song that you like and find that it is yet another song by a well established band and you say "holy crap...these guys just don't miss."

The drive up was uneventful. I did see a Maserati with the Massachusetts license plate "Aeros" so I wonder if that was Steven Tyler or something, but as he was driving a sports car and I was in a beat up Honda minivan, and it was raining heavily and he was going 80 in an area with speed traps every 3 miles, I chose not to try and keep up and find out. So Mr. Tyler (or Mr. Perry, if it was you) feel free to send me a line to let me know that you saw me on 84 east yesterday afternoon. We'll share a drink and reminisce about traffic and laugh about how you haven't put out a good song since you kicked the drugs.

The room here at the Charles hotel? Pretty standard. A square with a bed, TV and other assorted furniture. The bars of soap have ingredients like oatmeal, seaweed and coconut. I might as well rub lunch on my face. The fancy bit? A TV built into the bathroom mirror. I'm not sure exactly why but there you have it. The wireless connection is weak and the AC is blowing on the back of my neck. No view to speak of, except in the mirror. I walked through Harvard Square to get my bearings. As unimpressive as I remember it. Too many stores selling me stuff which has as its major selling point that I bought it in Harvard Square. Sure, you can get fancy chocolates or high priced jams but where do you go to buy staples for the food pantry which don't need a certificate of authenticity? There is also no shortage of homeless people. If I'm homeless, I guess there are worse places to panhandle. I gave a guy a dollar. He said "god bless you." At first I thanked him but then I thought about it. If he really had the power to confer god's blessing on me, wouldn't he use that power to get himself a job or a house? Just wondering.

and there was much rejoicing

Dateline Teaneck:
Parents across this quiet suburb, 10 miles west of New York City, breathed a collective sigh of joy as buses full of sugared up children drove off towards summer camp this morning. High-fives and hugs abounded as both women and men cried openly once the buses were out of sight. "A month without those little mooches!" screamed one mother as she pumped the air with her fist. "I'm going home to drink from the milk container and watch something besides Hannah Montana." The general feeling was reinforced by a parent who blasted Steam's "Na Na Kiss Him Goodbye" from a portable CD player. Many parents sang along. "Time to go take a real hot shower," one father exulted, "and then go out to eat a restaurant which doesn't deliver crayons to the table." One parent broke down in sobs of relief, exclaiming repeatedly "No one will rolls eyes at me for a month!"

In stark contrast to the popular sentiment, one father was heard sadly whimpering, "Sure I'll go drink myself silly...but who will be there to rub my back while I vomit? Who?"

New TV Show Ideas

Well, the muse descended and then tried to escape but I grabbed her leg and sat her back down. I remember most of what she told me so I'm writing it down now. She was in quite a strange mood this AM...

I haven't googled to see if these ideas have been posted. If s, I apologize to whoever came up with them first.

Here are some short write ups for a bunch of new TV shows.

1. A zany comedy about the daily life of a doctor in prison, called "Assume the Physician" (the spin off about an ex-con who works with an exorcist is called "Assume the Possession")

2. A deeply devout Italian family tries to keep its secrets from an ailing Matriarch in the drama "Don't Tell-a-gram"

3. "Young Pablo and George" -- what comic misadventures would have ensued if Pablo Neruda had grown up next to George Santayana?

4. A salesman pretends to be gay to get a job at a marketing firm in Greenwich Village in "Bi and Sell."

5. What's it like to be the geek in West Beverly High? Find out on "Town Squares."

6. A Korean War vet and his captor from his years in an internment camp team up to run a deli in the new comedy "Seoul Survivors."

I had more but I forgot them...damn muse got away again. This is why I need to be followed by a scribe...like the lead in my new show "Write Away!"

On Having Nothing to Say

So there I was, yet again, wandering about among hundreds of people with nothing to say to any of them. I started thinking about what it is that people talk about...what is "small talk"? And I think I figured out my problem. I have worked very hard not to have any opinions. Without opinion,s you don't get in to fights with people about religion or politics or sports. And without opinions you don't become some overbearing boor who imposes some (usually incorrect and more usually boring if not downright offensive) ill thought out point of view about a current events story that I have never even heard of.

But the flip side of not having that strong opinion is that I have nothing to engage anyone about. Someone walks up and says "how's things" and I say "getting by" and that's about it. If he brings up elections, a local team or something spiritual, I usually beg out. Not that I don't have, deep inside, some preference, feelings or opinion, but these conversations are never the kind which lead to any persuasion, conclusion or really anything productive. So I demure and the conversation dies out. It isn't that I'm not deep or am inarticulate, it is just that I find most people and their opinions either beneath my level of discourse, or above it enough that I would rather devote the proper time, attention and energy to discussing it.

So without opinions that I have any interest in sharing, I'm stuck not having anyone to talk to as just filler conversation.

Nature vs. Nurture

Over the last month or so I have begun thinking in earnest about he nature vs. nurture debate. Are we who we are because of how we are raised and the influences during our life or is there something predetermined about it.

I have been a whirling microcosm of the debate for a long time now and I had always settles on the "it is both" camp because it made the most sense. Sure, we have genetic predispositions to things, but we also have free will. Of course our DNA might light a path but our experiences and exposures ignite us and direct us also.

Recently I have started rethinking. Now don't get me wrong -- when I say rethinking, I don't mean to say that I see either side of the issue as purely persuasive. I don't. I still know that both components are essential. But after watching children and adults really closely, and even thinking about myself, I think that I come down a whole lot more on the side of nature these days. If you take a bunch of little kids, all given the same schooling and brought up in the same general area (thus minimizing the different influences...yes, I know that family is a big part, but I'm not convinced that it is enough to counterbalance this argument) and some will naturally gravitate to certain things -- games, tv shows, skills etc. It just seems to me that some kids are "naturals" at some things that others could never master no matter how many years of training and practice. I don't think I could ever have been good at math. I might have been better with the right instruction, but I was brought up with 2 siblings, same schools, under the same roof, with the same parents, and yet they just clicked with the math/sciences and I didn't.

I'm not saying that I know exactly where on our dna strand there is a gene for "skill at sewing" or "liking spicy food and scary movies" but it's there.

I'm no expert, but...

well, actually, not "but" anything. I'm just no expert. I guess I've started to see that more and more recently. Even in areas where I know some stuff, I don't know the names fo the experts, the buzz words and the newest trends. Part of it that I just don't care. i do enough to get by and am happy being simple, ignorant and like that. When I get angry and hate stuff, it sometimes shows enough knowledge to have drawn angry conclusions and that's why I rarely get angry about politics. I find it too difficult to understand and therefore to care about.

But what gets to me is that while I can fake my way through a superficial conversation, there is just so much stuff I don't really know. I watch my friends who can have in depth discussions about business, politics, religion and sports -- they know names, dates and facts. And they make references and think in directions I can't follow. I feel like I'm barely hanging on, even when they talk about things I'm supposed to know really well.

So what do I know? Very little. What do I care? Not much more.

Us V. Them

I have been working on a new theory for a couple of days. I think I finally understand the difference between men and women. I know..I know...there have been scads of books, articles and such purporting to pinpoint the differences between the genders and I haven't read any of them. But they're wrong anyway.

I think that the central difference (and I generalize this to all men and women even though I can say this only applies to me and the wife...I feel empowered like that) is that men embrace sameness and consistency and women are more comfortable with change. That's it, but that's a whole heckuvalot.

I couldn't figure out why something I said on a Tuesday got me in to trouble while a similar comment on a Monday went unnoticed or even appreciated. Or why a food which went over well for a certain length of time suddenly was out of favor. What is wrong with being in a rut? Why is there the sudden need to change the bedding, or the furniture or the color of the living room? I'm a guy and I have no problem with it as it is. There must be some deep chemical need in women to change things every once in a while.

Why don't guys ask for directions? Because we're already going somewhere and to stop or change is against the inertia. It isn't laziness which keeps us from wanting to come on errands, but the rituals we have established and a lack of interest in shaking them up. We call it "superstition" when a football player always wears the same shoes or follows the same pre-game practices. maybe it is just that he's a guy and that's what makes him comfortable.

Men don't spontaneously decide to go clothes shopping. We buy what we need because we need it and want to be done with it quickly. The experience of shopping is indulging in change. We are goal directed because the process is just an exercise in uncomfortable shifting. Let's get to the conclusion so we can begin to readjust. We like things like sports betting odds because they give us a statistic sense of what will happen and we can (at least provisionally) rely on that as a near-certainty so we are in a comfort zone.

Yes, there are exceptions. Yes, some men like change and some women are ok with tradition and staying the course, but I think that the ebb and flow of female hormones and the fact that women have a cycle of changes which can be seen as inconstancy might provide a biological basis for differences.