Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: Memoirist BS
Cal-Stanford Big Game, 1982
November 20, 1982: After racing through a sea of red (the Stanford band), Kevin Moen carries the ball into the end zone, making it Cal 25, Stanford 20.
I listened to this on the radio. I don’t even like football, and my heart was in my mouth. Good God. The Stanford band lost them the game!
You can watch the video here, and you can read the transcript of Joe Starkey’s play by play here. Tell me if you don’t feel at least a bit of schadenfreude, thinking about what the team did to the band members after the game. Blow me a tune through that hole, trombonist.
Now meet the Republican party’s version of the Stanford band.
Evangelist James C. Dobson recently opened his trap on the subject of George W. Bush’s Supreme Court nominee, Harriet E. Miers. From the New York Times story:
On his radio program last Wednesday, Mr. Dobson said, “When you know some of the things that I know – that I probably shouldn’t know – you will understand why I have said, with fear and trepidation, that I believe Harriet Miers will be a good justice.”
Seems Karl Rove has been whispering sweet nothings in Jimmy’s ear. Seems certain Senators, certain powerful Republican Senators like Arlen Specter, ain’t too keen on Amrrrka becoming a theocracy. Seems Jimmy D. might jes have to testify before a whole passel o’ angry Congressmen on this one.
Seems Jimmy D. done run out on the field before the game was up, shore ’nuff.
You can read the New York Times story here.
D.
Your morning dose of fugliness
Because I love y’all so very, very much.
Six degrees of me
Remember the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game?
1. Kevin Bacon sucked in Footloose with Sarah Jessica Parker,
2. Sarah Jessica Parker sucked in Sex and the City with Kim Catrall, who sucked more often, and
3. Kim Catrall didn’t get to suck Kurt Russell in Big Trouble in Little China.
Thus, Kurt Russell’s “Bacon Number” is 3. The University of Virginia’s Bacon Oracle can connect Kurt to Kevin in 2 steps, but I think my links are more fun. You ought to get points for fun.
After much consideration, I’ve decided I’m a full six degrees away from Kevin. Here’s the connection:
1. Kevin Bacon played with Benjamin Bratt in The Woodman (2004).
2. Benjamin Bratt played with Michael Keaton in One Good Cop (1991).
3. Michael Keaton played “Himself” on three episodes of Fred Rogers’ “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” (1975).
4. Fred Rogers hosted a special episode of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood in which he costarred with Koko, the sign language-facile gorilla (1998). Here they are in a loving pose even Bam couldn’t snark:
5. Koko once attended a halloween party at the house of molecular biologist Larry Kedes.
6. Larry Kedes was my PhD thesis advisor.
By this reckoning, my Bacon Number is 6. Are you surprised I had to go through an ape to get to Kevin? Even if she is a very, very intelligent ape.
This isn’t my lowest Bacon Number, but it is the most entertaining connection I could find. If my Bacon Number translated into something practical, such as income, status with literary agents and publishers, or ease of accumulating female groupies, then my Bacon Number would be 2.
What, you don’t believe me?
1. Kevin Bacon played in The Big Picture with Eddie Albert (1989).
2. Eddie Albert costarred* with Yours Truly in Green Acres (1970).
You realize what this means, don’t you? All of you are, at a bare minimum, only three degrees of separation away from Kevin Bacon.
We can all die happy.
True Koko story:
Larry Kedes knew Koko by way of a post-doc in his lab. This post-doc was, at the time, Penny Patterson’s photographer and significant other. Penny is Koko’s teacher and bestest friend.
Anyway, Larry thought it would be a hoot to have Koko over for Halloween. She could answer the door and hand out candy, and the neighborhood kids would all figure Koko was a human in a gorilla suit. Since Penny always treated Koko as if she were a human in a gorilla suit, it all made sense, sort of.
Think about it: if you wanted to invite a gorilla over to your house, wouldn’t your first question be, “Where will she crap?” Brilliant ape that she is, Koko is toilet trained. Larry thought he had all his bases covered.
In his plans, he unfortunately neglected one detail. Koko had never before seen a bidet.
I wonder who cleaned up the mess?
Koko, if you’re reading this, here’s how to use a bidet.
D.
*I’ll admit my choice of verbs stretches credulity.
THIS JUST IN
Oh, man, this is just too good not to share. Thanks to Ishbadiddle for this link to a remixed trailer for The Shining. This is fluffing brilliant.
“Are you spiritual?”
Um. Helloooo, Blogger? Is there a good reason why this post was up for several hours, and then disappeared, only to reappear as an older (AND INCOMPLETE!) draft version on my dashboard?
Or is this post being yanked by an even Higher Authority?
Cue Twilight Zone music.
Damn. I hate telling jokes twice.
At a Christmas party a few years ago, one of the local wives asked Karen, apropos of nothing, “Are you spiritual?”
Here was my wife, a firm atheist, being questioned on faith by someone who could only be described as a true believer. I watched, dumbstruck. I expected blood. But I had underestimated Karen yet again. As an attentive student of Miss Manners, she handled the question with ease.
“What an interesting question,” she said. “And such a good question, too. Isn’t it odd how infrequently folks talk about spirituality with people they hardly know? I wonder why that is?” And so forth. She kept at it until the topic had strayed a safe distance from the hot button of spirituality. The other woman never knew what hit her.
I was relieved — not so much because Karen had handled the question so deftly, but because no one had bothered to ask me.
That might explain how I came up with the Hannukah Lobster.
After that bit of humiliation, I brow-beat my parents into signing me up for Hebrew School. There, Israeli women who pronounced my name Dog taught me to read Hebrew, and later, a tyrannical cantor taught me my cantillation marks so I could belt out Torah lines with the best of ’em. Religious instruction consisted of disjointed Bible stories taught as historical fact with nary a word of moral or ethical analysis. As for Talmud — Talwhat?
Our rabbi fancied himself a comedian, a Jackie Mason in tefillin. What a dick. His whole pre-ceremony interaction with me consisted of a twenty minute interview, during which he badgered me about how baseball was a sport for intellectuals. He got me to cough up some dirt on my family, which he used during my bar mitvah as ‘humorous’ snark. Yeah, that’s right — in front of my friends, family, and the whole congregation.
That ended my schtick with Judaism, at least for a while.
See, it’s this last bit that Blogger keeps eating. Not the whole post, just this last bit. Grrr.
A few days ago, I mentioned Borges’ story, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”, wherein a little known, marginally successful author sets out to rewrite Don Quixote word for word. I’m beginning to feel like Menard, only it’s not Cervantes I’m struggling to channel. It’s me.
Well, here goes. One more time. This time I’m saving the HTML in a separate text file.
Over the years, my spiritual pendulum has swung from Judaism through Agnosticism to Zen Buddhism. I’m what you call a Jew-Boo (if you’re trying to be nasty, that is) or a Juddhist (my preferred designation). Those of you familiar with Buddhism know that its precepts are compatible with other religions. Zen, especially, is more a philosophy than a network of faith-based beliefs. So it’s not all that weird, despite what some of my tribe might think — the ones who sling the Jew-Boo label, that is.
Now that I’m an adult, I can take charge of my education. I have a halfway decent library on both Zen and Judaism, and I’ve read a fair fraction of it. I’m not an ignoramus. For that matter, I suspect I’ve read more of the New Testament than the average American Christian.
Nevertheless, when it comes to practice, I’m as piss-poor a Buddhist as I am a Jew.
The pendulum tends to take a sharp turn back towards Judaism whenever I’m faced with a pediatric airway emergency. Times like those, the last thing I want to believe is that I’m the one whose solely responsible for the life of this child. Those situations are frightening enough without that kind of load on my shoulders. Yup, that’s when the big time bargaining comes in.
Me: Hey, God? You remember me, the guy who recites his Shema every few years or so and hopes like crazy he’s catching You in a good mood. Well, hey, look. It’s like this. I have this kid here, she’s eighteen months old, and I would really appreciate it if you would help me look after her.
Him: (silence)
Me: Okay. Be that way. How about this: if things work out okay, I’ll start working on my son again. I mean, he’s nine years old. How entrenched could his atheism be? I’ll do my best, Lord, I really really will.
And so forth.
When you get down to it, I want to believe, particularly at times like those. Security, that’s what it’s all about. I don’t believe in an afterlife and I’m not particularly afraid of my own death. I am concerned about the safety and health of my family and my patients, and so I want to think Someone is up there watching over us.
At the same time, I realize no one makes it out of here alive.
That’s why questions like “Are you spiritual?”, “Do you believe in God?”, or even “Have you been saved?” distress me. The answer to all three is the same: It’s complicated.
You know something? For the folks who ask those kinds of questions, “It’s complicated” is the last answer they want to hear.
It’s complicated because I’m not the perfect Vulcan my wife is. It’s complicated because, while I hate blind faith, I’m too attached to my memes to let them go. It’s complicated because, like any true Agnostic, I really don’t know the answers.
I’d like to think my confusion is the hallmark of an intelligent mind, but I know it is nothing more than what it is: confusion.
And it doesn’t help that every time I come within a hair’s breadth of something approaching an epiphany of self-understanding, Blogger eats my column.
Okay. Here goes. Save HTML file. Hit publish button.
D.
A Birthday Wish List: Part 2
#7: A wish-fulfillment fantasy.
Sometimes, bad things happen to bad people, and the spirit of Schadenfreude takes hold. Like the feeling you get when that jerk in the Trans Am who cut you off three minutes ago gets pulled over for speeding, you know?
When we were kids, my brother and sister had this odd habit. If my brother got punished, my sister would rub her hand over her breastbone and say, “Aaaaaah.” She pronounced it with a guttural flare, as if the sound came from deep within her viscera. If my sister got punished, my brother would return the favor. Since I had a cast iron ass, they got little satisfaction in seeing me punished, and any “Aaaahing” from them would be met by my laughter.
It seems to me that as adults, we get to say “Aaaaaah” far too infrequently. What better birthday present could there be than to see a rich and powerful hypocrite brought low?
What I dream of:
George Bush caught on tape telling us what he really thinks about the displaced poor of New Orleans.
Pat Robertson indicted on child pornography charges.
One day, at a press conference, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan says, “You know, folks? This is all bullshit — I mean, I could tell you stories that would knock your socks off. Aw, hell. No time like the present.”
Rush Limbaugh . . . wait. He’s already shot himself in the foot so many times, what else could happen to the guy?
What I’ll be satisfied with:
Photoshopping rude images of Ann Coulter.
#6: The perfect father for just one day.
Remember the sitcoms of the 1960s? In Father Knows Best, Jim Anderson was, like a modern day Odysseus, never at a loss. No matter what you threw at the guy, he handled it with sensitivity and style. Princess having boy trouble with those creeps from the local frat? Jim would bust a cap in their ass and dance a jig on their graves. Kitten having menstrual cramps? Jim would give her a few tokes from his pipe and teach her the secrets of Far Eastern meditation. Bud busted for having the neighborhood’s first methamphetamine lab? Jim would post bail and buy his son a trampoline so that the boy can channel his energy more constructively.
I want to be that kind of dad, if only for a day.
You know. The kind that never raises his voice, solves every problem, and finds himself at the center of every group hug.
What I dream of:
A day wherein I’m the perfect father to my son.
What I’ll be satisfied with:
Not raising my voice above 80 decibels, and not making the kid cry.
#5: The great discovery!
As a kid, I used to fantasize about black ops agents coming to my school and spiriting me away from my classmates. “You’re far too important to our nation’s security to waste your time here,” one would say. Then the other would chime in: “We need a four-foot-tall boy genius to man our special space ship. This craft will make you the master of space and time. Do you think you can handle it?”
And I’d think: Can I handle it? Fuck yeah!
Only I wouldn’t have used the F-bomb back in elementary school. I’d heard it once or twice, soon learned it wasn’t in the dictionary, and was the only word guaranteed to put my mother in shock. Oddly enough, the word “frig” seemed to have the same effect, even though I was certain I’d made it up. Guess not.
Nowadays, I don’t particularly care to be the master of all time and space. As I learned in high school from watching the movie Laserblast, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I’m already a corrupt son of a bitch.
No, I’d be content if someone else discovered me.
What I dream of:
Some big agent, say Neil Gaiman‘s agent Merrilee Heifetz, finds my blog and sends me an email dripping with praise and wishful solicitations. Then comes The Phone Call (cue Scarlet O’Hara’s vocal inflections): “Oh, Dr. Hoffman, Ah am evah so hopeful that you are unrepresented, because it would be mah honah and privilege to be your agent.”
Don’t know if Ms. Heifetz has a Southern accent — actually, I kind of doubt it — but that’s part of the fantasy. I’m sure she’d oblige.
What I’ll be satisfied with:
Getting my damned sitemeter to top 100 for the day. Where the hell do you people go on the weekend? Don’t tell me you have lives.
D.
Dorm life
One of the things that sucks about my profession: I catch every cold that comes into the office. If I were a podiatrist, I’d do just fine, since no one ever became ill from close exposure to little kids’ feet*. But, no. I have to look up their goopy little noses, which brings me within firing range of their snot rockets.
Yesterday evening, I developed that vague ache in my soft palate which heralds a cold. Now my neck is stiff, my nose is twitchy, and my brain is all marshmallowy. This makes blogging difficult.
You may lower your expectations . . . now.
What should I write about? I came up with a not-t00-bad idea: “All I really need to know I learned watching Rocky Horror Picture Show.” With that idea came a single joke: “Eat your Meat Loaf.” Not bad, but not great, since it presupposes a knowledge of the movie. Even if I pony up an image of Meat Loaf, some folks are gonna say, “Huh?” Cuz if you haven’t seen the movie, it just ain’t funny.
So: that line of blog reasoning came to a dead end. I decided to free associate.
I saw RHPS in 1980, my second year in college and my first year in the dorms. Dorm life makes me think of:
- Dale getting drunk and pissing in the hallway
- Dale getting drunk and pissing off the balcony
- Dale getting drunk and pissing everyone off
I’m sure you’re wondering, “Who’s Dale?” But, really, don’t you know everything you need to know about him?
Maybe I should do a piece entitled, “All I really need to know I learned in the dorms.” I’m still making the assumption that you guys know that bit, “All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten,” which includes such pearls as:
- Play fair.
- Clean up your own mess.
- Don’t hit people.
- Share everything.
Okay, let’s see where this leads. What did I learn in the dorms?
- Play fair. If you fill your roommates’ room with crumpled newspaper, Eric, don’t whine when you find out your prank lost them some important shit and you’re responsible for the damages.
- Clean up your own mess. Oh, how I would love to say we ganged up on Dale and used his head as a mop to take care of that pissing-in-the-hallway stunt. Alas, we had to content ourselves with the fact that he flunked out after the first quarter.
- Don’t hit people. Hit on them. And, oh, by the way, you know that bit about, “If you listen to a woman’s bullshit until 2AM she’ll have sex with you”? Ain’t true. Jennifer, I think listening to you tell me at cracked-tooth-painful length how Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance changed your father’s life was at least worth some tongue.
- Share everything, but please be aware that if your roommate is busy humping the gal from next door** — five feet away from you — he may take exception to this rule. Oh, and by the way, Joe. If she whimpers after you’ve finished, it is not a good sign. Let a Real Man satisfy her next time***.
Not bad, but that’s all I got. My brain has maxed out, folks. Ever see Scanners?
Off topic: Have you folks been watching The Daily Show this week? Jon Stewart rocks.
D.
*I may be wrong about that.
**Co-ed dorms, including the bathrooms. Some chicks are nasty in the morning, I tell ya.
***Yeah, that would be me.
The things we do for love
How far will we go for love?
I think some guys are willing to work a lot harder for it than others. In particular, if you look like this
(that was for you, bam) you’re likely to expend far less time and effort snagging this
than if you look like this
.Before you howl, “But Rick Moranis is cuuuute!” let me say: I’m one hell of a lot cuter than Rick Moranis, and I’ve had two, count ’em two women in my life (no, I’m not counting my mom), and it hasn’t been for lack of trying.
Matter of fact, I got pretty good at trying.
I’ve already written ad nauseum about my courtship with Karen. Nuff said already. Thinking about today’s theme, it occurred to me that I haven’t told you much about my first girlfriend, GFv1.0*.
GFv1.0 never put me through much grief, not in our courtship phase. No, she let her parents do it for her. They liked having me over for dinner for a game I liked to call, “Torment the Howlie.” Or was it, Torment the Gwailo? Can’t remember what slang we used for whitey in those days. Anyway, GF’s mom would feed me yummy stuff like fish stomach. Grinning madly, she’d say, “SO? How do you like?” Then GF’s dad would make me drink Chinese tea that smelled like tobacco and kept me up for days.
I realize now they were being nice, accepting me into the fold. GFv1.0 has since told me that they actually really liked me. But at the time, I saw it all as an awful test.
Black mushroom: that’s the one I failed.
GFv1.0 couldn’t understand why I didn’t like black mushroom. It upset her. It was worse than, say, hating chocolate. Oh, how we fought over black mushroom. Nowadays, of course, I crave the stuff.
Would you believe that for love of GFv1.0, I once watched a chick flick from the first row of the movie theater and then raved about it afterwards? Well, of course I did. I’ll bet lots of high school guys do that, especially those of us who hung out at the Rick Moranis end of the gene pool.
We saw The Turning Point, with Shirley MacLaine (*shiver*), Anne Bancroft, and Mikhail Baryshnikov. But I didn’t care that I was watching a chick flick and getting a whopping case of neck strain. Why? I’ll tell you why.
We’d had dinner at a nearby pizza parlor, and then we decided to fit in some necking time before the movie. This was mighty early in the relationship; open-mouth kissing resembled Mr. and Ms. Pac Man trying to eat each other’s faces. It was a messy affair, with much gnashing of teeth and bruising of lips, because, you know, they just don’t teach this stuff in school.
At one point, she reached over and patted the lump in my crotch and said, “What is that thing?”
That’s how I managed to get through The Turning Point with a grin plastered all over my face. Granted, there were Levis in the way, but she’d actually touched it.
Something just occurred to me. Given the fact that Mikhail Baryshnikov spends most of that movie in tights, I don’t think GFv1.0 would have asked me that question after the movie.
D.
*Who shall remain nameless. There’s a distant chance she may visit the blog one day. If so, my only chance of survival will be the fact that I haven’t spread her name to hell and back.
The Steenking Rose
“Guess what,” said the husband. “We have to eat it raw. It’s the only way we can taste it nowadays.”
Garlic has modest antiplatelet and lipid-lowering effects. There’s even some weak evidence that a diet rich in garlic lowers the risk of colon and stomach cancers. You know what? I don’t give a damn. I like garlic because it tastes good and it gets me high.
Yeah, you heard me. I get a buzz off garlic.
I’ve tried to find a web reference to back me up on this, but all I can find is this quote from Tantrik Vegetarianism:
By now the reader might ask: “Why are onion, garlic and mushrooms bad?” As a matter of fact, onion and garlic are good for the body. They are bad for the mind. All three irritate and heat lower chakras (psychospiritual centers) and, thus, tend to make a person more irritable, distracted and sexually indiscriminant.
It’s true, too. After eating a head of raw garlic, I’ll shag anything that moves. More:
Garlic is a good medicine: its antibacterial and blood purifying qualities have been known for centuries. Ginger has similar qualities without the negative mental effects (and bad smell) of garlic.
I’m sorry. Ginger cheese bread doesn’t do it for me. Which reminds me:
My apologies for not giving precise measurements. You’ll have to wing it.
Combine softened butter with freshly grated parmesan cheese (Reggiano, puhlease!) and paprika. Mash together. Dried basil is a nice addition, too.
Slice a loaf of good quality French bread lengthwise. Toast it under the broiler until golden.
Take raw, peeled garlic cloves and ‘sand’ them against the toasted French bread. Rub them against the crust as well as the toasted cut surface of the loaf.
Spread the butter/cheese/herb mixture on the loaf’s cut surface and return it to the broiler. Watch it carefully. Once the cheese has melted and browned slightly, you’re done.
Remember: you can get the garlic smell off your fingers by rubbing them on a stainless steel spoon or butter knife held under running water.
That married couple was right. By the time I hit thirty, I couldn’t taste cooked garlic anymore.
Nowadays, if I load a red sauce with a dozen crushed cloves I might detect a hint, but it’s subtle, not satisfying, and it won’t give me that delightful garlic buzz. By the way, this isn’t an [insert your favorite illegal drug’s name here] kind of high, but an “I feel so good about the world and all the creatures in it!” sort of feeling.
Dosage recommendation: you need to consume enough that you ooze the garlic smell from your pores and your breath withers cacti.
Here’s another fine recipe for saturating yourself in garlic:
This simple sauce can be used on vegetables (cooked or raw), bread, fish, you name it. Be sure you soak your anchovies in milk first to de-salt them a bit.
One stick of butter
One can of anchovies (2 ounces)
Bunches and bunches of garlic cloves, crushed (start with 6 and add more to taste)
Melt the butter over low heat. Add crushed garlic and anchovies. The garlic should sizzle very little or not at all. Press the anchovies with a spoon; as the melted butter heats up, the anchovies will fall apart and seem to melt. Heat thoroughly. The more you heat this, the milder the garlic flavor will become.
If you’re feeling health conscious, substitute a mixture of canola oil and olive oil for the butter. Heathen.
Jake has decided to read To Kill A Mockingbird first. My fingers are crossed.
D.
Say what?
During my second year of ear, nose, and throat residency at LA County Hospital, one of our chiefs (call him el Jefe) did a study on ear foreign bodies. Very simple study: he reported on the first one hundred ear foreign body patients to walk in our clinical door. It took el Jefe only three months to rack up 100 cases. If you’re easily grossed out or still have nightmares of the Night Gallery earwig episode, skip the next paragraph.
The number one foreign body? Not earwigs, but Blatella germanica, the German cockroach. But don’t freak out. LA County Hospital’s patient population can’t be generalized to the world at large.
Here’s my favorite ear foreign body story. No bugs.
“Why are you putting rocks in your ears?” I said in my not-half-bad Spanish. “Little children put rocks in their ears. You’re an adult. What’s the matter with you?”
What is this damned thing? I thought as I looked at his ear under the binocular microscope. White. Hard. Wedged in pretty tight.
“I can’t believe it,” I said, still in Spanglish. “A grown man putting a rock in his ear. What were you thinking?”
My patient started talking a mile a minute to my nurse’s aide, and he started laughing.
“No, Dr. Hoffman. Not a rock. A rock of cocaine.”
Aha. Well, that explained it. (In case you’re thinking Huh? These folks stuff the rock in their ear when they think they might get busted.) This solved my problem, though. I irrigated his ear with alcohol, dissolving the rock.
My patient was not a happy camper. He’d expected to get the rock back.
My attending physician asked me to do a pelvic exam on a sixteen-year-old girl with vaginal discharge. “It’s her first pelvic,” my boss said, “but don’t worry. From the sound of it, she’s been very active.”
So what if she’s sexually active, I thought. This is her very first pelvic exam . . . it’s bound to be stressful. I vowed to put her at ease by speaking slowly and calmly, doing my best to reassure her and let her know this was all very routine, nothing to be afraid of. I’d tell her in great detail what I was about to do before I did it.
After explaining to her the general idea of what we needed to do, I held up my gloved and lubed hand, my index and middle fingers standing at attention like proud little soldiers, and said,
“Voy a poner dos piernas en su vajina.”
To save you from having to Babelfish that one:
“I’m going to put two legs in your vagina.”
Ever hear the expression bug eyes? We somehow managed to sort out the misunderstanding, and to her credit, she let me go ahead with the exam.
And, yes, I used my fingers.
D.