Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: Mishpucha (mi familia)
When did that happen?
We only use one TV, Karen’s big flat screen TV which we keep in the master bedroom; and the only time Jake ever watches TV is either (A) when Mythbusters is on, (B) there’s some educational program Karen wants him to watch, or (C) there’s something on MSNBC or Comedy Central appealing enough to pull him away from the internet.
Last night, Countdown had footage of four lion cubs, so we hollered out for Jake to come see (since he’s a feline fanatic). Karen was brushing her teeth or some such and when she came out, she and Jake were briefly standing side by side. And good lord, he’s almost as tall as she is!
You always hear people say, “Enjoy them when they’re young, it’s over faster than you think,” but it’s stuff like this which drives it home.
Off topic, but: I asked him if he would mind if we sold the downstairs TV. It weighs a ton and we rarely use it. Correction: I’m the only one who uses it, and I think I’ve watched it three times in the last six months. It’s ridiculous to keep shlepping it around with every move.
It used to be Jake’s playroom TV, but if I remember correctly he stopped watching videotapes about the time we bought it. He’d watch his old Battlebots tapes, and that’s about it. He doesn’t even do that anymore.
So I think I have a name for his generation: it should be called the post-TV generation. I guess you might call it the internet generation, but so many of us are internet-fixated, the label is too general. But my generation grew up with TV-as-babysitter, and TV as primary source of entertainment all through my childhood and teenage years. I suspect many of today’s kids are weaned from TV and hooked on the net by the time they reach their 7th or 8th birthdays. Maybe sooner.
I think this is a good thing. The net is far more interactive, and, I would argue, challenging. If you don’t believe me, check out Closure, an odd black-and-white game which requires a great deal of outside-the-box thinking. I bogged down on level four; Jake finished it. (Oh, and yesterday he played a net game in which the goal was to psychoanalyze and cure various neurotic animals. He cured the sheep straight away, but the turtle was very troubled indeed.)
D.
Eggs
I went to a K-6 elementary school. The day we graduated, I went on a bike ride with two of my closest pals, Dan Baudino and Frank Howarth. (I’m ever hopeful these folks will google themselves and find me. Over the years, I haven’t had much luck tracking them down on the ‘net.) We rode down to Arcadia Park and beyond. There was an egg factory over on Baldwin Ave, if I remember correctly; it was one of those places where eggs were sorted into medium, large, and extra large cartons. We had no business being there but just the same, the workers let us watch.
To be continued . . .
Okay, I’m back.
I’m on call tonight, which means I’m shacked up here in Martinez (roughly equidistant between the two hospitals I cover) with my computer and my new Christopher Moore, A Dirty Job, hoping I’m not jinxing myself by taking off my tie and shirt, kicking back, and booting up the laptop.
So. Eggs.
Shopping
Ultimately I took my sister’s advice and bought my mom a Macy’s gift card for her birthday, but not before walking up and down the mall searching for just that right balance of glam, sequins, flowers, and froth. Shopkeepers predatory for commissions kept their eyes on me as I passed, murmuring Let me know if there’s any, Can I help, How are you to, Are you shopping for your, the pulsatile tinnitus of Madison Avenue.
The cosmetics counter women have given up. They give each other makeovers or lurk expressionless by their wares. An older woman in Fashion belts out a song just out of step with the Muzak and wants to know if I like anything I see. “It’s all too stylish,” I say, and move on, quickly. My mother doesn’t do haute couture.
The mall is empty of money. The mall is full of bored kids, dropouts and truants, Generation Huh? Only the food court is busy.
This guy on his cell phone, someone’s arguing with him about training for a marathon. “There’s no way I could train for a marathon in six months,” he says. “Even if I could, I don’t think I have the mental outlook to run.” Guy looks upwards of 400 lbs. His gut squirms out below his tee shirt, gasping for air.
As for me, I’m one of the underemployed. We’re all taking a day off per pay period to meet the budget; our supe knows how to share the pain. Like Castro’s Cuba, Karen tells me. Oh, well. I can absorb a 10% pay cut and still do well. And besides, it gives me time to do the important things, like buy my mom a gift certificate for her birthday.
D.
Today
Laundry laundered, shopping shopped, and dishes dished, most of a clean bright Saturday stretched out before me and I had nothing to do but sweep the floors or futz at the computer or — here’s a thought — get some sunshine. So I accused The Boy of being a Keyboard Potato and told him we were going out. When he refused, I sapped him with a heavy gel wrist-rest and dragged his limp form out to the car.
Shadchen
I’m still trying to figure out . . .
The Obama Women
how to marry my son to Malia Obama . . . oh, let’s say 8 years from now, when Jake will be 21, Malia 18. (Malia’s in the middle.) Imagine! I could harass Jake’s father-in-law at family picnics. “You think you had it rough. Try interning at L.A. County Hospital, with every damned doc calling you Doogie. Pain in the ass having a funny name. Aw, why am I trying to explain that to you.”
To which the president would say, “C’mon, Doogie, let’s shoot some hoop.”
Then our newlyweds would sneak away from their embarrassing parents in order to make us some brilliant grandbabies. Yeah!
D.
The post-MTV generation
Jake was watching music videos on YouTube tonight.
“That’s the one that turned me on to the Dandy Warhols,” I told him. “Trent Reznor did a special on MTV, something like two hours of his favorite videos. The stuff he listened to at the time.”
“Now THAT is a great video,” I told him a little later. “It’s a good one because I didn’t much like the song until I saw the video, and then I really liked the song.”
So he was like all meh to the whole thing. We watched a few more videos. I made him search YouTube for “Mark Romanek” and I pointed out that he had seen Romanek’s videos for Perfect Drug and Closer.
Still no interest from The Boy.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why are you even watching this stuff?”
“I like listening to the music,” he said.
D.
Lantsman
This made my day:
I recognized the accent of my nonagenarian patient, so I asked her where she and her husband were from originally.
“Poland,” she said.
“Hey! Half my people are from Poland,” I told her. “My mother’s half of the family. They came from Lodz.”
She brightened even more . . . a thing of beauty. “We are from Lodz!” And of course she pronounced it better than I had (“wooj”).
When she and her husband left, they wished me a happy Hanukkah. They may be in their 90s, but their jewdar works very, very well.
I couldn’t stand it anymore. So what if I’m the only one who cares; I broke out the menorah tonight and lit up the candles. I don’t have enough candles to last eight nights. Hanukkah miracle, anyone?
At Lodz Shetlinks, you can take a Virtual Tour of Jewish Lodz. This sounded like a lot of fun until I took the tour, which looks a lot like this.
Graves. Lots and lots of graves. Thanks for bringing me down, guys! But at least they have some photos of the sole surviving synagogue,
So how strange was it for me to run into a couple of Lodz natives? Not that bizarre, I guess; Lodz is Poland’s third largest city. That’s right — Poland’s Chicago. No big deal, right?
But it felt good, just the same.
My grandparents, if they were alive today, would be (as best I can figure . . . they lied about their ages and didn’t know their true birthdays) about 105. I miss them, even though they drove me crazy.
D.
No Country for Little Kids
He’s not a little kid anymore. Good God, his voice is changing! But “No Country for Blooming Adolescents” didn’t have quite the same ring . . .
Las Vegas is not a kid-friendly town. Used to be, the only casino you could take a child and not get dirty looks (or worse) from omnipresent security guards was Circus Circus. Even at the Circus, if you happened to be standing in place for longer than a minute (say, for example, while waiting for a family member to get out of the bathroom), a guard would come over and escort you to the front lobby. Loitering ist verboten!
Even now, it’s easy to run out of things to do. We went to Red Rock Canyon on Tuesday; it’s a fine place to climb without gear since the grades are gentle and you really have to work overtime to get yourself into trouble. Nevertheless, Jake usually manages to find one precipice or another to climb out on, whereupon HIS life flashes before my eyes.
Yesterday we went to a place called Gamestop, and oy, what a hassle, since we had to park at the MGM and walk a fair distance to get there. And all totally unnecessary, since when I googled Gamestop just now, there are locations all over Vegas (including one just a few miles away from my parents’ house). The one we went to had the rattiest pool tables I have ever seen, and way too many out-of-order games. Still, we had a decent time shooting pool, playing air hockey, and killing zombies. Noisy place, but at least they don’t allow smoking.
He wants to go to Circus Circus today. Yes, it’s another arcade, but they do have circus acts, and the arcade games are different than the ones at Gamestop. As for me, I’ll be happy if I can make it to a bookstore. (I finished Earth Abides yesterday . . . and even if it doesn’t pack the punch of The Road, it still closes with a haunting quality. There’s a bit at the end where the protagonist, who has grown quite old, speculates that most of the people who died in the Great Disaster (a plague) would have been dead by now anyway, and the young people alive now have known no other world than this, and seemed contented with their lot. So was it such a Great Disaster after all?)
There’s a Go Kart track somewhere nearby, but we did that not long ago and Jake hated it. They used to have a water park in Vegas, but it’s the wrong time of year for that, too. I suppose we could catch a movie.
For Thanksgiving, we’re either going to a casino buffet (with all the trimmins!) or PF Chang’s. I’m hoping for PF Chang’s. Sort of like the ending to A Christmas Story, don’t you think? But we all need to celebrate the holiday in our own peculiar way.
Some more peculiar than others.
D.
the usual surreal experience
My parents believe in papering their walls with family photos. I can’t look up from the computer without being transported ten, twenty, forty years ago. Or more. My dad has an old war photo or two hanging about, and . . . sweet Jesus, where’s their old wedding photo, or painting, or whatever it is? I remember it hanging in the living room in the house of my toddlerhood. Oh, there it is in their bedroom.
I feel like Billy Pilgrim.
Some things never change. My mother still uses too much paprika on her roast chicken. My parents still communicate at 70 decibels — it’s worse now, since she won’t wear her hearing aid. They still have a neurotic dog. Every few years they exchange it at the Neurotic Dog Store. At least this one doesn’t get so excited by strangers that he ejaculates (which used to make bringing friends over to the house a real trial).
The rest drifts slowly but perceptibly toward entropy. They’re not quite who they used to be, nor are we. Thank heavens for Jake; if it weren’t for children, older might be a wholly depressing concept.
D.
Jesus vs. Buddha
Below the fold is my son’s 75er with no input or editing from his old man. This one’s for your amusement, folks, and won’t be considered for the formal contest.
Warning: if irreverence towards Jesus or Buddha ain’t your cuppa, don’t bother going below the fold.