Week 4 of the 2017 NFL Season

TIME: Sunday, 12:50 pm

PLACE: An apartment in a gentrified section of a blue state city

Old Hippie, Social Justice Warrior, and Woke Hipster sit snacking on kale chips and kraut frittatas, sipping IPA beer, waiting for the game to start …

OLD HIPPIE: So why are we watching football this week? I’ve never watched a game in my life.

SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR: The only football I’m aware of is fútbol. You know, soccer. We’re like the only country that doesn’t recognize the greatness of soccer.

WOKE HIPSTER: I watched a four-hour World Cup game once. Venezuela beat Cuba, 1-0.

OLD HIPPIE: But football is so … warlike.

SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR: We have to support the players. They’re honoring the sacrifices made by our fathers and grandfathers by kneeling during the national anthem. It’s what our fathers and grandfathers would have wanted.

WOKE HIPSTER: They fought and died for our right to protest! Even things they routinely did out of love for this country. It’s like the only thing that makes this country great.

OLD HIPPIE: Look – there’s barely anyone in the stands. Maybe the owners should let the homeless or some undocumented immigrants in to watch the games.

SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR: Why are there soldiers and all that flag waving on the field? Is it to remind viewers of America’s imperialism under Republican presidents?

WOKE HIPSTER: Hey, they’re showing highlights from last week’s games. I don’t see anyone kneeling though. Just a bunch of running and throwing and kicking that brown ball thing.

OLD HIPPIE: I’m not comfortable with all this violence. Hitting and tackling. Isn’t there a better way to play football?

SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR: How about each team tries to raise awareness for some worthy cause, like man-made climate change or transgender bathrooms, and the two teams who raise the most awareness get to be in the Super Bowl?

WOKE HIPSTER: Pope Francis could umpire the Super Bowl. He’s really great when it comes to climate change, and he’s totally nonjudgmental.

OLD HIPPIE: How would we decide which team raised the most awareness?

SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR: By whichever one raises the most money?

WOKE HIPSTER: I’m not comfortable with money. It just oozes privilege and is so patriarchal.

OLD HIPPIE: And these names! We’ll have to change some of these team names.

SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR: We’ll need a federal judge for that. I’ll call my friend at the ACLU.

WOKE HIPSTER: The New York Giants! What, are there no short people in New York?

OLD HIPPIE: So ableist. If I was a dwarf I would be uncomfortable rooting for the Giants.

SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR: Wait – can we say ‘dwarf’?

WOKE HIPSTER: And what if you’re a very tall person? Surely not everyone on the Giants is, uh, a giant. Sounds like appropriation to me.

OLD HIPPIE: Shhh! The game is starting. They’re playing the anthem. The players are taking a knee!

SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR: Quick, let’s take a knee in solidarity with our brothers in the NFL.

WOKE HIPSTER: When will women be allowed to play in the NFL?

OLD HIPPIE: I know, right? Hashtag women in the NFL now!

The Pope of Ambiguity

So now a group of 62 theologians, priests, and lay scholars have written a 25-page letter detailing what they regard as seven heretical positions propagating from Amoris Laetitia, Francis’ apostolic exhortation on marriage and the family. The letter is called a “filial correction” and such a thing has not been done in almost 700 years. The group sent the letter to Francis on August 11, and, as per Francis’ way of dealing with criticism, has been ignored for six weeks. Four days ago the group decided to publicize the letter.

The content of the filial correction as well as the signers can be seen here:

http://www.correctiofilialis.org/

You can even sign up to support the document at the website. I did.

I recommend reading it. I did.

Those in the know recall the “dubia” (Latin: doubts), a document sent to the Pope from four Cardinals asking for clarifications on five main points, such as, for example, “Can adulterers receive Holy Communion?” In the Pope’s exhortation Amoris Laetitia, one can vaguely read a “yes” to that question if one wishes to. And believe me, there are many out there who wish to.

Amoris Laetitia was released in April of 2016. The dubia was sent to Francis in July of 2016.

There was no response from the pope.

The Cardinals made the dubia public the following September, a year ago.

Still no response.

Then, in April of 2017, the Cardinals sent Francis a respectful letter requesting an audience regarding the dubia.

It was, and continues to be, ignored.

In the interim, two of the four writers of the dubia, Joachim Meisner and Carlo Caffaro, have died.

And now I expect the filial correction to be ignored as well.

So, regarding an apostolic exhortation that may – or may not (I’d like to know) – be filled with propositions antithetical to 2,000 years of Church teaching, there is utter silence coming from the Vatican. Fourteen months’ worth of silence.

Francis, the Pope of Ambiguity …

Radial Buckle Fracture

It never fails. Whenever tragedy strikes, I won’t have my cell phone on me. Admittedly, I only forget the phone somewhere (home, work) maybe once or twice a year. But, yeah, it never fails: when something bad happens, my cell phone will be M.I.A.

Wednesday, in a rush to get out of work with a clean desk and as many lose ends tied as possible since I was taking the next day off to watch the girls during a school closing, I left the phone on my desk. I moseyed on home via the scenic route, and, two minutes away from the town library where I habitually pick up Little One, I reached over to send her a text.

Phone wasn’t there. Dammit! I contemplated turning back, but figured a day with the cell phone (or electronic Honey Do leash, as I like to think of it) would be manageable.

I turned down the street where the library was and spotted my daughter red and sobby, surrounded by four of her friends.

I immediately pulled into the next parking lot and they brought her over. “What happened?” I asked from the window, assessing my soon-to-be teen.

Her face was the pink and splotchy mess that told me she’d just had a terrible cry. Then my eyes saw her arm – bandaged and bulging. “What happened?” I repeated, more urgently.

Turns out she and one of her friends were horsing around on a footbridge that spans the railroad tracks a quarter mile away. Little One lost her balance and tumbled down five stairs, depositing her full weight on the outside of her right wrist. She was instantly overwhelmed with pain, and her resourceful friends walked her to a nearby pharmacy, pooled their money together to buy some gauze, and one who just took a babysitting “Safe Sitter” class bandaged her up. Then they waited for me.

I thanked them, put Little One in the passenger seat, got Patch from Aftercare down the road. Then we raced straight to the emergency room of the local hospital a few miles away, the hospital where both my children were born. She was immediately seen, X-rayed, and given some Motrin. The X-rays revealed a buckle fracture and she was put in a soft cast.

(Right after leaving the hospital, we drove to my work so I could retrieve the cell phone, possible to avoid further tragedy down the road ...)

If I had been the one who fell, my bone would break. My bones, at the half-century mark, are like hollowed out old sticks. Really. So are, most likely, yours. Hers, being still twelve years old, are more like rubber bands. Mushy wet rubber bands, especially on the inside. Instead of breaking, the outside of the bone fractured where the radius connects with the wrist bones. There’s an outward bulge you can see on the X-ray, and that’s an effect of the buckling.

Well, the next day we had to visit our orthopedic pediatrician. Yes, we have one, with Patch’s ankle injury over the Christmas holiday and Little One’s prior wrist sprain the summer before. He’s a great guy, a little eccentric, a dry sense of humor, and we could listen to his monotonous delivery for hours. That cheered up Little One. Once the doctor reviewed the X-ray from the hospital and examined her arm and mobility, he decided to put her in a hard cast for two weeks.

“To make it kind of fun,” he added in a nerdy way that made Little One grin, “you can pick the color of the cast.” Then he began to recite his inventory: “We have red, pink, purple, yellow, blue, lime green, just plain white, …”

“Blue!” my daughter decided. It was her school color.

“Blue,” the doctor sighed to himself. “They always pick the blue …”

So despite the trauma of the past two days, she’s very excited. Her friends stopped by a couple times, once bearing Get Well gifts – an oinking green pig, some M&Ms, flowers. She has a respite from gym class and clarinet practice. And, she said to me, “I always wanted to have a cast!”

Here she is, rocking the blue:

Hopper's NFL Watchability Problem

OK, so I’ve read a bunch of articles and posts here and there about how the NFL is having problems. Primarily ratings problems, though one website labeled it a “watchability” problem. And that immediately lit up that invisible light bulb above my head. That’s exactly it for me, this season and last.

I’ve watched the NFL pretty regularly since the 94-95 season. Over time, I found myself getting too emotionally involved in my team – the New York Giants – my “tribe” as the sociologists may categorize it. I didn’t like that. The cliché “it’s just a game” does have more than a grain of truth, after all. I have zero skin in the game. In the long run, a game / season / playoff run doesn’t affect me in the least. So why was I going to bed royally pissed off after a close loss? I am, after all, a fan of the perpetually 9-7 Eli Manning Giants, so all games are close and only slightly more games are won than lost. So why the mental discombobulation from an activity that’s supposed to be fun and – even – relaxing?

In 2013 I decided to switch sports allegiances and began watching the Mets. Right off the bat I found the enjoyment and relaxation that had been missing. I wasn’t so emotionally invested, the games were slower paced, a loss wasn’t that catastrophic since ten baseball games equaled a football game in importance.

The past two season with the NFL, though, I’ve grown more than annoyed. I just don’t like watching the games anymore. Loyalty demands I do watch, though, but I may not after the Giants lackluster 0-2 offensive desert this year. But to me the NFL does have a watchability problem, and it’s not just due to the lousy New York teams.

In no particular order –

ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) Syndrome: More bells! More whistles! More camera angles! Up close shots! Let’s cut to the replay, several times from several different angles! Let’s hear the grunting on the field, the play calling! Let’s put humongous CGI robots battling on the field! Zoom in on ecstatic epileptic fans! Let’s cut to sideline reporters yelling over the loud crowd! Quick – cut to our man in NFL headquarters discussing the last penalty! More colors! More noise! More hard cuts!

Commercials, commercials, commercials … and more commercials: There’s the kickoff. Then three minutes of commercials. Then, if the Giants have the ball, a three-and-out before five real-time minutes elapse. Then three more minutes of commercials. There was a famous study a few years’ back showing that an average football game only lasts 11 minutes when the ball is actually in play. 11 minutes spread out over three hours. The game clock actually runs for an hour – and the game’s three hours long! What fills those extra two hours? Commercials!

Thug culture: A proliferation of criminal behavior on and off the field, gangsta swagger, an excess of tattoos, stupid overlong celebrations in the end zone. Including some classy crotch grabbin’ from a Giants rookie in their loss Sunday night.

Overexposure: Sunday afternoon, 1 to 7. Sunday evening, 8:30-11:30. Monday evening, 8:30-11:30. Thursday evening, 8-11. And four London games airing at 7 am on various Sunday mornings. That’s anywhere from 15 to 18 hours of football a week. Not counting the hour-long pregame analysis shows. Throw them in and you’re at around 20 to 24 hours of football a week. Too, too much. The product is diluted.

Announcers who want to date Tom Brady, Dak Prescott, etc.: Good Lord, get a room! The effusive avalanche of gushing love praise from the broadcast booth slathered on the select elected stars of the league is often quite embarrassing, if you take the time to actual listen to what is said. (Oh, announcers, one other thing, and I think I speak for all Giants, Eagles, and Redskins fans: just because you call Dallas “America’s team,” doesn’t mean everyone in America loves them!)

The kneel-down protests: Personally, I haven’t seen any at a game I’ve watched. I watch mostly Giants games, and I believe they’re one of the teams that hasn’t allowed this infection to fester to its sideline. But, yeah, the nationwide attention has had its effect, and I blame more the league itself for a cowardly, half-hearted, fence-sitting response more than the actual dopes taking a knee.

Ah, that’s enough. Giants lose this weekend to Philly, I may just ditch the entire season and resume bird-watching.

Birthday Weekend

Well, the Hopper birthday weekend officially came to a close late last night. And not only am I, straddling the half-century mark, utterly and completely exhausted, so is almost birthday-buddy Patch, now age nine, as well as Little One, age twelve (for only ten more days), and even the Mrs.

Thankfully, work was slow. As was I, at work.

Anyway, it launched with a blast. I am not a social animal. I’m probably best suited in this life for Carthusian monkhood. But the Lord in His wisdom decided to place me in a family of decidedly extroverts. I put my foot down months ago and told the wife not to plan any party for me, save for a quiet dinner with her and the two little ’uns. That lasted about a day or two. “Listen,” she said, “you’re turning fifty. Your family is not going to allow you not to have party.”

So we compromised. Something small, eighteen people, all relatives, aunts uncles cousins parents children. At a local pizzeria. Truth be told, I had a blast. I chugged some beers, guzzled some thin crust slices, wolfed down some birthday cake. And best of all, the wife got me this:

Yay!

This is an Epiphone Les Paul, kind of an economy-classed Gibson Les Paul. No matter – it feels great. The size and curvature of the neck, the fit and heft of the body. I love the shiny black finish and the gold frets and tuning pegs. She also bought a small Fender practice amp that lays down a nice basic tone to build up on. As of the writing of this post I’ve already put about fours hours of jamming into it.

So an enjoyable two-and-a-half hour 50th birthday party, capped off with the wife dragging out a black guitar case behind my back for me to open. It’s no exaggeration that I will probably remember that moment the rest of my life.

Saturday was no day of recovery for us. Got up early and ran some of the usual errands with the girls (recycling, dry cleaners, post office, library). Went to Home Depot for a couple of items – there’s a post in itself I won’t go into. Then I had to race back, shower, get into some biz cazh and motored a few towns over for a pre-Tax Season meeting with my second job. Went over my “report card” with my district manager, set some goals for the near future.

Got back home and actually dozed for twenty minutes while the girls kicked the soccer ball around in the backyard. Then the wife pulled up with Patch’s big birthday gift – a bicycle! She was electrified, super-excited. So, despite the unseasonably hot and humid weather, I hauled it and Patchie to the local running track to teach her how to ride.

And, father of the year that I am, I did. After much bruising and tears on her part. But the Mrs, in her wisdom, also included elbow and knee pads with the helmet with the bike.

Saturday night we chilled at a local eatery – just the four of us. Now I’m not a foodie, but I had one of the most delicious meals I’ve ever had outside of Hilton Head, S.C. I can’t recite the details two days later, but it was basically short ribs over creamy potatoes with some leafy veggie thing. But it was superb, I tell ya!

Sunday was a similarly action-packed day. Feeling somewhat spiritual entering my second half-century of life – O! forgot – I managed to find time yesterday for an afternoon confession – it’s good for the soul! – I got up at 6:45 and went to 7:30 mass solo (I allowed the ladies their beauty sleep). Got back, then the rush was on for Patch’s travel soccer game a few towns away. Poor little thing got rocked in goal for the first half, and we hoped it wouldn’t affect her birthday weekend. The wife actually had to bite her tongue and go for a walk as Patch was getting no help from her teammates. But after recharging with some oranges at half-time and going back in on offense, she got her fighting spirit back. Only one shot on goal, though, and it didn’t go in.

Once back and all showered, the wife took Patch to the beauty salon – where they met five of her fourth grade friends to get all their hands and feet done. Me and Little One picked up the cake and some balloons and met them all at that local pizzeria again, the scene from my bash Friday night. More pizza and cake followed. The parents came to pick up their little ones, we all mingled for a bit, then I headed home to shower yet again (like the third time of the day – it was unseasonably hot).

Because me and my pal were going to see It in the theaters. Had a chocolatini at his house (don’t ask – his wife makes them for me just about every time I come over there, something about both of us being chocoholics), then we drove over to experience the unexpected blockbuster. What a birthday, eh? It, my third all-time favorite book, now finally brought to the big screen in all its gloriously hideous and beautiful splendor (the 1990 miniseries does not exist in the world I inhabit). Normally I hate lengthy movies, but I absolutely loved every minute of the 135 minutes spent in Derry with the Losers Club battling ol’ Pennywise. A+. Easy A+. Best movie I’ve seen all year, best possibly since … I can’t recall. Definitely want to see it again on the big screen. Want to take Little One, but she’s still too little. Needs to mature at least another year, maybe when she’s in ninth grade.

So, that was the Great Birthday Weekend of 2017. Forgive my stream-of-consciousness post, too damn tired to edit it properly.

But it was a great 50th birthday.

Grant Hart RIP

Grant Hart, drummer, singer, songwriter, most famously for the proto-grunge alternative rock band Husker Du, died yesterday.

I was a HUGE Husker Du fan in the late 80s, turned on to them by my lead guitarist / pal Rich, and though it took a while for them to grow on me, by the summer of 1989 I must’ve listened to Zen Arcade, Candy Apple Grey, and Warehouse countless times. And by countless, I literally mean “countless.” Why, that summer alone in my virtual convertible Corolla, I blasted my cassette tape of Candy Apple Grey something like every single day, every single commute, every single lunch hour, from early May to late September. And I would throw on Warehouse in that brand-newfangled CD player thing I just bought every single night and jam along with it.

Now, as far as Husker Du goes, the band is absolutely one-hundred percent phenomenal, no doubt about that. To the Eighties what the Ramones were to the Seventies, plus some. Perhaps the greatest unknown-band-to-the-masses ever. And though I appreciated Bob Mould’s droning, wall-of-sound guitar and moody, dark, depressive lyrics, I enjoyed Grant Hart’s drumming and singing more. He had a mischievous, impish quality to everything he recorded, a hyper prancing galloping aggressive style of play that captivated me. Though I hold him not as a role model (serious drug abuse and worse), I always thoroughly enjoyed everything I ever heard him play or sing.

Died yesterday at age 56 (ach!) of “kidney cancer.”

Rest in peace. You gave a couple thousand of us some great entertainment over the years.

Grant Hart singing and drumming on Dead Set on Destruction from Candy Apple Grey:

Well, I’m standing in the queue

And I can’t stand anymore missing you

And I, I can’t stand the pain

And I can’t get home ’cause of a hurricane

Dead set on destruction

Dead set on destruction

There’s no flights home today

And no services out on the motorway

And I, I can’t leave the ground

And I can’t find a place now to put her down

Dead set on destruction

Dead set on destruction

The Atlantic winds are high

There’s only one virgin and if she don't fly

And they, they can’t land the plane

And they can’t get home ’cause of a hurricane

Dead set on destruction, etc, etc, etc ...

From the near-perfect Warehouse, the penultimate-penultimate song She’s a Woman and Now He is a Man

Well I can see her loading boxes in my mind

Into a belvedere with a trailer pulled behind

Well things didn’t go exactly as they planned

She’s a woman and now he is a man

Well there’s a vacancy between them everyday

And a sense of guilt that’s not going away

When they get older perhaps they’ll understand

She’s a woman and now he is a man

And now he’s into something that her heart cannot forgive

She’s saying to herself, “This is not the way to live”

Well he’ll never listen to her ’cause his mind is like a sieve

Oh brother! Oh brother! I’m telling your sister

No way can I resist her

With a guilty feeling hanging in their brain

And the two of them are potentially insane

Well they’ve had enough which is more than they can stand

She’s a woman and now he is a man

Well I can see her loading boxes in my mind

Into a belvedere with a trailer pulled behind

Well things didn’t go exactly as they planned

She’s a woman and now he is a man

She’s a woman and now he is a man, etc…

Solo Hart, from 2009: You’re the Reflection of the Moon on the Water

You’re the reflection of the moon on the water

You’re the reflection of the moon on the water

You’re the reflection of the moon on the water

But you’re not the moon

You are the scent of the sea on the night wind

You are the scent of the sea on the night wind

You are the scent of the sea on the night wind

But you’re not the sea

You are the shadows from the light of a fire

You are the shadows from the light of a fire

You are the shadows from the light of a fire

But you’re not the light

You are the sound of the rain on the dry earth

You are the sound of the rain on the dry earth

You are the sound of the rain on the dry earth

But you’re not the rain

[Repeat …]

(Husker Du live: Greg Norton, bass; Grant Hart, drums; Bob Mould, guitar)

I Wanna Be a Victorian Man of Science!

That’s it. It’s settled. Settled this morning, on the drive to work, as I listened enraptured to Sir Edward Elgar’s Symphony No. 2 in E-flat.

Ever been asked that question, “What time period would you like to live in other than the present?” For years I’d reply “the early 1950s.” Why? The atomic boom. Er, not the boom from the bomb, but the boom from the exponential expansion of atomic physics. I’d envision myself a young turk physicist out in the black-and-white Joshua-treed deserts of Alamogordo. Working at a secret US laboratory, delving the micro mysteries of the nucleus and beyond. Shirtsleeves rolled up and a lit Camel clenched in my teeth, I’d be at home swinging a hammer at an atomic pile or sketching chalk lines on a blackboard teasing out the internal structure of Uranium.

Now, after listening to Elgar’s work, composed arguably at the height of the British Empire (1910, I believe), that’s changed.

I want to be a Victorian man of science!

I now see myself with a top coat and ascot carriaging through the English countryside. A man of independent means, with a housekeeper and gardener to keep the family estate going while I and my valet trudge across exotic landscapes conducting esoteric – and risky – experiments. I’d even rescue a dazzling damsel in distress from the local natives with a clever plan and some old fashioned fisticuffs: one of those dark-haired British beauties bedecked in a fortress of fabric. My network of colleagues would extend across Europe – and not without rivals, too, such as Arronax in France or Lidenbrock in Dusseldorf. The race would be on to prove whose theory is correct – three scientists enter, only one leaves! And in my spare time I’d prove the unprovable theorems and solve the unsolvable conjectures by candlelight and cognac at the hearth and blow dust of ancient mediaeval manuscripts …

Yes, that’d be the life for me.

A Victorian man of science!

Renunciation

What does the man of renunciation do? He strives for a higher world, he wants to fly further and higher than all men of affirmation – he throws away much that would encumber his flight, including not a little that he esteems and likes; he sacrifices it to his desire for the heights. This sacrificing, this throwing away, however, is precisely what alone becomes visible and leads people to call him the man of renunciation: it is such that he confronts us, shrouded in his hood, as if her were the soul of a hairshirt. But he is quite satisfied with the impression he makes on us: he wants to conceal from us his desire, his pride, his intention to soar beyond us – this man of affirmation. For that is what he is, no less than we, even in his renunciation.

   - The Joyful Science, Book One, § 27, by Friedrich Nietzsche

* * * * * * *

All right, enough Nietzsche. My little interlude from reality. Now I’m back. Regularly scheduled programming to recommence.

The Quick-Witted Innkeeper

The idea of eternal recurrence gives point, again, to a familiar anecdote. This concerns a joker who goes to an inn, eats his fill and then says to the innkeeper:

“You and I will be here again in a million years: let me pay you then.”

“Very well,” replies the quick-witted innkeeper, “but first pay me for the beefsteak you ate the last time you were here – a million years ago.”

- as related in The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, chapter V, by H. L. Mencken, 1913

Times of Corruption

… cruelty now becomes more refined and that its older forms henceforth offend the new taste; but the art of wounding and torturing others with words and looks reaches its supreme development in times of corruption: it is only now that malice and the delight in malice are born. The men of corruption are witty and slanderous; they know of types of murder that require neither daggers nor assault; they also know that whatever is said well is believed.

- The Joyful Science, Book One, § 23, by Friedrich Nietzsche, 1887

Does Twitter come immediately to mind? The mainstream media?

And this was written 130 years ago!

Bad Moments in German Translation