February 2010 Archives
This is Teannaki. When I went to Christmas Island (Kiritimati in Gilbertese) last year, he was the first person I met. Top-notch fishing guides tend to be self-possessed, quietly confident people, but I've never met anyone who had that quality more than Teannaki. He was as burly as a stone god, and I thought to myself that he looked like he was carved from the trunk of an oak tree. He spoke little, and he radiated authority. He also seemed to have a thoughtful, preoccupied air, which might have been his nature or might have come from the tremendous complexity of guiding anglers in an environment with multiple variables—tide, weather, light, fish—that are always changing. He seemed to prefer thinking to talking, and it showed in his expression.
But as we bumped down the dirt road in a van heading to the fishing camp, I saw his lighter side for the first time. He said that after we got settled in and unpacked, we'd get together and talk about our daily routine for the coming week in a open-air meeting hall in the camp's center. "The maneaba," I said. I'd done some reading, and in the Gilbert Islands (now the republic of Kiribati), it was a tradition for each village to have a large palm-thatched structure by this name where people would meet and discuss things. It's a central part of their culture, still important today—the republic's parliament is called a maneaba, for example.
When I said that one word, Teannaki smiled for the first time since we'd met. He leaned forward and gave my arm a friendly poke with one of his stubby, strong fingers. "That's our word," he said. This was no great feat of linguistics on my part, but it really broke the ice. Teannaki was sitting in a van with four foreign strangers that he would be babysitting for a week, and I'm sure that in his thoughts was one big variable—what kind of people were we? Good guys? Jerks? And maybe my coming out with that one unexpected Gilbertese word, like a magician taking a dove out of a top hat, suggested to him that we were at least going to try to be good guys. Or maybe it was just a pleasant shock of recognition, like when you unexpectedly run into an old friend in a town full of strangers.
At any rate, it was a nice moment, and not the only one. Teannaki showed us the best week of fishing any of us had ever had, and he and his staff earned our respect and affection many times over. And now there's a god-damned tsunami spreading across the Pacific. I can tell you there's not a lot of high ground in Christmas Island, and probably not a lot of it anywhere in Micronesia—it's all coral atolls, and they just don't grow all that high. The people there must have some provision for tsunamis, because they've been there for thousands of years. I hope they do, at any rate. When you've been to a far-off place and met people there, it worries you when you hear that they're facing a potential disaster. That little girl who came and did traditional dances for us the last night, the band that sang popular songs, the other guides, the nice folks who made our food and straightened up our rooms, Teannaki who smiled and poked me with his finger—I hope they're going to be safe. I hope the same for everyone, of course, but those people are real for me now, even if they live literally on the other side of the world, and I hope it for them even more.
UPDATE: It appears that outside the area around Chile, this was kind of a meh event as tsunamis go. Seems like nobody has seen more than a knee-high wave anywhere. So for Teannaki and the little girl this was just an ordinary day, for the most part. Just another day in paradise—palm trees, frigate birds, the usual. Glad it turned out that way.
So the last time we met here, three days ago, I was sighing pensively over the melting, muddy, soot-blackened remnants of two big blizzards. I mentioned how it's sort of nice to see the world transformed by a newly fallen snow, and how the melting snow sets you up for spring to burst forth and so on, but the interim with the messy, gloppy snow is kind of depressing in an Ozymandian way—the once-mighty snow now pathetically humbled, like that.
Well, that's no longer a problem. We're looking, literally, at another eight inches or so. No more bare patches, no more muddy bits or exhaust-blackened bits or anything like that. And I want to say to all my friends around here that you cannot make it snow by writing a blog post. That's magical thinking. Blame global warming, El Nino, the weather gods, the fates, whatever. Don't blame me.
Well, that's no longer a problem. We're looking, literally, at another eight inches or so. No more bare patches, no more muddy bits or exhaust-blackened bits or anything like that. And I want to say to all my friends around here that you cannot make it snow by writing a blog post. That's magical thinking. Blame global warming, El Nino, the weather gods, the fates, whatever. Don't blame me.
Disclaimer: The scene opposite does not represent the alley behind the house as it looks today. That picture was taken the day we all dug out after the second big storm, Son of Snowpocalypse. Today it's overcast and drizzly, and for a number of days now the snow has been melting. The mounds of it along the roads are blackened with exhaust, and it's mixed with mud anywhere people have walked. The weather is chilly and raw, and the scenery is depressing.
Yes, it's easier to get around. For days those icicles there would drop water on the back steps, and the water would freeze at night, and if you went down the steps you stood a good chance of starting your day with a compound fracture. Today the steps are clear. And going to the store for food is something you can just do, without thinking how difficult or dangerous the conditions will be. There's something to be said for that.
But it's still dreary. It's like if you lived in a city that was captured by an enemy army. Now the enemy is defeated, the columns of prisoners marching out of the city with weary, downcast expressions as even the most timid of the citizens jeer from the sidewalk. I know it's absurd to feel sympathy for snow, but these storms always have their moments of glory and then trail away ignominiously, and it's just not very uplifting, somehow. If you've ever seen a once-jaunty snowman shrink and sag more and more with every passing warm day, you may know what I mean.
Of course I realize the rising temperatures and seeping water is setting us up for spring. Nature will come back to warm, brilliantly colored life. Just not today, that's all.
I was thinking about who I learn from, or not, and why. I know people who are relatively successful in various creative endeavors, and yet I don't learn anything useful from them, or at least don't want to, and I decided it came down to the kind of work they were doing, not the relative degree of success in the marketplace.
Thing is, there aren't a lot of rules in creative fields, the way there might be in medicine or engineering. But there are some, and a lot of people follow them blindly. "Avoid clichés," writers say, or "Don't use the passive voice." But see, here's the thing: Rules were made to be broken. Sometimes you want the object of the action as the subject of the sentence, and that's when passive is useful. And if you've heard a phrase before, maybe it's because that's the pithiest way to state the idea.
So following the rules is fine up to a point, but if you lean on it too much your work can become plodding, formulaic, and earthbound. That doesn't mean it will fail in the marketplace. Bricklayers work in a plodding, step-by-step manner, and they make good, useful things. Certain highly successful artists, writers, musicians and so forth do essentially the same thing, and good for them.
But merely following rules and patterns is a little too easy, isn't it? Do this, do this, do that, you're done. You're laying bricks all day, every day. I was thinking about that, and then I was thinking about other creative people whose work I like better, and I decided their work was based less on rules than on inspiration.
And I remembered those summer nights when we were kids and we would get those long, thin boxes of sparklers and light them up. They would make this blazing star of fizzing white light, and I guess every kid who ever ran around with sparklers at a twilight barbecue discovered that if you waved it through the air, it would leave a trail on your retinas that would hang there in the darkness for a second or so. And that's how it works when it's right, in my own humble opinion—you get inspired by something, and you want to express it out artistically. And if it goes right, what you do, your words, notes, paint, whatever, leaves a lingering glow in other people's minds that cuts through the meaningless murk of daily life and hangs there like the Northern Lights.
We had a couple of pretty good snowstorms recently where I live, and I thought of the "Winter" concerto from Vivald's The Four Seasons. I don't know much about Vivaldi and whether he preferred to follow the rules or to break them. I only know that I thought about that piece while the snow was howling relentlessly down on us, because the music sounds like winter. The fierceness of the storms, and the lovely, still purity afterward. I don't think Antonio V. thought too much about whether he was in line with the commonly accepted best practices and techniques in Baroque composition while he was writing this. I think he mostly sat down and had a long think about what winter would sound like if it were music. And he finally got a pretty good sense of where to go, and then he dipped the quill pen in the inkwell and started writing. Three centuries later, people still play it and listen to it, because it still sounds like winter. Is there a rule to be found in that? Because if there is, it might be one of the ones worth following.
Thing is, there aren't a lot of rules in creative fields, the way there might be in medicine or engineering. But there are some, and a lot of people follow them blindly. "Avoid clichés," writers say, or "Don't use the passive voice." But see, here's the thing: Rules were made to be broken. Sometimes you want the object of the action as the subject of the sentence, and that's when passive is useful. And if you've heard a phrase before, maybe it's because that's the pithiest way to state the idea.
So following the rules is fine up to a point, but if you lean on it too much your work can become plodding, formulaic, and earthbound. That doesn't mean it will fail in the marketplace. Bricklayers work in a plodding, step-by-step manner, and they make good, useful things. Certain highly successful artists, writers, musicians and so forth do essentially the same thing, and good for them.
But merely following rules and patterns is a little too easy, isn't it? Do this, do this, do that, you're done. You're laying bricks all day, every day. I was thinking about that, and then I was thinking about other creative people whose work I like better, and I decided their work was based less on rules than on inspiration.
And I remembered those summer nights when we were kids and we would get those long, thin boxes of sparklers and light them up. They would make this blazing star of fizzing white light, and I guess every kid who ever ran around with sparklers at a twilight barbecue discovered that if you waved it through the air, it would leave a trail on your retinas that would hang there in the darkness for a second or so. And that's how it works when it's right, in my own humble opinion—you get inspired by something, and you want to express it out artistically. And if it goes right, what you do, your words, notes, paint, whatever, leaves a lingering glow in other people's minds that cuts through the meaningless murk of daily life and hangs there like the Northern Lights.
We had a couple of pretty good snowstorms recently where I live, and I thought of the "Winter" concerto from Vivald's The Four Seasons. I don't know much about Vivaldi and whether he preferred to follow the rules or to break them. I only know that I thought about that piece while the snow was howling relentlessly down on us, because the music sounds like winter. The fierceness of the storms, and the lovely, still purity afterward. I don't think Antonio V. thought too much about whether he was in line with the commonly accepted best practices and techniques in Baroque composition while he was writing this. I think he mostly sat down and had a long think about what winter would sound like if it were music. And he finally got a pretty good sense of where to go, and then he dipped the quill pen in the inkwell and started writing. Three centuries later, people still play it and listen to it, because it still sounds like winter. Is there a rule to be found in that? Because if there is, it might be one of the ones worth following.
Whoa hey Fat Tuesday kind of snuck up on me, since I didn't realize until, like, dinnertime, that that's what day it is. So I dug around, found some Cajun seasoning, and sprinkled it on the pork chop I was broiling. And I'll make a point of listening to some of Dr. John's "Gumbo" album, one of the best New Orleans R&B albums ever, and also the Dixie Cups' version of "Iko Iko," which is a cappella and charming. They did it off the cuff, just hanging out in the studio, hitting Coke bottle with pencils and so forth.
I guess I would find Mardi Gras a more important holiday, an opportunity for a last hurrah, so to speak, if I intended to give anything up for Lent, but I don't. I've given too much up already. Have a good Lent, if you're observing it.
I guess I would find Mardi Gras a more important holiday, an opportunity for a last hurrah, so to speak, if I intended to give anything up for Lent, but I don't. I've given too much up already. Have a good Lent, if you're observing it.
Yesterday I was with friends who said that in church that morning the preacher had suggested they give some thought to people who were alone on Valentine's Day, which he added was at least partly a made-up holiday. I was trying to remember what I'd heard myself about its origins, and I dimly recalled reading that the fellow in question wasn't so much a real loverboy or anything. It was more that he was friendly, wrote people nice letters, something like that. I decided that once home I would look it up, and good old illusion-destroying Wikipedia says that outside of his having been a martyr, we don't know a damn thing about St. Valentine.
It was Geoffrey Chaucer who started the whole Valentine's day thing, it seems. Well, good for him. There ought to be a day consecrated to Eros, and if it's in the winter, so much the better, no? It's the summer in the Southern Hemisphere, of course, and that works too. Pretty much any day would work. But even if there's no real reason that it should be on February 14, we might as well leave things as they are. After all this time, six or seven centuries, "Valentine's Day" sounds like what it is. Suppose the Church researched the matter and found that the real patron saint of lovers was Athanasius, say, or Norbert? "Here you are, honey, Happy Norbert's Day?" No, no, I'm all for being real and genuine and accurate but in this, let's just carry on as always.
One more thing: Until my last haircut, I'd not heard about this gold rose thing. The woman who cuts my hair receives a gold rose from her husband every February 14, and she was telling me he wanted to give her a silver one this year because it would make a nice contrast, and she told him he was wrong, gold and silver don't go together, it doesn't work that way. We both agreed that men are clueless about such things. I went home and checked it out and found you can get a gold rose for about 60 bucks, which is roughly what a really nice bouquet of real roses might cost. Personally I think the real ones are the way to go. Gold roses are made by taking a once-real rose and electroplating the damn thing. I think that's a horrible, torturous thing to do to a rose. Flowers are ephemeral—it's one of the things that makes them charming. You might as well give someone a rose that was mummified.
At any rate, let me belatedly say that if your life is blessed with the love of which the poets speak, then good for you. If you have something going on that works for you okay, that's also nice. If there's someone you remember wistfully, someone you hope will be happy forever, well, that's love too, isn't it? Or maybe you have a pet that you love, or a place, or a piece of music, or a moment in a piece of music—whatever moves you, whatever becomes a part of you, somehow. I don't know what you call those feelings if you don't call them love.
And if you're thinking back over the your love life, cataloging the good bits, you might even feel free to think about someone you encountered just for a moment once, might you not? I was walking down a sidewalk years ago, and a young woman came winging around a corner fast enough that her handbug swung out and some sort of pen or eyeliner or something came out and clattered on the ground. She didn't notice, so I picked it up, called to her, and offered it. She turned around and stopped— tall, she was, pretty, with raven hair. When she realized I was giving her back this thing she'd dropped, she gave me an absolutely dazzling smile. "Merci," she said, took it, and continued briskly on her way. That was in Paris, actually, on a warm, sunny day long ago.
So! Anyway. Valentine's Day was yesterday, today is the 15th and it's time for breakfast.
It was Geoffrey Chaucer who started the whole Valentine's day thing, it seems. Well, good for him. There ought to be a day consecrated to Eros, and if it's in the winter, so much the better, no? It's the summer in the Southern Hemisphere, of course, and that works too. Pretty much any day would work. But even if there's no real reason that it should be on February 14, we might as well leave things as they are. After all this time, six or seven centuries, "Valentine's Day" sounds like what it is. Suppose the Church researched the matter and found that the real patron saint of lovers was Athanasius, say, or Norbert? "Here you are, honey, Happy Norbert's Day?" No, no, I'm all for being real and genuine and accurate but in this, let's just carry on as always.
One more thing: Until my last haircut, I'd not heard about this gold rose thing. The woman who cuts my hair receives a gold rose from her husband every February 14, and she was telling me he wanted to give her a silver one this year because it would make a nice contrast, and she told him he was wrong, gold and silver don't go together, it doesn't work that way. We both agreed that men are clueless about such things. I went home and checked it out and found you can get a gold rose for about 60 bucks, which is roughly what a really nice bouquet of real roses might cost. Personally I think the real ones are the way to go. Gold roses are made by taking a once-real rose and electroplating the damn thing. I think that's a horrible, torturous thing to do to a rose. Flowers are ephemeral—it's one of the things that makes them charming. You might as well give someone a rose that was mummified.
At any rate, let me belatedly say that if your life is blessed with the love of which the poets speak, then good for you. If you have something going on that works for you okay, that's also nice. If there's someone you remember wistfully, someone you hope will be happy forever, well, that's love too, isn't it? Or maybe you have a pet that you love, or a place, or a piece of music, or a moment in a piece of music—whatever moves you, whatever becomes a part of you, somehow. I don't know what you call those feelings if you don't call them love.
And if you're thinking back over the your love life, cataloging the good bits, you might even feel free to think about someone you encountered just for a moment once, might you not? I was walking down a sidewalk years ago, and a young woman came winging around a corner fast enough that her handbug swung out and some sort of pen or eyeliner or something came out and clattered on the ground. She didn't notice, so I picked it up, called to her, and offered it. She turned around and stopped— tall, she was, pretty, with raven hair. When she realized I was giving her back this thing she'd dropped, she gave me an absolutely dazzling smile. "Merci," she said, took it, and continued briskly on her way. That was in Paris, actually, on a warm, sunny day long ago.
So! Anyway. Valentine's Day was yesterday, today is the 15th and it's time for breakfast.
See, I know I sound like a mad scientist in the movies, it's not the first time, believe me, but—I warned them, the fools! I did. I said you shouldn't call a biggish snowstorm "Snowpocalypse" or "Snowmageddon," suggesting that this is the snowstorm that will basically end the world, when there might be other, slightly more severe storms coming later in the same damn week. And now this seems to be the case. The winter storm warning has been canceled and a blizzard warning put in its place, which just means slightly more snow (possibly up to 22 inches here) and winds up to 45 miles an hour. And they keep using the word "explosively," like that'll get it through our thick heads that this will be a good storm.
One thing they stress—don't go driving around later. And if you do drive, they say, have a winter survival kit with you. I have no intention of driving, but I have a winter survival kit anyway—books, a piano, plenty of good food including a big pot of lentil soup, and about three-quarters of a gallon of cheap port. I'll be just fine. See you in the spring, folks.
One thing they stress—don't go driving around later. And if you do drive, they say, have a winter survival kit with you. I have no intention of driving, but I have a winter survival kit anyway—books, a piano, plenty of good food including a big pot of lentil soup, and about three-quarters of a gallon of cheap port. I'll be just fine. See you in the spring, folks.
My social life lately has been confined to a few brief blizzard-free intervals here and there but I did get out the other night to a gallery show featuring a local photographer whose work I've admired. Later in the evening I was introduced to a woman who immediately started telling me about the thing in life that was bothering her the most at the time, the way complete strangers will do on airplanes and so forth. And it seemed the thing that bothered her most was her twin sister.
It all came out in a rush, and I don't remember most of the complaints, but one stood out—the woman looked at me and said one word—"Men"—and widened her eyes meaningfully. She didn't have to draw me a picture: the sister habitually stole men from her. Then she nodded toward a different part of the room. And there was the sister—also blonde, same height and general appearance, but there were some dramatic differences all the same. My sister had a black business suit on and a grim, dutiful expression. The other sister had a short skirt, dark stockings, flirtatiously tousled hair, and a gaggle of men around her. I couldn't see her face but she undoubtedly wore an expression of naughty glee.
There's a shock of recognition when you first encounter something that you've always heard of but never actually seen before, and that shock came to me in that moment. "She's an evil twin!" I said. "Like in the soap operas! I didn't know that was a real thing!"
She didn't laugh or smile; maybe to her I was just stating an obvious fact. Other introductions followed and we got swirled apart, but I kept an eye on her. That grim expression never changed. She seemed to be contemplating the few possible solutions to her problem: murder, relocating to another continent, various difficult and drastic expedients. I felt sorry for her and still do—evil twins are oodles of fun on television shows, but having one in real life, maybe not so much.
It all came out in a rush, and I don't remember most of the complaints, but one stood out—the woman looked at me and said one word—"Men"—and widened her eyes meaningfully. She didn't have to draw me a picture: the sister habitually stole men from her. Then she nodded toward a different part of the room. And there was the sister—also blonde, same height and general appearance, but there were some dramatic differences all the same. My sister had a black business suit on and a grim, dutiful expression. The other sister had a short skirt, dark stockings, flirtatiously tousled hair, and a gaggle of men around her. I couldn't see her face but she undoubtedly wore an expression of naughty glee.
There's a shock of recognition when you first encounter something that you've always heard of but never actually seen before, and that shock came to me in that moment. "She's an evil twin!" I said. "Like in the soap operas! I didn't know that was a real thing!"
She didn't laugh or smile; maybe to her I was just stating an obvious fact. Other introductions followed and we got swirled apart, but I kept an eye on her. That grim expression never changed. She seemed to be contemplating the few possible solutions to her problem: murder, relocating to another continent, various difficult and drastic expedients. I felt sorry for her and still do—evil twins are oodles of fun on television shows, but having one in real life, maybe not so much.
I feel asleep reading and woke up sleeping and got up to fall asleep again, and at 1:59 a.m. I was looking at dopey stuff on the Intertubes when the cat and I heard a scraping noise—the little town has a snowplow out tidying up the street. It was good to see. Now, the borough council here is a mixed group, but pretty together as a whole. And the borough manager (they're the people who really run small towns) is a smart, good guy. And if the crews are out getting things right in the small hours after a big storm, well, that's kind of cool. I'm a little concerned about the polity at the national level but here in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, we're hard at work getting the snow off the street. If you want to interpret this to mean that I think government should be small, but at least big enough to clear the snow away and accomplish other desirable group goals, that would be a reasonable opinion. At any rate, if I can't be blissfully asleep, it's almost as blissful to be awake to see my tax money at work getting the streets clear in the middle of the night. Heartening, you know? The plow driver is out there, doing it, getting the streets clear, and I'm working to notice and appreciate it, and to some extent all's right with the world.
You saw how people got all dismissive of Apple for naming their new tablet thingy "iPad," like they weren't thinking about some of the associations there. I thought about that today when I saw an ad for a new online dating site called "Zoosk." The first thing that struck me was how they pretty much were on target with the way business names today tend to sound like words from the tropical countries filtered through space alien talk and Dr. Seuss. Lots of vowels and consonants like Z, N, R, L, etc. This gives us things like "Zune," "Roomba," and so forth. But then I thought, okay, the deal with a dating site is that you want your customers to imagine a vast landscape of attractive members of whatever sex or sexes they find appealing, it's just this teeming cornucopia of potential love interests, all stunningly hot. Then I thought, do you really want the word "zoo" in your name, if that's what you're going for?
We had a pretty big snowstorm yesterday and today here in the eastern part of the United States, and one thing that's always predictable about the weather is that more and more, the weather people scream their lungs out over any major snowstorm. They've dubbed this one "Snowpocalypse" and "Snowmageddon," two terms that suggest a biblically horrific end to life on earth. The problem is that even a biggish snowstorm is a mild inconvenience in some ways and a lot of fun in others. There's no need to literally scream about it or describe it as the end of the world. It leaves you with nowhere to go rhetorically if an all-out nuclear war or asteroid did, in fact, destroy the world.
Ah—it looks like the snow has slowed to a stop. And the world is still here! Whaddaya know. I'm playing inside today but other people I know are sledding or making snow angels. I'll have to dig the car and walk out sometime soon but actually I can use the upper body work.
Ah—it looks like the snow has slowed to a stop. And the world is still here! Whaddaya know. I'm playing inside today but other people I know are sledding or making snow angels. I'll have to dig the car and walk out sometime soon but actually I can use the upper body work.
I hate people calling me to sell me stuff. See, I figure if you want to sell me something, you should pay for the medium you're doing the selling in. You should pay for the overhead at the grocery store or car dealership, you should buy the air time for the TV commercial, and so forth. Me, I pay for the phone service, so I don't want you to call me on it to sell me things. Just doesn't seem right. I'm on every do-not-call list there is.
But! I'm in the market for insurance, and a while back I filled out some information on this online listing deal so I could get a bunch of quotes. Got the quotes fine, but as I suspected, I've gotten a lot of calls too. A lot of calls. They say I filled out an application, which I didn't. And they're very avid—there's profit in selling insurance, I imagine—and there's a lot of them. And last night the phone buzzed just as I was getting the collard greens out to cut the ribs out of them and sauté them in olive oil and garlic. Ringy-dingy!
"Hello?"
"Hello. Can I speak with Matthew?"
"Well, not if you're calling from an insurance company."
My tone was pleasant, sort of nothing-personal, and bless the fellow's heart, he was cool about it. There was silence for a couple of moments, and then a low, amused chuckling. It was the kind of thing a person with a measure of ego strength would do if he were playing checkers, say, and his opponent saw he was wide open and did one of those bam-bam-bam-bam-bam deals and wiped him off the board in one move. That's life, the bear ate you, it happens. Best you can do is laugh to yourself.
Obviously there was nothing in the script about this situation, and just as obviously this guy was an authentic, down-to-earth person, a pretty cool person, really. I loved it that he just laughed. But I've learned to be firm, so I just said "Matthew is going to make dinner now" and hung up.
And then I felt bad. A guy who can take life's little setbacks philosophically is a guy I might want to buy insurance from. So call back, buddy, if you're reading this, OK? Just not at dinnertime.
But! I'm in the market for insurance, and a while back I filled out some information on this online listing deal so I could get a bunch of quotes. Got the quotes fine, but as I suspected, I've gotten a lot of calls too. A lot of calls. They say I filled out an application, which I didn't. And they're very avid—there's profit in selling insurance, I imagine—and there's a lot of them. And last night the phone buzzed just as I was getting the collard greens out to cut the ribs out of them and sauté them in olive oil and garlic. Ringy-dingy!
"Hello?"
"Hello. Can I speak with Matthew?"
"Well, not if you're calling from an insurance company."
My tone was pleasant, sort of nothing-personal, and bless the fellow's heart, he was cool about it. There was silence for a couple of moments, and then a low, amused chuckling. It was the kind of thing a person with a measure of ego strength would do if he were playing checkers, say, and his opponent saw he was wide open and did one of those bam-bam-bam-bam-bam deals and wiped him off the board in one move. That's life, the bear ate you, it happens. Best you can do is laugh to yourself.
Obviously there was nothing in the script about this situation, and just as obviously this guy was an authentic, down-to-earth person, a pretty cool person, really. I loved it that he just laughed. But I've learned to be firm, so I just said "Matthew is going to make dinner now" and hung up.
And then I felt bad. A guy who can take life's little setbacks philosophically is a guy I might want to buy insurance from. So call back, buddy, if you're reading this, OK? Just not at dinnertime.
Look, I don't mean to complain—it just seems to happen. But weather.com has been saying pretty much all day that it would snow here, and it never snowed, and it says that it's snowing right now, the region is overspread with blue on the radar map, but when I look out the window I don't see any snow. None. Not one flake. Who am I supposed to believe—a respected television channel and website, or my own lying eyes? Confused, that's me.
