Making the world safe for people with challenging tastes who occasionally like non-challenging fare

Here’s a theory: a lot of people watch “How I Met Your Mother.” However, no one talks about watching “How I Met Your Mother” (which is a surprisingly satisfying as a sitcom, in a very conventional way), so no one knows if it’s ok to like “How I Met Your Mother.” Sure, I’m eager to discuss “Community” and “Game of Thrones” with people, but “How I Met Your Mother”? Not so much. And I’d love to talk about some aspects of the show – like how everyone on it is fairly likable, except for the main character – but I can’t, because no one talks about it.  This is a strange conspiracy of silence. We were all confused when, in the hubbub about Charlie Sheen, several media outlets claimed that “Two and a Half Men” was somehow a widely watched show – come on, the only way that’s true is if you count international markets (seriously, everyone in Brazil watches it) and airplane passengers who are technically asleep but whose screens are still on.

 

But “How I Met Your Mother”? When I take the trouble of asking, it turns out that a lot of people watch it. So, I’m here to tell you, it’s ok to talk about “How I Met Your Mother.” But if someone walks by, and you suddenly switch to “Community,” I won’t judge you.  

http://flic.kr/p/bR7JDx

http://flic.kr/p/bCd2bw

Planning a trip in June.

http://flic.kr/p/bAaGLS

Adrienne and Earl

The almost-twin deaths of Adrienne Rich and Earl Scruggs have me wondering about the kinds of gigs you could see in heaven. (Note: I’m an atheist and probably don’t believe in heaven, but I do like the idea of some world after this one where time is irrelevant and you get to coexist with things/people that came before and after you. Who wouldn’t be comforted by that idea?)

So far, I’m starting with the idea that Miles Davis found Can and they did some jamming.

I like the image of Kurt Cobain asking Jerry Garcia for a performance of “Brokedown Palace” every night.

Hayden Carruth is off pestering Ben Webster.

See why this is great? It’s like fantasy sports, but with culture.

The Trumpeter Chronicles, cont'd

If you’ar an assiduous reader of this blog (and, come on, you’re not – I’m not even an assiduous reader of this blog), you may remember a character by the name of the Trumpeter, so nicknamed on account of her prolific farting. (Which, by the way, has not abated. Why should it?) This morning, I get to work and walk into the staff kitchen to put lunch in the fridge. The Trumpeter is futzing with something, so I keep my head down and try to avoid making too much noise. Alas, she heard the scuffle of my shoes...

Me:…

Trumpeter: Good morning!

Me: …morning…

Trumpeter: How are you?

Me:…fine…you?

Trumpeter: Well, I’m not sure if it was physical therapy last night or not, but I seem to have a strain in my kidney area!

Me:…

Trumpeter: Since it could be a kidney infection, I’m doubling up on the cranberry juice.

Me:…good, uh, luck. With that.

As my parents prepare to pack up and temporarily move house...

…I recently had the opportunity to sit down with my little sis and my mom and watch some old family tapes. A series of startling observations ensued, including:

 

*a bit of a sad feeling realizing that something fun was going on while I was away at college

*kids are so rude – I mean, we just sat there and ate. No “thank you’s,” no “this is great.”

*I probably wasn’t crazy about the “let’s film this stuff.” I mean, I know I wasn’t. I didn’t want a videographer at the wedding. I’m of the “just be awake, and conscious, and you can remember all the important stuff. Your brain is the best camera there is.” Well, no. The brain is a terrible terrible camera. Don’t trust it to record anything. Video is amazing. The amount of stuff you forget is amazing. Video is awesome.

*every time my mom got tired of filming one of her children, she’d say, “Ok, we need to hurry up. The, uh, battery is dying.” My mom is a genius.

*I really wish someone had told me as a kid to just embrace clichés – to be young, to be a kid, to be happy, to be open. Youth is wasted on surly teenagers.

 

And then it was time to go home, because where my parents live isn’t my home anymore. Which is mostly a good thing, except for when you’re feeling a little melancholy, a little old, and a little worn.

 

Why has this never happened?

 

The light turns green. Theoretically, if the 6 cars in front of me and I all accelerate at the same time and at the same rate, we should be able to to start moving as a block as soon as the light turns green, thus eliminating the need to wait for the ripple of forward motion to reach all the way back to me. Now, I know that there are a number of things that would have to align for this to happen – strictly speaking, there are a lot of variables here, and it’s fairly likely that you could repeat this a million times and not get it to work.

 

But I’ve stopped at way more than a million stoplights, I assume, or I will have stopped at way more than a million before I die. On some probabilistic level, like the 10,000 monkeys typing away, this should happen simply due to a random confluence of events. And yet, every time the light turns green, I inch forward only to see that 3 of the 5 cars ahead of me are waiting for the ripple to reach them. And I’m pretty sure it will somehow never happen, which seems wrong.

 

Direct to consumer marketing of prescription drugs

I’m taking this class on drug and device law, where we get to say things like “MDUFA” (pronounced ‘mah-doo-fah’) and “PDUFA” (pronounced ‘pee-dee-ewe-eff-ay’ – haha, jk, it rhymes with “Paducah,” or “Palooka”) and where we have phrases like “adequate directions for intended use” and “intent to introduce into interstate commerce misbranded or adulterated drugs” drilled into our heads.

 

One of the questions the profs keep trying to engage the class on is, if you were designing a legal and regulatory scheme from the ground up, would you still have the most salient features of our system – premarket approval of new drugs, for example? Would you still have the same standard for labeling (indication) claims, and how would you handle off-label use of drugs or devices? All of which is interesting, and really, for people who are my age and who have spent a good chunk of their adult life in a world where prescription drug manufacturers spend eight or nine billion dollars annually on advertising, it’s hard to think back to what life must have been like before the restrictions of direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing of prescription drugs.

 

When asked point blank whether this was a good thing or not, I said I supposed so, since I wouldn’t have known about “restless leg syndrome” without it, and the follow-up question – “is that a good thing or a bad thing?” - took me a little by surprise. Most people in the class reasoned that ultimately it’s not bad to inform patients of treatment options and of drugs that might help them with their treatments and that on the balance, the good outweighed the bad – not to mention that the historical proscription against DTC promotion might not survive a first amendment challenge today. But I kept coming back to the idea – the question, really – of why, if we all agree that the social or public utility here is about information, does Cymbalta have a theme? (It gets stuck in my head for days at a time.) Why are so many of the commercials designed to include emotional cues? Those commercials may ostensibly be about informing, but they’re also about creating an emotional connection with the viewer and are largely designed to titillate the senses, if you will. I know this is a fairly obvious point I’m making here, but wouldn’t the obvious conclusion, when watching these commercials, be that their intent is to sell a product rather than to inform?

 

None of the smartypants law students had an answer for me on that score. So I’m congratulating myself for judo-chopping your Socratic methodology, Georgetown Law Center. So. Crates.  

 

 

 

Mike Mills

 

I knew him in high school. We weren’t particularly close – more like our social networks intersected in a couple of salient areas, but that was about it. He was nice – a bowler hat, that 90s thrift look, and a very reclusive demeanor. I probably don’t think of him very often, not consciously, but unconsciously, I always remember him when I change lanes while going through an intersection.

 

Memory is arbitrary. I can’t help that the smell of flowers puts me at a street corner in Bethesda, or that the very idea of coffee and cigarettes translates into a chilly morning in a dorm in Ohio. I was giving Mike a ride somewhere in Rockville – back on Parklawn or something, near a Sear’s store, I think. As I changed lanes while going through an intersection, Mike said to me, “Did you know that’s illegal?”

 

“What is?”

 

“Changing lanes while going through an intersection. I got pulled over doing it. It was a 25 dollar ticket.”

 

“Really? I had no idea.”

 

“I guess you’re just luckier.”

 

There was something about the way he said it, and this isn’t just some cheesy bit of misremembering or romanticizing the past. The “something” about the way he said it didn’t tell me that I’d be writing this today, after his death. The “something” was a quality of being put-upon, down-and-out, perpetually unlucky, and also a profound indifference to the condition of being put-upon, down-and-out, perpetually unlucky. Maybe there was anger there, too. Probably there was. The reason political correctness seems like such a 1990s phenomenon is partly because the 1990s were closer to the 1980s than to the 2000s. It’s entirely more likely that Mike Mills may have been targeted by the police, by chauvinists or the intolerant, because he dressed a little bit weird for the suburbs. So did we all, but Mike still kind of stood out.

 

Sometimes shy people are just boring, as Jens Lekman says, but I never found Mike to be particularly shy and he was definitely not boring. He was a good person, gentle and kind. I hope he went on to be less put-upon. He didn’t have a whole lot of time, but considering he was probably 16 or 17 when I knew him…well, he only had another 16 or 17 years for the world to make it up to him. I hope it did, or that it at least came close to making it up to him.