Torture on Tisha B'Av

Yesterday was Tisha B'Av, the saddest day of the Jewish year. It is a day of mourning for the many historical tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people (amazing they could fit it all into one day!)

Traditional Jews fast from sundown the evening before through to nightfall, about 25 hours. Knowing that not eating for more than an hour or so makes me cranky I arranged playdates for my children.

My daughter and her friend played a few rounds of "beauty salon" in which they used magic markers to paint their toenails. Then they decided to play "restaurant."

Since I was nearby, lying on the couch drooling slightly (I had been fasting for 20 hours), I got to be the customer. They served me dish after dish, a salad made from wooden cucumbers and carrots, a bristle block sandwich, and some plastic cookies.

It looked good enough to eat.

Clash of the Gordons

I was poking around the Web today, looking for the lyrics of a song I could teach my kids and have them serenade my wife when she returned from her trip. At first I was thinking of The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

But in the process, I learned something that really bugged me - Gordon Lightfoot isn't bald.*

The two celebrity Gordons I know of (and for some reason, I don't have any actual friends named Gordon) are both cueballs, so in my universe, people named Gordon should be bald.

One of the Gordons is of course, Gordon of Sesame Street.


The other is G. Gordon Liddy.


Good Gordon vs. Evil Gordon

Both burst on the national scene at about the same time - in 1974, when I was a little boy. Gordon joined Sesame Street and Liddy played a crucial role in destroying our nation's innocence by engineering the Watergate break-in. Thus good Gordon and evil Gordon - at least in my mind's eye.

Liddy of course plays into the stereotype of bald men as evil masterminds. (Any chance of getting references to Lex Luther banned as "hate speech?")

It is a stereotype that oppresses me regularly as I join their ranks (at a rate increasing daily...) Fortunately, Gordon of Sesame Street was a shining counter-example, a mastermind, but for good. So good was Gordon, that there is a Gordon Fisher Price person. It is safe to say that there will probably never be a G. Gordon Liddy Fisher Price person (if you really want one, just bite the plastic hair part off of any other Fisher-Price character - the Fisher-Price figures can't resist, they have no arms.)



Come to think of it, a Watergate-themed Fisher-Price set would be kind of cool and might be an important step to addressing the shocking deficit of civic knowledge among America's youth.


*I knew "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" was really long and dirge-like - just the ironic mood I was seeking. Of course when I discovered it was the tragic story of an iron ore ship freighter that sunk in a November storm on Lake Superior (killing its 29 crewmen), I decided it would be kind of inappropriate.


I should establish something here. I never really listened to music. When all the other kids in high school were watching MTV or listening to tapes on the Walkmen - I was doing "something else." I am at a loss to describe what it might have been. So my knowledge of music and familiarity with songs and musicians is idiosyncratic - with an emphasis on the idiot. I am particularly prone to songs that when heard for even a few bars get stuck permanently inside the skull and also commercial jingles. I am also incapable of understanding lyrics clearly.

I hope this clarifies something...

Eloquence in the Morning

My long-suffering wife is away for a few days. No problem - I've got that dad thing down. But, in the mornings it is my wife who is the "go to" parent.

So, as usual, my little girl came into our room at an ungodly hour (although in fairness I consider any AM hour with a single digit ungodly) and commanded, "Get me my milk, please."

What coffee is to adults, apparently milk is too children.

I rolled over, looked at her and said wryly, "No, you get me my milk."

She furrowed her brow, "No, I'm little!"

An argument that had the virtues of brevity, elegance, and absolutely truth, I thought as I stumbled downstairs to heat her milk.

Having mastered the classic trivium (logic, grammer, and rhetoric) now she needs to learn to count so she can take on the quadrivium.

Summer Camp Initiation

My son came home from camp really excited for, "Color Wars!"

My wife looked concerned, "We need to pull him out - I don't like this."

"Yeah, I hated color war when I went to camp, I was always the one dragging down my crew," I shared - dredging up long repressed memories of summer initiations.

My wife's eyes got wide, "You are in this? Why didn't you tell me? You could have endangered all of us!"

Then I remembered, my wife grew up in Los Angeles - and not as a member of the "summer camp attending" class (although summer camp in LA seems redundant.) In her mind, color wars implied something beyond three-legged races and pop-tart eating contests.

All-Star Jokes

A special day here at the Goof home. My son loves baseball, but rarely gets to see a game (games start around 8 and he needs to be in bed around that time.) But he came home from camp and took a nap so he could stay up late.

Normally he has to wait for the morning papers - which he obsesses over, clips, and marks up. For the rest of the world print newspapers are slowly dying out for everyone else - but I am raising my son in a different era. He will be like the last of the Mohicans.

They did a great program with old Hall of Famers. I tried to explain to my son how Ralph Kiner was a real old-time - long retired when I was a collecting baseball cards. Of course they had my hero Eddie Murray and other Oriole greats - Franks and Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer and of course Cal Ripken. I was also happy to see Robin Yount, who's name adorns my boyhood glove, that I still use.

Best of all was Yogi Berra - my son knows all about Yogi. How, after Mary Lindsay (wife of NYC Mayor John Lindsay), told Yogi he looked nice and cool, Yogi responded, "You don't look so hot yourself."

How after Yogi was hit by a foul ball, he was taken to the hospital where doctors X-rayed his head and found nothing.

As I write this, it is the fifth inning. I asked my son if he wanted to stay up and watch it. He said, "Dad - I never refuse a fifth."

Yep, I'm raising my son for a career in vaudeville. Or maybe he can work the Catskills.

John Henry vs. The Bicycle

In one of the many statistics courses I've had to take (and muddle through) we learned about the John Henry Effect:

One group may view that it is competition with the other group and may work harder than than they would under normal circumstances. This generally is applied to the control group "taking on" the treatment group.

The effect is named for the classic American folk hero about a mighty steel-driver on the crews that built the railroads across the country. One day, the owner of the railroad buys a steam-powered hammer to do the job and John Henry challenges the machine in order to save jobs of his work-crew. In a tough mano a machino contest John Henry bests the machine but dies in the process.

I had my own little John Henry effect. My son has begun riding a bike. We go out to the trail, he bikes and I run along-side him. He is only seven, his bike still has training wheels, but he still peddles faster then I run. I am inspired, this is man against machine. I push myself to new limits. My heart pounds, my legs strain, my breath is ragged. It is MAN vs. MACHINE! AGE vs. YOUTH! I run like the wind (or at least a gentle breeze.)

And today, in defense of honor - I kept my son in sight for 87 seconds.

Strictly speaking, this may not be an illustration of the John Henry Effect, or it might be...

The fact is I didn't do very well in the class, which is why I volunteered to sing John Henry, Steel Driving Man in class for extra credit.

Yes it was kind of embarrassing, but it was also good preparation for my thesis defense (currently projected for 2017.)