CAPERS FROM THE CAPE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (08-27-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     It's true that vacations are scaled down these days, and you can't visit everywhere and do everything that a robust agenda might have on it. But that doesn't mean that we can't have a good time. After being cooped up in my house for five months, doing my taxes in a hotel room in Patterson would seem like a romantic getaway. And right now it's important to show that we can wear a mask when we need to, stay apart and work it into the plan without a whole lot of fuss. We rented a house in Provincetown, Massachusetts for a few nights and had a great time.

     It wasn't exactly the same experience as it used to be, when we used to hang out at the Governor Bradford until one o'clock in the morning, listening to the drag queens run Karaoke night. They had some chess boards built into the tables near the window, and we used to play, even though there would always be a piece or two missing. If you happened to capture my queen, there were always plenty more where that came from onstage. Female impersonators have a short fuse for people who can't carry a tune, and they won't let you twist in the wind for too long before they chime in and help you carry it somewhere unharmed.

     About 99 percent of the people walking on Commercial Street were wearing a mask, so it felt very safe to shop and people-watch. I noticed that I couldn't yawn with my mask on, so I made a point of not going anywhere boring. There were a ton of pretty girls and ladies walking around, at least I assume there were, I couldn't see much of their faces. The era of coronavirus has been a boon for girls with nice eyes. I remember back in high school, when one of my girl friends said, "I know the perfect girl for you." Which meant that they knew someone so desperate that they would possibly put up with me for one evening. And I'd shallowly ask if they were good-looking, and my friend would say, "She has great eyes," which meant the rest of her looked like a Goya painting. It was one step up from "She has a fantastic personality," which was a guarantee, if true, that she definitely wouldn't like me.

     When we sat down at the restaurant we could relax and take our masks off so we didn't have to eat through our ears. Like New York, the rule is that you have to eat a convincing amount of food in order to purchase drinks from the bar. I had been fasting since breakfast, knowing that I can only drink as much as I can eat. To my chagrin there was a one-hour table limit, and I almost had a panic attack. What if it's Daylight Savings Time and they set the clocks ahead and I have to leave before I get there? Thankfully no one was keeping 4/4 time, and I ate an entire pizza's worth of beer. Covid-era government is making us fat.

     As we got on our bikes to go home we saw a fox running across the street, of all things. I could see how foxy it was because it wasn't wearing a mask like a racoon does, and you could tell it wasn't a housecat because of the tail. A fox has a tail that looks like it was ordered from Etsy and hastily fastened on with a safety pin. Then we saw another one, so I guess foxes are in and cats are SO last year. In fact we didn't see any cats at all, and usually the place is brimming with them because of all the seafood, but this time there isn't as much Chenin Blanc left over to go with it.

     The next couple days were great for lounging at the shore, and our dog Gidget proved to be a carefree beach bunny. We took a walk along the sand bar at low tide, basking in the frequent praise of dog lovers unfamiliar with her breed. Gidget took it in furry stride, and even dipped her paws into the water (she's fussy about her paws). On the bay beach in Provincetown at low tide you can stroll for 15 minutes into the water and barely get your shins wet. If you keep walking and you see signs for Faneuil Hall, you went too far. There were no lifeguards, but with 80-degree water, no waves, no alcohol, no depth and tiny little fish, you'd really have to expend some effort to get into any trouble. It seemed much more dangerous to check my emails from work. There was a girl who found a nice-sized horseshoe crab, and I told her that an upside down horseshoe is good luck, although maybe not for the crab.

     We got back to our chairs before the tide rolled in and swallowed up the sand bar, and I picked up the crossword puzzle and turned on the AM radio to a country music station. If I listen to country music for too long I start to say "babuh" a lot and talk about my truck, even though I don't own a truck, and it takes two days to get it out of my system. But it sounds good at the beach, and when Gidget settled onto her own towel for a nice nap, it seemed like a pretty good idea.

     The next day it was already time to go home, and before we hit the traffic on Route 6, I wished I could take a piece of paradise with me. And there it was: a rest area with a sign that said, "Adopt Me." Before I could jot the number down we were already into the rotary. It's just as well, we don't have room for it in the garage, but wouldn't it be nice to have an area like that for the rest of the summer.
 

WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD ( 01-23-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     I have seen the future, and I have to be honest, it's kind of silly. In early January the city of Las Vegas hosted the annual Consumer Electronics Show. For $300 bucks you could attend the three days of seminars, exhibits and conferences designed to highlight the latest and the brightest innovations in the technology industry. There were 4,500 companies in attendance showing off everything from plant-based foods to self-driving cars to artificial intelligence to virtual reality to ultra high-definition televisions, and just about everything in between.

     People working in the technology industry think that it's their job to create a product that does something, and then try to find a use for it later.   "Ballie" debuted at this year's CES, a robotic orb that rolls around, following you and trying to convince you to resist the urge to kick it 30 yards for a field goal. It has a camera to take selfies of you clipping your toenails, or it might talk to you and try to get to know you better. A tweet from Samsung says that the device “understands you, supports you and reacts to your needs.” Which sounds like the same sort of thing I would slam my front door on an insurance salesman for saying. Or it could be your new fitness assistant, meaning that it will find a body-positive way to tell you that you are still fat. You can use it as a mobile interface, to close your curtains for you, or start your oven, or get your Roomba to quit goofing off and get back to work, or to tell your refrigerator that it's still fat. I've been waiting a long time for this day to roll around, only to have it possibly roll away from me again.

     The irony is that because of technology no one goes out anymore, they just sit at home and watch Netflix and order from Grubhub.com, while their self-driving car goes out and enjoys a night on the town. It's a lonely life. So now technology is left trying to fill the void of its own making. Designers are falling all over themselves trying to invent robots that will do useful things for us AND keep us company. Programmers, if you're out there, I can't imagine having any companion that I don't constantly argue with. You should build into the algorithm the ability to push my buttons after I push its button. "Wow, look at you, you turned me on," my robot says to me sardonically. I reply, "Yeah, well, let's get back to how stupid you are, for something that's supposed to have super-human intelligence. I can't believe you think 'The White Album' is better than 'Rubber Soul.' They couldn't even come up with a title for the album, only a color." And we go back and forth on a number of other topics before we break for coffee. I can just picture myself at the CES wandering around the exhibits with my robot to keep me company.

     We stop at a booth where the folks at Charmin have rolled out a contraption that fetches you a toilet paper roll via your Bluetooth device, should you run out at the most inopportune moment, provided you happen to have your Bluetooth device with you, your arms are long enough to reach the bathroom door and you can get over the shrieks of laughter coming from Alexa, Siri and Cortana. There are a lot of "smart home" products on display this year. Privacy is a big concern, and manufacturers don't want you to think that your toilet paper robot could be hacked into by someone who will teach your cat to speak Russian while you're sitting helplessly on the toilet.

     My companion robot is starting up with me again. "You really think that '99' from 'Get Smart' is better-looking than 'Mary Ann?' They couldn't even come up with a name for the character, only a number." I defend my choices while we wait for plant-based hamburgers to come out for lunch.

     Back on the floor there is a motor-assisted e-bike you can ride on top of water that uses a lithium-ion battery and costs about $7500 bucks. It goes about 14 MPH, and you can peddle it into the middle of the lake for about one hour before the battery dies and you have to start waving your arms to be rescued. Thank god this thing was not around in the time of Jesus. "LOOK! Jesus is walking on water! It's a miracle!" "Yeah, that's nice but look at that dude over there- he's got a water bike! THAT'S COOL!"

     I turn around, and where's my little electronic friend? Of course my companion robot couldn't resist checking out the new model at his manufacturer's booth and has a few choice words. "So, you're the next-gen model of me, huh? Is that logo on your chest what you call 'body art?' Not one for subtlety, are we. And what is that god-forsaken music you're playing? When I was your version we had a thing called melody. You should try some REAL music." Some things just can't be upgraded, I guess. We end up being escorted out by security after my companion robot gets into a contretemps with Ballie and throws it into the fountain at the Bellagio. Ballie gets the last laugh just before it hits the water when it yells, "YOU THROW LIKE A GIRL!" 

2020 VISION

 ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (01-16-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     Soooo, we're a couple weeks into the new decade, and it's time we evaluated how it's going so far. Did you make some New Year's resolutions? Things about yourself that you'd like to change or improve? They're not "New Year's resolutions" to me, because most of them are the same ones I made to start the Old Year that didn't improve very much. But I'm going to keep plugging away, because it would be too much like me if I used my resolutions to pick out some things that I'd like to make worse.

     One of my goals for the new decade is to find out whether we're in it or not. Many purists believe that we have to wait another year before the new decade actually begins, and that you should look at it as if you were in an elevator. If you're in the lobby, you have to go up one flight to reach the first floor. Don't worry, because you'll make it up when you get to the place where the 13th floor was supposed to be. There seems to be much less confusion about exactly when the year 2020 starts. Most agree that it starts shortly after 2019 ends. I'd give it a couple weeks just to make sure there's no overlap, and then I intend to wait 10 years, and if it passes successfully, then I can look back and say that this was definitely the start of a decade. Make sense to you? My friend Jonna here at work already told me in no uncertain terms that she's not going to go to all the trouble of changing the dates on her checks from the teens to the twenties unless she's getting a brand new decade out of the deal.

     I hereby resolve to help my wife out this year by doing more cooking. Cooking is so satisfying; it's creative, it's individual, it's like painting a work of art that you can eat and then throwing the canvas in the dishwasher. Indeed, if you've seen Jackson Pollack's famous work, "Convergence," you'll see the major influences for my "Scrambled Eggs with Cheese." After I cook something, the kitchen itself is such a mess it looks like a downgraded tornado grazed the area. It looks like terrain that the Allied Forces would have considered and rejected as a landing point for their LSTs during World War II. The fun part is that I always change the recipe slightly, put my personal stamp on it. Sometimes my wife's taste test doesn't go as well as I thought it might, judging by the face she makes. "How much thyme did you put into this?" I'm so thrown off by the face she's making that I vault right past the obvious joke, which makes me question my sanity. I say, "It said two teaspoons of fresh thyme, so I figured twice as much if I use the stale stuff that we have." She inquires, "Did you put your personal stamp on this again?"

     I resolve to become more tech savvy. I'm sick of newborn babies coming out of the womb who already know how to code, and I can't work the camera on my smart phone. I took the day off yesterday so I could call the Google Help Line and ask them to show me how to hook up this doohicky that's supposed to cast the screen of my laptop onto my television. After saying "yes" about 30 times to answer the phone prompts, I am directed to the cheerful and patient Ramona, who has clearly dealt with people like me before. "Do you have a smart phone?" She asks. "Yes, but even if you call it you're still going to be stuck with talking to me," I reply. She tells me to access "Google Home" on my Android platform device. "I'm having a little trouble understanding your accent," I say. Turns out she's born and raised in New York. "Why do I have to do this on my phone if it's my laptop that I want to access?" If only my wife were here to tell me to shut up and just do what she says, because Ramona is too polite to say it. In the end, she hooked me up, even though I had to check a bunch of boxes that let Google invade my privacy anytime it feels like it. "I agree to let Google come to my house and snoop around in my bathroom medicine cabinet if it wants." I did check that box in order to get this damn thing running. I was tempted to try to impress Ramona with my knowledge. "Hey, why isn't this damn thing on the cloud?" I would have asked. "If this thing was in the cloud, we'd be done by now. Good god, what if it rains though?" Sure, there are plenty of reasons to have children, most of which escape me at the moment. But maybe the best reason is so I don't have to call the Google Help Line anymore, and just let my kids say, "Dad, what do you want to even do that for when you can do this?" And then they show me something on their phone that I can never duplicate when they are not there.

     Another thing I'd like to accomplish for the New Year is to become less predictable. I say the same thing every January First- you could set your calendar to it. I've been told that I do everything the same way all the time, on the same day. And if I have to reschedule something it moves everything else back by one day, but I intend to make it up at the end of the decade, especially if it starts a year later than I thought. So this year I'm going to change things up, become more fluid, and it's going to make me infinitely more interesting. You know who I learned this from? Donald J. Trump. Donald J. Trump NEVER tips his hand to the opposition. He's here, he's there, where is he? He could be on a golf course somewhere in Scotland for all I know. Or, he could be on a golf course in New Jersey. OR, he could be on a golf course in Florida. By being unpredictable, he has won a trade war with China, caused North Korea to abandon its nuclear program and built a huge wall near the Rio Grande to prevent Texans from trying to escape. And if he hasn't exactly finished doing any of those things, you can be sure that they'll be done by the end of the decade. Whenever that is.

2020 VISION

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (01-16-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

 
2020 vision
     Soooo, we're a couple weeks into the new decade, and it's time we evaluated how it's going so far. Did you make some New Year's resolutions? Things about yourself that you'd like to change or improve? They're not "New Year's resolutions" to me, because most of them are the same ones I made to start the Old Year that didn't improve very much. But I'm going to keep plugging away, because it would be too much like me if I used my resolutions to pick out some things that I'd like to make worse.
     One of my goals for the new decade is to find out whether we're in it or not. Many purists believe that we have to wait another year before the new decade actually begins, and that you should look at it as if you were in an elevator. If you're in the lobby, you have to go up one flight to reach the first floor. Don't worry, because you'll make it up when you get to the place where the 13th floor was supposed to be. There seems to be much less confusion about exactly when the year 2020 starts. Most agree that it starts shortly after 2019 ends. I'd give it a couple weeks just to make sure there's no overlap, and then I intend to wait 10 years, and if it passes successfully, then I can look back and say that this was definitely the start of a decade. Make sense to you? My friend Jonna here at work already told me in no uncertain terms that she's not going to go to all the trouble of changing the dates on her checks from the teens to the twenties unless she's getting a brand new decade out of the deal.

     I hereby resolve to help my wife out this year by doing more cooking. Cooking is so satisfying; it's creative, it's individual, it's like painting a work of art that you can eat and then throwing the canvas in the dishwasher. Indeed, if you've seen Jackson Pollack's famous work, "Convergence," you'll see the major influences for my "Scrambled Eggs with Cheese." After I cook something, the kitchen itself is such a mess it looks like a downgraded tornado grazed the area. It looks like terrain that the Allied Forces would have considered and rejected as a landing point for their LSTs during World War II. The fun part is that I always change the recipe slightly, put my personal stamp on it. Sometimes my wife's taste test doesn't go as well as I thought it might, judging by the face she makes. "How much thyme did you put into this?" I'm so thrown off by the face she's making that I vault right past the obvious joke, which makes me question my sanity. I say, "It said two teaspoons of fresh thyme, so I figured twice as much if I use the stale stuff that we have." She inquires, "Did you put your personal stamp on this again?"

     I resolve to become more tech savvy. I'm sick of newborn babies coming out of the womb who already know how to code, and I can't work the camera on my smart phone. I took the day off yesterday so I could call the Google Help Line and ask them to show me how to hook up this doohicky that's supposed to cast the screen of my laptop onto my television. After saying "yes" about 30 times to answer the phone prompts, I am directed to the cheerful and patient Ramona, who has clearly dealt with people like me before. "Do you have a smart phone?" She asks. "Yes, but even if you call it you're still going to be stuck with talking to me," I reply. She tells me to access "Google Home" on my Android platform device. "I'm having a little trouble understanding your accent," I say. Turns out she's born and raised in New York. "Why do I have to do this on my phone if it's my laptop that I want to access?" If only my wife were here to tell me to shut up and just do what she says, because Ramona is too polite to say it. In the end, she hooked me up, even though I had to check a bunch of boxes that let Google invade my privacy anytime it feels like it. "I agree to let Google come to my house and snoop around in my bathroom medicine cabinet if it wants." I did check that box in order to get this damn thing running. I was tempted to try to impress Ramona with my knowledge. "Hey, why isn't this damn thing on the cloud?" I would have asked. "If this thing was in the cloud, we'd be done by now. Good god, what if it rains though?" Sure, there are plenty of reasons to have children, most of which escape me at the moment. But maybe the best reason is so I don't have to call the Google Help Line anymore, and just let my kids say, "Dad, what do you want to even do that for when you can do this?" And then they show me something on their phone that I can never duplicate when they are not there.

     Another thing I'd like to accomplish for the New Year is to become less predictable. I say the same thing every January First- you could set your calendar to it. I've been told that I do everything the same way all the time, on the same day. And if I have to reschedule something it moves everything else back by one day, but I intend to make it up at the end of the decade, especially if it starts a year later than I thought. So this year I'm going to change things up, become more fluid, and it's going to make me infinitely more interesting. You know who I learned this from? Donald J. Trump. Donald J. Trump NEVER tips his hand to the opposition. He's here, he's there, where is he? He could be on a golf course somewhere in Scotland for all I know. Or, he could be on a golf course in New Jersey. OR, he could be on a golf course in Florida. By being unpredictable, he has won a trade war with China, caused North Korea to abandon its nuclear program and built a huge wall near the Rio Grande to prevent Texans from trying to escape. And if he hasn't exactly finished doing any of those things, you can be sure that they'll be done by the end of the decade. Whenever that is.