DON'T WASTE MY TIME

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD ( 02-24-22)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     I admit it, I can't stand soccer. You can sue me if you like, maybe it'll take your mind off all the other things you're already suing me for. For a one-nil slugfest I could invest, well, no one knows HOW long because the referee can add as much time as he likes to the end of the game to make up for players wasting time during the game. I've been to meetings at work where the exact same thing happens; there's one guy who asks a stupid question every single time and the person running the meeting spends 20 minutes answering it under the misplaced notion that "there are no stupid questions." To make matters worse, the guy who asked it even told us beforehand that, "I know this is a stupid question but..." and not one of us had the courtesy to agree with him. As a fitting punishment for that, the person running the meeting asks at the end if anyone has any more questions, and believe it or not, somebody does.

     Anyway, my spectator sport of choice is baseball, and people from other countries who love soccer never tire of telling me how long and boring the game is. They say, I know this is a stupid question, but why does the pitcher shake his head four or five times at the catcher before he throws the pitch he wants to throw anyway? And why does the hitter grab his collar, then his glove, then his bat, then his cap, then his hair, then his crotch before each swing? Then why does he step out of the batter's box three or four times, then grab all that stuff all over again when he stands back in it? And why are you allowed to foul off as many pitches as you want, shouldn't there be some kind of limit? And why does the pitcher keep throwing over to first base so often? I quickly concur that these are stupid questions, which is what I always say when I don't know the answer.

     The fact is that baseball hasn't gotten more boring over the years, it's just that our tolerance for boredom has drastically decreased. When did this start? With the invention of the telephone? Just after the invention of the horse but before the telephone, I had to ride over to your house to have a conversation that eventually ends in me asking to borrow some money, and even though you might rattle on about your Mom's lumbago, I stuck it out because it took me so long to get there, and I needed the money. A few decades later, I could just make three or four calls from my house, and eventually I could find somebody fairly liquid who's Mom didn't have lumbago, which sped the process up considerably. Then the car was invented, and if I didn't like where I was I could just leave. With a remote control in my hand I had command of the airwaves, and with the internet I had the world at my fingertips.

     And because everything has been made so easy for me, I now have no patience for anything. Modern living has turned me into an irascible museum piece. I don't even have the patience to look up the word "irascible," so I hope I spelled it right. The very things that are supposed to make my life easier are the worst offenders. "Automatic" devices automatically raise my blood pressure. Every time I drive my wife's car I have to adjust the  "automatic" seat. I press the button while the seat moves back a fraction of an inch every 15 minutes. Then I press recline button for another 20 minutes while precious life seeps from my body. The automatic lumbar support can go to hell in a handbasket.

     Texting is quite the time-saver. Instead of picking up the phone to call someone when you have something important to say, you can use the text function instead. You save a TON of time because you don't need to wait until you have something important to say (I asked my sister to change her name so you won't know who I'm talking about).

     "Easy-open" packaging, makes life easier, unless you kill yourself trying to open it. I end up "opening" it even MORE "easy" with this knife I have that's really a borderline machete. It's known in my house as "the sharpest knife in the drawer." It's not like the ones gourmet chefs use, which they have to sharpen before they cut anything with. Mine comes right out of the drawer and cuts me on the way out. And that actually does save me the time of doing it myself. 

     In the interest of fairness, I think this column has wasted enough of both our time. But before we go, does anyone have any questions?

AT THE OLYMPICS

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD ( 02-17-22)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     Naturally, I'd love to be competing in the Olympics at my chosen sport, but my Olympic dreams were dashed by something that happened many years ago: everyone noticed that I had not an athletic bone in my body. If someone had been able to locate an athletic bone in my body, THAT'S the one I would have broken the day before the big race. So I'll have to enjoy it on television like everybody else.

     There is plenty of backdrop; the pandemic is still an issue and people are testing positive, which is a negative. Human rights in China come up as they always do. The subject of climate change can't be overlooked. I was watching the Women's Super-G, and there was only man-made snow where they were racing, which I guess you'd call the Super-G spot.

     But the Olympics are an opportunity to leave all that behind and focus only on what the mind and body can do when pushed to their very limits, while possibly on steroids. First, you need to learn the Olympic jargon. For instance, in the Slopestyle ski event, you've got to "put it down." Which means what "stick the landing" used to mean. If you can't "put it down," well, you should have thought of that before you went up. While you're hurtling around in the air you're supposed to grab part of your snowboard or ski, which is not at all what I would be grabbing under the same set of circumstances. In Figure Skating, there is a series of spins and turns referred to as "twizzles," and you want your twizzles to sizzle, not fizzle.

     There is a skating jump called a "Flying Camel Spin." Yes, it's an interesting move, but what I think we should be focusing on is: exactly who was the person who saw a skater land that jump and said, "You know what that looks like? A flying, spinning camel?" That was probably the day drug testing became a regular thing. Another girl performed two perfect "triple toe loops," implying that she has six toes. I don't know if the Olympic Committee needs to take a look at this, but if it is legal then I'm entering my cat in the next Olympics. Some skaters looked too tall for the short program, another thing the Committee should evaluate. 

     I have some questions of my own, such as, do ice skaters spin in the opposite direction south of the Equator? Also, at the end of the skating exhibition people skate up to you with a bouquet of roses. Why does nobody ski up to you with roses at the end of the skiing competition?

     Who am I to judge? I'm an expert at judging now, that's who. Everyone is after a week of watching the Olympics. But I'm not going to nickel-and-dime you with these tenth of a point deductions for dumb things like where you put your hands, or how how high you jumped, or if you didn't spin around as many times as you said you would. I'll be deducting for more important things, like whether you use too much garlic, or if you had plastic surgery that gave you duck lips, or for each time you say "It is what it is." I was watching a Russian girl snowboard, and the announcer said that they would be judging her on her execution, which is something I thought we would never see again after the fall of the tsarist regimes.

     Some things about the Olympics are different than they ever were. For instance, there is a lot more scrutiny and social media commentary regarding post-event interviews. A television announcer spoke with an American skier who was expected to medal, and instead fell at the top of the slope. It was like interviewing an open wound. There was also a tightly controlled interview with tennis star Peng Shuai, who has been missing from public view after making allegations against a Party bigwig. I read the entire transcript of the interview, and to me it raised more questions than it answered. My main question is: What the hell did she say? The whole thing was in Chinese.

     But there were lots of exciting moments, plenty of competitive events. For instance, there is the Half-pipe event, which reminds me of something a plumber once said to me after I tried to install my own dishwasher: "Where's the other half of that pipe?" I could also certainly devote an entire column to the sport of Olympic Curling, but in China, curly hair does not seem like a high priority. Also, if you were unfamiliar with Ravel's "Bolero," you'll know it by heart at the end of the Figure Skating competition. I guess it is what it is, and I owe you a tenth of a point deduction for saying that but it was worth it.

RICK MELEN'S SUPER SUNDAY PRIMER

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD ( 02-10-22)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

I don't know if I'm ready for a full-blown Super Bowl party just yet, but we're having a little get-together of some friends that are vaccinated against coronavirus, smallpox, and in fact any-sized pox. It's time to start living again, time to go back to being frightened of the things we used to be frightened of before the pandemic: spiders, trigonometry and redheads. I've even invented a new cocktail for the occasion, it's called a "vaccini," and you make it with a dash of dry vermouth, a couple ounces of gin and a splash of ivermectin. For those of you who might be new to the Big Game, I've put together a compendium of some of the phrases and jargon you're likely to hear during the broadcast, and exactly what they mean:

"We're going to take what the defense gives us...." This is something coaches tell their players before the game, when there is still some hope that the defense is going to give them anything. After the game has been lost 45-0, at the press conference the Head Coach can then explain that the defense gave them nothing, and would not accept a personal check even with two forms of identification.

"He seems to be a bit shaken up out there...." If a player is lying face down on the field in a pool of blood with all his limbs facing to different compass points, the announcers may  describe him as "shaken up." To me, "shaken up" is how you might describe a can of Yoo-hoo or Yahtzee dice, and I never once heard a medical professional use the phrase in a diagnostic context.

"We're not going to speculate on the extent of his injury...." This sentence is followed by a period of intense speculation on the extent of a player's injuries, along with gruesome video in slow motion that on any other broadcast would garner an "R" rating.

"We're told that he's undergoing concussion protocols right now...." Concussion protocols are where they ask you a series of questions, such as your name, the date, who is the current rightful President of the United States, and they determine whether you are suffering the after-effects of a serious blow to the head, or have always been this dumb.

"He's calling an 'audible' right now...." If the quarterback sees a configuration that might result in a serious blow to the head, and does not see the immediate value of "taking what the defense gives him," he may shout out a different play just before the snap. Since there are 70,000 fans screaming various other things at the players, some of which are not technically true, the resulting modification is heard by only the two or three players nearest to the quarterback, and totally inaudible to the rest.

"You don't want to miss Halftime for ANY reason today...." Normally, this is a phrase that underestimates the amount of chocolate in my refrigerator. Certainly the Halftime Show at the Super Bowl is ramped up, with an artist of international renown pretending to sing a medley of his or her greatest hits, consisting of two or three words each. There is a lot of dancing, some fireworks, and an aerobat parachuting into the stadium, sometimes on purpose.

"He left it all on the field...." This is a line that coaches tell a player to inspire him to play his hardest, expend every ounce of his energy and have no regrets at the end of the game, other than that he did not sign a guaranteed contract. This is why coaches get paid so much, because I would have wasted that line on a player who couldn't find his keys and wallet.

Well, I hope this helps you enjoy the game. I'm going to have to get used to being around people in person again, because right now I'm used saying mostly inappropriate things while wearing my bathrobe. If you want to use a facemask during Super Bowl, go right ahead. Just be aware that if you use one on the football field it will result in a 15-yard penalty.

THE EXERCISE BIKE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (02-03-22)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     I've been working from home for almost two years now, and my body misses the daily exercise of getting up way too late and running up and down the stairs at the train station, forgetting that I forgot to buy my ticket and running up and down the stairs again and then dodging Manhattan traffic instead of waiting for a green light. In midtown, instead of that flashing "DON'T WALK" sign that reminds you to run instead, there is a flashing numerical countdown, so if I see that I have 8 seconds left I take off in a dead sprint from half a block away in order to make it to the other side just before someone runs me over.

     To replace all that physical activity we bought one of those "smart" exercise bikes that you can use with online classes in real time. There wasn't a moment to lose, I wanted to get right into the saddle. I was too impatient to create a user profile and sign up for a session, I just wanted to put it into manual override and jump on for a quick ride. So I punched a few buttons, which got me pretty quickly into a loop of prompts that I couldn't find my way out of. I dug deeper into a couple some more menus, and before I knew it (and for quite some time after I knew it), I had changed the bike's primary language to Russian (I kid you not). I don't know if you're familiar with the Russian language, but it looks more like it's made up of a bunch of corporate logos and doodles rather than actual letters. I started panic-typing some stuff into several boxes, without knowing what I was saying, trying to get back to a language that might understand me better. I even went onto the internet to find out what the words "United States" and "English" might look like in Russian. But it only got worse, and instead I created an account that the Kremlin may be watching very closely.

     The next day I found a screen with an icon of a little picture of Earth, so I knew I was in the right place, and I managed to return to English. I booted up a little guided tour and started my ride. My wife assured me that the instructors cannot see or hear you, nor yell at you for doing something stupid. I can just imagine how it would go if they could:

     "Melén," my instructor says, "why don't you quit pedaling your Communist propaganda and get down to business here." I say, "That's fine with me, I think I might have accidentally initiated a military incident with Ukraine."  "War is no laughing matter, Melén." I counter, "Well then I won't bother with the joke I was going to make about a false-flag operation using Russian dressing. It needs work anyway." He says, "Melén, are you wearing bedroom slippers?" "Nyet, I mean NO, these are 'semi-wakeful athletic apparel,'" I lie. "Get yourself some bicycle shoes if you're going to be serious about your workout." I just say okay, but I picture bicycle shoes as having two little wheels on them, and maybe a bell.

     My mind was drifting a little remembering an actual ride I had in Amsterdam on vacation when I was trying to get to the concert hall. I knew it was on something-or-other-Strad, and it was by a canal, and it was somewhere north of where I was, so I was pretty confident I could find it. What I didn't realize was "Strad" means "street," so EVERYTHING is something-or-other-Strad, and also EVERYTHING is by a canal, and "North" covered a lot of territory, including much of Greenland. I would have thrown the bicycle into the canal at that point, but by then I couldn't even find a canal....

     "MELEN, do you have your toe clips on?" My instructor yells. No- I told him how I almost killed myself this morning when the phone rang. He says, "You might be one of those rare specimens who should be wearing a helmet even though your bicycle doesn't actually leave your living room." Our ride was taking us through Tombstone, Arizona, and I learned a lot about the place a I pedaled along. For instance, did you know that the gunfight between the Earps and the Clantons actually took place in a vacant lot? History thought it would sound better if they moved it to the OK Corral, a block or two away. I'm surprised history didn't find a corral that was better than just "OK," as long as they were changing the locale anyway.

     In my blurred reality, by mistake I ride right onto the street where they're re-enacting the famous gun battle between Wyatt and Virgil Earp, Doc Holliday, and the Clanton boys and McLaury brothers, and everybody stops shooting and there's an eerie silence with only the echoing of the gunfire and they're looking at me and not in a very nice way. I apologize and tell them to go ahead and fire at will, and for some reason I have a tough time convincing them that I'm not Will.