Against All Odds

Tonight the NBA Finals begin.  For the fourth straight year, the Cleveland Cavaliers will face off against the Golden State Warriors.

If you listen to the pundits, this will be the most uncompetitive, lopsided contest in recent sports history.   You’ll see headlines like “Everybody is counting out LeBron James, Cavs in NBA Finals Again” or “Is Warriors-Cavs IV the biggest mismatch in modern Finals history?”  You’ll read about how the mighty Warriors, with their entire roster filled with All-Star studs like Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, are going to mop the floor with the poor Cavs, who can offer only LeBron James and a gang of unknowns and retreads.  You’ll see statistical analysis of why the Warriors are destined to win, and hear about how the Cavs are in the Finals only because the Eastern Conference of the NBA is like the minor leagues compared to the Western Conference, and see that the Las Vegas oddsmakers have made the Warriors a prohibitive favorite and set a double-digit point spread for the first game.

The only way puzzled commentators think the Cavs might even win a game or two is if the entire Warriors team comes down with the flu, or Draymond Green and a few of his teammates get suspended for multiple games after a crotch-targeting binge that can’t plausibly be viewed as involving “basketball moves.”

Is this the biggest mismatch in sports — say, since the mighty Miami Hurricanes were supposed to wipe the field with the Ohio State Buckeyes in the National Championship game on January 3, 2013?  I guess we’ll just have to see if the know-it-all commentators and talking heads could possibly be wrong, and the Cavs can luck out and scratch out even a single win against the media darlings — which would no doubt happen only with the help of the officials and an overconfident Warriors team that doesn’t bring its “A” game against a feeble opponent.

Sometimes, in sports, the underdog does win, and the conventional wisdom proves to be wrong.  Will it happen this time?  I’ll be watching to find out.  But if the impossible does occur, and David does manage to slay Goliath in 2018, it will be one of the sweetest wins in the history of sports.  Because this time, it truly is Cleveland against the World.

Linking Glasses And Brainpower

Scientists have taken a careful look at one of the most important issues of our time and have found that there is, in fact, a link between innate brainpower and wearing glasses.  The findings warm the hearts the bespectacled among us — including, no doubt, many of the very scientists who conducted the study in the first place.

In research conducted by the University of Edinburgh, more than 40,000 people took a variety of tests that provided a general cognitive ability score, and also allowed their genetic data to be examined.  Researchers then probed the genetic data — including looking at more than 100 genomic regions that are associated with enhanced cognition — and found a correlation between intelligence and poor eyesight, with the smarter participants being, on average, 30 percent more likely to need reading glasses than those who scored poorly on the cognition tests.

And because the study involved actual cognition test data, the results shouldn’t be influenced by the “glasses effect” — namely, the general societal perception that those who wear glasses must be smarter because glasses are thought to make you look smarter.  Indeed, the lead researcher said the study “has identified many genetic differences that contribute to the heritability of thinking skills.”  So in addition to passing along the dreaded nearsighted genes, we glasses-wearers may also be passing along better thinking capabilities, too.

It all makes me want to square my shoulders, adjust my glasses, and — for today at least — proudly bear the name “four eyes.”

AFRICA

My bags have been packed for a few weeks in anticipation of my upcoming trip to southern Africa ! My friend and I are going to be there during the winter season when the weather is high eighties during the day and low to mid fifties at night making packing a bit of an adventure in itself. Reading the travel forums on the app Trip Advisor has been extremely helpful.

The Random Restaurant Tour (XV)

We’ve got a taco war brewing in downtown Columbus.  Condado opened a few years ago and has become a fixture on the east side of High Street, right next to the Columbus Commons.  Now Tio’s Tacos and Tequila has opened on the west side of High Street, just down the block.

Last week the lunch bunch paid our first visit to Tio’s and came away favorably impressed. Tio has a totally different vibe than Condado.  For one thing, it’s much quieter.  Condado goes for more of a bustling street taco approach; Tio opts for more of a traditional restaurant feel.  Consistent with that, there’s an actual menu of taco options, rather than the Condado build-your-own taco checklist.  That’s not to say one approach is better than another — they’re just different.

As for the tacos?  They’re very good.  So good, in fact, that JV and the Bus-Riding Conservative staked out the aggressive position that Tio’s tacos are better than Condado’s.  The Unkempt Guy and I, being less impulsive and more thoughtful by nature, weren’t quite willing to go so far after only one visit, but we admitted the tacos were excellent.  At the recommendation of our server we all got a spread of three, which turned out to be just right for a moderate lunch.  My favorite was the taco on the right, above, which substituted a folded slice of jicama for the taco and was filled with crunchy shrimp and covered with chipotle sauce.

Who will win the downtown Columbus taco wars?  I think the real winner will be the downtown lunch crowd, which now has a choice when they feel the call of the taco.

Happy Memorial Day!

We’ve had a beautiful weekend in Columbus, with sunny, clear weather and a traditional cookout yesterday.  With the arrival of Memorial Day, though, it’s time to take a step back and think for a while about the reason for this three-day weekend, and the men and women whose sacrifices in the service of their country helped to safeguard the many freedoms that we enjoy.

When I was a kid, Grandma and Grandpa Neal took UJ and me on a trip to Washington, D.C.  We visited Arlington National Cemetery, with its long, quiet rows of white crosses, and the Iwo Jima Memorial and its depiction of the stirring photograph of a flag-raising effort on Mount Suribachi during one of the bloodiest battles in World War II.  Those visits made a tremendous impression on me, and on days like Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Veterans Day I turn back to those awed, hushed memories and reflect on how many have served, and how well.

The inscription at the base of the Iwo Jima Memorial reads:  “Uncommon valor was a common virtue.”  It’s a fitting point of reference on this Memorial Day.

A grateful thank you to those who served, and those who serve still.  Happy Memorial Day!

The Gosling Brigade

Springtime is the time for hatchlings at the Schiller Park pond. Today I noticed three new goslings being chaperoned by the entire flock of resident Canadian geese. The adult geese are loud, obnoxious, constantly crapping pains in the behind, but their fuzzy, tumbling offspring are cute as the dickens.

On The DayQuil Registry

We have a persistent cough in the household, so we went to the drug store for cough medicine. We picked up a bottle of DayQuil, and when I paid for it the cashier asked for my driver’s license, which then got scanned. So, in some government database somewhere, I’m now officially shown as a DayQuil purchaser.

Apparently this now happens because one of the components of DayQuil can be used by teenagers to do something called “robo-tripping,” and the government wants to try to shut down that channel. So, you need to prove you’re 18 to buy it, and because the information gets scanned, you must end up on a list. Presumably, you can’t walk in to the local CVS and buy 25 bottles of DayQuil without setting off alarms.

Having an identification requirement therefore seems prudent. Still, it’s kind of weird to think that purchasing a patent medicine that you could buy over the counter for decades now lands you on another government list. It makes me wonder — what do you need to show to pick up some Vick’s VapoRub?

Home Ec Check

Earlier this week I popped a button on a ratty pair of shorts I wear during my summertime morning walks. It was another example of a troubling but well-known phenomenon–pants manufacturers intentionally using flimsy, defective thread to secure waistline buttons on male trousers. It’s nefarious!

Fortunately, Kish rode to the rescue. Drawing upon her high school home economics class training, she took out needle and more durable thread to firmly anchor the waistline button and (hopefully) prevent a recurrence of the embarrassing pop off scenario.

Home economics was a pretty useful, practical class when you think about it. Do schools still offer home ec courses?

The Kid Who Wouldn’t Leave

A family drama is playing out in Camillus, New York.  That’s where two parents have had to institute legal action to get their 30-year-old son, who has lived with them for eight years, to finally move out of the house.  This week, a judge formally evicted the son and ordered him to leave the premises.

According to the son, whose name is Michael Rotondo, in the eight years he’s lived with his folks he’s never been expected to contribute to household expenses or assist with chores or the maintenance of the property.  He doesn’t have a job and is a self-described “liberal millennial.”  His parents have encouraged him to get a job and buy health insurance, but instead he’s focusing on a custody battle about his own son — and continuing to live under their roof.  He says he is “an excellent father” who “would forgo buying clothes for myself so that I could take [my child] skiing.”

In fact, Rotondo believes his parents’ action was retaliation for his loss of visitation rights with his son.  Their first letter to him, in February, apparently came a few days after he lost visitation rights, and said “we have decided that you must leave this house immediately. You have 14 days to vacate.”  His parents then stopped feeding him, and later letters reminded him of the deadline, and offered him $1,100 and advice on how to move out.  But Rotondo resisted, saying he needed six months to leave.  Ultimately the eviction lawsuit was filed, and the judge decided Rotondo had to go.

A lot of people have been laughing about this story as the ultimate “failure to launch” tale about the unappreciative slacker kid who made no contribution to the household and just wouldn’t leave.  I don’t see much that is humorous in this sad case, however.  I’m sure the parents aren’t celebrating their victory over their own child; they’re likely heartbroken about it.  They provided their son with shelter, support, and a safe place to land, and eight years later, with no end in sight, they reached the end of their rope and saw no alternative to turning their personal family story into a very public drama.

And now the son they supported for eight long years is being quoted in the press as saying, “I wouldn’t characterize them as being very good parents.”  That’s the kind of remark that would cut any parent to the quick — not because they agree with his assessment, but because they probably feel they’ve failed in rearing a child who could be such a colossal, oblivious ingrate.

Living In Fleecetown

Pagedale, Missouri is a suburb of St. Louis that covers about one square mile of area and has a population of 3,300 people. With a territory and population that small, how can a municipality generate sufficient revenue to provide city services?  According to a consent decree entered in federal court, Pagedale’s evident solution to the revenue problem was to fleece its own residents through a system of citations for claimed “nuisances” or code violations.

To people other than the residents of Pagedale, the kinds of violations that were the subject of citations seem pretty comical.  According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, there were prohibitions against sagging pants, walking on the left side of a crosswalk, walking in a roadway if a sidewalk is nearby, or barbecuing in your front yard (unless it’s a national holiday), as well as bans on dish antennas, basketball hoops, volleyball nets, swimming or wading pools or other recreational equipment in the front of a house.  Having mismatched curtains or a hole in a window screen also could be cited for code violations and produce fines.

But for the residents of Pagedale, it was no laughing matter.  In 2014, Pagedale handed out 2,555 citations for such offenses — a 500 percent increase from 2010.  In some years, proceeds from the fines assessed for the violations generated a quarter of the city budget.  And in the meantime, residents were saddled with debt trying to keep up with the citations and fines.

Why did Pagedale resort to fleecing its own residents?  According to the Post-Dispatch, what happened “was that Pagedale, along with some other municipalities, began raising money from non-traffic cases because of a Missouri law that caps the amount of revenue municipalities can collect from traffic fines.”  In short, towns that used to be speed traps looked inward and decided poor residents would have to make up the revenue shortfall.

What does it tell you about “public servants” that, rather than cutting municipal budgets or developing legitimate alternative sources of revenue, they would prey on the people they are supposed to be serving?  It tells you that, in some places at least, the concept of government has become perverted, and municipal employees are more interested in preserving their own jobs and paydays than in furthering the public good.

The Post-Dispatch gets it right when it says:  “Municipalities that cannot deliver services without preying on citizens should be dissolved.”   That seems like a rule that is so basic that it doesn’t need to be expressed — but evidently not.  Have we really reached the point where we need to set rules against predatory practices by local governments against their own citizens?

Summa Cake Laude

Some stories are just too silly and delectable to ignore.

Take the story of the South Carolina family that wanted to celebrate their son’s graduation, summa cum laude, from a Christian-oriented home schooling program.  They ordered a cake from the local outlet of a large national grocery store chain to celebrate the feat, and wanted a sheet cake decorated with a mortarboard and faux diploma and icing to recognize that accomplishment.

Alas!  When the cake was retrieved and viewed at the party, the large national chain had edited out the Latin word variously translated as “with,” “along with,” or “together,” because it also is modern slang for a notorious bodily fluid.  So the cake came out saying “Congrats Jacob!  Summa — Laude Class of 2018” — even though the Mom who ordered the cake explained that the requested phrase was Latin and meant “with highest honors.”  Poor Jacob is quoted as saying, no doubt ruefully:  “The cake experience was kind of frustrating and humiliating because I had to explain to my friends and family like what that meant. And they were giggling uncontrollably. At least my friends were.”

Can it really be that a major grocery story chain that regularly bakes congratulatory cakes doesn’t know what “cum laude” means?  Maybe we all need to get our minds out of the gutter and onto a higher plane of baking.

Boxed Lunch Roulette

Yesterday I went to a professional event over the noon hour where every attendee got a boxed lunch.  At such events, the boxed lunches are grouped and stacked by the kind of sandwich printed on the outside, and you make your choice, take your box back to your seat, and hope for the best.

I say “hope for the best,” because when it comes to boxed lunches there’s a significant element of risk involved.  Sure, you can choose whether you want “roast beef” or “chicken salad” or “Italian” or “a wreck” (whatever that is), but of course the sandwich descriptions barely scratch the surface of the important information you’d like to know in deciding what to have for lunch.  At a restaurant, you’d be able to make choices about the bread to be used, find out what is put on the sandwich and add or subtract as you see fit, and pick your side dish, but in the boxed lunch scenario you’ve got none of those options.  You’ve got a mound of closed boxes in front of you, and it wouldn’t be seemly to start opening them up and pawing through the contents to determine which box is best suited to you.

Yesterday I went for the grilled chicken sandwich box. The grilled chicken came on a sub bun and — inevitably! — had lots of sliced tomato and shredded lettuce and other vegetable matter on top.  In the boxed lunch world, the prevailing assumption is that everyone will want every conceivable vegetable on their sandwich.  Call it the highest, or lowest, common denominator effect.  I despise both tomato and shredded lettuce, so I had to figure out how to remove them.  Since there was no utensil in the box, I removed the offending items by hand, which was a messy operation that created a small mound of unappetizing, limp vegetable matter in the box.  Add to that the fact that once shredded lettuce is added to a boxed sandwich it can never be fully removed because it tends to adhere to the bread and hide in cracks and crevices of the meat, and you’ve captured one aspect of boxed lunch roulette.

There’s more, of course.  With a standard boxed lunch, you get a side and a dessert.  Usually the side is a bag of potato chips or Doritos, but sometimes, if you’re lucky, it’s a small fruit bowl or edible pasta salad.  Yesterday it was barbecue-flavored potato chips, which equates to a losing spin on the wheel.  I’ve not conducted a scientific study, but I have to believe that barbecue potato chips appeal to only a tiny, tastebud-challenged segment of the American population.  Lacking the ability to appreciate delicate and nuanced food flavors and spices, this poor group must opt for chips coated in heavy, dusty, quasi-sugary artificial flavoring that stains your fingers red as you eat them.  I therefore passed on the chips and found myself wondering — if you’re making boxed lunches, why not just opt for regular potato or kettle chips, rather than pushing the envelope with something like barbecue or ranch or vinegar flavoring?  But although the side was a dud, the dessert was a positive — an oatmeal cookie that I saved and brought home to share with Kish.

Ultimately I got a pretty good sandwich after the vegetable removal process was completed, skipped potato chips that I shouldn’t have eaten anyway, and brought home a good cookie.  All told, I’d say I broke even in yesterday’s exercise in lunch box roulette.

The Random Restaurant Tour (XIV)

Yesterday Dr. Science and I were supposed to have lunch at a restaurant on the south side of town.  When noon rolled around, however, the rain was absolutely pouring down, so we needed a central destination to minimize the downpour effect.  Let’s see — he’s just south of the Statehouse, and I’m just north of the Statehouse.  Hey, how about the Statehouse?  You can’t get more central than that!

Fortunately, there is in fact a place to eat at Ohio’s seat of government.  It’s located in the “basement” of the Statehouse, reachable through the Third Street entrance.  You walk past the map room and the shouts of schoolkids on a field trip, turn right at the main hallway, and then look for the place where the staffers are heading, tucked away in a few rooms on one side of the hallway.

The restaurant is a breakfast and lunch spot called GRAZE.  As the name suggests, GRAZE is all about farms and pastures — specifically, the “farm to table” concept in which Ohio eggs, dairy products, and proteins are featured.  The menu includes breakfast items, sandwiches, soups, salads, wraps, and bowls, and the goal is for customers to obtain “a protein packed and nutritious lunch for less than $10.”  You start in the room with the kitchen area, place your order at the counter, watch the food preparers go to work, move down to the cashier’s station, and settle up on your order, and by the time you get your tray and water cup your freshly made food has appeared.  You then head into one of the adjoining rooms to find a table and eat your lunch.

I went for the lamb gyro bowl — without the romaine, tomato, and cucumber, of course — and it was really quite good, with moist, shredded lamb, tasty pickled onions, brown rice, lots of feta cheese, and tzatziki sauce.  It definitely hit the spot, and at $9.50, it also met the “under $10” test.  I gladly consumed it all.

As I sat relishing my meal, I thought idly about the name “GRAZE,” its clear bovine connotations, and its suitability for a restaurant name — but then I realized that horses also graze, and I obviously needed fuel for the afternoon’s race.  I concluded that GRAZE was a pretty good place to tie on the old feedbag.

Email Tag Lines

Lately I’ve noticed an increase in email “tag lines.”  At least, that’s what I call them.  They are the little quotes that some people have added to their email communications.  They appear at the end of every email, as part of the writer’s signature stamp.  Like “An unexamined life is not worth living. — Socrates” or “All you need is love. — John Lennon and Paul McCartney” or “When the going gets tough, the tough get going. — Knute Rockne.”

Email tag lines are kind of strange (not to mention pretentious and presumptuous) when you think about it.  It’s hard to imagine that one quote, no matter what it is, could provide an appropriate coda to every different kind of email that a person might send.  “Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse. — James Dean” might go well with an email planning a trip to Las Vegas, but it doesn’t really fit with an email expressing concern about a colleague’s illness or sorrow about the death of an aged relative.  Similarly, a tag line like “The truest wisdom is a resolute determination. — Napoleon Bonaparte” seems jarring when it appears at the end of a email passing along some bad jokes.

When I get emails from somebody who uses one of those tag lines, I always wonder about their motivation and how they came to add the quote to their email in the first place.  Did they just stumble across a quote from somebody that they thought was so true to the very core of their being that it just has to be included as a matter of course in every communication they send to people on any subject?  Or, did they first conclude that their email communications needed a little extra kick, and would be empty without some kind of concluding intellectual, political, or social statement from Descartes, John F. Kennedy, or Martin Luther King?

The bottom line, though, is that an email tag line, even when it does fit with the subject of the communication, can’t save you from yourself or mask your true nature.  Intellectual quotes can’t salvage an email filled with typos, poor grammar, and incorrect word use, and tag lines about love and peace won’t change the tone of a message establishing that the writer is an angry, unprincipled jerk.

In the end, content speaks louder than tag lines.

Whirlybirds Accompaniment

I went to work this morning, and as I was working I kept hearing this great jazz music coming up from the street below during today’s Sunlight Market on Gay Street.  I couldn’t tell whether I was hearing a recording or a live band — but the music was terrific.  It was old-school jazz that had a kind of New Orleans feel to it.  It reminded me of Tuba Skinny, one of my favorite Big Easy jazz bands.

When I left the office and walked out onto Gay Street, I saw that the music was coming a live band.  They finished a number and took a break, and I walked up to throw a few dollars into their open guitar case and thank them for adding a little musical accompaniment to my Sunday work session.  They were a Columbus-based band called the Whirlybirds, and they were great.  You can check out their Facebook page here and hear one of their numbers here.

I’m going to keep an eye out for a chance to hear more from the Whirlybirds.