2008 December | Periscope Depth

From the Blog

Dec

for all the wisdom of a lifetime, no one can ever tell

Posted by Professor Coldheart at 9:40 am

My friend TC celebrated his 39th birthday a few weeks back. He sent out an e-mail inviting folks to Rendezvous in Central Square for dinner and drinks.

He ended the e-mail thus:

Also, I have decided that a drink needs to be created called a “Jack Benny” in honor of the comedian who had a running schtick of always claiming his age was 39. To the best of my knowledge this drink doesn’t exist. Yet. When it does I shall be drinking it.

I fired back the following:

A “Jack Benny”: classic Manhattan; use dry vermouth instead of sweet; use Rose’s Lime Juice instead of bitters. I’ve just decided.

I gave it all of sixty seconds thought and some brief Googling to make sure I hadn’t concocted a poison. But TC, sport that he is, tried it and reported it potable. I have not had the courage to try it yet myself.

# # #

Since I don’t have any teenage daughters or college-age mistresses to shop for, I had no idea that a store called Forever 21 existed until I saw banners warning of an imminent opening in the Arsenal Mall. It’s a latecomer to New England, I believe. Looking it up online, I found that yes, it’s a retail clothing store that primarily targets young men and women.

Few things disturb me as much as the idea of wanting to be twenty-one, forever. I know I shouldn’t read too much into any store’s name, but I couldn’t help but recall a line from C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle:

She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she’ll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one’s life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can.^*

# # #

Monday night I met Lindsay and her gentleman caller Marc at Legal Seafoods in the Copley Mall. I showed up at the Legal in the Pru first, much to my confusion. “I didn’t even know there was a second Legal in this mall,” I told the two when I showed up, breathless, four minutes later. “Having two restaurants within a few hundred yards of each other seems a bit much.”

“And we have another one in Park Plaza,” said our server, appearing at my elbow like a conjured devil. “Confuses people all the time. My name’s Jeff; I’ll be your server this evening.”

Lindsay had her first whole lobster, so the server gave her a crash course in how best to dissect one. “Find the way each joint wants to bend, and then bend it the opposite way,” he instructed, a tip that appealed to the jiu-jitsu student in me. I had a baked scrod with buttery crumb topping over some rice pilaf.

On the train ride home, I realized that, though I had filled out the tip on the credit card receipt correctly, I had written in the wrong total – inadvertently adding the line items and the total twice. We’ll see if the restaurant charged me for the bill plus tip (a roughly 20% gratuity) or for the incorrectly doubled bill (a 100% gratuity) in ten days when the statement arrives.

# # #

Let me impart to you some advice my father gave me on New Year’s Eve, 2002:

Remember, I met your mother at a New Year’s Eve party in 1975. So … be careful.

^* This leads to one of the more interesting criticisms of Lewis’ theology that I’ve read – is Susan Pevensie being excluded from Heaven because of her sexual maturity? Personally, I could see an argument either way: either yes, Lewis is just that kind of frowning Puritan, or no, because trying to be eighteen for the rest of your life isn’t a sign of sexual “maturity” per se. It’s rather a moot point; read Gaiman’s “The Problem of Susan” if you’re interested.

Dec

I don't want to set the world on fire

Posted by Professor Coldheart at 7:00 am

This holiday season, give the gift of a media blow.

Philip Marlowe: Private Eye: One of the very earliest HBO original series, starring a young but still jowly Powers Boothe as Raymond Chandler’s iconic private detective. The series adapts Chandler’s short stories – not all of which involved Marlowe originally – and formats them as hour-long teleplays. The show suffers from the dated cinematography that afflicted every TV show in the mid-80s; it comes off a lot like Murder, She Wrote, if Jessica Fletcher hung out with heroin addicts and occasionally shook a broad if she got mouthy¹. But the dialogue’s still pretty sharp: a good pastiche of Chandler and the intervening decades without sounding like self-parody. And Boothe has the attitude down.

The Tailor of Panama: I don’t have a lot of faith in anything le Carre wrote after Smiley’s People. He fell in love with the ornateness of his own descriptions, leading to entire chapters that recounted about five minutes of action. But The Tailor of Panama not only revives le Carre’s classic cynicism, it ramps up his sardonic eye at the absurdity of his former profession – espionage – and the politics that enable it. Harry Pendel has thrived in Panama for decades, cutting bespoke suits for three successive Presidents (including Noriega) and countless foreign parties interested in the Canal. He also has a secret – a secret which makes him vulnerable to British spy Andrew Osnard. Osnard quickly puts Pendel to use as a source for South American intel, and Pendel makes use of Osnard’s resources in turn. Clever, tense and regularly surprising. One of the few le Carre novels I felt could have been longer.

Tropic Thunder: Funny enough, but I felt it could have spent another 15 minutes in the oven. You worry a film like this will wear out its welcome early: a concept strong enough for an SNL sketch strung out to a 90-minute run time. But Stiller et al give the premise just enough room, while exploring a variety of other action movie tropes as well. The trailers that precede the movie left me rolling; Tom Cruise’s cameo entertained me but didn’t rock my world².

Boomsday: Christopher Buckley once again takes a premise, gives it just enough room to stand on its own, and sets it loose on the bizarre world of Washington, D.C. This time around, it’s Cassandra Devine – a smart, hip blogger who catches America’s eye with the ahem modest proposal to solve the Social Security crisis by offering tax rebates to seniors who volunteer for euthanasia. She doesn’t mean for anyone to take it seriously; merely to spark some debate. But then it catches the eye of Senator Randolph K. Jepperson, whose path she’s crossed before and who’s looking for an issue to make a name on for his Presidential bid. It also draws the fire of the Society for the Protection of Every Ribonucleic Molecule, the AARP, the Vatican and a dozen other D.C. factions too ludicrous to be fictional. Boomsday’s pure farce, with nary a prescription for change (to say nothing of prescription drug coverage) in sight. But it’s a diverting few hours.

Burn After Reading: A Coen Brothers pot-boiler, in the original sense: something to keep the fire warm between projects. The Bros. don’t seem to know whether they want a screwball comedy – Tilda Swinton’s sleeping with George Clooney, while her husband John Malkovich writes his CIA memoirs, which he loses at the gym where Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand work, and then Clooney meets McDormand, etc. – or a black comedy, where (like office politics) the fighting is so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small. Despite the word “comedy” appearing in both, they are very different animals. Still: entertaining and worth a rental. I laughed several times.

Anansi Boys: When Gaiman’s being grand – writing sweeping paragraphs about the importance of Song and Story – I don’t like him very much at all. But when he’s writing about natural people dealing with supernatural things, like a nebbish discovering his father’s a West African god and his brother has inherited dad’s powers, then he shines. He invests the ordinary with magic and horror and suspense, and there he has few equals. Reading this, I couldn’t help casting Hustle‘s Adrian Lester as Fat Charlie and LL Cool J as Spider. Trust me, it works.

Fallout 3: Wow³.

_______________
¹ Now that I think about it, this would be awesome.
² Watching Tom Cruise in heavy prosthetics made me realize: Tom Cruise only has one setting, and that’s Tom Cruise. That’s all he ever plays. Cocky guy with a ready smile and occasional psychotic intensity. It’s fun to watch – I’ll never get tired of seeing it – but does that really speak to a lot of depth? Will we ever see Tom Cruise play a grieving, mousy widower? An emotionally repressed wage slave? A villain?
³ I mean, holy shit, wow.

Dec

christmas is for children

Posted by Professor Coldheart at 10:47 am

Let’s not overlook the most important gift I could ask for this season: the Ravens in the playoffs. Expect to see a lot more of the #5 jersey over the next few weeks.

I’d say something clever in anticipation of the next playoff round, like, “I hope this year’s Dolphins play like last year’s Dolphins when the Ravens face them,” but the Ravens were Miami’s only victory last year. So … um … let’s just have a good game, yeah?

# # #

I sat down on December 24th to talk wedding details with Matt and Lydia, who I will marry in June 2009 (not to be confused with John and Melissa, who I will marry in May). Man, there’s a lot that goes into a wedding ceremony. How many readings, what kind of readings, who’s going to read them. Will there be a song? Who’s handling the vows? What’s everyone wearing? All sorts of crazy nonsense.

# # #

The TSA riles me up every time I fly through Baltimore, and I’ve finally laid a finger on why: it’s the “Simplifly” video that runs on constant loop while you stand in the security line.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V90LAqKyijw]

The implied message – people who want to get where they’re going on time disrupt the system; people who docilely comply with the latest bizarre directive are quiet heroes – bothers me. What are you doing to make the TSA’s job easier? Does your packing style accommodate the Administration’s needs? Are you a cooperative citizen?

At about the 0:30 mark, a woman – the recurring villain in this video – sifts through sheaves of airline paperwork, looking for what the TSA demands of her this week (boarding pass, one form of ID). The scanner waits patiently for her to produce it, while the person in line behind her shoots her an, “Are you serious?” look. The nerve of these people! Not anticipating what they’ll be told to do before they’ve been told.

I’ve flown four times in the last forty days, as do many Americans around this season. No two trips through security were the same for me. For instance: despite being told repeatedly – through voice, sign and video – to put all liquids in a clear plastic bag for inspection, I never did. I only got stopped for it once: a thrower pulled my overnight bag out and rifled through my toiletries. If they can’t keep their own restrictions straight, why should I?

Dec

50 books: 2009

Posted by Professor Coldheart at 7:00 am

I’m using this entry to track my “fifty books a year” project for 2009. Entries listed in CSV for later exporting.

1, The Tailor of Panama, John le Carre, December 25 2008
2, Boomsday, Christopher Buckley, December 26 2008
3, Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman, December 26 2008
4, Button Button, Richard Matheson, January 2 2009
5, Strange Itineraries, Tim Powers, January 12 2009
6, Odalisque, Neal Stephenson, January 16 2009
7, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis, January 30 2009
8, The Stress of Her Regard, Tim Powers, February 13 2009
9, Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser, February 26 2009
10, Declare (again), Tim Powers, March 6 2009
11, The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov, March 10 2009
12, Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain, March 14 2009
13, Killing Pablo, Mark Bowden, March 15 2009
14, Emergency, Neil Strauss, March 16 2009
15, A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking, March 27 2009
16, Secret Agent: The True Story of the Covert War Against Hitler, David Stafford, April 4 2009
17, Xenos, Dan Abnett, April 11 2009
18, The Limits of Power, Andrew Bacevich, April 11 2009
19, The House of Sand and Fog, Andre Dubus III, April 17 2009
20, The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester, April 17 2009
21, Accelerando, Charles Stross, April 20 2009
22, Your Religion is False, Joel Grus, April 28 2009
23, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz, April 30 2009
24, As You Like It, William Shakespeare, May 1 2009
25, Jack and Jill, James Patterson, May 7 2009
26, Malleus, Dan Abnett, May 9 2009
27, The Surgeon, Tess Gerritsen, May 16 2009
28, Persuader, Lee Child, May 23 2009
29, Gang Leader for a Day, Sudhir Venkatesh, June 1 2009
30, Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson, June 23 2009
31, Slan, A.E. van Vogt, June 29 2009
32, Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, July 12 2009
33, No Second Chance, Harlan Coben, July 24 2009
34, Earth Abides, George Stewart, July 26 2009
35, Road Fever, Tim Cahill, July 27 2009
36, The Family, Jeff Sharlet, August 12 2009
37, Shutter Island, Dennis Lehane, August 19 2009
38, Paranoia, Joseph Finder, August 21 2009
39, No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy, August 22 2009
40, The Confusion: Juncto, Neal Stephenson, September 15 2009
41, The Confusion: Bonanza, Neal Stephenson, September 15 2009
42, Perdido Street Station, China Mieville, October 2 2009
43, The Ophiuchi Hotline, John Varley, October 6 2009
44, Wanderer, Sterling Hayden, October 10 2009
45, The Dispossessed, Ursula K. LeGuin, October 14 2009
46, One Shot, Lee Child, October 20 2009
47, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Empire, Chalmers Johnson, October 26 2009
48, Gone for Good, Harlen Coben, November 9 2009
49, The Hard Way, Lee Child, November 28 2009
50(1/2), How The Mind Works, Stephen Pinker, November 30 2009
50(1/2), This Immortal, Roger Zelazny, December 1 2009

Dec

yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me

Posted by Professor Coldheart at 11:39 am

Time to catalog the annual Christmas haul:

One Canon SD1100-IS digital camera;
2GB memory card for above;
Fallout 3, Gears of War 2 and Bioshock;
The Stress of Her Regard (Tim Powers)
Some Land’s End polos and Ts
Band of Brothers on DVD

Mom got a pashmina and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods; Dad got Amazon and iTunes gift cards (to complement his other gifts – a Kindle and an iPod Nano); and my brother got some UnderArmour and a Swiss Army Knife. A good haul, even in this wintry economic climate.

Dec

bum rush the sound I made a year ago

Posted by Professor Coldheart at 7:00 am

For folks traveling today, tomorrow or later: here are a list of items the TSA will confiscate from travelers. This list includes the following weapons of mass destruction:

Gel inserts in your shoes.
(Tom: “Are you gellin’?” “I’m gellin’ like a felon. No, literally, I have been arrested and am facing criminal charges.”)
Snow globes.
(Dad: “It’s part of Obama’s war on Christmas. You know he’s secretly a Muslim and has been waiting for this chance to put his anti-Christian agenda into play.

Professor: “Well, sure. He just takes the apparatus Bush put into place, and half the work’s done for him already!”

An exercise for the reader: which of us were joking?)
Kubotans. Confiscating a kubotan – a six-inch plastic stick that hangs from your keychain – illustrates the shallow mentality behind the whole TSA process. “Oh, these things could be used as weapons,” some moron decides, after trolling a few websites and spending twelve seconds in thought.
(1) Another thirty seconds of thought would have revealed the following: a kubotan is a six-inch plastic stick. 95% of the people who carry these things have no formal training and are no more a threat with it than without. The other five percent? The ones who have not only seen, but know, pressure points, joint locks, submission and escort techniques? They’ll just find another six-inch plastic stick.

Excuse me, sir, can I borrow that pen for a second? That’s a nice pocket umbrella; mind if I take a look? Hey, can you pass me that stapler? I’d like a Lifesaver; could you hand me that roll? Got a light? Hell, taking off a metal watch and wrapping it around your knuckles would accomplish the same effect.

(2) No one’s going to rush the cockpit with a kubotan. The entire point of a kubotan is to enhance strikes and submission techniques, not to inflict instant, fatal injuries. It’s not like a knife, where an untrained jackass swinging blindly is still a serious threat. I suppose you could kill someone with a kubotan if you jammed it up into their eye or struck them hard enough to collapse their trachea. But that’s a million-to-one shot for all but the most fanatically trained users, and taking their keychain away won’t help (see #1 above).

My point: a kubotan is not a deadly weapon. Confiscating it is stupid. Then again, confiscating shampoo is stupid. Confiscating water is stupid. We’re at the mercy of thugs and morons. Why even leave your home anymore?

Dec

cold-blooded

Posted by Professor Coldheart at 11:30 am

It snowed a lot this weekend.

Thursday we had the annual Yankee Swap at Internet, Inc. In our version (I don’t know that these are the default rules), you draw a wrapped present from the pile and decide (before opening it) to keep it or trade with someone else. The action stayed pretty sedate until the latter rounds, when all the good gifts were in the open.

As expected, more than half of the gifts contained alcohol or were alcohol-related (wine stoppers, glassware, etc). I had my eye on a bottle of Maker’s Mark and had a late enough number to claim it, but I knew someone else would readily take it from me. So I took a set of Guinness glasses and coasters instead. I then lost that gift five minutes later in exchange for a Best Buy gift card, which I kept until the end.

Friday was the actual Internet Inc. Christmas party at the Charles Hotel. Forgetting that dinner would be served at the party, I made myself some fish and rolls at home, then showed up fashionably late. Fortunately they’d just tucked in to the buffet when I arrived, so I got to lay a solid foundation of carbs before I started drinking. And let me assure you – I did a lot of drinking. When the VP of Marketing buys you a sambuca shot, you do not say no.

After trudging home in a blizzard, I resolved to leave the house as few times as possible that weekend. I only did twice. Once to Christopher’s on Saturday, to get a drink and watch the Ravens embarrass the Cowboys in their final game in Texas Stadium. Once to IB on Sunday to see the annual holiday show, a hilariously inappropriate send up of Santa, Christmas trees, Christmas songs and cookie dough.

# # #

Light on content today; sorry. I’m going to be in Baltimore through the weekend. You know how to reach me.

Dec

brooklin, shaolin, queensbridge down to long island

Posted by Professor Coldheart at 2:49 pm

I’ve had this anecdote in my back pocket for a bit, wondering what it meant. I’ll tell it anyway.

About a month ago I was working the heavy bag in the fitness center near my office. I try to go at a reasonable clip for the first set. Then I get some water and work elbows and knees for my second set. Third set I just pummel the bag until I can’t keep my arms up. I vary this routine pretty regularly, depending on energy level and my cardio needs for the day.

I do my first set and get some water. Coming back, I see a big guy who’d been jumping rope a few yards away at the bag. He’s throwing a few practice punches at the bag without gloves on, in that way that people do. I think nothing of it.

“When you throw a punch,” he says, as I step back up to the bag, “you want to make sure you step into it.”

Realizing he’s talking to me, I nod. I’m still catching my breath after the first set, so I couldn’t say anything yet even if I wanted to.

“Think of it like turning a corner,” he says, pantomiming the motion slowly.

“You mean like this?” I ask, and snap off a jab without really looking at.

“Yeah!” he says. Then: “So you’ve seen this before?”

“You know that jiu-jitsu school around the corner on Arlington Street?”

“Yeah.”

“I teach there.”

His eyes widen; his hands go up; he stumbles backwards. “Whoa, hey.”

“No, no, it’s cool!” I smile the most disarming smile I have. But the conversation has passed us by.

# # #

Any gym – any collection of guys being athletic – has a certain amount of implied status involved. Large corporate fitness centers avoid outright posturing: nobody calling anybody “shrimp” or “peewee” or any other 1950s-era insults. But you remain conscious of who’s doing your workout better than you.

I have never been the alpha male, except perhaps in the smallest and most trivial of social circles. I accept that. Running at the head of the pack eats up a lot of energy. When someone confronts me for purposes of status – crazy homeless people snarling obscenities in my face, aggressive drivers veering into my lane – I get baffled before I get defensive. What are you doing?, I wonder. Why waste your time on me? I’m no threat to you. I’m no threat to anybody.

Maybe I should change that, though.

When I told some stranger in the gym thanks, I actually do know how to throw a punch, I didn’t mean to step up in defense of my status. But clearly that’s what was going on. I’ve thought about this over in the months since it happened and concluded the following: if he’d meant it as purely charitable advice, mentioning my prior experience would have opened up the conversation (“oh, really? how long have you been studying there?”, etc). Instead, the word “jiu-jitsu” shut it down.

And I’m positive the guy didn’t even mean it as a threat – the proverbial sand kicked at the beach, the elbow in the ribs while shouldering through a crowd. He just thought he knew something I didn’t and that I’d be grateful for the lesson. That’s the insidious nature of evolution, of course: we operate on instincts that carried us through the hunter-gatherer environment, but just make us assholes in civilized society. He didn’t mean to be a jerk. I didn’t interpret him as a jerk. But the defensive posture gave it away.

So I guess I do have a limit that I will bounce back on when pressed. I don’t consciously go out and troll the streets for status. But I will actively defend what little I have.

# # #

Plus, for all I know I might have been throwing shitty jabs that day.

Dec

not long is how long that this rhyme took me

Posted by Professor Coldheart at 11:20 am

I lost every winter hat I own in twenty-four hours. The first one I left on the work shuttle; the second I left in a friend’s car. So while I hope to get that second one back, I bought a new hat at Filene’s Basement on Thursday. This is always A Process for me, as I have a remarkably big head and hate spending money, but I found a lambswool/acryllic cap that comes down over my ears.

I tried it on this morning, in anticipation of the upcoming storm, and it fit perfectly. As I jogged down the stairs to the train, however, I heard something tap-tap-tapping on my head. The Davis Square station disintegrating around me? No – the tag on top of the cap, bouncing off my head as I ran.

Should I cut it off with a pair of scissors, like I meant to this morning? Or should I leave it on and try and make it A Thing, like leaving the hologram sticker on a baseball cap? How would I fare as a trendsetter?

# # #

Maybe it’s The Onion, maybe it’s the continuing disintegration of American banking, but I’ve been thinking a lot about the Wu-Tang Clan lately.

Turn the pages to 1993. Dre has just released The Chronic, but we’re about a year away from Ready to Die and three away from All Eyez On Me. The rap scene is about to enter a long, derivative cycle of people imitating the success of Biggie and Tupac – spitting about obscene amounts of money, having sex with women and then never calling them, and about shooting cops. We’re minutes away from the start of the East/West feud.

Into this scene drop three cousins from Staten Island: the RZA, also called Prince Rakim; the GZA, sometimes called the Genius; and the Ol’ Dirty Bastard. They assemble a crew of nine MCs, each of whom has enough talent in his own right to headline his own album. While everyone else is shooting in nightclubs or beach parties, they film their videos in abandoned warehouses and junkyards. They rap about mis-dubbed kung fu movies and Iron Man comics. They rap about nothing but their own lyrical superiority and the pain they’ll inflict on competitors.

And their flow is sick.

My style’s illegal and death is the penalty
What justifies the homicide, when he dies?
In his own iniquity it’s the
Master of the Mantis Rapture coming at you
We have an APB on an MC Killer
Looks like the work of a Master
Evidence indicates that’s his stature is
Merciless, like a terrorist hard to capture
The flow changes like a chameleon
Plays like a friend and stabs you like a dagger
This technique attacks the immune system
Disguised like a lie paralyzing the victim
You scream as it enters your bloodstream
Erupts your brain from the pain these thoughts contain
Moving on a nigga with the speed of a centipede
and injure any motherfuckin’ contender

Consider: this is the crew that gave us Method Man, an MC respected enough to guest on both Ready to Die and 2Pacalypse Now at the height of the East/West feud. This is the crew that RZA built from nothing with little but Machiavellian maneuvering and a rigorous eye for the bottom line^*. This is the crew that made a celebrity out of O.D.B.

This is a group that, by any reasonable standard, should not have succeeded. Their contracts were bizarre, with any member being allowed to record with any other label at any time. Their sound was so far from the mainstream it was practically alien. And the idea that nine incredibly talented MCs could collaborate without feuding or violence for so long is unheard of. But, for a while, it worked.

Stories like this are what give me hope for hip-hop.

^* And steamrolling over internal dissent, if U-God is to be believed.

Dec

and I saw my reflection in a snow-covered hill

Posted by Professor Coldheart at 7:00 am

You have no idea how much time I spend convincing myself I’m not insane.

People tell me I have a good memory because I surprise them with trivia. I don’t have a good memory. I have a good sense for vivid and unusual details; they stick with me for decades. But so does everyone. I just talk about them more.

For years I remembered this weird movie with Matthew Broderick saving chimps from a space program. I thought I had seen it when I was very young. But there was always the possibility that I’d dreamed it instead. Then some benevolent soul pointed me toward Project X and relief slapped me in the face. I didn’t make it up. I’m not insane.

MentalFloss last week posted twelve things you probably didn’t know about A Christmas Story. I like the film, though I don’t hold it in the reverential regard so many others do. But it’s clever enough, so I scanned the list until I hit this one:

There are two little-talked about sequels. The first one was a 1988 made-for-TV movie, Ollie Hopnoodle’s Haven of Bliss. Jerry O’Connell played 14-year-old Ralphie, who is excited about his first job – a furniture mover. Of course, it ends up being awful, and it might make him miss the annual family vacation at Mr. Hopnoodle’s lakeside cabins.

And then I sat in stunned silence for a full five minutes, because I remember seeing that movie. Jerry O’Connell and his three friends spend the entire summer moving this refrigerator up four flights of stairs! His employer’s this really fat guy! I didn’t make it up or dream it while in a fever. I’m not insane!

Every now and then my dad will wander the house, singing snatches of pop hits from the 50s or 60s. My mom will stare at him. “Don’t you remember that one?” he’ll say. ” ‘Run to Him’! Bobby Vee!”

“I’ve never heard that song,” Mom will say.

” ‘If you find another guy / that satisfies you more than I / do run to him …’ ”

“I think you’re making that up.”

I always considered these moments a charming diversion in my childhood, or now a source of nostalgia. I never considered them a terrifying glimpse into my senile future.