I have been deeply immersed in preparing final first drafts (how is that for an oxymoron?) of early chapters of the book I am writing, whose new tentative title is Interrogating Memory: Film Noir Spurs a Deep Dive into My Family History…and My Own. We have also been preoccupied with various illnesses, injuries and anniversaries. Not to mention following the twists and turns of the impeachment saga.
With all that, however, I have not forgotten about this site. I have been meticulously compiling polling for the next 2020 Democratic nomination and presidential election updates, as well as this year’s three governor’s races.
And life has thrown a handful of interesting curveballs our way.
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Sunday, October 6, 2019 was Nell’s and my 12th wedding anniversary.
Rather than go out to celebrate, we chose to stay home and order food from our favorite local pizza joint. Three of our orders—and both orders of French fries—were perfect; only Nell’s was thoroughly botched, somewhat dampening the otherwise celebratory mood.
But that is beside the point.
As a gift on my first birthday as a married man, my mother-in-law gave me—after strong hinting from Nell—this high-quality Swiss Army knife with my surname engraved on the primary blade. Ever since then, it always goes into my front left pocket when I leave the apartment. This has proven troublesome on a few occasions, as it was nearly confiscated by a TAA worker at Logan Airport as well as on my recent trip to Philadelphia.
Along with my wedding band, in other words, it is one of my most-prized possessions. In a recent post, I told the story of how I lost my wedding band in the spring of 2011, only to have it miraculously recovered a few weeks later. Well, with all due respect to the excellent and criminally-underrated Split Enz, history does sometimes repeat.
On the Thursday night before our recent wedding anniversary, I used the primary blade on my Swiss Army knife to puncture holes in a seemingly-endless set of air bags used for packing boxes from Amazon, so I could flatten them prior to recycling them. I also broke up a handful of cardboard boxes, threw them into the back of Nell’s car—along with our golden retriever Ruby, who was due for a “’venture”—and took them to a nearby giant metal recycling bin; given the tandem nature of our residential parking, it was easier to take her car. After recycling the cardboard, I filled up Nell’s gas tank then took Ruby to a nearby park for a quick play.
I mean, who could resist this?
To be clear, speaking to pet dogs in a form of baby talk stems from my mother, who invented an entire language for our pet Keeshond Luvey (so named because “he loves everybody!”): chicken became “cluckies,” a favorite game was “sockie ballies,” and so forth. Given that history, my calling an adventure a “’venture” is perfectly understandable.
Meanwhile, eureka!
Look carefully at the photograph of Luvey and me in my parents’ bedroom in the Havertown, PA house in which I lived until I was 10 years old. Well, forget that the big stuffed blue bear I am snuggling belies the story I have long told that my allergies were so bad as a young child I lost all my stuffed animals; I will interrogate that memory some other time.
On the floor just to the left of the white two-drawered bureau is a blue spherical object which looks like an old-fashioned portable hair dryer, like the one that features so prominently in the house fire I first interrogated here.
But that poses a bit of a puzzle (yes, I am in the middle a story about my Swiss Army knife…just bear with me). Luvey was born on December 17, 1972, and we brought her home about two weeks later, when he was nothing but a small black ball of fur with a pink tongue. My house fire almost certainly took place in March or April 1973. If that is indeed THE portable hair dryer, Luvey would be at most four months old in this photograph. Could he really have grown that much that quickly? While it is certainly possible, it is also possible—maybe even more likely—that this photograph was taken shortly after the fire, and what is pictured is a replacement for the portable hair dryer destroyed in the fire—now stored safely upstairs. The Polaroid photograph itself is undated, other than the cardstock on which it was printed having the date “4/72.”
As the fictionalized King of Siam would say, “Is a puzzlement.”
Returning to my beloved Swiss Army knife, I am reminded of an incident that took place on an earlier wedding anniversary. Nell and I were then extremely fond of an upscale Italian restaurant in Newton Centre called Appetito, which closed in March 2014. In fact, we had one of the most important early conversations of our relationship at its bar.
On this particular anniversary, most likely in 2013, given the state of decline then apparent in the restaurant (nearly every customer was using a Groupon), our waitress was particularly flirtatious—and to my regret and shame, I playied along, cracking jokes about knives. At one point, I went to the bathroom. Just outside the door, our waitress stopped me, wanting to hold my Swiss Army knife, in lieu of my earlier “jokes.” I gave it to her, thinking nothing of it…OK, I was flattered by the attention.
I know, I know, it was my wedding anniversary.
While I was in the bathroom, in full view of Nell, our waitress pulled out every gizmo on the Swiss Army knife in a way that could be described as “provocative.” Needless to say, Nell was NOT happy with either of us, though I (deservedly) bore the brunt of her displeasure.
Hmm, I had intended that to be a funny anecdote, not a “husbands behaving poorly” confession. At times, I think these posts write themselves.
Moving right along, we return to last Thursday night, when I distinctly last remembered using my Swiss Army knife. The following night, there were yet more cardboard boxes to recycle, so once again Ruby and I had a ‘venture. We did not stay at the park nearly as long as we had the night before, however, in part because in the darkness I slipped on some small apples that had fallen from a tree near where I parked, whacking my left knee a bit.
Returning home a few minutes later, I removed all of the accessories (wallet, keys, pen, etc.) from my pockets into the wooden tray I keep in my office to hold those items.
Umm, where is my Swiss Army knife?
I checked every pocket of my jacket and jeans to no avail.
The first thing I thought was that it seemed as though when I had put things INTO my pockets, something had been missing. So that became my starting point: somehow it had gotten misplaced between Thursday night and Friday night.
Acting on that thought, I quickly searched all of the surfaces near where I had used my Swiss Army knife, thinking I had closed it up, put it down then forgotten to put it back in my office. That is very unlike me, but I was also wicked tired that night, so anything was possible.
Perhaps Nell had borrowed it during the day and simply forgotten to return it? Or one of our daughters? The answer to both questions, I learned on Saturday, was an emphatic “No!”
Thus commenced an epic search of the apartment, including my going through every single item in the large blue wheeled recycling bin in our backyard, thinking I had somehow tossed it in there with other recycling Thursday night. I even went through the adjacent trash barrel, as well as Nell’s car, on the off chance I had put in on the seat next to me or it had gotten mixed up with the broken-down cardboard boxes.
It was not in any of those places.
That evening, our daughters, a friend of our eldest daughter and I walked down to our favorite local restaurant, Zaftigs, for supper. Our route took us past the large metal recycling bin I had visited the previous two evenings, so I scoured the ground around it; it was not there either.
Finally, just after Nell went to bed, I had all but decided it had somehow gotten thrown into the large metal recycling bin with the cardboard when I remembered slipping on the apples at the park the previous night.
Well, it is worth a shot, I thought. And for the third night in a row, Ruby and I drove to the park. Using the flashlight on my iPhone, I scanned the ground where I had had my pratfall. Within seconds, a red metallic object caught my eye.
I am not ashamed to say I actually kissed my Swiss Army knife after picking it up from the dewy grass.
Nell was asleep when I get home, though the next day, after she heard the full story, she said that for that I could have woken her up.
Good to know.
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In this post, I took an early look at four elections, one of which was the 2019 Louisiana gubernatorial election. The “jungle primary” featuring every announced candidate, regardless of political party, will be held on Saturday, October 12. If no candidate wins an outright majority of the vote, a runoff election between the top two contenders will be held on November 16.
With 18 polls released since January 1, 2019 to analyze—11 since September 1, including five from Republican-leaning JMC Analytics (rated C+ by FiveThirtyEight), four from Democratic-leaning Remington Research Group (C) and three from unbiased Market Research Insight (B+), there are two questions to ask.
- Will Democratic incumbent John Bel Edwards, who has an average lead of 23.2 percentage points (“points”) over his two primary Republican rivals, secure more than 50% of the vote on Saturday, avoiding a runoff?
- If he does not, will he face United States House of Representatives (“Representative”) member Ralph Abraham or businessman Eddie Rispone?
As of early on the morning of October 10, Bel Edwards averages (weighted by pollster quality and time to election) 46.6% of the vote, well ahead of Abraham’s 21.5% and Rispone’s 17.9%; three additional candidates included in some polls total 2.9% of the vote,[1] leaving 11.0% undecided. Bel Edwards is tantalizingly close to 50%; assuming these averages are accurate and every undecided voter actually casts a vote, he would need to win just 31.9% of that vote to win an outright majority on Saturday. This is certainly possible, though I would not bet on it; never mind that I do not ever gamble.
That brings us to the question of whom Bel Edwards would face in a runoff. In early September, the weighted-adjusted averages were Bel Edwards 46.5%, Abraham 24.9% and Rispone 10.3%. While Bel Edwards’ position has not materially changed, Rispone has surged 7.6 points, both at the expense of Abraham, down 3.4 points, and by picking up support from some undecided voters. It is now effectively a toss-up between the two Republicans, although Rispone has finished ahead of Abraham in six of the last eight polls.
Either way, however, I estimate Bel Edwards has roughly a 92% chance of winning the runoff, and by around eight or nine points.
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For the last 69 days, ever since a string of mass shootings in late July and early August left 34 people dead, I have written a daily tweet which begins “Day XX mourning/decrying/bemoaning XXX mass shooting deaths in US in 2019.” The tweet always includes a call to repeal Amendment II to the Constitution of the United States, about which I first wrote in October 2017, and the hashtag #Repeal2A. To read those tweets, I invite you to follow me at @drnoir33.
While my tweets have clearly not effected any policy changes, I at least continue to call attention to the unaddressed scourge of gun violence in this country, to the point where a candidate for president of the United States could have this harrowing moment on a late night talk show. I have also had some fascinating, umm, conversations with gun enthusiasts, mostly some radical libertarians, while finding common cause with some extraordinary allies.
But what really made me realize how far this nation has come (not in a good way)—and because on this site EVERYTHING ultimately connects—was a seemingly unrelated event.
As I am naturally predisposed toward being a night owl, and because I do my best work after 11 pm, when the apartment becomes wonderfully dark and quiet, I tend to go to sleep well past 3 am, waking in the early afternoon. Indeed, the running joke now is “Daddy has finished breakfast so it must almost be time for Ruby’s supper!”
To wind down in those wee small hours after I turn off my computer, I like to watch selected YouTube videos on our living room television. I am especially drawn to videos produced by WhatCulture, Polyphonic, CineFix, WatchMojo and anything relating to the utterly brilliant third season of Twin Peaks.
A week or so ago, somewhat at random, a video of performances by stand-up comedian Emo Philips on Late Night with David Letterman appeared. I had quite liked the quirky cerebral Phillips 30 or so years ago but had lost track of him since. Intrigued, I began to watch; eventually I watched this 1987 special in its entirety. Another 1987 special, filmed in Washington DC, saw Phillips open his set by observing Joe Biden had just dropped out of the race for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination.
What is old is new again?
But the bit that really stuck out was this oft-repeated line: “I go the playground often to watch the little kids jump up and down and scream, because they don’t know I’m using blanks,” delivered in what could be described as a deadpan nasal falsetto.
Dang, I thought, nobody could get way with a joke like that today. And the only reason it was even remotely funny in the mid-1980s is because of how unthinkable such an action was.
Yes, it is time to repeal Amendment II.
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My birthday was September 30 and, not unlike Nell’s and my wedding anniversary, the day did not go precisely according to plan. Still, I received a generous Amazon gift card from a close friend; we routinely exchange such cards on our respective birthdays.
With it, I purchased a DVD copy of one of my all-time favorite “guilty pleasure” films, The Shadow, the 1994 film starring Alec Baldwin as the titular character. And I promptly decided that I wanted to be his version of the character—dressed all in black with a red scarf covering most of his face—for Halloween this year.
When I shared this notion with my psychotherapist, I had a mild epiphany. One of the issues we routinely discuss is the sense that nobody really listens to me, no matter how “right” I am. (And, yes, I appreciate the irony of making that statement on a blog, where by definition you are listening to me, a fact for which I am very grateful.)
Huh, I said, so for Halloween I choose to be a person that literally nobody can see, only hear. That is very telling.
Here is the thing, however.
For weeks, I have been telling Nell how there was only one thing I want for my birthday. Really and truly, I only want this one thing. I wanted it because my previous version of it had finally ceased to function, which it made it hard to follow up on those wonderful Polyphonic videos.
To her eternal credit, Nell, my brilliant, beautiful, loving and supportive wife of 12 years, listened to me, because this is what I saw when I came downstairs for the first time on September 30:
OK, OK, it was actually still in its box, covered in birthday cards and ribbons, along with three bags of mini Three Musketeers bars, which I had been craving the past few days for some reason.
But who wants to see a photograph of a box?
This may finally have supplanted my Swiss Army knife as BEST BIRTHDAY PRESENT EVER!, though it is very close.
Until next time…
[1] I assign them “0” if excluded.
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