Great Exudations

I fully confess to to being unreasonably proud of my Uber-rider score. It is a solid 4.94 and I think that is just about the perfect number. Because there’s a certain artifice to having a 5.0. Like maybe you only took one ride and tipped really well to goose your rating. Plus I recall, from my grade school days, that there’s a Navajo Indian tradition wherein they would quilt elaborate rugs but intentionally leave some barely perceptible flaw, so as not to challenge the perfection of their gods (I also remember that the Pueblo Indians built their huts of adobe… and maybe the fewer things you teach, the more that will be remembered). My wife likes to remind me that her rider score is 4.98. To that challenge, I make three perfectly rational responses:

1. The difference between 4.94 and 4.98 is not statistically significant
2. There’s clearly a gender bias at work here, with far more male drivers than female
3. I wouldn’t want that score anyway, as I am quite happy with 4.94.

I thought I might try something new in my eighth month as a would-be blogger. It is a “point to the passer” (see Dean Smith) moment as I acknowledge my high school English teacher Mrs. Belfiore. I give her hindsight credit for whatever modest progress I have made in letters since those days (I was much better in math and science back then). I say “in hindsight” because I absolutely hated reading in those days. Maybe it was a form of selective ADD. More likely it was just laziness and procrastination. Any book thicker than your thumb was a no-go, and even then… Anyway, she assigned us to keep a longitudinal journal for the semester. It was to be in traditional style to document your everyday thoughts and musings. It was a terrific idea! Only I blew it off, at least until the very end of term when I was up late “cramming” entries — using different pens and trying subtly different handwriting variations in order to mimic faithfulness to the original task (come to think of it, I think I did it with the same Jeff L. of S’Battle fame). She, of course, could spot the fakery in it but managed a choice few words of encouragement. As I recall, she liked the journal’s title “Generalities” and a few of the more spirited entries. Funny enough, I actually started my own journal writing in college just a few years later (I still have them!) and have done so off-and-on for decades. So her little trick worked after all! And I suspect that the writing ultimately got me to the reading for the discovery of new ideas and sources of inspiration (I’m still a slow reader who underlines a lot). These new, intermittent blog posts called “Trivialities” will therefore be made in her honor. It’s a similar open canvas approach that she endorsed, but the plan — for these austere times — is to delve into all things less than serious. Sub-serious! Because who really has time for all that, anyway…??

Without getting too much into the weeds (read as “over my head”) with the art historical aspects of Richter, what strikes me about him is the incredible range of styles in which he has worked. By comparison, better known artists like Pollock, Rothko, Lichtenstein, and Warhol (who all had their own early periods) can play as a “one-note samba.”

My friend Jeff L. and I used to play this game for hours-on-end in our high school years at my house. We also had access to the Intellivision football, basketball, baseball and golf versions, but this one was by far our favorite. We talked about this recently and I asked him why it was so. He stated rather simply, but definitively, that is was because we were so evenly matched (the advantage gained from playing the other games with my siblings didn’t hold up with Sea Battle). This struck me at once as both true and also utterly telling about our human nature. Deep down, we like to both watch, and to be engaged in, a fair and close contest. It is the essence of good competition and sportsmanship. And I think it is why many people, myself included, react in a strongly negative way to anabolic steroid abuse (Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire) and cheating scandals (New England Patriots) and “flopping” in soccer (or Duke basketball!). Ill-gotten gains are tallied as losses internally, where it really counts. A certain amount of gamesmanship is tolerated or even enjoyed (Seve Ballesteros). In other cases, it skirts the boundary and depends on your perspective (The Jordan Rules, John McEnroe). But I think all of us are susceptible to crossing that line if given the right/wrong game, the right stakes, the right opponent, the right mind-set and conditions. I don’t think that it defines you as a person, but it’s good to recognize the signs when a game or sport is bringing out the worst in you and, rather than yoking us together in friendly rivalry, is actually causing angst and ill-will. That never happened with Sea Battle between Jeff and me. It was the perfect level of competition, replete with frequent laughter, light-hearted intensity, gentle taunts and short-hand expressions (he would usually ring me and say only this: “S’Battle?!”). Fantastic fun! And I would hazard a guess that our lifetime match-up summary would be in the 52-48% range. There we no fights or heated arguments. No haggling over rules to gain advantage. No tears, other than joyful ones. No money changed hands (golf is hard enough on your ego without adding a financial pressure… something lost on many dude-bros lamely trying to relive their high school glory years or posturing as high-rollers). I think the ideal competition is engaged at about the level of non-league bowling… or backyard badminton (maybe pickleball, which I haven’t tried yet but sounds promising)… or silly-season golf (more on that later). But the gold standard, for me, will always be Sea Battle!