The Land of Hype and Hyperbole

 If only it felt as nice as it looks outside. 

Blue skies, bright, blinding sunshine bouncing off the snow. But it is about 10 degrees with a nasty 30 mile per hour wind, making it feel like -2 degrees Fahrenheit. 

There was a significant snowstorm about 70 miles south of me this weekend. I was right on the border of the storm, stuck in forecast purgatory; literally, "1 inch to 13 inches of snow", but the unknown forced me to stay at my workplace Saturday night (I must be within 20 minutes of my work when I am on-call, and I had no idea what the weather was going to do; nor did Mr. Weatherman). 

Turns out we got perhaps three inches, maximum. 'Tis the "Land of Hype and Hyperbole," I like to call it.

Looking out my window on this chilly Monday, 16 March 2026

Turns out, not much happened workwise this weekend. But it was one of those things where I couldn't do much but wait for my pager to go off, so I made a huge dent in a new book I am reading, John Williams: A Composer's Life by Tim Greiving, which I am just loving.  

I knew nothing about Williams prior to opening this book, and what a life -- what a career!! Of course, he's known for his close association with Spielberg, but Williams was in the music/television/film business for twenty years prior to meeting Spielberg. 

Williams had already scored films such as The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure, Fiddler on the Roof and Valley of the Dolls as well as made-for-television movies such as Jane Eyre and the infamous (to football fans) Heidi, plus television series like Lost in Space (he wrote the theme song), Gilligan's Island and Wagon Train, just to name a few. If that wasn't enough he had also already won a Grammy and an Academy Award. At 43 years old, he was considered perhaps the best film composer in Hollywood. 

Then he met a 25 year-old film geek named Steven who was a Williams "fanboy" and desperately wanted to work with the music legend. I think it is very akin to compare their fortuitous union with that of Lennon and McCartney in pop music: the meeting of two geniuses from which the rest of the world was rewarded with a lifetime of entertainment.

One of the interesting bits that I have read is that Spielberg strongly recommended John Williams to his friend George Lucas, who was struggling with a "space opera." Lucas thought it would ultimately be "a film to be watched by 10 year-old boys on a Saturday afternoon." As partial payment for his work, Lucas offered Williams 1% of the film's box office earnings.

Star Wars has earned approximately $10 billion at the box office; 1% of $10 billion is $100 million. Not a bad day's work.

Remember,that's just ONE film. We won't even go into the remainder of the Star Wars series, Jaws, the Indiana Jones series, the Jurassic Park series, E.T. (The Extra Terrestrial), Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Schindler's List, Home Alone, the Harry Potter series... well, you get my drift. The man is simply the greatest movie composer of all time and no one else is even close. Period. (Oh, did I mention Superman?)

Anyway, what I meant to say before going off on this tangent is that I am enjoying this book very much.

So that's it for now. I will update again, soon. Meanwhile I will sit in my easy chair and sadly watch the world burn. I have a feeling the other shoe is going to drop soon, I am just not sure which shoe; I am hopeful of one and fearful of the other. 

I promised myself not to get political on this site, so I will stop there. 

(**Gemini, Google's AI platform, tells me that it was Alec Guiness who was offered a percentage of the box office receipts, not Williams. However, author Tim Greiving has done impeccable, detailed homework in this biography and I trust his years of research over a shitty one second AI search.)

22 January 2025

 I'm not sure what to do with this site. Should I make it into a football-only site? Maybe record the daily weather? How about my own personal book club? A personal diary? All of the above? 

I don't know.

I suppose it doesn't really matter. I'm not marketing myself for an audience and if you don't promote a site, you don't get traffic. I'm good with that. This is for my own therapy. 

We all need a release valve. There can be no doubt today's world is far more toxic to one's mental health than it was 30 years ago. It is almost impossible to get away from the slings and arrows of social media (and yes, the irony that I am writing this on a website is not lost on me). I know for a fact my mind was much happier before Facebook, Instagram, etc. I find the less attention I pay to social media and news outlets, the better I am. 

Am I burying my head in the sand? To a degree, yes, I suppose I am. Does it really matter? No, it doesn't. The country will meander off the edge of the earth with or without me. This is not to imply I ignore current events and world news, but I try to tune the bullshit out. And most of it is bullshit.

Speaking of current events...

This year has been a theme of fire and ice so far. Fire on the West Coast: cataclysmic wild fires around Los Angeles earlier in January (they started on the 7th). Dry conditions with 100 mph winds make very favorable conditions for a catastrophe. Ice in the south: Lafayette, Louisiana, has more snow (10+ inches) than Baxter, Minnesota as of January 21. 

Are these cyclical patterns? Climate change? Even though the theory of climate change is based on the course and trends of 175 years worth of data, it doesn't exist if you say it doesn't exist. Draw a line in the sand and anything is political.

As John Lennon once wrote, "Living is easy with eyes closed."

Speaking of weather, we've had brutally cold temperatures here in central Minnesota earlier this week. Monday night was the coldest it has been in the last calendar year. It was -32° F on Monday night/Tuesday morning. It always amazes me that wildlife, like deer and birds, can exist in extreme cold like that, but they do. It is much more pleasant now -- something like 19° F right now. Above zero is always a nice thing. 

It is a little late for resolutions, but my son mentioned something yesterday that I have thought of before and I even made an abortive attempt at trying once: converting all my weather apps to Celsius/metric scale. In his words, "It's just so much easier to understand." (And so it is: 0 is when water freezes, 100 is when water boils. It is simply a paradigm shift to thinking anything from 17 to 29 Celsius is very pleasant. Anything below that is getting chilly and anything above that is getting hot.)

Liberia, Myanmar and the United States are the only three countries in the world that "officially" use the old imperial units. The U.S. isn't exactly a forward-moving, progressive nation, but obviously this is what the majority of Americans desire. Certainly, we are no longer leaders in education (far from it!). We've also fallen behind as the world leader in science and technology. That's not my opinion. That's a fact. Unless you choose to not believe it. Remember, it doesn't exist if you say it doesn't exist. Easy!

I finished a novella yesterday, The Pearl by John Steinbeck. I haven't read anything by Steinbeck that I haven't thoroughly enjoyed. The moral of this quick read was, essentially, "be careful what you wish for."

I think my next book is going to be Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky. It is yet another classic I have not yet read.

Happy birthday to my dad, who was born on 21 Jan 1915.

Friday, 24 February 2023

 Today is a day off for me--even more rare, it is a Friday and a day off. If time could just stand still now. It was -17 degrees this morning, but the coffee is hot, I've got a comfy chair and a good book. It could be -50 for all I care.

I have worked, it seems, every day for weeks on end. I've taken extra call for my work, so one work day is equal to three eight hour shifts. Plus a weekend of call, which is 64 hours. That's the equivalent of eight working days alone.

So if it feels like I haven't been home, that's why.

Things are going to get very busy in a few days. My daughter is going on a trip to New York City with her high school band in early March, so the next couple weeks will be early mornings and late nights of band rehearsal, not to mention she's the stage manager for the spring musical, which started rehearsals this week as well. 

Anyway, the band is flying to NYC and she's never been in a plane before, so I'm not so sure how this is going to go. She seems pretty chill about it, or at least she's putting on a heck of a brave face. I am accepting as a parent that at some point you've got to let go and let your kids spread their wings. I'm not going to be around forever. she's got to do things on her own. This will be a huge confidence booster for her.

My son is keeping himself busy playing trombone and working out after school in a power conditioning program; today is his last day of winter session and he wanted me to sign him up for spring session. So at least he's enjoying it, although I suspect a big part of the "enjoyment" is the fact he doesn't have to ride the bus after school. But he says he works hard and is always complaining of how sore he is the next day, so I hope he's getting some good out of it. 

I just signed him up for NDSU football camp in June; this will be his third year attending. I had to take his measurements for camp and he's now 5'10", 180 pounds... the size of a full grown man... He won't be 14 years old until July, so he's a big dude.

We had a feast of junk food for our little family Super Bowl party (me, my wife and my son). My daughter came out of her spider hole (her bedroom) to eat and to watch Rhianna at halftime and quickly scurried away. I was pleased the Chiefs won. When Brian and I went to a game at Arrowhead Stadium a few years ago, almost every Chiefs fan was friendly, talkative and respectful, which is the polar opposite of Eagles fans. They are obnoxious assholes. And if you're reading this and you are an Eagles fan, don't even argue. Own it. 

I was quite happy to see them cry in their beer afterwards.

My goofy son, posing with his "Chad" look. Evidently the "Chad" look is a thing. Anyway, he made wrapped smokies with mozzarella in the shape of a football for the Super Bowl. Deelish!

Otherwise, I am not doing much during these long winter days. although lately I've been working on putting together a new fantasy football league with a group of guys, so that's keeping me occupied. Hopefully the league will launch this fall. Fantasy football has been a hobby of mine since 1991. It is something I absolutely love to do.

I just started reading The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill by Don Russell, which I purchased last August at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West museums in Cody, Wyoming (highly recommended if you are ever in Cody). So, I am finally getting around to finishing the books I bought last summer. 

Relativity

A very cold night. There's not much to do, so I am spending some of my free time trying to better understand the undecipherable. I find astronomy, quantum mechanics and astrophysics fascinating, even though the subject matter is leagues above my head.

Below is a very simple explanation of a portion of Einstein's theory of special and general relativity. Well over 100 years ago Einstein predicted the existence of black holes. He also introduced the revolutionary idea that space and time were unified, and spacetime could be manipulated by gravity. Many of his contemporaries called him far too radical; in fact, that's the main reason he couldn't find a job as a teacher early in his career. 

Thanks to modern science, we have verifiable proof that he was exactly right.

I love this quote from Heisenberg. He is best known for the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics, published almost 100 years ago. Like Einstein, he was light years ahead of his time. 

"Not only is the universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think."

The Nostril Stick Test

I like to call this photo "stupid cold."

This morning in my part of the world (Minnesota, USA), the mercury plummeted to -33 degrees Fahrenheit. To my friends everywhere else in the world, that’s -36 degrees Celsius. 

Life changes at this temperature. The house makes eerie popping sounds. Wildlife disappears. Delicate sensors in vehicles flash false warnings. Ice crystals float in the air.

Today I attempted the ultimate test of frigidity: the Nostril Stick Test. In the painful January air, I breathed in deeply through my nose. My nostrils stuck together like wallpaper paste. A positive test. It was cold.

By now you are certainly asking, “Why do you live there?”

It is a fair question; in fact, I ask myself the same thing every winter: “Why do I live in a place where my nostrils stick together?”

I have no clever answer. This is simply home.