My 401(k)...

Would buy the same amount of gas now as it would've a year ago.

Obama Booty Call

If someone texts me at 2 am, I expect something a whole lot better than:

Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee. Watch the first Obama-Biden rally live at 3pm ET on www.barackobama.com Spread the word!

I STILL Think Uma Thurman's Stalker is Kind of a Cool Guy

What does it say about me that I think Jack Jordan, a.k.a "The Uma Thurman Stalker," is kind of a cool guy?

I first met Jack Jordan in 1991, when we were both students at the University of Chicago. We had a few acquaintances in common and bumped into each other on the quads or in a coffee shop or at a party. He was a laconic English major who smiled suspiciously at jokes, particularly the kind of jokes that a small group of self-styled insiders would pass around like a jazz improvisation. I never knew if he thought the original jokes were funny or not, so when it was my turn I'd often crank up my riff. I figured if he thought we were all being asses, then I was going to be the biggest ass.

The last time I saw the guy was at a party in 1995. At the time I had given up any idea of being anything other than a "financial analyst" and resigned myself to a job making various reports, charts, & graphs for a telecommunications company while taking business classes at night. I figured he, like nearly everyone else I knew still kicking around in Chicago, had made a similar compromise. Instead, I found out that he was part of a group that started a non-profit called Go Trek, which took socio-economically diverse groups of young people on long hikes through different parts of the world, testing their physical & foreign language limits while exposing them to different people and items of cultural significance. I came back from getting a beer and found him saying something to my wife that made her laugh out loud. I felt jealous.

I didn't think of the guy again for several years, until I bumped into a mutual acquaintance at a wedding. During a conversational lull, I asked about Jack and the acquaintance gave a glib reply and went for a fresh drink.

Jack was probably due to vanish from my mind, like a junior high classmate or a fellow former fast food employee, but then last week the abstract of "Uma Thurman's Stalker" became real. The New York Times article I was reading began "Jack Jordan, a University of Chicago graduate turned drifter who lived in his car..." and I had to stop because I got all queasy.

I thought I reached the point where I stopped hating on fellow University of Chicago alumni, those various charmless, narcissistic, annoying fellow classmates and friends-of-roommates/roommates-of-friends who are now tenured professors, hedge fund managers, film directors, op-ed columnists, and noted humanitarians, but this brought up the same sort of feelings, albeit in doppelganger form.

I spent the next couple of days romanticizing the idea that ten years ago I could have chosen a similar path, but somehow found myself foregoing the vegan/pool cleaner/schizophrenic/stalker route and doing that husband/homeowner/father/stay-at-home dad thing and that these moorings saved me from his fate. Fellow alumni would email and I joked that Jack was another victim of the perverse narcissism of a University of Chicago alumni, who no longer content with merely using Greek philosophers as a punchline, decided to believe their desperate rants would be seen as challices of brilliant allusions and metaphors. I asked my wife if she remembered that one party back in 1995 with a series of increasingly frantic triggers - Remember? At that one guys loft apartment? So and so was there? The dj had that one film on a loop? It was on Lake street? - until it was clear she wasn't going to remember a damn thing. I thought about writing a letter to his folks, googled his name, read the user comments on tmz.com and got angry enough to start writing something similar to this post, but then deleted it.

What does it say about me that I think Jack Jordan is kind of a cool guy?

It probably means we shouldn't be judged by the worst thing that we do.

A lot of people are talking, and judging by the Pennsylvania results, they will continue to claim that Obama is an elitist.

I don't think Obama is elitist, I think he's just uppity.

Suck it up 5 x 5

I hate fantasy baseball players.

Given a chance, they will always ruin a social situation, turning a quiet gathering of small pleasant conversations into a 120 decibel quorum on the merits of “owning” Dontrelle Willis in an even numbered year. Get a bunch of them together and they’re a pack of wolves, coming down from the hills to devour the innocuous conversations about recent movies, popular fiction, or why we keep watching John from Cincinnati to explain at great length to everyone present why they personally despise Barry Bonds, but they’re glad he’s on their team. I’d rather discuss the war on terror with my father-in-law and his college buddies.

Yet there I was the other day at a Sox game with my son and a friend of his and her dad, talking about Florida Marlins shortstop Hanley Ramirez and what an awesome year he’s having (.342 batting average, 20 home runs, 87 runs batted in, 35 stolen basis). How did I know about Hanley Ramirez when I can barely name the starting lineup of my hometown team? Because I play fantasy baseball on the DL.

Yeah, I wasn’t going to admit it to the guy, just as I really don’t admit it to anyone else. Five years ago a friend of mine decided to form a fantasy league by inviting a bunch of random folks he knew but didn’t know each other. I figured why the heck not? I inherited an abandoned franchise on which I recognized about 5 players and immediately started receiving trade offers that made no mathematical sense. I later learned this was a common fantasy league tactic, trading once great superstars on the decline for up and comers. I slugged it through 2 seasons before I stumbled onto the odd algorithm of fantasy statistics and started to become a “player.”

Being a “player” doesn’t really fill my life with anything remotely resembling a hobby. More importantly it doesn’t take away from my attempts to do other pressing things, like finishing the latest Ian McEwan novel or finding a job that fits my daddy schedule. If I spend any time at all on fantasy baseball in a given day, its about 5 minutes online just to see how I’m doing in the standings or making sure I don’t have any guys injured on my team. And this 5 minute average includes the times I’ve half watched a baseball games because I recognized the guy pitching as being on my time (Oh hey, Dan Haren! Nice to attach a face with a name!). I'm pretty sure I've spent more time over the past 5 years paying my utility bills than playing fantasy baseball.

Though over those past five years I’ve developed an idiosyncratic method for picking my pitchers, a draft day strategy, a decided aversion to any player over 30, and a strange ability to engage guys my age in conversation. When I find myself sinking into the tedium of a condo real estate market or magnate school admission policy conversation, I’ll suddenly chirp, “Hey, do you think Reyes’ll steal 90 bases this year?” or “Can anyone win 20 games anymore?” and about 69% of the time, that being twice Suzuki Ichiro’s batting average, it’ll lead to a conversation that’s actually filled with excitement and introspection.

The self-consciousness that guys get, that settles over them like the paunch they got once they're married with kids and a mortgage and can’t remember the last movie they saw in the theatre that wasn’t animated, vanishes away. Sometimes the excitement of the baseball conversation will get too much and they'll ask if I play fantasy baseball. I always lie and say no, but immediately ask how it works. Then its off to the races. An 8 year old explaining Pokemon evolutions has nothing on a 38 year old insurance industry applications programmer talking about the keeper rules in his league.

Yeah, a few years ago I would’ve said it sucks and wanted no part of it, but these are the choices now. If I want to be able to have any real discussion with another guy that doesn’t involve things half remembered from our 20s, if I want to see real introspection and emotion in another guy with whom I didn’t down Miller Genuine Drafts while listening to Guns N Roses, I know I gotta do one of two things: join AA or a fantasy league.

Right now, I’m sticking with the latter.

But does it really work?

I don't know, but I'm leaving these around the house anyway.

If I eat some by accident though, will I get moobs?

What do you do all day?

This is what I'm always asked and people seem vaguely disappointed when I say "I have no idea" so I've tried to write it all out for a day and I still have no idea why it should take all this time.

8:00 am - Wifey, who returned yesterday at 4:00pm from her week plus jaunt in the far east, wakes me up to tell me she's leaving for the airport now and I'll see her again when I wake up on Thursday.

8:05 am - Little Man crawls into my bed and declines my groggy offer to snuggle - "Naw, dada, we gotta get going watching television. You can make some coffee and snuggle me on the couch."

8:10 am - Make coffee, snuggle Little Man on the couch, half watch Scooby Doo.

8:35 am - Start to put away clean dishes, wash dirty dishes, drink more coffee, make bagel & cream cheese for Little Man.

8:40 am - Relent to demands for a second cartoon, sneak in some time on the computer, take a phone call from a college friend.

9:10 am - Finish putting away clean dishes, washing dirty dishes, drinking coffee, and cleaning the floor.

9:15 am - Download a recipe for limeade - 3 limes, 2/3rds cups of sugar, 6 cups of water - and let Little Man go to town with it.

9:35 am - Finish cleaning up after the successful limeade making.

9:45 am - Little Man tells me he's bored. After entertaining several options, he decides he'd like to go play mini-golf. We decide to bike ride there, but he doesn't want to ride the tandem, he wants to ride his own bike. I start to convince him we should use the tandem.

9:50 am - We're going to be taking out out bikes. We leave for the course, about 3 miles away.

12:30 pm - Return from golf. He's upset with me because I wouldn't let him call himself stupid, worthless, or a failure when he missed shots. I make him lunch and he sulks off to his room.

12:45 pm - Finish cleaning up from lunch, put a load of laundry in, start cleaning family room.

1:00 pm - Make my lunch, read some of the Sunday Times, exchange some emails.

2:00 pm - Leave the house for the airport to pick up mother-in-law (aka "Granny") who has returned from her vacation with a staph infection inside her cast.

3:00 pm - 2 big traffic jams later, arrive at airport, load up Granny's stuff

3:15 pm - Donut & coffee break with Granny and Little Man

3:30 pm - Take Granny grocery shopping, pick up more limes and hot dogs and other essentials.

3:50 pm - Leave grocery store, hope for no more traffic jams.

4:30 pm - Arrive at Granny's, doublepark in the alley and take everything up the stairs, realize that I didn't feed her cat once while she was gone bc Wifey never gave me the keys to her place, get Little Man into his tae kwon do uniform and head on over for his lesson.

5:00 pm - Drop off Little Man at tae kwon do, go home, put away groceries, take out garbage, read more Sunday Times.

6:15 pm - Pick up Little Man from tae kwon do and, despite the fact he got donuts earlier today, let him have his weekly McDonalds tonight because of his anxiety at missing out on a Legion of Superheroes happy meal toy. He gets Timber Wolf (a favorite) so he's ecstatic. He rules over the playland while I read The Week.

7:15 pm - Leave for Little Man's make-up guitar lesson. His instructor canceled at the last minute yesterday.

7:25 pm - Arrive for lesson and I realize I forgot my book, read old copy of Newsweek instead while he works on powercords.

8:05 pm - Lesson is over, his teacher briefs me on what Little Man is going to work on this week, we head on home

8:25 pm - At home, we should go to bed, but he hasn't gotten his evening "movie" (a half hour TV show) so I let him watch while I do another load of laundry and clean up the kitchen & hallway floors. While getting out the floor cleaner, I notice some compact flourescent lightbulbs were put in the wrong place so I decide to move them to the upstairs closet where, due to our misinformed purchase of a few Ikea lamps, we have a gloriously diversified collection of lightbulbs.

8:35 pm - Lightbulb falls out of cardboard container as I take it upstairs. It bounces once, twice, three times then smashes into the carpet on the stairs. I see environmental damage everywhere.

8:40 pm - Begin first of three vacuumings of the stairs.

8:55 pm - Little man is done with his movie, but I'm not done vacuuming. I try to think of something that will take a long time to do, then tell him to take a shower and brush his teeth.

9:10 pm - After the usual hunt for his retainer, we finally hit the sheets. He doesn't want to read a story together, but rather have us each read one of his Bone books. He lets me know when he hits a funny part, everytime he hits a funny part

9:30 pm - Still reading Bone, I can't interrupt even though I know we're over an hour behind betime schedule. He's reading, right?

9:50 pm - Too tired to read anymore, Little Man puts the book down and starts to snuggle me. I turn off the lights and snuggle back.

9:55 pm - Little Man starts flipping around the bed, trying upsidedown positions, sideways positions and putting various parts of him on me - feet, head, arms, legs - before I get the idea to turn on a fan and have it blast straight at him.

10:03 pm - Little Man is snoring. I should get some sleep.

10:28 pm - I can't fall asleep

10:30 pm - Watch the last half of Big Love and then the Daily Show. Still not tired.

11:30 pm - Watch the AFL-CIO Democratic debate, eat some cherries, still not tired

12:30 am - Give up on TV, go back to bed.

12:45 am - Still not tired

1:03 am - Last time I remember looking at the clock

7:14 am - First time I remember looking at the clock. Little Man is up - ugh only 9 hours sleep, he's going to be cranky.

7:20 am - Start making breakfast, start making this post.