Tag: Writing

Depression: more fun to ridicule than wallow 

JulianLeave a comment

The Real Ivanov, currently on stage in the East Village, is presented as a meditation on depression. I think that’s a mistake. 

There are two ways to approach depression:

  • To look at it as a comic activity; to ridicule it. That was Chekov’s choice.
  • To wallow in it. That is this play’s choice.

Ivanov, in this version, is an empathetic figure. He is someone depressed and unable to shake this difficulty. But objectively, he is a scoundrel: he married a rich woman, then her family disowned her, and all she does is love him, yet he has fallen out of love with her. Is it related to his money problems? He says no. Yet when his wife dies of tuberculosis, immediately he marries the daughter of the richest people in town. The juxtaposition between what he says and what he does is notable. If a man leaves the side of his tuberculosis-ridden wife to prompt a new relationship with a wealthy young woman, is that not a deplorable act worthy of ridicule? Yet this production plays it straight. 

Many of the scenes make no sense when played as a drama: Ivanov (our protagonist) goes to the richest woman in town, to whom he owes money, and begs her for another week to pay. She rejects him. A few scenes later, her husband goes to Ivanov and begs him to pay this man’s wife because she is haranguing him about it. That’s already somewhat of a funny circumstance: a man begging not for payment but for his wife off his back. Now, the husband pulls out a thousand rubles to give to Ivanov to give to the man’s wife, on the condition that Ivanov not tell her it’s from him. What a funny thing to do! Now, on top of that, add the fact that our protagonist rejects the money! What a ridiculous scenario! It’s like watching a circle of Loony Toons chase each other. Yet that scene in this production, much like the rest of them, is played dramatically. 

Throughout this performance, I was the only person in the audience laughing, frequently laughing because the manner I have found to enjoy this play is by imagining I’m reading the script for it while the actors are talking. I’m enjoying the script itself (it’s very well-written) and laughing at the difference between what they are doing and the humor in the script itself. 

This performance is to Chekhov like American Chinese food is to Chinese food. It can be simple and pleasurable if that’s your taste, but it lacks a certain depth of character.

After the play, I explained to my viewing buddy that this play could either be performed as a comedy or as a tragedy, and I thought this tragic choice was lacking. He said, “Are you sure it could be a comedy?” I showed him the poster: their tagline says, “A comedy about despair”. He said, “That was definitely not a comedy.” 

Next time, please make the audience laugh at the depression, not at the production itself. 

C-

Funcle 2: the Re-Funcling

JulianLeave a comment

When my sister birthed her first child, the world stopped. Oma and Opa booked a dozen cancellable flights in case of varying timings, then flew into town a week early. Partner & I waited around, there simply to be there in case we might maybe be needed. 

Today, my sister birthed her second child. This one was less of an event. Neither was particularly event-ful, but this one simply less. No one is staying up late to see the baby. Partner is on the other coast, returning here in a week. I’m sure I’ll swing by at some point tomorrow to see my new nibling, but nothing is planned and it’s all very chill. 

I wonder if primogeniture comes from that new-ness. From the fact that, for a first child, there is no competition. If grandparents were to be temporally equal, for instance, they should give the second child more attention than the first kid. The first kid had a few years of only-ness. A parent may love all their children equally for their whole lives. The first kid still got more love. 

It may equally come from implementation ease. Youngest kid is less predictable and less stable. It creates even more resource competition between siblings, and kids have enough of that as is. 

I’m excited to love my newborn nibling. Now that I know how to love a nibling, I’ll be more skilled in some ways (my nephew taught me). But I’ll also probably be a bit calcified to him (my nephew taught me how to be a funcle for him). Habits don’t die; they simply go underground. 

My job is to treat this kid as its own person. To show up and hold them and learn who they are. To learn who I am in their presence. To build our own relationship. 

I’m delighted to meet them. I’m excited to be their friend. 

Perhaps purpose is passion plus people 

JulianLeave a comment

Today I introduced a friend who makes quantitative trading-teaching games to a friend who owns a chain of toy and game stores. 

We played a hidden role social deduction game for 3.5hrs. Then they discussed game theory late into the night. 

I pitched this buddy on moving to The City. In 2 days he’s met a handful of driven, interesting, intellectual people. He usually lives in a tiny town. He doesn’t get out much. It’s not healthy. 

I wonder if he’ll ever expand his possibilities and his capabilities. Or if he’ll collapse back into the short-term, brief-profit-seeking perspective he always has. 

—

The last few months I’ve focused on renovating an apartment. Hearing people discuss their passions and excitement is both energizing and deflating. I wonder where I’ll go after this renovation. A family, perhaps. Or an opening of activity into work… or both. 

I enjoy playing games. I enjoy bringing people together. I’ll keep playing games. Keep bringing people together. 

Into a dancer you have grown

From a seed somebody else has thrown

Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own

And somewhere between the time you arrive and the time you go

May lie a reason you were alive, but you’ll never know

—

Games played

Just after midnight, as my buddy and I descended the steps into the subway station, a woman in a purple bathing suit followed. She muttered something about “Which way is this train going?” and “Who are you guys?” that we ignored. 

We paid our $3 to pass through the turnstile. She followed. 

We boarded the elevator toward the platform. The woman followed us. I tilted my head at my buddy. The woman lowered her top. 

Later, on the platform, my buddy commented: “She really must have thought we were good marks. Spent $3 and everything. And in the elevator, you see that?” 

I replied, “You know what that was?”

He said, “Advertising.” 

Welcome to New York

JulianLeave a comment

A buddy had a Medical Issue. He hadn’t spent a night away from home for the last 6 months. I told him he should visit. I asked what he needs. He described to me a Minor Medical Necessity that he needs every day – something akin to using a needle to draw blood. He’s squeamish around blood, so a family member helps him. We hopped on video while his family member performed the task. 

I’m not super squeamish, so I gave the thumbs-up. Less than 24 hours later, he arrived to my guest room. 

Today at 1pm, we went to a play. At 4:10pm, we left the play. At 4:30pm, we arrived at a friend’s birthday party. At 8pm, I left the party. My friend stayed behind. The time is now 11pm. I assume he’s still there. He hasn’t socialized outside of his family in a long time. He’s a severe night owl. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s out until 2 or 3am. 

His family member texted me, asking how the Minor Medical Necessity went. We haven’t done it yet. I didn’t expect him to stay out so late. Perhaps we’ll perform it when he returns at 3am. Or perhaps this “every day” will be a 36-hour stretch between two performings. It’s an odd situation where I’m responsible for doing it, but I don’t feel responsible for making it happen. (I’ve shared this perspective with him. He must habeas the corpus. If he’s out til 9am, I’m not going to see him til the morning.) 

I made for this guy a nice evening. I had a nice time at the birthday party. My friend enjoyed it even more than me. 

He just called me. He’s not coming back for a while. He’s befriended a few people. He wants to have them over for board games. I asked about the Minor Medical Necessity. He says it’s fine: we can do it in the morning. 

I’m not a doctor, and this wasn’t laughter, but I think ‘tis a helpful dose of medicine. 

The next morning I awoke to this message: 

Games Played: 

  • After listening to yesterdays npr story, one reader sent in the town of Show Low, AZ. 

Professional doubles tennis is broken

JulianLeave a comment

And the solutions are making it worse.

Wednesday night at the US Open, the mixed doubles semifinals started warming up at 7pm; each match lasted around 1hr20min, so with breaks between the matches we finished around 11:45pm. Two semifinals and a final in a single evening. Muchová and Menšík took it 6-3, 1-6, 10-6.

That compression is the entire point of the new format. People don’t like doubles tennis as much. Instead of making it better, they’re trying to make less of it. I think there are better moves. 

Tennis is a subdivided game. 4 points win a game, 6 games win a set, 2 (or 3) sets win a match. Why the subdivisions? Why win by two?

Because tennis crushes your soul. You spend ten minutes crunching point after point toward winning a game, only for all that work to be valueless when you lose that game. The same applies to sets: I don’t care how much work you put into the set, 1-6 or 5-7 both count as the same loss.

The subdivisions create the drama. They also create enthusiasm. Game points matter more than normal points. Set points matter even more. Deuce returns the game to an active stall: two jousters on idling motorcycles rich sparking with potential energy. Advantage is better still: one player a point from victory, the other a point from losing everything they just built.

The attempts to “improve” the game make it shorter and worse. Doubles removed advantage. 40-40 is still called “deuce”, but it’s now next point wins, rather than win by two. This change isn’t new:  the ATP has run no-ad doubles since 2006, which means the ratchet has been turning for twenty years. I’m writing now because it’s accelerating. 

This year, the US Open shortened the set too. In the mixed doubles championship, every match except the final is first to 4 games instead of first to 6. And they’ve replaced the third set entirely (final included): instead of playing games, it’s a “match tiebreak”, first to ten points.

That’s how you fit the semifinals and the final into one night.

The problem? Less-engaging games. If you have a bad game, the solution is not making it shorter. This is the classic mistake a promoter makes when they note “people have short attention spans these days”.

Don’t make it shorter. Make it better. Tennis lives on the drama. The excitement. The possibility. The heartbreak. Don’t give me less of that. Give me more.

Look elsewhere

Tennis has multiple levels: a match consists of sets which contain games which contain points. The US Open is making alterations at the set level. That’s the wrong level. The problem isn’t that doubles points come in sixes instead of fours. The problem is the points.

Only around ⅛ of doubles points are engaging (e.g. involving an impressive show of athleticism, or great strategy/tactics, or a large swing in likelihood of who wins the point). Compare that to ~⅓ in singles. And in singles between strong competitors, even when one player serves ace after ace, the mental game makes up for the disappointing physical game. Doubles has no such cover.

So make the point more interesting.

To do that, restrict the ability to hit winners. The first time a point goes hard-serve → barely-successful-return → smash, it’s cool. By the third time, it’s repetitive. By the thirtieth, you’re on your phone. (People actually left the tournament audience between the semifinals and the finals!) 

How to limit winners? Mandate that the ball’s second bounce be within some designated line arena. The game goes from pound-pound-pound to much more finesse.

It’s also a change tennis players could easily adjust to. You’re not moving the lines (they have years of muscle memory hitting exactly those places) and you’re not adding new restrictions on which shots are legal (eg pickleball’s no-volley zone). You’re limiting the players’ targeting and power, which is already in their wheelhouse. Tennis doesn’t become a fundamentally different sport: you just basically make one version of killshot illegal. 

(A worse idea, for contrast: scrap the finish line entirely and make every game win-by-two from zero. Every point matters. You don’t get the comebacks from 0-40, but you give every point more potential energy. I don’t think this is a good idea. But I think it’s still better than simply making the match shorter.)

The US Open has pumped money into the mixed doubles championship and restructured the seeding to encourage big names to play it. It worked, for two nights. But none of it makes the game better. I like watching tennis. Yet after viewing the mixed doubles at this tournament, I have no interest in watching Serena WIlliams and Carlos Alcaraz play mixed doubles just as I have no interest in watching them do laundry. Even if someone were drawn once by the famous names, they’d be unlikely to return due to the unenjoyable structure. Pumping money into a bad structure is like adding fuel to an unstable fire: you create a flash in the pan. 

You improve the game long-term by actually improving the game. Stop experimenting at the meta-structure and actually make the points fun.

Meh-ntalist

JulianLeave a comment

In freshman year of highschool, my theater teacher told me: “There are no magicians. There are only actors pretending to be magicians.” 

Tonight we saw neither. 

Suhani Shah bills herself as “the world’s most subscribed mentalist. I have no way of disproving that claim. 

What I can disprove: 

  1. Around ~30 minutes into the show, she wrote a number on a whiteboard, attempting to match the number that had been written while she was blindfolded. She failed. The audience did not clap. She commented on the audience not clapping. I told her “It’s wrong.” (I was on stage at the time as an audience participant.) 
  2. Around 3 minutes later, she told me and the other on-stage participant to select one of us to draw on the board, and tell her who it was. We neglected to tell her. She incorrectly guessed it was me. 
  3. There was another part where she had someone say a number that was on their mind. The reveal was to be EITHER that she had written the number both on the white board AND on a piece of paper already on stage, OR that she was wrong on the whiteboard as a dramatic intensity-heightener, and then MAGICALLY CORRECT with the paper on the stage. I can’t tell which, because 1) the numbers didn’t match, and 2) she didn’t play off the note-being-correct in a way that was obvious or compelling. 
  4. At ~the 75th minute, she performed an actually-shocking trick that I have no idea how she did. (She received random three-to-five-digit numbers from the audience, which combined with an audience member’s “random” button presses of additional numbers summed to the first 6 numbers on a twenty dollar bill and a pre-written scroll.)
    1. Okay, I actually just figured out one way she could do it: have the “calculator” app not actually be a true calculator, but be a program which only looks like a calculator but actually inputs the desired digits at the audience member’s presses. 

Today was her first day performing in New York. On ~3 occasions, she found herself a bit bowled over by audience members being very forward. For an audience-participation show, New Yorker culture is, I would suspect, quite specific. We move fast. Give us an inch and we’ll take it immediately. Say to the audience, “We need someone with a handkerchief. Raise your hand if you have one. One of you, join me onstage.” and someone will arrive immediately. 

She also mocked the audience participants more than I’m familiar with. This may be a cultural difference, but it rubbed me a bit the wrong way. (Partner didn’t notice or care.)

If you’re a mentalist, your job is to seem like you’re doing magic. Part of that success comes from playing off your mistakes well. 

Tonight was opening night. In two weeks, I hope she’s more successful. 

On Mathemagic

JulianLeave a comment

Tonight, Partner and I saw an off-Broadway show of a guy doing fast math in his head. He calls himself a “math-e-magician.” 

This performer does a great job of playing things off. One of his acts is to to guess the missing digit of the answer to an incredibly long multiplication problem. Starting with a 4 digit number from a previous trick, each audience member uses their phone calculator to multiply by a new 5 digit number that they don’t say out loud, and then they read all but one digit aloud. Give the digits in any order — he can still figure out what’s missing.

Magicians never reveal their secrets, but, for a math-e-magician, the reveal is part of the show. The trick is that he selected a multiple of 9 as the starting number. Therefore, the sum of the digits will always be a multiple of 9. So if The sum is 68? The next multiple of 9 is 72, so the answer is 4. The sum of the digits given is 34? The missing digit is 2 (34+2=36, 36/9=0). The sum of the digits is 45? Well, the answer could be 0, or it could be 9.

This is what separates the magicians from the math-e-magicians. And math-e-magicians reveal their secrets.

He cold-reads. He will say, “I’m going to read your mind… I’m getting a lot of nothing. It’s not zero, is it?” And if the audience member says, “That’s right!”, we’re good. 

But if the audience member replies otherwise, he can say, “Try thinking harder… It’s nine!”, just playing it off like it was part of the act.

Cold-reading psychics do this as well, where they might see a woman crying and say, “It’s not your husband, is it?” and if the response is yes, they say, “Yeah, I thought so.” But if the answer is no, they say, “Yes, I didn’t think so.” 

Either way, the phrasing gives you that particular out. 

My favorite and least-favorite part of the show was when an audience member kid said that he could do 75 digits of pi, and then he could not accurately do 75 digits of pi. The performer did a great job of making the kid not realize he was flailing. The performer had said, “We’re going to do 60 digits of pi, and then maybe continue onwards.” And since the kid was flailing, the performer cut him off. 

Partner’s favorite part was when he asked a little girl for her birthday, and did a whole act with the numbers in it. He then asked for someone else’s birthday, and the girl’s sister volunteered. But the sister was quick to point out that she’s not just a sister: she’s a twin. The performer chuckled and used the birthday anyway. 

This particular performer used to create magic squares to entertain himself. Now he performs math-e-magic in an Off-Broadway show. 

Starting early sure helps. 

The light goes out in my designer’s eyes

JulianLeave a comment

My designer waved the white flag. 

After two months of haggling over specific lighting, he has assented that Partner & I are boss. He literally said, “I lose.” 

I didn’t want him to lose. I don’t think him feeling like he has lost is helpful for anyone. But I also don’t want to pay an extra $14,000 on lighting. I’d rather have a visible flange. So yes, he loses. 

Partner was the key technical driver here. In some areas, I’ve been the pusher (raising the ceilings, which Partner was skeptical about but is now excited for; getting a deep tub; ensuring the island countertop is 34” tall, so it’s ergonomic for Partner’s cooking). In this area, Partner’s prior technical knowledge of lighting (she was a professional theatrical lighting designer in a past life) lends itself to this new domain. 

The final straw: learning that the second-tier lighting suggested by the showroom has a beam of ~4 feet in diameter at 6 feet high, while the lighting we found has a beam of ~13 feet in diameter at the same level. The same cost gets us approximately the same lighting specs, but pi*6.5^2 = 133sqft of light vs 12sqft, or 10x the amount of light. 

Yes, there’s more to light than the amount of light (or else we’d just light the whole apartment with floodlights), but we’ve already checked those traits! They’re approximately equivalent on every other element, just these have visible flanges! 

So today, my designer assented to purchasing the lights we described. He is seeking someone to buy them from. (Why he won’t just buy them from the website I found previously, I don’t know.) 

10x the light, 10x my happiness, and 300 copies of future board games. 

Here’s to holding your ground. 

Thanks, Partner. I couldn’t have done it without you. 

Against Middlemen 

JulianLeave a comment

My project manager/apartment designer sent me on a wild goose chase because he likes pretty things and I like money. 

I left his office at 3:45pm. Partner & I walked the 20 minutes to the lighting showroom for our 4:45 appointment. It was hot. Partner was grumpy due to lack of food (an all-liquid diet will do that to you, especially if you make the mistake of giving away your protein shake). At 4:15pm, my designer texted to cancel: see, the showroom closes at 5pm, so what about a meeting on Thursday? I told him tomorrow (Wednesday) is good but Thursday is no good. See: we have an appointment with my designer’s boss on Thursday, and I really want the lighting nailed down before then. Partner has already designed a new lighting package, so this whole experience of look-at-this-new-lighting-package feels like a wild goose chase to me anyway. It’s all because my designer wants no visible flange around my lights, while I want 1.5% of a million-dollar farm upstate. 

Having already walked to the showroom (and being an impish sort of fellow), I entered anyway. After a 5-minute wait, I spotted the same saleswoman who had previously helped me. I asked her about the 4:45pm meeting. She said there never had been a 4:45pm meeting. 

Aha. 

I asked her if she had designed the new lighting package that my designer mentioned. She said yes. 

Me: “Could we schedule an appointment for tomorrow? Any time after 1pm.” 

Saleswoman: “Sure: I’m wide open anytime from 1pm. And you’re my top priority.”

Me: “Could you send me the product list and spec sheets ahead of time so I can research them?” 

Saleswoman: “We can only send it to your designer.”

Me: “That dramatically decreases the likelihood we will buy lights from you.” 

Saleswoman: “Sorry, it’s store policy.” 

When I shared this experience with Partner, she laughed and said wedding plans often have a password, to avoid e.g. the mother of the bride changing things. 

“That’s fair enough,” I said. “But I’m the bride!” 

I’ve heard it’s reasonably common in German culture for someone experiencing consumer anguish of this sort to say something like, “But I’m paying you money!” And maybe it’s my German genes, but that’s my natural response! 

If you’re not going to share your information with me, I won’t give you my money! I already am disinterested in the fact that you charge $20k for something that I could nearly mimic for $7k. And now you’re not going to share MY INFORMATION with me? It’s like a HIPAA violation, but for lighting showrooms! 

I emailed my designer. I started the conversation by requesting that he only tell me meetings are booked when they actually are booked. (Shots fired.) 

It’s even more frustrating because I don’t mind the flange. 

In reality, a small issue. The demolition on my apartment started yesterday, and is going swimmingly. The meeting with my designer and the owner of the contracting company went well. This is just one small drop in a sea of good news. 

And anyway, not giving them my money is the best revenge. 

Musing on Connective Tissue

JulianLeave a comment

Imagine 10 or 100 people describe you, and their descriptions become a word cloud. Now take your word cloud, and compare it to other people’s.

Would we find that the people you spend time with have similar word clouds — similar descriptors, similar nouns about them? Does your cloud sit close to the clouds of the people near you? If so, in what ways alike, and in what ways different? (That’s graphing friend groups or political links in n-dimensional space according to personal traits, as a word cluster of noun descriptors of the person: clustering by cloud similarity and then drawing lines between the points based on social or political ties.)

My bet: people befriend and connect based on proximity. But the friend network is different than the leader. The map of who we like is not the map of who leads us.

Maybe “Yalie” is a noun about you, and a bunch of the people around you are also Yalies. Maybe most of the people you spend time with are quite tall — about the same height. But what about groups with diversities of traits instead: An office might cluster around Yalies but diversify by role: one person described “HR,” one described “accounting,” one described “CEO.” Some friend groups are all CEOs; other circumstances produce diversity. How does that work in an office? In politics? 

I wonder what they’d learn about politics. Is the most successful politician of a group the person who overlaps most with the rest of the group? I wouldn’t think the leader is necessarily the person with the most words overlapping others (because that person might miss a key trait, e.g. the desire to lead). Maybe the person who is friends with everybody is the one with the most in common with everybody. Or maybe the leader’s lowest commonality is higher than anybody else’s lowest (i.e. “The leader is nobody’s stranger.”). It’s got to be more complicated than that, depending on the group structure and incentives and the outsized impact of specific traits like desire for power.

Why I’ve been thinking about this: in a group that I interacted with today, the leader shares the most traits with the other group members. Each bloc shares one of her dimensions. Thinking about the descriptors of these different people and how she ended up being president: she is the person all of these different groups can agree on.

But often the leader of a group is not the leader because they have much in common with everybody, but because they plan things. That’s an interesting difference. The leader of a friend group is not the one most overlapping with others but more likely the one who organizes the events. In her case, part of it is she makes the thing happen — the leadership thing. This differs from the second-in-command, who doesn’t organize people, just makes the wheels run. Doing isn’t organizing.

Does anybody map social groups this way? A thing I’d be curious about: how do the friend network and the leader differ? The mapping half is studied — sociologists call it homophily. The gap between who connects and who leads is the fresher question.

—

Games Played

The writers missed out by failing to name it, “The Devil Wears Prada 2: The Devil Still Wears Prada.”