How Small Can You Get?

I just learned about micro wasps. Parasitic wasps find other insect eggs to lay their eggs inside of, because just setting your egg on the buffet line to hatch and pupate and develop is a pretty good idea. But because of this, the wasps are SO FREAKING TINY. Like...holy hell:

Courtesy of the Interwebs

Here is one next to a paramecium and an amoeba TO SCALE! Those are single-celled organisms! 200 microns is one-fifth of a millimeter. Their wings are more feather duster than proper insect wing. Their brains have only 7,400 neurons, and most have lost their nucleotides.

I dunno...this world remains endlessly fascinating.

Best. Halloween. Ever.

I like Halloween, I guess.

I'm not a gung-ho, holy-crap-it's-finally-October, horror-movie-marathon kinda guy. People where I work ask me what my costume will be, and I'm like, "Eh...same as last year, maybe? Chef gear? Or whatever my daughter wants us to dress up as...?" I just don't care that much. Plus, I spent so many Halloween nights working that I kinda lost the internal drive to care. The same thing happened with the Super Bowl.

Anyway, I have a nice Indian suit---like a nice dressy suit from India---that Corrie brought home from her trip 20+ years ago that I wore this year. People where I work said, "Eh, what're you supposed to be, Sherwood?"

I answered, "I'm a cultural appropriator." Half the people I told that to said, "Huh?" They other half laughed uproariously and said, "Good one!" That was worth it just for that.

But this year marked the first year since the kids were born that we had to figure trick-or-treating out for ourselves. Each year so far we've just taken part in Linda's Daycare trick-or-treat event, which tended to be on, like, October 28th at the sunny hour of 3:30 pm. The kids would walk up and down Nipomo Ave (where the home daycare resided) and knock on the obviously-pre-arranged neighbors' doors and that would be that. Now that Camille and Cassius are at the same school, we kinda had to figure it out.

Before the real festivities of the evening occurred, there was the "parade" at school, where the kids can dress up fully in their costumes (masks too, whereas masks are otherwise verboten) and walk around the grounds and be cheered on and photographed by parents. I missed this, Corrie was there to snap a picture of Cass, wearing both his normal costume (Ghostface, from the movie Scream (which he's yet to see)), as well as showing off his love for the newly vanquished:

Corrie wasn't really feeling up to it, but we pushed through. It got dark enough by 6, and we corralled the babies just well enough to get their costumes ready and them into the car. See, we can't trick-or-treat around our place, since we live in an urban hellscape environment with very little obvious front-door action. That was just another reason to keep going to Linda's for as long as we did.

So instead of our neighborhood, we drove up Atlantic to Cal Heights, a nice neighborhood where Corrie has some clients:

The drive was about ten or fifteen minutes. Corrie took the right turn into the zone and we slowed down. "Do you seen any groups of kids?" she asked. After slowly rolling through a few intersections, we spotted some walkers, Corrie pulled a nearly reckless U-turn and Ace Ventura-ed her Subaru up to the curb. "Let's do this!" she exclaimed as the kids' excitement was just beginning to burble.

All of a sudden, it turned out, we were surrounded by a few hundred people, clogging all sidewalks on all streets around where we'd parked. We just got out, started right at that house, and it was on. 

We followed the few houses before heading left with the sidewalk, and followed it all the way to a school. Nearly every place was decorated and buzzing. The air was just cool enough to feel like Fall, but not to where you'd be chilly.

Some houses had displays that were unmanned, like the witches coven above. Corrie took all of these photos and I grabbed them from her. There was so much color and charm and music and excitement all along the entire street and, really, all the streets in Cal Heights on this evening that it made me long for that kind of thing for our kids. Raising urban, city-kids is cool and all, but you'll never get THIS kind of excitement. 

Anyway, one house had a whole group of adults handing out candy like they were waiting for the bus:

Cass ditched the jersey (on the left)

As we were walking away, we asked Camille, "What do you say?" She got back into line, but not to get candy, arther to say 'thank you' to each person individually. The last person was laughing so hard he gave her another handful of candy.

Pretty soon after this, Camille was tearing ass from house to house, leaving us in the dust, screeching as she went along, "They gave me MORE candy!" and soon after, "I HAVE SO MUCH CANDY!"

This skeleton is at least 10' tall

It was hard enough work keeping up with her. Eventually I trailed her as Corrie and Cass brought up the rear. Camille is at an age and gender that is socially allowed to disregard social etiquette when it comes to queuing for candy. Since it was so crowded, the littlest, blondest girls were kinda allowed to run amok, despite their own parents' protests.

I was not in costume at this time, but I did have on my large union affiliated hoodie, and I got plenty of compliments and shout-outs, which was very nice.

The whole thing took less than 20 minutes. We went a few houses, turned left with the sidewalk, went up a few blocks to the school, came back down the opposite side, crossed our first street, and went up and back a few houses and absconded to the car. Hit almost all three of the Tao of Steve's rules.

We got home just after 7, put on some Treehouse of Horror episodes, and sifted through SO MUCH CANDY, to quote the littlest blond one, for what we all liked.

It was easily my new favorite Halloween.

[[Totally unrelated aside: (as seen in the map above) notable Poly High alums: Billie Jean King, Tony Gwynn, Snoop Dogg, and Cameron Diaz, amongst many others.]]

"It's a kind of chicken, daddy."

My daughter, reciting a long-standing children's rhyme: One, two, buckle my shoe.

Three, four, shut the door.

Me: Nice.

Five, six, pick up sticks.

Seven, eight, lay them straight.

Me: For sure. Gotta organize 'em.

Nine, ten, a big hat fen.

Me: (Raises eyebrows)

Her: It's a kind of chicken, daddy. A het fen.

That Was Over Fast

Dodgers in 5, just like in 1988. Dodgers end game 1 with a walk-off with two outs down at least a run when a hobbled hitter parks a shot to center-right, just like 1988. The only difference was this year Freddy Freeman crushed a grand slam (the first walk-off grand slam in WS history).

I watched that first game standing almost the entire time. When we scored in the top of the 10th without getting the ball out of the infield, I was sure would steal a game in LA. Joke was on me.

Congrats to the Dodgers, whose relentless nature and conquest of the fundamentals proved to be the undoing of my Yankees.

Yankees! Dodgers! Game 1 Tonight

When I started this blog it was 2009, and the last time my Yankees made the World Series. So that's eh, 15 fifteen seasons. That's as long a drought as for the Yankees as the 1981 to 1996 drought, or the years when I was a kid and my dad was a young father.

It's like, you have a two year old and a new born, and the next time your team makes the world series is when your oldest kid is a senior in high school. For me, I went from living in Brooklyn and shilling dairy and writing to living on an opposite coast, being a veteran in my gig, and with two kids of my own, both at the same elementary school.

But Cass gets to see his team (yay Yankee fandom!) in the World Series at an impressionable age. Cool.

Also, I like the Dodgers. I grew up rooting for them in the National League (thanks mom!) and I'd claim them as my favorite NL team. 

So this year, either Ohtani wins the chip is his first year as a Dodger (hell yes to that narrative) or MY team wins the chip! Hell yes to that narrative, too! I'm comfortable with whatever outcome because I've seen so much success in the recent past with my sports teams: from 1996 until 2022 with the Yankees, the NY Giants, and the Golden State Warriors (representing Nor Cal, but I like the Kings, too), it's been a wild time.

Superstar time, though, for sure: Aaron Judge, Juan Soto, Giancarlo Stanton for the pinstriped goons from the Bronx; Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman for the boys in blue form Chavez Ravine. Gerrit Cole, Clayton Kershaw...There haven't been this many future Hall of Famers and MVPs in the same World Series since probably 1996 (Jeter, Rivera, Time Raines, Wade Boggs for the Yanks and Maddux, Smoltz, Glavine, and Chipper Jones for the Braves).

Way to go baseball, for grabbing the collective consciousness. As much as D-Backs/Rangers was a good matchup of sound teams, c'mon! Dodgers/Yankees! Pennant number 41 for the Yanks! 15th meeting between these times, most ever! The narratives write themselves.

Go Yanks!

(Sigh) My Game's Finally Ending

The message I've been readying myself for a few years now came:

This is the message that Electronic Arts supplied us players of their phone game, The Simpsons: Tapped Out. It essentially says that on January 25th, the servers will be turned off and the game will cease to function. After all these years...

Here's an in-game image of the literal sunsetting of our Springfields:

TSTO, as we degenerate players called it, was a sims game. A "sims" game is a game in which you simulate things: you have characters who can assign quests for various lengths of time and be rewarded with types of currency that helps you build your town. All of us TSTO players were little civic planners, civil engineers, mayors, and lords of electronic fiefdoms. I played this game a lot.

It was a few things to me. One: it was a way to feel more connected to The Simpsons, arguably the greatest show ever made. Two: it was the most involved I'd been in any video game since the N64's Ocarina of Time. Three: it was a connection for me and my good buddy Tony, something we would regularly update each other about over the years. And years is the right framework, as I played this game a lot.

When I started playing, it was March 2012, and the game was a few months old. The maximum level a player could reach was 21. You started with Homer and Lisa, and would quickly unlock Cletus and Flanders, and as each of their quests or tasks would get done, you'd be rewarded with game cash and experience points (XP). Enough XP and you'd level up. By the time I reached the game's max level, that level was 35, and it was the Halloween event in 2012, after about six or seven months of playing. Now the max level is 939, which incidentally is the same as Puerto Rico's area code. Like I've said, I've played this game a lot.

Leveling up was just another way to keep engaged with the game play. That changed over the years, the engagement factor. While I did play a lot---I jumped awake when we were deep in the "Keep Cassius Alive" phase of his life and asked Corrie if my game updated (her response was "How tf should I know?"); I'd jones for Wi-fi codes in Laos and Cambodia to log in an keep my Christmas event going while traveling abroad in 2013/14---I was emotionally ready to quit the game a few years ago.

I had over 600 characters, thousands of "skins" (outfits for existing characters), I reached the edges of my space and, because of my city-planning decisions, I had most of my town full. I had maxed out the in-game currency (over 4.2 billion game-bucks), and by farming the premium currency, I had over 15 thousand donuts, which meant I could purchase any item in the game they offered, unless they sold a character for real money (which they did from time to time).

When I first put down the Simpson's house, I tried to place it strategically (for me). I thought it would look cool at the end of tree-lined esplanade. It wasn't what I was looking for, and after placing the Flanders house next door, I questioned my reason for even playing it. It wasn't until I separated their homes by water that I realized what I was really trying to do: I would recreate my Springfield as Venice. And I would essentially place everything in a spot that wouldn't change over the years of playing. I made a forest, and eventually had to fill most of it in. I once had a large bay gashing my town, but it needed to be filled in as well. If only...

And I mostly kept to that over the ensuing years. When looked at in it's totality, my game is an artifact of updates and releases, including when I started farming donuts and buying all the premium items. 

And I made my town into a veritable Venice, with waterways everywhere.

EA did a few things to keep engagement up in recent times. They made it possible to spend large chunks of game currency, which made clearing everyone have a purpose beyond just staring at your phone. And they made it possible to take photos of your entire town and save them. Here's an early one from my town:

It's hard to make out what's happening, but with zooming while looking at it on your phone, it the resolution gets down to playing the game size. That picture above is the first one I took, and I'll post the last one I'll take, the one I'm going to print out large like a poster. We should have guessed something was up when EA essentially doubled the available space in the game, opening up an enormous block to the "west" of the mountain range. Then they made the announcement of the sunsetting of the game by January and started to release many items that hadn't been released in years, and started selling the one-time cash-dependent characters for donut currency.

It's the last flailing about of our little pocket civilizations. We were, each of us, as players, mayors or despots, lords of our realms, civic planners and town designers. Some hasty, some petulant, some loved water everywhere.

I'm really only playing still so I can finalize my town for my poster-sized picture. That final picture will be coming in a few weeks or months, but here is one of the later ones showing off how much area is open. I finally got my ocean and will be getting my forests as well:

It was a good long run. I loved playing it, and having four months (we were told on September 25th that January 25th was the last day) to finish up and process losing it has been helpful. I was nearly done a few years back, so I've mostly made peace with it.

Viva Tapped Out! Thank you EA for all the years, and I don't regret not ever paying for anything. I know y'all as a company may disagree with that stance, but that's how it was. Halloween events; Christmas events; the terrible bickering between players on the fan sites (thanks tstoaddicts.com!) during the pagan winter event right after the election of 2016; the glitches and broken panes and integrity issues with the game elements...all of it, the warts and issues, I'd say were all worth it. The Stonecutters event still probably reigns as the best event...maybe the Monorail (I'm biased against the Monorail event because it broke my game for a few months). I don't regret playing, and while I'll miss it, I'm comfortable with moving on.

"You know my son's name, right?"

On the weekends when we make our weekly trip to the comic shop, we'll pick up the freebies that both DC and Marvel give out, essentially catalogs for what'll be out in two months time, as a way to drum up excitement and anticipation.

I usually peruse them and then toss them, but not until after the kids have had a huge fight about who gets which freebie. The trash ultimately claims them.

Anyway, DC recently re-released one of their most famous collaborations from the late '70s:

When I was telling the comic shop owner dude that I wanted it, he was like, "You, uh, know it's fifteen-bucks, right?" "Well," I told him, "my son's name is Cassius." He nodded and smiled, "Fair enough."

I remember the cover, front and back together, had celebrities drawn in there. I remember thinking oh, hey, that's Jimmy Carter and Lucy right there on the front. They even leave a message down on the back cover to check the legend inside to see how many you could name:

Only, the legend shows just how many actual people are depicted...

...so freaking many! And I love that many of them are staffers at DC Comics and Warner Bros.

Anyway, the only way it's possible to make everyone out is the fact that the product is SO BIG. The comic shop guy was like, "Well, that;s how big it was originally." Like, eh, okay...check it out laid up next to a regular magazine, which is already bigger than a regular comic book:

And then the story...is definitely from the late '70s, but is exciting.

I was trying to tell Cass about this...like, this is Ali, man! Superman isn't some comic character, he is the superhero: he can fly, he can shoot lasers from his eyes, bullets bounce off his body, he can punch someone's face clean off their body. He's older than everyone, including Batman. He's handsome and humble and is an invulnerable Boy Scout. He's almost too powerful for proper storytelling.

And people were like, "Eh...Superman vs Ali? Sound about right." Because you KNOW that somehow Ali was gonna win. Ali may lose to Frazier, and the unjust governing bodies of American boxing, but NOT to Superman. He wasn't gonna go kill brown people in Vietnam, and he wasn't gonna lose to Superman. 

Not only does he win, but Ali kicks his ass. He even protects him as they leave the ring:

It's definitely an artifact from a different time. It's big and beautiful, and Ali and Superman, however contrived their boxing match, are fun are to see working together. Also, it's always great to see Ali kick the asses of all comers, Superman and the extra-large Scrubb, Hun-ya.