The KING IS (NEARLY) DEAD

Last night I went to the Lakers vs Raptors game at the staples center. I admit that this was the first Laker game I've attended in the Lebron era, and am sad to report that it may have been too late.

The Lebron I saw last night was not the best player on his team, let alone in the league. His offense was nothing special: a few nice hard drives to the hole, but far short of spectacular. His outside shooting was terrible and out of rhythm.

But his offense wasn't the issue, it was on the defensive end where things looked off. He made a few nice stops and had one of his signature come-from-behind blocks, but this was overshadowed by his overall lethargy and lack of activity. He didn't close out quickly on shooters, have his hands dipping into passing lanes, or seem active. Despite having a triple double, his impact seemed net negative, and this turned out to be true from his real plus minus of negative 6 for the game. Maybe the Raptors are better than I expected, even without Kawhi. Time will tell.

It's normal to see players get larger over time. Lebron looks huge, not quite like the same guy that once caught a bad lob pass nearly 13 feet off the ground. He looked slow, and unwilling to take contact on the defensive end. If there was a 50:50 ball, it's odds were more like 10:90 in the wrong direction.

Lakers needs a real point guard, or this experiment is going to fail. And Lebron needs to guard bigger, slower players if they are to be successful on the defensive end.

I am sad I never got to see Lebron play, live, in his prime. But I saw enough last night to know the Lakers need to be honest with themselves if they hope to salvage a deep playoff or championship run.

#Bigmouth

Bigmouth, the new animated series on Netflix, is just terrific. Really--many moments of pure hilarity, so I can recommend fully if you're in need of some down time and laughs. I anticipate the show will be a big hit, and certainly hope so!

For me, it's been incredibly fun to watch, since the show was created by two of my oldest childhood friends, Andrew Goldberg & Nick Kroll, and it features many memories from our childhood together.

Andrew & Nick told me about Bigmouth about a year and a half ago when the show was first green-lighted, so I've eagerly anticipated its arrival ever since. I worried a bit about whether or how I might be depicted in the show (the character of Jay, which is my oldest brother's name, is loosely based on me and another classmate), but my desire to see their comedic rendition of our childhood certainly trumped any concerns.

So when the show was released a few weeks ago, I hunkered down for two straight nights to devour it, and I loved it and was impressed with what they created. Among and between the moments of laugh-out-loud, shocking antics, are moments of pure tenderness and sweetness, informed by the common experiences that stem from the roller coaster that is puberty. It is this common experience that will make the show successful--since we've all been through it. Viewers will see themselves in the stories, and relate.

Andrew & Nick, along with Eytan Oren and Jon Eger, were classmates of mine, and my best friends growing up. All these years later, they remain a part of me--my past, my present, my thoughts, my heart.  Watching Bigmouth made me want to tell a bit about their stories and role in my life.

Nick Kroll

Nick was really...amazing as a kid. Incredibly lovable and charismatic. As the show rightly depicts, he was very small in stature, but also adorable, confident, funny, and adventurous. He did not hit puberty until much later than the rest of us. In fact, when we all went our separate ways after 8th grade, I don't know whether Nick had hit puberty by then or not. By contrast, Andrew hit puberty at around 8 years old, and was shaving shortly thereafter. By the time Nick started shaving, Andrew had already started losing his hair!

Nick was tons of fun as a kid. In his bedroom were two basketball hoops that we used to play one-on-one death matches on, and he was a force to be reckoned with despite being much smaller than I was. And he was pretty tough on a real basketball court too. He made huge impacts on the games, running around the court, disrupting passing lanes, getting steals, and pulling off miraculous, gutty plays. I recently spoke with our old Coach, Steve, who is also caricatured in the show, and he confirmed that Nick, Eytan, and I were his best players, with a slight emphasis on me (thank god!).

Nick definitely had a special quality--he was fearless in all things--not just in sports, but socially as well. He loved being in the center of everything, and felt comfortable there. I remember on one school trip, he was sitting in the back of the bus telling jokes and singing dirty nursery rhymes.  The other kids and I ate it up, and it was fun. 

Those bus rides also foretold of his comedic bent. On one trip, we were headed to an old age home in the Bronx, and on the way there the bus passed a graveyard.  A ten-year old Nick saw the gravestones poking out from the ground and yelled out, "We must be getting close!"  He was always clever and funny. Years after that, we were in Oklahoma! together (for a second time), and when another actor messed up a line, Nick rolled with it, quite hilariously. Sadly, I don't recall the details, but it was funny stuff, and an early sign of his improv abilities.

About 8 years ago, when I moved to LA, Nick and I had lunch, and he told me about his single minded pursuit of his career. It was obvious to me he would achieve whatever he set out to accomplish. That's who Nick is--an unrelenting go-getter. I can only imagine what it's taken for him to achieve what he has. Enormous energy, drive, ingenuity, talent, and passion (and possibly a covert deal with the devil?).  In short, the Nick of today is a magnification of the Nick(y) we grew up with. It's fun to see how he has blossomed.

I will always love and admire him. He's very special and his career reflects that.

Andrew Goldberg

Though less famous than Nick, Andrew too is a force to be reckoned with. As an only child, Andrew spent years in his room and imagination, doing... god only knows what. But in those hours, he evolved into something very rare, with his unrivaled combination of imagination and incredible brain power.

Andrew is, to my mind, a certifiable genius. I'm not sure it's a matter of debate or subjectivity actually.

As a kid, he would receive baseball card sets as a gift for holidays and birthdays. Each set had hundreds of cards, and each year had multiple sets, resulting in thousands of unique cards released for collecting every year.  I collected baseball cards too, but I would buy little packs with 10 cards or so. As a result, I cherished each card, and when I was lucky enough to get a great player's card, I would frame it in a little glass case to make sure it stayed well protected. Each card was so rare and valuable to me that I wanted to savor each one by treating it with care and respect.

By contrast, Andrew was so inundated with card sets each year, that he kept them in the only containers large enough to hold them: huge GARBAGE bins. In his bedroom were multiple bins of cards, strewn all over the place in no order. For Andrew, the lack of organization didn't matter though, because he never needed to find the cards after viewing them just once...

...because he had already committed them to memory.

Much like Rainman's, Andrew's brain is a supercomputer of memory and processing power. He can do things that truly look like magic. For instance, you can reach into any of the garbage bins and pull out any of the the tens of thousands of cards. If you show Andrew an area of the card no greater than 1 square centimeter, he can extrapolate which card it is, and then proceed to tell you all of the statistics on the back of the card. Tens of thousands of cards with hundreds of thousands of stats, all available to him as simple recall. In fact, he tells me, he can still do it 30 years later. He is just not normal. Here's a clip of it made a few years ago:

After elementary school, Andrew and I continued on to White Plains High School together, where we remained close. At a certain point, his brilliance hit fifth gear. He would score perfectly on almost all standardized tests, earning him a spot at Columbia where he graduated with a 4.0 GPA, Magna Cum Laude. After that, he went to film school in California, and then got a job writing for Family Guy after a few shorter stints with other shows. Like Nick, his career has been blessed. I know tons of writers that constantly have to look for work, and it's a grind. Andrew, for all the time he's been here, has remained 100% employed at all times, and in fact, does side projects in addition to his formal "jobs". It's a level of intellectual production that can only come from the most fertile of brains.

Andrew as a kid--he was just a lot of fun. He loved baseball. He loved comedy. He was hilarious. He was eccentric. He was...terrific. In high school, he and our dear friend Dan Isenberg started a cable television show called Prime Time with Dan & Andrew.  Andrew wrote many/most of the skits, and they were hilarious. The show gained a following, and Dan & Andrew were like celebrities within the class. Dan, another terrific talent, became a rapper, and we are all still in touch to this day. Here's one of my favorite clips from their show, a skit called "Name that STD!":

In Bigmouth, Andrew's childhood household is hilariously depicted--because it really was a crazy place. I remember one time touching one of the walls to his staircase, an offense so egregious that his father threatened to make me repaint the whole house! In the final Episode of Bigmouth, Season I, there's a reference to Andrew's dad going crazy over drywall, and it's pretty hilarious.

It was a crazy place (though my house had it's own craziness!)--but a terrific breeding ground for comedy. As the saying goes, comedy=tragedy+time. Bigmouth capitalizes on this...#Bigtime. Many of the funniest moments were not so funny at the time, but are hilarious in retrospect.

Eytan Oren

Eytan Oren was a big part of our childhood, despite the fact that no character in Bigmouth is clearly based on him. That said, his impact on all of us was undeniable.

When we were very young, Eytan used to watch MTV pretty much around the clock. He wanted to be a musician, maybe even a rock star, and he practiced diligently to improve his chops and achieve his dreams.  Today, he plays numerous instruments, sings fabulously, and has performed in many, many bands over the years. A number of years ago, one of his bands released a music video called "Everything Changes" that went viral. Here it is!

As a kid, Eytan was also a terrific athlete and student. Come to think of it, I can't think of anything he wasn't good at. My mother loved his gorgeous eyelashes, and today he remains quite blessed with an impressive head of hair.

He's just a great guy. Brilliant in many ways himself. And, although we don't speak often, we remain close. I know that on my end, I will always love him.

Jon Eger

Jon has made no attempt to lead a public life. And I will respect that here and keep it brief.

Jon comes from a family where both parents are psychologists, and he himself is a practicing psychologist in NYC today. He is a very solid person--incredibly capable and talented at abstraction. He is a great listener. He is empathetic and compassionate, while remaining conceptually honest. He is exactly the type of doctor you'd hope to find when the need arises.

As kids, Jon and I were very close, and we were into "guy" stuff. Our version of fantasy play--we shot guns, wrestled, hiked, played baseball with his dad, and communicated with each other nightly using our high powered walkie-talkies.

Most noteworthy--Jon got me hooked on magic. He knew a few great tricks (coin matrix, for instance) that piqued my interest in magic, and we spent much of our adolescence and early high school years practicing and learning magic. On Saturdays, he and I would take the train into Manhattan and go to Tannen's Magic Shop & Rubens Deli. Then during the week, we would practice what we learned from the weekend, only to return the following weekend to come back for more.

Jon and I remain very close to this day. So close, in fact, that he called just moments ago while I was writing this paragraph. He will always be a rock for me, someone who will be there through the ups and downs that life presents. And I will be there for him. Always. I love him.

To my friends Jon, Eytan, Nick, & Andrew--l'chaim my friends. You're in my heart, always.

"I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"-Quote from "Stand By Me"

Deadpool, meet Kryptonite

I just returned from seeing the movie "Red Sparrow" at the Grove. I have no idea what it was about. But that's not the point of this post. Before the movie began there was a preview--a sequel to "Deadpool". I loved Deadpool, and so at first I was elated to see that a sequel was being made. But a few moments later, my enthusiasm subsided.

Like many boys, I grew up loving super-heroes. For my brothers, friends and me pretending to be "super" was a favorite pastime. My brothers even created their own superheroes, and I was the star of our family creation "Underwear Man". (It was our family consigliere Todd Rowen who I credit with authoring Underwear Man.)

I got to be the star while he was the villian. We'd conconct all sorts of crazy stories and then act them out and record them with our video camera. Todd was the evil villain, and each episode ended with my winning the day by beating him sensely or strangling him with a pair of underpants. After defeating him, I would typically go through a ridiculous, self-congradulatory flexing sequence full of youthful, good natured bravado.

So, we all loved superheroes, and to this day, I consider myself a fan of many the Marvel movies.  X-Men--love em. Iron man...enjoyed it. Batman, hit and miss.

In recent years, Deadpool was my favorite, and after seeing the preview tonight, I went from enthusiastic to apathetic in a matter of minutes. And the reason is simple. The reason is that, at least to my knowledge, there is a severe flaw in the Deadpool plot that all fans are subtly aware of after seeing the first movie. The flaw is...

Deadpool's super-power allows him to rejuvenate. He can rejuvenate and heal from ANY injury.

That's kinda similar to Wolverine's power, right?. Wolverine can heal from incredible injuries ALMOST instantly. But, Wolverine has some vulnerability in that despite his healing powers, he is not amortal. If it weren't for the adamantium grafted into his bones, he could lose a limb and it wouldn't grow back. Or would it? I don't know. Fact is he's never been killed either, but he's gotten close. And in the presence of Magneto, he may be immortal, but also helpless. More, if it were not for the adamantium surrounding his skull, presumably his brains could get blown out and not heal. Although again, not sure. But I think true.

But not Deadpool. In the first film, Deadpool loses an arm that grows back like a deer's antlers. He also takes a knife wound TO THE BRAIN, yet survives this without issue. In short, Deadpool is amortal: he cannot be killed. In fact, for all we know, he might not age either; he might be immortal.

And this is a huge problem from a plot perspective. What is the tension of a movie if it's protagonist is amortal?

This same problem plagued the Superman series many years ago. Superman started off just being a super-man. He was super strong. And could fly. But soon he could not be hurt. Soon he could use his eyes to send heat rays and his breath to freeze. He could fly, not just in earth's atmosphere, but in space, and at the speed of light. He became amortal, and thus fans lost interest because...what could really go wrong? If he can bring people back to life by going back in time and getting a do-over, then really, not very much!

The writers figured out that to keep fans interested, and their cash cow alive. Superman needed to have a vulnerability. They modified the story so that his powers were derived from the sun, and that hunks of his old planet, Krytpon, could weaken or even kill him.

I loved Deadpool, so I'm hoping for the best. But one of two things will happen. Either it will fail as a franchise, or Deadpool will meet Kryptonite.

Paean to a Puggle

I met my wife, Samantha, on Jdate in September of 2010. We went on a few dates and very early on, I met her dogs, Tobias and Simon. This post is about Tobias.

My wife had Tobias from the time he was a baby. He fit in her hand as a puppy and by the time I met him, he was fully grown to a whopping 35 lbs.

As part of our dating and courtship, we took the dogs for walks and to the dog park. And very early on, I noticed some special qualities about Tobias.

Despite being one of the smaller dogs there, he worked the park like Bill Clinton working a room.  All the other dogs loved him. He had a huge grin on his face any time he socialized with other animals. He held his chin high and walked with his chest out. He was abundantly confident. He was happy. He was above anything petty. No other dogs ever tried to hurt him, because despite his small stature, his confidence could be felt and smelled by the other dogs.

One day five about five years ago, we took the dogs to Petco to buy various provisions. While there, one of the store employees approached us and asked if Tobias could be a therapy dog. She recognized in his disposition a fundamental ability to provide joy and comfort. Sadly, one of the qualities required for a therapy dog is the ability to resist food, a quality which our little puggle lacked. But his good nature and aura were universally understood and appreciated.

Each trip to the dog park revealed the consistency of his character.  He would go around to the other dogs, rally them together, and within a few minutes create a game of doggy "tag". Quickly, the other dogs would chase him around the park, and he would run around frantically with a huge smile on his face. And he was tough to catch.

One day, I started a game of tag with him in our building's underground garage. At one point, I chased him toward a car that was parked in a carport. He ran around the left side of the car, and I knew he had nowhere to go other than the right side of the car. I headed him off as he came around the corner and I grabbed him into my arms. I caught him! It was the first and only time I did. There in my arms, he was panted and smiled, both of us knowing that I finally won a round. I laughed, and he smiled. And it was great.

Once Samantha and I started having children, Tobias became even more central to our lives. Our kids loved him, and he was good to them and so much fun. Our weekends involved trips to the dog park, to lakes, to weekend trips around California, Runyon Canyon, and more. Tobias would go swimming in the lakes with us, and he always had the best time going on adventures with us.

About three years ago, something changed. We noticed Tobias was in a lot of pain, and we saw that his toenails had erupted.  It's a strange word to use, erupted, but it's the truth. They didn't fall off. They didn't fracture. They...exploded, revealing his sensitive nerves and causing him tremendous pain.

We took him to our normal Veterinary clinic, and they didn't know what it was. So, I spent some time reading on the internet, and thankfully found several posts about SLO, an auto-immune disease that can cause these symptoms. We took him to a specialist/dermatologist, the amazing Dr. Werner in Studio City, and began giving him a cocktail of meds and vitamins. And within a short time, his nails grew back.With his nails returning, so too did his smile. We were absolutely thrilled to bring him back from the darkness of pain to the lightness of his normal disposition.

Everything was good, until a year ago when the next challenge arose. My wife, who is incredibly intuitive, again noticed something off with our little puggle. We took him to our regular vet again, and they found a mass in his abdomen. However, their X-Ray machine was not enough to discern what the mass was. We took him across town to a different clinic, where they again found a mass on his spleen.

The doctor came into our room and told us the news. Without a biopsy, she said, we could not tell whether it was cancerous, but they could tell that the mass was causing some internal bleeding. Without surgery, he would bleed out internally and die within the week.

Although we did not know whether the mass was cancerous and/or metastatic, the choice was obvious: remove the spleen and hope for the best.

Well, we were blessed. Once his spleen was removed, Tobias was back to normal! Energetic, if not as sprightly as in his youth. A few days later we received a call from the hospital: the mass was not cancerous.

For the last year, we felt great. Although the surgery was very costly, we got our puggle back and it was worth every penny.

That lasted until December of 2017, not even two months ago at this writing, when he started not feeling well again. This time, we noticed his skin had lesions. He would lick them constantly to assuage the itching, and so would Simon. It was very sweet to watch Simon take care of him. But the lesions kept getting worse. We took him back to Dr Werner, and every few days we'd take him for progress reports. Some days were better than others, but the overall trend was downward. What we thought were surface lesions began expressing themselves in other ways. Tobias stopped barking, and the doctor noticed ulcers in his mouth. We used special mouthwash to treat the ulcers, and it worked, but every day a new problem seemed to pop up.

Between the pain and the medication, Tobias was not himself. I was carrying him up and down our stairs. Normally, if I ever carried him to our bed, Tobias would wriggle out of my arms to situate himself as he saw fit. But Sunday night, I carried him to our bed, and he didn't try to get out of my arms. He was just...still.  I laid him down on our bed, and he did not move from the spot where I put him. I turned to my wife and said, "Sam...this isn't the same dog. He's suffering. He's suffering too much."

Monday morning, two days ago, we brought Tobias back to Dr. Werner. We brought Simon with us, and the three of us were told that the options were either palliative care, or putting him to sleep. We knew this already. We were there to say goodbye. Dr. Werner did not object, and a few minutes later, Tobias was put to sleep.

I lifted Simon to see Tobias on the table, and Simon did not lick him. He knew that Tobias was gone, no longer in need of his loving licks and kisses. And then, after months and years of holding it together, I no longer could. I broke down, hysterically crying at the site of his lifeless body.

For the past two days, life has seemed eerily unfamiliar. I don't know my wife without Tobias. I don't know my house without coming home to his loving welcome. Everything is different.

Tobias, our darling puggle--you were our first child. You, as much as anything, helped me fall in love with Samantha, because I knew that the mother that nurtured you would be good for my children. And I was right. She is. And I have you to thank. My kids are as I envisioned-confident, happy, and full of love. Just like you.

We miss you so much already Tobias. You will be in our hearts, forever.

Filters, Perspectives, and Bendable Realities

I'll give some examples from my own life to show you how filters work (filters is Scott's term for what I would otherwise call 'perspectives'). Especially, perspectives on THE PAST.

I own a moving business in Los Angeles called Shleppers Moving & Storage. We move thousands of customers a year, not only locally, but also long distances. Sometimes, items break. Sometimes, just like bags at an airport, items get lost. This is by far the minority of the time, and we measure claims very closely in order to monitor or performance and to make operational improvements when necessary.

For customers that have damages or missing items--their perspective is that they moved once, and something broke, therefore we are incompetent at our job. 100% of their experience confirms their conclusion, so they feel pretty sure of themselves. From our perspective, that customer is an isolated incident, part of the small percentage of customers that have damages or issues with our service. But there is no way to make a customer see this perspective, especially if they have been primed to see a different perspective. Let's talk priming:

We recently delivered a customer to Florida. Upon the arrival of his shipment, it was found that his rug was wet. I was appalled. I was mortified. I was apologetic.  How the heck can a rug arrive wet?

He also was missing a chair that was part of a dining set, and he was very, very upset about that.  The delivery driver, a vendor who himself may have lost the chair or wet the rug, blamed my company for both. He described our operation disparagingly to the customer in order to exculpate himself and remove himself from the customer's wrath.

As a consequence of the actual issues and the driver's narrative, the customer writes me and tells me that his damaged and missing items are the result of an incompetent operation. I obviously understand his perspective, and for him, that narrative works, with no available data that disconfirms his perspective/filter. A poorly run operation and a warehouse with a leaky roof are consistent with his narrative, supported by the delivery man's words. In my filter, our roof is brand new, and maybe the missing chair was delivered mistakenly by the driver to the wrong customer. Both "filters" work. Due to this customer's wet rug, we compensated him quite considerably, but I was reluctant, because my filter, informed not by one move but by thousands, yields different conclusions. By way of example, cut to yesterday:

Yesterday, we were loading a truck for long distance delivery. Many of the items were not packed by us, but by our customers themselves--we just provided the labor, not the packing.

In any event, as the items were being stacked, we noticed water dripping onto some of the boxes from above. The culprit? A customer packed a mini-fridge in box. The pipes inside the fridge started to leak water--which can cause damages. This exact scenario could explain what happened to the aforementioned customer's rug.  But were we at fault? Nope. We just moved things carefully, and because we can't control what our customers pack, sometimes this kind of thing happens, and we don't assume the liability. If you were in our shoes, you wouldn't want that liability either, because it's uncontrollable, and considerable.

The point is that looking back on the past, many filters and perspectives fit. For the customer that thinks we are incompetent, the data from the past fits his filter. My filter, based on a much larger data set, also fits. I will not be able to disabuse him of his perspective.

Win Bigly, thoughts

I just finished reading Scott Adams new book, Win Bigly.

I'm a huge fan. I think he shined brightest during Sam Harris podcast episode Triggered. He's a clear thinker whose teachings and insights are incredibly valuable. In How to Fail at Everything and Still Win Big, Adams instructs on lifestyle habits that lead to success, however you define it. In Win Bigly, the focus shifts from how to change yourself, to how to change, or persuade, others.

He does some clever things to make his point, the most obvious of which is highlighting his success in accurately predicting the win of President Trump in last year's election. As far as I know, Scott was one of the loudest voices predicting Trump's win, and he did so based on his observation and belief that Trump is an expert persuader. Perhaps that's understating his perspective. Adams believes that Trump has "weapons grade" persuasive abilities, and from my vantage point, this is irrefutable. Whether one likes our President or despises him, his ability to manipulate perception, control the narrative, and use language that helps him achieve his goals is profound.

The book--it's somewhat long and repetitive, and Adams uses his background as a hypnotist and accurate prediction of the election results to establish himself as an authority on persuasion. I'm not sure he is that. I'm not sure even he thinks he is that. Instead, he's a really smart guy that studies persuasion much in the same way I did--by reading books on the subject. And in this regard, he, and I, and millions of psychology and business school students share a common theme--that we've studied the work of Robert Cialdini. In fact, I've written on Cialdini myself to illustrate how weapons of influence are utilized by me in my work as a magician.

As a manual goes, I don't think that readers will come away empowered with a new set of skills. His previous book, about changing ones habits, did a better job at that.  Moreover, hearing him constantly refer to himself as an expert made me feel that 1. the repition was part of his pursuasive method (repition is pursuasion...hence product placement!), and 2. that the book was released somewhat quickly to capitilize on his 'hotness' right now. Still, it could have been pared down and edited a bit for my taste.

Overall--an entertaining and insightful read. If you do not understand his main point, that each of us can look back at the past with a different filter that makes sense, then you still live in a world where you think facts matter. More on that in my next post!

Duwende

About a year ago, I started singing with a great vocal group in NYC called Duwende. We performed about ten times in the year that I was in the group. I knew going in that the group's old bass, Ari Picker, might someday rejoin, and that happened about a month ago. It was disappointing because I was hoping to record an album with the group, and because I generally enjoyed singing with the other members--very talented group indeed. Fortunately, we did record a promotional reel that I thought you might enjoy. Additionally, I have some live footage of the group performing at the Natick Center for the Arts--I'll post one song from that concert here also--a rare, live, performance without microphones. You can download much of the music from these videos at www.duwende.com . Enjoy:)



And here's a live recording in concert: