Sleep Running: A Late Night Adventure

Last night, around 11:45 PM, I was folding laundry. (I know, I lead a very exciting life.) As I sorted through the load of towels I unexpectedly came across my 7-year-old son, James’s, karate pants. (See, that was kind of exciting.) I folded the pants and quietly entered my son’s room to put them away. James was lying on his bed, wrapped up in a swirl of Lego Movie and Mickey Mouse blankets, gently snoring away. He was out like a light. I noticed my son’s sketchbook on the floor and ever so silently opened it to see his latest creation. There was an illustration of one of our cats juggling three balls and another of our other cat jumping off a high dive into a bucket of water. At the top of the page it read “Cat Circus.” I smiled, looked at my little tyke snoozing away and soundlessly left the room.

A few minutes later, I finished dealing with the laundry and was about to put the basket away when I heard a door open down the hallway, which meant one of my two sons was suddenly leaving their room close to midnight. I started to walk down the hallway to see which of their doors had opened up, when James went sprinting past me toward the living room. As he went past I said, “James, what’s the matter,” but got no response in return. I watched as he ran into the living room, launched himself onto our couch, and curled up into a fetal position. I quickly went over.

“James, are you okay?” I asked, my hand on his shoulder. Nothing

“Is something wrong?” I asked, shaking him gently. Nothing.

“What are you doing out here?” I asked, shaking him a little less gently. Nothing.

His eyes were closed and he was snoring in the same manner I had heard five minutes earlier when I was in his room. This boy was asleep! And I quickly surmised that when he ran past me he was asleep, too. I had heard about sleepwalking before (and had seen it in a few horror movies I didn’t want to think about at that moment), but I had never heard of sleep running. Leave it to my kid to go over the top with his first bout of somnambulism.

After a few more failed attempts at getting him to wake up so he could go back to his room, I got my wife, who my kids actually listen to. She came into the living room and was as flummoxed by the situation as me. She tried many of the same tactics I did, to no avail. She even told him to wake up because he was sleepwalking—although technically, at that point, he was just plain sleeping, though in the wrong part of the house. Finally, after much coaxing, she managed to get him onto his feet and gently guided him back to his room, although I’m sure he slept through that entire 30-foot march.

What possessed my son to suddenly go on his quick sleep run, I have no idea. I wondered if my having been in his room a few minutes earlier may have triggered some subconscious fear that there was an intruder in his midst and he needed to get away. Or maybe it was just a coincidence and he would have gone on his run had I been in there or not. Perhaps he just didn’t get enough exercise during the day and his body decided to do some nocturnal aerobics. (I know that’s the only way I would ever get exercise, because I’m sure as heck not going to do it while I’m awake.)

Whatever the reason for my son’s little sleep-time adventure, it will be interesting to see if it was an isolated incident or if he will do it again. While the practical side of me realizes that it would be safer if this was a one-time thing, part of me wonders if we could get him to do other things besides run in his sleep—like wash the dishes or clean out the cat’s litterbox.  Or laundry, for that matter! After all it was his karate pants that may have triggered this whole incident in the first place. 

My Eight Desert Island Songs

Recently, a friend of mine posted the following question in an online rock music forum that we participate in: What are your eight Desert Island songs? Of course we’ve heard this question—and a variety of variants of this question—many times before. In this hypothetical scenario, we somehow end up on a deserted island and the mysterious all-powerful entity that placed us there allows us to choose eight, and only eight, songs to listen to over and over again. It’s unclear how we’re listening to these songs—mp3 player, CD, mixed tape, Victrola—but, the point is we can hear nothing else but these songs for the rest of eternity, so we better make some wise choices.

As a point of interest, my friend posted this question because he came across an article in which Bruce Springsteen was posed this query. Bruce’s choices were: Elvis Presley – “Hound Dog;” The Beatles – “I Want to Hold Your Hand;” The Rolling Stones – “It’s All Over Now;” Van Morrison – “Madame George;” Marvin Gaye – “What’s Going On;” James Brown – “Out of Sight;” The Four Tops – “Baby I Need Your Loving;” and Bob Dylan – “Like a Rolling Stone.” A respectable list, to say the least.

Clearly, the song choices of Springsteen, one of the most successful solo artists in the history of rock, will be of more interest to most than that of Schwartzberg, whose musical career consisted of four months of piano lessons as a child followed by an occasional drunken karaoke session in his 20s. But alas, seeing as how I write this blog, I’m going to share Schwartzberg’s list of eight desert island songs anyway, and nobody—not even The Boss, can stop me.

Be aware that the list below is in no special order, other than the order in which I happened to think of the songs. So, without further ado, here are the eight songs I would listen to over and over again throughout eternity, and the rationale behind each.

“Born to Run” – Bruce Springsteen
No, it’s not just because this list was inspired by Springsteen’s list that I picked this song. It’s because he’s far and away my favorite solo artist and this song introduced me to him. And every time I hear this song, I drop everything and give it my full attention. There is an urgency about this song—a driving force that sucks me in and gets my heart pounding and my temperature rising. I know this song has gotten endless airplay, but to me it can never be overplayed. It is passionate, alive and immediate. When I’m on my desert island and I need a sure shot of pure adrenaline, this will be my go to song.

“Roundabout” – Yes
This is the song I’ve cited as my favorite song for close to 30 years, now, and with good reason, I believe. This is 8 minutes and 29 seconds of the greatest, mind-bogglingly complex musicianship you will ever hear on a rock song. Rick Wakeman on keyboards, Steve Howe on guitar, Chris Squire on bass, Bill Bruford on drums, and Jon Anderson on vocals are unparalleled in their craft and each blows my mind at different points in the song. Actually, in some cases they blow my mind at the same point in the song. You know how they say if pregnant women play classical music while their baby is in the womb it will increase their baby’s intelligence? My theory is that if a pregnant woman ever decided to put “Roundabout” on constant rotation for the entire duration of her pregnancy, the being that she would birth would end up making Stephen Hawking look like Pauly Shore. And on a desert island, I would need all the intelligence I could muster.

“Subdivisions” – Rush
Just as Springsteen is far and away my favorite solo artist, Rush is far and away my favorite band, and “Subdivisions” is the song that introduced me to them. While the song is great musically and lyrically (it’s about being a loner in a suburban world of conformity) it is actually not my favorite Rush song. But, because this song turned me on to the band that would go on to make up such a core part of my psyche from age 16 onward, its significance cannot be denied. Being without this song would be like being without a limb, and if I were on a desert island, I would definitely need all my limbs intact.

“Birdhouse in Your Soul” – They Might Be Giants
If you are living by yourself on a deserted island, I would imagine despair might be a pretty major issue, so it occurred to me that I would need at least one song guaranteed to lift my spirits, and this was the obvious choice for me. To my mind, there is no band more fun than They Might Be Giants and no song of theirs more joyous than “Birdhouse in Your Soul.” The lyrics are somewhere between whimsical and nonsensical (“Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch/Who watches over you/Make a little birdhouse in your soul”) and its matched with music that is peppy and uplifting. Ever since I discovered this song in the early 1990s it has been my go to song when I needed cheering up. Indeed, it’s like musical Prozac and on my desert island I would take a daily dose.

“Hello” – Lionel Richie
Okay, stop snickering. The truth is, I was a huge Lionel Richie fan in junior high school when he was at the peak of his popularity. And when this song was released in early 1984, as ninth grade was coming to an end, I had a massive crush on a girl named Elizabeth. I played this song endlessly as I pined after this girl and the song has come to represent yearning for something that cannot be obtained. Of course, nothing ever happened between Elizabeth and I, and once 10^th grade started she was long forgotten when a new crush surfaced. But the song “Hello” is part of the fiber of my being and I would play it on my desert island when wistfulness and longing were the order of the day.

“Dance With You” – Live
For me, this song is the antidote to “Hello.” Instead of unrequited love, it represents pure, mutual love.  It is the theme song to the early days of my relationship with my wife and was the first dance at our wedding. Live is a band that my wife and I both loved prior to meeting, so when we started dating and found we had a mutual admiration for their music, it became “our band” together. Less than three months after we started dating, Live released the album The Distance to Here and “Dance With You” was the final track. It’s a song about how two people wrestling with inner demons find peace in their love for one another. It was, and is, our song. So, if I were alone on a desert island, I would need to have the musical representation of my wife with me, and that’s what this song is.

“Because the Night” – 10,000 Maniacs
After thinking about how my wife would be represented in my musical selections it suddenly occurred to me that I had no women’s voices in any of the songs I had picked. How horrible it would be to go through the rest of life without ever hearing a female voice ever again. And as soon as I had that thought I knew that the voice I would have to hear would be Natalie Merchant’s, as she is my favorite female vocalist by a very wide margin. At first I pondered her solo career, which has produced so many songs I love, and then I thought about her time with 10,000 Maniacs, which likewise, has dozens of great tracks. But then I remembered this song—a Bruce Springsteen cover, which the 10,000 Maniacs played on MTV Unplugged in 1993. I already liked this song, but their take on it is hauntingly beautiful and it quickly became one of my favorites. But I’m also picking this song because it is from a live album and there is applause at the beginning and end of the track, so if, while on my island, I want to feel like there are others with me, this is a great track to play.

“Help!” – The Beatles
I knew from the beginning of this exercise that one of my eight songs was going to have to be a Beatles song. There was no way I was going to commit to never hearing a Beatles song again. So when I got through my first seven and still hadn’t picked a song from the Fab Four, I refocused my energy on their catalog. I quickly realized that this task was nearly impossible. No band has more great songs than the Beatles, so how was I going to narrow it down to just one? But then, like a lightning bolt, it suddenly occurred to me what song I would have to pick. It was so obvious. Not only was it a great song, but the title was the one word phrase I would likely utter most often while trapped on a desert island—“Help!” Sometimes the answer just stares you in the face.

Everything is NOT as it Seems

November of 2016 has been nothing if not surreal. Up is down. Black is white. Night is day. Llama is dromedary. Well, maybe the last example isn’t the greatest, but you get the point. Things just don’t feel right.

It is difficult to separate lies from the truth. Everywhere you look you are presented with two different versions of reality. Sometimes you’re not sure what to believe, who to trust, or where to go for good, solid information. With so many different sources, each seemingly with its own agenda, discerning fact from fiction often feels overwhelming.

So what is one to do in this climate of perpetual deception? I believe the trick is to take baby steps. If you try to sift through every topic of importance every day, you will quickly go down a rabbit hole and run the risk of losing your mind, or at the very least, turning your ankle. Get grounded and start slow.

Indeed, I have followed my own advice and uncovered the truth behind an age-old lie. It may not seem like that big of a deal, but as I said, the trick is to start slow. It took meticulous research and hours of hands-on exploration, but in the end I feel confident with the truth I am about to reveal. And the truth is that “Everything Bagels” are nothing more than a lie. Admittedly they are a delicious lie, but they are a lie nonetheless.

When you go into a bagel shop or a store that sells lots of other stuff including bagels, you are often presented with a plethora of options. You can get a plain bagel, a sesame bagel, a poppy seed bagel, a cinnamon raisin bagel, an onion bagel, a blueberry bagel, a sunflower seed bagel, an egg bagel, a chocolate chip bagel, a garlic bagel, a whole wheat bagel, and of course, an everything bagel.

I have always taken the name “Everything Bagel” for granted because, let’s face it, they taste great. When something is amazing, you generally don’t worry yourself with what it is called. But what if what it is called is a lie? Should you stand by idly and let it go unnoticed?

A few months ago while at the grocery store I purchased a package of Everything Bagels. They were sitting next to the packages of cinnamon raisin bagels, which I also happen to enjoy. The next morning as I munched on my Everything Bagel it suddenly dawned on me that I was not tasting cinnamon or raisin. Clearly this bagel did not contain everything that might be on a bagel and yet the word “everything” was in its title. I read the ingredients.

An Everything Bagel contains the following: ENRICHED WHEAT FLOUR [FLOUR, MALTED BARLEY FLOUR, REDUCED IRON, NIACIN, THIAMIN MONONITRATE (VITAMIN B1), RIBOFLAVIN (VITAMIN B2), FOLIC ACID], WATER, SUGAR, YEAST, SUNFLOWER SEEDS, WHEAT GLUTEN, SESAME SEEDS, DEHYDRATED ONION, SALT, CORNMEAL, CALCIUM PROPIONATE AND SORBIC ACID (TO PRESERVE FRESHNESS), POPPY SEEDS, MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES, GARLIC, CELLULOSE GUM, CITRIC ACID, MALTODEXTRIN, XANTHAN GUM, CORNSTARCH, ALGIN, SOY LECITHIN.

In the list above I bolded the five ingredients that might be in its own bagel. (You’ll note that there are a lot of ingredients listed that would not constitute their own bagel. For example, I’ve never ordered a Xanthan Gum or Folic Acid bagel.) While we see bagel mainstays like garlic, onion, sesame seeds, poppy seeds and sunflower seeds, conspicuously absent from the ingredients list are cinnamon, raisin, blueberry, and chocolate chips, all of which are popular bagel ingredients. If one is being honest, an “Everything Bagel” does not contain everything.

So, clearly, the moniker “Everything Bagel” is nothing more than a blatant lie perpetrated by savvy, yet deceitful marketing types. Delicious though they may be, the “Everything Bagel” would be more aptly named the “Manythings Bagel” or, debatably, the “Mostthings Bagel.” But “Everything Bagel?” I think not.

Take a breath. Start slow. And you, too, can unearth the truth in this cockeyed world.

Man-Eating Car: News at 11

Hello, this is Rock Stone here on Channel 17, with some late-breaking news. Authorities report that there is a man-eating car on the loose this Halloween night swallowing up trick-or-treaters at an alarming rate. Repeat there is a man-eating car on the loose. Initial details of this report are sketchy, but apparently this psychotic sedan is cruising around the neighborhood luring holiday revelers with the promise of chocolate bars and gummy worms, only to gobble up its victims whole and speed off while blasting the Weird Al song, “Eat It.”

The photo on-screen was captured by a parent who was in shock as she live-tweeted her son’s demise. Her tweet, “Junior looked awesome as Frankenstein but then got eaten by a car” accompanied by the hashtag, “MoreTrickThanTreat” received over 2,000 likes at last report.

Baffled by this unusual phenomenon, local police are frantically rifling through Stephen King’s book, “Christine,” searching for answers, but at 411 pages it could be hours before any useful information is obtained. In the meantime, authorities are urging trick-or-treaters to avoid all cars sporting large, pointy teeth and lolling tongues. If you have any information about the man-eating car, or if you are the man-eating car, please call authorities right away. And now to Misty Fields for the weather…

Doug and I

Doug and I come from very different backgrounds. I’m American and he’s Danish. I’m a white collar guy and he’s a blue collar guy. I’m a football fan and he’s a futbol fan. And clearly, as is evidenced from the accompanying photo, we have different colored skin, too. Yet the two of us are the best of friends. Why? Because we respect our differences and can always find common ground.

You may well be saying to yourself right now, “Sure, Andrew, it’s easy to get along with someone who’s made out of hard plastic and has a smile permanently etched upon their face. But what about that guy over there who keeps on spouting crazy crap about that political candidate that I find crazy? How am I supposed to get along with him?”

Great question! Politics can be very divisive and Doug and I are on different sides of the aisle, so it’s not a topic we usually discuss. Instead we talk about our families (Doug’s son is doing great in gymnastics—it’s like he could hold on to the rings forever!); movies (turns out we’re both big fans of “Ghostbusters”—the original, of course!); and travel (we both love visiting Carlsbad, California!) But if politics or religion ever comes up, we simply agree to disagree and move on to a different topic.

So before you dismiss someone out of hand just because they have a different background, or like a different sport, or have different beliefs than you, think about Doug and I and remember there is always a way to find common ground. Because when you have a happy conversation with someone instead of an angry one, everything is awesome!

Your Menu Options Have NOT Recently Changed

When you call a doctor’s office it’s usually not for a good reason. You call to schedule an appointment to have that weird growth on your foot looked at; or you call to get test results back to find out what that weird growth on your foot actually is; or you call to pay the exorbitant medical bill you received, because it turns out your insurance inexplicably doesn’t cover weird growths on the foot. So, since you go into a call to the doctor’s office already experiencing some anxiety, the last thing that you want is to be lied to by their recorded phone message—yet it happens every time.

The first thing I hear when my doctor’s phone picks up is, “If you are experiencing a life threatening emergency, please hang up and dial 911.” That’s not a lie—it’s just common sense, albeit such common sense, I would hope it never has to be acted upon in the first place. I mean, let’s say you accidentally chop your entire arm off while dicing tomatoes. This is clearly a life threatening emergency. I would assume 99.99% of the population would think, “Wow, that’s bad. I should call 911,” seeing is how that’s a relatively easy number to remember. Presumably it would be much less likely that you would think, “Wow, that’s bad. Let me look up the phone number for my doctor’s office and see if I could get an appointment sometime this week to get this looked at.”

But it is after the obligatory, but moronically obvious 911 statement that the egregious lie occurs. The next thing I hear is, “Please listen carefully as our menu options have recently changed.” I am here to tell you, that is simply not true—unless you can define “recently” as sometime in the last decade.

I have been going to the same doctor’s office for about 12 years and I’m pretty dang sure the options have always been:

For hours of operation, address and fax number, please press 1.

To schedule an appointment, please press 2.

If you’re calling from a provider’s office, hospital or pharmacy, please press 3.

For billing inquiries, please press 4.

For medical records, please press 5.

Of course, “our menu options have recently changed” was true at some point in time—specifically, when the message was first recorded, oh so many years ago. But at some point—three months later? six months later? a year later? two years later, for crying out loud?—the menu options had not been changed any time recently, unless of course you’re talking about a geologic timescale, in which case any time in the past 10,000 years is considered recent. But, assuming for a moment that my physician got his doctorate in medicine, not geology, this whole “our menu options have recently changed” thing is a bald-faced lie.

Presumably, the reason they have perpetuated this lie for so many years is they assume people are too lazy to wait to hear the menu options and will start randomly pressing buttons, so they are trying to trick patients into sitting through all of the choices by claiming something may be different from the last time they called. If this is, in fact, the case I think there are some more honest ways to approach this message. I would recommend any one of these options:

1- “Please listen carefully, because while our menu options have not recently changed, you may be a new patient who has never heard our menu options before, or an existing patient who is either unable or unwilling to commit our menu options to memory.”

2- “You are about to hear our menu options and we highly recommend number four, but you may want to listen to all of them, just in case that’s not your thing.”

3- “Our office staff is way too busy and important to pick up the phone when it rings, so we prefer that you sit through this recording and then press the number that corresponds to the staff member who is going to leave your call on hold for 20 minutes before answering.”

See, all of those options are much more truthful than “our menu options have recently changed.” Of course, if they insist on lying on their recording, they could at least be more inventive about it and go with:

4- “Please listen to the following menu options, because if you don’t, a laser will shoot out of your phone and set your inner ear on fire.”

Now I’m sure it’s not just my doctor’s office that is guilty of playing fast and loose with the word “recently.” It’s quite possible that your doctor’s office, or insurance broker’s office, or lawyer’s office perpetuates this same ugly lie on their phone system. So feel free to suggest to them that they use one of the alternative wording options listed above. But if it’s your geologist’s office that says their menu options have recently changed, just leave it alone—from their point of view they’re telling the truth.

Goodbye, Jack Davis

Growing up a rabid MAD magazine fan in the 1970s and 80s there were several artists whose work I revered above all others. Men like Al Jaffee, Mort Drucker, George Woodbridge, and Paul Coker were living legends in my eyes. But perhaps the most legendary to me was Jack Davis, who was equally adept at pinpoint caricatures as he was at goofy cartoons. His illustrations seemed to come alive on the page. 

And I seemed to see his work everywhere—not just in MAD. I would spot his work on the front of TV Guide and Time, and on movie posters like the one for "Animal House." Every time I saw his distinctive work on some non-MAD thing I would get excited. It was like a life bonus to see Jack’s work somewhere besides MAD.

When I went to work as an intern at MAD in the summer of 1990 I got to meet a lot of the living legends like Al Jaffee and George Woodbridge, who lived close enough to the editorial office that they would drop off their work in person. But many contributors lived too far for frequent visits and they would send their work via UPS or FedEx. Jack Davis, sadly, fell into this category, as he lived in Georgia, so as a MAD intern I had to settle for hearing his endearing southern drawl on speaker phone from time to time.

Toward the end of my internship I sold my first freelance article to MAD. It was a spoof of the television show “Unsolved Mysteries.” As excited as I was to make the sale, I was even more excited when I was told by the editors they had decided to have Jack Davis illustrate. Actually, excited doesn’t properly capture my reaction—it was more a combination of dumbstruck and delirious. That an artist I idolized from the time I was a small boy would be drawing pictures based on words that I wrote was beyond surreal. And once I saw the actual article in print with our bylines next to each other, I was giddy for a week.

From MAD #304, July 1991

Eventually I did get to meet Jack Davis, who was like a lovable grandpa with an unexpected mischievous streak. It was a little over a year after my internship. I was now working for MAD fulltime and I got to go on the biennial MAD trip. It was a cruise to Bermuda and Jack was there with his wife, Dena. I was awestruck in his presence—not only because of his incredible talent, but also because he towered over me by about a foot. Meeting him was definitely one of the highlights of my MAD career.

Jack Davis Videotaping me Taking a Picture of Him

Interestingly, I would go on to sell about 50 articles to MAD over the next decade-and-a-half, but that first one was the only one Jack illustrated. I was definitely fortunate to have had that opportunity.

When I found out today that Jack passed away at the age of 91, I was saddened, wistful, nostalgic. Jack was an amazing artist and a gracious guy. That I got to have any sort of association with him is an incredible honor. He will be missed.