A Roadmap to Turning 30

Earlier today, Deadspin linked to a wonderful Esquire interview with former NBA star (and successful co-pilot) Kareem Abdul-Jabaar, who wrote eloquently about the 20 things he wished he'd known when he was 30.  Abdul-Jabaar, now 66, has always struck me as an interesting paradox; an intensely serious and physical player on the court, but every time I'd heard him interviewed (most recently on Opie and Anthony on XM satellite radio) I have been struck by how thoughtful and quiet - practically studious - he seemed.  Given this, I was very interested to read what he had to say to Esquire, the magazine that does the greatest work with making ordinary men seem extraordinary (and extraordinary men seem transcendent). 

Esquire does high-end journalism well in general, in my opinion, but its light shines brightest when it strives to use the examples of older men to teach life lessons to younger men.  I've been a long time subscriber and it's nearly impossible for me to read an issue without jumping directly to the "What I've Learned" interview (this month, Willie Nelson!).  It turned out that Abdul-Jabaar's self-authored article was even deeper than that.  Instead of small nuggets of advice, the article provided deep, sometimes excruciating detail regarding each of the items for which he wished he knew back then what he knows right now.

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I turn 30 later this year, and I am - except for matters related to planning a huge party - not considering it a very big deal.  People get caught up in milestone numbers, and sometimes this is with good reason; turning 21 is a legitimate excuse to purchase a legal adult beverage, and turning 80 (for instance) is an accomplishment worth truly celebrating for longevity's sake.  But 30 is none of that; unless you are a professional athlete, it's fair to say that anyone at this age has not yet accomplished even a fraction of what they will eventually accomplish. 

I know I feel that way about myself, which is why I read Abdul-Jabbar's article with a critical eye toward self-evaluation.  Where, if anywhere, did I seem to be doing pretty well for myself, still being a relatively young man?  And where do I know I am weak?  Below, I've sampled from his list of 20 items, and expounded a bit where relevant on where I stand:

(All words in italics are from the article itself.)

1. Be more outgoing. My shyness and introversion from those days still haunt me. Fans felt offended, reporters insulted. That was never my intention... I loved to play basketball, and was tremendously gratified that so many fans appreciated my game. But when I was off the court, I felt uncomfortable with attention... Basically, I was a secret nerd who just happened to also be good at basketball. 

If you asked me honestly what I wish I were better at, my first reply would be that I wish I were more of a people person.  Don't get me wrong, if I know you, we're cool, and we can talk about anything.  But I've always had problems connecting with people at first (through some combination of shyness + being a not-so-secret nerd who just happened to also be good at math).  Last year, I read Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, which helped tremendously (especially for an item written about eighty years ago).  What I try to practice when I meet new people, whether it's at an airport bar somewhere or in line at the grocery store, is to find something easy enough to talk about (the weather, sports, work, family) such that most people can talk about it comfortably.  But it's a constant work in progress for me.  I wish I were better at it.

3. Become financially literate. I chose my financial manager, who I later discovered had no financial training, because a number of other athletes I knew were using him. That’s typical athlete mentality in that we’re used to trusting each other as a team, so we extend that trust to those associated with teammates. Consequently, I neglected to investigate his background or what qualified him to be a financial manager. He placed us in some real estate investments that went belly up and I came close to losing some serious coin.

I'm doing well at this.  When I left graduate school, I decided to become more actively involved in my financial future.  I designed my 401(k) allocation myself, picking the lowest cost index funds available to me and rebalancing annually to shuffle more funds into sectors that I felt were on the rise.  I've also been reading tons of blogs and books about personal finance.  As it stands, my financial security is one thing I cannot complain about as I turn 30.

6. Get handy. I always wanted to be one of those guys who, whenever something doesn’t work, straps on a tool belt and says, “I’ll fix it.” Recently my washing machine broke and flooded my entire downstairs. I was forced to stand idly by waiting for a plumber to arrive while water rose around my ankles because I didn’t know how to shut off the water. That’s the kind of experience that makes you have your testosterone levels checked.

Yeah, I mean, becoming handy - unless you start at a really young age - is a life-long process.  Over the past couple of years, I've learned how to paint, wire outlets and light fixtures, mow lawns, landscape, fix simple drain clogs, install a tub surround, a ceiling fan, and a door knob.  I'm probably leaving a few things out, and I know for a fact there's a ton left to learn (I know nothing about carpentry, for instance, which seems like something I'd be good at).  Maybe ten years from now I'll be able to compare myself to others and say that I am handy, but for now, I'll have to settle for taking on new home improvement projects and seeing how I do.

 

7. Be patient. Impatience is the official language of youth. When you’re young, you want to rush to the next thing before you even know where you are.

Another huge weakness for me; I may be the least patient person I know.  I work in an office building with a physical therapy office and I like to walk fast.  It absolutely kills me to have to slow down in order to accommodate the needs of someone who is walking slowly due to a physical condition - I don't mean to be an asshole, I just really need to get where I'm going.  Why do I rush?  I have absolutely no idea; I'm either walking to my desk (where I do my job perfectly fine without needing to rush) or I'm walking to my car (and I'll get home when I get home, there's no point in rushing).  Even though I understand it, it's like I'm addicted to moving fast.

I drive pretty fast, too, and I find myself being jealous of slower drivers on the road.  It seems like a very Zen thing to be; cool, calm, and collected enough to not need to PUSH to get where you're going.  I wonder whether any of these slow drivers were like me when they were younger (probably no, probably most people as Type-A as myself don't live to be that old in the first place - our hearts explode first).  But still, the point is to self-evaluate here, and if I can improve on this maybe just one day a month, that's something.

 

9. Career is never as important as family. The better you are at your job, the more you’re rewarded, financially and spiritually, by doing it. You know how to solve problems for which you receive praise and money. Home life is more chaotic. Solving problems is less prescriptive and no one’s applauding or throwing money if you do it right. That’s why so many young professionals spend more time at work with the excuse, “I’m sacrificing for my family.” Bullshit. Learn to embrace the chaos of family life and enjoy the small victories. This hit me one night after we’d won an especially emotional game against the Celtics. I’d left the stadium listening to thousands of strangers chanting “Kareem! Kareem!” I felt flush with the sense of accomplishment, for me, for the Lakers, and for the fans. But when I stepped into my home and my son said, “Daddy!” the victory, the chanting, the league standings, all faded into a distant memory.

I write this as a childless man, and I'll choose to remain childless for at least a while longer, I believe.  This makes me happy because I'm inherently selfish (at the moment) and don't want to give up any of the freedoms that I personally have worked very hard to obtain (at least for right now).  I'm sure that as I get older these priorities will change, but I'm living my ideal lifestyle at the moment, and that's what matters for the purposes of this post.

On the other hand, a man starts to wonder about getting old (which happens to those of us who are fortunate) and getting infirm and needing help (which happens to everyone, if they live long enough).  These are big picture questions and I can't even feign an answer to them right now.  Staying childless gives me the comfort of not having to address what being part of a family means.  My family life growing up was tough, in its own way, and my extended childhood is a great way to "punt" on these types of questions.  Similarly, it allows me to focus on my career - and I do care a bunch about my career right now.  Will things always stay this way?  Probably not, but Kareem's words are interesting to read at this point in my life, regardless of what the future brings.

10. Being right is not always the right thing to be. Kareem, my man, learn to step away. You think being honest immunizes you from the consequences of what you say. Remember Paul Simon’s lyrics, “There’s no tenderness beneath your honesty.” So maybe it’s not that important to win an argument, even if you “know” you’re right. Sometimes it’s more important to try a little tenderness.

Unlike the patience thing, I am improving at this.  Because of what I do for a living, I'm rarely lacking for being around egos.  You can look at this in one of two ways, and I elect to look at it as being fortunate to work in a line of business that attracts smart and tough-minded people.  Earlier in my career and earlier in my life, I was so concerned that I wasn't competent/mature enough to fit in that I would push my arguments on other people.  Now I've learned to just give up and give in, even if I think I may be right about the argument itself.  

 

Many times I've feigned sympathy in conversations with strangers who have assumed my political views are radically different from what they are; in the past, I'd correct them and try to convert them to my cause.  Now I just let them think I agree with them.

I guess at the end of the day, I'd rather be well-liked than great at knowing stuff.  I think most people who know me know about my intellect already; there's no need to shove it on unsuspecting strangers. 

11. Cook more. 

Aw hell yes.  Man, do I love cooking.  I try to cook for my wife and me at least three times per week; my specialties are Mexican, Italian, grilled meats, and starchy side dishes.  The only place where I could see improvement over the next ten years is sharpening my skill set; for instance, I'd love to learn actual knife skills (get it? sharpen?), and I'd love to learn how to cook more haute cuisine-type stuff. 

13. Do one thing every day that helps someone else. This isn’t about charity, this is about helping one individual you know by name. Maybe it means calling your parents, helping a buddy move, or lending a favorite jazz album to Chocolate Fingers McGee.

Good at this, I think.  I'm extremely charitable within my own social circle.

14. Do more for the community. This is about charity, extended to people close by whose names you don’t know. You can always do more.

Awful at this, on the other hand.  Sometimes I wish I believed in God because - faulty premises aside - churches are great at getting people to volunteer; say one thing for religion, for better or for worse, it brings people together.  I do "guilty white person" things for charity, like donating money and clothing and old kitchen utensils and shit, but none of that seems real.  If I could make it to my 40th birthday having helped build a house or something, that would be ideal.

16. Don’t be so quick to judge. It’s human nature to instantly judge others. It goes back to our ancient life-or-death need to decide whether to fight or flee. But in their haste to size others up, people are often wrong—especially a thirty-year-old sports star with hordes of folks coming at him every day. We miss out on knowing some exceptional people by doing that, as I’m sure I did...You have to weigh the glee of satisfaction you get from arrogantly rejecting people with the inevitable sadness of regret you’ll eventually feel for having been such a dick.

BUT... BUT... arrogantly rejecting people is fun!  I am going to share a deep, dark secret with you right now - something I've never put on paper before (I think).  I've always sort of vaguely disliked other people until I get to know them.  I think it's the lasting chains of being a nerdy kid without too many friends in elementary school - when you're an outsider you start to think that the problems are with other people.  (And by the way, given how well my adult life has proceeded thus far, it's kind of difficult to prove to me that 8-year-old Fred didn't have a serious point.)  As an adult, though, this behavior can quickly become antisocial and overly judgmental.

So what do I do to fix this?  Well I'm pretty sure the issue is dispositional at this point; I am never going to be a social butterfly in this life.  But through learning better social graces I've been able to act somewhat smoother in casual interactions, which also helps keep me from judging (judging is, after all, a reflex with its basis in social anxiety).  This is another work in progress for me.

18. Watch more TV. 

 

I am an absolute STUD at watching TV.  No possible areas for improvement here.

20. Everything doesn’t have to be fixed. Relax, K-Man. Some stuff can be fixed, some stuff can’t be. Deciding which is which is part of maturing.

The day when I can learn how to say "fuck it" and actually mean it will be a paradigm shifting day for me.  I have to say, the big takeaway from reading Kareem's thoughts - and thinking how similar these issues are to the ones I face now, as I approach thirty - is that I'm a type.  Specifically I'm a driven, neurotic, ambitious person, which is both an awesome thing to be in the long run and an absolutely awful thing to be in the momentary quotidian of life.  The key is to learn how to enjoy moments, and I think that's something you just need time in order to figure out.  Or maybe more appropriately, you need a sense of the transience of time in order to figure out - I've yet to realize that time is short, and I am going to die someday.  I just assume that I'll keep growing, and learning, and becoming faster at running half marathons indefinitely.

Is this true?  Absolutely not, but it's nice to dream, at least for a while.  And when that dream ends, it'll be time to come to terms with item #20, which is ultimately about setting priorities.

Student Loans, or NONE LIKE IT POOR!

           For the longest time I believed myself and my friends to be members of Generation-X, mostly due to the fact that I heard this term flying around frequently when I was young.  A few years back, I found out that I am Generation-Y, aka a Millenial.  You know what else I found out?  That Millenials, in every sense, are screwed.

            The economy is still slow, and likely won’t pick up until people start spending again.  And the age range that traditionally spends the most, on everything but healthcare, e.g. cars, houses, furniture, etc, has no money to spend on these things for a number of reasons.  We have been forced into a number of Ponzi Schemes, namely Social Security and Medicare.  I say forced, because most Ponzi Schemes obtain members by stupidity or greed.  For us, it doesn’t matter if we are one, the other, or both.  What little money we have left is almost certainly going to student loans.  Why you ask?  Because parents drill into our heads from early on that you have to go to college and get a degree.

            I believe this to be a good course, but I believe too many people go and get degrees that are nearly useless, i.e. history, political science, art.  Or people major in whatever seems to be popular on TV, e.g. CSI lab tech, or use one of the aforementioned useless degrees to go on to something they watch on TV, e.g. lawyer.  I will take this time to disclose that I am an attorney, but took the time to become an engineer first.  Disclaimer, The Big Bang Theory did not exist until after I graduated, so there wasn’t a show glamorizing being a nerd, nor did any shows glorify the “patent attorney.”  Alas, while I feel I help advance the culture through bringing new technology to the market, I, like so many others carry student loan debt.  

            Law School, Medical School, and Business School are all very pricey, and I knew this going in, so I brought this on myself.  However, my point is that many colleges charge the same as Medical School, which will create someone licensed to save a life, for a degree that might get you a job as a waiter, if you are lucky.  Even the useful majors struggle these days to find that first job.  So the debt keeps piling up due to compound interest.  When will the student loan (non-dischargeable) debt bubble burst?  At what point will the job makers cut over-head to the point that the Millenials can no longer hope to pay off their student loan debt, and the original lenders can’t squeeze another penny out of them, or resell on the secondary market?  

More importantly, what will happen when the bubble does burst?  Will the current debt be forgiven?  Will lenders cease providing educational loans before then?  Will schools start going under because no one can afford them?  Or will they just become more reasonable with their tuition?  Will this lead to a reversion to the way we see things that we no longer tell our children they must go to college?  What will happen to the banks holding all these IOU’s that they can never collect on?

At this point in my life, I am starting to think that the best thing a high school graduate can do, especially in NJ, is to go be government employee from age 18-38, then retire with a pension, then get another job from 38-58, then retire with a second pension.  Avoid college and student loan debt.  You can still go to the parties, and you will actually be able to buy things that you want, in addition to those you need.

Why I Torture Myself, a/k/a Why I Run

How it looks is exactly how I felt - finishing a 10k race in March 2013

Yesterday morning, I woke up five minutes before my alarm clock would have sealed the deal - 6:55 am.  I slowly went through the pre-run preparations that allow me to run long distances (or, perhaps more accurately, keep me from feeling the negative after-effects of running long distances).  Fully stretched?  Check.  Guzzle down some water and fill up my nerdy as all hell fuel belt with 10 oz water, 10 oz Gatorade?  Double check.  Space age, fourth generation Gore-Tex long sleeved shirt and running pants?  Status achieved.  Body Glide (don't even ask)?  Absolutely necessary.

As I stumbled down the two flights of stairs in the Cape May bed and breakfast inn where my wife and I decided to get away for a relaxing weekend, I was thinking to myself, this is technically a vacation, my wife's up there sleeping like any sane person would be sleeping at 7 am on a Saturday morning on vacation, and I could be sleeping, too, for at least another hour and a half or so.  What the hell am I doing?

We'd been to Cape May, damn, I'd have to say this was the fifth time we'd spent a weekend in this town.  Because I treat this town as a place to unwind and relax, and because I generally do not associate distance running with unwinding or relaxing, I'd actually never run a single step within Cape May city limits before*.  But this morning, this unseasonably frigid April morning with temperatures barely above freezing and a complimentary 25 mph swirling wind, just to make things extra interesting, I was going to run the streets of Cape May.

(*NOTE: I'm fairly certain this is true, as I have meticulously kept statistics on every run I've taken since January 2008 in an Excel spreadsheet, but it is possible that I did run Cape May on a visit prior to 2008.  I encourage every runner to keep notes about each run - I keep date, distance, time, pace (calculated by Excel), location, and notes.  My "notes" generally include brief details about how I felt, whether I ran alone or with a friend, the weather that day, and any special achievements or items worth jotting down.)

The problem with this particular run was, it was God-awful terrible.  Specifically it was terrible in the worst possible way - I am generally a healthy and strong runner, but my one long-term weakness is cold and windy weather when I don't have my ski gloves.  I have poor circulation in my hands, and I also react awfully to frostbitten hands in a total body, almost autoimmune sense.  Now, every runner has to give up on a run (I call it "bonking", a phrase I learned from my father) once in a while, but 2013 had - to this point - been a banner year so far in the not-bonking category.  I had run dozens of times up to that point, under different conditions and for different distances, without a single bonk.

But 3.3 miles into a scheduled six-miler, I had to pack it in and walk back to the bed and breakfast, muttering curses under my breath, shamed by the road.  When I returned to the relative comfort of our heated room, it still took me another ten minutes for the frostbite to subside enough for me to relax and actually take a shower and get along with my day.

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Today's run was the complete opposite experience, by the way - seven miles at a comfortable 8:34 pace (how many of you knew that was 7.0 miles per hour?) at a local park.  Though it was still breezy outside, the weather had warmed to sixty degrees and as a result I was able to run in a t-shirt and shorts.  The park was buzzing with people, as today was the first truly spring-like weekend day of the year, and this actually inspired me to run faster.  As much as I hated yesterday's attempt at running, today was an example of why I run.

The health benefits of a moderate amount of running (let's call it 15-25 miles per week, though everyone is different) are pretty much indisputable.  A man my age and my size burns 150 calories per mile; running twenty miles in a week burns 3,000 calories, so it's pretty difficult for me to gain weight when I'm able to run twenty miles per week on average.

Mentally, the benefits are just as clear.  Twenty miles is about three hours per week spent running, at my current pace.  Whether it's on a treadmill or outdoors, that is a great deal of time for organizing one's thoughts and working through one's troubles.  Outdoor running is also forced sun exposure, which - in addition to a relatively strong early season farmer's tan - has mental health benefits as well.  People get SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) for a reason, and I'm fairly prone to feeling down in the winter time as well.  When winter finally starts transitioning into spring each year, I can't wait to get outside and run.

These are benefits for anyone, and they are relative to each person's previous health condition.  A sedentary person could complete a "Couch to 5k" running program and achieve notable health benefits, just because of where they were before.  I'm a repeat half marathoner (my seventh half marathon will take place later this month) so it's a bit more challenging for me to push the health envelope - I would either have to run longer, which I do not want to do, or run faster, which I am begrudgingly attempting to do.

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I run to escape my problems, and I intend to be completely transparent about that.

I run because if I didn't run, I would eat the same way I currently eat, and consume the occasional few beers the same way I currently drink the occasional few beers - but I would not feel, act, or look the same way I do right now, because I run.

I run to compete against myself, because I'm years out of school now and I'm still addicted to competition.  Until you graduate college (or, I suppose, law school if you're a lawyer or med school if you're a physician), you're constantly competing intellectually against your peers.  If you're a talented student, you learn to love the competition (because you're used to winning, for the most part).  But in corporate America, I have found that score keeping is vague, competitions are few and far between, and you don't know who wins and who loses until everyone retires.  So I run to keep that spirit of healthy competition alive.

I run to be social, which is weird because for many people running is a solitary endeavor, and it is weird because I'm not a very small-talky, chatty person in my everyday life.  Put me in a race environment, though, and I become best friends with people I've never met before (I am also like this at bars and at playoff baseball games; random strangers bear hugged me after Mark Teixiera hit a walk-off home run in a 2009 playoff game against the Twins - I guess I am just very huggable). 

I run to live longer, because I'm convinced that the human heart wants to be pushed (within boundaries, as ultra marathoners are hurting themselves without a doubt) and the human heart does not want to beat a hundred times per minute at rest.  People disagree with me on this, and that's fine - I concede that runners have been known to drop dead from time to time - but in a very macro sense, an average, moderate runner should see more years on this planet (and more of those years should be healthy years) than someone who does not run at all.

Finally, I run to experience running.  Running hurts, and frankly running sucks sometimes.  But you learn a great deal about yourself through running distances, breaking down your own mental barriers, running with people, and becoming enraptured in the process of simply putting one foot in front of the other, quickly, for an extended period of time.

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I do not, on the other hand, run for the following reasons:

1. To compete against others;
2. To be "good" at running;
3. To push myself further and further every single time;
4. To crawl through mud, climb fences, be cut by razor wire, etc.

The above are perfectly reasonable reasons for a person to run (hey, whatever toots someone's noodle is none of my business, as far as I am concerned), but I simply cannot run for these reasons. I am not certain why I am not a very fast runner - I assume it's a combination of my genetics and my just not wanting to work that hard at anything - but I know that I lack the mental and physical fortitude to become a very fast runner.  Plus, as a recovering fatty, there's no way I would ever combine dieting with a distance running plan.  I run to compensate for my unhealthy nutritional choices and nonetheless remain relatively skinny; if I were to eat too healthy while running so much, I would lose too much weight.  Nobody likes a stick figure Fred.

I can't push myself further and further every time because then I'd burn out and stop running altogether.  For someone who races fairly regularly, I am exceedingly prone to running burnout.  I have my share of problems with running journalism (e.g., Runner's World), one of which is the assumption that the readership runs because they love and/or are addicted to running.  I face palm every time I read these articles about post-race recovery plans that include things like "We know the first thing you want to do the next day after a half marathon or marathon is get back on the pavement.  Fight that urge."  Um, I'm sorry, what?  Please tell me this is sarcasm and I am just not getting the joke.  After racing 13.1 miles and leaving every ounce of energy I had on those 13.1 miles of pavement, I barely want to drive down a road for the next week or two after the race, let alone run on pavement.  I get pavement PTSD.  I can't even listen to shitty 90's grunge rock, that's how scared I get of Pavement.

And finally, there is this totally okay for other people, but not for me, running subculture of these "tough guy" runs.  I was reading an article about how these "tough guy" Spartan runs attract type-A, masochistic macho stock trader types - the kind who pump iron because they just want to be awesome, brah.  Apparently these guys crawl through sewer pipes and have their nipples plugged into electrodes just to finish these "races", which are loosely inspired by Marine Corps boot camp hell weeks.  So to each their own, I suppose.  You guys should have fun at your Goldman Sachs sausage festivals, and I'll just stay the course and enjoy running regular races, which I guess will now consist of only regular guys and all of the women.  Sucks to be a regular guy, I guess.

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I will know that I love running when I am able to run consistently for a year without any sort of break.  As of the present time, I have never been able to pull this off.  I typically train hard through the winter and early spring for a half marathon; then break for a while and hardly run at all for most of the summer (just three miles here or there).  Then I pick it up again in the late summer and through the fall for a second half marathon; then I break for the holidays.  For all I know, this strategy (if you can call it that) has kept me from becoming seriously injured while running.  But still, I would appreciate a year's worth of consistency for consistency's sake - just so I know I could do it.

Luck be a Lady: Preparing for the 2013 World Series of Poker

After about a decade of playing the game seriously, and after years of vacillating back and forth on whether or not to do it, this year I am finally crossing an item off of my bucket list by playing in the World Series of Poker.  The real thing, a major poker tournament with a $1,000 buy-in, and the chance - if everything goes right and the cards fall my way for three days straight - to bring home a real champions' bracelet from Las Vegas.

This is a story you may have heard before, at least partially, if you've ever played the game of poker seriously enough to wonder how - maybe if you went out to Vegas just once, and somehow got incredibly lucky while you were out there - you might actually compete among some of the strongest players in the world.  It's what happens just before the closing credits of "Rounders", after Mike McD breaks Teddy KGB's spirit and crushes his pride.  It is the kind of pipe dream spoken across many a low-stakes home game, and it's the reason why lots of true amateurs play satellite tournaments (even now, in the post-poker boom years) just for the chance to buy into a real Las Vegas World Series of Poker tournament.

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So here's how I fell in love with the game of poker: it started, I suppose, with card games for nickels and dimes against a few family members when I was about eight years old.  I was then greatly assisted by Hoyle Casino, a PC game released by Sierra Entertainment about twenty years ago.  This game taught me how to gamble digitally for play money, and it also taught me aggression - it's very easy to gamble all of your chips on one hand when they don't count for anything.

And you can't forget the incredible influence of the Jersey Shore arcade culture.  I don't know if it's like this anyplace else in the United States, but if you grew up anywhere near a beach in New Jersey, you were almost perpetually exposed to arcade environments that were everything but an actual brick and mortar casino, except the cigarettes were made of candy and the video poker games gave you tickets, instead of money, for a made hand.

While other six-year-olds played Skeeball or Pole Position at the Bev and Wally's arcade at Keansburg Boardwalk, I was playing some medieval predecessor to Triple Double Bonus Video Poker.  Gambling (like other vices, I suppose) is a culture, and if you grow up in New Jersey and don't gamble, it's something like growing up in New Orleans and not eating gumbo (or drinking hurricanes).  Your parents must have been really lame, or evangelically opposed to the act, or some combination of the two.

Then, finally, for my 21st birthday, I received Doyle Brunson's "Super System" - which was, by then, already established as a book of gospel in the canon of poker literature and strategy - as a gift.  I couldn't get through more than half of the book because it focused on Texas Hold 'Em, a game I barely understood, even though I'd recently started watching ESPN's nearly non-stop coverage of the World Series of Poker.  With time, though, I started to understand the game enough to compete for real money.

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Lost, now barely a footnote among the various hyper-televised sports fads of the very early 21st century, is the fact that for several years in the early- and mid-2000's, playing poker and being a poker fan was an incredibly, openly cool thing to be.  ESPN's television coverage of the game (which recently debuted hole card technology allowing casual viewers to view the exact card holdings and strategies of the players) was a major factor in this.

So was the considerably culturally subversive nature of the game; the fundamental idea that the assortment of sociopaths, social misfits, math geniuses, criminals, cokeheads, and general unwashed that we all collectively called "poker pros" could somehow consistently win money through bravado, deductive reasoning, and luck.  There was an inherent logic to the game, that the odds favored the strongest players over time, and that with patience, prudence, and better than average luck, a regular guy or lady off the street could even make it big themselves as a poker player in Las Vegas.

To me (and maybe only to me, given how poker participation has been declining over the years), there's something that remains fundamentally attractive (in the general, non-sexual sense) about all of this.  Even if the poker boom has already faded, with the easy money provided by regular guys and ladies drying up, and the Department of Justice's 2011 crackdown on major online poker sites uncovering the thin truth that the most popular online gambling site used by American casual gamblers was actually a massive Ponzi scheme orchestrated not by Bernie Madoff but instead by some of the most famous "poker pro" faces you or I had seen on the television screen.  Poker still remains a beautiful game, at least to me.

Perhaps it's my countercultural streak (which, admittedly, runs too deep), but even now, years after interest in poker passed most casual fans of the game by, I still have the itch to find out how I'd do in Las Vegas.  And in just a couple of months, I'll be able to scratch that itch.

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My career as an amateur poker player is, objectively, slightly above average, and that's it.  On a good day, I can walk into a poker room rusty as all hell and take money off of experienced and practiced player; on a good day, I really can read the entire poker table, the game moves in slow motion, and I can sometimes legitimately feel as if I am printing money (in a cash game) or tournament chips (in a tournament).

The massive problem with my game is that, most of the time, it's difficult for me to know whether I am having a great day or a terrible day until it's too late.  By "too late", I mean that on my terrible days, I can't stay at the poker table long enough to figure out which side is up.  After years of deluding myself about this weakness, I now understand it better, and imperative among my goals for the World Series of Poker is to play with enough patience, particularly in the early going, to understand (a) what kind of day I am having, (b) how I am feeling, and (c) how I should handle the game in response to (a) and (b).

Over the years, I've had some large cashes, most notably a cash for $3,000 in the summer of 2009 and a separate cash for $2,100 in the summer of 2012.  I also made a final table at a poker table on a previous trip to Las Vegas (though for very little profit). I am reasonably certain I am "up" (i.e., profitable) over the very long haul, though this assumes that I invest 100% of my winnings in my poker bankroll - more often than not, they are reinvested into rounds of drinks for my friends at the casino bar.  I am just as certain, though, that my game is flawed and I will need to get fairly lucky in order to play deep and be successful in a $1,000 buy in event in Las Vegas.

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Here are some things I know to be true:

1. The caliber of poker player is stronger in Las Vegas than anywhere in the Northeast.  Simply put, many players travel to Las Vegas in an attempt to make it big playing poker.  Vegas then chews up and spits out at least 80-90% of these folks, and sends them back home (to wherever home is for them), flat broke.  That's pretty much a Q.E.D. right there.
2. I'm best served treating this event as a gamble than as a truly serious venture.  This way, even if I push all-in with kings in the second round and come up short against an unfortunate pair of aces, I can at least dust myself off, say "Oh well", take a walk around the casino, and enjoy the rest of my trip.
3. I should still study and practice my game, a ton.  Fundamentally, if I start playing this tournament and do find myself getting broadly lucky, I need to be certain my game is optimized, fine-tuned, and spit-shined.  I need to be sure that when I bust out of the tournament, it is on a decision I don't hate myself over in the coming weeks or months.  More than winning or losing money, I want to play a solid game of poker throughout the tournament.
4. I should also practice the physical aspect of the game.  I've played enough poker over the years to know that stamina is not my strong suit.  Some poker players delight in playing one, two, sometimes even three days straight, barely breaking for a cigarette or some nutrition.  I tend to crap out and get tired or bored after six or seven hours, tops, which pales in comparison to the 30 hours of poker I'll (hopefully) be playing over two straight days in order to make it to the final two tables of this particular tournament.  So in addition to the endurance training I am currently doing for my half-marathon, I am also endurance training through extended sessions at local casinos and poker games.
5. I should have fun.  Because after all, it's Vegas, a place were dreams come true, and I'm fortunate enough to be able to play in the grandest poker tournament in history.  As a fan of the game, it's incredible that I can do this, and I intend to have fun in the process.
6. I should try to relax.  Easier said than done - I can be anal retentive and a bit high strung - but hopefully the $47 first class ticket to Vegas (thanks, US Airways award travel!) will help.  A complimentary, pre-flight Jack and Coke should help, no?

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My first training session was last Thursday at Sands.  I played $1/$2 no-limit because I felt, in terms of absolute level of talent, the caliber of player I'd be seeing in Las Vegas would be about the same as that of a daily grinder at a $1/$2 table at an above-average casino.  Truth be told, most of the table did know each other already from daily competition, which is never a good sign when you're an outsider who doesn't have much confidence in his game.  Regardless of my jitters and some early sub-standard play, I did take $200 in profits off the table. I will have to play again soon.

As the tournament approaches, my plan is post again with a training update and some more random thoughts.  I'll also post Facebook updates on my tournament play in more or less real time, as the competition ensues.

Fun With Basement Remodeling: Part One

Over the past few weeks, the household (me, the wife, and the Suze) has been enduring a fairly major renovation project; the demolition and remodeling of our basement.  We're about halfway done with the project, and we anticipate it will be finished in a few weeks (hopefully with some help from people that have more experience painting stuff than we do, and who can explain terminology such as "cutting in" - which I know has something to do with either painting corners or being an overly emotional teenager).

It's been a fairly annoying process, owing mainly to the lack of control we have over our house during the work week.  There are various people coming in and out of the house on different days (carpenters, plumbers, electricians, hobos, etc.) and they operate on a fairly early schedule.  We are late risers, and thanks to fairly flexible work schedules, we haven't felt truly rushed to start our days in a long time.  Keeping in mind we know we are spoiled, and also fortunate to have such an improvement take place at our house, it still kind of sucks - even if it's just for the short term (about six or seven weeks).

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Some backstory and some "before" pictures: the basement of our house has always been an eyesore.  One of the primary reasons we purchased this home two years ago was that we really liked the design styles of the previous owners.  They opened up the floor plan considerably, and had very good taste/style - which was good because, while we knew what we wanted, we also knew we weren't very good at making it happen ourselves.  So the house was fairly move-in ready, as a whole.

The basement, however, was not a focal point for the previous owners.  They slapped some beadboard over a few walls, threw a bit of industrial carpet down, and the MLS for the house listed the basement as "semi-finished".  (Thankfully the house was otherwise fine and below our price range in our house search, otherwise we would have complained about that aspect of the listing.) 

On a good day, the basement looked semi-inhabitable.  We used it for beer pong when we have house parties, because it didn't matter to us if crappy beer was spilled on the crappy carpet.  On a bad day, like when the pictures below were taken - after we moved everything out of the basement, prior to demolition - it looked like the kind of place where people go when they are abducted in horror movies.

Here's the aforementioned "semi-finished" section of the basement, before demo.  The room was lit by one naked light bulb in a $3 fixture, and the wall to the left of the screen would crumble if you punched it - it was just beadboard.  Same, really, with the closet wall to the right.  The window in the rear came with the house, in 1955 (they were thankfully replaced with new, insulated windows in the demolition).

And here's the unfinished section.  The utility sink - made of plastic, and with only three functioning legs - was fed by pipes that were originally covered with asbestos.  Yeah, asbestos.  Thankfully that is gone now.  The washer and dryer are currently in our garage, and April and I have been driving to her parents' house across town to wash clothes the last few weeks.  This is only slightly better than the college dorm lifestyle, since her parents don't charge us anything.

This is clearly the most rape-y part of the basement.  Our house is heated by a gas-to-hot water boiler (the blue box on the left).  Boilers are a wonderful way to heat your house; baseboard radiators keep the relative humidity of your house relatively high in the winter, compared to furnace hot air heat.  Additionally, they require less maintenance and are generally more reliable - the boiler in the picture above was assembled in 1983.  Like the author of this post (also assembled in 1983), it occasionally requires some routine maintenance. 

Notice that hose on the floor, behind the dryer?  That was the previous owners' cheap fix - the hose was attached to a leaky pressure relief pipe.  Turned out the expansion tank (that grey cylinder hanging from the pipe) had blown years ago and every time the heat kicked on, the pressure inside the boiler increased to 60 psi (it should be less than 20 for safe operation).  When the demo guys removed the hose, the pipe started leaking dirty water all over the concrete floor.  Replacing the expansion tank was an additional, unexpected cost about $200 - one of those extra monetary hits you should always plan on when budgeting a home improvement project, because they always happen.  Bottom line, replacing the tank was cheaper than replacing the boiler (though that will eventually have to happen, too).

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Below are the more recent pictures, after three weeks of work in the basement:

• Week 1: Demolition/boiler fixing
• Week 2: Framing
• Week 3: Rough plumbing/electric

At the time the pictures were taken, the project had just finished the preliminary inspections for electric, plumbing, and building/fire.  (In case you were curious, insulation - the fourth inspection - happened today, and now the carpenters can start sheetrocking, spackling, and doing "trim".  After that's done, and after we are satisfied with the work completed as the homeowners, there are final inspections for electric, plumbing, and building/fire.)

You can see that though the basement remains very much a work in progress, it also looks much different than before.  Here's the first picture:

The crappy window has been replaced, and wood studs jut out from the walls.  There's also a grid dropping down from the ceiling (after sheetrock, the ceiling is approximately 6'9", just high enough to not give me claustrophobia), and the lights will be recessed in those metal jackets you see above.  To the right is a closet, which will remain unfinished (but hidden from view using doors).  Our plan for this room is a media room; there will be a couch and possibly a recliner on the back wall that you see here, with a wall-mounted TV on the opposite wall.

Above is the space behind the boiler and hot water tank; this will eventually become the second full bathroom in the house.  You can see the hot (red) and cold (blue) water distribution lines, as well as the drain pipe (that's the larger, PVC pipe).  To the right is our new, space-age ejector system.  It turns out you have two choices when it comes to the removal of water/waste from a basement; you can either use gravity (which in this case would require drilling into the concrete foundation, a logistical nightmare that would also be extremely expensive) or you can use an above-ground ejector.  That white box (known, in technical parlance, as a macerating, upflushing sewage system) does all of the literally dirty work involved in pushing refuse from a toilet, sink, and shower to the house's standard sewage pipe.

And finally, this is the new laundry room - the white box is where hot/cold water will enter the washing machine.  There's a horizontal pipe below, which will lead from the utility sink (not pictured, to the left) to the washing machine and to the house's main sewer pipe (that big pipe to the right).

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It surprises me that, with all of the extra stuff in our basement in terms of framing, plumbing, electrical, and (now) insulation and sheetrock, the room looks bigger now than it did before.  Our basement is not a huge space; it's maybe 450-500 square feet of livable space, once the project is finished.  But when you're downstairs, it looks much bigger than it is.  I cannot wait to sit down in a finished basement, prop my legs up in a reclining chair, and watch a baseball game this spring.

What's next?

• Week 4 (this week): Sheetrocking
• Week 5: Sheetrock (finish)/Trim (start)
• Week 6: Trim (finish)

So, fingers crossed, the project will be finished around the first week of April.  If people are interested I will post pictures of the finished product in a later blog post.

A Cost/Benefit Analysis of Driving Like a Douche

If you're like me and have a long commute, you've probably had plenty of opportunities to observe another driver do something so spectacularly rude, dangerous, or illegal that you may wonder to yourself: how can anyone possibly do that?  Looking at it rationally, there are tons of legitimate reasons why absurdly "outside the rules" driving can happen - for instance, the driver in question could be driving to the hospital because their wife is about to give birth, or their child or parent could be critically ill.  At least, this is what I tell myself while barely holding back my fuming rage that people are able to break the rules so egregiously, always without a police officer nearby.

But, let's face it: sometimes when you see this happen, it's just some rich asshole who is in a rush to get somewhere, and doesn't feel like playing by the same rules the rest of us face.  Upon realizing this, it made me wonder: how much value would a person have to place on their time in order to willingly take the approach of damn the torpedoes, my 150' yacht ain't sailin' itself and I need to get to the marina, I'm riding this goddamned curb all the way to Rumson?

Well, not really.  Since I'm a selfish asshole, I was really first curious about myself: given the realities of getting pulled over, the length of my commute to work, and the value I place on my time, would it make sense - from an economic cost/benefit perspective - to drive like more of an asshole than I currently drive?


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Now "driving like an asshole" is a fairly abstract concept, so to keep things as simple as possible, I wanted to focus on one fairly common traffic law - a rule which most of us break from time to time: running red lights.  Specifically I wanted to know: what is the theoretical "break-even" point in which a person's time is so valuable such that they "shouldn't really care" about running a red light on occasion?

(NOTE: What follows is a completely amoral analysis, and leaves aside for the moment the very real truth that traffic laws exist for a reason, which is to save lives.  So please keep in mind this an intellectual exercise, and even if the results suggest that I "should" run more red lights from a purely economic perspective, I'm not really about to start driving like more of an asshole than before, because I really do care about laws and rules and such.)

I have a long (thirty mile) commute to my work place, and in each drive to or from work, I hit approximately thirty traffic lights.  And I'll admit that sometimes, in my impatience, I run yellow lights just after they turn red.  I do so because, in my gut, I felt like the risks of occasionally getting pulled over are outweighed by the likelihood that I do get pulled over AND get a ticket.  But I didn't really know this for sure, so I decided to crunch a few numbers in Excel and find out, roughly, how valuable an hour of someone's time would need to be in order to "come out ahead" money-wise while always speeding through yellow-to-red lights.

To be honest: I had to make a ton of assumptions in order to come to a conclusion, some of which are fairly abstract and open to interpretation to someone who disagrees.  In my analysis, I've tried to be completely forthcoming about where I've made these assumptions.  I did this because if you're one of those readers who loves crunching the numbers on their own, and if you find places where we disagree, let me know (especially if it fundamentally alters the result). 

But, if you think I'm awesome and quantitatively infallible and just want to know the answer, here it is:

• With my New Jersey commute, I would need to earn only $43,326 per year in order to offset the cost of obtaining a violation for running the occasional "late yellow" or red light.
• Because people with shorter commutes have fewer opportunities to fail and therefore would go longer between obtaining violations, commute time largely doesn't affect the result of the calculation.  A New Jersey driver with a 15 light/day commute would need to earn only $41,828 to offset this cost.
• Drivers outside New Jersey, being kinder, more moral, and better drivers in general than those inside New Jersey, would never consider such an evil possibility, and therefore are excluded from this analysis.

If you don't want to get into the nuts and bolts of the analysis, you can skip the entire next section entirely.

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As I mentioned earlier, this analysis primarily stems from a personal curiosity about my commute.  So I'll start with that example and then address how this applies more generally to other people's commutes.

First, how frequently would I get pulled over if I always sped up at yellow lights?

Here are the facts:

• I hit 30 lights on each drive to AND from work (60/day)
• I drive to work 4 days/week
• So each week, I hit 240 lights
• The average "cycle time" for any given light is 60 seconds, and in those 60 seconds, a light is yellow for 4 seconds (about 7 percent of the time)
• So, each week, I should hit about 16 yellow lights out of the 240 total lights I encounter.  That's 832 yellow lights per year.
• I have zero points, presently, on my driver's license.

Here are my assumptions:

• Yellow light situations turn into "running through red light" situations fairly infrequently, let's say ten percent of the time.
• Cops are rarely around - in fact, I would guess that cops are only around one out of every hundred times a person makes a poor decision and runs through a red light.
• I am polite with police officers when pulled over and therefore I am somewhat less likely than the average driver to get a ticket when I am pulled over - let's say one time out of every three that I'm pulled over (for something nominally "minor", such as running a red light), I get a traffic ticket.

 Given this,

•  I encounter 832 yellow lights per year while driving to/from work (I assume that in my spare time driving, I'm more laid back and will always defer toward not running red lights), and I make 83.2 poor decisions on a yellow light per year.
• I would get pulled over by a police officer one time out of each hundred poor decisions that I make, so I would get pulled over once every 439 days (about every 14 months).
• But because I only get a ticket one time for every three that I'm pulled over, I only get a ticket every 28 months.

Second, what are the costs (time + money) for getting pulled over?

It makes sense here to explain the assumptions first, since the facts are pretty straightforward:

• Assume, if given a ticket, I come across the most hard-ass judge in New Jersey, and I'm forced to pay the maximum fine for the violation AND I also get two points on my driver's license.  Realistically, the penalty for this violation would be far more lenient, but remember the exercise assumes that I turn into a radical douchebag driver.  So we should assume, being a douchebag, I'm going to insult the judge's mother's sexual proclivities while in court, and as a consequence they'll come down hard on me.
• Assume also that after the judge throws the book at me, I decide to offset the points on my driver's license by taking a defensive driving class (you can do these every two years, which is good news for me because I'm now acquiring tickets every 28 months).

Here are the facts:

• I'd be getting the maximum fine of $200 for the violation, which plus maximum court costs of $39 is $239.
• The defensive driving course would be $35 (let's say I take the one offered by Rutgers, since it's close).
• It would take up a full weekend day, and I love my weekends because I get to write obscenely complicated blog posts, so let's say the opportunity cost would be $400 (this is the cost I'd put on eight hours of my freedom on a weekend day).

 Given this,

• The total cost of getting a ticket would be $239 + $35 + $400 = $674, every 28 months.

Finally, how much would a theoretical driver have to earn at their job in order to make it "economically okay" to withstand this cost; that is, how much value would a person have to place on the time saved by running the red light in order to offset the cost of getting the occasional ticket for running red lights?

Here are the facts:

• In my specific commuting situation, I would save 13.86 hours per year (just trust me on this) by running through each yellow light I encounter (compared to always stopping).
• Over a period of 28 months, the theoretical time between receiving tickets, I would save 32.35 hours by being an asshole and running through every yellow light.

Now we can coast in to the final number: just by dividing the cost of each ticket ($674) by the number of hours saved by altering my behavior in a way that makes it way more likely for me to get a ticket, I get $20.83 per hour.  That number (which is $43,326 for a full-time, 40 hour a week, salaried employee) is the break-even point.  A person who values their time at higher than $20.83 per hour, in New Jersey, would end up "making more money" in the theoretical long run by gunning it through every red light and risking the occasional ticket.

But what about a driver with a more "typical" commute, let's say fifteen traffic lights a day (seven or eight in each direction)?  This driver would save less time than I would, of course, by running through red lights (they would only save 8.07 hours every 28 months), but they would also get tickets less frequently than I would as a function of having fewer opportunities to get pulled over (every 116 months, on average).

Plugging these numbers into my formula suggests that these differences essentially cancel each other out; a driver with a shorter commute would only have to value their time at higher than $20.11 per hour (or $41,828 per year) in order to economically justify this approach.

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I'm sorry that I'm not very confident about the above data, but I'm really not very confident about it.  Even in a best case scenario, where all of the (very smart) people who take the time to read my detailed analysis agree with each of my assumptions, I think the precise figures I stated ($43,326 per year for me, $41,828 for a driver with a shorter commute) should be considered as "shotgun blasts" with a huge margin of error.  In the real world, if I did this, I wouldn't be pulled over - like clockwork - every 14 months; instead, I might get pulled over twice in a month, with a two- or three-year break in between traffic stops.  And of course, over time, the police would start to realize that they are pulling over the same silver Acura TSX for running red lights all the time.  They might start to understand my M.O., destroying my "oh I'm so nice and the police will love me LoLz" assumption entirely.

At the beginning of this post, I suggested that the point of the exercise was to understand the "break-even" point where it makes sense for a hypothetical driver to start running through yellow lights each time they are given the opportunity, considering that in the long run it would make sense financially for them to do so.  Now that I think about it, though, there are other issues at play here as well.

The first is that, even if you disagree with the $43,326 number and think it should be something like $70-$80k/year, either because my assumptions are way off or because you think the "moral cost" of behaving in such a manner would be quite large, it should be fairly obvious that rich people are more likely to drive like douchebags in part because they can afford to drive like douchebags.  Traffic violations are a regressive tax in that (even if you assume that they occur with equal frequency across the income spectrum, which they don't) they hit the pocketbooks of low-income individuals disproportionally harder.  In an ideal world, and forgive me for being a bit of a bleeding-heart liberal in saying this, traffic fines would be a specific amount of a person's income.  $43,326 is a decent individual living wage in the United States in 2013, but if I'm correct about this figure (or even if I am in the general ballpark), it implies that for a sizable minority of people, the "correct" econometric decision would be to run through red lights.  This actually has fairly significant consequences toward public safety.  Turning traffic fines into a progressive tax would render my Incredibly Evil and Morally Reprensible Analysis completely moot.

The second (less academically rigorous) point I'd like to make is that productivity analyses are in the domain of economists and are therefore completely invalid in the real world, because psychology trumps economics in every way possible.  I mean, c'mon, "value placed on my time"?  Realistically, with all that time I'd be saving by running through each yellow light, what would I be doing besides fucking around on Facebook?  I really did take time and care to put together the analysis that precedes this statement, but I think this is just a quirky, intellectual exercise that exists in a vacuum. 

To that end, I'm curious about the extent to which people agree or disagree with what I've done.  (Please don't take this as an excuse to say, "well shit, I'm gonna run red lights now, git 'ir done!", because that would make me sad.)

Just Stop Believin': Journey and when your Lead Singer "Dies"

Our cable provider, Verizon FiOS, is pretty terrible.  You know those car commercials where the volume is turned up to eleven so that some screaming salesman hack can tell you about great deals, so you can COME ON DOWN to their dealership and buy yourself a brand new, $8,000 Kia?  Yeah, that's Verizon FiOS' specialty.  It makes me miss Cablevision, the management strategies of the Dolan family, and their in-house propaganda, that's how bad it is.

But one thing FiOS does have is Palladia HD, the all-concert channel that I end up enraptured with, every time I change the channel.  Sometimes, as you may know, I am an insomniac, and falling asleep to a nice live concert is quite relaxing and enjoyable on those nights when I can't just get to sleep.  On Monday night, I found a recent Journey concert from Manila on Palladia and couldn't help but watch for a while.  And then I got angry.

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You see, I have a very warm place in my heart for Journey.  It's not that Journey is fantastic (they're not even close to the best band I've ever listened to), but they were in the right place at the right time.  When I was a teenager, I had a penchant for knowing how to use computers (wink wink), and I have a cousin (cousin Nick, who was a groomsman at my wedding, many of you know him) who was very much interested in the underground downloading of music.  I also had a CD burner (which was rare in the late 1990's), and was able to burn a few CDs of 70's and 80's music for him from Napster.  Or maybe it was Kazaa.  But anyway, the point of this exercise was PROBABLY to get me exposed to music from Winger, Skid Row, Van Halen, Def Leppard, and Journey - my cousin also knew how to use a computer - but if that was the case, it worked doubly.  He got his mix CD, and I started listening to the music that he appreciated the most.

And holy crap, was Journey amazing.  I listened to it nonstop.  Some teenagers have moments of understanding what music and life are all about when listening to Guns n' Roses (which I enjoyed) or nu-metal like Rammstein (I enjoyed this, too) - but my heart was with Journey.  It was the perfect musical complement to my emotional state (vulnerable) combined with my levels of self-confidence (notably lacking) and quirkiness (exceedingly high).  Later in high school, after I shed 40 pounds, I found a Journey's Greatest Hits CD in my AP computer science teacher's CD stack (because I was awesome in that way).  I forced the class to listen to the CD each day while we failed at coding in C++ and still have this CD in my iTunes playlist, twelve years later.  I still listen to Journey frequently, as it's followed me through college, work, grad school, and work again.  "Be Good to Yourself," which is admittedly the twenty-seventh-best Journey song, made it onto my first "Running" iPod playlist when I was first getting into running half marathons.  I have serious attachment problems when it comes to Journey.

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Some backstory about the band Journey may be appropriate here.  The major thing that everyone knows about the band, besides "Don't Stop Believin'" (the twenty-eighth-best Journey song) is its lead singer, Steve Perry.  He seems like a strange guy, amazing voice notwithstanding.  After leaving Journey in the 1980s, he disappeared for almost a decade.  Apparently he needed hip replacement surgery (why that requires a seven-year sabbatical from public life is beyond my level of understanding).  He had some sort of solo career, which you'd know about if you liked terrible 80's music instead of awesome 80's music, like Journey.  Now he shows up at San Francisco Giants baseball games and leads the singing of "Lights" during the seventh-inning stretch.

Anyway, for reasons I do not fully understand, he left the band around 1987 and they've rarely/never recorded together since.  But, as my Monday night experience would attest, Journey is still actively touring and still playing their greatest hits from the 70s and 80s.  Their newest lead singer is Arnel Pineda, who essentially performs an extended Steve Perry impression when the band performs live.

Listening to Journey perform live in the twenty-teens, I suppose it sounds "good" in the sense that the remaining four (original as far as we are concerned) members of the band are still fully capable of playing their respective instruments and putting on a good show.  They seem genuinely invested in the propagation of late 1970's arena rock to the newest generation of Filipino audiences.  It sounded like the fans really enjoyed themselves and to be perfectly honest, if someone gave me a ticket to see Journey play at the PNC Bank Arts Center this summer, I'd go in about 1.5 heartbeats.

My issue - what made me angry - was the lead singer.  I get that lots of bands do this, and I think that Arnel Pineda did an excellent job of making Journey sound as much like Journey as possible without Steve Perry.  He hopped around on stage like a man nearly twenty years younger than the rest of the band (which is accurate) and provided what the rest of the band probably thinks is a well-needed burst of energy.

I just don't get the replacement of a lead singer as seminal as Steve Perry.  You don't replace Steve Perry (you can only hope to contain his spirit and singing voice long enough to do a decent job imitating him).  What ended up happening at times during this concert was that Pineda (who was born in 1967 and was about twenty years old when the original incantation of Journey split), in those moments when he was supposed to maximally get into the music, sounded to me like what someone born in 1967 should do when singing a cover song from a legendary band from the 1980's while around his buddies at the neighborhood bar.  By which I mean, karaoke it up and end up sounding just like Meat Loaf (in the worst way possible).

Which is fine at your neighborhood bar, and would impress me there, but here it made me angry.

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I do a terrible job of being a white kid born in 1983 raised in decidedly middle-class surroundings in New Jersey.  I should love the band Sublime, but I have to admit, I don't.  Everyone has that one band that they know they SHOULD love, but they don't, and for me, it's Sublime.  I love Journey instead.

I suppose Sublime and Journey couldn't be more different.  Sublime's original lead singer, Bradley Nowell, died in 1996 of a heroin overdose.  Steve Perry only died metaphorically.  Anyway, I never liked (almost everything) Sublime did.  I tried listening to their self-titled album many times over the years.  I didn't even like it when I was 21, the age when you're supposed to like everything you listen to, good or bad.  "Wrong Way" seemed stupid.  "Santeria" was okay, but kind of droning.  "What I Got" was only pleasant for that line about being ambivalent toward one's mother's use of cannabis, and "Caress Me Down" was pornographic and violates my conservative morals.  The only Sublime song I ever unilaterally liked was "April 26 (28), 1992", because it centered around the most idyllic riot in the history of mankind - it was essentially a fantasy novel set to a reggae bass beat.

When Nowell died, the band's manager said that Sublime like him would be like Nirvana without Kurt Cobain - it simply wouldn't continue.  Of course, we all recently saw Paul McCartney admirably substitute for Cobain at the Concert for Sandy Relief last month, so we know that in the world of music, no bets are completely off.  And Sublime, too, couldn't let the death of their lead singer keep them from recording new material.

I'm the only person in the world (maybe) who prefers the newest iteration of Sublime (with lead singer Rome Ramirez) over the older version.  It could be because I'm now older, or it could be because the music is now less edgy, but it's almost as if my interests in music and Sublime's have merged somewhere in between where we were in 1996.  Every time I catch a Sublime with Rome song on XM Faction, I don't change the radio.  I always end up enjoying it.

It also helps, of course, that Sublime with Rome made a concerted effort to record new material (which, at least to me, sounds substantively different from the music created with Nowell, both in terms of lyrical content and musical tonality).  Journey apparently recorded a new album with Pineda, but I heard none of it while listening to that concert on Monday night, so it's clear to me that they are not terribly interested in supporting their newest effort.  Instead, they are content to play out the string, in essence, substituting the heart and soul of the band's sound but playing the same old tunes that made the band famous.  Perhaps it's to make a quick buck, perhaps it's because they genuinely love what they created back in the day and don't want to disrespect it by letting it go.

Either way, well-intentioned or bad, it's just not the same, and it makes me wish they'd just let the music die.  It's just fine in "Greatest Hits" format, and it's not like anyone listens to Journey for the deep tracks anyway.  Give me my new Sublime with Rome, any day of the week.