The Total Todd Review

January 17, 2022

“Anybody here seen my old friend Martin?

Can you tell me where he's gone?”

I would have taken today off from the TTR to honor Dr. King’s birthday, but I still don’t have any time or place I have to be working otherwise. So, what’s a holiday to me? There are many ways to honor someone.

Of course, like every other year, everybody’s favorite way seems to be re-quoting Dr. King, all across social media. This led to my Facebook post: “Re-quotes seem nice. But, if they don't lead to action, they are actually part of the problem…"

An exception to the MLK re-quotes was my Facebook friend, Doug Henwood, who cited Lenin: 

“During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the ‘consolation’ of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it.”

Hell, they were citing the good Dr. during NFL broadcasts yesterday. Of course, pro football is nothing if not “the ‘consolation’ of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping”. (Marx was wrong: Sports is the opiate of the people…)

We had a bit of a Nor’Easter blow through last night. A lot of wind and rain, with things strewn all over this morning. Our outdoor kitties, Mamacita and Squeaky, stayed warm and dry in the shelters I made for them. (We haven’t seen Earl for almost a week now…)

Nothing in the news is really grabbing me, or even really new. According to our media, the Russians are still too threatening militarily and the Chinese are still too threatening economically. In the U. S., we still don’t have a comprehensive plan to combat Covid - we likely never will - and everybody is getting it. 

One interesting news item is that Texas state regulators are making fracking companies pay to change their operations to avoid the earthquakes they are creating. It seems like a big step for Texas to acknowledge that money-making of any kind, let alone oil money-making, could have anything but a positive effect, never mind a harmful one - one that they would require a money-making outfit pay money to fix. 

What a time to be alive…

I haven’t played in The Professors Game, my Saturday old man’s basketball game, for a few weeks now due to Covid fears. I could probably get it and be okay. But, I do not want to chance giving it to Diane, who is at greater risk than I am. 

I don’t know how much longer I will have to sit out. Things appear to be abating here in NYC, if no where else. So, maybe in a couple weeks. In the meantime, I have been running more on the treadmill recently. 

About a year ago, I got a cheap treadmill (less than $300) that folds up for storage. It has its drawbacks: relatively short running space, and it’s on a slight incline - so, even if it’s just a little bit, I am constantly running uphill. The plus side is that I have gotten a lot of miles in that I would not have gotten otherwise, since I would have been to wimpy to run in crappy weather.

I had been sticking mostly to weights before. Weights are great, but I felt that they weren’t getting me in shape enough. So, I’ve been going to my running kick. (Still, I’m gonna have to work some kind of weights in pretty soon…)

I watched the Iowa Hawkeyes nearly blow a 63-40 lead to the Minnesota Gophers down the stretch in a game in Minneapolis yesterday afternoon. Minnesota was depleted by Covid, so the big lead made sense. The Hawkeyes should have won by 30.

But, Coach Fran did his best to give the game away, switching to Zone defense, after the Hawkeyes’ Man-to-Man was shutting down the Gophers. They lit up with the Zone, and hit open 3’s with ease. On the other end, the Gophers went into a Zone, and we couldn’t get a decent shot, let alone score, for what seemed like days. 

Keeping to form, red-faced Fran did nothing during a like 20-5 scoring run by the Gophers. He finally called a time out. Still, it took an amazing effort by Keegan Murray to keep us from throwing away the game.

Afterwards, of course, Fran blamed the players.

In case you were wondering what kind of nerd I am, I started reading, “Dune” Duke of Caladan”, by the heirs to Frank Herbert’s Dune universe, one of them his son, Brian. I’m kind of getting into it, although it’s even cheesier than the original trilogy books. I’m also reading Ron Chernow’s “Grant”, and noticing a lot of similarities between U. S. Grant and Duke Leto Atreides, especially the eschewing pomp and ceremony and the leading by example. 

I wonder if Frank Herbert had Grant in mind when he was creating the Duke Leto character. Or, maybe it was more of a contemporary, like Eisenhower, whom, of course, was a modern Grant…

Diane and I watched “Super 8” the other night. It was the first time for Diane, and the second for me since it came out. I fell in love with it the first time, and it was vindicated on the second screening. (I cried more this time because for decades now I have been turning more and more into my fraternal grandmother, whom would weep during TV commercials, let alone moving, um, movies, and “Super 8” came out over a decade ago…)

“Super 8” is set in 1979, the very end of the post-War “boom”, when I was in high school. There are many minor anachronisms, but, to my recollection, the movie captures the zeitgeist impressively well, beginning to end. The minor anachronisms, as Diane first noted, occur in the scenes when “Super 8” briefly becomes a couple of famous Steven Spielberg movies from the same era, which makes sense since Spielberg was the producer, and the auteur, J. J. Abrams, obviously saw, and loved, those movies. (As did we all…) It all comes together wonderfully well, including the “movie with the movie” evoked in the title - which you have to sit through the credits to see - if only for the homages.

Also, it turns out that Diane went to high school with the actor who plays the main protagonist. I say again, what a time to be alive…

I will end with one of my favorite Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stories: Traveling from town while engaged in his humanizing work, he was often driven by brother. While his brother was driving Dr. King from one town to another at night, all along the way, drivers coming their way on the other side of the highway consistently wouldn’t dim their bright lights. Dr. King’s brother kept flashing his to remind them - as consistently, to no avail. 

Finally, Dr. King advised his brother to just stop dimming his bright lights, and not worry about whether or not any other drivers did.

He said, “Somebody’s got to have some sense on this highway.”

Rest In Peace, Dr. King