Here’s a fact: to take part in a humble game of home poker within the state of Illinois is a criminal offence. No exemption exists for domestic, non-commercial gambling between “legitimate guests or friends”, as the UK’s Gambling Commission so charmingly puts it. Tangential research corner: I was amused and/or nerdy enough to find out if Britain’s Gambling Act 2005 goes into any more detail about the required level of friendship legitimacy (would a LinkedIn connection count?) and although no answers were forthcoming, it did throw up this glorious piece of dry legal wit. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Section 42:
Cheating
(1) A person commits an offence if he—
(a) cheats at gambling, or
(b) does anything for the purpose of enabling or assisting another person to cheat at gambling.(2) For the purposes of subsection (1) it is immaterial whether a person who cheats—
(a) improves his chances of winning anything, or
(b) wins anything.
Simulated gambling during rehearsals for a play
Apropos nothing, on Friday night I very much enjoyed taking part in an intensive one-night-only method acting course. Although my character didn’t win the simulated “poker game”, he did enjoy a brief advantage in having so little idea whether his cards were any good that no one else could figure it out either. I’m also warming to whisky, very slightly. As in, I now finish my glass.
The next morning, I set off with Randi, Jason, Catherine and AJ for our weekend in New Glarus, Wisconsin. Dubbed ‘Little Switzerland’ (although Switzerland seems plenty little in its own right) the town is famous for its brewery which opens for free, pleasantly low-key and self-guided tours. There’s not a great deal to actually see (large metallic containers and pipes which presumably have beer inside) but you’re welcome to drink a pint or more of the stuff while doing it, or else explore the snowy but sunny garden outside.
All pretty sweet
On the drive up, we stopped at the “world’s largest” Culver’s.
Not pictured: Little Vegan Switzerland
Aside from beer, Wisconsin is also known for cheese – clearly a state with the right priorities. At dinner we ordered a cheese plate, fried cheese curds and cheese fondue for starters, at which point our server actually refused to take any more of our order “until you’ve finished that”. (Her scepticism proved well-founded, and since we didn’t order anything else, it was really her loss.) And that, plus more board games, out-of-city stargazing and one alarmingly anti-abortion roadside poster on the way back (“baby Jesus was once an unborn infant!”) pretty much captures our gentle weekend adventure.
In case you were wondering, yes, home poker is illegal in Wisconsin too. You’d have to hop another state over to Minnesota for that, if you were interested in that sort of thing.
It’s been a quietish few weeks. And although it seems spring might finally be on its way, it’s worth noting that my hair actually froze on the way to work this morning. I wasn’t aware that was a thing hair could do, unless encouraged by monstrous quantities of adolescent hair gel. Anyway, no surprise that the most appealing activities have been indoors and primarily sofa-based: “let’s watch the new series of Doctor Who from the start!” “let’s struggle to answer more than a handful of University Challenge questions while cheering on Michael and the Caius team!” “let’s find out David Cameron’s latest excuse for ducking a TV debate!” (Nope, haven’t given up my British TV habits quite yet.)
I did go see two more plays! (Note to self: no one reading cares about these plays or will have any opportunity to see them. Reply from self: carry on.) Plastic Revolution is a fun musical about Tupperware parties breaking out in the deadening nightmare of 50s suburbia, a show made with love and care but without taking itself seriously enough to be annoying. Sweetly, everyone I talked to afterwards who’d been around for the craze had their own story about being dragged along to a Tupperware party. It all seems so quaintly utilitarian. I want to live in an age when inventions “solved a problem” like storing leftover food rather than “solved the problem” of not being able to save Snapchats, or whatever it is you kids do these days.
The other play was Mr. Burns, which looked forwards instead of backwards to a post-apocalyptic future where a small band of survivors pass time by recounting Cape Feare, that wonderful Simpsons episode where Sideshow Bob steps on a load of rakes and sings the HMS Pinafore. Over time, this storytelling takes on a life of its own and mutates into quasi-religious folklore. This is the kind of play which divides opinion. I actually thought the surreal final act was the best part, while Randi thought exactly the opposite. We both believed that the two men sitting behind us deserved immediate and sustained violent retribution for being so loud. (If you can’t come to the theatre and be quiet for a few hours, don’t come. Stay at home and narrate your inner monologue to your TV instead.)
One exception to the indoors rule: dedicating a chilly Sunday to putting together a video for my Grandpa’s 90th birthday. (Happy birthday!) I believe the idea was for a ‘short video message’, but 88 takes later we’d assembled quite a masterpiece. I’m considerably more in awe of people who manage to recite a couple of sentences to camera without breaking down burbling.
Email’s not what it used to be.
Having decided it was Very Important to stay up all night migrating 13ish years of messages, chucking them into a few graphs seemed the logical conclusion:
All saved emails, sent and received (includes uni, excludes work)
The early years are spotty. I didn’t get my own email address until 2002, and this was in the era of dial-up modems and Hotmail storage quotas. I only have 3 emails from that year, and 2003 isn’t much better.
Then things start to climb quickly. By 2007 I’m at almost 4000 messages, or about 77 per week. These are mostly emails from real people: I didn’t keep the spam, the newsletters or the alerts. Many are short chatty messages from Babble – that group of us who often emailed back and forth before things like that migrated to Facebook comments and WhatsApp conversations. Indeed, a full 6 entries in the top 20 league of all-time email senders are from Babble, albeit pipped to the post by Lucy:
Top 20 senders of all time. You lose out if you changed your name halfway through (sorry, Abbi)
These days, most of the people I talk to most often barely get a look-in on these charts. It’s not surprising. There’s a big hit to my email counts at the end of university because (at least back in 2010) a lot of Cambridge still functioned on email, while the rest of the world was moving on. 2012 is catastrophic: email falling by 75% from its peak. Combine a plethora of new ways to communicate, a full-time job and a smartphone, and email looks like it’s down for the count.
Except… not quite. Every subsequent year has seen a rise in the total message count. There’s something nice about email. It takes time and commitment to write a message, and the inbox has a comfortingly archaic feeling of relative peace and privacy. Sure, many messages are of the “shall we Skype?” or “Your Amazon order is confirmed” variety, but others are long-form catch-ups and conversations.
And increasingly, like writing this blog, they’re happening later than might be wise:
Go to bed?
It’s Pancake Day! Or Fat Tuesday. Or whatever.
“Art is hard”
British-style ‘crepe’ pancakes
Oh, New York. Even the bad things which people throw at you (“there’s trash everywhere!”) I take as evidence of a spirited metropolis. It is, to state the obvious, the closest I’ll get to London without just going to London: the city which seems to stretch out endlessly in all directions, criss-crossed by a subway system which gets you anywhere, plus the psychology of hyper-urban crowds.
A snowy, icy and cold New York
It was also, at least in the last few days, super cold. Colder than Chicago – or at least that’s what it felt like, perhaps only because we were outside so much. Despite the weather, Randi and I managed to check off a bunch of touristy things I had missed last time around, inbetween hanging out with her friends in the city. (Tourism truism #137: people will grasp at anything which elevates them from being seen as ‘pure’ tourists.) Huge thanks in particular to Melissa and Amanda, who generously allowed us to stay with them and avoid taking out the huge bank loans which are presumably required for any form of New York accommodation.
One of the 9/11 memorial pools
One of the best things we did, a little unexpectedly, turned out be the 9/11 Memorial & Museum. Given how close we still are to the events of that day – both emotionally and politically – it seemed like it would be a difficult thing to get right. But what the city has built is a fitting tribute indeed. The memorial pools where the base of the towers once stood are dignified and thoughtful, while the museum lets the extraordinary and terrible facts speak for themselves. Indeed, the main exhibition is built around a minute-by-minute timeline of events, and I was moved by many of the small details: audio recordings of the crew members from the hijacked planes, video footage of the hijackers passing through security, an animation showing how US airspace was completely cleared of thousands of planes in a matter of hours. If you’re in New York, it’s certainly worth your time.
I’m more equivocal about the Tenement Museum, which came highly recommended but suffered from anticlimactic tour guiding. This is both a personal and a cultural thing, sure, but I really don’t like being solicited for my views, thoughts or ‘resonances’ on the subject matter – and I know this makes me sound all reactionary (“teaching is all about facilitating peer learning!”) but there’s a reason why most of the world’s great literature is not written in the Choose Your Own Adventure format. There was more confident storytelling in Big Onion’s Greenwich Village walking tour, which was excellent, and included the Stonewall Inn where the famous gay rights riots of 1969 began. (For some reason, I had never connected the British charity with this place in my mind before.)
The award for absurd security theatre goes to Liberty Island, who put you through airport-style screening to get onto the ferry and then airport-style screening again on the island itself. That’s twice as many metal detectors as it takes to board a plane. Still, the Statue of Liberty remains a beautiful thing. We also trooped to the Daily Show studios just to gaze forlornly at Jon Stewart’s soon-to-be-departing face from the posters, and walked the High Line, which is a great idea.
Braving the cold, “otherwise no one will believe we saw it”
Pilgrimage to the Daily Show
Coupley photo from the High Line. Not pictured: the High Line
Drinking out of a boot
Pizza at Roberta’s in Brooklyn, as recommended by Carolyn. Thank you!
At Times Square. Can’t wait to be back in February 2024.
Beth E . Dubowe-Lawrence on China, Part 3: Chongqing & Chengdu: “Again an awesome adventure to share this with you” Apr 21, 19:13
