Things About Jack

LA and California- Teetering on the Edge

March 1, 2009 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

I am a rare breed, a native Angeleno. Born and bred in the City of Angels I am none too pleased to read stories like Death of the California Dream and The Decline of Los Angeles.

It is not because I am fiercely protective of home, I am. But because it is bad for my friends and family and I’d argue bad for America.

I suppose that after making such a statement I should spend some time elucidating why this is so. And in truth I had every intention of doing so but I find myself struggling to do so. It is not that I cannot provide the support, I just don’t have the inclination. I find myself fighting through a bit of a funk and the analysis portion of the evening is suffering.

So let’s compromise and I’ll do my best to give it a shot. We’ll work backwards and spend a few minutes talking about Los Angeles. In spite of the stereotypes about here, there is much more than Hollywood and a million plastic surgeons.

People may claim that LA lacks culture but the reality is different. There are museums, there are theaters, there is a symphony and a gallimaufry of restaurants to choose from. And of course there is the proximity to the beach, the mountains and the desert.

The end result is that the city has some amazing things to offer and I feel privileged to have partaken of so many different things.

Kotkin is correct that a dysfunctional city government has made it very tough for businesses to survive here to our detriment. It is not an impossible situation. It is not something that we cannot recover from, but some it is going to take some doing.

And part of that doing has to do with what happens in Sacramento. The governor be it Arnold or whomever has to find a way along with the legislature to stop the bleeding. The exodus of business from the Golden State is a symptom of the disease.

In addition to devising a viable solution to the business issue the state needs to reaffirm its commitment to education. As a public school graduate I was part of a school system that was considered to be among the best in the nation. That is not the case now.

These are not insurmountable challenges, but they are formidable ones. My recipe for success is simple. What I want to see is:

Stop existing businesses from leaving the state.
Encourage entrepreneurs to start the next Google here in California.
Provide affordable housing near outstanding public schools.

The bigger question is how to make all these things happen. We have the raw tools and resources to fix things, I wonder if we’ll do it.

My Fountain of Youth

February 24, 2009 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

In one of our ten thousand discussions the Shmata Queen and I spoke about the beauty of aging. We compared notes about the benefits of aging, the sudden appearance of aches and pains and a dozen other new developments.

That wacky woman made the usual crack about how men don’t appreciate what pregnancy and childbirth do to woman’s body and how in some ways we have it easier. Of course she also expressed how she would do it over again a million times, but that is a different story.

Anyway as has become apparent to anyone who reads this blog I am wrestling with aging gracefully. It is a bigger struggle than I like to admit, but that is because I am feeling less than satisfied with a number of things. Some of them are things that I have control over and some I can’t do a damn thing about.

So as to avoid being a complete hypocrite I am working on changing the things that I have control over. In particular I am less than pleased with my fitness. If you look at this picture of me at 20 you will see a man with a full head of hair and a rock solid body. That physique was the result of hours of swimming, weight lifting and general exercise.

In other words it took a lot of hard work to reach that point. (Side note, I didn’t put the picture up and I am not going to.) In truth it took years to get there. I wasn’t ever heavy as a kid. I played a ton of sports and more often than not spent hours outside.

I mention that because when I get frustrated that I can’t fit into the jeans I wore in college I need to remember a few things. Twenty years later I don’t exercise like I used to. In part that is because I simply cannot. I don’t have the time. Life and the responsibilities of father/husband won’t allow me to spend the same amount of time on myself.

Add the joy of a metabolism that doesn’t work as well as it used to and you have your recipe for looking less like Charles Atlas and more like the Michelin Man.

But because I am determined to change this I have committed to finding more time to exercise and to becoming smarter about how I do it. I have to be better than I was, at least in the sense of making the most of my time.

I also have to contend with some of the changes that the years have brought down upon me. One of the things that I have done is I have begun foam roller exercises. I haven’t been doing them for very long but am exceptionally pleased with the results. Slowly but surely I am working out kinks that just didn’t disappear. If things continue to progress like this I expect that I am going to find that my progress into improved health accelerates.

And that my friends is a goal worth working for. Exercise is going to serve as my fountain of youth. It is going to be the mechanism for insuring that I remain young both in body and mind.

Stay tuned to this bat channel and I will be sure to keep you posted on how things develop. In the future I’ll share more about the weight lifting and whether I resume swimming. I am also playing around with getting into the Russian Kettlebells. I have heard good things about it.

I’ll keep you posted.

Explaining My Judaism

February 18, 2009 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

The Blues Brothers Are On a Mission From God.

I keep writing and rewriting the opening paragraph of this post. I don’t like the title. I hate it. It sounds ridiculous and idiotic and it sets a poor tone, but for now it will do.

Sometimes I’d like my religious beliefs to be based solely upon critical reasoning and logical thought. It’d be really nice and exceptionally convenient if they fit together like a cool set of legos. I’d start by providing you with an outline and then follow up with sections that built upon each other.

It would be like a pyramid with a wide base that served as a foundation and then blocks upon blocks until it reached the narrow top. And the best part would be that it would be easy to simple to understand. You’d look at the bottom and by the time you reached the top you’d have a clear understanding of why I believe what I believe.

Or maybe what I am really saying is that I’d like that. I’d like to be able to just whip out an explanation that didn’t leave me asking questions or shaking my head because some things just didn’t make sense.

But the thing is that when we are dealing with matters of faith then we are forced to take positions that require accepting that faith is sometimes all we have. It is hard to do and it makes for all sorts of interesting situations and compromises.

Faith is what let’s me accept some things and question others. To some people I am sure that this sounds ridiculous. One could easily argue that most of us are brainwashed as children to accept a particular religion as being the truth. From that perspective we could also argue that those who convert as adults deserve special consideration because they made a choice to believe, it wasn’t just spoonfed to them.

But that is a different story for a different time.

When I think about faith I think about a number of things. I think about love. When someone says that she loves me do I simply accept her word or do I require her to prove it. And if I require her to prove it, what do I need for proof.

Must she bear my children or would it be enough to have sex with me. Does she need to live with me and take care of me to prove it, or could it be proven by words.

Now all that might sound ridiculous, but to me it is tied into faith. When she says that she loves me I can take her word and accept it to be the truth or I can doubt it.

Ultimately I make my decision based upon a couple of factors, but faith is the primary mover. It is a bit disconcerting to make decisions that way, but sometimes it is all you have.

Ok, is it just me or is this post a prime example of gibberish and blather.

Tales of Brave Ulysses

February 17, 2009 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

Tales of Brave Ulysses– Cream

Have you ever read the Odyssey? As a kid it was one of my favorite stories. I loved mythology and reading about Odysseus just fascinated me. A general who was one of those who went to war because of Helen of Troy. A hero who fought for ten years to find his way home and then when he got there still had to undergo more challenges before he could regain his kingdom.

When I find myself feeling overwhelmed with the challenges presented by life I sometimes think about these kinds of stories. I look at the challenges faced by Hercules and the little boy that still lives within imagines what it would be like to be that guy.

Part of what I have always enjoyed about these stories is that the heroes have a tragic flaw. They may be capable of incredible feats, but they are also subject to doing incredibly stupid things. It makes them far more human.

I suppose that is part of why I appreciate Harry Potter or The Lord of The Rings stories. The hero is an ordinary person placed in extraordinary circumstances. To be clear I appreciate that though they may win in the end, they do not avoid tragedy. It is far more real.

Lately I find myself engaged in trying times. It is not all that different from many others. The challenges that I face aren’t unique. Many people face them, but the difference is that they are mine. I am the one that is forced to make the decisions about what sort of action to take or not to take. I am the person who gets to make the hard call about whether to answer the bell with a flurry of kicks and punches or to spend a round getting punched in the mouth.

In the quiet moment of the evening I write down these words and wonder whether the house of cards I live in will sway with the wind or collapse. Intellectually I haven’t any doubt that one day I will look back upon this time as just a memory. It will be like every other experience in my life. Some of it will make me smile and some of it will make me sad.

Emotionally it is challenging. Because the decisions I make will affect all of my family, but as to what the final effect of these decisions will be it is unclear. It is moments like this that I look at my parents and gain a far greater appreciation for what they did.

It reminds me of conversations I used to have with my grandfather. It has been 2.5 years since he died and not a day goes by that I don’t think about him. For that matter it has been a little more than ten since we lost “D.” I think of him often too.

I go back and forth about what my belief about olam habah is or is not. I go back and forth about whether I believe in a heaven. Most of the time I think that there is. But I live my life in the present. I try to do good things now because I think that it is the right thing to do, not because I want some heavenly reward.

Sometimes I think of my grandfather and “D” as being part of the vanguard that gets to check out wherever we go after we die.

Going back to my grandfather I can remember him advising me about life. He’d tell me that all we can do is the best that we can do, advice echoed by my father. Not surprising considering they were father and son.

There were moments that I found it to be infuriating because sometimes I felt that my best wasn’t good enough. But as time has gone by I have found it easier to accept. I may start a new post that covers this.

Wii Fit

February 16, 2009 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

This past holiday season we succumbed to the call of the wild and were assimilated into the collective. That is geek for we got a Wii. I love it. Been having a field day playing Guitar Hero and Lego Star Wars with the big guy.

My BIL recently gave us Wii Fit as a gift. If you’re not familiar with it go take a gander at this link. Ok, for those of you who refused to click the simple explanation is that Wii Fit is an accessory that turns your Wii into a useful tool for exercise. It combines Yoga, Aerobics, strength training and balance games that you can use to get yourself to improve your personal fitness.

I used it for the very first time early Sunday morning. It was a bit disconcerting when I stepped on the Wii board and it told me that only one person at a time is allowed on the board. Fortunately the kids weren’t close enough to hear me tell the machine to go bleep itself. In return the machine flashed a picture of Homer Simpson on the television and made some sort of laughing noise.

For a moment I considered jumping up and down on the board. I figured that if the damn thing was going to make fun of my weight I might as well punish it by giving it a pounding. Of course that was ridiculous, machines don’t think or feel pain. Ok, maybe they have some basic A.I. functionality but this sucker isn’t going to feel any pain.

So I continued on and discovered that the Wii Fit considers me to be several years older than I am. Great, the damn thing continues to mock me. But that wasn’t enough to deter me, I have thick skin, like an elephant but not as wrinkled.

Onwards and upwards. Forward I went through the exercises and discovered that Yoga is a cruel activity developed by an angry Indian Rajah whose sole purpose in life was to try and torture me. Damn, I haven’t any flexibility. When did I turn into the Tin man from the Wizard of Oz. Someone get me some oil.

I battled the machine for a good 35 minutes or so. Got a semi decent sweat worked up and figured out that the machine is partially right. I am out of shape, but not the way the thing thinks I am. I play basketball three days a week and lift weights. I have some extra meat on me but I can hang on a lot longer than the dumb machine gave me credit for.

It was a good reminder that I am not twenty any more. Notice how I keep mentioning that age thing. Yes, it irks me a little, I am not real crazy about this next birthday. But I prefer turning 40 to dying so you can expect me to be around a bit.

In the interim I figure that Wii Fit and I are going to spend a little more time together. Can’t hurt to do a little bit more. Besides, I demand satisfaction from the machine and the only way I am going to get it is to spend some more time beating it up.

Life Is Too Short

February 9, 2009 by Jack Steiner Leave a Comment

I love music. It is one of the great joys of my life. Music is a source of infinite wisdom. It is joy and it is sorrow. It enriches my life. Sometimes I stumble onto certain songs and find that I play them over and over because something in them touches me.

Wake Up by Arcade Fire has something in it that grabs me, but I haven’t quite put my finger on it. The chorus in which everyone sings together reminds me a bit of walking to the Kotel just before Shabbos begins. As you walk through the quarter you can hear the hum of people davening.

For those who can’t relate try to imagine being at a concert where thousands of people sing along. There is an electricity, an energy that you can feel. It is intense. Music tells a story and I love stories and that really leads to the main topic of this post. I want to live far longer than I am going to.

The Shmata Queen have endless discussions about life and what happens when you die. We debate and argue about what comes next, if anything. She has death issues and so do I, but they’re different.

In December of 2005 I wrote a post called Eternal Life in which I touched upon my desire to live long enough to learn and master many skills. That really hasn’t changed. In fact in some ways it has grown stronger. As I become more conscious of my own mortality and more interested in ensuring that I truly live my life I find myself feeling a bit crazed.

There are so many things that I want to do. There are so many places to visit and so many skills to master. How can I possibly do it all within this lifespan and how can I do it at a lesiurely place so that I might enjoy it all.

Oftentimes when I look back at old posts I find myself cringing because I feel like I missed the mark. I look at it and think that the writing is too rough, too choppy, too whatever. But sometimes I look back and I find that I can still tie into whatever I felt that day. Sometimes I look back and I see that I have changed.

This time I don’t see any profound changes. I still want to master all the skills that I listed there and more. It would be nice to become a doctor and a scientist. It would be fantastic to have a chance to become a history teacher and an archeologist. I can add several more items to the list without even trying hard.

Given the time there are a lot of things to do like revisit and rework old posts like Jewish Sex- Between The Sheets. Ok, that I could do. I really could go back and I suppose that sometimes I do. But let’s not get too far afield.

It is well understood that it I could dramatically increase my lifespan I would. And if I could turn back time I would. If I had the power I’d change certain things. Maybe I’d fix it so that I spent that time in Israel or maybe I would have been in that dorm at Indiana, who knows.

I have to focus on what I can do. I have to focus on what makes me happy. I have to focus on what drives me, the things and people that make my heart pound. I have to focus on doing those things that make life exciting. And I am doing that.

Clarification for those who are interested. I do not believe that life is always about excitement. No matter how good it may be there are moments in which it is going to be dull, boring and unpleasant. Understood and accepted.

But that doesn’t have to be the primary thing nor does it have to define me.

I believe that you can always reinvent yourself and I believe that some dreams can become your reality. All it takes is a will to find the way.

Now if only I had a thousand years I could do so much more. I guess that I can settle for another 90 or so.