A Drynuary Diary

Week Two: Okay but now what?

by Jolie Kerr and John Ore

John Ore: Hey Jolie, welcome to our second installment of Ask A Temporarily Sober Person! Wasn’t the moon beautiful this weekend?

Jolie Kerr: You know? Usually I don’t support the anti-moon agenda put forth by this’n here website, but I do think it was awfully cruel of the universe to deliver unto us a full moon in convergence with our first full weekend of Drynuary, so I’ll bellow a hearty I DESPISE YOU, MOON in solidarity with our Alcoholic Overlords.

Right then, with that out of the way, we’ve just made it through our first, and arguably most challenging, sober weekend. Last week you said something I loved about how Drynuary is both a challenge and a gift — a truth which hits you square in the gut the first weekend out of the gate, does it not? I mean, how many times can you ask yourself, “Okay but now what?”

John: Right? The first few days have the benefit of novelty to propel you forward. Yo! Check me out! Not drinking! Weekdays are filled with commuting and work and parenting and all of the things that make you drink in the first place, but at least you’ve got a routine to attend to and distract you. Then the weekend checks in with its stupid face promising fun and free time and sports, most of which is best accompanied by a beer. This is when you start recognizing where you are in the Kübler-Ross model. Which stage was horniness?

Jolie: Stages 1–5, based on a scientific study of one. But I’m sure I’m not the only one substituting sex for drinking. Also sugar, but we can get to that later because it’s time to talk about the “gift” part of things, which for me has really been found in the substitute activities.

Last Saturday, as you know because you live here, was ridiculously beautiful in New York. The perfect day for outdoor drinking, except that it’s Drynuary, so nope, no dice. I had a couple of dumb little errands to run; normally I would have jumped on the subway and hustled through the shopping so I could meet up with friends for several hundred glasses of wine, but instead I decided to take advantage of the weather. I treated myself to an iced coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts (you can take the girl out of Boston, but you can’t take the Masshole out of the girl), put a whole bunch of Phish on Spotify (you can take the girl out of boarding school, but you can’t take the trustafarian out of the girl), and twirled through the city having one of those great New York days where you wander from neighborhood to neighborhood people-watching and just checking some things out. Of course, it’s me, so the things I was “checking out” included a vintage clothing shop for ideas on boot storage and a leather daddy emporium where I inquired about the proper care and cleaning of strap-on harnesses. A Clean Person’s work is never done, John.

After a few hours, my feetsies were starting to hurt and I was a little peckish, so I came home, made a cup of tea, fixed a cheese plate and relaxed with an episode of “Sons of Anarchy.” It was perfectly lovely, truly. (Lest you think I’m avoiding human contact in the name of not drinking, I can assure you that I’m out and about! Or in and about, as the case may be. On Friday, I entertained in the home, cooked a big dinner — the chicken piccata called for wine, and I didn’t even flinch! Though if I’m being honest, I had a couple of half cup servings in the freezer, so it’s not like I cracked a bottle and then resisted its siren call or anything — and after the meal, we made crack brownies together when normally I’d be pouring another glass of wine or a bourbon. See what I mean about the sugar?)

John: It’s ALL about the coping mechanisms. I went to Queens, for Pete’s sake. Queens! For ethnic food, of course. Barbecue is ethnic food, right? They don’t have a liquor license yet, so: soft landing! How did they know I was coming?

You’ve got the right approach: cowering in your apartment all of Drynuary will drive you mad. Or worse, to drink. It’s like Steve McQueen being in the cooler without the baseball. The smugness factor alone of drinking cranberry juice on a Saturday night out ensures that we can survive behind enemy lines.

Here’s where I’ll share my Drynuary’s Little Helper. I enjoy bubble water on a regular basis, and I’m one of those jerks who orders “sparkling” while the rest of the table wants “New York tap.” I like burping! So much so that we now make our own seltzer at home. I’m always ready for a slapstick Three Stooges scene, so it has made Drynuary just a bit more tolerable. There’s enough citrus in my fridge to keep the British Navy scurvy-free, so I’ve always got a glass of custom club soda with a wedge of lemon/lime/orange within reach. My trusty sidekick. I call him Bubbles.

Oh, and it’s very environmentally friendly since we don’t buy plastic bottles of the stuff, ensuring that we don’t get kicked out of Brooklyn for exceeding the strict Neighborhood Carbon Footprint and Condescension Act of 2008. Drynuary: For A Greener Tomorrow(™).

Jolie: I love soda water in a wholly unnatural way. Like, to the point where about five years ago I had to cold turkey it on the seltzer front for about 6 months to kick the habit before I burped myself into a bone density problem. But yes, mocktails are crucial to surviving Drynuary. Jill mentioned that she’s been experimenting to great effect with pineapple, grapefruit, cranberry, etc. juices mixed with seltzer; I shared with her my “mix OJ and soda water, serve in a flute, close your eyes and pretend it’s a mimosa” trick, which also works well with peach juice for a mock Bellini. And now, if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go apologize to the Italian side of my family for using the words “mock Bellini” because dear God who am I???

And! While we’re on the topic of mocktails, I had a personal victory this Drynuary that I would like to share with the class: last year I said that I couldn’t imagine going to a bar and not drinking, but this go-round I made it happen. Cranberry and seltzer, bellied right up to the bar with my laptop while I worked on the cleaning column. It wasn’t even a thing really.

But I fear we’re making this sound too easy, so let me ask you this: have you come close to breaking? If so, what was the trigger?

John: I think the trigger was waking up on January 2nd. Or Alex Balk constantly posting studies on how booze is good for you.

Honestly, the biggest temptation has been my traditional post-hockey beers. A bottle of Canada Dry doesn’t seem to do the trick after a game, even if it’s geographically relevant. It’s called beer league hockey for a reason. (Mostly because we suck.)

Other than that, I miss having a nice glass of wine with a good meal. And a martini before a steak. And a Rusty Nail afterwards. I solve that by eating more cereal for dinner.

I was really diligent — and by diligent, I mean in the context of my final evening under the demon spell of likker — about stowing the Bloody Mary Bar after New Year’s Day so that I wouldn’t have to face it in the cold, cruel light of day right out of the gate. There are a couple of beers and bottles of wine in the fridge that mock me, but it’s a balancing act between being cavalier in the face of a PBR tallboy behind the yogurt and licking your lips lasciviously eying the open bottle of rye inexplicably sitting on the coffee table. Temptation is temptation, but there’s no point in drawing blood.

Shall we go to the leaderboard?

Week Two

Alcohol Consumed (units)
Jolie: 0
John: 0

Days Without Booze
Jolie: 12
John:11 (start January 2nd every year)

Disposition
Jolie: Cheery!
John: Determined, steely-eyed

Irritability (scale of 0–10)
Jolie: 2
John: 3

Outlook
Jolie: Waiting for the mood to set in.
John: Suspicious. Something funny is happening with time.

Shakes
Jolie: Do you think we should swap this out for something else since we’re past the detox stage? Are we past the detox stage? Where am I? Who are you? Why am I so thirsty?
John: Yeah, let’s swap this one out. Something relating to how healthy we feel? Is grinding your teeth healthy?

Smugness (scale of 0–10)
Jolie: 3, inching up
John: 4, “Oh, I don’t own a television.”

Sounder Sleeping
Jolie: Not as much as Week 1; I had an anxiety dream that involved drinking a glass of red wine at brunch with Paula Deen, which I had about ⅔ of before realizing that it was Drynuary and I was in big trouble. Which is crazy because God red wine at brunch?? Perish the thought.
John: Definitely going to bed earlier. Dreams are more vivid, weirder.

Substitute Activities
Jolie: Cooking. Writing. Twirling. Sexing.
John: Teaching my daughter how to say “Cheers!” with her sippy cup. And MY sippy cup.

John: The Smugmeter is inching up!

Jolie: A little bit, yes! But sobriety is apparently making me as soft as a grape (sniffle, miss u every day grape juice, old friend) because I didn’t take on so much as a disapproving tone when Jack told me that he’s interpreted Drynuary to mean “Sober Weekdays (But With Lots Of Pot) And Moderate Drinking On The Weekends January.” I’m slipping.

John: That’s a Drynuary Fail! He’s out, confiscate his name tag, let the shunning begin. By the way, let’s check in with the ultimate arbiter of taste and trends — Twitter — to see how our movement is doing “out there”:

The thing about trying to make “Bon L’(h)iver” a thing for “Drynuary” is that you don’t say “Bon L’hiver” in French this is just making me m

— Sugartits (@distract_a_bee) January 8, 2012

John: [sound of gears grinding] Well, duh! You say “Bon Iver.” (Hums “still alive for you, love” to self.) #PeopleUnclearOnTheConcept

Jolie: She should shut up and have a drink.

So! How are we doing, gang? “Tell us in the etc.!”

Jolie Kerr is sugar high.
John Oreis high and dry.

“Revellers in Manchester have been warned to be on their guard following a spate of thefts by ‘hugger muggers,’ who cuddle their target while picking their pockets.” Hugger muggers! Now all I have to do is come up with a rhyme for “stabbers” and I can predict the next crime wave.

by Grace Bello

Chris Hardwick has made a career out of being a nerd. Well, actually, he has made several careers out of being a nerd, as the host of “Web Soup” a writer for Wired, an author and the host of The Nerdist podcast. Paste Magazine and Rolling Stone both named The Nerdist one of the ten best podcasts of the year, which means that it’s now a TV show, with a special airing tomorrow night on BBC America. The podcast has also spawned a community of tech, science and nerd culture enthusiasts on Nerdist.com.

Years before he created Nerdist Industries, Chris was already sowing the seeds of his enterprise. He spent his adolescence seeking out nerd artifacts such as comics, video games and comedy tapes as if they were the missing shard of the Dark Crystal. Here, he talks about working with David Cross at his first job, what nerds did before the Internet, and how building Nerdist Industries has been like a game of SimCity.

Grace Bello: You wrote in Wired

that nerds were “once a tortured subrace of humans condemned to hiding in dark corners from the brutal hand of social torment [and are] now captains of industry!” How do the fans of your show and your podcast feel about that? Do they agree? Or do you get emails that say, like, “Oh, actually, I’m still a closeted nerd”?

Chris Hardwick: Well, more and more people are “coming out” about it as nerds. If you were a nerd when I was growing up, in the ’80s, you were socially ostracized. We were just into things that most other kids were not into. There was a consumer electronics thing happening, but it’s not like every store sold computers; there wasn’t an Apple store. You’d have to build your own computer. And most kids who were concerned with being popular wouldn’t take the time to do it. It took work. And the only reason you would do that extra work and sacrifice any kind of social life is if you were really passionate about what you were pursuing. And we were. And those were things like computers and chess club and comic books and things like that. But now everything’s so readily available everywhere, all the time. People don’t necessarily have to be into just one or two things anymore. Also, when I was growing up, nerds weren’t billionaires yet. So the popular kids now have sort of glommed on to the nerds because now nerds are powerful. There was no money for nerds then, which meant that there was no political gain, which meant that there was no manipulation of the nerds. If it manifested itself in any way, it was sort of like nerds tutoring the dumb, popular kids. That was the sort of power that the nerds would have.

Through your podcast, you get to meet some really amazing people, like Jon Hamm, Patrick Stewart and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Of the guests you’ve met, who have you been the most starstruck by?

Most of the people who have been on the show are friends of mine. I knew Jon for years before he did the podcast. Patrick Stewart, I’d never met before; I was pretty starstruck by him. Neil Tyson, I had not met before — and is it weird to say you’re starstruck by an astrophysicist? He would actually mathematically be able to tell me the impact of how starstruck by him I was. It’s great. Every nerd icon I’ve always looked up to, I’m systematically interacting with all of them in some sort of capacity. I always flash back to me as a kid; if someone were to have told me then, “Someday, you’re going to be friends with Weird Al.” It’s like, “What?” I almost can’t process it. I’m a fanboy as much as anyone else in this community. I think I’ve managed to compartmentalize my brain and hold the fan stuff down really deep, and it comes out when I’m not around people.

How did you cultivate your interests in comedy and comics while growing up? That was pre-Internet, so were you lurking in arcades and comic book shops?

That’s exactly it. The distribution is much wider now, but back then, we just had a different way of acquiring that content. If it meant something to you, you would find it. It was almost more satisfying as a nerd, in a way, because you did have to go on a quest for those things. And they were treasures that you had to hunt to find, whether it was underground comedy tapes that you would trade with someone or old comic books that you would trade — it was more in the physical world and it wasn’t a digital process. It also wasn’t instant gratification. It was definitely delayed gratification and a little bit of a crapshoot with what you’d be able to find. Then you’d also get accidentally exposed to things, and there was kind of a nerd pride to being aware of things that people didn’t know. You had discovered this hidden treasure that was very personal. Whereas now, you click on a website, and there’s a suggestion engine. We take for granted that you can find anything and that you’re going to stumble across stuff. But there was a time when you actually had to work for it.

It’s not like anyone was going, “We’re all a part of this scene that’s gonna ultimately yield a bunch of delicious comedy fruit!” They were just like-minded comics who weren’t getting stage time at the clubs and made their own thing happen

What made you pursue comedy as opposed to, say, going into the tech industry or the sciences?

I don’t know if anyone chooses to be a comedian; I think it’s something that you feel compelled to do. It’s pretty unrewarding for a long time, you know. You’re performing for two people, and you’re constantly asking yourself, “Am I doing the right thing?” If it’s not something that you are genetically predisposed to doing, you’ll quit doing it. The only reward that you have for so long is just the fact that you’re doing it. So I feel like I don’t know what else I would have done with my life. It just so happens that all my sub-interests were things like technology and sci-fi and video games and comic books. But stand-up comedy was always the thing for me.

Who were your comedy heroes when you were growing up?

Steve Martin. I had all the Steve Martin records. George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Sam Kinison, Rodney Dangerfield, Bill Hicks, Emo Philips, Bill Cosby… If there was a comedy special on TV, I taped it. I watched everything. It wasn’t like I limited myself to one kind of comic. I liked all different flavors of comedy. And people don’t really watch comedy that way anymore; we’re such a niche-y culture where you can surround yourself with very specific kinds of things. But I watched any kind of stand-up. I loved it all.

Do you find doing the podcast as fulfilling as performing stand-up in front of an audience?

Well, it’s fulfilling, but it’s fulfilling in a different way. They’re completely different forms of communication. In The Nerdist podcast, we’re conversational, and we don’t go out of our way to craft jokes in the podcast. There isn’t a live audience for most of the podcast; although we do live shows every once in a while. But stand-up is just you and the audience. And you have jokes that you’ve written: some of them are going to work, some of them may not. If they don’t, you’ve gotta figure out how to make them work really fast. They’re completely different but both satisfying.

What advice would you give to a young, aspiring comedian who’s trying to start his or her career?

We talk about this on the podcast a lot. There’s not really any advice other than “you have to start performing.” You can’t even give someone advice until they’ve been on stage a bunch of times. It’s not anything that you have to prepare for six months to do. You just get up and start doing it. That’s how you figure it out. There’s no fast track way. There’s no real way to prepare for it because it’s unlike anything else you’ve ever done. Find open mics in your area, go to open mics, get up on stage as much as possible. When you’ve been performing for a few months, then you can kind of take stock and figure out where you’re at and what you seem to be gravitating towards. It’s really about getting onstage and being comfortable talking in front of people.

Can you tell me about what it was like working on “Trashed,” the MTV game show you hosted in 1994? I mean, what was it like working with Brian Posehn and David Cross back then, both of whom would later go on to do “Mr. Show,” among other awesome things?

Yeah. Doug Benson worked on that show, Janeane Garofalo did stuff on the show, Steve Higgins — who was the head writer for “SNL” and who’s the announcer on the Fallon show, Joel Hodgson from “Mystery Science Theater 3000”… It was an insane group of people to work with as my first job. All I can remember is not really knowing what I was doing. I was shouting a lot because I thought being louder was more entertaining. We were all young comedian types trying to figure it out, but it was such an amazing group of people, and at the same time, the people in that cast were in this sort of parallel alternative comedy scene that had just migrated from San Francisco down to L.A. That was the group that sort of spawned the David Crosses and Patton Oswalts of the world. When I look back on it, it’s not like anyone was going, “We’re all a part of this scene that’s gonna ultimately yield a bunch of delicious comedy fruit!” They were just like-minded comics who weren’t getting stage time at the clubs and made their own thing happen. It was great for me. I was right out of college and I was working on MTV. It was a weird, fun experience.

Oh, I’ll tell you something that’s on the nerd bucket list: a glass dome underwater lair.

What was it like hosting “Singled Out” on MTV? What was it like hosting a dating game show, period, let alone a hugely popular one?

You know, “Trashed,” I thought, was going to be a big hit show. It was fun, and I thought, “Of course people are going to watch this fun show!” And no one really watched it. So it went away pretty quickly. So when they offered me the job hosting “Singled Out,” what I had learned was that, well, shows get cancelled right away. I was not mentally prepared for that show to be successful at all. It wasn’t until three seasons in that I finally thought, “Oh, maybe it is doing OK.” I don’t know; I guess it was the right show at the right time with the right age group, you know? I’m sure the show would be ridiculous and tame by today’s standards. At the time, there really wasn’t anything else like it. I don’t know why it resonated so much with people in a certain age group. But now, if I meet people who were between the ages of 13 and 24 when that show was on the air, those people still remember it.

Nerd culture seems to be reigning right now; Comic-Cons and superhero movies are really huge franchises. What are some of the more under-the-radar things in nerd culture that you’re into right now?

Every year, we do a stand-up comedy special on the podcast — an episode where it’s maybe comedians that people haven’t heard of yet — just because I was so influenced by comedy specials when I was growing up. That’s a good place to start with under-the-radar comedians. There are some British sci-fi shows that I really like. There’s this show “The Misfits” that’s really fun. Um, “The Fades,” premiering on BBC America right before “The Nerdist.” I’m a huge “Doctor Who” fan; that seems to have caught on quite a bit in the States, which is good. I always go to Reddit.com; maybe that’s more like memes and nerd silliness.

I guess Reddit is a pretty good source for up-and-coming stuff. I mean, that’s where these really strange memes come from, like Goths Up Trees.

Yeah, so many things come out of Reddit. It really is a petri dish of memes. It’s sort of a playground. I’m really liking Google Plus; I’ve been using that. Obviously, I’m still on Facebook and Twitter. I still have a MySpace account — it’s like an abandoned mining town. All the windows on my profile are probably broken and shuttered. A bunch of graffiti. There’s probably a hobo sleeping bag in there that’s covered in cobwebs. Google Plus, it’s really just a good microblogging service. And now, since Nerdist.com has become more of a website that’s not necessarily about me anymore, I wouldn’t really put silly, personal things on there. Like, I was in Portland over the holidays, and I passed by this old store, and there was this big sign that said that they were selling cat stickers. So I took a picture of it, and it wasn’t really appropriate for Nerdist.com because it’s not really a story. It’s really more of a Tumblr thing; I have a Tumblr account, I don’t use it. But it’s perfect for Google Plus. I can put the picture on there, it’s in the stream, I can write a little story about where I was and share that. So I feel like it’s a cleaner version of Facebook right now.

So, at the moment, you’re juggling a ton of things: you’re hosting “The Nerdist,” you’re hosting “Web Soup,” you write for Wired, you wrote a book. Is there anything that’s still on your comedian or nerd bucket list?

Oh, yeah. There’s a ton of things. The whole Nerdist Industries thing that we’re building is like a game of SimCity. I want to see how we can grow it and expand it. That’s all exciting to me. Now I’ve partnered with a guy named Peter Levin, who’s great. We have this premium YouTube channel. We’re doing a bunch of great stuff at Comic-Con. And we have a live theatre space where we do a lot of shows in L.A. It’s not like we’re going to go start a Nerdist steakhouse or anything; everything is related in some way. It’s realizing, “Oh, we have a podcast network! Well, we have a live theater space where they can perform and record shows and do comedy shows and stand-up! And, oh, those podcasts can be developed into television shows!” So everything is complementary. So as far as a bucket list… Oh, I’ll tell you something that’s on the nerd bucket list: a glass dome underwater lair. I think if Nerdist Industries could be in a glass dome on the ocean floor somewhere, then that would be a big one for me.

Interview condensed, edited and lightly reordered.

Grace Bello is a freelance writer based in New York. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic and on McSweeney’s.

Photo by Gilles Mingasson/BBC America.

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

THIS IS PROBABLY THE END

Outside they’re yelling about the secret weapon.
But I can still judge the season
by the unhidden dandelions all over the front yard.

Also the tricycles, which is to say
that I face the future ludicrous & unafraid.
Once I occupied a picnic table for a whole afternoon

& people came by, asked if it was okay to sit down.
My responses varied with the color of their eyes,
which is different than yesterday at the coffee shop

where I spent all my energy trying to convince you to sit
anywhere else. Not right next to me. Not
putting your adult espionage thriller on the table

where my drink goes. Outside, they’re always yelling
about the secret weapon.
I folded my old tattersall shirt & put it in a box.

The sleeves were fraying & I was embarrassed
to part with it. We give up on worn out things
when instead we should celebrate & covet their injuries.

I shoved sadness deep into my ears to drown out
the sizzling of dinner. I spent forty minutes
stacking books on the new bookshelf & each volume

generated such an impressive floral infused gust,
I had to wonder about the previous owner. I had to wonder
about the Nate Pritts from fifteen years ago,

the one who bought a bottle of his ex-girlfriend’s perfume
just to have it in case all beauty suddenly ceased.
It did. Then it started again

Nate Pritts is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Sweet Nothing. He is the founder & principal editor of H_NGM_N, an online journal & small press.

Like poems? More here.

You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.

Here you go! At CES, Mercedes pimped some weird “car-sharing” app with a doctored classic photo of Che Guevara with a Mercedes logo on his hat, because they were making a joke (joke?) about socialism, which, how did this even happen, on any of the complicated levels on which that seems like a bad idea at this moment? So, yes: “Felix Rodriguez, who is now president of the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association, said other veterans of the failed invasion had also commented on Mercedes-Benz website and promised never again to buy a vehicle from the car maker.” The Cubans are, sure, enraged, and perhaps you will enjoy the 313 comments at the Miami Herald today. (“All that we asked for and were promised was air and naval support to neutrolize Fidel’s still vulnerable armed forces. But we had an American President who simpy lacked the testicular fortitute to go through with the Armed Forces’ promises.” [sic throughout.] It’s always 1965 in Miami, the former terrorism capital and CIA base of America, baby!)

In other really dodgy moments, uh, here is the “augmented reality dashboard experience” Mercedes was doing at CES. Because what we alllll want is our Facebook friends projected on our windshields.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDufYCGY8GU

NO THANKS.

Assigned to profile Graham Greene, Penelope Gilliatt, briefly full-time since Pauline Kael left for an ill-fated stint as a Hollywood producer, turned in a draft that a young fact-checker named Peter Canby flagged for lifting material from previously published work. (Canby now oversees the storied fact-checking department.) Brushing the warnings aside, William Shawn published Gilliatt’s piece, which is when Michael Mewshaw realized she’d pilfered more than 800 words of his own Greene profile from The Nation. As he recounted in his 2003 memoir Do I Owe You Something? Mewshaw complained to Shawn, who blamed the plagiarism on Gilliatt’s alcohol problem and said public excoriation would drive her to the brink. Mewshaw took Shawn’s offer of $2,000 and a private letter of apology, but the news got out to the New York Times that May, leaving Shawn in an embarrassing position — and vulnerable to Kael’s successful demand for full-time status.

— Yesteryear’s scandals just seem so much more juicy! Also I should point out that $2000 in 1979 is about $5300 today.

To be sure, the just-released transcripts of the Federal Reserve meetings from 2006 do not look so terrific with the benefit of hindsight. But don’t just point and laugh; you should read a bit of the transcripts yourselves. What you’ll see is a very sophisticated group of people assimilating enormous amounts of information. The math and deduction that would predict the events of 2007 and 2008… well, who among us was banging that drum in mid-2006? (Okay, a few people!) But even those of us with anecdotal data — I, for instance, knew something was wrong with America when a friend who was an unemployed non-citizen immediately got a rather enormous interest-only mortgage on a vacation house! — weren’t exactly raving like Cassandra. And the Fed transcripts aren’t all ridiculous. Susan Schmidt Bies, who retired from the Fed in March of 2007, and then went on the Bank of America board, made a presentation on CDOs, mortgages and mortgage servicers at the Fed meeting on December 12, 2006.

In fact Bies, though she later threw herself on a (fairly small) sword with apologies, was warning about “easing of underwriting standards” in the summer of 2005. (Along the way, she did certainly draw some wrong conclusions.)

Also the Fed meetings are charming, really — a room full of witty, well-educated, well-prepared people. So Alan Greenspan’s legacy of deregulation, exercised as Chairman of the Fed from 1987 to January of 2006, is actually a disaster in practice, but at least we knew that was coming. Still, let’s remember him for a moment as he was, on the edge of a glorious retirement.

In worse news from the transcripts, Tim Geithner comes off pretty bad. Again. Good thing he’s secretary of the Treasury! Blech.

Volcanoes! They’re responsible for so many things, like pumice, the spontaneous combustion of Bobby Jindal’s political career and that part of Disney’s Fantasia right before everything gets terrifying. Some say the hellish orange sky in Edvard Munch’s The Scream came courtesy of the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. So what else can we blame on volcanoes?

MOZART’S THE MAGIC FLUTE

The ruins of Pompeii lay undisturbed for centuries under a thick layer of ash, tephra and other volcanic output following the eruption of nearby Mount Vesuvius. They were unearthed in the mid-eighteenth century, and — this is the crazy part, for me — visited by Mozart. Thirteen-year-old Wolfgang, a tourist, visited the still-being-dusted-off ruins of Pompeii in 1769. Here’s another thing that happened in 1769: Daniel Boone first set foot in Kentucky. But Mozart! The Temple of Isis, one of the first discoveries to be unearthed, was repurposed by the composer as a setting in his final opera The Magic Flute, first performed over 20 years after his visit. Here, watch legendary basso René Pape nail “O Isis und Osiris” at the Met in 2007. Though the Met didn’t replicate the temple as a literal backdrop, don’t you feel like you’re at least a little bit there?

OZONE HOLE ENLARGEMENT — ALSO SOME SNOW DAYS!

Do you remember when the hole in the ozone layer was the environmental problem? Early ’90s, right? The ozone layer, the future of the giant pandas, and also they counted the coelacanths? But for this thing here: the ozone layer. See, when Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991, it sent a whole lot of material up into the atmosphere, which acted almost like a giant can of Aqua Net and tore a massive hole in the ozone layer. Sulfur dioxide (SO2), a product of volcanoes, accelerates the chemical reaction that depletes the ozone layer. And a volcano as explosive as Pinatubo releases a lot of SO2. Literally tons of it. Twenty million tons, actually. Consequently, the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica was at its largest in the early ’90s As a bonus, the amount of tephra in the atmosphere cooled global temperature for a couple of years. The 1993 “storm of the century” was connected to the eruption two years previous. So if you had a snow day (or several) that second week of March: thank a volcano!

(Irresistible digression: You know that you can LOOK AT A COELACANTH, like, the 1938 coelacanth, chilling in a jar at the Darwin Centre at the British Natural History Museum? It’s in the room with the colossal squid. It’s not even the focal point of the room. Just, like, oh by the way, that’s our coelacanth, nbd. Also nearby: Some of Darwin’s original specimens from the Galapagos Islands and sea life caught on James Cook’s voyages (who, as it happens, was first setting foot in New Zealand around the time that Mozart was exploring Pompeii!) It is truly an embarrassment of fishes. And non-fishes, but the pun doesn’t work that way.)

FRANKENSTEIN AND SOME OTHER SCARY STORIES

Indonesia’s Mount Tambora erupted in April 1815, the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history. There’s a lot of recorded history, guys, and this one was the biggest! More explosive and deadly and damaging than Krakatoa, Pelee, Pinatubo, all of ’em. Only Lake Taupo in New Zealand, the year 186, was bigger. Here’s how terrible it was: the next year is known as the Year Without A Summer. The ash belched forth into the atmosphere put the entire planet into a volcanic winter. In New England, it snowed in June. In China, water buffalo froze to death. There were food riots in Switzerland. And on Lake Geneva, the summer vacation of the Shelleys and Lord Byron was a total bust as rain kept them indoors. Befitting the dismal conditions, the group told ghost stories — then had a contest to see who could produce the scariest story. John Polidori, Byron’s young doctor, ended up writing The Vampyre, inspired by a fragment of a story written by Byron. And Mary Shelley started work on what became Frankenstein. (Tambora can also be blamed for Byron’s apocalyptic poem “Darkness.”)

HAWAII

“Hawaii,” you are thinking, “yes, Hawaii has volcanoes. Everyone knows that.” And that’s true! But the Hawaiian Islands themselves are no more than volcano detritus, even though they’re hundreds of miles from any tectonic plate boundary along which you’d expect to find volcanic activity. The island chain was caused by a ‘hot spot,’ a hole in the Pacific plate. A plume of super-hot magma has poked a hole in the plate and surged to the surface, where the erupting lava cooled and solidified to form an island. At the same time, the Pacific plate itself was scooting and shifting over the plume. Voila: an island chain. On the image above (pilfered from an unrelated episode of “NOVA,” I just drew on it), trace the history of the hot spot along the floor of the Pacific as the Hawaiian Islands get smaller and smaller, then become little underwater mounds (called seamounts). Furthermore, the newest Hawaiian island is already forming just east of the Big Island. Lōʻihi Seamount is growing, but it’s still about a thousand kmmeters below the surface — and, as the plate is only moving at a rate of five inches per year, don’t count on the newest vacation destination being available within our lifetime.

THE MIAMI DOLPHINS FIGHT SONG
Jimmy Buffet recorded “Fins,” a song about dudes trying to pick up a lady in a bar, in a studio at the foot of the Soufrière Hills volcano on the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean. The volcano was not active at the time, but it was still impressive enough to inspire Buffet to title the album Volcano and write a song about it, too. The volcano hadn’t even done anything yet. The recording studio was blown apart by Hurricane Hugo a few years later, then the ground it stood on was buried in lava after the volcano erupted in 1995. One can only conclude that the island thought the same of Buffett’s album as did most critics, who generally agree that it was his worst.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwqzES_sHIA

In 2009, “Fins” was rewritten as a fight song and can be heard at Sun Life Stadium every time the Dolphins score a touchdown. Notably, the team hasn’t had a winning season since the song was instated.

THIS AMAZING IMAGE

Mount St. Helens, in western Washington State, sat dormant for about 150 years, then jolted back to active status as swarms of earthquakes led up to the infamous eruption in May of 1980. Since then, the mountain has been continuously monitored for the smallest gurgles — these measures includes a this Forest Service webcam, which is trained on the volcano day and night. Though you can’t see much at night, I guess. One unexpected result of having an eye on the cone at all times? An enormous mutant fly has been spotted prowling the slopes, triggering earthquakes with its mighty footsteps, waiting for Godzil….what? It’s just a bug on the webcam? Oh.

Victoria Johnson is a connoisseur of mundane webcams. She promises actual maps in the next column.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-mQyRuHIuA

“The best description I can give would be that if you looked at new spring snow, which has a fine grain size, about an hour after dawn or an hour before sunset, you’d see the same spectrum of light that an alien astronomer in another galaxy would see looking at the Milky Way.”
 — University of Pittsburgh astronomer Jeffrey Newman, on how, by looking through telescopes at other galaxies, he and his colleagues have determined the exact color our own would have from an outside perspective. But what if, say, the alien astronomer had stayed up all night tripping on mushrooms? Like, if he’d rented a house in Vermont with some friends over spring break junior year of college, and he reached down and scooped up a handful of our fine-grained, fluffy galaxy about an hour after dawn. Would it taste like nougat and caramel inside a milk-chocolate shell?

It is the 30th anniversary of Bow Wow Wow’s “Go Wild In The Country.” And now I will go check the mail to see if my Social Security check has come.