RIP Ben Bushman (1942–2016)

Ben Bushman, long-time principal of Beverly Hills High School (which I attended), has died.

A Brief History of The Witch's House

When I was a kid, The Witch's House was the place to go on Halloween in Beverly Hills. It sounds like it still is.

(Tip of the cap to Kimberly Reiss.)

Beverly Hills is not my home.

I don't think that Beverly Hills has felt like "home" for several years, and it really doesn't feel that way now. This is what assaults my feelings the most whenever I am in my parents' house. I just don't belong in this city anymore, and I'm not sure that I ever did. Ah well... (Caltech feels like home and so does Oxford, and I think that's about it.)

Maybe I'll write a longer entry about this at some point, but I'm really not sure what else there is to say.

Whenever I think about the early years with my family, I always feel that I have orders of magnitude more bad memories than good ones. (I have many good memories with my friends.) Maybe I'll eventually feel differently, but I have to be honest with myself and for now let me just say that I am so thankful that other aspects of my life (my wonderful friends, my career, etc.) have done a Hell of an excellent job of making up for any deficiencies in my life. This is the holidays and although being in the house of my childhood makes some of the bad stuff from the past come to the front of my thinking a bit more than usual, I will do my best to focus instead on all of the great things in my life---which (a) far outshine the bad things nowadays and (b) make me immeasurably luckier than most people. My deepest thanks go out to the people who have played such important roles in this.

Another Piece of my Childhood is Gone

OK, so this apparently happened in November 2007, but I only just found out. Namely, Tony Silver (Beverly High class of 1979), the owner of the Beverly Hills Baseball Card Shop died in November 2007. (I read about this in the obituaries in the 2009 Beverly Hills High Alumni Highlights.) As a child, I went to that store regularly, and even after I left home, I would still go there on occasion during breaks from school when I was back home. I didn't know the guy well or anything, but I feel bummed out after reading this because of the fact that feels like a significant piece of my childhood just left. (OK, admittedly my feelings are rather selfish in nature in this case.) Although I moved quite far away, this is a 'people in your neighborhood' sort of thing.

I have actually been in the mood to open some packs of baseball cards for quite a while. I do have a number of unopened packs in my parents' house, but one of the things I'd like really like to do when I am home this winter is to head over to the Beverly Hills Baseball Card Shop and buy some baseball cards---this includes some new ones, but I think I'd like to splurge a bit and buy some packs from the 70s or earlier.

Life (and apparently an old schoolmate) imitates Wedding Crashers

One of my old schoolmates from Hawthorne Elementary School and Beverly Hills High School has apparently become very good at crashing Hollywood parties. He is apparently considered a blagger among blaggers.

I suppose I shouldn't reveal his name here, but the name being used in the article above is close enough. I'm sure there's a wikipedia entry in his future, which would make him the 3rd (to my knowledge) member of my Beverly High graduating class to have such an entry.

(Tip of the hat to the subject of the article linked above.)

RIP Milton Rowen (age 91)

Dr. Rowen was the principal of Hawthorne School (my elementary school) during my first few years there. (I am listing him only by age because I don't know whether he was born in 1917 or 1918.) The main thing I remember about him is that we were all scared shitless of him because he would come into the cafeteria where we were having lunch, and if he saw something he didn't like he would scream at all of us. I think a couple of times he even screamed right in the face of some young kid. (Unsurprisingly, he had a military background.) He's treated rather kindly in the brief obituary in Beverly Hills Weekly, but for me this was a guy to fear, not to respect. I speak as a tree rather than as a forest, but at the time, I was quite pleased when he stepped down.

Wikified Classmates

I now know of two of my fellow Beverly High classmates [in this case, people who I actually know] from the class of 1994 who have been wikified. (Maybe there are more, but I just found out about the second one today.)

I went to both Beverly High and Hawthorne elementary school (since 1st grade, if I remember correctly) with Dina Rae (though I know her as "Dina Franks"). I went to Beverly High with Saba Soomekh, whose sister Bahar has also been wikified. I took classes with Saba, but I don't remember whether I met Bahar (maybe I did), who has appeared in MI: III (among other films).

Then, of course, there is also Angelina (who I mever met, though my collaborator JP Onnela can tell you at least one story about her; she was one year ahead of me in school and apparently left after sophomore year) and this person (whose family lived a block away from mine and whose brother is the one who first taught me how to throw a frisbee).

So much for my sordid past. At least I can have second-order fame through the people I know.

This is why I am "awesome"

I had another bout with awesomeness today...

I am at my parents' house and wanted to order from a local Chinese place that I really like but from which I hadn't ordered in several years.

My parents had a menu at home, but I knew what I wanted and I stubbornly just googled to find the phone number so I wouldn't have to leave my room and deal with their ill-tempered dog who would attack me (when it's not contained) if I left my room. I also didn't want to bug someone else to get the menu even though that was offered. I called the place and they no longer carried what I really liked, but it had been a few years, so I shrugged and ordered something that offered as an alternative. When they came to the door, I realized my mistake and paid a small delivery charge because this place is much farther than the other one. Ah well, at least I ordered from a place with the same name (which is apparently owned by the same people, if I understood correctly).

I'm such a champ.

(Oh, and the other place still has the menu item I really like...)

What happens in the Greater LA Area stays in the Greater LA Area

I am flying home to Los Angeles tomorrow and will be splitting my time between Caltech and Beverly Hills to visit friends, family, and collaborators. I arrive tomorrow evening and my plan for Sunday is to hang out with friends and eat meat.

My home precinct is lame.

I'm so ashamed.

I'm looking at today's issue of Beverly Hills Weekly and found the following statement in their article about how various Beverly Hills precincts voted in the recent US election:

"Precinct eight, which includes Hawthorne School, voted 256 to 191 [in favor of McCain]."

I went to Hawthorne School for nine years (Kindergarten through 8th grade). Unless I am seriously mistaken, that means that's my home precinct. Lame! Moreover, we apparently have a history of lameness:

"In 2004, seven precincts largely in the north (3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 16, 46) voted for President George W. Bush in the presidential
election over Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry.

Thankfully, precinct 8 voted against Proposition 8, so maybe there is some hope for them.

What happens at Caltech stays at Caltech

I flew to California yesterday, and I am writing this entry from a couple of friends' apartment near the Caltech campus in Pasadena. I am here mainly for my 10-year reunion, though I have been sneaking in some work as well. I am attempting to remain in touch via e-mail and I am also having discussions with local collaborators (tomorrow especially will involve a bunch of research).

The reunion officially starts tomorrow. I will have a continental breakfast and (non-continental) dinner associated with it. On Saturday, I'll be going to an alumni bar-b-que and also giving a presentation on Caltech pranks (along with my Legends III coauthor and two of our contributors). While on campus today, I went to the campus bookstore to buy a copy of my own book. The person behind the desk managed not to notice. :)

One of my goals on this trip was to eat good beef, because that's a bit harder to come by in the UK. We were going to go to Gyu Kaku tonight, but we were late in the game getting our reservations in order, so we're going to Robin's instead. We're also going to be playing some Mario Kart for the Wii tonight, and I may sneak in some Rock Band as well. On Sunday, I'll be running a one-shot D & D game, and on Monday I will transfer over to Beverly Hills to spend some time with family and pre-college friends. On Monday night, I am going to the Dodger game against the Reds. (This will probably be the only baseball game I attend this year. Sigh...) I will fly back on Wednesday and arrive Thursday afternoon. I'll sadly have to almost certainly miss a talk I really wanted to see, but sacrifices had to be made. (I had to miss yesterday's Governing Body meeting, for example, which was such a shame.)

I still have some movies and mathematics articles to write about. I'll plan on trying to catch up on some of that when I get back. I also just had a BEC paper accepted today, so I'll blog on that one when the reprint is out.

Other visiting friends

I meant to blog last term about a couple of other high school friends who visited me last term. Mimi Harris (who I hadn't seen since my ten-year high school reunion in October 2004), who overlapped with me both at Beverly High and a couple of years at Hawthorne elementary school, went to London on business in November, so I hopped onto the train and went to London to hang out with her and one of her friends (who hitched a ride with Mimi during a layover in New York). This is the day that I finally came to understand the glory of the "mind the gap" meme (I really want to get one of the shirts with that...), and I also created my own meme when we visited the Tate Modern. In one of the abstract art sections (I can't remember the official name of the general type of art in that section of the museum) was a painting that consisted of a brown background with a few orangish stripes. A nearby picture by the same artist had the same background and a single orangish stripe. I was pondering how little effort this took and how pointless this was (and was also reminded of a brilliant scene with John Malkovich in a recent indie movie in which he was an arist and a teacher as a prestigious art school), and every so often when I was ranting about how pointless this picture was, I reiterated (in defense of my opinion) the line, "But it's just a fucking stripe!" OK, so this probably doesn't seem particularly funny at all with the above description, but it became a meme (at least for the day) and was funny then. Or at least I thought it was funny, and the my companions got at least some amusement out of my caustic commentary. I guess that made the painting worth it after all (given the enjoyment that ranting about it gave me), but I still think that that particular piece of "art" is pointless.

Late last term, Maria King (opera singer extraordinaire) took the train down to Oxford to hang out with me for a few hours. She came down from London, which she was visiting from her temporary (few-month) home in Germany. She's now back in her regular home in New York City. Anyway, we hung out for a while and had fun.

Hmmmm... I think that this blog entry would have been much better if I had written about it several weeks ago the way I intended. Ah well, the important message is the following: I hung out with my old friends and had fun. I look forward to a lot more of that!

Old friends

Today I had dinner with Julia Wang, an old friend of mine from Beverly Hills High School who I hadn't seen in something like 10 years. She might be joining us for a games night or two at my place before I head off to Oxford. (We'll see how many I actually have before I leave town. I would like to organize many more of these than I do in practice...)

I also got a Facebook friend request from Matt Sullivan, who I last talked to at the 2006 APS March Meeting. Naturally, Matt commented on my current 'Turning Japanese' status, though I like Gazebo's response (in his Facebook status) even better. Actually, I'm particularly happy to have Matt in this addressbook, because sometimes I've had trouble keeping track of which e-mail address I should be using for him.

You can teach if you want to

The current issue of Beverly Hills Weekly lists some teachers and other staff of Beverly Hills Unified School district who are retiring at the end of this school year. Obviously, there are many familiar names on the list, but some of the familiar names are people I never actually met. Hence, let me mention the ones I actually knew:

David Knowlton: I had him for AP Physics at Beverly High. He didn't know the material he was teaching. I would often read issues of EGM during class. If one other person in the class and I got the same answer on a test, Knowlton essentially defined it as correct and there was at least one time when both of us turned out to have made the same mistake. Another time, I remember Knowlton asking me how to do a problem while I had a break during Science Olympiad (Knowlton was the coach). That problem was on the test he had given us the day before. It should be obvious from what I've written, but I didn't exactly respect him.

Scott Harvey: I had him for AP Poly Sci/Honor Econ (which were combined into one year-long course) during my senior year at Beverly. He was awesome! I appreciated the fact that he said what he actually thought and wouldn't put up with bullshit. He had a lot of critics, but typically those were people who were used to bullshitting their way through things. Harvey was one of the best teachers I had. Also, my idea for my senior-year graduation picture came from his class: he spent the entire year joking around about people flipping burgers at McDonalds, and on the day we picked up our caps and gowns, Harvey filmed each person in his class for a minute; we each wore our cap, held the spatula prominently, and said what we planned to do with our lives. I approve!

Dorothy Wong: She was my kindergarden teacher at Hawthorne School. She put up with my dinosaur fetish and let me proceed at a faster pace than the other students. (I have had numerous teachers who held me back because she wanted everybody in the class at the same place, no matter how far ahead of them I could be if they only let me see the next material.)

Dorthy Adler: She was the health ad I often saw at both Hawthorne and Beverly. At Hawthorne, she was the one to talk to in order to get home from school early. :)