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Very Superstitious
by David 'ZZYZX' Steinberg - zzyzx@ihoz.comOne of the problems of being a math geek, is that it's very hard to find anything to believe in. I plan to go into much more detail about this in a future column - it was going to be this month's but I didn't have time to do the research - but studying mathematics makes it harder to believe in anything. After spending years asking whether a statement is provable from a given system of axioms, whether it would continue to be provable if some of our axioms changed, it becomes really hard to believe that anything is actually true. Graduate level mathematics is a training ground for becoming a relativist. As a result, I have a hard time believing in any political truths - I'm one of those people who keeps getting swayed whenever anyone speaks their version of what's true - and the idea of being able to have faith in a religion is completely alien to me. So do I have no beliefs at all? Not quite. For while I constantly mock myself for following them, I have quite a set of superstitions.
Now I'm a fairly bright bunny and someone who thinks quite a bit about what he does and why he does it. So why is it that every single time I see a digital clock saying "11:11", I feel a compulsion to walk up to it and tap the top of it? Before I go any further, yes "compulsion" is the right word. I'll be watching a Mariners game or something, minding my own business, the clock will change, and I'll go through the struggle. "Must.... not... get... up.... Superstitions... are... stupid... Ignore... urg.... oh hell." Next thing I know, I'm up and walking towards the clock. My guess as for the power of this one is that I came up with it when I was 10. Believe it or not, I was a weird kid. I decided at one point that it was time to stylize my life a bit. I added a loop to the end of the "g" in "Steinberg" to make it look like my name was "Steinberge," (This was back when you could make out the names "David" and "Steinberg" in my signature, now it's a couple of scribbles.) I started crossing my 7's, I started making my 9's look like upside down 6's instead of a stick with an oval attached to it, and I decided it was time to have an exciting new superstition. Most of the strongest beliefs people have are formed when they are young. The Jesuits claimed, "Give me a child at an early age and it is mine for life." Beliefs that you have in your youth just seem natural; they tend to be what people call common sense.
Now while I can blame one of my superstitious habits on me being silly in 5th grade, others are far more recent. In my opinion, half the fun of being a baseball fan is coming up with elaborate rituals to make your team win. Sports are perfect for a relativist to actually have a venue where they can say something is right. (If I had to come up with an example of what would happen if we lived in a truly just universe, I'd have to use Mariners wins, well actually Mariners blowouts, winning by a score of 16-0, with Freddy Garcia pitching a no hitter and Griff hitting 5 homers. Moreover that example is so perfect that I can't imagine anyone arguing with it.) Now even though I know the One True Faith, there is very little - short of discovering previously unknown skills at the plate - that I actually can do to help the team. Little except for my Rituals of Guaranteed Victory of course. There's a really bad pizza place near the Kingdome, but when the M's need a victory, I'll be there eating two slices of mushroom pizza. I have an elaborate system for determining the correct way to leave the Kingdome depending on whether the M's won or lost. Oh, and I won't eat bread during Passover.
While I'm not sure how the first two rules developed, I know exactly why I tried to follow Passover this year. Last year, whenever I cheated, disaster struck. When my cd burner broke an hour after eating a bagel, I was horror struck into observing the holiday. This year, I figured I would actually observe the dietary restrictions - well some of them - for every one of the 8 horrible days. I made it through six. After the Mariners got destroyed on Opening Day, I figured that this superstition needed to be retired. I mean things couldn't get worse could they? Are there any more famous last words than those?
When Alex Rodriguez left the game on Tuesday, I should have known the answer. The MRI was just precautionary, nothing to worry about, I thought as I ate that bagel on Wednesday. When they announced he would be out 4-6 weeks, I figured that the fates had used their wrath on me. When I found that there were no comics that day, I knew that they had to be getting tired. When my first paycheck for my new job was $100 less than expected (mainly due to a mistake at the company's payroll), I was getting impressed at their thoroughness. I dusted myself off, and felt proud that I had managed to survive the attack with no real damage. I had forgotten, of course, that the holiday didn't end until Thursday at sunset.
Going home from work on Thursday afternoon, I made a stop at the comic store to pick up the issues that didn't come in on Wednesday. I was driving down University Way ("The Ave" for short) when a car went through a stop sign. I had enough time to see the car and react ("panic" for short) before he plowed into me. In a moment like that, time seems to slow down. As I skidded, I screamed "Look out! Look out!" to the people outside. Sure, they wouldn't hear the crash or the skidding car, but they might hear me screaming. Good thinking there. Somehow though, I managed to come to a stop.... on the sidewalk facing the wrong direction. The person who hit me kept going, so someone called the cops. It turned out not to be a hit and run though; he was just parking his car a block up the road. While I got hit by a wookie (dreads, I had to hold his dog while taking down his info, no insurance), he did differ from the people Chris Bertolet complained about last month by being willing to take responsibility for his actions. In retrospect, I should do the same. The dents in my door, the pain from my mild whiplash, and the fear I have right now all point to the same thing. Call me stupid, call me alogical, hell call me late for supper, but next year you won't catch me eating bread during Passover.
Special Bonus Show Review- String Cheese Incident Portland, OR 3/12/99
How do you keep a fresh mind about touring? Over time, the things that blew you away become commonplace. Mind you, this isn't a bad thing per se - shows feel like a homecoming - but even still there is a feeling of something being lost. The way I deal with it, is that every year I try to drag someone who has never seen a jamband to a show. Feelings of novelty are contagious; things that you don't even think about anymore are thrown into sharp relief.For my 1999 victims - Karen (from last month's column) and her husband Jim - the first example came early. To my surprise, the show sold out, and they ended up going down without tickets. It didn't occur to me that anyone wouldn't instinctively know that putting your finger in the air meant "I need a ticket." An hour later fortunately, both Jim and Karen got their tickets and we went into the Crystal Ballroom.
The Crystal Ballroom is an unusual venue. The floor bounces. The so called "sold out" venue had plenty of dancing and hooping space - much more than the other sold out shows of the run; the Eugene and Seattle shows were incredibly oversold. The way the floor bounces. The tapers section was located in the beer garden so you had to be over 21 to tape. Oh did I mention that the floor bounces? Between the Jim and Karen excitement and the bouncy floor, pre show anticipation was pretty high.
The first set was solid. The highlight was clearly the set closing "Hey Pocky Way" -> "Roll Over." "Roll Over" itself is an interesting song. A lot of String Cheese's songs tend to be of the form verse, chorus, verse, chorus, long jam, return to chorus. "Roll Over" was a tease. In the middle of the jam, they reprised the theme of the song, but - instead of going back into the chorus - went into a different jam. A few minutes into the jam, I was thinking segue, when - out of the blue - the chorus was then reprised. Well done.
Jim and Karen seemed to be enjoying themselves. I decided against informing them that the real action tends to occur in Set II. Let them discover that. The discovery didn't take very long. After the opening "Sand Dollar" came a cover of a Keller Williams song. The title of the song is "Best Feeling in the World," and the jam after this version more than lived up to the title. If I could have just one version of one song as my only String Cheese Incident music, this might be the song I would choose. The jam came in two parts - first a fast paced section, then a soulful Billy solo reminiscent of the end of Layla. I went to rehydrate after that, and came back to see Jim dancing up a storm during "Work." Hmmmmmmmm I always thought of that as a bathroom song; what was that I said about having a fresh perspective?
While it was obvious that a connection was beginning to happen, it was the "Smile" that cemented it. Jim was dancing as hard as any of us diehard cheesers. After it ended, he came up to me and said, "That was amazing." Another convert.
String Cheese Incident have a song called "Texas." While it's about a drug bust that failed because the police didn't know what the mushrooms they had were, the chorus says something different to me. "You can't bust me/If you don't know what you've found," speaks both directly to the failed bust and to the concept of the music itself. Steal Your Face and dancing bears stickers are a secret code for those of us who have discovered that music can have a stronger effect than vibrating our eardrums. As they played it, I thought of the discovery that Jim and Karen made. Music can be a powerful force and yet you can't be busted for it, because the cops don't know what they've found.
David Steinberg got his Masters Degree in mathematics from New Mexico State University in 1993. He first discovered the power of live music at the Capitol Centre in 1988 and never has been the same. His Phish stats website is at www.ihoz.com/PhishStats.html
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