Dave Greten's Blog

Seen in NH

A man text messaging while riding a motorcycle. Two lane, busy road, going about 20-30 mile per hour. No helmet.

Live free or die.

Movie Reviews of Movies I Haven't Seen - You Don't Mess With the Zohan

Oh good old stupid fun with Adam Sandler. I'm so happy he returned to his roots (Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison) after a brief foray into serious acting with the Wedding Singer and the other one I forget (99 Dates?). Little Nicky was horrible but this one is pretty good. From what I gather from the commercial, Sandler is some kind of hairdresser who is also a great kung fu fighter. The part where he smacked the guy around with his foot was pretty funny. I'm not sure of the plot beyond that. Is there one? Who cares. It's Sandler! Little fun fact for you - Adam Sandler is from Manchester, NH, which is the town next to the town where I grew up. Pretty neat, huh? Although paying $10 to see this might be a little steep, this movie is a good rental material.

Movie Reviews of Movies I Haven't Seen - The Strangers

This is a scary movie. Like, a really freaking scary movie. As in, horrifying. As in, difficulty-in-sleeping scary movie. And that's the reason I won't be seeing it. As much as I love a good horror movie, they always leave me deeply traumatized afterwards. So I have to balance short lived delight against long term pain. Laugh at me if you want but I had trouble sleeping for three months after seeing "The Sixth Sense." The scene where the kid goes to the bathroom and the shadow passes in back of him? I got a chill typing that and I've had eight years to recover. But to give you an idea of my amazing movie review capabilities, I could tell The Strangers was outstanding from a few still images. That's right, I'm that good. I may see this movie when it comes out on video. That way I can watch it with the sound turned off while hiding behind the couch.

Movie Reviews of Movies I Haven't Seen - Journey to the Center of the Earth

Brendan Fraser has never been in a good movie.

Read other reviews of movies I haven't seen.

The Black Version of My Brother

My brother Andy

Detroit point guard Chauncey Billups

From now on I'm calling Billups "Bandy." Andy's comment - "He's much better than I am - in basketball and in looks." But for the record, my brother is no slouch at basketball. He stands at 6'4" and has played against Sam Cassell, Cal Ripken, and several Baltimore Ravens and ex-college basketball players.

Painting The Crosswalk

One day during my sophomore year of college, my brother, Steve S, Bob L, and I were sitting outside of a coffee shop. We were watching pedestrians navigate the new crosswalk system they had put in. It was a terrible system. Steve made the comment, "Someone should paint a crosswalk there."

Bob leaned back in his chair and said, "That's a really good idea."

That summer, when we were sharing a house in Durham, Bob got some white paint. Late one night, he was laughing to himself. I asked him what was so funny and he said, "I think I'm going to paint the crosswalk tonight."

And here's the video:

Hunting Rattlesnakes

This weekend my friend Mark and I went to the Massachusetts/New York border to hunt rattlesnakes. I used to hike 4,000 foot mountains with Mark before he developed an obsession with these animals. I was there with him on that fateful day he bought the book about them and I have hardly seen him since. Damn snakes.

I'm not what you would call a 'snake person' but after going insane after ten months of baby-imposed social isolation, the opportunity to get out of the house was too great to pass up. I did this even though it meant driving eight hours round trip and slogging through bug-infested woods to photograph a bunch of poisonous snakes.



The den was a spot Mark had been to before so he knew the area well. Good thing too, because it's creepy roaming around in the woods watching your every step to make sure you don't step on a camouflaged snake. At one point I stepped by a rock and heard an ominous rattle at my feet. Mark said, "Don't move" but I still jumped three feet.

Despite my cowardice, don't get the wrong idea about rattlesnakes. They are extremely docile and reluctant to use their venom. Far more rattlesnakes are killed by humans than humans killed by rattlesnakes. They are beyond easy to kill. All you need to do is throw a rock on them and pow, you just killed yourself a snake. Congratulations. That's part of the reason they are endangered and a protected species in this area.

Because they are so easily destroyed, the location of rattlesnake dens is a closely protected secret by Fish and Game. To find his first one, Mark had to rely on a tip he received years ago and pour over satellite and topographical maps. In his mad pursuit of snakes, he has set up what he calls "the rattlesnake command center" in his home's dining room. His entire table is littered with maps and books on this elusive animal. He has now located something like 4-5 dens.



We spent a lot of time photographing these snakes. Mark took over 200 pictures. I'll spare you all of them and summarize with the one above. But I wish I had brought a camera along to photograph Mark taking these pictures. Since we live in an age of high quality nature photos, viewers can be unaware of the lengths photographers will go to get a good shot. Mark basically stuck his head about a foot away from this coiled snake to get this picture.

We saw a total of 25 snakes. According to Mark, that's his second best day ever. On the drive home he called his snake friend Pete - a man who has dedicated his life to finding all the rattlesnake dens in the New England area. Pete is so fanatical he has a standing $500 reward to anyone who shows him a rattlesnake den in Maine. Mark has stumbled upon a sub-culture I had no idea existed. I dozed for the last hour of the drive back to Mark's place but they were talking like excited schoolgirls the whole time.


All in all, it was a welcome reprieve from the world of work, raising a child, attending funerals and shopping for a house. I'm looking forward to more outings like this one but I will be amazed if this post gets any comments whatsoever.

Oh Yahoo

Speaking as a former employee of Yahoo, I feel I should weigh in on Microsoft withdrawing their takeover bid for the company by saying - Jerry Yang is stupid.

Strong words, I know, but this was a bad move by my former employer. And it's downright embarrassing that some Yahoo executives were high-fiving one another after the deal was thwarted.

Why was Yahoo so determined to stop the takeover? According to the Times article, Yang considered this a "personal victory." So there you have it, it's all about preserving Yang's ego. Yang didn't want to report to a boss. This is his life's work, I realize that, but I wish he had the good sense to know when to fold 'em. Yang has been transformed from an inspirational figure to a modern day Ahab.

It's sad because the merger of Yahoo and Microsoft makes perfect sense if the two companies want to remain relevant. The search market is 60% Google, 25% Yahoo, and 10% Microsoft (through MSN). Given, search is not what this is all about but it gives you an idea of what the two old players are facing in the threat of Google. Although Yahoo has the numbers in 500 million users, in almost every application I've seen, Google shows superior innovation and design. Yahoo is, with every passing day, looking more like a 1990's-era relic.

This is not the first time Yang's ego has brought about ruin, he was instrumental in bringing in his pal Terry Semel as CEO in 2001. During Semel's six year reign, he guided the company to 5% annual growth while being paid a mere $500 million. Semel's payday bonanza angered everyone and he was forced to resign after a shareholder's rebellion.

And this is also not the first time a deal that makes sense for Yahoo was sabotaged by someone's out-sized ego. When I was at Yahoo, eBay was taking off like a rocket and single-handedly capturing the auction market. Yahoo executives approached eBay with a takeover bid. It was all systems go until Yahoo COO Jeff Mallett realized he would be reporting to eBay's Meg Whitman after the acquisition. According to Business Week, he did everything to destroy the bid and it was withdrawn. This was good for Mallett's ego but less so for the company. eBay is now worth $40 billion and Yahoo Auctions has been retired.

Yahoo shares were absolutely punished today with the news. Every analyst downgraded the stock. Maybe the next move Yahoo shareholders should make is to ask Yang to step aside before he runs his own company into the ground.

Roger Ebert's Blog

Reading Roger Ebert's blog today, he imparted two pieces of advice on writing that I wanted to note down:

(1) Once you begin, keep on until the end. How do you know how the story should begin until you find out where it's going?

(2) The Muse visits during creation, not before. Don't want for inspiration, just plunge in.

This notation is as much for my benefit as yours, fellow writers. I have to remember these two points because I've been neglecting this blog for a long time. It's sad to see subscribers vanishing off bloglines.com but, God almighty, I can't think of a damn thing to write at this point in my life. The last thing that moved me was my grandmother's passing but since then, nothing.

So what's going on here in my life? Too much. A baby. Looking into buying a house. Two funerals. Basically my life stagnated for a long time (that's when I wrote a lot) and now it's been completely upended. All of the sudden I'm overwhelmed with responsibilities, long-term plans, confronting THE FUTURE, and moving to the suburbs after seven years of urban living.

I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. I haven't talked about something non-baby and non-house for a long time. My friends are too busy with their lives to hang. I don't have any hobbies any more. Rowing, karate, drums, climbing mountains, reading books - all gone. Basically the identity I worked so hard to build is gone, vanished with the birth of our first child. I had no idea (well, I had an idea and that's why I put it off for so long) children could be so tiring. I knew they were tiring but not this tiring. Did you know the first child often breaks couples apart rather than bring them together? It's true.

My brother told me the story of when he first moved to the suburbs of Baltimore, he was waiting in line at the Home Depot and he thought to himself "Oh God, I'm one of those people." White, upper middle class shopper in a big box store in the suburbs. Like a head of cattle being shepherded through the processing line. In this modern world, we all need something to distract and/or distinguish ourselves from the herd. I'm feeling a loss of both those things and I don't know how to get them back.

The Long Goodbye

My grandmother passed away on Monday. Although it was not unexpected, it did come as a shock. The voicemail from my mother made me stop in my tracks. She had been so frail for so long I am a little ashamed to admit I did not like going to visit her. She could hardly hear a word we said and was confined to her chair, reading an endless series of books and totally dependent on the care of others. I hope you do not think me as selfish. It was too painful to see someone who was once so filled with life and dignity reduced to this. I don't think she liked it either.

When I think of my maternal grandparents, I see the face of rock-solid German stoicism and practicality. When they were ready for you to leave, there was no dawdling. Grandpa would look at his watch and say, "Well, time for you to get going." I refer to my grandfather as "the man of steel." Not that he is cruel or brutal but that there is nothing in the world that can break him. He's like Clint Eastwood. Tall, strong and steely.

But don't get the wrong idea - he likes a good laugh, a good beer, and was overwhelmed with happiness when I showed him his great granddaughter. He has an extraordinarily generous spirit and looks out for those who are close to him. But he also was a military man all his life so he sees a world of rules, discipline, and brutal efficiency. To give you an idea of his sentimentality, my mother told me the story that when Grandpa was in a mop-up operation in the Pacific in World War Two, he was pulling survivors from the ocean onto his boat. One capsized sailor was clinging to his clearly dead friend. My grandfather wrenched him from his grip and said, "He's dead. Let him go." 

And so it was, initially, with Grandma. A group of nurses were crowded around him when they presented him with the news that his wife of 61 years had passed on. I'm sure they were worried he would faint, collapse, have a heart attack, or maybe all three. His reaction was, "Well, this is a shock. What are we going to do? Maybe we should move back to Connecticut." Not quite the reaction everyone was expecting. Sometimes a little dementia can be helpful.

The tears came later and knowing that pains me. My mother and grandfather were escorted into my grandmother's room so they could have a moment with Grandma lying in her chair. I can imagine an intolerable silence. My grandfather then said, "I think I might get a little teary here." The fact that he said it apologetically makes me teary. I can't even imagine something so horrible that it would make my grandfather cry. But this was it. And the thought of my grandfather sitting alone in his room, it's almost too much to take.

The thing I remember most about my grandmother were her hands. They were soft and kind. I can think of nothing that was more reflective of her overall character. She was the softness and humanity that offset my grandfather's punctuality and discipline. They were an ideal pairing for 61 years and she will be missed terribly by everyone who knew her.