In the Sardinia episode of No Reservations, Anthony Bourdain visits a goatherd who offers him a local delicacy. The goatherd grabs a wheel of cheese from the wall of his small hut. He cuts open the top. The cheese is moving. He slices a piece of the maggot-filled cheese and puts it on a dry cracker. Bourdain takes a bite.
“It's completely liquid inside. It's pungent, sharp ... like a Gorgonzola or a blue cheese, but multiplied by ten. … It's beautiful.“
I learned an important lesson: if you can eat it and it won’t kill you, there are many people out there who eat it and enjoy it. This principle is not confined to food. What otherwise timid adults enjoy behind closed doors defies imagination. It applies equally to the third F.
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About ten years ago, I went to a conference in Cambridge. The conference dinner was in the traditional style: High Table for the dignitaries, long tables for the rest of us, three courses with wine, Newton, Bacon, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson observing. In the middle of a story about a trip to Chile, I notice something going on at a table on the other side of the room. As the voices over there get louder, the rest of the hall gets quieter. One man shouts something incomprehensible. The other points at him. Both are red.
The hall is silent. One of the men stands up. He grabs his napkin, which was tucked into his shirt, and throws it to the ground. He points at the other and yells
“You need global convexity! Not just local!”
He storms out.
This man was not to be trifled with. Not on matters of curvature.
The moment passes. I exchange a glance with the people at my table.
“So the owner says, ‘Today we have parrilladita, a little mixed grill.’“
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Contrary to perception, some economists actually care about fairness. A friend of mine is in a department where the chair created a point system to track service and make sure future obligations are assigned properly. The points themselves aren’t worth much. I think when you get to ten there might be a pizza party, but the system itself is just for tracking. A few years ago, my friend co-organized the department’s seminar series with another guy. The organizing was worth one point, and the chair split it equally between the two of them.
The other guy complained. He had organized six of the seminars, and my friend had only organized four. The chair updated the tally, 0.6 for the guy and 0.4 for my friend. A few days later, the chair received a four page memo from the guy. Apparently, he had done substantially more than my friend, including one extra breakfast with the visitor, and one extra dinner. He requested that his points be increased to 0.66, and my friend’s reduced to 0.33. My friend took exception. She pointed out that he had left early from a number of seminars due to his other committee work. While acknowledging that he was obligated to leave, it was not appropriate for the guy to count the seminars as full participation. My friend had also done several airport pickups for people that she knew, which took a substantial amount of time. Her rebuttal was 5.5 pages.
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My wife and I used to host game nights. I generally enjoy bluffing or hidden role games with strategic nuance. We don’t play those very much. By the time we finish dinner, the most complicated game everyone can handle is Pictionary. Sometimes not even that. We usually dispense with most of the rules: no board, no rigid order of words. If you’re drawing, you pick three or four cards, and you can draw any word on any of them. The team gets a point for each correct guess, and the other team can steal a point at the end of each turn. Simple. Fun.
On this game night, we had brought a new couple into the mix. The woman was working on a project with my wife, and the guy was apparently something of a game aficionado. They arrive with a batch of Negronis, an excellent start. Over dinner, the guy told me about an especially exciting game of Secret Hitler. After dinner, we move to the living room to play a game. My wife reaches for the old standby. The guy’s face lights up. His cellphone pings.
“Will you excuse me for a moment?”
He steps out.
He returns and joins the game. The guy is looking for the board.
Between rounds, he and I go to mix cocktails.
“I didn’t realize you could play without a board.”
“Oh, yes. It makes things a bit simpler. A bit more fun.”
We return with the drinks. Play resumes. Our team goes on a tear. 14 points in one round.
“Don’t you think that letting the person doing the drawing choose the words makes it too easy?”
“Oh, it’s not always so high scoring. You’d be surprised. The crazy runs are part of the fun.”
“We’re winning, it’s not really about the score. But having the person drawing pick their own word kind of defeats the point of the game.”
“I don’t think so. The point is to have fun.”
“Dude, there’s no board. There’s no dice. The person drawing picks their own word. There’s no rules. There’s no strategy. This isn’t Pictionary. ”
“Bro, I don’t even know the fucking rules.”
I uncrumple the cards in my hand and mix them back into the pile. His wife walks over.
“Honey, please. We paid for the sitter until 11.”