Numb3rs, Lucky and Otherwise....

I won ten bucks on a scratchoff lottery ticket the other morning.  It'd been stuck in a drawer for almost two months after it was previously stuck in a Christmas card given to me at our holiday axe-throwing event.  That gives you an idea of how much I'm into gambling, because usually I simply suck at it.   That happy experience provides a lead-in to some other Numb3rs, lotto and otherwise, from the past few days.

That variant on the word comes from an old series starring Rob Morrow, best known to us as Dr. Fleischman on the even older series Northern Exposure, and he came to mind because of one of the lottery-related movies we've recently seen.  It's a streamer called Jerry and Marge Go Large, based on the true tale of a Michigan retiree who figured out how to near-guarantee, him and his family and friends, returns of hundreds of thousands of dollars on a specific Michigan (and later Massachusetts) numbers game that "rolled down" jackpots to holders of fewer winning numbers once the pot got over a certain amount.  Jerry is played by Bryan Cranston, best known as the good teacher turned meth dealer in Breaking Bad.

Cranston's appearance here was one of the recent returns of major cast and crew members outside the Bad/Better Call Saul universe.  Also turning up recently, both in front of and behind the camera, is his series co-star Jesse Eisenberg.  He's been a very busy boy, starring in an Apple TV series called Fleishman is in Trouble, a different Doctor of that name who has nothing to do with the one formerly in Alaska.  He also just made his directorial debut, with a film called When You Finish Saving the World, about a generation gap within a family. Of that, the New Yorker review said this about one character: “As he stares at the surrounding characters, furrowing his brow and twitching with unease, you can see their self-possession starting to waver. There you have it: Eisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.”  The Cranston film also plays on that joke; his character Jerry and his accountant basically lay out  the actual Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Central to both of these jokes is that Cranston’s character in Breaking Bad went by the criminal nom de guerre of “Heisenberg.” The other gambling-related series we've been watching, Poker Face, also has connections to those characters; this spoiler-free article about Episode 2 of the series gives some cool detail about showrunner Rian Johnson returning to work in New Mexico for the first time since directing a BB episode.

The other, probably not real, lottery winner we "met" on film is played by Kristen Wiig in a 2014 piece called Welcome to Me. She's a mentally troubled young woman who wins $86 million in the California lottery and uses almost all of it to start her own talk show on an infomercial network- about her own strange life, stranger troubles and strangest-of-all recipes.  It's definitely one of the weirdest movies we've ever watched, but the strength of the cast- including her, Linda Cardellini and James Marsden (long before they appeared together in Dead to Me)- made it worth watching.


Then there are other numbers that have come up in the past few days.

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4 and 5: We just got our annual flier from our trash pickup company with changes to the recycling rules for the new year.  A few years ago, they significantly cut back what was eligible to go into the green-topped tote, mainly as a result of what the overseas purchasers of the materials would pay to accept.  Paper, cardboard and metal changed little if at all, but  bottles and jars were now limited to clear glass only. That meant that, until the drinking stopped in the second half of 2021, we were pitching a lot of green and brown-tinted wine bottles into landfills.  The other major change was in their rules for plastic.  You may have seen the codes on the bottom of plastic packaging.  Actually, you may not have seen them, because they're often so tiny and buried into corners of the product that even Superman needs to put his glasses back on to read them.   Here's a handy summary recycled (heh) from some site:



Until a few years ago, our pickup people took almost all of these- definitely all of 1 through 6- but as of 2020, we could only put 1's and 2's in the bin. Most of the plastic we had been recycling had those codes on them, but there were a lot of 5's, particularly cups for things like yogurt and sour cream, that wound up being landfilled.  Now, happily, 4's and 5's are back on the guest list, and we can pitch those products to gain new life at the end of the recycling process.

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5 again, and again, and again.... The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has announced its nominees for 2023, and there are some very deserving ones on that list.  In alphabetical order: Kate Bush, Sheryl Crow, Missy Elliott, Iron Maiden, Joy Division/New Order, Cyndi Lauper, George Michael, Willie Nelson, Rage Against the Machine, Soundgarden, The Spinners, A Tribe Called Quest, The White Stripes and Warren Zevon.

This, we know. We also know that we can vote via email-linked ballot, once a day for up to five nominees per. This is the barrel of monkeys I began banging and will continue to daily until they announce the inductees in May:




That wasn't an order I put them in, but Warren would be first anyway.  I'd give him all five of my daily votes if I could. His musical mastery with both voice and guitar, and his unbreakable spirit even in his final days, are worthy of any Hall.  The Spinners are also long overdue, Kate Bush has made a remarkable comeback into consciousness, Sheryl spans genres and generations, and omigawd ya can't leave off Cyndi Lawpa! 


What we don't know is how much this, or for that matter any, voting really amounts to. For unlike, say, the Baseball HOF that has clearly defined rules and deadlines for eligible voters and percentages required, the Rock Hall's process is shrouded in secrecy. As explained here a few years ago,

Unlike most of its peer institutions, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has never been very open about the rules and procedures used to nominate and induct artists. They won't reveal who is on the Nominating or Voting Committees, what the final tallies are, or even innocuous information such as how many votes are actually cast. It's left to outsiders to piece together the puzzle and trust the Rock Hall is actually running their induction process with some integrity.

It's long been suspected that Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner has wielded a tremendous amount of influence over who does or does not get in.  The other distinguishing feature of this Hall is that a nomination or induction does have an immediate financial impact on the artist, either in touring if they still do or in their record sales even if they don't.  That differs from the sports Halls, where Scott Rolen's BBHOF induction isn't going to lead to a sudden boost in sales of Cardinals tickets. Remember, the recording industry is the one that literally invented pay-to-play, so I take any decision its poobahs make about Fame to mayyyyybe have their thumb on the turntable.

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And finally, 3, 7 and unknown.  The first two stand for March 7th, the day Eleanor just got scheduled for to get the first of her surgical knee replacements done.  The unknown in the equation is how long it had been since her prior doctor even bothered to do imaging of either of her knees. She can't remember them ever doing it in at least the five years we're sure she's been seeing them.  It was the first thing the new guys did today, and they found at least the first knee scheduled to be operating completely bone-on-bone.  They had no idea why the previous practice was so resistive of even discussing the surgical option.

This gives us a month for her to get some final bloodwork and primary physician approval for it and to get ready for what will no doubt be a major and hopefully positive change in her mobility and pain levels.

I might even be willing to bet on it.