This is one of the coolest things that’s happened to me in a while. And it reminds me: I need to get back to writing.

So, I’ll be back soon in earnest. Promise.

Is it simply because we’re too proud to admit that we could use the help?

As Gawande points out in The Checklist Manifesto, certain professions would find this question a little silly; they live and die by checklists. Skyscrapers and major building projects couldn’t get built (or remain standing) without careful coordination between dozens of trades; the only way to coordinate them is to keep everybody on the same page by–you guessed it–relying on a checklist. And pilots rely on checklists for nearly everything. It was the development of a checklist that turned Boeing’s B-17 from an unflyable disaster into the plane that helped win World War II. Inspired by these examples, Gawande tells the story of how he and a group from the WHO developed a checklist to reduce the number of surgical errors. (His concise description of what makes a good checklist is worth the price of admission alone.)

But convincing surgeons to sign on isn’t always an easy task; some surgeons bristled at the idea of having to go through a checklist of obvious steps, or of exposing themselves to being corrected by people lower than them on the chain of authority. This discussion reminded me of another excellent Gawande essay, in which he discusses the usefulness of coaching, even for professionals whom we think of as already “trained.”

To accept coaching, however, unless it is forced upon you, requires a specific mindset: humility. To a certain extent, this is a function of the fundamental attribution error, or as Gawande describes it:

This is why it will never be easy to submit to coaching, especially for those who are well along in their career. I’m ostensibly an expert. I’d finished long ago with the days of being tested and observed. I am supposed to be past needing such things. Why should I expose myself to scrutiny and fault-finding?

I have spoken to other surgeons about the idea. “Oh, I can think of a few people who could use some coaching” has been a common reaction. Not many say, “Man, could I use a coach!” Once, I wouldn’t have, either.

But there is a critical difference between humility and a failure of self-confidence. To accept coaching, especially in such a public way, is to expose oneself to the judgment of others. The judgment that you are seeking help not because you are good and want to improve, but because you have fallen short and need to be remedied. The same goes with checklists: referring to a checklist may catch you from omitting a step or missing a deadline, but you have to be ready to accept that an outsider may see it as an admission of failure.

And so, those are the two questions Dr. Gawande has left in my head. Are we humble enough to know that we can be improved if we ask for help? Are we confident enough to ask for the help we need, even if somebody might see it as a sign of weakness?

The largest portion of the exhibit deals with various proposals along the National Mall, particularly the Capitol and White House. Some of the proposals exhibited were submitted by complete amateurs; for example, a proposal for the Capitol featured a weathervane nearly as tall as the dome itself. More interesting is the implied drama from the rejected designs of Thomas Jefferson, who anonymously submitted designs for each under the pseudonym “A.Z.” Jefferson’s designs, while good, are totally different in character than the eventual buildings. It’s a fascinating experience to imagine these very different buildings replacing the buildings that stand there now.

Also featured are proposed and rejected designs for DC’s most significant memorials. The travails of completing the Washington Monument are well-known, and Unbuilt Washington features both the winning proposal (which included a colonnade at the base of the memorial), as well as a variety of proposals for completion of the memorial when construction resumed in the 1870s. And various proposals for the Lincoln Memorial range from the interesting to the bizarre (a several-hundred-foot tall ziggurat probably qualifies as both).

The exhibit contains a number of other curiosities–alternate designs for the Kennedy Center, the FDR Memorial, and complete re-imaginings of what the Mall and the city could look like structurally. On the whole, Unbuilt Washington is a fascinating glimpse of what might have been (even if some of these things would never have been built in a million years).

Unbuilt Washington is at the National Building Museum until May 28. Your $8 ticket also gets you into LEGO Architecture: Towering Ambition, which features scale models of famous buildings worldwide and is every bit as awesome as you would imagine.

(Note: I will try to avoid spoiling the plot; as with any mystery, Too Close to Miss is more enjoyable on first read if you don’t know how it ends. I think that nothing I mention plot-wise happens in the second half of the book, but be warned.)

Too Close to Miss lives with a foot firmly planted in the noir, hardboiled detective fiction genre; Mara is a former member of the establishment on the outs (a former Beacon Hill reporter busted down to photographer because she got the wrong people upset). Like so many noir protagonists, she is ensnared by a relationship that she really shouldn’t have gotten into in the first place. And, as we rapidly find out, what seems at first like a simple murder born of greed is part of a much bigger conspiracy.

However, recalling the noir genre so faithfully forces the reader to confront the fact that it is, attitudinally, a genre of the past. It’s Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler. Even something from the ’70s (like, say, Chinatown) is traditionally set in the 1930s. Add to this the fact that Mara, a young professional in the journalism business, is acutely aware that she works in an industry on the decline. The Boston Tribune, the fictional paper she works for, is on the path to failure, even if its employees don’t understand that fact. The Tribune’s best days are, in fact, in the noir era–the days of the morning and evening editions. The echoes of the past are present.

Too Close to Miss highlights this contrast of eras; in fact, the book starts with a cell phone call. But, crucially, modern technology is often of little use: the cell phone caller ID is blocked. A critical conversation takes place over a pay phone. A city government hasn’t put records on paper. A camera doesn’t work properly. Modern technology, in other words, is just another obstacle to be overcome by the modern noir hero. At the end of the day, nothing beats good old-fashioned gumshoe work. (And a flash drive.)

Too Close to Miss is a briskly-paced, thoroughly entertaining thriller that lives up to the heritage of the noir genre. It’s ten pounds of style in a two-pound bag. It’s also a book with one foot in the 1930s, and another foot just as solidly in the modern day. It comes with my high recommendation.

(Currently available as an e-book on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. At $0.99, it’s a bargain.)

*Disclaimer: The author is a friend of mine, and I helped with some arcana of the legal system as he was writing the book. But, if I hadn’t liked it, I could have just not written about it. Trust me–it’s good.

- Katie Hallahan is part of a team putting together a new video game, following up on their update to the venerable King’s Quest series. The Kickstarter page that they set up met its goal with plenty of time to spare, but they’re still accepting donations (pre-orders, really – $20 gets you a copy of the game) to help get the game off the ground. Check it out, and consider kicking in a few bucks if it’s your thing.

- I would advise you to read John Perich’s Periscope Depth under any circumstances, since it’s a fantastic blog. But this week specifically, he’s talking up his new novel, Too Close to Miss, with a series of posts about the book. Yesterday’s post described the inspiration for the novel, and he’ll be adding more. It’ll be good stuff; that much I’m certain of.

So perhaps it was inevitable that I would find myself standing in 39-degree weather on the National Mall on Sunday, waiting for my second Marine Corps Marathon 10K to begin. (The paradoxical name comes from the fact that the MCM folks rather cleverly organize a 10K on the last six miles of the marathon route, using roads that are already closed to accommodate people who think that 26.2 miles is a fortnight’s worth of running.) The camaraderie of strangers at a mass start like this is infectious: everybody is somewhat bored, a little anxious, and genuinely hopeful that their “competitors” do well. With the exception of the few who hope to win, this is not a zero-sum game: my success does not necessarily mean another’s failure. By the time the starter’s gun (in this case, a piece of small artillery) went off, I had stretched three times, tired myself out, and been re-energized by adrenaline. In short, I was ready to go.

The first two miles of the race have a vaguely postapocalyptic feel: the route takes you across the Potomac on the path of I-395. With the sun just rising, no cars on the road, and thousands of people running en masse away from the city, it’s an odd feeling, even just to travel on a multi-lane highway by foot. This year’s race featured an additional obstacle: Saturday’s rain and snow had frozen overnight to create patches of black ice in the shade. I wish I could say that I navigated it with skill and grace, but I have to concede that I was probably just lucky not to fall.

The next two miles take you through Crystal City, the only part of the run on roads that one might conceivably run under normal circumstances. This middle third is the hardest part of the race: you’ve been going for 15 minutes at a difficult pace, which is enough to begin to feel authentically tired. On the other hand, the bulk of the race lays in front of you. This is where I begin to think that the people who took their first two miles slowly had a good idea; it’s also the point where the race turns for the first time, so you see the faster runners well in front of you, and finally get to see the mass of people behind you for the first time. Pre-race camaraderie aside, it’s nice to have some people at your back.

Finally, it’s back on the highway and past the Pentagon. This is, for the most part, a gently hilly section of the course, and with the end in sight (figuratively, at least) it’s tempting to start the kick early. Here is where you need to hope that you planned correctly; if you have run your race correctly, you will have just enough energy to keep going until the end.

The course concludes with a sprint uphill to the Marine Corps War Memorial, which is the point at which your brain really needs to overrule your body’s better impulses. Finishing the run uphill, I found myself gasping for air, not exactly pleasant with temperatures still in the low 40s. And then it’s over. Check your watch, get your finisher’s medal and picture taken, get on the Metro, and be home by 10 o’clock.

Of course, it’s not over. By the end of the day, I was online, figuring out my next race: another 10K? A 10-miler? A half-marathon? I had always been sure that I was not “a runner,” but just somebody who runs occasionally. But, no; I’m looking for the next race, trying to get the time down, searching for those lost seconds. (Stupid ice patches.) There are worse hobbies, right?

Kennedy Center, Washington, DC

October 20, 2011

Can I start with a confession? Although I hadn’t seen it until last week, I’m really not sure Les Mis is really a great musical. When adapting an epic story to a sub-3-hour musical, a real premium is placed on economy of plot. The problem is compounded with a sung-through musical like this one; in something like Ragtime, which similarly attempts an era-defining story of epic sweep, you can at least get some plot out of the way through dialogue.

With Les Mis, I found myself wondering whether the resource of time could be allocated better. It’s a fun song, but do we really need six minutes of “Master of the House” to establish that the Thernardiers are horrible people? Nor does the song exactly create a deep character moment; I ended up thinking about Seinfeld during the song more than anything else. That said, the songwriting-as-songwriting is extraordinarily good; it’s not for nothing that “I Dreamed A Dream,” “Can You Hear the People Sing,” “One Day More,”* and–yes–”Master of the House” are considered classics of the genre.

*Although again, parody overtakes real life, as I found myself wandering to “La Resistance” as the first act drew to its conclusion.

So, more on the production after the jump, then?This was advertised as an “all-new” production, although I haven’t seen the original, which gives me little basis for comparison. But the overwhelming sense was that the show aspired to being cinematic, right down to the title card reading “LES MISERABLES” after the prologue. (Trying to get ahead of the Hugh Jackman/Anne Hathaway version next year, perhaps?) The big technical toy was an effects-heavy backdrop that, at various points, referenced: moving down a street, so the cast could march in place; moving through the sewers of Paris; and (do we need to spoiler alert classic works of Western literature?) the Seine rushing to meet Javert as he falls to his death.

These bits of tech wizardry generally come off as unnecessary, and didn’t add a lot for me. The language of theater is universal enough that we can understand what’s going on if a cast is marching in place en masse, I hope. And the final Javert scene comes off as really overplayed; personally, I think the whole thing would have been a lot more effective without 30 seconds of “falling.”

There are some real highlights in the cast: J. Mark McVey as Valjean, and Chasten Harmon as Eponine, both sang and acted big roles with impressive skill, and provided the show’s best moments. (“A Little Fall of Rain” does everything I accuse “Master of the House” of not doing.)

Don’t go to Les Mis expecting a perfect piece of musical theater, but this is on the whole a very well-done production, and is worth attending if you’re a fan of the show, or of songs in the musical theater genre more generally. Not the best thing I saw last week, but a perfectly pleasant way to spend an evening.

Warner Theater, Washington, DC

October 19, 2011

I think it’s fair to say that I’ve been a fan of Weird Al Yankovic since I was aware that there was such a person; at this point, then, for over 20 years. I’m slightly embarrassed (though apparently not so much so that I won’t write it in public) that there are many songs I think of as Weird Al songs first, rather than the parodied songs themselves. Which is a roundabout way of saying that it’s somewhat surprising that last week was the first time I saw the man in person.

The short version: two of the most fun hours I’ve had in years.

The concert featured mostly Weird Al’s new songs, as is to be expected of somebody who’s been performing for over 30 years. But here’s the thing: Weird Al’s new stuff is as good as (if not better than) anything he’s done in his career. Take, from the new album, “Party in the CIA”:

“Like a Surgeon” this ain’t. (Although, to be fair, Weird Al has historically played dark at times, as evidenced by, inter alia, “Christmas at Ground Zero,” the only nuclear war Christmas song I know of.) Still, this is actual political satire coming from a man who most people think of as parodying Michael Jackson songs in a fat suit. That’s a real accomplishment in my book. Now, if he doesn’t quite reach the heights of Tom Lehrer’s “Send the Marines”:

this doesn’t speak poorly of Weird Al so much as it reminds us: a) Tom Lehrer is one of the great American satirists, and b) that I’m even thinking of this discussion is something I hadn’t expected before I heard the album.

Seeing him live, two things become obvious: first, Weird Al clearly loves his job, and it comes through in every moment of the concert. Second, he and his band are really fantastic musicians. This shouldn’t be a surprise; after all, you can’t spend three decades doing genre-hopping parody without knowing your way around the music, but it really shines live.

Yankovic samples widely from his career during the concert, going back as far as the late 80s (the chaotic “You Make Me”), the early ’90s (a still spot-on “Smells Like Nirvana”), the mid ’90s (“Amish Paradise”), and up through what is somewhat astonishingly his biggest hit (“White and Nerdy”). Since all of these are done in costume, in between set pieces the audience gets clips from his AlTV specials, the underrated UHF, and assorted pop culture clips referencing, denigrating, and celebrating Weird Al. It’s an endearing and engrossing tour through the pop culture of my lifetime, by a man who (if he didn’t change it, per se) at least shaped the way a lot of us nerds thought about it and interacted with it.

The audience ranged in age from 16 to 76, the attire everything from costumes to concert t-shirts to business casual to dressed-up (hardly surprising on a Wednesday night in downtown DC), and everybody absolutely got their money’s worth. As the audience sang along to the encore, a medley of his two Star Wars parodies (“The Saga Begins”/”American Pie” and “Yoda”/”Lola”), I found myself thinking: From purely goofy to loving homage to actual political satire, Weird Al has been giving his fans what they ask for from him for decades; what more can a fan ask?

The most interesting point the author makes is that what really matters is the overall star rating, rather than the content of the individual ratings (although Elite members apparently have outsized impact); it makes me wonder how many times I’ve simply disregarded a restaurant (or another business) based on mediocre Yelp reviews. This can be overcome if you’re lucky enough to be curated; I can’t be the only person who’s gone to a restaurant with a mediocre Yelp score on the strength of a review with a compelling narrative.

Of course, this goes across the entire Internet; be as good at what you do as you want, but if nobody can find you (or, even worse, the most visible information out there is bad), good luck overcoming that.

I was in the Verizon Center last Friday, watching the HSBC Tennis Cup, a exhibition-slash-leg of a tennis seniors tour. The four players (Sampras, Andre Agassi, Michael Chang, and Jim Courier) have kept a lot of their shotmaking, but you can tell that the speed, the power, the endurance have all been slipping. It’s hard to admit, of people who were larger-than-life back then, but they looked . . . well, old at times.

(It was a little disquieting to be reminded that Michael Chang won the French Open 23 years ago. 23! To steal a line from a Friends episode, his French Open title is old enough to drink!)

What’s more terrifying is, of course: they’re not actually old. Chang is 39; Sampras is 40; Agassi and Courier 41. And yet, as top-level competitive athletes, they’ve been over the hill for almost a decade. In virtually every other endeavor, they would be just hitting their peaks. If they hadn’t made millions of dollars playing tennis, they’d be mid-career. (I wonder what your mid-life crisis looks like when you’ve already been a millionaire world-famous athlete.) But does any of us know when we hit our tipping point, if we already have, or will we just recognize it once we are far past appreciating it in the moment?

I’m glad they’re still playing; it was amazing to see their skills in action, even if they’ve lost a step. But entropy really does go just one way, doesn’t it?