stacy b-log

As the aunt-by-marriage of a rock star, I can truthfully say that I have partied with rock stars... but after last Saturday night, I can also say with some certainty: Rock stars got nothin' on Nobel Laureates.

In my day job as public radio salesperson, I helped Dr. Lawrence Krauss, the director of the Origins Initiative at Arizona State University, promote his recent Origins Symposium. Basically he invited about 100 of the world's leading scientists to Tempe, locked them in a room and asked two questions:

What is the origin of the universe? What is the origin of life? Discuss.

Apparently all that thinking really takes it out of you because the attendees - among them, seven Nobel Laureates, the discoverer of Lucy, the sequencer of the human genome, and Lawrence (the guy that did the show on How William Shatner Changed the World) - all needed to kick back with a few cocktails on Saturday night. Little old me (on behalf of my sister-in-law, the swimsuit model) managed to procure an invitation for two: Fly, meet wall.

Read on, get smarter...

It was the first cocktail party I've ever had to cram for, and by cram, I mean I made flash cards for Val and me to study on the drive to the party - call it Drive-by Jeopardy. And yes, the writers for Jeopardy actually do call these guys to make sure their questions are correct. I learned that Saturday night.

"Nobel Prize in Medicine... discovered the Hepatitis B virus... developed the vaccine... saved millions of lives."

"Who is Baruch Blumberg?"

"Author... TV Producer... Host of NPR's Talk of the Nation: Science Friday"

"I know this one! I know this one! - Who is Ira Flatow!"

Uncertain as to how many civilians (i.e., non-Nobel Laureates) had been invited to the party, we agreed our fallback position would be: "What a pretty sunset!" (It was) and "What a lovely home!" (Ditto).

Clearly, we were treading water in the shallow end of the intellectual gene pool, and I had a lot less to add than Val, who is a New York Times Bestselling Author - one of about 12 at the party. Though my only contribution to the scientific discourse was, "I made an A in Chemistry 113 last semester," I can say with pride that at least I wasn't the one that fell into the swimming pool trying to procure a cold bottle of wine. (Right, Scott?)

So here's a quick recap of what it's like to party with the greatest minds in the universe: Drinks spilled... Magic happened... Arses grabbed asses... Hoops were shot (No shirts and skins - just coats and ties - and come to think of it, they were more like bricks than hoops).

Since returning like a pumpkin-clad Cinderella from the Nobel Laureate cocktail party, I've been bombarded with questions about what I learned from this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (and I can say once because I probably won't be invited back). I've compiled the most illuminating pearls of wisdom gleaned (OK, overheard) from the evening - and I'm passing them along so you too can absorb the greatness thirdhand:

"I've been to Buckingham Palace to meet the Queen. The wallpaper needs work. Just awful... Ghastly."

-- I study baboons. What do you do?
-- I'm on the same intellectual level as a baboon, so we'll get along just fine.

"You teach high school physics? You, sir, are doing God's work, and I don't even believe in God."

-- So I understand things like tree rings, but how can you tell if the rock is 3 billion years old?
-- Oh, you've never seen the rings on the inside of a rock? They're right there - all 3 billion of them.

"The Amazing Randy was great... but I think the Fabulous Larry was may have had a slight edge."

-- Wait, I don't think I follow - they have transsexuals in your Montessori school?
-- We call them friends.
-- OK, friends. But they're students? In Montessori? How old does that make these friends?
-- No, the students aren't trannies - that conversation ended a while ago, keep up.

"I guess if you're an atheist, you're not going to go to hell for being a dirty old man."

Yeah, your IQ just increased exponentially, and now you're wishing you could retake the SAT and go into cosmology, right? Oh! Oh! Pick me! Pick me! I can answer that: Resounding YES! Here's why:

At the Origins Symposium on Monday (yes, they actually let me in - it was the public presentation), I learned that evolution doesn't necessarily naturally select for intelligence - it's just a happy by-product of our big brains - so you can rest-assured that you won't wake up one day to find that your evolved dog solving quadratic equations. Natural selection picks things that are a lot more useful - like reproductive endowments and eyesight. Makes sense to have evolved eyeballs on a planet that has a pretty big source of light, no? ... Makes even more sense to be reproductively well-endowed so you can pass on your genes, right? Well, maybe not all of you...

So if I followed along correctly, we took our one small step away from Australopithecus afarensis and made our giant leap into homo sapiens as those big brains evolved. After Monday, I'd like to think my brain was a little bigger - after the party on Saturday, not so much. That being said, I was able to formulate my own hypothesis on evolution based on my observations at the party - and I plan to test this experiment in the field in my second job as pop-cultural anthropologist and shidduch to the stars...

Nobel Laureates, cosmologists, physicists, geochemists, biologists, geneticists, cognitive psychologists and the like are endowed with big brains - but they also must be well-endowed - because they have an inordinate capacity for attracting hot wives.

Read that again: Big brains... hot wives. Big brains... hot wives. Big brains... hot wives. And here you kept looking at the size of their hands and feet! Not only were their wives HOT, they were SMART (not unlike all my single female friends).

So, a word to all the single ladies: STOP CHASING THE MEATHEAD NEANDERTHALS. Get physical with physicists! Be bionic with biologists! Develop some chemistry with chemists!

Your fellow hotties have already given the smart guys their Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval - and yet you persist in your unfulfilling attempts to reproduce with evolutionarily inferior knuckledraggers. Don't chase the rock stars - they've got nasty rashes on their big brains from the groupies! Don't chase the jocks - they've already shrunk their big brains with performance-enhancing drugs! And please, don't pollute yourselves with the Axe-body-sprayed, shaven-chested, spike-haired, popped-collared douchebags you find in bars - they don't have big brains and never did!

Be more evolved in your mating selections - because in the end, the nerds win. Big brains... hot wives!

(Clearly, if this little experiment works, I might even secure a return invitation to the next Nobel Laureate cocktail party. Hooray! And now, I will gladly make my reservations for Oslo this December where I will pick up my [ig]Nobel Prize for this contribution to the advancement of biology. Thank you.)

Posted by stacy at 09:30 PM | Permalink

For those of you scoring at home, Patrick "Flipper" Bertinelli successfully underwent his third shoulder / clavicle / upper extremity surgery in four years - the second in four months - yesterday at Arrowhead Hospital under the skilled knife of Dr. Evan Lederman, the official orthopedic surgeon of the Krewe of Helios-Arizona.

My three regular readers have been through this drill before - so we put together the following FAQ segment to answer important medical questions in small words and big type so everyone can understand...

QUESTION 1: So what's the diagnosis, Doc?
ANSWER 1: Left rotator cuff tear (not the hoped-for and less agonizing partial tear). His sentence is three weeks, 24/7 in the sling. Two weeks before he can drive. Two weeks away from work - one of which is another fabulous, unfun-filled fur-cation, compliments of the corporate overlords that brought you deck-building and Navy SEALs tryouts, neither of which will happen this time around. Oh, and a lengthy parole of physical therapy.

QUESTION 2: When is Pat going to stop racing that motorcycle?
ANSWER 2: Fortunately, this injury was NOT the direct result of Pat's racing endeavors! According to the esteemed Dr. Lederman, this "chronic" carnage of torn cartilage, bone spurs and tendon tendrils was already compromised, prior to the November '08 motorcycle crash that precipitated the clavicle in three-part disharmony. That incident was just "the straw that broke the camel's back," or rather, the unplanned evacuation that tore through Flipper's previously compromised left rotator cuff. You can file this one under "vaguely remembered skiing accident with his brother David from 10 years ago" and not a two-wheeled adventure! HOORAY!

QUESTION 3: If that's the case, why didn't Dr. Lederman fix the rotator cuff when he was in there back in November?
ANSWER 3: He didn't know it was injured. The broken collarbone was so clearly broken on the x-ray, they just went right in, plated it and sent Flipper on his way. When you hear hoofbeats, don't look for zebras - especially if there are plenty of ponies running around. As Pat began to rehab from the collarbone incident, he discovered a creepy cracking and clicking in his left shoulder. An MRI confirmed the rotator cuff injury, and prompted yesterday's surgical intervention. In his years of putting Humpty-Dumpties back together again, Dr. Lederman has had only two similar cases. It happens.

QUESTION 4: So why is hanging out in a hospital a lot like waiting at the airport?
ANSWER 4: The question is better phrased thusly: Why is hanging out in a hospital a lot like being stranded on the tarmac at the airport? We were asked to arrive at the hospital two hours prior to Pat's scheduled departure - 2:30 PM for the scheduled 4:30 surgery - this, after he'd been instructed not to eat or drink anything after 8:30 AM yesterday morning. We hustle through check-in... and wait... receive a nifty new carry-on bag courtesy of Dr. Lederman (It's kind of like a pledge-drive premium - "With the third shoulder repair, you'll receive this handsome new TOCA* duffle bag!")... and wait... Pat goes back to the pre-op area, finishes his paperwork, dons a crisp new hospital gown... and waits...

The nurse fetches me from the waiting room so I can go wait with my husband who is waiting in pre-op... and then we wait... and wait... and wait...

... and wait...

... and wait...

... and wait some more...

Oh, look, here comes Dr. Lederman - and it's 4:20 - what timing! "We've had two cases that were a little more complex than initially presented, but you're next in line... after that guy."

If you were sitting on an airplane, this is what you would have heard: "This is the Captain speaking, some weather disturbances out of Chicago have caused a little backup here today, and we're second in line for departure. Just sit tight and we'll keep you posted on our status."

... so you can wait just a little longer... though Dr. Lederman apologized profusely for the delay (both before, during and after surgery) which is more than you normally get while you're waiting on the tarmac...

So, I read my book outloud to Pat. We watch Men In Black II on his iPhone. We entertain the nurses. We learn that the 76-year-old woman in the pre-op cubby next to us was born on August 4, 1932 - AND PAT WAS BORN ON AUGUST 4, 1964! How creepy is that? (But we'll take a torn rotator cuff over a bowel re-section any day of the week). I go to the bathroom. We meet the anesthesiologist - Dr. Feel Good - who sent in his pledge of support to KJZZ-NPR this week (and even knew the phone number by heart: 480-834-5627!) I send a gratuitous text message to my friends and family updating our waiting. And it was only 5:13...

"This is the Captain speaking, I'm told by the tower that it'll be only a few minutes more. We'll have the flight attendants come through with beverage service. We appreciate your patience."

Because your patient is bored out of his mind and his stomach is making sound effects for the aliens in MIB2. If we were on an airplane, we would have been drinking heavily by now - instead we're still waiting. They don't let you get liquored up in the hospital. They just let you wait...

Finally at 6:12 PM, Dr. Lederman's long-suffering physician's assistant Amy arrives to take Pat back in to surgery. The cutting should take only a half-hour to 45 minutes, but they have to prep him, and he's got time in recovery which means door-to-floor in about 2 hours (kinda like being on an airplane!)

And so I drop off the scrip, call his folks, drive to get something to eat, charge my cell battery, ponder stopping in a local bar, decide better, make phone calls, find a wi-fi hot spot since the hospital's giving me no love, check email, pick up the scrip, return to the surgery waiting room, crack open my book - it's 7:05 ...

We leave the hospital at 9:15. Pat was understandably starving (imagine, you've stumbled off the plane, you have that stale, sticky airplane feeling and all you want is some cheesy gordito goodness from Taco Hell.) So I take him to the drive-thru - which had five cars in front of us - I offer to run in, but Pat says, "No - it shouldn't take too long. Let's just do the drive thru."

Let's just turn off the ignition right now... because we've been idling for 4 minutes and we've yet to give our order... We waited in the drive-thru for 15 minutes. We made it home at 10:08. He ate his gordito and digested while we watched a little TV. I gave him his Percocets, tied on his trusty hospital gown, affixed his ice machine and trundled him into the bed.

The wait was over, and truly, it was a weight off his shoulder.

*TOCA - The Orthopedic Clinic Association

Posted by stacy at 08:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)