Powerball isn't trying to make you happy

     Sometimes, the simplest question will help bring clarity. I wrote a column Monday celebrating the simply joy of blowing two bucks on Powerball. Then Rosemarie, a regular reader, asked this:

I enjoyed your "Surrendering to Powerball" column and will put to you a question that has long baffled me: Instead of making it more difficult to win — as they have recently done — by giving only one person (or two) a $5 million or $18 million Powerball (or Lotto or ...) prize, why not give $1 million or $6 million to 100 or 500 individuals? It would seem to invite more participants and therefore more revenue from the multiplied interested by doing this. 

A fair question. I thought about it, and answered:

The reason, I imagine, is that bigger pots draw in more players, which draws in more money. The purpose of these lotteries is not to benefit the winners — were that the case, you're right, it would make more sense to give away a thousand million dollar prizes. The purpose is to squeeze more money out of the public. Hence the one billion dollar prize.

     Evidence of the utter irrationality of humans. Because winning $1.6 billion, while no doubt an occasion for joy for the several people who won it Wednesday night, would no doubt have tremendous stresses as well, as a few regular schlebs sudden find themselves in charge of vast fortunes. It could be argued that winning a much smaller sum — say $200,000 — would provide all the bill-killing benefits, with none of the who-should-run-my-foundation? headaches, and do for hundreds if not thousands of people.

     Which means, were people thinking clearly, they'd flock to put their money down trying to win something like the Lucky Day Lotto run by the Illinois lottery, whose odds of winning a $200,000 payout are one in 1.2 million, and avoid Powerball with its 1 in 292 million odds that 44 states working in concert can't seem to win more than once every few months.
     But they're not thinking clearly, are they? They're dreaming. And while I stand by my earlier epiphany that it can be fun to snap up a ticket now and then, that doesn't change the greater truth: the purpose of Powerball is to take your money, not give money to you.

     

Fear and Loathing and Sean Penn

     A few days before Sean Penn's interview with drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera, better known as El Chapo, hit the Internet, I was talking with my younger son about gonzo journalism.
     He had asked if "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" is worth reading, and I said yes, it is: very funny, assuming you can get past all the drinking and drug use. Hunter S. Thompson's personality and style was so strong people tended to overlook the fact that he was a drug addict and alcoholic.
     Of course gonzo journalism is dated, a relic of the days when writers were the oracles, the gatekeepers. A little injecting yourself into a story can go a long way. While it can work when the subject matter is inconsequential, like the motorcycle race and district attorney's convention at the heart of "Fear and Loathing," when you have a truly important topic, gonzo journalism reveals its flaws. Nobody cares that your luggage got lost on the way to interview Vladimir Putin. I had just read "The Fight" by Norman Mailer, who goes to Zaire for the 1974 Muhammad Ali/George Foreman "Rumble in the Jungle." Mailer's ego blocks out the sun; he refers to himself in third person:

     Before the drive, they stopped, however, at Kin's Casino, and there each man lost a little at Black Jack. That was about the way Norman wanted it. He was feeling empty — the hour in the Press Room of the Memling had been no good for n'golo. To lose therefore, was a confirmation of his views on the relation of vital force to gambling. Feeling low in luck, he would just as soon squander this bad luck at the Casino...

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Not so good a time after all

Ivan Albright painted a series of self-portraits at the end of his life.

 
     To write is to err, as I say when a reader points out one of my blunders with an excess of glee. Mistakes inevitably happen when you put words together and hastily poke them in the public eye, and the writer who takes too much pleasure in another writer's gaffe is mocking someone today for something he may very well do tomorrow.
     That said, an innocent whopper showed up deep in the New York Times Monday that merits sharing. In the Arts section, page three, the "Arts, Briefly" column. Compiled by Andrew R. Chow, which means maybe he wrote it, maybe he didn't. Under the headline "Saluting David Bowie At Carnegie Hall."
     The badly-timed, unfortunately-worded opening sentence reads:
     "It's a good time to be David Bowie, below. He just celebrated his 69th birthday, released an album, "Blackstar," and has a show, "Lazarus," running off Broadway."
     Ouch. Bowie was also dead, or nearly, when the above was written, though of course the author, like the rest of us, had no idea.
     Which is worth relating, both for the rueful chuckle it might draw, and to show how little we really know of celebrities, though we pretend otherwise. We imagine them living large when, quite often, they're not. In this case, Bowie wasn't living at all. 
    My immediate thoughts on David Bowie's passing were posted here yesterday morning. But in the afternoon, polishing them for Tuesday's newspaper, I started this way:

     Of course the public never knew David Bowie was sick. A man who controlled his image so artfully, so thoroughly, who moved from one personage to another and was famous and adored for nearly half a century, well, naturally, he'd slip away without fanfare, leaving us to burst into applause to an empty stage.

     Which was the tack my colleague Rick Morrissey took, praising his silence in the face of illness, as opposed to "the compulsion to make one's cancer fight  a tent revival."  
     A sharp line. And the sort of thing that doesn't get said much, because being sick grants people license to share away, and they do, with varying degrees of tact and skill. 
     Though sharp lines also prick. Even as I was applauding Rick, I had to pause, first thinking of when my alcoholism memoir came out, and some idiot at the Tribune wrote a column saying, in essence, "Gee, where's my addiction, so I can get a book contract?" Making writing such a book seem boorish. A tarter version of the sentiment lauding Bowie for keeping mum (I responded to him with something along the lines of, "You know, Anne Frank did very well with her book, too, though I would hesitate, if I were you, from envying her publishing success too much, because there are other factors you are not considering.")
     The idea that too many are too public about being sick ignores the value of writing about illness. And it lumps together all the sick individuals posting graphic updates from their hospital rooms on Facebook with creative works like Evan Handler's novel of surviving cancer despite the ham-handed care he gets at Sloan-Kettering, "Time on Fire." I give it to every friend who gets cancer, because it's both funny and useful.
     Yes, there's a lot of that going around. But there are a lot of babies being born, yet reacting to your neighbor's infant with, "What? Another?!" is both rude and short-sighted. The world need babies, news, memoirs. First, those might be of interest to people who are not yourself, other people, with other needs and interests — bulletin: you are not the only person in the world. And second, they're obviously of value to the person writing them. And how much should a healthy person really complain about something bringing comfort to the sick? Nobody forces you to read it.
    Third, there is a general value to publicizing illness, in that it takes away stigma. People didn't talk of having cancer, not because they were being discreet, but out of shame. It was a seen as a death sentence and a personal failing. Just as gay people stepped out of the closet to demand funding for HIV research and civil rights for themselves, so people who talk about their illnesses normalize them, and remind us that sickness is part of the life, and deserves attention.
    Bowie's secrecy regarding his illness was characteristic — his art was public, his private life was, well, very private. And in this era, it was an amazing feat, one few celebrities could pull off. But like orange hair, just because it looked good on Bowie doesn't mean everyone should do the same. For instance, Roger Ebert's public battle with cancer was also characteristic, for him, perfectly in keeping with his life of elegant introspection and bracing candor, and it provided a moving denouement that in some ways was as culturally significant as his film criticism. Should he have kept it to himself, just to spare us a jarring picture in Esquire? The brutal full-face portrait was important, thought it wasn't everyone's idea of a magazine photo. 
     A writer is allowed his subject, her field of interest. For me, when I get sick, my guess is that I will try to keep it to myself, not out of reluctance to join the packed tent revival, but out of the feeling that Roger Ebert has already covered this ground, and far better than I ever could.  Of course, you never can tell what you'll do until you're there. Chicago artist Ivan Albright painted self-portraits right up to the time he died. They're hanging in the Art Institute.

David Bowie: Bottomless cool you could dance to.

     David Bowie's son confirmed that the rock star died Jan. 10 after an 18-month battle with cancer.

     David Bowie helped shape my world.
     When I was 16, I was a junior counselor at a summer camp in Ohio. We had a small turntable and just a couple records, if I recall correctly: one was Bowie's "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars." We played it continually, all summer. 
      By fall I was a Bowie fan, for his flair, the drama of his music—"Ziggy Stardust" is a dark tale of apocalypse and murder, a theme continued on "Diamond Dogs." His bleak worldview helped me navigate the self-generated crisis of adolescence. I remember coming home from high school, putting on the "David Live at Tower Philadelphia" album to the "Diamond Dogs" track, clapping on a pair of headphones and crawling under the desk to listen at full volume. 
     "This ain't rock and roll," he cried. "This is genocide!" 
     I have no idea what that meant, but it sounded good. Plus Bowie was cool, so fabulously hip that just listening to him imparted a bit of contact coolness, even to a chubby Ohio teen with a bowl haircut. 
     The album that came out when I was a senior, "Low," is not his most famous — half the songs are instrumentals, winding, jazzy Brian Eno-influenced numbers. But his "Always Crashing in the Same Car" certainly spoke to me—I wrecked both my parents' cars—and "Be My Wife" certainly did. "Sometimes I get so lonely," he sang. "Sometimes I get nowhere."
     I only saw him sing once, in 1980. He was touring for his "Berlin" album. In my recollection, he stood motionless behind a synthesizer and never so much as said, "Hello Cleveland!" True to form—he actually disliked having to perform—but also disappointing, as a fan, because Bowie was one of those rare stars, like Bruce Springsteen, who you wanted to look back at you. He never did, an artist lost in his art or, maybe, just too aloof. 
     Bowie kept putting out hit albums. "Heroes" was another one of those songs that was a soundtrack to my life. "You, you can be queen. And I, I'll drink all the time..."
    His star kept getting bigger. "Let's Dance" was elegant and sinuous, showing a song could be a hit and have a beat while avoiding the idiocy of disco. And then he just went away, living on some island, it was said, with his wife, the Somali fashion model  Iman.
    Bowie acted in movies—"The Man Who Fell to Earth"—that were strange and wonderful. 
    In recent years, he returned. New music. A retrospective of his life that toured world museums, a living scrapbook, tribute and not coincidentally, record promotion. He always was the consummate businessman. People lined up for hours to see it at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
    I did too, not so much in tribute to Bowie or my teenage self, but because my oldest son, Ross, loves him.  The boys grew up watching "Labyrinth," a kid's movie that had Bowie playing a goblin king to a teenage Jennifer Connelly and the Muppets.  He did that sort of off-beat thing—he was cool enough to pull it off, whether singing "Little Drummer Boy" as a duet with Bing Crosby, of all people, or recording  Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. 
     I remember Ross at 16, playing "Ziggy Stardust" and giving me one of those "What is dad making of this?" looks. I said, "Given that I had that album memorized, word for word, when I was 16, and can sing it for you now, if you're looking for me to be shocked, I'm not."  And then I began the album's first song,  "Five Years." 
     "Pushing through the marketplace...so many mothers sighing," I warbled, before he begged me to stop.
     Just Friday we were in Vintage Vinyl in Evanston—records are back; my kids buy 'em. They had the brand new Bowie album, "Blackstar," which came out Jan. 8, his 69th birthday. I held it up for him to admire,  though, at $38, that's all he did. 
    "I can get it online," he said. 
    So Bowie, the man, ended his story Jan. 10, to the sorrow of his friends and family. But the musician, artist and cultural figure will continue, so long as there are teenagers looking to see their turmoil reflected somewhere, and adults hoping to borrow a bit of bottomless cool and something good to dance to.

Surrendering to Powerball

     I didn't win the Powerball lottery Saturday night.
     Neither did you. Nobody did.
     Shocking, I know, because, well, we had our hopes, didn't we?
     I'm still surprised that I played, twice. So $4 of that a $1.3 billion being given away, maybe, Wednesday is mine.
     Or was.
     I'm a little embarrassed to admit I played. Mr. Logic. Mr. Rationality. Voluntarily paying the Stupid Tax. It's almost as bad as visiting a palmist.
     Well, like any sinner, I have my excuses.
     The first time was a few weeks ago, and a machine made me do it. I popped into the 7-Eleven on Shermer Road to buy a Sun-Times — my wife had taken ours to work. There was a new machine set up by the doughnut case. Designed, no doubt, to relieve the endless pressure on the clerk who has to sell both tickets and Slurpees. I had $2; why not try out the machine? It worked.

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"They have no problem talking to a robot." Meet Paro

     I am not what is called an "early adopter." I have not summoned an Uber car, though I've ridden in one conjured up by colleagues, and I've downloaded the Uber app on my iPhone, inching toward the big moment when I shift from licensed cabbies to piecework drivers.
     And I didn't pet a Paro until Friday, a dozen years after the robotic baby harp seal was created and started showing up at nursing homes and hospitals, and long after it became something of a cultural touchstone, parodied on "The Simpsons" and well-covered in the media.
     Still, it was news to me—I had stopped by the Japanese External Trade Organization's Chicago office, to pick up some background information for a trip to Japan in March for Mosaic, the London web site of medicine and science. Since I'm writing about kawaii, or cuteness,  my contact at JETRO,  Robert Corder, thought I might enjoy meeting Paro.
     And I did, if "enjoy" is the word you can use to describe the slightly vertiginous feeling you get when you glimpse the unfamiliar future hurtling toward us.

     Paro is not a toy. It is a $6,000 robotic baby harp seal that has audio, light, touch and temperature sensors, microprocessors. It bobs its head, looks at you like an inquisitive pup, practically begging to be stroked. It can bat its long eyelashes, and coo and trill in an appealing, lifelike way. 
       "They actually recorded baby harp seals, in Canada, to get the sounds just right," said Corder. "The shape itself, you have to hold it." 
     I admit that it is something easier to pick up than put down, and we ended up passing it to each other as we talked. The robots are made in Japan, but the company selling them, PARO Robotics, is based right here in Itasca. 
     Paro was designed by Takanori Shibata, a Japanese engineer who wanted to develop a robot that would be useful to people.  At first he considered making a robotic cat or dog, but people tend to prefer one or the other, and had pre-set expectations about how cats and dogs should look and behave.  On the other hand, not many people have held a baby harp seal.  Paro was approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a Class 2 medical device in 2009, and is found in hospitals and treatment centers around the world. The seals are useful motivators when dealing with autistic children, for instance.
    "They use it for kids who have ADHD, Asperger's and autism," Corder said. "Those kids can have a hard time connecting, so they teach them to talk to Paro. They have no problem talking to a robot. The teachers will use him as a teaching tool. They use him for breaks. 'Let's take a break and you can have some Paro time.'" 
     In retirement homes, Corder said, Paro not only comforts lonely seniors, but lures them into social interaction. 
    "The people come out of their apartments, come out of their rooms, down to the common area," he said. " They don't bring it to your room. So if you want to have time with him, you have to come out of your apartment. It's a whole strategic use." 
     I felt like a farmer gawping at a Model T, and what made me believe this sort of thing is going to grow bigger and bigger, and not just be a passing fad, is that I kept looking at Paro, which was batting his eyes and cooing and almost demanding attention, instead of looking at Corder, who is just another human being. 
    That no doubt troubles some, and I admit I had qualms floating around myself. Should not every dementia patient and troubled child have human caregivers and live comfort animals? Sure, in an ideal world. And a pony for the children. But in our real world, with an exploding population of elderly with dementia, caregivers will be a scarce commodity, and if comfort is found in robots such as Paro—and it is, studies around the world show—where is the harm?
    Paro made me think of our small dog, Kitty, and another initial, half-hearted mental reservation was, naturally, this robotic seal would not really love its owner the way a dog does. But that love is also a projection. I just think Kitty loves me, because I want her to and she seems to. Just like Paro does.  

Okay, I'm stupid too....

     Yeah, I bought a Powerball ticket. Friday, on the way to the train. 
     Stupid, I know. Because I'm not winning. Nobody is winning, at least nobody has for the past nine weeks. Which is why the jackpot is $800 million. The media focuses on that enormous, nearly-a-billion buck payout, and not the fact that you could have bought every single ticket sold for the past two months and change and still not won.
     But I bought a ticket anyway.
     Why? I suppose because I was hungry, which might sound strange. I had a small salad from home for lunch, now it was late afternoon, I popped into a Corner Bakery. I didn't want to buy a 600 calorie muffin. So I bought the smallest thing in the store, a 99 cent ruggalleh (a little cookie-sized square pastry, for you non-Jews).  It cost $1.10 with our highest-in-the nation tax. 
    So a buck plus shot to momentarily bat back hunger, and no chance at all for the Mount Everest of cash. That softened me up. So when the hand-drawn sign saying "$800 million jackpot!" or some such thing, in the window of the convenience store in the Civic Opera building caught my eye, I had just spend almost as much on next to nothing, and I knew I had two singles in my pocket. 
     What the hell? Why not?
     Lots of reasons. A sucker's bet. A vote for innumeracy, for failing to grasp the reality of long distances, long spans of time, long odds. The odds of winning the Powerball lottery are the same as the odds of picking one person at random from the population of the United States of America and having the person you randomly select be Barack Obama. I played the Powerball a month ago, because they had set up a machine at the 7-11 in Northbrook and I wanted to try the new machine out, and I didn't hit one of the six numbers you need to match. It's like setting out on a journey to Alpha Centauri and making it to Lincolnwood. 
      The glib line is that you are paying for the dream, and I did think of what I'd do if I won the money. Ready for something sad? My dreams of avarice were a new driveway and siding on the house. 
     The truth is, even those who win, which I won't, half the time end up wrecking their lives with the money. They were happier without it. Just as money can't buy a personality or a heart, as Bruce Rauner proves, so it can't buy happiness either.
     Sigh. So putting down two bucks on the same irrational stupidity that leads people to anti-vax theories and the belief that space aliens are watching us, and airing my small-bore dreams of adequacy in the bargain.  Chasing the same empty dream that turns cooing babies into Bruce Rauner, forming his fingers into pyramids and cackling over his piles of gold.
    Well, honestly, just to see that trait laid bare is worth two bucks. And picking up shirts on Saturday morning, the dry cleaner and I had a pleasant Powerball exchange. And my youngest and I passed five minutes actually talking to each other about how we'd spend all that dough. So I did get my two bucks worth after all.