Overthinking

A death-defying surfer, Michael Stipe, and a BIG BOSS walk into a bar...

A few days ago, I’m second in line to check out at Walgreens. Ahead of me is a woman in her late-fifties or so. She tells the cashier she’d like to buy a pack of American Spirit “Sky Blue” cigarettes.

The cashier and another Walgreens employee check the wall of cigarettes behind the register. They see other American Spirit colors but not Sky Blue.

“That’s really weird,” the woman says, in a mildly accusatory tone. “You always carry Sky Blue.”

The search continues for another 30 seconds or so, when I take my own look at the display. There in front of me, directly at eye level, is the missing pack.

Here is the thought process that ensues:

Should I say something? If I do, aren’t I just enabling this woman’s deadly habit? What if this is the moment she realizes that the universe wants her to stop smoking? Might I be saving her life? But if I don’t say something, will she go into a tobacco withdrawal-fueled rage because she can’t find her brand, taking out her anger on these two innocent Walgreens employees? What did they do to deserve such abuse? After all, isn’t she just going to drive to the next drug store and find the pack she wants anyway?

These were my actual thoughts. Somehow I managed to turn this mundane moment into the ethical dilemma of a lifetime. Can you imagine? I walk around like this every day!

In the end, I got over my pensiveness and pointed out the pack. Somehow the world kept on spinning.

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The Best…

…Series I Watched This Week

100 Foot Wave — Directed by Chris Smith
Streaming on Max

I can think of three times in my life when I’ve seen a place on TV and thought to myself, “I have to go there.”

One was when I saw Machu Picchu for the first time in the film The Motorcycle Diaries. Another was when TODAY visited the remote kingdom of Bhutan.

Within a few years, I crossed both of those mystical places off my list.

The third instance happened this week, when I watched 100 Foot Wave, a series about the people who surf the biggest waves in the world in Nazaré, Portugal (I watched the first season; HBO recently released a second season).

The waves there are so enormous and terrifying, they look like they’re from another galaxy. My jaw literally dropped several times as I watched Garrett McNamara and his acolytes try to navigate them on surfboards.

“I have to go there,” I thought to myself.

The series hit a sweet spot for me. Even though I’m not a surfer, I’m attracted to the spiritual experience that these obsessives have when they face nature’s most beautiful fury. I wonder to myself, How can you love doing something so much that you’re willing to die for it?

Sometimes I feel like watching them is as close as I’m going to get to having a spiritual experience myself.

But then I think back to the way I felt hiking the Inca Trail under the Peruvian sun or inhaling incense inside the Tiger’s Nest monastery, and I realize that I’m capable of spiritual moments in my own way.

Hopefully soon I’ll have the chance to feel something in Nazaré, too.

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…Album I Listened to This Week

Document (1987) — R.E.M.

I had the thought recently that I rarely hear anyone talk about the band R.E.M. anymore.

How can that be?

R.E.M. was the quintessential ’80s college rock band that amazingly transformed into a global act in the ’90s. In the process, lead singer Michael Stipe became one of the most famous artists in the world.

Their songs are iconic to rock fans my age: “Losing My Religion” and “Everybody Hurts” and “Man on the Moon” and “Drive” and “Nightswimming” and “The One I Love” and “Radio Free Europe” and so many others.

Yet when R.E.M. broke up in 2011, that was pretty much it. They’ve put out very few compilation or live albums since. They haven’t done any cash-grab reunion tours. They just seem off the radar.

But I know I’m not alone in having vivid memories connected to their music.

Age 12: I’m in Mrs. Johnson’s sixth grade classroom, trying to mimic Stipe’s gangly dance moves from the “Losing My Religion” video.

Age 15: I’m on a school bus, listening to “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” as I wonder how my awkward mind and body can possibly fit in at my new school.

Age 11: I’m away at summer camp, waking up every day to my counselor Nick playing “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine),” the song that connects him with his girlfriend from home… until she breaks up with him halfway through the summer. (He didn’t appreciate it when I pointed out the irony.)

That song came from the album Document, released in 1987. It’s the R.E.M. album I’ve kept returning to throughout my life, including this past week.

In addition to simply liking the songs, I appreciate that the band members were still striving underdogs when it came out, not yet MTV and mainstream radio darlings. Needless to say, I recommend it.

So consider this my attempt to make you think and talk about R.E.M. again — or maybe for the first time.

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…Photo I Saw This Week

Kyodo, via Associated Press Images / The New York Times

This is my new favorite photograph.

Chances are, it means nothing to you. In fact, I can think of few people who would feel anything about this photo except those who check at least two of the following boxes:

1. New York Mets fan

2. Remember the dull Mets teams of the early-2000s

3. Obsessed with Mets players from Japan

4. Own an oversized orange and blue novelty street sign that says TSUYOSHI SHINJO WAY

Of course, I check all four boxes.

The man in the photo, Tsuyoshi Shinjo, brought color into Mets fans’ lives back in 2001, with his oversized orange wristbands, his movie star charisma, and his inexplicable (but endearing) trademark hop when he caught fly balls.

As a player… eh. He was okay. But he was stylish. He was fun. He was a cartoon character/video game hero come to life, seemingly dropping from the sky one day to land on the outfield grass of Shea Stadium.

Some of us were instantly smitten. A few of us still are.

At age 51, Shinjo is still in baseball. He’s now the manager (or “BIG BOSS,” as the front of his jersey proclaims) of the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters in the Japanese Professional Baseball league. And as you can tell from this photo, he’s still got it.