It was a casual community pool. A long one. Full size.
My friend Scott challenged me to a race. A sprint. One length of the pool, first one to the wall. No goggles.
We were equally fit and both completely lacking in proper swimming technique. But we also shared a healthy competitiveness, and a history of head-to-head duels in various sports. It was always close between us.
We waited for two old ladies to power-walk out of our lanes. As soon as they were out of our way, we counted down and launched ourselves off the wall.
We swam as if being chased by a shark. Tactlessly. Splashily. Forgetting to kick.
I held the lead by half a body. As I swam, I imagined all the sunbathers sitting up and watching us competing for an Olympic medal.
Ten yards from the finish, an icy burn shot down my legs. I lost all my power. My body stopped listening to my brain.
I looked over my shoulder to check my lead. Scott had his head down. As I yanked my emergency brake, he plowed forward.
Scott wasn’t sure he’d won, but I was. He out-touched me by a hand’s length.
I punched the water and looked at the crowd. There was no crowd.
And I was glad for that, because I had absolutely blown it. If I had only fought through the pain, kept my head down, and willed myself to the finish line (like Scott did), I would have won the race. Instead, I searched for a reason to give up. I didn’t exactly find one, but the search alone was lethal.
If you didn’t get it, this whole story is a metaphor. For success. Or I guess I should say failure.
Don’t let the Scotts of the world out-reach you to the wall. Don’t quit, like I did.
Cliches are hackneyed, overused expressions. But that doesn’t make them true. Allow me to demonstrate.
1. ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE
Anything? I’m still having some difficulties making time-travel possible.
2. WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU MAKES YOU STRONGER
Like the lion that bit off my leg? My newfound courage from having been partially devoured is hardly strong enough to overcome the fact that I have no leg, because that fucking lion just ate it. I’m definitely still alive, and I’m definitely weaker.
3. BETTER LATE THAN NEVER
To drunk-dial my grandma? That, it’s probably better to never do.
4. GOOD THINGS COME TO THOSE WHO WAIT
Jack shit comes to those who wait. People who aren’t in action say this to make themselves feel better about being LAZY.
5. YOU CAN’T TEACH AN OLD DOG NEW TRICKS
Not with that attitude.
6. THERE’S A FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING
Except for the things that don’t happen, or should never. There’s no first time for climbing the gate of the White House, naked, with nothing but an Ak-47 assault rifle. I’m all about trying new things, but crack is not one of them.
7. STICKS AND STONES MAY BREAK MY BONES BUT WORDS WILL NEVER HURT ME
What hurts more, a thrown stone, or “I don’t love you anymore”? I rest my case.
8. OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND
I can think of plenty of things I can neither see nor get out of my mind. A million dollars in cash. A vacation in Greece. And my old friends I never see anymore–I think about them all the time.
9. DON’T JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER
WTF else am I supposed to judge it by? Oh, I’ll just read the whole thing cover to cover in the bookstore and then decide if I want to buy it.
I won The Listserve Lottery. Here is the exact e-mail I sent to 23,025 people:
I told an eighth grader I’d won the Listserve lottery. Her advice was: “They’re strangers. It doesn’t matter what they think.” I thought that was a good point for about an hour before I realized she was wrong.
There’s a difference between your opinion mattering and me letting it change how I express myself, in any way.Thoughts have intrinsic value. They are untarnished by Likes or Retweets. They float through the miasma of the universe, or wherever thoughts go.It DOES matter what you think, even if it doesn’t (necessarily) matter to ME.
Not only does it matter, it’s the MOST IMPORTANT THING.
Vishnu Schist matters to the boatman at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. He thinks the rock is God’s flesh, practically.
Poles matter to the blind skier. He thinks: “I’m already blind and skiing; for Christ’s sake, help me out with some poles!”
Pickled or fresh? The type of jalapeño I prefer on my Prawn Deluxe burrito matters to the burrito-rolling man.
It all matters.
WE all do.
__
My biggest fear is not reaching my full potential. Not mining every morsel of me. If my dreams are too small I’ll limit myself. Fear, false hope, and expectations will creep in and block my path to self-actualization. But if my dreams are planet-sized, orbiting through an infinitude of lost thoughts, at least I’ll get to find out. A goldfish grows to fit its bowl. Pardon me–to fit its tank.
My thoughts guide me on a tour of the Quantum field, a New-Age-Neverland, Shangri-La, McDonald’s-When-You’re-Seven-Years-Old kind of field. I’ll stay here, I think I will, cultivating excellence, spreading joy, and caring about the thoughts of strangers. Not to steer my ship for me, but to be the stars that move around me.
__
It’s 4 AM and I love being alive. I love the earth and all of its inhabitants. I fall asleep laughing and wake up smiling. Life is so perfect I could drink it with two straws. Love is so amazing I could take a hot bath in it. And my fingers would never get wrinkly. If you don’t feel how I feel, JUST START, and then you will. This is some raw, unadulterated, 100% organic BLISS I am experiencing right now (I’m sober, I promise), and I flat out refuse to let it fade. Ever. I’ll stay here, I swear I will, being intensely, intrepidly UNREASONABLE in defense of FUN and JOY, mine and yours. The dreams, thoughts, and prayers of strangers across the globe form constellations in the sky. At least one of them looks like a prawn.
Please visit me at:
* FOLEY SPEAKS [DOT] [COM] *
I have a lot of writing on there—travel stories, essays, humor, commentary, etc. And some other stuff. Enjoy!
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Instagram: @daxfoley
Twitter: @foleyspeaks
My name is David Axelrod, but you can call me Dax.
1: Roll up the cuffs of my pants—unevenly, so as to make it look “natural.”
2: Eat only vegan; keep eyes peeled for organic leeks, seitan, and whole grains (locally grown).
3: Dress up in the most flamboyant costume I can find; parade through the streets. Embellish with boxed sangria. Is that Pucci blouse on sale?
4: Debate the future of the internet with other people whose best guess is as good as–or way worse–than mine. Brainstorm names for startups that will never exist: Jubalee, SmashCorn, Huupla, Gimlit: “imagine Tumblr and Pinterest had a lovechild. We could easily pick up half a mil in seed funding.”
5: Drop acid in Golden Gate park; frolick barefoot in mud; befriend homeless Alcatraz escapees; repeat step 4.
6: Wear vintage keffiyeh (rags), enough bracelets to cover whole forearm, and strappy canvas rucksack (in the neo-postmodern-hipser-tradition).
Deciding where to take Dennis on his visit to North Korea was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. Gulags? Aquarium? Uranium enrichment plant? I hope he forgives me for not showing him the centrifuges, but we had been training that dolphin to “crash the boards” for three months.
We have so much in common. Take our hair, for example. Everyone’s always talking about it—his with the different colors, mine guido-style like Pauly D’s from Jersey Shore. We feed off of that energy. Not to mention we both have our nipples pierced.
Our date was really, really special. Yeah, we talked about basketball and politics a bit, but I wanted to get to know him as the gentle giant he is. So we got hammered on sake and he explained all of his tattoos. I took him back to my palace and we watched Double Team on BluRay. That’s what I call diplomacy.
I’ve said it from the beginning: I need someone who can clap robotically for eight consecutive minutes, at least. Watching Dennis clapping so vigorously at the exhibition game, I almost forgot he was American. I promised him that if I ever nuked the U.S., Chicago wouldn’t get touched. He laughed. Well, it was more of a snort.
I didn’t want to send Dennis home, but I knew I had to. It kills me to know that I might never see his studded lips again. I gave him an autographed copy of my manifesto and told him to read it whenever he gets lonely. He gave me his pink scarf and told me to smell it whenever I get horny.
The time we spent together was so rewarding. I wouldn’t trade it for Seoul in ashes. Watching Worm defend me in the press makes me miss him almost more than I miss the Eternal President. We are truly kindred spirits. People call us an unlikely couple. No. We’re just two freaks who understand that offense gets the glory, but defense wins the game.
Time is running out on Dennis’s 1996 wedding veil. I’m currently the highest bidder, but there’s no Buy-It-Now, and I’m worried about snipers. It would break my heart to lose the auction. I’d be so upset; I’d have no choice but to nullify the armistice.
One thing is for sure: no one can nullify my love for Dennis Rodman. To discredit our friendship would be a crime against humanity. Trust me, I know. I’m hoping I find clarity in his absence. And by clarity I mean slaves.
I’m proud of you for having such a good job, and making so much money. Keep it up!
But at least admit that you’re a total sell-out. You’re clearly only in it for the money. That’s what a sell-out is.
*Ah, shit. I’m being a hater again.
Are there any open positions at your firm? Bank. Whatever. For a freelance poet?
*Wait a second. I’d hate that shit.
But sometimes people have to do things they hate. Especially if they want to get rich
That’s bullshit! Why does it have to be like that?
*STFU and work harder.
Money isn’t everything.
“People with no money act like money isn’t everything.” – Drake
Besides, if I worked on Wall Street, I wouldn’t have any time for calisthenics and collage making.
You work very hard and I respect you. I also expect you to buy the drinks whenever we hang out. But you can’t look at me with pity while you buy the drinks. That ruins it. You have to pretend like there’s a chance I might buy them, even though there’s no chance.
Nevermind. We’ll never hang out. You don’t have time. You work too much.
Here’s a problem: The first to sin is the clergy,
The first to be forgiven is the most unworthy,
And the hungriest people are the last to eat,
We claim peace in a siege of catastrophe,
Feed on rigmarole, lies, and blasphemy.
Withdraw from injustice like a cash machine.
So many travesties…drunk drivers, dead passengers,
Bloodstained theater walls and schoolhall massacres,
Afterward, we offer prayers for the casualties,
I guess before we were praying too casually.
What can one man do to stop a tragedy after all?
Even after all the floodwater drains we won’t know.
We want to show we care so we change our cover photos?
That’s not enough; we know so,
Yet we act tough like bozos,
Ignore the homeless people
On the block where we shop for more clothes,
And even if you gave some change from your pocket
To a beggar who caught your eye while you were walking by,
It wouldn’t make you an upright citizen–
You probably did it just to feel munificent.
False intent, foolish pride, same difference.
Whoso will be noble will act no different when
No one’s watching than they do when the mob is marching.
Poisonous hate seeps, creeps into human hearts.
Who’s gonna keep the peace? It’s such a ruthless art.
Who’s gonna be the next Mufasa, Muhatma,
Moonwalker, Mr. Obama from Mumbasa?
Courage is rare; cowardice is well done,
Too much beef in the air, at least I smell some,
So if your friends violate your code of conduct
Will you dare to call ‘em out, or become part of the problem?
Will you speak for yourself, or stand idle…
While wannabe prophets preach violence in the name of the Bible?
Xenophobia or whatever, hope you remember…
Love is the only thing that lasts forever.
When things fall apart, love puts ‘em back together,
When you can’t find the words you’ll be fine with those four letters.
It’s always there to uplift and inspire
Still, liars revile persons and spew lewd subversive verses too,
They tear the world down with crude destructive urges, Do
They ever sieze the moment? No, too busy snatching purses!
Personally, when I feel hurt, or worse, I say these words:
Life is not a blessing and a curse, it’s just a blessing.
NORMAL: If you use Instagram but don’t actually choose a filter, the obvious question is: why did you use Instagram in the first place? It’s like you were desperate to get on the field but when the coach called your number you didn’t even have your helmet on. Perhaps you were making a statement about the art of artlessness, the technique of no technique? Highly doubtful. Normal filter = normal person = Weak Sauce City mayoral candidate. In other words, you’re scared of commitment.
AMARO: You know how in the Victorian era women were considered more beautiful for having fair skin? If you rock Amaro, you’re obvs overdosing on either pride, prejudice, or both. You’re cocky and racist. Your aversion to pigment and saturation reveals your propinquity for the supernatural; you make faces turn pale like the ghosts that hibernate in your subconscious. Your spirit animal is a baby pig. And since you probably didn’t even bother looking at the other 16 filters, it’s clear you make rash and impulsive decisions and are thus highly prone to superficial injuries.
RISE: …Like the sun that didn’t in your heart this morning. You may not know it yet, but you suffer from severe depression. There you go again, denying it. You’re pathological. You soften the contrast in your photo to hide the contrast in your mind. Unfortunately, you can’t brighten someone’s day by playing “Yellow” by Coldplay and saying “Look, I wrote you a song,” yet that’s the type of buffoonery you pull in all of your personal relationships, which is why they all inevitably go to shit.
HUDSON: A moderate filter that rarely impresses nor disappoints. You’d rather be average than risk failure, which is why you always obey orders and drive with your hands at 10:00 and 2:00. You wish you could break free from the shackles of mediocrity, but whenever you try it’s obvious that you were frequently spanked as a child and are self-conscious about the size of your feet. Your favorite chemical element is titanium and you believe in the power of your dreams, which are usually about bunnies.
X-PRO II: I’m scared to go near you. You know what you want and you’re not afraid to go after it. I saw your uber-badass photo with X-Pro-II. Those tones were just too bold for an ordinary Instographer. Only a rogue with a chip on their shoulder would dare to choose it. And that’s how you go through life. The rebel. I must say, though, the fact that you went with X-Pro over the even harsher contrast of Lo-Fi gives away the fact that you’re the youngest sibling and used to get picked on by the older kids.
SIERRA: Faint bluegrass melodies and ocean breezes, crackling amplifiers perched on boardwalk benches. This citrus synergy you exude through every pore, along with the musty stench of piss-stained station wagons, gin and ginger ale. Since you live out of a tent on the California coast (or wish you did), it’s obvious to everyone that you shun society and appeal to some unattainable hippie ideal. Your photos are bright like your mood and washed unlike your jeans. Your mother misses you dearly. Excuse me for saying it, but do consider ringing her every once in a while, just to let her know you’re okay.
LO-FI: Don’t even get me started. Total attention whore. Standing on the bar flashing the crowd…Two minutes later you’re on the corner hooking for cab money. You choose notoriety over clarity and self-fulfillment and fail to achieve even that. The lack of detail in your photographs reflects your poverty of real confidence. You probably can’t tell the difference between a Givenchy gown and a Señor Frogs tank top. Leave now.
EARLYBIRD: You’re not fooling anyone with the whole “early” thing; you don’t even show up on time to your own birthday party. Your photos, like your deductive reasoning ability, everything metal you own, and the crack of your ass, are rusty. Although you might “get” the proverbial “worm,” that worm can’t replace the ambition you disastrously misplaced.
SUTRO: You’re the Sweeney Todd of Instagram users. Your photos are dark but, regrettably, not ominous. They’re gothic shit-storms. And although you are probably very sharp mentally, you are shyer and more socially inept than the goddamn Steppenwolf. Here’s two Xanny bars. Chew them. And easy on the eyeliner.
TOASTER: Cool. You chose the filter that makes it look like your camera lens just got back from Afghanistan. What can I discern from this? Only that you would rather resurrect Bin Laden than take a picture that doesn’t suck donkey. Boom toasted.
BRANNAN: You possess all three Deathly Hallows. You are Darth Vader’s father. You are fluent in fifteen languages. You have a footlong cock. You are Achilles, but when your mother Thetis dipped you into the river Styx she was holding you by the hair, and when that hair grew out you did what anybody would do and cut it, so actually now you are completely invulnerable, even on your heels. Anyway, you don’t always drink beer, but when you do, you don’t give a fuck what kind of beer it is—you just want to party.
INKWELL: A.K.A. Black n’ White, in which you see things, or try to. Some would say you over-simplify. In fact, you flourish in the gloomy garden of grey, reveling in every shade, in the mundane and miraculous alike. You went with something classic because you wanted to preserve a classic moment. You’re so focused on the past that you fail to appreciate the perpetual present. Do you wear a poodle skirt to your ballroom dancing class, too? It’s like you took a train ride to Pleasantville just because Mr. Insta and Mrs. Gram offered you a free ticket. So impressionable you are. Your photo would make more sense if Jesse James was in it, but, sorry, he died in 1882. Inkwell is the limousine of filters: a pitiful anachronism. Be here now.
WALDEN: As in Thoreau, comma, Henry David. Lima beans in neat rows, a ripple in the lake of destiny, yadda yadda. Your want your photos to look warm and sunny. Instead, they look like decoration on the walls of a 24-hour diner in Pierre, South Dakota. The brightness of your pictures mirrors your cheery optimism, but bestows a nostalgic Dharma-Bum tinge on your life, plagued by missed opportunities. You bubble with youthful exuberance, whirling through nature like a dervish in Constantinople, or a balloon in the sky, or just-flushed toilet water in a toilet—but you haven’t a nickel in your pocket, or shaved in three months and that’s nasty.
HEFE: If the H were a J, this filter would mean “boss” in Spanish, and you would be a Mexican magnate (Slim?) or Colombian cocaine connoisseur (Escobar?). But it isn’t. It’s an H, which stands for “half,” which stands for how much of your photos are still distinguishable without the viewer having to squint and/or boost the brightness on their iPhone to 96%. By choosing Hefe, the orphaned lovechild of Brannan and Kelvin, you exhibit noble patience. You explore all options carefully before choosing; you deliberate; you’re a perfectionist; you drive yourself crazy with it sometimes. Your spirit animal is a koala and you are allergic to penicillin.
VALENCIA: A perennial favorite. Nice balance. Not too extreme. Choosing Valencia is like playing basketball against the Sacramento Kings or chess against yourself; it’s an easy victory. Step back into the blue tee-box and see if you can still hit the fairway.
NASHVILLE: Walden tempered by Hudson, strummed on a vintage cherry-sunburst Les Paul. You wish you were a rock star. In reality, you have three nipples.
1977: These things happened in 1977: 1. The rings of Uranus were discovered. 2. Somalia declared war on Ethiopia. 3. Elvis Presley died. 4. Kanye West was born. Why do any of these things matter? I don’t know because I wasn’t alive in 1977 and there’s a 77% chance that you weren’t either. This malfunctioning time machine of a filter is much more John Cusack hot tub than H.G. Wells classic, which is why when you use it, your photos stink. Speaking of stinking, your breath smells like 1977. Put a filter on that halitosis.
You no longer exist, but everyone is still talking about you. Nicely done.
What’s the truth about the calendar? You got everyone in a stink about the apocalypse. The end of the world as we know it. Indeed, your astronomical acumen is well documented and quite impressive. But there’s still a couple things I don’t understand.
I gather the Long Count Calendar is comprised of baktuns, periods of 144,000 days, or a little over 394 years. According to your snazzy sun dial, we’re presently hanging loose in baktun 13. Now, I’m no mathematician, but I slid some beans around on my abacus and calculated that, according to your supposedly unrivaled arithmagical processes, the earth is barely over 5000 years old. Oh, that’s funny, because when was your civilization on the come-up? About 2000 BC? Oh I see what you did there. You said, we are the world. Before us, there was no world. The clock started when the first Mayan baby was…
Eaten?
I know what I’ll do. I’ll tidy up my affairs. I’ll take care of my business. I’ll pray “The Mayans” weren’t “right” because you KNOW how privy CANNIBALS can be to STARGAZING. Lock your doors! Ring the alarm! And you call yourself a civilization!
What about dinosaurs, huh? Were they on your calendar? Did you pencil them in? What about the Pleistecene era? Hello? Never heard of it? Oh sure, you got a good long look at the stars. You “predicted” the “future.” You said, “Yo, check this out. I can’t say for sure but…I’m just putting this out there…end of Bak-13, just nothing, you know?”
All you did was play with stones; that’s how I know you were just a bunch of stoners. Sitting around the campfire, passing the peace pipe, procrastinating on your Astro homework. “Mr. E says we need baktun 14 by Friday. We’re screwed! WAIT. I’ve got a plan…”
Spread a few rumors. Threaten to cook a couple big-wigs calling the shots at Chichen Itza. I see how it is. Mo’ baktun, mo’ problems.
And now look. Everyone’s talking about the Mayan “prophecy.” I see right through you. There was never any prophecy. You never said anything about what was going to happen when the calendar ended. Why bother, anyway? Slash-n-burn agriculture? You thought that shit was sustainable? Your greatest accomplishment is a calendar that just STOPS. You’re a prizefighter famous for throwing in the towel. You were hot for a while, Maya, but you fell off. Your calendar ended a looooonnnnngg time ago.
I’m not going to sit around hoping that you made a mistake. Praying that you miscalculated. You knew a little something about constellations. You built some tight pyramids. I’m not on your calendar in 2013? You haven’t been on my calendar since 6th grade when I was forced to study your Yucatan ass. Other than your half-baked celestial blackout “hypothesis,” your only lasting contribution to humanity is as inspiration for the decorative woodwork on the walls of my local Chipotle restaurant.
1. Don’t do things just because you don’t know what else to do.
2. Don’t act like you don’t know what you want and can’t make up your mind. You DO know what you want: you don’t want to make up your mind.
3. Stick to what is immediate and right in front of you.
4. You are not your parents.
5. One day you will (probably) have children. Be how you will want them to be.
6. Alleviate past regret by avoiding future regret. Live your face off. Sledgehammer to obstacles.
7. Accept help. Couches. Food. Love. Money. Take it and say thanks. Pay it forward later.
8. Stop being such a whiney bitch. That’s not helping anything.
9. Colossians 3:23. New testament, old testament, I don’t really care just show me the wisdom and put the money in the bag.
10. Stop comparing yourself to other people. This should really be number one.
11. Watch less TV. You will be surprised how much better you get at everything else.
12. Everyone always says, “Do what you love.” If that’s not working for you try, “do what you’re best at.”
13. Make a lot of stuff and give it away for free. The making will show you the way.
14. Don’t go to graduate school because you’re scared, embarrassed, confused, or wishing you were still in college. Only go to grad school if you know you want to be a _________.
15. Cultivate a healthy lifestyle now. Don’t wait until you’re old and fat not to be fat.
16. Get advice from people who are barely older than you. Often times they know better than really old, fat people.
17. Be happy for, not jealous of, your peers when good things happen to them, or don’t expect anyone to be happy for you when you find your lucky penny.
18. Resumes are (mostly) a stupid fucking waste of time. If you want a job, go find the people who hire people and impress them with speech and action. You know what I call cover letters? Emails.
19. Hang out with people who hustle harder than you.
20. Keep a wad of cash around. Huge mood-booster and motivator just to look at.
Twenty-something and have some advice to share? Leave a comment and add to the list.
I recently passed an old schoolmate of mine on the street. We are Facebook friends. I know all about her life. I know about her vacation to Bora Bora, I know about her long-distance relationship, I know about her job at J.P. Morgan, I know her family tree. If we had any interest in speaking to each other we would probably have a lot to talk about. But neither of us has any interest. We never will. After an awkward double take and pause in which we both confirmed each other’s identity, we parted ways. Not a single word was spoken.
We are facebook friends, but we are not friends. What is a facebook friend? Someone you met once. Some bundy that you used to know. It doesn’t make sense to me that I could keep such close tabs on a former acquaintance yet have no desire ever to speak to them again. I will go on knowing about you—without knowing you—forever.
I could defriend you. You could defriend me. We don’t. Why? Because each of us gains some perverse pleasure from virtually eavesdropping on the other. This is the driving mechanism of the platform. Facebook stalking is really just facebook using. There is nothing to do on facebook other than stalk and be stalked. Then again, it’s not exactly stalking if the stalkee allows it…but it’s still weird.
Can we talk about this? We’re not interacting with each other or sharing with each other; we’re spying on each other. Our real-life relationship ended years ago. Now, the majority of my facebook friends might as well be strangers. Whatever benefit I get from snooping through their photo albums is no different than the benefit I get from snooping through the albums of someone I have never met (their friends). We’re looking for something. We’re comparing. We’re seeing how our lives stack up against others’. We know it’s foolish; we know it almost always makes us feel shitty about ourselves; we do it anyway.
And we want people to look at us, Like our statuses, and tell us they think we’re cool, because we care so pathetically much about what other people think of us. The facebook newsfeed is a sewer of vainglory. Sometimes you can find useful or fascinating videos, articles or opinions, but most of the time it boils down to people looking for others to commiserate with their pain or loss, to be excited about what they’re excited about, or, most commonly, to show off. After all, it’s not enough just to have fun. You have to prove that you had it. You have to make other people jealous that you had it. And if you didn’t have fun, if you got robbed or stabbed or dropped your iPhone in the toilet or something unfortunate happened to you, you have to tell everyone so that you find someone to feel sorry for you because if you don’t you might never get over it!
Am I being too cynical? On a more positive note, here are some of my personal favorite types of facebook statuses:
The itinerary status. “SFO–>LAX–>NYC–>PARIS! Catch ya on the flipside!” This is when I’m supposed to think “I don’t travel enough. I want to go to Paris! I need more money to travel to Paris more. I need a better job so I can make more money and travel to Paris. I am a Francophile. I love baguettes.”
The Wise-Man Say. A Chinese proverb, a quote from Socrates, a supposedly inspiring nugget of wisdom, to which I won’t stutter to respond, “Wow, [Truly Enlightened Being] really understands the innerworkings of the soul and the complexities of the mind. What a truly enlightened being!”
The Sports/Politics status. “Pujols! Yesss! Safe!!!!!” or “The next President of the United States: Mitt Romney. Get used to it!!!” Yes, you are entitled to your opinion, but what I really don’t give is a shit.
Let me not forget the people who MUST be first to report the news. They drop RIP’s while the doctor is still checking the pulse. Who is your source? Tell me! Tell me the truth, or I’ll tell you a lie: your up-to-the-second knowledge of current events impresses me.
Take your trivia to Twitter. At least on Twitter, virtual thinking-out-loud, cheap puns and shameless self-tooting of horns is the whole point. The difference is Facebook’s Like system. If at least one person does not Like my facebook status within one hour of posting it, I’ll delete it. I simply cannot swallow the embarassment of being unLiked, of not a single person laughing at my joke. On Twitter, everything goes into the vacuum. At best you’ll get a Retweet, perhaps a Favorite. If one measly tweet goes uncirculated, I’ll still be able to sleep at night. Besides, Twitter is one-sided. You chose to follow me. If you don’t like my tweets, unfollow me. Facebook friendships are two-ways contracts. We’re supposed to be friends. If you don’t like my status, I’m a loser.
There’s something really hopeless about the care with which we curate our e-images. Even those who resist facebook, say, by refusing (rather than neglecting) to upgrade to the Timeline feature, do it consciously; their rebellion against the pervading egotism is in itself an ego-driven act. If you resist the Instagram obsession by posting a photo with #nofilter, your resistance doesn’t make you impartial to the trend, it proves that you adhere to it.
I think if you are truly cool, you just are. You don’t need to be reassured by the little light blue Facebook thumb. I really don’t mean this as a scathing rebuke. I participate. I am a perpetrator. I’m just fascinated and perturbed by what it has become, and how Millenials, me and people like me, have essentially turned themselves into brands. We keep pumping out shitty status-commercials to advertise ourselves to uninterested “buyers” in the social marketplace. Social media has made everyone a potential reality TV star—and people are padding their resumes, desperate for a callback. Post a video online of yourself having sex with a C-List celebrity—you could be the next Kim Kardashian! The world is yours! But I’m sorry, feeling important doesn’t make you important, and your ass is too small anyway.
I don’t deny the usefulness of facebook, nor do I deny that it was an epic invention, nor do I deny that I wish I was Mark Zuckerberg. I like signing onto facebook to see what my friends, real and fake, are up to. I like being able to send messages to people whose phone numbers and email addresses I do not have. However, the medium has been contaminated. Facebook is no longer the social tool it was intended to be. Now that the whole world is on facebook, and anyone who isn’t might as well be invisible or dead, facebook users are no longer contributors to a global network as much as they are parasites feeding on the bloody carcass that is Mark Zuckerberg’s wallet.
Think about what you give to facebook and what you get from facebook. You give your self—your info, your product, your service, your brand—and you get free marketing and easy access to an audience of hopeful ego-strokers or potential fans, followers, or clients. Fair trade? If you have a real brand, yes, it’s a nice deal. If you’re of the purely stalk-and-be-stalked breed, like the vast majority of facebookers are, you are just auditioning for a lead role on The Real Blowhards of FB.
Don’t you see what’s really happening? Facebook is stalking YOU. Everything you do on facebook is tracked, recorded, monitored and saved. Facebook knows what you believe, how you spend your time, who your last date was, where you work, where you eat, where you were, where you might be, where you’re going, and where you are, precisely, right now. Facebook knows everything you tell it and everything it can deduce from what you tell it…and then it sells all of that information—the privacy you voluntarily sacrificed—to third parties who in turn single you out and shit on you with ads that will almost certainly work, milking you like the cash cowturd you are.
I deactivated my facebook account for a full year once. It was the best year of my life. I didn’t compare myself to anyone. I lived for myself. Whatever felt right for me, I did. Whatever felt wrong, I didn’t do. It was a truly independent, autonomous existence. But it was lonely. I started to miss my facebook friends. Of course, I could have called them or made plans to see them. Instead, I waited as long as my curiosity would allow (where were they now? what was I missing?), reactivated my account, read the top status in my newsfeed and instantly regretted my decision. “Stubbed my left toe yesterday. Stubbed my right toe today. FML.” No, FML. Deactivating your facebook account is the easiest way to find out who your friends really are. When my account was inactive, I was forced to confront the truth: I don’t actually have 783 friends. I have about 20. Aha! So that’s what facebook does. It makes you feel like your “Friends” are your Fuh-ren-duh-zzz, that the toe-stubbers are your back-havers, that you are safe, wanted, appreciated—loved!
Facebook made revelry competitive. It made our online personas seem more important than our personhoods. It made our preferences define us. We know our preferences don’t define us. Our character does. You don’t need a username and a password to share that.
Facebook launched the year I started college. Back then statuses didn’t exist. I don’t even think you could post photos at first. Everybody was friending everybody. You didn’t send someone a friend request after you became friends with them, you did it in order to become friends with them. It was an admission of intent to get to know. Maybe intent to have sexual relations with. In the good ole days, it was perfectly normal to be facebook friends with people you had never even seen before. Every facebook friend was a potential real friend. The problem is, not all of those potential friendships panned out the way either person planned…but we’re still connected at the virtual hip! Worse, we can’t sever the bond because we feel that one day we might need each other. What about your mass-marketing plan? Your petition? Your plea for help? If you kick me out of your tribe, you’ll never get me back. So you keep me around because one day I might come in handy. And I do the same.
The purpose of facebook has always been to connect people. No doubt, we’re connected now. Nice and tight. We are so connected that our online relationships have almost entirely replaced our real-life relationships, and in the ultimate paradox of our generation, face-to-face interaction, real human interaction—true connectedness—is going extinct. What do you mean we’re not connected? I can see into your living room in real time. Want to get coffee? Okay, you get your coffee, I’ll get my coffee, then I’ll press the button. Look how simple the internet makes things!
We’re treading dangerous water. Quote me on that. Put it in your status for me. I don’t want my primary experience of the world to be through a computer screen. I don’t want my generation to become those pale bulbous space-people from Wall-E. The world is out there. Here’s a challenge for you: go outside and have some fun with all five senses. Have a jolly, rollicking good time. Don’t bring any electronic devices with you. When you’re done, don’t tell a soul about it. Never mention it again. Resist from blowing your load all over the newsfeed. If we keep depreciating the internet with our unmitigated vanity, eventually the facebook bubble, perhaps the entire tech bubble, will pop. How do I know? If you blow hard enough, it always does.
1. Dress up as someone you actually want to be, not just someone “that would be kind of cool” to dress up as for one night. A costume shouldn’t be on you. It should create you. If you dress up like Steve Urkel, people are going to treat you like Steve Urkel and laugh at you and yank at your suspenders. Is that what you want all Halloween night? Be someone who you would actually like to become, in the flesh. Very often the idea of a costume is funny but the costume itself is lame. That’s because when you put it on, you’re not living into it, you’re simply wearing it. Don’t be so focused on the cleverness of the costume that its glory is ephemeral. A great costume isn’t just great when you see it for the first time; it’s timeless. Always opt for something classic over something corny, an inside joke, or anything that warrants an explanation. Everyone who sees you should know instantly who/what you are. If they don’t, they should at least be a) in awe of you, b) envious of you, c) terrified of you, or, best of all, d) all of the above.
2. Don’t make the obvious choice. Be original. The last thing you want is to show up to a Halloween party and see five other people dressed exactly like you are. Current events or movies are always great inspiration, but if, for example, you’re going to be the villain Bane from The Dark Night Rises, don’t just wear a vest, pop a furry collar, and wear the scary mask. Get huge. Be huge. Otherwise, when you put on the get-up, no one will be scared of you and your costume will be a failure. You’ll just be another punk with a Bane mask. So choose something that isn’t quite so fresh in everyone’s mind, but is nonetheless immediately recognizable. And if you choose something popular and contemporary, you better put some kind of twist on it.
3. Never use a prop unnecessarily. Need a mustache? Don’t buy one. Grow one. Okay, maybe you’re not so extreme about Halloween dress-up. If you want to be a bald guy for Halloween (rather, someone who is bald), obviously don’t shave your head to do it, BUT, if you’re ALREADY bald, think of the bald guys you could riff on for a costume! You might protest, “Well, if I’m bald, why not take advantage of Halloween as my one opportunity to wear a wig and NOT BE BALD.” My answer is this: truly great costumes are convincing. You don’t necessarily want to be someone completely different (physically) than yourself, or something totally random. Choose a costume you can really sell. Use your body shape and physical appearance to guide your choice.
4. There is a fine line between a ridiculously funny costume and a ridiculous, “funny” costume. If you want to go for laughs, choose something that is innately funny and not dependent on a punchline or special effect. Put another way: don’t try too hard. Don’t hop around all night in a 20-year-old sleeping bag claiming you’re a potato bug on acid. “Ha-ha, get it?” If you’re costume is a joke, it should tell itself.
5. Remember, you have to wear the damn thing all night! Choose something comfortable, but not for the sake of comfort. Choose something that makes you feel superhuman, but not a superhero. Choose something that makes people smile, but not smirk. Your costume is not the most important thing. The most important thing is how you feel in it. The better you feel on Halloween night, the more fun you will have. So choose something that gives you confidence, not something that makes you self-conscious. And if you have something to flaunt, physically or otherwise, that you don’t feel comfortable flaunting in a non-Halloween setting, by all means, shake it fast, show me what you’re working with.
I’m writing this post LIVE from the City of Seattle Municipal Court Jury Summons waiting room. It is 2:10 pm. I’m in the quiet room. There’s only one other person in here (I’ll tell you about him in a second). Killer views of Puget Sound. Impeccable Wi-Fi (I anticipated long delays and brought my laptop). Plush ottomans. This might as well be the Marriott.
I arrived 15 minutes late this morning, at 8:45. I drove myself. Parking is going to cost me $19. I had heard all the horror stories about jury duty–hapless samaritans trapped in windowless dungeons, simultaneously praying for and dreading their name being called….
And I’ve heard all the good excuses for getting out of jury duty. The classic pretend-to-be-insane (e.g. “If someone ever did that to me I’d take my chainsaw and turn his body into a jigsaw puzzle!”). The dauntless I’d-love-to-help-but-the-thing-is-I’m-racist (e.g. “How could he be innocent? He’s brown.”). If you’re really clever, as soon as you see the jury summons in the mail you’ll take a Sharpie and write RETURN TO SENDER–MOVED–LEFT NO FORWARDING ADDRESS. Chances are high you won’t hear from anybody for at least another twelve years.
But I am not one to shun my civic responsibilities. I showed up and waited like the rest of the good people. At 11:00, Kendra, the crotchety sign-in lady / AV practitioner called my name into Panel #2. “HERE!” I bellowed proudly. A bailiff guided fifteen of us to a courtroom two floors below. Boy, was I nervous. It reminded me of all the other times I’ve been to court. The time when I protested a speeding ticket by arguing that the speed limit sign was obstructed by a cumbersome conifer. The time when I pleaded Not Guilty to a citation for an illegal fire on a public beach….And all of my other grave criminal hearings.
You might be wondering how I can be typing this right now, if I’m supposed to be in court, jurorizing. I will explain. After the judge performed some quality control on the jurors, we separated for lunch. I was only three bites into a chicken shawarma plate when I realized–I made a big mistake.
You see, I am a Jew, and on Jewish holy days, I pray. Tomorrow is the holiest day of the Jewish year: Yom Kippur. You’re supposed to fast. Past experience has taught me that I am an unreliable arbiter of truth when my stomach is empty. For the sake of our great American system of justice, I had to speak up. I had to get out of jury duty immediately.
C’mon, cut me a break. It wasn’t an excuse. It’s real. This is my religion. I raced back to the summons area and called Kendra aside for a tête-à-tête. “I have a bit of a problem…” She glared at me with the wrath of Mephistopholes. “You’ll have to talk to your bailiff about that.”
So I did, and luckily, she wasn’t such a bee-otch. I explained sincerely the impression I was wrongly under, that is, that jury duty would only last one day (as if!). As soon as I realized that this little trial o’ mine might last all week, I explained my situation. Phrases uttered by me in my private chat with the bailiff include: “fasting,” “services,” “prayer,” “faith,” and, most suavely, “voir dire.” To my delight, another Jewish man was making the same plea for dismissal. While we jurors queued dolefully in the hallway, the bailiff went inside the courtroom to talk things over with the Judge.
It worked. O.J. (Other Jew) and I were escorted back up to the waiting area. Kendra was not thrilled to see us. Another last minute cancellation. We’re short on jurors this week. This makes the whole process run slower. Etc. Etc. Do you know what Sandy Koufax would say to that? “BLAH BLAH BLAH.”
It’s 3:13. I’m really taking my time with this. After all, I’m still here. Why? Because, you see, Kendra hates me. She is the camel whose back my shifty straw broke. Another bastard getting off the hook, and, quite frankly, she’s had enough of it!
Although I have been officially relieved from duty, Kendra refuses to let me (and my Tribesman) leave the premises. She warned me that I may still be called back onto another Panel. The friendly Mrs. Bailiff, despite rushing to get back downstairs, stopped to protest on my behalf. That wouldn’t make any sense, she stated astutely. If I get called into another panel, I’m just going to have to state my case all over again to a new bailiff and a new judge, and I still won’t be able to show up tomorrow. But Kendra, you see, is a camel with an attitude.
Here we sit in the business lounge of the Municipal court. Two Jews browsing the web at lighting speed. Just praying.
KENDRA JUST DISMISSED US BYE.
4:30 pm. I’m home now. The last 45 minutes were exhilarating. After we were dismissed, Kendra came into the quiet area and said to me and O.J., “You two are going to come see me, right?”
I assumed she was going to try and re-schedule me for another jury duty at a later date. I panicked. There was a long line forming at the check-in desks. In my frantic state, it did not occur to me that the check-in area was also the check-out area. While Kendra was distracted, I decided to run for my life. I wanted to take the elevator, but it was in her direct line of sight. I pretended like I was going to the bathroom, popped into the staircase and descended twelve flights faster than you can say “Guilty until proven innocent.”
I paid my $19 parking fee and fled home. Of course, my phone rang immediately from an unknown number. I knew it was K-Bones on the prowl. I didn’t answer it. She left a message. She was angry. ”I gave you specific instructions… I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then. Etc. Etc.”
I called her back. I lied to her and told her what I thought she said: “You two don’t need to come see me, right?” My bad. I misheard. All she wanted was for me to return my badge case. My badge case! Could I swing by? No, I’m already almost home. She made an exception for me, God bless her. She violated protocol and dismissed me anyway. I gave her my word I would mail in my badge case, and since I am a man of my word, and a man of justice, I will.
How do you get off jury duty? You don’t need to fake insanity. Take it from me. You can just be yourself.
I hope this letter finds you, because Santa Claus won’t. How could he? Your “house” doesn’t have a chimney. Of course, he could get in through through the balcony. Unfortunately, if you don’t have one, you don’t have Christmas.
But really, who needs Santa when you have 200 grandparents? You should feel lucky to have such caring, supportive neighbors. They won’t remember your name, but trust me, they want the best for you: the best non-marking shoes on the tennis court, the best adult supervision at the sub-4-foot swimming pool, the best pets resembling rodents or none, and absolutely your best behavior at all times. If you insist on making mischief, simply make it after 9:30 PM, when everyone but your nocturnal pet hedgehog retires to their tempurpedic pillows.
As a rare, able-bodied youngster in a tower full of wealthy World War II widows, it behooves you to take advantage of the plentiful entrepreneurial endeavors for which your youthfulness allows. Specifically, car washing, silver polishing, grocery shopping, and e-mail tutorials. Anything old people can’t do you should be getting paid for. Everything they’ve ever collected you should be refurbishing for hefty fees.
After you’ve ingratiated yourself with your elderly clients, you’ll never go uninterrogated in the elevator again. You know that elevator scene in The Departed where Matt Damon secures a date with the psychiatrist chick before the doors close? That’s exactly what no elevator ride in your building will ever be like. The doors you hold open will be for seniors checking their mail in sheer torpor.They’ll remark how much you’ve grown. You’ll envy their velour bodysuits and wonder if that’s wrong. They’ll ask you how your parents are. You’ll suffocate on six sprays of Chanel No. 5 and say “Fine, thanks.” They’ll admonish, “I hope I don’t see you without shoes in here again, boy.” You’ll think, “You still owe me fifty for the wax on the Aston, asshole.”
Over time, you will become a master of elevator pleasantries. A veteran in repartee. As a result, you will be absolutely incapable of long-form communication. Out in the real world, where people park their own cars, you’ll drop more conversations than a Verizon commercial.
You’ll have to be proactive about finding people yourown age to fake politeness with. I warn you, though, it won’t be as easy as it sounds. Since you live downtown, you’ll need to adopt a suburb for any neighborhood enterprise. Halloween? Buckle up, Batman, it’s a 30-minute commute for candy. Little league? Good luck feeling like a part of the team. FYI: black sheep that don’t tag up are slaughtered.
It won’t be long until your buddies from the burbs attempt to reserve a suite in what they believe is a hotel. They’ll discover the truth at about the same time you’ll realize that the curmudgeony mossback doing water aerobics is, amazingly, your best friend’s great-aunt (she qualifies as adult supervision if you fancy a dip).
Oh, yes. Your house-arrested pals will be quick to accept invites to 4th of July fireworks shows and revive your lonely exercise room, which boasts panoramic views and dumbells of up to 20 pounds. But the real question is: who will you choose to accompany you to the annual courtyard party? Will it be your comrade Tommy or his pleated-panted brother Bahama? Definitely don’t bring a friend of the opposite sex; you’ll be inundated with misguided congratulations on your assumed engagement. They’ll pinch your cheek and exclaim, “Kids these days! They grow up so fast!” You’ll reply “I’m in seventh grade.” They’ll persist, “Where are you going to college?” You’ll roll your eyes, mumble “Harvard” and sneak away to find the kebabs you came for.
You might get the feeling sometimes that you are being watched. That may have something to do with the window-washers peering through your kitchen glass, or, more likely, the security cameras in every floor lobby, lounge, corridor, and vestibule. Still, you have no right to complain. You have a rooftop jacuzzi! Your bedroom is halfway to heaven! You have been blessed with privilege other children would polish antique candlesticks for.
Don’t be ashamed of your affluent upbringing. Embrace it. Honor it. Work hard. If you keep the chrome clean on enough Mercedes, one day, just maybe, you’ll be able to afford your own luxury condo in a mature, urban cloud-buster, rife with amenities, and perhaps even a spacious balcony—with plenty of room for a sleigh.
Just be happy you never have to go outside to take out the trash.
You have the signal to walk, but don’t. Why? There are still moving vehicles approaching the intersection. You won’t leave the curb until all cars in the vicinity are immobile. When a car is trying to turn and you are in the way, you scurry away pathetically, convinced your life is on the line. For you, crossing the street is like playing real life Frogger. You make a Mini feel like a monster truck.
2. Like cars don’t exist.
You cross the street like it’s your living room. You don’t stop and look both ways. You don’t think or hesitate in the slightest. Your favorite movie is Unbreakable. It’s not arrogance or fearlessness that overcomes you, rather, sheer oblivion. You are either a drunk homeless guy, an ADD pre-teen, the Geico lizard, a ghost, or a roadrunner being chased by a coyote. Hopefully the lizard, because you’re going to need life insurance.
3. Like the street was named after you.
You’re the pompous pedestrian who intentionally frustrates impatient drivers. You haven’t owned a car in 25 years. You cross streets with your earbuds in, and take your sweet time. When the light turns green, you’re still moonwalking back across the street to where you started. You want everyone to see how much fun you’re having holding up traffic. Drivers will lay on their horns and curse at you; you’ll respond by blowing kisses. Don’t you have somewhere to be?
4. Apologetically.
It’s not that you’re scared of getting hit. It’s that you don’t even acknowledge your own inalienable right to cross the street. The white-striped area is like a prison hallway. You cross with bowed head and averted eyes. If you’re not an old lady, you just robbed one and are now trying, and failing shamefully, to blend in with the crowd. You’re like a person who enters the theater 15 minutes after the movie starts; you assume everyone hates you, but really it’s no big deal. And you make it so much worse with that half-assed “pardon-me” wave. Stand up straight and cross the street like you want to.
5. Self-consciously.
Sorority girl in a sun dress. Fat guy running. Three-piece suit on a summer afternoon. You are acutely aware that you are being watched. You are convinced everyone is staring at you and ridiculing you and you are correct. You try with all your might to avoid falling into any of the other six categories. By default, you fall into this one. Hey, at least you’re attentive.
6. Like it’s an Olympic event.
How could I leave out the New Yorkers? Tapping their feat nervously, staring at the signal as if willing it to change. Of course, if you feel you can cross safely, you hardly need permission from the little white man in the box. Crossing the street is not only a speed race but also a game of skill. Absolutely nothing but the following is possible: you will be the first person to leave the curb and the first person to get to it. You are ten minutes late for a meeting with the President. You knock young children over with your elbows like a fullback in the redzone. Relax, buddy. Relax.
7. Like you’re supposed to.
You cross the street safely and comfortably every time. Congratulations. You co-authored the nonfiction bestseller Zen and the Art of Crosswalking. You don’t cross like a coward; you don’t cross like a criminal; you don’t cross like a crab. You cross like you desire to be on the side of the street on which you presently are not. You are alert but not self-aware, blithe but not blasé, and you don’t need a blog post to tell you you are. You are the Siberian Tiger of pedestrianism. How long will you survive?
There are a lot of great athletes in the Olympics. They all desperately want to win. Some athletes cheat on purpose. Others cheat on accident. Most, I imagine, don’t cheat. All that matters in the end is one thing: did you get a medal or not?
I’m sure you’ve heard about the badminton players who were disqualified from Olympic competition for throwing matches. It started with Chinese Bad-duo Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli. Yu and Wang had already qualified for the next round, and egregiously tanked their match in order to draw a more favorable (easier) opponent. They could have given a kingly, Olympic, fight-to-the-death effort. Had they done that and won, they would have advanced to face another talented Chinese team. Why would they want that? So they “disgraced” the whole Chinese nation by serving the shuttlecock dinkily and repeatedly into the net. The crowd booed. They paid good money for those seats! The Olympic Committee booted Yu and Wang from the games for their unsportswomanlike patheticism, and Badminton made the ESPN home page for the first time ever.
Also for the first time ever, someone (Yu) uttered this sorrowful lament: “Goodbye my beloved badminton.”
Goodbye, bitches.
Clearly there is something screwed up about the Olympic badminton rules if there is any legitimate incentive for losing. I don’t blame the Chinese team for losing, or even for intentionally losing. I blame them for blatantly intentionally losing. If you’re going to lose on purpose, at least pretend, just a little, that you’re actually trying. Hey Yu, did you have to make it so obvious?
Yu took it out on the committee. “You mercilessly ruined our dream,” she said, “It’s unforgivable.”
Sorry, but Yu ruined your own dream. The bottom line is, Yu fucked up. Yu should have known. It’s not cheating if Yu don’t get caught.
Moving on. A similar, yet completely different, situation.
In the middle of the 800m track race, Algeria’s Taeufik Makhloufi quit running. He just stopped. Makhloufi was temporarily disqualified from the Olympics for poor effort, but reinstated when one of his doctors wrote a note saying he had suffered an injury. The very next day Makhloufi, looking sprightly as ever, blew out the field to comfortably win gold in the 1500m.
If you’re going to skip school, you don’t just not go, you forge your parent’s signature! DUH. Makhloufi wasn’t feeling it in the 800m. He got off to a slow start and didn’t want to tire himself out for the 1500m race he was the favorite to win. Perhaps he wasn’t bullshitting. Perhaps he really did recover from his quit-inducing injury in less than a day. More likely he didn’t try. But I congratulate the Algerian for his gold medal regardless, because he HAS one. He did what he had to do. He knew: If you’re going to cut corners, don’t leave the scissors behind. In other words, if you’re going to make up bullshit, make sure the shit comes from an actual bull and not a Chinese female badminton player.
How far would you go to win? Would you lose to win? Would you quit to win? Would you CRASH to win? That’s what British cyclist Philip Hindes did. The Brits got off to a bad start in the team bike sprint, and Hindes crashed on purpose to force a re-start. (Apparently, if someone crashes, they restart.) So they restarted the race, the Brits started strong and whaddaya know, they won. After the race, Hindes slipped up and admitted that his wipeout went according to a pre-planned team strategy. But yo, Phil, you’re not supposed to say that, dude. Of course Hindes awkwardly ammended his statement and pulled a Makhloufi. He lied. He said it was just an oopsie. Ignore what I said before, I couldn’t think straight. My knee hurt. Because I fell. Accidentally. It was pathetic but, at the same time, smart. That was all his home country, the Host country, needed to put an end to the controversy and keep the medals on their own soil.
The Olympics are like NASCAR. I want to see flames. I want to see bodies, aflame. I want to see the German 3m springboarder land flat on his back. I want to see the Egyptian weightlifter drop a 131kg barbell on her chest and be rushed to the hospital. I want to make fun of the rower with the boner on the podium. I want CHEATERS! Off with their heads! Scum of Olympia, I summon you! Walk the plank! No one expected you to performlike that.Clearly you have been taking performance enhancing drugs! Don’t lie. Don’t try to cover it up. We can all see: You have way too many red blood cells.
I refer to teenage swimming sensation Ye Shiwen, of China. According to an AP article, “she was so fast in the last 50 meters of the 400 medley that her time was quicker than that of men’s gold medalist Ryan Lochte over the same leg.” Faster than Lochte! You take steroids, don’t you, Ye? ADMIT IT!
God forbid somebody just does a really good job. Ye’s coach was rightfully irate at the American media’s accusation that Ye was guilty of doping. He correctly pointed out that Ye had tested negative on all her drug tests, and therefore such claims were totally bunk. To prove his point even further, the coach accused Michael Phelps of doping. Okay. Fine. I get your point. She’s not a cheater. But she’s Chinese, and they cheated at Badminton, so she’s a cheater by association.
Drug test? That’s nothing. You could be forced to take a gender verification test like female 800m runner Caster Semenya, of South Africa. Semenya was subjected to the sex test after her victory in the 2009 World Championships. The track and field powers-that-be essentially said, she’s so good, she has to be a man. That’s either sexist or racist or both; it’s surely humiliating. Good for her; she won silver in the 800m in London. Still, for the rest of her life the “thing” about Semenya is not “World Champion” or “Olympic Silver-Medalist,” it’s “Might Have Been A Man Once.” Because you can’t be great and play by the rules unless you’re American.
Mmhmmm. USA basketball routed Nigeria 156-73. They scored, like, 100 points more than Nigeria. They made the Nigerian men look like Nigerian children. One reporter accused Team USA of running up the score. I would bet the reporter who made that accusation was not American. Running up the score?!? Over here where the deer and the antelope play we call that WINNING. What is the alternative to “running up the score”? You want China and Algeria to try harder, but USA to pump the brakes? I can just imagine Coach K calling a 20-second timeout, walking over to the Nigerian bench and passing out Capri-Suns and apple slices. “Pacific Cooler, or Wild Cherry?”
Everybody’s looking for somebody to blame. Jordyn Wieber of the US women’s gymnastics team blamed the quote-unquote system after failing to qualify for the individual all-around final. Only two gymnasts per country get spots, the American team happened to be stacked, and Wieber, with a solid but not stellar performance in the qualifier, missed the cut. Jordyn, I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe next time, I donno, no promises here but uhhh….DO BETTER.
Ditto to you, Canadian women’s soccer team. Don’t blame the referees. We saw that Canunt cleat Carli Lloyd in the face. That should have been a red card. You’re right, none of that matters now. The game’s over. Our medals are made of gold. Yours are made of hockey puck. Cry me a maple leaf.
You didn’t lose because of the refs. You lost because you didn’t cheat enough! You should have been more like South African swimmer Cameron van der Burgh. Cam won the gold medal in the 100m breast stroke. Good job, Cam. How’d you do it? Cam: “I cheated.” Yes, he admitted it. He admitted he did an illegal extra “dolphin kick” (you’re only allowed two), but made a fair point when he added that “everybody does it.” After quelling an uproar from the Aussie runner-up, Killa Cam got to keep his medal, proving that being full of cheat and being full of shit can indeed be mutually exclusive.
When athletes train for the Olympics, they aren’t training for respect. They’re training for medals. Sometimes people cheat and get away with it. That’s unfortunate, but true. If you know you have to cheat to win, I would recommend either cheating without getting caught, or not competing at all. Getting caught cheating and losing are both simply out of the question. If you don’t know for sure you have to cheat to win, by all means, play fair.
Don’t be former-gold-medalist Italian racewalker Alex Schwazer. Alex made the dumbest mistake of all: He became a professional speedwalker. I keed, I keed. Thirsty to defend his title, the very-fast-walker took Erythropoietin, or EPO, an endurance-boosting blood-doper of the Floyd Landis kind. Swayze, shockingly, tested positive for EPO! He broke down in tears of shame and relief. What was he thinking? He had to have known he was going to get tested, right? While we’re at it with the blood test, let’s get Schwazer a sex test too. That man has no balls.
We’ve got our loser cheaters, our liar cheaters, our accused cheaters and our drug-abused cheaters. We’ve got our barely cheaters and our blatant cheaters, our hometown cheaters and our low-down cheaters. We’ve got cheaters of all shapes, sizes, colors, and breeds. But there’s one more kind of cheater we haven’t discussed yet. My personal favorite kind of cheater:
The accidental-pot-brownie-eater cheater.
I present to you: American Judo wrestler Nick Delpopolo.
Poor Nick. He said he was “shocked” when he received word from the IOC that his drug test came back positive for Tetrahydrocannabinol aka THC aka Marijuana. He claimed he was just snacking on some delicious brownies with a (now unmentionable) family member a couple weeks before the Olympics began. When he started feeling tingly all over, he thought he was just exhausted from so much Judo training.
I actually believe this story. Nicholas doesn’t strike me as the Alex Schwazer, Italian slimeball/idiot type. A couple things, though: 1. If you’re friends with an Olympian, and that Olympian accidentally eats your weed brownies, at least go to GNC and buy your Olympian friend some urine-purifier or whathaveyou. And 2. Let this be a lesson to all wannabe Olympians: careful with the company you keep, and the edibles you eat.
How does Nick Delpopolo’s crime stack up against the aforementioned Olympic infidelities? It’d be one thing if his cousin accidentally fed him an EPO brownie. He ate some weed. Why is marijuana even a banned substance in the Olympics? Who cares!? Since when does ganja give you super-human body-slamming powers? We’re talking about Judo here, not MarioKart! It’s not like Nick was caught Phelpsing with bong in hand. He was hungry. He wanted some dessert. He ate some chocolate and he went to sleep. I forgive you, Nicky.
After witnessing all of these Olympic scandals, I don’t know who to trust anymore. Did you watch any equestrian events this summer? Have you seen dressage? It’s dubbed “horse ballet.” The human riders guide their horses without speaking, using only subtle gestures of hand and heel. I can’t even watch dressage without thinking, “that horse is on something.” It wouldn’t surprise me if the IOC mandated drug tests for horses too. They may do that already. I can see it now: That mare is acting quite obediently this afternoon. Somebody get her tested for performance enhancing hay! Trot the plank!
I don’t care about archery. I have no interest in handball. I couldn’t care less about rowing. I hardly watch the Olympics to watch sports. (I do not consider table tennis a sport.) I care about two things: who wins, and who chokes. If you’re not on the podium, you’re dead to me. Unless you cheated, or might have, in which case, paradoxically, you matter.
It’s time for me to sign off. GNC closes soon. Congrats again to everyone with an Olympic medal. You understand that reaching the podium takes more than athletic skill and valor. It takes not only discovering loopholes but anticipating all the ways your shuttlecock might get stuck in them. If someone accuses you of cheating, shut them up by winning. And if the opposing coach passes you a Capri-Sun, don’t drink it!
I mean, literally, like, everyone talks this way. I’m not even gonna lie, it’s like, an epidemic or something. To tell you the truth, even I do it sometimes. Seriously though, it’s bad. It’s really bad.
When you think about it, it’s completely ridiculous. Like, people speak the worst English ever. It’s pretty much not even English anymore. No, seriously. It’s like Cher from Clueless meets Benjy from The Sound and The Fury. Basically, we all sound pretty much retarded. But I donno, that’s kinda just like, the way it is I guess.
And like, the thing is, we know we sound retarded and we still do it. For real though. I can’t even lie, if you think you sound intelligent, or—well, you know what I mean—like, if you think you sound like you’re speaking right, think again, because honestly—no, I mean it—you have to, like—you know, just speak better. Totes.
To be completely honest, saying you’re being completely honest is, like, LeBron James saying he can dunk. You know what I mean? Like, yo, LeBron, we know. But there’s this need to basically proclaim your honesty before you speak. I meeeannnn, why would you lie? Ya know? Like, now that you’ve admitted you’re not gonna lie, I can’t even take you seriously. It’s like, okay, maybe I would, if I wasn’t so busy wondering if you were lying when you said you weren’t gonna. Basically, you’re a fucking liar, and like, if you’re not, you don’t need to say it like frickin Casey Anthony or some shit. No. Actually though. You’re basically a murderer.
I literally try. So hard. Like, every day. To stop. Like, literally, I know I sound like a broken Miley Cyrus record or something but like, I just can’t stop. For real. It’s like, ingrained. I donno like, I’ve had enough, ya know? I’ve actually totally had enough. I’m done. I can’t even express how done I am. Seriously. Well done. I mean, charred on the outside, like, crispy or something. Ya know what, just—just—no, forget it, seriously, there’s nothing else to say. Honestly, I’ve said my piece. I mean it. Really though.
Binge drinking is a serious problem in US colleges. When did “raging” become such a beloved pastime, and how? When the baby boomers were in school they passed grass. These days, the kids pass handles of liquor. Don Diego. Kamchatka. The real frat stuff. In bulk. Thirty thirty-packs of Natural Ice. Ten cases of Coors Light for the top shelf. Jugo de jungle, exclusive blend. Beer bongs and pong, ice luges, balcony rope swings, inflatable jacuzzis full of Seagram’s and vomit, ruined youth strewn across shrubbery, the ER and the drunk tank, the fight-pickers and overhand right swingers, wife-beaten and bloodshot, who take it too far.
From what I understand it happens on almost every campus. College has always been about partying, but “blacking out” and getting “fucked up” are now apparently universal goals deemed as noble as Olympic gold. The sticky, thwacking dismount off the parallel bars, in other words, the shutting off of the brain, the cop you mistook for a tree and pissed on, etc, etc. You wake up in dangerous places with no idea how you got there, the stuff you see in Vegas movies, but it’s not funny when you’re the one with no front tooth. Regaining consciousness atop an out-of-order Coke machine in the 3rd quarter with a limp Sharpie dick on your face, beset by the putrid, bituminous caking of the “dining” room floor on which you must walk–of course your shoes and wallet are gone, fool, imbecile. With whom have you fraternized? They find you: “Dude, what if he’s in a coma?”
Strange mating rituals spoiling in mildewy kegerators of insecurity. Here we will fool around, experiment, test the waters, walk with shame, dress and act like sluts, dress and act like turds–the pathetic rivalries and petty drama, the listserve on which secrets are revealed, on which hate is unable to remain concealed, the thoughtless ranting and false importance of Reply-To-All. Tomorrow you will write politely and say your account was hacked, and by the way Go Jets, and y’know what, fuck you, I fucked her first, and you have a small penis so there, and ooh wow you cut me deep, and what grade are we in? Enter ‘Stop replying to all’ guy. Enter ‘But you just replied to all telling us to stop replying to all, you hypocritical dipshit’ guy. Enter ‘All of you shut the fuck up, right now, seriously’ guy. Enter me: forty page, syntactically fine-tuned jeremiad (like this, but with more vitriol and screaming with sarcasm) reminding everyone that we aren’t actually friends, or brothers, no, just a bunch of horny drunk post-teens, debased and debauched, reveling in it, perfecting the stereotype with broken bravado, ignominy and embarrassment, asleep with a cheek on the toilet seat, still holding that iconic red Solo cup, and def skipping class tomorrow (if not herpes than mono).
There’s this binge drinkologist (former alcoholic) who goes from campus to campus telling the true stories that always get swept onto the rug: the brain damage case, the paralysis, the four-story fall. Lives destroyed by alcohol. But it’s what you’re supposed to do. It’s what college is all about. Toga parties and lime chases, screwed-up faces, half-blind dry-humps and body-shots, bong rips and late-night burritos, sheer immaturity, disregard for consequences, unprotected sex and shattered windows. All this acknowledged in the speaker’s vain speech. Some in the crowd look moved, inspired to change their ways and live a healthier life. Very inspired indeed, sitting there in the audience sipping ethanol and/or promethazine out of a Crystal Geyser bottle (in the perennial name of “pre-game,” bearer of bad decisions), brazenly disobeying the canon with bird-flipping apathy, choosing neurological incapacitation over the catatonia of withdrawal. Kids these days: skulls thicker than molasses.
Is it a rite of passage? Hurricane season? Fist holes in drywall, streaking around the house because you lost before you earned your first re-rack? If only we could talk honestly with each other: Guys: “I want to have a one night stand with you.” Girls: “I want to have a one night stand with you in the hopes that it becomes a lifelong stand, and we have three children.” (Chauvinistic joke–the quintessence of fratulence). Greek, but far from Gods. Shotgunning ten-cent cans of mythology (8% ABV), dry-heaving heroism (Gatorade, please), minorly in possession of bud and Bud Lite, FUBAR, handcuffed, syphilitic, shit-faced, framboozled, curmudgeoned, collegiate.
There is a very unpleasant moment when you are moving very fast and you know you are about to crash and you can’t help it. An involuntary prayer, when death is not guaranteed, or necessarily even probable, but when you know: this is not going to end well. It’s not “please don’t crash” or “oh Lord, please don’t let me die.” It’s “I accept the pain I am about to feel. I accept that this is going to suck.”
Walking on sand is hard enough in the flats. Up a dune is bootcamp. The only reason people go up sand dunes is because going down can be really fun if you run or sled or board. (That, or for a pretty sunset. Or both.) Sand usually doesn’t hurt as much to fall in as snow does, but sand, like snow, can be light and fluffy or tight-packed and terrible. “Don’t let my wispy surface fool you,” warns Sand. “I will break your face.”
NASA tests its lunar rovers in the Atacama desert in northern Chile, because the terrain is most similar to the moon’s. It’s a raw, eerily desolate composite of shadow-shifting valleys. Fittingly, one of the valleys is called Valle de la Luna. Another is called Valle de la Muerte. Fittingly? *Insert cacophonic violins here*
If you put candle wax on the bottom of your sandboard there is less friction and you can get more speed. A nice slick board and you’ll be riding on air. Don’t even worry about falling. It’s just sand! Have you ever snowboarded before? No? Well pretend you’re snowboarding, except don’t turn because it’s really hard and yeah, just aim the nose downward and rip.
I just trudged for half an hour up the ridge of a gargantuan dune. I’m exhausted. I’m sweating like I’m in a Turkish bathhouse. I’m parched and need water. I’m holding a wooden plank with some straps on it, and a candle I don’t remember how I got. I’m sandboarding, creeping over the crest like a roller coaster at its apogee. Glory and Disaster are playing backgammon on a board made of dust. Or maybe it’s chess. Glory offers Disaster a draw. Disaster declines. I crouch, low and balanced. The dune reveals unexpected concavity. The more downhill progress I make the steeper the slope becomes. Too much wax? I’m really moving. I had no idea I was a born sandboard prodigy. I’m ripping down the dune like a torpedo. Warren Miller is probably filming me from somewhere over there.
Sometimes clothes gets caught on jewelry. A little tug breaks the thread free. Sometimes criminals get caught red-handed. They go to jail. Most of the time fly balls are caught. They should be. When the tip of a furiously fast-moving sandboard gets caught in the sand, Glory catches up with Disaster after the match and says, “You should have accepted the draw” and Disaster stares back in sinister surrender, and I might be paralyzed so I really hope someone saw that.
There is a very exhilarating feeling when you are moving very fast and you know you are about to crash and you can’t help it. One shot to build a sand castle on God’s beach (careful with those turrets). Now is when heroes sign their name in the guestbook of history, just below Nigel from New Zealand and Ajax, King of Salamis. This is the moment–focus your lenses and hold steady–to eclipse fear. Here you say: “I accept the pain I am going to feel. I accept that this will be the most explosively contortive wipe-out in the history of Latin American desert adventure sports.”
I needed a job and I got one in Miami so I moved there. I didn’t have a car. The money I saved by taking the MetroRail to work in Coral Gables every day (more on that later) afforded me the luxury of a two bedroom 34th-floor apartment in the 500 Brickell West tower.
If you couldn’t guess, there is also an East tower. All of the faux-chic and actually chic highrises in Miami’s booming Brickell neighborhood—the financial district—share the same hurricane-proof architecture, with about ten stories of above-ground bulwark garage space. The towers rise from there. On the eleventh floor of the 500, between the two towers, is a giant circular swimming pool. The towers connect again at the tops. The connecting piece has a hollow circle in it directly above and exactly the same size as the pool. The building is beautifully symmetrical with one exception: the east tower has a 42nd-floor rooftop swimming pool and the west tower doesn’t.
Before coming to Florida to start my new life as a working man, I was wandering the globe like a nomad with all of my worldly possessions. So when I found my roommate Steve on Craigslist and confirmed beyond reasonable doubt that he was not a serial killer, I was relieved to sign the lease, return my Mercury Milan to Avis, and throw a trunk full of dirty laundry into my new swag-pad in the sky. I’ve never been happier to sleep on a floor.
A bit about Steve: Great kid. Aspiring doctor. Loves Belgian beer. Ginger. But great kid, great kid (I’ll go easy, he’ll read this). Steve’s heels have never touched the ground. He doesn’t walk; he bounces. His gait makes one wonder if he has been injured in war, or is a duck. Nonetheless his strut confers a cheery alacrity; at any moment he could sprint or float away. Due to this strangely endearing peculiarity, Steve’s calves have developed into cannonballs. I don’t know why, but I’m sure this is important.
A bit more about Steve: He grew up in Miami; thus he had a car: a white Ford F-950 tank a.k.a. The Great White Shark. Every time I climbed into the shotgun seat of The Shark I felt helpless and in great danger. You see, The Shark was more like a Beluga Whale. It took up 1.75 parking spaces. Furthermore Steve (and he’ll admit this) is not the most dexterous specimen, especially behind the wheel. I still shudder to imagine him swerving across MacArthur causeway trying to choose the perfect song, slamming the brake just fast enough to avoid demolishing a Lamborghini. Costco runs felt like cage dives in the South Atlantic.
I arrived at a sweatbath named Miami in late August, when denim feels like leather and socks feel like moon boots. The humidity is unrelenting. It pummels and dizzies. It corrals humans into bank lobbies and ice cream isles. And if you actually do want to buy ice cream you better eat it in the store, because the heat will eat it for you in two minutes if you step outside. Shirts stick to backs. Foreheads gleam with sweat. Take refuge in a 3-series coupe, and let the valet figure out how to park it in ¼ of a spot.
Living in South America took some getting used to. Everyone around me seemed fabulously wealthy and unemployed. I assumed all of my neighbors were the incumbent heirs to clandestine cocaine thrones. Most acted accordingly, runway-walking in white linen suits, Prada shoes and shades. Plastic-chested wannabe Jennifer Lopezes can be spotted clinging to their husband’s (pimp’s) arms (money) with diamond-ringed, french-manicured fingers. What a strange world I lived in, where the line between personal trainer and gigolo became finer and finer with every lychee martini. The Starbucks in Brickell Village felt like the season finale of Basketball Wives.
Steve and I were lucky to have amicable hallmates. Cory, in B-School at UM, lived alone in 3406, and Eduardo, a Peruvian telenovela actor, lived in 3410 with his brother Gianfranco. Our apartment, 3401, had the northeast-facing view. This meant we had both downtown and Biscayne Bay views, with the yacht-lined Miami river directly below us, as well as partial views out to Star Island (where Oprah and Shaq live) and Miami Beach. Best of all we faced the transchromatic Miami Tower. Every night the tower glows in a new four-layer color scheme. Working a routine 9-6 job, I appreciated the tower’s unpredictable incandescence. At sundown I would sit outside, sip screwed Florange juice and wait with suspense for the illumination of Miami’s iconic ner tamid, for me the most impressive thing about “The 305” other than the percentage of the population with egregious plastic surgery, and LeBron James.
And what a year to join a bandwagon! The “Big 3” had assembled; the Miami Heat were poised for a championship run. Basketball reinvigorated the city, restoring a sense of cohesion and jubilance that I presumed, and Steve confirmed, had been absent in recent years. Somehow the excitement surrounding the Heat validated my presence in Miami; it proved that Miami was, in fact, desirable, and that I wasn’t crazy for living there. So what if Forbes magazine labeled Miami the Worst City in America for 2011? So what if downtown looks like the slums of Johannesburg? We got LeBron. I’m heading down to the sauna with some Dominican rum to have a steam and watch the game in the jacuzzi. What do you have to say about that?
Cory could cook, and we had a grill on our balcony (we had a balcony), so we feasted regularly. We’d spend all evening preparing baby back ribs, fried chicken, and potato salad, uncorking frothy Belgian ales, and listening to Hall & Oates, Sondre Lerche, or some other indie-electro-jazz fusion with rhythms hypnotic enough to quell our growing appetites. Finally, when it was time for bed, we ate. Repeat mañana.
With no car, I was forced to explore Miami by sweat. I could have at least bought a bicycle or a skateboard. No, I chose to suffer on the MetroRail and on foot. Eventually I came to embrace the sweltering humidity. I allotted five extra minutes into my morning routine to change clothes when I got to work, as mine were by then soaked. I still prefer extreme heat to frigid icestorms. Besides, humidity is good for the skin. Being sweaty is completely normal in Miami. Pit stains are perfunctory for pedestrians. This is what I told myself as I hunted shade underneath a sacred palm or behind the nearest empanada truck. ¡Bienvenido a Miami!
I formed an unspeakable bond with my fellow MetroRail passengers. All those familiar with Dade County public transportation will surely be acquainted with Violin Guy, with his puppetish limp and strident Mozart butcherings, Sock Guy, two pairs five dollars, and Really Drunk Guy a.k.a “Puerto Rico, baby!” who emphasized with hopeless gusto that he was, every day, “shuffling.” I spoke Spanish I didn’t even know I knew with Cuban grandmothers I knew I didn’t know. I accepted gratuitous cheesecake slices from random Dadeland Mall employees. I took care of inexplicably abandoned children. When the samaritan in me was off-duty, I stretched out shamelessly over two adjacent handicap seats, put my headphones in, and let the sweet smells and sounds of illegal immigration wash over me.
Between Metro jaunts and midnight balcony braais, I exercised at LA Fitness. The Brickell location is one of LA Fitness’ “Signature” locations, which means they charge more for all the same shit. Ah, but with no car insurance agencies beckoning, and plenty of spare steam to let off from my menial work day, I succumbed to join the gym and vowed to get strong with Miami’s most stereotypically tan and muscly stock. The average fitness level of gym members was genuinely impressive. Bobybuilders, models, strippers, athletes—an absolute scene. I regretted joining at first, but this was my neighborhood now. These were my people. And the my-people watching was superb. Women—the same ones breaking fake nails on iced vanilla latte cups at the Starbucks across the street—would adorn themselves in elaborate spandex bodysuits, like one-piece bathing suits cut to the navel, with neon green cheetah prints or some other ridiculous, indefinable design. They looked like Borat. They hadn’t even come down from the pole. I was embarassed for them. The vast majority of men in the gym were clearly on steroids. This trademark Miami superficiality is normal and expected. I stood out by wearing sleeves. Bold, I know.
When you live in Miami, none of the fun things to do when you’re on vacation in Miami are fun. Imagine clubbing on South Beach for a year straight. You would no longer be a human. You would reek of stale perfume. You would overdose on MDMA, black out, and wake up in a brothel on Key Largo. For a full-time resident, the escapist allure of Miami Beach fades like cheap blue jeans. All the beautiful people everyone talks about in Miami—you can’t find them. All you see are “I’m in Miami, BITCH” t-shirts and shot glasses, dilapidated hotels, and strung-out Ukrainian hookers. Miami is awful! Forbes was right! Miami is a sun burn with no aloe vera, a hangover with no advil, an unfulfilled dream, a vacuum.
So what did we do? Avoid the beach? Not quite. We figured there had to be other people who enjoyed, you know, conversation. We sought them out in more low-key watering holes, away from classless Spring Break contamination. We barely succeeded (hardly anyone does). Our main going-out spots outside of Brickell were a hole in the wall tap house called The Room on South Beach, The Vagabond in Midtown (with the emaciated crack fiends lingering), and Bardot in the design district (with the prick bouncer). These relatively stylish establishments kept us from feeling like soulless whoremongers. Most often we stayed in Brickell and drank at the century old Tobacco Road, the world’s shittiest and therefore best dive bar, which happened to be a block away from the daringly avante-garde magenta and cyan-carpeted 500 Brickell (home).
We made due and kept our integrity, most of the time. Events passed through town. We went to them. Steve, Cory, and I saw Novak Djokovic play tennis at the Sony Ericsson Open (Steve drove—lucky to be alive). Steve and I went to a Marlin’s game in Dolphin’s Stadium on a Wednesday and snuck into a luxury box. We made two trips to the Magic City Casino where we swam with the Cuban rounder sharks at the 2/4 limit table and miraculously broke even (we returned two weeks later and lost everything at the no limit table in a matter of minutes). We ran the ING half-marathon. We even went to Ft. Lauderdale. Cory, who is excellent at getting expensive things for free, worked his MIA-magic to get us into VIP parties at the Delano and Setai, and a few other open-bar events we felt we deserved to attend but never would have attended otherwise. My parents came into town and stayed at the Fountainbleau. Eduardo went with me to meet them. It happened to be “Hoodstock” weekend at the hotel (not my term). And…nuff said. These things only happen in Miami, where the sun is always shining and the tits are always implanted with silicone.
Luckily the Heat played well and gave us something extra to be excited about (other than seeing an aerial shot of the 500 Brickell in every TNT commerical cut-in). I plotted to launch a grassroots movement around Miami’s Big 3—Dwyane Wade (#3), Chris Bosh (#1), and Lebron James (#6). I imagined the three stars as one formidable beast, the Cerberus of professional basketball. The movement would be called JAMOSHADE 3:16 (a play on the oft-cited Biblical verse, John 3:16). I would print wristbands with the tagline and get disgustingly rich selling them for a dollar apiece outside of American Airlines Arena at home games. It was a drunk idea with drunk execution and drunk results. Quite regrettably, after a few too many Cuba Libres and a heroic come-from-behind Heat victory, I went online and payed approximately $400 to file a trademark for sole ownership of the word JAMOSHADE. Of course I never got around to making wristbands and the Heat would go on to lose to the Mavericks in the Finals. But don’t even think about stealing my idea, or I’ll sue your ass.
Anyway, Jamoshade lived on, as my nickname. Steve and Cory had far more socially agreeable schedules than I did, and on, say, a Tuesday night, when they wanted to go out and I chose to stay in and get a good night’s sleep (like the working man I was), they’d ridicule me and say, “stop being such a Jamoshade, Jamoshade.” They were right; I was being a Jamoshade. I was Jamoshading. My behavior was Jamoshady. Beaten, I’d clean up, throw back two spare ribs, make like a tower and light up the city.
Now that I have left Miami, I am occasionally overcome with nostalgia for the place. I miss sitting on my balcony watching world-class soccer on the rooftop mini-fields below. I miss the susurrus of the steam room. I miss the tropical fruit I squeezed into my mixed drinks. I miss my grandma driving down from Boca Raton to buy me fancy dinners. I miss running away from my friends on South Beach because they didn’t feel like eating at Jerry’s Delicatessen at 2 a.m. and I did. One day, when I have a yacht, and Eduardo is a movie star, and Steve is a doctor, and Cory is throwing his own parties, and King James gets his ring, I’ll return to Miami, rent something way nicer than a Mercury, and ball out like the Sultan of Brunei. Everything will come full circle, like the roof of the 500. For all its plasticity, Miami will always maintain a certain lustre, the Magic City mystique. It will always be there, sandy and sun-dried, as Will Smith calls it, a “south sea merengue melting pot.” What else does he say? “On the sneak, Miami bringin’ heat fo’ real.”
I like to think of myself as blithe, bold, and brave. A thrill-seeker. A risk-taker. A record-setter. You might find me jumping off bridges, running with bulls, or swimming in vicious rapids. Few are as daring as I. I like to think of myself as the ultimate adventurer. You might find me scaling ice, chasing storms, diving with sharks, or out of a plane. I don’t look back; I’m fearless. I don’t think twice; I’m extreme.
A daredevil like me would be hard-pressed to find a more adrenalin-whetting locale than Suicide Gorge, South Africa. While studying abroad in Cape Town, lured by the belief that the cliffs are always higher on the other side of the Atlantic, I ventured to this gorge to go “kloofing,” the South African relative of cliff-jumping. Although I had leapt from many a domestic cliff, I had never before kloofed. Offering jumps from three to twenty meters, this crazy canyon was meant for me. I knew I had to go big or go home.
After an hour-long drive to the site, I felt more than prepared for my first jump, but I had neglected to factor in the difficulty of the trek that led to it. In my swim trunks and flip-flops I maneuvered through a steep, craggy valley for forty-five minutes before finally arriving — tired, thirsty, but nonetheless committed — at the first kloof ridge. It was clearly one of the smaller jumps. I had come too far, I thought, to piddle away my shot at glory in three meters. Undeterred, I pressed on, leaving the tiny tarn undisturbed.
I clambered through the South African terrain for another fifteen minutes before coming across a second kloof site at a new pool. At an estimated ten meters in height, this was surely a man’s kloof, if ever there was one. Peering over the rocky edge, the black water below looked deep and cold. Really cold. Too cold for two attempts. With only one jump to prove what I was really made of, was it worth it? My prior due diligence led me to believe that if I continued down the original path there would be another jump point twice as high. A return trip to Suicide Gorge was pretty unlikely, so I passed on jump #2 in favor of the highest and most menacing jump the ravine had to offer.
I was not sure what I was looking for, only that when I found it, I’d know. I followed the trail over a sequence of massive, jagged boulders. Traversing them with the agility of an expert mountaineer, I found myself at the lip of a perilous cliff. Below me was a pool of water so small that I had to squint my eyes to determine that it was actually liquid. I contemplated its depth and the most strategic points of departure. Try as I might have to plan for my impending plummet, there was no assurance that when I jumped I’d even land on water at all. The name Suicide Gorge suddenly took on a whole new significance. Don’t look back, I thought. Don’t think twice. I am a risk-taker. Record-setter. Few as daring as I…
The hike out of the gorge was brutal on the knees. And the toes—flip-flops don’t do well on the downhill. Eventually I made it back to the car and, amazingly, out of Suicide Gorge alive…and dry. Although I most definitely went kloofing, I never actually kloofed. I never took a single plunge. But that doesn’t make me any less brave or any less daring. Sometimes, even for a daredevil, rationality trumps audacity. Sometimes reason rules. Sometimes it’s bolder not to jump.
I recently returned to my high school and had lunch with my old college counselor. He asked me how I liked college, if I was happy with my decision. I loved college for all the wrong reasons, so I gave a qualified ‘yes.’ My qualification sounded feeble and rehearsed; I instantly regretted giving it.
That’s what I want to talk about: regret. Wishing you hadn’t done things, or that you had done them differently. Perhaps the most pointless mental activity. Remembering the past or celebrating the past or learning from the past are worthy pursuits. Regretting the past is a deathwish and a confession of stupidity. The desire to change the unchangeable? I build a cage and trap myself in it.
I made the best choice for me at the time. It’s over now. Was I happy? If you saw me you would have thought so. I was happy to drown my unhappiness in Anything-But-Jäger and chisel away a phony personage. The personage stuck and solidified. Cell bars clamped down around me with a crashing thud and suddenly I was a character, an avatar, a shade of my real self. I designed the role: boisterous badass. Everyone saw through me, as a ghost.
I don’t know how much of my personage came out of me attending my particular college and how much of it came out of me simply being in college. Not my habitat but my age—the age ripest for, one might say, personagity. Either way I developed one—quite impressively megalomaniacal, I may add—and nurtured it. I blew it up with hot air. Methane hitchiking from my lower intestine finally arrived at the bus stop of my personage’s trashy suburbs. Everyone had heard of me and knew my face, but no one knew me. No one knew.
Let’s change that. Let’s learn how to choose. Choose like you’re taking an undefended queen. Without a second thought. Debate the choices you are about to make. Weigh the pros and cons. Move numbers. As soon as you choose, detach. Our lives are bracelets; our choices are beads. No matter what it looks like we tell ourselves it’s pretty. Lies! Stitches are missed. Colors don’t match. Threads are torn. Beads crack and shatter.
It’s all arts and crafts. We’re making tye-dye t-shirts. We’re rinsing in buckets. Stitching lanyards. We are our choices, but we are also our non-choices. After all, choosing something means not choosing myriad other things. With every new choice, villages of possibility are razed. They fold like Guess Who? panels. I sacrifice an infinitude of lives with a mere affirmation or denial. As Pablo Picasso said: “Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.”
Hindsight is a blinding light. What could have been is a chump’s racket. I could have gone to a different college, made different friends, had a completely different life. How complete would the difference really have been? If I had chosen another path, I’d be wondering what the life I’m living right now would have been like. What is is what might have been in a reality that never was.
I get complete with the past eventually. It just takes too long. That backwards glance like I’m being followed is my unacceptance of fate. My tragic decomposition. Relapse. And…he swallows the key. Will forgiveness redeem him? It may be his only hope. He will talk about himself, like this, instead of for himself. His life-force will be as powerless as a legless punch. His most determined blows will land on karma like feathers. He’ll cease to recognize himself. He’ll disintegrate into particles and scatter at first gust.
I always feel great until I try to justify or explain my choices. I’d be better off mute. Sometimes I truly believe I’d be happier if I never spoke. I find solace in an invisible, imaginary audience. They hear my cries of pain and commiserate. They nod slowly and understand. They grasp the singular inconsequentiality of choice, and hand me tissues before a single tear falls. They speak in silence, listen loudly, and are my best friends. I choose them and I don’t look back.
I never want to lie to anyone, ever. I never want to say I’m doing just fine when I’m in a foul mood. I never want to pretend to be rich when I’m poor, or hungry when I’m full. I never want to fake anything.
That’s the ideal. The problem is, the truth isn’t always so pretty. I don’t really want you to know how odious my job is, or how low-paying it is, or that I don’t have a job at all. That nearly everything I’ve “earned” was actually given to me. I’d prefer not to talk about that.
I despise “work.” I have an aversion to the word like Maynard G. Krebs. If I must be the sacrificial pawn in someone else’s chess game, I’d rather pitch a tent in a sequoia forest and beg for food.
Easy for me to say, because I know even if I never worked a day in my life I would never starve. My network would rescue me. My safety net is made of silk. And then I imagine the millions of homeless family-less persons across the world and I am filled with fear of God.
I’d have to play my cards atrociously wrong to lose this hand. My family has money. I have an education. Now I need to do something with myself, something true and honest. Devote myself to something noble, something bigger than me…
All of the rich people I admire refused to succumb to anything but the ideal. Their richness is not why they are great; their greatness is why they are rich. Most of them were destitute for long periods. Willem de Kooning once said, “I’m not poor, I’m broke.” He kept painting until the world appreciated his genius, and then some.
Henry Miller is my favorite author. Writing was no different for him than eating, breathing, or shitting. It wasn’t a choice. That’s how one’s work should be. He never had money.
How much are you willing to sacrifice to achieve the ideal? I ask myself this question every day. If my answer is everything, I’ll still have at least a roof over my head and a couch to sleep on. If my answer is anything less than everything then the truth I seek remains perpetually out of reach.
I saw Drake perform live. Before he started rapping he said, “I made millions of dollars by being myself.” That’s what I want. I don’t want millions of dollars by being you, or by wearing a starched collar that scratches my neck. The MegaMillions jackpot in California reached $476 million today. Oh, I want that. I want that jackpot badly, but it’s not the ten minute walk to 7-Eleven that’s keeping me from buying a $1 ticket, it’s Emerson:
A cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature. Especially he hates what he has, if he see that it is accidental, — came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it does not belong to him, has no root in him, and merely lies there, because no revolution or no robber takes it away.
So I win the MegaMillions. I buy a house on Lake Como, yachts and toys, clothes, cars, maybe my own island. I am filthily, unfathomably rich. I do whatever I please, I go wherever I please, I have everything under and over the sun, and I’m still just a man who eats and breathes and shits, and when I die, I’ll still just be a cold corpse, equal in every way to the corpse of a once starving, homeless leper in Bangladesh who hasn’t the word “million” in his vocabulary.
How many times over must I learn this lesson? Everyone knows: do what you love, do what you love, do what you love. Okay. Fine. I love writing, and I’m doing it, and trying to tell the truth and not be ashamed of myself, yet I’d be more ashamed to get a job pumping gas in Oregon, or to earn a meager wage selling lotto tickets at 7-Eleven, than I am to be gainlessly employed.
I want to obey Emerson’s Law. I want to stop comparing my life to other people’s lives, De Kooning and Miller included. I wish I had the courage of a Gandhi, Mandela or King Jr., but even $476 million couldn’t give it to me. That kind of courage would take at least a billion.
Often times when I travel I feel guilty. I tell myself I don’t deserve the experience. But even when I’m abroad, for example, by the charity of my mother’s United Airlines Mileage Plus account, even when my adventures seem to have no purpose except for me to embrace their purposelessness—all of that is irrelevant. How you get to a place doesn’t change the fact or reason that you’re there. It only matters what you do there. It’s only looking back that my nomadic wanderings transform in my mind from galavanting, cross-continental joyrides into my most meaningful memories. I’ve finally learned to stop apologizing for having a great life.
My parents ran the Greek Marathon, climbed Mount Rainier, hitchhiked through Yugoslavia. They have taught me the joy of exploration, and granted me the means to make profound discoveries. I see now there’s more to humility than not bragging. So when I say I spent Y2K in Buenos Aires, yes, I’m describing a trip, but it’s not an ego trip. It’s a fact. My entire worldview now hinges on the wisdom I’ve acquired through my adventures. To hide those experiences in an attic of unfulfilled self-expression would be a far greater shame than to attempt to share them humbly and fail.
My classmates would go to Arizona for Christmas vacation, maybe Hawaii, maybe their Grandma’s house down the block. I went to Uruguay, India, China, and Morocco. And then I’d get back and and sit down for a hair cut and the barber would ask me what I did last weekend. What am I gonna do, tell the truth and say I was in northern Africa, watching snake charmers and sipping on fresh squeezed orange juice? Yes, that’s exactly what I’ll say.
In the past I would have lied my way out of the interrogation that would certainly ensue were I to admit the truth. I didn’t want to boast and risk looking like a spoiled punk. I run that risk even without boasting. I have since come to understand that I have complete control over the way I present myself to anyone, that, when I meet a stranger, I can make assumptions about how they will see me and judge me and I can steer the conversation one way or the other to avoid confronting my true feelings, or I can make the right choice, ignore those assumptions entirely, and earnestly express those feelings.
It’s just as unfair to judge someone you know nothing about as it is to assume that they are judging you. I now give strangers the same benefit of the doubt I hope and expect to receive from them. I believe that you will take my truth as true, and accept me, even spinning a web of ineffable confessions. If I’m lying to my barber, who else am I lying to? What am I so scared of that I resort to making up stories like I’m being tried for committing a heinous crime, like I’m fabricating facts to beguile a jury?
I want to be extraordinarily wealthy and still befriend hobos over Five Guys cheeseburgers in downtown Chicago. I want to be a global enthnographer; I want to smile at people and have that be enough for them to trust and respect me. The truth I seek and find in my travels, in foreign lands and temples and deserts and hostels and dive pubs, is wasted if I do not share it. A piece of art—a photograph, a story, a dance performance, a man holding a note on his didgeridoo—is not art unless it is shared with an audience. Not once or twice, privately, but forever, publicly, out in the world, where you can go home neatly trimmed around the ears and not say to yourself, “Why did I say that? Why didn’t I just say what really happened? Why did I hold back?”
I used to dig myself into holes, lying and then lying about the lies. All out of irrational fear of rejection and of being misunderstood. Everyone from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Lil Wayne knows something about that, yet I’d go around telling my best stories with pinched lips, toasting with water, striking a conversation only when it served my own selfish motive.
From now on the filter’s gone. I will tell you of my fondest journeys and I will tell you proudly. I will tell you how fortunate I have been to see what I have seen, and I won’t fear Zeus punishing me with his bolt for hubris I may or may not display—to worry about backlash and consequences would make me deserving of the worst of it. To fear that imaginary wrath would warrant its real manifestation. From now on I’ll say what I’ve been leaving unsaid. I’ll tell the stories I’ve feared I’d be ridiculed for. It’s like dancing…If I’m a terrible dancer on the floor, and you’re an amazing dancer on the wall, how could you ever reasonably criticize me? And if you’re an amazing dancer on the floor we’ll both be dancing and that will be fun.
What perverse pleasure do you derive from baiting me into complicity? Yes, I make inappropriate remarks at times. Yes, I told my boss she had a FUPA. No, that wasn’t a very good idea, but I did it anyway, under your misguidance.
I try to block you out, but there you are in my ear again, whispering sophistries. In a restaurant you’ll say: “If you filled that water cup with 7-Up, no one would notice.” At the ballgame: “That woman is in your seat; unfog your Mike’s Hard Strawberry Lemonade goggles and expel her.” Being escorted by security out of ballgame after slapping said woman in face with kielbasa: “Are you not entertained?”
I heed your call like an obsequious child. Where does that get me? The back seat of a scooter in the middle of the Thai jungle. Abducted by a toothless tranny witch-doctor. Rural Venezuela, waist deep in petroleum, with only a hatchet, a deck of cards, and a canister of baby oil. You don’t deserve my trust anymore.
And when all I need is a dose of confidence, a smidgen of self-assurance, someone to tell me drunk-dialing my attractive and happily married ex-English professor wasn’t that bad of an idea, where are you? Nowhere to be found. M.I.A. Silent. You could at least try to make me feel better. You could, at a minimum, lie and say she definitely wants to make sex with me also—but no! You just hang me out to dry like the tears of shame drying on my mustard-crusted face.
Must you rehearse your Rihanna falsetto when I’m quietly reading a book? Excuse me, I’m out to dinner with a lovely young lady; can you please stop impersonating my mom? No, sorry, I can’t say I appreciate it when I have a tight deadline to meet at work, and you’re either freestyle rapping about office supplies, screaming like a banshee, or naming Presidents.
I thought you meant it when you told me you loved me. If you love me, why do you always call me a dickface? My panties are perpetually bunched? I’m a worthless cow-turd? Your words sting worse than the sunburn I got in Caracas.
I don’t blame you. That much. I know you’re only trying to help. I’ll admit you do occassionally point me in the direction of glory. And by glory I mean a hospital bed in which I lie whimpering, concussed, and contused. I thought you said I could take that guy?
Voice Inside, why do you tantalize me so? My head spins, intoxicated with false bravado like Bacardi and ambrosia sipped from a pimp’s chalice. Release me from your wicked spell. Leave me in peace, I beg you!
When you come into my house, don’t make yourself at home. That is, unless, in your home, you don’t use manners.
Here, in my house, we don’t worry about scratching floors. Nick the wall? Don’t mention it. In fact, here are some markers—draw something pretty somewhere. Have fun with a staple or paintball gun. My visitors are my decorators. Restraint? NOT UNDER MY ROOF.
Feel free to make extremely loud noises at your discretion. Yelling is not interpreted as anger here. Turn up the bass on those speakers. Leave the TV on when you leave. Play soccer in the hallway. Bounce balls. My house is a fantasy factory. Between these walls, there are no consequences.
Shall we eat? Don’t excuse me for asking: can you throw me some lasagna? I eschew etiquette. When you feel like eating, eat. Unsheathe thine hands! When you feel like drinking, guzzle. To the face. Save a glass.
My house is the anti-society; leave your customs at the door. Barbarize yourself. Bang on the table. Stick a knife in it. In my house, you don’t need to explain your behavior to anyone. Here, the rudest thing you could do is ask permission.
If you’re tired and you see a bed, sleep in it. If there are already people in that bed, sleep in it. Need a drink? Make a triple. Uncork the ’59. My house is a fairground. Play games. Ride rides. Fly. Anything is possible here. Everything is allowed.
I own the county. I own Home Depot. I own the fair. Let me show you my backyard. See that mountain over there? That mountain over there is in my yard.
Did I just see you washing a dish? You fool! Leave it for the robots. In my house there are no responsibilities, just power tools, trampolines, and medicine.
If you need a place to crash for a night or ever, you’re always welcome in one of my guest chateaus.
Indeed. My house is a fortress. A festival. A free world. Lick your plate, lick stamps, sniff glue, fornicate, dance, dunk, drink, fight, scream, pray, indulge. Walk around naked. There’s just one rule: never ask what time it is.
There’s always somewhere
I’d rather be.
Palm trees, light breeze—what’s the recipe
For conquered wanderlust?
Roam for centuries—not long enough.
I seek more repose
Than the city offers.
Then: Can’t stay in these woods
Much longer. Must get home,
To spin another globe.
I pin a place and think, “If I go there
Things will be perfect,”
Laugh in my own face,
And deserve it.
I won’t stop digging for China.
There are no tricks to remind us
How to undig the ditches
We’ve left behind.
How to find the right path,
Running circles, hope I’m on the right track,
The one to which truth binds us.
Where bravery meets defiance–
There lies self-reliance.
Every day, same David, new Goliath.
If the Alamo Bowl were a restaurant it would be Red Lobster. Alamo Bowls are like cheap sunglasses–you don’t care what happens to them. Winning the Alamo Bowl is like winning enough tickets at the arcade to buy yourself a handful of Double Bubble. It’s a tuna fish sandwich at the bottom of your backpack. The nonalcoholic beer of bowl games.
In the 2005 Alamo Bowl, Michigan played Nebraska. As a Michigan fan, I watched. Anyone who watched the game only remembers one play from it: the final play…
Nebraska leads 32-28. There are 2 seconds left in the game. Michigan has the ball on their own 36 yard line. Hail Mary situation. Nebraska is back in a deep zone. Michigan QB Chad Henne makes a 15 yard pass to wide receiver Jason Avant at midfield. As soon as Avant makes the first desperate lateral, it’s November 1982 and The Band Is On The Field. I’m thinking, I should just turn this shit off. The game is over. But wait, hey, HEY, it’s still going, another lateral to Hart, another, back to Avant, cross field to Manningham–this is laughable! Take a knee and put me out of my misery.
Avant gets the ball for the third time. The play is still alive. Time is long expired. Falling out of bounds he heaves it back to Hart yet again. Hart mishandles it; it’s technically a fumble and the play is STILL alive. Henne is just standing there picking his wedgie. The lineman are paying about as much attention as they would to a plate of raw tofu but the PLAY is STILL ALIVE and this has Cal-Stanford written all over it.
The primary ESPN broadcast has Mike Tirico: “Michigan is looking for a Music City Miracle” and he’s doing a remarkable job calling it at lightning speed. But if you listen to the Nebraska broadcast the dude, when the ball hits the ground, says prematurely: “The game is over. Nebraska has won the Alamo Bowl.”
But OH MY GOD Hart is breaking tackles and he pitches it to Ecker and Ecker is jogging down the field and he’s got space, and he’s glancing around looking for someone to tell him that the game is over. The band is not on the field but a bunch of people who aren’t supposed to be on the field are and we got water boys throwing blocks and nobody knows WHAT the lobster is going on and Ecker–you can see it happen–he starts actually running, fast, like wait, I have the ball and the game may or may not be over and I’m a bloody TIGHT END and I have the ball and I’M GONNA SCORE and NOBODY’S GONNA STOP ME.
I’m screaming like the goddam house is burning down–I happened to be in Mexico on X-Mas vacation. It was dead silent from there to Tijuana except for me jumping on the couch watching what was surely going to go down in the annals of sports lore–further down, even, than the California game–as the tastiest nonalcoholic beer-like college football play ever.
Bellowing: PITCH IT! PITCH IT YOU FUCKER!!! Because Stevie “I run a 40 in 3.92 seconds” Breaston, the fastest player to ever lay paws on pigskin, is RIGHT behind Ecker. Ecker just says “It’s me, or it’s nobody” and that sonuvabitch gets his fat ass tackled at the 10 yard line and Nebraska blows a Double Bubble the size of it and there ya go.
The agony. The burning, tormenting, knife-twisting soul-suck of losing the Alamo Bowl. Who knew San Antonio could bequeath such gut-wrench unto men. And Michigan didn’t deserve to win the game. We played like shit, but that, amigos, is precisely NOT the point.
This is what “Remember the Alamo” means to me. Clearly Santa Anna was not a football fan. And there I am in Mexico of all places, learning 19th century lessons in the 21st: If you’re in Mexico, you’re not welcome in Texas. I used to respect you, Tyler Ecker. You were a good football player. You were a solid tight end. I just want you to know, Tyler, that when I think of the most memorable moments I have ever witnessed as a sports fan, I think of your selfishness, and the glory that, because of you, never was. I’ll stop blaming you when the battle is forgotten.
Some argue even if he did pitch it to Breaston it wouldn’t have counted because there would have been so many penalties etcetera etcetera but listen, beyond the fact that the penalties for each team would have negated each other, beyond the fact that more people care about curling and long-jumping and stock-car racing than they do about the 2005 Alamo Bowl, that failed last-ditch effort and all those laterals amounted to the same L Michigan would have suffered if Henne’s initial pass went incomplete. I’m bringing out the big guns here. T.S. Eliot knows the point:
What might have been is an abstraction/ Remaining a perpetual possibility/ Only in a world of speculation.
Everybody hates doing the dishes. Some people are better at sucking it up than others.
I’m very untrustworthy of dishwashers. I can’t stand it when the dishes don’t come out clean after one wash. Chunks of hardened rigatoni stuck to the bowls and whatnot. How am I supposed to know if I’ve pre-cleaned sufficiently? To be completely safe I hand-clean to a shiny polish, then run the machine anyway. Perhaps I should get rid of my dishwasher altogether. Do you have any idea how happy some people with no dishwasher would be to get one? And how happy some people are not to have one!
Why is it so much easier to do the dishes in others people’s homes than it is to do them in your own? I don’t fret a mess I leave when I know I’m the one who will eventually clean it up. Leaving dishes for a host is plain rude but here’s the thing, what constitutes leaving? In any situation, not just a dinner party. Between roommates, teenager vs. parent, not-a-teenager-anymore vs. parent, etc. Within one hour after dinner? Before bed? By 10 am the next morning. Next Tuesday? Let’s not get too technical, hey? Who needs the South Beach Diet when you have a broken dishwasher? Fuck it, nothing to eat on…pass the coconut water.
Why don’t we keep this simple and just DO them. We’ll just do them and we won’t have to mention it. The plates will be clean–the whole place will!–and the food will go on the clean plates and as soon as we eat it–no, before we’re done chewing–nay, while the food is still being cooked–we will rinse those dishes meticulously in warm soapy water and rid them of toxic germs. The germs are coming for our souls, attack, ATTACK!
What if I were to argue that doing the dishes was as potentially enlightening and exhilarating as lunar tourism? “I will stand here for America–I will float here–I will, in my circumferal villa, where the light and dark sides of the moon meet, where it is always day AND night–I will eat and rinse the SHIT out of these dishes, for YOU, for AMERICA, GOD BLESS YOU GOOD NIGHT.” (That was my best Newt-Gingrich-doing-dishes-on-the-moon impression; hope you liked it.) Point is, when it comes to dishes and the doing-of, a foolish resistency is the hobgoblin of little sinks. If your life sucks, don’t blame it on the garbage disposal.
The dishes won’t do themselves, achem achem, they don’t do themselves. Someone has to DO them, but wait, DOING them is yin with no yang, you have to UNLOAD them and if you DO them but don’t UNLOAD them that’s like yinning without yanging, that’s like someone losing with nobody winning, vice versa. Unload those pearly dishes, I say, for all mankind. For all alienkind. Alien-ity. Touche.
The dishes pile up and so do the years, months, days of our lives. Fine, don’t do them, don’t wear sunscreen at the beach, get skin cancer FINE IF YOU INSIST. But no, no, ain’t lettin these hurr dishes be a’pilin on my watch hurr tonight! No sir! These hurr dishes done been clean. Foley Speaks!
I can eat and wash without complaining. Without leaving that foul gutter smell wafting into the upstairs closet. By all means, leave the fan off when you’re cooking–that curry smells delectable–but if you’re just gonna let those dishes SIT there you could AT LEAST turn the fan on, I mean, once in a while. What do I know about fans? In college we didn’t have fans and we got along just fine. The pipes froze and split just in time for the ceiling to cave in but we never got around to airing out our dirty dishes and that’s almost as bad as not doing them at all–maybe worse! But let’s keep this simple, hey, and ENJOY that ephemeral, diaphanous dish-dance. Let’s fire the proverbial puck into the untended goal of our quote unquote “day.”
BE the dishes. Love them. Look them in the eye and thank them. Firm shake. God bless. First I just want to thank my best friends, The Dishes, for their unwavering kindness and support, without whom I would be burning through Hamiltons, pillaging Nature our Mother for her precious bounty of trees, for the across-the-board downgrade from glassware to [gasp] PAPER PLATES–Yucghk, no thank you, I’d rather eat with my hands!
We eat. It goes into our mouths, it comes out of our assholes. We eat on dishes. They go into the dishwasher and come out of the goddam dishwasher. We are born, we live, we die. The dishes are eaten off of, washed, and unloaded. New children are born with every meal.
Too much thinking, not enough washing. Too much thinking, not enough writing. What. The kitchen’s clean, isn’t it?
There is a pertinent matter I need to discuss with you:
Murphy Pan doesn’t want to grow up.
Calvin sends me a message asking if I can play this guy from the cult classic gang film The Warriors (1979), in a music video he’s directing. Creepy villain–consider it done.
The artist is YMTK (Young Murph The Kidd)–a very talented musician (rapper) from East Oakland. The song is called “Murphy Pan” and it GOES:
I won’t give you Murph’s whole bio now because you can just click here and read it on his website. What I will say is that YMTK is on the cusp of superstardom. I was lucky enough to get to know him and the rest of his Cali crew, the L7 Dummy Gang…
The CEO of L7 Records is Hollywood Jo. No e. He’s acting as my personal stylist as we shop for wardrobe on Melrose. Jo exudes swag; I am in good hands. The Dummy Gang needs blue and gold everything–vintage Golden State Warriors. We can’t find a Chris Mullen jersey and that is disappointing. Calvin’s keen artistic eye and attention to detail mean a special focus on accessories–pins and patches, rings, bandanas, etc. We try on some gear before Murph has to leave for the studio.
I need that rogue biker look from the movie. Jo lends me his leather Diesel vest. Good start. We’re on our way to Hollywood Blvd. for my wig, but run out of gas. All the way out. Marching down Sunset to the Mobil station on La Brea with our little red one-gallon gas canister from Calvin’s trunk, we contemplate happy hour at Crazy Girls around the corner but decide to stay focused on the mission at hand. On the way back to the car, Jo stops into a watch repair shack to get his Hublot fixed, but they don’t have the right screw.
On Hollywood, Jo points out the location of Murph’s upcoming show at a lounge across the street. We stop in the army surplus store for my gun and sheriff badge, a smoke shop for scary contact lenses, and a shoe store for a clean pair of Chuck Taylors. Meanwhile Calvin asks strangers if they want to be in a rap video and negotiates jewelry rentals with a fat Armenian guy.
We’re in a warehouse in Downtown LA. It’s the day of the shoot. Showtime. It takes me a while to realize how significant my role is. Calvin calls the Face Gang, L7′s rival gang, to the set to commence ‘mean-mugging.’ I stand nervously in the back of the set and watch the gang pass. They look absolutely terrifying. That’s when Calvin calls ME to the stage (well, it felt like one) and it occurs to me that the Face Gang is MY gang, and I am their leader. Adrenalin overflowing, swag in overdrive, I drape a chain around my neck, invoke whatever burning hatred I have buried inside me, and make my glorious acting debut. I just keep thinking to myself, I am a murderer. I eat men. I will eat your heart. It seems to work.
That’s just one scene. There’s also the head-to-head gang scene, which results in my character getting stomped out by the entire L7 posse, and the scene that leads to it, my personal favorite, where I get to shoot the Overlord while he’s giving a speech on top of a school bus.
A few days later I’m back in costume doing touch-up scenes downtown. Calvin needs some dance cameos so we have “Murphy Pan” bumping out of his Benz while some promiscuously-clad ladies show their affection for Murph in a random alley. There are about six Mexican workers behind us watching the spectacle like a pride of hungry lions. I’m getting ready to do my one and only line (Come out to playy-aayyy) when some undercover cops (not the Mexicans) spoil the party and write Calvin a citation for filming without a city permit. At least they don’t care about the pot.
We meet back in WeHo and maraud through alleys in search of an eerie graffiti backdrop. I finally get to do my line. Calvin has to prop his Canon on the seat of a dingy motorcycle to get the shot. The owner of the bike comes out of Mao’s Chinese restaurant, guns blazing, thinking we’re robbing him. It doesn’t help that I’m dressed like a raving maniac. I insist we’re nice people. That’s a wrap for Murphy Pan! The Director celebrates with four tacos from Jack in the Box.
I follow Cal to Dummy Manor. Have to return Jo’s vest. When I walk in, Boogie Nights is playing on a 70 inch flat screen. Plants percolate–the hard-earned reward for an epic production. The revelry is only beginning. We’re on our way to The Roxbury…
“Crew Love” by Drake blasts in the Benz as we roll down Hollywood. After a very brief search for a parking spot, Jo asks if Calvin or I has $20 to valet the car. I do! I offer it gratefully, rightly suspecting it’s the only money I’ll be spending tonight. Murph whispers into the bouncer’s ear as we shuffle into the club, making sure his 12-man army gets through smoothly. I’m last, but not forgotten.
Bottle service. Peach vodka and Hennessy. We have one of four main booths in the center of the club. Servers and groupies alike welcome us with eager eyes. Murph is living it up with girls dangling all over him. The DJ shouts him out. I think DMX is in the building, but I can’t see him. A girl (“stupid ho” would be more accurate) tries to seduce me into pouring her a drink. You don’t think I see what you’re trying to pull here? I’m not about to give away liquor that I didn’t buy. “Are these your friends?” she asks. “Yes.”
Follow the crew on Twitter:
@CaliKingFilms (Calvin Gaskin, Director),
@HollywoodJoNOe (Jo Hall, Manager)
@i_am_ymtk (Young Murph, The Prodigy)
Read, watch, and hear more about about YMTK here. Look out for the official Murphy Pan video release coming soon! And when it comes out I need your help getting that thing to 1,000,000 hits!
Do you believe in swag? Or are you swagnostic? Because swag is a lifestyle. Turn up. I don’t know about you, but I’m driving my station swagon through Swagtopia right now. I am the next great American Swagtion Hero. Everywhere I go I am greeted by a neon sign which reads, “Swag City Welcomes You.”
Swag is like obscenity, or death. It cannot be defined concretely, only demonstrated. Add swag to talent and consider yourself made. Just don’t be so hard on yourself when you forget your swag by swagcident. Compose yourself. Regain your swagalibrium.
It’s that outfit you put on that makes you feel like you should be arresting yourself. Like, this shit should not even be legal right now. I should be in prison for looking this good. Lock me up behind bars. Take me to Alcaswag.
Personally, I don’t like to wash off my swag. I let the swag accumulate between my toes. I open my freezer and all I see are swagcicles. Don’t bite my swag; get your own. Make swaghetti, add Swagu. Heat it up. What is swag? Don’t ask, don’t tell. Just smell it. Be it. Swag on, swag…still on.
Don’t you see? Swag doesn’t grow on trees. Swag is in the soil. Swag is in the sun. It’s not an occasional delight; it’s a Rolley that don’t tick, tock. It’s the monster inside you, a swagnivorous beast, a swagosaurus, a fire-breathing swagon.
Channel your inner swag. Don’t change the channel. Oh, you want to watch that in HD? My swag is 1080p, talk to a swagtometrist and get that aswagmatism checked immediately. I left my swag on the moon, will you help me retrieve it? #Humbleswag
Ho fucking ho. Get your cameras out; Swagta Claus is coming to town. I don’t need a list, I’m swag, sonny–naughty and nice. I was born this swag. I found swag in the dopest place. I don’t need pockets in these swaggy jeans because I put all my money where my mouth is. Collar popped; call me Count Swagula. I’m a hearthrob, baby–Oops, I’m swaggin’ again.
Sometimes I look back on my past experiences and think: Wow, I was wise beyond my years. What foresight! What maturity! My semester abroad in Cape Town was not one of those experiences.
Cape Town is arguably the least fucked-up place in Africa, but is still completely backward in most ways. The government is corrupt, racial tension is high, the economy is unstable. Although Cape Town is a beautiful, modern, civilized city, it retains an undeniable lawlessness. That’s exactly why I chose it.
My study program provided housing in the shadow of Table Mountain on Upper Liesbeek road in a neighborhood called Rosebank. “Upper Leez” was right on the border of Rosebank and Mowbray, a noticeably more dangerous neighborhood. Walking to the main road from Upper Liesbeek, it was best to always head left (South) toward the University of Cape Town and student-studded neighborhood of Rondebosch. If you took a right you found a crackhead with Hepititis C, black wife-beater, and eight-inch kitchen knife in a snakeskin sheath.
My neighbors named the crackhead Jeremy and nicknamed him Cyclops. He lurked outside the 7-Eleven around the corner from our apartment with his slimy fiend apprentice, Nightcrawler. We quickly became accustomed to run-ins with this muscly, yellow-eyed horror show. Some days he’d politely ask us for change. Some days he’d be passed out on the ground. Other days he’d be foaming at the mouth and threatening to rape us. We never knew what we were in for.
Although we spent most of our time fearing stabbings, technically we were students at UCT. I stopped taking school seriously on the first day, when I learned the grading policy. 70% and up was an A, and it tapered down from there. So you could work your ass off on an English essay and some stuck-up professor who begged to differ with your analysis of his favorite J.M. Coetzee novel might subjectively give you a C+. Or you could take “Critical Thinking,” an introductory logic course with two simple multiple choice exams, miss 30 questions and walk away Valedictorian. I still regret not joining my roommate Josh in his African Drumming workshop. Suffice it to say we didn’t learn much in school.
Our rat and roach-infested apartment was on the street level by the train station. My room was on the corner; the gamut of shady characters I saw prowling through Upper Liesbeek Road was discomforting to say the least. Cyclops threw us a block party every night and invited his entire extended family of druggies and convicts. I was frequently awoken by midnight threats shouted in drunken, clicking Xhosa. I don’t think they were directed at me, but I never drew my curtains to find out for sure. Sometimes I grabbed the bars on my windows and prayed. After a handful of student apartments were raided, construction began on a new burglar gate. We were all thrilled about this addition. Unfortunately the gate was completed only two weeks before my departure from Africa, and even then did about as much to stop a burglar as Britney Spears can do to stop the paparazzi from snapping pics when she’s flashing her snatch in the middle of Times Square.
Josh and I managed to find ways to entertain ourselves, grilling kudu steaks nightly in the cement ruin that was our back yard, renting mediocre movies from Mr. Video (between the 7-Eleven and KFC, across the street from the cell phone and leather jacket store), and, in instances of extreme boredom, throwing glass dishes nonchalantly at the living room wall. We fueled our BBQ with Namibian coals and our restlessness with five dollar fifths of Black Horse vodka.
One night every week, at an unreasonably inconvenient hour, the power went out. We lit candles and crushed cans of Castle Lager, feasted on pre-cooked Bratwursts and smoked bad hashish. We purchased all our combustibles over the counter from Brother Isaac. He’d buzz us into his Rasta dispensory, treat us like old friends, then charge exorbitant prices for quarter ounces of his latest inventory. Cyclops always knew when American exchange students were heading to Isaac’s. On those days he was incredibly well behaved.
Mini-van taxis cruise up and down the main road. We called them “Wynbergs,” which is what the money-collector sitting shotgun would scream out the window, indicating the last Southbound stop. We’d cram into the vans with two-liter homemade rum and cola concoctions, heading, for all we knew, into the Heart of Darkness. We always ended up on Long Street, where we wasted no time pounding Car Bombs in the Irish pub and devouring spicy street-vendor shawarma. I recall having an entire conversation with a young African boy in complete silence. He stared at me imploringly, then sprinted away. I chased him, weaving through crowds and drawing the attention of police, who immediately assumed I had been robbed. No, Officer. We were just playing some friendly tag.
I was fascinated by the race relations in South Africa. I really wanted to understand the complicated post-Apartheid dynamic of whites and blacks in Cape Town. One night Josh and I heard about a house party in our neighborhood. It was St. Patrick’s Day, which meant nothing to anyone but us Americans, who jumped on any excuse for belligerence. I was dressed in a green polo shirt and silly Seattle Supersonics headband. We arrived at the party and were the only white people in sight. So what? We came all the way there and it looked like fun. When the bouncer refused to let us in, I suggested quite boldly that he was being racist. “Is it because we’re white?” I persisted. “No, Dave,” Josh interrupted, “it’s because of your stupid fucking headband.” The bouncer laughed in agreement and permitted us to enter. Inside, Josh found some girls from his drumming class with whom we drank flasked Havana Club rum and danced in joyous unity.
I lifted weights at The Zone in Rondebosch. It was a small gym usually packed with behemoth African warrior-types hurling insane weight with egregious form. I got strong with them. We blew out our backs together. Upper Liesbeek was where I ate and got robbed and slept; The Zone was my real home. I’ll never forget the grunts and groans I heard in that gym. It sounded like a battlefield. I debated about MegaGrow protein shake flavors and asked to work in on the pulldown machine. I refused spotters and flexed aggressively. I had no choice; I was in The Zone.
The gym motto was “Eat or be Eaten.” I followed it. After every workout I went home to grill disgusting quantities of ground beef and chicken breasts. The Braai (Afrikaans for “barbecue”) became a ritual. Everyone had their own braai technique. I went for variety, Josh went for size. He invented what he called the “Big Papi Burger,” which was essentially an entire packet of ground beef artfully molded into a single plate-sized mound. In an impressive display of prudence, Josh grilled himself a Big Papi Burger and put it in the refrigerator so that when he got home, drunk and hungry from a night on Long Street, he would have himself a feast. When he stumbled in to find that his Big Papi was missing, he was enraged, and naturally blamed me, his only roommate. When I arrived in a separate taxi, he attacked me in the street, yelling “DID YOU EAT MY BIG PAPI BURGER?! DID YOU?! TELL ME!” I squeaked out a “no” and tried to remind him we were friends as he choked me on the pavement. The next morning I found Big Papi in the microwave. Josh apologized. We cracked a couple Castles and laughed it off.
As the semester was winding down and we were running out of activities, Josh and I decided to go all the way to Wynberg in a Wynberg. It was an ugly neighborhood offering few attractions. Josh spotted a manikin in a pile of rubbish and decided he needed it. This discovery justified the whole journey. The problem then became, how would we transport the manikin back home? It had to come with us in the taxi. We paid for three and laid “Jacob Zuma” across all four rows of seats until we reached Upper Leez once more. When we exited the vehicle, Cyclops spotted us, and, for the first time ever, looked positively delighted. A few days later we threw a farewell party in our apartment and stood President Zuma up in the bathtub because, you know, This Is Africa.
Am I proud of this debauchery? I am not. Am I ashamed of this debauchery? I am not. There is nothing wrong with being drunk and immature as long you pass your classes and don’t get stabbed by a crackhead. Add a stroke to my score for Africa. I’ll take a mulligan. It was worth it: I gained eleven pounds. I saw Akon perform live on his native continent. I swam with whale sharks and jumped off a 700-foot bridge. I got my laptop stolen and my apartment fumigated. I bribed policemen to avoid arrest. I taught English to some kids who didn’t know it. I developed color blindness and ate animals until I became one. I lived in Africa, made a fool of myself, and loved every second of it. Now I mount my Black Horse and ride on.
Plaid shirts and denim vests, high-waisted rolled-up skinny-pants, thick-rimmed neon Buddy Holly glasses, beanies tilted to expose partially-shaved craniums, incongruous patterns on vintage ascots, beards infused with chewed Starbursts. You’ve really mastered the slumber-party-in-a-dumpster look, haven’t you, hipsters?
Who are the progenitors of the hipster movement? Jack Kerouac and the Beat generation, you say? I understand hipsterism evolved out of hippyism, but clearly it diverged somewhere. Peace and Love were lounging in the park writing free-verse poems and sipping sherry when electro-indie rhythms lured them into an atavistic paroxysm of pseudo-nonconformity. Now Peace is peppered in polka dots and Love’s parading through the The Haight in assless chaps. We have to do something about this.
You’re a rebel and a rogue. You don’t care about fitting in. You’re different and you want everyone to know it. Correct? Well let me ask you this, was the hipster label assigned to you, or did you pursue it actively in vegan cafes and American Apparel fitting rooms? You can’t make pornogami out of tattered Vice magazines and call yourself William S. Burroughs.
If you’re conforming to an image of non-conformity, you’re not only a follower and a hypocrite, you’re also a douche. Don’t go taking offense now. After all, I don’t see how you could… You embraced the self-perpetuating paradox of hipsterism when you got a neck tattoo of a rhinocerous with “Rhine-awesomest” emblazoned on its horn in bold Comic Sans font.
I went shopping for eyeglasses the other day. I wanted plastic frames, but not too thick to be tagged “hipster glasses.” I thought I made a safe choice in the end; but when I wore my new specs in public and a lady complimented me on them, I was disappointed to observe that half of her head was bald, the other half was further divided into pig tails, and she wore an oversized sweatshirt graphically depicting mating wolves. Not to mention her own glasses were thicker than a seitan steak. Mission unaccomplished.
Hipster is what you call things now when you don’t know how else to classify them. Look at this fucking hipster armadillo. Look at this fucking hipster doorbell. Look at Tim Tebow, Jesus Christ Hipsuperster, leading the Broncos in faux-gold hipstirrups. It makes me hipstir-crazy.
One day not long ago, a man went searching for some lines to color out of. He could not find the lines. He gathered a posse of motley misfits to join the hunt for breakable barriers. Lo, no barriers! “How can we shatter an unestablished paradigm?” one of the crew shouted, perplexed. Another replied, “First we will establish it, then we will shatter it!” The crew gazed anxiously into the man’s suspenders. “We are the paradigm,” he declared, “We must shatter ourselves.”
German entrepreneur Kim “Dotcom” Schlimtz launched MegaUpload, a file-hosting site, from his Hong Kong headquarters. Not familiar with Mega? Listen to this star-studded upload anthem. The catchy track boasts plugs from a slew of Mega-celebs like Kanye and another Kim: Kardashian. And take a look at 1:50. The quite unfamous-looking Dotcom appears to be doing his own vocals for the track, harmonizing with what sounds like Macy Gray over simple but effective animation.
So many big names chime in to sing praise for MegaUpload that it really makes you wonder why you aren’t using MegaUpload. The starpower is undeniable. Then again, some of the performers lauding Mega-uploading don’t seem all that jazzed, truly, about the cyber locker service. Apparently this hip-hop hacker, Mr. Kim, has the bait to reel in some of the music industry’s biggest fish. And I don’t mind, because—say it with me now—MEEEEGGGGGAAAA. Over 11 million hits in three weeks.
But just as this viral spiraled into ubiquity, Universal Music Group convinced YouTube to remove the video on legal grounds. After all, some pretty big faces are featured pledging allegiance to roguishly fast download speeds and causing a real stir in the Twitosphere. The Deutschland Don swung back, protesting no violation, and YouTube reinstated the video. I’m genuinely glad for that, because there is something weirdly hypnotic about this song that makes me want to just store files.
DORITOS – CRASH THE SUPER BOWL — “I MADE GOLD AGAIN!”
It’s always a good sign when people who admit to hating your product admit to loving it after they watch your ad. This seems to be a trend among commenters on a recent Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” contest entry video.
The video is about the magic recipe for Doritos—a potion, it appears, that even Professor Snape would have difficulty mastering. Failed attempts result in the addictively funny punchline: “What am I gonna do with all this GOLD?!?!”
The Man with the Doridas Touch garnered over 1 million views in its first week online—the highest count of any entry in the contest so far—but shockingly was not selected in the Top 5 on Doritos’ website. The video’s creators are urging fans to tweet their support in an effort to convince Doritos to reconsider the video.
Conspiracy theories are mounting as to why the Doritos selection committee denied this popular submission a Top-5 seed. Was the video submitted after the deadline? Does the recipe scroll distractingly fast? Perhaps it was just a crafty way of adding intrigue to the contest (which, by the way, is a genius method of attracting social medialites). I would delve deep into analysis of these hypotheses were I not busy practicing the Doritos recipe myself at this very moment. Anybody seen the pepper?
YOUTUBE – REWIND 2011
YouTube has a slight advantage making a video go viral. It helps that they’re YouTube. It doesn’t help that they chose obnoxious teen pop sensation Rebecca Black as their spokesgirl.
Black looks uncomfortable in front of the camera as she unnecessarily introduces clips from the most-viewed viral videos of the year. An overwhelming percentage of YouTubers have concurred with copious “Dislikes”—three times more than the number of “Likes” (not the most inspiring ratio). Nonetheless, the montage is entertaining, and succeeds in reminding us of some glorious footage from 2011.
The rewind fades to Black with a Top 10 countdown ending in Rebecca’s excruciating “music” video for “Friday,” apparently the most viewed video of the year with over 18 million watches. I’m guessing at least 3 million of those hits came from users who searched for “Black Friday” on Black Friday, but one can’t be sure.
It’s a beautiful new year. Here are my resolutions for 2012.
No more hangovers. Responsible drinking only. Someone buys me a shot, I sip it and chase with two liters of purified water. Unscrew my juice. When I wake up in the morning I want to feel like a person, not an endangered species.
I’m going to get fit this year without paying a dime for equipment or a gym membership. From now on, no elevators. I don’t need a stair master; I am one. Watch me bicep curl these unfinished vodka handles. Multiply the temperature outside by a hundred. That’s how many jumping jacks I just did.
And I’m done folding so easily under peer pressure. Come climb this scaffolding, Dax, everybody’s doing it. I’d rather not. Man up, Dax, that water’s really deep, I promise. I promise I don’t care. Yo Foley, we’re getting nipple piercings and matching walrus tattoos in Pattaya then renting some lady-boys for the white party. DJ Regret is spinning, you’re in, right? Sorry, can’t make it.
This year, no blowing money on stupid shit. I’m saving that money for things I actually need: fur coat, motorized tricycle, light-up shoes, spy telescope, truffles, the list goes on.
I’m getting famous this year. People will know me and ask who designed my leather jacket. Some will scoff at my latest mohawk variation. I will ignore them and carry on oozing swagger from my spa-cleansed pores. Whatever it takes. Tighter pants, driving gloves, sunglasses at night–I’ll do it.
Of course with fame will come tremendous and immediate wealth. I say this as a fact because this year I resolve to throw self-doubt out the penthouse window. When the paparazzi glimpse my calves, the sculpted lovechildren of sixty daily stair flights and Herculean determination, they’ll swoon. Look for me on the cover of US Weekly, cloaked in beaver.
This is my year, I can feel it! Peel off in the chrome power trike, post up at the club with a goblet of POM Wonderful. Finally, some resolutions I can keep!
Welcome to the Jewish Bachelor Series selection show!
BEN STEINBERG has locked up the #1 seed and a spot in the National Championship with a perfectly chiseled jawline and JD/MBA conference championship from Wharton specializing in international corporate mergers. At 6’3, 200 lbs, Steinberg is built to win, and he’s proven it with each business he’s started (three total–any more than that and he might have fallen out of the top spot due to fickle temperament). Steinberg is stellar on both sides of the field; not only is he tall and handsome, he’s rich! With two older sisters, he’s obviously well-coached, and at 29 years old, he’s ready to settle down with the trophy. The question we’re asking tonight is, who will battle Steinberg for the title?
First, let us count down the Top 10
At number 10, Yoni Finkelberg, fresh off his victory over Adam Greenstein in the BigChin title game, “The Fink” will face BigPockets champion Daniel Stagman in the Nose Bowl.
At number 9, Marcus O’Shaughnessy. With one loss for goyish name and another for unsightly unibrow, Marcus might have a tough time securing an at-large bid.
At number 8, Cory Shapiro. Shapiro had a stellar season, although some JAPs on the selection committee may be turned off by his orthodox prayer style. Will Shapiro’s family travel to a bowl game on Shabbas? The fact of the matter is, these are issues the JBS takes into consideration when making their selections.
At number 7, Sam Rubenfeld. Rubenfeld is one of those mensches who never gets the respect he deserves. In 2007, if you remember, Rubenfeld went unbeaten, acing the MCAT, repeatedly volunteering at food banks with his grandmother, and graduating from Brown magna cum laude. But because he competes in the mediocre Mid-Ashkenazi Conference (MAC), the computers denied him a title game birth. Will Sammy be snubbed again this year? Head Coach Martha Rubenfeld, Sam’s mother, has her pearls crossed.
At number 6, Matthew Levine. Finishing third in the stacked JD/MBA Conference, Matt unfortunately will not qualify for a JBS bowl.
At number 5, BigPockets Champ Danny Stagman will battle The Finkmeister for a much deserved Nose Job. Stagman is a Sous Chef at The French Laundry–that’s tough to beat–but slightly undersized at 5’6. He’ll definitely be chanting the Aleinu for a victory.
At 4, Stanford Kazinoff. Stan suffered a tough loss to Stagman when he listed his occupation as “freelance poet” on JDate. But he’s also a professional cellist and tanner than toasted almonds. Kazinoff is likely on his way to the Kugel Bowl.
And here we go! Once we reveal our number three Jewish husband candidate, you will know who will finish second and spin the championship dreidel with Ben Steinberg. Will it be Max Edelman, BigKosher conference champion, or Allan Goldberg, JD/MBA runner-up?
AT NUMBER 3, it’s MAX EDELMAN, which means GOLDBERG will take on STEINBERG in a rematch for all the latkes!
The showdown will take place at the Herschl C. Moskowitz Synogogue annual Purim carnival. Will Goldberg’s Masters of Accounting and enormous ears hold up against Steinberg’s dual-degree and formidable spread-Hebrew formation? These fine Jews will have to obey all 10 commandments to reach the light brown hair at the end of the seder.
We’ll be right back to discuss whether Kosher King Max Edelmen’s summer home in the Hamptons and I-Banking option offense should have landed him in the carnival.
Matty Friedman wears flip-flops in winter and unitards to parties. When bored, he guzzles tremendous quantities of liquor. When drunk, he conjures great spectacles, most commonly his naked self. He only shows up uninvited. He only stays if asked to leave.
–Are you friends with Matty Friedman?
–Are you?
–I asked you first. Because depending on your response, you could be either a professional Thai kick-boxer, or pants.
Matty is gifted at biomedicine, which doesn’t explain why he rode a bicycle from Cape Town to Nairobi. In Botswana he was looked on exactly as he is in the States–with equal parts awe and confusion. In America that makes him a “character.” In Africa that makes him a celebrity. Ah, that explains it.
This is not a roast. Matty is extremely intelligent, loyal, caring, and brave. I personally would never wear New Balance with a suit. To my own Bar Mitzvah ceremony.
Here are some things Matty Friedman might have said once:
On his three-day suspension from seventh grade: “How was I supposed to know she was wearing a thong?”
On being stranded with no food, water, or money in the middle of the Australian outback: “I’m not even worried about it.”
On his formerly stray pet kitten: “Today is our anniversary.”
People who know Matty have come to expect and in most cases look forward to his outrageous behavior. Many are disappointed when they encounter a more sensitive, subdued Friedman, passed out on the floor of a 50-square-foot dorm room, surrounded by cookie crumbs, condom wrappers, and the tattered diaries of Edwin Hubble, whose great-granddaughter he tenderly abducted (she found his spandex bodysuit and astrophysics expertise ravishingly sexy).
Consider yourself lucky if you encounter Matty Friedman in the wild. Do not be afraid; “Mr. Floppy” is very friendly. But please, do not feed The Animal.
Good evening ladies and gentlemen it’s your Captain Dax Foley welcoming you aboard….flight….
Ughk.
Flight……..
246 to………
Achemm, hacchmm. Flying time tonight will be long and slow. We are expecting violent turbulence throughout the entire duration of the flight. Attendants will be coming around duct-taping your thighs to your seat bottom. Those who do not cooperate will have their carry-on luggage collected and dumped onto the tarmac.
Ladies and gentlemen, mahalo very much for your useless effort in fitting personal belongings into the elf cubby under the seat in front of you. We are just waiting for some parts that may or may not have already arrived, and we are 17th in line for departure, so if you feel like stretching your legs, now is the time to stay seated and fasten your seat belt ATAP. All babies must be turned off and stowed; please ring your call button if you need extra tape.
Healthy Fun Packs are available for $17.50. They include seven to ten red grapes and four crackers. Beverages include and are limited to: aspartame, concentrate.
Please direct your attention to the nearest monitor for our mandatory safety presentation. I NEED EVERYONE’S EYES. Mahalo.
Welcome to the video about what to do when the plane is sinking 300 miles from land. I hope you like slides, because before the plane explodes, you get to ride one into the Pacific Ocean. As you can see in this absurdly unrealistic demonstration video, oxygen masks will deploy overhead, and, without a trace of fear or urgency, you will smile and calmly take the mask and fasten it over your nose and mouth. If you have children, make sure you let them suffocate first. Your seat bottom doubles as a diaper for probable self-defecation. To fasten your seat belt, pretend the right side is having intercourse with the left side.
We just received word we have changed spots in the departure queue. We are now……18th apparently. Okay, well, at least we’re moving.
Ummmm, you probably want me to shut up now. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the–
I’ll race you from here to there. If I lose I’ll stab myself with a blunt meat thermometer.
Teach me how to play Hearts. Bitch of spades again. Well, I lose. Now I’ll fill the jacuzzi with molten lava and walk the plank.
It’s a warm spring day and we’re out at the pool. First one to the wall. I look back to check my lead and lose it. I am Alain Bernard to his Jason Lezak, and this is the worst day of my life.
If I had to choose between dropping hot sauce into my eyeballs or having to buy dinner for the victors, I would buy the dinner. And then cast myself into the Bering Sea.
Hit me over the head as hard as you can with this steel crowbar. Only then will I admit defeat.
Losing is learning. Like the other day, when I lost a friendly croquet match in the yard, I learned that croquet balls are great for practicing soccer headers.
Losing isn’t always so bad, I guess, just expensive. Fourteen golf clubs, six Playstation controllers, and multiple reconstructive surgeries on my right fist and foot. Luckily I pay an exorbitant whole-life insurance premium, so if I lose a go-kart race and tie myself to the track before the next one, said expenses will be covered.
I can hardly watch sports anymore. When my favorite teams lose overtime thrillers, I have been known to dive head-first into television screens as if they were magic portals, with intent to assault opposing coaches.
If I am watching the game live, I inevitably run onto the field. I know security will chase me down and tase me, but I sprint in brandishing flaming nunchucks yelling “YOU IMBECILE! WHY WOULD YOU GO FOR IT ON FOURTH AND LONG?!” If I can put at least one person on their back before I am handcuffed and beaten by the police, the loss, unlike my bruised and bloody face, won’t hurt so badly.
I would rather cheat and win than lose fairly. When I cheat and lose, I eat lit coals.
I took a look at your transcript. Because we pride ourselves on the academic strength of our writers, I unfortunately need to ask you to explain the F on your transcript. A couple of sentences should suffice as an explanation.
Thanks,
Rachel
Dear Rachel,
A couple of sentences should suffice, but unfortunately doesn’t.
First of all, thank you for reading my transcript so closely. I expected you to treat it like my resume and burn it. Clearly you gave it a thorough look-through. I appreciate that. I appreciate that you must also have seen my immaculate record in a slew of advanced writing courses. Nonetheless, I would be happy to clarify the irregularity.
I took a one-credit GeoSci minicourse pass/fail and failed. One credit. The class was called Energy of the Earth. It met one hour a week. Why did I fail? It wasn’t because I didn’t go to class. It was because I didn’t stay in class. I just sat down in the last row, ripped out a piece of notebook paper, wrote “Sign In Sheet” at the top and my name on the first line, got it passing around the lecture hall, and immediately evacuated the premises.
The whole grade was based on one fifty-question multiple choice exam. I could intercede, like I did on the day of the exam, in a dramatic interruptive monologue, that the test was “horribly written” and “complete bullshit,” but I won’t go into that. I won’t make excuses and say “I had debilitating laryngitis on the day of the review session” because the truth is the review session was on St. Patty’s Day, and I missed it because I was busy funneling white wine sangria and playing quarters with half-gallon Mint Juleps.
I have researched your credentials. I see you have a PhD in Impossible Science. Touche. I’ll have you know I got an A+ in eighth grade Earth Science with Mr. Hopson!
Hopefully the following accomplishments, unlisted on my transcript or resume, make up for my most shameful sin of failure:
In the autumn of my Junior year, I cut corners assiduously to arrange a masterful class schedule with only two days of class per week. You say you pride yourself on the academic strength of your writers. You should have seen the letters I wrote to my teachers Senior year, when I geniusly discovered a loophole in the scheduling software that allowed me to enroll for two classes that met at exactly the same time.
The teachers were just like you. They thought they had me stymied. They would say “Dear David, I see your name on the sign in sheet every day, but I can never spot you in class…” And I would respond, “Dear Professor of Extremely Easy Class About Video Games, I’m sorry you haven’t noticed me. I sit right behind the overhead projector. I find it’s the most central view. I’m there!”
I’d arrive for the next class 10 minutes early, nestle in behind the projector, where some sycophantic freshman would say accusingly, “That’s usually where I sit” and I’d respond “Not today, buddy, not today.” The secret was skipping exactly as much of each course as possible, but never enough to get caught. Let me tell you, it’s a fine line. If not for the strength of my phony letters of apology during these trying times, which demonstrated precisely the clever wordplay and literary acumen you hold in such high esteem, Energy of the Earth might not have been the only blemish on my transcript.
Hi! Thanks for joining me today for a tour of Shangri-Nah Apartments, luxury living for the 21st century.
Shangri-Nah is a 100% green complex. Green walls, green carpets, green furniture. Even the mailboxes are green. We care about the environment so much, we went out and found the World’s tallest Hemlock trees and turned them into custom light fixtures. We bring nature to you.
Here we have the fitness facility. It’s open 24 hours. We just got these new machines in, aren’t they great? Shake-Weights, they’re called. And we’re very excited about our new state-of-the-art jump ropes. Recycled Burmese polybutylene—only the finest.
Really quick before I show you our staterooms, let’s head up to the rooftop deck. You’re going to love this. Just up this one flight of stairs and…here we are. We boast unobstructed views of rare dark cloud constellations such as “Emu in the Sky” and “Orion’s Belch” (if you’re lucky). Every Wednesday at 2:00 am we bring in a real Hopi Indian expert stargazer to help demystify the firmament. He happens to be the lead contractor, and my uncle. Only at Shangri-Nah!
We just unveiled 37 new floor plans, making each of our 37 units completely unique. The developers really wanted to create something special with each apartment. They sprung for an architecturally unprecedented technique called “Discordance.” I believe the popular term for it is “The Rupture.” Think Gaudi in Barcelona. La Segregata Familia. Our design inspirations are far and few between.
Here we are at the vacant one-bedroom. 2,000 square feet! Massive! Since the ceilings are only 5 feet tall, we’ve made it really simple for you to move around. Just sit right here on the “Rolling Rover” (as we like to call it), and use this joystick to navigate. Voila! No one bumps their head more than thrice an hour during their first week. Some residents prefer to crawl. Whatever you choose, you’ll get used to it in no time.
Repeat after me: GRA-NITE-COUN-TER-TOPS. We import our igneous from Eritrea. I wouldn’t exactly call it slavery; they mine it voluntarily and Shangri-Nah takes it from them politely. Exploitation? The only thing we exploit is quality.
Midget-twin Murphy bed, washing machine (no dryer), birdfeeder, built-in ashtray, hybrid sink-bathtub, and how about this view! The great thing about this unit is the way it’s perched right above the alley, so if you look north you see the black backside of the neighboring abandoned office building, and if you look east you see the dumpster that the burglars use to climb on and break in.
But you don’t have to worry about security at Shangri-Nah. We just installed an incredible alarm system—we call it The Baby. If The Baby hears an unfamiliar sound, it cries. And cries. And cries. We get the occasional false alarm, but what would you rather have, your birdfeeder stolen, or a deafening cacophony? Studies have shown the color green induces peaceful mental states. You’ll be so relaxed you won’t hear a thing.
That concludes our tour. Watch your 3-foot step, and help yourself to some gingerbread on the way out, the former tenant left a loaf. Everyone who lives here is super nice.
Camp is a place where kids go to feel safe and accepted. I felt neither when I, age 11, entered the communal boys’ bathroom at my summer haven to find a sizable crowd gawking at a toilet bowl full of shit…along with my Sonicare electric toothbrush.
There was no mistaking the malice of the act. This was a cruel, premeditated attack on me, and me alone. Someone hated me so much, they took my 6th night of Hanukkah present, dropped it in the toilet, diarrheaed all over it, and left it there unflushed for the whole camp to see. What could I have possibly done to anyone to deserve this?
I value dental hygiene, is that such a crime? So I brought my Sonicare instead of a regular toothbrush to camp this year. The toothbrush needed to be charged, but there were hardly any outlets in the old-fashioned cabins. I figured no one would mind if I left it in the bathroom.
Oh, someone minded. Maybe someone was jealous of my vibrating toothbrush, someone whose parents couldn’t afford to buy them one, someone who had a propensity for cavities. Maybe. That still didn’t explain the requisite enmity to produce Exhibit A: Electric Poopbrush, on public display to my horror.
Word of the sonic defilement spread to all campers and staff within minutes. So did the fact that I was the victim. A full-camp tribunal was held, inviting the perpetrator to privately confess to the camp Director, and apologize to me. Everyone was pointing fingers, taking guesses, defending the wrongly accused, and offering me their sympathies, which only made me feel worse. How bout lending me some fresh bristles? My breath was hurting. I could already feel the gingivitis coming on.
The identity of the shithead who shat all over my electric toothbrush was never revealed, officially. Most campers were so intrigued by the mystery of it all that they took it upon themselves to find evidence to solve the case. They reached a soft consensus. I believe I know who committed the shit-and-run, and to this person I have two words: flush you!
Dory oarsman down the upper half of the Colorado River: John.
Those sideburns! Or are they muttonchops? Flat across the bottom like two arrowheads. They’re the only part of his appearance he maintains.
John’s been down the Colorado over 100 times, and that’s just the Colorado. He’s been running rivers since before he could tie his shoes. He was born in a wooden hull on some Amazonian tributary, but grew up in Akron, Ohio.
Only half a mile into the trip, John is on the verge of tears. “I love it. So much.”
A self-trained geologist, John does not think about life in terms of years, but in terms of millions of years. This contributes to his swanlike equanimity; John is merely one insignificant oar stroke in the unfathomable history of the Grand Canyon, and he knows it.
His smooth speech, mixed with that Elvis-in-the-elements facial hairdo, commands attention: “My friends in Akron ask me, ‘Hey John, when ya comin’ home?’” He pauses, chuckling away a near tear. “I’m not going back home!”
He speaks selectively, extolling Vishnu schist or some other geostratum with sheer sedimentary adoration. Every thousandth word he utters, a bald eagle is born.
Even at night, John wears “sun” glasses. Yellow-framed, yellow-lensed prescription night-vision goggles. The glasses give him a froggy appearance, making it difficult to tell where he’s looking.
If John ever dies, it will be by slow-roast skin cancer in a cliffside adobe ruin. Most people’s sunburns turn into tans. John’s tans turn into sunburns. He is exactly the same color as the canyon: that deep, rustic red.
Back at camp, we’re making beads from holy Canyon clay. They are 5 billion year old beads. They have been being made. They will continue to be made long after we make them.
John’s words are more mesmerizing than memorable. I listen in earnest but comprehend nothing. I know not why; I kneel and kiss the nearest stone.
In the dory John is masterful. Exhales of distant thunder, Olympian oar-control, boat and water: one. We’re two miles away from a Class 9 rapid. John listens to the faint splashes ahead and gives an order: “David, please move slightly to your left.”
I move no more than two inches to my left in the back seat of the vessel.
“Too far.”
A trout hatches in a nearby eddy. John, almost implausibly perceptive to subtleties of current, implores: be still.
John wears a baggy long-sleeve quick-dry shirt that is, of course, wet. He is slightly hunchbacked from years of exhausting paddling. Despite being in incredible physical condition, he shuffles along like a great-grandpa with a 65-liter pack on. No hurry.
There he is polishing the beads, endangered yellow-eyed raccoon, buoyant ambassador of boatmanship. There he is shaving in the river with–what is that?–a pocket mirror! No vanity here. Pure utility. The scrape of a straight blade against sun-stained scruff awakens ancient Supai chiefs. Sideburns looking volcanically sharp.
When baseball players cross themselves at home plate, are they asking God for a base hit? Or are they saying, “Whatever happens next, I’ll still love you.”? What about after they hit a walk-off grand slam? Albert, how do you feel. “First I’d like to thank God…”
Nobody thanks God for striking out. Nobody thanks God for losing the World Series. Bill Buckner doesn’t believe in God.
Bill Buckner tells himself “Everything happens for a reason.” God was looking the other way for a sec. Probably tuning his ukulele or something. It’s rare to hear the victor say everything happens for a reason. It’s a way to explain why bad things happened to you as opposed to somebody else, or as opposed to no one. I struck out for a reason. If I hadn’t struck out, Billy might have been thrown out at third. Because I swing-and-a-missed, Billy stole third safely and Pedro knocked him in. And besides everybody knows Pedro bats better with two outs. Pedro’s clutch under pressure.
It’s like people think God is watching over just them and nobody else. Last November, Buffalo Bills wide receiver Stevie Johnson got open for a deep ball in the endzone. A touchdown would have won the game for the Bills in overtime, but the pass went right through Johnson’s hands, and he dropped it. The Bills lost. After the game, Johnson actually blamed God. Now that’s something you don’t see very often. The exact tweet was (sic):
@StevieJohnson13
I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO…
Thanks though! Asshole! I praise you like whoa, I bow to you, I paid 2 million for this diamond-encrusted cross and what do you do to me? You drop me the pass! That’s not cool man! That’s really not cool.
It’s like people think God is some top-hatted puppeteer in all black with a white twisted mustache and gangly fingers with bushy tufts of white knuckle hair pulling the strings of fate in 7-point increments, like in the Buffalo Wild Wings commercial where the barman makes a call and some janitor deploys a sprinkler head to trip a flanker in the open field.
God isn’t just somebody at a drive-by window who may or may not give you exact change. Ballplayers don’t hit more homers and catch more long balls because God loves them more than other players, or X-out or drop gimmes because God hates them more.
What do you expect? We all win? No mistakes? No strike-outs?
Why I love airports: Lots of alcohol. Time to read. Things to read. Horribly dressed, awkwardly shaped people to silently ridicule. Time to think. Time to blog. Backwards caps. So they don’t get crushed in the suitcase. And because I want you to know that I’m not from Dallas. Bloody Mary, please. While I watch world news.
But first, security. Most major airports have multiple security checkpoints. There’s always the obvious, highly populated checkpoint, and then there’s the checkpoint a short walk away that most people don’t know about. The people who do know are too lazy to walk to it.
On a typical day at San Francisco International airport, the primary security checkpoint is vastly overcrowded. It takes so long to get through security people start to panic about missing their flights. A lady guards the entrance to the empty first-class line. I ask her if there’s another security checkpoint that may have a shorter wait. She pretends not to hear me. I ask again. She pretends again! and asks me for my boarding pass please. Reluctantly she mumbles that there is another security checkpoint down the corridor. “You should tell these–” “First Class! First Class here!”
50 yards later, around a poorly marked corner, a completely vacant checkpoint. Me to ID-checker chick: “You should really send people here from the other–” “QUIET!” she interrupts. I was not speaking loudly. This is the checkpoint you don’t talk about. The guards who work here live by a strict code of secrecy. No one must discover the expedient route through security. “But there’s a huge line over–” “Sir, please keep your voice down.”
Quick water chugging contest at the conveyor belt, bewildered shake of head and I’m through. Fast food fanatics make moving walkway droop. Finally, boarding. May I remind you: there is only one plane. It leaves at the same time regardless of what seat you’re in. Still the positioning game begins. Zones 1 and 2 only, sir. A 3 sneaks in for a scan. Rejected! A suited whopper waltzes past the line, nose already in the clouds. Yes, this is the first class line, sir, but sir, you’re at the wrong gate. The crowd of onlookers assaults the stupid suit with poisonous stares.
On the plane, middle seat. Skinny Asian kid on the window. Massive mustached man boards late, claims “Him! the Chinese Guy” is in his seat. “Are you Chinese?” I whisper. “Korean.” [checks boarding pass] “OOPS.” Musical chairs, now I’ve got a new neighbor worth two. So fat he doesn’t actually block the armrest. His arm rests on his belly, which rubs against my shoulder. I think I recognize him: hey, aren’t you that obese bigot from the moving walkway? Oh sorry, my mistake.
De-boarding. Seatbelt sign off: DING! and they LEAP from their seats and PUSH to the front. Where the fuck are you going? We’re in row 35! Bundies acting like it’s the Amazing Race. I don’t see no cameras.
Why I love airports: people watching. Ethnography. But there’s only so much one can take.
How much coke were they on in the Victorian Era to build San Francisco? I’m walking around in a Salvador Dali painting of The Shire.
The circus seems to have come through town sometime in the middle of the eighteenth century and never left. After a while the circus became the city. I am the new freak in town.
Endless fata morgana. Rare zig-zagging rainbow. House of cards–all jokers. The cable car hums beneath me. A 3.3 earthquake registers in Richmond. Or do I hear a Chinese man under the street making pork fried rice in a medieval abbatoir?
A parrot swoops past. Hipsters stir like hippos hunting. I meet Florian at Crissy; we meander through the golf course and pretend we don’t know we’re trespassing. The painted ladies turn out to be men. My mistake.
Girl with red hair skipping. Skinny cyclist winking. Blues melodies through dense fog. Oysters slurped. You should probably be wearing shoes, I burn to blurt, but I guess it’s up to you.
Why does that homeless man need a fishing rod? Is he a homeless fisherman? No, he’s preparing for the shifting of the plates. When the earth opens up, he’ll cast his line into it. Perhaps a pleading pig will nibble.
Thinkers. Leaders. Innovators. We are a full-service global marketing and management agency with offices in 9 locations worldwide. We are extremely intelligent and powerful typists, gymnasts, alligator-wrestlers, librarians, and hackers–with PhD’s.
Job Duties:
Bring it, every day.
Develop new presentations for production teams
Work with the Creative Director to create and direct
Bolster systems engineering squadrons
Liaise with PFI VP’s, SRO CFO’s, CEO’s and myriad gurus
Write and edit newsletters; deploy targets; aim; fire
Light accounting
General Social Media beasting, inc. garnering hordes of Twollowers
(Every
Day!)
Who You Are:
You are a proven mastermind with at least 7 years of hands on experience in synthetic database optimization and strategic corporate growth consulting. You have a portfolio of short dissertations, essays, and videography from your past two firm placements.
You are a team-player who knows how to work independently. Deadlines are strangers; you meet them. You have excellent interpersonal skills and could WOW an audience of elderly Papua New Guinean tribeswomen with the supinity of a star-gazer.
You wear many hats, and can just as easily run campaigns as you can build them. B-Y-O hardhat. You are passionate about everything. You do not frown. You do not complain. No, we won’t make you make coffee–we’ll give you the reins to reinvent it.
***Operational comprehension of neurotransmutation and microbionics is a PLUS.
***Being able to do everything we demand of you is a PLUS.
Job Type: Unpaid 3-month trial with fat chance for flexible full-time gig.
Salary: DOE
Start Date: Immediate
TO APPLY:
Please write exactly 100 word responses to the following 3 questions:
1. What would you do if I sang out of tune?
2. Describe our company.
3. If you could remove one sport from the summer Olympics for a reason other than your own bias, what sport would it be and why?
AND
Make a 1:45 video about Platypus Extinction. (We need to know you can roll with the punches. Figurative and literal punches. We have a heavy bag in our office. His name is Saul. He does analytics.)
They told me at the Career Center I would have no problem getting a job at Subway. If fast food is my only employment option, at least let it be a healthy place. I guess I could move boxes for my aunt. She’s moving and said she’d pay me. An English major would be unwise to pass up a gig like that.
The next person who asks me if I want to be a teacher is going to get taken to school. Metaphorically speaking. Because you know how much English majors love their metaphors.
Here at the Professional Organization of English Majors (P.O.E.M.), we pride ourselves in our commitment to vague abstractions and the proliferation of obscure literary allusions. We at P.O.E.M. believe our analytical prowess makes us deserving of all of the jobs we can’t get. I know how to justify a word document. I know how to write a dynamic topic sentence. I know the difference between a sestina and a villanelle. Did you say extra mustard?
English majors! Do not give up! Do no lose hope! Stay hungry! That shouldn’t be too hard, since you’re only employable skill is your ability to type 80 words per minute. So if you find yourself plundering the pantry musing, “Wherefore art thou, Macaronio?” remember that you are not alone. If you gain grammar mastery, the airport Taco Time might let you copyedit the menu. For every typo you find you get one nacho.
Don’t take this the wrong way. I’m glad I chose English as my major. Come look at my bookshelf and tell me I’m not smart. I can write lucid, witty prose. Besides, I’d rather take a paper than write a test any day.
It was a creed written on facebook walls that declared the destiny of a generation. Yes we can. It was tweeted by shocked graduates and jaded job seekers as they blazed a trail further inside the box. Yes we can. It was sung by law school 1L’s as they cursed their mundane fate, and sell-outs who yearned to buy back in against the warning cries of elders. Yes we can.
It was the call of downtrodden employees who craved to fight The Man; desperate youth who Taught for America and hated it; a Foley who chose the blog as his new frontier; and a King who took his talents to South Beach and realized no Land is Promised.
Yes we can to money and freedom. Yes we can to tomfoolery and shenanigans. Yes we can do the unexpected. Yes we can flip the bird. Yes we can. We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of a million pairs of eyes rolling for change.
We have been told we cannot make it rain by a chorus of cynics… they will only grow louder and more dissonant… We’ve been asked to pause for a reality check. We’ve been warned against raging against the machine. But in the unlikely story that is The Future, there has never been anything false about truth.
Now the hopes of the cubicle slave in an entry-level vacuum are the same as the dreams of the undiscovered genius with more light bulbs than a world tour; we will remember that there is something happening on the intraweb; that we are not as worthless as our unemployment suggests; that we are one Tweople; we are one Obamination; and together, we will begin to write a new Mayan calendar, My and Your calendar, with three words that will ring from roast to roast, from spree to whining spree — Yes. We.–Oh shit, wait–Can we? Wait, I thought–fauuccckkkkk……………..
Alfredo is half Colombian, half Lebonese. He wears all black and a gold watch. He owns a frame shop. It’s not your typical frame shop. More like a factory. If quarter-million dollar masterpieces were trees, his gallery would be a jungle. There are only two things he loves more than art. One is women. The other is tequila. Between women and tequila, Jose Cuervo Tradicional Reposado gets the nod.
Alfredo’s sixth wife looks like a Colombian Vanna White. When a customer’s art is ready for retrieval, she struts down a long corridor to collect it like a bought vowel. As she walks away, but before she is completely out of ear shot, Alfredo, busy entertaining a patron, announces matter-of-factly, “She’s the least attractive of all my wives.”
Alfredo used to be involved with Pablo Escobar. His proof is his watch. It is as heavy as one would expect the watch of a man who used to be involved with Pablo Escobar to be. Underneath the face is a mysterious engraved hieroglyph. Alfredo likes to take the watch off, turn it over, point to the engraving, and exclaim to the nearest onlooker: “See! Pablo Escobar!” Everybody believes him.
“Big dick, great,” he declares proverbially, shooting back another agave, “Big balls, better.” He drinks his tequila out of styrofoam shot glasses with ice and lime. At least one bottle a day. He’s built up the tolerance of an elephant over the years. His wife says he can take it because he drinks so much water too. He’s always peeing.
It’s a joy and a privilege to get drunk with Alfredo. When he’s deep into a bottle, he loves to show off his bulging forearms. They really are impressive. Disgusting, actually. His fingers are short, but so thick and strong it’s obvious he has used them for killing. He raises his eyebrows, snarls, and laughs diabolically. “I was in prison once. Sold some art to the wrong people,” he confesses, eyes wide, licking his lips like he just finished a pork chop, “But I got out.”
The summer of my junior year in high school, I went to northern Chile for one month with a program called The Experiment in International Living. We spent the first two weeks touring the country, and the second two weeks in a homestay with Chilean families in La Serena (a city a few hours north of Santiago whose only claim to fame is an unusually high output of the blue gemstone lapis lazuli). I was placed with a family of four. My two homestay sisters were 12 and 7. I can’t remember their names. The older one was a tomboy. The younger one was the chubbiest and most obnoxious (but adorable) girl, Chilean or otherwise, that I had, and still have, ever met.
All I remember about her name was that it started with an M and had at least four syllables. Magdalena? Mariaelena? Magnormica? She had a shrieking, high-pitched, uncontrollable laugh. Her head was perfectly round, the size of a 16-pound bowling ball, but must have been at least 30 pounds. She was always smiling. Now that I think about it, she was the Chileshire Cat. She pestered me relentlessly. I loved her, but I couldn’t stand her.
My family was fairly well-off and had a vacation home at a small beach town a few hours away. They took me there. It was the low season, so the town, and the dusty old house, were deserted. I distinctly remember thinking to myself upon entering, “What in Pinochet’s name am I doing here?” By this point, Maximus La Serenius was driving me NUTS. She would poke me and jump on me, scream into my ear, slap me when I was napping, rub Nutella on my forehead, and do absolutely anything for my attention, which I gave to her in the form of profuse English profanity (none of them could understand).
There was a room in the house that reminded me of a summer camp cabin. It had ten twin beds lined up, five on each side, with very narrow gaps between them. Just mattresses and pillows. No sheets, and nothing else in the room. I found myself in this strange “bedroom” with just Manuela. For a brief moment, she stopped acting like a brat. But when she did, I felt sad. I had come to know and even appreciate her for her devotion to annoying me. When, for the briefest moment, she shut up, I felt cheated. I felt loss. I missed her.
And then she hit me in the face with a pillow. It hurt. I paused and stared at her menacingly. We each stood up on two adjacent beds. I grabbed a pillow in each hand and started swinging. I chased Macarena from bed to bed. She screamed in ecstacy but we were in the basement, so no one could hear us. She obviously couldn’t hit me with her pillow to save her life. She just flailed her beefy little limbs in all directions like a midget mummy high on cocaine. I beat the shit out of her with my pillows. Tomahawk chops, backhand blasts…I reached my pillows out wide and clapped her on the ears with nearly all of my force. She dropped like an anvil, but immediately scampered back up, snorting in Spanish. Somehow she was loving it–I couldn’t break her. I must have been hurting her, but she taunted me and begged for more. The pillows were useless now. She belly-flopped from one bed to the next, barreled into my shins and punched me repeatedly as hard as she could.
The epic battle suddenly ceased. Lying on our backs, panting for breath, and mumbling curses in our respective languages, we were exhausted. I thought the pudgy pest Maria Francesca de la Almohada was about to cry. Just then, a sinister grin flashed on her face. In one fell swoop she snatched a pillow and slammed it into my crotch.
1. I snuck into the Slytherin common room just to fart on Draco’s pillow.
Yeah, you heard me. Draco was acting like a bitch, so I skipped History of Magic, cloaked up, and followed Millicent Bulstrode into the dungeon after lunch. And what a lunch it was! It was revolting inside the common room, but I felt strongly that this was something I had to do. So, with the same determination I mustered in the Chamber of Secrets, I found my way to the boy’s quarters, found Draco’s bed, pulled down my pants and let it rip all over his green satin pillowcase. I’ve never told anyone this before. It means even more to me than winning the Tri-Wizard Cup. I’d bet a barrel of butterbeer Malfoy had trouble sleeping that night. And I made it out safely. Brilliant!
2. I once got a hand job from Rita Skeeter.
Fine! I confess! Rita Skeeter, that conniving bitch. Turns out Tom Riddle’s diary had some bonus material tucked into the back cover–old school photos of Rita doing the Skeet-Skeet with Maximus Brankovitch III, captain of the 1976 American National Quidditch team. That calumnious crab was at it again slandering Godric’s whole family tree. I told her to shut her pie hole. She wouldn’t. I told her I would destroy her, and insinuated about the pictures. Next thing I know we were in the bathroom of The Three Broomsticks. She was practically on her knees begging for mercy. Quite the weekend in Hogsmeade!
3. Luna Lovegood is my cousin.
My Aunt Petunia’s an even bigger skank than Skeeter! Just before she got pregnant with my cousin Dudley, Petunia met Xenophilius Lovegood at a bar in London. My uncle Vernon thought the baby was his the whole time. When Luna was born and she wasn’t fat, Vernon realized he was not the father. I didn’t have a clue about this until I got to know Luna in my fourth year. Nobody knew much about her mother. The story was that she died when Luna was nine. Luna once described her as “quite the extraordinary witch,” but it seemed a bit phony. Turns out it was. Her mother was neither witch nor extraordinary. She was my whore aunt, Petunia. I guess they call him Lovegood for a reason.
4. I’ve been smashing with Mandy Brocklehurst from Ravenclaw off and on since my third year at Hogwarts.
Most of the girls I hooked up with at Hogwarts always went around afterwards bragging that they snogged the Chosen One. Mandy was chill about it though. Apparently she’s a descendent of Rowena…smokin’ hot too. When Sirius escaped from Azkaban he told me he used to put spells on a girl named Penelope. Penelope Brocklehurst! Mandy’s mom! Brilliant! We used to go down to the edge of the forest together after Herbology. I’ve always had a thing for Ravenclaws. Shit got a bit complicated when I caught feelings for Cho the next year. But Mandy was always there for me. I followed that girl on the Marauder’s Map for hours. Hours!
5. I take the majority of my shits in the Room of Requirement.
At the first Dumbledore’s Army meeting, Hermione explained to Ron how the Room of Requirement transforms into anything the user needs most. Ron exclaimed, “Even a toilet?” And that’s how I got the idea. I prefer more privacy than the Gryffindor toilets can offer. I could go up to the second floor of the West Tower, but Moaning Myrtle would harass me there. You’d think, in a castle this big, there’d be one place a Potter could go to have some bloody peace and quiet while taking a crap! Thank heavens for the Req Room. Sometimes, after a massive feast or exhausting quidditch match, I’d head up there to relieve myself, and there was a little red carpet rolled out for me leading up to the toilet. Most comfortable toilet I’ve ever used. Obviously flushed itself. Now you know; that place is my sanctuary.
6. I use Felix Felicis recreationally.
Well, you would too if you mastered the bloody recipe! Ever since Professor Slughorn introduced me to Felix I’ve been addicted. You’d think most wizards would have caught on by now. Thing is, Felix can get messy if you don’t brew it properly. I always keep a pot brewing. Since liquid luck takes six months to ferment, I once sent Hedwig to Diagon Alley to procure me some Gillyweed Root to ensure the potion would be done before my first quidditch match. How do you think I almost die a hundred bloody times without ever bloody actually dying!?!? It’s not that I’m Harry Fucking Potter—okay, it’s that a little—it’s that I’m addicted to Felix Felici-Crack. God damn I love that stuff!
7. Part 1: I got high with Dumbledore…often.
Some of my best times at Hogwarts were when it was just me and Dumbledore in his office, getting faded. Of course he always had the dankest jar of Wizzijuana and most potent Bertie Botts hallucinogenic Jelly Beans. Do you have any idea how much time I spent in there? Bloody hell! We did whatever we wanted! You shoulda seen Ole Albus flying around his office on my Nimbus 3000! Every portrait on the wall was roaring with laughter. One time we smoked so much Wizzeed we thought we were giants! Dumbledore was impersonating Hagrid’s dad! It was bloody hilarious, mate!
7. Part 2: And then we went into the Pensieve together…
There is NOTHING like getting ripped and then going into an old memory. Especially when that memory is a childhood recollection from Helga Huffle-Puff-Puff-Pass herself when she was a spectator at a fire-breathing baby dragon contest. Probably the best moment of my entire life! And that includes shagging Mandy in the Room of Requirement with two vials of Felix in my system.
"All Moanday, Tearday, Wailsday, Thumpsday, Frightday, Shatterday."
Foley doesn’t cross streets at crosswalks; he crosses them wherever and whenever it is possible to do so without getting hit by a car. He rarely turns at right angles. He prefers to walk, but tends to do it too quickly, and rudely ahead of his company when he has any.
Foley is hypoglycemic; his motto: barriga llena, corazón contento. Feed him and appease him. He eats with his hands and picks up the plate whenever he can get away with it (he believes he can almost always get away with almost anything). Occasionally, he licks it. When he orders carry-out and runs out of napkins, he wipes his mouth with the bag. His metabolism is faster than a cheetah’s, or maybe a cheetah (he may be a cheetah). To account for it, he eats five to seven meals per day. It’s for your sake. When he’s hungry he’s a dick.
If Foley ever catches someone eyeing him, man or woman, for whatever reason, he does not avert his eyes to avoid awkwardness. He’s stares back fiercely until they stop.
Foley would rather be very late than barely late. He sometimes canters for up to half a mile to catch a train in fear of missing it by a second. It’s not punctuality that concerns him. It is not failure. Let him be egregiously tardy or wrong; it’s the close-but-no-cigars that drive him maddest. The almost-but-nots. Foley would rather come in third place than come in second.
Foley is no hypochondriac, but he has his moments. For example, panting on the train he just jogged four blocks to catch (and heroically made), Foley refuses to grab hold of the hand rails for balance. Instead, he drops into a wide stance, legs spread, or twists his leg and foot around a pole, or presses the point of his elbow against a wall. Foley may disobey the ten-second rule when food drops on the floor, but when it comes to public transportation, no hand-sanitizer can purify his imagination.
Foley refuses to say “Bless you” to anyone after they sneeze. He believes the custom is completely irrational. When Foley sneezes, he prefers that no one say “Bless you” to him either. Because then he is obliged to say “Thank you” in response, which he never means, which makes him a phony, which makes him despise himself. Foley believes that if anyone is ever going to say “Bless you,” it should be the sneezer, to the unfortunate recipient(s) of germs. Not that blessings kill bacteria; if that were the case, people would go around offering benedictions to hand rails on trains. Ridiculous!
Foley values his alone time. He doesn’t believe he must always be in the company of others to be happy. Sometimes there is no better company than Foley himself. Don’t take it personally if he doesn’t want to hang out with you on a given night, or declines your invitation. If the invitation is for karaoke, nevermind; take it personally. Foley has two modes: Bum Mode and Beast Mode. Don’t bother trying to change his mode. He’ll strike whenever he pleases. Alligators are quite lazy until they eat whole wildebeests. Being a clever and hungry gator, Foley wastes no energy doing anything until he must. But when the pressure rises, Foley surprises.
‘BRAAI’ is an Afrikaans word meaning “grill” or “barbecue.” A braai is a social gathering, but it’s really all about one thing: meat. In America, if you’re heading over to a pal’s place and want to offer the host a polite token of appreciation, you may bring wine or beer. In South Africa, where the braai originated, you bring a bag of boerewors and as many kudu steaks as you can carry.
Achieving Braai-Master status takes passion, hard-work, dedication, and practice. Before I get into particulars, I must make clear that braaing and grilling are not the same thing. Braaing is grilling, but grilling is not braaing. Grilling is the process of cooking meat on a grill. Braaing is the art of grilling. To have even the smallest chance of becoming a Braai-Master, it is imperative that you understand this distinction.
Let’s get to the meat of it: grill maintenance, recipe prep, marinades, ignition technique, gas v. coal, flip intervals, tool-work, timing, intangibles. You need to be able to adapt on the fly, know when to fan the flames, when to leave them be, and when to put them out. You need to take into consideration spacing, braising, brushing, wrapping, rotating, skewering, maneuvering. A braai is a blank canvas. Paint.
If you’re working with a proper coal grill (recommended), that grill’s gotta be hot when the meat goes on. The same goes for gas, but you better not let any gas seep onto those kebabs. That flavor-degradation will not be tolerated by the preeminent BMC (Braai-Master Committee) nor by the esteemed COAL (Carnivores of All Languages).
Keep that grill face clean, my friend. Meat sticking to the bars is the ultimate braai blunder. And what do you do when the flames get out of control and start attacking your kielbasas? I’ll tell you what you do, Luke Braaiwalker, you don’t let the flames attack. You keep the flames in check. Own the flames. Master the flames.
A Braai-Master never overcooks his meat. If it’s BMS you desire, pamper that Big Papi burger. Tickle that ground beef with your tongs. And no B-Master I know lets his breasts get bored on the braai. Fill the grill. Kudu loves company. A true Braai Master checks his meat like a shephard checks his sheep.
Go rib or go home.
“How do I know when I have achieved Braai-Master status?” I respond to all my young braaiprentices the same way every time: If you have to ask, you’re not even close. A Braai-Master knows that sometimes doing nothing is the most he can do when practicing his art. He knows that sometimes the braai surface is like a sandy beach, on which meat, like a Caribbean vacationer, needs time to bask in the heat.
I say “he,” but ladies, please excuse me, of course females can be Braai-Masters too. Braai Masteresses. Vegetarians? I’ve never seen it before, and although I would guess it’s nearly impossible, I don’t want to entirely rule it out. Actually, on second thought, I do. If you don’t appreciate the taste of meat…oh man, I’m…I just can’t…I’m sorry.
Other than meat-anthropes, anyone can become a Braai Master. So keep that beef sizzling and those brats brizzling, it’s only a matter of time before you–yes, even a Brookie like you—achieve Braai-Master Status.
What is it with people trying to predict the end of the world?
What is it with people believing those people?
There was some buzz over the weekend about May 21st being the end of the world. Gotcha! The Rapture never came. The guy who started the rumor, Emperor Palpatine, is befuddled, to say the least. I for one refuse to acknowledge him by his real name, even to call him a fucking idiot, because I refuse to give him what he wants: fame. Suffice it to say, Darth Sidious, you disgust me. May 21st, 2011 will forever be forgotten as The Day The Earth Kept Spinning.
In anticipation of the apocalypse, many believers quit their jobs and cuddled up with their loved ones for one last game of Parcheesi. Little Ricky didn’t even bother turning in his homework assignment. Those believers are now broke. Ricky’s flunking out of school. That’s what happens to people who turn to the dark side and believe nut-job Sith lords who have no reason whatsoever to be believed. The surprising thing is, people seem legitimately disappointed. Awww mannnnn, another false alarm!?!? Can’t it just be real already???
Just wait until the big one comes around. 2012: Get Rich or Die Mayan. At least the mysterious ending of the Mayan calendar has some semblance of ancient logic behind it. But go to your local Barnes & Noble and you’ll find that there is now a whole new genre of literature that has emerged from the End-of the-World obsession. There’s fiction, nonfiction, romance, humor, history, philosophy, and BULLSHIT. Every Darth and his brother is trying to cash in on Doomsday Dread.
On December 20th, 2012, I won’t be calling up my loved ones and saying any last goodbyes, oh no. Sure, I might crack open a 40 and get a little rowdy, but only because I’ll have an excuse, not because I actually believe it’s the last Hoorah. Even if John Cusack comes running into my house screaming, “IT’S HAPPENING! GET IN THE BUS, NOW!” I will not flinch. Isn’t believing in the veracity of these “prophecies” tantamount to a morbid desire for Armageddon to actually strike? What kind of person are you!??!?
I believe the world is going to end. The earth is definitely going to explode someday. But not in my lifetime, dammit, and not in yours. Foley, do you have anything to add?
You can only resign when it's your turn. It was his.
Dear Zynga,
Congratulations on acquiring NewToy, Inc., and therefore becoming the owner of the most popular App for iPhone, Words With Friends.
Some people still refer to Words With Friends as “Scrabble.” Clearly Words With Friends has Scrabblesque characteristics, but the games, as of course you know, are quite distinct. The WWF bonus square placement is much more user-friendly than Scrabble’s triple-word-in-the-corner layout, allowing for triple-letter-triple-word combinations, and much higher scoring. The iPhone is the perfect platform for the game; users can play up to 20 games simultaneously; it’s seamlessly linked to FB and Twitter; glorious, I love it. WWF has a convenient chat box within each game that has been praised by tech blogs internationally as a legitimate way to save money on your phone bill by decreasing outgoing SMS.
But Words With Friends could be better. WWF has the potential to become the first legitimate cyber-sport. Zynga, it’s time to make Words smarter. Foley knows what the people need.
Multiplayer games. Tournaments. In-game statistics. Player ratings. Matching random opponents fairly based on skill level. Out of the millions of WWF users who average one hour of daily gameplay, some* players are going to get slightly bored defeating 6th grade girls by 300 points when what they really want is a down-and-dirty dog fight Battle of Thermopylae. We all love the gameplay, the interface. John Mayer made absolutely no sense when he said “WWF is the new Twitter,” but I still think I understand what he was getting at. Words With Friends is a craze. It’s another way for people to be able to chat–and compete–with people they would never get the chance to chat or compete with otherwise. Split two games, develop a little rivalry, go out there and win a close game three, strike up a convo. I have formed small friendships with at least two formerly random opponents–a retired police officer and grandfather from the Bay, and a schoolteacher from Boston (I will respect their privacy here by not revealing their usernames).
Five years down the road I see Zynga campaigning to solve illiteracy in Central Africa with Words With Friends’ Read is the Word charitable initiative. Of course, don’t rely too heavily on a WWF game for sound vocabulary tips. Who’s the guy who gets final say on whether or not a word is legal? Mrs. Merriam? Surely not Mr. Webster. Hey Zynga, I’m trying to become a GrandMaster here and you got me playing T-Ball with some chump who just got his first cell phone. Foley isn’t the only competitive Words player out there. We can be civilized about this, not to fret, we can be Friends. The game is simply way too fun and way too addicting to not evolve with new demands. Who knows, some new word game could hit the scene, and just like that WWF could get kicked off the e-shelf like TextTwist, like Lemmings (ha!), only to become a second-rate rainy-day game, a garage game, a cheap thrill. As a devoted fan and lover of the game, username: DaxFoley does not want to see that happen.
What’s your username, Mr. or Mrs. Word-Legality-Decider? I challenge you to a game. Fine, best of seven. But if you lose I get your job.
“You know what, maybe I am insane! Maybe I am insane! And maybe it’s time for you to find out how insane I really am, yeeeaahhhhh. RIGHT NOW! OH YEEAAAHHHHH!!!!”
In the arena of our hearts, a King triumphantly dwells.
A chromatic conquerer, made of flames,
A conflagration of unbridled intensity, unrivaled lunacy,
Inextinguishable.
The Macho King! In sequined cowboy crown, belted in Gold,
Proud slinger of ropes, bringer of pain,
Ambassador of bombast, wild with rage,
O! Fountain of fury, Jimmer of Slims, Titan in tights,
Tonight, to You, we bow.
We sing for you, Master of Machismo, Magister of Madness,
And our song is gruff and rumbles like thunder:
Ohhhhhh yyeeeeaaahhhhhh!!!!!!!
It echoes through eternity behind your name,
And follows the applause of fanatics
Into rafters.
Savage in the sexiest sense, swashbuckler of soul,
I am overjoyed to be recycling this cover letter for the twelfth time this week. I am confident my foolproof bullshitting acumen, utter lack of originality, and sheer desperation make me a worthy applicant for the Undervalued Talent position at your company.
I graduated from Eff University with a BA in Applied Getrichquick. Throughout college, I mastered the art of doing as little work as possible and still sucking up to my teachers enough to get all A’s. I strongly believe my ability to make myself look significantly smarter than I actually am would make me a valuable asset to your team of apathetic drones. In an unpaid internship I got at the most distinguished-sounding company my parents knew somebody at, I worked unenthusiastically on a wide array of menial and mind-numbing projects. This hands-off approach has shaped me into the indolent, ass-kissing sell-out that I am today. In the other thing I made up that I did, I played a pivotal role in the feigning of nearly 1,000 hours of productivity–a new regional record for my age group.
I feel strongly that I am drastically unqualified for this depressingly underwhelming position. I sincerely do not give the infinitesimalest shit about bringing my nightmare of becoming a self-loathing office pawn to fruition.
I look forward to putting my 7-iron through your front windshield soon!
In the headlines today: Watermelons are exploding in China. Farmers in the Jiangsu province can’t bear to keep counting. The cause: WGH, Watermelon Growth Hormone…overdose. Oopsieeeesssss. The secret’s out. Everything we eat is poisonous! Watch where you step, this field is covered in melon-mines. Explosion-Enhancing Drugs are strictly prohibited; all violators, if whole, will be prosecuted. EED’s should be kept out of reach of all young melons. Memorial Day 2011: The Day the Melons Died. Who would risk it? Tap a melon at the market, lose an eye. Give me 200 shares of Organic please.
How long has THIS been going on for??? Have you ever noticed a dubious line on the skin of your Granny Smith? You look great! Did you…get some work done? Oh nothing much. It behooves you: think twice before you chomp into that juicy temptress, it’s actually a grenade. Wow! This strawberry is enormous! You gotta see this! One bite and you’re the Headless Horseman.
Am I supposed to feel sorry for these farmers? You lost your whole season’s crop because why? you gave your watermelons so many steroids they burst like Double Bubble. What was wrong with the melons before? When did the melons we all buy at the grocery store become genetically enhanced mega-melons? SpiderMelons. Let’s play the greasy watermelon game! BOOM! Empty pool. Walk out of Costco with a dinosaur egg, get arrested for Assault with a Deadly Melon.
Next time you’re in the produce section, don’t be surprised if you see people checking the labels on watermelons. If anyone finds a “Made in China,” run for your goddamn life.
Wednesday: Oh please, Monday, you’re the day everybody dreads the most.
Tuesday: Like you’re any different? Stuck right there in the middle of the week. Hate to break it to you Wednesday, but you’re just a big mountain that everyone has to climb right when they’re starting to get into a rhythm. And when they finally get past you, they aren’t even at the weekend yet, they still have to deal with–
Thursday: Take it easy, Tuesday.
Saturday: Please Thursday, allow me. I don’t even know why we are having this conversation. I’m all about fun. I just want to have a good time. Who wants to go to work? Nobody! This is between me and Sunday!
Sunday: Take a deep breath, Saturday, come hang out with me for a change; I’ll teach you how to really relax. You look a little hungover, how about a day at the beach? You know, a little S-U-N.
Monday: Sunday, you lazy sonofabitch! You never get anything done. That’s no way to live life. Get out there and make something happen for a change. BO-RING.
Friday: Achem Achem.
Tuesday: Not him again.
Friday: TGINT. Thank God it’s not Tuesday!
Tuesday: Go to hell!
Friday: I heard they party pretty hard there.
Saturday: You’re an idiot, Friday.
Sunday: You are all so immature. Maybe one day you guys will learn how to be civilized.
Friday: Immature! Life is short! Why waste it being mature? How bout a little celebration? Put on your dancing shoes, Wednesday, are you with me? Hahahaha. Thursday? C’mon, I know you got some mojo in there somewhere.
Wednesday: Quit trying so hard! Stop pretending to be something you’re not. We got Monday over here finishing his third cup of coffee. Friday and Saturday can’t put their egos away. Sunday with this incessant “day of rest” crap. You don’t always have to be coming or going. You can just ‘be.’ That’s what I’m about.
Tuesday: Better set aside my hiking boots for tomorrow. Massive elevation gain!
Friday: You’re a cheap whore, Tuesday, lowering your prices will never make you more popular than I am.
Thursday: Mr. Popular. Let’s at least try to get along. It’s a beautiful thing when we work together. Let’s try to minimize the bickering. We are an amazing week of days here, okay? Let’s acknowledge that!
Monday: Amen.
Thursday: You don’t have to choose between work and play. You can have both. Don’t you see? You can have both!
Saturday: Or you can choose play.
Tuesday: I think Saturday’s got a point. I do wish I could let loose a little more often. But I try, I try.
Friday: A lot of good that does you.
Wednesday: Again with the trying! You disgust me, Tuesday. And you, Friday! All of you!
Monday: If you’ll excuse me, everyone, I need to get back to work, and then I need to grab some shut-eye. I’m exhausted.
Sunday: Come again?
Monday: What’s the problem? Exhausted. Tired. Sleepy.
Sunday: I’m not sure I follow. It’s always something with you guys. Try this: Shoes off! Feet up! Don’t worry, be happy! When will you learn?
Saturday: Thanks for the wise words, Mom.
Monday: Goodnight.
Tuesday: Monday’s gone! Let’s do this shit!
Friday: You are the second day of the work week. I repeat: you are the second day of the work week.
Monday: Second that!
Tuesday: I thought you left.
Thursday: I’m gonna go grab a beer, It’s been real. Later, guys.
Friday: PEACE. Drop the beat!
Monday: Now I really am leaving.
Wednesday: Well, it appears this party is over.
Friday: Over! Hahahahahhaha.
Sunday: I guess I’m gonna go watch a movie.
Tuesday: Forget it, I’m gone too.
Friday: Hey, Turd, I challenge you to a dance-off.
The infinite continuum. Abounding love and universal harmony. Eternity: a joke, a second. Generations rolling, new children singing new songs, history repeating. The unreality of time, folly well spent. Life is a net on a beach, a good volley. The tide rises and the skies shift, but what was and what is shall always be, including you, you see?
The looking is the finding. The caring is the neverminding, and the cycle repeats again. Hope, regret, and fear will get you–you know where–nowhere, the place you were before. Is life really such a bore? You decide. And run we do from death on coattails; do not let it catch you, but do not fear the day it does. Celebrate and hug. Smile and share. Wear your sleeve on your heart and be blessed without sneezing. Breathe easy, no wheezing. Less TV, more reading. Create yourself and bask in it, share the wealth and laugh riches. Maybe earn them too, but by doing what you do–do you?
Soul-archaeology, digging up bones from skeletons of the unborn. Make stuff, rate stuff, berate and liberate stuff, but do not hate stuff and make such a scene please. We’re all the same molecules from the same Big Bang. Different dialects and vernaculars, new definitions of spectacular, new creations. Selflessness and patience, respect and admiration, pay homage where homage is due. The stars and the incomprehensible moon. The beyond, forever beyond us, placed there to face us and torture and haunt us. But you won’t get there in a rocket ship. Ponder this: to a galaxy far away you go someday, and all you find there is yourself, the way you are today.
Those who can’t do, teach. Those who can’t teach recite ancient Chinese proverbs like this one: “Sick and feeble need prick of needle.” Heed centuries of sagacity with today’s energizing Groupon from Asian Therapeutics. For $20 (a first-time visit normally costs $95), customers save $75 and get their choice of either a 60-minute acupuncture treatment or a 60-minute “cupping” treatment—both relaxing ways to alleviate pain and revitalize body and mind.
When it comes to acupuncture needles, size matters—the smaller the better. Even aichmophobes can rest assured the treatment is not only safe but tingly too. Hair-thin needles gently poke specific energy zones, recalibrating the flow of qi (ch’i), the vital life force, throughout the body. The placement and number of needles a patient needs varies depending on their own inner energy situation, and what their favorite Bruce Lee movie is (Enter The Dragon: +4 needles). Don’t get the point? Try cupping therapy instead. Pre-heated glass cups relax muscle tissue and relieve congestion. Be warned: suction sessions leave painless, short-lasting bruises that may turn trapeziuses into pepperoni pizza with extra ch’is; but who wouldn’t want a slice of that? After a cramp-expunging “reverse pressure” massage, you’ll be feeling, like, a million cups.
Treatable disorders include muscular, arthritic, respiratory, digestive, and reproductive conditions. Whether by prick of needle or suck of cup, the highly experienced traditional medicine practitioners at Asian Therapeutics’ serene studio promise to manipulate meridians without accidentally administering the Kiss f the Dragon. Find your center downtown just off the corner of 10th and S streets at 1008 S St. Free street parking is available. Until then, park your mind on this timeless wisdom from terrible teacher/undercover detective John “Kindergarten Cop” Kimble: “Light of lion makes shadow roar.
"....en el jardin, de la viiiidddaaaa...."
The Bling Blaow Prophecy
Acupuncture originated in China in 675 BC during the mighty Ling Dynasty. Emperor Chingha Ling suffered from chronic arthritis, and could hardly wield a sword. Criticized heavily for never joining his troops on the battlefield, Emperor Ling yearned to lead his men in a pivotal clash against the rebellious House of Flying Darts, whose long-range poisonous blow dart guns could inaudibly decimate entire armies. Desperate to win back the respect of the people, the Emperor sought counsel from reclusive sage Chi Lao, who had only this to say: “Ling Lao, bling blaow!” Emperor Ling had no choice but to fight. Struck by a stray dart in battle, he felt his life, and legacy, slipping away—or was it pain? One careless House assassin forgot to pre-poison his quiver. Not only did Emperor Ling survive the attack and successfully silence the rebellion, but from that moment on his arthritis was gone. Ling and Lao alike became legends. Word of their glory—and of the miraculous healing potential of needles—echoed through the land. The following timeless proverbs are also credited to Lao:
Better is a hard pillow than a stuffed armadillo.
If FernGully 2 isn’t a box-office hit, you must acquit.
Love is Jean-Claude Van Damme—ruthless. Lust is Martin Van Buren—nocturnal.
Even a broken clock has hands.
Drown will he who Tippecanoe in a river of Tecumse’s tears.
A camel with two humps. A Shawn Kemp with twenty-two children.
One small quest for James, one giant peach for mankind.
Shake it fast, but watch yourself.
Ode to Qi
The following verses were published in Sky-Hook Rhapsody, a poetry anthology by NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, in 1989. Abdul-Jabbar has been a proponent of traditional eastern medicine since early in his professional basketball career.
Yin and Yang play speed chess in Kamchatka.
And Samba on the streets of Brazil
You’re the force that guides them like Chewbacca,
The board, the beat, the clock, the feet, the thrill!
Whoa, dude, ditch the jeans and take that hoody off! Would you wear fleece in Jamaica? I didn’t think so. Hmmmm, a button down. Interesting. Might want to just chop the sleeves off that completely. You know what, shirts aren’t really en vogue down here; you’ll have a much easier time making friends in a wife beater.
Hurry up! The beach is calling. Throw your trunks on. Not those….way too plain. Take a look around you. You see all that neon? No, that’s not a nightclub, sorry, it’s a dentist’s office. Your outfit needs to reflect your surroundings. Your bathing suit should really pop out—try a lime green or bright magenta to spice things up and turn a few heads. Oh wowwww yeah that’s not gonna work. You are one pasty motherfucker. I know a tanning place we can hit up real quick—don’t worry, they’re open 24 hours, we’ll go there on the way back from LA Fitness after we finish boot camp. Gotta stay fit, y’know…it’s $50 cover for out-of-shape guys and only $20 if you have good definition on your tris. Ladies are free before 6 o’clock, but if your tits aren’t the size of Honey Dews you should probably just stay in.
Hungry? I know this spot in Little Havana that makes a mean Mojo chicken wrap, but it’s a little risky—my tape deck got jacked there last weekend. I guess it was my fault though for rolling up in the chromed out 3-series. Maybe I was asking for it. But hey, if you don’t have a Beemer coupe with tan interior you will have no chance at your audition for that Reality show. And clean up those sideburns man! Jeez, you’re looking kinda scraggly. Talk to my guy J-Boogie at the barber shop on 14th…yeah, the one with the pastel awning…he’ll hook you up with a real clean zero-fade blowout.
One more thing dude, no model broads are gonna put out if you’re rocking those stock RayBans. Gucci son, Gucci, I thought you knew better. C’mon let’s get outta here, I think I just saw Birdman.
I hate it when a job posting says absolutely nothing about the job.
Applying for this job is like voluntarily transporting a shady stranger’s parcel across international borders. It could be full of money or dildos or cocaine or bullshitted resumes or some other contraband. I’m bound to fail, bound to get caught at customs, bound to not get the job.
But if by chance I do make it to Algeria with my suitcase full of elephant tusk and Siberian lynx pelt, if by chance I do get an interview with these conceited craigslist comedy crackpots, what then? Then I’ll be stranded in Algeria with some Berber mountainmen with a couple camels, some semi-automatic rifles, a Louis Vuiton suitcase full of strap-ons and two kilos of blow. I’ll be a dead man.
You say you are the worst employer in the entire world and I believe you. That is why I want to work for you. Lucky for you, I am the worst employee in the entire world.
Regardless of the job, every day before I come to work I take a bottle of Bombay Sapphire to the face for twelve seconds. When I got sick of my last job as an entry-level dick-sucker, I arrived one Thursday with twenty multi-packs of Hellmann’s mayonnaise from Costco. Secretly, under my desk, I poured all the mayonnaise into a garbage bin, adding staples, coffee, scissors, and my own feces. I stood up from my cubicle and screamed, “A tornado is coming! A tornado is coming!” And when everyone else leaped up in a confused panic, I ran through the office dumping my shit-mayo over every desktop Dell and J-Crew button-down I could find. The CEO ran out of his office in a fury screaming, “Somebody stop that little fucker!” I walked right up to him wielding a three-hole puncher, McGuired him in the kidney, and poked him in the eyes. Then I stormed out of the office shouting, “Screw you guys, I’m going back to Algeria!”
When I got home I immediately went on craigslist and found you, my next victim.
I mean, literally, like, everyone talks this way. I’m not even gonna lie, it’s like, an epidemic or something. To tell you the truth, even I do it sometimes. Seriously though, it’s bad. It’s really bad.
I never want to lie to anyone, ever. I never want to say I’m doing just fine when I’m in a foul mood. I never want to pretend to be rich when I’m poor, or hungry when I’m full. I never want to fake anything.
Are you going to Coachella?
Everybody hates doing the dishes. Some people are better at sucking it up than others.
The CEO of L7 Records is Hollywood Jo. No e. He’s acting as my personal stylist as we shop for wardrobe on Melrose. Jo exudes swag; I am in good hands. The Dummy Gang needs blue and gold everything–vintage Golden State Warriors. We can’t find a Chris Mullen jersey and that is disappointing. Calvin’s keen artistic eye and attention to detail mean a special focus on accessories–pins and patches, rings, bandanas, etc. We try on some gear before Murph has to leave for the studio.
Plaid shirts and denim vests, high-waisted rolled-up skinny-pants, thick-rimmed neon Buddy Holly glasses, beanies tilted to expose partially-shaved craniums, incongruous patterns on vintage ascots, beards infused with chewed Starbursts. You’ve really mastered the slumber-party-in-a-dumpster look, haven’t you, hipsters?
It’s a beautiful new year. Here are my resolutions for 2012.
Matty Friedman wears flip-flops in winter and unitards to parties. When bored, he guzzles tremendous quantities of liquor. When drunk, he conjures great spectacles, most commonly his naked self. He only shows up uninvited. He only stays if asked to leave.
God, I hate losing.
When baseball players cross themselves at home plate, are they asking God for a base hit? Or are they saying, “Whatever happens next, I’ll still love you.”? What about after they hit a walk-off grand slam? Albert, how do you feel. “First I’d like to thank God…”
What is it with people trying to predict the end of the world?
In the headlines today: Watermelons are exploding in China. Farmers in the Jiangsu province can’t bear to keep counting. The cause: WGH, Watermelon Growth Hormone…overdose. Oopsieeeesssss. The secret’s out. Everything we eat is poisonous! Watch where you step, this field is covered in melon-mines. Explosion-Enhancing Drugs are strictly prohibited; all violators, if whole, will be prosecuted. EED’s should be kept out of reach of all young melons. Memorial Day 2011: The Day the Melons Died. Who would risk it? Tap a melon at the market, lose an eye. Give me 200 shares of Organic please.
I hate it when a job posting says absolutely nothing about the job.