Tru Love 4 All - the Glenn Truitt story

Killing Herndon - An Open Letter to the President

2010-06-06T16:48:00.000-07:00

Dear President Obama,

On the 12th of September, 1857, a 43-year old United States Navy Commander was given leave of his military command to captain the commercial sidewheel steamship SS Central America from Panama to New York.

You see, this famous and vital run was not the sort of trip you trusted to amateurs, and especially not when carrying nearly 600 passengers and 15 tons of gold (worth $2,000,000 back then). So it was common practice for commercial shipping companies to employ military ship captains on these treacherous and important voyages to keep their crews, cargoes and passengers safe. After all, in the 1850’s, sailing through the Caribbean wasn’t a lazy jaunt past resort islands and pleasure cruisers. No, the dangerous waters just below North America were a festering stew of bad weather, vicious piracy, and unmarked shoals - and if you were going to make passage through them, when you looked up on the command deck of the boat, you wanted to see a man in uniform, a Navy man, and if you were fortunate enough, an Annapolis man.

And so it was with the 575 souls aboard the Central America. With the sweltering heat of summer just passed, wealthy travelers and dignitaries eagerly seized the opportunity to accompany one of the largest shipments of gold ever at that point back to New York where it promised untold wealth for the men who had previously sent it from the California coast down to the west side of Panama. Passage with the famous Commander Herndon (having just a few years before completed what was then the most comprehensive exploration of the South American Amazon basin), aboard the luxurious and newly-built Central America, and in the cooling autumn breezes meant that this normally treacherous journey would be as safe, comfortable and incident-free as could be afforded at the time. But after safely reaching, stopping into and subsequently leaving Havana, things took a turn for the worse.

The Central America headed up the American coast, and as luck would have it, a hurricane had a similar trip planned. The crew struggled valiantly, but after a three-day battle with the tropical storm off the coast of South Carolina, the ship was doomed. As it began to succumb, Commander Herndon ordered the women and children to the main deck to begin evacuation. He oversaw as 153 people were loaded into lifeboats and safety, but refused to leave the deck of his ship. The last recorded sighting of him was “in full uniform, standing by the wheelhouse with his hand on the rail, hat off and in his hand and bowed in prayer as the ship gave a lurch and went down.”

Since his tragic and honorable death, the Navy has honored Commander Herndon with two ships named after him, and perhaps most famously, by erecting a 21-foot granite obelisk on the inner Yard of the Naval Academy, just steps from the beloved and world-famous Chapel, that simply bears his name in capital letters: “HERNDON”.

This monument is also the site of a seventy year old tradition at the U.S. Naval Academy, by which the Academy’s freshmen, or “plebes“ mark the completion of, what has been for most of them, the most difficult year of their lives. “Plebe Year” is a year of endless physical, mental and emotional challenges that outside of the other state and federal military academies, has no analog. It is a year of running, shouting, learning, cleaning, studying, working, and enduring. It is, if even measurably, exponentially more difficult than the freshman year of any state college or private school student. It is a sacrifice to prove worthy of brotherhood. No matter how detailed the description, it is inconceivable except to those who have lived through it, and when it is finally completed - it offers an incomparable moment of joy, pride and relief. And to reach this moment the Academy offers up to the freshman class one final challenge - a challenge they have all either seen or heard of, shortly after arriving on campus. According to tradition, the Herndon rock is covered with two hundred pounds of lard, and a blue-rimmed dixie cup (the hat the Plebes wear during their first summer) is taped to the top. The task is simple: take the dixie cup off, and replace it with a combination cover, the hat worn by midshipmen during the rest of their time on the Yard. The only tool they are given? Each other. The one and only time, upperclassmen included, that a midshipmen is ever given the opportunity to (1) wear athletic gear on the stored inner Yard and (2) set foot on the sacred lawn of the same, is for the completion of this monumental assignment.

As you might imagine, it is not easy. Is it is hot, slippery, sweaty and smelly. It is brutal and joyful, marked by moments of ecstasy (as hands reach perilously close the top) and cries of pain (as human pyramids tumble onto the throng below). It is group effort so massive that it nearly has life of its own: speaking with its own voice, in its own language, rising and falling like the chest of a heaving giant, and moving with both the strength and weakness that is composition provides. There are crews standing by with hoses to keep the beast from overheating, cannoneers a short bit away marking each 15 passing minutes in the creature’s short lifespan, and a crowd of mystified, awestruck and horrified onlookers cheering in its life and ultimate demise. It is also not safe. Sending a thousand college freshman in shorts and t-shirts to build a human pyramid on a lard-covered rock with no training and only the barest of instructions is not the sort of thing you do if bumps and bruises are of concern. But it is in those bumps, bruises, scrapes and cuts that the class is truly born. Like the year that precedes it, and the climactic actions of the man whose monument bears it, it teaches that nothing great is easy, and so long as you aspire to greatness, you can expect sacrifices (both big and small) along your way. For me, it meant scrapes down my arms and legs as I was raked down the rock’s north face, a sore neck from having a classmate literally standing on it, and innumerable bruises whose specific origins were lost in my own bliss as we reached the top.

I suspect that though he never lived to see it, that Commander Herndon would be proud to have his name endure as the seminal test of the Academy’s midshipmen; a rite of passage without compare. And I wonder what he would say to Vice Adm. Jeffrey L. Fowler, the Academy’s departing Superintendent, who nearly scrapped the entire ritual, and only ended up eviscerating it (by removing the lard) as his parting shot. I wonder how the storied Commander would look at this 1978 graduate, who after having spent a career aboard nuclear submarines in one of the world’s most dangerous and unforgiving environments, decided to punctuate his political flag-rank career by emasculating one of the Academy’s greatest traditions under the auspices of “safety”. Had Commander Herndon survived that fatal voyage in 1857, I suspect he, too, would have ended up commanding only larger and larger desks, and becoming more gentleman and politician than warrior. But I refuse to believe that he would have run so far afield of his days in command that he would demand that only purposeful and risk-free elements of officer training be retained; ignoring the value of such elements in his own development and perhaps trying to secure a place in a liberal administration who seems ever more bent on sissifying the nation’s armed services. Because I choose to believe Patton’s historic refrain that “old soldiers never die, they simply fade away.” And it makes me wonder if Mr. Fowler was ever a soldier in the first place.

Mr. Fowler’s actions may be consistent with current trends and may simply be a symptom of much larger problem, but that is no excuse and little consolation. Of the many lessons I learned at Annapolis, the most important was that the right thing to do is not always popular with subordinates, peers, superiors or even the public, but it remains the right thing to do - and as an Annapolis man, nothing less would be expected or tolerated from me. As a passenger aboard the Central America I would be counting on the very same to keep me safe, and prior to this incident, I have always felt the Academy’s legacy was similarly safe in the hands of men who walked its hallowed halls themselves. But I cannot fathom the narcissism, shameless self-interest and pomposity it requires to abandon the principal tenets of the institution that raised you in the name of political gain and the false production of one’s own legacy. There was a time that simply placing your name amongst the few men who have had the honor of leading the Academy was enough to mark the career of any officer as successful - apparently that time is passed, and now to be remembered you must change the Academy in some memorable way. It seems that no institution is safe from this Age of Entitlement.

To put it into perspective, Mr. Fowler’s actions have made me feel something I have previously never felt, and that is embarrassed to be a submariner. Of all the terrible surprises in this story, none was worse than finding out Mr. Fowler and I had both served in the same service. In fairness, the sub community has always, in its own way, held itself apart from (and even above) the rest of the fraternity of Naval officers, but I never expected that would come to this. I never expected that our pragmatism and intellectualism would become bastardized, short-sighted and downright stupid. I couldn’t have imagined that the crucible of underwater war-fighting could generate someone so foolishly paternal and mired in political correctness to the point of bald ignorance. I can only hope that the tens of thousands of men who have preceded Mr. Fowler, and the many more that will follow him in the silent service will stand up beside me and let him know that he does not speak for us, he does not represent us, and despite his service, is not welcome amongst us.

If Mr. Fowler expects to convince a group of officers specially selected for their academic aptitude that he has legitimate reasons aside from his own self-aggrandizement for his actions, he’s going to have to try harder than offering up “safety” as his primary motivation. Does he really expect any of us to buy such an argument when there are literally dozens of events on the Yard that produce larger number of small injuries, a greater risk of incident and an even less-tenuous connection to actual Fleet activity? What about varsity sports, intramural Field-ball, formal parades, Leatherneck, Pre-Airborne, Lightweight football open tryouts, running the sea wall, not canceling classes after ice storms, Army Week, March Over, pep rallies, cannoneers, the 40-year-swim, and his beloved Sea Trials (just to name a few)? Are they on the chopping block, too? Or did Jeff get pulled off the rock as a plebe before he could get to the top, and this is his way at getting back at all of us?

In the weeks since I learned of this tragedy, I’ve written and read countless comments and commentary, and I’ve been accused by a few of overreacting. After all, it’s only one ceremony, it’s not as though their tearing down the walls, right? Wrong. This one thing is indicative of what else is happening there, and just one bad enough to finally garner some media attention. It is, quite literally, the tip of the iceberg. We live in a world where the modern iterations of many storied institutions are simply shadows of their predecessors. We ought to be careful to hang on to the ones we can, even when it seems as though doing so will do little to quell the tide.

I am fiercely proud of my Academy experience. Between my degree and commission from USNA and my JD from Stanford Law School, only the former hangs on my office wall. I spent two years as Bill the Goat and believe that I am one of the most ardent and fanatical Navy Football supporters even today (for the record, I’d gladly pay thousands to put that costume on again just one more time). I have an “N” tattooed on my side and hate Notre Dame with a white hot passion that only an Annapolis man could. If given the occasion to explain how I’ve gotten so far in my own life, I never forget to mention that without the Naval Academy, I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere. And with that, I believe the institution is worth saving. I believe that we should rise up both as a nation of alumni, and simply as a nation and stop this nonsense, before my beloved alma mater becomes East Maryland State University.

Sir, I’ve never asked you for much, and I know you're busy but since you’ve had time to weigh in on the LeBron James free agency, I figure you’ve got time for this. Mr. President, my prescription for saving Navy:

1. Censure Jeff Fowler. Let his farewell tour of the Yard be just that. No promotion, no operational command. Give him two options: retire now with your pension, or retire now without it. The vast majority of his career is worthy of an honorable resignation - but, no matter how many stars you’ve got, unless you’re an actual war hero (e.g. John McCain), you don’t get to kick tradition in the balls and keep on moving up the Chain of Command.

2. Hand Pick the New Superintendent. Only ask him/her one question: will you put the lard back on the Rock? If the first words out of his/her mouth aren’t “Yes, absolutely”, move on.

3. Go See It. Next June (since you’re headed there anyways), take that little trip 30 miles up the road to Annapolis a week early and watch Herndon. To my knowledge, no President has ever witnessed it in person, and I know how you like being first to do things. Once you’ve seen it, write about it. And tell your successor about it. Trust me, you’ll have something to say once you see it - and you'll be glad you saved it.

In closing, let me just say that as men, we are rarely put in a position to really do something, and when we are, we often shrink from the task under the pressure from and obligation to those who got us and keep us there. I cannot imagine the pressure you are under but this is a real opportunity to effect that change you spoke about during your campaign. Of course, this one small thing will not swing the pendulum of legacy for your Presidency one way or another, but it has an air about it that I hope will make it unavoidable, and that is, it is the right thing to do. Because when it comes to killing Herndon, don’t you think that’s the sort of thing we should only do once?

Sincerely,  
Glenn H. Truitt
USNA ’97

Thanking Coach

2010-04-12T08:56:00.000-07:00

Like most athletes, I’ve had a lot of coaches in my time. Coaches hold a special place in American culture; somewhere between parent and teacher, someplace between best friend and arch-nemesis, a person with whom you might share your greatest victory and someone who may very well deliver your greatest defeat. Coaches come in all shapes and sizes; big coaches, little coaches, mean coaches, friendly coaches; coaches who yell, coaches who drill, coaches with catchphrases, coaches with bad hair. Some coaches never played the game they coach, while some play it still (or at least think they can). There are coaches that look good in suits, and coaches who look about as comfortable in suits as they would standing on the sideline naked. Nevertheless, many of us mark time in our lives with the coaches we’ve had. There are some lessons that only a coach can teach; things you would never have learned from your parents, friends, or that “school of hard knocks” you keep referring to (though you’ve been in private school since you were 18). Funny thing is, these most important lessons are most often learned from the coach you’d least expect them from.

I have to admit, I do like the word “Coach”. It’s respectful but still intimate - an unspoken understanding between athletes. Some coaches want you to use their first name, some want you to call them Mr. This or Ms. That., even rarer still are those who insist on sir or ma’am (outside of Texas high school football). But there’s something about saying “Hey Coach...” which lets someone know that you’re ready to take direction, and that you trust what they’re about to send you out to do. And so, every coach I’ve ever had I’ve called “Coach”. The last coach I had is probably the last coach I’ll ever have - there aren’t a lot of professional team sports opportunities for a 35 year old with a double spinal fusion, and whose two greatest sporting abilities are his ability to throw (a) girls and (b) frisbees (I’m sure my dad secretly wishes those were strikes and touchdowns - but sometimes you get what you get). My final coach was the coach of the Clippers Fan Patrol - the professional coed cheerleading squad for the L.A. Clippers - although her official title was “Director” - and like every last anything, ours is a story that deserves to be told; as she was, surprisingly enough, the coach that taught me the most.

Old Cheerleaders Never Die...

...they just keep finding other places to stunt. It’s true. Forget about the clapping, chanting, hand-motions, spirit fingers and any of that ancillary nonsense. Most cheerleaders just put up with that stuff because it’s an excuse to stunt. Don’t get me wrong, we are the energetic sort - but we’re also not stupid, so we know the cheese factor of what we have to do to earn the right to do acrobatics in front of strangers. Of course, as we get older, two things happen: 1. Our tolerance for wearing ill-fitting and awfully colored polyester, shouting chants to the detriment of our vocal cords and trying to generate excitement whilst starting at a sea of apathetic faces wears very thin (notwithstanding the license it provides); and 2. We’re not good for the four quarters, two halves, daily/weekly practices, warm-ups, stretching, etc., that we used to be (no matter what our brains may tell us). As a result, we end up finding places that will let us do the throwing, catching, flying, spinning and stretching that we love, both as little as we’d like and with as little hassle as we can. For some, it’s skulking around open gyms, while others find spots on pro teams, and for the precious few who can manage it, they coach.

Such was the case with Jessie. An All-American cheerleader for literally decades before - she, like many all-stars before her, found herself on camp staffs, then leading camp staffs, and then ultimately coaching. Though I didn’t know her then, I expect at each stop along this road, she stole a little time away for herself, throwing a stunt, basket, or other such skill every now and again - both to make certain that she still had it (though there was little doubt) and because, well, once you’ve got the itch - it’s hard to ignore. And that’s the beauty of a coach who’s played the game at the highest level: you know damned well that if you don’t live up to their standard, they’ll likely just step in and do it themselves (probably better than you did - and just as well as they did it ten years ago). What’s more, they get you - in a way that you sometimes don’t get yourself. They know what you do, how you do it, and most importantly, why. Which is why Jessie was a great cheerleading coach - she was a great cheerleader first.

The Cat Herd

At each level of any sport, the higher you go, the less teaching-of-the-game you have to do, and the more management of challenging personalities you must do. Despite what you may think you know about the group Coach Jessie was tasked to lead, you have no idea. As uniform as we may have appeared, we couldn’t have been a much more diverse group. We were young and old (ages 19 to 37), tall and short (4’11” to 6’6”), quiet and loud (yes, I know, quiet cheerleaders), and cocky and, well, o.k. for the most part all of us were cocky. We came from wildly different backgrounds, both personally, and in our own sport: some from rich families and some from poor, some from storied college programs and some who had only ever cheered in competition. To say we may have been a difficult bunch to lead would be akin to saying that Miley Cyrus may grow up a little socially maladjusted. We were a coaching nightmare.

But Coach was stoic, optimistic and loving. Always. You could see that most of us started out thinking that she didn’t have much chance of coaching us when we first met her - and for some, that petulant stare never went away. But she endured, and for many of us, she earned that spot she had - and we rewarded her with something that most of us did for precious few others, we listened. It’s a powerful thing when you realize for the first time that someone is really listening to you - you know, when a child is hanging on your every word for guidance, and you know fully well that they will take every bit of what you say as absolute gospel. It’s heady, empowering and sometimes scary. Of course, Coach had kids of her own, and it clearly wasn’t her first time both earning and exercising this responsibility. She used it well. She knew just the right amount of shenanigans to put up with, the right moment to drop the hammer, the time to pull someone aside. She knew how each of us ticked, she knew how to push you, she knew how to make you do what she needed from you, she knew how to make you feel like she hadn’t done much at all, and that you did it all on your own. Most importantly, she never lost sight of the fact that it was, in fact, cats, she was herding. They would never be cattle, they would never fall in line, bond like a football or volleyball team, or be lead by simply a strong hand. And that was really the genius in it after all.

The Captain I Wasn’t

I’m not quite sure how Coach saw me at first. I was going through so much personal change when we first met, I scarcely knew myself back then. On the doorstep of a new legal career, my first real job that didn’t involve a uniform, and in a terrifyingly new city where I didn’t know a soul. I was shy but loud, all heart and little technique. I was older than most of the group and felt it. I always suspected that I’d have more in common with Coach than I would with most anyone on the line. But I insisted on calling her “Coach” - and when she finally realized that this wasn’t just a verbal slip on my part, she gave me an odd look (as did many of my teammates). I suspect I may have been the first cheerleader in her charge to ever do so - at least at the pro-level. But she handled it with her customary aplomb.

My personality was a tremendously bad fit with the existing team’s at the time I joined. I was faster, more energetic and louder than most everyone (save my dearest Sanchez) - a cheerleader trained at a military academy - and, after expecting everyone to be exactly like me, visibly disappointed in my teammates. Coach saw it, and could see the storm brewing on the horizon. The strong personalities in the locker room, especially the team captains she had selected, brushed harshly against my own, and as you might expect, ultimately came to a head. One day, I forgot myself, and in a fit of childish rage, stormed off the court during warm-ups. Coach found me immediately, and the care and concern which she had always previously addressed me with was gone from her face. She presented me with my own foolishness, shined a light on my immaturity and would hear nothing of my justifications. She not only demanded better, but also that I apologize to the team, and to my then-hated nemesis - and that was simply for her to consider letting me back out on the court. In all of my years of leading and being led, I had never had to do such a thing. But I did. I swallowed the little pride I had left and gave that apology, through gritted teeth and strained back tears, and walked back out on that court - knowing a little more about Coach and a lot more about me.

My final year, I had every expectation that I’d be selected as a team captain. I had the seniority - the only guy on the line who had been there longer had already been captain and didn’t want the job again. I was the oldest, and most vocal member of the team. I did my best to lead during tryout prep, tryouts and early practices. I communicated with the group, organized social events, and tried to generate a new esprit de corps. I was simply waiting on my coronation, and Coach knew it. She didn’t pick me. And like that day I stomped off the court, I again reached back and found my petulant adolescence, and turned my back on a team, and a coach, that I felt had betrayed me. It wasn’t long before she confronted me again. We talked for hours - and though I don’t remember exactly what she said, I remember realizing exactly what she had known all along. It wasn’t my team to lead. They wouldn’t follow me, and I wasn’t ready. It didn’t make me less of a cheerleader, teammate, or person - team leadership is not simply about qualification, it’s a collective relationship that you must be capable of. She knew I didn’t have it, and taught me one of the most valuable lessons of my adult life.

* * *

There are other stories; other lessons, other moments. It’s difficult to try and take a five year relationship and condense it to just a few thousand words. There were moments we shared our own outdated-ness (singing Bon Jovi and Boston songs way too loudly), our individual successes and our personal defeats. We went down a long road together - and one that neither of us expected. Today, Coach is no longer coaching that team, and I’m no longer cheering. But, it takes little more than a stroll into STAPLES Center, or a picture from those days to remind me of not just who she was, but what she was to me. Though I’ve had many teachers in my life, I’ve learned from precious few of them. As luck would have it, it has almost always been from those I least expected. There were moments I cursed and hated her, and moments I loved her just as intensely. It was a crucible of a relationship, and I’m grateful for every high and low. Time has taken much, but has given me more - especially in the way of perspective. I don’t have many regrets from my last run as a “real” athlete - it was a time I’ll always remember, but there is one that came to me as I sat to pen this little ode. I don’t think I ever gave her a hug and thanked her for just how much she gave me - whether she knew it or not. So here it is Coach, in the best way I know how, in a medium which lasts forever, a hug from one old-retired athlete to his last Coach: thank you.

The Fourth Horseman

2010-04-03T16:11:00.000-07:00

History is filled with transcendent trios. Bands of heroes, villains, saviors and songsters have come in threes so often that we've become accustomed and comfortable with the idea and even the superstition that good things come in threes. The Three Musketeers, Charlie's Angels, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and the Three Amigos, just to name a few. While the first foursome that comes to mind are those famous horsemen who foretell the coming of the Apocalypse: Conquest, War, Famine and Death. As I prepare to depart Los Angeles after a shorter-than-it-seemed five year stay, I'm also leaving my own group of horsemen; a foursome to which I'm not certain I ever truly deserved to be a part of, but one that never made me feel like I did anything but.

I've lived a life of ancillary-at-best connectivity, treating each place I've stopped as simply a way-station on the way to bigger and better things. And as you might imagine, that sort of attitude doesn't lend itself to making great or lifelong friends. I've frequently felt intensely and secretly jealous of people who have best friends that they've known forever; people who would give or do anything for them, and for whom they'd do the same. Though through the years, I've had some close calls, I'm not sure I really ever had a best friend, let alone more than one. What's more, if you were to survey most folks on the places you might be least likely to make an actual connection, I would expect that Los Angeles would end up either at or near the bottom of the list. And not without good reason, the majority of the city is shallower than a spit puddle, and emotes a collective narcissism so intensely extreme that it's a wonder they don't commit all eight million of us. But it was here, in the most improbable of places, that I found three horsemen to ride with, and with whom I hope to frequently ride with again.

The Big 3

Sanchez, Joey and the Hawk. That's them. Sounds like a modern day A-Team. And I suppose we are an A-Team in a way. Though, I imagine that every group of male friends has a Hannibal, a Face-Man, a Murdock and a B.A. Barracus - or maybe more than one of each. David (Sanchez) is definitely our Murdock - crazy, wide-eyed, and an ability to find a smile in just about anything; though not without moments of unexpected lucid insight that are so profound that they often leave you simply shaking your head. Joey is surely our B.A. Barracus - though I expect if asked, that he'd tell you he's the Face-Man. He's certainly a fighter, and no mohawk notwithstanding, has gone through a number of haircuts that I'd never even consider. He's a man of few words, but constant presence; a fiercely loyal band member who often can't be convinced to do anything he doesn't want to do (though with sufficient tranquilization - or intoxication - he usually comes along). The Hawk is sort of half Face-Man and half Hannibal. He's surely the most well-dressed of the pack, and is legendarily suave with the ladies - then again, he's also the natural leader of the band. He's a business man, a family man, and one seriously big son-of-a-bitch. His demeanor is unflappable - and always seems to bring a purpose, a peace and a plan to every operation. They are an unlikely band of brothers, from wildly different backgrounds and with unimaginably different personalities, though I met them all in the same place: on the floor at STAPLES Center.

You see, we were all Clippers cheerleaders together.

Four For Fighting

I consider these three the brothers I never had, and like brothers, we certainly haven't always seen eye-to-eye. In fact, as I sat down to think about it, as ill-advised as it was, I realized that I had nearly come to blows with each of them (on separate occasions, mind you - no one's dumb enough to take all three of them on at the same time). But, brothers fight. It's as predictable as the rising sun. We challenged each other - drove each other to our absolute best, and absolutely crazy - usually at the same time. And when that got intense, well, it got intense. But just like brother fight - brothers understand when you mess up, brothers forgive, and in the end brothers stick together. To be honest, I don't regret the fights. I think it's how I knew; how I knew we were brothers after all.

It's a strange brotherhood, this cheerleader thing. All of us athletes in our own right, all facing the same ever-present emasculating stigmas, jealous jeers, and temperamental partners (which may be the hardest part of all). Trust me, no matter how much fun they look like, those tiny little girls we throw aren't always a barrel of laughs. I personally think it's because they're underfed (because I know how cranky I can get when I'm hungry) but who knows - all I can tell you is that it certainly mitigates any titillation you think we're getting from the process. The reality is, it's not easy on the line. Especially not on a pro line. And the guys are a much tighter knit group than the girls are - we have to be. We're not out there to look good - we're the muscle that makes it happen, and makes it happen with a smile. No one's looking for a picture with us, our autograph, or a calendar filled with us in our bathing suits. No, we have each other. Don't get me wrong - I love the STAPLES crowd, staff and the team we cheered for - but when it wasn't good, I had three guys on the line who were there. Every time. And for all the fighting we ever did amongst each other, we always fought better together.

The Back-Up Plan

There are a lot of things you can't count on your guy friends for: clean sheets at their place, something to eat in the fridge, keeping the noise down in the bed next to you when sharing a room in Vegas, a decent smelling bathroom and sympathy when you hurt yourself. But for all of that and more, there are a precious few things that you can count on your friends for, and of those, the most important is having your back.

The Urban Dictionary (the web's leading source for slang and truthfully horrible euphemisms) defines to have someone's back as:

An expression assuring someone that you are watching out for them. Comes from making sure you are safe by watching what's behind you when you're busy looking ahead.

But to be honest, that doesn't really capture it all. In a way, we knew about it much more intimately than most friends would have. After all, in a sport where "spotting" is a fundamental virtue - keeping an eye on your friends' safety becomes second nature. But, as cheerleading is full of just as much drama as you might imagine - there are other moments where it would be easy to not step in; easy to pile on rather than stand up; to run with the mob rather than step out alone. Each of these guys has had my back on countless occasions - not only in situations where I wasn't looking - but much more often in situations where I wasn't even there. They were there to defend me, who I am, and what's true about me - even in the face of not being popular or well-liked. I have done my best to do the same for them - because I believe that each of them is a better man than I am, and I won't suffer anyone saying otherwise - even if it means my ass.

* * *

Every day I spent on the line with these three fellow girl-wranglers, I wondered what I had done to get there, and if I ever really belonged amongst such a talented group. Joey could stunt with anyone and make it look like they weighed a hundred pounds; the Hawk could shoulder press a girl with either arm like it was a foam-covered aerobics weight, and Sanchez could do a back flip as easily as he could walk down the sideline. They were all better cheerleaders than I ever was. Joey has a National Championship, the Hawk was a team captain for one of the best squads in the Pac-10, and David logged seven years with the Clipps - and may be the most recognizable guy in the arena outside of Clipper Darryl. But they never made me feel like anything but an important part of the team; and just as proud to be standing on the line next to me as I was of them.

I often wondered what it is that I bring to the group. I am no Hannibal, no Face-Man, only a little bit Murdock and certainly no B.A. I'm not the oldest, the biggest, the fastest or the best-looking. What I am, however, is the piece that fits by not fitting. I'm not sure these three musketeers would ever had really fought for one another without a fourth. As we rode for the last time together this past weekend, we realized it was the first time we had done so since I retired from the line three years ago. And that's when I knew. Sometimes what great trios really need isn't any more talent, muscle, or brains. Sometimes they just need a fourth horseman; someone to hold the line together.

See you guys in Vegas.

Resolute

2010-01-04T21:32:00.000-08:00

New Year’s resolutions have their origins in ancient Rome and Babylon, where the mythical Roman king Janus with his two faces would look both at the year past and the year to come (and after whom the first month of the Julian calendar is named) and the Babylonians would return any farm equipment they had borrowed the previous year and start anew. Regardless of their origins or traditions, the marking of a new year has always offered a unique opportunity for reflection and renewal across cultures and eras. Reviewing the disposition of previous resolutions is not nearly as popular as the declaration of new ones, but since I had the unexpectedly good fortune of actually keeping my first year-long resolution in 2009, I have the chance to do both with equal vigor as we roll headlong into 2010.

My primary 2009 resolution was to write an essay a week, each week for a whole year - which turned my previously mundane blog into the essay project which you’re now reading. And to my great surprise, I actually completed this resolution - which inspired me to make a few more resolutions this year, in the hopes that I can repeat my previous success. I’m listing them here, so that I’ll have a few more people to be accountable to (should things get a little off track) and perhaps inspire you to some resolutions of your own.

Reading What I Preach

Some time ago, I stopped reading books. Which is not to say that I stopped reading. Actually I read every day - but I read the news, magazine articles, columns, essays and other short form prose, usually things that I can get through in a single sitting, a few stolen moments, or during an unexpected delay in doing something else. But between my ADD and my otherwise busy life, I stopped really reading books.

Now this is particularly hypocritical because I’m often telling people that want to become better writers that the one unavoidable prerequisite for great writing is great reading. And despite the fact that I endeavor to be a great writer, I haven’t done any great reading since I plowed through Olive Kittridge on my Kindle early last year.

So this year, I’ve resolved to read two books a month - and before you go sending a ton of suggestions, rest assured that my reading list is already quite full of suggestions, purchases and loaned books that have queued up as a result of my shoddy reading behavior over the preceding twelve months. I doubt I’ll be firing up book reviews here - but I may mention the titles from time to time. But that’s about two weeks per book, and as a part of this resolution, I’ve also resolved to spend a minimum of one hour per day reading (and to compensate I bought my TiVo a new 1TB hard drive to hold all the TV I’ll be missing).

Time to reconnect with the bookwormy dork that got me through middle school with great grades and no social life.

Three Things and the New Essay Project

With any project, if you don’t keep adapting it, it will become irrelevant, uninspired and uninteresting. And because I don’t want Tru Love to meet such a fate, they’ll be some changes coming to the blog and the project in the coming weeks.

First off, the essay project will be reduced in frequency to once monthly and, second, a new project called “Three Things” will take its place as my (at least) weekly creative output. Three Things will be a shorter version of my favorite thing: lists of three - sometimes humorous, sometimes poignant, always just three things long - well, not counting subparts, etc. Perhaps it’s better just to assume it will be three-ish things. The essay project will be moved to once monthly to ensure the essays get a little more attention and cover bigger things. Additionally, I’ve resolved to start submitting the monthly essays for publication elsewhere to see if I can expand my audience beyond friends and family - though I truly appreciate the support.

I’m truly excited for the format change and I’m looking forward to using the lessons learned from last year’s essay project to have an even bigger and better year of writing (and publishing) in 2010!

Sundry

Then, of course, there are those resolutions which aren’t really a whole year long, and aren’t really the sort of thing that require a whole lot more explanation that just to list them:

I’ve resolved to start eating healthier - a whole lot healthier - because I got way too close to 200 lbs., and no, they’re not making the pants in my size smaller all of a sudden...
I’ve resolved to de-clutter my life; which mostly means throwing away a whole lot of stuff, except books, which everyone should keep forever...
I’ve resolved to send more cards, because everyone likes getting them, and who am I kidding, I’ve got the time...
I’ve resolved keep fighting back from my injury - because giving up sucks...
I’ve resolved to save more and spend less - because that house I want isn’t going to buy itself...
and finally, I’ve resolved to cut myself a little slack; it may not mean finally taking my first vacation, actually spending a whole weekend doing nothing, or gracefully taking a compliment, but hey, it’s a start.

* * *

2010 isn’t the year we thought it would be when we were kids. There are no giant orbital space stations, self aware computers, or colonizations of other planets pending. There are no hover cars, or hover boards for that matter, we’re not wearing a whole lot of silver (if you don’t count the metallic print on Affliction t-shirts) and we still can’t “beam” ourselves anyplace. But it’s still an amazing time to be alive. We live in a world of constant wonder and change, where more than any other time in history, we can make ourselves anything we want to be. There’s no doubt that the last decade provided disappointingly few opportunities for optimism and hope, but as each new calendar appears, we are given just that. In this time of looking forward to endless possibilities, seize the chance to write down just a few of them; dream big and imagine that this might be the year that changes everything.

The Fourth Kind

2009-12-29T11:17:00.000-08:00

I’m nearly finished with the first year of my essay project, and after resolving last January to write an essay each week for a whole year, I’m nearing my first successful completion of any such New Years’ resolution. Looking back on the compendium of rants, raves and general irreverence that was my 2009, I’ve noticed a few things: (1) I have a penchant for lists of three, (2) I’ve left out some really good fourths, and (3) I never really revisit any topics - even after friends and family have commented on them and I’ve had a chance reflect and rethink. So, as an homage to the year that was, I’ve decided to unveil my top three fourths, er, not my top three quarters - well, you get what I mean.

So here they are - a year in review, of the things I left out:

Eyes, Eyes, Baby (A “fourth” for Shades of Lame)

Almost immediately after I published Shades of Lame, I realized that I had forgotten one of the most egregious and ridiculous sunglasses-related behaviors around, and with good reason. This particular bit of nonsense is not only not restricted to just southern California but I’m also fairly certain that it didn’t even start here. Every time I see this, I’m baffled by where such a trend may have originated, and how anyone might think that it actually looks o.k., let alone cool. And for what it’s worth, I’ve only ever seen this done by men - so ladies you’re off the hook (though your shades are all still way too big). I’m want to even come up with an adequately descriptive name for this eyewear inanity - but for now I think I’ll go with “high eyes”.

This is the practice of wearing one’s sunglasses just above your eyes, but still on your face. Now mind you, this is not wearing your sunglasses on top of your head; which while inadvisable and juvenile at least has some marginal amount of utility. But I can discern no practical purpose for leaving your shades on your face but not on your eyes. What’s more, it looks positively absurd - the same sort of absurd that I normally reserve for loud, bolt-on exhaust pipes on economy cars and skinny jeans for men.

After a brief survey, the leading candidates for answers to the proverbial and obvious question “WHY?” are the following:

While not necessarily needing the visual protection, the “high eyes” wearer still wants the fashion impact of their obviously cool shades;
Because you truly never know when the ambient light will become too much to bear, the “high eyes” wearer wants to minimize the time and effort involved in getting his sunglasses back over his eyes; or
Much like the Luna Moth, the “high eyes” practitioner is displaying a larger, douchier false set of eyes to scare off predators.

I personally think it’s the last one, and the fact that it also scares off attractive females, prospective employers, and anyone other than like-minded douche-moths is just an unfortunate side effect.

Putting the Der in Under (a "fourth" for A Healthy Dose of Shame)

To be honest, when I wrote A Healthy Dose of Shame, it was difficult to pare down the list of ludicrous gym behaviors down to just three. Because when the rest of the world has a problem where the self-absorbed attention-starved by-products of two generations of universal over-praising and over-investment of children in their own non-existent “specialness” has finally overcome any previously existing notions of good sense and decorum, and created a steady rain of unbelievably awkward moments and laughable scenes; Los Angeles will turn that rain into a hurricane of ill-informed pomposity, illegitimate arrogance and nearly unimaginable loss of individual perspective. And, on my very next trip to the gym, I realized that I had left out one very important shamelessly douche-tastic gym behavior: the Under Armor wearer.

For the uninitiated, Under Armour is a brand of sportswear which specializes in form-fitting (i.e. skin tight) undergarments that wick moisture away from the skin of athletes to avoid the discomfort of sweaty clothing. It was founded by, is built for and is primarily marketed to football players. It is designed to be worn under the pads, jerseys, equipment, etc. that athletes wear. And much like the name indicates, and much like its predecessor, just plain old underwear - it is not designed to be worn on its own as a primary garment. However, despite all this, not a visit to gym goes by where I don’t seem muscle-choad meathead doing just this. Because nothing says unmitigated badassery like a long-sleeved white spandex shirt, right?

Listen, even if you do have the sort of chiseled physique that can stand up to the unforgiving exposure that such a garment will provide (which, for the record, the vast majority of these cheesewads don’t), this just doesn’t look good. Because, just like it used to, skin tight clothing is the best way to let people know you’re trying too hard since the flop sweat. For the record, if you’re in good shape, it’s easy to notice, no matter what you’re wearing - and you'll look even better in something simple that everyone else is wearing, but just not quite as well as you. Do us all a favor: leave the spandex back in the 80’s where it belongs, and find a damned t-shirt.

Speaking A Loud (a "fourth" for The Golden Yield)

When I wrote The Golden Yield, I was catalyzed by the brutish and moronic behavior which seemed to surround modern-day elevator etiquette, and when I sat down to think about other examples of poor-mannered and self-centered conduct - they literally came flooding into my mind. I highlighted the three most prominent examples, but in the intervening months, I realized there was one very important one that I left out.

I’m not quite sure how or when the public at large started losing any real sense of the volume of their voices, but I am sure that in the past year, I’ve overheard vastly more conversations that I would have liked to, and as luck would have it, the inanity of these colloquies is always directly proportional to their volume. On airplanes, I have distinctly heard conversations multiple rows away over the roar of thousand horsepower engines and constant ventilation (and most recently through state-of-the-art noise canceling headphones). In coffee shops I have listened to mindless ramblings from dozens of feet away, despite being turned away, over the subtle din of other, quiet conversations, and through my iPod headphones. And in restaurants, I have endured alarmingly futile attempts at humor and over-eager sales pitches despite being so far away from the offending speaker that I wouldn’t even be able to hit them with well aimed steak knife (which I was then contemplating).

Here’s a hint: if you’re wondering why strangers keep turning around and glaring at you while you’re talking, it’s not because they’re eavesdropping, it’s because they wish they’re weren’t! Unless you’re conversing with a person who’s either deaf or dead, there’s no appreciable reason for you to be talking that loudly. Do us all a favor and do like your mom told you, and talk with your inside voice.

* * *

In the end, it’s a been a year of maddeningly frustrating behaviors, comically unaware douchebaggery, and one man’s struggle to keep from losing his tenuous grip on his quickly waning sanity in the face of apocalyptic-level stupidity. It’s been a year of finding a good reason to laugh amidst a good reason to cry and, more importantly, a good reason to cry amidst a good reason to laugh. And looking back on a year’s worth of essays, I found that while there were things that I missed, it’s been a pretty good year of hits. So I’ll close out 2009 with the top 3 things I learned this year, and leave it to you, dear reader, to send me a great fourth: 1. Inspiration, opportunity and salvation are not only not rare, they're all around you if you just take a look; 2. Though the latest generations will likely give us little else of value, they've at least given us something to laugh at; and 3. As doomsayers, fearmongers, and prophets of the terrible become all the rage, relax, things are going to work out just fine.

Happy New Year, everyone.

The Yule Tidal Wave

2009-12-21T23:36:00.000-08:00

Despite the fact that this is my fourth December in Los Angeles, this year was my first doing any appreciable Christmas shopping here. I’m usually headed back home to Colorado - and not wanting to check baggage full of presents, I do my last-minute shopping there, where it’s never much of a problem. But this year, I’m sticking around, enjoying the weather and avoiding the hassle of travel. To my horror, however, I realized far too late that last-minute holiday shopping in L.A. was going to be different, to save losing what little faith I had left in my fellow man and to rip what little Christmas spirit I had violently away from me just a few days before the big holiday.

I’m not quite certain what it is about holiday shopping that generates this almost apocalyptic self-absorbed mania. I don’t know if it’s that the apparently rising waters of desperate consumerism brings out the worst people or simply the worst in people. All I know is that if you’re looking for evidence of social decay, or a descent into anarchy and madness, there is no better (or worse) place to be than a shopping mall in December. As we drifted slowly towards the penultimate holiday, I was beginning to feel the swell of universal forgiveness, a compulsion for charity and the bliss of a belief in the goodness of man. But in one trip to the Glendale Galleria, all that was dashed. I found new reasons to hate strangers, a resurgent belief that our collective intelligence is sinking to unthinkable lows, and a conviction that we have leveraged the freedoms and privileges of living in the world’s greatest nation at its finest hour to become perhaps its most bloated, ignorant and disgusting society. Merry freaking Christmas.

Unfortunately, amidst the din of manufactured winter mirth, contrived yuletide cheer and affected holiday bliss, you were likely want to hear the death throes of my Christmas wishes and goodwill towards men; so I thought I’d take a moment to write them down:

Children of the Scorn

A note to parents: the sight of your children waiting in line to see Santa or looking around wide-eyed at the elaborate holiday displays are immeasurably cute and the sort of thing that reminds us all that the holidays are really all about the kids. However, the sight of your children running around unchecked on rage-infused sugar benders screaming at the top of their lungs, throwing unthinkable tantrums and otherwise acting with all the behavioral control of a pack of rabid hyenas is the sort of thing that reminds us all that parenting is the only major responsibility that doesn’t require any training, education or qualification; or in other words that it’s available to careless mouth-breathers like you.

I’m not sure what it is about holiday shopping that makes it seem like dragging your extended family out is a good idea; but it’s not. The only places that three or more generations of any family should get together are a big house, a big church or a big park. What’s more, when did bringing children along at all to holiday shopping become o.k.? Part of my parents perpetrating the Santa Claus myth for as long as they did was not buying gifts in front of me -- especially at those ages when I was prone to being difficult to handle in public.

If the traditional naughty or nice paradigm is still being used to determine whether kids will receive Christmas gifts, then Toys R Us is about to have a very lean year. I’ve seen better behaved broods on Animal Planet - and for what it’s worth, sometimes cleaner.

Lots of Love

Unfortunately, the horror of holiday shopping usually begins long before you even make it into the shopping venue itself, out in the suddenly undersized parking lot. Now, parking lot behavior that was already rife with the inconsiderate, the ignorant and the just plain unaware has now become gridlocked by shoppers who appear baffled by basic traffic laws and lack any appreciation for simply taking turns. For what it’s worth, the good folks that run these retail churches had the foresight to know that their traffic flow was about to turned into traffic not flow and hired additional personnel to help direct the traffic for maximum efficiency. Unfortunately, the folks they hired wouldn’t know maximum efficiency if it walked up to them in a t-shirt that said “Maximum Efficiency” on it. Honestly, I’ve seen more cognitively-capable staffing cleaning up roadside debris. Installing people in the middle of already congested traffic flow who couldn’t optimize their own bowel movements, let alone two way traffic is like staffing additional cash registers with people that don’t know how to add or subtract. Do us a favor and spare us these parking lot wizards and leave us to our own terrible devices.

As for the remaining bad behaviors in parking lots, there are some basic principles to keep in mind:

1. Driving at 3 mph to be able to cash in on an ideal parking spot left by someone leaving (otherwise known as parking stalking) during normal shopping times is annoying, and during the holidays is criminal. If you think that you not having to walk the additional few hundred yards demanded by getting a spot somewhere else in the parking structure outweighs the need for everyone waiting behind you to park at all, here’s hoping someone gives you the gift of a dent in your door while you’re gone.

1(a). Additionally, if you’re truly worried about the marginally increased physical exertion involved in having to walk a few extra hundreds of yards to the actual mall, it’s more than likely that you can actually use the exercise - so why not kill two asses with one stone?

2. Driving around the parking lot like you’re Jason Bourne or James Bond does not make you similarly cool or debonaire (besides your Honda Civic isn’t exactly spy material anyway). The acoustics of these enclosed spaces make the revving of your Mitsubishi Lancer’s engine or the screeching of your 15” tires all the more insufferable and turns what is normally just annoying into reasonable grounds for assault and battery. Trust me, there’s not a jury in the land that would convict me for dragging you out of your neon green Neon and beating your wanna-be Fast and Furious ass.

3. Indictment of parking stalkers notwithstanding, if you’re one of the lucky few who’s actually getting into your car to get out of the shopping carnage, then is not a good time to check your mirrors a dozen or so times, rearrange the stuff in your center console or otherwise sit in your car with your back-up lights without moving for any appreciable amount of time. All of us are waiting on the jerk off who’s decided to wait for you. Don’t worry, we’ll give him a piece of our mind - but do us a favor ... and move your ass!

Pardon Me

I’m not quite sure what set of rules governs the right of way in pedestrian situations, but it would appear that the following groups are to be yielded to under all circumstances:

Families with two or more small children;
Middle-aged women;
Teenagers in packs of three or more; or
Any group not speaking English.

On my trip to the mall, I was forced to yield to each of these groups, on a number of occasions despite carrying any number of bags, being in a visible hurry and/or moving through these crowds alone as an adult man. And by yield I mean that I had to either stop completely, squeeze myself up against a wall or actually go back they way I came to avoid them. On a few occasions, I was unable to make myself small enough to actually keep from having them run into me or my bags. And despite the fact that none of these minor collisions was my fault, I apologized each time, though, in fairness, without much vigor - simply a reflex from not being raised by wolves.

Listen, folks - not a moment goes by in these indignant crowds that I don’t fantasize about simply squaring my shoulders and plowing through you like a bunch of doughy bowling pins - and all it’s going to take is one more ill-behaved child or bad parking lot experience to put me over the edge. And trust me, I’m not the only one. Do yourselves a favor and watch where you’re going.

* * *

I imagine that there is some larger social lesson to be learned here; some commentary on the commercialization of a holiday and/or the commercialization of a society. There is likely some conclusion to be drawn about our rabid consumerism getting the better of our notions of good manners and basic respect for others. There may even be some moral about how we are often at our very worst when preparing to be our very best. But for me, I’ll simply take away two important lessons from my holiday shopping nightmare. First, holiday shopping is best accomplished before Thanksgiving, in front of your computer or, if you wait until the last minute, very early on weekdays, and second, there's nothing like spending a few hours amongst the hordes of savages, malcontents and morons who appear to be ringing in this most festive of seasons by turning a shopping mall into a third world street market to make you appreciate the simple beauty of a quiet Christmas morning.

Merry Christmas, all.

Stopping to Ink

2009-12-15T07:00:00.000-08:00

In contravention of the motherly advice given all over the world, I’m here to tell you that getting a tattoo is a fantastic idea. To be fair, I just got a tattoo a week ago (that wicked cool Navy piece pictured here) so I’m not as objective as I would have been had I written this a month ago, but trust me, I would have given the same advice back then. We have seen tattooing go from prisons and biker gangs to suburbia and celebrities then back again. It remains, however, the seminal act of rebellion and one of few permanent things still available to us in the era of months-long marriages, annual job hopping and suburban home flipping. Though tattoos mean something to each of us, and they also mean something different to each of us. For many, they are cultural, and for others they are the ultimate lack of culture. For some, they love or hate them openly, and others, love or hate them quite privately. But having heard the arguments for and against them (some of which I’ll review below), I can’t really come to any other conclusion than to tell that if you’ve thought for a while about getting yourself inked, go ahead and do it - and make your story beautifully immortal.

It Hurts

It’s a misrepresentation to say that getting a tattoo hurts badly. It would be much more accurate to say it hurts significantly; and that’s really sort of the point. After all, it’s a very small needle putting ink under your skin a very small bit at a time. It’s a quintessentially adult event and surely not for the faint of heart. But, nonetheless, it’s a good kind of hurt; like the burn of a shot of really good tequila or that deep soreness you get after a really good workout. And much like those hurts, it doesn’t last very long - while the ink itself lasts, well, forever. How much it hurts depends a whole lot on where you get it - as a good rule of thumb, if it’s someplace that it would hurt more to get hit than another, it’ll probably hurt more to get a tattoo there (i.e. anyplace without a whole lot of “padding”). Note: this is not a plea for you to get ink on your plushest parts, just a fair warning for when you don't.

In fairness, if the reason you’re not getting a tattoo is because you’re afraid it’s going to hurt too much - it actually may not be such a good idea for you. Those of us who do have a little ink would rather not have any more sissies running around sporting wanna-be tats. But if it’s simply an item you have in your “cons” instead of “pros” columns - rest assured, it’s not as bad as you think.

On a final note regarding the pain, if you’re planning on bringing friends along with you, put on a brave face - because if you don’t, the jokes about how big of a Sally you were will be as never-ending as your tattoo.

When You’re Older

This is the reason I hear the most often: when you get old, it will look terrible on you. Well, here’s a news flash, Nostradamus, when you get old, all of you is going to look terrible - especially naked. Trust me, when you’re 65, a slightly misshapen tattoo is not going to be the least attractive thing on your naked body, in fact, it’s probably not even going to be in the worst five things on you at that age. Who are you kidding? Have you been to the gym lately and seen what happens to bodies as they age? And those are the ones that are being taken care of! If anyone wants to see you undressed when you’re that old it’s either (a) someone who loves you enough to care less about your old tattoos or (b) someone you’re paying enough to not to care about your old tattoos. Either way, again, your old ink doesn’t matter.

Besides, what exactly do you expect to be wearing in your retirement years? There’s a high likelihood that the number of low-rise jeans, sleeveless shirts, or bare midriffs you’ll be sporting will be significantly reduced from your days of wine and cheese. At that age you’ll be showing less skin than a nun in a Boston winter. For all you know, the folks down at the rest home might have full tattoo sleeves and golden eagles across their chests; because they’re wearing pants pulled up to their armpits, support hose, long sleeved sweaters and collars buttoned up high enough to hide the stack of skin that used to be their necks.

There are a lot of good reasons not to get yourself tatted, but this isn’t one of them.

What Not To Wear

Not all tattoos are a good idea, in fact, the web is littered with a bevy of ill-advised tattoos (http://www.badtattoos.com/; http://www.mytattoosucks.com/; http://www.shittytattoos.com/) which are instructive on a number of counts:

The percentage of tattoos on those sites that are “portrait pieces” is not an accident. If you want to remember someone’s face, take a picture, shoot a movie or even have a painting made; the one thing that won’t look good stretched, sagged or faded is a line drawing of a loved one’s face;
If you think a cartoon character is a good idea for a tattoo, you’re too young to get one - this applies no matter how old you are;
While intensely personal, make sure someone you know and trust (besides your tattoo artist) sees your design before you get it done. This has a high likelihood of preventing any “naked lady” pieces or anything with someone else’s name;
If waking up in strange places with strange people hasn’t taught you this already, decisions you make while drunk (or otherwise impaired) are not the sort you want to be permanent;
Finally, if it’s on you, you’d better know what it means - this applies to equations, quotations, poetry passages, and most importantly, foreign languages.

* * *

In the end, the stories of our lives often go largely untold. For some, we are simply unwilling to tell them - either we fear the scabs over old wounds are not as thick as we would like them to be, or we have made ourselves who are in spite of who we used to be and don’t wish those who a part of our new lives to know about our old ones. For many others, however, we simply lose them. Because as time passes, memories fade and we have fewer and fewer occasions to share who we are as we grow older. Younger generations seize the days and our dim recollections grow less and less relevant. But stories can and do live beyond our memories; both on our pages and our bodies. By committing just a few important pieces of yourself and your life to the permanence of ink, whether on paper or on skin - you both bravely forego the ability to ever completely forget and bravely commit to telling the world, not just who you are, but who you were. And in that simple way, you can live forever.

20 Mistakes Women Make In Bed With Men

2009-12-08T13:12:00.001-08:00

1. ADMITTING IS THE HARDEST PART - You, yes, you make mistakes in bed... and contrary to what you may believe your vagina is not so magically wonderful that we don't notice. Oh, we may not SAY anything, but we noticed. The sexual revolution was FIFTY years ago, and the secret is out, WOMEN ENJOY SEX TOO ... so stop acting like it's a favor you're doing for us.

2. TAKE IT ALL OFF - Listen, if we're having sex with you, we like your body... ALL of it, so leaving your shirt on because you think your breasts are too small is just stupid, and you're not fooling us... it's not as though we think, "Well, I can't see that part of her so it must be FANTASTIC!" Get naked!

3. LINGERIE IS NOT FOR US - Asking us what kind of underwear we'd like to see you in is like asking a shark what kind of seasoning he'd like on his next kill... The fancy underwear you buy is for you to feel sexy, or for your girlfriends to tell you you look sexy in. Two things you should know about us - (1) we're not looking at THE LINGERIE in the Vicky's Secret catalog, and (2) if we think you're hot, we will HONESTLY think so NO MATTER WHAT YOU'RE WEARING (especially if it's not much).

4. MAKE SOME NOISE - We understand you being shy when we first meet you. We understand you being shy when you meet our friends for the first time. Hell, we even understand you being shy when we're out in public. But, please, when it's nakey-nakey time, a little feedback is nice. I mean, you don't have to get into the full on nasty talk (but it's ok if you do) but a little moaning, or geez, even a little heavy breathing is nice encouragement. If all we wanted was peace and quiet, we would already be SLEEPING.

5. NIPPLES ARE THERE FOR SHOW ONLY - Okay, we understand how you can be confused about nipples... Yours are beautiful, unique and fun. But please understand, ours are simply decorations. No matter WHAT you've read in magazines, or heard from your friends. It does literally NOTHING for us for you to touch, lick, caress, etc. them... and if I EVER find the person that invested you all in the idea that BITING them is ok, I will drag them out into the street and kill them with a shovel.

6. HAIR PULLING - Another one-way street. Listen, we get that there are certain "positions" and situations where you ladies (especially with the long hair) like this - and most of us are happy to oblige... but please understand, our hair is MUCH closer to the roots, and it HURTS when you do it to us... additionally, while we like it when you take charge from time to time, we DO NOT LIKE being on the receiving end of the whole domination-submission thing. Plus, if we ever do go bald, we'll likely blame it on you.

7. DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL - Listen, we know it's not cool to ask you if you've climaxed. We don't like asking. It has all the charm of tripping while carrying dinner to the table, and similar appeal. But please understand - there's NO FOOLPROOF WAY TO TELL... and while we love you being a little mysterious and YES that's part of your appeal, would it hurt you to let us know? Aren't you glad that we're concerned? If you don't feel like you should have to tell us, then perhaps we feel like we shouldn't have to induce your "super-secret mystery orgasm".

8. THERE'S ONLY ONE WAY TO SCREW UP FELLATIO - Teeth. Enough said.

9. THAT BEING SAID... - When we were 18, we BELIEVED there was no such thing as a bad blow job. Mostly because we were so happy to be getting one, and it barely took a dirty movie and a stiff breeze to get us off, so we didn't really care. But things change, and yes you can be bad at it. If we're not barely holding on to keep from "finishing"... you're not doing a good job, period. We're not like you, we don't need a warm up and some secret technique that is unique to each one of us - just ask the one of your friends who you KNOW knows what she's doing... or one of your "fabulous" gay guy friends... they know, it's not THAT BIG of a secret, and it's not rocket science.

10. THE ONLY THING I'LL SHAVE FOR YOU - is my face. And yes, I want you to shave yours. Yes, I know it's a double standard, but I also pay for dinner and carry all the heavy shit from your car. Yours is built for shaving - it's flat. Ever tried shaving the outside of two coconuts in a Safeway bag? It's a bad plan, and you're damn sure gonna cut that bag - no thanks. We trim, you shave. It's kind of like: we sweat, you glisten. If you want to see completely hairless male genitals, your options are: rent a porno, date a porn star, or a 13-year old... the only one we'll stick around for is the first one.

11. PLINK, OW! - There is nothing, repeat NOTHING cute about plucking the one or two random hairs that may occur on our backs or shoulders, ESPECIALLY after sex. Is it not enough that we only have one or two? Is it too much to ask that you simply NOTIFY us, and let us handle the removal? Please. Nothing is more certain to guarantee you WON'T be getting a "Round 2".

12. IF YOU WANT TO YANK ON A JOYSTICK - Buy an old Atari, and leave us ALONE. That's about as much fun for for us as "fisting" is for you. It's sensitive, that's why it HURTS SO MUCH to get kicked there. If we want it rough - rest assured, we'll say something. If you sense a look of pain on our faces - no matter WHAT we say, go with your feeling - it's hurting, so STOP!

13. WE HAVE ONE EROGENOUS ZONE - It's not: our backs, legs, arms, chest, neck, ears, and it's most definitely not anywhere near the ol' poop chute. Want to know what we're thinking when you are touching those areas on us? "Oh, I hope she gets to my dick soon!" Ok?

14. COSMO IS WRONG - The "100 Sexy Surprises to Drive Your Man Wild" article has at least 83 things that will make us NEVER WANT TO SLEEP WITH YOU AGAIN. Here's a good litmus test: If you think it's something that we'll think is weird, crazy or deviant, DON'T DO IT. I'm not sure where they find the men they interview for these articles - perhaps in the offices of a magazine written for women - do you really think these are the men that should be advising your sex life? Want some advice from a magazine? Read PENTHOUSE LETTERS - YES, we know they're completely contrived - but at least they won't get you kicked out of bed.

15. TALKING ABOUT YOUR EX WHILE IN MY BED - Is just as off-limits for you as it is for us. Yes, we know you're just talking about his cool job, talking to him about his latest vacation to Spain, or some restaurant he owns, but unless you want us to mention how thin OUR ex was, or how fantastic her breasts were, steer clear. This is supposed to be OUR moment.

16. DRAPING YOUR LEG OVER US AFTERWARDS - and laying your head on our chest is perhaps one of the greatest feelings you can give us. Laying COMPLETELY ON TOP OF US AFTERWARDS is not. It doesn't matter HOW little you are, it's not comfy - and NO it doesn't mean you're fat. It makes it hard to breathe - we want to relax, too. GET OFF!

17. YOUR HAIR ITCHES - We love that it smells like flowers, we love that it's soft and pretty and we love to have it all over the place ... DURING sex... Afterwards, it itches, so do that flip and tuck thing that you do - and keep it away from us.

18. STAY IN THE MOOD - There are VERY few ways to not at least cause SOME sort of break in the action when it's time to install the prophylactic, and it usually was VERY, VERY hot right before we do. We are being responsible and respectful, so PLEASE don't take the opportunity to coax yourself out of the mood - not even SLIGHTLY. There is nothing worse than FEELING BAD for putting a condom on - they're not the most comfortable thing - and YES it feels different than without. So do your best to be just as encouraging when we're finally "dressed for battle."

19. HEAD IS A QUID-PRO-QUO SITUATION - and YES, that goes for both. You want head? You give head. Fair enough. But beyond that - Please know that no matter HOW MUCH we may love you, want you, etc. If you have ANY grooming issues, AT ALL, we're not goin' down there. And we know you feel the same way so it's ONLY FAIR. It's a big commitment for us, and a tough mission to take on, with a HIGH failure probability - if it looks like a beautiful flower, and smells like one too, it makes the whole thing a LOT better for us... and if it looks like a forest and smells like one, too? We'll tell EVERYONE.

20. WE FALL ASLEEP AFTERWARDS, GET OVER IT! - Okay, listen: there is absolutely no greater way for us to be sent off to dreamland than this - and it is a COMPLETELY NATURAL MALE RESPONSE to fall asleep after sex. Round 2 may happen, after we have a little 10 minute nap... Every moment you try and keep us awake? We like you a little less. If you have something to say, make it profound and keep it brief. The good stuff can be said in a few seconds. The story about "that bitch at work" can't. Anything more than a few sentences, we're not listening to.

Shades of Lame

2009-12-07T22:09:00.000-08:00

California has more days of sunshine than another other state in the union, and this comes as absolutely no surprise to anyone who’s paying rent or a house payment here. The weather is often considered the primary reason for the premium we’re paying to live here (mostly because the rest of it seems to really suck for the price) and, in fairness, it is pretty awesome for it to be 85 degrees and sunny on Thanksgiving. But with this much sun, you would think that California would have mastered the art of wearing sunglasses. Unfortunately, it seems like no one’s getting it quite as wrong as we are. The constant abuse of sunglasses appears to have risen to epidemic levels and I just can't keep quiet about it any longer. Although there are countless other methods of abusing this eyewear staple, I have outlined the three most egregious offenses below in the hopes that I might reach enough of these people (or people that know them) that they will return to using sunglasses for keeping the sun out of their eyes rather than for demonstrating their outright douchebaggery. But if not, at least after today you’ll know that you’re not the only one laughing at them.

White Frames

White framed sunglasses for men are an integral part of the douche apparel trifecta (along with the iconic trucker’s hat and Affiction/Ed Hardy t-shirt) and may be the worst thing to survive the 80’s since the New Kids on the Block. To be honest, I’d rather still be seeing girls with crimped hair and pegging my jeans than watch some Douchey McChoad pimp his knockoff white RayBans like he’s trying to channel Corey Haim from License to Drive. There’s simply nothing masculine about white sunglasses. Which is not to say that everything a man wears needs to be a leather biker jacket or an Armani tuxedo, but c’mon, this is the eyewear equivalent of a denim mini-skirt. You can wear them, but as fair warning, the two things everyone’s thinking when they see you are: 1. I wonder where his boyfriend is, and 2. I’ll bet he wears those inside and at night. Which brings me to my next point:

The Light Unkind

I understand that sunglasses aren’t simply utilitarian; they can be as much a fashion statement as anything else you have on your head, but they have a time and a place: and those are during the day and outside. You might have a really cool umbrella, but wouldn’t you be kind of an ass if you carried it around open when it wasn’t raining? There are a number of exceptions to this rule, but for the most part, they probably don’t apply to you. I imagine that most of the ego-bloated asswipes (both male and female) who insist on wearing their shades inside and at night are trying to be mysterious, and keep us wondering what’s going on behind their dark frames; but we don’t need to wonder, because the only thing they’re hiding is that minimum-wage stare that accompanies a brain nearly choked off from meaningful input and filled mostly with malt hops and bong residue.

As for the aforementioned exceptions, they include:

Anyone famous enough to be photographed by paparazzi while they’re at the airport (note: this isn’t you);
Professional poker players playing at a World Series of Poker event (note: this isn’t you); or
Any professional law enforcement/physical security agent (e.g. Secret Service, FBI, P.Diddy’s bodyguards, etc.) (note: this still isn’t you).

As a general rule, if you’ve got your sunglasses on indoors or after sunset, and you’re wondering if you should or not, you shouldn’t. If you’re not wondering, then you’re the douches we’re talking about.

A Bug’s Life

I’m not quite certain when women’s sunglasses designers started getting into a competition over who could make them the biggest, but I am certain that the only real loser in that battle is the women who wear them. To say that these things look kind of ridiculous is like saying that Lindsay Lohan has a bit of a substance abuse problem. There hasn’t been this reliable of a bitch indicator since the pet chihuahua. Honestly, I swear that Barbara Bush would look like a entitled bimbo in some of these shades. The only point I can imagine to having outsized frames (unless you’re an actual clown) is to hide the majority of your face - which seems sort of counterproductive if you’re trying to get people to notice you. I mean, if more than 50% of your face is covered in black plastic, just how reliable of an impression can you possibly make? What’s more, I’m quite certain that there’s nothing sexually attractive about looking like a bug - in fact, there isn’t even such a fetish listed in the Psychopathia Sexualis (and believe me, there’s some perverse shit in there).

The only explanation I can possibly muster is that this is simply the latest trend that has been preached to women by the beauty-industrial complex. The BIC, which controls the vast majority of information consumed by the modern woman, has, in recent memory, given us a wide variety of ridiculous, unflattering and inexplicable fashion trends, such as the gladiator sandal, the poncho and the skinny jean. The giant bug shades are just their latest item of Emperor’s New Clothes. Trust me, no matter what the girl at the counter tells you, you look like a well-dressed praying mantis in those things.

* * *

Listen, Timbuk 3 and Corey Hart notwithstanding, I think we all know deep down inside what and when we should and shouldn’t be wearing with regard to sunglasses - and I think that the way it’s gone here in California is simply a function of our own unwillingness to point out the ridiculousness going on around us. We seem more content now than ever to ascribe shameless self-promotion and the incessant need for attention to idiosyncratic personality quirks rather than systemic social failures. Unfortunately, I think the sheer volume of these behaviors seems to favor the latter. But for my part, I’m content for now to provide a little volume and clarity for that still small voice in your head that sees someone wearing sunglasses like those mentioned above and whispers in the hopes you’ll repeat it, “Take off those stupid ass sunglasses.”

The Other Island I Lost

2009-11-29T13:26:00.000-08:00

It’s often said that “you can’t go home again”, but as I recently found home isn’t the only place that may vanish when you’re not looking. The news hit me like a a shot to the gut. I was simply surfing the internet, using Google to check up on people and places long gone from my life; taking a break from worrying about my future to see how my past is holding up. And while pondering a trip back to Florida, which I last saw in my rear view mirror on my way out of the Navy and into law school, I looked up an old friend and learned the unthinkable. According to the Disney website: “By September 28, 2008, all of the nightclubs on Pleasure Island will close. It will be last call for the last time at 8 Trax, The Adventurer's Club, Mannequins™ Dance Palace, BET Sound-Stage™ Club, Motion and The Comedy Warehouse.” Nearly twenty years after it opened, the world’s greatest nightclub shut its doors. And just like that, I found out that not only had I lost the greatest place I had ever known, I had missed a real chance to say goodbye.

I know what you’re thinking, it’s a nightclub. But you’re wrong. Pleasure Island was far more than just a nightclub. It was the king of the nightclub universe in the nightclub era. You can keep your Studio 54s, your Hammerjacks and your Viper Rooms, I’ll take P.I. The island was the street party that we all imagined when we trekked down to our local nighttime entertainment districts. There were clubs for everyone, a DJ in a booth high above the street, live music, bars everywhere, professional dancers and every night for fifteen of those twenty years, a new year’s midnight countdown complete with confetti and singing Auld Lang Syne with people you hardly knew. It was a place which seemed to finally have achieved the Disney moniker of “The Happiest Place on Earth” - and mostly devoid of the commercialism (overpriced food, cheap souvenirs and ill-behaved children) that seemed to plague the rest of the Disney empire. More importantly, it was the first and only place I ever felt like I fit in.

The thing to do at Pleasure Island was to dance. It seems like a simple thing, especially when dance clubs have now become as common and commoditized as coffee shops. But I had never seen, nor have I seen since, a place so devoid of pretense as the Island was. It was a massive, nightly, large-scale version of the reckless abandon which you usually only see for brief moments during wedding receptions and bar-mitzvahs. Strangers danced with and around one another as though it really was New Years Eve. In the literally hundreds of times that I spent my evening there, I never once saw a fight. People danced in the clubs and danced in the street. People sang along with the bands and the songs. People took pictures they’d share as the highlight of their vacations. People kissed at midnight. People did things that they just don’t do anymore.

But as important as it was to the world at-large, P.I. was ever so much more important to me. When I first stepped foot on the Island, I was less than a year removed from living at home and graduating high school, and my social awkwardness was so painful to observe that I often had a hard time trying to convince any of my friends to take me out with them. At 5’8” and 135 lbs, my clothes fit me like a blind store clerk had tried to dress an undersized mannequin, and that was saying nothing of the horrifyingly bad fashion sense that growing up unpopular in a small town in Colorado had given me. I liked dancing, but the one time I had tried to it in public (at a school dance) I had gotten hit so hard that I literally slid 4 or 5 feet on my face. Needless to say, I was a little gun-shy. But at the Island, everyone danced like I did and like I wanted to. There was dance culture of respect there which not only allowed everyone a chance to shine in their own way, but also celebrated it.

The characters that I met and became friends with on the Island are indelibly printed on my memories. They were amazing dancers and larger-than-life personalities. There was Carl, the greatest street dancer I’ve ever seen - who famously “retired” from street dancing once he got a professional gig. Then Guyton, the other white guy in the crew, with whom I never really got along - because I think we were far too much alike for comfort - but who put an edge into his dancing that I always tried to emulate. Then Dave, short and insanely acrobatic, making up moves as he went along and the only dancer who I ever thought had as much energy as I did - and with a seemingly insatiable and indiscriminate appetite for meeting girls. And finally Herman, the clown prince of street dance. A guy who taught me about dancing and about life; a guy who taught me the secret of knee pads under my jeans and the delicate art of dance-floor clowning; a guy who taught me that it’s not the baddest moves that make you the memorable dancer, but rather the ability to unashamedly and loudly be yourself. I’ve danced, and lived, that way ever since.

I had two extended stays in Orlando, and two amazing runs at the Island. During those times, I was frequently there four or five nights a week dancing for four of five hours at a go, sometimes even bringing a change of clothes to school with me so that I could change in the parking lot without having to go home. And no matter how many nights I reprised my experience, I was never able to keep from actually running from my car to the front entrance with excitement, and I never got tired of that feeling of peace and joy that would wash over me as soon as I stepped onto those street bricks and into the world’s greatest party. In the years that followed, I visited less and less frequently, and each time, the Island was a little less like I remembered it, and there were fewer and fewer familiar faces. And finally, I stopped going altogether - confident that the Island would always be there and that I’d find my way back.

But, as it’s want to do, time marched on. The Island stopped celebrating New Years every night. There were no longer dance revues on the outdoor stages. Old clubs were replaced with more modern venues and people seemed more content to eat, drink, shop and stand around rather than to join in on the fun. And ultimately, the good folks at Disney chose to shut down the iconic clubs and turn Pleasure Island into another Disney-themed and ultimately forgettable shopping and eating venue. Thanks, Fat America - you turned the happiest place on earth into another tribute to your apparently unflagging appetite for consumption and the avoidance of anything even remotely physically taxing.

In the end, time and progress will take many of the places from us that shaped who we are and what we’ve become. Losing Pleasure Island was a poignant reminder of two important lessons. First, to take the time to revisit the important people and places from your past. They won’t always be there, and they often provide an otherwise unavailable perspective on how far you have (or haven’t) come. Memory lane is a great place to spend some free time and there’s nothing quite like a actual visit. Second, to take the time to remember and record the memories of those places and times in your life. Because, the only timeless thing we really have are those thoughtful recollections, colored by our own perspective and the only way they truly survive is in the words we write.

And though it's a little late and I couldn’t say it in person: goodbye, Pleasure Island. Thanks for the memories.

Fear of a Strange Red Planet

2009-11-16T23:32:00.000-08:00

I have something to say to the red state zealots, to the right wing campaign volunteers, to the tea party protesters, to the Joe-the-Plumbers, and to the Populist movement who has turned a popular fear of government and the educated and moneyed classes into a political movement so sweeping and vast that the recent Presidential election, as a referendum on one of the horrific and tragically incompetent administrations in the history of American government, was actually a close call: I’m scared. I’m scared of you. I’m scared of your pundits. I’m scared that you’ve leveraged the technology around us to turn the Information Age into the Mis-information Age. I’m scared that we are on the brink of the ultimate Populist Revolt, the culmination of the rising tide of discontent against education, freedom and equality; and an intellectual apocalypse: the rise of the stupid.

The stupid have never had more power and influence that they do today. We’ve all seen the journalistic abomination that is Fox News, which has done for slanted and mindlessly partisan news coverage what Paris Hilton did for entitled celebutantes with loose morals: each of them now far removed from the sideshows, margins and shadows and suddenly paraded in front of us as the main act. With its hyper-stylized presentation and rapid fire pacing, Fox feeds the masses in the way they want to be fed, and allows them to ignore the substance of what they’re consuming. Much like Ray Kroc once opined upon reflection of building one of the greatest commercial empires of all times, Fox isn’t in the news business, they’re in show business. And the lesson that much of our country has failed to learn about food, they’ve also failed to learn about information: just because you like eating a Big Mac, doesn’t mean you should, and definitely doesn’t mean it’s good for you.

Glenn Beck is one of the most alarmingly ignorant and disturbing political personalities since David Duke. I’d like to say that it’s his manic mood swings that disturb me most about him. I’d like to say it’s the transparently nonsensical “logic” he uses to build and confirm his conspiracy theories and then passes off as “common sense” reasoning. I’d like to say it’s his clearly histrionic personality disorder (if you don’t know, please look it up). But it’s none of these things. What disturbs me most about Glenn Beck is that he’s popular. He generates ratings like Monday Night Football and Miley Cyrus, and people aren’t tuning in to see the train wreck. No, people are watching to learn; to have their own ethnocentric fears confirmed, and to join the angry hateful mob which looks at black man in the White House as a socio-political apocalypse. Glenn Beck is the face of a nation, and that scares me far more than anything that comes out Washington D.C. ever could. A parade of fools could scarcely pick a more appropriate grand marshall.

But compared to the most inciting modern rhetoric, usually passed around via forwarded e-mails and social networking updates, Fox News (Beck included) deserves a Pulitzer. Because when the stupid turns too ugly to be mainstream - it must be passed around virally. In the past year, I have either been sent the following:

At the end of an e-mail incorrectly recounting some of the President’s actions to date in office, with special attention to his approval of assistance to Palestinan refugees and diplomatic approach to Middle East foreign relations:

“WE are losing this country at a rapid pace.  Now we know why he got so much campaign money from the middle east!”

The punchline of a mortifying “joke” about three strangers in an airport:

Finally, the American Indian clears his throat and softly he speaks, "At onetime here, my people were many, but sadly, now we are few." The Muslim student raises an eyebrow and leans Forward, "Once my people were few," he sneers, "and now we are many. Why do you suppose that is?"

The Montana cowboy shifts his toothpick to one side of his mouth and from the darkness beneath his Stetson says in a drawl, "That's 'cause we ain't played Cowboys and Muslims yet, but I do believe it's a-comin."

And a photo that pasted the President’s head on the photo of a scantily-clad witch doctor, complete with a photoshopped bone through his nose and references to Soviet socialism that I will not dignify by reproducing it here.

The worst thing about all of these things is that they came to me from my family.

To call these kinds of things “disgusting” is to vastly understate the matter. This type of thinly veiled racism is the sort of thing that embarrasses me, even as someone who served for ten years in defense of my country, to be an American, if this is really who we are. We have unprecedented access to information, including primary sources: black-letter law, court decisions, and legislative documents. And yet, we are more prone to let our news be spoon-fed to us by increasingly less intelligent and increasingly more hateful commentators than ever before.

This isn’t a battle of ideologies, because those battles are fought on intellectual grounds. This is a battle of emotion and fear versus intellect. This is an unwinnable battle of what “real America” is all about. The red state faithful will tell you that “real America” is white people living in suburban communities where American flags fly in front lawns, kids walk to school and play in the streets safely, and all you really need to know you can learn from your parents or at church. In this “real America” you need to be able to carry a gun, because marauders, communist sympathizers and foreign combatants masquerading as immigrants are amassing on the horizon. In this “real America” knowledge and education are “brainwashing” and if you can’t figure it out with “plain ol’ horse sense”, it ain’t worth a’knowin’. They’ve convinced a frightening majority of the people in this country that being stupid goes hand-in-hand with apple pie and baseball; and that being “simple” is being “genuine”. And that’s scary; like zombie movie scary.

As a matter of fact, it’s starting to feel a lot like a zombie movie, lately; where everyone save a few rugged survivors has been turned into mindless, shuffling consumers of brains - out to turn every remaining human into another drooling and moaning member of the infected masses. Because, like a super-virus, stupid is also infectious, contagious and dangerous. Ignorance offers comfort and offers up untenable and fantastic platitudes to conquer fear. Dumb is cheap and easy, and what could be more attractive in these difficult times? And how much do the pictures from PeopleOfWalMart.com need to look like cut shots from Zombieland or 28 Days Later before we do something about it?

It appears as though the Red Scare is back for a third go-round, and it looks a lot like the first one did back in 1917. Once again there is mounting fear and anxiety that a revolution that will destroy property, Church, home, marriage, civility, and the American way of Life is imminent. And once again the media has exacerbated those political fears into widespread xenophobia. But this time, it’s the “red” that purports to be the good guys, the warriors against socialism and the protectors of the American ideal. It seems that black is the new red, and red is the new, well, white? At least they’re still fighting with good ol‘ fashioned hate and fear-mongering. We clearly didn’t learn our lesson the first two times, and as the old saying goes: we’re doomed to repeat it until we do.

As in both previous Red Scares and zombie moves, the faces of these foot soldiers for idiocy and imbecility are the faces of our friends, neighbors and even families, and it makes the terror all the more real. Because we used to know these people and now we hardly recognize them. But the enemy of this new Red Scare is not the equally fallible “Blue”, the DNC, or MSNBC. Because a scant few years ago, they were scary in their own right. No, the only real weapon against the mindless is the mindful, the only way to defeat ignorance is with knowledge, and so that’s how I choose to fight: with my facts, my knowledge and my keyboard. But unfortunately, for zombies, well, you’ve still got to blow their heads off.

For Hate of The Game

2009-11-08T22:52:00.000-08:00

I hate the Yankees. That alone hardly puts me in unique company, the Yankees are one of the most divisive professional sports franchises in the world. As the old saying goes: you either love ‘em or you hate ‘em. And I hate ‘em. But I think I may hate them more than most, and I can’t keep it in any longer. With apologies to those friends I have who do, inexplicably, love that team, I’ve got to let this out. The Yankees are the purest evil that isn’t an actual despot dictator or corrupt government. They are more despair inspiring than the entire cast of The Hills and a greater barometer for sweeping social decay than the mortgage crisis, political scandal and Miley Cyrus’ career combined. The Yankees have taken two of our most storied American institutions (baseball and New York City) and turned them into lessons in oppressive monopolism and narcissistic self-obsession being sold to us as confidence and sportsmanship. As a nation of sports fans, we deserve better, and we should demand it.

I swore that I would not watch the World Series upon learning the Yankees would be participating in it. I had watched the majority of the playoffs, and enjoyed the competitiveness and the annual demonstration by the baseball world that most expensive team is not necessarily the “best”. And with that cathartic proof less and less likely, I settled comfortably into the football season and put off thinking about baseball until next summer. But I did give one caveat: that if they would start throwing baseballs at Alex Rodriguez, I would tune in. In fairness, I said this mostly a as a throwaway - conventional baseball wisdom would nearly prohibit plunking a team’s best hitter; especially in the championship series. And Alex had, of late, come perilously close to actually earning a fraction of the quarter billion dollars he was being paid to consistently hit baseballs. But after news came over the wire that, impossibly enough, A-Rod had been hit three times in two games, I made good on my promise and tuned into the Fall Classic. I wish I hadn’t. Watching the Yankees win the World Series was like watching the rich kid in your class get the girl you had a crush on; or watching Goliath beat David. No moral, no inspiration, no joy. Just the affected and rehearsed mirth of a couple dozen millionaires and the smug applause of sixty thousand or so New Yorkers who seemed more relieved than actually excited. The Empire had struck back, and to my horror and disgust, evil had finally prevailed.

To be clear, I don’t hate the institution that is the Yankees. To love baseball in any capacity is to appreciate who the Bronx Bombers used to be. You can hardly talk about the lore of our national pastime without mentioning Micky Mantle, Lou Gherig or the largest character of them all, Babe Ruth; each of them Yankees, and remembered best in their pinstripes. But the modern day Yankees are no more that institution than Megan Fox and Kate Beckinsdale are Marilyn Monroe and Greta Garbo, Ryan Seacrest is Dick Clark or in terms closer to my heart, the Notre Dame football team is the same storied group that inspired ‘Rudy’, gave us Knute Rockne, or was even worth watching. At some point, as institutions mature and adapt over time, many of them lose so many of the identifying characteristics of their historical namesake that the name is really the only thing they’ve retained. So it is with the Yankees. Aside from playing in New York City and wearing mostly similar (albeit updated) uniforms, these are not your father’s Yankees.

The Yankees payroll last year was just under $210 million. Half of that was accounted for by just four players, and nowhere in that four was their World Series MVP or their fabled closer, Mariano Rivera (one of the few Yankees I do not hate). The Yankees overpay for talent like normal people overpay for movie popcorn. The real problem with this is that that’s $60 million more than any other team is paying, and it’s more than the four lowest payroll teams combined. Oh, and it’s near $100 million more than the team they were playing in the aforementioned World Series. In a nation where we demand fairness in our competitions, and talk of “even playing fields” has dominated our political and social landscapes since time immemorial, our appointed “national pastime” allows and even celebrates this inequity. So, in effect, we’re using the Iranian election method to determine a baseball champion.

So, how did this happen? It happened because Major League Baseball doesn’t have a salary cap, they have a luxury tax. Which basically means that if you spend more than a certain amount on your payroll, you have to pay a little more to the League. That’s right, the punishment for spending too much is, well, more spending. I’m not quite certain how requiring extra money from a group who can’t control their spending is an actual deterrent. I’m just glad the penal system doesn’t use this same methodology to control rape and murder. And who are the primary proponents of this “luxury tax” plan? The ownership of the Yankees. So to be clear, we’ve given the folks in New York City the opportunity to give the League and the rest of the country the middle finger and be the best by buying away every other team’s best players, and it’ll just cost them a little extra cheese? The same people who will spend in excess of $2,500 a month for a 500 square foot studio apartment, just for the privilege of living in their city? Normally you have to be a member of the Lohan family to get that kind of enablement.

And what of the lesson this teaches to those kids whose dads take them to the ballpark? I can just picture a father leaning over to his begloved son, face still stained with ballpark mustard and fingers still sticky from his first real box of Cracker Jack and passing on the timeless knowledge: See son, winners don’t make money, money makes winners. Wow. I can almost smell the American pride from here.

But I would be remiss not to mention the thing I hate most about the Yankees. And that’s Alex Rodriguez. "Pay Rod" is the most easily hate-able sports figure since Barry Bonds. Just a few years ago he was cast as the player who would save us from the Bonds scourge by wiping his name from the record books and doing it the proverbial “right way”. Ha! But it’s not solely the Yankees to blame for blowing up Alex’s head like a party balloon. After all, it was the Texas Rangers who gave him a 10 year contract in 2000 worth $252 million dollars. It was simply the Yankees who provided welcoming arms for a player who ultimately grew to believe he was actually worth that kind of money, and possibly more.

I could mention his marginal performance on the field (or at least marginal for someone making $200,000 for every game he plays), his recently admitted steroid use, his marital infidelity (and with Madonna, no less), or his notorious indifference over his own failures, but that’s really not it. It’s really the way he appears to be keenly aware that he’s Alex Rodriguez and that you’re not, and he’s bent on making sure you understand that. It’s really the way that he celebrates even his most benign accomplishments as though he’s some sort of underdog, and not one of the highest paid athletes in the world. It’s really the fact that you don’t just want him to fail, you want him to fail profoundly. You don’t just want the pitcher to strike him out, you want the 98 mph fastball to go cruising into his dome hard enough to wipe that damned smile off his face. It’s really that he is the consummate modern day villain: overpaid, under-talented and generally indifferent about the fact that he’s an absolute ass.

The modern day Yankees are, in many ways, simply a reflection of what we have all become, and in that, perhaps we have only ourselves to blame. We worship at the altar of material wealth with such great fervor that it has seeped into other, previously inviolate, areas and given us a single measuring stick for personal value. Nearly gone are the days of underdogs, hometown heroes and rags-to-riches fables. We’re left only with the hyper-rich becoming hyper-richer and overpaying to simply bear witness from our firmly entrenched seats in the proletariat. But for those of us who can’t or won’t give in to this sad reality, who believe there is something more and something better, and who love sports for the fairness it offers in an often unfair world, I offer you a start to your salvation in the form of a little sports hatred, or on the off chance you’re a major league pitcher, in one good hard throw at a guy’s head you can’t possibly miss.

A Healthy Dose of Shame

2009-11-01T18:59:00.000-08:00

Despite the fact that we are the fattest nation in its fattest era, a robust health and fitness industry has provided us with greater access to the technology and know-how we can use to keep ourselves in good shape than we’ve ever had before. We have dozens of diets, devices and drugs, all designed to make and keep us thin, strong and generally looking good naked. There is, perhaps, no better indication of this than the rise of the franchised super health club. In communities and neighborhoods both small and large, rich and poor, monolithic fitness centers have been propped up. These churches of physical betterment offer the latest pieces of fitness equipment, a bevy of personal training experts, and an environment engineered specifically to motivate us sweat and push away those extra pounds and puny muscles. Unfortunately, it seems that a few of my fellow gym patrons appear bent on dressing or behaving in such a way as to leave little doubt as to why, amidst all these agents for self-improvement, we’re still a nation of fat slobs.

The Tank Top Brigade

Let me just say, I get it. I understand how flattering a fitted tank top can be for a guy. I’ve personally been wearing them for undershirts for most of my adult life. However, they’re just that: underwear. I can’t honestly think of a good reason for a grown man to wear one of these shirts by itself - including in the gym. And yet, I see dozens of men wearing these to work out in. And strangely enough, they’re often paired with oversized shorts or pants. But I’m willing to give this entire ensemble a pass, because there’s a new breed of tank top (if you can even call it that) that’s to the tank top, what the tank top is to the t-shirt. I’m speaking, of course, of the giant sleeve-hole t-shirt, or the douche top.

This shirt is commonly executed by first taking the sleeves off of a regular t-shirt and cutting out the neck. This allows, ostensibly, for greater visual access to one’s guns (because if you wear a shirt like this, you invariably refer to your arms as “guns”) and enough space to show off a little pec-cleavage (and perhaps some stylish neck jewelry). But the next step really takes it up a notch. You cut the sleeve holes open down to the very bottom the shirt, leaving just enough fabric to hold the shirt together. This gives much more liberal access for admirers to your entire upper body, and if you’ve done it right just a peek of nipple from time to time. After all, people are at the gym to get motivated, and what greater motivation than being able to see your sculpted torso, right?

Wrong.

Honestly, in addition to a dress code which would allow anyone wearing something like this in a health club to be immediately removed, this sort of apparel should constitute legal grounds to take someone outside and beat them with a dull shovel. No one wearing a douche top will contribute anything valuable to the world, and will likely spend the majority of their days preying on young women with self-esteem issues or, once they’re too old, telling stories of how they did. I’ll bet a year’s salary that Levi Johnston has a drawer full of these. Do us all a favor and put on a damned t-shirt. If anyone wants to see more, they’ll ask.

The Screamers

Lifting weights is a brilliantly visceral experience. Anyone who’s done it for a while can tell you about the rush you get when you push something impossibly heavy through a range of motion for the first time. There’s probably some sort of endorphin/adrenaline science that can explain it - but all I know is that its reliable bliss, which is often in short supply. Additionally, because of the intensity of the experience, its often difficult to appear at one’s absolute best. Some of the scariest faces I’ve ever seen have been on people lifting. And sometimes, the experience is so intense that the occasional grunt is involuntarily let out. Usually, this involves enough weight that its completely understandable. However, there are a precious few people who feel compelled to actually scream while lifting weights, or grunt so loudly that it may as well be screaming. And by “loud”, I mean, loud enough that I can hear despite the fact that I have my earphones in and my iPod at the highest volume I can stand.

For the most part, these weight room chodes aren’t lifting enough to warrant a good sweat, let alone any accompanying noise. And yet, they’re compelled to make sure everyone within earshot understands that they’re exerting themselves into even greater sculptitude, and we really ought to pay attention. For the few of them who are actually trying to lift something challenging, they’re doing it in the least effective way possible, or hardly lifting it at all - screaming all the while, just to make certain we’ve all taken a good look at precisely what they’ve racked up. In addition, these are the same jerk-offs who feel compelled to drop whatever they do manage to lift in the loudest way they can muster, so that if I failed to notice the screaming, there’s no way I’ll miss the dumbbells hitting the floor from two feet up.

A few important notes here:

If I came to gym to hear people working out, I wouldn’t have headphones in. And strangely enough, the vast majority of other patrons have them on as well. Take a hint: we don’t want to hear you.
Rest assured that if someone does rack up and lift something impressive, I’ll notice.
Invariably, every person I’ve seen do something I’d qualify as “impressive” in a gym has done it with hardly a sound. To put it in simple terms: they let the weight do the talking.

That’s the only thing in the gym that I want to listen to, so shut up and lift.

Pretty Angry Girls

From the looks of it, there’s something really bad going on at the gym for almost every girl there. Because I haven’t seen that many pissed off girls in one place since the prom queen announcement. Honestly, what is it, ladies?! I mean, I can understand the need for a plaintive stare at a nightclub, but at the gym? Despite the fact that I’m always at the gym wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, headphones in and focused on my own workout, whenever I glance at a female gym patron (not counting any I showed up with) they look at me as though they recognize my face from the sex offender registry (for the record, they don’t). Now keep in mind I’m not leering or even attempting to initiate any sort of conversation, I’m just looking around the gym because staring straight ahead was something I had my fill of at military school. And yet, I’m forced to make a point of looking into obviously empty space to avoid hearing someone’s rape whistle and getting pepper sprayed while I’m making my way to the lat pulldown machine.

Is that really necessary? Look, I know there are guys at the gym who can be a little lecherous. But if you’ve been paying attention, they’re really not that hard to spot. Aside from the groups mentioned above, anyone wearing Under Armor (or anything skin tight for that matter), anyone wearing a necklace you can see, or anyone flexing in the mirror are safe to give your “look” to. For the rest of us, we’re just trying to get a decent workout in without being distracted by bad shirts and gratuitous yelling.

Additionally, if you show up to the gym with your hair and make-up done, in an outfit that looks like it costs more than your annual membership dues and showing more skin and cleavage than you do when you go to Vegas, having to deal with a little smarm just sort of seems fair, doesn’t it?

* * *

It’s not as though I expect the crowd at my local gym to look like a Bally’s Fitness Center commercial. I’m not sure I’d even want to go a gym like that (or else someone there might end up writing a piece like this about me). I’m just looking for a little less “crazy” in my workout facility. What’s more, no matter what someone looks like, if they’re in there seriously trying to improve themselves, far be it from me to give them any hell about being a work in progress. That’s what being there is all about, anyways. Unfortunately, too often it seems like many of the folks that show up really need work in the one area the gym can’t help them with, a severely underdeveloped sense of shame.

Common Nonsense

2009-10-27T01:10:00.000-07:00

The populist rebellion is in full swing these days. The gap between the educated and non-educated factions of Americans appears to broaden daily as partisan politicians, retail marketers and thought leaders try to capitalize on our socioeconomic prejudices for their own benefit. The poor blame the rich for the economic collapse, the rich blame for the poor for ever-increasing tax obligations. The poor popularize the scandals and salacious habits of celebrities in order to point out how undeserving the rich are (e.g. TMZ, gossip magazines and E! TV), while the rich point to isolated, fame-seeking members of the poor whose shameless academic failures have become the stuff of viral videos and television the world over (e.g. Ms. Teen South Carolina, Jay Leno’s “Jay-Walking” and Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader).

Despite the fact that the internet has made the sum total of the worlds knowledge nearly ubiquitous, the latest generation is less knowledgeable than any that has preceded it since single-room schoolhouses on the prairie. The value and quality of American higher education continues to plummet, while the price of it continues to rise. The dilution of the value of a college degree has become obvious as the school business has become big business. Who isn’t offering a degree these days? Yet, those same degrees have become less and less accessible as the prices of college continue to reflect the desperation of current economic times rather than the reality. The chasm between the educated and the uneducated is becoming more of the gap between the well-educated and the poorly educated. But a plague as foul smelling as by any other name. We’re not just losing the financial middle-class, we’re losing its intellectual counterpart.

The refrain most often heard from the populist crowd is that the educated elite in this country lack “common sense” - as though the nation’s academic elites have all been educated in cloistered and hallowed halls so far removed from the “real world” that they can scarcely be relied upon to tie their own shoes. C’mon people, put down the Grisham novel and step slowly away. Colleges haven’t looked like that for a hundred years, if ever. Most college campuses look like Abercrombie & Fitch commercials with less attractive people and more hand-painted signs. And the fraternities and sororities are no more powerbrokering secret societies than your local Elks Lodge is.

So what exactly is this “common sense” anyways? Most proponents of the theory employ the Justice Potter Stewart method of defining it; not attempting to list all the things that are included, but rather by just saying that they’ll know it when they see it. If this sounds like shaky ground upon which to indict a large portion of the population, it should. The idea that there is a special subset of knowledge available exclusively to folks who shun traditional education is just as absurd as the notion that the knowledge held by the educated or financially elite is unavailable to the population at large. It’s a farce either way.

And yet, we feel a special connection to the notion of “common sense”. We should. After all, it was Thomas Paine’s famous pamphlet of the same name, published in 1776, which became the most widely published and read writing in American history. Credited as a catalyst for the American revolution, it plainly and eloquently warned of the dangers of government and monarchy. It may be one of the most recognizable pieces of populist literature ever printed. But despite these storied roots, more recently common sense has come to mean “street smarts” or “life skills”; the knowledge of which parts of town to avoid, or how to successfully accomplish your own laundry. I’ve even heard it used to refer to skills as varied as interpersonal relationship prowess and fashion sense. What’s so “common” about all of that? And when’s the last time you took fashion or relationship advice from someone without an education?

What the new “common sense” is really, is intellectual segregation, born of the populists’ dissatisfaction with the current distribution of wealth and influence. What else would you call the concept that there are separate, yet equal spheres of knowledge and understanding that are divided along the same lines that dictate what part of town you live in and what job you have? I would hope that we learned a long time ago that there’s nothing equitable about this kind of exclusivity, and there’s nothing equal in “separate, but equal.”

“Common sense” is a pacification in the face of long odds; the exact opposite of the American “bootstrapping” ideal. As the socioeconomic gaps become wider and wider, they become more perilous and daunting to try and cross; and yet, it is precisely that challenge that has always given us our greatest leaders. The satisfaction crusade sweeping the nation, eager to tell us that being a little bit fat, overextended financially, or emotionally unstable is completely o.k., wants nothing more than for you buy into the fact that you’ve already got all the knowledge you’ll ever need, and that anyone who has more is trying to put one over on you. The real truth about the value of education is something Sir Francis Bacon knew over 400 years ago: knowledge is still power.

So, where do we go from here? Perhaps a good place to start are some things we can all agree on, no matter our education level or station in life:

Having a college education doesn’t make you smart and not having one doesn’t make you street savvy;
There isn’t a “better” way to learn. Where or how your get your information doesn’t have any impact on the knowledge or your command of it; and
The knowledge you do have does not dictate the knowledge you can get.

When we’re criticizing someone for not having any so-called “common sense”, we ought to take a good look at what we’re actually saying. One one hand, if we’re indicting their lack of intelligence on relatively pedestrian matter (e.g. unable to work a parking meter, confused by basic traffic patterns, etc.) we can just go ahead and call them stupid. After all, there are no special kinds of stupid. In the immortal words of Forrest Gump, stupid is as stupid does. On the other hand, if we’re challenging their lack of perspective, perhaps we should take the occasion to either give them some, or try and understand where they’re coming from. Either way, putting a finer point on your criticism both increases the chances you’ll be listened or responded to, and makes your own sense seem a whole lot less common.

To be certain, a decision not to educate yourself is a personal one, but it’s also one upon which you should, and ought to be, judged and it doesn’t make you privy to some special kind of knowledge. The idea that it does is both foolish and dangerous. In this Information Age it’s never been easier to learn, and there’s never been a time when it’s needed more. In fact, it seems the only people who lack any sense, common or otherwise, are those fail to do so.

The Write Stuff

2009-10-20T01:23:00.000-07:00

Today I found out that I didn’t win a short fiction contest that I entered this summer. In fairness, I didn’t really expect to win, nor did I have much of a chance. I’m not a fiction writer, and it was a national contest run by a magazine that features some of the best authors and writers of our time. But motivated by my girlfriend (an actual fiction author who entered and also didn’t win) and a fair number of cliches that are designed to keep me from allowing the statistical impossibility of things from paralyzing me into inactivity (e.g. “he who will not risk cannot win”, “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” and something about the “road less travelled” that I should be able to recall but cant), I entered anyway. It was a difficult but enjoyable project, and in my secret heart, where I keep my dreams of winning the lottery, making out with Carmen Electra and playing electric guitar for AC/DC, I hoped to see my name and my story printed in my favorite magazine. And in the most inglorious way possible, by opening the latest issue delivered to my house and flipping through, happening upon the winning entry a full three months before I thought a winner would be announced, I found out that it wasn’t mine and it wasn’t me.

So, instead of waxing poetic about the latest invasive public behavioral trend that makes me simultaneously loathe traveling, big cities and the public in general, I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on why it is that I write. For the record, had I not come upon this epiphanic moment, I’d be writing about the gentlemen in the row ahead of me, who is the latest in a string of middle-aged men who seem bent on attempting their strained and painful version of flirting with the poor women who made their travel plans too late to avoid getting stuck in a middle seat next to them. Invariably, whether a function of the pervasive and palpable awkwardness or simply a general lack of concern for collateral impact, these men lose control of the volume of their voice and I am bombarded by a stumbling and desperate monologue whose volume, consistent lack of humor, and intensity is impossible to ignore (despite my noise canceling headphones and the rumble of a jet aircraft). In addition to desperately hoping that they’ll find a reason to shut the hell up, or possibly be stricken mute by some sort of biological miracle, I’m left to wonder when the point is reached where communication with the opposite sex regresses to the same level it was at when I was 14 - because it seems to, thus far, be getting easier every year, and these guys can’t be much more than 10 years older than I am. Is like some sort of “flirting stroke” where I’ll suddenly start to slur my speech, not be able to feel half of my face and end up recycling tired social commentary to every strange girl unfortunate enough to get stuck in a seat next to me? But I digress. This is about writing, and I’m sure he’ll shut up soon.

So, I’m not winning contests, my book hasn’t generated any interest amongst literary agents, and I haven’t been published in a major periodical since law school. And yet, I still write. Why? For now, I’m lumped into the same category as the midwestern women who write short stories about the adventures their cats have in their dreams and demented home social scientists who are writing manifestos about the dangers of processed foods and the radiation from cell phones. If it were any other endeavor, I would have long ago cast my implements into the same storage area that holds my long-unused rollerblades, golf clubs and Rock Band drums. But I don’t write because I want it to make me rich or pretty and I don’t write because I want it to make me famous. In the simplest terms, I write because I’ve got something to say, and I want people to listen.

Writing is a special form of catharsis. Writing is the best version of my voice. In its measured phrases, sentences and paragraphs, I speak as efficiently and exactly as I’d like to speak in person. You know that feeling you get after you’ve had a discussion and you think of the perfect thing to have said? Or in a verbal confrontation when you come up with the perfect comeback but it’s too late to fire it? That’s what writing can give you. A chance to say it just right. And for a child who had a serious speech impediment growing up, the kind that required countless hours of humiliating speech therapy to correct, the ability to say something that right means ever so much more. Imagine knowing what you’d like to say and then being physically unable to say it. Imagine everyone around you looking at you with pity and disdain because you’ve been stricken dumb by your own mind. And then imagine what you might say when you finally found your voice. Imagine how you might never want to stop saying things at all.

Writing is a chance to inspire and entertain; each purpose with equal value. Writing is permanent and tangible. Writing endures. Writing is a snapshot of your mind, much like a portrait is of your body, and I’m sure you’ll agree that each can be equally embarrassing if you look far back enough. I try to hide my first stabs at writing as far away as I do pictures from high school and college. But the essays I write are the very first thing that I have ever done of which I am truly proud. I can look back, read some of the things I’ve written and be in complete and utter disbelief that I wrote them. I don’t want to change or improve them. I’m happy with them just the way they are. And contentment, for me, has always been in short supply.

I can finally understand the minds of those countless souls who trek out to Los Angeles, in the face of impossible odds, and an impossibly dirty and horrible business, to try and make it as an actor or actress or is some other creative art, because they truly believe their stuff is good enough. We’ve taken a special interest in watching the dreams of these intrepid souls get crushed, as the “open audition” episodes of our favorite TV talent shows draw astronomical ratings, inspire dozens of viral videos and become the stuff of entertainment commentary for weeks. But, it is the precious few of those starry eyed artists who actually do have the right stuff that go on to inspire us all. Without them, we’d simply have our 9-5 jobs, our overpriced lattes and our network news, and everything would be a fine shade of gray.

And so I keep writing; for the kid that wanted a steady sure voice more than anything, and for all the kids that still do. I keep writing for chance to write just one great thing, or a library full of them; to inspire the world, or just one person. I write to make sure that I was here, and for everyone else who did the same. I write funny things to keep from crying and heavy things to keep from, well, more crying. I write to keep you from reading Us magazine, watching the Tyra Banks Show and listening to Miley Cyrus. I write to make you laugh and I write to make you think. I write because I’m a writer, and because you’ll never know how much it means to me that you read.

Oh, and in case you'd like to read the ill-fated short story... you can find it here.

Driving Down Crime

2009-10-11T18:44:00.000-07:00

Racial profiling is a volatile and hot-button issue, which pits our ever-increasing desire for personal safety in an era of terror and violence against the desperate defense of our civil rights as their systemic erosion seems more and more inevitable. We all like to think we know what criminals look like, but then realize that not everyone that looks like our stereotypical criminal is one nor does every criminal fit such a description. Bernie Madoff looks about has harmless as your accountant, yet perpetrated the world’s greatest fraud; while Chad Ochocinco (of Cincinnati Bengals fame) looks straight from a gangster rap video, gold teeth and bad fashion sense included, and has never had anything more than a speeding ticket. There isn’t really any easy way to resolve this matter, and I won’t presume to do so here. But there is a type of profiling that is not only non-discriminatory, but also appears to be wildly effective; a way for law enforcement officials to locate criminals without ever seeing the color of their skin or the way they’re dressed. And that is: vehicle profiling.

It’s certainly no violation of civil rights. You can look and look in the Constitution (Bill of Rights included), the Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence or even Locke’s Social Contract theory and never find a mention of a right or relegation to a certain kind of vehicle. The car you drive is not an immutable trait, and is not culturally exclusive. What you drive and the way you drive are some of the most American freedoms that we have. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a more universal example of our freedom of expression than our vehicles. And therein lies the genius of this new science. Because our cars say something about us that we’ve chosen to say out loud and to the world at-large.

Reckless Drivers

As the world, and consequently, traffic moves ever faster, reckless driving has never been more dangerous. And I know how to spot it before it happens. If you see a compact car that is painted some obscene color or has rims that appear to cost more than the vehicle or, and this one is essential, has a bolt on exhaust device that makes the otherwise-economy car sound like a jet-powered leaf blower, that car will engage in some sort of reckless driving within five minutes, guaranteed. It doesn’t matter who’s driving; their race, gender or socio-economic background are meaningless. If you follow that car, they will break the speed limit, engage in street racing, accelerate in a reckless manner, or any other number of traffic violations that endanger other drivers, pedestrians and bystanders. And they will do it quickly. Who needs speed traps? These cars are easier to spot than Waldo on a page with only two people. In a world of champagne colored Lexus SUV’s, red Mustangs and silver sedans, how hard can it be to locate the lime green Mitsubishi?

Don’t believe me? Then try it for yourself. Follow one of these cars around for the requested five minutes and see if you don’t see something stupid. I’ll bet you a metallic purple Honda civic with an airfoil that you do.

Proximity Alarms

Of course, it’s not just the type of cars that can be profiled, it’s also the condition. Want to know which car has a habit of following too closely in traffic? It’s the one with enough dents in the front to make the bumper look like your ex’s teeth. Want to know which car is prone to sudden and dangerous stops? It’s not the service truck with that actual warning on the back of it. Nope. It’s the car whose rear end has more pock marks in it than the kid who serves me my fries at McDonald’s. That’s the most effective way to say “keep your distance” since the hippy hatchback covered in bumper stickers. The fact that these vehicles haven’t been fixed after multiple accidents is also telling - the driver knows there’s no point in spending good money on fixing something they’re bound to break in the near future.

Why not keep a closer eye on these folks before that add another notch to their belt (or their bumper)?

Minivans

Listen. I get it. It’s not like you can ferry around a good-sized family in a standard vehicle, but if I had to pick out the most consistent type of vehicle that I see involved in dangerously bad driving, it wouldn’t be the aforementioned “sport imports”, the dent brigade or any of the other vehicles here, it would unquestionably be the mini-van. Aside from its abject emasculation and uncoolness so pervasive that it actually makes the cars around it start to suck, it appears to be the last bastion for the driver whose awareness bubble extends no further than their front and rear bumpers. And unless you drive one (and, for some of you, even if you do) you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Of course, we can’t say anything or do anything about it. There’s probably a family in there, which is the most inviolate thing in America next to the flag itself. No matter how badly a family acts, you can’t really say a thing about it (including the Kardashians, the Gosselins and even the Gottis). Which is why I’m certain this would be the most difficult part of my profiling plan to implement. But I’m absolutely confident that you can follow a minivan (especially on the highway) for less than five miles and see some manner of public endangerment: impeding the flow of traffic, signal-less lane changes, and general highway dumbassery, just to name a few. Seeing a minivan in the left lane of a highway is like seeing Kevin Federline in a music studio: technically they’re allowed to be there, but it’s probably going to end in disaster, or at least a lot of angry and frustrated people.

Cargo Vans; Big, Dark, SUVs, and Toyota Trucks

Windowless cargo vans were the best thing to happen to perverts, kidnappers and burglars since the car itself. If you see an unmarked cargo van anywhere near a residential area or any non-industrial area after business hours, you don’t need to wonder whether it will be involved in something nefarious - you can just know it. It should constitute probable cause just to see one of these things.

Additionally, if you see an oversized SUV (e.g. Cadillac Escalade, GMC Yukon or Chevy Suburban) that is dark enough to not actually see into any place except the windshield, there is something in that vehicle that they don’t want you to see. And it’s usually not the driver or passengers.

Finally, if there is an early model Toyota truck driving around (i.e. late 80’s, early 90’s vintage) with tires balder than Dr. Phil and a suspension that looks more worn out than the springs on Paris Hilton’s bed, during rush hour please, please, please pull this car over. You want to know what causes accidents? Cars that stall in the middle lanes of the highway, or on busy interchanges and on ramps because they should have been fixed or taken out of service years ago. Listen, there’s something wrong with that car that you can give a ticket for (broken light, emissions, uninsured, etc.) and you’ll prevent more accidents than you ever could by pulling over the college student who’s texting in stop-and-go traffic.

* * *

In the end, it both is and isn’t true that you are what you drive. A cool car won’t make you cool if you’re not, and an expensive car won’t make you attractive (it may, however, get you a hot date). A hybrid car doesn’t make you a better citizen and truck that can pull a house doesn’t make you more manly (however, pulling a house with your truck does). But the new-found glamor of behaving badly, or at least selfishly to the point of endangering others has enabled those mostly likely amongst us to engage in such behaviors to advertise it with their means of personal transportation.

People that buy red cars know that they’re three times more likely to get pulled over for speeding - and yet they still buy, and there’s no outcry over red car discrimination, because hey, red cars do tend to speed (though they’re not the only ones). So why not expand this vehicular profiling past hot-colored sports cars and onto the ones detailed above, and many more that I’ve certainly overlooked (suggestions, anyone?)? You never know, all those cops on the street might finally actually make them safer ... or at least more likely to use traffic stops to stop actual criminals instead of those of us just trying to get where we’re going or simply most likely to pay the fine.

Battle of the Bulge

2009-09-30T10:59:00.001-07:00

We are a nation of self-love in the era of self-love. Entire industries have been built to short circuit the healthy social imperatives of shame and guilt, and entire generations have been convinced beyond any doubt they are each and all special. We no longer believe that we are simply deserving of the love of someone, we have now been led by teachers, parents and cultural leaders to feel as though we are entitled to the adoration of everyone around us - solely as a function of our own existence. One of the most troubling corollaries to this new axiomatic selfishness is the widespread preaching of mediocrity and laziness as model lifestyles and the acceptance of the effects such living has on the body as “natural” and even ideal.

It has become popular to blame the obesity epidemic in the United States on the peddlers of high-fat foods and high-sugar drinks, as corporate giants bent on making their profits on the backs our of own self-destruction. But it has gone without mention that there are celebrities, authors and scholars lining up to tell us that there’s nothing wrong with being a little overweight and lot indulgent. In the past two decades we’ve relentlessly pointed the finger at “negative media images” that have driven young men and women to eating disorders, performance enhancing drugs, and unnecessary plastic surgery, and created a backlash so severe that it’s suddenly become hip to have a “fat ass”, to “love your love handles” and to insist on being called a “foodie” instead of just a glutton. This widespread acceptance of the overweight population we have become is just as much at fault, if not more, for our burgeoning chubbiness than the fast food nation which often bears the brunt of the blame.

While still at law school, I recall the announcement of a seminar on campus for women called “Love Your Body”. Although I was not invited, the nature of the seminar seemed clear enough from their marketing materials. In an effort to avoid the deleterious effects that the “The Media Sexualization of Young Girls” was having on college students, the National Organization for Women was sponsoring large-scale group therapy sessions which would make gaining weight at college an exercise in learning to love one’s self, rather than the driving force towards an eating disorder. Funny thing was, all I could see running around campus were overweight undergrads in ill-advised and poor-fitting clothing who seemed extraordinarily content with their appearance. As it turns out, while the incidence of bulimia is approximately 1 in 5 and the incidence of anorexia is 1 in 10 amongst college students, 3 out of 10 college students are either overweight or obese, which is the same rate of occurrence as both of these eating disorders combined. Strangely enough, despite this fact, there was no competing “You’re Getting Fat At Far Too Young An Age” seminar scheduled on campus.

Tyra Banks became an international star as a runway and swimsuit model in the mid 90’s, riding a tall frame, a thin waist and natural good looks to the very top of the modeling world. She become the first African-American female to be on the cover of GQ, the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and the Victoria Secret catalog, arguably the trifecta of pop culture relevance as a beauty icon. Unfortunately, this fame simultaneously never provided a real impetus to obtain an education and did provide for a stable of enabling handlers and a platform and audience for her inane ruminations, culminating in her own talk show. As Tyra’s comfort grew along with her dress size, the rumblings amongst pop commentators began to grow louder about how she was “getting fat” – reaching critical mass when photographed in a unflattering one-piece bathing suit at an America’s Next Top Model photo shoot. This prompted perhaps one of the greatest self-righteous tirades in recent memory and empowered women nationwide to tell us all to “kiss their fat asses!” Fantastic.

So, to sum up Ms. Banks’ moral crusade in terms we can all understand: we have a woman who made literally hundreds of millions of dollars by being an idealized physical specimen: tall, thin and naturally pretty. As that naturally thin body ultimately gave way to a much more average or slightly overweight body, she’s devoted her energies, rather than to fitness and healthy eating, to justifying her physical change as not only perfectly natural but as ideal, and something all women should strive towards. Despite her changes, she still expects to be treated like a supermodel and hopes to inspire women the world over to not succumb to the pressure of being “super-skinny”. For what it’s worth, the distance between Ms. Banks’ body condition (at that time) and “super skinny” was particularly vast – and if it weren’t for her body looked when she was 17, she wouldn’t have a pulpit to preach from. What’s worse, the majority of women who watch Ms. Banks’ primary pop culture outlet (America’s Next Top Model) are under the age of 25. And if she was so happy with how she looked at that time, why did she immediately lose 25 pounds? I suppose we’ll just now be invited to kiss her newly skinny ass.

The “food” movement has never been more popular. Overeating, once vilified, has become celebrated with more television shows and movies than could possibly be referenced here. Competitive eating has become a sport with it’s own league and coverage on ESPN. Eating has become a hobby, celebrated in blogs and social groups, and more often than not, the involved eating is indulgent and gluttonous. We’ve decided that as long as our food doesn’t come in a Styrofoam box or paper bag, it’s an acceptable health decision. I’ve witnessed the term “foodie” which used to reference those people who took particular joy in exotic and flavorful cuisine come to be self-applied by people who simply can’t stop eating desserts and things with melted cheese on them. Unfortunately, giving something a cute nickname doesn’t stop it from being unhealthy.

Childhood obesity is an epidemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that over the past three decades, the obesity rate has more than doubled for children ages 2 to 5 and for adolescents ages 12 to 19, and has more than tripled for children ages 6 to 11. Not only are we getting fatter, we’re making our kids fatter as our own attitudes for what constitutes a “healthy body” have become more and more accommodating. The self-love generations have come of age and are having children of their own, and we’ve never been fatter. To mark this downward spiral with celebrations of our fatness is the proverbial Nero’s fiddle. Only this time, the tune he’s playing is actually devoted to the flames.

On the heels of a blockbuster dystopian film that warns of the dangers of us all needing to be hyper-ideal physically, I’m mindful of the fact that there’s nothing healthy about a nation of people who endeavor to all look like soap opera stars. We’re all built differently, and there’s something wonderful about that. But we’re given to look to role models for everything from how to dress to how to act and from how to eat to how to look. We should, from time to time, try to take a step back to take a look just exactly what these models are trying to tell us. And to the extent we find that it is simply a rationalization of their own shortcomings and wealth-driven sloth, we ought to be able to tell them to kiss our own non-famous asses. Or at least stop short of puckering up.

Personal Space, the Final Frontier

2009-09-16T12:34:00.000-07:00

In most matters, I'm not an ethnocentrist. I'm all for the melting pot that is the United States. The broad array of cultures that have been brought to our shores have contributed immeasurably to the success of America. The notion of requiring people to speak English only is laughably absurd to me, and decrying culturally-specific holidays, including foreign days of independence (e.g. Cinco de Mayo), as a loss of the American identity is just plain stupid. But there is one point of purely white-bread American custom on which I must insist. There is one decidedly red, white and blue rule of social conduct which appears to be of minimal importance to immigrant Americans which I'm afraid I must enforce. There is one thing that, no matter how much tolerance and cultural sensitivity is beaten into me, I will not budge on. And that is: stay the hell out of my personal space.

I'm not sure how the views on this have gotten so disparate between later-generation Americans and the rest of the world. And to be frank, I really don't care. I have no interest in why the older Latino women at Costco assume they can push their cart into mine with a disinterested aplomb or why the older Filipino man on the airplane claimed all the armrest real estate (and a couple of inches of my own seat space) on my recent flight out of Las Vegas with no more concern than had my seat been empty. I just want them to back off. I don't care about diplomacy when it comes to a stranger invading my personal bubble, I just want them to stop touching me. It is the ultimate affront to civility when the unsavory have a right-of-way simply because they don't care about whose space they're in, and no one else can stand having them in theirs. It's precedence via social leprosy - and I've had enough.

Edward T. Hall produced the most groundbreaking work in this field way back in 1966, in his seminal work The Hidden Dimension, which established the field of proxemics - the study of set measurable distances between people as they interact. According to Mr. Hall, the following are the standard distances for American culture:

Intimate distance - for embracing, touching or whispering
- Close phase – less than 6 inches
- Far phase – 6 to 18 inches
Personal Distance - for interactions among good friends or family members
- Close phase – 1.5 to 2.5 feet
- Far phase – 2.5 to 4 feet
Social Distance - for interactions among acquaintances
- Close phase – 4 to 7 feet
- Far phase – 7 to 12 feet
Public Distance - used for public speaking
- Close phase – 12 to 25 feet
- Far phase – 25 feet or more

Now I recognize that in the situations that provide the greatest opportunity for personal space violation - transportation, shopping, entertainment, etc., most of these distances are an impossibility, but I've always felt that one of the basic assumptions of agreeing to go into these situations with other people is that we'll do our level best to try and meet these distance requirements if possible. So why does it seem like cultural ignorance and age have become excuses to disregard this rule?

According to the foremost expert on the subject, the only good reason you have to be inside of four feet of me is if we're good friends, family or about get intimate. Four feet! Here's some news - regardless of where you're from, what God you pray to, or how long you've been on this planet, you're none of the above - and if you were, you'd know it.

In most matters I can tolerate the fact that we're becoming less and less gentrified. Hell, in some cases I even enjoy it. I may not like the fact that it's become completely acceptable to bolt a device onto the exhaust pipe of your Honda Civic so that I have to hear it four blocks away from inside my own car, but I do appreciate a good curse word now and then, and have never minded a nice bare midriff (muffin tops excluded). We've got to draw the line somewhere, and I'm ready to put right where Francis "Psycho" Saywer did in 1981. Any of you touch me, and I'll kill ya.

Okay, so maybe I won't go that far, but so you know, you're pushing me. You're pushing us. The whole tolerance crowd has just about had it. We're tired of getting out of your way just because the thought of you that close to us is revolting. We've grown weary of keeping our mouths shut when you plop yourself down close enough to us that we can evaluate the effectiveness of your last shower, despite there being plenty of room available. And we're fed up with your plaintive stare, feigning cultural ignorance when do something you know damned well is not o.k.

It's no secret that intolerance and hate are on the rise, especially as times get tough. For my part, I increasingly have to rebuff the forwarded e-mails and video clips from my red-state family and friends that increasingly target immigrants as the root of all of our evils. Quite frankly, their arguments are vitriolic and nonsensical. But, despite the victory for change and reason in the White House, these ridiculous movements are gaining momentum. And I fear that the root of this is a simple lack of respect.

Unlike my preferences in women's footwear, my disdain for abject douchebaggery, and my hatred of Notre Dame, my need for personal space is not a personality trait or social affliction. It is, as many social scientists have discovered, a deeply integral part of how we interact with one another. There is little need for us to speak the same languages, wear the same clothes or celebrate the same holidays, no matter if we're native, transplanted or visiting. But the space we give to one another is something else entirely. It is essential to our coexistence.

For my part, I'm still trying to fulfill my end of the contract. I didn't ram my cart back into the woman at Costco, and I didn't elbow the man next to me on the plane back into his own seat. I expect that I'll continue to simply fume and steam in relative silence, giving way and giving space, reducing my own proximate happiness for the blissful freedom of having my 18 inches back. But, I fear that banking on the impulse control of an entire nation who seems bent on the celebration of interpersonal violence is a really bad idea. The boiling point, if not yet reached, can't be far off. Perhaps instead, we can abandon the pursuit of our glorious individuality just long enough to stay out of each other's way. Or at least out of each other's space. A little breathing room may be just what we need to enjoy how wonderfully different we all are.

See also:

In Certain Circles, Two is a Crowd

Wikipedia: Proxemics

The Road to Happiness

2009-09-13T09:53:00.000-07:00

There is a great deal of time and effort spent on the discussion of “finding happiness” – as though it were something you lost in your apartment or a small town in eastern Idaho that isn’t on any map. In these existential treatments, happiness is a creature of myth and legend, inexplicable in form and indescribable in function. In addition to the meandering and secret path that is alleged to lead you there – provided you’re willing to follow the advice of life coaches, talk show psychics and religious zealots – no one can really tell you what it’s going be like, only that you’ll know it when you get there. But this treatment of happiness always made me feel like it was no more reachable than the sunset; no matter how hard I tried, it never seemed to get any closer. As a I’ve gotten older, however, I’ve realized that happiness is not some far off and shapeless thing, and that, I’ve already found it.

There are only three things in my life that have made me so happy that I’ve cried. Each of which I’ve been reminded of recently. Which is not to say only three things have made me cry – hell, after a couple of particularly nuclear break-ups, I’ve been known to cry during movies, sad songs, and certain well-crafted beer commercials. No, these are the sort of shameless tears that result from a shameless and unexpected joy. And these things are happiness. Now, they may not be happiness for you, or they may even be – but I hope you find, after reading about these simple pleasures, you can recall those few things in your life that made you purely, unbelievably and ridiculously happy. And maybe after a return trip through or to them – you can tell you life coach to take their mantras and mottos, and put them where their aura doesn’t glow.

Dancing

There aren’t many things as universally fun as dancing, so I suppose now you think I’m going to regurgitate some universal platitudes about “dancing like no one’s watching” and then go watch a Hallmark movie and cry myself to sleep. Wrong. In fact, I always dance like there is someone watching; the more people that are watching, the better.

For reference, I was a pretty shy kid. Now, I wasn’t a quiet kid by any stretch of the imagination – but I was about as comfortable around the opposite sex as though they were heavily armed and I were painted in bulls-eyes. The thought of actually striking up a conversation with a girl I was attracted to made me anxious the point of physical illness, and I spent the majority of my youth so physically non-descript that even if I had immolated myself and run down the hallway, I wouldn’t have turned a head.

But, when I found dancing, everything changed. I was able to jump into a crowd full of strangers and perform. There I was, just being myself – my overly energetic and crazy self, and not only was it o.k., it was good. Suddenly, these strangers weren’t strangers anymore. We had created some sort of bond between artist and audience – and they would strike up a conversation with me. The pretty girls in the crowd also noticed, and their eyes always told me it was time to come up and say hello.

I remember working on my own and with other dancers on new, more challenging moves. I remember the newfound ability to simply laugh it off when I didn’t hit something just right, rather than beat myself up. I remember having a crew of guys who would go crazy when I’d hit something particularly cool, and who wouldn’t let anyone get in my face on a dance floor. I remember knowing I’d do the same for them. I remember hitting one particularly tough move I had been working on and barely missing for weeks; the bald joy of the moment, enjoying the private success of it with the few friends I had there, and the public cheers; and the tears that I was simply powerless to prevent – and that I’m not sure I really wanted to anyways.

80’s Rock and Roll

I really believe that rock had two revolutions, and always roll my eyes at those Baby Boomers who insist that I “missed” the golden age of rock and roll. Because as far as I’m concerned, not only did I not miss one of the two great eras of rock, I was a part of the better one. Rock and roll has always been part revel and part rebel. It’s grown ups singing about a good time and the good life, but it really belongs to the kids who don’t, can’t or won’t do the same. It was the good kids’ first taste of just how good behaving badly could be, and there was no better time to find that out than in the late 80’s and early 90’s.

It was hair metal, cheese metal, pop rock or whatever else you want to call it. It was the power bands of the decade before (e.g. Aerosmith, AC/DC) perfecting their sounds and generating stadium anthems that demanded rebellion and fist-pumping commitment to Hedonism and rocking for rock’s sake. It was also the American take on “glam”; bands whose androgynous big hair and make-up made KISS look positively manly. These rockers (e.g. Motley Crue, Poison, Def Leppard) insisted on couching their power chords and fast-paced drums with impossibly high-pitched lyrics and lyricists who always seemed, despite their decidedly feminine look and sound, impossibly bad ass.

I remember the open disdain my parents had for this music and the furtive way I had to listen to it. I remember the excitement it built in me, and the bigger life it promised that helped me break out of the orbit of my small town at 18. I remember not being allowed to listen to the records and the unimaginable prospect of actually attending one of the concerts that came through Denver.

Which I think is why, now, I never miss an opportunity to see one of these bands when they come through my town. I know it’s not the “coolest” thing to have front row tickets to see Extreme or Motley Crue with Aerosmith, or to fly hundreds of miles to see Def Leppard and Poison. And I know it certainly wasn’t cool to be crying through the first three songs in the front row of the AC/DC concert because of how impossible that would have seemed to a younger me. But I do know that signing along with thousands of my closest new friends to the songs that I used to sneak a listen to as a teenager, promising me the bigger, better life that I went out and found makes me forget just about everything else, except how to smile.

Navy Football

I am a sports fan. You can usually identify us by seeing if we’ll watch back-to-back and identical episodes of SportsCenter with the same sort of intensity as though it’s our cardiologist bringing back test results. But like many fans, there is one team in particular that turns us just plain crazy. There is one team for whom we have an irrational love for; a team we will defend like a family member and support like a first-born childe. Because at some point in our lives, we became inextricably attached to this team, and it’s as much a part of us as the fingers on our hands. For me, this is Navy Football – the original Blue and Gold.

It started, as you might expect, while I was a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy. There, attendance to home football games is mandatory for the Brigade of Midshipmen and one of the most memorable sights of those games is the 4,000 or so of us clad in our dress whites (or blues) and cheering together in the southwest corner of the stands. But, as much as a loved being a plebe (freshman) and taking the field to do pushups each time we scored, my love affair with Navy Football didn’t really begin until the end of my sophomore year, when I beat long odds to become the man behind the mask; our school’s mascot: Bill the Goat.

For two seasons, I had an all-access pass to all things Navy sports, including home and away football games (one in Ireland, even), and my passion grew to a fever. With the license afforded by the anonymity of the costume, my outsized personality was allowed to grow and flourish. I didn’t simply jump up for touchdowns, I jumped up, danced, ran around the field high-fiving fans and let the other teams fans have it. A bad call didn’t simply cause me to turn away in disgust, I stomped my feet, stirred the ire of fellow fans, ran down the field and gestured at officials. I didn’t simply cheer the battle on the field, I found the other mascot and made a battle of my own. Far from simply being a nickname given to anyone who ever donned the goat’s head, I was Navy’s biggest fan.

Although a few of my antics had to be curbed when I took off the costume for the last time, not much has changed from those days when it comes to me watching Navy Football. I still jump up and dance when we score, I still let the officials have it after a bad call, and I still hug strangers when we’re winning. And after 43 years of losing to them, I recall crying like a little girl when we finally beat Notre Dame two years ago. Then I went to find every Irish fan I could to let them know that the day of reckoning had finally come, and they’d no longer be able to count their date with Navy as an automatic win. Can ya hear me, Matt Couture?

* * *

In the past month, I’ve gotten to dance in front of a screaming crowd, see Def Leppard, Poison and AC/DC (again) live, and watch my beloved Navy Football team just about ruin Ohio State’s season (and in Columbus, no less). I didn’t cry at any of these events (more likely owing to my age than the intensity of the experiences), but I did laugh and smile and forget about all the other stresses and nonsense in my life. For a precious few moments I was young again, or perhaps young like I never was – carefree, blissful and alight. And for the myriad of suggestions I’ve heard offering a road to happiness paved with seminars, counseling and selected pharmaceuticals, I’ve come to find that road is actually best walked with dancing shoes, accompanied by a bitchin’ lead guitar, and paved with gold (and blue) bricks.

I Am Not Spartacus (and Neither Are You)!

2009-09-07T12:25:00.001-07:00

I realize the risk I’m running by writing this. It’s one thing to wax poetic on the fashion tragedies of other men that I see running around and still try to maintain some air of masculinity – but it’s another to speak out women’s fashion. But after spending years as a male cheerleader and even longer as a dancer, I’ve given up on expecting my sexual preference to be obvious from the things I do.

It wasn’t that long ago that I finally realized why women spend so much time, money and effort on shoes. I remember the maddening mystery of it as an adolescent, a young adult and as a grown man. Back then, I could satisfy my own footwear wardrobe needs with three pairs – and if pressed, probably two. But once my hormones had calmed down to the point where I could finally notice something about a women besides the fact the she was female, I began to notice the details that made femininity so damned alluring. I certainly didn’t have anything even approaching a foot fetish (in fact, just writing that gives me an inexplicably cold chill), but I could finally appreciate just how great a great pair of heels was. I can’t imagine any practicing heterosexual male that doesn’t love beautiful legs. And the right shoe was the perfect ending to my favorite story.

Despite the exorbitant prices and monies involved, the trends in ladies footwear have always seemed to produce ever more flattering displays of legs, ankles and feet – even offering those unfortunate Sasquatch-footed girls with an opportunity to make their boats look a little manageably sized (I’m talking to you, Heidi Klum). I finally got it, and no longer wonder why Loubintons cost $800 (because they’re worth it) or why a shoe sale was such a big deal (because you can buy more of them for the same money). However, there is a current trend in ladies’ shoes, which has jumped the shark; something even more impossible to justify than skinny jeans, even more baffling than the collection of products in your bathroom, and the mostly widely adopted female fashion disaster since the crimping iron. I’m speaking, of course, of the “gladiator sandal.”

Before I get started, let me just say, I’m not so far up my own ass that I think that the women of the world (or even those locally for that matter) are choosing their shoes to impress me; or even to impress men, in general. I’m well aware of the fact that most of what women wear is done to impress other women. Case-en-point: fancy lingerie – because if we think you’re hot, we want to see you naked, and don’t care about the steps it takes to get there. So, if you love your Spartacus sandals, and your friends do, too, fantastic! But, I feel like us guys are often afraid to say anything when something you’re wearing just isn’t quite right. I mean, who are we (you know, the guys that can’t reliably tie their own neckties or match them to our shirts without your help) to criticize your fashion choices. You’re right, we’ve got no standing to tell you what to wear on your feet – but to extent it matters what we think – we think your Air Leonidas’ look ridiculous.

Honestly, I’m not quite sure whose idea this was, or why no one has said anything yet. But the proverbial emperor has got no clothes on. You paid fifty bucks for footwear that was designed 1500 years ago, and is a toga away from being a marginal party costume. It’s not like you girls don’t have options if you’re looking to show off your pedicure or aren’t in the mood for heels. Flip-flops are casual and worry free; and flats are comfortable and fun and neither of them make you look like you’re waiting for a chariot to come pick you up. And can someone tell me why these foot-worn monstrosities usually come in “gold” or “silver”? The only thing that you should be wearing in those colors is actual gold or silver. I mean, seriously, is there ever a good time for fake metallic print?

And as I sat down to write this, I realized, I’m not exactly sure what it is about them that makes them so absurd. On the one hand, they’re just not flattering. Ostensibly, one of the purposes of the standard women’s shoe is to make the foot look a little bit smaller. A gander through the history of women’s footwear bears this out as a common theme. There is an inherent femininity to a small foot. It’s dainty, and cute. Yet the current Maximus-style sandal craze does everything it can to make the feet look larger. Not just flat, but wrapped up in thin strings that on most girls, are tied up so tight that it looks as though they’re keeping your feet from being even bigger. On the girls who are tall and skinny enough (i.e. fashion models) to actually pull off a flat shoe as fashionable – their planks look big enough in these things to effectively ski on. There’s nothing hot about looking down at the end of bed as bodies are tangled together and having to wonder which bumps belong to you. And that’s exactly what we’re imagining when we’re seeing you wear shoes that it looks like we might be able to fit into.

And on the other hand, they look way too affected to be taken seriously. Listen, a bunny-themed corset is hot, but we don’t want to take you to dinner in it. And anything that takes that long to put on hardly gives the carefree, cute appearance you were hoping for. I mean, men as a general rule, are mouth-breathing morons when it comes to what you’re wearing, but we do know that laces that wrap around your foot a dozen or so times don’t just slip on. There’s only two ways we can look at these aberrations – you either take yourself way too seriously (and think that shoes that take twenty minutes to put on are ok), or you don’t take yourself seriously at all. Remember that kid in elementary school who insisted on wearing some element of his Halloween costume to school on days that were not Halloween (you know, like a cape or a mask)? Yeah, now that’s you. Congratulations, Caesar.

Finally, they barely qualify as shoes, and are the only item of clothing to come out of the Roman era that isn’t worn exclusively for frat parties. Doesn’t it feel silly to pull them out of the box and find that they consist of an eighth-inch thick leather sole and three or four long leather straps sewn to the side? Do they even come with instructions? Or at least a picture on the front of the box to look at (like a Lego set)? If you wonder in that moment if it’s really worth it – the money, the hassle and the discomfort – let me be the first to say: no.

For the most part, you ladies are far more capable at dressing yourselves in a flattering and fashionable way than most of us men will ever hope to be. Even the worst amongst you makes the majority of us look like we picked our clothes in the dark. But every once in a while, something completely absurd becomes a mania of sorts. All the sources of fashion advice that you have (magazines, television, friends, etc.) conspire and inundate you with an impossible amount of advocacy on behalf of a truthfully bad idea. And for the most part, we keep quiet – hoping it will soon pass, and knowing that, inevitably, you’ll find that little black dress, those black heels and that thing you do with your hair that makes us just want to touch it – and that all will be well. So perhaps it’s best I just sit back and wait for this to pass. But just in case it doesn’t, I’m polishing up my breastplate, helmet and sword. After all, once she’s got the shoes, all any gladiator girl really needs is a well-dressed gladiator.

Let's Hear It For the Boy

2009-08-24T01:16:00.000-07:00

The large scale campaign conducted by the women of world to convince men that they are the only gender subject to the visceral weakness of our base desires has been wildly successful. In fact, if not for the periodic reminder that I get from a particular kind of young lady (including one particularly poignant example this weekend), I would have bought it lock, stock and barrel myself. Strip clubs, adult book stores and porn websites all cater almost exclusively to the Y-chromosome set, and the few all-male revues that do appear, at least to the exclusion of the gay male crowd, to be directed at women are often reviled as caricatures and are almost always overtly campy in their presentation. We have been told and shown time and time again that while women can always resist a gorgeous man most men are powerless to resist their female counterparts. In fact, as you read that, you men are probably nodding your heads and you women are smiling to yourselves in the global fraud that you have successfully perpetrated. But alas, you’ve been betrayed by one class of the sisterhood that, despite an almost universal attractiveness and, in many cases, high level of education, loses all perspective and judgment around their chosen type of man. Behold the Athletic Supporter.

Of course, I don’t mean the elastic protective device used by male athletes the world over to protect the family jewels from harm – although the parallels are both entertaining and difficult to ignore. I.e. uncomfortably clingy, never quite as good a fit as you were hoping for and, even with bleaching, always just a little bit dirtier than you’re comfortable with. No, all enjoyable double entendre aside, I’m referring to professional athlete groupies – that dedicated cadre of loose women who attend sporting events they have little or no interest in with the hopes of attracting the attention of one of the well-paid sportsmen, if only for the night. What is extraordinary about this platoon of pretty girls is not that they exist in such large numbers but that they continue to exist – especially in this enlightened age of empowered and educated women.

The only plausible explanation for this behavior flies in the face of conventional wisdom regarding the sexes. At first, I thought it might be attributable to the exorbitant salaries paid to modern professional athletes. Even mediocre players in the major professional sports are multi-millionaires and the allure of moneyed men is a concept as old as money itself. But the traditional gold-digger is looking for a seat on the money train, and not simply a short tour of the sleeper car. The appeal of wealth is usually the security it offers – and we are often struck by the other shortcomings it appears to allow women to overlook in their mates (e.g. advanced age, physical unattractiveness, poor hygiene, excessive body hair, and/or tragic lack of personal style). But these athletes do little if anything to hide their philandery, and are usually prototypical physically. So, it’s not the money, at least not in the traditional sense.

So that left only their physical prowess. But these are grown women. Sure, we expect teenage girls to be prone to flights of fancy regarding starting quarterbacks, hunky heartthrobs, and consummate bad boys. But the women populating this corps of marginally chaste ladies are usually in their mid to late twenties – and often times older. And here I’ve always thought that coming of age as a woman meant casting aside childish desires and searching for a man who, depending on their level of sophistication, could satisfy their emotional and intellectual needs, or at least reliably fund their shoe budget. The majority of these modern-day gladiators are hard pressed to offer much more than monosyllabic mumbling or the occasional visceral grunt in the way of conversation and not a whole lot more in way of emotional availability. Given their level of cognitive maturity, one might almost consider an academic attraction to men like this be like cerebral pedophilia.

We expect or at least tolerate attractive girls in their early to mid twenties to be gallivanting about town and making poor life decisions about who they spend their nights with – we certainly also expect them to grow out of it by the time they can drive a rental car, or at least before they stop getting carded on a regular basis to get into a nightclub.

These athletes offer little more than a one night soiree – and I can only imagine the sort of personal treatment offered to these ladies once the evening’s festivities have concluded. It certainly seems like the sort of blatant and obvious disrespect that only strippers and crack whores would be likely to endure of their own volition and even then, only in exchange for money and/or illicit drugs.

But these “teamwork hoes” (a term I first heard on the Stanford campus, no less) regularly volunteer for this treatment. They are grown, educated and intelligent. They are frequently well-groomed, well-heeled and well-spoken. And, yet, they persist in attending to this class of men as though they were gods – happy to simply be in their audience for a few moments, even if those same moments are stolen amidst a chemical and alcoholic haze in a hotel room from which they’ll be summarily dismissed once the chance encounter has been hastily consummated.

But as a life-long penis owner, this behavior is far from inexplicable. Like it or not, and despite our intellectual development, we are all still physical creatures. We are sometimes subject to and victims of our baser desires. As much as we’ve learned and matured in our lives, sometimes all it takes is the robust display of cleavage (be it of the chest or bicep variety) to make us forget ourselves and behave recklessly. This is far from an indictment. In fact, it’s comforting to know that for every Carmen Electra and Megan Fox we’ve got, you girls have some second baseman or quarterback whose only appeal would be their quiet acquiescence to a shameless romp in the hay. So thanks to the Athletic Supporters (including the one I met recently – you know who you are) for cheerfully reminding me of the immanent corruptibility of the fairer, smarter and more temperate sex. Besides, it’s nice to have some company down here in the gutter – especially when it smells like flowers.

Anything You Can Douche, I Can Douche Better

2009-08-17T10:15:00.000-07:00

There is something truly incredible about the men of Los Angeles; something that defies all logic or understanding. Because just when I think that I've seen the art of douchebaggery reach its highest, or rather, lowest point, and without even seeking it out, I come across someone (or two) ever so much worse. It's as though L.A. has become the epicenter for dressing yourself like an asshat and then acting as though you're walking around in classic Armani suit. I'm not certain whether to laugh or to cry. But, ever since I read in my April Esquire magazine about "end of the douchbag era" (courtesy of Stephen Marche's 'A Thousand Words About Our Culture' column) I've been waiting to see signs of this downturn. From where I'm standing, however, I fear the Marche may have posted the proverbial "Mission Accomplished" banner on his cultural aircraft carrier just a tad too early. The douchebag movement is apparently alive and well here in the City of Angels - and may even be gaining momentum.

Skinny jeans, over-sized v-necks, highlighted hair and eyeliner are apparently not enough. Because while sitting in an Irish Pub (yes an actual Irish pub - the only place you'd be less likely to spot the common L.A. douche than a Men's Wearhouse) on the north side of town this weekend, I was confronted by a brave new step forward in fashion dumbassery - the coordinated kung fu headband. At first, I thought it was some sort of joke - as though some group of kids were having a theme party and the pub was simply a stop on their bar crawl. Sure they wouldn't fit in, but that was sort of the point of such an adventure anyway, right? I couldn't think of any other reason why two of these young men would be wearing tied headbands that matched their outfits: one white and one black. It was like some post-modern good vs. evil chode war - or as though the Karate Kid and Criss Angel had a love child (or two).

At least one of them had the good sense to use a handkerchief (of course that same dickwad did not have the good sense to keep his pants from falling off his ass - despite the fact that he was wearing a belt - but that's a different story). The other looked as though he had crafted his from an old white undershirt. I can almost imagine the scene at his house:

Assclown 1: "Yo, you ready yet?"

Assclown 2: "Almost... YO! Sweet headband!"

Assclown 1: "Yeah, chicks love this thing - Spencer was totally rockin' one last week at the club... I got black to match my jeans and eyeliner"

Assclown 2: "Dude, I don't have a white one to match my shoes..."

Assclown 1: "Yo, just cut up an old shirt!"

Assclown 2: "Sweet!"

You know, now it looks like I just transcribed outtakes from "Dude, Where's My Car?"

But seriously, Mr. Makeshift Headband was a serious limp and one crane technique away from being Daniel Laruso. I had to fight the urge to go over and ask him if he was from Reseda and how Mr. Miyagi was doing these days.

In all honesty, all of it would have been fine if they were joking. You know, a Karate Kid theme party wouldn't be such a bad idea - I'll bet you could even get Elizabeth Shue to show up depending on which bars you went to and if you had bottle service and a decent amount of cocaine. Hell, I might even have joined in with some movie quotes and maybe bought the group a round for their sheer audacity and brilliance. But, no. This was no tongue-in-cheek send up of 80's pop culture. This was latest ring quest of another Frodo and Bilbo Douchbaggins - lowering the bar to impossible new depths, and turning an otherwise tremendous local pub into a weak hipster rest stop. As they laughed at their own unimaginably stupid jokes, and strutted around the bar like peacocks, their woefully underfed Ingénues in tow, I struggled in vain to ignore them and was left trying to glean some sort of lesson from having to bear witness to this latest fashion tragedy.

Much like economic turn around - we must be cautious to announce the end of the douchebag era before it is truly nigh. In all likelihood, it will take years to undo the damage done by Afflication, Armani Exchange, Diesel and most of the Persian and Armenian guys I've ever met. Because just as one tool recognizes the errors of his ways, buttons up his shirt, takes off his jewelry and turns his car stereo down, another will take his place; under the same misguided delusion that such behavior is all that's standing in between him and a life of perpetually available sex with supermodels. No, it's going to take a nation of us to stand up; to continue to rage against this rising tide of overgroomed and undersmart scrotes, to finally point and laugh and yell: "What the hell are you wearing?"

Or just one of us to sweep the leg.

A Little Piece of Quiet

2009-08-07T15:06:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure that reading about economics is the healthiest thing for me. One one hand, it's intellectually enriching and allows me to explore a topic that I never had the good sense to get into while still in college, and develop a new skill set as a businessman. However, on the other hand, it gets me thinking about just precisely what I would pay for certain things, no matter how unsavory they are. Because, in a purely economic world, if people are willing to pay for something, it would be for sale.

Unfortunately for my girlfriend, if she ends up in the car with me, this means having to listen to me rant about precisely how much I would be willing to pay for a traffic-free rush hour trip to (or from) work (I've currently settled on $20 each way - if that can give you some sense of just how bad the traffic in L.A. is). As traffic worsens (inevitably), this leads me to point out all of the cars (and drivers) on the road who clearly wouldn't be able to afford such a toll, and beginning to opine about a requiring a minimum car value to use the highways or an intricate system of driver training and licensing that will keep all but the most skilled drivers out of the left-most lanes. In the end this usually devolves into a sort of driver's fascism that is a little too angry and serious to really be funny, and does little to calm my nerves.

But, since I have, despite its inadvisability, been reading on economics recently, my world view has become bent on pricing out of my life things that annoy me. Which became particularly tasteless during my flight from Burbank to Portland this past Thursday when I was seated a scant five feet or so from what I have determined to be the most terrible and annoying child I have ever encountered. We'll call him Jeffrey; for no other reason than it seems to fit. For reference, coming from someone who was raised by a mother that did in-home childcare, has four neices and nephews of his own, and has spent no less than eight years as a barmitzvah DJ - this is really saying something.

I had spotted this little bastard in the gate area. In fairness, I'm not sure if Jeffrey was a bastard. He was traveling with only his mother, who wasn't wearing a wedding ring. But I offer up the description as more of a declaration of his character than the martial status of his parents. I hadn't previously imagined that a 3 year old child could be a bastard, but now I'm certain of it. Normally, my least favorite groups of children are infants and teenagers. Infants who really can't help being noisy (and whose parents should keep them home), and teenagers who make noise because they're too stupid not to (whose parent should also keep them home). But, for the most part, kids between the ages of 3 and 6 are precious little mini-me's, who capture all the innocence and purity of what it means to be young. But not Jeffrey. No, it was apparent from his behavior before boarding that his parenting had imbued him with the impulse control of your average neurotic Chihuahua along with any number of other behavioral afflictions. Jeffrey was bent on screaming at the top of his lungs at random intervals, and then smiling while his mother half-heartedly attempted to quiet him. I joked as I got on the plane that I didn't care where I was sitting, as long as it wasn't anywhere near that kid. I should have known better. The jinx law was in full effect.

As I took my seat, my heart fell as I spotted Jeffrey in his dirty Mr. Happy t-shirt close enough to reach out and slap - separated only by his mother, who looked like she'd offer little, if any, resistance to such an action. I immediately thought better of this (messy litigation and such), and hoped against hope that either the flying experience or his woefully unconcerned mother might be able to quiet him without my intervention. My hopes were dashed as his gleeful screaming recommenced immediately, and I knew I was in for a bad trip. I smiled thinking about soon being able to strap my headphones on escape to some musical bliss, accompanied by crossword puzzles and some light reading.

But I was wrong. Jeffrey had apparently tuned his tiny little lungs and vocal cords to produce a frequency and volume which penetrated any possible masking. It blasted right through the rumble of the jet engines, the white noise of the cabin ventilation, the murmur of other conversations, and unbeliebably enough, the music in my headphones. I turned up my iPod to maximum volume, still to no avail. I tried pressing them into my ears the point of actual physical pain - and still, his chirpy little warble got right through. I looked back over my shoulder at the pair of them, seething and frustrated, and the look of glee on his face seemed to foreshadow a life of killing household pets, slapping around girlfriends and starting his own militia group. And yet, they were no more affected by the palpable air of discontent that surrounded them than if it were a light summer breeze, and I thought how liberating it must be to have that little concern for those around you.

It was at this point my mind turned to how to solve such a problem. This certainly wasn't the first time that the quiet enjoyment of my own life has been brutalized by disinterested parents and misbehaved children. I actually had to stop going to my local Costco for the same reason. But because I can put a price on my frustration, I began to try and think of a way to purchase my way out of it.

Bribery. I thought briefly about how much money I could directly offer the apathetic mother to quiet her child, and then realized that the she would no doubt view the task as Herculean and require a commensurate sum of money. I wasn't ready to forgo a nice weekend in Vegas just to get a little nap.
Drug Money. I then wondered if I could offer to buy the child a glass of juice which would perhaps have some night time cold medicine mixed into it. Or perhaps speak to the mother about the extreme hazards of airborne allergens on airplanes with regard to children and just happen to have a double dose of Children's Benadryl handy. Of course, I then realized this would only really help me next time (mental note to add to the packing list) and also required a mother who didn't treat their accompanying toddler like nothing more than an exceptionally noisy piece of luggage.
The Other AAA. I've often fantasized about an All Adults Airline. I know it's not the sexiest thing to fantasize about, but keep in mind that I'm usually doing it under the duress similar to what I experienced on my flight to Portland. I mean, it's not that there aren't any adults who aren't annoying - it's just a much smaller percentage, and you can also call them out for being obnoxious without earning the ire of their parents. I think I'd pay at least an additional $50 to be guaranteed that there would be no one under the age of 18 on my flight. Richard Branson can you hear me?
Loud Class. Imagine if you were the first airline to offer a seperate seating area for "families"; a soundproof compartment at the extreme rear of the aircraft which could come complete with crayons, Disney movies and an infinitely patient flight attendant. You wouldn't even have to charge extra. A small surcharge on all the non-family tickets should be adequate and if anyone was not willing to pay it - they could be invited to travel back in the "Loud Class" seats. You could even let them board the plane first (as they always seem inclined to do, anyways). Besides, it's been my experience (recent and otherwise) that parents seem completely immune to the cacophony of their brood - so they probably won't even notice!

In the end, it's unlikely that any of these solutions will be adopted. Polite society has somehow come to believe that the miscreant behavior of small children is one of those things we simply have to endure, since even the most blatant failures of parenting seem to be inviolate. We won't let someone's dog pee on the trees on our front lawn, but their children can ruin everything from restaurants to sporting events to travel without so much as a word from us. And if any of do dare to speak up, we're cast as children haters, or as though we're somehow infringing on a parent's seemingly fundamental right to raise whatever kind of social disaster that they choose.

For the record, I don't hate children. In fact, I rather enjoy them. My sister's four kids are amazing - but she's also one hell of a mother, and believe me, if any of them acted up like Jeffrey in a public place, they'd be having a very bad day very quickly. Of course, I suspect my sis also has some emergency Bendryl in her purse, too. But I don't find a lack of volume control in mixed company to be charming or a fundamental right of childhood. I just find it rude. Of course, in our Brave New World - which seems devoid of any sense of shame, I suppose the best way to spend the money I've allocated to peace and quiet on the airplane, is on a Xanax prescription and a stiff cocktail.

Cheers, Jeffrey.

As Far As I Can V

2009-08-02T14:53:00.000-07:00

When I set out to write a weekly blog for a whole year, I truthfully didn't expect an appreciable percentage of my pieces (if any) to be about fashion. I had no fashion sense to speak of until I was thirty years old, and even then it took me a few more years to really get comfortable in what I was wearing. As a point of reference, a law school colleague (who was a year behind me) once told me that when he saw what I was wearing in class during his visit to the campus (I was 29 at the time), he thought to himself "if that guy can do it, I know that I can." True story.

I'm not certain if the public at large has just gotten more shameless in dressing themselves, or if it's just southern California. But for whatever reason, even with my limited capacity for noticing the same, I see egregious and shameful fashion violations every single day, and when any of them reach critical mass (the point at which I've seen them often enough that I can no longer ascribe them to just a few isolated individuals' bad taste) I finally have to write about them.

And here we are again.

One of my personal fashion staples is the V-neck t-shirt; plain, usually white, sometimes colored and never screen printed (especially with "Affliction", "Armani Exchange" or "Abercrombie"). I find these to be just slightly more mature than a crew-neck t-shirt, and subtle enough to let my personality do the talking and not my outfit. But, I digress. Something's gone terribly wrong with V-necks lately. Well, men's V-necks, that is. They've gone the way of breast implants, french fries and Kirstie Alley's dress size - outrageously super-sized and, if you can believe it, growing. Honestly, when did a plunging neckline become an okay thing on a man's shirt?

There are certainly some fashion and grooming staples of the gay community that have greatly benefitted the average straight man's appearance and appeal. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, anyone? Man-scaping, a well-tailored suit, and jeans that cost more than forty bucks, just to name a few. But, just as importantly, there are some other staples of that same community that ought to remain there. For example: a vest with anything but a 3 piece suit, anything ribbed that isn't a condom, and chaps. Of course, included on this list of please-don't-let-this-get-adopted trends was the oversized v-neck t-shirt. Unfortunately, t-shirt necklines have made the transition and the last time you could see this much chest while everyone was still dressed, the Bee Gees were selling out concerts. It's as though just when we've finally convinced the world's men, even the smarmy ones, that it's not okay to wear a dress shirt with any more than two of the top buttons undone, we've now got to deal with a whole new slew of overexposed and underwhelming displays of man cleavage.

Now there's only really two ways this can go: (1) you're going to see some particularly unsavory chest hair, or (2) you're going to learn more than you wanted to know about some stranger's proclivity for hair removal. Let's go over why these are both way wrong... in order (so no one gets confused).

1. The Forest For the Trees. Listen, there hasn't been an acceptable purposeful display of chest hair since Magnum P.I. went off the air. There really hasn't. Which is not to say that you need to shave yourself like an Olympic swimmer if you want to wear anything that doesn't hug your neck - hair removal isn't for everyone, especially if you'll lose a couple jacket sizes if you do. But, just know that for the exceptionally small number of number of women who do actually get turned on by your front-mounted Sherwood Forest, they know how to find you and will appreciate a more private showing anyways. And speaking for the rest of us - the small amount that peeks out of your normal shirts is plenty. We've got to eat, you know.

2. Smooth Operator. If you've gotten your grooming habits into the twenty first century, especially with regard to hair removal - good for you. But I don't need to know. No, seriously, I really don't need to know. Think of it as a private gift, or an inside joke between you and whoever (if anyone) sees you naked frequently. A list which doesn't include me, or most people for that matter. I totally get that you want everyone to know you've got a great chest and can bench press a car. But I have it on pretty good authority that this is completely noticable through a shirt - with the added bonus that you won't look like a date rapist who has more invested in the rims on his car than he does in his living arrangements. Enough said.

A t-shirt can be a very powerful tool for a man. It's an iconic piece of clothing that it's nearly impossible not to look good in if you're in decent shape, and is the coolest thing you can wear that costs less than twenty bucks. James Dean, Marlon Brando (a young Marlon Brando), Paul Newman, and the list goes on. These paragons of bad-assery all looked their baddest in just a plain white t-shirt. Did you really need to see down to Brando's navel to know that he'd beat your ass if you tried to say something about his girl (or his hat)?

For months now, I've railed against the feminization of the American male, and from the looks of this latest trend in marginal shirtlessness, it's showing no signs of slowing down. Skinny jeans, eyeliner and jihad scarves; now we've got young men wearing ladies' necklines on their shirts. I'm not sure this is going to stop until teenage boys start running around in high heels. Of course maybe that's just what we need. When guys start breaking more than just the long understood basic laws of manhood by walking around dressed like women, we might just find our way back to the cave.

"Uniformed" Health Care

2009-07-28T23:47:00.000-07:00

As the debate over Universal Health Care or Socialized Medicine (or whatever name you’re currently using to refer to the federal government taking over health care) continues, we seem lost for a decent example of how and whether or not it will work. As European versions seem too far removed, we are constantly being told to take a good, hard look at our national neighbors to the North as anecdotal evidence. But, if Shania Twain, Keanu Reeves and Pamela Anderson are any example of our looking to Canada for informative analogs (of cowgirls, surfers or lifeguards, respectively), perhaps we ought to be looking a little closer to home. As it turns out, there is a significant section of the local population, that we can easily examine to inform our decision on the matter, for whom health care (1) has $0 out-of-pocket cost, (2) is run completely by the federal government, and (3) provides questionable levels of care and care availability, and that is, the military.

During my ten years in the United States Navy, people often told me about how “lucky” I was to have “free” healthcare available to me – as if that were the big upside to the woeful underpayment that they referred to as my “salary” and the opportunity to enter a war zone in defense of my country. Nonetheless, this talisman of a benefit seemed to stand out, to them and to most, amongst the myriad of other perks offered to military members. It was as though it was a “Get Out of Jail Free” card for ever getting sick – the ultimate freedom for a population cowed by the incessant fear mongering of the pharmaceutical and medical industries. But I’m here to tell you, not only is it not what it’s cracked up to be, it’s downright horrible. The policies surrounding military medicine along with anecdotal evidence of its failures leads to one conclusion: it’s a bad idea. I can honestly say, the single best thing about not being in the military anymore is having access real health care, and no matter what it costs me, I’m grateful to pay it.

Policy – Oops, OK.

You don’t have to be an economist to appreciate incentives. In fact, one the most important things I’ve learned in business and in law is to be sure and understand everyone’s incentives to the greatest extent possible before negotiating or dealing with them in any way. Incentives can explain even the most ludicrous behaviors. For example, say you’re the heiress to a global hotel empire, and you’ve got a completely unthinkable amount of money at your disposal. Not only do you not have an incentive to work or create any value whatsoever, you also have little incentive to behave in a polite or even lawful manner. You can see what I’m getting at. Of course, these incentives still can’t explain why such a person would be famous, but hey, it’s not a perfect science.

But, with regard to military medicine, the incentive structure is set up to create mediocre practitioners. One of the first documents you sign when you join the military is an agreement not to sue the Government. That’s right, immediately after signing over your life and freedom, you also give up your Constitutional right to legal redress should they fail to live up to their part of the bargain. This also means you can’t sue anyone else in the military. So, you cannot file a suit for medical malpractice, no matter what happens to you. What’s more, the military’s doctors don’t even need to carry malpractice insurance – they can make as many life-altering mistakes as they would like, and the worst thing that can happen to them is a bad evaluation. How free does that medical care sound now?

Seriously, you’re better protected from the kid serving you ice cream at the 31 flavors than you are from your military doctor. Which is great, except that the ice cream guy isn’t cutting you open.

Practice – Don’t Touch the Sides!

Of course, all of this policy jibber-jabber doesn’t really mean much to you in the abstract. Well, lucky for you, I had a few run-ins with my “free” medical care that went a little south of “good practice.”

When I was stationed in North Charleston, South Carolina, I was assigned to shift work aboard a moored training ship to learn how to operate a naval nuclear power plant. One day I had noticed a lump on my inner thigh and wasn’t feeling well. I went to work anyway and began to feel worse. My head was throbbing; I was sweating and had chills. As my visible condition began to worsen I was allowed to go to the clinic on base. After waiting for over an hour just to have my vitals taken, they noted my fever was 103, at which time they instructed me to go to the local Naval Hospital to be admitted. I never saw a doctor there, and they didn’t offer me a ride. So, nearly delirious, and with my temperature rising, I drove myself to the hospital, over ten miles away, where I waited for another hour to have my vitals taken again. This time an actual doctor saw my temperature and admitted me immediately. Safe, right?

Wrong.

After five days they finally determined that my lymph node was infected and would need to be biopsied to determine what was going on. My fever was still up over 102. They ultimately strapped me to a table under local anesthetic to cut into my groin and remove it. Which sounded like an o.k. idea until I actually felt the scalpel cut my leg, to which “doctor” responded: “You felt that?”

In addition this parade of horrors, I also personally experienced the following medical mishaps:

Waking up in the middle of my septoplasty (surgery to correct my deviated septum – under general anesthetic);
Four dry sockets after wisdom tooth removal; and
Having a root canal done on the wrong tooth!

I’d be better off with a medical student whose only surgical experience was playing Operation while drunk at a frat party than letting these quacks cut into me again. At least for him there was some sort of penalty for screwing up – even if it was only having to take a shot of Jagermeister.

There’s no “u” in “free”

Listen, the idea of universal health care is a fantastic one. The altruism is so pervasive that it even feels good just to talk about it. Pairing common access with the world’s finest medical care seems like a no-brainer. But, just like things you buy after midnight from the Home Shopping Network, the reality is a far cry from the promises (OxyClean, anyone?). When the government takes over health care, and more importantly when it takes over compensation to physicians, the incentives to excel, and even the incentives simply not to suck at your job, simply disappear. Much like teenagers, doctors in a consequence-free environment are bound to do some damage – the difference is that the worst thing teenagers will do is raid your liquor cabinet, make too much noise and maybe ruin a shrub or too.

Uniform Health Care will be much the same as “Uniformed” health care – the doctors will have no reason to be exceptional, and you’ll have no recourse if they aren’t. You don’t need to take my word for it, you likely know someone who’s served – and they’ll be happy to tell you. Of course, it’s true, no one will be turned away, but what makes you think that if we forced to world’s automakers to give everyone a car at a fixed, low price that they’d deliver everyone a Mercedes?

Back in the Saddle

2009-07-20T09:14:00.000-07:00

This past Saturday I stood back in a familiar place: on a padded cheer floor about an hour from my apartment, in front of a table full of judges, standing beside thirty or so impossibly fit men and women, my wrists secured with athletic tape, and with a fresh sweat dripping down my back from warming up. Nearly 18 months after dismissal by the team, triple-fusion spine surgery and a month removed from my 35th birthday, I was back at Clippers Fan Patrol tryouts.

Just so I don't ruin the suspense for you, I didn't make the team. But, in defense of that failure, I didn't actually try out. After months of agonizing over whether or not I should/would, I made the decision to show up and support the few folks I had trained with, help with warmups, and generally get back in with the crew - but not to submit an application and try out. I had spent the weeks before attending open gyms and reacquainting myself with the basic mechanics of partner stunting. Turned out it was much like riding a bike - except that you have a hundred pounds of girl balanced on your outstretched arm. In that short time, I remastered most of the stunts that I was able do before the surgery, and bulked up sufficiently to look (for the most part) just like I did when I trotted off the court in February 2008. And, even after all that, I decided that I wouldn't be casting my hat into the ring.

Of course, my return to the cheer floor took more than just a few weeks of stunt practice. For the first month after surgery I wasn't allowed to do anything. For the month after that I was only allowed to do twenty minutes on the seated bike. I had lost over 25 pounds and hardly recognized myself in the mirror. I was so embarrassed to be in the gym that I abandoned my evening "rush hour" workouts in a fitted t-shirt for 6 am workouts in a dark ballcap and sweats.

Two months after surgery, despite being cleared by my doctor, the NBA folks thought it was too risky to allow me back on the court for the last game of my last season. After a week of feeling truly crappy about it, I went back to the gym. Soon after, my doctor cleared me for light weight lifting and the elliptical trainer. For the next 3 months, I toiled with 15 pound dumbbells and empty Olympic bars in the wee hours of the morning. After 6 months, I got the green light to train for real. I tenuously ran a mile on a treadmill for the first time. I bench pressed 135 lbs with no more confidence than the first time I had done it nearly 15 years earlier. I still didn't want anyone to see me in the gym.

Two months later, I did a photo shoot for my spine surgeon and the hospital where I got my operation, as a "success story". It was the first time I had even thought about cheerleading since my surgery, and my good friend (and 85 lb flier) Tami agreed to stunt with me for the cameras. The weakness in my right arm was still palpable and visible, but they were able to get some decent shots, and I ended up in an ad the LA Times. Yet, I was still training in relative secrecy. I tried dating again, and it was a mess. I didn't feel like myself and couldn't face myself in the mirror for the first time in almost a decade. I tried alternative therapies - anything I could find, and it slowly began to get better. Injections, ingestions and even accupuncture. Ever so slowly, my arm got stronger, the atrophy in my chest and back began to fade. I started working out without a ballcap. Eventually, I even returned to working out in the evenings - and in a fitted t-shirt no less. I had regained the 25 pounds, and even just a little of my weight room swagger.

Today, my right arm is still not as strong as it was two years ago. I still can't lift quite as much and it's still difficult to see myself in the mirror after a shower. The weakness, even the small amount of it that persists, is still overwhelming.

But I went back to open gym, because I needed the visceral atheticism of it. Of course, I know what you're thinking, visceral athleticism in cheerleading? Listen, once you've taken a girl and throw her from the ground to standing on one arm stretched over your head, you can tell me whether or not you think that's athletic. Until then, shut up. But defense of cheer notwithstanding, I needed to feel that rush, that power again. And I did. The date for tryouts was rapidly approaching and impossibly, I was ready.

But then I thought about what I really missed about being a part of the Clippers Fan Patrol. I first auditioned for the team less than three weeks after moving to Los Angeles. I was completely new in town, with no friends, and no idea what I was getting into (in the city or with the Clips). I had a new grown-up job, where I similarly didn't know anyone or anything. It was crazy to even consider being a professional cheerleader when I had only recently become an attorney. But I made the team nonetheless, and it became my de facto family. It gave me my first real friends in the city: first, David and Steve and later, Joey (who are still my closest friends today), and my first real thing to do besides work. Before I could even catch my breath from moving down from the Bay, I was on the floor at STAPLES Center, throwing around girls in front of screaming fans, the LA elite and more a few celebrities. Our locker room was right across the hall from the team's and running around backstage with NBA players was completely surreal.

For as hard as we worked, we had a blast. We laughed, sweated and yelled. We were a team. We went to the playoffs. We had a time we'll never forget.

But it ended. Because things end. And not always how we want them do. Which was certainly the case with the Fan Patrol. Some of us walked away, others were asked to leave. We made time for other things and came back to games as spectators; which turned into reunions with old friends - ushers, season ticket holders, staff and others. We laughed when asked about when we were coming back to the team. We thought about next year, we thought about never. We talked to the new team members, and listened to how much things had changed and how much they hadn't. And on Saturday I realized, there wasn't going to be any David, any Steve or any Joey on the Fan Patrol next year or any year. And that's when I knew there also wasn't going to be any Glenn.

In the end, no matter how good it used to be, or how much you miss a time, you can't go back again. And trying to do so just seems to cheapen the memory. I made it all the way back to that floor on Saturday to prove to everyone, including and most importantly, myself, that I could. I walked away from it for the same reason.

Levi Blues

2009-07-13T12:01:00.001-07:00

This is not the first time I've waxed poetic on inexplicable fame. In fact, one might go so far as to say that it's one of my favorite things to talk about. Inasmuch, I'm likely, on balance, to be more a part of the problem than I am of the solution. But that being as it may, I can hardly stay quiet when the celebrity bar has been lowered so drastically as to make Paris Hilton appear as a paragon of legitimacy. The press has recently added a pundit so amazingly devoid of social value, even the faintest trace of intelligence, or any redeeming characteristics whatsoever, that it's a wonder they put a mic to his mouth the first time, let alone continuing to do it. The inane and predictable commentary offered up by this simpleton is barely qualifiable as English, and consists mostly of the muttering slurry of teen cliches and "you know"s that has to come to represent a generation for whom the term "slacker" seems far too generous. He is the face of never-leaving-the-town-you-grew-up-in, and the kind of young man that keeps the fathers of teenage daughters up at night. He is lazier than Crocs. He is Levi Johnston; the failure of a nation.

It's hard to know where to start with Levi. As a point of review, if you've been fortunate enough to not have heard of or from Levi, let's back up for a minute. Levi came to the forefront of the public consciousness during the 2008 Presidential campaign. His connection could only best be described as ancillary and at worst perhaps parasitic. When GOP nominee John McCain announced Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate, the media was sent scampering. Palin was a relative unknown, and for the briefest of moments, the Republican party seized the momentum of an election which looked more like the coronation of the King of Hope than a real contest. Palin was a former beauty queen with a frontier ruggedness who looked, at first blush, like the kind of woman who could finally break through the glass ceiling of Presidential politics. She was unapologetically conservative and paraded her family around with her as a demonstration of her commitment to family values. But then it all started to unravel. Her teenage daughter, Bristol, then 17, sprung the news that every red-state American parent is dying to hear. Her boyfriend Levi had gotten her pregnant.

The Palins got out in front of the issue by touting the validity of their daughter's relationship to Levi, and fans of the 1960's cheered as the fiction of lasting true love between teenagers got it's biggest shot in the arm since the remake of Romeo and Juliet. Of course, one look at Levi and the shine soon faded on that fantasy. If I were to ask you to close your eyes and imagine the type of young man that at 18 would knock up a 17 year old girl in Wasilla, Alaska (population, 10,000), in between his highest aspirations of becoming a professional hockey player (despite not being recruited to play college hockey anywhere), hunting moose and working as a carpenter, you wouldn't need to see a picture of him. Because he is exactly that guy.

So to review, Levi Johnston is famous for being the useless, wanna-be bad boy cum carpenter who was ignorant enough to have unprotected sex with the Governor's daughter. Oh hey, this just in, his engagement to young Bristol fell apart. Wow. That's the biggest surprise since the sun came up this morning.

Right, well if that's not enough for you, it gets better... or worse, depending on your point of view. Big, hunky Levi has done the classic tattooing your last name across your back or stomach one better. He's got his last name inked on his forearm. That's right, his forearm. Because nothing says "bright future" like eight inches of "Johnston" between your wrist and elbow.

In the interests of producing some sort of intellectual exercise while writing about such an intellectual sinkhole, I tried to come up with a short list of worse things to tattoo on your forearm than your last name in inch-high letters, and could only come up with a few:

A portrait of a ninja (included mostly because I've actually seen that one)
The quadratic equation (a good idea when you're 18, but no matter what they tell you, you'll never use it again after you graduate)
Directions to the "gun show"
Marilyn Monroe (sorry Megan Fox)
A chili recipe; or
McCain/Palin '08

It's hard to imagine why we would listen to Levi for anything more than a barometer for social decay as evidenced by American youth, but ostensibly he's being queried for his opinions on the Palin family. Which is a bit like asking Nicole Richie's neighbors to find out what she's up to. I mean, far be it from the Palin family to shy from the spotlight. The entire family is separately negotiating book deals and movie rights - if you want to know about them, just ask. What's more, if they're being especially secretive about something, maybe you should ask someone who isn't cognitively taxed by multi-syllable words. I mean, I know Alaska's not necessarily an intellectual hotbed, but it's also no South Carolina (where you can't throw a rock and without hitting a guy like Levi).

And who is foisting this moron upon the world as some sort of political insider? The usual suspects? TMZ? Perez Hilton? or any of the multitude of checkout lane gossip rags? Oh no. You can get your up to the minute imbecile coverage of the Palin family on CNN and Fox News. And to make matters worse, while countless numbers of aspiring writers (myself included) struggle towards agents and publishers to get their prose into print (and perhaps beyond), Levi is currently negotiating both a book and movie deal. Which is the sort of thing that could put a Lindsay Lohan memoir into Pulitzer consideration (and me into a mountain cabin). I mean, even an intelligent nineteen year old has little if anything to offer in the way of insight, I can't imagine this mouth-breather writing anything that won't make me dumber for having read it.

Listen, guys like Levi play an important role. Every small town high school needs one. Heck, they can usually stand to have a couple. They are cautionary tales for the generations that follow, and want for something better. They are the important lesson that a girl learns about bad boys, idiots, or anyone who lives their lives vicariously through their MySpace page. They are the karmic revenge on the popular girl who wasn't very nice to anyone, as they are five years away from a trailer, a baby running around outside in only a diaper, and domestic violence rap sheet. They are the context for your reunions that make you feel like you've accomplished something. What they are not, is anyone that should be in the news cycle any longer than it takes to recount the details of their tragic demise.

We can do better, and in fact, we must. In a nation where a healthy sense of shame seems harder and harder to come by, we still need to be ashamed of young men like Levi. Because it's only when we turn the public eye off and the evil eye on that we have a hope of discouraging them. And with a little luck, maybe the only thing your daughter's boyfriend will need to remind him of his last name is his driver's license.

Afflicted

2009-07-05T16:09:00.000-07:00

Through most of my adult life I have had the good sense and/or the good fortune to not have gotten caught up in the majority of ridiculous fashion trends that have afflicted most of my peers. There was my ten years in the Navy, which obviated the need to have much fashion sense; since the majority of time I was in uniform, and when I wasn't, my haircut gave away any hopes I had of blending in. Then there was law school at Stanford, where all I needed to fit in was a few hundred dollars worth of Abercrombie & Fitch (which hadn't become as douche-tastic as it is today). Finally, there was living in Los Angeles, and a decent amount of disposable income to spend on clothing - and by that time, I was over thirty and had just enough life experience to have developed my own understated sense of style. And so it is that for most of the fashion faux-pas that I rail against, I have never participated in them - which either validates my point or ruins my credibility depending on your point of view. But, there are a few fashion tragedies that I have been a part of in the past, that I've subsequently determined to be ridiculous. As tradition dictates, whenever I spot someone who hasn't yet seen the light and cast such nonsense aside, I mock them mercilessly. Hypocrisy, you say? You betcha. But, better to be right late, than never. And, it still doesn't stop it from being funny.

I hate for one brand to bear the brunt of my criticism for an entire genre of clothing, but since they had no problem being the flagship for faux bad-assery (FBA for short) when it was making them millions, I have no problem throwing Affliction under the bus for being the easiest way to spot a douchebag short of having them actually wear scarlet D's. I can recall the appeal of more artistically designed and printed t-shirts when Abercrombie was unwilling to produce anything that didn't have either a large number or cheeky sexual innuendo printed on it. I even bought some of these shirts; willingly laying down $60-$80 per shirt with the hopes that my t-shirt sophistication would make it obvious that there wasn't a futon anywhere in my furniture collection. Unfortunately, the responsible design group soon jumped the shark, and everything they produced had either a cross or a skull on it, along with an obnoxiously-sized and wannabe gothic version of the brand name. This is where I got off this particular fashion train, and none too soon.

Honestly, since when does wearing a cross make one a tough guy? The only kids I can remember who had to have skulls on everything were the same ones who thought that denim jackets never went out of style and that Metallica was an actual religion. And what's with the super-sized logo? I haven't seen branding that ridiculous on clothes since, Z Cavaricci (yeah, let that one take you back for a minute). Seriously, if I can tell what brand t-shirt you're wearing from fifty yards away, what are the chances you're not an ass? As if the giant cross and skull weren't bad enough. Every time I see one of these shirts now, my imagintion produces a deep baritone voiceover that yells "Affliction!" like a thunderclap. Which is precisely what I believe the wearer of such shirts to be the desired effect. Of course, I suppose that I'm then supposed to be so overwhelmed by the sheer badness of their clothing that I will be sure to stay out of their way not make any direct eye contact. In reality, I'm just trying not to laugh out loud, and leaning over to whisper to my companion, "Affliction bingo, plus one!"

That's right, Affliction bingo. A fun game for all you reasonably sane folks out there the next time you're at a concert, sporting event, movie, mall or other place you can expect find young men under the age of thirty. One point for every piece of Affliction clothing you can spot first, and double points for more than one piece on the same person. Of course the entertainment that you get from this game probably falls under the laughing-to-keep-from-crying category - but it's better than waxing poetic on social decay or worrying about how seriously underqualified the next generation of adults will be to do anything that doesn't involve their MySpace page. If you're looking to get a high score, I'd recommend a mixed martial arts event. Of course, here you'll find even more egregious examples of FBA, in the brands that have grown up around this new sports phenomenon.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of MMA. There will always be a demand for combat sports, and our bloodlust, if anything, has gotten stronger as we've become (arguably) more gentrified. Boxing was swirling the drain like the discarded hair from your man-scaping and we needed something that more real than pro wrestling and did not involve Don King. MMA answered the call. Unfortunately, the minimal gear and the nature of the combat has made the sport so accessible that every knucklehead who's ever been in a bar scrap now thinks he's two Ju-Jitsu lessons away from being a professional fighter, and wants to make sure everyone knows it. And, the aforementioned apparel companies have been happy to oblige. Now the streets are full of crew-cutted posers who expect that wearing a TapOut shirt is license to act as though they're a Mike Tyson in waiting who ought to be cut as wide a swath as possible. I swear that these guys are walking around with the Rocky training montage music playing in their heads. Of course, they're usually performing this menacing gait through a shopping mall parking lot on their way to their silver Honda Civic; the one with the do-it-yourself window tinting and exhaust modified to make it sound like a very angry lawnmower. Please.

I'm certainly not placing these brands at fault. For every quick fix we've ever desired, there's always been someone willing to peddle it to us, at a premium. And the need for wash and wear masculinity has obviously never been higher. The world has certainly feminized in the past few decades, and the opportunities to register one's value as a man are fewer and farther between than they've ever been. But, what sort of man needs to wear his toughness on his t-shirt? And, in a room full of men all wearing the same intended "bad-ass" label, how can you tell who the real bad ass is? Well, the terror imposed by skulls and crosses notwithstanding, he's likely the one whose shirt says nothing at all.

Dancing with Myself

2009-06-28T17:55:00.000-07:00

I'm not big on celebrity worship, and I never really have been. As a group, I don't find celebrities to be particularly interesting, either when they rise or when they (inevitably) fall. And as celebrity becomes a trait all its own - rather than an accompaniment for extraordinary talent and ability - there is less and less to be impressed with. Then I'm left with only either envy or disgust for the one thing that seems to differentiate celebrities from the rest of us - exceptionally good fortune. But I'm also not enamored with the proverbial "fall from grace", the watching of which seems to have supplanted baseball as America's greatest pastime. We appear to love nothing more that watching our most beloved stars become mired in scandal and disgrace. The "E True Hollywood Story" is the sort of thing which wouldn't be newsworthy if you glued the New York Times to the back of it, and yet, we've all camped, at least once, in front of an episode that we were just "clicking by".

Which is not to say that I haven't engaged in my share of celebrity bashing. It's difficult not to - I'm a writer who's prone to hyperbole and exaggeratory similie... how could I even hope to avoid Paris, Linday and Britney? But there was one target that I always left alone - even while the world piled on; one piece of low-hanging celebrity fruit that I never took a shot at; even when the jokes were passed around the schoolyard and, years later, the internet. I never took joy in the tragedy of Michael Jackson's life - and while I am disgusted by the throngs of people who likely participated in the widespread ridicule of his cloistered and strange existence and now are suddenly moved to celebrate his life and eulogize him in flowery prose, I am happy that I'm finally not standing alone in my admiration and gratitude for someone who taught me the most important lesson I ever learned: how to dance.

First off, here's what this blog entry is not about: Michael Jackson's death, the suspicious circumstances surrounding it, its effect on the internet or how its coverage might offer commentary on the state of consumer-driven media in the modern information marketplace. It's also not about how big of a recording artist he was, how Thriller revolutionized music, or whether or not he molested any children. I'm not going to write about how Neverland is the new Graceland, opine on the future of his three children or his obsession with plastic surgery. No. All of that either has been or will be covered in excruciating detail by both major and minor news outlets, gossip columns, and opinion wranglers much more widely read than myself. Because, in the end, the main character of a blog is the author - in this case, me. And Michael Jackson actually did change my life - in a way that you might not expect and that you certainly won't hear about in the countless dedications that will be offered in the coming weeks.

As you've no doubt gleaned from reading any number of my previous musings, I was a slight young lad. I had the sort of growth pattern (4'11" tall at 16 years of age) that might spur modern day parents to explore hormone therapy or other similar remedy - but alas, my parents simply bought me a computer so that I could at least do something productive with all the time I wouldn't be spending socializing. But, I digress. The sort of personality that accompanies this type of pituitary misfortune is exactly the one I had. I was painfully shy and scared even of my own shadow. I wouldn't have known what to say to a girl if I had been handed a script and the thought of attending school social functions made me anxious to the point of actual physical illness. My little sister, however, was a different story.

She was beautiful, confident, and had not suffered the same genetic misfortune of systemic underdevelopment as I had. In fact, it was quite the opposite. She also was a dancer, and upon her arrival at the high school, she was all but recruited onto the pom squad; a hyper-selective dance group that was, for all practical purposes, the same sort of high school royalty for girls that Varsity football was for boys. What's more, she was always keen to attend school dances, which seemed to be, from the stories that followed them, to be places of myth and legend where torrid romances were catalyzed and three and a half magic minutes' worth of Cutting Crew with your hands on the hips of the girl of your dreams was just a simple request away. With all the deductive reasoning that my hormone-clouded mind could muster at that point - I drew a tenuous line between the popularity I desperately desired and the dancing that always seemed to accompany it.

I distinctly remember seeing Michael Jackson dance for the first time. It was in the iconic Thriller video - and amidst all of the theatrics which made it the most famous music video of all time there was still Michael's dancing. The moves were like nothing I had ever seen. They were sharp and strong and big. Everything was iconic. It took me dozens of viewings before I realized that he was actually skinny, even slight - wearing pants that I'm not even sure my svelte younger sibling could reliably get into. But, every time I saw him, even after that, he commanded every bit of attention available, looking larger than life, with it being no matter that he was often one of the smallest people on stage. The music and dance scene of the late 80's and early 90's was dominated by moves and antics that we knew were ridiculous even back then, and are now difficult to even watch without cringing. But not Michael. In that crazy time he created his very own dance genre, which was every bit as classic as it was new.

I began to teach myself to dance by watching music videos in the basement of my parents' house. I jumped around in my socks and shorts with the sound turned up as loud I thought it could be without inspiring a tirade from my father, trying to imitate what I saw on screen and checking out how it all looked in the two waist-up mirrors mounted on either side of the television. I spent this time in the basement under the auspices of "studying" and if anyone ever caught me (I could hardly hear footfalls coming down the carpeted steps), I would dive onto the couch and deny that I was doing anything untoward save a little stretching. Though I struggled to find a similarly suitable excuse for why I was out of breath. But I persisted, watching the parade of performers and performances, always coming back to Michael, perfecting the points, the poses and those amazing spins. Michael always had a non-traditional spin - on a heel and toe, rather than on one pointed toe; a "street spin". I always loved the way it looked and, once I learned it, the way it felt - fast, smooth, and right on the edge of control.

Eventually, I made it out of my basement with those moves, but it was years later before I was confident enough to perform in front of others. Though I slowly grew into my own, physically, the awkwardness of those high school days stayed with me long after I had left those hallowed halls. But it was dancing that helped me out of that shyness. I found that although I couldn'tspeak to strangers, I could dance in front of them. Amazingly, this seemed to break down the other barriers, and I was able to make new friends for the first time in my life. Ten years after sliding around on the carpet in my basement, I was kicking, pointing and heel-spinning in front of hundreds of people a night in Orlando; making new friends, meeting new girls, and despite often being the smallest guy out there, feeling ten feet tall.

Watching Michael had taught me a lesson that most of us never learn about dancing: it's not about how well you do the moves, it's whether you've got your own. Dancing was about taking the things you learned from watching others and turning them into a personal expression. On the street, no one cared about how technically sound your dancing was, just whether you were bringing something real. And because of that, I came to believe that the highest form of dance was to create something truly original - and in that, there has never been a greater dancer than Michael Jackson. He fused tap, jazz, street and dozens of other styles into something we still only know by his name. He has been emulated by street buskers, global pop icons and laypeople alike. In the pop world, where everything is simply a flashy repackaging of long-ago created art, he fashioned something completely different and truly new - and changed the way people moved forever.

Michael's death was no more tragic than the rest of his life had become in the last two decades. His talent created unthinkable wealth and popularity, which ultimately enabled and fueled his inner demons to consume him in extravagance and oddity. As his personal failures became public, I was never outraged or angered. I felt pity. Which is an odd thing to assign to someone who you idolize. But as much as I was in awe of Michael's ability - I never much cared for or about who he was off the stage. I was just waiting for the next great thing he would come up with - the next spectacle; and whatever came in between was of no greater consequence than the work of the roadies or stage managers that surrounded his productions.

I don't see much point in the tributes and dedications that will dot the showbiz landscape in the weeks to come. They are profiteering from an unfortunate ending to an extraordinary life - and will give short treatment, if any, to the dancing I remember Michael most for. I also don't need to hear his songs played over and over on the radio - I have most of them on my iPod and have never needed a special occasion, morbid or otherwise, to cue them up. To me, his enduring legacy will be celebrated every day, on dance floors across the world, every time someone moon-walks, flips their jacket flaps behind them, or finishes a heel spin with a scowling point of their finger. I will continue to celebrate and thank him similarly. Though, I think he would have appreciated it best if we took just a little bit of it and made it a part of our own style - so that the only person that ever dances exactly like you is the man in the mirror.

On 35...

2009-06-12T12:03:00.000-07:00

Birthdays have gone from being a time to simply celebrate to a time to reflect on where I'm at and where I'm going in my life... and then having a celebration to cheer myself up after doing so. Although, since I'm not crossing a decade marker, I imagine most folks won't see much significance in turning 35. But, 35 is a more significant age than you think. It's the age at which you officially leave the world's most influential spending and cultural demographic (males age 18-34) and move into the demographic being targeted by pharmaceutical advertisers and Time-Life books. You may think these are just arbitrary divisions, but trust me, the folks in advertising know a whole lot more about important ages than we do.

At 35 we're supposed to be a whole lot less capricious. We're supposed to be set in our ways, and no longer subject to the whimsy of passing fads and current fashions. We don't just have clothes, by now we've got a wardrobe. We should know the difference between a good bottle of wine and the swill they sell at Trade Joe's and have seen all of the films nominated for Best Picture before the Oscars are announced. We drive defensively and look at teenagers and find it impossible to believe that we were once ever that young, stupid or poor at dressing ourselves. No matter what the bars, lottery commissions, military branches, religious laws, convenience stores or laws tell us, 35 is the real marker of adulthood; plain and simple.

So, here's to the tragic and untimely death of my youth... you will be missed.

I can say, that for all things I did not do during my days of wine and cheese, I did manage to learn quite a few things. In fact, I would venture to say that I learned more in the past 35 years than most folks do in many more, which I owe to less to my penchant for observation than I do to the extraordinary good fortune I've had to meet and learn from some amazingly smart people. Either way, I've decided to reproduce a few of the finest lessons I've learned here, for the benefit of both a younger generation, so that they might have a bit of a heads up as they careen through their own youths, and the generation that preceded mine, for the peace of mind that comes from knowing that despite our shortcomings, the newest members of the "adult club" are much wiser than our fresh faces belie...

1. Music will never, ever be as much fun as it was in the 80's... (nor will it mean as much as it did the 60's, or be as original as it was in the 70's). These things are not relative - they're absolute. Every generation does not have its Beatles.

2. It is o.k. to not care what people think, it is not o.k. to not care what everybody thinks.

3. Unless you are a professional hockey player or a lumberjack, a beard is almost always a worse idea than you think it is.

4. Anyone that you can see naked for free is almost always someone you don't want to see naked. (e.g. nudist resorts, streakers or nude beaches).

5. There have never been, nor will there ever be, teenage stand-up comedians. Because despite what they think, teenagers are not funny.

6. Reality TV has lessons to teach us, but only a few: While you can't buy love, you can buy a hot wife/girlfriend, the road from narcissism to sociopathy is paved with cameras and red carpets, and never underestimate the capacity of someone's greed to outpace their better judgment.

7. If you think you have more friends than you can count, you probably don't have any.

8. Partying in Hollywood always sounds like a better time than it actually is.

9. The only reliable way to tell how old a woman is, is to look at her hands; and

10. There is a big difference between being frugal and being cheap, one is smart and the other is disgusting. Consequently, while one can save you the trouble of overspending, the other can save you the trouble of having any friends.

* * *

In the end, turning 35, like many of the past ten or so birthdays, passed with a little fanfare (thanks to my girlfriend), a little depression and anxiety, the well-wishes of family and friends, and an otherwise unimpressive subsequent sunrise. Marking these specific occasions seems a little less important each year, as it takes nothing to accomplish them save continuous breathing. But I'm happy to report that after three and a half decades on this rock, I've both made an impression and learned all that I could - which is all I've ever expected of myself. Besides, I don't really like to think of myself as "getting older" until the first year I can look at my pictures and think to myself that I'm not, at least, a little better looking than I was the year before - so, to that end, here's to what 35 years of progress can do for one really ugly kid.

The Better Song

2009-06-07T15:14:00.000-07:00

Early in my teens, I became enamored with the power of being a DJ. As a small kid, it blew me away to see the effect that music had on people, and the amazing control that a disc jockey could then have over an assembled crowd, regardless of his size. I saw how music could turn a simple gathering in a party, and turn awkward first meetings of strangers into steamy rendezvous. Of course, it wasn't just any music that could do this, but the right music. And so the axiom originally opined by Stan Lee in 1962 (via the Amazing SpiderMan) once again proved true for the disc jockey: with great power did come great responsibility. For just as a DJ could magically make a party, he could also irreparably kill one. I was hooked, and before too long I was collecting music as fast as my limited budget would allow, and beginning to learn the oft overlooked art of programming.

Programming? It's not what you were thinking. Because the "tricks" that DJs could do (scratches, spins, etc.) were never what really intrigued me (although, in fairness, they are wicked cool), but rather the delicate art of knowing which songs to play and when to play them. The obvious prequisite for this practice was to know a lot of music - and so I began to listen, ask, research and collect. Twenty years later, I've heard hundreds of thousands of songs - and love the obscure as much as I love the popular. And while I don't get behind the "wheels of steel" as often as I used to, I'm still known to rock the party every once in a while. But more often than that, I still use music to cheer up, inspire or englighten my friends. And given that opportunity this past week, I came up a musical epiphany of sorts.

Often times in music you come across what you believe to be a truly unique aspect of a song: a novel instrument, an obscure name or just a brilliant turn of phrase - and it's just the sort of thing that makes you inexplicably happy. But there are a few rare instances, which I'll share with you below, where there are actually two songs that have this unique characteristic, and you haven't even heard the better one yet! Trust me - these are musical gems that you can carry around in your pocket and will always put a smile on your face, brought to you courtesy of "the world's most dangerous disc jockey" (my old moniker)...

There are only two songs about a girl named Eileen, and you haven't heard the good one yet...

Songs about a particular girl are as old as songs themselves, and we've all heard odes to Sherries, Jennys, and Kates. But as the 760th most popular name for girls last year (and steadily falling about 15 spots a year), Eileen shows up less often then "Armani" and only slightly more often than "Campbell". So, it comes as no suprise that there are not a whole lot of tunes about a girl named Eileen. And although the one you know is inarguably one of the greatest sing along/karaoke songs of all time, it's not the better of the two.

Steelheart was one of the very last of the "hair metal" bands of the 80's. In fact, they were formed in 1990, and built their following on the strength of vocalist Michael Matijevic, who had a vocal range like Mariah Carey (but the good sense never to star in "Glitter", and similarly long hair). You might think you don't know Steelheart, but if you heard "I'll Never Let You Go", and were a teenager during the early nineties, it'll take you back to your high school/middle school dance days faster than watching Sixteen Candles. But I always thought their signature piece was "Everybody Loves Eileen" - the other song about a girl named Eileen. You can't really sing along to it, because no one can sing along with Michael's vocals, but trying to sing along with it is the most purely blissful experiences you can have in your car, okay, well maybe the second most blissful.

Everybody Loves Eileen - - - Steelheart

The high note at 3:20 is particularly fun to try and hit (much like the last note in Summer Nights)... and the drum solo that closes the song out is also an excellent chance to hone your air drumming skills.

Try and tell me you didn't smile while listening to that...

There are only two songs with the word "chameleon" in the lyrics, and you haven't heard the good one yet...

I'm not trying to diminish the special place in your memory that you may hold for Boy George and Culture Club. The unashamed androgyny of the whole thing practically demanded that you enjoy dancing around to it like you were at a grade school slumber party. And Karma Chameleon had lyrics that, even now with nineteen years of education, I haven't the foggiest notion what they mean (notwithstanding the amount of time it took me to realize that he wasn't saying "Comma Chameleon"). But it's clear that the gents(?) of Culture Club didn't have the lyrical bravery or wherewithal to try and actually rhyme the word "chameleon" (or perhaps they were just too emotionally overwrought to even attempt it), but there is a band that did.

Slade is a band that you've probably never heard of - unless you lived in the UK during the 70's. In the UK they were the unrivaled kings of the Glam Rock movement and outsold and outperformed some of the more well-known Glam acts that you have heard of (Gary Glitter & David Bowie). Slade had 17 top 20 hits between 1971 and 1976 including six #1s, three #2s and two #3s and actually came the closest to matching The Beatles' 22 top ten records in a single decade. They originally wrote and performed a song, that when covered by English rockers Quiet Riot made that band globally and eternally famous, called "Cum On, Feel the Noize".

But the most fun they ever had (and the best song they ever had in the US - reaching number 20 in 1984) was with "Run Runaway" - which sounds like an Irish drinking song made into a rock song. That alone should make you smile, but the song is brilliant fun to listen to, and has lyrics (including "see there chameleon, lyin' there in the sun, all things to everyone...") that are eminently singable. And if that's not enough - there's a video with a castle and a leprechaun on lead guitar - which, I'm told, will make you want to go out and buy either a jaunty hat...

...or buy a bar of Irish Spring.

There are only two techno songs with a banjo in them, and you haven't heard the good one yet...

There isn't usually a tremendously large market for taking traditional or well known songs and turning them into techno dance numbers. In fact, outside of the rave scene and Dance Dance Revolution games (easily the surest way to embarass yourself at an arcade), there aren't really any. So when the Rednex turned traditional American folk song "Cotten Eyed Joe" into a euro-style dance anthem, no one could have expected its pervasive insvasion of global pop culture. It's now regularly heard at sporting venues from Green Bay to Yankee Stadium, and I've yet to be to a country bar that doesn't at least play it once a night.

For millions of people who would otherwise never be caught dead listening to banjo music, they enthusiastically dance and clap along to the Rednex favorite, where the banjo gives a distintive sense of both Americana and good-ol', down-home, boot-stompin' fun. These same folks would be even more surprised to find out that there is, in fact, another euro-dance number that is not only better and more fun, but also has (if you can believe it) more banjo.

The Grid was one of countless techno acts from the UK that formed in the early 90's. As dance music that had once been relegated to late night dance halls suddenly became mainstream, this easy-to-do yet hard-to-master genre spawned dozens of wannabe and copy-cat acts who had little more going for them save a decent sampling keyboard, a drum machine and a dream. And while boys from The Grid enjoyed modest success in the UK and Europe with the early stuff, it wasn't until they took on that proverbial American instrument, that they broke through to the US audience.

Swamp Thing is the sort of catchy romp that reminds you just how "dance music" got so popular in the first place. I actually have this song in my "workout mix", and just can't help but smile when I hear it. Plus there's a baby playing with speakers in the video... and you can't argue with that:

...and if nothing else, you'll finally have something to ask the DJ for (without looking like an ass) if you ever end up at a country bar.

* * *

There are not a lot of places to reliably find happiness these days, and where they can be found, they've often been exploited to the point of being overly expensive or affected and stupid. We have chemical substitutes, but they're often poor analogs and almost always come with more down-side than up. But there is and will always be the pure and enduring joy of a great song just when you need it. And for that, the only prescription you'll need is a meeting with your local DJ, who, like the song says, just may save your life.

A Slap in the Face

2009-05-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

The article came and went from the CNN.com homepage with little or no fanfare. In the news world, the shelf life of stories, even important ones, has gone from days to hours to minutes. But despite the never-ending barrage of news to which I subject myself every day, this story stuck to the back of my mind like so much peanut butter to the roof of my mouth. This story bubbled up into my consciousness at every free moment, and made me as irritable as if I had forgotten to eat all that time. So, three weeks later, I can no longer ignore the irrepressible urge I have to write about this, no matter what may come of it.

The headline read "Saudi judge: It's OK to slap spendthrift wives", which I first thought might be one of CNN's cute wordplay-style headlines. Surely by "slap" they didn't mean that a judicial official in a civilized nation would have declared it "OK" for men to physically strike their wives for any perceived offense, let alone overspending, right? But no, that was exactly what they meant. The actual quote was from Judge Hamad Al-Razine who said (and I'm not making this up) at a conference on domestic violence, that "if a person gives SR 1,200 [$320] to his wife and she spends 900 riyals [$240] to purchase an abaya [the black cover that women in Saudi Arabia must wear] from a brand shop and if her husband slaps her on the face as a reaction to her action, she deserves that punishment."

So, let me get this straight: an educated and appointed judicial official (for the record, the process for appointment to the Saudi judiciary is extremely comprehensive and robust) in one of the world's richest "first-world" nations, as a representative of its government, when addressing widespread domestic violence in that nation at an academic conference dedicated thereto, declared that it was acceptable for a man to physically strike his wife for spending more than three quarters of her allowance on a brand name version of the cover she is required to wear in public? And what's more that she'd be asking for it?! In the immortal words of Mugatu, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

But, after I allowed my alarm and disbelief to cool (with the help of a very level-headed muse), I found that my real problem with this story was not the story itself, but rather the startling absence of any real reaction to it. In particular, there were two things about the relative silence that accompanied this announcement which troubled and continue to trouble me:

1. Not hearing anything from the American Saudi community; and

2. Not hearing anything from the United States government.

Silence from the Saudis

The traditional response from a group of people who have been unfairly represented in the media is to speak out loudly and quickly, and to let everyone know that that is absolutely not who they are. There is no guarantee that such a declaration will sway public opinion - but a failure to do so appears for all the world like agreement. In the weeks and months following September 11th, there was a strong collective voice from the global Muslim community that was quick to point out that radical Islam was not Islam. Their scholars identified the principles of the world's largest religion which had been distorted into the anti-American jihad which bore those terrible attacks. And although there are still many hate-mongers who cannot be swayed from believing that all Muslims are American-hating terrorists - they are in the vast minority.

There was no such response from the Saudi community; no declaration from the government, no statement from American Saudi groups; just a seemingly damning silence. I don't want to believe that Judge Al-Razine speaks for all or even the majority of Saudi Arabians. I don't want to believe that in 2009 there is a first world nation where the large scale subjugation of half of its population is not only permissible, but encouraged. I don't want to believe that there is still a place in the world where marriage is viewed as an ownership proposition, and where domestic violence is viewed as an acceptable form of family dispute resolution. But what choice do I have? The announcement wasn't meant with outrage by the American Saudi community. There was no assurance from the Saudi ambassador that his is not a nation of close-minded misogynists hiding behind religious idealism. There were no pleas from Saudi scholars for the government to distance themselves from the Judge, and no open letters from now naturalized Saudis decrying a gross misrepresentation. There was nothing except the deafening silence of tacit approval; a terrifyingly passive acknowledgment.

So, if I'm wrong, and I pray that I am, please - someone, anyone, step up and let me know, because I'm not sure what to think if I'm not.

Silence from the United States Government

There is no doubt that we are living in an era of change. President Obama rode into office on a wave of hope and inspiration, the likes of which we haven't seen for decades. Among the many campaign promises which were turned into action in the first hundred days of his administration, the President has moved forward to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, and forbidden the use of torture by the United States government. There was no doubt that President Obama held human rights in the highest regard, and not just for Americans, but for all citizens of the world. But how can his administration be concerned and we, as a nation, be overwrought about how a couple hundred prisoners (many of whom were innocent) were mistreated at Guantanamo Bay when there are 13 million women (all of whom are innocent) being subjected to the antiquated and barbaric subjugation that Judge Al-Razine espouses?

The human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia are certainly no mystery to the U.S. Government; as it has been on the Human Rights Watch List for as long was we have had one. But, the regional and economic importance of an alliance with the country, combined with recent progress and dedication to some of the more egregious and systemic violations has dictated a U.S. response of "wait and see". But after the cavernous reticence following a declaration of state-approved wife beating, it would appear that we're doing our diligent observation through a blindfold. How valuable does a nation need to be to us for us to ignore their judiciary authorizing nationwide spousal abuse?

Would it be too much to ask, for the tens of thousands of Saudis who are granted visas to the United States each year (over 30,000 in 2008), that it be made clear to them that the slapping of one's wife for overspending is not only the sort of thing which can make you unwelcome in our country, but also get you a unique tour of one of our correctional facilities? Does it not bear mentioning that although we are a nation literally built on religious tolerance that we are also the land of the free? I am afraid that our own silence misrepresents just how far our "tolerance" extends, and I fear that Saudi households in our own country are hiding an ugly truth of this storied culture.

With a federal administration seemingly unafraid to speak up authoritatively on anything, this failure to respond is all the more shocking.

* * *

Perhaps I'm being a bit of a Pollyanna here. I haven't traveled and seen much of the world, civilized or otherwise, and I've spent a lifetime around intelligent, capable and independent women who make the traditional Saudi system seem about as viable as a geocentric universe or a flat planet Earth. So I cannot imagine that an entire nation, what's more an entire group of nations, with access to education, technology and the knowledge of the world's scholars could continue to live in the ignorance that Judge Al-Razine so deftly displayed. But if I'm wrong, and outcry and censure continue their absence, perhaps I've at lease unwittingly come across the one thing that could help every Saudi man who sits silently by and lets this outdated barbarism continue - a good slap in the face.

The Golden Yield

2009-05-23T13:53:00.000-07:00

A great deal of thought and prose has been dedicated to the notion that traditional "good manners" are an increasingly rare practice these days. So much so that I'll add little to the intellectual lexicon of commentary to note it any further. There's no doubt that the culture of self-importance that we have imbued in our last two generations has finally become the dominant paradigm in personal conduct (or in other words, has come home to roost). And since many of the small matters of politeness are just simple consideration of others, it's no surprise that they've begun to fade as the average person's sphere of awareness extends little further than their nose. This refusal to acknowledge the rest of the body politic, no matter their proximity, by these casual sociopaths, however, has gone further than just eradicating polite conduct, it has now made basic navigation of the metropolitan world around us, if not impossible, impossibly maddening.

Elevator Loading

Elevators have always been awkward spaces - but the notion that they ought to remain largely silent has thankfully survived the current wave of de-gentrification. However, the scene surrounding the exit and entry of these devices has become impossibly frustrating. When the elevator car arrives, the people trying to get on rush the door like it's a day-after-Thanksgiving Wal-Mart opening and the people trying to get off the elevator are pushing through the crowd like teenage pop-stars through paparazzi. This inevitably leads to a bevy of unnecessary and uncomfortable touching, making the whole process a lot more awkward than need be.

Honestly, is this so hard to figure out? The elevator only has one door; meaning one way on, and one way off. Which means that before you get on, you have to let everyone get off. And yet, every time I get off an elevator, I'm greeted by the dumbfounded looks of oncoming riders who actually appear to be surprised to find there are people riding the elevator the opposite direction and who now need to disembark (foiling their well-laid loading plans). What's more, they are so remiss to give up their position in the de facto loading queue, they actually force me to push my way through them rather than allowing me to dismount directly. Can someone please explain this to me? There are no "good seats" on an elevator, and, in fact, getting in first may actually be a disdavantage, especially if you're anticipating a short ride. And even if you don't get on, there will be another one along shortly. So why is everyone crowding around the door like it's the "General Admission" entrance to an Aerosmith show? I recently watched a standoff between just such a crowd and a woman in wheelchair that actually remained a standoff while elevator doors closed on her twice. At which point, a young man stepped aside to let her through (while the rest of the crowd poured inside).

I mean, far from simply being inconsiderate (which could just be attributed to moral decay and general malaise) they're actually slowing down the process by not letting people off first. These people aren't just spatially unaware, they're spatially stupid.

Sidewalk/Hallway Stopping

Pedestrian walkways have been traditionally every so much more efficient than roadways. They can accomodate a much larger number of people (even shoulder to shoulder) and a slight bump into another person isn't accompanied by a thousand dollar repair bill, insurance claim paperwork, or a possible court appearance. It's easy to get in and get out of the flow, and you can easily get to the side if you need to stop or slow down. I remember how terrifying this sometimes seemed as a small child - when all the world was taller than I, and all that I could glean from the experience was the strict imperative that I'd better keep moving. But somewhere along the way, this imperative got lost.

I now regularly walk behind people who either (1) simply stop, backing up pedestrian traffic like a keystone cops or Benny Hill scene, or (2) walk at a speed I previously thought only achievable on slow-motion replays. What's more, they commonly engage in these behaviors in small groups, walking the width of path/hall - making getting around them difficult if not impossible. I mean, I understand that we don't actually have eyes on the backs of our heads, but have our attention spans gotten so short that we have actually forgotten their are folks walking behind us? Is it too much to ask them to get the hell out of the way if they're going to stop? I imagine these same folks don't just park their car in the middle of street when they've gotten where they're going - they find a parking spot. Which is all I'd ask that they do with their ass and their posse.

But perhaps "parking" behavior is something that must be socialized into people. I imagine that if there wasn't a penalty for putting your vehicle in the wrong place, these people might actually park them in the middle of the street. Pedestrian parking tickets? I mean, if it cost you thirty bucks every time you decided to act like the only person on the sidewalk, I bet'd you get your butt off the side next time you tried to actually fire up that mush between your ears and the overload of trying to simultaneously walk and think actually made both processes seize.

Your Music

One of the best things about the iPod revolution is that is has many of us dancing and walking around to whatever music we like, as loud as we want, without disturbing the world around us. We can experience the world with our own soundtrack, just like as the guy sitting next to us can do the same, even if he's doing it to Miley Cyrus and High School Musical 3 songs (which also saves him from having me smash his iPod into a million pieces). Which is not to say that I'm not open to indulge the musical tastes of others - just that I'd like to choose when and from whom I do so.

Additionally, I'm also not opposed to loud music. In fact, I love it loud. I regularly turn up my own car stereo loud enough that I'm not subjected to my own tone-deaf warblings, and last December I sat in the sixth row of the AC/DC concert without hearing protection. Believe me, I'm not some old fuddy-duddy who wants everyone to turn it down. But, I can think of two instances where I definitely shouldn't have to listen to your music: (1) when I'm walking on the sidewalk of a street downtown; and (2) when I'm sitting in my own car with the windows up.

Yet, these are two places where I'm regularly subjected to the predictably absurd musical tastes of the local teenagers, who seem less bent on sharing their taste in bands than on assuring me of their own importance, as though I assign some measure of influence or coolness simply to one's volume. In reality, the effect is just the opposite, and I'm left wondering (as is the surrounding public) if some of the excess hair gel has actually seeped into your ears and brain, limiting both your hearing ability and musical judgment. Do us both a favor and turn it down.

* * *

The downside of raising multiple generations who are completely vested in their own importance is lack of room in most of their psyches for the importance of others. Far from bemoaning the loss of social graces, this behavioral tragedy is actually making the landscape more difficult to navigate for everyone.

Traffic, whether in the street, the sidewalk or the building, is not something that's going to get solved for us. There aren't going to be less people to deal with in the future, there are going to be more. If it isn't obvious by now, the looking-out-for-number-one paradigm hasn't really worked out. Maybe the only new traffic rule we need isn't so new after all, besides, whether "golden" or not, getting the hell out of the way of the others, as you would have them get the hell out of yours, has a nice ring to it.

The Unfortunate Tao of Kobe

2009-05-17T15:04:00.000-07:00

I have adopted and loved sports teams in almost every place I have ever lived; the Cubs from my early childhood in Illinois, the Broncos and Avalanche from growing up in Colorado, the Orioles from my years in Maryland (including watching Cal Ripken break the greatest sports record ever), the Hartford Whalers (although I just missed them) from my brief stop in Connecticut, the Predators from Orlando (am I the only who misses Arena Football?), the Jaguars from Jacksonville (a city has never loved a team so much), and most recently the Dodgers and Kings from my time in L.A. But to be an true Angeleno is to love the Lakers, as much as it is to love the Yankees for any "real" New Yorker. But despite my best and most recent attempts, I cannot love the Lakers, and a true Angeleno I may never be.

Last night, I watched the Lakers, or the group of otherwise forgettable mooks that play basketball with Kobe Bryant, finally do away with a Houston Rockets team that was more triage than trying. The victory was inevitable, and had all the drama of watching a vintage Mike Tyson beat up some scrappy, young amateur with three of his four limbs broken. But what makes me unable to love the Lakers, or even to love the transcendent talent that is Kobe, is how classless the entire thing had become by that point.

I worry, in writing this, that I become a “sports blogger”, which would mean two things: (1) I will alienate any of the headier folks that read my rantings, who relegate professional sports to the same part of their brain and personal schedule where monster trucks and the semi-gross songs they learned in summer camp go; and (2) I will unwittingly become a part of the fastest growing receptacle for useless, poor and hyperbolic prose that exists on the Internet. But, in considering whether or not to write this particular piece, I found that there was a greater message in my refusal to watch or cheer for my hometown team – I can only hope that you, dear reader, will endure the sports context in which it is encased. I promise it will be worth the ride.

The scene, however, requires a bit of explanation – because, the NBA playoffs do not have the cultural relevance that they did twenty years ago, and I fear that without it, you won’t have the foggiest idea what I’m talking about. The Lakers have been the prohibitive favorite to win the NBA championship all year, since their new young center (whose absence was largely blamed for their failure to win in last year’s Finals) was finally healthy. Led by mega-star Kobe Bryant, they spent a season vanquishing impossible foes, beating the reigning champion Celtics on Christmas Day (and stopping their 22-game win streak) and handing Cleveland (home of the league’s other superstar, Lebron James) their only home defeat. The Houston Rockets, on the other hand, lost half of their “dynamic duo” of stars, Tracy McGrady, mid-season – and the unflappable Yao Ming (who has the personality of your average slab of cheese) seemed unlikely to be able to shoulder the responsibility of winning on his own. The offseason addition of Ron Artest, the Association’s most polarizing character, had brought a cautious optimism – because the team seemed desperate for the one thing Ron could bring, intensity, but the instability that accompanied it (and which infamously drove him into the stands in Detroit and into a fistfight with fans), always seemed to put him and his team a moment away from disaster.

The Lakers won the Western Division title by an astonishing 11 games (in an 82-game season), which to put in some perspective, would be like Secretariat winning the Kentucky Derby by over 110 lengths. The Rockets improbably finished as the fifth seed, winning without, arguably, their best player, and held together by heart, duct tape, and a very good coach. The Lakers dispatched the Utah Jazz in the first round like so much lint from their jackets, where the Rockets MASH unit surprisingly outplayed and out-muscled a younger Portland team that looked like it may be only a season or two from being the best team in the league. So, when the Rockets showed up at the STAPLES Center a few weeks ago for Game 1, for a best of seven series with the Lake show, many of us had them penciled in for only four more games, admiring their pluck, but feeling that a good effort can only take you so far. Then they won the game. And it wasn’t close.

The Lakers have a long-held association with the tagline “showtime” – which in some circles is associated with their glory years in the eighties (Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, etc), but for most fans has never really left the arena. Their star player, Kobe Bryant has been one of the league’s best individual players for nearly a decade, and has drawn more comparisons to Michael Jordan than any other player in memory. He is, however, a player that only Los Angeles could love. One of the last and few players who came into the NBA straight from high school, he plays with a ferocity that looks ever so much more like a chip on his shoulder than a mantle of greatness whose responsibility has been passed to him. His anger looks like petulance more than fury – and he has always appeared much more eager to pass the buck than to demand that it stops with him. But, he’s good; very good – even great, although, I expect that most of us expect the greatness requires an off-the-court persona far more ingratiating than his. He can, however, usually back up the trash he talks, and once he’s gotten you down, his ability to satisfy the carnivorous and hungry crowd, in front of which he plays, with a splendidly brutal death-blow is nearly unmatched. The problem is, he has no reluctance for the crown he wears, and can’t even be bothered to pretend as much – and I so I cannot love Kobe, or watching Kobe play.

The American love affair with reluctant leaders began with our very first, when George Washington famously tried to beg out of being the President. Now, I haven’t read the prevailing biographies to know if this was actually the case – but I like the idea, as I think we all do. We love the humility of our heroes, their selfless moments as they attribute their success to their mothers, their Gods or their teammates. Whether contrived or not, it helps us to feel as though we are somehow, no matter how trivially, connected to their greatness, and as though we might find it, similarly, within ourselves. I am not so naïve as to think that professional athletes and celebrities are not creatures of tremendous ego – but I still appreciate the effort to at least try and attempt normalcy. Michael Jordon was long ago revealed to not be the saint we all believed him to be – but on-stage, on-court, he was. Every time I watched him play, I immediately wanted to pick up a basketball. Every time I watch Kobe play I feel a little bit smaller, and like going to bed early – desperate for the inspiration of a new day to wash the thin film of despair off of me that watching winners win poorly always seems to leave.

The real testament to the Tao of Kobe is the fact the entire Lakers roster seems to have adopted his personality. Although many of them have experienced personal, individual glory before – they all seem content, now, to be faceless members of the ensemble cast. What’s more, Kobe seems completely content to keep them there. Their talent as a group is often enough to carry them to victory – and, as a result, it often has to. You see, the Lakers take games off, because they cannot always be bothered to put the effort forward. Having become fully invested in their own greatness, there feel no need to respectfully fight lesser opponents with their best labors – especially when the loss is tolerable, and still permissible of an ultimate championship. The Lakers are the Mighty Casey of basketball, content to let two strikes go by, confident of their ability to crush the third into the seats. Such was the case with Houston.

After three games, the Lakers had won two, and the Rockets only remaining star player, Yao, was out for the rest of the season with a fractured foot. The inevitability of a Laker win was overwhelming and the drama of the series seemed to fade palpably as the news was reported. And then the Rockets won again, this time in Houston. And it wasn’t close.

With three games remaining, it was all tied up, and the drama of an impossible Lakers defeat, re-energized the series. The Lakers went back to STAPLES and won by 40 – looking altogether the champions they had been touted to be. But realizing that they only had to win one of the final two games, took another night off in Houston and lost for a third time, and it wasn’t close.

Not even the magic of a Game 7 could hide the predetermined nature of the deciding contest. The betting line was thirteen points, which is Vegas’ way of saying “not a chance in hell.” As it turned out, a healthy number of sports pundits had warned of the fatal effect that a Laker loss would have on Kobe’s permanent reputation – which, we collectively discovered, is really what makes him tick. Like a late-career Barry Bonds, obsessed with his own place in history, Kobe produces game-days efforts only as edifices to his own greatness – to mark the road he expects us all to follow to his election to the Hall of Fame, and permanent cultural adoration. And so, threatened with the only true thing he fears, irrelevance, Kobe drove himself and his forgettable posse to a victory – whose empty celebration seemed caricatured even as it was happening.

In that moment, it was finally clear to me that no matter how much time I spend in Los Angeles, I will never be a Laker fan. But L.A. loves this team, and they love Kobe. L.A. loves its front runners, and its success stories. L.A. only bothers with tragedies to the extent they can be media vehicles for the talents of its stars – never intending to glean any purpose or message. L.A. doesn’t root for the underdog – because underdogs beat winners – and this is a town that not only loves its winners, it worships them. The “scene” crowd packs into STAPLES Center as if it were the Roman Coliseum – there to see a scripted massacre, and to bask in the glow of its spectacle to assure themselves of their own importance.

But I didn’t find indifference last night. I found loathing. I found myself, after finally trying to count myself a fan, actually rooting against the Lakers. I found myself wishing for them to lose and to lose badly, under the most embarrassing of circumstances. The internal debate which had raged for years about whether to try and love the Lakers or to finally embrace my disdain was decided. And it wasn't close.

Rollercoaster... of love

2009-05-10T15:03:00.000-07:00

This past week I did something that was vehemently uncharacteristic of me on two counts. I spent most of the day on Thursday at Six Flags Magic Mountain in sunny Valencia, California. First of all, I'm not the kind to miss work and leave town without an occasion. I've famously never taken a real vacation, and the only stated purpose of my jaunt to the thrill ride capital of the state was simply because. Second, I'm acrophobic (fear of heights... and acrobats), so I'm not the sort who usually volunteers to be dropped from high places simply for the "fun" of it. Which is not to say that I'm a wallflower of any sort, but it suffices to say that skydiving is not on my life's "to-do list." But among the many positive influences my girlfriend has had on me, she pushes me to do things that are good for me despite my reluctance, and just before noon we were pulling up to a sparsely full parking lot in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere, save for the towering metal edifices of fear that loomed just beyond the fences in front of us.

To put my trepidation regarding roller coasters in some perspective, I didn't ride my first one until I was 27 years old. And I remember it like it was yesterday. I was in the Navy, and accompanying some crew members from my submarine on a trip to Orlando, where we were planning to spend a couple of days at the Universal Studios theme parks, a couple of nights galavanting about town, and the remaining time eating and sleeping (ah, the days of wine and cheese). But, near the end of our first day, we met up with a couple of young ladies who agreed to meet us the following day at Islands of Adventure, the thrill-ride side of Universal. The day started off well and we were palling around the park like a group of old friends in no time. But at some point, the ladies indicated they wanted to ride The Incredible Hulk, a lime green mile of terror whose claim to fame was launching its riders at full speed from halfway up the first incline, and my friends (having no knowledge of my fear of such things) were happy to oblige. As we stood in line, the increasing helplessness of my situation combined with the sounds and screams of those ahead of us being launched into oblivion piqued my fear immeasurably. I was impossibly silent, and spent the whole of my effort on forcing a half-smile despite my impeding doom. Upon finally reaching my destined seat, I tightened my shoulder harness down to the point of painfully crushing me into the plastic "cushion" and any illusion of excitement vanished from my face, along with any color. But after 90 seconds of emasculating screams, I not only found myself alive, but actually exhilarated, and back in line three more times that day for the same trip.

If it hadn't been for a petite, pretty young girl in line with me whom I was desperate to not look foolish in front of, I probably wouldn't have ridden a roller coaster to this day. A similar circumstance got me to jump off of the 10-meter platform at the Naval Academy's diving well, where it was a prerequisite for graduation. Trust me, if you've never stared down 33 feet into space with nothing to stop you but water while wearing only a pair of ill-fitting swim trunks, rest assured that it's farther than you think. The mechanical drone of the swimming instructor and the resounding slap-thuds of my classmates striking the water at over 30 miles per hour had made the scene surreal, and my fear impractical. But just before my turn came up, and I began to turn around and head back down the tower stairs, I saw a female classmate of mine that I had long been desperate to impress. Before I knew it, and against my better judgment, I had turned back around and taken five large steps, the fifth into what I expected to be oblivion. A few moments later I was gathering myself at the side of the pool (having not quite gotten my legs together before impact, and paying the resultant price with my ability to breathe), but nonetheless blissful that I had survived. Although I'm certain she doesn't know it, I have that young, female midshipman to thank, as much as anyone, for my successful completion of my degree requirements in Annapolis. Though I never did get her attention.

On Thursday, I first rode Tatsu, Deja Vu, Batman, Ridder's Revenge, and Scream much to my delight. I was hoarse from screaming and just the slightest bit queasy from being turned upside down so many times that I had lost count. Deja Vu was truthfully mortifying, but at least the harnesses had been substantial enough to give me some measure of security. You see, ever since my first ride on the Hulk, I had only two rules for rides that I would not brave: one, it must have shoulder harnesses (no lap bars allowed) and two, no free falling. To that point, I just coudn't rationalize having half of my body unsecured when being hurtled through space, or evoking the terror that falling always gives me, simply for a five minute high. I'll just take a Vicodin and a Red Bull, thanks. But the tallest and most storied ride at Magic Mountain is Goliath, which also, of course, turned out to be my girlfriend's favorite. Goliath boasts a 26 story drop and an 85 mph plunge, and as luck would have it, with no shoulder harness in sight. With Deja Vu, I had already braved the only real free fall in the park, but it had only lasted for a moment, and Goliath meant a minute and a half without the roller coaster equivalent of my Wubby, the locking shoulder harness.

There was, however, and as before, a pretty girl whom I was desperate to not disappoint, close at hand. And in a moment there I was again, trudging up the line towards what felt like impending doom, uncharacteristically quiet, and gripping the hand holding mine as though it would be the last time. After sitting in my death chariot, I pushed my lap bar down as far as it would go, sucked in as hard as I could (which doesn't create nearly as much room as it used to), and pushed it down again. I was wedged into my seat like a rubber door stop, and spent the few moments before we began the long ascent to the tallest point in the park trying to find places to hold on. As we climbed, I settled on a death grip that included my right arm curled under the lap bar and my left arm pulling my chest down towards my right, and as we crested over the peak, I stopped breathing all together.

Fortunately, the folks that run Magic Mountain have mounted the automated photo system for Goliath at the base of that first terrible plummet, which was able to capture me at one of the least flattering moments of my adult life: my eyes half closed, my entire upper body taught in a death clutch and my face unflatteringly twisted by both fear and screaming.

But I survived Goliath, my first non-shoulder harness coaster (an introduction on par with having the Hulk be my first coaster of any sort) and the resulting bravado allowed me to close the day with a visit to the Viper and Superman, all told braving the fastest eight coasters in the park.

The rollercoaster is as American as apple pie, and has served as the metaphor for everything from ill-advised romantic relationships to the stock market, to the trials and tribulations of adolescence. But for me, they represent something much simpler, the unknown and the fear of its anticipation. Safety statistics regarding these rides have the same effect that bar exam passage rates for Stanford grads and skydiving fatality numbers did. In that, the fear of being the one person who beats the odds was much greater than falling into the overwhelming majority. But it turns out that hitting the wall with the dart is much easier than hitting the bullseye, and I've been fine every time.

Looking back on the day I realized my visit to the park was more than simple random leisure, and had actually taught me a few things:

1. No matter how old I get, there always be an enduring empowerment in having a pretty girl around, which will likely continue to catalyze my triumph over my greatest fears.

2. The same cannot be said for the viability of my joints, my cardio-vascular endurance or my tolerance for stupid people.

3. If you're about to do something that frightens you along with other people, look around. If you see anyone that's likely to have to been a Hannah Montana or Jonas Brothers concert in the past six months and doesn't appeared to be scared, tighten up - you're being a sissy.

4. Theme parks are much more tolerable during the weekdays and before school lets out for the summer, as is any event where there are minimal numbers of teenagers and mouth-breathing families of seven around.

5. Vacations are a pretty solid experience, even if they only last a day. I guess Ferris Bueller really had something there.

and 6. Terror, like Vegas, Vicodin and Vodka, in small doses, can be exceptionally refreshing.

The Unforgiven

2009-05-03T17:59:00.000-07:00

The impression that you make on people with your appearance is a funny thing. Despite the voluminous media that has been devoted to some of the extraordinary physical transformations that people go through – even over relatively short spans of time (drastic weight change, growth or even plastic surgery), we tend to look at one another and expect that those we see have, for the most part, always looked as they do today – if perhaps a slightly younger version. It is this strange phenomenon that I believe contributes to the disbelief people express when I tell them that I was a tremendously slight and ugly kid when I was in high school. And always seems to further confound them further that I haven’t quite let it all go. You see, today, I’m athletic, social, and at least what a few past lady friends have found to be attractive. But I’ll always be, in some small part, that same kid who never wore a prom tux, a varsity jacket or a genuine smile.

Centaurus was a quintessential American high school. It sat in the middle of two small, sister towns along the highway corridor between two much more important cities: Boulder and Denver. And in the late 1980’s, for the children of Louisville and Lafayette, Colorado, it was the center of the universe. Of course back then, before there was an “internet”, and before cell phones where smaller than a briefcase, high school was the biggest thing in the world. Rival high schools, just a few miles away, were places of myth and legend – and worlds unto themselves; state championships were brass rings of incomparable measure; and college was a Valhalla whose threshold could only be crossed by besting the high school gauntlet. In this social crucible, personalities were formed, and social status was nearly permanently established. It was here that you would find yourself amongst the groups that would forever define you: motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wasteoids, dweebies, dickheads, etc. These were the most important four years of your life – and I spent the first two of them under five feet tall and less than a hundred pounds.

The concept of bullies, at least in the high school sense, has become an outdated one. With today’s teenagers armed like North African guerillas bent on a coup, pushing and shoving in the hallway hardly seems intimidating. But in 1988, the greatest fear of every fourteen-year-old boy was high school “initiation”. As it turned out, there was little, if any, truth to the rumored atrocities that would be perpetrated on us upon setting foot on campus. But it was the fear of it that kept us looking over our shoulders. There were allegations of cattle prodding, horrible violations with shaving cream, and being urinated on in large pits. Most of my classmates were just getting through puberty, and hardly equipped to resist the man-children that seemed to populate Centaurus’ senior class, and I was laughably far behind them. The terror was overwhelming. And it did its part to keep us quiet and compliant.

(I suspect the real purpose of this “tradition” was to separate us from our female classmates, to which end it was exceptionally effective, but I digress)

But a couple of weeks into it, we’d figured out that there was not a parade of horrors waiting for us if we lingered too long after school or in the wrong part of the hall. The mass terror subsided, and the bullies began to do what bullies do, work out their own inadequacies on the weakest members of the herd. I should note that in addition to my target-friendliness by just being a part of the freshman class, as I mentioned above, I was staggeringly slight (even for 4’11”) and had a mouth that greatly outsized its attached body. The only defense I had, which turns out is the only upside to being one inch from legal classification as a “dwarf”, was being very quick and difficult to catch. Watching football players chase me around a crowded hallway was not unlike watching kids trying to catch a greased pig at a rodeo.

On one memorable occasion, a couple of seniors, who had heard the rumor that I had never been successfully “trashcanned”, waited until after the hallways had cleared after school to begin their chase. The lack of obstacles greatly reduced my advantage, and after spending a good minute suspended upside-down over a particularly nasty can and holding on, white-knuckled, for dear life – a teacher heard the commotion and broke up the affair. I never did end up in that trashcan.

I suffered a great number of social indignities that year, and for that matter, in the following three. I never had a girlfriend, never attended a school dance, and never played on a varsity team. I was mocked, tripped, jostled and locked in my locker. I was ignored, laughed at, and emasculated in nearly every way. And seventeen years later, I have forgiven mostly everyone that was ever involved in these affairs. After all, we were just kids and I was an easy target. I often times ended up asking for it (my mouth writing checks my body couldn’t cash) and it was usually far more embarrassing than it was actually painful. But there’s one person I haven’t forgiven. There’s one I won’t forgive. There’s one that I have always had in the back of my mind as I have gotten bigger and stronger each year since. There’s one that I’d like to see again, not to ask him why, or to let him see what I’ve become, but simply to walk up and punch in the mouth.

James.

James was a pioneer in a way. He was a douchebag long before everyone else was doing it; the kind of kid who beats up animals and little kids. Because James was also small for his age, but still wanted everyone to think he was tough. So he made me his favorite target. Shoving me hard in the hallways, against lockers and walls. Always nominally inviting me to fight him back, knowing I’d never take up the challenge. It was always a public spectacle, but never long enough for him to get caught. I always left feeling, impossibly enough, even smaller. There are a lot of things I don’t remember about my time at Cenaturus High, but there are lot of things I remember about James.

I remember his ill-considered and neon-accented preppy clothes. I remember his spiky hair. I remember the evil smile he had on his face every time he confronted me, like some caricature of a bully. Because there was no good-natured intent in James’ hazing. He beat up on me as though he had to, as though my very existence was an affront to his being. I remember the terror and the helplessness. I remember my voice shaking as I yelled, “Fuck you!” after him, and brought on the worst beating I ever got in those hallways. I remember that I promised myself, promised myself that someday I’d give James his.

We’ve since had our reunions, and we’ll have another in just a few years. Much of the intensity of the old social castes has faded away, although I expect that I’ll always feel just a little bit awkward talking to Dea, that Brett can still throw a football about a mile, and that Jack and I are much more alike than we’ll ever admit. After all, we’re all on the home stretch of our 30’s and, for the most part, have become the people we are going to be. Centaurus is still standing in little Lafayette, but now the hallways are full of text messaging and skinny jeans and the hazing has been legislated all but completely away. There are no more hallway bullies, there are no more trashcannings and no one’s been stuffed in a locker in ten years.

The mileage on our memories allows us to appreciate our experiences for their greater purpose – to make us who are today. So, since I have the great fortune of liking who I’ve become, I can look at the vast majority of my past, both the pain and the pleasure, as a good thing – because without it, I never would have made it to where I’m at.

But not James. Because I expect he never really gave much of a damn about the things he did, and I don’t give much of a damn about forgiving him. I don’t want to hear about “two wrongs”, “fire with fire” or any of that “turn the other cheek” stuff. Thankfully, there’s not much of that little freshman left in this grown up body. I expect there’s just enough to put James on his ass, leave Centaurus behind forever and find a little peace in keeping a promise.

A New York State of Mine

2009-04-26T23:38:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I took a trip to the Big Apple, New York City, to celebrate my girlfriend’s birthday. I recognize that that might sound a little frivolous given the current economy. But as it turns out, the travel industry is so desperate to capture the little disposable income that is actually floating around that it actually cost about the same for us to go to NYC as it would to go to Vegas. And I suppose we decided to class it up a bit, and head to points northeast.

Prior to my latest visit, I had only been to NYC twice. Once, when I was still in submarine training when I went to celebrate New Year’s Eve in Times Square (read as: I was still 25 years old, with the social aptitude and accompanying fashion sense of your average agoraphobic shut-in), and then once again, as an attorney, there on business. My overall impression from those two visits? First, it was cold. The kind of cold that makes it your first impression of a place, no matter what sort of wondrous things you see there. Second, the people weren’t particularly nice. Not that anyone was mean, but the indifference was palpable – as if you could burst into flames and people would simply step out of the way and use you to warm their hands. And third, everyone (save the tourists) seemed to have really nice coats. Which does a surprising amount for the gentrification of the place.

But after years of poo-pooing the world’s most famous city, I was interested to see how my perspective might have changed since the last time I had visited. What’s more, my primary impression of NYC was informed by two competing sources: one, Law & Order, which I’m addicted to like a Trump ex-wife to plastic surgery, and two, my hatred of San Francisco, which makes no bones about trying to be the NYC of west coast. Turns out both sources were wrong: the NYPD is not nearly as cool as I thought they were (although still a very solid group of guys), and amongst the many things that SF has all effed up, it can now count its impression of what it means to be a big, important city.

To put it simply, New York City was the absolute shit.

Now, my New York experience was much more consummate than it was authentic. In that, we stayed at the W Hotel in Times Square, saw some shows (both on Broadway and off), went to Central Park, ate from the three major street food groups (hot dog, pizza & bagel), had a real steak and stayed out way too late dancing and drinking. I was ready for the entire adventure to be quaint and fun, but to be ultimately overwhelmed by the horribleness of the city, the paranoia of being victimized by street crime, and the ever present awfulness of the weather. But as it turns out, I had the best four days that I can recall, and now the best birthday I’ve been a part of wasn’t even mine.

Times Square

There are a hundred reasons to hate Times Square: it’s garish, loud, and full of ill-mannered tourists whose ideas about personal space seem drastically different from those of your average Californian. But there are a thousand more reasons to love it. I’m not prone to buying into anyone’s tagline, especially those generated by state tourism boards (for example, the only thing I’d like you to “Show Me” in Missouri is how to get the hell out of it), but Times Square really is the crossroads of the world, and if you’ve got any manner of ADD (even the acute version like mine), this is a place where you brain can actually find some peace.

There are literally a million things to look at. There are news tickers, stock tickers and, well, ticket tickers. Every brand that you can possibly imagine has some square footage there. The buildings are unbelievably tall, and the traffic actually seems to flow through without incident (although never without rest). I actually heard six different languages spoken while walking the same city block, and was never more than a block and a half from a hot dog, pretzel or knish. If there is a place that defines our video game, brand-name, pop-culture generation, it is this.

The Shows

First off, I can’t tell the difference between Broadway and Off-Broadway, and I expect that if I tried to, I’d come off as an even bigger douche than if I just kept quiet about it. It suffices to say that I actually preferred my off-Broadway experience slightly – but they were both pretty awesome. Secondly, I’m not into theater. I find theater snobs about as palatable, personally, as televangelists and informercial emcees. And, I’m more likely to be heard singing a Jonas Brothers song than I am to be humming along to a showtune. So, I consider it to be some measure of miracle that I enjoyed either of these experiences, let alone both of them.

Fuerza Bruta is an Argentian dance and music “experience”, which was like anti-theater. The entire crowd is shuffled onto a theater stage with no seats, and told to move around as directed by the show’s crew. What followed after was an assault on nearly all of the senses, in a celebration of music and movement that was passionate, fun and just the right kind of insane. The show happened all around and above us. The cast ended up amongst us, dancing and inciting the crowd. The DJ had a giant water gun with which he sprayed the throng, and which no one seemed to mind. But the most glorious moment was after the show had ended, when the performers had bowed and then invited us to stick around and dance with them… as they DJ played on and they turned on the “rain” in the center of the room. So, there I was, dancing in the rain in the middle of New York City theater, surrounded by strangers, smiling at my girlfriend (who was, of course, dancing with me) and having completely forgotten anything to not be happy about.

On Broadway there was Rock of Ages, which was a musical based on hair metal of the 80’s, and despite the fact that the star of the show was that insufferable rocker douche from American Idol a few seasons back – er, Constance something-or-other, the leader of the house band was from freakin’ Night Ranger. Enough said.

The Rest Of It

There were so many other things: Cental Park, dancing, shopping at Century 21, the pizza, the cabs, the subway, the W, the steak and even the rain. But above all, there was a sense of bigness about the city that was neither intimidating nor off-putting. There was a contentment in knowing that you’d be able to find whatever you needed to entertain, satisfy or comfort yourself just a few minutes away. Everything seemed so damned possible, even the impossible things – like putting a smile on the face of one California cynic.

In the end, my trip to New York City taught me a few valuable lessons:

1. The pizza in California sucks
2. The weather in California does not; and
3. There’s still nothing better than dancing with a pretty girl in the rain.

Fast and Spurious

2009-04-06T05:08:00.001-07:00

It's a little late to be noting the rise in popularity of franchise films (for both the studios and movie patrons) as a sign of the Apocalypse. We're a decade into this mind-numbing trend, and we've only got ourselves to blame. So "Bring It On" has three sequels (all straight to DVD), and American Pie has had four (the last three straight to DVD). I think it's fair to say that there has never been a franchise whose fourth installment had any sort of merit, artistic value or cultural significance (NOTE - Star Wars: Episode IV does not count as a fourth installment). But this past weekend, as I found out that the fourth installment of a film franchise shattered box office records, I reconsidered whether it was finally time to invest in a cabin next a lake and finally give up on society.

Fast & Furious embodies a creativity in sequel naming that we haven't seen since Christopher Reeves was playing Superman (The Fast and the Furious [2001], 2 Fast 2 Furious [2003], The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift [2006], Fast & Furious [2009]). The fact that this franchise can retain relevance by recycling scripts and only changing articles and conjunctions ought to be our first indication that there may be some significant mind decay going on - but the numbers tell a different story. Target consumers are lapping up this brain candy like day old doughnuts at the 7-Eleven.

From CNN.com (and Entertainment Weekly):

In the first truly shocking box office result of the year, "Fast & Furious" sped away from expectations to gross a humongous $72.5 million, according to early estimates from Media by Numbers.

That result is effectively double what most industry observers had predicted for the debut of the fourth feature in Vin Diesel's car franchise, and it left in the dust a number of notable records:

- Best April opening ever, beating "Anger Management's" $42.2 million.

- Best Universal Pictures opening ever (three-day), beating "The Lost World: Jurassic Park's" $72.1 million.

- Best F&F franchise opening ever, beating "2 Fast 2 Furious'" $50.5 million.

- Best opening yet in 2009, easily beating the bows of the more-buzzed-about "Monsters vs. Aliens" ($59.3 million) and "Watchmen" ($55.2 million).

And yet, "truly shocking" just doesn't seem to really capture how this news made me feel. Along with skinny jeans, The Hills and Uggs, the street racing of "sport import" cars is additional proof that I've begun to make the transition from young and hip to fiscally responsible and social irrelevance.

But let me back up. Despite what I imagine to be the global reach of this forum, I expect that most of you have no idea what these movies are about. So let me provide a brief synopsis: the height of badassery is achieved by taking a $12,000 car (Acura, Honda, etc.) putting six figures worth of performance gear, neon lights, obscene paint jobs, shininess and noise production equipment on it and then racing it in the city streets with no regard for human life. As it turns out, performing in this way will: (a) get you the hot girl, (b) allow you to always narrowly escape capture by the hapless police, and (c) make all manner of thugs and miscreants not only elect not to kick your ass, but also give you what the kids like to call "mad props".

Don't get me wrong, I'm not ready to start camping out on my front porch with shotgun full of "salt rock" to chase the neighborhood kids of my property (although, the thought of being "Crazy Old Man Truitt" does bring a little smile to my face). I understand that street racing, and fast cars has always been purveyance of American youth. For God's sake, the title of this ill-conceived franchise was taken from a 1939 movie about a race between a 1935 Chev and a 1939 Hot Rod Lincoln. I remember the hot rods that dotted the landscape of my high school parking lot, and the intense envy I felt. But I also remember a few important characteristics of these cars and times that distinguish them from the current trend:

1. The cars were older models that were "fixed up" and "hot rodded" by the "gearheads" that owned them, usually on their own dime, that they had earned from their part-time job.

2. If they were loud, it was because they had an obscene engine in them that made them obscenely fast.

3. If they were racing them, they were doing at the local 1/4 mile track (Bandimere Speedway for you Colorado types), or on some very desolate country road, where only things they could disturb/damage were themselves, some barbed wire fences and a smattering of assorted livestock.

The cars in these movies would cost in excess of $100,000 each to reproduce, and that's without the special effects gear that allows them to pop half-mile wheelies, attach film rigs, and be in massive crashes without mangling the driver/passengers. There is nothing "American Graffiti" about simply having enough privilege and money to pay a custom shop to "pimp" your ride. These aren't simply well-tuned old engines with sport shifting, a blower and a racing carburator on them - these are machines built by the same guys that build the cars for professional racing. Owning one of these doesn't say anything about you except that you have extraordinary spending power.

What really worries me about this development is not that this dangerous and silly subculture exists, it's that it's becoming mainstream. It's that I'm going to have to endure more and more teenage wastoids trying to imitate these behaviors in their endless quest for coolness. The reality of these cars is that almost none of the kids that pay to see these movies are going to be able to reproduce these cars. So what will they do? They'll make their cars loud instead of making them fast. And they'll drive around the city and neighborhood streets like idiots in the middle of the day/evening, attempting stunts they're not trained or able to do.

The beauty of America is the freedom to be any sort of stupid that you'd like to be... with one very important caveat: you can't do it if it keeps anyone else from being the kind of stupid that they'd like to be.

Noise pollution is excusable under certain circumstances (e.g. your band actually rocks, your car is actually fast, or you're someplace that is already loud). But if all you did was spend fifty bucks and thirty minutes bolting a noise-making device onto the exhaust of your KIA Sorrento, trust me, you're not fooling anyone - and the only attention you're getting is the kind that starts with "I wonder what douchebag is driving that thing..."

On the off chance that you actually do have a fast import car, rest assured that most of us do not care. Which means that I don't need you to cover the eighth of a mile between stoplights in three seconds just to highlight your feelings of inadequacy. I don't need you to swerve in and out of traffic just so I can appreciate the alleged glory of painting your car a color that's been known to cause seizures. And I certainly don't need you coming around a corner, squealing your 14-inch tires while you're trying to focus on the text message you just got. If you want to race, why don't you try it against someone else who actually wants to race you (and not the folks just trying to get somewhere), and doing it somewhere where the only people you'll hurt (in case your driving skill turns out to be a little less than you had predicted) are yourselves?

Besides, before you decide this is your one-way ticket to transcendent awesomeness, keep in mind that the buyers for the surviving F&F cars (after the filming) did not include Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, or Jordanna Brewster. But they did include the five feet of manliness that is Frankie Muniz. So after buying one, you'll only be one hit sitcom away from being that cool.

A Plea For More Denim

2009-03-31T16:10:00.001-07:00

Okay, so I’ve mentioned this a few times in previous pieces, and seeing as how the subject trend has not withered and died under the weight of its own absurdity (as I had hoped), it’s time to take it head on: What the hell is up with “skinny jeans”?!

No, seriously, I don’t get this. I really don’t. After nearly three and a half decades on this planet, and exposure to what must certainly be hundreds of thousands of different forms of attire – I honestly cannot conceive of a less flattering and more ridiculous way to clothe one’s self. It’s the ultimate failure of both form and function. If there is a mountain of ill-advised fashion choices, this is its summit.

When I speak to friends about this, they always open with the same question: do I mean for men or for women? And to this I answer: both. Of course, it is much more inexcusable for men - but you ladies aren't getting away scott-free.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of the form of a woman's leg, and it's display in public - but, there's nothing sexy about seeing anyone in something that looks like it's about as comfortable to wear as a sandpaper tank top. Besides, anyone who's read me before knows that I'm a big fan of the country bar, so I'm no stranger to women in tight jeans. But there's a place where the tightness must stop - and that place is called - the knee. I mean, honestly, if you think that showing off the shape of your calves is going to rescue an otherwise unflattering display of the rest of your lower half - you should probably just go with a skirt. And before you go telling me that "hey, they actually are comfortable" - it doesn't matter, the fact is, they don't look comfortable, and because I'm not a masochist - that's not hot.

Listen, if you're a girl, and you've got legs that are so fantastic that they absolutely must be displayed in their entirety - you've got plenty of options: leggings, mini-skirts, and fitted capris just to name a few. So what's the deal with skinny jeans? I imagine that even the most svelte young women must find getting into these denim torture devices to be an experience that requires equal bits of flexibility, determination and prayer. Additionally, there simply cannot be a sexy way to take them off - which ought to be reason enough for adult women to avoid them.

My point is, ladies, if you want to be trendy - get the latest handbag, and leave the leg hugging to that special someone in your life, and not your pants.

Now, gentlemen - unless you are very good at ballet, or even better at road bicycling, swimming or professional wrestling, there is no good reason for you to ever wear skin tight clothing - especially on your legs. These exceptions are not instances in which it is any more pleasant to look at, just those occasions in which the assault and battery that it inflicts on my eyeballs has some manner of justification.

I have never met a girl over the age of 15 who thinks these are even remotely o.k. to wear. And for the record, only two of the few "tween" girls I polled believe that skinny jeans on boys are acceptable (and I have the sneaking suspicion that these same girls would think that white spandex body suits were "hot" if the Jonas Brothers were spotted in them). It is also important to note that they were talking about boys the same age. If you're a grown man and you think that wrapping your legs in skin-tight denim is o.k., perhaps clothing isn't your biggest problem after all.

Don't get me wrong now, I'm not advocating overly baggy clothing on men, either. Seeing a guy swimming in a white t-shirt that goes down to his knees, a sports jersey (not at a sporting event), or pants that could fit two of him in them is the easiest way I've seen to spot a moron since the dunce cap. But, really, how hard is it to find clothes that fit?!

My disdain for these jeans may have something to do with the increasing inappropriateness I feel regarding the display of a man's bare legs as I get older. In that, the only times I think it's appropriate to wear shorts as a grown up male are when you at the beach/pool, participating in a sporting event, or at home. The male leg is like the engine of a big ship - you don't need to see it, you just need it to be strong and reliable... and seeing it sort of makes the ship seem a little cheap and silly.

The two "groups" of men which seem most predisposed to this inexplicable form of self-mockery are "rockers" and "skaters" - both of whom seem like unlikely adopters of such a trend.

For rockers, I understand there is some cache to being skinny and wearing fitted clothing, but can't it just stop at leather pants? Isn't the crazy black hair, the piercing of every conceivable bit of skin and the black nail polish enough? Take it from someone who's spent some time on Hollywood Boulevard, it is. I need to see the shape of your legs like I need to Chelsea Clinton giving speeches on college campuses again. Besides, with all that black on, isn't a little extra ventilation for some of your sweatiest parts a solid idea? As far as I know, the "rocker" motif is about "looking" different, not smelling it...

For skaters, a group who defines themselves by participation in an irreverent but strenuous (and challenging) athletic activity, choosing apparel that restricts movement seems like a more baffling selection than Sarah Palin. I mean, truthfully, if you're trying to dress for difficulty, why not just go with a suit of armor? These things practically scream chafing... and that's just from walking. It just seems so insanely contradictory to see a teenage boy with good enough sense to wear a helmet while skating, but bad enough judgment to wear skin tight denim so that he looks "cool" while doing it. It's not as though you need to do anything more to identify yourself as a "skater" if you're already carrying a skateboard!

* * *

A long time ago, I once succumbed to a fashion trend, the sight of which still mortifies me to this day - and that was rolling the bottom of my jeans tight against my legs, what used to be known as pegging. And all this showed off of our legs was the ankles. Skinny jeans are a full blown fashion cataclysm, and for some reason, they've outlasted the poncho, the Kabballah bracelet, Crocs, Uggs and even Affliction. It's as though the ridiculousness of a trend is proportional to how long we'll be forced to suffer it.

In the end, I expect skinny jeans, like all unfortunate fashion movements, will run it's course, and I will have to find yet another reason to mistrust and dislike teenagers (don't worry, there's an endless number, and they're coming up with new ones all the time). In the meantime, I'll keep my fingers crossed that summer comes soon, good sense prevails, and, for the first time I can recall, I'll actually hope to see more people in shorts.

Calling Grizzly Adams

2009-03-19T21:14:00.000-07:00

I've recently had a style epiphany. This is the sort of thing that really only happens to men, mostly because "fashion" is an item that's fairly low on our priority list (for reference, it falls somewhere between Christmas cards and the WNBA Playoffs). And for those who know me, you'll know that I consider myself fairly fashion conscious - meaning that I have a subscription to Esquire magazine, own at least 5 pairs of jeans that do not have the words "LEVI", "Wrangler", or "GAP" anywhere on them, and drive 25 miles each way every two weeks to get a $50 haircut. Which makes style epiphanies all the more rare and wondrous for me. But, seriously... seriously when did everyone start having a beard again?

I mean, I really thought this was the sort of thing that we outgrew as a culture and not one of those fashion "trends" that would come in and out of style every couple of decades; things we never want to see again, like the mullett and copious amounts of pubic hair. The whole thing just seems unsanitary, doesn't it? Centuries of razor technology and you've still got the grooming habits of Cro-Magnon Man? What's next, a leopard skin singlet?

Seriously, a beard has got to be the most reliable indicator of douchebaggery since the visible gold chain. For reference, there are really only two ways to go with facial hair: (1) you just let it grow unfettered, or (2) you groom it into one of a myriad of "styles" - both of which seem equally ill-advised and horrible.

The Grizz

Just letting the hair on your face grow unchecked is the easiest way to say "I don't care" since Crocs came out. It's like wearing a little notice to strangers that you have a job that requires you to "punch in" and wear a name tag. Of course with that bush strapped to your chin, you could be a superstar actor between blockbuster films or a maybe a comedian, but let's face it, you don't look like Tom Cruise even with the better part of your face covered, and the only funny thing about you is how you look with that Chia Pet chin of yours.

I'll bet you'll tell me it's worldly, or that it's your way of defying the establishment, but in reality, everyone you see is checking out your clothes to evaluate whether you're homeless or not - and there's nothing worldly about that. You don't live in a cabin in the wilderness where you might need it for warmth - you live in a crappy apartment in Van Nuys... so what gives? Razors too expensive? You're wearing a $200 pair of jeans! And as far as counterculture goes, that become mainstream fifteen years ago, wake up and smell the Seattle. You're not making a statement, you're making a scent. Do you even comb that thing? I think you might have some noodles stuck in there from last week.

I've never met a woman who thinks this is attractive. Wait, scratch that, I've never met a women who regularly shaves her legs that thinks this is attractive. Amongst the many other ridiculous things that it is, a free-growth beard seems to be ticket to a lifetime alone - or with the kind of girl who thinks Renissance festivals are "cool".

The Groomed

Thankfully, this type of facial hair is far more common in southern California than the other. But while it is marginally less dispositive of one's predisposition towards hourly employment and a general lack of direction, it is much more indicative of someone's overall douchery.

Note, however, this usually doesn't apply if you're over 40. Once you're a grown man, you've earned a goatee, mustache or tastefully trimmed beard. It may even look good on you. But, if you're over 40 and you have a soul patch, a Fu-Manchu or have trimmed any shapes into your facial hair - age aside, you're still a douche.

A quick aside on my descriptive terms... according to the Wikipedia (the global oracle of second-hand knowledge):

Douche bag, or simply douche, is considered to be a pejorative term in most of the English-speaking world. The slang usage of the term dates back to the 1960s. The term implies a variety of negative qualities, specifically arrogance and malice.

...but, to be honest, if you don't know what a douche is - much like the knowledge passed on in Rounders about "suckers" - you probably are one. Enough said.

Seriously, though - groomed facial hair on anyone under the age of thirty just makes you look like an ass. When did this come back? The last time I remember 5 o'clock shadow being cool Don Johnson was running round in a white linen suit with a pastel colored t-shirt and George Michael was still widely thought to be straight. Unless you actually own and ride a Harley, six inches of goatee just looks silly. And no, your Kawasaki Ninja does not count. And please don't get me started on lamb-chop sideburns or anything that's pencil thin. People who grew up in the seventies are still embarrassed about those 'burns, and anything that looks like it could be reproduced on your face by a little eyeliner and some free time is probably not as manly as you think.

* * *

I suppose that the reality of this is that it's much like bolt-on exhaust pipes, skinny jeans for men, and The Hills; things that I'm simply too old to understand. I imagine there comes a time in every adult's life when they realize that, in some part, they've been left behind - and that there are no longer any music videos on MTV. But I'd like to think that I've still got a sense of what looks and what doesn't look ok.

In a world where emasculation seems to lurk around every corner, I can certainly understand the need, the compulsion, to establish one's manhood at every opportunity (which, as it turns out, makes skinny jeans all the more perplexing to me). Many great historical male figures cut their profile with a signature bit of facial hair. But it's important to note that these men were also wearing union suits and codpieces for underwear.

Want to man up? Try fixing something in your girlfriend's house. Want to look dangerous? Get a leather jacket. Want to rebel? Get a tattoo. And if you really want to spend time doing something to your face that will make you look all grown up, for God's sake, shave.

Midnight in the Garden of Pretty and Evil

2009-03-10T20:20:00.000-07:00

Hollywood is arguably the birthplace of the nightclub, in that it seems to have inspired nightclubs the world over. I have been to nightclubs in hundreds of cities, and no theme is more consistently represented than “Hollywood” – from its famous “Roxy”, “Viper Room” and “Sunset Strip” to its velvet ropes, monolithic and dour bouncers, and VIP back entrances; each reprised a thousand times over in small-town suburbs and big time “second” cities. But, as with most things, the “idea” of Hollywood nightclubs is far more glamorous than the realities.

I can vividly recall my first Hollywood nighttime outing. My mind raced with images that had flashed on my TV screen: pretty people, neon castles, flashy bartenders and listening to music so transcendently good that I would have no choice but to dance the night away. I remember the concern with which I decided what to wear – hoping, desperately, to be cool enough for the scene. But what I will truthfully never forget was the crushing disappointment of the actual experience.

My first thought, and the corresponding first words that came out of my mouth, as we arrived in the vicinity were: “This is Hollywood? I thought it would be…uh, cleaner.” The sidewalks were dirty, like wrong-side-of-the-tracks post-natural disaster dirty. The corners and closed storefront alcoves were filled with homeless, prostitutes and all manner of unsavory characters. The streets contained an even mix of both exotic sports cars and mid 90’s-era Toyota Corollas (and various cars of that nature) – which was somehow more disheartening than had the streets been filled fully with either. Valets hustled to park lines of cars, while lines of would-be party goers snaked around the blocks from the sporadically placed entrances. And the hordes of pretty people? Replaced by crowds of wannabes and posers – all trying to be something they clearly weren’t with a desperation that was palpable.

But aside from its general failures to live up to the preceding reputation and hype, there are some unique characteristics of the Hollywood club scene which keep me from going more than once annually (usually to remind myself why I don’t go anymore).

Parking on the Dance Floor

There is one essential thing to know about dance clubs in Hollywood, and that is that, for the most part, people do not dance there. Which is not to say that there isn’t a “dance floor” or other designated dancing area, because there is. It is also not to say that there is not music to dance to. In fact, some of the best DJs I have ever heard have been in Hollywood night spots. But, as above, no one is dancing. Of course, in other cities’ nightclubs this looks a little silly, because that would mean that there’s no one on the dance floor. Not in Hollywood. No, what you are supposed to do there (or at so far as I’ve been to glean from observation) is to stand about on the dance floor as if it’s simply a good place to listen to the music and if anyone does start to dance, you are to cast sideways glances at them, as if they have two heads.

In the very few places in Hollywood where dancing does take place, it must be very crowded. And by “very” I mean, eight-people-touching-you-at-any-given-time crowded. The primary motivation behind this phenomenon (as well as the dance floor parking policy) is the first rule of Hollywood clubbing: you must look cool at all times. This prohibits, amongst other things, overtly enjoying the music (i.e. toe tapping or swaying to the beat), removing your hat or sunglasses, or smiling.

The does, however, give you some insight into the authenticity of a “Hollywood”-style club. If there are people on the dance floor, dancing, smiling and generally having a good time with at least some casual disregard for their appearance, you know it’s a complete knock-off[1].

A Place for Friends

One of the most unique characteristics of the western Los Angeles night scene is its functionality as a device to meet new people. Which is to say, that it has none. You see, people in Hollywood go out exclusively to hang out with people they already know. Now, for those of you not from L.A., you’ll recognize this behavior as what you call “having some friends over” – but in order to do it here, you’ve got to get dressed up, brave the traffic, be on “the list”, then enjoy seeing your friends over $15 well drinks, $9 domestic beers and one seriously angsty cocktail waitress (who is truthfully expecting a $20 tip each time she swings by).

This behavior can be visually observed as groups of friends “circling the wagons” and chatting amongst themselves for the balance of the evening, not unlike a high school lunchroom. And from experience, let me just say that I do not advise trying to break into one of these circles. Because if you do, you’ll stop conversation in that circle faster than an audible fart (and be the recipient of the aforementioned sideways glances from the rest of the club).

Now, I’m a friendly soul and found this out the hard way, but it comes to this: if you go to the nightclub in Hollywood alone, that’s how you’ll be leaving.

What Not to Wear

Hollywood nightclubs are a lot like high school: in that they are mostly designed to make you feel as though you’re not cool enough, not pretty enough and not rich enough to be there. The atmosphere is intense enough, that even the “cool kids” feel this way. The idea is to spend as much money as you can trying to look as though you spent nothing on what you’re wearing. For example, you roll out in your “plain” Rag & Bone Jeans ($275), “plain” white James Perse t-shirt ($50) and your “plain” casual Fiorentini + Baker shoes ($360), and you’ve spent nearly $800 on looking like you don’t even care enough to put on a decent shirt[2]. Nice, huh?

Which is not to say that you are allowed to actually dress as though you don’t care, because you’re not. You’ll likely not even make it into the club so attired, and even if you do, when someone realizes you’re wearing less than $100 worth of clothes, you’ll get kicked out like you knocked up the owner’s favorite niece.

This preparation is, however, essential in Hollywood, because your face is the third or fourth thing that any potential mates look at (after your shoes, watch, and sometimes, your outfit). And if you think that’s shallow, just wait until you get to the “conversation”; which consists of a net-worth focused interrogation, and features such inspirational queries as “So what do you do?” and “So what do you drive?”[3]

In that, clubbing in Hollywood is sort of like interviewing for a job that you don’t really want.

Bright Lights, Big City

In the end, there is some modicum of entertainment in simply observing the living caricatures that populate these scenes: the “actresses” and “models” (read as: baristas and waitresses), the “producers” (read as: sleazy old guys who actually made their money in plumbing but always seem to have “a friend in the business), the “musicians” (read as: the grooming and bathing averse) and “visitors” who come from the suburbs for the feel of an “authentic” party experience (and end up leaving with a $500 bar tab and wondering why they didn’t just go to the corner pub).

In fact, you might just discover that the mystery of a street with so many parties going being called the “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” isn’t much of a mystery after all.

[1] The proper response to this is to look around in disgust, and briskly remove yourself from the premises (as though you’re heading off to a much cooler party).

[2] This, of course, does not include the watch you’re supposed to be wearing, which can set you back about a cool $10,000 (if done properly)

[3] I’d love to be able to tell you that this is all just me taking some poetic license and engaging in a little harmless hyperbole… but this is, unfortunately, all true… and based on personal anecdotal evidence.

Blasts from the Past

2009-03-02T18:24:00.000-08:00

Recently, I think may have accidentally run over someone's beloved pet, or perhaps I wasn't paying attention and let a door slam on an old lady. I can't really recall doing any such thing, but since karma has kicked me in the nuts twice in the last 14 days - I figure it's got to be something. You see, in the past two weeks, I've been contacted by two women, out of the blue, each of whom I had dated more than eight months ago.

Now, I know what you're thinking, I should be stoked - a little "recycling" never hurt anyone, right? I mean, in a world where "creepers" abound, it's easy to see why a nice guy like me would get a call back every now and then. But no, you'd be wrong, both of these calls opened with the bald assertion that the caller had no interest whatsoever in getting back together with me. What's worse, both of these women broke up with me.

Here's where you know I'm telling the truth, because that assertion is baldly emasculating enough that there's no way anyone would offer it up as a fabrication.

Can someone please tell me what the hell is up with this? Because I can see the motivation behind getting back in touch with someone who broke up with you (albeit a tremendously selfish one) to let them know that you're successful and happy - despite their rejections. And I can see the motivation in getting back in touch with someone you broke up with to see if you can give things another try; second thoughts, etc. Which left me to wonder just what sort of explanation would follow a declaration of my continued, abject undesirability.

The first young lady wanted to apologize, which was almost... almost ok. But then she followed it up with wanting to "see how I was doing" and if I "needed anything". Well, let's see, in the intervening eight months since we last said a single word to each another at the rightful end to the worst weekend trip to Las Vegas ever, I spent two of those months just crying all day, 45 days contemplating a suicide attempt within walking distance of her house, another month and half building a candle-lit shrine to her in my living room (which is turns out is a seriously bad place to put a life-sized wax replica of the love of one's life) and the rest of the time just waiting by the phone for her call. I mean, that must have been the answer she was expecting, right? Honestly. how far up your own ass do you have to be to believe that if a man is deprived of your attention for any appreciable period of time, that he needs to be periodically checked up on for health and well being?

I told her I was fine, and that I really wasn't interested in being friends with someone who let me know, in no uncertain terms, that I really wasn't good enough for her. In her defense, after hearing her dating resume, I probably should have known. A group that included: a couple of celebrities, a few professional professional athletes, and at least two gentlemen whose net worth placed them in the I'll-just-pay-cash-for-this-Lamborghini club was not ready to welcome me as a member. And that's not really the point here. Rather it is that there seems no need to call and apologize for being a horrible person, 8 months later - because no matter what I say, I am not really going to forgive you, and, more importantly I stopped thinking about you seven and a half months ago! What kind of person calls to remind you of something terrible, unexpected and callous they did to you? Let's just say that I hope she wasn't trying to improve her karma score - because her call has the distinction of being the single most self-serving thing I've experienced in Los Angeles (and if you've dated in LA, you'll know that's really saying something).

The second young lady called to let me know she was moving back into town from Utah, into the house of a new boyfriend. So you know, she was no stranger to a little phone-based drama, as she had broken things off with me via text message. But, we hadn't spoken in months - the last time, she called to let me know she was leaving town (for good... ha!), and after I agreed to meet with her before she left because she seemed genuinely upset, I never heard from her again. Classy, right?

Since then, I had taken great lengths to avoid the drama that trailed around behind this girl like a comet's tail - including not going back to the bar we used to hang out at - and had nearly forgotten about the entire sordid affair. But here she was, calling me to "catch up". Really? Catch up? So I pressed her... why did she really call? And then I got it, her mother had asked about me. Ah, and there it was. Because, it is not hard to believe that someone's small town Utah mother would ask their daughter about the lone professional that had punctuated her daughter's dating landscape of neck tattoos and ill-conceived facial hair experiments.

Which is all understandable, but again why are you calling me??? Unfortunately, this poor girl had no idea she was the second of two, and had to bear the brunt of my frustration boiling over. No longer able to pretend to be indifferent, I unloaded, and told her that I was not really interested in telling her how I was doing, or catching her up on the many endeavors I was involved in, any more than I was interested in hearing about what new boyfriend's favorite beer was, or whether or not he had scored some "excellent weed". I also let her know that she had earned a spot on that list of people I'm looking forward to sending a free copy of my book to, just to let them know that they bailed on me a little early. Her actual response was: "I can't wait to read it!" Wow. Sometimes the jokes just tell themselves, folks.

I've asked some female friends about this behavior and they're as dumbstruck as I was - or at least they're saying that. I suspect this may be one of those things that all women have agreed to keep secret because it adds to the mystery, allure and utter inexplicabiilty of the feminine psyche - like going to the restroom in groups, waiting periods for calling, and the acceptability of spending more than $1000 on a handbag. The fact that the two women involved were about as different as they could possibly be (age, education, employment, etc.) keeps me from thinking that this is the sort of behavior I can write off to just a crazy idiosyncrasy. Perhaps one of my dear readers can respond with some sort of explanation.

In the past few months, I have enjoyed some very unexpected reunions (via Facebook and other social networking sites) with some long-lost and dear friends from my past - including elementary, middle and high school, college and even law school. I suppose it should come as no surprise that some unwelcome reunions might occur alongside. But the moral of the story is that: in case you're wondering whether you ought to get back in touch with someone who you've previously dated (and broken things off with), just to say hi and that you're happily involved with someone else - don't... the ass you make may be your own.

One Hell of a Pitch

2009-02-24T19:47:00.000-08:00

Okay, so once I mention "my book" to friends, they immediately want to know what it's about - mostly because I didn't really tell anyone besides my co-author that I was writing it. I suppose I just wanted to make sure the whole thing was really going to happen before I got my friends and family all excited about it... but since the project is moving forward - I thought I'd share a rough transcript of what I pitched to those literary agents last weekend, which I hope will suffice as a good answer the oft-posed question above. If not, feel free to send me follow up questions... although, if you do, don't be surprised if you end up getting mentioned in a subsequent piece (you've been warned).

* * *

Hi, my name's Glenn, and I've got a funny book - but first let me tell you a little about me:

I'm an Annapolis man; a Stanford-trained L.A. lawyer who spent three years moonlighting as a cheerleader for the Clippers. I have a membership to tanning salon, a celebrity gym and a grocery co-op. I'm your prototypical L.A. guy - a do-er.

I've written a book with Jen.

Jen is a big city girl-next-door. A San Francisco high-rise desk jockey, who's funnier than she is flashy. She can most often be seen on the sidelines watching it all go by. She's the consummate observer.

We like to refer to ourselves as Generation C - a generation of kids who came of age between the 80's, which thought were ridiculous but had good music, and the 90's which we thought should ditch the flannel and get a decent bath. We're a generation without a voice - misfits, if you will. But if you ask any of us, individually, we've all got something to say.

We met at the nation's top citizen journalism website (www.broowaha.com) where we are both top writers, amassing over 150,000 individual article views between us.

We call it "Smart Mouths: Generation C tells it like it is from both sides of the gender coin"

We took on ten topics - from sex and dating to religion and politics; each expressing our own independent point of view and then, in writing, commenting on the other's. It reads more like a conversation than a collection, and much like talking with anyone from Gen C, it's sharp, blunt and pointed, but it's also funny. That's how we communicate best, getting our point across with humor.

In the end, we found that although being a part of this generation can at times seem very intellectually lonely, and as though we are adrift between the well-defined Generation X and Generation Y, we have a collective voice and identity of our own - and that's really what the book is about.

(Coming to a bookstore near you!)

Well met, and too soon forgotten

2009-02-23T16:05:00.000-08:00

I almost forgot to mention... okay, I did actually forget to mention... My mea culpa follows.

Amidst my weekend romp through SF - I connected up with a good friend from law school who's living and practicing in The City. This is extraordinary for a number of reasons:

First and foremost, I don't have a lot of friends from law school. The transition from public school and public service to private school was one that I wasn't quite ready for. Nothing can really prepare for the slap in the face that is being the public school kid in a room full of kids born to privilege and promise. "Oh you're doing Spring Break in Vietnam? That's great! Me? Oh, I'm going to go out for a few drinks... on consecutive nights." I didn't take it well. But, amidst countless dozens of people who I hope to never, ever see again - there were some truly spectacular people that I'm lucky to have spent that time with. Brett is amongst these precious few.

Second, I'm not a San Francisco type of guy - this is something you'll no doubt read or have read more of if you follow my ramblings with any regularity. The fact that I've located friends in a place like SF surprises even me. I prefer to think of Brett as an LA guy who's trapped in SF because of a good job opportunity... I'm sure he won't agree.

So this is Brett. And what's amazing about Brett is that if you ever meet him - you'll have no idea that there is a river of funny and interesting prose running through his brain. He's not really a quiet guy, per se - it's just that he sometimes keeps the company of very loud and gregarious sorts (i.e. me) and it makes him seem that way. But, over the course of a few too many cocktails at the Big 4 (at the Huntington Hotel), I believe that I've finally convinced him to share his musings with the world at large - in what I believe will be a forthcoming blog. It will be good... trust me. Brett's been an "inside man" for some pretty crazy adventures - and you will want to read about them.

Perhaps he'll even respond to this post with the title and web address so you can just click on over... only time will tell.

Point being, I forgot to mention - in a forum that is alleged to announce the more significant incidents in my life - a very significant reunion. My apologies to Brett and to you all.

We Built This City...

2009-02-17T05:51:00.000-08:00

So, this past weekend, I spent three days in San Francisco, which I have often described as the "greatest weekend city in the world" and it did not disappoint. The trip was a bit of a last-minute affair - since I'd only really "planned" it a week ago. A new friend, also a writer, was headed off to the San Francisco Writers Conference (http://www.sfwriters.org/), and had a room at the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins. Well, the offer of finally being able to get serious about my book project combined with the prospect of spending Valentine's Day at the most romantic hotel (and hotel bar) that I know of proved impossible to resist.

The Conference

There's no doubt that writing is a lonely thing. The experience itself is really best accomplished when alone - but it can also make the distance between the words on your screen and the words in the books on the bookshelves seem impassible. So, being amongst a room full of writers was extraordinarily inspiring. All at once, it seemed as though I might just be able to get my book published after all. All this creativity and resolve in the same place was impressive.

Of course, there's no doubt from the look of the crowd that these are people who spend a significant amount of time by themselves. Which is not to say that it was a particularly unattractive crowd, but the fact that it was a writer's convention would have been immediately obvious to any passers-by without ever having to read any of the posted signs. As in most situations, I was feeling a little bit of an odd-man-out, but under the circumstances, the feeling was more welcome this time than most others.

By the end of the conference I had accomplished two very exciting things:

1. I resolved to begin writing a memoir - which I won't say too much more about here, but it is a project that I'm very excited to begin. There was a fantastic workshop on memoirs - and I've always, always wanted to tell my story. But, more importantly,

2. I had pitched my book to four different literary agents, and all four of them asked me to send them a book proposal and a sample of the book. I am going to put the book pitch in a subsequent blog entry - so stay tuned!

The Hotel

The Top of the Mark is the consummate San Francisco bar. I don't even like San Francisco, and I love this bar. The Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Hotel is a beautiful historic hotel on the very corner of Nob Hill - and at its very top floor sits this ignominious night spot. There are windows all the way around - with a view of the city that makes it feel as though you're in the middle of a postcard. They have one hundred different martinis on their drink menu, and all patrons are seated (i.e. if they don't have a table for you, you're not getting into the bar). In the middle of the place is a small dance floor where a live jazz quintet plays everything from standards, to ballads to very cheeky covers of songs you thought you'd only hear at weddings and barmitzvahs. But the best part of all is that everyone gets dressed up. That's right, a regular night spot where there's no one wearing jeans.

To spend a Valentines Day night at a place was just about the best V-day that I can recall. It was one of those nights when one is tremendously glad to be a grown-up and to be to truthfully enjoy the sublime beauty of such a place on such a night.

* * *

I could go on and on... especially about the Hot & Sour soup at the House of Nanking and the world's greatest buffet (located, surprisingly at an Irish pub/piano bar) - but I imagine that it suffices to simply say that it was one hell of a weekend.

Entitled to the Sunshine

2009-02-08T23:11:00.000-08:00

People who are not from Los Angeles seem to always get that look on their face when we Angelenos complain about winter weather below 50 degrees as though we've just simultaneously admitted to running a dog fighting ring, masterminding a billion dollar ponzi scheme and secretly volunteering for the Palin 2012 campaign. Its like they imagine that Los Angeles, is a lot like where they live, except it's summer all the time. Which is precisely what the California tourism people would like them to believe. And if that were the case, their disgust would be perfectly justified. But, rest assured, in a 158,302 square mile testament to the validity of economics, we Californians are paying (in any number of ways) for year-round sunshine, and on those few occasions that our sunshine state (sorry, Florida) doesn't deliver, it's just like someone left out one of the scoops of ice cream in your Dairy Queen banana split (a reference for you red-staters). You'd paid for three, and dammit, it's three you want - no matter what lesser desserts the surrounding patrons ordered.

Look, it's fine if the folks living in the great frozen middle of our nation want to look at winter like some sort of American rite of passage - but there are some folks willing to pay to not have to deal with snow chains, snotsicles and temperatures that can actually kill you. But rest assured, we are paying for the privilege. Let's just take for example, Indianapolis, IN - a legitimate American big city. The cost of living in Los Angeles, is 52.2% higher than in Indy. Which means that if you were making $100,000 a year in Indy, and you took that "great job" to LA - you'd have in excess of $38K less dispoable income per year. Of course, the high temperature in Indy next Monday is going to be 33 degrees - and in LA, it'll be 67 (and we'll still be pissed about that). If you paid $40,000 for year round sunshine, how would you feel about a week of rain?

And it's not just cash we're paying to live in LA. We lost $6 billion in 2002 in productivity in Southern California due to traffic (and believe it, it's gotten a lot worse since then). What the rest of the country (not counting NYC) refers to as a "traffic jam" we, here in LA, call "empty roads." It's not uncommon to average about 15mph or less during rush hour. Which may not sound so bad, until you realize that the average LA commuter has to travel 15 miles (each way) to and and from work. So, if you believe the common idiom that "time is money" - we're paying again, and paying big.

In a recent survey, Los Angeles finished third amongst America's rudest cities - behind NYC and Boston (which is really no surprise). So, amongst all the sunny, the normal dispositions are anything but. Ask anyone who's lived here - people in LA don't make friends, they network. It's like a prison colony for sociopaths, just with nicer restaurants and more expensive drinks. Who knew that sunshine attracted assholes?

Finally, real estate. I mean, the "dream" of owning a single-family home in LA is the same as they dream of being a millionaire. No, I don't mean because they're the dreams of the same people here - because they're actually the same dream. Think about what kind of house a million dollars buys in your town. Now divide the square footage in that house by a factor of four, put it in a bad part of town, cut the size of the lot down to an eighth of an acre, eliminate the pool, the multiple car garage, the landscaping, and increase the age of the building by thirty years, and you'll have your "million dollar home" in sunny Los Angeles.

With all this paying - you're damned right we want it sunny. All the damned time. Because we paid our money, and we want all three scoops of our 80 degree happiness.