3yrs.

3yrs.

Today's weather is eerily familiar, the Mid Atlantic's version of that day in Minnesota.

I miss Minnesota. I miss Paul. Somedays, like today, I miss knowing that the work I do touches millions. Say something important to someone important, seems like the right thing to do today.

The best speech about Paul and one of the best I've ever heard.

I cry nearly every time I hear it, and get goosebumps every single time. You don't have to, I just do.

Aaron Leavy: Trendsetter.

At 6PM this evening I will be conveyed to New York by that most noble of steads: the Chinatown Bus. Washington DC has a Chinatown, though the veracity of that title is highly questionable. There are a couple of Chinese restaurants and a few grocery stores. But mainly there is the MCI Center. I have to figure that a parade of hockey fans sorta overwhelms what little Chinatown-y vibes may exist.

On the other end (in NYC) I'll get to see Mark and Stacy and of course Brian. Should be a good weekend. I have no idea what we'll be doing. But I'm hoping it's cheap.

I'm bringing my BRDM jersey. Time for some guerilla brand awareness in the mecca of hip. Soon some asipring designer will dredge up from the recesses of their memory the image of an oh-so cool guy with a wonderful red machine logo...and I can only imagine what kind of brilliant gear will result from that. Soon everyone will want to wear our jersey. We will become, as Paul says, more of a marketing phenomenon than a team. Or maybe not.

The Wheels on the Bike Go Round and Flat.

This week I've decided that, as a time and money saving measure, I will bike to work. My bike, purchased in Fort Collins in order to create another point of shared harmony with Jen, is heavy and in general not so great. But it is certainly good enough to meet my most basic bike needs. Ie, I can sit on it, and traverse the distance between home and work in a time that is less than or equal to the bus. That's it. Those are the needs.

Yesterday I get up and am feeling great about this decision. I get this sanctimonious feeling as I pass buses on the way to work. Thinking about how good I am (me personally) for the environment, and how fit and buff I'll be after all this biking. How rewarding this will be. It's a glorious morning, crisp and cool. I start to head down 16th and encounter a long hill, but as with everything this morning it's all downhill. Nothing to stand in my way.

Yeah, well that's not entirely true. Even as I'm enjoying this great morning, I realize, my tires need some air. Well that's not entirely accurate. It's my tubes inside my tires that need some air. And well, that's not entirely correct because some suggests that there is any air in my tubes to start with. As I finish coasting down the hill I realize that the normal rhythm of the bike tires on the ground has started to have a little more bass than usual. I'm sounding more like Snoop than I'd like, as there is a fairly consistent (every revolution as it turns out) sound coming from my back tire. My tire separated from the rim.

I am forced to abort my glorious ride and address the harsh reality that I'm walking my bike to work. So I walk the last 8 blocks to work and lock my bike. Locking my bike is a challenge as the U-lock is too short as is the cable lock. So the brilliant inter-locking patterns of my mind, whereby I am completely secure become something more akin to a taut tie between my bike and the rack. But I digress.

After trying with Paul's help to inflate the tube (no luck, though a special thanks to Paul for the effort), I take my bike to the bike shop. It is then that I meet the biking equivalent of every indie rock record store clerk. He is dismissive and basically scoffs at my bike. As we are walking out he says, in a strangely confrontational yet paternalistic tone: "Given 6 hours I could make this a good bike." I say, oh, what's wrong with it. Knowing full well several things, but wanting an appraisal, not a reprisal. Well I get the second. His answer: Oh...everything, but you don't care. You don't care do you. I feel like my pedatrician is accusing me of replacing formula with gin. I'm trying to be a good bike owner (having now spent nearly 80 bucks on a bike worth 150, just to lock and inflate it). So I pay and leave. The bike ride home is nice. The hill on 16th mocks me on my return trip. Every push of the pedal reminds me that for every stretch of downhill, there's always an uphill on the way back.

It makes the world go 'round, and makes me nutty

It's pricey to live in Washington, DC.

And not really even for the reasons you might assume. I pay less in rent here, than I did in Seattle. I don't have a car, and therefore don't have to pay for gas. Though I do still have to pay for insurance--the car lives at my parent's house, it's like after years of unfaithful service it's been put out to stud, to procreate and annoy future generations of car owners. But having friends and little time to cook, that destroys my budgets like a paper airplane in a forest fire. Summary of expenses of the past 24 hours.

Metro to frisbee: 1.35
Metro from frisbee to lunch: 1.35
Lunch (ordering very cheaply): 10.71
Bookstore browsing: free
Movie (matinee): 6.75
Metro home: 1.35
Metrobus to work: 1.25
Breakfast burrito: 3.85
Lunch: 5.45
Metro to Paul's: 1.35
Bike lock: 34.00
Bike reflector: 12.00
REI membership: 15.00
Total for the past day and a half: 94.41

And it's certainly not as though I'm leading an extravagant lifestyle. I'm grateful that to be with my friends I don't have to go and drink, because I'd be even poorer. And yes the bike lock was bought for several good reasons: 1) to promote me exercising more, 2) cutting down on Metro fare. And the bike reflector is so I don't die, which seems like an expense worth making.

It's just annoying. I spend so much of my time worrying about money. I don't know what it's like to be unconcerned about it. I always have this fear of some horrible expense, or being fired, or some other financially destructive wave. It's really fucking annoying, frankly. I don't spend lavishly. I don't travel. (much). I don't drink (much). I don't smoke (at all). I don't buy Cds, one in the past 6 months. I spend less than 6 bucks at lunch nearly every day. I don't use a car. and yet I always seem to find some way to fuck up my budget. One month it was replacing my glasses. One month it was paying for the next 6months of car insurance. There's always something. I'm sick of it.

I usually try to have these posts have some arc, some whining, some good part, some funny, some earnest. This one doesn't have those features, it's really just me being frustrated with the cost of living, and not sure what to do. I guess I will have to wake up earlier and make lunches. That'll help a little. And I figure if I bike a few days a week I can save maybe 20 bucks a month that way.

Sorry for the tirade. I'm sure the next post will be much happier. And things will get back to normal.

Bright Smile.

A fairly normal weekend this one. The amazing thing is how fortunate I feel to have weekends (at all) like this. I'm certainly in the right place these days.

At 6P I left work and walked to my bank, dropped off my check and wandered over to 2nd Story books. I feel, irrationally, like I'm cheating on a lover whenever I go to any bookstore in DC that's not Kramer Books and Afterwards. I look around to make sure no one I know sees me going in. I had about 20 minutes to kill before I met my friends at the Metro. I spent the time eagerly and gingerly going through hundreds of maps, lithographs and woodblock prints-- most under 30 bucks. When I get a little more money, or a little less self-restraint (more likely of the two options) I'll pick up a few lithographs to decorate the house. I had this long time where I found lithograpsh really lacking. But after spending time at the Met and really looking at the works and thinking about how they are constructed, I became something of a convert. So it'll be nice to get one of those for the bare concrete walls of my apartment.

After 2nd Story I met JKD, Liz, Jesseca and Amanda. We were heading to Virginia to see Josh Ritter and the Frames. I have burned Josh cds for Amanda (when we were in Minnesota), and Jesseca and Liz. I'm like the Johnny Appleseed of Josh Ritter.

We jumped on the Metro and headed deep (well sorta) into Virginia. I, for one, don't like Virginia. I don't like visiting, I don't like being there really at all. It's a place that just feels weird and for reasons that I cannot fully articulate I just don't like it. It's a bit like trying to explain the feeling right before you sneeze. It doesn't really make sense or compare to any other feelings...but I have that kind of feeling about Virginia, it's like something awkward, loud and phlegmy is going to happen. Yuck.

We get to the venue, get some tix and head out for Thai food. Great Thai food. Good conversation. The evening is working well.

Getting into the venue is tricky. I have my messenger bag and am forced to throw out my bottle of water, and I have to argue and plead to avoid having to throw out the tupperwear container with Paul's lasagna from the night before (sadly I forgot to refrigerate it). JKD is unable to bring in a thermos, apparently there is some great concern about contraband liquid in the venue.

The concert itself is amazing. Josh comes out in a long coat. He's in good voice, energetic. and it's clear that my friends are enjoying themselves. Which was probably my biggest concern. I think some people may have gone mainly to humor/placate me. And knowing that they weren't going to regret that decision was great. Mixed with cheap PBR, familiar songs and good friends the evening was a pleasure.

Josh is, as ever, smiley and dopey. "Our little rockstar," as JKD calls him.

The Frames are tremendous. High energy. Clearly having fun. They cover To Be of Use by Smog (with the memorable lyric, "Most of my fantasies are of making someone else come.") They cover as part of another song Pure Imagination from Willy Wonka. It's a great fucking evening. Just a hoot.

Saturday:
I wake up early. Far too early. Put on some Petey Pable (Raise Up) and get ready for Raze's game. I head over to JKD's and meet Amanda and Libby there and we drive to Virgina (grrr) for a game. I'm fired up. I am sick of losing and decide that I am going to be dominant in this game. I am going to get open all the time, I am going to throw well, and most importantly that I am going to shut my guy down on defense. And you know what, I did those things. It felt incredible. I played really strong defense and it was, for the first time, more fun than offense. And yet. We lost.

A wonderful leisurely drive back to the District under a heroically blue sky. I got home and just hung out for the rest of the day. Made some guacamole, drank a beer or two, watched Almost Famous.

Later in the evening I went to Jesseca's friends' party. The preponderance of Jesseca's friends in the district are Jewish. I walked into a room filled will relatively short, semitic looking guys with scruffy beards, with names like Micah and Juda and Chaim (okay that I made up, but seriously it was an incredible assemblage of 20 something Jews). There were 3 Brandeis grads. I'm glad I started growing my beard earlier in the week, otherwise I'd have been cast out. It was a good time. Good conversation, good beer, great goat cheese. A fine evening. Sadly the hosts of the party were throwing the party as a last hooray before they move. I'm quite certain I'd be good friends with them, and it's sad to know that's not going to happen now (or at least less likely).

Sunday:
Pickup at the Polo fields. Decent turn out. The energy I mustered for defense on Saturday was wholly absent on Sunday. I did have spiffy new socks courtesy of Ms. Sproat. Quite nice. Sadly my play was considerably less spiffy than my socks, but a good time was had by all. Afterwards headed to Dupont for lunch/dinner, book shopping, and a movie (The Aristocrats). Now I'm going to remove my contacts, pour myself a Magic Hat, plant myself on the 14yr old makeout couch and remind myself why I loved The Great Gatsby as a 10th grader.

I lead a blessed life, and I try hard to remember just how fortunate I am. I have friends whom I adore. People to learn from (and make eggs with , and get socks from, and make stupid jokes to)...life isn't too shabby for Aaron.

Like Oprah, kinda.

So as I child I remember shopping with my mom and walking to the checkout counter and seeing a tabloid with the inside scoop into Oprah's miraculous weight loss or her terrifying weight gain. Well this is the requiste post about Aaron's facial hair. Starting Tuesday morning...I began Operation Winterize. I'm bringing back the beard. A focus group of close friends reveals that attitudes are mixed on the issue. Some friends see the beard as a sexy choice, one that fits with their values. Others see the beard as a barrier towards ones kissibility. I may later conduct some polling to gain a more projectable sense of the public's opinion on the matter. For now I'm behaving like the bold leader we always knew I was...bravely acting even in the face of uncertain polling numbers. That's right, I don't make decisions based on polls. I'm far more whimsy-prone than that.

We'll see how long this lasts. Turns out I can grow facial hair pretty quickly. I'm past the indie-rock stubble and towards what Mark would certainly call a respectable beard after less than a week.

What month am I...

I was talking with my friend Katie White. She has recently moved with her boyfriend to Florida. she was recounting the incredible heat and the consistent weather. I realized why this bothered me (for her specifically). I've always associated Katie with the period in Late fall before Winter comes. She's a november person. She seems to best emody her own specific talents, values, and virtues in that time. I got to wondering, what season to I think best fits other people I know.

Brian is August. Baseball season, dark shoes, black shorts.
Mark is trickier, I'd say September. His birthday. When we met. The start of school. the start of football season. it's the time when his relentless belief that things can be better and different seems most real, most true.

What about others? do people associate themselves, me, others with a month.

Who belongs to what month, who belongs in what season.

I think I'm May. Something about the liminal state between spring and summer. The transition from growing to blossoming. The period when late afternoon naps spent under a single sheet with the windows open are possible.

After After Ashley

Went with Brian (who is visiting this weekend, or at least for part of it) to see Susan's play: After Ashely. Sadly it's been, I calculated, nearly 3 years since I've seen any theater. That's terrible. Same thing with dance (I have seen one piece since Ann and I broke up). So this week I am rectifying these transgressions against my artistic health.

After Ashley was, first and foremost, great fun. It was interesting, funnny, and challenging. And it was free. So maybe that's first. I think the show itself warrants its own post. When I was in HS and did theater people brought you flowers when they came to see your show. So I thought, well I'll get Susan some flowers and bring them to her. Apparently this was above and beyond. All the cast were shocked to see the ASM (assistant stage manager) with flowers. I just figured it was a nice thing to do for a friend in the "biz."

After "After Ashley" we went to Jaleo for tapas. I hate tapas. I find it over priced, over hyped and wholly underwhelming. But we went to tapas. I cannot stress enough the degree to which I find tapas to be the most annoying of new trends. The food always seems greasy and prepared haphazardly. Over presented and under cooked or underwhelming and over priced. I think of tapas sort of like Polly Pocket. Being small and easily shared doesn't make something distasteful better. It just makes it smaller, and supposedly cute. I for one, have no use for cute food. I love appetizers. I love sharing food. But something about the tapas I've had has left me unsatisfied.

I ordered a full plate meal. It consisted of chicken. just a bunch of chicken, poorly seasoned, ill prepared and exceedingly chewy. Jaleo and I are not friends. We will, god willing, not be seeing any more of eachother.

Winter goals

1. ENDURANCE I. I want to be able to play at full intensity 3-5 more points per game. I usually can play 80% of my points at full intensity and then the rest at 75%. I want another 3-5 at full speed, full recover.
2. ENDURANCE II. I'd like to be able to play long all game. I've played so much handler that or mid that I don't really have the stamina to play long (with 5 yard set ups and 40 yard cuts) for long points all game. This needs to change and to do so I need to start to run. I've never run more than 3 miles in my life. This winter I want to finish being able to run 6.
3. VERTICAL. I want 3-5 inches on my vertical. Any increase in my vertical will result in a stronger first step. and lord knows that can't hurt.
4. BACKHAND BREAK. I didn't break mark at Regionals with a backhand. This needs to change.
5. HECKLING. I'm a good heckler. But I need to really think about the essence of mockery, really explore the mental space and find ways to taunt while educating, humiliate while being humorous.

In service of these goals, I went for a little run this evening. 2.8 miles in about 25 minutes. Felt nice.


Completely unrelated thoughts: I'm trying to think of songs (ideally well travelled hip hop or something easily recognized) to turn into frisbee songs that we can sing on the sidelines during games.

One team started their game by singing Milkshake by Kelis. I'm proposing Nothing But a G Thang, maybe Holiday Inn...something that has a fun chorus that people know, and we can adapt. Thoughts?

Belarus and Spinal Tap

A couple of random anecdotes from the past week or two.

1. A couple of weeks ago when Rita was bearing down on Houston (etc) a friend remarked that meteorologists were forced to reclassify Rita. It was larger than a Category 5 so they called it a monster. See this is bad science. If there are categories for hurricanes you really need to have one that encompasses all kinds of hurricanes. Seriously, just make there be a Category 6. For instance maybe Category 6 is a hurricane that is so giantic that it causes the earth to spin against its own axis. You can't have something that's beyond the Category system. Reminds me of the scene from Spinal Tap. This one goes to 11. Why don't you make 10 higher... Same thought.

2. My coworker answers the phone, "Belden, Russonello and Stewart" and gets this perplexed look on her face. Finally after a few slowly spoken sentences she says, "I'm pretty sure you have the wrong number." She hangs up and begins laughing uncontrollably. Turns out the caller was asking for the Belarus Embassay. I guess it's not that hard to confuse Beldon, Russonello and Stewart with Belarus...and I'm pretty sure that BRS (our abbreviation is the same as that for Belarus).

This word hero, I don't think it means what you think it means

"I think that if Barbara Lee would read the history of Joe McCarthy she would realize that he was a hero for America."

Strange. I am struggling to invent a sentence that's less true.

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In highly unrelated news: I'm playing in Regionals this weekend. This will be my first trip to Regionals. I realized that I have the least big tournament experience of anyone on my team. I will be on the starting line (most likely) at Regionals, and everyone else will know that feeling but me. It's like I missed a couple of steps along the way. You're supposed to work your way up, playing with increasingly strong teams. I apparently skipped that step. Went from teams that would get bageled at Regionals to playing an integral role for a team that will be competitive. I don't harbor delusions that we're going to make nationals or that we'll finish in the top 5-6. But it's certainly possible for us to finish around 8. No matter the finish, I'm excited about next year and thrilled to be playing with this team. Good people, good approach (overall). Should be fun. Here's hoping I can walk come Monday. I make no promises. I hear that ACLs are valuable. And groins, hamstrings are pretty sweet from what I can gather, ankles do their thing and you love them for it. I'm just hoping that my parts love me after this weekend. Lord knows I'm a horrible abuser, but they seem to take me back time and again.

Arrogance

I've never read a book by Tom Wolfe. Growing up, my parents had a ratty paperback copy of Bonfire of the Vanities on the shelf next to their bed. It was an ugly book. I was vaguely aware that there was a movie of the same name. Never appealed to me, and sadly since it was a book owned by my parents in paperback I sort of assumed it wasn't high literature. Not sure it is, but that's neither here nor there.

Last night while discussing branding and this Onion article, JKD emails me this link. It's hard for me to imagine the talent that justifies this much ego. Tom Wolfe looks like a small town mayor from the 30s dressed up for his office portrait. It's hard to imagine that he himself is so potent as a brand as to justify this kind of arrogance.

The whole thing suggests a new level of personal definition. It's strange. Branding has gone from something you do to the ass of cattle, to something that companies seek, to something that major companies devote budgets somewhat akin to the GDP of small Asian nations to define, and now people are becoming brands. I read somewhere that David Bowie offered stock in himself. Now Tom Wolfe is making himself a brand. The only other person who I know of who has self branded as effectively is Thomas Kincaid. I, myself, hate Kincaid like he stole my date, and shot my dog. His work is so purposefully devoid of talent. So fuzzy and readily digestable as to make Norman Rockwell seem like Maplethorpe. Kincaid is like the pureed carrots of art. It asks nothing of the viewer and, sadly, offers nothing to viewers. But he has branded himself. He has factories that produce posters to which he applies a few highlights and then sells them as original works. I guess two dots of paint on the snow capped roof of yet another warmly lit cottage in the middle distance is almost like an original work. Granted using the term original to describe any of his works is a fallacy of incredible proportions. I find his work so cloyingly annoying that I often wonder that there are enough shitty motels to justify his continued creation. And yet, he is a brand. Hooray! Remind me that if I ever try to brand myself I should first do it with a hot iron.

9.23:07

A while back I was introduced to Over Heard in NY. Basically it's hundreds of people who record the minutae and ridiculousness of overheard conversations in the Big Apple. My fellow commuters tend to be both somber and sober in the mornings, so I get few interesting overheard nuggets. I have witnessed a woman dilligently recording in a nicely bound leather journal every text message she received (or sent) from a lover of hers. The book was open directly under me (as I stood) and several of the passages were particularly sweet and corny. One indicated that her paramour "thinks of her roughly every 37.8 seconds." The strange thing, to me, was that she was recording the date, time and second that she received each and every message. It became more like an autistic librarian effort than a catalogue of love letters.

But who am I to criticize young lover. I've done some strange and (I thought touching) things while deeply in love, so here's to the text message lady. Hope it works out.

Putting a puzzle together, wearing mittens

I’m laying on the couch I call the "14 yr old makeout couch." This couch, acquired by my roommate Dave has as its primary defining characteristics two features which suggest to me the dreams of 14 year old boys. The couch is sort of suede-y, and most importantly it functions a bit like a chaise lounge. If you pull the arms of the couch towards you, they can be lowered into full recline, as can the back. It converts from a velvety/suede couch into a bed of same. Dave loves it, though thankfully not for those reasons. I on the other hand find it not a little preposterous and generally silly. But it serves the purpose, and I have taken a few naps in its gentle embrace, so I shouldn’t complain too much.

I’m sitting here alone. As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been leading the life of a galavanting socialite or someone similarly engaged in evening activities. I’ve lamented this fact, and whined about it. And tonight I find myself occupying my apartment in total solitude. And without being too blunt, I’m bored out of my fucking mind. I want to be talking to people, making friends, telling stories, hearing jokes, throwing Frisbees, doing something. Instead I’m checking and rechecking my email, and now sitting to write this.

And yet, whining aside, it’s terrific. In the final analysis, I think I may be overloading on people right now, if I’m this distracted and bored while sitting alone. I may want to try and spend a little more time with just Aaron, otherwise I may lose my damn mind.

I guess I need alone time, but though how much is still an issue of some debate. Tonight I’m buzzing with thoughts about this weekend’s Sectional tournament. (to read more you can check out another blog project of mine http://www.brdmultimate.blogspot.com/) But the realization that there are tons of people with whom I could be hanging out right now, several just a few blocks away, well that’s just peachy keen. I’m thinking about the various new friends I’ve made and trying to sort out what it means that I’m making considerably more female friends, and um…well, what comes next. I never really bought the thesis of When Harry Met Sally that it’s hard to have cross gendered friends without some (some) relational pressures interceding, but I think it may be on to something.

All of which leads me to a strange conclusion. I now realize. I’ve never really dated before. I’ve only ever entered into relationships with close friends. The idea of asking someone whom I don’t *really* know to a meal or movie is completely foreign. Not so much scary or intimidating, as simply foreign. And if you ask someone to diner who is in possession of XX chromosomes, does that have to be a date? What signals am I sending? I feel like a jittery telegraph operator, I'm undoubtedly sending and receiving signals that mean nothing. I don’t know. When is a movie just something you watch with another person, and when is a movie a signal of some primal dating instinct. It's all Greek to me.

Unlike the 14 yr old whom I imagine loves my couch, I don’t really have the basic experience of dating. I don’t know the official rules. It feels a little bit like trying to piece together the rules of cricket by watching a test match. I get the general goal of the game, and some of the terms, but the strategy is impenetrably confusing to me.

But, even if I'm struggling with the rules and basic truisms of dating or the precursor to dating (really). But, the best part of all of this is the realization for me that dating someone and ending the romantic part of that relationship doesn’t have to come with the requisite strife and sorrow that ending a 2 year relationship does. I have been worrying that I better choose really carefully, lest I mess up and have to endure another gut wrenching break-up. This isn't going to hurt like my last break up. This is pulling off a Band-Aid not Civil War field surgery.

People date all the time. You can date and find out that after a few days, weeks or months it isn’t working and that’s fine. It’s not some earth shattering upheaval, hell, it can be less of an ordeal than changing long distance carriers.

So the past few weeks have been spent trying to figure out what people think of me vis a vis dating, and what I think of them. But it’s funny. How can I know what another person is thinking when, with unfettered access to my own thoughts, I’m often flummoxed. I gotta imagine that if I don’t know what I think, knowing what they think is like cleaning the Aegean stables. I was talking about this with a friend (Liz) and described the quandary as trying to put together a puzzle with mittens on. Seems about right. And yet, it’s still pretty fun. Further vague updates as events warrant.

Underdogs

Longtime readers (or long time friends) no doubt know that one of my closest friends is Brian Fusco. You may remember him from the various Red Sox vs. Yankees posts this time last year. Brian is, and has been for as long as I've known him (almost 10 years now) a devoted Yankees fans. His devotion to the pin striped ones is always best described as nearly religious. It fulfills, as best I can tell, a bonding function in his family. It's something that his brothers and father share, and something that is a point of commonality. And lord knows that's important.

His fandom is also a source of fairly frequent teasing from Mark and I -- we who dislike the machine that is (or recently was) the Yankees.

But the odd thing, as I've come to realize is that Brian in his professional life always roots for the underdog. And in some cases for the preposterous, jaw dropping, eye-rubbing underdog.

Instance 1. Brian moved out from New York to join me, JKD and Tanner in Iowa. He moved without a job (same for the others, I'd already been hired) in order to do numerous tasks of dubious personal enjoyment to help a fiesty, spine-bearing Democrat compete in Iowa...against the life time party guy, John Kerry. He willfully moved to Iowa to do this (I guess I did so as well, but other people's devotion to these things amazes me, my own just seems like a programming error).

Results. Um, yeah. We lost. But I challenge anyone living in a non-Schiavo like state to tell me we weren't right. Each of the things that men and women of lesser vision attacked us for turned out to be diversions from a weak argument of their own. But, we lost. And in a Jana Novatna sort way.

Instance 2. Less risky, but still somewhat outlandish in theory. Brian moved to Wisconsin. Specifically to La Crosse. He did this to so that he might help re-elect (see less outlandish) a guy who voted against the Patriot Act. This is at a time when every Democrat (well, lots of the ones I don't like) were saying that you had to be strong and tough. Apparently the way you demonstrate these values is by whining like a girl with a hop-scotch related injury. You whine about how you were tricked, how you really thought you could trust the president. Anyways Brian packs up and moves to help a nebbish Jewish guy try to win in Wisconsin. Because why not. Now I also worked for Paul Wellstone. A nebish Jewish professor...but again the insanity of others amazes, mine just feels normal.

Results
Now I guess technically Russ Feingold isn't an underdog, but how many people figured he'd basically prevent Kerry from getting his ass whooped in Wisconsin. That's right the regal senator grabbed on with both hands to little radical Russ' coatails and let the ground work of clinically insane people like Brian, and the Matts carry him to victory in Wisconsin.

Instance 3. Brian moved back to New York and is working for a white woman running for city council in.....wait for it, Harlem.

Results. We'll find out on Tuesday.

I guess when your childhood team is the winningest team in the history of sports, you can make your life's mission to work for long shots.

Good luck Brian.

Hey there...

So the past month has been hectic. I looked back at my calendar and for every single day over the past 4 weeks I've had something. Practice or games (14 times). Visitors. Birthday parties. Dim Sum. Trips to Phoenix. In general, I've been busy. And while I love being busy (as it keeps me social and prevents me from worrying about...well, a lot of things) I'm overloaded. I haven't gone to bed early in what feels like forever. Never one to favor the lukewarm middle ground I've gone from feeling sedentary in Seattle to wired in Washington.

Which brings me to this blog, this blog which I love and of which I have been neglectful. I realize that there are a couple of people who seem to enjoy reading it, and I've been unable to generate any content, largely because I've been alone for 10-15 minutes a day for a month. I'm going to try and return to writing more. I feel good when I write, and I've missed doing it. So for any of you, if there are any, who wish I'd written more--sorry. I'll try to do better.

Basic updates:

After journeying hither and yon yesterday I finally found cufflinks (for my new shirt) at the Dollar Store in Mount Pleasant. I walked in there, exasperated at not being able to find these incredibly simple things. I also was cursing my father, aren't cufflinks the kind of thing that a father gives to his son. Some sort of strange and pointless father son moment that is supposed to make up for a lifetime of distant parenting and mixed messages. Turns out I got the good father and no cufflinks. So I guess it's a fair trade. Anyways after searching high and low (well, a few stores anyways) I finally wander into the Dollar Store and ask for cufflinks. The woman working there informs me that "no" they do not have any, they've just sold out. Immediately another employee shouts to her something in a language I don't recognize and then says in English that they do have cufflinks. Later it is related to me that the 1st woman was certain I'd asked for Cornflakes. Apparently my English isn't nearly as good as I'd hoped, or at least my diction isn't.

After cufflinks were purchased, it was time for a return to Alex's Unisex Hair. Avid readers will remember my spicy visit earlier this summer. I liked the results from that first cut, so I ventured back. This time I was greeted by a woman who spoke absolutely no English besides the word clipper. Non-marine, white guy hair cuts are pretty rare in this place. But the price is right, it's close to home, and hell how badly can you mess up a man's haircut. After gesturing and trying to convey length, the woman asked me if I wanted clippers. Not waiting for the answer she asked Uno, Dos. I'm guessing that's shorthand for the length of cut. I gesticulated wildly making scissors out of my fingers. It was like an impromptu Roshambo had broken out and I was playing alone. Finally a guy a few chairs down translated, my motion into Spanish for scissors and out came the blades and the clippers were replaced.

Normally when I get a haircut I spend a lot of time having conversations about really mundane things, and generally sort of wishing I could just veg out. Well this was wholly appropriate situationally. She asked no questions, and I offered no small talk. She worked and watched tv, and I stared at myself in the mirror. Realizing for the first time, just how deeply creased my face is. I've developed wrinkles or at least marks that indicate age. It's not really something that troubles me, more just the strange realization that I don't know my own face as well as I thought.

Finally the hair cut was finished. The woman combed all of my hair straight back into something that resembled the look you'd see on a 80s film version of a mobster. My hair, in this process, acquired more grease and than a Rizzo appreciation festival. But the hair cut was cheap (11 bucks) and quick, and I didn't have to say anything. I parted with my best, and most sincere "gracias," which brought a smile and a patronizing (wholly deservedly) "something something something something, poquito (sp) Espagnol." I smiled. She smiled and laugh.

I guess 4 years of crappy highschool French doesn't really help so much when you live in a Hispanic neighborhood. Maybe I can pick up some Spanish along the way. I know (think, I know) poquito means small...she was being generous, I know one word, that's not a small amount that's nothing.

FRT

A random 10 from my itunes (I've started bringing my laptop to work to serve as a jukebox, because my beloved ipod has fallen on hard times).

You're Missing--Bruce Springsteen
Cut your hair--Pavement
Memory Lane--Elliot Smith
All is Grace--Palace Brothers
Rival--Pearl Jam
Sidewalk--Built to Spill
That was your mother--Paul Simon
Ohio--Neil Young
Sad But True--Metallica
Angels on her shoulders--Josh Ritter

I'm listening to a bunch of new stuff (to me) lately. Lots of Shins and Decemberists. Highly recommend each. I realize I'm late to catch on to each of them, but still, great stuff.

"Yeah, Sports!"

Like my life, this blog, I fear (know? expect?) has been taken over by ultimate. It’s a slow, creeping process where by I relinquish any pretense that the silly game which I love is some temporary external activity. It’s ceased to simply be something I do, a choice among choices, it has a far more definitional feel about it. Ultimate represents some sort of boundary within which my personality and personal drama are acted out. The community of people with whom I share this passion or I guess, affliction, continues to grow in size and prominence. Like any similar change, the movement into a new community comes with gains and losses. I’ve made new friends in DC. The community has come to mean meeting people with whom I shout silly things, scrape knees (I’ve come home bleeding 5 out of the last 8 nights), commemorate victories pyrrhic and epic, and generally recount the great fortune, that is, sharing this passion. And in general I love it. There are days when it can be absolutely taxing, just emotionally wrengching. And somedays, I do wish I could better explain it. I’d love to be able to give voice to the deep need in my life that ultimate fulfills. But we all have our goals, some want to buy the world a Coke, and that’s hard too.

The emotionally wrenching part is hardest to explain. Some days I expend so much energy on the sidelines and on the field that I’m almost in tears in the quiet moments that follow the incredible physical and I’m almost embarrassed to admit, spiritual high of shared competition. Tonight I’m residing in one of those moments. There is a classic sporting expression, an exhortation to further sacrifice: “leave it all on the field.” I’ve always been partial to this expression and the sentiment it represents. My own personal mantra has been something similar, “it only hurts when you lose.” For me the notion of losing is a fairly amorphous one, there is losing in the absolute fashion (scoring fewer points) but there is also the loss that comes from feeling like something less that your best was offered in support of your teammates. The gnawing, clawing painful realization that people, friends who count upon you (even in a silly game) received less than your last full measure (not in the Lincoln sense—I’m not that crazy) of effort. And so I play ultimate with a willful disregard of its toll on my body. I layout eagerly, knowing full well it will destroy my shoulder, bruise my chest (and occasionally ego) and often tweak my knee. And while it’s not true, in any real sense, I believe that it only hurts when you lose (the will to compete or to give of yourself, that is)

And so, in general, I try my best to leave everything on the field. When I was younger and liked team sports less, the goal was to impress my parents, or prove to older bullies that I was more than just the smart kid in class. I guess that was the first and, for a long time, dominant reason that sports mattered to me. I was constantly trying to prove to kids who hated me that I was worthy of their admiration or at least tolerance. The one sentence, never uttered, for which I played was: "Wow, Aaron, you’re smart and you can really play ______" (insert sport X). In service of this goal (acceptance) I adopted a sporting persona dramatically different from my everyday life. In normal life I was, when younger, different from my peers and woefully uncool (by their measures). I cared about things that never mattered to my classmates. I was a progressive child in a conservative suburb. Even more so, I was tender. When teased, I cried. When upset I cried. When frustrated, which was pretty much all the time, I felt alone and unloved by my peers. None of these things are remarkable, nor do I assume them to be, they just are necessary explanations in order to better understand the transformative role that sports played in my younger life—and may help to explain why ultimate is such an emotionally relevant part of my current life.

As a kid, if I was tripped or bullied or just embarrassed I felt helpless. No where in the rules of the playground could I find a loophole that permitted safe harbor for the geeky, hyperactive kid who cared more about national politics than pop music. But sports allowed me an outlet. It was a place where I could reinvent myself. Instead of being the kid who got hit and cried, I became the kid who sought physical contact and never ever cried. If I was hit (as happened) in the knee with a pitch while catching I immediately tried to stand up. In this case, my knee failed to support my weight and I came crashing back to the ground. But I kept trying to stand and protested loudly and angrily at being taken out of the game. A failure to complete an inning was akin to admitting personal failure, personal limitations and sports was, and maybe still is, about killing that part of me. About bringing to the fore an Aaron who can destroy by force of will the part of me that worries about my peers and fears their condemnation. I should further explain that I was never the strongest (pretty clear), fastest (see previous parenthesis) or more capable. But I was among the most intense players. My sports of choice growing up were baseball and basketball. I was never officially allowed to play football, though our backyard variety further reinforced the theme. We had a standing rule in the football games of my younger days where you could perform an onsides kick. This basically involved throwing the kickoff as high as you could and while the ball was descending from its great and loping arc you would gather around the poor sap who decided to catch the football and then as absolutely deck him. You would try to gather as much momentum, and turn it into as much pure force as possible only to release it on a supposed friend at his most vulnerable moment.

I was always the receiver of the kickoffs. I always wanted the ball. I wanted to know that, on a sports field, I could take whatever hit was delivered and that I would not fumble and would not fail.

In my other “official” sports the story was much the same. I pitched and caught in little league. Loving above all other moments, the collision at the plate. It was the chance for the skinny kid with the strange inability to shut up or be normal to take the best shot from the larger, well-loved boys. And with the armor of my position and my persona fully intact, I felt invincible. In school I could be bullied, harassed, taunted, mocked and sometimes made to cry. Behind the plate I was tougher than you, harder than you, and never ever dropped the ball. In 9-10 collisions at the plate in my little league days, I never dropped the ball. I was hit so hard and so flagrantly fouled in one game that the offending player was ejected, but I never dropped the ball—doing so was showing weakness, and that was the role of Real Aaron. Sports Aaron fit in, oh sure he’d reference NPR instead of WBZZ, and he’d talk about the righteousness of Lloyd Bentsen and the folly of Dan Quayle instead of ….oh I don’t know, nearly anything else, but overall he played a role, he was of value.

In retrospect, my elementary and middle school peers were some pretty desperate people. It was a desperation borne of recognition. They knew that there had to be winners and losers. They recognized far earlier than I did that childhood social interactions are built around who is winning and who is losing. Who knows the grossest thing, who knows the most about this taboo of taboos we call sex (Answer everyone else but Aaron. I was, and maybe still am, remarkably clueless). If the answer was you, you were winning. If you could pick on someone else you were winning. As a child I thought of social interactions as something more than a zero sum game. I was not interested in defining my role in opposition to yours. Never occurred to me. I thought we could all be winners. It sounds naïve and probably was. It’s only now, I mean literally right now as I write this that I realized just perfectly sports fit into my childhood. Sports were a place where keeping the tally of who was winning and who was losing was fair. It was based on performance, on effort, on ability. It had nothing to do with whether you were cool. For a few months in the summer people like me would be valued, would contribute and would undermine the veracity of the stereotype which I so ably wore during the school year.

So what, if anything, does this have to do with my life today. I think ultimate plays a similar role to sports from my youth. I have an insatiable need to prove that I’m worth something. This gnawing insecurity that maybe I’m no good. Either objectively or in relative terms. I’m not sure where this insecurity comes from. But I know that something about ultimate helps me cope. Something about testing myself and finding my actions worthy of occasional admiration makes me feel like a tolerable human being. Ultimate is a chance to prove to myself and to people about whom I care a great deal that I’m worth caring for. That any affection they may have for me is not misplaced because I’ll give whatever I have to be worthy of it. This probably sounds a bit absurd, and over the top, and may be just that. But there is a part of me that feels it might be true.

And so I play ultimate with a reckless abandon. In the end, for me, it is about offering up to the good of the team all your physical gifts and making yourself completely emotionally present throughout the games and practices. I show up to games having spent the morning pacing around my apartment because I cannot calm down. I want to play so badly. I pace on the sidelines because I cannot sit still. I just want to be helping my teammates so badly. Even these people, whom I’ve known for a matter of months, I love. It’s a weird love, not the full lasting deep kind. Not the real kind. So maybe love is the wrong word, but it’s a devotion that’s similar to that. It’s a feeling of kinship, or maybe fellowship. But it’s emotionally draining. To spend a weekend with people you adore, yelling, screaming, diving, straining, bleeding and fighting is taxing. And after the joy of shared competition is over and after the cars are packed and the players returned to their normal Sunday routine (icing, trying to explain to significant others why they are hurt, again) we’re all back to being real, normal people. It’s like the end of the summer as a child. The end of every tournament is the end of the magical space in which I can redefine my ability and personality. I have to talk in sentences that makes sense. I won’t be able to say “Yeah, BRDM” or “Yeah, Paul*,” “Yeah, tapping the keg” (ad nauseum) and have it make sense. I lose that world at the end of every tournament. After “leaving it all on the field” I have almost nothing left. I’m emotionally spent, I’m just wiped out.

And while I know it’ll be back to this world again soon, and that unlike in my youth, my real life is pretty fucking stellar, it’s still sad. It’s an emotional remnant of a time when sports allowed me to feel worthy, and know that I could be valuable. I guess we all need that, and so maybe that’s how I should explain ultimate. It’s my community, it’s my place where I want desperately to be found worthy, and where I want to be a part of something where winning and losing aren’t just a zero sum game. This weekend, we lost every game, and as I came back to my apartment yesterday and my roommate’s friend asked me as I struggled to walk and bled all over my socks, "Was it worth it?" To which I replied “There’s no where I’d rather have been, and nothing I’d rather have been doing.”


*I realize this is a pretty unfunny post, and may read terribly in the morning. But right now it says a lot of things that I need to say, so it’s going to get posted. But, also one really funny movement from the weekend. So while playing ultimate it is very common for people to shout, “Yeah, BRDM.” Basically the syntax is as follows, Yeah followed by any noun, many of the verbs or any concept. You can cheer for just about anything you can imagine. Case in point, a teammate of mine throws a very errant pass to another teammate. The disc is coming down slowly and several people are gathered under it. I’m on the sideline and say hopefully, it’s alright he’s going to catch it. The disc is predictably swatted away by one of three defenders. I take a beat and turn to Shamik, who heard my previous assurance that “he” was going to catch it and say, “I never said who ‘he’ was.” To which Shamik replies, “Yeah, caveat.”

What's in a Number, What's in a Name

DC Nasty, the team I joined upon moving to DC, has undergone a transformation. After several years with the same name and a rotating lineup, we chose to change our name (and hopefully keep our lineup). It's been a period of changes for the team. For one thing many of our key players are completely new. My teammates Ed, Shamik, Paul, Lily and Megan are all new to the team. Though I think I may be the newest of that group. That’s some serious turnover and I think those additions will help (though I cannot speak to the players whom we replaced). All the same an old name failed to capture the soul of this new entity.

So we did what all good democratic entities do: we voted. Everyone on the team was encouraged (frankly I hounded people) to submit names to the group. In the end we accumulated 41 names. Many stunk, some of your author’s choices, in retrospect, were a bit off. Though I will continue to believe that St. Eugene could be a great name (St. Eugene is the patron saint of dysfunctional families, a pretty apt description for most ultimate teams). After voting (a 3 choice weighted vote administered by yours truly) we whittled the list to three choices: Wiki, U-Dog and Polly and Illuminati. Wiki as in the –pedia, and it’s Hawaiian for fast and informal, U-dog is a reference to the 60s cartoon, and Illuminati just sounded cool to enough folks.

Following a tournament we gathered together to consume some grilled meats and down a few beers in the hopes of uniting this motley crew of folks into a team. Never underestimate the value of shared meals, stories and humiliation as team building exercises. We managed to achieve each of these goals, and we also decided on the team’s name.

Drumroll.......

Big Red Death Machine.

Yeah, turns out like most democracies, decisions are made by those who show up. After talking about the various choices upon which we had voted, we decided that they all sucked so we went with Big Red Death Machine. I think it’s sufficiently ridiculous and despite sharing it's ackronym with that of boredom (BRDM) it's a good name and moreover I really enjoying playing with this group of people and feel more included now that we’re ALL calling ourselves this new thing. It’s nice, when I first moved here I was trying to choose between two seemingly disparate ways of playing ultimate: regionally competitive men’s ultimate and midlevel regional co-ed. I still wonder from time to time where my skill set places me, meaning if there were some sort of ultimate draft at what level would I be playing. Would I be able to play nationally competitive, regionally or mid-regionally? But that’s only one part of the equation the other part involves enjoying every minute of practice, and sharing in the creation of a team. That's the part of this sport that I love even more than playing, being a part of something larger than myself. It's a little like a campaign, you take a bunch of crazy fuckers bind them together under a common flag and then ask them to do things that are beyond sound judgement and their own perception of self-limitation. Oh and there's usually a fair number of attractive members of the opposite sex just to keep the lizard brain happy.

And as it turns out, I’ve really loved playing with BRDM. We’re a team that’s starting to figure out what it’s like to be a team. We are cheering one another, we’re going out for dinner and drinks. Teammates tease, taunt, and support each other. It’s a good situation. This is the first time I’ve been involved with naming a team, and it’s the first team for which I’ll have a jersey with numbers and the whole shebang.

Which forced me to select a number.

As a child I never had a favorite number. It seemed like numbers were symbols devoid of much communicative power, and so I never really picked one as my own. Oh, and even more importantly playing baseball most of our shirts were assigned by height. So the smallest child wore #1, while the largest was usually assigned #19. As a lanky kid who didn’t like tight shirts, I think I tended to get 11. That seemed the right size for me. But I never really cared about the number I wore. So when I got to pick my number here it was strange how easily I chose my number: 25. I first thought about selecting 25 when Jen and I were still dating, and it was the date of our anniversary, but the strongest attachment to the number comes from, sadly, Paul’s death. He died 10.25, and for some reason the number 25 has seemed a pretty powerful symbol since then. So I’m number 25 on this team…a childhood of Michael Jordan worship, and I pick 25 instead of 23. I guess I can think of myself as having grown up.

After picking my number (which I should add, I’m really proud of) I went to ESPN to try and find out what famous players have worn my number. (I guess it should be the other way around, presumably KC Jones didn’t select 25 in admiration of me). The most famous players to wear 25 are Barry Bonds….Mark McGuire….Rafael Palmerio….and Jason Giambi. So astute readers, what do each of these men have in common? That’s right they’re all baseball players. Oh, and they are all fucking steroid-ed out of their minds. There’s more juice in them than a carafe of Tropicana. These are men with veins with diameter of a garden hose and forearms that require headbands not wristbands. I have inadvertently selected the universal symbol for ‘roid head. Terrific. It’s hard to imagine a person less likely to be accused of using “the juice” than me. I once described my earlier physique/fashion choices as looking like a toothpick being wrapped in Kleenex. Put another way, I have a much easier time filling out a 10-40EZ than I do any shirt. But now I’m in the company of these great cheaters -- Mighty Caseys of the “medical” enhancement revolution, and Aaron: a modern redux of the 98lb, sand-kicked, weakling. Pretty great..

But what’s in a number. A lanky player wearing any other number would layout just as sweet.

Xenobotany

Monday Morning. I rise at 6:30. Well that’s a fib. The alarm ended my sleep at at 6:30, I arose after a few trips back into the land of dreams and consequence free action. Around 7:00 I jumped up and got ready to head to my bosses’ house. (and yes that is, I believe, the correct punctuation...the home of two of my bosses, they are married). Wandering over to Heller’s Bakery to grab a croissant and bagel (planagel really…to be eaten on the plane) I embraced the thick morning heat of my newly adopted city. It’s 7:30 am and the heat conspires with my block long walk to create intricate sweat-based Rorschach designs on my newly pressed shirt. Wonderful. I think this one under on my right pec reminds me of a dancing bird trying to eat its own wing. Fantastic…some sweat, some sweets, and some psychoanalysis. Carbohydratic nourishment in hand, I returned home and for the first time in my life (I believe) I called a cab. I do not, as a matter of course, make use of cabs. They make me nervous: 1) it’s rare that I really know where I’m going 2) Even though I love making conversation under normal circumstances, the cab conversations I’ve had have just been a bit strange or at least strained. But the walk to the residential portion of DC where my bosses live seemed more than just a bit daunting under the watchful gaze of the hateful sun. So a cab was my option. Oh, and to add to the desirability of this option was the fact that I was traveling on business and because I’m no longer working for a 2-bit operation we can afford to reimburse for travel expenses. The cab arrived at 8:00 and we were off. On the way I relayed my destination: Phoenix. “But it’s a dry heat, ” offered the cab driver wearing one of those scotish hats that seem too stereotypically perfect for a real cabbie to actually wear. “Yes”, I replied, “though so is an oven.” The surface of the sun is also fairly dry, and similarly unappealing as a summer destination (though I guess the sun is pretty much off limits year round, from the little astrophysics I know). I was informed by my cab driver that the real place to visit is New Mexico, because that’s where Don Imus lives. This struck me as patently ridiculous. Who bases their geographic preferences on a radio celebrity, let alone Don Imus. Proximity to Don Imus means nothing. He’s a radio personality. He exists in the ether. By his very definition he can exist (in manner in which this man encounters him) in numerous places at once. Don Imus could live in the right back tire of a monster truck parked at the Stuckeys on I-90 in Wall, South Dakota, and you wouldn’t know. But I chose not to mention my theories on the role of Don Imus as a tourist attraction. Instead we talked (he talked) about how “fucking environmentalists have made DC terrible with all the imported trees.” Apparently the driver was fleshing out a theory wherein everyone in DC has sinus problems solely because there are too many trees, especially Asian trees. There may, in fact, be a botanical point to be made here, but I just admitted the truth, “that I hadn’t thought of that.” Similarly I’d never thought of trying to weight train by bench pressing a canvass sac full of rabid foxes while eating deviled eggs. See there are lots of things I’ve never thought of.

Eventually we pulled up to John and Nancy’s house and I disembarked, tipping well. Odd conversation aside, we made great time and that’s what he gets paid for, so why not tip well. Plus, I gained new insight into what I’ll forever think of as xeno-botany. The people you meet.

What's with Hungary

While wanding the backroads of the internet I came across this site. Music Ecosystem. The site is designed to help record execs to better market their songs...it does this by telling you what songs are being downloaded (illegally, I assume) the most.

It's a data mining application. But it's incredibly comprehensive. It tells you the % of users who have an artist or song in their collection.

Silver Jews............ .04%
Modest Mouse............ .76%
Built to Spill............ .36%
Neutral Milk Hotel............ .16%
The Pixies............ 1.84%

The most popular artist... Eminem. 29.25% of all users have an Eminem song in their collection.

The program will also tell you what kinds of music people with Modest Mouse will like. I should like

You can also search for the most popular artists in a given country. For instance Austrians really like The Rolling Stones, while Argentines love Oasis and the Poles are into Madonna and The Talking Heads. Hungarians have from what I've seen thus far the worst taste in music...or at least the furthest from my own:
1. Supertramp.
2. Barry White.
3. Chicago.
4. Paco De Lucia
5. Yes

Oddly enough, in Britain the most popular artist...Bruce Springsteen. That's right, more Brits have the Boss than the Beatles. This is the marriage of two great things, ready data (especially in list form) with music. I love it.

I was not born...

I was reading an email from the Silver Jews listserv, of which I am a registered member. Just skimming an interview with David Berman from Pitchfork. My eyes landed on this line, it seems to perfectly encapsulate the last post.

"I was not born to be the center of attention in a crowded room."--David Berman

Damn Straight.

Party time excellent

A few weekends ago I spent my Saturday skipping from party to party. I began the evening with a long and leisurely Metro ride to Ballston. Accompanied by a great book (Snow Crash) and my iPod I transferred and rode out into the warm and humid embrace of Virginia. The first party of the evening was the housewarming party for my friend Susan. Susan and I first met in high school and first became friends when we worked on the production of A Midsummer’s Nights Dream my senior year. It was the first show I’d ever stage managed and she was the ASM (Assistant Stage Manager). Currently I work I polling and she’s….a professional assistant stage manager. I should really contact Actors Equity and see if I can get some sort of finders fee for discover her talent…though in all honesty the greatest miracle was that I didn’t destroy her interest immediately. I liked stage managing but I was constantly making it up as I went along. Being a moron with a prompt book appealed to me, and I was pretty good at pretending to know that which I did not.

Susan’s party was about 2 blocks from the Ballston Metro. In the space of those 2 blocks I passed two parties in which it appeared Abercrombie and Fitch had invested heavily. It’s entirely possible that I passed by a convention of the “I heart A&F” society. Thankfully Susan’s party was filled with people my speed: theater folks and law students. I hung around for about 2 hours in blissful uneventfulness. Soon thereafter I packed myself (book, Frisbee and iPod) up and schlepped myself back to the Metro. Then it was over to Logan Circle and Allison Stuntz’s homewarming. It’s strange that the home necessitated warming, since a week earlier I was there warming it with my good wishes and poorly made jokes. Allison played host to the aforementioned music theme party.

This party was a bustling and bursting affair. There were numerous folks fitting the profile of nearly political job in DC. There were interns, techies, legislative staffers, pollsters, consultants, organizers and lobbyists. It was like a job fair without the promise of employment. I quickly sought out and adopted as my own a circle of Dean staffers. We caught up and I found that my little nebula of friends soon dissipated and dispersed in search of other friends, potential one-night stands and other staples of the 20 something party.

I meandered around and caught up with old friends and tried to worm my way into conversations in order to make new friends. But, truth be told, I really wanted to be at home reading Snow Crash. So I ventured to the second floor and said my goodbyes to the few folks I knew up there. As I was saying goodbye to my friend Buffy I saw Sandra. You may remember Sandra as the host of a party I went to sometime ago. At that party I felt awkward and out of place and so I left early. Well it turns out Sandra read that post and thought it a slight at her, or at least her friends. At Allison’s party she began yelling at me. Shouting accusations, and loudly and somewhat violently quoting back to me lines from my post. It was mortified. I write these posts realizing they are going to be read, but I tend to have a sense of whom I imagine will read them. Even still I try pretty hard not to say mean things…and in fact I don’t think I said anything mean about Sandra. But still here I was getting accosted, loudly for something I’d written. I was being asked to explain who were the “busty women and busty men.” Now I don’t remember writing the second half of that, and I was certainly not going to enter into a debate about the nature of blogging and the idea that writing what you feel is sometimes more important that writing what was there. I tend to write what happens to me, but some of the descriptions are, of course, more in the Hunter S. Thompson methodology…where you write what you know to be true even if it never happened. So in this case I explained how I felt about the party even if it’s not accurate in the sense of a documentary. Anyways, I was not about to enter into that discussion with Sandra at this time of the evening. So I did the next best thing. Basically I pointed to someone else, she looked there and I ran out of the house. I essentially reenacted a scene from a Looney Tunes Cartoon. I half expected to be destroyed by an anvil, or to draw a hole on the wall and jump through it.

As I ran out onto the street I realized, that sometimes I’m just not a party guy. I’m built for less intense encounters. I’m not equipped for the sensory overload that is a hectic party. After running a bit of the way to the Metro I descended into the underbelly of the transit system, resumed reading my book and thought about how nice it is to just sit….alone…reading.

Girls Gone WildWOOD

Last weekend I ventured up to New Jersey for the 13th Annual Wildwood Beach Ultimate Tournament. More than 150 teams from around the country show up to the run down beach town of Wildwood New Jersey for a two day ultimate tournament. I had long ago promised my meager services to the Oberlin reunion team. JKD and I were to drive up after work on Friday, but some horrible illness (sore throat, etc) struck JKD on Thursday and I was left scrambling for a ride. But in the Frisbee community you can arrange rides on short notice, in fact, it seems nearly to be expected. After emailing everyone I know who plays in the area I was able to get a ride and as the clock struck 7 I was wedged into a northbound Subaru with 4 other disc chasing maniacs.

After this weekend, I’ve come to realize that the feelings that most people associate with vacation: disconnect from daily life, a sense of being calm, a feeling of being rested and rejuvenated…I get these from ultimate tournaments. Normal vacations, like trips to visit other cities don’t do this for me. But an entire weekend of running around, cheering, chanting, screaming, and laying out, somehow this recharges me and brings me the release from my normal life that vacations are supposed to.

Upon pulling into Wildwood at 1 am I learned that I represented just the 4th player in Wildwood for team Oberlin. As Dan Scott put it the team came down with a case of the bails. This was further exacerbated by the fact that there were more Oberlin alums playing with other teams than there were playing for Team Oberlin. Our previous poor showing at Poultry Days meant that people were searching for more capable teams to join. A rare case of obies not sticking together and one that I have to admit really bothers me. But being the adorable rogues that we are we were able to recruit some players, and NAchie arrived from Oregon via Newark via NJ Bus Transit.

Rather than write up the results of each game I’ll just offer some general thoughts and maybe a few highlights here and there.

The first thing to realize about playing beach ultimate is that you play barefoot. I’ve long since sworn off playing barefoot. The last time I played ultimate without shoes was freshman year and in so doing I broke and sprained my big toe. Now I continued to toss on the quad for another hour until I was reduced to hopping to get the disc. Knowing when to stop has never been a trait associated with me sporting adventures. Playing barefoot on the beach is fine. Well, fine might be the wrong word. It’s nice and certainly different. But it does result in dozens of small cuts to your feet. Oh, and when you, as I did, step on a shard of glass from a stray beer bottle, well the cuts get a little larger. I stepped on this particular bottle (I didn’t get a brand, but I’ll assume it was Coors just to further fuel my hatred for that particular company) midway though Saturday. I continued to play for the rest of Saturday and through Sunday. When I finally got back to DC (and back from vacation) I realized that the now sand filled hole in my foot seemed to be the cause of no slight discomfort. How about that. Who could have predicted that? Aaron returned from a tournament injured, and yet still played well past the point of logical cessation. Stunning realizations. Not dissimilar from noting the fairly high humidity found in a glass of water.

As avid readers may know ultimate teams tend to have strange names. It’s part of the charm. You never play a team named The Lions, or the Jazz. It’s stuff like Sexually Considerate, Yellow Suckmarine or Girls Gone WildWOOD. This is part of the joy of the sport, or at least part of the preposterousness and entertainment.

In terms of personal performance, I played well. In our first game I scored 2 of our three points, and threw for our third score. In our final game I scored our only point. I played nearly every point in our four games first day. I think it’s reasonable to guess that I layed out about 20-25 times over the course of the tournament. I adore the feeling of flying through the air, and when you play on sand (especially wet sand as we did) the landing is just as fun. The best part of our team, besides it being full of fun people/Obies was that we were all willing to lay out. No one finished the tournament without sacrificing their cleanliness for the good of the whole. That’s rare, and is to be most sincerely appreciated.

I don’t know from a New Jersey Boardwalk. I grew up in the Midwest. We don’t have use for boardwalks. We are not obsessive in our recitation and playing of the song “Under the Boardwalk.” We are plagued with other foibles but fetishizing the boardwalk is not one of them. Turns out the boardwalk is like the midway of a bad county fair, but as a permanent, celebrated feature of a town. Hard to imagine why NJ gets mocked. Before someone else points it out, I realize that other states have boardwalks and that Wildwood may be a particularly sketchy place. My favorite features of the Wildwood boardwalk were the t-shirt shops and the hunt the insurgent. Like so many other t-shirt shops the ones in Wildwood adopt an attitude akin to that of Alfred E. Neumann after a night at a strip club and three too many tequilas. It’s not about critiquing the flaws of society it’s about reveling in the degree to which the wearer of the shirt can distance himself from caring through the purchase of a shirt. That’s right, let’s prove just how little I care about something buy purchasing a product declaring my ambivalence.

The other startling feature was “Hunt the Insurgent.” In this “game” you are able to shoot (with paintballs) a man in a large protective suit wielding a shield. This man, dressed like the men from some of those women’s self defense classes, prances and gambols around as small boys pepper him shield with pastel colored splatters of paint. As I understand it this booth is supposed to reinforce our patriotism, and resolidify in public sphere just how much we hate those whom we should. Except, here’s the thing…the insurgents aren’t just sitting around getting shot. They’re firing back. An no point in time does the “insurgent” blow himself up, or threaten the person attacking him…oh and he has a shield. It just feels like it mocks the danger faced by those for whom hunting insurgents isn’t a boardwalk game. But I guess mocking the sacrifice of those who actually fight wars has become a cottage industry in DC, so I can’t really criticize Wildwood for making it more visceral.
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One non-NJ related comment. While driving back from the tournament my teammates and I were talking about my sparsely appointed apartment (I still don’t have a real bed, or you know, a dresser). The captain of my DC team commented, “you know not having a bed makes it much harder to score with chicks.” To which I responded, “I already have enough trouble with that, but you may have a point, I guess I don’t need to make things any harder than they already are. It’d be like having the steeplechase in the Special Olympics.” For which circle of Hell did I just punch my one way ticket?

Familiar Sensations

Today was a great day for two strong familiar feelings. The first was a strange reminder of just how nice a peanutbutter and jelly sandwhich can be. Every day as a school kid I took a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich to work. Every day. For 6 years. The thing is, after 2 years I hated the taste of these sandwhiches. For a couple of years mom substituted graham crackers for the bread. I basically never ate my the largest part of my lunch for years. And yet I never told my mom (I have since told her). I'm not sure why I did this. But before this morning I hadn't had a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich since I was 11.

Looking for something to eat before I ran out the door to catch the bus I realized I had all the ingredients for the most simple of sandwhiches. Whipping one up and downing it with a glass of milk I was returned to an idealized 50s house with an apron and heel wearing mother. I felt like I should have been wearing a propellor beanie. And you know what, it's a great taste. The sugary and slippery jelly (preserves in my case) really does work with peanutbutter. I'm not sure why I figured this wouldn't be the case, but I was honestly surprised. Apparently generations of people weren't all wrong. Go figure.

The other familiar feeling was that of working...all day. Today I arrived before 9 and except for 5 minutes spent walking to get lunch, I worked all day. I'll be working for at least part of this weekend. There is something fantastic about The Large Project. Something reassuring about contesting with your own ability to focus, and endure and realizing that you're capable. I love work. I have, far too often, defined myself (and in my worst moments--others) by the work I do, or more appropriately by the sheer volume of work I am able to complete. Under less fortunate circumstances being an ADHD case tends to make me bright but disjointed, but when faced with work worth doing I get this strange focus and finally my energy and pace are put to use. Today was one of those days. I wrote a bunch, learned a bunch, and am mentally racing.

Here's to old favorites.

Why my coworkers look at me strange...already.

While discussing the newest issue of Wired, I began talking with my coworkers about a new phenomenon one of them read about: that of online gamers paying eachother in real money to acquire game based weapons. Essentially game addict #1 pledges to give $10 in real money to gamer #2 who has, let's say the magical sword of geekdom. I flew into a rage at this concept. Everyone else thought it was weird, but in a passing sort of way.

But I think it violates the essential nature of a game. Games are by their very nature attempts to define the boundaries of life. There are rules and the totality of available options are either ennumerated or bound by the prescriptions of the game. It is a tautology.

Games are the closest version of the social contract, Hobbes style. You agree to these mutually limiting rules in the effort to better mitigate the chaos that would ensue otherwise. But you do so willingly. When you go outside the rules, outside the imaginary universe created by the rules you are violating the social contract. It's not the same thing as up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right control....etc, that's using an ill hidden code to achieve something that was part of the game. But to go outside is just wrong.

Games assume by definition that victory is not predetermined before the start, adn that game play determines winners through either luck or skill. Games operate on the assumption that you are self interested and that you work towards your own victory. Any efforts beyond that are another violation of the social contract....unless you can mathematically demonstrate that no series of moves available to you can produce victory. At this point the social contract has failed you and you are free to go rogue and basically fuck shit up to the extent permitted by the rules.

So, anyways I basically spit all of this out stream of consciousness out of the blue, while discussing some small article in Wired. This is why people at work are already starting to wonder about the sanity of "the new guy."

How Many Boyscouts in a Jamboree

The weekend began in earnest with a trip to RFK. After trying to cajole numerous friends into joining me for a Nationals game, I was briefly set up on a blind date. This marks the second time I’ve been set up on a blind date with the friend of a very new friend/glorified acquaintance. While in Oberlin I met the friend of a friend and was instructed that upon moving to DC I should go on a date/meeting with their friend. Friday’s momentary date scenario was also with a lawyer or at least law student. I’m not sure what it says about me that acquaintances and new friends want me to date their legal eagle friends. It’s like saying, you’re interesting…not to me, of course, but maybe to my friend. But I guess it’s flattering. Well, either way that set up failed to take root as other plans interceded. In the end my friend Amanda whom I’d had to stand up for lunch earlier in the day (work crisis) and I went to the game.

Game summary: The Nationals are bad. They seem to be playing as if they feel some overwhelming obligation to regress to the mean. Much like nature, I abhor a vacuum…and the Nationals have taken to sucking in such a fashion. I watched Roger Clemens dismantle the routinely feeble Nationals’ hitters. Final score 14-1. Still despite being hotter than blazes and watching the Nationals’ play poorly, it was a great time. Live baseball is just pleasant, and certainly well worth the 10 bucks for tickets.

Midway through the 6th inning I noticed a mass of brown and peach about ¾ of the way across the stadium. It took a while for an image to settle out of the chaos…it was an entire section filled with Boyscouts. Thousands of white 11 year olds wearing their “oh-to-be-a-UPS-man” scout uniforms, each earnestly hopping for a Norman Rockwell moment. It was impressive if nothing else. I believe I may have seen more boyscouts on Friday than I’d seen in all the years previously. Turns out the Boyscout Jamboree was in DC this weekend. I’m not exactly certain how many Boyscouts it takes to make a Jamboree. Presumably it’s somewhere between a minion, a quorum and the number required for electoral representation in Congress. Though, truth be told, I saw enough wholesome, acne ridden faces wearing badges and buttons to justify a Congress person. Maybe that could be the trade off, DC gets Congressional Representation but so does the Jamboree. They could pass knot tying legislation. I pledge to do my best to do my duty to reward the interests to whom I am beholden. They could get their backroom deal merit badge, maybe a killed in committee merit badge. Granted I imagine that a lot of constituent services would just be providing copies of Victoria Secret catalogues to one another, but you know you gotta give your voters what they want, what they need.

Navigating the Metro on the way home was made even more challenging with thousands of boyscouts and their diligent and humourless leaders trying to shoehorn them into subway cars. There is something truly odd about watching hundreds of boyscouts mill around aimlessly only to realize that they were struggling to read the Metro maps and were in point of fact: lost. I guess orienteering isn’t routinely conducted along the Orange line. I for one have nothing against the boyscouts, and should make that clear here. I don’t like a lot of the policies, but the idea of kids wanting to serve their community and learn to camp and take blocks of wood and fashion them into faulty cars—this doesn’t bother me in the least. In the interest of journalistic (when this became a concern, I don’t recall) objectivity, your author was for about 7 months a Cub Scout. I was abysmal. I quickly earned a couple of the sissy badges (the ones that other kids thought were for girls) I think I got a sewing badge, and a cooking badge. I never learned to tie a single knot, and my pine wood derby car made the designers of mid-80s Volvos feel pretty fucking smug. I believe after 10 hours of work with my father on the car it was somehow blockier in appearance than the original rectangle of wood from which it came, it was as if we’d found a truer core of aerodynamic opposition. Oh, and my car listed to the right aimlessly as it tried and failed to transverse the little course. I lost, and badly. It was soon there after that I bid my farewell to the regimented masculinity of the boyscouts. I never made it to the next stage of Scoutdom--Weblow. Yes, that's right it's a good thing to call awkward boys under the tutelage of some Mark Trail idolizing nut the Weblows. There's no way that'll warp your understanding of your role in the universe. Maybe I'm just bitter that I couldn't ever earn any cool badges. A final side note, there is a theory that every man looks good in a uniform. I'm here to tell you this doesn't extend to 8 year olds in Cub Scout outfits, I can assure you of this.

Resident, Alien

The great takeaway from today was a feeling of belonging. Being able to navigate in a city suggests a certain level of ownership. I went to frisbee, parties, stores and wandered aimlessly about the streets of my city.

I remember pretty soon after I moved to Seattle, I was pulled over for entering into an intersection and failing to leave a safe distance. The officer who pulled me over asked, among several questions, if I was a resident. I said, “well, I just moved here.” I wanted to say I wasn't a resident, but only because that's truly how I felt. I'm guessing that doesn't hold up in court. She then asked questions about how long ago I'd moved to my apartment. But that doesn’t really measure your residency. She should have asked me, can you navigate to Ballard? Do you know the hours at the Pike Place Market. Do you have a library card? What direction are you facing? What do you call where your parents live? To me no amount of time in a place can replace a the value of having a sense of the place, or feeling psychologically connected to your surroundings.

I think a big part of this is being able to navigate your city. Being able to give directions, to easily move from place to place. This has always been hard for me. My father can read a map and is at heart, I believe, a cartographer. My mother can, without looking at a map or any landmarks, instantly know what direction she is facing. Though to be fair she grew up in small town Kansas a land bereft of landmarks. However she cannot read a map, and my father couldn’t tell you he was facing west if you spotted him the W and the ST. And so, I am truly my parents’ son--an amalgam of each of their navigational weaknesses. Not great with maps, and I don't have innate directional skills.

That is until I moved here. Unlike my times in Minneapolis and Seattle I feel like a local here. I tend to know which direction is North, I have some vague sense of how to get places, though much of that is the work of the subway system. But it still leads me to wonder if some small portion of my earlier sense of transience came from never really fleeing like I was a resident of the places where I resided. I always felt alienated from the place by my inability to navigate, but I think it was more than that. I’m not sure what, just a sense I had of feeling apart from the ethos of the place. I realize I’m in a city based in no small part on my career aspirations. It’s a company town, and while I don’t work for the company, I’m certainly in the business. So that helps as well.

It’s odd. Before, when I would visit my parents I’d use the term home to refer to Minneapolis and while in MN home indicated Westerville. Home was a place that was definitionally separate from my current location. But not any more. Oh, I'm sure I'd be a lousy driver here, and I still can't give directions. but I have control over my transit. I can get here and there, and no how to move about in my city . This is, for now at least, my home. I’m a resident.

Happy Birthday Paul.

Today would have been Paul Wellstone's 61st Birthday. Find something of meaning to do for someone else today or tomorrow. Thank a person working on the Hill. Sign the next petition and smile at the organizer. There are still good people doing good work...and maybe they're not famous and maybe they'll never be a senator, but then no one thought Paul would be.

Terra 911

While walking from work to the bus stop I glanced down and say the license plate of a particularly nice Virginia Nissan: Terra 911. I've spent the past few hours trying to figure out what on earth it means. Are they mocking the president for his pronunciation of terror? Are they standing steadfast in support of the rescue workers? Because it's from VA you have to assume that it has something to do with the Pentagon and less so with the Twin Towers. I'm just baffled.

For years the Republicans have been saying: everything changed on 9/11, and we'll never forget 9/11.

Wouldn't that suggest that you don't need a license plate to remind you and others about the tragedy. For instance if it were that life changing wouldn't that suggest that reminding yourself would just be silly. Like IMMARIED...you don't need that. There are other symbols that remind you of things like that. And if it were something pleasant it'd be one thing. But it's the idea of terror and 9/11. Not the heroes, not the sacrifice, just the complete notion of unadulterated fear and unceasing worry...that terror conjures. Why would you make that your license plate.

I like to believe it's Tom Ridge's wife. She wanted to commemorate how she and her husband could afford this nice new car, and why it's registered in Virginia and not Wisconsin.

One Down

It's been nearly 4 years since I took a job without knowing in some concrete fashion that it would end and that it would end relatively soon. Now, some ended in ways I couldn't have ever imagined, but that they ended was never a surprise. Now I find myself starting a new job, that doesn't have to end. I could, conceivably, work for BRS for 2 years, for 6 years for the rest of my life. It's like I've gone from being Sam Malone to married. It's a little daunting. It's always been one down, X to go, or "it's only 15 days and a wake up." Now it's an indeterminate length of time. It's at once reassuring and a little strange.

As for the work itself it was pleasant. I found my office mates to be kind and welcoming. Today's tasks were well within my limited range of skills...transcription and fiddling around with a graph in Word. While not life changing, they are tasks that I can easily and competently perform. I'm sure that tasks will improve and that I'll begin to really learn a lot soon.

In other news and better updates: I played with DC Nasty (www.dcnasty.org)yesterday. We played in the midst of a heat advisory. It was sweltering and 70%+ humidity. It's always a bad sign when your Dri-Fit wicking fabric is unable to move the moisture because the air is already too saturated to accept any evaporate. I played relatively well. I had one layout that won me the affection of my teamates for the next few weeks. People were shocked and stunned...I covered a lot of ground and laid out (parallel to the ground) at a height of about 3 1/2 feet. I only wish I could have seen it myself. I then got up and threw for the score. Turns out I can play. And when I eat before I play I don't feel like I'm about ready to die, even when it's awful out. So I will take that as a key lesson.

My sister is coming the Sunday for a visit. She and a friend are driving out (not exactly sure about what they'll do with the car) and staying with me from Sunday night to Wednesday morning. I'll try to think of fun touristy things for them to do. I'll probably send them to the mall on Monday or Tuesday. And then on the other day maybe Georgetown. I welcome suggestions from those who know.

The past couple weeks have been strange. I've had a pretty much unbroken streak of good news (seeing friends, playing frisbee, getting a job) and yet I have trouble shaking this doubt, this sense that I'm failing or at least not doing as well as I should. It's frustrating. Because it's not like there is a single thing to which I can point and say, this is what's bothering me. I think part of it is that since the first few months of my relationship with Jen everything has seemed less thrilling. None of the recent good news feels as powerful as that. Which I guess is a testament to just how fortunate I was to feel those feelings, but I wish I had other things that were as exciting. Those first few months were like skydiving compared to the teacups rides of the months that folowed. I have to recalibrate what it means to be happy, to something less heroic and more sustainable. I'm planning on not worrying about things too much this week, and not focusing on the doubt or depression, or frustration, or whatever this feeling is. I feel like having a job, a routine, maybe even a few dates will help me to start to feel more like a productive member of society. And finally, worrying about money (which is a hobby of mine) is something I'm just going to have to let go of. I cannot make things better by worrying about them. (Thus ends the most "journaly" entry I've written in a good long while).

Is this poetic or condescending

I'm reading a biography of Warren Magnuson (D-WA). He was an incredible force for positive social policy but I know very little about him. I struggled to find a biography of him, eventually I ordered a used book that from the packaging used to be in the Spokane Washington public library. It's the only bio I could find. I guess being a powerful Senator doesn't warrant nearly as many biographies as say being Martha Stewart or Tony Danza.

The bio starts with his legacy and then moves to his birthplace. Fairly standard stuff. In describing the place of his birth, Moorhead, MN the author talks about Moorhead as a classically American small town:

Fargo and Moorhead are the kind of church-going, tree-lined small places that made America great because they inspired their more gifted offspring to get out, go forth, and prosper."

I'm quite seriously unsure what to make of this passage. Is it saying that the only value to small towns is that they are so limiting that they force their strongest minds and sharpest wits to leave for greener pastures. Is is saying that small town America is a place where great minds are nurtured and then unleashed on the rest of the world towards great ends.

What do you think it means? Am I just being daft here?

Lanky Gourmet

Unemployment and easy access to the internet have prompted me to work on my culinary repetoire more than I have in a long time. It's a fairly limited set of things that I can make. I've started to enjoy the assembling part of cooking. Previously I'd really only enjoyed disassembling vegetables. Humility aside, I am a mighty fine chopper and dicer, and relished these tasks which helps to explain some of the menu items as prepared by the Lanky Gourmet. Stir fry, stuffed mushrooms, rice dishes, tuna steaks, salmon, tacos,omelets, bruschetta, guacamole, etc (working on Tom Yum soup).

Yesterday I decided to expand the menu and learn how to make crepes. Turns out they are preposterously easy. I'd always associated them with some mastery over the culinary arts. Nope, they're simple and really tasty. Sort of like a hybrid of pancakes and omelets, which as far as cuisine goes is right in my wheelhouse. I'm slowly acquiring the ability to host a very serviceable brunch. Megan suggested that I need to master cinnamon rolls. I figure that plus good mellon balling skills will elevate me into the brunch host category.

The recipe I'm using...should any of you want to make crepes at home:

1 egg
1/2 cup of flour
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup water
some salt (you know...not too much, maybe 500 granules)
1/8 teaspoon melted butter (turns out using the microwave is the best for this).

Combine flour and egg in a bowl. Fold together. Add slowly water, stir further. Add milk, butter, and salt. Stir till mixture is smooth.

Pour maybe a 1/4 cup of the mixture into a teflon skillet heated over medium. Swirl mixture. Wait a minute then flip. Eat. So far I've mainly been buttering and sugaring then rolling the crepes. I've also tried sauteed mushrooms. I like the versatility of the crepe.

This ends the Lanky Gourmet post for today.

And I'll Proudly Stand Up*

A friend of mine suggested an idea for a party wherein the guests would all bring muscial selections that supported a theme. One theme suggested was Patriotic. As in what songs make you feel patriotic, even if protesting is the only thing that makes you feel patriotic these days.

Well this is two things I love, music and getting to define what I think it means to be an American--or at least conceptualizing what America stands for.

My immediate first thought was Fortunate Son (CCR). And that's not a bad selection. It's just I don't think it captures the optimism I feel about America. The tension between our ideals and our reality. I finally settled on three

1. The Power and the Glory--Phil Ochs
The song is beautiful and gentle. It rolls through a littany of states and articulates the manifest beauty of the country.

Here's a land full of power and glory/
beauty that words cannot recall/
oh her power shall rest on the strength of her freedom/
glory shall rest on us all.

Then the final stanza Ochs tackles the distance between our hopes and reality:

Yet she's only as rich as the poorest of the poor
only as free as a padlocked prison door
only as strong as our love for this land
only as tall as we stand.

2.Thank you (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)--Sly and the Family
Stone
This song is less about the lyrics than Power and the Glory. The thing that gets me with this one, is it's a band full of crazed funk musicians some of whom are married and it's racially mixed. It's party music made for whites and blacks by whites and blacks. Given that a lot of American musical history has been attached to who should make music for whom and who should listen to what bands' music--Sly and the Family Stone is just about making fun music. Music for everyone. Everytime this song comes on the ipod, I begin to strut. I begin to sway and half-dance while walking, I cannot help it. It's an involuntary reaction. And the lyrics, do suggest something American---the idea of being allowed to be who and what you are. It's cheesy and Polly Annish, but I still cleave to that notion as descriptive of the US.

3. The Ghost of Tom Joad--Rage Against the Machine
I selected the Rage Against the Machine version of this Springsteen song on purpose. First I like it better, but second there is something powerful and I think suggestive of America in the idea of making and remaking. Sampling, stealing, reordering and reclaiming earlier truths for your life. The song is itself a reodering and copy of the great speech from Tom Joad in the Grapes of Wrath. It's a call to greater community involvement. An indictment of the role of authority in dealing with the suffering of the Great Depression. It's agrarian and transient, it's about the underdog, three pretty strong American ideals that are still symbolically relevant. The speech and the song talk of death. But it's not the end for Tom Joad, he's alive wherever someone is being hassled, hurt, or suffering. That America is often in the wrong is clear, that our great artists can freely critique our failings is pretty special. That our artists whether authors, NJ rockers or Hispanic rap-rockers can retell the stories of our failures without condemning the idea of America--that's pretty powerful stuff. It's because of the power of the ideals that harsh criticism is warranted. You don't berate a child's painting for falling short of the mark--it's not supposed to be great. But you can critique a great film maker's poor choices, they should know better, they should do better. And so should we. America deserves harsh critics because what it tries to be is so worthwhile, and when we fail it's so devastating.


*God help me if Lee Greenwood appears on anyone's list.

Things I never knew about my hair

Today I took care of the second item on the list of "Important but Attainable Goals"--getting a haircut. It's been about 7 weeks since my last haircut. While playing frisbee yesterday I would occasionally catch a glimpse of shadow and I looked distasterous.

I usually get my haircut at some chain place in a strip mall. Places like Great Clips, Super cuts, etc. But I'm nowhere near a strip mall, so it's barbershop time. I know of two places in my neighborhood. The first is an "African Hair Style Shop." This shop is run by a Senegalese man (so says the placard out front) and he specializes in braids. My hair wasn't that long, so I passed on the braids. The other place is a Unisex barbershop, run by an older Hispanic man. Earlier I was joking with Jen that I might come back with a mohawk, since my Spanish is non-existent.

When I sat down I was asked a single question: Short? Medium? Usually when I get my hair cut I'm confronted by a series of questions to which I have no useful answer. I don't remember if I want it layered, or over the ear. I have no real concern if the hair toward my neck is squared off or rounded. That said, the question short or medium seemed a little too spare for my taste. I chose medium (looking at my hair now I shudder to think what passes for short). Immediately the man reached for clippers. It was then that I realized that I was a rarity among the people who sat in that chair. I didn't want my hair buzzed or clippered. After some discussion and persuasion I was able to get my hair cut with scissors. All in all it went well, though I was facing out towards the street so for the entire process I had no sense of what was happening to my hair. Not being able to see your hair cut is a little unnerving.

After the majority of the work was completed, he leaned into my field of vision and said, "Your hair is hard it's....." He began to search for a word and trail off. I helpfully suggested, "It's thick." Immediately after saying this I realized how absurd the notion was. I'm in a Hispanic barbershop and I was suggesting that he was having trouble because *my* hair was thick. Ignoring me, mercifully, he offered his own analysis of my hair: "It's spicy."

As should be clear from most of this experience, my knowledge of hair and haircutting is pretty limited. But I certainly never knew nor imagined that my hair was spicy. That's hot.

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UPDATE: Last night I had a dream wherein I was chased around a parking garage and when eventually caught my head was shaved into a fade. Though there was no mention of the spiciness of my hair.