david brooks

dear david brooks,

your recent article "high-five nation" was just the worst. let me explain why.

you say that "[on v-j day] the allies had...completed one of the noblest military victories in the history of humanity. and yet there was no chest-beating." maybe there was no exuberance on v-j day because we exploded and incinerated hundreds of thousands of civilians in japan. maybe people recognized the frightening future implications of our use of nuclear weapons. maybe it wasn't because those were more modest times.

you call "individual expressionism" a capitalistic routine. you are wrong. sure, aspects of it are frequently co-opted by corporate interests, but there are vital movements (do-it-yourselfers, backyard farmers, much of the bicycle culture, to name a few that come immediately to mind) whose individually expressive members are driven not by money, but by intellectual curiosity and desire for self-sufficiency and sustainability. 

you use michael jordan's basketball hall of fame induction speech as an example of immodesty. can't m.j. allow himself a little self congratulation for the simple reason that he is the greatest basketball player to have ever lived? and because he was being inducted into the basketball hall of fame? there is nothing wrong with him reflecting publicly a little bit on his success in front of people who appreciate his accomplishments. he is frequently quoted as saying that his predecessors made his success possible. is the forced aw-shucksism prevalent among athletes today better than a little honest discussion? do you really think michael jordan is trying to bolster his resume at this stage in the game? shit.

later, you essentially compare the actions of contemporary professional athletes and entertainers, people who are paid to get attention, to those of soldiers and average americans at the end of a brutal two-front war; a war in which we unleashed the most fearsome human-made device ever devised on a civilian population. do you really think that our soldiers today would unabashedly celebrate the use of nuclear weapons on our enemies? do you even think that terrell owens would pretend to pull down his pants and moon afganistan or that dikembe mutombo would wag his finger at iraq if we obliterated their major metropolitan areas? 

you might remember babe ruth's called shot in 1932, which is possibly one of the cockiest gestures of all time. not just calling the shot, but the mocking and grandstanding the accompanied his trot around the bases. if there wasn't a precedent for public celebrations of personal accomplishments before, that certainly set it. 

an opinion column at the new york times? you can say anything you want to hundreds of thousands of intelligent people. don't fucking call me and my contemporaries immodest and self-indulgent and then back it up with illogical nonsense.

hood to coast

one time i asked my friend how you stop on a fixed gear bicycle without brakes in an emergency, right, because it seemed like the track skid took a second to initiate and he said "you just do". now that is an imperfect explanation and i ride with brakes because my gear ratio is, as rachel's friend pointed out, pretty stout. but i would like to borrow that explanation if i may to describe a recent experience i had that has nothing to do with bicycles.

so i ran in the hood to coast relay, which is a 197 mile road race on the back roads of oregon; teams have 12 people and each team member is responsible for running 3 legs, one every 8 hours or so. it is an intense experience for a number of reasons, 1) you don't have much of an opportunity to sleep, 2) you can't eat normally, because you're always about to run, and 3) unless you are a distance runner and 15+ miles don't bother you, running 5-7 miles every 8 hours is exhausting. 

now i was not out of shape, but it is true that i took a couple of weeks off from running before frantically trying to get some training in during the week leading up to the race. nevertheless, i ran my first leg, 6.4 miles, and felt pretty good. my second leg was 4.9 miles around 5am and i overexerted myself, running faster than i planned to (the result of some poor calculations of my proximity to the checkpoint.) 

by the last leg i was spent, my quads and calves were frozen solid and i had slept two hours in the rain and eaten only peanuts and raisins and bananas for the last 18 hours. my teammate flurry had given me some energy cubes, little caffeinated gelatinous bundles of carbohydrates (yeah, that's a natural product), of which i ate five to wash down my five ibuprofen. i was at the handoff point, waiting for my teammate to come in and i was thinking "my god, i don't know how i'm going to do this". 

and if this seems too self congratulatory or you think i am about to make myself out to be some sort of hero like robert redford in the natural (triumph in the face of adversity!), well then let me disabuse you of that idea. and if you don't want to read what amounts to a story about an overprivileged white kid going for a 5-mile jog, well then i don't blame you. i bet there is some show on mtv right now that will at least make a similar story entertaining with melodramatic dialogue, a lively soundtrack and fast cuts. 

well lindsey ran in to the checkpoint and sort of surprised me, i was so checked out. i went from daydreaming to running. the first few minutes i was so uncoordinated i felt like i had hooves (or maybe high-heels on, or maybe both like if the greek god pan were a cross dresser). whenever i passed anybody or someone passed me i thought "oh man, they feel like i feel; this is hard and they are doing this too." and eventually the physical exertion and discomfort were pressed backward in my mind, like they became more than i could focus on and i was just going. 

and so if someone asks me how you run a race like hood to coast, the only answer i would be comfortable giving them is "you just do". (and if you want to extrapolate my sentiment to mean "even when you think you can't, you can", then be my guest, just don't hold me responsible if things don't work out.)

the heat and dreams

so it turns out that my car doesn't have any air conditioning, but i already knew that. you didn't, because that is not generally a piece of information that present to people unprovoked. anyway, me and kathleen took a road trip of sorts down to san francisco and camped along the way in national park/forest/recreation area campgrounds, which are the best kind of campgrounds and i had this amazing vivid dream in our tent one night and i am going to tell you about it, but after i tell you about the heat.

red bluff, california is the fucking hottest place i have ever been. you see, we were visiting lassen volcano (which erupted may 19th and may 22nd, 1915) and we were at an elevation of over 8000' and it was hot up there (but not because it is a volcano, though that's awfully clever) and if i keep adding parenthetical asides to my sentences, i'll never get through this thought. ahem. as we drove west down toward red bluff (at 348' in elevation) the temperature, which is generally one of many components that make up what we call our experiences, began to rise. at about 97 i started to monitor the situation, because at 97 temperature became the only component of living that i was capable of paying attention to and here's one reason why: it became gradually apparent to me that my eyeballs were baking in their sockets. 

now i can tolerate physical discomfort generally well, but heat will be the death of me. so with that in mind, and the fact that there was no air conditioning, so our windows were open, picture this scene: one large bearded man of northern european ancestry and a fair freckled lady of irish descent were barreling down a northern california highway at 75 miles an hour with the windows wide open, unable to talk or listen to music for all the buffeting wind noise pulsing in our heads. the bearded man at the wheel was monitoring the thermometer with a sense of foreboding as it the numbers rose and rose. the only communication in the car was every couple of minutes when the man would yell "99...100...101..." over the constant throbbing of the wind. (oh, i think i should mention that the bearded man was me, because i don't want to talk in the third person anymore.) at 105, i started to notice that i didn't seem to be sweating. then i realized that that wasn't true at all, my backside was drenched and i seemed to be stuck to the leather car seat, but everywhere the hot wind hit me was bone dry. my sweat was evaporating before i could feel it. my eyes dried out if i kept them open for more than a second. at 107 we decided to take a picture of the dashboard, where the temperature readout was. if you're all like "that doesn't sound hot", then try sitting in a sauna for two hours. 

whenever one part of my body touched another part, there was an instant wetness. (and to steer this story toward the inappropriate, there are instances where that is desirable, but alas this wasn't one. and for the most part though, this drive wasn't hot and wet, just hot and dry.) when the thermometer topped out at 112, sitting in traffic in red bluff (and know that we were the only car with its windows open), i couldn't even bear the electrical attraction between my subatomic particles. i so desperately wanted a dark matter breeze to blow through my being (haha! what a convenient and ill-defined explanation for the real mass of the universe being so much greater than the observable mass. and also, if there was a dark matter breeze blowing through my body, and there might have been, it sure didn't help.) think of this too, we had been driving in that temperature for long enough that all of our water was 107.

but if you don't feel sympathetic to our plight, well then you're right. there was so much good on the trip, that having to reconstitute our eyeballs was just an unpleasant aside. and anyway, san francisco was in the low-60s when we got there later that night.

now to shift gears completely to a dream i had while camping (and the dream i had last night that reminded me that i had the dream that i had while camping)...

look, i have this friend greg and we all lived on this farm, all of my friends and me. so greg fell for this chicken that lived on the farm, like followed it around all day. he named it grubwalker. and you know how chickens move, sometimes running and flapping and jumping all zig-zaggy, well greg would just shuffle along behind the chicken, to the exclusion of everything else. he wasn't even interested in human contact. he just loved grubwalker, he loved that chicken.

now this was a dream, right, so there was no narrative involved. i was just shown briefly this magical relationship between my friend and a chicken. i was sort of sad that greg didn't want to interact with humans anymore, but i was happy that he had found fulfillment (although it was slightly codependent). now i can see three separate aspects of the dream that relate to my life at the moment, the first is this youtube video i saw about a dog and an elephant who are best friends (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBtFTF2ii7U), the second is the fact that i have been entertaining the idea of raising some chickens in my backyard, and third is that my friends are getting married and i am happy for them, but there is also this realization (or maybe a misconception) that marriage will somehow change the dynamic of my relationship with them. 

i have no idea why it was greg who fell for the chicken, that part doesn't make any sense. (i would also say that greg probably eats more chickens than any of my other friends, so that adds another layer of strangeness to this dream. he is at least in the top three...) dreams are so awesome.

and last night i was a speed-skate cross racer, which, as far as i know is a sport that i just made up. it is like motocross or snowboard cross (boardercross, bro!), but on speed skates. bonnie blair eat your heart out (tony blair eat your heart out too). it takes place in an arena on this crazy topographical ice. it is totally nuts. i was decent, but not great. my dream centered on this race where i had my best lifetime finish, so that was encouraging. i think i got second or third, but there were some serious competitors. and anyway, don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.

(and who needs cohesion? who needs narrative or punctuation? this isn't a novel, this is a blog for crying out loud! you want a story, be my editor. sheesh.)

kfc double down sandwich

why do you mention this you ask? because the bread is replaced with fried chicken. then what is inside the sandwich you ask? bacon and cheese and special sauce. where can i get one you ask? only in rhode island and nebraska. have we finally figured out how to create food products with no redeeming nutritional value you ask? we figured that out a while ago. then what does this sandwich represent you ask? taken in conjunction with "my humps", the direction our political discourse has headed in this country, and the fascination with the sordid details of michael jackson's life (including the fact that his death was ruled a homicide), this sandwich represents the downfall of human civilization. it was a pretty good run though, wasn't it?

oh mythology

i don't want to assign any mystical powers to myself, and actually i have none, but there was an instance two weekends ago where i was exposed simultaneously to my past and a (the?) future and i was lucky in that i immediately recognized the difference. and it is a rare occasion to feel so privy, to feel as though you understand the choices you have and to understand why you are making decisions you are making. and if you're yearning for more specifics, well then i can't help you. (but you know it has to do with love, right? only love is capable of seeping into the otherwise neatly compartmentalized aspects of our lives). 

and i bring this up only because it is on my mind right now. there is a costume party tomorrow, the theme of which is gods and goddesses, and in determining which deity i wanted to emulate, i realized that i couldn't be anyone but janus (and oh, i just learned about him today!). the god of new beginnings. he has two faces, one looking to the past and one looking toward the future. 

and my future is this and not forever, but friday, a goddess will fall asleep with me and kiss me on both faces when i am waking up.

pause, sit with your breath or: from russia with love

the term "mouth-breather" is in the collective consciousness these days and the first time i ever heard it was in a woody allen stand-up routine, but it wasn't live. it was recorded and i was in a car with amy and jill and we were driving from garmisch-partenkirchen down to cinque terre, which is a fun thing to do if you ever find yourself in europe with amy and jill and a woody allen cd. and i don't think it is fair to call it a coincidence that the first time i have ever felt comfortable applying the label of mouth-breather to a person was when i was riding on a chinatown bus from new york to boston two fridays ago. it is not fair to call that a coincidence because one incident involved listening to woody allen in a car with two girls i like and the other incident involved sitting next to a loud russian on a chinatown bus and they are such unrelated incidents that they cannot be considered a coincidence.

now i'm sure you've ridden a chinatown bus. i like the lucky star, mostly because of the dragon wearing a backpack that adorns the sides. and also i like stopping at arby's where there always seem to be other lucky star busses parked letting people stretch out and get cheap beef sandwiches and use a bathroom that isn't quaking and braking and accelerating and decelerating and heaving you around. and it takes some figuring to determine which lucky star is the one you just got off of and which one would take you back to where you just came from if you got on it by accident.

so i was heading up to boston for mike's wedding and it was friday afternoon and i think everyone in new york was heading up to boston for mike's wedding, because the bus was full and so was the highway. it took six and a half hours. but i was waiting in line to board the bus behind this pretty girl and maybe she had tattoos somewhere, i don't know, but she was pretty. i thought to myself "this bus is going to be full, look at all these people in line" and also "i should sit next to this pretty girl and wouldn't that make the time on the bus go by faster?" so i didn't. i sat two rows behind her on the other side of the bus because maybe i would get both seats to myself if i looked gruff enough to scare people away. but the bus was full, like i knew it was going to be. so the last person on the bus was this behemoth of a russian man with a blackberry and a tight t-shirt and a baseball cap on and where else was he supposed to sit? 

so he plunked down beside me, all elbows and hanging over the armrest and he immediately launched into a heated discussion with another russian or maybe someone didn't speak russian, but who he wanted to bellow at regardless. he probably didn't need to use the phone, if the person on the other end was anywhere in connecticut i'm sure they could hear him if the wnd was blowing in the right direction and they tilted their head just so. as abruptly as the conversation started, ten minutes later it ended and by the time his hand, still grasping his phone descended to his lap, he was asleep. and he slept like he talked, bellicosely, but instead of some unseen recipient of his energies, the recipient was sitting exactly in my seat and shared all my fears and aspirations. in case that wasn't clear, the snoring mass of russian was piled onto me. his head was on my shoulder, bicep to my bicep, hand on my thigh.

"now this is interesting," i thought and "i can't believe we're only in cos cob."

we rode like that for a while and at least the air conditioning was on this time. then his phone rang and he launched into such another boisterous conversation that i almost forgot he had been asleep seconds before. ten minutes later, conversation over and i had my snoring russian blanket again. once his phone rang again i took the opportunity to get up and spread myself out under the pretenses of heading to the bathroom. not that i didn't have to pee, because i did, but mostly i wanted air around my body and not flesh. so i made it to the bathroom and shut the door and took some deep breaths (unadvisable) and got ready to start peeing and the driver decided to accelerate and switch lanes and brake, all in a span of three or four seconds. so i wedged myself in the tiny bathroom, elbows on walls, feet on the rim the toilet, anything i could do to keep from getting jostled and sending an errant stream trickling down my shorts and out under the door. but i couldn't bring myself to do it. i felt like some drunk in a cartoon, looking down at the bowl meandering it's way through my field of vision. finally, i looked at myself in the scratched up mirror, looked away, sighed and sat down on the toilet seat. i felt so defeated, sitting there peeing while connecticut heaved past me in fits and starts.

and stepped out of the bathroom, four or five minutes later  and made my way down the aisle. when i got to my row, the russian was dead asleep, hanging over the armrest, but i didn't need to wake him up. his phone rang...

me so hornets

oh, my parents like to keep the bushes in order so they periodically traipse about the yard with a hedge trimmer and some felco shears and that is how come magazines sometimes come take pictures of our yard and also politicians film campaign commercials there. i think it is great until i am supposed to take part in the trimming, then i find it unnecessary.

but so, there are casualties in every war, and this is a war story at the heart of it, you see because mom was out pruning the hedges and these crazy little fuckers decided that the pruning shears were too close to their nest. they are called white faced hornets and they don't buzz around so much as fly directly at the point on your body that is most sensitive and sting it over and over. so mom got stung, she threw down her implements and ran inside for the baking soda.

dad was swift in avenging his wife's attack, like a few hours later when i was trying to read some malcolm gladwell by the pool. he came out of the garage with some raid (which is a patented chemical product that kills stinging insects and makes dogs really curious. seriously.) and, never one to tempt fate, a broomstick. get ready to run, he told me as he steadied the broomstick like some don quixote, but with realer, if less intimidating enemies. right-oh, i responded. and "psssssssssssh..." the raid shot out as dad parried at the nest. and "psshhhhhh..." the raid immediately stopped coming out. dad looked at the can, looked up, threw the can down and started running. i leapt up from my lawn chair, threw malcolm to the grass and dove for the pool, fully clothed. i dove right past dad, as he yelled "owwww...shit!" running full tilt. i hid under the water for a few seconds to make sure the hornets passed me by and took the opportunity to scoop up my sunglasses from the bottom of the pool.

dad was inside with the baking soda. it feels like i got hit with a pan he said, looking at his wounded forearm.

i'm going to really let them have it. i'm going to wait until it is dark and they're all in their nest and i'm going to sneak up and let them have it, dad informed me.

hornets 2 - humans 0. 

at dusk, from the kitchen i saw dad in the mudroom putting raincoats on and snowpants on. muck boots. canvas hats. ski gloves. not only was he putting them on, he was trying all the options out to see what materials might be best at thwarting a stinger. finally he approached me like some wacked-out fisherman, covered head-to-toe in the most water-repellent, insulated garb he could muster and asked me to pull his mosquito net over his head. i obliged, making sure the elastic around the neckline had no slack that would allow those crazy insects any point of entry into dad's soft parts. he was ready to fight anything. 

remember that dude in jurassic park who was trying to steal the fucking embryos or dna or whatever and he's all driving in the rain storm and his car slides off the road and he's trying to winch it back up and this dinosaur starts hissing at him and spits in his eyes and then they all eat him (his name was dennis nedry)? wouldn't have happened to dad. he was impervious. 

in fact, the final battle was tame, dad employed the scorched earth policy. he razed that nest. the little fuckers never stood a chance. serves them right for living in our cuboid bushes.