xtcian

lwb

1/30/04

left: Lindsay and me in April 1991; right: Lindsay and me in March 2002

This blog is going out to one of my closest friends in the world, Lindsay Bowen. I don't know anybody (with the exception of Salem) who maintains a positive outlook on life like he does – we made fun of him in college because his debauchery was only outpaced by his inability to actually get into trouble. He's a cat with 9,000 lives, and proof that good grace and good humor acts as proper padding to any misstep.

I've oft-told this story, but I met Lindsay in 1989 when he was fresh out of high school – he was the lighting director for a Lab play I was in called "Private Wars." There was this one scene where Chris Briggs was trying to explain something to John Bland, and the lighting changed with the story, and it always got a laugh. Probably the only time in drama history a light cue got a laugh, and only because Lindsay is just one of those people who gets it.

The only time I was ever furious at him was at Mardi Gras 1992, where he drank our entire bottle of Southern Comfort while we were playing Ultimate Frisbee. Then I think he threw up in our guests' house, which was insult to injury, but quickly became hilarious about a week later. The rest of the time, he – along with Dana – have been utter saviors. They eased my transition to the Carrboro farm in 1994, they let me stay two uninvited months in their house in 1997, and they provided the proper impetus for me to move to New York in 2000 (without which my life would never have wildly diverted to the right path).

His devotion to theater has gone past the "childhood crush" phase, past the "college dabbling" chapter, straight through the "gotta pay Manhattan rent" collapse, and on into What He's Doing With His Life. He slogged through seven years of writing code for credit card companies until the right gig came along. Now, he has suffered through one of the worst winters of discontent I can imagine. A lot of tragedy has befallen him of late, so I wanted to tell him, through this public space, that we love him very much and I know this will be a hard landing, but it will be on his feet.

cartophilia!

1/29/03

States sure are funny-looking. I like states with vestigal tails, like Iowa:

and Missouri:

...although I've always hated the Missouri slogan of "The Show-Me State." What, does that make the rest of us gullible? Besides, Missourians, as far as I know, don't have a specific character. You know who does?

That's right, Nebraska. When I gave a talk at Hastings College, the entire auditorium knew the State Song ("Beautiful Nebraska"). Do any of the 19 million residents of New York State know the state song of New York?

I like it when states reach for something that they might not deserve. Take Alabama and Mississippi, for instance, both violently sticking out a body part to touch the Gulf of Mexico:

And what makes Oklahoma so desperate to touch New Mexico?

Idaho seems to have a thing for Canada:

And who wouldn't? Canada is full of great people. One of my favorite places on God's Green Earth is Prince Edward Island. I think they should have the slogan "Prince Edward Island: The Island That's Also a Smile."

back to you in the booth

1/28/04

While watching our beloved Heels deliver a hard-fought spankin' to the Wolfpack tonight, I was again intrigued by the presence of Doris Burke on the sidelines. As far as I know, she has become ESPN's Girl Friday on game days, working many of the ACC and Big East matchups I've seen.

Like Bonnie Bernstein at CBS and a host of other well-attired female sportscasters, she might never be allowed to do either play-by-play or color commentary for a national game. They'll let women do some roving reporting (referring to them as "analysts"), but I have yet to hear one actually call a game.

This was a sore point upstate last weekend as Alex Yong's wife Wendi is fully capable of doing the play-by-play for any college football game, including historical facts and the occasional deft turn of phrase. Truth is, besides the sparse remarks of Billy Jean King during tennis or the interstitial Up Close and Personal segments by Hannah Storm during the 1992 Olympics, we have yet to experience the true gender-busting equivalent of Howard Cosell, Harry Carey, John Madden or Frank Gifford.

It is true that most sportscasters get their jobs by having played the sport themselves on television, something very few women can claim. However, Cosell could barely throw a forward pass, and Dick Vitale had a terrible coaching record. Many sportscasters come from nowhere more special than the RTVMP department at Carolina (Stuart Scott) or that joke of a student paper over at Dook (Seth Davis).

It could be chalked up to simple xenophobia - we haven't tried a woman play-by-play announcer, and we don't feel like it - but there might be physical limitations as well. Put simply, the male voice has greater range from low to high without sounding psychotic. Certainly women are capable of 4-octave voices (I'd love to hear Kate Bush call a soccer game), but the top three octaves are usually various level of shrieking. I don't mean to sound pejorative, it's just a laryngeal thing.

If you listen to Woody Durham or Mick Mixon call a Carolina game on the radio, they provide non-stop talking with a clear dymanic range: low basso when we dribble midcourt, then a high exclamation when Raymond feeds Rashad for an alley-oop. The most memorable sports moments come from sportscasters who get so excited that they go up a few octaves (Vitale's "babeeeeeee" and Marv Albert's "Yessssssssss!") I don't wonder if a female Woody Durham, doing the same, would induce ear fatigue. I could be utterly wrong, but I think it might be tough to hear for an entire game.

If you truly listen to women in the media, most of them have husky voices that belie the occasional cigarette and Jim Beam & Coke. Listen to Lynne Russell on Headline News, Paula Zahn on CNN, or our very own Laurie Dhue on Fox - Laurie was one of the infamous low altos in the Carolina singing group The Loreleis. I think you have to be an alto to be a woman anchor; anything higher, and you have nowhere else to go.

Laurie reporting for Fox

The one thing that does strike me as subconsciously sexist about female sports reporters is their physical position relative to the men in the booth - the boys are up on high, the women are down in the trough. It's no wonder that Joe Namath thought he could sneak a quick one on Suzi Kolber; after all, she was just working the fields. It's also no wonder that the sideline reporter is always called upon to deliver injury reports on the players (something Doris Burke does all the time) - can anything be more motherly than a female voice telling us that one of our boys has been hurt but will soon feel better?

I'm waiting for the one female sportscaster that will prove my vocal theory wrong and rise up through the hierarchy to call a national game. Linda Cohn is one of my favorites at ESPN - will they ever give her, or someone without a Y chromosome, a chance?

brooklyn, brooklyn über alles

1/27/04

Okay, a little message to the fine folks at "Sex and the City" - we're friends with the writers, and they are cool, funny, intelligent women. But could ya LAY OFF BROOKLYN ALREADY?

This week's episode has Cynthia Nixon considering a move to Brooklyn with her husband, and the show treats the premise as nothing short of spiritual and emotional death. Sarah Jessica Parker's Carrie has to bleat out several times how fuckin' great Manhattan is, with the kind of self-satisfied glee that makes me understand why my brother Kent thinks New York is occasionally full of shit.

Let me tell you something about Manhattan. It is for three kinds of people: actors, alcoholics and age-appropriates. Actors really do need to live in Manhattan because their apartment acts as something of a dressing room between auditions; someone like Laurie Williams (who will be playing Tony's mother in flashback this year on "The Sopranos"!) wouldn't be able to get to Brooklyn and back for a 25-minute costume change.

Alcoholics need to live in Manhattan because it's a lot easier to stumble home to your shithole in the East Village than to stumble across the Brooklyn Bridge. When Lars and I used to drink in Alphabet City, I felt blessed to live 300 yards away from aspirin and my bunk bed.

Age-appropriate means just that: if you're 22 and single, it is way easier to hook up, drink, attend apartment parties and see bands with kids your age in Manhattan. Sure, that kind of life can be had in Williamsburg and Astoria too, but there is nothing better than the I Just Graduated From UVA and I Live With Six Of My Best Friends On Bleecker Street Guide to Life.

But these "Sex and the City" chicks are pushing 40 (Kim Cattrall is 47) and their characters are at least in their mid-30s. This Manhattan snobbery is puerile, mostly because I used to feel the same. In fact, I think I once told Michelle I wouldn't even go above 14th Street in Manhattan. But actually living in Brooklyn has cured me of this insane disdain - it has Manhattan beat on so many levels that it's useless to even begin a list.

I will say this: going outside in Brooklyn doesn't cost you $40. The apartments are all one foot wider and two feet taller. When I walk down the block, I actually see the same people, and some of them know my name. Each entrée, while being just as stunningly yummy as a Manhattan meal, costs $5 less. On the Q train, I can get to Union Square in 15 minutes (from the Upper West Side, it can take 30). When I was a kid watching Sesame Street, I thought they were describing Manhattan; when I moved to Park Slope, I realized they were talking about here.

Tourists venturing to Manhattan hoping to have the "Sex and the City" experience will be sorely disappointed - in order to achieve it, you need:
a) to have lived there for ten years already
b) a rent-controlled apartment
c) seventeen million dollars.

I'm tired of being told Brooklyn is the place you go to surrender yourself to the boredom of middle age and family. That is utter hooey manufactured by the dream corporations that want you to believe in an ever-conquering Gotham. That Manhattan doesn't exist anymore; they priced all the interesting people out of the market. Maybe the "Sex" writers think that Brooklyn is a spiritual death, but it was the place where I finally came alive.

And now we're going to have our own basketball team. With a stadium mere blocks from my apartment. When the Nets play the Knicks, the guy making Manhattan catcalls from Row Y will be ME.

my block tonight, covered by the storm

circle gets a square

1/26/04

On the way home tonight, Tessa asked when was the last time we had an openly covert homosexual bandleader, you know, the kind of lead singer that was so gay that he almost wasn't gay anymore. She thought it was Boy George, and I made an argument for the Smiths, but we both agreed that there is just no space in our culture for the don't-ask-don't-tell flamboyancy that saturated our youth.

I mean, let's take two people - Charles Nelson Reilly and Paul Lynde:

All throughout my childhood, it never even occurred to me that they might be gay. And this was after 13 years of Lynde's gossamer-thinly-veiled fairy jokes on "Hollywood Squares," and Reilly? He was one Roman concubine away from exploding all over the set of "Match Game '74."

I miss those times, the über-gayness of Liberace and the Village People. I'm amazed at my naïvete, even now. Here was a band called THE VILLAGE PEOPLE. How about a band called QUEEN, whose lead singer looked like this:

Here's Rob Halford of Judas Priest in 1984, fifteen years before he came out:

I mean, you could do that back then. These days the politics of homosexuality are so labyrinthine and bizarre that people like Michael Stipe are forced to put up an elaborate array of smokescreens. I mean, Elton John and George Michael came out – a few press leaks and admissions at a time – but it all seemed rather miserable. Perhaps people shouldn't bother coming out, if it'll be that redundant and serious. Let us bask in the glow of the cloyingly homoerotic! I miss the days of Paul Lynde on "Bewitched!" slurring, "Oh, TABITHA!"

make that TWO sea breezes

1/25/04

So Lars and I went skiing at Catamount this weekend, and it was almost a survivalist experience; if you weren't wearing the balaclava mask with pinholes for your nose and mouth, you felt like your teeth might freeze and break off. With the help of four layers of wicking polyester fabrics and those chemical pads you put in your boots that give off heat, we were good for about three runs down the mountain.

The big mistake was drinking three Woodchuck ciders on the way home. It's one thing to put on a nice buzz when your body is in a state of bliss (or a state university) but when you've just gone down a mountain with a minus-50 wind chill, your adrenaline mixes with alcohol in a way that produces some sort of ghastly toxin that made me barely able to complete sentences for two days.

My life took a turn in 2000 that introduced me to the world of alcohol addiction, and I have thanked Providence every goddamn day that I don't have one. It's the kind of thing you don't take seriously unless:
a) you wake up one morning and realize that you're an alcoholic
b) your life has been scarred by the vodka-saturated horrorshow of a close relative, or
c) you marry into it.

I certainly never took "alcoholism" seriously throughout my adult life; I thought it was totally 1970s. For me, alcoholics were either homeless guys on 45th Street or suburban housewives who also took too much Valium. If we ever thought somebody drank too much at our fraternity, or the Pink House, we all just assumed they'd grow out of it.

It wasn't until I saw what alcohol had done to so many of my friends that it began to register, and then it took years to catch on to the code words found in A.A. (listen at the Academy Awards, there's almost always a veiled thank-you to "the rooms"). Tonight, I watched a little mini-doc on Joe Namath, who famously freaked out in December on ESPN during an all-day binge, and I could see the horror in his eyes, and the shame welling through his pores.

Tessa and I had known each other for 13 years when we first started dating, but she didn't know my drinking habits. On our second "date," she asked me why I wasn't having a cocktail, and I told her it was because of the pain pills I was taking for my back. She says that's the moment she knew I wasn't an alcoholic, because a "drunk" would have ditched the rules the first chance he/she got.

I have spent the last four years flagellating myself for various transgressions (which makes for some of the more popular blog entries) but I have come to realize something that actually works well for me: I have a non-addictive personality. The only thing I'm remotely addicted to is refined sugar, but that won't get you into a car accident unless you're hunting for the last red M&M under the floor mat while you're driving.

Matt and all the Purple House guys used to belittle my penchant for "girl drinks," but what they didn't know is that I couldn't stand the taste of alcohol, and was hiding them behind... yes, refined sugar! So I'd like to take a minute and give a shout-out to the girl drinks that got me through my 13-year sojourn in Chapel Hill, but were never good enough to make me an alcoholic: here's to the Sex on the Beaches, the Woo-woos, the White Russians, Grasshoppers, Long Island Iced Teas and Cement Mixers that just made me 15 pounds overweight. I've now seen what alcoholics have to deal with, and losing weight is, comparatively, a holiday.

grandfather clock

1/23/04

Bob Keeshan - Cap'n Kangaroo - died today at 76. As he was an incredibly huge part of my youth, I thought I'd reprint a little piece I did for the Indy back in 1996. Enjoy! (or ignore!)

***
Anyone who has grown up in the Midwest will remember the pitch-black winter mornings that would accompany a typical third grader's attempt at getting to school. The wind chills would frequent the minus-50s; the car, driven by a hapless parent, would have to be started an hour before actually driving; the passenger door locks thawed with a butane lighter. Diesel snow, gray and frozen solid, lined the sides of streets for three months at a time.

Captain Kangaroo, on at 7am thanks to CBS, was our morning companion throughout the '70s and early '80s. Competing networks didn't stand a chance against the Captain - imagine hog reports lisped by octogenarian weathermen, or the tedious ramblings of adults selling self-help books on "Good Morning America."

The Captain's show had weird quirks. "The Dancing Bear," a recurring skit that featured this guy in a bear suit dancing around a corral, was surreal enough to scare the shit out of me. Mr. Moose, a puppet character that hid behind the bar in the main room, seemed amazingly conniving and evil. Somehow, someway, Mr. Moose would always trick the Captain into saying something that would unleash a torrent of ping-pong balls on top of him.

Now I knew that they didn't hurt or anything, but whenever they cut to the G.I. Joe and Stretch Armstrong commercials, one thought permeated my mind: who's going to clean up all those thousands of ping pong balls? Does Captain Kangaroo himself have to get on his knees and do it by hand? What about all the ping pong balls that roll underneath the camera dolly?

The characters on the original show are etched into the reptilian hindbrain of most kids now aged 18-38. Mr. Green Jeans (who, as I discovered when we got a color TV for the kitchen in fourth grade, wore blue overalls) was always around to dole out country-fried advice, and - being from the sheltered 319 area code - Mr. Baxter was one of the first black people I felt like I knew.

So what do you do when a charter member of your subconscious comes to your hometown? You go see him, of course, even if it is at a store called Zany Brainy in the asphalt savanna of the new Walmart strip mall.

Zany Brainy is the thinking parent's Toys'R'Us - the visual overload of a warehouse is replaced by soothing, carpeted aisles and piped-in Muzak, peer-group tested to make your child calm and capitalistic. In the music section, there are three CD's that are take-offs on the Beatles' "Abbey Road" (for obvious cross-marketing reasons). There is a Play Center in the middle of the store, where kids can beat each other with tiny wiffle bats. Everything at Zany Brainy is fluorescent yet pre-chewed, all edges rounded off so nobody gets hurt, the spines of books lacquered and drool-proof, everyone wide-eyed like Muppet babies.

The Captain sat in the back of the store, signing autographs from a long line of parents and children, all of them remarkably well-behaved. Everyone wanted pictures of themselves with him, so I contented myself near the back of the line with a book I found on the shelf entitled "When We Married Gary." Told in heartwarming pastels, it was the story of one girl's struggle to accept her mom's new husband Gary, a balding computer programmer who, we are told, "sometimes gets mad just like daddy used to." I put it back in the Family Upheaval section, and moved forward.

And there he was, Captain Kangaroo, just two people ahead of me. The Captain once had the same unfortunate struggle with history that all Vulcans from Star Trek still have - having come of age in the mid-60's, they are now forever stuck with Beatle haircuts. The Captain has lost some of his hair, but I was struck by how handsome he is - easily the best looking man in his late-70s I've seen in years. His eyes glowed as he met each child, sitting patiently for photographs with a calm smile, something he has no doubt done for forty years.

When I got to him, he seemed surprised that I was there by myself. People in their late 20s are not represented very well at Zany Brainy, as we are too old to buy anything and too young to have kids.

"I just wanted you to sign my booklet," I told him, "And just to tell you that you got me through some very cold, depressing mornings in Iowa."

He nodded, and signed my book. I turned to go, but I had to ask him.

"Um, this may seem vaguely stupid, but... who was it that picked up all those ping pong balls every day?"

He smiled and said gruffly, "Some very highly paid Union stagehands."

Which is what I figured anyway, but I just had to hear it from the man.
***

4th and 1 with 25 sec. left

1/22/04

While trying to hook up our TiVo today, I was subject to about three hours of CNN, and among the pieces of "journalism" I ingested therein, I found out that companies are bitching and moaning about "water cooler" talk after the Super Bowl, saying it costs them about $820 million in lost output. This is so horrible on so many levels that I have to number them:

1. What is this, pre-Industrial Revolution? Is there so much corn to be de-tassled that a bunch of guys can't sit in the cafeteria and talk about the last football game they'll see until August? The mere fact that this chit-chat is seen as $820 million in losses, and not just Part of Being an American shows you what is wrong with America and the Korporate Kulture.

2. There is certainly just as much chit-chat every two weeks dealing with other subjects. My guess is, using their math, that the following deficits should be true:
This week: talking about Dean's Iowa mishap: -$147 million
Three weeks ago: various Michael Jackson gossip: -$468 million
Last Spring: Ruben beats Clay: -$288 million
Last December: We nab Saddam: -$974 million

3. It is my understanding that the average human worker has only about three real hours of hardcore "work time" they can handle each workday, and that may be WAY overstating it (it's probably more like an hour). I'm not talking about people stitching soccer balls together on some Javanese island, I mean workers for companies that have a water cooler and enough self-management that employees can chat with co-workers whenever they want. I'm leaving out doctors, and some of my more nutty friends on Wall Street.

Anyway, if that is true, then we're talking about at least 25 hours of doing something else: email, Web-surfing, phone calls to friends, reading, and yes, talking to Randy in Marketing about the Carolina Panthers. I'd like to know where and how these companies are finding the $820 million lost when there's so much other effluvia to dilute their numbers.

4. What are you paying the legions of people hired to find out how much money you're losing in chit-chat after a Super Bowl game? Put all the companies together, all the efficiency experts and focus groups and spyware, and how much has Corporate America spent? Perhaps somewhere in the neighborhood of $820 million?

Whatever. This shit makes me angry, but not half as much as another statistic I've heard: the worst day for domestic violence is Super Bowl Sunday. Just the thought of some redneck fuckwad in his mustard-stained T-shirt beating the shit out of his wife because the New England Patriots just lost – now that's a stat I can sink my teeth into. I dream of getting a nice long 2x4 so I can show up at the mobile home park in Framingham and give some husband a little payback.

I ran out of Celexa and had to take a lower dose for a few days. Or is it obvious?

ev'rybody's work-in' for the week-end

1/21/04

I think the subject has been done to death since high school, but there seem to be an awful lot of shows right now about one-hit wonders. VH1 did a Top 100 countdown of them a few weeks ago, and the iTunes Store just prompted me to download their One-Hit Wonders Vol. 2 collection.

What gets me is the smugness that audiophiles have about one-hit-wonders; as I like to say, they have one more hit that you ever did. Most people's favorite bands have never yielded a hit – in my case, XTC put out fourteen brilliant albums and never had a Top 40 song. Not "Senses Working Overtime," not "Dear God," not "Making Plans for Nigel" – not even the ones you might know. The fact that Right Said Fred ("I'm Too Sexy For My Shirt") was capable of doing something XTC couldn't is further proof of an arbitrary world with no functioning Deity.

Another curious thing about so-called one-hit-wonders is that most of them had 2-5 other hits that you've forgotten about. At dinner the other night, someone described Men at Work as a one-hit band for "Down Under," when they actually had a Number 1 song before that one ("Who Can it Be Now?"). Men at Work also had "Overkill," "It's a Mistake," "Be Good Johnny," and "Dr. Heckyll and Mr. Jive" just to name a few early MTV heavy rotations. If you look at any of the excellent Top 40 books out there (or have me along with you on a month-long road trip), you'd know fun and useful facts like Romeo Void's other song.

Another one of my favorite band categories are Groups That Had a Shitload of Hits But You Don't Remember They Existed, which includes Quarterflash, Billy Squier, Ambrosia and Richard Marx. These people all have mansions, swimming pools shaped like guitars and manservants.

I've rambled on about micro-eras before (like the "Daisy Age" from 1987-90) but there was another weird one occurring from about mid-1980 to early 1982. It was the last gasp of the earnest hair bands like REO Speedwagon, Blue Oyster Cult, Foreigner, Loverboy and Journey before the requisite beauty-demands of MTV made them superfluous. The music? Frequently terrible (Speedwagon's "Take It On the Run" and Foreigner's "Jukebox Hero" is CRAP). The lyrics? Unbelievably idiotic ("I'm not looking for a love that'll last, I know what I need and I need it fast"). But those early days of Atari, after Disco and before the New Romantics, had its own barefoot charm.

Speaking of Romeo Void, VH1 has done an excellent job of mining the secret longings of your backwards-leaning 33-year-old; their show Bands Reunited is one of the best ideas I've seen in the history of nostalgia. I don't know if it works or not, but they tried to get the Void, Berlin, Kajagoogoo, The Alarm and Squeeze back together for one show. Putting the Squeeze boys in one room is a public service to humanity, and I thought only the Budster and I liked Romeo Void. Count me in! Can you also try and get the Smiths back together? I'd give up baked goods to see Morrissey and Marr together again!!!

luddism

1/20/04

Salon's top story is about Dean's "fatal system crash" and how his own internet boom (young Dean-ites blogging away and planning meet-ups) went bust in the prairie pragmatism in Iowa. I'm sorry, but people are taking entirely too much delight in Dean's failure, a sort of political shadenfreude that used to be reserved for people who were already President. They seem especially elated that the whole "internet" thing didn't work out for him, which should be called out for what it is – just more plain ol' anti-intellectualism and the ego-stroking of the Inner Luddite that shines through us all.

Why are we so fucking happy when technology stops working? You'd think that a populace that lives on pacemakers, Lexapro, CDMA phones and up-to-the-millisecond stock quotes would be rooting for technology to get more and more flawless, but there's something about a massive failure that makes everyone smile warmly and wax romantic about "analog" and "bricks and mortar." And when Salon's writer Farhad Manjoo compares Dean to Pets.com, it comes off as oddly self-loathing (an internet-based company proffering that the internet failed us) even though I'm sure that wasn't the point.

I think there's a bit of nerd-hatred going on as well. I've actually written about it in Salon myself – part of the article is about the glee with which the Internet New Economy was abandoned in late 2001, as if the whole thing was the trumped-up horseshit of a gaggle of dorks. The football captains, "real" blue chip companies and George W. Bush came in to kick sand in the faces of all the 28-year-old upstart CEO's and bring us back to some sort of post-9/11 pragmatism. The epitaph for this decade is shaping up to be "Don't Get Too Excited."

I'm not about to give up that fight, however. The entire world basks in the sunny beneficence of the Internet and everything it has to offer, wired by geeks, and used by passionate young people to glom around the candidate they love most. When you tell revved-up young internet users that their whole campaign has been a disaster due to the wind-chill-hardened farm families of Iowa, all you're doing is demoralizing another generation away from the polls.

Quit it!

And stop being so smarmy about technology. That shit is keeping us alive, my unctuous friends!

caucus and muscles

1/19/04

My advice to you is to go over to my brother Kent's site where, as a resident Iowan, he can tell you all about voting in those circus caucuses they had there yesterday. Iowa is famous for three things: it makes Quaker Oats, it birthed Grant Wood, and it gets to tell the country its presidential temperature. Just stick a thermometer in its ass, and it will give you a few surprises.

First of which is how poorly Dean fared, although his camp doesn't seem too worried about it. Secondly, our North Carolinian boy John Edwards, roundly counted out by pundits weeks ago, has been given some serious blood doping. Who would have thought the Des Moines Register had that much power? For those of you playing at home, I used to deliver the Des Moines Register through 6-foot snow drifts throughout my neighborhood in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. If memory serves, it used to be pink, which is probably what Republicans still think of it.

The day has raised again the ugly spectre of "electability," something that may not faze Edwards – he's a Southern guy, by all accounts a great speaker... I don't know. Like we say, it's all re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic, but is anyone else a little titillated by the prospect of a real Democratic race with actual testicles, willing to do anything to unseat Bush? That's what Iowans voted for, and they're usually a realistic bunch.

the 1972 Williams Family Iowa Croquet All-Stars: me, Steve (with baby Michelle), Kent, Sean

P.S. Check out my nephew Sean Patrick and how he single-handedly helped swing Iowa towards Edwards. Really! No, but sorta. Just read it.

a few grass blades

1/18/04

cows roam the desolate hill next door, all of them looked pretty depressed when I went up there (click for bigger)

sunsets are quick and easily extinguished at 6 degrees F

esse quam videri

1/16/04

This post is not going to be about Iraq at all, but it starts in Iraq, namely the Nabil restaurant in Baghdad that was blown to smithereens on New Year's Day by insurgents. It was a place frequented by many Western journalists, and in fact, my buddy Colin Soloway had been there several times just last month. I wonder if he feels what could be called "hypothetical dread," a feeling as though you were teetering on the edge of some ghastly fate, but through your own innocence and insouciance, you just didn't know.

I mention this because that's the way I have come to view much of my past. 2001 was a massive turning point for me, a year after which nothing was going to be the same. It was the year I lost all of my confidence and had to painstakingly re-mortar it again; it was the year when I finally understood what an asshole I had been. I think back at the time before 2001, and feel dread just thinking how closely I came to destroying myself.

The blog I wrote a few days ago – the one about the dot-com – is an example of these thoughts. I erased it because it was hurtful, but there was a second part to it. The end of the story tells about how I was summarily dismissed, and how I realized that the person who had been full of shit, the person who had known so little about our audience, who had an overweening sense of entitlement despite paltry credentials – was me.

I was taught an unthinkable amount of humility in 2001. I had lost a job I thought I'd owned, I directed an independent film that nearly spiraled out of control, I was blocks away from the worst terrorist attack in history, I fell into a deep well of anxiety that made me question why I bothered to breathe, and I gave my ego over to someone else by preparing for marriage.

I look back upon my behavior after college, during my stint in Los Angeles, and my early days in New York, and I think: I'm in recovery. I was addicted to myself. I was drunk on my own bullshit.

There's nothing worse that someone claiming a sanctimonious conversion experience; they bore me blind, and besides, it's a trick the Religious Right uses all the time to shield themselves from past criticism (Ralph Reed is a perfect example). I'm trying to own up to the things I've done in the past as best I can. The question is: did I learn it too late? It's one thing to be a moron when you're 23, but I was still a moron at 33. I got by on charm, on writing skill, and the occasional Right Thing to Do, but I'm still stunned it took me so long to realize that I ever had a lesson coming.

In this recovery, I've used a lot of the language and principles taught to me by Tessa and my dime-store knowledge of A.A. (even coming to understand that A.A. was not a front for rabid Christians was a big pill for me to swallow) and even though I have not done any of the steps – which would require me getting in touch with some very disagreeable people – it has allowed me to think honestly. I used to feel like I was "in trouble" all of the time, usually because I was juggling a lie and a truth in the air at all times... or because I was actually in trouble.

Now I only feel "in trouble" every other Tuesday, which is a huge step in the right direction. Some people die without any room for a second act, and I feel grateful beyond nouns that I was provided one.

gray's anatomy

1/15/04

We were sitting in a biopsychology seminar my junior year at Carolina discussing the various ways of treating depression. This was 1988, about five minutes before Prozac came out, so the methods were still pretty archaic. The professor started out with "tricyclics," drugs that were effective, but had all sorts of bad side effects. If those didn't work, you moved on to "MAO inhibitors," which was another deeply clumsy way to make miserable people feel better.

Of course, tons of patients responded to neither, so the teacher trotted out electro-shock therapy, which had a better success rate than you might think (and, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" aside, was usually painless and used very little electricity). The bell rang, but the class was enrapt: "what happened if that didn't work?" one of the girls asked. The professor smiled and said "then I guess you're shit out of luck."

That was a big moment for me, the revelation that science couldn't fix everything. I always believed in a safety net underneath the safety net, you know, something that could be put in place in case things got too bad. But in 1988, this was as good as you got.

Then came Prozac, which took two years to gain foothold. Then Paxil and Zoloft and Welbutrin and all of the other drugs based on similar principles. After becoming a numb zombie on Prozac in 1998, I went on Celexa in April 2002 and seem to be doing fine. Even now, the molecular mirror image of Celexa – Lexapro – is becoming the drug of choice for many of my friends. The safety nets have returned, because there's always one more drug to try.

And again, you have to realize this is a lie too. Elliot Smith, who wrote many of my favorite songs, so capable of infinity beauty with a guitar, was filled with anti-depressants when he died; it didn't stop him from plunging a knife into his chest, several times.

And now Spalding Gray, a man with such an eerily delicious command of the language, has seemingly jumped off the Staten Island Ferry. This is man who had a seven-year-old son, an incredible career, a loving wife. But a car accident in Ireland destroyed his hip, and the depression than ran in his blood had only worsened since September 11 (he lived in Soho).

Gray had enough money to get the best doctors, try every painkiller available to modern medicine. He had access to every anti-depressant we've got, most likely took them all at one point or another. And still, he chose the black, frigid depths of the East River. If there's one thing that is hard to accept, it is the Buddhist principle that pain is inevitable, even if suffering is optional. The man who wrote "Swimming to Cambodia" has sunk to the bottom of the deep channels, fathoms below the icy winds on the coldest day of the year.

Forget about it...

1/14/04

Too many hurt feelings, too many emails arising from today's blog, so I got rid of it. I made a pact that this space would never be a source of frustration, anguish, negativity or mean-spiritedness, and I transgressed that pact myself. I live a very different life from the one I inhabited a few years ago, and sometimes looking backward can be not only hard, but damaging. Mea culpa.

On to bigger and brighter things.

reaching zero Kelvin

1/13/04

I just walked from Prospect Heights to our place in Park Slope, and while a map says that ain't very far, the blithering arctic air made it seem like the death march from Omsk. There is a pervading theory that global warming actually makes the East Coast colder - at least temporarily – because the ice caps melting frigid water from Greenland ends up diverting the Gulf Stream away from us. If that's true, then could it suck any more?

it's actually colder than this, but doesn't O degrees kind of seem like a world gone amok?

Now that I'm really boring you, I'd like to tell you about January 21, 1985. On that day, a cold front came over the Southern United States that froze nads and killed sperm from New York to Savannah. It also happened to be the weekend that my prep school took our yearly trip to Wintergreen, a modestly shitty ski slope outside Charlottesville, Virginia (the bunny slope was called Rabbit Run, which was funny to us smartypants acne-literati, as we had just discovered Updike).

Anyway, when we got to the slope that day, we could tell it was going to really fucking blow. The 90s were years away, and nobody was wearing any "wicking" fabric, and in fact, I was wearing a ski bib. Tessa recently informed me that nobody has worn a ski bib in earnest since the late '60s.

So Hampy and I get on the ski lift, and halfway up the mountain, the thing stops. Silence, swinging in the air. We are too cold to talk, but it's getting ridiculous. Minutes pass by. And then, right where we are stuck, a gargantuan snowmaking machine twenty feet away roars to life, deluging us with a blast of sub-zero needles that makes it impossible to breathe. We are subjected to this for at least five minutes. It is the coldest day in Virginia history, and we are dangling in the atmosphere, being torn apart by shaved ice.

Charlottesville weather records courtesy of weather.com

After an eternity, the lift started again, and when we got to the top, Hampy and I didn't ski off, we just sort of fell over, our limbs rigor-mortised in place. It took us the rest of the day to thaw out, a week to find anything funny again, and I still need therapy from time to time.

the weather at our farm as I write this – even you Canadians have to admit that negative-27 is a little annoying

T.T.A.C.D.M.C.A.M.B.

1/12/04

My brother Kent reminded me of this dude in Minneapolis who thinks I'm a "self-involved fuck" so I decided to dedicate another blog to him. I call this entry Things That Are Currently Driving Me Crazy about My Body. I hope he sits back, cracks open a can of Schlitz (or whatever they drink in Minnesota), puts his ottoman in Full Recline, and enjoys today's missive – just for him!!!

1. My plantaris is killing me.

If you look at the picture, that calf muscle runs up and behind your knee, and for some reason, it's filling me full of pain every time I do something utterly random, like get out of a chair. I can't imagine how I did it – I even tried to recreate the injury in hoops on Thursday, but couldn't. The only other time it hurts is the following:

- the first three steps down a staircase
- while getting into the car, moving my right leg from the sidewalk to the gas pedal
- moving laterally to stop Chopin from peeing on someone's car.

The website says that this muscle is "rarely used" and they don't even have a specific stretch for it, at least where it hurts me (the back of my leg behind my knee). Frankly, I'm flummoxed. Guy in Minneapolis, what would you do?

2. I have a deviated septum and it gives me migraines.

Or does it? I can't tell who set off an M-80 behind my left eye every night, but now I'm waking up in paroxysms of pain, just like a goddamn junkie. I have to take three Excedrins to make it go away, but then the caffeine makes sleep impossible. The cruel joke is that the deviated septum is on the right side. I stay hydrated – you know, like they do in some northern prairie states like Minnesota – but this is making me lose my religion.

3. My middle finger on my left hand feels like it has arthritis.

That's my only explanation for this stupid pain in the knuckle, making it hard for me to do much of anything intricate besides type. I know it sounds like I'm kidding, but it's true. Is there such a thing as localized arthritis on one knuckle on a random hand, and nothing else is affected? Maybe the cold weather is breaking me down. It was colder here this week than... well, other states I could name!

Yeah, well, there you go. I have other things that are making me crazy – like the fact my stomach hurts 87% of the time, but we'll go into that another time. The cool thing about me is this: I may obsess over my own poopy, but I take just as much interest in your poopy too.

Hey, use the comments button to tell me what is ailing each and every one of you right now!

glubbular globby pluff

1/11/04

Sean just wrote an interesting blog about weight gain/loss in which he says one of the worst days of his life was when he lost a bunch of weight that he was trying to lose, looked in the mirror, and realized he wasn't any happier. I suppose I'm the experiment that botches the hypothesis, but when I lost 22 pounds in the spring of 1995, I looked in the mirror and said "HOLY FUCK YEAH!!!"

I did it in what was soon to be a terribly unfashionable way: Slim-Fast. I had one or two of those motherscratchers for breakfast and lunch, and then ate a large portion of something sensible for dinner. Oh yeah, I worked out every other day (almost) and gave up french fries for a year. It was amazing how quick it came off.

Then again, I had the determined dogma of the deeply depressed, and I was unemployed, making for plenty of free time to do all these workouts. We were living in a farmhouse for $117 a month, rendering a real job hardly worth it – I could basically pay rent on the dwindling royalty checks from 13th-GEN and not worry about it.

I was stunned at how different my face looked with 22 pounds gone. I finally looked like other people. I never considered myself fat, but now I knew what it was like to be part of the dating pool without relying on wit alone. It was pretty awesome, and I kept the weight off (most of it) until my Great Anxiety Depression Year of 2002.

I would consider going back on the Slim-Fast thing, but I don't know if it's the kind of thing you can pull off in New York. There's too much to do, too many great things to eat, and too many friends expecting you to do it with them. A lot of my friends have done (or are doing) the South Beach diet (or any of the Atkins/Zone school – the diametric opposite of Slim-Fast) so I might try that, but frankly, I have enough problems with my energy level.

Oh yeah, and I'm MARRIED. So I don't have to care anymore. But then again I have made several pacts with myself that I don't end up a middle-aged white fucking schlub.

O Mormon pioneers! O rugged western kinsfolk whose blood I share! I know you needed the extra girth to make it through the Utah winters, but I don't need your love handles anymore!

putrescent persiflage

1/9/04

I had a great blog topic tonight and Tessa made me forget it. So now she has to write the blog. I'm just taking dictation.
Here goes!

This is very much like Yeats' later period. When he took dictation from his recently-awoken wife – who had just come out of a dream - he thought he'd stumbled upon something genius, which he called "automatic writing" – when he attempted to capture her "pre-conscious psyche" and, on occasion, his own.
But his later period sucks, so I'm not sure this is a good way to go. Plus, you're sort of a slow typist.

What? You try and type as fast as you talk, motor mouth!

And I'm only talking at half-speed. You try to think as slow as I'm talking. It's not as easy as it looks.

I'm a fast typist! Shut UP! WRITE MY BLOG!!!

I have laryngitis. I can't talk to you anymore.

You are not backing up your part of the deal.

Hey, happy birthday Nell! Yay, Nell was born today.

See, you don't get this at all. You have to tell a great story about Nell, and then end with something like "...and thirty-three years ago today, she was born." Get it?

a) smart ass
b) self-evident
c) yay! It's Nell's birthday!

Jesus, it's no wonder you don't keep a blog. You have iffy communications skills.

I have laryngitis.

On the net, no one can hear you rasp. Jesus, will you quit screwing around and WRITE MY BLOG?!?!?

I think laryngitis is a state of mind. My brain feels a bit raspy. And now I'm bored, so finish your blog yourself.
P.S. It's Nell's Birthday! I mean, today. On Friday. This posts on Friday, right?

*sigh*... no, this posts on Saturday

And it was Laurie's birthday last week. Hey, weren't you going to stop writing a Friday night blog? That's what you said, anyway.

Look, this isn't supposed to be about me.

I'm done. Aren't we done?

Yeah. Great job, sweetie.

a tree falls in brooklyn

1/8/04

Ah, the sights and sounds of the ass-crack of winter. Here's a snapshots of the goings-on about Brooklyn!!!

always a sad sight - the Christmas trees abandoned by the families of Park Slope

always a happy sight - Tessa acts as bouncer at our local Food Co-op (she's meaner than hell, don't cross her)

Chopes like to get dolled up in his winter best - I told him he looks like a fruitcake, but whatever

I have begun growing my yearly Winter Mulletâ„¢, and it's already taking shape!

do so solemnly swear

1/7/04

The temperature on weather.com today said "feels like 12," and they weren't goddamn kidding. You can describe the kind of chill you get at 50 degrees; there is the crisp cold of 41; there is the misery of 24 – but "feels like 12" is something else altogether. Coming inside, it takes about 5 minutes to decompress, like you were a deep-sea diver recovering from the bends.

I spent a the day "feeling like 12" en route to my therapist in midtown, a monthly journey that I keep doing even though it was originally just for the weeks leading up to my wedding. Getting a little therapy, even if everything is totally cool, is absolutely necessary to the long-term prospects of a union - as loath as I was to start the process, I can heartily recommend it to everyone. It does, however, bring up some ancient feelings I'm not exactly proud of.

I made a pact long ago not to be a "guy," you know, in the way that most people decided to be male. I decided that I would talk about my feelings, not be clammed up about things, never define any job in terms of gender, and never watch either NASCAR or hockey. But it's interesting how hard therapy can be for me, a dude.

I'm cool for about the first 45 minutes, and after that, I want to go hunt buffalo. I reach a point when I'm pretty well finished with talking, and I know it's childish and churlish, but something in my genetic makeup, a lone wolf crying at the top of my "Y" chromosome, wants me to get an ax and chop down a tree.

And so one must ask the usual question: is it nature or nurture? Did years of bad television, moronic pimpled friends in junior high school, an emotionally-shut-down prep school and countless glasses of Jim Beam & Coke shut off my ability to delve into emotional issues as far as others can? Or is it just that men are not terribly complicated creatures, and they are afraid to go to the bottom of their soul, because their biggest secret is that nothing is there?

prius my cold fingers from it

1/6/04

Today was my first long(ish) trip in our new Toyota Prius, so I filled up the tank, re-calibrated the controls, and then Tessa and I spent the better part of the 120-mile trip staring at the "fuel consumption" screen. It's pretty cool – it shows you when the engine is drawing power from the battery, how the brake is charging the car, and when the engine shuts off completely (like when you go down a mountain).

You're supposed to get 52mpg in the country (60mpg in the city) but there are several factors at work here. First off, the manufacturer's sticker mileage is only in comparison to other vehicles in the same category. I don't know exactly what that means, but I'm sure other websites will point you in the right direction.

Secondly, it's winter, which is hell on batteries. It was freezing and snowing all the way down the Hudson Valley today, and that cuts into your MPG. Thirdly, the unavoidable batch of ice that attaches to your car can really drag your oars (if you don't mind the mixed metaphor). Fourthly, if that is a word, the frigid air actually makes your gas tank act smaller.

The verdict? 44.5 miles per gallon on a two-hour trip in some pretty fucked-up weather, up and down some pretty steep valleys. Not bad, and if the small-but-disturbed Yahoo! Group stories are true, it only gets better as you go along.

Which is all very cool, but my favorite part of the Prius is taking the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, staring at the map, and seeing the car go underwater:

splurt!!!

1/5/04

At long last, a dream has been realized. I remember the day they were toted away, left in a bag in Iowa in 1977, never to be seen again. Upon arriving back in America in 1979, we asked, "where are they?" but silence followed. For years we pined for them. They reminded us of picnics, pink lemonade coming out of our noses, cousins frolicking and endless afternoons of Orange Push-Ups dribbling down our chins. But a dark era clouded over, and we thought we'd never see them again.

UNTIL NOW!

That's right, ladies and germs, we just got back what was rightfully ours: A SET OF PRISTINE JARTSâ„¢ BRAND LAWN DARTS!!! Ronald Reagan and his evil Republican minions banned them from all 50 states, ordering them destroyed, but they couldn't get all of them! That's right, a refugee box from the time when Kids Could Have Fun has landed on our doorstep.

Yes, you nervous ninnies, we plan to be careful. We won't play with them when Jamie's kids are over. We'll put them on a shelf that 5-year-olds can't reach. And when we actually play, we'll put Chip in the kitchen with Chopes. No need to ruin two of the greatest minds of the 21st century.

But you can bet your ass we will be playing Jartsâ„¢ until we get repetitive motion disorder. We will have tournaments. There will be betting money involved. We will get so good at Jartsâ„¢ that shit will be talked. Manhoods will be called into question. It will be a cultural movement that will tear asunder the pusillanimous memories of Rubik's Cubes and Hula-Hoops. It will ROCK.

As soon as the ground unfreezes.

wide open three-pointer

1-4-04

God, I am so fucking sick of losing. Obviously, as a Carolina fan, we have a long, rich tradition of winning back in the Dean Smith era, and no matter what happens, we always run a clean program with great guys and god knows our colors look awesome on everybody, especially the urban youth on the 3 train to Manhattan. I have poured forth in a froth of ecstasy and hung my head in suicidal gloom about UNC hoops last year on these pages.

But I'll tell you something. Jon Vaden and I sat in Indianapolis in April 1998 and watched Antawn Jamison and Vince Carter fold their tent in front of Utah, a game we should have won by 15, and after it was over, we just froze there in agape-mouthed disbelief at the debacle we'd just witnessed. From that moment on, despite the occasional glimmer of hope, being a Carolina fan has been a cavalcade of misery.

First came Makhtar's false claim that a Utah player called him a "nigger." Then came Dook winning 5 ACC championships in a row. Then came Dook's 2001 championship. Then came Matt Doherty, who alienated and humiliated his players on the first day of practice. Mass transfers. Public displays of rancor. Then an 8-20 season, the kind of year that even the WORST teams never suffer. Then a player revolt. Then Roy Williams comes to right our severely listing ship, and he says it's the most miserable job he's ever had. We drop our first ACC game in a hard-fought but ultimately futile contest against Wake Forest, a team that has now beaten us FIVE TIMES in a row. And yesterday, again, we were beaten by Kentucky, for the FOURTH TIME in a row.

I don't care if I sound like a bad fan anymore. I have tried to be Buddhist about it, and accept that change, even bad change, is compulsory, but fuck that. I am tired of losing these big games.

Don't talk to me about our 18-game winning streak in 2001; that was a fluke resting on the back of the soon-to-be-proven-psychotic Joe Forte. Don't talk to me about the "Maryland Snow Game." Don't talk to me about our "improbable run to the Final Four in 2000" – it only set up another humiliation. Don't tell me about beating Illinois this year, they've already lost again. Don't talk to me about anything. I know some schools have never won a National Championship. I don't bloody goddamn care.

I want to start winning again, and I want to start winning by forty. I want to beat Clemson so bad that they can only put four guys on the court (1998). I want to beat Manhattan 129-45 (1985). I want, like Rasheed and Jerry, to never lose at Cameron.

We have gone 40-43 in our last 83 games. That SUCKS. I don't care if this blog is well-written, or doesn't prove a point, or is the kind of thing that gets a link from the goddamn Dook fan sites to show how unraveled UNC fans have become. I just want to win again. I'm tired of feeling like this about my religion.

they are the eggmen

1/2/04

One night we were having another huge campus party at the Pink House, and, as was our want, a bunch of us were getting warmed up with a box of Franzia- brand Pink Zinfandel. The great thing about those boxes of Franzia is how much wine - 5 liters - fit into such a small box for only $11.99 from the Harris Teeter. Once Goebel's stopped selling kegs for $40, those boxes of Franzia became an instant hipster soirée.

Anyway, Scott Bullock always had two or three extra drinks before a party so it would loosen some of his low expectations of his fellow man (i.e., someone stealing the top to the toilet, etc.) and this time he was doing it while listening to Revolver and Magical Mystery Tour.

As the music worked its way to a crescendo, we heard a huge CRASH in the living room, and Scott fumed off, stomping up the stairs in an inconsolable rage. When Chip finally asked him what was wrong, he said "I'm mad because the Beatles are too fucking good." And as nuts as this sounded, I actually understood it. Not possessing the capacity for deep appreciation at that moment, Scotty turned to the next best emotion: anger.

I've always appreciated him for that - he's sort of the conversational id, always willing to say something you've forbidden yourself to say, even while remaining an angelic creature from the bucolic woods of Maine. He's famous for two comments - one dealing with Jessica Savitch, the other with Downs Syndrome - that remain the funniest things I've ever heard in conversation. I don't know, playing pool with Scott, Colin Soloway and my nephew Sam tonight, I was reminded of that night he threw his glass at the wall because "She Said She Said" was too fucking good.

later that night

the sway of the sensible

1/1/04

When groups of successful New York writers get together, you can pretty much bet two things: they are going to talk shit about everyone they know, and they're going to be unbelievably funny whilst doing so. While I love hearing every detail, it's impossible for me to participate very much - the mere act of being published, or having an article appear anywhere is really such a HUGE SUCCESS that I have trouble being disparaging towards anyone. Getting in print is itself a Herculean achievement. Everyone wants to do it, most people try, and few are allowed any body parts in the door. The rest is just jockeying for position on top of Everest. YOU CLIMBED THE MOUNTAIN, you know? I think my early success and quick humiliation thereafter taught me quick appreciation for how fragile these worlds really are.

One thing Tessa has pointed out is true: New York offers the chance to be around people who have not given up on their adolescent fantasy of creating art for money. These people are writers; they deign to string words together for a living, and there's something so ballsy about that – it needs to be celebrated.

The rest of this country, from the top on down, wants you to stop being an artist. It's true. The Bush Administration told you to go to the mall after 9/11, not finish a sculpture or attend a lecture series at the MOMA. The government has always made it practically impossible to be a freelancer, by doubling your FICA taxes, giving you no affordable health insurance, and demanding that you file quarterly.

Some families do this as well: they just want to keep everyone in the fold. People are routinely discouraged from getting their M.F.A., told to go out into the real world and quick fucking around. Even as we obsess over shows like "Friends" and "Frasier," where nobody seems to have an actual job (or at least one with any time requirements), we live in a society that has a tut-tut attitude about true bohemians who want to remain peripatetic and sleep in on weekdays.

Even worse are people who used to have the dream of being an artist, but took a more "sensible" path down the road to a firm income and home ownership. They leave little messages, tiny hints in conversations that you should join them, get a little frustrated and bored with any rough patches you might go through. Readers of this blog aside (Tuesday's comments were gorgeously rendered), the same goes for having children, for similar reasons – they want their friends to have to make the same sacrifices.

It's a little patronizing, maybe even a little mean-spirited, but I understand where it comes from. I just wish that people were given more latitude to be a fuck-up at worst, and a free spirit at best. In this New Year, can you try to NOT talk someone out of a freelance writing career, can you actually ENCOURAGE someone to keep playing guitar? We are all going to get where we're going eventually, and the beauty of life is the myriad bizarre footpaths. Your cousin may be a shitty actor and you hate going to his plays, but jesus, let him figure it out for himself, okay?