xtcian

golden arches

4/30/08

For those of you reading this blog sixteen years from now, these are the two stories currently swamping our culture:

1) Reverend Jeremiah Wright is causing all sorts of problems for the Obama campaign due to his media blitz, where, among other stupid things, he made disturbing eugenic-related comments about how blacks are different from whites.

2) Miley Cyrus, who tours as the TV character Hannah Montana, appeared "topless" in Vanity Fair magazine, causing a nation of tut-tutters to wring their hands in agony.

Yep, this is pretty much where America is right now. But the fascinating thing, to me, is how similar both stories are. Jeremiah Wright would be horrified to share an elevator with Miley Cyrus, let alone be compared to her, but their situations are exactly the same: BOTH of them forgot who they really are.

Or, better put, who they really aren't: real people. Wright and Cyrus are brands, trademarked™ confections invented by vicious news cycles and their own aspirations, and they're both trying to sell you something. Wright is trying to sell his skewed version of race, and Cyrus is trying to sell music downloads, toys, and advertising dollars. By incorporating the mainstream media to sell their goods, both have given up being real people, which is fine: when properly curated, they give their customers exactly what they want.

Ah, but on the same week, these two incredibly disparate Americans forgot they were merely brands. Jeremiah Wright fancied himself much more than an old inspiration to a current presidential candidate: he thought it was time to make his mark. Miley Cyrus believed she was going to "grow up" from her bubbly, sanitary TV creation, and strike a pose in VF that suggests statutory rape. How unbelievably stupid can you get?

Jeremiah Wright has turned himself from a mentor to a dangerous punchline, and if he'd possessed any self-awareness, he would see there's a time and place for his divisive bullshit, and NOW WAS NOT IT. His brand was "crazy old uncle" who, many would have figured, would know his lifelong struggles would be immeasurably served by the election of an African American president, a man he is now sabotaging.

Miley Cyrus is a 15-year-old concoction, sprung from the achy-breaky loins of someone who seems too stupid to draw breath; a few phone calls, and she waltzed into the perfect tweener kids show. Her brand is to provide edge-free entertainment for kids with parents struggling to keep them off the hip-hop. She's the place you turn when you need to be fourteen miles from the nearest swear word, and now? She got nekkid-ish in a big boy's magazine.

Where is the scene in the back of the limo, where our protagonists Jeremiah and Miley are sat down, and told to cut this shit out, or it's curtains? Where is the man with no eyes, mirror shades reflecting their faces, telling them they have to play ball? Culture loves a story about a person who bucks the system, but capitalism and the court of public opinion really reward those who truly know who they are not.

d'oh!

4/29/08

Oh, I had something trenchant to add, but then Tessa sent me a picture. Lucy thought Homer should watch how she takes a bath, so she gave him a spot on our toilet magazine rack, and...

How can something be so sweet and so profane?

And can someone do a CODE WORD like "when was the last time you felt utterly objectified"?

spake like a child

4/27/08

On Saturday near sunset, our infinitely beloved Salem and his stunning girlfriend Sturdivant got married in Gulf Stream, Florida in front of their adoring fans. Odd as it may seem, they asked me to officiate the wedding, so I promptly went to the Universal Life Church, got ordained (as the Right Reverend, thank you) and months later, brought the whole family to Florida to be of service to a couple of my favorite people in the world.

I think we pulled it off pretty well, judging from the emotion surrounding the ceremony - and also from Tessa, who said she loved my sermon. She never says something like that unless she means it, so I was quite proud to make the cut. I wish we had more pictures, but both our cameras died, leaving us with only a few right now.

Salem's little sister Katie, awesome as always

Sturdivant's friends are a bevy of wonderfully intense women we would have all fallen for in college, and many of the wedding events felt like kickin' it old school at Molly's or Linda's, back when that meant something. They provided more anecdotal (yet powerful) evidence that modern, single men in their mid-20s to mid-40s are unbelievable buffoons, but that's for another entry.

Lucy had an incredible time, especially getting to hang with Salem's six-yar-old daughter Lillie-Anne, although her crush on his son McColl was so pervasive that it made her non-functional at most events. I was proud of her at the rehearsal dinner - she got into the swimming pool with her dress on, which is PURE ROCK.

I've been asked to post the benediction/service I gave Salem and Sturdivant, and I hope it doesn't seem too self-indulgent, because I can't tell you how honored I was to be in that position. So here you go, short and sweet, as best as I can remember it...

... I find myself up here today in a completely bizarre, completely unexpected position. I'm standing next to Salem and Sturdivant, and neither of them are allowed to talk. If you know either of them, you'd realize how rare that is.

Be flexible with one another, appreciate each other's fault lines, embrace your doubts, appreciate your ambivalence, and something odd might happen: you'll probably stay together until you're 104 years old.

knowledge is good

4/23/08

This is Sean, Ian's brother, writing.

This reminds me of the court scene in "Animal House" when Hoover has had it with the screaming idiocy behind him, he turns to the guys and says, "Can someone tell those assholes to shut up?" and Boon jumps up and, full voice, yells "HEY, SHUT UP YOU ASSHOLES..."

Yes, Animal House was required viewing in our home growing up.

Ian asked me to write the blog today because he thought he was liable to say something nasty. Which is kind of hilarious, if you think about it, since he's managed to piss off a big group of people no matter what he writes. I can't imagine him turning to me, the most impolitic person he knows, unless he's just at the end of his rope.

Here's the thing. Lindsay invokes the "Ian Rule" or whatever, but the fact is, the internet works like this. There's a snapshot of a moment that gets relayed to someone's blog, and that blog then gets pored over by hundreds of totally random people who pick over the thing like it's the goddam Code of Hammurabi. They stumble on an inconsistency, they become sexually aroused and then they type in some horrible comment with their suddenly bespunked hands.

Ian, I'm guessing, has a hard time ignoring you blowhards. It's easy for me, as soon as you start saying "you democrats" or "you liberals" and then use Ian's words, (Ian, who is in no way a spokesman for ANYBODY, and this blog, whose words have the equivalent endurance of the hair you leave in your brush) you're really easy to ignore. Also, it's easy to ignore you if you're a dick.

I'm guessing that most of the "code word" entries, and the reason that we never learn anything about his career or personal life, is because the constant screeching gotcha-birds are always hovering, ready to shit into Ian's mouth the second his smile gets a little too wide. I don't know, I could be wrong. I barely talk to him, we're both raising children and writing shows and trying to sneak away from our wives to golf.

anywhoodle

A brief thought on the election.

I have a strict constructionalist view of the Constitution, I believe in the living document, and I also have a deep passion for the Declaration of Independence. So, it should be obvious that it would be hard to find a worse President for someone like me than President Bush. I understand that any new President would be better for America.

John McCain spoke out against torture, and he supports a smart immigration plan. I understand that his call for endless war is a real turn off to some of the people I know, but I see it slightly differently. I think he broadcasts strength and old-man crazy, but I don't believe he would be irresponsible. His sabre-rattling is like Reagan's. I like the crazy old fart, and I believe that his heart is in the right place. Sure, he hugged President Bush like a child clinging to his father, but, as the Obama decriers can't seem to figure out, a man can't be judged by some of his unfortunate friends.

Barack Obama is intelligent, liberal and honest. He has been a supporter of the second amendment, he has been unyielding in his support of a woman's right to choose, and the level of respect he has for the simple American dream, the patience he has for opposing viewpoints, and the balance between policy nuance and inspired leadership is a paradigmatic shift in the way the political world works.

Hillary makes me so unhappy. She has a wicked handle on a series of facts, but she's willing to bend interpretations to make anything say what she wants it to. She disregards caucus states, because they don't represent the "real voters", she disregards the Obama primary wins because there are either a lot of black voters, or are states that will be won by Republicans anyway... Today she's claiming to have more votes total, although to get to that math you have to count a state where OBAMA WASN'T ON THE BALLOT... She claims that if Obama loses Indiana, it's a sure sign that he can't win the general election because it borders his home state, regardless of the fact that she's lost two of the states that border hers.

We have had two presidencies filled with a man who ignores facts or comes to a conclusion that makes no sense given the facts. Do I think we'll have another attack like we did on September 11? I don't know, I don't think so. But we will have another Katrina, another economic blowout, another four, five, six... a dozen horrible things we can't imagine.

I just can't feel okay voting for someone that doesn't see information as fact. I don't want someone using phrases like "bad intelligence" to explain horrible mistakes, and I don't want someone reading what they want into the facts they are given. If Obama was this far behind, he would have dropped out.

If I can't vote for Obama, I will vote for McCain. I at least trust that the un-forseen will be dealt with as it is with him as President. I don't believe that Hillary will respond to what *is*, I believe she will try to tell us why the things that are happening are actually great for her and for us.

And, in case you're wondering how I write so much content, I just write and don't edit. And that's because I have my opinions, they're well informed and I'm super-smart.

wilkes is barren

4/22/08

Pennsylvania, you SUCK. You could have ended this thing last night, and instead, you proved yourself to be the goddamn rednecks you swore you weren't. What tipped the balance for you - the Bin Laden scare ads, the shrill repetition of your bitter gun-clinging, or could you just not pull the lever for the black dude?

At this stage of the game, what could POSSIBLY draw you to Hillary Clinton, with the way she's behaved?

I know this will get me kicked out of the Obama Love Circle, and it goes against everything his campaign is about, but CAN WE PLEASE PUT OLD PEOPLE AND RACISTS ON AN ICE FLOE AND KICK IT OUT TO SEA? This country isn't theirs anymore, and they have nothing left to offer except offensive jokes and car farts. It's time to move the fuck on. A more enlightened future is waiting, and they're not invited.

keepin' perspective

4/21/08

I'm dedicating today's entry to one of my favorite Spazmoid All-Time Dork-Outs: namely, a lifetime odyssey of stitching pictures together badly. I've been working for the ultimate panorama shot since I was ten years old and living in London, scaling St. Paul's Cathedral and trying to get a snapshot of the entire city at once. If I can find those pictures, I'll post them, but they were taken with an Instamatic camera with 110 film, so it all looks a little like Niépce's first photo ever taken.

As the years passed, I figured out how to hold the camera correctly, and then Photoshop created "photomerge", quite possibly the most magical use of computer processing power since Zaxxon. While I did the massive autumn panorama of the farm by hand, now I'm able to create vistas like this one over the farm a few Decembers ago:

click any of these pictures for bigger versions

It's not always perfect - last night, during the full moon, I snapped some pictures of our porch from inside our darkened house, and it looks like something from a carnival ride:

Either way, it's a damn sight better than my panoramas of yore. Below, for your endless amusement and unfathomable boredom, I have an old bulletin board of photos that have yet to be Photoshop Photomerged™. Clockwise from top... the Carrboro farmhouse Annie, Greg and I lived in (1994); my bedroom at the Pink House (1997); my dorm room, 407 Grimes, which I inhabited with Jon and Chip (1987); the Carrboro farmhouse again in winter (1995); the Purple House in winter (1992); and the same spot in Audubon Park in New Orleans with different people from 1987 to 1997.

blowing through the jasmine of my mind

4/20/08

all right, all right, all right

I just watched "Dazed and Confused" again for the tenth time, and was struck again at how well Richard Linklater painted the tiny dots that created a portrait of American adolescent life in 1976. That movie was targeted for a particular swath of people roughly my age, and once you get past all the awesome dialogue (and the pants), you're left with one of the few historical documents from that largely forgotten era.

I was nine years old in 1976 and my brothers Kent and Steve were graduating high school - making them the exact age as the main characters. When I watch this movie, I imagine Kent tooling around Cedar Rapids, IA in his orange VW Beetle playing Dr. John and Foghat, though I'm sure he'll puncture my romanticism. Linklater's Texas was a good bit more languid than Iowa anyway, given that Iowa winters last eight months, and the drug usage was probably more lonely.

Either way, I count myself among the last people that will ever know what the 1970s felt like - the barefoot, uncaring summers, the grisly images from Vietnam courtesy of Walter Cronkite, being stuck in enormous cars with no air conditioning, and most of all, the immeasurable freedom of being young and benignly forgotten. I remember my parents' parties filled with red wine spilled on yellow shag carpet, and then seeing the depression set in the next day, a sadness that cried out for pills that were still ten years away (but in the meantime, a valium would do).

These are not things I experienced directly. But the overall sense, the timbre, the smell of the era? Absolutely. I'll be among the last ones standing, to tell of this decade called "the seventies", when so much seemed to happen, but then again, not really anything. We could point to how ugly the fashions were, but even those have been recycled and spit out again. When I was at Carolina, you could evoke laughter by parting your hair down the middle; now that look has come and gone twice. Do they even throw 1970s parties anymore?

"Dazed and Confused" also does an incredible job of showing the carefree happenstance of teenagers with nowhere to go, and all night to get there - something we carried with us all through college. Can any of you remember when you'd be late at a party, having a fascinating conversation on a porch, and you'd catch the pink and purple light of the sun rising? Sure, you'd have "things to do that day", but not really. Do you remember what it was truly like to have absolutely no schedule, when you'd find yourself in Wrightsville Beach or New Orleans, with about fifteen bucks? Or just on a strange girl's couch?

These are the things we gave up in order to have a real job, or to actually chase our passions, or to have kids. Perhaps we stopped for other reasons: fatigue, the inability to sleep on floors anymore, sobriety, or the epiphany that your fate was somehow slipping through your fingers. I was waxing romantic about it tonight when Tessa abruptly said "Oh honey. We stopped doing it because it was SO BORING."

And she's right. 49 times out of 50, those nights would be dreadful wastes of time, not meeting anyone, spending money on crap, getting more self-involved, not kissing the Jenny you liked, and running out of fucking gas. But that 50th night? I've had five or six of them, many of them with people reading this right now, and it almost made it all worth it.

The 1970s were a different era, and like our endless college nights of the 1990s, there's no going back. There are too many helmet laws, drinking age requirements, cell phones and lawsuits to recreate anything similar. But one thing we have to remember: somehow, in a way that doesn't erode our stomach lining, our kids will have to know the infinite horizon of nights where we don't know where they are, where they don't know where they are, and the only touchstone is a faint violet sunrise to remind them the world still spins.

camel city singin'

4/17/08

Lucy's godmother, the one and only Annie, has today's entry!

I’m truly honored to be invited to blog on my favorite blog, xtcian! Though I’m powerfully tempted to spend the whole time waxing rhapsodic about hooping, something tells me this might not be the ideal time or place, and anyway I have my own blog on tribe.net through which to exercise that peculiar inclination. If your curiosity about hooping simply CANNOT be contained, feel free to pop over to our brand-new website, which has turned out rather nicely, I must say.

Baxter and I are here in LA on a whirlwind California tour teaching hooping workshops (yes, it’s true), and witnessing Ian’s bond with Lucy reminds me of the bond I shared with my own dear dad, who died when I was 19. His death was unexpected and swift—he was an exceptionally healthy 50-year-old when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor that took his life within six months. I had absolutely no way of coping with the enormity of this loss, so in large part I just didn’t, and consequently many years of my youth were vacuumed up in what was really an obsession with this loss.

Now that so many years have passed and I have been able to release my focus from being solely on my own pain, I find myself wishing so much that people just knew him, understood in some real way who he was. I’ve realized that the story of his disappearance from this earth was only a tiny fraction of his life, and that there is so much more about him that’s worth sharing with you, my friends in the xtcianosphere. So what I thought I would do today is to do my best to introduce you, as best I can, to one of the greatest people I have ever known—my dad, Jim Humphreys.

For sounds and visuals, the best way to envision him is to imagine John Edwards. Their resemblance, noted by our whole family, is uncanny--particularly their similarity of speech. When he died, my dad was only a couple of years younger than Edwards is now, and looked every bit as youthful and exuberant as the unfortunately doomed presidential candidate. Daddy was also a lawyer with political aspirations, albeit considerably more modest. He was active in the local Democratic Party and talked occasionally of running for mayor of Winston-Salem. Like Edwards, he grew up in small-town Southeastern North Carolina, and like Edwards he felt inordinate ambition from early in life to move beyond the parameters his hometown.

He spoke quickly, often in staccato flurries that suggested his thoughts nearly outrunning his ability to lasso them into words and sentences. In what I now recognize as an innate delight in language itself, he always took care to find just the right word, to say exactly what he meant. Having spent 3 years in Germany (he had compulsory military service after college because he had been a cadet at West Point, where he was teased mercilessly for his hillbilly accent), he was also fluent in German and spoke some French (but zero Spanish, to my great amusement). He read only histories and biographies, lacking the patience to follow the often winding paths of fiction, and would often read a thick hardback with one eye while watching TV (news, old movies, and "Rockford Files" being his programs of choice) with the other.

My parents had divorced, with admirable maturity and absence of drama, when I was 7, and we spent two nights a week at my dad's house less than a mile away. He was an absolutely terrible cook but did his damnedest to make meals for me and my brother, despite our relentless heckling, eye-rolling, and jokes about his prowess in the kitchen and ridiculous yellow apron. His weekend Birkenstocks, coupled with khakis and a bright polo shirts, were also the object of affectionate derision ("Wow, Pop--what a combo!") My dad bore our bad preteen jokes and even insulting comic drawings with an endless well of good cheer. He saved my brother's superhero rendition of him in a cape and tights with a discernible potbelly and a huge, orating mouth, along with every artistic foray we made while at his place, the Land that Art Supplies Forgot. Magic marker menus on notebook paper and pencil tracings of Ziggy were carefully collated in Daddy's photo album.

At home, his 1977 Gibson Hummingbird was always out of its case, ready to be played. He played and sang at least one song every day, and my brother (who, as you all know, eventually became a professional musician) and I (who still play & sing when I get the chance) learned hundreds of songs that way--traditional, bluegrass, folk, and "gonzo country"--the Texas style pioneered in the 70s by legends Jerry Jeff Walker, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson. I know if he had believed in his own musical talent, which was real but limited, he would have loved to spend a few years knocking around coffeeshops as a gypsy songman, like his idol Jerry Jeff. But his small-town sense of convention and responsibility, as well as the strong desire for a family, took him down another path.

Even though it is so easy to exaggerate the attributes of the dead, so easy to render them as they appear in our memory--larger than life, rinsed of flaws and limitations, amplified to proportions that would be unrecognizable in life--I know that when I say my father was an extraordinary parent, I am not exaggerating. Nothing in life brought him more joy than my brother and me. He delighted in us whether we won or lost, whether we were behaving ourselves or being little whining pains in the ass. He both loved us unconditionally and genuinely *liked* us, as people. He believed in us and consistently demonstrated that, which gave us the gift of real confidence in ourselves. He listened to us, he was fair, he was interested in who we were and who we would become. He often mentioned how excited he was to become our friend when we were grown, to get to know us as adults. He would tease me, saying, "Maybe someday you'll start calling me 'Jim'--" to which I would scream "NO!!! I'm NEVER calling you anything but Daddy!!!"

Among my dad's papers I found one of those local magazines (like "Triad, On Point" or "Winston-Salem Magazine"--mostly advertisements for local businesses) who they had interviewed my dad as one of "The Top 10 Eligible Bachelors of the Triad." They printed the answers to a semi-personal questionnaire which all the "eligible bachelors" had filled out (my dad was never one to refuse good publicity) and I was struck by one question in particular: "What is your life's greatest achievement?" All the other bachelors (many of them, like my dad, divorced with children) had cited business or professional achievements. One of them even talked about buying his first boat. My dad's answer was: "Being father to two nice children."

It goes without saying that my dad's funeral was surreal. I had been largely oblivious to the symptoms (forgetfulness, exhaustion) preceding his diagnosis with an advanced and inoperable brain tumor, which happened two weeks before I left home for my first year of college. One day my dad was up and about, his normal self; the next day he sat me down and told me that no matter what was wrong with his brain or what happened to him, I was to continue my life as planned, no interruptions; the next day he was disoriented, flat on his back in the hospital, head shaved from the biopsy, voice weak, unable to find words. We never again had a real conversation. As he had directed, I left for college two weeks later, as planned. I returned for 3 visits before he died in February--two weekends and the winter holiday. Nothing about it was in any way real to me when I received the phone call that he was gone.

My dad had several close friendships and knew thousands of people, and thousands showed up at his funeral. In my shock I experienced this outpouring of love and respect as through a convex lens--large faces waving in front of me, one after the other, moving, distorted, speaking words. Thankfully, some words made it through my glassed-in state and offered me another chapter of what my dad had to teach me in this world. Face after face that I did not recognize came up to me after the funeral, saying, "Your dad really helped me once..." "I wanted to go back to school and your dad lent me some money..." "I can't tell you how much your dad helped me when I was having a hard time a few years ago..." I was astonished that none of these people was familiar to me. I didn't know any of their names or how my dad knew them. Most of them I would never see again--my mom moved away from Winston-Salem before I graduated from college, so I hardly spent any time there again. But they gave me the gift of letting me know who my father had been, in at least one respect, outside the world of my perception. They realized that I might never have known something important about who he had been. I am so grateful for that.

This was one easy example of a way my father has been able to guide my life toward Light, toward being a better person than I might have been, even though now he has been absent from my life as long as he was in it. It's an amazing thing, to realize that I can still learn from his example, or at least try to. But I've had to turn away from the temptation to wallow in this loss, to refuse to grow out of anger that things did not turn out the way they should have.

Of course, my father should have lived, should have been able to delight in witnessing the growth and change in our lives as well as take more time for himself, for answering his own unanswered questions as he got older. I often wish that he could have gotten to know the many wonderful friends in my life--there are so few left who really remember him. But I thought I'd take some time today and let you get to know him a little, not just because he was my dad, but because he really was a great guy, and you would have liked him.

stop draggin' my, stop draggin' my

4/15/08

I guess I'm sexist, sure, in the way that we're all racist, we're all shape-ist, and we all make certain assumptions about people who go to Duke. There are a few things that are inescapable, just from having grown up in the '70s and '80s and being laden with knee-jerk assumptions left over from other decades. When any of you heard that Eve Carson had been murdered in Chapel Hill, what was your immediate image of her attacker? These ugly habits die very, very hard.

And so we fight against these feelings, right? Some might even veer into overcorrection, and that's fine too, as it's failure in the right direction. As for me, I grew up with an incredible respect for women (from my grandmother to my mother, and so on) yet was afflicted with the gene that made me a Chaser of Skirt. And the time came when I had to rectify the two things, and though I'm now married to one of the more powerfully awesome women on the planet, it's still a work in progress.

But here's where I draw the line. I am sick and fucking tired of being told my antipathy for Hillary Clinton is sexist. I have read it from magazines I usually love and from writers I usually respect. I've heard it in conversations involving the few people left who still support her. It all comes down to the same flogged horse: men like me who can't stand Hillary just don't realize just how sexist we really are - we're so subconsciously chauvinist that we need to be told, again and again, until we lose that "faraway" and "scary" look in our eyes when we think of Obama.

I admit it, having actually done the moral inventory required for true self-knowledge, fully 3% of my contempt for Clinton is based in a buried desire, deep in my amygdala, to bash uppity women with a wooly mammoth femur. But the other 97%? IT'S BECAUSE SHE'S ACTING LIKE A TOTAL FRICKIN' TOOL!

I'm not going to post links, because this shit's so easy to find, but this is a person who has cozied up with right-wing media moguls, hemmed and hawed when asked if Obama was Muslim, told half the electorate their states don't matter, announced that the Republican candidate was better on national defense than the guy in her own party, had the audacity to say Obama was en elitist when she and her husband earned $109 million over the last decade, and is admittedly staying in a race she's already lost to subvert the will of the people.

In the meantime, McCain's positives are (temporarily) going up, any meaningful dialogue about the future of this country is being shredded by shenanigans and gossip, and yes, PEOPLE LIKE ME ARE GETTING PISSED OFF ABOUT IT. So anyone out there calling us on our purported sexism: grow the fuck up, and take responsibility for the way your candidate is behaving. Sure, this will all seem like Much Ado when Obama wraps up the nomination, but in the meantime we've got Oscar Wilde's nightmare: the tension is unbearable, and I hope it ends.

scottland yard

4/14/08

And now, our co-champion from the pool, Scott Burkett, has his blog forthwith!

***

First of all, congratulations to Emma who cleaned my (and everyone else's) clock for most of the tournament. She excelled throughout the whole bracket and I was saved by a lucky (or unlucky) last pick. But here goes anyway . . .

So, here I am trying to be a guest blogger on a site that I truly enjoy while dealing with a case of guilt like I'm going to Mass on the way home from buying birth control at the local pharmacy. I truly hate the fact that I'm writing this at all – I'd have much preferred reading the guest blog of a jubilant Tar Heel that picked us to win and was now reliving their rapturous weekend in San Antonio.

Unfortunately, my father was all but a professional poker player (and not averse to placing a few sports bets either) and he always – always! – stressed that you love with your heart and you bet with your head. Sadly, I've thought that Kansas was the best team in the country all year. Good guards, a great 3 in Rush and 4 bigs that all play hard and have skills. Sure, we could have won if we played really well, but we didn't and that's that. I won't forget, however, how many games we gutted out this year or how many times I told everyone that I knew that I loved this team and how hard they played.

So, enough of that. I thought that I'd like to take just a minute of everyone's time to explain why I got hooked on reading Ian's blog in the first place. I remember those days in '89 and '90 when you had to get up early or know someone who did to get a DTH on Wednesday mornings. Between the crossword, Calvin and Hobbes and Wednesday's Child, if you didn't have a DTH by 9:30 you didn't have a shot of seeing one.

As much as I liked those columns, though, the main reason that I read the blog and kept on reading was that I happened to catch one of Ian's letters to Lucy within the first few days of visiting. I remember reading it and sitting stock still in my chair for a couple of minutes and then going back and reading it again. It felt like I wrote that piece about my own child, though I doubt I could have done it with half the skill that Ian did.

I've felt that way a million times about my own children. I'm stunned and humbled seeing the pure goodness that radiates from these small things that sprang from my wife's body and introduced me to the person that I'm supposed to be. It's like someone pressure washed all of the dreck from a few pieces of my personality, put them together with many more pieces of my wife's personality and then repackaged it into a living reminder of that there are good things in the world – even if my daughter did spend the better part of a month trying to convince me that Daddies really should wear panties since girls don't like underwear (I think I'm going to need about a year of therapy to fully parse that one long conversation with a 4 year old).

Ian – Thanks for reminding me that the written word is a powerful thing and the written words of people that love you are gems beyond price. My children will have a few simple words from their father every few months to remind them that they have been loved and treasured their entire lives.

I hope I can join in some of the conversations that happen around here now that I've gotten over my temporary case of lurking and I hope that I can participate in next year's pool. I promise I'll pick the Heels if I think that they are the best team and if I don't pick them I promise that I'll be pulling for them and hoping to read a guest blog from one of you guys on the Tuesday after a great weekend in Detroit.

Cheers,
--Big Scott

in June, Caroline will turn six, and Wyatt will be two

license to thrive since 2005

4/13/08

Hey ladies and gentlemen! Guess who turns three today?

bonus trivia: what turned SIX today?

emma chi upsilon

4/9/08

For those still conscious after the Heels got drubbed in the Final Four, we got ourselves some winners in the annual pool - and it was a tie! Our girl Emma, who wrote here on March 18 that she would "go ahead and start working on my guest blogging piece" before she even entered her picks, dunked on the naysayers who thought she was being cocky. Our other winner, Scott Burkett, played with this head and not his heart, and wound up at top.

Today will be Emma's blog. Enjoy!

***

Sure, everyone knows the basic rules for picking games in an NCAA tournament bracket. A number 16 seed has never defeated a number one seed. Nearly always, one number 12 seed beats a number five seed in the first round. In the years since the field has been 64 teams or more, a number 15 seed has beaten a number 2 seed only a handful of times.

I have come up with some other rules to go by in doing my picks every year. And who am I to make up rules for March Madness Bracketology? Well, nobody, really. I have never played sports. But I have watched college basketball ever since my grade school teachers let us watch the ACC tourney on ACC tournament Friday. I clearly remember watching the 1982 NCAA championship game. To this day, I swear I was the first person on that rainy night on Franklin Street in 1993 to come up with the thought that TimeOut should put a picture of Chris Weber making that beautiful T with his hands in the national championship game.

I don't remember when I did my first bracket, but I am guessing it was about 15 years ago. My husband has conducted an office pool since he has worked at his office and has kept a Hall of Fame. In the last 11 years, I have placed first or second in the pool five times. I think I finished in the top five in the xtcian pool last year, but don't quote me on that. In perfect candor, I did make the Hall of Shame in 2004, but I will blame that on the fact that I had a one-year-old and a three-year-old at the time and who really had time to care about basketball that year?

Back to the brackets. I have fun with it and these are my rules. As soon as put my rules out there, I am sure that I will become the world's worst bracketeer, but that's a chance I'm willing to take.

1. First step: You must get a newspaper the Monday following Selection Sunday. In that paper, you'll find blurbs on all 65 teams in the field. This will provide valuable information for your selections, such as Team Coach, Team Mascot, town where the school is located, season record and how the team has performed in the NCAA before.

2. If in doubt, go with a family member. For example, my maiden name is Stallings. Therefore, when I see that Kevin Stallings is the coach of Vanderbilt, Uncle Kevin will get into the second round of the tourney. (This did not do me much good this year, but has worked in the past.)

3. If in doubt, go with your sisterhood. Back in 1995, when the Miami of Ohio Redhawks were still the Redmen, they made it to the big dance. I think they had a player who wore this great and funny looking pony tail on the top of his head who was a lot of fun to watch. So, I picked Miami of Ohio to make it to the second round. They made it. My husband looked at me and said, "Why did you pick that team?" "Because that is where Delta Zeta was founded, of course."

4. If the field fits it, pick a final four theme. It must have been 1997 when I decided that it would be fun to have a feline filled final four. My picks were probably Arizona, Kentucky and Clemson. Carolina would have been my exception to the theme.

5. As any gal would tell you (even a fashion idiot like myself), if you can't find any other distinguishing factor, go with the better team color or basketball uniform. I promise you, you won't find a better basketball uniform than those designed by Alexander Julian. In fact, maybe we should bring those unis back for good luck.

6. Don't enter a pool with more than fifty people in it. Although the payout is better, you've limited your odds of winning way too much. I like pools with about 25-30 people in them (I will break my rule for the xtcian pool every year. I have always said that rules were meant to be broken).

7. Never spend more than thirty minutes filling out your brackets. Don't overthink it. Go with your gut.

8. No matter how fun it is to pick UNC every year, it's not reasonable to predict them to win the National Championship every year. Pick UNC when it is reasonably likely for them to win the National Championship. Branch out and pick another team every so often. Of course, if they are the #1 seed in the entire tournament, this gal will be picking them.

After Saturday night's game, I really didn't feel too much like writing about March Madness today, but I certainly didn't want to write about politics or religion. Global warming has been discussed ad nauseum recently. I could talk about music, running or the beauty of eastern North Carolina (I said eastern NC, not East Carolina), but it was basketball that got me here today.

So, a thought came to me, a smile appeared on my face, my fingers danced a little bit as I started typing, and I decided to talk about basketball. The thought? No matter how you look at this basketball season, we outperformed Dook in every way, shape and form.

seitan tastes like sheitan

4/8/08

Rampant cursing, messianic self-pity, the maniacal destruction of inanimate objects, decades of revenge fantasies... I'm a treasure trove of things I can teach the Lulubeans to avoid. One to add to the archives: when to stop being defensive and just admit that your critics are not always completely deranged. And so it is with the environmentalism on this blog; I'm going to completely let it go.

It's true that I fly a lot, more than the average person, and while I'm not convinced my personal travel behavior has any real meaning, I also have to come to grips with another, worse truism: nothing I do has any real environmental meaning. None of the hybrid car-driving, none of the offsets, none of the solar power, none of my habits put the slightest dent in the problem.

Barring a completely new energy source, we're only rearranging deck chairs. In his devastating article last year in the NYT, Thomas L. Friedman showed how two cities exploding with people - one in Qatar and one in China - renders everything we do irrelevant:

Hey, I'm really glad you switched to long-lasting compact fluorescent light bulbs in your house. But the growth in Doha and Dalian ate all your energy savings for breakfast. I'm glad you bought a hybrid car. But Doha and Dalian devoured that before noon. I am glad that the U.S. Congress is debating whether to bring U.S. auto mileage requirements up to European levels by 2020. Doha and Dalian will have those gains for lunch...

I drive my car and plan my little projects in the vain hope that I have some control over the world, but it's an illusion than can best be described as "cute," especially by Americans who might read this 20 years from now. And that's where I made one of the biggest mistakes on this blog: I pretended my illusion was real, and argued accordingly.

All it really did was set me up for attacks, laying open wide avenues of hypocrisy, and leading to more cases of the Lindsay Doctrine in action. So here's the deal: I don't care anymore. Remember when I asked you to do "one thing" to help with climate change? I rescind my plea, and honestly, please do anything you want. Recycle if you want to, burn endangered yak fat in a pit in your backyard if you want to, I'm walking away from the charade. I'll still do all my enviro-stuff because old delusions die hard and it's our little way of giving Dick Cheney the finger, but I'm through kidding myself.

Part of this is because I'm tired of subconsciously - and consciously - editing myself on the blog. If I'm going to keep doing this, I can't second-guess everything I write, and I was intentionally leaving out entire trips I was taking, cool shit I was buying, and rants that were percolating, because I didn't want to have to hear about my conspicuous consumption, my flying, and my bourgeois tastes. I am tired of putting "for work" as a modifier to my plans, because, quite frankly, some of these things end up as stories for the career, and others end up as stories for experience.

I've decided I can no longer care, even a little bit, what someone thinks about my lifestyle. As such, I'm acquiescing the environmental argument. If I write about going to Scotland to taste a rare barrel at Bruichladdich, and you think my airplane is a blight on the troposphere, I'm not going to fight you. If I buy another piece of electronic equipment from the Apple Store, and you think I spend too much money on crap, I bow my head and tip my cap.

Despite the squibbling over the last few days, there is one Basic Tenet of XTCIAN, and I'd forgotten it: "At all times, you must know exactly how stupid you look." When I got married, and some cranky old acquaintances on another message board commented that I looked "goofy" and that "Tessa was too pretty for me" and that we were "two yuppies in love... BARF!" my comment back was "NO FUCKING DUH, SHERLOCK."

I get it, the "three houses", the leftist claptrap, how I'm "hopelessly out of touch", the not having a real job, the "not understanding how this country really works", the big words, the Hollywood name-dropping, the religion-bashing, I get it, I get it. But I lost self-awareness on the environmental stuff, and I'm relieved to let it go, so I can get back to the business of being an effortless prick with a clean conscience.

3 oz. of liquid

4/7/08

Okay, let's go ahead and get this out of the way. Any and all comments about the greenhouse gases emitted by my travels will be referred to this entry from now on. Let me say it loud and clear: I USE AIRPLANES FOR TRAVEL. I WILL CONTINUE TO USE AIRPLANES FOR TRAVEL. I TRAVEL PLACES YOU MAY NOT THINK ARE ESSENTIAL. I TRAVEL A LOT, AND NOT ONLY FOR WORK - OCCASIONALLY I WILL TRAVEL TO WATCH A BASKETBALL GAME FEATURING MY BELOVED TAR HEELS.

But I thought you were a rabid environmentalist! Isn't that a little hypocritical?

I'm sorry, I can't really hear you when you're sucking my balls.

*Ahem*. I said... I thought you were a rabid environmentalist! Isn't that a little hypocritical?

In some ways, yes. I am one of the (roughly) 100-250 people who elected to take a flight to a place where the plane was going anyway. If I had gotten together with the other 100-250 people, and told them all to drive to Italy... well, no, they would have flown the empty plane anyway. But if I started a groundswell of public outcry against air travel and convinced 30% of all Americans not to fly to Europe anymore, they would probably reduce the number of JFK-Rome flights from four to three.

Am I culpable? Yes. I'd argue that my culpability is very, very small, but yes, it exists.

I'm not talking about vacation flights to Europe, I mean flights to a place like San Antonio, just to watch a basketball game.

Ah, but is it just to watch a basketball game? When I went to Texas last weekend, I met up with my buddies Jon Vaden and Chip Chapman - two friends I've had for 23 years. We talked for two days about our various life issues, offered support where we could, and even visited the Alamo - along the way, spending money in the local economy:

So where do you draw the line for frivolity?

You could have driven. Didn't you once say: "Every person on that... plane bears the responsibility for its gas usage. They made that choice, not me."

Yes, but you're taking me out of context. I was saying that to commenters who didn't like the fact that I was driving across the country when there was a plane going there anyway.

Besides - and I'll come clean here - many of my arguments against flying (and for driving) came from an irrational post-9/11 fear of flying that has since been mostly eradicated by therapy and Celexa. In a way, I was trying convince my wife to let me drive from New York to California twice a year, and thankfully, cooler heads prevailed.

Sounds like rationalizations to me. I mean, what percentage of man-made global warming is caused by airplanes?

1.7%.

Um. How much is caused by driving, shipping and trains?

12.3%.

Er... what about deforestation?

18%. Lighting accounts for about 20%. You see where this is going, don't you? Let's put it in simple terms:

A round-trip flight from LAX to San Antonio emits about 275 kg of CO2 per passenger. If you were to swap out ten incandescent bulbs for CFLs in your house, you would stop 385 kg of CO2 in one year. Hell, if you were to insulate your attic with rolls of R-38 from your hardware store, you'd save 1500 kg of carbon dioxide a year.

What are you getting at?

I'm saying "make realistic changes where you can." If you don't like buying carbon offsets, that's fine, but instead of calling environmentalists who fly "hypocrites", you could make about five changes to your own home that would cancel out every flight they'll take for the next five years.

Oh no. Is this where you list all of your Great Environmental Achievements?

Yes, because it makes conservatives so furious. To wit: we drive a Prius (roughly 45 mpg), we own no incandescent bulbs, we are a one-car family in Los Angeles with no commute, our farm has a solar array that provides free energy to our house as well as several homes surrounding it, we heat with a wood stove (77% efficiency using a renewable resource), we've planted trees on both coasts, use new high-efficiency washers, dryers, dishwashers and refrigerators... and we pick airlines with new planes and a solid environmental plan.

Wait - what was that last part?

I make sure to fly new planes that are 44% more efficient than the ones we used in the '80s (and are still around). And for our roundtrips back to New York, we almost exclusively use Virgin's brand new planes, which not only have cool games and movies on demand at every seat, but Virgin itself is investing in a superfuel that may change travel as we know it.

Whatever. You're still flying and still putting gas into the stratosphere.

Whatever. It's always the climate change deniers who harp on this the most. They use our so-called hypocrisy as justification for doing absolutely nothing. I would make this warning, however: don't forget what happened to the boy who never went on an airplane, never discovered new places, never visited other countries, never learned another language, never commiserated with old friends, and never ventured far because the world was too scary and complicated...

What?

He became a batshit wingnut reactionary Republican.

You can only do this environmental stuff because there's money, etc. etc. prissy self-righteous, etc. etc. elitist, latté-drinking liberal fuck, etc. etc-

Wait, wait. I'm sorry. Again, it's really hard to hear you whilst you suck my balls.

did somebody step on a duck

4/6/08

Chip, Jon, me, mid-1st half, Alamodome, score: 40-14

Honestly, I should have known it was over when I heard the Kansas pep band. They played an arrangement of some awesome pop/jazz invention that was clear, unexpected, complicated and catchy - the kind of piece actual musicians love. When our band took over, it was the same ragged tunes they've been flogging since 1987. Familiar, sure, but shopworn. It bore remarking.

I don't think it's possible to oversell the amount of hatred for North Carolina stuffed in the Alamodome on Saturday night. The rivers of royal blue coarsed through the aisles, powered by loathing, high on undying resentment and foaming with betrayal. Kansas fans wore shirts that didn't toy with the language like those "Duck Fook" jokes: they actually said "FUCK ROY".

If you were from another country and judged audience bias by noise and color, you would think 85% of the stadium were from Kansas, and about 300 people were from North Carolina. I can't say I've ever been in a more hostile environment, and I've been to road games in the ACC. Jon, Chip and I tried our best, but sometimes it felt like we got mixed up at the concession stand and walked into the wrong movie.

They booed our players, they booed our coaches, they relished each of our botched shots like bon-bons from heaven. When they began to pull 20, 22, 25, 28 points ahead in the first half, tens of thousands screamed in furious ecstasy, addicted to the cruel adrenaline of knife-twisting. They reminded me of Eric Cartman making Scott Tenorman eat his own parents, then licking the bully's face while moaning "Ooh, the tears of ultimate sadness! Let me taste your tears, Scott! Oh, num num num!"

Okay, Kansas. You got it out of your system. Roy Williams was your coach, but then went back to his alma mater, taking what is arguably the best job in college basketball. Then he won the national championship with us. I understand you were pissed off. Now can you move on? Because if that's all you had to fight for, Memphis is going to clean your fucking clock tonight.

this won't hurt a bit

4/3/08

I had periodontal surgery in the afternoon, and lemme tellya, it just ain't the same since dentists stopped busting the nitrous oxide. In order to preserve sterility, they had to put two sticky sheets of plastic over my face, therefore pinning me to the seat like Munch's "The Scream", then covered my eyes and stuck oxygen tubes up my nose.

Personally, I'm not claustrophobic and tend to enjoy having so little choices, but I could see how most other patients would freak out. As such, they give everyone three Atavan and some narcotic syrup by rote, just to weed out the potential spasmoids. The surgery itself was fine, vaguely uncomfortable, but I was really hoping for more fun with the Atavan. They were saying stuff like "some patients get up and start talking in made-up English and start pushing random buttons in the elevator." I said, "you're going to turn me into my daughter?"

Sadly, none of that happened - I didn't have any crazypantsing at all, in fact, I was remarkably lucid all the way home. And then I lay down in bed at 12:30 pm, turned over, opened my eyes, and it was 8:15pm. What the fork?

Anyway, much to do now, because I'm going to meet the rest of my 407 Grimes Dorm roommates from 1986 - Chip and Jon - late tonight in fabulous SAN ANTONIO! Anyone else going to be there? WHOO-HOOO!

miss gradenko

4/2/08

Here's the thing. I don't like having just one song from an artist, or really, from an album. There's something so disconnective about that for me - like a single gorgeous finger amputated from a distant body. When the whole concept of iTunes and illegal downloading went mainstream about in the early 2000s, the mantra was always "why pay for a whole album, when you can get only the songs you want?"

For most horrible pop acts, that seemed reasonable, But as a whole, I found several things about that statement sickening. To wit:

1) How the fuck do you know what songs you're going to like? Do you really think a few seconds' preview on the iTunes music store is going to give you insight into not just that song, but your shifting tastes two years from now?

2) There was a day when artists would make albums with an overall idea; a theme would run throughout, and each song was carefully placed. Hell, two of the greatest albums ever made - "Sgt. Pepper" and "Skylarking" - are utterly robbed of their power if you just snatch one song out of context.

3) Artists who advertise for iTunes (like Alanis Morrisette infamously did) are basically saying "half of my album is filler anyway", but if that's true, what the hell are you doing releasing seven shitty songs on an album of eleven? It's stunning to me, in a world where so many struggling artists clamor to have five people show up at coffee shop, that established musicians are allowed to be so cavalier.

My solution? The iTunes store should stop selling individual songs for 99 cents - they should sell the whole album for 99 cents. If everyone is only downloading one song anyway, what's the difference? Studies have shown that it's still immensely profitable for record companies to sell their music at pennies per song - why not save themselves, and the concept of "the album" at the same time?

Doing so would compel illegal downloaders to go legit, which puts countless millions of dollars back into the hands of companies, and hopefully, artists. It will also compel the musicians themselves to discard their crap and make every song a stunner. Great books don't have "throwaway chapters" meant to be ignored, why should albums?

And then, the album as a statement - not just a hodgepodge of potential hits and filler - can come back. "Synchronicity". "OK Computer". "The Wall". "The Queen is Dead". Think of those hidden songs, the fourth track on Side B, that snuck up and changed your life after you'd already heard the album twenty times. You can always right-click and erase whatever song you want, but more likely, you'll keep the whole painting, even if the blue stroke in the corner takes longer to appreciate.

*kerplonk*

4/1/08

Guys, I apologize. I'm still so jetlagged that I begin to walk into walks by 10pm. Can someone say something rude and salacious in the comments to keep the dinner party going until I "come to," as it were?