Who knew Zack Morris could translate into literature?

I have a new favorite author. Well, favorite is probably too strong a word, but I just discovered this guy and I suddenly want to read everything he’s ever written. In the last week, I have read two books by Chuck Klosterman. One being, “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs” and the other being, “Killing Yourself to Live.” The former is a collection of short essays providing commentary on pop culture, life in general, and the author’s life in particular. The second book begins under the guise of the author taking a road trip to all sorts of locations where rock stars died, but really that premise is just the jumping off point for the author to provide commentary on pop culture, life in general and his life in particular.

I feel weird calling these books “great” because in the conventional sense of literature, most educated people would probably call these two books puerile, self-indulgent and full of “philosophy for idiots.” Make no mistake, these books are all those things, but beyond that – and as far as I’m concerned, this is all that matters – they are engaging and well written. To give you an idea of the subject matter you’ll find in these books, Klosterman spends thirteen pages of “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs” discussing the significance of the TV show Saved by the Bell. He spends the bulk of “Killing Yourself to Live”, which is supposed to be about death and rock-n-roll, going on and on about his ex-girlfriends. And yet, there was never a point, not one single paragraph in any of these books, where I wasn’t completely absorbed by what he was talking about.

At the outset, Klosterman’s writing reminded me of another of my favorite writers, Bill Bryson. Bryson has written several travel narratives, including the books, “The Lost Continent” which is all about his experiences road tripping around the United States, and “A Walk in the Woods” which is about his experiences hiking the Appalachian Trail. While Bryson does spend a good deal of time describing his personal day to day life on these trips, those narratives are merely a backdrop for him to tell the histories, little-known backstories and personal commentaries of the areas he passes through. Klosterman, on the other hand, uses the places he visits in “Killing Yourself to Live” as a backdrop to tell the history, little-known stories and commentaries of his own life. Similarly, in “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs”, the bulk of one essay about Billy Joel discusses not why Billy Joel was important to pop culture, but why Billy Joel was important to Klosterman.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Why would anybody want to read these books, written by a guy they’ve never heard of, about the very same guy who they’ve never heard of? I was wondering this myself as I sped through chapters two and three of “Killing Yourself to Live” where Klosterman completely abandons the premise of rock star deaths and spends fifteen pages talking about a girlfriend who’s not really a girlfriend and who has nothing at all to do with his current road trip – save for the fact that he’s giving her a ride before he embarks on said road trip. “Why should I care about this guy’s girlfriends?” I asked myself several times. And yet, I did, in fact, care about this guy’s girlfriends. And that’s when it occurred to me that while this book probably couldn’t have existed, much less sold thousands of copies, twenty or even ten years ago, the fact of the matter is Klosterman is writing at a time when blogs are one of the most popular forms of written expression. People all over the country spend hours a week reading first-person stories written by people they have never met.

And that’s what Klosterman’s books essentially are – really long blogs about things that we probably shouldn’t care about, but for some reason do. Add to that the fact that Klosterman is a genuinely sharp, engaging and witty writer who often has a dead on perspective on pop culture and the human condition and it makes these novel-length blogs worth the read and worth the recognition.

Reduce, Reuse, Re-detonate

I read a story in USA Today yesterday (actually "story" is too big a word, this was more of a blurb buried in the margins) about a series of explosions that occurred inside a bomb recycling plant in Louisiana this week. Okay, first of all, in this spectacle-fueled society, why was that one not all over the front page? People live for stories with explosions. Especially ones that involve multiple bombs, and especially ones that occur right in our own back yard.

Second of all, I didn't even know there was such a thing as bomb recycling plants in this county. Hell, I didn't know there was such a thing as bomb recycling. Exactly what kinds of bombs do these people recycle and what, pray tell, do they remake with the leftover components? Firecrackers? Presto logs? Cap guns? Apparently this plant recycles old military bombs. I assume we're not talking about nukes here, but are they the kind that look like old cannon balls with fuses on them? Are these like plastic explosives? ...and if so, which number is printed on the bottom? Like do they send it to the plant along with their milk cartons or their soda bottles?

But more to the point, who signs up for this particular job? What are the qualifications one needs to recycle bombs? And what does that kind job pay? What kind of salary would you have to pull down before you agreed to be the guy who pulls the toenails out of a Rotweiler hopped up on crack? Oh sure, they probably have safety procedures in place to keep you from getting mauled, but that doesn't change the fact that you're still pulling the toenails out of a Rotweiler hopped up on crack. I'm sure they had safety guidelines at this recycling plant, but damn, a place like that is (forgive the unfortunate cliche/pun) just a ticking timebomb... which they will apparently then refurbish into a watch or something before the timer goes down to zero.

But the thing that is really... REALLY funny about this - the explosions forced police to evacuate two schools in the area.

Seriously... no I mean seriously... WHO BUILDS A BOMB RECYLING PLANT NEAR A FREAKIN' SCHOOL?

Better than a yellow ribbon

Maine is awesome.

Remember that commercial that ran during Super Bowl this year where a crowd of people in an airport starts applauding for a group of soldiers who are exiting their plane? I saw that exact scene recreated in the Bangor Airport earlier today (I was up in Maine for my high school reunion). My mom dropped me off at quarter of seven and as I made my way up the escalator to the security gate I saw several men in fatigues descending the stairs. I smiled and gave a nod to one of them as I passed by. I got upstairs and the security checkpoint for my gate hadn't opened yet (less than an hour before my flight was scheduled to take off mind you) so I just kind of hung back to wait and that's when I noticed the wave of camouflage coming toward me. Soldier after soldier came pouring out of the international arrivals terminal. Greeting them as they came were a group of maybe ten Mainers. They were shaking the hands of every soldier that came through the exit, saying good morning, thanks for your service, thank you for coming and God bless you. With time to kill before they opened up my gate, I joined the greeters - most of whom didn't appear to have any bags with them, but had apparently shown up at the Bangor Airport for the sole purpose of welcoming this battalion of troops to Maine - and I shook the hands of dozens of troops, thanking them as they came through.

It was a cool moment, though as our little line shook hands with the lo-o-o-o-ng line of soldiers, I started to laugh because it kind of reminded me of the lines we used to form after every baseball game in Little League where the two teams walk past each other, shaking hands saying, "Good game, good game, good game." At one point, I thought I'd be funny and said that to a cluster of the guys coming through, eliciting a small laugh. After about five minutes, the wave of khaki green broke for a few seconds and I slipped away to write this blog. But still the wave kept coming. Just kept coming. For perhaps fifteen straight minutes this small army kept on flooding out of the gates. And for that entire time, these Mainers, several of whom wore veteran hats, stood there and shook their hands. And as the wave trickled down to the final few soldiers, the whole group started clapping, and several others in the terminal joined in.

While I waited for my gate to open, all the soldiers, who outnumbered the civilians in the terminal 10 to 1, milled around making phone calls, taking pictures, browsing through the gift shops and talking to anybody who stopped to shake their hands. One old lady sitting near me asked a particularly young looking man in uniform where they were headed. He told them that they were an aviation squadron out of Texas and were on their way to Iraq. The lady gasped at that news, saying, "Oh my," and then asked him if he wanted to go.

With all the confidence and dignity that comes with wearing his uniform, the soldier responded, "Oh yes, I can't wait."

I wonder if this scene could have happened anywhere but in a small airport like Bangor. In big city airports like Philadelphia, would the people in town even know when a battalion of soldiers would be arriving? If so, would they have the motivation to show up at the airport to greet them? Would there even be a place to await them as they exited the plane. And would anybody in a big city have courage and/or compassion to not only shake the hands of every single soldier who came off the plane, but then start applauding in the hopes that others around them would join in. Somehow I don't think so. I don't think that's necessarily sad or indicates anything bad about the people who live in our cities since we're all encouraged to never make eye contact, much less interact with people or draw undue attention to yourself. So I don't think it makes these people or places bad.

It just makes Maine awesome.

(and the troops even moreso)

Thoughts from an airport phone booth

It’s Sunday morning at exactly 8:42. I’m at the Philadelphia international airport waiting for a flight to take me to Chicago where I’m working the PGA Championships. (Incidentally, that means this blog won’t be posted for several days until I get a reliable internet drop at the TV compound, as my laptop has no wireless feature). I took the TSA warnings seriously and made sure to pack all liquids, gels and all other innocuous canisters into my checked bags and got to the airport at least three hours before my flight which is scheduled to take off at 10:35. I left my sister-in-law’s house in south Jersey at 6:30, experienced no traffic and arrived at long-term parking just after seven. In a rare showing of punctuality, the shuttle arrived less than thirty seconds after I schlepped my bags over to the little bus stop. In fact, it ended up being so prompt that I actually forgot to write down which section of the marathon parking lot I was parked in and had to ask another lady who’d gotten on with me. The bus let me off at Terminal A five minutes later where I walked right up and checked my bags in with the skycap (in addition to my usual big duffel bag, I also checked in a small pull-along suitcase just in case the rules change within the next week and I’m no longer allowed to bring my laptop on board with me for the flight home) and headed to the security gate.

The screeners, agents and miscellaneous employees who work the security gates at Philadelphia airport are notoriously curt and make very little effort at disguising how much they hate their jobs and the people they are forced to deal with on a daily basis. I braced myself for a good hour and a half of hearing the same orders barked at us over and over again about removing liquids from our bags, shoes from our feet and laptops from their cases. These orders traditionally become louder and more condescending with every ignorant, unprepared flier who arrives at the metal detector apparently unaware of the rules. But today, for some reason, the people who work here were surprisingly chipper. The lady checking my ID and boarding pass laughed and joked with me and I laughed and joked right back. Despite all the new regulations and despite the fact that this terminal only had one of their five security gates open, I was through the line and out the other side in less than a half-hour – including the extra five minutes it took for a secondary screening of my laptop and shoes.

Now let me just say this; I am usually the first person to complain and make sarcastic comments about airport security, which by and large is little more than an inconsistent designed to “make white people feel safe.” But honestly, today I was more than willing to cooperate, not even thinking twice before removing my shoes. For two reasons really. First of all, I know these TSA guys have had a rough couple of days worth of irate travelers (who apparently don’t watch, read or listen to the news) verbally assaulting them and pleading un-winnable cases with every tube of lotion and bottle of perfume confiscated. So I saw no reason to be just another thorn in the side of these people who are, after all, just doing their job. But second, these new security measures are ones I can actually see a point to. The people in charge saw a legitimate threat and they responded accordingly. Honestly, I’ll be more upset if they end up changing these rules back to the way they were before. I’ve said before, it’s consistency I want to see in airport security. If something is a threat today, then it should still be a threat tomorrow. Just because a month or a year or five years goes by without a similar plot being foiled doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there who won’t try it again someday when we least expect it. If a terrorist can smuggle an explosive onto a plane in a Gatorade bottle in 2006 (or in 1995 for that matter, as we learn more and more that this was not even a new idea), he’ll still be able to do it in 2011. So yes, please be steady and vigilant about real and serious threats. But please don’t waste your time confiscating my tiny pliers and nail clippers.

So when all was said and done, I was through security and into the “sterile area” by 7:30, a full three hours before my flight’s scheduled departure.

Now if only the waitress at the restaurant I went into to have breakfast had been as swift and efficient as the security team. I could be mad at how slow and obviously apathetic to her customers she was during the hour I sat there, but honestly I feel for waiters and waitresses who work the breakfast shift. It really is the crappiest shift to work as far as I’m concerned. I worked as a waiter for two years during college and thereafter but thankfully only had to work two or three breakfast shifts that entire time. The problem with breakfast isn’t just that it’s a very busy shift. It’s probably no busier than a heavy lunch rush. But for all your running around, there is very little payoff once 11AM rolls around. Everything on the menu is cheap. Generally even the most expensive item on a breakfast menu costs about as much as an average-priced appetizer on the dinner menu. So that drives your tip percentage down right off the bat. Also, breakfast crowds tend to be a bit more irate when their food doesn’t come right away. They’re often coming from church, or are on their way to work and haven’t had anything to eat since they woke up that morning. They’re hungry, half-asleep and they want their food right now. Beyond that, the bulk of a breakfast crowd tends to be old people (who else in their right mind would get up an hour earlier than necessary when you could just as easily roll out of bed and have a bowl of cereal?) who are notoriously impatient, bad tippers, and often end up splitting their three-dollar breakfast specials and asking for separate checks.

So I gave the slow and passive-aggressively rude waitress quite a bit of slack. I knew I had plenty of time to kill before my flight. Plus, I was reading a fairly awesome book. KILLING YOURSELF TO LIVE by Chuck Klosterman is a road trip book written by an author with an off-the-cuff style I can totally dig and relate to (and in a recent picture, this guy looks so much like me, minus the glasses, it’s scary).



The basic narrative is all about Klosterman, a writer for Spin magazine, traveling around the country to the places where rock stars died tragically and to places where other tragic deaths, somehow relating to rock-n-roll, occurred. One of Klosterman’s first stops is the former site of The Station in Warwick, Rhode Island, where one hundred people burned to death during a Great White concert. But this basic premise is really just a jumping off point for Klosterman to wax on about anything and everything that catches his fancy, from drugs, to pop culture to his own ex-girlfriends. The writing is at times self-indulgent and makes you wonder, “Is he actually going anywhere with this,” but for the most part it’s witty, intelligent and makes you laugh, ponder and say, “You know what, he’s exactly right about that.” This is exactly the kind of book I hope to one day write and publish – and was actually the catalyst that inspired me to pull out my laptop and start writing this blog today.

So I read my book contentedly for nearly an hour until I suddenly realized I had to leave right away. I won’t go into too many details, but the coffee they served here was so horrendous as to require four sugar packets before I switched over to Sweet & Low, and by the time I used it to wash down my heavy pancakes and the obscure meat patty they claimed to be sausage, I needed to go. No I really had to go. I didn’t bother waiting for the waitress to come back around. God knew what I would be capable of if I waited that long. I walked up to the bartender and begged him to make change for me, slapped my money and tip down on the table and ran to the nearest bathroom.

Some interesting graffiti I saw while sitting there doing my thing (in addition to the usual gang-related tag art) included:

SORRY ABOUT T.O. –DAL FAN

PHL IS SWELL

and the ever popular:

EAT CUNT

Exiting the bathroom, I saw a paper towel lying on the floor, upon which somebody had written: DO NOT USE.

So now I sit here in a phone booth with my laptop, taking advantage of the little shelf, the AC power socket and the fact that I can still bring this device through the security gate. It’s now just past nine-thirty. My flight starts boarding in a half-hour. Think I’ll go read a little more of my book and hope my experience at O’Hare in a week will be as pleasant (bowel movements notwithstanding) as today’s was.

You write one column with the word "lesbian" in it...

A few years ago I used to write a somewhat weekly column for an online e-zine called the Greenwich Village Gazette. I eventualy stopped writing for them after I'd created my own website simply because they were a pain to deal with - posted things incorrectly, screwed up links, etc. The last thing I ever wrote for them was what I considered to be a witty and sarcastic column about a court ruling in New Hampshire that said if a woman cheated on her husband with another woman, it wasn't considered adultery. I went off on not only the ludicrousness of the law, but also on the gay and lesbian community's official response, which I thought came off as incredibly self-serving and unsympathetic.

Apparently my article is still very much circulating the cosmos, because in the last week alone I have gotten close to a dozen emails about it. Curious, I typed in a few choice keywords and found that it has been posted, either in its entirety or as excerpts, on several blogs and news sites. Depending on who was posting, or on who was writing me emails, people were either giving me big old "Amens" or calling me an outright homophobe. The column certainly wasn't intended to come off as homophobic, simply pointing out hypocrisy where hypocrisy lay. If I were going to comment on anything here, it would be about how sloppily written the piece was... I've grown a lot as a writer since then. So, I could have been put off by those homophobia comments if not for the fact that a good majority of gay people who have written me in the last week, and in the past few years, regarding this column have echoed my sentiments, telling me I'm right on the ball: "Adultery is adultery."

It has also been really interesting seeing how people place assumptions on what I must believe based on this article. Depending on their point of view and their frame of mind, people have both commended and derided me because I obviously am in support of gay marriage, or else they have commended and derided me because I obviously don't consider gay relationships to be as valid as straight ones. Regardless of what I believe when it comes to those things, it's rather amusing watching on fire people use my 800 word essay as a springboard for their own conflicting points of view.

Anyway, I was just rather amused that something I wrote nearly 3 years ago was still circulating the internet and igniting such ire and passion in people. If you want to check out the original piece, you can follow one of the two following links and then tell me if you think I come off as homophobic(?), right on the money(?), badly written(?):

Greenwich Village Gazette Column

Hey Guess What Column