Strings-n-Things

I admittedly have a very narrow understanding of science… mostly because to be a true scientist requires levels of mathematical knowledge that I just can’t wrap my mind around. But I do enjoy reading and watching “pop culturilized” versions of scientific concepts. I recently posted a blog about my fascination with evolution as explained by prolific and eloquent authors such as Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker. But lately my real fascination has come from the world of physics.

My intrigue began when I saw the movie What the Bleep Do We Know, which gives a very trippy yet accessible primer on the nature of Quantum Theory (though I thought the movie suffered by turning into too much of a new age “self-help” commercial a la The Secret). Less than a month after watching What the Bleep, I was hired to write a classroom video series about Quantum Theory. That’s when I realized that the movie really REALLY oversimplified the theory. I had to learn QT from the ground up and it wasn’t easy. I literally read the book they gave me about ten times from beginning to end and went through about five drafts of the scripts before I finally started to grasp not only the ideas but their implications. A few months later, the same company hired me to write another series about Relativity and the learning process began all over again. Briefly, for the uninitiated, Quantum Theory and Relativity are two very different aspects of physics. Overly-simply put, QT deals with the world of the very very small (atoms, electrons, quarks, etc) while Relativity deals with the world of the very very large (planets, galaxies, black holes, etc). The problem is that the two theories don’t jive with each other. Those equations and experiments that produce nice neat and tidy results when examining the forces of black holes, produce completely ludicrous results when examining the movements of electrons. And vice versa. In a universe that is supposed to obey strict, orderly and well-defined laws, the fact that there isn’t one universal set of equations to govern the very large and the very small has, quite frankly, been driving scientists batshit for the better part of the last century.

Enter String Theory. For the last thirty or forty years, this has been THE THEORY that was supposed to unify the two worlds. I’m not going to go into all the aspects of it (there is an awesome NOVA series online that breaks it all down), but overly simply put, the theory states that all matter and energy is made not of particles or waves but of infinitesimally small vibrating strings. Right now the theory is based entirely on complex (excruciatingly complex) math. There’s no way to test it simply because there’s no microscope powerful enough to observe something so small as a “string”. But the math, if it’s accurate, does two things. First of all, it seems to prove, mathematically, a lot of the trippy, f---ed up, whacked-out theories about parallel universes and diverging timelines that I have personally come up with over the years (often under the influence of THC). But more importantly for the world at large, String Theory seems to do what scientists have been hoping for by linking Relativity with QT… albeit with one caveat: the only way it works is if there are more dimensions than the four we know about.

Aside from one version of string theory (which puts the number of dimensions at 26) almost every other version puts the number at a much more familiar value: 10. Ten dimensions! If this turns out to be true, how freakin’ cool would that be? That would mean that the entire universe operates on a number that is the very basis for our entire numerical system. And the only reason that 10 is the basis for our entire numerical system is almost quaintly simple: because we have ten fingers. The bible says God made us in His image. Is that a literal truth? Does God look like a man? Or is God simply a Being of numbers and perfection – a 10^th dimensional being? Since He is considered to be All and Everything, is He essentially the embodiment of every dimension… numbering 10? Did he give us ten fingers to somehow represent that fact? We always think of Heaven as being “up in the sky.” Maybe Heaven won’t involve a three-dimensional “up”. Maybe Heaven (or Nirvana or Enlightenment) will mean rising to a higher dimensional plane. The Bible says that at the end of the world we will become like Jesus. Maybe that means we’ll be elevated from our three dimensions to something “higher” and more closely resembling God.

I can remember while studying for the Relativity series, reading something about the expansion of the universe. Again, overly-simply put, there were three ways the universe could have expanded immediately following the Big Bang. There could have been too little “bang”, causing all the density of matter to almost immediately collapse back into itself. Or there could have been too much “bang” causing all that matter to fling so far and so fast that it never had the chance to coalesce into galaxies, stars and solar systems. And then there’s the third way it could have gone. A perfectly balanced “bang” that allowed everything to fling outward and yet still come together into the order we see now. Physicists equate this to the idea of balancing a pencil on its tip. Theoretically it’s possible that you could do that. But you’d have to balance it absolutely perfectly and hope that no outside force (wind, bumping the table, a truck driving by on the street) altered its positioning by even a fraction of a millimeter. The Universe apparently formed like that. Perfectly. HOW THE HELL? Scientists check and recheck the math and they say it just doesn’t make sense that the universe should have formed this way. Like seriously, nothing in nature has ever formed in such harmony. I’m paraphrasing and probably (again) oversimplifying the matter, but the fact remains, the Universe formed PERFECTLY! How do you even begin to wrap your mind around how utterly amazing that is?

I find it disappointing that so many people interpret science and faith to be such disparate and incompatible concepts. For people of deep religious faith, so many scientific theories amount to little more than heresy, serving only to take glory away from God. On the flip side of that coin, it seems like a lot of scientists think that even entertaining the possibility of a supreme being somehow detracts from the beauty, wonder and logic of the Universe… and ultimately makes one a bad scientist. Yet so much of what I see in both science and religion seem to compliment each other in ways that are almost illogically perfect. It boggles my mind that more people don’t make this leap.

Insert Rocky Horror Lyrics Here

I've been thinking about time travel a lot lately. Well really I've been thinking about higher dimensions in general a lot lately and time travel goes right along with that train of thought. To know why my brain has been going down this road check out the following video: Imagining the Tenth Dimension. For those of you who don't have the eleven minutes to invest (first of all, you're missing out, it's a total mind trip) the basic gist of this heady heady video is all about visualizing higher dimensions as a series of "points, lines and folds." As a quick example, imagine an ant traveling across a two-dimensional piece of paper. As far as the ant is concerned the paper is just a long flat surface. It walks in a straight line trying to come to the "end" of the paper just as we would fly a ship through space trying to get to the "end" of the universe. But if you used three-dimensional space, and folded that two-dimensional paper to another point on the sheet, you could essentially make that ant "jump" instantly from one point to another point in its universe. Similarly if you could "fold" three-dimensional space through the fourth dimension, you could jump instantly from one point in the universe to a point billions of light years away...

As most anyone who has a basic understanding of Einstein (or even basic science fiction physics) knows, the key to time travel lies in the fourth dimension. Time is the dimension that exists above the length, width and depth we all comprehend. It is the dimension that connects "space" as we know it now to "space" as it will be a minute from now. Or in its broadest sense it is the dimension that connects the Big Bang to the very end of the universe. In theory the ability to time travel exists in the ability to move through the fourth dimension in the same way we currently move through the third. But rather than driving down the street or taking an airplane to Australia or a rocket ship to the moon, we are taking a very different kind of highway through minutes, hours or millennia.

Different movies depict time travel in different ways. The one that comes to the mind of most people in my generation, of course, is the Back to the Future trilogy. In those movies, time travel is presented as an instantaneous transition. Doc Brown and Marty McFly jump thirty, seventy and a hundred years in a seamless leap. I don't quite get how that could happen. We can travel through three dimensions but it takes a finite amount of time. And it requires us to travel across the space in between. We can't just suddenly move from New Jersey to Australia. That would violate Einstein's theory of relativity that says nothing can move faster than the speed of light. So it would stand to reason that we can also not move through time without it taking a certain duration as we cross over all that time in between (unless, as the video says, we could "fold" instantly through the fifth dimension to whatever point in the fourth we wish). Of course then again, moving through space requires time, a higher dimensional measurement. So perhaps moving through time requires a higher type of measurement we haven't thought of.

Another thought. What would it be like to "see" in four dimensions? Well how would a theoretical two-dimensional being see us? Figure a piece of paper bisecting your body and a 2D guy looking at you. He'd only be able to see whatever length of body he happened to be aligned with. If the paper was bisecting you from top to bottom, he'd only see a "cross-section" of your 3D self: a line that changed from brown to flesh colored to the white of your shirt to the blue of your jeans. In order to comprehend your entire body, you'd have to move across the line of paper entirely. The 2D man would have to compile each cross-section into an overall picture of what you might look like. Similarly we as 3D people can only see "cross-sections" of the fourth dimension. For instance, as I sit writing this, I can only see the man sitting across from me as he exist in this exact second. If I were to see him "fourth-dimensionally" I would see essentially a blurred three-dimensional line of every movement he made before now and after now. This is a topic they discuss in Imagining the Tenth Dimension as well as in the book Slaughterhouse Five (where the main character gets "unstuck in time"). Seeing in four dimensions allows you to see every moment of a person's life all at once...

But this is where I get stuck… though I'm certain I've already lost most of you well before now. Would seeing in four dimensions allow me to see every moment of his life. Would I see him simultaneously as a baby and as a corpse? Or is it like three-dimensional space where I can only see the parts I am also a part of? While I certainly have the ability to see Australia (since I can travel through space to get there) I can't actually see it unless I physically go there. Similarly, will I only see this man's full fourth-dimensional self for the duration of moments that I am also a part of… the moments where he and I are in the same proximity? He has been sitting here in the hotel lounge since I arrived here with my laptop and perhaps before I leave he will at some point walk to the elevator. If I were to see him in four dimensions, would I only see him that far? That would make sense to me.

But what about people I see all the time? Every moment I'm with Lauren, would I see every moment of fourth-dimensional time we have shared? Or would I only see the beginning and end of each individual meeting? When I return to our room will I see her simultaneously from the moment we met through the moment we die? Or will I only see her from the moment I come through the door until the moment one of us leaves?

Then again, the ability to see every moment of somebody's life in four dimensions wouldn't require time travel at all. All of those moments would exist in the present. This is one of the ideas explored in Slaughterhouse Five. For people who can see all moments of a person's life, death is not something to be scared of since you can always see and interact with a dead person as they were when they were alive. You can see and experience past good times even when you are currently experiencing bad times. They all exist simultaneously. But it seems to me that seeing the fourth dimension in this way would probably require command of an even higher dimension. At least the fifth and possibly even the sixth. Because again, even though I exist in three-dimensions, I can't see every part of the third dimension… I'm limited by barriers such as walls, trees, the horizon and just pure distance. Being a part of the third dimension only means I can travel through it. But being able to see all of three-dimensional space at once would require the use of a higher dimension or perhaps a higher plane of existence. Likewise existing in the fourth dimension would only allow one to travel through time, not see the entire timeline at a glance.

Yes friends, these are the kinds of thoughts that keep me up at one-thirty on a Sunday night. I have no real conclusion to this so I simply leave you to your own thoughts and confusion.

(also, I'm certain there are countless typos in this post but I have no energy or brain capacity after all this to go back an edit… perhaps later.)

At my feelers, unleash hell

As a father, I am really really looking forward to the age where ant farms become appropriate toys. I loved my ant farm as a kid and I can’t wait for the excuse to have one again. For the uninitiated, a typical ant farm consisted of two-panes of glass (or plastic) spaced a couple of centimeters apart which you filled with soil from your yard. You’d go gather up about twenty or thirty ants from the same colony and transport them home in a peanut butter jar. After jimmying them one-by-one into the ant farm with some food (the instructions suggested sugar water curiously enough) you’d just sit back and let them go to work for about a week, digging tunnels and settling into their new home. After that the real fun would begin.

You’d start by going out and collecting about twenty ants from a different anthill. Your next move was really a matter of taste. You could drop all twenty of the rival ants into the ant farm at the same time and watch as both sides fought to the bitter violent death, leaving behind only one or two befuddled sentries. On the other hand, you could drop them in two or three at a time and watch as the colony ganged up and tore them to pieces. Occasionally, one of the intruders would put up a good fight and take down a couple of the ravenous mob (especially if you were lucky enough to find a colony of red ants), but in the end he was still inherently doomed.

This was the way I chose to put my rival ants to work. I’d gradually up the number of intruders over the course of an hour or so, giving my colony plenty of practice against increasingly difficult odds. Then, after I felt that all of my little six-legged soldiers had been sufficiently trained up in the art of war, I’d give them a real challenge. I’d go out and find myself a big freakin’ SPIDER and drop that into the farm. Here’s where the action really got interesting. Unlike ant-on-ant battles, which pretty much always came down to whoever had the bigger army, you never really knew how a spider would fare against an entire colony. A spider is obviously big enough and tough enough hold its own against four or five ants at once. And if he positions himself properly the narrowness of the tunnels can actually work to his favor, preventing the ants from swarming him in numbers he can’t easily handle. But ants are nothing if not coordinated. It all boils down to how fast they can rally a multi-pronged attack, sending flanking units to the surface to come around and attack the spider from behind. Once the ants can pin down the intruding monster on both sides, forcing him to split his attention, it’s only a matter of time before they get past his long legs and onto his back. After that, the outcome of the fight is pretty much a foregone conclusion. Now it’s just a matter of how many ants the spider will be able take down with him.

When people think of little boys and ants, they usually conjure up images of us incinerating them with a magnifying glass, or dousing them with gasoline. They really don’t give us enough credit. We came up with way way way more f---ed up ideas than that. Ant farms gave us a staging ground to recreate the Roman Coliseum! We made countless drones fight for their lives purely for our own amusement. We let swarms of opposing armies slaughter each other just to see who would come out on top. We put trained fighters into the ring with the equivalent of Bengal tigers just to see how many would die before vanquishing the beast

Now I know what you’re thinking: serial killers in training. But trust me, no mass murder has ever wasted his time executing insects. They killed cats and dogs and birds and things. Things with faces. Things with personalities. Things you can love, sympathize and identify with. But who ever identified with a freakin’ ant? And I mean a real ant, not that cute puppet thing from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Sure we were messed up. All boys are. But hey, at least we purged our homicidal curiosities on creatures that everyone kills on a daily basis. Is it really so messed up that we got additional entertainment value out of it? And is it really so messed up that I can’t wait to share that joy with my son?

Really?

I saw a Humvee in the parking lot of Whole Foods today. Weird.

I realized today that I don't really like most Christmas music and haven't since I was a kid. Actually I realized that a few years ago, but I realized WHY today. As a kid, Christmas music is fun mostly because you're always the one singing it. But as you get older, you're forced to listen to Bing Crosby sing it. And if you don't particularly like Bing Crosby, well... it doesn't do much for your like of the music in general.

Allison came out with a very profound statement the other day: "I was two on the day I turned three."

I used to buy milk two or more gallons at a time. Then I read some stuff that said milk actually wasn't as good for you as everyone says. These days I buy vinegar two or more gallons at a time. I'm not saying the one is a natural byproduct of the other, but there you are.

I really don't understand how people still get computer viruses. How hard is it to question a sender about a strange looking attachment?

I never realized just how insanely fun it can be to throw one tiny cat onto the back of another unspecting cat. Especially a large, old and crotchety cat.

I've already decided that I will most likely be writing in my candidate for president next year. Not sure who, but I just can't bring myself to validate the choices either party has given us with so much as an X... or a hanging chad.

I have a theory that hardcore pornography is actually targeted at closeted gay men. Why else would they spend so much time focused on the cock?

I don't think I will ever reach a point in my life where I am too mature to laugh at a fat kid falling down.

For years I've told people the story of a childhood friend who peed on an electric fence as if it were something that happened to me personally. Somehow a story like that is just funnier in the first person.

I don't care if she's only fifteen; hot is hot and show me the law that says it's illegal to leer.

I like to think I'm fairly open-minded when it comes to strange foods, but I still can't wrap my mind around tofu.

Little kids' bodies are so ridiculously disproportionate it's almost a marvel they aren't genetically defective. When they raise their arms up high, the fingers barely clear their scalp.

The thing I really miss about my Geo is playing "Merge Chicken" against people in Mercedes SUV's.

I have no idea how I used to eat Ramen in such quantities.

I sometimes wonder how many years the sciences of physics and chemistry were set back because one guy thought for about two seconds that the atom resembled a mini-solar system.

I can't bring myself to feel sympathy for anyone who loses an hour and a half's worth of work because they forgot to save.

I never realized that I hadn't seen a single red hot dog since leaving Maine until about a year ago when I read on Wikipedia that red hot dogs are actually a Maine "thing."

I likewise never realized that I hadn't seen a single whoopie pie since leaving Maine until somebody told me that Maine is apparently the whoopie pie capital of the world.

Britney Spears is hot. Her music is catchy. And everyone just needs to lay off.

At any given hour on any given day I would bet a minor sum of money that I could find at least one Law & Order or CSI incarnation on TV.

I still don't know, nor care, what the top news story of the day is.

I saw a Humvee in the parking lot of Whole Foods today. Still weird.

Slow Ride into the Eternal Night

I bought my Geo Metro less than a month after moving to California. That was eight years ago. Another time. Another me. Over those next twenty-two months, I went through such profound changes in my life and personality that I actually have a hard time remembering a “me” before that time. As a result, that means I also have a hard time remembering a “me” who drove anything except that little black car. Of course “little” is a misleading word. I took that car over mountains. I took it into the desert. I drove it across the country three times - once with every earthly possession I owned in the trunk and back seat (which I still haven't been able to identify as "lame" or "something Jack Kerouac would do"). It’s been pelted by everything from snow to falling rock to hailstones slung by a tornado. The Geo may have been “little”, but it was little in the way that, say, Joe Pesci is little.

Almost every major epiphany I had during that time occurred behind the wheel of that Geo: deciding to pull back from friends I’d made in order to figure out who I was as “just me”… fully realizing the extent of the love I had for a girl back in Boston… understanding that I could move out of L.A. even though I felt like my whole life had been leading me there… ultimately realizing that no matter how much I thought I’d learned about myself, the world, and my place in it, I was still, and forever would be “full of shit.”

They weren’t all earth-shattering, paradigm-shifting revelations. There were also all the little things I learned behind the wheel of the Geo:

- My love for country music
- The proper method for controlling a skid around another car while you simultaneously curse them out and flip the bird.
- You can park anywhere in L.A. for free if you’re a good enough parallel parker who doesn’t mind walking a bit.
- The top number on your speedometer is not necessarily the top speed your car can handle.
- Cops will not pull you over no matter how fast you’re driving if there is a tornado in the vicinity.
- Windows-down is always preferable to air-conditioning on all but the most unbearably hot days.
- It doesn’t matter how badly you sing if you crank the radio loud enough.
- Even though we know we shouldn’t drive home drunk, we still sometimes do.
- A fresh coat of wax can make even a shitty car look sporty and stylish.
- Even so, chicks will never gravitate toward a guy in an economy car.
- Sometimes it isn’t necessary to have a destination. Driving to drive is just as fun.

There were others, but I think you get the point. The Geo has been a central part of my life for over eight years now. But when the first words out of my mechanic’s mouth last week were, “How attached are you to this car?” it wasn’t hard to see the writing on the wall. He rattled off a list of problems that, without even doing any calculations, obviously added up to more than the car’s monetary worth. I’m not sure how surprised I was to discover tears welling up in my eyes the instant I hung up the phone, knowing one way or another the Geo would have to be put down.

Today, as I signed the dotted line to purchase a new mini-van for my growing family, it all hit home. I will never drive the Geo again. It’s already off our insurance, making way for something newer, roomier, more reliable. Part of me regretted that I hadn’t taken the Geo for one last joyride. But really, what would that have gained me? I know I have to move on. Even though the Geo played such a central role in the transition from “old me” to “new me”, I know it could not have continued functioning in this new and ever-changing life that I lead. In that respect, I’m actually almost glad the decision was taken out of my hands. The Geo’s usefulness, from a completely legal standpoint, is now worn out. Its destiny is fulfilled. Soon a tow truck will come take it away, leaving behind nothing but some very vivid memories and a generous tax write off in its wake… and the “me” transition, I suppose, will finally be complete.

So, “Slow ride,” old friend. “Take it easy.”

It's the little things that make you feel old.

In just over half a year I will be entering my thirties. But I’m not one to freak out about the fact that my youth is almost officially over. In a way, the last five years have been a gradual slope into adulthood anyway. Marriage, a kid, a job I held down for four straight years (a personal record), a beard, working in a field where people several years older than me view me as some kind of expert, starting a writing career in drips and drabs, another kid… In spite of it all, I still feel quite youthful and not at all like I need to worry about another decade coming to a close.

But two days ago I called the police on a neighbor who was playing his radio too loud. And yesterday... I bought an area rug.

My Daughter: The Bad Influence

It’s amazing how ten minutes in kid world can so often become a microcosm for life in general and, if you look hard enough, a fast forward glimpse into what these little rugrats have in store for you. Lauren and I recently took the kids down to the pool for an afternoon and Allison made friends with a little boy who was there with his mom. At three years old, Allison has pretty much grown used to always being the youngest kid in a group, but this boy was only two and it was obvious from the first moment that he was in love with Allison and would follow her anywhere. Allison must have sensed this too, because she almost immediately began testing his loyalties.

Standing on the side the two of them would talk for a second, then Allison would spontaneously announce, “I’m going over there,” and run to the other side of the pool. The little boy would have a moment of hesitation where he would look at his mom who was standing in the water, then at Allison who was beckoning him from twenty feet away. Then, making the hard decision, he would run, with many looks back, to Allison. His mom and I would swim our way over to the two chatting kids just in time to hear Allison once again announce that she was going to go back over there and run in the direction from whence we had all just arrived, forcing the little boy into another hard decision.

Personally, I didn’t mind shadowing Allison all over the pool – that’s why we had come down here after all – but it was apparent this boy’s mom was tired and really didn’t feel like swimming back and forth just to follow her son while he followed a girl. When she and Lauren struck up a casual dialogue earlier, we’d learned that she had just had another baby about six weeks before and this was one of the first times she’d been able to get out of the house. But it was apparent her little boy was indeed prepared to follow Allison no matter how many times she ran away from him. And the more Allison scurried away, the less he looked to his mom for approval before pursuing. Sensing the mom’s lack of energy, I suggested to Allison that we stay in one spot. Not to be deterred, Allison immediately changed tactics and began subtly taunting her new little friend.

“How old are you?” she asked, knowing full well what the answer would be since she’d asked the same question a half dozen times already. It took the younger boy a few seconds to formulate his words and position his fingers into the correct number of digits to say, “I…two!” Allison would immediately shoot back, “Oh well I’m three!” After about the tenth round of this exchange with Allison asserting her numeric superiority, the boy actually started lying to sound better. “I…tree!” he said. Allison, knowing better (and knowing full well what she was doing I might add) would mock, “You’re not three! You’re two! I’m three!”

The mom, trying to keep her part in this whole thing as jovial and non-confrontational as possible stuck up for her son with a lame, “Oh he’ll be three in a few months won’t you buddy.” Allison looked at her, considering this for a moment, then looked at the boy and decided to taunt him another way. “That’s my daddy,” she said, pointing to me. “Your daddy’s not here.”

Oh crap. My stomach dropped. In five minutes time, she’d already progressed from a coy little game of cat and mouse, to throwing veiled insults at the boy, to now throwing veiled insults at his family. I was honestly rendered speechless. I couldn’t see scolding her over this. It was a perfectly normal three-year-old conversation topic after all and she wasn’t outwardly, blatantly mocking this kid by any stretch. But I knew better. We all did by this point. This wasn’t a mere casual observation on Allison’s part. It was a well-calculated dig hidden behind the mask of innocence. The boy’s mom once again spoke up in defense, “His daddy is at home watching his baby sister so mommy could go to the pool.” I jumped on this and rallied to the mom’s side, “Oh see, they have a baby just like us Allison. His daddy is home with the baby.”

Allison, already bored with this new line of dialogue, once again changed tactics. “I wanna jump, Daddy!” She shooed the little boy away with a flip of her hand then leapt three feet off the edge of the pool into my waiting arms. She looked back at her newfound puppy dog with a look that said, “See what I just did.” Earlier, before Allison and this boy became fast friends, he too had been attempting this same kind of stunt with his mom… only he didn’t so much jump into her arms as lean out until he was in contact with her hands, at which point he just kind of fell the rest of the way. I’m fairly certain Allison saw this and remembered it. Now, off the boy’s look of hesitation, Allison threw her arms around my neck, laid her head on my chest and said in a loud clear voice, “I love you, Daddy.”

That settled it. Even at two years old this kid knew that to impress a girl and steal her away from the current man in her life, he couldn't just match what she had done. He had to do it three times bigger and five times more dangerous. Just behind the ledge where Allison had jumped was a slightly higher ledge. Just behind that was a brick wall about two feet high. The little boy, who not ten minutes earlier had been afraid to jump from the ledge two inches above the water, was now attempting to climb the wall for a stunt that was certain to impress the cute little redhead who he was quickly falling in love with… if he didn’t split his head open in the process, of course. Fortunately, me, Lauren and the boy’s mom all had the good sense to stop him before he took a flying leap off Blind Man’s Bluff. One of us made up some lame but plausible excuse that would allow us to separate the kids before Allison could convince him to run away with her.

Like I said earlier, I’m so used to Allison being the youngest in a group of kids. By extension she’s almost always the shy follower, the one eager to please her friends… and even that is only when she isn’t deathly afraid of the other kids. But boy oh boy, I can already see that she is going to have the potential to be that girl who the other moms view as a “bad influence.” She speaks well. She’s sweet and courteous. She has a soft porcelain face that absolutely cries, “Innocence!” But let us not forget that fiery red hair and the temper that comes along with it. This kid is smart, shrewd, calculating. She’ll learn how to wrap people around her finger and use them to her liking. I only pray she uses them for good and not for evil. I don’t want to field phone calls from angry parents over why their son missed curfew. I don’t want to answer questions as to why one of Allison’s boyfriends ended up in jail over a dare. I really don’t ever want to think of my daughter as being that proverbial “Madonna and Whore” package. It does give me hope that when the boy and his mom finally left the pool, Allison watched him go, forlornly waving goodbye, and spent the next two hours sadly asking, "Where the boy go?" She really did love him. She just didn't know how to express it. Maybe we’ll just keep her away from the pool for awhile.

John Kerry has NOTHING on these guys

When the fam and I went down to visit my sister in Florida last week, we opted not to fly like most normal people. In an effort to save money on tickets and rental cars – as well to save our sanity from trying to corral two kids and all their usual tote-along crap through an airport – we drove the thousand-plus miles. That however, as they say, is another story and shall be told another time. The trip was far from perfect, yet far from disaster, and all the aggravation was made worth it by one thing, perhaps my most favorite thing about driving through the southern states: Waffle House.

I first discovered Waffle House a few years ago in Louisville, Kentucky while I was working the Kentucky Derby. I had no idea at the time that it was a fifty-year-old franchise. Other than the giant yellow sign out front, it didn’t seem to have any of the usual trappings of a typical chain restaurant. Consisting of a few small booths and one long counter facing into the grill area where waitresses and short order cooks bustle about in full view, the whole place seemed built more around functionality than presentation, giving it the appearance of a small independently owned greasy spoon than anything designed by a corporation. But the food was great, and even better it was cheap! I got myself an “All Star Special” consisting of bacon, eggs, grits, toast, coffee and, of course, a waffle, all for less than ten dollars including tip.

Back at home, my job often had me driving from Philadelphia down to Washington, D.C. and I began to notice that familiar yellow sign on my trips south. It seemed as soon as I crossed the southern Pennsylvania border, otherwise known as the famous Mason/Dixon line, Waffle Houses started popping up at every other exit. I stopped in often and grew to love the place. The food, as I’ve said, is delicious and, for the price, absolutely cannot be beaten. Of course, as they rely heavily on butter and grease for their main components the cuisine is obviously no friend of the heart, but so what? If you want healthy, go get an egg-white omelet at the Wheatgerm Café.

More than their food though, the overall Waffle House atmosphere is what has made me keep coming back over the years. Walking through the front door you get the impression that you’ve crossed a threshold into some truck stop throwback to the 1950’s. But this isn’t just bogus nostalgia. Never for a moment do you get the impression that anything in this place has been designed by some suit in an office building three thousand miles away. There aren’t logos and merchandise plastered on every wall, the food specials don’t have overly cutesy or flamboyant names, and even the jukebox spinning the occasional oldies tune is a basic model (some might even say “cheap”) without glowing pink bubbles or backlit displays.

Most notable at every Waffle House though, is the staff. Seeing as how this is primarily a southern and midwest chain, it hardly seems a coincidence that the staff is generally comprised of people who could be described as “trailer trash.” I know I’m generalizing in the worst way here, but with pretty much zero exceptions across the entire chain, this is not the kind of place you’d go into to ogle the waitresses. Be that as it may, you will never, and I mean never, meet more genuinely nice people working in any restaurant. They’re not operating on the “Ten Key Points of Customer Service” handed down from the company manual or trying to hit certain timing and upselling benchmarks as dictated by their corporate managers. This is simply, purely down home courtesy of the highest caliber. There is never a roll of the eyes or a stressed out huff when you ask for more coffee. You never detect even trace amounts of annoyance when a customer places a complicated order. And when the waitress strikes up a conversation, you never get the impression that they are simply trying to schmooze you over in the hope of earning a bigger tip. I don’t know if Waffle House uses a different style of recruitment or if a certain type of person just naturally gravitates toward this particular establishment, but I have never met a Waffle House employee who wasn’t that perfect combination of friendly, helpful and prompt – everything, in short, that you’d want in a waitress.

Over the course of our long roundtrip to Florida we ate at Waffle House several times. I still order the same thing I did on my first visit, the All Star Special. And I still I love every greasy mouthful of bacon and egg, still savor every buttery sweet bite of waffle, still relish the indescribable texture of grits on toast, and still wash it all down with multiple cups of Waffle House coffee, which in and of itself tastes inexplicably better than the crap they pour at most any other restaurant. As ever, the staff was wonderfully friendly and cordial, even as our children proceeded to make a gigantic mess of our table and the floor around us. We left full, satisfied, nurtured even. But most importantly, we left not broke. We’re home again, officially north of the line and already I long for the day when I’ll be able make the trip south for another warm and friendly helping of quite possibly the most awesome restaurant chain in the world.

Fair enough

Just got back from the final night of the Southampton Days Fair. I noticed that the density of slutted-up underage hooch was much lower this year than last year. Oh don’t get me wrong, there were still a few notable seventeen-year-olds (okay, fourteen-year-olds) walking around who would bring out the statutory rapist in any guy, but for the most part more parents must have put their foot down this year and declared, “You are NOT leaving the house dressed like that, young lady.”

We were able to have a lot more fun at the fair this year. Allison is that crucial year older and that crucial bit taller, which allowed her to go on all the kiddie rides, even the ones we couldn’t go on with her. And she had a blast. I felt a little bad because our friends Jen and Mike came along as well with their year-old son, David and they were treated to a full evening of following us as we followed Allison from ride to ride to ride. But at the end of the night we all got to sit down to a fireworks display that was actually rather impressive for the size town and fair this was.

So all in all a good night, though I did let nostalgia bum me out a bit. Last year when we came to the fair, the evening closed with a guitar man named Ray Owen on the main stage who put on a show for the kids and played all sorts of cool “Americana” folk-rock songs like “City of New Orleans”, "Me and Bobby McGee" and others I can’t seem to remember. Then at the end of the night he asked if there were any requests. I shouted out, “Mister Bojangles.” He told the crowd – consisting mostly of teenagers who impressed me with their appreciation for older music – the backstory of the song and then closed his set with the Jerry Jeff Walker classic. While Ray did play the fair this year as well, he went on earlier in the week on a 6pm slot, right about the time I would have been rushing for the train to leave New York City for the day. So we didn’t get to see him and didn’t get to end the night holding each other as a family and swaying to the sounds of “Mister Bojangles.” But other than that, a good night all around.

One question occurred to me tonight though. I know I’m probably showing my age here, but what the hell is “Hollister”? I saw so many people walking around in t-shirts bearing that word tonight. I mean entire hordes of people (teenagers mostly), sometimes two or three in a group of five, were wearing these shirts. At first I merely assumed it was the name of one of the high schools in the area, but then I realized that a lot of them had the word, “California” printed on it as well. So seriously, what is Hollister? Is it a clothing line, a sporting goods line, the name of the high school from The O.C.? Somebody please help me be hip.

Thank God I had a normal name

Yes, yes, I know it’s been like a month since I posted anything, but I do have a good excuse. First of all, my last post was like a 40 page road trip entry, so you have nothing to complain about. But secondly… and I know my wife if going to kill me for saying “secondly”… I became a dad again. On Christmas in fact. Yes that’s right, we became one of those families. I will post the whole story with all the gory details in good time, but suffice it to say, Jesse Brian Hodges entered the world on Christmas morning healthy and happy and amidst a lot of screaming on the part of his mother.

And already my mind has gone to the “that’s just so weird” camp. It took me a long time to come to grips with the fact that I could even be a dad the first time around with Allison. Like, that was just so weird. But what was even weirder to me was the fact that we named her Allison… and nobody questioned it. I wrote a whole humor column about it. Well this time, it’s kind of the same thing. Right now it is just so weird that Jesse’s middle name is Brian. Does anybody else realize that that’s my name? I know that like 90 percent of the human race does just that same thing, but man… it’s just so… weird! Like I just gave another living human being my own name. I know he’ll never be called by it except when he graduates from school or when he’s been really really naughty. But as if giving him my last name wasn’t enough, I had go and to brand him with my first name as well. Seriously, giving your son your own name is only something old guys do… you know, guys your dad’s age and stuff. Weird.

Anyway, now that that’s all out in the open, I can finally return to writing my usual dumb blogs about patently unimportant stuff that at least 7 people per day seem to be reading if my webstats are anything to go by.

Hey, she could have said "schlong"

We’ve been getting Allison ready for what it’s going to be like when her baby brother, Jesse, arrives sometime in the next month. We, of course, are having a homebirth, so we’ve been telling her how mommy is going to be yelling and crying and making grunting noises, but that she’ll be okay because she’s just pushing Jesse out of her belly. Beyond that, we’re preparing her for what it’s going to be like with a new baby in the house, mainly the idea that he’s going to cry a lot and mommy is going to be giving him milk (which Allison calls “mooky”) to make him feel better. For the longest time Allison, who has been weaned for months now, kept telling us that she was going to share mooky with Jesse; “Jesse get ‘dis side and I get ‘dis side.” But we’ve finally gotten her to realize that, no, Jesse gets both sides and Allison gets chocolate milk and macaroni and smoothies and granola bars and yogurt raisins and stuff like that.

The one last thing we’ve been preparing her for is how Jesse is going to look different than she does, because Jesse is a boy and Allison is a girl. So we tell her, “You have a tushy, but Jesse is going to have a penis.” (I don’t know why we euphemized the girl parts and not the boy parts. “Penis” is just a cuter word than “vagina” I guess.) So she’s gotten really good at understanding the differences between boys and girls – since mommy is a girl, she has a tushy, but daddy and Jesse have a penis.

Well it was bound to happen eventually. I was at the playground with Allison a few days ago. She was on the swings when this older girl (four or five I guess) came over and wanted to give her a push. Pretty soon they were playing and talking and Allison told her she had a baby brother named Jesse. The girl brought Allison over to see her own baby sister who was sitting in her detachable car seat on one of the benches. Her mom was there and the little girl told her all about how Allison has a baby brother. I clarified and said, “Well, almost. He’s going to come out sometime around Christmas.” The mom… I’m sorry, let me clarify… the very hot mom and I started talking about all the stupid random things parents talk about, laughing and joking and whatnot while Allison and her daughter ran around playing together.

Well at one point they came back to look at the baby again and Allison said, “That’s your brother.” I corrected her, telling her that that was the girl’s sister because she was a girl. I then made the mistake of adding on, “But Jesse is going to be your brother because he is a boy.”

Do you already know where I’m going with this? Allison, well coached at this point, looked up at the mom (don’t forget, she was quite hot) and told her, “Jesse has a penis and daddy has a penis.”

The hot mom nodded her head and said the only thing a hot mom can say after receiving that type of information, “Um… oh… well… good…”

I think I handled myself well though. Rather than get embarrassed, or scold Allison for something that, let’s face it, we’ve been putting into her head and praising her for when she says it back to us, I looked the hot mom dead in the eye, and with no sense of irony whatsoever, said, “Yeah, you know, important information to have.”

Important information to have??? I’ve had several days to think over that response, and as dumb as it sounded at the time I have not been able to think of a better one that wouldn’t make it seem like I was trying to cover up some kind of illicit incestual pedophilia going on at home. Deadpan acknowledgement (of the fact that we were passing along important information to our daughter, not of illicit incestual pedophilia) was the best I could come up with. But you want to know what I’ve really been thinking about? Had I been a single dad (or a scumbag husband for that matter) and she had been a single mom (or again, I had just been a scumbag who didn’t care), I think I could have used that embarrassing little exchange as an icebreaker to try and… what’s the phrase they’re using these days… oh yeah – hit that. I really think it would have worked. I think if I was ever in that position where I was actually using my kid to pick up chicks, I would make sure to coach them so they’d just bring up penises in conversation. Mind you, I always have been a total dork when it comes to picking up women, so I’m not sure what my follow up line would have been to the whole tour de force “important information” opener. But hey, at least I’d have had a foothold.

Am I right ladies? Yeah you know it.

Impressionable songs

It's funny how powerful first impressions of certain songs can be, and how long they can stick with you. There are certain songs that, whenever I hear them, I remember exactly where I was and what my general state of mind was the first time I heard them. "When I Come Around" by Green Day will always make me think of Winter Carnival my junior year of high school, outside at night with twenty other friends building a big Winnie the Pooh snow sculpture. "You Spin Me Like a Record" by Dead or Alive will always remind me of the bar I worked at when I first moved to Los Angeles, and the cheesy 80's cover band that always sang it as their finale.

But what's really funny about first impressions is how they sometimes just can't allow you to think of a particular song any other way - like when hear a song that is actually a cover of an older song. You get so used to hearing the new version that when you actually hear the original, the one most of the rest of the world recognizes as the "true" version, you can't help but think that the original sounds, well... weird. For the longest time, I only knew the Sheryl Crow version of Led Zeppelin's "D'yer Ma'ker." When I finally heard the original version, I at least knew enough to keep my mouth shut about the fact that I liked the Sheryl Crow version better. That rightly would have been considered sacrilege by the classic rock loving people I grew up with. Fortunately, I managed to get past that first impression. Others stick with me to this day.

At the beginning of Offspring's song, "Pretty Fly for a White Guy" some weird German guy says the nonsensical phrase, "Gunter glieben glauchen globen." This clip was actually taken from an earlier song, "Rock of Ages" by Def Leopard. I'm sure when most hair metal fans heard that clip in the Offspring song, they were like, "Hey those bastards ripped off Def Leopard." But never having heard that particular song previous to "Pretty Fly for a White Guy", I will always associate the phrase with Offspring. On those occasions when "Rock of Ages" comes on the radio, it always seems strange to hear that funny German voice and to not have it followed immediately by, "Give it to me baby! UH HUH, UH HUH!" But I almost have an excuse for that one. It's not just first impressions. I legitimately hear the Offspring song on the radio way more than I hear "Rock of Ages."

One song that I don't have the luxury of that kind of excuse is "Under Pressure" by Queen and David Bowie. Some of you already know where I'm going with this. There is a guitar riff at the beginning of that song that was picked up and sampled in the early-90's by white rapper Vanilla Ice in his one hit wonder "Ice Ice Baby". Once again, my first impression of that particular guitar lick was from "Ice Ice Baby." And like every other white pubescent male of that time, I loved that song, knew all the lyrics, and was too dumb to recognize the irony. So when I first heard "Under Pressure" two or more years later it struck me as immediately weird. "Whoa, that's the same tune from 'Ice Ice Baby'." But here's the really weird thing. I don't think I've actually heard the song "Ice Ice Baby" in... I'd say a good five years or more. And I haven't heard it with anything resembling frequency for a good fifteen years. "Under Pressure", on the other hand, I hear on a fairly regular basis. They play it quite often on the classic rock stations. But here's the thing, every single time the song starts, every single time I hear that opening guitar riff, my mind immediately thinks that I'm about to hear "Ice Ice Baby." It literally takes a fraction of a second to realize what a stupid conclusion that was to draw, and remember what song I'm actually listening to. But it never fails; every time "Under Pressure" comes on the radio, for a split second I think "Ice Ice Baby."

But even that isn't the most ridiculous first impression of a song to stick with me. By far, the most idiotic lasting impression I have is for "Für Elise" by Beethoven. Every time I hear this most famous of piano pieces, every... single... time... I insert lyrics into the tune. That's right, lyrics. And not just any lyrics. The lyrics to a McDonald's commercial. It's all because of The Wizard of Oz. Remember when they used to air The Wizard of Oz like once a year on TV and how it was always, for some reason, a big deal? Well one year, when I was still in elementary school, my family taped the movie off the TV, commercials and all. And one of the commercials that repeated several times over the course of the movie was this McDonald's commercial. Back then, McDonald's put titles on all their commercials and this one was entitled, Recital. The thirty-second plotline involved a little girl who was scared to play the piano at her recital. Her dad gives her a boost of confidence by telling her that when it's all over, they'll all head over to McDonald's. The girl, still scared, walks up in front of the big crowd and begins to play "Für Elise". As she plays, she sings along in her head:

How I wish I were already there,
Instead of here,
Playing this song.
Oh I would have a big choc-o-late shake,
And cheeseburger,
And also (woops) and also fries.

And I would eat
My fries myself,
And not give any
To my dumb brother.
Hands off, they're mine, all mine, all MINE.

Oh boy my recital is almost done.
It wasn't bad.
I'm still alive.
And now I can have my choc-o-late shake,
And cheeseburger,
And also (woops) and also fries.

She finishes off the ditty with a piano version of the McDonald's theme song of the time: "What a good time... for the great taste... of McDonald's."

I swear to you, every damn time I hear that song, to this day, I hear those lyrics. Fortunately, I know it's not just me being lame. And the reason I know this is because a couple weeks ago I was hanging out with my sister and said, "What do you think of when you hear this song?" When I started humming "Für Elise" it took her all of two seconds to say, "That McDonald's commercial from The Wizard of Oz." God love my sister, the first impression got her too. They really are that strong.

(((And my gosh, isn't modern stupid technology wonderful. Here's the Recital Commercial from YouTube.)))

Inexplicable optimism

As of yesterday I am now officially, and gainfully, unemployed. By choice mind you. After four years of working as an on-site Avid support tech, which was stable and paid well, I have finally made the leap into the uncertain world of freelance writing. The beginning of this new phase in my life comes on the heels of a whirlwind month and a half, which has included a move into a new apartment, a mind-trip high school reunion, and two back-to-back away jobs that paid a boatload of money but kept me away from my family for nearly three weeks straight. I’m still in the process of decompressing from this marathon run and am just really starting to ponder the implications and future of this leap.

I honestly have no idea what or who I’m going to write for, where my paychecks will be coming from or what I’m even going to write about. Fiction? Non-fiction? I’ve got several ideas, which will keep me busy for awhile, but I really haven’t thought too deeply on the subject up until now. In fact I’m still not thinking about it very much, except in the abstract. And the thoughts I am having, amazingly, involve not even a modicum of fear or apprehension. Right now all I feel is excitement. In fact, I haven’t felt this excited about my future in a very long time.

It all washed over me this evening. I was standing in the kitchen of our new apartment just washing dishes. First of all, side note here, our new apartment is awesome. This place is actually an old renovated hay barn and is much more “us”, with a thousand times more character, than our old generic apartment in our old generic development ever was. Just being in this new place is exciting and invigorating. As I stood at the sink this evening, the windows over the sink were open and I could hear the rain falling on our yard and the wind chimes chiming on our porch. I had the Sirius coffeehouse station on playing artsy acoustic music and a pot of freshly ground Kona beans percolating next to me. Lauren was putting Allison to bed in the next room and for one perfect moment I was completely at peace. But it wasn’t just the peace that comes from easing down after a long hectic month. It was an even better kind of peace; the kind that is laced with unencumbered optimism about the future.

The last time I can remember feeling this way was the summer of 1999. I had returned to Los Angeles after a month shooting a movie with a group of friends, and was just beginning the process of sending out resume after resume to any company that was hiring. Talent agencies, TV shows, production companies – I applied to pretty much every nook and cranny of the entertainment industry. And with every resume I faxed, my excitement grew and grew as realized that I could end up working for any one of these companies. My whole future was ahead of me and the possibilities truly seemed endless. But that feeling quickly passed as soon as I actually started going out on interviews and realized that I would eventually have to pick one of these positions. All of a sudden the waves of possibilities collapsed to a single decision. And ever since then, for the past seven years, even as my path through life has meandered this way and that, my future has still been a veritable connect-the-dots of single decisions. Not that that’s a bad thing. With very few exceptions, those decisions have been wonderful and exciting in their own rite: leaving L.A., asking Lauren to marry me, moving to Philadelphia, becoming an Avid tech, having our first child…

But now, for the first time since that first summer in Los Angeles, the immediate future ahead of me is wide open. At that time, I had just come out of the four-year comfort zone of college and leapt into the unknown territory of “the real world”. This time I am coming out of the four-year comfort zone of a steady job into the unknown territory of… something. I don’t even know what this territory is – “making things happen for myself” perhaps? But just like the summer of ’99, I’m not scared. Not even a little. I know I probably should be, just like I probably should have been then. And I know that as the abstractness of my future gradually solidifies into the concreteness of reality it will start to sink in. But for now all I can feel is excitement and optimism at the seemingly limitless possibilities ahead of me.

And it didn’t occur to me until just now, but this time it’s actually different than it was seven years ago. The possibilities truly are endless because this time I’m going into it a freelancer. The last time I was in this place, one decision collapsed my possibilities to a single reality. But now taking one job or trying one path won’t close off all those other possibilities. This time, the future truly is limitless.

All I have left to do now is make it happen. All I can hope is that I ride this wave of excitement into an actual lucrative career. I hold no illusions that this is going to be easy, or that it will happen quickly, but right now none of that matters. Right now all there is is possibility.

10 Years

This is a little late in coming and I intend on doing a more in-depth write up on this eventually, but for now this will have to do...

I went to my 10 year high school reunion last weekend. I was honestly pumped up about this event. Not because I'm some huge success and wanted to go rub it in people's faces... not because there was the prospect of hooking up with the ex prom queen... not because I wanted to see how miserable the lives of my enemies had turned out... None of those things were the reason. I was simply, purely and genuninely interested in what my old friends were up to.

My highschool, I have realized, was different from most. Although there were definite cliques and there were definitiely people who were more popular than others, by and large, we all kind of hung out together. I wrote a whole essay about this about six years ago. Basically, it wasn't just that the jocks hung out with the nerds and the kids in the band... the jocks WERE the nerds and the kids in the band, as well as the arty granola hippies and the vocational school rednecks. Pretty much, we were all friends. At the very least we all knew each other's names, which doesn't happen in a lot of schools.

So I really and truly was just excited to see people again and find out what they were up to. The thought of being nervous never crossed my mind... Right up until the point, and I mean the INSTANT, we pulled into the banquet hall's parking lot. Just as we turned in off the road, I saw somebody getting out of their car. It was a guy I graduated with whose name was Glen, but who everybody called G.W. I hadn't seen G.W. since the summer after graduation but I recognized him instantly. He looked exactly the same... yet remarkably different. I mean, it was just G.W.... only ten years later. He'd grown about 4 inches and put on about fifty pounds of solid muscle. That's when the wave hit me. Suddenly I felt dizzy. For whatever reason, at that moment the realization hit me that I was going to be seeing all these people I once knew... only ten years later. In effect, all these people who I only remember as kids would now be grownups. I know this is an obvious observation, and I honestly didn't expect it to hit me as hard or as ludicrise-ly as it did. But suddenly I seriously felt as though I didn't know where I was.

We got out of the car and there was a bearded man standing next to his car dressed in ripped jeans and an old baseball hat. I didn't recognize him until my friend Jesse said his name, Colin. Oh my god, it WAS Colin. I remembered him as a young kid without a trace of facial hair and now he was a man. He spoke with a deep Maine drawl that I never remember him having and when he talked it was slow and quiet and deliberate. Sixty seconds into our conversation I had to sit down. Literally, i just sat right down in the dirt parking lot, knowing I was on the verge of passing out.

I'll hopefully get into the rest of this evening later on. But suffice it to say much of it felt a lot like these first two encounters. In fact I still feel like i'm tripping out right now. Dozens of faces of people I once knew. People I instantly recognized as the kids I'd hung out with, but who had, as far as my mind and memory were concerned, aged ten years in an instant.

There was no pretension shown by anybody there that night. Everybody greeted everyone else with genuine hugs, and for those first few minutes the conversations and tones of voice were those of the 17-year-olds we once were. And even as we discussed jobs, families, mortgages, land value and other typically grownup topics, these were still just my high school friends. I honestly can't figure out if it felt "weird" or "right."

All I know is that it was a truly awesome evening. When I left this place I always envisioned breezing back into town from L.A. speaking of whatever fabulous movie or TV show I was working on at the time and regaling everybody from this small hick county with stories from the big city, from show biz, from all the cool things I was doing and the people I was meeting. Instead, I came into town as just another Mt. View graduate, no better or worse than anybody else I knew. I actually found myself most amazed and intrigued by the stories of people who had stuck around the old homestead. Some actually were homesteading (one girl had built a house that had no electrcity or running water), other's were farmers, like real down home Maine farmers, and loving it. The aforementioned G.W. spent his days working his land up on Hogback Mountain (yes, it's actually called that) and putting out a local alternative newspaper. An independent movie crew just recently finished shooting a film up on his land and he helped them out with everything from cooking to standing in as an extra to all the miscellaneous tasks that go along with a film shoot.

What blows me away most is how much people still looked inherently the same. Nobody had gone bald. Nobody who was once skinny became fat. Nobody who was once plain became a super model. We're all doing so well, and what's even better is we're all doing well in our own unique ways. Hopefully as I spend more time thinking on it I'll be able to articulate all this better. Right now I still feel tripped right the hell out and my head is just buzzing with strong feelings that I can't even identify much less figure out why I'm having them.

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.

Four years and counting

July is a good month for celebrating independence and national identity. Of course there’s July 4, our own Independence Day. There’s July 1, which is when Canadians celebrate the formation of their country. And today, July 14 is Bastille Day, an important holiday for the French, marking the day those military geniuses, rose up and declared their independence from… France. The only reason I even remember the date of this particular French holiday is because July 14 also marks the day Lauren and I joined forces and became husband and wife in 2002.

That’s four years, man. FOUR YEARS! I’ve been married for as long as I was in college. Longer actually when you realize that college doesn’t even last a full four years. I make this comparison a lot when I’m weighing units of time. This drives Lauren nuts sometimes because it makes it seem like I’m constantly living in the past. But my reasoning for this particular comparison is simple. College was an all-encompassing time in my life that seemed to go on forever. And I don’t mean that in a bad way, like it was some inexorable chore that I just couldn’t get out of. I just mean that during those four years, it seemed like the entire world was in college. And when you’re surrounded by that many people all in the same station of life, you could swear that phase is never going to end. But it does end and you do eventually move on.

When comparing things to that sense of time, it does not feel like four years has passed since I said, “I do.” Then again… does it? Consider what Lauren and I have done since that day: three different apartments and soon to be a fourth; a graduate degree from an Ivy League school for Lauren; a job in Avid tech support for me which has taken me all over the country; a slowly budding writing career; a job at a birth center for Lauren where she routinely catches babies in her bare feet; an awesome road trip; two trips to Hawaii; the death of a beloved cat; the birth of two nieces, several friends’ babies, our own daughter and another baby already on the way… hell, I even grew a beard! Consider the new things we’ve learned about since that day: midwifery; homeopathy; attachment parenting; vaccine theory; cloth diapers; organic foods; how to make our own peanut butter; theories of evolution; chiropractic care; where to find really good coffee; satellite radio… some of my favorite bands today, I didn’t even know about four years ago.

When I think of our marriage in those respects, then yes, I guess it’s very easy to believe that it’s been four years. I look at who we were and what we thought and talked about back then and so much of it is different today. We’ve grown in ways I never would have imagined four years ago, and what’s more, we’ve grown together. I mean that in both senses of the word. I mean that we’ve grown in these things alongside one another. But I also mean we’ve grown closer… grown into each other. I’d only had one other long-term relationship before being with Lauren, and the longer we were together the more things stagnated. I thought those couples who said, “We love each other more and more as each day passes,” were just regurgitating lines from romance movies. How could you possibly love somebody more the longer you were together? It seemed to me that the longer you were with somebody, the less there was to learn about them and the more boring and stale the relationship had to become. But with Lauren, all those old preconceived notions have been turned on their head. Sure, as each day goes by there is less for us to learn about who the other person was and used to be, but in place of that we have constantly reinvented ourselves and who we are together through common experiences and newly acquired knowledge. We haven’t allowed our relationship to go stale because we haven’t allowed our lives to go stale. And that’s the key. But I do think the cliché movie line is a little bit misleading. “More” is the wrong word. I love Lauren deeper today than I did four years ago. As we grow together, I find myself loving her in ways I didn’t know I could love back then. It’s such a strange and intangible feeling and I wish I could explain it better than that.

A lot of single people out there have a really screwed up vision of what marriage is. They view marriage as the death certificate to their own independence and identity. And honestly it’s not their fault. There are a lot of married couples who fuel that stereotype of jaded, loveless, co-dependent, miserable people who have lost all sense of who they are to the marriage and subsequent parenthood. But honestly I have found my own marriage to be quite the opposite. I have found more freedom in my life with Lauren than I ever had alone. We support each other. We help each other. We lift the other one up when they’re down and make sure they don’t give up. Rather than losing all sense of who I am, I have found myself growing in ways I never considered – aided, challenged and encouraged by the one who has vowed to walk with me through good times and bad. Yes, part of my identity includes the suffix, and Lauren. Part of my independence means conferring with Lauren for major decisions. And yes there is a certain degree of co-dependence, but it’s a dependence that comes with a sense of security, knowing that that person will be there when I get home at the end of the day and will stand with me in all things.

I’d be lying if I said there weren’t aspects of my single days that I miss. I miss the parties, the late nights out, and “the chase” (even though I rarely “caught” anything). I miss being able to just throw a backpack into my car and drive out to the desert on a moment’s notice without having to check in with anybody back home. There are always certain things you have to… maybe not give up completely, but at least alter to fit any new station in life you enter. But hopefully you find new things to not only fill the void of what got left behind, but actually overflow it. Sure I miss certain things about being single, but I know that I wouldn’t be half the man I am today had Lauren not been by my side this entire time. While we have our share of problems like any other couple, there is definitely far more good here than bad and it’s made the last four years pass with excitement rather than boredom.

So it’s on this day that I, along with France, celebrate my independence and constantly evolving identity with the woman who I love and will continue to love for the rest of my life.

Happy Anniversary, baby!

Perhaps I'll float too

I started off writing a blog about something but it has run away from me and now I think it's going to end up being a full-blown essay. I had to stop only two pages into it tonight because I've developed a throbbing case of carpal tunnel in my mouse hand this weekend getting The Road Trip designed and posted and it started flaring up as I was typing. So I've left it for now, but what got me going on it in the first place is the book I'm currently reading. It is, hands down, my favorite book in the world. It is, honestly, the book that makes me want to be a writer of fiction more than anything in the world. The book that I will one day credit as being my inspiration, the muse that I've been chasing. I read this book and I hope to one day create a work of fiction that even approaches it. And the thing is, I'm embarrassed to admit it. I'm embarrassed to say it's my favorite and my inspiration. Because I don't imagine this book has much, or any, weight or significance in "serious" writing circles simply because most people assume it's just a stupid horror book about a demon clown that eats children.

That's right, the book is IT by Stephen King. And for those who haven't read it, or worse, for those who have only seen the HORRIBLE miniseries they did of it back in the 90's, I just want to say that I have never read another book, or another author for that matter, who can break down the psyche of a child as well as Stephen King does in this book. Even a lot of really great authors out there simply don't understand children. They've been away from it for too long or something. Even books that are critically hailed as beautiful masterpieces, when I read them, I see the children as caricatures. Fake. A grownup's idea of what a kid is. But in IT, every single one of the seven main characters is a flesh and blood kid. They talk like kids do. And not just the way kids talk when they're around adults. They talk the way kids talk when there are only other kids around.

I love this book and if you've ever read my (essentially defunct) humor column you know why. I say in it that I've never really grown up. But that's not really accurate. It's more that my memory is very vivid and I remember PERFECTLY my childhood. I remember specific days, instances, feelings, conversations. I remember how I was and how others were. Which is why I can spot a phony kid so easily when I read another author's depiction of childhood. I feel cut from the same swatch as Stephen King because he seems to be the only other person on earth to not only remember childhood the way I do, but can express it honestly without screwing it up. And to be honest, while I remember it easily, I know I have a long way to go in expressing it. I read IT and I know that. But that is the level of expression that I aim for. I'm not sure what kind of fiction I will ultimately write and hopefully get paid and become famous for, but I know it will involve children as the main characters. And I only hope I can acheive the level of deepness that Stephen King accomplished in IT.

Crap, my hand is flaring up again. Gotta stop now. More on this later.

"High" enough anyway

As I was driving home from a late day at work, racing to make it in time for the series finale of LOST (which was ab…so…lutely… AWESOME by the way), I was flipping through the channels on my Sirius radio and stopped by a station called “The Vault”. This is the station where they play “deeper classic rock.” Basically all the B-sides, lesser known and lesser played songs from classic rock artists. When I switched it on I heard a familiar and eerie sound of church bells. The text on the screen confirmed what my ears were telling me. It was the intro to the song “Fire On High” by Electric Light Orchestra.

I haven’t listened to this song in… maybe not years, but definitely a long time. And I really can’t remember the last time I heard it while driving in my car. I have the song on mp3 on my computer, but with no CD player in my car (and the fact that they rarely ever play this song on regular radio) the only place I really had the option to hear it was while sitting at my desk. Which is probably the reason I haven’t listened to it in so long, because this is and always has been one of the greatest driving songs ever. With no lyrics, incendiary and impossibly fast guitar riffs as well as crushing drum fills, it’s the perfect song for speeding down an empty Maine road, picking imaginary chords with your fingers and pounding out hardcore beats on the steering wheel.

Whenever I hear this song, my thoughts turn immediately to my college days. And anybody who was real close to me at Emerson at the time knows why. I used this song my sophomore year as the background for a marketing promo I edited for the Evvy Awards (which if you don’t know, is Emerson’s version of the Emmy’s). I had wanted to cut something to that song ever since I’d learned to edit a couple years earlier. The fast beats and guitar were perfect for quick cuts and movement. This ended up being the promo that first made people at Emerson think I was some kind of kickass editor. I’m not saying that conceitedly, in fact I kind of laugh when I think about it. I laugh because when I watch the promo now (well I haven’t actually watched it in… god, I don’t even know when, but I can remember exactly what it looked like), I think the editing was actually pretty… childish is the only word I can think of to describe it. I know I was only a sophomore in college, so I was still learning, but the whole promo is nothing but a series of lightning fast cuts. Cut,cut,cut,cutcutcutcutcutcutcut… Seriously, the only real talent it required was the ability to find a beat and the patience to tediously lay in each individual shot. That’s why I really think it was the song more so than the actual editing that made the promo be perceived as awesome. There’s just something about that song.

Tonight when I heard “Fire on High”, my thoughts didn’t go to my Emerson days… well maybe just for a second. Mostly this time, they returned to highschool, back when this song first came into my life. This was the song that they played when our soccer team ran out onto the field every game. I can think of no better song to get you pumped up for a game as much as this one. Alternating between majestic sounding verses full of strings and angelic voices, and the adrenaline-inducing chorus with its signature guitars and drums, that song made us feel like gods as we ran our warm-up laps around the field. I mean, you know, before the game started and we got our asses kicked six to nothing.

And like I said, as far as driving songs go, there simply was no better. But only when you were driving on the kind of empty two-lane cop-less roads we drove back home in Maine. Because inevitably, as you jammed on air guitar and pounded out steering wheel drums, your speed increased by at least ten miles an hour. It was seriously unavoidable. When that last round of badda-ba-ba-ba-bom… badda-da-daddadadada-dom-dom-dom… dadada-DOM ended, and your hands were numb from bashing against the steering wheel and your body was tingling in the now complete silence from how loud you’d had the radio cranked, you’d look down and realize you were doing almost eight and had drifted half-way across the center line.

As much as “Fire on High” took me back tonight, it just wasn’t the same. Driving down congested Street Road, one of the major thoroughfares through the Philly suburbs, it was impossible to truly give in to the music. With lights every thirty seconds, cars all around me, and a forty-five mile per hour speed limit on a street that’s loaded with cops, I couldn’t really concentrate on my guitar and drums too much. I was mostly using my thumbs as opposed to my whole hands on the drums. And the meat of my palms stayed planted on the wheel, rather than down near my side, as I picked out the notes on air guitar. For a second or two I tried to play the way I always remembered doing it back in Maine, but the second my car drifted and inch, I grabbed the wheel again and muted my performance a bit. Plus, whenever I stopped at a light, I had to ease it back for fear of the person in the next car looking at me.

But in spite of not being able to really cut loose, the song put me in such a great mood and got my adrenaline coursing through my veins the way it always had whenever I ran out onto that field, or whenever that marketing promo ended and one of my peers told me it had given them goosebumps. It was the most perfect appetizer for the most kickass episode of LOST ever. I only wish I had thought to lock the song into my radio’s memory on the off chance that it would come on again someday while I was out and about on one of the few two-lane roads in the area. Then I would be able to click over and experience “Fire on High” to its fullest. Oh well. With luck they’ll dust the song off and pull it out of The Vault again while I happen to be passing through and it’ll be just like the old times… you know, minus the getting creamed by our rival school afterward.

You know I'd have a hell of a band

I think I would have loved being a musician. Whenever I've hung out with other friends who are musicians or heard the stories of people I know who have managed a band, the stories always fascinate me. The parties. The people. The lifestyle. The art. It all speaks to me. Spending a day in Nashville two years ago only fueled that feeling even more. I know that very few musicians make it big, but even the life of a struggling musician, the starving artist, appeals so much to me. I know it's not all roses - no artist's way of life ever is - but man it must be an awesome trip. If I had it to do over again... and had a shred of musical ability, I have decided I would move to Nashville and live the life of a singer-songwriter.

That's obviously not going to happen, but last night before Amy's show I got a brief, albeit meaningless, taste of what it might be like. I walked up to the counter at Milkboy Coffee and ordered myself an iced latte. Seeing me standing there with my red beard, my slightly shaggy and windblown hair which I've been growing out, and my groovy retro t-shirt, the chick working the counter asked me, "Are you playing tonight?"

For a split second, I was a musician. I was there man. I felt it through and through. And dude, it totally rocked. Then you know, I snapped back to reality and paid full price for my drink.