Short Takes #6

Hayden Carruth: Human Cruelty, 271
Michael Datcher: The Spinners, 292

Datcher shines light on the troubling absence of fathers in project housing and the suburban aspirations repressed within urban culture. There's no men raising children where he grew up, and when a man interacts with the neighborhood boys, they compete for his attention with one-upsmanship and stunts. But the attention is fleeting, the problem of men who have children but aren't fathers cyclical and rampant in the ghetto. A fantastic line in this, after laying out a scene where black kids do backflips to impress a man passing through their project:

"It's likely one of these men laid the seed that spouted into a back-flipper before them." (293)

Datcher says it's easier to give into vice than take the easy road, yet his essay isn't prescriptive; it laments the hardship but neglects to fix anything. Perhaps that simple fact indicates the paradox of the urban problem, identifiable but doomed to repeat.

Sky-hooks and Supernovas: The (unauthorized) Lardner family story

My long essay:

I was built for this. I'm tall and wiry, with a wingspan that can stretch out of both car windows when I'm in the driver's seat. Basketball-sized.

My dad has one regular hobby, a singular passion that governs his very-limited leisure time: It's my dad's basketball league; or maybe, his beer and pizza league with an ancillary side of basketball. He's lost a step; they've lost multiple. He stays in shape toting packages for UPS; the job gives him chiseled legs, financial stability, a ravenous appetite, creaky knees, and heaps of stress. Every Thursday, he shows up about 20 minutes late and replaces his brown uniform and boots with ankle braces and thick-soled athletic footwear.

He's the garbage man, cleaning up rebounds and getting hustle points on plays others won't contest. As a child in a family of five brothers, food wasn't in abundance. Eating was an intense sprint of ravenous gulps; the tortoise would starve, outmatched by five eager hares who knew there was no time to pause. He still won't waste food; I've watched him eat many things no one else wanted, not because he was enjoying it, but because it would be bad form to trash it. He makes the best out of scraps, somehow generating points and posterity, carving out a niche.

In real life, he's sometimes just a bland dad. I guess that's what 12 hours of physical labor daily will do, make a man into a barely-animated corpse. But on Thursdays he's not dad but Rob, consistently but not fashionably late (it's a matter of obligation and function), prideful, foul-mouthed, a scrapper. Plays a big man's game in an average body. Rob's teams barely lose, he's the unappreciated hot glue that bonds a squad.

I play blind. I should order myself some goofy wraparound prescription goggles, but instead I hoop on instinct. It's pretty phenomenal, really, how good I am without being able to make eye contact, without reading the passing lanes betrayed by a precursory glance or setting up an unspoken lob through a look with my distributor at point. It's all on feel; I've put in Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours for mastery(or at least it feels like it), in gyms and on blacktop and in driveways, and watching the game and observing its intricacies and committing to memory and then performing until it's muscle memory, ingrained in every jerk and lean.

When I play with them now, I supernova. I'm unstoppable, competing against myself at the start. Back to the basket, working my way left, preparing the hook or the bank. Always smooth, unless it's not, and then I'll just snatch the rebound and rectify my heinous error.

Last time we played, I stuffed Rob on his first shot. “Damnit,” he cursed as his buddies gave him some shit. I can't let him score though, I need to show Rob who's boss. My teammate shoots and misses; I'm there to clean up scraps. Put back, points. Rob, a head below me, wanted the rebound and contested my shot. Didn't matter, I was taught positioning and hustle and how to stay with a missed shot. I was taught never to bring the ball down in a double clutch, to keep it above my head so shorter players couldn't hack at it. Sorry, Rob, dad taught me how to render you helpless.

But, by the 5^th or 6^th consecutive game, I'm gasping like a pack-a-day smoker, as they keep on chugging while I'm tugging on the shirttail of my man, hanging on for dear life. Thinking about how embarrassed my dad is going to be when his virile young man of a son has a heart-attack playing in the old-timers game. Now I'm the hare, showboating and sprinting until I get passed by the smart and steady.

My dad and I play in the driveway all the time. I've gotten too good for him, I can't even turn around and play back to the basket. He's defenseless in the post against me. Rob's wife, Kathie, sits outside with her black lab on the bench by the pine and watches us play. Most of the time, I show Rob up in front of Kathie. As she watches, I see her chuckle and imagine she thinks about how much has changed, pictures cradling her 6'6” infant who's now battering her husband, a full-grown, former military man himself. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar sinks yet another lefty skyhook; he's unblockable.

We used to wrestle on the tacky shag carpet; my parents didn't design the house, and it was the first of many, many renovations they've undertaken. My dad was tougher than me, as is the usual dynamic between parent and toddler, but I'd give it my best shot. I was scrappy, but no match in the scrum. I like to think my dad felt threatened, like I was the young cat of the savannah challenging the patriarch, who may have excessively rested on laurels, lost a step, but in fact I'm sure he was toying with me, like I was the outmatched mouse putting up a valiant but ultimately useless struggle. One day he pulled too hard on a loose toddler limb, horsing around in a rough enough manner to incite the fiery rage of my mom. She thought it was broken, but I escaped with just a sprain. I was 3. My dad sprained his 3 year old's arm. Kareem's arm, high in the air now as the leather tickles twine.

I set foot in Ping a few weeks ago for the first time in my nearly two years at OU. I played basketball with my roommate and a few of his friends. They were awful. Kareem was at Ping. That is, until we were challenged from across the court.

“Are you any good,” I asked the tall and cut man across from me. I was afraid I knew the answer before he opened his mouth. “I used to be, I'm kind of out of shape now.” It was a nice reply, sportsmanlike and humble, but it was patently false.

I blocked him a few times and tallied my fair share of points, but I faltered with my team on my back. I couldn't defend him. He dropped probably 7 on me in a game to 12 during our second game. He was quicker and took better angles. It was a second round knockout after a first round takedown. Judges' scorecards all read 20-15 when the fight was stopped. Before that, I can't remember the last time I've lost. That isn't meant to be bragging, I literally cannot remember.

I set foot in Ping for the second time two days after I set foot in Ping for the first time. This time, I was by myself, in a barren and desolate wasteland of inactivity that vaguely resembled a functioning gym. I logged about 70 minutes of solo time, shooting and driving and dribbling and sweating. I woke up early before class three days after that, and did the same. I didn't enjoy losing, and decided it wasn't going to happen again.

Once, my dad threatened to walk home when my parents were greater than 20 miles away from it. They were playing Whirlyball, which I had to research before writing this section. My source tells me “It's like each player is in a dodgem car on a basketball court. You get a Jai Alai racquet...players try to shoot the ball at a high goal with a net. It actually was fun I know Laura Freiberg and Maureen have both done it years ago too, love mom xoxoxoxo.”

They went with a bunch of friends, and played on separate teams. My dad disagreed with a ref's call that went against him, and stormed off, announcing he would just walk home. Their friends encouraged my mom to go talk to him, make sure he's okay. “No, I'm not going to chase him when he's being a baby,” my mom replied. Eventually, he made it back to the car.

I see his competitive edge flare up when we play ping pong, when he plays morbidly boring Wii games with my brother, when we play cornhole at graduation parties. I also see it in me. It can't be healthy for either of us.

In a shameful stint of my life, I broke 5 Xbox microphones. They kept snapping after they somehow hurtled towards the wall or the floor. Coincidentally, it always seemed to happen when the newest Call of Duty game was in the disc tray. That can't be healthy.

My dad was never very good at sports. He was a wiry offensive guard on his junior high football team; too uncoordinated to play a skill position, but scrappy enough to take on larger kids in the trenches. They won the city championship; I'm still regaled with stories of those glory days. He had never played soccer until high school; he found a niche as a full-back who could barely kick, stepping up for tackles and out-hustling the other team's forwards. But his worst sport was basketball, he sat on the end of the bench every year in an era where giving kids mandatory minutes wasn't the protocol. He rarely played. The summer over his 7th grade year, he left town to stay with an aunt. He made a friend who wanted to get better as much as he did. They played for hours that stretched into days that ran together into weeks. They got significantly better. When winter basketball started up, my dad was a new player. He started getting minutes, minutes he carved out months before with exercises of effort and devotion.

My dad and I communicate on the court, bond using the language of the game. Dish on my brother's laziness and how to get him motivated, or the pratfalls of UPS' bureaucratic waste. It's our “thing,” grease that keeps the wheels of our relationship spinning smoothly, the tie that binds. Playing basketball is a really wide-ranging phrase; it encompasses a casual, almost meditative shoot around, as well as full-contact competition. The level we play at varies, but it's always synchronized, every step mirrored like only the most familiar of foes. He shaped my game, genetically and in practice. It must be weird to see an improved version of yourself across from you, the upgraded model that you had a stake in building.

Neither of us are any good at being wrong. I keep my computer open, browser up and situated within arm's reach, whenever I'm home with him. The Internet will settle shit. It's grating. If we're watching sports, we have to argue about every call. I find myself automatically disagreeing with anything my dad says, taking the other side even if I don't believe it. It feels like a disease, or like I'm too dim to avoid the obvious trap. Contesting points for the sake of arguing. It can't be healthy.

He's hard-working and I'm averse to labor. He's religious; I'm indifferent. He fixes stuff around the house and makes things with his hands, I'm a wordsmith who's been helping him spell and write his Christmas cards since the 4^th grade. But on the court, we're threaded together, cut from the same cloth and weaved into the same blanket. Working the low post, back to the basket, battling on the glass, using the backboard for put-backs. Hustle points, never taking the first shot but clamoring for the leftovers. Scrappy.

Short Takes #5

James Galvin, A Second Time (111)
Michael Martone, Contributor's Note (176)

Martone's take is a third-person autobiography of his name, I was drawn to it for its unique form. My last short take is going to be an analysis of the "Biographical Notes" story, treating it like an actual artistic endeavor, so I was interested to see what Martone included.
He looks at the many ways he has been perceived  which is an extension of what name or nickname he weent by at the time. From Monk, the monkey imitator and monkey-pun artist, to Mike, card-carrying member of The Mikes of America club. It's a bit disorienting when he references other people while talking about himself in 3rd person; he has to be on point with his clarity or diction, or else the reader gets lost in sentence muck.
Friends call Martone Martone, a strangely intimate construction in the way
children in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where Martone lives now with his wife who still calls
him Martone, call Martone Mr. Michael (179)

It's an awesome piece though, with details like:
 a high school crush writing her name as if she was Martone's bride
Martone's wife having private nicknames for him that he isn't allowed to disclose in his writing
ending with him ---SPOILER ALERT--- saying his name for the pastor as he's about to be wed

I'd recommend this, no doubt.

Choose Your Own Adventure: The Free-wheeling Blog Post Where YOU decide your destiny!

My innate nature (are those words of a common ancestor?) is that of an tactical saboteur, deliberately and methodically assassinating my emotional well-being. It's fun to destroy.

Remember those Spy vs. Spy commercials for Mountain Dew? I looked those up and apparently they're adapted from Mad magazine and have been around since the 60s, the cultural recycling went entirely over my head. Anyway, the two Spies practically mirror each other, operating out of the same playbook of espionage. It's sugary-drink motivated sparring between masters; since they know each other so well, it's impossible for one to pull too far ahead.

That's how I feel about myself emotionally. When good shit happens, I somehow have to level it out. I can't appreciate highs without a morose counter-stroke. I have access to my manual, my innards. I know where to hit so it hurts. Isn't that some sort of sickening irony, that no one can hurt you more than yourself?

I don't damage myself like a bulldozer or wrecking ball. It's a pinpoint strike, like one of those ultra-secret martial arts moves long-rumored to exist where they hit a pressure point and the assailed loses consciousness immediately. It's terrifying that I'm a self-aware terrorist, a suicide bomber of the mind. I catch myself erring and I do it anyway. Is it like Dave Howells said, are we destined to be depressed? Doomed to be down? Is the human condition perpetual gloom?

Against my better judgement, I delight in ruining things. I'll even catch myself doing it, be cognizant about the inevitably and unflinchingly negative outcome, and go ahead anyway. As I walk away from the fire, flanked by a trail of smoke, I shake my head and wonder what else I could have expected. It went exactly as I expected. And I still did it.

I love stealing shit. I'm a financially stable suburbanite with literally no reason to need to take things. I don't take from other people, just corporate stores(ed's note: on second read, is this me trying to justify what is clearly illegal and probably reprehensible? How self-centered do I have to be to try to make stealing OK? I'm not fucking Robin Hood here). My recent kick has been from the Grab N' Go on campus; I'll shove cookies into my jacket, maybe a bit too conspicuously, even though I already got a sandwich and chips and a salad or chicken and an orange and a drink. I don't need cookies, but I want that tiny little rush. One day, I'll be caught. Maybe I'm trying to be. (Maybe this paragraph doesn't fit at all? Maybe I want to confess. Maybe I could work this in if I could figure out how to arrange it?)

Maybe it's my immaturity, maybe this is why I can't have nice things.

I''m trying to destroy. I want to destroy. And, unfortunately, I probably will end up ruining anything that goes my way.

I'm sorry.

Short Takes #4

Richard Rodriguez (piqued my interest) From "Mexico's Children"
M.J. Iuppa Daylight Savings Time

This reads like straight poetry, abstract and lyrical. I'm not going to act like I completely have a handle on it, because I spent most of my time reading this just admiring sentences and thoughts and fragments and phrases. "watching the highway lines breaking up like Morse code." She compares shutting a door to the flick of a Zippo lighter. I think the title is a play on that phrase, saving as in preserving in mind, not turning back the clock (though I know the author wishes she could relive it). There's almost no general detail about the relationship, just the wildly specific, but I envy this sylvan and inherently natural passion of both the affair and the writer's voice. And I mean natural as close as possible to the root of the word, the intended meaning, nature-al.

Rodriguez/Didion response

I thought, in the first few pages of Rodriguez' essay, that I would enjoy it throughout. However, I didn't care for his shift from presenting San Francisco as a location of change and of sadness within the gay rights movement to the emphasis on architectural characteristics. I loved presenting the parade as at first unabashed celebration, and then as a sort of tarnished but still-proud beast, a bird of prey with sharp talons but clipped wings. Rodriguez kept going from spectacular writing to mundane sections for me; I was never fully invested. One place where I thought he connected was the body building, which he describes as "a parody of labor, a useless accumulation of the laborer's bulk and strength...and yet there is something businesslike about habitues, and the gym is filled with the punch-clock logic of the workplace. (764-765)" Overall though, I thought it was a promising writer with tedious subject matter.

Didion seems to present New York as a place for perpetual outsiders; everyone is transient in their own minds, but the city eventually becomes habit, with familiar faces and similar high-minded attitudes abounding. Perhaps that's a lot of the appeal of New York; It's like a bright light for ambitious minds, irresistible to dreamers, they swarm like flies, most getting zapped by the current of the city. The rules of other places just don't seem to matter; you swap keys and pull all-nighters and live without furniture and with billowing gold curtains dancing outside windows. Didion seems to believe that there is a process for New York, the early wide-eyed romanticism of whimsy, followed by settling into possibly peculiar habits, before being disenchanted with the pomp of the city, a claustrophobia of the body and mind. "It is distinctly possible to stay too long at the Fair," says Didion (687). This was more palatable than Rodriguez' portrait of San Francisco, but I wouldn't say I enjoyed either.

Media

The tragic arc is an invaluable element of storytelling. It casts an entity in a sympathetic light, begging "what-ifs" and "why them's?" Television news loves to do this, disasters that humanize the victims, the story between the lines of the police report.

Tangent time; it's bullshit that people use the expression "Only the good die young" when someone passes away unexpectedly. My friend's sister died in a car crash in Florida this week, and people are consoling themselves with that expression. Do they even understand what they're saying, peanut-brained simpletons?

It's not that literally bad people live longer, and that duration of life is inversely proportional to kindness. If their thick skulls could process beyond the surface level, they would realize that the expression refers to the change in perception once someone's gone.  "Only the good die young" means that those lost are always seen more favorably; if they were a douchebag, you just shelf that info to be respectful. People are kinder in death, wax nostalgic in ways that would never happen during life. No one ever calls me a "beautiful angel" within earshot.Appreciate what you have when it's there, not when you miss it.

But what I'm also mad about is so loosely threaded with this essay's topic, it literally only shares the same word. I feel like this is supposed to be about forms of media for entertainment, not the news media. So, um, yeah that Bachelor finale was really something. We sure learned alot about the minds of people from the voyeuristic mating process. Oh, and the roses and the love, so genuine, for sure can be found amidst meddling producers within a fucking bubble. That's how love works.

I'm moving back to the Steubenville rape case, so I can lose more of you in your own opinions of it, incite other angers. CNN, supposed bastion of neutrality, made the unfathomable decision to paint the rapists as victim, sentences ruining their "promising" futures. God knows I want the fate of society to be in the hands of juvenile rapists. Those poor children, and they're still innocent children, have to register as sex offenders for the rest of their lives. Oh the humanity! How inconvenient, almost as inconvenient as dragging around a lifeless girl described as a "corpse" from party to party, repeatedly violating her, and documenting it. Stupid, broken court system, making these local upstanding heroes serve as much as two years for these silly offenses. Just let boys be boys and kids be kids, lighten up, y'all--it's only rape.

Fuck Poppy Harlow, the CNN reporter who said it was difficult to watch Malik Richmond cry out that no one will want him after his sentencing. She said it was  “incredibly difficult” to watch “as these two young men — who had such promising futures, star football players, very good students — literally watched as they believed their life fell apart.”  LINK

 Fuck CNN for adopting a tone sympathetic to rape. Candy Crowley, the anchor at the time of their coverage, happened to be on campus Monday night. I wanted to confront her on the network's inexcusable tone, how could a sound-minded, good-hearted person accept that filth? "You're morally bankrupt," I would shout in the climax of my admonishment. "A sellout. And you should be ashamed."

I almost made it to the event, but I was too busy watching TV, desensitized and drowning.

Eggers comparison

pp 90. "So we usually eat on the coffee table. If the coffee table is beyond clearing, we eat on the family room floor. If the family room floor is covered with plates from the night before, we eat on my bed." (and the half-page leading up to this)

pp 178 "We do not know why he wants to do this, to get in a car with four strangers and run naked on a beach and be photographed doing it, and come to think of it, we do not want to know."

Both of these are weird and funny predicaments that Eggers ends up in, and they show a sort of incompetence that he uses to undercut his anger at being criticized for being inept (or actually being inept). In the first, Eggers is unable to serve a meal on the main table because of the ping-pong net sawing it in half. Of course it's far too much effort to unhook one side, walk a few steps, and repeat. Why do that when there's so much room in other spaces. You know you're living when you recline and dine sprawled on memory foam. The Romans ate while relaxing, and they did some good shit, so it's clearly part of Eggers' desire to impart culture onto Toph, and not because he's lazy as hell.

Likewise, as the nude photoshoot idea is deflating in a kind of freefall of expectation, Eggers gets what he wants in a willing participant. But on further rumination, is that what he really wants, this weirdo? I think it's a really funny spot to kind of backtrack and make a joke about this Prince-Albert clad enthusiastic exhibitionist. I just had the urge to use lol at the end of the last line, then realized that doing so would eliminate the modicum of academic respect we're still trying to preserve. Close call though, in all honesty.

So both of these passages are in a similar style, kind of plain writing in covering a clearly funny premise. Overindulging in language would negate the humor, so Eggers reigns in the length and allows the funny to roam free. Considering most of his style is verbose eccentricity,  this shift allows the humor to shine through and made both of these moments stand out amidst a sea of hyper neurosis.

An Exploratory Post of Staggering Mediocrity

For my Eggers emulation, I'm going to introduce my last post, found directly under this...you could read my blog from the top and it would be pre-essay material coming before the real piece. Link here

The following essay ventures into the mind of an erratic and honest thinker. A thinker who battles anxiety now, and bears in the future.

Is the title of this blog post insinuating that this post is mediocre, or that the previous Woolf emulation is mediocre? Is the mediocrity spread in a thick layer through both posts? Where does the underselling stop and the beauty begin? All of these questions, and more, will not be answered in this piece. I'm seriously going to not answer so many questions, things like: Why is the world poor? How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if it was paired with a lumberjack like how police have K9 units, in a deciduous forest? Why does Krispy Kreme throw dozens of donuts in the trash every night? I'm not going to answer any of that.

Some components of a great story are action, violence, and confusing love triangles- or at least that's what Hollywood tells me. You get none of that, unless your idea of a love triangle is a brief and misplaced homoerotic longing, then there's plenty of that to go around. So sultry!

I'd like to take this time to acknowledge some important people in my life that have shaped both this and the ensuing piece. Hey, Ms. Lynch! Remember when you said that I changed from 7th to 8th grade, implied it was for the worse, and asked if my parents were getting a divorce? I do! Then I'd like to shout out my mom for believing that I would be painfully shy and it would inhibit my life. Does a painfully shy person rap over Gucci Mane's Orange Juice instrumental with words inspired by Huxley's Brave New World? I think not (John was the only Caucasian on the Savage Reservation/Information got me sayin' 'What the Ford is up with that?). Thanks to Mrs. Knight for banning all balls on the playground and teaching me how to successfully stage a peaceful protest, making me like a Gandhi of Jr. High, but fatter (Buddha?). And finally, thanks to my editor, the squiggly red line under shittily-typed words; couldn't have done it without ya, buddy.

Make up your own damn themes, I'm not spoon-feeding you.

Woolf Emulation

this is pretty bad for an emulation, but I started trying to do for Athens what she did with London, and quickly shifted to identifying with her philosophy. Not relevant, but I go into words that are untranslatable and this is my favorite one of all: Saudade, the Portuguese word that means a deep pining or nostalgic longing for a missing element.

I spend quite a bit of time walking around Athens, and much of it is lost in my own world of thought, absent-mindedly pondering life. Sometimes I'll laugh at the level of digression I achieve, wondering what these people passing by me would think if they knew I was just casually considering killing myself or that I'm laughing incredulously because I thought about asking that guy out. Both of these happened today; I saw this conventionally handsome and well-dressed guy on my way to class and my thought process was "damn he has it all put together" "I bet he gets laid so much" to "maybe I should ask him out" and then I start laughing at how ridiculous my mind works and people look at me like I'm crazy and I realize that it looks crazy and start laughing about how crazy I look then I wonder if I might be. This may be why I eat most of my meals alone.

When Dave said he tried out the baby Bjorn (sic?) I thought it was funny because I can barely carry a pizza down Court St. let alone a swaddled infant in a traditionally effeminate manner. I feel people staring at the pizza and judging me, or worse, anticipate them asking for some, the joke soiled by one too many hungry, drunk denizens of the town.

I spend a lot of time changing my mind, too; one destination in mind only to recant that desire, pivot and head back where I came from. Class is the only lead pencil that consistently pulls me out of the room to experience life.

Something came up earlier this week about maybe thinking about jumping from high places, it must have tied in with Anthony's essay but I can't remember for sure. On second thought, someone was talking about driving off the bridge and pondering mortality. The French have this untranslatable expression, L'appel du vide, that is used for that overwhelming urge you sometimes have to destroy yourself. It's replicated as the phrase "the call of the void," you feel it behind the wheel, on the ledge, face pressed against the window. Sometimes I think about how easy it would be to kill something weaker, most women and children. A few seconds of mechanical violence, and you've terminated, I could do it in one swift decision. I've never held a baby and I stay far away from ledges, because I know I feel L'appel du vide. It's not suicidal, but I know I feel the call of the void, and don't know if I would heed it.

If I had nothing left to live for, I would go do the absolute coolest shit. If I was going to die anyway, why not go see the world, an impoverished wanderer living live at its minimalist base. I would go down to the country and tap my feet in a bluegrass circle, I would do a ton of meth and opiates, sing at soccer games in Europe, skydive off the Grand Canyon, fight a bear in Canadian woods. That's my ultimate way to go out, grappling with a bear. If I get cancer or something morbid where I have an inevitable end, I'm literally going to try to fight a bear. It would be so much fun, you couldn't even be mad about losing to a grizzly bear. And I would be legend for the manly demise.

I wish there was a way to reconcile these sides, the quivering mess with the ceaseless bravado, the brash and critical douchebag with the sentimental core.  The one who wants to live life to the fullest with the one who barely lives it at all.

Short Takes #3

Kathleen Dean Moore- Muskgrass Chora
Dinty Moore- Son of Mr. Green Jeans

I picked this Moore essay because I'm pretty sure he's an OU faculty member. His structure of the essay was pretty unique: A chronicle of fatherhood, sorted alphabetically. It gives him free reign to make some scattered connections and self reference within the essay. I also think the structure speaks to the impossible alchemy of fatherhood; there's no way that you can tie it together smoothly. I actually think this is a really similar technique to what I used in my "Don't say this wasn't intimate" essay, a number of interspersed and overlaying thoughts that craft a strong (if somewhat abstract) narrative.

Moore draws from a number of sources that inspire him: the dream American family of old television, clean and pristine, a number of different animals, and his own relationship with his father and inherited biology.

He makes a really interesting connection between the titular Mr. Grean Jeans, a father on the show Captain Kangaroo, and an entry titled "Green Genes" about his Irish roots.  His Green Genes didn't give him Green Jeans, but they gave him substance control issues, "a facility with words," and some strong hesitations about fatherhood.

There's a (happy?) twist near the end that was set up by the format. At times funny, scientific, and wistful, this is probably worth a read.

Don't say this wasn't intimate.

Let's get weird: Port wine stains are my biggest turn-on in a girl.

WTF are port wine stains, right? Let me Google that for you.

I can't remember the first time I saw a port wine stain in person. I know my fascination was sparked on the program "What Would You Do," they painted port wine stains on a girl's face, then had her verbally abused by her sales associate, another actress. The associate makes disparaging remarks about her "condition," and says things like "we'll make you look normal."Please try to find time to watch this video.

This essay is unfolding in real-time, a chronicle of going further down the rabbit hole. That episode aired in 2012, and I found a Reddit thread from 2011 that I recognize for sure. This girl puts her imperfection on display, fielding all questions with good humor. She even calls a retouched version of the photo of her with normal skin "weird." Maybe this was my first experience learning about these, and it's fitting that it would be from Reddit, the information buffet I've feasted on over the last few years.

It has been a topic of a Dear Abby column before, but I can't find the specific ones I read.

This is a picture of a pretty one; is the mark pretty or do I like it because the girl is happy?

I get absolutely giddy at even the mention of port wine stains, it's practically Pavlovian. The sight of them makes me so happy.

I can't find anyone who fetishizes port wine stains on the Internet, the place where pretty much everything exists. I might be the only one who sees them as lustrous, beautiful marks that augment a person instead of hinder them. I'm OK with that.

I have a scar from when I fell running for the bus that runs along my left thumb. I don't like that origin story; I prefer to say that I got jumped, acquired it in a valiant and manly battle. My mom bought me some stuff to rub on it that would reduce or even eliminate it in 3-6 months. It's been 7 years, and I still haven't used it. I don't think I want to.

There's this girl on my green who unabashedly wore short shorts in the fall. Port wine stains sheath her bare limbs. Pollack in scarlet monochrome. I'm like a kid on Christmas when I see her. Once, we were in a loose-knit conversation, the type where your friends know my friends so lets stand here and posture up and try to seem cool without having anything to say. I was too nervous to say what I wanted to say. I didn't say anything at all. I don't remember what her face looks like, but I'd remember those legs anywhere.

I have stretch marks from being fat on my stomach and sides. My battle with food was the toughest of my life. If you really think about it, those scars are self-inflicted.

My biggest high school crush (and by that I mean still in high school, isn't that awful?) has a giant nose. She plays it up, absolutely owns it. Nosetradamus, et al. She loves posting ugly, unflattering pictures of herself on social media.

3 in 1000 people have port wine stains. Many who have one facially coat themselves in makeup to hide it. I bet I've seen, known so many more people who have them, but hide them.

This girl I met at a party has a weird esteem quirk. She thinks she's ugly and laments her pastyness, her small tits, even her personality--she used that C word to describe herself, trying to explain the reason she doesn't have a valentine today. She didn't have all of these insecurities when we reversed roles and she came on to me that night. Maybe the port wine was bubbling in her stomach and it blocked the port wine of her heart.

They can be lightened surgically. I wish people wouldn't do that.

I didn't make the connection, my roommate did. He goes, "You're really into girls like that," after I tell him about the party girl's outpouring of resentment on Twitter. "Wait, what?" I reply dubiously. "Girls who emphasize their flaws." He's absolutely right.

It goes back to my persistent white knight fantasy. I want to save a girl, then savor her. But it's not really that clear cut. I think I like the marks specifically because I want to cradle her and tell her that there's nothing wrong with her, that she isn't flawed, that the sales associate is the one who's wrong, that society is wrong for looking at it and just looking away, refusing to make eye contact.

In Steubenville, Ohio there was a huge incident covered by the New York Times where a 16 year old girl was abused and raped at a party by two football players. There were other accomplices and many witnesses. Her ex-boyfriend brought her there, and may have set it up. She was dragged from party to party, completely nude, molested and violated. They took pictures, Tweeted about it, recorded video. The town is a corrupt small town, doing everything they can to keep their precious football team out of trouble. The news can't publish the name of the girl, a minor and victim. I used my journalism background (and my internet creeping background that so many in our generation are proficient in) to find her. I know her name. She lives in West Virginia, not far from here. She could, realistically, end up at OU. I'd just like to fucking tenderly hold her and put her head on my shoulder and reassure her that she isn't broken.

3 in 1000 people have port wine stains. 1000 of 1000 people have flaws.

I guess a port wine stain can be a bit of a scarlet letter. Hester ended up owning hers. I'm not in love (interesting how I started with turned on and ended at in love; somewhere I made the unconscious transition from sexual to romantic) with port wine stains, I'm in love with flaws. Flaws are imperfect, which makes them  human. Wear your badges, your scars that confirm your personhood with pride. Find someone who loves that about you.

Port Wine is described as a sweet, fortified wine.

Music

So there's this song that reminds me of my mom. Donna Lewis is apparently this Welsh one-hit wonder who did this song called "I Love You Always Forever." It's like a generic pop song, it's pretty bad lyrically and sonically. But you don't know that when you're a little kid. I was probably between 3 and 5. My mom's bedroom, green and white vertical striped comforter, sturdy wooden box/bench at the end of the bed, shitty alarm clock radio. If you could get past the crackle, you could hear the song. Always. Forever. Meant to be together. I love you.

It's not the music that tugs the ol' heart strings, it's what's behind it. I don't care about the quietly angelic voice that's so damn persistent.  I don't care that the accompanied underscore sounds like an over-sentimentalized adventure. I'll tell you because I'm supposed to, but it's tedium. Minutiae. The song doesn't mean anything, my mom does. My mom makes the song.

I've done an awful job of showing it, but it makes me happy, because my mom loves me. And I know because Donna Lewis and my mom and I all told each other that we did. And it makes me sad, because it reminds me about the sands of time forcing their way down that narrow cylinder. My mom isn't here forever. She's here, but not forever. But her love, her love is. She sang that it's forever, and I believed her.

Fisher response

There's something interesting and romantic about seeing foods we take for granted as delicacies. Fisher's high regard for mashed potatoes with catsup and her reverence for potato chips is a reminder of our good fortune. The Washington Post paid a world-renowned violinist to play for free in the D.C. metro; nobody paid much attention to him, despite the fact that tickets for the local engagement the previous day started in triple figures.

At the same time, I disagree with Fisher's Ascetic attitude towards taste. She intentionally avoids potato chips, and describes an indulgent binge as "(eating) stupidly." Does she avoid other satisfying behaviors to accentuate their significance? Sex? Drunkenness? Bathing? Pleasure reading? I think people should live to maximize pleasure, not shun it. Fisher seems to have an aptitude at describing pleasure, and a deficiency at embracing it.

Short Takes #2

David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day (read this!)
David Huddle, Men at Night

This is a take on order and disorder in the military. An aborted training mission leads to discontent in the ranks, until it's corrected through discipline and cadence. It's hyper-real and reads like an understated action movie, eschewing sensory description and challenging prose for stunted clarity, in much the same way that military life is stripped down compared to civilian life. There's some ambiguity; the reader doesn't learn why the mission was canceled. It's a bit like those paintings that are nothing but curves, but your mind fills in space based on experience, and you see a flushed-out, complete work of art.

Ackerman on tanning

Ackerman, in case you haven't caught on, fancies herself a bit of an adventurer. On page 92, she separates herself from the masses by saying that commoners enjoy relaxing, idle vacations in the sun. I find her writing is often indulgent, but she had a beautiful sentence, the rare line that makes me stop and ruminate on my own inadequacies in comparison.

And, though some of us like adventure travel, most prefer to sit in the sun like a rack of spareribs, basting ourselves regularly with sauce, and quietly frying, taking care to turn over so we'll be cooked on both sides.

In a way, we really are preparing ourselves for consumption by others, visually.

A Person's Smell

My roommate is is not from the school of thought that "less is more" when it comes to perfuming. Every time he's about to leave to see his girlfriend, he bathes himself (and the room) in body spray. When I remind him that it's meant to complement, not overwhelm, he insists that his saturation of scent is fine because of the cold weather. (?)

He left for the weekend, so I checked the can for details. "Power Stick: Intensity" hits you as delicately as a linebacker, a pungent and unabashed conqueror of any room.

As a fragrance miniminalist without a girlfriend to go visit, I have to wonder what I've missed out on.

Second-hand Smell

When you walk into a thrift store, the scent is usually the first thing you note. It's the musk of thousands of people, combining in a sort of collective aroma. Discarded memories, traces of hikes and job interviews and cigarettes and movie marathons and running marathons. It's the smell of human experience. Each article of clothing in a thrift store has a unique story; that heavily-padded blazer was donated because it adorned a man who lost his truelove, the XXL t-shirt a past skin shed by the man who finally took control of his life.

Sure, some articles might smell like musty storage, but anything with a torrid scent is either discarded or cleaned. The abhorrent stench is neutralized, sanitized, and it becomes but a faded memory woven into fabric.

Short Takes #1

Joanna McNaney's Clean Slate
Katarina Roberts' Undercurrent

Clean Slate:

McNaney's composition is a reflection on a high school photo of her parents. She analyzes their appearance and characterizes each of them, portraying her dad as a smart nerd who managed to attract a beautiful woman with a deep sadness. Beyond the surface of the photo lies a rocky relationship. McNaney can see her mother's broken smile masking an inner sadness, and she recognizes the look as one her mother adopts to camouflage a perpetual sadness brought on by angry and abusive spouse.

Of Deception in the Golden Dome

Features of Montaigne's writing: quotes strewn throughout, many clauses merged in heavily punctuated sentences,

Knute Rockne invoked the health issues of his puerile son, a 6 year old supposedly expiring worlds away from the locker room where, as an overmatched football coach, Rockne desired to incite his squadron, a unit doubted by most against the pigskin army of Army, undoubtedly better, as signified by an untainted record. Rockne parlayed his son's health into motivation, that intangible of which the grandest men embrace, into a shocking victory, carved out for a child far from infirm. Betwixt this victory and the precedent set by winning for the ill George Gipp, less of an embellishment than the certified falsitude of the prior, Notre Dame employs a proud tradition in football and in mendacity.

Manti Te'o, gridiron warrior buoyed by public vibe and sentiment, has witnessed his white lie morph into an ivory palace of deception. But, as athletic director Jack Swarbrick affirmed in conference with the gullible press, a press that not only nibbled the bait, but swallowed the hook, the palace of deception has been erected for nearly a century, enclosed under a golden dome of mistruth.

Two incidents of suspected rape have been, effectively, downplayed through sleight of hand; The Fightin' Irish summon the press for a fictional woman, a teary and heartfelt affair, while Swarbrick neglects to summon tears nor words for violation of tangible flesh. The university habitually fails to understand:

“What is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious.” -Cicero