The things I won't do for a new challenge. Since I overcame my hatred of running and began entering races a few years back, I've been on a constant push for new distances to challenge myself. First came the 5k benefit runs. Then the Thanksgiving 5-mile turkey trot. Then the half marathon. Once I had hit that point, races became a bit boring. So I searched around for different formats that would challenge more than my ability to run in a straight line. Not sure exactly what it is that drives this desire to test myself in new ways. I don't think there's one answer. Part of it is the insidious shadow of age licking at my heels, enticing me to accept that the old gray mare ain't what she used to be. Part of it is the terror of a Sisyphean existence, pushing the same boulder up the hill day after day, never reaching the top before the boulder rolls back down the hill and I have to start over again in the morning. Some people find comfort in routine, which is fine, so long as that is what motivates you. It does have it's attractions, but I always seem to chaff at it over time. I've come to realize that my motivations are in learning new things, seeing new places, pushing my own boundaries. I think these racing challenges are a way to provide that newness and beat back the tentacles of age clawing at my virility.
The first new format I tackled was a race called the Ragnar Relay. I ran it with a team of 11 friends. It's a 200-mile race that runs around the clock until you finish. The camaraderie was great, the race was a lot of fun, and there were a few elements that made it much more challenging than a regular race. My first leg was 8.5 miles up a mountain in West Virginia. 1700-meter elevation gain. I wanted to die. My second leg was 4.5 miles along a back country road at 3:00am. Both required me to master new psychological elements to get through it. Finishing was immensely satisfying.
Then a couple years ago, a new format started gaining popularity: the obstacle course race. I think the Warrior Dash was first to emerge, but that is only a 5k. Total snoozer distance for me. Not worth ruining a pair of running shoes in the mud for a 5k. But the Tough Mudder is another story. 12 miles with 22 obstacles. Now we're talking. I've wanted to run one since I first heard about it, but the timing has never been right. My first year of school, I focused on my marathon. Me and my friend Magellan were planning to do the Mudder in Phoenix this February, but he had something come up at work and couldn't make it. So we postponed it indefinitely.
Fast forward to July. I get an email from Magellan wanting to run the Utah Mudder in October. I consulted my busy schedule and luckily had a window that worked out perfectly. So I started getting psyched up about the approaching day. The day before the race, as we were having a prerace dinner with Magellan's brood, I consulted the weather report for our start time, 8:40am. It was to be 46 degrees. Then I looked at the course map. Within the first mile came two obstacles: Kiss the Mud and Arctic Enema. Kiss the Mud is a traditional military obstacle, a field of mud with a wooden framework strung with barbed wire so that you have to belly crawl through the mud.
Arctic Enema was a huge tub filled with ice water. Traversing the middle of the tub was a wooden barrier that went below the surface of the water so that participants had to fully submerge themselves in the ice water in order to complete the obstacle.
So right off the bat you were frozen solid, especially your hands. This becomes a huge factor later in the race. See, about half of the obstacles involve either water or mud or both. The other half of the obstacles involve some combination of climbing and gripping. Not a simple task when you can't feel your hands. The key is to keep running at all times, keep your body moving and generating heat. I saw so many people stopping or walking in a daze after the water obstacles. It wasn't long before they would start to shudder. Not sure why their teammates weren't pushing them along, helping them warm up. This is a race that you absolutely should not run on your own. There are times when you physically cannot overcome an obstacle by yourself, say nothing of the strength you draw from the friends you're running with.
Magellan and I bolstered each other's spirits and our conversations along the way helped to keep our minds off the cold and ache in our extremities. We muscled through in a respectable three hours. Nothing really threw me off my game until the final obstacle: Electroshock Therapy. It's about 40 feet of electrical wires hanging down in curtains across a field of thick mud and hay bales. I wasn't really worried about this obstacle as I stood at the entry watching others running through it. It was channeling 10,000 volts, but I'm no electrician. That means nothing to me. It seemed like most people ahead of me were immediately laying down in the mud trying to crawl through to avoid touching the wires. Spectators were yelling, "Go Low!" I thought the better way would be to get a running start and blaze through it as fast as possible. Soon enough, I learned that perhaps those going to their bellies so early were not there voluntarily.
Somehow, my friend Milliwalk-a found a video on YouTube that a spectator took of me running into this obstacle's teeth and subsequently being laid low. At about the 1:01 mark, you can see me come running from the right side of the screen. I get one foot over the first hay bale before a jolt hits me and drops me face-first into the mud. I can remember thinking at that point, "I guess I'll go low." But low doesn't help me once I get to the second hay bale. When those shocks hit, it's like resetting your computer's CPU. It takes some time to re-boot. The rapidity with which I was being shocked made it impossible get all the way reset. The result is that with each successive jolt, I become more and more confused about where I am, why I'm laying on a muddy hay bale, why I can't see out of my left eye, why these people are yelling all around me, what my name is, why I'm peeing my pants in public. Anyway, enjoy the following video. I highly recommend watching it in full screen mode for the full effect.
I don't remember much after about the third jolt, and I barely remember crossing the finish line. I remember standing up after exiting the mud pit and two girls congratulating me, the one putting a headband on me, the other wrapping me in tin foil like a Chipotle burrito. Surprisingly, I had the wherewithal to inquire after the location of the medical tent. On that jolt where I head butted the hay bale, I packed enough mud under my eye lid to build an adobe hut, and I needed to have it intensely irrigated. The medical tent was a pretty sorry place. People got jacked up in this race. Mostly it was people shivering violently while nursing a cup of hot chocolate, a dazed look on their face as though they'd just stormed Normandy. I fought - unsuccessfully - to control my own shivering, before leaving the tent with most of my vision restored to find my friends.
The rest of the day seemed to move in slow motion. Electrocution does weird things to your mind and body. It's like it separates you a little bit from yourself. It can be hard to focus on anything afterward. Which is why I'm calling BS on Jack Bauer's adventures in the second half of season eight of 24. No way he could have the energy to fit in sexxy time with Agent Renee AND kill so many people within just a couple hours of being hooked up to a car battery. Though I'd be willing to put the sexxy time to a test. You know, for research.
So would I do it all over again? Absolutely. With the right friends, the right team, it's worth every ache and pain I incurred. It's the most vivid kind of living I can imagine. I intend to enjoy my health for as long as I possibly can.
Every year I go through my 'friends' list on Facebook and delete people who don't really belong there anymore. Though it is a public network, I keep my security settings on high in order to maintain as personal a space as is possible. By allowing 'friend' access to my page, I'm essentially opening a window for those people to perv on my life at will. It's perhaps understandable, then, that I would want to review and update who is allowed to see that information. The question then begs, how do I set the criteria for deleting acquaintances?
In purges past, it has been a fairly cut-and-dry process. Usually you can see the dead limbs on the friend tree that need pruning and it can be taken care of without emotion or explanation. There are those individuals that come into our lives as a summer breeze, for but a moment, and are gone just as quickly. An acquaintance with whom I've shared neither depth of experience nor span of years is jettisoned into interspace like dross from space station Mir. In contemplating this year's purge, I had no reason to expect any variation. However, events of the past few months indicate that this round may require a more nuanced approach.
That's because election season came into full swing like the turn of a full moon and revealed a smattering of my friends--seemingly reasonable chaps, people I actually like--to be shaggy, lumbering politi-beasts with breath wreaking of the undigested entrails of cable news talking heads. Any other time of the year, you can talk to these shapeshifters about business, sports, news, weather, even religion. They are rational in thought and make some effort towards empathy and reasonability. Then a pale, translucent mist of political ads hit the airwaves, signaling some primordial region of the brain that the time is nigh. Hair sprouts on the back and shoulders, ears elongate, fingernails grow into claws, and where human teeth used to reside are found canine incisors. They sit stooped at their computers chewing up the latest red meat offerings from the blogosphere before turning to their keyboards in a frenzy, pounding out tweets and status updates round the clock.
I'M GOING TO SAVE AMERICA THROUGH FACEBOOK STATUS UPDATES!! THE REPUBLICANS/DEMOCRATS WANT TO TAKE AWAY YOUR RIGHTS BY DESTROYING/WORSHIPING MEDICARE/SOCIAL SECURITY/GUNS/CHEESE STEAKS, RAPING/SAVING THE ENVIRONMENT, AND/OR BRAINWASHING US ALL INTO BECOMING COMMUNIST/CHRISTIANS/ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS/MILITIA MEMBERS! I HAVE IT ON GOOD AUTHORITY FROM ED SCHULTZ/SEAN HANNITY/RUSH LIMBAUGH/LAWRENCE O'DONNELL THAT THOSE OTHER GUYS ARE DEVIL WORSHIPERS WITH BLACK TAR IN THEIR VEINS WHO FEAST ON THE UNWANTED BABY GIRLS FROM RURAL INDIA AND CHINA AND THAT THEY WANT TO INCREASE/DECREASE TAXES IN ORDER TO FUND THEIR SHEEP ORGIES. NOT ON MY WATCH, SCUMBAGS!! NEVER FORGET!!
Really? I never knew that. I find it all very interesting. Please tell me more about your comically one-sided political views. You're sure to change my mind. Shall I don a bib while you spoon feed me? I'm not sure what proper protocol is for swallowing so much bullshit in one sitting. Please, tell me how you do it.
Anyway, the point is, you're howling up the wrong tree. I don't begrudge anyone a slanted political view. In fact I don't think it's possible to be completely unbiased. However, it almost seems like the people who consider themselves the most tuned-in, the most educated, the most current on the issues--indicated by the volume at which they spout it--are the most blind to the full assessment of a given issue. That's because they've already decided what they're going to think about it by the sources they choose for information. Black can be white and up can be down, so long as it is the person's preferred news outlet that tells it to them.
Enjoy the wolfbane while it blooms, my friends. It's a peculiar season. And if by some chance you find that we are no longer connected on Facebook, just know that you're probably a decent humanoid, but I can't watch you spin off this planet.
I've always hated searching for jobs. It's the total power disparity between the employer and the applicant that gets me irritated. HR managers write totally narrow, impossible job descriptions and then bitch to the WSJ that there is just a total lack of qualified candidates out there. They are apparently all looking for that one kid who graduated college in molecular physics at 15, went on to design the first all-electric car battery, spent two years in Budapest as a concert pianist, speaks five languages, and founded seven charities, all before he could legally drink alcohol. Oh, and they want him to not be a total smug asshole. Only a person with such impeccable credentials could possibly be trained to manage our fine selection of Colombian and Brazilian roast coffees.
So you dress your resume and cover letter up to make it look like you're something resembling that non-asshole, only to have some robot set fire to your lovingly crafted documents before any human lays eyes on them because you didn't combine key words in the right sequence.
Everything about making the career change from government affairs to business has gone pretty swimmingly up to this point. I guess this is just a new part of the game I'm having to learn, mostly on my own. I'm experiencing a fair bit of frustration and burnout right now. I know the positions are out there. Just a matter of getting myself in front of actual people who can make actual decisions.
Occasionally I like a certain kind of dimwit. They amuse me, usually without intending to. They do this by embracing a confounding blend of overwrought group aesthetic conformance with a total lack of self-awareness. The subjects of today's tale communicate in a vulgar pidgin English. They dress in the modern equivalent of burlap sacks. They exhibit devotion to some sort of pseudo-mythology that could only have been dreamed up in a trailer park. In so doing, they are entitled to membership in this cult of pop culture backwash. One-on-one, there's nothing extraordinarily interesting about them. But when they reach critical mass and begin to exhibit their group behaviors, it can be highly amusing.
At the end of this post, I'll present you with a little gift of the video that led to my writing about this group. I hope you'll be as amused with it as I was. First, let's explore the Dark Carnival and the slack-jawed scions that gave us this mad crazy knowledge in a little more detail. Grab some Faygo and listen up, yo. It's 'bout to get real deep on y'all. Knowledge dropping today comes from Insane Clown Posse, or ICP, as in-the-know juggalos call them.
Have I just lost you? Are you feeling disoriented by that last bit of lingo I threw at you? Well allow me to open your minds to a whole new universe you'll wish didn't really exist.
This dandy pairing of lyrical expectorate is called "Violent J" and "Shaggy 2 Dope", and together they form ICP.
BFF necklaces, bro.
According to Wikipedia, ICP is a rap group out of Detroit that performs a type of rap called "horrorcore". You may remember some of their songs. Carnival of Carnage? Night of the Ax? Murder-Go-Round? We Gives No F***? Bugz on My Nugz? I Stab People?
These ringing a bell for anyone? No? Well don't let the juggalos hear you disrespectin' like that.
'Juggalos' is what you're supposed to call ICP fans. They prefer that to jughead, imbecile, or cretin. Even if you don't recognize any of those songs, you likely have seen the Mark of the Beast Juggalo, the hatchet man, in your everyday life. Anywhere hatchet man is, there too are juggalos.
You can see him in lots of places if you look:
On T-shirts
On Cars
On Necklaces
On Tattoos
And of course, On Caskets
And if that last picture isn't sad enough for you, here's something to bring a tear of indignation to your eye: ICP has sold over 6.5 million albums, putting them among America's 1-percenters. Sigh.
Early on in the band's history, the fat one, Violent J, had a dream about some crazy carnies. The band decided to use the dream to spin some elaborate mythology about evil jokers involving what seems to be some modified version of a Tarot card deck. They call it the Dark Carnival. It would all be kind of adorable if it had come from a couple of 9-year olds like it sounds. But it didn't. It's just regular growed-up imbecility. And the juggalos eat that stuff up, yo. 'Cause that stuff is like, deep. And dark, you know what I'm sayin'?
They had been spinning this mythology since their 1992 debut album, Carnival of Carnage. Each album explained a new card in the deck, or something like that. It all built toward a final card explanation on their 2002 album, The Wraith: Shangri-La. The BIG REVEAL was that the Dark Carnival is nothing more than an allegory for the awesomeness of God, heaven and hell. The album, by the way, included tracks like Murder Rap, Get Ya Wicked On, and Cotton Candy & Popsicles. And fans were like, "Huh? Well, I guess as long as y'all still rap about killin' and sexin' and gettin' drank, I can get down with Posse Jesus."
ICP continue to make music, including the song Miracles. As described by Violent J hisself on their website [completely sic'd]:
"This song points out some of every day's biggest and best miracles and suggests that you take the time to peep some of them out and re-evaluate what your seeing here. Because the truth is right here on this earth, in every day life there is some pretty f***in' fantastic s*** poppin' off...We understand if your not feeling it though. We know it's way different and all that. But if you can open your mind enough to see a miracle out of a lightning bug, than maybe you can open your mind enough to dig this song."
Without any further ado, let's take a look at the video (language is a bit rough, so make sure the boss or kids aren't walking by).
Graduation. I won't lie, it felt pretty good. I flipped that tassel on my mortar board, they showered me with balloons, and I finally managed to eat--truly eat-- all I could at the Sweet Tomatoes buffet. I've settled in to begin the execrable process of rebuilding my job search. Unlike many students, I really do want to get back to work.
Unfortunately, I lost most of last week to the process of moving out of my apartment. My lease was up at the end of May and I didn't want to sign on for another year, because I have no desire to stay here in Phoenix. No offense to the natives who love and call this place home. It's just not a good fit for me. One of the good things about Thunderbird is that its students are constantly coming and going all over the world and need people to sublease their apartments. So I have moved into just such a temporary situation. But to do so required that I put most of my stuff in storage.
Moving is always a difficult thing, but this one was rougher than most. I've been carrying a lot of items with me for years that I've grown pretty sentimental about, packing memories from place to place. My situation at this point is very temporary (more so than is normal, even for me). A man in a more permanent station might be able to sustain his collection of indulgent sentiment, but a mobile man can ill afford to remain attached to such knick knacks and shelf stuffers. So I determined to maintain the memories in my mind and offload much of my stuff. One of the most difficult items to part with was my Elvis Presley jumpsuit. I managed to place it in a good home, but it was hard to let go. I have so many fond memories in that suit. First time I wore it was in college. It was just a sparkly black jumpsuit at that point, no cape or belt or even shoes. Just a shaggy-haired college kid with a pair of sunglasses. Every donning thereafter--including at least three Halloweens that I can remember--I added a new piece until it was complete. In honor of its passing, I present a brief photo montage of some of my favorite moments in the suit:
We can't go on together with suspicious minds
There was Elvis Presley's birthday party at Dremo's bar in Clarendon, at which I got to karaoke in the suit, as well as sing some Elvis favorites with Dirty Harry.
For some reason, these guys came to the birthday party dressed as hare krishnas
Then there was the time that J-Dem asked me to perform at her birthday party, which, through the creative brainstorming of friends, morphed into jumping out of a cardboard cake before performing. And I'm not one to turn down a request from a friend.
Viva Las Vegas
Feelin' the music
And then there was the final outing, when the T-bird rugby team threw a Halloween party for the student body. We danced until the bar closed.
It was a worthy send off for a suit that has brought me so much thrill over the years. I came alive in that suit. But the legend will have to live on with another. I'll miss you, old friend.
Prologue:The purpose of adding a disclaimer at the beginning of this post is to explain a little bit about the process that I have gone through to get this finalized for public offering. I composed this blog post last fall when I was in a much darker, more hopeless place in my dating life. While in school, I was so busy and had so much work to do. And yet, my mind always seemed to find time to contemplate the solitary nature of my existence. Over the last six months, I've returned to work on the post a number of times. In that time, I followed some of my own advice that I wrote in the original version, subsequently bumbled my way into a somewhat more positive place, and have actually been on a handful of decent dates since I graduated. I guess the takeaway is that I have changed my outlook for the better, and have necessarily changed some of the content of this very personal post. For better or worse, it is part of my journey in life. Enjoy it. Or don't, see if I care.
I've been feeling a bit defensive lately about my lack of dating life. People occasionally make comments about it, express wonder that I haven't brought me home a Woman. As though I should just walk down to the Womenz Store and throw the first pretty young thing that makes eye contact over my shoulder like a side of beef and get on with it. These comments usually come from married people who got out of the dating game at an age when it was still played in 2-D.
Their concern is genuine; they just want to help me find a plot o' land next to theirs in that sweet little piece of paradise called marriage. As a result, they love to give advice that fits easily on the back of a Laffy Taffy wrapper. I get a little tired of being spoon-fed B.S. lines about marrying your best friend or choosing the right person to take into a foxhole in a battle [a favorite among The Olds]. I've never wanted to shag my best friend and I'd never take a woman into a foxhole. [Apologies for the sexism.] But whatever. The simplicity that their advice implies is an attractive fairy tale.
When I was younger and more sensitive, I took my inability to find a spouse as an indication that there was something wrong with me. Then I realized that, yeah, there probably is, but when I find the right Woman, all that wrong is gonna become soooo right. I took comfort in knowing that this ugly duckling would one day blossom into a...slightly less ugly duckling. And I got on with living, doing my thing the only way I know how. Yet in all honesty, I've been adrift for a while now, moving even further in the direction (relationship-wise) of grim solitude. I'm willing to own up to a significant portion of the failure being mine, and I'll address some of that later. However... I am also operating in a pool that is, how can I say this nicely...not optimized to my search engine. Aside from the milquetoast profiles of the internet world that I discussed in my shameful confession post, the real-life dating world of Mormon singles wards is not much more hospitable for me. As evidence, I offer an anecdote. In preparation for a combined Sunday School lesson on dating, the elders quorum leadership in my singles ward sent a survey to the men about dating. Please take a look at the content detailed below as Exhibit A:
What is your age?
Please indicate the level of importance for each of the following choosing criteria when deciding to ask someone out on a date :
Common Interests
Virtuous Behavior
Physical Attributes
Work Ethic/Intellectuality [not a real word, BTW]
Spirituality/Testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ
Kindness to Others
Please rank the following criteria in order of most importance to least importance in choosing someone to ask on a date:
Same attributes as above
How likely would you ask out a young woman who dresses immodestly?
Very Likely
Somewhat Likely
Somewhat Unlikely
Not Likely
Would Not At All
Please describe the characteristics of women that you admire (eg. mother, sister, leader, etc.)
How often do you go on dates?
At least once a week
1-2 times a month
1-2 times every six months
1-2 times a year
Wait...I'm supposed to be going on dates??
What are some of the reasons you, or others you know, do not date?
What do you think are the most important qualities to consider when choosing an eternal companion?
Are we having fun yet?? I mean, putting aside my fancy market research critiques of this survey design, it really drives home how much I don't really miss having an active dating life. And did you catch that little joke at the end of Q6? Ungh. Good stuff. I tell ya, I'd totally forgotten, but dating is just the bees knees. Why, I oughtta be packin' my days and nights with all the lovely kindness and intellectuality I can. Or I could start inhaling whip-its until I go brain dead and pass out. Similar sensation. Am I inadvertently revealing the "my fault" stuff too early? I guess we'd better get on with it then. In my fall post about my internet date, I asked the question "How did I get here?" This question, combined with some recent conversations, has led me to think that perhaps the word "here" could benefit from a broader defining. Where is "here?" To say that "here" is "on an internet date" is too narrow in scope. How about defining "here" more according to The World's expectations: thirty-something, single, no dog, no house, no kids, no romantic prospects.
A clown with no dog is a sad clown indeed.
One of the recent conversations mentioned above occurred at a game night with a table full of married and "sorta married" people. The design of the game was that one person would choose a question prompt and read it aloud. Everybody else at the table would write an answer on a scrap of paper. Then the answers would be gathered up and read aloud to the person who chose the prompt, and that person would have to guess who wrote each one. The prompt that got me in trouble was something like "What accounts for the poor communication between men and women?" I thought my answer was obvious enough, but when it was read aloud, it caused much consternation on the part of the women at the table. For some reason, "Women are crazy" did not sit well with them. I suppose this is as good a place as any to clarify and offer an apology for the Humungus-ness of my response.
I don't believe that all women are crazy. Not even most. The response comes from having seen far too many of my dear friends and loved ones locked in relationships where the crazy didn't come out until after the marriage contract had been signed or the first child born. And then it came out in force. Somewhere deep down, my hope is still in the notion that women are the fairer sex, (depending on the definition of fair, of course.) The women present at the table that night were every bit the fairer of their respective relationships, and are the shining stars of hope in my sky. But the "sorta married" guy at the table was living through a perfect example of the wifey-go-crazy phenomenon, with her burning the marital edifice to the ground around them. I don't know how many of you have been around a burning building or even a campfire at night. The flames are mesmerizing to watch. The stars in the sky above are numerous and beautiful. Yet they are stationary. They don't dance for you. After watching the bonfire, your retinas are desensitized, making it difficult to see the beauty and brilliance of the stars when you look skyward. I know I shouldn't internalize the struggles of others so much, but I do. I see the destruction, and the horror burns itself into my memory.
For me, this is "here." Retinas seared with the images of marriages in flames, struggling to see all of the good relationships surrounding me, hesitant to trust that Woman is who she says she is. Can't blame Woman for holding back her whole self. I build walls around my inner garden as well.
I think I would be far more risk-tolerant in my relationships if I thought "Yeah, if she goes nuts, I can just get out." But the whole forever-ness of Mormon theology makes me really hesitant to take a flyer on getting along beyond the honeymoon stage. I'm not always the easiest person to understand or be with over long periods of time, and the thought of "time and all eternity" tends to agitate the snarky region of my brain. Which is what "they" told me would happen.
In my experience, most of the things that "they" warn you about staying single into your thirties is generally true. You get set in your ways. You become very independent, a bit jaded, a bit cynical. You become more discriminating in personality traits of people you date (assuming I dated at all). Yet it's not like I have some sort of grocery list of things I'm looking for. I can't honestly tell you physically what I'm attracted to. I'm not sure I can even tell you what personality traits attract me. Attraction for me is like good art: hard to describe, but you know it when you see it. Dating in Mormon single wards is like being in a traveling circus. You should just marry the limber trapeze girl and get out while you both can still look back fondly on the magical time you had taming tigers and swallowing flaming torches. I've been riding my motorcycle in the Sphere of Death for so long, nothing excites me anymore. Add any wrinkle, it still feels like I've been there, done that. Because no matter what comes into the Sphere with me, there's still me riding the same bike. It's difficult to generate much excitement for another first date when you've been doing the same routine for more years than you care to count.
It would be nice to find a Woman that rattled my cage again after so long. Right now it's the Wasteland, the great blue yonder of the world, that still excites me. There I ride free, but I ride alone. And I'm generally pretty comfortable with this. More comfortable than I should be. Throughout my 20's, I could always make more friends that were more or less in my age range and station in life to ride the wasteland with. After my mission, all my high school friends started getting married. I made college friends. Then my college friends got married. After college, I made Colorado friends. Then my Colorado friends got married. I moved to DC and made DC friends. Then my DC friends...well, some of them found their way out of the circus. Some are still juggling swords for the bearded ladies. But I moved here to AZ at age 31, and lost their daily company anyway.
I've been busy enough with school to make involvement in my ward on a social level difficult. Beyond that, though, I've had some hesitation in remaking friends there. I've got great friends at school, but we've all dispersed since graduation last week, and I'm back to square one. I could date non-Mormons. It's been ages since I've gone outside the tribe to date, and I'm not sure I would be any better at navigating the terrain out there. Lord knows they are a heckuva lot more skilled in putting out signals than my sisters-in-faith. They may even be willing to get on the big happy Mormon bus one day. But currently they play by a different rule book. Eventually they're likely to want to get their hands on my Charlie Browns. Which is a really exciting prospect, but I'm trying (pretending?) to be a good Mormon boy. There's a part of me that thinks I've more than fulfilled my duty to virtue; there's another part that is very reluctant to discard the years of faithfulness so flippantly. It would be easy to give up, if not for belief. If not for faith. Mine is admittedly weak right now, not really due to doubt in my religion as much as to fatigue. I'm tired of fighting the same battle every day interminably. My church leaders tell me I'll be blessed in the long run for staying strong. But that's a thin gruel to subsist on, and I'm a man who likes his steak. A large source of erosion of my defenses is found in the principle of value: fruit that is two months from its expiration date is significantly more valuable than fruit that is only two days away. And let's face it, the fruit of my loins has been left on the shelf for a long time. The value of my long-cherished virtue has been diminished over time. Yet I guess in terms of spirituality, it's still the long-term vision that wins out over short-term wants. For how long, I don't know. Either way, this is a very real part of "here". Sitting on a fence between Fro-Yo Boredom dates and Forbidden Fruit Loinfire dates. And the battle doesn't get any easier with time.
I'm not good at letting people into my life to begin with (says the guy in the middle of a massive over-share on his public blog). As I get older, it becomes even more difficult starting from scratch after all my friends get married. Lately I've been reluctant to engage in conversations about my dating life with friends other than my very closest. I prefer to avoid the awkwardness.
Which is an interesting development in itself. I didn't used to feel awkward in these conversations at all. I've always genuinely enjoyed the freedom that single life offers. But besides the "women are crazy" conversation mentioned above, some recent discussions with female pursuers have made me realize how far out to sea I've sailed my dingy, and it has started to make me a little self-conscious. Through my mid-twenties, the word I frequently heard used in describing my romantic presence was "elusive." The word that one recent pursuer used was "evasive." The words "Elusive" and "Evasive" are similar in definition, but vastly different in tone. They are as different in tone as the Current Me is different from the Teenage Me.
I can remember as a boy, my mother used to sing "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys" to me, despite [or perhaps as a result of] being married to one herself. I was a lot more sensitive at that point. I cried at the end of E.T. And Lonesome Dove. And Rainman. Mama tried her darndest to follow Willie Nelson's advice. And I did my best to make her proud for as long as I could.
My gawky adolescent years incorporated a giddy, paint-huffing sexuality to the mix. Teenage Me thought heaven was all whipped cream and thigh-highs. Yet at the core, my sweetness remained. I was a closet romantic George McFly-type who dreamed of winning girls' favor by buying flowers and writing love letters. As it usually goes with these types, I always felt far too much anxiety about such expressions to pull them off smoothly, and I spent most of my high school years being walked on, over, and around. High school girls don't want sweet guys. I pined openly for a girl in high school, only to have her tell me that I was "the kind of guy you marry when you grow up." Which translates roughly to "call me when I start wearing Spanx." The unabridged version would be "I need a few years to really get a sense of what it feels like to be treated like a piece of garbage by a slab of shredded beefcake in an Abercrombie shirt. That way I'll be able to fully appreciate the great qualities that I have already identified in you."
Unfortunately for those girls, and perhaps more unfortunately for me, youth has a way of moving on. Trying to capture that sweetness in a Mason jar and preserve it on a shelf is just a slow, sad suicide. And so I moved on. The heavenly whipped cream dreams of youth have been tempered by a long, steady diet of Valyrian root and monk's pepper. Hope gave way to cynicism somewhere along the way, and now I sometimes question how much interest (or requisite communication skills) I have to carry on a long-term relationship. Even though I don't totally feel this way today, for a while there it felt like I had crossed an emotional Rubicon of sorts.
I noticed it in the small things. For example, I've always been a fan of older music. I love Elvis and Billie Holiday. But I looked around last fall and realized I rarely listened to any of that anymore. I listened to far more Doors and Black Keys. It was formerly "That's Alright Mama" and "All of Me"; those had been replaced by "Back Door Man" and "Your Touch".
I used to set my alarm to wake up to random Stevie Wonder and James Brown songs. For the last five months of 2011, I woke to the same bleak song every morning: The End by The Doors, complete with chopper blade sound effects from Apocalypse Now.
Five months of that and you'll begin to believe you really do know what it feels like to wake up in some armpit hotel in Saigon. I slowly came to the conclusion that "here" was not a good place to be. I was slowly, aimlessly morphing into The Humungus in real life.
Cultivating such a bleak outlook on your own romantic future is a soul-robbing exercise, a slo-mo slasher show in three acts. Act One, you start out with the best part of yourself, your love, your heart, to give. And you give it freely, carving it out piece by piece over the years until Act Two arrives to find you with blood on your hands and stone in your heart. This is when you stagger to center stage, bathed [symbolically] in a lone spotlight, to deliver your monologue in which you rage at the gods and threaten them with your own self-destruction. Act Three is where your fate is decided. Too often, people find themselves in a tragedy (aren't all slasher shows tragedies at the core?) wherein they find that their strength is insufficient to stop the slide intohard-set cynicism and/or full moral nihilism. I think that toward the end of last year, I was perhaps at an uneasy intermission between Acts Two and Three. I've been wrestling mightily to pull myself back from that, with some significant success. Now, most days I think, "Marriage couldn't be so bad next to that alternative ending."
[NOTE TO MARRIED/DIVORCED/DIVORCE-CURIOUS READERS: If being married is worse than a slow-mo slasher flick, don't tell me. I'm trying to talk myself into engaging one of the she-beasts in conversation/flirtation, palpitation, and perhaps (eventually), rhythmic gyration. I don't need any negativity obstructing my return from the Wasteland.]
The problem is mine. My residence "here" is my responsibility to fix. My neuroses, my cynicism, my insouciance, my lack of effort, my guardedness, my difficulties with emotional intimacy. I don't like the idea of assigning fault or blame for any of these things, but for better or worse, I own them all. I certainly can't put the blame for my station on the saccharine sisters I attend church with. Their sweetness is just what they've been taught to be. All their lives, they've been told that that is the ideal. So they shouldn't be faulted just for following the program. The problem is mine. I've built high castle walls around myself, and made it intentionally difficult for women to get close to me. I can get only so far flirting with them from atop my wall, but I don't know how to let down the drawbridge, even with women I AM interested in. I know I need to find a way.
So am I stepping back from the brink? I'm trying. When being crushed by ennui, how do you get motivated again? People try semi-regularly to set me up with friends. I'm game if they're willing to subject their friends to the brain damage of me. But the hunter went out of me for a period. With all of the faith/marriage/crazy conversation I spoke about above, the endgame has become unclear. It's a struggle to get the hunter back. A mother's shame can only fuel my efforts for so long. If I'm gonna get out of it, it'll take a girl that really kicks me upside the head, and I've been on some good dates that have helped. Beyond that, I guess I've started with the small things. I'm getting re-acquainted with Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong. I'm trying to focus on healthy relationships. I'm giving up Cormac McCarthy books for Jane Austen (yeah right. Not a chance.) Maybe if I can be consistent in these efforts, I can soften up enough to get beyond the jaded joker and resuscitate some of the romantic in me. Fingers crossed.
You ever have an experience where an item you've had for a long time suddenly feels completely outdated and in need of a wholesale change? Like a bed or a car or something you use every day and don't give it a second thought. Then one day you walk into your room or garage and think, "Wow, I really need to upgrade."
When I got back from China last week, one of the first things I did was stop in to look over the current state of this blog space. As you may have noticed, I experienced that outdated feeling when I looked at this site. Has it really looked the same since 2009? Shame on me.
I've been busy since I got back, so I set out some time today to update the blog's look, right after I went to the gym. On the way back from the gym, I heard some Electric Light Orchestra on the radio. ELO tunes have a certain infectiousness. As I sat down to work on the revamp, I couldn't get the song out of my head. And for some reason, from the time I was probably eight years old, when I think of ELO, I always associate them with Xanadu, even their non-Xanadu stuff. There's a reason for this.
See, when I was eight, that was about seven years after Xanadu was released. I must have been in about third grade and my brother Griswold was in high school. Our family had this enormous piece of furniture that housed a record player, a sprawling monolith to melodious vinyl, entombed in 70's-shiek carved maple. The thing must have weighed over 400 lbs, and was showcased in our main family room. Most of our records, as far as I can remember, were classical or stuff my mother would listen to, like The Carpenters. But us kids were rock and roll kids. As the youngest, I was raised on the tastes of my older siblings, which meant Van Halen and AC/DC ruled, or even some classic rock bands like Boston. I had never heard of Eurasure or Depeche Mode until I went on a mission and had to live with kids from Utah. Listening to that synth-pop stuff might have gotten me an economy class trip down a flight of stairs, courtesy of Big Brother Airlines.
One day I came home from school, and through the front door I heard the sweet harmony of Olivia Newton-John and ELO. I curiously opened the door and walked into the living room to find Griswold sitting in front of the record player intently studying something in his hands, (what I later discovered was the vinyl jacket for the Xanadu soundtrack). I piped up and asked what he was listening to. He flinched and hurriedly turned the music off, as though I'd caught him looking at a dirty magazine in the living room. "Nothing. Just go away. Forget about it. Nothing." He stuffed the jacket back into the stack of records and headed downstairs to his room. I doubt Griswold even remembers this incident, but for some reason it has remained vivid in my mind for 25 years.
Anyway, I'd never seen the movie until today. With ELO jamming in my head, I decided to look up Xanadu on Netflix and watch it while I worked on the blog. I'm about an one hour into the movie and one thing is becoming increasingly clear: there is a drug imbalance here. Either I need more of them, or this movie needs less. I guess this is about the time that Hollywood was experimenting with a lot of split-reel overlays and neon lighting. I also never realized how big roller skating was around the start of the 80's. Probably because I missed out on the phenomenon on account of I couldn't even walk back then.
Am I blowing your mind yet?
The second half of this is developing into a cinematic stew, with chunks of Saturday Night Fever, Tron, and Superman 2, and just a dash of Clash of the Titans thrown in for seasoning. Which is to say, totally mind-blowing. Not sure if it's in a good way. But man, Olivia Newton-John is spectacularly hot in this show. I'd don some plum smugglers and pull on my roller skates if I could curl up with a woman like that on a couch like mine to watch shows like this.
Unfortunately for me and my roller skates, if I dressed like Michael Beck does in this movie, I'd likely be drawing a whole different crowd (hello Miami, here I come!)
My dogs, I've neglected you for quite some time now. I can explain. You see, I've been in China finishing my MBA program on a consulting project here. I am on a team of four, here to help the local lemon industry improve it's capabilities, with the long-term goal of reaching world markets with raw lemons and processed lemon products like fragrance, oils, and concentrate. Riveting stuff for you, I know. I've also been maintaining the blog for the project on our school website, so I haven't had time to attend to this space. This will continue to be the case for at least the next three weeks. Forgive my infidelity. If you want to follow the work we're doing here in Sichuan Province, click on this little blue link.
So until May, I leave you with a photo. See you all soon.
Christmas at the Humungus family compound is a reliably mellow experience. Like a sweetly glazed creme brule, it provides occasion enough to gather around for good conversation, and it is best savored slowly. In my youth, Christmas was conducted with reckless abandon. It was as though we were an army in the field during The Great War, closing our eyes, but never truly sleeping. A bugle would blow reveille at 0600 to signal that Santa had stolen the march on us in the night. Everybody came running to assembly, followed by screaming children ripping and thrashing and gorging on 5-pound bags of gummy bears (I was a chubster for a reason.)
Nowadays it is a much more adult-paced holiday. We are able to skip the early mornings and mountains of wrapping paper, as I am joined by three of my five siblings in riding the wasteland childless and alone. It has been a pleasant metamorphosis of traditions in a way. We are able to focus more on enjoying our time together, less on playing with whatever new toys we may have scored.
My brother, Clark Griswold, carries most of the Family Man water for us siblings, what with his amazing wife and four kids. He's making a pretty good case to be our parents' favorite (if only they didn't love me so, so much.)
Family photos to aspire to
This year, after the adults had opened our gifts at the parents' place, we went over to Griswold's to catch the tail-end of his kids rampaging through their piles of goodies. I must say, as peaceful as the adult affair is, I probably get as much enjoyment from watching the excitement of kids opening their new stuff as I do from opening my own. But even after the paper stopped flying and the squealing ceased, the best gift had yet to be revealed.
Unbeknownst to anyone, Griswold has become a karaoke dynamo. So great has his enthusiasm for his art grown that Mrs. Griswold bought him a karaoke system all his own, and his friends bought him a powered mic bedazzled with rhinestones. When Griswold suggested we all fire up the machine that night, I'll admit I was a little reluctant to get into character for the jam. I've never done karaoke in a living room, and certainly never in front of my family. But about three songs into it, I was singing along the whole way. I decided to jump in for a duet with Griswold (dual mics, y'all!) of Steve Miller's The Joker, the lyrics of which are innocent enough. Unless you're singing it in front of your mother. We were rolling along, singing passionately of being jokers, smokers, and midnight tokers, getting our lovin' on the run. When we sang of how much we "really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree," mother asked quizzically, "What does that mean?" And we all laughed, because really, who wants to explain what that means to their mother?
Surprisingly, everybody took a turn at the mic except for Slut Rock and dad, although we did get Slut Rock singing along with a rowdy rendition of Whitesnake, and brought the whole family in with some Neil Diamond. There were a few songs that I've sung a thousand times in my car, but never realized how really nasty they are until I was singing in front of my mom and dad and saw the lyrics written on the screen. Gold Digger and Baby Got Back, for example. And let's not forget the horror of watching video of myself perform Like a Virgin. I won't say it was embarrassing, because there's no room for self-awareness in karaoke. You have to give it your all. If you were any good, you'd be making millions singing on the MTV, or wherever you go to watch music videos these days. Being bad is half the fun of karaoke. We can all take the piss out of each other individually, but collectively, our crappy singing makes us better. And really, isn't that what family time is all about?
