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At first I though I'd found a following in the Portugese adult film industry, but soon discovered that these posts are merely a new way for companies to advertise. This didn't sit well- if my site's going to advertise I'd like to be paid for it, and I'd like to associate myself with companies of my own choosing, companies that meet a high standard of quality and better the community. Wal-Mart for example.
From now on when you comment you'll have to type some letters and numbers in a box to show that you are a person and not some super hi-tech spam-computer peddling Viagra. I hope it doesn't discourage you from leaving comments.
Merry Christmas!
Andrew

Ask a New Orleans Saints Fan

I'm watching the Redskins/Saints game on FOX, and just now the guy doing color commentary was saying,
"It's great what this team is doing for the city. You go down to the French Quarter and you see the restaurants doing more business, and the people are just as friendly as ever, and they're happy to have you sample the gumbo, and it just does your heart good to see the good times starting to come back."

At the same time rosy color commentator is saying this, there is a struggle going on in the courts to force FEMA to restore housing benefits to about 11,000 households who lost their homes to the hurricane. Let's ask a member of one such household how he feels about the New Orleans Saints:

"Well, I think Drew Brees is just having a monster of a season, really reminiscent of Dan Marino back in his prime. And it's exciting to finally see Reggie Bush realizing some of his potential. It feels great to see this perennially disappointing franchise making good after so long. Yeah, I guess you could say that the Saints first playoff season since 2000 has really distracted me from the fact that it's Christmas time and my family is out on the street because the government doesn't feel like it needs to help us. I stroll through the rubble of the yet-to-be-rebuilt neighborhoods I used to know so well and think, "Man, the coaching staff has certainly risen to the challenge of finding ways to utilize both Bush and Deuce McAllister. Shit, my stomach is growling. I wish I could afford some gumbo."

Preventative Maintenance

This morning after I put the children on the bus I headed down to Larry Green's Tire & Exhaust for an oil change. I waited in a nearby diner where I drank five or so cups of coffee and read One Man's Meat (A wonderful book with an unfortunate title that inspires most people my age to giggle and think of penises). After about an hour I went back to settle up.
"How's school going?" asked the man behind the morbidly obese man behind the counter.
This is always awkward. It's understandable that this man, who has seen my father pay for work on my car more often than not, would think I was still in school, and being honest with him means telling him that I am a bum.
"Actually I'm not in school right now. I need to go back to get some teaching credentials. Wish I could just teach without them. Ha ha."
The man looked at my shirt, which has my daycare's logo on the left breast, and furrowed his brow.
"Tell your dad hi for me," he said.
"What no Bush joke today?" I asked.
"What?" asked a nearby woman who had been reading and apprently eavesdropping as well.
"Oh, Cecil likes to tease my dad abut being a liberal, and he normally says somethign about Bush to him," I told her.
"I can't imagine why anybody wouldn't like Bush," she said, daring me.
"Yeah, uh, there are some reasons but you know, whatever."
"I mean, if Kerry or Gore was President I'd have had to move," she said, looking back down at her book.
"Yeah, well," I said lamely. "It's good to be able to imagine other people's point of view."
Getting into my freshly lubed car I thought about all the things I could have said to her and wondered why I had settled for self-righteous condecension.
I think it's because I work with children. It seems to me that people who work with children get too used to explaining basic concepts and principles of moral behavior. "Imagine what it's like to be someone else," is something I say at least three times a week, usually because Cody just punched Jack for taking his ball. Cody needs to learn to consider other people's feelings, as does Jack. But at Larry Green's Tire & Exhaust I couldn't hope to educate anyone; this woman was too far gone. Here I said it only as a means to save face without engaing in a pointless political debate with a mentally handicapped woman twenty yards away from a group of thick-necked mechanics who were all going to agree with her.
Maybe my words changed her. Maybe she's in the midst of internal dialogue right now, forcing herself to consider some of the myriad opinions heretofore left untouched by her too easily appeased brain. Probably not, but I'll never know. I said it with my back to her, already half out the door and ashamed of my arrogance-- still dependent on my father and talking to a middle-aged woman like I was Atticus Finch.

I SWEAR IT'S NOT REALLY FOOTBALL DON'T SKIP IT

Feedback from one would-be reader in Durham, North Carolina:
"I took a look at it, cause Jocelyn said it was funny. But then all it was a bunch of football stuff, so I didn't read much of it."

I think a lot of people do this with my blog, and it frustrates me. If these people didn't automatically shut off at the sight of the word "football," they would soon see that I don't actually write about football at all. Sure, I use some player names, I make reference to events from the world of sports, but I don't spend time talking about football games. Have I ever written a word about who I think will win the Super Bowl this year, or what I think of the Colts' run defense, or whether I like Larry Johnson more than LaDanian Tomlinson? No, never. Of course, most of you didn't get to read the words "No, never," because when you read the words "Colts' run defense" you closed your browser window. And I think you suck.

What sparks this tantrum? Well, today I read this on ESPN.com:
"Randy Moss blamed his penchant for dropped passes on the fact that he is unhappy and his focus level tends to go down when he is in a bad mood, the Oakland Tribune reports."
and I thought, "That's just like me! When I am unhappy my focus level goes down, and I lose my patience more quickly and yell at kids when I shouldn't! Randy Moss and I have something in common!"
I think that's really interesting, when I discover common ground with millionaire athletes with pronounced character flaws. Finding a little bit of yourself in another person, particularly someone vilified in the media, gives you insight into yourself as well as into that other person. I find myself saying, "Gee, no matter what our station in life we all have similar problems. Everyone has a rough time at work now and then," and "Oh Jesus, when I am being sullen at work do I come off like Randy Moss? Holy shit I need to watch that."
Maybe I could have posted that in a way that was a little subtler, a little wittier, but I didn't really think it would be worth the effort since most of you would never read the fucking thing since it is, in part, about a football player. What a bunch of closed-minded douchebags you are.

Nobody Understands Me! I'm So Complicated!

Wednesday night found me saying completely straight-faced to a room of my friends: "Did you ever see Ramona or Avonlea on the Disney Channel?" I was trying to share a disturbing anecdote about child actress turned indie director Sarah Polley, who starred in both of those programs. I was laughed at, and it was pointed out that frequently I say things that are not very masculine. Speculation occurred as to whether I had a vagina.
On my way home I remembered an exchange I'd had six months ago with my old roomate JC. One day JC passed through as I watched a man having his throat cut on The Wire (best show to ever air on American television). JC had also seen me watch some other similarly grim, hard-boiled things about cops and poverty and the drug trade and socialism, not to mention the big gun fight in the second half of Heat. And JC said, "Andrew, it seems like you're such a sweet natured peaceful guy, but you sure do watch some depressing, violent stuff on television."
It's amazing how different people know you in different ways. I don't know if my friends who laughed over Avonlea would ever call me "sweet-natured," but they have long questioned my masculinity on the basis that I watch thirtysomething. JC didn't know me as well at all, but I much prefer his view of me as the "lovable teddy-bear masking a bloodthirsty avenger of societal wrongs," to my friends' version, the "whiny, opinionated, and sullen douchebag with the tastes of a twelve year-old-girl."
JC also didn't think it necessary to involve genitalia, which I thought was classy of him. I think I might call him up and see if he wants to hang out.

Up At 3

Yesterday my state voted a marriage amendment into law that would, I told my friend Amy, "keep her from getting her live-in boyfriend imprisoned when he beat her," a crass joke that feels like one thousands of strangers are all making independently of one another at roughly the same time.
In other election news, the Democratic Party reclaimed the House of Representatives and it seems likely that Nancy Pelosi will become the new Speaker of the House, something which inexplicably angers my father. Not that its unimaginable to dislike Nancy Pelosi, he is just literally unable to explain why when I ask.
"I just don't think she knows anything," I think were his words.

Yesterday was also the day I decided to eat a ton of crappy food: pot roast and mashed potatoes, a pot pie, three or four donuts, a cupcake, lots of coffee, a few tootsie roll pops, several beers, several sodas, and a large piece of vegan birthday cake. I woke up at three in the morning sweating with terrible heartburn, wondering what was wrong with me, and in the hours that I've been up since I've attributed it to what I ate. I have also repeatedly checked election returns, showered and shaved, watched half of The American President (which I knew was stupid but has less charm than I remembered) and half of The Shawshank Redemption (still good).
In my late night session of surfing the internets I stumbled on a Slate.com article about Sadam Hussein's February hanging. It tells of "drop tables," charts that tell executioners how far to drop the person they are hanging. Drop them too far and their head will pop off; drop them not far enough and their neck won't break and they strangle to death. This is all based on weight: skinny people need to drop further than fat people, and the drop table is calculated accordingly. Which sets up the following:

The Army drop table turned out to be inadequate for Mitchell Rupe, a Washington inmate who was supposed to hang in 1994. On death row, Rupe refused all exercise and ate junk food nonstop. By the time of his execution he'd reached 409 pounds, well above the table's maximum listed weight. According to Army regulations, anyone heavier than 220 pounds would get a 5-foot drop. The Washington authorities made an exception and cut Rupe's planned drop to 3.5 feet. Rupe appealed his case, and a federal judge ruled that the risk of decapitation was still too high. Rupe died in a prison hospital this past February..

As I write this post, The Shawshank Redemption plays on in the background. Coincidentally, I just saw the scene where Brooks hangs himself. Right now it's the scene where Andy plays the Mozart aria over the prison public address system. It reminds me of my friend Katie.
Once when Katie had been drinking she and Cara and I went to the Village, and I played Mozart on the juke box. As I returned from a trip to the bathroom my song came on, and drunk Katie, remembering the scene I mention above, started yelling "SHAWSHANK, MOTHERFUCKER! SHAWSHANK! YOU SHAWSHANKED THAT SHIT!"
I miss Katie.

It's been a month- oops.

Does anyone still read this? I feel like most people have given it up at this point, and it makes me sad. Biscoe, I know you're still there. I've got like five half written things I need to write the other half of, and I just never seem to get around to it.
Possibly the problem is that I've become too ambitious, and it's gotten to the point where nothing is good enough. Well, no more. Ambition is for douchebags.

Today I want to take a moment to hype up Bravo's new season of Top Chef, which if you didn't know is a "Reality" tv show where a group of chefs take part in different food related challenges, with the worst cook each week being jettisoned until the one remaining contestant is given some new cookware and an expenses paid trip to action-packed Pigeon Forge. It's reality TV so it's stupid by nature, but this past week really sold me on the series and I think I'm now commited to watching the entire season. Consider the following incidents from Wednesday night's episode:

1. The following exchange between contestant and judge:
Judge: Food is for eating!
Contestant: I agree with you one hundred percent.

2. The contestants were given a $100 each to buy ingredients for the week's ELIMINATION CHALLENGE. One young man named Michael, who is obviously a raging alcoholic, used $8 of that money to buy himself some beer, and discovering at the register that he was over budget declined to put the beer back, electing to ditch his cheese instead. His dish? A steak and cheese sandwich.
Later in the episode, afraid he would be voted off, Michael was seen pounding a can of beer and then declaring he would fight head judge Tom Colicchio.

Mike's worth watching all by himself. Throw in a guy who looks like Wolverine only with a squeaky voice, and you've got something truly special.

The Cheese Stands Alone

Today at my father's house I was trying to think of something inexpensive to eat. I went to the fridge, spied some eggs on the bottom shelf, and heard in my mind's ear the voice of Alton Brown whisper: "Eggs, like pasta, are a great way to use up scraps you might otherwise throw away." Thrilled by the idea of an omelet to go with the piece of pork tenderloin on the middle shelf, I set about sweating onions and chopping tomatoes, finding the Worcestershire sauce and the rosemary and grating the parmesan cheese. Everything ready, I at last started cracking eggs. The first one was blood red on the inside, with a mottled white and purple yoke that almost made me throw up. I threw it down the drain and quickly hit the disposal switch.
"My dad needs to stop getting eggs from Food Lion," I thought.
Determined not to lose my appetite, I picked up another egg and cracked it. This one was shit-brown with a mustard-yellow white that ran all over the counter. Gagging, I finally checked the carton and found out the eggs expired back in March.
Few everyday experiences are so upsetting as a failed cooking project. The onions and the tomatoes look pathetic in their bowl, waiting to be in an omelet that will never happen, like they've been stood up on a date. What point does this shredded cheese have now? Sure it can go back to the refrigerator and wait for pasta that may or may not be cooked later this week. Most likely it will go in the trash, and while it makes no sense to empathize with cheese, it's kind of where I'm at this morning.

Favorites

We are not supposed to have favorites at work, but we do anyway and it's kind of obvious who they are. We try to act impartial, we try to be strict with them, but the children know, as do we, that certain kids get away with stuff because we sort of, please don't tell anyone cause feelings could get hurt, like them better than everyone else.

My favorite kid left at the end of the summer. She is starting kindergarten this year, and because she has a hard time with change her mom, quite rightly I think, decided to pull her out of our after-school program until she adjusted.
I miss her. She was a lot of work, and she could be hard to deal with, but when something upset her she would walk past three other teachers on her way to me, sobbing "Mistuh Evaton!"
"What's wrong?" I would say, sincerely worried.
"I can't find my card!"
"What?"
"My card!"
"I don't understand you. Your card?"
"MY CENTER CARD YOU MANIAC!"
The kids all have what we call a "license," which is a card with a magnet on it that they put on a board to help us keep track of what room they are in. So I would scoop her up and take her off to find her card, and once it was found, I'd turn her upside down and spin her around in circles for a few minutes until she was dizzy and giggling and yelling "STOP IT YOU MANIAC" and then we'd go draw pictures of crabs, something that she wanted desperately to do just right and would scream when she was unable to start out with a perfect red circle.
"Don't worry, it looks nice" I would say.
"No, it looks stupid," she would say, and waste another piece of paper, making another imperfect red circle, and then another, and then another, until she was again crying and throwing her marker, and I would have to come over and tickle her to cheer her up, and maybe cross my eyes or something, and then her mom would come and she would leave and I would wonder why it is I love a little kid who is such a pain in my ass.

Post-Game Interview

Reporter: Andrew, how does this week's emotional fantasy loss to the Hell Freaks effect you and the team, and how do you bounce back from it?

Andrew: Well, you know, it's really discouraging. The guys thought we were gonna pull this one out, and I did too honestly, but in the end we just didn't get the performances that we needed. Some of us just phoned it in, and I think Jason Whitten, Jamal Lewis and Muhsin Muhammad know what I'm talking about.

Reporter: Is it particularly discouraging that the score was so close?

Andrew: Yeah, any time you come within one point of winning, well that's gonna be a real let down. But you know, we're just taking things one week at a time, and we've gone out and got some new players with funny names, and we're gonna see if those guys make the difference.

Reporter: Are you referring to New York Jets wide receiver Jerricho Cotchery?

Andrew: Yeah, I am.

Reporter: When you see the numbers that some of your bench players like Cotchery or DeAngelo Williams put up, and you think, "Hey, one of them would have won the game for us," how does that feel?

Andrew: Well that's always infuriating, but you can't second guess yourself like that. I mean, the Raiders really suck this year, and you figure if the Chargers can put up like 200 rushing yards against them last week, well so can Jamal Lewis, right? That seemed like a really good call, and I don't think too many people would have disagreed. But the thing I and a lot of other people lost sight of is this: Jamal Lewis ain't LaDanian Tomlinson. Not by a damn sight.

Reporter: You can say that again. One last question: Has the play of first overall pick Larry Johnson been disappointing to you, and are you going to trade him?

Andrew: Well, Larry's been getting a respectable number of yards, but he's not getting to the endzone, and yeah, I'm pretty pissed off right now. Obviously I can't trade him, he's too important, but when you think that if he had just scored one touchdown this week and one last week we might have won both of those games, well, I mean, what can you say? "Fuck that douchebag" I guess about sums it up.

Why Doesn't Anyone Else Care About This Stuff?

I've been sick for two weeks with some sort of sinus infection that my doctor described as "one of those bugs." He smirked when he said this, and went on to tell me that it was good that I had come in, that my weekend was going to be horrible, but that he would try to "head it off at the pass." He then handed me a prescription for augmentin and three free samples of decongestant medication his office is being paid to advertise by pharmaceutical companies.
Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Louis Chisholm! That will be $20!
In the middle of this illness I found solace in two completely unrelated, rather small events that, though trivial, raised me from my gloom. Head held high, I blew the fluid from my nose, looked that small army of hyperactive children in the eyes, and said "Here you children, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, thou art not so!"

1. This week HBO renewed The Wire for a fifth and final season.
and
2. Someone in my fantasy football league traded me Carson Palmer for Corey Dillon and Laurence Maroney.

It is in my nature to share the things that make me happy with those around me, and I told all my coworkers and friends about my good fortune. After being humored in different degrees by several, it was as I told my boss about Carson Palmer that I realized that my happiness, while important to me, is inherently boring to others. My boss put a good face on it, smiled and congratulated me on my trade and my favorite tv show, but in her eyes I could see the blank stare of courtesy. She's too nice a person to tell me to go away.

RE: The Wire
I've been meaning to write about The Wire, greatest show in the history of television, for a long time, and I will put it off yet again so as not to shortchange it. For now I'll suffice to say that hearing it had been renewed, in spite of low ratings, shocked me in the best possible way: apparently people aren't always motivated by greed, and sometimes things do work out the way we want them to.

RE: Fantasy Football--
My first week of fantasy football did not go well, and I would like to put it in terms that people unfamiliar with fantasy sports or football in general can understand.
Imagine that a movie was coming out that starred Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Murray, Meryl Streep, Toni Collete, Michael Caine, Flava Flave (who turns out to be BRILLIANT), and the somehow resuscitated corpse of Jimmy Stewart. Suspend disbelief a second further and pretend that this cast existed, somehow worked well together, and that the movie was getting great word of mouth from people you respected. And then you saw it and found out you had somehow missed that this was a remake of Cannonball Run II.
That was my first week of fantasy football: lots of hype, a lot of players who were supposed to be amazing, and none of them did a goddamn thing. I lost to my friend Jon, who I was watching the games with, and he spent the afternoon half-heartedly making fun of me. I think part of him wanted to enjoy the win, but the other half felt too sorry for me to really get into it. We ate burgers, and I yelled "GODDAMN YOU LARRY JOHNSON" and things of that nature, and I went home angry with a headache, too sick to drink the beer I thought might have made things better.
On Tuesday when Traci wrote to ask if I wanted Carson Palmer in exchange for two of my back-up players, it seemed like a chance for a fresh start. Again the movie comparison: this is equivalent to getting Edward Norton in exchange for Cuba Gooding Jr. and Ricky Jay. After some complications, the trade has gone through, and I will be starting my new quarterback today against Chuck's Hell Freaks. In spite of my new acquisition I fully expect to lose again, and I'll probably tell my boss about it.
"That's too bad Andrew, really. I'm sure Carmen will do better next week. How are you feeling? Better? Glad to hear it. Now can you head next door and make me some copies?"

Troubling Postscript to Recent Post About Secondhand Lions

A lot of superstitious people follow sports: there's the Sports Illustrated curse (in which an athlete who appears on the cover of Sports Illustrated is said to be jinxed and will suffer a slump or injury or some other ill luck), the Madden curse (which says basically the same thing about football players appearing on the cover of Madden Football), the well-known "Dirty Underwear/Unsightly Facial Hair/Not Having Sex/Eating Only Gruel will Keep My Streak Unbroken and Bring Me Success in the Playoffs" Myth, and God knows what others that irrational sports fans/players have come up with to explain things in their lives that are in anyway not obvious.
(Is it coincidence that so many NFL players are also born-again Christians? You decide.)
Then in the light of Mr. Gibson's and Mr. Osment's recent troubles, is this the beginning of a Shyamalan Curse? Will stars of M. Night Shyamalan movies from now on abuse alcohol and drive their cars under the influence? Let's not wait to check this out when it'’s too late: after Joaquin Phoenix or Paul Giammatti has died in some drunk driving accident or Bryce Dallas Howard has publicly called the Iraqi people "sand niggers."” No, let's get to work on this now-- set up some sort of elite task force of scientists and ninja-commandos and see if they can figure out how to stop this thing before it leaves Hollywood in ruins.

Drinking as it Relates to Depression Derived from a Career Scuttled by Puberty

Recently both Mel Gibson and Haley Joel Osment were arrested for driving while intoxicated. Mr. Gibson’s transgression is much the more widely reported offense due to his greater fame, power, and his spectacular ability to say just the right thing to law enforcement, but I was more interested in the troubles of young Mr. Osment, whose career has fallen on hard times since his voice cracked and he was seen in the appalling Secondhand Lions (which Daniel Neman probably reviewed under some hilarious headline like “Secondhand Movie!" What a sparkling wiit that guy is.).
I remember going to see Secondhand Lions with my dad in the aftermath of Hurricane Isabelle. Like the rest of Richmond we were without power and running water, and the idea of going somewhere with lights and air conditioning was appealing, and Robert Duval and Michael Caine are both actors of a certain reputation, and we though, “What the hell? It can’t be worse than sitting here in the dark picking our noses.” We were wrong.
I remember walking out of the Carmike movie theater feeling relieved to be back admist the destruction, and also feeling certain that Mr. Osment was on his way out. Being the sharp, insightful person that I am, violinist Sir Yehudi Menhuin came to mind, and how his bow arm went to shit once he hit his twenties. This seems to be the way of child prodigies: they achieve success on instinct alone, only to fail later when they get a little older and start over-thinking things. Then they get drunk and wreck their Prius. Or turn to Eastern philosophy if you are Yehudi Menuhin.

You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do

This morning on my way to work I stopped by the local gas station to redeem a coupon, one of those frequent customer cards where the cashier punches a hole everytime you buy something. I got all my coffee there for a few weeks, and the cashier recognized me when I came in. So did the man making the sausage biscuits. He waved, I waved back, and went to add the cream and sugar.
I looked up from my half and half to see the biscuit man come around the counter to say hello.
"You find what you need?" he asked me.
"Oh sure," said I, "found it fine."
"Lord I am exhausted," said the biscuit man, hands on hips. "These two jobs I work have me wore out."
"Yeah, two jobs'll do that to you," I said.
"Yeah. I got this here management position, and then I got my own business for myself. Make more money on that."
I knew what was coming, I've been here before. "I'm looking for some quality people to help me with my business, maybe you'd be interested?" And then he'd try to have me sell knives or help people refinance their mortgages or sell amway.
"Yeah, I work here, and then I make movies."
"Oh," I said, unsettled, "that's really great. You must be proud."
"Well, they're all X rated," he said. "I don't tell my mama."
"Uh huh," I nodded. "I guess you don't."
"Good money though, and in these times we livin' in..."
"Yeah, gotta do what you gotta do."
"Yeah, I sure am exhausted though." He wiped sweat from his brow, smiled and said, "You have a good day now!"

Football is Fast Upon Us

1. Recently I dreamt that Heisman Trophy winning running back Reggie Bush was violently murdered during a football game and that Sportscenter kept replaying the clip over and over again. Reggie had "broken a big one" as Madden might say, and was shedding tackles on his way to a touchdown when suddenly a defensive back layed a monster hit on him, knocking him flat on his back. This defensive back then stuck his head under Reggie Bush's jersey and began disemboweling him with his teeth. ESPN captured all of this in stunning detail, and it was Chris Berman's "Play of the Week." In my dream, I wasn't disturbed by this so much as I was inexplicably saddened. It felt just like when Dale Earnhardt died: I knew that being disemboweled by Troy Polamolu was a risk every football player takes, but I hated to see it happen, particularly to someone so full of talent and so admired by so many people I felt superior to. I awoke in a cold sweat, and quickly checked ESPN.com to make sure it wasn't true.

2. Speaking of ESPN.com, I have joined a fantasy football league. I do not expect to be good at fantasy football-- in fact a minute ago I was planning on using the fact that I am not good at fantasy football to somehow make my decision seem cooler to people who hate sports (9/10ths of all my friends; that most of them still read the blog even though I insist on writing about this stuff moves me to tears). The fact that I momentarily planned to use incompetence as a rationalization for doing something I am occasionally ashamed of seems possibly the most pathetic thing I've ever heard of, and were I in a different mood I would probably try to turn this into a bit about the rest of the country and its culture/politics and where I fit in that scheme. But I am not in that mood (my four readers collectively exhale a sigh of relief).
I have named my team The Ninja-Pirates, after my group of kids at work who go by that name, and I spend at least fifteen minutes each day debating whether I want Shaun Alexander in my top five. (On the one hand it seems like a smart idea to put him in my top five because he is really good and everyone on ESPN.com says to do that, on the other hand I just don't like Shaun Alexander, possibly because I dislike the Seahawks in general. If I said this was because of their team name and their uniforms you would question my masculinity, so let's pretend it has something to do with their wide receivers.)
Also, I take issue with ESPN for censoring my posts in our league's web forum, something that seems a tad inconsistent in light of the fat that I designed a team helmet that says "Fuck Your Mom" on it. In this way, ESPN resembles every boss I've ever had.

3. I would like to give a shout out to Jon Biscoe, who put the whole Fantasy thing together and at whose house I plan to spend most Sundays for the next five months, watching games and gorging myself on beer and whatever has been most recently barbecued. We did this last football season and I had a really good time, which probably means that when I am forty I will look back on it as one of the defining moments of twenties and wonder why nothing is ever as much fun as that was. If my blog is still up then I would like to remind my future self that even though this was a lot of fun, sometimes I did drink too much and pass out in the recliner. Also there was the time when I broke Jon's girlfriend Amy's patio furniture. So it wasn't all sunshine and lollipops.

Neighbors

1/14/06

Two girls live upstairs and they are both named Jessica.
Our kitchen has no curtains, and I often see them while I cook or eat. Their back door is right next to our kitchen door, and I see them take their dogs to the bathroom, take their trash out, kiss their boyfriends goodbye. I have never met either of them, and that seems strange to me because I see their mail, and who they date, and I step in their dogs’ shit when I go to work in the mornings.
This afternoon the Jessicas had friends over to watch playoff football, and every time the Redskins did something right or wrong the ceiling would shake and I could hear the deep-throated shouting of what sounded to be a chorus of professional wrestlers singing madrigals. The Redskins eventually lost, and as I cooked my dinner I saw several of the young men walk to their Ford Explorers.

8/13/06
I recently moved to a new apartment building. Here I know a number of my neighbors, many of them from before I moved into the building. I recently met the lady upstairs but cannot remember her name, possibly because she is older and unattractive.
We met one Saturday night around eight o’clock when I was peeing in my new bathroom and felt water trickling onto my head from the light fixture above me.
“Hark, methinks the upstairs neighbors hath overflowed their toilet, or are otherwise engaged in some aquatic sport unimaginable to me. I shall investigate!” I said.
Upon knocking on the door I received no answer, and knocked again. A faint hello came from within, in a voice that couldn’t belong to an old woman but sounded as if it ought to.
I identified myself as the downstairs neighbor.
“Just a moment,” said she, and I heard movement, splashing. She answered the door in a towel, laughing nervously and apologizing for her nakedness. I felt as though I had stepped into a porno film with an unattractive, nervous porn star given to hysterical fits of laughter.
“I’m so sorry! Would you like to take a look and see if you can figure it out?!? I was taking a bath! HAHAHA!”
She was indeed taking a bath: candles lit all around the bathroom, a copy of He’s Just Not That Into You resting spine up on the closed toilet.
“It wasn’t that much water really,” I said, “I’ll call the maintenance people Monday.”
“Okay, HAHA, I’ll just avoid bathing until then! HAHA!”
I took a quick glance at her room. It was very similar to mine, but with an enormous bed with a dozen or so pillows carefully arranged in a geometric design. I tried to hide the fact that I was being nosy and stepped out.
I saw her a week later, and between outbursts of nervous laughter she told me she had indeed been showering at a friend’s house all week. I told her not to worry so much and returned to my room to play Vice City, leaving her cackling like the Joker on the front steps.

I Only Regret It Isn't a Haiku

Today during afternoon snack a five year old boy, one of my favorites, casually spoke what I immediately recognized to be a poem, short but profound. The title is mine.

America
I know what's good for you:
Milk and Apple Pie.
I can make a fist.

Katie Doesn't Live Here Anymore

My friend Katie moved to Brooklyn this past weekend. I feel like I ought to have something good to say about this, but I don't; I just feel kind of depressed.

I don't know why I have had such trouble with the blog this past month, though I have several theories, most of which involve the heat. Whatever the problem, if I can't up with something good to say about either Katie moving OR Mel Gibson being an alcoholic anti-Semite that I am in some real trouble.

We'll see if I can come up with something better tomorrow.

Little Things

It's my birthday, and I haven't put anything up in awhile. These two things are unrelated, and do not belong in a sentence together.
Recently I have been thinking about how I inevitably feel disappointed by anything I spend any time anticipating-- parties, Christmas, new Coen brothers movies, concerts, members of the opposite sex, wonton soup, just about anything. And as I thought about this it occurred to me that one big exception is peeing. Nothing lives up to hype as consistently as the moment when you finally get to pee after you've held it for half an hour. I find that this is particularly satisfying when I'm peeing in a dark alley or on a building that represents something I dislike, such as a church or country club.

Sidenote:
My birthday party last night lived up to my expectations, and not just because I got to pee a lot-- I saw a lot of people I liked, I got just the right amount of drunk, and I got to wear a sombrero with a fan and a bowl of M&Ms on it.

Avenue of Champions

The new issue of RVA Magazine is out, and once again they have put something I wrote in it. Go out and buy a copy.

Avenue of Champions

One night a couple of years ago I played pool with some friends at a place on West Broad Street. I left late and alone, and approaching car with key in hand saw in my peripherals a figure approaching from the left. Instinct took hold. I jammed the key in the door, jumped inside, and cranked the engine-- and then shame caught up to instinct. I took my hand off the gearshift and took a good look at my potential attacker. She was a heavy-set black woman in her thirties, dressed in jeans and a sweater, not particularly dirty or homeless looking. Just an ordinary person in the city at night and most likely in distress. Had I taken this innocent woman for a threat because she was black? Despicable.
I rolled my window down and asked what was the matter.
“I need a ride,” said the woman.
I had expected her to ask to use my phone. I offered her that.
“Nobody to call, I need a ride.”
White guilt makes you do strange things. Here was a stranger without manners refusing to be helped on my terms, and instead of telling her sorry and driving away I felt that I needed to prove to her that I was not afraid. That I was aware that I had the sociological upperhand, that I was keenly aware my great-great grandfather had most likely whipped hers for rattling his chains too much, and moreover, that I owed her for it.
So I cleaned my CDs off the passenger seat and asked her where I was driving.
“Oh, just drive and I’ll tell you where,” she said, “my name’s Denise. What’s your name?”
“Andrew.”
“Andrew, where do you live?”
“Southside,” I said, glad for once to live thirty minutes away.
“Oh. Well cross Broad and go straight for a minute.”
As we started over the bridge towards the Diamond she asked me if I had a girlfriend, and I started thinking about the episode of Six Feet Under where a hitchhiker douses Michael C. Hall in gasoline and puts a gun in his mouth.
“Yes I do,” I lied.
“Well do you ever, y’know, mess around on her?”
“No,” I said. My voice cracked.
“Why not?” she asked, “Not like she would know.”
“I love my girlfriend,” my beautiful imaginary girlfriend, I started thinking of a name for her in case I was pressed and settled on Michelle, “I’d never do that to her.”
Near the Diamond Denise asked me to make a right down a pitch-black street that seemed to go nowhere. At the time it was too dark to read the street name, but now I know it’s called “the Avenue of Champions.”
This is where a better story would take off. I’d park to let her out, and her pimp would come from the shadows to stab me and take my wallet. Or she’d ask me to do some meth with her, and a cop would pull up just as she did and when my family came to bail me out I’d get to explain why I was in a parked car with a stranger and some crystal methamphetamine at 2 am. Maybe if I were James Frey that’s how this would end. But it isn’t what happened, and I’m too boring to pretend otherwise.
Stopped there at the Avenue of Champions I heard, in my mind’s ear, the voices of two shitty DJ’s joking about this ridiculous white guy who allowed himself to be robbed and murdered by a black hitchhiker because he felt it would be racist to do otherwise. It would blow up into a national news story, a little throw away in the last five minutes of the network broadcast that Brian Williams thought somehow provided trenchant insight into race relations in America. I didn’t stop to wonder how the media figured out the motives of a corpse; I kicked Denise out of the car.
“Man, I’m not going to fuck you up,” she said to me.
“No,” I said, “I’m scared and you need to get out of the car. Sorry.”
And, amazingly, she did. Grumbling, she shuffled down the road towards I know not what, and I drove away half expecting to be chased by an El Camino back to Chesterfield County. Later, safe in the bosom of 23113, the guilt would return, and Denise would become once more an unfortunate woman in poor circumstances who was further victimized by the fear and latent racism of a would-be good Samaritan. But for a few minutes, driving fifty miles an hour through the museum district, fear outpaced guilt, and for a brief shining moment outside the Diamond I had ceased to be a total fucking moron.

I'm only sort of kidding.

Recently my job satisfies me less. Children are harder to manage right before summer vacation, and some who take medication stop taking it, and my patience, always thin, has grown thinner. Money problems that I have until now rationalized as “the trade-off for doing something I enjoy” are becoming harder to manage, just as the enjoyment dwindles.

Last week I renewed my cell phone plan, and as a reward for being a loyal Sprint customer received a $150 credit towards the purchase of a new phone. After a few calls and an hour and a half standing in line at my local Sprint store, I received a brand new phone at no cost.
As I punched my phone numbers into my digital phone book, I found myself feeling content for the first time in what felt like, but probably wasn’t really, months. Finally re-connected with the joy of owning something new and expensive, I realized how much I had missed it. I began to think that the key to happiness is not the love of small children, but consumption: of electronics, of compact discs, DVDs, furniture, expensive food, etc. Money, it turns out, is more important than people. I guess I already knew that, but sometimes it takes life experience for a concept to really register. This one finally has.
So my next job, and I’m looking for one, is going to reflect this new set of priorities. If nobody will give me a job that fulfills me, I might as well get paid well and fulfill myself by buying a lot of shit. Is that soulless and evil? Maybe. Will I be happier? No doubt about it. So will GMAC and Sallie Mae.
Peace out children. Talk to me when you can afford it.

Harmless Books That I Cannot Take to Work

Naked by David Sedaris
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
The Virgin's Lover by Phillipa Gregory
Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man by Tim Allen
Why I am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

I Always Liked this One- June 16, 2004

Alyssa Teaches Me Feminism

My friend Alyssa is a feminist; not in the sense that you and I and all other decent people are feminists (that is to say, we support equal rights for everyone), but in the sense that she will be a graduate student in women's studies at Rutgers this fall and doesn't shave her armpits.
When you know someone like this, whose views lie outside of the mainstream, the temptation is to make their differences the topic of conversation, if only because it's the first topic that comes to mind during an awkward pause. So whenever I see Alyssa, I eventually start asking her questions about women's rights, and that's where the conversation stays.

Allow me, for the sake of explaining further, to set up this hypothetical comparison-
Say you had a friend who was schizophrenic. You would almost certainly find yourself full of questions about how he regards the world. "What," you might ask yourself, "does Mervin feel about nuclear armament? About cabbage? about professional basketball?" Were you to ask him you would not be surprised to find his perspective different from your own: nuclear weapons remain a menace, but for him a pressing one, lurking in the garages and bridgework of everyone around him; cabbage for him is not an unappetizing vegetable but a good friend, loyal and pleasant to talk to; basketball might have no meaning at all. These may not be your own feelings, but it does you good to hear about them- your horizons are broadened.

It's precisely that way with Alyssa. I am always asking her ridiculous questions about what is important to her, because I am genuinely curious about how she sees things, and she is patient and willing to discuss whatever nonsense it is that I am bothering her with-
"I like calling people 'douchebags,' Alyssa. Is that okay? As a feminist are you offended by that?"
"Actually Andrew, I am offended by the very act of douching. Is there something wrong with a woman's body that she needs to cleanse it that way?"
"Wow, I'd never thought of it like that. But I guess that makes 'douchebag,' okay then?"
"Well, not really."
Alyssa seems to approach this kind of question and answer session as working to raise awareness of feminist issues, and if that is her goal she has achieved it. Among other things, I have learned from her that it is fun to call pro-life people "anti-choice." "Because," as Alyssa put it, "Why should we let them define the terms of debate? I'm not going to let them imply that I am anti-life."
She also invited me to a women's rights rally in D.C. where it is doubtless I would have learned countless other things about feminism, but I begged off because I am lazy. After the rally, she told me that Karen Hughes, a close advisor to the President, had created controversy when she likened the protestors to terrorists. I got a good laugh out of that. "Ha!" I said to myself, "what a jackass!" But for Alyssa, this was an attack, one which she will fend off with rusty chains and broken bottles. I admire her for it.

Alyssa really liked it when I first wrote this, and sometimes still brings it up when she is town. She just got her Master's degree (what, you my master now?) from Rutgers, and has landed a vagina-related position in our nation's capital, which means I will get to see her more often, thank goodness. The amount of radical feminism I am exposed to dropped precipitously in her absence, and I have found no one to fill the void.

The Reason I Took Down "The Porn Thing"

A number of people have asked why I took down the recent repost of "The Hot National Security Advisor," a brief bit of not-quiet-soft-core porn that I plagarised from a Zane book and altered slightly so that it was about a sexual encounter between the Secretary of State and myself.
There are really a few reasons I did this, but the main one is that a number of people found my site by googling things like “big nipples” and “nine-inches in the butt.” It might sound silly, but that’s what it took for me to see that I had crossed the line between edgy and jaw-droppingly poor taste.
There’s something appealing about being uncompromising, and as a result people who fail to compromise are celebrated in every aspect of our culture: Admiral Farragutt’s damning the torpedos, Dirty Harry’s 37 different recognizable speeches (delivered inevitably to a criminal he has the drop on) that are repeated by people ranging from the American Film Institute to shitty cellists in my high school orchestra who now work as mattress salesmen, most of John Wayne’s career but perhaps most memorably when he spanked his wife with a shovel in McLintock thereby causing Pauline Kael to go into a series of twitching fits that would later be misdiagnosed as Parkinson’s disease, George W.’s entire benighted political career from his willingness to claim that Anne Richards was a lesbian to his current willingness to tap the public’s phones and call it national security, the Cuban Missile Crisis, pissy self-absorbed white people sending back their steaks at Outback, ad infinitum. It’s easy to see why people discuss this as being somehow quintessentially “American,” (by people I really mean Shelby Foote) but I think it seems pretty global and it’s not hard to understand why—nobody, not the French or the Iranians or the Irish, likes to compromise; we all do it every day of our lives and we hate it.
Anyway, I thought that by reposting pornography with Condoleeza Rice’s name in it on my blog that I was being uncompromising, but really I was just being disgusting, so I took it down.
My bad.

Of Fast Food and Driver’s Etiquette

My mother used to get off on letting people merge in front of her and letting them take her turn at four-way stops. Often she let so many people in front of her that it made her late, but she didn't care. She was usually late anyway, and she said it made her feel civilized.
With a different take on civilization and deep-rooted hatred for tardiness, my father will yell at anyone and anything that irritates him behind the wheel, unleashing cruel ad hominem remarks about weight, hair, teeth, etc., with liberal use of the words “douchebag” and “dumbshit,” aimed at everyone from old people and children to the local Hardee’s.
My own behavior leans toward my father’s side, but with a slight emphasis on gutlessness. Once in a Wendy’s parking lot a man cut me off and when I yelled something, he rolled down his window to ask me sinisterly if I had a problem.
“NO, OF COURSE I DON’T HAVE A PROBLEM!” I screamed back at him.

This morning pulling out of a McDonald’s with my breakfast I found the narrow alley I was taking back to Main blocked by a brown Chevy whose driver was feeling a little timid about moving past me. Irritated and late for work, I asked the car to "hurry up already,” and made a circular waving motion with my right hand. To my surprise the car pulled up beside me, and the driver, a sassy black woman so stereotypical I cringe at describing her for fear of seeming racist, rolled down her window and started shouting at me as though I were her child and I had just stolen some Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups from CVS.
“You don’t talk to me like that!” she yelled.
Maybe if she was the big guy from Wendy’s I would have been intimated, but she wasn’t.
“What are you even talking about?” I yelled back, “I just wanted you to get on with it. See this gesture? (demonstrated gesture) That was me waving you ahead.”
“You better be glad I’m not your mother,” she told me.
“My mother knew how to drive better than that. Stop being slow and making other people late for work,” I advised her, and she drove away.
For a few minutes I felt bad, like I had started my day off by being petty and immature and yelling at someone I should have respected. Then I thought about it for a few minutes. I gave her as much respect as she was entitled to: I didn’t make any obscene gestures or remarks, and I responded to anger with reasoned criticism. What’s to feel bad about?
Between my mother’s over-the-top deference to others and my father’s bitter anger, this seems like the happy medium.

Childhood can be Pleasantly Eccentric

There's a boy at work who wants to play foosball every morning. And so I play foosball with him every morning, and every morning I win, and after each point I score he throws his hands up and yells "NOOOOOOOOO!!!" like Elijah Wood in Fellowship of the Ring when Ian McKellan fights the huge troll-thing and ends up falling into the bottomless pit.
Sometimes when I beat him he tells me that I am evil, a word he also uses for an older girl he has a crush on. At different times he has told me that I am "an evil sack of potato-beans," that Waldo (of the Where's Waldo? books) is "his darkest enemy," and that "the sausages of breakfast are delicious." His words exactly.

Sometimes while he is walking he will bob up and down, one hand in the air as though he were pantomiming carrying a tray of food, his back slightly hunched so that his butt sticks out, and singing a nonsense song with lyrics pretty much consisting of "Doot-dit doot-dit, doot-dee-doo-dit."

At first this boy put me off-- mostly because he would do things like put his hands in my hair and coo "fuzzy!"-- but this morning, as I pushed him away and explained for the dozenth time the concept of personal space, it occurred to me that I won't see him over the summer, and that this made me sad.

It's funny how they grow on you.

From way back in the day--A Few Words About Race-- May 5, 2004

A Few Words About Race
This weblog is not only concerned with frivolous things like quilts and graphic sex scenes with important members of the government, it is also concerned with the important issues of our day. Today's post will be a frank and earnest discussion of race relations in America, and I will focus this discussion around two important questions.

1.) As far as the whole "portraying black people in a positive light" thing goes, didn't the Cosby Show sometimes get a little silly?
I'm not saying they shouldn't have portrayed black people positively, but I think they could have sometimes done a better job making their positive portrayals of black people fit in with the story. For example, the other day I watched an entire episode about how Denise wouldn't lend Vanessa a sweater, and then for some reason in the last two minutes of the show the whole family gathered around the television to watch the "I have a dream" speech. What did that have to do with the sweater? Or Vanessa's problem with studying? Or Cliff's winning a tub of popcorn from Claire in a bet, only to have her eat it when he fell asleep in the movie theater? I'd have liked it if they could have integrated the last two minutes more with the other twenty-three. Perhaps Denise and Vanessa could have argued over the value of non-violent protest instead of a sweater? Or perhaps Cliff could have fallen asleep watching the "I have a dream" speech, and Claire could have eaten his popcorn then. It's called craftsmanship, and I don't think it's too much to ask. (Thinking about it, I realize that The Cosby Show did that a lot, tacking on two minute scenes at the end that had little or nothing to do with the rest of the episode. Those scenes were normally about Cliff and Claire getting it on, or dancing to jazz music, or engaging in some other married behavior, so I guess superfluous Martin Luther King is better than superfluous old people sex.)

2.) Why is Sprite marketed to young black men almost exclusively?
Consider Sprite's current ad campaign, featuring a puppet with an afro (This is not the first such commercial. I distinctly remember another commercial, this one for sneakers, that was targeted at young black men and involved a puppet. Do young black men like puppetry? How do they feel about the Muppets?). This puppet is shown interacting primarily with young black men, who are usually asking the puppet questions about why it likes Sprite so much. The puppet explains why, and usually throws in some joke about also enjoying girls with large bottoms. This kind of ad seems to be clearly targeted at young black men. Why? Is lemon-lime soda popular with young black men? I have known a few in my day, and I don't remember them drinking it much. Why isn't Coke marketed to young black men? Or for that matter Toyota Corollas?
I wish more products were marketed exclusively to black people. Hopefully someday we will live to see commercials where little black puppets with afros will be used to sell cars and prescription drugs, as well as lemon-lime soft drinks and sneakers.

The question, "Why market Sprite to young black men?" continues to haunt me. Recently I asked my black co-worker Melvin about it.
"You know A-Money," he said, "I never thought about that, but you are right. I wonder what the dilly is with THAT? Know what I'm saying?" And I said "Fo' shizzle," and then we locked fists and embraced.
I am tight with black folks.

Satan's Pussy

Today I heard this story from Jonathan Knowles. I want it to be true.
And I'm paraphrasing him. As James Frey might say, "This is how I remembered him telling it"--

"So this guy I'm friends with, he told me about this girl he works with who cuts herself. Which, you know, that's really horrible, and I kinda feel bad telling this cause I don't wanna make light of cutting yourself. But whatever. This girl cuts herself, and she needs to be smarter about it cause she isn't allowed to wear long sleeves. But she's not smart, she just cuts herself wherever, and she comes into work the other day with this pentagram cut into her forearm. And the boss brings her into his office to ask about it, and she's like 'my cat did it.' "

Quilt Enthusiast Classic-- I Prove Hermandad is a Word-- April 5, 2004

Tonight I worked the closing shift at Barnes & Noble. As usual, after all the books were put away we all stood around and talked until the manager told us we could go home. Looking for a conversation to join, I found two of my coworkers (lets call them "Kathryn" and "Frances") in front of the Spanish books, several of which "Kathryn" was turning upside down.
"That'll teach the dirty spics," she said (not really).
"Frances" picked up a book by John Grisham, titled "El Hermandad."
"That's not a word." she said, pointing to the title.
"Oh come on," I said, trying to be reasonable, "Of course it is. They actually do expect Spanish speaking people to read this, they're not going to just make up some word and make it the title of a book. What kind of marketing sense does that make?"
"I know it's not a word. I took so much Spanish. I know."
I tried again: "Dearest Frances, I don't mean to be rude, but you are asking me to take your word against that of a large and distinguished publisher, Harpercollins, which is but part of a vast international media conglomerate, News Corporation, which in turn is owned by Rupert Murdoch. Surely Mr. Murdoch and the folks at Harpercollins did not get where they are today by allowing such errors as the one of which you now accuse them. They have editors; they are careful about these things."
"I was in Spain for forty days. I learned so much Spanish. Seriously, it's not a word."
For a moment I was prepared to let it go. Why argue something that could clearly not be settled? But then I realized of course, it can be settled. We work in a book store, one that sells many excellent reference books, some of which are Spanish-English Dictionaries. So I found one, and I looked up the word "hermandad." It means "association." When I told "Frances" this she corrected my pronunciation. I refrained from asking her how she knew the pronunciation of a word that she knew didn't exist. I had already accomplished my goal; it was clear that I was right.

Since I wrote this two years ago I have gotten to know both Frances and Kathryn a lot better: Kathryn hates Hispanic people even more than I thought, and Frances is a compulsive liar who has on different occaisons claimed to be both the inventor of Pop Tarts and an African-American. None of us works at Barnes & Noble anymore. Thank Goodness.
PS- Steve Riggio, you cheap son-of-a-bitch, how the hell are you? How's your blog? Care to leave a comment about how you "do good work," you self-righteous greedy prick?
Don't be mad, it's all love. Always love.

Quick Note

The other day I was sitting in a restaurant with some friends and two things were discussed that I felt were of note--
1. Jacob Pepper said that he longed to spend his birthday in a Mexican bar drinking with real Mexicans and
2. Even the few people who read my blog are reluctant to go wading through my archives, which are, truth be told, sometimes hit and miss.
I swear to God I didn't bring up point #2, it just naturally arose in the conversation. The only reason I mention it here is to explain why I am going to start republishing old blog posts. I plan to do this once a week, not only because I am lazy but also because I think some of those things were good and I want people to read them.
I will still write new things.
Thank you for your time.

Jacob Pepper: like Harold Bloom, but younger and infinitely more entertaining

Last Saturday I went to my old Barnes & Noble with Jacob Pepper so that he could get himself a copy of Moby-Dick.
When asked "Why Moby-Dick?" Mr. Pepper replied, in a tone slightly exasperated but still cheerful, "Cause I wanna read something totally sweet." Later, when someone spoke of a past attempt at Don Quixote, Jacob pointed out that Don Quixote was inferior, because it's not about a man trying to kill a whale.

Sometimes when I laugh at this sort of thing, put it on my blog, I worry that it seems like I am condescending, that Jacob is a joke I derive amusement from. It's not like that. Yes I laugh, but I also find myself wishing that I had said what Jacob said, that his way with words was mine, that I saw the world with the same intensity, earnestness, and good humor. So often I find myself embarassed by emotion, and Jacob's easy acceptance of his feelings and refusal to apologize for them account in large measure for his charm.

And furthermore, he's right: a story about a man hunting a whale is totally sweet.

The High Price of Sound Judgement

There's a little boy at my daycare with an unusual name, bestowed by obvious former hippies. I can't use the exact name without violating his privacy, and I've spent some time trying to think of a comparable name by which I could call him. Let's go with "Poem."
One day while playing with blocks Poem got into a shouting match with a third grade girl about the war in Iraq.
"THE SOLDIERS ARE DYING FOR OIL!" he yelled, his eyes full of tears.
"NO THEY ARE NOT!" she screamed back, approaching tears herself, "THEY'RE DYING FOR OUR FREEDOM!"
Obviously, Poem listens to what his parents say and takes it to heart. Most kids do.

About a week ago I walked into the library and found a group clustered in a corner, shouting excitedly.
"Poem is telling people there's no such thing as God," a helpful kindergartener told me.
The cluster then came apart to reveal Poem, red in the face, hollering his parents' beliefs in vain at the surrounding children, each of them just as convinced by their own parents. Five or six of them asked me to intervene-- "TELL POEM THERE IS TOO A GOD!" --and intervene I did, but not in the way that they, or I for that matter, wanted:
"Poem, it's okay to believe that, but the other kids get to believe what they want too. It's a very personal subject, and it's better not to talk about it at daycare."
Oh restraint, oh wisdom, you save me a job, but at what cost? What unimaginable joy, now forever lost, would it be to tell these children, with the authority of age, title, and $10 an hour, "No, Poem is right about everything. There is no God. The soldiers are dying for oil. Construction workers are unspeakably cool. Apple churros are the best snack. High School Musical does suck, and you should stop singing it all the time. "

Richmond Symphony, be not proud

The following appears in the April 2006 edition of RVA magazine, on stands now. It is my first time being published, outside of the college literary magazine and a few letters to the school paper, and I am moderately proud. A link to the RVA magazine website may be found to your right.

Back in February the Richmond Symphony performed the Mozart Requiem, and I went to hear them do it. They did a good job, as they almost always do-- the Richmond Symphony is a good orchestra. I wish more Richmonders knew how lucky we are to have them.

Before the performance conductor Mark Russell Smith, always one for the sound of his own voice, made some brief remarks: the expected stuff about it being Mozart’s 250th birthday, and the outstanding chorus directed by James Erb, and how the Requiem was a fitting tribute to some important local personage, recently deceased, of whom I had never heard. Then the soloists walked out, the orchestra tuned, and the Requiem began.

A word about the venue: in 2003 the Symphony was temporarily evicted from the Carpenter Center, and sent to live as refugees in a number of area churches. This particular performance took place at St. Michael’s Catholic Church in Glen Allen, a perfectly nice building that requires, for logistical reasons I am not privy to, that concerts there be played with the house lights up.

House lights up shouldn’t be a big deal, and at first I almost didn’t even notice. But as the bassoons and basset horns began their dark opening lines above the quiet detached notes in the strings, building to that small climax just before the chorus enters for the first time, it struck me exactly what it meant to have the house lights up. It meant I could see the audience, and the audience, typical of a classical music performance, was generally in its mid-to-late eighties.

I’ll admit that at first I felt tremendously put off by this. Hundreds of articles have been written about classical music’s aging audience and its taste for the established, its fear of the new and the dissonant. I have resented this audience for years, not because they’re old and crazy and they talk during the music, but because orchestra programs pander to them, usually at the expense of what I want to hear. I know they aren’t bad people, but we have different tastes: I want something to stimulate and engage, they want something to comfort and soothe-- a friend to hold their hand while they go, so to speak. I want to hear Penderecki and Bartok and Daugherty. They want to hear Beethoven and Brahms and, above all, Mozart.

As the soprano began singing her first solo, all around me I could see eyes glazing over, mouths hanging open, streams of drool beginning to form. Just before the Kyrie, as a woman behind me hacked up some phlegm, it occurred to me that this was actually the perfect way to experience this music. Here, as I listened to one of the great artistic examinations of human mortality, all around me was the disturbing physical representation of same. Music that had been in the past abstract, about the death that awaits everyone, in the distant future, the death we must all come to terms with, eventually, took on a startlingly immediacy. Death was present in the room with us, sitting all around me, coughing and asking his wife if she had seen his program. This performance wasn’t about the general death we all face. These people sitting around me were slowly dying as I listened, and taking the classical music industry with them. I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that I am surprised at least one audience member didn’t pass on in the middle of the concert.

During the Lacrimosa I swear I saw the bald scalp of the man in front of me decay before my eyes. My father, who was sitting next to me, noticed something was wrong and asked if I was alright. I nodded that I was okay, but in the distance, behind the horns and the timpani, I thought I heard ambulance sirens.

The Man is Coming for Your Teeth

From the Washington Post:
"Government lawyers tried to confiscate the gold tooth caps known as "grills" from the mouths of two men facing drug charges, saying the dental work qualified as seizable assets. They had them in a vehicle headed to a dental clinic by the time defense lawyers persuaded a judge to halt the procedure."

The Best Way to Eat a Cupcake

Thursday evening finds me tired and eating a cupcake in bed. I have smeared a small amount of icing on the sheets, and as I wipe at it with a damp paper towel I think that it might be worthwhile to share the following:
If you're going to eat a cupcake you should tear the bottom off and put it on top of the frosting, creating what is known in some circles as the "cupcake sandwich."
Why do this? Because, reader, it better distributes the frosting to parts of the cake that might otherwise be eaten sans glacage.

Tomorrow I plan to work fourteen hours, after which I shall have sex with your mother. It will be unsatisfactory, and afterwards I will tell her it isn't going to work out and ask her not to be awkward when she inevitably runs into me at parties.

Lame, perhaps, but it doesn't involve ESPN

New Yorker music critic Alex Ross on a recent Kronos Quartet Concert that featured an extended interview with Howard Zinn:
'My favorite moment came after Zinn said that free speech was being curtailed in America: a man in the balcony yelled “Amen!” and a woman near him yelled “Quiet!”'
I like Alex Ross very much, and these lines put a smile on my face. You may find a link to his blog, The Rest is Noise, in the space just to your right.

This is why we need to fund the arts.

What can anyone hope to add? I guess it's good to note that even though in this photo you can't see all the angles, there is supposedly a baby coming out on the other end. No shit.

Memory of the Midlothian Public Library

Yesterday's Internet Movie Database movie of the day was Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, starring Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor.

When I was in high school I couldn't afford to rent movies, so I borrowed them from the local public library, which had a decent selection and was free. One day as I picked out an episode of A&E's Poirot, I overheard a girl in braces ask her mother about Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
"That's a musical," her mother said, "Your father and I saw it once when we visited Aunt Sally. It was so sad though, let's get something else."
"I'm sorry," said I, poking my head around the corner in an honest attempt to be helpful, "but I couldn't help overhearing your conversation. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is actually a movie adaptation of a play by Tennessee Williams. I think you have mistaken it for Fiddler on the Roof, the classic Broadway musical about Russian Jews and a patriarch's struggle to accept change. But their both depressing- Ha!"
I don't know if I expected the mother to thank me for correcting her, but I certainly didn't expect the angry stare she gave me. Quickly I went back to looking at the television section. From there I could hear her a moment later, voice full of irritation and sarcasm, explain to her daughter that The Wizard of Oz was about a bank heist and that The Prime of Ms Jean Brodie starred Clint Eastwood, daring me to say something.

As Promised, Annie.

Courtney Marlowe strolled into her old Barnes & Noble with a large Ukrop's bag in one hand and fury in her heart. She headed straight to the children's department.
Overhead she heard Jenny Scharrar's pleasant voice welcoming everyone to attend storytime.
"Today we're reading stories about Spring! Maybe we'll have a visit from Harry the adorable Easter chick! In our children's department in five minutes!"
As she walked through the store shelvers waved to Courtney.
"Hey girl, how's the new job?!" they called out, but she ignored them.
She strode purposefully into the children's department, and waited for storytime to begin. As the children came in, loud and irritating as ever, the anger inside her began to bubble up to the surface. Her face twisted with rage. Just as Jenny came in leading a small bookseller in a baby chicken suit, Courtney snapped. She opened her bag, and brought out a couple hundred dollars worth of sushi, some yellowtail, some eel, but mostly spicy tuna. She grabbed four pieces and crammed them into the mouth of the nearest child, who instantly started screaming, pieces of rice and raw fish spraying everywhere as she sobbed. People froze as Courtney moved through the throng, stuffing sushi into kids mouths. Several mothers bolted for the exit, leaving their children behind.
Everywhere children were bawling and spitting sushi. Several boys swallowed theirs and began running around telling everyone how good it was.
Jenny paged "MANAGER 1 TO THE CHILDREN' DEPARTMENT!" and moments later Paula dashed in. Jenny briefed her, and she stepped in to handle things.
"Courtney, if you don't leave now I am calling the police. And you are banned. For life."
Courtney crammed a large wad of wasabi paste up Paula's nose.
Leaving Paula sobbing on the floor, she turned, threw her remaining rolls at a few select parents, and ran out of the store as fast as she could. Nobody's sure, but it sounded like she yelled "SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS" as she went.

Annie-
Sorry I couldn't honor your request to make Courtney naked in this story-- it would have been too over the top.

Have a suggestion for a story? Requests may be sent to aever2hd@hotmail.com, or posted as a comment.

Who Says UC Berkley is Politically Biased?

Check out the results of this study, carried out over the last twenty years at UC Berkley, with results just published in Journal of Research Into Personality. Maybe it is biased, maybe it doesn't really mean anything, but it's a lot of fun.

Sometimes Stealing is Accidental

I often wonder how much of what I write is original work and how much of it is the regurgitation of jokes, stories, ideas, phrases, etc. that I read in the past and forgot about.
Just now I was talking to a friend and made a joke about "finishing the internet." I liked this well enough that I briefly considered writing a brief post wherein I would finish the internet and discuss what I learned. But something seemed off, somehow familiar.
So I googled "finished the internet" and came up with about 800 hits. It turns out my joke came from a commercial, I can't remember what for-- possibly digital Cable, possibly car insurance.

My Influences
Woody Allen
E. B. White
P. G. Wodehouse
The Geico lizard

Malcolm Gladwell/ Bill Simmons / That infernal Santino

These past few months I have been living without cable, and while it has been liberating in a lot ways, the primary result has been an upswing in the amount of time I spend on the internet. Sunday afternoons wasted on marathons of Project Runway have made way for Sunday afternoons wasted at Slate and ESPN.com.
ESPN.com is pretty much just that, a waste, with the notable exception of Bill Simmons, whose column is smart and entertaining and full of fun pop culture references that help me feel better when I don't know what third rate basketball player he is talking about.
Yesterday Mr. Simmons posted a lengthy interview with Malcolm Gladwell which has changed my life in ways both small and large: On the small side of things I plan to go buy "Blink" this weekend. On the large side, I now feel that I understand my lack of motivation to achieve anything with what God/genetics/my surroundings (depending on your views) have given me.

Malcolm Gladwell: Why don't people work hard when it's in their best interest to do so?
The (short) answer is that it's really risky to work hard, because then if you fail you can no longer say that you failed because you didn't work hard. It's a form of self-protection. I swear that's why [Phil] Mickelson has that almost absurdly calm demeanor. If he loses, he can always say: Well, I could have practiced more, and maybe next year I will and I'll win then. When Tiger [Woods] loses, what does he tell himself? He worked as hard as he possibly could. He prepared like no one else in the game and he still lost. That has to be devastating, and dealing with that kind of conclusion takes a very special and rare kind of resilience. Most of the psychological research on this is focused on why some kids don't study for tests -- which is a much more serious version of the same problem. If you get drunk the night before an exam instead of studying and you fail, then the problem is that you got drunk. If you do study and you fail, the problem is that you're stupid -- and stupid, for a student, is a death sentence. The point is that it is far more psychologically dangerous and difficult to prepare for a task than not to prepare. People think that Tiger is tougher than Mickelson because he works harder. Wrong: Tiger is tougher than Mickelson and because of that he works harder.
The rest of the interview may be found here and I encourage you to go read it. And check out the rest of Mr. Simmons work while you;re there; it's all first-rate . Much better than Bravo programming to be sure.

The Lady, or the Bear-fucker?

The other day I went into a Barnes and Noble to buy a latte and was waited on by a girl named M------ K--- I knew in high school. From behind the counter at Barnes and Noble she was polite and kind, and since it was slow we spoke for a few minutes while her co-worker made my drink. I left confused, trying to reconcile this M------ K--- with the one I knew in high school. That M------- I remember as irritating, petty, and cruel, and though I can't remember many details of how or why she was this way, I feel certain that she was.
Less certain is this story I heard about her and her younger brother; I want to believe it but it seems too good to be true.
Growing up M------ had a favorite teddy bear, which she slept with every night. One day in high school it went missing. She looked for it everywhere, and after a few days gave it up for lost. Tears were shed.
Two weeks later she found the bear in her brother's laundry hamper. It had a hole gouged in its crotch and was covered with semen. M------, refusing to lose a treasured part of her childhood to her younger brother's unusual stuffed animal fetish, sewed up the hole, put it in the washing machine, and went back to sleeping with it as though nothing had happened.

Now, gentle reader, I would like your input. What is weirder, defiling a stuffed animal or sleeping with a stuffed animal knowing it has been so defiled? Can we make excuses for the brother, in the throws of early puberty, full of hormones, wondering what it would be like to have sex with an inanimate object? Can we understand M------, sentimental to the point that she can't give up a precious stuffed animal even after it has been encrusted with the ejaculate of a younger sibling? Who is more loathesome: M------ or her brother?
Please leave a comment with your opinion; I really am curious to hear what you think.

Wind

I've been reading Super Bowl articles all week and hating myself for it.
Is it that reading something purporting to be analytical makes me feel good? Do I fool myself into believing what I'm doing is in some way constructive, despite the fact that the "analysis" is mostly a bunch of ready-made catchphrases and silly overly-enthusiastic guesswork, all clustered around the single idea: "Pittsburgh runs the ball well?"

Sports analysis, never something I held in high esteem, seems even more ridiculous to me after seeing this article on the Guardian website. And still I know that after tomorrow's game I will go to ESPN.com and read what Bill Simmons has to say.
Not Skip Bayless though. That guys blows.

I never named my car.

And now it might be too late.
Today while looking for a parking spot outside 4th street cafe I accidentally drove my car into a passing Chevy Malibu. Nobody was hurt, but four cars were involved and my car got pretty fucked up and, sentimental person that I am, I'm a little choked up at the thought of never driving it again. After all, if this wasn't my first car, it was my first car that didn't suck, my first car that didn't leave me feeling ashamed and uncomfortable and wondering what the dirty stuff coming out of my AC vents was. It seems too important a thing to be referred to as "my black 2002 Saturn L-200."
But can you name a car posthumously? What would I call it? Does it have to be a funny name? What exactly is a funny name for a car?
If anyone has any suggestions, I think it might help me with my grieving process.

The Meek, Earth yet to be inherited, hit me up for spare change.

Now that I live in the city I interact with more poor people. Typically our interaction is brief, and ends with me either giving them a dollar or telling them that I am “strapped.” The homeless person then, depending on the circumstances, either asks for God to bless me, or rolls their eyes and acts huffy. The homeless can be surprisingly unsympathetic to the financial troubles of others.

The Panhandlers and Their Techniques, Reviews for December 2005-January 2006


12/28/05— A man approached me on my way home from a bar with the line “Hey, Big Man.” Still distraught over the four XXXL sweaters my Grandmother gave me three days prior, I ignored him. * 1/2

12/31/05— About 2 am on W Grace Street a man asked for “a piece” of a young lady I was walking home. No attempt was made at response. *

1/11/06— On my way to a bar I was approached by a man who told me the story of how he had just arrived in town, was lost, and had three hungry children in a car around the block. Could I help him get them some food? Wanting to believe his story, I gave him $2. ***

1/13/06— On my way to a work party I was approached by a man who told me the story of how his brother had been thrown in jail on “some bullshit,” and he had been left responsible for three hungry nieces and nephews, who were in a car around the block. Could I help him get them some food? Put off by his lack of creativity, I said that I was broke. **

1/22/06— On my way home from a friend’s apartment I was approached by a man who offered the line, “Brother, I’m homeless as a bitch. Help me get a drink?” I gave him $5. ****

You've already seen this, and some day we'll all stop e-mailing it to each other.

All good things deserve analysis.

My Interview with Jesus

One of the most important people in history, Jesus H. Christ, since his death and resurrection at the age of 32, has been a central figure of western civilization, hero to both the righteous and the wicked, cause of wars and political movements, and the subject of countless books movies and television shows.
I spoke with at his home in West Baltimore.

Me: So Jesus, I'd like to get this one out of the way right off the bat-- I posted a blog about you a couple weeks back.

Jesus: (laughs) Yeah, I thought you might ask me about that.

Me: Were you offended by it?

Jesus: Not really. I mean, everyone always gets so worked up anytime I'm portrayed as being in any way a sexual being. People need to calm down.

Me: Do you have a sexual preference then?

Jesus: (laughs) I won't go near that with a ten foot pole.

Me: Really?

Jesus: Alright, fine. I go both ways. Let's change the subject now.

Me: Okay, what do you think about the war in Iraq?

Jesus: Well, I'm pretty much against war.

Me: Always?

Jesus: Yeah, pretty much always. So I guess I hate the war in Iraq, but I try not to be too hard on the Bush administration.

Me: I realize that you are kind of known for your compassion, but I think that's a little much even from you.

Jesus: Yeah, I mean I get mad at them too, sometimes, but then I remind myself that most of those people have serious personal issues that have shaped them into what they are. If that happens to be repulsive, well, that's not 100% their fault.

Me: What sort of problems?

Jesus: Well Rumsfeld has had syphilis since the age of 23, and it's developed to the point where he is pretty much totally crazy now. Thinks he's talking to skunks and rabbits and baby deer. And George W. is autistic. Very high function, of course.

Me: Wow.

Jesus: Oh yeah. And then there's the child abuse. Loads of that. Cheney, for example. His father used to dress him up like Snow White and peg acorns at him in the backyard.

Me: What about Condoleeza Rice?

Jesus: Actually, she doesn't really have an excuse. She's just sort of a cunt.

Me: Changing topics, what's your take on John 3:16 signs at sporting events?

Jesus: I guess I'm okay with that. I mean, if you want to invoke my heavenly father sacrificing me to save man from eternal damnation, in the hopes that a man will be able to kick a ball between two poles, well I'm not going to stop you. You'll look like a dick, but whatever.

Me: Are you my homeboy?

Jesus: Uhm, frankly? No.
Look, I find that shirt really irritating. I mean, I know I love every one, you're all my children, blah blah blah, but it's just presumptuous you know? I mean, who the fuck are you man, calling me your homeboy? Not you specifically Andrew, I mean a general you. "You" (makes quote marks in the air with his hands) don't know me. Every one thinks they know me, everyone thinks I'm their fucking homeboy. It got old years ago, let me tell you.

Me: I'm going to throw out some names, and I'd like for you to say the first word or phrase that comes to mind.

Jesus: Alright.

Me: Marcus Vick.

Jesus: Troubled young negro.

Me: Barbra Streissand.

Jesus: Narcissitic clown with the voice that makes me weep.

Me: Pat Robertson.

Jesus: Surprisingly on target much of the time.

Me: Really?

Jesus: No, I was fucking with you.

Me: Well I'd like to thank you for taking time to speak to me, Jesus.

Jesus: That's It?

Me: Yeah, that's all I got.

Jesus: Wow, I can't believe it's done so soon. It's been a pleasure.

Productivity

Every morning after I put the kids on the bus I get a three hour break. I do wonderful things with that three hours: bill paying, errand running, napping, cooking. Sometimes I get home in time to catch the final ten minutes of Dawson's Creek on TBS. It's fun to imagine what events lead up to each day's tearful climax.

DAWSON: And... I want to figure out where we are. What's going on between us.
JOEY: And how do we do that, Dawson?
DAWSON: Oh, God... I'm sorry, Joe. I'm -- I'm not -- I'm just not all there. I mean, I can -- I can analyze somebody else until the cows wander home, but as soon as I turn all that indulgent perception on myself, it's like I completely lose connection between my heart and my head. It's like the two are incompatible, and I -- I can't get it together. And I really wish I could, because I'm so scared of what might happen if I don't. I... Does this make any sense to you at all?
JOEY: What are you so scared of, Dawson?
DAWSON: I don't know. I don't know.

Today I used my three hour break to watch an episode of Six Feet Under, and then I ate more than half a box of Corn Pops. My stomach hurts and the after-taste isn't pleasant either, but I'm not sorry.

For more memorable lines from Dawson's Creek you can go to the official website. You can also go there to buy your own personalized Dawson's Creek soundtrack-- you pick the songs, you pick the cover. Mine has Joey and Pacey on the cover, and features the song Juliette by Vanessa Daou, which played in Episode #615 while Joey shaved Pacey's goatee off. I always thought that was so moving.

Our Beethoven

Hey man.

The blog is OK. There's a BIG typo at the bottom: "Bath" instead of "bathe".
It's like some of your others in that you detail stupid things that people do- but in this case, instead of picking something that is illogical or ridiculous (i.e. Kenny Bevan hits a guy with his car and shrugs it off, or a politician pathetically calls Barnes and Noble to order his own book), you pick something that only seems like a problem for you.
Also, it's kind of a one-joker. Like, it would've been similar if it'd been titled "If Beethoven could talk to us today" and then it was one sentence: "Fuck you, cocksucking troglodytes".

Nick

That's an e-mail from my friend Nick. He is, of course, right about my post (January 2nd) being a one-note joke. However, I wanted to correct Nick's impression, and I suspect it's an impression I've probably given others, that this was my own angry comment on popular music. Not at all; popular music grows on me more all the time. And while admittedly I can be fairly angry, these days the only time I get really angry about bad music is when I can't turn it off, which is rare.
No, this post was about Beethoven, and what someone with his immense ego and bad temper would say if he knew what our culture was like and where he fit into it.
(Truthfully the post was about the phrases "vapid twadlings of garishly painted teenage concubines" and, "toneless whore voices writhing up and down the scale in sickening melismas whose sound compares unfavorably with that of my dog's bowel movements," and not much else).

I'm still thinking about Beethoven and popular music, specifically who in the world of contemporary popular music most resembles him? Who is our Beethoven? Here are a few possibilities:

The Wu-Tang Clan
The Wu-Tang are innovative and ambitious enough, but their work isn't consistent and they lack Beethoven's seriousness. It seems unlikely that Beethoven would make an appearance on Chappelle Show, let alone say "Konichiwa, bitches." (Side note: they call Raekwon "the Chef" because he cooks up all kinds of marvelous shit.)

Radiohead
As innovative and ambitious as the Wu-Tang, Radiohead is also completely without a sense of humor. However, Beethoven, as humorless as he was, did tend towards the optimistic side. Radiohead songs, which may fool you because of their often ironic titles, are frequently quite depressing.

Enya
Lacks intellectual heft.

Tim McGraw
Shares Beethoven's uncanny ability to dissect and get to the heart of a theme, though his themes are not as good. Loses points for whoring himself out to Monday Night Football, which Beethoven would never do. Never. Can you imagine if they reworked the Ninth Symphony each week to incorporate football highlights?

Colts, beauteous, godly sparks,
AFC South champions,
Drunk with fire, O Heavenly Manning,
We come unto your sacred RCA Dome.
Your audibles once again unite
That which boat parties sternly parted,
All men are made brothers
Where your perfect offense drives.

It would never work in German.

(For those who don't watch Monday Night Football, this past season at the halftime of every game they would play a highlights clip featuring Tim McGraw's heartbreaking "I Like It, I Love It," the lyrics reworked to describe the actions of the previous days football games. Apparently this was a major undertaking, and every Sunday night writers had to work furiously to get the words to Mr. McGaw so he could record them for the Monday night broadcast. And their hard work paid off in spades. SPADES. )

Go Hokies!

This past week Marcus Vick, quarterback for Virginia Tech and younger brother of NFL star Mike Vick, was dismissed from his team. Virginia Tech sited a long history of trouble with Mr. Vick, the most recent incident being his behavior at the Gator Bowl, where he was nationally televised stomping on a defensive lineman's leg.
This past weekend, still claiming that the Gator Bowl incident was an accident, Marcus Vick announced he would participate in this April's NFL draft.
Today he was arrested on charges that he threatened three teenagers with a gun at a McDonald's in Suffolk.

I can't help feeling that, as bad as Marcus Vick appears to be, it isn't really fair to single him out. Sure, he's selfish, reckless, and violent, but then, isn't college football meant for people like that?
Take for example this last season when, following the VA Tech/Miami game in which Miami gave Tech its first loss of the season, there was a drunken riot featuring numerous beatings, rapes, attempted rapes, a stabbing, and one incident in which an 18-year-old freshman was found beaten into a coma (He died later that week).
And then there's the fun story about the students at Tech and other schools who have football scholarships but live in subsidized housing so they can pocket their $500 a month housing stipends.

So Hokie fans commit rape and murder when their team loses and Hokie players cheat poor people out of subsidized housing, but God forbid the quarterback step on somebody's calf muscle, THAT's inexcusable.
All Marcus Vick did was drive under the influence, attempt to seriously injure a member of an opposing team, and threaten some kids with a gun; bad surely, but not murderin', rapin', cheatin' single welfare mothers type bad. He's not near ready for the pros.

If Beethoven could speak to us.

Children,
I address not only those of you who may be underaged, but all of you, because you are all children. Feeble-minded and insolent children whose parents never married.
I hate you. You are unworthy of my music, of my message of universal brotherhood, of the triumph of the human spirit through love. Unworthy because you choose to be so, because you prefer the vapid twadlings of garishly painted teenage concubines, their toneless whore voices writhing up and down the scale in sickening melismas whose sound compares unfavorably with that of my dog's bowel movements.
There is a terrible stench about you because you never bathe. Fuck you.
Ludwig van Beethoven