Alex Ross = The Shizznit

You should go here and read this. It made me wish I wrote it: therestisnoise.com
And then you should go buy the book, cause that rules too.

The Game of Life

“Patriotism… is the essence of identity,” said the boy in the wheelchair at the front of the classroom. “Can anyone tell me who said that?”
He didn’t realize that the rules of the assignment did not allow for questioning the audience. The audience knew it though, and nobody answered.
“Does anybody know?” he asked.
“Uh, no, I don’t know,” said one boy. The rest of us shook our heads.
I think Clay, the boy at the front of the room whose cerebral palsy confined him to a wheelchair, had expected a chorus of wrong answers—“Churchill!” “Benjamin Franklin!” “Thomas Paine!” “Jefferson! It must be Jefferson!” – and the lack of enthusiasm seemed to discourage him.
“I said it,” he finally said, proudly.
We all looked at each other. “I guess I should have figured that,” I whispered to a friend nearby.
Clay was an awkward case. On the one hand, he had a terrible disability and was certainly rising above it the best way he knew how. He was active in a number of clubs and extra-curricular activities, extremely opinionated, a personality around the school that was easily recognized by upper and lower classmen alike. On the other hand, he was also a total prick. His outspoken opinions frequently bordered on fascist, and “Patriotism is the essence of identity” was fairly typical, though only hinting at the militant xenophobia I had come to expect from him. Furthermore, and I know how terrible this sounds, he was constantly holding up his disability to those around him and asking to be congratulated for it.
“Yes,” his speech went on, “You might not think of it to look at me, but in spite of my physical disabilities I do a lot of thinking, and that quote is by me. That’s a thought that I had. And if you are willing to give life your all, you can have great thoughts of your own.”
After the speech was over Clay asked us what we thought, and we told him we didn’t think question and answer was allowed in the body of the speech, that maybe he should keep his questions rhetorical. He didn’t seem to know what rhetorical meant, and didn’t want to bother with it.
“But what did you think of the quote?” he wanted to know, “Weren’t you surprised that I came up with that?”
“Well, it doesn’t actually make a lot of sense,” someone ventured. “Isn’t identity kind of a personal thing? And I know that for a lot of people patriotism doesn’t enter into their sense of identity at all. And should it? Isn’t saying that your country defines who you are kind of dangerous?””
Clay got a little mad at this point, and there was a bit of heated discussion before our teacher brought us back on task.

Later that year, a basketball coach at our school died of cancer. There was a memorial one day in the gym, which was renamed in the coach’s honor. His widow was there, and several members of the school board, and the superintendent of schools spoke. Naturally our principal spoke too, and as he did I saw Clay’s mechanized wheelchair hum to a stop behind him.
“And now,” our principal announced, “The student council president will read a special poem by one of our own students, dedicated to the memory of Coach ______.”
And the SCA president stepped up and read Clay’s poem, “The Game of Life.”

“Here we go full court press
Oh no, I have to rest

I cannot rest now, I have a game
A game that might build our fame

On me my kids depend
This GAME I don’t want to end

I have to win this fight
I have to make it through the night

This is hard its true
But somehow I’ll get through

Here we go full court press
Oh no, I have to rest

I am tired, I fought to the end
On the Lord I now depend.”

And everyone solemnly bowed their heads. Few would have admitted it, but I believe a lot of people left that gym thinking differently about cerebral palsy.
“Why does a disability give you a right to have your doggerel read into a microphone at someone’s memorial service?” I imagine them thinking., “And why didn’t they find someone from the school literary magazine to write a poem? Aren’t they at least marginally more qualified?”
That’s certainly what I was thinking, but some thoughts aren’t appropriate to share. Clay taught me that. That, and that patriotism is the essence of identity.

I Suppose YOUR Favorite Movie is Titanic

Recently I was at my friends’ house, drinking a beer and trying too hard to be funny, when my friend Amy handed me a copy of Entertainment Weekly.
“Here,” she said, “you’ll think this is interesting.”
This issue of Entertainment Weekly ranked the top 100 everything of the last 25 years—top 100 TV shows, top 100 albums, top 100 books, top 100 plays, videogames, movies, etc. As is always the case with such things, I found myself howling at certain choices the editors had made. For example the greatest television program in the history of television programs was rated #11, behind the likes of Lost and Friends. I shook my fist and gnashed my teeth, and other people in the room decided to go get another drink or see how the grill was doing.
But then of course, there were the things I felt they had got right. Among these, Pulp Fiction was rated as the number one movie of the last 25 years.
“Can’t argue with that!” I thought, tipping my imaginary cap to the editors.
It reminded me of an anecdote from several years ago, when I went to purchase that excellent movie on VHS. I had received some horrible over-sized sweater from my grandmother, and had taken it back to Target for store credit. Target’s always got some great deals on movies, and I found Pulp Fiction, most important movie of the last 25 years, for the low low price of $9.99. Giddy with the thrill of a bargain well hunted, I approached the register.
“I’d like to purchase this video please!” I told the cashier, my eyes full of the innocence and sugar plums.
“Alright then,” said the cashier, a woman not unlike Lunch-Lady Doris. She regarded my purchase. She held it up at arm’s length, looking over her spectacles.
“Hmmm,” she said, “I don’t hold with this trash.”
(I realize I am taking creative liberties with the story, but I want to stress that she actually called my purchase ‘trash.’)
I looked back at her, agape. She returned my gaze, a look of certainty in her wrinkly eye-balls.
“Trash,” she said.
“It’s not trash actually. I don’t buy trash.” I told her.
Unimpressed, she bagged my purchase, and I fantasized about reporting her to her supervisor, but knowing all the while I wouldn’t follow through. I hope that somewhere she is looking at Entertainment Weekly right now, high arbiter of popular culture, and reconsidering her opinion.
“Trash.” What a stupid bitch.

Unsolicited Advice

When I first got out of college I worked a few temp jobs. One of these was at S & K corporate headquarters. At the time S& K had a policy of sending friendly little postcards to its customers, and these all traveled through my little mailroom, where I applied postage and mailed them. I also mailed the following:

Dear Dan Bjornson of S & K Famous Brands Store #898,
My name is Andrew, and I was recently hired through a temp agency to work in the mailroom of S & K Famous Brands Corporate Headquarters in Richmond, Virginia. One of my many duties there is to sort and mail the many hundreds of “Thank You” postcards written by S & K salesmen to their customers every week. This doesn’t take as long as you might think, and I end up with quite a lot of free time. Sometimes I use that free time to look at the postcards that I am sorting. On one such occasion I happened on some of your cards, and I have some advice for you that I think might prove useful.
On some of your postcards you have included the following sentence:
“I appreciate the opportunity to service you.”
Perhaps it did not occur to you, but your use of the word “service” implies a sexual relationship between you and your customer. The word you want to use is serve.
Keep up the good work!
Your friend,
Andrew Everton

Championship Fun Team

The children have four weeks of school left, and that means my day care will become a day camp. The foundation of day camp is the small group—each teacher has fifteen or so children that they are personally responsible for, and these fifteen eat lunch together, have quiet time together, sit together through announcements, and compete together for points. Yes, we have competitions, and the kids answer trivia questions, run relay races, and build model skyscrapers to earn points for their team. The team with the most points at the end of the summer is the winner, and receives an extravagant prize, in addition to the glory that winning your daycare’s summer contest brings.
One of the first acts of summer camp is picking your team’s name, and many people let their kids do this. The kids get together and brainstorm names, and then vote on the one they like best. This results in team names like “The Shining Stars,” “The Super Stars,” and “The Star Olympics,” all of which were team names my first summer. I can’t deal with a star-based name, so I help the kids out. I brainstorm the names, and then they pick which one they like best. They still get input, and they end with a way cooler name. Like “The Ninja-Pirates” my team’s name from my first summer.
Here now, a list of ideas for this summer’s team of champions:

The Vampire-Samurai
The Zombie-Bears
The Jedi-Donkeys
The Sumo-Dwarves
The Mongol-Sharks
Captain Ahab’s Surf-Nazis
Revenge of the Belligerent Hummingbird
Velociraptor MBAs
The Sullen Pre-Adolescents
The Doctors of Philosophy
The Cobra Kai
Team Jesus
Benji Compson’s Freedom Commandos
Championship Fun Team


Postscript--
My team didn't like my choices. They decided to go with the name "Chapter Imagination." I'm kind of embarassed, but letting them pick their name was the right thing.

The Pirate Intestines That Bind

“Do you want to hear something gross?”
I was walking on the playground with a fourth grade girl in my group who I liked fairly well. She is a well-behaved, quiet girl who loves to read and whom my boss has repeatedly referred to as “dainty,” – not the type of kid you expect to hear gross things from.
“Well, okay, sure.”
“When pirates wanted to punish someone, they would cut their belly open and then force them to dance until their intestines fell out.”
I was sort of dumbfounded by this.
“Yuck,” I said, “I was not expecting you to say something that genuinely gross. I thought you were going to tell me that Harry Jacobs eats his boogers or something.”
“Haha, no way, everybody knows that already.”
“Well I have one for you now.”
“Okay, I’m ready.”
“Some plains Indians had a ritual where they would make two slits in the pectoral muscles, do you know what that means?” I pointed to my chest. “They would put a cut on either side, and then they would slide a rod through one hole and out the other, like threading a needle through cloth. And then one person would stand on either side of the man, one holding each end of the rod, and then they would lift the person up in the air.”
“Ewwwww, that’s sick, Mr. Everton! Ew ew ew ew!” She smiled broadly at me, “Teachers don’t normally tell kids stuff like that.”
“You’re right. You’re not upset by it though, are you? I hope I didn’t just give you nightmares.”
“Oh no, I’m fine. I like gross stuff.”
She went off to collect caterpillars. Just at that moment we had become friends.