Aug
27
Favorite Songs (Embarrassing or Not) Part I: Duncan Sheik, Barely Breathing
Filed Under Uncategorized
I heard this song the other night on the kitchen radio. The radio stations down here are bizarre. When you move to new city, it doesn’t feel like home until you know the roads like a map printed on the inside of your eyelids and can dial the radio by sound alone.
Down here, the radio stations seem to come in various shades of shitty. In Columbus, we were spoiled with one honest-to-God independently owned rock station. Sure, maybe they did play The Cure too much, but it the nineteen classic rock stations we have now. At any moment, I can find at least three stations playing AC-DC. We’ve selected a more modern station for our kitchen listening pleasure. A station that doesn’t seem to employ any DJs. Sure, maybe we are supporting the first step in the robot rebellion, but we figure it’s worth the risk to not hear any AC-DC.
So this station is what we listen to during dinner, and the other night they played this Duncan Sheik song from 1997.
The thing about favorite songs is that you do not choose them. They choose you. It’s like that instant attraction across a smokey room. Later, in the cold light of day, you think of what your friends might say as you belt out the lyrics in the car on the way home from work. It’s a fling. No one needs to know.
I remember this song from the summer of 1997. I was twenty-two years old, a fresh college graduate working a useless summer jobs. I had a few months on my lease after school and a bit more youth to burn, so I spent the summer hanging out with my friends and working at a seed packing factory.
This was not career-building work, but it filled me with a lot of very funny stories. Like I said, I had a lot of youth to burn.
My job that summer was to drive a white van around town and pick up seed racks from grocery and hardware stores. To this day, even with an MBA, I cannot figure out the financial viability of this position. But I never asked questions. I just drove. First around town, then around Ohio, then deep into Michigan. Often, I rolled alone. I thought frequently of the book Blue Highways, in which William Least Heat-Moon traveled around the country in a physical and metaphorical search.
On longer trips, the seed company would rent a new Dodge van for me instead of the battered old Ford. I daydreamed about my own Blue Highways adventure, planning how I’d fill the empty cargo bay with shelves for gear and food. I’d sleep in a hammock, traveling all the river and mountain towns of the country, never to cut my hair again.
Very little hold he promise of freedom for a young man like an empty van. There’s a bumper sticker in there somewhere.
I had companions on most of the longer trips. Mostly older, mildly alcoholic men with no driver’s licenses. This was a realm of difference in my worldview.
On the day I think of when I hear this Duncan Sheik song, I had not only a companion on the trip, but a co-pilot. Further, he was actually driving. This was a rarity. I rode shotgun to an older college student. A new guy to the seed company. He was twenty-seven and blonde. I remember he seemed old to me. This is ridiculous, but I suspect it might have been his teeth. They were straight and white, but beginning to darken in the crevices from smoking. Something about these dark edges suggested age to me. But you really only see this when you’re twenty-two and still have full luster of your enamel.
Later, you learn that everyone’s teeth stain.
So I remember this guy and his flawed teeth. I do not remember his name. Craig or Greg or Sebastian or something. I do remember he drove very fast. We were going to a grocery store in Youngstown and I remember him cruising along somewhere between eighty and ninety miles an hour. The speed made it feel like a mission.
And I remember hearing this song. It was in heavy rotation that summer. I remember thinking of Jennie Garth from Beverly Hills 90210. I thought if I had a girlfriend like Jennie Garth — or even Jennie Garth herself — I would feel like this song all the time: lilty, poppy, misty, full-on chest crushing love for a girl on TV whose teeth were as white as a brand new Dodge cargo van.
At twenty-two, I was all about escape. That’s why songs took me so easily then. I was hiding from the real future behind an imaginary one.
Aug
18
The Lists of Others
Filed Under Books
I love me some lists. Those around me, close to me, know it. I’m always within easy access of several lists of varying degrees of usefulness. Things to do. Things to buy. Things to teach my son. The beauty of our modern age, our first world dilemma, is that you can break down just about anything into bullet points. Need to get out of debt? Need to end an unhealthy relationship? Need to convince a nation to support an unjust military act? Everything looks a little clearer in a list.
Don’t get me started about PowerPoint, though. This application nearly ruined the bullet point for everyone.
So I’ve got these lists. Mostly, I move them around into different notebooks. I cross things off, add new items. I move from expensive Moleskines to cheapo spiral pocket notebooks and back. It strikes me as an old man thing to do. I see myself as a very old man, scribbling furiously in a notebook, relatives eyeing me restlessly. Maybe an old man, maybe a mad scientist, whatever it takes.
Imagine my pleasure and surprise upon finding Sasha Cagen’s To-Do List: From Buying Milk to Finding a Soul Mate, What Our Lists Reveal About Us
I so wanted to like this book. I think about my own lists and what they say about me: that I am forever trying to control the uncontrollable, that I am always in the process of chasing down the ideal form of myself, that I have wanted to reorganize my filing cabinet since 2002. Truly, loads of therapy material here. I like looking at my old notebooks like looking at old photographs. I was curious to see what others put in their own lists.
But like old photographs, I realized that I find my own lists interesting because I am in them. I have context, related memories. I look at a list and remember what I was doing, how I was feeling. I’m prodded, like an old song or smell.
And for the same reason, I found myself tired of this book a quarter of the way in. I think the book is a fantastic concept, but it just didn’t work for me. I need more context–I need to know a person before I can care about their lists. This is what keeps me from rooting through coworkers’ desks while they are at lunch, I suppose. Although connected by theme and content, the lists in this book felt disjointed, superficial. I would have preferred seeing the accumulated lists of one person over time, a character sketch over a lifetime of crossed off tasks, a life described only in terms of plans–accomplished and otherwise.
Still, it’s good to know that I am not alone in my list-making compulsion. And I did learn a little something about myself. So I’ll keep browsing the $3 bin at Border’s for more surprises.
Aug
17
Shifting Roles
Filed Under Games
Back from my second trip to Gen Con. This year lived up to the expectations set last year. We were able to take more advantage of the events this time, play a few more games, and learn a bit more.
One of the most enjoyable things we did over the weekend was play a round of the Tower of Gygax. Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons and founder of Gen Con itself passed away this spring. This event was a tribute to Gygax, an 80 hour continuous dungeon crawl with a rotating cast of players using 1st edition rules.
The format made this event fun. Really fun. Each time slot was filled with two identical adventuring parties. You would play until you were killed, at which point your backup would take over and you’d warm the bench until that person met their own untimely demise. Given the ridiculous toughness of the dungeon, no one waited very long. One of my complaints with roleplaying games is that the action tends to get bogged down by caution. In contrast, this format rewarded brazen risk taking. Who cares if you bought it the hands of a giant ogre with a chocolate cake? You’d be back in the game shortly. And it was endlessly more entertaining for the rest of the party.
The Tower cemented an idea about RPGs that was forming in my head all weekend. I cut my geek teeth on D&D, meticulously copying character sheets and re-reading the Monster Manual in my bedroom as a kid. But RPGs have a serious time commitment. None of us can meet for four hours a week, every week, to maintain a massive campaign. My friend said almost this exact line as we rode in an elevator this weekend. And I agreed. I agreed, even after we had spend the morning playing a four hour standalone D&D game.
Why is it that we assume that to play an RPG at home we have to involved in a year long, multi-level campaign? Why can’t we play like we do at Gen Con? Why can’t we get together every month or so and play a discrete scenario for four hours? The Tower of Gygax challenged my preconceptions of how an RPG is to be played.
So I think we’re going to try a home game. We’ll invite some people over and play a short D&D scenario–maybe even Tower of Gygax-style–for an evening. Maybe it’ll work, maybe not. There are plenty of other games to play next time. Call it Den Con.
I must also say that a big part of the great fun we had playing the Tower of Gygax was due to the participants. With RPGs, the people sitting around the table always make or break the game. Keith Baker, game designer and writer, was an excellent and entertaining dungeon master. Also, Matthew Atherton, Feedback from Who Wants to be a Superhero?, was in our gaming group. He was an enthusiastic player and all-around good guy. Who knew you could find such good company in the Midnight to 2am slot?
And so Gen Con passes until next year. Hopefully, we can keep up the gaming spirit in the meantime.
Aug
7
Enlightenment
Filed Under Uncategorized
My son likes to get into things. He’s nearly a year and a half old, so rocks, sticks, alarm clocks, stove dials, electrical outlets, burglar alarm panic buttons, and chapstick all hold undeniable allure. When he is in our bedroom, he infallably goes for the dish on my nightstand where I keep watches and coins and other irrisistable objects. Normally, I stop him immediately, as my wife does not appreciate finding our son chewing on a coin. Even if it is one of those fancy new presidential dollars.
But tonight he picked up the flashlight I keep next to the bed and I let him keep it. It was too big to choke on and kept the little guy away from the clock radio. Also, have you ever seen a little kid walking around with a flashlight stop suddenly over the peculiar bright spot on the carpet? Hilarious.
Later this evening (after finding said flashlight under my desk, still burning), I noticed that the nylon holster for the light was on my nightstand. But now it contained a pen.
What a good idea, I thought. Some kind of pen holster would be incredibly useful. Think of it: a collection of pens, always handy. On your belt.
Hours later, I realized others call this a pocket protector.
I think we’re both doomed.
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