So this article in yesterday's New York Times attracted a lot of feedback/opinion on the Times' comment section, Twitter, and Facebook; with the majority seeming (in my highly unscientific analysis) to back the article's premise — that college graduates are fleeing former industrial strongholds in the Midwest and elsewhere (places like Dayton, Ohio, which was the focal point of the article, but also — and even more so, really — smaller cities like my hometown and current location of Rockford, Illinois for larger, culturally richer, and more diverse metropoles like Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle, and of course New York, among others.)
I don't dispute the article's main thrust, which boils down to something like "the better-educated you are, the better-suited you are to enjoy a larger city's cultural offerings and the more likely you are to want to be in a similarly well-educated populace." I myself have zero intention of remaining in Rockford, and intend to head to Seattle, New York, hell, even considering Melbourne, Australia when the time comes. Yet at the same time, returning to Rockford — particularly as it was unplanned, that itself a lengthy and separate story for those who don't know it — has forced me to reevaluate this unaesthetically-pleasing, benighted, depressed, mismanaged, crime-infested city. It may be the case that the young and educated get the hell out of here as soon as they can. I graduated from Guilford High School here in 2003, and promptly went to New Hampshire for my college education, then to Frankfurt, Germany, and Boston. In another words, half a country and half a world away.
But — and maybe this is just my Midwestern sentimentality peering through — there's a sense of community here I didn't experience in Hanover, Frankfurt, or Boston. That could be due to the "stay calm and carry on" sense of resilience among Rockfordians or maybe even what's often referred to as "Midwest nice" (which is true, by the way, if not necessarily sincere). I guess what I'm trying to say is that for a smallish Midwest city like Rockford (160K pop., 330Kish metro area), I'd be willing to stay here if it seemed possible to establish a youth culture here, to open a business, or run for office. I spent my teens hating this city, and have only recently, since returning, learned to appreciate the good things about it — and there are many. So no, I don't foresee staying here, but I don't think the so-called Heartland is really dead; it's just going to take a creative mix of public policy measures and private entrepreneurship to create the kind of climate that fosters, celebrates, and can afford an outstanding creative class.
Update: Edited twice to correct two minor punctuation errors.
5.28.2012
My Top 100 Books
Created this list just 'cause; feel free to comment and disagree, but this is my top 100 novels ever written:
My best hundred
works of literary fiction (limited to that category specifically; there are
many authors and works I love and admire not listed here and intend no writer
any disrespect). Obviously these are my own views and in no way represent any
organization, author, agent, or anyone else. Also, this list is based upon my
own 26-year history with literature, with the acknowledgement that there are
many works I have not yet had the opportunity to read.
100-80:
100) Ensalo sobre a cegueira (Blindness), José
Saramago.
99) L’Étranger (The Stranger), Albert Camus
98) V., Thomas Pynchon
97) Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow
96) Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis
95) Nana, Émile Zola
94) Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien
(okay putting Tolkien above the previous folks could elicit some controversy,
but think it justifiable; and purely sentimentally, Tolkien I came to when I
was 11, the above quite later).
93) Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov
92) A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man,
James Joyce
91) For Whom The Bell Tolls, Ernest
Hemingway
90) Il Gattopardo (The Leopard), Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
89) Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
88) Return Of the Native, Thomas Hardy
87) Neuromancer, William Gibson
86) El Otoño del Patriarco (Autumn of the
Patriarch), Gabriel García Márquez
85) Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
84) A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
83) Pnin, Vladimir Nabokov
82) Il Barone Rampante (The Baron in the Trees),
Italo Calvino
81) 村上 春樹
(Norwegian Wood), Haruke
Murakami
80) Light in August, William Faulkner
79-60:
79) Hav, Jan Morris
78) Malina, Ingeborg Bachmann (some might
find this controversial, but a truly game-changing novel by an underappreciated
author)
77) The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene
76) Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse (an overrated
novel, while quite excellent, that gets more attention than his better works,
to which we’ll get)
75) Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann
(though it won the 2009 National Book Award, I feel this work has been
overlooked of late to some extent; it really is a wonderful portrait of a place
and time)
74) Light in August, William Faulkner
73) Tender Is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
72) Cannery Row, John Steinbeck
71) The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
70) Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney
69) The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
68) War and Peace (Вoйнá
и мир), Leo Tolstoy
(Overrated, Anna Karenina so much
better… to which we’ll get)
Just ‘Cause: Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby (just cause I’m
an Arsenal nut and take “Gooner” as a high compliment)
67) Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee
66) Бесы (The Possessed/Demons), Fyodor Dostoevsky
65) 海辺のカフカ (Kafka On the Shore), 村上 春樹 (Haruki Murakami)
64) Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
63) Portnoy’s Complaint, Philip Roth
62) Rabbit, Run, John Updike
61) Nesnesitelná lehkost bytí (The
Unbearable Lightness of Being),
Milan Kundera
60) Pamela, Samuel Richardson
59-40:
59) Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner
(have to say, after four readings, I don’t get this book, but yet I have no
issues recognizing its brilliance. So… you’re an ass, Faulkner.)
58) Раковый Корпус (Cancer Ward), Алекса́ндр
Иса́евич Солжени́цын (Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn)
(better than “One Day,” underrated, though “Gulag Archipelago” remains
Solzhenitsyn’s crowning achievement, just not eligible for this list. Wish it
were fiction.)
57) David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
56) What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,
Raymond Carver
55) Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
54) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken
Kesey
53) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter
S. Thompson
52) Buddenbrooks, Thomas Mann
51) Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes
Saavedra (might seem low for many, but really, this book – while good – grabs
the top spot or near there on similar lists only because it was one of the
first)
50) Les Misérables, Victor Hugo
49) Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
48) Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
47) Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
46) The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford
45) The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
44) O Evangelho Segundo Jesus Cristo (The Gospel According to Jesus Christ),
José Saramago
43) Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, David
Foster Wallace
42) Amor En los Tiempos del Cólera, Gabriel
García Márquez
41) Bleak House, Charles Dickens
40) Under Western Eyes, Joseph Conrad
39-20:
39) On the Road, Jack Kerouac
38) Falconer, John Cheever
37) The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
(first tattoo, have to say, is the Tristero horn on my left underarm; one of
the books that changed my entire view of fiction and what it could do)
36) The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
(Not a huge personal fan either of Hawthorne or this book, but good is good.)
35) Native Son, Richard Wright
34) To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
33) Finnegan’s Wake, James Joyce
32) Appointment in Samarra, John O’Hara
31) An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser
30) The Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
29) Dubliners, James Joyce
28) 源氏物語 (The Tale of Genji, Murasaki Shikibu
27) The Adventures of Augie March, Saul
Bellow
26) Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad
25) Los detectives salvajes, (The Savage Detectives) Roberto Bolaño
Ávalos
24) Cairo Trilogy (okay, kind of a cop-out,
but they just go together), نجيب محفوظ (Naguib Mahfouz)
23) The Wind-Up Bird
Chronicle, 村上 春樹 (Haruki
Murakami)
22: 1984, George Orwell (to be straight
honest, the other two iconic English-language dystopian novels Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451 – not to mention Margaret Atwood’s excellent
two-released-of-three trilogy that began with Oryx & Crake and really came into its own with The Year of the Flood as well as Евге́ний Ива́нович Замя́тин's Мы (We ) [(Yevgeni Zamyatin's We) (and I have no clue yet how
punctuation works in Russian, so added an apostrophe 's' there anyway) also
came under considerable consideration, as they've all impacted the manner in
which I regard our future and their merit as fucking good writing) and Orwell
has become the defining metonymic term for any form of totalitarianism, state
surveillance, and denial of pleasure.
Its literary merits might fall short of others on this list, but as far as
impact goes, I believe it's hard to argue that 1984 isn't near first on the list of books you read at fifteen and
realize that the world is far more complicated, implicated, and fraught than
you had thought).
21: Jane Eyre, (Brontës had to happen, yo. I'm
as unhappy about it as you might be. Or ecstatic, I dunno.)
20: Pride and Prejudice, (see above but with reference to Austen)
19-1: Now it gets
real.
19: Twilight, Stephanie Meyer
(if you read that
and believed it for more than three seconds, I owe you something).
19: Преступлéние
и наказáние (Crime and Punishment), Фёдор
Миха́йлович Достое́вский (Fyodor Dostoevsky); have to say, it was hard to put Crime and Punishment this low, as it was
really the novel that – back at age 15 in my intro to C++ computer programming
class back in my sophomore year of high school (with a teacher named Lyle who
always had a thermos at hand and always smelled strongly of cleaning fluid...
if you catch my drift. Did I mention this class was at 8:45 am?) really opened
my eyes for the first time to what great writing could accomplish, and to
themes and concepts that have since perpetually caused me many a headache. I
think, though, C&P's heavy-handedness re: redemption
places it lower than a couple of Dostoevsky's other works.
18: Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad. I
hated this book the first time I read it, and have no qualms saying so. I
thought Conrad’s prose ugly (to put it kindly) and repetitive: how many times
does one really need to write “inscrutable” or some variation. I had to reread
it for my senior AP English class, and really gained a new appreciation for
Conrad’s haunting prose (i.e. the “whited sepulchre” reference to the Book of
Matthew) as well as a grasp of the overarching theme of a Nietzschean anti-hero
consumed by his own power and the lust for more. That concept has become almost
cliché nowadays, what with Cersei Lannister and Walter White running around,
but it was Conrad who gave us that in its crispest and most phantasmagoric form
(as well as Brando saying “The horror, the horror…”).
17: Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne.
Nothing to say really but hilarious.
16. Der Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse. I rank
this novel so high not only because I think it shows perhaps the complementary
angle to L’Étranger of the isolated
and seeking white male of indeterminate but relatively young age following a
long-brewing impulse, etc., but more so because I guess I read it at the right
age and in the right place.
15. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov. The greatest
love story ever written.
14. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
The greatest love story written to a generation.
13. Go Down, Moses, William Faulkner.
Perfect.
12. Doktor Faustus (Doctor Faustus), Thomas Mann
11. Das Glasperlenspiel (The Glass-Bead Game), Hermann Hesse. My
physics teacher as a junior in high school gifted me this book when I
graduated, and I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time; read it again later in
English and then in German, and am more grateful to him with each passing day.
10. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace. One
of those books that changes one’s entire view of fiction and what it’s capable
of.
9. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark
Twain
8. Cien Años de Soledad, Gabriel García
Márquez. Perhaps cliché, but one of the most radiant and memorable works I’ve
ever read.
7. Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain), Thomas Mann, stunningly brilliant work, still
need to read in German.
6. Братья Карамазовы (The Brothers Karamazov), Фёдор Миха́йлович Достое́вский (Fyodor
Dostoevsky). Putting this so low has some basis – and don't get me wrong, Karamazov was a book I cherished
reading, even in the Constance Garnett verson. Certainly one of the most
amazing books ever written, but No. 2 on my Dostoevsky list, second to the
winner of this quasi-competition.
5. Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
4. Ulysses, James Joyce
3. Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon;
Pynchon changed everything for me in terms of fiction. I wasn’t even aware of
the kind of things he’s been capable of until I read “49” and “Gravity’s
Rainbow.” Stunning work.
2) Анна Каренина (Anna Karenina), Leo Tolstoy, Need I say more? The
Kitty-Levin story alone would put it in the top 20, not to even mention the
rest of a stunning stunning novel.
1) Фёдор
Миха́йлович Достое́вский (The Idiot,
Fyodor Dostoevsky) — just a novel without flaws. From the naïveté of Prince
Myshkin to the diabolical Nastasya Filippovna, just perfect.
As Walter
Benjamin once said, all great works of art either dissolve a genre or create
one, and these are the books that accomplished both in my amateur opinion.
Welcome any feedback, as I’m sure I missed works deserving of acclaim.
Update: Huh, I have Heart of Darkness on here twice. Leave it at #18, and #55 we'll just leave open. My bad.
Update: Huh, I have Heart of Darkness on here twice. Leave it at #18, and #55 we'll just leave open. My bad.
5.27.2012
Quarterlife
(Not the show, just to get that out of the way, though it's worth your time)
This is going to be a somewhat longish and relatively rambling post (as are most, no?). I'm 27 on the day I'm writing this, so "quarterlife" for me would extend to 108 — which I doubt I'll get to and am not really sure I would even want to. But "quarterlife" generally includes pretty much the entire time between about 24 and the day you turn 30. As well, pretty much the point in an educated, privileged, ambitious, lonely and relatively young existence that those are the years you figure out what you want to do with yourself — because there's so much you want to do, and so many people you want to become. So you try on identities and roles, work jobs you're — on paper, at least — overqualified for, fuck as often as possible and with whomever's willing. You move back home if that's where quarterlife takes you, hit your parents up for money, wake up with extreme guilt, and then forget it happened: until next month, at least.
Now just as an aside, I do have to mention that I've grown up and become an adult in the confines of a very middle-class family. I consider myself privileged for the facts of having had hard-working and loving parents who (irrationally in my mind, but we'll get to that) support me in a variety of ways even when I'm a complete wreck (and those who know me well know that said situation is not an infrequent scenario). My father got his B.A. when he was 37. My mother has been a nurse for decades, even as nursing has gone from a respected profession to merely the ground crew of corporate healthcare. I received grants to attend the wonderful college I attended, and couldn't have done so without those grants. And yeah, I've been paying loans since they began coming due and likely will for quite some time. "Privilege" means having had the chance to earn those opportunities, not being given them. And if that smells bitter, let me just say that I have nothing against anyone who grew up in a household where that sort of progression was assumed and paid for. Not at all. You can't control the circumstances into which you were brought up, just what you do given them.
With regard to the above, the point is that you become who you are by having a foundation and finding your personal direction.
Maybe if you're like me, quarterlife insidiously helps you develop the will to do the sorts of things you never had the courage to do before. In my case, the above have so far included piercings, tattoos, coming to terms with my bisexuality, moving from a rebellious atheism to a more considered and more serious and defensible (though still in flux) sense of spirituality, and developing the sort of "fuck it" attitude I always admired when I was younger, but never had the confidence to adapt. Maybe that's quarterlife or just me; I can't speak for anyone else, and I've always lacked in confidence. I've been bulimic since I was 14 and a quasi-functioning alcoholic since about 20, though overcoming both for a while now with all I can muster.
I fell in love (many times) then transitioned to believing that love wasn't meant for me. Not quite falling out of love, but just losing the belief that anyone could love me -- that there was something fundamental about me that disqualified me from that part of human experience. I still am unsure of this particular bit. I like to think there's a boy or a girl out there for me, but don't know, and for the purposes of this post, am okay with that lack of knowledge.
The attitude is something I believe I've come to belatedly. I don't mind being a late-bloomer, so to speak, though I've yet to really bloom even. There was a time when I would have minded that, would have cared what people thought about me coming to realizations that most people go through in their teens or college years, but that I've waited until my mid-to-late-20s to work on. But whatever. The past few years of my life have been pretty shitty. I tried to kill myself with all intent twice and spent time on a psych ward for each attempt. I lost my one-time fiancée and best friend from my own stupidity and reprehensible behavior (the guilt I bear in that regard I will carry to my grave). I had to move home from Boston to dear old Rockford, Illinois just to stay alive. That might sound dramatic, but really, that's kind of where things were at the time. And yet, even though that sort of interruption was nothing I'd planned on as a callow collegiate, I'm grateful for it. I'm a better person now for having been a bad person and a broken person then. Not where I want to be yet, but I've been to the deep and dark places, and I survived.
Quarterlife does something else. It forces you to critically assess what you believe. That may sound banal, but really it's a big fucking deal. I studied intellectual history and philosophy in college, and spent a year after graduating mostly drinking South African pinotage [at €2.99, who could argue? and playing World of Warcraft (which wasn't the complete time sink of which one might accuse me with a great deal of justification; I met several friends whose friendship I value highly and with whom I am still in touch. This might come across as a means of self-justification, but as I said, our new world functions in pretty weird ways)] in Frankfurt am Main. But also studying philosophy, working through a crisis with my then-girlfriend and meditating, often along the bike/walking/running path on the Main River and trying to assess those questions. As an undergraduate, I had always assumed I would go to law school, make some bank, and move toward a career in politics. Naturally, like many quarterlifers, I realized after taking the LSAT and starting applications that it wasn't for me. I had to do something in which I could work, work hard, and come home at the end of the day and not have lingering qualms about what exactly I had done that day. Some days I would run along the Main, on nice days I'd grab a baguette at the nearest Bäckerei and just stare out at the water, thinking about Adorno or the Stockhausen my American friend there had just introduced me to, or missing the girl, or just fate, existence, or what exactly the fuck I'm doing looking at a river and thinking these things. Law may still be in my future — I think I'd be good at it, and no, I don't really know what that means. We shall see.
Quarterlife is by its very nature a time of transition, one that doesn't necessarily fit within age brackets, and one for which the very designation (though I think it fairly accurate and almost cliché) can apply equally to anyone trying to figure out who the hell they are. I'm always a bit suspicious of folks who don't doubt, and ones who know with certainty who they want to be at 22 or 25 come across as particularly suspect. I think — and I imagine most would agree — that when you're my age you really don't have a fucking clue what you're talking about, and if you say you do regardless, you're full of shit. Of course, it used to be different back in the day, and I imagine (without researching) that there's a practical army of sociologists who could tell you exactly why that is. But whatever. We live here and now today, in a world shaped by our forebears who couldn't tweet a picture of whatever they're eating at that moment on their iPhone.
Quarterlife is a process, I'm coming to find. One that's often no fun, no matter how many hookups or summer evenings passing a J and leaning back in awe of strewn stars. It's hard work, yo. Maybe I'm just late to the game, or don't really know what I'm headed for, what to do tomorrow, that kind of thing. Yet I find quarterlife as exhilarating as it is frustrating and incomprehensible. All of the anger, pain, confusion, rage, desire, desperation seem to point toward some sort of image of yourself as that person you'd like to be, even — and especially if — that image remains blurry. Quarterlife means learning things about yourself you hadn't known, reading books you hadn't heard of until today, seeing films and shows you might not have seen, exploring a faith you didn't know you had. Quarterlife presents you with the courage to open up your door and go for a run in November, to open up that Word file and start writing, to open up a business, to run for office. Quarterlife presents the possibility of impacting in new ways the lives of those about whom you care.
So it's exciting. I'm at a sort of transition, I guess. To come back to this part of my own story, in 2009 I attempted with all seriousness suicide. I don't have a problem admitting that — I think an honesty about mental illness and suicidal thoughts can only help prevent that outcome and encourage those suffering from depression to seek help. I know I'm grateful that my ex-girlfriend found me in time and called 911. She and I aren't exactly in contact anymore, but she saved my life. At the time I didn't really give much of a shit if I lived or died — and that itself is a difficult thing to explain to someone who has had the fortune of not finding her/himself in that position. It's a shitty thing to write, but I found myself disappointed to come to in the hospital. Shitty, not out of guilt or out of the horrific experience of drinking activated charcoal (which tastes something like an unholy admixture of Pepto-Bismol and gasoline — not that I've consumed gasoline, but the smell of gasoline was unmistakable in the taste of charcoal).
It wasn't really a part of my life of which I'm proud. I did some pretty unforgivable things that, as I mentioned, I'll probably have in mind on my deathbed, whenever that happens. I won't go into details, but I bring it up to say that I'm learning it's harder to forgive yourself than it is almost anyone else. This is part of quarterlife too, I think. Arriving at the mental and emotional stage where you can look back at stupid shit you've done, bad things, even crimes and come to the point where you can truly believe that you're judged for your actions, but that all you have today is today, that yesterday's gone, and tomorrow's a new day. I think that's the kind of thing that quarterlife brings into sharper resolution.
Now, I find myself here at 2:20 a.m. CST on my 27th birthday, looking out my window and seeing a nearly full moon sliding through drifting clouds. When I was a teenager, I used to go for walks in the middle of the night, just for the pleasure of being alone, the moon and me. I'm a night person; anyone who knows me even marginally knows that, even if from just looking at the timestamps of my Facebook comments or tweets. I've always wanted to be a morning person, and I still do. There was a period encompassing my sophomore year of high school and about the first half of my junior year when I'd wake up between four and 4:30 just to sit in a dilapidated armchair and read Will Durant, Emerson, and Kant. Yet what the night offers is the sort of complete solitude the day doesn't. No birds chirping, coffee beans to grind, cat yelling at you, just you, the moon, a good glass of whiskey, and a blank page with a blinking cursor staring at you.
To that end, quarterlife is possibilities. There have been so many times I've traded glares with that fucking cursor, not even to mention the paper clip that managed to insult a paper clip (a feat I had previously thought impossible), but didn't have the courage to type out a single word. Or, if I did, I wouldn't save it. Quarterlife has brought me to a place where frankly, I don't give a fuck. I'm going to sit in my uncomfortable desk chair, throw on some CSS, and just let it go. It's likely horrifically bad. I'll probably not disseminate any of it, but quarterlife has brought me to a place where I don't give a shit frankly, and I'm going to write even if it's terribad. (On the off-, off-chance it isn't). I couldn't do that when I was 21 or even 24. I watch these YouTube clips of 11-year olds stunning an audience mostly out of awe. There's no way in hell I could have done that at their age I think, followed immediately by Shit there's no way in hell I could do that now. But now at quarterlife? I don't give a shit.
Our generation (which large and corporately-funded media organizations have preciously dubbed "Millennials") often gets painted in hugely optimistic terms as far as our savvy with technology, our entrepreneurist tendencies, our ability to "network" and effectively utilize social media platforms —to paraphrase some of the stock lines of the global companies seeking to hire we shiny avatars of clean living — makes us ideal candidates for a lifetime of ladder-climbing. This is hardly new. It was referred to as "the rat race" as early as the late 1970s. Yet the paradigm is similar in many ways to the preceding decade, the '60s. This, of course, is borne out each Sunday night on AMC's Mad Men, which as we all know by now, traces the lives of various folks of various ages and backgrounds during the heyday of Madison Avenue, and whose lives are all in various forms of turmoil, likely gin-related. The comparison to the '60s is apt, though, for both the separation between those with their eyes set on Madison Avenue or that sort of track and the rest as well as the simmering but hardly-discussed undercurrent of dissatisfaction and loneliness among those of us dubbed the "most-connected."
I'm a socialist, have no problem saying that, but I'm not antithetical to entrepreneurship or capitalism in general, and I think there are some encouraging trends in business — fueled largely by quarterlifers —leading to greater attention on individual employees and the social impact of the business. That dissatisfaction and loneliness I believe hiding in the background for so many of my fellow quarterlifers is effecting positive change in many organizations, and that's a good thing. But there's still the feeling of alienation that our iPhones and twitter accounts can't bridge. It's not the kind of thing we can talk about really, though it's my belief that it's pretty much universal. Quarterlife presents one forwardly with that question: do you confront your demons, your existential angst, and surpass them, or do you let them take charge?
In all, quarterlife is a tremendously confusing experience, and one for which I was not ready and didn't even realize I was embarking on until I was well on the way. Yet, it's also been the most richly rewarding time of my young life, not always happy (rarely, even) and full to the brim with mistakes, bad decisions, weaknesses, flaws, et al; but I've learned every (mis-)step of the way, and hope I can take that knowledge forward for whatever and wherever awaits me. So ¡Viva Quarterlife!
Note: I began drafting this on 08 April, which was the birthday alluded to; just finished it today and elected not to change that initial reference. So please no birthday wishes until April 2013 if you so choose =D
This is going to be a somewhat longish and relatively rambling post (as are most, no?). I'm 27 on the day I'm writing this, so "quarterlife" for me would extend to 108 — which I doubt I'll get to and am not really sure I would even want to. But "quarterlife" generally includes pretty much the entire time between about 24 and the day you turn 30. As well, pretty much the point in an educated, privileged, ambitious, lonely and relatively young existence that those are the years you figure out what you want to do with yourself — because there's so much you want to do, and so many people you want to become. So you try on identities and roles, work jobs you're — on paper, at least — overqualified for, fuck as often as possible and with whomever's willing. You move back home if that's where quarterlife takes you, hit your parents up for money, wake up with extreme guilt, and then forget it happened: until next month, at least.
Now just as an aside, I do have to mention that I've grown up and become an adult in the confines of a very middle-class family. I consider myself privileged for the facts of having had hard-working and loving parents who (irrationally in my mind, but we'll get to that) support me in a variety of ways even when I'm a complete wreck (and those who know me well know that said situation is not an infrequent scenario). My father got his B.A. when he was 37. My mother has been a nurse for decades, even as nursing has gone from a respected profession to merely the ground crew of corporate healthcare. I received grants to attend the wonderful college I attended, and couldn't have done so without those grants. And yeah, I've been paying loans since they began coming due and likely will for quite some time. "Privilege" means having had the chance to earn those opportunities, not being given them. And if that smells bitter, let me just say that I have nothing against anyone who grew up in a household where that sort of progression was assumed and paid for. Not at all. You can't control the circumstances into which you were brought up, just what you do given them.
With regard to the above, the point is that you become who you are by having a foundation and finding your personal direction.
Maybe if you're like me, quarterlife insidiously helps you develop the will to do the sorts of things you never had the courage to do before. In my case, the above have so far included piercings, tattoos, coming to terms with my bisexuality, moving from a rebellious atheism to a more considered and more serious and defensible (though still in flux) sense of spirituality, and developing the sort of "fuck it" attitude I always admired when I was younger, but never had the confidence to adapt. Maybe that's quarterlife or just me; I can't speak for anyone else, and I've always lacked in confidence. I've been bulimic since I was 14 and a quasi-functioning alcoholic since about 20, though overcoming both for a while now with all I can muster.
I fell in love (many times) then transitioned to believing that love wasn't meant for me. Not quite falling out of love, but just losing the belief that anyone could love me -- that there was something fundamental about me that disqualified me from that part of human experience. I still am unsure of this particular bit. I like to think there's a boy or a girl out there for me, but don't know, and for the purposes of this post, am okay with that lack of knowledge.
The attitude is something I believe I've come to belatedly. I don't mind being a late-bloomer, so to speak, though I've yet to really bloom even. There was a time when I would have minded that, would have cared what people thought about me coming to realizations that most people go through in their teens or college years, but that I've waited until my mid-to-late-20s to work on. But whatever. The past few years of my life have been pretty shitty. I tried to kill myself with all intent twice and spent time on a psych ward for each attempt. I lost my one-time fiancée and best friend from my own stupidity and reprehensible behavior (the guilt I bear in that regard I will carry to my grave). I had to move home from Boston to dear old Rockford, Illinois just to stay alive. That might sound dramatic, but really, that's kind of where things were at the time. And yet, even though that sort of interruption was nothing I'd planned on as a callow collegiate, I'm grateful for it. I'm a better person now for having been a bad person and a broken person then. Not where I want to be yet, but I've been to the deep and dark places, and I survived.
Quarterlife does something else. It forces you to critically assess what you believe. That may sound banal, but really it's a big fucking deal. I studied intellectual history and philosophy in college, and spent a year after graduating mostly drinking South African pinotage [at €2.99, who could argue? and playing World of Warcraft (which wasn't the complete time sink of which one might accuse me with a great deal of justification; I met several friends whose friendship I value highly and with whom I am still in touch. This might come across as a means of self-justification, but as I said, our new world functions in pretty weird ways)] in Frankfurt am Main. But also studying philosophy, working through a crisis with my then-girlfriend and meditating, often along the bike/walking/running path on the Main River and trying to assess those questions. As an undergraduate, I had always assumed I would go to law school, make some bank, and move toward a career in politics. Naturally, like many quarterlifers, I realized after taking the LSAT and starting applications that it wasn't for me. I had to do something in which I could work, work hard, and come home at the end of the day and not have lingering qualms about what exactly I had done that day. Some days I would run along the Main, on nice days I'd grab a baguette at the nearest Bäckerei and just stare out at the water, thinking about Adorno or the Stockhausen my American friend there had just introduced me to, or missing the girl, or just fate, existence, or what exactly the fuck I'm doing looking at a river and thinking these things. Law may still be in my future — I think I'd be good at it, and no, I don't really know what that means. We shall see.
Quarterlife is by its very nature a time of transition, one that doesn't necessarily fit within age brackets, and one for which the very designation (though I think it fairly accurate and almost cliché) can apply equally to anyone trying to figure out who the hell they are. I'm always a bit suspicious of folks who don't doubt, and ones who know with certainty who they want to be at 22 or 25 come across as particularly suspect. I think — and I imagine most would agree — that when you're my age you really don't have a fucking clue what you're talking about, and if you say you do regardless, you're full of shit. Of course, it used to be different back in the day, and I imagine (without researching) that there's a practical army of sociologists who could tell you exactly why that is. But whatever. We live here and now today, in a world shaped by our forebears who couldn't tweet a picture of whatever they're eating at that moment on their iPhone.
Quarterlife is a process, I'm coming to find. One that's often no fun, no matter how many hookups or summer evenings passing a J and leaning back in awe of strewn stars. It's hard work, yo. Maybe I'm just late to the game, or don't really know what I'm headed for, what to do tomorrow, that kind of thing. Yet I find quarterlife as exhilarating as it is frustrating and incomprehensible. All of the anger, pain, confusion, rage, desire, desperation seem to point toward some sort of image of yourself as that person you'd like to be, even — and especially if — that image remains blurry. Quarterlife means learning things about yourself you hadn't known, reading books you hadn't heard of until today, seeing films and shows you might not have seen, exploring a faith you didn't know you had. Quarterlife presents you with the courage to open up your door and go for a run in November, to open up that Word file and start writing, to open up a business, to run for office. Quarterlife presents the possibility of impacting in new ways the lives of those about whom you care.
So it's exciting. I'm at a sort of transition, I guess. To come back to this part of my own story, in 2009 I attempted with all seriousness suicide. I don't have a problem admitting that — I think an honesty about mental illness and suicidal thoughts can only help prevent that outcome and encourage those suffering from depression to seek help. I know I'm grateful that my ex-girlfriend found me in time and called 911. She and I aren't exactly in contact anymore, but she saved my life. At the time I didn't really give much of a shit if I lived or died — and that itself is a difficult thing to explain to someone who has had the fortune of not finding her/himself in that position. It's a shitty thing to write, but I found myself disappointed to come to in the hospital. Shitty, not out of guilt or out of the horrific experience of drinking activated charcoal (which tastes something like an unholy admixture of Pepto-Bismol and gasoline — not that I've consumed gasoline, but the smell of gasoline was unmistakable in the taste of charcoal).
It wasn't really a part of my life of which I'm proud. I did some pretty unforgivable things that, as I mentioned, I'll probably have in mind on my deathbed, whenever that happens. I won't go into details, but I bring it up to say that I'm learning it's harder to forgive yourself than it is almost anyone else. This is part of quarterlife too, I think. Arriving at the mental and emotional stage where you can look back at stupid shit you've done, bad things, even crimes and come to the point where you can truly believe that you're judged for your actions, but that all you have today is today, that yesterday's gone, and tomorrow's a new day. I think that's the kind of thing that quarterlife brings into sharper resolution.
Now, I find myself here at 2:20 a.m. CST on my 27th birthday, looking out my window and seeing a nearly full moon sliding through drifting clouds. When I was a teenager, I used to go for walks in the middle of the night, just for the pleasure of being alone, the moon and me. I'm a night person; anyone who knows me even marginally knows that, even if from just looking at the timestamps of my Facebook comments or tweets. I've always wanted to be a morning person, and I still do. There was a period encompassing my sophomore year of high school and about the first half of my junior year when I'd wake up between four and 4:30 just to sit in a dilapidated armchair and read Will Durant, Emerson, and Kant. Yet what the night offers is the sort of complete solitude the day doesn't. No birds chirping, coffee beans to grind, cat yelling at you, just you, the moon, a good glass of whiskey, and a blank page with a blinking cursor staring at you.
To that end, quarterlife is possibilities. There have been so many times I've traded glares with that fucking cursor, not even to mention the paper clip that managed to insult a paper clip (a feat I had previously thought impossible), but didn't have the courage to type out a single word. Or, if I did, I wouldn't save it. Quarterlife has brought me to a place where frankly, I don't give a fuck. I'm going to sit in my uncomfortable desk chair, throw on some CSS, and just let it go. It's likely horrifically bad. I'll probably not disseminate any of it, but quarterlife has brought me to a place where I don't give a shit frankly, and I'm going to write even if it's terribad. (On the off-, off-chance it isn't). I couldn't do that when I was 21 or even 24. I watch these YouTube clips of 11-year olds stunning an audience mostly out of awe. There's no way in hell I could have done that at their age I think, followed immediately by Shit there's no way in hell I could do that now. But now at quarterlife? I don't give a shit.
Our generation (which large and corporately-funded media organizations have preciously dubbed "Millennials") often gets painted in hugely optimistic terms as far as our savvy with technology, our entrepreneurist tendencies, our ability to "network" and effectively utilize social media platforms —to paraphrase some of the stock lines of the global companies seeking to hire we shiny avatars of clean living — makes us ideal candidates for a lifetime of ladder-climbing. This is hardly new. It was referred to as "the rat race" as early as the late 1970s. Yet the paradigm is similar in many ways to the preceding decade, the '60s. This, of course, is borne out each Sunday night on AMC's Mad Men, which as we all know by now, traces the lives of various folks of various ages and backgrounds during the heyday of Madison Avenue, and whose lives are all in various forms of turmoil, likely gin-related. The comparison to the '60s is apt, though, for both the separation between those with their eyes set on Madison Avenue or that sort of track and the rest as well as the simmering but hardly-discussed undercurrent of dissatisfaction and loneliness among those of us dubbed the "most-connected."
I'm a socialist, have no problem saying that, but I'm not antithetical to entrepreneurship or capitalism in general, and I think there are some encouraging trends in business — fueled largely by quarterlifers —leading to greater attention on individual employees and the social impact of the business. That dissatisfaction and loneliness I believe hiding in the background for so many of my fellow quarterlifers is effecting positive change in many organizations, and that's a good thing. But there's still the feeling of alienation that our iPhones and twitter accounts can't bridge. It's not the kind of thing we can talk about really, though it's my belief that it's pretty much universal. Quarterlife presents one forwardly with that question: do you confront your demons, your existential angst, and surpass them, or do you let them take charge?
In all, quarterlife is a tremendously confusing experience, and one for which I was not ready and didn't even realize I was embarking on until I was well on the way. Yet, it's also been the most richly rewarding time of my young life, not always happy (rarely, even) and full to the brim with mistakes, bad decisions, weaknesses, flaws, et al; but I've learned every (mis-)step of the way, and hope I can take that knowledge forward for whatever and wherever awaits me. So ¡Viva Quarterlife!
Note: I began drafting this on 08 April, which was the birthday alluded to; just finished it today and elected not to change that initial reference. So please no birthday wishes until April 2013 if you so choose =D
Brief, Unfocused Thoughts on HBO's "Girls"
so i'm really coming around to hbo's "girls," after a somewhat shaky pilot, unmemorable second episode, but a third largely-cringeworthy, but wonderfully written and acted, and ending in one of my favorite scenes in 2012 tv thus far. just funny, unexpected, and genuinely touching. first thing that came to mind when i saw that scene was "fucking golden," and that opinion hasn't changed in the several times i've rewatched that episode. i think the world of lena dunham, but, as i'm starting to really get to work on my own series (and i've learned a great deal from "girls" already, and am looking forward to where it goes), the issues i have with "girls" boil down to two things, one far more important than the other.
the less relevant one is that the dialogue thus far (and i'm a fan of the show, not trying to prematurely judge its first season after only three episodes, but thus far) seems uneven and choppy at times, interspersing more than a few misses with some amazing one-liners. still looking for the consistency. secondly and more importantly, thus far the show has struck one note; it's struck it well, presenting the idiom of we snarky, jaded and media-saturated 20-somethings better than any other show yet, and, though i don't yet live in a major city (though i have, in the us and in germany), and seems to affirm that idiom's accuracy based if only on my twitter feed lol. but it's a note that has a limited range; "girls" seems to be described more often as comedy, but thus far it's been more of a tragicomedy. i'm hoping to see it expand its scope, with the understanding on my part that it's playing within its contours. none of the characters is particularly appealing, which is, of course, part of the point, but characters like adam (while extremely-well acted) just come across as one-dimensional. and maybe that's the way things are in manhattan? been there multiple times, look forward to coming back, but haven't lived there, but have lived in boston, berlin, and frankfurt, and the sort of cynicism that comes through most strongly in ms. dunham's dialogue just misses more than it hits, in my view at least. when it hits, it's pretty much the best out there, but the misses just seem forced.
i highly doubt i can ever match ms. dunham in terms of witty/current dialogue, and am not sure i want to (though i have the highest degree of respect and admiration for her). sort of always been an outsider in my generation, and as i get older and gain more experience and perspective, come more and more — really with each passing day — to take a skeptical approach to my generation's skepticism. not to bash on "girls," but at times thus far it's seemed rote, and entirely rapt with itself. i think of that scene on boston common in "good will hunting" where robin williams tells an insanely-young matt damon, that to understand him (williams) and his depth requires loving something more than himself. now that's had a great deal of personal relevance (another issue for another time), but makes an important point; that there's a spectrum that exists between treacle and nihilism (of course, and more suited to philosophy theses than some random thoughts about a random medium). not to paint "girls" with either brush, which, it seems, is ms. dunham's point.
i guess my counter (not in an antagonistic sense) — and what i'm trying to create — is a canvass on the el greco scale, or say a mahler symphony or something in that vein — with the focus on how complicated contemporary life can be across generations, dealing with 20-somethings sure, but also with 50-somethings and 50-somethings caring for their 80-something parents, all in the landscape of a mid-sized midwestern city burdened by the flight of the unionized manufacturing base. not to try to emulate "the wire" (though, as the best novel of the 2000s, is worthy of emulation, but to explore the landscape of rockford, ill.
looking forward to more "girls," and will keep you posted on my own project. all in all though, tremendous respect for ms. dunham, and i really do look forward to experiencing more of her work.
the less relevant one is that the dialogue thus far (and i'm a fan of the show, not trying to prematurely judge its first season after only three episodes, but thus far) seems uneven and choppy at times, interspersing more than a few misses with some amazing one-liners. still looking for the consistency. secondly and more importantly, thus far the show has struck one note; it's struck it well, presenting the idiom of we snarky, jaded and media-saturated 20-somethings better than any other show yet, and, though i don't yet live in a major city (though i have, in the us and in germany), and seems to affirm that idiom's accuracy based if only on my twitter feed lol. but it's a note that has a limited range; "girls" seems to be described more often as comedy, but thus far it's been more of a tragicomedy. i'm hoping to see it expand its scope, with the understanding on my part that it's playing within its contours. none of the characters is particularly appealing, which is, of course, part of the point, but characters like adam (while extremely-well acted) just come across as one-dimensional. and maybe that's the way things are in manhattan? been there multiple times, look forward to coming back, but haven't lived there, but have lived in boston, berlin, and frankfurt, and the sort of cynicism that comes through most strongly in ms. dunham's dialogue just misses more than it hits, in my view at least. when it hits, it's pretty much the best out there, but the misses just seem forced.
i highly doubt i can ever match ms. dunham in terms of witty/current dialogue, and am not sure i want to (though i have the highest degree of respect and admiration for her). sort of always been an outsider in my generation, and as i get older and gain more experience and perspective, come more and more — really with each passing day — to take a skeptical approach to my generation's skepticism. not to bash on "girls," but at times thus far it's seemed rote, and entirely rapt with itself. i think of that scene on boston common in "good will hunting" where robin williams tells an insanely-young matt damon, that to understand him (williams) and his depth requires loving something more than himself. now that's had a great deal of personal relevance (another issue for another time), but makes an important point; that there's a spectrum that exists between treacle and nihilism (of course, and more suited to philosophy theses than some random thoughts about a random medium). not to paint "girls" with either brush, which, it seems, is ms. dunham's point.
i guess my counter (not in an antagonistic sense) — and what i'm trying to create — is a canvass on the el greco scale, or say a mahler symphony or something in that vein — with the focus on how complicated contemporary life can be across generations, dealing with 20-somethings sure, but also with 50-somethings and 50-somethings caring for their 80-something parents, all in the landscape of a mid-sized midwestern city burdened by the flight of the unionized manufacturing base. not to try to emulate "the wire" (though, as the best novel of the 2000s, is worthy of emulation, but to explore the landscape of rockford, ill.
looking forward to more "girls," and will keep you posted on my own project. all in all though, tremendous respect for ms. dunham, and i really do look forward to experiencing more of her work.
LGBT Rights Are Just That... Rights
A little bit late to the game on this, but here's the point about same-sex marriage that gets obfuscated in whatever pathetic attempts at "debate" on cable news: marriage with respect to civil code (i.e. the state) has nothing whatsoever to do with religion. The rights and privileges pertaining to a married couple exist by virtue of law, not religion. If particular religions frown upon homosexuality (because they apparently misunderstood Jesus, Muhammad, or Yahweh), they have every right to do so, and to restrict religious marriage to heterosexual couples; why they would want to do that, I really don't know, but they have that right. But under the law, marriage is a strictly secular contract between two individuals who choose to commit their lives and property to each other, and, in accordance with the law, be admitted to certain rights and privileges to which as individuals they had not been privy. Now, name another legal contract the eligibility to which rests on sexual orientation. The contract between the armed forces and an enlistee used to be one, but thankfully Pres. Obama relegated that to where it belongs: the dustbin of history. Marriage should be no different. Let particular religions do what they will, but the state has no business granting special status to two individuals who love each other and are willing to commit everything to one another only on the basis of their heterosexuality. Either the rights and privileges accruing to marriage apply to all individuals willing to enter into that contractual obligation or they apply to none. Rights are rights. DOMA is unconstitutional and will be overturned. And I will live to see the day where I can marry a man if that's with whom I fall in love in every state in the country.
Going Forward
Among the many things I'm trying to or starting to try to change in my life is my tenuous relationship with my blog. I've never really lived up to it or to whatever benighted souls read it every now and then. I would like to change that. I've written many time about how I'm going to take it seriously, how *this time* I really do mean it! and how I'd like this site to really represent me as a writer, conversationally, critically, and professionally. I realize that having breached that informal contract several times in the past, there really isn't much I can say to persuade anyone that this time, damn it, I really really do mean it. But I do. Not today, but in the very near future, I'm going to be fully redesigning and renaming this site; it'll still be Destructive Anachronism, but the URL is going to be different and the post frequency much greater. Stay tuned.
5.10.2012
Obama and Faith In His Words
Maybe I'll add mine later, but for now yes. Just yes.
"In the end the values that I care most deeply about and [Michelle] cares most deeply about is how we treat other people and, you know, we are both practicing Christians and obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others but, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated. And I think that’s what we try to impart to our kids and that’s what motivates me as president and I figure the most consistent I can be in being true to those precepts, the better I’ll be as a as a dad and a husband and hopefully the better I’ll be as president."
— President Barack Obama, on his Christian faith and support for marriage equality.
"In the end the values that I care most deeply about and [Michelle] cares most deeply about is how we treat other people and, you know, we are both practicing Christians and obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others but, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated. And I think that’s what we try to impart to our kids and that’s what motivates me as president and I figure the most consistent I can be in being true to those precepts, the better I’ll be as a as a dad and a husband and hopefully the better I’ll be as president."
— President Barack Obama, on his Christian faith and support for marriage equality.
5.04.2012
#JobsforVets
Dear friends: Heard a really disturbing thing shortly ago that's really got my gander up. A friend who's active duty in the army reserves told me that having that experience on his resume has made it harder to find a job in civilian life. He described (what I'll describe as) that kind of discrimination as "epidemic" in his unit. Now, my values and faith demand that I be a pacifist and devoted progressive, and I have consistently been against both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, I strongly support our troops, both active-duty and veterans, and was frankly shocked to hear this.
My father, uncle, and both grandfathers served, so this is a personal issue as well. Our troops — male and female, (thanks to Pres. Obama's leadership) gay and straight, black and white — are people who have committed themselves to make the ultimate sacrifice, if that's what it takes, to defend the rest of us. Think about that. It takes a certain kind of cojones. Beyond that, these ladies and gentlemen have extremely advanced technical skills that are extremely valuable to the private sector, and more importantly, the leadership experience and discipline to excel at any profession, whether as a janitor (not there's anything ignoble about being a janitor) to running a multinational corporation or working in public service. Beyond even that, our troops are so much more than the folks (amazing, and I'm proud to know that I'm represented by such individuals as those who accomplished this, both on the ground and in the preparation and training) who killed Osama bin Laden; they also help build schools, hospitals, bridges, roads, assist in protecting families and businesses around the world. And if we can't help them and return the favor we owe them, then what exactly are our values as a society?
This is not a political issue. Both Democrats and Republicans, progressives and conservatives, need to do what we can to ensure that our current state of affairs comes to an end — in which the military and their families sacrifice for us — while we lead our lives separately and too often in ignorance of the particulars of their situations and the sort of sacrifices, physical, mental, emotional, financial — you name it — they make every day on our collective behalf. How can we call ourselves a community if we don't value everyone equally and strive to understand and support each other?
So join me in supporting our troops, and — though admittedly a small gesture, but one that takes little time and, ideally, helps raise awareness of the alarming un- and underemployment rate among our veterans and active-duty troops and the degree to which it's extremely difficult for our troops to reintegrate themselves into the civilian economy: if you're on twitter (and you all know by now that I am @destroy_time), please take a minute or two to send a tweet including "#isupportveterans because __" and using #jobsforvets and retweet to your followers. I would recommend sending it to your local elected officials and media, as well as @whitehouse, @BarackObama, @MichelleObama, @maddow/@maddowblog and @StephenAtHome/@ColbertReport. Whether or not you agree with Rachel Maddow's politics, she, Colbert and the First Lady have been on the forefront of addressing this issue. Thanks.
Hopefully, if we together can get this trending, it 'll make some small difference in ensuring that we properly thank our vets, active-duty troops, and their families for their service.
Updated: Fixed a sentence fragment that I overlooked (I was too fired up to edit carefully) and added a couple of em dashes.
My father, uncle, and both grandfathers served, so this is a personal issue as well. Our troops — male and female, (thanks to Pres. Obama's leadership) gay and straight, black and white — are people who have committed themselves to make the ultimate sacrifice, if that's what it takes, to defend the rest of us. Think about that. It takes a certain kind of cojones. Beyond that, these ladies and gentlemen have extremely advanced technical skills that are extremely valuable to the private sector, and more importantly, the leadership experience and discipline to excel at any profession, whether as a janitor (not there's anything ignoble about being a janitor) to running a multinational corporation or working in public service. Beyond even that, our troops are so much more than the folks (amazing, and I'm proud to know that I'm represented by such individuals as those who accomplished this, both on the ground and in the preparation and training) who killed Osama bin Laden; they also help build schools, hospitals, bridges, roads, assist in protecting families and businesses around the world. And if we can't help them and return the favor we owe them, then what exactly are our values as a society?
This is not a political issue. Both Democrats and Republicans, progressives and conservatives, need to do what we can to ensure that our current state of affairs comes to an end — in which the military and their families sacrifice for us — while we lead our lives separately and too often in ignorance of the particulars of their situations and the sort of sacrifices, physical, mental, emotional, financial — you name it — they make every day on our collective behalf. How can we call ourselves a community if we don't value everyone equally and strive to understand and support each other?
So join me in supporting our troops, and — though admittedly a small gesture, but one that takes little time and, ideally, helps raise awareness of the alarming un- and underemployment rate among our veterans and active-duty troops and the degree to which it's extremely difficult for our troops to reintegrate themselves into the civilian economy: if you're on twitter (and you all know by now that I am @destroy_time), please take a minute or two to send a tweet including "#isupportveterans because __" and using #jobsforvets and retweet to your followers. I would recommend sending it to your local elected officials and media, as well as @whitehouse, @BarackObama, @MichelleObama, @maddow/@maddowblog and @StephenAtHome/@ColbertReport. Whether or not you agree with Rachel Maddow's politics, she, Colbert and the First Lady have been on the forefront of addressing this issue. Thanks.
Hopefully, if we together can get this trending, it 'll make some small difference in ensuring that we properly thank our vets, active-duty troops, and their families for their service.
Updated: Fixed a sentence fragment that I overlooked (I was too fired up to edit carefully) and added a couple of em dashes.
5.01.2012
First Attempt at This
(wish me luck if you're so kind)
Morning Prayer:
Morning Prayer:
Dear Creator,
Thank you for giving us life and helping us enjoy this day
before us. We see the earth flourish, we speak with friends old and new, and we
revere you in the spirit of joy and happiness.
Best,
—Benjamin
4.28.2012
Nerd Prom
Not going to recap the whole thing, though I do think Jimmy Kimmel was pretty excellent, fat jokes and too-rapid fire delivery aside, but Obama entirely killed it. This item in particular, with regard to LGBTQA rights and h/t to The New Civil Rights Movement for the link.
The Bulls Minus D-Rose
Attended my first-ever Bulls playoff game today, a 103-91 win over the Philadelphia 76ers. It was a phenomenal experience, from the iconic intro to a pretty easy win at the final buzzer. Phenomenal in every aspect until 1:10 left in the fourth quarter, when this happened. The consensus opinion seems to be that the Bulls are done, have no chance of making a deep playoff run, can't beat Boston if they can even get by Philly without Derrick.
Here's my attempt at optimism (and obviously thoughts and prayers go out to Derrick, and wish him a speedy recovery):
The Bulls are the deepest team in the league, with the possible exception of San Antonio. The Bulls have beaten Miami, Boston, Orlando, New York, Atlanta and yes, Philly without Rose this year, going 18-9 in the 27 games he missed. That .667 win percentage would still have netted them the No. 2 seed in the East, ahead of Indiana and only two games behind Miami. C.J. Watson, while certainly not the caliber of player Rose is, has shown he can step into the point guard role as a starter, score, distribute, and run the Bulls' offense. Yes, he didn't have a great game today, but there's no reason to doubt that he and the rest of the bench mob can step it up without their superstar.
There's also been a lot of criticism of Coach Tom Thibodeau's decision to leave Rose in the game with a double-digit lead and the outcome hardly in question so late in the fourth quarter. Some of that criticism is valid, I believe, but that's how Thibs coaches, and why he's been so successful: his mantra — as well as Derrick's, though it certainly didn't pay off today — seems to be "go hard, or go home." I think Thibs has the ability to get this team through, particularly with a healthy Rip Hamilton (who was outstanding today), a hot Kyle Korver, and late-season improvements by Joakim Noah and Carlos Boozer.
The Bulls will get past Philly, maybe in five or six games instead of four or five, but they will advance. In the second round, they're likely to face Boston (which, let's face it, and regardless of Ray Allen's health, is just a better and hotter team than Atlanta), which will be a definite challenge. The Celtics core of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Allen, and Rajon Rondo has a title to their credit and a good deal of playoff experience. Brandon Bass has been great for them all year, and — as none other than Celtic fan-in-chief Bill Simmons wrote — Greg Stiemsma has come out of nowhere to make significant contributions for the C's. They're a dangerous, dangerous team fueled in addition by the knowledge that the 2011-2012 season is likely the last hurrah for the Big Three/Four, given the advanced age of Garnett/Pierce/Allen (even despite Garnett's second-half resurgence getting more time in the paint).
And yet. The Bulls, again, are the deepest team in the league. They have home-court advantage. They've beaten the C's without Rose. No, a regular-season game isn't the same as a game in a best-of-seven, but they have the best head coach in the league not named Greg Popovich, and they have the talent. It's absurdly premature to write off their title hopes, though the hill did become that much steeper with the loss of Rose. Are they favorites to emerge from the East anymore? No. Are they done (as so many were quick to assert)? Hell no. They can beat Boston. They can beat Miami. Do I think it's likely they will? Also no, but they're by no stretch of the imagination dead in the water. See Red.
Here's my attempt at optimism (and obviously thoughts and prayers go out to Derrick, and wish him a speedy recovery):
The Bulls are the deepest team in the league, with the possible exception of San Antonio. The Bulls have beaten Miami, Boston, Orlando, New York, Atlanta and yes, Philly without Rose this year, going 18-9 in the 27 games he missed. That .667 win percentage would still have netted them the No. 2 seed in the East, ahead of Indiana and only two games behind Miami. C.J. Watson, while certainly not the caliber of player Rose is, has shown he can step into the point guard role as a starter, score, distribute, and run the Bulls' offense. Yes, he didn't have a great game today, but there's no reason to doubt that he and the rest of the bench mob can step it up without their superstar.
There's also been a lot of criticism of Coach Tom Thibodeau's decision to leave Rose in the game with a double-digit lead and the outcome hardly in question so late in the fourth quarter. Some of that criticism is valid, I believe, but that's how Thibs coaches, and why he's been so successful: his mantra — as well as Derrick's, though it certainly didn't pay off today — seems to be "go hard, or go home." I think Thibs has the ability to get this team through, particularly with a healthy Rip Hamilton (who was outstanding today), a hot Kyle Korver, and late-season improvements by Joakim Noah and Carlos Boozer.
The Bulls will get past Philly, maybe in five or six games instead of four or five, but they will advance. In the second round, they're likely to face Boston (which, let's face it, and regardless of Ray Allen's health, is just a better and hotter team than Atlanta), which will be a definite challenge. The Celtics core of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Allen, and Rajon Rondo has a title to their credit and a good deal of playoff experience. Brandon Bass has been great for them all year, and — as none other than Celtic fan-in-chief Bill Simmons wrote — Greg Stiemsma has come out of nowhere to make significant contributions for the C's. They're a dangerous, dangerous team fueled in addition by the knowledge that the 2011-2012 season is likely the last hurrah for the Big Three/Four, given the advanced age of Garnett/Pierce/Allen (even despite Garnett's second-half resurgence getting more time in the paint).
And yet. The Bulls, again, are the deepest team in the league. They have home-court advantage. They've beaten the C's without Rose. No, a regular-season game isn't the same as a game in a best-of-seven, but they have the best head coach in the league not named Greg Popovich, and they have the talent. It's absurdly premature to write off their title hopes, though the hill did become that much steeper with the loss of Rose. Are they favorites to emerge from the East anymore? No. Are they done (as so many were quick to assert)? Hell no. They can beat Boston. They can beat Miami. Do I think it's likely they will? Also no, but they're by no stretch of the imagination dead in the water. See Red.
4.25.2012
What "Mad Men" really means!
Spent this evening (after work) digesting Phillip Maciak's masterful analysis of "Mad Men"'s success, its relevance in the contemporary cultural landscape, and the meaning of the apparent shift from episodic emphasis to longer and more complex season- and series-long television plots, indeed the shift from a focus on television as entertainment to a focus on plot recently posted at the Los Angeles Review of Books (which I can't strongly enough emphasize how badass they are, how every conscious person should be reading the LARB, and everyone with the means — even as meagre as mine —should support them financially if that's a viable proposition, and no, I am in no way affiliated with LARB, just am impressed by what they're doing).
As someone who's currently at work on a television series that takes the long narrative approach over the episodic one, the debate currently raging about the respective value of each approach to a television series is of particular interest (don't get too excited, it's still very much in the early stages, though I know where I want to go with it; at least the pilot's done, though I haven't the slightest idea or experience with what comes after the words are on paper). It seems that television — like film, pop music, fiction, just to name a few forms of media — is diverging at long last. Long last not in the sense it's necessarily a good thing, just that television in contrast to the previously-mentioned media held out longer in attempting universal appeal.
Now it would not only be reductionist but frankly foolish to assess the divergence in media from a perspective of pure entertainment to entertainment in one camp and complexity in the other; pure enjoyment and, for lack of a better term, cerebral complexity in the other. Say Jersey Shore or The X Factor compared to Breaking Bad or Mad Men. There's clearly a qualitative difference between the two camps. I'm a fanatic for good television to the extreme, yet I have also found myself spending hours on end watching Chopped!, Iron Chef America, SportsCenter et al — shows I would lump in the former camp, all of which to say that noting the growing divergence isn't to disparage the entertainment side of the ledger, just to note that the gap between entertainment and "art" seems to be growing. As someone whose primary media interest is fiction and the novel in particular, I find this encouraging; David Simon famously described The Wire as similar to a realist novel, and it's an apt description and a point made by many more and savvier critics than I. The realization that serialized television programs can tell a complex and realistic story as well as a novel has both galvanized the industry and provided openings for writers, directors, actors/actresses, producers et al that simply weren't there previously. The trope of a debate about whether or not we're witnessing a "Golden Age" of television really misses the point, which is the premier television series today offer something the media hasn't before: nuanced narrative meant to inspire reflection and unafraid of taking on the messier parts of contemporary life. Walter White, Don Draper, the Dowager Countess, Tyrion Lannister, Lena Dunham, Dexter Morgan —just to name a few— aren't always admirable characters, in fact they're often repellent and do horrific things. Yet there's a realness and self-awareness about each that rings true in a manner which Lucy Ricardo — to use one of Maciak's examples — never did.
All in all, the focus on the long story is more rewarding than 43 minutes of escapism; I'm quite glad the paradigm is shifting and look forward to its continued development over against the self-contained episode.
As someone who's currently at work on a television series that takes the long narrative approach over the episodic one, the debate currently raging about the respective value of each approach to a television series is of particular interest (don't get too excited, it's still very much in the early stages, though I know where I want to go with it; at least the pilot's done, though I haven't the slightest idea or experience with what comes after the words are on paper). It seems that television — like film, pop music, fiction, just to name a few forms of media — is diverging at long last. Long last not in the sense it's necessarily a good thing, just that television in contrast to the previously-mentioned media held out longer in attempting universal appeal.
Now it would not only be reductionist but frankly foolish to assess the divergence in media from a perspective of pure entertainment to entertainment in one camp and complexity in the other; pure enjoyment and, for lack of a better term, cerebral complexity in the other. Say Jersey Shore or The X Factor compared to Breaking Bad or Mad Men. There's clearly a qualitative difference between the two camps. I'm a fanatic for good television to the extreme, yet I have also found myself spending hours on end watching Chopped!, Iron Chef America, SportsCenter et al — shows I would lump in the former camp, all of which to say that noting the growing divergence isn't to disparage the entertainment side of the ledger, just to note that the gap between entertainment and "art" seems to be growing. As someone whose primary media interest is fiction and the novel in particular, I find this encouraging; David Simon famously described The Wire as similar to a realist novel, and it's an apt description and a point made by many more and savvier critics than I. The realization that serialized television programs can tell a complex and realistic story as well as a novel has both galvanized the industry and provided openings for writers, directors, actors/actresses, producers et al that simply weren't there previously. The trope of a debate about whether or not we're witnessing a "Golden Age" of television really misses the point, which is the premier television series today offer something the media hasn't before: nuanced narrative meant to inspire reflection and unafraid of taking on the messier parts of contemporary life. Walter White, Don Draper, the Dowager Countess, Tyrion Lannister, Lena Dunham, Dexter Morgan —just to name a few— aren't always admirable characters, in fact they're often repellent and do horrific things. Yet there's a realness and self-awareness about each that rings true in a manner which Lucy Ricardo — to use one of Maciak's examples — never did.
All in all, the focus on the long story is more rewarding than 43 minutes of escapism; I'm quite glad the paradigm is shifting and look forward to its continued development over against the self-contained episode.
Is journalism in crisis?
My response to Kevin Anderson's column of the same title for Al-Jazeera English:
Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that journalism and journalists are still figuring out how to navigate the new and still-evolving digital media landscape from an economic standpoint. I work in media at a medium-sized newspaper in the United States, and we've dramatically cut back on staff while reducing issue size and slashing content. This while steadily losing subscribers to the print edition while gaining page views on our website. It's not my forte, but somehow that uptick in views does eventually need to be monetized. I think it's fairly inevitable that traditional print media will continue its long decline and eventual death (even despite stubborn 27-year olds who love nothing more than newsprint-stained fingers). However, and at the same time, we're frankly living in a golden age of journalism, as social media both expands the network of potential readers and journalists, but also has been proven to bring stories to light that might not have done so in the pre-digital era. The example par excellence, of course, is the ongoing investigation into the murky world of the Murdoch empire. Independent media is thriving, and I find myself daily filtering what I have time to read, listen to, or watch, as it's no longer even conceivable to check off every media outlet on the ideal list. I look at organizations like Democracy Now! which does incredible work and features extremely high levels of journalistic quality and integrity, and know that 15 years ago, Democracy Now! probably couldn't have existed.
So in summary, journalism's crisis isn't a lack of qualified reporters/columnists nor a lack of a means of distribution, but rather a (hopefully temporary) crisis due to a paradigm shift to which editors, publishers, and journalists are still figuring out how to respond. The greater threat stems from the yellow journalism as practiced by — in the United States, at least — the main three cable networks (Fox in particular, but MSNBC and CNN as well), and their willingness to demean their audience's intelligence at every step. That Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" is considered the most trusted news source in America should say something.
Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that journalism and journalists are still figuring out how to navigate the new and still-evolving digital media landscape from an economic standpoint. I work in media at a medium-sized newspaper in the United States, and we've dramatically cut back on staff while reducing issue size and slashing content. This while steadily losing subscribers to the print edition while gaining page views on our website. It's not my forte, but somehow that uptick in views does eventually need to be monetized. I think it's fairly inevitable that traditional print media will continue its long decline and eventual death (even despite stubborn 27-year olds who love nothing more than newsprint-stained fingers). However, and at the same time, we're frankly living in a golden age of journalism, as social media both expands the network of potential readers and journalists, but also has been proven to bring stories to light that might not have done so in the pre-digital era. The example par excellence, of course, is the ongoing investigation into the murky world of the Murdoch empire. Independent media is thriving, and I find myself daily filtering what I have time to read, listen to, or watch, as it's no longer even conceivable to check off every media outlet on the ideal list. I look at organizations like Democracy Now! which does incredible work and features extremely high levels of journalistic quality and integrity, and know that 15 years ago, Democracy Now! probably couldn't have existed.
So in summary, journalism's crisis isn't a lack of qualified reporters/columnists nor a lack of a means of distribution, but rather a (hopefully temporary) crisis due to a paradigm shift to which editors, publishers, and journalists are still figuring out how to respond. The greater threat stems from the yellow journalism as practiced by — in the United States, at least — the main three cable networks (Fox in particular, but MSNBC and CNN as well), and their willingness to demean their audience's intelligence at every step. That Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" is considered the most trusted news source in America should say something.
4.22.2012
On the Perfect Game
There are fewer things I like to do as a Cubs fan than heap praise on the White Sox as an organization or on a White Sox player. That disclaimer given, firstly, sincere congratulations to Philip Humber on his perfect game against the Seattle Mariners Saturday night (White Sox 4, Mariners 0). He hit all his spots, his breaking ball was lethal, and the defense behind him was more than solid. More importantly, when Pierzynski sealed the deal by throwing to Konerko at first to record the out after Brendan Ryan struck out on an outside breaking ball, he was rushed by his teammates who were genuinely thrilled to honor Humber and recognize his place in baseball history. The affection was genuine, and that's always good to see.
The perfect game in baseball is pretty much the Holy Grail of team sports. Baseball, like no other team sport, is both a game in which the whole is greater than the parts and one in which the parts can achieve a statistical measure of greatness that other team sports can't offer. Perhaps this is because baseball is more analyzed by advanced statistics than any other team sport (though basketball is catching up). More likely, it's due just to the nature of the game: that, in order to advance the team, it comes down to one individual against another, batter versus pitcher, whether one out in the bottom of the ninth or 27 outs over the course of a game. The only remotely comparable achievement is a keeper in soccer keeping a clean sheet, but that's a commonplace (an achievement no doubt, but hardly rare).
The concept itself of perfection is deeply embedded in American society, from our idolization of millionaires and surgically-"perfected" nymphets to the adoration of power and financial success in general. This, of course, borne out by HGTV, MTV, TLC et al. I don't even need to list the shows.
Perfection in baseball is something only available to pitchers. Sure, a batter can break records hitting 5 HR in a game or 13 RBI, but it's just not the same. For batters, the immortal glory comes with (unadulterated) lifetime records like Hank Aaron's (yes I know that Barry Bonds technically holds the all-time career home run record, but his is tainted) career home run record. It's been dissected by far more accomplished writers on baseball than myself, but the perfect game is almost an enigma in contemporary professional sports. It requires skill, the right conditions, luck, and a stolid defense, yet comes down to one man staring down another man from a distance of 60 feet, six inches.
And maybe that's why baseball — while now imported to practically the entire globe — is considered America's Game. Combining that sense of rugged individualism with workmanlike cohesiveness with the possibility of redemption through a goal greater than oneself. Above it all, of course, the idea of perfection. Those are key notes in the mythos of America and American greatness. We celebrate a perfect game in the sense of honoring the individual who accomplished that remarkable feat, but also in the sense of honoring perfection itself as an ideal to which we can and must aspire, and an ideal that's achievable if we only work hard enough.
All of which is fine and good. Go big or go home is a personal motto, and I sincerely congratulate Philip Humber on his remarkable accomplishment. Yet I can't help but wonder if the better story and better role model is 49-year old Jamie Moyer, for the time being staff ace of the Colorado Rockies, as well as the oldest individual ever to record a win as a pitcher in the Major Leagues. Moyer's fastball tops out at 82 on a good day. But he knows the game inside and out, he knows how to pitch, he hits his spots, knows how to fool a hitter half his age, and is the best student of the game still on the field. His approach is never to be flashy, but always consistent and consistently good. And why? Because he puts in the work day in and day out. Moyer's never wowed anyone, but he's also never let any team down. Not to say that Humber has or won't be starting for a very long time. I hope he does. Saying that in the fever flare of Humber's perfect game we don't lose sight of the Jamie Moyers of baseball and everyday life.
Personally, I'd rather be a Jamie Moyer.
The perfect game in baseball is pretty much the Holy Grail of team sports. Baseball, like no other team sport, is both a game in which the whole is greater than the parts and one in which the parts can achieve a statistical measure of greatness that other team sports can't offer. Perhaps this is because baseball is more analyzed by advanced statistics than any other team sport (though basketball is catching up). More likely, it's due just to the nature of the game: that, in order to advance the team, it comes down to one individual against another, batter versus pitcher, whether one out in the bottom of the ninth or 27 outs over the course of a game. The only remotely comparable achievement is a keeper in soccer keeping a clean sheet, but that's a commonplace (an achievement no doubt, but hardly rare).
The concept itself of perfection is deeply embedded in American society, from our idolization of millionaires and surgically-"perfected" nymphets to the adoration of power and financial success in general. This, of course, borne out by HGTV, MTV, TLC et al. I don't even need to list the shows.
Perfection in baseball is something only available to pitchers. Sure, a batter can break records hitting 5 HR in a game or 13 RBI, but it's just not the same. For batters, the immortal glory comes with (unadulterated) lifetime records like Hank Aaron's (yes I know that Barry Bonds technically holds the all-time career home run record, but his is tainted) career home run record. It's been dissected by far more accomplished writers on baseball than myself, but the perfect game is almost an enigma in contemporary professional sports. It requires skill, the right conditions, luck, and a stolid defense, yet comes down to one man staring down another man from a distance of 60 feet, six inches.
And maybe that's why baseball — while now imported to practically the entire globe — is considered America's Game. Combining that sense of rugged individualism with workmanlike cohesiveness with the possibility of redemption through a goal greater than oneself. Above it all, of course, the idea of perfection. Those are key notes in the mythos of America and American greatness. We celebrate a perfect game in the sense of honoring the individual who accomplished that remarkable feat, but also in the sense of honoring perfection itself as an ideal to which we can and must aspire, and an ideal that's achievable if we only work hard enough.
All of which is fine and good. Go big or go home is a personal motto, and I sincerely congratulate Philip Humber on his remarkable accomplishment. Yet I can't help but wonder if the better story and better role model is 49-year old Jamie Moyer, for the time being staff ace of the Colorado Rockies, as well as the oldest individual ever to record a win as a pitcher in the Major Leagues. Moyer's fastball tops out at 82 on a good day. But he knows the game inside and out, he knows how to pitch, he hits his spots, knows how to fool a hitter half his age, and is the best student of the game still on the field. His approach is never to be flashy, but always consistent and consistently good. And why? Because he puts in the work day in and day out. Moyer's never wowed anyone, but he's also never let any team down. Not to say that Humber has or won't be starting for a very long time. I hope he does. Saying that in the fever flare of Humber's perfect game we don't lose sight of the Jamie Moyers of baseball and everyday life.
Personally, I'd rather be a Jamie Moyer.
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