The More You Know

The post-college student, especially those of the naive and ultimately doomed English-major variety are swamped, Hoarders-style, in a mountain of books. Books we probably should have sold back to the bookstore for ten cents on the dollar like normal kids, but just couldn't. My strategy was simple: if I liked one of the books I read in class, I kept it. I figured I would eventually get around to reading it again since I liked it so much the first time around. Predictably, this has not happened. I have not reread ANY of the books I saved. Books are too plentiful and life too finite to waste precious minutes rereading the words of a some guy who didn't live to see iPods or flat-screen TVs.

I was trying to realign some of these books on the bookshelf -- How does the saying go? My bookshelf needs a bookshelf? -- and nearly realigned my spinal cord instead. In the middle of this burdensome work, I unearthed a little brown book, tucked away behind some Mark Twain and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The book, pictured right, was The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane. My professor bumped it from the syllabus because she wanted to spend more time on a previously ignored feminist text that predated the feminist movement. I don't remember the feminist text or the author because I'm a bad person. I did save The Red Badge of Courage, though, because I didn't have a chance to read it and would have received about two cents back from the bookstore. So there it was, hidden all this time, a book on the shelf I had not read.

I used to always skip Introductions in college, but now I find them fascinating. So-and-so was huffing paint while writing in the closet of his second-cousin's one-room apartment. You don't say? Critic Alfred Kazin made a point of hammering home two things in the Introduction:

1) This was the first American novel to describe war as it truly was. Basically, Crane called bullshit on the idea of a flawless and heroic soldier, always-competent leadership, and patriotism. Soldiers were scared sometimes, lieutenants were not the smartest men in battle, and neither always knew what they were fighting for.

2) Crane was only 21* when he completed this novel and never fought in battle. His experiences were drawn from what he read. Many Civil War veterans who read the book were shocked to find out such a realistic portrayal of battle and nuanced psychological profile of a soldier could be penned by someone who was not once a soldier himself.

* -- There's nothing like reading a novel firmly established in the American literary canon, written by a 21-year-old to remind you of how little you've done with your life.


I finished the book today. There's tales of a soldiers handing over their personal belongings before battle, anticipating death. There's a colony of ants crawling over the face and into the eyes of a dead soldier. There's a cloud of gray smoke hovering over every scene, including the battle-free scenes. There's the overwhelming sense of paranoia that you would expect in a war novel. Where the book truly shines, in my opinion, is when Crane delves into Henry's (the protagonist, referred to as "the youth") psyche. We see a a soldier who believes in the glory of war and is reduced to fleeing the scene when it comes time to fight. Henry describes the guilt of walking past the wounded soldiers and wishes he suffered a wound himself. He is forced to leave a dying comrade at one point, and reminisces on the looks girls gave him in uniform and the support he received back home when being sent off. It's powerful stuff that reads like a memoir if memoirs were written in third person.

Reading Crane got me to thinking about sports writing. Most sportswriters didn't play college sports. Some didn't even play in high school yet they are entrusted with telling these stories. It's one thing to a write a simple game recap, but but how adequately can a writer assess a player's ability to breakdown a defense if they've never broken down a defense? Or even, how can a writer truly understand what's going through a player's mind on the court? Interviews are becoming more and more useless every year, as players know better than to express anything that can provide headlines or damage their brand.

We've accepted the writer-player relationship because it's the best we can do. Players cannot play and write full-time during the season. And just as their counterparts weren't good enough to play professionally, they probably wouldn't be good enough to write professionally. So we cling to our Stephen Crane's. The ones who are so good they can make you feel like they were chasing Ray Allen around screens or standing at the free throw line, down a point with two free throws. They command the respect of the players they write about and so on.

Either way, I'm glad to have experienced one of Stephen Crane's literary contributions. I wish he could have listened to his Abe Holzmann on an iPod.         

Beavis and Butt-head Do the 21st Century

The year is 1994 and like most six-year-olds, I climb out of bed at a late hour. It feels late to me, maybe 9:00 or 9:30. I know which days to get out of bed and which days to stay put. My parents would just shoo me back upstairs and tell me to go to bed, but they're out tonight. My 16-year-old sister is "babysitting," which consists of waiting a couple of hours until my brother and I fall asleep, make sure we're tucked in, and then do whatever she wants. She babysat us frequently, about once a month.

These are the days I wait for. I know to get out of bed and quietly tip-toe down the edge of the stairs. Five steps down and I can peer over the stair railing and watch the TV. A cartoon is on, it doesn't matter which one, I like all cartoons. Had my parents been downstairs, I would have watched for a minute and quietly went back up the stairs, hoping they wouldn't hear me. With my sister it's different -- she caves easier. I slowly continue my trek down the stairs and rub my eyes for effect. "Could you not sleep?" she asks me, and I say "No, I couldn't." This is usually all it takes. She allows me to sit next to her and watch TV until I fall back asleep. Just like that, my first viewing of Beavis and Butt-head. My parents would never have allowed me to stay up, I thought, let alone watch a show like this.

I never understood the appeal of Beavis and Butt-head, partially because I was too young to know what half the jokes meant. Another part of me found them annoying. I couldn't stand the constant laughing and grunting and snickering. I heard enough of those sounds in school. When I watched TV I wanted to get away from them and experience something new. As I got older, Beavis and Butt-head began to grow on me, but mostly for artificial reasons. It was labelled a "cool" show and I wanted to be a "cool" kid. So I watched with my friends and laughed at the jokes I didn't understand and laughed at the jokes I didn't find funny. Then I turned ten, approaching the age when this show would have resonated with me, but Beavis and Butt-head was cancelled in November of 1997. I missed the boat by a couple of years.

Through my teen years, I became acquainted with the show through reruns of various episodes and the movie. Creator Mike Judge was now working on King of the Hill, a show I adored. Seventeen years removed from my initial thrilling and blurry-eyed experience, Beavis and Butt-head is back on MTV. It premiered yesterday, sporting the same formula that made is successful. Beavis and Butt-head was always a character-driven show, allowing our two anti-heroes to make magic out of events we'd usually find too unbelievable or mundane to be funny. Yesterday, the boys goaded a homeless man, who they believed to be a zombie, into biting them. In their minds, this would give them the suave, female seduction powers seen in Twilight. They riddled away in a hospital bed with Hepatitis A, B, C, and just about every other known virus. Later, Beavis found an onion in his chili dog. He closely inspected the onion, causing his eyes to water. This conveniently occurs during an episode of The Bachelor. For the rest of the episode, Butt-head makes it a point to let everyone know Beavis cried during The Bachelor, which Beavis vehemently denies. It sounds stupid, and it is, but the formula continues to work.

Beavis and Butt-head built its reputation on the legitimately hilarious music video sequences. Beavis and Butt-head confine themselves to the couch, and watch and comment on the popular music videos of the day. The show again lucks out because this is an easy blueprint to replicate -- they simply replace Alice in Chains and the "Safety Dance" with LMFAO and the cast of Jersey Shore. The show will undoubtedly find a new niche audience and even pull back some of the 20 and 30-somethings, but will it still resonate with teenagers like it once did?

We're in an age of Twitter, Facebook, and personalized blogs. Kids have platforms now that were not available to them in 1993 when this show initially aired. If people want to share their opinions, it's pretty easy in 2011. Whether or not others are listening is besides the point. Blogs and social networks have at least created the illusion that everyone's thoughts are important. Why else would someone twitpic what they had for lunch, or post on their wall about how so-and-so fucked them over? Gone are the days of sitting on the couch and complaints falling on deaf ears. Teenagers take to the Internet to voice their opinions and frustrations of everyday life. The fact that these words show up and are stored in cyberspace give them more meaning than a soundbite, unrecorded and forgotten.

Beavis and Butt-head aired from 1993-1997, before social networks and widespread blogging. The Internet was just starting to find its way into households. Most of us were probably too preoccupied with trying to figure out what the Internet was to even fathom where it was going. The generation of teenagers who were watching Beavis and Butt-head could relate to lounging around and making fun of the absurdity of the world around them. Criticisms of things as simple as music videos sometimes turned into critiques of politics and human behavior. It must have been comforting to see two cartoon kids on the TV, albeit immature and over-the-top, mimicking the thoughts and behaviors of real-life teenagers. Imagine having only the newspapers and talking heads as opinion-makers. Nowadays, we can get our information from a variety of sources we consider reasonable. In 1993, Beavis and Butt-head were relatable when most news outlets were not talking about the things teenagers wanted to talk about.

If the first episode is any indication, Beavis and Butt-head will be just as funny as it was the first go around. However, I doubt present day teenage life will allow for it to reach the iconic status it did under the previous generation. I suppose that wasn't the point of bringing it back anyway. Instead of a show representative of teenage life, it will likely fall into the quickly discussed and discarded bin that so many subjects do in today's fast-paced information cycle. I, for one, am happy to at least be awake and old enough to understand what's going on this time.   

My Cat Is Getting Old

My cat, Kringle, turned ten years old today. According to Calculator Cat, that would make him 57 in cat years. July 27, 2001 is not his real birthday. When our family picked him up from the shelter on December 27th, they had him listed as a 5-month old kitten. We stuck with the 27th, subtracted five months, and decided to use July 27th as his birthday. I could also tell you about the elaborate back-story my brother and I created for him. About how he lived with Fidel Castro while growing up in Cuba, and preached revolution in his previous lives. Or how he batted leadoff and played centerfield for his shelter baseball team. Or even the eight illegitimate children he fathered with two different women. But all of that would bore you.

Kringle's backstory was very important to us as young teenagers, and was instrumental in the development of my love for storytelling. But more than anything, creating a narrative for Kringle was necessary because cats are just plain boring. They sit, they sleep, they eat, and if you're lucky, they provide a change of pace and lick their ass for a few seconds. You can only play with a cat for the first year or two of their life and then they start to become bored. Really, you're going to make me chase around that feather again? I'm too old and wise for this shit.

Talking about Kringle's past exploits allowed us to create some excitement when there wasn't any. None of it was true, but I'll be damned if I didn't start to believe in it. Yesterday night, Kringle tip-toed into my room and began sniffing around. My bedroom windows were open, and a glimpse of the outside world for a house cat is what reality TV is to humans. My windowsill is about three feet high. In his younger days, Kringle jumped up there with no problem. Despite the two-inch width, he would always manage to measure up the height and time his jump perfectly to land on the windowsill with ease. Nowadays, he's more hesitant.

Kringle looked up at the now Goliath-sized windowsill. He stared for a minute, poked is head around, checked out the other windowsill, and realized he couldn't make the jump. He hasn't been able to make that jump for some years now, so he's taken to jumping on my desk and then stepping on to the windowsill. My desk is about two and half feet high. I've never seen him have a problem with jumping up to the desk.

As usual, my desk was a mess -- empty water bottles, empty beer bottles, laptop, obnoxiously large books, keys, wallet, glasses case, etc. I pushed most of the crap to back in an attempt to clear out some space for him to jump up. Kringle sniffed around some more and surveyed the now-open space. He stretched out on his hind legs, and batted his paws at the top of the desk. I interpreted this as a way to psyche himself up. Kind of like when a boxer jumps around in his corner during introductions and punches himself in the face before the fight is about to start. Kringle did the super-stretch a few more times before settling in. He crouched down real low in preparation for his jump. Glued to my desk chair, I stared. I was riveted.  He looked at me, and before I could react, he jumped up to my lap, jumped on to the desk, and stepped on to the windowsill in the span of two seconds. The once one-step process turned two-step process, is now a three-step process ten years later.

I guess that is what getting old is about. There's no easy way to do anything anymore. I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a flashback of the times we coaxed him into jumping five feet in the air to track down a noise-making ball. Or of the times I had convinced myself he made diving catches in the outfield. The reality is: he's ten years old and has lost his athleticism. And some of that athleticism was imagined to begin with.

As Kringle lay on the windowsill and stared into the blank night, I decided I would blog about this. I hadn't posted anything in a month and figured my five loyal readers were probably wondering if I was still alive. So I disappeared into another room to find a camera. I was going to take this visceral, even symbolic picture of Kringle staring into the black vastness of the world and use it for the top of this post. Camera in hand, I made it back into my room. As I steadied the camera and just about took the picture, Kringle turned around and jumped off the windowsill. The photo above is what I was left with. The perfect, fleeting picture I burned into my memory morphed into the picture I actually took. 

I can't help but to think that too is what getting old is about.           

Stumped

The three men arrived in their rusting white van. Armed with an arsenal of destruction weapons, they would eventually begin hacking at the tree. First, the youngest and most fit man climbed to the top of the tree. He wore special tree-climbing boots and was supported by a rope tied around his waist and to the sturdiest branch. He had with him his chainsaw and used it to saw the weakest, most thin branches. By the time he was done, he had created the world's largest bird's nest beneath him. The oldest of the three men took it from there. He gathered up a pile of branches and took them to the wood chipper, and repeated this single step until all of the branches were destroyed. The man on the tree had it pretty easy from there -- a few semi-developed dead branches and then the main event -- the trunk. You watched it all from your bedroom window.

The three men were hired to take down your tree and three of your neighbor's trees. An insect outbreak most likely got a hold of them and were killing off a bunch of trees in the neighborhood. After the workers took down the trunk of your tree, the third man used a heavy machine to grind away the stump. He looked happy doing it, knowing he had a place in the world. You're outside now and you give him a head nod up to acknowledge his good work.

The man finishes with the machine and covers the hole with what looks like a grassy soil mixture. The area is a bit uneven, and takes on a yellow hue. A passer-by might think a dog pissed all over the area, but never that a tree used to live there.

You reenter your house, walk upstairs back into your room, and notice the unobstructed view. Gone is the tree and everything becomes so clear to you. Your eyes focus to the left: Chris' pool. You remember the time -- about six years ago -- when Chris, your younger brother, and yourself were able to convince Brittany and Sarah to come swimming with the three of you. Sarah possessed the good upper body, Brittany the good lower body, and both of their faces were decent enough. You decide on Brittany even though there is nothing spectacular about her. Sarah had been flirting with Chris and you're not about to encroach on his territory. Sarah is the better looking one. Son of a bitch.

While in the pool, Brittany suggest you play a game. The name of the game now escapes you. One of the girls opens her legs and one of the guys is to swim through them. In the event of a successful pass, the girl is to put her legs a little closer together. You lose when the girl's legs are so close together that you crash into them before you are able to get through. This is a great game because losing is really like winning.

In the pool you try to put moves on Brittany. You get close to her and say things you think will impress her. She laughs you off and is more interested in your younger brother. He could care less about her. Chris is not able to close Sarah. Everyone gets out of the pool, dries off, and leaves unhappy.

Your eyes move gradually to the right and fix on the Rizvi's shed. Behind the shed is where Chris and you had your first egg-throwing experience. It was a warm summer night and the two of you were a couple of bored suburban middle-schoolers looking for something to do. "Hey, why don't we egg a house," you say. "Sure," Chris replies. "Have you ever done it before?" you ask. "Sure. Lots of times." "You're a liar."

The two of you agree on 12:30 in the morning. The perfect time. Everyone should be asleep and it's not like cops come through your neighborhood anyway. You are able to sneak out the back door with no problem. Your parents have work in the morning and go to sleep early regardless. Chris is not so lucky.

His parents are asleep but he has to pass by their room to make his way down the stairs and out the door. Chris' mom has the ear of an owl. The slightest creak of the stairs would wake her. Chris decides not to chance it. He places his house key in his pocket, opens his bedroom window, and removes the screen. He climbs out the window and on to the roof. From there, he is able to grab ahold of the basketball rim and drop down to his driveway.

You brought four eggs with you and hand two to Chris. You're afraid of the streetlights giving you away so you hide behind the Rizvi's shed and Chris follows you. "We can throw them from here," Chris says. "A few houses down they have a sliding door in the back. We can peg the shit out of it from here. It's not that far." You look over to the sliding door. It seems pretty far to you. You've never thrown an egg but you have thrown a baseball before. Chris has a better arm than you and you want him to go first.

Chris cocks his arm back and lets it fly. You gaze at the magnificent flying egg until you lose it in the darkness. Splat! A direct hit. "Holy shit," you say as you get ready to throw. You release. Splat! Another hit, just below where Chris connected. You become so excited and you body fills with adrenaline. You don't wait for Chris' turn. You throw again. This time with all your might. Splat! That one almost hit the roof! Splat! Chris had flung his last egg.

"We should get out of here," Chris says. "I'll see you tomorrow." Chris jumps back into his yard as you jump the Rizvi's fence and head across to your house. Your first act of petty vandalism and it feels so good.

Staring out your window and your eyes move to the Rizvi's front lawn. The Rizvi's didn't always live there. Before they bought the house, it had gone unsold for many months and the original owners had already moved out. No problem. You and the rest of the neighborhood kids adopted the house as your own. You played on the giant tire in the backyard and swung on the swings. Occasionally, each kid would bring food from home and you'd eat together on the patio. When basketball became boring, and it hardly ever did, you would play tackle football in the Rizvi's yard. It was the only house that wasn't fenced in -- plenty of room for a mock football field. The neighborhood kids don't play basketball or football nowadays. It's all about hockey. You can't drive anywhere without having to wait for a kid on roller blades to pull his net to the curb.

When the Rizvi's moved in you were devastated. The house you ate and played at, and took so much care of now belonged to someone else. At your age, you didn't know the first thing about home ownership but it felt like your house was being taken from you. This was supposed to be the house nobody wanted. Shortly after assuming ownership, the Rizvi's had a fence built. Your football field became but a distant memory.

The three men packed up their demolition tools and drove off. They left four piss-colored patches of grass in four different yards. Your once obstructed bedroom view is now a mirror to your past. That tree used to scare you as a kid. As you tried to sleep, its branches looked like monster's claws waiting to break though your window. You don't even sleep in this room anymore.

Why did it take the removal of a dead tree to help you remember? Why did you push these memories aside in the first place? You're sure of one thing: with loss comes recollection.