The Unintended Good is the Best

I have struggled with sleep most of my life. Many people find sleep a comfort. A relaxing period of rest. A respite from the reality of real life.

To me, sleep is the worst.

Dreams. Nightmares. Night terrors. Just weird shit. It happens. It's always happened. Some days better than others. When it's just a nude speech in high school it's unsettling. When it's fighting zombies or demons off my children, it's time to have breakfast at 3 am.

As a child I would read with a flashlight under the covers. The first night terror I remember was awaking to a ghost floating out side my closet when I was in first grade. I ran and told my folks and the did the normal thing. Clearly there was no sign of a ghost. But I didn't believe. I took my kangaroo and two lego guys into bed with me to make sure (my alter ego and his andriod bodyguard)  I needed the support. I needed the placebo.

As I've grown older, I've learned that for me, perception is reality. If I perceive a benefit, there will be one. Mountain Dew was my spinach. I could always reach for it in time of need. Pot roast. Broaster Chicken. Tot dish. Green Bean Casserole. All became some mythical food. If I could just have that I would be ok. Clam Chowder. Surge.  Unrequited Love. The right pair of socks. Family. Fear. The ideal of the one. All have at one time or another kept me going. Propped up my ego my id and my soul.

I am not able to shake these needs. I am not above placebo. If anything, I have learned that for me there is little more important than what I think I feel.

Which brings me to tonight. And steak and eggs and a woman who shamefully, who's name I don't even know.

Yeah. Yeah the whole shame and women thing is not the issue here. Another time perhaps.

What is the point, what is the focus is that Steak and Eggs from my favorite greasy spoon is the best placebo I have ever had.

Well it's not the steak and eggs at all. Or the hashbrowns. Or any of the actual nutrients.

It's a completely different nutrient. It's the nutrient, the drug of being remembered.

There is nothing so intoxicating as being.

It's why I love many of my favorite places. Life is painfully full of anonymity. 99% of the world will never know my name. Never learn anything about me.

And for someone who trend toward ego-centric. That sucks.

Yet.  Being remembered is the best. It's like crack. Like a shot of adrenaline. Like love.

And in a way it's the basest form of Love.

Some nights. When I know that sleep will be especially rough. When I can't find the right recipe for solace. I will seek my solace in steak and eggs from a greasy spoon diner.

But even then, I will wait until I see who is working.

Not which cook.

Not which grillmaster.

Just which server.

If I don't see her. I leave.

And no. It's not a crush. Yes, I am prone to crushing on those in the service industry who excel.

No.

I need to know that my comfort, my placebo is safe.

She sees me enter. Either comes to the counter or gives me a nod. (A simple acknowledgement can change the world).

Eventually she comes to take my order. Yet that doesn't really count. Which is the point.

She knows my order.

Medium Rare Steak
Scrabbled Eggs.
Hashbrowns.
To Go.
No Bag or napkins.

(She always tries to talk me into the napkins)

....she's right.

It's hard to describe the joy and power that comes from being known. From having your wants and needs met before you can even express them. From service on a level that is. Unusual. Yet right.

I keep my tip in the appreciative but not creepy range*

Tip Range
*0-10% Probably a Jerk or HS kid
*10-20% Normal Ignorance of the Industry
*20-30% Service Industry/Great Service
*30%+ Probably a creepy stalker.

So it's not about that. It's the service and the fact she remembers me before I can remind her.

Nothing feels so good as being remembered.

So much of life is admitting that through the normal passage of time, we are all forgotten.

Thank you server at my greasy spoon midnight bad decision place.

You'll never know how much it means to be remembered.

And I'll never truly be able to tell you.

But I'll probably creepy tip as an attempt.

Is Speech to Text the Modern Kerouac?

It seems more and more I enjoy the silence tired of the talk radio music blaring my just drive it's quiet I used to do it to think I think now I do it so I don't think nothing in my head nothing to spark the imagination cold dark night driving down the road nothing to wonder about nothing to hope for nothing to drink nothing to fear nothing to lose nothing to think of loss nothing I wonder if maybe this is what Zen is where you reach equilibrium with universe and you could be at peace part of me wonders if maybe this is what giving up is for you stop fighting the current and you just float and you go wherever the stream may take you even maybe over a waterfall because you realize that the overall power of the current is more than you could ever you can't compare that fight and rage and set your job as you're my dude doesn't matter maybe this is growing up figuring out some battles hell most battles can't be won instead for today I'll call it Zen.

SPOILERS You Don't Always Get What You Want...Sometimes You Get What You Need - Star Wars SPOILERS.

I

THIS IS ABOUT STAR WARS AND CONTAINS SPOILERS. DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN STAR WARS THE FORCE AWAKENS. MY THOUGHTS CONTINUE BELOW THIS MUSICAL INTERLUDE. FOR THE SAKE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND YODA DON'T CONTINUE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO HAVE THE MOVIE SPOILED.

There. Can't say I didn't try and warn you.

In the past 10 days, I have watched the original trilogy. I have reread Star Wars Aftermath. I have devoured every article and analysis that I could about Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I saw the movie three times in four days and have stopped myself from going at least two other times. I haven't been this deep into my Star Wars fandom since the awkward two week period in the summer after sixth grade when I tried to get people to call me Anikan Solo.

Yes. That happened.

I've tried to sit down a write what I loved about the film. What I didn't like and what I didn't want to allow logic (like physics) or naysayers (It's just Star Wars over again!) take away from me. In spite of it all, I wasn't truly compelled to write. Until I read a very honest and well written article by Rob Bricken on Gizmondo entitled "There's One Thing I Totally Hate About The Force Awakens"

It's a well written piece and I understand his complaint. That the update tears away the happy ending of Return of the Jedi from Luke, Leia and Han. That the victory at the forest moon of Endor was short lived and that war still rages on. It was something that even the author admits was necessary for the plot to move forward. Yet it was hard for him to accept - in Bricken's words;

As someone who grew up on Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, retroactively qualifying the Rebels’ victory over the Empire and the accomplishments of the original trilogy is distressing enough. But what really upsets me about The Force Awakens is how it reveals (determines?) that despite all the conflict they faced, and all the victories they won, Luke, Leia and Han’s lives after the Original Trilogy were basically miserable.

Miserable. Damn. That is a harsh reality.

I often learn the most when I understand my own reality when I have a point of reference. A lighthouse when at sea. A north star. A constant. In a way that's why a part of me still believes deep down in some sort of soul mate or true partner. I don't always know what I want until I lose it. I most often understand where I stand when I know the room. I didn't realize what I loved about The Force Awakens until someone said they hated it.

Whoa. So that means that I love that Luke, Leia and Han's lives were miserable? What kind of jerk am I?

No.

Well I'm probably a jerk but for so many other reasons. No. What I loved about The Force Awakens is that it took my iconic heroes and characters and made them more real. It made them flawed. It made them more human. It made me love them more.

Yes. Luke failed. He tried to return the Jedi to their former glory and he accidentally unleashed emo Vader on the universe. Leia lost her son and threw herself into work and in a way, lost herself. Han didn't always talk himself out of it. He didn't know how to be a perfect father and when his son rejected him and Leia, he ran, he went back to his scoundrel space pirate ways. If the story ended there it would be miserable.

It didn't. Han had a chance and  reason to come back. Yes it was a familiar reason. If there are two constants in the world of Han Solo they are Chewbacca and the Millennium Falcon. His recapture of the Falcon upsets his scoundrel world once again. Han is given the chance to make a difference again. To borrow from another recent space epic, a chance to give a damn. Once again, his true heroic self rises to the surface. Finn and Rey are his new chance and he runs at it. Even if he complains the whole time.

Han finally faces Leia after what had to have been a long separation. The scene were he brushes off a panicked Finn and stands before the landing ship was awesome. If you've ever been in the situation of facing an angry ex who might rightly hate you - then you know that moment was braver than any Kessel Run.

Han's death, which brought me to tears the first two times, works because it's the death of man who would lose his life than completely give up on his own son. The scoundrel Han would never have walked out on that bridge. Han, the father, couldn't do anything else.

Leia seems to have pushed emotion and connection aside. Losing her brother, her partner and her son in quick succession can have that effect I assume. She's a General now. Not a Princess. And there's a hell of a lot more Eisenhower than Elsa in her. Her emotional restraint with Han is torture. He and I and maybe the audience, wanted her to lash out at him. Be angry for running away. Yet her concern is not giving up on their son. She asks Han to bring him back. Probably knowing that's a one in a million chance. She too can't give up on her son.

Luke. He's barely in the damn movie! What is there to analyze? He doesn't even speak a word. He ran to the wilderness. He became a hermit like Old Ben Kenobi on a faraway hidden world like Yoda. He saw that darkness that he had wrought and could not abide it. He gave up. He was  just a kid from a dessert world who should have stuck to shooting womp rats in beggar's cannon.

Yet potentially the greatest hook for a sequel ever, Rey stands arm out, offering Luke his saber and another chance. A chance that Ben Kenobi barely got to experience and one that Yoda was too old to experience. Another chance at redemption. An apprentice. The opportunity to right a wrong even as Obi-Wan had done and hopefully much more.

If you see only the misery that came after Return of the Jedi, I can see why you would hate one thing about The Force Awakens.

If you can see your icons, fall and get back up. Fail and keep trying. Never give up hope in their loved ones in spite of logic. You can seem more of yourself in them.

I fail routinely. I fall. Sometimes I even get back up. I don't need my heroes to have happy endings. I don't need a bonfire and a band of misfit teddy bears playing the bongos (but my birthday is in like a week...). I don't need the shiny happy ending of Return of the Jedi.

I want it. But I don't need it.

I need to see flaws. I need to be inspired to keep doing in spite of failure. I need to have hope. To believe in family. To trust in love.

No the themes of The Force Awakens are not what I wanted. They are what I needed.

That's why I love it.

The Masks we all Wear: What's Your Secret Identity?

When I was young it never occurred to me that everyone had a secret identity. Of course I knew about Bruce Wayne and Batman, Clark Kent and Superman even Drake Mallard and Darkwing Duck. Secret identities were for comics. Not real life. Real people didn't use a mask to hide their face. It was obvious. Real people were real.

And as a kid. I was really really naive. I mean that's not a shocking revelation. There is plenty I am naive about to this day. I learn that every day. As a child I was naive. Especially about secret identities. I had no idea that they are the rule rather than the exception.

Even as a child, bathed in my ignorance, I wore masks. I hid part of myself. Like a movie that other kids think is for babies - never mention the Care Bear stare ever again. Have no idea what that slang word use that somebody used - nod and smile and never admit it. Frustrated because you're having trouble with multiplying fractions - immediately pretend you don't care about math and it's not cool. A hundred masks, a thousand feints, an entire wall of smoke concealing real things about me. My secret identity.

What is the greatest difference between secret identities in comics and the ones we create in real life? Secret Identities in comics are usually pretty awesome. Playboy philanthropist. Award winning reporter. Single duck dad. Wait. Scratch that last one. Who wouldn't want to be Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne? Those lives looked pretty damn good. Enviable even.

In reality, what we hide are the things we are ashamed of. The things that we are embarrassed of. The things that make us afraid or weak or vulnerable. We don't hide our ability to fly or our nights as a rooftop vigilante. We hide the things we don't want anyone to see. The stuff. Baggage. Issues. Flaws. Dirt. Pain.

It's not a ground breaking statement. Duh. Dude. Everyone has their stuff. It's life.

By my nature, I analyze things. I overthink. I obsess and dwell. I ruminate and ponder. I am at times the definition of paralysis by analysis. Especially when I let the mask slip. When the baggage is left spinning slowly and obviously on the carousel for the whole world to see. Sometimes life opens the phone booth before Superman can get the spandex completely on. And people see us without the costume or the mask. And it sucks.

I judge myself so hard when I slip. When a surprise brings on anxiety and panic and I just don't deal with it well. The paralysis/analysis cycle begins to spin like a dreidel on crank. It is out of control and no one is going to have a good time. (Paralysis/Analysis will be the name of my emo cover band)

When I am honest, I judge others when I see a slip too. A harsh word. A bad day. A grumpy response. A sarcastic self indulgent comment. I see their slip and I too often judge. Sometimes I can realize that everyone has their stuff and that's ok. Other times I slip up and don't cut people any slack.

I slipped recently. Let some pain out. Let a surprise lead to anxiety and panic and then disappearance. And ever since I've judged myself way too harshly. I've mentally replayed the moment over and over with little point or result. It's pointless. This dreidel is tired.

We all slip. The secret identity eventually gets out. It always happens. We fail. We miss. We hurt.

It's part of being human. So is the secret identity. It's all part of the big contradiction that is being alive and trying to live.

I need to give myself some slack when I slip. You need to give yourself some slack. And we all need to give each other a hell of a lot more slack.

We're all struggling. We are all fighting. And we all lose little battles every day. It's become common to point out when someone slips. To blast it all over the internet. To gossip. To laugh. To highlight the failures and dance on the graves of anyone and everyone.

We've all got our secrets and our pain.

I'll let you keep your secret identity. You let me keep mine.

Maybe then we can fight together when the really big bad stuff comes.

Comfort Food. Comfort Art.

We've all heard of comfort food. That favorite dish. The one that reminds us of home. Mom's chicken pot pie. Grandma's Beef Brisket. A simple Google search leads to hundreds of recipes, cookbooks, Yelp reviews and more. It's a thing. Can't be denied.


I have my comfort foods. Friday as I dealt with some holiday and seasonal blues, I made a ham and scalloped potatoes. It was great. It didn't do the trick. Lately I have found that my Comfort Art has been more effective. Comfort Art? What in the world is that?

For me, music, movies, books and entertainment are more comfort than food. It feels weird. Elvis Costello doesn't have the carbohydrates. Elmore Leonard doesn't contain alcohol or caffeine.White House Down doesn't give me a sugar high.  But if I am honest. Those things do so much more.

Last week I lay on a bean bag in my basement drinking Surge and listening to Elvis Costello on vinyl. It filled me more than any carbohydrate loaded meal. Even if it wasn't my favorite album. Even if it was just the mix of nostalgia and music. It worked. It filled me up. Each line and note connected with me deep down.

Saturday night after a long day at work and plenty of self created stress, I found myself holding Elmore Leonard's Out of Sight. A book I haven't read in probably 15 years. I got about 25 pages in before finally sleep took over. Somewhere between discussion of prison gun towers and planned bank robberies. The words, the world, the characters were more intoxicating than any lager or rum. Oddly, the dreams weren't the worst I had last week. Sometimes I need to give my mind a place to run. Or it picks its own.

Tonight, after a stressful, hectic and snow filled Monday after a holiday, I just needed distraction. The day was fine. I got things done. I have plenty of work to do this week. But when the work day ended, I was a ball of nerves. I felt the stress. In my gut. In my neck. In that little spot right between my eyes on the top of my nose. Tense and worn out. I needed a sugar high. So I put in the Channing Tatum action opus White House Down. Yeah. It's silly. It's over the top. It's one beautiful man saving his precocious daughter, the President and probably the entire country. It's sugar pop action. And it's exactly what I needed. I won't even get to the end of the movie. I don't need to. You know how sometimes you only need have the Snicker's bar? It's like that. I've got my pop sugar buzz. It broke the stress.

Sometimes we talk about guilty pleasures in media or music. For me it's Comfort Art. Just the nostalgia or pop sugar or literary intoxication I need. Some people might mock when you need to rock out to N'sync or just watch a favorite movie yet another time. Or maybe not understand why you have watched the entire series of Firefly on a yearly basis. Screw them.

Let's fight for our Comfort Art the same way we would fight for Grandma's brisket. Because sometimes it's exactly what we need.

Lysistrata and Spike Lee

This fall, I have a friend who is taking a humanities class. Her assignments, readings and reports have led to all kinds of discussions about classic literature. I have had the chance to talk about Shakespeare and the Latin classics again. Shockingly concepts and ideas I haven't used in my daily life in years. One of the works we talked about was Lysistrata. In case you're not familiar with Aristophanes work:

Lysistrata (/laɪˈsɪstrətə/ or /ˌlɪsəˈstrɑːtə/; Attic Greek: Λυσιστράτη, "Army Disbander") is a comedy by Aristophanes. Originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BCE, it is a comic account of one woman's extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian War. Lysistrata persuades the women of Greece to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace—a strategy, however, that inflames the battle between the sexes. The play is notable for being an early exposé of sexual relations in a male-dominated society. Wikipedia

It's a comedy in the bawdy nature. Many stagings have the male cast members with giant plastic phallic members in the latter parts of the play. Imagine a sex comedy with visuals by 14 year olds. But in it's bawdy nature, which as a rule plays to our lowest common denominator - it questions our wants and desires. Aristophanes makes fun of one desire, sex, and man's determination for it by highlighting another desire in a comedic way. It was satire. I'm sure that not everyone in the audience appreciated it. But it was clever in its way.

But it is a classic and historic example of the constant and continuing conflict between men and women and sex. What is it, what should it be, why do we do what we do in relation to it? In one way it shows the power of the gender conflict, in another it shows the mental and social limitations of the time: the idea that the only way to stop men from fighting is to take away their sex, or that women can only influence situation/life through their sexual control. Lysistrata has in it elements of both feminism and sexism. One aspect unexpected from a play written in 411 BCE and one expected.

Yet. It is easy to debate how far we have come as a species in roughly 2,425 years. Even as I read Lysistrata again this fall. (I'll admit that I didn't see the bigger picture or the grander issues of sexism, feminism and just plain humanity when I read it as a younger man). I found myself wondering if in our time with different horrible challenges of war and hate, some group might not pick up Lysistrata's banner of chastity. What would happen? How would society react?

As ever, mine was not an original thought. I was to delighted and intrigued to find that Spike Lee was developing an update of Lysistrata himself, titled Chi-Raq. The story, as explained by fourth wall breaking narrator, Dolmedes (Samuel L. Jackson):

The Aristophanes comedy "Lysistrata," about a sex strike waged by Athenian women designed to frustrate their lunkhead warriors into halting the Peloponnesian War, dates to 411 B.C. and was written in rhymed verse. "Chi-Raq" will do likewise, he says. (At times the movie feels like a nervy grad-school collaboration between theater and film departments, with access to really good actors.) The South Side women are fed up with the carnage caused by the war between rival gangs, the Trojans (Wesley Snipes is their one-eyed leader, Cyclops) and the Spartans (Cannon's character, a rising rapper with a gangbanger's resume, goes by the name Chi-Raq). Lysistrata gets wind of a sex strike, a nonfictional example from recent history, led by Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee. Why not try it here, in the bloody city by the lake? - Chicago Tribune

I appreciate the change of Lysistrata from wife to warrior. The setting of Chicago certainly makes the modern audience take more notice than ancient Greece.  In keeping the comedic tone, Lee attempts to sneak past the defenses of the audience and make an impact. Humor is the gateway to all emotions. If I can make you laugh, I can make you cry, I can make you feel. It is the great irony of both linguistics and Shakespeare that his comedies end in tears and his tragedies end in hope.

I look forward to seeing Lee's interpretation of Aristophanes work. No doubt there will be those who call out it as another sequel or icon for the lack of originality in modern media. But this is not another white guy with a gun saving a building full of people. It is not Channing Tatum lampooning Johnny Depp in high school. It's not a comic or a space opera or another dramatic retelling of war.

Chi-Raq like Lysistrata asks a question. Hopefully it reminds us to ask it as well:

Is humanity's primal need to create able overcome it's primal need to destroy?



 

The Song Doesn't Remain the Same

One thing that I love to do is share music with my children. With activities all over the metro and transporting between houses, we have ample listening opportunities.

I still have a CD player and my kids love to pick out old CDs and listen to them. My 9 year old is probably the worlds youngest Eve 6 fanatic. We all love The Refreshments and Frank Turner. It takes the right day for Meatloaf. From the time they were each babies, I always made mix tapes and compilations for them. 

I love mix tapes. Yes they are still CDs and I still have a CD player in my car. Perhaps it is my affinity for High Fidelity but music and mix tapes are important to me. I make them for people important to me. Each year I try to make a road trip cd for my kids yearly family trips.  I make them to deal with my regular emotional roller coasters too. 

Because of this there are plenty of homemade CDs in the car cd visor holder (95 represent!) and some of them are favorites of my children. The other day, my son grabbed a cd and passed it up to me in the front. I always have veto power and usually I would have veto'd this cd. Yet for some reason, this time I decided to put it in. 

The spring and summer of 2010 was not a good time for me. The roller coaster went off the rails. I lost my job. I lost my significant other. I had to move back to my parents house. My entire house of cards life came tumbling down. At some point that summer either while wallowing or trying to recover, I created a mix tape and simply titled it "broken"

As the first track began, I started to regret putting it in. Some sensations, smells, songs hold too much memory for me and I can't handle them. I haven't been able to listen to a certain song by the Wallflowers since 2000. I have literally walked out of stores once I heard those familiar first cords. So I worried that maybe this cd would bring too much of that summer, of that period of broken back. And for a second it did. 

I skipped the first song at my son's request, and I was just about to push the eject button when something unexpected happened. As Dee Clark began to lament the Raindrops falling from his eyes. I heard my son softly singing along. 

It's weird that I know every word to a song from 1961 and there is no reason my son should know it. But then it hit me, all those car rides that summer. All those trips to the children's museum. The songs played and I sang along. Suddenly I remembered the joy of those moments. The pieces of that time that weren't broken. 

Together we sang through the sappy silly song. We sang together a snippet from Dr Horrible. We laughed. Something that had seemed broken wasn't. 

We picked up my daughter and all three of us sang through Dr Horrible again. Instead of the pain and memories that these songs used to hold, it was fun. 

We even made it through the song of that summer that I used to sing scream as I drove around my broken world: "Nothing Ever hurt like You" All three of us singing loudly and smiling and jiving along. A song that I didn't think I could ever sing with a smile. I was beaming. 

Something happened to those songs over the past 5 years. They didn't stay the static cauldrons of pain. It didn't hurt like it used to. Time, patience and growth  combined with knowledge to change them and me. It was an excellent reminder. 

The song doesn't remain the same. 

And that's ok.