Rome is Burlington

At a school like Middlebury (emphasis there on the like), I find it rather perturbing that I could literally go a month and not step a foot off campus. This is all prefaced of course by the fact that I am a freshman, this is my first year of college, I fully recognize that I do not know the ropes and am, not so much incapable but more precisely I feel I am ill-equipped to objectively make the best use of the resources and offerings I have. And that's really just the way it goes I think; it's normal. I don't think anyone can just walk on as a freshman and be able to achieve their fullest potential as a college student. In fact, just to throw this into the mix, I'm of the view that says that no one ever will full out live up to their greatest human potential. I think sometimes you can catch instances and glimpses of unbridled potential-meeting ass-kicking on the part of an individual, but those moments are shrouded by the self-perpetuating whining and close-mindedness that circulates through dormitories and across campuses -- again, especially in the case of freshman. We already know how codependent kids are in the first few weeks of school (what I have taken to calling the summer camp phase of collegiate life), what with the constant scheduling and coordinating and shameless room-peeking-to-see-if-they're-in-there-oh-wait-it's-just-their-roommate-and-to-be-honest-I-didn't-really-have-any-interest-in-talking-to-them-so-I'm-just-going-to-make-one-comment-about-some-class-I'm-taking-and-some-work-I-have-to-do-so-I-can-be-like-OK-I-should-probably-go-start-my-philosophy-and-then-leave-but-keep-looking-for-people-to-talk-to. But it's true. SO much of our initial conversations with people is small talk about absolutely nothing. You can ask me what classes I'm taking and talk to me about my interests and my goals and what I hope to achieve in college, but don't just nod and say "Whoa that's so cool" when I tell you I'm starting Russian, and then not say anything else. By doing so you force me to says something like "Yeah, it's weird working with a new alphabet and everything, but once you learn that it's not that bad." And then you do the thing again where you nod and I play with my cellphone in my pocket because this conversation is dead. I have subconsciously come up with so many stock phrases I know I'll use for these bullshit autopilot conversations... with what drivel is my mind consumed, and at what cost for that matter?

As a side note, I'd like to touch on the International Quidditch Association World Cup (yeah, I know, it's a little much with the capital letters) that took place this Sunday pretty much a hop and a skip from the building in which I shower, do laundry and wander around my living quarters wondering how for the love of all things holy did my room get so ridiculously dusty. Seriously though, I don't know about anybody else, by I consider myself a relatively clean person for a male my age, and I can say the same for my roommate, but we get these assemblages of dusty fluffy shit that are just bizarre. We have literally no idea what the source of these conglomerations of filth could be. They're already all up in our nooks, and relentlessly they continue their spirited advance on our cranny strongholds. In the words of Dave Chappelle -- that shit is inFURiating! But back to Quidditch, and specifically an example I thought of someone who made the most of his time and resources not just in college, but also in... his own head. You know what I mean. I'm talking about Alex Benepe. This dude had his shit together and executed. He took hold of this this grassyroots game when he was a wee freshman or sophomore maybe and made it into like a huge freaking deal on campus. I mean Quidditch isn't all people talk about my any means but still they get tons of people out there every weekend playing. Running around with brooms between their legs. They sell t-shirts! In my mind an idea or a notion becomes legitimized in the greater society when you can buy a t-shirt confirming its existence. I bought one. I can't wait to wear it NOT at Middlebury. Like in 20 years. So yeah, this weekend was the WC (cue flushing sound) and there were just mad Quidditch players everywhere. The ratio of pairs of spandex to available hits off the soft-serve machine was staggering. LSU came! No, actually, THE Louisiana State University drove their asses all the way to Vermont for a one-day event a lot of my friends here didn't even go check out. Washington State came. There's not a reason out there good enough to convince me that it made practical sense for a team to come all the way from the fucking Pacific Northwest. But cheers to them for actually doing it. They had local food in trucks with awnings! I love it when trucks have awnings. Even though if you were a sandwich shop in Middlebury, VT you'd be stupid if you didn't jump to sponser this thing. It only makes sense. They also had an owlry! With an actual owl! Also some other bird wings, which was kind of morbid I thought. I was standing there like it was my goddamn 7th birthday party around all these little kids just oggling the beauty of this plushy and distinguished-looking bird. I wanted to snuggle with it, and at the same time I wanted to see it plunge inches deep into snow and emerge with a bloody mouse. In the end Middlebury won the tourney, which I thought was actually kind of lame, but the real achievement (holler at me admisSIONS!) was the fact that a Middlebury student just decided to make this happen and it actually did. Good shit Alex Benepe, '09.


[Also as another side note, I herby vow never to employ the term "Middkid" in a serious setting. Kind of annoying, not a fan.]

So what's Burlington got to do (got to do) with it? It blew my face off, that's what it's got to do with... me. Or what it did do... to me. Instead of copping out and doing a play-by-play journalistic account, let's think about why this experience was so meaningful to you Matthew. Remember Matthew: show, but don't tell. Don't bore your reader with trivialities and hollow anecdotes. Make your meaning universal. Stretch yourself. Ha. OK. So I went up there for the purpose of chilling with my homie who is a freshman at the University of Vermarijuanaont. I rolled into pretty much the commercial and cultural hub of Burlington, and to give you a reference point, that was I would say a 15-20 minute walk from the dormitory in which my friend makes his residence. Immediately my mind is blown. I've been kind of toting this idea recently that since I've never really done anything fun in a city before while having the "freedom" I have as a college student, I figured that I wouldn't really know what I was missing out on by going to school in such a remote area, and furthermore (to look at things a little more positively), I have pretty much convinced myself that to an extent I can have fun wherever I am, and that being in a small town like Middlebury won't be a problem at all. That I'll be foine. I'm not totally ruling out that the latter is impossible, but I now do see the obvious merits in having a city right there. Right there! It's... just, like, I mean you're like there and then you're like THERE, man! This shit is awesome! We did urban things! Like walk... in... public! We ate actual pizza in an established parlor of pizza, served by people who don't assume you're going to go to class once you finish eating. Church street is great for its red-brick openness. Once you remove automobiles from a place that they would normally run through, you've got yourself some instant charm. And I bought into it.

You know what else I bought into? Private. Schools. And this is really why my time in Burlington was so illuminating. All you hear when you're applying to college is how you DON'T need to go to a "top" school, a "selective" school. Is it true? Or is just a way to help you prepare for some inevitable rejection? I'm positive it's true. What's that quote about how Mark Twain never let his schooling get in the way of his education? Why don't we actually listen to that?? No, we don't actually take it seriously and incorporate it into our philosophy on life. We just smile, nod, maybe make eye contact with a friendly face and say "You know that is so true though?" and then move on, back to the grind. Sometimes I think for my purposes and the education I'm looking for, I could learn way more from just reading books. On all sorts of subjects. Books are the key. It's sad how I don't read that much anymore. But I don't have the excuse that I hear sometimes that school ruined reading for me and now I can't do it. I refuse to accept that. I will accept that I might be lazy at this point in my life - lazy and certainly easily distracted. But the future holds good things. Anyway, colleges. What do I get at Middlebury? The answer is everything. Given to me. Offered to me. Available to me. Advertised to me. But at the same time, I don't get that freedom that I could feel sitting in that dorm room at UVM. What is freedom? I think when people talk about "all that free time" you suddenly have as a college student, they can mean several different things. I'm not used to having all this time. I'm not used to having all this time with virtually the same tasks to accomplish as I did in high school: homework. When you think of the things you "have" to "do," homework is pretty much the only thing that comes to mind. When I was in high school, I'd do it when I got home. That was kind of normal. But in college, you have so much time! So you will - without fail (hapun) - waste that time, because you feel that the only thing you have to DO is homework. And that's a pretty normal way to go about budgeting your time. But there's so much potential in a college day, it's ridiculous. What happened to being driven? What happened to getting your shit together? You could say that getting your shit together is a state of mind, but really at the end of the day, the only way to have your shit together is to actually have your shit together. Period. This is of course easier said than done. But let's take a look at the differences (in my mind, I'm biased, I'm trying to prove a point, I'm slanted in a certain direction I get it) between a school like Middlebury and a school like UVM.

Midd has dining halls with food all the time, all you can eat. It's really good food. I would never complain about the food. I have a dining hall connected to my dorm! I don't have to walk outside to go eat. How awesome do you think this will be when it's like -40° out? How worth it is that bowl of lucky charms compared to that walk? Luckily I don't pay any tax on my cereal. But how ridiculous is that? Why do I deserve that as a freshman? Why do I need that? I'm not being the dick who resents what he's lucky to have (well...), but I'm just trying to point out how we're all college freshmen, but the systems everywhere are so incredibly different. Middlebury is a bubble. I thought my high school was a bubble, and maybe it was socially, but at least I regularly went out into the world. Remember old people? Remember little kids? It's objectively sad how excited I get when I see little kids playing on swings when I'm on my way to class sometimes. They're just little human beings and that's why I love it so much. Innocence. Seriously. Can't emphasize this enough. Innocence. Not even going to comment about it. But I wish they could bottle that shit. That's it. Also we're all corrupted. But the point is, Midd is not the real world. It's a campus. There are little theme parties and there's gossip flying everywhere and the longest walk you'll ever make is 15 minutes tops and you're with people ALL the time and before any given night on a weekend there's probably a good 35-40 minutes of telephone logistical coordinating that goes on, while everyone else sits disabled in the lounge until some social opportunity comes and herds everyone away. Sometimes I think about how many text messages are flying over campus and it kinda makes me sick. I'm not a nihilist. Maybe I'm a cowardly nihilist, just like I'm an indecisive anarchist and a timid atheist. I'm not totally willing to commit. Back to the point though - the kind of freedom you have at Middlebury in my humble freshman opinion is to take advantage of the clubs, activities, classes, professors, the collegiate life. But at UVM, I feel like there is a different kind of freedom. I have so many opportunities, but am I really living independently here? Drawing from my conversations with my Burlington mate, I would say that the presence of "the man" (the administration etc.) is felt not nearly as much as I feel it at Middlebury. Walking around UVM was a exhilarating and numbing at the same time. As a disclaimer, it did happent to be a really grungy gray metallic day outside, and it was also a Saturday morning so a lot of people were either in bed or hungover scrounging for food, so the feeling on campus was probably a little disproportionately stark. And also it rained as I was running to catch my bus, so obviously, running in the rain, making all your ideas seem way more significant, you know the way it goes. But still!! The word that was stuck in my head was "industrial." Looking out the window from my friend's room it was like the gulag man (I openly admit to having but a vague and fabricated understanding of what the gulag is.). But thoughts are all about association anyway. Free thoughts. Good thoughts. I loved walking through this one gigantic brick building. Apparently it was the physical sciences building. Fucking sweet. I felt like it was 1982 in there. And the past has to be better than the present, right? In my mind it often is at least. My favorite thing ever though? Those old school black signs with the white individual letters. Kinda like those signs outside churches that get parodied all the time. But seeing those signs made me feel that if I went there I would be getting a much grittier, real college experience. Like I was in Good Will Hunting. I want to have a small shitty room. To be in a rundown dorm. To have to walk ten minutes to lunch just to have chicken patties every day. I've gone to small schools all my life. I've been close with the people around me. Maybe now I want to be a nobody, to have some time to myself, to feel alone and deserted. Maybe then I could get some work done.


But I mean, it's all good.

Out And About

I have been quite busy these past few weeks. Rehearsals for the play (which goes up next weekend) have mathematically taken over my life, and then when you combine that with everyday social twiddling, pondering the eternal creative verities, and (maybe) actual schoolwork, and you can see why the routine of a bewildered college freshman such as myself could get a little overwhelming. Also meals. You'd think that with 24 hours in a day and three meals which take I would say on average 35 minutes each if you go as packs of freshmen from your hall (as I often do, although there is no shame in grabbing a newspaper and eating lunch at like 1:30 by yourself once the lines have gone down), you would have a lot of time to do other shit. But no, that's really not the case. You get out of class at around 11 or 12. You get back to your room, you check the menus online, and you expound with your roommate for about 7 minutes on why the vegan beans are lame and the pita bread is awesome. Once you've succeeded in latching onto a cluster of other freshmen just as clueless and regrettably codependant as you are, you finally ship off. And you always end up leaving right at rush hour! It's a joke. So let's say you get back from lunch at like 1:15. You procrastinate til like 2:30, which for me consists usually of watching Colbert online and singing to music from "O Brother, Where Art Thou." Why? Because I ball. But what I'm saying is sooner or later (usually at around 5:30) you find yourself wandering out into the hall like a zombie trying not to sound too desperate/too much like you're talking to no one in particular when you casually but still at a relatively assertive decibel proclaim, in the words of many a lame de chez lame freshman that came before you, "Hey... anybody want to go to dinner?" And repeat. 

So school is overwhelming. That's nothing new. What do we look for, then, when life becomes too difficult? An academic break perhaps? A calendrical respite, if you will? Oh I will. Fall break '08 bitches! Featuring everyone fucking leaving and me staying on campus! There is practically no one here! I don't talk to anyone! Welcome to the good life...? But don't get me wrong - I'm not here to complain. I'm actually really enjoying these few days of relative solitude. I can chill, sleep, get some exercise, catch up on work, maybe even do some writing, who knows? That was my skeletal outline going into this purgatory. So far I have been (surprise surprise) overwhelmingly unproductive. But it's only Sunday. I have so much time...

Yesterday I had plans for an evening on the town. This would have been really nice, since I don't ever go off-campus. The vibe I get in terms of the town of Middlebury's reputation is that basically there are a few stores, a few places to get food, but overall it sucks and there's nothing to do and omg Boston is so far away I hate everything go to Burlington but Burlington is so far away man life will be so much better once I have a car here. So I've neglected to explore the town, simply because I thought it wasn't worth it. But I forgot to consider the fact that I, Matthew, have a tendency to find the mundane and the humdrum irrationally engaging. My standards for enjoyment in a public locale are so embarassingly low that I could arguably be happy in most if not all post-industrial revolution municipal settings. So here was my brilliant plan: (1) I fucking bike into town. (2) I sit and eat some pizza. (3) I go to some café/coffeehouse type place and sit on something cushy and rustic with my laptop, soak up the vibe, and try do some writing. Yes, some writing. Not blogging, not journal writing, not scribbling ideas and quotes into my little notebook. No, actual creative writing. I think about writing a lot. If I wrote for half as long as I thought about writing I'd... that would just never happen. I've concluded that I'm lazy. That's basically what it comes down to. I would love to have written (a-ha!), but it's really hard to write! And there are so many things that I enjoy not to the degree of which I enjoy having written, but still it's worth saving myself the struggle -- Let's listen to Andrew Lloyd Webber. Let's just bask in the reasons why Andrew Lloyd Webber is awesome. Hey, let's Wikipedia Andrew Lloyd Webber. Let's go play with a tiny flashlight. Man I haven't had a Snapple in forever. Let's delete text messages. Where the hell did I put my headphones? Card games are awesome. I used to be so good at spit. Shit, I have to do laundry. Should I join the Peace Corps after college? New Daily Show! New Office! Anybody want to go to dinner? -- that's usually how it goes. So I was going to actually bite the bullet and try and crank out SOMETHING. Anything. Anything would be better than laziness. And I'd feel accomplished! That's what I was going to do. That would have been awesome. Instead, here's what really happened. And beecause I'm me, I'm not surprised at all in retrospect.

I start biking down the hill from my dorm. My first thought, "Shit, I should have worn more clothing." I am such a terrible judge of temperature sometimes. I'll wear my "I-go-to-college-in-Vermont-and-I-recognize-I-look-like-a-tool-but-nevertheless-I-feel-obligated-to-own-a" North Face when it's like 70º out but no, when I bike into town at 6:30 at night when the sun is already mostly behind the mountains, I'll rock the long sleeve t-shirt underneath my father's cardigan. So it's cold. And I'm biking. I feel like a paperboy circa 1951. Obsessively changing gears, not really 100% comfortable with my ability to brake smoothly, getting really weird looks from people as I awkwardly waddle my bike single-file across the bridge behind some oblivious woman on a cell phone. 

A word now on biking with a shitty bike. Now the bike I was using this evening was much better than my bike, the bike I owned before it got stolen because I was sick of using a ridiculous Kryptonite lock on a bike that probably cost $14 on ebay. So of course one weekend it got stolen. For the break I was lucky enough to bum a bike. I like this new bike a lot better. But it's still a mountain bike and thus fairly onerous to operate. The ramifications of riding on such a bike -- 

1) You look like a fool. I'm not really able to pull off the whole pedaling while standing phenomenon. I see these people gliding up hills and I think to myself "Wow, that  looks like an efficient use of energy and utility. That person is totally maximizing their and their bicycle's geometrical potential. Way to be awesome." But I always end up sitting the whole time, and I feel really incompetent pressing my chest into the handlebars trying to muscle my way up the hill in low gear. 

2) You work obscenely hard to get where you're going, and yet you don't really go anywhere. You'd be so much better off with a road bike. We're taught in life that if you work hard and put effort into what you do then you can accomplish anything. Why isn't that the case on a tiny mountain bike? I call it the paradox of fucked.

3) This point is more about inexperienced bikeriding in general. I don't know about you, but it takes me so impossibly long to lock my bicycle. Especially now, the bike I'm borrowing has one of those coil locks with the rubix cube system of alligning the numbers like freaking Hercules. And you pretty much have to be Hercules to not get absolutely victimized by this lock. Every time, it's a struggle. To get it through the spokes, around the metal thing in the ground, inserted properly (don't even-) and finally locked. The worst thing (and this has happened to me several times) is when you're literally squatting down in front of the bike rack trying to tame the beast and you look over and hey, it's someone I passed three minutes ago on my bike. They were just taking their sweet old time walking while I was cranking out endorphins like I was Lance Armstrong. Oh the shame.

So I get to the pizza place. I had been by there earlier that afternoon when I was aimlessly wandering the town, half-attempting to find this street I looked up which the internet claimed had a barber shop I had developed an interest in. I didn't find it. But I did see this nice sicilian pizza place that looked promising. I looked it up online when I got home. What I got from the reviews I saw was that it's great pizza, but the service takes forever. I said ok, that's cool, I don't mind waiting for good pizza. I get to the parking lot, see some tough ass dude with a goatee grilling me from outside Middlebury Discount Beverage, and I have a "Fuck, I look like such a college student" moment. I mean I'm wearing a backwards baseball cap and a backpack for goodness' sake. I won't even get into how worthless and uncool I felt pacing, scanning the parking lot looking for a place to lock my bike. I eventually get into the pizza place and order. I realize that there are no seats. It's just for taking out. Actually, there is one seat. A tiny bench. A bench that probably didn't go higher than my shin (Shin is a weird body part. I would have been more comfortable using my knee, but it was really much shorter than that. An ornamental bench. I didn't sit down. Imagine if I had?). So I immediately realize why the service in this place is so abysmally bad -- it's run by a bunch of white kids from Vermont. In the words of my Statistics teacher of old, "Hello!!" They're like chatting it up back there! Making pizza! The specials were written in really lame colored chalk. It was really a joke. You ever go into a pizza place, like a real pizza place in the city or like a deli or something and you feel like you don't want to even interrupt the assembly line that's going on behind the counter and you don't want to inconvenience the employees by even ordering? A bustling pizza place is a thing of beauty. But these were college-age kids. I ordered two slices and some garlic knots. Shout out to Westchester. Two things struck me as bizarre -- first, the garlic knots. Garlic knots, as I understand it, are made from leftover scraps of pizza dough that they just crumple up, splash on some butter and some garlic shit, and toss in the oven. But these garlic knots weren't even knots - they were like cubes. They were in a bowl. The chick behind the counter asked me how many I wanted. How many?? I said one order of garlic knots what do you mean how many? I want six motherfucker because that's what an order is. You mean you sell by the individual knot? She's scooping them out one by one with a piece of waxed paper like it's a goddamn Dunkin Donuts. These were obviously premeditated garlic knots. They actually set out dough specifically for garlic knots. What, you mean you guys fucking measure shit out? Do you use recipes? Be a man, eyeball your shit! Man, that bothered me. This also bothered me -- I was planning to only order pizza and take my chances eating the pizza the café later, hoping if I bought a drink at the café and hid myself in a corner, I could have my pizza and they wouldn't hate me. So I wasn't ordering a drink at the pizza place. The girl at the cashier says to me when I'm ordering, "You can have a drink too, if you'd like." Hold the phone. I am almost 19 years old. I have been in probably over 100 pizza places in my life, and every fucking one has had drinks. So I'm pretty familiar with the ballpark of mealtime accessories at my disposal. I can see the fucking drink machine right there. You look like you babysit my little sister and you're telling me I can have a drink if I'd like?? Do not bring that weak shit around me. I'm taking my pizza. Peace.

In the end, the café was closed. I ended up biking all the way back up and having a really ghetto meal at my desk, with paper towels from the bathroom, sipping water from a nalgene. Ah, freshmanhood. I also ended up dumping half of the garlic cubes on my buddy across the hall. Dumping unwanted yet perfectly edible food on someone is kind of a testy maneuver. I made sure to tell him that they were soggy, not warm, extremely dense and he totally didn't have to take them if he didn't want them. I then felt kind of lame when he looked at me kind of quizzically and said "Dude I don't care, I'll take them all. The more food the merrier."

Hm. That's a really nice outlook actually. 

Burn After Reflecting

the coen brothers are fucking awesome.

i just saw burn after reading. holy shit. that movie was so good, in so many ways. i can't even tell you. i'll start by saying that it is part of my personality (i have noticed) to put things on pedestals and lose a clear objective perspective on things (or people) i admire (or love). am i idolizing the coen brothers too much? am i convinced that the coen brothers are the smartest minds in filmmaking and art and everything that i love? 

no. because tarantino movies are fucking awesome too.

but seriously, my shit is kind of always slanted. someone asked me tonight, "do you really believe what you say?" and it stopped me dead. honestly, i don't know and for all the introspection that (i at least claim in public with possibly not-so genuine motives) i go through, how real and honest and (a word i have grown to love and hate) objective am i really about myself? but wow. we are not really talking about that. we are talking about why burn after reading was fucking awesome.

 

burn after reading was essentially a zoomed-in, stripped-down, hyperrealistic, dark, psychocomedic (apparently not a word. fuck. keeping it anyway.) satire of a medley of startlingly insightful choices of hollywood genres. it went the fuck there. it's really, honestly just operating on a completely different level than most of the cultural food pyramid bullshit hollywood churns out on a regular basis. these guys are fighting the system with this kind of filmmaking. it constantly changes the mental arena you exist and struggle to succeed in when one takes in art. we like to settle into what we're looking at and say, "oh, this is one of these movies." "it's this kind of painting." the coen brothers keep you on your toes. you will get your conception of what is acceptable or customary to appear on "the big screen" beaten in the skull with a fucking hatchet. we're just brainwashed by the big production studios to expect and (more noticeably here) not expect certain things from movies. it sucks. but it's all that much sweeter when someone actually takes notice and crafts such a brilliant and creative fuck you to the system. it works within a system to highlight the flaws of not just the mass media but also of (speaking to the film's actual plot and subject matter) many concerning contemporary topics, including why americans are stupid, why american politcs/ bureaucracy in general is a fucking joke, and (presumably and not necessarily consciously) why everything in the world is kind of fucked. let's be real. we have technology. we have admittedly some great and progressive thinkers out there, but still, the strength of the general human (or let's pump the breaks and safely say american) spirit has been tailspinning for awhile now. and it's only getting worse.

 

so. more or less, that's pretty much the gist of what i took from that movie. what i'd love to do is get a copy of the dvd and write why i thought this moment was genius, and why that moment was brilliant. i won't though. that would get a little excessive. let it be known however, that i could, and kinda was throughout the movie tonight. 

 

oh, shit. it was also fucking hysterical. all that garbage above was just what i realized after i got over how just funny this movie is, and how smart and perceptive the coen brothers are as a writing team. the sharpness of the script makes their actors truly puppets (in a good way) or (if you'd prefer) reflections of the directors' consciousness(es). sigh. i was the same way when i saw fargo, raising arizona, the big lebowski, no country. i won't deny, these guys are able to capture something that i seem to have a really intense admiration and respect for. 

 

so what to do now?

Lights And Darks

First of all, I fully acknowledge and sympathize with any (am I being optimistic with this self-indulgent preface?) groans in reaction to this incredibly pedestrian subject matter. I myself can't believe I'm writing about this... although it was such a meaningful experience!! I'm not however going to do the thing where I talk about what it means that we're finally on our own, with our own responsibilities, and how doing laundry is this great metaphor for the (baby) steps I and my peers are taking every day on our steady collegiate path to adulthood. No. No metaphors. Laundry is fucking laundry. It will always be just laundry. But some funny antics still went down... at least in my mind. So let's get this show on the road because I still have to do my Russian homework. 

As a dude (and self-proclaimed aficionado of appropriate dude conduct), few things give me more enjoyment than witnessing my boys poke their heads into each other's room and ask, "Yo, you do laundry yet?" Professionality is the key to this interrogation. Serious and/or businesslike demeanor is critical to a successful transaction. One motherfucker breaks character and the whole operation is shot to hell. The response is usually a slow head-turn in the direction of the hamper and a weighty nod, followed by something in the general ballpark of, "No." If we're really getting comfortable here, there might even be the follow-up "Are we doing this thing?" You know the answer. What would Bret and Jermaine say? I don't even have to say it.

So here we are. Four dudes. Trekking down the hallway, all simultaneously without speech trying to indivicually decide the best way to carry his respective hamper. Some are whipping the shapeless mesh sack. Others have upgraded to the deluxe foldable hamper. Tension quickly accumulates when an observation is made in my direction - "Dude, we have the same hamper."

I know. I know. I know. I fuckin' know.

"Oh... hey yeah wow. I guess we do." Tension quickly disappears as a brethren halts the pack. An idea has so been had.

"Should we... get a girl?"

WHAM. No one knows what to say. Utter silence. No one in their right mind is going to say that it's a bad idea. But would anyone be willing to take that giant androgenous leap for dudekind and sponser this revolutionary proposition? The perpetrator is quick to justify his suggestion - 

"I mean, she said, like, she would help us when we did laundry." 

This new piece of information elicits grim nods and solemn "mmm's" from the dudes. The decision is made to recruit a neighboring X X chromosome. After the customary hasty sexism accusations are made, our group of five makes the epic elevator descent to what I am now calling the Tide dungeon. 

I didn't even think that was that funny myself.

Boy am I glad we decided to grab a girl -- not only because she was someone who could help answer the ridiculous questions that boys spoiled by years of mommying could come up with -- but also because it must have just been really fun for her to witness such bald-faced domestic naivete. We had nooo friggen clue what we were doing in there (for the most part). Here's a sampling of the shit that we were too stupid to repress in the presence of a female:

 

"Do I put the fabric softener in the washing machine?"

"Do I have to separate the lights and darks in the dryer?"

"What the fuck is perm press?"

"What if it's a striped shirt?"

"Yo, do you have a delicates bag? Ok. Do I need one you think?"

"So I just fill it up to the line?"

"38 minutes?!"

"Do I have to stand here and guard it?"

"Is this a wool sock?"

 

Ah... college. In the end, laundry was a success. I had neat little piles on my bed. They were like my children. Folding laundry is kind of like reverse foreplay, isn't it? Everything all laid out... all the work has been done, but you still need to stand there and fold shit. It's weird. That was kind of a weird connection to make. But yeah, in the end it was a success. I had been looking forward to the shenanigans of dorm life for a long time before I got to college, so if something as by definition lame as doing laundry with other people gets my blood going as it did on that fateful night, then parties/actual socializing will probably blow my face off. People rule. 

P.S. Tide-to-Go -- one product which absolutely requires you to say its name in its entirety. No compromises, no hip nominal alternatives. You're using a specially-designed detergent pen to get that highlighter stain off your shirt. Give in to the corporate enslavement. It's called Tide-to-Go, and it shall always be referred to as such. 

A Hoedown

Last night in the big white tent there went down a hoedown. Our pregaming for this hoedown consisted of dressing up in what we thought would be the most original and spirited costumes we could find - wife beaters and bandanas. And rolled up jeans. And in the case of an impassioned few, imitation stereotypical southern tattoos inscribed in permanent marker. Barefootdom was almost across the board, although one dude wore work boots and for this I made sure to give him daps. Anyway I and the little crew of floormates and such I have been associating with arrived a little late to the hoedown. What I discovered blew my fucking skull. There was a legit Appalachian band - banjos, fiddles, and an old woman playing the stand-up bass who I kinda wanted to party with. For the people who may know what I'm talking about, the frontman for this group who served as the Big Brother voice of the night dictating the dance moves bore a strong resemblance to that really chill conductor on the Hudson Line train... you know the one i'm talking about? The big santa-type fellow with the huge beard. The beard is definitely key. It definitely made the look of the band that much more authentic. Not that they needed to prove they were authentic - this wurn't no spice girls concert. 

So we get to the big tent and I see just lines of people going at it. And already I kinda feel like I'm a tool for dressing the way I was. I should have gone with the western shirt thing. A No Country/Brokeback combo if you will. Last night made me realize how much of a costume party college can be, especially on a small campus like this. When I come back from T-gives break I'm definitely bringing up some of my more third-party getups. Where else are you gonna wear that kind of stuff? Rice paddy hat? Check. Leather vest? You better believe it. I'm making a list.

I'm also getting sidetracked. I was just standing there to the side wanting so badly to square dance with someone but not being able to just grab somebody. This is also me right after coming from a sex/improv/comedy/educational show, so I was totally telling myself I need to be more confidant take more risks stop being a bitch eht setterah eht setterah. I was thankful when my FYC grabbed be and we just started getting sucked into the mob of people running through rows of people and do-see-doing and swinging your partner and just clapping and hopping around when you couldn't figure out what you were really supposed to do. 

The next big step in the evening was getting into an actual square. That means four couples. You can imagine the darting eyes and the nervous glances that had to be filtered out before everyone got settled. I actually found myself in a group of people I had never met, having been pretty much given the boot when i tried to poke my head through a couple of my floormates' shoulders. But this was good for me in the end. It's hard to describe the feeling of what a hoedown is. Well, actually an imitation hoedown. It was weird. There's obviously the realness of the band and the dance instructions being shouted out. But we're all a bunch of college freshmen in Vermont. I would say a good number of us went to prep schools. We don't know shit about real live hoedown culture. So it was kind of a satirical hoedown [It's weird that hoedown has an "e" in it. I checked it out on wikipedia and it is indeed the right spelling.]. But this is what I learned. This is also where I start ranting.

1) People are way too fucking guarded. So many people are afraid to just let go and be a part of something totally foreign to them. I'm definitely part of that group, but I'm trying to fight it every day. People need to commit to something and not just constantly remind themselves that this is a silly dance during orientation week. Because...

2) I don't know exactly why I'm doing the numbered list thing but to continue that ellipses above, it's because there is a whole different kind of fun to be had out there. We are so jaded and attached to our ideas of what a "good time" is that we reject things that are old-fashioned or unconventional. We're also obsessed with creating our own identity and shaping our own societal comfort zones, but why not look to the past a little once in awhile? They had fun back then, right? Because a hoedown is nostalgic by definition at this point. It's quirky and not something a young person of this generation (generally speaking) would actively choose to do for fun. But it IS and it CAN BE...

3) The music of a hoedown is also really interesting. It's just this simple pulsing bassline with these wholesome repeating riffs, but you can really get lost in it. It's really interesting to zone out to. 

4) Speaking of zoning out, I tried something that kind of relates to the whole guarded thing. While I was linking arms over shoulders with these three other people I had never met and just spinning around to the music, I let my eyes just glaze out. I tried to focus less. I tried to let my body just go with it. And it was a stark difference to the way I usually feel in life. And I don't really understand it very much at this point but as Toby said at casino night, I'm gonna chase that feeling.

5) OH. I was so fucking pissed at one point during this hoedown. The bearded frontman who was probably pushing 65-70 was shushing our bratty asses for a good seven minutes. I could not believe people weren't shutting up!! I felt so terribly. It's so fucking disrespectful to this man and his profession to just keep talking when he is just trying to do his job. And his job, in case you hadn't noticed, was to entertain YOU and to provide a good time for YOU. He's not doing this for his own good. I wanted to run on stage and give those motherfuckers a piece of my mind. Sure enough though, when beardy finally got the instructions out and the dance finished, the applause was tremendous. It was a different kind of applause. For a second, the people who had really been into it released all that energy and you could really feel that there was something awesome going on.

6) This hoedown got me thinking also about a word I so often use: "ridiculous." It's right in the fucking title of this blog. It's totally a defense mechanism though. It's designed so that when you say it, you feel like you're more grounded and centered than all the shit that's going on around you. You = stable and level-headed. Shit happening = craaaazy. Don't get me wrong though. Some things are actually ridiculous. And you could argue that a bunch of college kids swinging arms under a tent with lights around the edge is kind of ridiculous. But sometimes I just want to say fuck ridiculous. I should just go with it. Live in the mooooooment.

Maybe I should go to a rave sometime.

Poor Ted

So. I'm in Staples with my mom yesterday because a) I ball and b) the most relevant answer, that given I am leaving for college on Sunday, I wanted to pick up some pens and also an external hard drive. I've been jotting down notes/thoughts/observations/quotes/one-liners for the past few months in a notebook I carry around now, and I don't know where I found it but I've been using what is apparently called the Pilot G-2. I don't want to be the guy who tells you your pen sucks but my pen is the shit and I like how it writes and how it clicks and how it feels and how the ink just does lovely things with my ever-fluctuating handwriting. I dig this pen and I wanted four more black ones and hey blue ink should I get a pack of those hmm the ink looks a little light I don't want it to be a lame kind of blue I want it to be badass and navy and authoritative like a suit Kofi Annan would wear what the hell now I'm looking around and they don't seem to offer any other kinds of blue I guess this is the only blue Pilot has so I might as well get it. All this while a mother and her three children battled over the differences between THESE pens and the Staples brand pens. One of the girls looked about 12 and I'm pretty sure she was judging me... she could pick up on my inner monologue. So I grabbed the two packs of four Pilot G-2 pens and went looking for the section on external hard drives.

It's been a slow process, but after months of boredom and an excess of access to the world wide web, I've downloaded a shitload of music and my one time Greek god of a Macintosh has lost a bit of its studly performance edge and now has to pull more weight than Marion Jones' ex-husband. I never got that relationship. I think Marion had other problems. She never won my heart as Mia Hamm did. Lisa Leslie came close but then her bone structure got to me. My vocabulary in the language of mainstream female athletes should not be questioned. But going back to Staples. I found the hard drive I wanted (it's sleek and notebook-size and I won't need more than 250 GB realistically will I?) but I had to go ask a Staples person to go in the back and get it for me. So I walk to the customer service whatever little island at the front of the store and ask some mid-thirties dude with a goatee for what's that word they use assistance. He is obviously not doing shit except chill there and chat with his suckup of a co-worker who looked like a grown-up twenty-something version of Brucey from Matilda (great movie). So I ask him for the hard drive. He looks at me. He picks up the phone that talks over the loudspeaker and calls "Ted" to "Hard Drives" for "Customer Assistance." Bruce laughs as goatee summons Ted.

OK. Ted comes. He is probably mid-fifties and Asian and he has glasses and he looks kinda sad and depressed. His hair reminded me of Javier Bardem in No Country but in this case the effect was not kickass and psychologically devastating, but instead, once again, sad and lonely. My mom whispers to me that he has been there working at Staples forever. So already I kinda feel bad for him. But he did what he had to do (and believe me, we presented him with a really difficult task.). I pointed to the hard drive I wanted. He looked at the number on the laminated slice of plastic which corresponded with the hard drive I wanted. He went in the back and got it. He handed it to us. After thanking Ted for his trouble, we walked towards the register and I noticed that the group of island douchebags had not moved and was still for the most part not doing shit. Still chuckling, being lazy, being douchebags. So I went over to goatee and asked him why he couldn't have gotten the hard drive himself. He pauses and looks at me. 

"Well, Ted's in that department... and... and he's right there." He points to Ted who now is standing, indeed, right "there" very much in our range of eyesight but not involved at all in the conversation that was heating up at the customber service island. 

"That's his department?" I asked. 

"Yeah, Ted's in that department and he's right there." 

Wait... hold on. Ted might be "right there" now, but he's only there because you called him from across the store to do a menial task. And what is this department you speak of? There's one fucking shelf for hard drives. That's not a department. Across from it is mp3 shit, and adjacent to that is printers. I looked at Ted's nametag and it said "Sales Associate" - same as your nametag. You're telling me Ted is the only person here who could read a barcode and go in the back and get it? You don't know how to do that? No, you do. But you would rather make Ted do it. And you know Ted is never going to complain one bit and he'll do all your boring jobs. How does that make you feel? Do you feel like a bum? Can you feel how little respect I have for you right now? 

I didn't say any of this though. I kinda stared at him for a second, said OK, and left. I think I made him a little uncomfortable but I really need to be more assertive in situations in which I feel that an injustice has been committed. In hindsight I wish I could have gotten him really pissed off and flustered and then made him feel like shit for getting worked up at an 18 year-old kid. 

"STAPLES. That was - you're a dick."