you know what's bullshit? "the longer you have to wait, the more prepared you'll be when you finally find the person who's right for you."
bull. shit. the longer you have to wait, the more nervous you are that you don't know what the fuck you're doing and everyone else does. the more convinced you become that you are completely undesirable, because people who are less interesting or less attractive than you get all kinds of guys, so there must be something deeply, unchangeably wrong with you that you can't even figure out. the more everyone else develops a backstory and a set of ex-whatevers they can refer to, and the more you have to lie and make things up. the longer you have to wait, the farther behind you are, and the less likely you are to ever catch up or find anyone who likes you the fucked-up way you are. that's all.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Saturday, January 22, 2011
attack of manbearpig
just walked a mile in what weather.com says feels like 10-degree weather. some of the snowbanks up the street are taller than me. I could literally disappear into them. Boston is a polar ice cap right now, snow-cover-wise.
you know what else Boston is? it's built on a landfill, same as San Francisco, or most of it is anyway. where I'm sitting right now, this whole part of town, used to just be the Massachusetts Bay. and if there's ever an earthquake of significant magnitude in New England, close enough to the city, the loosely-packed ground under this dorm will liquefy and the whole Back Bay neighborhood will sink into it, anywhere from a few inches to several feet. that includes Fenway Park, and that includes everywhere I've ever lived away from home. there have been earthquakes out here, too. nothing in the last hundred years to compete with the West Coast, but out on the Cape there was one in the 1800s that they felt in New Hampshire and western Mass and all over.
get to the edges of the country while you can, yo. New Orleans is sinking as the water's rising, the next great coastal earthquakes could cripple San Fran and Boston. there's great stuff out here, come see it before we all have to move to Kansas.
earth science is the only science that's ever been remotely interesting to me, you see (besides space'n'planets, that is...and dinosaurs...okay, applied science can be awesome, it's just bio/physics/chem that I hate). how the Midwest is flat like it is because it got rolled over by glaciers during the last Ice Age, how New York and New England are actually rising upward, 18,000 years later, as a result of those glaciers retreating off of them. how it was probably a volcano in Mexico that got the dinosaurs, and you can still go see the crater.
100 percent unrelated to all this, MLB Network named Andrew McCutchen the best center fielder in baseball today. my boy. I couldn't be prouder of him and I think they're right. kid's going places.
my dad and I were discussing the Pirates a couple months ago and he was being pessimistic as ever, and I said, "well, my great hope for Walker and McCutchen is that they end up Red Sox, so I can still watch and love them." he said, very earnestly and seriously all of a sudden, "no, you know what? my great hope is that they win the World Series as Pirates in 2014, and Neil Walker wins the Series MVP." and he walked away.
the moral of this post: Boston may be hit by an earthquake and fall into the bay before the Pirates win the World Series, but that doesn't mean I'll stop believing.
you know what else Boston is? it's built on a landfill, same as San Francisco, or most of it is anyway. where I'm sitting right now, this whole part of town, used to just be the Massachusetts Bay. and if there's ever an earthquake of significant magnitude in New England, close enough to the city, the loosely-packed ground under this dorm will liquefy and the whole Back Bay neighborhood will sink into it, anywhere from a few inches to several feet. that includes Fenway Park, and that includes everywhere I've ever lived away from home. there have been earthquakes out here, too. nothing in the last hundred years to compete with the West Coast, but out on the Cape there was one in the 1800s that they felt in New Hampshire and western Mass and all over.
get to the edges of the country while you can, yo. New Orleans is sinking as the water's rising, the next great coastal earthquakes could cripple San Fran and Boston. there's great stuff out here, come see it before we all have to move to Kansas.
earth science is the only science that's ever been remotely interesting to me, you see (besides space'n'planets, that is...and dinosaurs...okay, applied science can be awesome, it's just bio/physics/chem that I hate). how the Midwest is flat like it is because it got rolled over by glaciers during the last Ice Age, how New York and New England are actually rising upward, 18,000 years later, as a result of those glaciers retreating off of them. how it was probably a volcano in Mexico that got the dinosaurs, and you can still go see the crater.
100 percent unrelated to all this, MLB Network named Andrew McCutchen the best center fielder in baseball today. my boy. I couldn't be prouder of him and I think they're right. kid's going places.
my dad and I were discussing the Pirates a couple months ago and he was being pessimistic as ever, and I said, "well, my great hope for Walker and McCutchen is that they end up Red Sox, so I can still watch and love them." he said, very earnestly and seriously all of a sudden, "no, you know what? my great hope is that they win the World Series as Pirates in 2014, and Neil Walker wins the Series MVP." and he walked away.
the moral of this post: Boston may be hit by an earthquake and fall into the bay before the Pirates win the World Series, but that doesn't mean I'll stop believing.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
and i think to myself, what a wonderful world
here's how my first 48 hours back in Boston went:
- touched down in Logan, took a shuttle that I never knew existed back to campus. went to the newspaper office, where I was until roughly 2:15 AM.
- slept from about 3:20 AM to 5:25 AM, went to the radio station for a 6-8 AM show.
- passed the fuck out from 8:30-10:30. this was my night's sleep.
- had class, came back to the newspaper office, was here until 3:45 AM because of a goddamned Russian-novel-length basketball preview. went to sleep at like quarter to 5 AM.
the not being dependent on caffeine thing was happening. I don't foresee it happening for much longer. mmmm Dunkies coffee, in which you can't even taste the coffee because of the liquid tons of cream.
it's not all bad. it's not even mostly bad. it doesn't even really get dark at night where I live. that is, 7 PM looks about the same as 4 AM, and the sky gets more grayish than black, or at least that's how it looks in the middle of Kenmore Square. at 4 AM.
and snow in the city is weird, because there's nowhere to put it once they scrape it off the streets, so they just pile it up along the sidewalks, and the eight-year-old in me wants nothing more than to climb on it. I mean, fifteen-foot-high stalagmites of frozen-over, old gray snow, piled up against streetlights and consuming mailboxes and bike stands (I saw a bike that was 85 percent buried. unreal). what else am I supposed to do on my way to class?
the morning of the radio show I was walking to the station at about 5:50 AM, the T had just started running again and it had just started snowing a little. when my co-DJ and I left at 8 there were two inches of snow on the ground and more falling, and it was quiet. you know how it gets quiet when there's a sudden huge snowfall? those big frozen-over piles of ice had all this new snow on them, and you couldn't find the crosswalks so people were just crossing everywhere. couldn't see the train tracks, anything. we just kind of walked along in awe.
and then it rained like three hours later, and there were knee-deep puddles down the street from my dorm. weatherpocalypse 2011.
I'm in this rad history class that's history of the US, 1968-present, and today we talked about our first "public" memories, i.e. the first time we realized there was a bigger world outside our house/school/family. mine's the 2000 election, which made me think that every election had to be decided in a recount that went on for months. that or the fact that every time I wanted to watch Sesame Street during 1995, the OJ Simpson trial was on, and it pissed me off.
I could ramble forever. I have all these middles of stories written and only a few beginnings. I might go to Dublin this fall. the only reason I can keep my eyes open right now is caffeine. I want to get an apartment off campus next year. I love Boston and I never want to leave. I can't wait to permanently move to San Francisco. I wanna be a professional baseball player. I also want a new camera, and to go to a good concert. and I want to see this kid I've been missing for like a month (saw him the other night but it was brief) and to listen to Cee-Lo Green. at least I have the means for that last one. peace.
- touched down in Logan, took a shuttle that I never knew existed back to campus. went to the newspaper office, where I was until roughly 2:15 AM.
- slept from about 3:20 AM to 5:25 AM, went to the radio station for a 6-8 AM show.
- passed the fuck out from 8:30-10:30. this was my night's sleep.
- had class, came back to the newspaper office, was here until 3:45 AM because of a goddamned Russian-novel-length basketball preview. went to sleep at like quarter to 5 AM.
the not being dependent on caffeine thing was happening. I don't foresee it happening for much longer. mmmm Dunkies coffee, in which you can't even taste the coffee because of the liquid tons of cream.
it's not all bad. it's not even mostly bad. it doesn't even really get dark at night where I live. that is, 7 PM looks about the same as 4 AM, and the sky gets more grayish than black, or at least that's how it looks in the middle of Kenmore Square. at 4 AM.
and snow in the city is weird, because there's nowhere to put it once they scrape it off the streets, so they just pile it up along the sidewalks, and the eight-year-old in me wants nothing more than to climb on it. I mean, fifteen-foot-high stalagmites of frozen-over, old gray snow, piled up against streetlights and consuming mailboxes and bike stands (I saw a bike that was 85 percent buried. unreal). what else am I supposed to do on my way to class?
the morning of the radio show I was walking to the station at about 5:50 AM, the T had just started running again and it had just started snowing a little. when my co-DJ and I left at 8 there were two inches of snow on the ground and more falling, and it was quiet. you know how it gets quiet when there's a sudden huge snowfall? those big frozen-over piles of ice had all this new snow on them, and you couldn't find the crosswalks so people were just crossing everywhere. couldn't see the train tracks, anything. we just kind of walked along in awe.
and then it rained like three hours later, and there were knee-deep puddles down the street from my dorm. weatherpocalypse 2011.
I'm in this rad history class that's history of the US, 1968-present, and today we talked about our first "public" memories, i.e. the first time we realized there was a bigger world outside our house/school/family. mine's the 2000 election, which made me think that every election had to be decided in a recount that went on for months. that or the fact that every time I wanted to watch Sesame Street during 1995, the OJ Simpson trial was on, and it pissed me off.
I could ramble forever. I have all these middles of stories written and only a few beginnings. I might go to Dublin this fall. the only reason I can keep my eyes open right now is caffeine. I want to get an apartment off campus next year. I love Boston and I never want to leave. I can't wait to permanently move to San Francisco. I wanna be a professional baseball player. I also want a new camera, and to go to a good concert. and I want to see this kid I've been missing for like a month (saw him the other night but it was brief) and to listen to Cee-Lo Green. at least I have the means for that last one. peace.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
see you drivin' round town with the girl I love, and I'm like-
fuck all the rest of this, I'm being a rock star.
it doesn't matter that I can't write songs, or at least, that the songs I'm writing right now are nowhere near where I want them to be.
I used to be a goddamn good guitar player and there's no reason I can't get there again.
at home I live with a kid who's ten thousand times better than me and can push me; at school I've got a buddy to jam with who's right about at my level, and I can't have him getting better than me.
there is a place you can get playing music with the right people (or even by yourself), a place I've never been able to get to any other way.
I'm going back there.
it doesn't matter that I can't write songs, or at least, that the songs I'm writing right now are nowhere near where I want them to be.
I used to be a goddamn good guitar player and there's no reason I can't get there again.
at home I live with a kid who's ten thousand times better than me and can push me; at school I've got a buddy to jam with who's right about at my level, and I can't have him getting better than me.
there is a place you can get playing music with the right people (or even by yourself), a place I've never been able to get to any other way.
I'm going back there.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
linger on, your pale blue eyes
(things I wrote down on half an hour of sleep this morning; as ever, if it's in brackets they're not my words)
blood half-caffeine, churning and shaking, I stare at 9:00 in the morning with the same eyes that saw 9:00 the previous night - barely rested, sore, and suddenly shaken by the final chord of a four-month-long song. that which had become my nucleus is splitting and I am pinned here, looking up to the sky, heart pounding out delirium, no sleep until I know what happens next, no sleep till I can't stand it anymore.
[thought of you as my mountaintop, thought of you as my peak
thought of you as everything I had but couldn't keep]
what of it now? what to believe? bonds forged in the giddy hours of the morning, taste of diner coffee on my tongue and the good tired feeling of laughter in my throat. something has changed on a deep, irreversible level; a commitment has been made, but what of my promise to myself, what of this tentative declaration of love that hangs clearly visible in the air like our breath in the frozen morning? I'm going on - no time to settle that which matters in the course of a life until the last chord finishes ringing out.
--
saying goodbye for now to one of my friends this morning, she said, "I'll miss you most of all, Scarecrow!" to me. just about broke my heart, for some reason. I'm always afraid people aren't going to miss me.
sometimes when monumental things happen in my life I imagine hearing a massive guitar/piano chord in the background, like the end of "A Day in the Life" or "Love Reign O'er Me" something. I can't be the only one.
I think I've said the word "bizarre" a thousand times since yesterday afternoon. it's fitting though. things have been bizarre. wonderful, mostly, but bizarre. like spending the night in the sketchiest office ever, sleeping on a couch, and walking half a mile to a diner for breakfast on the coldest morning you can remember yet this year. at this place on Beacon Street they serve what I think are fried bagels and give you paper placemats with maps of Greece on them; they don't seem to be affiliated with the Greeks in any other way.
I have no idea what's going to happen next.
blood half-caffeine, churning and shaking, I stare at 9:00 in the morning with the same eyes that saw 9:00 the previous night - barely rested, sore, and suddenly shaken by the final chord of a four-month-long song. that which had become my nucleus is splitting and I am pinned here, looking up to the sky, heart pounding out delirium, no sleep until I know what happens next, no sleep till I can't stand it anymore.
[thought of you as my mountaintop, thought of you as my peak
thought of you as everything I had but couldn't keep]
what of it now? what to believe? bonds forged in the giddy hours of the morning, taste of diner coffee on my tongue and the good tired feeling of laughter in my throat. something has changed on a deep, irreversible level; a commitment has been made, but what of my promise to myself, what of this tentative declaration of love that hangs clearly visible in the air like our breath in the frozen morning? I'm going on - no time to settle that which matters in the course of a life until the last chord finishes ringing out.
--
saying goodbye for now to one of my friends this morning, she said, "I'll miss you most of all, Scarecrow!" to me. just about broke my heart, for some reason. I'm always afraid people aren't going to miss me.
sometimes when monumental things happen in my life I imagine hearing a massive guitar/piano chord in the background, like the end of "A Day in the Life" or "Love Reign O'er Me" something. I can't be the only one.
I think I've said the word "bizarre" a thousand times since yesterday afternoon. it's fitting though. things have been bizarre. wonderful, mostly, but bizarre. like spending the night in the sketchiest office ever, sleeping on a couch, and walking half a mile to a diner for breakfast on the coldest morning you can remember yet this year. at this place on Beacon Street they serve what I think are fried bagels and give you paper placemats with maps of Greece on them; they don't seem to be affiliated with the Greeks in any other way.
I have no idea what's going to happen next.
Friday, December 3, 2010
thumbin' my way down to north caroline
I wrote a blues song about shit I did this summer. it's called "corners of the midwest" and it's kind of not terrible, maybe. in other news, my voice is terrible, and weak, and too quiet. I always think it's okay until I record it and play it back. eurgh I sound like I'm twelve and have strep. which happened a lot, I had strep every other week as a kid. hey, maybe that's why I can't sing?
I also wrote two songs (and various fragments) about this kid I like a lot. and another song about cutting out and driving to California when you feel like it. these are the things that are on my mind. and shit. at least I'm playing guitar again? and the last couple I wrote have actual chord progressions that aren't just 1-4-5, so.
I averaged four hours of sleep a night this week. I was doing really, really well at not being dependent on caffeine, and then "having to learn how to be a section editor of a daily college newspaper" happened and now Dunkies coffee (and its ACTUALLY NAUSEATING amounts of cream and sugar) is my bff again. but I spent Wednesday night drinking cheap wine and yelling about basketball with other people who are insane enough to work for a newspaper. good shit.
did I ever write about the time I accidentally found Lake Erie over the summer? I was thinking of that when I was writing today and it ended up in one of the songs. that was a cool moment. I miss summer. I think somewhere deep in my brain I believe that as long as I'm still listening to predominantly Springsteen (which I am) it's still summer.
I also wrote two songs (and various fragments) about this kid I like a lot. and another song about cutting out and driving to California when you feel like it. these are the things that are on my mind. and shit. at least I'm playing guitar again? and the last couple I wrote have actual chord progressions that aren't just 1-4-5, so.
I averaged four hours of sleep a night this week. I was doing really, really well at not being dependent on caffeine, and then "having to learn how to be a section editor of a daily college newspaper" happened and now Dunkies coffee (and its ACTUALLY NAUSEATING amounts of cream and sugar) is my bff again. but I spent Wednesday night drinking cheap wine and yelling about basketball with other people who are insane enough to work for a newspaper. good shit.
did I ever write about the time I accidentally found Lake Erie over the summer? I was thinking of that when I was writing today and it ended up in one of the songs. that was a cool moment. I miss summer. I think somewhere deep in my brain I believe that as long as I'm still listening to predominantly Springsteen (which I am) it's still summer.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
to you and me that's jingletown, that's home
When I went to Ireland with my family, just about the first thing my brother and I did was try to convince innocent Irish people that we were Canadian. I have no idea why this happened (although the overnight flight from New York, which left at 10 PM EST and landed at 4 AM EST...which is 9 AM Ireland time...and the absolute lack of sleep on that flight may have had something to do with it), but we walked all around Shannon Airport yelling "EH" and talking about the Edmonton Oilers, in the hopes that someone would mistake us for Canadians. I think we also talked in southern accents (terrible, terrible southern accents) and did Fargo impressions for a little while, and then I passed the fuck out on a bench for an hour and a half. I don't think we convinced anybody of anything, besides that we were complete jackasses even for Americans.
Right now I'm wearing an Oakland Athletics hat. I have four baseball caps in regular rotation, for teams based in Pittsburgh, Boston, San Francisco, and now Oakland, plus a Minnesota Twins one that has been sporadically important in my life (plus my Pens hat, but that's separate). When I wore my Sox hat the other day, this kid on my floor told me I was being a disgrace to San Francisco, and I had to stop and explain to him that I'm not actually from California, even though I ran down the hall whooping it up with my friend who is when the Giants won the World Series. Before that, I wore my Giants hat to the newspaper office, with a Pirates shirt, and got the Spanish Inquisition into why the hell I would ever wear a Giants hat (also got the question "is it Barry Bonds Day?" No, sir, it is never, ever, ever Barry Bonds Day in my life, and you're lucky I didn't slap you for saying so).
I guess there's a definite thread of me wanting people to think I'm from places I'm not from, even though I love where I actually am from (more so now that I don't have to be there year-round). It's just more interesting that way. I mean, I have a reasonable claim to Boston now (I can navigate the city much, much better than I can Pittsburgh, which is a source of guilt) but I just like walking down the street, seeing people notice my hats and think of me as a Californian, or a Minnesotan, or a Chicagoan the times I wear my Blackhawks shirt, and so forth. I want to know what it's like to be from everywhere, how you think of yourself if you're from Wisconsin or Florida or New York or New Mexico, what people want to convey when they identify themselves with one place or another. I personally feel connected to a whole lot of places; hence, the hats.
That's why I got back into sports in the first place, you know - wanting something to connect me back to Pittsburgh. Going into junior year, I was starting to think, and be concerned by the thought, that I could go to school - let's say - in New York and have nothing to distinguish me from people from Cincinnati, or Kansas City, or what have you. And people always expected me to pay attention to hockey, since I play, and I thought sure, I'll just become loyal to the Penguins, and that will be that. The rest is history, obviously, but sometimes I realize that's about the weirdest damn reason to get into something in the world. It worked, though. When I think of home I think of Mellon Arena (rest in peace, old buddy) and PNC Park (you'll see better days, I promise) and walking across the Clemente Bridge in the summer with my family, standing in a crowd of 375,000 Penguins fans on the Boulevard of the Allies celebrating this thing we believe in on June 15, 2009. They don't have that shit in Philly or Dallas. That's just home.
Right now I'm wearing an Oakland Athletics hat. I have four baseball caps in regular rotation, for teams based in Pittsburgh, Boston, San Francisco, and now Oakland, plus a Minnesota Twins one that has been sporadically important in my life (plus my Pens hat, but that's separate). When I wore my Sox hat the other day, this kid on my floor told me I was being a disgrace to San Francisco, and I had to stop and explain to him that I'm not actually from California, even though I ran down the hall whooping it up with my friend who is when the Giants won the World Series. Before that, I wore my Giants hat to the newspaper office, with a Pirates shirt, and got the Spanish Inquisition into why the hell I would ever wear a Giants hat (also got the question "is it Barry Bonds Day?" No, sir, it is never, ever, ever Barry Bonds Day in my life, and you're lucky I didn't slap you for saying so).
I guess there's a definite thread of me wanting people to think I'm from places I'm not from, even though I love where I actually am from (more so now that I don't have to be there year-round). It's just more interesting that way. I mean, I have a reasonable claim to Boston now (I can navigate the city much, much better than I can Pittsburgh, which is a source of guilt) but I just like walking down the street, seeing people notice my hats and think of me as a Californian, or a Minnesotan, or a Chicagoan the times I wear my Blackhawks shirt, and so forth. I want to know what it's like to be from everywhere, how you think of yourself if you're from Wisconsin or Florida or New York or New Mexico, what people want to convey when they identify themselves with one place or another. I personally feel connected to a whole lot of places; hence, the hats.
That's why I got back into sports in the first place, you know - wanting something to connect me back to Pittsburgh. Going into junior year, I was starting to think, and be concerned by the thought, that I could go to school - let's say - in New York and have nothing to distinguish me from people from Cincinnati, or Kansas City, or what have you. And people always expected me to pay attention to hockey, since I play, and I thought sure, I'll just become loyal to the Penguins, and that will be that. The rest is history, obviously, but sometimes I realize that's about the weirdest damn reason to get into something in the world. It worked, though. When I think of home I think of Mellon Arena (rest in peace, old buddy) and PNC Park (you'll see better days, I promise) and walking across the Clemente Bridge in the summer with my family, standing in a crowd of 375,000 Penguins fans on the Boulevard of the Allies celebrating this thing we believe in on June 15, 2009. They don't have that shit in Philly or Dallas. That's just home.
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