Marking Time

It’s always an eye-opening experience for me to go to a big, sprawling amusement park like Six Flags Great America (where I went yesterday), or one of the Disneys.

All the blinking lights, the noise, the walkingwalkingwalking, the junkfood, the tall purple-faced people dressed as comic book villains I don’t recognize, and of course the rollercoasters! It all hurts one’s brain and beats up on one’s body, but it’s a mildly pleasurable and necessary pain… the “no pain, no gain” type. The intra-body wave you ride, trying on purpose to get dizzy and euphoric and sugar-buzzed without going so overboard that you lose your lunch, is part of the fun.

So is the “taking the pulse of the country” aspect of being there, at least for me. Once again, the park reminded me that the culture I was born into is often simultaneously fun and toxic, brilliant and stupid. For example, I am often in awe of the scientific prowess and heavy-duty marketing knowhow it takes to build these rides and to run such a place, even as I bemoan the unconscionably high prices, and whine that the new Dark Knight coaster really sucked.

Yup, sorry to be the one to break the news, people, but Dark Knight-The Ride was not worth the 1+ hour wait (yes, an hour, …no I’m not crazy, just stupid, …and keep in mind that’s the wait on a non-crowded weekday). It’s an enclosed coaster which runs mostly in the dark, with mediocre blacklight effects and more of a semi-predictable, neck-thrashing jerkiness than genuine thrills, speed, or haunted-house scares.

I didn’t mind the “you’re in Gotham City now” pre-boarding total-immersion room, complete with a mock “live” press conference featuring characters/actors from the new movie shown on a courtesy screen in the mock subway station, with a red dot matrix fake Gotham news crawl running below it. But the letdown of exiting that room, only to board a coaster that doesn’t even equal the creative engineering of the Magic Kingdom’s Space Mountain (now over 30 years old), soon takes all the wind out of any Dark Knight rider’s sails. (Did someone say Knight Rider? I hear KITT came back again this year, too, but still sucked as much as the original… ha! The Hoff is such a joke.)

It wasn’t just our multi-age, middle class white party (ages 8-42) that thought the Dark Knight ride stunk, either. I made a conscious effort to listen to people as they were getting off, and also later that night when I again rode Superman next door (an awesome ride, BTW, day or nite). Both rides dump exiting passengers into the same DC Comics-oriented giftshop, and as people exited, it seemed nobody was impressed with Dark Knight-The Ride. It’s barely half the fun of the original Batman coaster on the other side of the park, which is a much underrated marvel (comics pun intended) of design and execution.

Maybe they just tried to squeeze DK into too small a space in the park. Maybe in their enthusiasm about all the high-tech pre-ride stuff, and the up-to-the-minute tie-ins to a summer 2008 Hollywood blockbuster, they thought the coaster itself wouldn’t matter to us. But it does. And it sucked.

That disappointment was piled on top of my already low-boiling chagrin over the massive “Virtual Army Experience” recruiting building Six Flags has allowed in the front parking lot. Apparently, existing propaganda that blurs the line between real violence and simulated violence still hasn’t been enough to fill the Army’s recruitment needs — not even with all the new Army-developed and endorsed “shooter” videogames on the market.

So now they are “taking their message to the people”, to where people show up by the thousands. I can almost hear their fatigue-clad carnival barker now :

Hey all you gung-ho twelve-year-olds! Hey you paintball fans! Come on in! Shoot at real holographic enemies! Test your speed and toughness! Plan a mission to take out the freedom-hating terrorists! Then go get youself a free t-shirt and a Coke, take a pamphlet, and go on into the park for other equally intense amusements, all at the low price of  $54 per person. Just think of it as your personal boost to our sagging economy,son. Amusement is your duty, and your right, as a red-blooded American. Now go do your duty, soldier!

Tomorrow: more reflections on Six Flags Great America, including how my body let me down, how the Geico gecko ruined my day, and the blessing of being with siblings who know you “by heart”.

It’s hard to know exactly when it happened, but sometime between January and June of 2008, my five-year-old (now six) outgrew most of the post-toddler “kid” shows on Playhouse Disney and PBS, and became a crazed fanatic about Cartoon Network.

It would be easy to blame it on my wife, since she does not share my mistrust of the network itself, and started turning it on for him when I had previously been steering him away from it. But it’s my fault, too. For one thing, I’m doing what we said we would not do: using the tv as a babysitter, to keep him occupied and safe while we try to get other things done (like this damned blog! …which magically turns minutes into hours!). Or rather, his body is safe… his mind may be another matter.

I’m trying to nip it in the bud by setting some time limits, but I fear Pandora may already be out of the box, and my kid’s a budding cartoon junkie. He hasn’t asked  to read a book in months. He blurts out random non-sequitr quotes from unknown shows while we’re riding in the car. He doesn’t want to go outside when it means turning the tv off. I don’t want to sound alarmist, but I’m concerned Cartoon Network will make my child into a brilliant idiot.

There are two reasons I don’t like and don’t trust Cartoon Network’s daytime programming:

1. commercials for junkfood, bad toys, and more crap we don’t need but that he will bug us to buy. He’s being groomed as a consumer, and I don’t want the corporate monstrosity that is AOL/Time/Warner reprogramming my child and undoing the good work we’ve done for six years
2. too much ‘toonified violence… watered down, bloodless, but aggressive nonetheless, and pushing values I definitely don’t share. There’s a marked difference between the spirit of conflict between Wile E. Coyote vs. Roadrunner, and the power rays, magic and kung fu of today’s cartoon violence. I can’t always put my finger on it, but something about most of the current “drama” and adventure ‘toons just seems to rub me the wrong way as a parent and a pacificist-leaning Christian. Plus it’s mostly just bad… badly written, badly drawn, badly acted. For example, I won’t willingly let Graham watch Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs until he’s 17… but when he does see it, I want to be the one to show him how good movie and tv-makers can do up violence and double-crossing with great intelligence, humor and style, instead of the cartoonish hollowness and CGI flashiness of The Incredible Hulk.

Just as an experiment, though, let’s switch on Tuesday morning’s Cartoon Network offerings for awhile and see what we get:

7:56am   Ben 10  is just wrapping up. Or is it Ben Ten: Alien Force. I don’t know. There are two current series featuring the same characters, and I think Ben 10 is Graham’s new favorite show. He clearly idolizes Ben, who is ten. (How’d you guess? No wait –on Alien Force, Ben is 15. I’m confused now.) It’s not bad overall. Fairly innocent, with today’s villain being a midget hypnotist who wants all the people at the mall to rob the cash registers and bring him cash. Ben has some wristband thing with a button he can push to transform himself into other entities, like Fireball Guy, or Plant Guy. Silly, but not all that different from the animated adventure/superhero stories that formerly appeared only on Saturday mornings or after school. The downside: I put on Playhouse Disney as Little Einsteins was wrapping up today, and Graham howled, “No! I don’t like this show anymore!” It used to be his favorite. Poor innocent little glasses-wearing Leo, cast aside in favor of one of the “cool kids”, complete with a shape-shifting gizmo and a preteen’s smart-aleck attitude.

7:59am        Wedgies. I had neither seen nor heard about this show until just moments ago. Oh wait, I see – it’s only a little bumper, a time-filler, a 1-2 minute mini-toon called Flapjack. Maybe these pilot-y sorta things are called Wedgies ’cause they’re wedged between two other shows. And unless I miss my guess, that’s Brian Doyle-Murray I hear voicing one of the two featured Flapjack characters. Brian is Bill Murray’s older brother. He’s a fairly decent, funny actor in his own right. But apparently nowadays, in an era where scripted tv comedy is third in the pecking order, behind hourlong dramas and semi-scripted reality tv, A-list character actors like Brian have to take what they can get. That means voicing car commercials (Matt Dillon is the current voice of one of the major car companies), or little wedged-in bumpers, or cartoons, just to keep working steady. (Brian’s done some Sponge Bob, some Disney tv stuff, a wide range… his scratchy voice is good for cartoons.) It used to be that movie actors (I think) did this type of work on the side, for fun, or after their biggest career successes were well in the rear-view mirror. But with increased competition, for fewer on-camera jobs, I’ve noticed more and more recognizable actors slogging away on cartoons. Take the PBS show Cyberchase, for example. It has two: Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future’s Dr. Emmett Brown) and Gilbert Gottfried (better known as a stand-up comedian, and for that aggressively annoying voice). Now maybe these two actors actually like working on a quality show that subtly builds math skills into the plotlines. And I know Mr. Lloyd has done stage work on and off for years as well. But part of me can’t help but wonder if the less expensive, less creative, tenement-style programming that is reality tv is the main reason that cartoons have become the bread-and-butter for a whole class of actors now. Meanwhile, have you looked at most of the crap that passes for live-action network sitcoms aimed at 18 to 32-year-olds these days? Big Bang Theory ? Puh-leeease!

8am      Johnny Test - (Not to be confused with Jonny Quest, for all you old-schoolers out there.) I’ve only popped my head in and watched partial episodes, but when I did watch, Johnny Test had a time machine. This is an old trick: it gives the writers permission to put their own goofy spin on thousands of years of human history. Now Graham will probably think Atilla the Hun was just a scowling ham of an actor with a beard and a clearly un-American look, unlike the dashing, blond and ironic hero, feisty little Johnny T.

8:30am    missed it - TVGuide.com says it was Skunk Fu! - probably typical of the snarky, hugely ironic and self-referential nature of entertainment in the Oughts. Everything’s a lefthanded rip-off of something else…

9am    Tom & Jerry Blast Off to Mars. A feature-length movie, produced by TBS cable network. Actually, Ted Turner and/or AOL/Time/Warner (owners of Cartoon Network) own alot of those old cartoon franchises now. When Cartoon Network first started it was mostly just an outlet for a wide range of those shows I grew up with, like the Hannah-Barbera stuff. (Now , CN shows alot of original and syndicated programming, some of which is imported, much of which is crap that definitely will not stand the test of time.) I blogged about this once, in the context of a discussion on Scooby Doo’s staying power. Meanwhile back here at the ranch, Graham just saw that Tom and Jerry were on, and got very excited. I was gratified that at least two of the more “classic” characters and situations strike his fancy as much as, if not more than, the Pokemons and Ben Tens of the cartoon universe.

Long live Bugs Bunny, Felix the Cat and Fred Flintstone!

“He wanted it, but I needed  it.”

So said American Joey Chestnut today, as he narrowly defeated perennial competitive hot dog eating champion Takeru Kobayashi in the Nathan’s world championship on Coney Island. At the end of the ten minutes (a time reduced from the former twelve minute period, to increase the pace) the two were tied at 59 hot dogs each –  ten more dogs than any of the other competitors. Then the regulation tie was resolved in a 5-dog “dog off”, a shootout where speed mattered more than ever. Chestnut finished his fifth dog not long after Kobayashi, who “stumbled” early, had just started his.

Chestnut, a Californian, kept the victory in perspective in the postgame interview. He put a nice patriotic spin on his response to “Why do you do this?”, responding humbly “I love to eat. I love the competition. We’re just having some silly fun, which is in the spirit of Fourth of July.” Chestnut was the defending Nathan’s champ, but last year Kobayashi reportedly had a jaw injury. Thus the statement above about “needing it”. Chestnut had to beat a healthy Kobayashi to secure his legitimacy as a champion.

Meanwhile, the commentators went on about Kobayashi having to win to maintain the image of “his brand”. What human being is, in himself, a brand? Is this what we’ve come to?

The competition itself was as weird, funny, and intense as one would guess… reportedly the best competition ever in the 80-plus years of the contest. And the first commercial after the crowning of a winner was from the main sponsor, Heinz Ketchup.

Ketchup?! On a hotdog?! That’s un-American right there. Or at least goes against the traditional hot dog rules here in Chicago, where we take our hot dogs VERY seriously. (Condiments allowed: yellow mustard, sweet relish, tomato wedges, celery salt, onions and hot peppers optional… any questions?!) Get away from me with that sauerkraut. Put the chili in a bowl. Save the ketchup for your burger. This here’s a Chacaago dog!

Maybe it’s a political thing, and Senator Kerry’s ketchup-mogul wife Teresa Heinz Kerry is the perpetrator. They’re swift-boating their condiment competition. You think it’s an accident that the leading yellow mustard on the market is called French’s? What’s next, Freedom Dogs?

Don’t let them do it, Joey. You’re America’s best hope to stay on top in the world. Not only did you need it… we needed it, too. And we’re right proud of ya.

Graham’s been taking a swimming class this summer, through the Skokie Park District. The district’s park and services were rated among the tops in the nation, and it’s a really nice perk about living here.

He’s doing pretty well in class, though he has a bad case of nerves sometimes when first getting into the pool. He’s six. It’s understandable. Plus, unlike me, he’s not a jump-in-headfirst kind of guy. Which is fine… a little innate cautiousness ought to keep him from doing too many of the dumbass things his non-cautious dad did (and still does).

But the odd thing for me, when I look at him during class, is how absolutely WHITE he looks. Part of it is the genes: he’s fair-complected, like my wife (whereas I’m half-Italian, and thus have some of that olive-toned Mediterranean melanin in my skin). But the main reason he stands out is that he’s literally the only caucasian student, in a class of about twelve or fourteen kids.

His teenage teachers –most of them probably members of the high school swim team– are all white. But Graham’s fellow students are all various shades of brown: Indian, Mexican, Israeli, Chinese, Uzbek (Uzbeki?), Persian — who knows?!!! Skokie’s such a diverse melting pot of a town, one gets used to a “don’t ask, don’t tell” kind of mindset.

Not that I mind Graham being the only child of full European descent in class. I actually rather like it that my son has an opportunity at an early age that I did not have, to get used to the “browning” of the entire planet and the blending of its cultures. Maybe he’ll eventually come to “not see race”, as our pal Stephen Colbert playfully boasts he’s able to do. (”Oh, are you black? I didn’t know…”)

I grew up in a fairly lilywhite, newish suburb, where my upperclass Cuban friend Raul, whose father was a physician, qualfied as my one minority friend. He said “Ciao” instead of goodbye, his family spoke Spanglish in their home, but in dozens of other ways he was passing for white… or better yet playing up or down his ethnicity as it suited him. I don’t blame him, either. “It’s hard out there for a pimp”, as they say. 

Raul got married to Kelly, a stereotypical “white” girl in many ways (and I don’t mean that in either an insulting or celebratory way) from the richer part of town. Raul then went on to become an immigration lawyer, and as far as I know, they and their blended children are living a happy, culturally-blended existence in or near that same suburb where I grew up. I don’t know why he made all these choices, and it’s not for me to say, anyway. Yet why didn’t he become a corporate lawyer, instead of an immigration lawyer? Perhaps he chose to buck some of the cultural expectations of the environment and cultural heritage he came out of, even as he embraced others. Sometimes you just gotta pick a lane and move forward.

My point (now that I’m finally getting to it) is simply this: that awareness of one’s difference within a certain context can build character, and develop a sense of ownership about one’s background. It also gives ample opportunity for appreciation of people from other backgrounds. If everyone around Graham looked and acted too much like him, he might not be challenged as much to think about concepts like “privelege” and “nationality”. But instead, he’s internalizing these concepts in swim class, without even realizing it. He’s swimming and going to school and going grocery shopping in an environment where the business and politics of the world get played out right here in his own town now and then.

For instance, Graham knows what a mango is. (I’m absolutely certain I didn’t know this when I was six.) He’s partial to apples, grapes and strawberries, though. (How Northern European of him…) Thus, in the strange, multi-flavored stew that is modern America, he’s the potato.

Or maybe he’s the sweet potato, because he’s really sweet and kind and unprejudiced, which is a great gift. Plus… sweet potatoes are just more interesting than plain old white ones. And we all know how essential it is to be interesting, right?

I hate to make light of something so serious… but let’s face it, that’s what I do. I’m a sophomoric middle class nerd who actually thinks blogs with “Aargh” in the title are funny.

But the actual news item that I base this alarmist posting on, is serious. A stranded yacht was boarded and hijacked yesterday off the coast of Africa, near Somalia.  (Or do you call it Somaliland? Or Puntland? Apparently there are a number of factions trying to carve their own dysfunctional sovereign nation out of the splintered mess that is present-day Somalia.) On the yacht were a family of three and their captain. The family is European, probably French or German, and the CNN article I got this from does not say how old the child is.

They did, however, bury the lead. Further down in the article, we get this:

Earlier this month the U.N. Security Council gave nations new powers to pursue pirates into the waters off Somalia in an effort to combat a new spate of hijackings off the Horn of Africa.

The Gulf of Aden in particular has become a treacherous stretch for shipping in recent months, with more than two dozen pirate attacks reported since the beginning of 2008, according to the International Maritime Bureau. Nine of those have been successful hijackings, the bureau said.

It’s a classic good news/bad news scenario: the good news is that this new breed are fairly inept pirates, if their hijacking success rate is just 9 for 25. And furthermore, a boat can’t fly through the air and bring down a major international pair of skyscrapers.

But the bad news is that the terrorist/pirates may have finally hired some good p.r. people, and are now using that whole Johnny Depp adventure movie mystique to improve their image among kids and morons in Europe and America.

Think of it… this kidnapping just reeks of Hollywood. A pompous French dad who drags his family out for a dangerous fishing excursion, a yacht out of gas, a vulnerable kid “saved” by the ugly yet charming captain named The Black Heron (played by Jack Black, in blackface). They’re gonna sell this turkey to Lifetime Network and make a killing (oops, maybe I should use a different word there, shouldn’t I?) .

Anyway, what differnce does it make. It should only be about a decade before the whole planet is submerged in water from the melting ice caps, at which point we’ll have to look to rogue/heroes like Errol “Fabulous” Flynn and Kevin “Waterworld” Costner to save us from the coming doom… a doom in which we will ALL run out of gas.

We now use an average of 25 barrels of crude per person per year. And we make our cleaning supplies, nylon fabric, and hundreds of other products using derivatives of crude oil, the cost of which we have not even begun to abosorb yet. (That will be the second wave of rising prices… watch for it.) So we’re either going to have to change how we make and do and travel and recreate, or we’re only going to sink this ship.

Mad Max, where are you when we need you?

For those that don’t know your arcane Hollywood film history, The Three Faces of Eve was an odd, but high-quality, 1957 take on mental illness, specifically multiple personality disorder. It starred Joanne Woodward, one of the most underrated actresses of the Baby Boom generation. If I were a film historian, or teaching college (which I may in fact do sometime soon if I get myself together), I might do a unit on the good and bad portrayals of mental illness in film over the years. For example, how many of you have seen the sweet, early Johnny Depp movie Benny and Joon (subject: late teen onset of schizophrenia… not Johnny’s, but Mary Stuart Masterson’s)?

Maybe I’m thinking about Eve and Joon because I recently watched Robert Altman’s Vincent & Theo (1990), about another cuckoo, Vincent Van Gogh and his complicated relationship with his brother Theo. It was depressing and uneven, as many Altman films are, but I liked it nevertheless. Perhaps because I, too, am depressing and uneven.

Depressing, optimistic, whatever. All of the above and more. Therefore I finally put myself out there on facebook, which I think I’ve been avoiding for the past two years in the interest of NOT doing something trendy for once. Conformists like us all have to stake out at least one way to not be a lemming, right? (Same reason I’m not going to drive a hybrid, or probably get tats and piercings… I prefer to display my distinctiveness in what I say and do, not how I look.)

The cool part about facebook though –which, I know, will be stating the obvious for those of you who participate (sorry) – is the prospect of turning up old friends and returning them to New Friend status. Perhaps even friends you didn’t know you had, people you thought had dismissed you in high school as a dope, or nice but irrelevant. That’s the experience I’m having, anyway. Acceptance (or at least tolerance) from unexpected sources.

Still, nothing beats honest face-to-face conversation, like the splendid time that was had by all at the L’Arche Chicago Eighth Anniversary event on Sunday, June 22nd. My friend Spencer Foon was honored, along with State of Illinois disabilities advocate Sheila Romano. Sue and I caught up with old friends, made a few new ones, and just enjoyed the smiling faces of the core members.

Two highlights: Spencer in a suit and tie (it will be another five years before I see that again), and Reba/Sonshine Group pal Ron Polzella looking hale and healthy… and winning a bottle of wine in the raffle! I’ll drink to that, Big Ron.

“Here’s looking at you, Dad.”

I know that –as Humphrey Bogart/Rick Blaine said in Casablanca– my problems “don’t amount to a hill of beans” in the context of wars, floods, earthquakes and supermodel Kate Moss’ hair extension malfunction. But the problems are real enough to me, and thus the truest reporting I can do (at least while sitting in a comfy cafe eating biscuits and gravy… I mean, I’m EMBEDDED here, people).

There was supposed to be an 8am tee-ball game at the “big field” today (Sunday) –with a P.A. announcer, teams lining up on the baselines while being introduced, and kosher hot dogs being sold (at 8am?). I looked forward to the whole baseball-fest pageantry – the older kids would follow, getting the same treatment. But it started pouring at about 7:55, and the games (or at least ours) were canceled.

Happy Frickin’ Father’s Day: up at 6:30 for NOTHING!

So I went to breakfast… alone, since Sue dislikes restaurants (and breakfast), and Graham already had a Pop Tart before the rainout. Dropped them off, then found out that Prairie Joe’s, my favorite breakfast joint, isn’t open till 9am on Sundays. Had to settle for Le Peep… this shee-shee (chi-chi?) place in Evanston with no character and middlin’ food. It was packed, especially with grinning dads out to breakfast with their families, and in some cases even the grandparents. Made me feel even more rained-upon.

By most accounts, when they were making the movie Casablanca, it was a mess not unlike my spoiled Father’s Day morning. They had multiple writers trying to clean up the story, Ingrid Bergman was a no-name actress still learning English, some actual WWII events changed the plot midstream, and it was not expected even by the filmmakers to be the classic that it became. Nevertheless, I didn’t hold out much hope that my Father’s Day would improve (and it really didn’t). Maybe I should have brought in a few more writers to clean up the plot: get Sue and Graham to join me for breakfast, have a great breakthrough at church, watch Casablanca together on DVD at night — that sort of thing. Oh well…

Sunday marked the third major event for me affected by excessive rainstorms this spring. The first two were at school: the Peace March for which we’d spent months preparing, and Field Day, where multi-age groupings compete for school bragging rights in relay races, Tug of War, and other events. That one got moved from a Friday to a Monday due to the storm. But the CMLC Peace March was just scaled back to a pathetic little parade around the gym– a complete waste of the attention-getting costumes, signs, and choreographed chants I taught the kids. I was quietly crushed, though I put on a brave face. (A metaphor for how most of the school year went, by the way…)

They say everything happens for a reason. My faith and perseverence notwithstanding, what could possibly be God’s reason for raining on every celebration I had a leadership role in this year? Yeah, I know: it’s not all about me, His rain falls on the just and the jerky alike, but my patience is getting pretty thin by now — enough to turn me kind of jerky.

In Casablanca, Rick and Ilsa would “always have Paris”. Meanwhile, what do I have to look back on fondly in the first six months of 2008, in this Father’s Day war of dampened spirits?

My friend Ruth “blog-tagged” me the other day… oops, it’s been over a month ago now, where did the time go? I don’t often get involved with chains, or forwarding stuff, but since this one is more like shameless self-promotion disguised as a game of tag – and I’ve always been a fan of shameless self-promotion – here goes…

Here are the rules if you decide to play along:
1) Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2) Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3) Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4) Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Ahem… and now, my seven facts (for which I make no claims as to their randomness or their weirdness, as I’m too far gone by now to distinguish weird from normal):

1) My earliest memory is a traumatic one: bleeding profusely from my right forearm, after snagging it on a cabinet hinge at about age two and a half, or three. (Yeesh… what a way to start, you sicko.)

2) My first job out of college was with Kartemquin Films, producers of the acclaimed film Hoop Dreams and dozens of other social-issue documentaries featured on PBS and in theaters. My name is even in the credits. I got fired from that job, though. (I was 22, and in over my head in terms of the specific, sales-oriented job I was supposed to be doing.)

3) My middle name is Sebastian, which was my maternal grandfather’s first name. (My son’s middle name is Brice, my dad’s first name, …and his first name, Graham, is similar to my father-in-law’s middle name, Gorham.)

4) I once missed a plane home from Paris, and was forced to stay an extra day or two. Not the worst place in the world to be stuck, let me tell ya…

5) Best comic timing I ever exhibited: my little sister spilled a glass of milk at supper, and some of it dripped into Dad’s lap, and he started screaming and swearing, and she started crying. After ten seconds of that, I piped up with this classic: “No use crying over spilled milk.” Everyone cracked up, including Dad. Crisis over. But my ambition to be a comic, or a humorist, or somehow use words to make people’s lives better was just beginning.

6) I took a date to a Cure concert once in the Eighties, mistakenly thinking it was the Christian rock band The Call. Never felt so out of place and awkward in my life, out there at Poplar Creeek Music Theater among 30,000 pre-goth, brooding, black-clad brethren, and me like a doofus in my yellow Izod LaCoste shirt. It was my one and only date with that girl, too.

7) My favorite food is lasagna. For all my other favorite this, that, and the other, check out my MySpace Profile. It’s one of the few things MySpace is good for anymore…

Seven other blogs I frequent:

1 - Brad Listi - A.D.D. - An actual published novelist. Doing a younger, hipper blog that has as many funny commenters as I’ve seen anywhere. Brad’s also funny, and capable of serious political and cultural analysis, too.

2 - Will Fitzgerald, aka Will.Whim . Words are the air he breathes… and he’s a fledgling Mennonite pastor, to boot.

3 - Jesus Manifesto - started by Mark VanSteenwyck (I think), this blog has grown up into a cool little webzine.

4- Alternadad - former Chicago Reader journalist and sometime novelist Neal Pollack, doing a blog about parenting a wild-ass six-year-old, much more colorful than my own kid. Neal leans more toward the profane side of my sacred/profane duality, but as the only person in this list who makes any MONEY at blogging (at Parents.com), he’s my hero anyway.

5 - Pastor and Author Greg Boyd’s Random Reflections. I first caught this cat on Charlie Rose’s interview show, on PBS. Then I read his book Myth of a Christian Nation. Then I started listening in to an occasional podcast of his sermons, and reading this blog.

6 - Rafiki James - one of my first and most consistent supporters for the MySpace side of MT. He does some fine spiritual and political essays himself, I must say.

7 - Carolynn Todd Burbee’s chatty little blog without a name. It’s primarily personal news and reflections, by an old college friend who teaches history. I mean… she’s not old. A year older than me, but then… oh never mind. I’ve already gone and stuck my foot in it…

But first another confession: This marks at least my third blog post in which the word “confession” is part of the title - a sure sign that I’m a St. Augustine-aping, whiny, guilt-ridden, post-Catholic, pseudo-intellectual hack trying to catch people’s attention with self-deprecating humor and imitation, half-assed, lazy religious trickery. Nevertheless, here goes…

I went out, alone, for pricy coffee and and a delicious torte after a church committee meeting the other night. I seem to need to do something like this about once a month: fancy coffee and a hipster newspaper, or popping into a blues bar, or walking down to the corner tavern (which for me is about a half-mile away, barely walkable with my arthritic knee). I never plan when I will make these little bohemian excursions — where I act like a carefree single man, or an irresponsible married man, or a down-on-his-luck divorced man who for some stupid reason reveres reckless poets and raging drunks like Charles Bukowski and Arthur Rimbaud. In fact, planning would be in direct opposition to the spontaneity I so desperately need when the urge to excurge hits. (Excurge? Excurse? Play hooky from my boring life? Whatever… you get it.) Plus, I’m multiply disabled in the medulla adultada, that part of the brain where for most people planning occurs.

But my secret fear is that I look out of place when I’m out playing at that bohemian lifestyle. I have no tattoos. No hardware hanging from my appendages. I don’t wear funky hats much anymore. I mostly wear off-brand polo shirts. My jeans are not ripped, nor written-upon, and I don’t wear all black. I do own a classic old leather bomber jacket – one which I can picture the hero of Kerouac’s On the Road  wearing as he immerses himself in some seedy underworld of tenement apartments and broken-down, landlocked houseboats. But the zipper on that jacket is busted, so I often opt for something warmer and more sensible, if less cool.

Out at the cafe the other night, my main clue that I’m getting too old for this sh*t was that I couldn’t see anything in the dim, atmospheric lighting. I had to use my phone as a lame-ass itty-bitty book light, in order to read The Onion, skipping over articles about rock bands I’ve barely heard of, and occasionally puzzling over references aimed squarely at college-age kids. (I still “get” most of the jokes, though I may not think they’re as funny as the youngsters do…) And I cursed under my breath like a crotchety old man when my twenty-year-old waitress moved at the speed of molasses in getting me the check. Doesn’t anybody have pride in their work anymore? (Yeah, I sound like my parents now. It sucks.)

For last month’s excursion, I admit I pushed the outside of the envelope a bit, as I went out late on a Friday, after Sue and Graham were asleep, to play craps on the gambling boats all the way over in Gary, Indiana. I didn’t leave a note. I didn’t ask “permission” (God forbid). And I knew full-well that my father struggled most of his adult life with a gambling addiction, much injuring my mother and yet denying he had a problem every step of the way. But dammit, it was Friday night, I was wide awake and wired, and I wanted to do it. I’d been thinking about it for months, in fact. So I did it. I even won $130. But Sue called me at about 1:30 or 2am, as I was driving back, wondering where I was. When I told the truth she was rightfully ticked off.

So now I have to make confession, to be reconciled to my wife and my life and my boring middle-class, middle-aged existence. Until next month, when I will fall off the wagon again and limp my way through a game of Ultimate Frisbee with kids half my age after church. In a few minutes I will go off to my full-time job, and when I come home tonight I will cook a well-balanced dinner and probably watch Night In the Museum with my family. Between now and Sunday, I have to mow the lawn, the ultimate symbol that I’m no longer bohemian. (Do they even have lawns in Bohemia, or do they just cover their yards with skate parks and cheeky paintings of Elvis on black velvet?)

Plus I probably need to spend some time this weekend looking for work again, as the school I’m teaching at is suspending operations next year due to financial difficulties. Well, at least that’s ONE way I’m still living like a twenty-something bohemian and wanna-be. I have no real CAREER to speak of…