Okay, so first thing’s first: James Earl Jones has the greatest speaking
voice ever bestowed upon a man. There’s a reason why he was chosen to
do the voice-over work for Darth Vader. I could listen to him read the
assembly instructions for an Ikea bed frame and be completely enamored;
his robust baritone is the therapeutic equivalent of dunking a set of
eardrums into a soothing hot bath with eucalyptus bubbles. I’d stop
myself before the imagery gets too disturbing, but I think that ship has
sailed.
“Field of Dreams” would still be a good movie without him. The 1989
Kevin Costner fantasy about ghosts who haunt a baseball diamond in an
Iowa cornfield is a classic – a strange and unsettling classic, but a
classic nonetheless, tailor-made for anyone with a sense of baseball’s
mysterious, almost mythical history.
But Jones is the scene-stealer, the thingamabob that stirs the whatever.
Not that it’s hard to steal scenes from Kevin Costner; the man once
played Robin Hood, and in two-and-a-half hours, the only word he managed
to pronounce in an English accent was “sword.” It marks the only time
in film history when the merry bandit sounded like he’d just stepped off
the boat from Rhode Island.
Anyone who’s ever sat in a cool breeze at a minor league ballpark in May
and felt completely at peace knows about Jones’ goosebump-raising
soliloquy at the end of “Field of Dreams.” It’s the kind of speech that
makes roughneck cowboys blubber like ninnies. Predicting that far-flung
travelers will be inexplicably drawn to the spectral exhibition games
played in that mysterious cornfield, Jones talks about baseball as
though it had been laid at humanity’s feet by the Greek gods of Olympus.
All in a voice that could melt a stick of butter.
Only baseball can inspire that kind of poetry. You don’t hear a lot of
stirring odes to synchronized swimming, or intercollegiate water polo.
At
this point, you’re in one of two camps: Those who can relate to
baseball’s romanticism, and those who think the sport is as boring as
John Kerry reading “The Iliad.” (The third camp – those who couldn’t
give a rat’s patootie – have already moved on to a sudoku.)
Summoning my powers of objectivity, I can see how the uninitiated might
consider baseball less than enthralling. In a lot of ways, it’s an
anachronism – it has no earthly business being played in a century
dominated by 30-second commercials, movies on demand, and cheeseburgers
prepped so quickly they cause a ripple in spacetime. Baseball doesn’t
fit into a world of instant gratification; its pleasures are slow, doled
out not by the foot, but by the inch.
That’s what makes it great.
I’m reminded of this every spring, right
around the time I first hear that gratifying wood-on-cowhide crack. The sound is like a pair of
snapping fingers jolting me out of a state of deep hypnosis; not being
much of a winter sports enthusiast, I tend to spend those frosty months
actually being (gasp!) productive, which is the antithesis of what
summer’s all about. Summer is a season for wasting vast stretches of
time eating ice cream sandwiches while watching minor league mascots
lose footraces to four-year-olds.
When I was about 10, my father gave me one of those kid-friendly books
filled with factoids about the history of baseball. That history is what
sets the game apart from, say, hockey, which I believe was invented by
the penguins of the Arctic circle. Or football, which was created in a
lab by pumping gamma rays into a petri dish filled with bull
testosterone.
The story of baseball is the story of the country’s industrial
revolution; it’s the story of pickup games played in the streets of
Harlem in the late 1800s, of steel-jawed immigrants hitting and catching
their way out of coal mines. It’s the story of the Civil Rights
movement (Jackie Robinson, anybody?), and of late 20th Century excess.
It’s the story of cheaters and their punishments – the story of
fairness.
But why am I proselytizing? James Earl Jones’ “Field of Dreams”
character, in a speech to his friend Ray, said it far better than I
could:
“The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been
baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been
erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has
marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It
reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again.”
Insert wistful sigh here.
To truly appreciate that, maybe you had to
grow up with a sock tied around your brand-new baseball glove to get
just the right curve in the webbing. Or felt a tingle rush up your arms
as you connected with your first fastball. Heck, maybe a vendor in the
stands once pelted you in the kisser with a bag of peanuts – that would
do it too, I suppose.
Whatever the reason, it’s got a grip on those of us susceptible to its
charms. And yes, the cliché is true: We love peanuts and Cracker Jacks,
and we don’t care if we ever get back.
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Thursday, May 23, 2013
The simple life
Henry David Thoreau once said, “Our life is frittered away by detail.
Simplify, simplify, simplify!” I’m not sure how seriously I should take a
man who communed with squirrels and had a beard that looked like their
mutated cousin; but then, his Wikipedia entry is huge while mine is
nonexistent, so who am I to judge? The naturalist and author of “Walden”
may have been onto something.
Since Thoreau lived in the 1800s, it was naturally easy for him to sequester himself in the Massachusetts wilderness to subsist on a diet of wood chips and loneliness. When he submitted himself to nature to write, the big technological innovations of the day were shoe horns and breast pockets for monocles. Today’s gadgets, with their brightly-colored screens and videos of skateboarders injuring their genitals, would have made the teeth fall out of his head, and into the campfire where he cooked his badgers.
They’d also have made him question whether his call for simplicity is even possible.
I’ve been thinking about Thoreau lately, and not in a jealous, I-want-to-spoon-with-bears kind of way. Rather, impulsive technological purchases have made me think of simplifying my life – and of how difficult the task will be.
So I’m laptop shopping. (Yep. I’m going from Thoreau to computers. Strap in for a wild ride.) It’s a frustrating pursuit. Depressing as it is to admit, computers have become as much of a necessary staple as milk, or comfortable underwear. They’re wonderful inventions in a lot of ways – what else would allow me to write e-mails, watch The Daily Show, and Photoshop images of my head onto the bodies of Greek gods? – but they’ve also insinuated their way into daily life with the inextricable persistence of a benign growth. Not owning one would be as hampering to productivity as chucking my phone, or lopping off my hand with an Ottoman scimitar.
My current laptop is a joke, and not a particularly funny one. It does the basic things you would want it to – I can play music on it, and blog about my hatred of circus peanuts – but beyond that, it slogs its way through heftier applications with the plodding resignation of an arthritic dog. Even video-watching taxes the hardware on this disgraceful machine. Let’s say I want to watch the latest episode of the Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert’s satiric jab at blowhard political pundits. The process goes something like this: Go to Colbert’s website. Click on “Full Episodes.” Select the latest video. Insert earplugs to drown out the clothes-dryer-calibur noise emitting from the overtaxed innards of the ancient beast. Sit through choppy commercials while the computer’s processor awakens from bear-like hibernation. Curse a lot. Watch episode. Kill self.
It’s an ordeal.
So the time has come for a new one, and that’s all well and good. Except, in defiance of Thoreau’s philosophy, I can’t bring myself to simplify. I expect a lot of my tired Dell’s successor.
Being enamored with video editing will do that. In college, I took an editing course in which my instructor assigned a final project seemingly designed to make the fanboy in me quiver with glee: A music video, to be shot MTV-style, and shown to the class on the semester’s final day. Since I generally consider music to be the greatest invention this side of canned cheese, I took to the assignment with relish, cobbling together enough embarrassing footage of my friends to splice together a video worthy of MTV’s heyday – back when it actually aired music videos, rather than mind-numbing reality shows starring loud-mouthed drug addicts and doughy ex-professional wrestlers.
It was a ludicrous masterpiece, capturing the zeitgeist of my college years and impressing my instructor, who gave me an “A” despite being visibly horrified during the screening. It set off an obsession, and soon, with a stockpile of new computer equipment and all the pretentiousness of a young Kubrick, I started dashing off projects of my own: Music videos, documentaries, YouTube-ready shtick, and in an alternate version of reality, a romantic comedy where I get to make out with Scarlett Johansson. (Physics tells us it’s possible to envision a parallel universe in which this does indeed happen. Reason number 257 why I love physics.)
As years go by, of course, priorities change. Videography took a back seat to more pressing matters, like finding employment, and mastering the Star-Spangled Banner on my plastic kazoo. But lately, the old interest is awakening, and it’s awakening to a world of Blu-Rays and high-definition and anamorphic widescreen. It’s time to chuck the steam-powered Dell and update my gear, but that in itself has entailed erroneous purchases and weeks of research that would intimidate the most diligent presidential historian. I can’t imagine Ron Chernow’s 900-page volume on Washington resulted in more gray hairs.
And for what? One last masterwork? One of the biggest problems with gadgets is there are way too many of them; each one a detail, frittering away life, bit by electronic bit.
It’s enough to make a guy want to chuck everything and go live in the wild, bathing in streams and teaching sign language to possums. As much of a video geek as I apparently am, I hear that mantra, echoing: Simplify, simplify, simplify.
Since Thoreau lived in the 1800s, it was naturally easy for him to sequester himself in the Massachusetts wilderness to subsist on a diet of wood chips and loneliness. When he submitted himself to nature to write, the big technological innovations of the day were shoe horns and breast pockets for monocles. Today’s gadgets, with their brightly-colored screens and videos of skateboarders injuring their genitals, would have made the teeth fall out of his head, and into the campfire where he cooked his badgers.
They’d also have made him question whether his call for simplicity is even possible.
I’ve been thinking about Thoreau lately, and not in a jealous, I-want-to-spoon-with-bears kind of way. Rather, impulsive technological purchases have made me think of simplifying my life – and of how difficult the task will be.
So I’m laptop shopping. (Yep. I’m going from Thoreau to computers. Strap in for a wild ride.) It’s a frustrating pursuit. Depressing as it is to admit, computers have become as much of a necessary staple as milk, or comfortable underwear. They’re wonderful inventions in a lot of ways – what else would allow me to write e-mails, watch The Daily Show, and Photoshop images of my head onto the bodies of Greek gods? – but they’ve also insinuated their way into daily life with the inextricable persistence of a benign growth. Not owning one would be as hampering to productivity as chucking my phone, or lopping off my hand with an Ottoman scimitar.
My current laptop is a joke, and not a particularly funny one. It does the basic things you would want it to – I can play music on it, and blog about my hatred of circus peanuts – but beyond that, it slogs its way through heftier applications with the plodding resignation of an arthritic dog. Even video-watching taxes the hardware on this disgraceful machine. Let’s say I want to watch the latest episode of the Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert’s satiric jab at blowhard political pundits. The process goes something like this: Go to Colbert’s website. Click on “Full Episodes.” Select the latest video. Insert earplugs to drown out the clothes-dryer-calibur noise emitting from the overtaxed innards of the ancient beast. Sit through choppy commercials while the computer’s processor awakens from bear-like hibernation. Curse a lot. Watch episode. Kill self.
It’s an ordeal.
So the time has come for a new one, and that’s all well and good. Except, in defiance of Thoreau’s philosophy, I can’t bring myself to simplify. I expect a lot of my tired Dell’s successor.
Being enamored with video editing will do that. In college, I took an editing course in which my instructor assigned a final project seemingly designed to make the fanboy in me quiver with glee: A music video, to be shot MTV-style, and shown to the class on the semester’s final day. Since I generally consider music to be the greatest invention this side of canned cheese, I took to the assignment with relish, cobbling together enough embarrassing footage of my friends to splice together a video worthy of MTV’s heyday – back when it actually aired music videos, rather than mind-numbing reality shows starring loud-mouthed drug addicts and doughy ex-professional wrestlers.
It was a ludicrous masterpiece, capturing the zeitgeist of my college years and impressing my instructor, who gave me an “A” despite being visibly horrified during the screening. It set off an obsession, and soon, with a stockpile of new computer equipment and all the pretentiousness of a young Kubrick, I started dashing off projects of my own: Music videos, documentaries, YouTube-ready shtick, and in an alternate version of reality, a romantic comedy where I get to make out with Scarlett Johansson. (Physics tells us it’s possible to envision a parallel universe in which this does indeed happen. Reason number 257 why I love physics.)
As years go by, of course, priorities change. Videography took a back seat to more pressing matters, like finding employment, and mastering the Star-Spangled Banner on my plastic kazoo. But lately, the old interest is awakening, and it’s awakening to a world of Blu-Rays and high-definition and anamorphic widescreen. It’s time to chuck the steam-powered Dell and update my gear, but that in itself has entailed erroneous purchases and weeks of research that would intimidate the most diligent presidential historian. I can’t imagine Ron Chernow’s 900-page volume on Washington resulted in more gray hairs.
And for what? One last masterwork? One of the biggest problems with gadgets is there are way too many of them; each one a detail, frittering away life, bit by electronic bit.
It’s enough to make a guy want to chuck everything and go live in the wild, bathing in streams and teaching sign language to possums. As much of a video geek as I apparently am, I hear that mantra, echoing: Simplify, simplify, simplify.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Dimpled balls
There are people who play mini-golf professionally. This blows my mind.
Mini-golf – in case you’ve been captive in a Sri Lankan dungeon since the age of steam power – is a putting game based on the premise that people won’t become murderously enraged by having their balls swatted back to them by spinning windmill propellers. Its origins are fuzzy, so I’ll just go ahead and assume it was created by a mad scientist, probably German, whose goal was to make children cry while their families slowly went insane.
All that will sound excessively harsh in light of the revelation that I, an easily frustrated man, try to make it out to a mini-golf course at least once a summer. No clue why I put myself through the ordeal. Mini-golf is one of those slippery experiences whose negative effects evaporate from memory faster than disappearing ink. In that way, it’s very similar to my relationship with hot-dogs. Every summer, I get super excited whenever someone offers me a hot-dog, and it’s only halfway through eating one that I remember I hate them.
To be fair, I don’t outright hate mini-golf. It can be vaguely fun as long as nobody’s keeping score, which is usually what ends up happening anyway, even if it didn’t start that way.
The whole thing begins innocently. You and your golfing buddy grab your balls (oh, grow up), and a scorecard with one of those nubby eraserless pencils that are always sticky. You walk to the first hole and you think, “What’s the harm in keeping score? This first hole looks easy enough; simple straight line, piece o’ cake. We’ll be done the whole course before my ice cream starts to melt.”
Forty-five minutes later you’re on the 9th hole, listlessly whacking balls around without even looking, telling your partner, “Whatever, I’ll just take the six.”
It’s as though the game was invented so the non-checkered-hatted masses could taste a bit of the frustration of actual golf. Every once in a while I’ll tune into CBS on the odd Sunday to watch “60 Minutes,” only to find it delayed by a professional golf tournament; and while my initial reaction is usually disappointment, I’m invariably sucked into the drama of watching grown men cursing at a ball the size of a mutant grape. If mini-golf is an exercise in frustration, golf-golf has got to be the most painful ordeal this side of a Greek pan-flute concert.
In real golf, Mother Nature is the windmill, conjuring gusting winds that steer well-hit balls into tangled woods or giant kidney-shaped ponds. Even the greens, so flat-looking on TV, are riddled with dips and curves in a complex geometry that would have driven Einstein to give up math and form a barbershop quartet. The next time you’re watching TV and come upon a golf tournament accidentally (because nobody seeks it on purpose), watch the faces of the guys in third or fourth place. They look like they’re pouring over gruesome crime scene evidence.
Mini-golf is a microcosm of that reality. Its one saving grace is that when you make a lousy shot, you don’t have a ten-minute walk to the ball. You simply step over the cowboy’s outstretched boot, hop across the Hobbit-sized waterfall, and chuck your pink ball into the adjoining video arcade. There it will stay until staff comes around and digs it out from behind the dusty Pac-Man machine from 1983.
But hey, some people are gluttons for punishment. These unfortunate souls can be found playing in the World Minigolfsport Federation, and unlike the old World Wrestling Federation, where “World” is a term meaning “Gold’s Gym in Arkansas,” the mini-golf league is truly world-wide. World championships are held on odd-numbered years, while continental championships are played in even-numbered years. Divisions within the federation make space for the full scope of humanity: Men, women, the old, the young, and in all cases, the alarmingly disturbed.
All kidding aside – most kidding aside – these players have my respect. It takes a person of a certain amount of fortitude to practice whacking a piece of plastic through a clown’s eyeball until you’ve got it just right. And maybe this is just a shot in the dark, but something tells me these valiant men and women aren’t exactly pulling down Tiger Woods money; you don’t see a pro mini-golf player hawking Buicks on network television. No, I’m pretty sure these players have kept their day jobs. Which is even more impressive, since it must be hard to train for tournaments when you’re responsible for closing up shop at Bed, Bath & Beyond.
They’ll serve as inspiration the next time I subject myself to 18 holes of pure silliness. Who knows? If I master the windmill, there could be a future in it for me.
A strange, strange future.
Mini-golf – in case you’ve been captive in a Sri Lankan dungeon since the age of steam power – is a putting game based on the premise that people won’t become murderously enraged by having their balls swatted back to them by spinning windmill propellers. Its origins are fuzzy, so I’ll just go ahead and assume it was created by a mad scientist, probably German, whose goal was to make children cry while their families slowly went insane.
All that will sound excessively harsh in light of the revelation that I, an easily frustrated man, try to make it out to a mini-golf course at least once a summer. No clue why I put myself through the ordeal. Mini-golf is one of those slippery experiences whose negative effects evaporate from memory faster than disappearing ink. In that way, it’s very similar to my relationship with hot-dogs. Every summer, I get super excited whenever someone offers me a hot-dog, and it’s only halfway through eating one that I remember I hate them.
To be fair, I don’t outright hate mini-golf. It can be vaguely fun as long as nobody’s keeping score, which is usually what ends up happening anyway, even if it didn’t start that way.
The whole thing begins innocently. You and your golfing buddy grab your balls (oh, grow up), and a scorecard with one of those nubby eraserless pencils that are always sticky. You walk to the first hole and you think, “What’s the harm in keeping score? This first hole looks easy enough; simple straight line, piece o’ cake. We’ll be done the whole course before my ice cream starts to melt.”
Forty-five minutes later you’re on the 9th hole, listlessly whacking balls around without even looking, telling your partner, “Whatever, I’ll just take the six.”
It’s as though the game was invented so the non-checkered-hatted masses could taste a bit of the frustration of actual golf. Every once in a while I’ll tune into CBS on the odd Sunday to watch “60 Minutes,” only to find it delayed by a professional golf tournament; and while my initial reaction is usually disappointment, I’m invariably sucked into the drama of watching grown men cursing at a ball the size of a mutant grape. If mini-golf is an exercise in frustration, golf-golf has got to be the most painful ordeal this side of a Greek pan-flute concert.
In real golf, Mother Nature is the windmill, conjuring gusting winds that steer well-hit balls into tangled woods or giant kidney-shaped ponds. Even the greens, so flat-looking on TV, are riddled with dips and curves in a complex geometry that would have driven Einstein to give up math and form a barbershop quartet. The next time you’re watching TV and come upon a golf tournament accidentally (because nobody seeks it on purpose), watch the faces of the guys in third or fourth place. They look like they’re pouring over gruesome crime scene evidence.
Mini-golf is a microcosm of that reality. Its one saving grace is that when you make a lousy shot, you don’t have a ten-minute walk to the ball. You simply step over the cowboy’s outstretched boot, hop across the Hobbit-sized waterfall, and chuck your pink ball into the adjoining video arcade. There it will stay until staff comes around and digs it out from behind the dusty Pac-Man machine from 1983.
But hey, some people are gluttons for punishment. These unfortunate souls can be found playing in the World Minigolfsport Federation, and unlike the old World Wrestling Federation, where “World” is a term meaning “Gold’s Gym in Arkansas,” the mini-golf league is truly world-wide. World championships are held on odd-numbered years, while continental championships are played in even-numbered years. Divisions within the federation make space for the full scope of humanity: Men, women, the old, the young, and in all cases, the alarmingly disturbed.
All kidding aside – most kidding aside – these players have my respect. It takes a person of a certain amount of fortitude to practice whacking a piece of plastic through a clown’s eyeball until you’ve got it just right. And maybe this is just a shot in the dark, but something tells me these valiant men and women aren’t exactly pulling down Tiger Woods money; you don’t see a pro mini-golf player hawking Buicks on network television. No, I’m pretty sure these players have kept their day jobs. Which is even more impressive, since it must be hard to train for tournaments when you’re responsible for closing up shop at Bed, Bath & Beyond.
They’ll serve as inspiration the next time I subject myself to 18 holes of pure silliness. Who knows? If I master the windmill, there could be a future in it for me.
A strange, strange future.
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Feeling a bit flush
Here’s what’s frustrating about answering nature’s call in a public restroom: It’s always a crapshoot.
Whoa! Zing!
But seriously, folks.
I got to thinking about this at a Chinese buffet. At this point, the less specifics I divulge, the better off we’ll all be. What should have happened, in a good and just world, is that I should have walked into the restroom at said buffet and been gently welcomed by the scent of Lemon Pledge. Every surface should have sparkled like the lighted interior of a South African diamond mine. My sneakers should have squeaked against well-scrubbed linoleum tiles. And – this would have been a cool bonus – a tuxedoed gentleman named Waddington should have wiped dry my freshly-cleaned hands as business adjourned.
Yeah, none of that happened.
What happened instead was so horrific they should award me the Congressional Medal of Honor.
When people do private things in public spaces, that’s just what happens, sometimes. That’s how it is for men, at least. I haven’t been inside a women’s restroom since I accidentally walked into one at an Orlando airport when I was six (sorry, Denise), so I can’t speak for the fairer sex. There’s a part of me – a very childish part – that thinks women’s restrooms are like the insides of FabergĂ© eggs. A place saturated with sunlight and rainbows, where hand towels dangle from the horns of unicorns and Sarah McLachlan plays the grand piano in a silk bathrobe. It’s possible I’m an ass.
Most men’s rooms, by contrast, could easily be mistaken for the torture room at Guantanamo Bay. It’s the place where dreams go to die.
That’s the worst case scenario, anyway.
The best a guy can hope for is a men’s room like the ones at the TD Bank Garden in Boston. I took the train there last summer, and with one too many Mountain Dews under my belt (literally), the john was destination numero uno. There’s a moment before walking into a public restroom when I steel myself for the most horrific scenario possible. I tell myself the floor tiles will be cracked and pooling with water from a busted pipe, or that the person who used the facility just before me had enjoyed a breakfast of beer and cabbage.
That way, when the room is well-maintained, as it was in Boston, it comes as a pleasant surprise. The Garden restroom seemed less like a place where people do their business than a command center for the International Space Station.
Everything gleamed. Everything. The faucets, the tiles; the throne itself. The level of cleanliness was borderline disturbing, and it’s ruined other restrooms for me.
Because it’s a roll of the dice, isn’t it? Sometimes you can make an educated guess as to the room’s condition. In the case of the Garden, it makes a certain sense that clean would be the norm – it’s a major hub in a major city, with mop-welding crews on hand to fight the good fight against seediness and grime. But take a trip to the can at a roadside Arby’s in rural Kentucky and you may be lucky to make it out alive.
It’s the uncertainty that makes it so daunting to do familiar business in a foreign land. It’s a feeling akin to receiving Christmas packages from an inconsistent gift-giver: Will this be the snazzy sweater I drooled over in the perfume-choked aisles of Macy’s, or a ten-pack of garish underwear with drawings of Snoopy on the butt cheeks? Unwrapping it is the only way to find out for sure.
In the case of the Chinese buffet, I should have been more prepared for disaster. Such establishments can be a hoot, but they generally exist to service those who are feeling gluttonous and undiscerning. That alone should tell you everything you need to know about what the restrooms might be like, but it’s more than that. With a few notable exceptions, buffets can’t even keep the buffets clean. When the trays are overflowing with gooey lo mein noodles, ignorance is bliss; there could be a silver dollar from the California gold rush era hidden at the bottom and nobody would be the wiser. But take a look at the half-empty pizza tray the next time you’re pigging out. Next to the hardened little squares of half-hearted pie will be freckle-sized clusters of crust, glued to the tray by a film of grease that could stop a bullet. It stands to reason the commode would be similarly neglected, the stuff of Stephen King novels and Vietnam flashbacks.
And what can we do about it? Not much. When nature calls, we’ve got to answer it.
Really, the best way to keep these places clean it to not dirty them up in the first place. That means treating your stall as if it were your bathroom at home, minus the ugly ceramic cat on the wall that I keep telling you to take down. It stares at me. Sell that thing on eBay, already.
The women, I have more faith in. The men? Well, let’s just say I’m a man myself. We’re pigs. And the world, it turns out, is our sty.
Whoa! Zing!
But seriously, folks.
I got to thinking about this at a Chinese buffet. At this point, the less specifics I divulge, the better off we’ll all be. What should have happened, in a good and just world, is that I should have walked into the restroom at said buffet and been gently welcomed by the scent of Lemon Pledge. Every surface should have sparkled like the lighted interior of a South African diamond mine. My sneakers should have squeaked against well-scrubbed linoleum tiles. And – this would have been a cool bonus – a tuxedoed gentleman named Waddington should have wiped dry my freshly-cleaned hands as business adjourned.
Yeah, none of that happened.
What happened instead was so horrific they should award me the Congressional Medal of Honor.
When people do private things in public spaces, that’s just what happens, sometimes. That’s how it is for men, at least. I haven’t been inside a women’s restroom since I accidentally walked into one at an Orlando airport when I was six (sorry, Denise), so I can’t speak for the fairer sex. There’s a part of me – a very childish part – that thinks women’s restrooms are like the insides of FabergĂ© eggs. A place saturated with sunlight and rainbows, where hand towels dangle from the horns of unicorns and Sarah McLachlan plays the grand piano in a silk bathrobe. It’s possible I’m an ass.
Most men’s rooms, by contrast, could easily be mistaken for the torture room at Guantanamo Bay. It’s the place where dreams go to die.
That’s the worst case scenario, anyway.
The best a guy can hope for is a men’s room like the ones at the TD Bank Garden in Boston. I took the train there last summer, and with one too many Mountain Dews under my belt (literally), the john was destination numero uno. There’s a moment before walking into a public restroom when I steel myself for the most horrific scenario possible. I tell myself the floor tiles will be cracked and pooling with water from a busted pipe, or that the person who used the facility just before me had enjoyed a breakfast of beer and cabbage.
That way, when the room is well-maintained, as it was in Boston, it comes as a pleasant surprise. The Garden restroom seemed less like a place where people do their business than a command center for the International Space Station.
Everything gleamed. Everything. The faucets, the tiles; the throne itself. The level of cleanliness was borderline disturbing, and it’s ruined other restrooms for me.
Because it’s a roll of the dice, isn’t it? Sometimes you can make an educated guess as to the room’s condition. In the case of the Garden, it makes a certain sense that clean would be the norm – it’s a major hub in a major city, with mop-welding crews on hand to fight the good fight against seediness and grime. But take a trip to the can at a roadside Arby’s in rural Kentucky and you may be lucky to make it out alive.
It’s the uncertainty that makes it so daunting to do familiar business in a foreign land. It’s a feeling akin to receiving Christmas packages from an inconsistent gift-giver: Will this be the snazzy sweater I drooled over in the perfume-choked aisles of Macy’s, or a ten-pack of garish underwear with drawings of Snoopy on the butt cheeks? Unwrapping it is the only way to find out for sure.
In the case of the Chinese buffet, I should have been more prepared for disaster. Such establishments can be a hoot, but they generally exist to service those who are feeling gluttonous and undiscerning. That alone should tell you everything you need to know about what the restrooms might be like, but it’s more than that. With a few notable exceptions, buffets can’t even keep the buffets clean. When the trays are overflowing with gooey lo mein noodles, ignorance is bliss; there could be a silver dollar from the California gold rush era hidden at the bottom and nobody would be the wiser. But take a look at the half-empty pizza tray the next time you’re pigging out. Next to the hardened little squares of half-hearted pie will be freckle-sized clusters of crust, glued to the tray by a film of grease that could stop a bullet. It stands to reason the commode would be similarly neglected, the stuff of Stephen King novels and Vietnam flashbacks.
And what can we do about it? Not much. When nature calls, we’ve got to answer it.
Really, the best way to keep these places clean it to not dirty them up in the first place. That means treating your stall as if it were your bathroom at home, minus the ugly ceramic cat on the wall that I keep telling you to take down. It stares at me. Sell that thing on eBay, already.
The women, I have more faith in. The men? Well, let’s just say I’m a man myself. We’re pigs. And the world, it turns out, is our sty.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
A real schmuckin' futz
This needs to be made clear straightaway: I usually love cats.
Usually.
That’s not the most masculine admission, of course. Gender stereotypes being what they are, it would be much more acceptable for me to proclaim a love of ugly, hard-nosed dogs named Buster or Killer – animals that chew meat and smell like armpits. And I love them, too, providing they don’t pee on my laptop. Cats, though, are almost painfully cute, low-maintenance creatures that cuddle and purr and pounce on things. A cat and a laser pointer can provide hours of entertainment, more so than a Pauley Shore movie, although that’s largely because Pauley Shore is dumb.
Every animal, unfortunately, is capable of its own evils. You’ll never see a cat threaten a nuclear strike, or force you to watch “Real Housewives of Atlanta.” But once in a while, a feline comes along that makes you glad it doesn’t have the opposable thumbs necessary to operate a switchblade.
This the story of Schmucky the Cat.
That’s probably not his real name, but we all know cats only respond to the sounds of can openers and deflating balloons, so I’m just gonna go ahead and call him Schmucky. It’s a well-earned moniker. Schmucky has the temperment of an injured Iranian soccer player, combined with the glowing personality of Stalin. If Schmucky were a man, he’d have a face tattoo and massive biceps from years of arm-wrestling in dive bars.
Sadly, I can’t avoid this objectionable beast. See, my apartment is uniquely situated: There’s the apartment proper, where I can shadow-box and play air drums to Kool and the Gang in complete privacy, but in the back, there’s access to a room I share with one of my neighbors. This room basically amounts to a massive shed – a giant sawdust-smelling tinderbox that’s perfect for storing old microwaves and back issues of Nintendo magazines. I use this storage space to house dumbbells and freeweights, because I’ve convinced myself it’s not too late to transform a physique that resembles a melting lump of wax.
Trust me, I’m not trying to sound manly. I’m about as manly as a scented candle. But I mess about with my weights because it makes me feel like less of a sloppy bum. Until recently, I could do this in relative peace. That was before Schmucky – my neighbor’s orange tabby cat – commandeered the storage room and turned it into his own private bunker of hatred.
I’m usually good with cats. In fact, at a friend’s recent birthday party, I was nicknamed the Cat Whisperer, although to be fair, it was a nickname I invented myself, and no one believed me. Still, I have a way with animals. I consider it a personal failure if I haven’t earned an animal’s friendship. Or at least its respect, which it expresses by not pooping on me.
But I knew I was in for a challenge when I met Schmucky. Truth is, Schmucky’s kind of a putz. The first time I walked into the shed and saw him standing stiff-legged in front of my dumbbells, he hissed a hiss that could strip the varnish off a park bench. As I approached him slowly, cooing and trying to chill him out, he backed away but kept his teeth bare, as if daring me to make a move. Any move. Anything at all that would justify his lion’s ancestral call to go mental on my tender ankles.
Needless to say, it was a bit disconcerting. As Schmucky disappeared all ghost-like into one of the room’s hidden nooks, as felines are want to do, I started my workout routine without incident, thinking he had run off to smoke a Marlboro and cool down. Then, as I stood to do curls, a venomous hiss erupted from just above my head.
Schmucky, that crafty little ninja, had found a way up into the rafters, and squatted on one of the beams, scowling at me and threatening violence, all within a foot of my fleshy bald scalp. I whirled around to face him, as much as a man can be said to “whirl” when he’s carrying dumbbells, and beheld a face so sinister, so distorted by rage, I had to fight the urge to bolt for my kitchen in search of garlic and a wooden cross.
I sat down on my workout bench, continued curling, and locked stares with my nemesis.
There’s a scene in “Rocky IV” – undoubtedly the most ridiculous of the Rockys – in which Sylvester Stallone’s title character stands in the middle of a boxing ring prior to his big fight. His opponent is a towering Russian killing machine who looks like a ‘roided-up Dolph Lundgren, possibly because it’s a ‘roided up Dolph Lundgren. The two fighters stare each other down in the seconds before the opening bell. The Russian, with a stone face and soul-dead eyes, says to Rocky, “I must break you.” And for 15 rounds, he nearly does.
Clearly, Schmucky has seen “Rocky IV.” He’s got his Dolph Lundgren impression down to a science. And he does it every. Single. Day.
There are a number of things I could do. I could move to Switzerland and join a circus. I could become a sword-swallower and travel the world, disturbing people. Or, you know, I could talk to my neighbor about it. There’s that.
Then, perhaps, the long nightmare will be over, and I can once more regard cats as cute little fuzzballs. Non-murderous fuzzballs that won’t stuff me into the trunk of a Lincoln Continental.
Your reign of terror will soon end, Schmucky.
So go ahead. Make your move.
Usually.
That’s not the most masculine admission, of course. Gender stereotypes being what they are, it would be much more acceptable for me to proclaim a love of ugly, hard-nosed dogs named Buster or Killer – animals that chew meat and smell like armpits. And I love them, too, providing they don’t pee on my laptop. Cats, though, are almost painfully cute, low-maintenance creatures that cuddle and purr and pounce on things. A cat and a laser pointer can provide hours of entertainment, more so than a Pauley Shore movie, although that’s largely because Pauley Shore is dumb.
Every animal, unfortunately, is capable of its own evils. You’ll never see a cat threaten a nuclear strike, or force you to watch “Real Housewives of Atlanta.” But once in a while, a feline comes along that makes you glad it doesn’t have the opposable thumbs necessary to operate a switchblade.
This the story of Schmucky the Cat.
That’s probably not his real name, but we all know cats only respond to the sounds of can openers and deflating balloons, so I’m just gonna go ahead and call him Schmucky. It’s a well-earned moniker. Schmucky has the temperment of an injured Iranian soccer player, combined with the glowing personality of Stalin. If Schmucky were a man, he’d have a face tattoo and massive biceps from years of arm-wrestling in dive bars.
Sadly, I can’t avoid this objectionable beast. See, my apartment is uniquely situated: There’s the apartment proper, where I can shadow-box and play air drums to Kool and the Gang in complete privacy, but in the back, there’s access to a room I share with one of my neighbors. This room basically amounts to a massive shed – a giant sawdust-smelling tinderbox that’s perfect for storing old microwaves and back issues of Nintendo magazines. I use this storage space to house dumbbells and freeweights, because I’ve convinced myself it’s not too late to transform a physique that resembles a melting lump of wax.
Trust me, I’m not trying to sound manly. I’m about as manly as a scented candle. But I mess about with my weights because it makes me feel like less of a sloppy bum. Until recently, I could do this in relative peace. That was before Schmucky – my neighbor’s orange tabby cat – commandeered the storage room and turned it into his own private bunker of hatred.
I’m usually good with cats. In fact, at a friend’s recent birthday party, I was nicknamed the Cat Whisperer, although to be fair, it was a nickname I invented myself, and no one believed me. Still, I have a way with animals. I consider it a personal failure if I haven’t earned an animal’s friendship. Or at least its respect, which it expresses by not pooping on me.
But I knew I was in for a challenge when I met Schmucky. Truth is, Schmucky’s kind of a putz. The first time I walked into the shed and saw him standing stiff-legged in front of my dumbbells, he hissed a hiss that could strip the varnish off a park bench. As I approached him slowly, cooing and trying to chill him out, he backed away but kept his teeth bare, as if daring me to make a move. Any move. Anything at all that would justify his lion’s ancestral call to go mental on my tender ankles.
Needless to say, it was a bit disconcerting. As Schmucky disappeared all ghost-like into one of the room’s hidden nooks, as felines are want to do, I started my workout routine without incident, thinking he had run off to smoke a Marlboro and cool down. Then, as I stood to do curls, a venomous hiss erupted from just above my head.
Schmucky, that crafty little ninja, had found a way up into the rafters, and squatted on one of the beams, scowling at me and threatening violence, all within a foot of my fleshy bald scalp. I whirled around to face him, as much as a man can be said to “whirl” when he’s carrying dumbbells, and beheld a face so sinister, so distorted by rage, I had to fight the urge to bolt for my kitchen in search of garlic and a wooden cross.
I sat down on my workout bench, continued curling, and locked stares with my nemesis.
There’s a scene in “Rocky IV” – undoubtedly the most ridiculous of the Rockys – in which Sylvester Stallone’s title character stands in the middle of a boxing ring prior to his big fight. His opponent is a towering Russian killing machine who looks like a ‘roided-up Dolph Lundgren, possibly because it’s a ‘roided up Dolph Lundgren. The two fighters stare each other down in the seconds before the opening bell. The Russian, with a stone face and soul-dead eyes, says to Rocky, “I must break you.” And for 15 rounds, he nearly does.
Clearly, Schmucky has seen “Rocky IV.” He’s got his Dolph Lundgren impression down to a science. And he does it every. Single. Day.
There are a number of things I could do. I could move to Switzerland and join a circus. I could become a sword-swallower and travel the world, disturbing people. Or, you know, I could talk to my neighbor about it. There’s that.
Then, perhaps, the long nightmare will be over, and I can once more regard cats as cute little fuzzballs. Non-murderous fuzzballs that won’t stuff me into the trunk of a Lincoln Continental.
Your reign of terror will soon end, Schmucky.
So go ahead. Make your move.
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