For a Film

Teaching freshmen is funny as hell.

The other day I was just minding my own business, teaching my writing class (Introduction to Academic Writing or some kind of garbage like that), when a teacher in another room started a movie with the volume turned up a little too loud. The dialogue wasn't clear, but the saccharine soundtrack was, and every once in a while it would fill the room with angst and longing.

I was talking about literature reviews or something more or less useless like that, when a particularly sentimental swell of symphonic goo distracted me, and I was forced to remark that, judging by the soundtrack, the movie must be awful.

"Is that a movie?"

Justin had sat in the front row every day of class for the entire semester. He wasn't a good student, but he wasn't the worst. (After the class turned in their first writing assignment I was convinced that he was an ESL student - you know, English as a Second Language? - until the class turned in their second writing assignment in which he decided to use complete sentences and real words.)

"Is that a movie?" he asked, genuinely bemused.

"I think so?" His question was so sincerely confused that, for a moment, I thought maybe I should have been wondering the same thing, is that a movie?

"Oh. I thought I was in a movie - that this was a movie - and that that was just the music playing during it."

Dude was totally serious.

And, you know, maybe the craziest thing of all is that I'm pretty sure he was sober.

Teaching freshmen is funny as hell.

Two Bits from the Bard

116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

*

I'm almost convinced that every relationship isn't just another economy - another give-and-take - .

And I'm drowning again in my more-or-lesses.

Starving Artists

Dustin enlisted me to do some illustrations for his company Christmas card the other day. After some planning and a bit of work I came up with all of the Santas-, cookies-, elves-, and fire-related content you see here. Dustin wizarded up the rest.

Enjoy.

(If anyone can tell me how to convert a .pdf into a .jpg and get a better result than this, let me know. One tends to appreciate the visual arts better when they are visualizable. In the meantime, if you're interested, let me know and I can email you the .pdf.)

Thanksgiving Tragedy

Thanksgiving day for my friend Eric is little more than Pie day. It is the one day of the year that he dons an apron, sets aside his masculinity, and decides to bake. This year it was apple pie.

He called me at about seven. The family festivities had already come and gone and I was pacing the house between episodes of Firefly, restless for something to take my mind off of my non-Thanksgiving-related worries, when Eric called. He needed shortening.

He stopped by to borrow some and promised me we'd watch a movie and eat pie later. Sure enough, a few hours later, in the middle of the Peanuts' Thanksgiving Special, Eric called and told me that all was ready.

As soon as the special was over, I drove up to his house, more curious than I was eager. When I arrived he was just about to remove the pie from the oven. He opened the door, and Eric, his mother Maggie, and I beheld what appeared to be a perfect pie, waiting inside.

"How do I get it out of there?" Eric asked his mother, reminding us all that, perhaps, there are certain consequences (ineptitude among them) to only baking once a year. He kept reaching his hands into the hot oven and having to pull them out again immediately.

"Well, Eric," Maggie replied, wryly, "some people like to pull the rack out...."

As she said it, she did it, her mittened hand beckoning the hot rack, as it were. Almost immediately, however, tragedy struck as the pie irritably sprang forward, flying toward its freedom with a will.

Eric screamed and desperately lunged for the pie, which he caught, and then screamed again as the pie repaid his kindness with pain. He withdrew his careful hands, sending the hurtling pie into an irrecoverable tailspin which ended abruptly on the kitchen floor.

Eric was devastated. Maggie felt responsible. I could not stop laughing.

It smelled delicious.

Later, Eric was heard to utter that his heart was broken, but he would bake again....

I believe he will. And I wish him well.

A Haiku for Mike

All the while

I pray to Buddha

I keep killing

Mosquitos.

by Issa

(translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa)

Saviours

I saved the world from the devil, today.

My eyes are sore and my back hurts.

And I guess it was a good day.

A good day for Fall Break.

Stealing Lines

Someone complained to me today about the lack of updates.

Get used to it.

I had to see about a girl.

Memories and Metaphors

One day, in Los Andes, Chile, I climbed to the top of a big hill in the middle of town to watch the sunrise and burned through a whole roll of film just taking pictures of the sky.

By the time the sun came up I was out of film.

Sometimes I'm scared to death that this will end up being a metaphor for you.

Venting: The Justice Rant

Not last weekend, but the one before, I somehow managed to overdraw my checking account. (As I think about it, it may have had something to do with my not having gone to the bank for three weeks and just carting my uncashed checks around in my wallet as a reminder to eventually, you know, go to the bank and cash them.)

I have no checkbook. I've never had one. Just the card for me, thanks. This, of course, means that I use my checking account for everything: that $0.99-pack of gum, the $1.69 stick of Blistex, this $3.99 video rental (Thumbsucker - I'm just going to throw this out there right now: I love Keanu Reeves), the $1.99 bottle of chocolate milk, or, how about that $8.99 24-pack of Dr. Pepper?

I paid for all of this stuff with my check card, all while overdrawn.

So, last Tuesday, when I finally got around to the bank to make a deposit, I was somewhat concerned when I saw a seemingly innocuous negative sign put to the right of my balance. I thought about it for a while as I drove to work but couldn't make heads nor tails of it. How could I have negative $200 in my checking account? It just didn't make any sense.

As it turns out, after a little investigating, I found out what was going on, but it still doesn't make any sense. I made ten transactions after overdrawing the account, because my card was never declined. Not once. And the fucking bank charged me $22 for each one, in addition to whatever I paid. That chap stick? Yeah, that cost me $23.69, not $1.69.

I had been charged $220 in overdraft fees for transactions the final sum of which did not exceed $60. The bank was kind enough to forgive half of the fees because I "have such a good record" with them, but I was still irritated. It wasn't until last Friday that I became enraged.

Last Thursday I lost my sunglasses. Couldn't find them anywhere. I was about to drive down to American Fork (again) and I was in a hurry and distracted, so, after checking my car, I must have forgotten to lock the doors. Some time that night, some asshole got in and stole 11 CDs, my owner's manual and registration, and my garage door opener. My garage door opener! The owner's manual? What kind of sick fuck behaves like this? I can understand the CDs - I can -, but the owner's manual? That's just weird and rude.

That Friday morning, as I was making a list of all of the albums I was going to have to buy again, I couldn't escape the feeling that I had been robbed twice that week, and that I was upset not because I was shirking responsibility (I shouldn't have overdrawn my account; I should have locked my car - I get it; I agree), but because the punishment didn't fit the crime.

Shouldn't the bank have charged me the value of the goods that I had purchased instead of some arbitrary fee? Their $22-rule made me wish I would have bought a car instead of Office Space.

Shouldn't some kind of divine, karmic law only have allowed the equivalent of an unlocked door to be taken from my car? I think the change in the tray on the dash would have covered it - $1.62. (They left that, like a shitty tip, to rub it in my face, I guess.)

I suppose, in the end, the upside is that the bastards that robbed my car didn't realize that that 24-pack of Dr. Pepper behind the driver's seat was the most expensive 24-pack of Dr. Pepper ever. $220. (Almost the exact price, as it turns out, I paid to replace the CDs they took.)

That almost made me feel better about things. Almost.

sdrawkcaB

Playing catch-up in reverse:

5. I choked on my water and coughed it out all over my power strip at work and then was too afraid of getting electrocuted to unplug it for about two minutes at which point my fear of burning the building down trumped that so I pulled the plug and - didn't. get. electrocuted. [Sigh of relief.]

4. I've decided that I no longer need to be on time to work, so when I say, "this morning," above, what I'm really saying is, "about twenty minutes ago." (It's 12:52 PM, now.)

3. I went to bed last night at three after staying up way too late for a Superman marathon - we watched Superman, Superman II, and Superman Returns, after which I came to the almost unavoidable conclusion that I would never, ever get this Monday back and that I loved it.

2. I carpooled to American Fork for the Superman marathon with a girl that I dated for about two months and broke up with for the next six about three years ago and her new boyfriend. I still don't know how that happened; it was a little awkward at first, but they’re both much better people than I am and actually really nice, so it was cool (albeit there is a possibility that they were merely making a play for my Dr. Pepper).

1. I saw The Dark Knight on Friday, as part of my friend’s Mormon-ified bachelor party and was moved on several levels, not the least of which being my bowels, as I was holding it, as it were, for the entirety of the two-and-a-fucking-half hours.

Watching People Drown

Everything changes. Everybody changes. I change. Every day. So why does it feel like a tragedy?
(Minipop credit: http://www.flipflopflyin.com/minipops/)

The Real Vampire

What kind of video rental store stocks Blade II and Blade III but not Blade?

Oh yeah, it's my local Blockbuster.

That's crazy, right? I mean, I'm not the only one who thinks that there's something - dare I say it - morally amiss in this situation?

I don't even like that movie, but I have found that it is not healthy to suppress the urge to watch a particular film - no matter how horrible. So now what the hell am I supposed to do?

This store is bleeding me dry.

The Fraternity

Cooke, Montana: In a cheesy, touristy "trading post" where I would eventually buy my bitchin', authentic, made-in-Mexico, straw hat, I was looking at the toy cap guns.

They were the quality variety: metal; with real weight. I was in the act of hefting one, appreciatively, wondering if Eric and Spencer would be willing to wear them around if I bought one for each of us, when I noticed a little dude, no more than six, looking at me from the other side of the rotating wrack.

He was obviously impressed by the fact that he had at last found an "adult" who could appreciate the finer things (toys and a potentially inappropriate reverence for the mock-violence embodied in the pistol). When he realized that I had noticed him there, looking at me, he walked around the wrack to more closely inspect the revolver in my hand.

"Pretty cool?" I suggested, seeking the approval of an obvious authority on the subject.

He nodded, "Yeah." A co-conspirator; soberly cheerful. A confidante.

"Do you have a sister?" he asked, quietly - perhaps not yet quite satisfied that I was, in fact, a compatriot.

"I do."

"You should use these on her."

He held up a package of toy handcuffs, revealing it like a secret weapon, or a rich delicacy.

"Are you going to put those on your sister?" He could hear the approval in my voice.

"Yeah." His sly, confidant smile only hinted at the impending excitement he envisioned.

We consummated the exchange with a solemn high five and casually returned to our respective contingencies, effusing innocence and propriety, our faith renewed and mischief in the making.

Jack Straw

On Saturday I went to some kind of fair in a park with Ryan where I bought some pants made of bamboo. Seriously.

The real story, however, is Ryan's dad.

Ryan's parents were there as well, and when Ryan spotted them, his knee-jerk reaction was a lament: "I can't believe he's wearing that hat!"

Ryan's dad was wearing an awesome straw hat - the kind you see in gas stations near the cheap sunglasses. As they approached, we exchanged pleasantries and I was seized by a wild impulse to ask him if he'd purchased the hat at a gas station. Instead, deciding at the last moment that it was, at least potentially, an inappropriate question, I merely asked where he had found it.

"I got it at a gas station!" he cried, still clearly thrilled by the fact that such treasures could be found in such mundane places.

What is your excuse now? I had to ask myself. If he got one, how can you not?

The Floss-Effect

I was never a flosser. I always knew it was something I was supposed to be doing, but also, I always knew that I just wasn't going to do it. And so I didn't. The closest I came to being a regular flosser was my first year in Chile, but that was only motivated by my lack of faith in the local population of dentists and even with that I spent the second year floss-free. It just didn't matter to me. It just wasn't worth it.

And then, I don't know why, really, but I met this girl, and she seemed like someone I should be better for. Oddly enough, "better" took the form of someone-who-flosses. And I flossed. And for years, now, I've continued to floss, even after she's come and gone.

From one moment to the next we're different people, but perhaps it is relationships, even the transitory relationships that never quite make it off the ground, that change us the most.

I'm on the lookout now for someone that will turn me into a regular car-washer. Any takers?

As I write this I'm beginning to wonder if I've ever had the floss-effect on someone. It's an awkward question to ask: when we dated did it make you a better person? Maybe it's safer to modify it: how did our dating make you a different person?

Was it worth it?

I'd settle for turning someone into a Tarantino fan.

I [heart] T-shirts, number six

Mo' Money, Mo' Problems

(photo by D. Butcher)

Failing Flailing

Last Monday I turned in the last two papers of my undergraduate career. Now, all I want to do is watch old episodes of Daria and ride my bicycle.

Has higher education failed me or have I failed it?

Fiction: Nine Minutes, part one

“Oh, I have a vibrator that color.”

I’m not even kidding; these are the things that she’d say. As if they weren’t supposed to drive me to distraction.

And we’d walk. For miles. For miles and miles we’d walk and walk and look at the buildings and the posters on the walls. There was nothing particularly romantic about the dirty brick. There was nothing very suggestive about the stained flyers. But I loved it. Every moment. I loved it and I loved the morning and the air and the moment. The air was alternately cool and clammy. The sounds were jarring and happy and busy. Car horns and outbursts of conversation and startled buses. People looked through us and walked around us, their minds on their destinations, their phones in their ears.

She was pointing at the obnoxiously pink block letters of a ratty poster glued to the side of a whitewashed warehouse.

LIVE!
THE SCENTED NIPPLE,
WITH BRITT’S CLITS
AND FURST BLUD
THURSDAY,
NOVEMBER 17,
9 O’CLOCK
AT BAD JAZZ,
9TH AND 9TH

She hugged my shoulder and pulled me along, through the crowd around the bus stop and past the newspaper stand, and then it was goodbye and see you tomorrow and take care and no kiss but a wink and I waved.

***

I should buy a car.

Every morning the thought crosses my mind. Every morning my phone buzzes and jumps and generally scares the shit out of me from underneath my pillow and I frantically push buttons until the awful get-the-fuck-out-of-bed song stops and I can go back to sleep for nine more minutes, thinking about getting a car as I slowly surrender my shocked and brittle conscious back to the soft, blurred edges and indistinct faces of people from school and work and home and school and I’m asleep.

Nine minutes later I’m all over it all over again and I should get a car and get out of bed but not yet and nine minutes after that I actually get up. And out. Of bed.

The tile is freezing on the floor in the bathroom.

I hate brushing my teeth. Maybe more than anything. Taking a shower is routine, but brushing my teeth never sinks into the framework of the morning.

“I love brushing my teeth. No flossing. But my toothbrush is my best friend. After you.” She’s such a liar.

Her hair is blowing into my face so I keep my mouth shut but it might be too late. I can feel it on my lips. We’re walking down the street in the shadow of brick buildings and the smell of exhaust everywhere, staining the morning, staining the flyers, staining our lungs. The wind is tugging at the flyers, tugging at my jacket, flattening my hood against the back of my head. But maybe it’s just the busses coming and going.

THURSDAY

She’s pointing at one of the posters, saying something that belongs in my ear alone right out loud, “…that color.” One sad corner of the poster pulls away, sticky, from the wall, covering part of the garish announcement.

We walk and walk and walk and say goodbye. Waving.

Moving On

Unlike some people I know, not only did I used to be really into the Dave Matthews Band, but I'll admit it. I'll admit it and I still really, really like their first three albums. And listen to them. Really.

(I'm still in love with Phish, too. Get over it.)

Yesterday, in fact, I was listening to some tracks off of Crash, when it occurred to me that the only thing more ironic than Dave singing "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die," is that he's not singing it ironically.

It's so much easier to criticize something when you're no longer in love with it.

A Super Market in Salt Lake City

Today I was at the grocery store with my parents because I'm the most pathetic 25-years-old man alive. My mother and I were walking down an aisle when it occurred to me that my father had fallen behind somewhere along the line. I back-tracked along our progress through the store when I found him in the deli section with two packages of hot dogs in his hands, hefting them.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"I can't decide which one to get," he said, his eyes never leaving the packages. "This one is bun-sized, but these are thicker; I can't tell which one weighs more."

It had happened: before my very eyes, in the middle of Dan's, my dad had become an old man.

When shaving your mustache becomes not just a good idea, but a great one...

A lot of skiers covet and flaunt the goggle-line. Those in the know shoot for the mustache-line.

The Smooth Criminal

I am largely of the opinion that men grow beards so that they can have mustaches without looking like they're gay. The other day, though, I decided that maybe, just maybe, it might be worth the risk to sport a mustache - at least for a while.

Accordingly, I buzzed my beard and left the 'stache.

The results thus far? Ironically, my mustache appears to be straightening gays.

Tellingly, it appears to be having the opposite effect on women.

I [heart] T-shirts, number five

Eating Lunch Alone

Society requires food. Food, however, does not require society: there's conversation in a salad, personality in vegetables, charm in a dessert, class in a beverage, and friendship in a sandwich. Soups are aloof, but worth the effort. Roasts are pious. Cookies are the best company. The receipt from an order of crème brûlée is like lipstick on your collar.

Spades are Spades

I was watching basketball with my friends last night - my first game of the season - and, finding myself irritated at how "fouls" prolong games, the following occurred to me:

If they called "fouls" what they are, namely cheating, there wouldn't be nearly so many of them. Rules exist in a game for a reason. When cheating has become a part of the game to the extent that it has in basketball, then it becomes obvious that, somewhere along the line, the players and coaches and organization and referees have lost sight of what basketball was supposed to be, and are instead trying to make it into something else - something that lasts twice as long as it should and thrives on dishonesty (another name for "fouling").

R.I.P.

Basketball

January 20, 1892 - April 30, 2003

I [heart] T-shirts, number four

I [heart] T-shirts, number three

I [heart] T-shirts, number two

I [heart] T-shirts, number one

Post-elusive

Every once in a while I (like most of us, I'm sure) find a flier underneath the windshield wiper of my car. I never, ever notice it until I'm in my car and about to drive away. Thus begins the awkward process of rolling down the window, turning the windshield wipers on, and hoping that they will push the flyer close enough to my outstretched hand that I can grab it. If I have to get out of the car to get the flier my day - and sometimes my entire week - is officially ruined.

How these fliers get onto my car I have never been able to ascertain. Someone - or something - is responsible, but remains elusive.

- Or, anyway, remained elusive.

On Thursday (the same day I returned to the record store to sort out the Kanye Debacle) I was walking to my car and I saw her.

The Flier Girl.

I saw her; and she was hot.

Case closed.

Like a Fall

I am not a huge hip hop fan, generally speaking; however, the other day, I decided that I needed to buy Mr. West's newest effort. I went to the record store, bought Graduation, and, as I busily jotted down notes for the next day's test in the infamous Physics of the Human Body, gave it a listen. I was enjoying it to a degree, but something was missing. Gradually it dawned on me: I was not hearing nearly enough expletives.

I checked the cover of the album and, sure enough, it proudly displayed a Parental Advisory for Explicit Content; nevertheless, the record was clearly "clean." It was like listening to Hendrix with the guitars cut out. The discrepancy between the catalogue numbers on the disc and the packaging suggested some kind of mix-up.

The next day I returned to the record store and placed the defective product on the counter.

"What's the big idea?" I asked the girl in righteous fury. "There is no profanity on this album and there should be."

"That's weird," she said. "You can go get another one."

"Deal," I said, pleased as punch, and after a moment returned with another copy.

I opened it and saw that, once again, the catalogue number on the CD was not the number on the package.

I pointed this out.

"Let me grab a CD player and we'll listen to it."

A minute later we stood around a small CD player with her manager (an ugly, ugly woman) listening to "The Glory," waiting for the following lines:

Can I talk my _____ again?
Even if I don't hit again
Dog are you _____ kidding?

"This is unacceptable," I said, irritated and proud.

The manager and I went back to the rack. Her plan was to grab the oldest looking copy they had and, finding a good one (she placed great stock and comfort in the fact that the "CPU [was] slightly yellowed"), took it back to my friend behind the counter.

By this time, there was a line of people waiting to check out as well as another employee who had decided that his aid would be indispensable to the task of listening to filthy language (evidently we were "kickin' it, listenin' to Kanye" - this dude was even whiter than I am) congregating around the counter.

I was no longer feeling righteous, furious, irritated, or proud. I was actually beginning to feel ashamed. It was something akin to what I imagine it would be like to take back a pornographic magazine because there were missing pictures in it or something. It was embarrassing, and there was the nicest looking mom (she had to be a mom) that I had ever seen waiting first-in-line and, I imagined, looking a little disappointed (in me).

We opened the new copy and the girl put it in and pushed play. It seemed so loud.

Can I talk my shit again?
Even if I don't hit again
Dog are you fucking kidding?

I was so confused: I was relieved and anxious at the same time. The manager was saying something about how this situation was so much more preferable than the reverse: an angry mother yelling at her because the "clean" copy of an album she had bought for her son wasn't "clean" after all. I nervously glanced at the nice-looking mother in line. She was holding her items close, the third season of The Cosby Show most prominent among them.

I thanked the employees for their trouble and quickly walked toward the door.

Something had just happened there, and it felt like a fall.

A Picture of Wind

Today, as I was walking to class (James Joyce is so choice) the wind blew all of the snow off of the soccer field and into my right ear.

Wow!

http://www.bigear.org/Wow30th/wow30th.htm

Not an Autobiographical Post

A thought about surprise parties: when a friend of yours who doesn't know anybody else plans a surprise party, you plan a surprise party.

Thursday's Child

I was walking to my car yesterday when I overheard a brief exchange between a guy and a girl passing one another near me on the sidewalk.

"How was your weekend?" said the guy to the girl.

How was your weekend? It's Thursday. Thursday. Maybe I'm the crazy one, but it seems to me that if you haven't figured out how someone's weekend was before Thursday, you forfeit that information. Tuesday is pushing it; Wednesday is a little sad. Thursday is just wrong.

I struck up a conversation with this girl (who happened to be walking my way) and asked her how she felt about the situation. (Of course she was hot.) The fact that she was obviously more excited to talk to a stranger (me) about the statute of limitations on the How-was-your-weekend? question than she was to talk to the guy that knew her and probably had a legitimate reason to ask about her weekend was all the answer I needed.

The moral of this story: when you have a great conversation with a beautiful stranger about the social short-comings of others, get her fucking phone number.

I'm still right about the Thursday thing, though.

The Ladies' Room

Confession: Every time I use a public restroom I am convinced that I am in the Ladies' Room until I can locate a urinal. If they ever start putting urinals in the Ladies' Room, I don't know what I'm going to do. (I don't know what the ladies will do either, come to think of it.)

VI. Marlene

Looking back, the only real difference between the two groups of women was whether or not they were attractive. There was one woman, Marlene, who, if it could be said that anyone owned interior design in Utah, owned interior design in Utah. She was also the one designer who persisted in being perceived as attractive and mysterious by the entire design community; though, ironically, the allure came only from how much everyone (thought they) knew about her—effectively destroying any real sense of mystery—more than any intrinsic beauty (of which there seemed to be none). Everyone had a different story about Marlene’s travels in search of the perfect rug. Everyone had a different account of her different affairs with different drugs. Indian and Arabian nights were peppered with erotic encounters with the exotic locals. I was lead to believe (and have no real reason to doubt) that the woman had not slept in the company of less than one person since 1966. Her gigantic, black sunglasses seemed to hide entire lives’ worth of debauchery and sin (not to mention more than a few wrinkles that were gradually becoming veritable folds) and she was never seen without them.

V. Designers

We only sold rugs to interior designers: glamorous, ugly women (and the occasional gay man) with too much time on their hands. For most of them it was a hobby—something to do to kill the hours of the long, affluent day. They were forever wandering in and out, flirting and talking and carrying on as if they did not live in Salt Lake City, Utah, but were instead cavorting with the gurus of New York or Paris. Did I mention they were ugly? None of them were even the least bit attractive. On occasion they would bring their clients (who were often very attractive) to the showroom to look at the rugs that hung from gigantic metal frames swinging on hidden hinges, creating the illusion of eighteen-feet-tall books with fifteen-thousand dollar pages made of silk and wool. Clueless, the designers’ clients were typically lonely housewives whose husbands’ financial successes fueled their own, masturbatory, financial excesses.

Forever 22

Like millions of other people with better things to do today, I watched the Superbowl instead of doing them. I just want to go on record saying that I never gave up hope that the Cowboys would come back to win it. Led by Emmitt Smith.

Our Last Dance

I was on the Sugarloaf lift up at Alta today when it occured to me that there are only two kinds of people in this world: those who love Bowie and those who do not. There's a lesson in that.

Two Purposes

The thing about shoes is that they exist for two purposes: footwear, and irony.

IV. José (or, That Damn Cat)

José was a good man. He spoke just enough English to make real communication only tantalizingly out-of-reach. Having lived in Chile long enough to pick up the language myself, I had been taken on as much to communicate with him as to play office assistant to Becky. José and I used to chat. We enjoyed each others’ company—as much as possible with an age-gap of 30 years and a cultural divide of what felt like thousands—and to this day I regret not going to his daughter’s wedding reception to which he, personally, had invited me. I found out after I had left the business that he had contracted a flesh-eating virus from a stray cat that his wife had taken in that had licked a sore on his heel as he lay, napping, on the couch. Within three days he had nearly lost his leg and accumulated tens of thousands of dollars in hospital bills. He never told his wife that it was her damn cat, he just had one of his children insure that it “ran away.” He was a good man. That’s all I heard, really, but I like to think that he’s doing well in spite of everything.

III. Todd

Todd was plagued by health problems and the rest of us were plagued by hearing about them. He had married a woman from Taiwan who he met in his home town in Idaho as she visited the Mormon missionary who had converted her to the faith years before. It was love at first sight, apparently—had she heard him first and fallen in love after I would have questioned her sexual orientation: his feminine voice was perfect for his rug-related responsibilities, which consisted of entertaining the ridiculously gay designers as much as anything. The rug business is as good a place as any for a guy to find a boyfriend.

On a Saturday

A little while ago I went on a date with a chick named Erin. I went out with her a few times way back in 2006, but then she moved to London for the summer. She came back and we ran into each other on campus so I dug up her number and gave her a ring (telephone - not a band (ring - not a group)).

On a Saturday we went to the Lonestar Taqueria and then to the Coco Cafe where the hot chocolate is so thick, afterward, you needn't eat for days. After this we went to my place to watch Annie Hall (Woody at his best).

As it turns out, Lonestar and hot chocolate don't mix well. - You know, in the belly? My stomach was a bit disgruntled, but hers! - her stomach sounded like it was trying to get out of her body. We ignored it for an hour and a half. An hour ... and a half. Can we just talk for a minute about how awkward that gets? It was as though her stomach were commenting on the movie. It would say something - boldly, angrily - and we would continue watching the movie in silence, as if we agreed.

Dating is awesome.

Saturday Night in America

I spent the evening in Provo with some friends of mine. After a battle of the bands at BYU, we stopped at Wendy's where I purchased a Baconator: two beef patties, two slices of cheese, and six slices of bacon on a premium bun.

In theory, this burger is like the holy grail of burgers. In execution, however, the Baconator is one of the worst burgers I've ever eaten. It's just too much.

After attempting to express my dismay with the burger, Mike (my friend, not me in the third person) whole-heartedly agreed, saying: "I know exactly what you mean. The first day that came out I took the day off of work to try it out and it was just bad."

Parker laughed.

"That's a good story," he said, shaking his head with admiration. "I wish I had stories like that. What have I done with my life? Where have I been?"

He was kidding but he was serious.

And I kind of knew what he meant. Kind of.

The Queen is Now Dead

The other day I was chatting with a friend of mine who lives in Virginia. Somehow the Smiths came up and I learned that V (as she shall hence be known) had no idea who they were. It is a sad commentary on contemporary society when someone doesn't know who the Smiths are.

In the '80s (a decade not nearly as deprived of good music as the average music fan would have you believe) the Smiths released a series of albums and singles that kept guitars cool in the face of rampant overindulgence in synthesizers and the like. While this is neither the time nor the place to mount a why-you-should-love-and-respect-the-Smiths campaign - you should.

I figured the best way to introduce V to the Smiths was for her to hear my favorite Smiths' tune, "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want":

Good times for a change
See, the luck I've had
Can make a good man
Turn bad
So please please please
Let me, let me, let me
Let me get what I want
This time

Haven't had a dream in a long time
See, the life I've had
Can make a good man bad
So for once in my life
Let me get what I want
Lord knows, it would be the first time
Lord knows, it would be the first time

Morrissey's yearning, almost-over-the-top desperation and Marr's lush, textured guitars make this one of my all-time favorites (you may recognize the music as covered by the Dream Academy - an utterly forgettable '80s band with the exception of this borrowed glory - in the museum scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off).

I found it on the Hype Machine (http://hypem.com/) and shot her a copy of the link. A few minutes later, V responded:

"I guess this is OK. Weird lyrics: 'Some girls are bigger than others'? I don't know."

Needless to say, something had gone wrong. V was hearing the Smiths, but she was hearing a Smiths song that no first-timer should ever be exposed to. She had clicked the "play" button on one of the "Please Please Please" results and received, instead, the following:

From the ice-age to the dole-age
There is but one concern
I have just discovered:

Some girls are bigger than others
Some girls are bigger than others
Some girl's mothers are bigger than
Other girl's mothers

Some girls are bigger than others
Some girls are bigger than others
Some girl's mothers are bigger than
Other girl's mothers

As Anthony said to Cleopatra
As he opened a crate of ale:

Oh, I say:
Some girls are bigger than others
Some girls are bigger than others
Some girl's mothers are bigger than
Other girl's mothers

Some girls are bigger than others
Some girls are bigger than others
Some girl's mothers are bigger than
Other girl's mothers

Send me the pillow...
The one that you dream on...
Send me the pillow...
The one that you dream on...
And I'll send you mine

Yup. "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others." Even Marr's excellent music isn't going to save this one completely. I'm not going to say it's not a good song. I won't say that; but, clearly, some songs are better than others.

The moral to this story is to always check your links, I suppose. That, and keep the Smiths to yourself.

II. Becky, Todd, José

Becky and BJan met at BYU and fell in love. They were both much less round in the ‘80s. Becky, in fact, was almost ravishing. While sorting old files one day I happened upon a photograph of the happy couple from their newly-wed days. Dark and coldly attractive, her past figure shocked me as much as I am sure it now haunts her.

Becky had a head for business that complimented her husband’s expertise and general lack of common sense. Together, they were unstoppable—or at least would have been in a state that cared more for interior fineries than it does for green lawns and a day at the lake, or shoveled driveways and ski slopes. As it was, they did well enough to eat out two meals a day, every day, and employ the most homosexual heterosexual secretary I had ever met (Todd—they’re all Todds, aren’t they?), an illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic (José), and a poor college student who lived in his parents’ basement and spent more money on records than all other expenses put together (me).

I. BJan

BJan, a short, round Iranian, knew all there was to know about rugs. His father had met his American mother through a remarkably boring turn of events (considering the match and geography) and I no longer recall the specifics of the peculiar systems and operations that had led to his conception; nevertheless, he was. A Mormon rather than a Muslim (the maternal influence respectfully overriding the paternal), he had come to Utah to go to school at the church-run Brigham Young University. He was the only fully accredited rug appraiser in the state—the kind of distinction the average youth dreams of only after being hit in the head and even then never takes seriously. BJan, however, was no average youth. He quickly mastered all there was to know about the field—no minor accomplishment—and with a loan from his parents entered the rug business, initially operating from his home—a small, log-cabin-style affair behind his parents’—and then from a large showroom downtown by the time I came along. Knowing all he knew (which is really quite a lot) explained, at least in part, why he didn’t know much of anything else. His wife Becky ran the place; his role was more like that of a consultant. He ate lunch a lot.