Did You Know Flooring is Hard?

(If the title didn’t give it away, I’m redoing the floors in my mom’s house today! Turns out, it’s difficult and labor-intensive as shit. So just know that while you’re soaking up these sweet, sweet words, I’m likely covered in dust and choking on asbestos. But we’re doing a re-post because I love y’all. I love y’all AND actually like what this post had to say, so, in case you missed it…)

Where Does Personality Come From? / Who Are You?

Hey! Happy Tues…day…every…

Is today Tuesday…?

F*ck it, sure. Happy Tuesday, everyone!

If you can’t tell, ye olde headspace is a bit frazzled this fine ~~Tues-~~ weekday. So, the way I figure it, it’s the perfect time for a (Oh, yeah, and I didn’t have anything prepared for today because of work on the house. Anyway!) healthy ~~freestyle rant~~ essay!

I’m still pretty hung up on the topics in last week’s post, so I’m just gonna wax pseudo-philosophical and armchair Bro-Brain it up with some questions I had when I was eight. Sound good? Sweet.

I remember sitting in Mrs. Thompson’s third grade class room staring at a cow brain in a jar (for real, I was stoked when she said we were getting one) and the thought crossed my mind: “Where do our personalities come from?” You could probably see the pretty straightforward line of thinkin here, yeah? Our brains hold most of our thinky-stuff – memories, facts, jokes, emotions, lies we told our parents so we wouldn’t get in trouble – and so if that cow’s brain was in that jar, looking exactly as you’d expect from cartoons and old timey movies, then am I looking at that cow’s personality, too?

Like, obviously not the cow’s personality being expressed (uless that cow was lazy and really liked to swim but go nowhere), but looking at the vessel for its…well, its everything. And then I turned the question inward: “Where does personality come from?”

Now, clearly, this is a deep-as-fuck kind of question, and we could spend an actual book here (like the many that already populate the shelves of Barnes and Nobles nationwide) if we wanted to. But I gots shit to do and can’t mentally spelunk that deeply with what time I’ve got. But, I remember the timeline of that thought process as I’ve grown went roughly like this…

Personalities are held in the brain. Well, I mean, they are…aren’t they? But…is it…well, is it a thing that can be…held? That can be contained in that squishy little sponge of gray matter? And why are some people funny, others are serious, and why do I like Gundam figures, but not tomatoes (so on and so forth)? And if you had twins that were born at the exact same time, to the exact same parents, and lived in the exact same house, going to the exact same places, and knowing the exact same people…how and why would they ever be different?

Clearly, this is the point where you shoehorn in the age-old “Nature vs Nurture” debate, right? I think I’ve come to the conclusion that that question is entirely just a thought experiment or thought provocateur (if we’re feeling fancy) than an actual question. Because, and yeah, opinions will differ on this I guess, but, it’s obviously a mix of both. I guess the point of the question is just to determine where you personally place your line as to the ratio.

Because, yeah, Nature definitely has its part, undoubtedly. Some people just straight up have certain predalictions and preferences, personality traits and characteristics. But you don’t just go through life, having experiences and encounters without ever changing and altering on some scale (Enter: the debate over Dany’s decisions in the GoT finale – bring it, nerds! This is a hill I will die on. She had every reason IN THE WORLD TO- nevermind. Another time. Maybe. Or not. I don’t know. Anyway…).

But then, went my twelve-year-old brainy brainy after watching Fight Club, who are you? Or, who am I?

“You are not your job.” – Totally. Your job is just what you do, it’s how you contribute to the tribe. And that might change any number of times for any number of reasons.

“You are not your bank account.” – Well shit, I would hope not. Because that’s never been mighty impressive. But still, yeah, of course. This one’s silly.

But then, expand it a little…”You are not your name.” – Hey, Robert, Wallace, Sarah, etc! These things are just… the sounds we make or the squiggles we draw to express who we mean or who we’re addressing. But there are a million John’s, Tessa’s, Fred’s, and Abigail’s. It’s just…a label. It’s handy, you can like yours (I like mine), but it isn’t you.

During a religious studies course from years ago, I remember my professor mentioned how Plato felt about just existing in a body (and if I’m wrong, blame either my memory or Mr. Thompson – I know, another “Thompson”). Apparently, he likened it to a cage. A cage you, the mind, were just occupying until it died. A cage that could and would occasionally break down. And that got me thinking: “Yeah, you can’t be your body, either. If you break your arm, for example, it’s not like you lose part of you. Even if you’re an athlete and that means you can’t play your sport anymore, you aren’t any different, just your capability.”

That’s where Identity enters the mix. “Who am I?” Not “what,” or “how,” or any other of the five question types. “Who” in a way that isn’t answered with your name, or your job, or your sex, or your relationship to family members. Your personality. Who. Are. You?

Maybe if playing football is part of your identity, or you’re the “tennis guy”, and you suddenly sustain an injury that keeps you from doing that, then yeah, you lose that part of yourself. (For example, I used to do parkour but after a few injuries and “life thangs” eventually stopped. And it was weird, because to a fair number of people, I was “the parkour guy” or the “dude that can flip,” and when that was gone, there was an adjustment period, I won’t lie.) So, you lose that part of yourself, kind of…

But…do you really?

No.

Like, yes. But no.

See what I mean?

Anyway, the closest thing I’ve come to that’s an acceptable “answer” (in quotes because, ah, well you get it by now), are best illustrated by the two following sources:

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations
I mean, spoilers if you have any interest in the game and haven’t ever played it, but that’s about all the warning I’m gonna give for an eight year old video game in an overdone seri- anyway!
At the end of the game, Number 16 (I think was his ID) has this big heart-to-heart with Desmond, and, with arms outstretched and his face to the sky, he drops the line, “What are we but memories? Huh!? The stories we tell ourselves!”
Think on that shit…
…
Set it? Cool.
If you’ve been with me since the beginning, you might remember the short I put up with the same name. And I always liked it, and it’s stuck with me, because there’s something about it that resonates. It checks a lot of boxes. “You are not your job.” Check. “You are not your bank account.” Check. “You are not your name.” Check.
We’re just…that. We are our life’s story. What’s the one thing you leave behind after you die? Your legacy. Your memory. People’s memory of what you did or how you impacted them or others. You are the things you do, the places you go, the stories you tell, the people you take care of, the hand you hold out to help, etc etc.

Some Philosopher’s Playlist I Listened To That One Time Yeah, I get it, less of a catchy title. We could always call it, “Some Philosopher’s Playlist I Listened To That One Time: Reloaded” or something, but anyway…
In it, and I think I’m going to butcher the quote since I’m just spit-ballin’ here, some unnamed older gentleman says something like the following:

“We all go through up’s and down’s. And once, when I was on one of those down’s, I kept having a thought. It was the same, persistent thought. ‘Why does this always happen to me?’ And when I realized that I had that thought before, something occurred to me. I am not the thought. This thought is not me. And I wondered, how many thoughts, and how many people everywhere each day, have thoughts like this, thoughts that are not them? And it occurred to me… I am not the thought, I am the awareness.”

Okay, if I had you take a moment to let the first one sink in… Absorb that. “I am not the thought, I am the awareness.” Speaking of parkour (from earlier), one of my coaches, Brett, made a deceptively insightful comment one day that I overheard: “You know, you can’t control your mood, but you can control your attitude.”
Now, marry the two thoughts. You’re not the thought, you are the awareness. You are the consciousness, the phenomenal, inchoate, ethereal experience behind your eyes, behind your thoughts. Your thoughts aren’t you, they occur to you. Your mood/emotions aren’t you, they influence you – you, the one behind them.

So, I don’t know, in conclusion…take the above and just…mill on it. Like Izzy from Gray’s Anatomy once said: “My mom always said, ‘Trust the man who claims to seek the truth, but doubt the man who claims to have found it.’”
And I need to maintain my credibility ’round here.

Anyway, thanks for brain-wrestling with me.

Catch you Thursday.

Ciao.

Who Are You? / Where Does Personality Come From?

Hey! Happy Tues…day…every…

Is today Tuesday…?

F*ck it, sure. Happy Tuesday, everyone!

But then, went my twelve-year-old brainy brainy after watching Fight Club, who are you? Or, who am I?

“You are not your job.” – Totally. Your job is just what you do, it’s how you contribute to the tribe. And that might change any number of times for any number of reasons.

“You are not your bank account.” – Well shit, I would hope not. Because that’s never been mighty impressive. But still, yeah, of course. This one’s silly.

But…do you really?

No.

Like, yes. But no.

See what I mean?

Anyway, the closest thing I’ve come to that’s an acceptable “answer” (in quotes because, ah, well you get it by now), are best illustrated by the two following sources:

Anyway, thanks for brain-wrestling with me.

Catch you Thursday.

Ciao.

“If you look out the window to your left…”

Hey everybody, happy Tuesday.

A couple months ago, I swore to do a post every Tuesday and Thursday, and despite life’s hurdles, we’ve kept to that pretty well.

Won’t lie, though. Today is…ah, kinda comin’ up with zilch.

Nada.

Goose egg.

Nothin’.

Also, been busy as hell so I’m just now getting to it 10:00pm my time.

So this is a fly-over post. You know how you have fly-over states (here in the United States, anyway)? The places you fly over (ha-ha, like the name!), look out your window, and there’s nothing crazy to see?

I have another premise to work off of, but don’t have even thirty minutes to throw it together today, so that’s gonna be Thursday.

In lieu of that, I DID have a personal story I thought of that would fit this time slot. It’s good, quick, qwirky, and has a nice little lesson attached to it.

Problem is, I forgot it. I don’t remember which one it was.

So really, if you’ve made it this far, I guess I’m talking to you now. Yes, YOU! And just you, because I’m sure between the timing, the quality of my words thus far, and how long this has already gotten, you’re the only one who’s made it this far. So, congratulations, I guess. It’s actually sort of cool, if you think about it. You’re the only person ON THE PLANET (in all likelihood, don’t hold me to that entirely) who gets to read these specific words. So, enjoy this. You’re seeing a thing that you and only you will EVER see.

Because really, who would make it this far? In earnest, I’m surprised even I’m still going. This genuinely should have ended a few minutes ago. And boy, if you’re new, like, you’re not a follower yet (ha-ha, I said “yet”, like this is a good advertisement for what this blog is about)…I…just, sorry, I suppose. You deserve better.

So hit ‘Heed the Call’, and we’ll do better from here on out.

Damn. I really thought I would have remembered the story I’d meant to tell by now. I’ve just been shamelessly vomiting a stream of consciousness for, like, ten minutes, which should be enough time, but still – zilch, nada, etc etc.

Well. Okay. It’s time this shit comes to an end. Um, how about a preview? The prompt for Thursday: “You’re approached by a stranger on the street. He walks up to you briskly, hands you a package, and departs just as quickly. You open it to see an old fashioned pocket watch. The moment you touch it… [Must include magic.]”

Got a fun idea for this one, but like always, we’ll work on it in the moment. Again, if you’re the one person who’s actually made it, see what you can do with the prompt and come Thursday we’ll compare. And-

HOLY SHIT I JUST REMEMBERED THE STORY

Okay, so for context, I’m not generally a believer in so-called “hocus pocus” or “woo-woo” things like crystals in one’s pocket, psychic visions of the future, past, or other lives, so on and so forth. If you’re down with those things, I would also say that I’ve been wrong about a ton of shit and I wouldn’t be surprised if I was here again.

Anyway, a few years ago, Amanda and I went to a festival in San Francisco called “The How Weird Street Fair”. It was basically an outdoor rave in the city streets. That said, had a whole ton of experiences in the span of an hour or two. I:

-Saw a dude in roller skates wearing nothing but whitey-tighties, a luchador mask, and saran wrap from the neck down.
-Saw a lot of naked people, including two old dudes with light-up cock rings (that was a hell of a thing)
-Hugged a monk named “Storm” who gave me a copy of the Bhagavad Gita.
-Was given a small necklace with the word “Peace” written on it in Hindi.

The one I wanna focus on is that neckla- Oh! Also, my favorite part: We saw a turd on the sidewalk. RIGHT on the sidewalk. And the best part? Someone solved the problem by putting an orange traffic cone NEXT TO IT. Not over it. Not cleaning it up. They put a cone next to it, as if to say, “Hey, check it, but watch out, there’s a turd here.” Anyway – let’s focus on that necklace.

Have you ever had an experience wherein you remained calm despite reasons not to?

I’m gonna keep this brief because I’m getting sleepy.

When I was taking a few classes at the local junior college, I always parked in the campus garage. On this one particular day, I remember I backed into my parking spot perfectly. Like, it was flawless – perfectly straight, perfectly even. Anyway, after classes, I came back to my car real quick to change out some books and noticed something weird: my car was askew. Looking at it now, my car was diagonal in the lines, and my first thought was, “Huh, I wonder who hot-wired my car just to repark it weird.”

Then I noticed the front bumper was peeled clean off.

Long story short, my car had gotten hit by someone coming around the corner too close and too quick. They left their information and everything got sorted out. But the thing I always think back to and chuckle about is how calm I was through the whole thing. I even found it funny that my first thought was that it got hot-wired (heehee, that’s dumb). It was just so unexpected the only choice was to find it funny.

Anyway, if there’s a lesson here, it’s either: plan out your posts because otherwise you wind up with a disappointing, aimless rant, or just don’t sweat the small stuff, ie don’t cry over spilled milk, ie don’t make mountains out of molehills, etc etc.

See ya Thursday.

Speed Prompt Challenge #3 – “Atomic Bacon”

Happy Thursday, y’all.

For full disclosure, this was going to be the intended post for Tuesday, but…well, stuff came up and kind of stole the show. But today’s a new day and truth be told I needed a little bit of time to outline today’s challenge.

“But Evan!” I hear you shout, “That’s cheeeeating! You’re only supposed to have thirty minutes!”
“Ah, gentle reader,” I would respond. “you’re absolutely right. So it’s a good thing all that time I could have spent really building it into a fully-formed thing only amounted to about five minutes of spit-balling onto some paper before starting this.”

All good? Cool.

We know how this goes. We have a prompt, thirty desperate minutes, the Law of the Honor System, and some kind of product at the end (featured below). This time, however, we’re going to do it a touch out of order. The prompt this time was a little unusual, and as such, I think it’s better to share what it was afterward.

You’ll see what I mean.

Starting timer in 3…

2…

1…

Atomic Bacon

Las Vegas, 1982

“I do not like these costumes.” Bucky scratched at his armpit. He was dressed in the uniform of a hotel bellhop and pushing a cart covered in trays and glasses.

“They are not costumes,” replied his partner, Foxhole. He was dressed in a tuxedo that was a size and half too small for him. “They are uniforms.”

“Yes, but they are not our uniforms. And so they are costumes.”

“It doesn’t matter if you like them or not, we have them to help do our job. Besides, they were someone’s uniform. So fuck you.”

Bucky spared a hand from his cart-pushing to give his partner the finger. Agent Foxhole was ready to protest, but the two were forced to calm as a group of large, sunburned, American tourists came bumbling down the hallway in their pool attire.

The two Russians adopted the friendly smiles of normal, American hotel staff as the gaggle passed them by, smelling of sun screen and tequila burps. When they were once again alone, scowls retook their faces. “You know what?” Agent Bucky asked.

“What?”

“American hot dogs. They are not all that bad.”

“But they make you shit like crazy.”

“You would know,” Bucky muttered under his breath.

“What was that?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“Well, game face. And shut up, we are here.”

The two approached the door at the end of the long, long hallway. In front of it, was a behemoth of a man in a suit, with hair slicked back and sunglasses on indoors. As the two got close, his upper lip curled into a lopsided sneer.

“Hello,” Foxhole greeted. “We are here to deliver room service.” He smiled, showing all of his teeth.

“Ain’t nobody order room service. Get goin’.”

“Ah, you must be from Texas. Happy American ‘Lone Star State.’ Ha-ha! You are not one who ordered big steak here, under tray? We know you like things big in big Texas.” Foxhole nudged the giant’s tummy with a friendly elbow.

“Take your cart, take your trays, and take your steak, and get the fuck out of here before I shove it all up your ass. Boss didn’t call for no food.”

Agent Foxhole looked back to Agent Bucky and shrugged his shoulders, to which Bucky replied in the same. “We tried,” they said together.

Lightning fast, Foxhole kicked the big man’s knee to the sound of a loud crack, parried away the hand that reached for a stowed pistol, and pulled a blackjack out from between the tray’s napkins, whapping the juggernaut soundly over the head into the soft, sweet arms of unconsciousness.

“Oh, shit,” complained Foxhole.

“What is the matter?” Bucky inquired.

“I tore my pants.” The Russian agent indicated a long tear along the rear-end of his tuxedo’s slacks.

“Well, I mean, y’know,” Bucky stammered.

“What?”

“You know how you got your codename, do you not?”

“How did you get yours?”

“Oh, they just put me into a name generator. ‘Bucky’ was good, bland American name. I think like big stag, with horns and mean antlers, but that’s just for me.”

“Why did I get ‘Foxhole’ then, according to you?”

“It was from time you cracked porcelain in toilets at The Farm. You leave big old crater.”

Agent Bucky began to snicker and laugh, but Foxhole slapped him upside the head. “You ready to be serious?”

Bucky nodded, only smiling.

Foxhole nodded and knocked on the door. No answer. He knocked again to the same response. He looked at his partner and again the two shared a moment of shoulder-shrugging. He replaced the blackjack on the tray and retrieved two silenced pistols, giving one to Bucky. They nodded together, and Foxhole slammed a heavy Russian foot against the door.

Back-to-back, the two whirled into the room and sprayed bullets at their targets, each firing quiet, whispered shots until their pistols were empty.

Then they noticed the people they were- um, the targets they were neutralizing were…

They were already dead.

The two stopped and looked at one another in confusion. They walked about the decadent Las Vegas penthouse that was, currently, littered with corpses. The followed the trail of bodies through the luxuriant space around to the master bedroom, which itself sported a bloodied doorknob. They opened the door and saw an man in a bathrobe, spread-eagle’d on the bed.

With a knife in his throat.

“Shit!” the two shouted. Foxhole threw down his bow-tie. “Second place is the worst.”

“Wait,” said Bucky. “Maybe…maybe they got kill, but did they get prize?”

Foxhole’s eyes lit up. “Maybe you are right. What was your half of code?”

Bucky cleared his throat. “‘Pull me to pieces, hear me crackle. Hungry for mushrooms, you’ll need my name.’ What was yours?”

“‘Not very tall, better avoid my tackle, but while I don’t play, without me there’s no game.’ What do you think it means?”

The Russians walked about the room, looking for clues as to what their riddle might reference. They searched between crystal decanters, liquor bottles, under the fabric of the card tables, inside the cushions of the furniture, everywhere.

“Oo!” exclaimed Bucky. “What about that?” He pointed a hairy finger between two lamps and underneath two hung portraits of the penthouse’s owner. Agent Foxhole followed the line of sight and saw a gleaming, golden statue of a hog.

They approached it together. Crackling bacon, mushroom-hunting pigs, the charge of a boar – everything checked out.

“What about needing for game?” Foxhole asked.

“Ah, dirty American passtime. Football. They refer to ball as ‘pig-skin’. Very silly.”

“Makes sense.”

“What do you think is inside? CIA agent names? Launch codes?” Bucky heard two hissed stings and felt a shock in his back. He fell to the ground and saw Foxhole standing over him with a pistol.

“Sorry comrade. Extra-curricular assignments, and everything. You know how it goes.”

“Da.”

END

The Take: Hmm…well, that was…weird. Okay, so the prompt here was this: “A story out of the three words ‘Boar,’ ‘Penthouse,’ and ‘Blackjack.'” The very first thing to come to mind was a Vegas story, obviously, wherein it culminates in some sort of high-stakes hand of blackjack at a card table, right? The thing that really throws a super wrench into that, though, is the addition of ‘Boar.’ The thought process went, “What the shit would a pig be doing at a casino gaming table?” soon met “Well maybe there’s just a pig playing cards, shut up” soon became “Yeah, like Animal Farm meets Ocean’s Eleven.” Like, that’s kind of awesome, but too much for what we’re doing here.
So that got dialed back to some kind of 1980’s spy-thriller but it got goofy really quick. That was in part because I wrote the title on the fly in a panicked moment, but still felt a sort of loyalty to it. It wasn’t until the end that I suddenly realized how weird and contrived it sounded to actually have nuclear launch codes stashed that way, so that’s why it ended abruptly. But hey! We were within time (sort of, I had to pause once or twice because of distractions outside of my control – but that’s not what we’re focusing on here), so yay!

Anyway, y’all are great. This one was weird. See ya Tuesday.

Ciao!

Fight Club! – Fringe League

Happy Tuesday, everybody. Wanted to post earlier, but got held up by errands and ran into a…well, an adventure.

Y’all, this one is fresh off the presses!

So, allow me to set the scene:

I’m with my mother at a local Grocery Outlet (one of those errands I mentioned and for previously stated reasons) doing what you might expect – grocery shopping. We’re browsing the produce and cold cuts, when a white chihuahua runs by without a leash. My mom sees it and laughs. She asks me where it could have come from, but I told her about the man I saw holding it a minute prior. He was a bigger dude (around, not tall), with stringy brown hair, and a white shirt – details that will come back later. Just picture a Brett Gelman with about fifty pounds and twenty years of heavy drug use on him.

We finish up her shopping and are heading up one of the aisles towards the checkout lanes when I see that same white chihuahua run passed up ahead. I hear a grumbled voice say…something, and then see the dog run back the way it came. What was a grumbled voice grows pretty suddenly into adversarial shouts.

My mom stops and I walk ahead to the cross-section of aisles where an older gentleman who looks exactly like Michael Harney (I’m serious, I almost stopped for an autograph) is shouting a good ol’ Mr. White Shirt.

I don’t quite hear what was said at the beginning, but the pretty unmistakable gist was that Grandpa Michael said something about Dirty Brett’s dog, and Dirty Brett wasn’t having it. A store manager walked up to the commotion and she started doing managerial things – asking what the problem was n’ so forth.

Dirty Brett, like a gentleman, starts raining F-bombs on her like it’s the Shelling of London and he’s psyched to play Germany. Grandpa Michael steps up, calling him an asshole, presumably to defend “the lady’s honour.” Dirty Brett decides he’s totally right and directs all his further barrage of cusses right at Grandpa Michael. Grandpa gives him the ‘put-up-your-dukes’ posture and Brett does the same.

A couple of things before we go on.

Firstly, I got to recognize, in the moments to follow, a particular privilege I enjoy in life. I’m 6’4″ (a question I get asked all the goddamn time by strangers) and float anywhere between 200 lbs and 245 lbs depending on motivation, the time of year, alignment of the stars (you get it). When it was “dunk a freshman in the garbage day” in highschool, I got passed right over on account of my height. For context, the only other fight I’ve been involved in or have had to break up since grade school was defending my girlfriend Amanda from a crazed neighbor (Short version: diagnosed schizophrenic off her meds, shouting “You bitch!”, charged Amanda in our apartment complex’s laundromat. I got in between them immediately and the imposing height was all I really needed to diffuse the situation – or at least keep Amanda safe.).

Secondly, in real life, people that think they’re so ready to fight do not know how to fight. This is coming from someone (me) who readily accepts that he’s utterly delusional in his martial prowess. Does the voice in my head tell me I could bite the ass off a bear and stop a charging leopard with a well-time front kick? Yes! And that’s the problem! But I accept that I’m probably incorrect here!

So Grandpa Mike takes his stance, Dirty Brett wastes no time in throwing a punch, and the two clash.

Now, when I say “clash,” I really mean- well…picture a fight between seven-year-old’s on the playground. Are you imagining how they throw “punches”? Do they have their heads way back, faces pointed away, throwing sideways hammerfists with their fingers half-curled? Then you got it. That’s precisely how the first and only “punches” of this Seniors’ League brawl were thrown.

That’s partly what made me feel safe jumping in between them to break it up. I sure as hell know I’m not trained in how to throw a well-executed punch, but now that I’m just as sure these yahoos don’t either, well…those are odds I’m happier with.

I stand between them with my back to Grandpa Mike looking at Dirty Brett. I found this moment fascinating for a couple reasons. For one, it was oddly reminiscent of the laundromat incident. Having about nine inches of height on Dirty Brett, his eyes never came near mine (I mean that in the way of eye contact, but I guess physically too- ah, you get it). Secondly, I shouldn’t be in between these two guys, but I was. Like, what the hell? I’m not the type at all to intervene in public brawls. I lay all the credit with them both being long in the tooth and little-kneed, respectively (and we’ll get to what I mean in a second).

Management and customers are around us now, and Dirty Brett tries to throw a kick passed me at Grandpa Mike and I slap it out of the way. His bones must be hollow like a bird’s, because even though he really put his body into it, there was zero power behind it (hence my theory about his little knees).

And it was at that moment that I felt my ego squirt itself into the situation. I’m not fucking kidding you when I say that Jason Stathem’s voice began narrating my thoughts. They went as follows:

“Okay, you son of a bitch. The punch was strike one. That kick? Strike two. Try something else, anything else, and I get violent.”

Now, that was about the end of the fight anyway. In total, you had some shouting, a failed punch from either side, a kick from Brittle-Bone that got swatted away, and that’s it. Management told both men they had to leave, we got in line, mom got her groceries, and we left.

The real point to this whoooooole thing, the real meat of it, was the examination of the immediate aftermath and the perceptions of the event, including my own.

Remember that Stathem soliloquy we had a few moments ago? Well, the way I figured it, I was serious. Now that I was between them, if he threw another aggressive action my way, intended for Michael Harney or not, I was going swing back. The way the mental movie played out in my head is that Dirty Brett moves forward, I plant, and front-kick him to his tummy; or the same, but I drop and take him down, swing to his back as he tries to stand, and I snatch his neck with a rear-naked choke.

“Evan,” I hear you begin with a questioning tone, “are you a fan of the UFC?”

“I follow combat sports, yeah,” I would say back. “MMA being the big one. And there are other promotions out there – Bellator, ONE Championship, Rizen, WSF, PFL, etc – but that’s besides the point. Yeah, that’s why I know some of these terms and think I could look-see-do recreate them in a street fight. But, I would also stress that earlier (and much more grounded) point of ‘I’m super goddamn delusional with regards to my martial capabilities!'”

That leopard example? That wasn’t a joke. That was a real-life reference. Coworkers and I had a MONTHS-LONG debate over whether or not I could physically fight off a mountain lion.

But back to the point at hand. Let’s examine any of the outcomes Jason Stathem’s voice told me to try:

I take him down and choke him out.
Likely ways that plays out: I grab his legs, he falls, and he cracks his head against the linoleum. Now I’m part of the police report this just turned into. Or he goes down, I take his back, but since I’ve never applied an RNC, I get over the face instead of under the chin, and he bites into my arm with his dirty-ass teeth.
I front kick him as he charges in.
Likely ways that plays out: It works. He comes at me now angry, but I channel my inner Darren Till, elbow him upside the head, and he drops. That’s bad because a) if we’ve forgotten, I have my mom with me, she doesn’t need to see her son like that; b) it’s another scenario where I become part of a police report; and c) I don’t need to know what that kind of deliciously terrible power feels like just yet.
All of that, or, I go to kick him, I slip (because I’ve never fucking done it before), and Dirty Brett soccer-kicks me in the head. Again, my mom doesn’t need to see that, plus now my glasses are probably broken and I can’t drive us home.

Now, as I’m going over all these reasons in my head as to why I’m glad the fight didn’t escalate, we pass by a gentleman who saw the whole thing standing in the parking lot talking to management.

“And here’s the young man who got between them,” he says as we pass by. “Deflected that kick, too. Like some of that UFC, eh? Ha-ha-haaa!”

(Quick side note, here. While after he said that, I just laughed politely and nodded at his joke…y’all, I wanted to hug that man, take him to the side, and start asking, “Did it really look that cool?? Was it like this? Or like this? Do you think I could have taken him?” Probably one of the best compliments I’ve gotten in months.
Anyway…)

While we laugh, another older gentleman who saw things unfold came up. “Yeah,” he says, “I was just thinkin’ that if he tried anything else, I’d jump in there and knock him one.”

“Yeah?” I laugh with him, thinking he’s joking too.

“Oh, yep. And I’d ask him, ‘how’s it feel to get punched in the throat by an old man, huh? Haha! Punch him right in the throat, yep.”

I…I just…

I solidly learned a lesson today, and that lesson is this:

As people on the street, as a whole, we think fighting is way easier than it actually is. Just like Grandpa Michael Harney, most of us think we can just walk up with the option to kick someone’s ass. If you try that, that someone will probably kick your ass right back. I am supremely confident that Grandpa Harney thought he’d crack this disrespectful prick and that’d be the end of it. I’m just as supremely confident that, if left to their own devices with no intervention, Dirty Brett – even with his light-ass bird bones – would have set his chihuahua down and gorilla whomp’d on Old Man Harney until we needed all the king’s men to put him back together.

So, just, unless you’re actually trained in self-defense, be careful about your estimation of your abilities; and I’m guessing that if you’re a trained fighter in any capacity, you don’t need me telling you any of this.

Anyway, that was today’s adventure. Take it easy and we’ll be back Thursday!

Ciao!

RE: The Legend of ‘MegaBoom!’

(Happy Thursday, all! By a combination of time constraints and outside distractions, we’re doing a re-post! Though, I will say, we have a cool somethin’ coming for Tuesday [if not before then, but we’ll see].)

Sorry we were absent Thursday, but celebrating Independence Day meant making sacrifices…

…like camping…and swimming in a lake…

…and s’mores.

Don’t feel bad for me.

Anyway, what I’m saying, is I missed one. BUT it’s okay, because it actually ties in.

Last Thursday saw all of the above-mentioned activities and many others. The one we’re going to focus on is one I think everyone (and especially any Lord of the Rings kids) should at least try: archery.

The lake/campground/recreation territory whatsamagidget we went to had a ton hiking trails, and of those, one that is itself a walking archery range. I’ve had my bow for about seven years and have practiced the art of flinging arrows off and on in that time. (In fact, anyone else remember that Mayan Calendar Apocalypse that was supposed to happen back in 2012? I’m not saying that I thought the world was going to end…I’m not…I am saying that I had my bow ready just in case it was the Time of Mutants and Raiders was nigh, though.)

All of that, however, is just context for what we’re talking about today: The MegaBoom.

That whole off-and-on habit of practice translates roughly to: “practicing regularly for a few weeks and then taking a few months off.” That means that, after seven years, I’m ~~pretty good~~ ~~alright~~ ~~I can hang~~… I do alright. And yes, of course, I check that my grouping is good enough to hit a human-sized target in case the Green Arrow needs a break, duh. So bulls-eyes at 40-meters happen, albeit infrequently, but I’m no Robin Hood or freaky good shot.

However…

…there’s one guy out there who thinks I’m fucking fantastic.

Let’s focus on that guy.

It was one of those times where I was taking up the hobby again off a hiatus and I go to my regular shop (I would super give her a shout-out, but I’m not totally sure that what happens in the story was entirely legal, so let’s just call the shop “Maggie’s.”) I pay for my time and begin stringing my bow.

For a Friday, it’s unusually thin, with myself and two other guys taking up lanes. One of them has his son with him, who’s receiving beginner’s lessons at the firing line. The owner, Maggie, is teaching him basic form and safety, and he’s eagerly drinking it all up. It’s cute. During this time, myself and the two other guys (the boy’s father included) begin chatting it up. I explain that I’m coming off a regular layup and they both say how they’re each taking it up for the first time, roughly, since childhood. So we’re all on relatively even ground skill-wise, which was comforting (after all, it’s humbling to be on the line, shooting wide, while Katniss Goddamn Everdeen steps up and zeroes her quiver with bulls-eyes). At this point, I overhear Maggie teaching the kid the importance of a full draw:

Maggie: “Mmhm, well yeah. This time it didn’t stick in the target because it wasn’t going fast enough. If you want it to stick, it has to go faster; and if you want it to go faster, you have to pull back all the way, buddy. Okay?”

Then, bless her heart, she puts the spotlight on me. Without ever breaking eye contact with the kid, she then says:

“Hey, Evan. Step up to the line and take a shot for us, hmm?”

I politely pause my conversation with the other patrons and step up to the line. I line up my feet, my hips, shoulders, and even crack my neck. I nock an arrow, grip the string, then finally look at the target. One big breath in then out, I raise my bow, draw back to my nose (a habit of form that I’ve always had weird difficulty adhering to), hold a moment, and release.

Fuckin’ bulls-eye.

Calmly, I smile and step back into conversation but on the inside I am: screaming, windmill-playing air guitar, and thinking of what sponsorships I want when I make it to the Olympics. The two other men had kind things to say, and while I outwardly received them coolly, my heart was on fire in my chest.

The rest of the day proceeded pretty uneventfully from there, but I came back the next day to practice, still riding high off my cool moment from the day before. Who do I see but the father from yesterday (let’s call him Tyler)? He greets me as “that bullseye guy” (to which I blush) and we get to practice.

That day, the store was being managed by a friend of Maggie’s rather than Maggie herself (I think she’d come down with a stomach bug). [We’ll call him] Franky watched us shoot, gave us pointers on form, made jokes – the usual. That was, until he said something about a “Mega Boom.” After a run collecting my arrows, I returned to the line and asked what that was all about.

Rather than answer me in words, his eyes just lit up and he ran around the corner to the back office. About a minute or two later, he returned holding what looked like a bike pump, a small mesh net, a clamp of some kind, and an empty 2-liter soda bottle. I watch as he assembles the whole thing and begins apparently pumping air into the empty plastic bottle. When he’s done, he’s left with a highly pressurized soda bottle fixed to a little stand, and I suddenly see what’s going on: an explosive target.

Now, for context, Maggie’s since moved to a larger location, but the range at that time was relatively small, maybe 15-meters long from target to wall. Thing was, the wall was a warehouse door that opened out into a parking lot. When he sees that we understand what he’s offering us, Franky goes, “Yeah, we might want to head outside for this.” He sets the bottle on top of one of the targets at the end of the range, opens the door, and motions us out into said parking lot. He walks us to approximately 50-meters away (approximately 160-feet, for my imperials) and gives us the green flag.

(Which, as a side note, was a bit premature because as we’re looking at each other as to who is going to try to set off this pseudo-domestic explosive first, a couple of nervous, first-time customers were just walking out the front door – next to the door INTO WHICH WE’RE ABOUT TO FIRE. They freaked out and left before anything happened though…so…all’s well that ends well.)

Anyway, Tyler looks at me and says, “You’re the likeliest to hit it, so you go first.”

I still don’t really understand his logic here, as wouldn’t you want the likeliest shot to go last? But I was too taken by the flattering reference to yesterday’s freak accident but well-time bulls-eye to say no.

Now, at that point, I’d never attempted a shot from that far away before, so my hopes were pretty low. I was also shooting at an empty plastic bottle…a thing which is TRANSPARENT. So I just adjusted my eyes best I could and focused on the blue Pepsi label that wrapped around it. I follow the form from yesterday, raise, draw, and release. Normally, at such close ranges, the sound of an arrow shot sounds kind of like “thuum-tak!” in pretty quick succession, right?

This one was different.

I release the string and hear: “thuum…f-f-f-f-f…BOOOOOM!!”

For the second time that weekend, I felt like Green Arrow, Katniss, Hawkeye, the huntress-god Artemis made flesh. And y’all, it was so loud even from outside and that far away, that I can’t imagine what would have happened to our ears or brains if we’d been standing inside.

After a few moments of stunned silence, we walk back to the wall of targets and look at the damage. I’d hit dead center of the bottle. On one side was a small hole the diameter of an arrow shaft, and the other was split and blown out entirely. I also realize then and there that my arrow itself is utterly missing. I dig into the target a little and find the front half of it and start laughing until I cry. I look around, but can’t seem to find the end with fletching until Franky calls out from the usual firing line that it had blown back to the tape. He brings it over to me and apologizes (fair enough, arrows are expensive); but I told him something I very much mean to this day: I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

The next Monday, I went to work with the ruptured bottle and two frayed arrow pieces and put them proudly on display atop my locker, praying that I’d get asked about it.

I probably told this story to over twenty people that day, and I haven’t matched it with a better one since.

But Tyler doesn’t know that. To that guy, who happened to be present for the singularly best moments in my archery career, I’m a goddamn sniper.

…

Anyway, y’all take it easy until Tuesday!

The Legend of ‘MegaBoom!’

Happy Tuesday, all!

Sorry we were absent Thursday, but celebrating Independence Day meant making sacrifices…

…like camping…and swimming in a lake…

…and s’mores.

Don’t feel bad for me.

Anyway, what I’m saying, is I missed one. BUT it’s okay, because it actually ties in.

All of that, however, is just context for what we’re talking about today: The MegaBoom.

However…

…there’s one guy out there who thinks I’m fucking fantastic.

Let’s focus on that guy.

Then, bless her heart, she puts the spotlight on me. Without ever breaking eye contact with the kid, she then says:

“Hey, Evan. Step up to the line and take a shot for us, hmm?”

Fuckin’ bulls-eye.

Anyway, Tyler looks at me and says, “You’re the likeliest to hit it, so you go first.”

This one was different.

I release the string and hear: “thuum…f-f-f-f-f…BOOOOOM!!”

The next Monday, I went to work with the ruptured bottle and two frayed arrow pieces and put them proudly on display atop my locker, praying that I’d get asked about it.

I probably told this story to over twenty people that day, and I haven’t matched it with a better one since.

But Tyler doesn’t know that. To that guy, who happened to be present for the singularly best moments in my archery career, I’m a goddamn sniper.

…

Anyway, y’all take it easy until Thursday (for real this time)!

Confessions of a Criminal, pt. 1

Happy Tuesday, everybody.

The other week, I went to a local event in my area called “Coffee with a Cop” as part of an attempt at character research for a novel I’ve got cooking (I actually sort of chickened out then had to come back after being light-heartedly berated by a department clerk, but that’s a story for another time). Point is, it’s a really cool shin-dig wherein members of the local police department convene at a designated coffee shop and are available to the public for questions, conversation, and general hang-out.

Reflecting on it and my notes, it got me thinking about the, precisely, two times I’ve been at odds with The Law – both simple traffic violations.

The first was a simple speeding ticket, and not worth mentioning besides this note telling you it isn’t worth mentioning.

The second was a bit more fun.

For a bit of context, let’s rewind. You all remember Pierre, the roommate who ignited the apartment-wide Cold War? Well, maybe six years ago, he had a girlfriend who’s father had the following belief: “Eh, I just use the carpool lane year-round and whenever. Whenever I get caught, I just treat the ticket like my membership fee.”

As a 19-year-old, I thought this philosophy was goddamn brilliant.

So that’s what I did. For years, I was “that guy,” the one who blazed passed you losers caught in bumper-to-bumper traffic during rush hour. I did this as a renegade road warrior for years; and you know what? I was always on time (~~sort of~~ ~~kind of~~ ~~not really~~ not the point).

Well one day, I hopped on the freeway, scooted over to the fast lane like usual, and was on my way. Except this time was different. This time, I got a little funny feeling in the back of my brain. A little tingle like ESP that told me, for some inexplicable reason, today was the wrong day to do this. Some would call it paranoia, some would call it guilt, others might call it an impending sense of divine CHP justice (I’d probably side with the latter). But whatever you want to call it, in that moment I was certain I’d made a bad move. So I started trying to merge back in line. Thing was, my plan worked TOO WELL.

I was flying passed columns of barely-moving vehicles, making really good time to my next job (yeah, by the way, it was during a summer where I was working a second job to help teach an English class – well, tutor, but you get me), but all the while thinking that today it was a bad idea, and for the life of me I couldn’t find a spot to merge back into line.

Well, about five minutes into this master class of seeing the future, that’s when I saw him: Officer Powers.

And no shit, I’m not making his name up either to make him sound cool or ‘protect his identity’ or anything. His name was legitimately Officer Powers (like, I’m sure he had a first name, but you know what I’m saying).

Anyway, the freeway passes under an overpass and time…just…

Well, you ever have one of those experiences where you experience a single second of time, but it feels slowed down and stretched into fifteen? That happened here. As I drove under the overpass, I turned my head (slow-motion eyes blinking included) and saw a motorcycle cop that had been hidden on the other side of the barrier. I watch his eyes (behind his badass sunglasses) slowly rise from his radar gun and – y’all – I could feel the eye contact. With our eyes alone and all in an instant, we had the following conversation:

Me: “You see me, right?”
Him: “Oh, yeah.”
Me: “And you see me seeing you, right?”
Him: “Mmhm, most definitely.
Me: “And you can tell I’m seeing you seeing me, right?”
Him: “Totally.”
Me: “Shit.”
Him: “Yup.”

Then, just as quickly as it had slowed, time resumed its usual pace, and as it did, my heart started thumping. “Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap!” it kept saying.

Then OF COURSE a spot opens up in a regular lane, I scoot into it and start hoping, “Well, maybe that whole thing was imagined. Maybe that badass hawk-eyed cop lost track of me.”

Nope.

A few seconds later I heard the ‘Whoop-Whoop’, saw the lights, and he pulled up behind lil’ old me.

Now, here’s the problem. Like I mentioned up top, I’ve been pulled over precisely once before on the freeway. That time, it had been a complete piece of cake. Freeway, nighttime with no other cars, just before an off-ramp that pulled directly into a gas station. Super safe, super easy, no mess, no fuss.

This time, it was on a hot, bright, busy day, with the Great Migration of Southern Traffic happening, and I didn’t know to/how to pull over onto the shoulder.

So…I…just kept driving.

Like, I was in the right-hand lane and trying to choose and exit to take, but couldn’t find a similar, utterly perfect one; so I panicked and stayed on the freeway.

I took so long to pull off that the car driving in front of me must have had a guilty conscience over something and pulled off to the shoulder themselves (or they were demonstrating for me, I don’t know). Point is, I take so long to pull over, the guy rides up to my window.

Him: “Hey, are you gonna pull over or what?”
Me: “Um, erm, I, uh, um…downtown exit?”

I can’t see his eyes roll behind his shiny-ass aviator glasses, but I felt it.

I finally pull off the freeway at the designated exit, but then I encounter another problem: where to park?

I come up to a stop light, and take a right because I know it goes into a neighborhood with, normally, plenty of street parking where I can proudly receive my traffic citation. Except today, the curbs are all super busy. So I come up to a 4-way stop intersection thinking this: “Well, I mean, there’s a little bit of space over there, but it looks like it’s a bit of red curb and, ho-ho, I don’t wanna double down. That spot looks open, but- oof, looks like a yellow curb…”

Meanwhile, Officer Powers has again approached my driver’s side window as three other cars have approached the intersection, but are all awkwardly sitting there since it’s my turn to go and nobody wants to go out of order while a cop is present. I roll my window down.

Me: “Hi again.”
Him: “Yeah, hi. You see that patch of curb over there?” -he points-
Me: “Yessir.”
Him: “There.”

He holds his hands up to hold the three other cars back as a way to direct traffic for me as he waves me forward to my parking spot.

The [French accent] piece de resistance?

I smirk and nod at one of the cars I pass. Y’all, I felt like such a pimp getting my very own police escort that I chest-pumped at a stranger.

Anyway, once I park, it was nothing but a (further) pleasant experience. He told me I come off like I’m new to this sort of thing, to which I confess I am, to which he responds that he guesses that’s probably a good thing.

In the end, I was late to work, got my ticket and a story, and I haven’t violated the rules of the carpool/HOV lane since. #thesystemworks

Also, I told my mom about the whole thing, and she laughed with me. I told my girlfriend and got my ass chewed plum off for it. Learned a lot that day.

Catch you guys Thursday!

…

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

ALSO I HAVE MORE NEWS!!

My episode with the NIGHTLIGHT podcast dropped last Friday!! It features a horror story of mine: “The Scars of Eliza Gray“. Go, it’s free, give it a listen, and if you wanna, stick around after the 25-minute mark to listen to my interview with the podcast’s creator, Tonia Thompson. It was a TON of fun to do and I’m sure we’ll have more news like this in the future.

Today’s Hors-d’oeuvres (#foodforthought)

Happy Tuesday, everybody.

First off, if you’re having trouble (like I did) with the title today, that’s apparently how you spell the little munchies you have before dinner or in between courses (plain speak: “orderves”).

Second, I’m out there husslin’, so for today, you’re at a fancy dinner party. It’s a big ol’ Great Gatsby mansion with a courtyard, a fountain, waiters n’ shit. I’m the guy who walks up holding a tray and a towel over my arm (I assume for some reason) and offers you little worldly food items. Let’s say I have a curly string mustache, too.

I’ve always been a bit of a quote collector and I think we should all be. A few years ago, my girlfriend’s mom gave me one of the best compliments I’ve ever received when I said, “I like to consider wisdom where I find it, no matter the source,” and she replied, “That should be on a pillow or something.”

But that’s what today’s about, a few morsels here and there that resonated, and I’m gonna cross my fingers they do the same with you. Cheers.

“If objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation prepared to receive us the instant we are born – a world furnished to our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun? Or pour down the rain? Or fill the earth with abundance? Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe goes on.”
-Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

The Take: I would actually recommend reading all of ‘The Age of Reason’ by Paine- well, actually not. Part 1 is terrific. In (very) short, with Part 1 he basically outlines his views on religion at large, the idea of a Creator, existence, and his own personal form of deism (which I personally find beautiful). The above is a good foot in the door for what the rest of Part 1 is about. It doesn’t capture all of the wonderful ways he illustrates it and further fleshes it out, but it’s a pill if that’s all you want. An even more concise if less flavorful way to express what I think Paine tries to get across here is this: “The world is so much bigger than you and majestic beyond reasonable understanding. That alone is reason enough to appreciate life.”
(The second half, called “Part 2”, is basically a constructed essay-form breakdown on how the stories in the Bible don’t, in his view, conform to logical processes or, as the title goes, reason; and personally, I didn’t find I needed that, but if it’s your bag, go for it.)

“Death by violence, death by cold, death by starvation – these are the normal ends of the stately and beautiful creatures of the wilderness. The sentimentalists who prattle about the peaceful life of nature do not understand its utter mercilessness; although all they would have to do would be to look at the birds in the winter woods, or even at the insects on a cold morning or cold evening. Life is hard and cruel for all lower creatures, and for man also, in what the sentimentalists call a ‘state of nature.'”
-Theodore Roosevelt

The Take: I think I feel good including this one here because I’ve noticed it comes up a lot in my fiction (nothing that’s made its way here yet). I hold that it’s a reasonably good theme to include or just understanding to utilize whether it be in fact, fiction, or real life, because it’s true. Life isn’t easy within civilization sometimes, much less without it. It can be a terrific reminder the next time you think you live in a shithole or boo-hoo about how nothing ever happens in your town. Just watch one episode of “Naked and Afraid” and you’ll realize even that’s wilderness survival set to Easy Mode.
[WOOP WOOP! WARNING! POLITICAL MOMENT AHEAD! 3…2…1…]
And whether you have a stance on hunting, you yourself are a hunter (I’m not), a vegan, vegetarian, or anything else, before you forsake friendships in arguments over these things: hunting isn’t the problem. Is trophy hunting pretty dicky? Yeah, absolutely. But an ethical hunter killing for food that isn’t wasted, while it isn’t utterly natural, it isn’t outside the norm; as it’s an unfortunate fact that that deer or elk wasn’t going to live happily ever after. So the next time you come across a headline that aims to criticize some aspect of hunting, do a liiiittle bit of homework before biting the hook.
[-jets powering down…cooling…cooling…cool-]
If I haven’t lost you yet, on a literary note, taking an understanding that nature in its raw form is exactly what Teddy calls it – “merciless” – and is still beautiful into writing can help bridge some schisms over seemingly conflicting themes. I hope I’ll be able to share some of my own works that attempt the same here one day.

“You’re never gonna get the same things as other people. It’s never gonna be equal. It’s not gonna happen in your life so you just learn that now, okay?
Listen. The only time you should look into your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don’t look in your neighbor’s bowl to see if you have as much as them.”
-Louis C.K.

The Take: I think I first encountered this one while scrolling through Facebook yeeeeaaaars back. Originally, in the set he expressed this on, it was while he was discussing being a parent and some of the lessons one dishes out when they find themselves in that position (I also did a super fast google check to make sure he’d been quoted elsewhere too), but it came across as a good bit of personal advice.
It sort of pairs flows from the same perennial, ages-old proverb “Comparison breeds contempt,” and I think it puts a good cap on what we’ve covered. It’s good to expect nothing, yet appreciate everything (saw that on a bumper sticker once, holds up).

Anyway, I think that’s about it. Hope some of this rings with some of y’all.

See ya Thursday (or before, who knows anymore).

…

PS – I have NEEEEEEWS! Another story of mine, “The Scars of Eliza Gray”, is currently in the works to be featured on the NIGHT LIGHT horror podcast in a few weeks. So stayed tuned, ’cause I’ll be posting updates as I get them and blasting it out there once it’s up! Also keep an eye out and an ear open for the episode where we discuss and give our takes on Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” and “Us”! Yaaaaay!

A Place to Be

A bit outside the usual posting schedule, but that makes sense for this one. A warning up top, this is going to be pretty unplanned, unstructured, and probably unedited – we’re gonna barf a rant here, so bear with me.

Do you have a “happy place” that you go to?

Actually, different question (but hold onto that one).

Have you ever seen Ratatouille? It’s the movie with a little rat named Remy in Paris (I’m pretty sure), voiced by Patton Oswald, who discovers there more to food than eating trash. There’s a scene somewhere near the mid-beginning wherein he tries introducing his brother to flavors besides trash. He has him close his eyes, eat a piece of cheese, then a piece of grape, then try the two together. The entire time his brother is chewing, the background behind him goes to black and these ribbons of color trace themselves and dance around to reflect the sensations brought on by the flavors.

Since seeing that movie, I’ve done the same thing with a really good meal probably a thousand times (my friends can attest, as they make fun of me for it). But it’s an excellent way to just…savor.

Somewhere else I’ve found a similar experience is with music, and God just writing it out it feels a little woo-woo. I feel like it comes off like a Grateful Dead hippie who talks about “feeling the music, maaaaan,” but it’s real.

I want to be – and I mean this – a pretentious douche who can honestly say that I’m way classier than you because I appreciate the orchestra and classical music, but I can’t; I hate it; I’m just not that person even though I want to be (I have similar feelings about coconut water).

However, somewhere I’ve found I can appreciate the body that is orchestra and the wonderful phenomenon that is several dozen instruments coming together harmoniously in a symphony…

…are soundtracks. Soundtracks to movies and video games. Those things that give the subconscious, subliminal flavor to a storytelling experience.

Even as I tippy-type this on out, I’m listening to the soundtrack to ‘Detroit: Become Human’ and if you don’t know what it is or haven’t experienced it yet, you owe it to yourself to try it. Don’t think of it as a video game, even. It’s a piece of interactive fiction. It’s an exploration of narrative and a masterfully done composition of character, experience, empathy, choice, and music. Don’t look up a play-through, don’t listen to a friend tell you about it, do it yourself. Trust me. And when you do, go into the Extras and pore through the “Making of” and “Behind the Scenes” style videos.

I say all that because it brings me to this: remember that question about happy places?

Maybe not a happy one, exactly, but one of my favorite places to be is a place where I appreciate and wonder. I enjoy writing and feel a compulsion to do it whether people read and listen or not because of the process that goes into it. Loosely quoting Chuck Palahniuk, the man who wrote Fight Club, he said “real writing shouldn’t be easy, it should tear you apart.” And by and large I agree with that wholeheartedly.

The process of storytelling in a fictional capacity is creating a conflict in your mind and others by describing people, events, decisions, consequences, feelings, and mistakes that by right don’t physically exist, then resolving it in a very real way that reflect aspects of what it means to experience the life of a living being. It’s…it’s a privilege we have.

An art form I’ve never understood but have long wanted to: music composition, which brings me back to soundtracks. Nowadays, they’re cinematic enough to have grabbed my attention, but they employ the means of orchestra, so my interest has a foot in the door of that hoity-toity interest I said earlier I can’t be classist about.

And that note about happy places? One of my favorite places to exist, and I hope you can either relate or give it a try sometime, is putting myself in the mind of a composer. I love listening to the soundtracks and scores of movies and games (Detroit is obviously one, but really pick any that you enjoy) and picking out the instruments I can hear and identify, then picturing them being played alongside the others.

But it makes me so envious. It’s one thing to observe and appreciate something an artist does, but it’s something else entirely to think of the place in the mind that made it. Like Remy’s brother in Ratatouille, I imagine it’s like that: an empty black background, and then sounds bleed out of the ether like ribbons of light and dance, singing just to you; but then it’s up to you to capture it. And it’s that first step that has me so jealous. To be in the quiet and slowly begin to hear the timpani, the horn, the cellos in concert, and violins above it all come out of the silence and begin to fit together.

Or maybe it isn’t like that at all. Maybe you walk down the street and start to just feel a rhythm that exists in that moment like we’ve seen in commercials: the construction crew down the road and its jackhammer lay a background that car horns and doors opening and closing fit into to create a symphony only you see.

I got to speak recently with a friend who graduated with his Master’s studying music and is going onto teach. I thought it was the perfect opportunity to ask him about all of this stuff about a composer’s mind and was floored to hear him say he doesn’t have an interest in it, that he enjoys playing clarinet and that process, but not creating music for symphony. To each their own, but all that did was reinforce my want to exist in the mind of someone who hears what I imagine they do.

So, Philip Sheppard, Nima Fakhrara, John Paesano, if you’re reading this, just know: I’m a fan and I’d love to talk to you.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by. I’ll catch you guys tomorrow.