the ocean

The Year In Review

Every year, the last few weeks of the year provide a great opportunity for writers and editors everywhere to collectively shirk their duties to do actual reporting and creative thinking and instead phone-in rehashed "retrospectives" of the fifty or so preceeding weeks when fresh content is created. Of course, this year a certain horrific natural disaster is keeping the Wolf Blitzers and Connie Chungs in the newsroom and away from their annual new year's orgy, but we've never exactly been "hard news" here at the blog (unless stories about the Olsens count), so I'm going to go ahead and reduce, reuse, and recycle my heart out.

January: The blog doesn't exist yet, so probably nothing much really happens. I can't think of anything. Chances are there's some snow.

February: The third installment of the Lord of the Rings series walks off with a whole bunch of Oscars. Strangely, no one asks for them to be returned. I start the blog, and no one cares. That position is pretty steadfastly maintained into the present.

March: John Kerry locks up the Democratic presidential nomination, running on a platform of incoherent rhetoric and craggy facial features. Meanwhile, at the blog, posts alternate between analysis of the great books of the world and discussion of the weird things the lady who cuts my hair does.

April: A California grand jury indicts Michael Jackson on child molestation charges, shocking an American public that was pretty convinced he'd already been indicted on those charges a while back. But Thriller remains a classic.

May: The series finale of Friends airs. The nation enters a monthlong period of mourning, complete with wailing, gnashing of teeth, and rending of garments.

June: Former President Reagan dies, and apparently it is the most important thing that has ever, ever happened. I get the day off to mourn, and spend it drinking and watching porn.

July: A Senate report reveals that the CIA massively overstated the threat of weapons of mass distruction in Iraq. Later, it turns out the CIA is also responsible for overstating the viability of Lindsay Lohan's recording career.

August: America gets Olympic Fever, which is a lot like malaria, but less deadly.

September: A lot of news happens, to be frank, but around here, September 2004 will always be known as the month of the parasite.

October: The Red Socks win the world series. Cub fans seize the opportunity to descend further into self hatred.

November: The election happens, and I avoid talking about it at all costs, instead expressing myself through the consumption of alcohol.

December: Christmas. The only thing that ever happens in December is Christmas. Oh, and a horrible natural disaster, but again, we're not a "hard news" site.

Lonely at the Top

I've been back at work for the past few days, but everyone else has not. Yesterday there were only two people in from my department; today there we're up to four. Can I say that it's been freaking awesome? It reminds me of the days immediately preceding holiday breaks in grade school -- everyone just assumed you were going to be too spaced-out to learn how to add fractions that day, so instead you got to play tenuously math-related board games watch old episodes of Reading Rainbow. My supervisors have basically just thrown up their hands and decided to hope someone will get interested in the law again next week. I spent half the day today shredding things. Tomorrow I think maybe I'll catch a movie. Something with LeVar Burton, perhaps?

It still feels too soon to be back, though, I have to admit. I could definitely go back to that whole school plan where you get a month off to watch The Price is Right and play Sega at Christmas. Of course, no one was paying me then. I'd miss that.

Your Eighth Grade English Teacher Edits the Christmas Story

-- Isn't three wise men a little bit redundant? It's not like they're serving different functions in the story. And just have him bring gold. Your audience probably doesn't know what franken-whatsis is, anway.

-- Think about the fact that your whole story is basically centered around a baby, who is by nature not a very interesting character. Your reader needs to be rooting for the character to overcome something, like say The Civil War, or come to terms with something, like say lupus. What's your baby struggling with? A little bit of gas?

-- Okay, and I know he's supposedly a holy baby, but the X-Files stopped being cool like five years ago. Strand your baby on a desert island or among sexy suburbanites and then maybe you've got something.

-- You need more strong female characters. As it is, it's just a bunch of guys standing around in a barn. Maybe you could add a bookish but beautiful classics professor into the mix. Is a romantic subplot out of the question?

-- Have you considered having the animals talk? Not only would that contribute some much needed comic relief, but it could also open up possibilities for merchandising.

-- Beards aren't sexy. Neither are sandals. Or barns. At the very least, bathe your characters. Ideally, move the whole thing to the present and set it in a Beverly Hills high school!

-- Instead of "an ox and an ass" try "an ox and a donkey." See, now we're using words that everyone can enjoy.

-- Maybe shift the story away from the Christmas season of the year. You don't really want to invite comparison with Christmas classics like "Frosty the Snowman" and "A California Raisins Christmas."

-- A virgin birth? Yeah, right, I've heard that one before.

Silent, Holy

Another blessed Quincy Christmas has come and gone.

Where shall I begin? The Concert for The Grandmother was a smashing success. True, there was some unprofessional snickering from my sister during her command performance of "The Sound of Music" (which may have had something to do with the nearly inaudible and completely unsolicited descant I was adding in the background), and I realized afterwards that the program was perhaps a bit heavy on the Baroque (Bach, Bach, Bach), but the audience was enraptured. That may have had something to do with the medication, but I'll take it. Frankly, I'll be stunned if next year this time The Concert for The Grandmother isn't playing to sold-out houses on Broadway.

As for gifts, Santa brought everything I never knew I wanted, because Christmas is all about transforming friends and relatives into the people you think they ought to be. My mom bought me five or six books I am sure I ought to be eager to tear into, and my grandma gave me clothes that in her 1940s worldview are precisely what a nice young man ought to be wearing. I definitely can't wait to try out the beautiful straw boater and darling spats; they're sure to make me the hit of the Spring Cotillion.

And then there was the incident of the ham. Despite the fact that we had Christmas dinner at the Holiday Inn Buffet (swanky) so as to save my grandmother the trouble of cooking, she somehow misinterpreted this as an invitation to bake what must have been a twenty-pound ham. And potatoes, and green bean casserole, and yams, which I'm pretty sure no one has ever actually liked. So I'll be eating leftovers for weeks, from a meal that never actually happened in the first place. I'm not sure, but I feel like this violates some pretty important rules of physics. Hopefully the hole in the space-time continuum will suck me in soon, before I have to eat any more ham. Next year I think I'm telling my grandma that I'm Jewish.

Lifestyles of the Middle Class and Obscure

My life has been astoundingly free from event the past few days, which is exactly the way I can't help but feel it should be. Forgive me, however, if it makes for a less-than-compelling narrative. On the other hand, it's not like typically I'm out hunting renegade spies or canoodling with supermodels, so maybe there won't even be a noticable difference.

I went to the mall with my mom the other day. I bought socks (argyle) and ties (not argyle). She bought a pair of old lady shoes, the kind with the really thick rubber soles and the stated objective of being able to retain one's balance and not break a hip. I didn't run into anyone I knew, which made me feel kind of old and sad. People used to be coming out of the woodwork (okay, the Dairy Queen, but same difference) to harass me in mall. Have I lost my appeal?

Our mall here, by the way, has about six stores, the largest of which is a Christian book store called The Mustard Seed. I think at least two of the others sell fashionable mumus for women "of a certain age."

There have been two lunches with my grandma. I like to visit her for elliptical stories about the forties that have no ostensible point and the good cheese spread she always buys that I can put on Ritz crackers or pretzels, if the mood strikes. Usually I go during The Young & The Restless so she's in a cheerful mood. I see The Young & The Restless (or Y & R, as we insiders call it) about twice a year, and yet I have no problem keeping up on those occasions. Not exactly quick on the plot development, there.

Rhearsals on the big Christmas Eve Concert for The Grandmother (Let's call it CECTG, shall we? I feel like acronyms are fun, suddenly.) are proceeding apace. My sister and I have decided to play one of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos as a viola duet. Don't you wish you were going to be there? Surely you must. And yet seating remains tragically limited.

I am going to go eat some Keebler Frosted Animal Cookies. There was some talk of going to bars again this evening, but it is cold, and the cookies remain a better option.

They Closed my Favorite Mexican Place, Too

They say you can't go home again, but I think they just mean that you probably shouldn't. Because while a trip to my hometown is entirely possible, physically (although those last three hours by stagecoach are sort of a bitch), it's always a little bit more of an emotional journey than I would typically sign on for (unless Leonardo DiCaprio and a doomed ocean liner are involved). The truth is, it's impossible to recapture the feelings you may have once had towards certain places or people, no matter how full and rich you may believe your current emotional life to be. So you find yourself talking to friends you might at one point have taken a bullet for (assuming it would only have been a flesh wound, natch) and making the sort of painful small talk typically reserved for dentist's offices and nationally televised blind dates.

"So are you still in advertising?" you find yourself awkwardly querying a person with whom you once engaged in a 12-hour conversation the night before the PSATs, causing your parents to nearly disown you despite the fact that you totally aced the PSATs anyway, thank you.

"Uh, marketing," comes the response. "Yeah. And you're . . . where?"

Later you run into a girl with whom you used to regularly skip art history to take naps in the sun in a seldom-monitored hallway behind the auditorium.

"Hi!" you say. "I'm going to get another drink. Do you need anything?"

"No, I'm good, thanks. You look great!"

And that about does it.

My fifth grade teacher once told our class that friendships are a function of time and space and that our friends in a few years would be totally different from those people with whom we were then exchanging elaborately-folded notes and embarrassingly tame secrets. We certainly didn't believe him at the time, in no small part because the speech was a thinly-veiled attempt to get us to stop making fun of the kid who told everyone he was a medieval knight and wore a Voltron backpack, which wasn't going to happen, but he was definitely right. At the age of 26, I've been through literally hundreds of friendships in my life, but number certainly less than a dozen among my current close friends. There's a whole world of people out there that I love but never speak to. We live in a universe of limited resources, and that means we will in a sense always be unsatisfied, always left with the feeling that we want more, that we're missing someone or something that we care about. Wanting, I guess, is how we know we're alive.

Which certainly beats the alternative.

And on that note, I'm off to Wal-Mart for approximately the hundredth time since I've been back in Quincy. It's either that or I go without flossing tonight, and neither I nor America's fine dental professionals care to contemplate such a fate.

The Excitement May Kill Me, If My Parents Don't Do it First

Posting may be a little spotty in the next week, as I am spending the holidays in the wilds of west central Illinois, and my schedule will no doubt be brutal. There are videos that need renting, people, and if my mother doesn't force me to watch Will Smith in I, Robot, who will? Plus I have a social responsibility to run out to attempt to buy toothpaste and become embroiled in awkward, 8-years-of-life-spanning conversations with former health topics instructors and fellow choir members in the middle of the Wal-Mart. Try not to be blinded by the glittering social whirl.

For the most part, however, I will be responsible for the production of our annual gala Christmas Eve Concert for The Grandmother, to be held in our basement on that holy night. And whatever you may have heard about 93-year-olds with limited hearing abilities and attention spans, you had better believe that they are demanding consumers of less-than-proficient performances of Romantic-era viola duets and stumbled-through Rogers & Hammerstein numbers. So I'll be shepherding my sister (and possibly the dogs -- we haven't finalized the program yet) through what will unquestionably be a grueling week of rehearsals. Because Joy to the World for four-hand piano doesn't learn itself, people.

Good times.

Precious Moments

My office had its annual "holiday party" last night, which, since we have no budget for a party, is actually just a bunch of people who don't know each other all that well going to a bar and buying their own beer. Which does not, however, mean that it was free of the expected debauchery. Drinks with whimsical names and hefty alcohol content were consumed. Slapping fights broke out. People were paid for doing things to other people. Oh, and there was karaoke. Anyone who tells you I don't perform the world's finest rendition of Mariah Carey's "Hero" is a goddamned liar.

So today, needless to say, the office is pretty much a ghost town (spooky!). I got in at 8:45 because I was expecting an important call (read: actually work-related) and it was a good 45 minutes before anyone else staggered in. I counted three separate "coffee and bagel runs" made by coworkers before lunchtime. And I caught one of my co-workers trying to sleep on the floor behind his desk. Must be a flu bug going around, eh?

I think we've all really learned a lot about each other. Perhaps not as much as at last year's party, when intoxication led to a rather frank discussion of some rather taboo sexual practices, but there was learning nonetheless. I heard a number of coworkers' childhood anecdotes that really should be preserved for qualified helping professionals, and found out some rather amusing middle names. Perhaps most disturbingly, I was treated to a rather extended discourse on someone's college thesis. I think it had to do with Kant, but it was hard to tell under the weight of all those adjectives.

Regardless, I think even my hangover-saddled co-workers would agree that whatever suffering the office party may cause, it's more than balanced by the day-to-day lessening of pain that actually knowing and liking the people you work with can bring. We're going to suffer, sure, but at least we'll all suffer together.

The Revelation Will Be Televised

I think I may have too much free time on my hands. For one thing, in the past week I have found spare moments for both the construction of holiday crafts and the creation of some 120 Christmas cards. For another, I have recently adopted several new TV shows as my own, including at least a couple that I’m not even sure I actually like. (Is Boston Legal really appointment television for anyone? I feel like even Michelle Pfeiffer probably makes David E. Kelley turn it off.) But the most disturbing evidence of my idleness came on Sunday, when I found myself not only watching portions of a PBS telethon, but actually becoming emotionally impacted by it.

"I should really send them some money," I thought. "I mean, they draw the majority of their support from viewers like me."

But it just wasn’t the prospect of seeing This Old House bulldozed and Elmo having to do more than just tickle for his paycheck that choked me up.

"See, there are people doing good things with their lives," I thought. "What do you do that’s worth anything? And that America’s Next Top Model parody you wrote for the office Christmas party doesn’t count."

It was an excellent point. All too often in the past months (er, years) my life has consisted largely of activities like watching marathons of shows I’ve already seen five or six times, drinking substances that are chemically only a few molecules removed from turpentine, and buying pants. Which is not to say these activities are useless; at the very least, it’d be awfully drafty in here without pants. But I used to aspire to more. As early as four I proclaimed myself a novelist, and turned out missives with hot titles like "Sam the Dog" and the shocking familial expose "Meg the Person who Always Said No." In middle school I thought I might go into music, until I realized that those three chords were always pretty much going to be the three I knew how to combine. Heck, in high school I was even good at math. (I’m not sure that’s strictly relevant here, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have it on the record. I was also first chair viola and got the Best Project Award in my German Six class.)

Anyway, the point is that I’m going to seek more meaningful ways to spend my time. More reading, more writing, less Dr. Phil. More research, more charity stuff, fewer jello shots. But before I do anything else, I’m sending off that damn check to PBS.

The Weekend in Quotes

Man at the Liquor Store: Are you guys having a party?
Jay: No, the keg is just for me. Do you have a twelve foot sub I could chase it down with?

Jay's Sister, Meg: I can’t help but feel that Jesus would have approved of this party. I mean, he turned water into wine, not the other way around.

Random Guest at Jay's Party: I hope this story doesn't sound insensitive, but...
Jay: RACIST! RACIST! Get out of here, you goddamned racist bigot!
(and then later)
Same Random Guest: Hey, can I get another . . .
Jay: RACIST!

Jay’s roommate, Jeremy: Did you know there’s a kid passed out on our couch?
(about an hour later)
Jeremy: Do you know that kid?
(still later)
Jeremy: So is that kid going to be okay, or what?

Jay, picking up his sister: So I don’t know what your plans for the day are, but they’d better include a nap.

Jay’s Friend Sarah, Phoning With a Question: Okay, so I met this guy at your party last night, and he seemed really great, but last time I met someone at one of your parties he turned out to be emotionally unstable and scarily obsessive, so I wanted to check and see what you thought of this one before it went any further.
Jay: Okay . . .
Sarah: Because, you know, not that it’s your fault, but I’d kind of hate for that to happen again.

Girl Jay Randomly Met at his Friend’s Work Party: I’m eighteen, but people always say I act a lot older than that.

Jay’s Cab Driver: So where are you going?
Jay: Well, it’s at North Avenue and . . .
Driver: You just tell me where to turn. We’ll get there.
Jay: Okay, well you can turn left on Halsted . . . um, you just passed Halsted.
Diver: We’ll get there, we’ll get there!

One-Hour Photo Employee: So when do you want these back?
Jay: Would one hour be too much to ask?
OHPE: Cute.

Holidaze

Last night we had a little holiday party at our building, and I'm pretty sure that if Christ hadn't already died and been resurrected, this would have been enough to kill him. In addition to the obligatory red and green jello shots and the third-grade style construction paper Christmas ornaments, we also had a full-on game of "Pin the Tail on the Christ Child" set up and what was undoubtedly the finest arts and crafts center this side of the Mississippi for stocking and dreidel making. Frankly, you haven't really lived until you've followed up a keg stand with a blindfold and a huge pair of scissors. It's worth it for the possibility of accidental makeovers alone.

Today, however, I am rather typically paying the price. Lately, when I drink I tend to wake up absurdly early the next day and find myself unable to go back to bed. So although I only got four hours of sleep, I was wandering around at 9:30 this morning, sucking down tylenol and picking glitter and felt out of our rugs. I greeted the various crashers ornamenting our couches, chairs, and floor, and poured the first of the day's approximately 800 glasses of water. Then, I strolled down the street in what would eventually prove a fruitless search for McGriddles, realizing that pajama pants aren't really all the rage on North Avenue.

God bless the holidays.

Let’s Get Topical!

Apparently, there was a big fire in downtown Chicago the other night. I say "apparently" because I haven’t been very much in touch with TV or newspapers lately, and therefore did not find out until my mother (who lives some 300 miles away) mentioned it on the phone. In fact, so out of touch was I that I did not realize the building in question, scorch marks and all, is basically right outside my office window. So memo to myself: put down the beer every so often and try to discern if something’s on fire. You’ll save yourself some skin grafts in the long run.

In other equally important news, I have become obsessed with eating salad by the pound. There’s a place in the Board of Trade building (see, they know value!) where they have all the best ingredients (six kinds of cheeses!) and a whole bunch of potato and pasta salads, too. And after you hit like seven dollars it’s UNLIMITED salad for the same price. Because I don’t really need it to be healthy, so long as I can convince myself that it is healthy. I mean, cotton candy and cheese fries are good for you, right? So what if I do get rickets?

And my work experience has been vastly improved by the addition of "music time" each day. I brought in what the kids used to call a "boom box" so I can groove to the sweet sounds of Ashlee or Avril (not really) as I draft brilliant memoranda on complex questions of law. I’m thinking about dropping in some lyrics some time. There are so many jurisdictional issues that are really best addressed with a snippet from "Sk8er Boi."

Pop Quiz

The blog has been around for nearly a year now (okay, ten months or so), and basically I think it's time for all of you to start proving your devotion. In lieu of human sacrifice, which quite frankly gets messy (and the cleaning lady doesn't come until next Monday), I've prepared the following quiz highlighting some of our favorite topics from the past. Please send your completed copies (and a SASE, natch) to:

Ridiculous Sham of a Quiz
123 Fake Street
Anytown, USA 12345

All right, here we go!

1. What celebrity did Jay once dream was his grandmother's roommate?

A. Edward James Olmos
B. Madonna
C. The Little Mermaid
D. Jared from the Subway commercials


2. What profession has Jay NOT seriously considered?

A. Dental secretary
B. Corrupt group home coordinator
C. Self-proclaimed Messiah
D. Janet Reno


3. Why shouldn't Jay have children?

A. They're generally not big drinkers.
B. He carries the rare "evil" gene.
C. He finds 101 Dalmations to be "over the top" with "weak characterizations."
D. They cost a fortune on the black market!


4. Which societal practice does Jay strongly censure?

A. Giving to UNICEF -- those kids are such damned whiners!
B. Selling Christ-related memorabilia on E-bay.
C. Excessive locker room nudity.
D. Kelly Ripa.


5. If towns A and B are 300 miles apart (and apparently 100 years in the past, when trains were still a relevant mode of transportation) and one train leaves each town heading for the other at 3 PM, one at 83 mph (or kilometers, what the hell!) and the other at 67, how much longer will Tara Reid be famous?

A. Five minutes.
B. Who?
C. As long as she keeps flashing people on red carpets.
D. It's a trick question. You don't bury survivors!


ESSAY: In 25,000 words or more, describe what Jay has meant to you. Extra points for use of the phrases "Christ-like," "good in bed," or "better than Oprah."

Sightings

I’m having this weird thing lately where I keep thinking I’m seeing random people from my past on the train or in the street, when in fact I’m just seeing the usual assortment of random people. For instance, today I was walking to meet a friend for lunch and I could have sworn I saw my statistics teacher from college, the one who never made us do homework or take tests (because she "trusted us" to learn the material) and instead had us write journal entries discussing our feelings about statistics (sample entry: "Sometimes it makes me really angry the way politicians misuse statistics!"), but it was really just another old lady, probably nowhere near as gullible. A few weeks ago I thought this guy in the grocery store might be a gentleman from my undergrad famous primarily for having no sense of people’s personal space and bathing rather too infrequently, but a closer examination revealed no familiar odor. And once, just once, I thought I saw the weather guy from the local news station we watched when I was a kid working at the Cold Stone Creamery. Turns out he’s still in the TV business, though.

It’s hard to say what this all means, if in fact it means anything at all. Are these bizarre hallucinations a manifestation of some sort of misplaced nostalgia? I don’t recall having particularly fond feelings for statistics or even News Channel 10, for that matter, although I did once send a rather heartfelt fan letter to their noon news anchor. Has the vastness of the world just left me desperate to make a connection of any kind with anyone at all? If that were the case, I feel like there are internet sites and escort services far more effective for that purpose. Maybe my brain just is that random. I mean, I also thought I saw Oprah in the Walgreens the other day, so it’s just barely possible...

Perspectives

– Tom Brokaw’s Retirement. I would care more, but I’m usually watching the six o’ clock Seinfeld rerun while he’s on, anyway. I do think he has better hair than Peter Jennings, though, and fewer annoying colloquialisms than Dan Rather.

– Desperate Housewives. Every woman on the show is at one point or another portrayed as clueless, sadistic, or just plain crazy, and yet I’m hooked. Maybe I’m just hoping that Teri Hatcher will stop doing those Radio Shack commercials now.

– The Generation Gap. For some reason, groups of naked old men never fail to cluster around my locker at the gym and carry on long, intense conversations about insurance or boating. Is it something I’m putting out there? Maybe I should take down the Matlock poster.

– Productivity. Now that each day features only about two hours of sunlight, I find myself having random narcoleptic fits. Last night I fell asleep while reading and dreamed that I was still reading, resulting in some rather bizarre plot developments. I mean, there aren’t unicorns in The Bonfire of the Vanities, right?

– Holiday Cheer. I nearly got into a fistfight the other day with a woman who tried to steal a box of Christmas cards from my cart while I wasn’t looking. Because getting arrested at Big Lots is just what I needed to make my season bright.