Stone Tower

Grandfellas

One of the really strange things about my adolescence is that I never became "too cool" to hang out with my grandparents.  My parents I feared being seen with like any normal kid.  I remember having a panic attack one night in the tenth grade when my mom decided it would be fun to eat dinner in the food court of the mall.  I imagined the place filled with my fellow students, all out on their own doing really grown up stuff and talking to girls and...and there I was eating a slice of Sbarro with mommy and daddy.  It was mortifying.  I nearly passed out.

But with my grandparents (my mom's parents, just to catch everyone up), it was different.  I think it had a lot to do with the fact that around the time I entered high school my grandfather basically decided I was awesome.  I have no idea why he came to this conclusion, but from about age fourteen on, I was the heir to the throne.

This wasn't the typical doting of a grandparent.  My grandfather was never one to dote.  Until I hit my teen years he treated me like the goofy little crybaby that I was.  He was never mean or anything like that.  He was just a man who made his feelings clear.  I was a decent kid, but it’s not like I was about to set the world on fire.

But all of that changed as I got older.  Suddenly I was brilliant, clearly smarter than anyone in the family (aside from him, of course).  I got a job at the local supermarket, which seemed to gain me several levels in manliness in his eyes.  He had owned a grocery store at one point in his life, so I think he had a special respect for it.  Truthfully, the supermarket was the only place I could find work when I turned fifteen.  But if he saw it as a special bond between the two of us, so be it.

I started becoming a math and science guy about this time too, which my grandfather saw as the wave of the future.  While the rest of the family (my parents, my uncle, and my sister) wallowed in silly things like teaching and sales jobs, I was about to make my mark and change the world.

"Hey, Jason, I had an idea the other day," my grandfather said to me one night I was over his house for dinner.  "You know how a car engine turns the wheels?"

"Um...yeah, I guess," I said, taking a bite of my third cheeseburger.  I loved cheeseburgers--still do, actually--and my grandfather made it a mission in life to make sure I was well supplied at any meal.  If I ate less than four in his presence, he took it as a personal insult.

"Yeah, well what if you hooked a belt onto the wheel and fed it back to the motor?"

Oh boy, I knew where this was going.  I tried to interject, but my mouth was full of juicy burger goodness.

"You see?" he went on, smiling at his own cleverness.  "This way you don't need gas!  The car just runs forever!"

"Um, you can't do that," I said, washing down my burger bite with a sip of warm soda. 

My grandparents always kept their house stocked with soda just for me, but refused to put it in the refrigerator.  It wasn't a space issue.  There was always plenty of room in the fridge.  They just preferred to keep two or three two liter bottles sitting on the counter by the stove in case I happened by.

"What do you mean you can't do that?"  He started getting a little angry now, as was his habit when questioned.

"Well...what you are describing is a perpetual motion machine," I told him, quite sure he had never heard the term before.  "It's physically impossible to construct a device that is one hundred percent efficient.  It would violate the laws of thermodynamics."

He went quiet for a second, thinking over what I had just explained.

"Yeah, but you could do it," he said, nodding his head in excitement.  "You're smart!"

That's how my grandfather saw me.  An eager young kid who worked hard, loved his cheeseburgers, and was too smart to be limited by the pesky laws of thermodynamics.  I dare say that no one in the world had--or likely will ever have--as much (admittedly misplaced) confidence in me as that man did.

On the other side of the coin, I had to admit I thought my grandfather was pretty damn cool in his own right.  He was a giant italian guy who could--and often did--crush walnuts in his fist while playing cards.   He was a day trader more than a decade before there were day traders.  He had a Wall Street Journal delivered daily, and every day he would pour over the listings on the dining room table with his broker on the phone--a rotary phone, mind you.

And there were romantic--and likely wildly exaggerated--tales of his, shall we say, less than respectable youth.  There was something about a fish truck that doubled as a rolling casino on Saturday nights up at the beach--those stories were always halted quickly by my mother just as they were getting started.  My grandmother liked to tell me the story of how he came to her rescue when they were in high school and some guy planned to stand her up for the prom--something about just using her to make some other girl jealous.  I guess my grandfather was on to the guy and swooped in to fix things, opening the prologue to our family in the process.

So I guess my grandfather and I had a real Ray Liotta / Robert De Niro thing going on...but early in the movie, before Joe Pesci gets killed and all the cocaine stuff.  Actually, come to think of it, I guess our relationship eventually did end the same way as in the movie--but that's another story.

Anyway, because of all of this, even in my adolescent too-cool-for-the-world phase I never thought twice about hanging out with my grandparents.  We'd go out to eat, I'd come over to help them fix the VCR, and they'd routinely call to check in.  It was all very cool.  And when they decided to take a four day road trip to sightsee in Canada--the spring of my junior year in high school--I didn't think twice about tagging along.

We hit Montreal and Quebec (roughly about nine hours north of where we lived) and did all the touristy things.  I had five years of French under my belt, so I knew enough to read the street signs and annoy the hell out of waiters.  My grandparents were thrilled to have me along.

On our last night in Quebec, the concierge at the hotel told us about a special medieval style dinner show that he had tickets to.  My eyes lit up at this instantly.  I loved--and still love, quite frankly--anything medieval.  This, of course, meant we were going.  If it was something cool that Jason would enjoy, then sign us up.

My grandfather was also very excited that he was getting a deal on the tickets through the hotel.  The man loved getting a bargain.  He'd go to three supermarkets a week, just to hit all the sales.  And here we got a show, dinner--dinner without forks, but dinner--free refills on soda and wine, and a bus ride to and from for one low price.  There was even a two hour shopping excursion after the show where we got to hit all the little shops with coupons from the hotel.  How could you go wrong?

(side note, I bet Kim just picked up on where this is going...)

And so, after going up to change, we headed outside to wait for the bus.  It was just the three of us and about thirty college kids, out for a Saturday night of fun.  We all boarded the bus and began our thirty minute ride to the theater/restaurant.  My grandmother--ever the friendly type--happily chatted with the college kids the entire way, much to my grandfather's slight annoyance.

The show was fun...and all in French.  I sort of translated for my grandparents for most of it--though inferring a lot more from body language than any mastery of French.  Still, I could tell my grandfather was impressed.

Neither of my grandparents drank wine--and I was too young, even by Canadian standards--but, much to my grandfather's delight, I easily drank our ticket price in soda to make up for it.  I would imagine the rest of our group enjoyed the show a lot more than we did judging by the frequency the "bottomless" pitchers of wine were being replaced around us.  By the time we got back on the bus, the happy college kids were significantly happier than they had been on the trip over.  I mean way happier...like, maybe a few of them should keep a bucket on their lap on the ride back just in case happier.

Thinking on his feet, our bus driver made a command decision.

"Ok folks," the driver said over the loud speaker.  "I think we are just going to head straight back to the hotel.  We'll skip the shopping thing."

A half cheer / half moan of approval slowly made its way up from the back of the bus.  My grandfather, however, was decidedly unamused.

"Excuse me," he said, moving up to the front of the bus, "Can we at least have twenty minutes?"

My grandfather had paid for a shopping excursion and--drunk spring breakers be damned--he was getting a shopping excursion.

The poor bus driver turned back with a pleading, hopeful look that quickly withered under my grandfathers unamused stare.

"Well, ah...I guess we could stop for a bit, sir," he said.

Even at the time, I felt for the guy.  He clearly had a situation here.  I am sure there is a whole course in bus driver school about avoiding just this kind of thing.  The last thing this guy needed was a retired couple and their goofy grandson keeping him from getting these kids home before things got out of hand.

And so the bus stopped in old Quebec, amidst a chorus of decidedly unhappy grumbling.

"Ah, we're just going to stop for a few minutes and let these folks have a look around," the bus driver nervously announced. 

I did my best to ignore the groaning protests behind me as I followed my grandparents out of the bus.

"So you folks just want to take a quick look around, right?" the driver asked as we stepped out.

"Just give us fifteen minutes," my grandfather said without really looking back.

We took a quick walk around one block, mostly window shopping the little souvenir shops.  Despite my grandfather's repeated assurances that we had every right to be out there, the little shopping trip was anything but relaxing.  As we came back out to the main street, I caught sight of the bus driver frantically peering through the crowd for us.

"All right folks, are you all set?" he called once he saw us.  His question had a panicked yet hopeful quality to it.  My grandfather--seemingly having proved his point--let the man out of his misery.

"That's fine, we'll head back," he said as my grandmother and I exchanged relieved looks.

So after our three minute jog around the block, we made our way back to the bus.  And by this point, the friendliness of our college friends had completely evaporated.

"Assholes!"

I froze mid-stride in the narrow aisle as I heard the taunt.  I felt my grandfather--just a step behind me--tense with rage.

"What did you say?" he asked the crowd in front of me over my shoulder.  "Did you say 'assholes'?"

At this point I was fairly certain I would be ending the night in a Canadian hospital, recovering from a stab wound I took defending my elderly grandparents. 

Seriously, what was he thinking?  I’d spent my entire childhood riding busses and learning the rules.  When you are a tall, lanky math geek in thick glasses, you don't make a fuss.  If the cool kids scream insults at you, you quickly sit the hell down and pretend you never heard it.

But as I turned to look at my grandfather I saw a brief glimmer of the guy he'd been at my age.  In his expression, I saw a guy who was very used to taking control of the situation.  A guy who looked as though he'd be very at home behind the wheel of a fish truck.  And a guy who was never, ever called an asshole in front of his wife and grandson by some drunk-ass punk sitting in the back of the bus.

"Ah...nothing, sorry."  The faceless voice from the back of the bus held a lot less bravado now.

My grandfather just shook his head angrily as we finished making our way back to our seats.  It was as if we were letting those kids off the hook rather than narrowly escaping a potentially dangerous situation.  It was a strange twist on how things like this normally went in my experience.

We made it back to the hotel without incident, and by the next morning my grandfather was more frustrated that we'd missed out on the shopping trip than anything else.  Even though I still believe to this day I came pretty damn close to getting caught in a drunken bus brawl that night, I think I left Canada with a little more respect for my grandfather.

And, for better or worse, I've learned that when someone calls you an asshole on a bus, the last thing you should do is quietly sit down.

Checking in on the Cat...

The summer I first met my wife--way back in the late nineties, kids--I lived in a small apartment in Newport, RI.  It was a nice place, and over our first few months together Kim (enjoying her first summer off as a new teacher) spent as much time as possible at my place.  Even if I had to work most of the time, she persevered on her own using my beach pass and other island resident perks I'd picked up (and never used) to pass the time.  She was a trooper.

Then, fall came.  Kim's school was better than a two hour drive from my apartment, so spending the night down my way became impossible.  Since we'd moved way passed the "see each other once or twice a week" phase, this meant I was now spending most of my nights at her place.  After about a month or so, "most nights" pretty much turned into "every night."

At one point (in early October 1999), I stopped by my apartment over my lunch break because I realized I hadn't stopped by to feed the cat in a little over a week.  As I stood there in my cold apartment, with an angry cat staring up at me from a trough of Meow Mix, it really no longer felt like my home.  Even though I was still paying rent, I'd pretty much moved in with Kim.  And while echoes of all the parties, late night video game sessions with my friends, and a summer of mostly naked frolicking (not with my friends) still filled the place, something inside me understood I had moved on.  

A couple weeks later, I broke my lease and the cat and I officially moved up to Woonsocket where the rent was half the price and no one had to go a week without being fed.  It was one of many smart decisions I made during that time.

As I stopped by to dust the cobwebs off my blog this morning, I was struck with that same feeling I had that day in my old apartment.  In March, I basically turned down the heat, locked all the doors, and never stopped back.  It was a conscious decision.  Writing the last two thirds of my second novel just needed to take priority in my life.  I've spent the last couple months finishing my book (which is what this was all supposed to be about in the first place), and following that I started a new job.  I've been writing a ton while I've been away, but just not here.  

So, here I am, back and facing an angry cat.  As before, the place is sort of cold and empty.  For some strange reason Typepad erased my bio and links pages (you'd think that a former engineer would have thought to save backup copies of those, wouldn’t you?).  And looking around, I remember how much fun I used to have writing up pieces for the site.  Unlike my old apartment, though, this place still feels like home.  Reading over some of the old posts, I realize that I'm not done here.

So, if you'll excuse me for a moment I am going to get the heat back on and see if I have any cat food in the cupboard.  Check back soon!

Do You Have the Time to Listen to Me Whine?

Back in college, riding an ego boost from my brief stint in semi-pro theater, I took an acting class over summer semester.  I actually earned three humanities credits for the class and was able to free up three hours a week in my schedule for the fall semester that year.

Aside from that, two lasting benefits came out of that summer:

1.  I learned that I am, quiet possibly, the worst actor ever to have cake make-up liberally applied to his face by a girl in a top showing a somewhat less that respectable amount of cleavage.

2.  I learned a series of acting techniques that have proven invaluable to my writing.

There is not a single piece of fiction that I have sat down to write that didn't benefit from something our professor taught us that summer.  He gave us a pretty comprehensive overview of scene study and character creation and even some new-agey exercises like body memory and "the method."  We worked a number of scenes in class over that summer to put these techniques to use, and while I couldn't seem to execute the results on a stage as well as I could in my head, I found that I could grasp the theories and tools pretty quickly.

On the first day of class that summer, the professor had us jump right in.  Half the class had to climb up onto the stage, while the other half remained in the seats--watching.  I was with the stage group, and so I made my way up there with the eleven other "lucky" ones.

"Just be," the professor called to us from his seat in the back row.

We all looked around nervously to each other wondering just what the hell he was talking about.  I was especially nervous because I desperately wanted to impress this guy.  Keep in mind that at that point, I thought myself the gifted little actor.  I had visions of this professor taking me under his wing and honing my talent--which had earned me exactly two major roles (both as an "awkward nerdy type, with a heart of gold"--quite a stretch) in my entire acting career.  Surely this was the time to show him what I could do!

"Um, do you want us to talk or something?" a nervous older woman, one of the continuing education students, on the stage asked.

"Just be."

"All right," the big guy next to me said with a bemused confidence.  "Hi, everyone.  My name is Silas.  I am six credits short to graduate, so I thought this class would be an easy three.  Anyone want to get a beer after this?"

The class laughed quietly.  Damn.  This guy was showing me up with his confident stage presence and his "I don't care that if I look like an idiot up here" demeanor.  He wasn't even an actor!  He was just here for an easy three credits.

"Guys," I whispered urgently, turning around to the rest of the group on the stage.  "I think we are supposed to improv something.  Someone say something funny."

I got back eleven nervous stares from the group, each one begging me to just shut the hell up.  To give them any credit, I don't think I was exactly casting the inspiring image of master thespian that I thought I was.

"Just.  Be."

It went on that way for ten solid minutes; the twelve of us awkwardly standing on the stage while our remaining classmates looked on.  The entire time, I was convinced that he wanted someone to take center stage and do...well, something.  I wanted to be that person more than anything.  I just had no idea what to do.

After our ten minutes, we all sat down, and the professor took the stage.

"How did that look?" he asked the class members who had remained in their seats.

"Bad," one guy said.

"Uncomfortable," a girl called out, earning a few laughs.

"That's a good word for it," the professor said.  "And what did we learn from this?"

We all looked around to each other not having a clue what the point was.  He let us quietly mutter for a few moments before cluing us in.

"If you are going to take a stage," he said, "have a reason to be up there.  Otherwise you are just wasting everyone's time."

And with that, I was introduced to the world of real acting--as opposed to the world of repeating memorized words the way a volunteer director coached you.

It was actually a profound lesson, and to this day I can still remember how it felt to stand on that stage with no lines or blocking or clue what I was supposed to be doing.  I especially remember it any time I sit down to write a scene for a fiction piece, some technical paper for work, or even an article for this blog. 

Is there something I am trying to accomplish by having these two characters sitting in a tavern talking about their childhood?  Is it relevant to the process I am trying to describe if a probe is moved circumferentially about a cylindrical test piece under ultrasonic inspection?  Is there some need in a given piece for a reader to care about the summers I spent at camp?  In short, is there a reason I am typing these words at all?

And that, in an admittedly roundabout way, brings me to my point.  Faithful readers--both of you--may have noticed that I haven't posted an article here in the last few months.  I've written a number of things--or perhaps I should say I've started to write a number of things--for the site, but nothing turned out to be worth posting. 

I wrote a pretty interesting story about the first and last time I got into a real fist fight, but beyond making a few joking asides, the piece had no point.  I had no reason to tell that story other then filling up the page with some words.  I wrote a number of articles--some I even edited and got close to posting--on the fears and doubts I've been having about fiction writing over the last several months.  But, to be honest, they just read like diary entries; so much ranting and self indulgent pep talks that don't really have a reason for existing outside of my own hard drive.

The problem really is I have no idea what to do with this space anymore--I don’t really know why I am standing on this stage, if you will.  From the beginning, I decided that I didn't want this site to become an online diary.  Not that I think there is anything wrong with sites like that, but that type of blog was just something I wasn't interesting in doing.  So I tried to dig deeper and focus on telling different types of stories about my past or things that were going on in my life now in a way that had some value beyond just documenting my life.  I tried to write thoughtful or poignant pieces that might connect with someone who stopped by to read them.  I tried to produce some humor pieces that would stand on their own.  And, once or twice, I tossed in some short fiction, just on a lark.

I've had fun, but I find the well running dry.  I find myself struggling to write pieces to fit a blog which has made a point of having no point.  I scour my brain to think of some childhood story that will fill up a few pages rather than think of some story that illustrates a point I want to make or communicates a feeling I am having.  The result is somewhat bland, auto-biographical slop.  This site has ceased to become an outlet for my creative expression and become some new obligation I don't feel I am living up to.

Anyway, that's where I have been (I've even drafted two or three versions of this article over the past couple weeks that just really degenerated into whining).  I had a conversation with someone today that really showed me how skewed some of my priorities--with respect to writing--have become over the last few months.  That led me to--among a few other things--finally writing an update for this site.

I think I need to make some adjustments to my writing habits and goals, and this site will be a part of that.  I'm just not sure how, yet...

Is anyone even reading this anyway?

Boys, There is Beer in Heaven

I attended a small private (Catholic) high school growing up. I am pretty sure I've written about it in the past. Over the four years I spent there, in addition to the rigorous math, science, English, and history program of study, I also attend an additional "sixth period" of Religion every day. When I applied to the school I didn’t think twice about the religion classes. In fact, they sort of played as a nice bonus as the pastor at my church excused me from CCD (the normal--and somewhat useless given the format--religious education taught at our church on weeknights) from ninth grade on. I was pretty into religion at that age, anyway, and the idea that certain religious agendas could be detrimental to someone's science education wasn't something I could have conceived of back then.

Looking back today--after spending this weekend touring an absolutely terrifying "Christian" school my wife and I were considering sending my daughter--I see how lucky I was.

The kind of religious education I received at my high school can probably be best demonstrated by my far-and-away favorite lesson. I was in 10th grade at the time, and that year we had a split religion class. For the first half of the year we focused on morality. That class was actually really fun. It wasn't memorizing a list of "right vs. wrong" but more how to actually analyze situations in real life. Our teacher, Mr. Sullivan--a just out of college teacher who usually taught English--wasn't so much interested in giving us answers as he was in convincing us that there were so many more questions than we had ever thought about.

The second half of the year--working with the same teacher--we focused on church history, which was fascinating. It was a religion class without the religion. We studied how the early church was formed, all of the interesting stuff that happened just after the crucifixion, and how this strange little sect of Judaism flourished to become the dominant force in the world 2,000 years later, which wasn't always a pretty story. It was an amazingly objective look at where all of these beliefs--things we had just taken as granted up until that point--had come from.

Mr. Sullivan typically ran these classes as a large open discussion. He'd introduce topics, let us ask questions or make points, and sort of guide us to somewhere relevant. I had never heard the term at the time, of course, but what we were really learning was not so much our religion as it was how to apply "critical thinking" to our religion. As a side effect--or perhaps this was actually the point--we'd often break off the rails of a discussion as something we learned seemed at odds with what we'd been told in the past. One of these break outs--on the actual nature of heaven (most of us were science guys, after all)--lead to my favorite lesson which I still carry with me to this day.

"I'll tell you one thing," Mr. Sullivan said, walking back to sit atop his desk all cool-teacher-like, "there absolutely has to be beer in heaven."

Cue scandalous murmuring of two dozen conservative--and perhaps a bit sheltered--fifteen year olds.

"Heaven," he went on, "is a perfect place where everyone is happy and content. I love beer. In fact, nothing makes me happier than relaxing with a perfectly chilled, tall glass of beer. How could I possibly be happy for all eternity in a place where I couldn't ever have a beer again?"

I sat back in my seat and smiled as the room filled with even more scandalous murmuring. He sold me--along with most of the class--on his beer filled heaven that afternoon, and to this day I am still convinced he is right.

Now, that might seem silly or pointless to most of you, but that little moment from my tenth grade church history class is exactly the tone of the religious education I received for four years. And it is a tone I took for granted. There was no hellfire and damnation preached at us. No litany of rules from some obscure book presented as the "infallible word of God." We saw religion from an almost philosophical perspective, and we were given the freedom and the tools to explore it.

Last Saturday, my wife, daughter, and I went to visit a very, very different kind of small private school. There is a small "Christian" school in the town were we live--I'll refrain from mentioning the name. We didn't really know too much about it other than it was difficult to get into and that it was well respected academically. I had some concerns as my family is no longer Catholic and perhaps beginning to question if we are even "Christian." anymore. But my experience with religious private schools (as I wrote above) up until Saturday was outstanding. I realized we would need to have some discussions with the administration at the school, but I was confident that they would be focused more on education than religion anyway. Surely, reading and basic addition came first (Erin will be entering kindergarten next year), and how much Jesus loves you a distant second. How wrong I was.

Over the four hours we spent at the open house, my mindset progressed from nervous that Erin wouldn't be accepted, to oddly amused by the "prayer to center ourselves before the informative video," to more than a little weirded out as the phrase "infallible word of God" was enthusiastically tossed out three times in a five minute introduction, to slightly intimidated as the "headmaster" tried to answer my question on whether the presentation had just happily informed us that the school taught all the biblical stories as fact, to horrified as a science teacher proudly explained how they dealt with the whole "Darwin thing," and finally to just plain old furious at the condescending counseling the entire administrative staff gave us when my wife blurted out our new religious affiliation.

"I attended a U.U. service once," a woman said, clearly now disgusted to be standing in the same room with us. "They--they just allow you to believe whatever you want. They don't require you to accept any dogma. It's just so misguided!"

At one point--and Phil Plait forgive me!--I went undercover, pretending to be concerned that intelligent design would not be given an equal enough footing with evolution. I was assured that I had nothing to fear.

"We are concerned with teaching our students how to be a Christian in a non-Christian world," the director of the science department explained. "First we teach them what we believe and what is right, then we explain what others"--remembering the way he said the word others still makes me feel like I need another shower--"believe, and why they are wrong."

"That way," one of the administrator added cheerfully, "the students can make up their own minds!"

I managed to hold my tongue until we left. Our situation is a little desperate with my daughter, as our town's schools are terribly overcrowded and under funded. Although it got a little close towards the end, the rational part of me was in control enough to not burn any bridges in anger. Still, if someone had mentioned the age of the world, I think I would have lost it.

Walking to the car I was incensed and insulted, but mostly I was shocked. As an engineer and a writer, I am very mindful of the "war on science" (as Phil Plait likes to put it) going on. I knew things like the Creationist Museum were going on in this country--I even met a couple at Context who had marched in protest at its opening--but I guess I just never believed something like this could be going on in my own backyard.

As Erin--thankfully unaware of the den of mind-numbing evil we had just spend four hours hanging around in--climbed into our car, I couldn't help but let something slip out.

"Don't bother buckling your seat belt," I told her, looking over to my wife. "I am sure Jesus will protect you."

Erin cocked her head and looked at me strangely.

"Who's Jesus?" she asked.

Kim and I burst into a fit of hysterics right there in the parking lot, and much of the tension dissipated. Nothing could have made us prouder.

I've got the touch!

A few months ago, when Apple released the iPhone, Kim and I headed over to the Apple store to see what all the fuss was about. I'm not a huge cell phone guy--I think I've logged a total of thirteen minutes on my phone in the last year--so I wasn't that excited. I mean the commercials looked cool, but I just don't use a cell phone--or any phone to be perfectly honest--that often.

Still, I was impressed as Kim and I stood side by side in the store messing around with the phones. I was even almost considering picking one up after the salesman helpfully pointed out that the iPhone I was holding in my hand was the ultimate iPod. My iPod, I use. My little nano sees use on a daily basis, and it's hard to remember life without the little guy.

The $500 price tag, though, did it in. It was just too much. And the fact that the product was designed primarily as a phone was a major negative in my mind. It was cool, but it wasn't for me.

"You know," I said to Kim as we left the store, "That was really cool. If it were about $200 cheeper and not a phone, I think I'd be walking out with one right now."

Apparently one of the chipper Apple salespeople was taking notes as we left. I can only hope they didn't follow us to the next couple stores. Well, at least not with cameras.

Yesterday was iPod touch release day, and though I usually mock people for doing things like this, I ran right over to the Apple store after work and snatched one up. A week before--after hearing about the iPod touch on the morning news--I returned the 30Gb iPod I'd bought in August in anticipation of securing the serendipitous upgrade. Since then, I'd been checking the Apple website daily trying to get a line on the official release date. When I got the email from Apple Friday morning announcing that the product I had requested they create months earlier was now in stock, my emotions got the better of me.

This whole affair does put me in an interesting position, though. With the iPod touch being just over 36 hours old as a product, I have the chance to publish a topical post. How cool is that? Along those lines, let me present my initial impressions on my new iPod touch. Feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments.

POSITIVES:

1. The Touch Screen
The touch screen is certainly the most Star Trek part of this whole thing. As I virtually flip through my virtual CDs, I almost expect a cup of Earl Gray tea--hot, of course--to materialize on the desk next to me. The interface is nearly flawless, even with my giant fingers, and the response is very satisfying. Moving around the different modes and adjusting settings, I very quickly forget that the buttons and slide controls I'm using aren't really there.

2. YouTube
Less than a minute after turning my iPod touch on for the first time (after its initial sync with my MacBook, of course), I was watching Lisa Nova's 300 parody on YouTube. The streaming video loaded and played as quickly and seamlessly as if I were using my laptop. In fact, had I not picked the video at random and started it immediately, I would have been sure that the video had been cashed in memory somewhere.

The YouTube interface is a nice "toy," if not a key feature. I'm a big fan of YouTube and usually pop on a few times a week if for no other reason than to avoid the latest prime time game show Kim is watching, but I doubt I'll find much need to check out videos on the go. Still, it earns the device some major coolness points.

3. iTunes Store
What struck me about buying songs for my iPod from my iPod was just how much easier the whole process was. I browsed some of my favorite bands for a few minutes, eager to find something to buy--for test purposes, you understand. I soon found Seven Mary Three's Rock Crown, and was ripped ten years into the past as the opening notes of Lucky came through my headphones. Rock Crown safely holds a place in my top five favorite albums of all time, though I hadn’t heard it in years--my original copy was lost in a move. With a few button clicks--again, clicks of buttons that don't actually exist--the entire CD began to download to my iPod touch.

While I could have just as easily found the CD using my MacBook--and indeed have been meaning to for the last several weeks since I heard one of the album's songs on the radio--this illustrates what I think is so cool about the integration of the iTunes store on the iPod Touch. Before, I was somewhat shackled when searching for music. If I remembered an old song I loved but had lost or heard something new in a movie or on the radio, I had to file it away in my mind and hope I remembered next time I was on the computer. With the iPod touch, I can reach into my laptop bag and have the song in a few seconds--if I have Wi-Fi access, of course. It might seem a minor difference, but I think it's going to seriously change the way I find music.

NEGATIVES:

1. Batteries not included
Okay, the battery is actually included, but not much else. There is no AC power adapter, no cover or case of any kind, and the instruction manual would barely pass as an informative brochure. I realize Apple is fighting to cut costs on the entire iPhone line, but I can't even have a simple little leather sleeve to protect the screen?

Along the same line, the iPod touch has been deliberately handicapped, ostensibly to protect the marketability of the iPhone. Although by all reports the device contains a bluetooth interface, it has been disabled, forcing me to use a USB interface cable to sync with my MacBook. It seems a little strange that I can stream video from the other side of the world while browsing the stacks at Barnes & Noble, but to connect to my laptop I need to fish a cable out of my drawer. Likewise, the calendar application does not permit entering or editing of contacts from the device itself, and other applications, like Google Maps, have been removed altogether. While I understand the business reasons for introducing these limitations, they significantly bring down my the value of the device in my mind. Thankfully, iPodtouchhacks.com is already on the case.

2. Fingerprints
This is nitpicky, I guess, but I've had the thing less than 24 hours and the screen is already smudged to hell. It's pretty easy to guess that this will be the default state of any iPod touch that gets regular use. I have no idea what can be done to avoid this--and in truth its not really that big a deal--but if you are considering purchasing one of these and plan to watch video regularly, be prepared to keep a supply of screen wipes handy.

QUESTIONABLE

1. Battery Life
My main concern with the iPod touch--and what I plan to test the hell out of over the next 14 12 days--is battery life. All these cool new features are great, but if they mean I can only use the device for a few hours between charges, you can expect a review of the new iPod nano in the coming weeks. The Apple website boasts that the iPod touch as a music play time of "up to 22 hours." If I can get half that playing music, I'll be happy--my old nano gets 12 hours at best. We'll see over the next several days.

OVERALL:

Quality -- 5 / 5
Value -- 4 / 5
Raw Coolness -- 5 / 5

Where Have All the Good Shows Gone?

I've been astounded by TV this summer--and not in a good way. Over the last few years game shows and artificial talent competitions have taken over the major networks, leaving little room for anything with a semblance of narrative plot. It's frustrating, really. As much as we can joke--and probably honestly admit--that less TV is a good thing, I've discovered this summer that absolutely no TV, leaves a sad little void in my daily routine--well, some of my daily routines, at least.

A big part of the problem is that television, as an industry, seems to be working overtime to reduce all entertainment to the lowest common denominator. It's not about giving the audience a great, compelling story that reaches them individually and speaks to something inside them on a personal level. Today its more about selling discount furniture and the latest super drug than anything else. It's become more a matter of offering something that the largest percentage of the viewing audience won't absolutely hate rather than something a much smaller percentage will actually love.

Maybe it's always been this way, but it seems like nowadays the networks have dropped all pretense. We've had occasional glimmers of hope in the last few years, perhaps most notably the outstanding but short lived Rome on HBO--which, not coincidentally, had no interest in selling us Tempurpedic mattresses or Lipitor. But for every Rome, Lost, or Heroes, it seems there are a dozen fake reality shows, halfheartedly disguised as game shows, talent competitions, or docu-dramas, trying to do little more than keep us tuned in between the commercials with cheep, lowbrow gimmicks.

The buzz for the fall season seems to offer some hope--the Bionic Woman remake seems promising--and it would be insufferably cynical of me to believe most of the people working in the trenches of the television industry aren’t feeling the same pain I am. I seriously doubt anyone worked for years to break into the industry dreaming all the while of producing Fat March. Still, some of the offerings this summer seemed to redefine hopeless, and they leave me more than a little fearful that I'll find myself excited about a new show this fall only to have it stripped away in six weeks and replaced with Celebrity Tic-Tac-Toe staring David Lee Roth.

In light of this, allow me to present a few of the worst offenders offered up this summer in place of actual content; shows that had me so furious I honestly began to wonder if the money I handed over to DirecTV would be better spent picking out boxed sets at Best Buy. As you read these keep in mind all those struggling writers out there, with brilliant scripts and concepts wasting away in the slush pile--or whatever the television industry's version of the slush pile is--while some irrelevant old guy looking over marketing data green-lighted this garbage.

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Just for Laughs
If you haven't seen this, then I envy you. At first the commercials didn't look so bad. They were made with this vibe of:

"Okay, you know those goofy video shows that are always on? Yeah, well we decided to make one that's actually funny. And by funny we mean painfully cruel to unsuspecting people we've set up in elaborate hoaxes. Oh, baby, are we taking this tired old hack hidden video stuff to the next level. Yeah, it's going to rock."

Oh those lying, evil bastards. It wasn't funny. It took nothing to the next level--well, unless they were shooting for the next level of suck. And it most assuredly did not rock.

What the show actually consisted of--oh wait, I'm sorry, I mean "consists of." Yeah, because this useless garbage is still on in prime time while Studio 60 was forced to tie things up into one season in hopes of creating a tidy DVD boxed set. That seems fair. And this is all new and cool because no one has ever heard of YouTube.

Anyway...what this show consists of are recycled European hidden-prank videos--some nearly a decade old if the age of the cars used in some of the pranks is any indication--repackaged over public domain muzak and an infuriating laugh track. And just to make sure the show is as insulting as possible each "hilarious" set-up is introduced by the actors showing the camera exactly how the prank works. You know, just in case a viewer at home actually thought that it was a real invalid old man in a wheelchair being shoved into a manhole thirty-two times. Clearly the audience is so stupid that the premiere episode would have shut down the 911 switchboard with people calling in for help. Ugh.

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National Bingo Night
You know when Bingo is fun? Never. Sure the elderly flock to church basements to play Bingo, but that's because their only alternative is sitting alone in their sad little apartments, petting their cats and waiting to die. And even then they don't actually enjoy it. But, it gives them something to do and rakes in a ton of cash for Jesus. If there are two things that society needs to fear, it's the elderly with idle time on their hands, and an underfunded Jesus--seriously, do you expect Fr. O'Sullivan to drive a Honda Civic?

By the same token, do you know when a normal person--a normal person under 72, I should say--actually plays Bingo? Only on cruise ships...and then only while drinking heavily and waiting for the damn show to start in the Starlight Lounge. Do they want to be playing Bingo? No. In fact are they actively trying hard not to play Bingo? Oh god, yes. But, much like Jesus, cruise ships don't run on love and fairy dust. If you've got several hundred drunk vacationers locked in a room, passing out stupid little punch cards is a sure fire way to cash in. If they have to watch it anyway, they might as well play, right?

And have you ever watched anyone play Bingo? Do they look or sound happy? No. They hunch over their little cards, cursing the world, and unload streams of insults at the caller whenever his chipper little voice drops below some predetermined decibel level. It seems even when you force people to play this god awful game--be it for Jesus or for crispy Bingo cruise dollars--it only causes them misery and despair.

For some reason not available on their website, the good people over at ABC took this same analysis of the game of Bingo and created National Bingo Night. Hell, it's not like people were busy watching Studio 60 anymore, and while they're killing time waiting to watch Jerry Springer do the fox trot--after 23 minutes of filler, of course--why not pass out some Bingo cards?

So apparently the plan was people would fill up their living rooms, download Bingo cards from go.abc.com, and thrill to the excitement of a game no one actually wants to play made even more infuriating by commercial breaks and snappy host segments. Yeah, that's what we want. Thanks for that, ABC.

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America's Got Talent
Wow, Star Search! But really dumbed down Star Search with obviously setup "bad" acts thrown in so the "judges" can pretend to be mean! Yeah! And it has David Hasselhoff? Rock on! This has to be the best idea ever!

Oh wait...it's not 1986 anymore. And I have a brain; a brain that cries itself to sleep every night, longing for intelligent, complex narrative plots--not unlike those that we used to enjoy on Studio 60--to deliver me from this world of game show hell. Oh well, jugglers are cool, I guess, if by cool you mean something to have on the in the background while you search through the week's releases on iTunes.

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Thank God You're Here
NBC: Get ready for improv comedy at its best!

Us: Really? We love improv comedy! This actually sounds like it could be good!

NBC: Well, okay it's not actually improv comedy. It's really just a disconnected series of poorly written sketches. But see what we've done is kept the script hidden from one of the performers.

Us: Okay, we get it. So basically it's a scene study where we get to see how a talented improv performer can wrestle control of a poorly written, hackneyed sketch, break it loose from its rails, and take it somewhere really cool? Wow, that actually sounds innovative and--

NBC: Ah, yeah...see what we're going to do is instruct the normal cast--the ones who are on our approved script--to awkwardly force the guest actors--the ones with no knowledge of the script--to stick to the amazingly unimaginative story line we've come up with. But don’t worry, there's plenty of room to make up lame puns, and we're actively going after guest stars who can really pull off unconvincing fake accents.

Us: Wait...that doesn’t sound like improv at all.

NBC: Um...well...you have us there.

Us: All right, this sounds like a horrid suckfest, but we'll bite if and only if you can get two players from the most respected sketch comedy troupes of the 90s to awkwardly host and for some unexplained reason randomly judge the train wreck performances each week and award a trophy at the end.

NBC: How about David Allen Grier from In Living Color and Dave Folly from the Kids in the Hall?

Us: Wow, now not only am I watching this insulting garbage instead of Studio 60, but now I've lost all respect for two accomplished comedians. And, as an added bonus, I think a little part of my childhood just died.

NBC: Boys, we've got a winner! Go ahead and cancel Studio 60!

Waiting for my Real Life to Begin

For those of you who don't know, I spent this summer preparing for the Patent Bar Exam, an insidious six hour test explicitly designed to keep people from becoming patent agents. Wonderful questions abound like: "Which of the following is not untrue?" and others which recite a counterintuitive and obscure line in the MPEP (the 3,000 page manual on which the entire exam is based) which contradicts everything else you've learned to be true. And while the test is open book, the number of questions seems to have been scientifically calculated to ensure finding an answer on lookup will waste more precious test time than the question is worth.

Over the course of the summer, preparing for the exam slowly transitioned from a difficult task I was determined to get through, to pretty much the hardest thing I've ever tried to do. I lost my mind exactly three times along the way (I am sure Kim could start her own blog with some of the stories). As the difficulty ramped up, all of the other things in my life were pushed off, one by one, into a holding pattern. Preparing for the exam took over as the constantly running background task in my mind. I spent every free moment I could get studying or taking practice exams. I worked patent jargon into every conversation I could, much to the delight of my family and friends. But mostly I worried every single moment of every day--in an exponentially increasing rate of panic--how in the hell I was going to pass the damn thing.

Which brings me, in perhaps a roundabout way, to why it's been about three months since my last post. I stopped trying to update the blog--and eventually stop trying to write in general--early in the summer. Which is ironic, really, because the main reason I was taking this exam was to take a major step forward in my writing career. For many reasons--which I will refrain from rehashing here--the life of a patent agent is several orders of magnitude more conducive to the career of an aspiring fantasy writer than that of an engineer. Of course the fact that I'm much happier writing patents for a living than debugging circuit boards while struggling to elbow my way into a cool design project is a nice added bonus.

Perhaps because of this original goal, as my prospects for passing the exam grew suddenly darker (sometime about mid-July, if I recall, right about the time I lost my mind for the second time), I couldn't help but feel my entire writing career was on the line. Somewhere about that time, the exam became more than just a difficult qualification test and took on much higher stakes. It seemed the collective mass of all my hopes and dreams were on the line. Pass the test, and I could leave my old life behind and start down a new path toward writing greatness. Fail, and it would be time to head down to the new Super Wal*Mart to see if they need a new carriage boy--I was pretty good at that once upon a time.

Perhaps, in reality, things weren't quite that dramatic, but from that point on the test became about fighting for a chance to get back to my writing. All the novels I have planned, all the stories I want to tell seemed held prisoner by this beast of a test, taunting me at every practice question I couldn’t answer with a whip-crack of his swishy tail. I grew to hate the test, and in the last weeks leading up to my exam day I lost nearly all hope.

Finally, about two weeks ago, I drove up to Worcester to take the exam. Six grueling, emotional, and painfully desperate hours later I walked out with a rather plain--though for some unexplained reason notarized--printout which read:

"Preliminary results seem to indicate that you have obtained a passing grade on the exam."

And just like that, the beast was dead. Well, not just like that, I guess. I sat in my car for about ten minutes reading that line over and over and over, sure I was missing a "not" or an "unfortunately" somewhere. I didn’t find it. It seemed it was really over--er, based on preliminary results, of course.

I drove straight from the testing site to the liquor store in town and bought the most expensive bottle of Scotch they had--well, the most expensive bottle they had within reason. I'm not exactly pulling in a patent agent's salary yet. Then I went home, blasted Colin Hay out of the stereo, and collapsed into a chair with a glass of the Glenlivet Archive. I just sat there alone for about an hour (a second glass came into play) enjoying the moment. After all, how many true victories like that to you get to enjoy in life?

And so for the past two weeks, I've been going back to restart all the projects and other tasks I've abandoned over the summer. It's amazing how much was pushed aside. This weekend I think I've finally caught up on everything, and I should get back to a regular posting schedule again--about once a week, new posts usually by Monday morning.

Thanks to everyone for hanging in there. I've notice quite a few of you faithfully checking in regularly over the summer. Thanks for your patience. I hope to make it up to you over the next few months.

And hey, New York publishing world, I'm back!

Never Thought to Question Why

When I was in the forth grade, my parents goaded me into becoming an altar server at our church. I can still remember my mom picking up the phone at random (it never rang) and yelling for me:

"Jason? JASON!! It's for you! It's," pause for dramatic effect, "THE CALL!"

Yes, god himself was calling long distance. One hopes he was kind enough to reverse the charges.

That went on for about two weeks before I finally gave in. To be honest, I didn't really care one way or the other. I wasn't an especially religious kid. My family hardly ever went to church, and other than a very stereotypically Italian painting of Jesus on my grandmother's wall, god pretty much stayed well secured in that building for me. But if signing up to be a server got my mom off my back and had the added benefit of getting me out of the house once in a while then so be it.

It ended up being pretty cool--once you got over the fact that you had to walk around the altar in front of a few hundred people every week. You set things up before mass. You got to play with fire and drink wine. I even got to ring the cool gospel bells at least once per mass. There was also this sense of importance surrounding the job. I really liked that! I wasn't just some random parishioner anymore. I was a part of the production team, a featured player, if you will. I saw what happened behind the scenes. People knew me, and that filled me with a small sense of pride.

Years went by, and I kept at it. Typically altar servers quit once they hit about junior high, but I never got around to it. Before I knew it, I was in the ninth grade, wearing a robe that didn't quite reach my knees and standing on the altar next to a pair of forth graders. I enjoyed being a part of the church, but things had found their way past silly somewhere between seventh and eighth grade.

Deacon Len, who had become something of a mentor to me over the years, stepped in to fix the situation. He created a position in the church for me, and I was promoted from humble altar server to sacramental assistant--which basically meant I was his right hand guy. He even ordered me a special robe and vestments that I got to take home each week. To the untrained eye, I sometimes passed as a young priest.

"Good afternoon, Father," the lapsed-catholic uncle of a baby being baptized that day would say as he walked into the church.

"Good afternoon," I'd reply with as solemn and pious a tone as I could manage. No sense embarrassing the poor guy.

And so it went. I became a fixture in my church, working all of the baptisms, weddings, and funerals. Through it all, I gained a very different sense of our faith. Church wasn't some cold building you went to once a week. It felt more like a second home. I was the first one there to set up, and almost always the last one to leave, shutting off the lights before I went. Every week I found myself in conversations with the priests or visiting officials from the church. On several occasions, I even served with Cardinal Law himself. The odd thing of that was it never occurred to me what a big deal that was. Why wouldn't a world famous religious leader be chatting with me in the sacristy of our church before mass?

Aside from my unique role in the church, I also spent my teen years attending a Catholic high school run by a group of very friendly, down-to-earth Marist Brothers. There, I got a very different view of Catholic theology than I think most people get to see. Our religious education was very open and diverse. In ninth grade, Brother Eugene didn't pull any punches, teaching us essentially a sex-ed course, heavy on the science and light on the religious dogma. In tenth we studied church history and morality. I still remember the lecture our teacher--a lay teacher in his early twenties--gave on how there absolutely had to be beer in heaven. I still believe him to this day.

All four years we were taught to think for ourselves and question what we had come to believe about our faith. It turned religion, for me, from some abstract, pie-in-the-sky concept to something very real. I remember the day in tenth grade--the morning after many of us had been confirmed--discussing if we "felt" anything. If you aren't Catholic, conformation is one of the last sacraments (a rite of passage, if you will) where supposedly the Holy Spirit comes down to join with your soul and give you the strength and conviction to become an adult within the church. For most kids, it's usually the night when the cardinal or bishop slaps you (part of the ceremony) and all your relatives send cards with crisp $20 bills inside. For us...it was something more. We all agreed that morning in homeroom that we did actually feel something. That something "magical" for lack of a better word had happened to us.

You can probably guess where this is going. By the time I was fifteen, the peer pressure was coming at me from all sides. Seminary brochures were practically appearing under my pillow at night. To be honest, I did consider it for a few years. I did love being a part of the church, and it actually did seem like a cool job. There was that pesky no women thing, but it's not as though they were beating down a path to my door at that point anyway.

It all came to a head my junior year in high school. Cardinal Law (my old pal) was hosting an information night at his residence in Boston. Our pastor basically signed my friend Sean--who was largely in the same boat as I was--and me up for the night, and informed us we'd be attending. The night was...informative. I'll just say this: L.A. street gangs have nothing on the Catholic Church when it comes to peer pressure.

After three hours of discussion and questions from our fellow hopefuls like:

"Cardinal, I just can't help but worry what would happen if I didn't join the priesthood. Wouldn't I wake up years from now regretting my shortsightedness? I am so scared I won’t be strong enough to make the right decision. I mean surely this is the only way to happiness!"

I was sure I was done for. As the night ended, Cardinal Law himself got up and started handing out applications. I saw my life flash before my eyes. That small part of me that still held out hope that one day I'd actually get to touch a naked boob screamed out in protest. But I sat there frozen, as the cardinal made his way, eager young hopeful by eager young hopeful, to my chair. Not for the last time in my life, though, fate intervened.

Grabbing me roughly by the arm, Sean pulled me from my chair. Before I knew what was happening we were nearly sprinting for the door.

"Sean, shouldn't we at least say goodbye or thank you or at least wait to be dismissed?"

"Shut up, just shut up! We're going! Don't look back, man, don't look back!"

We burst out into the night and dove into my parent's waiting Ford Aerostar, begging them to just drive and not ask questions. Exchanging concerned looks they did as we asked.

After that night, I stopped going to church. I felt at the time--and probably rightly so--that I couldn't maintain that level of involvement without the pressure to take things further. It didn't really matter for me, though. What I had grown to learn and understand about the faith stayed with me, and going to a building once a week to hear stories or practice ceremonies I knew backwards and forwards didn't seem so important. And so, I sort of found my way into a personal, isolated form of Catholicism, practicing and observing my faith in my own way.

Naturally, as I grew older, I began to find myself at odds with certain aspects of what the church officially taught. These differences grew harder and harder to ignore, but I began to justify them by deciding that the religious leadership had misinterpreted things along the way. These were old men in robes, living somewhat outside the "real world" and perhaps their world-view was significantly off center. I felt validated in this line of thinking as those religious leaders I knew personally seemed to quietly filter and adjust the proclamations of intolerance and hate that seemed to be issued from Rome on a regular basis.

Years later, when I met my wife and began the process of getting married in the church, my years of quiet isolation ended. As I returned to my church, these misinterpretations that I had largely ignored for so long began to anger me. I could no longer just dismiss them and simply focus on what I believed to be true. Something had changed in me, and I could not get past the realization that these old men in Rome--men who to my thinking were dangerously misguided--were speaking for me. More than that, they were hijacking my religion. Not some minor club I passively attended on Sundays when I got around to it, mind you, but an institution and philosophy I had dedicated much of my young life to. It wasn't fair.

I held on to hope, though, in my quiet grumbling. A changing of the guard was near, and with a new pope in the Vatican, I believed, would come a wave of sweeping reform. We'd get someone younger and more in touch with the real world, and the edicts of the irrelevant old men would be washed away. But that didn’t happen. We got someone who felt Jean-Paul had been too soft. Someone who declared that the church had become too lenient in allowing its followers to be subjective in choosing which church teachings to subscribe to.

And so my church--the organization I had spent so much of my life believing in--continued to unapologetically preach hate and intolerance with renewed vigor. Without shame they continued to cover up and look away from decades of child abuse and molestation. They organized anti-gay movements throughout our state to eliminate same sex marriage and stop any adoptions by gay couples. And of course, Pope Ratzinger himself came out against the "evil" of Harry Potter novels--because certainly with all of the war, hunger, disease, and death going on around the world, our first priority must be to prevent children from reading. Education be damned, if one more child reads about a fantasy world with magic wands, surely the apocalypse will be at hand.

And so, I quit the church last year.

So much of what I believed in--and I am talking mostly about the historical specifics of the faith--came solely from my trust in all those old men in the white robes. As that trust finally dissipated, so did nearly all my faith. Was there a Jesus? Was there a crucifixion and a resurrection? Did any of it actually happen? All I have to go on are the handed down stories from men of questionable motivations, judgments, and character. Why should I believe any of it? More importantly, why should I continue the cycle and pass any of it on to my daughter?

In years past. this week--holy week--would have been a big deal for me. Five hour long masses, bearing the cross, holding the oils for the priests, directing the lighting ceremony for the vigil, standing proudly before a standing room only crowd on Easter Sunday. It was something I looked forward to every year. This week, though, I only feel foolish and embarrassed...and betrayed.

There is a part of holy week--at the end of the service on Holy Thursday--where the priests unceremoniously strip the altar bare, and we all walk off in silence. It's a dark and chilling moment, symbolizing that god himself is actually dead, having been betrayed and murdered by those he came to save. In a way, that's how I feel now, like that empty church. Nearly all of the details and specifics of what I believed in have been ripped away without pause or explanation. And now, I stand in this empty building, clinging to a few core beliefs, but largely not sure what to do next.

If there is any truth to the greatest story ever told--and, admittedly, the entire history of western civilization would seem to suggest that there is something to it--I truly believe it's become lost and twisted over 2000 years of retellings and biased interpretations. And truthfully, I have far more important things to do then to sit around worrying about whether Jesus actually turned water into wine at one point or the meanings of obscure lines of horribly translated poetry from the Old Testament. I think I know enough to examine life and find my way to being a good person. Unless god wants to hit the pause button for a second and come down to set the record straight, I think that's the best I can do.

Now someone get me a chocolate bunny and a three pack of Snickers eggs. That seems to be the only thing that remains for me this week.

And We Said We'd All Go Down Together

It was the summer of 1986, the summer between fifth and sixth grade for me.  It had only been a month or so since I'd stripped off my Webelos neckerchief and crossed the bridge to enter the world of Boy Scouting.  That's not a figure of speech, there.  The pack actually had a bridge they pulled out of storage every year just for the ceremony.  There were candles and oaths--it was all very moving.  We entered that school cafeteria as boys that night, but we left as...err...well, still boys, I guess, but boys with nifty new green neckerchiefs.

The six of us in my Webelos den were men without a country after that night.  Our Cub Scout pack was not associated with a Boy Scout troop, and as a group we really had nowhere to go.  Taking matters into their own hands, our dads came to the rescue and Troop 55 was born.  The six of us--young, eager, and not one of us for knowing a square knot from a sheepshank--were a brand new troop.  And our first event?  A week of summer fun at Camp Onway.

To be honest, we were there a year early.  Graduating Webelos were actually supposed to attend some sort of Cub Scout week that summer--the kind of thing that involves mostly fishing with your dad and staying up all night in the safety of a furnished cabin.  It was the following summer, one after spending a year with a troop and learning the ropes, that you would be turned loose for a summer at camp.  We sort of skipped that part.

We were like fresh soldiers plucked off our farms, rushed through training, and sent to the front.  We arrived that first day, in our crisp brand new uniforms not having a clue what to expect.  Our official BSA pocket knives were sharp, but our mosquito nets were tight (tight-tight-tight).  That week seemed to last two months.  I remember more excitement, drama, and adventure over those seven days than probably the rest of my childhood combined.  We were all on our own for the very first time--well, as close to on our own as we were going to get for the next five and a half years--and I reveled in it. 

That's not to say there weren't a few rough patches.  We saw a few bouts of petty bickering and fighting the likes of which only high string eleven year old boys running on no sleep can have.  Everyone except for me had some emotional breakdown over homesickness.  I sort of had the opposite problem, as my mom showed up with McDonalds bags on Wednesday.  There was at least on incident of an angrily hurled neckerchief slide resulting in a bloody nose, followed immediately by a mad dash back to our campsite so no one would get in trouble, followed then by a bunch of laughing and wondering what the two of them were arguing about in the first place.

Mostly, though, that week was filled with fun memories I still hold on to over two decades later.  There was the peanut butter and jelly relay race--a swimming event, mind you--where I swam anchor and pulled us from last to third, though sacrificing much of the soggy remnants of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the process.  There were horrendously irresponsible games involving bug spray, matches, and a hastily retrieved bucket of water.  There was that day in woodcarving merit badge class when I carved the best three dimensional object of the week--an arrow (I had a gift).  There were the late night campfires with skits that seemed to rival anything I'd ever seen on SNL (although this was pre-it's-the-90s-so-everything-must-be-a-cool-acronym-world so we just called it Saturday Night Live back then, kids).  And, of course, there was the pride I felt earning my first merit badges ever and having my name called out on the parade field at the end of the week.

So much happened that week that I remember being in such shock when I finally arrived back home.  Electricity?  Cars?  Bed times? ??  Who can live like this?  That was only the first summer of many for me, though.  We'd come back the next year, older and wiser.  Our scoutmaster would know enough this time to get us the camp right next to the showers--instead of the one with the twenty minute up hill hike we'd had that first year.  We'd know all the cool songs the first day and the short path through the woods that'd get you down to the waterfront first for free swim.  And there would be plenty of new adventures, some to even rival the memories we'd made the year before.

I spent the next two summers at Camp Onway as a scout, the last year staying on three weeks straight--earning about half my merit badges in the process.  The year after that I signed on to be a C.I.T. (a counselor in training), and called Onway my home for eight weeks.  We put Bill Murray and the entire cast of Meatballs to shame that year.  Aside from those summers, I spent countless weekends 'neath the pines, in all kinds of weather and in every season.  I was inducted into the Order of the Arrow there one fall, and became a brotherhood member of the order just a year later.  The camp became a fixture in my scouting career; a home base that seemed to always remain constant.

I found out today (through a reader's comment in this blog) that Camp Onway will likely be sold in the coming months.  It's hard to imagine the place I spent so much of my late childhood and early adolescence bulldozed and turned into condos.  Part of me always expected I'd have a chance to return to Onway and walk around one last time.  I guess in some way I expected the camp to live on forever, like a place frozen in time.  Unlike the eleven year old boy who walked through those gates those years ago, though, I know the world doesn't work that way.

If Camp Onway holds some special memory for you as well, you might be interested in this website.  A group is trying to put together a petition to save the camp from certain condo-hood.  Here's wishing them luck.

Going all Rock Star on You Guys

I wanted to just post a quick message apologizing for the infrequent updates over the last month.  I could give you lots of excuses, talk about how busy work has been, and make myself feel better, but the truth is most of my writing time has been spent partying the last two months, and by the second week in December I sort of just stopped fighting it.  What can I say?  It was a tough year, and Kim and I had some steam to blow off.  And for the record, nothing blows off steam like a trip to Vegas.  The commercials do not do that place justice!  Anyone remember that scene in Rock Star when they had the big party after the first show and Jennifer Aniston ended up...ehh...but I digress.

Basically between--in reverse order--Vegas, Christmas, marathon Christmas shopping weekend, Thanksgiving, random Thanksgiving weekend party night in Providence, and my birthday--plus two separate surprise no-kid weekends thrown in there somewhere--I sort of let writing fall down the priority list the last several weeks.  Sadly this included my fiction work as well as my blog updates here.  I'm not proud, but I'm not beating myself up either.  If Kim and I have learned one thing in the last three and a half years, it's never to squander a random no-kid weekend--especially when it coincides with a free Scotch tasting night at the local liquor store.

Anyway, I'm back in the saddle now and feeling very well rested and recharged from our Vegas trip--well I should say recharged creatively from the Vegas trip and rested from the two and a half solid days I did nothing but sleep after the Vegas trip.  It's also New Years, so I am feeling all motivated and resolution like (delicious power bar for lunch instead of BK double cheeseburgers--proud of me, Kim?).  I've got all new writing goals for the year--not to mention an amazing new writing machine that's just begging for an old school 14 hour writing day (more on that soon--I'll just say for now I have the best wife EVER).  Basically I want to write so badly at the moment it hurts a little. 

To make up for my lapse, I've planned--and started writing last night--a four or five part series of articles on our Vegas trip.  I hope to get the first of those up by the end of this week, and then post the rest of them a day or so apart.  After that, I should fall back into my once a week schedule (new post by Monday morning each week), which seems to work well for me when I'm not plying my cute wife with cherry vodka. 

So, thanks for bearing with me and stay tuned for some Vegas fun!