Mtv will save my job

If you were a conscious person following the days of 9/11 and you watch TV more than passing one by in store windows you likely heard some variation of this phrase: “You know, for those younger people out there that came up in the MTV generation, this isn’t going to be gone tomorrow. This is real and permanent and it’s something we really have to live with.”

I should have been offended. The idea of guessing someone’s emotional reaction is arrogant at best, even if you’d come up in the same generation. I caulked it all up to the angry wilting of youth the young newscaster was feeling, realizing she was going to be on local news covering traffic jams with the local baseball team soon. But I’d heard the phrase or something like it constantly for weeks after 9/11, talking points and platitudes coming like fads in its own journalistic microcosm.

But if she was right, and my cranky tantrum was juvenile and immature, I think at this critical juncture, I’ve got to passing talking points of my own. We’re currently sitting in an awakening to how much of a sham the world of finance really is. As one market research correspondent remarked, “money isn’t anything with inherent value, we prescribe value to it, and gold’s no different.” WOW!


I didn’t go to school for finance, I went for English, and when the real world reared its ugly head, I went back for Political Science. At no point in my 17 years tenure at college did I believe I was doing anything other than the abstract. We knew what we were, and the first of those things was “mocked” by those with “purposeful” majors. That’s the sin I’m talking about, finance has paraded around for years as some concrete piece of machinery, intricate in its assembly and operation. Too difficult for the lay person to figure out. We went to men with Ivy League degrees and experience for support, and only in a time of unwavering rebuke, when we’ve walking into the proverbial coat room at the Christmas party and saw it fucking the boss were they ever forced to admit…this is all a sham.

This has left us with will. How we will the markets to be, how we determine the state of the country to be in (financially of course), English majors willingly accept the poverty they’ve chosen, but they’ve never asserted we were needed to run the country. So now we need to imagine.

The accusation being lobbed at President Obama as a last ditch effort by the finance industry to screw over a man they despise is that his tone is ruining the country. These 40 something’s are telling me that I have a short memory span? I can recall the last 4 years, and while I’m chomping at the bit to make that comparison, it’s done nightly on Olberman and The Daily Show, so I’ll make my point that I came to the dais with.


Should not the attention-deprived, Ritalin-addled, multi-takers of this new generation, those quick to forget the gravity of a situation, those iKids that move on before the last things over, aren’t they the solution? We need consumerism they say, now more than ever we can’t save.


If the forgetful are the engine by which the country is run, maybe gravity is not the merit we should long for. Maybe we should all believe this will be gone tomorrow, spend like the axe isn’t looming over our heads and remind ourselves that the past is long gone. There’s a book out there to the title of something like “How the Irish saved Civilization.” Its thesis from my understanding (having not read it) is that all the great old historic texts from the Old World were saved in a Celtic library while the originals or their near offspring burned while Rome was sacked. If all of what I’ve writing is within a foot of being accurate, the next book should be called “How MTV saved the American Economy.”

Yankee Passion

If you've ever met up with me for coffee on some early saturday monring, you know I love practicing Yankeedom. I read this today and loved it, and thought I might pass it on...

A humorous aphorism attributed to E.B. White summarizes these distinctions:

To foreigners, a Yankee is an American.
To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner.
To Northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner.
To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander.
To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter.
And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast.

The cycling worlds forgotten children.

“Wrong format.” It was a blunt rejection of a modest proposal. “Anyone who rides their bikes to grab a pack of cigarettes doesn’t read Bicycle magazine, and people who read Bicycle magazine don’t give a shit about people who use their bikes to commute.”


I’d met with Ian to discuss the options for a magazine that would cater to cycling’s forgotten sub-class; the commuter.

“Is that going to be the focus of the magazine?”


It wasn’t. I’d just finished reading an article about why New York magazine had been such a successful, enjoyable read. How the creators knew the energy of New York back then (70’s?) and they’d translated its beauty into insightful articles and well thought-out and penetrating opinion pieces. The same energy that had been missing from countless other city magazines that ended up being a bunch of snobby trust-fund writers talking about night clubs with prison-like consistency, and restaurants that charged $40 per inch of food. I looked at this and thought Boston deserved much better, the laundry list of topics could span for years if we’d only made one at the first round table discussion.

The city was as true to life as it gets. No omnipotent mayors rearranging cities into grids, Boston’s cow paths would remain, and a state legislature that repeatedly sent themselves and contractors to the big house when they attempt to “grid” the highway system. What other city ahs shifting exit ramps? That alone is the most interesting architectural piece in America.

How could a city so aligned in the minds of Americas with racism by way of bussing also be the only place that gay people could get married. How much of a line can Boston walk?

From its roughed-up gulley’s in JP and Allston to the cobble-stone chucks of Beacon Hill and all its western outliers, the culture of people living in the Greater Boston region was, as distinctly homogenized in its uniqueness. These cultures we’re nationality based, they weren’t given to you in a blood line; they were conscious choices, a throwback to a time when neighborhoods said everything about somebody. How they voted, what tax bracket they were in, how they saw the world, and the types of people they married.

And all of these tiny issues that made Boston, Boston were circling around, and intertwined with the morning commuter like nothing else. It was the card between the spokes; it was the elephant in the room.


The cycling commuter isn’t box-able. They’re not all the same. The DUI’ers line up with the Green-minded, and peddle alongside those fitness-junkies who peddle to work because there aren’t parking spaces after 4:30 a.m. in the financial district. The people without cars because Somerville’s ticketing system is a fascist regime, and because those roadways made a bike more efficient than any car could be. Those in the know up here know two things; the bus will save you more time than the T if you’ll only learn to read the schedule, and that bicycles are the fastest way to get anywhere.

But there was still no outlet for the community to rally. In my opinion, communities of like-minded interests can get quite a bit done if they rally, and that usually takes a swift boot in the ass. The larger problem in Boston is that a large part of the 60’s envisioned utopia springs eternal. Older folks with graying hair and polo collars still believe the fairy tales of the drug-induced Marxist theory.

Like communism itself, when its put in to practice it doesn’t really amount to anything of worth. Half-hearted protests, a “bike day” where we all ride down Comm. Ave. with a police escort, writing to our representative. These are all ideas that are supposed to work but of course never do. If not for the benevolent dictator; Tommy Teddybear up in City Hall the cyclists who actually need a legal recognition would be dead in the water, or more accurately, under the wheels of the 66.

What Boston really needs to do is stop holding signs on the common in colorful tribal garb and start throwing some fucking tea into the ocean. In other words, A lot less Cambridge, and a lot more Boston.


For all intents and purposes, cyclers are a second class citizen that does more for a commercial area than motors physically can. We reduce the need for space, we decongest busy roadway and we end up paying more than our share of taxes for things we don’t use.* A more opening commuting community also is a new source of revenue for everyone. Its not all bike racks and locks. We create urban infrastructure, roadways, specialty shops, and reduce the wear and tear on roadways.


You’ll notice I didn’t mention the environmental impact. Less Cambridge more Boston. In addition to my insistence on community lockstep to achieve goals, there’s also a degree of politics. The environment for quite a few politicians is a conversation killer. It ends debate, they shutdown and no one gets anywhere. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my short career it this; cut to the chase, give them the cost and how its going to help them. Mention the rest as icing on the cake when their already on board but for Christ sakes, never let it be the breadth of the issue. Ever.


Cyclists need to, as a community, present themselves as a grouping in existence for the better of civil function, for social progression, and that are fiscally prudent, rather than telling everyone to ride a bike because we’re causing hurricanes. Even if that’s the case, the goal should be to win your position, not say “I told you so, I was right” when its too late. In this position, the environmentalists are more guilty than those who don’t care because their charge is a responsibility they are not taking custody of.


The ends justify the means. As “Tip” O’Neil would say, “all politics is local” and the line is drawn this way, there are winners and there are not winners. This accurately accounts for all gray areas. Take baby steps, hit them where it matters (generally the wallets, sometimes kids), and never get off message. You allow one space cadet to invoke your name without violent repudiation and you might as well hang up your hat. The community is there, our needs our reasonable and our demands are logical as well as cost-efficient. We just need a voice, out many comes one. E pluribus unum. Ride safe friends.

* http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/331734_firstperson17.html

When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race.

--H.G. Wells

Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride.

- John F. Kennedy

It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.

-- Ernest Hemingway

You're a f***ing pervert is what you are.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/books/review/Gottlieb-t.html?_r=1

The article in the link above is something thats fascinated be for awhile. It basically details the things people look for in a mate, and how that effects their lives. The article makes a couple important points that are central to the overall inquirey.

The following is a quote from a woman who has no legs and who's husband, Ron, happens to find that a turn on...

"Yet Ron’s current wife, also legless, questions at times whether her marriage to Ron is romantic or sick. She has, after all, seen the Internet chat rooms where men like Ron list specific preferences for SAEs (single-arm amputations above the elbow) or DAKs (double-leg amputations above the knee). “But,” she wondered, “was a preference for a single arm really all that different from a preference for a certain color hair, a certain tone of skin or shape of face or type of body?” "

You can read this sort of thing all over the web, you can pair it up with psychological text in most academic texts, but rarely, given our Puritan origins, has anything been this openly discussed in a major news outlet that spans the nation. If the question above doesn't convince you that this is less an illness and more a preference, we should cite history (and the same article) for a reference to see how we all are...

"Are all of them deviant? None of them? Or is deviance a matter of time and place, the way that a century ago, fellatio and cunnilingus were regarded as perversions in some psychoanalytic circles?"

Truth be told, there are people out there who still find those two things perverse. Even within the confines of a locked bedroom, and a monogomous marrige. But today those folks are few and far between and the idea that these are normal has long ago been exported from ancient Indian text.

Once the point was established the article and I parted ways. I was happy to see the the curiosity stood to become slightly more public, but while the NYT's kept fighting the crusade for it being normal, I kept wondering - How does this happen?

We've all seen the standard ones. We've all at least heard of the foot thing, we all know about violence and the costumes but there were tons out there, not as high profile but with a stewing mass of supporters on backwater sites all over the internet. (To be fair, i'd never heard of the amputee thing prior to the article).

You need only click haphazardly on a pop-up ad to be thrust (intended) into a world of weird fixations you've never seen or heard of before. The one that has confused me for years now is balloons. The thing about this one is, there isn't really anything perverse about it. Its just naked people of the gender of your choosing with, around, and on balloons. And even the "on" isn't weird, their just sitting on them.

In this capacity, the balloon isn't any different than a chair or a couch, its a prop in the area. So what the hell? To date I don't know. I thought it was a tactile thing, may a latex like structure was the crux of the issue but tons of things in the defiled world have this property so I'll ask again...why the circus toy?

In truth I've never found out and to be honest I don't activly look. I just know that its lurking out there and I need to know why I'm just too lazy and prefer my retnas to do anything about it. If you're not actually dealing with sites that are peddling it for pornographic use, like craigslist or other classfied internet sections, then you can generally get into the midset of these people which is all I want. We all know what a sick world it is out there, and that might be a matter of preference, but that my preference and I'll stick to inquiring outloud and hoping someone else can give me a hint.

Bridge to Somewhere

The trip out of town was a long one, with considerable stretches of barren wilderness that second guesed a mans wanderlust. The world was silent when Collins left sometime between 4 and 5 am and the sounds around him became keen, like expositioned writing. The stone dust crunched beneath his shoes and his car door had a familiar creek, albeit more intricate than any time prior. The gas even smelled of gas when he turned the engine over. The cold had a way of doing that on those early spring days where the warm of the sun was sandwiched between the hollow coldness of its absence.

He found an AM station that came in poorly over the speakers and turned it down till it became a babbling hum that came through but wasn’t comprehensible. This wasn’t a time to think, it was a time to do, to go and there wasn’t a considerable time to waste. He left nothing behind, his debts were paid off, his things had mostly stayed in the car to begin with, and the rest he bundled in a blanket and threw in the backseat.


The road was silent and empty, the cracked windows gave a roar to the wind that wasn’t there and the thick wall of pine trees that lined the road prevented the sun from turning the windshield into a kaleidoscope. The last thing he’d pass before leaving town was the train tracks that carried the materials of the steel mill and the parts for the factory, a breakfast place that wouldn’t open until noon to account for services, a blinding white church that appeared to hold no more than 50, and a gas station. The only sign of life for miles in either direction. He’d filled up last night but stopped in to grab a coffee and a refill on a half pack of cigarettes.

The man at the counter looked up with a half glance that still managed to look shocked.

“can I help you” he mumbled has the other half of his lips worked to hold the filter in his mouth.

“pack a malboros.” He turned back to finish pouring the coffee and stir in the sugar. “and this.”

“family vacation?” He turned back from looking out at the car with a loss of expression that made it hard to tell if he was joking.

“yep. Disney world.”

The man at the counter choked out a laugh like it was stuck in his throat. “you fillin up?”

“that’s it.”


When he pulled away, the neon sign for American Spirits glowed in his rearview with its Native American smokes the peace pipe. The last frontier at the end of the run was a bridge out of town, named after Senator Bird from WV, made more elaborate because it connected two states over a river 200 feet below it. It was the last bridge out of town, glowing in the rising sun, and seemingly brilliant in its modern architecture. He rolled the window down to let in the coming warmth and turned the radio up slightly. He dragged out the end of his cigarette and crushed it into the steel ashtray from days gone by. He flicked the crushed butt from the window off of the bridge letting it almost float down to the river below to extinguish the dying flame and carry it off into the great Atlantic to rejoin with whatever nature it came from. The rows of street lamps faded into the distance behind him he threw on sunglasses as the sun hit the windshield and exploded into a thousand points of light.

He kinda looked like Farley Granger with his hair slicked back
She says I'm a sucker for a fella in a cowboy hat
How far are you going he said depends on what you mean
He says I'm only stopping here to get some gasoline
I'm guess I'm going thataway just as long as it's paved - Tom Waits

A eulogy too late

I’ve never left flowers on my grandfather grave. In fact, I haven’t seen the plot, and I didn’t attend the funeral. I went to the wake, but I opted not to go to anything else. If it matters, he wasn’t even my biological grandfather.

At the wake I watched love turn ugly an already somber event. One of my cousins, who’d had her own troubles in life, wore jeans which drew the wrath of my aunt.

“its so disrespectful” she said. I wondered if my grandfather would have noticed.

I remembered the morning the call came in. My father, who’s never been a man for crisis woke me an hour prior to my normal routine. Half-conscious, I clamored for the phone thinking it was my alarm, thinking I was late and when I got there I answered the phone expecting the explode on my family for not waiting another 6 minutes.

“your grandfathers dead.” The line came through in a voice with a timbre that wondered what to do next.

“this is how you wake me up?”

“well what am I supposed to do Bren.”

“alright well let me call you back once I’ve showered.”

I was a man born for crisis. I over think things, I think too much, but when there isn’t time, and you just react, that’s where I shine. In times like this, I don’t feel much. I just end up thinking that you have to appear strong for everyone else. Someone needs to act rationally. Too much hemming and hawing might lead to some paltry disrespect of the man. Let the details be handled, let the other greave.

I went to Late Shakespeare that day and let Hamlet wash over me, but that was all I could take. I skipped German class and went home. I called my mother.

“whats going on?”

“well the wake is tomorrow”

“come get me, I’ll be there”

I told Erin I should get down there and see my grandmother soon. I thought I would ask, depending on her mood to see the tombstone.

I’m sure other people had planted flowers, I’m sure some had left wreaths, and prayed for his soul. I still never have, but for what my opinion counts; for whatever this counts, I think about him constantly.

There are plenty of men in my life, old guys that have come before me in the bloodline. None in my generation, but there are uncles, and my father. I even know a few great uncles for what their worth, and some of them I look up to. Some of them I should look up to, and some I wisely don’t. Still, I always think of my grandfather.

I would never tell the man this, I don’t know if he could handle it, but rarely do I think “what would my father do” in this situation.

My grandfather was a man of no great acclaim, he never stood high above the crowd, he never asked for very much, and it’s a crushing sadness to think that he could weather tremendous strife, never say a word, and complain even less. In that way, I think he shined brighter than anyone else I’ve come across not because of where he stood when things were going, but where everyone did when they weren’t.

To me, temperance is a gift I was not blessed with, but its one that I can’t take my eye off of. They say that God, whatever he is, works in mysterious ways. While I was not given a cool hand, I’m blessed to have an example to learn from, and in many ways I feel that its worked to my advantage to study and witness its virtue.

In all the words we never spoke to one another, in all the lost time I wouldn’t know what to do with if I could get it back, he’s still the most enduring and revitalizing figure I’ve come across. That he went back at 40 to get his high school diploma, that he worked three jobs to support a family, half of which he inherited. A man with no wants apparent to eye or ear, but one who would spin records on his head at the holidays and sing, a man who would draw Casper in condensation on his windshield from his morning coffee; A poor immigrant who had never seen the middle class, but would still ask “I wonder what the poor people are doing today” every holiday dinner.

Its easy to see this as a sentimental story. If we all just hold out, we’ll over come, right? I don’t really know, I never looked at that aspect. What mattered most to me, and one thing I heard the President-Elect say the other night was that he never got too high when things were good, and he never got too low when they were bad. He was reliable. If I were a novelist, I’d mention that across from their house was the Atlantic Ocean right there in the south end of New Bedford, and across from their house was a rock that jutted out from the surface, slightly crooked facing northeast ever since I was a child. He lived inside the flood gates, the ones that saved the city if there was a flood and the rising tide was closing in. His house would have been gone, but it never happened.

I’ve never thought of it that way, but that rock that had seen countless decades, a pack of seals and Frank Sinatra’s boat was the best way to explain him. It takes a lot of words to say I miss my grandfather, but that just wouldn’t do him justice. He was a gardener, he had passed it on to his children, and I can’t bother to water the spiderplants. And I’ve never left the easter lillys on his stone, but I think I’ll carry that rock with me, not just through life, but into the heart of my deepest lows, and times of suffocating solace, I’ll remember I could have it far worse, I could have it much graver, and I could always take it much better, survive smarter, and never say a word.

Ryan Seacrest is the enemy

When I was a young lad, I took up a paper route. It wasn't like your paper route, I would imagine. Placate me here for a second, I'm guessing yours was a neighborhood deal that you either wanted or your parents made you get to instill some responsibility. You knew your neighbors names and called them Mr. or Ms. [last name], you earned a little extra spending cash for the concession stand down by the ball field and every Christmas you got excited because most folks on the street would give you a little holiday money, because you'd been so helpful all year round. You were a fucking eagle scout.

If that's you, and I'm guessing it is because that was every ones route in my neighborhood when I was growing up, then we in fact did not have the same paper route.

See I got my paper route under the guise of responsibility when I was in the 7th grade, I was roughly 13 and despite having been on the payroll of the Catholic Church and my uncles landscaping business, I apparently still needed to learn the virtue of a hard day's work. Or in this case days, because my paper route was born out of my mother inability to handle money. She's screwed herself into debt to a considerable degree and this was her way of making some extra money. It was slave labor. We made $5 for three days of work. At least the church gave me $3 a game when I'd help out at CYO.

The route grew in number every month because we needed more and more money. (Once a financial moron, always a financial moron). We'd start Friday afternoon when school got out, and we drove to all the mailboxes. At its height the number of houses we were to stop at had peeked just over 1,000 and it encompassed 5 surrounding towns. My mother would drive, while the person riding shotgun would hang the papers on the hook or run them up to the door, and the person in the back, amidst a sea of folded and bagged newspapers would fold and stuff until we switched. Obviously, my mother always drove.

I should mention here that this wasn't the home town paper. This was the paper you got when you didn't get the hometown paper. It was a glorified tabloid that no one really wanted, so you'd have to ninja the paper to their property because if they caught you, they would undoubtedly cancel, and you'd be down revenue. As I mentioned above, we couldn't be down revenue.

This inevitably led to problems. During the winter months, papers might occasionally land in the snow in someone's front yard. Complaints erupted at the Gazette when spring rolled around and large swaths of suburbia discovered their own mini-compost pile sitting in their front yard when they ran it over with their lawn mower. Numbers dropped but we pressed on. For an entire year, we sucked down hot chocolates and suffered through Casey Kasums top 100. I've heard more Mariah Carey and Boys II Men than I would ever hope to again in my life.

Somewhere close to the 1 year mark we were fired. Well, my mother was fired we were sort of along for the ride. The people that finally chased us down were still being counted to save revenue, but the papers were mounting in our basement, until we were getting close to capacity and my father went ape shit. Instead my mother went to the little league field to dump a bunch of papers in their dumpster, but the privately owned field saw her do it and decided to give the gazette a call. Some would call it terminated, but my brother and I saw it as liberation. And in hindsight, I think I've discovered why he's never held a job for more than a month in his life.