Humor

121 More Valedictorians Than Dalmatians

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The high school from which I graduated just named 222 valedictorians; this former valedictorian is mildly chagrined.

This is NOT going to be an

This is NOT going to be an “everyone gets a trophy” rant, but…

On June 3, 1984 I spoke at my graduation from Dublin High School. At that time, Dublin had less than 4000 inhabitants, there was only one high school, and the sole traffic light on Sawmill Road south of I-270 was at Rt. 161.

That's my inspiration face.

That’s my inspiration face.

That day, my co-valedictorian and I gave what has been described as “an inspiring, well-prepared valedictorian speech” to a crowded set of football bleachers. Now Dublin has over 43,000 residents, there are three high schools, and driving on Sawmill frightens me down to my Shamrocks. My high school is now called Coffman, and the bleachers I spoke before are now the visitors’ seats at the shiny bajillion-dollar football “complex” they built on the other side of the school. Moreover, the school I went to is now invisible behind masses of additional wings.

Oh, and there are also 111 times as many valedictorians. From the Columbus Dispatch on June 3rd of this year:

Graduation ceremonies might still be going on if Dublin schools had asked all of its valedictorians to speak.

There were 222 of them.

That means two out of every 10 graduates at Dublin’s three high schools received top honors this year. Dublin Scioto had 44 valedictorians, Dublin Jerome had 82, and Dublin Coffman had 96.

Or to put it another way, the Dublin City School district now has 40 more valedictorians than it had graduating seniors in 1984. Yes, the district now has over 1100 grads, but at that same ratio, my class of 182 would have had 36 valedictorians.

Or yet another way, 121 more valedictorian than Dalmatians.

Even The Today Show’s toothy people who populate the show’s misbegotten third hour, had a laugh at Dublin’s expense. My alma mater is now a laughing stock.

This isn’t going to be some lament about how “everybody gets a trophy.” If you look at the comments section of the Dispatch article, a quick scansion shows approximately 850 mentions of that phrase. And, yes, I know I used “scansion” incorrectly. Would anyone but a valedictorian know it’s used incorrectly? I don’t think so.

No, my lament is about how this development cheapens one of my better cocktail-party lines. For some reason, mentioning this fact elicits a very pleasing “Well, isn’t that nice, but, again, please tell me what that has to do with Caitlyn Jenner?” Now I’m scared that dropping this tidbit will now only brings a cascade of “Me too’s” from the entire room. Continue reading →

Thoughts the day after a birthday: I am now old, and somebody in India knows I live in constant fear…

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skeleton-laptop

I had a birthday yesterday, my 49th. I’m about to age into a new demographic, and some spam outfit in India knows this. They also know I’m pretty much scared of my own shadow. Over the month leading up to my birthday, they have sent me over fifty pieces of spam to my account. I used to get notices that sexy girls named Gina had just seen my profile and wanted to “sexx with you, Chrisfay” I never had the heart to click on the link and tell Gina that she was barking up the wrong tree. I also never had the heart, or stupidity, to install spyware or malware or whatever would make my trusty laptop an agent of the darknet.

Now I get nothing but emails confirming my sexless nature; these people don’t even have the decency to offer me V1agr a as I am considered so old, so beyond help, that pills won’t even help me get laid. I am not happy that they assume I no longer want to get my wood working and would rather focus on woodworking. I have received three different notices of this:

wood copyBut the vast majority are fear-based. Your body is dying! Your neighborhood is going downhill! Your loyalty points are expiring! Continue reading →

Grindrin’ and Growlrin’ Me Down

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[In which I apparently date incorrectly]

My delete screen from Growlr.
My delete screen from Growlr.

I went and checked out a different bar in Columbus Thursday night. I didn’t bring my book into the bar. This was new territory, and I didn’t know if it would have a good place to flash the glittery raccoon. [No, this is not a euphemism. Click on a link once in a while, people.] Needless to say, I was bored almost immediately. So, out came the phone. Thank god for Instagram and the endless twiddle-worthiness of its filters, or I would’ve been tempted to re-up with any one of the several “location-based dating apps” that used to litter my phone. I cannot go back to having things on my phone that make me feel bad about myself. That’s what the rear-facing camera is for.

A few weeks prior to my move from Brooklyn to Columbus, I deleted my profiles in those various apps and sites that supposedly would help me find a geographically convenient guy with whom to do anatomically inconvenient things. They go by names like Scruff, Manhunt, Recon, Grindr, Growlr, Lepr, Regrettr, Alienatr, etc. It’s too easy to just mindlessly scroll thru the endless parade of thumbnail photos of body parts, judging people based on pictures smaller than one-inch square. And if I’m judging, I know I’m being judged right back.

In all of these, I am very specific that I am not interested in a random hook-up. I need some connection before the depravity begins. I also add something along the lines of: “There is no greater aphrodisiac than a complete sentence.”

So, I would obsessively flip between the apps, allowing that weird repetitive behavior aspect that’s somehow part of my bipolar to take over. Of course I never actually initiate contact with people because then they might actually respond. So I wait. The replies of course are slow to come in because, despite my childlike demeanor and that cement truck full of Just For Men I regularly back up onto my face, I refuse to lie about my age.

But eventually replies trickle in. Continue reading →

Reading Books in Bars with Bears

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bearmontage2 copy

It’s going to take me a few words and sentences of ever-so-pertinent background until I get to the part where I actually read a book in a bar. You’ll probably also notice, if you notice these types of things, that this is the first post since mid-February. There’s been a massive amount of writer’s block –even grocery lists were an exercise in futility. I punched myself in the head a lot. Literally. It’s a lousy coping mechanism, but at least it doesn’t work.

I always forget what reading and feeling on the same wavelength of a book can do to get one writing again. A good and museful friend who works at a major publishing house located in an architecturally significant triangular building sent me an advanced reading copy of an upcoming book from an author whom I’m admire but am not allowed mention because it’s not my place to promote this book. Also, my good and museful fears that the great and powerful editor of this book will hurl him from the roof of this architecturally significant triangular building if I reveal the name of the author.

This book has made me [adverbially] happy and has given me a “Hey let’s turn the barn into a stage and put on a SHOW!” attitude towards writing. Plus the heady scent of the cheap Scholastic Books paper on which they print advanced reading copies has fired up my wordy part of my brain stem.

And the author of the above-not-mentioned book does this kind of preamble stuff, and it works for them. So, consider the previous couple of paragraphs homage.

At the beginning of April I moved back to my hometown of Columbus to live with my sister for a while. The bipolar had been acting up for quite a while my last months in Brooklyn. Nothing made sense; everything made noise. There seemed no escape. Suicides were being planned. In the lead was a very Romantic one to be held in Green-Wood Cemetery that involved finding a tombstone with the right combo of a funny 19th century name like Hortense and an angel decaying in a pleasing manner.

However, I decided that offing myself was not really fair to the cat. Yeah, yeah, and loved ones, too. But, really the cat. Like her owner, she’s kind of obese, middle-aged, and makes a lousy first impression. A death sentence for me would’ve been a death sentence for her. Yet, the status quo could not remain. When your cat is your most definite connection to this mortal coil, maybe it’s time for a change.

My first thought when I moved to Ohio was that I was going to live some sort of monastic lifestyle. I dwelled on the disconnect: How I missed my friends in NYC; how people on a certain location-based “dating” app think phonetically typing out animalistic grunting noises counts as a complete sentence; how pedestrians are invisible to most drivers in Columbus; and how crappy that online writing workshop I signed up for through [insert name of oh-so-creatively named nonfiction magazine here] turned out to be. But when I found myself four thousand words into an essay I had titled “The Ouroboros of Disconnect,” I figured it was time for a change. Stuff was just happening TO me –sometimes even AT me. That’s not the formula for interesting wordsmithing. Besides, I couldn’t figure out a way to end the piece.

Get it? Yeah, it was four thousand words of ouroboros metaphors. And puns. Ouroboring!

Stop it!

So, I made a decision to seek out connection. During all this disconnect, I have come to the conclusion that I am not, in fact, an introvert. I am an extrovert with crippling social anxiety. I draw energy from people, yet I don’t understand how one is expected to deal with them. Continue reading →

For Lori: Follicle Muse and Cootie Shot Rationale

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[A Valentine’s Day installment in the ongoing series “Really Kinda Gay Things I Did Before I Was Really Kinda Gay.]

 Brown Horse Galloping Wide Desktop Background

By the spring of third grade at Manasquan Elementary the boys vs. girls mentality was beginning to break down. Cootie shot technology was available to all who were willing to walk around for the day with a ballpoint circle and dot on their forearm. Cootie tech allowed one to have physical contact with the opposite sex for the rest of the school day without having to worry about contracting the cooties.

The cooties was a highly contagious disease with no agreed-upon symptoms. I think today we’d call it a “syndrome.” A social I.B.S, if you will.

Shots were necessary because the playground was evolving. In the Fall, the schoolyard game of “Girls Chase the Boys” involved actually running at top speed to avoid being caught. Yet, in the Spring, the boys somehow got slower, and the girls got noticeably more aggressive in their pursuit. And it wasn’t just tag, it was “accidentally” tripping and some aggressive tackling. Then I began to notice that certain girls were chasing certain boys, and certain boys were angling to be in the path of certain girls. Instead of running in straight lines, the would run serpentine until the right girl caught them. They all were starting to change.

I milled about at the edge of field.

I figured I had best allow myself to be caught, and I knew exactly who need to do the catching: Lori Townshend. There were only two flaws to my plans. First, I was peripheral to her world. I existed only when dittos needed to be handed back to the person behind you. She, like everyone else, just sort of tossed the papers over her shoulders so she could get to sniffing the sweet, sweet ink that gave us the energy to get thru whatever dullness Miss Volpe decided to ditto that day. Second, if she were to chase me, then I couldn’t see her hair, which most certainly trailed behind like a herd of wild mustangs answerable only to her.

But I lie. Hair was too mild a word for what Lori possessed. From my perch behind her, I would hold crayons up to it in an attempt to determine its exact color. We weren’t just dealing with long brown hair. Chestnut waterfall maybe. Or a russet cascade. Maybe an auburn tsunami. I was kid with a 64-box of Crayolas and a thesaurus; I could go on all day. Continue reading →

Last 1973 a D.J. Saved My Life. [Part #1: Introduction; Dad]

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Recently I made what I trust is a correct decision and opted against that suicide I was planning. [Don’t worry; everything’s great now, even if everything still sucks.] I cannot possibly overstate to you one factor in my decision: I have serious reservations about the availability of popular music in the afterlife, be it as cherub or as wormfood. I would miss music too much.

This close call has led me to think a lot of grateful thoughts about how music got to be such an integral part of my life.

It always knocks me slightly off kilter to walk into someone’s place and not hear music. Why don’t they have music on? They’re just walking around their apartment in silence? Is their version of silence actually silent? They have to have voices like everyone else, right? I would kill to swap the voices in my head with the voices in their head for five minutes. How can these people walk around not wanting to have the voices in their heads silenced? Do their voices tell them things like “You’re lookin’ swell today, Greg! Keep up the good work!”? When they close their eyes do they see one of those old Successories™ posters from the 90s? Do they recite to themselves that “Footprints in the Sand” tale?

My voices say things like, “You know you’ll be first on the conveyor belt when they start up the Soylent Green factories. Let better people snack on you.” I could try to drown that out with “Footprints in the Sand,” but that story just reminds me that the middle toe on my left foot has been hurting for weeks now. I assume it will need to be amputated. That’s why I always have music on whenever I can help it. Right now it’s the “Mellow New Years” playlist and The Posies’ version of “O-o-h Child.”

As a lot of bipolar folks will tell you, our minds tend to wander. Music is a low fence that keeps me from sauntering out of the yard and into dark traffic. Eventually I get back to the task at hand.

As soon as I got a radio in my room around the age of 8 or so, it went on, and it stayed on. The only reason I ever turned it off was I was leaving the room, and I only did that grudgingly because President Ford told us to. I would lay awake at night tuning in far away AM stations, feeling an electricity whenever I tuned in a station that began not with a boring W, but with the exotic K or even the weird-tingly-feeling causing C. Even in far away Canada they listen to the same music we do. Somewhere, some other kid was listening to “Kung Fu Fighting” at the exact same time. I’ll take connection where I can get it. Continue reading →

Rockstar Christmas (Complete with Pyrotechnics)

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tumblr_mf19kfaPgj1rb6o14

[Two years ago, I devoted a Tumblr called $1.98 Advent Calendar from the C-Town to the cause of taking the Baby Jesus on adventures thru the City… plus what was going on back at the manger… plus what candy I got that day… You should check it out.  In addition to these regular features, which will remain there, I am moving a few longer essays over to this site for safe-keeping.]

In the past few days, people have begun posting all sorts of Christmas music on to the Facebook.  I hide them from my feed.  Not that I don’t like Christmas music; I just don’t like other people’s Christmas music.  Christmas songs hit me right in the lizard part of my brain stem.  They are tied to some of my earliest memories, so it’s really hard for me to accept anything new into there.

A lot of the ones in my feed seem to fit a Venn Diagram mapping the overlap between “gay-ish icon” and “carol.”  I’m sure that YouTube clip of Klaus Nomi doing something to “Silent Night” is neat, but it pollutes “Silent Night” to me.  “Silent Night” is the sound of my music box bell; it is the sound of my brother-in-law, the Rev. Larry, asking the congregation if “we might hum a verse.”  I do not want Klaus Nomi in my brain stem.

One song that is forever lodged in my brain stem.  It’s “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” not just any version.  It has to be the version found on the 8-Track of Vol. 6 of WT Grant’s “A Very Merry Christmas.”  (This was one of 4 8 Tracks we had —the others are a Ray Coniff Singers compilation, “Tapesty,” and “Catch Bull at Four.”)  To me, it wasn’t Christmas until I saw that chubby girl on the front look longingly at the shiny bell.  It strikes me now as foolish to let a toddler play with glass ornaments, but, hey, nothing bad ever happens at Christmas.  The 8 Track format was perfect for my small hands; put the peg in the hole, and you have music…

And when “Twelve” came on, my sisters and I would go into action.  We danced about, re-enacting each of the days.  By day 12, it was a cross between The Supremes, Fosse, and The Chicken Dance.  I was a transcendent Lord-a-Leaping.  Day #1 was the best because we all got to be Partidges.  Not the fat bird —real honest-a-goodness Partridges.  We all would stand there and shred air guitars like The Partridge Family was Sabbath.  Added bonus:  I was not forced to “play” drums like my namesake on the show.  We all got to share in the Yuletide joy of being rockstars.

One time, our parents were out at bowling, so it must’ve been a Monday.  My dad, who worked in the restaurant business for WT Grant, where we got the tape, would sometimes receive “experimental” kitchen appliances.  One such contraption was an avocado green vertical broiler/toaster.  We slapped some bread in there, hit the button, and the bread started to broil.  But our song was coming on, and as everyone knows, it’s a pain in the ass to “rewind” an 8 Track.  So we HAD TO DANCE.  We were on Day 11.  I had just executed the complex transition from leaping to milking when we smelled smoke.  We ran into the kitchen to see flames shooting out of the experimental vertical broiler/toaster and licking the cabinets above.  I took charge of the situation and continued running through the kitchen, into the dining room, then past the tree in the living room, and out the front door to the opening strains of “Joy to the World.”  I did not stop running in my bare feet —and screaming —until I got to the hydrant.  Then it was just screaming.

But even that cannot dampen my enthusiasm for that song.  The order of the days may be non-standard (our Lords are at #9), but it’s my Christmas song.

Photos of Alienation and Despair: A Primer

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I’m in a lousy headspace today. The depressive side of my bipolar is at least half-rampant –if rampant happened to be the heraldic term for laying on the couch.  I’m just sorta perched on the edge, waiting for something that’s never coming. Hence, half-rampant.

So I thought I share some photos which I feel depict alienation quite well… plus instructions for their use by the lay person…

Enjoy!

Iron rusts from disuse water loses its purity from stagnation and in cold weather becomes frozen even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind. –Leonardo DaVinci
Black and white or sepia tone

The use of black and white or sepia tone, perhaps lit from a slightly skewed angle gives that feeling of decay. Color would just ruin this old, forgotten furniture, adding too much detail.  We cannot have happy yellows in a stifling Texas attic. This way the viewer can feel old, unused, and unloved.  Perfect for birthdays.

 

“He was an introverted kid, so I didn’t send him to his room as punishment. No, I took him to a party.” ― Jarod Kintz, This Book is Not for Sale
The sad person in an otherwise festive setting.

The sad person in an otherwise festive setting lets the reader know how isolated you feel.  A great one for conveying introversion.  Pro tip: cropping the subject towards the edge makes it looks like he’s trying to escape. Gay Pride Float, Budapest, 2009.

 

“Most of us need something not to walk away from” ― Josh Stern
This photo combines three im

This photo combines three important elements: slightly off-focus, the subject is walking away, and if you look closely enough, it a graveyard. Pictures like this are especially effective if the person is no longer in your life –or even better, dead. Confession: I am still friends with subject, but I felt the need to include it because it’s a graveyard in Berlin, which has got to add six or seven alienation points. Pro-tip: it’s really easy to compose out of focus shots using the “zoom” feature on the iPhone.

 

“Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.” ― André Malraux
Obstruction

Am I the subject or is the plant? Does it matter? Feel free to let your viewer know you know you mock any investment they may have in you. Bonus juxtaposition! I am obscuring myself in the Philip Johnson “Glass House.” That gives the viewer an added shot of irony, which people love, especially when it’s is as obvious as possible.

 

“The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.” ― Karl Kraus
incarceration

Feeling trapped, say in a never-ending cycle of unemployment or meds or vanishing friends, then you should chose a sad of example of something that should be free… like you wish your dreams were.  Look at this ancient Wollemi Pine being held against its will at the Kingsbrae Gardens in St. Andrews, New Brunswick.  Don’t you think it’d be much happier romping with its fellow trees? [Bonus irony points: trees can’t romp; there is no escape.]

“Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt” ― Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
sublime

See that mountain in the Highlands of Scotland. Beautiful? No, it’s sublime –just too damn big to be beautiful.  All it can do is threaten to come tumbling down upon that poor little house. By the way, the house is you and your dreams. Including the sublime in your alienation pictures really drives home how insignificant you really are. Pro-tips for New Yorkers: look at all those tall buildings. Tourists may find them beautiful; you should find them sublime.

 

“And pictures of perfection, as you know, make me sick and wicked.”
― Jane Austen
imperfection

One surefire way to convey alienation is to take an image everyone associates with joy and discovery, and then show it in an unflattering light.  This is how I encountered the Eiffel Tower when I visited it on a high school trip. Now the Eiffel Tower is ruined –hopefully, ever hopefully –for everyone.  This is why ‘US Magazine’ always shows us stars without make-up. No matter how pretty someone may be in the popular eye, they could always be much, much worse.  This technique also works well if you consider yourself well-liked –just focus on those people who’ve shunned you at any time in the past. You’ll be feeling like a smog-shrouded World Heritage Site in no time.

“Expose yourself to as much randomness as possible.” ― Ben Casnocha
At

At first this picture of a cherub outside the Brooklyn Academy of Music seems like the furthest thing from alienation.  I mean, he’s a cherub; what’s cuter and more self-actualized than a cherub.  Now add the following quote from the Heavenly Maestro:

Welcome to Heaven’s Most Holy Orchestra! Here’s your triangle.

I honestly hope this helps you the next time you wish to illustrate your alienation. Take care.

Thus endeth the experiment in decorative spandex…

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My friends Damian and Mirch throw a monthly dance party for your homosexual element called DIRT, and it’s held the first Friday of every month at The Eagle, NYC’s premiere leather-themed bar. One does not hold a monthly dance party for your homosexual element at The Eagle and call it Orange or Chamomile. Maybe Cammo-Squeal would pass muster, though. I like attending their party because instead of soulless, wordless gay techno that’s only ever existed in a machine, they play actual rock-n-roll. If you’ve ever wanted to hear Judas Priest in a gay bar, where frankly it belongs, then you should go to DIRT. These are all songs that existed in the air as actual sound waves before hitting the tape, and they RAWK. Also, Damian sometimes takes my suggestions and plays songs he’s never heard before. That’s how I got to hear both “Ah, Leah” and “Freedom at Point Zero” in a gay bar. This week he was going to play a song that I had found by The Moving Sidewalks, Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top’s first band.

I wanted to go, and I wanted to give back. So when I saw on the Facebook invite that the theme was one of wrestling singlets, I called my friend Greg and asked if I could borrow one of his multiple wrestling singlets. Multiple. The layperson would be surprised at how often the gays throw parties where the theme is wrestling singlets. But with a little thought one realizes that a) they leave little to the imagination in both the twig department and the berry department; b) a lot of us spent a lot of time in high school and college watching wrestlers punish their bodies to get down to some ridiculously low body fats; and c) when the wrestlers stopped wrestling, they put on some real weight and began to drunkenly tussle about shirtless on beer-soaked fraternity multi-purpose floors.

Only problem is… I hate spandex. Continue reading →

Jesus is a Race Car (Christmas Throwback)

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[Two years ago, I devoted a Tumblr called $1.98 Advent Calendar from the C-Town to the cause of taking the Baby Jesus on adventures thru the City… plus what was going on back at the manger… plus what candy I got that day… You should check it out.  In addition to these regular features, which will remain there, I am moving a few longer essays over to this site for safe-keeping]

Over the course of the past few days I have put our Lord and Saviour, the King of Kings, Wonderful Counselor, Emmanuel in tater tots, a burrito, and a meatball parm sub.  Surely I’m going to hell for this almost Cromwellian disregard for icons.

Baby Jesus and I go way back.  He is the main character in the only nativity scene I have ever known.  These are not fancy priceless heirlooms; the older shepherd has a price of 88¢ written in wax crayon on his base.  They are mismatched —the older shepherd and the headless camel clearly come from a more rustic set.  My parents, therefore, saw no reason to keep me from playing with the nativity scene.  Or as it was known by me:  Adventure Team Manger.

It’s not like they could keep me away.  I was starved for action figures.  All mine sucked.  I asked repeatedly for a GI Joe, but I got something called an Action Jackson.  First of all, Action Jackson was two thirds the size of a classic Joe and lacked his flocked facial hair.  Jackson was as smooth as a rent boy in Bratislava.  My friends would announce the arrival of “Joe!” in practice deep voices.  Try saying “Action Jackson” without lisping.  Joe had all sort of camo and gear.  Jackson had a singular blue jumpsuit and a parachute that came out of a hole in his back.  The only way he could execute a proper jump was if he was stripped naked so his back-hole could properly function.

So you can see why plaster Magi were more enticing.  Also, I was comfortable playing with Catholic iconography.  Over my bed hung a large crucifix with a special compartment that contained all the supplies needed for Last Rites.  The holy water contained within was an integral part of the fire safety brigade/death cult I had going on with my stuffed animals.

Christmas decorating was never complete until the manger came out.  It couldn’t come out until the tree skirt was in place, which didn’t happen until the entire tree was decorated and plugged in.  As soon as the front of the manger was folded down, the Magi, both shepherds, and the Blessed Parents went on adventures that took them all over the living room and sometimes into the dining room.  Control Base Manger was manned by the animals because, as we all know, they “kept time.” Action Jackson was not invited.

How did they get to their adventures?  They rode in the Baby Jesus.  Baby Jesus fit perfectly in my small hands, and His flat bottom surface made zooming him along on the carpet a breeze.  I would shrink the Magi and everyone down with the power of my mind, and they would crawl into the Baby Jesus.  I would then drive Baby Jesus to the designated adventure coordinates.  That I actually had to carry everyone over to the designated adventure coordinates in an off-season sand pail should not be noticed.

One day while Baby Jesus was racing against some Hot Wheels, I noticed that His underside was approximately the same width as a Hot Wheels.  Then I set up my Hot Wheels track, the one with the loop-de-loop.  I tried sending Him down by Himself, but he got three inches and fell off the track.  But when He was rubber-banded to a Hot Wheels Batmobile, He could make it all the way down the track’s incline and halfway through the loop.

So, I think Baby Jesus will be just fine with a bunch of tater tots.