Posts tagged column

Patchworks

So, for four years, I wrote a column for a newspaper in a town I’ve never been to. It was fun, and a great lesson about deadlines. I gave it up when I got married and went to work at Crossroads. I miss it somedays. All of my columns used to be online, but have slowly disappeared it seems. I regret that my blog, in it’s current form, isn’t all that personal. So, in an effort to keep my stuff out there in the electronic ether, and force myself to go a little deeper, I’m going to periodically post old columns.

Like I said, I wrote them for a bunch of people I’d never met, so I wasn’t scared to discuss some of the gory details of my life at the time. These days, with my blog linked to Facebook and whatnot, there’s a lot more chance of someone reading something I wrote about them. So, give me some grace. It was all for the sake of a paycheck and narcissism.

Away we go:

I was reading some posts on an internet forum yesterday that really got me thinking. Someone started a discussion about what kind of advice you’d give your younger self if you were able to travel back in time. Lots of folks joined the conversation and almost every one of them offered their younger selves advice about romantic relationships. It seems that most of us tend to make mistakes in that area when we’re younger.

I’ve been watching my fiance over the past few weeks as she has helped a young male friend of hers navigate the pitfalls and slippery footing of a short-lived dating relationship. She’s given him a lot of advice - stuff she’s gleaned from a few years of similar experiences. Of course he doesn’t listen to most of it. Nobody ever does. I think our brains are hardwired to ignore advice when we’re young. Unlike a lot of the animal kingdon, humans don’t have parents who cast them out into the wild in order to force them to survive. Instead, our parents, in many cases, coddle and protect us from the world and it’s harsh realities.

So sometimes I imagine that into response to this lack or essential skill-building, our brains ignore good advice in order to create situations where we’re destined to get hurt. And through that pain we learn valuable lessons.

So it’s not that teenagers are stupid. Their brains just won’t let them be smart.

In spite of how much everyone probably needs the painful lessons of their youth, I still find myself wishing I could travel back in time and talk to my younger self. Of course I don’t see why a younger me would listen to an older me anymore than he’d listen to anybody else. Especially when he sees what a loser I am.

All that being said, here’s some stuff I’d tell a younger Patrick:

-Have more confidence in high school. Get involved in more things earlier. High school will in no way ever be the best times of your life, but they could be made a lot better by broadening your horizons.

-Thank your parents more for what they do for you. Your parents are awesome and all of your friends love them. Make sure they know that kind of stuff.

-Work to have a closer relationship with your brother, Jeff. Of course, if I’m gonna say that to a younger me, I need to say it to older me too.

-Draw more.

-If you can’t be faithful to your high school girlfriend while you’re away at college, break up with her. Treating her like you are is just stupid and will just lead to more stupidity.

-Pay more attention in college. You have an opportunity to learn things now that you’ll wish you knew someday. Right now your brain is young and elastic, when you’re in your thirties it’ll be hard and rubbery and you’ll have to work twice as hard to retain stuff.

-Don’t cry about that one girl. You barely know her and you look like an idiot for it. Plus, look at how she acted. That is not a girl you’re gonna be happy with long term.

-Spend more time with your nanny.

-Ask for help in Florida. You’re in over your head. This may not ultimately be where you’re supposed to end up, but there’s no reason to fail so spectacularly just because the people around you don’t know how to reach out and help you.

-Write more.

-Stop ignoring the problems. Everybody around you knows where your marriage is headed. And so do you. Sticking your head in the sand isn’t going to make it go away. At least try and come out of this looking like a man.

-Stop talking so damn much.

-Stop using the credit card and start paying down your debt. When you finally put your mind to it, you’ll be out of debt in less than two years. Start now! Start early!

-Take better care of your house. When you’re eventually ready to sell it you’ll have months of work and thousands of dollars in front of you before it’s ready to put on the market. And for goodness sake, hire somebody to put down your tile. You can barely draw a straighline. What makes you think you can lay tile straight?

Man, I could go on and on. And some of this advice is directed to the me of just a few years ago. It seems no matter how old you get, you never stop needing advice. No doubt in a few years I’ll be thinking of things I wish I could tell the me of today. Hopefully these days I’m a little more open to advice now then I was as a teenager, though.

Hopefully.

fan mail

Every once in a while I get an email from a reader concerning my column. Usually it’s someone pointing out something we have in common or telling me they appreciated something I wrote. Up until last night my favorite email was from a lady who told me maybe I shouldn’t be speaking at churches since I can have a foul mouth sometimes.

That email has been usurped, though.

The Harlan website hasn’t posted this week’s column on their website yet, so I can’t link to it - but it was all about this time my ex-wife and I were vacationing in California and we took the opportunity to meet up with an internet comic book nerd buddy of mine face to face for the first time. I thought it was a nice, heart-warming story about how people are people regardless of the situations surrounding how we meet them.

One of my Harlan readers, however, got something completely different from the column. Here’s an excerpt from their email to me:

“…sure you had to clean it up a bit, and you had to say that your wife was there, but it was still one of the finest pieces of gay erotica I’ve ever seen
printed in a mainstream paper.”

Sara was with me when I opened the email. I let her read it and then we went back and read the column in question. Of course now, reading the column, it was just like when a friend points out some girl has a weird nose and after that you can’t look at her without noticing. When we read the column it sounded totally gay. Sara was on the floor laughing and gasping for breath.

Once the Harlan website posts the column I’ll link to it as always. Then I’ll stand back and let you all take your shots and get your jokes in. Then we’ll tuck it into the back of our brains and NEVER SPEAK OF IT AGAIN.

Batman Begins - a thoughtful review

Because I read comic books, whenever a new super hero movie comes out, my friends expect me to go see it opening night. But I’m sorry, I’m not some nerd who goes running out to the theaters to see a movie the day it opens. I’m an entirely different kind of nerd. Ever since Batman Begins opened all of my friends have been coming to me telling me how good it is and how I should see it as soon as possible. Strangely, it was mostly girls telling me this. Girls! Girls don’t know anything about Batman. So when they told me how good it was, all I really heard was, “Blah, blah, blah, Christian Bale is so cute. Blah, blah, blah, stare at my chest.”

I finally saw Batman Begins, though, and wow! Now that was a super hero movie! It was like the Citizen Kane of super hero movies. Well, if Citizen Kane was all about Rosebud killing Kane’s parents and inspiring him to go get trained by ninjas and then spend his life fighting other snow sleds.

A few minutes into the movie I was a little worried. Mostly due to the amount of eyeliner the actor playing a young Bruce Wayne was wearing. I thought maybe Joel Schumacher was directing Batman again. If you don’t remember Joel Schumacher was the flamboyant “genius” who gave us a Bat suit with nipples on it and multiple butt shots. Any fears I had quickly evaporated, though, when young children started getting attacked by bats and ninjas started kicking people’s butts — two things essential to any good movie.

I’m a Batman fan from way back. As near as I can remember, my first comic book featured Batman. I love him the way only a thirty year old nerd can. But I love him in comic books. Super heroes work in comic books. Sometimes they don’t work on the big screen. For instance, in a comic book it’s possible to make a man in a cape, boots, and briefs outside of his pants look relatively cool. On a movie screen the same man just looks like a pervert. So I don’t usually go into these kinds of movies with very high expectations. The most I usually hope for is a few good action sequences. I rarely expect a respectful portrayal of super heroes, and never expect a good film in and of itself. Imagine my surprise that Batman Begins actually gave me both!

I should have known going in that Batman Begins had the potential to beat the odds. For one thing the director’s chair was being helmed by Christopher Nolan, the man who brought us the remarkable film Memento a few years ago. The other thing it had going for it was the casting of the relatively unknown, but physically appropriate Christian Bale as Batman - as opposed to the less inspired casting of the previous films, namely the chinless and squishy Michael Keaton, the perpetually stoned-looking and toothy Val Kilmer, and my evil twin George Clooney.

I also really liked the movie’s choice of villains. As a comic book fan I was familiar with Ra’s Al Ghul and the Scarecrow. If you had told me early on, however, that you planned to make a compelling origin story for Batman using these two characters instead of the much more well known Joker, I probably would have laughed at you. Then you would have asked what I was laughing at, I would have explained it, you would have called me a nerd, and I would have gone home and muttered at you under my breath while drinking from a Burger King Star Wars collector’s glass.

Of course Christopher Nolan is much smarter than me. By not starting with the Joker he left himself something to build towards. Perhaps he learned from Tim Burton’s mistakes in directing the first installment of modern Batman movies. By starting with the Joker (played by Jack Nicholson, no less) Burton created a situation where any villain who came after seemed kind of like a dull also-ran in comparison. He peaked too soon. Instead, Nolan teases us with the Joker at the end of his film, hinting at what’s to come. Especially chilling was Batman’s reaction. He’s blase, almost apathetic at the mention of some overly theatrical villain leaving Joker cards at the scenes of his crimes. Unlike the audience, he’s not privy to the fact that he’s witnessing the creation of what will one day be his greatest enemy.

Batman Begins even managed to avoid some of the pitfalls that other super hero movies tend to fall into. For instance, one of my big problems with the Spider-Man movie a couple of years ago was the idea that Toby Maguire, playing a poor high school student, could develop a costume that in reality required Hollywood designers and thousands of dollars. Batman Begins didn’t ask us to swallow anything quite that unbelievable. On the contrary, they showed us just how realistically a presumed dead billionaire can walk into the basement of this late father’s company and find millions of dollars in one of a kind prototype weapons that nobody knows about except for a kindly old man who doesn’t mind lending them out on the weekends. Hmmm. On second thought, ignore this paragraph.

My absolute favorite part of the film was seeing Katie Holmes hallucinating and teetering on the brink of insanity after being abducted and drugged by a small, nefarious, somewhat effeminate man. Strangely enough that’s also been my favorite part of Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood for the past month or so. Ha! I really wish there was some way to represent a rim shot on the printed page.
There was really only one thing that bothered me about Batman Begins. I find it incomprehensible that after over a decade of Batman films, Hollywood still can’t design a costume that allows Batman to turn his freaking head. I mean, come on! We’re supposed to believe that Batman can get his hands on utillity belts full of gadgets and capes that allow him to glide on air currents, but he can’t master something as simple as the cotton turtleneck? Batman is supposed to be intimidating. What’s scary about a guy in a cape and a neckbrace?

So there you have it. My thoughts and feelings on Batman Begins. Does this count as a movie review? I feel so Ebert right now. Or is it Siskel? Which one is still alive? Anyway, if you haven’t seen Batman Begins yet, go see it, even if you’re not a big fan of super hero movies. This one boast a talented director, interesting settings, and a pretty smart script. Also like I mentioned above there are ninjas kicking people’s butts. Later in the year when it wins an Oscar for best ninja-butt-kicking scene and Christian Bale makes a tearful speech in which he thanks all the little people that got kicked, you’ll be able to say you saw it coming. And you’ll have me to thank.

Break In

My ex-wife used to do this thing. Every night as we were laying down to bed, she would ask me if I locked the door. Locking the door was my responsibility. Our relationship was pretty egalitarian. We didn’t really have specific jobs. If the dishes needed washing — one of us would wash them. If the garbage needed taking out, one of us would take it out. There were a couple of exceptions — one was gift wrapping. My ex-wife did all the gift wrapping and with good reason. There was something about the physics of gift wrapping that escaped me. If you’ve received a present from me since my divorce, you know what I’m talking about. It’s all wadded up paper and scotch tape. The other exception was the locking the door thing. My ex was more than capable of locking the door. And she would do it on any number of occasions — just not before bed. For some reason, that was my job. As the man of the family, it was my responsibility to make sure the homestead was secure before we turned in for the night. I was okay with it. It felt masculine somehow. So, every night as we settled into bed, she’d ask, “Did you lock the door?” And I’d say, “Yes.” And that was all she needed to be able to drift off to sleep — a little assurance that I had done my job and the world was safely locked out of our apartment.

One particular night, a Thursday I recall, we had just gone to bed and like clockwork, my wife ask me, “Did you lock the door?” And like clockwork, I replied back to her, “Yep.” But here’s the thing — even though I said, “yep” I really didn’t stop to think if I’d locked it or not. I answered instinctively. Just like I assume that I had instinctively locked the door the same way I always do.

A little while later, I was awakened by a commotion. Namely my ex-wife shooting straight up in bed, proclaiming she’d just heard the front door open. I tried hard to go back to sleep. I wasn’t being a jerk, I promise. And it’s not that I find break-ins boring. It’s just that I didn’t really believe my wife had heard the front door open. See, she had a history of hearing things in the middle of the night. In the eight years that I was married to her she had, on numerous occasions, sat straight up in bed and claimed to have heard opening doors, creaking floorboards, televisions coming on, people talking, birds flying around, cars crashing, ducks, can-openers, popcorn popping, sleigh bells, bowling pins being knocked over, llamas, and on one particularly odd night - A German oompa band. So as you can imagine, her sudden claim that she head a door opening sounded a little like crying wolf.

I was a good husband, though, after my ex insisted a second time that she’d heard the door open, I got up out of bed, bleary-eyed and sluggish to investigate. Well, not really investigate — because I was positive the front door hadn’t opened. I was simply doing a lap around the apartment to make her feel better.
If I’d been more awake I would have noticed a faint glow in the hallway that shouldn’t have been there. The living room light was on. I hadn’t left the living room light on. But, sleepy as I was, this kind of detail was lost on me.

Our apartment was small. By stepping out of the back bedroom into the hallway, I could see all the way to the front door. My eyes were only half open my first foot hit the carpet of the hallway. But they were completely open by the time my second foot touched down. My front door had indeed been opened. The gentleman who opened it was still standing in the doorway. We saw each other at exactly the same second. We both froze.

I always wondered what I’d do in a moment like that. You hear about how animals all have that flight or fight instinct. When confronted with danger they’ll either fight for their life or run for it. I say I’ve always wondered what I’d do in that moment — but actually, I’ve always assumed I would run. And run I did. But not away from the intruder. On the contrary, I ran right at him. Something took control of me and I ran at him screaming, “Get out of my house!” He ran out of our apartment like a shot. By the time I made it to the door I was suddenly faced with another decision — keep chasing him, or lock the door behind him and call the police. I decided that chasing him would be foolish. I had gotten him out of my apartment. That was enough for now. So, I slammed the door and locked it.

In our bedroom, my wife was screaming. I couldn’t hear her, though, because my heart was pounding in my ears. I was filled with adrenaline. Every nerve-ending was on fire. I’ve never felt more alive in my life — or more like a man! I had just chased an intruder out of my apartment! I had protected my home from a vicious criminal! I was the man of the house! I was doing it!

As I leaned against my front door, out of breath and reveling in boiling testosterone, I happened to look down and notice that I was completely naked.
I like to think that it was dark enough in my apartment that the intruder didn’t notice — that the reason he ran from me was because he was intimidated by my speed and forceful tone. The more likely truth, though, was that in the midst of a routine burglary he suddenly found himself being charged by a full-grown, naked man, screaming like a lunatic and decided to bolt

We called the police the next morning. Our lock hadn’t been forced at all. I had forgotten to lock it. I felt terrible. The police thought it was strange that the man turned on the light. There was some speculation that maybe it wasn’t a break-in at all, but rather some poor drunk man stumbling home to an apartment complex full of identical apartments and by sheer coincidence, walking into our unlocked home, thinking it was his. If that is indeed the case then hopefully that guy writes a newspaper column too. Because his story is even better than mine.

Give Ashlee Simpson A Break

Okay, so I have mixed emotions about Ashlee Simpson. On the one hand I find her music terrible and the few times I caught her reality show on MTV I found her, personally, to be spoiled and annoying. However, I actually find her dye job and faux punk style a little more attractive than the ditzy, blonde sex-kitten persona of her sister Jessica. What I don’t understand is her being booed off stage during a half time performance at the Orange Bowl. Yeah, I saw her lip-synching screw-up on Saturday Night Live. And, yes, I saw her pitiful attempts to blame the whole thing on her band. But where does all this righteous indignation on the part of the American viewing public come from? If you were really offended by Ashlee’s appearance than I can only assume that you were living under the mistaken assumption that most of the bubblegum pop performances you see on television are actually live. Here’s a helpful rule of thumb — if the song sounds exactly, note for note like the album version — then it’s most likely a recording that the performer is lip-synching to. Live music features missed notes, variations, and occasionally out of breath performers. Personally, I refuse to believe that most Americans are really that naive. I think they just wish they were. I think the Ashlee Simpson thing was a whole lot of people trying really hard to hold on to their innocence. I don’t think she got booed for misrepresenting her talent months before. I think she got booed for making it harder for everyone to lie to themselves.
Yeah, that’s a lot to put on Ashlee Simpson doing something stupid on Saturday Night Live. But stick with me for a minute.

Despite how savvy and jaded we like to pretend we are as a society, I think, deep down, we all long for innocence and simplicity. Take the recent election. For the last several decades nearly every president we’ve had has been accused or found guilty of some sort of questionable behavior: dalliances with Hollywood starlets, Mafia ties, masterminding break-ins, illegal arms trading, adultery, and cover-ups. Yet, somehow, every election year when the partisan mud starts flying, everyone stands firmly behind their respective candidate, shocked that someone might even suggest the existence of impropriety. I know I’m a little cynical when it comes to this sort of thing, but I just can’t imagine that someone makes it all the way to the Presidential level of politics without a little moral compromise along the way. Somehow, though, no matter how many times we get collectively stung as a nation, we seem to want to believe in the people we vote for. If there’s something going on behind the curtain we don’t want to know about it.
Humans are strange creatures because we tend to mock naivety and innocence in others but long for it in ourselves. We laugh knowingly and wink at each other when our children believe in Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy - but most of us would secretly love for there to be some supernatural entity in our lives that rewards us for good behavior and proper dental hygiene. Ultimately, though, we don’t allow ourselves to believe in that sort of thing. As individuals, we shed such beliefs as we enter adulthood. Collectively, we lost that kind of innocence a long time ago.

I have a friend who loves the show American Dreams. She watches it with her family every week. During one particular episode that featured an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, my friend’s mother pointed out that the 60s, the era in which the show takes place, was really the point in our country’s history that morals really began to degrade. I understand what she means. There was definitely a change in our country’s sexual morals and attitudes towards drugs at that point in time. But even a cursory glance back at American history will reveal a country that at different times prior to the 60’s condoned religious persecution, slavery, and the suppression of women’s rights. Not exactly activities that speak well for our ancestor’s moral fiber. So, why do so many people, like my friend’s mother, see the sixties as the decade where we really started going downhill? I’m sure there are lots of really well thought out theories on this subject that have been carefully and painstakingly crafted by extremely educated social scientist. I’m going to pretend those don’t exist for right now and throw out my own, uninformed, uneducated opinion in their place. I think we point to the 60’s because it wasn’t that long ago. They’re still in sight, so to speak.

What do I mean? Let me put it another way. The last two years of my marriage prior to my divorce weren’t so good. Things were tense and uneasy. There was arguing and there were trust issues. When I think of my marriage now, I don’t dwell on those last two years. I think about the six years prior to them. It’s comforting to remember a time when things were good and everything worked. Likewise, I think as a society we like to think that moral decline and loss of innocence are fairly recent occurrences. Not too long ago, things were better. People weren’t so hard and jaded. Kids didn’t have to deal with things like drugs, sex, and violence. Celebrities were famous for the right reasons. Marriages lasted. There was no terrorism. Life was good. And maybe, just maybe, since it wasn’t all that long ago anyway — we could get back there.

I think this need as a society to reclaim our innocence is really just a larger reflection of what’s going on inside of most of us as individuals. When we bemoan how far the world has fallen, I imagine in most cases, we’re secretly talking about ourselves. We all remember a time before our first heartbreak, before the death of a loved one, before we hurt someone, before a divorce, when life seemed simple and we didn’t think about things like guilt, and loss, and pain. However, just like the 60’s weren’t really the beginning of America’s downward spiral — we tend to give certain moments in our lives more power than they deserve. One action doesn’t make you a bad person. One decision doesn’t make you uncaring. And one hard discovery doesn’t rob you of your innocence. All those things just make you human.

I’m not trying to justify bad behavior. I’m not excusing treating people badly or acting selfishly. I’m simply saying that mistakes, bad decisions, hurt, and pain are all part and parcel to being human. Longing for a time when they didn’t exist is natural, but it’s not really useful. What is useful, is taking all that negative stuff and learning from it. Finding out what insight it holds and using it to help others. I have this friend. He’s done some really bad things in his life. Illegal things. Immoral things. But he’s real honest them. He’ll usually tell just about anyone that ask. Does he ever wish that he could go back to a time before his mistakes? I don’t know. I’ve never asked. What I do know, though, is that he’s learned the lessons of his past and he tries to use those lessons to help other people, literally, every day. He’s the person I wouldn’t hesitate to go to if I was feeling guilty about something. Because of everything he’s been through, he doesn’t judge. He doesn’t look at people and see their lost innocence. He just sees people. How much better off would we be if we could all do that? How much better would life be if we didn’t dwell on each other’s mistakes? Or more importantly, our own?

So, to close, everybody lay off of Ashlee Simpson. As I pointed out above, you’re only mad at her because she reminds you of what you think you’ve lost. And how fair is that to poor Ashlee? I think we all owe her an apology. As a matter of fact, I think we should all run out right now and buy her album to make it up to her.
Okay, just kidding. If you could see me right now, I totally couldn’t keep a straight face when I typed that. Sorry.