It's all about the milk, I tell ya'. And by 'it' I mean athleticism and muscles. You see, it's a known fact that Jews don't exactly excel in athletics on a large scale. When you see a big, beefy linebacker coming off a high school football field, chances are he isn't a Schwartz. And chances are he drinks milk with dinner.
Growing up, I would never have milk with dinner. I would drink it after as a healthy frosty dessert beverage, and indeed I really did and do love the stuff. I just never drank that much of it. I've asked my Jewish friends about their milk-drinking habits growing up, and they too did not report drinking milk with dinner.
However, when I would eat dinner at a non-Jewish friend's house, there would be a tall glass of milk in front of my plate. In college, my gentile friends would wash down their tray of refried garbage at the dining hall with a glass of 2%. I wouldn't think anything of this if it weren't for the blaring difference in physical size and athleticism between us Jews and them non-Jews. I would have sprained my ankle just stepping foot onto a high school football field. My Jewish friends in high school were on the same level of fragility. I'd watch in amazement as my Christian counterparts lifted heavy weights, got big and strong, and competed in intense physical competitions. I, on the other hand, pulled a muscle bowling for the bowling team. That was my only varsity letter. Bowling was also the only high school sport in which you could smoke cigarettes and eat cheese fries during an athletic competition.
But back to milk. I really think Jewish parents are turning their children into fragile weaklings by depriving them of their needed calcium and other nutrients. Could it be that they want to keep their precious little babies off the dangerous football field and in their rooms doing homework? Perhaps. But I think we deserve an equal chance at excelling in athletics, a field we've been falling short in ever since basketball players stopped shooting foul shots underhand. (Dad, I know shooting foul shots underhand is actually an accurate method once you learn how to do it, and that these overpaid players who can't make foul shots could improve their free throw percentage drastically by learning to do it underhand. But it's just lame. Really lame. And it makes us look bad.)
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Allow Me to Explain Myself...
I apologize for the rash of poetry posts. And no, I did not write all of those last night. I lack the drugs, depression, and/or insane talent to spew out 6 poems in a few minutes. All except for the one with the gnarly gramps were written by me a couple of years ago in Sophomore Poetry Workshop, a class at Syracuse that was certainly sophomoric. Any child who talks constantly when the teacher is talking is absolutely absurd, especially when the child is a 20-year-old college student. I was in more functional classrooms back in elementary school.
But even bigger than the class was the system it was in. What kind of well-regarded, heinously expensive liberal arts school offers but one single poetry workshop, AND ONLY FOR SOPHOMORES?! What!? Obviously my schedule both semesters sophomore year didn't allow me to take the goddamn class. Then the next year as a junior, it would only be natural that I had to get a petition filled out which bestowed upon me, a weird junior outsider who had no natural-born right to enroll in the only poetry workshop available, the honor of being ALLOWED to take the shitty class. You could cut the tension with a knife the day I came clean to the sophomores about my true grade level.
To be fair, the class wasn't all terrible, considering it got me to actually start writing poetry again. I posted some of those very poems last night because the mood just struck me to dig up some writing from the past. I hope you enjoyed.
But even bigger than the class was the system it was in. What kind of well-regarded, heinously expensive liberal arts school offers but one single poetry workshop, AND ONLY FOR SOPHOMORES?! What!? Obviously my schedule both semesters sophomore year didn't allow me to take the goddamn class. Then the next year as a junior, it would only be natural that I had to get a petition filled out which bestowed upon me, a weird junior outsider who had no natural-born right to enroll in the only poetry workshop available, the honor of being ALLOWED to take the shitty class. You could cut the tension with a knife the day I came clean to the sophomores about my true grade level.
To be fair, the class wasn't all terrible, considering it got me to actually start writing poetry again. I posted some of those very poems last night because the mood just struck me to dig up some writing from the past. I hope you enjoyed.
Your Hands Will Grow
(Photo: 'Generations' by photographer Steven L. Miller. slmblackandwhitephotography.com/)
Your hands will grow.
Calluses will cake your steady palms
and gain character with every touch.
Your nose will grow,
Broad and strong and pointed straight into the future.
Your pudgy cheeks will stretch with time
And sprout prickly hairs that will tickle
Your children’s faces, and they will laugh.
Your small frame will grow wide and full,
Sturdy yet unassuming in silent masculinity.
Yes, you will grow, my boy,
Into the life of a man who now walks
Just over the horizon.
But your eyes, those eyes that even now
Know my soul and look on
In unabashed wonder,
Your eyes will never change.
A Case of the Mondays
Sunday sets in like a creeping suspicion,
Restless unease, a hint of a hangover.
Procrastination festers like a tumor;
So much to do and too much time to do it
So just waste away the day, regret the night
That soothes with a quick fix of television,
Empty Internet surfing and idle dreams
That shatter like bones from the piercing alarm.
Maybe this time my alarm will not go off
And I will fly in blissful slumber somewhere,
Anywhere, away from work and time and life,
Where there is no such thing as Monday morning.
Restless unease, a hint of a hangover.
Procrastination festers like a tumor;
So much to do and too much time to do it
So just waste away the day, regret the night
That soothes with a quick fix of television,
Empty Internet surfing and idle dreams
That shatter like bones from the piercing alarm.
Maybe this time my alarm will not go off
And I will fly in blissful slumber somewhere,
Anywhere, away from work and time and life,
Where there is no such thing as Monday morning.
Family Reunion
The day she told me, I saw the end in her eyes.
I saw the months of anguish, grueling nights
crawling into endless days of radiation
and nausea and despair. I saw her sitting,
her strength oozing away from her as slowly
as the drops from her intravenous bag dripped
silently into her tired veins. I felt my chest
tighten while I dropped the final rose onto her casket,
tears falling from the troubled sky as a boy
buried his mother. But on good days,
those precious times when hope abounded
and that knowing twinkle returned to her eye,
a mother held her child in her soothing arms
and death was a distant cousin to them.
I saw the months of anguish, grueling nights
crawling into endless days of radiation
and nausea and despair. I saw her sitting,
her strength oozing away from her as slowly
as the drops from her intravenous bag dripped
silently into her tired veins. I felt my chest
tighten while I dropped the final rose onto her casket,
tears falling from the troubled sky as a boy
buried his mother. But on good days,
those precious times when hope abounded
and that knowing twinkle returned to her eye,
a mother held her child in her soothing arms
and death was a distant cousin to them.
Going Home
The men stand in silence in the trench,
Smoke lingering like death’s opium,
Morbid serenity and souls gone numb;
They pay no heed to the vile stench.
Their rifles are sticks in their hands,
Useless ornaments for little boys’ wars
Yet they check and inspect them; menial chores
To steady themselves for the fight at hand.
The whistle blows and they ascend,
Charging up and out with primordial screams.
The machine guns howl and rip apart flesh
Yet their souls have no fear for bullets nor bombs.
Cigarettes and dreams are all that is left
When the ghosts among men go wandering home.
Smoke lingering like death’s opium,
Morbid serenity and souls gone numb;
They pay no heed to the vile stench.
Their rifles are sticks in their hands,
Useless ornaments for little boys’ wars
Yet they check and inspect them; menial chores
To steady themselves for the fight at hand.
The whistle blows and they ascend,
Charging up and out with primordial screams.
The machine guns howl and rip apart flesh
Yet their souls have no fear for bullets nor bombs.
Cigarettes and dreams are all that is left
When the ghosts among men go wandering home.
The Past
Let go of the dying past
that grips us all in its final breath.
Have no sympathy for its passing;
peaceful closure comes in death.
An infant’s cry is a final breath,
its first words like its last;
peaceful closure comes in death
as the boundless soul becomes the night.
Words, if true, will last forever
while falsities come and go with the wind.
Boundless is the soul transcending the body,
no earthly form to call it by.
Falsities disappear in the wind
like a thought, a dream, a grain of sand.
All from this earth must grow to die
for reasons unknown by the minds of men.
Thoughts are grains of sand in our dreams
that, like our souls, are wide and vast.
Live the life you wish to lead;
let go of the lifeless past.
that grips us all in its final breath.
Have no sympathy for its passing;
peaceful closure comes in death.
An infant’s cry is a final breath,
its first words like its last;
peaceful closure comes in death
as the boundless soul becomes the night.
Words, if true, will last forever
while falsities come and go with the wind.
Boundless is the soul transcending the body,
no earthly form to call it by.
Falsities disappear in the wind
like a thought, a dream, a grain of sand.
All from this earth must grow to die
for reasons unknown by the minds of men.
Thoughts are grains of sand in our dreams
that, like our souls, are wide and vast.
Live the life you wish to lead;
let go of the lifeless past.
The Wind Lets Go of Everything it Touches
(inspired by “A Lover’s Quarrel” by Sam Hamill)
The wind lets go of everything it touches,
The songs it whispers, tragic and true;
The quivering trees murmur in unison:
We walk on the faces of forgotten dead.
The wind lets go of everything it touches;
Things once blown settle down to die
As thoughts once spoken drift away in silent
Contempt for their brethren that went unsaid.
The wind lets go of everything it touches
As a Saint dies a little with each soul saved;
Permanence and time, eternity and God
Are transient words in our shallow heads.
The wind lets go of everything it touches
Skin and dust and water and stone;
The world is in reference to all worlds past
As we tiptoe on the faces of forgotten dead.
The wind lets go of everything it touches,
The songs it whispers, tragic and true;
The quivering trees murmur in unison:
We walk on the faces of forgotten dead.
The wind lets go of everything it touches;
Things once blown settle down to die
As thoughts once spoken drift away in silent
Contempt for their brethren that went unsaid.
The wind lets go of everything it touches
As a Saint dies a little with each soul saved;
Permanence and time, eternity and God
Are transient words in our shallow heads.
The wind lets go of everything it touches
Skin and dust and water and stone;
The world is in reference to all worlds past
As we tiptoe on the faces of forgotten dead.
Monday, October 8, 2007
Going to the Movies: A Fine American Tradition
I went to see the new Wes Anderson movie, 'Darjeeling Limited,' at one of the only independent movie theaters in the greater Boston area. I'm still not sure what I think of the movie, but the act of going to the movies brought up a lot of thoughts about just that, going to the movies.
The first part of going to the movies is picking the movie, a process that is often easier said than done. When there's a group of four friends going, usually three out of the four agree on a particular movie. But that fourth prick of a friend always has to make things complicated by saying something like, 'actually I read bad reviews.' No you didn't. If anything, you googled the movie, went to the first second-rate movie website you found, read the first unenlightened opinion by an over-critical hack, and took that as the word of God handed down to us mortals to warn us of the 90 minutes of hell that await us should we be so foolish as to see the particular movie.
Anyways, so that fourth 'friend' will pout and make a fuss about why the review he read is more valid than the reviews and opinions the other four friends have heard. He'll say something passive-aggressive like 'fine, I'll see it, but don't say I didn't warn you if it's bad.' What that really means is, 'if it's great I'll say it was okay, if it's okay I'll say it was bad, and if it's bad, I'll rub it in your faces like the self-righteous asshole I am.' Happens every time. Sometimes I'm even that prick. Everyone is once in a while.
But alright, let's assume you make it past the selection process. The friend who assumed the role of driver for the movie event will then be delayed by at least ten minutes every time without fail. You'll get a nice variety of excuses, like "my parents insisted at that moment on having a heart-to-heart talk with me that couldn't wait another minute," or "I had to wait for my sister to come back with the car." But the truth is usually something more along the lines of, "there was a sick shark special on Discovery Channel and a seal was getting tossed around like a bloody rag doll and I lost track of time." Those specials are highly hypnotic and can entrance even the most well-meaning driver, even when he's already fifteen minutes late in picking up his friends.
Now you've arrived at the theater and spent ten minutes finding parking. After all four of you instantaneously expelling from your brains all information relating to the location of the car in the enormous parking lot, you walk into the theater, the aroma of old popcorn grease wafting into your nostrils. You check the screen that shows the movie times and yell at the friend who told you all the wrong time. Hopefully he erred on the better side and you still have a little time before the movie. Hopefully the movie is also not sold out. I challenge you to tell me anything more disappointing than finding out the movie you got off the couch and got dressed to go see is sold out.
When it comes time to buy tickets, most people revert to their inner sheep and scuttle into the long line that snakes back and forth before the ticket counter. It seems the general population has seen the credit/debit card ticket machines over to the side, considered the time it would save them to buy tickets that way, and decided to go with their initial instinct to wait on the long line unnecessarily. "Yeah, I heard 'bout them machines where ya touch the screen and buy yer tickets with a credit card, 'n it saves ya a bunch a time. But that's just not me, ya know? This is how ma daddy bought movie tickets, and his daddy before him. I figure, why change now?"
After you get your tickets, there is the inevitable purchasing of snacks. I've gotten so accustomed to the major movie theater chains that when I get to the front of the snack line, I'm almost offended if they don't offer a family-size bucket o' popcorn. Even if I just ate a full meal, I must get at least a slightly-unnecessarily-large bag of popcorn. Lately I've been trying to limit the degree of nausea and self-loathing I feel during the movie snacking experience by buying a bottle of water instead of the usual gallon of sugardrink. The bottle of water is too big also, but having to pee really bad is better than getting diabetes in two hours.
With my $15 snack and drink in hand, it's time to find the specific theater my movie is playing in. Just like with the location of the parking spot, we all immediately forget which theater the movie's in after the miserable ticket-tearer teeny bopper looks at our tickets and tells us. My friends and I will wander around like lost puppies, forgoing the conventional wisdom of looking at our damn ticket stubs and instead hoping to just stumble upon the correct theater. After a few unnecessary minutes of searching, we enter the theater.
First you must walk to the center aisle and stand there like a jackass while your eyes adjust to the darkness. During this time, you feel like everyone in the theater is staring at you and judging you silently from the shadows. That's because they are. Finally someone from your group spots four empty seats nestled conveniently in the exact middle of the row. Hopefully the movie has already started, making your fellow movie patrons extra cheery as they are forced to stand up to let your late asses sidestep apologetically past them, spilling popcorn on them and brushing your butt against their crotches. Once you sit down, you must fumble to find the cup holder, then struggle for five minutes to take your coat off and put it comfortably behind you without knocking over your or your neighbors' drinks or elbowing them in the face. I usually give up and just keep my coat on my lap, regretting every second of it for the entire duration of the film.
Watching the movie is the only easy part of the process. Except for the occasional friend who is not familiar with any common film conventions that are used to move along the plot and foreshadow what's to come and thus must ask you for an in-depth explanation of every scene, I love watching movies.
What I hate more than any aspect of going to the movies is those assholes who feel the need to let an inanimate screen know just how much they loved the movie by applauding when the credits start to roll. Hey dumbasses, in case you're not familiar with how this goes, those actors (whose cellulite you've bought magazines to see) at some point in the past got together with a director, a producer, and a bunch of other people and they created a film. This film was then edited, and a series of watered-down, Wonderbread trailers were shown to the public to get the robotic masses to go see it. What you just saw here in this theater was that film. The actors are not here to hear and appreciate your applause. They are across the country, and have already made two equally terrible movies since they finished this one. So by applauding after the movie, the only people with which you are sharing your feelings about this movie are your fellow movie-watchers. And I think I speak for all of us when I say that I don't give a crap what you thought of the movie. Especially when we just finished watching Epic Movie (Yoni and I sadly waited five minutes before walking out of that Oscar-winner. A part of me died during those few minutes).
After spitting on the faces of everyone who worked on the movie by deciding to leave as soon as the credits start, it's time to revert back to a five-year-old and leave all your trash on the floor as you walk out of the theater. It's amazing how many of us do this, people who wouldn't do that anywhere else. I guess the movies just bring out the best of us. We spend too much money, stuff our fat faces with grease-laden junk food washed down with a gallon of liquid candy, sit on our fat asses for two hours amazed by flashing lights and loud noises, then leave a sticky mess of cardboard and crumbs behind us for some absolutely miserable janitor to come clean up. It's almost as American as Nascar.
The first part of going to the movies is picking the movie, a process that is often easier said than done. When there's a group of four friends going, usually three out of the four agree on a particular movie. But that fourth prick of a friend always has to make things complicated by saying something like, 'actually I read bad reviews.' No you didn't. If anything, you googled the movie, went to the first second-rate movie website you found, read the first unenlightened opinion by an over-critical hack, and took that as the word of God handed down to us mortals to warn us of the 90 minutes of hell that await us should we be so foolish as to see the particular movie.
Anyways, so that fourth 'friend' will pout and make a fuss about why the review he read is more valid than the reviews and opinions the other four friends have heard. He'll say something passive-aggressive like 'fine, I'll see it, but don't say I didn't warn you if it's bad.' What that really means is, 'if it's great I'll say it was okay, if it's okay I'll say it was bad, and if it's bad, I'll rub it in your faces like the self-righteous asshole I am.' Happens every time. Sometimes I'm even that prick. Everyone is once in a while.
But alright, let's assume you make it past the selection process. The friend who assumed the role of driver for the movie event will then be delayed by at least ten minutes every time without fail. You'll get a nice variety of excuses, like "my parents insisted at that moment on having a heart-to-heart talk with me that couldn't wait another minute," or "I had to wait for my sister to come back with the car." But the truth is usually something more along the lines of, "there was a sick shark special on Discovery Channel and a seal was getting tossed around like a bloody rag doll and I lost track of time." Those specials are highly hypnotic and can entrance even the most well-meaning driver, even when he's already fifteen minutes late in picking up his friends.
Now you've arrived at the theater and spent ten minutes finding parking. After all four of you instantaneously expelling from your brains all information relating to the location of the car in the enormous parking lot, you walk into the theater, the aroma of old popcorn grease wafting into your nostrils. You check the screen that shows the movie times and yell at the friend who told you all the wrong time. Hopefully he erred on the better side and you still have a little time before the movie. Hopefully the movie is also not sold out. I challenge you to tell me anything more disappointing than finding out the movie you got off the couch and got dressed to go see is sold out.
When it comes time to buy tickets, most people revert to their inner sheep and scuttle into the long line that snakes back and forth before the ticket counter. It seems the general population has seen the credit/debit card ticket machines over to the side, considered the time it would save them to buy tickets that way, and decided to go with their initial instinct to wait on the long line unnecessarily. "Yeah, I heard 'bout them machines where ya touch the screen and buy yer tickets with a credit card, 'n it saves ya a bunch a time. But that's just not me, ya know? This is how ma daddy bought movie tickets, and his daddy before him. I figure, why change now?"
After you get your tickets, there is the inevitable purchasing of snacks. I've gotten so accustomed to the major movie theater chains that when I get to the front of the snack line, I'm almost offended if they don't offer a family-size bucket o' popcorn. Even if I just ate a full meal, I must get at least a slightly-unnecessarily-large bag of popcorn. Lately I've been trying to limit the degree of nausea and self-loathing I feel during the movie snacking experience by buying a bottle of water instead of the usual gallon of sugardrink. The bottle of water is too big also, but having to pee really bad is better than getting diabetes in two hours.
With my $15 snack and drink in hand, it's time to find the specific theater my movie is playing in. Just like with the location of the parking spot, we all immediately forget which theater the movie's in after the miserable ticket-tearer teeny bopper looks at our tickets and tells us. My friends and I will wander around like lost puppies, forgoing the conventional wisdom of looking at our damn ticket stubs and instead hoping to just stumble upon the correct theater. After a few unnecessary minutes of searching, we enter the theater.
First you must walk to the center aisle and stand there like a jackass while your eyes adjust to the darkness. During this time, you feel like everyone in the theater is staring at you and judging you silently from the shadows. That's because they are. Finally someone from your group spots four empty seats nestled conveniently in the exact middle of the row. Hopefully the movie has already started, making your fellow movie patrons extra cheery as they are forced to stand up to let your late asses sidestep apologetically past them, spilling popcorn on them and brushing your butt against their crotches. Once you sit down, you must fumble to find the cup holder, then struggle for five minutes to take your coat off and put it comfortably behind you without knocking over your or your neighbors' drinks or elbowing them in the face. I usually give up and just keep my coat on my lap, regretting every second of it for the entire duration of the film.
Watching the movie is the only easy part of the process. Except for the occasional friend who is not familiar with any common film conventions that are used to move along the plot and foreshadow what's to come and thus must ask you for an in-depth explanation of every scene, I love watching movies.
What I hate more than any aspect of going to the movies is those assholes who feel the need to let an inanimate screen know just how much they loved the movie by applauding when the credits start to roll. Hey dumbasses, in case you're not familiar with how this goes, those actors (whose cellulite you've bought magazines to see) at some point in the past got together with a director, a producer, and a bunch of other people and they created a film. This film was then edited, and a series of watered-down, Wonderbread trailers were shown to the public to get the robotic masses to go see it. What you just saw here in this theater was that film. The actors are not here to hear and appreciate your applause. They are across the country, and have already made two equally terrible movies since they finished this one. So by applauding after the movie, the only people with which you are sharing your feelings about this movie are your fellow movie-watchers. And I think I speak for all of us when I say that I don't give a crap what you thought of the movie. Especially when we just finished watching Epic Movie (Yoni and I sadly waited five minutes before walking out of that Oscar-winner. A part of me died during those few minutes).
After spitting on the faces of everyone who worked on the movie by deciding to leave as soon as the credits start, it's time to revert back to a five-year-old and leave all your trash on the floor as you walk out of the theater. It's amazing how many of us do this, people who wouldn't do that anywhere else. I guess the movies just bring out the best of us. We spend too much money, stuff our fat faces with grease-laden junk food washed down with a gallon of liquid candy, sit on our fat asses for two hours amazed by flashing lights and loud noises, then leave a sticky mess of cardboard and crumbs behind us for some absolutely miserable janitor to come clean up. It's almost as American as Nascar.
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