Goodbye, 2011!

Wow! 2011 just flew by. And, by flew by, I mean that I became convinced that it was 2012 in about June, and started using 2012 as my date on everything. That was kind of weird. But, that’s not to say that 2011 didn’t have its memorable moments. Here’s what we learned in the year that was….

1. You probably shouldn’t sell all your worldly goods just because Harold Camping says the world’s going to end.
2. Earthquake + tsunami + nuclear reactor = holy shit.
3. Pro basketball lockout? Meh.
4. It was secretly a little bit cool when those Mythbusters sent a cannonball through someone’s house.
5. As it turns out, homeless people who beg for dollars at the side of the road (even those with golden voices) often have mental health and addiction issues that they can’t overcome simply by being paraded before millions of people and featured on the Today show! Who knew!
6. Royal weddings are kind of annoying.
7. Partying, partying? Yeah!
8. Not even the death of Osama bin Laden could stop Americans from bitching. This time about how the announcement interrupted The Celebrity Apprentice.
9. Lindsay Lohan has some seriously jacked up meth teeth.
10. But people, apparently, still want to see her nekked.
11.Patrice O’Neal roasted Charlie Sheen, and now he’s dead. So, draw your own conclusions.
12. Gabrielle Giffords…seriously….that was messed up. No matter what your politics.
13. Considering their financial trouble lately, perhaps the Europeans should be a little less condescending.
14. Despite both being terrible, Nancy Grace and awkward celebrity dancing have their fans.
15. Americans will support people through a lot of things, but not a 72-day marriage.
16. Speaking of which: most annoying celebrity of 2011? Kim Kardashian.
17. Close runner up? Alleged roast killer Charlie Sheen.
18. I’m not even going to mention Casey Anthony.
19. STOP CHANGING FACEBOOK!
20. Some people really love to say Merry Christmas.
21. “Rolling in the Deep” is probably on your iPod right now.
22. Unless you’re all alternative. In that case, it’s “Rope” by the Foo Fighters.
23. While we’re decidedly apathetic about protests, pepper spray seems like a douchey move.
24. On a related note, this post is currently being occupied by the 99%. They would like a bathroom, please.
25. As it turns out, Urban Meyer didn’t want to spend that much time with his family.
26. We still like Jen waaaaaaaaaaaay more than Angelina .
27. The world is different because of Steve Jobs. I mean cyborgs.
28. When the gays forced us all to be gay as a result of their gay agenda, and now we’re all gay? Fabulous!
29. Tebowing is either really gross or really awesome, depending on how annoying you are.
30. Arab Spring sounds like a bar of soap.
31. And that gross Anthony Weiner thing happened.
32. People still haven’t grown tired of saying, “Where’s your global warming now, Al Gore?” whenever it snows.
33. It was not a good year for despots.
34. Or Arnold Schwarzenegger, who totally proved correct my theory that you just can’t trust those Austrians.
35. Muammar Gadhafi looked just like Bert Convy right until the bitter end. What? You never watched Love Boat?
36. Coincidentally, 2011 was the 20th anniversary of Bert Convy’s death.
37. Michelle Bachmann on the cover of Newsweek with the crazy eyes was not entirely inaccurate.
38. Honey badger don't care.
39. And last of all – but way too soon - a little piece of E. Street moved to heaven.

A Cats with Knives Christmas Story

This Christmas story is either 100% true or completely made-up, depending on the statute of limitations for theft.

I will never forget Christmas when I was in 7th grade. Maybe it was 8th grade. In any event, it was Christmas. One of my parents may have had a broken leg, the older children were in the process of moving in and out of the house, and Christmas just didn’t feel like Christmas that year. I might have been in 5th grade. The year doesn’t matter, so stop obsessing about it.

In any event, that year, because of the broken leg and the children in a constant state of flux and whatever else was going on the world (Iran Contra? Maybe.) we hadn’t put up any Christmas decorations at our house. I was the youngest, and it’s not like I needed seasonal reminders. And anyway, putting them up meant getting all of the decorations out of our scary basement and getting our ancient fake tree, the one that constantly smelled like burning plastic, out of storage and figuring out if all of the parts had made it back from last year. They never did, and the tree had grown sparser and sparser each year. So I was fine with no decorations. After all, once all of the older kids went back to wherever they’d come from, it would be me and my older sister left to take all that shit down and put it away, and that job was No Fun.

A night or two before Christmas, most of us kids and some of our friends were all gathered together, hanging out in our front room, when my oldest brother came home (from college? I guess. Seriously, I never knew where all these people came from) with one of his friends. He looked around the house, baffled.

“Where are the decorations?” he asked.
“Mom and Dad didn’t feel like decorating,” my sister offered.
“We didn’t really care, either,” my other brother added.
“Meh,” I said, shrugging. All of my other siblings nodded their heads.

“This is crazy,” my oldest brother said. “It’s goddamn Christmas.”

And then he proceeded with what I can only describe as the Great Christmas Shakedown.

“Give me all of your money,” he said to all of us. “We need to go buy a tree.”

“Uh…..,” I said. I hadn’t really signed up for tree-buying. I was, like, twelve years old, and hadn’t really budgeted for this. But I had a couple of bucks in my pocket from babysitting, so I turned them over. Everyone else did likewise, and we amassed something like ten bucks. Suitable for a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, at least.

“Who’s coming with me to get the tree?” My brother asked. “There are a couple of lots down on Broad and Hamilton.”

A couple of sisters volunteered, as well as some friends who’d come over to hang out with us, but not me. First of all, it sounded like hauling a Christmas tree was going to be hard work. Second of all, my friend Alison was spending the night, and she hadn’t signed up for tree-hauling either. Also: it was at least ten o’clock at night at this point, and what they were proposing sounded like it was going to take a while in the cold weather (this was before global warming). No thanks. Instead, we hung out at the house and pulled the Christmas decorations out of the scary basement.

Surprisingly, the front door flew open not a half-hour later, and in came my brother, holding a pretty nice tree. He and my siblings were laughing, but the crazy kind of laugh that people do after they accidentally sideswipe someone’s car while on a drunken joyride.

“How much was the tree?” My sister called out, as we all worked to place it in the tree stand.

“It was free!” My brother said.

“Free?” We all wondered about the spirit of Christmas, and the generosity that the lot owners must have felt, seeing our ragamuffin family out on Christmas Eve, looking for a cheap tree to lend us some Christmas cheer.

“The Christmas tree lot was closed,” he admitted. “So this one here,” he said, pointing to my sister, the gymnast with amazing upper-body strength, “Climbed over the fence and grabbed a tree. She threw it over the fence, and then we all ran like hell.”

There was stunned silence. We’d just committed a Christmas…felony? Probably a misdemeanor under the law, depending on how one looked at the fence-hurdling. But still, that was some fuc-

“But I have some good news!” my brother said, interrupting my thoughts. His college roommate who was spending Christmas with us walked in the door with a square box. “We used the money to buy this!” Proudly, the roommate stepped forward. He had several cases of beer. Something low-shelf like Natural Light or Pabst Blue Ribbon.

“Hahahahahaha!” We all yelled. “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!” we added!!! And then, for good measure, we threw in “Merry Christmas!” and commenced to drink all of the beer. That year, we definitely had the best-looking drunk-decorated stolen-from-some-poor-sons-of-bitches Christmas tree in the neighborhood.

So, to all of you, celebrating Christmas with your group of functional, dysfunctional, or something in-between loved ones: I wish you all the season’s best. Or at least Milwaukee’s Best. Don’t steal anything this year.

Down with Siri

I love scientists. I don’t love them literally, because they are mostly nerds and they don’t use real terms that are natural to English (unless you think “quarks” and “syzygy” are natural); but I love them theoretically, especially astrophysicists, because they manage to be limitlessly open-minded, while at the same time will NOT put up with anyone’s jive talk. Seriously, have you ever confused mass and weight around a scientist? He or she will put you IN YOUR PLACE.

Anyway, I think of those geeks at Apple computers as scientists. They think of an idea, and instead of asking that idea to fit into the logic of an ordered world, they figure out a way to flex the world around their idea, and build a bridge from crazy idea (A computer that you can wear on a band around your arm? Never!) to possibility (hello, iPod!) using only 0’s and 1’s.

But sometimes, I think this shit goes too far. And I’m specifically talking about a little something designed by the brilliant folks at Apple called Siri.

According to my friend Wikipedia, Siri is an “intelligent software assistant and knowledge navigator functioning as a personal assistant application” for newer models of the iPhone. I see Siri a little differently. I see Siri as “a substitute for real friends.”

Now, I know some of you, those of you who have hackles, are feeling them rising right now. You are Siri adopters, and you find the technology delightful. “I have plenty of real friends,” you are saying to yourself. “I need Siri to manage my incredibly busy and awesome life.” In truth, you are addicted to your fucking phone. Have you ever walked down the street, just looking around? At least half of the people walking alongside you are now so non-conditioned from interacting with humans that they have to pull out their phones whenever they’re in transit, rather than have another human being think that they have nothing to do.

Siri makes this worse, because it is a “natural language user interface,” meaning that it seems like it is talking to you like a real person, including making recommendations and personalizing results. People quickly caught on that you could ask Siri inane questions, and Siri would answer.

Q: “Siri, what is the meaning of life?”
Siri: “Try and be nice to people. Avoid eating fat. Read a good book now & then.”

First of all, I have to point out that the grammar there is a little sloppy. It presupposes that “trying” and “being” are separate functions, when I believe what it really means is, “Try TO be nice to people,” meaning that one should make the attempt. But, bygones. Anyway, if I were Siri, this would be my answer, “The meaning of Life? Stop trying to connect with a PHONE.”

And I guess this is my big beef: we are a nation that is becoming ever more polarized every second. You’re screwed whether you say, “Merry Christmas,” or “Happy Holidays” because you’ve just made the shit list of some freak with an agenda. Siri, who is basically a “me so horny, I love you long time” application – all instant gratification without having to actually emotionally invest in another human being – makes us begin to think that that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

But you know what? I bet that, when you’re taking that last bit of breath that you have here on earth, contemplating if there’s anything in the great beyond, scared that your light is going to go out and then – poof – you’re going to be stuck in the black nothingness, or worse, that heaven is really super boring, your PHONE is not going to comfort you. Your phone is just a distraction, just a way of ignoring the frailties and realities of those hairy, slobbery, smelly, often unfunny, and terribly burdened things that we call Other People.

So, next time you get the urge to connect with someone, make it a real person, not your phone. Just smile at a stranger. Say, “Hi.” Ask for directions. Compliment their shoes. Whatever you do, don’t forget how to interact with people just because your phone makes it much easier not to.

Broad and High

Almost every day, for the past four years, I have passed through the same intersection of Broad and High streets, in the center of Downtown, Columbus. I drive east at rush hour on my way to class, and I drive west in the double digits of night on my way home. I run through the intersection in the early hours of the weekend mornings, when the hookers are still asleep and the addicts are too blinky and disoriented to be too scary. I have to tell you, if I could choose to sit anyplace for hours at a time, this would be the place.

My favorite thing about Broad and High is that it is the perfect vinaigrette of batshit crazy people, and totally normal people who are just trying to catch the bus. The fascinating part is trying to guess who is who. I do not say this lightly. I saw a seven foot tall man with a cane and a top hat, and I was like, “Got it: that’s a crazy one.” Wrong. He was shooting a commercial. On the other hand, I saw a perfectly dressed woman walking down the street at a business-like clip. “Ah, the working woman!” I thought! Until she pulled a cat out of her hair and handed it to a guy dressed like Elmo. You just never know on Broad and High. One day, I saw a nun protesting. On closer look, it wasn’t a nun. It was a dude. The outfit was from a costume shop. Nuns totally don’t wear Sound of Music wimples anymore.

But even if the guessing game of What Am I Going to See Today didn’t keep me intrigued, the opportunity for back story creation would. Here is a fact: I am a compulsive back story creator. I create a back story for literally everyone. Dean of my law school? Lived with the natives in Paraguay. Weird neighbor? Competitive Boggle player. Hateful coworker? Spends her Friday nights painting her nails and crying. See? I can make a back story for anyone.

The people on Broad and High provide rich imagery for a fascinating back story: they have scars, chef pants, bicycles, backpacks of every stripe, wigs, furry thigh-high boots, and accessories that range from Gucci sunglasses to a ship in a bottle. These aren’t just skeezy prostitutes and twitchy drug addicts; they are skeezy prostitutes with dreams, and twitchy drug addicts who are just looking for companionship and free doughnuts from Tim Hortons. Somehow, everyone mixes together: working folks, street people, valet parkers, city workers, police officers, politicians on their way to lunch, and confused schoolchildren whose bus dropped them off to soak up some Ohio history at the statehouse.

And I guess this is the bottom line: I love Broad and High because I identify with everyone who ends up there. I’m a harried office worker, a citizen, a consumer, a commuter, a student, a mother, an artist, a sightseer, and a pedestrian. In the most private recesses of my mind, I am as crazy, as addicted, as lost, as lonely, and as desperately in need of community as any person who finds himself on the corner that separates east, west, north and south in my city. And I know that I’ll never be able to see, appreciate, or understand every person who ends up on Broad and High, but I can see every bit of myself there.