Jesus, please tell your people to stop talking.

I've been getting frustrated again. I've had more idle time lately. I have been writing. I have. But I've also been getting lost on the Interwebs, watching interviews of Sarah Palin and her fans, usually regarding the publication of her new book "Going Rogue."

I am not joking when I say that Sarah Palin is nothing to be laughed at. She is not a joke. She should be taken seriously. I'm not saying that she has anything to say that is valuable, or that she deserves to be listened to. I guess what I'm saying is: Don't underestimate the ignorance of the American people.

I found this email exchange while poking around on the n+1 website the other day. It was from just before the 2004 election. (Do you remember that? Kerry vs. Bush. That was a rough time. I'm glad I was still straight edge then; had I drank, it wouldn't have been pretty.)

Here's my favorite part:

I can see in that mosaic of red, blue, light red, light blue, and gray a solution to the prospect of 50-50 decisions resolved in the courts every four years: Dissolve the Union.

No more electoral college; no more red, blue, swing; no more U.S.A. I don't mean to sound alarmist but this thing isn't working. I propose 7 new states carved from the existing Republic. They can maintain a loose alliance, though without the obligation to support each other in foreign entanglements. Global dominance can now be ceded to the EU—it hasn't gone that well for us anyway. The borders of our new states should be porous. After age 18 adults have the option of crossing the border to pursue their happiness as their political and cultural leanings compel them (how it is right now more or less, minus a failed experiment called the federal government). So, the new states:

Red Sox Nation
Composite states: Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland (including Washington, D.C.), Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin
Capital: Boston
Form of government: Social democracy
First head of state: Howard Dean
Sox fans enjoy state-provided healthcare, free higher education, the option of gay marriage, abortion on demand, without apology, and continue to serve as the world's leading providers of financial and media services. Budget caps are imposed on the Yankees of New York. The sanest of the new states (despite its sometimes shrill executive), Sox Nation boasts no standing armed forces of its own but controls the former American nuclear arsenal by remote control. Also, Pedro still throws pitches at people's heads.

Nirvanistan
Composite states: California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington
Capital: Seattle
Form of government: Narco-syndicalism
First head of state: Arnold Schwartzenegger
Free of the burdens of national political ambitions, Arnold legalizes marijuana, and the cash crop revitalizes Pacifica's economy, as the new dealers synergize with Silicon Alley to sell their grass globally.

CRINGE (Christian Republic in God's Embrace)
Composite states: Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, and all those other currently red ones in the South and the middle, plus Alaska.
Capital: Austin
Form of government: Democratic theocracy (everybody votes for God)
First head of state: God, as told to George W. Bush
We been praying a lot and working hard. Just us folks down here, believe in God, and don't have sex if we ain't married. Laying off the booze, dried out the whole Republic. Damn that moonshine. Devil's concoction. Overturned that Dred Scott decision, we did. Got ourselves a culture of life and an ownership society in these parts. How can you have a culture or a society anyway if nobody's alive and nobody owns nothin'? Got ourselves a damn big Army too. It's very lethal. Gonna do some drillin' in Alaska. No harm done, just a little pinch. Need some more jobs. Workin' on that. Real hard. Amen. (Sponsored by the people of Saudi Arabia.)

Florida
Composite state: Florida
Capital: Tallahassee
Form of government: Gerontocracy
First head of state: Bob Graham
Populated by retirees from Sox Nation and CRINGE, Florida is a welfare state offering a free medicinal prescription drug benefit subsidized by its neighbors to the North.

SWEAT (Southwestern Esteemed Aged Territory)
Composite states: Arizona, New Mexico
Capital: Phoenix
Form of government: Straighttalkocracy
First head of state: John McCain
Much like Florida, but with more of a cowboy aesthetic. And free drugs.

Nevada
Composite state: Nevada
Capital: Las Vegas
Form of government: Casino
First head of state: Donald Trump
Gambling, hookers.

—Christian Lorentzen

You can read the exchange here: http://www.nplusonemag.com/emails-what-if-union-crumbles

Christian Lorentzen is a senior editor at Harper's and a "bearded, second-rate hipster". He's quite funny.

I need an instrument.

To make a measurement.


I watched Instrument, the Fugazi documentary, the other night while Elle and her Mom looked at bridesmaid dresses and flower arrangements. It made me cringe at moments, watching Ian grab kids and escort them off stage for spitting or starting fights. It also made me proud. As small as punk always was for me, it was always split down the middle at shows: people who wanted to have fun and for everyone around them to have fun and then peop;e who were there to work out demons, to shove people around, and celebrate their inadequacies as human beings with the crowd. I was of the former camp.

Anyhow, the video is pretty amazing and made me want to get back in a van and drive again. Any takers? I can scream, shot, and play tambourine,

Cry.

I know of only a few times when my Dad has cried other than for a movie like Forest Gump, or Dead Poet's Society, or, most recently I'm told, Up. But he's told me about how he cried when Lennon was shot. And I've seen him cry when this song comes on. Lennon was something unique for his generation, and rightfully so, I think. I know of no other figure like him. Perhaps Thoreau. Yeah, that might work.

The Lord Taketh Away

For some reason I make the mistake (maybe it isn't a mistake--maybe it is stupidity--my Dad says that a mistake is something you make once, maybe twice, but after that it is just stupid) of trying to reason with some kids I grew up with back in Florida who have become wildly evangelical with their Christianity. I feel like I owe it to someone--I don't know who, maybe other kids back home that have not fallen for their nonsense--to make the case for rational thought, science, common goddamn sense, etc. Anyhow, it rarely seems to work and I end up in long comment threads on Facebook trying to understand how someone can possibly think the types of things they do. I am an Atheist. I believe that the creation of the universe was not done by any of the deities that are found in religious texts. I do not believe in Gods. Spirituality, the soul, these things are of interest to me, but on a scientific level. Other than that, I make no assertions about the universe. I am not a Nihilist, a fascist, a Nazi, a barbarian, or any of the other things I have been called by these kids, called them simply for not believing that the Bible, in all its infinite wisdom about burning witches, stoning to death prostitute daughters of priests, the keeping of slaves, etc, to be a very moral book. Moral in the sense that it does more good than harm,not moral in the sense that it follows the customs of an archaic text, which is a distinction worth making. For them Morality is what God wants us to do. For me it is what society would benefit from most, what would cause the least amount of suffering, pain, death, etc.

For believing that, I am a nihilist. My morals are said to have no compass. Who invented the compass anyway? The Arabs, I think.

Anyhow, I read this in the November issue of Harper's. One of the kids said that "Ideas have consequences." I agree. Here is an example.

The lord taketh away

From the trial of Carl Worthington of Oregon City, Oregon, who was charged with manslaughter after his fifteen-month-old daughter Ava died last March of bronchial pneumonia and a blood infection that could have been cured with antibiotics. Instead of seeking medical treatment, Worthington and his wife, Raylene, with family and other members of the Followers of Christ, prayed and conducted faith-healing rituals. In July, Worthington was found guilty of criminal mistreatment, a misdemeanor, and sentenced to sixty days in jail. Greg Horner was the prosecutor.

greg horner: Let’s start with your beliefs about the use of modern medicine. You don’t believe in modern medicine. Isn’t that correct?

carl worthington: I don’t know that I’d say that I don’t believe in it. I don’t put my faith in it, would be a better term.

horner: You don’t use modern medicine as a means of addressing illness. Is that correct?

worthington: Right. If I can anoint someone with olive oil and he starts feeling better, then there’s no need to use medicine.

horner: Well, it’s a little bit more than that, though, isn’t it? It’s not whether they get better or not. It’s just that you don’t believe in using modern medicine.

worthington: It has to do a lot with how they do. If I never seemed to get better, then why would I do it? I would probably use modern medicine myself. I’ve never felt that I’ve needed it. It wasn’t because somebody forced this on me. It’s because I seen it for myself, as I was growing up. When I was anointed, I felt better, so that trained me to have faith in it.

horner: Has your position changed as a result of what happened to your daughter?

worthington: No, it’s still the same.

horner: So the fact that you did not get your daughter to a hospital Saturday night, and she died a day later, has not changed your position on modern medicine?

worthington: Well, it hasn’t changed the way I feel. I’ve seen nothing here that’s proved to me that it would have been any different had we taken her in. When a doctor can’t do nothing for you, you usually put it in God’s hands anyways, so that’s where I’d had it the whole time.

horner: Even in retrospect, even knowing the outcome, you wouldn’t change how you handled her medical condition?

worthington: There’s nothing they’ve done to prove that they could have cured her. What I got was a maybe yeah, maybe no. They wasn’t sure.

horner: You acknowledge, then, that, gosh, maybe if I’d taken her in, she’d be alive today?

worthington: I don’t believe so, no.

horner: Well, that’s what you said about what the doctors would say. But for you, it was more important to follow your faith. Isn’t that right?

worthington: My point is that if the medicine hadn’t worked, the doctor would tell you to put your faith in God anyway. They’d say there’s nothing more we can do for you. That’s where my faith and trust was, so it sounds like there’s a good chance that’s where I would have ended up anyway.

horner: Getting back to the question about whether or not you were willing to ignore the medical likelihood, that had your child been taken in Saturday night, she would have survived—you were willing to take the chance that that wouldn’t happen. Is that right?

worthington: What chance are we talking about here?

horner: The chance of Ava dying.

worthington: When?

horner: Saturday night.

worthington: Saturday night? I didn’t think she was doing that bad Saturday night. She started off like she was coming down with a cold. I mean, does everyone take their kids in every time they have a cold?

horner: No, they don’t. But they do take their child in when they’ve got a huge growth on their neck, and they’re choking, and having difficulty breathing, and the father thinks that there’s a possibility they’re going to die!

worthington: I don’t recall her ever choking. There was a moment after she hadn’t slept all night when I was worried that she was getting weak, and then I saw her take her bottle and hoist it up with one arm by herself, and she showed me she was strong.

horner: So you see her lift up a bottle with one hand, and that’s enough for you to say, Okay, I’m willing to take my chances with prayer?

worthington: Well, it was an improvement. And we wanted to see a bigger improvement. We did see that bigger improvement that evening, after we’d laid hands on her again.

horner: Had she declined, you would have been on the phone to 911 and got that child to the hospital? Is that what you’re saying?

worthington: That’s an impossible question to answer. It’s possible that someone could lose their faith if they’re not getting the results they want. But why would you take them to a doctor if they’re getting better?

horner: You take them to a doctor because if you don’t, the bacteria and the pneumonia kills them. Does that make sense to you?

worthington: Say it again.

horner: You said, “Why would you take a child into the doctor?” The answer is, you take them in because they die from bacteria, pneumonia and swelling. Does that make sense?

worthington: I didn’t know she had a pneumonia, I didn’t know any of that.

horner: Why was it that you didn’t know that?

worthington: I’m not a doctor, I guess.

I got to see Kid Dynamite right before they broke up. It was a strange time in hardcore, I think. I was new to the scene, about 13 years old. I was really into Minor Threat and GB. All the bands then were kinda sludgy and heavy, and weren't really into just playing fast music and having fun. It was time to be serious. But I was young and wildly idealistic and wanted to have fun with my friends at shows. Kid Dynamite came into my life and kind of ruined hardcore for me. I saw them and nothing was ever the same. Because like two months after they came to St.Petersburg they broke up. No band ever cam close to em again, i don't think. Maybe the first times I saw Stretch Arm Strong or Bane, or even the first American Nightmare or Hope Conspiracy tours, but those were a little more heavy handed and not as much of a party. Here was their last show, a reunion they did for a friend with cancer, I believe. I wasn't there; i was in Australia.

I said, but I'm tirred! I been walkin all day, try'n to find a job.

I worked as a carpenter and framer for several years. I worked for a few friends of mine, one of them being Rick Lang, who passed away about 5 years ago now. He was a good man, and one I'll always miss. When this song came on he always starting tapping his big work boots, and would inevitably end up singing to us and dancing. Those were good days.

Back from Florida. What a trip. More later.

For now, enjoy this video. I don't care how bad I get made fun of for loving this song. I love it.

Blistered

I had the pleasure of seeing Strife just after they "sold out." They were amazing. They ended with this song "Blistered"


and threw the mic right into my hands for the last breakdown. I remember holding it up with some sweaty, screaming kid growling into the microphone "Look into the sky!!! I can see the ashes falling! Look into the skyyyyyyyy! I can see it all coming dooown!"

That was a good night. I remember walking out of State Theater and seeing Boomhower in the back, smiling at me. "Saw you grab the mic there, dude," he said. "That was a good fucking show."

So much for one a day!

I bought The Get Up Kid's Four Minute Mile and Save The Day's Stay What You Are the summer between my junior and senior years of High School. I was driving a green Toyota Tacoma with a big, clunky topper on the back, in which I had constructed a platform bed and a surfboard storage area, all in hopes of driving around, sleeping in the back of my truck, listening to music and staring out at the ocean at dawn and at dusk by myself. It had been a weird summer, and I was really getting a knack for running away from things. I decided to graduate early; I had the credits I needed; what was the point of staying? So, I told the school what I was doing, they said "sure." They didn't seem to care at all, but they did keep me from being included in the Mr Venice contest because technically I had graduated and they "couldn't control what I would do on stage." I had wanted to play this song by Saves The Day:


But, I got denied, and probably for the better as I had a pretty terrible voice, even for covering whiny ass Saves The Day.

So, I graduated and moved to California. I drove out west with Tim Croft and my Dad, caravaning with my green truck and Tim's white bronco--Janessa, he called it, if memory serves me correctly. It was a good trip. I listened to Four Minute Mile and Stay What You are A LOT, and really still love both those albums and miss that period of music. Here's one of the Get Up Kids newer songs, an album that I HATED when it came out, but one I have learned to really enjoy.

I'm going to start posting favorite songs/videos. One a day. A retrospective of sorts!

I meant to post this yesterday.

Elliot Smith was introduced to me right before I moved to California, when I was 17. I didn't listen to the albums much on my drive west. I was burning to see the pacific, to move, to surf everyday, and find something out about, well, something.

California is a different story, but I will tell you that I listened to either/or and the self titled album in rotation with The Get Up Kids Four Minute Mile the whole ride home, driving through the south, following the first real arctic blast of that winter, sleeping in my truck, covered in boardbags and wetsuits to stay warm.


One of my favorite songs, covered by Smith.

I'm sure I'm late to get around to posting this. It's probably old news, but for some it might not be.

Since moving to New York I have become kind of a gearhead when it comes to bikes, though a very slow-to-learn one. I have gone through 5 bikes in less than two years now, swapping and selling them, getting hit by cars on them, giving them to Jack only to have them stolen hours later, etc. Possessing the personality that I do, it's hard for me to ever feel finalized in my bike quiver. Currently I own my Holy Grail bike--a Waterford built Schwinn Paramount track bike with a full Suntour Superbe Pro group, with the exception of the wheels which are Mavic Open Pro's laced to Phil Wood hubs--a more proper city track bike wheel, I think. I have been slowly tweaking the most current project, which I am almost ready to abandon and leave as be, a Kona Paddy Wagon, built up like a porteur bike, specifically designe, not for delivering papers, but for hunting/gathering at Trader Joe's on Monday AM's.

Anyhow, what I wanted to post was about some kids I know through a gulp bike forum. I have met some really great guys on there, many who I met in real life and later realized were on the forum. One of them was Lucas, who I have become really close with, though he talks to me like he was my girlfriend and I the negligent boyfriend.

So, they did a write up in the New York Times about of a thing that Lucas and Devotion's friend John Prolly has organized in Williamsburg each Thursday evening called Peel Sessions. I've been to a few and enjoyed hanging out talking shit, drinking a beer or two and watching kids get silly on tweaked out track bikes.

Full article here

Several people who I haven't seen in a while have asked, when I've told them I'm getting married, if Elle was pregnant.



Well.......

No.

She is not.

In fact, she is really goddamn skinny now, the results of going to the gym to run 5+miles EVERY MORNING at 615!

I, on the other hand, am only a little skinnier, having dropped below 200 for the first time since the fated Christmas trip to Florida where I did absolutely nothing but eat and sleep on the couch with Lemon and Kiwi on top of me. I'm getting slim, trim, and back on it. But fuck if I'm getting up that early for it! I can write that early, but not run.

Sometimes I feel like History is going to crush me.

It's beginning to feel like Fall here in NYC. I'm pumped. I built up a Kona Paddy Wagon with some slightly more burly all-weather tires, put some Pasela touring tires on Elle's bike, and am working on getting a 5-rail Cetma rack for the Wagon so I can haul around my bag without sweaty-back. We've been really enjoying our morning rides down to Tribeca from out apartment on 20th and 1st. It takes the edge offf a bit. I end up not punching windows or slapping rear-view mirrors as much when its nice out; pleasant weather has a calming effect on me that i never realized until moving to NYC. The seasons really change my disposition, writing, and worldview.

We're heading to Rhodes Island on Friday evening or early Saturday morning to pay my dear friends, the Attias family, a visit. We are hoping to poke around Providence, look at Brown and RISD, meet their new Frenchie, Lola, and generally enjoy the company of some of the gentlest people I know.

Dehumanized

There's a really wonderful piece in the September issue of Harper's Magazine written by Mark Slouka,about the effects of an economically driven educational system, the current fate of democracy, etc. It's a great piece to give to someone when they ask, "What are you going to do with a degree in __________(insert any of the humanities here: Literature, Philosophy, History, Etc.)."

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/09/0082640

here's some clips:



Rain does not follow the plow. Political freedom, whatever the market evangelists may tell us, is not an automatic by-product of a growing economy; democratic institutions do not spring up, like flowers at the feet of the magi, in the tire tracks of commerce. They just don’t. They’re a different species. They require a different kind of tending.

The case for the humanities is not hard to make, though it can be difficult—to such an extent have we been marginalized, so long have we acceded to that marginalization—not to sound either defensive or naive. The humanities, done right, are the crucible within which our evolving notions of what it means to be fully human are put to the test; they teach us, incrementally, endlessly, not what to do but how to be. ......

They are thus, inescapably, political. Why? Because they complicate our vision, pull our most cherished notions out by the roots, flay our pieties. Because they grow uncertainty. Because they expand the reach of our understanding (and therefore our compassion), even as they force us to draw and redraw the borders of tolerance. Because out of all this work of self-building might emerge an individual capable of humility in the face of complexity; an individual formed through questioning and therefore unlikely to cede that right; an individual resistant to coercion, to manipulation and demagoguery in all their forms. The humanities, in short, are a superb delivery mechanism for what we might call democratic values. There is no better that I am aware of.

For me, this shot summed up the SDRE show on Saturday

Do you remember CD clubs?

I do.

My Dad let us join one when we were like 9 or 10. It was one of those deals where you bought one CD for full price (16.99!!) and then got 11 CD's for a penny each. For Christmas that year my Mom had been given a 5 disk CD changer, and one CD: Tracy Chapman. Whenever I hear that "He's Got a Fast Car" song, I feel like I am 9 again, being woken up for school, or eating Honey Bunches of Oats with Jack, looking at 1+ year old Kayla learning to walk, my Dad drinking coffee and filing his briefcase with bills and invoices for Beliken, his clothing company. Mom would try to cut bananas into our cereal. I just recently, as in, like, yesterday, began to tolerate bananas.

Anyhow, I remember a few of the CD's we ordered. We each got to pick three, I think, but I don't remember who ordered what. Here's a list from foggy memory:
Shaquille O'Neal: Shaq Diesel
Crash Test Dummies: God Shuffled His Feet
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Greatest Hits
Soul Asylum: Grave Dancer's Union
Montell Jordan: This is How We Do it
Pearl Jam: Ten
Gin Blossoms: New Miserable Experience

The last album was my Dad's jam. We listened to that album a thousand times if we listened to it once. I remember many an afternoon out in the shed, putting the drywall on what would eventually become the Rompin Room, singing along:

"Things you said and did to me
Seemed to come so easily
The love I thought Id won you give for free
Whispers at the bus stop
I heard about nights out in the school yard
I found out about you"

Recently, my friend Futureman hooked me up with an invitation to an "exclusive" torrent site for DLing music. It was like being 9 again, flipping through the BMG catalog, circling the pictures of the album covers I wanted, making a list of fifteen albums and laboring over the final cuts, except I didn't have to make any cuts-; I can download whatever the fuck I want! The anxiety is short-lived now( it took WEEKS to get the CD's from BMG; it only takes about 45 seconds to DL an album from the site), but I still get excited about new music the same way I did back then.

I haven't been home to see my pops in 6 months now, and have been missing him and my sis terribly lately. The first album I snatched from the site--can you guess? Gin Blossoms discography. And damn have I been listening to it, blasting it when the ladies aren't home, drowning out the little girl that lives next door's singing lesson, playing air guitar in the living room, thinking of my Pops.





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7WaJt02sTE

Will you carry me across the sea...

I honestly don't remember the first time I heard Sunny Day Real Estate's "Diary." It must have been ten or more years ago, in High School. I assume I was in my 4Runner, or in Juice Box's Jeep. I don't remember. So, I can't say how long it has been since I have wanted to see them live, but it has been a while.

I got to see them Sunday night. They were amazing, in the most un-bastardized, literal sense of that word.

Elle and I went and ran into Terrence of the Lafayette Luftwaffe. Terrence got to see them in their heyday, on their tour supporting "How it Feels to be Something On." We both pine for that period of music. We both still listen to Superdrag, SDRE, Samiam, and other bands from the early-nineties, before the word "Emo" was ruined, coopted and stripped of any meaning. It is a word that does not mean anything anymore, and certainly one that a band like SDRE does not recognize.

I'm sure one day I will get around to writing a long-form essay about my love affair with this time period of music, about the aesthetics of vulnerability, etc. But right now I want to tell you that SDRE played an incredible show. The crowd (which consisted of a disproportionate number of tall, chubby, black-shirted sad men, so many that is was very difficult for Elle to see no matter where we were in the crowd) erupted at the first notes of each song, a choir singing in unison to each chorus.

It was a good show and one I will not forget soon.

Here's some clips.

It's starting to feel like fall here in New York. The leaves have already begun to look singed at the edges and the air feels lighter today. These are the days for bike rides, for sunset sessions and offshore winds. For coffee on the boardwalk. The beginnings and ends of the day auburn and rusted, crisp and clear.

This is my last semester as an undergraduate student. I have been in New York for almost two years. I feel like I have been here forever, yet at the same time like I have just arrived.

I spend a lot of time browsing graduate schools in the afternoons, waiting for 4:45 to roll around so i can pedal downtown to pick up Elle from work. It makes me hopeful, yet empties me. Where to go now, what to study, what to do. MFA in creative writing, try to get a book deal? PhD in American Studies, teach college, write essays on the bowels of American popular culture? Who knows which way the wind blows.

I do know that in <9 months I am getting married to a girl who everyday surprises me with he fits of beauty, her moments of grace and humor, her empathy. Other than that, well, I'll figure it out. I'm not worried about it. Not worried at all.

I realized that I never put a decent shot of MY bike up, and, since I will inevitably be putting a picture of Jack's bike I just finished with Devotion, I figure I might as well. My baby:

I built Elle a bike. I'm very proud of how it came out.

We went skateboarding yesterday. Elle and Noelle hung out and chewed gum while Vava and I shredded. I haven't skated in a while--not counting trips to the grocery school on my zip zinger. It was a good feeling, still being able to pull a few tricks out of my bag for Vava.

Here are some pictures Elle took:

News. A little late.

I asked Elle to marry me.

She said yes.

I have been thinking about asking her for a long time. That sentence makes it seem casual kind of, which I promise you it was not.

I decided I was going to do it before we went to Nova Scotia, one night lying next to her as she slept with her eyes half-open. I started looking for rings. Over the next couple weeks I spent hours walking around the city looking at rings that felt empty, cold, diamonds that sparkled wildly yet felt distant, fake, soulless. I talked to my Mom, something I have started to do a little more often lately, about rings. She mentioned the ring her and my dad got married with, that she had saved it and would love for me to have it.

My Dad got a pretty bum deal in my opinion. There are obviously two sides to their story, but the one I have witnessed wasn't very fair to him. He worshiped my Mom. When they got divorced I got an email from one of her friends wondering how I was dealing with everything. She was a good friend of my Mom's from childhood, and knew my Dad and her from the beginning. Your Dad always adored your Mom, she said. Put her on a pedestal, but she never took it well, being worshiped.

He gave her that ring and they were married in the backyard of the house where, one year later, I was born. The story since then isn't all bad news. Not even close. I mean there are three of us now, and the earlier part of our childhoods were spent in the company of two parents who loved each other and us very much.

Anyhow, anyone who knows me knows how close my Dad and I are. Pete says it is incestual. My Dad is my best friend. And I feel like I share the same idealism about my relationship with Elle that he had for my Mom. I worship her. She is the most beautiful person I have ever known, the most amazing, rational girl I have ever met. She takes care of me, knows how I am feeling--sometimes before I do--, and is always, always there for me. When I fall down--literally--she picks me up. And I think she feels the same way about me. And that blows my mind. We never get sick of each other. Ever.

SO, I had the ring my Dad gave my Mom refinished, turning it into white gold, and the diamonds made to sparkle like it did when my Dad gave it to her 26 years ago. I wanted that ring to mean what it did to my Dad, and for it to be received the way it should have been. I wanted to redeem it, and in doing that, redeem my Dad. I hope this doesn't sound cruel. It isn't. My Dad had his heart broken. He risked it all, time and time again, and got burned. Elle knows this, knows how it weighs upon me, and understand me better because of it.

I think she also realizes how much it means for me to want to get married, knowing what happened with my parents. If Elle wasn't who she is, and we weren't who we are together, I would have gladly ended up living in a rooming house with Pete, Jack, and probably Lucas and Larry, for the rest of my life. Elle has forced me to reconsider and retract many statements I have made about the nature of women, the nature of committed relationships, etc. etc. She has made a liar out of me, in many ways.

So, I asked her to marry me.

Two Saturdays ago I was supposed to go looking for apts during the day. I was going to ask her that night. Her birthday was Sunday and we were supposed to go to dinner with her parents. Saturday night was my chance. It would surprise her and be a birthday present to remember.

I made reservations at a cuban restaurant in DUMBO, and we had plans to ride over the Brooklyn Bridge on the way back, something Elle had never done. I would ask her there, the city behind us twinkling.

But, Elle decided that since it was such a nice day that we could ride bikes around Brooklyn and look at the apratments together. I thought that would be fine. We could come back in the afternoon, get cleaned up, and head out for dinner.

So we rode bikes around for 6 hours, got home, and were exhausted. She suggested we order food instead of going out. No, I said, lets go out. It will be fine. She was exhausted though, so I didn't have much of a choice.

We ordered wings.

I was freaking out. I called Kayla, told her the situation as I ran through the grocery store to get stuff to make a salad. She said it would be fine. I thought maybe I should wait. Another time, i thought. Wait for the perfect moment.

But I had been working myself up to this point for over a month now.

I lit candles, put the wings on plates instead of eating out of the styrofoam, and asked her to marry me about 15 minutes into our meal. I was sick to my stomach and Elle could tell something was up.

I got down on my knee and she offered to stand up (she was sitting criss-cross-apple sauce). I don't know what to do, she said. Do you put it on my finger? I say yes, do you put it on my finger?

Then we hugged and kissed a lot, jumped up and down and tried to figure out what to do about telling people.

Now you know. I'm engaged to the most beautiful girl. The girl of my dreams, as if I had created her myself, to my own specifications and liking. She is mine, or will be officially sometime in June (we think).

I'm a lucky, lucky young man.

Bear was a good pup. She always welcomed me loudly when I cam home late from hardcore shows, or when I snuck in from the Rompin Room for some Oreo's and milk. Usually Dad would wake up from the door opening or from bear barking and join me. We would sit, the dogs sitting under the table or in the dining room, and dunk our cookies together, talking of life, love, hate, politics, religion (or lack thereof), etc. Even as she got older, and her seizures began to strip her of her vitality, she was such a loving and faithful pup. As her mind went, her love stayed put. My Mom was crucial in taking care of her, and always knew just how to calm the poor lady down. Last year her brother, Wolf, died. I wasn't there to see him off. But it was a rough time for me, being alone in NYC, feeling alienated from everyone I loved and cared for, and hearing my Dad tell the story of Bear wandering around the backyard, digging and sniffing, trying to find her brother out there in the backyard somewhere, trying to dig him up and bring him back.
She tolerated my pup Lemon's harassment, as long as Lemon didn't take her chair from her. She will be missed.

You Are Not A Stranger Here

So my friend Cornelius Blackpool suggested a collection of short stories to me. "It's called 'You Are Not A Stranger Here' by Adam Haslett," he said. "It's fucking awesome."

Blackpool has always seemed a damn smart guy, having majored in Literature and went on to work in the Hedge Fund world.

Anyhow, Elle bought me the book from the Strand last week. I finished the book i three days of subway rides. Besides the ones where Elle and I meet on the back of the train on our ways home from work, they were the best subway rides of my life.

Haslett graduated from the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and from Yale Law School. It's the only thing he has ever published, and it was a finalist for the Pulitzer and the National Book Award. And for good reason, too. His stories are definitely MFA fiction, but the best kind. Critics have called the stories Checkhovian. I guess that's fair.

Here is the first story from the collection:

"Notes For My Biographer"

Two things to get straight from the beginning: I hate doctors and have never joined a support group in my life. At seventy-three, I'm not about to change. The mental-health establishment can go screw itself on a barren hilltop in the rain before I touch their snake oil or listen to the visionless chatter of men half my age. I have shot Germans in the fields of Normandy, filed twenty-six patents, married three women, survived them all, and am currently the subject of an investigation by the IRS, which has about as much chance of collecting from me as Shylock did of getting his pound of flesh. Bureaucracies have trouble thinking clearly. I, on the other hand, am perfectly lucid.

You can read the rest here:

www.all-story.com/issues.cgi?action=show_story&story_id=46

I never posted a picture of my head:

5 staples and 4 interior stitches. I've been getting headaches lately, but was told it's fine on Thursday at the ER. I have Post-Concussion Disorder. They said the headaches would go away eventually.

So, we've been surfing a lot lately. Jon, Dale, Lucas, Pete and I have been on a bender. Elle has been coming and bodysurfing with us, too. Summer is amazing when you are young, in love, and have good friends around you.

These are Lucas' pictures of the Schwinn Paramount I purchased off him. I will take pictures of the frame built with my stuff soon:






I bought it of Lucas for a great deal and then built it up with Ezra. He helped me lace up some Phil Wood HF track hubs to Open Pro's and got me some Sugino 75's and a Nitto 65 post. I have nt gotten a chance to load the pictures I took of it yet. It hauls ass, and will probably be a contributor to my ultimate demise.

I got a new bike, a new log, a new spot for the summer, and nothing to show for it on this blog. I'm working on it. Stay chuuunneed.

Mark Greif is one of the smartest men I have ever met. He has been my teacher and life-coach at the New School for the last year. In that short time he has introduced new ideas, confirmed old ones, and dismantled and obliterated others. He is the editor or a personal favorite magazine of mine, n+1, and a writer who consistently weaves philosophy, literary criticism, pop-references, and sociology throughout his work, and in his daily lectures/discussions. He recently published an essay titled "What You"ve Done To My World" in an anthology titled Heavy Rotation. the Anthology consists of writers articulating something about a particular album that changed their life. Mark chose Fugazi.

Last fall we came to class to find that Mark had cued up the projector and had several YouTube videos of Fugazi, Bikini Kill, etc. ready for us to watch. We sat and intellectualized Punk for the rest of class, mark becoming flush when he found himself "falling into the 'nostalgia trap'" when discussing his younger years.

"What You've Done To My World"
By Mark Greif
Minor Threat didn't last long as a band. It was, though, as the music writers say, "influential." Meanwhile, its young singer, Ian MacKaye, moved through several short-lived bands until he formed another stable group, which added a second, lesser known but highly emotional young singer, Guy Picciotto, from the even shorter-lived (but "influential") band Rites of Spring. This was, as it turned out, a piling together of two geniuses on the Lennon/McCartney model—with a new rhythm section of comparable genius. They called their band Fugazi.

It chagrins me to be writing about Fugazi, since no one is less qualified than I am to do it. I wasn't there in D.C. when they started, I didn't see them on their first tour or their second, and I always had the profound and pleasurable sense that their music at least partly excluded me, because it was so tightly bound up with the post-hardcore and straight-edge world, a subculture I had nothing to do with. They were not commercial, they didn't offer themselves to the world through radio or TV, they didn't connect to anything else I knew or that felt natural to me. In fact, in addition to being a band, Fugazi was a kind of phenomenon known to many people who didn't care for them musically: an anticommercial, ultramoral, somewhat puritanical outfit that toured constantly, often playing in such unconventional places as church basements and college rec halls; that insisted on an all-ages admissions to shows so that fans under eighteen or twenty-one could attend; that held down ticket charges as low as five dollars, rather than raking in the money.

read the rest here:

http://nplusonemag.com/what-youve-done-my-world

There's more to life than surfing

I used to believe that. That statement is a large part of why I live in New York. After I gave up trying to be a pro-surfer, after I gave up trying to conceal myself within the surf industry, after I allowed myself to grow as a human being, I felt like I had to let something go, to shed a skin, molt, in order to fit new things in. Surfing was my life--exclusively--until I was 15, when I made room in my schedule for hardcore bands. Even then though, surfing drove my decisions, it controlled me. As I got older and the world didn't end up being as wonderful as I hoped it would be, I resented surfing for not preparing me for the real world. I blamed it for me not having healthy relationships, for me not having a true high school experience, for me not writing novels when I was fresh out of high school, before all the cynicism left me paralyzed and desperate.

I posted something a few weeks ago about leaving nothing behind, about burning everything in your tracks, leaving no trace. Surfing was one of the things that I burned. I have not allowed myself to honestly enjoy surfing like I did when I was 17 for a long time now, and I want to. I want to go surfing and not carry any of the egotistical, competitive baggage with me.

Pete and I surfed the other day at Rockaway. Elle st on the beach and watched, even came out and took one in on her belly fr a bit. Even playing around in the Rockaway slop, Pete surfing in cut-off jeans, our backs pasty and covered with a layer of winter-skin, it still felt like we were trying to prove something. I knew that Pete and I were by far the best surfers in the water. We usually are. That's something the 18 year-old Pete adn Ashton hoped for, something we strove to be. But, it doesn't make Pete or I happy anymore. Pete talked about how when he surfs with our friends from NY, who don't surf as well as us but who enjoy surfing so much that it is contagious and pleasant to be around--they are like grommets, but thirty-years old and have wives or kids, etc.--because he feels weird surfing aggressively when they are around, like it will kill their enthusiasm.

I ate this for lunch/breakfast. It was good.


Anyhow, what I am getting at is this:
I want to have fun when i paddle out again. And I plan on doing it more often.

Elle and I have discussed our plans for December, after I graduate. We still don't know what to do, but there is talk of going somewhere I can surf more often. There's also talk of China. And New Zealand. And Australia. There's talk.

I always dreamed of being with someone who at the very least considered my ridiculous idealism(sustainable NZ ranch with dozens of dogs, Nova Scotia cottage, Australian point surf via Vespa's, European stays, houseboats, sailboats, etc.). To be with someone who actually suggests ridiculous ideas like Elle does is quite wonderful.

And, you should see how good looking she is in a helmet on her bike. Hot damn!

I've surfed three times in the last 10 days. It feels good, being back in the water. I'm slowly getting it back. Pete and I have been getting some fun ones at Rockaway. Pete has been blasting the fins off the back on his new whip. Elle even took a few to the shore on Saturday. The water's warm, we're staying in a loft in SoHo for the next two months, my new log is perfect, my girlfriend still wants me around all the time, my bike will be built by the weekend, and life is very very good. I am a lucky young man.

As if I didn't miss home already, what with Kayla, Jack, Pops, and Little Girl being there together for the summer, the surf being fun at North Jetty, and me trning 25 without them, Jack sent me these today:

Happy Father's Day, Dad.

It would, and presumably will, take years for me to pen how much love I have for my dad. Mark Goggans is a father like no other. He was a natural. I'm sure he would tell you how hard raising the three of us little hellions was, but it never seemed to faze him, or, at least, he never let his stress show. He taught us and every one of our friends how to surf. he coached our baseball teams. He turned off the TV. He gave us books and lit fires under our asses. My dad stands above all other people to me. I love him with al my heart and miss him dearly, though I know he thinks of me everyday when he wakes up to my dog licking his face, or comes home to my dog's poop on his bed. I love you dad.

Elle is sleeping

So I thought I would write a little something.

I had a pretty lovely birthday. Jon, Pete and I drove out to Long Beach and surfed just west of Lido with Dutchie, China Ty, and FM Borroughs. Dubstar even made it out towards the end. The waves were decent sized, glassy, and super consistent. We surfed for almost four hours, sharing waves, dropping in on each other, listening to Franco regulate (excerpted conversation: Franco: Alright, lets spread out a bit. We're getting a little too clustered together. Pete: We're the only people out, Franco), and watching Ty and Dutchie give their childhood stomping grounds a going over.

We headed back to BK after stopping for coffee and a fritter at Star(five)bucks, and a bagel place. Bless got a ticket for "almost hitting a kid" while blowing past a stopped schoolbus (strangely, the bus was stopped in the left lane of a divided road, like in the middle, and the kids were getting out to cross the median, and, according to most state laws, you only have to stop for a school bus traveling the opposite direction if there is no median or divider, thus making it seem like a literal death trap for the bus to be dropping kids off in the median), but the guy let him off for a seatbelt violation.

I got home and rode to DNA to pick up Elle and ride our bikes back to her house for some R&R. We ate some hummus and crackers and cheese, and took a nap for an hour. We decided to meet everyone at Mollusk 'round closing time for beers on the deck and then headed to Fiore on Grand street for some fettilini al fruti de mare. Ben and JT came and represented SRQ. Pete pedaled his skinny ass over. Jon and Monia came and brought me Lance Arstrong's book and a bar of decadent Godiva. Jesso and Ilan came followed by Amanda S. Franco had to take a shower and comb his pomp and met us a little later at Fiore for a glass of White and a big slab of steak.

It was really a great day, mellow as it was. It was the first birthday I have not spent either out of the country or with family in a long time.

Jack sent me a video of Lemon swimming into the middle of the intracoastal, chasing a tennis ball with a caption that read : Happy birthday dickhead.

Jack is lucky, getting to lay around the romping room with Little Girl all day, getting lifted with my dad around the BBQ grill or the fire pit, helping my sis bake shit in the kitchen. I miss them quite a lot. Lemon has apparently maxed out at 32 pounds, which is almost twice the size she was when we were so blessed with her arrival into our lives almost a year ago. Little Girl is big now. When she jumps on the bed in the mornings it will hurt. As well as having very little comprehension of Other People's Space, she has very little understanding of her own physical presence and strength.

So, that's all for now.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I have existed on this earth for 25 years. My lifetime is at the very best 1/4 of the way over. And that's fine, I guess. You can't live forever.

I have been doing too much thinking lately. Mainly about the past, about my past, and have come across a lot of strange forgotten things. When I was younger I was all about hardcore bands and read each band's lyric sheets in full. I always loved the Don't Look Back attitude that hardcore seemed to deliver.

But, I don't listen to hardcore anymore, not really. And I constantly look back.

But thinking about my past these last couple weeks I have discovered something about myself that I am not sure I'm proud of:

I burn everything in my tracks--not just bridges, everything. I change my mind, set a match, turn and go. Until recently, I never really looked back at all.

Anyone who knows me well will also atest to my unwavering devotion to Ernest Hemingway. I think "Snows of Kilimanjaro" is one of his best stories, which makes it one of the best stories of all time, if you ask me.

In the story, Harry is dying from gang green. Death sits at his feet and breathes upon his neck. His lady is with him, trying to make him comfortable while the wait for the medical plane to arrive. He resents her, resents the people he has known, the life he has led. He is determined to ruin everything he can before he dies, to take all the good with him:

"Is it absolutely necessary to kill of everything you left behind? I mean do you have to take away everything? Do you have to kill your horse, and your wife and burn your saddle and armor?" she asks.....

"Do you think its fun to do this? I don't know why I'm doing it. It's trying to kill to keep yourself alive, I imagine...............I don't like to leave anything," the man said." I don't like to leave things behind."

Does anyone else feel this way? I know every girl I have ever gone on a date with, or dated for a long period of time-- actually, pretty much every girl I've ever known-- would recognize the sentiments in me. And I don't know why I do it, really.

I used to consider myself a misanthrope of sorts, justifying my actions by call ing them intellectual rebellion. To quote Shai Hulud:

"I am the wayward son of man, my fathers have darkened what was the warmest
heart the world would have ever known, relish in what you have created.

deprived of life a formless shadow deprived of life
set your body ablaze!"

So, what i am getting at is that I want to break this habit. I want to move on, to stop being so angry at the world. It is going to kill me, the anger.

The rehearsal dinner was held at Greg and Janina's house, just south of them a ways. Their house was too perfect for words, and was tucked away in a little bay, overlooking these beautiful little islands and points. Ezra made a big bucket of decadent pulled pork and we all sat and ate and drank and watched the sun set. As darkness fell (it didn't get dark until almost 2200 hrs), Greg made a fire out back on the water and we all sat around and talked or stared silently at the profound beauty that is rural, coastal Nova Scotia at dusk. Someone grabbed a guitar from inside and Glen Hansard--of "Once" fame--and their friend Sam Amadon played a bunch of songs. It was really quite lovely.



Elle and I headed back to where we were staying at the Lighthouse Motel in pleasantville and tried to wrap our heads around the beauty that we had been a part of that day. it was a good day, I'll leave it at that.





The wedding was at this tiny fisherman's church on an outer LaHave island, tucked away down a gravel road, and overlooking another one of the picture-perfect bays. The church has stained glass in all the windows of lighthouses and was built in memory of several fisherman and locals who drowned at sea. The building looks like the skeleton of a boat's hull from the inside and smelled of rich pine. The afternoon light draped over the 30 or so of their close friends and family. The pictures will do the event justice more than words, but I will transcribe something that I said to Ez and Hill during the service.

"I have spent a good part of my life afraid that themost important moments of my life, the most sincere emotions, were cliche and sentimental, ripe for parody, afraid of being called naive for believing in things like love and beauty. But as I have gotten to know Hil and Ez, the life they have made for themselves, the people that surround them, and th love they share, i can't help but feel that it is genuine.

Their love is nothing to roll your eyes at.

And that makes me happy. Like soul-deep happy"



I thought I was going to throw up when I sat down.

Anyway, the wedding was incredibly beautiful and I couldn;t imagine a more appropriate way of celebrating two of my favorite people in this world's wedding. It was incredible. Glen played an Al Green song before they gave their vows, Sam played a song of his appropriately titled "Wedding Dress" as they walked down the isle together. Their vows were traditional Celtic vows, which as with everythng else, were perfect.


the photos that follow were taken by Elle on her pop's Pentax.

Last week Elle and I flew north for the Caldwell-Nanney union in the LaHave Islands of Nova Scotia.

We flew into Halifax on Thursday and arrived early in the afternoon, rented a car, and drove three hours south-west(I think) across the peninsula (make sure you don't call it an "island"; people there are very quick to correct you and apparently very proud of being "connected to the rest of Canada" and when correcting you usually make some sort of comment about how "Americans know nothing about Canada," though a young friend of Ezra's who lives there, when we told him this story, said, "shit, it's pretty much a fucking island") to the Bay of Fundy.


The Bay of Fundy claims to have the most extreme tidal shifts in the world. A combination of bottom contours, currents, and a Viking curse or something, causes the tides to fluxuate tremendously, leaving boats that once were sitting pretty in 20 feet of water high and dry at low-tide.

We had reservations at the Thistle Down Bed and Breakfast and were pleased to find it actually on the Bay and as pretty as the pictures made it seem. The B&B was owned by a guy named Mel whose eyes never fully opened and whose dry sense of humor and creepiness combined to cause a slight case of paranoia in Elle and I when we found the room furnished with a stuffed white teddy bear which I quickly examined for a camera or other recording device.


We spent a day and a half there eating scallops (in everything!--scallops in our omellettes even), relaxing, and driving around the area. We hiked to Balancing Rock, drove out the the furthest part of the peninsula, took a bunch of ferry's, and checked out some lighthouses.

On Elle's request I had been growing a beard for the two months prior to this. It had gotten a little grizzly and she seemed to have changed her mind about it (when we first started dating I had a beard but shaved it very soon after we became serious--very soon, as in ON our first real date, which is another story entirely--and she wanted me to grow it again). I brought ONE disposable razor with me to shave the thing off my face. It took 45 minutes of hacking at my poor, sensitive face to remove the bulk of it. I left this:


We left Saturday mronig and drove back across the island to the LaHave Islands for Ezra and Hillary's rehearsal dinner in Petite Riviere. It took two hours of driving through empty pin tree-lined roads to get to the coast and another half-hour weaving along the most beautiful rocky coastal roads before we found the island.

Hillary and Ezra have been telling me about Nova Scotia since I met them. They spend a good amount of their summers there and are always eager to share it with their friends. They decided the wedding was the perfect way to share such a special part of their lives with their closest friends and family. Seeing where and how they live up there was incredible.

I will follow with a post on the wedding, which I am still trying to do justice, and a bunch of photos.