Sic Semper Tyrannis

Pure, Simple, Fantastic Part III.

III.

The memories from this fortuitous day in question are hazy at best. Perhaps a more writerly way to say that would be “I remember it like it was yesterday…” In either case, sitting here in my landlocked adulthood one thing I’ll never forget from my previous life on the beach was how the man-made world seemed to gradually fade off into the naturally-made world. It wasn’t more than fifty yards or so before sandy concrete and parking meters morphed into dunes that you couldn’t see over, interspersed with non-functional staircases crafted with lonely, grayed-out boards made ancient and pitted from lifetimes of exposure to the moist, ceaseless winds originating from somewhere halfway across the world.

On the really hot days you couldn’t run out to the tide fast enough to escape the scalding sand if you were brave and went barefoot. And venturing from parking lot to waterline in shoes and socks was equally treacherous. Every step you took poured more sand through holes in your shoes until, by the time you could actually see water, it was like lifting witches’ cauldrons filled with barbells and attached to your legs.

Even though I was prepared for a most intensive, specialized shoreline assault mission with my Zip-loc bag of Joes, I regret to say that I remember none of the details of play that day. For all I know it could have been an epic, bloody battle like at the end of Red Dawn.

But isn’t that the way childhood is? I know that I know that I know that I spent oodles of time, hours upon hours posing these miniature militiamen into appropriate positions. However, I’ll be damned if I can remember any of the moments themselves.

Like I’ve hinted at earlier, time is measured in different ways when you’re a kid. I have this theory that I’m not quite ready to publish in Scientific American yet, but it goes as follows: as you get older, the basic unit of time increases. When I was really young the basic unit of time was a day. All planning stretched out no further than a day: “Today I’m going to eat my toast, watch Tom and Jerry, hide in the backyard while mom sweeps the house, have some lunch, maybe watch some Disney channel and wait for Dad to get home.” By high school I could never prognosticate further out than two days. By the time I was in college the basic unit of time had expanded out to a week. “Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I have English Comp, Math for Poets, and Fundamentals of Blah, blah. Tuesday and Thursday I have my science lab with that cute Darcy girl, and this weekend I think I’ll hang out with my dorky guy friends.” Now, having reached my thirtieth birthday, the basic unit of time is about two weeks- one paycheck. I’ll bet my parents are making plans by the month. My grandparents…

I wonder what the basic unit of time is for those gray-haired, Chinese mystics who live to be, like, one hundred and forty and learn how to fly.

I digress.

I may not remember the details of how exactly my crack-team of commandoes secured the Georgia coastline that day, but that may be due to one of those moments of childhood singularity- you know, the kind that you remember a couple decades thence and write about in a short story?

At some point that day, as the sun had gotten as high in the sky as it was likely to, I placed Duke and Rock n’ Roll and Scarlett and the whole gang back in their Zip-loc so as to spend some time in the water.

One of the great things about beaches is that they are equal-opportunity bodies of water. Unlike a swimming pool, lake, or pond there are a variety of ways to enjoy yourself without having to commit to total immersion. You can dip your foot in a pool, but eventually you have to jump in.

At the beach, however, you’re allowed to just sit right at the point where the water gives up its advance on the sand and recedes back. It’s possible to sit in an inch or two of water for hours on end and come away feeling like you’ve had a pretty productive day of water sports. And people walk along beaches without shoes but dressed in regular clothes all the time. And being a conservatively timid kid I found myself plopped down at the water’s edge, fascinated with how it never seemed quite possible to dig a hole in the wet sand. Every few seconds the dying throes of a wave would creep up and erase your efforts. The feeling of the earth below you, melting between your toes is a sensation that is difficult to forget. Normally, that sensation- the wet sand, hot sea, seagulls chattering- that was enough.

But this day, this momentous occasion, it wasn’t enough to dwindle in the puddles and tide pools.

Many times in the past, I had watched my brothers wading in water up to their necks, jumping into waves, seemingly miles out (but in reality, maybe fifteen or twenty feet), they laughed and yelled with excitement as they waited for the next wave to splash into them. And I figured I could be just as daring. So, I slowly walked out further, ever so further into the sea- solid, wet sand slowly giving way to inches of water, giving way to water at my knees, giving way to…And upon each new goal set and attained, the ocean kept coming at me, ceaseless, the little white-capped piles of water ahead of me slowly becoming hills, becoming mountains, all unaware of my presence.

It was at that point when the warm water was at chest level that I lost my footing, probably surprised by an unexpected wave. And I learned fear.

It’s amazing how in one flash-of-lightning you can become fully aware of things you took for granted one millisecond before.

One instant before I was swept away that day I lived in a world where there is always a ground to place your two feet, air for your lungs to breathe, and sight without burning. But all of that went away in one frightening instant. For the first time I had recognition of fear. It’s an odd, chilling sensation when your head goes under water, feet touch nothing, you twist and arch your back, squirming to find bottom so as to make sense of the surrounding murk and the sound…Oh my God , the sound. It’s the sound of suspension, stasis, like a low hum, with eery slicing sounds as your arms flail in the water.

The vast expanse of the ocean was waiting for me that day, like some kind of patient predator- one of those that builds elaborate traps and simply bides their time until their next meal stumbles by.

But for some reason, the sea said “not yet.”

That flash of panic was followed by the knowledge that I wasn’t in that deep of water. “There’s gotta be a floor here somewhere.” I had kicked and squirmed enough, stretched and reached out far enough that my fingers eventually felt solid ground again. I could make heads and tails of my situation in space, from which it’s a fairly natural maneuver to get your head above water by leaping off the ocean floor.

That first huge gasp of air after sucking in a nose full of salty water is exhilarating. I couldn’t run up to the beach fast enough, swimsuit weighing me down, hair plastered to my head, all the while looking around to see who noticed my near drowning, to know whether I should feel embarrassed. No one seemed to notice as my world changed from an idyllic romp in the sun to a universe where fear and death were possible. No one noticed as reality expanded one thousandfold in less than a second. No one noticed. I could check off the worry of embarrassment. But was that better?

I could be dramatic and literary and say I remember that event every day of my life and thank God for blah, blah, blah. But the truth is, I go years without even thinking about it. In fact, I only am reminded of my near drowning when I come desperately close to admitting that I can’t swim, an adult of thirty-something years of age.

Thankfully the older you get the less you have to talk about these things.

posted by Mike @ 2:51 PM 1 comments

Pure, Simple Fantastic Part II.

II.

For whatever reason there was one day I indeed had my precious time alone in that rear seat. It was a typical hot Savannah summer day, the sun just pummeling down as if Mother Nature had seen enough and finally decided to get rid of the humans. On top of that was the fact that the station wagon offered little to no measurable air conditioning, especially all the way back in the Crow’s Nest. TV chefs and cooking personalities talk about “sweating” vegetables in a frying pan. Maybe Mother Nature was a carnivore, preparing a chubby kid snack for herself.

Despite the hellacious heat, heaven was simultaneously present. After all, this was a beach day.

It’s about an hour’s drive to Tybee Island from where we lived, which is approximately 4,200 minutes or 70 hours in kid-time. Days at the beach weren’t an all-too common occurrence for the Stutzman clan, probably because it’s no “day at the beach” for parents to cart around three boys constanty fidgeting while they face the prospect of aging at seventy times the normal rate, arguing amongst each other, facing traffic, the heat, the temperamental A/C and just the general ludicrousness of life.

The drive out to the island was an observant kid’s dream as far as scenery goes: past the Krispy Kreme, turn right onto the long boulevard with palm trees planted evenly in the median, one for every local soldier killed in battle (if I remember correctly), huge rollercoaster bridges that seem to give the car wings to glide above the saturated marshes and millionaire homes and boats and gray sand and the families of crabs that live in pockmarks of the stinking, salty ground, past the old civil war fort where something important surely happened amongst the man-made mounds and tunnels and cannons, the bricks and bars. I’ll never forget the significance of the violin and bow found in the moat and displayed at the fort’s museum, surrounded by black-and-white sepia photos of those stoic civil war guys who all looked like Lincoln, gazing off to the photo’s edge, silent. I always wondered, “Who has time for violins when a civil war is happening?”

But today was not a day for the civil war. I had bigger fish to fry.

In the seat next to me, in a carefully sealed Zip-loc bag, was a crack team of military commandoes, a beach assault team- the likes of which the world had never seen assembled: reporting directly to me was Duke, the First Sergeant and natural-born leader. The importance of this mission could not be overstated and for times like these, you need cool heads in control.

Handling communications was Breaker, whose job always seemed a little nebulous to me. He didn’t even carry a gun. But I’ve never been a technical guy and was sure he was handy for something. Probably making phone calls on his fancy headset.

Providing versatility with the crossbow, (a genius idea- a bow and arrow held horizontally) was the fiery red-head counter-intelligence soldier Scarlett. Also important as a source of boobs for distracting the enemy.

Bringing the heavy firepower was Rock n’ Roll, his blond hair and manly beard a reminder of better times, when toughness could be measured by the amount of hair on your face or the number of keyboards you had on stage in front of you or the length of your cape.∗

In case of trouble, it’s always a good idea to have a teacher. Thus the inclusion of Spirit and his trusty eagle buddy. And speaking of trusty animal buddies, Mutt and Junkyard were called up for service for this mission. Unfortunately the dog disappeared- probably into the recesses of the house, under a couch or other inaccessible cranny. Mutt never seemed to be the same without his dog. He was a “dog handler” after all. His whole identity was stricken. This is why specialization is a very risky undertaking. Markets dry up. Funding disappears. Schools of literary criticism become passé.

Also storming the beach that day would be Snow Job, the arctic trooper.

Finally, as an early demonstration of my seeking the best in people, the white ninja Storm Shadow was also enlisted, despite his history of working with the enemy and the red cobra image right there on his uniform. Still, if you sent an army of ninjas to any war… Plus, in a rare reversal of Western mores and fashion, Storm Shadow wore white while his “good guy” counterpoint, Snake Eyes wore black.

I always felt mildly jealous of the kids on the G.I. Joe commercials. They would get to play with the coolest new figures and vehicles amongst the most awesomely exotic locales. Granted, what looked like a swampy landscape on the planet of Dagobah was in actuality a corner in some drafty television studio soundstage. But today I was going to be one of those kids. I would have miles of actual coastline, the wispy salty wind, the sand dunes and beach grass…all of it real.

∗ Applies only to Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman, who by all observational accounts was the model for the Rock n’ Roll action figure.

posted by Mike @ 7:39 PM 3 comments

Pure, Simple Fantastic Part I.

Pure, Simple, Fantastic

I.

There is a certain “schlupping” sound that it makes.

The schlup and the sound of friction, like when you rub your fingers along the outside of a balloon. That strange hybrid is exactly the sound you get when you’re a little kid, say five or six years old, and your soft, white thigh flesh sticks to the vinyl seat as you’re moving around, getting fidgety from a long car ride.

But then, who’s to say it’s a long car ride? Kid-minutes are roughly seventy times as long as adult minutes. And is the fact that it’s a long car ride even important? Does the back of your thigh make the same sound when it slides across the seat during a short car ride? Of course. But it’s MY story and I thought it was an important detail, so back off.

Dateline: Savannah, GA- The early 80s

My hometown isn’t just a song by Springsteen. It’s also an actual place. You can point to it on a globe or map. I remember Savannah being a lot like hell in that people pretty much resigned themselves to being hot and sweaty all the time. I lived there from the womb until about eleven years of age, and it snowed a grand total of once in those years. And by “snowed,” I mean the grass had some frosting at the tips of the blades until the morning sun evaporated it. So, we wore shorts a lot. Thus the shluppy, farty sound my legs made when they stuck to those utilitarian, tan bench seats.

But Savannah was also a lot like heaven. For one thing we had a car.

The legend of that first family car looms large in my memory/ imagination; as transportation of the masses should. This poop-brown 1976 Chevelle station wagon was the wondrous device that shifted the Stutzman clan from one world, with its requisite culture and expectations, (namely our house), to strange, exotic new worlds where all bets were off, like Burger King. Or on really long days, we might ride clear across town to the Hobby Shop so my oldest brother Mark could get some glue or just the right paint for the intricate airplane models he would build. At the time I thought my eldest brother was some kind of magician. I never really got to see the process involving directions in both Japanese and English and time spent waiting for the glue on the plastic parts to dry. I only saw cool airplanes hanging from the ceiling in battle position, held in place by clear thread.

Anyway, that station wagon was something. (I mean that in the “folksy” sense. As in “Man, that station wagon was something,” not “that station wagon had physical presence.") The most radical feature for my little-kid brain to process was the rear seat. It faced backwards! Don’t let the awesomeness of that concept escape you, dear reader. If you’re reading this you’re probably old enough to have become jaded to the beautiful world of kid concepts and the pure, the simple, the fantastic.

There’s something so delightful about traveling -moving- but not really knowing where to. Riding in that back seat looking out the tailgate at where you were, with someone else worried about the logistics of driving and figuring out where to go and how to get there and all that rigamarole; that was just the best. (Not to mention making faces at the other drivers. Even at that age, I got a sense of how hard those adults were trying to ignore us, my brothers and I, with our fingers at the corners of our mouths, stretching them out. The default response was to stare ahead, as if terrified by a thought.) And I am still enthralled when I see the odd train or bus or people-mover or what have you that allows a passenger to disengage from what’s coming up ahead.

So, logically Mark and my other brother Todd and I would fight over that back seat. In one of the cruelest design flaws, the builders or architects or other scientific-type responsible for that seat forgot to make it big enough to fit all three of the Stutzman boys. In fact, it could really only seat one of us comfortably, and two of us rather uncomfortably. Three of us? Forget it.

My parents must have enjoyed opening that tailgate to find, not a dead body like you would see in a mob movie or James Bond film, but a big lump of giggling boyhood. I know that would make me happy these days.

But in all honesty I have to say I enjoyed the times when I had that rear seat to myself. Much like Edgar Allen Poe, I think I might have had a devil looking over me as a child, silently, calmly watching over my bed at night. How else do you explain a child who enjoys solitude?

Well, you could also explain it by saying: “When you’ve got two other loud boys living in the same house, demanding attention, you start to crave time alone.”

That explanation sounds less grotesque…

posted by Mike @ 3:38 PM 2 comments

An explanation

A couple years ago I started working on a "fantastical memoir" type of thing to exercise my creative writing muscles. I'm going to start posting the fruits of those labors here. It has really just been a writing exercise in the "write SOMETHING every day" method of becoming a better writer. I'm not sure that approach works for me but it gives me something to post here on the old blog! (P.S. today marks my five year anniversary with this thing! Wow!)

These posts will be LARGELY unedited, mostly just a typed version of how the pen hit paper. What I'm saying here is that it's still really rough, I don't like a lot of it, and I haven't finished it. I still revisit it every now and then. But here's what I've got so far. Hope you enjoy some of it...

posted by Mike @ 3:29 PM 0 comments

But before I get to that...

The zeitgeist of conversation between me and a couple friends of late has been "The Album." We've been listening to some "classics" and talking about the album as an artform.

Which of course always comes around to discussion of the influential ones in your own life, regardless of(or at least not entirely dictated by)the likes of Rolling Stone, The Onion, Pitchfork Media or whatever critics tell you you should like.

So, not typically being a listmaker, I thought I would at last put my list together. This is roughly in order of preference, yet not very scientific and I feign very little critical detachment. But here are my 107 favorites, (because I can't narrow it down to just 100. In fact I thought of a couple more about three hours after sending this to my friend.) Anyway, these are the albums that have brought comfort, defined a season of life, forced me to sing along, to cry, and made me see life and music differently. I still thrill to see their album covers and enjoy listening to all of them.

Feel free to chasitise me for ommissions or gross miscalculations in ordering:


1. The Beatles Abbey Road
2. The Beatles The Beatles (White Album)
3. The Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
4. Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon
5. Radiohead OK Computer
6. Led Zeppelin ZOSO
7. King Crimson Discipline
8. Elvis Costello & the Attractions Imperial Bedroom
9. Pink Floyd The Wall
10. Paul McCartney Ram
11. Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here
12. Van Halen Van Halen
13. Jellyfish Spilt Milk
14. Frank Zappa The Grand Wazoo
15. Weezer Weezer(Blue)
16. Stereolab Dots & Loops
17. The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour
18. Adrian Belew Op Zop Too Wah
19. Wilco Sky Blue Sky
20. Genesis Foxtrot
21. Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream
22. The Beatles Revolver
23. The Beatles Rubber Soul
24. Ben Folds Rockin’ the Suburbs
25. Bob Dylan The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
26. The Beatles Help!
27. Garbage Version 2.0
28. Decemberists Castaways and Cutouts
29. Paul & Linda McCartney Band on the Run
30. They Might Be Giants Factory Showroom
31. The Zombies Odessey and Oracle
32. Rush Moving Pictures
33. XTC Nonsuch
34. Elvis Costello & the Attractions Armed Forces
35. Wilco A Ghost is Born
36. Fountains of Wayne Welcome Interstate Managers
37. The Cardigans Life
38. Dave Brubeck Quartet Time Out
39. Sixpence None the Richer Divine Discontent
40. Beck Sea Change
41. Sun Kil Moon Ghosts of the Great Highway
42. Wynton Marsalis Standard Time
43. Wynton Marsalis Think of One
44. REM Automatic for the People
45. Queen A Night at the Opera
46. Sheila Divine New Parade
47. Frank Zappa Hot Rats
48. Radiohead The Bends
49. Yes Close to the Edge
50. David Gray Flesh
51. REM Life’s Rich Pageant
52. Wilco Being There
53. Yes Going for the One
54. They Might Be Giants John Henry
55. Sixpence None the Richer Sixpence None the Richer
56. Genesis Nursery Cryme
57. The Who Who’s Next
58. Dave Matthews Band Before These Crowded Streets
59. The Police Synchronicity
60. King Crimson Three of a Perfect Pair
61. Genesis Wind & Wuthering
62. Brian Wilson Smile
63. Elvis Costello & Burt Bachrach Painted From Memory
64. Bob Dylan Time Out of Mind
65. XTC Apple Venus
66. Bloomsday Bloomsday EP
67. David Bowie The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust
68. Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
69. Phish Billy Breathes
70. Coldplay A Rush of Blood to the Head
71. Rush Permanent Waves
72. Miles Davis Kind of Blue
73. Pedro the Lion It’s Hard to Find a Friend
74. U2 The Joshua Tree
75. Josh Rouse Dressed Up Like Nebraska
76. They Might Be Giants Flood
77. Led Zeppelin II
78. Radiohead Pablo Honey
79. Paul Simon Graceland
80. The Cardigans First Band on the Moon
81. Bob Marley & the Wailers Legend
82. Of Montreal Aldhils Arboretum
83. Pink Floyd Meddle
84. Dire Straits Brothers in Arms
85. Stereolab Sound-Dust
86. Fountains of Wayne Fountains of Wayne
87. Stevie Wonder Songs in the Key of Life
88. The Beach Boys Pet Sounds
89. The Beatles A Hard Day’s Night
90. The Beatles For Sale
91. King Crimson THRAK
92. MxPx Slowly Going the Way of the Buffalo
93. Red House Painters Songs for a Blue Guitar
94. Tom Petty Wildflowers
95. John Coltrane A Love Supreme
96. Portishead Live at the Roseland Ballroom
97. Ivy Apartment Life
98. High Llamas Hawaii
99. Jeff Buckley Grace
100. Tom Waits Rain Dogs
101. Elliott Smith XO
102. Metallica …And Justice for All
103. Old 97s Satellite Rides
104. Weezer Pinkerton
105. Blink 182 Enema of the State
106. Eric Clapton From the Cradle
107. Liz Phair Whitechocolatespaceegg

posted by Mike @ 3:22 PM 1 comments

Stay With Me...

I will have a pretty large update in the next couple days.
I'm going to be laying some creative stuff on you in the coming weeks.
Stay tuned for some prose-writing...

posted by Mike @ 8:21 PM 0 comments

Change of Seasons and An Invitation to Witness Awe-Inspiring Glory (aka Mike finishing a race)

Well friends, the changing of the seasons is bringing with it a change in focus for yours truly. I was a biking nut for the whole summer. With the purchase of a new bike in June (and a little spandex…largely against my will) and lots and lots of training miles I now feel totally immersed in cycling culture. Riding a bike has become one of my favorite ways to pass time.

But the time has come to go back to the activity that largely turned the tide for me over two or three years of massive weight loss—running.

Running is an equally interesting thing to decide to do. One of the best shirts I saw in the marathon said: “My sport is your sport’s punishment.” Through the whole process of dropping the lbs I had a love/hate relationship with the mere word “running.” For, the pace at which I was tripping around the lake and park could more accurately be described as a “jog.” “Running” is for skinny, fast people.

Here’s something that has me excited, though.

Somehow over the summer I’ve become accustomed to a more aerobic (as opposed to a “fat-burning”) workout. Consequently, over the last month I have been running much faster than I ever have in my life! So, I transition into this time of the year with new hope. I will be smashing my previous times in the two events I have coming up: Race for the Cure 5K this Saturday 10/10 and the Tulsa Run 15K on 10/31. (By the way, I would love to see people I know at the finish of these. Anybody wanna “Save the Boobies” or take a road-trip to Tulsa?)

Progress is addictive.

posted by Mike @ 9:20 AM 3 comments

The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite by David A. Kessler


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
If you struggle with overeating, you must keep one thing in mind when deciding to read this book: you MUST finish it! Otherwise don't start it!

For the first half of the book is pretty much filled with reasons why American people trying to gain control of their appetite routinely fail over and over, again and again, against a seemingly unconquerable enemy.

Backed with all kinds of research studies on what goes on in our brains when presented with foods we love (usually foods loaded with sugar, fat, and salt ad infinitum) Kessler is like a clanging symbol of behaviorist hopelessness. It's REALLY hard to resist these foods! And the fast food and chain restaurant industry has a vested interest in people failing. I found it to be scary the amount of chemistry that goes into concocting these hyperpalatable foods.

The second half of the book presents a little more hope in outlining some mental tricks in REPLACING the habituated behaviors of overeating terrible foods with other, (sometimes non-food-related), healthier behaviors.

So, in this book you get both the negative and positive aspects to viewing the human body and brain as a machine... It can learn procedures by which it can destroy itself or keep itself running at optimum efficiency and health.

As a former hopeless, unhealthy overeater I thoroughly enjoyed this book! (Even if the science got a little overwhelming.)


View all my reviews >>

posted by Mike @ 11:11 AM 1 comments

China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power by Rob Gifford


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
In this book NPR correspondent Rob Gifford offers a fascinating view of China’s past, present, and potential future. A twenty-year resident of the country, Gifford weaves together an enjoyably readable book that is equal parts travel journal, (the narrative thrust of the book recounts his two-month journey of Highway 312, China’s three-thousand mile equivalent to America’s Route 66) and political, economic, and spiritual history book.

Along the road, Gifford meets all kinds of interesting people, each one voicing their own hopes and struggles. As an interesting hybrid of “foreigner who speaks the language” the author deftly exposes these individual’s lives as demonstrative of the larger life of China as a whole-- an impossible, multi-cultural whole. Gifford’s China is hard to pin down, hard to define: at times too Western in its greed and environmentally- damaging technological progress and at times not Western enough, (see the country’s treatment of the ethnic minorities in Tibet and Muslim northwest.)

But it’s the people that are most fascinating. One of the more heart-rending passages about a karaoke bar prostitute:

“[…}there is a dangerous tendency for everything in modern China to be given an economic impetus, as though financial pressure is the only reason anyone ever does anything. We often fail to see that Chinese people are living, breathing, loving, hating individuals, who do things for complex psychological reasons, just like Westerners. And as Wu Yan sits talking about her life, her story doesn’t have that standard tone, which says, “I must do this or I won’t be able to eat.” She is slightly laconic, and cynical and angry.
“So why are you working here?” I eventually ask her.
There is a long pause.
“There was a boy…” She pauses again for a long time, rattling the dice in the cheap plastic cup. “Wo ting xihuan de…who I liked a lot.” She is looking at the floor.
“But he liked another girl.” She stops shaking the dice, then looks up at me with large, hurt eyes. There is a long silence as I try to compute what she is saying.
“So…you’re…doing this to punish him?...Or to punish…yourself?”
She doesn’t answer but reaches out her arm to me, the palm of her hand facing up. There are two jagged scars on her lower arm, as though her wrist had been cut. She looks angrily into my eyes.
“It’s difficult being a person isn’t it?” she says finally.
I look at her and nod slowly. She shakes the cup with the dice inside and slams it down on the glass table.

Coming to this book knowing pretty much nothing about the country, the author kept me in it the whole time. Great read!

View all my reviews >>

posted by Mike @ 1:03 PM 0 comments

New Directions in Music Appreciation

It was two or three years ago when I quit a band. When I think about those sad times, it’s often accompanied, strangely, by The Who.

In tears I had already told my compatriots that I was done. There was just one more show on the books. Just had to get through that one last hurdle- one last concert, and a life of freedom and promise awaited me.

And anytime I hear The Who’s album Who’s Next I am transported to that time of my life- the rush of things winding down, friendships entering into a new phase, the hope of time and ordinary concerns, the unknown. I was discovering the album for the first time the week of the show. Snatches of a lyric here and there would pierce me as I drove around that week, succinctly and sharply defining the moment.

“No one knows what it’s like \ To feel these feelings like I do…”


“No one bites back as hard on their anger\ None of my pain and woe can show through”

A wild drum fill here or a strange synthesizer sound there would somehow speak peace to my busy mind and heart.

It’s the strangest thing in the world to say. After all, this is rock n’ roll we’re talking about here.

But in Pete Townsend’s artistry, his collected oeuvre, you have the entire set of possible emotions—anger, rage, silliness, spiritual depth, love, skepticism, sadness, loneliness, lightness…Listening to this music reminded me: just as all of these things were possible for Pete Townsend to write about, they were possible for me to feel. If Pete was able to experience all these things and exist, so could I. Everything would be ok.

As the day of the show drew closer I had to routinely skip a song every time it came on just to be able to get through the night without breaking down: “The Song is Over,” which I guarantee is not about a guy leaving a band he was in for most of his adult life. It’s about a love relationship ending, but I knew it would have been too much to take at the time.

“After the show is finished,” I said to myself. “After I’ve packed up the guitars and amps for the last time. Then I can hear this song.”

If you’ve not heard this song I recommend you listen to it somehow, if only for that aching chorus.

The Song Is Over

The song is over
It's all behind me
I should have known it
She tried to find me

Our love is over
They're all ahead now
I've got to learn it
I've got to sing out

Chorus:
I'll sing my song to the wide open spaces
I'll sing my heart out to the infinite sea
I'll sing my visions to the sky high mountains
I'll sing my song to the free, to the free
I'll sing my song to the wide open spaces
I'll sing my heart out to the infinite sea
I'll sing my visions to the sky high mountains
I'll sing my song to the free, to the free

When I walked in through the door
Thought it was me I was looking for
She was the first song I ever sang
But it stopped as soon as it began

Our love is over
It's all behind me
They're all ahead now
Can't hope to find me

(Chorus)

This song is over
I'm left with only tears
I must remember
Even if it takes a million years

The song is over
The song is over

Excepting one note, pure and easy
Playing so free like a breath rippling by.

posted by Mike @ 7:46 AM 0 comments

Let This Be a Lesson To You

Last week I learned a lesson about bodies. It turns out my body’s “memory” is pretty short-term.

Having reached my two biking goals for the last three months (1) complete a century and (2) a sub-30 minute lap of Hefner, I decided there was no time like now to start adding running/jogging back into the mix so as to prepare for the Tulsa Run 15k at the end of October.

Let me present my stupid heresy and then I will present the result…

Proposition (what was in my head): “I typically bike for an hour, I should be ok if I run for that long. Back in the marathon training I was doing that kind of distance just about every day.”

Result: Soreness from hell! I mean like “hurts to get out of a chair and walk” soreness. I haven’t felt that bad since the three days after the marathon. (Happily I am mostly over it now as I write this.)

I had always heard that cycling and running are utilizing different sets of muscles, but thought that was mostly hooey. However, after this weekend’s debacle I am a believer. An hour on the bike is nothing. An hour running after three months off? Well, let’s just say I paid for it big-time.

It kind of sucks to feel like I’m starting over with the running, but this might turn out to be a good opportunity to unlearn bad habits, learn faster paces, etc. Like Charlie I am looking forward to braving the cooler temperatures, and come December and January or so, seeing the crowds thin out in the mornings.

posted by Mike @ 9:51 AM 2 comments

Whatcha Listenin' To? (Special Billboard Edition)

For those not in the know, Billboard is the organization that keeps track of chart data of popular and classical music, (music within a lot of genres, actually.) They publish this info in a fascinating weekly magazine. I say it’s fascinating because it so grotesquely reminds me of the business behind making music, getting it on the radio, etc. etc.

I’ve always found it strangely creepy to see the photos of insanely popular, beautiful pop divas and tattoo-ed gangsta rappers, and cowboy-hatted studly dudes, and mopey indie rockers, and past-their-prime dinosaur rockers making the state fair circuit…all of these kaleidoscopic performers and entertainers glad-handing the record label execs that pay the bills (perfectly tanned rich white guys in expensive suits) at press events. Those photos always seemed kind of out-of-whack somehow, as if the business were a kind of image-driven circus with out-of-touch Great Oz-type guys controlling it all.

When I worked at a music store in college, we used to consult the Billboard to try to translate when customers would come in looking for “this song I heard at the club” or “you know that song on the radio? It goes ‘doot doo doo…”

Billboard’s been around for awhile and the CDs they compile of each year’s big hits (along with the “Have a Nice Day” series) serve as a great document of what gooey, transient treats the culture was producing way back in the day. Well, our public library has a lot of these discs. And me being…well…me, I decided to start methodically working my way through these, having finished experiencing the 90 or so albums the library had from the Rolling Stone Top Albums of All Time.

The library’s collection of Billboard discs starts with the year of 1975. Here are some highlights so far:

1976-
It was an auspicious year, in that yours truly came on the scene.

“All By Myself” by Eric Carmen- I have an untested theory that the chorus of this song can be overlaid by Harry Nilsson’s “Without You.”

1977-
“Undercover Angel” by Alan O’Day- I’d never heard this song before. It’s one of the goofiest mish-mashes of pop/rock and over-the-top studio production I’ve heard in a while.

“Rich Girl” by Hall & Oates- I leave this little aural adventure of mine with a new appreciation for these guys as they had several hits in this time period. Fantastic funky Rhodes piano and triumphant B section.

“Don’t Leave Me This Way” by Thelma Houston- It took Baz Luhrman’s Moulin Rouge to really hear the darkness underneath the bubbliness. I like it when songs can trick you like that. (See also most of They Might Be Giants’ catalog written by John Linnell.)

1979-
“Heart of Glass” by Blondie- There are a scant few songs that even have a remote chance to get me to bob my head, much less dance. But this one is definitely on that list. Let’s be honest. A large part of this band’s appeal was how good Deborah Harry looked. But this is a very tightly-constructed disco-pop song, regardless of the band’s image. The melodies will stick in your head but they are delivered with such a lackadaisical sigh. Also of interest to me is the unconventional 4/4 bar followed by ¾ bar in the B section. Maybe I won’t be dancing to this after all…

“Just When I Needed You Most” by Randy Vanwarmer- I wonder what good ol’ Randy Vanwarmer is doing these days… The gentle falsetto vulnerability of this song is pretty creepy in my book. And I'm pretty sure I'm hearing an auto-harp solo in there too! I wonder why you don’t hear this kind of thing on the radio anymore.

1982-
“Eye in the Sky” by Alan Parsons Project- This is the best Pink Floyd song never written or recorded by Pink Floyd. Lyrically, it’s a thing of ambiguity. Is it about God or a creepy lover? You tell me. Also of interest are the extended chords which employ quite a bit of dissonance, but it’s all dressed up in such a comforting soft-rock kind of way, you don’t even notice the complexity of the harmony you’re hearing. This is probably my favorite song I’ve heard off of these Billboard discs so far.

1983-
This was apparently a schizophrenic year in music. You have Men at Work’s Australian version of The Police with “Down Under,” Eddy Grant’s Jamaican funk heard on “Electric Avenue,” Culture Club’s reggae on “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” (probably deserving of an award or medal for “most times to repeat a refrain so as to avoid writing a verse,”) and the epic “best impression of a Meatloaf song by a female artist” in Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” And don’t forget Michael Cembello’s “Maniac.” And yet somehow the Stray Cats’ “Stray Cat Strut” is still an anomaly, even amidst such a mixed-up year.

More later…

posted by Mike @ 10:01 AM 0 comments

A Nice Sunday Ride

Yesterday was a beautiful day. Here's a good way to spend a beautiful day: take a leisurely bike ride downtown, thrill at the 20 mph cruising speed as you descend the best hill on Shartel. Soak in that lonely, weekend feeling of tall, empty Sunday buiness buildings and relatively dead streets, normally chaotic and stressful during the week. Have a free cheeseburger (or two) at SchlegelFest, an outdoor party/bicycle-shop-perusal. Ride back home, smell the bakery as you blow past it.

Even better, do it with a couple friends and Life Is Good!

(I think we shall do this route again, for both Coffeeslingers AND Cuppies and Joe are within reach!)

posted by Mike @ 9:48 AM 4 comments

Abandoned Ideas Volume 4

Whenever the weather is bad I wind up having to spend some time at the gym. I like to see people there and look at their faces while they are pounding out miles on treadmills and elliptical machines, sweating it out on stationary bikes. As I look at them, I many times see the same faces and wonder “what keeps” them (me) at this?” What motivates us to spend our valuable time in this manner? Is it health? Mutual well-being? Stress-relief? Escaping feelings of guilt? Running away from bad habits? Pure enjoyment? A desire to improve at something? To look more conventionally attractive? Anyway, I look around at these familiar, yet anonymous faces and feel a strange camaraderie. We’re all WORKING for something.

And I got to thinking about that “work” part. Work is merely the expense of energy- burning calories. “What if,” I thought to myself, “we could find a way to harvest all of this energy we’re expelling in the name of fitness?”

What if the sum total of the mechanical energy I’m producing could be captured and stored by that stationary bike? And then sent on to a master collection point at the gym? And then multiply that by how many people use that one bike in one day. Multiply that by however many other bikes, treadmills, and weight machines are used in a day, week, month…Now multiply that by however many fitness centers there are in the country, the world! Whoah! There is your alternative energy source!

posted by Mike @ 10:26 AM 2 comments

The Century (Full Report)

Today I bring you a report of the second huge accomplishment of the year for yours truly.

Saturday was the cycling century and I finished that mofo! The course was basically from the Children’s Center in Bethany, west to Hinton, and back.

Common questions:
Did your butt hurt? Surprisingly, no.

Was it a race? No. It was an endurance ride, which means there were rest stops every 10-15 miles. Overall, these were the best rest stops I’ve seen with an event like this. The people working them were excited, helpful and they were well-stocked with powerade, water, snacks, medicines, etc.

How long did it take? Time on the bike was 5 hours and 54 minutes. Total time, including rest stops, was about 6.5 to 7 hours. I wound up averaging about a half mph lower than I wanted to.

How was it? I got off to a really fast start. I made a point to get up close to the front at the start, to try to avoid the mass of humanity and find the faster people to try to keep pace with them. This lasted for about the first 20 miles or so. I have found that the field tends to thin out after the first rest stop. And I got passed by a couple pretty disciplined pace lines, which I've yet to learn about, being fairly new and all.

There were two factors that made this ride difficult: the heat (at the end) and the wind. I chose this particular century because the course was largely east/west, banking on the fact that we typically get north-south winds in Oklahoma. In biking, crosswinds are easier to deal with. However, the wind was probably blowing 20-25 mph on Saturday, which made the two jaunts heading south just brutal.

And then, as the morning turned into afternoon and my body started to get mad at me, the temperature rose to the mid 90s. The last rest stop was my longest, as I was getting light-headed and cranky. It felt good to just sit and soak up those big winds blowing across the dusty plains outside of Yukon. I wanted to stay there for the rest of the day.

But I didn’t. I had a goal to meet and I was close enough to push through. The one bummer was that police support at the intersections was mostly a forgotten memory after the halfway point and cruising through Yukon, I and a handful of other people hit every damn red light! You would think a chance to rest would be welcome. It was not. For at every red light my body kept thinking “we’re done! Great!” But we weren’t done. In fact there were still a handful of hot miles to go. I was fading fast.

I finally reached the Children’s Center to one lone anonymous stranger’s half-hearted cheering and immediately found a shady spot on the lawn to collapse. I laid there for a good ten minutes, too tired to care about what I had just done, the muscles in my calves twitching. I guess my legs hadn’t gotten the message that we were done now.

Other than the weather there was one other unexpected difficulty for me on Saturday: fueling. In total I burned something in the neighborhood of 8000 calories doing this thing. Your body has to take in energy to continue as it’s burning at that rate. It’s usually not a problem for me. I’ll have a big breakfast, and take in granola bars and Gatorade to replenish every hour or so. Unfortunately the rest stops didn’t have Gatorade but had Powerade instead. I didn’t know this before Saturday, but Powerade + Heat do not mix well in my stomach. So, the last thing I wanted to do was eat. But like I said, I needed food for energy. Water alone will not cut it. So, I faded at the end because I ran out of gas, not motivation.

So, all in all, a tough day.

One interesting thing I am noticing, though… The residual toll was much tougher on my body when I did the marathon (a scant three and a half months ago.) After the marathon I was literally too sore to walk for about three days.

However, this time, I was ready to ride again the next day, feeling no pain or soreness. This could be due to the fact that I was MUCH more well-prepared for this event, having already done the goal distance plus a few more miles in training.

What’s next?

I plan to keep biking for the next month or so, since I love my new ride so much and to try to become a social creature again. Then I will switch over and try to learn how to run again for the Tulsa Run 15k in Tulsa at the end of October.

It’ll be nice to have Saturday mornings off for awhile!

posted by Mike @ 1:17 PM 3 comments

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a stirring book of unaffected beauty. The prose style is not futzed over. It's simple. Deceptively so. And Ishiguro is able to evoke the thoughts of a woman looking back over her childhood and early adulthood very convincingly. Nice trick for a male writer.

The other nice trick he pulls off is setting a wistful, evolving love story against the strange backdrop of a school with an unusual, mostly unspoken secret drama. (And that's all I'll reveal...)

I was sad at the end, both for plot reasons, but also because I would have to begin the search for another good, highly readable book.

View all my reviews >>

posted by Mike @ 3:35 PM 2 comments

Hopefully not a bad omen...

Tomorrow is the day! I shall be doing the 100 mile ride for Spin Your Wheels, benefitting the Children's Center in Bethany.

If all goes well, I should be finishing at the Center around 1:00 if you want to stop by and be amazed at the Triumph of the Will!

I'm not normally a superstitious type of fellow but I do like order and my routine, and this week has seemed to be out to rattle me.

It started out with a flat tire right before Wednesday's morning ride. After pumping it up again I was only able to get in 2/3 of the distance I wanted to cover that morning before it was going flat again. And Thursday morning's thunder and lightning show forced me to hit the stationary bike at the gym, which I hate. And then this morning's flat tire reappeared after setting out on what was supposed to be a nice, easy short ride. Unfortunately I had to walk the bike about 4.5 miles to get back to the car. My only consolation was: "at least this didn't happen tomorrow." (Fingers crossed.) So with a brand new tube, I will set out confidentally tomorrow morning.

Conditioning-wise, none of this is that big of a deal. You're supposed to taper off your weekly mileage before a big event anyway.

But mentally, I just feel off-kilter, having had to go with plan B and C against my will for the last three days of training.

Like I said- I like predictability and routine, especially the week going into the thing I've been training for literally for months.

This has not been that kind of week at all.

posted by Mike @ 9:22 AM 0 comments

I don't subscribe to Netflix, but...

Richard Corliss has written a curmudgeonly article in this week's Time called "Why Netflix Stinks" in which he bemoans the disappearance of his favorite corner video store called Kim's. I must say I was struck by the following observation:

Beyond the mail delays and the botched orders, the lack of human interaction is the big problem with Netflix and its cyber-ilk. Thanks to the Internet, we can now do nearly everything- working, shopping, movie-going, social networking, having sex- on one machine at home. We're becoming a society of shut-ins. We deprive ourselves of exercise, even if it's just a stroll around the mall, until we're the shape of those blobby people in WALL*E. and we deny ourselves the random epiphanies of human contact.

(While I agree with the thought and am determined to not become as insular as he suggests, I find it amusing that one of his main illustrations was from a movie!)

I don't want to be a shut-in! I want to LIVE life!

Stop reading this and go outside and INTERACT with someone right now!

posted by Mike @ 1:31 PM 2 comments

This Friday's Ride

I'll be doing this bike ride on Friday morning, (planning to start around 7), if you wanna come share some miles.

I messed up on it last week and ended up riding an extra 35 miles. I won't do that this time!

Anyway, it's not too hilly and has luxuriously wide shoulders for most of it.

posted by Mike @ 7:30 PM 2 comments

The Satanic Verses and the Art (?) of Provocation

I recently struggled through Salman Rushdie’s infamous book The Satanic Verses. It was a little over 600 pages of gobbledy-gook alternatingly about two plane-wreck-survivors-turned-angel-and-demon-turned-back-into-regular-guys, an obvious re-working of the early days of the prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), a butterfly-eating prophetess leading a village to a possible watery grave in the Arabian Sea, and a bunch of other stuff that I barely remember, which may or may not have incited any brain activity in the first place.

This was a complicated book that reminded me how much of an insulated dumb American I am.

Of course, when it came out, this book infuriated influential Muslims to the point that they wanted the author dead. Officially. As in “if you know where the author is hiding and don’t think you have the gumption or wherewithal to kill him, let us know. We’ll find someone who will kill him.”

This all got me to thinking about art and the goals with which one goes about creating art. I’m going to make a pretty big assumption from the outset- namely, that Rushdie knew that some ideas in the novel would upset some Conservative people of the Muslim faith. You don’t title your book after a possibly heretical story of errantism in the Qur’an and expect everything to be peachy keen. My favorite example of a similar action in the Western World would be if I were to write a book called The Whorish Wife of Jesus. (Of course, my book would be about The Church, “the Bride of Christ,” so it would be ok. Heh.) Nor do you talk about the wives of the Prophet and prostitutes in the same breath and expect there to be no discussion among the faithful.

Rushdie is obviously no idiot. Even though I’m kind of surprised that the literary critics and English teachers of the day didn’t issue a fatwa against him for creating such an incoherent mess of a book, I can readily admit that he obviously has an extensive body of knowledge serving as the inkwell in which he dips his pen.

If Rushdie knew that people of the Islamic faith would have problems with some of these elements, then surely at least one of his goals was to provoke these folks. We sometimes soften this impulse by using language like “I wrote this to make people think…to question…to take their faith seriously, etc.” (see also Kevin Smith’s Dogma.)

But I am now wondering: is provocation a noble goal for an artist? Does art need to be noble? Does art need anything at all? (I personally can’t escape the notion that art should uplift us out of negative states- of intolerance, of hopelessness, of base, cruel lives. I’m kind of old school that way and I also realize how subjective the notion is. So I’m not married to it.)

Another question- is a mere exercise in the freedom of speech necessarily “art?” For instance, when whoever it was that put the crucifix in urine and called it an artistic utterance did their thing, was the obvious shock and outrage that resulted a valid, complete appreciation of the creation? I don’t know.

Here’s the thing. Sometimes a guy like Rushdie wants to encourage thought and critique of ideas and open up the windows and let in some fresh air with provocative material. But as the publication of the Verses showed, the result can sometimes be the exact opposite of his intentions. What happened instead? An influential cleric denounced the work as offensive, therefore well-meaning people of faith didn’t read the book, denounced it and the author as offensive (possibly evil) and demanded his life. The intended audience burned the book, bombed bookstores, et cetera, et cetera. So much for discussion and honest critique of one’s cherished ideas.

No, trenches were dug even deeper. Instead of fresh air and productive discourse, the same sides just retreat further away from each other.

It seems to me that human nature has always been thus and thus it shall ever be.

What say you?

posted by Mike @ 4:30 PM 0 comments

Norman Conquest

Saturday’s long ride was a nice change of pace.

I was convinced by a friend at work to do The Norman Conquest- a benefit ride for the JD McCarthy Center- the longest distance being a 66 mile ride in and around Norman that claimed on the website to be “VERY hilly.”

They weren’t kidding. While, training-plan-wise, I wanted to get in a few more miles than 66 on Saturday, the elevation changes MORE than made up for it since I do not normally train on those kinds of grades. What a workout! A bunch of steep hills, and rolling country roads made for very interesting terrain. It’s interesting to do that kind of ride with other people. There isn’t a lot of talking. It’s kind of a ghostly quiet, the only sound you hear being a bunch of clicks as people shift at roughly the same time.

And as you probably know, the weather on Saturday morning was fantastic! Not hot, not windy. Unlike, I don’t know, the last three months?!

After averaging 2 mph better than I expected to, (long descents and being around other people certainly helps), I feel like the relatively flat 100 mile ride in three weeks shall be no problem.

Bring it on!

posted by Mike @ 3:12 PM 1 comments

Tongue Twisters

While entering doctors' information into a database I have created some tongue twisters in my head. You will notice an overall theme. They all involve languages spoken by one doctor in particular.

Say the following phrases to yourself as ridiculously quickly as possible. You might find that they have a pleasant ring to them:

Spanish Spinach- spanish spinach spanish spinach spanish spinach spanish spinach spanish spinach spanish spinach spanish spinach spanish spinach spanish spinach spanish spinach spanish spinach spanish spinach

Urdu Underwear- urdu underwear urdu underwear urdu underwear urdu underwear urdu underwear urdu underwear urdu underwear urdu underwear urdu underwear urdu underwear urdu underwear urdu underwear urdu underwear urdu underwear urdu underwear urdu underwear

Hindi Hyundai- hindi hyundai hindi hyundai hindi hyundai hindi hyundai hindi hyundai hindi hyundai hindi hyundai hindi hyundai hindi hyundai hindi hyundai hindi hyundai hindi hyundai hindi hyundai hindi hyundai hindi hyundai hindi hyundai

Terrible Arabic- terrible arabic terrible arabic terrible arabic terrible arabic terrible arabic terrible arabic terrible arabic terrible arabic terrible arabic terrible arabic terrible arabic terrible arabic terrible arabic terrible arabic

posted by Mike @ 10:02 AM 0 comments

Last Saturday's Ride

"How was it?"

It wound up being 76 miles.

I'm not going to lie...76 solitary miles are tough.

Almost 5 hours of myself, my mind, my bike and that's about it.

The relatively short section where I wasn't sharing the road with cars was mercifully broken up with some music, but it didn't last for very long.

Turns out I need people.

Why wasn't this an issue with running? Probably because I could have my tunes for the whole time, I suppose.

Friends of the blog--if you own a bike and haven't forgotten how to ride it, please consider getting up early on a Saturday soon and breaking up some of the monotony with me!

posted by Mike @ 1:34 PM 2 comments

This Saturday's Ride...

I'll be biking this 74 miles on Saturday if anyone wants to ride along for some of the miles. Overholser and Hefner are pretty popular legs. But if you want something more challenging, the early hills in Yukon will make for a pretty good workout, [and a hellacious workout if the wind is up.:-)]

I'll be rolling out at 6 am and I'll have my phone with me if you want to synchronize.

posted by Mike @ 6:52 AM 1 comments

Abondoned Ideas Volume 3

Back in the days when I was in the band Grandpa Griffith I had a fleeting glimpse of marketing genius.

Some background: When you self-finance an album, it actually costs about the same amount of money to make 1000 copies of your album as it does to make 500 copies. You wind up with boxes and boxes of CDs that, unless you're Kid Rock, will probably remain unsold, resting very safely in your closet for the rest of your life.

(If I ever move out of my house to another one at some point in the next two to sixty years, I will have to face a pretty big decision--namely, do I even bother to move all of these boxes of _Electric Scooter Holiday Blowout_ and _Jay_? Maybe I should place them on the curb for the garbagemen or leave them in the closet for the next homeowner or renter to discover, like a rare archaeological find...)

Back in the day, I thought a good way of selling the album, (besides the tried-and-true hard work of playing a lot of shows and developing an audience, etc.), would be to take a cue from the Girl Scouts and sell them like so many boxes of thin mints.

Stake a claim by a busy roadway, (I always had the corner of NW Expressway and Meridian in my head), make some signs and play an all-day marathon concert to draw drivers' attention.

Those CDs would sell like Straford Peaches! In my head, at least.

posted by Mike @ 10:30 AM 2 comments

A Pretty Good Way to Start the Day...

And now I present to you the results from my latest blood draw with notes from the doctor and nurse...

posted by Mike @ 7:47 AM 7 comments

My New Road Bike!

I recently (i.e. since the marathon in April) started training for my first bicycle century--100 mile ride. As of yesterday, here is the bike I'm going to do it on--a 2008 Giant OCR C3! I've put 82 miles on it in the last day and a half.

Upgrades over my other bike (the flat bar road bike which I shall now use exclusively for the daily commute to work):
-5 lbs lighter
- clipless pedals
- a more aerodynamic riding position

Life is good!

posted by Mike @ 9:20 PM 4 comments

Abondoned Ideas Volume 2

For all of the video-game-designing readers that might be out there, I offer the following concept free of charge.

The name of the game in my head is Ted Nugent's Rock n' Roll Safari.

For those that don't know-- Ted Nugent, also known as "The Motor City Madman," was a rock n' roll guitarist and bandleader in the 70s and 80s. Ever heard the song "Cat Scratch Fever?" "Stranglehold?" Ever heard of the early 90s band Damn Yankees? That's him shredding on the guitar. Ted is also a vocal conservative political voice, a gun nut, avid hunter and sportsman. Pretty weird dude.

In my head, the game was a first person shoot em up type a la Halo or Wolfenstein 3D. (Remember that one? I played it obsessively in my early college days!) Endorsed by Ted Nugent, it would feature shooting up animals in a variety of environments: the African Plains, the swamps of the Southern United States, the Rocky Mountains, outer space? That's the "safari" part. The "rock n' roll" part was originally that it would just feature a sweet awesome soundtrack.

But now, since the invention of Rock Band, I have rethought it. I think that the plastic guitars should be involved somehow. Maybe equate the guitar playing to taking the lives of animals? Like, if you get so many notes correct in a row, the guitar shoots a zebra on the screen? I don't know.

That's about as far as I got before abandoning the idea.

posted by Mike @ 2:36 PM 1 comments

A Month of Sundays Part VII

Yesterday was Sunday, which has meant a new church experience as of late.

Against my better judgment I went to a friend’s church. (Why “against my better judgment?” Well, what if at the end of the service all I could think to say is “Dude, that was weird!” I’m not looking to be in the business of offending people. Better to avoid the possibility, I thought.)

Anyway, from what I could tell it was non-denominational. An 11:00 start time is absolutely perverse, but I have dealt with that in other posts already. This was the second service of the day and was one of those “multiple campus”-type churches.

My friend Joe plays guitar. I really got more out of watching him do his thing during the music than anything else. There were about 25-30 people in attendance, which made the high-energy rock band and dual screens showing video of the musicians and singers feel a little superfluous. I felt like I was attending the “little mega-church that could.” Perhaps the earlier service was a bit larger.

Things I liked: I like walking up to a building and someone opening a door for me and saying hello. Bonus points when their skin is a different color than mine. That was one thing I noticed about this group of young-ish (ranging from 10- late 40s in age): they weren’t all pasty white like me.

The music was the sound of “contemporary praise and worship,” which means rock drums, electric bass, acoustic guitar and Joe doing his best impression of The Edge from U2. As I watched these people up front, leading worship, singing with eyes closed, hands lifted, dramatic and all-- I wanted so badly to feel the same feelings…to tap into whatever it is that they apparently are tapped into. But even more than that, I wanted even more badly to believe that these people were truly in the moment like they seemed to be.

Is it really possible to be this excited?

Is it not just a conjurer’s trick? (I spent many years in a band. I know that the best way to invoke a response from people was usually to “fake” that emotion yourself. Move around to make people want to move around. Thrash about to make your audience want to thrash about.) Does praising God through music work the same way? Through the power of suggestion? “Act ecstatic or reverent to elicit the same response?” I hope not!

I don’t know if there is a reason behind it or not, but I noticed that the band played improvisationally behind announcements at a couple points, which proved to be an exercise in focus for me. My ear naturally gravitates toward musical sound. (This is why I sometimes fade in and out of conversations at restaurants or anywhere else there is "background music." If you have experienced this weird quirk of mine...now you know why at least.)

Things got weird for me after the musical time. The sermon or message was delivered on the giant screens, a video I presume. As I listened to the middle-aged guy talk about change and the gospel, wondering where he actually was, I had an argument with myself inside my head:

“Mike, this is really weird. There’s this talking head up there, speaking authoritatively and every now and then he asks people to repeat. As if he can hear them. It’s like George Orwell. Institutionalized passivity. The Great Oz.”

“I know it seems weird, Mike, but this is how many, many people do ‘church’ now. Anyway, it’s really not all that different than listening to a live, in-person speaker. It’s not like you’re interacting with a pastor when they’re delivering a sermon anyway. For that you need to go to an African American church!”

After basically watching TV with these folks for what seemed too long, (I find that I get antsy more frequently with my new active lifestyle), it was time for the response, which seems to always come down to deciding to be a Christian of some sort.

After that were some amazingly well-produced, high-energy videos promoting upcoming events involving the other “campuses” throughout the city and we were dismissed to the sound of funky music from the band.

posted by Mike @ 4:34 PM 3 comments

A Month of Sundays Part VI

On Sunday I visited another church.

This time it was different, though. The other times I went to churches I had never been to before. This time I decided to do a Thomas Wolfe-ian experiment and visited my first childhood church experience- the Lutheran church. Unable to go back to Savannah, Georgia and recreate my ABSOLUTE first church memory, (getting yelled at by a lady for running around and playing hide-and-seek in a darkened church sanctuary!) I visited the little Lutheran church that we went to for about three years off and on when my family first moved to Oklahoma back when I was in fifth grade.

Childhood is obviously a powerful time for people- all kinds of new experiences, neural connections being formed in the brain, new habits unrolling, a worldview shaping, etc. And the idea of God and church being thrown into the mix at this time? Pretty overwhelming when you look back!

And “look back” I did. Since I had insider knowledge I realized that some things don’t change much. The building and grounds are all largely the same- four walls, a steeple and a parking lot surrounded by a lot of land. Over the last twenty or so years this church never built on an additional wing, never added services or offered choices of worship styles to accommodate an influx of new people or made any of the changes typical of a “successful” church. They still recite the Divine Order of Worship, (I can still sing the tunes in my head), they still sing every verse on hymns and stand on the last one. They may have switched out more comfortable chairs for the wooden pews and gotten a new pastor, lost some of their folks to old age and the regular movements of life, and Lord knows I’ve changed since my junior high years, but Sunday felt like I had travelled back in time.

The strange thing was that there were still some older people left who remembered the thirteen year old version of me, which I didn’t expect.
“How are your mom and brother Todd?”
“Where is your mom now?”
“Are you living here?”
“You used to play the guitar…”

The best line I heard... when I said that I have a church family of Nazarenes here in town, a lady slyly said “They’re good…but we’re better!”

I really wonder how a church like that has survived through the generations. There were about 50 people present in that sanctuary (which seemed so much larger to my shy, childhood brain.) The average age was the oldest I’ve seen yet, probably in the mid to late sixties (probably due to the fact that the church is very close to a couple retirement communities), with a handful of children present.

Let me speak for a moment in crass commercial language. How does a church like this compete in what is unfortunately a marketplace? In the last few weeks I’ve seen what draws the young and hip- the excitement and energy. I’ve also seen the church situations where one can advance in social standing by immersing themselves into a larger pool of like-minded folks. This unassuming building, this small group of folks, can offer neither of those two things.

I looked around, wondering what has kept these people together through those changing tides and times? The couple young mothers with their noisy kids sharing the same air as octogenarian choir members...what has kept this thing alive? If I were indeed writing a book I would have interviewed some of these folks and gotten some of their stories.

So, what was the service like?

Lutheran worship is by the book. Literally. Everything is written out as if the congregation and pastor were speaking the lines of a play, (“the most boring play ever written,” if you asked some folks.)

A Diversion:“Thy and My”
One important note on theology and memory: There is a point in the liturgy where you are supposed to sing “Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation.” Turns out I remembered the tune correctly over these years but the words slightly incorrectly “…the joy of MY salvation.” That’s a big difference, theologically-speaking, contained in less than a syllable: God’s salvation vs. My salvation. Hopefully God has not been offended over the years for my incorrect thoughts!

There were some very strange feelings welling up in me. “This used to feel so normal, so routine.” No longer. I’ve already discussed my problems with reading things aloud, even if they have had been passed down over hundreds of years. And then there were the silences- waiting for people to walk from the back of the room to the front to read the day’s scriptures, waiting for the pastor to walk from the altar to the back to sing with the choir, and then back, the un-polished-ness of it-- the silences were brutal. I realized for better or worse, that I am used to a pretty well-oiled machine of continuity in church services.

I also realized how hard these people are working to make even this simple worship service happen. Go to a larger church with some “professionals” around and you can hide or blend in and go months or years without anyone asking anything from you. Not so in a church this size. (Within five minutes after the service I was recruited to play guitar!)

Again I am left with questions: why would someone engage in this activity on a Sunday morning? Is it a convenient, regular meeting place and time for your friends and support network? Is there something to the liturgy or the act of performing the liturgy? Is it just what they’ve always done? Is it the sermon? The hymns?

I shall continue to think on it…

posted by Mike @ 3:58 PM 2 comments

"Admit That the Waters Around You Have Grown"

I was at the grocery store the other day and heard the absolute classic (and still very much relevant) Bob Dylan song “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” It was shocking to hear a work of prophetic importance and depth in that context: strolling through the pasta isle.

Why is that, I wonder?

Grocery store music probably sounds a lot like it did twenty or thirty years ago. In fact, most of the stuff that serves as background music at Crest and Buy for Less, (my two primary haunts) was released in the late 70s or 80s. Interspersed among that faire might be a Backstreet Boys or Celine Dion ballad that takes me back to junior high bus rides.

I’m sure there have been all kinds of research studies performed to determine the exact types of musical elements that make people want to purchase more stuff. Apparently unobtrusive pop music performed well in those tests, for I hear an awful lot of comforting, numbing sounds whenever I’m buying food. (Strangely, though, the music that makes you want to buy food apparently is not the same kind that makes you want to buy pants. To buy pants in a department store, you need actual muzak versions of hits without vocals.)

But then there was Bob Dylan!

I like living in a world where I can be surprised like that.

posted by Mike @ 9:27 AM 1 comments

A Month of Sundays Part V

So, Sunday morning turned out to be an experience EXACTLY like what I was looking for when I set off on this little experiment of mine. I went to a Divine Liturgy service at a Christian Orthodox church and it was something totally different!

I’m not going to even fake like I know the ins and outs of Orthodoxy and their theology and history and branches and all that hoohaw. Those kinds of academic minutiae become less significant to me with every passing year anyway.

Here’s what I can tell you. Yesterday was pretty much the exact opposite of what I witnessed the week before at the mega-church. When I walked in the door I was overwhelmed by the art in the sanctuary. It was all over the place—iconography. I did enough research on the internet beforehand to know that you are not supposed to talk upon entering the church. I saw a guy silently shush! some whispering people in the atrium area as I was getting my bearings.

Looking into the sanctuary I saw priests in robes, I heard what sounded like cantilation coming from one corner of the sanctuary, (cantilation: you know how in movies that take place in the middle east, there is that “foreign” sounding singing going on? Or in movies where a kid has to sing for his bar mitzvah? Kinda sounds like that…) a platform and then behind it another room containing an altar in a “holiest-of-holies” kind of configuration where the priests and altar boys hung out. On the left was a choir.

I found a place to sit just in time to stand up and this thing was off and running and I was pretty much lost in space and time for the next hour and a half or so, never knowing when to sit or stand or cross myself. I just watched a family in front of me who really seemed to know what was going on. The dad sprang up out of his seat when the time came to stand and we got quite a workout through the duration of the service.

The liturgy was printed out and it was in English, but here’s the thing—it was sung! And these weren’t strophic “songs” (i.e. verse, chorus, etc.) where you could catch on with the repeats. This was more like chant. So, even if I did know where we were in the service, which wasn’t guaranteed, I had no chance of participating, having not had the tunes ingrained in my head since childhood as I’m sure some people present had. (And even if I had grown up with the tunes I still would have struggled to participate since I somehow managed to sit in front of two of the most tone deaf women I’ve ever heard! It was like I had two devils sitting on my shoulders, each one determined to distract me from the beautiful sound of the choir leading the congregation!)

After the lengthy time of call and response type stuff, one of the official dudes in robes read an epistle, the Gospel text was sung (!) and then there was a short homily delivered by a guy looking like one of the Byzantine paintings come alive—lanky with a short beard…His message was about the unity of Christians—pretty abstract stuff about how all Christians are unified by the name of Christ, how it’s a symbol of God’s character and how to find God’s plan for your dating life (just kidding about that last part.)

Then, a really interesting thing happened at communion time. This is when I really lost track of what was going on. Basically all of the “official” guys in robes paraded from the altar with the bread and cup and banners and cross and went to the back of the room and then back to the altar, signifying (I hope) the love of God shed abroad to all the world.

In preparation for the communion, the choir was singing, priests were praying, there was incense slung, all these voices over one another. It’s funny to me that this was just as overwhelming to my senses as the loud drums and rock spectacle from the week before.

At this point I might as well talk about the music and other aesthetic matters. The music I heard in this service was probably many hundreds of years old and its models were probably close to a thousand years old. There were no instruments played, other than the human voice. I also noticed that there was no “us and them,” no musicians and an audience watching. It really felt more like one big choir, some people knowing the music better than others. The choir was more of a device to keep everybody in the same key. The melodies employed ancient modes (different from those used in the Catholic church) that bring to mind deserts of the Middle East and time. It is foreign to my musical experience and probably the experience of most Americans outside of the Orthodox community.

Which I found kind of cool.

This was not the sound of trying to make the Gospel hip or “relevant” through catchy pop music or emotional string pulling. People in some churches get up in arms about how out of date hymns are because they were written in the 1800s. Well, go back in time another, I don’t know, 400, 500 years? and place yourself in a non-Anglo Saxon culture. That’s the musical scene we’re talking about here. Its irrelevance to pop culture, and even to regular life was strangely attractive to me. To me it was the sound of people doing what they have done as a worship practice for centuries. That’s deep.

And then there were the paintings covering the entire, beautiful room. Icons of Bible stories and sad-eyed saints with circles behind their heads depicting halos and skinny, six-pack abs Jesus. Why do saints never smile? There was writing in both English and Greek? maybe Arabic? Visually, it was all quite beautiful to me, and I’m sure all of my head-tilting and golly-gee gawking at the ceiling and walls and stained glass made it clear I was a visitor.

Speaking of which, come communion time, I know enough to realize that when visiting a church it’s safest to assume that I am not invited to the Lord’s Supper. The guy to my left was invited and when he came back, he slipped me a piece of bread! Now, I don’t know how regular of a gesture that is in a church like this, but that small, silent act by a complete stranger was very meaningful to me. Here I was an outsider. Here he was- an insider, bringing me back a piece of the love of God as he knew it. I like that.

After all the rows had been served, there were a few announcements, just like at any church, and they moved to the ending bit, dismissed by rows to approach the altar, kiss a handheld cross and the priest’s hand and file out. Which I assumed was similar to how other churches shake hands with the pastor on the way out.

But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it! Mike Stutzman kisses the hand of no one, priestly garb or no! :-) I tried to summon the courage to do something so far out of my comfort zone, but failed. I watched each row file down there, hoping to see just one person merely pass by, or just kiss the cross, which would give me tacit permission to do likewise but wound up leaving into the hot, bright noon time sun, still curious about what I had just experienced.

posted by Mike @ 10:33 AM 3 comments

A Month of Sundays Part IV

“Congratulations on your decision to commit your life to Christ! Here’s what’s next:
-Fill out this card
-Pick up your What’s Next Kit today”


So, on Sunday I went directly into the belly of the beast (according to some friends) and attended a service, no an “experience,” at one of the local “.tv” versions of church.

I know. I know. I know.

“Consumerism.” “Plastic.” “Fake.” “Watered down.” “Marketing.”

I’ve heard/read just about every bit of vitriol people have to spew against mega-churches. Luckily, since I’m not out looking for the “ideal church” and defending it, but rather out looking for new, unique experiences for myself I feel absolutely no need to join in the raging arguments.

So, with that in mind, some observations: Once again, crossing the threshold of an unfamiliar church, not knowing anyone is a little bit of a mental battle. But I walked in to a giant cavernous space which was merely the “coffee” and hawk-the-programs-and-services area. Even though I was a little early, the idea of mulling about in that area was unappealing to me so I went in and found a seat in what took the place of a “sanctuary,” feeling more like a concert hall.

As this was one of four services that day, I expected everything to run like German clockwork. Get ‘em in and out. And I was right.

After an introductory rock-out song, the place went dark and the “praise and worship” time started straight up at 10:00. I got the impression that this block of time is one of the big draws of this kind of church. Clearly lots of behind the scenes time, energy and money had to be poured in to the process of making this happen. It was loud. High energy. Lights. Smoke machine. Distorted guitar and big, busy drums. “Give it up for Jesus” was said more than once. And behind the words on the screens was some sort of digital milky white shape floating through space. So, pretty much a typical Sunday morning for yours truly! [The preceeding sentence is to be read with sarcasm.]

I listened to the music with a bit of jealousy: everyone on in-ear monitoring and live sound production on par with what you’d expect to hear at any kind of touring band’s concert—all kinds of digital delays on the voices and drum loops, etc. All very slick and polished. If anyone around me was singing along it was impossible to hear them. Musically, this was the sound of people who are paid to rehearse, not the sound of people who volunteer their time. Like I said, as a musician I was a tad jealous. That’s a pretty posh gig: being able to hear yourself on fancy equipment and play music that, let’s be honest here, doesn’t require much in the way of technique. But the really interesting thing I noticed, as I looked around at those assembled: mostly hip-looking 16-30 year olds, was that a lot of them looked just as bored and distracted as the 16-30 year olds I’m used to seeing. Amongst all the lights? The pounding subs? The smoke? Still bored? Of course, there were also the folks for whom this kind of music (or more importantly these words, I presume) really resonate. They were the “jump up and down and raise your hands”-type of folks.

So, high-energy, rock n’ roll show…check.

The only things left to do to call it church after that were deliver a message and invite people to become Christian or more Christian or Christian again or Godly or who knows what it is that people have in their heads at those invitation moments?

One other little observation-- as the official people spoke about the goings-on during the week and in the future, everything was “awesome.” As in “This concert/evangelical event is going to be ‘awesome.’” “That small group activity is ‘awesome.’” If everything is awesome, NOTHING is truly awesome I thought to myself.

After the official videotaped “blessing” from the great Oz, we were off and running with the teaching moment. The message, delivered by a pretty young (I’m thinking late 20s to mid-30s) hip-looking guy, in jeans and designer T-shirt, was flawless as far as presentation technique is concerned. He didn’t use big, difficult words, used humor and examples from television and was an energetic speaker.

But as I listened to the topic “The Power of Prayer” I must confess I felt like I was being tricked a little bit. It seemed that in preparation, the message was put together with some general points: “Prayer is effective when it is X, Y, and Z” and then the supporting scriptures sought out. This type of teaching is one of the big criticisms I have heard of this and other mega-churches but I was more surprised by the underlying assumption of the message, namely that prayer is the method by which you get the things out of God that you need/ want for yourself: to conceive a child, a mate, etc.

True confession time. I don’t pray. Ever since I was a child I have had the assumption that if my creator is up there or out there or in here or wherever, then God knows what I need/want before I tell Him about it. And I don’t see much use in reminding myself of these needs and wants. I’ve been trying to focus on the overabundance of good in my life, not the lack of niggling things that would make it “perfect.” As I’ve always heard, “ ‘Better’ is the enemy of ‘good.” Of course, this leaves out the state of the world and others, which I’ll bet God knows about as well. But it surely wouldn’t be a bad thing if I were more mindful of the world outside of me and mine.


After the message was the requisite time of invitation to make a change and raise your hand with atmospheric, dreamy synth music playing in the background.

After that there’s nothing else left to do, apparently. We were dismissed and I checked my watch as I walked out the door. 11:00 EXACTLY.

Another realization I had during this time was that I’m afraid this project of mine is going to prove useless. What can you really know about a group of people by how they worship God for an hour or two on a Sunday morning? In that room were probably three hundred people. Three hundred stories, three hundred collections of successes and failures, cruelties and compassions. THOSE stories are the identity of the people of God for me. The rest-- musical choices, choir robes or lack thereof, preaching, prayers—those are just window dressing.

Right now I know this much. I’m not looking for an “awesome” hour of holy goose bumps or an hour of intelligent, Biblically-correct interpretations of reality or an hour to “recharge the batteries.” I’m starting to think that the things I want from a church are generally what EVERYONE (who isn’t a psychopath) wants from life, regardless of God talk: to love and to be loved. [Which, yes, I have largely known for the last 13 years…]

So, a big question I now ask myself is--"What place does a worship service have with respect to this perceived need?"

After church #3 it appears I’m still no further along than when I started!

posted by Mike @ 3:41 PM 6 comments