The Freakshow & the Professor

Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young - Fire Inc. (mp3)
Out of the Frying Pan (And Into the Fire) - Meat Loaf (mp3)

I’m about to make a statement that might immortally rankle some of BOTG’s most loyal readers and it’s co-creator beyond repair: No one ever maximized the power and rock piano awesomeness of Roy Bittan like Jim Steinman.


The E Street Band’s “Professor” and a happily-hired gun who has played for dozens of artists over the years is the kind of pianist that makes kids like me love the piano and hate piano teachers. No, excuse me. Bittan is the pianist who eats those pianists for breakfast, who kills them in his sleep.

It’s unfair to say Steinman would be nothing without Bittan. Grossly unfair, because Steinman’s operatic schmaltzy pop muse is one of the most unique and flabbergasting hydra-vixens in the history of successful pop music. No way his muse looks a damn thing like Olivia Newton-John in Xanadu.

Steinman is the engine, Bittan's the handlebars on the motorbike careening into Hell. Some people would mistakenly think Meat Loaf is an essential part of the machine, but Steinman proved on any number of occasions that he didn’t need Meat Loaf nearly as much as Meat Loaf needed Steinman. Steinman gave Bonnie Tyler immortality. He gave Celine Dion and Air Supply tolerable songs. His songs almost made Streets of Fire watchable. (OK, that last part isn’t true. Nobody could have made Streets of Fire watchable, which is saying something, because Diane Lane is adorable.)

Meat Loaf was replaceable; Bittan is there on every song.

Although I never met him, don’t know him, and have never read more than a paragraph about him, I’m positive Jim Steinman is one of the freakiest freaky freakshows to ever make a bajillion dollars off rock music. As the first page of his web site convincingly observes, Bat Out of Hell is the only one in the All-Time Top 20 List of Best-Selling Rock Albums to be entirely written and composed by one person.

I’ve read a little more on Tom Scholz, the musician and creative force behind Boston who basically created and produced their debut album in his basement. It’s quite possible Sholz and Steinman were both the offspring of some Area 51 genetic experiment gone awry, freaks on leashes.

In pictures, Steinman looks like that nerd who was too cheesy to fit in with the goths or beatniks, so he just kept wearing leather and listening simultaneously to hard rock and Broadway shows in his garage. He had two record players hooked up. On one he’d play AC/DC, and on the other, Jesus Christ Superstar. On one, Foghat, on the other, My Fair Lady.

Wanna know the man who first discovered how perfectly the Pink Floyd album matched up with The Wizard of Oz? Damn straight it had to be Steinman, because Jim Steinman is like the Chuck Norris of modern music.

I can make fun of him all I want. I can make fun of his music, too. He writes music that begs to be mocked, performed by singers who are in all ways unhip. He doesn’t pick singers for their cool quotient; he nabs them for their ability to sell a used Pinto to Mitt Romney. His singers, given the right material, are expert salespeople.

Recently I went back and started watching the first season of GLEE, and I can promise you from now to the day I die that GLEE would never exist without Jim Steinman. That show’s ability to intertwine schmaltz, drama and comedy so swiftly and seamlessly is loved and despised for the same reason Steinman’s music is.

When you listen to Steinman, and when you watch GLEE, it’s hard to know exactly which emotion you’re supposed to feel. Worse, just when you commit to laughing or crying, something happens to totally yank the tablecloth from under your meal.

And I get it, why some people would despise this music, despise Steinman. But I've gotta believe that even those who hate him have to admit that he brought something unique to the landscape, a non-conformist with a vicious hook and the inability to keep songs under seven minutes.

Everytime I hear “Thunder Road” I want to write a love letter to Roy Bittan. I hope everytime Bittan hears the opening sequence in “I’d Do Anything for Love” he wants to write Steinman a love letter, too.

Bang and Blame

Hold Her Down - Toad the Wet Sprocket (mp3)
Bang and Blame - REM (mp3)

I was a virgin until a month before my 21st birthday. I was on my second date with a guy named Craig, a 20-something blond surfer type who got my number after I made him a chai tea to go at the coffee shop in his neighborhood where I worked...

...I felt him enter me and it hurt like hell, but I was flying high on the notion that I had finally conquered two fears — the fear of having sex and the fear that I never would. Afterwards, I was a little embarrassed by the spotting of blood on his sheets — should I offer to wash them? — but I still couldn’t contain my excitement.

“I can’t believe I’m not a virgin anymore,” I marveled, my head laying on his furry blonde chest. I had told him how inexperienced I was on our first date, two days before, when we were hooking up on this same bed after a light sushi dinner and a bunch of beers had put me just past the point of sauced. He, like the few other guys I had gotten intimate with, appeared impressed that I had waited for so long. I wondered if he felt special that I had chosen him as my first.

“Um, are you serious?” he asked incredulously. “We had sex two nights ago. Didn’t you notice?”

Thus begins one of the most powerful and controversial personal narratives I’ve read in a long time.

Titled “I Was Date Raped When I Was Drunk” on the grrl-powered site TheFrisky.com, the piece is frank and honest, horrifying and brave. Its unintended coda is a mesmerizing, mind-numbing 492 comments, mostly from women aggressively or angrily defending Ms. McDonnell-Parry’s take, but some from those begging to differ.

All too frequently, women comment on their similar traumatic experiences, a reminder that no matter how many women we think have had these living nightmares, we're guessing low.

Date rape is too important for us to ignore.
It’s too real for us to shy away.
The discomfort, the fear, the murkiness of the topic and the grey area of judgment are, none of them, sufficient excuses for avoiding the conversations.
My fear of being accused of insensitivity or ignorance isn't an acceptable excuse.
Especially if more conversations might reduce the numbers of encounters like Ms. McDonnell-Parry's.

Although I am grateful for her account, I disagree with her conclusions and find them to be dangerous, one more reminder to the troubled male half that no matter what we do short of signing contracts, we’ll be seen as the instigators, the aggressors, the bad guys.

To be certain, the history of humankind is about men getting away with most anything they did or do to women. It's still true in most of the world. But justice does not mean switching the gender target of injustice.

In the world of gender equality, the drunk man cannot be at fault for his inebriated actions while the drunk woman escapes all scrutiny.

You can lead a man to your private parts. You can tell him to ravage you with every inch of himself that’s not his reproductive organ, permit him to be completely naked with you where his hips and your hips are in close proximity if not direct contact, and even permit him in such a position to insert items that might or might not approximate the girth and feel of a penis... but only the male is at fault if you are both drunk and he actually inserts himself?

The male in her tale is no hero. He is not blameless. If she confessed to her virginity and her desire to hold onto it, then her granting of consent should probably have come through more clearly and directly than a drunken moan. But if hers is a cut-and-dried story about a male criminal and a female victim, then it’s patently destructive to the world of mutual responsibility we need.

Please understand: I don't claim to be indubitably right; this topic does not afford such simplicity. As a male defending a male, my motives could be suspect. Worse, anyone who has watched “Mad Men” or “Rescue Me” or any other hard-edged TV show knows that rape can occur with a fiance, a husband, an ex-husband, or even a trusted best friend. Women are never 100% safe, which is heartbreaking to type, since I believe deeply in myself as a 100% safe male.

I found comfort reading Emily Yoffe (“Dear Prudence”) at Slate, whose response to a woman in a similar situation feels more reasonable and less like an excuse to unflinchingly and in all situations blame one gender for the problem.

But if we can’t debate date rape, if we can’t have honest, hard, ugly discussions about this, then it’s because men are not allowed to question, which means the female controls and decides every bit of what is “truth.” Which means the female can control the narrative and free herself from responsibility.

Most men want to do the right thing, want to be the good guy. We cannot afford a culture where the female’s perception of all sexual encounters is the sole perception that counts, because it makes all of us males feel damned if we do or don’t. Sex cannot become a kangaroo court.

As my daughters get older, and as All Things Sex become increasingly impossible to avoid or ignore, I will have loads of advice about building trust, about moving slowly, about the penis’ ability to dictate the entirety of a man.

I’ll advise her that every additional drink she downs places her at greater risk of bad things, and that friendships and “situational awareness” are her best allies. Eventually, after I’ve steeled myself with a stiff shot or two, I’ll explain to her that letting a guy go down on you, while you're both drunk, on your first or second date, and letting a guy’s naked hips nestle directly next to your naked hips when you don’t even really know what he does professionally (or what his major might be), might not be the best way to protect yourself from catastrophe.

Whether Mr. Catastrophe, who misunderstood silence for consent in a drunken tryst, is a criminal might be debatable; that the girl is another victim will become fact.

"Maybe" might mean no, but any woman who puts all her chips on that rule is tap dancing in a mine field.

Being safe and careful and wise is no guarantee of protection, I'll tell her, but it will greatly increase the odds that she’ll have at least most of the control over her own sex life. And playing odds is the best we can do, because human beings sometimes misunderstand one another in critically awful ways, and because men are sometimes big strong seething piles of shit.

The more we as a culture talk about this horrible stuff, the more these nightmares aren't just shared on message boards and comment sections but discussed as a real part of the real past of real people... maybe we can actually help young women -- and men -- learn how to better protect themselves and one another.

Starting A National Trend

Neil Young and Crazy Horse--"Like A Hurricane (live)" (mp3)

Rock and roll is probably dead. I don't say that judgementally or evaluatively, just factually and in the sense that the heyday of the two guitars, bass, and drums bands has passed as the dominant structure for modern music. The number of teenagers who dream of forming such a band and taking it into a club and onto the road and into a career is severely diminished from those peak years. Those teenagers with a serious interest in music now are not necessarily even interested in rock. It is far too easy and manageable to use a computer and some other tools to lay down some beats and synthesizer tracks and to create a hip-hop song or a homemade rap or some kind of dizzying electronica. Even though such teens might look fondly back on the Blink 182s of their childhoods, that kind of "traditional" band is simply not the norm. Not for them.

But overall we are an aging population and there are untold numbers of us in our 30's, 40's, 50's, and 60's who spent some portion of our lives learning to play guitars and basses and drums in hopes of eventually forming such bands as part of some kind of amorphous dream not unlike the NBA hopes that carry far too much weight in urban neighborhoods. There are those of us who took piano lessons or who sat in dark, smoky suburban bedrooms assigned to the task of the tambourine or the background vocals or simply to be hangers-on for others dreams. I believe that there are a lot of such people, regardless of where those instruments or dreams are now, and it of them, of us, that I write.

My friend Troutking has started a national trend. He just doesn't know it, and neither does the nation. But as soon as it catches on, I guarantee you that you heard it first here. Some social trends happen as the result of some cataclysmic event, some just come about organically. This trend is of the latter type.

What Trout has done is to get some of us with a bit of homegrown musical training together to play music--old music--in that very band setting that we once dreamed being a part of. We set up and we twiddle with our instruments and we start falsely sometimes and often end abruptly. We encourage each other to try new roles, like taking a solo or playing a new instrument or adding a voice to the mix, and we work to involve everyone. We nod and quietly celebrate when we hit something magical; we look at each other and know when it didn't quite come together. But, and this is the best part, there is always enough there for us to keep going.

When word gets out, when people realize how much fun this is and how quickly those three or four chords that they once knew come back, when risks cease to become risks when among friends, when lovers of live music realize that there are some songs they will only hear in concert if they play them themselves, when the back-of-the-mind idea of playing music for a party becomes the party itself, then I envision the idea spreading like peanut butter on a bagel.

We've tackled Bob Dylan and Neil Young so far. The Rolling Stones to follow. Bruce Springsteen, The British Invasion, Frat Rock, and Jangle Night are all waiting in the wings. Each night leads to new possibilities. To play music around a particular artist or a theme creates a focus and a sense of purpose. So a ______ (insert theme here) Night at Trout's house involves computer-printer decorations with photographs and sayings of the artist in question, food that connects somehow with where he came from, beers, and most of all, music, a lot of music interpreted and played by us, to be followed by a bit of euphoria and and eating and debriefing at the end (and trying to stay out of sight while the drummer takes down his kit and transports it to his car).

The band line-up: "The Fast Car" on drums. "Paco" on guitar and vocals." "Skinny Suzie" on vocals. "Dartmouth" on vocals, guitar, and harmonica and a Russian instrument whose name I didn't catch. "Cousin Stevie" on lead and rhythm guitars, some vocals. Trout on keyboards. Me on guitar and vocals and pressed-into-service harmonica. My wife as groupie, photographer, sometimes singer. Sometimes session extras: "The Pounder" on learning guitar, "Becks" on learning guitar, "Roadman" on learning harmonica. It's all good.

And, believe it or not, we are growing as a band. We were better the second time around, more polished and more intuitive, we stretched out a bit more effectively but often knew when to say when. Though we are a friendly group, there is no such thing as a democratic band that succeeds for any length of time. So people take charge when necessary--no vote. The highlight of our last outing, the Neil Young Night, was when we were starting "The Loner" and our drummer stopped us and said, "No. Faster." And that made all of the difference.

I'll admit, I fought it, Trout's inevitable national trend. Like I fight most things. It took well over a year to get Dylan Night off the ground. Neil Young Night happened last weekend, about 9 months later, but this time there was also a practice. Even then, I wasn't willing to carve out the time and practiced against my will. I didn't want to give up weekend time. I thought we needed an audience. I didn't want to invite players to the performance who hadn't been at the practice. I didn't think that it could be a social occasion. I put up so many barriers and none of them held water.

No, Trout is clearly onto something. So many social obligations are just that, so many gatherings are the same old-same old. But when each band member walks in the door there is a kind of celebration, at least for me, of that feeling that is as primal as fire, but that is so quickly forgotten: when we make music together, life is better. Oh, yes, so much better. And even better with drums.

I hope that you, too, get the chance to figure that out, if you don't already know it. Or again, if you do. You'll be a part of something bigger, maybe something national.

Look, Ma, I'm On TV!

Glossary--"Ghosts In The Vapor" (mp3

I spent a decent part of Sunday after noon looking for my brother-in-law. At a golf match. On television.

To accomplish such a thing is easier said than done, and there is no guarantee of success. He, a middle-aged member of a large crowd of golf watchers enjoying the 68 degree sunny weather near the coast, was going to be at the Farmers' Insurance Open golf tournament. And he had let his 85-year-old mother, who was staying with us, know that he would be at the tournament and that the tournament would be on television. "I'll be the one waving," he texted. So we started watching. When such a thing becomes a possibility, suddenly, somehow, it becomes paramount.

He was in San Diego; we were sitting in our den in Chattanooga, TN.

Actually, when we started looking for him, he wasn't even there yet. But we didn't know that, or that his girlfriend really didn't want him to go but that he felt like he needed to put in an appearance (he works for a professional sports team, so I suppose networking was involved). So we started watching the last day of the tournament and looking for him about the 7th hole on.

NOTE: If you never watch golf, the television coverage focuses only on the frontrunners or someone embroiled in scandal, just like the political primaries.

Then we found out that he had arrived. But he told us he was on the 13th hole, watching a golfer from the University of Florida. We could see that said golfer was not on the leaderboard, so we knew there was no chance. Hold on, we texted back, the leader, Kyle Stanley, is about to tee off at the 11th. We'll be there at 13, via television, soon.

Then we heard from him that he was at the 11th. Stanley hit his drive into the crowd and it bounced off someone's shoe and carromed back into play. Text him and ask him if that ball just him, I joked. No, he wrote back, he was on the other side of the green. Tell him to get on the side of the green where the balls are landing, I said.

After Kyle Stanley chipped onto the green, he took off his golf glove and handed it to the spectator he had hit with his drive. Quid pro quo.

And, then, a minute later, as the players were finishing up the hole, all of a sudden there he was. "I see him," I shouted. "He's right beside Stanley's golf bag! See him? He's wearing a dark blue shirt."

And that was that. Mission accomplished. And that was the ending of our watching of the golf tournament.

Now, I love my brother-in-law, but I've never shouted about having seen him before. It's a funny thing, isn't it, to know that someone you know might be on television and to spend your time trying to get just a glimpse of him? Why? To what end? Is it some verification of his existence several thousand miles away? Is it the chance for a mother to catch a glimpse of her distant son?

I'd have to say no. These days, a cell phone camera can take care of those needs in short order. Is it more that there is some famous event and I know someone who is at that famous event and that somehow that makes both him and, by extension, me more famous, too? Is it the bragging rights of "I saw my brother-in-law on TV yesterday"? I'm not sure.

There probably isn't much to it at all. And yet, if I get word that he'll be visible at the All-Star Game next year or that you are going to be in the audience of a Letterman taping week, I'll probably check out those as well. Much as I might malign television and as tired as I am of so much of it, it still possesses that strange ability to make us, if we're on it, or someone we know who is on it appear more real than however real we are. While the various native peoples who claim that having our images captured costs us a bit of our souls may be right, the fact remains that seeing ourselves or people we know projected on a screen counters the tenuousness of our presence.

Betrayed By Bueller

Getting Away with Murder - Papa Roach (mp3)

“Never rub another man’s rhubarb.” -- The Joker

At lunchtime on Friday, a coworker I barely know rushed up to me and shoved his smartphone in my face. Like, while I was in the food line.

“You gotta see this,” he said.

Funny thing. I’d said those exact words not five minutes prior, thrusting my smartphone in the face of a coworker upon my arrival at our dining hall. Mine was a self-made video of a slutty but attractive young blonde sitting on a trapeze bar in the rafters of one of Chattanooga’s finest restaurants.

It’s the kind of restaurant that, when you say the name, everyone reacts, “Oooh, swanky!” Except when there’s a young hottie in a high-cut red evening gown swinging over the bar, at which point people say, “Oooh, skanky!”

So, when this cell phone flew in front of my face, I couldn’t help but assume it was video of this swinging lady from another angle, even though this guy wasn’t even at the party.

Instead, it was video of some dude in a bathrobe, in a hotel, walking to fling open the curtains.
And then, it’s Matthew Broderick.
And then, he says, “How can I handle work on a day like today?”
And then Yellow’s now-immortal song, “Oh Yeah,” plays briefly in the background with the date 2.5.12 on the screen.

And then I wet myself.

“No. Way,” I said, looking around for some napkins to dry my pants.

“Way,” he said. “It’s gonna happen. Facebook is going nuts!”

At my lunch table, we sat and discussed the topic for more than half the time, trying to imagine the plot to what would have to be the most amazing surprise sequel since the reelection of Grover Cleveland.

Would Sloane be in it? Nah. No way.

Cameron? Absolutely.

What about Principal Ed Rooney? Hell yes. A cameo at the very least, but likely some awesome part, like Mike Tyson in “The Hangover.”

Would Ferris be married? Divorced? An eternal bachelor? Married, we figured. Ferris, for all his antics and insanity, was at his core a man of principle and values. He wouldn’t be the kind of guy to totally fall in love with Sloane only go grow up and be a man-whore.

If Jason Segel’s “The Muppets” could pull of the miracle, reviving what had become torpid with a non-stop cuddlefest of perfect and clever cheese, then not even the demise of John Hughes could prevent the possibility, ever so slight, that we were on the cusp of witnessing a pop culture miracle.

I practically shoved adolescents out of the way as I hurried across our campus and back to my cave, where I plopped down in front of my computer with the eager look of Ralphie trying to decode that Little Orphan Annie message.

Mere minutes later, I was drinking my Ovaltine, and it tasted... a bit nutty.

It’s not the teaser to the Super Bowl trailer for the sequel to one of the cornerstone movies of my generation’s existence. It’s the teaser to a G**D*** Honda commercial.



Fucking Honda. Fucking Broderick. Backstabbing, disillusioning, sacrilegious bastards.

Please understand. I’m sure the commercial will be clever. I’m sure it will have parts where, despite myself, I’ll laugh. But the laughter will be the kind of laughter you hear at funeral visitations or in ICU, the laughter of people who are trying to distract themselves from the fact that something we thought was immortal has died right before our eyes.

If you think I’m exaggerating my emotions in this regard, you clearly haven’t been reading this blog. Movies and music are the dog-ears of my life’s journal. And although I arrived late on the Ferris train -- didn’t see it until it hit the dollar theater -- I never hopped off. Me and enough of my generation to fill 500 Hogwarts-bound trains found a kind of hope in that movie we keep desperately looking for in other films.

It’s not Hughes’ best movie, because that was “Breakfast Club.” Ferris was his most important, because it told us, more clearly and confidently and joyfully than any other Hughes film, that someone out there understood us and loved us enough to have fun with us. The movie understood how to make us laugh and relax without ever once resorting to our baser instincts.

Yes, there’s a moment of Mia Sara in the pool. And yes, there’s a moment where Jennifer Gray kicks the ever-loving shit out of Rooney. And that, my friends, is the complete extent of sex and violence in the film. The rest of the film is (save for some foul language that couldn’t have been more perfectly  placed if Michaelangelo himself had served as artistic consultant) good and clean teenage escapism. The paragon of it, in fact.

If you think I'm overreacting, then you didn’t see the adults age 32-48 in my school cafeteria. Because every last damn one of us was so beside ourselves with a youthful glee at the thought of a Ferris Bueller sequel that you've thought we all got raises.

I own a Honda. Right now. A Honda Accord. It’s been a pretty good car, especially for the money. But for a few minutes on the way home on Friday, I considered crashing it over a guard rail and into the Tennessee River. I’m never speaking to my car again, and it’s not even the car’s damn fault.

But my car is now a part of the Hatfields, and I’m now a McCoy. Lines have been drawn. There’s hell to pay for this. I'm so mad I can't even proofread this.

Corporate bastards in an Odyssey ran over Bueller, and someone’s gonna have to get vengeance. Even if I have to hire Liam Neeson to travel the globe and find the people behind this. He will find them. And he will kill them.

If he did that for his daughter, just think of what he’ll do to the poor saps who murdered Ferris.

The

John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman--"My One And Only Love" (mp3)

Let me be blunt: I want more "the" in my life.

Especially in reference to me. That's right, that most common of articles is something that I find myself craving everytime I pick up a magazine, especially a story about someone famous. I want to be "the."

I'm not talking about "the" pronounced as "thee," as in a professional athlete who introduces his college as "The University of Ohio" or some such. That's presumptuous and over-urging.

No, for you grammarians out there, I'm talking about "the" in an appositive phrase. You know, that statement that introduces the subject? As in, "the novelist Joe Schmoe" or "the painter Jane Floe." That's it. That's all I want. Instead of being Bob _____, I want to be "the teacher Bob ______" or "the dean Bob ______." Is it so much to ask?

Probably.

As far as I can tell, there are a few criteria that one must possess in order to get the "the." First, the person must pursue a craft worthy of the the "the." Popular ones that qualify, beyond what was already mention include "the poet," "the artist," "and, suddenly, the "journalist." I thought for the longest time that you had to be a creative type in order to get the "the," which is why seeing "the journalist _____ _____" in Newsweek tonight gave me both hope and the courage to write this post.

Second, the person must be married or living with somebody, because you rarely get the mention if you are the main focus. Only if you're being quoted, as in, "The poet Robert Frost once said...." Otherwise, you've got to have a significant other, and, probably, a more significant other. I can handle that: I'm married to a lawyer. Excuse me, I'm married to "the attorney _____ _____," which works right now since I'm talking about me, which makes her second banana. For once. At the very least, to get the "the," you've got to be the partner that the writer isn't writing about, even if you happen to have more cred, fame, cache, or whatever.

And finally, the person should have a "here's somebody you don't know but if you were cultured you would" quality about him or her. See, when a writer gives you the "the," he or she is elevating you at the same time that he's putting down the reader. He's saying, "Look, fugnut, if I don't identify his wife as a poet, somebody like you is not going to have any idea who she is. Embarassing, really."

I'm okay with that. Just give me the "the." I don't mind being a craft beer, a boutique offering, a niche product, an esoteric choice. I'll happily be the best place to eat that nobody knows about or the option that exists only for those in the know. Just give me the "the."

In fact, now that I think of it, my wife the attorney isn't ever going to get the "the." She's a lawyer, for God's sakes, making the big bucks while working herself to death, but grinding it out, not creating art. I'm sure she counts it as part of her good fortune that she's married to "the blogger Bob ______."

Yeah, the blogger. I like the sound of that. I'll take it.

40

Resurrection Fern - Iron & Wine (mp3)

This is 40.

Fortune has smiled on me.

This is the sentence that repeats like a chorus in my head, in a manner as sublimely peaceful and mellow as possible.

I was a bundle of nuclear nervous energy at 21, but at 40, I'm very meh, and meh feels pretty damn good, I gotta tell you. It's a nice meh. Very chill.

If today is any indication, the reason I don’t “do well” or stand on ceremony on “big days” like birthdays and holidays is because I don’t enjoy placing undue expectations on people or moments. I don't want to get up tomorrow having to choose the Perfect Birthday Outfit or the Perfect Lunch Destination or the Perfect Birthday Party Plans. I just want a nice day, and even that might be asking more than I deserve. Expecting more just seems unfair.

Which brings me more joy, the movie I didn’t expect to be good but was sublime, or the one that lived up to its billing? Which brings me more joy, the discovery of a new band or the revisiting of one of my favorites?

Which brings me closer to God, the scheduled, regular arrival to church on Sunday mornings, or the everyday miracles surrounding us and waiting patiently for us to notice?

In 40 years, fortune has provided me, gifted me, with people to whom I will never be quite capable of expressing my gratitude and love. From parents to friends, from my wife to my children, from coworkers to acquaintances come and gone. I tried writing about them all last night, but what came out will stay with me. Sharing it felt tawdry. Moreso even than usual, I mean. But just trust me, little words like “parents,” “friends,” “wife,” “children”... they each create greenhouses of vibrant, flourescent beauty.

One of my two oldest friends in the world sent me a gift yesterday. A box of graphic novels and a demand that I not reciprocate. His gift was perfect. It was our friendship of 33 years in a brown cardboard box with my name on it.

How could he still think of me as his friend when I have all but disappeared into a life of domestic responsibilities and daily obligations and desires closer to home, where the two hours of distance between us often feels like an ocean rather than an easy Interstate? I honestly don’t know how he holds fast to our friendship, but I cherish that he has. I cherish how we humans are like that in our best moments, how willing and able we are to let go of the dirt and cling to the essence of what is good.

The longer I've known someone, the more opportunities I've had to completely fuck things up with them. A tornado moment of self-destructive stupidity or a never-ending monsoon of small mistakes. Betrayal or mere bundles of minor disappointment. Who knows which kind of natural disaster my goofy ways brings to those who cross my path; I only know my weather patterns come with risk.

Yet the ties continue to hold and bind. And I just shake my head at my good fortune.

On this day, perhaps the reason I'm not falling into some abyss of despair is because I can't even get deep enough into all the ways I've been wildly lucky. Health, love, security, more happiness than not for so many of the people I love and care for, and none of those could have received from me as much as they have given.

The midlife crisis will have to come another time.

I am forty.

I am fortunate.