Apparently Some Circles Do End (Cheating In America : Part Two)

I recently watched the film "Waitress." It's marketed as a cute, quirky romantic comedy which centers around a young waitress at a roadside cafe who dreams of bigger things than her small-town life is giving her. I remember it getting good reviews when it came out, so when my wife sent me to Blockbuster with the request of bringing home something light-hearted and funny, "Waitress" seemed to fit the bill. We were both a little disappointed by what we ended up with.

Though the movie does have its redeeming qualities, a central story line of the film is about the main character having an affair on her loser husband. What makes it worse is that she's pregnant. Kick it up a notch and she's sleeping with her doctor, the very OBGYN who's checking her regularly during her pregnancy. There are numerous scenes of them all over each other... in his front yard, in the car, in the patient room in one of his offices. And though you don't actually see anything beyond heavy kissing, the main character actually narrates the line "At first it was about the sex." What the?!? I'm sorry. Am I a total prude or is that ridiculously immoral and disgusting on several levels? On top of that, there's even another character cheating on her husband in the story too. What bothers me is how the whole thing is presented. I think we're actually supposed to cheer on the adultery. We're supposed to be happy for this girl as she's banging one guy while pregnant with another's baby. Sadly, this seems to be a trend in Hollywood these days.

Think of some recent films and think of how many times you've wanted two married characters to cheat on their respective spouses in order to be together. "Walk the Line" was a great film about the life and romance of Johnny Cash and June Carter. It was a great love story, but both characters were married. Both characters had children. Both cheated, both lied, both wrecked lives and families in the process. You could argue that Johnny and June were "meant to be" and that after they got together, they stayed together until the day they died. Fine, but the bottom line is that they broke their marriage vows along the way and I had a hard time really wanting them to be together in the movie because I knew what it meant to be cheering on their relationship. And did I mention the Academy Awards that this film was either nominated for or won?

Currently in theatres is "Charlie Wilson's War," another movie where you want the two main stars to be together, and yet both character are also married. And again, this film has been nominated for multiple Golden Globe awards and will certainly be in line for several Oscars too. If all Hollywood does is glamorize cheating, why should any of us be surprised when it happens in our own lives or when family values as a whole seem to be falling by the wayside?

I wrote in a previous post about how I thought that the steroid scandal in baseball was sadly reflective of not a problem in that sport alone, but a declining sense of morals in our nation as a whole. Some may call that an over-statement, but I just don't see otherwise anymore. You constantly read of marriages breaking up, of single-parents raising children alone, and of kids falling apart. The family structure that should be so essential in our lives today has been replaced by too many other me-first negative forces. It was once said that "no man is an island," and yet no one seems very interested in doing the things to promote togetherness very much any more.

I go to bed every night knowing that I've never cheated on my wife and knowing that the day will never come where I'll look my children in the eyes and say, "Boys... the reason your mom and I aren't living together any more is because I just wanted to bang some other lady... that pussy was more important than you." Am I a hero, or just some dope whose story isn't worth telling?

F*ck Baseball ! (Cheating in America : Part One)

Earlier this week the official investigative reports on the steroid scandal in Major League Baseball were released to the public. Many were surprised to see big names like Roger Clemens, Eric Gagne, and Miguel Tejada on the list of guilty players. Questions and speculation are everywhere. What do we do now?

Honestly, I'm so disgusted by all of this I don't really know where to start. Sure, we've all known that steroids have been involved in sports. You can't look at Barry Bonds now or Mark McGuire or Sammy Sosa from a few years back and not think they were on something. I guess seeing it in official writing though makes it alarmingly and painfully true.

What bothers me the most is this culture of ours that possibly created this dilemma. We want everything fast. Working for things takes too long. We live in an incredibly speedy, virtually instantaneous society. Working endlessly in the gym is simply not fast enough for most athletes... or they've been made to believe that. We're also in an age of statistics. Anything of value, apparently, is only relevant if it's measurable. The more numbers, graphs, and esoteric data - the better. No one can tell how hard you've worked at something. They can only pat you on the back when some numbers show your significance. It also seems like we're in a culture of cheating, one where liars and acts of dishonesty frequently go unpunished, even when it's so painfully obvious that a major wrong has been done.

Where does baseball go from here? I have no idea. I'm fond of saying that since we don't live in a perfect world, there are no perfect solutions. What I am sure of is that baseball is probably just reflective of a much bigger concern: How far does our American culture have to fall down before someone realizes that not only are we headed in the wrong direction, but that our flimsy ideals most likely sent us this way in the first place.

The Art of the Performance

I got to see Bright Eyes in concert the other night. Conor Oberst and company put on a fantastic show and I was not disappointed in my first time seeing them. Oberst, who has often been referred to as “the new Bob Dylan” in regards to his song-writing, was entertaining, emotional, humorous, aggressive, and intense all at once. He is a dynamic performer who seemed fragile in his most intimate songs, but was later a powerhouse in the ear-blasting finale. It was a great show.

There was one thing that really struck me about that night, and that is the nature of performers and their performances. Here you have guys who sing the same songs night after night, hundreds of shows a year. For some artists, they’ve belted out the same tunes tens of thousands of times. Doesn’t that get old? And yet somehow, each night some of these people are able to reach down into themselves and pull out all of the appropriate emotions when needed. It kind of amazes me.

When Bright Eyes performed “Poison Oak,” I was blown away. I’ll reprint the lyrics below, but the song seems to be about one friend losing another. They start off as boyhood pals, but then one quickly grows up, steals a car, drives away and gets into some bad stuff. The speaker sings of loss and how his clothes are “soaking wet” with tears. Every time I’ve heard the song on the album “I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning,” it’s always gotten to me. It’s starts off very quietly and intimately, but then it swells with anger, sadness, and regret. It’s a tune that sounds like Oberst might’ve easily cried through the vocals or through the writing of it. I practically do for the emotional chord he strikes through every lyric, especially when the band hits the crescendos of the later lines.

It’s probably a mistake to assume that Oberst is singing about someone from his life. We probably too often guess that of writers, which diminishes their ability in some way. But let’s just say that this is something very real to him. I can understand how Eric Clapton might’ve barely been able to get through the recording of “Tears in Heaven,” but does it still get to him now after performing the song for over fifteen years? You wouldn’t think so, or at least not in the same way, and yet when Conor Oberst sang “Poison Oak” when I saw him, you would’ve thought he was speaking of something that just happened to him yesterday, even though the song was recorded several years and many many concerts ago. The emotion he conjured up for the performance of that song was almost tangible that night at Constitution Hall. I give him a lot of credit for that and admire any artist who is able to deliver such passionate renditions of their songs night after night.

“Poison Oak” Lyrics by Conor Oberst

Poison oak. Some boyhood bravery.
When the telephone was a tin can on a string,
And I fell asleep with you still talking to me.
You said you weren't afraid to die.

In polaroids you were dressed in women's clothes.
Were you made ashamed, why'd you lock them in a drawer?
Well, I don't think that I ever loved you more,

Than when you turned away, when you slammed the door,
When you stole the car and drove towards Mexico.
And you wrote bad checks just to fill your arm,
I was young enough, I still believed in war.

Well let the poets cry themselves to sleep
And all their tearful words will turn back into steam.

But me, I'm a single cell on the serpent's tongue.
There's a muddy field where a garden was.
And I'm glad you got away but I'm still stuck out here.
My clothes are soaking wet from your brother's tears.

And I never thought this life was possible.
You're the yellow bird that I've been waiting for.

The end of paralysis, I was a statuette.
Now I'm drunk as hell on a piano bench
And when I press the keys it all gets reversed.
The sound of loneliness makes me happier.

Knowing How to Wrap it Up

I saw "Ratatouille" last night. As usual, Pixar managed to produce a most enjoyable film and one that works for both children and adults. A few of their recent movies have veered toward the "too long" side, especially "The Incredibles" and "Cars," but the thing I give Pixar credit for is always knowing how to wrap up a story in an entertaining but also meaningful way. "Ratatouille" has a fantastic finish, ones that concludes the tale of a rat who dreams of being a cook, but additionally makes a poignant statement on the nature of art and the artist. Here it is, quoted by the character Anton Ego, the notorious food critic of the story.

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize that only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau's, who is, in this critic's opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau's soon, hungry for more. "

Pretty deep stuff for a kid's movie, but that has always been the genius of Pixar: They know how to cater to more than one patron.

"Felice" Means "Happy"

I went to the Bright Eyes concert this past weekend. I’ll write about that at another time, but now I’d like to talk about the most pleasant surprise of the night: the opening set by The Felice Brothers.

A lot of times you go to a show to see a certain performer and have to suffer through some other acts beforehand. I didn’t even go to the Bright Eyes show on time because I’d never heard of the other artists on the bill. But as I strolled into the venue about forty minutes late, I was pleasantly surprised by one of the more enjoyable bands I have seen and heard in a long time.

The Felice Brothers are made up of three actual brothers from upstate New York and another member, a big accordion player named Christmas. Despite playing on a large stage with a lot of room, the brothers occupied an intimate space the size of a closet. They danced and stomped around. They banged on their instruments, dropping drumsticks and bumping into one another along the way. They whooped and hollered through a bunch of songs that sounded like good-ole whiskey-soaked sing-a-longs from some Irish bar. And actually, one of the tunes was called “There’s Whiskey In My Whiskey.” Three of the four guys sung lead at one point or another, and they all chimed in throughout their set.

The thing that struck me about the Felice Brothers was how much fun they were having. They smiled through every song and just genuinely seemed to be enjoying what they were doing. They were real musicians too. It seemed like they were playing for the playing, not for the money or the crowd or for anything else. The music just banged out of them, echoing through their limbs with every note and beat of the drum. I don’t know that I’d say they were great musicians or guys who were adroitly skilled at their instruments, but they were obviously swept away by their songs and their enthusiasm was infectious. I loved them. LOVED them!

In the end, this post will never do justice to the wonderful performance from the other night. I just can’t stop stomping my feet, can’t stop swaying with music that hasn’t stopped playing and can’t stop yelling out lines in answer to some happy call-out from some other place. So if you get the chance, check out The Felice Brothers. You won’t be disappointed, because like they said the other night, “Felice” means “happy.”

Things I like... Things You Should Like

I saw The Thermals play here on Saturday night. What a show! I was honestly tired as hell and not entirely wanting to go. I try to live by the motto "You'll never remember a good night's sleep as much as great experience," so I rolled out of the suburbs for the late show at The Black Cat club in DC. It was one of the funnest shows I've seen in a while.

A friend got me into The Thermals last year. Their album "The Body, The Blood, The Machine" is fantastic. It's fast. It's fun. It's so energetic. It's the kind of music that you makes want to blast it out of your car stereo and race down the highway. I knew that if their live show had half the vibe of the cd, I'd be in for a good night.

The funny thing about the concert was that the whole thing flew by in about 45 minutes. The Thermals play songs that are all about 2-3 minutes long. They relentlessly flew from one song into the next and seemed to play their entire three album catalogue without taking a breath, and without breaking an hour. Some might say, "Hey... I paid for a bit more than this," but the show was awesome. I was either jumping up and down or smiling the entire time. The band seemed to have fun too, which in my concert-going experience always seems to enhance the show.

So if you get a chance, check out The Thermals at a concert venue near you!

Album favorites from "The Body, The Blood, The Machine" are...
#4 "A Pillar of Salt"
#5 "Returning to the Fold"
#7 "St. Rosa and the Swallows"
#1 "Here's Your Future"

Hymn for the Deviant

The film version of "Into the Wild" has recently hit theatres. It's the story of Chris McCandless, the son of a wealthy Virginia family who drops out of school, empties and gives away nearly $25,000 from his bank account, then treks across the country to "find himself," only to die alone in the Alaskan wilderness. The movie is being lauded for its visual beauty and philosophical depth. I read the book a number of years ago.

What initially struck me about McCandless' story was his selfish thinking and careless ways. He alienated himself from his family and just dropped out of society. He sent little notes and postcards here and there, but my memory of it is that he just cut himself off from the people who he'd been connected to. And while severing the umbilical chord is often necessary as one travels into adulthood, shutting the door on his family seemed very cruel to me.

McCandless ended up dying from his carelessness. He ultimately found himself alone in the countryside, unable to find enough food to live on and could not escape his predicament because the high water season of Alaska had trapped him in. His lack of understanding and possible respect of the harsh landscape he had traveled to resulted in him starving to death, one of the most horrible ways a person can die. When I finished the book, I found I had very little sympathy for Chris McCandless. That was about ten years ago.

Now that the story is back in the media again, I find myself revisiting my thoughts on this young man. The things I originally took from the story are probably not that different than what many people would have. McCandless was clearly marching to the beat of his own drum. He was a fruitcake who traded in a life of ease and comfort and opportunity for one with no guarantees or stability. Who does that kind of thing? Only an idiot, right?

When I was a kid, I remember thinking my mom's sister was kind of crazy. When she was in college, she backpacked around Europe, sleeping here and there as she went. Later she joined The Peace Corps and ended up getting pregnant by some guy in South America. She came home alone, gave birth, and then eventually moved clear across the country from where her family lived on the East Coast to reside in California as a single parent. None this sat very well with her mom and dad, and I recall getting the general impression that Aunt Kathe was kind of "out there." Now that I've gotten older though, I'm come to realize that not only was Aunt Kathe pretty cool, she was probably much cooler, more interesting, and daring than my own conservative family was.

Why is it that our society so often condemns those people who refuse to be normal? Chris McCandless didn't want the life of ease he'd been born into, so he challenged himself. My Aunt wasn't content to follow the path that everyone else did, so she struck out on her own terms and made her own life. These people weren't doing the things the way everyone else does them. In a way, they were embodying the very ideals our country was founded upon: individualism and freedom of choice, and yet because they made choices that weren't "normal," they were often met with scorn and mockery.

Didn't Thoreau embark on a journey similar to McCandless'? Isn't he hailed as an American Icon now? Didn't Christ battle an empire and generations of religious thinking? Didn't Picasso defy every artistic tradition laid before him? And what about Luther, or Copernicus, or Ghandi? Every one of these people were called insane by one person or another, and yet instead of being forever defined as "crack-ups," we now think of them more as "break-throughs." Maybe it's something to know that one day people will see your genius, individualism, and perseverance, but for some of these guys it may have been cold comfort at best.

I wish I had half the balls of people like Chris McCandless or my Aunt. I could say that I'm married now, have a family, a good job, a great house, and a nice life, but that might not have mattered to them. For now, maybe the best I can do is learn their stories and impart their wisdom to those around me, hoping to inspire others to embark on their own journeys "into the wild."

More Things I Think About While You're On Your Cell Phone

Ever wonder why we don't have British accents here in America?

Think about it. All of the early colonists were from England. They established settlements here in America and the towns that survived were eventually populated by more people from the UK. Sure, there were people born here who never set foot in England, but their parents were English. Their grandparents were English. Their neighbors were English. Every person those first Americans knew were either from England or descended from people from there.

Our speech is formed and modeled by the folks around us. We make sounds really out of mimicry more than anything else. A child of deaf parents, ones with altered speech as a result of their deafness, will grow up with slightly altered speech themselves. If you live in the south, you're going to speak with a southern accent because every one around you talks that way.

So then why don't all of us have British accents?

Someone always tells me that our accents have faded... that that's what happens over time. Really? Did they fade in England? Have they disappeared in other parts of the world too? Then I'm told that because America is full of people from so many different places, we've developed a neutral accent as a result... kind of a mix of a thousand accents, which results in nothing discernible in our speech. Really? I'm pretty sure that England has just as diverse a population as we do here. It's not like people don't travel and relocate there from all over the world. So what gives?

Bloody hell, man!

The Enduring Message

Ernest Hemingway has been my favorite writer for a long time. He's got some phenomenal stories and books where he did things with the English language that had never been done before, which have influenced people ever since. Without a doubt he lived one of the fullest lives of any person I have ever read about. He squeezed more life into his sixty one years than many people who live full lives will achieve put together.

The thing that always stays with me about Hemingway is the message of his work. In some ways, for me, EH is almost more of a philosophical figure than anything else. In his stories, he cast his characters in terrible situations. They faced war, death, defeat, and loss in a variety of forms and the point that Hemingway routinely made was the importance of showing "Grace Under Pressure." He basically told us that life sucked, and that it sucked for everyone, but that the most important thing you had to do was face it with strength and dignity. When you really think about it, he couldn't be more correct.

I don't think it's negative to say that life is full of disappointment. Thirty two teams compete in the National Football League for the SuperBowl title. Thirty one of them lose in the end. Tens of thousands of people will run in the Marine Corps Marathon every year in Washington, DC. All but one of them will lose. Those numbers are staggering.

We've all faced hard times. There have been periods in my life when I've thought, "I don't know if I can take much more of this." It seemed like loss and negativity were around every corner. But each time things didn't get better, I found myself stronger. In fact, there were times when I realized that I didn't know how strong I actually was and as corny as it sounds, I often went back to Hemingway at those moments. He once said, "To live, one must endure," and that's all I tried to do. When things did finally change for the better, I marveled the most at my own endurance and refusal to give in to those circumstances.

Thanks Papa.

The Zen Dream

Every now and again I think about this little Zen Buddhist story I once heard.

Once there was a man alone in a field. Suddenly another man came running up to him.

"What's going on?" the first man asked.

"I'm so excited," the other man replied. "I just had the craziest dream."

"What was so crazy about it?" the first man asked.

"Well," the other man began, "I dreamt I was a butterfly."

"And...?"

"What I don't know," the second man said, "is am I man, standing in this field, who dreamt I was a butterfly? Or am I butterfly who's currently dreaming that I'm a man?"

The Unmatched Palette

Though I'm fairly adamant about questioning the presence of God in our lives, the colors of the natural world have always made me draw a breath. Despite the many achievements of man, we have never been able to manufacture colors as brilliant as those found all over the planet. The yellows and oranges of garden peppers. The almost electric purple on the feathers of a peacock's neck. The soft pinks inside a conch shell hidden deep beneath the azure seas of the Caribbean. Sometimes the sunsets that spread across our Virginian skies make me forget that anything else exists in the world during those evenings.

The other day I found this picture of a Panther Chameleon in a book of my son's. I just couldn't stop looking at the seemingly infinite number of colors that splashed themselves all over his skin. Even now I really don't have words to describe its beauty. I'm think I'm just thankful to have stumbled across it.

Things I like... Things You Should Like

Andrew Wyeth is one of the last great living American painters. Come to think of it, he has to be one of the greatest American artists ever. His work, so painstakingly detailed at times, so almost emotionally tangible at others, has continued to amaze me ever since I first stumbled upon a book of his watercolors several years ago.

When the Philadelphia Museum of Art put on a Wyeth retrospective last year, I couldn't wait to go. There are so many pieces that I love of the painter's native Chadd's Ford home and surroundings. Of the many art exhibits I have been to over the years, Wyeth's was one of my favorites. Seeing his pictures close up was an incredible experience. On one hand, it's just such an awesome thing to see an image you've admired from afar hanging on a wall in front of you. It's like seeing a dream come to life. On the other hand I thought, "Some people are just so gifted. Thank you for these gifts."

"Marriage" is definitely one of Wyeth's works that I admire so much. It's really just a simple painting of two old people sleeping, but every time I look at it I think, "This is what love in the late stages really looks like." The man and the woman are sleeping, covers pulled up to their necks. The bedroom window is open and outside you can see the cold Pennsylvania countryside at bay. It's certainly metaphorical and really represents all I want out of my life and marriage. When it comes down to it, I want someone to be there for me even in the most unglamorous and uneventful of times... just the two of us fighting the winter that we cannot stop from advancing. There's more love in that image than in most poems and letters a person could write. And I think that's what I really like about Wyeth in the end: He's so good at what he does that he tells you everything about yourself without ever saying a word.

Searching For Atlantis

The other day I watched the IMAX film “Dolphins.” It’s a great movie, by the way, filled with incredibly clear and beautiful photography, interesting information, and a wonderful soundtrack. I absolutely recommend it. There was one part, though, that really got me thinking.

One segment of the film tells the story of a man who befriends a wild dolphin somewhere near the Providenciales Islands in the Turks and Caicos. Each day the man swims out to a local reef and swims around with “Jo Jo.” They blow bubbles together, play with a little rubber chew toy, and swim in these beautiful slow circles around one another. It’s a touching story, but the thing that really struck me was how great of a swimmer this man was. They showed him just spending so much time underwater, swimming inverted half the time. It was pretty amazing. The narrator of the film even commented on what a phenomenal diver this man was, mentioning that at times he was holding his breath for nearly three to four minutes. That’s pretty long. The world record is something like fourteen minutes. As a former swimmer who swam competitively for fourteen years, it was quite a challenge for me to swim fifty meters under the water, which would probably translate into something under one minute. One minute! And this guy in the movie was under for three or four times that?!? I was amazed.

The film also mentioned that Dolphins are mammals, just like humans are. So essentially, we’re a related species in some way. One very basic view of this is to say that Dolphins, along with a number of other mammals who live in water, are just living creatures who can hold their breath for really long periods of time. Now I realize that man never evolved from a dolphin, but is there some genetic evolution that occurred because dolphins and some other mammals ended up living in the sea and humans found themselves on land?

Darwin’s theories on evolution are completely believable. His awesome drawings of birds and the specialized attributes they developed in accordance to their surroundings and living situations make perfect sense. So going back to the diver in the movie… if humans spent increasing amounts of time in the water, would we eventually evolve some sort of greater lung capacity, different eyes, and an altered skeleton to help us survive those conditions? Does that diver in the movie have lungs that are now different than the ones I have, simply because of the life he has chosen to live? It makes you wonder exactly what we could do… what we’re capable of doing in different circumstances?

Here’s a final and related thought: Aren’t there tons of people still born with webbed fingers? What's that all about?

Maybe Superman Was Simply Never Told What He Couldn't Do

The other day I went in to talk to my boss about an idea I had. Without going into too much unnecessary detail, I basically brought up some thoughts I had about changing an approach to some things we were doing. I had been thinking about some ways of revamping the current system and wanted to know what she thought about them. All I got was…

“No, you can’t do that.”

“No, that won’t work.”

“The problem with that is…”

“Everything would have to be completely rethought and changed…things that have been in place for a long time."

“Well, this is just the way things are.”

“That’s a nice idea, but…”

“No.”

“No.”

“No.”

Now I’ll give her some credit because she was basically bringing up all of the realistic roadblocks and potential problems with my ideas, but I just didn’t like the way I was handled. I’d been thinking about this stuff for a long time. My plans were going to make improvements for everyone, I hoped, but then my hopes got dashed pretty quickly. And while I appreciate my boss’s feedback, I would’ve preferred a more positive approach. How about…

“That's a great idea. Let's talk about developing that. Here are some other things that you may want to consider."

Even if the end result would be that my ideas were unrealistic, at least I would’ve been encouraged to dream further and shown that new ideas are not only helpful, but also important to my own career and to the establishment I work for.

When I started really thinking about it, are we maybe told “No” too often? Are people told what they can’t do as opposed to told what they possibly could do? Sometimes those negative voices are too hard to overcome.

I often wondered how different we’d be as a species if we had no idea of limits. I know this sounds weird, but could I breathe underwater if I simply didn’t know that I couldn’t? Do people drown because that’s what they expect to happen, because that’s what we’ve been brought up knowing? You’ve certainly heard of the stories where a car rolls onto some man’s child and miraculously that man is able to lift the otherwise unliftable car off his kid. How does that happen? Is it adrenaline that somehow gives him strength that he never had, or is it fear that supercedes his knowledge of his personal limits and allows him to perform an act he never knew he could do… because he’d been made to think that he couldn't do such things? It’s so often said that humans only utilize a very small percentage of their brains. Why is that? Maybe it’s because we’re told that that’s all we can use.

I'll leave you with this: If a bird was taken as a baby and never saw its mother or another bird and was caged in a human home, would it ever know that it could fly? And with no one encouraging it, would it stay forever grounded, unaware that it had the ability to soar among the clouds?

Really now?

Ever wonder about keys? Ever wonder how it's possible that no two keys are alike? I have a hard time believing that. I've always wondered how many other Ford Explorers my Ford Explorer keys will open. Ford makes HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of these cars. They're sold all over the world. The key patterns never duplicate? Come on. Is this so that we don't try to take other people's cars? I've also wondered if I drove around hitting my garage door opener, how many other people's doors would I activate?

When I was a kid, I got locked out of my house. I asked my friend if I could borrow his key. He was stunned. I said, "Just let me see it." Sure enough, it fit right into my front door. Now it didn't open it, but it slid in perfectly. Maybe that's why I've always wondered.

Fingerprints are the same. Do you really think that no two are alike? In the billions of people who populate this Earth, none of us share the same prints... the same swirls and loops? Science tells us that this the case, but you know as well as I do that every person CURRENTLY living has not been finger-printed, and certainly not everyone who has EVER lived has been either. So therefore, how can science accurately make that claim. Maybe the better question is WHY are we being made to believe this?

Things I like... Things You Should Like

Ryan Adams is one of my favorite musicians. He's great in a lot of ways, but one thing that's cool about being an RA fan is that the guy puts out albums at a ridiculous rate. Two years ago he released three cds, one of which was a double-album, the wonderful "Cold Roses," all in one year. Some people have criticized his prolific nature... really?!? What would you prefer? A guy who puts out a couple of cd's a year, or someone who only releases a record every four or five years? Even if all of that output is sometimes uneven, at least you've got something to get your hands on! Don't forget that The Beatles released all of their work within a six year period! That's amazing. And let's not compare Ryan Adams to The Beatles per say, but get off the guy's back for working!

Anyhow, I've been going through my RA phase this summer. It happens all the time. I start listening to someone's entire catalog for some reason. In the beginning of the summer it was Bright Eyes. Then it was Jane's Addiction. Then I moved on to Pete Yorn and then The Clash. Once I listened to nothing but Bob Dylan for about six months.

So I've been going through my Ryan Adams cd's, which has coincided with the release of his latest album "Easy Tiger." What I like about RA is his great singing, his diversity of sounds, and the emotion that he puts into his songs. I know the word "heartfelt" can be a bit cliche, but at times this guy can almost make you cry. The song I can't escape is "Hard Way to Fall" from his "Jacksonville City Nights" album. It's a breakup song where the singer remembers all of these idiosyncratic details about his girl... how she reads from the back to the front of magazines, the Scotch that she drinks, how she loses her keys, etc. You realize it's a lost love song when he sings "how I miss those things." None of this is groundbreaking or anything, but it's simple and sad and direct and everything I like about music. The ending is the best. He's got the verse:

"See her smiling at him?
That used to be me...

And we used to be something,
but something happened to me."

I love that. It kills me. It kills me every time I hear it. It's so honest and sad. Best of all, I find it to be very self-critical, which most people struggle with.

So check out Ryan Adams. You won't be disappointed. And the best part is that by the time you've gotten around to buying one of his albums, he will have just released a few more.

What I Think About While You're on Your CellPhone

Ever think about the mail? Seriously, how does it work? It's mind-blowing to me to consider how the postal system actually operates. You write a letter. You put an address and a stamp on it and drop it in the mail box. A carrier picks it up and drops it off at a local post office. Somehow, that office, which receives mail from thousands of homes within its service area, is able to take that letter, separate it out with other similarly-marked mail, and send it on its way. But think about all of the options there! How many addresses could there possibly be in the postal United States? Now make that global. And somehow, I put something in the mail here in Virginia and two days later it ends up at my sister's house in Pennsylvania, or three days later at my brother's house in St. Louis. It's going from trucks, to offices, to planes, back to other offices, back to trucks, across time-zones. It's amazing.

And yet I bet if I asked the average person how the Post Office worked, they'd say, "I'm sure it's all by computer now." Yeah... that helps. Get back to your phone.