It was late at night or early in the morning depending on who you are or what you call it
A friend of mine has recently escorted his 8-year old brother to wrestling at the downtown arena. He recounts his night to me, explaining the dynamics of the WWE in small detail. “We show up, right? And it’s totally the worst thing I’ve ever experienced in my entire life,” he tells me, “—little kids all over the place, screaming their heads off. This goes on for about two hours,” he continues, “and then there’s an intermission. So while my brother’s off getting some memorabilia, I decide to get a beer.” I listen intently, waiting for the build up. I know from prior experiences with this particular individual that this story is about to get really good. While the addition of alcohol at what is ostensibly a children's event might imply some form of complexity, it also adds the essential compent of debauchery, which seems essential to storytelling, at least as far as I'm concerned. “The next thing you know,” he says, “I’m getting totally into it; you know, cheering for my little brother’s sake. And all of the sudden fucking Sandman appears next to me in the crowd, and the spotlight is on me, and I’m on TV!” I try to imagine my friend in this scenario, which is not a hard illusion to maintain, all jazzed up as some psychotic wrestler makes his way toward the main stage, with enough pause and proximity for my friend to be captured in the most spectacular ephemera I could ever hope for in televised sports. “Did you get to see it on TV?” I want to know. “No,” he tells me, “I hope no one else did, either; that shit’s embarrassing.” Yeah, I say. I guess it kind of sounds that way.

A night out, in Albany, New York. Oh, Albany, I want to shout out, even your name sounds horrible, the syllables obtuse and bloated. But it’s been years now hurtling insults at one another and I’ve promised to stop, now. You catch yourself once in a while, a small quip in the direction of invective. What can you do? It is another night, the same as every other night. And we are drinking. When the night is over all I want to do is walk around in the desolate nightscape, hurtle obscenities that will bounce off the architecture and into the stone walls. If I hang out long enough, someone will give me an ass beating that will send me into the next stratosphere, I imagine, steal the last fifty cents in my pocket. Something. I know one girl in Albany who was robbed by method of tickle torture (sic), the assailants applying the method of vigorous tickling before running off with her purse. That sounds pretty good. It never happens to me but oh, well.

MCs better start chattin’ about what’s really happening
I have, in the last three days, found myself in the rather startling position of being a parent. My no job situation has inexplicably lead to the 9-5 position of pseudo-parent of three children, ages 6 and under, as both my own parents and everyone else seems ineligible for three days because of prior engagements, to take care of my sister’s children on a visit to New York State. Somehow, the reduced circumstances have lead to the completely insane idea that I would be an adequate babysitter. I do research beforehand, contacting friends I know who have kids, and write things down on a pad of paper. “What am I supposed to do?” I ask. “How do you do this?” I want to know, as though I’m confused by the literature of a VCR I’m learning to operate. They shake their heads compassionately and then give me the unsettling advice. “Do yourself a favor,” I am told by one person, “Save some money and send them to daycare.” While this may seem like a facetious attempt at humor, I quickly realize how serious this person may have been. Within the first hour of my time alone with the kids, things are out of control. Imaginary fishing in my parents’ swimming pool has segued rather quickly into the removal of clothing and splashing feet in the water, despite continued attempts to convey that it is not a good idea to do this. They are climbing on the ladder, naked, and splashing, and there is no regaining control thereafter. I have not yet perfected the tone of voice which conveys warning and danger, and the transparency of that voice has lent to doing whatever, as the kids laugh out loud when I tell them not to kick water at me, please. I decide to alter my approach thereafter, enacting the anything goes-style of babysitting, which they seem to prefer.

Inside, there is nothing which does not go. The house is a total catastrophe, as toys, clothing, and books are strewn all over the living room floor. Additionally, anything with sugar content is discovered with staggering immediacy, and is soon spread over every countertop (which may or may not in some way correspond to the contents of the living room floor). Sugar cookies, Capt n’ Crunch breakfast cereal, and candy are discovered first; soda is consumed with no clear restraint, and the ensuing art projects which occur are incredibly succinct. I erroneously destroy the art for art’s sake concept right off by telling my 6-year old niece, Alex, that maybe she could sell one of her pictures for enough money to afford the ice-cream truck for the duration of the week. This creates an unending supply of pictures, with plastic tea-cups and all manner of other things incongruously pasted in there, churning them out, mass-production style. She holds one up, telling me it’s for me, glitter glue falling all over my pants and shirt. Thank you, I tell her, but I don’t have any money, which causes all production to come to a halt.

Shortly, I receive word that there is a crisis in the bathroom. It really is just the fast-motion montage of things gone awry, cued up with an alarming sense of alacrity. I go to the bathroom door and am granted entry inside. The recently potty-trained Sophie is struggling with toilet paper, holding up a sheet for me to take in my hand, as she gets up off of the toilet, which produces a small turd to fall at my feet. She laughs at this turd production, as I just stare down at it shaking my head. She then instructs me to take the toilet paper, and motions toward the turd on the ground, telling me to pick it up. My hand wavers out in front of me as I reach down to pick up the turd and put it into the toilet, watching as it spins in the mini maelstrom of the flushing toilet and disappears, away.

I begin imagining myself in some kind of David Eggers scenario, where I am left in charge of these three children. Some disaster has occurred, elsewhere, and now the children are my responsibility (which is not a hard illusion to maintain). It is only the first hour and already I’m having an anxiety attack. My well-conscripted plans of how easy this would be—the myriad possibilities of culture and museums and food which has not been prepackaged in some sort of way—have all quickly crumbled, as there I am, with a turd in my hand. How do people do this, I wonder? I do not know. Even the big questions do not go un-addressed. The first day I find myself being asked questions about god and life and death and all manner of things. I stammer with an answer to these inquiries, wondering about the indoctrination which has already been foisted upon them through cartoons and Capt n’ Crunch commercials and god knows what. And what exactly, I can get away with. Would it be appropriate to send them away with a permanently altered worldview? And how exactly would the family unit react to the children’s now illuminated position on the fascist overtones in Saturday morning cartoons?

Kids, when you break it down, are basically little invalids, being programmed any old way. It seems like you should need to pass a training course in order to have a baby. Because it doesn’t take more than a cursory glance around to realize how many weird people there are out there, raising little robots, with more or less of an accurate description. I am crushed by the weight of the responsibility implied by even an hour’s worth of time spent with my nieces, and it seems unreal to me that I have friends who do this everyday. It seems like these people deserve some sort of medal, or at least a reward of some kind.

One activity we manage to successfully navigate without destruction of property not our own is a trip to the goldfish pond, which is on the periphery of a cemetery. We have a little bag of bread, and schools of goldfish come to the surface to eat the handfuls of breadcrumbs that we are throwing into the water. The kids are wowed by this experience, and it’s nice. In the cemetery they are having a funeral for some kind of state official or something, with bagpipes and a marching band. The kids quickly make note of this. “When you die, you have to go in the ground?” I am asked with requisite inquisitiveness. I have to explain. “—Uh, yeah,” I produce, not knowing exactly what to say, “some people do.” You watch as they soak in this information and contemplate all of that for two seconds, before throwing more breadcrumbs. They accept these facts so plainly that it seems strange to me. Death is not even really a concept for them yet. And it makes me think of all the other information which has yet to materialize in their 6-year old minds. An entire galaxy of horrifying things. But they are accepting of the easy answers, and that’s good. We throw more breadcrumbs, which turn into soggy cubes that are devoured quickly by the goldfish. And somehow, in this moment, being alive seems radiant and beautiful, tiny glints of sunshine cascading off the water and blinding you with a curious splendor. It feels OK.

The last person in the Tri-state looking for the last ditch black hole something to do
I went to a rock show at an amphitheatre this past weekend. It was spectacular. I don’t typically get to see large crowds come out in support of anything, not being a patron of baseball games and being a self-identified member of a culture which prides itself on the micro-cosm. Hordes of people walking around in the tepid night, sporting an overpriced band t-shirt. It’s kind of nice. These are common people, who have come out recreationally, after a long week of work. And they have come to get down. The guy who is standing in front of me is getting crazy, unconditionally hooting numerous times during every song and holding up his hand, with thumb and pinky extended, in what could otherwise be described as the “telephone.” He swaggers back and forth, doing a little pseudo dance, holding up the telephone hand, which seems to be receiving transmissions directly from the band onstage and delivered to his soul, producing the greatest display of rock patronage I have seen in quite some time. Except, of course, if you are counting the fat guy sitting two rows up and over, who is involved in a ritual of his own, frantically air guitaring with both hands throughout the duration of entire songs. He has also appropriated, when he is not rigorously air guitaring, a dual fist pump, totally outdoing the guy in front of me. I can do nothing but laugh, as I attempt to vicariously experience the show through the lens of these people. It really is good stuff.

I am trying to determine when was the last time I produced a public display of approval like the ones being demonstrated this weekend. It may have been when I found out that a speeding ticket was dropped, or when I realized the local grocery mart was carrying a pancake mixture I’ve been looking for for some time. God knows the everyday gives you little to cheer about. Some succession of days are lined up, and you find yourself, like the minotaur, running crazy through the labyrinth. Although, maybe you need a context of total crappiness to accentuate the really air guitar moments.

People like me tend to chide the rock spectacle. So wrought is the whole thing now, wrapped in commerce and consumerism, that we are blinded by the spectacle. Going to a rock concert is like being really enthused with the shiny wrapper of a candy, and never even realizing there might be something inside. Even I find myself turning to a friend and declaring that the light show is pretty good. But maybe I’m just really jaded. I’m just really suspicious of anything that more than 20 people have heard of, and it borders on fetish, which somehow denotes sincerity and often times greatnesss. Somewhere, right now, there is a basement show happening, which may just be worthy of an air-guitar moment. But where that may happen to be, I just cannot tell you.

At some point during the show, I feel my legs begin to tire and a mild ache developing in my back. The group plays a ballad and I decide to utilize my perfectly good seat, which after all is just sitting there. It feels good, sitting, after hours of standing around. And you realize, therein lies the virtue of your seat, an entirely new revelation. Ah: sitting, you think contemplatively, never realizing it could be so nice. Eventually the music picks up again, and the guy in front of me begins his public demonstration of how into it he is, enacting some kind of dervish-like dance, as I continue to appreciate the hidden value of sitting. Turning around, mid-spin, he sees me just sitting there, the total faux-pas of form, not really feeling it. And I can see, there is a moment where he fixes on me, and in those two seconds lies the articulation of the difference between the two of us, which can never be spoken. I almost feel a little remorse for my lack-of-into-it-ness, but not too bad. And then the show goes on.