Orpheus, Day One

I thought of this, this weekend. I'm not sure why, but it came up in conversation. I had a memory of an excellent moment in parental approach. I'm not sure why all parents don't instinctually do this kind of thing.
Maybe it is a result of most people's constant need to prove they are better than everyone around them -- even their own children. Ah, ego.

When I was fifteen, I put together my first band with some friends. We, in our ambitious young attempts at profundity, named the band after the great musician of myth: "Orpheus."

Orpheus trying to save his lovely
wife from the underworld. (Corot)

We had virtually no command over our instruments, and beyond some piano and guitar lessons, no one really knew what he was doing. I had just started drum lessons, but most of my practicing involved wearing headphones and smashing along with the songs of Rush.

In fact, we were -- hilariously, in retrospect -- exclusively a Rush cover band.

A Reminder: It's Good To Be Tough

Have you seen this video about the damage we are doing to our young men in America by sending the wrong message -- by telling them to "be a man"? The anger this video raises in me comes from so many places, I don't know where to start. You can watch it here, but be careful in work and around the kids, because there is profanity.

First, I am angry to think that there are fathers who still operate on such a cave-dwelling level that they try to teach their sons to disregard their own emotions. Maybe I am an idiot. I thought that was a thing of the past.

Maybe I am also angry for being an idiot and not knowing that this is not a thing of the past.

I am also angry because videos like this feel so much like an attempt to capitalize on or to gain fame for their creators by exacerbating a problem. If I, in fact, am not an idiot and this type of fathering is a thing of the past, these people are making a small portion of fathers look like the majority (media's lens in the sun). (Herein lies the problem in "raising awareness." Sometimes, it raises actuality.) But I can't be sure.

If a video like this is needed, it makes me angry that it is so. If fathers can't see that is it wrong to turn out a generation of hammers, what hope is there? It makes me feel pessimistic. I see no hope in a future in which we think we can solve all problems by "raising awareness," analyzing data and "starting conversations." People only get better one-by-one. That only happens by seeking truth, not evidence. Evidence wins arguments; truth fixes hearts.

A Modest Proposal for Eliminating Bad Behavior in Football Fans: The NFFL

Let's face it: fans of both American and European football can be disgusting. I'm not sure what to do about soccer -- it seems the riots continue and there will always be select beatings of unfortunate visiting fans. But I think I have an answer for American football...and it came to me after I watched a video of an Eagles fan (they lost) spitting in the face of a Saints fan (they won) at the end of a recent playoff game.

We can all agree that this is bad form. Perhaps we can all agree it is disgusting, no? But, perhaps -- as I often point out to my writing students on the verge of their "problem solution" papers -- we can eliminate the problem by simply recognizing and removing its cause.

Look: we can't very well turn apes in to diplomats, and, let's face this as well, some guys are and always will be Cro-Magnon. So those, we rule out. I think, however, if we rethink the whole nature of football, we may be able to eliminate the bad behavior of those chaps for whom we can hold out at least some hope: the hotheads who fall apart after their teams lose but who really are, at heart, okay guys -- and I believe that includes most of the guys in the stands...

Why TV Makes Me Think About Dying

I'm not afraid to talk about death. In fact, I have never been afraid of death, itself -- at least not up to the point of having a family. Because of them, I now have a healthy dose of fear. I don't want to leave them without a dad and husband.

Still, I love being alive. And I love feeling, thinking and doing -- I love exploring the beauty in the world and I love experiencing the great creations and deeds of the exceptional people who live and who have lived. There is much to love about the world. And I really think there is more good than bad out there.

You know how I know TV is bad, though? When I am watching (as I was last night) and I think to myself: When it is time to die, I won't miss this place much. It will be kind of a relief. This is not to be confused with a wish for death; it is just an resignation that it will, in some ways, be a relief. That's nothing new. But it is a disproportionate reaction to a misrepresentation of reality.

Television, to me, is like the magnifying glass in the sun, held over the top of my head. It is not a true representation of the world, but a focusing of all that is bad in it.

This Ain't No Barn-Raising

It is fashionable for creative types like myself to be bitter and critical about suburban life and while I went through my teenaged/early-twenties phase of "I am going to get out of this place as soon as I can and wander the world and then live in, say, Paris," I eventually realized that creativity and intellectuality don't have to be urban or ex-patriotic. In fact, by thinking those things, one is just caving-in to the biggest enemy of creative thought: cliche.

In short, I like the suburbs. To flip a maxim, though, I tend to be in the suburbs but not of the suburbs. I have never felt an obligation to participate in local government or to take part in any over-the-fence conversation about the weather I could otherwise avoid. I like to sit in the bleachers and watch my boys play ball; they have me telling them what to do, enough -- they don't need me to hound them about the proper way to snatch up a grounder.

All that said, there are times when I find suburban life to be beautiful. I'm not going to qualify that. My middle-to-lower-middle-class neighborhood is a thing of beauty on a summer night or under a blanket of snow, like today.