The Books That Brock Read

Looking for Alaska

2010-08-30T21:29:00.000-04:00

Looking for Alaska by John Green is a coming of age novel about a huge turning point in the main character’s life. The book is even divided into “before” and “after” sections. We all encounter turning points in our lives. Life is not a level plane. Some of these events are notable changes like graduations, weddings, and births. Other important turning points go unnoticed and can only be identified if we ever stop and take the time to think about how the events in our lives have helped shape who we are today.

When did you stop being a child? At what moment did the process begin, the journey into adulthood? When being a grown-up was no longer a make-believe game. For me that moment occurred in the small town I lived as a young boy. This town had just one traffic light. I wouldn’t say it was the middle of no where more like the middle of not much. Few people lived in the town itself, with most of the population living in the surrounding forests and farmlands. That’s where I lived, on the side of a hill with woods behind me and corn fields out front. There wasn’t much to do, but when you’re a nine year old boy a little goes a long way. I once spent a full hour trying to get a ball stuck in a tree. No, not trying to get it unstuck, trying to get the ball stuck in the tree. Why? No reason.

When I wasn’t conquering these types of projects, I was riding my bike along with the three boys that lived around me. We would meet on a small stretch of gravel road in the front of my house. The road wasn’t on a map and didn’t even have a name because it was really only used by the four houses that had driveways branching off from it. Since few cars traveled on the road and those that did knew to look out for us, there was never any fear of being run over. This meant the gravel road was safe, thus it was the only place our parents allowed us to ride. So we stayed there, riding back and forth, back and forth.

We were riding our bikes one Sunday night, just before the sun went down, when we heard sirens off in the distance. However, it wasn’t until the next morning on the school bus that I learned of the reason for the sirens. The bus driver took a different route that morning, avoiding the road that would have taken us by Mike’s house. At school there was a moment of silence and a counselor came around to all the classrooms telling us that if anyone needed to talk that they should come and see her. Some of the girls cried but those were the girls that would have cried given any reason. When it finally came time for recess a bunch of us talked about what had happened, and everyone seemed to have different a version.

All we knew for sure was that he was hit by a car. Mike’s house was out in the country, like mine, but the road in front of his house was paved and cars had a tendency to drive too fast. Some said he ran out into the street going after a ball, while others claimed he had fallen from a tree onto the road. I still don’t know what exactly happened.

Mike and I were not friends so I wasn’t upset or in some state of mourning, but rather I suppose I was shocked. Since we had rode the same bus, there were occasions when all the seats were taken and I unwillingly sat next to him. I don’t remember what we would talk about or even if we said anything at all, but it was at these times that I really experienced Mike. Mike’s family was well-known as one of the poorest in town. Mothers in our community would react to their children’s messes by saying “Look at you! You’re all dirty! Someone who didn’t know better might mistake you for one of them (last name) kids!” They would say such things because Mike, along with the rest of his family showered twice a month at best and his clothes weren’t washed any more frequently. As a result he had a smell that mimicked the combination of sweaty socks and a musty basement. His clothes were handed down three or four times and by the time Mike took ownership. The colors were faded, holes were common, and any garment previously a natural white took on a beige tone. From inside his ears to under his fingernails, he was covered in dirt, like a human version of Charlie Brown’s friend Pig Pen.

The most disgusting aspect of Mike was that his nose was so full of snot that it packed his nostrils. It looked like he had stuffed two small corks in his nose. To say it was gross would be an understatement. The boys nicknamed him “The Boogie Man,” the girls gagged at the sight of him, and even teachers had a hard time looking directly at Mike.

At recess kids use to play this game called “Snot Tag.” It was essentially the same rules of freeze tag, The only thing different in Snot Tag was that Mike was always “it.” He chased everyone else as they went running and screaming away from him as if he was a monster in a movie. He seemed to enjoy the game. He would smile and laugh as he ran around but I can’t imagine why. Maybe he didn’t understand.

On the way home the day we learned that Mike died, the bus once again avoided the road that went past his house. The avoidance of the scene had increased the interest of my friends and me because when we got off the bus, we dropped our backpacks off inside our front doors, grabbed our bikes, and met at the end of the gravel road. It started off just like any other afternoon of bike riding, but without any discussion or planning, we pulled off onto the main road. No one led, no one followed, and although we all understood what our destination was to be, we didn’t talk about where we were going.

I had been riding my bike for five years or so and, I never left that stretch of gravel until that day. The first thing I noticed was that paved roads were much easier to ride on. One could go faster with less effort. However, there was a lot more to worry about. With main roads came more cars and not just the cars of our parents and neighbors. These were cars that didn’t know us, with drivers that, if we would pass on the street would not give us a second look if even a first. It was an entirely different world.

We only had to travel maybe two miles before we reached our destination. We kept our distance though, pulling off along an apple orchard and there, maybe fifty yards ahead of us, was Mike’s house.

I must have seen Mike’s house hundreds of times before that moment. Everyday the bus drove by it. However, for some reason, it seemed different from all the other times I had gazed at it from inside the bus. It was almost as if I had only seen pictures of the house until that point.

Mike’s house, like Mike, was a mess. There was not a blade of green grass in the whole yard, just weeds and dirt, not to mention the various rusted out cars parts, broken toys, and all the other objects that for one reason or another had lost their function or purpose and ended up outside. It was a two story house, missing almost all of its shutters and made up of random pieces of plywood and aluminum siding of different colors.

We didn’t say much as we stood between the fruit trees and anything that was said was nothing more than empty small talk to break up the long periods of silence. We watched cars pull up to the house and people get out with their heads down and their arms around one another. At one point someone looked over in our direction. This was more than a little uncomfortable for us. We felt almost guilty being spectators to someone else’s tragedy until finally our guilt got the best of us and we got back on our bikes and headed home.

There was still a lot of time left before dinner, leaving plenty of time for bike riding, but now that we were out on the open road it seemed pointless to go back to riding in front of my house? So for the rest of the afternoon and everyday after that until I moved away a year and a half later, our bikes explored the surrounding area, never again returning to the gravel road.

Mike was the first person I knew who died. I wasn’t close to him and his death itself wasn’t the least bit emotional, but never the less Mike was a kid, just as I was, and kids aren’t suppose to die. So while it wasn’t a shock to me that he did, it was a shock that he even could. Add that to the new found freedom to explore the world around me beyond the confinements of that gravel road and when I look back over the timeline of my life that is the moment I started to move out from under the bubble of childhood. While it was by no means a dramatic sharp turn on the road of life, the incident started my journey away from that gravel road that would eventually lead to the highway of adulthood.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

2010-07-29T14:52:00.000-04:00

I'm at Myrtle Beach for a family summer vacation. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo seemed like a good summer read, a straight-forward, plot-driven book that was easy to read through yet long enough to spread out over the week long beach stay. All my life a trip to the beach was synonymous with summer vacations. However, if there's one thing I hate about the beach it's the sand. I mean if you think about sand is nothing more than ocean dirt. Not many people would made dirt castles and allow themselves to get buried up to their necks in soil, and yet every summer, all over the country people flock to coast lines in order to stick their feet in dirt.

Bright Lights, Big City

2010-07-17T22:53:00.000-04:00

I was recently in New York City for a conference and just happened to be reading Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney, a book set in the NYC during the early 1980's and the basis for the movie of the same name starring the delightful Michael J. Fox, and Kiefer Sutherland. The printing of my edition of the book has the World Trade Center on the cover and during my journey to New York I had to attend an exhibit that required me to walk past Ground Zero, thus this picture was taken.

It goes without saying the September 11th 2001 is a day that no one who lived through it will ever forget, a moment in time where every individual reminds where they were and what they were doing. In September 2001, I was in my senior year of college, attending Messiah College, a small Christian liberal arts college in South Central Pennsylvania.

Now part of the requirement of attending this fine institution was going to chapel on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. The easiest way to explain a chapel is a casual, condensed church service that takes place during the week. A student was required to attend so many chapels in a semester or receive some unknown punishment, to memorize the Book of Leviticus perhaps. Chapel started at nine thirty and lasted about a hour. Students received credit for attending the chapel by swiping their college ID cards during the exodus from the auditorium. At the start of chapel the doors were typically closed at 9:35. Once the auditorium were closed, it wasn't out of the ordinary to hear loud banging on the metal doors during the second verse of Better is One Day from a tardy undergraduate heck-bent on getting his or her chapel credits for the semester. Late comers were kept out of the auditorium to prevent students from pulling the scam of entering through one door at the end of the service and immediately exit through another door but not before swiping their card, thus still receiving credit for attending.

I was never late, and thus never had to try old the previous mentioned scam, however, I probably came close a couple of time since I lived off campus in college so my journey to chapel involved more than walking a few blocks towards the auditorium. That Tuesday morning, September the 11th, I was getting ready for the day when I turned on the TV just after the second plane hit. There was a lot of confusion. It was all too new to understand. The newscasters were at a loss for words. My thought was maybe it was just prop planes with unknowledgeable pilots. I soon had to turned off the TV and drive to campus. As I entered chapel I was telling my friends around me what I had just seen. I was surprised that no one had seen or heard about it yet. They had all pretty much just rolled out of bed.

The chapel that day went as usual. What had occurred was less than an hour old so it was only after the last song and before dismissal that the speaker mentioned the something had happened. The rest of the day was filled with optional classes and groups gathering in dorm rooms around televisions showing the same clips over and over. Looking back I can only describe it as the strangest day I've ever experienced. There was just too much to digest and yet not enough information out there for it to even begin to make sense. It was a confusing and emotional time.

During my latest trip to New York I saw that the Ground Zero of today is a very different place from those images on the videos clips. In fact during my visit on this Thursday at five o'clock, with the sidewalks packed with people hurrying to catch their trains, the area is not much more than another construction site to complicate traffic. Maybe it was the lack of any type of memorial, the amount of time that has passed since the event, or the comotion that surrounded me, but it was hard to have any sort of emotion at all.

A good chunk of time has passed since that day, and time has a way of dulling the details of past events. In addition to that there's a whole new crop of priorities in life, the recession, oil spilling every-which-way. Not to mention the differences in my life from eight years ago. I'm not worrying about finding a job as I venture out into the real-world as I was back in my senior year of college. Now I spend my time worrying about home repair issues that don't exist and being the type of father that makes Cliff Huxtable look like Al Bundy.

I'm far from political and maybe not even that patriotic, but the events of thay day were important, they were significant. Something that, while we can't continuously cry over, we should never forget, because it's not that 9-11 was that many years ago it's more that we're so far away from where we were during 9-11.

Home Game

2010-06-19T21:54:00.000-04:00

The author Michael Lewis is best known for his sport's related books Money Ball and The Blind Side, but in Home Game Lewis tackles a much more strenuous topic, being a father of young children. Having a three and a one year old myself, this book was right up my alley.

My whole life I always saw fatherhood in my future, but I would never have comprehended that waking at 7:30 in the morning would be considered sleeping in, and where a video game system's primary purpose would be to show VeggieTales DVD's.

Nevertheless I won't trade it for anything and I am always trying to take the time to step back and cherish these years in my children's lives, to mentally record what it's like to interact with them at these ages. Because before I know it they'll be grown and instead of asking for snakes they'll be begging for money and the keys to the car.

The Chris Farley Show

2010-06-15T22:04:00.002-04:00

The Chris Farley Show is a book written and approved by the family so it's not some scandalous unauthorized biography by a tabloid editor. At the same time the book is not afraid or embarrassed to tell the the dark and troubling aspects of Chris's life.

Despite what reviewers and publishing companies would have you believe, there really aren't that many books that can make the reader both laugh and tear up, but I will admit that I did both while reading about Farley's life. Chris was probably the funniest troubled man ever to be in the public eye. He had so many fans yet lived a life feeling all alone. It's easy to ponder what Chris Farley would have been doing today. He was after all supposed to be the original voice of Shrek.

I was a junior in high school when Chris Farley died. Soon after a classmate of mine started sporting a homemade shirt reading "Chris Farley is my Princess Di.", in reference to Princess Diana's death and the memorials/commotion earlier in the school year.

While I didn't exactly share my classmate's passion, sometime later I bought The Best of Chris Farley on video. It was probably one of my first ever purchases online, way back when it was assumed that using your credit card online was the equivalent of wearing a suit made of money and walking down a crowded street.

This video became a staple in my life, as I watched it on an almost daily basis and could not only recite every line in a voice I thought at least adequately imitated Farley's characters, but I could also pick out every nuance from flubbed lines to voice inflections. I can't begin to list my favorite scenes but the first Matt Foley skit is down right iconic.

Spanking Shakespeare

2010-05-29T22:15:00.001-04:00

Spanking Shakespeare by Jake Wizner is the story of a boy named Shakespeare who writes about various embarrassing events of his life in short story form. I myself have encountered a number of embarrassing events over my life. The latest happened just this month:

The Day I Almost Drowned of Embarrassment

Over the winter, as I looked far out to the horizon towards summer, I decided to work on getting in better shape by training for several sprint triathlons. Now a sprint triathlon is just like a regular triathlon in that it is a race containing three parts: swimming, biking, and running. In a sprint triathlon, while distances vary, the three sections are shorter than a triathlon. For example an Ironman's running section is 26 miles where as the average sprint triathlon is typically 3 miles.

I worked out, ate well, and registered for my first race for the end of May confident that I could at least finish and with no delusions that I'd even have a chance at winning. Now there was a bit of confusion about how this race was setup. Typically a triathlon goes swimming, biking, and finally running. However, most but not all of the online descriptions for this race listed it as starting with running and ending with the swim. I decided this is how I would train for the race, so I would run around the neighborhood and then jump on a bike. I don't have a pool nor does the gym where I'm a member, but I didn't think I'd really need to train or even put much thought into the swim. This of course would be my near fatal flaw.

While I never swam laps regularly in my life, I was comfortable in a pool and knew how to swim since I was very young. As a kid, summers were spent at my grandparents' pool and as a teenager my family moved into a house with a pool (that I was often forced to clean). So needless to say I knew my way around a pool even if I didn't know the first thing about a butterfly stroke. While I was confident in my basic ability to swim, the main reason I didn't bother practicing in a pool was because I figured with the swimming at the end of the race I would likely be so worn out by that point that any degree of pool time before hand wouldn't do me much good, so I just mentally planned to take the swim easy as I was not trying to set a world record, just finish the race.

Well of course as luck would have it, shortly after I arrived to the site of the race I learned that the swimming section of the race would be first. I chuckled to myself but figured, oh well, I'll just take it easy so I'd have plenty of energy for the long race ahead.

The swimming portion of the race was 300 yards. Again, not having much swimming knowledge, I somehow assumed that the average laned pools that I was used to were 50 yards long thus I would have to swim a total 6 lengths of the pool. When I had registered for the race I had to give an estimated time on how long it would take me to swim 300 yards and by some self created equation I guessed that I could swim 6 lengths of the pool in 4 minutes and 30 seconds at a nice even pace.

It turns out that pools that I thought were 50 yards long were really only 25 and I'd be swimming 12 lengths of the pool not 6. This not only meant that I'd be swimming twice as long as I had planned, but also that I had registered a swim time that was essentially twice as fast as I had intended. And just me luck those times were used to select the order in which racers would begin the race.

You see the swimming was structured so that everyone lined up outside the pool and every 30 seconds a person would enter the water and begin swimming up and back in the first swimming lane before moving to the next lane and swimming up and back repeating this until the person reached the other side of the pool in the 6th lane. Basically it was a human train through the pool with the fastest people leading the way. Because I has grossly errored in my estimated time, out of 90 racers I was seeded as the 7th fastest swimmer in the group. The person who lined up directly in front of me, person number 6, would go on to win the entire race!

As the race started, the area around the pool was packed with people. All the racers were lined up along the side of the pool awaiting their turn to enter the pool, spectators filled the bleachers to cheer loved ones on, and time keepers, life guards, and race volunteers were all doing their jobs. As the six people in front of me began swimming through the water, one after another, I began to panic. No longer was I focused on taking it easy, saving my energy, and just finishing the race. In my worried state my sole goal was to not make a fool out of myself, and in with impaired judgement the only way I could think of accomplishing my goal was to swim as fast as possible and get the heck out of that pool.

After the 6th racer started swimming towards his eventual victory, I entered the water determined to make Michael Phelps look like a dog paddling preschooler. The time keeper gave me the signal and I shot off the wall and started putting together some sort of stroke and kicking rhythm. I felt good but as I reached the wall and headed back I could see that the next swimmer has already started and was closing in. Not good I thought, so I tried to pick up the pace. By my 3rd length I was more exhausted than I am after running 3 miles. I felt as if dozens and dozens of eyes were watching me struggle through the water, laughing as my rhythm fell apart.

On the 4th length a swimmer passed me. On the 5th length two more passed. On the 6th length I had to start walking on the bottom of the shallow end from time to time to help me stay a float. At the 7th length I could see two men standing at the edge of the pool watching me and shaking their heads in disapproval. On my 8th length two more swimmers passed me and I notice a woman standing along the side of the pool wearing red shorts and a white shirt, so I assume a lifeguard. This woman was locked in on me and followed down along the side of the pool as I swam up and back, one lane to the next.

At my 9th length my goal changed. It was no longer about swimming quickly, but all about staying focused enough to not pass out. I doubted they would let me finish the race if they first had to haul me out of the water and give me mouth to mouth. Lengths 10, 11, and 12 are sort of a blur. I was just trying to breath at an even pace and keep my arms and legs moving. The whole time I could still see the life guard tracking my every move. At the end of the 12th length I was done and I climbed out of the pool and felt as if I had not swam twelve lengths but rather went twelve rounds in a boxing ring.

But the worst was over and it was relatively smooth sailing from there. I was able to get a hold of myself and ended up finishing the race in the middle of the pack. Not bad more my first race, but I guess I'll have to get a pool membership before my next one.

Columbine

2010-05-13T15:50:00.000-04:00

In the mid and late Eighties, I was in a small rural elementary school. Every year, even though experts had deemed them worthless, the entire school had an air raid drill, where students had to get under their desks and tuck up into a ball. This was to protect everyone in the school from a Cold War related air strike. The lack of strategy any Communist country would have to possess when deciding to bomb the farmlands of Pennsylvania was clearly something the school's administration never took into consideration, but of course for a bunch of little kids this drill was exciting. It was like playing fort instead of practicing our cursive Q's.

In middle and high school we had severe weather drills. If a tornado was heading the school's way we would all line up on either side of the hallway, get on our knees facing the lockers, and cover our heads from falling debris. We didn't mind the 10-15 minutes this drill wasted but we hated having to sit on the floor like a bunch of criminals as the teachers patrolled the up and down the hall yelling at guys too tough to ball up on the ground and girls that didn't want to get the knees of their pants dirty.

In my years as a teacher I have had to conduct school intruder drills. Typical this drill starts with a general announcement over the loudspeaker such as "Attention faculty, staff, and students, we will now be having our school intruder drill. We will notify you over the loudspeaker when this drill has ended. That is all."

However, if there was an actual intruder in the school, the announcement would go more like this, "Would Mr. Locke please come to the main office. Again would Mr. Locke please come to the main office. Thank You." Now there would be no Mr. Locke working at the school in any capacity or it was a principal that died many years ago. Rather Mr. Locke is a code word known only to faculty and staff that there is an intruder in the school. A code word is used to avoid panic in the students and tipping off the intruder. Upon hearing this announcement the teachers would look outside their classroom and pull in any students roaming the halls. We would than lock our doors, turn off the lights, close all the window blinds, and get all are kids to go to the back corner of the classroom farthest from the door and windows. Teachers were instructed to keep the 25-30 kids in a tight bunch and wait until notification over the loudspeaker or entry of law enforcement.

We're advised to try and keep our students as quiet as possible. I found that this is surprisingly not as hard as one would imagine even though it's just a drill. There isn’t the giggling from students hiding under desks or the complaining from students lining up facing lockers. The overall temperament of the students was surprising. There wasn't really the chatter, complaining, or horsing around that one would expect from a bunch of teenagers.

At 18, I was in my first year of college. All my classes were in the morning so my afternoons consisted of watching syndicated sit-coms reruns and taking naps until it was time to head to dinner. But one day in April as I flipped through the channels ready to settle into an episode of The Cosby Show I came upon the live shots of the tragedy at Columbine. Like many I was glued to the coverage, but maybe even more so since even-though I was watching it all from my college dorm room, I was still very much in high school. My graduation had been less than 12 months ago. I still talked to all my high school friends and even had their senior pictures on the cork board over my bed, and college was really just a four year break from lunch ladies and study halls as I would be going right back after getting my degree since I was majoring in Secondary English Education.

The events of Columbine changed the way schools operate but it's likely you have little to no idea as to what actually happened that day, what was supposed to happen that day, and what led Eric and Dylan to do the things they did that day. You probably think you know. It was after all covered extensively by the media, but the fact of the matter is they got a lot wrong, and I do mean a lot, and by the time the facts surfaced the public's attention had moved to the next big event.

Dave Cullen's book Columbine sets the record straight, providing a detailed account of the people and events surrounding the incident. This book is amazing, shocking, and heartbreaking. My biggest qualm with the book is that it's entertaining. It is so well-written; the narrative is so strong and appealing that it's easy to get wrapped up in the characters and the story, wondering what would happen next, only to be reminded that these weren't characters these were real people and the ending was a well-known and horrific tragedy.

So Brave, Young, and Handsome

2010-05-03T19:02:00.000-04:00

Sometimes after finishing a book I like to do some research on it, like getting to know the writer, and discovering themes or symbolism that were way over head. At some point during my post-book search I encounter numerous book reviews, whether they be the ones on the bottom of the Amazon.com page or articles in major magazines and newspapers.

If you ever read any of these reviews, regardless of the book, you've most likely noticed a trend of epidemic proportions. I'm not sure why book critics feel the need to do this but they seem bent on fitting as many adjectives and adverbs into their reviews as possible. It's as if they need to establish themselves as some sort of authority and the only way to do so is through the use of copious amounts of descriptors they find in their well-worn thesaurus.

I came to this conclusion after reading and researching So Brave, Young, and Handsome by Leif Enger. So Brave, Young, and Handsome is a western story of the internal and external journey of the main character trying to discover where he fits, or in book critic talk, "It is a picaresque tale of adventure, happenstance and even danger, buoyed by a kind of cockeyed idealism."

Years ago I read Enger's first novel Peace Like A River, a book I thoroughly enjoyed and would recommend to anyone. While I liked So Brave, it didn't come close to reaching the perch I have Peace Like A River placed, but I at least I liked it more than this reviewer, "I grimaced throughout ... the stilted prose and gratuitous insertion of elegant words that clashed with the pedestrian prose."

Critics just appear to try too hard and want to come off as being as good or better than the authors they review. As a result they end up producing bad sentences reminiscent of a middle school grammar book. And in the end these reviews become so exaggerated that they are no longer useful because the books reviewed are neither as bad (Enger's book, however, left me wanting some good old honest pacing, some nicely weighted silences, that familiar restrained macho cowboy style, some convincing local dialect and dialogue.) or as good (This wonderful novel written by a delightfully naive narrator recalls Mark Twain in its adventurous tale.), as the critics makes them out to be.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest & Leadership is an Art

2010-04-02T21:37:00.000-04:00

This was going to be two different posts. After all they're two very different books. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey is a classic novel, set in a 1950's asylum, about taking a stand against control, authority, and anything else contributed to "the man". Leadership is an Art by Max Depree is a guide for those in authority and leadership positions.

However, they're not the polar opposites they would appear to be. Kesey's novel celebrates the rebel, the one who takes a stance against the status quo, a person who rallies the people around them and motivates those people to do things they never before believed they were capable of doing. Depree would see this so called rebel as valuable asset, someone with talents and abilities that needs to be nurtured and utilized, instead of punished and marginalized.

In Cuckoo's Nest, the people in power are out to make the individuals under them submit to every order or make the individuals' lives miserable in the process. In Leadership, the people in power have a responsibility to the people they lead to assist them in reaching their maximum potential.

Today, with all that's going on in the world in the areas of politics and business, leaders are rarely seen in a positive light. They're viewed as greedy and power hungry, arrogant and crase. Much of this view is warranted seeing that leadership has come to be defined as controlling and manipulative.

In Leadership is an Art, Depree presents the idea of the leader as a servant, that the leader must be accountable to serve and meet the needs of those he or she watches over. This is not a new, ground breaking idea by any means. Given the Easter holiday, a great example would be of The Last Supper. Here Jesus, the Son of God, the Savior of the world, washes the feet of his disciples and in turn illustrates to us that to be a leader is not a privilege, it's a responsibility.

Rock On

2010-03-02T22:27:00.000-05:00

Dan Kennedy had what at one time I would have considered my dream job. In Rock On, Kennedy tells the tale of his career in the music industry, attending exclusive events, and meeting music legends. However, the book chronicles the industry during the early 2000's during the new threat of the great evil that was digital music.

Of course music has changed a lot in the past 10 years and I've changed right with it. Back in 2000 ,I was easily buying 1-2 CD's a week. Now, it's been 4 years or more since I can recall buying myself a CD. Once I owned hundreds of records and a 1000 CD's all cataloged in alphabetical order. Today, the little remaining music, I haven't sold at yard sales or given away, collects dust in a corner of my house.

I used to know a lot about music. I DJ'd dances, went to concerts, and stored away copious amounts of useless information involving b-sides and foreign releases. In the present day, I couldn't tell you the difference between A Vampire Weekend and Three Days Grace, and the only songs that have been stuck in my head lately all come from pre-school programs on Nick Jr.

Until I Find You

2010-02-11T19:30:00.000-05:00

Until I Find You is a big novel following the life of the main character Jack Burns starting from the age of four. Jack survives a chaotic and dramatic childhood of being lied to and abused. Many years later he comes to realize that much of what he remembers is wrong. It isn't until he reaches adulthood that he is able to start putting it all together in order to put it all behind him and open himself up to things he could have never imagined.

I'm 30 now and 30 doesn't feel like I imagined it would at 15. There's really not much excitement in turning 30. Being 30 really isn't hip like how they say 40 is the new 30 and 60 is the new 40 (of course these are said mostly by people in their 40's and 60's), but 30 is still the same old 30.

A person's 20's is a celebrated time of coming into adulthood, and being completely independent. They are called young professionals, where as in any other age it simply called having a job. The twenties are a time where people feel free to go and find themselves. By 30 is you haven't found yourself yet you're likely lost forever.

The thirties are the least glamorous, the Jan Brady of ages. There's nothing interesting about them. You can't get away with being young and care-free, but far from being old and wise. A person's 30's are all about work, whether it's working to establish ourselves at a job, raising a family, improving ourselves, or to overcome the obstacles set before us. It's 10 years of raising kids, 10 years of the daily grind, and hopefully only 10 years of paying off the debt we racked up in our twenties.

The Catcher in the Rye

2010-01-29T19:30:00.000-05:00

When I was probably fourteen I read this book for the first time at night before bed. I knew nothing about the actual plot of the book; only really knew that it had this reputation of being so controversial. So much so that I was even surprised that my parents allowed me to buy the book. So each night I read about 10-20 pages, waiting to reach the point of the book that made it so infamous. My teenage imagination was convinced it was either going to get very violent or pornagraphic. I read and read and of course neither occurred. And once I had finished the book I shrugged. I liked the book but what was all the fuss about?

The Catcher in the Rye is easily and justly grouped into those objects considered timeless, however the general public's ability to appreciate those types of things is always grounded in the here and now. Taken out of the contextual history, can Citizen Kane really be considered the greatest movie ever made? Are the original Star Wars movies really an epic experience in science fiction?

The Catcher in the Rye is a call to arms for teenagers in angst. And when the book was published back in 1951 teen rebellion wasn't much more then a boy's refusal to tuck in his shirt. The most popular song of 1951 was Les Paul and Mary Ford's How High the Moon, so far in 2010 it's Ke$ha's TiK ToK. Needless to say, today teenage angst is very much a part of the social mainstream. Holden Caufield is no longer the champion of alienation and rebellion. He's a parody of every teenager in America.

Sadly, Catcher in the Rye is no longer a book, it's just another pop culture item like The Dark Side of the Moon or The Rocky Horror Picture Show that young people and hipsters like because they think they're supposed to in order to be considered unique individuals. Maybe it was the the fight to have the book banned, Salinger's self-imposed exile from the public spotlight, or it's overblown role in John Lennon's death, but Salinger's masterpiece became more about the hype that surrounds it. Is the book popular because people like it or do people like the book because it's popular?

There will no doubt be numerous articles and commentaries in the next few days and weeks about The Catcher in the Rye's impact. Many will say share the same story of how the book "spoke to them" during their youth. While I have no way of proving this, I'm willing to bet that for the many who claim to hold The Catcher in the Rye so close to their hearts there are few who truely understand it in their heads. But what to I know. I'm probably just a phony.

American Born Chinese

2010-01-23T19:26:00.000-05:00

American Born Chinese is a graphic novel about a boy's journey in learning to deal with his cultural background. It's one of the few graphic novels that's as much a novel as it is graphic. A "graphic novel" is really just a more grown-up way a saying 'long comic book'. As a boy, I never really got into comic books, but I was into comic book superheroes. I watched the after-school cartoons, played with the action figures, and even had them on my Underoos.

It's easy to see why these costume crusaders are so well loved by kids. Their superpowers, costumes, and alter egos are just the beginning. They're always there when they're needed, they always make things right, and they always win in the end. They show us what we could be if we could be anything we wanted.

There's this website called Growing Up Heroes, it's a collection of pictures of our childhood love of superheroes (1, 2, 3), back when we believed that anything was possible and telling the difference between the good guys and the bad guys was an easy thing to do. Superheroes are fictionalized versions of the real heroes in our then young lives, the firefighters, teachers, and parents, all the people we wanted to grow up and become. But once we do grow up those heroes many times fade away, or rather we don't view them in the same way.

It's hard to have heroes as adults. We may feel we no longer need them. Maybe they've disappointed us, or we've discovered all their unheroic flaws, but it is when we are grown-ups that we need to have heroes the most. Having heroes is acknowledging that you are still a work in progress. They are examples of who we'd like to be. Heroes give us a goal to reach for. And it's when we're adults that, in some capacity, someone in our lives is looking for us to be their hero. We may not be able to teach that someone how to fly but hopefully we can show what to do when we fall.

A Decade's Read In Review

2009-12-30T18:36:00.000-05:00

Five years ago my New Year resolution was to read 50 books within the year. I failed by five books. But what this resolution started was a habit of keeping a running list of books I read each year. Based on this list, over the past 5 years I've read 186 books. That's a lot of books, but I still wish that number could be higher. However, it seems that the more responsibility I have, the less I read. In 2005 I was childless, living in an apartment and without a job for part of the year, so I had time to read 45 books. This year I became a father of two, remained gainfully employed, and had a house to keep up, thus only got through 25. Of course it's not all hard work and toil causing my decline in reading, my DVR in conjunction with my love of reality television gets some of the blame.

Looking over this list from the past five years is almost like looking through a scrapbook. With certain books I remember exactly what was going on in my life as I read. For example, Into the Wild was the book I brought to the hospital when my first child was born. There are other books, such as Indecision, that I have no memory of ever reading.

Given the trend of looking back at the end of the year/decade, I found it only fitting that I put together my own list of top ten favorite books of the past five years. While these ten are clearly standouts, don't hold me to the actual rankings as they are about as meaningful as the ranking in the BCS.

10. The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey - This book changed how I look at money. There's no big secrets or magic formula, just simple, common sense information.

9. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky - This was like a page ripped out of my early high school years. At times the book's diary entries mirror the journal I kept.

8. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell - Like all of Gladwell's books, this one pulls back the curtain on life to see that most times there isn't as much luck involved as assumed.

7. The Road by Cormac McCarthy - This is every father's anxiety filled nightmare. The fact that someone wrote it all down assures me that I'm not the only one worrying.

6. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald - Despite the high school English teachers of the country (myself included) forcing this book down the throats of young readers nation-wide, this is a great story and one of the few "classics" worthy of all the praise.

5. Superstud by Paul Feig - This is one of the few books that I have found to be laugh out loud funny, but that's probably because it was honest and embarrassing. Few people would ever have the courage to admit to the what Feig did, although many of them are guilty of some of the exact same things.

4. I Love You, Beth Cooper by Larry Doyle - When you were an awkward teenager, reading about the mishaps of a follow brethren is funny because it's true.

3. Columbine by Dave Cullen - This will be the next book I write on so for now I'll just say, most of what we thought we knew was wrong.

2. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson - If only all history books were written like this, but then again not all historical events are this interesting.

1. East of Eden by John Steinbeck - The average person could probably name 4-5 Steinbeck novels and East of Eden wouldn't be one of them, but it is by far his best.

In case you're interested (however I'm not sure why you would be) here is my reading list for the past 5 years:

Books of 2005
01. LANARK by Alasdair Gray - 1/2/05
02. THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER by Stephen Chbosky - 1/5/05
03. THE JUNGLE BOOK by Rudyard Kipling - 1/13/05
04. DIARY by Chuck Palahniuk - 1/17/05
05. A SEPARATE PEACE by John Knowles - 1/21/05
06. THE POLYSYLLABIC SPREE by Nick Hornby - 1/23/05
07. NINE STORIES by J.D. Salinger - 1/28/05
08. TRUE NOTEBOOKS by Mark Salzman - 2/1/05
09. LIT RIFFS edited by Matthew Miele - 2/7/05
10. THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME by Mark Haddon - 2/11/05
11. ECHOES DOWN THE CORRIDOR by Arhtur Miller - 2/20/05
12. RUNNING WILD by J. G. Ballard - 2/21/05
13. PETER PAN by J. M. Barrie - 3/3/05
14. THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE by Jonathan Lethem - 3/15/05
15. ANTHEM by Ayn Rand - 3/17/05
16. THE TIPPING POINT by Malcolm Gladwell - 3/24/05
17. BLESS THE BEASTS AND CHILDREN by Glendon Swarthout - 3/26/05
18. FEVER PITCH by Nick Hornby - 4/3/05
19. PEACE LIKE A RIVER by Leif Enger - 4/15/05
20. LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME by James W. Loewen - 4/25/05
21. THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder - 4/29/05
22. 10TH GRADE by Joseph Weisberg - 5/4/05
23. LIVE FROM NEW YORK by Tom Shales & James Miller - 5/14/05
24. CARRIE by Stephen King - 5/19/05
25. RUNNING WITH SCISSORS by Augusten Burroughs - 5/29/05
26. NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND by Fyodor Dostoevsky - 6/5/05
27. THE LITTLE GUIDE TO YOUR WELL-READ LIFE by Steve Leveen - 6/6/05
28. LIFE OF PI by Yann Martel - 6/14/05
29. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald - 6/25/05
30. AMERICAN PSYCHO by Bret Easton Ellis - 6/30/05
31. THE FUNHOUSE by Dean Koontz - 7/10/05
32. DEATH BE NOT PROUD by John Gunther - 7/27/05
33. LULLABY by Chuck Palahniuk - 8/21/05
34. SHEET MUSIC by Dr. Kevin Leman - 8/23/05
35. WHY DO MEN HAVE NIPPLES? by Mark Leyner & Billy Goldberg, M.D. - 9/11/05
36. THE TRUE CONFESSIONS OF CHARLOTTE DOYLE by Avi - 10/11/05
37. THE OUTSIDERS by S.E. Hinton - 10/17/05
38. MANIAC MAGEE by Jerry Spinelli - 10/19/05
39. JARHEAD by Anthony Swofford - 11/5/05
40. NIGHTJOHN by Gary Palsen - 11/**/06
41. WILD AT HEART by John Eldredge - 11/21/05
42. BLINK by Malcolm Gladwell - 12/4/05
43. ANIMIAL FARM by George Orwell - 12/23/05
44. WEIRD CHRISTMAS by Joey Green - 12/25/05
45. WHEN ZACHARY BEAVER CAME TO TOWN by Kimberly Willis Holt - 12/27/05

Books of 2006
01. THE KNOW IT ALL by A.J. Jacobs - 1/9/06
02. EAST OF EDEN by John Steinbeck - 1/30/06
03. JOURNAL OF A NOVEL by John Steinbeck - 2/8/06
04. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut - 2/13/06
05. MY LIFE AMONG THE SERIAL KILLERS by Helen Morrison MD - 2/19/06
06. MY NAME IS ASHER LEV by Chaim Potok - 3/12/06
07. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee - 3/25/06
08. FAHRENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury - 4/3/06
09. RUMBLE FISH by S. E. HINTON - 4/6/06
10. ULTRAMARATHON MAN by Dean Karnazes - 4/9/06
11. TORTILLA FLAT by John Steinbeck - 4/14/06
12. OF MEN AND MICE by John Steinbeck - 4/18/06
13. MISSING PERSONS by Stephen White -5/13/06
14. BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA by Matherinw Paterson - 5/14/05
15. MIXED by Angela Nissel - 5/30/06
16. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger - 6/8/06
17. INVISIBLE MONSTERS by Chuck Palahniuk -6/15/06
18. EATS SHOOTS & LEAVES by Lynne Truss - 6/25/06
19. SUPERSTUD by Paul Feig - 7/3/06
20. BUSTING VEGAS by Ben Mezrich - 7/10/06
21. THE RULES OF ATTRACTION by Bret Easton Ellis - 7/17/06
22. A LONG WAY DOWN by Nick Hornby - 7/24/06
23. CHOKE by Chuck Palahniuk - 7/29/06
24. THE MEMORY OF RUNNING by Ron McLarty - 8/4/06
25. TOTAL MONEY MAKEOVER by Dave Ramsey - 8/17/06
26. THE KITE RUNNER by Khaled Hosseini - 8/20/06
27. FUGITIVES AND REFUGEES by Chuck Palahniuk - 8/21/06
28. HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN by M. J. Hyland - 8/26/06
29. REASONS TO LIVE by Amy Hempel - 8/28/06
30. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway - 9/13/06
31. THE DANTE CLUB by Matthew Pearl - 9/27/06
32. KICK ME by Paul Feig - 10/7/06
33. WORD MYTHS by David Wilton - 10/9/06
34. FIGHT CLUB by Chuck Palahiuk - 10/12/06
35. PLAINSONG by Kent Haruf - 10/26/06
36. TWO SOULS INDIVISIBLE by James S. Hirsch - 10/28/06
37. HOUSEKEEPING VS. DIRT by Nick Hornby - 10/31/06
38. THE BRETHREN by John Grisham - 11/9/06
39. IS TINY DANCER REALLY ELTON'S LITTLE JOHN? by Gavin Edwards - 11/10/06
40. GEEK LOVE by Katherine Dunn - 11/18/06
41. DEAN & ME by Jerry Lewis - 11/22/06
42. THUMBSUCKER by Walter Kirn - 11/25/06
43. BAIT AND SWITCH by Barbara Ehrenreich - 11/27/06
44. INTO THE WILD by Jon Krakauer - 12/3/06
45. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding - 12/20/06
46. A GUIDE TO RECOGNIZING YOUR SAINTS by Dito Motiel - 12/24/06

Books of 2007
01. EARLY BIRD by Rodney Rothman - 1/9/07
02. THINGS FALL APART by Chinua Achebe - 1/20/07
03. THE 48 LAWS OF POWER by Robert Greene - 1/28/07
04. FREAK THE MIGHTY by Rodman Philbeck - 1/30/07
05. LITTLE CHILDREN by Tom Perrotta - 2/5/07
06. HAUNTED by Chuck Palahniuk - 2/17/07
07. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London - 2/19/07
08. INDECISION by Benjamin Kunkel - 2/25/07
09. EMPIRE FALLS by Richard Russo - 3/7/07
10. NIGHT by Elie Wiesel - 3/11/07
11. THE KNIFE MAN by Wendy Moore - 3/19/07
12. THE BEACH by Alex Garland - 3/14/07
13. OH THE GLORY OF IT ALL by Sean Wilsey - 4/6/07
14. RICH DAD POOR DAD by Robert Kiyosaki - 4/8/07
15. EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE by Johnathan Safran Foer - 4/16/07
16. THE DIRT by Motley Crue - 4/29/07
17. THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER by Stephen Chbosky - 5/4/07
18. FREAKONOMICS by Steven Levitt - 5/13/07
19. THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA by Philip Roth - 5/20/07
20. FAST FOOD NATION by Eric Scholsser - 5/28/07
21. WHY DO MEN FALL ASLEEP AFTEER SEX? by Mark Leyner - 6/3/07
22. INSIDE THE AUCTION GAME by Frank Stefanick - 6/9/07
23. BLINDNESS by Jose Saramago - 6/19/07
24. ON WRITING by Stephen King - 6/20/07
25. YOU REMIND ME OF YOU by Eireann Corrigan - 6/28/07
26. MIDDLESEX by Jeffrey Eugenides - 7/8/07
27. THE ALCHEMIST by Paulo Coelho - 7/12/07
28. FOUNDING MYTHS by Ray Raphael - 7/26/07
29. HEY NOSTRADAMUS! by Douglas Coupland - 8/6/07
30. SMASHED by Koren Zailckas - 8/17/07
31. MR. ADAM by Pat Frank - 9/3/07
32. TWELVE by Nick McDonell - 9/12/07
33. TWISTED by Laurie Halse Anderson - 9/18/07
34. LOVE IS A MIX TAPE by Rob Sheffield - 9/26/07
35. AMERICA'S CHEAPEST FAMILY by The Economides - 10/28/07
36. NARRATIVE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS - Frederick Douglass - 11/16/07
37. MONKEY WRENCH GANG by Edward Abbey - 12/9/07
38. THE BLIND SIDE by Michael Lewis - 12/16/07
39. GILEAD by Marilynne Robinson - 12/29/07
40. THE STRANGER by Albert Camus - 12/31/07

Books of 2008
01. ASSASSINATION VACATION by Sarah Vowell - 1/11/08
02. THE PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE by Rick Warren - 2/2/08
03. YOU REMIND ME OF ME by Dan Chaon - 2/18/08
04. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald - 3/1/08
05. FRESH FAITH by Jim Cymbala - 3/7/08

06. JOE COLLEGE by Tom Perrotta - 3/23/08

07. A RAISIN ON THE SUN by Lorraine Hansberry - 4/7/08

08. HEAT by Bill Buford - 4/24/08

09. RANT by Chuck Palahniuk -6/7/08

10. I LOVE YOU, BETH COOPER by Larry Doyle - 6/11/08

11. DEAR MR. MACKINS by Richard J. Mackins - 6/15/08

12. CHASING GHOSTS by Paul Rieckhoff - 6/24/08

13. THE CONTORTIONIST'S HANDBOOK by Craig Clevenger - 6/26/08

14. JESUS' SON by Denis Johnson - 7/13/08

15. MONEYBALL by Michael Lewis - 7/18/08

16. ONE MISSISSIPPI by Mark Childress - 7/29/08

17. REMAINER by Tom McCarthy - 8/11/08
18. SPEAK by Laurie Halse Anderson - 8/18/08

19. THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy - 8/19/08

20. I KILLED by Ritch Shydner & Mark Schiff - 8/22/08

21. HEART SICK by Chelsea Cain - 9/6/08

22. THE SHACK by William P. Young - 9/25/08

23. COMPANY by Max Barry - 10/23/08

24. ADVENTURES OF THE ARTIFICIAL WOMAN by Thomas Berger - 10/28/08

25. GIRLFRIEND IN A COMA by Douglas Coupland - 11/12/08

26. BAND OF BROTHERS by Stephen E. Ambrose - 11/30/08

27. THE LAST LECTURE by Randy Pausch - 12/4/08

28. CHILDREN OF MEN by P.D. James - 12/20/08

29. DISRUPTING CLASS by Clayton Christensen - 12/26/08

30. MULTIPLE BLES8INGS by Kate Gosselin - 12/28/08

Books of 2009

01. WATCHMEN by Alan Moore - 1/1/09

02. THE REAL ALL AMERICANS by Sally Jenkins - 1/13/09

03. THE ABSTINENCE TEACHER by Tom Perrotta - 1/19/09
04. THE CHOSEN by Chaim Potok - 1/31/09
05. CLOWN GIRL by Monica Drake - 2/9/09
06. WONDER WHEN YOU'LL MISS ME by Amanda Davis - 2/17/09

07. WHERE'S MY JETPACK? by Daniel H. Wilson - 2/19/09
08. RICKLES' BOOK by Don Rickles - 2/21/09
09. SLAM by Nick Hornby - 3/1/09

10. SWEETHEART by Chelsea Cain - 3/8/09
11. THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY by Erik Larson - 3/29/09
12. LULLABY by Chuck Palahniuk - 4/14/09
13. RATS SAW GOD by Rob Thomas - 5/10/09

14. ANGELS AND DEMONS by Dan Brown - 6/2/09

15. NARRATIVE of the LIFE of FREDERICK DOUGLASS by Frederick Douglass - 6/10/09

16. FOUND by Davy Rothbary - 7/3/09

17. AMONG THE THUGS by Bill Buford - 7/28/09

18. RABBIT, RUN by John Updike - 8/16/09

19. WHEN THE FINCH RISES by Jack Riggs - 9/12/09

20. LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT by Eugene O'Neill - 10/5/09

21. OUTLIERS by Malcolm Gladwell - 10/12/09

22. TWILIGHT by Stephenie Meyer - 10/26/09

23. COLUMBINE by David Cullen - 11/5/09

24. THE SCARLET LETTER by Nathaniel Hawthorne - 11/24/09

25. STORKY by D.L. Garfinkle - 12/13/09

Storky

2009-12-16T18:48:00.001-05:00

Storky is about a year in the life of a high school boy told through his journal entries. I could relate to this story for many reasons, one being that from the spring of my sophomore year until the middle of my first year of college I sporadically kept a journal. Reading Storky motivated me to dig out the journal, which has since been ripped out of its original notebook.

(Please note that the excerpts in red are transcribed just as I originally wrote them, in all their ungrammatical glory.)

I often wrote in my journal late at night just before bed, so I was usually half asleep as I jotted down the day's events. That is the only reasonable explanation for why I would write things like, Dec 30, 1998: ...I went over and found Tony and a bunch of other people and we went to see Patch Adams, one of the best movies I have ever seen... and 6/30/96: ... The past week I have been following Kerri Strug reading every about her. It weird, I know I will probably never meet her but because of her I exercise for at least 45 minutes each night...

The late night writing could also be why I often wrote the most incredibly undetailed entries: Dec 27, 1997 – Went to Megan's house. There was a bunch of people from where I used to work and just watched T.V. and July 3, 1998 – Today I went hiking with Kate, Lauren, Matt, Nick, Katie, and Laura and went swimming to a lake.

Other times I perfectly illustrated the traits of a teenager that doesn't know what true hardships in life really are: 5/14/95 - Today I think I had to make the most important decision in my life so far... This decision was to give a girl a note telling her I liked her and in case you're wondering how it went the next entry starts: This was the most tension (I think I meant stressful) day of my life...

But by far the most painful aspect of the journal is the occasional poem:

Untitled

Do you wonder what I called myself

When I'm walking all alone

It is different from what you call me on the phone

The name I have now was given to me as a child

It was good then but has become to mild

This name I will keep me till the day I die

You're never get it from me so don't even try to pry.

I have no idea what any of that means.

One of the great things about the journal is being reintroduced to all the people and moments in my life I had long since forgotten. I only wish I would have been more detailed in my entries, capturing all I could, because for covering 3 years of my life the journal is only about 30-40 pages. This means that so many things went unrecorded. Take for example my entire entry from the day of my high school graduation: June 4, 1998 - Today I graduated. Basically all day I reflexed (I meant to say I reflected). The only time I all most lost it (meaning was emotional) was before leaving when we were taking pictures. It really didn't hit me yet. Afterwards Dylan had a party which a lot of people went to.

Why I only spent 3 lines on what, at that point, was one of the biggest days of my life is very disappointing to me now. Especially since I remember so many memorable moments from that day, like driving over to the ceremony with just me and my grandfather in the car and him talking about my future, taking pictures with friends outside the auditorium in our robes, the realization that this would be the last time I'd see most of my teachers & classmates, and the party I mentioned was a lot of fun, but none of it made the cut.

It's hard to fully cherish the moments in life as we are busy living them. That's why people keep journals or in this day and age have blogs, to help with recording those events; I just didn't put as much effort into it as I wish I would have.

And so I'll leave you with a few words of advice from my 16 year old self: "Listen when people talk because they sometimes tell you things about themselves unexplicitly."

The Scarlet Letter

2009-11-25T13:08:00.000-05:00

The Scarlet Letter is the next unit I’ll be teaching and it has been a while since I did a thorough read through. It also seemed fitting given the time of year in relation to the setting of the book.

I tend to feel the same way about The Scarlet Letter as I do about Thanksgiving and that is that while I love the overall message of each, neither is by any means my favorite in their respective categories. With The Scarlet Letter the symbolism and character development is genius, but the writing itself is a cure for insomina. And Thanksgiving is a great time to reflect on all we have, but too often it feels more like a dress rehersal for Christmas. Thanksgiving has never been my favorite holiday. In fact I’d probably like it even less if I wasn’t a teacher, seeing that I currently get more days off then the average person.

My biggest qualm with Thanksgiving is the meal. Overall, I’m not a fan. However, I do like the separate dishes that typically make up the meal. I enjoy turkey, love stuffing, and can do nasty things to a pumpkin pie, but throw all those things together and the whole meal seems tired and overdone. It’s too 1950’s June Cleaver.

But the meal is a tradition and when something is part of a tradition it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s great but rather there is a meaning far beyond the actual ritual. Another thing about traditions is that over time they are often taken for granted. And to some degree we’re all guilty of seeing Thanksgiving as just a day of food, football, & family. We take the day for granted which is sort of ironic since the purpose of Thanksgiving is to pause and remember all the things in our lives we’ve been taking for granted like our health, family, etc.

So while I won’t enjoy eating green bean casserole I guess I need to remind myself to be thankful for the luxury of never being without it, even if it is as uncreative as the Puritans’ color palette.

Twilight

2009-11-15T22:00:00.000-05:00

Yes I actually read this book. The whole thing. And while during the read I rolled my eyes so often they nearly fell out of my head, it's easy to see why this book has become all the rage within, & even outside, the tween crowd. What girl hasn't at one time dreamed about starting over in a new town where boys are suddenly fighting over her and the richest, most mysterious, most attractive guy falls instantly in love with her.

But Twilight is really no different than books with a shirtless Fabio on the cover, it's similar to reality shows like The Bachelor, and the same as romantic comedies starting actresses named Jennifer. All are in the business of selling the love fantasy. Essentially this fantasy involves an everyday girl meeting the perfect guy and they instantly have a connection. The outside world tries to tear them apart but the couple's love is so strong that they are able to overcome it all. The End.

Romantic entertainment is big business and some girls can't get enough of the stuff much in the same way there are guys who can't get enough adult entertainment. In fact the two genres are very much alike. The main different between Twilight and men's magazine is that one has pictures. Yes, I suppose there are other differences as well but the main thing they share is that they both objectify the very thing they are supposed to be portraying. Just as adult entertainment presents an unrealistic fantasy of sex, romantic entertainment presents an unrealistic fantasy of a platonic relationship.

Romantic entertainment teaches that love, true love, is something that once we obtain it we can treat it like a house plant, put it in the sun, give it some water, and watch it grow. Love is made into this object that's hidden from us, but once we find it we have it forever in flawless condition. Too often romantic entertainment shows people in love with love and not the work it takes to love another person. Real love takes work. Real love is about struggling through tough times and learning to abandon your pride for the betterment of the relationship.

Love isn't a Celine Dion song. It's not a rose ceremony, the use of the word loins, or a music montage. Love is finding someone you can fart in front of. It's morning breath. It's things that wouldn't make a very appealing romance novel and thus we see very little of true love in romantic entertainment.

So adult entertainment is a false representation of sex, and all a person needs in order to dive into a sea of this misrepresentation in today's day & age is a computer. But it's still taboo; it's not socially acceptable to look at during a lunch break at work or on a bench in the park. You won't find it on prime-time network television or in the racks of the supermarket. But romantic entertainment, this false representation of love, is everywhere and it's seen as no big deal. There aren't many conservative groups getting worked up over a Meg Ryan movie. And maybe that makes romance entertainment more dangerous. Maybe we've seen so many lies we forget what the truth is; we are searching for the fantasy instead of working with reality.

By no means will we be seeing people walking out of stores with Twilight books wrapped in brown paper bags any time soon. Nor will many high school girls be grounded after DVDs of Maid In Manhattan are found under their mattresses. But it's important to keep in mind that just as it is ridiculous for guys to assume every intimate moment will be pornographic paradise, it is foolish for girls to be disappointed when their lives fail to be fairy tales.

Long Day's Journey Into Night

2009-11-03T17:36:00.000-05:00

My first teaching job was as a long term sub, meaning I was substitute for a teacher who would be out for an extended period of time. The position was as the theater teacher. Now there were many glaring problems with this:

First, my theater experience, beyond childhood Christmas plays at church, was once working stage crew on a high school musical and an introduction to acting course, with a course difficulty in the vein of basket-weaving, I took solely to fulfill a creative arts requirement.

Second, acting classes weren't really within my comfort zone. Sure, I had studied to be a teacher and in theory should be able to walk into any classroom and mold young minds, but teaching theater takes more than a class roster and a lesson plan. It takes someone with acting talent, something I lack, and thus I was not equipped to lead by example in the finer points of acting.

Third, I was hired a week before the start of school. There were no textbooks. No materials. The teacher I was a sub for created the course from scratch. She was an acting coach in her spare time,making her a walking textbook. Where as I didn't know my stage right from my stage left.

My greatest performance may have been acting like I knew what I was doing each period. Too many times I was deciding what to do in class as students were walking in the door. Needless to say if any of those kids become movie stars they should receive an instant Oscar just for overcoming the huge setback that was my instruction.

So while I'll never direct a play I enjoy reading them. They're often a welcomed break from novels where the author feels the need to describe everything in unimaginative detail. Plays, even ones written by the the most detail oriented writers, are concise, the meat of the story with all the side dishes intended to be served once it reaches the stage.

I read a lot of Eugene O'Neill's plays in college. I can't say I'm a huge fan of his, but what drew me to his supposed masterpiece, Long Day's Journey into Night, was the topic of dangerous drugs, like heroin, once being used for common cures. It's beyond frighting that drugs that would now get you jail time used to be given to children to help them sleep. Although I sure for some of my theater students a similar remedy would have been a welcome relief from the pain I put them through.

Outliers

2009-10-21T17:30:00.000-04:00

There's a quote by E.B. White, the man who wrote the children's classics Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little, that goes, "The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war."

As parents we want the best for our children and to put them in the best possible position to live long, happy, and productive lives. We try to predict the future our offspring will face and prepare them for it. While it's impossible to foresee and eliminate all the hardships and tragedies that will stand in their way, we encourage, protect, and corral our children towards success.

Ask someone how to achieve success and they'll most likely tell you that the answer lies in hard work. Society has bought into the belief that hard work is the solution for everything, it is after all at the core of the American Dream. If someone failed, it's simply due to the fact that the person didn't really work for it. As a teacher I've seen my share of good intentioned parents pushing their children harder than a pack of mules. It's assumed that hard working kids become talented and intelligent adults who are essentially guaranteed success. If that were true the man with the highest IQ ever measured, Chris Langan, would be a world leader instead of a bouncer at a bar.

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell examines what separates the super successful from the sub-par. While talent plays a major part in success, it is rarely the most important factor. This is illustrated in how a majority of professional hockey players have winter birthdays, why many of the richest people in the history of the world were born within just a few years of one another, and what makes children in Asian countries perform so well in math. It's not very often that you can thoroughly enjoy reading a book full of theories and statistics, not to mention feel just a tad bit smarter from the experience however this seems to be Gladwell's forte and the only qualm I have with him is that he has only written three books thus far.

As Gladwell explains, success is almost entirely about being at the right place at the right time and taking advantage of the opportunities if they happen across the person's path. So while William and Mary Gates raised their son in an upper-class home where they supported and provided for him, as it turns out the biggest reason Bill Gates (who as Gladwell illustrates is a prime example of having the rare opportunities that lead to success) is one of the most successful persons in technology/business today, is that his parents decided to start a family in the mid-fifties. As parents we can try to give our children the world, but ultimately what will have the biggest impact is what the world gives to them.

When the Finch Rises

2009-09-25T18:30:00.000-04:00

In When the Finch Rises the main characters are two young boys growing up in the late sixties. The pair become enamored by Evel Knievel and his televised motorcycle stunts. Being a curious and courageous duo, they even attempt their own stunts atop bicycles, using dangerous homemade ramps made of plywood and cinder blocks.

The entertainment industry can have a powerful effect on children. When I was around 8 one of my favorite movies was Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory mainly because I dreamt of having a room totally made out of candy like the scene with the chocolate river. In the movie, one of the rude kids, Violet Beauregarde, loves to chew gum. A gum addict. And at some point in the movie she states that she sometimes saves a good piece of gum by sticking the chewed wad behind her ear.

For some reason this tidbit resonated in my young mind and one day I distinctly remember enjoying a delicious piece of Dr. Pepper flavored gum with a liquid center. I was enjoying it so much that I decided it was too good to throw away. So taking a cue from Miss Beauregarde, I stuck the gum behind my ear.

Now at that age I was sporting the classic shaggy bowl cut so it wasn't hard for the gum to become intertwined in my hair. The hard thing was trying to retrieve the gum out of the hair behind my ear. In fact I unsuccessfully tried for the next 10 days, making sure to hide it from everyone.

Finally, on a night my family was getting dressed up to attend some event, my dad found the clump of hair while combing my hair. Now this Dr. Pepper gum, in its crewed, ten days old state, takes on a dark maroon color, the same hue as a bloody head wound. But as my dad was about to rush me to the ER, he noticed that my massive gash had a sweet delightful smell. Once the truth of the matter came out but it was clear that the wad of gum could not come out, dad reached for the scissors and I ended with a large hole in my bowl cut. Lesson learned.

A Shout-Out From Mr. Eisen on Twitter

2009-09-08T07:55:00.000-04:00

Total Access

2009-09-07T08:20:00.000-04:00

The NFL season is here and in my opinion football is simply the greatest sport on Earth. People typically like to place baseball over football, they romanticize it and call it "America's favorite pastime" but it's nothing more than propaganda. Baseball just simply isn't close to the complex and physical game of football.

In baseball every game is like casual Friday with players wearing pants and button-up shirts. The perfect game in baseball is one where nothing happens. Baseball players can actually go on the disable list for a blister on their fingers. And professional baseball stadiums even have to give the crowd a designated time to stand up and stretch so as not to have them sleep through the end of the game.

But beyond the games themselves, the biggest thing that the NFL has on the MLB is that in football everything is an event. The NFL has perfected the art of making news out of the off-season. Once the Super Bowl winner is crowned, the league doesn't go into hibernation. There's the Pro Bowl, Free Agency, the Combine, the Draft, training camps and endless fantasy football talk, all satisfying our fix until the kick-off of a new season.

Total Access is a great read from the Walter Cronkite, or even the Pookie Anderson, of the NFL Network, Rich Eisen. It's an inside look into the event packed world of the NFL. It's loaded with hilarious stories and interesting facts. The perfect thing to tide someone over between Sundays.

Fly Eagles fly.

Rabbit, Run

2009-08-29T10:13:00.000-04:00

So I have this tattoo on my right upper arm. I got it back in the summer of 2003. At the time I had moved back home with my parents, was single, unsuccessfully looking for a teaching job, waiting tables part-time, and staying up until 3 in the morning on an average weekday. What better way to celebrate these great achievements then by rewarding myself with a tattoo.

The tattoo is this logo thing that I carefully designed using my initials, which for better or worst just happen to be B.S. The tattoo itself is blotchy; it's not as filled in as it could be. That's because the day I got it I had the bright idea that to lessen the pain normally associated with getting a tattoo I would take a few shots of rum. However, alcohol causes your blood to thin, so as the needle is going in and out of your arm, you bleed more, making it harder to ensure that the intended area is covered. So I ended up with a less than stellar tattoo.

But at the time I convinced myself that regardless of its appearance this tattoo was more than just ink strategically placed under the skin, it was a statement, a statement of uniqueness, like a trademarked symbol. Think The Artist Formerly Known As Prince. It's completely ridiculous thinking behind this completely ego-centered image, that I will wear for the rest of my life.

It's not that I'm now against tattoos, it's just that tattoos on me don't seem right. Like going to McDonald's and finding salmon tar-tar on the value menu, ink on me is confusing, humorous, and more than slightly disturbing.

As time has past I've come to confess the errors made in many of my choices. Like when my 2 year old son asks me why I have a sticker on my arm, I admit to myself that this tattoo was a mistake. I regret getting it. People say you shouldn't regret things in life. I don't understand that. Having regrets doesn't mean you didn't learn something valuable, it just means you identify your wrong doings. Show me someone who has no regrets and I'll show you someone who either has never made a mistake or more likely is too embarrassed/delusional/arrogant to admit them.

I've come realize that I am my worst enemy, and the same probably holds true for most people. No one has lied to you more than yourself. The person who has talked you into making all those horrible decisions is the person you see in the mirror each day. We tend to either trust ourselves way too much (learning to twist our reasoning until anything is justifiable) or not at all (by knowing our flaws and continually use them against us).

The author John Updike died back in January of this year. I had never read any of his work and since this celebrated writer is from the state I call home, Pennsylvania, I felt compelled to read one of his more well-known books. That and Conan O'Brien recommended him in an issue of Entertainment Weekly.

Never have I hated a main character more than I have in Rabbit, Run , so much so that I repeatedly wanted to toss the book aside and it took much longer to read than it should have. The character doesn't know what he wants, only what he wants right at that moment. He's an anti-hero, and his super power would be the ability to justify running away from all the responsibility in his life. At no point did he get any sweet tattoos but his actions and attitudes just happen to be total B.S.

Among The Thugs

2009-08-12T11:00:00.000-04:00

When I was in high school there was this propaganda spread around to all the students, that to get into anything close to a good college a student had to take at least 2 years of a foreign language. Maybe it was the guidance counselors who spread this lie, or the language teachers wanting to ensure their services would be in high demand. Nevertheless, my fellow students and I bought into it and were soon choosing our classroom aliases and looking up curse words in the English to foreign language dictionary.

I took Spanish and during my second year I had a fresh out of college, 5 foot small, meek and incredibly kind-hearted woman for a teacher. And we made her life, or at least the class period, miserable. The class was filled with sophomores. Now sophomores are essentially freshmen trying to act like juniors, full of delusional immaturity. What made things even worse is that of the 25 students in the class only 4 were girls. There was so much testosterone in that room it's surprising that the girls didn't sprout whiskers as a result of a contact high.

So needless to say we were beyond jerk status in our treatment of this woman. I remember almost nothing she actually taught, but I do remember how we would rhythmically pound on our desks in the middle of her lesson, how we would steal things off her desks and hold it above her head as she would jump and try to get it like some kind of poodle. On a number of occasions we somehow convinced her to let us listen to the song The Humpy Dance during class, and to celebrate the end of the year we had her show us The Goonies. And again this was Spanish class.

I'm not sure how many times we made her cry during class. It was enough to make us feel bad but not enough to make us stop. Clearly we were complete and utter bastards to this poor woman. But the thing is we weren't bastards by nature. Individually, we weren't troublemakers. We weren't making frequent visits to the principal's office. In fact many of us had never seen the inside of it. However, when we were thrown together in that classroom together we transformed into a pack of incarcerated vikings.

I choose to read Among the Thugs because, A. I read Buford's book Heat some time back and enjoyed it and B. it's about soccer (or I should say football), a sport I'm not any good at but have enjoyed playing ever since I was six years old. I was about 20 pages into this book when I came across an article in the latest issue of Newsweek called "Fifty Books for Our Time", and in a serendipitous moment this obscure, 19 year old book, that I couldn't even find in a book store or libraries, was listed. This was my first hint that this book was more than just soccer.

Among the Thugs is about the author's time spent around soccer hooligans in Europe and analyzes crowd violence. Some even see the book as being insightful in understanding terrorism. Maybe if that Spanish teacher had read it our Digital Underground fueled attacks would have been squashed.

Swaptree

2009-07-21T21:19:00.000-04:00

Like most avid readers the number of books I get far outnumber the number I'll ever get around to reading. 80% of the books I own are ones I have yet to read. I add an average of at least 2-3 books to my shelves a month. With that said, it's safe to say that I haven't actually bought a book in over two years.

Instead I've relied almost solely on the site Swaptree.com to feed my reading habit. Swaptree is a trading site for books, CD's, DVD's, and video games. You make a list of all the items you are willing to trade and a list of items you'd like to receive. The site then finds matches and setup a 2-way, 3-way, and even 4-way trade.

Time and time again I've made a trade for a recently released book in exchange for a CD I haven't listened to since college and instead of shelling out the $20 or more dollars for the new hardcover book, I'm only paying 2-3 dollars to mail the CD. I can even print postage right off the site.

So far my best trades have been for uncorrected proofs books also called advance reading copies (ARC). These are small batches of book copies the publisher gives out to the media, bookstores, and libraries before the book is released for sale. They are very collectible and without intentionally seeking them out, I've made trades for 5 ARC's so far. The best one being a signed uncorrected proof of Slam by Nick Hornby (movies based on his books include High Fidelity, About a Boy, and very loosely Fever Pitch).

To date I've made over 170 trades and estimate that I've probably saved between $1,100 to $1,700. The best thing is, when I'm finished with a book I turn around and list it right back onto Swaptree and I no longer feel forced to read a book I can't get into since I don't really have a financial investment with it in the first place.

So whether you're looking to feed all your media desires, save money, and/or de-clutter your bookshelves, Swaptree is the way to go. Enjoy.