Puddles of Myself

World's Coolest Dude 1911-2011, (1921-1930)

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 11:26:58 PST

We continue with the second installment of the World's Coolest Dude 1911-2011 list, covering the winners from 1921-1930.

In case you missed it, you can see yesterday's post, which listed the winners from 1911-1920, by clicking this link. Here are the winners from 1921 to 1930.

1921 – Albert Einstein

In November of 1921, Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for his work involving the photoelectric effect, which explained the existence of photoelectrons or electrons emitted from matter due to their absorbtion of light. Basically, this study explained light and the phenomena related to it at a much more microscopic level and may have had something to do with Cezanne’s theories on painting and how he saw objects. However, what Einstein’s Nobel Prize was really for was for his shaping the 20^th century with his ideas, especially his theory of special relativity, which shaped much more than the sciences of the 20^th century, but also humankinds general conception of reality. Modernism and Post-Modernism in their different incarnations have as much to do with the after-effects of war as they do with Einstein’s special theory of relativity, which basically said that how we experience time depends on how fast we are doing something—time lapse is not invariant. This furthers the element of parallax evident in 20^th century culture, that an object seen or experienced from a different point or different speed, makes the experience of that object alien, sometimes extraordinarily alien from any other perspective. What the theory of special relativity specifically did on a scientific level was allow us to realistically fathom the idea of space travel. Einstein won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 for his work regarding the makeup of light, but he had already done far more than that. Plus, he was maybe the last globally famous scientist (fine, I’ll take arguments for Stephen Hawking). And he significantly influenced the next year’s winner.

1922 – James Joyce

Though the first episodes of Ulysses began appearing the the Little Review in 1918, the novel was not published in its entirety until 1922. Literature was changed immediately upon its publication. This is not an exaggeration as authors such as Ernest Hemingway have been on record as saying that Ulysses allowed them to see what they could do with literature and what words they could use. Ulysses went a long way to espousing the idea that culture was significantly fractured, but that perhaps it had always been that way, that our experience of the everyday is kaleidoscopic, simultaneously a part of history and outside of history depending on how we choose to embrace our surroundings. The novel gives us Leopold Bloom, a man who enjoys the mundane aspects of life while experiencing great personal pains, and Stephen Dedalus, a young man who ponders the poetic and philosophic nature of life with a cruel, hurt mind at odds with the needs of others and his own good. Through each of these characters we meet a vast array of human life and everyday experiences that are sometimes relayed in a straightforward manner, but other times filtered through the array of perspectives that history and literature have given us. There is a chapter that uses each style of the English language as it as evolved over the centuries, all while imitating the gestation period of a fetus. Oh, and all of that concept is used to narrate a group of men getting drunk in a maternity ward while a woman gives birth to yet another child. Joyce fits both concepts high and low into a story that also effectively tells the story of Ireland and what had ailed the country up to the year Ulysses takes place (1904) and even on through to the time period Joyce was writing the novel (1914-1922). Joyce also elaborates on the dangers of social institutions and even the institution of the imagination if it is not balanced correctly. The novel contains some of the most beautiful passages in the history of English literature and is the most life-affirming book that has ever existed. Joyce changed the course of literature in 1922 and influenced not only the writers of his generation but generations of writers and will continue to do so until the world explodes. He took the throne in 1922 and he consistently shares it with only Tolstoy and Shakespeare.

1923 – Calvin Coolidge

Now I know some of you may be thinking that Calvin Coolidge only won the World’s Coolest Dude Award in 1923 because he has the word “cool” in his last name, well that is just not true. To be fair, much of Coolidge’s victory did come from the fact that Warren G. Harding had died in office as President of the United States and was such a terrible and corrupt president that anyone who followed would look great by comparison. Coolidge was a soft-spoken, conservative man from Vermont who brought small-time government appeal to the office. His wholesomeness helped restore America’s faith in its government after Harding’s corrupt tenure. Under Coolidge, the “Roaring Twenties” really took off. 1923 was just the beginning for Coolidge and we all know that beginnings usually seem the best, especially when you leave office with the country headed for a financial disaster that it can’t afford. But, hey, the Great Depression didn’t happen under Silent Cal’s time in office.

1924 – Edwin Hubble

It’s 2011 and we all take for granted that the Earth is in a galaxy known as the Milky Way and that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies in the Universe. However, back in 1924, we didn’t know that. We couldn’t make meta and self-referential jokes about the vastness of the universe to entertain adults and kids at the movies (see Men in Black). On December 30, 1924 (just sneaking in for eligibility), Edwin Hubble announced that Andromeda, which was a group of stars believed to be a nebula, was actually another galaxy and that the Milky Way was in fact a separate galaxy in a space that was filled with perhaps an infinite amount of galaxies. This was mind-blowing to the public at the time and only became even more mind-blowing as marijuana made its way further and further into popular culture. So, to recap, this guy changed our own perception about how we saw the dimensions and measurements of the Universe—seems like he deserves to win World’s Coolest Dude in any year, let alone a weak year like 1924.

1925 – F. Scott Fitzgerald

This was a no-brainer. By 1925, Scotty Fitzgerald had strung together two novels which had arguably set the tone and aesthetic for America in the 1920’s in This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and the Damned. Joyce may have been towering over literature with his sheer detail and linguistic genius, but there was no one writing more beautiful, musical and heart-breaking prose than F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1925 when he published his masterwork, The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald was only 29 when The Great Gatsby was published and it was his third novel to be reckoned with. His earlier work had looked at class and America at the beginning of one of this country’s greatest decades, but in Gatsby, he attacked America as myth, America as mythmaking, America as beauty and heartbreaking glory, all in economical, yet beautiful prose. H.L. Mencken called The Great Gatsby a “glorified anecdote.” The World’s Coolest Dude voters did not agree, as they found Fitzgerald’s work moving, beautiful and the story much deeper than it's shade less than 200 pages suggest. Jay Gatsby, Tom Buchanan, Nick Caraway and all the awful guests at Gatsby’s parties continue to live on in our minds, taking on new shapes and identities as the years pass by. And no one will ever forget that green light or the fact that we are like boats against the current, borne ceaselessly into the past.

1926 – Fritz Lang

When James Franco and Anne Hathaway (Sidenote: I know that Anne Hathaway recently got engaged, but the other weekend, I was in Chelsea and I saw her crying over some coffee, so mark my words: that engagement is a sham and she should/will be with me! Plus I’m still not sold she’s actually engaged.) hosted the Oscars this past year we all made fun of them and the movies they were “honoring” without really giving a thought to how far movies have come over the past eighty to ninety years. In 1926, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis first premiered in Germany and it still remains a cutting edge film nearly ninety years on. The film premiered in December of 1926 so it just snuck in under eligibility for 1926. Metropolis used cutting edge visual effects such as using miniatures and a swing camera. Basically, it was the first huge leap of visual imagination that film had truly seen and it directly influenced such directors as Albert Hitchcock. On a philosophical note, the film embodied German expressionism in its symbolic representation of a dystopian future (how about THAT sentence?). Basically, Fritz Lang created a film in 1926 that James Franco would still approve of today. And perhaps set the bar for “foreign films” and how weird they should be. Lang was a visionary, the film was cutting edge and the committee knew all too well where the award should go in 1927.

1927 – Lou Gehrig

In the 1926 Major League Baseball season, Lou Gehrig was twenty-three years old and had his breakout season. He put up the following numbers:

Yr Age G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO AVG OBP SLG

1926 23 155 572 135179 47 20 16 112 105 73 .313 .420 .549

So, by the 1927 season, he was known as an essential part of the New York Yankees team. However, no one was prepared for the season he was about to unleash:

Yr Age G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO AVG OBP SLG

1927 24 155 584 149 218 52 18 47 175 109 84 .373 .474 .765

Many people overlooked Gehrig’s insane season in favor of marvelling at Babe Ruth’s 60 home runs, which were impressive, but unwittingly started the American public on a terrible addiction to home runs that eventually culminated in the 1998 MLB season and Barry Bonds’ head circa 2002. However, the World’s Coolest Dude committee did not miss the monumental season that Gehrig put together. Just dwell on those all around numbers for a moment and then slowly begin to piece your brain back together. People may dock him points for being on the 1927 “Murderers’ Row” Yankees, perhaps the greatest baseball team ever assembled, but not the WCD committee. When you play on one of the greatest teams of all time and put up the best all around numbers on said team, there has to be an air of coolness around you, an ability to understand the moment, a poise to remain unflappable under the greatest amounts of pressure, scrutiny and peer competition. And that’s what the 1927 Lou Gehrig had, which is why he won the award.

1928 – Charles Lindbergh

Like 1924, 1928 did not hold a strong field of World’s Coolest Dude contenders and thus Charles Lindbergh’s selection is a bit of a minor controversy in the annals of the World’s Coolest Dude award. In May of 1927, Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Louis, alone, from Roosevelt Field in Garden City, Long Island to Paris, France. The flight took 33 hours and there were points where the Spirit dodged storm clouds at 10,000 feet and then others where it just avoided the white caps of ocean waves at 10 feet. Lindburgh flew alone through icing, fog, and “blindness” until he miraculously landed at Le Bourget airport where he was greeted and carried by a crowd of 150,000 people. Linbergh was rumored to have been carried on the crowd’s shoulders for a solid hour. After the flight and for the rest of 1927, Linbergh embarked on the “Lindbergh U.S. Tour: Wings over the Atlantic” (which Paul McCartney later made reference to with with album Wings Over America), where he gave speeches about aviation in 48 states and 92 cities. The influence that Lindbergh’s flight had on air travel was so great that its stretch into 1928 could not be ignored. The public had been very skeptical and fearful of aviation, but after seeing Lindbergh’s solo heroics, air travel did not seem so impossible. The rate of U.S. Airplane passengers increased 3,000% from 1926-1929, with a bulk of that growth coming in 1928, the year following Lindbergh’s historic flight. Though Lindbergh would later become famous due to the horrible abduction and murder of his son, in 1928 he was the world’s hero, and the World’s Coolest Dude.

1929 – Al Capone

Though many of you can watch Al Capone’s rise to prominence as part of a larger story arc on Boardwalk Empire, it’s important that you understand why he was the World’s Coolest Dude in 1929. Capone had left Brooklyn for Chicago in the early 20’s and was recruited into Johnny Torrio’s Five Points Gang. By 1925, after Torrio had retired due to a life-threatening attack, Capone had taken charge of the Chicago Outift and was engaged in a war with the North Side Irish gang led by Bugs Moran. This war was ongoing until 1929 when, in an effort to settle the score once and for all, Capone ordered the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Capone’s soldiers, dressed as policemen, raided a warehouse where Moran’s men were gathered. The reason Moran’s men were there is still debated, but Capone’s men opened fired with sub-machine guns killing Moran’s seven men. After the shooting, two more of Capone’s men emerged wearing street clothes and were walked out by the men wearing police uniforms in order to give the appearance of an actual arrest. The Massacre ended up drawing too much attention in Capone’s direction and though he was never convicted of ordering the murders, the heat around him eventually led to his conviction for tax evasion by the IRS. In 1929, Capone was arguably the most powerful mobster in America (Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano were also in the mix) and he gave us one of the most horrific, yet iconic moments in American organized crime. You may not like it, but sometimes the bad guy is the World’s Coolest Dude.

1930 – Ernest Hemingway

In 1930. Ernest Hemingway was thirty-one years old. His bibliography up until that point looked like this:

In Our Time (i.e Nick Adams stories like “The Battler” and “Big Two-Hearted River”)

The Torrents of Spring

The Sun Also Rises

Men Without Women (Contains “The Killers” and “Hills Like White Elephants”

A Farewell to Arms

So, by 1930, Hemingway had forcefully and thoroughly established the “Hemingway style” as well as the “Hemingway mystique.” Even if Joyce’s genius still towered over literature like some obtuse, profane spector, Hemingway was widely considered the best and most influential writer of the time. One has to look no further than the allure of novels like The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms which was published just a year earlier. His first short stories were just refreshing blasts of declarative prose that reminded you what it was like to just walk or sit (see “Big Two-Hearted River”) while A Farewell to Arms took that simplicity and added doom, romance and the small spiritual (read: microscopic) occurances that happen among the meaninglessness of life. Reading Hemingway in 1930 was like teaching yourself how to read and approach language and story for the first time. In 1930, Hemingway could make putting on a sweater seem important and meaningful. Everyone read his books and everyone thought they were genius, and if not, they understood why he was important, even if perhaps they didn’t think there was much prose actually present. He was a literary celebrity and living legend of literature. In 1930, Ernest Hemingway was undeniable. That’s all you need to know.

Check back tomorow for the next installment of the World's Coolest Dude 1911-2011.

World's Coolest Dude 1911-2011, (1911-1920)

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:05:10 PST

Puddles of Myself is back and we ( aka Matt Domino) are finally bringing you a complete list of the World's Coolest Dudes from 1911-2011.

Well, my Puddlers, as promised, we are back. You'll notice a few overall tweaks to the site, but overall everything is pretty easy to follow. The individual writer archives will be updated and then placed at the top of the page so you can easily get your fix of Mark Jack, Alex Theoharides and even our old friend Alex Ramsdell. There will also be a few new friends to get to know in the coming weeks and months and you'll be able to find them under the "Puddles of My Guest Columnists" tab.

Today is the first installment of our World's Coolest Dude 1911-2011 list. I'll be posting ten winners from for the next ten days so that you can peruse and argue and laugh all the way through the holidays and into the New Year. The criteria is pretty self explanatory: each year the World's Coolest Dude committee convened in order to decide who the World's Coolest Dude was. They took into account influence, coolness, edge, inevitability and achievement and decided who the most appropriate winner was. This list reflects their decisions.

So, without further ado, here is the first installment of The World's Coolest Dude 1911-2011 list.

1911 – Teddy Roosevelt

On the surface, there wasn’t much rhyme or reason to Teddy Roosevelt’s selection as the World’s Coolest Dude in 1911. His tenure as president had ended in 1909 and in 1911 he was in the middle of a muddled Republican landscape looking to choose a candidate for the 1912 election. Politically, things were not looking great for Roosevelt. However, at the time he was perhaps the most iconic and influential American alive. He had set the American aesthetic of the early 20^th century, which was that of the educated frontiersman. An ideal American, through the influence of Roosevelt, was a person who could handle themselves in the wilderness but also conduct themselves in the city by helping to reform the institutions of society and resist corruption. In 1911, the influence of Teddy Roosevelt was felt in the most remote parts of Montana all the way to Washington D.C. and even to the other side of the globe where his “Speak softly and carry a big stick” motto resonated in U.S. foreign policy. Roosevelt had that kind of sway without the Internet—now that’s saying something.

1912 – Roald Amundsen

The South Pole has always been a mythological and mysterious place. Hell, have any of you ever seen The Thing? In 1912 it was still fairly uncharted territory. The first landing on Antarctica was in 1820 and its geographical coastline was not even partially charted until the 1830’s. The early 20^th century saw a renewed interest in the exploration of Antarctica and the South Pole. The most notable explorer was Ernest Shackleton who trekked across Antarctica but just missed reaching the South Pole in 1909. In December of 1911, Roald Amundsen reached the actual, 90°S latitude of the South Pole. Just think about how cold the South Pole is. Then, think about how cold it would have been 100 years ago without all the warming technology we have now by means of improved clothing and other gadgetry. Yeah, pretty amazing feat. My brain is actually numb thinking about how torturous that would have been. Now, because communication was different in 1911-1912, Amundsen’s announcement of his deed did not reach world ears until March of 2012, making him World’s Coolest Dude 2012. Makes you think about the nature of words, communication and language and what their significance is, right?

1913 – Marcel Proust

In many ways Marcel Proust can be considered a loser. However, he wrote one of the masterpieces of literature in In Search of Lost Time or to some A Remembrance of Things Past. Proust’s work basically set the foundation for Modernism and opened the doors for modern literature to attempt to dissect memory and the mundane. The first volume of this work was published in 1913, which includes the famous “Overture” in which the narrator of the novel dips a madeline cookie in his tea and has his memory drawn back to when he was a child. This phenomenon of memory and storytelling was touched on in Tristam Shandy by Laurence Sterne in the 18^th century, but Proust made it relevant and revelatory in his time. Joyce was already onto the same strain, most likely without knowledge of Proust, since he was writing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man at the same time, but Proust was published first and his “madeline, tea-dipping scene” is perhaps one of the, if not he most influential scenes in the history of literature due to the fact that it openly allowed a reader (aka a person) to celebrate his or her sense memory in an intellectual and palapable way that was never thought of before. So, in 1913 a neurotic, homosexual Frenchman who was in love with his mother taught us the merit in valuing our own memory and the benefits of understanding why we enjoy or remember the things we experience. This man basically set the foundation for the Puddles of Myself aesthetic. Of course he was the World’s Coolest Dude 1913.

1914 – George Washington Goethals

Do you remember when you used to have to sail around South America in order to get to the West Coast of the United States? Neither do I, and I’m glad I don’t (or maybe I do, I mean that boat ride would have been refreshing and exciting, albeit long). One of the main reasons we can understand a world that does not involve sailing around South America to reach the other side of the United States, is a man by the name of George Washington Goethals. Now, Teddy Roosevelt (WCD 1911) was responsible for undertaking the Panama Canal endeavour and he did have the administrative wherewithal to appoint Goethals as the Chief Engineer of project, but it was Goethals who used his engineering skill to completel the Panama Canal two years ahead of schedule. Two years in 1914 was about equal to ten years now. Can you imagine something being finished ten years ahead of schedule? Goethals implemented the Riverton Lock, which he had pioneered, on the Canal and under his leadership he was able to reign in the large scale project and finish it with skill and precision. This man changed the way we looked at the entire continent of North America, shipping in general and travel in general. G.W. Goethals was the World’s Coolest Dude 1914.

1915 – Harry Houdini

In 1915, World War I was well underway and no one had any idea what type of devastation was occurring and about to occur in the trenches. During WorldWar I, one of the most popular entertainers was Harry Houdini. It is widely acknowledged that the history of magic performance reached its apex with Harry Houdini. Magicians and escapologists had been gaining steam as cultural phenomenons and entertainers since the late 19^th century (see The Illusionist and The Prestige) but it all culminated with Houdini and his Chinese Water Torture Cell Trick as well as his Suspended Straitjacket Escape. Though these tricks were each first performed in 1912, Houdini’s fame and notoriety were at their peak a few years later in 1915, when even the dullest of “how-dey-do-dats” knew the name Houdini and would come to see his act. There may have been a slight magic boom in the 90’s with the fame of David Copperfield, but it didn’t have near the same cultural and entertainment weight as Houdini did in 1915. Harry Houdini was the hottest ticket around in 1915, so he had to be the World’s Coolest Dude.

1916 – Charlie Chaplin

This summer you’ve gone to the movies to see blockbusters and your fair share of Hollywood movie stars, like, uh, Shia Lebouf, and umm, Ryan Reynolds and uh, the guy from Captain America. OK, so it was not a great summer for movies and movie stars, but you know what I mean. Our culture and our world are consumed by movie stars. However, Charlie Chaplin was arguably the first movie star. In 1914, Chaplin debuted his character “The Tramp,” who was a modified hobo. “The Tramp” was a vagrant who covered his nature by using the very socially normal, refined manners and clothing of a 1910’s gentleman. The character of “The Tramp” is the iconic image we have of Charlie Chaplin: the bowler hat, the baggy pants and suit jacket, the large shoes, the bumbling motions. “The Tramp” also encapsulated American values as well as those traits we have always looked for in heros: cunning, the willingness to work, anti-authoritarian attitudes and the ability to travel and move. The character was an international sensation and it is what truly drove Chaplin’s fame and image. “The Tramp” was perhaps the defining character of the silent movie era. Chaplin himself at least thought so, as he retired the character in 1931, refusing to ever make a “talkie” using “The Tramp.” Why 1916? Because by that year, “The Tramp” had gained enough notoriety and had driven Chaplin to enough fame, yet still retained its freshness. You loved “The Tramp” in 1916, making Charlie Chaplin the World’s Coolest Dude.

1917 – Vladimir Lenin

At this point in history, we are well versed in communism and Vladimir’s Lenin impact on the world, but just try to imagine what hearing about Lenin was like back in 1917. Basically all you need to know is the story of the German government facilitating Lenin’s return to Russia from exile in 1917. Lenin had been exiled (again!) from Russia and was living in Switzerland. The German government, in an attempt to destabilize the Russian government during World War I, arranged a special train to deliver Lenin to Russia during the aftermath of the February Revolution. Russia, whose governmental foundation was already cracked and deteriorating would soon fall by October and the October Revolution, after which, Lenin deposed of the Russian Congress and gave one of his signature quotes: “We shall now proceed to construct the Socialist order!” Clearly this man was the Rock of his time. Actually, he was beloved by the people and was in a sense the People’s Champion. Soon after he had formed the Bolshevik Government, the assassination attempts came and soon his health declined from exhaustion (the man only rested twice from 1917-1922). However, for that glorious moment in 1917, he was the leader of the people. He was a man who didn’t see color or heritage but merely only the oppressed workers and the capitalists who took advantage of them. Whether he was right or not, you couldn’t help but be magnetized by his power over the people.

1918 - Woodrow Wilson

It’s funny that perhaps the two iconic and contrasting images of America in the early 20^th century are of Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt is always shown outside, standing next to a tree, wearing a hat or with his hair combed in a neat way that suggests he just got himself together, only for a moment for the camera. In either case, he always has that shit-eating, “I’m taking life for the fullest” smile on his face. On the other hand, we have Wilson with his circular spectacles, his Mona Lisa smile and his very academic aura. Woodrow Wilson entered the United States into World War I in 1917, but in 1918 he made sure that our aims in the war were well known and concise. They were the Fourteen Points and though they were slightly liberal and progressive (worldwide cooperation) they helped the American public and government feel a focus during a time of war. Wilson also spearheaded the negotiations with Germany that led to the war. He showed an organization and determination to end the war on our terms, which gave our country and the other Allied Powers a sense of confidence that was so desperately needed during the war’s later phase. In 1918, with countries like England, France and Italy feeling fatigue, Wilson was looked to as the World’s Coolest Dude. That is to say, he was looked to as an influential leader.

1919 – Arnold Rothstein

If the Texas Hold Em’ craze of the mid-00’s, scratch-off tickets, “It Makes No Difference” and Rainman have taught us anything, its that gambling is cool (well, in the case of “It Makes No Difference” its saying the word “gambler” like Rick Danko that is cool). Arnold Rothstein was perhaps the best gambler of all-time. He controlled New York in the 1910’s and a majority of the 1920’s. However, he is most known for fixing the 1919 World Series aka the Black Sox Scandal. Rothstein paid members of the Chicago White Sox to throw the series, which they did, and helped him earn a tidy sum from betting against them. Rothstein was never caught for fixing the series, though it is common knowledge that he did in fact influence his outcome. The “Black Sox Scandal” caused “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, one of the biggest stars of the early days of baseball, to be banned from the game and have his reputation tarnished for a period of time. The fact that one man could influence the outcome of the major sporting event of the day makes him the World’s Coolest Dude, no matter if the circumstances are a bit nefarious.

1920 – Babe Ruth

On December 26^th, 1919, Babe Ruth was sold by the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees for sum that totalled around two million dollars in today’s value, which made Babe Ruth the highest paid player in Major League Baseball history. Ruth was a solid pitcher who emerged as an extremely productive hitter by 1919, but the Red Sox had no idea what was in store for their city and franchise after they sold him to the Yankees. Upon selling the Babe to New York, Boston effectively opened the doors for Ruth to become the legendary player he became and unwittingly brought a curse on their franchise and city that lasted 84 years. Just look at the change in numbers from Ruth’s last year in Boston to his first year in New York:

Yr Age G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO AVG OBP SLG

1919 24 130 432 103 139 34 12 29 114 101 58 .322 .456 .657

1920 25 142 458 158 172 36 9 54 137 150 80 .376 .532 .847

There is a marked jump between the two years, as though by being sold to New York, to a city that was well underway to taking on the historical and cultural meaning that it has today, Ruth acknowledge an opening up of History; he saw the footsteps before him and chose to step in them and around them, effectively taking the throne and making it his own at the same time. In short, he understood what it took to become history and become a legend. 1920 was the first year of his becoming and the fact that he became the highest paid player in MLB history and enacted a curse on a city that lasted nearly 100 years, makes him the World’s Coolest Dude without question.

Come back tomorrow to see the winners from 1921-1930.

Free Agents and Mea Culpas

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:05:37 PST

Matt Domino offers an apology as well as his Top 15 Free Agents for the 2011-2012 NBA season.

I hate being wrong but when I am wrong, I’ll usually be the first one to admit it. Whether it is in love (I try as hard as I can to never be wrong about this one, but hey, we all make mistakes), sports, music or anything else, I absolutely hate being wrong. I'll fight it, I'll argue, I'll try to point out the tiniest positive aspect that I can, but when I the writing is on the wall, I’ll read it and say, “I’m wrong.”

What this all means is that, there will be no Puddles of Myself re-launch or redesign. I tried to take on too much too soon and make this blog something that it wasn’t ready to be. I leaned on a few people a little too much and in the end I had to try and undertake the redesign myself, which I wasn’t prepared/didn’t have enough personal time to take care of, what with working a day job and trying to prove to the world that I am one of the five best living writers. So, I was wrong and I’m going to make it up to my Puddlers all around the world. The blog will continue to bring you great, passionate and varied content, but we're going to stay within our identity and our capabilities—which is something I always preach the value of in literature and athletics anyway.

Puddles of Myself will be live again starting on 12/19/11. We will take you through the holidays with a list of the World’s Coolest Dude Award Winners from 1911-2011 and I believe that you will be thoroughly entertained by this list. Then, our stable of writers will start posting up their own new works and if you think Mark Jack hasn’t been camped out in Berkeley over the past four months, stewing over god knows wait and just waiting to unleash his heady thoughts, well then you are sorely mistaken. We’ll have some new female writers contributing, which I am especially excited about and we’ll even be working in some video content (slowly, but surely). With my new contributions to SLAM Online, there may be less sports writing on here from me and more general cultural/spiritual musings, but that’s good so I can then bring back the Puddles of My Podcast in a manner that can consistently entertain you all.

All I care about is my Puddlers (and money), so I apologize to you all for the ongoing hiatus. We’ll be back soon enough.

Actually, today I’ll give you a little bonus feature. This is a piece that I submitted to SLAM and which they posted this past weekend, only to pull it down because it was a bit too honest. Here, you’ll get to read it in full. Enjoy and remember we’re live again on 12/19/11.

I love you all.

Let Your Free Agent Flag Fly

Matt Domino

I know I am stating the obvious here, but thank God the NBA is back. For me, things were getting bad. I was staying up late, chewing multiple pieces of off-brand nicotene gum, drinking tall boys of Busch beer and watching old 1990’s Chicago Bulls games on YouTube. During my days off from work, I would wander aimlessly around the streets of Brooklyn challenging high school kids to games of pick-up and H-O-R-S-E for money. Then, with my brain still filled with the holy spirit of Jordan’s competitive fire, I would mercilessly destroy them in a whirlwind passion for victory. Yes, things were not looking good.

But, now, in some sort of holiday season miracle, we will have an NBA season. My mind is drawn back into focus. I’m drinking less (?) and focusing on current events. My stock portfolio is stronger. Things are good and most importantly we are about to embark on a frenzied free agent period that should put the free agent period the NFL saw this summer to shame. We are going to have players going all over the place. So, in order to temper this madness I am going to provide you with my list of the top fifteen free agents that will be available when teams start training camp on December 9 as well as what team that I believe they will end up signing with. I was going to consider all restricted free agents as part of this list, but instead I am going to list all of the unrestricted free agents and Marc Gasol, who is, in my opinion, the restricted free agent most likely to move. Besides, we can’t get caught up in too much fantasy.

15. Michael Redd

Some of you NBA fans might be saying, “Whoa, wait a second, he’s still around?” Yes, that is how far Michael Redd has fallen from the heights of 2004-2008 when he was one of the most respected perimeter shooters in the game. He even played on the “Redeem Team.” Injuries have hampered him in recent years and he hasn’t played 70 games since the 2007-2008 season. However, we’re about to start a 66 game season and that might make all the difference. With Mike Miller’s recent hernia surgery and the uncertainty if he will ever have “it” again, can’t you see the Heat using their amnesty clause on Miller, signing Redd to a more reasonable 1-2 year deal and using him as their knock down shooter? I think so.

14. Delonte West

It’s everyone’s favorite nutcase! (I know, I know he has bipolar disorder, but he is still a little whacky) Delonte is another guy who just can’t seem to stay healthy but can be an asset to your team as we saw in his time with Cleveland and at spots last year with the Celtics. He’s a good ball handler, can make plays and has that level of “irrational confidence,” as Bill Simmons says, that you want on a contender. That’s why I see him re-signing with the Celtics to backup Rondo for another year. Though, the Celtics could trade for Chris Paul in a monumental deal and everything I’ve said could be shot to hell.

13. Glen Davis

We continue with another one of the Boston Celtics’ free agents. We all know that Davis is capable of giving a team points, energy and rebounds off the bench. He takes charges better than possibly anyone else in the league and can even step up and hit a big shot from time to time. He had his best statistical season in 2010-2011, but strangely, it didn’t feel that way. In previous years, “Big Baby” had fit into place with what the Celtics did and did exactly what they needed him to do when they needed him to do (for the most part). His 2010-2011 season seemed to lack that trait. It appears that his time in Boston has come to an end. I see Joe Dumars looking at his defensive background from his time in Boston and finding potential value in him as a glue guy and signing him to a possibly bad contract once they amnesty Rip Hamilton.

12. Nenad Kristic

It’s a Boston free agent bonanza! I guess that makes sense since they only have six players actually under contract. Kristic will never be confused with Charles Oakley or even Nick Collison; he lacks a certain interior toughness to his game. However, he can make shots, make the defense respect him, pass and, most importantly, provide scoring to take the burden off Kevin Garnett to be the only low-post presence for the team. I think Boston resigns him, though it will be important for the Celtics to really pick up another center who is more of a rebounder-defender so they can actually bring Kristic off the bench to spell Garnett rather than play them together.

11. Tayshaun Prince

Prince will be 32 years old in February, but he can still get around 14 and 5 every night. His defense has slipped slightly over the past two years, but wouldn’t your effort wane if you were playing alongside Ben Gordon, Charlie Villanueva and their bloated contracts every night? Prince is a heady player who can pass well and will play defense when part of an actual professional team like those mid-2000’s Detroit teams. Doesn’t that sound like the current Boston Celtics? I think that the Celtics don’t end up trading for Paul and make one last run at the title in the shortened season. I know Prince is looking for one last contract, but I think the Celtics can sell him on the following: one year deal, playing for a contender, playing with three Hall of Famers and Rondo, increasing his worth during a title run and then parlaying that into one final long-term contract next year with another team. I feel like Prince would buy into that. He still has some personal PR work to do to wash the stink of the last two messy years in Detroit off and Boston is the perfect place for that.

10. Samuel Dalembert

Last year Sam Dalembert made 13 million dollars. That fact is literally one of the reasons why there was a lockout. Sam Dalembert is not a great player and he made 13 million dollars in 2010-2011. Sam Dalembert is still not a great player but interest has been piqued in him because he seems to be the perfect fit for the Miami Heat. His fit with the Heat has also been tied to his Haitian nationality since Miami hosts a large Haitian population and is also as close in proximity to the island as he can get playing anywhere in the league. Still that 13 million remains a problem. Will Dalembert actually demand that kind of money or will he follow the Miami Heat model of accepting less (in his case significantly less) money in favor of playing with Wade, Lebron and Bosh and being the favorite to win the title. I mean trotting out a lineup of Chalmers, Wade, Lebron, Bosh and Dalembert would be pretty ideal for the Heat. Besides being defensively imposing, the Heat could then use Haslem and Anthony off the bench for scoring toughness and energy and come up with a more solid 1^st team/2^nd team dynamic using Wade/Lebron and the Miller or Redd role to handle the second unit scoring. It would be something far closer to those 90’s Bulls 1^st/2^nd teams that were so useful and effectively used during their title runs. It all makes too much sense, as long as Sammy realized he’s not worth 13 mil.

9. David West

Since the 2005-2006 season (AKA “Chris Paul Year One”), David West has been one of the most consistent low-post players in the league. He’ll basically get you 18 and 8 every night and he’s proven that he can do it with Paul out of the lineup as he did for much of the 2009-2010 season. Unfortunately, he suffered a nasty ACL injury late last season and is still rehabbing. I’m only putting him this low because you don’t know how he will respond from injury at 31 years old. I still think he re-signs with the Hornets as they try to convince Chris Paul to stay in New Orleans. And even if they end up trading Paul, they can keep West in place and try to reinvent their team in a similar way that the Nuggets did when they traded Carmelo last season. Denver set the model with how to deal with a modern superstar requesting a trade to only team and the Hornets would be wise to follow their lead.

8. J.J. Barea

J.J. Barea was a key part of the Mavericks’ run to the title last year. We all know this. He tore through the Lakers when the Mavs dominated them and only got stronger as the Finals went on. Because of his strong, clutch play and the way the NBA works, its natural that someone is going to throw too much money at him during this shortened free agency period. Barea made 1.8 million last year, which is a bargain. I can easily see the Nets or some other team offering him something along the lines of 5-7 million per year when the most appropriate range is 3-4 million. Despite this, I still feel that Cuban and the Mavs find a way to structure a deal with Barea so that he resigns. Roddy Beaubois is not a sure bet and they truly value Barea for energy/chemistry. I think he stays in Dallas.

7. Jamal Crawford

O, prodigal son, Jamal Crawford! I don’t know why I wanted to say that, but it felt right. Crawford has always been that strange mix of talent and total lack of self-awareness/understanding of the game of basketball and its history. He can score and shoot with anyone but still makes some of the worst decisions in the game and takes some of the worst shots. He’s been of great worth to the Hawks the last two years and really showed up against the Bulls in the playoffs last year. He’s coming off his weakest statistical season since 2005-2006 and he made 10.8 million last year. He’s one of those “irrational confidence guys” (again citing Simmons) that can score and every title contender needs that. However, I just don’t see what contender can fit him in right now. He supposedly wants to go to the Bulls but I don’t know if they can afford him. I see him resigning with the Hawks. Crawford is a baffling player and the Hawks are a baffling team/franchise (except Horford). They deserve each other.

6. Grant Hill

One of my all-time favorite players. Seriously, please go back and watch Grant Hill from 1995-2000, you’ll be amazed at how you could forget that he was perhaps the most well-rounded player in the game besides Michael Jordan. You have to be impressed at how he clawed back from the brink of retirement and transformed himself into some kind of latter day Scottie Pippin who can defend, shoot and handle the ball. He doesn’t score like he used to, but if you were 37 and your body was ravaged by injuries for years you wouldn’t be able to score like it was 1996 either. Like Steve Nash, I want Grant Hill to wind up on a contender and win a title. But for some reason, he and Steve Nash share this great sense of loyalty and decency that stems from them being honorable, smart and good human beings and I just feel like Grant stays in Phoenix with Nash. And that’s some kind of tragedy for them both.

5. Jason Richardson

J-Rich had a disappointing season last year with Orlando, but really, what wasn’t disappointing about last year’s Orlando team? Since his tutelage under Steve Nash, Richardson has become quite a useful shooter and player. On the right team, he can get you 19 points a game and shoot 40% from three-point range, like he did on the Suns in 2009-2010. Orlando needs to come up with ways to keep Dwight Howard and surround him with shooters that he can pass to. I think Otis Smith will make a strong effort to re-sign Richardson and I think he will end up staying with the Magic.

4. Tyson Chandler

Besides Dirk channeling vintage Larry Bird and also mastering his own ridiculous array of off-balance shots, Tyson Chandler was probably the biggest reason why the Mavericks beat the Heat in the Finals. Chandler just always seemed able to grab that extra rebound or be open for that alley-oop or emphatic dunk. He was a presence on the interior that Miami just couldn’t match. Chandler has already started playing games in the media by saying that he doesn’t think the Mavs will resign him, which could be true. But at this point Tyson Chandler should know who he is. He’s only a good player when he plays with Chris Paul or is part of a true, deep team like last year’s Mavs. And, really, the Mavericks are the only place he makes sense (Miami, New York and Boston would too, but they don’t have the money/space). In the end, I think the Mavericks do try to make a deal with Chandler, but that the Rockets sneak in and offer him a little bit more and manage to lure him to another part of the state of Texas. You have to watch out for Daryl Morey.

3. Shane Battier

Now, you might see this and say, “Shane Battier at number 3! Domino you are crazy!” And, sure, you might be right, but Shane Battier is this high precisely because of the same reason he is so valuable on the court—intangibles. For some reason, a team with Shane Battier is that much smarter and tougher. He helped Memphis reach the playoffs for the first time in franchise history in the mid-2000’s; he was great for the Rockets for the past few years and was great again for Memphis last year during their run in the playoffs. He plays great defense, can pass, make threes and is conducive to chemistry. I think that the Grizzlies and the Heat will make the strongest offers for him. And, because Battier is a good guy who values team chemistry, I think he re-signs with this current Grizzlies team to make another deep run in the playoffs.

2. Nene

A center who can get you 14 and 8 over the course of a season is rare in the NBA these days, but that’s what Nene has done over the past three seasons. He can score in a variety of ways and plays great defense. He can pass and rebound and more than anything, he’s tough. He’s played 75 or more games the last three seasons after a string of injury-plagued years and by all accounts, at 29 years old, seems to be in the middle of his prime. You can’t put a premium on having that kind of player, that kind of interior presence on your team. Miami would kill to have him. New York would kill to have him. Boston would kill to have him. But I don’t think that any of those teams have the remote possibility of getting him. I think that after watching how Nene anchored the “Post-Carmelo Run N’ Gun Nuggets,” that the Golden State Warriors will use their amnesty on Andris Biedrins and sign Nene. Then they can trot out a lineup of Stephen Curry, Montae Ellis (until he’s traded), Dorrell Wright, David Lee and Nene. Wouldn’t that lineup be as competitive and exciting as the Nuggets’ team at the end of last season? Then, they can bring other young athletic players like Klay Thompson and Ekpe Udoh and a journeyman like Louis Amundson off the bench for energy and toughness. That’s not a bad team dynamic and identity to have heading into the season and they can always evolve and pick up better fitting pieces if they trade Ellis. Nene to the Warriors! Let’s bring some excitement back to G-State.

1. Marc Gasol

I’ve already covered why he’s valuable in my last piece. He’s the only restricted free agent on this list and he’s the third best center in the league. Of course he’s the number one free agent on the market. And I think he’ll stay in Memphis for the foreseeable future. Despite Randolph’s contract, I think this franchise is getting smarter.

But, then again, you never know what can happen. Maybe Gasol decides to take way less money and goes to Miami and the Heat do win the next six titles. That sort of sport’s fan nightmare is in play. And so are many other possibilities like potential CP3 and Dwight Howard trades and plenty of other, less valuable free agents changing cities and possibly adding depth to teams that you never even imagined. On December 9, 2011, all of this is in play again. We’ve got our characters back; we’ve got our stories back; we’ve got our game back. God, I love Christmas.

Occupying the Throne

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:05:54 PST

Matt Domino weighs in on Occupy Wall Street, our Watch the Throne culture, as well as the meaning of life.

11-11-11. INTERNATIONAL CORD DAY. THE WALES HAVE ALIGNED AND THE HIGH MASTER PUDDLER, MATT DOMINO SPEAKETH:

(Also, this movie is coming out today)

Hello, my Puddlers. I know that on this brisk fall day you are probably frowning as you read this post on the same old Puddles layout. Well, that's why I am here—to provide you with yet another update as to our relaunch.

I am sorting through some final options in the next two weeks and will be able to make a final decision as to whether or not the new design will happen this year or next year. If the new design does not happen this year, we will continue on in the current format and continue to give you quality content. My writers are waiting in the wings. We have some new contributors lined up and some ways to expand on the elements of this blog that I'm really excited about. The new platform will be ideal, but if we can't get there and if it keeps me from staying in touch with all of you, then we'll put it on hold, keep workshopping it and continue to use this current format to keep the voice of Puddles alive and vibrant in a world that changes so rapidly (see Joe Paterno shaking his head in disgrace).

Also, I wanted to throw up an essay that I've been thinking about getting published elsewhere. However, I feel that with headlines like this and reviews like this , I figured the time to post it was now, multiple submission rules and guidelines of literary journals and websites be damned.

Oh, before the post, I just wanted to make the official announcement here that I am now a Contributing Writer for SLAMonline, so you can start reading my work there as well. I'll be posting plenty of links to my Facebook account, Twitter feed, and my GMAIL statuses.

Now, here is my metaphysical post to hold you over. Stayed tuned for more news from me.

Occupying The Throne

Matt Domino

I have been waiting to die since I was sixteen years old. I can remember the day vividly. It was spring and I was sitting by the pool with my old dog, Rocky. I was wearing striped linen pants in an attempt to look like the Beatles at Rishikesh. I watched the wind ruffle Rocky’s white and orange fur. I breathed in and out, felt the warmth of the sun and realized, for some strange reason that life was nothing but a series of death that led to your ultimate demise and that I should start preparing myself for that eventual demise. And I have been, in my own ways, ever since.

Now, don’t let this fool you—I am not ready to die. Nor am I totally unafraid of death; I don’t have that level of freedom. I am not Notorious B.I.G. I am not Omar. I am not a soldier. I am a coward by nature and so I only know my world, the part of the universe I move through individually. I only know what I enjoy, know the people in my life I care about, try to know the things they care about and feel, know the nuances of passing clouds as the sun sets on a windy-warm October day. And of what I know, I am slowly learning how to give up when that time comes. So, I am not ready or unafraid to die, but merely learning how to prepare myself for death.

I think of all this because I think of the two poles of my generation that have been on display this past year. The end of the year is great because it allows us the convention of taking stock, of distilling the past year in an attempt to turn it into a tangible object or idea that had a meaning. I don’t know if I am a good enough writer to ever distill a year down to its essence, but for me, this year has been defined in some way by two things (well, three counting Wilco’s The Whole Love; I mean how good is that thing?): The Occupy Wall Street Movement and the album Watch the Throne by Jay-Z and Kanye West.

One night in October, I was with my friend Zach at the bar Sunny’s in Red Hook. We were talking about Radiohead, Wilco, the legacy of George Harrison and what Red Hook must have been like at the turn of the 20^th century. Through the whiskey and the beer, the conversation turned to the Occupy Wall Street Movement.

“The story of our times,” Zach said to me.

“Is it really?” I said with over-earnest curiosity.

The whole movement had snuck up on me in the early fall. I don’t usually pay attention to anything political or anything involving a protest. This has something to do with my level of intellect, but more to do with my Catholic upbringing and part-Irish soul. Or rather, it is because instead of protesting, I prefer to quietly figure out what it is in human nature, what immovable force of history and time that is at work and why perhaps it is maybe not worth the time to raise our voices. Perhaps the options of healing and solution are something closer to that immediate repose of our own sphere of influence.

Zach said that he felt Occupy Wall Street was the story of our times, though he conceded that he tended to seek out protest movements. He’d always been more in tune with current events as well as all government and political matters than I could ever hope to be. He was going to march the next day from an Occupy Wall Street gathering in Times Square all the way down to the “home base” in Zucotti Park. He told me that I should come with he and his wife just to experience it. I told him I’d think about it, knowing full well that I wouldn’t go because I had already made up my mind to see another friend play his second ever live show. The night came to an end with us eating pulled pork sandwiches and drinking Miller High Lifes at a lonely bar on Van Brunt Street. Then, we flagged a cab and I dropped Zach off in the heart of Carroll Gardens, going home to his wife, while I continued on alone up to my bachelor’s apartment in Williamsburg.

On the ride home, sitting in traffic and not caring about the meter running, I began to think about Occupy Wall Street and my obsession with understanding what the pulse of my generation is. Whether or not you are creative by nature, there is a longing in each of us to understand what it is that those in our generation think about and care about. It may stem from some kind of longing we all have to belong, to want to be a part of something larger than us, or it may be our desire to define the world around us. And nothing is more immediate than those of our generation. So, I was sitting in traffic and thinking about Occupy Wall Street. How I had no true connection to the movement and how I had not felt connected to the economic decline in any way since 2008. My father made the sacrifices he had to in order to pay for my college tuition and I owe nothing in student loans because of that. Ever since I graduated college, I have been gainfully employed in one way or another: private school teacher, warehouse worker (for my father), paralegal/attorney/office manager/accountant for a small-time egomaniacal yet charismatic attorney, Editorial Assistant and now Editorial Coordinator, which is basically a glorified janitor or basically Arthur from the Larry Sanders Show with less pussy and less Hollywood shop talk. I have been lucky enough to not have to worry for my economic life. This is in part due to my parents paying completely for my college education and in part due to my ability to take and work any job that came my way.

When I look to Occupy Wall Street, to the comrades of my generation, I see no reflection of myself. I feel their pain and I even feel guilty, or rather, like a SCAB when I go to work or when I see Jeff Tweedy call Occupy Wall Street one of the most important examples of democracy in our time. I have defined myself as being a creative person and for much of my 20’s I have lived among musicians in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. And that whole time I have felt more or less like a SCAB due to my willingness to work in an office—to take on that Don Draper persona and go to work disguising myself and my creativity in something manageable, something that fits a 9-5 schedule. Yet, I am not rich. I make less than $40,000.00 a year after taxes, but I live practically. I do bulk cooking on Sundays so I can eat the same dinner all week. I make sandwiches and bring my lunch to the Conde Nast Building, which is sacrilege with a world-reknowned cafeteria just 14 floors below me. I drink my coffee at home before I go to work. Because of this, on weekends I can afford to go out to dinner and splurge on something really good; I can buy that round for everyone or that 100 beers for a party at my apartment because in that moment it feels right, because those moments are the times that matter. I don’t give a shit about my lunch break at work because that’s not even me who is there taking that break.

And so I’m a member of the work force who burns and works for even more at night. Many of the people in Occupy Wall Street are the same too—I know this. There are people who work and go down to Zucotti Park before their work day or immediately after just to be a part of the movement. My friend’s old boyfriend finds inspiration in seeing everyone so organized and behind a cause that he uses that energy to do a better job at work. No, not for fear of ending up unemployed, bu with the energy of togetherness and taking a stand giving him cause to appreciate his life. Walking along Zucotti Park, with the faint patchouli and body odor smell and the weight of Ground Zero behind him, he gets the scent of an autumn fire in his nose and he understands the huddled cold of the night and the clearly drawn boundary of the meditation corner. He appreciates the nonchalant chewing of the cops on Broadway surveying the crowd. And he even laughs a the neighboring Brooks Brothers when he walks to the subway to head to work. There is a goodness to the movement. There is something to take inspiration from and to feel a part of. If you are lucky enough to have found good work or if you’ve had to work on food trucks, you can take a stand. I just don’t feel connected to it at all.

There is a reason I don’t feel connected to Occupy Wall Street and it has to do with the two poles of this year and of my generation (or perhaps any generation in general). The first pole is made up of those who Occupy Wall Street—the casualties of a greedy financial system, a flawed academic system and a flawed national view on parenting and the growth of this nation into its third century of existence. However, amid Occupy Wall Street, there are representatives of that other pole, the pole that the protestors are trying to bring down. I am not saying that there are spies or traitors among the protestors, but the majority of the Occupy Wall Street population are cardholding members of this current generation. That is to say, that many of these people are armed with iPhones, Droids, laptops and the occassional iPad. They hold the tools of modern success in their pockets and if they were given the opportunity to become part of “the 1%,” they would gladly accept entry into that exclusive club. The members of this generation feel entitled to some kind of creative success that makes them the boss and makes them comfortably wealthy and their willingness, and innate desire to be part of the 1% isn’t wrong, it just simply is.

The best symbole for this inherent desire is the album Watch the Throne by Kanye West and Jay-Z. Watch the Throne is an album about making your way in America, getting rich and then, once you are there, enjoying it and revelling in it as much as possible. “This ain’t no fashion show, nigga we livin,’” Kanye says on the track “Made in America,” and that line perhaps sums up the album better than any other. At this point, Jay-Z and Kanye have become symbols of the tiniest sub-percentage of the vilified 1%. That they did it through the merits of creativity and providing a soundtrack to our over-educated and awkward college dance parties seems to provide them with a pass from judgment, a pass from the scornful eye of our generation.

It has been well documented that Kanye was raised in a middle class Chicago home and that Jay-Z was raised in the Marcy Projects of Brooklyn where he sold crack. Each man took a different path to the level of success that they each currently occupy and one could argue that there is no one else as famous as Kanye West or Jay-Z in 2011; no one else breathes the same air (well, probably Beyonce.” They are the creative rich, the hip-hop rich and that carries a certain level of credibility with those of us in this generation who have been educated in the finest institutions, who value creativity but who have nothing to show for it due to the greed of Wall Street and the failing economic infrastructure of the country. We appreciate Kanye and Jay-Z even when they are singing about being insanely rich and living lives we most likely never will because they have the tact, the creative knack to throw in an audacious but self-conscious line like Jay-Z’s “Pablo Picassos, Rothkos and Rilke’s” on “Who Gon’ Stop Me.” Jay-Z talks about his rich lifestyle, graduating “to the MoMa” and doing it all “without a diploma,” in many ways mocking the very world, the very order that our generation has come to accept as gospel. Yet, some part of us still wants to be Jay-Z and Kanye, wants to worship them because, hell they are rock stars, but also because they represent the fantasy of this post-Apple world; the fantasy that with the right tools, such as an iPad or an iPhone, to make the outside world seamless, economical and filled with some kind of commerce at every turn, that we can all become instant entrepreneurs. We can come up with the next great idea that will make us rich—that will bring us that tasteful, creative, smart and comfortable lifesyle that Jay-Z and Kanye so keenly represent in our minds. Jay and ‘Ye spoke about watching the throne before the Occupy Wall Street Movement happened and their throne, their rarified air is in many ways safe from any kind of upheaval. But this generation wants to overturn the throne of the rest of the 1%, while simultaneously and subconsciously worshipping at and wanting that throne in their own way.

I realize that many people reading this may think me a traitor to my own kind, and I’ve already detailed my long-standing selfconsciousness of being outside of my own generation, but I firmly believe in these things. The reason why can be exemplified by the phenomenon of the Facebook image of the college senior holding up a sign that details his practical saving, spending and living, which has made him less in debt and less desiring to protest in the Occupy Wall Street Movement. The backlash at this image has been rather surprising, but people in the Occupy Wall Street Movement see it as some antiquated “American” image of a self-made man that is meant to perpetuate the current system that values making it on your own. I find this baffling. Perhaps I am ignorant, but there is no system. There is only greed and greed has proven to be inherent in humans and in nature throughout time. The only weapon one has against greed is living the best they can on the means they can and working hard and smartly in an effort to succeed. This requires cunning, diligence, patience and perseverence. There is nothing “American” about any of those things. Those are virtues that have existed for thousands of years. I am not a Republican, but I find the current tenor of distrusting anything connected to hard work and cultivating personal success as being used to relay a hatred for Republicans and the shortcomings of America disturbing and wrong. The very idea of Democrats and Republicans is disturbing to me, as is the very notion of anyone trusting that an institution will ever be fair or truly successful. Our own individual lives are fraught with inconsistency, short-comings and stretches of elation followed by ruts of depression. What happens when we are all in offices together for hours at a time? Even more of the same. So, it is up to the individual to do the best in his sphere, the personal as well as the civic portion of the world that he intersects with, and try to effect change and make an impact that way.

And perhaps that is what many of the Occupy Wall Street protestors are doing. However, I have a friend who takes many causes upon himself. He is an admirable friend and I love spending time with him because he’s a good guy. But the anger he draws from the general injustice of the world is not sustainable, neither is the far sweeping hatred of greed that lies at the center of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. My friend does his best work, makes the most palpable difference, when he is doing work for the non-profit he set up to help workers in a foreign country. When he speaks of that cause, he tells personal stories about townspeople he’s met, places he’s stayed, the danger of the world he’s entered, the injustices he has personally seen. Gone are the stats, gone are the hyperbolic statesments about “Wall Street” and “the 1%.” There is the real; there is the tangible good of the world, the practical work that makes all of this existence more substantial and more fulfilling. When I hear those stories, I realize that he is a better man than me.

It may not be my place to discuss these things. You may say, “Stick to the sports, Domino” or “Stick to writing about some drunk love revelation you had about George Harrison—that’s when your writing is at least charming, Dom.” And you’d probably be right about all of that. However, what I know is that I feel passionately about my stance. I feel no connection to Occupy Wall Street, though I appreciate that it provokes this conversation and that it exists. But I believe only in the personal change we can make on our own lives and on the civic world we encounter through those passageways. I like Watch the Throne because I misuse its tones and song-meanings on my own melancholy in ways that were not intended in the slightest. And what I really care about is watching the New York skyline on a crisp beyond belief October night from the window of the J train, as the East River looks like a smooth, darkened mirror and the air seems to get warmer and stiller as the night goes on. And there are small moments: walking with your arms around your friends’ shoulders in Chinatown; laughing at a dinner with gay strangers; feeling great warmth at watching your friend play music and grow into his stage presence; and, while riding the train at 3:00 in the morning, seeing a lost, beautiful black girl you had met at a bar two months earlier and given up to the great vastness of the city and relishing the opportunity to be able to make conversation with her one more time. That is the folly and the chance of life, that is where myth is born. And all of that, from Kanye to the greed of Wall Street to the glass of the downtown East River is what I have been slowly teaching myself to leave behind since I was sixteen years old. But its so hard, because we care so much.

Thousand Dollar Wedding - A Review of Wilco's "The Whole Love"

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:06:16 PST

Matt Domino's "review" of the new Wilco album, The Whole Love, as well as impressions of a wedding weekend.

It has been awhile, my Puddlers, but before we begin today's post, I wanted to check in real quick and give you an update on where we are for the relaunch.

In an effort to make sure that this site can bring you as much quality, passion-driven content as possible, I have been brainstorming and testing different platforms all summer with my good friend Alex Ramsdell. We have settled on a design and a means of building the site that should be ready for launch by the week of October 10. I know the hiatus has been a bit extended, but it has allowed me to work on my fiction (getting better by the day! #humblebrag) and recharge my jets in order to approach posting insightful and hopefully enlightening material on this site.

When we relaunch, you will be treated to the World's Coolest Dude 1911-2010 List, which will provide a summary of each World's Coolest Dude from 1911 up until last year and include the breakdown of the candidates for 2011. After that, I know that I have some special posts to provide and my stable of writers (slowly increasing) such as the terrific Mr. Mark Jack (now our West Coast correspondent) and Mr. Alex Theoharides (now married!) are rearing to drop some Puddles of Themselves for you to splash in.

So, bottom line, thank you for your patience and just know that I will be back and better than ever. The ideas never stop. Now, here is something to whet your appetite.

Thousand Dollar Wedding

Matt Domino

Lake Champlain was choppy like the sea. There were whitecaps stretching out through the center of the lake and over towards the eastern edge, towards New York. It was sunny and I stood with my friend Jeff, his brother Andrew, his cousin Albert, two other groomsman named Matt, and Jeff’s soon to be brother-in-law, Cam. A guy with a beard who I disliked immediately was filming us talking in our tuxedos. The sun was very bright and we had each just had a bottle of beer each. Down the hill, the white chairs and wooden alter were set up on the green grass.

“There’s twenty four guest rooms up there,” my friend Jeff said pointing at the large, brick inn.

“Twenty four?” Cam said.

“Twenty four, Cammy.”

“This place is very peaceful,” Andrew said to me.

“What do you have there?” I asked.

He showed me a folded piece of paper.

“Did it turn out alright?” I said.

“I mean, yeah.”

“OK, guys,” the guy with the beard, said. “Now you all stand over there so Jeff’s shadow is alone on the grass. Just stay in that pose and then casually walk away past me.”

We stood and made hand gestures towards each other. We slid our hands in and out of our black pant pockets. Jeff made us laugh as we looked at the large inn. Then we walked past the guy with the beard and his video camera back up to the pavilion. I put my hand on Jeff’s back.

“We should walk down to the stables,” he said. “Sara will be here soon.”

****************

I first saw Wilco live in October of 2002, though I had first listened to them in the spring of that year. Obviously, the first album I listened to was Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and it was my secret that entire summer. I’d listen to it by my pool in the middle of the day while I cleaned the debris at the bottom. I realized no song had ever seemed to personify my soul more than “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart.”

The summer days floated by and tied up in those drifting days was the album. “Heavy Metal Drummer” made my heart soar. “Ashes of American Flags” was obscure, melodic and seemed to mean so much more than I could understand. “Poor Places” slowly revealed itself to me and made me think of Ringo Starr circa “A Day in the Life.” And “Reservations” made me think of some girl I had not yet met. Friends would come over and we’d smoke pot in my pool and hide a keg behind the heater. I’d play the album and they wouldn’t understand. That was my Wilco. That was 2002.

And so I found myself alone at their concert in October. I drank beer around the corner of Roseland Ballroom and then saw them recreate the magic of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot right in front of me. Every sound was there, every nook that I had explored on my headphones in school or on the hot brick in my backyard. All of a sudden Jeff Tweedy was one of the most important figures in my life. I left the concert feeling moved, my heart swaying in the way that only Joyce was able to accurately describe. I walked from Roseland to Irving Plaza barely knowing which way to go. I was thinking about my Early Decision application to Columbia and I used an NYU dorm to take a piss. I smoked cigarettes outside of Irving while baseball went on in bars all around me. Then, the doors opened. My friends spilled out. They were all there. They hugged me. The Yonder Mountain show was over and it was time to drink beer on the train ride home.

*********************

“There were the first conversations,” Moretti the pastor said. “And there was the, ‘no, no, um, well, OK, yes,’ to the first ‘study’ date. And now, after four years and the intertwining of your lives, your families, of ups and downs, here you are.”

Jeff held Sara’s hands as I watched from the groomsmen’s line. I looked out to the crowd, squinting in the sun. My friends were lined in the back. Some were further up sitting next to my parents and my sister. I looked at Jeff holding Sara’s hands. I looked next to me at Andrew, his brother, and behind me at his cousin Albert. My friends were smiling in the back row and I wanted to make them laugh. But I also felt like crying.

“He’s done it,” I said to myself. “The son of a bitch has done it.”

**********************

No one liked Sky Blue Sky when it came out. It wasn’t Wilco’s best album. I had wanted Kicking Television—The Studio Album. I wanted loud, heroic, distorted Springsteen rock. Instead, they gave us quiet. They gave us what many people called “dad-rock.” I listened to Sky Blue Sky over and over again on the top floor of my college library while I finished final essays and tried to wrap up the first draft of my ill-fated first novel manuscript. I sat and wrote and thought about the significance of A Ghost is Born coming out at the end of my freshman year and Sky Blue Sky coming out at the end of my senior year. I wasn’t sure that it meant anything and I continued to write.

Once I got over my initial, reactionary disappointment, I realized that Sky Blue Sky was actually a great album. To me, it seemed like Tweedy was just feeling out the longest tenured lineup he’d had in years. The album had a very “group” feel to it. There was intricate, jazzy, but tasteful guitar. Warm, quiet, organ notes were at the back of nearly every song. It was a domestic album, an album meant for sweeping and listening to coffee brew. And that’s not always what we want. I didn’t want it, but I learned to love it as I sat and finished my story about all of my friends.

One night leaving the library I ran into my old roommate.

“What do you think?” he asked.

I laughed. “I actually love it now.”

“It’s awful.”

“You think everything is awful,” I said.

“I guess that’s true.”

“See.”

“No, it’s not though.”

“I know.”

“You want to drink whiskey?”

“Nah, I got to get back home. Get off campus.”

“You gonna dip?”

“Maybe, but winter is over.”

We hugged and I walked to the emptying parking lot with the cool, spring, Upstate, sky opening up around me. It was dark, but there was plenty of nice light from all over the campus. There was dew on my car. I got in, rolled down the windows and was in love with someone. I wanted to smoke. I wanted to do a lot of things. Instead, I rolled through the quiet, empty streets of town back to my apartment and managed to enjoy that.

*********************

After all the speeches, after the dinner, after the tablecloths and the gold, we smoked cigars in the courtyard. Everyone smoked. Men, women, guys and girls. I saw my parents through the tufts of smoke, my father thin and my mother wearing blue. Everyone was standing around and talking all at once. My friends looked great and their girlfriends looked beautiful with nice white teeth and perfect fitting dresses. Suddenly there were two kinds of cake.

“Do you like a good carrot cake?” I asked my friend’s girlfriend.

“I most certainly do. Do you?”

“My favorite cake.”

“Where is Jeff?” one of my friends asked.

“He’s still dancing,” I said.

“Still?”

Then I was talking with cigar and scotch to the two other groomsmen named Matt.

“And we’ve known each other for eight years, Domino,” Matt Kennedy said.

“That’s true.”

“Remember when we watched Wall Street with the shades pulled down when you came up that summer?”

“One of the best times of my life.”

“I’ve drank too much this weekend.”

“We’ve had fun,” I said. “I’ve had a blast with you guys. Your girlfriends are fantastic too.”

“December 1, 2012. Save the date, Domino. You’re coming to mine.”

We smoked together. Cigar and cigarillo smoke streamed throughout the courtyard. The night air felt like fall and the women draped their shawls around their shoulders in black, blue, purple and gold curves and folds. The band played in the other room and I knew Jeff was dancing on the wood floor, smiling and slinking around with his slim body, reminding everyone young and old why they loved him no matter how annoying he ever got.

************************

“You fucked up,” my old roommate texted me. “New Wilco album leaked today.”

I was coming back from a day hike in Cold Spring. The Metro North rode along the Hudson and the sun shone gold on the water in the late summer haze. I had been waiting all summer for the new Wilco album to leak. I had trawled the Internet looking for it. However, on that day I was tired and sitting on the train. I was looking forward to my friend’s wedding the next weekend. I didn’t want to step off the train and into Grand Central Station. I felt a sense of melancholy but couldn’t find the perfect song to match it. I had waited this long. The album could wait. I’d find it.

“How is it?” I texted back.

“Stirratt is taking back what’s his.”

I smiled and slid my phone into my pocket. I fell asleep with the Hudson rolling by and restless children chattering to their parents in the seats all around me.

Later that night, I downloaded The Whole Love by Wilco.

********************

On the Hilton balcony the night was cold. My friend Erik had brought a backpack of sweaters for people to wear. There were bridesmaids, my friends and groomsmen sitting on Hilton deck chairs. We were all staying at the Marriott.

“You’ve never been to Brooklyn?” I said to the non-bridesmaid I’d been dancing with all night.

“No,” she smiled. She had a very engaging smile. It left you feeling constantly on the edge of finding out some gleeful secret.

“And you live in the East Village?”

She nodded and smiled again.

“It’s very rewarding,” I said. “Not like they say in the papers and in magazines.”

“I’ll have to go.”

“Maybe we can go after work. I work in Times Square too.”

“Where?”

“Conde Nast.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Why don’t you give me your number?”

I entered the digits into my phone. All of a sudden, Jeff’s cousin Albert was in the middle of a late night speech.

“And that’s what family is,” he said in his impossibly deep but familiar voice. “That’s what it’s all about. It’s being there. Shit, I don’t know what my life would have been without Jeff and my aunt. Hell, Andrew too. But that’s family. You’ve got to have family. And now we’ve got Sara too. You all don’t realize that when you’re younger. I used to say fuck everything. But now it’s different. But that’s family. That’s what happens when…”

My friend Rich started clapping and the whole group joined in. I held back a laugh even though I could’ve listened to Albert’s speech all night. I held the hand of the girl next to me. I thought of Albert’s baby and how it looked like the mother. Then, I remembered it was my birthday.

“It’s my birthday,” I said to the girl.

“Happy Birthday,” she said.

***********************

The whole week before my friend’s wedding all I could listen to was The Whole Love. “Art of Almost” was an opener in the tradition of “Misunderstood,” “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” and “At Least That’s What You Said.” It immediately sounds like a misty night where everything is on the line in some way or another and Tweedy sells the vocals as well as he sells them in “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart.” “I Might,” “Dawned on Me,” and “Born Alone” might be the best trio of pop songs Wilco has ever done. “Sunloathe” sounds like a missing track from Abbey Road and “Capitol City” sounds like “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” mixed with the low end of peak-era Band. Even the slower, subtler songs like “Black Moon,” “Open Mind,” and “Red Rising Lung” have embedded their melodies in my head and filled that strange space in the Wilco catalogue that “Company in My Back” occupies. And then there is “One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend),” which is the son of “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.” You are at the ten-minute mark before you even know it and ready to attack it again.

The Whole Love sounds familiar immediately upon first listen, as if it’s always been out there but you just realized that Wilco had this other album you’d never heard yet. It’s not as great as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and not as expansive and perhaps thrilling as Being There, but it contains some strange essence, some shining quality that is not easy to define. And all you want to do is listen to it over and over again and you find yourself looking forward to the different sections of the album each separate time you listen. You find yourself looking forward to different sections and for completely different reasons each time.

***********************

After the wedding, my friends and I drove to a swimming hole off of a ravine in Vermont. We climbed down a small trail to the bend in a stream. There were some high school boys sitting on the rocks in the sun. We waded through the cold mountain water and set ourselves up in the sun.

“People jump in from that cliff and die,” my friend’s girlfriend said. “It’s bad.”

We sat in the sun and watched as the high school boys climbed up to the cliff, each one wearing long board shorts.

“I can’t watch,” my friend’s girlfriend said.

The sun was warm on the rocks and you could feel the cool air rising up from the stream. The boys started jumping in one by one off the cliff and splashing down into the stream. My friend’s girlfriend cringed each time they jumped. It made me smile for some reason. The last boy that jumped threw his bathing suit off first and then jumped in naked. All of his friends floated in the water and laughed as he emerged to the surface and splashed to grab his suit.

I looked over to my friend Chris.

“I’m enjoying all this youthful machismo,” he said.

I laughed and knew exactly what he meant. We stripped down to our underwear and each took turns jumping into the stream from the rocks. The water was very cold on your bare skin, but it made you feel alive and knocked away any alcoholic residue from the long weekend.

We all lay on one large rock together in the sun drying off—all seven of us. The stream continued to drone on. We lay for a while and then sat and made jokes. We laughed and walked around in circles. The high school boys left. The sun started falling below the tree line and the shade covered the rocks. We waded back across the stream and walked back up to our cars. We changed clothes and said goodbye to each other. A car full of us were on our way back to New York, while my friend Chris and his girlfriend were on their way back to their temporary home in Vermont. Even though five of us were still in the car, I still felt very sad, as though I had said goodbye to a great many more people.

****************************

Last week, I found myself walking north through the West Village after a play. The play had been extremely good and I was feeling moved by each of the performances. It was a perfect September night after a day of rain. People were sitting outside at restaurants having late dinners, laughing, drinking wine, talking about work, about themselves or about something they wanted to do. I, as usual, was feeling very much in love with the actress who was in the play. And at the same time I was trying to give up on someone who I cared very much about.

It felt good to walk and “Art of Almost” was stuck in my head. I murmured the lyrics in imitation of Tweedy’s cadence. I murmured them as if they were a sort of hymn. I kept thinking about the wedding and why it had felt like some kind of culmination to my life just as much as it had been a sort of culmination to the life of my friend Jeff. I wasn’t jealous of my friend or the fact that he had found such a seemingly perfect match to spend the rest of his life with. No, what I was thinking about was the loss of the moment. That moment in Vermont where I looked around a room shining with wood and gold and saw, so visibly, all of the different paths of my life and where they connected. I realized how entrenched I had been in my own friend’s life. And how that life had been a part of a larger set of intertwined lives of all my friends. And now that circle was expanding due his new wife Sara. Perhaps that was the most moving part of it all—that their two lives seemed to be perfectly intertwined and featured so many good people. That moment in Vermont was great and it ended and I would have to move past the void of that great happiness and on with the present.

I walked on along Sixth Avenue and remembered I was in New York City. I murmured the lyrics to “Art of Almost.” I walked alone along Sixth Avenue as I had walked from the Wilco concert in 2002.

Mark My Words

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:06:33 PST

Mark Jack says farewell to New York City and prepares to reluctantly welcome the West Coast straight into his heart.

Hey, my Puddlers. The blog hiatus was supposed to start on Friday, but you are getting a bonus Mark Jack post on this Monday. This is Mark Jack's farewell to New York. I am going to miss having Mark Jack around as a friend to talk to. You've enjoyed reading his words here on the blog, but the intelligence and well-read thought that he brings in person is something different. He'll still be writing when he moves to Berkeley (I'll make him put stuff up here!) so you won't lose that part. He deserves to write and you deserve to keep reading. I'll miss my friend, but life moves on and we all deserve to figure out how to be happy.

So, without further ado, here is Mr. Mark Jack. We'll both see you on the other side. Enjoy the summer.

There Is Everything Here

Mark Jack

“Too little too often,” I say, or perhaps, “So few so privately.” But then can any of us be sure that we are meaning anything? And does anyone here want to speak of decline or are we too afraid to pull a Gibbons—as if we could.

I have still so many things to do and yet I know that I will reach no goal and so I’ve set none, but I have gestured weakly (if not meekly) in some direction, I think, and the getting there is the question and I’ve always had a poor eye for distance.

Writing now, I’m missing terribly the city I haven’t left yet, and the city I’ve never really liked. New York is a foolish place, and though it’s pride is still intact, it’s ambition still vigorous, it is a sad realization that I’ve come to that the city only believes itself to be good at making money. I am not a businessman. I am not a careerist. I am bad with money; I do not know the value of it. So…I’m moving. I depend upon everyone to disagree with me, because New York is the city as all see the city. It is built upon and with mistaken notions and mispronounced foreignness. Kafka wrote this city. He may have so many of his stories reference specific streets and parks and buildings in Prague, but his made-up New York is vague and crushed and upright and unknowable and present and real. New York is still a place to go to, and it’s mythic past remains present, and perhaps always will, in the look of the place. It is too iconic to lose too much, but if this trend towards safety and denial and bourgeois sensibility continues, it will be a place to spiritually die. So many have come here to escape something, and I think, maybe it is that lack of cohesion which has always given New York something to be about; it is the lack of a stable idea of what it was that one wished to escape to that provided New York with countless stories and arts and lives. Where now, though?

I frequent a little basement Malaysian restaurant on Doyers street in Chinatown, which is that little elbow of a street off Pell that curves onto Bowery. This is old school Chinatown, but everything around this little basement place is expertly marketed Chinatown. I mean, Nom Wah Tea Parlor looks great and old fashioned and is, to an extent, but it’s a tourist place as well. Just walk around down there and check it out. I’m not advocating for some New York pride, nor am I against making money on some level. I want people from out of town to feel that they can come into New York and find some awesome food, or a great new pair of shoes or some shit, but in the end, who fucking cares!?! Order it from the goddamn Internet! I can’t help but feel that the danger of the city in the past—though I should be clear here and state that I do not wish for the good old days of stabbings and rape—was interesting because the danger was whether the created you would be a good you or not, interesting or not. The only creation dichotomy present in this city today is successful or not. I am not. I am moving.

Henry Miller used to walk around New York hating it, just fucking hating it. He wrote this city beautifully, even though he was a piece of shit. Every city that he went to that he had any love for was most likely a terrible place to be. Miller loved to bitch. The Colossus of Maroussi was one of his best and it is the only book of his where he reaches those gorgeous, ecstatic moments while praising a place. Normally he does this while bitching. He bitched ecstatically about New York.

Where are our New York writers now? I’ve been to a few readings. I’ve read of few young books by young authors. I’ve perused some magazines seen the stories filled with misunderstood irony and droll humor that missed the mark and was only droll. It is so much shit in my view. The literary scene in NYC, the young, playful, daring literary scene of NYC is just a bunch of strong willed, unskilled graphic design hacks. Let us reach deep into our throats and examine that our hearts are still beating, and not just coffee laden and marketable. We are not dirty enough. Or, we are not clean enough. I Don’t Know.

Most days, these days, I feel totally mediocre; I feel totally accomplished and productive if I’ve done even the most paltry things. Mostly, these days, I don’t know, IDK! Like a corporate logo, like a political party’s acronym, its symbol, like something to follow, to chant in shoddy unison, and, lastly, something to admit. Hmm. I don’t know.

So I’m moving. I’ve got my WPA Guide to NYC, so I’ll be able to make all the walks around the city still in my imagination, even in Berkeley. I’ve never cared for much built after the 30s anyway. The WPA descriptions are amazing and beautiful and still ring fundamentally true for today’s New York. Queens is still single family suburban crunched into a city. Brooklyn is still brownstone and factory outskirts with a downtown of its own. Staten Island is a weird mystery of New Jersey, sunken tugs, and laser tag. The Bronx is still smoldering in places and idyllic in others, and Manhattan is still just as overcrowded and plateau-like.

To all my friends in New York I send you my love. I will miss you all terribly. I hope that if you decide to come out to the Bay Area we can get together. I hope to continue to yell at you all from the west coast on this blog, so maybe as far as this scenario goes, nothing is changing, but it feels different, even here. I’ll describe walks in California that are only predictably beautiful. I’ll miss views like this:

Love,

Mark

Cleaning House

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:06:55 PST

Matt Domino discusses the Puddles of Myself hiatus, Cat Stevens, Ernest Hemingway, as well as the best way to take a shower.

(Editor's Note: If you really want to get confused about the message of this post, listen to "All I Want Is You" by Roxy Music on repeat while you are reading. Trust me, you will be emotionally baffled.)

I’ve been riding a lot of trains lately and I’ve been running a lot. When you run in the morning in the city during the summer it is as cool as it will get all day. The sun is starting to filter through the trees and the bums are waking up from their sleeping places next to tree trunks. You can almost really smell the grass. There is the faint smell of garbage and the odor of put out charcoal. Sometimes the grass is damp and that makes you feel good in your sneakers. And on your way back to your apartment it starts to get hot. Mothers walk next to their children who hop along, shaking their legs and knees next to patches of dirt and front stoops, just happy to be with their mother and not in school. I sweat in the sun on the street corner waiting for the cars to pass. When I pass the cool air of the grocery next to my apartment, I’m happy. Then, later, after I’ve showered, cleaned and had my coffee, I stop and buy fruit from the Korean woman next door. I’ve been riding and running and feeling the rhythm of summer.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about what it means to be clean. I’m not allowed to drink beer in my parents’ house anymore. Not drinking beer there is a good thing, so I drink sweet drinks instead, which I don’t usually allow myself to drink. My dad doesn’t drink anymore. Instead, he does work around the house and asks me how I am. I don’t like to talk about how I am, so we make jokes or do work or talk about work. And that is all fine because I like to talk about work since I like to watch Mad Men.

When I ride the train I drink beer and I think about all the things that have happened to me. I think about where the people I love are. I frown at my reflection as it emerges in the window among the darkening homes and straight railway lanes and backyard pools. And when I ride on the train I get lonesome. But I drink beer and remember the people I love and the girls I have loved who just didn’t understand me, just like I probably didn’t understand them. But there were lobster dinners and times I was too drunk or times they were too drunk or times we walked aimlessly and I made bad jokes or times that their father called the cops on me. That’s when I pull hard at my tall beer.

“The next station is Syosset!”

There’s a friend of mine who used to piss me off by always announcing when he was going to take a shower. I know he had a thing about being clean, but it still bothered me. It bothered me because I was fundamentally opposed to being clean, or rather to announcing being clean. I have friends who have remained far dirtier than I do. Friends who travel with tobacco residue in their pockets or who have wiped their ass with their hand in the wilderness. Friends who have been arrested or in rehab and friends who have been on the trail for months at a time. And I admire all those friends out on the trail; the ones who killed large, wild cockroaches to find a place to sleep on the ground and who huddled in ice caves to stay warm. I’ve washed in streams and lakes and in Wyoming rest stops, but I’ve never felt cleaner than after I’ve played street ball on a warm afternoon, come home, showered, drank perspiring golden Miller High Life bottles while eating Italian steak and let the day cool into an evening of promise—that is, an evening where I was expected somewhere or knew where I was going. That feeling is cleaner than taking three showers a day. That was cleaner than the first shower after three weeks on the road or three months on the mountain.

I’m not obsessive compulsive, but it is summer and it is hot. I’ve felt a certain melancholy come over myself, so I’ve tried to get clean. I’ve been listening to Tea for the Tillerman by Cat Stevens, which is a great album. It is 1971 to me. There is plenty of great 60’s ensemble pop present in the drums and piano and there is Stevens’ fervent acoustic strumming and early 70’s earnest singing. When I feel the dirt of my melancholy or the weight of the subway and responsibility, I listen to “Miles from Nowhere” with its fantastic drums and piano. I listen to the lyrics of the song, which I don’t do for a lot of songs. Rather, the song has lyrical moments that pop out:

Lord my body has been a good friend

But I won’t need it when I reach the end

I love everything

So don’t it make you feel sad

‘Cause I’ll drink to you, my baby

I’ll think to that, I’ll think to that

When you are melancholy, this sort of song sticks out. The first set of lyrics clean you immediately because you think of the transience of your body. You remember that you are spiritual and that you won’t need your body in the end, which makes you feel free because what can anyone ever do to you anyway? Then, the second set reminds you that it is just your love of everything in the world that makes you feel sad, it is your presence among other objects and recognizing that inner light in other objects. So, you’ll drink to it and think on it. And again who is going to stop you or do anything to you on a Wednesday morning when you move through life loving everything? No one will, so you can be clean living in the material world and loving it as well as be clean knowing that you don’t need it at all when it all comes down to the end. So, then perhaps you figure out what to love and love it very much knowing that it’s going to go in the end anyway. Because only by loving something will you understand what you are without anything. When you are clean. Just remember that you can’t even take the Cat Stevens album that made you think about these things with you either. It’s going to get thrown away or lost under the front seat of a car or blow up on your iPod at some point.

There is a character in my recent manuscript that likes riding the train. This character asks his sister at one point if she ever wants anything simple, which is something I’ve thought about quite a bit. So, perhaps what all this postulating about what it means to be clean is really about what it means to want something simple. In the story, the sister (Liza) asks the brother (Tom) about riding the train:

“I’ve always wanted to ask you why you like riding the trains so much. Why do you?”

He takes his hand off my shoulder and puts it back in his right pocket. He scuffs his shoes on the wet stones.

“There’s something about it. Something about that moment of travel. Even though I’ll always bounce back out here from the city, when the train is moving I feel good. Having a beer and riding a train. Its very simple in a way.”

I nod my head. He’s very stern now. I decide to put my hand up on his shoulder.

“I think I understand.”

He turns down at me. “Do you ever think about anything simple?”

Tom later tells Liza, who is picking blackberries, to enjoy it because it is something simple. When you learn to enjoy something simple, the rest of the messy things in life don’t seem to matter. You can lose the melancholy and focus on the motion of the train or the action of picking a berry.

I’ve been reading Ernest Hemingway as well. Ernest Hemingway and The Great Gatsby. Gatsby just because it is summer, but Hemingway because his writing just clears the deck—cleans your palette. Sometimes his dialogue can be a bit ridiculous, especially Catherine Barkley’s early dialogue in A Farewell to Arms. But when Hemingway is rolling and his narrators are telling you things were “nice” or that it was “hot” or that there was “wine,” you can’t help but be enthralled with the simplicity. You know what wine being there is like, so you can approximate your own experience. You don’t need the narrator to create it all. It has been said plenty of times, but when you are in the midst of great Hemingway dialogue, there is quite simply nothing like it. Rapid conversation on a page. Few stage directions. The perfect circular and dead-end logic of actual conversation. The weight of something unsaid suddenly punctured by a direct statement that further pressurizes the situation, which is what happens in life.

A Farewell to Arms is far from clean. It is full of injury, failed love and procreation. It is tragic. The Sun Also Rises is a mess as well. But the fact that the actions are so defined in each novel and that the prose is so sharp, makes the whole thing seem clean and neat. Characters sit down at tables, order bottles of liquor and plates of food like no one else in literature; it is almost something you want to strive towards. “If only I could sit down at a table like Jake Barnes or Frederic Henri.” There is something about reading a Hemingway novel, so simple and meaningful, in the summer that has made me feel clean, has made me feel more aerodynamic moving through the thronging crowds of the day.

I’m taking a break from the blog for a few weeks. I’m going to clean the site up, but I’m not taking the hiatus for any purpose of cleansing myself. I’m not going to stop drinking either. I’ve just been thinking about what it means to be clean for moments in a world that is filled with dirt; a world where everything we do has some repercussion or meaning. In the end, it will all come to nothing, because we won’t need our dirt. The world will. The world will need to remember us by something, but we won’t need the dirt and, in actuality, the people we love won’t need it either when they reach the end. But this is a world about enjoying yourself and taking what you have and making the best of it. If you drink too much, you try to stop. If you feel dirty, you take a shower and try not to announce it. And, if you’re like me, you revel in those small moments or epiphanies you get from books or music where you can make tangible what it actually means to be “clean.” Hemingway and Cat Stevens have managed to do that for me so far this summer.

So, my Puddlers, I’m going to keep on running in the morning. I’m going to watch the sunlight and try to smell grass the best I can and enjoy that well-timed gust of wind walking along the evening streets. And I’m going to understand why watching the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, hearing the phrase “Midsummer Night Classic,” and drinking beer on a 90 degree night with the fan droning is something simple, clean and good. I hope you take the time to do the same.

Theoharides on Endings

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:07:10 PST

In preparation of the Puddles hiatus, Alex Theoharides presents his thoughts on the nature of endings in music, movies and literature.

We're in the middle of "Pre-Hiatus Week," my Puddlers, and I hope you have been enjoying yourself and managing to stay cool.

Today, Alex Theoharides is going to share his thoughts going into this hiatus. Remember, this is just a hiatus and he and I will both definitely be back on the other side to bring you more of our wit and wisdom. I don't want to give his post away, but I want to wish him congratulations and I think you all should as well. Now you're curious aren't you? Well, I won't stand in your way.

Without further ado, here is Mr. Alex Theoharides.

Theoharides On Endings

Alex Theoharides

Most pop songs end with either a tempo change/fadeout (The Beatles’s classic, “A Hard Day’s Night”), a dramatic key change (Wilco, A Ghost is Born), a variation in the number of instruments being played (The Beta Band’s“Dry the Rain”) or some combination of all three. There’s nothing particularly original about these sort of song endings. In fact, the last three seconds of most songs sound more or less the same. Is this a result of some lack of ambition by pop artists? Or is merely, that our (to be clear, our universal) understanding of how to reach an ending is limited. As you might guess, I lean toward the latter. Partially because I have little desire to throw out my rather substantial record collection (#humblebrag no. 1), and even less to criticize friends such as my talented freshman year roommate, Mr. Erik Gundel, who have devoted years of their life to the study of pop music (#humblebrag no. 2). The truth is that I know very little about music theory, certainly not enough to offer any real critique. However, I do know what my ears tell me, which is that there is a limited sound to endings.

Literature, on the other hand, is a field in which I’ll hold my rather near-sighted eyes up against anyone else’s. I know books; God knows, I’ve wasted most of my life reading them. And I know that there is a similar lack of variety in their endings. How do our classics end? Really, only in two ways. First, there’s the Pandora’s box format, e.g, bad things happen, characters make all the wrong choices and mess everything up, only to find a glimmer of hope in the end. Take Salinger’s ending to Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield decides not to flee his problems, he reveals that the whole books is a journal he’s keeping at a mental institute, and as he bids us, adieu, he rather optimistically mentions that he’s planning on going to another prep school in the fall. A similarly hopeful ending can be found in Dostoevsky’s anti-climatic epilogue to Crime & Punishment, in which Raskolnikov discovers religion as a way to escape from his guilt and self-loathing.

Then there is the much more common, “wasteland” ending, perhaps best evidenced in Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” when a drive through the forest ends with a character, referred to as the Misfit, killing an entire family, then debating the validity of Jesus with an old lady, who begs him not to, “shoot a lady,” and calls him “one of my own children,” before he shoots her as well, and says that the old woman could have been a good woman if someone had been around “to shoot her every minute of her life.” The prevailing sentiment of the story, and of all of O’Connor’s work, is that life has no true pleasure, and even less worth. Similar endings can be found in all texts by writers that were born in Ireland, fought/endured a war, and/or experimented with hard drugs and alcohol.

So now, it seems that endings tend to sound and read the same. “How about in film/ television?” you ask.

“Well, I’ll tell you.”

Both genres, for the most part, fit the dichotomy established for literature (standouts such as The Shawshank Redemption and Six Feet Under fitting into the first category, while The Godfather trilogy and The Wire correspond with the latter). However, film and television each introduce a new twist into endings—their limited importance in modern culture. The Godfather Part I & II are arguably two of the greatest films of all time, but Part III, for numerous reasons (including widespread disinterest from the director, producers and actors) sucked hard. Likewise, the final seasons of many of many popular shows, including The Wire, The West Wing, and Lost have all sucked. Somehow these poor endings have in no way cheapened the overall value people hold for these shows and movies. Which begs the question, do endings really matter? And if they don’t, then do we need to shift more focus to beginnings, to the origins of our favorite pop art?

Full disclosure, I’ve never had much use for endings. As a kid, I used to throw the end of my epic foosball matches with my dad and sisters so they would want to play again. When I ran cross-country, it was almost as common for me to stop mid-run as it was for me to finish a race. I celebrated the end of high school by breaking up with my girlfriend, having jaw surgery, and largely, being a mess. In college, I was known for my perpetual habit of pretending to get up go to the bathroom, only to peace out for the rest of the night (Yes, I just used the expression “peace out”). And for the last several years, I’ve spent most of my free time typing away at various novels, every typed word seeming to propel me further and further away from ever reaching the end.

I know that I’m not alone in my struggles.

Mr. Matt Domino will surely tell you, in an upcoming post, that there is no end is sight for his blog of puddles. This is a break, an extended leave, a chance to focus on fiction and on improving the layout of Puddles of Myself. He’ll be right, of course, and these are all admirable reasons for going on leave. However, this “break” is still, in a way, an ending. A break from what Puddles of Myself was, to what it will become. And for me, it seems to fit nicely with my latest attempts to try to adapt to the idea of endings, of reaching out and actually touching the yellow finish line. In less then a month, I will be getting married, which I should note is not an ending, in any cliché, “end of my freedom,” sort of way. Rather, it is an ending to the way in which I’ve grown to think about myself over the past dozen or so years as a boy, selfish, a loafer through life. I will have to learn to see myself in a new light, to think of myself as a husband, and hopefully, as a less selfish, and less loaf-full, individual.

Thanks to Matt Domino for the space.

The end is nigh, the end is nigh.

(Editor's note: The end is not nigh. It's more of "the hiatus is nigh." Oh, wait, maybe I ruined the poetry there. Shit, I'm a crappy editor. Editor's note to self: you are a crappy editor.)

Pace Yourself

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 12:07:24 PST

With the end of Season 2 of Treme, Matt Domino takes a look at the series and why its pacing means everything.

I’ve never been to New Orleans before, but I don’t think that matters. This isn’t a post about Treme being a great show because it transports you to New Orleans; that it makes the city real to you no matter if you’ve never been there in your life or if you live far away. Ulysses never made me feel like I was in Dublin even though I lived there—Ulysses made me feel like I was living life, living in the world. I think of Ulysses when I walk around New York and smell urine or garbage or notice the sunlight early on a June morning. Ulysses’ success lies in its baroque representation of real life—so baroque that it at turns becomes absurd; creating a kaleidoscope of reality that echoes our own true experience of the world. To me, Treme does the same thing.

When I watched the first season of Treme, I was struck most by its slow, Joycean pace, as well as the Mardi Gras episode “All On a Mardis Gras Day,” which reminded me very much of the “Wandering Rocks” episode of Ulysses. Now, its easy to draw parallels because both “All On a Mardis Gras Day” and “Wandering Rocks” create a representation of a city in the middle of a procession, of some kind of ceremony and all of the individual lives that occur in and around that event. But that is what is so vial about both. Both Treme and Ulysses capture cities—two very different cities—but in that capturing, they relay greater overall truths about human existence. The setting doesn’t necessarily matter in the end.

Many people who liked The Wire don’t like Treme. Now, one of the cardinal sins I have committed in my life is the fact that I have never watched The Wire. It is my ultimate “I should do that” object or experience; that movie, book, place you always can agree with people about being great through general cultural knowledge, but never actually force yourself to do alone. Everyone has one. People loved The Wire and from what I’ve heard and read, rightly so. All fans of The Wire and David Simon in some way wanted Treme to be The Wire: New Orleans. However, Treme is not The Wire. They each share a sort of Tolstoyan scope and attention to action—they both depict people and the decisions they make in complete objectivity as objects in relation to other objects and allow the action and drama to come through that juxtaposition, relief and repose. Treme seamlessly moves to the different sections of New Orleans life as I am told The Wire did for Baltimore life, or as Tolstoy did for Russian life.

It would seem that the whole point of Treme would be to depict and tell the story of post-Katrina New Orleans, and that is certainly the case on one level. However, I firmly believe that Treme is just the story of people’s regardless of the city. Sure it is drenched heavily in the color and music of New Orleans, but sometimes to tell the actual story, you need to make sure your scenes are full—that they smell and sound real and are anchored in something or someplace tangible. Even though Treme is filled with characters that are musicians and countless scenes revolve around gigs and street-side jam sessions, it is not a show simply about music. You need to look no further than the last scene of the Season 2 finale.

Season 2 was better than Season 1. Season 2 ended with a montage of the characters in the show. It just showed them in motion, in places their actions had taken them due to the course of the season/their life. As a viewer, only we know of any progress or regression that has taken place. Take, for instance, my second favorite storyline of the season. Sonny, a Dutch musician transplanted in New Orleans, has lost his girlfriend (the very talented violin player, Annie T) and has bottomed out as a heroin addict. Through the course of the season he gradually finds a steady gig as a guitar player in a band and is helped to get sober by one of his bandmates that makes him work on an oyster boat. It is through this that he is eventually put in the position to ask out the daughter of a local Vietnamese shrimp fisherman/fish salesman. Why is this one of my two favorite storylines from the season? First, I always enjoy a story about personal betterment. I get a certain validation from someone cleansing himself or herself, perhaps because I am always trying to cleanse myself of any baggage that I might be carrying, whether literal or cosmic. The other reason is because just look at the action of that plot progression. Based on the actual episodes and events of the show, it would seem like nothing happened. Yet, when you show a snapshot of that character and where he is at the present moment, nearly everything has happened. He has gotten over his heroin addiction. He has joined a band and even if the band did break up, he is no longer only known as a street musician. He has made small strides through the everyday. He has taken action and thus his life has changed. It is not some terrific advancement or achievement, but it does mean something—it does matter and tell us about what we are all capable of. We are all capable of change and change comes often at the smallest and most incremental levels. When you pay attention to those changes in a snapshot, you often learn more than you expected.

My other favorite story revolved around Delmond Lambreaux and his father Albert “Big Chief” Lambreaux. Delmond and Albert have a strained relationship because Delmond chose to become a musician in New York rather than New Orleans, where Albert is respected as an Indian chief and community figure. Delmond wants Albert to move out of the family home or at least accept money to help repair it, but Albert is stubborn and the two clash constantly. This season, Albert comes to New York because Delmond wants Albert to help him on his new record, a record about his New Orleans roots. Albert finds plenty to criticize about New York, especially the bead store where Delmond goes to get beads to sew his own Indian suit for Mardis Gras. Albert begins to criticize Delmond’s sewing speed too, when Delmond explains what he is sewing is for his father’s suit. He explains the image he is sewing is a depiction of his father and his sadness over what has happened in his life. The two share a quiet moment where Albert tells him that the sewing work isn’t bad. You see that Delmond takes the modest compliment as something with greater meaning, which it most certainly is coming from Albert. In the season finale, the two perform a song from Delmond’s album at jazz fest. Both men are onstage enjoying the moment and enjoying being together. This is a journey of a father and son. As far as action goes, nothing huge happens to them in two seasons. Delmond visits New Orleans often. Albert reluctantly comes to New York. They both bicker and fight over who is more stubborn. However, their lives are punctuated by these moments and these small moments make the whole difference, they create the meaning.

Treme is certainly about New Orleans. It is about terrible events that happen in our life. It is about death and destruction and what we do to overcome those things. Mainly, though, it is about small moments. It is about how we progress with our lives despite the fact that people are murdered or hurricanes or tsunamis destroy our cities. No matter what happens our individual lives and existences carry on in the face of mass tragedy and the uncaring nature of the universe. There is something to the progress and improvement we make. There is something to the roles we take on and shed in our lives. Our personal stories matter as do the places our lives take us to, whether it is a New York kitchen, San Francisco, a stage with our father, a shrimp boat, Kenya, Minnesota, a coffee shop writing songs, the classroom of a school, or back behind our family run bar. Small changes are what matter and very often those are made at a slow pace. Appreciating that pace is important, though. And that’s why Treme is a show I watch.

Game, Set, Match

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 17:06:30 PDT

It's Monday, my Puddlers. I know what you're saying, "What happened, Domino? Take your little hiatus early? We came back from the Fourth of July scared, shaking and terrified to go back to work. We needed you to make us strong and remember that life is good." And you would be right in saying that. My life was busy last week. "Work" got in the way of this, my work. However, life will be good again. Well, at least for this week until I take a hiatus to improve the site and make myself famous with fiction so you can say you were there when. But what a week this will be. You will be getting three posts from me, a heartbreaking and poingant post from Alex Theoharides and a very special post from Mark Jack.

So, hang tight my Puddlers as we ride out this week of Puddles as you know it and when you return it will be something more. Something closer to what I always envisioned.

Now, here's some me.

All of a sudden I have become a tennis writer. When I sat down to contribute a post this week (Editor’s note: “this week” was “last week”), I thought about a lot of vague profound ideas. Ideas that came from small moments pieced together by images and music and sounds. I wanted to rush those ideas out as fast as possible so that the world could read them and react. I wanted to make “music” like a newspaper; music like headlines as John Lennon said in his “Instant Karma” phase. However, I knew those ideas needed time. Perhaps I am getting smarter and perhaps I am becoming a better writer. Or, maybe I am just learning that ideas need time. In any case, I decided to focus instead on something more tangible to ease my words out, a topic that I could easily grip, and thus begin to write about. So, I thought of tennis, which I now love.

Novak Djokovic beat Rafael Nadal in this year’s Wimbledon Final. Novak Djokovic beat Rafael Nadal and I was crushed. It was a rainy grey morning and I listened to the match on Wimbledon Radio. I listened to the match with some friends at the beach house that my parents are selling. I was slightly drowsy from the bacon and under-ripe avocado sandwich I had eaten and because of the rain. We listened to the English commentators and picked up beer cans and washed plates. I sat on an Ottoman drinking beer while the commentators gave play-by-play on Nadal’s loss.

“Its quite amazing really. Djokovic’s playing has been superb.”

“Yes, Nadal is making the kind of errors that he avoided all tournament long.”

“Nadal serves. Djokovic with the return. Nadal forehand. Djokovic with a backhand. Backhand Nadal. Forehand volley Djokovic. Backhand NADAL! Backhand Djokovic. Nadal what A SHOT! And THE RETURN! Novak Djokovic. This is thrilling tennis.”

“Nadal played almost perfectly there and it wasn’t enough.”

“To be blunt: the former world’s number one is being thoroughly outplayed here today.”

And so it went until Nadal bowed out in the fourth set. It might as well have been the third. I felt dejected after Nadal’s loss, as I usually do when one of my favorite sports entities loses. I felt like I had lost something as well, or that nothing would ever be good again. However, I drank another beer and went on with my day. I stepped out to a humid summer air and decided I had to take a train East to go swimming with some friends.

When I returned to work after the Fourth, I read this piece on Grantland, which got me thinking about tennis overall. Right now, men’s tennis, at the Grand Slam events especially, can give any major sport a run for its money. What I mean is that there is drama in almost any matchup. “The Big 4” (or “Big 3 and A Half” as they are called) are compelling enough. You have Federer, who is widely considered the best of all time but who is in decline and may not be the best of all time because he was always outplayed by Nadal. Yet, Federer is the magician. He can pull another victory out of the air. Every player still fears Federer in some elemental way. Everyone except Nadal, Nadal who appeals to our passionate, hard working side. The side of us that just wants to explode at every second—put our force and determination out into the world and win over those souls that were too timid or too polished to succeed.

But now, Djokovic has emerged as maybe the player to beat in men’s tennis. He is not the villain I always wanted him to be—the preening heel, as if he were some kind of wrestler. Instead, he is a somewhat unlikable Eastern European man who plays extraordinary tennis. The Wimbledon Final exhibited a will that I hadn’t been convinced of in his recent string of fantastic playing. He simply out willed Nadal who uses his omnipotence on the court to force his opponent into errors. This time it was Djokovic who made Nadal look like he wasn’t trying enough. He baffled Nadal with will. Djokovic is slowly building a great resume and he already has proven to be too much for Nadal on many instances. As Brian Phillips pointed out, we have a conundrum at the top that features the equation Djokovic>Nadal>Federer>Djokovic. However, to me it still seems that the rivalry between Nadal and Djokovic is just beginning to unfold at the Grand Slam level. If Nadal is truly the greatest of all time, he will find a way to hone is will into a new method of figuring out how to beat Djokovic.

That only covers the top three. We also have to consider the fact that despite his sort of limp-towel performance at times, Murray is a fantastic player. Tsonga proved at Wimbledon that he too is a joy to watch. We have the likeable (formerly fat!) American, Mardy Fish; the darkhorses Monfils, Del Potro and Ferrer as well as the enigmatic and goofy Soderling. Finally, there is Andy “I feel bad for him” Roddick as he winds down his career and we try to remember him for what he was and not what he wasn’t or promised to be, which is always hard for Americans.

It is a sport I thought I’d never like, but now tennis is my saviour. My uncle used to torture me at his beach house at Love Ladies at the Jersey Shore by making me watch the U.S. Open night matches when all I wanted to watch was preseason football while the waves crashed out in the darkness and relatives talked and did adult things around me. Now, I love tennis. And while I can’t analyze the different shots or even break down the importance of first serve points or the value of the passing shot, I can write about how great it is. It is a psychological sport of one man against another. It is physical, demanding and exciting. I am riveted while listening on the radio. It’s clean, clear and decisive, despite its country club connotations. In this, my hour of sports darkness (NBA lockout, dog days of baseball) tennis will be my savior—no matter who is better than whom.

A Month of Storms: A Review of Bon Iver, Bon Iver

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 16:18:47 PDT

It rained on Friday night, though very briefly. I stood in a backyard pleasantly drunk with a cigar in my mouth and a full stomach. The next morning it was sunny and warm so I felt the need to be outside. I sat on the roof of my apartment in the sun drinking water. I watched, as next door, a sprinkler tried to keep the machinery of the grocery store cool. I made a list of jobs I wanted, a list of things I wanted to do this summer and a list of ideas to use at my actual day job. Then, I wanted to play basketball. So I went to play.

After I had finished playing, I walked with a friend of mine along Franklin Street, following it until it turned into Kent Avenue in Williamsburg. At the junction where the streets swap names, beside the small garbage filled cove, I said to my friend:

“I think Greenpoint has some of the best looking girls.”

“Yeah, they’re your speed.”

“I don’t know. I really think so.”

“Let me ask you,” my friend said, “out of all of the girls in the world, how many are there that you think you could possibly marry? Like if the circumstances were right and everything.”

I thought for a second. “Ten.”

“Only ten? There are about four billion women in the world.”

“I don’t know if that’s true.”

“Maybe a little less. But let’s just say four. So out of that four, there have to be about a million women who are 18-30. Agree?”

I laughed. “That’s probably not true.”

“Fine, but just work with me.”

“OK, so out of one million women, how many do I think its possible that I could marry?”

“Yes.”

“Circumstances have to be right? Have to be in same mindset? Same place geographically and spiritually or mentally or whatever?”

“Yes.”

“Ten.”

“No. Really?”

“I don’t think I’ve even really liked ten girls and even the ones I have really liked don’t count to your ten because it didn’t work out and I’ll probably not even marry them.”

“I guess that’s true,” he said.

We walked for a little longer down the street and buildings began to crowd us. We passed the East River Park and a Mr. Softee truck piped its slow, cobwebbed tune.

“What if I said twenty?” I asked.

“Yes. That was the number I was looking for.”

I laughed and soon we were walking up to the Northside Piers condominiums. The buildings stretched to the sky with gleaming blue promise. It wasn’t so much the promise of achievement or of some kind of American myth, but more the promise of comfort or that you could be comfortable at some point. Maybe that is the American myth. In any case, the buildings were blue and bright and made of glass.

“Crazy how this place has changed,” I said.

“It’s more my vibe now.”

“I remember running around here like three years ago.”

“Pissing on the sidewalks and everything.”

I laughed. “I didn’t even like it then.”

Next to the condos they had made nice grassy spots that looked across the river to Manhattan. They had even built a wooden boardwalk. There were pretty girls with tans sitting on the grass and I smiled at them and tried to make eye contact and thought about what their lives were like just starting out in Williamsburg. Along the boardwalk, there were Latino men hooking fish heads onto fishing hooks and throwing them into the river. A Spanish song played softly on their stereo. My friend and I looked across the water to Manhattan. We peered down into the water.

“If you fell in,” my friend said, “how would you climb back up?”

I pointed to some ancient, broken wooden pylons not too far from the new boardwalk. “I’d swim over there and climb up.”

“That far? I hate swimming.”

The clouds passed over the sun briefly, making the air somewhat cooler but still enjoyable.

“This is perfect weather,” my friend said. “You could play ball all day.”

“Look at that place.” I pointed to a big white warehouse on the water that had been converted to condos. “Crazy.”

“I like it. I don’t know. Sometimes its just nice to have nice things.”

The wind picked up a little bit across the water. I looked across to the park on the other side of the river. The sun was still covered by the clouds. He was right; the weather was really perfect.

“Let’s cut,” my friend said.

*****

A few weeks ago it rained. There was a terrible thunderstorm. I was walking towards Madison Square Park and I wasn’t feeling well. It wasn’t that I was sick; I was feeling out of sorts and was waiting to go someplace to have a conversation. I was streaming Bon Iver, Bon Iver on my iPhone and the rain started to come down slowly with the first murky, jagged guitar riffs of “Perth.”

As I passed into the park, my eye was drawn to the sand pathway and circle that sits near the Broadway border. People were dashing across it to gain cover from the rain. I didn’t need an umbrella yet, so I walked casually with my hands in my pockets. The scene reminded me of an Impressionist painting, with children and women and umbrellas appearing in strokes before my eyes—objects distinct from each other, but not individually distinct. My heart immediately felt lighter and I continued my stroll. The trees swayed and the drums hit heavily in my ear. It was something greatly different from the first Bon Iver album. I could make out thunder overhead and felt the rain grow stronger. I walked under an overhang of trees and stood against a bench.

I needed an umbrella now and opened it above me. The rain smacked it. A couple sat on a bench near me, willingly getting wet. A man with headphones on ran past without an umbrella. Two college-aged girls skipped another way with bags of Shake Shack slowly getting wet under their umbrellas. Rain dripped off the trees and the music itself was murky and watery, with punctures of drums and saxophone breaking through. There was thunder again. A girl, giving up the chance of staying dry, stood in the rain in her purple tank top and long black hair. She wasn’t close, but I felt I could make out the streaks of rain streaming down her chin and neck. And I looked down at my brown suede shoes to see how wet they had gotten.

Lightning flashed and then a roar of thunder hit amid the hypnotic beginning of “Holocene.” Rain started coming in sheets. I decided that I wasn’t going to give myself up to the rain. I held my umbrella ahead of me and walked toward Madison Avenue and 24^th Street. The rain was soaking the front of my khakis. I saw a group of people huddling underneath the corner entrance of the Credit Suisse building. I took cover too, standing away from the edge where rain was slanting in. The top of the covering was decorated with gold and I thought of the Vatican for a brief second.

The album played on seamlessly through “Towers” and “Michicant” as I waited out the rain. More people joined to take cover. We watched the trees of the park sway and cars swish by. There were flashes of lightning above buildings and thunder roared. Wet strands of hair fell across women’s foreheads and along their cheeks. A little boy happily tried to hail a cab for his mom and sister as the rain soaked his collared t-shirt. All the time I stood, quietly listening to Bon Iver, Bon Iver and slowly feeling better for whatever reason. Perhaps it had something to do with the rain and taking shelter with other people I didn’t know. Or maybe it was because I could momentarily disappear with the scene. In either case, I felt good watching the rain and listening the music.

Soon, the storm passed as they do most of the time. It was a summer storm. The rain slowed to a drip and mist and people moved out from under the corner covering. Men walked quickly along 24^th street towards Park, or others resumed their route through the park. I walked on 24^th on my way to talk with somebody, listening to the resonant piano strikes of “Hinnom, TX.” The sky was turning from grey to purple.

****

This past weekend I sat in my friend’s brother’s apartment in Chelsea. Outside, confetti from the Gay Pride Parade sat scattered and stepped on in the streets. We sat in the well-windowed apartment as sun shone in along the floor. We watched my friend’s cousin’s baby toddle around holding a balloon. My friend, his fiancée, his cousin, his aunt, his mom and I all watched as the baby held the balloon by its ribbon and it skipped along the floor, as though he were walking a dog. He would toddle and then fall on his diapered butt without making any kind of shriek. The balloon would bounce and he’d grab at it and suddenly make a chirp:

“Goo ah gak!”

Someone would imitate the sound and the baby would fall on the balloon, grabbing for it and drooling on it; smiling all the time. We drank coffee and ate chocolate and Linzer tarts. My friend and I packed bridal shower presents on a cart—boxes of white, with blue ribbon, thin pink tissue paper, purple cards and red bags with strong white papered handles. They all talked amongst each other like family and gave the baby a bit of bread to chew on for his new teeth. Outside it was a sunny, hot, afternoon. It was Sunday in the summer in New York and the rest of the world.

****

A month ago the first summer storm rolled in on Sunday. The day was hazy, humid and grey. I ate eaten a big lunch and met the girl I was seeing. The sun began to burn off the cloud cover and emerge. We sat in the park with coffee and talked about Bridesmaids and then about ourselves. The conversation flowing from one topic to the next with laughter because it was nice to talk and we both liked each other.

It was Sunday and we each didn’t want to go to work the next day, so we decided to get some drinks to remind us that we could make it through. We sat at a restaurant next to the park and drank mojitos. She talked about her family and I put my hand on her back and kissed her on the lips between talking points. The sky grew dark and soon it began to rain. A canopy covered us, so we watched the rain fall on the leaves and flowers in the park and on the sidewalk and street. We smelled the rising scent of the pavement.

“I need to buy groceries,” she said.

“Let’s go. I’ll help you after the rain.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I’d love to.”

We had another drink and the rain passed, giving way to more sun than there had been before. We finished our drinks and decided to walk around some more. We walked on a street with trees that had white flowers.

“I like this street,” I said. “We walked down here one of the first times.”

“It’s a good street.”

I noticed a metal sculpture garden that was gated off behind a building. I pretended to be an expert on art and explained the sculptures in a high-minded voice. There was a sculpture of a motorcycle.

“And what’s that one?” she asked.

“That’s a commentary on the transience of our experience. How our transport, how the thrill of moving can suddenly be reduced to a stationary, static position.”

“You come up with the most ridiculous bull shit.”

We walked down to the park next to the river and I looked across to Brooklyn at the Northside Piers towers standing along the water. Thin clouds had covered the sun again and the twilight was setting in. There was a terrific mist hovering above the river. We leaned against the railing and I kissed the girl I was seeing. I pulled her in close to me and enjoyed kissing her. She told me about children’s books and her friends in publishing; she told me about her sister and swimming. We would take breaks and kiss and look at the mist on the water. Soon, it was getting dark.

“Do you want to get groceries?” I asked.

“Let’s just get beer.”

“You sure? I don’t mind.”

“I’ll be fine.”

We walked away from the water and the mist and back to the huddled streets with yellow signs and striped canopies. The night was warm and thick.

****

After my conversation, the night was dark and very humid. Water from the storm dripped slowly off fire escapes. The sky was slowly clearing. I walked to the subway in the purple-red light of the city night.

When I got into the subway, I turned on “Beth/Rest” on Bon Iver, Bon Iver, because I had read that it was the best song on the album, though it might turn out to be controversial because of its Bruce Hornsby influence. I didn’t quite know what that meant, but I figured it might mean bordering on cheesy or maudlin. Regardless, I turned on the song and got on an air-conditioned car.

I listened to the song with its emotional keyboard chord progressions, the high-pitched guitar weaving in the background and the saxophone lending some kind of pleading warmth. All of this surrounded in some kind of 80’s production sheen, while Justin Vernon’s voice carries the proceedings along without using his trademark falsetto. The subway rattled along and I got off at Union Square and switched trains. I played the song over again once it had finished. I played it two more times until I got back to my apartment. My hair was sticky from humidity and my socks were still damp from the rain. I listened to the final jagged guitar lines, the pedal steel that emerges and those too-cheesy-to-be-bad keyboards. I thought that I understood what the title of the song meant and, to me, it seemed like no matter what the song sounded like, it sounded sincere, which is what matters to me most of the time. I decided then that I liked Bon Iver, Bon Iver better than For Emma, Forever Ago. That was a Thursday.

A Matter of Degrees

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 10:03:04 PDT

I’ve been feeling strange ever since the Miami Heat lost to the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA Finals. I’ve been feeling strange because as the Playoffs and Finals went on, I realized how attached I had gotten to the 2011 Miami Heat. When the Heat played, I found myself yelling and throwing things if they were behind; I sent frantic texts to friends and ignored their calls to rehash the game if the Heat lost. This is behavior that I usually reserve for the Philadelphia Eagles, Philadelphia Phillies, Rafael Nadal and the University of North Carolina Tar Heels. Each of those sports entities represent a sort of workingman’s or humble approach to their respective sport (the Tar Heels have been wildly successful over the years, but they retain some sort of farmhouse/schoolroom charm due to Dean Smith’s legacy). The Miami Heat are on the complete opposite end of the spectrum. They are “hollywood,” as Joakim Noah said. Or so that is what we have been told over the past eleven months.

When the Mavericks beat the Heat, I tweeted that the Mavericks and Dirk winning were a feel good story, but that the Heat winning would have been much more culturally relevant. What does that mean exactly? It means we would have had to ask ourselves more questions about what we believe in and what is actually acceptable. If the Heat won, all sports fans would have had to look themselves in the mirror and ask, “Is this what it has come to? Is this what sports will be like from now on?” They would have had to accept the fact that three great talents (two especially transcendent talents) came together to win a championship with a cobbled together roster. They would have had to watch this video, nod their heads and say, “Welp, they were right.” However, that is not the reality we live in. Now sports pundits and former athletes can remain in their holier than thou stances and say, “I was right. I knew it wouldn’t work.” Now the world can take solace that there is an “order” to things and that there is a certain way things are done.

What baffles me is that normally I would love the Dallas Mavericks. Dirk is an all-time great with a ridiculous shot and secret training exercises that make his game so unique. He was hounded and tortured by the media for years and deserved a chance to prove how great he has been once and for all. Kidd is a Hall of Famer who deserves everything good (basketball-wise, how he is as a person is up for debate) to happen to him. Chandler started out as a young player who got a lot of money and hype during a bad time for the league, was given up on and who has now reinvented himself as a poor-man’s Kevin Garnett—which is a high compliment for anyone. And Shawn Marion is a likeable glue guy. This was a team of veterans who had seen all the in’s and outs of the NBA, played very well together and deserved a championship. Yet, I couldn’t embrace them. I even began to hate them as the Finals went on. There was just something in me that wanted to see the Heat win. If I hated the 2007 Patriots, then why did I love the 2011 Miami Heat?

For some reason this Miami Heat team represented something different to me than they did to the rest of the world. Even after the Decision, when Wade, LeBron and Bosh all came together, I thought, “This is great. These guys will have to figure out how to co-exist. They will have to find their roles and work together. Plus they’re taking less money. What an experiment! What a risk!” Of course I realized that the Decision itself was awful and that their welcome celebration was something straight out of the WWE (O, lost! O, WWF!) Perhaps it is some fault in my character, but those things didn’t matter to me. I took them at face value as stupid mistakes and moved on. I tend to do that in the world: take actions and situations as they are and try to move on. This may be some sort of coping mechanism that might lead to my undoing, but maybe not. To me, something happens and then something else happens and you react accordingly in a continuing succession proceeding on until death. So, I never dwelled in what the Miami Heat were perceived to be in a hyper-critical, hyper-informed and hyper-intelligent culture. I saw three guys playing together. Maybe they were scared of some kind of spotlight, but maybe they were truly concerned with winning championships and were very willing to figure out the right way to play in order to do that. I could be an optimist.

As the season wore on and the hatred against the Heat began to build to levels that had not been seen in years or perhaps ever, I was further drawn to them. I defended them against people I talked to; I defended them (in my head) against the pundits who were so eager to state the bottom line about the Heat at each stage of the season. I have always loved sports for the narrative, and to me the 2011 Miami Heat were the very definition of narrative. They were drama in its original form. There was a fall from grace; there was a journey to seek redemption; there was a search for some kind of truth, some essence and in this case it was basketball. How would they run offense? How would they use their athleticism to play excellent defense? Even though they didn’t have their entire healthy roster until the Playoffs, I still wondered how they would use the diversity of their roster to trot out a lineup that not many teams in NBA history had ever used: Wade, Miller, LeBron, Haslem, Bosh; a lineup with no point guard that they finally used in the Playoffs but only sparingly because Miller’s thumbs didn’t work. The Miami Heat and all of their questions made me pay much closer attention to basketball than I ever had. I ignored the hard stats, but paid attention to how frequently they ran lineups. I watched the game “off the ball” or the action away from the ball more than I ever had. I wanted these guys to figure it out, because if they could figure it out then there was a promise that the most beautiful basketball would be played—that the essence of basketball itself would be presented. The Mavericks played excellent offense in the Playoffs and the Finals. They moved the ball with precision and speed. They made extra passes and played off each other with ease. However, there was never the same promise that came with the Heat starting from nothing and slowly learning how to play the most beautiful basketball of all-time. I never had a chance to watch the 1986 Celtics, widely considered the most fluent (in the language of basketball) and fluid basketball team of all-time. I saw the 1996 Bulls, but they were based more on the freakishness of Jordan, Pippen, Rodman and Harper and their length (as well as the force of Jordan’s fire) than they were on an essence of basketball. The Heat held the promise of something spiritual.

My love of the Heat could have also stemmed from the fact that I am obsessed with roles. I am obsessed with the roles we fill in our lives and in the lives of others. We are objects that interact with each other and our position to and perception by another object creates a certain role that can be filled at anytime. We are all capable of anything—history has taught us that, as Michael Corleone said—but there are only the certain few who can recognize a role forming and presenting itself and can play that role to its fullest (see Don Draper). Then there are the even more select few who can play multiple roles to their fullest degree (see Young Hal/Henry V and Bob Dylan). Something about this is tied to history and I’m going to keep trying to figure that out for the rest of my life. I love roles, which is why I love Mad Men since it is all about how we fit into our lives and the lives of others, not only at work but in our personal life. When do you have to admit that you are great at a certain job for a reason and that perhaps that is your role to play to its fullest? When do you give up a delusion for the role you were born to play? This holds true in the NBA. There have been plenty of cases where a great player is bogged down by his want to be something he is not. All it takes is being on the right team to figure out his role and to settle into being the player he was meant to be. It may not have been what he wanted to be, but it is what he was meant to be. Perhaps it was his want that was a delusion after all.

Now, one would say that the Mavericks were more role based than the Heat. There was a clear pecking order with Dirk as the go-to scorer and star, Chandler as the defensive presence, Kidd as the steady hand, Marion as the lanky wing defender and sneaky 15 point scorer, Stojakovic as the three point specialist and Terry and Barea as the bench sparkplugs. Earlier in each of these players’ careers there was a time when they either wanted to be more or had to be more than hey were capable of, but on the 2011 Mavericks, they could play a role that suited them and that contributed to the entire team. The identifying and playing roles is part of “The Secret” as Bill Simmons called it. And the Mavericks exemplified it to perfection. They were hard-working veterans who knew how to play a role and that’s what we want from our athletes and the world.

Yet, the Heat were more compelling. We had the endless debate over who would be the go-to guy, Wade or LeBron. There was the question of whether or not Bosh could demand the ball enough. Who would be the three point specialist, Chalmers, Miller or Jones? Who would do the rebounding work once Haslem was injured? Would Joel Anthony be able coordinate himself to play forceful and utilitarian basketball? Again, there was an element of going from nothing to everything that was inherent in the 2011 Miami Heat. They were under the microscope and had to create an entire world, an entire team existence with every discerning eye in the cultural world turned towards them.

So, maybe in the end it becomes a game of degrees (no pun intended). With the Heat, the degree to which they had to decide their roles was far more interesting to me than the Mavericks falling into line with an established tradition of roles falling into place over time. Instead, the Heat and their stars voluntarily sped-up the process of role-finding and role-playing. They did it in the interest of winning championships. I can appreciate the Mavericks. I know why they are a good team and why they deserved to win a championship. With the Miami Heat, I still don’t know why I am completely fascinated by them and I think when many people look past their initial, unreasoned hate (besides Cleveland fans), they will find the same confusion. Even if the Heat had won the championship this year, we still would have not seen them play their best basketball, which would have been a scary and yet still fascinating thing. We would’ve (hopefully there’s no lockout) headed into the 2011-2012 season with a hated team that won the championship without playing their best. They would have been even more hated as the champions and we would still be wondering what made them tick and what they were possible of. We would’ve wondered why we cared and if perhaps we were merely slaves to an established history of acceptable success. We would’ve continued to question roles, including our own roles as observers of sports and culture.

I suppose we still have some of that, but we don’t have it all. We have another nice story to add to our collection. But, like I said, I’m a man of degrees. And a deserving Dirk winning a championship took a few degrees of questioning and meaning away. It was a nice story, but there was something more lurking. And perhaps that’s why we have history.

Theoharides on Chinese Food

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 10:53:02 PDT

I'm here, I'm here, my Puddlers. I know it seems like a long time, but I needed you to digest my epic Memorial Day post. Also, I took a long weekend for a Bachelor Party for my good friend Jeff. We all went to Fire Island. Needless to say there was plenty of beer drinking, swimming, cigar-smoking and carousing.

But now I'm back. We are going to get back to regular posting for the next few weeks. However, starting on July 15, the blog will be on a bit of a summer hiatus. I know, I know. You're probably saying, "How much work can this be, Domino? You don't post everyday and now you've got other guys posting for you out of the goodness of their hearts." And you would be right about all of that. However, I want to work on the redesign of the site as well as focus on my fiction for a bit. Starting around that time, the site may be down or you may see some slight changes, but I will definitely alert you when it is back up and running under the redesign. After the immediate redesign, I may throw up some short posts from time to time. However, you can follow me on Twitter and on Facebook where I will be throwing up some posts from the archive to bide your time.

Overall, the break should last about a month to a month and half. And, I will be returning with extra energy and effort when I'm back.

Now, today's post sees Alex Theoharides discussing a topic very near and dear to my heart—Chinese Food. I'll hand it over to Mr. Theoharides, even though he reveals some secrets about how I run things over here.

Theoharides On Chinese Food

Alex Theoharides

A few years ago, (well to be honest, more like six or seven years ago, Zeus, I’m old) I got in an argument with a pseudo-friend (I’ll call her Dumb-Dumb) over Chinese food. To be clear, we weren’t eating Chinese food. The argument was in fact about Chinese food.

Dumb-Dumb claimed to be from the city, which meant she grew up in New Jersey but had visited New York on the weekends, and had read enough gossip columns to know the trendy restaurants from the steaks houses of yesteryear. Based on her romps in the city, Dumb-Dumb claimed that the best Chinese food in the world came from an establishment known as P.F. Chang’s, located on a little island she called Manhattan (never heard of the island? Me neither. Gal was crazy!)

Now, I have nothing against P.F. Chang’s … well … (come on Alex, muster your inner snob, your audience of none expects it, and also please refer to yourself in the third person more often, as in, come Alex, you can do it, come on Alex, there’s nothing to it) … okay, so I have a lot against P.F. Chang’s. 1) It’s in no way, shape or form unique to NYC. In fact, there are branches scattered across the U.S of A. 2) The food is only as good as the nearest toilet. 3) Need I say more?

At the time, however, I had never heard of P.F. Chang’s and I responded to Dumb-Dumb’s comment by suggesting my favorite Chinese Restaurant, the one, the only Amherst Chinese.

“Well,” replied Dumb-Dumb, “It’s not in New York, so how good could it possibly be?”

“It’s very good,” retorted our always quick on his feet hero (me, myself, and I). “New York doesn’t own the patent on good food. There are hundreds of great chefs who would rather serve poop than cook on the garbage crusted streets of New York.”

“Why would anyone want to live anywhere but the City?”

And this is when things got ugly, which means, this is when I stuck out my rather sizable jaw and managed to piss everyone within earshot off with my ridiculous form of arguing, which boils down to a mixture of semantics and bull shit.

Lost in all my nonsense? My real argument.

Finding good Chinese food, like finding a good version of most ethnic food, is a problematic endeavor, made exponentially difficult by the multiplicity of definitions people have about what constitutes good ethnic cuisine. Of course, its my job, (one which Fraulein, excuse me, Editor Matt Domino pays me handsomely in … er … oh wait, that’s right I do this shit for free. God, please remind me again, why was I an English major?) to break these people down into neat little categories for you.

1) People who think the only good Chinese food involves Stinky Tofu and thousand year old eggs.

2) People who think that Chinese food should result in severe abdominal pain and rabies.

3) People who think that Chinese food should be served by pretty blond waitresses who don’t speak Mandarin.

And finally,

4) Geniuses such as myself, who realize that good Chinese food is a construct of my American food identity. Just as my favorite Indian meal will always be Chicken Tikka Massala, a meal invented by Brits, my favorite Chinese dishes are Moo Shu Pork and Sesame Chicken. Boring? Safe? Run of the mill? Yes. Yes. And No. Just because a dish has been westernized, doesn’t exclude it from being delicious. I love food. I love cooking food. Most importantly, I love eating good food. I just don’t want to turn food time into a visit to the museum. If my palate tends toward Americanized versions of Chinese food, so be it. Its damn tasty food when done right.

Which leads my to my next point. Very seldom is my kind of Chinese food done right. Typically, the chefs, perhaps conscience that they are catering to dumb Americans, add too much grease and MSG and processed ingredients to their meals, which results in a disgusting mishmash, vaguely reminiscent of food. Good Chinese Restaurants, such as Amherst Chinese (which I miss more than any other restaurant on the East Coast) use organic ingredients in their dumbed down, American versions of Chinese food. They make their own pancakes, noodles, sauces and dumplings. They only speak Mandarin. And they get mad at you when you take too long to order. But by Zeus, they know their business.

Long story short, Dumb-Dumb was an idiot. I’m still bitter. And if you’re looking for good food a few hours away from any major city, look no further than Amherst Chinese in, where else?, Amherst, Massachusetts.

Growing Up

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 20:40:13 PDT

Memorial Day has become the holiday that I most associate with America. It’s not for any military or patriotic reasons, but more for that fact of what it represents—what little traditions we enact year after year that give it a meaning and definition in our lives as the official start of summer.

The Memorial Day weekend truly starts on the Monday before the weekend, when you exchange plans with your coworkers and your friends. The week drags on until you come to that sleepy first “Summer Friday” (at least in New York). Then you get a ride with your friends or hop a train, bus or plane to go home or to go meet with old friends by the beach somewhere. Perhaps you have some new friends from college or the adult life you are beginning to form for yourself and their parents have a country house somewhere, so that is where you go to find quiet and a barbeque. Or maybe there is some timeshare that has been in your family for years and you can enjoy that luxury. Or, one of your childhood friends bought a house in Providence with his fiancée and you can go there for your weekend sanctuary. No matter where you go, its usually a hot, sunny Friday and you will undoubtedly be sitting in traffic for more than two hours. Yes, even if you are flying.

This year, I went to my friend Jeff’s house in Providence. My friends and I had done the same thing last year because Jeff had just bought the house with his fiancée and we had to have a housewarming weekend since the rest of us couldn’t even fathom having a house or being engaged, but that’s what Jeff had always wanted in some way. We all want to own a house in one way or another, but having a home was just something that had always been integral to who Jeff was. So last year we went up and had fun: went to beaches, took videos, ate lobster, got drunk, got sunburnt. In the end, we had a memorable time. So much so that I still remember driving home late on Memorial Day itself through the mist of the Connecticut night and feeling so terribly hopeless. I was going back to a new job that was promising, but I felt restless looking out at the houses and unknown streets in the stubborn night. There were countless corners with lawns and sprinklers and low-hanging trees. There were countless youthful romances and heartbreaks next to every hedgerow. There were streetlamps that stood beside the street in a purely American fashion and I already missed my friends. However, I consoled myself, as I have since, by remembering that we had plenty of years left to continue having good times.

This year, some friends couldn’t make it because of work and also because of a lack of money, which was mainly due to the bad economy but partly due to laziness. Jeff was a little frustrated when we spoke the Friday morning before I left.

“No one picks up their phone.”

“That’s just the way it is, man. They probably feel bad they couldn’t come.”

“Just weird is all. I’m only getting a pony keg though.”

“Too bad the Finals don’t start until next week.”

“I know. Just call me when you get to New Haven, Domino.”

I left work at 1:30, already running late to meet my friend and her pretty friend from college who were parked by Grand Central Station with a trunk full of fresh bagels and some smoked fish I’d bought from Russ and Daughters the night before with the girl I was somewhat seeing. The plan was to ride up the FDR and hopefully catch minimal traffic until we got to the Hutchinson where, in a perfect world, there would be no traffic. I was listening to a live bootleg of “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You” from Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour in 1975. The live version of the song had taken on such a different complexion than the straight country, but none the less revealing and joyous, album version. I was sweating and felt the need to shout some of the new lyrics Dylan had added into the overwhelming humidity in the air:

Well I’m feeling a little bit scattered,

And your love is all that matters

‘Cause tonight I’ll be staying here with you.

People were rushing in every direction trying to make trains and buses. Girls’ dresses were suddenly appearing in my vision for the first time all season, in their yellows, greens, purples, oranges and slim blacks, as something utterly real, important and present. I could make out the light perspiration on the backs of women. I saw little kids hopping along with their instinctual energy and love of summer. I felt like Stephen Dedalus at the Sandymount Strand watching the birdgirl in the waters.

—Heavenly God! cried Stephen's soul, in an outburst of profane joy.

I felt my soul doing the same and I thought of my work, and of the girl I’d been seeing, and felt that perhaps I was just a bit scattered as well and hoping it was perhaps that love that would be all that mattered.

I heard a shout. I turned around and saw my friend sticking her head out the window and waving. I pulled my headphones out from my ears and hopped in the car.

“What ya didn’t see us?” my friend asked.

“I was listening to this Dylan.”

“We got the bagels.”

“Beautiful. You guys are beautiful.”

My friend’s pretty friend turned around from the passenger seat.

“Hey, Matt, how the hell have you been?”

“Good, Maria. I’ve been good.”

My friend wove through traffic like a professional and we were suddenly on the FDR, then slowly moving on the Bruckner. I figured out a shortcut through Pelham Park that got us to the Hutchinson and soon we were moving, not at any great speed, but we were moving along as well as you can hope to move on a highway on the Friday of Memorial Day Weekend.

A few hours later, Maria was driving the car while my friend slept in the passenger seat. We were passing New Haven and she explained that she’d grown up outside of that downtrodden city and closer to the Long Island Sound. The traffic had all but dissipated and we were starting to cut across the state on I-95. I sat in the back seat as Maria told me about the different exits along the highway. I asked her about the Connecticut shore and she explained its merits to me. She told me about a childhood best friend of hers who lived off one of the exits we passed and how that friend later went to the same college she did but that they never spoke. I asked Maria about her job in the government and she told me her beliefs, which were practical but articulated with passion, which made them more interesting to me since I am easily swayed by anyone who talks about something with passion. Especially a girl like her who knew about politics and world affairs, while I know nothing about anything civic or political. I tried to weigh in where I could and she was more than polite towards my points while illuminating me on think tanks and the different countries who are involved with the Human Rights League and why Cuba should be re-incorporated into our foreign policies. Finally, she told me how her dad commuted all the way to New Jersey each day.

“I did it with him for two months one summer and it was terrible,” she said. “I told him he was crazy for doing it.”

“Why does he do it?” I asked.

“Well, he told me. He said, ‘I like where I live and I like my job and I’m not willing to give either of those things up.’”

“Can’t argue with that.”

“No, you can’t.”

We were both quiet as she continued to drive and I think at one point I dozed off amid the humming of the highway and the sunset.

At about seven o’clock we pulled up to Jeff’s house. It was a humid, but pleasant twilight on his quiet suburban street. The birds were chirping in the trees and I heard a child’s laugh and squeal from an open window somewhere. Jeff and his fiancée greeted us in aprons at the screened front door. A thought passed through my head, that Jeff’s fiancée looked as pretty as she ever had at that moment.

“I’m cooking lobsters and some fish,” Jeff said. “Lots of beer in the fridge.”

I checked the refrigerator—he was right. I grabbed two beers for us while the girls drank wine. We all paced about the kitchen, as people will do when they first arrive at the home of a friend or a loved one after a long drive. Jeff stood at the center of it all, leaning his thin frame over the burners. He seasoned the blackfish with Cajun spices and began to sear them, while steam came from the lobster pot. Maria, my friend and I set the table and Jeff’s fiancée brought out a bottle of champagne. I uncorked the bottled and poured champagne in glasses. Jeff came in from the kitchen with the lobsters and set them down.

“I tried a new way of boiling them. Boiled them for twenty minutes. It’s a little long. Not sure if this will be good or not.”

We toasted to Jeff and Sara, to new friends (Maria had never met them), to Memorial Day Weekend and to summer in general. The lobster was good, as was everything else. The wood of the dining room table shone under the light and the door to their sunroom was open, letting in a slow breeze that had picked up with the onset of night. My friend went up to change since she and Maria were going to an alumni dance at their college, so Jeff, Maria and I talked about famous political dictators while Jeff’s fiancée talked on the phone in the sunroom.

“Did you know that Time has only given out four red X’s?” I said.

“What’s a red X?” Jeff asked.

“It’s for when a dictator is killed.”

“That’s right.” Maria said.

“There’s one for Hitler, Sadaam, and that other Al Qaida guy they killed five years ago.”

“Al-Zarqawi,” Maria said.

“Who’s the fourth?”

“Japan,” I said.

“No Stalin? He was the worst.”

“Completely,” Maria said.

They continued to talk about Stalin’s legacy in Russia, a country that Jeff had always loved due to some vague family lineage, while I got up to wash dishes in the kitchen.

Later, Jeff and I were drinking a few more beers when my friend and Maria came down in their dresses to go to the alumni dance. They both looked very clean and pretty and for whatever reason reminded me of a new bar of soap pulled right out of the box. Their dresses had pockets on the side. I wasn’t sure if it was an old-fashioned style, but I loved it—maybe it was just a country style that made sense. There was something absolutely right about seeing two pretty girls in dresses going to an alumni dance at their college in a New England city. I wanted something very badly at that moment, I wasn’t sure if it was love, a woman or to sit in a cool breeze with a beer, but it was palpable and I felt very much like a teenage boy on summer vacation. Then, they were gone to their dance.

Jeff, his fiancée and I sat in the sunroom drinking and talking. Some of his fiancée’s friends came over and I tried to keep up with the conversation, but I was tired. Jeff and I talked about how our friend Chris was going to be coming with his girlfriend the next morning. We were trying to decide on the best beach to go to since I was adamant on swimming over Memorial Day Weekend. I found myself looking at my phone and waiting for the time to reach 1:00 AM so that I could allow myself to go to sleep. However, I managed to stay up so that Jeff and I found ourselves awake at 2:00. I was drinking one last unnecessary beer and we were talking about the NBA. In that moment, standing there with my old friend, talking about basketball, I thought about the NBA as a thing and how it had already been in my life for about twenty years and been a shared passion for Jeff and I for about fifteen years. How we’d seen the end of Michael Jordan, the full career of Shaq, the flash of brilliance that was Penny Hardaway, the saga of Kobe Bryant, the quiet efficiency and intelligence of the San Antonio Spurs, the rebirth of the Celtics and now the era of the Miami Heat. And it amazed me that Jeff and I would get older and grayer and the games would still be on. We’d be wearing different clothes and he’d have his wife and there’d be kids, we’d talk about the players of that time, the great teams, how certain players could play better, and then we’d quietly murmur about how much we loved the NBA. In that moment, with that vision of some future so present in my mind, I wasn’t sure what my life would be filled with or how full I’d let it become, but Jeff would be there and there would be things like basketball to talk about, so perhaps it could be good.

I finished my beer and we both took full glasses of water to bed. He went in with his fiancee and I went into the guest room. In the quiet of the room, I folded my clothes neatly and placed them on the top of the dresser. For some reason, I felt the need to pull back the curtains in the room and look out onto the back lawn, probably because I never got to do a simple action like that in my apartment. In the garden, I made out the shape of the large lemur statue that Jeff’s cousin had sculpted for him. I smiled thinking of Jeff’s cousin and his thick Brooklyn accent and then let the curtain close. I put two of the decorative pillows from the bed on the floor, pulled back the soft duvet and lay down. I slept immediately under my friend’s roof.

* * * * * *

The next morning I woke up and listened for footsteps. I heard someone walk down the stairs to the first floor. I listened for voices and wished secretly that I could be alone, which is something I wish for even on weekends with close friends. I saw the sun peeking behind the curtains and I quickly got over that desire. When I walked downstairs, I saw Jeff, his fiancée, my friend and Maria all sitting in the sunroom. My friend and Maria were sitting side-by-side on the couch wearing gym t-shirts and plaid shorts. They both had their legs propped up on the wicker coffee table. We talked about plans for the day. Maria had to meet some of her friends she hadn’t seen in awhile. She borrowed Janelle’s car to go out. I had a vague sensation of wanting her to stay and sit with us all day, but I wasn’t sure what emotion it was tied to, so I figured it wasn’t that important to me.

Inevitably, we started talking about Jeff’s wedding. A wedding is something that you have to talk about, no matter how far away it is. Jeff and his fiancée explained the setup of the farm where they were getting married. They told us about the arrival party, the cocktail hour at the wedding, the dinner, the ten-piece band, the after party and the farewell brunch the day after the wedding. It was going to be a weekend of celebration. I pictured the ceremony on a grassy lawn in front of the big lake. The leaves on the trees were changing even though it was only early September. Jeff was wearing a tuxedo, but he looked like we had when we went to our prom in high school. All of my other friends were there too, looking exactly as we had in high school. We posed for pictures and pretended to punch each other in the stomach. I pictured my parents at the ceremony too. I already imagined my drunk and the speech I would give; the speech that would make someone love me, or make some old relative say, “Now, that’s a smart young man.”

“I want a wedding,” my friend said.

We laughed, but I understood what she meant.

“So, we’re going to Colt State Park?” Jeff asked.

“Yeah, lets just do that.”

“We should get ready now then before Chris gets here.”

“Nah,” I said. “Let’s just wait until they get here.”

And before we knew it, they were there. Chris brought in a bag of groceries that included a few six-packs of tall, Narragansett Summer Ales. Narragansett is not a great beer, but I have a soft spot for it whenever I go to Rhode Island. It may be because it is some symbol of that water-filled state, but it has a very clean label with nice writing on it and drinking the beer out of the bottle tastes very good. The Summer Ales that Chris brought were even better than the regular Narragansetts, so we set to drinking them in the early afternoon.

Jeff showed off the new wood finish he did on the roof of his sunroom because Chris was good at building things and intuitive when it came to tools and crafts. We laughed a lot and made fun of Jeff’s neighbor who Jeff described as “an asshole.” It got sunny and then cloudy; wind blew through the sunroom. I put on Before the Flood, the Bob Dylan and the Band live album from 1974 and tried to make Chris’ girlfriend laugh because she has a good sense of humor and can give confidence to someone who just wants to make a small room of people and friends laugh. I changed shirts and when I came down, Jeff was sawing pieces of wood and starting a fire in his little clay oven out on the patio. He stopped to go get groceries with my friend since it was close to dinnertime. Chris and I were outside alone for a second.

“I don’t worry about you,” he said.

“Thank you, man.”

“It’s an intuitive thing and I know you know that.”

“I do. And you know I feel the same way.”

“I miss you sometimes you son of a bitch.”

“Yeah right.”

We laughed and drank more beer.

“This is a good session beer,” Chris said.

Jeff and my friend came back with steaks and a lot more beer. Maria appeared from the back gate with a friend of hers from Brown. They sat down as Jeff started cooking steaks and sausages that Chris had brought. Jeff’s fiancée set a long table with salad and leftover rice from the night before. She brought out a homemade pizza that Jeff had whipped together.

“Steaks are done,” Jeff said.

“Thanks for all this, Jeff,” I said.

“Uh, Matt, what about me?” Jeff’s fiancée said.

“I’m sorry,” I said sincerely. “I know I’ll never be forgiven.”

“Domino,” she said.

We toasted to the meal and to the pleasant night and the fact that all of these different people were sitting around the table together. Maria’s friend explained his start-up energy company. It had something to do with harnessing energy from the water. It sounded like a good idea and, even in that very moment, I wished that I had paid attention better. The guy was nice and he was from a family of architects in San Francisco, so I trusted him.

Dinner ended and my friend, Maria and Maria’s friend from college all had to leave. We said our goodbyes.

“You should come down to D.C. sometime,” Maria said.

“Sure.”

“She’ll never come,” she motioned to my friend and laughed.

“Sure she will. I’ll come whenever.”

I hugged her and kissed her on the cheek.

* * * * * *

Later that night we were all drinking beer in the sunroom. Jeff’s fiancée brought out wine that she and Chris’ girlfriend shared.

“What?” Chris said. “Is that a lemur statue out there?”

“Oh,” Jeff’s fiancée said. “Yeah, Albert made it for Jeff.”

“Al!” Chris said and laughed. “How is he?”

“He’s got a cute little kid now.”

“I didn’t know he made art.”

“Yeah, he doesn’t so much anymore. But he can still make sculptures and things when he has free time,” Jeff said.

“That’s better,” I said.

“What do you mean, Domino?”

“I mean, its better to just make something that somebody likes. Sometimes that’s better than anything else. Any art.”

I thought of the Bob Dylan bootleg I loved and I wasn’t sure I even believed what I had just said. Or, at least I wondered if it were even true or not.

Well I’m feeling a little bit scattered,

And your love is all that matters

‘Cause tonight I’ll be staying here with you.

“Here’s a beer, Dom,” Chris said, handing me a very cold, perspiring regular Narragansett.

“I love ‘Gansetts!” I said.

“Domino,” Jeff’s fiancée said. “You’re the only person I know who loves Narragansetts.”

I hugged the bottle.

Under each regular Narragansett cap was a riddle using pictures. We spent the next few hours figuring out the riddles and drinking more beer. First Jeff’s fiancée went to bed, then Chris’ girlfriend. Then just Jeff, Chris and I sat out in the sunroom. We were all tired and a light rain was beginning to fall outside. I motioned to say something to both of them, but finished off an unnecessary beer first.

“Should we go to bed?”

Chris gave a large muscular nod from the chair he was slumped in. We went into the kitchen to get glasses of water. Jeff made a quick little sandwich for he and Chris using a half of a bagel. He put some of the smoked fish I brought on each quarter and spread a little plain cream cheese on.

“You want any, Domino?”

“No. You disgust me.”

We all walked upstairs slowly and went to bed. I folded my clothes and lay down alone under the soft duvet. I thought about the lemur statue out in the garden and was soon asleep. I wasn’t sure how late it was.

* * * * * *

We ate eggs and bacon the next morning. The bacon, when cooked, smelled of thick maple syrup and it was delicious. After we ate eggs and bacon, Jeff, Chris, Chris’ girlfriend and I went out to grab some supplies while Jeff’s fiancée showered and prepared for their big barbeque. Chris and I went into a crowded local bakery with a foolish list of supplies I had scribbled out to make everyone laugh. We bought baguettes, five large chocolate chip cookies and one raspberry Danish that I promised Chris I would get him. We laughed while waiting on line.

Back at the house, Jeff and his fiancée playfully yelled at each other while they made orzo salad. I helped them clean up the counter space and told Jeff’s fiancée that she had planned and made plenty of side dishes for the guests. Everything seemed eerily familiar to me, but I was enjoying myself helping her clean and prepare. Chris and his girlfriend had to leave to go to a party for her family. Jeff and I saw them out to the car. Jeff’s neighbor was outside with her baby and her brown standard poodle. The sun emerged strongly from behind the clouds and the baby chirped from its mother’s arms. Jeff and I said goodbye to Chris as they pulled out of the driveway. I felt a little sad, but went inside and took a shower.

Guests arrived for the barbeque, including one of Jeff’s friends from college who had the same first name as me and whom I liked a lot. He came with his girlfriend too. The sun was hot and all of a sudden there were a lot of people on the back patio that I didn’t know, but they looked nice and were friendly and young and sat around tables. Jeff’s fiancée had prepared enough side dishes and there was plenty of beer. I talked with a guy I’d met the year before about working in print. He was a nice guy and we joked about a lot of things and tried to be comfortable talking with each other for an extended period of time, which isn’t always an easy thing to do with someone.

I sat with Jeff’s friend from college, Matt, and his girlfriend.

“Jeff said you needed a ride to White Plains to catch a train,” Matt asked.

“Can you help me out? If its not too much trouble?”

“You got it.”

So, we talked. They had both just graduated law school, so we talked about that. We talked about the wedding. Soon it got darker and Jeff started another fire. One of the guests was drunk and tried to explain to me why he wasn’t a homophobe. I knew he was drunk and I was feeling flush with drink and the sense of upcoming summer and celebration that I was in the mood to be patient and listen. Besides, it was a nice night and Jeff had a fire burning.

The night got late and I started a movement to begin cleaning. However, all the girls took over and formed a line near the sink in the kitchen. The water over the sink ran hot and steam rose up and fogged the window. I had to go to the bathroom, so I hesitantly moved through the long row of girls talking loudly. I walked with my shoulders shrugging as if I knew nothing of washing dishes or anything domestic. I reached the bathroom and took a piss. And as fast as the line had started, as fast as the ritual had appeared, the girls and everyone else started filing out. The drunk guy and his girlfriend stayed awhile but they soon walked home.

Everyone was getting ready for bed, when I reminded Jeff and his fiancée that I had stashed the cookies from earlier in the day. I pulled them out of their hiding spot by the dryer and put them in the microwave.

“They don’t need it, Domino!” Jeff stood in front of the microwave.

“Trust me.”

“Domino.”

“Trust me.”

I put the cookies flat on a paper towel and put them in the microwave for thirty-five seconds.

“Get out that milk we bought,” I said.

The microwave stopped and I pulled out the cookies. Jeff, his fiancée, Matt, his girlfriend and I started pulling at the cookies. The chocolate chips were warm, gooey and delicious and soon it was a feeding frenzy until the last bit was gone. I quickly crumpled up the paper towel and threw it away.

“Damn you, Domino,” Jeff’s fiancée said.

“You know that was good.”

“You’re right.”

We all went up to bed in our respective spots. Our stomachs filled with milk and rapidly eaten chocolate chip cookies.

* * * * * *

On Memorial Day morning, the five of us sat around leisurely drinking coffee with the sense of impending departure that hangs over any Memorial Day. We ate the remainder of my smoked fishes and the last of the bagels. We had coffee and I showered. When I got downstairs, I saw Matt drinking a beer, so I decided to have one too. More coffee was poured. We said we would leave, but then we stayed. Finally, it was about 1:00 PM and it was time to go. I collected all my things and grabbed my sneakers from the sunroom. I had the feeling I was forgetting something, but I went through my mental checklist and found that I had everything. We said our goodbyes and I didn’t feel that initial sadness rise up because I knew that I’d be seeing Jeff and his fiancée soon enough anyway. Or maybe it was because things were a little bit more scattered in general and there was no way to be truly sad.

I got into the back seat of Matt’s car.

“We’re going to stop in New Haven,” he said. “I’ve got to move some stuff out of my apartment and take it to White Plains.”

“Sounds great,” I said.

Matt turned on some Spoon and I listened to he and his girlfriend playfully bicker back and forth. We were stuck in traffic for a few hours and I thought about watching the NBA Finals the next night. By the time we got to New Haven the sun had started completely shining, giving the area around the college a completely refreshing and collegiate feel.

“I can’t believe this is such a terrible place,” I said.

“That’s what you think at first,” Matt said. “And then you see someone get stabbed across the street.”

We stopped at his apartment, which was in the top floor of an old Victorian home. We walked up creaking back steps. The apartment had a distinctly "end of the school year" feel to it. There were boxes everywhere and unwashed dishes in the sink and around the kitchen. Windows were open and fans were buzzing. Everything was very quiet and you could hear the birds chirping outside.

“This place is disgusting,” Matt’s girlfriend said.

“Well, then grab some stuff and we can get out of here quickly.”

We made several trips up and down in the heat, taking out dress shirts, ties, half full bottles of liquor, pots, pans and a fishing pole, which Matt forced his girlfriend to take in her car. Then, Matt and I got in his car, while his girlfriend got in hers and we set off for White Plains. There was no traffic on the Merritt so Matt and I flew. We made small talk. We talked about the summer. He explained the intricacies of living in New Haven and told me some stories of danger. We talked about Jeff and other mutual friends we shared. We also talked about fishing. It was a nice conversation that had no awkward stops to it, only natural ones, which was a reassuring thing to happen in a conversation between two guys who had been brought together by a shared friend. Before I knew it, it was 5 o’clock and I was at the White Plains train station.

“I’ll see you soon, my man,” I said waving Matt off.

He gave a nod in his baseball cap and sunglasses and took off.

I waited for the train in the golden light of the late afternoon. The sun was filtering through the trees and I thought about all the times I had taken the Metro North. How at different times it had signaled ultimate heartbreak, an escape, a chore, and a drunken late spring afternoon reverie. I put on my headphones and began listening to the Bob Dylan bootleg from 1975. I listened to Bob wail and change the lyrics to his songs. I listened to him change the tempo.

Well I’m feeling a little bit scattered,

And your love is all that matters

‘Cause tonight I’ll be staying here with you.

I kept listening on the train and watching the trees pass by. I remembered the lemur statue in Jeff’s yard and what I had said about it. Perhaps I was wrong. Maybe it isn't just enough to simply make something that someone enjoys. Here was Bob Dylan, taking songs that people knew and loved, and then completely changing them. He rearranged the tempo so that the song took on a new meaning. He sang the lyrics with different emphasis, so that the songs took on a deeper meaning, maybe even a truer meaning than their original form. From the sound of the crowd, it seemed like audience enjoyed the new versions (how could you not with that backing band and especially those drums). Whether they liked it or not, it didn’t seem to matter to Dylan, all that mattered was that it sounded like he was having the best time of his life. As if he were saying to the world and to himself, “now this is what ‘A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall’ was supposed to sound like. I just couldn’t do it like this before.” There is a truth to the enjoyment of creating something and giving it to someone for their enjoyment—it is an act of care, of love. But perhaps that isn’t better than art, even if it is just something completely different than art.

When I got back to the city, I walked around the streets of my neighborhood in the last red light of the day; I wasn’t ready to go home yet. The smell of charcoal was in the air. I saw little girls taking large steps on the front stoops of their apartment buildings. It was Memorial Day without a doubt. I had just had a great weekend with old friends, their new loved ones, and other people who were nice and just trying to make their own way through this world and have their own Memorial Day weekends. I thought of the girl I was somewhat seeing and how I thought I might be able to love her, if that was even possible.

In front of me, a guy was walking his old, trodding, yellow dog. They walked slowly side by side toward the setting sun and I felt as scattered as I’d ever felt. I was wondering what mattered. I was pretty sure that I understood, but I couldn’t be quite sure. In any case, it was another Memorial Day.

K-Mark

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 08:08:09 PDT

We've come to another Friday, my Puddlers. There is another round of summer movies to be had, another round of summer dresses to observe women wearing and the continued hope of periods of rain, giving way to after-rain, which might be the most pleasant time to live in a city in the summer—especially if a park and a bar and a woman in a light purple dress are nearby.

I'll be dodging the heat this weekend and listening to the new Bon Iver album, which is fantastic. I recommend you listen to it as well as I'll probably be writing about it, rain, and Cat Stevens very soon. Also, next week look for one of those sprawling epic posts that has made me famous among those who detest fame.

However, today, we have Mark Jack in what I believe is one of his most poignant and on point posts, which is saying something because I feel like he has been on a roll over the past month. So, without further ado, I give you your Friday dose of Mr. Mark Richard Jack.

In Search

Mark Jack

Sometimes it seems like there is a certain satisfaction in circling around the glories of cultural appetites, even when it might be better to avoid that kind of taste altogether, that kind of circuitous observance and thought. I feel like I ought to do less of that, that circling, and instead move straight to the page or the computer screen or whatever. But then I fear my hand’s weakness, my eyes’ unwillingness and my mind’s flightiness and I circle and circle.

So when I’m told, “You can’t just get drunk and wait to become a writer,” or something like that, I’m terribly embarrassed by all the crass assumptions I’ve been making.

But Hell.

I just finished reading Swann’s Way and, don’t worry, I’m not going to talk about it. I don’t know that I could say anything that worthwhile. It is a stunning work that has enough baggage around it without my contributions. I was talking to a friend recently who said she tried to read it but couldn’t get into it, claiming disinterest in long passages about doorknobs. I don’t remember any particularly long passage about a doorknob but if it’s in there, I want to find it and confront one of the (most likely) most beautiful descriptions of a doorknob in literary history. Read it.

Reading Proust’s long passages on memory, I am forced to confront my own problems as “presence.” I wish I could be upset about something I’d done, rather than something I continue to do, for I could look on it all, then, as my past. For so many years I have not regretted, which is perhaps to say that I have not truly remembered. Either way, while I have recognized mistakes I’ve made and disliked aspects of my previous selves, I have never wished for the opportunity to change. I have been fairly content with myself—the smug bastard—and perhaps feared some disruption of the space-time continuum, and so never even considered things like, wanting to go back to high school and not buy that weed that got me expelled. I find myself rejecting, somewhat, that Doc Brown mentality recently, which leaves me in a shitty position. And I must admit that, while I am more inclined to it, time travel remains a fantasy.

I am actually happier, now, and in a fuller sense, than I have been for years, and it is this happiness that has made my regrets more punishing, as I have reached a place where I am beginning to feel that I deserve or at least have worked for a better life than one which consists of being taken advantage of at service industry jobs. I was interviewed on a WNYC show last fall and they tried to tell me I’m “malemployed” because I worked at a bar even though I have a B.A. That is, until they found out I majored in literature.

I think it is important to struggle with memory and reject mistakes, but not punish oneself for them in the present. I mean, we can’t be depressed because we did something shitty when we were ten, but we shouldn’t convince ourselves that the event was an integral part of a delicate narrative that has led to a person; a “me” that I am satisfied with, to a reasonable degree. Somehow, that attitude, which has been the predominant attitude of my life, is one that refuses real confrontation with oneself, either in the past or in the present, and one which, as it performs an act of avoidance also performs an act of inclusion. That is to say, we refuse to confront our mistakes so as to better establish them in convenient areas of our lives so that they are remembered as fitting, linear narratives. “Even though I shouldn’t have behaved that way,” this manner of thinking suggests, “it was integral to the self that I have become and to reject that mistake is to reject my self, which is a mistake.” Dumb bit of logic there, eh? I mean, why shouldn’t we reject ourselves, ever. I reject the drug obsessed arrogant puissant that I was my freshman year of college. I wasted a lot of time, a lot of everyone’s time. That kid that I was was a piece of shit, and since there is no Dolorean to take me back, I cannot know that if I slapped my former self around a bit and made him get his shit together a little sooner that somehow the world would’ve ended yesterday. Also, and this is the truly unfortunate thing about the lack of a flux capacitor, I cannot slap that obnoxious piece of shit that was me around, not even a little. My one consolation is to understand that; that self is not me.

Mark

P.S. I am moving to Berkeley, CA in August. Any help with job opportunities would be awesome. Thanks.

Theoharides On Sports Villains

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 11:30:37 PDT

Welcome to a scorching New York Wednesday, my Puddlers. Although, it seems like the entire country is suffering from the heat. You already know how I feel about it: bring it on, bring on the madness, bring on the homicide and score it to this song.

Speaking of the Heat—well I won't go into yet another collapse by Miami last night. The Heat's penchant for playing better when their backs are up against the wall is getting extremely infuriating and hopefully it doesn't cost them the series. In any case, this NBA Finals is shaping up to be an extremely memorable one, which is fresh on the heels of last year's excellent seven game series between the Lakers and the Celtics. All good things for the NBA.

While we are on the topic, Alex Theoharides is here today in his regular slot to weigh in on hating the Miami Heat and why its good to generally hate different players in sports. I'll leave it to Mr. Theoharides from here.

On Sports Villains or How Lebron James’s Decision Made the NBA Finals Interesting Again.

Alex Theoharides

Look, as a sport’s fan I can’t stand the Miami Heat. It’s in my fan DNA to dislike them - even prior to their current run of amateurish exhibitionism. Back when the New York Knicks were coached by Jeff Van Gundy and still played de-fence, the Heat were their last great rival. Their games were epic slugfests, filled with flagrant fouls, bench clearing brawls and suspensions. When I think of the Heat, I still think first of Tim Hardaway’s lickity-split crossover, PJ Brown tossing Charlie Ward over his shoulders, and Van Gundy hanging on to Alonzo Mourning’s ankles like a bratty toddler who didn’t want his father to leave for work (otherwise known as my favorite NBA highlight … ever). Those Miami Heat were easy to hate (anyone else find it interesting that Heat and hate have the same 4 letters? no? just me? great.) because they played an ugly brand of basketball. However, I always had a begrudging respect for them. The Heat of old weren’t sports’ villains, but simply grisly veterans willing to knock someone down if it meant they could advance to the next round of the playoffs. The Knicks were no different, perhaps even worse, and collectively the two teams so ruined the aesthetic of the NBA game that Commander, excuse me, Commissioner Stern had to institute sweeping rule changes into the league.

This Miami Heat team is different. Lebron and Wade play beautiful, sometimes breathtaking basketball. They defend, they attack the rim, they go after offensive rebounds, they make highlight play after highlight play … in short they play basketball exactly how it should be played. Still I hate them. I hate the way they came together. I hate the way they celebrate every good run as if they just won an A.A.U championship. And I hate how easy the game comes to them. Look, I admire the Heat, but I don’t respect them. I love watching them play basketball, but I don’t like the way they turned the NBA into a league in which superstars can just decide they only want to play with each other. I hate the Heat, I hate the Heat, I … I can’t stop watching the Heat.

Villains are great for sports. They give otherwise neutral sports fans a clear understanding of who they should root for, and, more importantly, who they should root against. Sports are more entertaining when fans have a vested interest, however insignificant, in the outcome. Some of my greatest childhood memories are of watching my favorite villain, Michael Jordan, repeatedly defeat every single fragging (yes, as in Battle Star Galactica) team in the NBA year after year, with that same damn wagging of his tongue. However, not all sport’s villains come in the same shape and size. Some, like Jordan, are all villains because of their greatness. They are only villains to those who root against them. Others, well, how about, in keeping with Dictator Domino, I just make a list. (Please note the high total of Knicks and Yankees, aka, my attempt to not play favorites)

Sports Villains

The Michael Jordan Division

True superstars, whose talent renders the outcome of games entirely too predictable; true superstars who break the hearts of sports fans year after year with their on field exploits, their perfect shots, or throws, or catches.

Joe Montana

Jerry Rice

Emmett Smith

Peyton Manning

Lebron James

Derek Jeter

Pete Sampras

Lance Armstrong

Wayne’s World

Yes, as in Wayne Gretzky, the great one, who I loved to watch, but who millions secretly detest because he, like everyone else in this list, was a pretty boy, who always seemed to get all the calls, all the stats, and yes many of the wins.

Magic Johnson

Tom Brady

Alex Rodriquez

Andre Agassi

Dan Marino

Roger Federer

Ty Cobb Division

Truly unlikable sonsofbitches, loved only by their team’s most ardent fans, and disliked by teammates and foes alike, who seemed to care more about their stats then they did about their teams performances

Wilt Chamberlain

Roger Clemens

Pete Rose

Oscar Robertson

Kobe Bryant

Barry Bonds

John McEnroe

Nolan Ryan

Eric Lindros

Curt Shilling

The Bill Romanowski Division

Hardworking, needle-some, whiny players, who made up for either their lack of age or talent, by barking at opponents, cheating at every good opportunity, and generally acting like Class A boors.

Bill Laimbeer

Kevin Garnett (circa 2008 -2011)

Dennis Rodman

Kevin Youkilis

Charles Oakley

Robert Parish

Ron Artest

Scott Stevens

The Orel Hershiser Division

Goody two shoes players, who somehow always seemed keen on reminding you of exactly how great they were, in a way, somewhat reminiscent of that kid we all had in math class, who not only got the answer first, but then preceded to spend five minutes telling you all about how he got the answer first. We get it Oral, you were a great pitcher, yes, you won all those games in the playoffs, yes, yes you were great. Just shove it already! It doesn’t help that these fine folk have a cruel tendency to end up as sports broadcasters.

Tim McCarver

Rick Barry

Kareem Abdul Jabbar

Greg Maddux

Paul O’Neill

Reggie Miller

J.J. Reddick (Duke version)

Christian Laettner (Duke version)

Basically any Duke player besides Grant Hill

The Manny Ramirez Division

Just Manny being Manny.

The Marriage of Federer and Nadal: Who's the GOAT?

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 13:50:56 PDT

On Sunday, Rafael Nadal won his 6^th French Open title. The win gave him his 10^th Grand Slam championship. In winning the match he raised his overall record against Roger Federer to 17 and 8. The fact that Rafael Nadal “owns” Roger Federer has suddenly changed from some kind of heat of the moment boast to something more closely resembling fact.

In the course of the 2011 French Open, the narrative for Roger Federer changed from the fact that he might be washed up to a rumble that he looked in top form to, “He’s back! Good God look at that serve, he’s back!”—the last comment coming after his epic victory over Djokovic in the semifinals. Now, after a loss to Nadal on Nadal’s preferred surface, Federer finds his story in a strange place: he is suddenly and unceremoniously being removed from his thrown as the Greatest of All Time. Why is he being removed? Because he has been able to consistently beat everyone besides Rafael Nadal. Now, Djokovic too has a winning record over Federer, but this is seen as some latter day changing of the guard in the story of Roger Federer’s tennis career. Djokovic is now the upstart whose head is finally on straight—and enigmatic roadblock to Nadal’s ascension as the Greatest of All Time. Djokovic is a fine player, but Nadal has beaten Federer in Federer’s prime. First it was only on clay. Then, he took him to the limit at Wimbledon in 2007 before finally beating Federer the next year in perhaps the greatest tennis match of all time. Nadal and Federer are tied together by time and history and, unfortunately, there is nothing we can do about it for better and for worse.

As this article points out, how can we consider Roger Federer the Greatest of All Time if he has not been able to consistently beat his greatest challenger? Nadals 17-8 record against Federer suggests less of a rivalry and more of one player dominating another—Nadal’s rugged strength and defense mastering Federer’s elegance and seeming magic. As Wiedeman points out, Michael Jordan never had one opponent he could not consistently beat. Michael beat everyone, even those initial bullies like the Detroit Pistons who stood in the way of his dominance. Do 16 Grand Slam titles truly matter, do they mean anything if you can’t beat your greatest competition?

It’s an interesting question and I say that the 16 titles do matter. I don’t particularly like Federer despite all of his well-known grace, good sportsmanship and class. Federer makes the game look easy and beautiful, but there always seems to be something forced behind it all, something I can’t quite articulate, but to me is painfully evident. However, he is a fantastic champion and quite frankly dominated the sport of tennis for nearly a decade. He has the most Grand Slam Championships of all time and that kind of success has to mean something. Even if the competition of the field was inferior in the heart of his dominance, tennis is set up so that even an inferior field can breed an upset over an overwhelming powerhouse of a champion. Nadal is my favorite tennis player of all time, but Federer is the greatest player of all time.

As much as I love sports and love comparing different players and eras, I know that the exercise of comparison is wrong. Even though Nadal and Federer are peers in a sense, there is a certain distance between them. Federer is close to five years older than Nadal, which is equal to ten years in tennis. They do almost represent two different “eras.” But their greatness and their rivalry and their combined shadow over the field causes us to compare. It’s hard not to since they have been magnetically drawn to each other in their stature, which is directly due to both their achievement as well as time.

I was reading Jeff McGregor’s piece on Nadal and Federer and he suggests that Nadal is slowly becoming Federer, that his game is evolving beyond its initial reliance on strength and ungodly endurance. McGregor says that Nadal has become a much better shot maker and technician, closer to Federer’s mold. I don’t know enough about tennis to know if this is true or not. Nadal never exudes the elegance of Federer on the court and he’ll never leave you speechless with his array of trick shots. However, Nadal has improved his serve so that he breaks it out when he absolutely has to. To my eye, he no longer presses with as much force during a match so that you wonder if his knees will explode. He still has that reputation, but it is no longer his actual identity. His actual identity as a tennis player is the best defensive player of his era and perhaps the most accomplished shot-maker, even better than Federer. He doesn’t have the same magic tricks, but a ball you thought was dead will suddenly coming back to you at the strangest angle. Nadal doesn’t dress it up—he just does it. And, because he cares so much, because he plays so hard, you never know when he might unveil a new trick, a new element to his game. That new element will most likely be something as simple as his shocking service game at the 2010 U.S. Open.

Nadal’s 6 French Open titles tied Bjorn Borg’s record. I read about Bjorn Borg to finally learn about his career. He was a prodigious talent who won 11 Grand Slam titles and retired from tennis at the age of 26 for mysterious reasons. Arthur Ashe later described him as follows:

“By the time he left, the historical challenge didn’t mean anything. He was bigger than the game. He was like Elvis or Liz Taylor or somebody.”

The description of his game sounds like some strange combination of Nadal and Federer. And maybe that means something, but what I was mainly struck by was the field that Borg played against. He won titles against Ashe, Connors, McEnroe, Vitas Gerulaitis and even Rod Laver. When reading about Borg, there was an overwhelming sense of history that rose from the era he played in. I’m not trying to say that the historic field makes Borg a better champion than Federer or Nadal, nordoes the fact that he has such an iconic stature within the game—its just who he is, its just what Bjorn Borg means. He is the mythic figure with silver locks who sits courtside at all the Grand Slams. He is the enigma. He is something that “tennis,” the very definition of the sport as something done in history, needed to exist.

Nadal and Federer have made me love tennis. It is a sport whose psychology is perhaps not matched elsewhere. Not even my beloved basketball has no many ebbs and flows in momentum and psyche that can seemingly happen in an instant. It is one man against another man, each one relying on his endurance, body control, confidence and acquired skill. It represents all of the individual traits and philosophies I admire in life: independence, self-reliance, competition and success. Where sometimes I find myself facilitating others, perhaps to both their detriment and mine, tennis has no facilitations, only individual reliance and achievement. Nadal and Federer made me realize this.

No, Nadal is not becoming Federer, but they are tied together by something that may look like a fusion or transformation. Obviously, their rivalry ties them together. As a sports pundit, Mike Greenberg, said, Federer and Nadal are writing the history of tennis right now. When we talk about tennis we will talk about Nadal and Federer. Perhaps it is their difference in style or the fact that the stakes are so high whenever they play; or perhaps it is merely the fact that Federer vs. Nadal is all we truly want to see. But maybe it is something else. Nadal and Federer need each other and the sport of tennis has needed them both. I don’t believe you would have an ambitious but mentally fragile Andy Murray, a quirky but dangerous Soderling, an always game Del Potro, Ferrer or Monfils, and even a motivated Djokovic if Federer alone was running roughshod over the sport. It is their combined dominance that inspires others. Two men existing and battling in a rare air is far more encouraging than just one man battling himself (Jordan may have been the lone exception to this rule). Nadal and Federer are tied together by something more than a rivalry, they are bound by some kind of mysterious fate, their actions, their victories and failures that are history. And when those things are involved, which one of them is the greatest of all time doesn’t really matter—even if I’ll always be rooting for Nadal.

Don't Break My Mark

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 13:32:28 PDT

It's Friday once again, my Puddlers, and I am definitely looking forward to this weekend. I'm going to keep this preamble short by just saying you should all love your friends, feel bad for victims of the terrible tornados, know that the best place to be during a tornado is underground or in a natural ditch, and that when you are up 15 points in the fourth quarter with a chance to go up 2-0 in the NBA Finals, you do not stop running your offense and rely on "hero-ball" aka throwing up three-pointers.

That's it for me this week. Now, I leave you with the one man who can do what he does—Mr. Mark Jack.

High, Low and In Between

Mark Jack

What about the fact that we speak too greedily of ourselves? Are we too readily to see in this action a dilemma? Is it possible that we too arbitrarily suggest, by identifying this action as a dilemma, an ethics imperfectly followed?

What of it all?

Moreover, who has allowed the proliferation of such a voice, such an increasingly pedagogical voice, here? (Matthew!!)

There is some strange double movement, here, of democratic specialization. Perhaps it is merely a chaos of opinions imperfectly read as such and the problem of such misreading is due to this confused space. But what space?

Much of the writing I encounter on the Internet is decent at best, but the lack of hierarchical positioning renders our navigation of worth difficult as the decent manifests itself on the same level as the heinous and the sometimes profound. My ability to traverse the information as if perusing a schizophrenic quilt, in my mind, does not perform a revolutionary re-reading of knowledge or power, but instead, relegates language to advertisement. Reading the average blog, one quickly comes across a blue, underlined phrase that, if clicked, takes the reader to yet another page with its own set of blue links to more pages, ad infinitum. Moreover, all this linkage is surrounded by unapologetic advertisements.

In addition to this one may find that most posts are merely a re-rendering of popular culture as performed by the main players into the form of journal. By inserting the presence of the I into the happenings of the day, or some new record, we are asserting both our (meaning bloggers) individuality—as personal and yet non-specialist—and our expertise—as we may suggest, by hyperlink not our knowledge, which might be imperfect, but another’s, which, though possibly imperfect, is at a remove from us, and so deniable, making our assertions as expert via un-impeachability.

So what?

I do find it both discomforting and comforting. The ease with which I, earlier today, watched a music video of Dominique Young Unique and, then, watched a video of Elaine Scarry lecturing at Cambridge is, despite the joy I find in such an ability to access information, a bit disconcerting. Perhaps I am discomforted because I cling to the old forms of access as a means to power, perhaps in my unease I reveal the reluctance with which I approach the focus of much my liberal arts education, which was to challenge such limited access, and subsequently reveal my desire to remain privileged.

What I am actually concerned with here is not that one has greater access to information—that, I think is positive—but rather that varied information is given almost equal resonance. The discussion I might have in an academic setting may carry over to the bar, and I have been delighted when it has, but in no way should we confuse the alcoholic passion of the bar discussion with the rigor of the academic. Both have their merits, but we are given cues as to how much and what kind of attention should be given in the physical world while the internet largely erases such cues, which is why, perhaps, you are here, reading this. Sorry.

The Internet seems to operate spatially and yet I do not find myself using spatial vocabulary.

I have used the word “here” many times in this post and yet, even while my assumption is that here refers to the virtual space of this blog, I can’t help but simultaneously position myself in my bedroom where I am writing this and where I would most likely read it. Here, then becomes a spatial specific word but not a site specific. The word “on” is another commonly used word, which operates in terms of a spatial metaphor. As I write this, I am on a chair, but I am also on my computer.

These are not exactly profound realizations, but I think it is important to recognize the limitations of the spatial metaphors used for the Internet. The collapse of high and low culture is not new to the Internet and, I believe, a positive thing, a sort of continuation of the modernist utopian project. However, the collapse of notions of expertise is problematic. In addition to this, the boundaries of culture and language largely remain. Google searches do not routinely return results that are pages in different languages or that were created in other countries, even if English speakers.

There is a strange geography that we are routinely exploring, and as comfortable as we become and as dependent as we become upon this world we have yet to truly confront the ethics of this space in the same way we have in the physical world. I look forward to the explorations and the critiques.

Love,

Mark

Farewell Big Aristotle, Goodbye Shaq

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 08:09:26 PDT

It brings me a certain level of pain to feel forced to throw up a post about basketball that isn’t about the NBA Finals. I want to write about the fact that all of the sports pundits who are so reluctant to give Miami any credit for the run they are on are completely in denial. Yes, Miami’s defense is that good. Yes, they have learned to play well together. Yes, their supporting cast is not as bad as we all thought it was now that all of the players that were supposed to play are finally on the court together when it matters. Yes, Dallas is not that much better of an offensive team or team in general. Please just give Miami credit, despite your inclination to be angry at surface appearances rather than to completely understand the entire experiment. I’m tired of short sighted declarative remarks on who the Miami Heat are. Let’s think about the narrative of basketball in general, of people in general and of where we are not only in the history of the NBA, but as a society in relation to our heroes, our values and what we deem as virtues.

However, I have to write about Shaquille O’Neal because we will probably never see him play basketball again.

In 1993, I was backstage at a talent show (yes, talent show) at my elementary school, Pearl S. Buck Elementary. I was going to be lip synching the words to the “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” and doing an early 90’s dance routine with two friends of mine (I was seven years old and it was the angular, neon, early 90’s). I was just beginning to learn about and understand basketball. Hell, I was just a few weeks removed from my first two great basketball experiences (watching the 1993 East Regional Sweet Sixteen live and then the 1993 NCAA Championship late at night) and a few weeks away from one of the most formative basketball experiences of my life (watching Game 3 of the 1993 NBA Finals when the Suns beat the Bulls in triple overtime 129-121). We were backstage at the show and kids were talking about someone named “Shack.” I imagined who this player was that they were referring to. I didn’t watch basketball as religiously as I do now and the Orlando Magic weren’t in the 1993 Playoffs. I only found out about Shaq, Shaquille O’Neal, at the 1993 Draft when a player named Penny Hardaway was traded by the Golden State Warriors to the Orlando Magic for Chris Webber. The announcers were baffled because a teaming of Webber and “Shaq” (as it was actually spelled) seemed unstoppable. They showed clips of Webber on the Fab Five Michigan team, which I was familiar with. Then, they showed clips of Shaq. I don’t think I had seen anyone jump as high as Shaq. Not Shawn Kemp, not Michael Jordan, not anyone. He jumped with a different force; he broke backboards. That summer, I lowered my net and started practicing my dunks. I was seven years old and my hands hurt when I grabbed the rim.

As the 1990’s continued and I grew into my consciousness as an active person and as a basketball fan, I pledged allegiance to Jordan. There was just something right about him. His movements were so smooth, the angles and places he got to were unreal, there was just an element of inevitability about Michael Jordan—he was the hero and he was always going to win. It’s only later in life that I understand the toll that took on him personally as well as on those around him, but then, it just seemed right. Michael Jordan was the best player. When Shaq and the Orlando Magic unceremoniously dumped Jordan and the Bulls from the 1995 Playoffs, I was furious. I watched as Shaq and Penny victoriously carried a vindicated Horace Grant off the court on their shoulders. And I was more than pleased a year later when the Bulls swept the Magic in the Eastern Conference Finals, effectively ending the Orlando Magic’s “Penny and Shaq era” as Shaq moved west to the Los Angeles Lakers.

Jordan retired. The league went on strike. Tim Duncan won a championship, but Shaq was the best player. He was to be the new face of the league. Then, a young Kobe Bryant joined him and things started to happen. Shaq had always been a force of nature—a huge and imposing physical specimen, who nonetheless had a playful and goofy demeanor (see Kazaam!). However, in 1999-2000, Shaq became the immovable object. Shaq took on that air of inevitability. You fed Shaq the ball and he either got to the rim for a dunk, an easy layup, the baby hook or he passed it out to an open man or he was fouled. Shaq was fouled a lot. They invented the “Hack-a-Shaq” for God’s sake, which was one of the worst developments in basketball. I’ll remember the “Hack-a-Shaq”—it is an unfortunate part of his legacy—but I’ll mostly remember the dominance, the inevitability you felt when you watched Shaq. I hated the Lakers during their dominant run from 1999-2004. I hated Shaq, I hated Kobe, I hated Rick Fox and everyone else. They were a great team, though, and Shaq was phenomenal.

However, from my perspective, it seems like there should have been more. I know that is unfair to say and I don’t know why I’m saying it about a player I never liked, but simply marveled at and acknowledged his greatness. When Jordan entered that realm of inevitability he seemed to revel in it, it seemed to permeate everything about him, whereas with Shaq it never did. With Shaq, he seemed to see his own inevitability, he saw the shape and knew it for what it was and decided that it wasn’t for him. So, perhaps that makes him better in a way than Jordan, perhaps the psychological and spiritual damage is less. After all, Shaq is known for his off the court penchant for solving crimes as a volunteer police officer, for his playful antics, his sense of humor and his charity. And that all comes with being a basketball player and a larger than life figure. Shaq was always comfortable in his skin as a big man, which is a proven rarity (see Kareem Abdul Jabaar to this day), and he was perhaps comfortable with not realizing his total potential as a basketball player. He went through seasons out of shape, he pouted about fame and his importance. He left feuds and a bad taste in his wake (see Penny Hardaway, Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade and even Steve Nash). There was a convincing essay by the FreeDarko guys that made a very convincing claim that perhaps Shaq was never the person we imagined him to be—perhaps it was all an act, by someone who was maybe more insecure than we imagined.

And yet, he won four titles, the 2000 MVP Award, 3 Finals MVP Awards and other accolades. He was a star beyond stars. He was a rock. He was there year after year. He was Shaq and he was inevitable.

This past year in Boston you knew it was the end of the line. Shaq stayed away from the spotlight other than his good-natured antics with the citizens of Boston. He stressed the importance of taking less money to play for a winning team, something he never said before. He was not a force of nature, but rather someone you were hoping could give you ten points and five rebounds a night. The only inevitability about Shaq was that he would be injured. So, I’m glad he retired. He was a phenomenal player that I will never forget. He is certainly one of the top five centers or “big men” of all-time. We may never see a player play Shaq’s type of physical, forceful post game again (Dwight Howard is a long shot to even come close) and that makes me sad. Yet, I still feel like he left something behind. I still remind the periods of Fat Shaq, the player who somewhat took his own inevitability for granted. Maybe, like I said, he knew what it was and didn’t want it, maybe it was a conscious decision. And I know you’re not supposed to compare a player to another player, especially not to Jordan. But there is something about embracing that rare trait of inevitability that is appealing to me, that seems honorable, no matter what the damage may be. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Shaq is right. I’m not sure that we’ll ever know for sure and maybe that’s just one of the ways that people are different.

In any event, thank you Shaq for having left your mark. Thank you for making the history of the NBA that much richer. I’ll be seeing you shortly on TV somewhere.

Theoharides on the Apocalpyse

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 12:36:54 PDT

Hey, my Puddlers. Sorry for the lack of action or communication over the past week or so—writing up these hilarious lists, maintaining an absurdist based Twitter feed, and posting things to Reddit can really take the life out of you. I also went away for the Memorial Day weekend and I have some kind of idea swirling around for an epic post; something with "mud on it" as Delmond from Treme so recently said on a great episode of that show. I'm going to try to get it up here this week, but it may have to wait until next week due to my busy personal and professional life (plus the NBA Finals is taking up much of my attention).

Also, later this summer I will be taking a break from posting in order to finish my revision of Last Mound of Dirt so that I can begin pitching it to agents. This should also coincide with the redesign of the entire site, so stayed tuned for announcements regarding all of that. There is no Mad Men season this summer so I won't be doing recaps to fill in the space. Instead I may just post guest posts and small little updates or thoughts from myself. Nothing going over 300 to 500 words, though. We'll see. I may just give the entire world a vacation.

Anyway, this week we'll have a Mark Jack post on Friday and next week or the week after we'll make another stop in the mind of Puddles of Myself Special Guest Columnist, Erik Lilleby, who will share another personal story.

However, today, we have Mr. Alex Theoharides who has a few things on his mind:

Theoharides On America in the Age of the Apocalypse:

A Rant & A List (Let’s Call it Wednesday)

Alex Theoharides

The Rant (written, as all good rants should be, in the third person plural):

America the wonderful, we proclaim. Land of opportunity and of Thanksgiving. Jazz and Hip Hop. Steinbeck and Kerouac. Cracker Jacks and Micky D’s. Microsoft and Macintosh. Baseball and Football and Basketball (oh my!).

And yes, also the Land of the Apocalypse.

This past month, Americans have waited with baited breath for the earth to cave in beneath us -- our breath held not because we fear the end of the world, but because we secretly pine for it, longing to be witnesses to the end. How else to explain our obsession with crazed preachers and Mayan calendars, our deep-rooted affinity for movies such as Armageddon, Mad Max, Water World, I Am Legend, novels such as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, our bitterness that this past week didn’t end with earthquakes but with yet another proclamation -- the end is nigh, the end is nigh.

America’s obsession with the Apocalypse stems from our base understanding of ourselves, of our nation and its place in the history of the world. American children are taught to be dreamers, to live with a suspension of disbelief; the suspension being, of course, that America is the ideal society. Borne out of the linear dynasties of Greece and Rome and the United Kingdom, America, we feel in our heart of hearts, our bones, is the land that stands for all that is right in the world. Sure we protest the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, we bemoan the actions (or lack thereof) of our political elite. Certainly, when we travel abroad, we feel contempt for our fellow stupid Americans. However, lurking just beneath our skin-deep criticism of our nation is our deep-rooted pride in the American Dream, in the Greatest Generation’s storming of Normandy, in the Beats travelling by jalopy from sea to shining sea.

We want America to go out on top. We don’t really care about the threat of global warning. We’re not good about conserving water, recycling, reusing, or reducing. And we secretly suspect re: (hope) that the rash of earthquakes, giant waves, hurricanes and tornadoes that have occurred over the last few years is a sign. A sign of what? Of the Apocalypse (cue somber music), of course.

Signs of the Apocalypse

Yesterday, two eight-year-old boys in front of me on line at the local Dunn Bros coffee shop, ordered Caramel Mocha Lattes.

Barry Bonds, without making a big deal of it, without even jamming a single needle up his sizable rear end, offered to pay tuition for the kids of the Giant fan in a coma.

The President of Urban Outfitters (yes, that hipster locale) has been making large donations to anti-gay politicians.

Lebron’s “The Decision” turned out to actually be good for the NBA.

A fetus has over 200 friends on Facebook.

A rash of horse herpes has forced a group of riders to practice their craft on … wait for it … stick horses.

Airline passengers got into a fight over a reclined seat.

And yes, I wrote a blog post about the Apocalypse.

Top 20 Friendships of All-Time Part 2

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Thu, 26 May 2011 13:43:46 PDT

It's Thursday, my Puddlers, and I'm back to provide you with Part 2 of the Top Twenty Friendships of All-Time. You can look at Part 1 of the list by clicking here.

Before we begin there are a few honorable mentions that did not make it on this list: Artie and Larry Sanders, Bart Simpson and Millhouse, Laverne and Shirley, Rory Gilmore and Paris Gellar (for the evolution), Bruce Springsteen and his guitar, Michael Jordan and Charles Oakley, Zach Morris and Jesse Spano, Zach Morris and Skreech. Those are only a few of the honorable mentions and you can feel free to contact me with some of the friendships that you think are tragically missing from this list. I'd be glad to hear and entertain your arguments.

One more note before we begin: Dirk Nowitzki is playing out of his mind right now. If you are a marginal fan of basketball, you need to watch what Dirk is doing on a nightly basis. He is making impossible shots seem easy. His fadeaway is unguardable and his one-legged jumper has become the only other trademark move of this current era besides the Rondo fake/scoop layup. It has been absolute treat to watch Dirk play over the past month and I can only hope he continues to play at this level in the Finals, because it will only make it that much better and competitive.

Now, we continue with the Top 20 Friendships of All-Time:

10. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - This may have been the first “buddy” movie of all-time. I say that unofficially, but I am fairly confident in my assessment. Some may say that the relationship between Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was more a “here and sidekick” relationship, but I see it as more of an evolutionary Don Quixote and Sancho Panza dynamic. Cassidy’s time in the world is up, but he refuses to believe it. The Kid is more of an equal to Cassidy than Sancho Panza was to Quixote, but he doesn’t know any better about the world changing so they continue on in their outlaw adventures in the face of their unknown pursuers—continuing a delusion about their own existences. So there’s that and also the fact that they both like the same woman but manage to not fight over her. And something has to be said about dying side by side with your friend in Bolivia in a gunfight when you are completely outnumbered by Bolivian soldiers. Finally, they are both so handsome and cool. I definitely think that I have more of a Cassidy (read Newman) vibe—impossibly good looking and distinguished.

9. Aaliyah and Missy Elliott – Their friendship was perhaps the most prominent female friendship in modern R&B, although it only lasted a short time. They were both cutting edge artists who worked together as well as with Timbaland at the turn of the millennium. There’s actually not much more I can say about this friendship other than the fact that they both made some revolutionary music about ten years ago and that Missy paid tribute to Aaliyah after she died like any true friend would. What? What else do you want from me? I’ve expounded about plenty of fictional and real friendships so far and there was bound to be one that was a little shorter than the rest, right?

8. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel – Their friendship is like a fine wine: aged, stored in a musty cellar over time, has a slightly bitter taste at the back of the tongue but with a slightly sweet, full-bodied finish. Simon and Garfunkel first met each other in elementary school in Forest Hills, Queens and started singing together at a very young age. They split up after high school, but reconnected a few years later and created some of the most memorable music and harmonies of all-time. Can you imagine creating an enduring and complex work of art like Bookends or Bridge Over Troubled Water with your childhood friend? Imagine you are Paul Simon and you have just written “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and you know your friend and singing partner so well that you understand he will master the song more than you ever could. Sure they fought and broke up, but it gave us “The Only Living Boy in New York.” And they had perhaps the most famous friend reunion ever at their 1981 Central Park concert, which was complete with rain and a record audience. Sounds like a Top 10 friendship to me.

7. Martina Navratilova and Chrissy Evert – This was a classic sports friendship. By that I mean that the excellence of these two women at tennis and their exhaustive competition completely overshadowed the fact that they were actually great friends. Also, their respective images caused people to confuse their personalities. Chrissy Evert with her blonde hair and turn of the 1980’s good looks was seen as the delicate and graceful champion. Meanwhile, Navratilova, with her gawky, slightly masculine appearance and eastern European bark, was seen as the hyper competitive aggressor. Well, that and she started to dominate Evert and every other women’s tennis player in the era. In reality, Evert was far more competitive and outspoken while Navratilova was humble and mild mannered. The public’s misconception and focus on their rivalry only brought these two women closer together as friends.

6. Thelma and Louise – No friendship list would be complete without Louise Elizabeth Sawyer and Thelma Yvonne Dickinson. First of all, these two just get credit in general for basically setting the tone for early 90’s women’s looks and fashion—Geena Davis especially since she was one of the archetypal babes of the 1988-1993 era. In the more specific, you have to like this friendship because of the way that these two women bonded over their trapped lives and were able to take a stab at some kind of freedom or liberation even if it got away from them. Their relationship is the go-to relationship for female outlaws and perhaps female buddy movies in general. There is nothing that says friendship or loyalty more than killing a guy who is trying to rape your friend and then going on a road trip to stay on the lamb and avoid the feds. Plus they have the iconic image of driving the 1966 Thunderbird Convertible off the cliff as they hold hands. All women should be so lucky to be friends like Thelma and Louise were.

5. Larry Bird and Magic Johnson – This is perhaps the greatest sports friendship of all time and one of the best overall sports stories, as I have previously written about. There were countless themes and factors that tried to stand in the way of the friendship between Magic and Bird: race, natural rivalry, NBA lineage rivalry, and personality. However, these two not only channeled all of those things into some of the most compelling athletics ever, but also into a lasting friendship. Larry and Magic were not friends for much of their NBA careers. It wasn’t until the late 80’s that they began to actually speak to each other. However, it was the usually reserved Bird that publicly showed his love if Magic when he expressed such great concern and sorrow over Magic’s contraction of HIV in 1991. These two friends not only had a legendary impact on the game of basketball, they also had an impact on each other’s lives. Two polar opposites who combined to drive and inspire the other.

4. Doc Brown and Marty McFly – No one in Hill Valley ever questioned the friendship between a 17 year old 80’s rocker and an eccentric old man scientist. The reason was because the friendship between Marty McFly and Doc Brown was so great. These two not only set the bar for time travel, but they also made the Delorean one of the most iconic cars of all time. Their sense of adventure and scientific curiosity often put the balance of the universe and our very existence in jeopardy, but everything seemed to work out. Sure Marty caused Doc to let a “Great Scott!” from time to time or Doc’s scientific jargon left Marty baffled—overall these two understood each other. How else do you explain the intuition of Doc flying the Delorean up the side of Biff Towers in the alternate 1985 to allow Marty to jump off the roof onto the hood of the Delorean so he could smack middle-aged alternate Biff in the face with the Delorean door in order to escape from being shot and go back to 1955 to correct the space-time continuum? All of us can only wish that we had the ability to read our friends’ minds that well. I’d argue that the adventures of Doc Brown and Marty McFly have not been surpassed in the past 25 years. Were this old man and this young 1980’s teen great friends? You’re damn right they were.

3. Neal Cassidy and Jack Kerouac – With all due respect to Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway, the friendship between Jack and Neal has been the most influential friendship on my life, which is something that thousands of men can say. Kerouac and Cassidy set the blueprint for the modern male friendship. They were young, good-looking, all-American, adventurous, maintained a prolonged friendship, shared the other’s wife/girl at the time, and devoted an intense attention to each other that people often mistook for homosexuality. The friendship between Neal and Jack represented what all guys want, a buddy to take road trips with; to smoke cigarettes and drink bad coffee with; to drive maniacally across the country and pick up women, but to also marvel at the natural beauty of the world as well as the simple holiness of a stretch of road or the seats in a diner or vanilla ice cream on apple pie. You have the trope of the book smart introvert who longs to be a freewheeling, street-smart, naturally masculine con artist in play. The writer who loved women but is awkward and clumsy around them confessing his soul, while the other is an expert driver who seems to fall into a girl in every town and makes them all fall in love with him. In a moment of fervor (I won’t say what substance was fueling me) I once turned to my friend Chris Redder on the way to a keg party in out senior year of high school and said, “You’re the Neal to my Jack.” And we ambled along in his white Jeep in the fading twilight of one of those high school springs that you can never get back. The keg party was good that night—we owned it. Any guy lives to be able to say that phrase about a friend. You may not be able to get those twilights back, but you can cherish the enduring friendship and mythology.

2. Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King – This is a timely friendship due to the fact that Oprah’s show just went off the air after 25 years and there is not much I can really add to what this friendship symbolizes. Oprah is the most powerful woman in the world and one of the most, if not the most powerful media presence in the world. Gayle King is her best friend as well as an intelligent editor, radio show host and general advice giver. The two have been friends for over 30 years and have a close bond and attention to each other that people often mistake for homosexuality, which, as we covered in the previous entry, is the sign of an iconic friendship. In the modern era, when people refer to being good friends, they use Oprah and Gayle as the example. And that’s not just between my friends and I, women usually do it as well. Basically, when you say Oprah and Gayle, everyone—even a majority of men—knows you are talking about two great friends. To me, that factor alone has to put them in the Top 3.

1. John Lennon and Paul McCartney – Some people may scoff at this one since John and Paul were collaborators and band mates more than they were actually friends. However, they started off as teenage boys in Liverpool and they started off as friends. As I’ve covered before, the Beatles are such a unique phenomenon that it’s hard to delve into their mythology time and time again. However, I love the Beatles and I love both Paul McCartney and John Lennon in such great amounts that we have to dive in. Paul and John were close friends just as the Beatles were as a band. However, through their friendship and partnership some of the most enduring tropes were developed for collaboration, the most notable of course being that John was the smart one who wrote more complex, confessional lyrics and harder edged songs, while Paul was more whimsical and tended to write songs about funny characters and could toss off a simple melody with ease. Anyone who has had a creative friend or a friend in general tends to think of where they fit in the John and Paul dynamic, whether you are working on a musical project or any other artistic endeavor or if you are just reacting some event in your life. You take a minute to wonder, “Am I John or Paul in this scenario?” Their partnership driving the Beatles for most of their time as band almost singlehandedly changed the pop-culture of the entire world. Their partnership has left an indelible mark not only on music in general, but also humanity. We all know that they had a falling out that lasted pretty much until John was assassinated, but the true grief and devastation that Paul felt after John died was the emotion born out of being friends with, knowing and loving someone for a long, long time. That was at the heart of the Lennon/McCartney partnership and for that reason they get the number one ranking on yet another perfect list that you can’t really argue with.

Top 20 Friendships of All-Time Part 1

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Tue, 31 May 2011 14:35:16 PDT

One of the best parts about reading this blog is observing and enjoying the lists that I post from time to time. One of the other great parts about reading this blog is intently following my long, romantic and poignant posts on friendship, which is probably the virtue I have sought to define for much of the twenty-five years I have been alive. I’ve quoted Michael Chabon before, but his quote from The Mysteries of Pittsburgh that it is friendship and not love that truly eludes us is probably one of the most true statements that has ever been written. One could write for hours about what it means to be a good friend to another person. What a good male friendship consists of or what a great female friendship consists of. And even more hours could be spent analyzing male and female friendships or whether the relationship between men and women is ever truly a friendship. There are layers upon layers and gestures upon gestures that lead us to great and meaningful discoveries about who we are as people and what we value in others. We can make great virtues out of our friendships and drive our friends crazy by holding them to high standards, or we can place little value on friendship and sleep with our best friend’s girlfriend. And even then, there is plenty of grey area. It is a topic I will spend the rest of my life trying to define.

However, in the meantime I’ve decided to probe history, movies, TV, music and literature in order to find the Top 20 Friendships of all-time. This list is so in depth and eloquent that we’re breaking it up into two parts. Believe me, that’s definitely the reason we’re splitting it up and not because I had to fill in some space this week.

So, without further ado, here is my list of the Top 20 Friendships of All-Time:

20. Dawson Leary and Joey Potter – I think that this ranking will immediately have some dissenters due to the fact that these two characters have a spot in any twenty-something’s heart. Dawson Leary and Joey Potter were introduced to us in 1997 on the WB and for those of us in our early to mid teens were directly influenced by the relationship between Dawson and Joey. She was the pretty tomboy who snuck into his window at night to talk about life. He was the film geek who just couldn’t see how beautiful she actually was and that he loved her. There was a classic element of tragedy to their friendship and that tragedy was called love. The fact that Dawson romantically loved Joey is actually what drops them down on this list. Sure they had a star-crossed romance that eventually ended up with them not being together. But over that time you can’t overlook that these friends slept together, which somehow disqualifies them from the mystic connection that an actual friendship is. With romance, you can pin the sensation down from time to time and express love, passion or romance in sex. Friendship is only briefly defined by obscure actions, nonchalant conversation and beer that slowly fades away. Some may believe in sex being possible between friends (e.g. the Natalie Portman fuck-buddy movie) but I’m more of a skeptic. Sorry Joey and Dawson, maybe you should have stuck to talking shop about Spielberg.

19. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson – This has become one of the most underrated friendships of all time. These guys were once bitter political rivals in the early days of this country. They both lived in the shadow of George Washington and were trying to form the country in line with their own strong visions. It was a classic story of fame and politics getting between two friends. Adams and Jefferson were originally close during the days of the Revolutionary War, even setting some Lennon/McCartney precedents by penning the “Declaration of Independence” together. However, the growing interests of this country both home and abroad tore them apart. The greatest betrayal may have been Adams’ appointment of the “Midnight Judges” after he lost the 1800 election to Jefferson in an attempt to spoil Jefferson’s presidency by putting some of his men in the Supreme Court right before his term was up. Jefferson was able to pass legislation to remove these men from office and slowly their friendship resumed as the bright candles of the White House faded from each of their eyes. They started an epic letter correspondence (like two other friends who will appear on this list) until the day they died—which was the same day. On his deathbed, Adams famously uttered, “Thomas Jefferson survives.” However, before the Internet and Twitter there was no way he could have known that his friend had already died a few hours earlier. Nothing says friendship more than the belief that no matter how you fail or no matter if your time is up, you are thinking about how your buddy is continuing on.

18. Monica Geller/Rachel Green/ Phoebe Buffay – This list would be not be complete with out an entry from the legendary sitcom Friends, which was probably one of the most iconic cultural items of the entire decade of the 1990’s. Some would say that Joey and Chandler were the better “friends” on the show, but I have to give it to the girls. Friends as a show was not believable in the slightest, but it seemed like the fights between Monica and Rachel were more believable as friends. Now, Phoebe generally didn’t have storylines involving her fighting with Monica or Rachel, but she was definitely a good source of comic relief to ease the tension when there was a fight. And of course she had her feelings hurt from time to time as well. We’ve all seen the show—these women had some good times and some bad times. They fought with each other and slept with men that the other liked. They all lived in New York in the same apartment and waited a long time to have kids in non-traditional ways. Wait a second; maybe the show was more realistic than I thought.

17. Han Solo and Chewbacca – This might be the most famous interstellar friendship of all time. Spock and Captain Kirk were too aloof. Now, friends will be aloof, but their relationship was different, it felt too professional. Obi wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker had more of an older brother/younger brother dynamic and Luke and Han had a sort of romantic rival dynamic that was eventually settled when it was revealed that Leia was Luke’s sister. Han and Chewy, now that was a friendship. From the moment we meet them in A New Hope, we get a sense of their back-story, that this galactic swashbuckler and his large hairy friend had all kinds of adventures together and truly cared about each other. You can picture Han and Chewy behind the wheel of the Millennium Falcon on some long space startrip across a galaxy far, far away, smoking cigarettes and listening to the Replacebots and just idly talking and roaring about how strange life can be and how just the simple good looks of a spacewoman can ease their aching hearts. If you don’t think that these were the two of the greatest friends of all time, then you are racist and need to look at yourself in the mirror.

16. Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway - "That is what you are. That's what you all are...All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation." That is the concluding line of a story about a mechanic that Gertrude Stein told to Ernest Hemingway, which inspired his inscription for The Sun Also Rises. Their friendship was a short but powerful friendship. Stein introduced Hemingway to bullfighting, encouraged him to give up journalism and embrace fiction and even helped edit some of his earliest work. Stein was like a mother figure to Hemingway, which is a friendship that is not often discussed in the world and literature: mother as friend to son. Now, of course there were Oedipal undertones as Hemingway has admitted that he wanted to sleep with Stein because of the fact that she reminded him of his mother, but they never did (unlike Dawson and Joey). They had a terrible falling out in 1926 that cut their friendship short. But they had already helped each other in many ways in their art, in their identity as Americans abroad and in life.

15. Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza – Some people may complain about this ranking, however, I was conflicted putting these two in even this slot. My main issue with the Seinfeld/Costanza friendship was this elemental fact—were they even friends? Think about it: one of the fundamental traits of the characters of Seinfeld was the fact that they all took some level of pleasure in the misfortune of others, including their own “friends.” That fact made the show realistic, because there is an element of truth in the fact of wanting to see the misfortune of others. Even in groups of friends, we laugh when a friend trips or “eats it.” We love to see slapstick happen to the people we like spending time with; it is one of the strangest phenomena in life. So, when George got into a mess, who was the first to laugh most of the time? Jerry. And vice versa. Now, that still doesn’t overlook the fact that these two grew up together and that Jerry let George spend so much time at his apartment venting about all his problems, lies and insecurities. Now, that is the mark of a true friend: listening and generosity. People may claim that Elaine and Jerry had the better friendship, but their friendship was based on romance and then the resulting post-relationship sexual tension, which is a rare occurrence. However, in my mind the non-sexual tension trumps a sexual-tension related friendship. Any woman that I have sexual tension with I usually don’t call my friend because I’d be thinking about sex more often than our friendship. If I have sexual tension with a girl, I tend to call her “this girl I know,” rather than “my friend.” To me, that’s just being honest with myself because I never think about sleeping with any of my friends.

14. Rory Gilmore and Lane Kim – Another rule of this list is that it does not include the “family friendships.” Obviously Rory Gilmore and Lorelai Gilmore as “friends” would be in the top five of any “Top Friendships” lists; that fact is undeniable. But you still have to give credit to the other anchor in Rory Gilmore’s life, the indefatigable Lane Kim. Lane is the epitome of a rock scholar. When Lane talks shop to Rory you learn something every time. Due to her strict Korean upbringing she even had to install a secret compartment in the floor of her room to store all of her records. Those were records she shared with Rory so she could outsmart any snobby girl or guy at Chilton or Yale. Also, Rory needed to know some deep cuts to keep up her witty banter with Jess outside of Luke’s Diner or by the gas station. This friendship wasn’t a one-way street either. Rory helped Lane with all of her schemes to sneak out of the house or to go to a party to meet her bandmate and boyfriend Dave. Rory also convinced Lorelai to let Lane’s band practice in their garage. Lane and Rory’s friendship endured Rory going to a different high school and then going away to college. Speaking as a person who has retained friendships with some people for nearly fifteen years, I can safely say that maintaining a close friendship over the passing of years and circumstances is no joke. We could delve into the different nuances of a “maintained friendship,” but lets just settle on the fact that Lane Kim and Rory Gilmore were some of the best friends to come out of Star’s Hollow, Connecticut.

13. Jay Gatsby and Nick Carraway – One of the most mythic and ambiguous friendships in history, the relationship between Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby has influenced me perhaps more than any other in fiction, history or real life. It was the friendship with Jay Gatsby that caused Nick to utter the famous line that he wanted “no more privileged glimpses into the hearts of men,” which is how most male friends and even female friends feel from time to time when confronted with the enormity of what being a friend means. “No, no more. I can’t have any more empathy.” It might just be the melancholy yet crisp nature of the prose or of the tragedy of the story itself, but the relationship between Nick and Gatsby just seems to mean so much. Gatsby represents a romantic way of looking at the world, while Nick retains some sort of pragmatism and yet finds the appeal in Gatsby’s way of seeing the world. Nick sees some value in the kindness and attention that Gatsby can display with a smile or an “old sport.” And Nick ultimately sees how the world will use up a man with all of Gatbsy’s traits and just move onto the next house lit up with money and the glow of champagne. Nick is not able to save Gatsby, but he does relay one heartfelt compliment to him, by stating that he’s better than the rest of their group near the end of the novel. We never see things from Gatsby’s perspective, but in real life, sometimes its just that one comment, that one compliment from a friend that can make all the difference—that one phrase that illuminates the relationship in a new way.

12. Sancho Panza and Don Quixote – This friendship has perhaps been overlooked due to the fact that it is a well-established tenet of western literature (i.e. no one reads Don Quixote anymore), but it is one of the most iconic. You have the hero (even if he is comedic) and his trusty sidekick. The sidekick supports him on his foolish whims because he actually doesn’t know better himself and even plays a joke on the hero at one point because he can’t resist (isn’t this how most guys spend most of their 20’s?). The two go on an epic journey together, which was one of the earliest and most well-known “road trips” along with The Odyssey and Pilgrim’s Progress. The friendship between Sancho Panza and Don Quixote suffers because they are embedded in our consciousness and culture in ways that we have forgotten. However, all you need to know is that Sancho Panza was by Quixote’s side when he thought he couldn’t go on anymore.

11. Bob Uecker and Norm MacDonald – I’ll admit that this friendship gets such a high ranking because of its seemingly random nature and also because I love both of these guys independently that finding out they were weird cross-generational friends was just an added bonus. Their friendship can basically be summed up in this story told by Norm MacDonald in a vintage Letterman moment (at this point Letterman has that same “I don’t care vibe” that MacDonald does, though Norm is much warmer and less curmudgeonly in his vibe). The friendship between Uecker and MacDonald covers that strange and great situation where you have an old guy who is friends with a middle-aged guy because they share some kind of ancient secret of men. Norm MacDonald and Bob Uecker just seem like two guys. It’s as simple as that. One has made a career out of a great announcing voice and a love for baseball and just happens to be a funny guy; the other on his love of comedy and a unique delivery. They are both just men in the most non-testosterone way possible. They remind me of beer and putting on a worn navy blue hat. There is something to be said for that.

Click here to continue to Part 2.

Mark for Mark's Sake

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Fri, 20 May 2011 13:49:29 PDT

It's been a long rainy week, my Puddlers, but we've made it to Friday. The summer is looming in the distance, so lets try to enjoy these small windows to huddle up in our apartments and watch mist descend over the city, while we slowly drink beer and feel some sort of impalpable sadness. All of that will pass soon and it will be hot in the morning and hot in the day. We will drink hot coffee in the morning and cold beer by dusk. And things will be impossible and great as always.

I'm writing this intro after just rereading Mark Jack's post from today. I think it fits the mood of this week, this spring and everything going forward. Read and enjoy.

Oh, and RIP Macho Man Randy Savage. A truly formative influence on my life.

Now, here is Mark Jack.

The Arab Spring in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Mark Jack

Sometimes I find myself grinding my teeth down and shrinking my hands into little diamond fists from anger. I do not know why.

Syria’s Bashar al-Assad has contending groups of black clad security forces arresting, then releasing, then arresting again scores of protestors and innocent—meaning indirectly involved—Syrians. The numbers of detained and possibly tortured are a matter of guesswork. Soccer stadiums are being filled. Soon, perhaps, these confused men in black will skip a step and make it easier on everyone by declaring whole towns prisons. The absurdity of it all in no way detracts from the seriousness. Just as Quadaffi, as silly as he is, as megalomaniacal as he has been in his revolutionary stance, has still been solely responsible for great suffering. As an American, the immediate response to the conflicts in the Middle East is to ask how we should involve ourselves. Do we impose embargos? Do we intervene monetarily or militarily? Do we bring criminal charges and freeze the bank accounts of these dictators? Do we finally, after so much time ignoring it all, enforce the rule of law? As we ponder our options, we congratulate ourselves and our facebook groups, and we get it, and we see the youth, and we dream of beautiful reforms, which are just a siphoning off of potentialities.

And yet, what am I upset about? Am I upset? No. Not really. Just a little sad maybe. I’m not sure what understanding we may be generating and disseminating with the modern tools so often praised. Self-immolation doesn’t photograph as well after Thich Quang Duc, perhaps, but it’s still a powerful, almost primal protest. Guernica is maybe the type of understanding we need to focus on. We need to search for artistic understanding. Even if I am overwhelmingly informed of the atrocities in Libya or Syria or anywhere I do not feel that I am even close to understanding them, which too often means “mastery.” Perhaps it is better to not attempt realisms here; perhaps we are given too quickly to anonymous protestors and overcome by their adrenaline but not their confusion. We must seek to stare up at the twisted feet of the stumbling lady in Picasso’s painting and not understand, and not know, but at least to feel. I’m not sure how this can be politically implemented, but it’s a better start than the punditry we espouse and regurgitate now.

I can’t help but think that art is the only response to atrocity, to tragedy. Artistic response is the only response that, at least if done well, does not in some way diminish by encapsulation, the tragic event, as in explanatory news stories and the like. While I do truly believe this, I can’t help but think that Picasso’s painting did nothing to stop the Spanish Civil War and has never acted as deterrent, unless you consider its covering during Powell’s speech to the UN urging war with Iraq. Even then, Bush still bombed.

So I’m going on walks these days, angry, or at least a little on edge, and when I get home the news has some new terrible event that isn’t, maybe, new, but at least I could avoid it before and now I just feel so impotent.

Much of the readings of these revolts and protests center on a notion of revolution called the J-curve. Basically, if a closed, undemocratic society stays that way it will remain stable. However, as outside factors intrude, the country becomes open to raised expectations—economic growth, or access to the lifestyles of a more open society (through the internet, say). These expectations then run into the closed authoritarian political space. The dictator has two options, according to this theory: beat down the revolting populace and lower expectations, in a manner of speaking, or grant concessions that will bring about an at least temporary or convincing but illusory openness to society.

All of these things are so tired, and don’t really mean anything, and don’t lead to any understanding. Every field has some tired-ass J looking graph that illustrates only lack of insight. And just because I find it offensive that bourgeois expectations of material well-being would be understanding enough for revolt against violent and absurdist dictatorships doesn’t mean Egyptians don’t, in some even quite large way, just want new shoes.

So, look, I’m still just looking around at New York, peacefully existing, being beautiful and absurd, and the gap between what I experience and what I’m told other’s experience is so very frustrating, but I’m not sure we can really close it.

I believe we should all seek this.

Love,

Mark

Theoharides On Bridesmaids

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Wed, 18 May 2011 12:08:42 PDT

Welcome to Wednesday, my Puddlers. Its been a rainy week here in New York, so that means there are plenty of actual, literal puddles to jump on, slide around in and pour down your pants. However, rain or shine there will always be Puddles of Myself to enjoy.

I hope you all enjoyed the Fleet Foxes review from yesterday. Next week we will have the Top 20 Friendships of All-Time as well as our regular columnists Alex Theoharides and Mark Jack. I am still accepting any guest submissions to feature so please feel free to e-mail me at any time.

I just want to mention three links today. You may have noticed the tag-line on the page header giving a shout out to Sea Bean Goods and Real Sorbet. These are two culinary endeavors undertaken by great friends of mine and recommend that you throw your full support behind both. You can find links on the sidebar to the right. Also, please check out Sam Skarstaad's new album. The first track alone is worth a download or just five streaming minutes of your time.

Now, I turn it over to Alex Theoharides to pick up the slack.

Theoharides On Bridesmaids or Why I Gave Up My Saturday Night to Watch Jon Hamm Act Like a Class A Richard

Alex Theoharides

First, a clearing of my rather snobbish nose: If I have to watch another topical George Clooney film about the war in Iraq or the state of the Economy, I might just have to write a blog post about how much I hate modern films (Oh crap, I think I just… ). I’ve largely lost interest in movies as televisions shows such as The Wire, The Office, Mad Men, Friday Night Lights, and my latest craze, Sons of Anarchy, have consumed most of my viewing time. Movies are too long, too predictable, and quite often, just too damn run-of-the-mill. There are several better things I could do on a Saturday night—namely watch the NBA Playoffs, which, might I add, have been fantastic.

However, this past Saturday night there were no NBA games on, it was cold and rainy in Minneapolis (go figure), and after spending the previous few weeks in a state of extreme depression due to the demise of the Celtics, I owed my gal (henceforth known by her pseudonym Myrtle Schmeckpepper) a night spent watching a mindless chick flick. Which isn’t to suggest I don’t enjoy chick flicks. I have two sisters and I grew up watching Anne of Green Gables and Little Women and Little House on the Prairie and When Harry Met Sally and the Gilmore Girls and and and … the list goes on. It only got worse in college, peaking when I spent a fortnight plowing through the first two seasons of the show Felicity (#unforgivable). In fact, I’d go as far as to say that after graduating from Skidmore College, with its 60-40 girls to guy ratio, I earned an advanced degree in Chick Flicks. I know why Love Actually can be perceived as arrogant male propaganda (really?, an Ugly Brit manages to score four sexually adventurous girls in a Wisconsin bar?). I could write a term paper on why Rory Gilmore (of previously mentioned Gilmore Girls’ fame) had to leave Logan in the show’s final episode to follow the Obama campaign (yes because that’s how journalism careers are made). And without breaking a sweat, I could tell you why Joey Potter (yes, Tommy Cruise’s cuddle buddy) chose Pacey Witter over Dawson Leery even though the show (yes, idiots, Dawson’s Creek) was named after him. It had something to do with this and this. Suffice it to say, it wasn’t particularly difficult for Ms. Schmeckpepper to convince me of the value of going to see a movie, especially when I read in Molly Lambert’s excellent Grantland teaser that it had the potential to become a female Caddyshack.

Please note, teaser alert begins now. Although anyone who thinks that Bridesmaids is the type of movie that needs a teaser alert is an idiot. (Sorry Matt, I promise I’ll stop calling your readers idiots soon, I promise)(after this one last time)(that’s right, you’re all idiots!)

Going to the theater is a rather miraculous experience in socialization. For some reason, if I’m watching a movie at home, and Ms. Schmeckpepper so much as fidgets in her seat , I feel the need to pause the program, shush her like that boy scout we all had in our third grade class who thought it was disrespectful to talk during the pledge of allegiance, and generally behave like a boor. However, within the rather sticky confines of a movie theater, I not only abide by any manner of sounds—the crunch of popcorn, the suck of straws, the ceaseless running of the mouth—I actually crave them, believing, naive schoolboy that I am, that they somehow add a certain quality to the experience, a sense of community, if you will. The crowd at Bridesmaids didn’t disappoint. I was out-gendered, easily 10 to 1. The woman in front of me didn’t stop laughing from the moment the previews began. And the smell of buttery popcorn lingered over every seat. It was all so wonderful.

The movie was exactly what I expected it to be. Kristin Wiig, the only funny cast member left on Saturday Night Live, carried the performance from start (ladies, time to get your Hamm on) to finish (A Wilson Phillips’ “Hold On” dance sequence, need I say more). She played a downbeat woman trying to find love in this crazy world of ours, all while trying to be her best friend’s Maid of Honor. Like any Judd Apatow movie (and yes, I know he was just the producer not the director, but it was still an Apatow movie) the dialogue was fresh, the comedy raunchy, and the bit characters often stole scenes from the stars. In particular, Melissa McCarthy (yes, Sookie St. James from the Gilmore Girls) killed it, becoming, I hope, this summer’s Zach Galifianakis. The only unfortunate side effect being that right around the time she began to take her talents to South Beach (if her talents were diarrhea and South Beach was a white porcelain sink) on the silver screen, I realized I could never watch Gilmore Girls in quite the same way. And yes, I re-watch Gilmore Girls. And yes, I often do so on the Soap Network. Why? Who’s asking?

Other stellar performances include Chris O’Dowd as Wiig’s likable, and discreetly funny love interest (think Seth Rogen from Knocked Up, minus the Mary Jane and man boobs, plus a badge and a Scottish accent), Rebel Wilson and Matt Lucas as a social inept brother sister tandem, and … unfortunately that’s it. Many of the actors came across flat. Particularly, Wiig’s best friend in the film, who was played by the a little to good to be believable Maya Ruldolph, and her antagonist, Rose Byrne, who plays a villainous bridesmaid that tries to steal the role of Maid of Honor from Wiig. The flatness in both cases was not the fault the actors—it was the fault of the writing. The actors were given stereotypical roles (flustered bride, overeager and lonely rich young wife) and asked to make magic. They didn’t. I can live with that.

Bridesmaids was a fun, summer movie. It wasn’t great, and sadly, it certainly wasn’t a Chick Flick Caddyshack. It just wasn’t.

Final grade: B-