3 Fashion Laws

One of the great surprises of this writing project has been just how many times I have written about clothing. On balance, I’m no more qualified to opine on style than anyone else you might find on the street. I am, however, uniquely qualified in voicing my opinion in the most honest of ways, and since the fashion industry seems founded mostly on delusion, I find my point of view needed sometimes in the most dire way. But like any good logician, I am not content with simply anecdotal remarking, and empirical evaluation. I need rules, axioms and laws that I can apply without passion or prejudice to the fashion choices of others that always produce consistent results - or in this case, things that don’t make me want to claw my eyes out of my head. And so, after careful consideration of these many months of summertime clothing which I have been forced to observe, here are 3 laws of fashion:

1. Why Not Take All Of Feet. I have been wrestling with my own personal revulsion over being bombarded with the sight of nearly bare feet for some time. Because it’s hot outside (and by “hot”, I mean three months of three digit temperatures), there are a lot of feet around. Now granted, I don’t personally understand why this obviates the use of regular shoes. After all, keeping my feet uncovered while the rest of me is bundled up does little to keep me cool, and a pair of shorts and a t-shirt keep me from overheating despite wearing socks and sneakers. But that notwithstanding, I’ve come to this: the only people whose feet I want to see naked are those whom I want to see the rest of them naked. Or to put in plainer terms: gentlemen, shoes on; old people, shoes on; anyone overweight, shoes on. Any questions? Listen, their is no part of the human body which more unapologetically conveys one’s overall health, fitness and grooming standards like their feet - and unless you’re the kind of person turning heads at the swimming pool, do us all a favor and turn your bare feet into some shoes already.

2. Gang Colors. Over the years, nightclubs and other entertainment establishments have utilized dress codes to restrict access to gang members who use clothing to identify themselves and rival gang members. Prohibited items have included certain colors (blue and red), certain items (ball caps and plain white t-shirts) and even certain ways of wearing otherwise innocuous items (sagging pants). But of late, these same clubs have added a restriction to their list - to prevent an even more insidious and worthless group from access - the banning of “TapOut” and “Affliction” shirts to keep out Team Douche. Never in the history of clothing has a brand become more unerringly indicative of an overall absence of redeeming social value than these two. What the white hood is to racists, the screen-printed skulls, crosses and other faux badassery is to chodes. No matter what sort of artistic or stylistic value these brands used to have, they have been completely and irrevocably absorbed by the least desirable social element since street gangs, and the time has come to either take them out of your closet and burn them - or abandon any defense you may have to being an asshat. There is simply no good reason to ever be seen in one of these shirts again.

3. Man Dazzle. As a general rule, it is never a good idea for a man to buy clothes at any store that might be rightfully classified as a “boutique.” Men’s clothing has, until recently, been gloriously simple. For those with refined taste and a similar budget, there was elegant simplicity. And for the rest of us there was regular, old, simple simplicity. Quality notwithstanding, our clothes came in shapes, sizes and colors that just made sense. The only things that were attached to these practical pieces were buttons, zippers and the occasional snap. On the rare occasion you needed something shiny affixed (e.g. cufflinks, tie clip, etc.) it was a completely separate affair. But just when I thought screen printing had reached a critical mass of ridiculousness, someone got out their hot glue gun and upped the ante. Studs, rhinestones and hastily affixed shiny trim began to appear on casual clothing like unwelcome pimples on a questionable complexion. This man-dazzling has turned the previously banal exercise that was men’s laundry into a tag-reviewing mid-term in the myriad wash modes and drying techniques available in the laundry room, and even exposed the dry cleaner to casual men’s clothes. If there is a worse idea than built-in accessorizing for men, I haven’t heard of it. Seriously, this was barely acceptable for Elvis and it most certainly isn’t o.k. for you. If a shirt has anything on it besides a device it keep it closed, you’re better off without it.

* * *

No matter how exhaustively I try, I suspect there will always be an opportunity for me to shamelessly mock what people are wearing. After all, without fashion misses, there would be no fashion hits. But with the pace at which trends are set, obsessively followed and then abandoned, the struggle to keep up has all but eliminated any measure of common sense in the process, and a nation of the tragically hip are left to the wit and whimsy of a few eccentric Frenchmen. Is it really any wonder we end up looking foolish? For me, unlike any other areas of my life where I prefer the cutting edge, I tend to purposefully stay a few steps behind with what I’m wearing. That way I can vet the current trends, see if there’s anything I like, or whether I’ll stick with the time-tested classics that I know and love. After all, they don’t call it “fashionably late” for nothing.

3 Accidental Lessons

As many of you know, 3 things has been on sabbatical of late; largely as a function of a self-imposed exile to study for the Nevada Bar Exam. The Bar Exam has the same relationship to the practice of law as true love has with ABC’s The Bachelor (or Lord help me, the Bachelorette), and studying for it is a lot like dating in Los Angeles: painful, expensive, and an unbelievable grind just to score something average. But similar to life in Los Angeles, the best part of it is when it’s over, and thankfully, I can finally now enjoy the afterglow of a July spent living like a shut in. The myriad of useless things that one is forced to learn for the Bar Exam is mind boggling. From bits of the Constitution that no one will ever care if you know to lawsuits that will never be filed, my brain hasn’t been this awash in utterly valueless knowledge since I thought winning at Trivial Pursuit might get me laid. It didn’t. But along the way, a funny thing happened, and I actually did learn a few things that not only did I not expect, but that actually might prove useful someday. As you might expect, not one of them was in my prep course syllabus. And so, in the interests of finally being back, here are 3 things I accidentally learned while studying for the Bar:

1. The Live Long Day. For the majority of my adult life, I have had the enormous good fortune to either (a) spend my days doing things that I like doing or (b) spend my days doing things I don’t like doing with someone’s boot up my ass to make sure it gets done. As a result, my days have always seemed woefully short. Just when I start to get up to speed, the sun’s setting, and it’s almost time to reload. I haven’t kept regular “working hours” for as long as I can recall, and if I’m awake, I’m usually trying to squeeze just a bit more into my days. But with a good, solid month to put work aside and try to channel my law-school self, I discovered that when you’re doing something you don’t really want to do and there’s no one there to motivate you - days are long. Like a rush hour trip on the 405 long, Out of Africa long, last-day-of-school-before-summer long. Never has the difference between having to do something and wanting to do something been more painfully obvious. I usually have to be reminded to eat lunch - and usually some time after one in the afternoon. But more than a few times in July I checked the clock three times before ten hoping it was noon. Even more depressing was realizing that there are actually five or six usable hours after dinner (which I had to use for something other than watching Law & Order re-runs and re-mastering Mario Kart). One thing I learned for sure, whoever said that “life is short” was definitely not studying for the Bar.

2. Are You Thinking What I’m Thinking? My regular readers know that I lamented many times over the unwanted changes that three and a half decades (or so) have wrought on my body, but always comforted myself with the corresponding gains my mind has made over the same years. It turns out, however, that not all of the changes to my mind have been as positive as I had hoped. I used to be really good at school. I mean, really, really good. I had a nearly insatiable appetite for classes, homework and tests. I didn’t just have a tolerance for pedagogy, I had a need for it. But in the intervening 15 years or so since I was last truly engaged in academic pursuit, my knowledge of the gap between what you learn in school and what you need to know to be successful has broadened to the point where I have approximately the same amount of patience for classroom-based academic instruction as I have when running a few minutes late and driving behind a minivan in the left-most lane on the freeway (trust me, it’s not a pretty sight). It’s not that the classes have changed that much - white boards instead of chalkboards and laptops instead of notepads, but still the same repetition, outlines, flash cards, practice tests, etc. And I couldn’t be less interested if it were a class on the Neo-Freudian nuances of Sex and the City. I once had the romantic notion that I might go back to school someday - get a Master’s degree, maybe even a Ph.D. I also once suspected I might be a superhero who simply hadn’t located his powers yet. Turns out there’s a better chance that I can fly.

3. Legally Gone. There are a lot of things not to like about being a lawyer, but the absolute worst part of the profession is having to spend time around other lawyers. Of course, I’m not saying that all lawyers are the same sort of insufferably self-absorbed, vastly over-apprised of their own worth and intelligence, shits that give rise to an entire subset of pointed humor and a nearly universal revulsion amongst the public, but it’s a large enough majority to warrant not betting against it. I have been out of the firm practice for over four years, and in that time I had almost forgotten how painful it is to not only spend time around people far enough up their own ass as to nearly come out their own mouth, but to be associated with them. It took me less than a full day into my Bar prep course - overhearing two attorneys talking at lunch - to remember. It was that day I committed to taking my review by video lectures at home, lest I have to endure another minute. There hasn’t been a group of people so poorly over-advised of their social value since the Kardashians, and it should come as no surprise that their patriarch was similarly licensed. I had once hoped that my revulsion to my professional colleagues was born of simply going to the wrong school and working in the wrong city. Nope, we really are mostly assholes.

* * *

In the end, taking the Bar Exam was an instructive process. A reminder of a few important principles that I may have lost in my otherwise focused practice, and of the breadth of knowledge that the public expects from us. It was also instructive on just how long it’s been and how far I’ve come since the last time I sat in a room with that many other JDs. Six years is an otherwise unremarkable amount of time. After all, it took more time to get the education I needed to take the exam, to get from voting eligible to rental car eligible and from puberty to non-virginity (yes, I know). But in that time, I went from someone who had memorized a good bit of the law, to actually being a lawyer; the kind of professional that people entrust with their lives, their livelihood and their future. And while it took this kind of exam to start to figure out that I could do that, it’s going to take a whole lot more than another one to tell me that I can’t.

37 Things

I should start this off by saying that last year’s birthday column is one my favorite pieces, and so when I thought about how I could possibly top that particular collection of aged wisdom, I was daunted to say the least. But, I’ve also come to realize that, despite all of the schooling (both formal and informal) that I’ve received, I still learn something almost every day. This realization is particularly profound as I continue to suffer through what I can only call as the American Age of the Idiot - where no one seems to be learning much of anything (despite having the whole of the world’s knowledge literally at our fingertips). And so in the interests of marking the passing of yet another year in this extraordinarily strange trip I call life - here we go with a brand new slate of lessons learned, for those who have yet to travel this far down the road to perhaps avoid a similar set of stumbles - or for those who have traveled farther, to reminisce about simpler times, here are 37 things I’ve learned:

1. The worst thing about reality television used to be how unlike real life it was, now it’s how much like real life it is that makes it horrible.
2. Driving is like air hockey, most people think they’re pretty good at it, but ninety percent of them just end up flailing around and causing most of their own damage.
3. The primary difference in parenting between this generation and the last appears to be the amount of noise that will be tolerated prior to any beating.
4. Peace of mind is never overpriced.
5. Anything being sold to you by someone you’d otherwise pay to see naked is always overpriced.
6. Justin Bieber is karma’s way of getting back at us for scaring our parents with Ozzy, Motley Crue and Iron Maiden.
7. Of all the things that have come “back” into style, none is more baffling than the giant ass (e.g. J-Lo, Kim Kardashian, Niki Minaj) - the 19th Century called, and they want their healthy body image back.
8. You’re more likely to be taken seriously with a clown nose on than with sunglasses parked on top of your head.
9. No matter how the other gender inequities stack up, they are all outweighed by profoundly how much less it sucks to get older as a man.
10. There is only one man over the age of 30 who is allowed to wear skateboard sneakers, and since you’re not Tony Hawk, get yourself to the store and buy some grown up shoes.
11. No one wants to see your feet.
12. How do I deal with the heat in Vegas? Well, not having to worry about earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, blizzards, ice storms, hail, humidity or even severe thunderstorms helps quite a bit.
13. The one thing Facebook has done better than e-mail, phone calls or even real life, is just how easy and effective it has made it to completely erase someone from your universe.
14. Twitter is the new MySpace.
15. Rental car companies know something that we don’t: no one under the age of 25 should be driving - and they’re right.
16. Stupidity is bad. Willful stupidity is worse. Petulant and indignant willful stupidity is the worst - and this is why I both fear and hate the Tea Party.
17. Despite all the idealogy I’ve been exposed to (willingly or otherwise), researched, or even heard about, the only comprehensive social theory that seems to hold up under any scrutiny is economics. If you want to understand the world around you, put down the Bible and pick up a macroeconomics textbook.
18. Everyone who really gives a damn about you will give you more than one chance.
19. When it comes down to choosing between incompetence and crazy - smart people choose incompetence, because at least you can plan for that.
20. Three things you should never lie about (because the truth is way too easy to find out): your age, your weight and whether or not you can dance.
21. Becoming a lawyer didn’t make it harder to understand why people hate us, it made it a whole lot easier.
22. The only great American thing that will never be duplicated overseas is college sports.
23. That being said, the only things I love more than Navy Football are the people I knew when I was seven.
24. A bad mother is neither uncommon, excuse-worthy, or an indicator of how I feel about women. It’s just a bad mother - look around, they’re everywhere - and most of us turn out just fine.
25. The three most reliable indicators I’ve found for when it’s time to completely disregard everything someone says (and just start nodding): reading/defending the Twilight series, believing Sarah Palin is a viable Presidential candidate, and regularly watching Fox News.
26. The primary objective of my thirties has been to avoid, at all costs, my life resembling a Dockers commercial in any way.
27. I’m sure I know why we’ve invested young women with the idea that they’re all beautiful, but not so sure why we’ve imbued them with the idea that they should all get paid for it.
28. A solid rule for plastic surgery: keep the knife away from your face.
29. In the end, you will get what you deserve - good or bad.
30. Being older is fantastic, acting older sucks.
31. No matter how far I go, no matter what I achieve, unless you’re a female, honking your horn at me for any other reason besides my failing to notice the light change is an invitation for me to kick your ass.
32. Even if you’re part of the world‘s most popular religion, you must believe that over two thirds of the people on the planet are completely fucked. I think it’s much more likely that it’s all of us.
33. The two least attractive words you can say to a woman at 37: “my roommate.”
34. Being good at math never got me laid. It did, however, help me figure out just about anything - including why I wasn’t getting laid.
35. Obese people don’t have a “medical condition” they have a “motivation condition” that we used to call “being lazy.”
36. Getting older isn’t about wanting sex less, it‘s about sometimes wanting sex less than a really good back rub.
37. The beginning of any great thing often requires the end of some other really good thing - so here’s to a great 38th year.

3 Great Gifts

Despite my best efforts wishing to the contrary, my birthday is rapidly approaching, and my trek into the “middle-aged” demographic is progressing past its infancy. To be honest, though, if you’ve got to grow old (and I have it on good authority that you do), it’s really best to do it as a man. After all, the guy from The Most Interesting Man in the World commercials looks like he’s somewhere north of 60, Sean Connery is north of 70, and Hugh Hefner is north of 80, and all three of them will see more supermodels naked this week than I’ll see during the rest of my life. Being an old guy is cool, where as being an old lady means support hose, comfortable shoes and feeding pigeons in the park. But of the few downsides to aging with a y-chromosome, perhaps the most stark is the dearth of great birthday presents after you’ve turned 21. Like most men, my taste in toys runs on the pricey side, and the number of people in my life who like me enough to buy any of them for me runs on the very, very low side. And so, as most birthdays pass, I’m left to buy myself something great. There have, however, been a few presents that have defied this trend; gifts so unexpectedly wonderful that they still give me pause - and make me immeasurably grateful for my friends (and even for my birthdays), and so in the interests of optimism for my many birthdays to come, here are the three best birthday presents I’ve ever gotten:

1. Surprise, Surprise. For as easy as I am to disappoint, I’m really quite difficult to surprise. After two adult careers in leadership and professional advising, I’ve learned to pick up on little hints to put together the big picture - long before it’s obvious. While this type of skill has it’s advantages - it also has it’s downside, in that no one was ever able to successfully throw me a surprise party before the age of 34. It’s not as though I expect or even enjoy a giant to-do being made out of an otherwise nondescript day - after all, once you’re out of your twenties, you’re really only obligated to celebrate the passing of decades rather than years, and there’s a waning joy with each one (until you’re making Willard Scott’s list). But having spent nearly a decade of my own on the left side of the country - where good friends are in vastly shorter supply that good networking opportunities, I found myself wanting for the type of fun that everyone was pretending to have with their “friends”. And so it happened that a very good girlfriend planned a very good surprise party directly under my nose. The ruse was so convincing that I nearly came unglued after passing through the door of the party room at my then-favorite indoor go-kart track. There were a few people there - some true and honest friends, some well-intended absences and a lot of smiles to go around. There will be more birthdays, and more parties, but I suspect I’ll never be surprised like that again, and that will have been my best birthday party ever.

2. Tequila Sunrise. I wish I could say that I turned 21 someplace cool: Cabo, Vegas, New York City, or even someplace with a beach. I wish I could say there was a famous bar, a luxurious downtown setting, or some cool band playing. I wish I could say that there were dozens of my friends helping me ring it in, and some Hangover-style epic story of shenanigans hazily recalled the next day. But I can’t. I turned 21 on the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Kings Bay, Georgia - at the crappy base bar, with all of about twenty people total in attendance, and only one there for me. Sammy T. Wray, USMC, the craziest jarheaded son-of-a-bitch I ever met, and a classmate of mine at the Naval Academy just happened to have the extraordinary misfortune of being stuck in Kings Bay for the only day he’d ever willingly spend on a submarine. Years later I would return to this base as my first and only duty station as a commissioned officer - and come to discover that Kings Bay is affectionately known as the armpit of Georgia, which is a generous explanation. And if you think that drinking in the base bar on a rural submarine base on a Sunday night in mid-June sounds horribly lonely and depressing, you’d be right. But backed by a DJ with a bad mic and a music collection ripped straight from Top 40 radio, the courage that only your first 4 shots of tequila can provide and the support of one very loud shipmate, I had a night that I only barely remember, and a morning that involved my first “strange ceiling” wake up. I’m sure I never thanked him appropriately - so, wherever you are, thanks, Sammy.

3. Up-Chucks. Every once in a while you have a friend who knows you so well that rather than getting you what you want for your birthday they get you something you need. Now, I don’t mean they’re wrapping up household necessities, vitamin supplements or a long-overdue gym membership. No, I mean, they give you something that you never would have found on your own, and that becomes something you can’t possible live without. I usually try to achieve this Zen by giving loved ones their first Apple products - but as I have a house full of those, no one can replicate that particular method. But in 2007, my best friend (and a better friend than I deserve or could imagine) David gave me just such a gift - in a small cardboard box that didn’t have any batteries, wires or screens in it. After having spent eight years living there, and finally making my escape, it could easily be argued that there still isn’t much California about me - but aside from some great friends, the only other thing I took away from the Golden State was a rockin’ pair of Chucks. For the uninitiated, I’m talking the iconic Converse Chuck Taylor All-Star shoe - and my first pair (and the best birthday gift ever) was a black & white pair of low-rise lace ups. Since that day, I’ve bought almost ten more pairs, worn them to everything from weddings to country bars and they’ve become a seminal part of my adult wardrobe. But, I don’t like any of them as much as my first pair - which I’ll again be wearing this year to celebrate.

* * *

Whoever said that birthdays aren’t about presents has never really gotten any good ones. In fact, the best thing about birthdays are the presents. There’s nothing particularly awesome about turning another year older - especially after turning 21; so unless it’s about the cake - it has to be about the presents. But it’s just as important to note that presents don’t always come wrapped. In a world this busy, just the gift of people’s time is precious - and good times and good memories are some of the most enduring gifts you’ll ever receive. Birthdays are milestones in our lives, but if all you have to mark the passage of another year is a higher number to put next to your name - you’re doing it wrong. So, this year, I’m hoping for some great presents - inasmuch as I’m hoping for great times with great friends, because while every poor bastard has to get older once a year, not everyone has all of you to make each year better than the last.

3 Ladies' Laments

I’ve always said that I’m more a lover than a fighter - but most of those who know me well know that’s really more wishful thinking than anything else. I have a lot more fight in me than I sometimes know what to do with. As a matter of course, this colors everything from my writing to my personal demeanor, from my practice to my personal life. And so when it comes to the opposite sex, while there can be no doubt that I love the ladies - looking on the group as a whole with a mixture of wonder and curiosity - I’m also no more frequently disappointed, disgusted and otherwise disenchanted by any other group of people. So while I would freely admit that women are more intelligent, more mature, and generally more socially aware than us men, it makes those instances where they fail to live up to these obvious advantages that much more shocking and terrible. And so, in the hopes that one of my many lovely female readers can offer me some kind of explanation, here are 3 inexplicable things that women do:

1. Foot Show. There was a time when I truly did not understand that almost genetic fascination that women have with shoes. To my adolescent mind, the variety and volume of footwear that most women coveted seemed useless at best and maddeningly wasteful at worst. But as I grew, I started to get it, and ultimately came to appreciate how much more fantastic a woman could look in the right pair of shoes. Unfortunately, as magic as they might seem, there is nothing in a great pair of shoes that change the way your feet look, and like certain other fashions that are more privilege than right (e.g. miniskirts, bare midriffs and tight jeans) just because you can display your bare feet to the world doesn’t mean that you should. Aside from a few fetishists amongst us, I think we can all agree that the average foot isn’t the most appealing thing. And come on, you know if you’ve got the kind of feet that no one really needs to see. But if you don’t, here are a few simple tests: if your toes point in five different directions, if your heel looks like an overcooked biscuit, if your toes look like they’re grabbing something when they’re not, or if you’re more than twenty pounds overweight - you need to avoid flip-flops, sandals, or any other kind of footwear that’s going to kill the appetite and faith in humanity of anyone unfortunate enough to glance down at your feet. I mean, seriously, it’s cool if you’re big - but when you’re big, the part of you that suffers the most is the last part of you that I want see flaunted in front of me. Do us all a favor and make sure that great pair of shoes you’re wearing out are actually shoes.

2. Aging Gracelessly. Look, it happens to the best of us. We’re getting older. And while I can appreciate better than most, the want - the need - to fight it every step of the way, I also appreciate the value of those who wear their age well. I’ve said many times that while I’d love to have back some of the superpowers of youth that I’ve lost over the years, I definitely wouldn’t trade all the wisdom and grace I’ve gotten in exchange to have them back. Besides, no matter what mass media tells you about the ideal woman being 22 years old, I can personally vouch for that being a load of hooey. All the little things that make a girl a woman are usually found long after the eat-what-you-want days of youth - the way she walks, talks, dresses and even smiles are carefully crafted over years, not gleaned from an issues of Cosmo. But the one thing a grown woman can screw up is not gracefully accepting this fact. Lying about your age is just plain stupid. A year or two doesn’t make that much difference, and anything more than that will be as obvious as the skin on the back of your hands. And dressing like you’re 25 when you’re 35 is pathetic and silly. Which is not to say that you can’t show a little skin, be a lot sexy, or just plain cute - but the word you’re looking for is elegance and you can’t locate it in Forever 21, Wet Seal or Abercrombie. If you’re over 30 and shopping in a place like that, you’d better be with your niece/daughter.

3. Kung Fu Pandering. Women are, as a rule, notoriously good BS detectors. After all, they don’t call it “women’s intuition” without good reason. I’ve stood in front of many a young lady who I was quite certain looked right through to the heart of me. It seems that there is just something in the female DNA that allows for a nearly effortless perception into the motivation behind almost anything. Given all of that, I am utterly baffled by the manner of media that women allow to be peddled to them. And not only do they fall victim to this shameless pandering, on many occasions they actually defend it. Take, for example, the formulaic “chick flick” where an impossibly good-looking, wealthy, humorous and intelligent man falls for the girl next door, sweeping her off her feet, and whisking her away to a storybook life of love and happiness. Despite the fact that these stories couldn’t be any less realistic if they were animated, women flock to these screenings in droves, cry when they’re supposed to, and walk out of the theater lamenting that their man isn’t anything like that. Even worse, grown women - apparently unfulfilled by the offerings of the modern adult romance genre - have adopted a poorly-written young adult offering about transparently gay vampires and werewolves seducing teenage girls as a romantic zeitgeist. And worse yet, I hear women defending this mindless smut as vigorously as they do equality in the workplace and defense against domestic violence. How can it be that women’s intuition seems to be so finely tuned on one hand to reality and yet completely ineffective against fiction?

* * *

For the most part, I’m a big fan of the enigmatic nature of women. It is, after all, that unsolvable mystery which provides us with the lifetime adventure of getting to know one of them, and the beautiful frustration of falling in love. But some mysteries, I suspect, are better off solved, explained or debunked. As we’ve become accustomed to a nearly ubiquitous equality of the sexes, we’ve also become wary of ever leveling any gender-wide criticism - lest we be cast out as a holdover from a time since past. To avoiding this type of criticism against women, men keep quiet, and women are left to police themselves; fixing the problems from the inside out. After all, there can be no protests of “you just don’t understand” when the trigger man behind both barrels of aspersion isn’t a man at all. And so when the familiar lament of women being their own worst critics is raised, perhaps it isn't the problem we’ve located - but rather, the solution.

3 Reasons to Come Back

As many of you have no doubt noticed, Three Things has been on hiatus of late. The intervening time since the last published piece has been punctuated by some of the most troubling times I can recall, with the majority of my time and effort spent on survival rather than the relatively leisurely task of bringing you three things each week. I have to admit, I thought about walking away - even titled my farewell piece (“3 Final Things”) - and began to walk this project into the proverbial sunset. But with the help of friends, family and the catharsis of good work, I found a reason to turn Three Things back from the abyss, and, at the very least, finish the year we’ve embarked on. In fact, I found three. And so for you, dear and faithful reader, here are the 3 reasons Three Things is back.

1. D-Spite. I’d like to be able to tell you that all the reasons I came back for are positive, sunshiney things; hearts, flowers and puppy dogs that turned my frown upside down and gave me reason to get back to this keyboard. But as a person who has always, at least in some part, been powered by vengeance, anger and spite, I would be lying to paint such a rosy picture. No matter how colorfully it’s painted, at the core of each rant is at least a kernel of hatred, and nothing seems to drive me to action quite like being wronged by someone. And so, it should come as no surprise that both a significant amount of the pending strife and the strength to pull myself out of it owe to someone rather than something. Of all the turn-the-other-cheek style advice that is peddled around to discourage revenge, the only bit I’ve ever found to be true is that success is the best version of it. And all that nonsense about how revenge won’t make you feel any better is ridiculous. Revenge, and especially revenge via success feels fantastic. I’d be hard pressed to come up with a better feeling than letting someone who didn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t believe in me know that not only did I do great without her, but that I did it because I was without her. And so, in the interests of letting her know just that - I’m back.

2. Laughing to Keep From Crying. You can call it catharsis, but I think that this project accomplishes something both more and less profound. Whether it be me, my age, outlook or whether it’s actually true - we appear to be living in a time of unparalleled ignorance, indifference and indignity. And while May 21st came and went with only a subtle burp from an Icelandic volcano, one might argue that we are trundling through a Second Dark Ages - where the only apocalyptic “rise” is the rise of the purposefully unenlightened. In these dark times, where education has apparently become a tool of oppression rather than a tool to rage against it, those who have retained, against all odds, the ability to reason, logically evaluate and objectively learn, have a duty to keep their voices heard. It would be easiest to hole up in some kind of intellectual compound; walled off from an increasingly paranoid and foolish proletariat in the hopes that their decay into mindlessness ultimately results in some kind of cannibalism (or at least a tendency for self-destruction and/or violent insurrection) and allow the educated few to repopulate the wasteland they leave behind. But because I have not only promised to do otherwise, but as Burke said “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” - I will carry on. Even if my “do nothing” is only to offer a little insight, humor and sanity to a world increasingly devoid of each.

3. For You. Dear readers. For every moment that I have spent staring at a blank screen with a blinking cursor, wondering if I’ve exhausted my inspiration, vocabulary or simply my utility as a writer; for every time I’ve looked back in horror on something I wrote before I thought I knew how to write; for every critic and criticism that makes me want to hang it up; and for every moment I’ve wondered if I’ll ever amount to anything more than just another navel-gazing hack who's better off keeping his musings in a private journal - there have been countless moments where all of you have made it worthwhile. You’ve laughed, cried and ranted right back at me. You’ve praised, panned and passed along the things I’ve written. You’ve been inspired, provoked and pissed; embarrassed, tickled and reminded. You remind me that I’m not shouting into the abyss, because the abyss doesn’t shout back. You give me the greatest gift of this era, with each passing word - your time, and you carry on a tradition passed on from time immemorial by reading my thoughts to inform your own. And because I’ve yet to repay any of you in any small part for all of this - I’ll endeavor to keep trying to do so.

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After over a month spent away from this keyboard, there’s a lot of catching up to do. Thankfully, the world continues to frustrate and amaze me in equal measure, whether I write about it or not - so inspiration abounds, and I suspect I’ll be caught up in no time. I can only hope that in my brief time away, you haven’t filled up the precious few minutes each week that you used to spend with me, with something more entertaining, more blissfully caustic, or heaven forbid, funnier. But on the off chance you have, I’ll make you a deal: if you come back and don’t find yourself laughing, nodding or head-shaking harder than you ever did before, you’re free to go with my blessing and the only good three things to ever come out of a “boy band”: Bye Bye Bye.

As for the rest of you, hold on to your screens - it’s gonna get bumpy.

3 Baffling Bests

We are obsessed with comparing things. Or more to the point, we are fascinated with ranking them. And as you might expect, in a way only Americans can appreciate, we really only care about who’s number one. The late, great Dale Earnhardt captured our national sentiment best when he quipped “Second place is the first loser.” Even in seas full of talent and excellence, we insist on a winner. Can you even remember who lost the Super Bowl? It was only three months ago, and already we’ve forgotten. We select our bests in countless different ways: secret ballots, tournaments, public voting, mathematical formulas and more, and each of them has its imperfections. But on balance, because of the attention we pay, our highest honors are rarely awarded improperly. The command performance gets the Oscar, the prettiest girl wins the tiara and the best team wins the championship. There are however, those most subjective awards, whose secret selection process in private rooms seems not only fallible, but downright wrong. In this first year of a new decade, I’ve noted more misses than hits, more snubs than locks and more undeserved praise than an episode of Celebrity Rehab. I think you’ll agree, here are 3 questionable bests, and who really should have won:

1. Need You Not. First off, let me just say, I’m a big fan of country music. Say what you like, if you haven’t been to a honky tonk (i.e. country bar), you have no idea what you’re missing out on. And with that in mind, I couldn’t be happier to see country enjoying a popular resurgence. Country music just has a different kind of soul than the rest of the stuff that’s out there. Trust me, I’ve converted more than a few people over to my way of thinking about it. But even with all that, the Recording Academy couldn’t have missed by more when it gave its top Grammy award (Record of the Year) to Lady Antebellum for “Need You Now.” Don’t get me wrong, they’re a great band, and they have some great songs. But that’s no more the best record recorded this year than any of the forgettable drivel expelled by the Bieber/Cyrus/Swift collective. I discovered the real record of the year during a seemingly scripted exchange with a disc jockey at my favorite country bar. “Hey, what was that last song?” “F*#k you!” “Hey, f*#k you, Frank! I just want to know the name of the song!” “No, that’s the name of the song!” “Oh... catchy!” Modern R&B has become so forgettably formulaic that I normally wouldn’t recognize a single track from the entire Billboard R&B Top 100. But Cee Lo Green's iconic track successfully fused post-modern doo-wop, hip-hop attitude, R&B vocals and a sentiment so universal that it nearly obviates the foul language required to express it. This song will be played in every kind of club for decades (take it from this DJ) - and I’m pretty sure the only reason it didn’t win more awards was the watered down “clean” version which took half the fun and all the “pop” out of the real track. “F*#k you” is this generation’s “Baby Got Back” - and will license more cussing at weddings, barmitzvahs and company Christmas parties than bad catering, open bars and “Mony Mony” put together.

2. The English Patience. For the record, having ten movies nominated for the Best Picture Oscar is the worst awards show idea since, well, letting James Franco and Anne Hathaway host one of them. Seriously, I’ve seen shades of grey combined to greater effect than those two mooks. It was like watching an open mike night at a suburban comedy club - mostly just desperation and hopeful (albeit disingenuous) applause. But, I digress. Why anyone would believe that there were ten movies worthy of the show’s most coveted award is beyond me, let alone five. But, despite the super-sized slate of films from which to choose, the selection of “The King’s Speech” was already preordained. After all, not only was the film a “true story” (an apparent prerequisite these days - no matter how loosely based on real events the story actually is), but it was also performed in English accents, which has now become Hollywood’s most reliable imprimatur of artistic merit (outside of casting an English actor to not use their accent, except during press junkets). Despite 235 years of distancing ourselves from them (in ongoing rebellion) - it seems that we still look back to the mother country when we start to lose our social direction, all of our art starts to look the same or too many former SNL cast members start making bad movies. “The Fighter” was a better story (and almost got me to forgive Christian Bale for his "Batman voice"), “Inception” was more engrossing (and did get to forgive Leo DiCaprio for Titanic), “127 Hours” was more artful/independent (but still didn't excuse Franco’s hosting performance), and “The Social Network” may have been the only real zeitgeist in the bunch (and completed Justin Timberlake’s transformation from boy-band-member to legitimate artist - ala Marky Mark). Just because something sounds like art doesn’t mean it is - after all, the Best Picture should be something other than the best movie that will someday air on PBS.

3. J-No. As your average red-blooded American male, I have often engaged in a vigorous debate about the most beautiful women on the planet. When I was young, my tastes ran towards Alyssa Milano, Christie Brinkley and pre-ruined-by-hip-hop Mariah Carey, as I got older, I became a little more Jenny McCarthy, Pam Anderson and a touch of Carmen Electra. Then I began to class it up with with Vanessa Marcil, Jennifer Love Hewitt and, on my particularly cultured days, Jane Seymour. Ultimately I’ve arrived at the conclusion that each of them has a claim in their own right, and while the occasional Swimsuit Issue model and Victoria Secret angel may catch my attention, you never really get over the women who first made you feel like a man. That being said, I don’t have any idea what kind of parallel-reality/Bizzaro-world that the editors of People magazine are living in to declare that Jennifer Lopez is the most beautiful woman in the world, but I know that I don’t want to live there. The girl who scans my groceries is more attractive than J-Lo, and I’m fairly confident that it would take three of her (taped front-to-back) to equal one J-Lo sized backside. And spare me the nonsense about “real women have curves”; for one, this is supposed to be about finding The Most Beautiful Woman In the World - do you really want her to look like everyone else? And for another, there’s nothing “average”, “healthy” or “beautiful” about having an ass you can set a drink on. Seriously, what are the odds that the most beautiful female on the planet is married to Mark Anthony anyways? Sure, she can sing - and yes, she’s doing a passable job on the world’s most popular show, but c’mon. With that much make-up and hair, I can look like J0Lo. You know who has curves? Sophia Loren has curves, Catherine Zeta-Jones has curves, Kim Kardashian has curves - what J-Lo has is a giant ass, and the day she’s truly the most beautiful woman in the world is the day I’ll leave it.

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The fact that we get it wrong from time to time, shouldn’t really discourage us all that much. Choosing the best of anything can be a dicey proposition at best, and we are imperfect creatures using our imperfect judgment. However, we should resist the temptation to run far afield of what we truly know to be good or true simply to prove a point or earn the approval of those around us. The world is not a fair place, despite all of our constructs to the contrary. Pretty often trumps ugly, fast often trumps slow, and if we’re lucky, smart often trumps dumb. Working to create exceptions to these rules, however, is not only disingenuous, it also devalues the rare and wondrous occasions when it happens on its own. Underdogs aren’t underdogs if we build the system to favor them. It is just as quintessentially American to love winners as it is to love the rags to riches, bottom to top, last to first story. The American dream isn’t born of staying at the top, it’s about scratching and clawing your way up there, through sheer force of will. What used to be a universal desire to be the best has become, of late, creating bests where they don’t really exist: giving every kid a trophy, refusing to name valedictorians, and letting more and more teams into championship tournaments. But if we’re all the best, then none of us are - and instead of all winning, we all lose.