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.

* * *

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.

* * *

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.

3 Political Paradoxes

I’ve never considered myself a particularly political person, and would consider political activism (e.g., picketing, protesting, rallying, etc.) to have roughly the same time efficacy as watching the Jersey Shore, and yet, I have always been unable to escape the matter. Whether it's folks recommending I run, my family inexplicably turning Tea Party crazy, or just the intermittent traffic on my Facebook news feed - politics follows me like a crazy ex-girlfriend. In general, however, I try to keep up. Even as an official member of the “middle aged” demographic (35-45), I make an effort to stay connected to trends in technology, commerce, art, music, business, etc. And to that end, very little catches me off guard. But I don’t have any idea what’s happened with politics. I feel like I’ve been in a cryogenic chamber for 20 years, woken up, and everything’s gone completely crazy. I don’t recognize politics; I don’t recognize the players, the people or the sides. I don’t know when everyone got so mad, and I certainly don’t remember when the stakes went from haughty disagreement to murderous rage. But as I try to step back and take a good look, there remains some confusion - and so as an alternative to the 24-hour news/commentary cycle, here are 3 political paradoxes - that I just can’t figure out:

1. The Wrong of the Right. Up until a year ago, I was registered for my entire adult life as a Republican. It always just made sense to me. I grew up idolizing Alex P. Keaton, and in a country were Ronald Reagan was a modern day Eisenhower. Capitalism went from helping us lead the world to putting us in a class of our own. It was all about making the money and keeping the money. Government was there in the background - but the world was about business, and politics was there just to keep everyone playing by the rules (for the most part). But somewhere along the way, being a Republican became being a conservative, and being a conservative became being religious. In the span of my adult life, the GOP went from Gordon Gecko to Sarah Palin. We started out as captains of industry bent on self-made success, to trailer park, bible thumping mouth breathers who claim they’re the “real” America. Now, I’m no sociologist, but I’m fairly certain there’s never been a successful society who heralded as champions, its 50th percentile - and I’m sure there’s not a successful political party that’s ever done it. My old party, no longer grand in any sense, has become a tyranny of fools - built on the paranoia of ignorance, and shaking its fist at the storied academic halls that bore its greatest traditions. Capitalism has never been successfully navigated by fools, and never ridden to the highest classes by those whose faith outpaces their work ethic. And yet, these are leaders of the modern day right. The Tea Party is the worst bastardization of a good idea since New Coke. And just like Coke, I’ll forgive them for messing it up, as soon as they start bottling up GOP Classic again.

2. Missing the Middle. It might just be a function of my old age, but lately I feel like pulling kids aside and telling them about the good ol‘ days, when there was a big group of people (read as: the majority of folks) who liked a little bit of each party’s politics - though they may like one a little more than the other. When the balance of power transferred from one to the other (as was destined to take place), they endured a little bit of what they didn’t like for a little of what they did. Each party would insist that the other party had it all wrong - but in the end, they’d come together and reach compromised solutions that had the country’s best interests at heart. Unfortunately, just like the disappearing middle class, the political middle has similarly vanished. Being a moderate is now viewed as traitorous and weak-minded. Being non-committal as a voter is just as unforgivable as if it were the politicians themselves. Modern day political participation requires, as a prerequisite, that you choose a side. And by choosing a side, it means you whole-heartedly commit to one, and abandon as utterly without merit, the other. The problem with this idealogical segregation is that it reduces personal opinion on an impossibly diverse set of issues to a single choice. It’s like choosing a college based solely on the mascot - or a house based on how the doorbell sounds. Take it from someone who got the education of a lifetime at a school with a goat for a mascot - it’s better to take a deep look, at your school, your house and especially your politics. I don’t care if I’m the only one there - I‘m stepping back to the middle, feel free to join me.

3. To The Extreme. I can remember when being hard-core into politics meant more than one bumper sticker, a few signs on your yard, and showing up to a rally or two. These days, it means plotting the actual death of the other side’s leaders, likening its proponents to historically evil ideologies and/or spewing rhetoric so caustic that it makes that one crazy uncle you used to have that served in the Army seem like Miss Manners. Incompetence, ignorance and dishonesty used to be capitol political crimes; now they seem like prerequisites. Hyperbole has become the regular language of political discourse, and U.S. Senators now defend the use of completely contrived pseudo-facts on the Senate floor, as necessary to make their point. In a world of nearly universal and constant media bombardment, it seems that we’re remiss to pay attention to anything that doesn’t threaten us (or the world at large) with imminent harm or descent into anarchy and chaos. As a result, every disagreement roils into a high-stakes, life-and-death conflict of wills, that can only really be decided by the death, dismemberment or severe handicapping of the losing party. All liberals are Communists, all conservatives are fascists. The “slippery slope” argument has become the “sheer cliff” argument - where any inkling turns into blinding allegiance. Any failure to disclose turns into a conspiracy so vast and sinister that the JFK assassination seems like a Sunday picnic by comparison. But how can we be expected to keep our cool when the people we elect and pay to have perspective behave more like members of rival gangs than professionals with differing opinions?

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When it comes to politics, I have always been the tolerant sort. After all, it was a recognizably cyclical process, and if you didn’t like the way things were going all you really needed to do was wait, and pretty soon they’d be headed in a different direction. When this whole Tea Party thing started, Fox News lost its mind, and otherwise normal people became convinced that the President of the United States was literally out to get them - I bit my tongue, retreated for a bit and hoped it would pass. But as time has worn on, this movement has not worn out, and I fear that we’ve finally found a way to punctuate the end of the Information Age - with the Decade of Ignorance. There is not much that I fear more than a tyranny of fools - and in that, the fear-mongering set may finally have found a way to get to me to be scared right along with them. But as I’ve often been told, bravery isn’t about not being scared, it’s about being strong in the face of fear. So for my part in this brave new world, despite my aversion to idiocy, I’m fighting the good political fight with the one weapon that appears to be missing from current political battlefields: reason. Wish me luck.

3 Things to Remember

A wise man once said: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” And twenty five years later, life’s moving a whole lot faster than we ever could have imagined back then. It’s never been easier to lose sight of the forest for the trees, and with more self-indulgent tools at our fingertips than ever before (e.g. Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and even blogs), it’s a wonder we can ever see past our own noses. It is also our nature to focus on the negative, and take the positive for granted. After all, no matter how much good is in our lives, we still seek to eliminate the bad - so it should come as no surprise that we’re conditioned to pay it the most attention. And so with lives full of love, we see the few who hate us, and with lives full of success we replay and relive our failures - daring to call ‘deluded’ anyone who doesn’t similarly commiserate. The gift of perspective is often an unexpected one, and is usually forced to arrive with a good bit of force to jar loose our stubborn tendencies; and I have been fortunate to recently receive it. And while I continue to battle with my propensity for paying attention to the most negative people in my life, I was reminded of those precious few people who really make all the difference in our lives, here are 3 things to remember when you’re busy forgetting them:

1. Someone Looks Up To You. It’s a heady realization - for any of us. Because for all of us, it’s true. We are all role models to someone. When we are young, we look up to nearly everyone; the adult world beyond our reach - impossibly mature, complex and stylized, our more popular and attractive peers - seemingly effortlessly navigating an otherwise suffocating social hierarchy, and those charged with helping us make the transition to adulthood - our parents, teachers and coaches, whose knowledge and judgment often seems infallible. But as we grow and continue to look up, we often neglect to look back down and see who’s looking up at us. Sometimes they are the obvious ones: younger siblings, pupils or children we care for; but often times they are unexpected and even more often go unknown. I recently had someone from my past not only tell me that they had looked up to me twenty years ago - but also, what they thought of me: how I seemed to have it all together, have strong convictions, etc. What struck me about this revelation was not how utterly wrong it was (my life was so tragic it was almost comic, almost), but how horribly I must have acted back then. The idea that anyone would look up to me at that point was so outlandishly foreign that I never considered, in that context, what I said, did or, more importantly, failed to say or do. Self-pity is an ugly and un-inspirational thing - especially when you remember that someone is watching you with those same eyes that you used to look at your big brother/sister, parents and/or teachers with. The opportunity to inspire is as precious as any, and it often takes little more to take advantage of it than recalling that as poorly as you may think you’re doing - someone thinks you’re absolutely nailing it, and prays they can do it just like you do.

2. Someone Misses You. One of the most astounding and saddening by-products of our brave new world of connectivity is just how profoundly alone it makes us feel. I can connect with the people in my life more effortless and robustly than I could even have dreamed just a few short years ago. I can send short messages, long messages, voice messages and even video messages with the touch of a button. I have over five hundred friends on Facebook, and thousands of people will read this. And yet I sometimes find myself as disconnected and lonely as I’ve ever been. We have been presented with a world of infinite connections, and it makes our own limited connectivity feel small and unworthy. We fawn over personalities with millions of “friends” or “followers” and long, enviously, to be known and desired by people we don’t even know. Even those of us who neglect to drink the Kool-Aid handed out by the Church of Fame are guilty of taking for granted of looking ahead at the expense of remembering to look back. We are the product less of the countless people who have touched our lives just for a moment than those special few who changed it immeasurably. And conversely, for the innumerable lives we will only briefly touch, we will deeply affect but a precious handful. As it turns out, in those moments of solitude, if you close your eyes and think about it, it’s not the adoring crowd that you miss - it’s those scarce few who make all the difference. Thankfully, the hole they leave by being gone is best filled by remembering that they miss you, too.

3. Someone Loves You. You’ve seen love. You know what it is; read about it, watched it, and listened to someone sing about it with more conviction than could possibly be faked. If you’re lucky you’ve felt it, but you’ve probably also felt what it’s like to lose it. But, no matter what your experience with love, the one thing that unites us is our universal feeling of unworthiness. We know nothing so intimately as our own imperfections. We know our failures, shortcomings and deficiencies more intimately than our own names - and when anyone sings our praises, a voice inside tells us that they couldn’t possibly have seen all of us, for no one who can see the warts (both inside and out) could love that. I recall believing in my teenage years, as a truth every bit as universal as the sun rising, that I could not be loved. But it wasn’t any more real for me then as it is for any of us now. No matter how wretched, horrible or utterly unlovable you believe yourself to be - someone loves you. Someone can’t imagine a world without you. Someone thinks you're perfect, just the way you are. But most importantly, someone is waiting for you to notice, to feel it, and to feel just as worthy as they think you are.

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It’s so easy to get caught up in the negative, the banal and the downright depressing, as there’s just so much of it around. In this Information Age, the real tragedy is not the flood tide of data that we’re scarcely able to consume but rather that most of this unending flood of information we’re getting is bad news. If you listen carefully you’ll discover that you’re not good enough, not rich enough, not cool enough, not hot enough, not smart enough and most certainly not happy enough. And while I’ve always felt that the one skill essential to becoming educated is the ability to listen, I also know that listening to too much without thinking for yourself will turn your otherwise useful brain into so much strawberry Jell-O. One of the greatest tools we have been given is our memory. Our ability to learn and grow depends on it. But as important as it is to use it for the facts, lessons and skills we’ve acquired over the years, it is even more important to use it to keep those people who matter most close to us, no matter how far away they (or we) get.