Some Updates

It's been busy around here for the past couple of weeks, and I've tried to post a few times on a few topics, but I haven't had the ambition, really. Here are some random thoughts:

• I was putting together a long post about George Carlin, and it was too maudlin and it was boring me. Suffice it to say, the two pop-culture entities that most influenced me when I was a teenager were Monty Python and George Carlin. The Pythons gave me a model for embracing absurdity and Carlin exposed my lifelong alienation as natural in a culture as ridiculous as this one, and expressed exactly what I was feeling in ways that helped me accept it.
• I had another job interview on Friday. It came up suddenly, and I had to prepare a teaching presentation in a shorter time than I'd have liked. The interview went well, though, so now it's back to waiting.
• Michele and I celebrated our second anniversary last Tuesday. Michele wrote about it here. We went to a restaurant in OKC and I got this amazing filet of tilapia, and had a glass of a really good pinot gris. Then we went home and watched The Spiderwick Chronicles. Talk about a wild celebration. Sly called in the middle of dinner, so I said I'd call him back. I haven't called yet, though. I owe him a call.
• Michele's brother and his family stopped by unexpectedly on Monday. Their three kids are like a tornado, so it seems like we don't get to visit as much as our time together would suggest, but it was good to see them.
• I have a lot of thoughts about the NBA draft, and maybe I'll write a post about that soon, but for now I'll just say that I'm of two minds. I think what the Timberwolves needed was a solid seven-footer to start at the five so Jefferson could be more effective at power forward, and the only asset they got in that regard was Jason Collins, in the trade with Memphis. On the other hand, I like what Kevin Love brings to the team, and Mike Miller should be a solid asset. Eh. Not a bad draft, but nothing to be too excited about.
• Since we've lived in Norman we've met a lot of people who brew their own beer. I think the funky Oklahoma blue laws have created a fixation among some people here. For our anniversary Michele bought me a book about the history of brewing in Minnesota. The book is fascinating, and because of that my reading of Ellison's Juneteenth has slowed to a crawl.
• It's hot here, and it's getting hotter.

That's about all I have to say right now. Maybe soon I can be more entertaining and/or interesting. Right now I just feel worn out.

On Unusual Anniversaries

Today is the thirtieth anniversary of Elvis Presley's death. I don't remember that day, but I remember the next day, when my friend Judd (yes, that was his name) said, "Elvis died yesterday."

"Elvis who?" I said.

I had no idea who Elvis was, though I'm sure I'd heard his music more than a few times in my life. My mom liked his music, even if she wasn't a fanatic about it. A few months later my brother and I would get a double-record set of Elvis's fifty greatest hits for Christmas:

But as momentous as Elvis's deathdday is, I usually remember August 16th as the day I left for basic training. In 1988. Nineteen years ago. When I was eighteen years old.

Ugh.

I feel old.

August 16, 1988 was a traumatic day for me--part of the worst year of my life. It was the last time I saw my father alive, and even though I didn't know that would be the case, I should have. He was too sick then for any other possibility. Only my emotional numbness kept me from realizing it, from considering the possibility that maybe I should wait a while before leaving my family. A week later I took leave, bought an overpriced, last-minute airplane ticket, was suited up in a hastily-tailored set of dress whites, and flew home to attend his funeral.

And then I went back to the navy. It took me a while to realize I hated working on electronics, a little longer to realize I was a pacifist, and maybe another decade to want to be a human. And now my life has come together so well it's like that year--those years--happened to someone else. I think of my desperation in the months following basic training and I know I'm not capturing how disabled I was. I know I can't recreate the emotional paralysis I felt. And I don't want to. There was a time when I thought I'd never feel any differently, and now I can't even remember it completely.

This sounds like a seventeen-year-old's poetry.

Suffice it to say that life is much better now. On August 16th.

And as an added bonus, here's a blurry copy of my boot camp picture:

August 16th is also a day of famous arrests: Charles Manson in 1969 and Ted Bundy in 1975. Bundy escaped, though.

I did, too.