Ableson Rants

2004-11-30T01:31:00.000-05:00

The clock has moved past midnight and I’m suppose I am technically no longer in my 20s. But, since I wasn’t born until sometime after seven in the morning, I’ll still consider myself 29 for the purposes of this.

Birthdays used to always be a big deal for me and I often utilized them to reflect back upon the year that had passed. Given my penchant for over thinking things, this predictably led to some deep and dark moments of introspection. The last few years have been different.

I always thought that turning 30 would be a combined huge occasion and crushing reality check for me. In some ways, I suppose that reality-check began a few years ago when I bought a house and the got married. Reality check is probably the wrong description; it’s been more like, dare I say, growing-up. Either way, the fact I am about to be a father at some point in the next couple of weeks has been the major distraction that has kept me from thinking about turning 30, until today at least.

Change has been something I have been good at and given the massive amount of change that is potentially about to happen in my life, it was only natural that turning 30 would start to sink in.

The baby aside, I have also been dealing with career issues and have been actively looking for another job. Not exactly the best timing to be starting a new job, but when have I ever not taken on huge changes at one time. Not to rehash, but in less than three years time, I have bought house, got married, been laid-off, gotten a new job and am now about to turn 30, become a Dad and potentially leave one job for another. Some people go their entire life without doing as much; but, enough with the self-glorification.

I had a dream last night where my old roommate Piper and I were back in the same dorm room we had junior year in college. In the dream, we were our current age, but we had come back for our senor year. The room was exactly how we left, except for the ton of trash and stuff we left behind in addition to none of the people we lived with being there anymore. I found the timing of the dream to be strangely coincidental.

So many of my past birthdays through my early- to mid- 20s were spent worrying about what I was going to do with my life. Thing is, I still worry about that, but unlike the true worries from the past, these are now unfounded. It’s hard to speculate about what you want to be when you grow-up when you are grown-up. And you know, it’s not a bad thing to have your shit together. It also doesn’t mean I can’t stop being hungry for what I want in life, and that remain to be a writer. But, it now includes being a great husband and an incredible father.

Father, it is still such a weird concept for me to think about; it has remained surreal through out all of this. You know, many jokes have flown form family members about the baby being born on my birthday. I’ve resisted it, but, in truth, I’d welcome it and my only birthday wish would be for the health and safety of both mom and baby.

So, goodbye my dear 20s, you treated me quite well but I’ve got no time for you anymore. We’ll always have the memories though, well, so long as all the partying I did with you didn’t steal too much of my memory.

2004-11-03T23:48:00.000-05:00

The reality of it has finally sunk in; this baby is on the way. Amazingly enough it wasn’t the construction we’ve done to build the baby’s room nor all the clothes, toys and stuff that made everything concrete for me. No, it was the all-day, rapid-fire birthing class we took last Saturday that did it.

Most of you with are no doubt familiar with Lamaze and the breathing exercises it teaches you, but unless you’ve had a baby or have one of the way, you probably don’t know what these classes are like. For starters, the Lamaze classes are a bit of the past. The latest craze involves a combination of breathing techniques and labor education. And what education it is. But we’ll get to the scary part of the birthing class in a bit.

My wife and I were both very hesitant to attend any birthing class, even more so when we began looking at the options and duration of some of these classes. The recommendations in many of the books we read said to start looking into birthing classes by the five month of the pregnancy. There were many options and when we finally settled on the one we felt was right for us, Isis, we were then surprised at the duration of these classes. Given our rather urgent need coupled with the fact we had no desire to commit to a half dozen sessions at three hours a clip, we opted for the seven-hour cram session.

So we settled into to our all-day Saturday class a mere six weeks out from our due date. Needless to say we were worried that we would be far and away the furthest along in the class. So, we were pleasantly surprised to find the 11 other couples in our class to all be around the 35 week mark.

The class was as advertised, a cram-session. We spent the early part of the class going over what to expect as we approached labor. The first funny moment came when we hit the relaxation and breathing portion of the program.

The instructor, who was great no doubt because she had six kids of her own, instructed us to grab floor mats and all lay down next to our partners. It was the ultimate icebreaker as trying to fit 24 people on the floor lying down had as al in cramped quarters. I was just thankful nobody had gas, a substantial concern in a room full of pregnant ladies. She shut the lights off and ran as through the typical picture yourself floating on a raft in the ocean type exercise. And it was very relaxing, so much so that I feel asleep. Fortunately, I wasn’t caught.

This all led to her demonstrating a babies birth using a creepy doll for the newborn, a knitted uterus that could have doubled a winter hat and some nylon thing for the placenta. It was a good presentation of the steps, albeit, a rose-colored presentation of the real thing. It was all leading up to the great finale, the video.

Yes, we had the pleasure of ending the day by viewing the video of three different women giving birth. It didn’t pull any punches and was certainly pretty graphic, blood, pain, guts and all. I was fascinated by it more than anything and it served to really get me more excited about the birth of the child. This wasn’t the case for everyone.
I made it a point to see how some of the other couples were reacting to the video and I was surprised to see a couple of moms-to-be actually covering their eyes for the most reveling parts of the births. Made me wonder how they were going to get through he real thing.

I guess my only complaint was, not to be too shallow, I wish they could have found some more attractive couples for the video. But as I overheard one couple saying, would you agree to appear in the video if they asked you? The response: not for a million dollars. Makes sense to me.

2004-10-04T22:53:00.000-04:00

The bitching and general cynical attitude I show toward my wrok environment has to really tax people at times. My new boss called me on my negativity the other day and it caught me a bit off-guard. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t realize that I am often negative at work, but I always try and use it as a means of finding humor in things. While my new boss might not quite get this about me yet, it did make me realize that perhaps I’ve been a bit too cocky these days.

I often ridicule the younger generation, being in a academic setting certainly lends itself to this. But, for as much as I get pissed at the ignorance of folks younger than me, I realize that was once me. The problem is that, as I approach 30, I have been looking at myself as a knowledgeable person. This, of course, isn’t true, and it me who needed this recent reality check. I don’t know shit about shit.

I dwell on what is wrong with my work situation all the time, constantly wondering and dreaming about what it would be like if I was only doing what I wanted for living. It’s the same thing I have written about a million times. Yes, I’m doing it again. The problem is, I tend to think it’s my cynical views of the world that inspire my writing. To an extent it does. But do I really need to exhibit this at work?

I guess what it boils down to, again, is that I don't no where to draw the line. And again, it's why I am very much looking forward to becoming a father.

2004-09-22T23:04:00.000-04:00

I made the mistake of watching a Dr. Phil special on television the other night. I’m not proud to admit that, but he was doing a show on problem children and I couldn’t help but get sucked in. And it scared the hell out of me.

He paraded-out story after story about problem children with problems ranging from watching too much television to a kid who was exhibiting a nine of the 14 characteristics of a serial killer. I was able to deduce that most of the problems had everything to do with poor parenting, but it got me thinking. Now, I can’t help but wonder what our combined gene pool holds. Could there be something in our lineage that could lead to a terror child?

My wife is 100-percent Italian as far back as she can trace it. Her grandparents came here from Italy and aside from a great-, great-, great-grandfather who they believe was abandoned, she is as full-blooded as they come. Myself on the other hand, I am as American as it gets, that is, I am 100-percent mutt. Of course, none of this has ever mattered to any of us, until we got pregnant. Now, I can’t help but wonder what our combined gene pool holds.

I realize this is silly, but as the anticipated arrival of our first-born creeps closer, my irrational worry is rising. I’m starting to question whether or not I am ready to be a parent. Sure, I’ve read a bunch of the books, but lately, I’ve found myself reading more as quickly as possible. I feel like I am cramming for a last minute exam. Even more troublesome is, the more I read, the more I feel like I don’t know a damn thing. The paradox of knowledge is a bitch.

So, like any true researchers, I'm throwing all the books aside and working on a new theory: instinctual parenting. I know, all you parents are thinking I’m in for the biggest surprise of my life. But, let’s think about this for a second.

Humans have been having children since the dawn of time. Captain Caveman certainly didn’t have to worry about whether or not the wrong colored stuffed animal or too much watching of a purple dinosaur was going to damage his kid. No, his lot was easy; keep the kid away from the fire and watch-up for big bad T-Rex.

Maybe I’m naïve, but I consider myself a well-raised individual and I have to think that is due to the wisdom that was imparted upon my parents from their parents. I have a good foundation and I know enough that you can’t plop your kid in front of the television for hours a day and hope the kid grows up adjusted to the real world.

It’s not that I don’t see how it is easy to use the idiot box to raise your kid though. While the glowing box is raising your kid, it frees-up your time to get things done. It allows you to be selfish and in this world that values career first, family second, it’s the perfect tool for many. But that is not going to be me.

Too often I drive through my old neighborhood when visiting my parents and realize there is a severe lack of children out playing. The same ball field on the way to their house where I spent so many summers playing wiffleball is always empty. I can only speculate these kids are in playing videogames and it just tears me up inside. You want to know what’s wrong with kids these days, start at the local playground.

So, I vow that I will not let this happen. My child is going to learn to be creative and find ways to manufacture their own fun. Sure, I loved videogames growing-up, still do. But I’m going to do my best to reverse that trend. The kid goes to the ball field or plays house, the videogames will remain Daddy’s.

2004-08-24T23:48:00.000-04:00

I need this kid to get here sooner than later, but, barring a major evolutionary miracle, the little creation won’t be here for another four months. Until then, I’m left with a level of surrealism permeating though my daily life: there’s a major change on the way, but it’s anything but tangible right now.

Talking to anyone with children will undoubtedly always lead to some acknowledgement of their procreation being the single greatest thing to happen to them. I’ve got no reason to believe otherwise, although there is a part of me that believes this is the mantra all parents adopt; sort of similar to how Nomar claimed he loved playing in Boston. But, I believe it to be true, because with the routine nature of my nine-to-five daily tryst under the fluorescents sucking the creative spirit from me, I need that feeling more than anything. I need something to make everything worthwhile.

There is a portion of my brain telling me this is just another in a long line of my Clark Griswold-esque expectations’; I’m just setting myself up for failure again. But, how can something like bringing a child into the world be anything short of remarkable?

I’m not naïve enough to think this isn’t going to be major work. I understand there will be a astronomical amount of late nights, crying, no sleep, diaper changing, not to mention an that lifelong worry and concern I’ve signed-on for. No, I get all that and have to believe that cleaning up your child’s crap is infinitely better than dealing with co-workers’ sludge.

Truth be told, there was a time I couldn’t fathom the idea of having a child, let alone coming to grips with my current reality of impending fatherhood. But, I’m genuinely excited about things. Sure, there is a very significant frightening aspect to all of this, but the excitement seems to find a way to barely nudge-out the worry, leaving me with this surreal anticipation. And it’s this surrealistic anticipation that has me convinced this baby is exactly what I have always needed in my life.

It has only taken a mere eight years of doing the daily working world grind to sap my spirits and plunge my motivation into uncharted depths. I realize this could very well be the summer malaise sucking my concentration, but whatever the reason, I have not been able to concentrate one iota on any matter related to my job.

This has been a recurring situation for several months now. I have moments of brilliance were I am able to complete a tremendous amount of work, but these tend to occur only when I am forced into situation where issues need to be addressed. These periods are followed by long stretches of time where I sit idly while visions of a perfect life on easy street dance with the conflict of my current job and my contemplation of how I can achieve my dream job. Toss impending fatherhood and summertime laziness into the equation and I’m left with an extremely dangerous career situation that has been extremely taxing on my mental health.

And this is where the baby comes in. The 21-year old version of me is about to spit-up, but, I can not wait to become one of those parents who can talk about nothing more than what is new in their child’s life. I feel that I have been working toward one of life’s true miracles waiting for it to change my entire perspective on reality. I need to life for this because right now, it seems to be the only thing that will make working for a paycheck versus pursuing my dream job an easier pill to swallow.

2004-08-02T15:56:00.000-04:00

Sometimes there are moments that are just so serene, I don¹t know whether to let exist solely in my memory or to preserve with the written word. This is one of the moments.

The beach is rather desolate for what you would expect on an early August afternoon; the cool temps and winds having succeeded in turning the place 180 degrees from the beach chair to beach chair stacked norm of the three H’s.

The only thing between myself and the crush of high tide is the occasional beach walker and an elderly gentleman scouring for change with a metal detector. It feels a lot like a post-apocalyptic aura you get after Labor Day. I love it.

There has always been something substantially powerful about being at the edge of the shore as the waves of the ocean form a power struggle between myself and what often feels like the mass of an entire country behind me; the seagulls serving as the messangers between the two forces of nature and time. To have it nearly to myself is humbling and empowering. It provides perspective you don’t get from the daily rat race of life where you’re too often caught up in struggling for your own bereavement where every word and interaction potentially impacts your standing on the corporate ladder. It’s that sense of worry about career growth that has taken years off my life; or several hairs off my head at the very least.

As I sit and write, I start to realize why I often have to choose whether or not I want to write about the moments that inspire me to do just that, write. Because, inevitably, my contemplative writing winds around to me thinking about my job and place in life with all the worries that push my closer to needing some time with Zoloft.

But that is also what is so humbling and empowering to me. These real life worries don’t matter here. The feeling of the waves crashing on my feet combined with the infinite horizon in front of me makes me realize just how minuscule a cog I am in the grand scheme. This ocean could swallow me up in seconds without a care about my latest business plan or strategic thoughts on life. A scary thought, but for some reason, it feels incredible. Ashes to ashes, all fall down, there is nothing like an unexpected mid-summer fall day to make you feel so alive.

2004-07-30T01:40:00.000-04:00

The responsibilities of impending fatherhood are daunting, sometimes downright frightening, which lead to a myriad of questions and even more worry. It’s really just one big cycle of worry after worry. Will I be a good dad? Can we afford this? What if something goes wrong? Is the baby healthy? Will I have to go to water park?

Few things repulse me more than a water park. Actually, pretty much anything that attracts people for good old fashioned manufactured corporate fun disgusts me? But I could always avoid these with ease when I was single. Marriage certainly didn’t bring me into contact with these places, unless you count the Home Depot. But being a parent? I feel I may be doomed to episode of screaming kids, exposed bear bellies and chlorine soaked nachos. It’s a fate I’m not sure I’m ready to come to grips with yet.

But I’m going to have to because, well, kids love this shit. I know I did.

During on many trips to Cape Cod in my youthful years we would always pass this water park on our way to and from the Cape. My brother and I would always beg my parents to go there and they always said no. They give us a “maybe on the way home” and the subsequent “we’re too tired” when we headed home.

Year after to year it was the same thing until one year they finally gave in. And that must have been enough. But like time has a way of doing, I finally was able to gain some perspective. Why would any parent want to go to a water park other than to please their kid? I’m going to have to this some day.

Parenthood is definitely a weird cult. This much I’m already starting to realize. Kids love to have fun, at your expense. I guess this is what my parents always meant when they said they “sacrificed a lot for us kids.” As a parent, you have to subject yourself to the very happiest places on earth that marketing gurus drill into your kids heads. Am I ready for this?

I know it sounds stupid, but seriously, after watching family for years now, I vowed this would never be me. I always said I never wanted to have kids. That, of course, has changed, much to the chagrin of the 21-year-old version of me. But like the true PR professional I am, I’m trying to put a positive spin on this before my house becomes overrun with toys and I find myself in the same 15-year-old bathing suit with a plastic floatation device in on hand an a soggy corn dog in the other.

One of my best memories from my childhood was when my dad would get down in the dirt with my Tonka trucks and me. We would sit in the backyard and build roads and dams in the mud for hours. I remember my dad seeming like he was having the time of his life. I don’t doubt that he was. Because somehow, I think having a kid really allows you to get back in touch with your own childhood. I’m looking forward to that.

Those Tonka trucks are still in my parent’s basement and I am looking forward to dragging those out and reliving my childhood memories. If my child is anything like me, he or she will love those moments the most. That one on one time with your parent that will forever be engrained in their head. It’s obvious I need to not only live for those moments, but to utilize them to talk about the evil creatures that lurk in water parks around the world. I figure they’ll but this for at least seven year or so. By then, I should have done enough research to find the water parks that have an on-site bar.

2004-07-21T10:09:00.000-04:00

I don’t know about the rest of Red Sox nation, but during that last game against Seattle the other day, there was a big part of me that wanted them to blow that lead and lose. Because, truth be told, I don’t think I can take it anymore and a prolonged losing streak would probably make the rest of my summer much more enjoyable.

The pain from last season lingered like the back end of late night burrito after a night of tequila and beer. That is to say, it hurt. Sure, I tried optimism over the winter and, the Patriots winning the Super Bowl sure helped, but as soon as pitchers and catchers reported, I realized I wasn’t emotionally ready for this season to begin.

The baseball season is long, we all know this, especially as Red Sox fans. You would think, being the self-tortured souls that we are, we would know that taking six of seven games from the Yankees before Memorial Day meant jack-squat. But, no, Sox fans were all over this. I warned my friends to take heed, but still they yammered on, in every medium they could; from sports radio to the myriad of web site dedicated to discussing the team.

Which reminds, am I only the one out there that think the likes of a certain Sox player and a certain prominent owner shouldn’t be spouting opinions on these message boards? I mean, the media is one thing, but how can you possibly feel the need to explain yourself to people in an anonymous forum who probably have the Sox chat up in one browser and the latest Pam Anderson video in another? Sox fans are cynical by nature, but the lunacy perpetuated through some of these virtual discussions is manic.

But, I digress. To each his own I suppose. After all, it is the forlorn right of every Sox fan to jump on and off the bandwagon of players and managers several times a season.

I set out to avoid getting sucked into all things Sox as much as possible this year. Choosing to not watch nor attend a single game in its entirety until after July 4th, I figured I would be able to at least shield myself from some of the heartbreak.

It sort of worked.

For a couple of months there, I followed the team via box scores and the newspapers. It gave me just enough info to maintain a working knowledge of the season without driving me too far off the edge. However, what I found when I jumped back on board nearly three weeks ago is that being a Red Sox fan is like being a former addict. I had just fallen head first off the wagon.

The problem lies in this obsession with the Yankees and the “curse.” It has simply gotten too big. When a documentary about a losing season brings can be a local hit, you know you’ve got problems.

At least I do, because I do still believe and this always turns me into an emotional train wreck. I simply care too much and it starting to take its total. And that is why I sat there the other night wanting them to blow it.

This team doesn’t have the magic of last year and we are all in denial if we think they are going to turn it around.

They’re not.

But the problem is, I can’t let them go, it’s against every fiber of my Red Sox being. It’s like being in a bad relationship, except instead of them cheating on me, they tease me with losses and then come running back to me with a winning streak. I have no backbone at all, choosing to always let them back into bed with me. I’ll never dump them on my own. I need them to just run away from me and never come back. So please, my dear Red Sox maiden, just start losing and never stop because if you can fall out of contention by mid-August, it might be just enough time for me to get up the will-power to take you back next fall.

2004-06-10T16:24:00.000-04:00

There is nothing like the impending birth of your first child to bring to thoughts of one’s mortality to the forefront of the cranium. You would think with such a joyous event on the horizon that my head would be filled with all things sugary and sticky sweet? But, death? The irony is delicious.

They say life takes on a whole new meaning once you become a father. I'm still unsure who "they" are but I can tell you my life is already changing in ways I never thought possible. Between the episodes of elation and fits of pure terror about the impending creation, I've generally found myself more and more excited about my forthcoming fatherhood; that is to say, I’m starting to think more like a grown-up.

Maybe its just fatherly instinct, but the need to be the provider and protector has really welled-up in me over the past month. And along with this rise of sentinel nature has come an overt reality of the ever-looming grim reaper.

I've never spent much time thinking about death; how many people before the age of 40 do? I'm not clinically insane, I do realize death is a natural part of the life cycle. It's just that when you’re relatively young, you tend to think of yourself as being immune to it. But, I’m turning 30 this year and things are starting to ache more and my health is starting to become more of priority, although not so much that I'm ready to denounce Buffalo wings and beer. This fatherhood thing has me thinking.

There are a host of physiological and physical aspects that expectant fathers can feel. Everything from weight gain to moodiness to changes in sleeps patterns. I didn’t put much stock on any of these when I read about them back at the beginning of the pregnancy figuring, I wasn’t the carrying the kid, how could any of this affect me? Well, guess what, it does, especially the desire to be the ultimate protector.

In a phase that I imagine might be similar to my wife's "nesting" phase when she gets there, I've not only become extremely protective but also worrisome. I read about this protective nature leading to some men going so far as to purchase a gun. At the time I laughed at the image I got of some guy defending his bedroom with a shotgun, now, it suddenly makes sense. Not that I have Smith and Wesson on speed dial yet, but I now understand how impending fatherhood could drive some fathers to their local gun shop. Which leads me to a worry you can’t really do anything, the unknown.

Driving into work this morning I heard a report on the radio about a truck driver who burned to death when he collided with another truck. While a sad situation to hear at anytime, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I began thinking about this man's family and how this morning was probably not unlike every other morning for then and then all of sudden things are altered forever. I instantly about thought about my wife and suddenly began to feel this immense sense of doom. I quickly changed the station and was rescued by Howard Stern.

Still, the feeling that came over me as a sat thinking about my own mortality was deeper and more real than ever. We live in an uncertain time in a culture that promotes fear. You can't turn on the television or pick up a newspaper without being confronted with some sort of terror warning. I also know that you can't think about the unknown because you will literally drive yourself crazy. But as a father-to-be, it's become tougher to avoid. "They" were right, I'm seeing things from a whole new perspective, but I just need to keep this new perspective in perspective because being too speculative can really distort perspective.

2004-05-26T19:45:00.000-04:00

I’m going to write this down because if it’s in print, it must be true. My wife is pregnant. There I said it, it’s out there and now the process of acceptance of this reality can take place.

I won’t lie this isn’t a surprise. We’ve held caucuses about having a kid for months, the peace accord having been reached with both parties agreeing to the stoic trying, but not trying philosophy of an if it happens, it happens nature. Of course, when I agreed to such a solution, I never in a million years thought the proverbial bun would be placed in said oven with such efficiency.

Needless to say, the republic of Steve is shocked at this quick resolve, but quite proud of their soldiers’ ability to get in and get the job done is an extremely swift manner. But with this infiltration came the stark realization that army of Steve is way past the fail-safe point. I’m going to be a Dad sometime by the end of this year, a fact that excites, bewilders and scares the hell out of me.

See, I’m still wondering when the hell I grew-up. Sure I’ve been of legal drinking age for eight years now in physicality, but mentality, the 21-year-old version of me still controls a large part of my brain. Despite a concerted effort by the present tense me, that has built a solid career, bought a house in the suburbs and gotten married, the young naïve, know-it-all always looking for a good time me, still has control. But, this baby thing, well, the college boy hasn’t taken this news to well.

I suppose like any good student would do, I’ve taken to seeking out information on this pregnancy deal. And guess what, pretty much every book on the market pretty much comes with way too much information. Sure, they are all helpful in learning about the developing fetus; do men really need to know about increased flatulence, darkening nipples and leakage? I suppose my interest would be high if I were some sort of bizarre fetishist. Of course, I’m not, but medical questions aside, what about my own personal thoughts.

I’m going to have a baby to worry about, someone who I am totally responsible for and someone who is soon enough going to want to play with my videogames? I still love my Playstation 2, but there is no way I want my kid being raised by videogames.

And what about the internet? With the stories you hear about shady chat rooms with the pedophile workers. This will have to be regulated of course, but how to do it without be hypocritical? Heck, the internet was made for porn what if the spam for the latest porn sites popping up everyday. Perhaps I need to start lobbying for all porn sites to have to be registered as a “.sex” domain.

But what’s most worrisome of all is that I’ll be morphing into mini-van driving soccer dad before I know it. The 21-year-old version of me just puked.

Don’t get my wrong, my excitement for this baby is high, but I think I’ve got some things to work through from a selfish/foolish perspective. And I’ve got nine months to get it done.

2004-05-18T16:23:00.000-04:00

Smack dab in the middle of commencement season and I figured it would only be right to tip my mortar board to the thousands of college students around the area who will be receiving their sheepskins and heading off to the real world. So, congratulations and welcome to hell.

I miss college and its hallowed grounds chock full of students, fueled by click of mouse total information access, warped on personal beliefs that they are going to make a difference and change the world. Oh, to be young and naïve without a care or true responsibility filled to the brim with idealistic optimism. Makes
me...jealous.

Jealousy aside, what really gets me is listening to graduation bound students wish away their final semester proclaiming they are so happy to be done with
college. I only have one question, are you all insane?

Sure, I can remember and relate to what it was like to know nothing but school for the better part of 16 years of your life, but for the love of all that is holy, don‚t be so excited to be out. Because for all the excitement that comes with the opportunity to
finally apply your hard work and education in an actual job, the novelty will wear off fast. The nine-to-five world will get old fast and soon you'll be begging to have those days of all the adult freedoms with none of the responsibilities back.

College is the greatest ego-booster around. Sure you're paying them to learn and the workload can get treacherous, but if you make it through to graduation, you can walk out of it feeling like the world owes you everything. When I received my diploma I was hell-bent on staying true to myself and not compromising any of beliefs or dreams, which meant nothing more than avoiding the "real" world as long as physically
possible. It was a good year and half of bartending, traveling and, of course, partying, but eventually, reality sunk in. It was time to put my degree to work. So, off went the Birkenstocks and out came the neckties.

When I finally landed my first "real" job, I was resolute on retaining my individuality at all costs. But gradually, corporate life began to chip away the
chip on my shoulder and compromise became my modus operandi. I went from vowing to never wear a tie to vowing never to own a suit to owning a suit. It didn‚t take to long to deduce that it‚s pretty tough to assert your individuality in the gray corporate world,
especially as a young professional. It is more than enough to have you longing for the weekly thirsty Thursday night benders. But, I‚m starting to come full circle; at least trying to anyway.

Of course, that full circle has me a bit resentful, albeit more understanding of my place in life. I don‚t necessarily think that I want to go to be back in college, despite the part of me that still believe he is still 22, but I do think I can deliver at least
a bit of a message to recent grads. Enjoy what you have and by all means, don‚t be in a rush to grow-up so fast. There is plenty of time for that. Take the time now to explore and try things because you will only get the free pass right now. Soon, deadlines,
bosses and even more intense pressure than you had in college will rule your life. Don‚t get me wrong, career success balanced with a great family life have joys of their own, and while getting a great raise from doing an incredible job is a satisfying feeling, it still doesn't hold a candle to being able to pull three all-nighters in a row and still managing to remain your beer pong title.

2004-04-05T15:49:00.000-04:00

Time has a way of rushing by and life has a way of happenings, but as often is the case when anniversary dates happen, you can’t help but remember what was. And while a myriad of “I was doing blank when Cobain was killed” recollections are being recoiled throughout the printed and virtual realm this week, I too, have found myself reflecting on the affect of grunge on my generation. However, this reflection hasn’t taken the form of directly relating to Cobain, but rather, what the media-anointed affect was on Cobain and Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder dynamic.

Ten years ago, grunge ruled the airwaves and the consternation and apathy of Generation X infiltrated all things pop culture. Looking back, most probably remember that in 1991, Nirvana single-handily quashed 80s hair-metal, turned the nation’s attention to the Seattle grunge sound and opened the door for fellow Seattleites like Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam.

With sales of their album “Nevermind” taking off, records companies began signing every band out of Seattle it could and the media began to paint the likes of Cobain and Vedder as spokespeople for a maligned and discontent generation of young adults who were basically depressed and pissed-off at a world they felt cheated them out of the American Dream.

It was in the lyrics of Vedder and Cobain that an alienated generation found voices they could relate to. But the pressure of being elevated to such a prominent position went against the punk rock fabric that Cobain and Vedder came from and they both bristled at the fame and popularity suddenly bestowed upon them. Vedder once said in a 1994 interview with Melody Maker : “It's just so weird. You write about this shit, and you're suddenly the spokesman for a generation. Think about it, man, any generation that would pick Kurt or me as its spokesman -- that must be a pretty f*&%(# up generation, don't you think?”

Statements like that were common themes in most of the articles written about the grunge scene back then. The resulting undercurrent was rampant speculation as to which signer would off them self first? Nobody was shocked when Cobain was found dead; the ironic twist is Cobain’s suicide may have saved Vedder’s life that night.

Speculation being what it is, the argument can be made the unwanted public pressure placed on him, was a leading contributor to Cobain’s death. Having spent eight years on both the journalism and public relations side of the media, I have developed a sense of just how powerful the media is in shaping public opinion. Journalists at the time were almost trying to dictate history in the present and, as the gluttony of “tortured artist, spokesperson for a generation” stories perpetuated the aura around Cobain and Vedder, it became easy to believe that one of them had to die to legitimize the grunge movement’s place in history.

Preexisting demons aside, you have to wonder if the media killed Cobain? And if not Cobian, would it have been Vedder?

While time as elevated Cobain to rock icon status, Vedder’s transformation and maturity has coincided with an aging generation. Mainstream music chewed and spit out Pearl Jam and the grunge movement long ago. If the ten year anniversary of Cobain’s death isn’t enough perspective for you Gen X’ers, consider this; I was recently asked by a college student what it was like to be around at the height of grunge?

Now out from underneath the white-hot spotlight of pop culture, Vedder and PJ have continued to churn out music and play to sold-out arenas across the land. Vedder has also come to embrace his place as a role model over the last decade.

The media’s attention now focused on the pop-tart Britney Spears and ghetto-fabulous hip-hop artists of the world, Vedder has been able to act without fear of his every word and action being disseminated in this real-time news at the click of a mouse world. He’s become very outspoken, too outspoken if you ask some, but the point is, he is not afraid to make is political agendas known. Sure, he continues to be a thorn in the conservative side of America, especially in the wake of his penchant for donning a George W. Bush mask during PJ performances of the anti-Bush song Bushleaguer, but isn’t that far more productive than arguing over who’s band is better?

Pushing 40, Vedder’s song writing has also taken on similar political tones while remaining true to the sort of introspection that appealed to the Gen X’ers a decade ago. I think he has evolved into something Cobain probably never could have become, that of a serious musician not afraid to carry a political torch. He’s matured and so have we.

We Gen X’ers have grown up. We’ve got jobs, spouses, mortgages, kids and most importantly, a sense of responsibility that we didn’t have in college a decade ago. Then, it was easy to look at things as being hopelessly stacked against us and, much like Vedder wondered in the song Indifference, ask “How much difference does it make?”

Time has a way of putting things into perspective. And while it’s only right to pay homage to the genius that Cobain was, I take greater solace in the fact that Vedder is still around as a voice for my generation. He may not resonate with as much force anymore, at least has far as the public of mass consumption knows; but he stills stands as a defining icon for the generation formally known as X.

2004-03-04T10:06:00.000-05:00

If you're anything like me than you are prone to delusions of grandeur. But you also are prone to a minor inferiority complex when it comes to reflecting upon your high school days.

I had a weird series of dreams the other night, the kind where several people you haven't thought about for years play prominent roles. You, know, the ones where you are still chasing the girl that got away or reliving those embarrassing moments of teenage awkwardness. The dream this particular night had them all, including an interesting situation where I got to be rejected by two old high school crushes all over again. Trampled three-some dreams aside, what struck me the most about this dream was the presence of my old chemistry lab mate.

Truth be told, I had been in classes with this kid since junior high, but it was the hilarity of science experiment gone bad that sticks out the most in my memory cache. This kid was a genius and often as a lab partner his chemical virtuosity would lead to quick completion of assigned tasks leaving plenty of time for chemical freelancing. Our peak accomplishment came the day our adlibbing forced the school to be evacuated.

I didn’t see this kid after graduation and probably have thought about him once in the 12 years since, until the other night.

He was one of those eccentric geniuses we all knew in high school, the kid you was teased often in elementary who hit that right blend of oddity and intelligence, that you couldn’t help but admire them. You knew they were going places in life. After this old acquaintance’s dream appearance, I woke up wondering what had become of him.

Naturally, I had to Google him.

What I found simultaneously amazed me and instilled great feeling of inadequacy.

It turns out this kid got heavily involved in the Internet and rode the boom of the late 1990s to great fortunes. He was one of founders of what is now a multi-billion company and has appeared in countless articles, many in national publications. He since gone on to form his own production company and serves on the board of directors of a well-known advocacy group. In contrast, I once did publicity for a small local jamband and have been quoted in a couple of trade publications.

Still, I wondered how I matched-up against my former classmates. I wondered how I would match-up should any of my former classmates find themselves with the need to size themselves up against me. So I got to googling myself. The result: I had three pages to this kids eight.

Embarrassing. Or so I thought.

I mean, two google pages is a pretty good for someone pushing thirty, right? Granted, I’ve had the luxury of being in the type of work where you output becomes part of public consumption, but I’m doing okay. Surely, I’m doing better than some of my other classmates. So I googled a few before my narcissistic acts got the better of me.

The entire exercise did raise some interesting questions for me. How often do former high school classmates wonder about how they measure up to people they’ve lost touch with? I don’t know that I have overtly made wondered how I stack up to former friends, but I can’t ignore when my subconscious forces these thought to my conscious. So I wonder, it’s foolish but I do.

It could be a reason why I didn’t attend either my fifth or tenth reunion. But more so, I think it might be jealousy. See, most people I went to high school with remained in Rhode Island and have remained close friends. But I have drifted. Maybe it was a desire to put that prt of life behind me because I certainly had a good high school experience copmpared to the normal teenager. I’m more inclined to think the reason lies in the fact I have always gotten further and further away from old friends.

I realize that I tend to live my life in stages and as I get older I ‘m beginning to understand more that you can’t always take everything and everyone from your past with you. Even in this day and age, its hard to keep in touch with people. You can’t expect to still know the daily activities of your old high school hockey teammate or college drinking buddy. Life just moves too fast. So, you take a few companions on life’s ride and simply have count your blessing for having such great memories. If you never forget, you always have the fond dreams to look forward to.

2004-02-06T23:35:00.000-05:00

I’m starring down the barrel at 30 this year and I can’t help but wonder if it will be the magical line of demarcation into adulthood. Will I finally be transformed into a card-carrying member of the adult crowd? Is it the moment I’ll become my parents? Will it be when everything I’ve already passed on the way to full-fledged adulthood; career, house, marriage, finally becomes real for me? Will I actually believe in my true age?

These are all questions that continue to have me searching. In many ways, it feels like I’ve been perpetually inquisitive forever, but that is what the real world does, blends everything together. However, I can pinpoint the definitive moment when the realilty became reality: psych 101 class, my senior year.

I’m sure that fact I was able to put off psych 101 until my final semester in college says something about my psychological profile from both a shallow and deep perspective. But it was toward the end of that class that the reality of graduation started blipping on the radar screen and so did the questions and anxiety about what was next?

Adhering to my belief that psych 101 was common sense, I had long since stopped paying attention and I began to perform a psych case study myself. I started writing down questions I had about life after college, just one right after the other. And I filled two pages, no paces, no line breaks. I’d give anything to be able to find the notebook now. I hated that feeling then, but here I sit nearly eight years later and I just have as many questions.

Granted my sanity isn’t helped by the fact that I still think I’m somewhere between my 20th and 23rd birthdays. True to my perpetual confusion, I can’t place my feelings on a definitive age, but there are true realities in my brain where I’m still just about to graduate or enjoying my first couple of years out of school. And while the occasional delusion of grandeur never hurt anyone, I’m beginning to wonder if the duration of mine should be cause for concern. See, I’m married with a mortgage and the insemination summit about to reach an accord. In short, life has sailed past the acquaintance phase and is well onto happening to me. And I’m worried that I’m numb to the true gravity of it all.

I’ve been wondering a lot lately what the 20-year-old version of me would think of the present tense me. You can imagine the conflict that occurs when the 23-year-old present delusion self gets in the middle of this. I know all this is coming because I’m facing my 30th, but I had big dreams when was safely ensconced in college a decade ago. Talk about the world being my proverbial oyster, I had dreams and a great sense of self that fueled by the all the adult freedoms, none of the responsibility that college provides. Back then, it wasn’t matter of wanting to be the next Eddie Vedder or Bob Costas, it was a matter of when that was going to happen. Of course, it didn’t…or hasn’t or never will, depending on which of me you ask. The point is, I felt vibrant back then, like I was on the cutting-edge of something that would revolutionize the world. I still feel that, but now, that feeling seems fleeting. I worry that somewhere along the line I’ve made a choice that has lead me down a safer path; one that while my goals have always remained in focus, has made it that much more difficult to achieve. Is the road of suburban life too safe?

So many people try it. Growing-up it is the one thing you always expected you would do. Row, get a job, get married, have a family. It was just the way it was. But is it still? With half of all weddings ending in divorce, is the expected work ethic of this nation too much? Does getting to your goal require more of a push than falling into a family will give? I have to wonder, but again, it can only come down to me.

Still, the fact I am in considering having a kid blows the present day version of me away. It pisses the 21-year-old me off. Life has a way of happening. I don’t know and I’m wondering if I ever will. In so many ways, it’s good. Family that is, the security of it and the notion that walking alone through this world will never happen. And then there is the part of me that is, and will probably always remain, the young kid in my mind. Which is why this is weird. I’m in a great position, but for some reason want to give it all back to youth. Are we constantly chasing our youth, is that normal?

I’m inclined to hope it is because I don’t see myself realizing 30 anytime within the next year. Which scares me.

2003-10-30T23:33:00.000-05:00

With my first wedding anniversary rapidly approaching I have received my first taste of what the anxiety of trying to find the perfect gift most be for the millions of married folks out there. Fortunately, before I twisted myself in a knot, I remembered that there is a traditional list of appropriate gifts out there for each year. That is when I discovered that someone had updated the traditional list with a corresponding contemporary one and noticed some interesting trends.

Let’s look at the first one. The traditional gift for your first anniversary gift is paper. Now, if you’re like me, you’re wondering just how exciting can paper be? The answer is romantic and practical. You can easily fill this if a book, tickets to a show or go straight to the heart with a poem, but write it yourself. Don’t be one of those people who buy one of the multitudes of ready-made romantic verse out there. I highly recommend going the traditional route versus its contemporary; a clock. I suppose that is practical at least, but clocks on everything we own these days, I’m sure my wife isn’t in the market for a clock.

Skipping ahead to the fifth year gifts, we find traditionally wood in the gift given. Wood? “Happy anniversary honey, here’s a log.” Doesn’t exactly say I love you. The contemporary solution to this was to revise wood to silverware. Nothing exudes love like a fork.

The tenth anniversary comparison is where the lists get truly interesting. Traditionally, tin is the gift given. Again, not much better than wood, but at least tin or aluminum provide a bit more flexibility in terms of gift finding. Now, the contemporary offers a much more viable and expensive alternative, diamonds. Diamonds are traditionally given on the sixtieth anniversary, so I can only gather that these contemporaries have factored in the high divorce rate of this country, figuring their best chance at diamond was to bump it up 50 years.

The contemporaries did make an attempt to make up for this expensive change five year later at the 15th, exchanging the traditional crystal for watches. Sure, watches can be just as much if not more expensive as crystal, but if you’d dumped a few thousand on a diamond five years prior, you can easily fill this year with a nice $30 Timex. However, it’s a bit of an illusion as they stick it to you five years later.

How nice it must have been years ago to get away with celebrating your two decades together with a gift of China. Not that I advise in selecting china patterns on your own,but it is the perfect do-it-yourself gift for your wife. You could even get creative and surprise her with a trip to China. I like it; the contemporaries did not. Their gift is platinum. Platinum that precious metal retailing at roughly three times the price of gold. Yes, we’re back to jewelry for year 20.

After all these changes it is nice to know the traditionalists and the contemporaries all agreed that silver is indeed the appropriate gift for year twenty-five. But the contemporaries are back to their new trick in year thirty. Traditionally, pearls are the gift for your 30th, the new-age gift has been rectified to diamonds…again. Apparently, these folks feel if they survive this long they deserve more diamonds. Hey, pearls are pretty expensive too, but I guess they are just too old-fashioned. In keeping with modern trends, it seem our contemporaries gave up re-jiggering the list after 30, figuring they would either be dead, divorced or just sick of their spouse by then I guess.

There are a couple of other big gift mark-ups between the two lists in other odd years. Take the fourth anniversary with its traditional and easy gift of fruit or flowers compared to the contemporary of appliances? Then we have the ninth where traditional pottery as been expensively changed to leather. But my favorite comes in year eleven where apparently fashion jewelry is preferred to the traditional steel. I have to disagree with this; nothing says you mean the world to me more than a nice solid steel girder. Tens years to go, I can’t wait.

2003-10-21T23:26:00.000-04:00

I suppose I always knew the day would come when I would utter phrases that began “I remember when…” I just didn’t think it would happen before my 30th birthday. But there I was the other day in South Station having just missed my train home with a dead cell phone preventing me from calling home to inform the wife. So I saddled up to my first public telephone in years, reached into my pocket for a quarter and nearly choked on my iced cappuccino at the big 50-cent logo starring back at me. Fifty cents? I remember when pay phones cost only ten cents. This of course got me thinking about what else has changed so much in my 28 and ten-twelve’s years.

I remember when showing up to college with one of those 25-pound Brother word processors had me ably prepared. Those days, the only folks with computers were either rich or geeks. The Brothers were big, bulky slow and loud. Nothing will ever beat with the time my roommate and I were simultaneously printing out 35-page history reports on dueling Brothers. I think our entire floor thought they were under attack.

I remember when candy bars were only a quarter and the stale bubble gum in the baseball card packs of the same price was the best gum going. The highlights of every summer day were the daily trips to the corner store to pick up another pack of baseball cards. We still traded them back then and there were even a couple of kids in the neighborhood who stuck them in the spokes of their bikes. But the gum, the gum was the greatest tasting flavor there was, even if it only lasted 20 seconds.

I remember when kissing a girl in middle school was the most risqué thing in the world. I’ll never forget my first seventh grade dance, spinning around to the required Stairway to Heaven last dance, and looking over and seeing two of my classmates kissing. Coming from a catholic school, I instantly was shown the light on how cool public school would be. I made it my mission to find that ever-elusive first kiss, a kiss I finally got a bat mitzvah of all places that spring. Sitting at Mother’s Day brunch the next morning, I recall a sick feeling in my stomach, as if I just done something terribly wrong. These days, kids are having sex in the hallways.

And to get back to telephones, I’m not even sure I remember what life was like before cell phones, oh yeah, much quieter. You were actually able to go out to dinner or a movie without having to overhear someone’s annoying conversation or disgusting novelty ring. I miss the time when cell phones weighted about 15 pounds and were only carried by doctors and folks who needed to flaunt their wealth. I suppose the notion of cell phone is good for emergency situations, but I don’t need to hear what is going on in every stranger’s life.

Yes, I sound like some sort of old curmudgeon despite my relatively young age, but the rapid progress of technology has made it possible. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t given into many of the latest gadgets, but I still enjoy the way life was. I guess I’m a romantic in that sense and I can only imagine how what I’m going to be like when I’m 50. Although by then, I imagine we’ll have something that does our thinking for us.

2003-10-17T04:28:00.000-04:00

This one hurt. This was supposed to be our year and this hurts more than anything I can recall. Five outs away, the game in hand, cut down by a manager, who went with his heart over his head, now doomed to the debate of Red Sox lore while a nation of Sox fans mourn. It’s going to be a long while before time blows away the salt from our dried-up tears.

It easy to second-guess Grady Little for not taking Pedro out in that eighth inning, lord knows we will be doing it until the Sox win the Series. His neglect to not pull Pedro will destine him to the company of Bucker and Bucky Bleeping Dent in future discussions of the hard luck Sox. But as much as I want to fault him, I can’t. I’ve always believed you can’t go wrong when you go with heart. Sometimes it works and others, well, it doesn’t. But he went with his gut, and honestly, who else would you want on the mound other than the best pitcher in baseball, tired or not. Unfortunately Little’s heart broke all of ours.

And now we are left with the Yankees once again in the World Series. That is really the hardest part of this to digest. It’s not so much that we lost a game seven, it’s that we lost it to the hated Evil Empire. Once again the Yankee mystique came through much to our distain and we are left at home forced to watch them battle for their 27th championship. It’s really too much to take, the aura of luck around that team. And they are lucky. After all, it was nothing more than a pop-up that somehow found a way to drop in that cost us this game. Bambino or not, somehow the ghosts of Yankee’s past swept through the Bronx and dropped that bloop just beyond the reach of the Sox fielders. That was when my cynical Sox side kicked in. I just knew the game might have been lost then, as if that Boone home run was destined to happen. I guess sometimes good can’t always win.

So we are left with the proverbial wait ‘till next year. As much as Red Sox nation is sick and tired of this notion, it’s our ill-fated reality. But, wasn’t this team fun? It was a great ride this year. This was a Sox team unlike any I can remember in my lifetime. They tore the cover off the ball, gave us so many great come-from-behind moments including that improbable victory over the A’s in the division series. As much as this hurts now, it really was a great season that just came up a little bit too short…again.

But, they’ll be back next year and we’ll make a run at it again. The only thing left to say is thank you. Thank you Red Sox for giving us all something to believe in and something to be passionate about. That game seven, as heartbreaking as it was, is why we all love this game and this team. Opening day is only six months away, until then, how about them Patriots?

2003-10-09T23:23:00.000-04:00

My friends are getting married this weekend and I couldn’t feel any worse for them. No, I’m not upset that two more are making the leap from the holy land of singledom, which would be hypocritical. No, I feel bad because they are getting married this Saturday.

Unless you’ve been living in a hole or doing damage control for the newly elected
Governator of California, you know all about the Red Sox huge series against the New York We’re Richer Than You Yankees. Yes, the dreaded Evil Empire is not only in town for game three on Saturday afternoon at Fenway, but Pedro Martinez is scheduled to work against number one traitor Roger Clemens. It could be the most anticipated and exiting match-up of the series and my friends are getting married right smack in the middle of it. Ouch.

No sooner had I finally pulled my heart out of my throat following the Sox win over the A’s, did I realize that my friends wedding was on a crash course with game three’s four o’clock start. My thoughts instantly flashbacked to another friend of mine who had the dubious distinction of getting married during the Pedro/Benedict Arnold match-up in game three of the ’99 series. To this day, she still moans about losing most of her reception to the television in the bar. I’d imagine she would be far less bitter if one of those absentee Sox devotees hadn’t been her husband. This Saturday should prove to be even more interesting.

See, the soon-to-be-groom grew up in New York and is a lifetime pin-striper while the bride-in-waiting is native Bostonian with a strict allegiance to the Sox. Add it all and it amounts to a room divided. Fortunately for we Sox lovers, the wedding is on our home turf, which at least gives us hand as the Yankees fans begin arriving for the rehearsal dinner Friday night. Can you see the Hatfield and McCoy scenario playing out? I know it won’t get heated, after all we’re all civil people, even the Yankee fans. Plus, the ground rules have been laid-out by the groom.

With the ceremony likely to be completed by 3:30 and a reception start of 5:00, there is a bit of a window there. The groom has put in a request for scores to be relayed at the bar as long as nothing is announced over the PA system at the reception. Pretty confidant that this will not satiate the masses, I went into contingency planning mode. A few emails later, I was able to confirm a television in the bar adjacent to the reception hall and secure a portable TV as a back-up. In an effort to not upset the bride, I figure we can go in shifts to the reception staying in contact with the bar folks via two-way radio. At the very least this should keep everyone happy with no one the wiser. Plus, barring extra frames, I figure we’ll all be back in time for dessert.

Being in the wedding party, my last dilemma is deciphering if I will be jinxing my beloved Sox by standing up next to a Yankee fan. But, if Larry Bird can induct Magic Johnson into the hall of fame, I can certainly stand-up for a Yankee fan. I just hope my Sox hat doesn’t clash too much with my tux.

2003-09-25T00:28:00.000-04:00

Todd Walker saved my life the other night. There I was with one foot dangling off the side of the Lenny Zakim bridge (the Tobin was already full) for the 13th time this season when Mr. Walker rifled a ball into the seats tying the game and saving the lives of a few thousand Red Sox fans. David Ortiz’s game-winning homer in the extra frames may have saved us for good.

Being a Red Sox fan isn’t easy, never has been. I’m not kidding when I say I was ready to throw in the proverbial towel many times this year, as a Sox fan you expect the team to fail. You expect them to raise our hopes every spring and then self-destruct faster than Marisa Tomei’s career after My Cousin Vinny by mid-August. Not only do we expect it to happen, but also it’s almost as if we enjoy it. The thing is, this hasn’t happened this year and I’m not really sure how to act. As a collective whole, we take pride in being a frustrated, beleaguered gaggle of sad sacks. What are we going to do if they actually win?

I know its superstitious to talk about the playoffs when the Sox haven’t sealed the deal just yet, but throw a little salt over your shoulder and get excited because its happening. I know what you’re thinking, this is a little too optimistic for a Red Sox fan, but really what’s not to like. Bullpen woes aside, I wouldn’t want to touch the Sox starting rotation in the playoffs and they hitter knock the crap out of the ball. This team has eight guys with more than 80 RBIs, EIGHT. I was too young to remember the ’67 team and was only a year old in ’75, but I cut my teeth in ’78, earned my Sox badge of consternation in ’86 and was a full-fledged veteran by the ’99 division series. I’ve seen some good Sox teams; teams I thought had a chance, but my rearing always had me waiting for them to lose. In that sense I was never disappointed. But this year just feels different. Plus, the curse has to end sometime, according to the voice of Ben Affleck anyway.

This team has chemistry, it has gumption, it has resolve and most importantly, it has personalities. Guys like David Ortiz and Kevin Millar have brought life and leadership to this team, the key ingredient they have been missing in recent years. They’ve been able to not only deliver on the field but in the clubhouse. I only know what I’ve heard and read, but even the biggest yearly Pedro and Manny distractions seem to have been nothing more than minor blips on the radar. This team seems to believe in each other and never quits, no matter how dire things seem to be. The come-from-behind win the other night when they were down to their last strike is the epitome of this. They have that championship make-up.

So, I’m going against everything my Red Sox history has taught me and am jumping on the believer bandwagon. Something about this team just feels right; I really don’t know how else to describe it. Perhaps I’m still drunk off the Patriots Super Bowl win two years ago, but dare I say, I think this may be the year? Only time will tell and if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to sacrifice my Clemens rookie card to the baseball gods. Go Sox!

2003-09-24T01:13:00.000-04:00

There has to come a point where you stop looking up to musicians and writers as being on a higher plane then you. Surely, a time must come in life where you stop floating on the notes of musician as heavenly or dwell on the deeper prose of a writer. A time must come when your idolizing of these people ceases and their crafts become more of a mentor for your own inspiration. It’s a time that needs to find me soon.

Music and writing have been two of the most consistent and cherished pieces in my life. Music hooked me from the very first Beatles song my Dad ever played and writing has hooked me ever since One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. I’ve run the gamut of musical genres since, from Def Leppard to Led Zeppelin to Pearl Jam to Phish while my favorite writers run from Jack London to Jack Kerouac to Dave Barry to Tom Robbins. They have all inspired me and I have aspired to be them ever since I can remember.

Having idols is a natural part of the human condition. This was especially true for music with me. I used to stage my own rock concerts in my room as a kid with a hockey stick for a microphone and a tennis racket for a guitar; I’d wow thousands of people every night. I got serious enough in junior high to actually purchase a bass guitar. Determined to make it as a rock star, I took lessons and tried to learn songs only to find I suffered from the biggest obstacle a would-be musician could experience, I was tone-deaf. Still, it didn’t kill my dreams.

Through my latter high school years and college I was caught up in the grunge movement and obsessed with Pearl Jam. At one point I may have even thought I was Eddie Vedder. I wrote a lot of lyrics back then in the hopes I could write songs with a lot of my musicians friends when I encountered the dream-killing reality that I could not sing. Still, it didn’t stop me from writing, lyrics or otherwise.

To this day, I aspire to have my own syndicated column. Like any aspiring writer, I write. I’ve done a few stints on the journalism circuit both working for a paper and freelancing. But, the student loans came due and the lure of corporate America and its big bucks were a necessity I couldn’t pass up. After five-plus years in the public relations realm, corporate America had enough of me and decided to restructure me. I was laid-off.

For two months now I have contemplated what my future holds. I have decided I want no part of my former career and have set about trying to figure out what I want to do. And that is writing a column. For the last year, I have been writing intermittent columns and posting them on my own web site for the world to read, in theory anyway as there are perhaps a dozen people who know my web page exists. I have also set about attempting to gather information from actual paid columnists in hope of finding a way to get my proverbial foot in the door. It has been helpful, but I still sit on the outside looking in.

The rock star dream may long be dead, but music as continued to be an outlet for me. I was at a show recently chatting with a friend of mine who had just performed when I looked out at the crowd and felt old. The show that night was 18-plus and most of the kids in attendance were at least 10 years younger than me. I was actually feeling a bit washed-up, as if these kids were looking at me and wondering who this old guy was, when a notion that has always been bouncing around my gray matter took hold. At some point you have to go from idolizing the people on stage to the person that is creating the memories for these folks. In short, I realized I need to get off my ass and make things happens. And for me, that means to write and write some more. I need to be the creator versus the one who idolizes. It’s time to reach for the higher plane.

2003-09-18T15:20:00.000-04:00

When I was recently part of an ever-popular restructuring plague decimating the job market these days, I tried to look at in a positive light. I wasn’t particularly happy with my job situation at the time and had already begun the process of seeking another job. I figured this was not only an opportunity to get away from the rat-race and office politics but also a chance to find something I truly enjoyed doing. From my initial foray into the market, I knew right away I was going to be up for a serious challenge and competition with the myriad of other job seekers in the open market. What I didn’t realize was that finding the proper job, let alone getting someone to interview would be easier than finding my wife.

I began seeing a career counselor, which my former employer was nice enough to provide, shortly after being laid-off this August. He began to school me in the finer nuances of how to conduct a proper job search; the most important key being networking. I don’t know about you, but the idea of networking just feels a little seedy, especially the informational interview. I understand how valuable it can be to speak with someone in an industry you aspire to work. However, the notion of contacting someone under the guise of seeking information for your career search amuses me. Obviously I want job and they know it. It’s really nothing more than a big game.

Networking groups and meetings are even more amusing to me. It’s really kind of like dating when you think about it; trying to establish connections in a roomful of strangers with the hope of landing a date that could potentially lead to a long-term commitment. Except in this case, we’re talking jobs, not sex. But it still takes the right amount of schmoozing, charm, BS and bravado right? The same holds true for want ads.

Want ads are akin to responding to personal ads. You have to have to tread that fine line of honesty while trying to separate yourself from the rest of the masses. “Single marketing professional with a flare for the creative and savvy communication skills seeks like-mined advertising agency who enjoys casual dress, humor and the occasional happy hour romp.” You send in you resume and let the games begin as you agonize over when to call to seem interested without coming on too strong.

If you are lucky enough to get a date, the fun really begins. You need to figure out what to wear, analyze your past interviews and do your research in hopes of presenting yourself in the right light. Then there is the thank you note and hours spent analyzing the interview and stewing over where you thought you went wrong. And the worry, oh the worry really digs in. “Will I ever find the right job and settle down or will I be reduced to a life of jumping from one career to the next?” Yup, job hunting is just like dating, fortunately I’m married.

2003-08-18T23:38:00.000-04:00

One year, four months, 29 days and 12 hours is exactly how long it took me to become disgusted with having to cut my lawn.

I’m not sure there are many folks out there who actually enjoy cutting their lawn, but I can say when we moved into our new house, I took great pride and joy in trying to beautify my lawn and yard. There was something very self-gratifying with trying to make my yard as nice as can be. And I must say, I did a good job getting it too look pretty spectacular, especially given the condition of it when we first moved in.

Allow me to paint you a picture. To say the previous owners took good care of the yard would be akin to saying the British have reliable intelligence capabilities. I’m pretty sure there may be some errant weapons of mass destruction somewhere in your yard. We didn’t buy the house for the yard, although its mere size (3/4 of an acre) and double-tiered level in back certainly made it attractive. However it was the perfection of the house that made it possible for me to overlook the crumbling stone wall and the four-foot wide dirt path running from the stream in the back all the way to the street out front, the product of an estuary pipe installed to prevent the basement from flooding. The tire tracks left by the previous owners move-out that destroyed the remainder of the yard still in good condition was a bonus. Needless to say, the yard needed work.

I made it my personal mission that first spring to begin cultivating the yard back to normal with my main challenge trying to grow grass on that 75-foot long dirt path. It was fun, a lot of work, but fun. By the time springtime rolled around this year, I’d fixed the stonewall and not only succeeded in growing grass on the dirt path, but had the lawn looking like Augusta National. And with most of the heavy lifting finished by June, I was looking forward to enjoying its splendor while having to nothing more than maintain the grounds. Then summer came in wetter than a rain forest and my yard went from Augusta to Amazon.

Water is of course good for a lawn, but too much can lend raise to pesky critters such as grubs that just love to eat the roots of your lawn. They did a number on mine. While I did take the proper precautions of laying down fertilizer to kill these critters, too much rain rendered it nearly ineffective. What lots of rain is good for is spawning crab grass, which near as I can tell grows at nearly ten times the rate of normal grass. I swear no sooner would I cut my lawn that I could see this stuff grow before my eyes. My lawn would go from freshly cut to jungle in less than three days. Throw in the fact that it takes a minimum of two hours to cut my lawn, a lawn with more peaks and valleys than the Berkshires, and you can see where cutting it even once a week is tough in dry conditions. But when wet, it’s a least a three-hour job. Which brings me to last Friday.

We were in the midst of a long stretch of tropical, Florida-type weather replete with hot thick muggy air and daily downpours. Realizing I wasn’t going to catch much of a break in terms of the lawn drying out at all and with sections of my lawn pushing a foot high in a mere week’s time, I fired-up my Toro. I purchased this Toro earlier this season after its predecessor, a 15-year-old hand me down Toro, quit on me back in May. If only I had the same foresight. This new mower had the all-important self-propel system that took a little bit of the burden of me. Its mulching abilities were perfect for the non-bagging method I employ in the back. However, this system mulches so well, that it has a tendency to build up wet grass on the underside resulting in the blade jamming and me needing to tip the mower on its side and scrap the grass out. With so much rain, you can imagine how frustrating this can get. It was about the 20th time of performing this ritual that I gave up, storming into the house vowing never to cut the grass again.

Actually, it was probably more like kicking and screaming like a two-year old. Still, I refuse to cut that damn lawn. Yes, it has only been five days, but I’m holding out, at least until the wife makes me cut it because I know we’re not hiring a landscaper. Personally, I blame this on the youth of America. Don’t teenagers cut lawns anymore?

2003-06-25T02:59:00.000-04:00

The deal sounded just about right, high-speed DSL for under $40 a month. After years of dialing-up my home Internet access, the marketing folks at Verizon had succeeded in beating their product into my head. Several clicks and a credit card later and my entry into the land of high-speed internet access was on the near horizon. Or so I thought.

The box that arrived at my door several days later contained all the things I would need to enter the land of DSL. According to the directions, I would be hooked up in three easy do-it-yourself steps as soon as my landline was verified for service. It all seemed so promising and simple. I should have known this was going to be an episode in customer service hell when the email arrived estimating my DSL ready date at five weeks away.

Since it was still the end of May, I figured the June 27th ready date must have been a misprint. My initial call to the Verizon customer service folks quickly dispelled this rumor. Apparently the ad blitz for the their service had worked, because that date was in fact accurate. I’ve never had good experience with wireless providers making deadlines, so it was with great surprise when the email trumpeting “the last day you have to deal with dial-up” arrived four days ahead of schedule. Lies, nothing but lies.

I eagerly dugout the now dust-covered package I’d received weeks earlier and began put their one-two-three installation process to the test. What they fail to tell you is that there are approximately 102 sub-steps to each step. To their credit, step one was pretty easy, involving nothing more than fitting a few phone jacks with special filters that allow for clear phone signals while allowing unfettered DSL signals directly to your computer. Step two is where it got a bit dicey.

It seemed simple enough, connect your new modem to the computer. Even the friendly voice on the set-up disc made it seemed to easy, until it couldn’t find the proper driver to establish the connection I needed. A bit of trouble-shooting and I was dialing for tech support. Now, they call it support, but I really think they should consider naming it Tech Appeasement because while you are most likely not going to get a solution to your problem, they do have a way making to feel warm and fuzzy about it. Actually, Tech Roulette might be more suitable because really press your luck when dialing for help.

The first couple of calls had me believing it was a direct problem with the operating system on my computer. Of course, I knew it wasn’t a problem with my operating system, but the tehc lady was so nice, she actually convinced me it may have been and got me of the phone. I got lucky with the third person I reached. She was extremely knowledgeable and actually spent a good half hour on the phone with trying to help me get connected. After going through several steps, she concluded it may be a problem with the phone cord I was using or I needed to reinstall Windows. The former option being more easily rectified, we said our goodbyes and I went and changed the phone cord. Still nothing.

Dialing for answers a fourth time, I quickly realized I was pressing my luck. Again, the wise person in me should have been on alert when the tech guru I connected with had her system crash. The fact it took her five minutes to resolve her own system issues tells you where this call went, rapidly downhill. She must have been new to the job because she was clearly going through the Verizon corporate manual on tech support, getting me nowhere fast. And then came what I was dreading, she had to submit a help ticket to the central command, which near as I can tell, means the solution to my problem is churning somewhere in the black hole of Verizon tech support.

So here I sit, still cranking-up the old dial-up stuck on step 2.12 of their easy one-two-three installation plan praying I’ll get a call in a few days. I suppose the lesson here is buyer beware. I’m sure this will get worked-out eventually but if this is any indication of the service I have in store, I can only imagine what customer service will say when I request three hours of my life back. I’ll tip my cap to their marketing folks though, clearly there is a sucker born every minute. Last day of dial-up my ass.

2003-05-19T15:12:00.000-04:00

“Yankees Suck.” I am so sick of that stupid chant because it’s not true, the Yankees anything but suck. Of course, if I had $170 million to blow, I could put together a perennial World Series team as well.

I cringed when I first saw those t-shirts and bumper stickers being vended on Lansdown St., it just never made sense to me. Sure, the Yankees are the Evil Empire spawned from the concrete metropolis with the Madison Ave. cover boy at short…but suck?

Let’s face it, with 26 world championship and appearances in the four of the last five Worlds Series the Yankees are the best. Heck, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least in the YES conglomerate was somehow behind the Yankees suck shirt. how appropriate would that be, the Yankees profiting off Boston stupidity? Then I realized, New Yorkers couldn’t be that brazen. Dirty? Yes. Ballsy? Yes. But suck? No.

We’re a bitter bunch up here, more so with each day our beloved Sox slip further behind the Spanks. But when that bitterness wells up, don’t direct it towards mindless chants…look around our city and realize, not only are we a whole lot more dignified than New York, but we’re a lot less smelly.

Look, I love New York. It’s an urban marvel. No where in the world can you find more delis, pizza parlors, newsstands, rats or freaks in a city block than crammed into a New York City block. But let’s face it, ya’ll are a bunch of freaks. For instance, there this story from a recent.

Now, I’ve been to NYC at least a couple of dozen times in my adult life and I always can count on seeing something new each time I’m there. From the house cat-sized rat to the transvestite drag queen to the naked shoe shine man to the Loch Ness Monster I spotted in a swamp at the corner of 5th and 45th one New Years Eve, NYC is the best freak show there is. But what puts it over the top is that it seems like everyone is a Yankee fan. And during baseball season it seems the entire town…all eight million of you, will make a point of stopping what you are doing to see how your beloved Yankees are faring. From your wealthiest celebrities out by Central Park to the poorest bum of them all, you need to know. And what’s more, is it unites you under one cause. Oh sure, you get this in Boston in the form of misery loving company, but it is no where near the same level as NYC. In other words, you wouldn’t see your Sex in the City types mingling with a homeless guy and his two cats.

For what’s its worth, I actually saw a homeless guy with two cats panhandling on 57th during my last trip to the rotten Apple. He was stretched out between Park and Madison with a cardboard saying “please help, homeless.” This is no doubt as normal a site to you NYC’ers as it would be to we Boston folk, but this guy had with him two cats. And I’m not talking two cats that were merely just hanging out with him in hopes a mite might dislodge from his beard. No, these were his cats…all two of them, complete with two open cans of cat food and a litter box crafted out of one of those aluminum drip pans you use on your backyard(grassy knolls found often behind one’s house for you NYC’ers.) grill, wearing a Yankees shirt. And of course, the cynic in me woke-up. Here was this guy replete with Yankee regalia and two cats, fat cats mind you, begging for money for food…and I’m thinking…eat the damn cat food or the cats for that matter.

But I digress. I visit on a regular basis, because being the devout Boston Irish-American that I am, NYC offers extended drinking time…it’s the only thing you have up on us. Well, that and 26 Championships. Come to think of it, NYC doesn’t seem like a bad place. (Did I just say that? Clearly this Sox fan has taken bitterness to a new extreme). The bottom line is, the Yankees don’t suck (Yankees suck).

2003-03-11T22:44:00.000-05:00

Downloaded any of the recent Phish shows from the Phish conglomerate’s recently instituted new LivePhish Downloads (LPDL)? If you haven’t or haven’t heard of it, it’s an offshoot of the Live Phish cashcrop the Phish organization recently implemented just prior to the bands return on New Years’ Eve. LPDL make soundboard copies of shows available to the discerning listener in less than 48 hours after a show’s conclusion. It’s the ultimate vehicle for this instant gratification and satiation needed by so many of their Phans. And it cuts right though the very practice that has allowed the band to rise to the stature they have achieved today.

The taper section post LPDL is getting to be a lonely place. Not seeing those mic stands perched just above the wiggling bodies, up there calling out the band to fill them with the grooves that please us all, is unsettling to me. The dawn of LPDL era has left only the hardiest DAT-wielders and stolen a huge part of what Phish was from a lot of fresh-faced fans. Younger fans who will never truly come to appreciate the culture that was tape trading; fans who will be cheated out of what was a key element in the Phish magic.

Tape trading used to be a quest, a magical journey to find that allusive show that would often launch you into a sometimes never ending odyssey to find someone who had the show you were seeking. Maybe it was your first show, your 50th show, a New Years Show, an obscure show; a show with a good cover, the only thing that mattered was that you wanted a copy of that show. You would dedicate yourself to finding the person who could offer up that tasty trade or the B&P. It didn’t matter how long it took, you were going to find that show, and, unlike today, this quest could often take months. But upon success, the resulting feeling was something beyond words.

One such significant moment for me came after I was blown away by the ’94 New Year’s Show. I remember returning to school and being hell-bent on obtaining a copy of this gem. Back then, if you didn’t know a taper or friend of taper, your quest for a shows began and ended on the newsgroup rec.music.phish, which was and still is a simple bulletin board dedicated to the discussion of all things phish. I took every chance I could each day to log on to the group hoping against all hope I’d get lucky. And I say lucky because, in early ’95, the NYE show was the hottest and toughest show to acquire. Sure B&Ps were being posted each day, but unless you happened to catch the offer within the first few minutes, you were left out in the cold. I would literally check the messages with every free second I got. And after countless hours logged, I finally found that B&P, three months after the show.

However, in all that time it took to actually score a B&P, I was getting in on other B&P offers, trading with other folks and, most importantly, making friends in the community. This was a great sub-culture of the Phish community not only united by a love of music, but bonded by the dedication and time it took to trade tapes. This was almost a profession, one that took a significant amount of time. To spin one show for a person was a three-hour commitment. There were days when my friends and I would spend entire weekends bunkered down in someone’s dorm room with three or four decks spinning at once. This was ritual, a true bonding experience. And it’s something that will never happen again. I really I miss the days when Maxell XLII’s and padded envelopes were considered decorative items.

As CD-R technology began to become available and affordable to people, actual tape trading began to slip into the past. Sites were popping-up allover where you could download shows. However, this something was still reserved to those with some decent tech-to-itiveness and a fast connection. So acquiring CDs of shows still took some time but with the time to burn a show now practically shrunk to nothing, shows were getting into the community much quicker than they never could when tapes were still the way. However, the origin point still remained the same, tapers. Without tapers, shows would never be available, which brings me to the mischievous sprite that is LPDL.

The institution of LPDL effectively eliminates the above experiences. With shows available almost instantly, the romanticism of the taping culture will all but be eliminated. While the official Phish position is one that still encourages tapers, the reality is, they have cut off the taper lifeline…and ended an era. Sure the cantankerous lot will tell you that Phish hasn’t killed taping, rather the greedy phans have killed taping because they can’t wait for this. Of course, the Phish business development group knows this and in that has made a smart business decision. However, it is one that strikes clearly in the face of the very principle and people that helped get them to the pedestal they currently sit on.

The free trade of their shows in the early 90s created a groundswell of awareness, which directly corresponded to a substantial increase in their fan base. College campuses had an undercurrent of “heads” who were committed to these four guys from Vermont and spent a lot of their time spreading the shows around; sharin’ in the groove. It was grassroots marketing at its finest and there is no denying it paid a huge part in pushing them to the mainstream success they currently enjoy. A success that has seen them sell-out every show they have played since the hiatus ended. A hiatus that grew their legend and fan base, a fan base that the Phish organization is looking to cash in on and a hiatus that may have subconsciously been the best marketing ploy ever.

Look, Phish is a business and there is no fault in a business doing what they are supposed to do, make money. What I take issue with is where they are pulling it from. The LPDL series to me, is a seedy means to make a buck. It's one thing to charge folks upwards of $50 to see a show, but to make that very show also available for an additional fee is ridiculous. Yes, you can argue that you are not being forced to purchase these shows, but realistically, dropping $10 to obtain a show instantaneously versus having to wait weeks for a show is a no-brainer that plays right into our need to have access to information instantly.

And in that sense, the Phish marketing folks did their research. LPDL are a very low-cost way of turning a profit. I’m sure, despite their legal disclaimer dictating otherwise, they have built in a specific ratio of “illegally” disseminated LPDL shows to shows purchased. Unfortunately, what the business plan didn’t account for was the extinction of the taper and subsequent experience.

So, while the end of this era rings sad with this Phishy romantic, I’m trying to take solace in the notion that every new era needs to usher in new hope. In this case, I’m really hoping the LPDL era will resurrect the long lost art of concert bootlegging. So be on the lookout for some tasty B&P SBD offers. I’ve always wanted to be a pirate.

2003-02-23T15:35:00.000-05:00

The sweeping ignorance of the general public is something that continues to amaze me. It especially seems to flare up in situation with heightened frustrations. My day today was booked-ended by two charming examples of ignorable anger.

Stepping out of the car at the train station this morning I noticed an abnormal amount of people waiting when my morning grogginess was interrupted by a strangers voice bellowing “No need to hurry buddy, we ain’t going anywhere anytime soon.” He was right, we weren’t going anywhere for a good 50 minutes.

Fifty minutes that was spent absorbing the tensing atmosphere of the numerous commuters standard at various stations each getting equally more frustrated as each minute of train tardiness placed them further from their schedules. It was an impending foreshadow of what was to come.

As a commuter you come to expect the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) will get you to your destination on time roughly 40-45 percent of the time. Now, most of the time they get you there no more than a few to 10 minutes late. And then there are the days like today.

Priding themselves on doing their best to guarantee your prompt arrival and thereby increase you confidence in them, the MBTA maintains a refund policy if your train is more than 30 minutes late. How this policy works is that should you be on a train that is 30 or more minutes late to its destination, you can fill out a form with the MBTA and they will send you a refund. However, they still instruct their conductors on these late rail vessels to still collect all fares. As you can imagine, this is a policy that can ruffle some feathers, which I got to witness first hand in the following exchange between a couple of irate commuters and our fearless conductor.

Irate Commuter #1: “So let me get this straight, we need to fill out a form to get a refund.”

Fearless Conductor: “Yes sir, just go to the ticket counter in South Station or fill out the form online and I believe they will send you two free tickets.”

IC #1: “Why don’t you just not take my ticket?”

FC: “I wish I could sir, but unfortunately they do not allow us to make a decision like that, I’m sorry.”

Our conductor continued along picking up tickets from commuters who were no doubt just as frustrated but who at least had been taught the principle of decorum while the irate commuter continued grumbling to a fellow irate commuter. This insightful exchange went a little like this:

IC #1: “That is so stupid, they (MBTA) don’t know how many people are riding these trains. You’re telling me he absolutely has to collect these fares. Who’s gonna know?”

Irate Commuter #2: “Oh, you’re telling me, its stupid, he’s just an idiot.”

Mind you, the conductor is well within earshot of this exchange. I have no idea how he was able to keep quiet, because I barely could, but as I turned to see whom our irate ignoramus #2 was, I realized it must have been easy. After all, I’m sure slurs are a little bit easy to brush off when they are coming from 40-ish year old woman sporting a feathered Cheryl Tiegs hairdo circa 1978. I figured her presentation pretty much effaced anything she had to say.

I can only imagine what it must be like to be in the middle of a train full of very pissed-off and late commuters. There is probably some version of the scenario in hell. However, I can see the point behind our irate commuters regrettable exchange and question how the MBTA applies its 30-minutes fare refund. By instructing their conductors to continue collecting fares on these refund-eligible trains, the MBTA is banking on public indolence; that people will just be too lazy to take the time to fill-out the refund forms. And I’m sure they are right, but they need to realize the position they are putting their employees is in. I hate seeing a working-class Joe getting shit, for simply doing his job.

Fast-forwarding past the ill-bred corporate part of my day, we find my evening commute brushing itself with another ignoramus.

Walking toward the entrance to the subway, I was stopped by a clearly flustered woman asking me if I could point out a particular building she was looking for in the area. Apparently my two seconds pondering was a little too long for this woman as she blurted out, “Oh, you don’t know, what good are you?” Coincidentally, that was the same question I was asking myself as I played my eight game of solitaire while my inbox continued to ping with new messages a few hours earlier. But stepping out of myself for a second, I apologized to her and kept on my merry way knowing full well the karma police were sure to take care of her.

Don’t get me wrong; I’ve been in similar situations as all of our players today, but I do my best to swallow because making a public spectacle is not high on my list of priorities. It did give me some fodder for the rest of my trip though as I realized in public, we’re literally only an indiscretion or judgment lapse away from chaos. They say ignorance is bliss, but not when you feel the need to display. So to our irate friends out there, do us all a favor next time; be considerate of others and shut-up.

2003-02-19T22:41:00.000-05:00

I miss college and its hallowed grounds chock full of students, fueled by click of mouse total information access, warped on personal beliefs that they are going to make a difference and change the world. Oh, to be young and naïve without a care or true responsibility filled to the brim with idealistic optimism. Makes me…jealous.

College is the greatest ego-booster around. Sure you’re paying them to learn and the workload can get treacherous, but if you make it through to graduation, you walk out of it feeling like the world owes you everything. When I received my diploma I was hell-bent on staying true to myself and not compromising any of beliefs or dreams, which meant nothing more than avoiding the “real” world as long as physically possible. It was a good year and half of bartending, traveling and, of course, partying, but eventually, reality sunk in. It was time to put my degree to work. So, off went the Birkenstocks and out came the neckties.

When I finally landed my first “real” job, I was resolute on retaining my individuality at all costs. But gradually, corporate life began to chip away the chip on my shoulder and compromise became my modus operandi. I went from vowing to never wear a tie to vowing never to own a suit to owning a suit. It didn’t take to long to deduce that it’s pretty tough to assert your individuality in the gray corporate world, especially as a young professional. But, I’m starting to come full circle; at least trying to anyway.

After five plus years in corporate settings, I’ve begun to experience a resurgence, or depending on your level of cynicism, regurgitation, of that same difference-making, bucker of the system ideology that so ruled my academic world days. I suppose it’s the old “knowledge is power” idiom, but that 21-year-old kid who vowed never to wear a tie has traipsed his way through enough brain-storing sessions to solicit my own
out-of-the-box thinking which when taken off-line to discuss with myself has led to the obvious conclusion, I hate corporate life.

I could undoubtedly dedicated pages upon pages dissecting the roots of my hatred, but that would merely be trying to give credence to all things Dilbert and not truly bring forth what the solution to my hatred is, finding something I like. But, to talk about corporate clichés is cliché.

There are millions out there who feel the same way as me, but how many want to do something about it and how much can you rebel against the corporate doctrine without running the risk of being branded an insubordinate and getting your butt tossed to the proverbial curb? So the thinking becomes “how much can I really make a difference?” It’s the classic syndrome of being tiny drop in an ocean of standard operating procedures so we continue to ebb along with the flow to earn our societal keep.

The obvious aside, I’ve come to realize that, ever so subtly, you really can take a stand for your principles and I’ve resolved myself do what I can to go against the corporate grain. I’m not talking earth-shattering, fuck the establishment type rebellion, but little things, like taking a lunch or actually working nine to five, real simple stuff that helps me live my belief that my life will forever be more important than anything that requires me to sit in a cube. Which brings me to my intended point.

Sitting through what will now forever be known as the President’s Day Blizzard of ’03 watching inch upon fluffy inch pile up to feet, I resigned myself to not going to work the following day. With all non-essential city and state workers already told not to report in the following day, I figured my company would follow suit and I knew I would have a good morning’s worth of shoveling staring me in the face. Well, my company made no mention of anything the following day. It was business as usual and I still stayed home, but it wasn’t without the corporate guilt nibbling at me all day.

You know, it wasn’t long ago that the world would have had no problem stopping for the day to allow people to dig out and god forbid, enjoy the majesty of such a storm. Not today. In this era of real-time info and work first mentalities, those adhering to the corporate-first creed hopped in their SUVs and headed straight to work as if it were business as usual. I’m proud to say I wasn’t one of them. Let the revolution begin.

2003-02-13T13:09:00.000-05:00

High alert, dirty bombs, safe rooms, gas masks, anthrax, nukes, emergency safe kits, fear. I’m starting to get the feeling I’m in the middle of the old Creature Double Feature movie showcase. It’s only a matter of time before the Godzilla warning reaches the red level: “Severe risk of massive destruction reigned down from an oversized lizard.”

Seriously though, this is getting a bit scary. I went from having a perfectly groggy train ride this morning to completely paranoid by the time I pulled into South Station, because I read the morning’s paper. Stories about people stockpiling duct tape and plastic in case we are hit with some sort of chemical attack and my respective city’s plans in the event of an attack permeated any sense of lucidity I had. Duct tape and plastic? Look, I realize duct tape might very well be the most useful fix-it tool around, but I’ll be damned if it and a few hundred yards of plastic are enough to create a barrier from a chemical attack.

But this is what the Office of Homeland Security recommends, to create an air-proof room in your house by duct-taping plastic over the window and doors. Even if this were to work, has anybody given any thought to the fact that creating an air-proof barrier to keep chemicals out will also prevent fresh air from getting in? Why don’t the just tell us to place a place bag over our head and tape it around our neck, it be much more effective and use considerably less duct tape.

I’m not sure if I can even give in to these warnings or if I even have a choice. It is scary though and I can’t help but wonder if this is what it felt like in the 1950s at the beginning of the Cold War? Are duct tape and plastic shelters the equivalent of fall out shelters? Can the reinstitution of air raid drills be far behind? I’m not ever one to give in to too much hype around anything, but I can’t help it, news of this is every where you turn. This real-time dissemination of information may be the exact reason why this fear may be more intense than the Cold War. Information traveled at a snails pace compared today, but the question remains, what spurns greater hysteria, instant information access or slow information gathering which allowed time for the human psyche to wander into dangerous paranoia?

Hysteria aside, I question the merit of getting the public geared-up for things like this. Duct tape and plastic, honestly, this is the best our government can come up with? I’ve already heard stories of people wrapping there entire houses with plastic and can’t help but wonder if the OHS has cut some sort of back-ally deal with plastics and duct tape manufacturers of the nation?

About the only thing close to the area of rational I can think of, is that this push to create survival kits was hatched as a psychological ploy to prevent people from feeling helpless. In other words, if we can physically touch, feel and purchase something tangible, it can give the illusion that we are truly not powerless against terror. Makes sense I suppose.

But for me, well, I can’t pray victim to it; this is what the terrorists want, to induce fear. I will say that I feel I can relate a faction of a bit more to what life must be like in Israel on a daily basis, a situation that must be the ultimate example of hell on earth. Survival mode has become second nature for them and I can only imagine what would happen to the American psyche if things started blowing-up with the regularity of things there. I still won’t be purchasing my duct tape and plastic anytime soon, but if those air rais sirens go off, you’ll find me hunkered down under my desk subsisting on whatever crumbs from a years worth of eating lunch at my desk has left me.

2003-02-06T13:48:00.000-05:00

I have been involved in many interesting discussions and opinion volleying on the Iraq situation of late and just do not understand the perspective of the anti-war factions. How, if in fact evidence is given that Iraq does possess Weapons of Mass Destruction (WND), could you possibly be anti-war? Do people honestly think the freedom and luxuries what we have today were just given to them? Our me-first generation has taken self-indulgence to level never seen before. Ironically, it’s the freedom of our deeply rooted, spoiled brat American way of life that serves as the catalyst for the anti-war platform.

Now, I’m never one to ever champion violence over diplomacy, but when that breaks down, how can you argue against something that has been the solution for thousands of years. How can you argue against History, against what civilization has dictated is the resolution to conflict? It doesn’t make it right, but how can it be changed?

Many will argue we have too many problems to worry about within the United States borders before flexing our Democratic muscle all over the globe. I agree with that. We need to worry about education; natural resources, the environment, the economy, jobs and the million other problems facing the American public, but we should have been worrying about these yesterday and everyday prior to it.

We have built a culture and society that thrives on commercialism. It’s why you can read this from your palm pilot or access soft-core porn at the touch of a button while dialing for a pizza to better enhance our position as the world’s fattest nation. We are capitalist gluttons, slaves to money and power and the only thing that is going to reverse this is a drastic tragedy, the kind of tragedy that could be made possible if we let hostile nations continue to build to WMD.

But I question the rhetoric of these anti-war proponents, wondering if they have no sense of pride or historical cultural significance. You preach peace and non-violence at all costs, but are you willing to die for these ideals? Because if enough proof exists that Saddam has a chemical weapons surplus and is building to nuclear capacity, that is what inaction will bring, death. American Revolutionist Christopher Gadsen once argued that is it is easier to stop the work of “crafty, dissembling, insinuating men” before they get the chance to “carry their point against you.” I ask that all those diametrically opposed to war think about that for a second because if we don’t strike preemptively, we will be left in the smoldering debris these rogues will reign down on us.

If what Colin Powell presented to the United Nations is true, then Iraq is not only harboring WMD, but he is also going to great lengths to conceal them from the from the UN. Powell stated that Iraq has two of three components needed to build a nuke and he firmly believes Saddam will not stop until he succeeds in doing so. We are dealing with a madman here, a deceitful killer of his own people who despite his own innocent propaganda, will stop at nothing to see his mission fulfilled. His actions since the Gulf War have subtly done nothing to dispel this. If he is allowed to gain the munitions needed to reach us, he will. And North Korea will probably follow suit.

Look, I’m not going to argue against those who believe there is not root connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, or those who think this is Bush attempting to finish what his Daddy didn’t. But what I will ask is that you strongly consider the hatred and resentment that Iraq and other nations have for the U.S. and realize these people would like nothing more than to see our way of life destroyed. The people of these nations, so often referred to by the anti-war folk as innocent victims, aren’t playing by the same rules as us. They are people living under supreme dictatorships who hate us for our freedom, the very freedom that permits the dissemination of the anti-war extollers. They are people who would take much pleasure in eradicating you for simply having the freedom to push a peace agenda to preserve them.

We are a spoiled generation; we Gen X and Y’er’s. We’ve had everything in our lives given to us, leaving us with no sense of the true sacrifice Democracy comes with. In this information age five minutes ago is an eternity, so trying to wrap our arms around the significance and freedoms won for us by our ancestors in wars past is impossible. But the fact of the matter remains, if not for the likes of U.S. led war victories, we wouldn’t be enjoying everything we do today. Oppression is a horrible force.

Realize that I am basing all this on the extreme last resort. I support and am in complete favor of the peaceful disarmament of Iraq and removal of Saddam from power. But the realist in me has no faith that Saddam will ever go down without a fight. So I ask you anti-war folk, if it came down to your life or that of somebody in a foreign land, which would you chose? World peace is a great ideal; just tell me how we can get there without conflict, because if you can, than you my friend will go down in history as greater than god him or herself.

2003-01-31T10:49:00.000-05:00

I not sure that I got the memo, or maybe I just missed the press conference, but could somebody please tell me when South Station was renamed ING Direct Train Depot?

If you have been through South Station in the last week, and according to the MBTA web site approximately 115,000 of you do each day, you would have to been more blind then local boy Ben Affleck’s Daredevil character to not notice the infusion of orange oozing and dangling from every corner of the building. Orange, that big bright perfect combination of red and yellow with its marvelous paradox of being both a color and a fruit has been reinvented by your friendly neighborhood global financial service company in the form of, ING Direct advertisements, dozens of them.

These ads hang from everywhere; you literally can’t get away from them. There are flags, signs, banners, billboards and even big ad pasted to the floor for the eye-contact impaired. ING has not only taken over every single existing ad space in South Station, they have put-up enough money that they’ve created ads in places I didn’t even think possible, and I’ve seen condom ads in urinals.

The ads themselves are just stupid, citing obscure references a fictional Joe putting banking his money with ING and becoming a better Joe. From my count there are at least three dozen separate ING banners hanging in the station and with only about five different variations, we’re not talking Burma Shave brilliance here. No, just pure, in your face, look at all the ads we can buy so bank your money with us chest-thumping. The whole experience just feels dirty, like some sort of forced marketing enema.

I’m not sure who to be more disgusted with, ING for shelling out what had to have been millions to take over South Station or the MBTA for whoring itself out in the name of the almighty dollar? I guess I have to side with the MBTA on this one, after all, they seem to be losing money hand over fist and they seemingly haven’t had a train run on schedule since the Regan Administration. You don’t turn down the life raft when you’re drowning. No, I place my blame squarely on the execs at ING.

What’s funny, in an ironical sense, is that they’ve decided to infest their investment ideology when the economy is the worst it’s been n a decade. Their underlying message is fine and I have no doubt that ING provides customers with a better interest return on their money. What gets me is the pure gluttony and corporate flag-waving the ads represent. Given the state of the economy, what kind of message is being sent when companies spend millions of dollars on advertising?

Advertising has just gotten ridiculously out of control in this country. Its everywhere and companies waste more money on establishing a “brand” than they do cultivating a culture that is not only good for the corporate drone stuck fluorescent sunbathing in a corral, but also good for the world itself. People are thing of the past. How people you can get you message in front of the way of today. I’m sure ad agencies are working a on way to get advertisements directly into our brains.

I don’t mean to use ING as a scapegoat, I just can’t stand for anymore for companies flexing their proverbial corporate greed by polluting my life with their advertising BS. Nothing seems sacred anymore; we are subjected to advertising everywhere we turn. And ING has taken it to the extreme. Then again, perhaps I'm looking at this completely wrong. Maybe the next time a company is looking to invest in a multi-million dollar ad blitz, I should give a them a call…I’ll tattoo their logo on my ass for a cool mill.