My cave is a human

All my wretched and diabolical plans for this summer appear to be in mid-thwart. Originally, I was going to snooze through a job at the Country Club, earning way more cash than is necessary, while raking in a fair check from Illini Media in my work as assignment editor. I would scoop up some easy credits from Parkland in an online course or two, thus eliminating the need for me to slog through the bitches that are economics and political science during a real semester. My friends here and I would go out on a bi-nightly basis, scoring cheap drinks at bars, eating grease foods while inebriated and engaging in general goodhearted brouhaha. And I would write six or seven brilliant endeavoring feature stories while chipping in a couple dinky beat bits for the paper. And I would have an apartment to myself for a negligibly cheap sum, where I could play PS3 and Final Fantasy X at my leisure.

By the sheer amount of good things referenced in the preceding paragraph, you may have correctly assumed by process of elimination that I'm not having the best of summers. One of my larger concerns at the moment is this what is becoming chronic shoulder pain and odd discomfort of the lower back. Because they make moving harder, which translates to every thing being slightly harder. Luckily, one of my roommates left behind a bottle of Ibuprofen that is currently blanketing those pains. It wears off at night, though. Bummer. Additionally, I was rejected by the Country Club, then everywhere else I applied (read: Chipotle and IHOP) and oh hey, it's July on Sunday. Furthermore, I wasn't able to sign up for classes, partially because I didn't have a job to fund the $300 credit nuggets, and partially because I was late in beginning the process of registration. My job at the paper has been a double-edged sword. In that it gives me first pick of all story ideas, then full power to assign them to whomever I like. As in, not myself. Meanwhile, I'm clinging to the pithy salary I'm getting, trying to fund my life and buy food that I can feasibly cook. And socially most of my nights have consisted of light reading and boredom, as I've only been out to the bars a couple times. It's senseless to go spend money there when I have no job.

Which brings me to my apartment. My home. My cave. The air conditioning is broke. I'm hesitant to call the landlord because technically I don't live here. It's a no-table-involved lease agreement that I have with Gordon Voit, a swell chap I might add, that I get this apartment for the summer for $500 bucks. That figure looked way less threatening when I was banking (literally) on $12.50 an hour, 20 hours a week. It's as hot as a human mouth in here right now. The thermostat tells me we're at or north of 90. The only light right now is from the relenting sun and this computer screen, the only other electricity being used is to power my fan, which is admirably blowing right at my face, doing its very best to keep up.

Earlier today I was wearing my fall jacket to keep me cool. But eventually I made Chunky chicken and gumbo soup, and put Frank's Red Hot in it (read: gave up). I followed that with the coldest shower I've ever taken (a bookend to the hottest shower I've ever taken, which occurred at Blaisdell Hall of PAR after getting back from the Return to Titletown celebration in Lambeau Field), which I took with the door open for good measure.

The remaining of my two roommates moved out (for a month) yesterday. So how's living alone? Well, it's lonely. But I have no problem with that. The problem is that I'm not miraculously self-motivated sans the presence of others. I'm still making good excuses not to do necessary things (what if he flips a shit and kicks me out? I'm lambed). I can't even find a good place to hang this disco ball. The one thing I need right now is for this weather to go the hell back to Texas or wherever it belongs and to let things cool around here so I can stop being all hot and bothered.

That or a vacation. My cave is a human.

--Eliot Sill

John Michael and His Inescapable Joy

robert langellier

John Michael is filled with inexplicable joy. It is a joy that builds, and it has been building for several years, but it is only very recently that it has exploded into a new realm of inexplicable joy. This is for a number of complicated reasons that happened by chance to coalesce together in time.

But now his happiness is consuming him. It is wrung from his feet when he walks and wrought from his nostrils when he breathes, reflected in magnified degrees from the light running wild into his pupils. Everything from John Michael radiates and booms and swells, pushing forth into the world in a swirling surge of questionable sincerity, questionable only because this new level of inexplicable joy is so radically new to him that he cannot bring himself to bow fully to the notion that this John Michael is truly even John Michael. 

This joy is strange to him particularly because nothing is going particularly well for him these days. It goes, it goes, but there is no brilliant thing that has tangibly changed around him. The joy brings big smiles on him when there is nothing really to smile about but the wind and its gallivanting into his body. They are big grand smiles. Banished and despised are simpers, no wry grin on his face anymore, but big grand openings, great invitations to his happiness. It is enough to set John Michael on fire. Enough to bring on an urgent sensitivity that is so riveting it is almost sexual. Where another less recent version of himself would twitch, an anxious twitch, his current body will swell and rise, a sinful-feeling tingle that reaches the root of every follicle of hair. It covers him, and traps him in the sense of overwhelming, inescapable, and paralyzing pleasure. 

I suppose that in consuming it is also becoming. John Michael is turning into nothing, nothing but a practice ground for glee to spread its wings and swing its hips and not have to answer any questions like why, or for how long. He is nothing at all but the very concept and outlet of happiness. Nothing, or perhaps everything, for it is as if all feelings and stimuli are churning within him at once, churning in the vacuum void of his soul and riving him from that old beast who tried filling it with single, unannexed emotions. These sensations are even the bad ones, which when thrown into the mix are on some universal perspective still great things because they are definite things, and I can find no other quality truer and more pure than definition. And so, by some vantage, John Michael is now becoming either nothing or everything, which perhaps makes him a character and not a person, because if he is nothing or everything then he is understandable and noncontradictory, which are two things I know people are not. And maybe this would trouble John Michael if it did not bring him so much joy.

Nevertheless, there is still the vague notion in John Michael that everything he has been lately is stacked together like hundred dollar bills on a summer day, and any breeze, this one or the next one, might send everything loose. But as he thinks now in waves of joy and not in time, it is of little bother to him. 

Heros

If someone told me that, right this minute, Justin Bieber was signing autoigraphs at White Oaks Mall, I wouldn't care at all. I wouldn't feel any urge to go meet him or talk to him or even see him. I wouldn't even be filled with a hatred for him and want to go just to hate him in person. That news would have no effect on me at all and I would continue my day as previously planned. I have absolutely no opinion on him as a person or a performer and his presence in my city would mean nothing.

If someone told the little girls I coached at gymnastics Zone that Justin Bieber was at White Oaks Mall signing autographs, they would shit themselves. They would shit themselves, then change, then force their mothers, coach, or whatever adult they could find to take them to the Biebs imediamente.

If someone told me that Patti LuPone was at White Oaks Mall, right now, spitting on people dreams, I would shit myself. Then I would clean that up, drive myself to the mall and cry all over her assistants while she stood nearby (she doesn't seem like a "I love me fans" type).

 I used to think that I was above the celebrity-obsession that is so prevalent in America. I don't buy gossip magazines, I've never watched a reality show about some celebrity's everyday life, and Ive never understood the big deal with autographs. Then I realized that it isn't that the rest of the world is celebrity obsessed and I'm not, it's just that I have different heros than most people and everyone is gaga for their own heros (there's a hint at another one of my heros).

Although Robert Pattinson would barely make me look up from my coffee, I know that there are plenty of obscure seemingly unimportant people in the world that I wouldn't even be able to speak to in real sentances (i.e. Aaron Tveitt- I brokenly asked him for a picture, was turned down, and ended up taking a super blurry picture of the side of his head because I was shaking so terribly (Aaron Tveit is a Broadway actor (no one has heard of him))).

I'm pretty sure if other members of Classic Brian saw the creator of The Wire on the street, they would yell quotes form his show at him until they elicited at least some kind of reponse from him. In our own way, we are all giddy little fan girls, it's just that they don't make magazines about my heros.

So what is it that makes humans so suceptable to this kind of ridiculousness? I would say that I am just a sucker for raw talent and that I like to see these people in person to prove that they are real people and not perfectly engineered robots. However, I don't have any desire to meet Mark Zuckerberg. He is undeniably talented and powerful, but he has no effect on me as a person.

I suppose that it has to do with our hidden or not so hidden desires. For example, I have always dreamed of being a fierce braodway performer, so those people seem like gods to me. The ultimate that I will never reach. Super versions of my local theater friends. Maybe Conor has secretly always wanted to write a kickass drama series and The Wire is his idea of writing perfection.

Whatever it is that makes us willingly to pay or break laws or travel just to spend 3 minutes in the presence of another human, it seems to be universal.

People I would quit my summer job to meet:

Patti LuPone
Lady Gaga
Alec Baldwin
Amy Poehler
Robert Downey Jr.
Conan O'Brien
Bill Hader
Will Arnett
Ian McKellan

There are more, I just can't think of them right now.

-Mada

Nick - Pretzels, Man, Pretzels

 

This is the third time today that I've supplemented one of my meals with a pretzel. These things are great. They come in packs of, like, 25, and they have salt packets so you can put however much salt you want on top! You just have to make it stick with water first, and then pop it in the microwave. BAM! Pretzel!

In Imaginary Nick Land, these are served instead of dinner rolls.

Okay, I guess that's all I have to say about this!

Pretzels! Oh boy!

-Nick.

A Character I Hate From A Show I Love

This post began as a tweet. Because I had something to say about a story I thought was interesting. Then I realized that no way could I capture my feelings about this story in 140 characters, so I opted to post it to Facebook. When I kept writing, I realized that no one on Facebook wanted a novella on their newsfeed, so as a courtesy, I am opening the floodgates here so this tweet-turned-tangent can take on its truest most uninhibited form.

The piece I'm referring to is this LeBron James profile done by ESPN's Brian Windhorst. To credit Windhorst and ESPN, this is sports journalism. That's a start, and a notable one from the Worldwide Leader in gerrymandering journalistic integrity to attract viewership. As it is a feature profile, it has every right to focalize through LeBron James, the way the entire network seems to operate. Windhorst writes about how different LeBron James is as a person from last year's Finals to today, placing James' proposal to his longtime girlfriend at the crux of said transition. While it'd be easy for Windhorst to have written a piece for the sake of hyping the Heat's title chances, it seems there is an actual point here, and that LeBron is actually growing up.

This piece fascinates me. I'm mad at it, I feel for it, it's good, it sucks. But it makes me feel a lot of things, which is to say, if nothing else, it's an extraordinary picture of LeBron James. Windhorst, in most all his "journalism," pads the Heat, shows them love a little more than I'd like a journalist to. But here, it's different because it's a feature; it's allowed to paint LeBron as the hero. But that aside, he is the villain in these playoffs. Just a tragic villain. He's grown up, but has done so after hopping to the wrong side of the fence.

Right now I'm thinking Kevin Durant is Luke Skywalker, and LeBron James is the NBA's very own Darth Vader. But, that is to say, James' story is tragic. So talented. If only he hadn't decided to go to the dark side, spurning his adoring fans in Cleveland by making them hold their collective breath through 27 minutes of an overly gaudy nationally televised acceptance of slick psychophant Dwyane Wade's offer to form a devastating hoops alliance whose purpose was to rule the NBA for the next decade. In terms of disgusting self-righteousness and crude pageantry, however, The Decision was a mere appetizer for this appalling entree.

What LeBron had mistaken as earnest excitement for the NBA's next big thing sticks out as the most arrogant, polarizing offseason filled with mistake making and camera loving. And the owner of that camera was ESPN and all of its affiliates (except for in the previously linked video, the owner of THAT camera was Chuck Fadely of the Miami Herald). ESPN has since graced the Heat with an utterly disproportionate amount of coverage, going as far as creating a "Heat Index" page for the team, designed to track the progress of the Big Three and aggregate all their personal headlines surrounding Miami's new darlings.

Meanwhile, the Oklahoma City Thunder — a team that A: had a better record than the Heat this season, B: has as many (if not more) All-Star caliber players on it as Miami, and C: has a better, more fervent fan base than the lackadaisical Miami crowd that comes late and watches expectantly rather than passionately — get practically none of the bountiful attention ESPN provides. The Thunder came from having nothing but Nick Collison, Ray Allen and a 28.2% shot at a top-three pick to its (different) name five years ago to now having three offensive forces, two defensive forces, and some quality veteran role players — essentially everything it takes to win an NBA championship. Yet it's Miami we care so much about. Why?

Because the NBA is about LeBron James. It's about the moment he turned bad. It's about him being defeated last season by an aging Mavericks team that was cashing in on its last hurrah and breaking through for the first time simultaneously. It's about him coming back this year and trying to win it again, the haters less vicious and pressure mounted higher. It's whether the Heat will be defeated by the Thunder, or if they will seize the throne and occupy it for years to come. Because James is the league's prodigal son, the most gifted player in its history, and the one of whom all the league's fans have demanded greatness.

The NBA is a drama about LeBron James. But it's also real life, because LeBron James is not a character. LeBron James is a real person. Dwyane Wade is a real person. Kevin Durant is a real person. And yet the way it happens to set up, these monumental storylines aren't depicting fantasy, they're depicting a competition for an accolade, had by two businesses, played out in the arena of their products, selling their brand, their product, their players, to the public. McDonald's can't get emotionally upset when you choose Burger King, but LeBron has been hurt by the hate he's received since "taking his talents to South Beach."

And that pain made him change himself. That and the pain that came with losing the NBA Finals. He changed himself, his approach, after getting bested on the biggest stage for the second time in his mortal career. He grew up. And that's what I love about the drama of the NBA. Even the enemy gets down on himself, but he's still the enemy. Even the enemy grows up, but he's still the enemy. LeBron James is still the enemy, but even he is human.

--Eliot Sill

Characters I Hate From Shows I Love

I'll try and do this without spoiling anything for you folks. I'll stick to rather vague, non-plot oriented details about these fucking fucks. But I will show you how shitty these characters are.

The Wire

This might as well be first up, since I'm watching season 5 again. This guy.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck yooooooooooooooou. You are the worst person in this show, Scott, and this show is full of fucking drug dealers, murderers, and self-destructive psychopaths. He's a liar and a kiss-ass, the reason that the news industry struggles to remain impartial. All he cares about is winning an award, and unfortunately his superiors are of the same mind. He makes me mad every time he comes on screen.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

Deanna Troi is the ship's counselor. She's also an empath. Oh, you don't know what an empath is? No reason you should. Basically, it's a shittier telepath who can only sense people's moods and feelings, but not their thoughts. Bottom line is, she cheapens the show. Oh, we've made contact with an alien race. What's that Deanna? You sense some deceit from their leader? Good. Glad I can expect a "surprise" later. Bitch. There's often a gratuitous pair of boobs thrown into so many shows, and you're Star Trek's.

Battlestar Galactica

Gaius Baltar, bane of the human race. Baltar's Wikipedia page describes him as weak, arrogant, and a coward. The only one in the entire universe who cares for him describes him as narcissistic, self-centered, feckless and vain. (The font fucked up here and I don't know how to change it back. Whatever.) Anyway, man this guy. Petulant. I think petulant would be the word I would use to describe him. I keep hoping he's going to die but man, I can just tell he's gonna be a survivor. Sheeeeeeeeeeit.

Huh. I guess I don't really watch that many serious shows that have characters I can actually hate. But...

Lololololol. I don't hate Krillin. Actually I love him. I just wanted to laugh at him. Worthless. (Oh hey, my font fixed itself. Fancy that.)

-Classic

Jane Cheney

Jane Cheney wears contacts and likes to read a lot.

Jane Cheney reads a blog about severe thunderstorms before going to bed.
Jane Cheney is hoping to influence her dreams by doing this.
Jane Cheney wants to imagine herself in the most tenacious of squalls.
Jane Cheney wants to wake up feeling relieved that the weather outside is actually quite palatable.
Jane Cheney has an imagination that surpasses most of her peers.
Jane Cheney has very few friends.
Jane Cheney's mother and father expect their daughter to be successful.
Jane Cheney's mother insists she take clarinet lessons, despite Jane Cheney's desire to switch to viola.
Jane Cheney owns a dog named Barker.
Jane Cheney still sleeps with stuffed animals on her bed, though she is 15 years old.
Jane Cheney doesn't really like any music.
Jane Cheney's wardrobe consists mostly of smaller blue clothes with a little bit of larger black ones.
Jane Cheney will not be killed by a drunk driver before she turns 25.
Jane Cheney convinced her English teacher that she had to go to the bathroom, though really she only wanted to use the drinking fountain.
This was the wildest thing Jane Cheney had ever done.

Except for when Jane Cheney dreams, and flies about those raging thunderstorms.



--Eliot Sill