In the interest of fairness I should probably point out right at the beginning I have no clear proof a Rosemount-area skateboarder is responsible for what happened to my pants.
Here's what I know for certain: when I put this particular pair of pants on last Wednesday morning they were, so far as I noticed, free of any major blemishes. I also know that not long after I left a day camp held at Rosemount's skateboard park it was pointed out to me that the back left pocket of my pants looked like someone had used it as an impromptu canvas for some form of really simplistic abstract art. I don't mean a few stray marks. I mean all my backside needed was some PVC tubing and a black turtleneck and it could have jammed Blue Man Group.
Video evidence from the skate camp clips we recorded for our web page suggests the marks were not there when I showed up at the camp. Looking-at-my-butt evidence makes it pretty clear they were there a short time later.
The only one with a reasonable chance to scribble all over my rear between the time I left the camp and the time the marks were discovered is the band director at Rosemount High School. I do not suspect him.
Anyway, if anyone feels unfairly accused by this column I apologize. But a pre-teen skater with a hyperactive pen hand seems like the most logical explanation for this unexpected colorization of my kiester. In my mind it narrowly edges out other potential explanations, which range from an unseen pen hanging from the camera bag I was carrying to Gremlins.
None of which should suggest that a scribble-happy skater is an entirely satisfying explanation for the graffiti-fying of my sensible workday trousers. For one thing, the amount of drawing that was done would have taken some time. These were some serious pen marks. Put a white hat on it and my pocket would have looked right at home in the Smurf village. Just call me Vandalized Smurf.
I'd like to think I would have noticed someone putting in that kind of effort on my derriere, but it's possible I could have missed it. I had a calendar in that particular pocket, so it's certainly possible I wouldn't have felt the point of the pen as it sketched a work of modern art behind my back.
But it seems unlikely any young skateboarder would have wanted to devote that kind of attention to my pants when there were other skaters performing tricks with names like "Fakey Rock-it" or "Corkscrew Whackadoodle" or "Hey, I Didn't Fall Down This Time." Even if all the tricks looked, to me, like someone rolling up a ramp, stopping and rolling back down.
I don't get skateboarding.
With all that going on is it really reasonable to think someone would bother to take the time to attack my rear end with a pen?
To tell the truth, I'm not even that upset about the whole thing. All I lost was a pair of pants. And it gave me an opportunity to talk about my fanny in polite company. That can't be all bad, right?
I'm just confused. Outside of abduction by alien art students or marking by some trouser-related secret society I've yet to learn about I just can't figure out how this happened.
Those skateboarders seem like the most likely culprits (everyone knows kids these days are all up to no good, right?) but it's hardly an open-and-shut case. If the pen don't scribble you must not quibble, or something.
Maybe I'm just not meant to know. Maybe some mysteries are beyond the grasp of human understanding.
First Stonehenge, then crop circles and now my pants.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
Skaters, you're off the hook.
----------------
Now playing: The Hold Steady - Lord, I'm Discouraged
via FoxyTunes
Friday, June 27, 2008
Thursday, June 12, 2008
What's the cause?
I'm starting to think we've run out of really good causes for people to champion.
Voting rights for women? Done. World peace probably isn't going away anytime soon, but jumping on that bandwagon's hardly original. Equal rights aren't exactly sorted out, but the effort's there. Even the whole Save the Whales things seems a little played out.
These days, it seems like anyone who wants to champion a new cause left with previously unattractive options like laziness or eating other people's garbage, both of which are actual movements with actual names and actual media coverage.
CNN reported this week on something called the Slow Movement, an organized — if presumably lethargic — effort to get people to relax a little bit. Edgar Cahn, a 73-year-old lawyer identified by CNN as one of the movement's leaders (which I assume in this case means "guy with a web page") says people cause themselves stress by trying to cram more and more activity into their lives.
In response, Cahn has started something called TimeBanks, a nonprofit group through which members trade blocks of time with each other. So, for example, you could offer to go to the grocery store for some person you've never met (get them lots of Nutter Butters) in exchange for having some other perfect stranger come mow your lawn or walk your dog or clean your toilet. I don't understand this concept. Easing busy schedules by trading chores with some random person a little bit like easing the economic crisis by trading some dude on the street a $20 for two $10s.
Then again, Edgar Cahn is getting interviewed by CNN while I'm typing a column at home by myself at 10:30 p.m., so maybe he's onto something.
Getting together to discuss having too much on our schedules seems counterintuitive to me, but Cahn is apparently not the only one to have the idea. According to CNN, a group called Take Back Your Time has launched a campaign to address what it calls "time famine" with conferences and "teach-ins" to help people learn they don't need to be busy all the time. Here's my advice: try avoiding anything called a "teach-in." That should free up a few hours right there.
In San Francisco, a group called The Long Now formed to "provide an alternative to a 'faster/cheaper' mind set and promote 'slower/better' thinking. I have no idea what that means, but I imagine their meetings last forever.
Still, as silly as it sounds to organize entire groups around a messages as simple as, "Chill out, dude!" at least the time management people don't dig through your trash looking for a snack. That's a whole other movement. Something called Freeganism which, as far as I can tell, is based entirely on the idea that paying for anything — from furniture to clothing to salad fixin's — is for chumps.
Several years ago I had a roommate who announced proudly one night that he'd just had his first dumpster diving experience. I wasn't sure if congratulating him was the right response, but I made sure to have him point out exactly which bag of chips was his.
Look, I really don't care if you get all giddy about finding a slightly bruised eggplant in a grocery store dumpster. I don't want you to ever invite me over for dinner, but you do what works for you. I just don't think it deserves a whole movement. Freegans seem to believe what they're doing is some kind of statement against consumer culture or something. Mostly, though, I think it's a statement that they're less afraid than most sensible people of getting a stomach parasite.
Maybe it's not their fault. Maybe if these people had been born a few decades earlier they would have been marching to end segregation or trying to ban the bomb or staging sit-ins against New Coke.
Then again, maybe they've just got too much time on their hands.
----------------
Now playing: Massive Attack - Five Man Army
via FoxyTunes
Voting rights for women? Done. World peace probably isn't going away anytime soon, but jumping on that bandwagon's hardly original. Equal rights aren't exactly sorted out, but the effort's there. Even the whole Save the Whales things seems a little played out.
These days, it seems like anyone who wants to champion a new cause left with previously unattractive options like laziness or eating other people's garbage, both of which are actual movements with actual names and actual media coverage.
CNN reported this week on something called the Slow Movement, an organized — if presumably lethargic — effort to get people to relax a little bit. Edgar Cahn, a 73-year-old lawyer identified by CNN as one of the movement's leaders (which I assume in this case means "guy with a web page") says people cause themselves stress by trying to cram more and more activity into their lives.
In response, Cahn has started something called TimeBanks, a nonprofit group through which members trade blocks of time with each other. So, for example, you could offer to go to the grocery store for some person you've never met (get them lots of Nutter Butters) in exchange for having some other perfect stranger come mow your lawn or walk your dog or clean your toilet. I don't understand this concept. Easing busy schedules by trading chores with some random person a little bit like easing the economic crisis by trading some dude on the street a $20 for two $10s.
Then again, Edgar Cahn is getting interviewed by CNN while I'm typing a column at home by myself at 10:30 p.m., so maybe he's onto something.
Getting together to discuss having too much on our schedules seems counterintuitive to me, but Cahn is apparently not the only one to have the idea. According to CNN, a group called Take Back Your Time has launched a campaign to address what it calls "time famine" with conferences and "teach-ins" to help people learn they don't need to be busy all the time. Here's my advice: try avoiding anything called a "teach-in." That should free up a few hours right there.
In San Francisco, a group called The Long Now formed to "provide an alternative to a 'faster/cheaper' mind set and promote 'slower/better' thinking. I have no idea what that means, but I imagine their meetings last forever.
Still, as silly as it sounds to organize entire groups around a messages as simple as, "Chill out, dude!" at least the time management people don't dig through your trash looking for a snack. That's a whole other movement. Something called Freeganism which, as far as I can tell, is based entirely on the idea that paying for anything — from furniture to clothing to salad fixin's — is for chumps.
Several years ago I had a roommate who announced proudly one night that he'd just had his first dumpster diving experience. I wasn't sure if congratulating him was the right response, but I made sure to have him point out exactly which bag of chips was his.
Look, I really don't care if you get all giddy about finding a slightly bruised eggplant in a grocery store dumpster. I don't want you to ever invite me over for dinner, but you do what works for you. I just don't think it deserves a whole movement. Freegans seem to believe what they're doing is some kind of statement against consumer culture or something. Mostly, though, I think it's a statement that they're less afraid than most sensible people of getting a stomach parasite.
Maybe it's not their fault. Maybe if these people had been born a few decades earlier they would have been marching to end segregation or trying to ban the bomb or staging sit-ins against New Coke.
Then again, maybe they've just got too much time on their hands.
----------------
Now playing: Massive Attack - Five Man Army
via FoxyTunes
Friday, June 06, 2008
Words of wisdom
It's become something of a tradition, this column addressing another class of fresh-faced high school graduates. This annual attempt to impart some final words of wisdom to another class of students as they prepare to dress themselves in uncomfortable gowns, perch funny-looking cardboard caps on their heads and sit in the sun for a few hours in a bizarre ceremony designed to provide some kind of closure to more than a decade of learning, growth and Guitar Hero. As I write this I like to picture you graduates, swathed in polyester and sitting in folding chairs. In my mind's eye, you look like a box of black crayons. Very distinguished. There are reasons these columns pop up year after year, of course. Writing this, I have learned, is the closest I will ever get to actually addressing a graduating class in person. Because while I make my case year after year I have yet to be asked to give a commencement address. Honest-ly, I believe I could bring some real star power to a commencement exercise. I'm known nearly citywide. Columns like this are also easy. They're what idea-starved columnists like to refer to as a gimme. Who, after all, can't come up with a few words of advice for a group of people so unworldly they still believe tapping out misspelled messages on a cell phone keypad is an effective means of communication? Sharing the hard-earned wisdom we've accumulated in the years since we were in your gowns. Most of which consists of repeating the same things someone told us back then. Work hard. Have fun. These are the best years of your life. Small-town journalists get all the women. Granted, some pieces of advice are better than others. High school seniors are conditioned to accept advice this time of year. Studies have shown that high school students who do not receive a consistent supply of advice from parents, family friends or complete strangers on the street frequently develop unsettling symptoms that include an inability to dance like no one is watching. The advice is not all cliché, of course. The people who give it have all been where you will soon be. We've worn the flimsy robes and the dinner-plate hats and we've all asked the question you're bound to ask yourselves as you consider all you've done to this point and all that lies ahead of you: Now what? The prospect of leaving behind the safe halls of Rosemount High School to explore something unfamiliar can be frightening. Remember, though, this is the least frightening graduation you will ever go through. Most of you will go on to college next year. And for all the new experiences it offers college is not the real world. College is the real world with training wheels. You will make decisions there that will affect the rest of your life, but mostly you'll just make decisions that will affect whether you try to scrounge up quarters to do laundry or plan a trip home. Ridiculous outfits and diplomas aside, this isn't the end of the journey. It's just a stop along the way. So pick up your diplomas this week. Listen politely to all the people who want to give you advice. Then go figure it all out for yourself.
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