In the crumbling walls of Hubble Middle School (now flattened), I was the shaky smirking irritating guy in class with stretched rubber bands connecting my top and bottom braces. I was as charming as a cloud of gnats, and just about as interesting. I made seventh grade English teacher cried multiple times, my social studies teacher pushed my desk over seconds after class started, and stacks of write-to-pass papers, projects, and the like were left undone. I was awash in self loathing, painful awkwardness, and struggling with the worst bouts of ADHD I’d ever experienced. I wore the same fraying boxers most of those three years, my pants were mostly the same ‘might-as-well-be-glued-to-my-hips’ dark colored corduroys. I was dirty too.

Just to paint a picture, that was me. I was the giggling snide side kick but without the chubby face-punching lead-man.

Through the luck of having a friend with a date, I place myself in the good graces of a girl – a date – to a dance. The details are lost in the ether of time, but I’m sure I never mustered the courage to ask her straight out, and merely passed along the message through the lines. I bought a pair of pleated khaki pants, and a flowing dress shirt and tie – like a sprouting kid wearing dad’s hand-me-downs.

The day of the dance, my mom was due home just in time to take her and I to the dance. Of course, being the permanent slouch, I was running behind. I took a shower and had to dry my hair – fast. So I pulled a dry towel over my head and rubbed it fast. Now the hair was too dry and the chunky gel would only make things worse. My head only fit somewhat underneath the sink, and the cold water washed down and onto my beige striped Sears dress shirt. Instead of a towel, this time I whipped my head – clung to my legs above the knee and head-banged a few times into the fluffy bathmats. It was still damp and dripping, more drops of water falling on my skin-toned shirt. I placed my hands on my hips and flung down to draw out the water. My head didn’t clear the counter.

The off white plaster was not forgiving on my squishy body. I went to the dance, meet my date, and sat in the darkened gym when the power went out with a throbbing red mark on my forehead.

I think her name was Lauren, she was just about as interested in me as any girl would have been, she was doing a friend a favor. We didn’t see much of each other at the dance.

First Dance

Posted on

January 19th, 2013

Category

My Childhood

In fifth grade, my teacher scared the shit out of me. I was a horrible student and didn’t do my homework. So my teacher belittled us in front of the entire class and told us we weren’t allowed to go to lunch and were being forced to finish the work we were supposed to do the night before.

The girl, who would later get her period on the way to gym class later that year, and I were ashamed and kept quiet, doing our work. The lumpy hispanic kid did nothing of the sort. He cried. Sobbed is more accurate, and protested in the only way a helpless fifth grader would, saying their parents were going to sue her.

Mrs. Smith had always been a little strong in the emotion department. She memorized lines from books we were reading in class and dressed in character – even going as far as adorning a nazi uniform, swastika and all – shouting at the top of her lungs that she was going to find the jews. Needless to say she was a bit heavy-handed, but a passionate teacher none the less.

Something in the way this tubby kid was crying, complaining, and even threatening the employment status of our teacher just broke her. She was a heavy woman, built shoulders first in the hands of god, and when she sauntered her way over to you – with the same authority she called out Penelope’s suitors – like when she overturned my desk mid-class, you knew what was coming. This time though it was rough and jagged like a hurricane hitting the shoreline, she came screaming down his desk row and squared her face with his. She pointed at his chest, deep into his soul and he didn’t waver anymore than he had. I sat with my jaw against my collarbone as my teacher told this child how good he had it, what he was going to amount to, and how much of a shit she gave about his threats. I can’t remember if she swore, but I’m sure she did. All of the garbage, the back talk, the chatter and disturbance an elementary classroom can birth rained down upon this kid. He left, under whose order isn’t clear, but the girl a row over and I were praised for how good we were for working quietly and Mrs. Smith went back to mashing her thick green salad between her wide jaw.

For three days there after I ditched school. My mother forced a teacher conference with the powers that be. As my mother tells it, she scolded my teacher and those who employed her, but I just remember being in the room and not much else.

I ran into Mrs. Smith years later when she came into my grandparent’s bakery and asked how she was doing. She was still teaching, but at a different school.

Fifth Grade – Not The Worst In The Room

Posted on

January 5th, 2013

Category

My Childhood

I almost inexplicably hate review shows about the ‘previous year,’ although I do love year-review for albums. That’s really it. Music is kind of the only thing deserving of getting reviewed in reflection on an annual basis. Maybe top internet searches just to give perspective. But this isn’t like those, I’m not rating my year, I’m simply laying it out like a newly washed rug and taking a step back to see how it fits in the room.

Finn’s Birth

This may not have been the start of the year, but it’s hard to bookend a year without talking about the 28# baby in the room. He was born in February, pulled from the clutches of Lis’s interior on the 15th. We spent three days building up, then Lis got sliced open, I saw a tiny human being yanked through a hole in my wife’s stomach and got to tell the sex of said tiny human. I cut the cord too. I listened to the placenta being ram-fisted with a gut push like the world’s worst fart.  I held him before Lis’s arms were released from the crucifix-like spread of the operating table. Everyone says it’s a super happy moment, and part of it was, but I wasn’t sure if I was only suppressing my fear of now having this responsibly and feigning overjoy or if I was actually elated. Sleep deprivation, emotional roller-coasters, over caffeinated, fear, happiness,  shock, joy, horror – all played their part in making me feel the most disconnected from myself than I had ever felt in my life.

People say that was the easy part – thus far, it’s been the hardest.

Adding Another

It may sound strange – but, emotionally, Finn didn’t feel like a part of our lives until about two or three weeks after getting home from the hospital. Having family visiting was fantastic, but after plowing through the most stressful, beautiful, horrible, wonderful thing in your life the last thing you want is to ask your mother if she wants some more tea. I am glad Lis was off as long as she was. Sharing the load of diapers, bottles, and emotional weight made the transition to my solo tour that much easier.

I still snap awake from work or reading to the mysterious cries from the next room – oh right, I’m a dad.

Weddings Suck

Let me be clear, I like going to them. It’s like prom but the older people tell much dirtier jokes and the alcohol consumption is much more explicit. Lis and I held our reception more than half a year after getting wed. We had it at SPG. Our thought was great food, very small group, and little hassle. Oh whoa, how those aspirations of the uneducated in such a space are placed in the mire; of rude in-laws, of pushing family, of a tired baby, of unforeseen havoc in the most obnoxious sense. All I wanted was to eat some lobster rolls, show off my baby, shake some hands, and relax. Last time we will ever attempt something like that.

Short Trips

The fancy food show in DC. A few days in Chicago. A weekend here or there in Boston. A drive up the coast. A hike up a local Mountain. A visit to crashing ocean waves. A visit with family. A holiday. Funerals in Chicagoland. This year was like a roll of film from a long vacation. Snapshots of finally really enjoying a new state and enjoying our baby. We traveled a lot, we were on the move a lot, crossing half the nation via car, flying, being inundated with family and just getting round.

Brewing Along

2012 was sort of getting to a place where I could be comfortable with brewing. It will slowly tilt from obsessive hobby to zealous unstoppable venture in no time flat. Resolutions aren’t quite my bag but I made an exception – I’m going to take this much more seriously. I can keep it fun, but let’s try to get something more out of it. Many homebrewers are complacent, this one is ready to go. Spreadsheet updated, recipes slotted, gobs of malt ordered, yeast lined up. From finding my way to building a ‘house brew,’ this will be a touchstone year for my beer.

Breathing in

This past year, I could have been truly living life. Maybe that is the underlying theme to my year  – breathing it all in, from ocean air to hop aromas to ripe diapers.

Happy New Year.

2012 – A Year in Review

Posted on

January 2nd, 2013

Category

Fatherhood, reflections

In fourth grade I played the viola.  In retrospect, I only really played it because I couldn’t play any of the cool instruments allotted to fifth graders. So my mother shelled out the money to rent two separate instruments two years in a row – I guess I can’t complain we never were allowed anything.

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But it was when I was my movement to the band instead of orchestra that I picked up a golden tube of pure disappointment.

I’m not one for practice, at least when, and so anytime I’d pick the thing up to teach myself a thing or two my heart wasn’t in it and my “practice sessions” lasted less and less time. I didn’t really care about the damn thing to begin with and only wanted to fit in with some girl I was eyeing – that cute girl in drum line two rows behind me. When the whole band would practice together, I always kicked myself for not picking up the snare drum instead to awkwardly eye her from the same row. Fifth grade band went scooting by in quiet clumsiness and I usually just moved my hands on the keys while my peers played during concerts.

Then middle school came knocking. At Hubble, kids in band stayed after and the thirty something with a four-foot pony-tail brought a much stronger presence than my lumpy elementary band conductor did. I made it to one session. I couldn’t hold up the lie anymore. Lessons were no longer played together, where I hid my playing behind my classmates. There were deadlines and song were to be memorized. My excuses were riddled with holes, and I just didn’t care anymore. To top it off my little drummer girl was only spotted in a sea of kids on concert nights; the band, as a whole, rarely played together.

I quit, much to the chagrin of my mother –  who was, unsurprisingly, upset about flushing a chunk of money on something she had pressured me take more seriously, even having a conversation before renting for another year. Was sure I wanted to play in middle school? That poor woman.

Another Failure – Tooting My Horn

Posted on

December 28th, 2012

Category

My Childhood

So I’ve been lamenting a lot on what exactly I should be brewing. I know for a lot of brewers it’s making a great pale ale, or kicking out a pilsner to be proud of, but for me it’s about making something I can’t buy at the store; I want my beer to mean something to me in a way too, a self-expression and representation of me as a person.

So far it’s done a pretty good job of describing my clunking along in a sort of ‘duct-tape-the-muffler-back-on’ sort of way. From the not great attempts at brett table beers, to the way brew days always seem to go, I’m more or less running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

But I’m trying to change that – at least with my brewing.

I’ve got a spreadsheet running with upcoming beers, ideas, and current/past beer on the list. I’ve added what is ready, what is currently fermenting, and the litany of ideas below. I think this year as well, I will attempt to have a standard ‘house brew’ on tap. I’ll work on getting my method down more. Brew more often, and just generally ‘tighten’ up the ship.

2012-11-28 09.16.49

As far as current brews, I’ve got the first group brew day beer on tap. It’s a toasty dark-brown beer with heavy doses of wheat and fermented with wheat and roeselare blend (pictured above). It’s mostly “wheat” with a kind of over-toasted bread taste profile. I don’t get much sour/funk but I’ve been told it’s there. Hard to compare it to something else I guess. A stout of unknown recipe is bubbling along from a huge 40 gallon brew day just this past weekend. Myself, I tried to blast through 4 batches of solo-hopped beer during the same time, but due to weather and bad planning only made it to 3 with the last one a blend of last two remaining hops. It’s likely that those are in the upper 1.070s – didn’t get a clean measurement (another mistake).

So in a roundabout way – this post is also my declaration that I’m going to start taking this much more seriously.

Brew Update – Mid Dec

Posted on

December 20th, 2012

Category

Beer

In light of recent horrific tragedies, I can’t help but write something. First, let be clear: I am in no way attempting to marginalize the severity of the actions carried out by a man on a shooting spree, let alone in an elementary school. This isn’t a normal thing for me to post, but I felt the need to put something down. To at least write it up here, allowing a collection of thoughts.

This is about the news. Let us not blame 24 hour news cycles, or 9/11, or a growing partisanship in politics on how news coverage is shaped – I’m not going to point fingers at for-profit news coverage either but there are issues. Serious issues on the morality of a story.

To harp on images of mothers and fathers breaking in a school parking lot, to replay old tapes of that poor high school student being dragged from the second floor window in Columbine, to plop a child under the harsh lens of a camera to explain how his teacher saved his life, or to play a father’s weeping press conference over like a sport’s replay film is vile. Plain and simple. When did death become a part of the american public narrative? Why can we not be notified as a bulletin instead of force-fed reels of aerial shots and slow motion photo pans? Why must we poke the fresh wounds of a community to see them squirm, tear up, shake and pause?

The shooting in Connecticut was like a broadcast rating analyst’s wet dream. Children in harms way, a mad gun man, a small affluent white town, within driving range of Manhattan, and all on a Friday – because then it could be poured into the news feeds all weekend as if we’re ducks at a Foie-gras factory. Enough is enough.

Stations attempts to find blame in mental health or gun control laws, but never reflects against their over-coverage of over-seas island retreat killings, mall shootings, and playing a highlight show on how you aren’t safe anywhere in the world, all while anxiety medicine rolls seconds after saying how this could have happened anywhere. I’m not placing blame solely on them – but stirring the pot surely isn’t helping. There are of course surreal moments when it’s mentioned; strange meta-discussions on how media plays their part, then it’s back to a 3D schematic of the building with a step-by-step on the rampage.

It’s sad. All of it. There is a lot to be down about, from all sides: from feeling grief and fear for the families, children, and teachers – but also the idea of the news ship landing square in town, dropping us there in the most vulnerable time in their life. Despicable.

Let’s try to move away from slide shows and splashing the anti-hero’s face, let’s get the news and grieve in our own way – in private.

Why ‘The News’ is Awful

Posted on

December 18th, 2012

Category

reflections

In the space between finals and the start of second semester when it seems like everyone’s classes are done ganging up on them – in that cool lull in the spring where it’s too cool to keep the windows open – my good buddy Nate and I sat chatting about music. It was Sunday evening and he was still nursing a hangover layered with a cold, face-down in his pillow with an open and empty pizza box at arms reach he mumbled something about The Who.

At the time I was revving up my music obsession and had picked up Live at Leeds and played it through my grounds-crew-at-the-airport style headphones in a way that told everyone in earshot that I was going to have hearing loss before my forties. But that wasn’t the point, I liked The Who – hell I loved them. But it was in this moment with my friend stretched out with an inch of his round belly poking out underneath his dark-colored shirt, awkwardly seated forward in a butterfly chair, the dorm room door open and the crackling record player that I found out that music changes you.

The LP chased the sun set. Roaring into our ears and fluttering out of the room. Short breaks between of me flipping or changing to the second record. It was loud. Not in the way parties or “rocking out” is loud – it was a thunderous. The waves crashed around us, we were there – in studio, we inhaled Townshed’s riffs and exhaled our misconceptions of rock and roll. It was an overture for us all. No one walked in or said a word, neither of us spoke. I was warm with sound, the emotional work poured into the artist on the other end.

All I could do was huff and laugh a little at the end of “Love, Reign o’er Me.” I was sad it was over. I had to go back to living my life. I was on pause, as if Captain N mashed his belt and the Who and I were the only ones there to witness these moments. There was no coming back.

Albums That Shaped Me – Quadrophenia

Posted on

December 18th, 2012

Category

reflections

2012-12-04 13.39.30

Being around my son all day it’s easy to lose sight of what he actually is. He’s a little person. A living, thinking, feeling person just waiting to grow up. What is hard to ignore is the idea that everything I do, the “don’t touch that”s, the shoveling of yogurt into his mouth (he loves it), the times he plays alone, and the times we spend together all add up into this thing. This child, then a teenager and by then it’s well past over

Finn could be a senator some day, or just some guy you pass in the amusement park scooping invisible trash into his dustpan, but he’s growing up. I lose sight sometimes that he’s learning, he’s watching, making sense of his world. I’ve got to be that guiding hand,  we’ve got to be that.

Maybe this is the crushing responsibility everyone warns you about.

 

Daddy Reflection – Dec

Posted on

December 13th, 2012

Category

Fatherhood

These may not be ‘great’ albums, or the best by the artists, but they are albums that, in a broad sense, help construct an identity for myself.

In the turmoil that is the average middle school the horrible subversive infighting, painful chastising, life-long damage to self-worth and the like – mine was particularly bad. Some back history: I failed seventh grade. Not in a way that school systems allow kids to do, nor in a way that parents would allow their kids to do so either. I had a self-inflicted agonizing loss of close friends in a way that would make any part of child’s life hard, but stack that on top of being placed into a ‘last chance’ class for the horrible fringe children of Hubble Middle School – well I might as well have been gum on the shoes of mediocrity popular. I attempted to eat lunch with people I knew but was cast out publicly, shamed for days, until I spent the rest of year eating ho-hos in the hallway – avoiding hall monitors and crying tears of embarrassment. My poor teacher, who had his own demons (his wife having a nasty case of breast cancer,) allowed us social bottom-feeders in the room when we whined enough to break. When he didn’t it was the three steps across the hall, or the desk placed directly outside the door, me, a green bag of Sun Chips, and a sack of two off-brand ho-hos.

So it was during this part of my life I picked up an album. An album by a band I only liked in passing but wanted to buy so the cool (see: bad) kids in my Educational Opportunities class would think I was somehow cool too. They, of course, didn’t think this in any dark recesses of their psych – but they borrowed the album no matter. It was a different time when CDs were king and you had one that you were into and played it to the point of mania.

Another short piece of back story: Mr. Comstock, the shepherd of us lost souls, was doing a ton of research on ADHD. I had (have?) a pretty nasty case and he put to use a handful of tools to help me study. One that stuck for the rest of my life: white noise – or more accurately, jams while working. So I brought my CD player in, my fancy rear-wrap headphones, and RC adapter in to relinquish half of brain to the music.

So this brings us back to the classroom. Where seeming the only normalizing album in my collection was ‘Hello Nasty’ by the Beastie Boys. It wasn’t my foot in the door to being hip, but it was a way to feel normal, to feel needed by my peers. That is just the tangible item. The album harps on some pretty dark themes, has bright poppy songs splashed with a message, and just like nearly any pop album of a preteen’s library – leads the listener to believe it’s about them. It spun and spun in my CD player, the brain-cation between my ears, allowing me to get away from being an emotional fringe blob.

Everything about it is the ideal metaphor for my life at the time.

Albums That Shaped Me – Hello Nasty

Posted on

November 30th, 2012

Category

My Childhood, reflections

This may come as a surprise to any parts of my family that happen to read this, but they are horrible. Not individually,  quite the opposite actually when we’re paired off and spend time separated from the pack.

There was always a low-level grumbling about an uncle not showing up when the horde got together. I never really understood his plight, his surely is much more complicated, but sympathized after my first year in college. Take a breather away from the drowning volume of my family and it’s easy to see why anyone with extended time away wants to keep their distance. My family is also painfully insular in a way to drive any new person mad, all the in-laws have an unspoken kinship and get along just because of the madness.

It is when I return that I find myself holding my tongue  keeping to myself, and leaving the adults to their own accords. As I moved across country I feared I’d be pushed out into a mire where, because of my time away, questions where more about what kept me busy during the day with little judgement. Don’t think my family is hurling insults or kicking glances in painful made-for-tv sort of way – it’s much more painful and childish, where everyone collects snips of passing judgement from one another like a bad cold and we’re all secretly miserable together.

I’m sure other families are much worse, with abusive drunkenness or real fist fighting – I am not attempting to level myself with that frame of mind. No, I’m simply stating that my move away from my family allowed myself to cast my mold instead of being shoehorned into one.

So to those wondering if college out-of-state or move into your own apartment, or that move across country for no good reason at all is a good idea – it is.

Why Moving Away Was The Best Thing I Could Have Done

Posted on

November 26th, 2012

Category

reflections