I Could Always Fall Back On My Jockey Career...

Every generation, an athlete defies conventional wisdom in a given sport and rises above his peers to greatness, transcending the game in such a way that they gain relevance in the global consciousness.

In basketball, there was Michael Jordan.

In golf, Tiger Woods.

In baseball baseball Babe Ruth, football Jim Brown, hockey Wayne Gretzky, and so on and so on.

Now, in a sport as to yet unappreciated, an athlete has risen to such heights that he has quite possibly changed the fabric of America as we know it.

That athlete is me.

That sport is hide-and-go-seek.

The Scene: Martindale, Texas. My cousin, Doyle, and I have been lured to his neighbor's house under the pretense of a dinner party. Doyle is asked to bring his five-year-old granddaughter, Storie, with him.

The Setup: Under the guise of a traditional dinner party, I have let my guard down. At a table with four adults, I begin proper conversation as I enjoy a delightful meal. Little do I know that Storie and the neighbor's four-year-old, Lauren, have plotted a surprise version of their favorite game.

You guessed it. Hide-and-go-seek.

As the "adults" continue dinner conversation, I find myself in the middle of a high-stakes battle for survival. Lauren and Storie play to win, and they'll win at any cost; no rule is too sacred.

"Count to fifty" quickly turns into "count to five," "close your eyes" is taken as "follow me around so you know exactly where I'll be hiding," and "I'm too tired and old to lift both of you up to touch the ceiling for the six hundredth time in a row" becomes "sure I will, and don't forget to kick me in the face again on the way up."

Standing at six feet, five inches tall, I am at a clear disadvantage. This is a game where being compact is intimidating, where children and little people reign supreme, where Shaquille O'Neal cowers at the sight of Verne Troyer. This is a game I was not born to play, and with ten seconds to go in the fourth quarter, I need a hail mary, and Doug Flutie is nowhere in sight.

So I point Lauren and Storie in the other direction to count to "fifty" and make a mad dash...past the living room, through the kitchen, around the dining table, and out the screen door to hide behind the porch. Ten minutes later, the girls still hadn't found me, making me the default winner of the contest.

I had done it. I had overcome adversity to reign victorious. Against all odds, I had conquered my demons, and two little girls, to do the impossible. Sure, outside the house was "out of bounds" based on the unspoken rules, but unspoken rules were meant to be broken. Especially when the only people you have to convince of your innocence have yet to finish kindergarten.

The point is I had won, and in doing so, I had inspired a nation. Frankly, it's a shame Al Michaels wasn't there to do commentary, because this could have been his second "miracle on ice."

I may never be able to replicate the magic. I may not be the smallest, or the most flexible, or the quietest breather. I may never even play hide-and-go-seek again. But on that day, I was a champion.

And to those who are inspired by my tale of courage and resolve, athletic endurance and wisdom, to my adoring fans and countless hide-and-go-seek groupies, I have four simple, yet breath-taking words of wisdom for you.

Olly. Olly. Oxen. Free.

Providence

In a time spent long ago
A foreign world you may not know
Was home to many booming states,
Kingdoms of imposing weight.

The greatest realm among them all
Stood on a mountain great and tall.
A dynasty like none before,
Bellicia was built on war.

Their thirst for land was never met,
They swept across the Earth and yet
The more they conquered with their swords,
The more thanks given to their Lord.

And in the valley down below
A smaller kingdom soon did grow
With its own God up above,
Paxamo was built on love.

The Paxamons lived peaceful lives
Bore peaceful kids from peaceful wives
And loved their enemies as their friends
Their charity it knew no ends.

And in return they were beloved,
By all their neighbors up above
Except for the Bellicians;
The chosen people had no friends.

Inevitably the day soon came
For Bellicia to expand its reign.
They bore down on the peaceful folks
With endless force, all unprovoked.

The Paxamons had no swords
They merely prayed to their own Lord
And their God did answer their call
And Paxamon it did not fall.

The many kingdoms long since slain
Joined together in the name
Of peace and friendship, hope and love
Defending Paxamon from above.

By evening blood had filled the streets,
The Bellicians had been beat.
Their love for war had lost to love,
And so they turned to up above.

How could their God have let them down?
They were the people of the crown.
But were replaced by Paxamon
Which now believed their God was strong.

Empowered by his mighty Lord,
The Paxamon King drew a sword
And claiming God was on his side,
He swore he'd take the countryside.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? Ed Gein.

Certain film genres have a tendency to produce formulaic movies. Because of this, we've all been conditioned to associate life scenarios with scenes we've seen in the movies time and time again. It's gotten to the point where movie cliches can even dictate our actions.

Do you find yourself in a bookstore arguing with an attractive stranger of the opposite sex? Do you have an unexplained feeling in the pit of your stomach that tells you to expect a race to the airport to stop her from leaving town sometime in the following months? Congratulations; you're in a romantic comedy.

Elevator's not working? The other people in the elevator happen to be an attractive woman, a rogue police officer who's recently divorced his wife, and a sharply dressed man with a vague European accent? Brace yourself; you're in an action flick.

Paying the bills by delivering pizza or cleaning pools? Did your customer come to the door in a towel that barely covers her Silicon Valley? Is she speaking in really awkward pointed sentences that only a child or a NASCAR fan would consider acceptable prose? Hope you brought a condom; you're about to be in a porno.

We all know how these movies start. So when I find myself in Martindale, Texas, visiting my cousin Doyle, and he mentions that he just happens to live right next to "the old mill" where they filmed the Hollywood remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I'm a little unnerved. When he takes me on a tour of the town at night, I start to shake my head.

When he pulls into a small alley behind the mill to show me the nearby river, my mind races.

Then, when his car gets stuck in the rocks, and he tells me we are going to have to walk home to get his tow truck, I resolve myself to an untimely death by way of chainsaw.

To review, here are the facts:

+ I'm a traveler, wandering through a small town in Texas.

+ It's pitch black outside.

+ The car has broken down in a remote area, forcing us to walk home.

+ We're right next to "THE OLD MILL" where they filmed THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.

This is pretty much the start to every slasher film in history.

As Doyle and I make our way across the dark field, I am consoled only by the fact that I am 1) not the black guy, 2) not the guy who recently mocked the local legend at an impromptu campfire, and 3) not currently having sex with an attractive coed, which incidentally is the first time in recorded history this has ever been viewed as a positive.

Somehow, Leatherface missed the memo, and not only were Doyle and I able to survive, we were even able to come back (you NEVER go back) and tow his car out of the riverbank.

Thankfully, on this particular dark and dreary night, life did not imitate art. But local legend says that if you pass "the old mill" these days and have the courage to peek through the boarded up windows, you'll see a disfigured man with a chainsaw, drinking himself stupid and crying into his pillow as he moans about "the one that got away."

What's the Unemployment Rate For Guys Living in Their Vans?

So you know that job I got recently? (If not, scroll down the page.) I quit that already.

Rest assured, I had very good reasons. The good news for you is that said job was ripe with stories and observations to write about. Also, if I don't get a new job soon, I'll run out of money and have to do the whole homeless thing again.

So all of you Hobo Diet fans out there, get ready for a possible sequel.

In the meantime, you can expect to read plenty of unusual and quirky happenings on this blog in the coming weeks, including but not limited to:

+ Thoughts that go through your head when you're about to be sliced in half.

+ The U.S. Post Office's epic fight against incompetent terrorism.

+ Public transit through the eyes of Ayn Rand.

+ How to completely freak out a religious fundamentalist at Fry's Electronics.

and, of course

+ Awkwardly timed bovine defecation.


You can't read about this stuff in The New York Times, people.

Although, after careful thought, I do consider The New York Post direct competition.

Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls

You know, they just don't make waterfalls like they used to.

I don't know who the "they" in that sentence refers to, but "they" need to get it together nonetheless. Just ask the citizens of Great Falls, Montana. Or anyone who's ever paid to get into McKinney Falls State Park.

I recently fell into the latter category. And I didn't really mind it; there are no LA Fitnesses (my default source for showers) in Austin, and the park offers a much needed shower and a place to park for the night. So I'm happy with my stay there. I'm just saying "they" might want to consider renaming the park.

This is the biggest "waterfall" I come across in the entire park. And it's not for a lack of trying. I take all of the recommended hikes, but I come across nothing resembling Niagara Falls, or even a picture of Niagara Falls. I did my best to make the waterfall look impressive, but I unwittingly captured my shadow in the picture, bringing to light a rather disturbing scale and ruining any chance of portraying the fall as "towering."

To McKinney Falls credit, "they" do have a pretty impressive man cave. If things don't work out with the van, I would totally consider setting up camp here. I mean why not? You have plenty of shelter. Very few tourists come by to bother you. And, of course, you don't have to worry about the loud sounds of booming waterfalls in the background.








Is this another famed waterfall, or did I pour out a bottle of Dasani and take a picture? The world may never know.





But I'm not mad at "them." Let's face it, when you've got land like this, you've gotta lock it down and charge people to see it.

I Would Have Paid Twice as Much for a Quality Splinter

Back in Freshman year of college, I took a trip from Ithaca to Austin in the middle of a school week.

Yes, just like in the movie Road Trip.

No, I've never met Tom Green.

This trip was purely academic, as I was in Austin with a fellow classmate for our Documentary Research class. We were there to interview an FBI crisis negotiator who worked on the infamous Branch Davidian debacle in Waco.

The interview went well, and I learned a lot. (Side note: There's a 99.9999999999999999 % chance that David Koresh was not the second coming of Christ. But if he was, we really screwed the pooch on that one.) Strangely, the thing I remember best from my trip to Austin had nothing to do with the Waco incident. It was a teenage mutant ninja turtle made of aluminum foil.

The streets of Austin were alive and well. The music scene was amazing, the people happy and outgoing, and the street vendors talented. This one kid could make almost anything out of aluminum foil. I told him to do Michelangelo (thus demonstrating my appreciation for art history, 1990's pop culture, and the bastardization of the former by the latter).

When the result was a fully functional ninja turtle, complete with nun chucks, I tipped him twenty dollars. Best money I ever spent.

Now, back in Austin for the second time, I decide to see what the area surrounding the city has to offer. Seeking a break from Walmart, I head to McKinney Falls State Park.

Will I find a foil version of Donatello there? Will McKinney Falls contain the key to the meaning of life? Will it at least have waterfalls?

Tune in soon for the (possibly) thrilling answers to these questions and more!

At Least the Guy Yelling Into His Cell Phone Stopped After a Few Minutes

As I type this, I am having trouble concentrating.

I am in a Starbucks in Houston, Texas, and current van trouble warrants me being in Starbucks in order to write this blog. It is one of the bigger Starbucks I've been in.

There are five customers here, spread throughout the store. I am in the corner typing this blog at a raised stool and counter. Twenty feet away from me, a relatively young couple are quietly reading/working. Between us, two strangers are holding the loudest conversation in the history of Starbucks, completely unaware of the people around them.

Look, I've had many a conversation at Starbucks, but I've at least made sure to keep my voice down. In this instance, the man and woman, 24 and 35 respectively (I feel like I know them now) have been carrying on a conversation for nearly half an hour DESPITE THE FACT THAT THEY ARE SITTING OVER FIFTEEN FEET AWAY FROM EACH OTHER!

Not to sound like a curmudgeon here, but if you're going to talk to a stranger in a public setting for an extended period of time, especially when people near you are clearly trying to read and write, how hard is it to move to one of the many open seats right next to each other and bring down the volume to a reasonable inside level?

The reason I bring this up is not because I can't deal with the noise (although I still hear every single word despite putting on Bose noise-canceling headphones) but because I think it represents a bigger issue that I think merits exploring.

The two in question are clearly educated, reasoned, thinking individuals. I know this because they have brought it up several times during the conversation and made a point to demonstrate their finer intellect. They have also have made a point to bring up how egocentric our society is, how uninformed and unaware we are, and various other issues they have with a perceived lack of common decency.

So essentially, they are acutely aware of widespread cultural and human character flaws and regard them with concern and dismay, but are seemingly incapable of recognizing similar flaws in themselves.

Basically, it is your everyday coffee shop conversation among proud intellectuals who profess many strong points, but undermine those points by displaying them in an overall manner that comes across as more pretentious and self-aggrandizing than an "Inside the Actor's Studio" episode featuring John Malkovich.

I am fully qualified to recognize this scenario because I am often guilty of participating in it.

But when we turn our eye to the bigger picture while ignoring our part in it, we do ourselves a disservice. Nobody respects the lumberjack bemoaning deforestation as he chops down a tree. It's infuriating to listen to a politician railing about the dangers of partisan politics and mudslinging by pointing out how often the other party does it. And it's really difficult to listen to these people rail about common decency while yelling their virtues across the room.

Which reminds me, how obnoxious are those blogs that rant about banal minutia and mild disturbances like the world is coming to an end? I mean, get a twitter account, for God's sake!

Anatomy of a Mechanical Bull Ride

As you might imagine, life on the road can get pretty lonely at times. So when I'm able to set up a date with a woman in Dallas, I am definitely excited. When she suggests going to Cowboys Red River, I am even more intrigued.

Cowboys Red River is an authentic Texan bar. A loud country band plays on stage while hundreds of couples two-step across a circular floor resembling a skating rink. I count somewhere between three and four hundred cowboy hats in the room at any given moment.

I am certainly out of my element, but fortunately for me, my date is not a fan of line dancing. She does, however, intimate that I should ride the mechanical bull located at the back of the bar. Knowing absolutely nothing about riding mechanical bulls, but looking to impress my date, I decide to sit back and watch a few others ride before partaking myself.

I discover most riders break down into one of three categories:

1) The City Slicker. This guy falls off of the bull within the first ten seconds, bringing shame and ridicule to his entire family.

2) The Overly Serious Cowboy. Like the bowler who brings his own ball and shoes to the lanes, this guy is always prepared with chaps, a cowboy hat, and various other bull riding accessories. To him, fake bull-riding is a life and death matter, and he's rather die than fall off that machine.

3) The Drunk Girl. This girl's only concern is that she looks sexy riding the bull. In this case, sexy generally involves dry humping the bull in a drunken stupor.

I am clearly a city slicker, but it's important that I stay on for a decent amount of time considering my date is watching. As I hop on the bull, I notice that my legs hang down all the way to the bull's horns. I'm instructed to grab a piece of rope near my crotch and lean back.

As the bull starts rocking, I start to gain confidence. I'm staying on far longer than I expected, and the only price to pay is the feeling that I'm being repeatedly punched by myself in the crotch. As the bull gets more violent, I start to slide off. My feet get caught in the horns, and I push off to get myself resituated. Apparently, this violates some sacred bull-riding rule, because a woman in the surrounding crowd starts to heckle me, telling me to "quit cheating."

Unfortunately, my long legs and the increasing movement of the bull make it impossible for me to position my feet from underneath the horns, and when the bull finally bucks me off, my foot gets tangled up in them. As the crowd looks on, I am stuck on my back with my size 16 sticking straight up in the air.

There is nothing more reassuring than being stuck on the ground with your foot caught in a mechanical bull while a crowd looks on. It is not an empowering position. After about thirty seconds, or what seems like a year, the bull operator moves the horn and sets my foot free.

With a bruised crotch, a battered shin, and a damaged ego, I stumble back to my date, who is now looking at me with an expression containing an odd mix of pity, disdain, and amusement.

There will be no second date.

Vans are Like Cubicles on Wheels

Against all odds, I've been hired for a full-time job in Houston. As much as I'd like to dedicate all of my time to this project, my bank account is dangerously close to empty.

Now, I'm not opposed to the whole "starving artist" thing, and I'm experienced in the whole "having no money" thing, but I've grown attached to the van and I can't keep traveling the country in it without earning some income first. So I'm going to be mixing this project with my new job for a little while and documenting a different approach to finding the meaning of life.

What this means for Project Meaning:

+ I will still be exploring adventures on my time off and am dedicated to continuing to focus on the bigger picture.

+ I will continue blogging here and (because I've been lazy with blogging the last couple months) you should not expect much of a drop-off in blogs. I intend to provide, on average, three to four blogs per week.

+ I will still be living out of the van, meeting and learning from as many interesting characters as possible, and attempting existential experiments.

Not much should change, but I wanted to keep everyone updated. Tune in for the next week to read about mechanical bull-riding injuries, hide and seek shortcomings, and my short stint as a viable political candidate.

For Whom the Booth Tolls

Dallas is a sprawling city with an abundance of intersecting highways. A disturbing number of these highways require tolls. I am vaguely familiar with toll roads from crossing the country, but Dallas is the first place I've experienced that requires a fee to travel within the city limits.


I could provide fair, balanced analysis and mention the arguments in favor of the tolls, but I won't. Instead, I'll summarize the Dallas toll system with a simple yet fundamentally sound point: It sucks.

I traveled ten miles...TEN MILES!...and was stopped not once, but twice by toll booths asking for one dollar a piece. As if gas prices weren't rough enough, paying two dollars to go ten miles is asinine.

Fortunately, I discovered that my GPS system contains a function that allows me to avoid tolls when going somewhere. I had to go out of my way, and probably split the difference in gas money used, but as long as my money isn't going to the city of Dallas for their insane toll system, I'm happy.

Dallas residents aren't slowed down by the tolls, because they pay for EZ Pass, which still requires a fee but allows unfettered access past the tolls. A local I talked to estimated that she spends roughly sixty dollars a month for EZ Pass. Sixty dollars a month!

I can not in good conscience support this madness, so I am hereby adding "toll booths" to my growing list of items that are definitively not the meaning of life.

The case against toll booths:

+ They provide jobs, but not jobs any sane person would want. Any monetary compensation for otherwised unemployed people is easily counteracted by the inevitable depression that comes from sitting in an enclosed space for hours on end, doing a mindless task for a large group of people united only in their disdain for you.

+ Nobody is happy to pay a toll. This makes for an increased number of pissed off drivers on the road, which is never a good thing.

+ If you don't know they're coming, you risk the possibility of not having the correct change and then choosing between a) slowing down traffic while you search your seats and glove compartment or b) breaking the law and risking a ridiculous fine.

+ They bring a negative association to your city for visiting tourists. I now resent Dallas for more than its football team.

+ They're tacky and I hate them. Just saying.

The case for toll booths:

+ They provided inspiration for a character on an Adam Sandler comedy cd.

Yeah. That's pretty much it.

Paint Envy

I've always thought of museums as a really depressing place for an avid art collector to go. I mean, sure, in theory, an avid art collector would have a fine appreciation for artwork and would therefore find the museum captivating, but in reality, aren't we all flawed, self-indulgent, and self-conscious? Or is that just me?

Anyone?

My point is, no matter how great your art collection is, no matter how devoted you are to it, no matter how much money you paid for that Picasso sketch, every personal art collection is going to pale in comparison to the Louvre.

While I was looking at all of the amazing 3300 year old artifacts from King Tut's tomb, all I could think about was how mad I would be if I had just spent two thousand bucks on an "antique" chair from the nineteenth century.

Likewise, when Greg suggests we visit another art museum after the Tut exhibit, I figure it might be a bad idea to citing that any collection, no matter how exquisite, would taste like a McDonald's milkshake after a lobster dinner.

I was right, but that doesn't mean the exhibit didn't have its strong points.


This piece is even cooler than it looks when you consider that it's like a billion feet tall (and I'm not using hyperbole...I hate hyperbole more than I hate the idea of a room filled with a million Nickelback cover bands) and it also has a motorized arm so the statue swings the hammer back and forth.

I'm about 6'5, and I had to stand on my toes in order to pose for this picture. I think the height of the statues was more disturbing than their conspicuous lack of heads.

You can see this statue from the streets of downtown Dallas. It reaches high into the air and incorporates diversity into its message of reaching towards the heavens, including pedestrians from all races, genders, and nations. Still, I bet PETA protests because there are no animals on the beam and, as Friedrich Nietsche once said, "all dogs go to heaven."


But pretty cool art, right?

Not compared to the Louvre.