It's the End of Summer As I Know It (and I Feel Fine)

By Josh Corman

Clever Alice Cooper Reference

Arne Duncan and President Obama plotting the destruction of summer.
Hilarious.

When I was a kid, I heard the old expression, credited to Ben Franklin, that you can count on just two things in this world: death and taxes. With all due respect to our most quotable founding father, I  disagreed from the moment I heard the quip. For most school-age children in this country, the concepts of both death and taxes are mere abstractions, their inevitability a distant, vague proposition. So if eight-year-old me had been allowed to amend Franklin's aphorism, I would have added to it something that I really did feel would happen every year like clockwork, something I felt was my God-given right as an American, something I would fight for, if it came to that. Death? Sure. Taxes? Fine. But the thing I could always count on? Summer vacation.

From early June through mid-August for every year of my public education, I was free. I played in the yard, watched or played baseball six hours a day (and organized, reorganized, and shelved baseball cards for another two—great practice for bookshelves or record collections), ate lunch whenever I wanted, went swimming, jumped on the trampoline, skipped stones (seriously), learned the game of golf, and read every book I could get my hands on, among about a hundred other things. It was wonderful, even when it was boring. Summer vacation was how I learned to be by myself, to find entertainment off the beaten path, to terrorize my little sister in inventive new ways. Without it, I'm sure I wouldn't be the person I am today (nor would my sister, for that matter, but her nightmares are down to two nights a week, tops).

Increasingly, though, the rumblings from those highest of higher-ups in education spell doom for the traditional summer vacation. Death and Taxes indeed.

Time on Our Hands


The first question to ask about the end of summer vacation is why? Why put an end to this most beloved of childhood rituals?

The answers from those dark, nefarious forces aiming to squelch everyone's good time are surprisingly persuasive. On the one hand, the discussion over America's global competition in the academic realm has taken center stage. Both President Obama and Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education, have taken pains to point out the need for more globally competitive students as they outline proposals and policies. Chief among the president's suggestions has been lengthening the amount of time students spend in school, either by extending the school day or the school year. My knee-jerk reaction as a teacher (it would have been the same when I was a student) is to boo loudly and frequently, but if I'm honest, I know that my vitriol is primarily the result of selfishness. I like being done with work before 4:00 PM, and I love having summers off.

But if I look at the issue more objectively, that is, if I try to see the issue simply in terms of problems and solutions, it seems, initially at least, difficult to argue with a longer school day and a longer school year. Consider, as Malcolm Gladwell points out in his fantastic book Outliers, that students in many Asian and European countries spend about 250 days a year in school, compared to the average American student's 180-190. Kids in the U.S., especially those with long summer breaks, are shown routinely to retain fewer of the skills and less knowledge than those who have a shortened summer vacation. This is even more true for kids in lower socio-economic strata, because it's likely that they're not being read to or taken to museums or enrolled in summer camp programs that might help bridge some of the wide gap between school years.

Isn't it obvious that kids who spend 25% more time learning to master skills will be better at those skills (and potentially given more time in which to master them, meaning fewer rushed lessons and fewer kids being turned off math because they took longer to understand its underlying principles)? Isn't it clear that taking immense amounts of time without any sort of targeted instruction throws an enormous wrench into kids' ability to learn?

Of course it is. But you and I both know that it isn't the whole story, either.

What We Do With the Time That Is Given to Us


I graduated high school with somebody who went to MIT. One of my best friends is at NYU law school. Another friend has studied at Oxford. All of these people had lengthy summer vacations. They all engaged their minds in a variety of ways, looked for education in a broader sense, everywhere they could. The latter two goofed around a lot and spent a lot of time doing things that no sane person would consider intellectually beneficial. And yet, there they are, smart, decent human beings with a lot to offer the world.

I'm less concerned with asking the question, "But what would they have been able to accomplish with all that extra learning time?" than asking, "What would they have missed out on if they'd been cooped up in a classroom sixty-five extra days a year?" The reason the second question interests me more is that I think I know the answer to the first one, but I'm much less certain about the second. I would hope that they would have still developed some of the same extra-curricular interests and met the same friends and been able to use their time free from school to experience some of the incredibly formative moments of their youths, but I don't know if that's accurate.

Thinking about this makes me realize how delicate a balance the relationship is between structured learning time and those moments which are, at least on their surface, totally removed from intellectual or academic concerns. I would distrust anyone who said we didn't need both, but I have no idea what the exact balance between the two should look like.

Perhaps we can take a clue from Sir Ken Robinson, whose TED talks are among the most viewed in the website's history (his first one, titled "Schools Kill Creativity," is actually #1). Robinson points out that schools very often do a piss-poor job of adapting to the needs of students whose strengths lie outside of the traditional spectrum of academic subjects (math, science, languages, etc.). He claims that an alien looking down on Western education could only conclude that its purpose is to produce university professors. Think about the kids you went to school with. Who finished at the top of the class? What was most valued in those students by their teachers? Maybe you're like Emily, who in her post on creativity last week admitted that she had submerged her more creative instincts in the interest of more measurable academic skills. (She was class salutatorian, by the way.) How many kids are like her? How many aren't capable of succeeding in school like she did because their intelligence isn't as varied or adaptable as hers? How many feel like they aren't good at anything only because what they were good at wasn't valued by their schools? Robinson says it's this last thought that bothers him most.

And it should. Because when it comes to education reform, we assume that students should essentially be treated the same, that there's one way to define intelligence and that, therefore, the most practical answer to the question, "How do we make our schools better and our students stronger?" is to make the school day longer and shorten summer vacation, rather than question the value of what we're teaching them to be.

Maybe we will have to spend more time in school. But first, we should ask ourselves what the value of time outside of school is and see if we can't learn a little something from summer vacation that would apply nicely inside a classroom. What if we used those extra sixty-five days to let kids explore their passions and interests outside of the core content subjects? What if we acknowledged that just because kids are out of school, that doesn't mean that they aren't learning constantly, turning themselves into the types of people we want to succeed in our culture—not just because they're smart or they did well in school, but because they're assured of who they are, confident in what they do, and capable of a more rounded view of the world.

If we fill our schools with students like that, they will leave school and build a richer society once they're out in the world. I'd take that outcome, even if we still finish behind France in the TIMMS test, 'cause I bet we'd beat their asses in Calvinball.

On Creativity, Continued: Execution

By Jonny Walls

I've spent the last thirteen years in pursuit of a career in creativity. In high school and a few years beyond, it was music. For the last six years, it's been film.

On Wednesday, Emily posted an incredibly insightful piece about the importance of creativity. Creativity, she argues, belongs to everyone, even those, like herself, who grew up erroneously believing themselves uncreative. An important tenet of Emily's thesis is that creativity is often undervalued, sometimes to a startling degree, in our modern mindsets. I agree, and so propose we keep the creativity train rolling through the weekend.

Now What?

So you're fresh off Emily's rousing call to creative arms and have found your mind flooded with fresh ideas and memories of youthful schemes that went ever undone. You've discovered a new spring in your step that you forgot ever existed. You're floating on the winds of hope and rediscovered wonder.

Well I'm here to bring you back down.

Creativity isn't all excitement, fleeting images, and wild experimentation; it requires application as well. It's not enough to rediscover the slumbering bear of creativity hibernating in the wintery cave of our subconscious; we must brave the beast and wake it. (A decidedly uncreative analogy, yes, but deliciously ironic. Am I right?)

I've by no means been a paragon of creative success and innovation, but I have figured a few things out along the way.

Hold on there, Jackson...

Let's dispel a popular myth that creativity and organization are somehow dichotomous. Somewhere floating around is the notion that creatives are all free-spirited, wind riding forest sprites who could no more condescend to bother with good grammar than they could tidy their work spaces (not that they could ever be contained by any such conformist cubicles of oppression anyway.) Granted, every mind works differently, but it has been my discovery that organization is not only in harmony with creativity, it is a distinct aid unto it.

For me, anything from a messy work space to haphazard digital file management can act as a creativity suppressant. Even if only on a subconscious level, clutter is just one more thing to preoccupy our mind-power and weigh our creativity down. If I'm editing a film, I shouldn't be wondering where, out of five possible locations, one particular root file may be. I want to dedicate my concentration to the flow of the story and the rhythm of the piece. Knowing that every file is safe and cozy where it ought to be is downright liberating. Clear out the clutter, overthrow disorganization, and watch your creativity blossom, unhindered.

It's All Been Said More Effectively Before

In the last two years, not including all of my paying work, I have edited a now published book, co-written a travel memoir exceeding 100,000 words (three drafts), written a feature length screenplay (eight drafts), written twenty-seven blog entries, collaborated on a friend's graphic novel, performed all parts for and recorded a song, performed drums and contributed to arrangements for a friend's music project, written, directed and edited a short film, written three short stories, worked on numerous friends' projects and short films, am currently writing another feature length screenplay, am currently collaborating on a web series, and am in pre-production for another short film I wrote and will direct.

Oh, and I made a board game.

Yes, landing on Waffle House right out of the gate does earn you an extra turn.

Please understand, I'm not trying to impress you. (What a sad attempt it would be.) What I mean to point out is, I could have done more. I should have done more. I spent a lot of the last two years sitting on my ass, browsing the internet and wasting time. I spent more time staring at Facebook and espn.com than I did on all of those projects combined. Imagine what I may have accomplished if I had cut my wasted time in half.

I'm not the busiest person in the western hemisphere. There were times (extended times) when business was slow. But even when I was working every day, I would find time to get my own creative work done. If you are serious about uncorking your creativity, you have no excuses. You must sit down, clench your teeth, and do something. Talk can be good. It can help you organize your ideas, to flesh them out, but it only takes you a fraction of the way. We need tangible results here, people. Get it done. Write that story. Go to the store, buy the materials, clean out the garage, and start painting. Find someone with a camera and a Mac and shoot that short film. Do it.

Collaboration is Key

When I was slogging through a drastic revamp of my screenplay a few weeks ago, I hit a brick wall. I couldn't get through a certain obstacle, no matter how I tried. I wracked my brain and spent days, literally, in misery. Finally I called a friend. He already knew the basic story, so I talked him through the specific points of my issue, and he started throwing around ideas, and then I started throwing around ideas based on his ideas, and then new ideas were born out of a seed that his ideas planted in my mind, and then he began sprouting new ideas based on my new ideas, and then two of our ideas collided in mid-air and showered sparks and caught the couch on fire, and the next thing I knew I was picking ideas like fruit off of a tree (and treating my idea-burns). It was like a laser bouncing back and forth between two mirrors, gaining intensity by the moment. (I have no idea if that actually works.)

When I finish a screenplay, a story, a rough cut, anything, I don't pat myself on the back and congratulate myself on a job done. I send it to every willing person I know. I sit down with a group of seven or eight friends and read through my screenplays aloud. I let people watch rough cuts and hope they'll catch any awkward cuts that eluded my tired eyes. I tell them that I appreciate their praise, but what I really want is the criticism. There is simply no way to squeeze every bit of juice out of an idea with one pair of hands alone. A second pair will come in from a different angle and hit a fresh patch of that same fruit that you didn't even know was there.

You don't have to keep every idea. I certainly don't. Remember, it's your vision that in the end must be accomplished. Sometimes the ideas I'm given go straight in the trash. Sometimes they lead to separate ideas I keep. Sometimes I take the ideas outright and claim them as my own (the true secret to creative success), but I am always, always, better for it. Collaboration is the anvil upon which any and all singular visions can be molded to size and made perfect. No exceptions.

In Summary...

Creativity is part inspiration, part execution. As Emily pointed out, sometimes the inspiration bit is cast aside before it even has a chance to take root. But just as often, the seeds of inspiration are planted and left untended. Creativity doesn't just happen. While geniuses like Steinbeck and Wes Anderson and Van Gogh and Thom Yorke tend to make it seem effortless, it's an illusion. It's anything but.

Now go. Wake the bear.

By Jonny Walls

On Creativity

By Emily Walls

Imagine this: You are locked in a windowless room on the second story of a commercial building. You have with you a handful of binders, a legal pad, one (1) pen and one (1) green marker, several paperclips, a stapler, a Norman Rockwell calendar, and a desk. On that desk you have a computer, which is equipped with Word and Excel only. No Internet. No phone. No one else. How many hours do you think will go by before you begin composing a 29-stanza poem about a young girl who brutally murders a Microsoft icon?

For me, the answer was 114 hours.

When I was in the fourth grade, my teacher announced one day that the school would be offering an extra art class for those who showed particular giftedness in the visual arts. She passed out a small test—a single page with three simple shapes that we were to draw at double size—and explained that if we were interested in the class, we could submit our completed exams and wait for the results.

I was excited. I had never produced anything less than A material in all subjects, I was already participating in an accelerated school program, and I was motivated. Chance of rejection: zero.

So I gave up my recess that day to stay in and work on my test, painstakingly measuring each shape with a ruler and carefully copying the shapes at twice their sizes. I handed in my paper, confident that I would be accepted. A few days later, my teacher posted a paper with the names of accepted students, and I was horrified to discover that my name was not among them. I did not understand then what I know now: Art is not about rulers and grids.

I walked away from my fourth grade experience with new perspective on my place in the artistic community, and though I gained valuable humility and insight into the nature of art and creativity, I simultaneously bought into a profound fallacy that all creativity equals visual art. Since I was not good at drawing, I reasoned, I must essentially lack creativity. Add to that the further segregation of subjects in school and exposure to right-brain/left-brain concepts, and I became fully convinced that I simply was not a creative person. There were creatives and there were non-creatives, and I was the latter.

I built my education on this false premise, concentrating on subjects that could be measured, skills that could be calculated. I had a natural aptitude for writing, but I feared the demands of creative writing courses, so instead of majoring in English in college, I majored in business. I took finance and accounting courses and learned about target markets and interest rates.

And I was right about certain things. I am crazy good at whipping up spreadsheets. I have a talent for organizing ideas, and I can make order from chaos. I’m good at creating systems that make processes faster and smoother. Plus, I have great spatial reasoning, which comes in handy for packing cars on road trips.

Do you know what I suck at? Picking out two colors that look good together. Telling the difference between Arial and Helvetica. Knowing what “white space” is. Layering clothing.

I spent six years post college keeping myself in the lands of Reason, Logic, and Fact, because creativity was not for me. I worked several different jobs – some I liked, some I didn’t – and for one month of 2011, I took a temp position working in a windowless office on the second floor of a commercial building, my only companions a desk, a handful of office supplies, and Microsoft Word. One hundred fourteen working hours and 29 stanzas about murder later, I came to an important – no, essential – conclusion: Creativity belongs to everyone.

I was contracted to work forty hours per week in that position, but the job I was hired to do sometimes took me one hour per day to accomplish, and one time just seven minutes. I begged for more work from my supervisor and coworkers, but they told me there was nothing more for me to do and that I should go to my office and read for the rest of the day. Eyes can only take so much small print, so I spent an alarming number of hours staring at a blank wall. After a few of those hours, I was amazed to find my mind teeming with crazy ideas – comic strips, stories, poems, and the like. I built cities out of staples and file folders. I made origami Star Wars figures. I drew pictures (crude though they were) and made up characters. I wrote Verbal Infusion's first post with pen and paper at that desk.

I found that when you strip away the distractions, your mind will fill the void with your own unique thoughts, and your mind is alive and alight with creativity, even if you’re the kind of person who thinks Papyrus is the font of the future.

That temp job is long over, but I learned from it that I need to make time for reflection and doodling, that I need to intentionally seek inspiration. So I now set aside time to check out my friends' design work on The Fresh Exchange and A Pair of Pears. I watch TED Talks every now and then to see what brilliant people are doing in fields wildly different from my own. I take breaks from romantic comedies to watch movies that challenge me mentally and amaze me visually. And after I’ve done that, I sit quietly and think. And then I create.

Links to the Present - 4/24/12

We here at the Infusion are taking Tuesdays to share a little of what's caught our fancy over the preceding week. We call it "Links to the Present." Peruse our offerings and give the article titles a click.


A Point of View: In Defense of Obscure Words - BBC columnist Will Self derides the paucity of personages amenable to engaging with obstreperous parlance (the lack of people willing to read works that use difficult words).

Insane 'Tube Transport' Will Zip You From New York to L.A. in 45 Minutes - This brief animation lays out the general schematic for an energy-efficient travel system that could probably make your commute shorter than the time it takes for you to key your car's ignition.

Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: Eight Experts on Who's Greater - Tired of seeing endlessly reductive internet polls and rankings that unfairly simplify legitimately complex debates? Me neither! Seriously though, some heavy duty Russian scholars tackle the age old question while simultaneously giving me a hankering for Borscht and The Brothers Karamazov.

Five Things Alfred Hitchcock's Films Taught Me - On the lighter side, the British Film Institute's Heather Stewart (no relation to Jimmy, presumably) noted recently that Hitchcock might deserve to be on Britain's national curriculum alongside Shakespeare. Ann Billson contemplates what the Master of Suspense can teach us.

This is just horrible.  In another sector of "British film," this couple pays 750 pounds for what some are calling the worst wedding photos ever. As you will see they are...shockingly bad. According to this source for the same story, part of the reason for the blurry photos was a self-proclaimed "epileptic photographer" who couldn't safely use a flash. There is nothing funny about epilepsy, but maybe, just maybe, that guy is in the wrong business.

Swan Songs

By Josh Corman

What If?

What if John Lennon had been shot in 1969 rather than 1980? What if, just weeks before the release of Abbey Road, the most significant member of the most significant musical group in history had left this world? And what if, instead of leaving behind a fully recorded, mixed, and mastered piece of visionary art, John had struggled to finish some of his compositions. What if only half the vocals had been laid down, or what if he had never quite been satisfied with the guitar on "Come Together?" What would the rest of the group have done? What would the release day for Abbey Road have looked like if fans knew, beyond any doubt, that the last glimpse into John Lennon's genius, moving full steam ahead, would come on October 1st, 1969, and that it really didn't look like what he would have wanted out there?

What a shame it would have been, obviously. It's sad enough when a towering creative figure dies at the end of a long, productive life and career, or even when they die young, but with their best creative days likely behind them. But when a Kurt Cobain or James Dean goes, right at what should be the apex of what they've striven to give the world? We listen to that last record or watch that last film, and we search for something, some flicker of the promise we know we've lost, and it comforts and pains us all at the same time.

The Pedestal

The most fascinating novel ever written about taxes and accounting.

For a number of reasons, I looked forward with near unhinged madness to this year's Spring Break. Besides all the usual perks of a work-free week, I had been saving something very important: David Foster Wallace's final novel, The Pale King. The combination of wild anticipation and anxiousness with which I had looked forward to reading Wallace's final work (he committed suicide in 2008 after a long, troubled battle with depression and addiction) was something that I hadn't experienced since reading the final Harry Potter novel in 2007. In that case, I was only anxious because I wanted so badly to love the story and discover the answers to questions I'd been asking for years. The Pale King brought with it a different layer of emotion. This was the last time I would read a novel by one of my three favorite writers of all time, and knowing you're losing a character doesn't feel nearly as bad as losing an author. I had devoured Wallace's previous two novels, The Broom of the System and Infinite Jest, near the beginning of last year and read one of his two nonfiction collections, Consider the Lobster, the previous Christmas. In the time between reading those works and opening The Pale King, I had watched approximately ten hours of interviews with Wallace, read his Kenyon College Commencement speech, "This is Water," probably fifteen times, and gobbled up every interview, profile, and review I could find written about the man or his work.

This is dangerous behavior. I'd put DFW on a pedestal. Rarely, if ever, does anything good come from putting a writer, musician, actor, or sports star on a pedestal. Creating hopelessly high expectations (especially for a dead person) leads mostly to deflation and letdown because of the narrow pathway it leaves for our idols to tread. Take Cobain as an example (my Verbal Infusion contract requires me to make mention of Nirvana or Kurt Cobain no fewer than twenty times per year; I'm trying to add a few tallies to that ledger). When In Utero came out, a lot of people were disappointed with the record's raw sound, but that disappointment didn't really stem from the quality of In Utero. Rather, it was that In Utero didn't sound enough like Nevermind for many fans' tastes. They had created a Platonic version of Nirvana in their minds, and when In Utero didn't mesh with that narrow conception of what the band should be, they reacted unkindly. History has a way of salving the sting in most instances like this (and it certainly has for Nirvana's second album), but time and again the pedestal effect plays itself out.

And so, having placed The Pale King on a pedestal next to its author, setting aside a week to read it during which I would have plenty of time and focus to spare and essentially creating an environment in which the book could do little but disappoint me, I finally read the thing.

Man, did it hurt. The Pale King is funny, poignant, and philosophical, and it shows flashes of brilliance that even Steinbeck can't match for their harrowing, pummeling pathos. And now, 560 pages later, it's all gone. I knew this ache would come. The effect of feeling, for real, that I would never get to engage with this voice (in this form, at least; Wallace has short fiction collections and one more nonfiction collection that I'm working hard to create pedestals for) in a fresh way again. It doesn't feel like regret, exactly, but it stings in kind of the same way.

The Afterglow


One of the hardest feelings for me to describe to people is that of having just finished a book that you know is going to stick with you for a long time. The words are simultaneously buzzing around in my head, striving to leave a singular impression and quickly fading from memory. What's left is usually just a holistic impression that feels unworthy of the massive effort that you know went into what's been read.

My immediate holistic verdict was one of gratitude and awe. Gratitude because when Wallace died, his editor put a tremendous amount of work into marrying the three hundred or so neatly typed pages that represented the most complete part of The Pale King and then cobbling the rest of it together using found notes, rough drafts, and computer files. The result is, as the cover indicates, unfinished, a word that only adds to the ache I mentioned earlier. The awe I felt wasn't new. The way guitar players are in awe of Hendrix or Morello, poets in awe of Whitman or Eliot, actors in awe of Brando or Lewis, that's the feeling even two or three consecutive DFW sentences make me feel. The fear that "unfinished" meant "lacking quality" vanished pretty quickly. The Pale King met the immense challenge I had set for it, but it made me wonder about what will come next.

David Foster Wallace is my John Lennon (even though John Lennon is also my John Lennon, he was dead five years before I was born, so it doesn't work the same way), my Kurt Cobain, my James Dean. He left behind a few thousand pages, and as I've worked through them, I've thought about this end point often. The way I see it, I've got one of two choices: I can convince myself that finishing Wallace's last novel is tantamount to losing a best friend, develop an unhealthy literary solipsism where I see everything through the DFW lens, thereby ensuring that I hate ninety-five percent of what I read because it doesn't measure up, or I can acknowledge that it's been a hell of a ride, that my twelve pound copy of Infinite Jest isn't going anywhere, and that Wallace will always be there, waiting to be reread and rooting for me to find something that's just as great as he was. Instead of being bummed or even afraid because I've read his every word, I should just appreciate what he gave me and move on.

That second choice is really the only choice for us, if we want to enjoy our favorite pastimes, but I don't know if it's the one we choose most often. If you saw the story in the news about the Tupac Shakur hologram closing out Dr. Dre's set at the Coachella music festival last weekend, you might understand what I mean. Tupac was a titan of his field, to be sure, and for much of the last seventeen years, a lot of hip-hop fans have been hung up on what his loss meant, and what his death cost in terms of his art. It's a callous way to approach the loss of a life, but when we lose an artist, it's hard not to think about their work first, because it's really the only connection we have to them.

The concept of a rapping Tupac hologram is weird, but it's also frightening. Dr. Dre, the man who dreamed up the idea, has said that this is only the beginning for this technology and that there are plans to send the hologram on tour. How long do you think it took for someone to call Yoko Ono's or Courtney Love's agents and pitch the idea of a Beatles or Nirvana reunion. I can only pray that neither one of them would have the audacity to give such a plan the thumb's up, but until I hear a definitive "no," I'm going to be a little nervous. But there are those who might get excited at the prospect. I am afraid of these people.

See, I don't want to be somebody who can't let go. I won't ever read a new David Foster Wallace novel or listen to a new Beatles record or see a new Heath Ledger movie, and I need to be okay with that. Increasingly, I think I am.

By Josh Corman

Follow me on Twitter @JoshACorman

Why the Hell Not? An Epistemolgical Exploration with Blade II

By Jonny Walls

A hypothetical question: What if I came home one day and declared to my wife that "Blade II is my favorite movie"? Would she think I had become crazy? Probably not. After all, having Blade II as one's favorite movie is not a crazy thing to do. But then again, my wife knows me, and she knows that Blade II is not my favorite movie, and could never be. At least, the "me" that she really knows, or thinks she knows, would never choose Blade II as his favorite film. It's simply not in his (that is to say, "my") character.

She would assume I was joking. Besides, I've never even seen Blade II.

But what if I insisted, without a hint of twinkle or jest in my eyes, that Blade II had indeed, for no apparent reason, ascended to the throne of my personal movie kingdom? What if I became angry and rude when she refused to believe me? What if I spoke of nothing for the rest of the day, but my adoration for Blade II. Let's say she knows that I haven't taken drugs, I haven't suffered brain injury, that I am functioning completely normally in every other way imaginable.

My wife knows I like to joke, and she knows I've never even seen Blade II. Pure logic would lead her, once again, to believe that it was a prank. But then again, she knows that a joke of this nature, carried on without a trace of irony for that long, is also out of my character.

But what if she came home next day to find our apartment walls covered with Blade II posters? What if, in the backyard, she found the charred remains of Coppolla's Bramstoker's Dracula DVD, all of the Underworld DVD's, and the Twilight DVD's? What if, that evening at dinner, I built a to-scale replica of Wesley Snipes out of mashed potatoes? What if I became grumpy and left the table to sulk in my room when she criticized my poor craftsmanship and told me that the real Wesley would be embarrassed by this sad attempt at starchy immortalizing?

You see where I'm going with this? At what point does my wife dismiss what she thought she absolutely knew and instead accept a new paradigm of reality?

What if she opened up our DVD case, expecting to find It Happened One Night among our diverse DVD collection, only to find hundreds of copies of Blade II, and nothing else? What if I legally changed my name to Blade?

Movie characters are constantly faced with improbable situations and often react with stubborn disbelief. Think of Neo in the Matrix, or Demi Moore in Ghost. I constantly find myself on the side of truth, wondering how the unbelieving protagonists could be so mulish in the face of such compelling evidence.

"Ditto, Demi! Ditto!"

I often envision myself in their position, accepting the truth with the enlightened wisdom that only an outsider watcher in a theater can attain. But maybe, if the tables were turned, it would take just as much convincing and time in denial for me as it does for them.

Capable of Kidnapping?

Recently Emily and I were visiting my Dad in San Francisco, who had flown in for a conference, and the three of us spent the day with our good friend (and Verbal Infusion guest poster) Phil Tallon. Phil was staying with his dad, who lives about thirty minutes outside of the city, so we gave him a ride to his pop's before heading back to L.A. at the end of the night. As I am wont to do, I blindsided Phil with the following hypothetical: What if I sped past your exit and started driving south toward L.A? At what point would you actually start to be afraid, or at least think something was seriously amiss?

It turns out Phil is a tough nut to crack. He simply refused to admit that he would ever believe me capable of true malice or danger. He would not accept that I could somehow not be the person he's known for years.

We upped the stakes.

"What if you started asking questions and telling us we missed the exit, and asked us repeatedly to turn around, and we all ignored you. No explanation, no interaction or acknowledgement of your presence, just silence, all the way to L.A?"

"I would assume it was an elaborate and well planned prank."

"But you have important things to do tomorrow: meetings, flights to catch soon, daughters and a wife waiting back home. What kind of person would do that to someone in your position?"

"I would consider it a highly inconsiderate, elaborate prank."

"What if I actually cut you with a knife?"

"Are you going to cut me with a knife?"

"No."

"Exactly. It's not in your character."

It was my assumption that a stunt like this would at least cause bewilderment, if not fear. But Phil insists that he would stick to his guns of hard knowledge. He knows what he knows, and anything in seeming disharmony with hard truth must be made to fall in line, one way or another.

The Drive-Thru Splasher Strikes Again

When I was in high school, I had a friend who would go to drive-thru windows, order a water, take the water from the employee's hands, yank off the top, splash the water into the employee's face, and then drive away laughing. I never did this myself, but I certainly never stopped him, and I laughed every time I was in the passenger seat.

I am aware that this was a cruel thing to do, but it did open one little window onto a special corner of life that goes oft unnoticed. At first it was hard to pin down exactly what it was, but as I thought on it more, I figured it out. When that water would hit those poor, underpaid employees' faces, we would witness a moment of true shock, of true humanity. Every layer of presupposition, every mask and ego, would drip away in that one instant of wide-eyed bewilderment. We would catch these people truly unaware. We were doing something they absolutely never expected, and it was kind of amazing. Those tiny glimpses are rare, and they're usually all we get of bare, untainted humanity, but they're worth catching.

Rare though they may be, those stripped, uncorrupted humans are still down there somewhere in every person, under the layers of expectation and habit and game-faces and work personas and social norms. Those people down there wouldn't have trouble accepting anything, if the evidence pointed that way.

Sometimes, even often, our knowledge and deductive skills lead us correctly. A well placed axiom serves as a fine barrier between ourselves and some truly slippery slopes. It's not about killing the idea of knowledge, but rather, opening the door for it. Somewhere along the line, we tend to lose the ability to expect wonder. To expect surprise. To expect miracles. To let them in.

There is an infinite universe that can't be comprehended, so would it really be that shocking if Blade II became my favorite film? No, it wouldn't.

But still, not gonna happen.

By Jonny Walls

On Parks & Recreation and Place & Patriotism

by Philip Tallon

There are a lot of reasons to be deeply taken with the show Parks & Recreation.

• Ron Swanson.
• The way the show perfected what The Office set out to do: using the banality of everyday American life as a backdrop for a sitcom.
• Amy Poehler’s brilliant portrayal of Leslie Knope, the strong-yet-flawed female lead.
• Ron Swanson.
• Etc.

One reason that I’m especially fond of Parks & Recreation is the way that it gets right something about the nature of patriotism. What it means to really care about a place that’s less than great.

The fictional Pawnee, Indiana isn’t identical to where I live, but it has a lot in common. It’s an unspecial, mid-sized town with lots of urban sprawl and disposable strip malls. There’s not much crime, but there’s also not much culture. It’s a place where nobody would choose to live, but it’s where most of us, in fact, do live.

Yet Leslie Knope feels a strong, almost maniacal devotion to Pawnee. To her, this IS the greatest place on earth. One part of this attachment is perhaps due to her naiveté about the outside world. She seems a little foolish in a season 2 episode, "Sister City," when, before welcoming Venezuelan dignitaries for a visit, she says, “Remember, everyone, Venezuela is a poor country. These men are not used to the wealth and flash that we are used to in central Indiana.” The episode has a lot of fun reversing this expectation. The dignitaries do little but belittle Pawnee’s dullness compared with Miami, or its squalor compared with the luxury they are used to as high-level politicians in an oil-rich country. In this way Knope’s a bit like many midwesterners who think a town with no sidewalks, tons of strip malls, and decent roads is as good as it gets. Who could ask for more?

Here and elsewhere the show has its fun poking at the way Americans are often content with, and unaware of, sad elements of modern life. The visiting dignitaries poke at the weaknesses of American civic life repeatedly. Talking to the city planner, one remarks,“This city was planned? Driving in I saw at tattoo parlor next to a school next to a Taco Bell. It looks like it was designed by a very stupid rodent.” This would be funnier if I didn't live in a town that has the same shoddy planning. The local school, for instance, is a hunched, virtually windowless monstrosity that looked like it was designed merely to maximize air conditioning efficiency (which it probably was).

(This critique of depressed urban spaces is especially pronounced in the British The Office, where, in one episode, Ricky Gervais' David Brent reads W.H. Auden's poem about Slough, which essentially says that the depressing town where the show is set would be better off being bombed.)

But the more interesting, and more rare, aspect to Knope’s patriotism is the way her deep loyalty to place transcends jingoism. It isn’t that she’s blind to the bad-making features of Pawnee. She sees a lot of them. But her perception of these flaws doesn’t dent her affection. It drives her to improve Pawnee by making it a prettier place to live (through parks) and a more pleasant place to live (through recreation).


A good part of the comedy of the show grows out of her perennial, unstoppable desire to improve the place she loves, and how her efforts to this end are ground up in the gears of government bureaucracy. Knope’s optimism is highlighted by Swanson’s general apathy and distrust of government. Her natural energy is channeled into public works. His laziness and secrecy are abetted by some version of libertarianism.

To wit, Swanson:

• I work hard to make sure my department is as small and as ineffective as possible.
• I think the entire government should be privatized. Chuck E. Cheese could run the parks. Everything operated by tokens. Drop in a token, go on the swing set. Drop in another token, take a walk. Drop in a token, look at a duck.
• My idea of a perfect government is one guy who sits in a small room at a desk, and the only thing he’s allowed to decide is who to nuke. The man is chosen based on some kind of IQ test, and maybe also a physical tournament, like a decathlon. And women are brought to him, maybe ... when he desires them.

You get the idea.

Anyway, the point is, Leslie sees the flaws of the place, but loves it anyway. And her love for the particular (fictional) town of Pawnee drives her to make it more lovable. This is what patriotism means.

E.g. in season 4’s episode “Lucky” we hear a Venezualan-sounding evaluation of the town of Pawnee from a muckracking journalist, who is interviewing Leslie about her run for city council. The journalist describes Pawnee thus: “Home to the Sweetums Candy Corporation, 19 waste repositories, and not much else.” Complaining about the airport, he says, “This airport seems to me like a metaphor for the town. Out of touch, out of date, perhaps, lost, insignificant, and sad.” Leslie pushes back, recognizing the airport’s “desperate need of refurbishments” and Pawnee’s lack of “big-city amenities,” but pointing out that Pawnee “makes up for it with hand-working hearts, I mean hard-working hands.” Perhaps I should have mentioned one plot point in this episode is that she is drunk during the interview. Regardless, Leslie rightly hammers home her commitment to making things better: “I’d rather talk about ways to solve problems in this town...We can talk about ways that I can improve the airport or our many, wonderful parks.”

Leslie’s a patriot not because she ignores the bad things but because she loves Pawnee enough to try to fix them. G. K. Chesterton’s comments on patriotism could almost as easily have come from Leslie, and apply to Pawnee (the rest of the piece is really just a long quote from Chesterton):

Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing—say Pimlico [England's version of Pawnee]...It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico: in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico: for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason. If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles; Pimlico would attire herself as a woman does when she is loved. For decoration is not given to hide horrible things: but to decorate things already adorable. A mother does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it. A lover does not give a girl a necklace to hide her neck. If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is THEIRS, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is a mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.

Like beauty and the beast, sometimes you have to love something to make it loveable. Sometimes, in the short run, this love can even look a bit like hatred. Perfect love sometimes requires us to say that the thing we love is less than perfect. Fans are often the biggest critics. Chesterton again:

The more transcendental is your patriotism, the more practical are your politics...The devotee is entirely free to criticise; the fanatic can safely be a sceptic. Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.

I’ve found Chesterton’s insight here indispensable for thinking about loyalty ever since reading it. So many people get patriotism wrong, but whoever is writing Parks & Recreation gets patriotism right. And this is part of why I am utterly devoted to this show, even though the recent Leslie-running-for-office storyline is a bit tiresome, and the Ann-Tom relationship is utterly ridiculous. But these are only small criticisms. I share because I care.



Philip Tallon (@philiptallon) is the author of The Poetics of Evil and the co-editor of The Philosophy of Sherlock Holmes (forthcoming later this year).

Soul Mates and Subtext

By Josh Corman

Follow me on Twitter @JoshACorman

While driving home from work the other day, I heard a strange ad for one of those online dating sites. Normally, these ads—wether for eHarmony, cupid.com, match.com, or Christian Mingle—usually stick to a pretty rote explanation of their services, focusing from time to time on particular couples who've found relational success with the help of their services. This commercial, however, took a different enough track that I took full notice.

The average eHarmony user (composite).

A woman's voice explained that it's often next to impossible to create a reliable picture of a person from their online dating profile, even when that profile actually includes a picture. Basically, the woman said, people are creative and practiced enough at answering the typical profile questions that you have to carefully read into the subtext of their responses to get an accurate idea of who it is exactly that you're inviting to join you at Olive Garden next Thursday night. This should shock no one. But what she said next was jarring: "You know that if a guy says, 'I like horror movies,' that means he owns a hockey mask, but has never actually played hockey." The implication that all the Wes Craven fans seeking love and companionship via the web would serve well as the basis for his next slasher flick took me aback. It seemed weird that a company would essentially warn you that using their service carried with it the pretty high risk of being manipulated (or chopped into bits with a chainsaw and dumped in a shallow grave) under the guise of love. But then, insight struck.

If it's true that most online dating profiles are elaborately constructed ruses designed to trap and trick unsuspecting fools into sharing nachos with humanity's seedy underbelly, then the honest, wholesome few in the online dating community need help from someone. I think that someone is me.

Now, Corman, you're saying, what aid could you possibly provide to these poor folks? You've never filled out an online dating profile. You've never combed through dozens of possible matches, only to feel like no one suitable is ever going to find you. Hell, you married your high school sweetheart, whom you started dating when Napster was still a thing. Fair points all, friends, but you're forgetting the one skill that reading online dating profiles demands: ruthless critical analysis of rhetorical and thematic subtext! That's right people, my years of close, careful reading of authors as diverse as Melville and Palahniuk, Atwood and Austen, McCarthy and Dahl puts me in the enviable position of being able to comb through the underlying messages buried deep within the average dating profile to reveal the true nature of the person who crafted it. If you or someone you know is or has ever attempted to navigate the turbid waters of internet dating, you can thank me later.

Let's first consider this seemingly innocuous response to one of eHarmony's thoughtful queries: Other than appearance, what is the first thing people notice about you? Jeffery J. said this: My most apparent quality is probably sense of humor. I laugh a lot and love doing it. I like to crack the occasional joke, too, but I'm more content laughing with a group than trying to get laughs from others. Attention isn't something I crave, but sharing a sense of humor with someone is a great feeling, and laughing with people makes up a lot of my fondest memories. I hope that whoever I end up with feels the same way I do.


It's clear what Jeffery here is trying to accomplish. By revealing his lighter side, Jeffery hopes to show that he's not all business, all the time, and invite potential mates to smile at the prospect of sharing a warm joke. Thankfully, I'm here to prevent anyone from falling into his trap. Notice the arrogance of that first line, where he presumes to tell us what his "most apparent" quality is. I'd like to think that if I were scoping for a date, I'd want that date to presume that I'm intelligent enough to make up my own mind about what's apparent and what isn't. At the same time, Jeffery doesn't seem secure enough to come right out and answer the question he's been asked. Your sense of humor is "probably" what people notice about you? Indecisive much, Jeff? As if the combination of hubris and flakiness wasn't enough to drive you off after line one, he tops himself in just seven words with his second sentence.

Jeffery claims to "laugh a lot" and that "he loves doing it." I'll bet you love doing it, Jeff. And I'll bet you thought no one would notice your perverse innuendo, too. The question asked for one quality, not two, and trying to incorporate your carnal demands into what should be a simple, wholesome answer is frankly repugnant. If he would cloak this kind of blatantly hyper-sexualism by hiding behind that uncertain pronoun at the end of the sentence, what else would he hide from you? Unfortunately, we get our answer just a few sentences later. The end of Jeffery's response ostensibly conveys a desire for shared interest, but it's important for you to see his true motive. Sharing a sense of humor isn't enough for this animal. He would have you mirroring his every move if it were left up to him, feeling "the same way I do." Thankfully, it isn't up to him, and by discarding his profile, you save yourself a potential lifetime of awkwardly chuckling along to a Carrot Top special just so Jeff won't hit the bottle later and come at you with an extension cord. You're welcome.

Do you see how valuable it can be to approach these delicate responses with a finely tuned eye for subtext? Let's look at one more to ensure that you walk away confident in your approach.

This response to another of eHarmony's standard profile questions proves the old maxim about the tips of icebergs. You don't want to be the one ringing the bell on the Titanic, so pay attention.

What are the three things for which you are most thankful? Susan G. writes: Well, family first and foremost. My parents have always been there for me, and paying that back to them in any little way has long been a priority for me. Secondly, my job fulfills me in so many ways. Working with at-risk kids isn't easy, but I've learned so much about life through my relationships here that I wouldn't trade it for anything. I guess that I would also say my pets. It may sound strange, but even when life has thrown some obstacles at me, being responsible for something, even just a dog, always let me maintain a sense of purpose and value because I knew that there was something relying upon me.


Disgusting, I know.

Let's take this bit by bit. It's clear from what she says here that no matter who she dates or marries, that person is always going to come second to her family. Holidays, vacations, dinner plans, all of that and more are going to be funneled through her family and abide by their schedules. And if you have a fight? Forget about it. Susan here will go running home to Mom and Dad without batting an eye, turning them against you and turning every little disagreement into a tag-team cage match. Cut the cord, lady!

If you stopped reading after her "family first and foremost" diatribe, I don't blame you, but if you read further, your compassion wasn't rewarded. Susan says her job "fulfills" her, and that she's learned a lot working with "at-risk" kids. The feeble attempt at making herself sound compassionate only serves to reveal the painful truth: Susan is a workaholic who runs with a rough crowd. If you can drag her away from her desk for a few hours a day, she's going to insist that you hang out with people who she freely admits aren't easy to be around. It's telling that no matter how much damage these rough-and-tumble friends of hers cause, she plainly states that she "wouldn't trade [them] for anything." Don't be a hero and try to free Susan from the spiraling life she's chosen. You'll only end up getting dragged down with her.

I'd spend my powers similarly deconstructing her final statements about thankfulness, but I'm not going to insult you. If you couldn't pick out Susan's flaws after the first two points, you probably deserve each other. (Maybe you've always dreamt of featuring on A&E's Needy Cat Ladies and the People They Butchered.)

Thankfully, I don't have to navigate these treacherous waters myself. For my part though, I hope I've offered something useful that you can apply to your own internet dating experiences. If the major dating sites continue in their honest appraisal of the situation at hand, I'm sure they'll have the riff-raff cleared out in no time. But until then, remember: When in doubt, they're probably a serial killer.

 By Josh Corman

Follow me on Twitter @JoshACorman

The Great Muppet Caper: How Pixar Robbed Jim Henson Blind

By Emily Walls

The geniuses at Pixar have changed the way animated tales are told. Not just pleasant stories with happy endings, Pixar films speak to timeless truths and the common human experience. It's not princesses and happy villages; it's a family learning how to steward their gifts, a car learning to appreciate the past, a fish learning to trust. Pixar has made a name for itself as the studio that asks the question "What if?" What if a rat could cook? What if the monsters in our closets are just blue collar workers taking care of business? What if we could lift a house using only balloons?

The first of these films, the big one that started it all, was the story that asked what if our toys wake up and play when we're out of the room? Toy Story's endearing characters and singular story set the standard of ingenuity and creativity for animation from 1995 on. Its writers' names have become synonymous with excellence and originality. It's too bad, then, that they stole their first story from Jim Henson and Laura Phillips.

Available on Netflix right now

The movie was called The Christmas Toy, and it was, I believe, a 1986 straight-to-VHS Christmas movie. It was a special, magical movie to me, because I only ever got to watch it when I was at my grandparents' house. They had taped it off TV, so every Christmas my cousins and siblings and I gathered around the tube to watch the scratchy old VHS. I'm glad I did, because if I hadn't seen it, I might mistakenly believe Toy Story was an original idea.

For Toy Story, the Pixar gurus played on the following common experience: at one point in your life, you believed that maybe, just maybe, your toys were real. You talked to your doll and tucked her into her little play crib and truly believed that she knew you cared for her. You saw your sister's three-foot-tall ventriloquist clown doll and knew deep down in your heart that it was was going to murder your ass in the dead of darkest night. (Why, Erin? WHY?) And maybe you believed that all of your toys could move and talk to one another when you weren't looking. Anything could happen when you weren't watching. Perhaps you even closed your toys inside your room then quickly jerked open the door and jumped back inside, shouting "AHA!" to your room of silent and immobile toys. I know I did. But I also know that I ambushed my toys because in 1986 Jim Henson planted in my mind (dare I say incepted) that toys love to play when we're not around.

The movie opens on a quiet toy room, but slowly the toys wake up and burst into song about how much toys love to play. They then gather around for a stupendous announcement: It's Christmas Eve and there will be new toys in their room in the morning!

New toys are coming!

Kind of like, oh I don't know:

New toys are coming!

But to be fair, in Toy Story it's a birthday party, so that's barely similar.

But if Toy Story ripped off the idea that toys come alive, at least its main character, Woody, has a unique dilemma to overcome. Woody is Andy's absolute favorite, best pal, top toy in the whole wide universe, and we learn quickly that Woody is scared to death of being supplanted by a new toy. In a recent TEDTalk (which you must watch), Pixar writer/director Andrew Stanton discusses the progression of Woody's character. The writers painstakingly crafted Woody's personality as they worked to flesh out the story's central conflict, taking their main character from a mean, bossy sourpuss in early drafts to the lovable, insecure cowboy we see on the big screen. Perhaps they wouldn't have had to work so hard to get Woody's character right if The Christmas Toy had only featured a strikingly similar main character with a similar dilemma that they could copy OH WAIT IT DID.

In The Christmas Toy, Rugby the stuffed tiger is Jamie's absolute favorite, best pal, top toy in the whole wide universe, and we learn quickly that Rugby is scared to death of being supplanted by a new toy. He is so scared, in fact, that he sneaks out of the toy room to spy on the newest Christmas presents...

 ...kind of like how Woody sends a battalion of toy soldiers to run surveillance on Andy's birthday party.

Now, this is where the stories take a major departure from each other. You see, in Toy Story the newest addition to the toy family is a futuristic space man who doesn't even know he's a toy.

Whereas in The Christmas Toy the newest addition to the toy family is a futuristic space woman who doesn't even know she's a toy.

Are you amazed yet? We're not done.

When Buzz springs from his box he makes an entry into his star log. "My ship has run off course en route to Sector 12. I've crash landed on a strange planet," he says. "Terrain seems a bit unstable." Then he flies around the room and surveys his new surroundings.

Meteora springs from her box and demands, "What planet is this?" She commands them to take her to their leader and flies around the room inspecting her new surroundings. "Interesting vegetation," she says of the tinsel covering the Christmas tree.

The other toys try to convince Meteora that she is a toy who needs to return to her box, but she won't listen to them. They try a new tactic: trickery. They tell her that the box is a one-way ticket to the fame and glory a toy like her deserves. Their ruse works, and she runs to the box.

Similarly, Buzz Lightyear cannot be convinced that he is a toy. When Woody gives up on trying to persuade Buzz to accept his true identity, Woody tries a new tactic: trickery. He convinces Buzz that the "YO" truck is a transport to a spaceship, and Buzz happily complies.

In the end, both Woody and Rugby learn that their owner-children have enough love for both their new and old toys. Along the way, they have the following:

Toy deaths

Moms who are mostly legs

Toy spouses arriving as gifts at the ends of the movies

So if The Christmas Toy used the same premise as Toy Story and had the same characters and the same central conflict, then why don't we know more about it? Toy Story is wildly popular. Why not its predecessor? I have an answer: The Christmas Toy kind of sucks. It's a 50-minute, made for TV movie and it feels like a made for TV movie. The pacing is slow, the dialogue corny, and for a movie targeted to children, it spends an inordinate amount of time on the bleakness of toy death. Where Woody is flawed but lovable, Rugby is flawed and annoying. Where Buzz is selfless, Meteora is narcissistic. Sure, I loved The Christmas Toy when I was a child (and I hear my two-year-old niece loves it now), but the movie did not pass the test of time. It is painful to watch.

Toy Story, on the other hand, takes a couple of good ideas and makes them great. The characters are instantly endearing, and the story itself is timeless and relevant. I was twelve years old the first time I saw it. I loved it then, and now that I'm twenty-nine, I might love it even more. Sure, it leans on the ideas of The Christmas Toy, but it develops, delves, and expands where The Christmas Toy remains stunted. I have heard it said that good artists borrow, but great artists steal. If a little outright thievery was what it took to bring Pixar into our lives, I say it was worth it.

So reach for the sky, Mr. Henson. This is a stick-up.

The View from the Top

By Jonny Walls

When the final buzzer sounded Monday night, it became official: The Kentucky Wildcats are once again champions of men's college basketball. It's difficult, bordering on impossible, to describe how that felt. Let's just start by saying it felt good. Really good.

Darius Miller, the senior from Maysville, KY claims his spoils.

 But, surprisingly, the feeling surprised me.

Now, for all of the non-sports fans, I'm not going to spend any more time dissecting the nature of sports fandom and why it is at least partly rational (and certainly no less rational than other widely accepted practices) because I did so recently here. Corman explored similar grounds, but from a different angle, here.

So for the time being, let's just say that there really could be something to all of this sports hysteria stuff, and there may be something legitimate behind feeling elation and defeat along with a beloved team, even if we don't fully understand it.

I have "felt" national championships before. I was watching with a group of my friends when Kentucky won the 1996 national championship, the first of my lifetime. I wore a pair of UK themed silk boxers on my head for the whole game. I ran through the streets when it was over.

I was watching with my dad and my friend Travis a year later when a highly talented and favored Kentucky team lost in overtime in the national championship game to four seeded Arizona. I cried when it was over.

I was watching in 1998 with about fifteen other friends at my friend Bailey's house when Kentucky came back from ten down at the half to defeat Utah and claim another national championship. We all jumped in her pool with our clothes on when it was over.

So the feeling, Monday night, shouldn't have surprised me. But it did.

It was partly a "can this really be happening" feeling. Understandable. I asked my wife if it was reality or a dream. She said it was real, thank goodness. But that's not surprising.

It was partly a feeling of relief. This isn't completely surprising either, bearing in mind my anxious personality.

This was me at halftime...and we were up by fourteen.

Perhaps a large part of the newness of the whole experience was how much I wanted this one. (I suspect I'm not alone in this.) When it happened in '96, I didn't know what it was like to be champions. (I suspect all the folks who were around for the '78 crown followed by twenty years of agonizing disappointment experienced in '96 what I experienced on Monday.)

When it almost happened in '97, I never doubted for a second that we would win it (that is, until the final buzzer). When it happened in '98, I got a taste of the (slight) underdog victory sensation, but there was still a sense of entitlement floating around Lexington. Three championship games in a row, two of them won; we felt we were owed the privilege.

That's all part of it. But there's something else behind it too. Something deeper: This was the first time I had experienced this wholly unique sensation as an adult, that is, as the person that I am now. And that is what is so illuminating about starkly unique experiences, like having a team you truly love win the NCAA tournament. It provides life with unmistakeable context. It's like a mountain behind you in the distance that tells you how far you've traveled.

Remember that movie you adored as a child? Remember that time you dug out your old copy (or found it on Netflix streaming, as is the way of our age) and discovered that, despite a small wave of pleasant nostalgia, it isn't nearly as magical as your younger, less-educated self thought it was?

Monday night was nothing like that.

But, remember that other movie you loved as a child? Remember how you loved the lightsabers and Ewoks and the little green guy on Dagobah and the spaceships and explosions? Remember how one day, when you were starting to grow out of childhood, you sat down to watch these movies again (it had been a couple of years since you saw them last) and something else, something even better clicked into place? Remember how you first noticed the full brilliance of Luke's near inevitable path to become his father being brilliantly visualized by the black gloved, mechanical hand? Remember how you realized that one of the greatest themes of the film was Luke's choice to turn from Darkness, and how that was the single factor that redeemed him from his father's fate? Remember how you still got a kick out of the lightsabers and the Ewoks and the little green guy on Dagobah and the spaceships and explosions, but now it was the delicious coating on something much more meaningful and precious?

That's what Monday night was like.

I could go on ad nauseum in my usual, overly analytical way about how this victory made me feel connected to my home state and my friends and helped to ease the pain of adapting to life away from home. I could go into detail about how memories of going to meet the '98 team at the airport with my dad and friends enjoyed a fresh resurgence in my emotional memory and enforced my affection for them. But I don't need to. Those are my personal reflections, and this phenomenon is universal.

The seemingly artificial, shallow moments of joy, like seeing your home state's team claim the crown again, provide some of the best perspective there is to be found in this life. Only now, Kentucky fans aren't looking at that mountain in the rearview. We're back on top.

And that feels good. Really good.

By Jonny Walls

Ripping Out the Roots

By Josh Corman

Follow me on Twitter @JoshACorman

We here at Verbal Infusion don't usually post such similar items in such close proximity to one another, but, then again, we here at Verbal Infusion don't always check the site prior to writing said items to be sure that just such a flap is avoided, either. In any case, we're sticking with this whole sports thing because, in all honesty, we just don't get to talk about sports very much on here, and the NCAA Tournament Championship has bought us a little leeway, we'd like to think. Enjoy.

The entire ball game, in terms of both the exam and life, was what you gave attention to vs. what you willed yourself to not.
- David Foster Wallace, The Pale King


When I graduated from high school, I was just entering the beginning stages of what I would term the blooming of my culture tree. I voraciously ingested new bands and filmmakers and authors, and they all became their own burgeoning branches, increasingly heavy with fruit—their as-yet-undiscovered debut albums and esoteric indie films and short-story collections. I couldn't get enough. This was largely by choice, but, after a while, I became a type of automaton, buying albums and movies and books because I couldn't bear the thought of not being completely up to date on the latest trends, even if I didn't really care about the individual pieces of work as I lapped them up.

This lasted until probably a couple of years after I got married. At that point, it became far less justifiable to feed my personal little culture tree for reasons both financial and temporal, and I started doing what I imagine a lot of people entering their mid-twenties do: trimming the culture tree. As much as it pained me to not race out at midnight to buy any more just-released DVDs, I soon came to terms with the change of course and found myself not much worse for wear. As my responsibilities increased, I trimmed the tree to make room for the people and things that needed my more focused attention.

It should be clear from these paragraphs that I am a reasonable person, perfectly capable of making sane, rational decisions, even about excising some of those things which, for a season of my life, I spent a probably inordinate amount of attention on. Let's all agree on that premise, shall we?

Hard to believe, but this picture is to scale.

During this whole tree-trimming period, I briefly turned my attention to sports. I say briefly, because in just about the same moment that I thought about scaling back my sports intake, I realized that it would not so much involve trimming branches as ripping out the roots of my culture tree. See, sports matter to me like very little else in my life, and when people hear a statement like that, they often have one of two reactions. The first reaction is knowing empathy. They nod and start citing sports-related moments from their youth and adolescence that provide much of the context for those times in their lives. These people are lifers, and if you find a lifer that supports the same team or teams that you do, you've probably found a friend who'll be around for a long time (obviously, having this same conversation with someone who supports a different team can render this person instantaneously insufferable).

The second type of reaction is a mixture of incomprehension and near hostility, with a dash of dismissive arrogance thrown in, like someone who took a couple of Spanish classes in high school trying to keep up with native speakers and failing miserably: they resent the people and the language they're speaking. These people, as Nick Hornby noted in his memoir Fever Pitch, simply don't get it, and it's unlikely that they ever will. They view sports as trivial and unworthy of serious consideration. In a world so overflowing with art and politics and fine cuisine and actual strife, sports simply do not warrant their attention.

It goes without saying that these people think of me much as Nick Hornby thinks of them. They would say there's something out of whack with my priorities, that all the energy and attention (and eventually money for heart medication) that I spend on sports is wasted, floating out into nothingness, an investment in a void.

And I'll admit, sometimes I feel like they're right. I mean, I've never thrown Abbey Road on and had Nickelback come out of the speakers, and I've never opened a copy of a Steinbeck novel only to find the text cruelly replaced with Sue Grafton's prose, but the equivalent happens in sports all the time. Fans invest their time and energy and appreciation into a given team or athlete, they feel like that investment will surely be rewarded, only it isn't. The pass falls incomplete, the shot rims out, the ball hits the crossbar (again and again and again, in some cases), and all those people who could have been off sampling a choice cut of steak or soaking in the hammering beauty of Beethoven are brought low by their apparently foolish allegiance to this or that squad of athletes, many of whom don't seem to bear a burden half as heavy as many of their fans. And this happens far more than its inverse. Any sports fan worth their salt has a half-dozen stories of anguish for every moment of championship-induced euphoria (excepting perhaps Yankee and young Manchester United fans). We accept this as part of the odd bargain we make as investors in these volatile, amorphous entities called teams.

But why? It's a fair question, and one I've pondered dozens of times. Hornby says it's an addiction for him. He knows his behavior is not sane, but that Arsenal Football Club simply have their hooks in him, and like a true addict, he needs the fix more than he's bothered by its effects on him. Kurt Vonnegut said we do it because we want our lives to mirror the stories we read, so we build constructs like sports to imbue them with a sense of drama, not worrying about the contrivance.

I don't know the answer, despite having lived out sports fandom as intensely as anybody I know. But I suspect that besides being fun to watch and a reminder of our youths, sports also offer us a few hours at a time when we are connected to other people through something that transcends political leanings, class, race, and any of the other hundred stratifications that make up our culture. This is not a new thought, but I think it strikes most closely to my personal experience. I've heard some argue that such connection is fabricated, that we're all just fools rooting for laundry, and that any meaning imposed upon grown people's performances playing children's games is illusory. It's a cop out to say that anyone making that argument "doesn't get it" (despite how true it is), so I'll try to counter it with something a little more potent.

Tonight, the sports team I have supported more fervently than any other will play for its eighth national championship, its third during my lifetime. When Kentucky tips-off against Kansas, I will transform into an anxiety-ridden ball of sweat, weak knees, muttered profanity, and reckless intensity. But so will millions of other people just like me. People literally around the globe will watch this game. They will cheer with me and sigh with me and no matter the outcome, they will empathize with me. I can think of precious few other things in the world about which the same can be said. Yes, millions have read some of my favorite books, but outside of the few days following the release of, say, a Harry Potter book, they aren't all doing it at the same time, suffering through the same suspense and elation and devastation that I am. Because that's a big part of what sports are: the knowledge that others care about what you care about, the knowledge that you aren't alone.

What DFW said about how we spend our attention is true, and he also said that the reason that art exists is that we are constantly attempting to make ourselves feel less alone, that the reason novels and films and poetry and music speak to people so intensely is that those are the ways in which we assure ourselves that there are other people out there like us, other people who care about the same things and experience the world in roughly the same way that we experience it. That's a wonderful thought, if you ask me, not to mention a true one. I think the same thing can be said of sports. By watching these games and following these teams, we're doing more that just escaping from our lives or killing a couple of hours; we are reaching out, knowing that other people share our joys and our heartaches and our excitement.

And that's a feeling worth chasing. If you need me tonight after 9:30 EST, I'll be running hard after it. Well, me and a few million friends.

By Josh Corman

Follow me on Twitter @JoshACorman