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

March Madness and Movie Magic: A Deconstruction

Jonny Walls

When I play video games, I experience thousands or millions of lines of code. There are no creatures, no characters, no spaceships, no swords, no glistening lakes, no foreign planets or magical forests. Just code.

When I read a book, I'm looking at thousands of letters grouped together in particular sequences on multiple pieces of paper. No people, no stories, no feelings, no dialogue. Just ink and paper.

When I watch a movie, I'm witnessing the result of light hitting a sensor and burning into a piece of film. No explosions, no kisses, no life or death scenarios, no sexy glances. Just film.

When I watch basketball, I'm seeing a bunch of guys I've never met, who were in elementary school when I was in college, playing a game. I'm watching them throw a rubber ball through a metal hoop, and hoping one group of kids manages to do it more than the other. No warring cities, schools, or states. There is no actual school or state pride on the line. Just kids, rubber, and metal.

These assessments may seem harsh, but they're generous by deconstructive standards. Like it or not, it's cold truth.

How about this? When I watch a basketball game and my blood starts pumping and I know in my heart that I will be genuinely disappointed if the game doesn't swing my team's way, I am knowingly basing my own happiness upon whether or not the collection of particles that make up the people who wear the collection of particles that form my team's uniforms can throw the collection of particles that takes the form of a ball into the collection of particles that is a rim more times than the opposing group of particle collections.

But that doesn't feel right, does it? That completely true description paradoxically fails to tell the truth of the life that we know. Whether it's video games, literature, film, or basketball, the elements of this life take on greater meaning than the sum of their individual parts. We "irrationally" relate to the characters on screen or the players on our favorite team because there is something in them that is also inside us, be it an eerily familiar disposition or the simple willingness to represent one's home state.

Relate to Scott Padgett or he will eat you.

Hoops and Hollywood

When a great basketball team is firing on all cylinders, it becomes like a living, organic, flowing being, greater than the sum of its parts. Each part of the organism plays its role to perfection, and the result is like Life. But we must suspend our disbelief just a touch to see it. If we don't, we'll see nothing more than boys in uniforms throwing a rubber ball.

For a film to make us forget the real world, all of the pieces must work together seamlessly: lighting, choreography, acting, sound, costumes, makeup, etc. If it fails, we see actors in front of a camera surrounded by a crew, but when it works, it becomes surprisingly easy to suspend our disbelief.

Funnily, we tend to selectively align our skepticism and liberality of belief with what most pleases us, and are quick to scoff at those who align it differently. I know people who have cried watching a person they know to be a living actor pretending to die in front of a camera as a different person, then turn around and ridicule sports fans for caring about the outcome of a sports match. I have likewise known avid sports fans to ridicule fiction and story lovers for their so-called love of escapist fantasy.

Is it really so different if a Red-Sox fan suddenly sees Johnny Damon as a different entity when wearing Yankee Blue? Is it not a similar phenomenon when a film lover sees a different Matt Damon when he's playing the angel Loki and when he's Jason Bourne?

The Answer Was Inside Us All Along

We get to be genuinely, emotionally moved by films and truly excited and elated (or disappointed, forlorn...crushed) by sports by suspending our disbelief, but neither would work if they didn't tap deeply into the intricacies of our inherent natures. Selflessness, beauty, struggle, physicality, desire, agony, defeat—these powerful aspects of life are on display in every decent film and every worthy game of basketball, so we can be forgiven when we conveniently forget that we're not actually part of the team we adore, or that Frodo is really some kid from Iowa.

Art and sports work because, literally, we have infused them with meaning. It's a certain fluid, flexible, lowercase meaning, but it's meaning nonetheless.

Look at yourself and your loved ones. A collection of separate particles, every one of you. But we have meaning because we have been infused with it. Deconstruct us all you want, down to the last quark, but almost no one would disagree that we are greater than the sum of our parts, and I say it's because we were made so.

Breaking the Fourth Wall

An important caveat lies simply in the word "imitate." Art and sports work because they imitate, but they fall short for the same reason. As ridiculous as it may sound, it's quite easy for, ahem...certain types (read: myself and most of my friends) to lose sight of the line between imitation and real life. I've lost myself in a novel or video game world for days at a time, and I've lost sleep over more than one impending UK basketball game. In fact, as UK's monumental Final Four match-up with Louisville looms, I have found myself fighting off pangs of anxiety with a steady stream of self-reminders: "It's just a game. It's just a game." In truth, it's more than a game, but it's still just a game. You know what I mean? Paradoxical, perhaps, but then again, that's life.

This weekend, if you tune in to the Final Four, go ahead and suspend your disbelief. Relate with your team and choose to get caught up in the drama. Hope your team wins. I know I will. But don't kid yourself; it's only an imitation.

By Jonny Walls


For more on basketball and life, check out my Dad's new book.

Like a Virgin: Four Routine Tasks That You Forget Were Terrifying the First Time Around

By Emily Walls

Aging is mostly an ugly, drooping process, but chief among its virtues, in fact possibly its only virtue, is the power to forget. Mothers endure labor, swear they won't have any more children, forget about the pain over time, and then pop another one of those devils out two years later. Heartbroken souls go through agonizing breakups and swear off love forever, only to fall head over heels for someone new just months down the road.

Here at Verbal Infusion, we feel ourselves duty bound to remind you of your past pain and, with any luck, make you experience it again. To that purpose, I present to you today four tasks that have perhaps become routine to you, but were once frightening, even painful, prospects. Let us never forget the anxiety of new situations and thereby fail to empathize with the young or inexperienced. Consider us your Fountain of Youth.

#4 Riding Public Transportation

It doesn't matter if it's a train or rickshaw, the anxiety you feel when facing your first ride on public transportation will leave you shivering, mumbling, and soaked in your own urine. Thankfully, these are the first requirements for riding public transportation.

The main source of tension you feel is the firm belief that everyone else knows exactly what to do, and you are the only poor bastard who doesn't have a clue. Mostly, you are correct.

Buses, I think, are the worst. Trains are busy enough to mask your blunders, taxis private enough, but buses boast the greatest people:silence ratio. You can cram a bus full of passengers until the standing space is so crowded that every seated passenger pays for his comfort with a crotch to the face, and still those riders will not say word one to each other. They will, however, glare living death at you if you get the fare wrong, and let's face it, some of them will shiv you. The fare is easily the most intimidating portion of bus travel.

1. It's the first impression you make on the driver and other passengers. Do it right, they assume you're a pro and leave you alone. Do it wrong, shiv.
2. Incorrect fare means you make the other passengers wait until you get it right. You do not want to make the other passengers wait.
3. Every transit system is different, but they all share a common no-cash policy. What they use in place of cash is anyone's guess—and I mean literally you make your best guess, because instructions will be placed exactly nowhere. If you're like me, your first attempt will be payment by pigeon feathers, but you are wrong. More than likely, you need to bribe a nearby street vendor into selling you some kind of transportation card that looks almost as official as a Post-It note.
4. No one will tell you what to do with that card, so you'll have to get in line behind other people and copy what they do. Sometimes you need to tap it against a card reader; other times you need to insert it in a slot. DO NOT GIVE IT TO THE DRIVER. Bus drivers have moved beyond our realm.

So let's say you get the fare right (somehow) and land yourself a spot on the bust. You must then wade through the murky waters of seat selection and bag placement. When you have comfortably settled yourself between Mr. Shifty Eyes and Ms. Mumbles, you will be free to examine the map and schedule. Lucky for you, the map has been expertly painted for the transit system by a Jackson Pollock enthusiast. On your first ever bus ride, you will read the map incorrectly and get off at the wrong stop (if you figure out how to get off at all), but take heart. Although you are now in an unfamiliar and scary part of town, you have successfully taken a bus. The rest of your journey should be a walk in the park. Seriously, get your tennis shoes out. You're walking.

Unless, of course, you have a car, in which case you need to prepare yourself for...

#3 Pumping Gas

You fill up your tank probably 2-8 times per month, depending on your commute, and I'll bet that you don't spend ten seconds of those 2-8 fill-ups worrying about vehicle placement, nozzle type, or payment method. It is all so routine to you now that you listen to music, talk with your friends, clean your windshield, and exit the station without even noticing that somewhere in the throes of routine, you filled your tank. But remember the first time you did it? And I'm not counting the times your dad dragged you out of your cozy backseat and into twenty degree weather to teach you how to set the pump on family road trips. I'm talking about the first time you did it completely by yourself after you got your license.

Pumping gas is surprisingly intimidating because, due to the variety of pump types and payment methods, you can be thwarted by your ignorance at any moment. Some are prepay, some are not. Some use buttons, some use levers.

The first time you pull up, you assume that everyone is watching you and that they'll think you're just a stupid kid if you get it wrong. So you go through the steps and act cool and try to look nonchalant, but if for some reason you miss a step, you know that the the clerk is going to shout instructions at you over the intercom. At fragile sixteen, intercoms can only mean ridicule and shame. James Dean surely never got intercom'd.

But it's not just sixteen-year-olds who get the filling station jitters. I lived in Oregon for a year, where by law every gas station must be full service only. People born and raised there have never pumped their own gas, and I've heard a few of them say they'll drive twenty extra miles to find full service stations when they're out of state.

Most of us go through anxiety now when we have to pay exorbitant prices at the pump, but at least we no longer have to endure anxiety over the pumps themselves.

#2 Going to the Gyno

Yes, I'm going there.

My first gyno exam can't be called "intimidating" exactly, because it was a surprise. Like, "Surprise! Speculum!" At age nineteen, I went to my family doctor to find out why I had been on my period for two months. I expected her to discuss my symptoms with me, talk over desired outcomes, and prescribe me a pill. Instead, I got a surprise pelvic exam from my doc and her nurse, who I can only assume was named Helga and who looked like an exact cross between Jamie Lee Curtis and a Velociraptor. The exam was conducted with the sensitivity of a rototiller, and although my doctor did not find the problem that day, at least she answered my questions about alien probes.

And that's the thing about gynecological exams: until you have one, you don't really know what to expect. Moreover, the exam is full of paradoxes. First, you pay the doctor for her medical services, but given the circumstances, it seems like the doctor should have to pay you (or at least take you out to a fancy dinner first). Second, the exam is likely to make you tense, but you have to relax for it. And finally, you have to reconcile dual desires to make a good impression on your doctor and to be in no way memorable.

A friend of a friend, who we'll call Sally, failed miserably on this last point. In the hours before her annual check-up, Sally was at the home of her grown daughter. Wanting to freshen up a bit before her appointment, Sally rummaged around in her daughter's medicine cabinet and found a bottle of feminine spray, which she used. At her appointment later that day, everything was progressing as usual until her doctor made an uncharacteristic remark.

"Ooh. Fancy," he said.

Sally had no idea what he was talking about, but not wanting to prolong the exam or make it any more uncomfortable than necessary, she stayed silent. Puzzled, she returned home after her appointment and relayed the incident to her daughter.

"But what in the world would make him say that?" her daughter said.

"I've asked myself the same question, and I can't figure it. All I used was the feminine spray you keep in your medicine cabinet."

"Mom, I don't have any feminine spray...I do have body glitter though."

Sally's doctor, I am sure, remembers Sally.

The thing about these exams is that we make too much of them in our minds beforehand, particularly before our first ones. We forget that they're completely routine to our doctors and that if we have good doctors (always get a recommendation) things will be quick and painless. And now that I've divulged far too much, let's move on to a topic that men (who will never again complain about turning their heads and coughing) can identify with too.

#1 Speaking a Foreign Language

The purpose of foreign language classes in the U.S. is twofold: 1) to fill out the seventh period in what could otherwise be a mercifully short school day, and 2) to arm our youngsters' vocabulary arsenals with additional resources for possible dick jokes on college placement exams. At no point do we expect to use these languages with their native speakers, so our first experiences getting from el aeropuerto to los museos in other countries often feature us babbling in Pig Latin and gesturing with the enthusiasm of a thousand Ewoks.

We know the theory. We know that "hola" will trigger a greeting, perhaps even an introduction, but we don't quite believe it will work. There is a chance—an all-too-likely chance, if you happened to attend my high school—that we have been the subjects of an elaborate ruse that the grown-ups instigated to humiliate us in foreign countries.

Perhaps they've been lying to me for years, I think. Perhaps I've learned gibberish. Probably I've learned gibberish. There sits a smiling Bolivian concierge to "welcome" me. She's probably just waiting for me to speak so she can taunt me. SLUT. Well, I won't give her the satisfaction. I'll never say hola! I am not her pawn! "I AM NOT YOUR PAWN," I say as I storm off in the direction of the town dump.

Jonny handles his foreign language nerves with a touch more aplomb. After arriving in Mexico in 2008, Jonny and a few other friends, one of whom spoke fluent Spanish, hopped in a cab. The fluent one gave directions to the cabby, and Jonny sat for a while in comfortable silence in the passenger seat, that is, until he could no longer sit by without trying out his two semesters of Spanish vocabulary. So right there in that silent cab, he just listed off all the Spanish words he could bring to mind, and in no particular order.

"Pantalones." (Pants.)
"El gato." (The cat.)
"La leche." (The milk.)
"Sacapunta." (Pencil sharpener.)

And so on. The driver did not understand...understandably.

Even saying a foreign word to English speakers in the U.S. can be intimidating. I remember when Chocolat came out, I learned how to pronounce its title from movie trailers and award shows. I heard some idiots pronounce it like regular old "chocolate," and I mercilessly mocked them in my mind. Then came time for me to see the movie at the theater. I stood with a large group of my friends in a long line at the ticket stand, and I mentally rehearsed exactly how I was going to say it.

"One for Chocolat, please [flawless French], and here's my student ID." I thought about it and thought about it. "Ch like Sh. Silent T. Stress the third syllable. Ch like Sh. Silent T. Stress the third syllable."

I ignored conversations with my friends just so I would be prepared when the time came. I was the first of my friends to get to the ticket window. The girl at the counter said, "Hi. What movie would you like to see?"

I took a deep breath, braced myself, and shouted, "CHO-LOT, PLEASE."

I yelled the hardest Ch and sharpest T you've ever imagined at that poor woman. Two of my friends burst into laughter on the spot. My face is flushing even now as I write about it, but its color is nothing to the deep maroon it manifested that night. Worst of all, the ticket taker did not understand me and asked me please to repeat myself.

"The chocolate movie, please," I mumbled.

"I'm sorry?"

"ONE TICKET FOR THE CHOCOLATE MOVIE—THE ONE WITH JOHNNY DEPP."

And if that wasn't enough punishment for the night, I went on to watch Chocolat.

By Emily Walls