Monthly Archives: December 2012

Stop telling me not to use my super strength

I always felt really bad for superheroes, the majority of them hiding away in their stupid civilian clothing, constantly pretending to be something they’re not, always in fear of having their secret discovered by some idiot who would then call up the closest reporter, giving away that secret for no better reason than because nobody in the comics has anything better to do.

What’s it have to be like to be Superman, only allowed to use his super abilities when he’s dressed up that ridiculous outfit? Of course nobody really considers it from his point of view, because he’s so easily able to put on a pair of glasses and pretend like he’s just a regular guy. But while his powers might seem uncanny to us earthlings, to him it’s just his nature. To him it must be a struggle to keep it all hidden away.

Imagine the earth was about to blow up, but your parents are these geniuses who, despite the fact that nobody listened to their warnings about the impending destruction, built a prototype rocket capable of sending you as infant to a habitable planet far away inhabited by a race of aliens that appeared almost identical to human beings.

But unlike human beings, these aliens can barely walk. They can’t run. They can’t lift anything heavy at all. In fact, they can’t really do anything. They barely have enough strength and intelligence just to go about surviving and procreating. And all of the sudden a spaceship crashes and guess who’s inside? It’s you.

And some aliens take you in and raise you, but you’re a little human baby, so you’re screaming and crying and running around and throwing stuff everywhere. And these aliens are completely shocked. They have no idea how to deal with your unimaginable powers. Even your screaming is impossible for them to comprehend, let alone deal with, because their inferior bodies can’t even produce audible sounds louder than a whisper.

So you’re whole life you have your adoptive parents telling you to pretend like you’re just like everybody else. No running. No talking loud. No lifting stuff up. That’s what it must have been like for Superman growing up in Kansas. It had to have been awful. His mom sends him to the store to go get some groceries. “But don’t you use any of that super speed! Walk slow! Really slow!” And now put yourself back on that alien planet from before, and your adoptive mom tells you to walk across the room to go get the remote, but she tells you to do it really deliberately, and make it look like it’s not a struggle to pick it up when you get there.

What’s that got to be like, to modulate your strength and your speed? It’s one thing to fake walking slow, but it’s another thing to fake it to the point to where it looks authentic. We always see Superman either walking like a regular person or running as fast as the Flash. Wouldn’t it look a little suspicious if Clark Kent started walking or running but only fifteen percent faster than a normal human would? How does he control it, make it look authentic?

Back on the alien planet. You pick up the remote, you have to actually act, to literally stage a performance of you straining to lift it up after you’ve already made a whole scene of pretending to walk over to get it really slowly. That must be exhausting. They never touch on it the comics, but the majority of Superman’s brain activity must have been engaged and spent constantly trying to make a convincing show, hoping not to raise anybody’s suspicions.

If that were me, if I were that baby in that rocket ship on that alien world that I made up to illustrate my point, I’d be so pissed off, constantly bitter. Why am I living my life pretending to be something that I’m not? Why can’t I just jump across the room and pick up the remote like it’s no big deal? And I eventually would. There’s no way I’d be able to keep a lid on my powers for too long.

Sooner or later I’d be in a bad enough mood where I’d just be like, you know what? I don’t care anymore. Hey everybody I can run fast. I can fly. I can lift up giant pieces of machinery and I have X-Ray vision and laser-eyes and freeze-breath and I have super hearing and I can read really fast and you can’t shoot me with a gun, I mean you can, but it would be a waste of a bullet because I’m bulletproof.

And that’s just Superman. I’m sure life on regular Earth must be equally frustrating for all superheroes, like Spider-Man and Iceman and She-Hulk and even more obscure superheroes like Deathlock or Speedball or even Aquaman’s teen sidekick Aqualad. I find it completely unbelievable that there would be even one person with the character to keep an identity secret for an entire lifetime, let alone a whole cast of costumed caped crusaders. These universes full of super beings should realistically just be a whole bunch of villains, people who were told to shut up and slow down their whole lives, that conformity is the only answer, that you have to suppress your super natures. And eventually they’d grow more and more bitter and vile until one day they’d snap and give a big collective middle finger to regular society and its bland conventions of normality and the status quo.

But, yeah, I don’t think that would sell a whole lot of comics, not to mention TV shows or movies or actions figures. Still, it’s something to think about. Just try walking super slowly from one side of the room to the other and tell me its not something interesting to think about.

My friend is friends with Keanu Reeves

I’m so pissed off. One of my friends moved into a new apartment building a couple of months ago. “You’ll never guess who lives in the building with me!” he started telling me. He was way too excited, way too happy. I could just tell by the look on his face that I’d wind up resenting whatever words came out of his mouth. “Keanu Reeves!” Yup.

I tried to at least not look pissed off, but I probably didn’t do too good of a job. At least I didn’t go right ahead and tell him exactly what I was thinking, which was, so what? You live in the same building as Keanu Reeves? Big deal. Seriously, how is that at all news, at all something to be even remotely happy about let alone gushing with excitement? I live with tons of other people. I don’t even know anybody’s name.

What, do you think all of the sudden because you happen to live in close proximity to a celebrity that you two are going to somehow hit it off? Be friends? “Maybe he’ll knock on my door someday to borrow a cup of sugar!” my friend offered. Please, nobody borrows sugar. That’s ridiculous. If ever found myself in the position where I was in the middle of cooking or baking something, and I realized that not only did I not have any sugar, but I needed a whole cup, like a whole package of sugar, I’d either run to a store and buy some, or more likely, I’d just give up the whole project right there and throw everything away. Because obviously I hadn’t thought this through. Obviously I got way too impulsive about baking, about just throwing a bunch of ingredients in a bowl without even bothering to stop and think to myself, wait a second, do I have any sugar? Do I know how to bake? I tell you what I’m not going to do. I’m not going to start knocking on a bunch of random neighbor’s doors asking them for free groceries. If somebody ever came to my house with an empty measuring cup in hand, I’d take the measuring cup, tell them to wait there one second, and then I’d go inside the house and lock the door. I wouldn’t answer for the rest of the day.

But that’s not what I’m pissed off about. I mean, yeah, I guess I got a little pissed off there, but what I’m really pissed off about is the fact that he did it, my friend, he’s actually like friends with Keanu now. I don’t know how it happened. Well, I know the details of the how, but I just can’t figure out why. They were in the elevator or something and my friend couldn’t help himself. “Oh my God! I loved you in The Replacements!” or something like that. If I were a celebrity, I’d be so annoyed. But not Keanu. They hit it off.

They did like a karaoke night thing at his place the other night. And guess who wasn’t invited? “Oh, you know how it is,” my friend tried to tell me, “I don’t want to impose.” Yeah, he didn’t want to impose at the party, but he had no problem imposing on Keanu’s elevator ride. Isn’t that like an invasion of personal space or something? And it didn’t work for me. I spent like an entire afternoon riding up and down in that same elevator, hoping I’d get my own celebrity run-in.

And I did, I got it, Keanu finally showed up. But it wasn’t just Keanu and me, there was also some old lady in the elevator with us. She had already been up and down like five times that day. I know because I was there every time. On her fourth trip, she must have assumed that I was like an elevator boy, because she just walked in and said, “Twelve, please,” and I was like, “Excuse me, I’m not an elevator boy, you can’t tell me what to do,” and she said, “Elevator boy? Could please just push the twelve button for me? So I did, but only after I pushed two through eleven first.

Anyway, she gives me this dirty look when she walks in, but completely forgets about me once she realizes that she’s sharing my elevator ride with Keanu. “Oh my God!” she starts gushing, “I just loved that movie that you were in with Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson! You know, the one where Diane Keaton flashes the camera? What a great movie!” and Keanu was like, “Hey, thanks a lot. See you around.” And the next thing I knew it was Keanu’s floor, and he was getting ready to get off, and I hadn’t even gotten to say anything to him, like anything at all, and I really wanted to go to that karaoke party.

So as he stepped out of the elevator I kind of shouted, “Wait! Keanu! I loved Bill and Ted! Wait, I mean The Matrix! I loved The Matrix!” and as the elevator door closed, he said something to me like, “Man, those movies came out a long time ago buddy.” And that was it. I banged on the door really hard and screamed, “I love karaoke!” hoping that he heard me through the metal. I think he did, but still, he had no idea who I was or how we might get in contact with one another.

Which was such a shame, because if that stupid lady wasn’t there, I had such a good plan. I had this newspaper with me opened up to a crossword puzzle, and when Keanu stepped into the elevator, I was going to be staring at the paper, like totally not even paying attention to Keanu at all, like it could have been just anybody that walked in. And I would’ve said without looking up, “Hey man, do you know a seven-letter word for ‘empty orchestra’ Japanese origin?” And he would have said, “karaoke,” and I would have made a little show of counting out the letters, looking a little puzzled but then finally relieved when I figured out that it fit. And I’d look up and say, “Hey, thanks a lot.” And he’d say, “Sure, no problem. It’s funny you mention karaoke. I’m having a karaoke party at my place tomorrow night. You live here, right?” And I’d say, “Yeah, sure,” and then I’d stick out my hand and say, “Rob. And you are?” “Oh, I’m sorry,” he’d put down his groceries or whatever, offering me his hand, “Keanu. Keanu Reeves.” And I’d just act all casual, like I’d never heard of him before, and I’d say, “Great. Sounds great. Maybe I’ll stop by. Nice meeting you Keanu.”

But that didn’t happen. And after I finished banging on the doors I turned around and that lady was still standing there with me in the elevator staring at me. And I just looked at her for a second and then screamed, “What?”

Why so aggressive?

Sometimes you just have to fight that feeling that sprouts up inside, that emotional response to an external stimuli, something that completely hijacks your consciousness, that focuses and redirects all of your energy and awareness into something primal, something base, something outside of who you are and who you want to be.

The other day I was riding my bike home from work. I was heading east in between Third and Second Avenue. The light ahead was red and there were maybe three or four cars lined up at the stop. I’m pedaling along and all of the sudden this car behind me honks the horn. It’s a loud and sustained honk. By the intensity of the sound, by the way my body reacted, how the hairs on my body all stood up, how I felt my heart skip a beat, I could tell the car was directly behind me, way too close for a car to be trailing a bike.

And I was in a bike lane. There are tons of bike lanes in New York. Not every street has a clearly marked bike lane, but this one did, and it’s one of the reasons I take this particular route every single day. So I’m minding my own, riding up to a red light, in the bike lane, and out of nowhere this car come right on my tail and honks the horn and holds it.

My body immediately goes into red alert. I’m not a road rage kind of guy, but I’m instantly scared, but only for a second, because as soon as that instant passes and I realize that I’m not in any immediate danger, the fear is gone but the adrenaline remains, and the overall state of being that I’m left with is anger, rage, something that wasn’t there just thirty seconds before.

So I turn around, it’s a taxi, and he’s really close, way too close to me, but close enough that, as I instantly turn around to him, as I show him my middle finger, even though his windows are closed, I know that we’re close enough that he can hear me as I look the driver right in the eye and shout, “Fuck you asshole!” And as I say it, I’m sort of caught off guard by my own reaction, by the force behind the words, behind the volume in the words. My heart’s pounding, my lungs are taking in all sorts of deep breaths, preparing my muscles and blood for whatever’s going to come next.

All I need is a second to cool off here, to assess the situation. Unfortunately, I don’t get a second to think, because no sooner do I curse this guy out that he decides to show me who’s in charge on this road. He swerves further into the bike lane and accelerates, as if he’s going to plow into me. The reasonable part of my brain would have told me to run, to get out of there, but everything happened in like a minute, so there is no reasonable part, I’m just a reaction, pure animal. I stick out my leg as if to say, if you come and try to run me down, I’m at least going to kick your cab as hard as I can. Somehow that works and he slows down.

But we’re still going to the same place, right behind that line of cars waiting at a red light. We pull up behind traffic and we’re side to side. This has been a pretty aggressive minute already, and neither one of us is ready to let go of the moment. He pulls his window down to say something, but I don’t let him get a word in. “Go ahead asshole!” I shout to him, “Let’s race! Go ahead and race me to that red light!” And he makes a face at me, a real snarl.

And part of me was overcome with the urge to make a huge fist and pound down on this guy’s side mirror. Maybe I could have taken it off right there and then riden away. And I really, really considered it, if only for a second, but it was a whole second where I was thinking to myself, just do it Rob, just smash the shit out of this asshole’s car with your bare hands.

But I didn’t even get that second to really consider anything. Because as soon as he opened his window, I opened my mouth. As soon as I started talking, he opened his door and got out of the car and stood up right next to me. And that’s what jolted me out of the moment. That’s when the better part of my judgment kicked in, and I started pedaling, fast.

What the hell just happened? That was a situation that escalated fast, real fast, faster than any situation I’ve been involved in a long time. Was that guy ready to fight me? Was he going to beat me up? And what about me, was I equally ready to engage? I got a good distance ahead, turned around, saw that guy just standing by his open driver’s side door, and, still juiced up on emotion, I screamed back at him, “You’re a real asshole! A real stupid asshole!” The light turned green and I pushed myself out of there, past that street, past Second Avenue, past First, all the way to the Queensboro Bridge.

And as I pedaled up and over the bridge, I had time to think, about what happened, about how I reacted. What the hell was that? Where did that come from? I was shaken. I played over and over again in my mind what had happened, what could have happened if things had played out differently, if that guy hadn’t stopped when I kicked out my leg, if I hadn’t stopped myself when I got that urge to slam down on his mirror. So many alternate possibilities. So many different opportunities for one or both of us to get hurt, for police to have to get involved. So much unnecessary aggression and violence. Just two guys getting in each other’s faces at just that right moment where we both sent each other into instant equal but opposing rages.

I always think to myself, stay in the moment. It’s cliché advice, but it usually puts my life into perspective. In this case however, I was stuck in the moment, locked in some weird byproduct of evolution, my animal nature. Why get so angry? Why the sudden impulse towards violence? I’m reminded that it’s in all of us, that we all come from a crazy, violent world.

And I did get out. The whole thing is burned in my memory, but in reality the event only occupied no more than two minutes of actual time. I got heated, I got pissed, but I got out of it, I snapped out of it. I knew that this wasn’t a battle worth choosing. And so, yeah, I’m not exactly proud of how things went down, but I definitely learned something, about impulse, about emotion, about being reminded that you never know when reality is going to turn sour, when instinct is going to hijack the reasonable part of your brain. But it happened, and it was nuts, man, it was just fucking nuts.

Running really late for work

Sometimes I feel like I’m always running late, regardless of when I have to be up, or how much time I have at my disposal to be ready. For example, the other day my boss asked me to work a double shift. “No way,” I told him, “I hate working.” OK, I didn’t say that exactly, but I still said no. Not taking no for an answer, he countered “OK fine,” he told me, “How about you can come in at noon?” And I was like, all right, fine, that sounds doable.

And I started planning out how the day would go. I’d wake up at eight-thirty, get like three blog posts done, take my dog Steve for a long walk, make a nice breakfast, maybe even get some reading done. Let’s do it!

The next thing I know my cell phone alarm clock is blaring at the periphery of my consciousness. I’m trying to get out of bed but my body is completely unresponsive. My cell phone alarm is so loud, so grating. I don’t know if everybody is familiar with the iPhone alarms, but I always use the one that sounds like the red alert from Star Trek. It’s intense. But it’s the only one that even stands a remote shot at waking me from a deep sleep.

What happened? Eleven o’clock already? Jesus. I usually wake up a lot earlier. I barely had time to get up, shower, shave, and then take the dog for a walk before I grabbed my bike and pedaled to work at a pace I usually reserve for outrunning taxis I’ve accidentally bumped into in traffic. OK, that’s not really true. I don’t outrun taxis. I just got a little carried away with the length and dramatics of that sentence. Although I did love Premium Rush.

But still, I was right on the verge of being late for a shift that I was already told to come in late for. I really was biking to work a lot faster than I usually do. For the first time in the better part of a year, I had left the house without so much as putting a morsel of food in my mouth. More importantly was coffee, or the lack thereof. Brewing and waiting and sipping, it was all completely out of the question.

I made it on the floor of the restaurant literally at the very minute. And I’m not one of those guys to throw around the word literally. Like I actually punched in and it said 12:00. I made it to work and the floor manager sees me and goes, “Finally! Rob’s here. Where have you been?” That deal that the general manager made with me? That whole thing about working a double and then telling me to come in at noon? Did we seal the deal some kind of a secret handshake? Because he didn’t tell anybody else. So I had to explain myself to the other managers, telling them I actually wasn’t late, but even when I hunted down the GM, “Right?” I asked him, “Remember you said I could come in at noon?” “Right …” he had that look on his face, like I might be making it all up, like he couldn’t really pinpoint the agreement I was talking about.

The day is over. I made it through. I just can’t get over the fact that, with two extra hours added to my day, I wound up being later than ever, later than I am on a regular day when I have to be at work at my regular time. I missed breakfast, I missed coffee, and I didn’t get to write anything. My whole day at work was thrown off balance. I was having what I assumed to be a lack of caffeine induced headache, even though normally I don’t believe in those. And I was starving. I was starving and serving people delicious, delicious lunch. It was torture.

When did I become so dependent on coffee? I never drank coffee in college. I don’t even remember when it became this habit. I honestly don’t know how I got to the point where I need three cups of coffee just to feel like myself in the morning. That’s kind of crazy, right? But tons of adults drink coffee. Maybe I’m more of an adult than I’m letting myself admit. You know, aside from the whole almost being late to work at noon thing.

These stupid goddamn idiot stupid morons

I just hate it when people cut me off in traffic. That’s so stupid. They’re so stupid. I’m trying to drive too. And now they’re in front of me. Stupid idiots. And then they start driving really slow. That’s stupid also. Like get out of my way, man, so stupid.

You know what’s really stupid? Hopscotch. Hopscotch is so stupid. Oh wow look at me, I’m a little kid, drawing some stupid boxes with chalk. Oh and I don’t even know how to make all the boxes the same size, because I’m such an idiot. And then I’m going to take turns with my idiot friends and we’re going to throw a bunch of stupid rocks over and over again. And we’re all going to look so stupid, just hopping around. Hop, I get it. Everyone’s hopping. But scotch? It doesn’t have anything to do with scotch. What a stupid name, hopscotch.

I would always try and run up to those idiot little kids and push them over while they hopping around, pushing them right out of those stupid little boxes. Or I would just stand right in the middle of the hopscotch board. “Go ahead and try something,” I’d say, “you stupid idiots.” And some of those idiot kids would start crying and screaming, running away to go tell the teacher on me. But my teachers were all such idiots, such morons. I’d just throw my hands in the air and say stuff like, “What? Come on! I didn’t! No! That’s not true!” and the teacher was so stupid, eventually she’d just be like, “OK now, enough! All of you!” Ha! All of us. Including those idiot babies playing stupid hopscotch.

The other day I went to go get a sandwich at the deli. I told that stupid deli guy, “No lettuce or tomato! I hate lettuce and tomato! OK? Got it?” Do you know what that stupid moron deli guy did? That idiot, you know what he put on my sandwich? Lettuce and tomato. That idiot! I said, “No lettuce or tomato!” and what does he put on my sandwich? Both of them. That stupid moron idiot stupid deli guy. What kind of an idiot puts lettuce and tomato on a sandwich when I clearly said, “Hey! You! I want a sandwich, but I don’t want any lettuce or tomato! Hello? Hello? No lettuce or tomato! Do you understand me? Does this guy understand me? No! Lettuce! Or! Tomato!” I don’t know why that stupid deli has to go and hire the stupidest idiots to work at their deli section. Jesus Christ, it’s a sandwich, and I told him over and over again not to put any lettuce or tomato on it. That moron. What an idiot.

You know what else I just can’t stand? These idiot people around my neighborhood that keep walking their stupid dogs in front of my house. Keep your flea infested mutt away from my house. Walk on the other side, you idiot. I always just stay by my front door and I say as loud as I can whenever a dog walker walks his smelly dog in front of my house, stuff like, “Stupid dogs! I hate dogs! Get that flea ridden mutt away from my property! You goddamn nuisances!”

Or these stupid leaves. Every fall that stupid tree in front of my house starts losing its stupid leaves. What an idiot tree. I’m telling you, what kind of a tree keeps losing its leaves every single year? Come on! And one by one, right in front of my house. So I have to go out there with some stupid rake and I have to start raking these stupid leaves, and then when I’m done, that idiot tree is at it again, shaking in the wind, dropping leaves everywhere.

That reminds me. Did I tell you about that idiot sandwich guy yet? Please don’t even get me started. If you went to a deli and ordered a sandwich, and you told that idiot deli guy over and over and over and over again, “Hey buddy! Did you put any lettuce or tomato on that sandwich? Hello? What is that? Is that lettuce? What about that over there, is that lettuce? Lift that up. Lift it up so I can see if there’s any lettuce or tomato under there,” what would you expect to find when you opened up that sandwich? I bet you it wouldn’t be lettuce or tomato. And what if you saw lettuce and tomato, not just one, but both, both lettuce and tomato? Wouldn’t you feel like an idiot? Wouldn’t you feel like that no good idiot goddamn stupid goddamn deli guy was just so stupid, the stupidest deli guy in the word, can’t even figure out how to not put lettuce and tomato on a goddamn sandwich? I’m telling you, this guy, I almost feel bad for him, for how stupid he is. I should have just made my own sandwich. Goddamn lettuce and goddamn stupid tomato.