Yearly Archives: 2013

Reader mail: Toilet paper

Today I’m going to respond to some reader mail. I’d do this more often, but nobody ever sends me any anything. And so when I got this email today, I wasn’t going to ignore it. No, I want to encourage stuff like this, right? So here it goes. Julie wrote me:

OK so I think you should write a blog post about toilet paper. People seem to have a very strong preference for whether the toilet paper roll should be put in so that the paper is pulled from the top or the bottom. Random, I know.

Julie, thanks again for writing. I’m really interested by your email because, up until now, I’ve never even considered what you’re talking about. It’s always just there, the toilet paper, except when it’s out, obviously, but now that you mention it, yeah, I guess the paper does dispense itself from a particular direction.

And now that I’m thinking about it even more, things are starting to click, like I’m thinking about all of those times growing up when my mother would get really upset with all of us every time we, “put the toilet paper on the wrong way.” I don’t know why I never made the connection before.

Yeah, and, also, every once in a while, not always, but sometimes, I’d say like half the time, my wife comes up to me and she’s like, “Rob, what’s wrong with you? Why is this so difficult?” and, you know, statistically speaking, I’m bound to get it right half the time. And half the time I’m getting scolded for doing it the wrong way, but I’m not getting it, that there’s even a difference, so I guess nothing’s being reinforced, nothing other than, well, sometimes I’m just going to get yelled at about the toilet paper.

Because, yeah, sometimes I deserve to be yelled at about the toilet paper. I’m not trying to make the argument that I’m the perfect housemate, that I’m just this guy minding his own business, keeping his side of the street clean, every once in a while getting ambushed about the direction of the toilet paper.

No, a lot of the time I totally deserve it. Like, if there’s not really any left, and I’m upstairs, I know that I should go downstairs to where we keep the big package of toilet paper, I should go down and get a new one. Since I’m down there already, I might as well get two, you know, consolidate the trips downstairs. Right?

Right. But a lot of the time, even though my intentions are good, if there was enough toilet paper to satisfy my toilet paper needs, I’ll often get distracted before or during the act of going downstairs to get more. And again, why are we keeping all of our toilet paper so far from the toilet? I know the answer to that. It’s because there’s no room to keep all of the toilet paper in the bathroom. That’s the answer.

I’m constantly trying to insert a different answer into the conversation, like, well, let’s just keep it in the bathroom anyway, even though there’s no room for it. But there’s an answer for that too, it has something to do with adults not living that way, like you can’t just keep things out, like a giant bulk thing of toilet paper that you bought at the bulk store.

And then I would argue, well, why are we shopping at the bulk store? To save trips that we’d have to make to buy more toilet paper. It’s great. And it’s a great answer, at least I think so. Those super bulk packs of toilet paper, they last my wife and me like four months. That’s four months of never having to leave the house to buy toilet paper. Everybody can get behind that.

So by that same logic, I would then say, well, why only go ninety percent of the way? I’d like to not only save trips to the store, but I’d also like to save trips downstairs. If the overall goal is to cut down on time getting up to get toilet paper, then why shouldn’t we just keep that whole big thing of fifty plus rolls of toilet paper on the bathroom floor? It’s a bathroom. I don’t think it’s totally out of the ordinary to expect to find toilet paper in the bathroom. And again, I’m not an architect, sorry I don’t have a time machine to travel back to the past to convince the architects who built this two-bedroom to maybe build a closet, maybe a tiny closet, something that could fit a big bulk object, maybe like two feet by two feet.

But why am I wasting my breath? You don’t think I’ve gone through this, and many similarly convincing arguments, hundreds of times already? I just can’t win. The end result is always the same. And it’s like, whenever I take stock of my life, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m constantly walking up and down the stairs to either go get or to come back up with a roll (or two) of toilet paper.

Julie, I hope that answers your question. I was a little reluctant to get into the whole toilet paper subject, because the way my mind works, one thing often leads to another, and I didn’t want the conversation naturally steering toward, you know, like what do we use toilet paper for? Like poop and stuff. Ugh, gross. I just mentioned it. I just mentioned it in a half-assed attempt to congratulate myself for not mentioning it. I was so close.

Keep those emails coming!

RobG@strictlyautobiographical.com

Andre and the big race

I was training for this race for, I don’t know, for forever, a marathon, and the big day was fast approaching. I saw on Facebook a few days before, it was Andre, we had since reconnected, you know, on Facebook anyway. He put up this status update, “Getting pumped for the big race!” and there were something like a hundred and twenty likes. No way, I thought, I didn’t know Andre was a runner.

So I sent him a private message, I was like, hey man, are you running the big race? The same race I’m running? I didn’t know you were training. And he responded back, but not on a private message, he wrote on my wall, “Yeah man, it’s my first race! I’m getting really pumped up!” It was basically identical to his own Facebook post, the one that he written earlier. And still, his comment on my wall got something like sixty likes, like people that only I knew, like my mom and cousins and stuff.

Which, whatever, I wasn’t going to let it piss me off. This was about me, about my training, about me hitting my personal best, my goals, my time. Still, I couldn’t stop myself from hitting refresh on his page, all of these, “Good luck tomorrow!” wall posts, after somebody would write something, somebody else would write something else, and Andre would go down the list, liking every single comment.

“Really feelin’ the love!” he threw somewhere in there. It didn’t matter. I had to focus on envisioning my goals, stuff like that. The big day came, I got up early, I tried to keep a low profile at the starting line. I wore this hooded sweatshirt and huddled in a corner somewhere to wait for the announcement for the runners to line up.

But I couldn’t help but notice to my right, there was this group of runners all wearing bright yellow team jerseys. And wouldn’t you know it, Andre was in the middle of the pack. I had to see what was going on. They were all like singing these songs, something about a team, I don’t know, there was a lot of chanting.

“Hey Andre, what’s up? What is this, you’re part of a team?”

“Oh, hey man! Yeah, you know, no big deal, we all donated a bunch of money to kids with cancer. We figured, might as well run for a cause, right? Try to make a little bit of a difference, you know what I mean?”

I knew exactly what he meant, “Jesus man, those charity teams, what are those like a couple grand?” I had considered trying to get a spot in the race through a charity, but two thousand dollars, even if I did hit up all of my friends and family, would I be able to make it happen? And if I didn’t, I’d be liable for that amount. I couldn’t do it.

So I went on craigslist and bought some guy’s ticket for four hundred bucks, still a lot more expensive than it would have been had I just qualified or won the race lottery. It’s so tough, these big races, they make it impossible for regular runners to run. And I’m better than regular. I think so anyway. I’m just not good enough to qualify on my own. I’m just short, just a little.

And this guy, he contacted me, I said, where’s a good spot for us to meet up so I can grab the ticket? And he tells me to come by his office in Midtown. Well, I asked, can we meet somewhere a little in between? It’s kind of tough for me to get all the way over there. What about, where do you live, could I swing by your neighborhood? And he repeated the same email, to meet him by his office.

So I showed up and there were like a thousand people outside of his office building. I called his cell phone, he told me to wait outside. I waited like fifteen minutes, I couldn’t tell who he’d be, what he’d look like. I called him again but he didn’t answer. Finally he showed up, he just kind of stuck his hand out, like give me the cash. I gave him the cash, he handed over a manila envelope with the race number.

“Hey man,” I asked, “What about the race t-shirt?” Every race gives you a race t-shirt. It’s awesome. It’s great to wear it around town afterwards, it’s like the next best thing to wearing the medal around your neck. He started walking back toward his office, without even turning around, he was like, “No race t-shirt.”

Whatever, I ran the race, it was great, a personal best. I was still a little shy for next year’s qualifying time, but I’d get there, I was improving. Still, I went onto Facebook that night, Andre had posted tons of pictures, like during the race. Like he must have stopped several times along the course to have conversations with friends. He posted his time, something like just under six hours.

“Congrats Andre!” “Way to run buddy!” Like. Like. Hundreds of likes. Hundreds of comments, dozens of “Thanks guys! Just trying to make a difference!” My mom, I don’t know, Andre must have friended her on Facebook, she wrote something like, “So proud of you!”

And I saw him running in the park later that week, he was wearing the race t-shirt. He gave me a wave. Two other runners ran by, they were wearing race t-shirts too. They passed Andre and they all gave thumbs up, “Way to go!” “Great race!” and then they ran by me, and one of them spit to the side, toward me, I don’t think he saw me, it didn’t get on me, but it was close enough.

Movie Review: Pacific Rim

Throughout the entirety of Pacific Rim, all I could think about was stuff like, wow, this is such an awesome movie. It keeps getting better and better. Not once am I finding myself even remotely bored. I cannot wait to go home and write about how much I loved this movie.

And I did love the movie. But I saw it with my wife and the first thing she said upon exiting the theater was, “Wow, that was dumb.” How could we have arrived at two dramatically differing opinions after sitting next to each other for the exact same two and a half hours? Worse, why couldn’t I really mount a defense?

Because, look, I know when I’m defending movies that shouldn’t be defended. Like when I write about how much I loved Iron Man 3 or Thor, yeah, it’s probably because I’ve spent over fifty percent of my life reading comic books, that it’d have to be a really bad comic book movie for me to admit that I didn’t at some level at least enjoy a little bit what I just saw.

Like Daredevil, or Spider Man 3. Go ahead and start throwing eggs, I know that I’m broaching a very sensitive subject here, but were those movies really that bad? I haven’t watched them in a while, but I remember enjoying them. I liked the first Hulk movie. I always default back to the twelve year old me growing up on Long Island, no Internet, no cable TV, I used to get a thrill just from watching Fantastic Four cartoons on Sunday mornings. Never in my wildest imagination would I picture myself as an adult presented with dozens upon dozens of full-length comic book motion pictures featuring B-list superheroes.

I’m getting a little sidetracked from Pacific Rim, yes, but this is all adding up to a huge disclaimer, that in an attempt to review movies, I’m trying to go for an unbiased reaction after having seen one. I don’t know what the opening weekend numbers are, and I’ve yet to read any professional reviewers. I just want to go see a movie, and try as best I can to call it like I see it.

But it’s often the case that something cool like this will come out, a superhero movie, or in this case, a robots vs. alien monsters movie, and I can already picture exactly how the naysayers will react, similar to how my wife put it, that it was dumb. That it was just a bunch of fight scenes linked together by a pretty cheap plot.

And yeah, I guess, if you want to get all cynical and scientific about the movie, I suppose there really isn’t a whole lot more to it than that, alien monsters invade the earth through a portal deep in the Pacific. In response, we build a bunch of rock-em, sock-em robots to beat them all up.

But whatever, those feelings I was experiencing in that theater were real. It was pure joy. And I’ve sat through movies that should have been catered to me, like the new Superman, and I’ve been put to sleep. There was seriously no down time in the fun and excitement here. The score was a movie length fight song. The battle scenes were pure chaotic euphoria.

Did I mention that the pilots of the robots have to link their minds via something called a neural handshake? And that’s not like a colloquialism, the scientists say stuff like, “Neural handshake complete.” That’s what I’m looking for in a big action robot movie, people maintaining a straight face while talking about a neural handshake. The side characters, the almost unnecessary plots and asides and conveniently placed toilets that made up the caulk to this movie’s tiles, everything was fun, ridiculous, everything was insane.

And it’s a good concept. When was the last time we’ve had a really crazy monster movie? All I can think of are the old Godzilla films from decades ago. I know that the series has been rebooted several times in recent years, but nothing sticks, because everything tries too hard to be serious, to depict a modern world where big monsters wreak havoc.

This isn’t that world. It’s just further enough in the future to where the world resembles the one we live in, but all of the backstory is explained in the first ten or fifteen minutes, so everything is alien, fresh, reminiscent of the real but not even close to anything we’d be able to mistake for reality.

It’s just, my heart is still pumping, there’s still a surplus of adrenaline coursing through my veins. I really did love this movie. It’s fun, it’s pretense-free, they laid out some very simple rules that guide the course of the film and they rarely stray from the formula. It works. It’s pure hyper energy, it’s like an amusement park, one built entirely out of crazy roller coasters, and there are no lines, and they just let you keep riding everything over and over again for as long as you want. For like two and a half hours, anyway.

Hey Donald Rumsfeld, you’re an asshole

Four or five years ago, I was riding my bike home from work one afternoon when I ran into former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. At the time, I was waiting tables at this restaurant on East 60^th Street in New York. As a bike commuter, I had to do this weird loop few blocks out of my way to make it to the bicycle entrance for the Queensboro Bridge. It was annoying, because the restaurant was only like one block away. But it was against traffic, and at around five or so in the afternoon, trying to swim upstream like that is suicidal.

And so I was heading north on Third Avenue when I saw him, Donald Rumsfeld. It was definitely Donald Rumsfeld. It had to be. It was maybe a month or so after he left the Bush administration, right around when Dick Cheney was talking about how he was the greatest Secretary of Defense that had ever lived.

You think about the George W. Bush presidency, and again, I don’t want to get too political here, but those are the years that I came of age. I was a junior in high school when W got elected, I was a senior during 9/11, and I remember it was in the middle of our spring break during my freshman year of college when the President got on TV and gave Saddam Hussein that twenty-four hour ultimatum.

I had no idea what was going on back then. I didn’t read any papers or watch the news. But I remember seeing that speech and watching people’s reactions to Operation Iraqi Freedom. There were a few dissenting opinions here and there, but mostly it was stuff like, yeah, let’s get them. Let’s get those assholes. Nobody fucks with us. Stuff like that. Remember, it was like a year after 9/11. I still remembered being that senior in high school and watching the Vice President on TV telling us that it wasn’t a matter of if there’d be another attack, but when. So this stuff, to me anyway, it wasn’t anything that I thought of as being outside the realms of how the world was supposed to operate.

And then throughout the course of college, I started keeping up with current events. We weren’t out of Iraq in six months. I thought for sure, I just knew it, that Kerry was going to win the 2004 election. He didn’t. We’d be in Iraq for a while. I graduated college. I started watching documentaries about the Iraq war and what was happening overseas, why we were doing what we were doing.

A big moment that I’ll remember, something that, I hate to say cemented, because I want to have this idea of myself as being open to change, but something was firmly planted in my mind when Saddam Hussein was captured, when we handed him over to the new Iraqi government, and he was executed. Someone present at the event managed to record the act via cellphone, and for a whole weekend in February, this grainy footage was playing on repeat over every news channel.

I remember thinking, this is the culmination of American justice? This is why we went in there, we insisted that this guy get out, all so we could hand him over to his own political enemies for a good old fashioned hanging? A hanging, with a noose. It’s medieval. And we enabled that. We went over there and this big result was a hanging. It was crazy.

And throughout everything, as things got bad, then better, then bad again, as civilians got massacred, as it came to light that the administration had all but lied to the world regarding the justification of the invasion, everybody in charge, all of the real key players, every weekend they’d run around to all of these interview shows and double down on their arrogance. Even now, these idiots are still parading around the country, giving lame speeches in a pathetic attempt to defend their actions, belittling their opponents as they try to carve out a legacy that doesn’t involve the words war criminals.

Toward the end of his presidency, even Bush knew that he’d given too much power to the wrong group of people. It was too little, too late, unfortunately, but Rumsfeld resigned in disgrace, Alberto Gonzalez as well. Even Cheney’s grip on executive authority was curtailed significantly, leaving relations between the former President and his VP strained to this day. But in thinking about everything that went down, all of the lives lost and reputation squandered, yeah, these guys might have lost their jobs, but they got off easy. They’re still greeted as champions by certain sectors of the political spectrum. Their agenda, their worldview, while maybe it’s in remission, it’s hardly been defeated. It’s all a waiting game, they just bide their time utnil another like-minded President is elected, the right environment to carry out their goals. To borrow from a popular TV show, all of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.

But back to me, riding my bike on Third Avenue, it was definitely Donald Rumsfeld. He was at the head of his pack, surrounded by an entourage of old men in suits. I was going pretty fast, but I knew that this was a unique encounter, for me anyway. I wanted to say something. But what? I couldn’t think of anything, so I wound up shouting, “Hey Donald Rumsfeld!” and he kind of looked up, that Rumsfeld scowl, and I yelled, “You’re an asshole!” and that was it. I turned onto East 62^nd, made the right onto Second Avenue, and I was over the bridge pedaling away back home.

Every once in a while I’ll think about what went down. It was a very minor interaction that I’m sure I’ve unconsciously embellished in my head over the years. Like, did he really look up at me? Was I really yelling in as strong a voice as I think I was? And I was so certain that it was him at the time, but thinking about it from four year’s distance, what was he doing over by that part of the city? Why was he in New York? Was it really him?

I’m sure it was him. And I’m pretty sure that, even though I didn’t really have anything to say, I think I said exactly what I should have said. Because seriously, what hasn’t this guy heard before? He goes to Washington, he sits at the head of whatever think-tanks and conferences, and he probably hears arguments from both side of the coin, from people more educated and up-to-date with what’s going on than I could ever hope to be. What was I going to do, stop my bike and get into a policy argument with the former Secretary of Defense?

No, a guy like Rumsfeld, I felt that it was important for him to be faced with his legacy as it is, not as how he and his buddies planned it out before they ever sent the first troops overseas. And maybe he can dismiss opposing arguments from the highest levels of government officials. Maybe he can listen to professional journalists and analysts rebuke his decisions and dismiss everything as something fundamentally flawed.

And probably, my comment didn’t register at all. I’m nobody. I’m some dude on a bike screaming out an insult. Maybe he didn’t even hear me. But that was my moment. For just a second, I had this guy’s attention, I think, and I wanted to let him know, one guy to another, hey Donald Rumsfeld, I think you’re an asshole.

Just Do It

Ever since Lance Armstrong fell from grace, I’ve had to default back to my old life motto, Just Do It. It felt great, just, right, like finding an old sweatshirt in the back of your closet that you haven’t put on in years, like you must have put it back there almost immediately after buying it, because you’re thinking back, how often did I really get to wear this sweatshirt, two, three times? And so it’s practically new still, and you’re looking at it, worried, is it still in style? Will I look like a man from the past? And you’re standing there contemplating all of the various ways in which the world is going to judge you, and this voice pops up in the back of your head, it says, “Just do it.”

And you do it. You put on that sweatshirt. That’s what I did. Not with a sweatshirt, that was all just like an example. No, I’d never lose track of a sweatshirt like that. Maybe a pair of sneakers. Sometimes I’ll go to a shoe store just to see if they even have any shoes in my size. And it’s always stupid, because they never do, it’s always twelve, thirteen, tops, and so I’ll get discouraged, I’ll find myself way in the back of the store, that huge wall where it’s just “Everything Must Go!” the shoes are all organized by size, and there’s a little section just devoted to fourteen.

But it’s like, everything must go for a reason. Why? Because all of these shoes suck. But they’re there. There’s always like four or five pairs of shoes in my size. And I start thinking, wow, this is a great deal, what a find. And I’ll try them on but I’m not really loving them. Like I don’t hate them, but I don’t love them, and I’ll debate over and over, do I want them? Should I buy them? And then, conveniently, coincidentally, maybe, but it’s just what I need to hear, or see, I look at the box, the shoes are Nike, or, maybe not these shoes, but I’m in a shoe store, I see the Nike logo everywhere, and in my head it’s like, “Rob. Just do it.”

So I buy them, I make an effort to wear them once, but I’m definitely self-conscious. These aren’t exactly regular shoes. If they were regular, someone would have bought them off the regular aisle, not the please-get-these-shoes-out-of-our-store aisle. I make an excuse to go home early, change out of my shoes, and I don’t even want to look at them anymore, they’re a reminder of everything that’s wrong with me, my flawed sense of style, my inability to be happy with what should be as simple as picking out a pair of shoes.

Back in the closet you go, shoes. And then years later, I’m doing like a massive cleaning, I find them, I think, man, these are practically brand new, and that same feeling creeps in, I’m like, maybe I can make these work. And again, think about the savings. Think about that sensation of having a practically brand new pair of shoes just materializing in my closet. And I’m saying it out loud this time, I’m like, “Just do it!” and my wife is like, “Rob? Did you say something?” and I have to try to avoid giving a direct answer, because I don’t want to sound like a crazy person.

Still, they don’t fit, they weren’t in style years ago, and while the arc of the fashion universe might be long, it hasn’t yet bent toward this particular pair of shoes. The money lost years ago is hardly worth justifying now, and so I don’t feel any guilt at throwing them away, whatever, lesson learned. I pause at the trash can, shouldn’t I try to hold onto these, maybe find a shoe charity that I can donate them to? But I start imagining all of that work, I’ll never do it, I’ll put it off, these things are going to find their way right back into the closet. I’m outside already, I’m looking at the trash can, just do it man, just throw them away.

Done. It was almost kind of easier with Live Strong. I wasn’t so impulsive. That was just a generic expression of fortitude, like, do I really feel like going to work today? I don’t know. Live strong. Whatever, I’ll take the day off, that’ll be good for living strong, because I need to be relaxed to live strong. I can’t be stressed out to live strong. Living strong is so much more adaptable to any situation.

But just do it? I think I need a new life motto. I’m accumulating so much junk. Stupid t-shirts with lame slogans. This pair of pants that almost fits right but not really. I’ve got to stop just doing it, because my house isn’t big enough for all of this garbage. What other kinds of philosophies are out there? What kind of inspirational sayings might apply to how I want to live my life? Have it your way? I’m lovin’ it? That could work. Maybe I’ll gain like a new positive outlook on all of my bad purchases. Like that ugly jacket. I’m lovin’ it? Yeah, maybe I could be lovin’ it.