Monthly Archives: May 2014

My action figures

I have these two Marvel Comics action figures on my desk. They’re from when I was a little kid. For some reason, out of all of the toys that I had growing up, these little plastic Wolverine and Deadpool figures are really the only ones that made it, to still being a part of my life, even if they only exist in a background kind of way. You think about Toy Story, right, you think about Buzz and Woody having to deal with the inevitability of getting tossed to the curb. But not these two. They’re right here on this desk.

I think I got them when I was in the second or third grade, and twenty-two years later, these guys look pretty good. It’s not like I’ve taken special care of them or anything. As soon as I got them, for Christmas, a birthday, I can’t even remember, they were torn out of the packaging, whatever tiny guns and knives that fit into their molded plastic hands were almost immediately lost.

I never really understood action figures, even as a little kid. I knew that I was supposed to want them. Every commercial on TV told me so. But I never knew what to do with them. Like, are you supposed to hold one in each hand and make them interact?

They’re cool decorations I guess. But that’s about it. Although I didn’t have the biggest collection out of all of my friends, I definitely wasn’t lacking. I had a bunch of superhero stuff. I remember one time I went to the comic book store and saw this Mr. Fantastic action figure. “With fantastic stretching powers!” the box read, and in my mind I imagined some sort of a cool bendable Gumby-like guy. But when I finally got to pick out a toy for whatever reason you let a little kid pick out a twelve-dollar toy at a comic book store, I was really disappointed that it wasn’t really a stretching toy at all. The limbs just kind of clicked out by maybe a centimeter or two, giving him a weird stick-figure appearance.

I didn’t really enjoy playing with action figures, but it was the only real currency that boys in my class dealt with. Not that you’d ever exchange them. But just having the most, a big collection. It was important. In addition to super hero action figures I also had wrestling action figures, Ghost Busters actions figures, Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles.

It’s all pretty dumb, all of the stuff I valued as a little kid. Pogs were fucking stupid. Let’s get a bunch of kids to beg their parents for a dollar so they can buy a bunch of cardboard chips at Seven-Eleven. And again, a part of me knew that these were stupid too, that I was forcing myself to have fun presenting my pog collection for the approval of my ten-year-old peers. But everybody was faking the same excitement, what would I have done, just sat it out? What else would I have had? Nothing.

In addition to the Wolverine and Deadpool, I definitely had a Spider-Man figure that lasted all the way past college. In my first apartment after I graduated, I definitely remember stringing a thread through his plastic hands and taping it to the ceiling, making it look like he was in mid-swing. And then, I don’t know, somewhere along the line, packing my stuff into boxes, unpacking everything, I have no idea what happened to that Spider-Man.

So now it’s just the two, that’s all that I have left of my action figures. Recently Wolverine’s arm snapped off below the elbow, and that kind of sucked, but I reattached it with duct tape, and so, I don’t know, now he looks battle-hardened.

I’ve always kept them standing up at the back of the desk, but these are old toys, there’s a little bit of play in the joints. It’s hard to get them on really firm footing. I’d stand them up, and not right away, but definitely by the end of the day, they’d just fall over. It was getting to be a distraction, the constantly trying to find the right balance, positioning their limbs in such a way to try and foster some stability. Finally I tried wedging one of Wolverine’s claws inside of Deadpool’s hands, like where one his knives used to go.

And it worked. They look like they’re holding hands, yeah, but they haven’t fallen over in weeks. It’s like four legs of a table, ultimate stability. And yeah, the positioning is awkward, but now that I don’t have to fiddle with them every day, it’s easier for my brain to have them just melt into the background. They only pop out once in a while, and it looks like they’re holding on to each other. Or they’re fighting. They’re seeing which one is going to outlast the other. Because I think about myself as an old man, fifty, sixty years from now. Maybe I’ll have one. That would be cool. Holding on to both would be really cool, but it’s just realistically not going to happen. If I could make a chart, the number of action figures I’ve had, over time, and I graphed it out to the present day, there’d be a clear line pointing down. And I really don’t have any reason to think that the decline is over. So no, I’ll probably be lucky to wind up with just one.

Agoraphobia

I was at this trivia night at a bar by my place a few nights ago, and one of the questions was, “Agoraphobia is the fear of what?” And I knew it, I’ve heard this trivia question a thousand times before. I told my friends, “I got this,” as I snatched the answer card from the middle of the table, and I started writing right away, “Fear of open spaces.”

And my friend Bill objected, “Rob, you can’t just write stuff in without consulting the group.” But I knew it, OK, “Bill, I one hundred percent know the answer to this question, all right? It’s agoraphobia. It’s a fear of open spaces. It’s the opposite of claustrophobia. OK?”

“OK Rob, that’s fine, but it’d still be cool if you could just talk it out with the rest of the group before you just grab the pad, OK?”

And I said, “Bill, do you have a better answer? Do you have a different definition for agoraphobia?” And he didn’t. So that was that.

Only, when they were reading the answers back, the announcer said, “Agoraphobia is: the fear of leaving your house.” And I said to my table, “Do you think she’ll count our answer?” Because, yeah, it was kind of the same answer. They were worded totally differently. But if you think about it, right, claustrophobia is that fear of being cooped up, right, and so if you want to be cooped up, like if you like hanging out inside, that’s the opposite. You’re going to be agoraphobic.

So I waited until the end of that round and I went up to the quizmaster, she was busy putting everybody’s scores into the computer, but I just needed her attention for a second. “Hey, quizmaster, remember that agoraphobia question from before? Did you accept our answer? Fear of open spaces?”

And she looked up at me and was like, “Agora-what? Huh?”

“Yeah, from before, agoraphobia.”

And she put down what she was doing and clicked a few times on the computer screen before reading something out loud, word for word, “Agoraphobia is the fear of leaving your house.” Even the intonation was identical, she repeated it exactly like she said it the first time.

“Right, I remember the answer. But we wrote fear of open spaces. Which is kind of like a similar way of saying what you said, right? Because trust me, I know this answer.”

“Look man, I have to go by what’s on the computer, OK, so, I probably didn’t give you guys credit for agoraphobia. Sorry dude.”

And I took out my phone, because while she was busy butchering the answers to well known questions, I just had to double check, on the Internet. I found some Google search and I was like, “Look, just take a look here …”

“Dude, I just have to go by the computer, all right? And seriously, no cell phones during trivia night, OK, that’s not cool, I could disqualify you.”

And so, whatever, she wasn’t budging. Of course I felt like she was on a power trip, I mean, give me a trivia mic and I’d probably be just as ruthless. But this wasn’t fair. And when I got back to the table, Bill made sure to position the pen and pad like totally across the table from where I was sitting.

We were in a six-way tie for third place for most of the next two rounds, and everyone kept giving me the stink-eye, making sure to remind me that we could have been in a five-way tie for second. “Are you one hundred percent sure?” Chris said, mocking my self-assuredness from before, every time I pitched an answer to the rest of the team.

It was useless. Even if nobody knew the following answers, they’d never give any of my wildcard guesses a shot. Whatever, there was a music round later in the night, and we only got like two or three answers, so even if we had scored that agoraphobia, it wouldn’t have done us much good.

“Besides,” I kept badgering Bill on the way out the door, “Did you have a better answer for agoraphobia? Did any of you?” And nobody answered. Because nobody did.

And then when I went home, I went on my computer to really get a full-screen definition of agoraphobia. And this one web site said, “It’s not the opposite of claustrophobia. It’s a fear of any situation in which there is no escape.”

Which, that includes an open space right? Come on, I remember so clearly studying for the SATs, agoraphobia, the fear of open spaces. Where is all this stuff about anxiety and panic attacks coming from? Isn’t that just like a fear of everything? And even if that’s the case, don’t open spaces also fall into that category of everything?

I’m just saying, man, agoraphobia, if they’re going to run a trivia night, I’m not saying the quizmaster needs to know everything, but just a general familiarity with basic stuff, that would be nice. Doesn’t that seem like a quizmaster prerequisite? Right?

I’m sorry but, you’re fired

I just don’t think we have any room for you here, not enough room, not with these numbers. What are we supposed to tell the shareholders? Nobody wants to see you go, well, nobody except for Maggie, but her objections … well, I probably shouldn’t have said that. Let’s just say that … I can assure you that Maggie had nothing to do with … with this. And between you and me, Maggie’s not going to make the next round of cuts. So don’t think of this as Maggie over you, I mean, nobody’s winning here. Sure, it might be hard to walk out of this office and not notice Maggie sitting there pretending not to smirk, but just think …

You know what? Forget I said anything about Maggie. And please don’t tell her what I just told you. Because if she confronts me … look, I’m going to be real with you here. I’m thinking that we’re going to fire Maggie. But I shouldn’t have told you that. I see now how that was a mistake. But I can’t take it back, and I’m realizing now how you don’t have anything to lose, because we’re already letting you go, and so I’m sure getting in Maggie’s face and telling her what I just accidentally told you, I’d bet that would bring some measure of satisfaction. I can see her just sitting there, not looking up at you, but smirking, smiling as you pack up everything from your desk into those boxes.

I don’t know why they make us give you these boxes. I mean, do you really have many personal belongings here? At work? Sure, I guess I’ve got these photos, although, I’m not really attached to any of them. If I were in your position, I’d gladly leave everything here, “You get rid of them,” I’d tell whoever shoved a box in my face, telling me, I have to be out of here by the end of the day. Of course, if I were in your position, I wouldn’t be in my position right now, and so I guess they wouldn’t be my picture frames. Would they be yours? No, that doesn’t make any sense.

What I’m trying to say is, jeez, I really shouldn’t have brought up Maggie. Look, I’ll be straight with you here, OK, if you tell Maggie what I just told you, I’m going to have to deny it. All right, Maggie’s going to come storming in here, talk about lack of professionalism, because again, I really shouldn’t have said anything. Do you know that you’re one of my first firings? Not the first. But definitely the second. The first one was Charles a while back, but he probably knew it was coming. And in his case, I think I said too little. I’m not sure I got across the whole let go aspect of the termination. Is he still coming in? Regardless, that definitely went a lot smoother than this is going right now.

Basically, if you tell Maggie, I’ll deny it. And it won’t end there, OK, because I can’t deny it and then fire her next week. She’ll be like, “I knew it!” And I can’t take that, not from Maggie, jeez. And so I’ll have to keep her on, indefinitely, probably. And so do you want that? You want her to keep her job? Or do you want her to get fired?

Obviously we haven’t made any final decisions regarding Maggie, or any of the cuts really, I’m just thinking that, there’s no way she makes it past next week. Which, yeah, it’s just unfortunate, you know, the whole company is just resizing or rescaling, or restructuring, what do you call it? There’s a lot of rebranding. Like this is new for me, letting people go, that’s like a rebranding. Man, I hope this gets easier. For me, I mean, you seem to be taking it all in stride.

And who knows? I mean, it was a bad quarter, yeah, and it sucks that we kind of have to go quarter to quarter here, but what if the next quarter is good? What if it’s really good? We’re probably going to be looking at some un-restructuring, which, I think you’d have to talk to HR again, I don’t know if they’d make you go through the whole interview process. Did you interview with me? When you first started? I mean, so yeah, you probably wouldn’t get me again, not unless they re-rebrand me back to hiring. Right now it’s strictly firing.

Not firing, you know, let go. Man, thanks for being so cool about this. Like especially in regards to Maggie. I seriously can’t stress enough how much I shouldn’t have brought her into this, OK. And like I said, even though I’m pretty sure we’re going to let her go, she’s definitely staying if she confronts me with any of this. Hell, I’ll suggest she gets promoted. So yeah, just keep your chin up, all right. Do you need a box? Because I have all of these boxes if you need to … like if you want to carry anything out. Yeah, I don’t really get the boxes.

But just, you see her smiling, just don’t even smile back OK. Just have like an inside smile, the smile of satisfaction that you get from me telling you … I mean, I’m not telling you … but I’m telling you telling you, Maggie’s out. But only if you don’t even look her way. Because any sort of nonverbal communication, like even a knowing smirk, OK, and she stays. Cool? All right. Sorry to see you go. Best of luck out there. You’ll be fine.

Hey, we should grab drinks sometime, now that I’m not your boss anymore. Ha. All right. Can you send in Rich on your way back to the desk? You know what? I should probably get him myself. Don’t worry about Rich. All right. Great. Thanks.

You’ve got to, like, turn your backyard into a garden, man

I started hanging my clothes out to dry, you know, in the sunlight, to save energy, to go a little easier on Mother Earth. But I forgot that my backyard sprinkler was set on an automatic timer, and so, without really connecting the dots at first, I couldn’t figure out why my clothes wouldn’t dry, even after spending like three or four hours under direct sunlight.

Eventually I had to be somewhere, and I really needed those pants, so I just threw everything in the dryer. And just when I heard that ding go off telling me that the spin-cycle was just about done, I noticed it, the sprinkler popped up out of the ground, I was wasting energy, and water, and sunlight. Can you even waste sunlight? I guess, right, because if my shirts weren’t out there colleting all of those photons, the grass would have used them, right? The grass, my organic heirloom tomatoes. Are they a little hungrier today? I know that sunlight is supposed to be an infinite resource, right, but are there enough direct rays to simultaneously dry my clothes and feed my backyard?

And the water, I’m positive that water is a finite resource, and so I feel even worse, wasting it all on washing my clothes, or, I guess that’s not a waste, because I need to do laundry. But re-wetting them outside with the sprinkler, not only am I stealing sunlight from the plants, but I’m also robbing them of water. Although, I guess in the whole circle of life ecosystem, some of that water probably dripped down from the clothesline to the ground.

But then even after I start to wrap my head around all of the waste, telling myself, don’t worry, it was an accident, I’m still green, I went online, I went to this green blog that I always visit, and there was a picture of this guy in Texas who uprooted his whole lawn and replaced it with a giant vegetable garden. There was a whole gardener’s manifesto, all about how using water and energy on grass is a mega-waste of the earth’s resources.

And I looked out at my own lawn and I thought, that guy’s absolutely right. Nobody eats that grass. Except for my dog, sometimes, not always, but just every once in a while we’ll go outside and he’ll start eating grass, like a goat, grass and fallen leaves. I try yelling at him to stop, but there’s no use, I’m not getting through to him. I looked it up online, “my dog is eating grass,” and all of these pet web sites told me that dogs eat grass to induce vomiting, that it’s a sign of an upset stomach.

Only, my dog didn’t vomit. I’ve noticed that when he’s about to puke, he starts licking the floor, like compulsively, and then sure enough, twenty or thirty of forty licks later, puke. And then he starts eating it, which, yes, I’m sorry, that’s totally gross. But think of everything that we can learn from the dogs, one with nature. They don’t let a scrap of food go to waste, grass, lick, even vomit, they’re all precious resources in the eyes of man’s best friend.

But like I said, he didn’t throw up the grass. I wondered if I’d accidentally stumbled upon some sort of mutant grass, like maybe this stuff is somehow edible. So I harvested about a bowl’s worth and sautéed it with some organic extra virgin olive oil and some organic shallots and garlic that I got, not at a farmer’s market, unfortunately, but it was at a clearly labeled “organic” section at the supermarket, which is fine, in a pinch I guess, as long as my money is going toward sustainable organic farming, that’s cool.

But yeah, the grass was disgusting. It made the whole house smell like the inside of a lawnmower repair shop, like, imagine the guys at the shop heated up a really heavily garlicky lunch in the microwave, that’s what the house smelled like. And when I ate a couple of bites, well, whatever vomiting inducing powers the grass didn’t have on the dog, they definitely worked on me. And so I cleaned myself up, I made sure to save whatever my body couldn’t digest for my dog, because, yeah, it’s gross, again, I apologize for being so graphic, but he ate it, and so it didn’t go to waste, it was good, for him, my dog’ll eat anything.

And after that I committed to tearing up the backyard, because fuck that, lawns, all of that water and sunlight and more water dripping from my sprinkler-soaked clothes drying and re-drying on the clothesline, what does it all mean? Why am I spending all of these precious, precious natural resources on a bunch of inedible blades of grass? No, I tore that whole backyard up.

And then, I don’t know, it’s really hard to keep the weeds away, you know, it’s like a whole blank canvas, that empty yard, all of that overturned grass. It’s like it just kept growing, even though I pulled it all out, it’s like the roots just re-rooted themselves, and also, all of these other weeds, big clumps of crab grass, dandelions. I’ve seen people eat dandelion greens, but I don’t know man, that’s just way too bitter for my palate. But my clothes are definitely dryer. I just set the sprinklers to only go off in the middle of the night. That way it won’t interfere with the drying. The only thing is, you know, if it starts raining in the middle of the night, I won’t be awake to shut off the sprinkler. And so yeah, that’s a huge waste of resources. But I’m doing my best, right? I can only hope that the whole ecosystem can take care of the rest. Because I’m just one dude, just trying my best, the best I can to make a difference, just me and my giant backyard garden and my clothesline full of t-shirts and underwear.

Classic Phil

I had a party at my house a few weeks ago, and I’ve always hated the idea of excluding anybody, so I kind of cast a wide net in terms of invites. It was too wide, I know it, I hate having to do stuff like this, but it’s either invite everybody or don’t have a party at all. Because the last thing I want is for someone’s status update or shared photo to ruin it for someone else, that, sorry, I had a party and I didn’t invite you.

And am I really being cool about it? Looking back, I don’t think I’ve ever been cool about it at all. I kind of spread the word in advance to the people that I would have invited had I allowed myself a more exclusive get-together, and then like two or three days before, I put out a general announcement to everybody at work, friends on Facebook.

All I’m really doing is reaching for the bottom, right, like who else is not only not going to have any plans on such short notice? I feel like a jerk even laying it out like that, but that’s exactly what it is, all right, people with nothing else to do, just waiting for a last minute sympathy invite.

The party was on a Saturday, I sent out my mass invite on a Thursday. Friday morning this guy Phil at work sends me an email, “Hey Rob, what should I bring?” And what do you mean what should you bring? You ever been to a party before? Just bring some beer, a bottle of wine, I don’t know, a bag of chips. This isn’t high tea here.

But what do I say? “Don’t bring anything.” Because what are you really supposed to say? You tell people not to bring something. You kind of hope that they bring a little extra booze or some snacks. Not Jell-O. OK, that’s just weird. That’s what Phil brought. He brought some weird molded Jell-O thing, like something straight out of a sixties cookbook, a big, green ring with stuff floating around in it.

“Hey man, I made some dessert,” and he was smiling, like I was trying to get a read on him. Was this some sort of a joke, like a gag gift? But I swear, I couldn’t tell, and while a part of me really wanted to laugh and be like, “Ha, that’s hilarious,” I just really wasn’t that convinced that this Jell-O thing wasn’t anything less than a hundred percent sincere.

I was right in the middle of laying out all of the snacks, pouring this giant bag of tortilla chips that I had bought at Costco into a big plastic bowl. I had all of this party stuff spread out around me. And it wasn’t because I wasn’t ready yet, OK, it was because Phil showed up exactly at eight o’clock.

Like was he walking around the block? Just waiting for the clock to strike eight so he could knock on my door? Nobody else was here yet, and I was clearly still setting up, but he has this thing in my face, it wasn’t even wrapped, like I don’t understand how he got it all the way from his place to my place, was he just sitting on the subway with the Jell-O on his lap, breathing on it? It’s too much.

And I get it, OK, like I can be socially awkward sometimes, I have that same tendency to overthink everything. And yeah, when I get invited to a party, I’m totally stressed out about what time I’m supposed to show up, right, but I’m not the guy walking around the block wasting time so I can show up at just the right second, OK, I’m the guy walking around the block waiting for just the right time to make an entrance that looks natural, like I’m not obsessing about how many people have arrived before me, or if I’m too late.

OK, so I understand. But this guy is like me but with absolutely no inhibitions. Just, it’s eight o’clock, ding-dong, here’s your Jell-O. Maybe it was a joke. “Ha, that’s funny,” I did say it, hoping he’d laugh back, because come on dude, I’ve never seen a dessert like that in real life, and maybe it’s really tasty and everything, but nobody’s going to eat that. And tell me you had it wrapped up, please, tell me you ditched the wrapping outside, something, because I can’t get over the exposed jiggly surface, like somebody two seats down from you on the subway sneezes, it just seems like a giant germ magnet.

“What’s so funny?” and what do I say to that? “Nothing,” I said, “Just something I was thinking about from earlier, something funny happened.” And he was like, “What happened?” and I wanted to be like, Phil, come on dude, just help me out a little here, OK, just stop with the follow up questions, just put down the Jell-O man, come on dude, just let me finish setting up here.

“Where do you want me to put this Jell-O?”

“I don’t know man, anywhere’s fine. Just grab yourself a drink, OK, just hang out while I finish getting ready.”

And I’m telling you, that fucking Jell-O was like the hit of the party, I don’t even know where that cake slicer thing came from, because I definitely don’t have a cake slicer, like Phil must have brought it, OK, he must have had that thing in his back pocket. But everybody had like cake slices of Jell-O, I wanted to give out a warning, like, “Jesus, Chris, don’t eat that Jell-O,” and Chris was like, “Why? This Jell-O is awesome. Classic Phil.”

What was I not getting? “You’ve had this before?”

“Yeah man, Phil brings it to all the parties, that’s like his thing.”

And I was just thinking, how come I’ve never been to any parties with Phil before? Like I don’t care, OK, it’s not like I have to be invited to everything, OK, I know that not everybody does the whole blanket invite thing like I do. But not once? How many parties are people having that Phil’s invited to and I’m not? Because I would have noticed that, OK, I’m telling you I would have noticed a green fucking Jell-O ring cake with pieces of canned pineapple floating around in it.