Last year I attempted to respond to my year long horoscope as determined by Yahoo. It was a fun post to write, and from what I heard, it was a fun post to read, too.

And so it seemed obvious to me that I should do another one regarding this year's predictions for 2008. However, after looking it over a couple of times, I decided that writing such a post wouldn't be worth my time. In last year's post, I briefly introduced you to an interesting phenomenon called the Forer Effect, and it just so happens that this past year's horoscope is a prime example of the theory. Basically, this year's horoscope was just too damn generalized (and in some cases, flat out incomprehensible) for me to have any fun riffing on it. Just look at the first paragraph of this year's horoscope. Upon close examination, I have no idea what the fuck it's supposed to mean exactly. It's as vague as, well, you know.

That being said, I'll now opt to post my own vague assesment of 2008: I learned a lot from this year. Like any year, it had its share of both enjoyable and icky moments. Regardless of how those moments made me feel, they were nevertheless memorable.

Happy 2008 and happier 2009. I'll see you again at the last year of the decade.

Earlier this year I came across a list that Art Garfunkel made - it's of every book he's read since 1968. For some reason this struck me as a cool thing to do, thus I jumped on Mr. Garfunkel's one man bandwagon.

I'm posting the list here for a couple of reasons. The biggest reason is that posting it to my blog almost guarantees that I'll never lose or misplace it. Less important reasons include my hope that I'll introduce you to a book or two that you come to love. Maybe if I'm lucky, you'll be able to give me a few recommendations based on my favorites/reading patterns.

A few notes: This list is almost in chronological order. Books in bold indicate favorites - the ones that linger in my mind still for reasons I'm not quite often able to discern. Asterisked books indicate that they are re-reads. Finally, partially unread books (even if I nearly finished the damn thing) make no appearance on this list.

Reading Habits of 2008

• Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut*
• A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut
• When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
• No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July
• Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter by Steven Johnson
• Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations by Clay Shirky
• Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Entitled - and More Miserable Than Ever Before by Jean M. Twenge
• High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
• Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
• Don't Get Too Comfortable by David Rakoff
• Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
• Coraline by Neil Gaiman
• Nine Stories by JD Salinger
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• The Film Club by David Gilmour
• Inside Steve's Brain by Leander Kahney
• Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay
• The Dice Man by Luke Reinhart
• Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury*
• For One More Day by Mitch Albom
• Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
• Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
• White Noise by Don DeLillo
• About a Boy by Nick Hornby
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• The Giver by Lois Lowry*
• Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry
• Messenger by Lois Lowry
• Improvise by Mick Napier
• Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork by Richard Brautigan
• Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger
• Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman
• An Unfortunate Woman by Richard Brautigan
• On Writing by Stephen King
• Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
• Winkie by Clifford Chase
• Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow
• The Mist by Stephen King
• Mr. Monk Goes to Germany by Lee Goldberg
• More Information Than You Require by John Hodgman
• The Time Machine by H.G. Wells*
• The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
• God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut
• Skipping Christmas by John Grisham
• Free Range Chickens by Simon Rich
• Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii by Lee Goldberg
• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Questions? Recommendations of your own? Share in the comments if you'd be so kind.

Today I got a letter in the mail from the college I'm transferring to. I figured it would be just another piece of college junk mail (current college students ought to have a good idea about what I'm talking about) but lo and behold - it turns out it was actually a letter informing me that I'm now the recipient of a surprisingly sizable scholarship.

I'm not going to go into details, but there's a key word in that past sentence: surprising. I did not apply for this scholarship, nor am I entirely sure as to why I qualify for it. The letter did cite "previous academic work that has prepared [me]", but it failed to say what work in particular swayed them. I'm guessing that it had something to do with my grades from last quarter, but I feel that's a weird way to judge my academic success. After all, it was just a quarter - that's only nine or so weeks of introductory college work.

So as you can guess, I was very surprised when I read the letter - so much to the point that if I got another letter that said, "Oh, sorry - we meant to send it to the other guy with your name," I'd be nodding my head and going, "Oh, okay! That makes much more sense now."

By a bizarre coincidence, I came across this Wikipedia page introducing me to something called impostor syndrome. In short, it's an unofficial mental condition in which one believes they don't deserve their success.

I'm not trying to say that I consistently deal with impostor syndrome - on a particularly egotistical day, I could name a decent number of accomplishments and awards that I'm really proud of - but I've certainly had a few achievements where I feel undeserving of whatever success that has been bestowed upon me. Being picked for the film festival comes to mind.¹ As does getting first place in Thespian Festival² - and now this scholarship.

The Wikipedia article seems to imply that those with impostor syndrome on their minds experience guilt regarding their accomplishments. However, in the instances I've provided, I don't really feel guilty. Instead, I feel a little confused - maybe even pleasantly surprised. You know. "Really? Are you sure? Well, okay, I guess."

Maybe the reason for my confusion stems from a few words in that Wikipedia article: "unable to internalize their accomplishments." I only have the vaguest idea as to why I got this scholarship. Maybe if on the back they scribbled something like, "Okay, so this is what we were thinking..." I'd feel a little less flabbergasted.

¹ This isn't to say that I thought Taffy was bad - in fact, I think it's a pretty damn good sketch. It's just that I'm surprised that they thought Taffy was a solid film. (I know I'm not the only one who follows this train of thought.)
² More statements intended to both clarify and defend my easily derailed train of thought: this isn't me saying that Jordan and I aren't good improvisers; it's just that I don't think that particular scene that we performed was anywhere close to our best work. It'd be like calling "Dig A Pony" the best thing that The Beatles ever did - it's a (barely) decent song, but man, they did so much better than that.

A belated Merry Christmas to you. I don't know about you, but I feel like this whole Christmas thing isn't quite over yet. This may have something to do with all of gifts I've purchased for others that (still) have yet to arrive from Amazon.

On Christmas Eve my Dad had us all go to the Catholic church. It's the third time I've ever gone to a Catholic service, and as a self-proclaimed Bad Lutheran, the experience is always slightly nerve wracking. I always feel like I'm stepping into a clubhouse for this secret society's meeting. It's a society that I'm at least aware of, but I don't know all of the traditions. I'm concerned that at any moment one of the real members will see me mess up on one of the secret handshakes and go, "Impostor! Seize him!"

It reminds me of when I went to see my friend Drew's Bar Mitzvah a number of years ago, the first (and last) time I'd ever gone to a synagogue. I was dropped off there with my friend Brady. A basket of yamakas sat at on a small table just beside the door. Something like instinct told us to put them on. We grabbed the first ones we saw and went on our way.

20 minutes into the service, we were a little concerned. We had noticed that certain groups of people were wearing certain colors of yamakas. For instance: all of the old men were wearing one color. All of the twenty to thirtysomethings were all wearing another. And all of our fellow non-Jewish peers were wearing yet another color. This made us paranoid that we might be wearing the wrong color of yamaka - God forbid what the penalties might be - so we headed back to the basket and dug through to see if we could find any more yamakas that matched our friends'. Unfortunately, my memory fails me from this point on - however, I can guess that we did one of two things: 1) we found matching colors or 2) we just stopped caring.

After the service we asked Drew if there were rules regarding yamaka colors. As it turned out, there weren't.

This is the front of a birthday card I picked up while in Philadelphia last summer. I saw it at the store and decided it was the best card I'd ever seen. My temptation to actually give it to someone faded rather quickly. Now I'm mildly considering having it framed.

A little thing I do sometimes to alleviate boredom is a game/thought experiment that we'll call "Where Am I?"

It works like this: you pretend you have just woken up wherever you are. You pretend that you have no idea where you are and no memory of how you got there. You also pretend that you don't have anything on your person except your regular clothes. With all this in mind, you ask the titular¹ question: where am I?

You can use only your environment (i.e. climate, foliage, buildings, signs, license plates, overheard conversations) to figure your location. Asking people the question "Where am I?" is unallowed, not to mention awkward - this game is best kept within the confines of your mind.

Speaking of your mind: this game is a wonderful way to get it going in interesting directions. Sure, there are obvious routes ("What can I use to figure out where I am?") but there are weirder paths that you'll probably cross too. ("Would I really come to this conclusion with this evidence, or is my actual memory influencing me?")

Though I guess you could play it anywhere, I'd say the game is best played in an unfamiliar place; particularly, during dull moments on vacations. I suppose you could play it in a familiar place, although I don't think it'd be terribly exciting,² unless you were to pretend you had a total lack of memory. I guess that'd make things interesting, too.<sup>3

1</sup> Tee-hee.
² "Okay, where am I? That looks like an alarm clock. And that looks like my nightstand. And this looks like my bed! I'm in my room! Hooray!"
³ "Okay - HOLY SHIT! That gigantic picture frame on the wall - the one with the buttons! The pictures move!"

I usually don't put sketches on my blog, but since this is going to be outdated in about, oh, two weeks ago...

DINNER

LIGHTS UP to reveal a FAMILY around a dinner table CS. The doorbell rings and the HOST answers it SR. Enter CHIZIK.

HOST: Gene! It's so wonderful to see you!
CHIZIK: Oh, hi! It's great to see you, too.

They wander to the table and sit.
Beat.

CHIZIK rises.

CHIZIK: Wow, that was great. Thanks for having me.

ABRUPT BLACKOUT

Tonight's night was exactly the opposite of the one I last described to you. I think the biggest reason for this was the insane cold; the kind of cold that forces you to listen to God knows what on the radio because taking your gloves off to operate your iPod - even to just press play - is not an option. Luckily it was a good God knows what: some crackly blues recording from an era before your parents were born.

Where streetlights weren't necessary, they're now not enough. Even though the ground is covered by the same amount of snow as last night (perhaps even more) the sky is incredibly black.

Most of all, it's quiet. It's a different sort of quiet from last night, like the cold's killing any sound that might happen to exist outside of your car.

Not only are these kind of moments nice, but they're necessary. They act as quiet endcaps to a night, the only opportunity before the next day to go, "Wow, tonight was wonderful."

This post is brought to you by my notebook and a flashlight.

The power's out as I write this. Yes, write - I can say that in the true, literal, pen-to-paper sense for once.

It went off about fifteen minutes after I beat a certain video game for the first time - a game I've owned for nearly ten years now. This isn't a rare thing; I've never beat most of the games I own for some reason or another. The situation here is particularly ironic, though.

See, my mom bought the game for me when I was in third grade. She was worried by the amount of video game time I'd devoted to Goldeneye 007, a shooter that belonged to my Dad. She bought Zelda for me under the pretense that I'd stop shooting simulated guards and instead occupy my N64 time by slaying semi-mythical creatures. As it turned out, I got frustrated with Zelda's difficulty - not to mention the sheer vastness of the whole game. Somehow "stop playing 007" became "play 007 less"; I ended up beating 007 nearly a decade before I beat Zelda.

But back to now time: so I'd just beat Zelda and then 15 minutes later, poof - off went the power. Then it turned on again, as if it was a little confused. And just as quickly as it was back, it was gone again. That's the way things have been for about a half hour now.

I took the power outage as an opportunity to go on a walk, which was a

And now the power's back on again. My hand is beginning to cramp up (as it easily does), so from this point on the post will be typed.

Anyway: I took the power outage as an opportunity to go on a walk, which was a sort of surreal experience. All of the streetlights on our block were off, however, this had no effect on my ability to see. The street was plenty bright thanks to that weird freshly-covered-in-snow glow, not to mention the Hy-Vee parking lot that shines like a baseball stadium despite our relative distance away from it.

I didn't see a single person or car. I didn't even see a single footprint, except for my own, which decorated the otherwise bare streets with its zig zags and looping patterns. It was a little difficult, though, to see anything too far ahead of me. It was not unlike the effect one gets from playing a Ninendo 64 game like Zelda, where developers employed the use of mysterious fog (sometimes in excess) because the hardware couldn't handle a bunch of objects on the screen at once.

Most of all, though, I thought about my time in Chicago. It reminded me of the few times I found myself alone on the sidewalks late at night, which was an unnerving experience. When you're in that kind of situation in a big city, it's hard not to feel like someone is going to jump out at you. But here, not so much. The experience instead becomes totally relaxing - an experience I hadn't realized I'd missed.

Thanks for your comments regarding the ChaCha post. I was very curious to see what sort of questions/answers would come about - after all, you rarely get the chance to see the more human side of these guides.

A potpourri (yes, that's how it's spelled - I'm surprised too) of links for you:

• This year's election was undoubtedly historic. A bunch of people were thrilled with the outcome and a bunch weren't so pleased. Regardless of our political stances, I think we can all be glad that this image of Obama and this image of McCain - neither of which were photoshopped - came out of the elections.
• For a while I was contemplating journalism as a major, but eventually my interest waned. However, the prospect of writing headlines like this certainly tempts me.
• Here are some awesome soundbites that the announcer for Mortal Kombat recorded.
• Old timey photographs + camera tricks = creepy
• Finally: a surreal comic in an Edward Gorey sort of style.
  

Do you want to try an experiment with me?

Here's how it goes: text ChaCha (242-242) and ask it a thought-provoking, open-ended question. Your question will have to be brief and your answer will be even briefer. Here are some sample questions to get you going (but no fair stealing them):

• Do you think morality is an absolute, unchanging thing?
• If you were forced to change your first name, what would you change it to?
• If money was not an issue, what would you do with your life?

My question and answer is in the comments - I strongly encourage you to post your own questions/replies there, too.

I think a few of you already know that I'm a huge fan of the video game Katamari Damacy¹. I'd explain the game here, but this video says more than any pithy paragraph could.

Anyway, the game's creator gave a talk at GameCity last year where he discussed playgrounds, broken flip flops, and a new game he's planning called Nobi Nobi Boy². After reading this preview of the game, I'm still not quite sure what exactly the game is all about, but that being said: I still want it.

¹ A game I fondly call "Rolly Game", while Mary opts to call it "the Tylenol pill game" due to the Prince's resemblance to a pill. (I think.)
² This translates to both "Carefree Boy" and Stretchy Stretchy Boy." The Japanese language is sort of awesome like that.

It is very, very cold outside. Evidence: I opened up Dashboard and was greeted with this. That's not even factoring in windchill.

The following post was outlined very late a few nights ago, and thus doesn't have much of an ending:

When I was really young, one of the big warnings that I always used to get about the internet was that you never really knew just where - or more importantly, who - you were getting your information from. If you're under the age of 30, you've probably had a series of talks from parents and teachers regarding this, which just might be the internet's biggest caveat: that information you're thinking about citing could have been uploaded by anyone, that so-called pen pal of yours could actually be an overweight pedophile¹, etc.

It's been drilled into my head for good reason: it's true. As a now cliché New Yorker comic goes, "On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog." With the internet, you've sometimes got no idea who the writer of that page is, who made that video, and (most frighteningly but rarely) who the hell you're talking to. Having a lack of context is arguably one of the most harrowing things about the internet.

But there are a few exceptions to this. Sometimes a lack of context can be a lot of fun. StumbleUpon comes to mind. Half of the content I find whilst using Stumble inevitably causes me to ask a hell of a bunch of questions regarding its source. You know: "Where is this from? Who has that kind of free time?" And the biggest question: "Is this real?"²

See, with other mediums, like television, the distinction between fiction and reality is pretty easy to make. When I'm watching TV, it's pretty easy to tell whether or not you're watching an actual ad or a parody on SNL. Sure, there are rare moments when it's hard to make that distinction, but generally, established mediums have a tendency to label themselves as real or fake.

However, with the internet, the line between real and fake can be pretty damn thin. Again, this can be a problem, but occasionally, wondering about the legitimacy of whatever you just watched can be a lot of fun.

¹ I'm not sure why I felt the urge to note that this particular pedophile is obese.
² Case in point: this video. For the longest time I was convinced it was an actual clip from some European talk show - I actually had a mini-debate with someone about its authenticity - but Jordan later proved that it was a fake.

Just saw this bizarre, totally messed up video and decided I just had to share it with you. Usually I'm being hyperbolic when I say stuff like this, but I am totally and completely sincere when I tell you that I had to watch it a second time because I thought I might have dreamed it all.

As a writer I am very conscious of the effect that reading has on my output. The sort of influence that reading has upon me manifests itself in a few obvious ways; for instance, when I was reading a sci-fi book, I wrote a science fiction short story. When I was reading a collection of non-fiction, I wrote a short story written as if it was a magazine article. The biggest indication of an influence, though, can be seen when I don't read much at all. When this happens, I don't tend to write much at all, either.

There's also the tricky terrain of voice. Whenever I read books or stories or essays that make me feel as if my mind has just been blown, I worry that I'm subconsciously attempting to imitate the voice of the mind-blowing piece in question. Often times these worries are not unfounded. In the coming weeks I'll be posting a list of all of the books I've read this year, special note given to any aforementioned mind-blowing books. With that list, you could probably go through my past year's output on this blog and go, "Oh, look how he italicized just a syllable of that word. I think he got that from Salinger. And that little aside - that's very Vonnegut. Oh, and last but not least: Sedaris, Sedaris, Sedaris."

Hell, I'll occasionally blow off the subtly of the subconscious and flat out attempt to borrow from the rhetorical toolboxes of writers who've left a mark on me. I suspect I'm not alone in this behavior; in fact, I know I'm not the only one who does this.

Case in point: a teacher at my former high school - a man who I respect, though I've never had as a teacher - requires one of his classes to read Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius. It's a wonderful pick for a high school class; not only is it a wonderful book (not to mention analyzable), but a unique choice at that. It's not something I would expect to be taught in a public high school; it's a relatively new book and its form is undoubtedly unique.

If you're unfamiliar with the book, Eggers tends to write in a wordy ranty sort of voice that is half Jack Kerouac, half Holden Caufield. His sentences and paragraphs are emotionally fueled and tend to whirl round and round, which causes them to every so often crash and burn into an incoherent mess. It's often clear when reading A Heartbreaing Work that Eggers didn't put a whole lot of stock into the editing process, which is fine and dandy for a journal or blog, but not so much with a $15 book. Anyway: I realize that a lot of these comments describing Eggers' writing style come off as rather complainty, but my qualms with the book and Eggers' voice are limited. He has the story, voice, and general literary chops to pull it all off. A Heartbreaking Work is still a book well worth reading and teaching.

However, there's one side-effect of teaching this book to high schoolers that causes me to cringe every now and then: the voice and style that Eggers uses in the book is infinitely imitable. What I mean is that a lot of students - young men especially - read the book and then seem to become addicted to writing in that Eggers sort of style. I've seen a fair deal of it over the past few years; do a bit of digging and I'm sure you will find a number of repetitive blog posts and Facebook/MySpace notes whose authors clearly have a thing for A Heartbreaking Work.

Again: there's nothing wrong with the sort of style that Eggers' uses, except for this: it's his. Not a lot of people can pull it off. The rest of us need to stick to our own style and voice - and most importantly, we must edit, a lovely practice which can turn a bloated piece into something much more readable. Otherwise, the written world would become very monotonous.

So it should be fairly clear that I get a little annoyed whenever I see someone trying too hard to be Dave Eggers. So what prevents me from replying to those posts and notes with a succint "For Christ's sakes, stop!"?

For one thing, that's curmudgeonly, assholeish behavior. And for another: it's totally hypocritical. Though I don't try to full-out imitate Dave Eggers on the page, I'm very guilty of attempting to incorporate little bits and pieces of my own favorite authors' style into my own work. As much as I may dislike this, it's totally necessary.

To paraphrase something my improv coach told me: there are a lot of different ways to write, and there's nothing wrong with trying a variety of those ways. It's a lot like trying on different outfits. Some outfits you will like, some outfits you will hate, and some outfits you will like only bits and pieces of. In those cases, you'll keep the bits and pieces of those outfits and throw out the rest. At first, you'll have nothing but this disjointed mess of little pieces, but eventually, you'll have your own unique outfit.

The same thing applies with writing. We are an amalgamation of our influences. Like it or not, imitation of our idols is a vital part of the process that we're all guilty of.

Though I'm out of high school - and so are the majority of my friends - I still occasionally see long winded passionate notes written by students who've just had their minds floored by A Heartbreaking Work. Upon reading these notes, I can't help but roll my eyes, but the disdain isn't as sharp as it used to be. Instead, I say, "Someday, you too will learn" - to both the writer and myself.

The big catch about commercials is that ads rarely live up to the product they're advertising. The optimist in me hopes this was not the case with Croonchy Stars.

Awesome: being in Disneyland, riding Space Mountain.
Unawesome: waking up and realizing it was all a dream.

Over the past few days I've had Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind on my mind - specifically, a question I asked myself not long after seeing the show for the first time: how do you go about making a show as funny, surprising, honest, bizarre, thought-provoking and generally wonderful as Too Much Light without ripping it off? And: how would the normal theater-going audience around here react to such a show? Who would want to be (and who would be capable of being) a part of such a show?

Here are some things I found while cleaning out my room:

• A piece of paper with a line down the middle, hot dog style. The left side is headed "Things I love." The right side is labled "Things I hate." Both sides are blank.
• A poster from the video game Parappa the Rapper.
• Photograph of Paul Hovey, Ted Beem and me, circa 4th grade. I am holding one of those so-called unbreakable plastic combs that they would hand out on picture day. I say "so-called " because this particular comb is broken.
• Pamphlet from 5th grade regarding puberty and its effects on boys. It reads like a father hastily explaining the facts of life to his son. For instance, the pamphlet describes what an erection is - however, it is the reader's job to fill in the blanks as to why on earth erections might exist. (Then again, it could be argued that if you are in 5th grade and you can't figure out why erections exist, then you have bigger problems than erections. Also: there are subtle advertisements for Old Spice deodorant throughout.)
• A note from Maeshal Abid inquiring how my skills as a Pokémon trainer have progressed.
• A copy of the Clive Register from 7th grade, in which my science teacher is dressed like a woman.
• An opened, one pound bag of Runts given to me eight-ish years ago. They are probably still good, albeit dusty. (Regardless, they were thrown out.)
• An electronic device called the "MegaMouth Warpr" [sic] which is like a lovechild between a miniature megaphone and a Yak Back.
  

Last year a friend of mine (who may or may not read this blog) took a particularly intense course dedicated entirely to marine biology. I believe he's majoring in it as well - though this is college, and major plans can be as stable as a house made of Jello.

That being said: I hope that there is a portion of marine biology dedicated solely to teaching walruses to play musical instruments. And a portion dedicated solely to bucket studies.

Since I'm in the midst of cleaning out my room, I found these words to ring particularly true: "Now I know you all got stuff at your house that you don't need no more you don't want."

Today is a cold day. It's one of those particularly gloomy winter days - the kind with no wind no snow and everything just basically looks dead.

I'm also a little bummed because I was hoping to make the drive to St. Louis to check out a friend's improv show. Unfortunately, some of the roads are less than kind today, which makes me feel a little iffy about taking a six hour drive.

Having all of this quiet time as a result of break is nice, but boredom has been slowly creeping in over the past few days. And just as steadily as boredom has crept in, money is creeping its way out. Curse you, recessionistic economy. Curse you and your job sucking ways.

On a more optimistic note: does anyone else remember this awesome clip from Sesame Street?

As you may or may not be aware, I'm on break until January 20th. This is quite obviously a long-ass time.

A long ass-time.

Anyway, I've found myself with much free time and not so much money; as a result of this, I've been looking for part-time work to help alleviate both factors. The problem: as you may or may not be aware, our current economy is not so good, which is less than stellar news for one in search of a job.

Even my previous place of employment, a certain large chain bookstore (hint: the name contains an ampersand), is willing to re-employ me despite past promises. I'm neither surprised nor offended by the news; retail jobs fill up fast this time of year, not to mention that said large chain bookstore has been experiencing some economic woes of its own.

Thinking about my tenure at this bookstore caused a memory of working there to resurface:

It's 7 PM on the last Friday before Christmas. The checkout line at the store is huge, extending well past the "Please Wait Here" sign placed at the beginning of the holiday season. I happen to be behind one of the cash registers at the very end of this line. You would think that upon (finally) seeing me, a customer might display something like gratitude, but past experience tells me otherwise. Instead, customers' facial expressions range from zombie-like apathy to murderous rage. (By the end of my stint at the store, I'm surprised that no one has replied to my store-mandatory question of "And would you like to get a discount card with us today?" with a succinct yet effective "Fuck you.")

There is, however, one recognizable face amongst this cheerless conga line of consumerism: my Dad. He is standing just outside of the line. One of the customers in line appears to be a little disgruntled, perhaps worried that my Dad is trying to sidestep his way into the line. My Dad and I make eye contact.

"Excuse me," he says, holding up a copy of Asthma for Dummies (ironically - he's a lung doctor), "would you happen to have a copy of this in Braille?"
I'm amused, but for me to smile would break the unspoken rules of this little joke.
"I dunno," I bark back. I lower my gaze and pretend to not even pay attention to him. "Why don't you go see for yourself?"

Do you ever get that unexplainable feeling that you're being watched? At first you feel a little paranoid, but then you look up and you realize your suspicions were right. At that particular moment, the same thing happens to me except on a much more massive scale. I looked up from attempting to scan the nth hundredth barcode of the day to find that every person in this little corner of the store - every cashier, every customer - is staring at me, their mouths agape. It's as if I've just made a Jewish joke at the Holocaust Museum. Worse, my Dad is nowhere in sight. An affirmation as simple as a brief laugh from him would have killed any potential awkwardness.

I calmly raise my hands in the air in the same manner one might to show they're unarmed.
"Everyone," I say, "it's okay. That was my Dad."

Everyone laughs and the chill immediately dissapates. It's strange, but reassuring. Typically my awkward moments eventually result in someone else's laughter, but rarely has the turnaround come so quickly.

A couple of nights ago I saw a movie called A Complete History of My Sexual Failures. It's a comedic documentary by a British independent filmmaker named Chris Waitt.

I feel like I'm being redundant in giving a summary of the film, but here goes anyway: Looking over his life, Chris realizes he has had a lot of girlfriends. He also realizes that every single one of them has dumped him. It somehow strikes Chris as a good idea to make this into a documentary.

I realize that last sentence seems a little bit snarky - as if I'm trying to imply that making a documentary about mishaps with one's exes is a bad idea. It's by no means a bad idea, but upon reflecting on it, it becomes clear that such a film could end up portraying its filmmaker in a not-so-positive light.

In case I'm not quite getting my point across, let's try a little thought experiment: think about the most significant romantic relationships of your life. Now think about the biggest regrets that you have from those relationships - the moments that cause you to cringe and make involuntary little murmurs of pain whenever you recall them. Now think about those moments being displayed on a gigantic screen as strangers, family members, and exes watch on.

That being said: for Waitt to make a movie likes this takes major cajones...and a nearly unpalpable sense of detachment. Waitt's (whose face is on screen something like 75% of the runtime) default facial expression is one of complete and total distance. For most of the film, he looks as if he's just about to ask, "Could you repeat the question?" It creates a bizarre kind of comedic effect that lessens both his and our awkwardness.

But this made me wonder: is that I'm-not-quite-here-look really Waitt's default facial expression? It was as if Waitt was wearing a mask here and there throughout the movie - like he was actually smirking behind that totally lost facial expression of his.

And then I began questioning his genuinity further into the movie, when he reveals that he has problems "getting it up." I don't doubt Waitt has those problems - he stops by a few medical professionals and even shows a bit of an awkward "the morning after" moment after a date that goes (relatively) well - but Waitt had a tendency to occasionally completely suck the sincerity out of those moments by engaging in rather Borat-ish shenanigans. Though his visit to a dominatrix is hilarious - as is when he takes seven Viagra and asks strangers if they'll have sex with him - they seem a little superfluous to the movie as a whole.

The wonderful thing, though, is that three fourths of the way into the movie, Waitt realizes that he isn't taking the project quite as seriously as he could be. From this point onward the movie becomes infinitely more truthful, heartbreaking, and wonderful. Unfortuantely, this portion of the movie loses a bit of its comic edge, but what it lacks in laughs it makes up for in thoughtful honesty.

Again, though the movie has a few moments that are a little too Borat-ish for my liking, A Complete History of My Sexual Failures is still worth a watch.

I am no proponent of fearmongoring - but still, I feel this is worth noting for caution's sake. Regardless: as one commenter says, "If we're unable to keep buying Girl Scout cookies, the terrorists have won."