December Wolves: The Everything Else List Round 2

More lists. I don't know if this is my price for lazing about on this stuff, but ending the wolves with lists feels somewhat defeating. Never fear, though. There's at least four more posts left and there's one non-list post in the can. Fifteen was the number I said I'd make and fifteen will be the number by 31st, whether by hook or crook.

I'll push the fear out of the way.

6. The way Kristian from Crime In Stereo's eyes lit up when he talked about his new record, I Was Describing You To Someone. Every band says their new record is their best before its been released, but the way Kristian seemed stoked about it (outside of the Metro) is something it's hard to find a parallel for. They clearly want these songs to be heard, blasted and compared explicitly to their previous material. That's rare and frankly magical.

7. Hearing and believing I'm an inspiration to other people. Hearing that those people believe my writing is "inspiring, interesting and intelligent" is very, very flattering, but even more flattering is that my writing inspired other people to write. Those words still make me blush a unflattering red.

8. Auto-Tune the News. I'm of a single mind on Auto-Tune the News. It has the emotional weight of a carrot, the depth of a dog's water dish and the nutritional value of a Slurpee. Then again, it's a full pop song about the month's news, fed through a vocoder and even had T-Pain guest on a song. From that perspective, it's a neat snippet of 2009. Yes, people mistake it for saying something politically, but you shouldn't hold that against the show.

9. Beating the final mission of Starcraft: Brood War without cheat codes. I've said repeatedly that Starcraft is a defining moment in my childhood and continuing growth, so putting the entire single player campaign to rest is a real accomplishment. I probably sunk an entire day into beating this mission with all the re-starts and save states, but frankly, I just ended up outlasting the computer and using the cheats of a walkthrough and constantly saving my progress.

It went like this: Take out the nuclear Terrans (with their fucking siege tanks) as fast as humanly possible, assimilate their base. Defend my base. Build up my force. Break off pieces of Battlecruiser/Valkyrie Terrans. Defend my base. Build up my force. Break off another piece of B/V Terran territory. Assimilate base. Defend my base. Rinse, repeat.

By the time I got around to the Protoss that had unfettered access to the bottom half of the map (and attacked me throughout the mission), it had run out of resources in its own base and it hadn't expanded. It's not quite the same as beating a human player, but the payoff of destroying three forces dead set on my destruction, that started off with nuclear weapons, Battlecruisers and a half-started 'Toss tech tree is still sweet.

10. Obama being sworn in. I cried and nearly ran out of my Oral Presentation class to make sure I caught whatever was left of the swearing in. Our long national nightmare was over, I texted. Finally, the feckless, thuggish era of Bush was done. And it hasn't been sunshine, gumdrops, rainbows and Candyland since, but that day, I felt hopeful and inspired. Yes, I would rather be lead by a President that got out of college and chose to do community organizing instead of a guy who coasted around on Daddy's money and ran businesses into the ground. I would rather have my country lead by a guy who taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago for a decade than a guy who couldn't be bothered to look into the details of his decisions.

Let me hedge my bets just a little. He's continuing some of the Bush policies that I find repugnant. Then again, Al-Qai'da tried to attack us Christmas Day and should have succeeded. Oddly enough, the reason why they didn't succeed was because what they got on the plane was incendiary than explosive and the passengers (!!) put it out. But then again, Al-Qai'da attacks are usually redundant, so there should have been someone else on that plane that had a bomb, but apparently, there wasn't. Strange. Suicide terror is crazy.

The short version is this: I sleep better knowing Obama is at the desk and not Bush and that inauguration was the day when it first felt real.

Farewell

I haven't updated Eleven Names is a minute, so this is as good a reason as any. This was going into Overkill number seven, but apparently, they care, very much, about deadlines. The upshot is now that you get read the Overkill-quality piece without having to wait for the printshop and I can put in hyperlinks or make the piece as long, rambling and confessional as I want without worrying that I'm sharing too much.

Truth be told, I was uncomfortable admitting this much in Overkill, so it's probably for the better that I didn't get comfortable enough with the piece until after the deadline...



I miss GFC coffee. That's the topic Katrina picked for me, so here I am. Since graduation, I've had a lot of other coffee. The best, so far, is Starbucks. Potentially blasphemous, but it's true. For me, anyway. I don't know what makes GFC coffee so memorable. I'm tempted to say that it's the high quality beans, the blender or whatever the thing that turns the beans and hot water into coffee is called.

Maybe it's the cute baristas. But if that was true, then that would put tons of points into local coffee houses across Chicago, where any 20 something woman with thick glasses and a tired smile slings cups.

Maybe it's the hot chocolate mix that goes into 97% of the cups I pour myself. Almost certainly, the hot chocolate mix is the ingredient that makes coffee tolerable for me. And because of it, I can stomach the bitterness of coffee. I can ingest another drug. Maybe it's the whole straight-edge thing, that like Catholicism, never really goes away. It informs everything I see. It's a lens.

So. GFC coffee. What is it about the coffee that makes me think about it and miss it more than the Creative Crust or cookies from the Artist's Cup? This sounds like a copout, but I think it's all of these things and the clientele. I don't think of GFC coffee as the thing I pay $1.50 for, I think of GFC coffee as the atmosphere, the moments where I sip my coffee and curl up around it, move my nose towards the rim and drinks in the smell, the fumes clearing out my sinuses. GFC coffee is the pillows within arm's reach and talking to my friends.

GFC coffee is the smile on my face or the indignation on reading something in the New York Times that is Very Wrong And Ought To Be Recorded Somewhere.

And yet, I don't feel the same way about alcohol, yet I associate it with many of the same things. I associate it with the camraderie in the Penny Bar, the things it is unwise to tell my parents and the ancient, powerful urge to sing whenever I hear Sweet Caroline, even through the ringtone of the bitchy secretary in the office. The cute girls that seem to get cuter when Yuengling is consumed and everyone's hair is let down. Speaking of which, if anyone knows Bets...

In other news: These good feelings are all things I think about when I think of beer. And I know it's a lie.

I know that the only thing alcohol does is it makes me happier and then makes me feel everything 10 times more. I associate the alcohol with walking home alone, depressed and hopeless. I want to kiss girls, but (as Jawbreaker might say) I end up kissing the bottle.

So anyway. I'm drinking a beer at 8 p.m. in my parents apartment.

And if you want to know what being a graduate is like in these times: For me, it's not having a job, going through internships bleakly, kicking myself for not biting the bullet and going to the office and asking them for help with the next stage in the game of my life.

I need help is one of the hardest sentences in any language.

So here I am, putting my hands on a bottle of wine my parents own and when they're gone I'm wondering what I do with it. My fingers curl around the bottleneck, feeling the imitation wax around the bottle. It's red wine. Sophisticated, according to at least one ex-girlfriend. The more or less official drink of the World/Inferno Friendship Society and France. It's for lovers, lushes and "creative types." It is the closest thing that I have access to that can act as a muse.

The reflection of a writer/artist in alcohol is one of the most common romantic depictions of the type, for good reason. It exists because it's one of the ways to get out of your own head and be creative. It's traditional. It's easy. It works.





Plus, I'm no fun. There are glaciers warmer than me. I get more fun and ideas flow easier when liquor is involved. I get creative and less restrained. Besides, no is limiting, by its very nature.

I drum on the bottle with my index and middle finger. The wine glasses are just a counter top away. There's something to celebrate, right? Mom and Dad are in Hawaii, in advance of an anniversary that's a real milestone in anyone's life. Hell. This anniversary predates my life.

Relax, I tell myself. Just a little something. I'll write better. I sigh and understand, in an instant.

I already know what I do. I take my hands off the bottle, not because it's the right thing to do, but because I know where it leads and I don't have anywhere to walk to. It's no good for me. I have no one to walk home to. No cheerful roomates. My friends aren't a five minute walk away and always up here. There's not a couch to play Star Fox 64 on until I dry out.

There is no one a short walk away to air grievances with and I'm keeping company with a dark, quiet apartment. There is no point in escaping this way. I'll just come out of it realizing I'm alone in my parents' house. I haven't touched my Playstation in....months, now. My escapism currently is Hellboy and Immortal Iron Fist comics. They're fun. The secret about comic books is this: They're short stories for everyone. The suffocating pretense that usually goes with short story collections isn't there.

Also, the pictures are pretty.



The Immortal Iron Fist (left) is about family, in a roundabout way. Sure, there's kung-fu, HYDRA and mysticism, but it's about the friends who would go to the end of the earth for you and the ancient obligations that take you there. There's also a battle, in which the people the main character (Danny Rand) fought against join him to protect their home from destruction.

Comic books are also fun to read on the bus because it lets you know what people think of you immediately. Pulling out an issue on the ride home, the response is either a cautious interest, because they don't want other people to know, or never looking at you again.



I'm getting more used to the stares and the "I thought he was cute, but" sighs now.

It's a mouthful, but I'm told the kids want to see melodrama and I'm scared I'm just giving them what they want. I'm scared, like Tim Kasher, that I'm simply returning to writing about pain and bad things because it's easier than writing about other subjects and that melodrama is what brings people's (let's not mince words, your) attention.

This post is penance enough for admitting I am not a superhero, I think. The acknowledgment of my failures only goes so far before it turns into masochism and with all the pessimism here, I wonder if I'm still on the right side of the line. I know what it takes and I know that if I push myself, I've got it. The difference between hard and impossible, well, you know...

But, sometimes there's moments of clarity and joy in the post-graduate life. I got a text message out of the blue from one of my old roomates, now a sophomore, who says he's found an academic subject he's actually interested in, which is something that frightened him last year. This made my night. It made me smile.

I'm not in college any more and I don't want to be back in college. I'd like to be among my friends, who are in the area, which is an important distinction. I want to see them. I want to see what they're doing now and not have the pall of trying to get another grip on something that's gone.

As attractive as nostalgia is, I don't want to spend that time with those friends reliving the old days. I want to see what they're doing now, in this very moment. I want to be a part of that and not spend my time in a land filled with "remember when?"

And that's why I like GFC coffee so fondly. I remember it likely better than it tasted at the time, but whatever. I like GFC coffee because it represents a period of time, no longer than one hundred and forty seconds, that all I focused on was the warmth of the coffee next to my frigid body and frozen psyche.

But that's not really a note to end this on. Life is awesome. Really. I don't know exactly what's coming and that's exciting, I think. After a summer of being afraid of the future, the winter doesn't feel so bad. Looking back on it, it seems people like my writing when I'm truly engaged in what I'm writing about. That's a feeling I want to have. It's productive, but also affirming and uplifting.

Yes, I publish a lot, according to some people, but ultimately not enough for me. I ought to be updating every goddamn day. So, I'll make this announcement: Eleven Names (that is to say, me) is going on a spree in December. 15 (full length) posts by midnight New Year's Eve. There will not be fake "I've had this one done and have been waiting to publish it for months" posts. Just from now till December 31st, I'm going to write a lot. Starting today, I'm writing the column I've always wanted to have.

If I can do that, then I catapult from there to a regular posting schedule, I'm sure. And by the end of it, I'll really need some GFC coffee.

Finished Demos: It's A Pretty Good Song, Babe, You Know the Rest

We're not dead. We just don't update regularly and my normal columns don't have an easy parallel here. So. I gave this to a college writing magazine at the end of January, and that issue still hasn't been published.

I eminently dislike sitting on writing when the only thing that's keeping from being seen is sorority obligations, which are things that do not hold a large amount of power in my life. Anyway. This piece (whenever it comes out) will be called Let Me Take You Out and it is about, well, girls and boys presuming there is a right time and place to go back to for authentic romantic expression.

Fuck that. (Oh, the title comes from a Gaslight Anthem song.)

What makes romantic expression authentic is the intent behind it, not when it was expressed and if that gets obscured, then I think we're in a world of trouble. Whenever this gets published on paper, I hope, I hope, I hope that the introduction below gets printed with it.

Romance, like love, might be beyond verbal expression. I don't even know if it's appropriate to say I'm grasping in the right direction, because that would suggest a Platonic form (look it up) of romance, which is not an idea I currently want to commit to. Remember: I don't know romance and I never will.

Hugs/Kisses,
Charles Victor Szasz


There's this little thing that's clawing away at the back of my mind: Romance isn't dead, but there are some people that are pretty determined to pronounce it dead on arrival despite its steady breathing and lively EKG.

Before I even begin, let's make it clear who I'm not speaking about. The kids (and adults) who go out to places where they can drink alcohol and orgasm mutually are not really a part of this discussion. if you want to complain that they're killing romance, this isn't the venue.

It's the kids who are trying to "go back" to an earlier era of courtesy and social cues that have been overly romanticized. (These people may be related to the people who think World War II was the Good War. I loathe the Holocaust, but there is no good war Ever. [More crimes were averted, I'll grant you that.] Over 40 million died in over World War II. To put that in perspective, go to a beach. Now imagine each grain of sand is a naked, ruined corpse, pale from malnourishment and smeared with the excrement of the lifeless vessels on top of them. That's war.) You know the type. Cynically, they're the douchebags who think that with a fedora and an antiquated dress code, they're somehow being gentlemen or ladies. They seem to have mistaken being romantic for being suave. I have no words for them, but then again, I've constructed them as an easy target.

Less cynically, but more pointedly, there's the people who genuinely believe that there is some golden age for romance to go back to and closely adhering to that standard will make them romantic. It's this group that's more worrisome to me, since they're more authentically disposed towards the idea, but are heading in a direction which avoids the problems that they claim to have a solution to.

Some say Victorian England, some say it's the period before the Second World War (1920-1940), some go to France, but all say that Romance is dead with a seriousness that makes me smirk. Romance, as I characterize it, the crossroads of concern, humility, sentiment and action, can't ever die because there's always going to be something genuine there. Modern Life is War got it right with "Fuck the Sex Pistols": The grass was never green. There was never purity. Some say it's all over. Stupid fucking jaded burnouts...You don't get to decide. It's ours. Go away. Shut up. Little else in my mind needs to be said. It is the genuine emotion that can never be a product of a particular time and place that makes love and the expression of it romantic.

It's the why and less the how, and that's where I take umbrage with this group of well-meaning kids who want to go back to something else. They want it to be codified, written down and definitive. There aren't many hard and fast rules to go by and for a lot of people, that's frightening. That's their prerogative, though, as is the focus of this submission, I believe they're barking up the wrong tree. I do not mourn the death of labyrinthine social codes around romancing the people of your desire. I don't think it's a good idea to go back to a time when the idea of romance was limited to straight white people. I am supposed to show you how much I care by giving you a rose or dancing slowly? How disappointingly limiting, not to mention exclusionary.

Going "back" to something lacks the ability to grow and blossom with the different intersections of gender, desire and sex, that are finally acceptable to express in public in the college's bounds and in some large cities. Our traditional dances are gendered for men who like women and women who like men. But you know that already. Remember, people are left out by these universal romancing ways. The reason why things like putting your jacket down over a puddle so the girl doesn't have to step in the water are supposedly romantic is because it comes out of a desire to make the person's life a little easier, cost be damned. Just to see you smile, as Tim McGraw sings, is the essence of the idea.

Romance is (Did I just type that? If you ever see the phrase "something is" without any kind of background, your bullshit detector should go off loud and clear.) an ideal that is meant to be reached for and never grasped, I believe (Phew.). You, I or anyone else can never ever think of ourselves as romantics, because at that point where I think I've got it, I've lost it. It's in the humility of knowing you would give up what you have for your lover but knowing that your lover would never ask it of you. It is crucial now to mention that I do not submit myself as any kind of answer to the questions I pose. I will feign suggestions but I am far too suspicious, neurotic and unreasonably paranoid to be a model for anyone, except in what not to do. (Did I mention the low self-esteem and depression?)

If you want to be romantic, I think you ought to first figure out what romantic means to you, and apply those ideas to a modern context. I initially compared this to Batman, but somehow, using a fictitious character who is almost completely incapable of sustaining a meaningful adult relationship (sexual or emotional) seems wrong here. You will make mistakes. I will make mistakes. It hurts. It breaks. But, in making the mistakes you are acknowledging the ever-expanding possibilities of modern interaction and expression that didn't exist during a fictitious Golden Era, whether it's comic books or Americana.

I don't feign to understand romance. I just see people looking in one direction and I think I see what they're describing in a different direction. I'm very, very distrustful of the desire to go back or say anything is dead. But then again, I'm a white heterosexual male, I've hardly ever needed help raising my voice.