Heave Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Hello there. How was your Christmas (or Hannukah, or Kwanzaa, or secular solstice celebration)? Did you eat well? Did you get everything you wanted? They're saying gift-giving around the country was quite constricted this year, what with the poor economy and all. I hope that didn't keep you from enjoying the holiday(s). In fact, I hope it enhanced your enjoyment. By forcing you and yours to focus on the essentials (family, baby Jesus, candelabras, Africa, the earth's rotation on its axis, etc.) rather than the getting and giving of stuff, that is.

Me? My Christmas was lovely, thank you. I got to visit family and friends, I ate quite well (that Kentucky bourbon pecan chocolate pie I bought in Louisville was outrageous), and I actually did get some nice gifts. Mostly utilitarian things that I needed (e.g., boots), plus some great books, some pajama bottoms with penguins on them (I get at least one pair of pajama bottoms every Christmas - I now have enough to open a sizeable, if somewhat narrowly-focused, boutique), and plenty of consumables. I love consumables. In particular, I was happy to receive from my father a 1-lb bag of dark chocolate M&Ms, which was a great improvement over the 5-lb bags of regular M&Ms my brother and I have received in the past (my father belongs to an exclusive club called Sam's Club, which provides him with access to regular consumer items in large quantities - you should see the container of Kraft Parmesan Cheese in his fridge: it's the size of a nuclear warhead). 5 lbs is a lot of M&Ms - so much, in fact, that I could have made it to April last year eating nothing but M&Ms - so I was happy that this year we made a shift to quality over quantity.

But let's face it, some Christmas gifts just suck. Maybe it's a gift certificate to a store you would never shop at, maybe it's a crappy t-shirt, or maybe it's a pecan log from Stuckey's, but whatever it is, a bad gift is not just something you don't want or like - it's something that actually injures you in some way. It wounds your pride ("So this is what they think of me?"), it lends tacit support to an entity that you despise ("Hey, thanks for the Ann Coulter book!"), or it burdens you with something that you cannot discard without offending the gift-giver (think of the pink bunny pajamas in A Christmas Story). Or maybe, just maybe, it makes you vomit uncontrollably for an entire morning. That's right. This year my brother, stepsister, and stepniece all got together and gave me a stomach virus for Christmas. They gave one to my father as well, but mine was much more robust. Luckily I didn't actually unwrap it until Boxing Day (the traditional gift-giving day in Britain), so I was still able to enjoy Christmas itself - visiting family and unwittingly infecting them, eating copious amounts of Christmas food that would soon find its way back up the way it came.

Now, I know some of you have had this thing already. As with most things, Oklahoma has lagged behind the rest of the country when it comes to stomach viruses (the same could be said of hairstyles, popular music, using Craigslist to buy and sell things), and it's undoubtedly the great holiday influx of people from out-of-state that has finally brought us up to speed. So forgive me for being behind the times here, but man oh man, this thing is terrible, isn't it? It feels a bit like a giant hand is reaching inside of you and ripping out anything that's not nailed down, and a few things that are. It also feels a bit like what I imagine waterboarding must feel like, only you're afraid of drowning in fluids that are pouring out of you rather than fluids pouring over you. Am I being too graphic? Sorry.

I don't blame my relatives for getting me this crappy gift. I know they got it from someone else and they obviously didn't want it, so they did what I would do myself - they regifted. And I'm happy to report that I'm on the mend, enough that I can actually contemplate going to Ingrid's German Kitchen for brunch today. The nice thing is that I have virtually no appetite, so I'll probably not get as fat this holiday season as I was afraid I would. The other nice thing is that it's forced me to stay home and get some work done, which was something that really needed to happen. Which only goes to show you that even the worst gifts are not without their redeeming qualities. And redemption, after all, is what it's all about, innit?

Road Trips Make You Smahtah

Things I learned on my most recent drive from Washington, DC to Oklahoma City, OK (in order of appearance):

1) Fairmont, West Virginia, is the pepperoni roll capital of the world. It may or may not be legal to produce one anywhere else in the state.

2) There is a cheap periodical sold in at least one West Virginia convenience store called MugSHOTS that consists entirely of mug shot photographs arranged in a grid pattern on every single page. I'm not sure if the purpose is to allow the locals to learn whether the guy who moved in across the street is a sex offender, to enable them to discover the whereabouts of that uncle who hasn't called in several weeks, or simply to provide cheap entertainment by spotting people they know ("Hey! There's Roscoe!" "Naw, that ain't Roscoe. See how that one eye opens all the way? That's Roscoe's cousin Lugnut." "Dang, you're right. Lugnut shore does look like Roscoe from the side") I greatly regret not forking over the $1.50 for a copy of this periodical.

3) Pepperoni rolls are kind of gross, and eating one may lead you to believe you're having a heart attack.

4) Drivers in the Midwest are very slow. Like, at-or-below-the-speed-limit slow. This may account for the almost total absence of speed traps between West Virginia and Missouri.

5) In a pinch, cookies and clementines make a perfectly suitable dinner. Provided there are enough cookies and clementines.

6) 7 degrees fahrenheit is cold. 7 degrees fahrenheit with 40mph winds is very, very cold. Eye-freezing cold. Tongue-shrivelling cold. Very, very cold.

7) Like everybody else in the world, British-voiced GPS systems have a hard time pronouncing Louisville. Unlike everybody else in the world, they pronounce it "LOW-iss-vill".

8) If, by some strange twist of fate, I were to end up living in Louisville, KY, I would be just fine. For two reasons: Lynn's Paradise Cafe, easily the most whimsical restaurant in the country (seriously, follow the link), and the Homemade Pie Kitchen. In truth, I'm not entirely sure about the merits of the latter, but I'm expecting great things from the Kentucky Bourbon Chocolate Chip Pecan Pie I bought there.

Lynn's looks like this (I took this last year when I was there):

9) There is a town called Santa Claus, IN.

10) Toasted ravioli is a famous St Louis delicacy, and, even though the eponymous ravioli is not toasted but fried, it is also delicious at a place called Hodak's ("A St Louis Tradition Since 1962") and best enjoyed with good friends and family.

11) Ahab had Moby Dick, Dante had Beatrice, Monty Python had the Holy Grail, and I have the St Louis City Museum.

12) Missouri has an abnormally large number of adult superstores. Abnormally large. Almost all of them have yellow signs, yellow being the international symbol for "seedy".

13) No matter what you're expecting, it will always take about twice as long to drive through Missouri as you're expecting.

14) My brother really likes to drive at night, while I really like to drive during the day.

15) Quite a few bands put out CDs this year that are not as good as their previous CDs. These include: Wolf Parade, Jenny Lewis, and Okkervil River. The new Silver Jews, on the other hand, is quite good. Ditto TV On The Radio. (I may do an end-of-the-year music wrap-up in a few days.)

16) Arriving home to a welcoming mother and a slightly hysterical but adoring dog after a 20-hour drive is a wonderful feeling.

Hello Ninja in the Snow

Longtime readers of this blog know that there's a ninja living in my driveway. He is, to all appearances, a harmless ninja, and back in October when I wrote about him I indicated that it made me feel safe to know that he was out there guarding me from the denizens of NoHo who might attack me in the night.

Well, after I posted that the ninja went into hiding. I don't know if he sensed that his presence was being publicized and, fearing that his mission might be compromised, decided to go underground for a while. Or maybe he had been called away on some urgent errand in another part of the Valley, some troubled corner in more need of his vigilant eye than my humble Submarine. Whatever the cause, the ninja had disappeared, and I had begun to despair.

But I needn't have worried. This afternoon the first major snowfall of the season began - it's still coming down as I write this, and the city is beginning to close down - and, as I stepped out a few hours ago to run some errands, I saw him again. At first I didn't recognize him, dressed as he was in a Smurf-blue down coat with the hood pulled tight and a rainbow-colored scarf wrapped around his neck. I was a bit perplexed, though, as I ducked out of my hobbit-door and saw a person standing with his back to me, staring thoughtfully at a line of footprints running to the middle of the driveway and back. This, of course, was the ninja-path he had created for himself as he charged up and down the driveway, and as soon as I heard his telltale "Hey! Hey-yay-yayayayayayeeeeeeeeiiiii!" I knew he had returned. I was caught off-guard, though, and before I had time to retreat back through my door he saw me. We exchanged glances, and then we said hi. I walked quickly past him and didn't hear the battle-cry again as I turned the corner onto the street. When I returned about an hour later he was gone, and his footprints had been all but buried by the falling snow.

I'm afraid I may have scared him away for good.

NoHoHo!

Sadly, I'll be leaving NoHo on Saturday and won't return until after Christmas. But I managed to pop out today and snap some photos of the place before I go. They're here.

Have I mentioned how charming this town is?

J Mascis Is Living All Over Me!

So I'm sitting at the Green Bean today (the Green Bean is one of my favorite brunch spots in the Valley - which is saying something in a valley that is, for some reason, stuffed to the rafters with great brunch spots) (I know valleys don't have rafters, but it'd be funny if they did, no?) and who walks in but J Mascis, lead singer of influential alternative rock band Dinosaur Jr. He was accompanied by a lady whom I assume was his wife and a baby whom I assume was his baby.


How do I know it was J Mascis? Am I some sort of obsessive Dinosaur Jr fan who knows not only what every band member looks like, but also where they live, what they drive, when they graduated high school, and what time they take their dogs for a walk? No. In fact, I don't even own a single Dinosaur Jr album, although I'm familiar enough with their music and keep meaning to get around to downloading their highly-regarded album You're Living All Over Me. No, I know it was J Mascis because I once saw a picture of him, and he looks like this:



Mascis is the one in front


This, you will agree, is not a look that one encounters very often, and, having seen it once, it's pretty hard to mistake him for anyone else. Even in hippie-saturated NoHo.


The funny thing is, this is actually the second time I've seen Mascis since I moved here, the first time being a couple of months ago on the very same block as he scanned the menu of the new noodle restaurant in town. I'm convinced that J Mascis does nothing but wander back and forth along the same block of downtown NoHo, eating at the same three or four restaurants, pushing a stroller containing a baby that may or may not be his, and remaining completely unrecognized by his fellow NoHoites. Of course, he probably thinks the same about me.


The Valley, in fact, is awash in celebrities, past and present. Robert Frost lived here, of course, as did Emily Dickinson, Calvin Coolidge, and Sylvester Graham (inventor of the Graham Cracker). Since I moved here, I have also run into Jonathan Harr, author of A Civil Action and The Lost Painting, in NoHo - also twice, both times in coffee shops. I have yet, however, to come across the Valley's newest celebrity, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, although I remain hopeful.


In fact, I'm hoping to run into Mascis, Harr, and Maddow all at once, perhaps all out drinking at the Dirty Truth or getting burritos at Bueno Y Sano. I would walk up to them without a hint of fear or trepidation and invite them over to my place for cookies and board games. Which reminds me - I need to get some cookies. And board games.

If the Tweed Fits

I often struggle to explain to people what I do for a living. This is partly because I don't actually do much of anything, really, but partly also because my income is not tied to any specific service I perform. When most people say "job," what they really mean is "activity performed on behalf of another for which one is compensated monetarily." At least, this is what they would mean if they had the vocabulary of a lawyer or a government bureaucrat. But that, most emphatically, is not what I'm doing right now. In the past I have been able to explain that I make my living by teaching, and, while this is actually only a portion of what I understand my "job" to be, it's usually enough to satisfy my interrogator - a new barber, say, or a distant relative I happen to bump into at a funeral or wedding. Even now, if I'm cornered, I'll still tell people that I teach, even though this is a complete falsehood. It's just so much easier than explaining to people that the college that employs me expects nothing more of me than that I show up for a free lunch on Thursdays (though not all Thursdays) and give a brief talk twice a year about my research. When I have taken this approach, I'm usually met with a slight pause, a blank stare, and then a question along the lines of, "So, like, what do they get out of it?" And then I have to explain that, well, they don't get much out of it at all, apart from a slight enhancement of the intellectual atmosphere on campus and the opportunity to support promising young scholars in the early stages of their careers. "So," my hypothetical questioner might ask, "they're paying you for the privilege of supporting you in the early stage of your career?" "Yes," I will say, and then quickly change the topic to sports or farting.

You can see why I usually just lie about it.

I'm similarly coy about admitting to people that I have a PhD. Twice in the past month I have been reduced to blushing embarrassment by well-meaning relatives who have introduced me to acquaintances as "My son/grandson, the doctor/professor" or something along those lines. I know that they're doing this because they're proud of me, and they're probably accustomed to bragging about me when I'm not around, and, yes, I probably ought to be proud myself. And I am. But still I'm loath to bring up the topic on my own, and then only slowly and reluctantly. Why? Several reasons (and sub-reasons) come to mind:

1) Modesty. I don't want people to think I think I'm better than them.

1a) I actually do think I'm better than most people, and I don't want it to show.

2) Where I'm from, being smart wasn't something to be proud of, but rather something you hid away, like an embarrassing birthmark or a gay uncle. If you wanted friends, if you wanted to be cool, if you wanted the girls to like you, for heaven's sake you couldn't let them know you were smart.

2a) When people learn you're smart, they're liable to say something like, "Oh yeah, you're smart, huh? Well, then, say something smart, fag." And then you're stuck.

3) When I tell people I have a PhD, I invariably have to tell them what I have a PhD in, and this often leads to one of the following scenarios:
a) They tell me all about how their own family came over from Ireland and how they just went over there last summer and tracked down some of the old relatives and oh but that beer over there is dark and the grass is so green and the music is so great and have you studied much about Celtic mythology and my isn't that Riverdance fascinating....
b) They ask me what my dissertation's about, and then I have to try to boil down what, to me (because I've been so close to it for so long) is an intricately constructed argument about the emergence of a tradition of violence in mid-Victorian Belfast, into terms that my barber can understand. And doing that causes me much mental pain.
c) They ask me why I decided to study Irish history, and I then have to launch into a very long story about how, no, I'm not actually Irish, but I lived there for a year and took this amazing class with this great professor who made us do research in the National Archives and I came upon this batch of letters written by peasants to other peasants threatening them with violence if they didn't stop paying rent that was too high and on and on and on... I don't mind telling this story, actually, but it's not nearly as pithy as I'd like it to be, and that bothers me somehow.

The funny thing is, you don't actually have to be all that smart to get a PhD in history. What you need to be is persistent and determined. If you were really that smart, you'd have figured out a way to use that great big brain of yours to go into a profession in which there were actual job opportunities or in which you might have some control over what part of the country you'd live in. This is why you'll find very few genius historians: geniuses are innovative, they take risks, they shift the goal-posts. Historians (and other sorts of academics as well, I should add) get where they get by playing by the rules, by treading well-trodden paths. Don't get me wrong, writing a dissertation is a bitch, and it takes lots of very highly developed mental resources to get it done - but more than anything it takes self-discipline, hard work, and a willingness, at times, to place interpersonal relationships somewhat lower on your list of priorities than most doctors would recommend (not that doctors have any room to talk).

For most historians, I believe, the allure of the profession is to be found in the persona that comes along with it. Many are the young, freshly-minted PhDs who can't wait to rush out and buy that first tweed jacket and naugahyde valise the day after their dissertation defense - and many are the pedantic blowhards who simply thrive in front of a classroom but who, in any other profession, would be swiftly dispatched to some back-office, pencil-pushing job away from clients and customers. Indeed, it's impossible for me to imagine most historians that I know as anything other than historians: they're born with a predisposition toward becoming one, and that predisposition is reinforced and solidified once they start upon the path.

It makes me happy when things find their natural level like that. If the tweed fits, wear it - that's what I always say.

But if the tweed doesn't fit? Well, it probably will before long. Even if you don't want anyone to see you in it.

Winter Comes to the Valley

According to the electronic thermometer hanging on my wall, it's 17.2 degrees fahrenheit outside right now. That, my friends, is cold. That's almost as cold as it is in Fargo, ND (16 degrees), colder than Billings, MT (22 degrees), and much colder than Oslo, Norway (where it's 32 degrees right now, in the middle of the night). Snow is forecast for tomorrow, rain the next day, then more snow on Thursday. Winter, it seems, has arrived.

New Englanders love to complain about winter. In fact, complaining about winter is something of a regional pastime, like rodeos out west or Civil War reenactments down south. You can usually tell how long a person has lived in New England by the scale and complexity of their complaints: newcomers will focus primarily on the cold temperatures and abundant snowfall, but natives (especially older natives) can spend hours dwelling on the travails of shoveling the walk, the astronomical cost of heating oil, the iniquities of the municipal snowplowing regime, the dangers of falling icicles, which roads to avoid and which to stick to, and memories of winters and blizzards past. As in any society subject to extreme changes in the weather New Englanders have devised a number of folk methods to predict when the bad weather will arrive. It's said that a light-colored breastbone in the Thanksgiving turkey indicates a mild winter ahead, whereas a purple or blue one portends snow and bitter cold. A warm Christmas supposedly means a cold Easter. If a month starts out warm, it is sure to end cold. And if your pigs start squealing, get ready for a blizzard.

Most of this, of course, is pure hogwash (pardon the pun), but it's a fair measure of how seriously winter has shaped the patterns of life here. Yet New England winters are hardly the worst in the country: the upper midwest stays much colder for much longer, and areas around the Great Lakes get much more snow. Moreover, the winters in New England have been getting much milder lately - average winter temperatures have risen about 2.5 degrees in the last 40 years, and this is having serious negative consequences for local industries such as ski resorts and maple sugaring. I can remember watching in amazement two Januarys ago when an extended stretch of warm weather caused the trees to bud outside my Somerville apartment while confused birds hopped around chirping and blinking in the sunlight. Rivers and lakes are staying frozen for shorter periods or (like the Charles in Boston) failing to freeze at all.

Most natives I know delight in these warmer winters, but I don't. Maybe it's because I prefer being cold to being hot - you can always get more bundled up, after all, but you can only get so naked, and anyway my internal thermostat is set somewhat higher than most. Maybe it's because, as a non-native, I'm still charmed by the novelty of waist-high snowfalls and single-digit temperatures, as I am by the beauty of a snow-blanketed meadow or glistening forest. The shortness of the daylight hours and the sludgy grossness of a city several days after it snows are depressing, it's true, but this can be slightly offset by a warm, cozy room and a piping mug of cocoa or mulled wine. I suppose it also helps that, this year at least, I'm not paying for my heat, so I can keep The Submarine as cozy as I like and only feel slightly guilty about it.

But mostly I like New England winters to be cold because that's the way they're supposed to be. This is not some hidebound traditionalism on my part, nor is it abject sentimentality - it's simply a function of my deep unease about what we're doing to the climate. I know this is going to open me up to all sorts of ridicule from my New England readers, but seriously, folks, how can we enjoy a 60-degree February day when we know what it means for the polar ice caps, ocean currents, sea levels, or worldwide rainfall patterns, all of which threaten the livelihoods (and lives) of billions of people? Not concerned about people? Then go watch March of the Penguins or some clips of Knut the Polar Bear or that saxaphone-playing walrus they've got over in Istanbul. Seriously, these things are frigging cute. Surely a slight twinge of guilt is in order under the circumstances?

None of this means that I won't indulge in the great New England sport of winter-bitching in the months to come, but it does mean that, when I do so, my heart won't really be in it. In fact, if we break any snowfall or temperature records this winter, I will probably rejoice a little bit - but quietly, so as not to spoil the fun for my neighbors.

From Joey

Turn the volume way up and give yourself a quick fright with this Christmas greeting from the Oklahoma GOP.

I think I just vomited a little.