a Sporting Life

whiskeyandgoatsmilk:

whiskeywednesday:

WHISKEY WEDNESDAY’S WHISKEY OF THE WEEK: Old Grand Dad Whiskey

Package: Is this cough syrup?

Smell: Not sure if it’s the label enforcing the color but, maybe a hint of tangerine citrus. mature drupes such as cherries or persimmon, whiskey may not be old but my nose remembers something old such as tannin.

Taste: I let this brut open for at least 2 hours while sipping every 10 minutes. Spices such as ginger unfold and keeping with the nose, aged fruit. The bitterness of early persimmon can’t possibly escape. AKA: ALCOHOL FLAVORED WHISKEY LIKE WOAH. bite your bottom it will

Finish: This finish never ends. Paired with a full bowl of luxury navy flake in my pipe, I couldn’t force this bourbon to relax any earlier. The sweet mature fruit flavors blended perfectly with this mild tobacco. This could never be a favorite bourbon but the finish lasts forever.

Price: $16 !@#&^#$@!!!!!!!!

Rating: The whole demeanor of this bottle could be easlily misunderstood if naught a bit of patience. The rough and rugged alcohol nose and first sip toughness is actually enough to drive n00bz away for good, but, upon investigation there is a redeeming quality about this pour; so sweet and dry at once. Don’t bother eating granny’s fruit cake if you hate it like i do. You can receive the raisiny goodness with this 100proof bottle and catch a nice crazy buzz along the way. 3.5 WHISKEY SHOTS OUT OF 5

cheap but DAMN that shit is strong! but yea, we’re all broke hipsters any way. I say: Whiskey version of PBR?

they said i would never get the word “n00bz” in a whiskey review I SHOWED ALL OF THEM!

“Drinking With the Homeless”

I remember his hands, hard like the barnacles we’d find in the early morning light on the rocks along Lake Michigan. I’d wait as he would spill change from hand to gnarled hand to the glass covered counter between us then count it out slowly, deliberately, a measure of insurance he extended to me that he wasn’t ripping me off. I was young and impatient, wanting more to see the line forming behind him move along and make its way out of the store. A few times, I rushed him, scooped up quickly the slowly piled change, brushing against a barnacled hand, while slapping his half-pint of Old Grand-Dad in the other hand, nodding to him that all was right but now was not the time for stories.

It was always the same: a half-pint of Old Grand-Dad. He swore by it. He claimed it was the best bourbon ever made, like it existed as some sort of secret in broad daylight, a cosmic joke for his hoarse, throaty laughs, the folks in clean and pressed clothes wasting their good money on Jack and Maker’s and Knob Creek. It was bonded, a fact that gave Old Grand-Dad great power in his reckoning. He tried several times to explain what that actually meant but I never understood him, whether because of his tendency to mumble or my disinterest, I do not know.

I came across a lot of odd characters at the liquor store. I was too young to work there, just 20 years old at the time, and hired to run the lotto machine (a slight concession to the illegality of my hire). My age was of secondary legal consequence, in fact, as I was being paid under the table just as the three other of-age employees of the shop were also. The arrangement was fine by me. I needed a job and was happy to take part of my pay in Johnnie Walker.

The shop was owned by a hard-as-nails bitch who I respected quite a bit despite her rough demeanor, I sensed her good intentions behind the deep mistrust in the world around her. But she was seldom there. Instead, the place was run by her husband, John the Asshole, as he was known throughout our little part of Hyde Park. John the Asshole wasn’t around too often, though he would occasionally bring by prostitutes for a quickie in his office, or a “friend” who had a serious nose candy problem. They would do lines of blow then gleefully grab good stock from the shelves to fete their highs further.

There were plenty of times John the Asshole would come by to actually do the work of running the shop, whether that was having me unload the contraband liquor out of the trunk of his car. Or running the numbers until boredom would take over and he’d start jerking off in his office (the shoddily constructed office had a few exposed gaps to the stock room in back… an unfortunate fact I discovered during one of John the Asshole’s self-love sessions, almost giving away myself away with the gagging sound that loosened my throat). Sometimes, John the Asshole would just drop by on his Harley to tell me how short my drawer was and how much he’d be docking my pay that week. The first few times, I was angry and argued… after awhile I would simply shrug then redouble my efforts to exact the docked amount from store’s stock of scotch.

(To John the Asshole’s credit, he would often buy the night shift dinner, in my case a buffalo chicken sandwich from the Florian which eased the hunger of my paycheck-to-paycheck stomach. In his own twisted way, he offered a bit of kindness, a blowjob from one of the hookers from time to time, an offer I repeatedly declined.)

John the Asshole was forever on my case about the bums that came through the store. I was good at getting them to leave without being a complete dick about it… but John the Asshole preferred the front. Tony, the painfully overweight guy I worked with most nights, left the shop more or less to me. I didn’t care much… I always preferred working alone because I knew I would do a better job. Tony would smoke up in the stock room then sit in the office, the door open, the lights off, eerily invisible given the midnight darkness of his skin and the dimmed office, yet with a watchful eye should the store get out of hand.

Out of hand was a distinct possibility. Yes, the liquor store was in Hyde Park, a relatively affluent neighborhood surrounding the University of Chicago. But the store was on the far side of Hyde Park, the curious clashing of the University’s student population, the affluent African American population of Kimbark, and the Hyde Park non-University nightlife that brought in young African Americans from other nearby South Side neighborhoods to the bars and restaurants along 53rd Street. A group of Blackstone Rangers hung out at the corner across the street outside Pullman’s. Outside the Tiki Lounge a couple of blocks down semi-frequent stabbings occurred … no violence inside because no one wanted their presence banned by Cyril, the elderly owner whose Hawaiian shirted specter, strangely imposing, clung to the bar each and every night. Mostly this short stretch of 53rd was where White and Black, young and old, with a couple bucks in their pockets came to unload those greenbacks for a little fun without great event. But tension often hung somewhere in the background ready to spill over.

More than once, I had to menancingly brandish the bat that laid so nonchalantly askew in a box beneath the register. Tony’s massive presence, sliding down from the darkened office more often induced the desired effect, a scattering of whomever was trying to shortchange me at the register or slip a bottle of Boone’s out the store in an overlarge coat.

Mostly, though, the liquor store was a place of calm quirks, regulars leaving muted traces of themselves in-between the racks of twenty-five cent chips and displays of ten dollar wines. There was Andre the barber dropping by to lay the neighborhood gossip on Tony and me with his lispy drawl. The well-worn routines of Andre’s life, every meal taken at Valois cafeteria next door, the same Pick 3 and Pick 4 numbers bought every day from me, bookended a great sweep of local history which he assembled into broken narratives and shared with us, most likely for his own pleasure. There was the old pensioner whose name I forget, a quiet sort who would kick around and smile, occasionally sharing some tale of 53rd Street past, but mostly just waiting to exchange pleasantries with other regulars in and out of the store in the afternoon. There was the crying woman, her two young children always in tow, buying them their dinner of chips and RC Cola, yelling at them to make up their mind. I call her the crying woman because that was her hustle, approaching passersby with tears in her eyes, begging for some pittance with which to feed her children. This singular talent, to produce tears without hesitation, might have served her on the stage or in some grander scam. Instead it was a cynical novelty to propagate cycle of abuse for whichever drug with which she found her life enmeshed.

And, of course, there was our man, the bum who swore by Old Grand-Dad. I remember his face, too, not just the barnacled hands. He looked like a Muppet, features worn and exaggerated by a life on the streets. Big sleepy eyes that would widen rarely but dramatically. A nose bulbous and shiny, looking like if squeezed it would let out a glorious “honk!” Beard flecked with snow-white and gray sticking straight down to a jagged and satisfying point.

One time, Old Grand-Dad claimed he was once a millionaire, that he once had it all, but gave it up because it didn’t mean anything. The whiskey was enough now, it was all he wanted. Women he detested. And fancy clothes and food held no appeal.

When he told me this, I, naturally, didn’t believe him. But he assured me of its truth. He beckoned me forward across the glass counter that divided us. I leaned in for the great secret. But he didn’t share it with me. He simply laughed a furious hoarse giggle that stunk of cheap-ass Old Grand-Dad and staggered out the store.

eatsleepdraw:

Miyazaki Cowboy

No Face stares out onto the plains, vast as a banquet table. Perhaps on the distant horizon Lady Eboshi struts through the swinging doors of her saloon petulantly awaiting what the next stagecoach brings. Inside the saloon, the midday heat has long since silenced the player piano. Nausicaa drums her fingers at the bar, pretending to sip a shot glass of moonshine, screwing up the courage to do what she must do.

The American West could have been Miyazaki’s playground. It certainly persists as an idea just as steadfastly as the disappearing Japanese forests around which Miyazaki weaves his inspiring fables.

Considering how ardently I’ve resisted growing up at times, it’s a surprise that I also resisted the films Hayao Miyazaki for as long as I did.

The resistance had much to do with the genre: Anime. Akira left me confused and numb. I fell asleep during Ghost In the Shell. It seemed reasonable to give up.

But the lesson persists, categories endure only because - once in a blue moon and in spectacular fashion - descriptions fall so hopelessly short of mark. Further, genre will always be transcended, often when least expected.

Miyazaki’s films are well crafted yet undeniably fun. They’re complex in emotional texture yet elegant in execution. A singular conscious pervades his work yet Miyazaki reaches out to the universal.

In short, it’s all very very good.

I can’t remember if I watched Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke first. I remember the DVD case to Spirited Away at the video store, held in Keetens’s paw with an imploring look. Again and again, I wiggled free from watching it. (That difficult negotiation that Netflix has made irrelevant, the hour spent in the video store, running up to the significant other, a look of triumph with a case lofted high… sometimes to be spurred on, sometimes shot down, I miss that.)

Whenever I did finally capitulate, I felt the fool. Why did I waste any time resisting? We soon ripped through them all: Nausicaa, Castle In the Sky, Totoro, Kiki, Porco Rosso, even Castle of Cagliostro. We awaited Howl’s Moving Castle with impatiently hopping feet.

There is something in the thrill of discovery, new worlds opened up in-between the unlit crevices of the one you’re already too familiar with, new words to be spoken which untie the knotted tongue. I worry sometimes that I’ll never again be thrilled as I was when I stumbled upon Miyazaki’s movies in my mid-20s, or the Lord of the Rings books in early adolescense, or the bizarre work of Phillip K Dick from the Eileenosaurus’s bookcase, or the first time I listened to the Black Saint and the Sinner Lady… It’s foolish, I know. There’s too much within this world to know even a meaningful fraction of it. But when certain great works created by others, by genius, become personal, it’s hard to imagine how anything else could put its grips on your heart if not in the same way then at least with the same force.

I chose this picture because at first it made me laugh. (And, because I will never pass up an opportunity to sing Miyazaki’s praises.) But the more I look at it, the more I do think there’s something to it. And, it’s not just how fitting the bushy eyebrows and moustache flow into the Studio Ghibli aesthetic. No, it has something to do with our imagined worlds, for America the West. And No Face, an empty vessel searching for something, maybe beginning with a simple innocent desire, maybe turning into ravenous unchecked disaster…

Or maybe it’s the simple notion that if Miyazaki was a gunslinger (taking my cue from Mingus) there’d be a whole lot of dead animators.

fuckyeahbicycles:

brokenandwhole:coldhearted:icanread:(by sndr)

Strangest thing. I logged onto Facebook this morning to find on my home page a link. The update was by a friend of a friend. The link was to a post on his blog. He suffers from PTSD stemming from childhood trauma. Coincidence of coincidences, I suffer from PTSD stemming from childhood trauma. I wanted to reach out to him. I thought it was important (insert enough dark humor here to make this sound not like a Dr. Phil episode please).

Anyway, this is what I wrote:

[Name redacted], I don’t know if you remember me. I met you at Throbbing Gristle - I’m [name redacted]’s friend, Cian. I suffer from PTSD, too, also stemming from childhood trauma. I don’t know if I have any words of wisdom, I just wanted to reach out, digital hug style.

Cognitive therapy really helped me but that was a bounded and limited investigation. I undertook the investigation with a wonderful therapist and I set very clear goals. I basically wanted to stop stopping myself. I’m more or less okay with the occasional deep lethargy, with the not-too-often fits of complete disconnect, with the fact that many of my loved ones don’t understand me at all. But I just want to do one thing in life and I don’t want to stop myself from doing that…

So cognitive really helped in that regard but I hear what you’re saying in terms of its overall usefulness. I don’t want to be defined as a survivor and all that bullshit. These are the facts, though: Our survival skills have been on high alert since we were young. I can survive but I don’t know if I’ll ever thrive. I guess we just try to find the people who can help us build the tools that we need? I don’t know.

I don’t really have much access to my past, the trauma wall is still up, though, with a few cracks in it. I’m okay with that. I’m okay with it coming down some day. I’m okay overall with likely being alone. I’m a fucking handful, I understand. I’m shaking as I type this. I’ve muttered random names and words that are swirling around my head again and again and again, and played off like I was breaking into some snippet of song or a distant melody line. Whatever, I’m a weirdo, I always will be, I’m okay with that.

If you ever want to get a drink (alcohol and I are like this) and just chat, let me know. We don’t have to talk about anything in particular, we don’t have to hold hands and cry. We can just be two dudes who might understand something of the weight behind certain words and phrases each other speaks… I can tell you about the time that my college psychologist finished listening to me after I spilled all, took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and defeatedly said “I didn’t think it would be *that* much.” Hilarity abounds!

@[Name redacted] I can’t speak for [name redacted] but in my own experience and observation of others, people suffering from PTSD resulting from childhood abuse are often incredibly open and upfront with their condition and their various scars. I think it stems from having some development halted abruptly while still a child. There’s often no armor. That sounds great in some sense but it’s really not. Sometimes the only way I’ve managed to get by is to be so disarmingly open and honest to the point of making everyone else extremely uncomfortable. That’s really the only weapon in the arsenal. Trying to divine the motives of others is an exercise in futility. My ability to reality test was for a long time virtually nonexistent, I had to depend on a few select others to interpret situations for me. With the inability to form a single barrier and an interior life as orderly as a Jackson Pollock painting, the only way to get love is to be so open, so unguarded, so completely laid bare for all to see.

We’re in some odd emotional territory when vulnerability is often one’s greatest strength.

Suffice to say it’s been a weird morning. The above photo was the first one on my dashboard, I didn’t want to pick it really to accompany this entry but it doesn’t seem that I have choice. Fun, fun.

Edit: sorry, Tumblrs, probably none of you wanted to read this. I mainly posted it for my non-Tumblr friends, the ones who know and love the complete wreck that I am…

hammerito:

ohai-jennifer:

;) lovin’ it.

The original hipster. Cardigan? Check. Sweet pants? Check. Chuck Taylor knock-offs? Check.

He just showered too much, damnit.

There are those days when cynicism clouds the sidelong gaze. The days which I look back on childhood, the childhood endemic to a certain America, and see a lot of cheap plastic, shoddy production values, and dime-card sentiment all hustled to turn a buck.

Then I remember Fred Rogers.

There are so many stories. The limo driver Mister Rogers insisted be invited into a television network executive’s home for dinner when he discovered the driver would have to wait in his car outside. The boy with autism whose first words came after seeing Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. The Stanford educated gorilla Koko who didn’t miss an episode and, upon meeting Mister Rogers in person, embraced him before proceeding to remove his shoes.

Then, of course, there is the fact Mister Rogers saved PBS. The Nixon administration (can there be a better villain?) wanted to slash the funding for PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Fred Rogers, at the time a lightly known children’s television host syndicated in a few markets throughout the country, testified before a congressional committee with a straightforward and simply-worded plea:

I’m very much concerned, as I know you are, about what’s being delivered to our children in this country. And I’ve worked in the field of child development for six years now, trying to understand the inner needs of children. We deal with such things as the inner drama of childhood. We don’t have to bop somebody over the head to make drama on the screen. We deal with such things as getting a haircut or the feelings about brothers and sisters and the kind of anger that arises in simple family situations and we speak to it constructively.

…

We made a hundred programs for EEN, the Eastern Educational Network, and then when the money ran out people from Boston and Pittsburgh and Chicago all came to the fore and said we’ve got have more of this neighborhood expression of care.

And this, this is what I give. I give an expression of care every day to each child to help him realize that he is unique. I end the program by saying that you’ve made this day a special day by just you’re being you. There’s no person in the whole world like you. And I like you just the way you are.

And I feel that if we in Public Television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health.

The outcome? Congress doubled funding for PBS.

My favorite story, though, is the one about the Impala. Fred Rogers drove a rusty old Impala, never bothering to trade it in for a newer shinier version, a new shinier toy. One day, after the taping of his show, he found his old Impala gone from the parking lot. He filed a police report. It made local news.

Less than two days later, the Impala was returned to the exact spot from which it was stolen. Everything the same, except for a note attached: “If we’d known it was yours, we never would have taken it.”

Here this hopelessly corny man, a lithe little man who wore sweaters that his mother knitted for him every day on television, could move the conscious of even the most hardened.

My first memories of Mister Rogers are of his hopeless corniness. For various reasons, I don’t remember the early years of my life, those tender ages which Mister Rogers so directly and deftly nutured from behind the warm glow of a glass screen. I remember squirming through the show, being downright bored with much of it.

I remember wondering why I bothered to watch the show at all. Mister Rogers looked like he stepped out of another time. The music was sweet but annoyingly so. The lessons of each episode I felt like I already knew.

But I continued to watch. I returned to the Neighborhood every day probably a little longer than was appropriate for my age. I returned for that message of care which I so desperately needed. I returned for that assurance, for that positive affirmation, that was so hard to come by elsewhere. I returned for the calm comfort offered amid the turbulent and dramatic world childhood can so often be.

I don’t know how well I’ve absorbed all the lessons of Mister Rogers. I would probably fight someone if they spoke a cross word of old Fred Rogers. I’m sure he wouldn’t approve of that. I curse and drink and stay up late. My intentions haven’t always matched my actions, sometimes much too much so. I’ve hurt others and haven’t always known how to apologize.

Still I know if Fred Rogers were around he’d likely be more than a little forgiving of falling short the saintly line Mister Rogers sketched. He’d probably say the same thing he always did when people were trying to coax a judgment out of him to suit whatever ends: “God loves you just the way you are.”

ISSUE 05 of the Norman Einsteins is now online! Go forth, kiddies.

And, if you like the magazine and haven’t already, sign up for the monthly mailing list. Email join@normaneinsteins.com. It would make my day.

ISSUE 04 of the Norman Einsteins now online!

ffffound:

july10.jpg (JPEG-Grafik, 500x375 Pixel)

I lost my Batman shirt somewhere between three big relationships and the smattering of women for whom, for brief hot moments, the definition of our proximity wavered from “girl I’m dating” to “friend” with a knowing wink.

The shirt was wrapped in stripped paper Christmas ‘89. It served as a trophy of sorts. That summer Tim Burton’s Batman movie hit the theaters, theaters I visited no less than seven times. Since I at the time considered Batman the finest film ever made, I brandished my repeated viewings with pride, the shirt merely an acknowledgment of already measured feats.

I grew up, more or less, but still wore the shirt even when a succession of films overtook Batman’s place in my hierarchy. Resevoir Dogs to The 400 Blows to Ikiru, all reflected a supposed refining of sensibilities with age and experience.

The shirt’s persistence in my wardrobe begged to differ.

The prime suspect in this mystery, Shiva, on facing intervals apart, in a coquettish sotto voce, would request an unwashed shirt, a set of olfactory jumper cables, I guess. After our lips’ last part, I would hand her a crumpled ball of 100% cotton. She would bury her face, like one of any great beauty, one at once childish and severe, instantly within.

I left Batman with Shiva a few times. Batman proved to be a favorite of the naked or near naked women who wandered in and out of my life. If I caught some nymph in a favorite tee of mine, I would work up mock annoyance in a mock lather all the way to mock anger, providing myself fitting excuse to throw her back on the bed, dispose her of the shirt, and engage in one of those ritualistic comedy of errors love or lust drives us to perform.

I’ve lost a lot of shirts over the years. Innumerable black-pocketed tees I’ve replaced with startling regularity. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology navy-blue worn with a smirk all throughout college at an institution that wasn’t M.I.T., yet similarly overwhelmed with its sense of self. The smiling skull Marine olive-green worn in honor of my buddy who eventually served in Afghanistan and Iraq, worn and lost before either of those wars were prosecuted, lost after I forgot any such defense of its screen-printed logo: Mess With the Best, Die Like the Rest.

These kinds of losses are meaningless unless we make metaphors of material, a currency for moments tender or trying. A faded black t-shirt with a peeling yellow logo seems a small price to pay for pieces of variegated loves.

Still, sometimes, I just want my Batman shirt back.