You should be ashamed.

Guilty pleasures.

We all have 'em.

The first time I heard this term was when my mom was chuckling at the flaming antics on an episode of Will & Grace.  It's a silly show, she knew that.  It can be risque and stupid, she knew that, too.  But there are some things for which we abandon our usual snobbishness or high-minded preferences.

Let's be clear.  That we all have "guilty" foods is a given.  B. loves her brownies.  I indulge in crappy fast food every once in a while.  We know it's bad for us, but we ignore that fact and pig out.  I'm not talking so much about food here, though.  We all have something non-edible that for one reason or another, we just can't let go of.

What is it about that particular shamefully tasteless piece of junk that pervades our walls of classiness and strikes a chord with us?  It could be a Hank Williams, Jr. album, a Dixie Chicks poster left discarded under our bed, an old Aquaman comic book brought to light, those parachute pants left at the bottom of our drawer, the action figures/dolls we're suddenly too old/cool for... or so we claim.



I'll admit it, I have one.   A few, actually.


I know they look ratty.  I know they're faded and wafer thin.  I know they have holes everywhere and the edges are frayed.  I know I've had them since sophomore year of high school.  But I looooooooove my comfy jeans.  They're like an old friend, fitting the contours of my oddly shaped raptor legs and prominent calves perfectly.  They're baggy where they should be baggy, they fit snugly where I need them to.  It's a dance, it's teamwork.  I love them so.  B. has threatened to throw them out on more than one occasion.  I've thought about hiding them until I can patch them up and start wearing them in public again (they're my Saturday jeans, usually).  Everyone should have some comfy jeans, no matter what Stacey London or Clinton Kelly or Tim Gunn or... ok I'm out of fashion gurus, but no matter what anyone says I will always love those jeans.




I remember buying NSYNC's album No Strings Attached and bringing it to a friend's house.  We started rocking out to "Bye Bye Bye" (come on, who hasn't?) when my friend's older brother scorned us into submission.  The oldest myself, I was new to the "bully older brother" element.  His derision was enough to spoil our fun.

... Until the second track, during which all three of us sat around the kitchen belting along in cracked falsetto, "It's Gonna Be MEEE!"





I've never really watched any Fast or Furious films (it feels like there are enough now to rival the Land Before Time franchise).  I saw The Pacifier and nearly died laughing it was so bad.  XXX should have been nixed from production before ever hitting the box office.  Vin Diesel is a joke.  We all know it... but... Chronicles of Riddick is this weird, space-age acid trip for your eyes.  And there's Vinny, standing in all of his awkwardly stoic theatrical splendor.  But I don't hate it, dang it!  It's so stupid and so cool.  Maybe it's the conceptual design riddled through the film, maybe it appeals to my inner nine-year-old.

...a nine-year-old with a concussion.

I'm fully aware it's a weak movie.  Starring a weak actor who got hired for his biceps and chrome dome.  I know I shouldn't like it, but I do anyway.  Against my better judgement, I don't hate it.  Other guilty pleasure movies I wish I didn't secretly think are cool?  Hellboy.  League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Speed Racer.  Insert other franchise-less sci-fi/fantasy niche here, the list goes on.




Why can't we just enjoy what we like, unafraid of the judgement of others?  




My wife shocked me a few weeks ago by suggesting we go see Pacific Rim.  Even I had dismissed it as just a transparent conglomeration of Power Rangers, Transformers, and Godzilla.  We knew going in that it would be Independence Day underwater.  We didn't expect a moving script or a twisty, convoluted plot.  No depth, just big robots beating monsters senseless with their mechanical, rocket-powered fists.

And we got what we wanted.

We both loved it, ignoring the film critics looking down their noses at our enjoyment.


I think it helps having someone in which to share the burden of others' judgement.Geek out, embrace the corniness of your guilty pleasures, you might just find a kindred spirit in the process.




What are you ashamed to enjoy?  What's your guilty pleasure?

Come on, give.



S

Eden and Mecca

GeoMagnetism.

I’m sure this is an actual scientific phenomenon having to do with the earth’s polarity and such, but for my own purposes I’m going to botch that and make it my own.  This is what I’m calling something I’ve noticed about the places we seem to be drawn to inexplicably.  Some of us feel that life won’t be complete without a pilgrimage to Paris.  Others have to make it to the Big Apple before they die.  Why does this happen?  Why are our souls drawn to a place we’ve never before been?   

Why do we feel so at home in a far away place?

My wife loves to travel.  Being an evolutionary biology buff, one of her several personal Meccas is the Galapagos Islands.  She also dreams of going to Istanbul, Cambodia, New Zealand... the list goes on.  We have a map on our wall that is speckled with stickers indicating our eventual travel destinations.  I want more than anything to be able to take her all over.  I want to give her the world.

She was able to break away from work one Saturday and we made the mistake of buying a National Geographic special issue describing the 100 most beautiful places in the world.  We were depressed the rest of the weekend.  There is so much this wonderful world has to offer, and we can’t afford to break away and have adventures while still in school.

But I digress.   

I think there are two reasons we can be drawn somewhere:  

(1)    We feel like we were made from that patch of earth. (Edens)

(2)    We won’t feel complete until we make it there. (Meccas)

Not the same thing. 

Just because a place is pretty doesn’t mean we feel incomplete without going there.  Reaching one's Eden instills a sense of inexplicable return, as if we belong there, as if we've somehow been there before and have come home.

Not so with Meccas; going there fills a void we were born with.  Going to the Mecca(s) of our souls does more than check off an item on our Bucket list- it fulfills an inexplicable, very personal longing.  I want to kiss my wife underneath the Northern Lights, but I want that for us, not for myself.

I’ve found several personal Edens while I’ve traveled.  A dock by the James River in Virginia.  A brisk pine forest in Colorado’s mountains.  But regardless of where I am, I feel most at peace when I’m near the water and the woods.   

Which is why, if pressed to choose one place, my Eden would be here:

I was fortunate enough to go to Scotland with my family over Spring Break in 2011.  We saw wonderful things, gorgeous countrysides, vast lochs, misty glens, rolling hills, sparse, harsh rocky cliffs… It’s the only place I can think of visiting and hoping for bad weather.   When it’s sunny, it’s a lovely sight.  But in the drizzle and mist and fog and rain – magnificent.  

 I love it there.  I hope when God took the dust with which to make me, He scooped up Scottish soil.

My Mecca, however, is not a tourist hotspot.  I don’t want to vacation there, I want to help there.  This place has held a special place in my heart since I was 16 years old.  I remember learning a lot and growing up a lot when I took a class called Advanced American Studies my junior year of high school (isn’t your disillusionment/fall into Nietzsche-inspired atheism supposed to happen in college?), and in my studies I came across reports about Rwanda, Darfur, the LRA, Sudanese civil war, and the bajillion other troubles Africa has.  I remember seeing a photograph of children captured by Joseph Kony’s LRA trapped behind barbed wire.  I had recently learned a lot about the Holocaust as well, so what kept me up at night was the burning question: 

Why isn’t someone doing something?  I thought we’d learned better.

Then I thought:

Would the world be more upset if the children behind that fence were white?

I remember staying up late telling my poor little brother about it, trying so hard not to cry at the injustice of it all.  I can’t explain why this bothers me more than other problems in the world.  The truth is, I’m still more shaken by pictures of child soldiers in Kenya or news of unrest in Sudan than by a tornado or a hurricane or something that "should" hit closer to home. 

Maybe I’m the racist.

I’ve felt Tyndale’s fire in my bones since learning about the troubles Kony has caused.  I don’t think my soul will ever rest until I am able to go there and physically help these children.  That is my pilgrimage.  That is my Mecca.

There are a myriad of reasons we can be called to the far reaches of the globe.  Some we can trace back to revelatory moments of self-discovery, some are more abstract, slipping through our fingers every time we try to grasp why that particular spot on the map holds more sway than others.


What are your reasons?

Where’s your Eden?  Where’s your Mecca?

S

What about the Horses?

B. and I had a good conversation with my baby sister the other night.  I never really called her my "baby" sister when we were growing up, but I've lately adopted the title to nurture my newfound sense of denial.

She's growing up.

It was hard enough to come home after 2 years abroad to find that the tan ten-year-old tomboy I left was now wearing makeup and oggling Daniel Radcliffe.  Now she's passed through the gauntlet of high school freshman year.  And it's just...

Weird.

We talked about, like, mature things.  Not gross stuff, just things that were pretty deep for a high school sophomore.  She was able to understand and expound on concepts and subjects that would stump many people I know in college.  I guess I shouldn't be so surprised, she's different; she's always been a bit above the general backbiting and drama characteristic of her female peers (which I and my bros take full credit for)  Girls are dramatic, all the time around boys mellowed her out.

She's the one sister.  One girl to five boys, poor thing was born to be outnumbered.


This isn't the first time I've had to shift from seeing my siblings as younger underlings in desperate need of knowledge and noogies to intellectual peers.  Well, peers is a generous term.  The two brothers between sis and I dwarf my intelligence easily.  They take AP classes like it's cake, they watch Kahn Academy youtube videos to keep up on calculus.  They have the minds of engineers; even music is more mechanical and architectural to them than it is expressive or emotional. 

Now, just in case you think I'm related to absolute geniuses who spend their free time splicing genes and curing cancer, let me be clear.  They're smart, they're older, we can talk about deeper, more mature subjects.  But one beatboxes incessantly, quotes Nacho Libre, and spurts random AC/DC lyrics without provocation.  The other is an obsessive gamer and, I'm ashamed to say, a Brony.  Both giggle through episodes of Adventure Time like four-year-olds.  I know this because my four-year-old brother giggles with them.

I remember avoiding including the brother closest to my age in any event or gathering with my high school friends.  I was "too cool."  I couldn't have my home life and my social life mixing (see "Keep Your Friends Close").  My parents forced me to take him, and I was surprised to find he fit in really well.  It was fun having him around (not that I'd ever tell the punk).  Sure he cramped my style around my girlfriend, but no more than my bros who weren't related to me did.

He was becoming less a little brother and more of a... friend.  Weird.  We had been sworn enemies since he was about three and now here we were with our separate social circles, getting along.

My brothers and I really became friends in the nebulous year between when I graduated high school and when I left for Europe.  When Dark Knight came out, I went with my bros.  We started hanging out, replaying old N64 games and just spending time together.  Even in middle school and high school, I would take my siblings out for ice cream, to a movie, whatever struck our fancy.  Little one-on-one outings, just to get to know them in a setting outside of home.

Baby sis was probably the most frequent guest on these impromptu outings.  My "sister dates" usually involved just walking over to the Base theater, getting her some candy and seeing whatever latest Abigail Breslin movie came out.  We'd talk on the way over, she'd confide in me all the drama of being ten, mean teachers, tough homework, swimming lessons, an occasional mention of a boy that would put my hair on end.

I was waiting for her horse phase.  Isn't that how it works?  Girls move from Dora the Explorer to Hello Kitty to Hannah Montana to Horses to Boy Bands.  I still had the horses before boys became an issue, right?  Nope.  She went straight to One Direction.  ... No comment.  

I've been gone for most of her adolescence, so it's been strange to see how much she's changed each time we meet or talk.  She's crazy smart and driven, she's enjoying a biomedical program at her school, she's dabbling in ceramics and painting.  She (along with B.) drools over Man of Steel's steely bod.  All the jokes that once flew over head, she gets now.

She's growing up.  But she's also growing well.  She's kind and wise beyond her years.  She respects her parents, she's patient with her little brothers (as much as can be expected).  I'm sad to lose the tan ten-year-old, but this young woman, this friend of mine is an exciting new discovery.


My family is changing, our home is becoming less juvenile, and after so many years with someone always in diapers, I think we're all excited to be done with the Nick Jr. phase.  Not long ago my brother, always the clown, came across this hilarious song, and had the courage to share it with my parents, lords of all things G-rated.  They laughed and loved it, as did we older kids.I think they're excited to have older kids, intellectual peers with whom they can have real, unedited conversations.

Baby sis is growing up.  But so are the rest of us. 


How are you growing?  What do you get to enjoy as an older kid?



S

My Chemist and a New Element

Let’s just get it out there. B. and I are very different.  I’ll save how we met and got married for another time, but suffice it to say opposites truly attract.  There is some real depth to that normally trite catchphrase. 

When we were dating, she told me once that she was worried that I was looking for someone who had more in common with me. 

Now, I would never hit B., or any woman for that matter, but in that instant I reeeeeeally wanted to smack her.  Fortunately this conversation was over the phone. 

I had to explain that I love our differences, I celebrate them. 


Everyday.   

I mean that, everyday. 



... It helps that they usually come up everyday. 

Pizanmovinite: 

I grew up in a large albeit tightly knit family, and there is one tradition that seemed to survive and thrive better than scripture study or prayer or even nightly meals together around the dinner table with all of the stress and scheduling life brings: 

Pizza and movie night.   

It was literally a household word for me.  I would come home on Friday after school and ask my mom, “What’s the plan for pizanmovinite?”  That’s right.  With common usage, it was shortened and meshed into one glorious term that, now that I see it written down, seems like a chemical element or a geological sample like carbonite or something. 

Every week we had pizza, usually homemade by mom, and we gathered together to watch a movie.  We rotated who got to pick.  

My family and home life - my childhood - was cemented together with marinara and Disney DVDs.  Everyone had their piece of the pie, a task that became very literal and very complicated on these family evening get-togethers.  Half of one pizza was left plain cheese to appease younger, pickier mouths.  The rest (usually three pies fed our large family with the chance of a few leftovers - gone within twenty-four hours) was a carefully fractionated conglomerate of pepperoni, pepperoni with black olive, hawaiian, meat lovers, supreme and veggie supreme.  (getting hungry yet?)

I've since become a bit of a snob when it comes to pizza.  Homemade is best, but in a pinch Papa John's will do.  Dominoes is for desperate times, Little Caesar's is only acceptable when you're moving or broke.  Blackjack's plastic cheese and cardboard crust is criminal.  Papa Murphy's?  I'd rather eat the box.

I’ve tried to make pizza for my wife, but to her, it’s just food.  AND she has to be in the mood for it.  This took months to wrap my brain around; if food is in front of me, I'll eat it.  I still make pizza about twice a month, and 9 times out of 10 I eat it all.  Mostly, I just make it because I can easily transport it to my job (I walk/bike to work) and have leftovers for lunch.  Still, I hope pizza becomes a staple in our new family.

You say spud cement, I say...

The reason my wife endures my obsession with Italy’s greatest invention is because she, too, has an incurable culinary fixation.  Starchy and salty and buttery and creamery and oh so good.  She looooves mashed potatoes.  


If she donates her body to science, it will come with a complimentary gravy boat. 


Some people add potatoes to their main course.  She crafts her meals around them.  Her diet revolves around them, which explains why we have roast almost every Sunday.   Roast beef with peas, fried chicken, any excuse to boil and mash little golden nuggets sprung from Irish soil.  Okay, they're probably from Idaho.

I've tried to match her recipe, and it has always come out disastrous.  She's a chemist with the stuff.  She knows the exact consistency, the ratio of butter to salt to milk to add to the starchy paste.  I married the Walter White of taters.  When we had only known each other a few weeks we were helping make a big dinner, both of us adding butter to the mixture, unaware of the other's contribution.  I'm not sure she'll ever forgive me for what I did to that batch.

It's that important.  Every meal.  She can’t understand how I could ever get tired of them.  I just shake my head and add toppings to my pizza.

I’m not saying anyone is right or wrong.  Nor am I saying that these are the only dishes on which we disagree or for which we stand as the lone supporter.  I love breakfast, she's more dinner-oriented.  She has to be in the right mood for something like italian, chinese, steak, curry, soup or stir-fry.  I just need cash in my wallet and an empty belly.  I’m saying that with marriage comes compromise.  And that compromise extends into things like menus.  


We all bring our own elements into the chemistry of our homes.  Including the kitchen. 

How has your menu changed over time?

Any recommendations for this new couple venturing into the culinary unknown?




S

Frontiers

Hamlet's "undiscover'd country" refers to the destination of our souls after death.  But I think there's another country we see from afar and yearn for in life.  Every child can't wait until he grows up, he pines after the coming days of independence and privilege.  Every grownup yearns for the carefree days of their youth.  The grass is ever greener.  I don't mean the usual trite landmarks of life we often dog-ear in our own subconscious autobiographical works-in-progress; we won't be talking about first kisses or crushes here.  There are a few subtler moments in life when I think we can all recall feeling brave and intrepid, blazing a trail into the unknown and grown up.



My grandfather was a very proper man.  He was an insurance agent, he traveled for business often and had an office with very little candy and no toys.  He was rarely seen without a necktie, and always maintained a calm, reserved demeanor reminiscent of Gregory Peck.  His horn rimmed glasses weren't an ironic hipster statement, he just wore them to see.  He was the product of a distant, unreachable generation of grownups with their own sights, smells and sounds.  The man was an island, a kindly, older Atticus Finch.  His was a tidy, polite love.

But I knew him best as a young child, when sights and smells are more potent than memory.  I know a lot of people equate the smell of their grandparents' home with something old, dank and stale.  Not so with mine.  Their house always seemed to carry a briskness, a newness, a polish to it.  The carpet always seemed freshly vacuumed, dust never seemed to attach to their shelves, the kitchen was never messy. Even when Grandma was baking bread or making dinner, her "mess" seemed orderly.  My grandparents never smelled old to me, they smelled like grownups, that was all.

I vividly recall him sitting at the table for breakfast, richly adorned in all of the colors, textures and smells of what I deemed as the far off realm of adulthood.  The harsh musk of aftershave dulled by the warm milky aroma of his small bowl of Cream of Wheat.  The crisp inky bookstore smell of his freshly folded newspaper, its smooth pages always turned to a business article with lots of boring words in tiny inscrutable print, devoid of any pictures.  I can still hear the tinkle of his orange juice glass, the brief hiss of citrus as his sharp spoon pierced the soft red flesh of his bitter grapefruit half.

I was always stunned at how comfortable he looked in a shirt and tie, a horrible dress code whose discomfort I was grateful only to endure each Sunday.  Somehow the fabric of his dress shirts looked softer, his tie more silky, wrapped around his neck cooperatively like an old friend.  I had a clip-on that stabbed my windpipe.  His slick 50s haircut suited him well; my cowlicks were untamable.

One day I finally got up the gumption to abandon my Frosted Chocolate Crunchables or whatever dessert was being passed off as a kids cereal and asking instead to partake in some more grandfatherly fare.  I mimicked grandpa's portioning (I might have added extra sugar to the Cream of Wheat) and was pleased to find that I actually liked this "grownup" food.  We split a grapefruit together on more than one occasion, although I recall sprinkling significantly more sugar on my half to quell the bitterness of the fruit.

To this day I still feel markedly more grown up than usual when eating Cream of Wheat, Shredded Wheat, Malted Milk, or a simple half of grapefruit.




I remember going in for my first surgery (well, the first I was old enough to remember).  But it wasn't this experience that really sticks out in my mind.

My surgery was early in the morning, I think I was scheduled to go under at 5:30 am.  My parents woke me up before the sun was up.  Before there was even a faint hint of light on the horizon.  For the first time in my life, I saw the starry sky of a new day.  The air was so quiet, it felt like we were the only three awake in all the world.  I remember looking up out of the car window on our way to the hospital and drinking in the vast black emptiness of space, feeling so small, but somehow taking comfort in that fact; if I'm so small, than my problems must be pretty small, too.

This was my undiscover'd country: the wee hours of the morn. So late it was early, so early it could still be called late.  Day's darkness, a strange new phenomenon for my young eyes to behold.  I've pulled all nighters since then.  I've been out with friends until three or four in the morning.  I've woken up at some ungodly hour to get a proper start on a roadtrip or a hike.  But I never felt more out of place, more thrillingly audacious than that early morning as a kid headed to the hospital under a deep dark morning sky.




I felt awfully proud of myself one night as a fourth grader.  I had read not one or two chapters, but nearly half of The Lion, The Witch, & The Wardrobe in one night.  I couldn't be stopped, I was a speedreading demon!  I remember coming out into the living room waaaay past my bedtime, but it was summer, no school, and since I'd just been reading for fun for hours, I think my parents were more lenient in such cases.  I talked with my dad about the book.  We talked about what an interesting story it was, and how compelling it was despite the childish talking animals.  Yes, even in fourth grade I thought that was juvenile.  We're both C.S. Lewis fans, and we had a good time talking, but he, not wanting to spoil anything, did most of the listening, giving me leeway to geek out.  I think my dad held back a lot, afraid that too much would fly over my head.

He was right.  I was halfway through The Silver Chair (we had a box set of all the Narnia books) and I heard my parents use an unfamiliar word.  It sounded a lot like analogy, I already knew what that meant.  I asked them about it later that night.

"Allegory?  It's kind of like an analogy, but more symbolic," dad tried to explain.  "It's when a story or its characters represent something else."

I nodded in feigned comprehension.  This concept was too abstract for my cartoon addict brain.  Then he boiled it down to something pertinent to my own experience that changed my perception of the world forever.

"Aslan is Jesus."

...

WHAT?!?!!!

I lay in bed that night staring up at the grainy patterns of the wooden underside of my brother's top bunk, mulling over the stories I had read so far, matching them up with Biblical events and parables.  The stone table and the crucifixion, the resurrection of both characters, even some lines taken straight from the four Gospels.  How had I not seen it before?  Inception didn't blow my mind nearly as much as this revelation.  Suddenly I was aware of all of the parallels, double entendres, and subtle wordplay around me.  I had joined a group of elite intellectual adults who saw the world in more ways than one.



I'm not a trekky.  Space isn't the only frontier.  Everyone has plenty of undiscover'd country to delve into in their own lives.





What frontiers remain in your life?  What have you already conquered?




S