Evening at the Improv

Posted on August 13, 2023 | 2 comments

Memories are funny, no pun intended, but thirty-plus years ago, sitting in a tiny college apartment, I watched a hilarious Howie Mandel show on television. The popular stand-up comic, while on a circular stage for his special, stopped a young woman attempting to leave for the restroom, questioned her from the stage, and embarrassed her thoroughly; then, once she left, had everyone in her section exchange seats with everyone in the corresponding section on the opposite side of the stage and then went back to his routine. Five or ten minutes later, the camera panned to a very confused woman who returned from the bathroom unable to recognize absolutely anyone from her section. Of course, Mandel stopped his routine and made her life miserable again.

Two thoughts remain decades later: Number one, genius. Number two, avoid live comedy shows.

Last night, however, in a moment of weakness, my wife and I went to a show at the famed Hollywood Improv on Melrose. We were basically the first to arrive and took a tall table in the waiting area where we were surrounded by portraits of epic comedians: Joan Rivers. Richard Pryor. Steve Martin. All the legends. A small crowd of fellow early birds soon joined us, and when the time came to line up and head in, you would have thought my wife was flying Southwest what with her sprint to the front of the line. So, we were seated first, where the following exchange occurred:

Host: Where would you like to sit?

Wife (turning to repeat the question to me): Where would you like to sit? (note: very thoughtful)

Me: Totally up to you, Sweetheart. (note: always the correct response)

This was followed by Jody taking us to the front row where it was obvious we would be able to look up the nostrils of the comedians as they stood in our laps. Old Howie Mandel memories came flooding back as I broke out in a quiet sweat.

I am pleased to report that it turned out great. We were joined by two equally-terrified-to-be-sitting-on-the-front-row young women in town from El Paso, Texas, and we just had a great time. Counting the cold opener and the host, there were eight comedians spread over two straight hours of laughter, and I thought they were all fantastic. Our seatmates got put on the hot seat once, but we were surprisingly spared the spotlight all evening. Apparently, I am so boring that even eight consecutive comedians took multiple looks at a strange/tall/bald man directly in their face and said, Um, we’re going to pass on that one. For once in my life, I didn’t mind at all.

I got to thinking on the way home: I am happy that there are places in the world where you can go just to laugh. When Jim Valvano gave his inspirational/dying speech at the original ESPYs, of the three things he said everyone should do every day, he said, “Number one is laugh.”

Now not everyone loved every part of the show. Afterward, in the valet parking line, what appeared to be an elderly mother escorted by her son was making it clear that she did not appreciate certain comedians AT ALL, but you know, it seems to me, and you have every right to disagree, that sometimes comics find a way to say out loud what many think but are afraid to say, and in so doing help others discover that they aren’t alone in the world after all. And what a relief that is – not to be alone.

We’ll be back for another Evening at the Improv, and I might not be so lucky next time. But if that’s the case, maybe I’ll bump into that unfortunate soul from the Howie Mandel show and we’ll have a good laugh about it together.   

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The Last Bookstore

Posted on August 5, 2023 | 2 comments

“A book is a dream that you hold in your hand.” – Neil Gaiman

I went to The Last Bookstore today. Not to worry, that’s just its name. If you are curious about the name, the owner opened his independent bookstore when physical bookstores were closing all over and thought, Well, maybe I’ll just open one more anyway. That was nearly twenty years ago, and the store has now grown to 22,000 square feet. Take that, Bezos.

So yeah, I drove thirty-eight miles, one way, through summer beach traffic and into swarming Downtown Los Angeles just to go to a bookstore. What, you might ask, would cause a person to drive thirty-eight miles, one way, through summer beach traffic and into swarming Downtown Los Angeles just to go to a bookstore? Well, it’s a cool bookstore. To wit: I arrived ten minutes before the doors opened at eleven, and there was a line. Some were there, I’m sure, for its Instagram popularity, ironically, but most appeared to be my people. Book people. Awkward, strange, beautiful book people.

You should know that me and my people, and this is hard to explain, think that a bookstore is a place where invisible magic happens. We really do. Good magic, mostly, so as you’d might expect, we’d rather be there than most any place around, except possibly our own special reading spots where we take the treasures we find in a bookstore. At the bookstore, we wander slowly through the stacks believing that magic is happening all around us. We’re searching for our own magic, so we do an odd little dance, sideways shuffling down the stacks, rarely making eye contact with our fellow citizens and wordlessly exchanging places with one another like a clumsy do-si-do, respecting the magic that we know is flirting with our fellow readers, too.

We believe and do all of this because our lives have been changed, magically, in a bookstore. We have been transported back in time, and I’m talking literally, and if you don’t know what I mean, then I can’t explain it to you. We have discovered new worlds that we had never imagined and now can’t live without. We have found ourselves in a bookstore, including soulmates that were dead before we arrived on this planet but who now live with us, magically. We have lived the lives of many others, too, vicariously. Maybe vicariously. Sometimes it is hard to tell.

I went to The Last Bookstore today and left with two new treasures: Box Socials by W.P. Kinsella, and Morgan’s Passing by Anne Tyler. At the checkout, with a line behind me, the staff member wanted to talk about Anne Tyler. We talked about our favorite Anne Tyler books, and for a few moments, we seemed to forget that this was actually a place of business. Probably because we knew it was much more.

So, I’ll be back, traffic be damned. Although I may take the subway next time since I noticed that The Last Bookstore is very close to the Pershing Square station. That way I can read a book.

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Back Behind the Wheel

Posted on July 27, 2023 | 2 comments

I was born with a lazy eye. It’s the left one if you want to direct your derision at its lethargy appropriately.

“Lazy eye” is officially called amblyopia and afflicts approximately 1-2% of humanity, including celebrities known for their beauty such as Ryan Gosling and Heidi Klum, alongside unfamous people not known for their beauty, like me. Amblyopia can typically be corrected if discovered in small children, which mine was not, meaning that I have been legally blind in my left eye my entire life. If you are curious, it has peripheral vision, but a member of the alphabet would need to be the size of a linebacker for accurate identification.

Not searching for sympathy here: Since it’s a lifelong condition, I only know my way of seeing the world and have gotten along just fine. I was known as a decent outside shooter on the basketball court. I could tell that my wife is really pretty right away. I even once found Waldo. And I had no problem securing driver’s licenses in Arkansas, Mississippi, California, Tennessee, and Illinois—until I moved back to California, that is.

It turns out that the California DMV modified its vision standards since I moved away, and when I visited early last week, I was told to visit an optometrist. (Side note: Driving home after said eye exam through a winding canyon while squinting through a dilated working eye led to some reflection on what I assume was the motivation behind the new standard. But I digress.) Afterward, a return trip to the DMV with the completed form led to the discovery that I had to take a behind-the-wheel driving test for the first time since the mid-1980s. Which happened yesterday.

Let’s begin by saying that, yes, I think I had all the nerves of the teenagers taking the test with me, maybe more. If you fail the test as a teenager, I assume your parents offer comfort and a stop for cheeseburgers. I, on the other hand, might have to sell my car immediately and Uber home.

Well, the time came, and my driving critic was a young man that looked suspiciously like Sal from Impractical Jokers, which did make me wonder about the entire ordeal. It also occurred to me that I was probably teaching people to drive before he was old enough to learn, but since I was actively engaged in combat with militant butterflies, I just focused on the driving.

Me and Sal (not his real name) rode in silence, and I tried to remember all the things: hands at eight and four; constant looking over your shoulder like a bobblehead; using turn signals months before you actually turn; driving faster than the joggers but slower than everyone else; and so on. If you perform what is known as a critical error, you instantly fail; if not, you must have under twenty points to pass. I am pleased to report no critical errors and just five points marked, so I made it. I celebrated by taking my own self to In-N-Out for a cheeseburger.

I am the most defensive driver I know, and believe me I felt a little defensive when required to take a behind-the-wheel test. I guess I could hate on California, or the DMV, or government bureaucracy in general. And, well, yes, and sure. Or I guess I could look for a silver lining like learning something new (very little) or fun conversations with new people (didn’t happen). Instead, I guess that sometimes, when life seems unfair, the only thing you get out of it is some real-life practice in endurance and patience.

I suspect you are facing something much more unfair and challenging, or will. If so, hang in there, do your best, and know that I am rooting for you to pass, too. And when you do, I suggest treating yourself to a double-double combo (protein-style) like I did.

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Some Things Never End

Posted on July 24, 2023 | 2 comments

There are multiple reasons to keep me away from the ocean. My unusual skeletal assortment of joints and angles constitutes a complex geometric equation that results in, once you add water, the buoyancy of a bowling ball. That’s a big one. Another is that my complexion is reminiscent of a sheet of notebook paper. When I walk on a midday beach, I hear a faint sizzle and picture God as a grill-master in the sky with a giant spatula and one of those aprons that says, License to Grill. Years ago, my wife and I went to Cabo for a wedding anniversary and rented a beach bed, which sounded lovely until I discovered it had slats instead of a canopy cover. She turned around from tanning in her beach chair to discover me levitating in a sideways plank on the side of the bed in an attempt to find shade in the shadow of a two-by-four. (I’m skinny, so it wasn’t as crazy as it sounds.)

And yet, baffling though it may be, I love the ocean. I love the foamy waves and the constant roar. I love the pelicans diving for dinner and the surf crashing on the rocks. I love the ocean breeze and the peculiar aroma. I love the seashells and the seaweed, and the helplessly happy humans at play. I never saw an ocean until college, but hell, my first cassette purchase in high school was Billy Ocean (“Love Zone”), so maybe it was destiny.

Now let me be clear: I don’t need to be in it, on it, or under it. I admire the seafarers and the surfers, but they aren’t me, and I am not even slightly jealous. My love is suited for the sidelines, so give me the times when normal people are less likely to be there, say a sunrise or a sunset, and a lazy walk or simply staring at the grace of it all.

I’m not exactly sure what would make a pasty sink-hazard adore the ocean, but I am far from alone—just head to any beach and see who shows up. I think it has something to do with the dream of a life without limits. That there is something beyond comprehension out there, beyond what we see, that endlessly keeps reminding us, through all our senses, that there is more than we can ever know. Yes, I think that is what it is for me at least.

Last night, at sunset, my wife and I sat in Adirondack chairs gazing at the Pacific Ocean as the crowds dispersed for the day. She joked, “What time do you think they’ll turn off the waves?” I simply smiled in silence and considered the grace in believing that some good things never end.

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I Liked Your Speech or Whatever

Posted on July 17, 2023 | 2 comments

I discovered that major moves activate a secret video room in a remote hallway of the brain where tiny staffers cycle through footage collected in the place you are moving from for you to do with what you will. They don’t waste time with the people and places that captured your heart since you could never forget those. (Unfortunately, same goes for the people and places that led you to reflect on the word throat-punch.) I think they are clearing out space for the new memories to come, so these scenes are apparently endangered, the ones you just might forget, and it feels like you should take the time to salvage the treasures.  

One recently came to mind from Illinois that I want to keep for sure.

I do a lot of public speaking, and last winter one of my assistant coaches invited me to be the keynote speaker for a running club’s holiday banquet that celebrated high school cross country runners from throughout the region. I drove to the restaurant on the evening of the event, and it was a bigger deal than I anticipated, honoring a male and female runner from fifty or sixty high schools, plus coaches and parents in attendance. I ate my banquet-hall chicken in a crowded room and got ready to do my thing.

Other public speakers will know what I mean, but I was really on that night. Like, really on. When I got up, I immediately felt like the entire room was mine, like Steph Curry must feel every time he touches a basketball. I was funny and inspiring, and most importantly, didn’t speak too long, and when I finished, I could tell that it was a hit. A couple of folks whispered kind words that I won’t repeat out of modesty.

Well, the rest of the program came and went, and since Midwesterners aren’t much into sharing their feelings, I didn’t have to fight through too many people to head to the exit afterward, which is where it happened.

I held the exit door for some folks on the way out, and a dad walked by with his award-winning daughter dutifully walking behind him like a little duckling. After the daughter passed, I noticed that she hesitated, then stopped, shyly half-turned toward me while her dad kept walking, oblivious to everything, and without making eye contact said to me, “I liked your speech or whatever.”

It was a heroic moment, but I instantly knew that she was disappointed with herself. Her body language was clear: she had flubbed it all up, said the wrong thing, sounded silly. I looked at her eyes and willed her to make eye contact and said with all that is sincere within me: “Thank you so much. You have no idea what that means to me.” Somehow, that must have been the right thing to say given the obvious relief in her very posture. Then, she did look at me, smiled, and with a new spring in her step turned to catch up with a still-clueless dad.

It felt good to deliver an inspiring after-dinner speech that night, but what felt a thousand times better was getting to be the only person in the world to witness the very moment that a young human had the courage to test drive independence and say something that was entirely her own reaction to a strange-looking man that had shared something somehow meaningful to her. I don’t know her name or even remember what she looked like. Well, not true: I remember what it looked like to see her dash away, a talented young runner sprinting off toward a life of her own making. I want to keep that picture as a treasure, which is far more inspiring than anything I might ever say.

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They Say You Can’t Go Back

Posted on July 13, 2023 | 3 comments

I always heard that you can never go back. But imagine for a moment that you grew up in small-town Arkansas and then moved to the Gulf Coast in your late twenties, and then to glittery Malibu in your late thirties. Then, imagine that in your late forties you left to pinball around the country for several years before moving back to Malibu, let’s say, a few days ago. Then, imagine that you needed some bananas and went to the grocery store and got into a short checkout line staffed by a face that you recalled and that when it was your turn the kind man with Juan Carlos on his nametag looked at you with a bit of a furrowed brow and said, “Hey buddy. It’s been a while.”

You imagine all that, and in the meanwhile I can tell you for certain something that feels really good: To be remembered. To be missed. And to be welcomed back.

I will never know how it feels to be considered physically attractive, but there may be some benefit at least to having a physical appearance that is, to put it kindly, distinctive. It surely made me feel good to be recognized after all these years.

I guess we all want to be Norm at that Cheer-ful pub in Boston, and as the song shared, have a place to go where everyone knows your name, and they’re always glad you came. For some, that means never leaving home. For others, that means the exact opposite. But maybe, every once in a while at least, it can happen for some of us when we shift this camper-van called life into reverse.

I always heard that you can never go back, but for the first time I am giving it a shot, and after $1.51 worth of bananas, I am now happily questioning that premise.

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A Midwestern Farewell on Independence Day

Posted on July 4, 2023 | 6 comments
Carlinville, Illinois

There is a tiny town about twenty miles from here, and its welcome-to-town slogan meekly mentions to passers-through, “Pleasant Living in a Convenient Place.” Had I ever made a sound before that could be described as a yelp? I don’t know, but I recall a surprising laughter-sound emerging when I first saw the most Midwestern description of a town imaginable.

Today ends my Midwestern adventure of about two-and-a-half years. It has been pleasant to say the least, which is what Midwesterners tend to do, say the least that is, but I want to say more.

It took moving to Illinois to fully recognize my own roots since I grew up in Arkansas, which both sounds and feels like the Deep South. My mother was from a town named Strawberry in “the hills” of Arkansas—yes, you can think hillbillies—but my dad was from the Missouri bootheel, not so far away geographically, yet no one thinks Deep South when considering Missouri. I grew up in Arkansas, sure, but the northeastern tip and just a couple miles from the Missouri state line, and it took moving to Illinois to see that my dad’s family was Midwestern through and through, and that my heritage is both Southern and Midwestern.

It has been good to come home for a while to a place that I didn’t even know was home. And I will miss it in the way that you miss when leaving home.

I will miss many things. The people, of course. The understated lifestyle. Early morning runs in farm country. The train whistles. The towering corn stalks. Cardinal baseball on KMOX. The summer sno-cone stand. The transformation of autumn, and later, the peaceful beauty of snow. The local parades, and a favorite restaurant on the town square where the staff knows me and my favorite meal.

Two local churches let me preach sermons for them on many occasions, and the last time I did, as many people filed by and shared kind words, an old farmer-type stopped, looked me in the eye with a firm handshake and said with a sincerity that I cannot describe: “Thank you for relating to us.”

I surely won’t forget that.

Tomorrow, early, we will get in our cars, find the oft-traveled Mother Road, and head West until we reach the California ocean that we know very well. But tonight, we will attempt to sleep in a dark and empty house, listening to fireworks shatter the silence. I will know that the explosions are a centuries-old affront to old King George, while in reality simply an excuse for grown children to exercise a primal urge to blow things up. But me, I will imagine that bursts of extravagant colors fill the sky above where I sleep in an exquisite conspiracy by the entire Midwest to, for once at least, display its true beauty.

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I Must Write

Posted on July 2, 2023 | 14 comments
Joan Didion in Malibu in 1976

Among the cardboard boxes and mental/emotional somersaults that come with moving, three things happened. First, a distant friend commented on a Facebook post that decades later he still remembered one of the first essays I had ever shared. Seed planted. Then, a week later, a much-newer Illinois friend said that I ought to start a blog and share my thoughts from time to time. It struck me, of course, that a current friend would have no reason to know that I had started a thousand blogs. Friends made in our first three ports of call (Arkansas, Mississippi, and California) would list blogging as one of my primary characteristics, but friends made in Tennessee and now Illinois have no reason to make that association.

Finally, last night, we watched a Netflix documentary on the life of Joan Didion. I felt the fire kindling in my soul from the first frame, but when her friend said that she thought Joan wrote to understand her own thoughts and feelings, the words glared in my mind like a neon sign: I must write. Again.

When I think of myself as a writer, I am thinking of the short, observational life essays that I shared primarily during two life stretches: when I shared “a daily thought” religiously (using both meanings of the word religiously) for the ten years we lived in Mississippi, and when I started the blog, “starting to look up,” in 2015 while living in Malibu. Sure, I put together a couple of books, along with trying out other forms of writing like short stories and poetry, but when I heard the suggestion that Joan Didion wrote to understand what she thought and felt, I knew that was what I was doing when I blogged.

So, here we go again.

I have many, many friends all over the world now thanks to our rolling stone lifestyle, and I would be honored if any of them followed along by subscribing or simply catching the occasional Facebook share, but to be candid, and with all due respect, last night’s documentary convinced me that I need to write and why I need to write, and I do it for me.    

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Proverbs from Infinite Jest

Posted on November 14, 2021 | 2 comments

My fascination with David Foster Wallace goes back several years now, but it was only after moving to his home state that I attacked his monster novel, Infinite Jest. I can technically say that I finished it last week since I read every word in its 1,079 pages, including the 388 end notes, but I now believe that one never really finishes Infinite Jest. As in, when I finished War and Peace years ago, I finished War and Peace. But Infinite Jest appears to carry on like maybe your high school experience carries on—you never really stop thinking about it.

I won’t even try to explain or in any way recreate the book. I’ll note that the section that made me laugh out loud the hardest was Mario’s “first and only even remotely romantic experience, thus far” (pp. 121-126), and the two sections where DFW’s descriptive writing just left me stunned at his gifts were the squeaky bed flashback of J. O. Incandenza (pp. 491-503) and Hal’s visit to the NA meeting (pp. 795-808).

But what leads me to dust off my blog today and share is the six-page passage of “exotic new facts” learned “around a Substance-recovery halfway facility” (pp. 200-205)—the profundity sprinkled in that passage is most worthy of sharing with others who will (should?) never read Infinite Jest.  

So here you go. I’ll remove the “That” intro to selected sentences and offer these as sort of proverbs from David Foster Wallace, may he rest in peace:

  • Certain persons simply will not like you no matter what you do.
  • No matter how smart you thought you were, you are actually way less smart than that.
  • ‘God’ does not apparently require that you believe in Him/Her/It before He/She/It will help you.
  • You do not have to like a person in order to learn from him/her/it.
  • Evil people never believe they are evil, but rather that everyone else is evil.
  • It is possible to learn valuable things from a stupid person.
  • Boring activities become, perversely, much less boring if you concentrate intently on them.
  • Sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt.
  • You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.
  • There is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness.
  • Concentrating intently on anything is very hard work.
  • It is simply more pleasant to be happy than to be pissed off.
  • A clean room feels better to be in than a dirty room.
  • The people to be most frightened of are the people who are the most frightened.
  • It takes great personal courage to let yourself appear weak.
  • You don’t have to hit somebody even if you really really want to.
  • No single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable.
  • Other people can often see things about you that you yourself cannot see, even if those people are stupid.
  • Having a lot of money does not immunize people from suffering or fear.
  • Trying to dance sober is a whole different kettle of fish.
  • Certain sincerely devout and spiritually advanced people believe that the God of their understanding helps them find parking places and gives them advice on Lottery numbers.
  • “Acceptance” is usually more a matter of fatigue than anything else.
  • Perversely, it is often more fun to want something than to have it.
  • If you do something nice for somebody in secret, anonymously, without letting the person you did it for know it was you or anybody else know what it was you did or in any way or form trying to get credit for it, it’s almost its own form of intoxicating buzz.
  • Anonymous generosity, too, can be abused.
  • Having sex with someone you do not care for feels lonelier than not having sex in the first place, afterward.
  • It is permissible to want.
  • Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.
  • There might not be angels, but there are people who might as well be angels.
  • God might regard the issue of whether you believe there’s a God or not as fairly low on his/her/its list of things s/he/it’s interested in re you.

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A Major Move

Posted on February 2, 2021 | 24 comments

Jody and I have lived in The South and on both the Gulf Coast and West Coast, but in March we are relocating to a new region of the country—the Midwest—because I have recently accepted the role as Vice President of Diverse and Equitable Student Life, Dean of Students, and Title IX Coordinator at Blackburn College in Carlinville, Illinois.

We are very excited, but the move is bittersweet—sweetness from the deep confirmation that this is the exact right move for us, and the bitterness of leaving behind people at Lipscomb and in Nashville who in just two years loved us so well and captured our hearts, including friends, colleagues, and maybe especially, students.

Years ago, when Jody served on the board of the National Student Employment Association, she attended a conference at Berea College. Afterward, she could not stop talking about the idea of a “work college,” and as I listened, I fell in love with the work college concept, too. We actually said back then how amazing it would be if either of us ever had the opportunity to work in such a place.

Well, as you might surmise, Blackburn College is one of just a handful of work colleges in the United States, and in fact, the only one that is managed by students. Its unique arrangement promotes a cost structure that allows many of its students the opportunity to receive a college education, which reflects one of our deepest values.

When news of our transition emerged in the past few days, I thought people would not understand our decision. I was prepared to quote Parker Palmer, “Vocation at its deepest level says, ‘This is something I can’t not do, for reasons I’m unable to explain to anyone else and don’t fully understand myself but that are nonetheless compelling.’” And yet, those who know us best said they completely understood. Even many who don’t know us best knew us well enough to say the same. I found that most reassuring.

So that is our major news.

I doubt many of your post-pandemic travel plans route directly through Carlinville, Illinois, but if they ever do, please let us know. In the meanwhile, I will do my best to share glimpses of our new small-town life from time to time.

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