Talk Hard

Every week, my body seems to require one sleepless night and last night, I filled that quota.  Normally the cause is reflection on the events of the day, too much caffeine, or those asshole neighbors across the street that never seem to shut up… but this time it was entirely my own doing.

I’m currently staring at a sunrise with heavy eyes because of my love for a lesser-known Christian Slater movie, “Pump Up the Volume”.  I got home, tossed my keys on the kitchen table, went to my room, settled in bed and closed my eyes expecting to sleep... but the urge to watch it for the fiftieth time was an unstoppable force.  My attachment to this 22 year-old piece of young-adult cinema isn't because of the old-school Beastie Boys references, its cliché "mysterious geek" storyline, the conflict with school administrators, not even the jokes about chronic masturbation.  It’s idea of a lone voice speaking for the underdog and being heard by society.

But I like chronic masturbation...

In the movie, Slater plays a shy high-schooler forced to move with his parents from the East Coast to a cookie-cutter suburb in Arizona.  There, he starts his own late night pirate radio show as “Happy Harry Hard-On”, gaining a significant following by the kids at his school.  The plot then grows into a conflict that doubles as a commentary on media’s role in free speech in America.  The last two words of the script, "talk hard" I found interesting, in a cheesy kind of way.  Just like Happy Harry Hard-On, I dug it.

“Talk hard,” he said earlier in the movie, “I like that.  I like the idea that a voice can just go somewhere, uninvited.  Just kinda hang out - a dirty thought in a nice, clean mind.  A dirty thought is like a virus, it can kill all the healthy thoughts and take over.”

The premise of the movie got me thinking, as you might've guessed, but it also brought me down a bit.  I took quick stock of my surroundings and realized there is very little chance of something like this ever happening anymore.  Why, because the premise is unrealistic? Hell no. Well, not in 1990 at least. It won’t happen because it isn't 1990 anymore, its 2012.

Pause for a moment and think about all of the social media sites you’re involved with.  Personally, I’m on five – Facebook, LitReactor, Red Room, Blogger, WordPress – and considering the times we live in, that’s a pretty conservative amount.  Off the top of my head, I can think of another six major sites that are along the same lines.  These days, if the narcissist that dwells in every one of us wants to be heard… it will be.

PAY ATTENTION TO ME, INTERNET!!!

The internet has become The Great Equalizer.  We have all of these mediums for people to speak out, and most have nothing to say.  It’s become this one loud noise of monotonous pseuso-self-expression and it takes a small miracle for someone with substance to surface among the huddled, noisy digital masses.

No, I’m not claiming to be one of those people.  Cool your jets, Ace.

It’s not just the abundance of useless crap that’s clogging the pipes, either.  It’s the ass-backwards popularity curve that has grown alongside the internet; the obsession with celebrity news over world issues.  I’ve learned to tune out such things by avoiding the “Entertainment” tab on the CNN & MSNBC websites and skipping past the E! channel when I’m looking for something to watch on TV, but I’d have to live as a hermit in the mountains to not notice how many people are wondering if Kim & Kanye are going to get hitched.

No, I’m not claiming to be one of these people, either.  Pipe down, Bub.

Do you think Happy Harry Hard-On’s 2012 version would be talking about whether or not Travolta is gay? I should say not, Harry’s angst was how teenage angst should be; driven, original & creative and back in 1990, being the only kid in down with the means of reaching out to others on a grand scale was definitely possible.  Today on the other hand, he wouldn't stand a chance against Perez Hilton's pathetic excuse for an abortion of a news blog.

Seriously, fuck that guy.  I sometimes feel actual pain knowing that he's making piles of cash for getting the scoop on a speculative boob job photo of a celebrity and pointing it out via Microsoft Paint's Spray Can feature, set to bright pink.

Pictured:  the fucking Devil.

It saddens me, knowing that people with something meaningful to say are being drowned out by empty sensationalism.  Will we ever get another lone voice like Happy Harry Hard-On?  I like to think so.  History always repeats itself and history has had a few of these guys already.  From historical figures like Socrates, all the way to free speech advocates like Lenny Bruce, and the unfathomable number of others in between.  Each one of these people had the need and drive to yell over everyone else and educate them at the same time.

The problem I see now is the drive that pushes that kind of person can, nowadays, easily be matched by technology that’s within the grasp of any asshole with an internet connection (guilty…).  Being heard is too fucking easy, you no longer have to work for it!  The ease of it means, while a few of these people saying something worth listening to are rising to the surface, they’re also accompanied by a horde of others that want to tell the world about their cat, collection of Elvis dishes, or their handful of Instagram photos they took of a chair.  Fuck it, I’ll just cut through the crap and say it…

It’s my belief that not everyone was meant to reach out to the world.

This may seem like a touchy subject for some people humping the Bill of Rights, saying "How dare you suggest that not everyone be given their right to free speech!"  To which I reply, "That’s not exactly what I’m saying, however, it IS my very right to suggest that anyway.  So please, go touch yourself to a picture of Thomas Jefferson and quit bothering people.”  I’m just saying that some people need to shut up.

On that note…

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The Alpha Bird

It's a pleasant day, so I thought I would clean out my car.  In it I found a notebook that I hadn't touched in a month.  In fact, I forgot it even existed.  I opened it and found a few pages I had filled up in quite a hurry.

Seeing as how in recent days I've been distracted by another endeavor revolving around The Written Word, I thought I'd convert those pages into 11pt. Calibri and share 'em.

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It was one of the first beautiful mornings of the season.  The idea of neglecting the warm air by sitting in the same coffee shops I had inhabited all winter felt like a grand injustice, so the drive thru and a little freeway driving was the name of the game.  By the time I passed Miller Park, the urge to be a deep/mysterious/soulful/pretentious wordsmith overcame me, so I made for the lakefront. 

Down by Bradford Beach, I found a little unmarked parking lot nestled right up against the water.  It was only nine in the morning and there was already a score of cars parked with their owners relaxing in the driver’s seat, windows open.  I found a space that was relatively secluded and had a nice view of the harbor to the south.  Opening my notebook and clicking my pen into the ready position, I gazed through my windshield, foolishly expecting divine inspiration.

It’s really tough to feel deep & soulful when time and time again, you prove to yourself that you're anything but.  The first ten minutes of sitting in front of a beautiful view was spent trying to pinpoint a seagull that had a different call than the others.  It almost sounded like he was mocking his friends. 

Another car pulled up and parked nearby.  The birds must have recognized the car, because soon after he turned his engine off, they swarmed him like some kind of Hitchcock knockoff.  My suspicions were confirmed after he opened his windows and began to toss bits of bread onto the ground – it seemed to me that he was a frequent visitor.  Seeing the birds fight over their breakfast turned into a lesson of dominance in the wild.

The seagull with the sarcastic call swooped in and stood before the others and their food, raising his wings.  The Alpha Bird had made his introduction to the meal and his disciples turned around, defeated.  Many flew away to other cars, seeking new means of morning nourishment.

The clouds above us opened up, and the sun transformed the water from an endless blue-grey cloth flapping in the wind, into a great plane of crystals, shuffled around by the Moon’s gravitational pull.

The man in that car decided to fancy himself as some kind of National Geographic documentarian, as he brought out his cellphone and began to film the two or three birds that decided to set up shop on the hood of his car.  Bit by bit, he lured them closer to his window to get a better shot for his soon-to-be YouTube failure.

Then it happened.

He accidentally dropped a handful of his stale, torn-up ammunition into his car and the Alpha Bird seized the opportunity, hopping into the cabin of the car.  What followed was ten to fifteen seconds of the most amazingly funny commotion I've been lucky enough to witness in years... four, at least.

The Alpha Bird, not to be trifled with, immediately began flapping his wings in the face of the one-time documentarian.  He tried to return the favor in defense of himself – without any sort of luck.  Faced (heh heh) with the harsh reality of nature wanting to feed, he found just enough clarity in the chaos to find the door handle.  Opening the door and tumbling out was his only reaction, out onto the pavement covered in bird shit – thanks to his want to feed & film birds that people see all the time.  With his hands and knees covered in seagull excrement, he couldn’t think to do anything but watch as the (then) three or four birds tumbled around and made a mess of his makeshift film studio/stale bread depository.

Did I lend this man a helping hand?  No.  His stupidity deserved a reckoning and I still had some coffee left.

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The Moment I Realized Trendy Clothing Stores are Full of Shit

There was a pivotal moment when I was much younger, when I started to question what the trendy clothing stores actually thought of the people that were frequenting them.

It was the first time I had ever walked into an Abercrombie & Fitch store.  Up until this point in my life, I saw no need to awkwardly wander into a place that was filled by employees that were so beautiful, I was intimidated by them.  That day however, I was compelled to.  A couple of years earlier I had just ended my long-haired, ratty denim grunge phase and by the time I got my driver’s license and the sweet sense of freedom that came along with it, I was gravitating toward the other end of the spectrum by becoming a preppy fashion victim. So I felt the need to utilize my freedom and glimpse into adulthood by shopping in all of the cool places I was too chicken to walk into before.

So... how long is it until I turn 21?

This specific pilgrimage to one of the many meccas of Trend was to get a pair of these cargo pants I saw being worn by all of the muscular, tanned, shaggy-haired cool kids.  Walking in, I knew I found the right place, but I wasn't sure if that was a good thing – never before had I felt so intimidated and self-conscious at the same time.  The walls were plastered with black & white photos of people with rippling abs, wistfully trotting through wheat fields… and the clerks walking around the store looked just like them... one of which I remember not wearing a shirt at all.  The people around me, in person and print, I had no problem with – that wasn’t what was bothering me.  Hell, if I looked like that, I’d probably try to walk around shirtless too.  The problem was the substantial vibe, the feeling that I just didn’t belong there – that I wasn’t exactly their ‘target market’.  Less than five minutes after I entered, I exited with the pants I so richly desired.

Once I was back home with them, I took a gander at the 100 page catalog that the girl behind the counter automatically stuffed in the bag with my new hallmark of coolness.  I was too busy to object to the catalog however, her cleavage commanded my full attention.  Hey.  I was sixteen, ok?

Fellas, even NOW you wouldn't be able to look away.

Thumbing through it, I noticed the content was more than just pictures of khaki shorts and rugby shirts.  Every twenty to thirty pages, there were what I could best describe as articles, written about subjects geared for the type of person that the A&F corporate offices seemed to think would shop there.  One specific piece caught my eye.  I can’t remember the title of it exactly, but it was something along the lines of:

“Items Every Abercrombie & Fitch Guy Needs In His Dorm Room”

I was naïve at the time, so I read on – it seemed interesting.  While the majority of its content has, by now, been lost into oblivion, a few items stuck out and have stayed with me ever since that fateful day.

-A couple pairs of tightey-whities (so you can hide your “excitement” when you’re on a date).
-A copy of The Shawshank Redemption (so women think you're deep).
-A golden retriever named Jack.

Something else about that list stayed with me – the memory of what I thought immediately after I finished reading it, “Wow.  That was fucking sad.” Keep in mind, this wasn’t a fully-grown, socially-conscious adult having that thought, it was a naïve suburbanite at the tender age of sixteen. 

I don’t know what disgusted me more; the fact that they thought every guy that shopped at those stores was a mindless genetic lottery winner that took a break from beating off in front of a mirror to bore society with his hotness, or that type of person might actually exist and had probably followed that list to the letter.

That assumption about their customers was well illustrated by the tighty whitey part.  Who the hell came up with the idea of needing tight underwear to hide a hard-on during a date?  It’s a date, not a damn lap dance.  The higher-ups not only thought the average Abercrombie & Fitch customer was a mindless brute, but also felt he had caveman testosterone levels that made him think “MM… YOU HOT GIRL.  ME FUCK YOU NOW!!!”  Hey Bam Bam, you forgot to tip the waiter.

Now onto their idea of someone buying The Shawshank Redemption to only put it on their shelf for others to see.  It’s as if Abercrombie & Fitch customers were such one-dimensional jocks, they would need to display a movie in their bedroom that made them seem like they don’t just think about the next time MTV’s The Grind would come on.  I could imagine an advertising executive putting his hand on a college kid’s shoulder to make his twisted advice sound more heartfelt, “Come on, Trent.  You’re too simple to actually LIKE a movie that doesn’t involve one single explosion or shower scene… so just buy it and leave it near your TV, and maybe she’ll see it.  It’s not like she’s going to quiz you on it while you’re on her!  Right?? *nudge nudge*”

When it comes to A&F thinking every college guy should have a golden retriever named Jake… I’m not going to even bother with that one.  Describing my hatred for that assumption would end with me jumping in my car and going on a cross country rampage, and I need to replace the rear shock on it before I go on any kind of road trip, whether it involves news-worthy rage or not.

Where the HELL did I leave that damn rocket launcher??

Now I’m not saying that was the day I stopped shopping at trendy stores.  Not at all.  The jeans I’m wearing right now probably had a price tag of over $100.  The t-shirt I’m wearing was aged artificially.  The button-down shirt that’s draped over the back of my chair was ordered directly from Perry Ellis – I still appreciate the need to look nice.  What I’m saying is that the people that run these companies should stick to what they know: clothing.  The moment they wander into the territory of the demographics’ lifestyle, that’s when you start to get the advertising campaigns that make the general public roll its eyes.  From Buckle and H&M, to Hot Topic and everyone in between, they're all guilty of reducing their view of the public to the lowest common denominator.  

I guess the same could be said about a lot of other markets.  We’ve all seen those late night commercials that depict people getting frustrated while fighting a losing battle against simple objects like a blanket or a broom.  Then again, people that find those 3am infomercial products useful might actually have trouble halving a fucking bagel.

Now Free with Order:  Endless ridicule from your friends!

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She'll Find Out You're Not an Astronaut

"I AM! I just lost my spacesuit! Quit laughing!"

Fellas, the ambient temperature gauge in my car no longer says “ICY” every morning, the Shamrock Shake is back, and my pasty-white legs are seeing sunlight.  For me, that means spring is finally upon us.  As you all know, with spring comes the clichéd urge to chase after women that will be wearing less and less as the temperature rises and rises.

Being somewhat of a veteran in the ways of chasing women (figuratively, of course... unless I'm playing Tag – which is still cool, by the way) I feel the need to pass on some of my tried-and-true knowledge.

Now before you make any sort of assumptions, I should let you know that the following wisdom has nothing to do with any of that "Pickup Artist" type of bullshit.  I'm going on record and saying that only girls, not women, fall for that crap.  Keep in mind, I use the term “woman” subjectively.  If she’s mature in years, but still has the mental capacity of a 21 year old that thinks Buckhead Saloon is the best bar in Milwaukee, she’s a girl.  Though, that example only holds water in this argument.  When it comes to real life, I'll use whatever term I damn well feel like using.  Sorry, I get defensive sometimes.  Back off! I just do.  Moving on.

My expertise deals with mature women, and when I say “expertise”, I mean a very acute knowledge that has taken many, many mistakes to figure out, and when I say "acute", I mean it; the sheer abundance of emotional and mental elements that make up the modern woman is enough to give any man a coma-inducing stroke.  In fact, it’s safe to say that about 98% of what goes on in a woman's head is probably still beyond my grasp.  But that 2%.... I have that shit locked down, and it would be selfish to keep it to myself – doing so would be a great disservice to my fellow men out there.

Secured.

Notice how I called you my fellow men and not my Bros. That's 1 of the 2% right there.  Referring to your friends as "bros" should have left your vernacular the moment you graduated college.  Your kitchenware doesn’t consist of Dixie Cups and stolen sporks anymore – it's time to embrace the maturity of your peers.  If you don't know what to use instead... so help me, I will personally bitch-slap the stupid outta you.

“What, pray tell is the counterpart to the lack of Bro-age, then?” you're probably asking.  That other 1% is simple: Honesty.

Kind of anti-climactic, isn’t it?  There it is, simple and boring.

Before you dismiss me and click that little "X" in the upper right-hand corner there, keep in mind that I’m not saying, “HEY!  Stop telling women you're a Ninja Bullfighter, that job title does not exist!”  Well, I’m saying that too, because frankly, that’s a dumbass thing to say to someone.  Seriously.  But having an honest approach goes way beyond the realm of what you say, it also includes how you act – the way you portray yourself.  Trying to impress a lady by pretending to be a more intelligent, kind, tough or wealthy version of yourself carries the foul stench of impending failure, because it’s basically lying to someone you're going to be seeing on a regular basis.  Sooner or later, that facade of yours is going to fade away, the person your girlfriend has grown to like will no longer exist, and there’s little chance of that situation ending well.  If you base a relationship on lies… you may as well keep your bags packed, because the writing was on the wall before you even had a chance to paint it a different color.

“Just be yourself” is the advice you always heard from your parents when you were growing up, especially your mom.  Why did she say that to you over and over again?  Because she fucking knew better!  She’s dealt with the liars and phonies in the past and she eventually saw through all of their bullshit and dumped them for someone better.  She’s seen what happens, and she’s trying to prevent you from making the same mistake as the guys she dumped, because she viewed them as liars, probably just looking to get lucky.

If you are just trying to get laid, keep calling your friends “Bros” and go seek advice somewhere else.  I’m not some jackass who calls himself “Mystery”, likes to wear furry hats and does cheap magic tricks outside of nightclubs.  Subscribe to that method of meeting girls, and I assure you, the final scenes of your personal life will parallel his inevitable conclusion: Solitude and sadness.  Mystery and his ragtag group of “pickup artists” were nothing more than a cheap gimmick.  If they weren’t, they would have done more than limp through two seasons on VH1 – a network where “RuPaul’s Drag Race” is on its fourth.

Clearly, this is someone you should take seriously.

Apologies for going off on a tangent, but after years of spending my nights surrounded by guys trying that crap on women, then moments later watching those very same women turn around and start laughing with their friends, I feel the need to try and help by voicing my opinion.  But like all advice I give, it comes with the disclaimer: Use at your discretion – just because it works for me, doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll work for you.  I’ve found success because I don’t have the patience to lie, and frankly, I’m not that good at it.  The person I am when standing next to a woman I’m interested in is the same person I am when standing next to anyone else.  Unless you’re a douchebag, then I can be a real asshole – another thing I’m open and honest about.  There are no extra stories or mannerisms I have to memorize, and there are no unpleasant surprises for anyone else.  I sure as hell don’t have it all figured out, but at least I have that one little section of my life set straight.

So fellas... give it a try.  What do you have to lose?  Nothing – we've all dealt with rejection, and we will all continue to deal with it. It’s a part of life, so why not step away from the comfort zone of falsehoods and enter a world of veracity.  Just think of it as a way to make sure you don't have to remember to live like it's an alternate reality.  It's less work! Less work for your relationship!!  And if it does pan out, the next time you and your new girlfriend are in bed, show me some appreciation... mid-pump, say "Jeff says Hi".  Why?  Because it's fucking funny, that’s why.

See? Told ya.

A special note to the ladies who have made it this far: First of all... if your new boyfriend says "Jeff says Hi" while he's trying to throw down his best moves; you read this, you know where it came from, so just laugh at it because the three of us you know you should.  Secondly, and more importantly (for you two, anyway), if he's being honest, be honest right back.  The old Girl Games of Courtship need to be left behind, like men using the word "bro". If you're interested in dating him after he shows interest in you, just tell him.  If you're not, just tell him.  If your man does get past the first kiss but still screws something up, just tell him.  If you want to fool around with him while he's wearing a panda suit, just tell him.... then drop me a line, I know a guy that has one.

P.S., For you beautiful, amazing ladies out there who actually take the time to read my scribblings, I have one more gem of advice, and since St. Patrick’s is right around the corner, allow me to deliver it in the form of an old Irish saying:  

“Is peacach é gach naomh.”

This loosely translates to “Every saint is a sinner” a.k.a., nobody’s perfect.  Now that you'll be getting the true version of us, take the time to appreciate us guys for our flawed selves.  Hey, you're the ones that wanted us to wear the panda suit to have Panda Sex, and we did.

Pictured: Love

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