a musing julius…

i recently made a trip to somerset one day after work to return some pants i had bought from banana republic. now, i find somerset the ultimate people watching venue. you can find the ultimate fashion statement or trend in one visit during the holiday shopping season. my first year in detroit, the trend was uggs, and i had counted over 80+ people in the first 10 minutes before i realized counting was futile. two years, i counted the number of burberry-like scarves people were wearing. i hit 56ish before i realized that too was silly.

anyway, so i’m walking in the relatively empty mall to the apple store after returning the jeans i had bought, and on the way, i see, FIVE men, at least 30-55 years old in age, just milling in the distance.

what? why are you all milling…awkwardly standing with your hands in your pants, some of you staring at your cell phones. then i see it…that pink neon on black granite…victoria’s secret. the threshold into the store contains a force field preventing those men who lack confidence from even approaching. often, you see women stopped in their tracks hanging onto an outstretched arm of their boyfriend who dare not enter the sacred “secret” store.

i’m not quite sure what the aversion is, but men just can’t seem to grow the pair required to walk into that damn store. maybe they’re afraid of telling their spouse/girlfriend/mistress of what they like. maybe they’re afraid of looking at women that are more attractive than their current spouse/girlfriend/mistress. maybe they just don’t like lace. i don’t know. i just know that 5 men, standing outside of victoria’s secret is just WEIRD. go wander somewhere. walk in to the apple store across the way. get some sweet from starbucks for the girl who’s buying the underwear that you don’t want to admit you like seeing. don’t stand there and be awkward.

just walk into the damn store already.

justice is a little french band that i was introduced over a cadillac commercial where one of the hooks from the song was used as the background. that song was called genesis and you can listen to it here. that’s where i became attracted musically to justice. unfortunately i missed their american tour which consisted of just two shows, one in l.a., the other in nyc. currently touring denmark, england and germany, i’m half tempted to fly out to see them perform.

but the real genius is this song and video. incredibly creative, unique and frikin’ sweet. i think the cool effects really start at 50 seconds into the video. but the whole thing is worth the watch!

those who know me will understand when i say i’m not a big costume person. clearly, a lot of people are. but when talking to my friend just this past thursday before halloween, she called me a halloween grinch (hopefully, in an affectionate manner) and it got me thinking…why do people dress up?

i think the main reason is it gives people the chance to be something they’re usually not. in fact, the morning radio show i listen to on the way to work discussed halloween as exactly that, a time to be something that you’re not. live out a dream or fantasy for a day. do something outrageous…

i’m of the opinion that if you have a dream or fantasy you want fulfilled, you should probably just do it. are you dressed up as indiana jones…then you probably should have chosen a degree in spelunking and anthropology. decided to dress up as maverick from top gun…maybe you should have gone to aviation school. seriously, why dress up as something like a doctor or pilot or a president when you could have gone and DONE those things. do some outrageous once a year, but leave the other 364 days to your fairly benign life dressing up as…yourself, like the 3 layered pastel-colored collar-popped polo shirts with a sweet set of $5 aviators.

obviously, my theory explodes when the dude dressed up as a banana shows up to your halloween party. or the 22-year old dude dressed up in an 8-year old’s pajamas (which was a sweet costume by the way.) if you’re gonna dress up, why not dress up as something impossible to be, like the girl dressed up as an angel with her hand down some dude’s pants on the dance floor at the bar, or the girl dressed as a bumblebee (whom i coincidentally fell in love with multiple times when the whole idea wasn’t ruined by the image of a girl from the blind melon music video)

anyway i probably won’t dress up until i can think of something as creative as the guy that walked in with a lampshade on his head and table around his waste. he was a “one night stand.” rocked my face off.

2 months ago, while on vacation in florida, i read and finished The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. it’s a book about a man, told from the perspective of a dog. it’s an incredibly cute book, filled with its share of twists, romance and wisdom (that only a dog can provide.) what’s amazing is that the dog most certainly doesn’t understand human emotion and interaction (things like love, sex and anger) in the beginning of the book, but eventually learns them towards the end.

my favorite quote from the book, provided at the end by enzo (the dog’s name) was “humans find it impossible to let go.”

i wrote that quote down on a post-it note, and i have it as the title on my phone, and wrote it on my desks at home and at the office. the reason being is that i find it to be hellishly true. humans find it impossible to let go. we build constructs, futures and fantasies around a whisper, idea or emotion. so when our fantasies deconstruct right before our eyes, our deepest emotions are scarred and they turn to anger, denial, hatred, etc.

i find it impossible to let go nearly ALL of the time. and i don’t think i’m alone. the quote says humans find it impossible to let go. not just julius finds it impossible to let go.

that quote comforts me. i’m not alone. all of us have felt this way at some point in time.

channel 955 radio in detroit offers a segment every thursday morning called war of the roses. the gig is a man or woman calls up the show and thinks their spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend/partner is cheating on them. the radio show calls up and offers a free dozen red roses to the potential cheater in an effort to see where they get sent…

the girlfriends have some back story, like their boyfriends are “hanging out with the guys a lot”, or “i found condoms in his jacket, and we don’t use condoms.” the spouses usually have the typical, “he’s working late” or “she goes out on business a lot more than she used to.” i tend to laugh during this segment because (most of the time) the signs of a cheater are extraordinarily obvious. its laughable that they’ve stuck around for months while they’re “getting played” 

even funnier is when the flowers don’t go to the person on the phone, and they go to the mistress. the radio show even asks for anything the cheater wants on the card and most common i’ve heard is, “i love you. had a great time last night.” when the radio show reveals this was a prank…the cheater quickly begins to talk their way out of it…as if a quarter million people in detroit that listen to the show each morning ignored the card they sent with the flowers.

at this point the cheater looks stupid. in what i find an ironic twist of fate, those being cheated on, are even more stupid, and start to say, ”well, i still l love him/her…” story and everyone in detroit knows that she or he will take him or her back.

i thought “cheating” was something stupid teenagers in high school did to each other to get back at a former boyfriend, or prom date, or whatever. in college and “the real world” i figured we’d have grown up…all of us…yet each and every week (minus the holidays) the radio show manages to find someone else to nail as a cheater, and someone else to take them back.

here are some conclusions from almost 3 years of listening to this show:

• this is the reason men do not send women flowers. we’re gonna get nailed if we send them or we don’t. either way, we lose.
• men most often cheat because they are ashamed of what they think their partner wants from them.
• women most often cheat because they cannot make up their mind about what they want in a man
• women most often take their cheater back because they cannot make up their mind about what they want in a man
• if anyone offers you free flowers to send to someone, send them to your mom. 

i have a new pet peeve: ignorant misspellings. seriously…in today’s computer driven world, with spell check, and phones with text messaging features that can actually correct words, there’s no excuse anymore…

listen, i’ll not spell words correctly each and every time. i have trouble with the word “definitely” sometimes. but an incorrect spelling is just slightly better than an ignorant misspelling.

yesterday, i’m playing online poker. clearly the online gaming world is filled with really intelligent people have really great conversations, so when one player called another a “petafile” I about laughed my head off. when someone tells me friend’s home ”is really cool” i’d expect a “their” and not a “there.” in addition, your versus you’re kills me. probably the most common error, just above the “their/there/they’re”

just tonight, the evening news was advertising a job for an “elecitrician.” someone has to read these things…proof read the damn thing.

so annoying…so, so annoying. accept [sic] when i do it.

update: apparently aliens didn’t come. i suppose the intergalatic federation of light was wrong. just google it…

during my vacation last month in florida, i spent a good amount of time at the hot tub, because hey, i was on vacation. i already shared the story of meeting my cancer-treating e-commerce genius, but the real winner i met the next day.

a nice gentleman, with whom i had relatively benign conversation with for at least 15 minutes quickly took a liking to me. much like the others i met on my trip, he was perfectly normal until he asked me: “do you believe in aliens?”

i respond with something like, “well, sure, i mean, the universe is a big place. it would be unlikely that in the billions and billions of planets, we would be the only form of life.”

his response went something similar to this, while i sat in awe for the next ten minutes:

“dude, i’m so happy to hear you say that. aliens have been coming for thousands of years. they can travel across stars. the government has known for years. you ever hear of area 51? and roswell, new mexico? yeah, those are real man. effing government has been covering up aliens coming here, and the government is covering it up. its all real…but you know what man, it’s almost all over though. the cover-ups, the lies. its all over. october 14th man. that’s the day. that’s the day everyone will know aliens are real. they’re coming. they’re gonna come in a ufo. it’ll be huge. it’ll cover a quarter of the state of alabama. they’ll hover over huntville for 72 hours. everyone will know. we’ll see it. the whole world will know when they visit. and there will be no more coverups.”

i smiled, said i relish the day to find out that the world is smaller than we think it is, and walked away.

my only question is, if intelligent life really did come to earth, do you really think they’d visit northern alabama?

i recently got back from vacation at my parents condo in florida, where i destressed and decompressed from a whirlwind 2008 which included 50,000+ miles of flying, 12+ hour days working in a foreign country on 2 seperate occasions and taking a new job that has me responsible for the day-to-day of 5 employees. i think i deserved the break, and sitting laying on the beach while watching a school of dolphins jump out of the water just 100 feet offshore was exactly the kind of break i needed.

our condo is 3.5 miles from the florida-alabama border (i know this, because i ran there) and as i learned, is in an area called the “redneck riviera.” so after 2 days of fairly classy outings to the finest sushi and fish houses on the key, suffice it to say, heading out on the 3rd to an irish pub that’s decorated with about 550,000 one-dollar bills with a group of people i had met at the hot tub over talks of the auto industry and politics…i was destined to find redneck-ish ness.

so my story starts with my outing, where i drove with a guy named brad, a 45-year old former business man, who can’t stop talking about…well, everything. he tells me how he’s gonna “get into the ecommerce” because everyone’s doing it (maybe 10 years ago) and how he’s got “an anargy drank” for “dem old people” so they can live better lives. he had a rock solid business plan; “i just want $1 from everyone. i can today, get 350,000 email addresses,” he tells me. “just think julius, easily, 10% of those 350,000 will just have to subscribe each month for $9.95, and i’ll be rich. hell, maybe 20-30% of them will sign up. easy money,” he continues.

“but brad, what will you sell each month?”

“my cure for cancer.”

WHOA!!! here i was judging this man for being crazy, and now here he is, telling me his cure for cancer. i politely stopped him saying that he may not want to tell me because i could sell it too…he said, “no, i trust you. even though i met you 3 hours ago, i trust you. that’s all we got in this world, trust.”

“perfect, so tell me, what’s your cure for cancer”

“well, i’ve done a lot of research into cancer [says the former financial analyst] and cancer cells can’t survive in a ph above 7.9. so, you just gotta raise the body’s ph level. and to do that, just drink basic water.”

a quick google shows his research came from some very reputable and professionally made websites. but anyway, i admire the man for really pursuing everything that gets him worked up, like his energy drink, health newsletter for the elderly and obviously, cancer cure. it’s a better to do that, than sit around.

next blog post, the greatest story i’ve ever heard down south.

i go to the gym fairly regularly, and i enjoy it there. but there are some really funny and odd people i see going each week, and while they might view me as ridiculous when i show up, some of these guys are classic.

• mister-i’m-too-good-for-everyone: i see a guy like this nearly everyday. non-challantly walking around, chewing gum like they’re burning calories. they’ll sit down at a machine, do 9 reps on a machine, not going through an entire range of motion, and walk away as if he just put that machine into its place. later they’ll meander around, not being impatient by a machine, but you know in the back of your mind, they’re judging people for not being as good as they are. usually, they’re smaller / weaker than the people that actually know what they’re doing.
• miss-sweat-suit: i don’t quite get it, but they’re wearing sweat suits, cotton, polyester or otherwise, moving from one machine to another, in an effort to lose weight, or something. amusingly, they’re often carrying a bottle of water which negates the effects. awesome.
• mr-huge: uh, this guy usually sounds like he’s gonna blow out his colon when he’s lifting something big. he’s just giant, lifts 800 pounds at once, and needs 4 people just to help him lift the damn thing. but he looks awesome after lifting one weight one time. but hey, he’s bigger than me.
• miss-gatorade: this person is usually on the elliptical and is able to consume an entire bottle of gatorade before i’m done warming up. that’s 140+ calories you just drank. takes me almost 15 minutes of slow jogging to burn that many…and here you are, just eliminating your weight you burned. more awesome.

anyone got any other frequent gym offenders.

last weekend i hit up a wedding in wilmington delaware of two college friends. with my senior year roommate, and a another girl from college, we drove up to meet the entire crew from college crew, who decided to fly in saturday to philadelphia international airport. to celebrate our reunion, we decided to head out to the one and only bar the hotel concierege was well aware of, scrimmages. scrimmages is a sports bar, and on saturday we decided to eat and drink to our hearts contents in a place that looked more like your friends basement than a bar. but the food was decent, the beer was cheap, and the entertainment…well, thats your job.

see, karaoke is what scrimmages is known for on saturday’s, and myself, seth and john (the non-jew, jew, and half-jew crew, respectively) hit up the stage to sing Edwin Starr’s ”War.” suffice it to say our motley crew got the entire bar on their feet (one with a lighter) singing and dancing.

seth, john and i were not singers. we were performers, grunting like edwin on his finest day. background vocals were provided by the bar. everyone was in tears laughing and singing. john, seth and i couldn’t keep a straight face by the time the 2nd chorus came around. screams and grunts about war and “what it [was] good for” were the topic of the night. never in my life have a felt like a brought a crowd to their feet than singing that damn song in a random bar in delaware.

so how do i know i made it? well, after the sunday wedding, 30+ of us from the wedding returned sunday night to do more damage to the keg collection. well, believe it when i say when i purchased a pitcher of the world’s finest natty light water, the bartender looked at me and said, “hey, you’re one of the guys that sang war last night.” i responded politely with, “yes, i was one of them,” only to hear, “you guys rocked last night. i won’t forget that for a long time.”

the 30+ of us enjoyed scrimmages so much that plans are in the works to return in the 2009 calendar year. i guarantee scrimmages will be on my agenda for any east coast trips coming in the future.