Man vs. Bird

Every day during Morning Edition, my local NPR station will thank a contributor by name, usually for a semi-generous donation he or she made. This morning was no exception. Yet the names of the donors, a married couple, gave me pause — Fowler and Bird. Let me repeat that: the couple, though married, had different last names, he Fowler and she Bird. The man's name was Fowler, literally a person who hunts birds. Without question this is the greatest pair of names I've come across in a married couple, although my grandparents (Paul and Pauline) come in a close second. Extending the fowler/bird dynamic to British slang, as a bachelor, this Fowler fellow could not unfairly have been thought of as a hunter of all birds. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Fowler and Bird had gotten married for no other reason than to exploit that badass pair of names. God knows I would have.

College Football: Week One

Given that I have no technical understanding of football or what constitutes effective strategy, my thoughts on the game are highly impressionistic and largely conjectural. After all, my high school football career (one year) amounted to a cumulative gain of only ten yards (that's a seven-yard reception and a three-yard tackle for loss). That said, few things capture my imagination like college football -- it's a gladiatorial pageant that comes closer than anything else in the US to the rival nationalisms and emotions of European football (soccer). Below are my thoughts on what I consider important from the first week of the season (note: I don't consider football "fundamentals" such as running, passing or tackling all that important, as will be demonstrated below).

• As anyone with a television or computer knows, Oregon running back LeGarrette Blount was suspended for the rest of the year after socking Boise State defensive end Byron Hout in the mouth following the No. 16 Ducks' 19-8 loss on Thursday night. I'll concede the state of Oregon's proud progressive tradition and largely pacific nature, but this suspension is unacceptable. After all, football is predicated on violence, albeit a regulated and stylized violence. Still, if Blount had stiff-armed Hout during a long run and broken his nose, it would have been a cause for celebration, not an "unconscionable act," as one ESPN analyst fatuously called it. If I were a coach, I would actively seek out recruits habituated to senseless violence, as it's probably correlated in one way or another to an ability to score touchdowns.
  
• Similarly, while inattentively watching Saturday's marquee matchup, Alabama vs. Virginia Tech, I learned that Alabama defensive lineman Brandon Deaderick was playing for the Crimson Tide a mere five days after being shot in the arm. That's right, shot -- with a gun. What's more, the analysts in the booth didn't seem all that impressed by it. They mentioned it casually early on, unmoved, perhaps, because Deaderick was lucky enough to have been shot in the forearm. Sure, the dude may have been shot, but it was only a flesh wound, Kirk Herbstreit may have thought to himself. Show me a guy who gets stuck in the gut with a shiv minutes before a game starts and then rushes for 150 yards and two touchdowns -- then I'll be impressed.
  
• Lastly, ESPN analysts seem shockingly unaware of the last three decades of the disability rights movement and politically correct language. On separate occasions, both Herbstreit and Chris Fowler assessed a player as "gimpy," presumably as it related to a non-life-threatening leg injury. I don't imagine a man with cerebral palsy who has difficulty walking would equate his condition to that of a college football player who got a charley horse during a Friday afternoon walk-through or describe it in those terms, but I may be wrong.

Aunt Sandy's packages

Even though I just turned 25, my Aunt Sandy -- the peroxide blonde, sexagenarian matriarch of our family -- believes that I am, always have been, and always will be 7 years old. This may have something to do with the fact that she is a second-grade teacher, or maybe she liked me more when I was 7 and wishes I still was. In any event, for every holiday, major or minor, she sends me a package full of candy, toys, arts supplies and other bric-a-brac. These packages are covered with stickers appropriate to the holiday (shamrocks for St. Patrick's Day, hearts for Valentine's Day), usually featuring Snoopy, Woodstock and the rest of the Peanuts gang. What follows are the itemized contents of a recent package, illustrative of the trend. Please bear in mind that I am, or at least appear to be, an adult.

• Mechanical pencils (2)
• Pens (2)
• Mini scissors
• Novelty eraser (1 hamburger, 1 french fry)
• Bookmark with picture of Golden Retriever puppies
• Mini jawbreakers
• Jelly Bellies
• M&Ms (plain)
• Skittles
• Magnetic refrigerator clip (2)

I can count on the steady delivery of packages such as this like few other things in the world. I don't think my aunt is under any illusion that I actually use all (or any) of the things she sends me (for example: the mini scissors. I own and know how to operate a full-size pair of scissors. For what purpose would I need a pair in miniature? Tailoring?). I think she mostly just enjoys putting the package together and sticking it in the mail. And for that, I suppose, I can at least be grateful.

Yesterday in history

As I spent a number of my formative years in Lawrence, Kansas, I should be ashamed that I left one of that small hamlet's most important events off of yesterday's list celebrating the historic events that took place on my birthday. In 1863, of course, a band of pro-Confederate ruffians from Missouri known as Quantrill's Raiders rode into Lawrence and massacred some 167 men and boys in one of the more notorious episodes from the periphery of the Civil War. This event accounts for a good deal of the bad blood that persists to this day between the two states and is reenacted, albeit metaphorically, each fall when the University of Kansas and the University of Missouri play football, a game known as the Border War. Ludicrously, the game was renamed the Border Showdown -- complete with corporate sponsorship! -- after 9/11 and the US invasion of Iraq led some people (most likely those who don't watch football) to believe it was inappropriate that a football game should bear the appellation "war." This apparently wasn't a problem during World War I, World War II, Korea or Vietnam. Go figure.

On this day in history

I was born 25 years ago today. I'm guessing I weighed somewhere between five and nine pounds, but I have no way of verifying that. I was born bald, which most babies are, but later went on to grow an enviable head of hair, which few people do. My father had a mustache when I was born, wore his hair like Art Garfunkel and favored cheap cotton polos, which he wore with tennis shoes. That was either the high or low point of his fashion, depending on your preference. My mother was 32 at the time and probably regretted the pregnancy, at least while she was in labor, and probably for some time thereafter.

None of this is likely to be seen by posterity as having any real historical merit, unless I go on to develop a vaccine or assassinate a world leader, neither of which is likely. In that spirit, I've collected some of my favorite events that happened on this day in history instead:

• 1831: Nat Turner leads a slave revolt in Virginia. He is later caught and executed. (Well, at least he tried.)
• 1936: Wilt Chamberlain is born. (The Big Dipper played for KU under Phog Allen, scored 100 points in a game and claimed to have slept with 20,000 women. Enough said.)
• 1940: Exiled Russian communist Leon Trotsky dies in Mexico City one day after being stabbed in the head with an ice pick. (In addition to happening on my birthday, this is also my favorite political assassination of all time. Stabbed in the head! With an ice pick! In Mexico! Trotsky!)
• 1959: Hawaii becomes the 50th state. (The number 50 has a wonderful symmetry about it, another reason to let Puerto Rico languish as a commonwealth. Besides, we only need one tropical island. Thank you, colonialism.)
• 1991: The attempted coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev collapses. Boris Yeltsin stands on a tank. (Luckily, this was before Yeltsin began showing up drunk at public appearances, or he might have inadvertently blown some major shit up.)

Does my own birth rank with these historic events? Only time will tell.

V is for Velcro

On Monday night, I went to Wal-Mart and bought a pair of velcro shoes. They are gray with white soles and made of some strange synthetic material. They have two straps, cost $12 and are made by Starter, whose business model seems to have evolved (or devolved) from manufacturing pullover coats with sports logos to making cheap shoes for multinationals, a fall from grace not unlike those of other brands that were popular in junior high (Mossimo and Airwalk immediately come to mind).

This is not the first pair of velcro shoes I've owned in my life. The first came three years ago, also from Wal-Mart (where else?). But this proud legacy goes back further, all the way to high school in fact, when my friend Rob Dugas stunned friends and family by buying a two-strap pair of soft white pleather.

I should point out here that this was in the pre-geek chic era, or at least geek chic hadn't yet made it to Lincoln, Nebraska. Rob genuinely believed velcro shoes were awesome, which made his wearing them all the more subversive. Because people don't know what to think of a man wearing velcro shoes. They'll say to themselves: "Strange, he doesn't seem handicapped. I wonder why he's wearing velcro shoes. There must be some explanation for this, but I have no idea what."

That said, these are, without a doubt, the worst shoes I've ever owned -- probably why they cost $12. (Obviously I'm not talking about how they look. They look awesome. That's the point.) You know how the back of certain types of furniture -- say, a bookshelf -- will sometimes be made of a thin piece of fiberboard with a wood veneer rather than being made of actual wood? Imagine instead if that same bookcase were made entirely of fiberboard and wood veneer. It would probably fall down immediately, and even if it didn't, it would still look shoddy. That's what these shoes are like. Cheap, thin, poorly constructed, devoid of any non-synthetic material.

But I defy anyone to tell me they don't look good.

IKEA: The New Stalinism?

I went to IKEA for the first time yesterday. When I walked in, I felt like the men who met God in the Old Testament must have felt: not necessarily joyous, but terrified and in awe of the sheer power of the place. It was massive, like three Home Depots stacked on top of one another, filled with cheap consumer goods and home furnishings. I was there to buy a bookcase, a desk and a chair. I found these things and more, also picking up a floor lamp and a 15-piece tool set.

Am I happy with these purchases? Yes. Despite being poorly made and requiring some assembly, they are somewhat stylish and will adequately furnish a studio apartment. But on another level, the advent of IKEA is deeply unsettling. In the four hours I spent there -- I have no idea why it took that long. I think at one point I fell asleep while looking at a table -- I was reminded more than anything else of the Soviet Union. That may seem an odd impression, given the apparent differences between Soviet communism and the kind of global capitalism represented by IKEA. But given the store's prices and the range of products it offers, IKEA has the potential to become a totalitarian giant of home decor. Because if you can buy everything you need there at rock-bottom prices, why shop anywhere else? (Wal-Mart is another obvious example of the same phenomenon.)

Consider that, in the Soviet Union, citizens often had little choice in what they bought from state-run factories, which enjoyed monopolies on the goods they produced and had little incentive to respond to consumer demand. Factory goods there were cheap and poorly made, and people had little variety to choose from. Similarly, IKEA's products are rather badly made and use cheap materials. And while IKEA seems to offer a lot of variety -- say, eight or ten different types of coffee tables -- everything in the store conforms to the same dull, utilitarian aesthetic, as if it were designed as well as made by a machine.

Because it's so cheap and its products can feign quality, IKEA almost compels a person to shop there. It says: "Here, these products are cheap and relatively attractive. Sure, there's better stuff out there, but you don't have that much money anyway, so you really should just shop here. Besides, we have everything you need." And that's the most insidious thing about it -- IKEA does have everything you need at reasonable prices, and it makes you complicit in your own degradation by forcing you to acknowledge that fact and shop there.