The Year a Rubik's Cube Defeated Me

This had to have been 1982 or 1983. I was in the Mummers Parade as a child and won second place in a juvenile category (it was a category for juveniles, not that the category itself was juvenile). The first-place winner was some kid who was dressed as a Rubik’s Cube. I was so disappointed because everyone loved my costume. I wore a big backpiece and the whole thing was sequined and feathered within an inch of its life. I walked all the way up Broad Street wearing it. And then I lose to some piker wearing a cardboard box with colored squares on each side. Was the puzzle even solved? This detail is lost to history. Oh, I’m sure the colors were real pretty and had sequins and everything. But it was still just a Rubik’s Cube. Even at age 7 or 8, I knew the Mummers judges were just jumping on the bandwagon of the hot Christmas toy and didn’t appreciate the intricacy of the well-made costume I wore. It was a lesson to a young child that some people will always hitch themselves to the latest trend and look dated, while some things are timeless. How livid I was that New Year’s Day. This undoubtedly started my whole year off under a shadow, and you could argue that I have been living under the cruel shadow of the sequined Rubik’s Cube ever since.

Let's Get Physical

Physical media has its advantages if that’s the only place you can find the artwork in question. Our house is crammed with records, CDs, books, comic books and DVDs that we’ve collected over the years and decades. Much of this we’ve digitized but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t come in handy when there’s a glitch in the matrix and you lose access to the digital world.

The latest glitch is in my ancient car, in which the auxiliary jack for the stereo no longer works. I’ve tried different cables but none of them work, so it’s a problem with the stereo, and it’s not worth getting the stereo fixed because the car is on its way out. This means I can’t listen to music on my iPod or iPhone, so I’m stuck with CDs and the radio.

It hasn’t been all bad, since I dug out some old mix CDs and such and have been able to listen to some songs I never digitized. I’m glad I kept these since the car is where I listen to most of my music and without anything to listen to, I would only hear my aggravated profanity and the bile coursing through my system during my hateful commute. The radio is OK but it gets old. I listen to Oldies 98 now since I’m old and the station has finally caught up to the ‘80s music I loved. This is a deep irony since I was livid in 1987 when 98 stopped playing top 40 music. Another irony is that the station is just as repetitive as it was in the ‘80s, which I don’t understand. They used to be bound to play whatever was popular but now they have a whole decade-plus to work from, and they still play the same stuff way too often for no reason.

I experienced another good reason to keep CDs when Prince died. At the time, his music was only on certain streaming services and I don’t think you could download it everywhere. None of his albums had been remastered so only the originals were available to buy. So there was a scramble for people to play his music but I already had it all so I only had to push play. We keep all our records, of course, but records have aesthetic pleasures and better sound quality so there are reasons for keeping those beyond just access. This is why I’m not interested in streaming unless everything breaks down and I have no choice: I already painstakingly collected and paid for all this music so I don’t want to do it all again. 

I think it’s also important to hang onto DVDs and blu-rays if you can because TV and movies could disappear from streaming services, and that’s outside of our control. I was just reading an article saying that since Disney bought Fox, Disney has been putting old Fox movies into a vault, so people won’t have access to a lot of horror and classic movies. Netflix isn’t great about carrying older movies so many will be inaccessible without physical media. We have a lot of TV shows on DVD and I’m hanging onto them. I like to rewatch quality TV and you never know when they’ll stop streaming.

If your home doesn’t have much storage space, I can understand getting rid of stuff. We’re lucky enough to have room, so what’s the harm in hanging onto physical media in case we need it?

U-Turn

In your hurry to dart in front of my car and do your sudden 180º, it was probably lost on you that the “no U-turn” sign is there because of people like you. People who are in too big a hurry to “get somewhere” (as if we all aren’t trying to do that) to notice me slamming on my brakes behind you. I saw the eyes and headlights behind me, close enough to have sent us right back in a chain reaction to the hospital from which we just wheeled out of.

After all, why should the rules apply to you?

I strive, as do we all, for charity for those who have made mistakes. But with one more soul to take care of—one who wakes up from anesthesia haze and strains up against his seatbelt because you could not be bothered to follow the rules and undertake the herculean task of going half a mile to make a legal U-turn—perhaps I can be forgiven for thinking you are just a dimwitted, thoughtless POS.

I'd totally vote for a woman for president—just not one of these women

I mean, I’d totally vote for Elizabeth Warren but there’s something about her that turns me off. She just … talks about stuff and explains stuff. It’s just like with Hillary Clinton and her shrill pantsuits, and the way she didn’t smile enough but laughed too much. I’m all for voting for women, but not them. They remind me of the ex-wives I never had.

Kamala Harris turns me off twice as much as Warren or Clinton. I can’t put my finger on why. I’m also not too hot on Amy Klobuchar, Tulsi Gabbard, Kristen Gillibrand or Marianne Williamson, for various vague reasons. I’m a huge fan of hypothetical women but these are just not the right women for the Oval Office.

While I’ve always been a massive feminist, I also wouldn’t have voted for Shirley Chisholm, Barbara Jordan, Pat Schroeder, Carol Moseley Braun, Michele Bachmann, Elizabeth Dole, Jill Stein, Carly Fiorina, Alyson Kennedy, Carrie Chapman Catt, Helen Halyard, Cathy Gordon Brown, Caroline Killeen, Marsha Feinland, Elaine Brown, Ellen McCormack, Lorna Salzman, or Margaret Chase Smith. True, I was either not alive or not old enough to vote when these women ran, but I wouldn’t have voted for any of them for president. They just turn me off, even based on a brief perusal of their Wikipedia pages. It just wasn’t their time.

There are a lot of other women currently in Congress who could potentially make a run for president someday but I don’t know if I’m feeling it: Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Liz Cheney, Ilhan Omar, Susan Collins, Lisa Blunt Rochester, Lisa Murkowski, Katherine Clark, Martha Roby, Mary Gay Scanlon, Ayanna Pressley, Terri, Sewell, Ann Kirkpatrick, Rashida Tlaib, Debbie Lesko, Doris Matsui, Dianne Feinstein, Jackie Speier, Sharice Davids, Anna Eshoo, Zoe Lofgren, Suzanne DelBene, Katie Hill, Judy Chu, Julia Brownley, Joni Ernst, Barbara Lee, Grace Napolitano, Norma Torres, Karen Bass, Linda Sanchez, Yvette Clark, Lucille Roybal-Allard, Maxine Waters, Nanette Barragan, Katie Porter, Abigail Spanberger, Susan Davis, Sylvia Garcia, Diana DeGette, Rosa DeLauro, Jahana Hayes, Chellie Pingree, Stephanie Murphy, Val Demings, Kathy Castor, Chrissy Houlahan, Mikie Sherrill, Jacky Rosen, Betty McCollum, Lois Frankel, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Susie Lee, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, Donna Shalala, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Kyrsten Sinema, Lucy McBath, Robin Kelly, Jan Schakowsky, Lauren Underwood, Cheri Bustos, Susan Brooks, Abby Finkenauer, Debbie Stabenow, Mazie Hirono, Cindy Axne, Lori Trahan, Elissa Slotkin, Haley Stevens, Tammy Duckworth, Brenda Lawrence, Angie Craig, Ann Wagner, Vicky Hartzler, Dina Titus, Ann McLane Kuster, Bonnie Watson Coleman, Martha McSally, Deb Haaland, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Xochitl Torres Small, Kathleen Rice, Grace Meng, Nydia Velazquez, Frederica Wilson, Deb Fischer, Carolyn Maloney, Tian Smith, Maggie Hassan, Nita Lowey, Elise Stefanik, Virginia Foxx, Alma Adams, Joyce Beatty, Marcy Kaptur, Marcia Fudge, Kendra Horn, Suzanne Bonamici, Madeleine Dean, Susan Wild, Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, Kay Granger, Veronica Escobar, Sheila Jackson Lee, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Jackie Walorski, Elaine Luria, Jennifer Wexton, Jaime Herrera Beutler, Pramila Jayapal, Kim Schrier, Carol Miller, Gwen Moore, Catherine Cortez Masto, Jeanne Shaheen, Marsha Blackburn, Patty Murray, Maria Cantwell, Shelley Moore Capito, Tammy Baldwin or Debbie Dingell. I’m sure all these gals are lovely, but I just don’t know if I’d vote for one of them for president.

Look, nobody is a bigger feminist than me. Nobody. I can’t say I’m the father of daughters, but as the son of a mother, I’d love to see a woman in the White House. Someday. But I’m just going to pass on all the aforementioned women.

Forgiveness

Whether or not Brandt Jean should have hugged and forgiven Amber Guyger, who murdered his brother Botham, is not for me to say. I have no idea what I would do in that situation because it’s impossible for me to put myself in his shoes. I won’t judge what he did or speculate why he did it.

But it did make me uncomfortable when I saw Jean hug Guyger in the courtroom. It’s hard to articulate why, but it has to do with the public’s reaction to what happened and the risk of taking the wrong lesson from this. Right away I could hear a public chorus of feel-good “aww”s at that hug. I could see people calling this “inspiring,” a word people apply for phenomena ranging from forgiveness for murder to crafting projects on Pinterest. I could see the Good Morning America-zation of this, simplifying something complex into something no deeper than a hashtag. #inspiring

I think the problem with people turning this hug into a heartwarming moment is that it can let us off the hook, let us believe that everything is wrapped up in a neat little bow and there’s no longer anything to see here. I worry that white people will see this hug as some kind of absolution for systemic racism; that we can change our racist society if wronged people just forgive, rather than actually taking steps to correct injustice. Meanwhile, Botham Jean is still dead, this bloodshed will happen again, and people who look like me will get better treatment from the legal system than people who look like him.

If there’s anything this should inspire, it’s that we should care more about these issues, and not think everything’s OK because of an excruciatingly personal forgiveness that is in danger of being extrapolated to society at large.

Much smarter people than me have written about this and I will defer to them. I still can’t fully articulate why the reaction to this bothers me, but when I saw it, I did have a visceral reaction, and it wasn’t because it warmed my heart.

Friday! Friday! Friday! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

WYAP-FM: Alright, it’s finally Friday! It’s 5 o’clock! Are you ready? (factory whistle sound effect)

Caller 1: I am ready for a Friday! Awwww yeah!

WYAP-FM: How ready are you, Carol from Bensalem?

Caller 1: Like, I’m really ready! I need a weekend! Give me some great weekend tunes!

WYAP-FM: We got your great weekend tunes here on a Friday at WYAP-FM! How about you, Doug from Gray’s Ferry? How bad do you need this Friday?

Caller 2: Oh, I need it bad! Working all week!

WYAP-FM: Working all week! I hear you!

Caller 2: Friday! Friday! Friday! Yeah! Yeah! Yeeeeaaaahhh!!!

WYAP-FM: And I know Mike from Havertown needs a weekend! You got that Friday feeling?

Caller 3: Oh, I got that Friday feeling! It’s 5 o’clock, I’m driving home, blasting 98.8 WYAP-FM! Woo-hoo!

WYAP-FM: Coming up, we’ve got “Working for the Weekend” and “Bang the Drum All Day,” then “Working for the Weekend,” then “Bang the Drum All Day,” then “Bang the Drum All Day” again, then “Working for the Weekend!” three times in a row! Getting you home and into your weekend!

Caller 3: Oh, man, get me home and into my weekend!

WYAP-FM: Stick with us at 98.8 WYAP-FM! Great tunes for your Friday drive time! (factory whistle sound effect)

Caller 4: Weekend! Weekend! It’s the weekend! I can’t … I can’t take it!

WYAP-FM: And the weekend is just getting started, Trish from Arden! We’re here for you, getting you through Friday rush hour!

Caller 4: Bleeping Friday, you bleeping bleep bleep bleepers! (incoherent, ecstatic screaming)

WYAP-FM: Stay tuned for Loverboy!