Ride Free

There's more than a few ideological differences my wife and I have when it comes to raising our son, Holden.  I talked about one of these the other day, his eating meat, which was a knock-down, drag-out brawl.  I eventually won.  But not without heavy concessions to the other side (apparently, I have to endure another pregnancy, which was really hard on me the first time).  There was also the heated circumcision question.  To me, I didn't see any room for debate.  Where I'm from, you got circumcised or your name was Barry and we kicked the living shit out of you in gym class*.

                                * I never really beat up a kid named Barry with an uncircumcised dick.

Justine is from Northern California, meaning born and bred in the Bay Area, the epicenter of liberalism and legislation to protect you from yourself.  Justine has traveled extensively, but her roots bore deeply here.  I'll never forget one couple's therapy session (yeah, I go to fucking couple's therapy.  So fucking what?  We have problems with our fucking communication).  After I'd been bitching about Justine's wanting to foster kids like we're Jolie/Pitt, our wiccan priestess of a counselor says, "Joe, you do know you've married an Earth Mother, right?"

Earth Mother.  Jesus.  Makes my balls shrivel even thinking of the expression.  Just this side of "praying to the burning gods on the playa" in the lexicon of shit that makes me want to move back east, shave my head, and join a gang. This New Age, subculture, third-eye crap permeates everything they do out here.  Now there is a lot that I love about San Francisco.  It is a place where success isn't defined by the kind of car you drive or how high up you work or live; a place where you are free to be who you are (or as much as any of those things can be true in a modern, industrialized society).  The percentage of folks with college degrees out here is staggering, not that having a college degree necessarily translates to intelligence. Some of the smartest people I know didn't even go to college.  But one thing an education does tend to do is foster feelings of inclusion, rather than exclusion.  And even though I hate most mutherfuckers, that is a good thing.

But everything comes with a price; reciprocity is the currency on which this universe runs.  And the by-product of all this is an oversensitivity that borders on cloying.  Hence, a championing of being politically incorrect.  Which is basically people now thinking they have an excuse to not be polite.  And if there is one thing that pisses Joe off it is not employing proper etiquette (my first wife made me read Amy Vanderbuilt's The Complete Book of Etiquette, quizzing me if I wanted to get some.  So hot).

                               You see how thick this shit is?  Cover to fucking cover.  "It's lunch time, asshole.  The napkin gets folded in half."

Most of these "Earth Mother," hippy traits of my wife I can ignore.  Despite her assertion that they form the bulk of her person, I see these characteristics as mostly minor, inconsequential details, like Mandy Moore on Scrubs saying "That's so funny" instead of actually laughing.

Which just proves what we already know.  Really attractive people can get away with just about anything (see Amanda Knox).  Justine is an absolute doll of a woman, smart, gorgeous, amazing mom, so what if I have to deal with the occasional tearing up when they show cat juggling videos from South America?

It's a little tougher to ignore with my in-laws, who are both full-fledged, card-carrying (-burning burner) hippies, who bless chakras and comment on the strength of someone's chi, but generally I let it pass, even when grandpa leads a drum circle procession into my house for my son's first birthday, or when grandma dresses him like a baby monk because chia seeds sprouted all over him.  It's the Bay Area. Drum circles here are like tipping cows back in Berlin.  Just what you do.

Of course, when it comes to actually raising our boy, navigating these issues gets a whole lot trickier.  If you read this blog often, you know I think my old man was a douche.  And he was.  God rest his soul.  But like Mark Twain said, the older I get, the smarter my father becomes.  The guy did get a few things right.  Like raising us in the country.

I am glad I grew up in the wide open spaces without much adult supervision, free to do stupid shit like testing the ice on the pond in the thaw of spring, until you'd hear it crack and rush to see if you could make it back to shore in time (Sorry, Roger; we miss you).  And riding our bikes, zipping down steep hills and over gravel pits, taking air off poorly constructed homemade ramps, doing tricks to impress our dipshit friends.  It's what being a kid is all about.

Seriously, how many chances do you have to feel cool as a kid?  Your mom picks out your clothes, you get those fucking goofy haircuts; you're old enough to crave freedom but too little to do jack about it.  Riding my bicycle--without a helmet--was one of the few moments I felt a reprieve.  Nobody was bundling me up and strapping on elbow- and kneepads.  It was my fucking Huffy and a big ass hill; and, yeah, I crashed a lot, and, yes, I've been diagnosed with brain damage, but no one can prove those things are related.  And don't forget, in the "big crash," it was the rest of my body that got fucked up, not my head.

I aim to win the support of the masses with these posts, and I realize this one is a losing fight.  No one is writing in and saying that encouraging my kid not to wear a helmet is a good idea. Of course he's going to wear a helmet.  It's the fucking law. More importantly, my wife says he has to, and when you win the 2 meat skirmishes, like I said, you have to concede other battles.  I am not even saying he shouldn't wear a helmet.  No way I could live with myself if the boy ever got hurt because of something I did (or didn't do).  I just think the '70s were a pretty cool time to be a kid.

I'll probably get a ticket out here for even writing this.  But hillbillies and rednecks get a few things right.  My son is going to grow up probably speaking four languages and eating kale chips, and he is more apt to do yoga than he is boxing. But never riding his bike too fast down a gravelly ravine, no helmet, the wind in his hair, trying to impress his version of Tracy B. with some ill-advised, hot-shot show-off move, and then fighting back the tears when he scraps his knees and face to shit?  That's what'll make a man out of you.

                                                           Skip to 2:50

Listen, I'd put the boy in a suit made of styrofoam and keep him in a bubble if I could.  I don't want to see him ever stub a toe.  That's what it's like when you're a parent.  But some of the best memories of my childhood came from doing stupid shit, the starting fires and playing with hornets nests, and yes going too fast on a bike without a helmet.  It's a shame, is all.  But I guess that's why we have moms. Otherwise we'd let the kid eat pancakes and pizza and Pop Rocks all day, and stay up half the night ogling half naked pictures of Kate Upton.

Burning Man

Well, it's that time of year again, when the teeming, crafting hordes load up the veggie-fueled caravan and make like Tom Joad in reverse, heading back to the dust bowl...

For the sake of full disclosure, I freely admit: I don't know what the fuck actually goes on at Burning Man.  I mean, I've never been there.  Best I can deduce (from the endless slew of Bay Area "burners" who won't shut up about it): a bunch of dirty hippies get together in the desert to take lots of drugs, have sex with strangers, display their shitty art, and not shower for a week, as they have deep discussions about the need to return to a more primal existence, before lighting some big wooden sculpture thingy on fire, which takes on religious significance as being symbolic of some kind of transcendence. What kind of transcendence?  Beats fuckall out of me.  How can I speculate on why people would want to spend a week stinking like hobo and shitting in scrub brush?

Burning Man would be bad enough if it simply existed somewhere far away.  Like the Tea Party or pirates, an abstract I only had to encounter when I clicked on a specific link to a Yahoo story.  Or if I still lived in Connecticut.  But I live in the Bay Area, where Burning Man is like herpes.  The shit is everywhere.

I am a grumpy old man who doesn't like fun.  I know that.  So feel free to keep that in mind as you read this.  But I used to like drugs. Lots and lots of drugs, and even back then, you couldn't have paid me to go to Burning Man.  (And considering you used to be able to pay me to do just about anything, that's saying something.)

My first encounter with Burning Man came via this guy, I think his name was Kevin, who was roommates with this girl I knew.  Kevin wore lots of flannel, smoked pot non-stop, repeated the same story 80 fucking times.  And had a soul patch.  I guess the only vital detail of that description is the soul patch, eh?  I'd just come from CT, and knew more about the GOP and finishing school than I did about Burning Man, so I tried to keep an open mind.

"Oh, man," Kevin said, "you being an artist, man, you'd dig it the most...man."

Sure, I said, lay it on me.  I was an artist, and trying to open my mind was sort of a prerequisite for the grand journey of self-discovery upon which I thought I was embarking.

We sat in his filthy Bernal Heights' home, cluttered with dirty hippy crap, hardened old coffee cups, sixteen cats and giant stinky dogs, furniture that smelled like old people, the cold fog drifting in, as Kevin explained the magic of Burning Man, how a bunch of jackasses, most of whom probably also had soul patches or were dating a guy with a soul patch, or at least knew of a guy with a soul patch, climbed into a junky RV or van, where they pooled together change for the gas to drive to the desert to meet up with a bunch of other soul-patchers to partake in a spiritual awakening via a sharing of their "art."  And I guess this is where he lost me.  The art part.  Because, like I, Kevin also considered himself an "artist."  But whereas I tried painting trees that looked like trees, people who looked like people, and didn't suck, Kevin was more of a...crafter...gluing shit to paper, macaroni and bird feathers.

"Because, you and me," Kevin said, "we're the same.  It doesn't matter how 'good' you are.  Art is all about what what's inside your soul.  Rembrandt, you, me, it's all the same, man: art."

No, Kevin, it's not all the same.  Rembrandt is better than I.  And I sure as fuck am better than you.

Christ, I hate all that "art is equal" bullshit, drives me nuts; it's fucking commie talk. Like anything else, art is subject to hierarchy, quality and standards.  Crime and Punishment is better than Aunt Edna's self-published Homemade Jams of the South. Art is serious shit.  You work at it, you don't play at it.  Crafts are for Kindergartners and untalented girlfriends named "Lisa."  Just because you glue twigs to milk cartons when you are feeling "expressive," it doesn't make you an "artist" any more than giving yourself a paper cut makes you a surgeon.

Of course, I wouldn't have said these things to Kevin.  I would've just nodded, maybe said, "Oh," or "That sounds cool." Because at the time I was trying to shed my repressed strict Christian upbringing, and I was just a shy farm boy in the big city.

This would've been 19aught92.  I've lived in the SF Bay Area for the better part of the last twenty years, and Burning Man, instead of going the way of the pet rock in the '70s or breakdancing in the '80s, goofy fads like rap/rock fusion that enjoyed far more airtime than they deserved, Burning Man has only gotten bigger.  And if you live in San Francisco or any of its surrounding boroughs these days, good luck trying to escape it.

The worst part about Burning Man--I mean, besides the obvious part about the people who go there calling themselves "burners"--is how it's attained a religious-like status, is regarded as something profound; and admitting you have no interest in the process renders you an unevolved cretin.

"You've never been to Burning Man?  Why haven't you gone?  You have to go.  You have no idea what you're missing.  It's nothing like you think!"

Yeah.  It is.  I know exactly what's it's like because you people won't shut up about it.

And soon, the "burners" will be back, like goddamn grackles returning from pillaging sunflowers, posting their fucking pictures of guys with Dr. Seuss hats and pierced, dopey girls in pasties, standing beside some crappy junkyard sculpture, looking smug, like they've unlocked the keys to the universe just because they're not wearing pants.

Burning Man is the emperor's new clothes of new-age spirituality, an excuse for the pseudo artists, tattooed hipsters, and Ani Difranco wannabes to feel like they are doing something important with their lives because instead of fucking strangers and getting high in their rooms they are doing it in the sand.

Maybe I'm being hyper critical of something I just don't understand.  So if I'm overshooting the boat here, have gotten the particulars wrong, please feel free to write and explain what it is I am missing.  But that's a tall order, because when I look at videos like the ones below, I swear to God, it's enough to make me want to be a Republican again.

(* And to all my friends who are at Burning Man.  I am not talking about you guys! You guys are, like, way cool!  And your art is AWESOME!  I'm talking about...those other people.  And it's not like you're going to read this anyway.  They don't have the Internet [or electricity, or running water, or working toilets] in the desert.)