So when my mom suggested we go to see a play, I threw my hands in the air and shouted for joy at the prospect of phenomenal repertory theater in Boston! Or, to put it differently, I was over-joyed at the food that would bookend whatever show my dramaturgical mother set her heart on. She picked me up from the library, and as I got in a car I paused for a moment:

“Woah. People drive cars.”

“So what show are we going to see?”

“Let’s eat in the food court, we don’t have much time before the show starts.”

(Shit.)

“Ok, yeah, I’m hungry so whatever works.”

We approach a street corner, where a group of children is standing (kids don’t ever really “stand,” they sort of just constantly freak-the-fuck-out). The pack senses me, and I can sense in return their little eyes sizing me up. Whenever there are enough kids around, cannibalism becomes much more likely, if only because you know they don’t yet have the entrenched ethical systems that would tell them it’s wrong (and kids are universally always famished, like vultures — neon-clad vultures with backpacks that aren’t large enough to actually carry anything).

“WIZARD OF OZ!!” They all shout in infinitely excited unison.

Jesus Christ. (Louis CK is right, how did people express confused fascination before Jesus died?)

“It’s the Wizard of Oz,” says my mom, just to hammer in that the kids were, in fact, answering my query without realizing it. So after having my drama heart broken, I reconcile myself to at least enjoy dinner.

I had a Chutney’s vegetable and rice bowl. I only know that because of my performance of ordering (“You want the vegetables?” “No, I said that just to fuck with you, of course I do.”), since to attempt to understand what the indiscriminate chunks of matter in your Chutney’s rice bowl actually are through some deductive process would be beyond any intellects. The guava juice was good. I have never in my entire life had the possibility of eating a real guava — Does anyone ever sit down at a corporate picnic or farmer’s market and just open up a guava? — so I can only assume this is what guava juice tastes like. Honestly guava’s may taste absolutely nothing like the sugary-sweet nectar that Chutney’s tried to pawn off on me but I’m almost happier being none the wiser.

Indigestion in tow, we walked to the theater.

From more than forty feet away, the Wheelock theater looks pretty pleasant, even modern, which is an adjective you can give to just about anything as long as it isn’t literature or philosophy because someone wearing an ascot will correct you. I’m one of those people who knows literally nothing about architecture other than liking Frank Gehry buildings when I was ten, so I also have to habitually “notice” that things are “well built” to keep up this strange adolescence-inspired charade.

Then I opened the doors and saw the army — a teeter-tottering mass — of children shaking and jumping and screaming all over the lobby — literally, agitating so tightly together that walking through to the Will Call table was impossible and I was basically shoving little people aside, standing on heads because they’re not just in front of you but under and above you all at once and it starts to feel like you’re a Chilean miner because you feel crushed and start having to punt toddlers out of your way just to pick up your tickets. It was here that I realized that this was a family theater production of the Wizard of Oz and that I was the only 20 year old guy wearing a blazer in the entire building.

At most other places I go, my grandfatherly cardigan and tweed jacket combination work out a “comfortable fit,” and I’ll get one compliment from a Hispanic girl — not kidding, it’s always the Hispanic girl — about it. But here, they mean only one thing to the eyes of leery parents guarding their precious commodities: my sweater, age, and gender mean that I am subject #1 for all of their deepest and darkest molest-y fears. Here’s the thing: I love kids. That’s a really hard thing to say as a man in general, but particularly as a man at my stage in life, but I really do, and here I’m forced to act like I don’t even know what they are. And it’s made all the funnier because a lot of men at the Wheelock Theater would really give the “Ugly Fathers or Pedophiles” contest a run for its money.

None of this was helped by my immediate need upon arrival to use the restroom — to pee out that toxic, neon guava juice — which was less a bathroom and more just a broom closet with two toilet stalls, two urinals, and three sinks crammed together with about the same quality of urban planning as Boston. If there were ever a bathroom that did not do anything to deserve having three sinks, it is one that has only two urinals that are separated by barely two inches of penis-to-penis space. So I had to pee and I managed to wrangle my way into the corner urinal, as far from danger and the aroma of dank poo as possible.

The whole time I’m in the Harry Potter bathroom, I’m consciously trying to avoid looking at anyone but I can’t help noticing that the kid next to me who is dangerously close to me — and I’m crouched like a fucking gremlin in this corner — has his trousers around his ankles as his dad levitates him into the air, and he’s just shooting piss all over the already piss-wallpapered walls right next to me. But his dad is not looking at the kid — no, he is not even noticing the horrendous mess that is happening to these poor, poor misused walls — because he is looking at me and my potentially-rapey sweater. So I don’t want to make eye contact with anyone and I’m studying the hell out of the tiles of the bathroom wall like I work at a Tile Import shop and hoping my bladder squeezes it out of me faster than usual so I can escape lazer-eyes and his floating piss-machine. Eventually I wash my hands and have to awkwardly suggest that another urine-guardian allow me to reach the paper towel machine so that I don’t walk out of this den of horrible smells and tragic aim with dripping hands.

Because everyone knows that when someone walks out of the bathroom with dripping hands, you kind of wonder if they were reaching into the toilet bowl. Nobody wants that.

Imagine your worst nightmare. If you aren’t dreaming of a surprise production of the Wizard of Oz in a theater where the backs of the seats feel like rough planks of thousand year old wood and you’re seated directly in front of the orchestra who is blasting smooth jazz at you, then you don’t have any idea what horror is.

It’s here where I should admit that the leads (THE LEEDS AREN’T WEAK, YOU’RE WEAK), especially Dorothy and the Tin Man who was, (not) coincidentally, played by my brother, were quite good.

The Director or Stage Manager or, honestly, some random dude, came up before the show to say a few words and said (to the kids in the audience, but I assumed he said it to me) “We hope to see you on stage next year.” So I spent the rest of the show imagining myself simultaneously playing all the roles in the Wizard of Oz which is both enthralling and terrifying to imagine. Shows that would not make good one-man shows: The Wizard of Oz.

Quick game: think about your ideal version of the Wizard of Oz. Now decide how many music numbers there would be. Is it twelve? No? Well, it was here. There were twelve musical numbers in this version of the Wizard of Oz. It’s like ten too many. This is not your ideal version of the Wizard of Oz. In fact, in my ideal version, the munchkins just dance for a while, Dorothy realizes that the crazy woman who lives near her is a total bitch, and everyone gets to eat free cookies.

At the intermission, for which I thanked Jesus more times than I have for almost anything else in my life, I realized that I had to go to the bathroom again and would have to do the whole ritual again. But I was saved from total despair when I looked at a line of women that looked like a Nicholas Sparks book-signing, but was in reality the bathroom line. If you ever wanted to feel great about not having a vagina, you should stand outside of a women’s restroom during the intermission of any reasonably public event. It’s like ladies discover bathrooms anew each time there’s a large public gathering split into two parts and, due to some inexplicable primal instincts, all act like predatory lions gathering at a gazelle corpse. Except the gazelle corpse is an improperly cleaned public restroom without enough paper towels.

So I retreat back to my concrete seat, weaving through groups of kids, some of whom are inexplicably wearing pajamas — some adults even had pajamas, but in groups that were not linked to the pajama-ed children, so it just felt more and more like I was in the Twilight Zone — in preparation, I can only suppose, for the moment where the kids catastrophically collapse and can’t be shepherded through the process of “getting ready for bed.” I, like I’m Sam Fisher in Splinter Cell, make it past the concessions table, which happens to be doing Super Bowl-quality business because the little bands of mongrels are all famished again after sitting still for about an hour, though honestly I entirely understand because when my mom takes me to see the Wizard of Oz, I kind of want to just leave and eat instead too. Except they get cookies and I don’t, split up into micro-chunks, because one thing that modern parents seem to really take a delight in doing is breaking up foods that don’t really pose choking hazards into small chunks for the fuck of it and then slowly parceling them out to their dying-of-hunger youngsters like they’re re-enacting Oliver Twist or something.

At the end of the play, a lot of people stand up, as if the play and it’s ensemble supporting cast of children, who, we have to admit, are adorable but not good at acting — because it’s not like a five year old is out on the street smoking cigarettes and reading secondary texts on the Wizard of Oz as part of their Daniel Day-Lewis method-acting routine — deserve a standing ovation. It was very cute, some people were good, but one thing that really bothers me is how often plays get standing ovations. It totally defeats the purpose if you’ll give everything a standing O. Playgasm.

The director’s note says something along these lines: “Finding the gold inside ourselves remains one of life’s greatest challenges.” I entirely agree. In many ways, I think the Wheelock Theater helped me do that tonight.

My name’s Brad, and I skipped the Freshman Formal to see the Wizard of Oz with the children of the city of Boston.

“You don’t know who I am, that’s why it’s OK that I tell you this.”

If I had a nickel for all the times this had happened to me, I’d have one bright and shiny Jefferson nickel. Is Jefferson on the nickel? Regardless of how simple it would be to Wikipedia-query the answer to this, I’m self-SOPA-ing myself to protest my own reservations about internet piracy.

“K.”

“My friend thinks you’re really cute but she’s too scared to talk to you. You’ve seen her before.”

I’m not even going to mess around with setting up a nickel precedent for this one because I’m going to go ahead and guess this won’t become a regular nickel-reception occurrence. EL OH EL.

“I have?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Well, cool.”

“She’s going to come over here.”

(That’s what he said.)

“Alright.”

So I stand awkwardly in the same place, planning possible escape plans in case she is Marlon Brando. I think one of my greatest fears is that I will be hit on by the Ghost of Marlon Brando. He would give me an offer… ok I’m done, sorry.

“Hello.”

“Hi. My name is Brad.”

(If normally my interactions with women are like Sisyphus at the bottom of the hill sizing up the boulder, fully aware of the impossibility of pushing it to the top, and not entirely sure he even wants to give it a push, this time it’s like Sisyphus standing on the top of the hill, leaning against the boulder and asking Jupiter what else “that bitch” has in store.)

“Hi, my name is ______.”

This is both to protect identities and also because the first time someone tells me their name means absolutely nothing. I have the short-term memory of an Alzheimer’s patient or someone suffering from Aphasia.

“What are you thinking about studying?”

I know a lot of people hate these conversations but they’re as close as I can get to home turf, because with enough effort I can draw all conversations into ones thematically aligned with the corpus of Alain Badiou. It’s my own conversational game. The other one is deciding whether or not people would be included on my team of zombie-killers.

“Oh, I don’t really know, but I think contemporary continental philosophy is what I’m most interested in.”

Yes. I am that guy. The key test in all these conversations is if there is any response here that denotes I can keep going. Because I’m going to keep thinking about Badiou anyways. At least sometimes I can say crazy things about being with a greater/lesser degrees of one-sidedness to it.

“Oh me too!”

Hold. the. phone.

And then I got to discuss the ability of mathematics to speak the true language of being, the relative importance and twoobishness of Descartes, whether the Communist revolution was coming (though this was probably another conversation) and a bunch of other things I don’t really member. But then there was external interference. Before I know it I’m talking about whiteness studies with an African studies major, which, honestly, I didn’t know existed at Harvard, but it’s a positive development at least, right? The more the merrier.

Does Santa Claus ever say that?

“I love your glasses,” says some other girl, walking by. Around me the continuous thump of Top-50 rap makes holding my attention on anything for more than fifteen seconds even more difficult than it usually is. I find that I continuously make eye contact with people I’m not talking to at parties, usually to test my own ability to see, but other times just because it’s a true sociological fact that if you look at someone and they make eye-contact with you, you have to look back in a little while to make sure they aren’t still looking at you. But the problem, here, is that people think I’m constantly bored of them, which, sometimes, is also true, but usually isn’t.

Is there a fear of being in crowded parties with men who are larger than you? Self-SOPA.

I go downstairs to where dancing is happening. There are no lights except black lights. A gloom hangs over the whole room, and I can’t help thinking this would be the perfect basement for a fight club. But when girls with too much makeup dance down here, they look like the walking dead (and the men’s faces already look like the walking dead because the only emotion I can read on them is absolute sex-focused concentration) so I start to get a little freaked out. I check my text messages and lean against a wall. “No, I’m just standing here awkwardly. Yeah. I’m not waiting for anyone.”

Pretty soon I’m back upstairs. Girl who thinks I’m really cute apparently felt the same way about another guy. Girl who liked my glasses is on drink #toomany. That’s what happens when you look like an Urban Outfitters Muppet. You’re fishing with a broken reel. Some dude at the top of the stairs looks at me:

“You are too hipster.”

Oh thanks, you noticed my glasses too.

“Do you mean that in a disparaging or complimentary fashion?”

I swear I actually conversationally used the word “disparaging,” probably for the first time in my whole life.

“I have to say the former, dude.”

Cool, dude, cool. You look like a Hansen roadie or a reject from the first season of the Real World or the protagonist of a bad Adventure Novel but I’m not going to say these things to your face. Courtesy is underrated in person, but on the internet I’m definitely going to compensate for your dickery.

“Oh, uh. Thanks, I guess.”

“Yeah, have a good night man.”

“You too!”

But of course that guy found me again later, to reinforce the fact that he had broken the secret Hipster Rosetta Stone. Zubat-ing the shit out of a conversation I was in (where you arrive in someone else’s conversation and leech out life from it by laughing at jokes you aren’t a part of).

“Would it be rude if I see how many hipster stereotypes you meet?”

“NO WAY!”

(obviously, fucksacks)

“Do you own a fixie?”

Damn. Got me there. You will be a more formidable enemy than I realized. And lest there be any debate on the subject, I have drawn my Schmittian lines: you are an enemy. But I love my red fixie…

“Yes.”

“Would you rather be drinking PBR right now?”

Ok, this is not even a question of hipster-dom or lacks-thereof. PBR is unquestionably a slightly better beer than Keystone Light. This is not a question of opinion, it’s a truth in the Badiouan sense. And I will maintain fidelity to that truth.

“Yes.”

“I should stop this.”

(No…)

“I think it’s great.”

So to keep a long story short he had to leave and I ended the night the way so many others end: sitting the Kong. Kevin sat us down in a corner spot (Thanks Kevin), and we feasted on 1) Vegetable Fried Rice and 2) Scallion Pancakes. That’s the only thing anyone should ever eat at night, because while the Kong is relatively uninspiring during the daytime hours, you feel like Hemingway when you’re crapulously shoveling it down your throat. I switched tables to say hello to another group of friends, and Seng brought me a fortunate cookie (Thanks Seng).

If you have three fortune cookies in one night, do you keep the first, the last, all or none? I’m unsure about the rules, but number three was clearly the best.

“You will find success in your professional life.” FUCK YEAH!

I woke up today in order to bring my course registration to the course registration building.

“We have a quick survey for you.”

The beginning of all bad conversations.

“Ok.”

I can never say no. And, here, I mean this literally, because I functionally cannot turn in my registration without finishing the survey.

“What are you thinking of concentrating in?”

“Social studies.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, no.”

But clearly he wanted something else, and he looked so displeased, and I thought about how annoyed I would be running this survey too. I will throw you a bone. Looking at the sheet, I see Anthropology as the #2 item on the list.

“And maybe anthropology…?”

“Social anthropology?”

Uh… I think so? What does that even mean? Is there another kind?

“Yes. That one.”

“Thanks so much.”

That’s the end? The survey is just to ask me if I have thought about what my major should be? That’s not a survey. That’s a question. A survey has to at least involve two questions. You could have just called it a brief question. And why am I humming the lyrics to Yonkers right now?

So I leave, but I have a realization: Wait. It’s the morning (it’s 2:45 pm). So I go to the coffee shop:

“Can I get an iced Americano?”

“We don’t have iced drinks anymore.”

…anymore? … forever?

“Oh. Well, I will take, um… a coffee?”

And so with my hot coffee (I hate hot coffee) steaming in my hand (I didn’t get a brown-hand-saver-device because I’m punishing myself for buying a hot coffee), I walk back to my room. It only cost a dollar, at least. I will punish myself by reading Agamben:

“The exception is that which cannot be included in the whole of that which it is a member and cannot be a member of the whole of which it is always already excluded.” (HS 25)

That’s a real sentence.

My name is Brad, I’m just living the bare(bear) life in as many possible ways as I can.

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/01/12/things_vladimir_putin_is_not_too_busy_for

1. Sometimes – Beach Fossils

2. Golden Haze – Wild Nothing

3. Beach Comber – Real Estate

4. Dirty Cartoons – Menomena

5. Book of Revelation – The Drums

6. Child – The Maccabees

7. Red Socks Pugie – Foals

8. Boom Puma – Morning Teleportation

9. I Woke Up Today – Port O’Brien

10. Consequence – The Notwist

11. 1 Samuel 15:23 – The Mountain Goats

12. The Sea Is a Good Place to Think About the Future – Los Campesinos!

13. 1930′s Beach House – Movietone

14. Sleep Forever – Portugal. The Man

Dear Jacques,

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says “If you see it in The Sun it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon,
115 West 95th Street,
New York City

Virginia, your little friends are right. So is your father (but is that not always the case…?). You have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. You strive for socio-symbolic completeness. You think that nothing can be which is not confirmed by some larger sociolinguistic entity — in Seminar XX, I call this the big Other. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s are incomplete. In this traumatic universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him and his inability to come to grips with the constitutive lack.

No, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus. Or, perhaps Santa Claus exists as exception to the universal — the not-all. Which is to say, only in the sense that he does not. Your father wants to control your jouissance. He does this precisely through the Superego imperative to enjoy!

No Santa Claus! Thank not-God he does not live, and he does not live forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now we will still reside in these elaborate fantasies constructed out of a need to explain the unexplainable. I suppose in that sense, Santa might as well exist.

Sincerely,

Jacques Lacan

1. Fitz & the Trantrums – Moneygrabber

2. The National – Twenty Miles to NH pt. 2

3. Los Campesinos! – By Your Hand

4. Tennis – Origins

5. OnCue – Can’t Wait

6. M83 – Midnight City

7. Gary Clark Jr. – Bright Lights

8. The Donkeys – Oxblood

The Donkeys, Oxblood by Daniyrselfclean

9. Cults – Go Outside

10. Mausi – sol.

11. Grouplove – Lovely Cup

12. The Antlers – I Don’t Want Love

13. Big Sean – Memories pt. 2

14. OnCue – Running

15. The Wombats – Techno Fan

http://t.co/ajtaUJar

Two sets of skanky middle school eyes are sneering at me, momentarily distracted from pawing at iPods they will never own to take in my difficulties.

“Can I help you with something?”

Can you? There are so many people working in the Apple Store today, I start to wonder if unemployment even exists.

“No, thanks. I’m here for a Genius Bar appointment.”

“Oh, let me get Craig.”

If you insist. She does.

“Craig, paging Craig, can you put up your hand?”

He does not, and I awkwardly stand right in the doorway of the store. I fiddle back and forth doing the little dance with my feet that signifies aimlessness. At least the angsty acne-ridden monsters have become distracted again. We have technology to thank for many small miracles.

“Craig, Craig, are you back there? Throw up your hand, Craig!” She chuckles.

Throw up your fucking hand, Craig.

“Craiiiiiig, can you wave real fast? I’ve got a Genius Bar guy.”

His hand shoots up from the mass of obesity, opulence, and red-shirted Appeople at the back of the store.

“Do you see him over there?”

No, I have suddenly become blind. Lead me to him!

“Yes, thank you.”

I walk through this thrawl of people. I’m not claustrophobic, but if I were, this Apple shopping experience would be infinitely less comfortable. I wonder briefly about people who fear Aluminum, and how hard walking to the counter would be without crying. I then imagine the oddly short individual next to me crying. It fits him.

“Hi, I had an appointment, but I’m a little late.”

“What was the name?”

“Brad.”

“Oh– I see, well you’re going to have to sign up again.”

I already signed up. I’m not that late. Can’t I be squeezed in?

“Oh, really?”

“Yep.”

“Um… so can you do that for me? Or do I have to go home and come back?”

“No, no, can’t, sorry. You can however grab one of these desktops and sign up — HA HA — not these kids computers here.”

I was planning on using the kids computer so I could feel like a giant. The Appeople will deprive me of even this small pleasure.

“Ok, cool.”

I walk over to the computer, next to an avid white man transfixed by the magnificence of an Apple Cinema Display. It reminds me of what I picture to be the general pants-pooping that followed early public demonstrations of electric lighting.

I sign up for an appointment an hour later. After spending too much (which would really be any) time in Eddie Bauer, I head back.

This time, things will be different.

I am a few minutes early. Craig, you will not again deprive me of the opportunity to fix this computer. I am on a mission.

I burst through the doors like the Sultan charging into his highly profitable, all-white harem. Apple’s annoyingly pretty industrial architecture will not catch me off guard like before. The doors do not really burst because of their hydraulic systems, but it is nonetheless dramatic.

I shoot devil stares at all non-adults in the room. Those roving pre-pubescent eyeballs will not fuck with me. They recoil in terror. Unfortunately I also pass my evil glower over a baby. Sorry, baby. You were a casualty of something far grander than yourself.

Out of nowhere, multiple red-shirted employees appear, readying their memorized introductory sequence:

“Can we–”

THERE WILL BE NO HELPING ME TODAY, APPEOPLE!

I spot Craig chatting with a colleague in the exact same place as before.

“Brad. I’m here for my appointment.” I say it with the maximum possible amount of gravitas — which means, very little.

“Ok, wait a few moments.”

Oh, Craig, I will wait decades for this fix.

And then after running all the tests in the book, I was told there was no problem with my computer. So I left with exactly the same computer as before. But with a much higher level of JUSTICE.

I extend my offering again, hopeful something improves in the second go-round.

Embarrassed, at a loss for a clever retort, I wonder, “Would saying yes even make it any better?”

“No, um… it’s not. But it’s my first time here.”

She has a shy grin, but boredom is her defining feature. It always happens this way with these girls.

“First-timers tend to go a little overboard.”

This is the moment I’m supposed to realize I’ve done something tremendously wrong, awkward; something in serious need of correction. But the defects that she sees in me so quickly are ones that I’ve long ago noticed in myself. Ones that will not disappear. They are me.

“Right… right.”

She can’t have graduated high school yet. It’s written in the way she holds herself; in the way straightened hair falls across her face. Her youth so vivid in the ill-fitting neon shirt.

I look down again at the mess I’ve made. Though I should only feel sadness and disgust, there’s something redemptive in the inspection of what I’ve done.

“That’ll be $5.35,” she adds, as I fumble for my credit card.

“I don’t need a receipt.”

I pick up my Peachwave frozen yogurt, filled to the brim with frozen fruits and boba balls, and walk out the front door, past the midget-sized, amorphous plastic chairs.

As the spoon grabs granola and yogurt, I think,

“I’m going to enjoy this one.”

1. We Bros – WU LYF

2. Wilhelm Scream – James Blake

3. Midnight City – M83<

4. Cannons – Youth Lagoon

5. Halocene – Bon Iver

6. free press and curl – Shabazz Palaces

7. It’s Real – Real Estate

8. By Your Hand – Los Campesinos!

9. Go Outside – Cults

10. Kaputt – Destroyer

11. Money – The Drums

12. California – EMA

13. Bizness – tUnE-yArDs

14. Polish Girl – Neon Indian

15. Amor Fati – Washed Out

16. Twins – Gem Club

17. Honey Bunny – Girls

18. Ice Cream – Battles

19. Ronnie Coleman – Action Bronson

20. LotusFlower – Radiohead

21. New Beat – Toro y Moi

22. Ten-Twenty-Ten – The Generationals

23. Night Air – Jamie Woon

24. June Hymn – The Decemberists

25. Space Is Only Noise If You Can See – Nicholas Jaar

26. Ritual Union – Little Dragon

27. Heart In Your Heartbreak – Pains of Being Pure at Heart

28. The Look – Metronomy

29. Blood Pressure – MUTEMATH

30. Peso – A$AP Rocky

31. Ffunny Ffrends – Unknown Mortal Orchestra

32. Romance – Wild Flag

33. Vessel – Zola Jesus

34. Gold – Delay Trees