Ocean City, Maryland

I used to enjoy having being younger than most of my friends. For some reason, as a child, I assumed this meant that I got to live longer even if it meant being shorter and skinnier than my peers. Obviously, this was pretty dumb reasoning. Being younger than all of your friends stops being fun right after your 20^th birthday.

My friend Dan and I are the last in our group of friends to turn 21. This means that while everyone else gets to go to bars, Dan and I recreate my social life from age 11 to age 16. Basically, I have enough time to start a Madden franchise and play through the 2027 season. As an aside, I always hated how Madden allows players to take storied franchises with deep ties to the local community – such as the Packers or Steelers – and move them to hundreds of locations in the country, including Puerto Rico…but not to any cities in New Jersey. Yes, the geniuses at EA Sports will allow you to take the Giants and move them so home games are played in Yellowstone National Park or something, but I can't move the Jaguars to Newark.

Another friend of mine, Jon, came up with a list of the worst possible fake IDs which one can use. This was inspired by a story of a time that this kid we both knew actually took a novelty McLovin ID from a Superbad promotion and used it at a bar, and the bouncer thought it was so funny that he let the kid in. Jon's list included:

1. A Dominique Wilkins jersey
   
2. The limited edition director's cut of the movie 21, in which a talented group of misfits from MIT takes on Vegas…and wins! (spoiler alert)
   
3. An index card with the number 21 written in Sharpie. *must have charisma and/or moxie to get away with this one
   

Neil, previously mentioned in my recap of the Toronto Spring Break trip, turned 21 over Memorial Day weekend. Dan, Mike, me, Nate, Neil and eight of Neil's high school friends chipped in and rented a house in Ocean City, Maryland to celebrate. As mentioned, Dan and I aren't 21 so our weekend was considerably tamer than the ones everyone else experienced. Still a great trip though.

Thursday 12:15 pm – 2:15 pm

Technically, not part of the trip, but this time period certainly affected my travel plans. I had to drive my friend Ojus to the Department of Motor Vehicles to update his license since he too had recently turned 21. The DMV remains a model of efficiency matched only by Comcast's tech support and the Philadelphia Eagles' 2-Minute Drill. I had intended to leave Jersey by 1:00 pm but was delayed nearly two hours.

Thursday 3:30 pm – 8:00 pm

The Drive. If I were John Elway, I would just capitalize everyday verbs so I could make them feel epic, though I guess at some point they begin to look like titles to Seinfeld episodes (The Deal, The Fix-Up, etc.). Thank god the annoying writers from Friends didn't work in sports journalism in the 1980s, or Elway's exploits would all have titles like The One With the Drive or The One With No Regard for His Body, First Down Denver.

Unlike Elway, I actually went into Baltimore. I had to stop there on my way south in order to pick up a friend. The first thing I saw from the highway was the shipyard made famous by Season 2 of The Wire. Baltimore on its surface doesn't seem so bad – nice skyline, sparkling football stadium, plenty of waterfront areas. But I guess the genius of The Wire was exposing the corruption and urban decay that lurk slightly below the surface – even though tourists like me are completely oblivious to it.

Thursday 9:00 pm – 12:00 pm

I left Neil's and went to my cousin's for dinner and to watch Game 5 of the Suns-Lakers series. For the past decade, I would mark the end of the season for a given league in two ways. First, the season was pretty much done the day Nets or Cowboys were eliminated. But, I would breathe a sigh of relief and consider the season truly over once the Lakers and Eagles were prevented from claiming the championship. Once those teams were out, I could enjoy the rest of postseason play stress free.

Why? Because for most of the past decade, the Nets and Cowboys have sucked. Dallas was great in 2007 and the Nets were decent in a crummy conference for two years, but that's three seasons out of a total twenty combined NFL and NBA years where my teams had a realistic chance of winning a title. In contrast, the Eagles and Lakers are something like fourteen for twenty in terms of combined contending seasons. And I don't hate the Patriots as much as the Eagles because New England wasn't beating Dallas by forty points twice a year for ten years.

So, I was rooting pretty hard for the Suns. Thank god Ron Artest provided me with the following two quotes over the next three days; otherwise I'd be legitimately bummed out by his Game 5 heroics:

"Say Queensbridge!" – to Craig Sager after the game.

"Growing up in New York, if you called someone for charging, you knew someone was getting stabbed after the game." – from a SportsCenter report on how Phil Jackson wanted his team to draw charges in the Finals.

Friday 9:00 am – 2:00 pm

We wake up early to pack and head to the beach. The Friday before Memorial Day is one of the busier traffic days of the year, so we knew ahead of time it was going to be brutal. One of my few talents is the ability to fall asleep during any car ride, which means that instead of being awake for five miserable hours, I went to sleep and woke up at the beach. One of the special features to an extended edition Lord of the Rings DVD said that Elijah Wood used to fall asleep all the time on the set. Again, I really didn't have a social life from age 11 to age 16.

Friday 3:00 pm – 8: 00 pm

I paid something like $39.99 for two slices of pizza before eight of us got a pickup football game going at the beach. I hadn't gunslinged in several months, but gunslinging is a lot like riding a bike – assuming that the bike has no brakes and maybe one tire inflated. In short, I was awful. Still a fun time though.

Mike, who was previously named Gunslinger of the Year for his decision to drive from Philadelphia to Disney World for the night, is a high roller. As the rest of us were putting our groceries away and determining bedding arrangements, Mike called some beach company and began a spirited defense of his title as Gunslinger of the Year. The conversation went as follows:

Mike: Hi, how much does it cost to rent jet skis?

[inaudible response by the other person on the phone]

Mike: Oh ok, thanks. I'll keep you posted. [hangs up]

Jetski would make a great last name for someone from eastern Europe.

Friday 8:00 pm – 9:00 pm

We went to dinner. Ocean City, Maryland is nice, but not as nice as Ocean City, New Jersey. A lot nicer than Seaside though.

Dinner was key since it was the last time I ate a vegetable until Monday at 9:30 pm. In fact, renting a beach house and living with a group of friends is both a lot of fun and incredibly disgusting. For example, my friend Nate claimed he was happy he showered on Sunday morning because it was the exact midpoint of the trip. It was his only shower over 3 days.

When you're at a beach house, a lot of little things that make life livable get taken for granted. For example, no one buys any antibacterial soap. Many people will seek to be magnanimous and state that they will buy some the next time they go on a 7/11 run, but it never happens. Meanwhile, the only groceries we bought were all pseudofoods – Ramen, hot dogs, etc. We would have been better off just pouring salt in oil and drinking it. So to recap, your hands are going to be encrusted in filth because no one buys soap and you're going to be eating nothing but material that put the "stuffs" in foodstuffs. And yet I keep coming back.

Saturday 1:00 pm – 6:00 pm

More football and lounging on the beach. My ankles and knees were killing me from running on the sand all the time. Andre Bynum recently had 70 milliliters of fluid drained from his knee, which are almost two shots of knee fluid with which Ron-Ron can chase down that Hennessy at halftime.

There was a radio blaring 808s and Heartbreak in front of a sign that said Free Magic Show. I don't know what the magician was getting at here.

Saturday 8:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Dinner at a kebab place on the boardwalk. Still no sight of a vegetable. Six or seven of Neil's high school friends came up for the night, which relegated me to the bench. Still, I did a solid job of bailing out failed jokes and staying out of the way – a good performance from a hustles/intangibles standpoint. This was me.

Saturday 11:45 pm

An extra large coffee is purchased.

Sunday 1:00 pm – 6:00 pm

I hung out with our neighbor for a bit and then headed to the beach. I think what bugs me the most about political commentators on Fox and MSNBC (no one watches CNN, whose programming now consists mainly of John King reading assorted Twitter feeds at you) is the insistence on grouping people into monolithic demographics. Nascar dads, soccer moms, the key backgammon seniors block of western Ohio.

The neighbor I met would have made a pundit's head explode. He drove a pickup truck and cursed at the Volkswagen we saw driving by our shared building. But he wasn't religious or into sports. He didn't attend college and worked as a contractor. He didn't hate the government.

Anyway, by Sunday, my diet had consisted of nothing but pseudofoods. I don't know how the hot dog eating contest is legal. The winner usually eats around 60 hot dogs, which comes out to something like 660 grams of fat. This is equivalent to nearly 30 KFC Double Down sandwiches. Identity politics are pretty awful.

I soon spent $60 on boardwalk games trying to win a Brandon Jennings jersey. No dice.

The boardwalk, as required by law, had many of those stores where you can buy t-shirts of things like Calvin wearing a Redskins jersey peeing on the Cowboys logo. Strangely, these stores were also selling tons of sweatshirts with the Monster drink logo. I don't wear energy sweatshirts though, since they make me jittery.

Monday 10:00 am

The drive home begins. Very bittersweet that the weekend was ending – most of us begin work in the days right after Memorial Day, so it was a de facto end to summer vacation.

Monday 6:00 pm

We arrive at Neil's house eight hours after leaving the house. Memorial Day traffic was a dagger, but luckily I fell asleep for most of it.

Monday 9:22 pm

I arrive at my home in New Jersey 223 miles away from Neil's house. As the announcer in N64's Star Wars Episode 1: Podracer would have said, "It's a new course record!" Have I mentioned that I had no social life between the ages of 11 and 16?

Monday 9:30 pm

I eat a vegetable.

Graduation

Pollen¸ Jerry Bruckheimer, and college seniors are all known for coming up big in the middle of May. Yesterday, I attended my cousin's graduation from Rutgers University in New Jersey.

I have a passion for solid offensive line play and sound logistical planning. The Rutgers graduation committee did an excellent job organizing an efficient ceremony for several thousand students and their respective families. Parking was not only ample, but also supple and firm.

The ceremony had all the familiar trappings of a graduation. The phalanx of graduates' seats was flanked by a parenthesis of foldable plastic chairs in which sat their impeccably dressed parents.

Some, that eternally unidentifiable group of others upon whom lazy writers heap scorn, find graduation ceremonies to be excruciatingly boring events. I am not some. Specifically, I was looking forward to the speech by Eric Knecht, the President of the Rutgers Class of 2010 and the only scheduled student speaker. Public speaking isn't difficult in and of itself. But, Knecht would have to balance obligatory graduation day platitudes against the pressure of saying something interesting and memorable. His introductory speaker, a vice dean, approached the podium to give a short introduction on the class president.

Knecht's biography was remarkable. A summa cum laude graduate, Knecht has also chaired or founded several university organizations and will be teaching underprivileged children in Washington, D.C. this fall. If he were from "right here in hard-workin' northeast Ohio", he could have been part of a presidential candidate's stump speech. The parents in the audience were impressed. An awed murmur of "woahhhh" swept through the crowd with each successive fact the vice dean told the crowd. The introduction ended and the class president neared the microphone.

When the home team in basketball falls behind by, say, fifteen points and goes on a run to cut it to two, the crowd gradually crescendos. Still, they wait for the exclamation point – the three pointer that triumphantly marks the home team finally taking the lead – in order to explode into happy delirium. Sometimes, this shot misses. Twenty thousand people simultaneously groan ("ohhhhhh") and the announcer says something like "they woulda blown the ROOF off if that had fallen!"

Thanks to his glowing introduction, the class president approached the stage essentially having cut the lead to two. The crowd was firmly in his pocket. We were waiting for the exclamation point.

The exclamation point never came. It was soon clear that his speech, by his own design, could not have had one.

First, he gave the standard remarks alluding to their first days together as a class in fall 2006 and mixed in some tepid but crowd-friendly jokes about dining halls and Facebook. Pretty safe material, but Knecht's a natural speaker whose delivery was effective nonetheless. Soon, he took an enormous risk for which I must give him a lot of credit.

He talked politics. And, he did not equivocate. Knecht forcefully stated his convictions in blunt language, convictions which were soon transmitted over two enormous video boards and dozens of loudspeakers. He did not hide, and though the speech was well received and he earned a warm round of applause, I couldn't shake the feeling that many of the same parents who were "ooh"ing during his biography were made squeamish by hearing Knecht's political views on this particular stage.

I was pretty squeamish as well. I don't really care what a person's political views are, but most political statements are couched in arrogance and feigned piety. As soon as Knecht started talking about 2008, I had a feeling he would start talking about politics. Much like male nudity in a Judd Apatow movie, I knew it was coming, and I knew I was going to be uncomfortable, I just didn't know when.

Michael Jordan was once asked by a Democrat why he didn't make political statements. Jordan replied, "Republicans buy sneakers too." Knecht didn't care. He gave his speech the way he wanted to and earned a well-deserved round of applause, even if it meant forfeiting a chance at a standing ovation.

After Knecht's speech, students who had earned awards or scholarships were recognized for their achievements. Seventeen students had a perfect grade point average. Winners of department level awards, such as the Arthur C. Cope chemistry prize, stood up. My favorite was the one student who received the Geroge Washington Carver Award for Excellence in Peanuts.

Later that night, my freshly graduated cousin, his family, and my family all went to dinner. His father, my uncle, is like a cross between Rodney Dangerfield and Vito Corleone. His medical empire in central Jersey is wildly successful and he is regarded as one of the top immunologists in the state. His word is law and he has inspired loyalty bordering on devotion in those who work for him. Still, he never met a fart joke he didn't like.

Most first generation immigrants from India were taught British English as schoolchildren, which means they refer to "math class" as "maths", likely a shortened form of "mathematics". This extra "s" presumably migrated from Rutger University, which is what my uncle's friend repeatedly called the home of the Scarlet Knights.

I'm happy to be incubated in college for one more year. Good luck, class of 2010.

Late Registration

Broadstreetrun.com indicated that interested runners could register for the titular race by March 31^st, though by now enough time has passed that I can't remember all the details and the site may have in fact said April 1^st. At any rate, I logged in on March 27^th, which should have given me enough of a buffer to register for the race in time.

Buffering…buffering…buffering…

When I logged in, I was greeted by a banner at the top of the page. It said that the race was full and that registration was now closed. I don't blame the organization charged with managing the race at all; the original notice probably said "…until March 31^st or until race reaches capacity" and I misread it. Plus, the race was May 2^nd, which was during the peak of finals-related stress. So, it's been a fun six weeks or so, but my failure to register on time doomed my chances for a spot in the race.

It is difficult to come up with something interesting to say every day without becoming stale or repetitive. I thought about standardizing the column by creating a few fields – say, Music Listened To, Miles Ran, Noticed – and updating them every day. But, I think it cheapens the writing when an occasionally amusing gimmick is used as a crutch, though since everything I write is based on run-on sentences and the 1994 NBA season, I don't know that there's much quality left to corrupt.

After taking roughly two weeks off from moving in order to deal with classwork, I've started running again since moving home. The past few days I've ran between four and five miles.

Lingua Pura

Language can be hilarious:

1. I was gunslinging some conversation at an attractive woman when she said "she had to run to the ATM machine." I told her that she was being redundant, because the M in ATM already stands for "machine". Thanks to my hilarious knack for stomping all over my own game, we didn't speak after that.
   
2. At a recent barbeque, a girl told us how her globe-shaped earrings were based on the planet earth. I didn't understand she meant planet earth and not Planet Earth, because any earrings that involve 6 months of time lapse photography and Sigourney Weaver must be taken seriously.
   
3. Writers of TV shows such as Lost like to make characters read books so that they can add depth, hoping that viewers like me will go "Literature! Wow! They mean business!" For example, a recent episode had one character read Of Mice and Men, which makes sense because parts of the sixth season have been like getting shot in the back of the head by your best friend.
   
4. A few of my friends were trying to figure out – without looking it up – when Catcher in the Rye was set. One person thought it was the 1920's, another the 1980's. I blurted out "you're way off, it's set in the future!" but I said it with such pinache and perfect timing that I expected to get a solid laugh out of it. Crickets!
   
5. Pitchfork, the hipster music website, actually started a review with the following passage:
   

   "Akira Kosemura's entrancing Polaroid Piano is my favorite ambient-inclined piano record from Japan since Radicalfashion's Odori, which it often resembles in faded miniature"
   

   
   

   I guess they were embarrassed that someone actually thought it was a good idea to write like that, because the current version of the review deletes that line. I had to look up the cached version of the page to find the line. It was such pretentious writing that it was seared into my memory.
   

The comedy in language has been successfully mined by entertainers from Larry David to Randall Munroe. Munroe is best known for his comic strip XKCD, which often comments on the link between romantic angst, Fourier transformations, and Venn Diagrams.

Tony Soprano once said "'Remember that time?' is the lowest form of conversation". I thought he was being an idiot – I love to talk about old times with friends. But, I guess he meant that eventually the words get stale and you have nothing left to talk about.

I don't speak with some of my close friends from high school anymore. Not that we had a falling out or wouldn't enjoy spending time with each other now. It's just that over time, the stories atrophy. You run out of things to talk about and become trapped in a prison of "how're classes going?" conversations.

The language and structure of sports films had grown depressingly stale, but this changed in recent years. I love movies like The Replacements in which a scrappy group of misfits comes together to beat the more handsome and better funded villains. But, films like The Wrestler remind me of Raging Bull in that they are sports movies that require the viewer's focus and attention and not just an ability to fight through quicksand. I don't know how my Quest to run Broad Street is going to end. There are no square-jawed, arrogant runners taunting me, and no out of my league romantic interest for me to win. Just a lot of dirty laundry and lower back pains.

Day 15, March 16 2010: 2.5 miles

Day 16, March 17 2010: 8.0 miles

Day 17, March 18 2010: 3 miles

Day 18, March 19 2010: 2.67 miles

Day 19, March 20 2010: basketball

Day 20, March 21 2010: basketball

Day 21, March 22 2010: basketball

Day 22, March 23 2010: 2.0 miles

Day 23, March 24 2010: basketball

Day 24, March 25 2010: rest

Day 25, March 26 2010: rest

Day 26 March 27 2010: basketball

Just Do It

Day 14, March 15 2010

Be like Mike. So said the famous 1992 Gatorade ad in which the smiling Bulls guard inspires little kids to achieve the same greatness he did. The funniest part of the ad is the last three seconds, when the screen fades to black and the signature phrase appears in white text on a black background. Clearly, some lazy video editor forgot that the final cut of the ad was due the next day and slapped it together as quickly as possible. I'm reminded of a classic Simpsons joke in which the Navy employs three recruiting tactics:

Lt. Smash: There are three ways to get people to join. Subliminal, liminal, and superliminal.

Lisa: Superliminal?

Lt. Smash: I'll show you. [shouts out window] Hey you! Join the Navy!

Carl and Lenny shrug and choose to enlist thanks to the superluminal efforts of Lieutenant LT Smash. Maybe I'm not as impressionable as they are, but I'm pretty close. Jordan's legendary competitiveness – and the aura of invincibility which validated him – made every kid who grew up from 1984 to 2000 want to Be Like Mike.

When I was growing up, my cousins used to whoop my ass at everything from Madden '95 to schoolwork to Madden '96. Granted, we had a limited universe, but it still sucked. If I was reading picture books, they were reading novels; when I could add, they could multiply. Jordan was the dominant cultural figure in our lives, and every time I wasn't good enough compared to my cousins made me feel pretty lame, pretty Unlike Mike.

I wanted to run ten miles today and I couldn't get past six. I hadn't eaten in several hours, but so what? Jordan had the flu! Game 5, 1997! I thought of every story I've read in which words like "pathological" and "ruthless" were used to describe Jordan's competitive streak, and how hard I used to try to emulate him when I was younger. I wonder if the mythologized version of "Michael Jordan" I've admired for so long is even real. But, I've realized that I'm also the same person who believes that an 89.5 is just as good as a 98 if they both count as As. I don't think Jordan – or, at least, "Jordan" - would agree.

Pestle and Mortar

Days 10 – 13, March 11-14 2010

Food Wars premiered on the Travel Channel on Tuesday and immediately became my favorite current show on TV. The premise of the show is simple: most cities have a signature food and two iconic restaurants battle over which makes the better product (think Pat's vs. Geno's for cheesesteaks in Philly). Food Wars's charming hostess walks us through seven minute mini-documentaries on the rivals before each submits a finished dish for a blind taste test to a panel of locals who determine which makes the "true" cheesesteak, or deep dish pizza, or whatever.

I mention this because several housemates intend on hosting a barbeque and my hope is that some sort of rivalry breaks out. Neil, the current burger-making champion, may be challenged by Mak for the title. If there was a Tale of the Tape, Neil would be listed as the defending champion, 5'10'', and from the Mid-Atlantic region which is known for its fertile soil and temperate climate. Most of my knowledge of Neil is actually from my fourth grade social studies textbook. Also, he has a fondness for laxatives.

Mak is from both Bosnia and Herzegovina. Dan once described his burgers as having "a secret ingredient, but the secret ingredient is Worcestershire sauce and burning it". Mak is a heavy underdog.

Food and running are perfect inverses in terms of how enjoyable they are. Running is excruciating, but the sweaty, triumphant walk from the gym to the shower is worth the pain that the miles bring. Food, contrarily, brings instant gratification and feelings of lethargy or gluttony afterwards.

I finally got back on my grind for three miles of misery on Day 11 and three more on Day 14. These aren't good numbers. I cramped up in the second mile, which forced me to abandon my intention of running six. My hope is that the end of spring break and its indulgences will be a positive development for my training.

Sick

Day 9: March 10 2010

After spending ten hours driving home from Toronto, I spent two more driving back to Jersey from Philadelphia. I had a fever.

Being home sick reminded me of all those times growing up when I couldn't make it to school. When I was young, it meant that one of my parents would stay home with me and feed me some delicious pink antibiotic. As I got older, I spent my time watching the Nick Jr. morning lineup or the same episode of SportsCenter five times in a row and then worrying about how much schoolwork I was missing.

I wonder what it's like to grow up in the South or West where the weather isn't miserable from late October to early March. People don't usually get sick during the warm weather months. Maybe those kids don't have memories of "Hi there, Face here! (trumpet sound)" or Barry Melrose breaking down a Hartford Whalers game, but maybe that's a good thing.

Today, I got home at three, watched Tuesday's phenomenal Lost episode, and spent the next eight hours napping or watching NBATV. Since there weren't any NBA games on until later, the channel spent its time discussing the NBA D-League, which is kind of like a minor league for basketball. Lot of hype for Saturday's Tulsa 66ers vs Rio Grande Valley Vipers showdown presented by Papa John's. My assumption is that Rio Grande Valley chose to represent an entire region so they could maximize their fan base, much like the New England Patriots.

Since I got a phone with a Facebook app on it, I haven't been on the actual Facebook website in a while. I logged on today to respond to one of my friend's messages. He is studying abroad in Argentina and said that he found a vending machine whose poster is an image of Grant Hill on the Pistons instead of a glossy Coke bottle splashed with ice. I wonder if this is a common phenomenon in countries with a history of hyperinflation. I hope Theo Ratliff is on Aquafina machines in Belarus.

I took TheraFlu, Claritin, and six times the recommended daily dosage of Vitamin C in an effort to heal as quickly as possible. Today is March 10 and the last time I ran was March 4^th.