My Father at Work

My father works every day of the week.

Let me repeat that: My father works every day of the week.

Seven days a week. No day left behind. No day unaccounted for. A true lion's share.

Note, too, that here the expression "every day" is more or less a euphemism for saying that my father works Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Naming all of the respective days renders this whole thing a bit more palpable.¹

Using a simple system of observation and arithmetic, I have determined that during a normal business schedule, my father logs anywhere from 8-10 hours/day on weekdays and 6-8 hours/day on weekends. During a hectic business schedule ("hectic" is one my father's fallback words), he logs anywhere from 10-12 hours/day on weekdays and 8-10 hours/day on weekends. Calculating these estimations, I can say that during a normal business schedule, my father works approximately 52-66 hours/week; during a hectic business schedule, 66-80 hours/week. Keep in mind, too, that the hectic schedules appear to be just as common as the normal ones (don't ask me why), which means that he's usually working a minimum of 66 hours/week. Of course, we have to account for any potential oddball fluctuations in these numbers. For instance, this past Saturday he worked a total of 13 hours (9 a.m. - 10 p.m.). This exceeds not only a normal business schedule weekend per diem maximum (8 hrs./day), but also a hectic business schedule weekend per diem maximum (10 hrs./day). Still, I think that an average of 66 hours/week is as good an estimate as any.

This, however, only accounts for his hours logged at the office. I've yet to factor in a few important additionals. For example, he sometimes leaves the office in the evening only to relocate himself at a nearby coffee shop, where he fixes himself a little work space. Ink and more ink on white paper, all for the sake of preparing documents ("prepare" and "documents" are two more of his fallback words). He often proofreads and edits paper documents as he eats breakfast, dinner, and lunch (I don't think that I've ever seen him take a snack break). He also checks his e-mails on his phone at stoplights as he drives to/from work, and in the mornings as he waits in line at the drive-thru for coffee (triple shot, two pump, no whip, soy white mocha). Basically, he's one of those people who doesn't distinguish between the spaces where he works and the spaces where he eats/sleeps/leisures/excretes/etc. For him, every space is a place for doing work. In short, I can safely conclude that my father is always working, and that statement, as I reread it, doesn't smell of hyperbole in the least.

My father claims that if he owned a high-speed printer, he would be able to spend more time working at home. This is a recent claim and, of course, only a claim. As far as I can tell, there is nothing preventing him (financially speaking) from rolling out of bed tomorrow morning and buying himself a high-speed printer so that he can work from home -- yet this is a pipe dream.

You see, my father is one of those people who waits until the very last minute to do something (an isn't-for-work something, that is). This basically explains why, according to my pseudo-stepmother, there isn't "a single completed room in the house." Like any puzzle that I ever tried to put together on my own, every section of our house is lacking in one manner or another. With the amount of money that my father must earn each week, he could probably purchase all of the necessary pieces of furniture (and there's a lot of it that we "need") on a single paycheck and still afford to dine himself and my pseudo-stepmother on a week's worth of fancy dinners at swanky steakhouses and sushi bars. In other words, my father's about as rich as Croesus as far as run-of-the-mill, upper-middle-class society folks go.

Now, I'm clueless as to how other kids and teenagers and young adults (Is a 23-year old still a young adult?) negotiate with their own parents. When you're in college (and I have been for the past 4.5 years), you almost never get to see how the typical college student behaves toward his/her parent(s). And I probably don't even need to add that the film and television industry, the "definitive" source for how people act in cases of familial dysfunction, usually lacks even a modicum of realism.²

That is, I'm lacking a frame of reference or a system of measurable relativities for this whole thing because I just don't see enough of others interacting with their parents (and when I do, it usually doesn't give me much hope for humanity (but let's not exploit yet another apocalyptic cliché)). So, as I try to come down on this whole thing about my father at work, I must admit that I'm working purely from my own senses. And the senses of the American author Don DeLillo.

In his novel Players (1977), DeLillo writes that to pay a bill is to "seal off the world." It only took a few licks before I decided that this notion of sealing off the world provided a sort of grounding for my reading of my father at work. You see, all this time I've had it backwards. I assumed that by working so much and sacrificing all of his time, my father has been making life more difficult for himself. I thought: Here's a man who's trading all of the fun that he could be having (and that he could have been having; my father's been doing this for a long time) for an office in an office.³

But, like clean clothes coming out of a laundry dryer, this reading of things was inside out. Because I've realized that my father's work is his fun (now I'm wondering whether the word "fun" may be outdated in the traditional sense). It's the thing that he can attach himself to -- a vocation, really. And it's the thing that lets him effectively "seal off the world." In this sense, it's protective, a bubble of fun, but one that's very difficult to pop. Thus, my father is, like many other important people, just a man in a small room, reducing the world around him to ink and more ink on white paper.

It didn't take long to see the full implications of this new way of thinking about things. My thesis also hinges on a reading of culture, namely how fucking terrifying culture is. I mean, imagine: You're in your late 50s, culture has changed significantly since you were younger, and now you constantly have to stay on top of everything from books and music to films and fashion if you want to be "cool," not to mention the news (though, people don't explicitly talk about being cool anymore; now it's more like a hidden language that we basically have to intuit). Now, extending the scenario, let's say that you dip your feet into these waters, buying the new Lady Gaga album because you read in the paper that Lady Gaga's music is in vogue. And then your son comes home from college, notices said album on the kitchen countertop, and makes fun of you (playfully, of course) because you're nearing 60, because it's Lady Gaga, because there's some incongruity here that your son exploits for a small laugh that he hopes will impress his girlfriend who's come home with him from college, too. And if you made a mistake here, then, you immediately wonder, just how many potential cultural faux pas are just lurking out there in the real world, waiting for you to step on them like landmines? The point is, how fucking terrifying is culture? And how does someone who hasn't been affiliated with its swift movements for his/her whole life navigate these murky waters? There's just too much room for error here. More importantly, because the culture that we associate ourselves with also comes to stand for us in some way in the eyes of others (don't tell me you don't assume something about a person who reads James Patterson, or watches Michael Bay films), anyone (and especially someone in his/her late 50s) runs the risk of an identity-related meltdown if they don't choose properly.⁴

For someone like my father, this whole culture problem must present itself as something like a Gordian Knot. So, why not ignore it, seal it off, just sticking to what he does best?

There is, of course, a monkey wrench that I can (and will) throw at my new reading of things. It comes to me courtesy of a David Foster Wallace (DFW) essay that I recently read, the one about the tennis player Michael Joyce. (Reader, be warned: MUCH QUOTING IS TO FOLLOW.) In the closing section of that essay, DFW writes that Michael Joyce "wants this [professional tennis], and he will pay to have it--will pay just to pursue it, let it define him--and will pay with the regretless cheer of a man for whom issues of choice became irrelevant long ago." Throughout the essay, DFW makes Joyce out to be something like a hero, but a hero who's made tremendous sacrifices to be one (the proverbial hero is a dragon-slayer, and it's not easy to slay dragons). This heroic portrayal of Joyce is even evident in the title of the essay itself, at least the one that is reprinted in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (1997). In this title, DFW makes reference to Joyce's tennis playing as a form of "Professional Artistry," one that elicits truths about metaphysical thingamajiggers like "Choice, Freedom, Limitation, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness," which is more or less DFW's way of saying that he approves of Joyce.

Earlier in the essay, DFW also writes the following:

We revere athletic excellence, competitive success. ... But we prefer not to countenance the kinds of sacrifices the professional-grade athlete has made to get so good at one particular thing. ... the actual facts of the sacrifices repel us when we see them ... It's farce because the realities of top-level athletics today require an early and total commitment to one pursuit. An almost ascetic focus. A subsumption of almost all other features of human life to their one chosen talent and pursuit. A consent to live in a world that, like a child's world, is very serious and very small.

Now, where DFW saw a paradigm in Joyce (a particular) for higher truths (universals), I see a problem in the idea of athletes (a universal) for my father (a particular). My father works just as hard as most professional athletes, making sacrifices like they do, is as good at his own craft as they are at theirs, etc. So, my question is this: Why doesn't the average person, or even myself, revere a hardworking office worker like my father in the same way in which they prostrate themselves in front of professional athletes? This is a deeper mystery altogether, and, running around w/o a Nautilus, I leave it for someone much smarter than myself to explore. All I promised was to throw a monkey wrench at the original thesis.

So, what do we do with this whole mess? The lingering problem, at least for me, is this: If Art promises to be the salvation of Human, something that allows Human to see itself, to think critically, to behave morally, etc., but Art is also part and parcel with Culture, which has repeatedly proved itself to be a terrifying mother fucker, then how is Art ever going to solve the problem of preaching to the choir? Granted, this isn't the only impasse that stands in Art's way, nor is it the most vexing one. It's like sharks circling the water near Scylla and Charybdis: They're dangerous, but in terms of other potential catastrophes looming on the horizon, take a ticket. Still, I've tried to at least point out these sharks and identify them (which isn't a bad thing, because sharks are capable of some real bloodbaths).

As I finish this, I sit at a large, wooden table in a downtown coffee shop. The place is metallic and bare, sort of modern looking, but still sports a great cup of black coffee. Unexpectedly, my father walks in; this shop is only a few blocks from his office. He greets me before taking a seat at the granite circular bar that subsumes the middle of the shop. As I've predicted, he unloads a pile of papers onto the countertop, immediately going to work -- that is, until he orders his coffee. The barista is female, mid 20s, attractive in that not-too-stylish kind of way. My father strikes up a conversation with her. He asks her several questions, they talk, he's funny, she laughs and smiles; she seems to appreciate the company on a rainy day. I remember that today's the first day of the first year. The whole thing's very amicable and pleasant to observe from my end. And, unexpectedly, my pseudo-stepmother calls me. She wants to know if I know where my father is. And I lie. I tell her he's busy right now. Because I just can't interrupt him. Because this whole scene's just too genuine and real and natural. Because I can tell that my dad's enjoying himself. So, I let it go on.

And it's still going on right now.

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1 Or, if I want to be stylish, matching the form with the content, I could say that my father works Monday, and Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Thursday, and Friday, and Saturday, and Sunday.^↩

2 Let me just give you one example of this: When I was growing up (though, I'm still growing up), it seemed to me (and it still seems) as if every teenager in every movie or television show always acted like a snarky bitch toward anyone whom their divorced/widowed mother or father was dating or wanted to date. The whole idea of a potential non-biological stepparent was just too repulsive to these Kinder. Now, I guess that this whole motif is supposed to signify some sort of struggle, a conflict that the two parties will overcome, thus actuating a cathartic resolution, which itself will sprinkle the seeds for a strong and everlasting step-friendship. The problem is, I've just never seen things work like this in "real life." Not only have I myself never had a problem with my divorced mother or father being in relationships with other people, but I also don't know anyone else who has. (Or, if someone has, and I've forgotten about it, then I can at least say this: Things were never as bad and hostile as pop culture has made it out to be.) Hell, I'll even proffer this radical notion: I LIKE the idea of potential non-biological parents. I like my stepfather, I like my pseudo-stepmother  -- They're both good people. In fact, I submit that this whole notion of Stiefelternfeindlichkeit stands as one of those ironic cases where, instead of offering something that society's youth can relate to (what we might call empathetic), it actually does the opposite. For, by showing Kinder how the youth of television behave toward their actual or potential non-biological family members (who really aren't their actual or potential non-biological parents at all -- they're only actors), it thus sanctions this type of behavior for those Kinder who are watching (thus I call it prescriptive), since they often idolize film and television actors. In the world of literature, all of this is perhaps a good deal less obnoxious. Some playwrights are in fact very good at depicting dysfunctional families (e.g. Edward Albee, Tracy Letts, and many more). Some novelists are also very good, but I feel in my gut that playwrights are superior in this neck of the woods. Though, I say this not having read Jonathan Franzen. Perhaps I should? I've heard that he writes about dysfunctional families, and does so well. Though, I've also heard about half a dozen people (myself included) mention how much they'd like to slug him in the kidneys for being such a stuck-up windbag (sometimes).^↩

3 "Office" is a strange word, isn't it? It can denote either a set or a subset. In this case, my dad has his own individual office (subset), as do many other employees, at his office (set), i.e. his place of work.^↩

4 A good analogue for this whole mess is that scene at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when the antagonist of the film chooses to drink from the cup that he thinks is the Holy Grail, but it's not the right cup, and because he chooses wrongly, he basically decays unto death in a matter of seconds. Culture's like that. And, ironically, culture here has provided a good analogy for itself.^↩

Christmas Errands

The lion's share of the Christmas holiday belongs to errands. (A strange word, "errands" -- from whence does it come? As to how it entered my own vocabulary, I would wager that my mother must have used it quite a bit when I was younger, and, not surprisingly, I soon did, too.) I mean, they more or less dictate Christmas, wouldn't you say? We go shopping for gifts? We're running errands. We prepare for our holiday meals? We're running errands. How did things come to be this way?

Today is the day before Christmas. I happily spent the first part of it at a coffee shop, indulging myself with the first volume of a rather well-known graphic novel that I came across the other day. Afterward, I removed myself to a nearby bookstore so that I could purchase the second volume of this series. In other words, my day before Christmas has been comprised of errands. It is only natural, then, that I would follow up these errands with another.

Before leaving the house, my pseudo-stepmother approached me with a request: Pay a visit to a grocery store -- any grocery store, the choice was mine -- and pick up a couple of "take-home plates." (By this, I believe she meant a partitioned, disposable plate, ones that our guests could use to take food home with them. An American necessity, to be sure. The occasion? We're having a Christmas Eve dinner party. Another American necessity, to be sure.) A simple, routine task. An everyday kind of thing. In short, an errand.

This, then, was my mission: To return with partitioned, disposable plates.

For some reason, the visits to the coffee shop and the bookstore took precedence over the plates. This ordering of events ultimately injected something like a conflict into my quest. At the bookstore, I ran into my father, who was there buying gifts for my pseudo-stepmother ("I haven't gotten your pseudo-stepmother anything yet"). When I briefed him on the nature of my assignment, he advised me not to complete it. I asked why not; he grunted me away. The task, in all its triviality, must not have interested someone like him. And if it wasn't worth his time (as one might say), then I suppose he couldn't fathom why it would be worth mine.

You see, I was here faced with two options, a proverbial "fork in the road." I could either run the errand, procure the partitioned, disposable plates (for the convenience of our guests), and satisfy my pseudo-stepmother's request. Or, heeding the advice of my father, I could ignore the request, return home, and explain myself.

All of this got me thinking: The lion's share of the Christmas holiday belongs to errands.

Now, certainly I must have grown up knowing this to be true because, frankly, it doesn't surprise me very much. I've been conditioned to it as a matter of things. In fact, Christmas errands always carried a bit of prestige, if you'll allow me to put forth such an odd statement. I mean, when it comes down to it, Christmas has always been portrayed in terms of a struggle. Whether in books, or in films, or in plays, the Christmas struggle is everpresent. We struggle to find the right gifts. We struggle to have a perfect holiday. We struggle to be together as a family, to get along. And to succeed at this struggle -- this is honorable. Like I said, there's a bit of unexpected prestige lurking here.

So, as I tried to make up my own mind -- to go to the store or not to go to the store -- I asked myself: Is this it? Is this my struggle? Deciding whether I'm going to take fifteen extra minutes to purchase a couple of partitioned, disposable plates at a grocery store of my choosing? Is this what it all boils down to? Is there prestige here? Is this humorous? Is this disappointing? What emotion am I supposed to register?

The true life may not be reducible to words, but I do know this: That there was something of the true life captured in this bland, quotidian not-even-a-highlight of my existence. I knew that whatever I chose to do wouldn't ultimately make a difference one way or the other. I knew this. Yet, in the moment, it still felt important. My decision did, that is.

I think we can all relate with this. I think we've all "been there." I think there's something like a shared humanity in these slices of life.

I hope some of us would go the store and complete the task. I hope others of us wouldn't. Because each makes an important point. One says, "Look, I know this is important to you, and even though I may think this whole thing pretty ridiculous -- that the success of our dinner hinges on things like partitioned, disposable plates -- I'll do it for you because it's the holidays, because we're pseudo-family, because it feels right. Because all that matters is that we find joy in the happiness of others, and my doing this will make you happy." The other says, "Look, I know this is important to you, but please, just let it go. You don't need to squeeze perfection out of every last thing. Let this one thing be; I'm sure that the evening will still dance magically."

I went to the store. I didn't find the plates.

The Secret to Becoming Better Looking as You Age?: Become a Television Star!

Is this just another one of my conspiracy theories, or do actors and especially actresses seem to get better looking throughout the duration of a television series even as they (supposedly and logically) get older? Granted, I probably don't watch enough serialized television to do this topic justice, as I am only familiar with a few popular shows (The Office, Parks and Recreation, Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and The X-Files, more or less). Nor am I versed enough in aesthetics to have a debate about beauty. Still, I think there is a point to be made here.

Case #1 - Cheryl David (played by Cheryl Hines) on Curb Your Enthusiasm:

Recently, I have been rewatching Curb Your Enthusiasm, and I have slowly noticed how Cheryl seems to become better looking at the show progresses:

Cheryl, left, in the first season of Curb Your Enthusiasm

Cheryl in a later season of the show

In the top picture, from season 1 (which debuted in 2000), Cheryl is probably about 35 years old, whereas in the bottom one, she is at least 40 or older. Admittedly, I probably can't make my point across with Cheryl alone, if only because it's not her beauty that has improved so much as her surface appearance. In the bottom picture, she is, I would say, more stylish, better dressed, etc. And this pattern is one that accompanies many characters on television.

Now, I certainly don't want to give off the impression that I think a person cannot be beautiful once they reach a certain age, or even as they get older. Again, this post is not, at least for me, a discussion about an individual's beauty. Rather, it is a discussion about television, and what television tells us about the way actors and actresses age. (In fact, I should mention how difficult it was for me to find a picture of Cheryl from season 1 on the internet, even though there was no shortage of images of her from later seasons.)

Case #2 - Dana Scully (played by Gillian Anderson) on The X-Files:

As a kid, I grew up watching The X-Files, and I loved it. I thought that it was one of the best shows on television. But as I've gotten older and watched through episodes again and again, I've started to notice how Dana Scully, one of the two main characters on the show, aged throughout the television series:

Scully in an early season of X-Files

Scully in a later season of X-Files

Personally, I find Scully to be attractive in both pictures (not that it matters!), but the bottom one demonstrates how television can transform the appearances of actors and actresses (especially the latter). Look, even the color of her eyes has changed in the bottom picture! 

Admittedly, I understand that someone could object to the Scully example on these grounds: This is a show from the 90s, and the styles were just different back then. In other words, what I am calling attention to is "the trends" rather than anything significant about Scully's appearance. (Indeed, for this reason alone I have refrained from including the transformation of Elaine on Seinfeld in this post.) Whatever position you take is up to you. If you decide that Scully is not the case-in-point for this topic, then surely this next one will convince you.

Case #3 - Jim Halpert and Pam Beasley (played by John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer, respectively) on The Office:

Need I even argue this?

Jim from an early season of The Office

Jim from a later season of The Office

The early (and younger) version of Pam Beasley

The later (and older) version of Pam Beasley

It was probably the later seasons of the show that earned Jenna Fischer this modeling job

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So, that about wraps this post up. I would like to hear thoughts from others.

A Shared Event at the Coffee Shop

It is safe to say that I spend a rather disproportionate amount of my time in coffee shops (even as I write this post, I am sitting in one!). This summer I would estimate that on average I've visited a coffee shop at least once per day, sometimes even twice. I do this not only because I enjoy the atmosphere, the internet, and, of course, the coffee, but also, and perhaps most importantly, because there is so much to be observed here. Indeed, I have observed so much in my time at coffee shops, especially this summer, that I'm beginning to think it wouldn't be unwise for me to dedicate a blog solely to reading them as public spaces.

Most of us visit coffee shops on a regular basis, but what is the purpose of this space? Just off the top of my head, I can say that I, personally, have used the coffee shop this summer as a place for: caffeine; observation; homework; learning German; reading; Facebook; internet surfing; composing e-mails; blogging; writing; socializing; meeting new people; playing board games; hanging out with friends; breakfast, lunch, & dinner; working on a children's book; etc. And this is just me! Now, most of these may sound like rather trivial, everyday tasks, but for one person to be able to accomplish -- no, to want to accomplish -- all of these tasks in a single space is so endlessly strange and interesting to me. I fear that I've reached the point where I'm more addicted to the coffee shop itself than the coffee they offer.

Still, I've yet to mention the enigmatic "shared event" that titles this post. I'm drawing the concept from Don DeLillo, an American author whose ouevre I am currently working through. DeLillo often speaks of "events" and how they "gather force." One of his characters in The Names even speaks of feeling "involved in events." The idea has always been rather interesting to me, not only because I seldom find this idea mentioned in writing or everyday life, but also because it seems totally relevant to contemporary existence.

Anyway, the point is, I tend to feel a hidden tenseness in coffee shops, as if everyone who shares these spaces, this internet, and this air, everyone who chooses to have private conversations in a public place for all of us to hear -- it's as if we all still wish to maintain a separate space, our own privacy or secrecy, despite our behavior in this space. I often wonder what can be done to break down this sense of a wall. Why, I think, is it so difficult for me, or anyone for that matter, to engage the person who sits no more than two feet away from me, the person whom I openly allow to see what I'm doing on my computer and who provides me with the same freedom?

The other day, while sitting in this very coffee shop, this tenseness was alleviated somewhat. For over an hour, I had been sitting next to the same person, a person who, I think, attends the same university that I attend and was writing a paper for school much like I was. On top of this, we were sharing the same internet, the same air, both drinking coffee. As one says in English, there was something "in common" between the two of us. Yet I still felt that there was something inaccessible there, something unbridgeable.

The solution to this proved to be no less than a power outage, which was caused by a passing thunderstorm. It wasn't our sharing of internet or air that brought us together; rather, it was a "shared event" -- a power outage, a taking away, a negative -- that reminded us of our commonality. Consequently, we were able to engage in conversation, we were able to find "common ground," able to "break the ice." But the power outage did more than this. Ironically, the loss of power proved to be a spark of another type, erupting a chain of laughter throughout the coffee shop. The event "gathered force," we might say. The whole atmosphere of the coffee shop was affected, if only for a few moments. It wasn't long, however, before the generators were signaled, the power restored, and the measurable change, the realized community, was submerged once again.

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DeLillo, Don. The Names. New York: Vintage, 1989. Originally published in 1982. Print.