Oof and yikes. 

The first link is to Frank Bruni's article in today's NY Times about the food critic Craig Claiborne. Bruni calls him "the father of contemporary restaurant criticism."  The title of a recent biography on him is, "The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat."  Either would make a fine tombstone inscription, I say. 

And yet Claiborne was also, to put it in Larkinian bluntness, fucking miserable.  "[F]earful, irritable, lonely and depressed," is how Bruni puts it.  "...for the 'personal poem' Claiborne produced as an anniversary present to one longtime lover, he paid $240 to Limerick Lane Poetryworks, which promised verse to call your own in return for the right background information. This was in 1992, the same year that the James Beard Foundation gave him a lifetime achievement award. He skipped the ceremony." 

To me, an acclaimed writer paying someone else $240 for a five-line joke is sadder than skipping a prestigious lifetime achievement award.  Bruni concludes: "His tale is a sad reminder: happiness has less to do with achievement than with perspective. And sometimes the person inside a life, storied or otherwise, is least able to savor it."

The second link is to Michiko Kakutani's review of Philip "They Fuck You Up" Larkin's collected poems, also in today's Times.  If you have not read Larkin, be advised that he is widely considered a Big Deal in mid-twentieth century English poetry.  Many critics argue that he was The Biggest of Deals.  If you have ever read Larkin or even two paragraphs about him, you already know he was quite the drag--though admittedly a pretty funny and thoughtful drag.  (This be the blurb:  "Thoughtful!" -Dennis O'Toole.)  There is nothing terribly illuminating about the review, decent as it is.  If you are a go-getting do-shit machine and only have time to read one of the links at the kick-off above, read Bruni's.  Even still, both articles are "sad reminders" of the chasm that sometimes exists between achievement and happiness. 

After reading them this morning, I thought of my own ambitions and concluded that rather than chasing mighty achievements I'd prefer to find happiness in something more mundane and common.  Like, say, friendship.  I then recalled these oft-quoted lines of W.B. Yeats:

Think where man's glory most begins and ends
And say my glory was that I had such friends.

However, I caught myself:  that quote is not actually the modest appreciation of simple friendship that years of greeting cards and decorative pillows would have us believe. Yeats is name-dropping.  In context, ("The Municipal Gallery Revisited"), he is saying, "I'm in a prestigious museum right now where portraits of my famous friends are hanging on the wall.  BOOYAH."

Now, that's not a fair summary.  "Booyah" was only in the first draft.  And though he does drop a few ten-dollar names, he does it in the most, shall we say, thoughtful manner possible:

Heart smitten with emotion I sink down,
My heart recovering with covered eyes;
Wherever I had looked I had looked upon
My permanent or impermanent images:
Augusta Gregory's son; her sister's son,
Hugh Lane, 'onlie begetter' of all these;
Hazel Lavery living and dying, that tale
As though some ballad singer had sung it all...

It's 1937.  Yeats is 72 years old, and his "mediaeval knees lack health until they bend."  He sees his pals, many long dead, and then--spontaneously overwhelmed with powerful emotion--looks for a bench to collect himself.  My heart recovering with covered eyes... If he's name-dropping, then he's doing it with soul.

Still, this is a level of glory most of us will never approach.  Our friends have not likely had their portraits painted by the finest artists of our nation.  (The one of Synge above is by Yeats's little brother Jack, perhaps the very painting mentioned in the final stanza and the one that prompts the famous "such friends" couplet.  [CORRECTION: whoops, it's by his dad, John Butler Yeats.]) Children will not be sent on field-trips to museums to see our friends hanging in gilded frames throughout the galleries.  Docents and tour guides will not recite the lists of our friends' achievement's for decades and centuries hence.

But I like mine all the same.  And I bet that, unless you are some cartoonish social climber with your own reality show, you like your non-famous and mildly-accomplished friends just fine.

So then, can we feel the same way about, and find glory in, our equally modest and unremarkable achievements?  The lesson of Craig Claiborne and Philip Larkin evokes another oft-quoted line of poetry, though not one that has ever been stitched onto a pillow:  "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair." 

Poor Ozymandius, King of Kings.  A few millennia pass, his monuments crumble, and suddenly the guy can't get a table at Le Bernadin to save his immortal life.  But look on his works, ye humble, and buck up!  Turns out they didn't really matter so much.  I met a traveller from an antique land who said ol' Ozy had a bunch of buddies, and that they were each super nice and extremely funny.  He had each of them killed and entombed with him so they could all hang out in the afterlife. 

Yep.  That's exactly how I intend to go out.

The Nerd Gene
by "Dr." Dennis O'Toole

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco have published a study in the journal Science showing that male fruit flies who cannot find a mate drink four times as much alcohol as those that mate.  "It's the first discovery, in fruit flies," according to Science, "of a social interaction that influences future behavior."

Nerds everywhere, take heed:  Could it be that the vicious cycle of social ineptitude is wired into one’s DNA? 

Science seems to say, quite emphatically, yes:

Three other studies, all from the last month, came to similar conclusions:  researchers at the University of Georgia found that mateless mice are twice as likely to read science fiction than their cooler counterparts.  Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that dorky rats are 70% more likely to engage in live action role playing (also known as LARPing) than rats who join fraternities.  And, perhaps most frightening of all, some guys at the University of New South Wales discovered that male hamsters who retain their virginity well-past sexual maturity are 12 times more likely to conduct scientific studies among other hamsters.

Clearly, the eternal struggle between Jock and Nerd is not confined to humanity.  Indeed, the opposing traits are among of the basic building blocks of life.

According to Science, a chemical in the fruit fly brain known as neuropeptide F, “might play a role” in the spurned fly’s urge to get drunk.  Look no further, I say, for an organic basis of the dorky impulse.

If your first response to this bit of news is, “Wait, isn’t neuropeptide F similar to a chemical in humans called neuropeptide Y?” then my answer is yes, you too are a nerd.

Where do I fall in the nerd-jock dichotomy?  Well, you tell me: I wrote this essay in my own blood, sitting on a weight bench at Eminem’s house.  There’s 325 on the bar, and trust me: four sets of twenty would be no problem.

However, I am a friend to the nerd, be he fruit fly, mouse, or man.  So here’s my advice to all manner of species looking for a little companionship: 

Slow your roll.  Don’t bother that lady fruit fly.  Let her fly over to you.  Lady fruit flies like confidence.  They like a little mystery.  Lady fruit flies want to think, “What’s his story?”

But honestly?  The Game only has one rule:  be yourself.  After all, life is short.  Especially yours:  fruit flies have a 30-day life span.  No sense wasting all that energy worrying about who wants to mate with you and who doesn't.

Alright, I gotta dust.  Me and Eminem are going to pool-party at Clint Eastwood's house.  I’d invite you along, but… well, you know how it is.

Oh, I think we both know.  If I had given my pinky free reign over my rice, Chaos would have entered my home and urinated in the shower (another thing I am not allowed to do).  I would have grown churlish and slovenly, a man of ill manners and eccentric habits.  Years on, I’d find myself out on the town with a buxom and elegant lady. [Reader: “Why buxom?” Writer: “Mind your own business.”]  I’d regale her with tales of life on the Continent, pepper our conversation with delicious bon mots, and punctuate each disquisition with an adage of Pascal’s. 

Optimism would shine from every horizon.  Seals floating on icebergs in oceans far off would clap their fins and bark in my approval.  If a Tarot lady were observing the scene, she’d lay out whatever card has to do with two people having enjoyable sex later that night.

And then, suddenly:  Disaster, delivered by the tiniest of fingers.  Without realizing it, I would idly nudge the last bit of my risotto all’ortica onto my fork. 

The maître d' would gasp.  A busboy would cry out.  My stunning, curvaceous date would suddenly fake a cough and look away.  With a stammer she’d say, “G-g-golly, mister!  I gotta powder my nose—and no foolin’!”  I’d wait for her to return, in vain.  If this is the sort of man who uses his pinky as a utensil, she would think as she stole off into the night, then how else is he a total scumbag?

This horrific and dystopian version of my genteel eating habits is occasioned by an article in yesterday’s New York Times, titled, “One is the Quirkiest Number.”  The thesis appears six paragraphs deep on D1:

“In a sense, living alone represents the self let loose.  In the absence of what [some guy] calls ‘surveilling eyes,’ the solo dweller is free to indulge in his or her odder habits – what is sometimes referred to as Secret Single Behavior.  Feel like standing naked in your kitchen at 2 a.m., eating peanut butter from the jar?  Who’s to know?”

The article’s Exhibit A is a 28 year old singleton named Amy who, among other freakish traits, is prone to “running in place during TV commercials; speaking conversational French to herself while making breakfast (she listens to a language CD); singing Journey songs in the shower; and removing only the clothes she needs from her dryer, thus turning it into a makeshift dresser.” 

Most examples in the article are like this:  a mix of slightly anti-social (running in place for no reason) and not at all (singing in the shower).  Some of the people mentioned keep extremely odd hours that would drive a spouse up the wall (anti-social).  Others wear comfortable clothes that aren’t nice enough to wear outside (who doesn’t?).

Still, I get the point—and I did enjoy the glimpse into the lives of others.  The rise of single-living in America is a very popular topic now (e.g., among countless others, David Brooks’s Op-Ed this week).  28% of homes now have only one person living there, which is a new and very modern phenomenon.  (In 1950, the number was just below 10%.)  Without a doubt, many of us in that 28% have adopted some strange habits.  The strangest depicted in the article, to me, concern eating.  To wit:

“‘I very rarely have what you would call “meals,” said Steve Zimmer, a computer programmer in his 40s who lives by himself in a Manhattan loft.  Instead of adhering to regular meals or meal times, he said, he makes ‘six or seven’ trips an hour to the refrigerator and subsists largely on cereal.”

This is one of several culinary examples, each of them odd, and perhaps why I offer my own eating habits as the glimpse into my one-bedroom life.  I don’t mean to knock Mr. Zimmer, the computer programmer in his 40s who lives by himself in that Manhattan loft, but I bet I enjoy my meals more than he his “meals.”  While I’m definitely not Ms. Manners, fastidiously folding my napkins and laying place settings before a few matching candles each night, I do serve myself meals that I would serve a guest.  They’re informal—paper towels for napkins, oven mitts for trivets—but they’re traditional.  My reasoning is this:  The basic eating habits of society (however modifiable by sleep habits or varied by culture) have been optimized over time by the wisdom of generations.  It would be, I think, presumptuous for me to dismiss it all as a mindless convention or think I could improve upon it by whim and urge. 

The goal of any society is to be a civilized one, and the measure of a civilization is how well its members live and get along.  A home then is a microcosm of the civilization at large, and it does not matter how small that home is.  We don’t chew with our mouths open at a wedding in honor of the people sitting around us, right?  Obviously, yes.  However, it does follow that you leave civilization once you leave the wedding and find yourself all alone, with the door closed and the blinds dropped.  As my man said:

If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man—and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages—it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings…

Thoreau goes on after the ellipses to say “without making them more costly,” but the statement (from Walden, chapter one, “Economy”) still stands despite my elision and my slightly modified purposes.  If chewing with your mouth closed is a real advance in the condition of man—and I think that it is, though only the wise know how to keep a Dorito’s crunch sufficiently muffled—it must be shown that it has value in solitude as well as in community.

When you chew with your mouth closed, when you eat on a plate at a table instead of standing over the sink, when you [pats self on back] use a knife to land those last bits of rice onto your fork even though no one can see you, you are making yourself the companion worthy of respect and dignity.  You are making your own, private moment in your own, private home part of and worthy of civilization.  And, you probably enjoy your food more. 

I can think of no examples to offer the New York Times Home section of how living alone has warped me.  (Well, I despise TV.  That could turn out to be a bit of a problem if I ever cohabit with an American again… but that’s a long-ass essay for another time and not something that I consider a “quirk.”)  In every respect I can think of, I live my life in my one-bedroom as if I had to share it with other people:  I do my dishes shortly after I eat.  I do not talk to myself.  I fold laundry and put it away.  I don’t drop clothes or mail just anywhere.  Of course, none of that means I’m an ideal roommate.  I have quirks, but my guess is they are more based on personality than eccentric habits.  Plus, I am a dude, and far from an anal one—so I definitely make messes.  But, I tend to clean them up quickly out of respect for the guy who has to wake up tomorrow and live here. 

My problem with the article is not how any of my fellow 28-percenters featured in it choose to live.  Honestly—anyone can take my advice or leave it.  My problem, rather, is that none of the habits mentioned is an example of, as the author put it, letting the self loose.  Folding clothes does not make a person a conformist, and taking a deuce with the bathroom door open does not set the spirit free. 

It’s worth asking what does.  My guess is that, among the solo-dwellers, very few spend their alone-time truly alone.  TV, radio, the internet, MP3 players, smart phones, video game consoles—the proliferation of these high-tech lifelines are the biggest reason single-occupancy homes have spiked to 1-out-of-4 in the last 60 years.  We’re willing to live by ourselves now because it hardly feels like it. 

Some wise man (I forget who) said that all our miseries stem from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.  28% of Americans now wake up in such a place every day.  That’s 87 million of us and a whole lot of misery at the ready.

On the other hand, to be able to sit quietly, alone?  Now that is setting the self loose. 

_ In the final week of January, 2011, I read an article in the New York Times titled, “Grief Could Join List of Disorders.”  It said:

In a bitter skirmish over the definition of depression, a new report contends that a proposed change to the diagnosis would characterize grieving as a disorder and greatly increase the number of people treated for it.

That made me think: what other normal shit is now, like, fuckin’ crazy, bro!?  So I came up with a list of other revised definitions for common disorders.  The results:  Eh.


First problem:  that Times quote is long, yet it’s still not thorough enough to set up my game.  The right quote should also say that this proposed change would appear in the new (fifth) edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the book-to-beat in professional psychiatric diagnosis.  Rather than try to squeeze in that long-ass title, I’d rather just toss “the D.S.M.” in brackets somewhere and assume that you—a savvy reader of broad interests now doing post-doctoral work at one of Switzerland’s finer particle accelerators—are familiar with the acronym. 

_
Could I also squeeze in this quote from the article, by one Dr. Allen Frances, the guy who (I needn’t tell you) oversaw revisions to the last DSM?  “What I worry about most is that the revisions will medicalize normality and that millions of people will get psychiatric labels unnecessarily.”  I’d sure like to, but boy oh boy would that be a mouthful.

The working title I gave it was: “I’m OK, You're Just as Crazy.”  This is based on the famous self-help book, “I’m OK, You’re OK,” which no one has read in 30 years.  What followed the Times quote was my list of “Other Disorders with Expanded Definitions.”  So I really had two titles.  Yikes.  

So, here is the list I came up with.  It's all right.  I guess.  My scathing personal commentary appears in red.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Symptoms now include dotting I’s and crossing T’s. [Decent joke.  Not trying to blow anybody's doors off yet.]

Premenstrual Dysphoric Syndrome

Are you a woman?  Then please call a doctor immediately.  [Good, but I’d like a slightly harder punchline here to get past light-hearted set-up bits and to undermine any rule-of-threes expectations by dropping a true zinger into slot two.  I mean: “bitches-be-crazy,” right?  Just kidding around, though:  a moment of levity in the eternal battle of the sexes.  A chance, perhaps, to laugh—but not too hard.  I do not want to alienate any female readers and I definitely don’t want to piss off the dames at Jezebel.com.]

Shyness

Symptoms include introversion, fear of public speaking, and reluctance to engage in mixed martial arts cage fighting.

Sex Addiction

If you have ever used sex as an excuse to make a baby, please contact your physician.  [I apologize for calling the women at Jezebel.com “dames.”]

Anorexia

Symptoms include Lent.  [Do people know what Lent is anymore?]

Acrophobia

If you are not the guy in the movie “Man on Wire,” you have it.  [Yawn.]

Restless Leg Syndrome

Symptoms now include running, riding a bike, soccer, and making snow angels.  [Too easy.]

Narcolepsy

Do you sleep eight hours each night?  Seriously?  Every night!?!  [We’re getting there.  See, this is not really a definition but a panicked interrogation implying that you are crazy.  I’m undermining the form, son.]

Narcissism

Symptoms include exercise, hygiene, laundry, and mirror ownership.  [BOOM.  Take that D.S.M. V and your specious medicalizing of normality!]

Dual Hand Syndrome

Sufferers have two hands, one at the end of each arm.  [The best bit in the list.  The rest is downhill.]

Paranoia

Symptoms include actually being chased by dogs, really getting threatened by hoodlums, and definitely being followed by black helicopters owned by the Trilateral Commission.  [Way too wordy and obvious.]
 
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

If you skipped down the list to this one, go to an emergency room immediately.  

Pyromania

Symptoms include smoking, using a gas stove, and Def Leppard’s third album.  [YES.]

Antisocial Personality Disorder

Symptoms include asking your friends when the bill comes at a restaurant, “Is it cool if I only throw in eight bucks?  I barely had any of the appetizers.”  [I aim this at specific friends/loved ones and genuinely hope that it’s in the new D.S.M.]

Dyslexia

If you ever get “all turned-around” in a rural farm maze, you are a danger to yourself and others.  [Is it sexist to assume that all Jezebel.com writers are women?  Maybe some of them are dudes.]

Passive Aggressive Disorder

Oh, I’m sure you don’t have this one.  Just go to the doctor anyway, will you?  UGH!

Homophobia

Symptoms include tucking a sweater into a pair of jeans.  [Here I wanted an example of a very lame male fashion faux pas that might offend a gay guy.  However, aren’t I using a stereotype of gay men as fashionistas and thus, ironically, acting homophobic myself?  Well, no.  Comedy writers are the trapeze artists of social mores.  You, reader, should not take the risks that I take.  I can be as racist and homophobic as I want and yet still be considered a good guy.  You can’t.  It’s not fair, I know, but that’s life.]

Amnesia

Have you memorized this list without really trying?  Well, then I hate to break it to you… [A somewhat decent final definition, but more somewhat than decent.  One of my problems with list-comedy is the second-to-last bit is always better than the finale because of the implied promise of a killer out.  Think of every Letterman Top Ten List you have ever seen.  List comedy makes it very, very hard to throw down the mike and walk away arms-wide, glaring at the audience Chris Rock-style with a “Yeah, I said it!” scowl.  No one reading this list would say, “Oh no he didn’t!”  They’d probably think, “Oh sure he did.  Many of us could have.”]

End of list.

Such is the cross that I had to bear as a comedy writer.  [Note to secular humanists:  that is a Jesus reference.  He had to carry the cross that he was eventually nailed to after being condemned to death by a Roman official named Pontius Pilate.  Lent is the period that commemorates this sacrifice that he made for all of humanity.  Including you.]  Now, I’m not saying I can’t play the list game.  Oh, I can.  Without a doubt.  For whatever reason I just couldn’t get my curveball to drop here.  So in closing, I just want to say that I think it’s total bullshit that I can’t call the female writers at Jezebel.com “dames,” but it's perfectly fine if I call their male writers “dudes.”