The most satisfying word

I'm a word nerd. I enjoy good books, corny puns, and witty movie dialogue. At the risk of deluding myself with notions of grandeur, I like to think of myself as a writer, a wordsmith, a guy whose pen is mightier than William Wallace's sword.

I am indeed a man of many words, but few words satisfy me as much as one word: douchebag.

Douchebag is far from being an elegant word. It is, in fact, a term whose meaning I barely grasp. I know it has something to do with feminine hygiene, but since I have as little to do with feminine hygiene as possible, I cannot really picture what it is.

But that is not important. What is important is how "douchebag" is applied in popular usage. In this sense, I think everyone knows what a douchebag is, and why it feels so good to say.

So what does douchebag mean to the millions who utter it every day? Well, in my view, it refers to a person whose cocksure demeanor and arrogant attitude make him or her both maddenly irritating and laughably ridiculous. They are, in Top Gun terms, individuals whose egos write checks their bodies can't cash. They are full of themselves and think everyone else should be, too. And they could all use a good, sound thrashing.

Since that would be against the law, however, the next best thing is to call them what they are: douchebags.

Perhaps a few examples would shed some light on this satisfying word:

Derek Jeter - The shortstop for the New York Yankees prances around the bases with a look of pure smugness on his pretty-boy face. He simply oozes douchebag.

Ashton Kutcher - The party-boy actor wears a shit-eating grin that needs to be wiped off his foo-foo face. Even his fancy name screams "douchebag!"

George W. Bush - If ever there was a man who deserved the name, Bush is he. His seamless blend of arrogance and ignorance in addition to his "bring it on" bullshit has not only been the worst thing to happen to this country in decades, but it has earned him the status of Douchebag-in-chief. Hail to the chief.

In the end, a douchebag is simply someone I love to hate...and someone I love to name for what he is. So call a douchebag a douchebag, and enjoy it.

The Mad Hatter of March Madness

The NCAA tournament is the best thing in sports. Period. Nothing else comes close.

For one thing, every game matters. These kids have worked hard all year and it all comes down to one game. Every game could be their last. This is a far cry from, say, pro baseball, where 162 games means a single game counts for next to nothing, and at some point you just get sick of baseball...it's like watching paint dry 162 days out of the year.

For another, the tourney seems more driven by love than money. I say "seems" because yes, money is a huge part of college basketball. Yet, unlike pro sports, there is more to it than that. There are the coaches who are not merely managing egos, but molding young men and women. There are the players who will never make the NBA who are nonetheless playing their hearts out because each game could be their last game, ever. There are the fans who love the schools they went to, to whom the team colors signify an experience, not just a name.

Thirdly, there is the omnipresent prospect of David beating Goliath. Born and raised in an underdog city, I love to see the little guy win. In pro sports, alas, it seems the same teams win all the time - either they make the right moves, have all the money, or both. Moreover, multigame playoff series in pro sports (except for the NFL) mean the underdog has to do it more than once. In a one-and-done tournament system, however, David only needs one chance to beat Goliath. And it happens every year. What is March Madness known for if not for big bracket-busting upsets?

Finally, the NCAA has done a great job of making fans part of the fun by providing them with brackets to fill out and pick the winners. It creates natural buy-in and participation among fans. We watch the games with more interest, rooting for the teams we picked. And this is the only time when being wrong is still fun, because it means something unexpected happened...and the unexpected is the one thing we can expect from March Madness.

So I will be glued to the television for the next three weeks as the tourney plays itself out. I will be rooting for my Boston College Eagles and any Ohio team, and rooting against the pastel-wearing teams from the south or west coast...especially Duke, that bunch of rich, stuck up preppies who get all the calls. The Blue Devils are the Zach Morrises of the basketball world and they are, in the end, all that's wrong with March Madness.

The Irish are not just a bunch of leprechauns!

Today is St. Patrick's Day. If we follow the script, we are supposed to drink until our blood runs green and jig about like a bunch of leprechauns. Sounds fun, and it is, but it also is a bunch of blarney.

St. Patrick's Day is supposed to be an appreciation of all things Irish, yet we Americans have turned it into a big frat party. It's amateur hour over here in the States, and it paints the Irish in an unflattering hue. We seem to imply that their natural state is one of drunken foolishness, as if they were a horde of green-wearing wackos drowning in Guinness. We get taken with our own caricatures of them: Lucky and his Charms, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish mascot, etc. That's about as accurate as reducing Americans to flag-waving, gun-toting braggadocios....that is, there is some truth to it, there are some bad apples, but it's not the whole story. It is, in the end, an insulting reduction of who they really are.

With this in mind, we should still have fun, but I think we should do it a bit differently: take a deeper look at Irish culture. Listen to the music of an Irish artist like Makem & Clancy or U2. Read the poetry of an Irish poet like William Butler Yeats or Seamus Heaney, or the prose of an Irish writer like James Joyce. See a movie by an Irish filmaker like Neil Jordan or Jim Sheridan. Or go online and check out photos of Ireland - my Facebook profile has an album of photos I took on a 2004 bike trip up across Ireland.

Whatever you do, try to dig a bit deeper when you get your Irish on. Chances are, you'll like the pot of gold you find at the end of that rainbow.

Into The Twilight, by William Butler Yeats

OUT-WORN heart, in a time out-worn,

Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;

Laugh, heart, again in the grey twilight,

Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.

Your mother Eire is aways young,

Dew ever shining and twilight grey;

Though hope fall from you and love decay,

Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.

Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:

For there the mystical brotherhood

Of sun and moon and hollow and wood

And river and stream work out their will;

And God stands winding His lonely horn,

And time and the world are ever in flight;

And love is less kind than the grey twilight,

And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.

I'm going to hell, and I'm taking you with me

I have to blow off some steam, b/c I'm going to hell and I'm mad as hell.

Right now we're in the middle of Lent, a good time for good Catholics who like to flagellate themselves and others with the unremitting whips of guilt and unworthiness. It is a time when you're supposed to give things up, put on sackcloth, and confess your sins. All of this, of course, will save your soul. It's like magic - follow the recipe and you'll go to heaven.

Lately, however, this recipe has come to taste like a healthy heap of horseshit, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I want to wake up from my churchy childhood, a nightmare of self-hatred, guilt, and letter-of-the law living that has sucked my life of real life. If you're good you go to heaven and if you're bad you go to hell is the mantra that has kept me from really being myself, being alive, and being happy. 12 years of Catholic school taught me how to be a good boy, not a real man; to do what they want not what I want; to obey rather than to dream.

I've known hell my whole life because of people trying to get me to heaven, and I'm done with all that bullshit.

So don't tell me about heaven and hell: you don't know a damn thing about it. Don't tell me about Jesus: you don't know a damn thing about him. Don't tell me about how to live, because you don't know a damn bit more about it than I. I don't care who you think you are: keep your afterlife, your Jesus, and your judgments to yourself - I'm sick to death of hearing about it, I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore.

There, now that felt good!

Am I going to hell for writing this? Of course, because just about anything gets you there these days. So why bother worrying about it? Hell, I might as well enjoy the ride downhill. It sure beats the upward climb.

ps. I think Mick Jagger put it best: "You'll never make a saint of me!" Check out the song at http://tinyurl.com/6bq9ut.

Living up to your name

I would say you are hotter than a thousand suns.
But that's not enough: it's more like a thousand and one

I would call you a rose, but a rose is only pretty
Standing next to you, a rose looks downright shitty.

If you are a rose, as pink as the morning
I'll prick you then, because you make me thorny.

I would show you the moon, but I'd get arrested.
Yet you shine in the night like the lamp at my bedstead.

But what do I call you, the light of my life?
Without whom I would be buried in strife.
Without whom my heart would beat its last beat.
Without whom my hell I would very soon meet.

I'll call you your name, if it's all just the same.
It's a name that suits you, just like I do.
It's a name that you've earned, you for whom I have yearned.
In the end, it's the only thing I can call you, my friend.

Joy.

Forever Youngstown

Rust Belt. That is what they call the swath of onetime manufacturing hubs in the Midwest: Detroit, Cleveland, Akron, Pittsburgh. These cities certainly have an edge of rust to them, as once bustling city centers collect dust, dilapidation, and depression. Factories have closed, yet they still waste a lot of space, like big hulking tombstones bearing homage to bygone good years. People flee the cities for the suburbs, and who can blame them? So, while the Rust Belt burghs have tried hard to shake off the rust, it has been easier said than done.

Nowhere is that more apparent than Youngstown, Ohio, a former steel-producing giant that may be the buckle of the Rust Belt between Cleveland and Pittsburgh. This past weekend I walked about Youngstown for the first time in years, in town for the Cirque de Soleil, which took place at the Chevrolet Center. It felt like I walked into the Twilight Zone. It was a Saturday afternoon, and yet the downtown was deserted. Shops were closed, and the streets were bare. There may as well have been tumbleweed blowing among the ashen buildings and dead streets. I could have streaked the city pantless and nobody would have batted an eye...there was no one there to appreciate such art.

Actually, there were some art afficionados in town, but they were there for the Cirque de Soleil, as was I. So I left the eerie avenues of Youngstown behind and took in the circus. Wow, what an experience. It was as colorful as Youngstown was colorless, with leaping, wheeling, dancing bodies garbed in all the colors of the rainbow wowing the crowd to the accompaniment of surreal tunes. In my younger, stupider days, I used to belittle dancers as sissies and wussies. Ah, no more - any one of these performers could have kicked my ass...and looked good doing so. The tricks and stunts they pulled were tremendous, and my big mouth was open nearly the entire time. It was a sublime mindfuck that was definitely worth the trip.

So I left the circus arm in arm with my favorite clown, Joy, and we walked into the bored yawn that is Youngstown. Strange, but it didn't seem such a downer anymore. If it was dead, it was also at peace. And so were we, as we walked off into the gray night, visions of the circus dancing in our heads, whispering our silent farewells to the silent town, while the clowncars sped off to their next performance.