ode to otis

Disney World was, and will be, something of an American pastime. Growing up every kid wanted to go there and experience the magic of the whole place. Parents do whatever they can to get their kids there once or twice. Chances are they even stay at a resort in the park. The kids are blown away by the glamour of the whole place—the castles, Goofy and his humorous antics, the rides—hell, even the churros you can eat in the park. As a youngster life doesn’t get any better than those days when you live the fairy tale in real life.

At 25 Walt Disney World is just terrifying.

There’s no magic in the air when you look out at the splendor of it all. Instead it is hot, humid and your legs hurt from walking. The twinkle that was once in the air feels more like prison. The bar of soap in the hotel room even has Mickey Mouse etched in to it and you want to vomit from having to look at that little squirelly, high pitched, man/mouse again. The fireworks in the park every night remind you to shut the blinds to the hotel room because there are about a half million kids running around outside screaming. And honestly, the resort workers that tell you to “have a magical day” after each and every encounter make me want to do completely irrational things.

Needless to say, after my time in Orlando I hopped a flight home to Detroit immediately. And that felt good. Speaking of home, I made this drawing that sort of dances around the idea of home and the comforts of home. The drawing is so cool that I am contemplating getting it etched in my flesh in a conspicuous area that is out of plain view. See, I am not a huge fan of self-inflicted pain—particularly of the tattoo variety. I ask myself what in the hell is making me want to have some guy drive an ice pick in to my skin to place some sort of colorful drawing on the side of my torso. What does anyone ever want with such a horrific idea? I feel the idea of getting a tattoo is something that everyone at some point in their life thinks about. When we are young (really young) tattoos are interesting because we only notice the ones that have nude depictions of women (or at least those are the ones I remember). Right around the age of 12 having a tattoo makes you feel like a badass. In high school, getting a tattoo with your best friends sounds like the best idea in the universe. In college, getting a tattoo while you study abroad or go overseas would be perfect. And then you hit this point later in life, maybe where I am at, where a tattoo, for the sake of expressing a simple thing that you really believe in, seems like a good idea.

I guess a tattoo has to be something that you feel like you can always think about, embrace, visualize or even talk about. This totally defeats the idiotic idea of getting a tattoo involving a significant other that you aren’t married to. Chances are it will end at some point and you wont want to continuously think about the etching of Kelly’s name in your forearm. I guess a tattoo in that sense, needs to express something with lasting firepower. But then why would you want to express that in a colorful drawing scraped in to your skin? I guess I could go round and round with this.

The other day my work situation took a fairly drastic change. Instead of following the Eisenhower Interstate System through the great American frontier to running and cycling events, I will be switching tours in late June to have me now going to music festivals. This is undoubtedly something of a dream job. Everything from All Points West to Bumbershoot to Summerfest. I will be there still slanging the old Crocs. If any of this ends up running even remotely parallel to the Langerado, I think this will end up being something of a legendary American summer. And oddly enough, it gets even better. My friend Mike Sack, the one I just visited in DC, will be joining me as we work together on the road.

Yep. I think I can manage that.

From the horrific days at Disney, I took a sojourn to the depths of Metro Detroit as I mentioned before. Detroit turned in to Cleveland. Cleveland faded in to Denver. Denver bled over to Salt Lake. Salt Lake to some dive casino outside of Vegas. And Vegas inevitably morphed in to southern California—of the San Diegan variety. And now I sit in LA at my buddy Steven’s apartment writing in the dark. It’s light and sunny outside, but I am more than pleased to sit here with a half eaten Subway sandwich and a bottle of sparkling water at my disposal. Usually I spend a couple days hashing out a blog entry, adding to it when I see fit. Today, I am writing this one through start to finish in one sitting. I have played Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay” about fifty times this morning.

I realized today that going to Subway is actually a fairly intense activity. Here’s the thing, you watch the entire process unfold before your eyes and it is really, really hard to not want to control the whole thing a little bit more than you normally do. The sandwich that you will soon be enjoying is composed right before your eyes and this brings on the issue: I ALWAYS feel like I could make the sandwich better myself. It starts as soon as the sandwich artist asks you what you would like. I always used to reply with “a footlong Subway Club on honey oat” but now I reply with “a footlong ham on honey oat” because the ham footlong is part of the $5 footlong menu (and the Subway Club is not—bullshit).

From the moment my reply is vocalized the sandwich artist turns around and opens up the giant bread oven with that characteristic metal latch and chooses a footlong freshly baked loaf of honey oat. Now, about 80% of the time I browse the loaves available and wish the sandwich artist would pick a different, bigger, fresher one. About 10% of the time I actually tell the person this and request a specific loaf of honey oat. Because of that low percentage, I am usually sweating at this point of the sandwich creation process because the bread I really want is waiting for the next guy. Things chill out a little bit when the sandwich artist puts the meat on. There really isn’t two ways you can put the meat on—its always ten slices of whatever you choose. In this case, it was 10 slices of Black Forest Ham. There’s really nothing left to be desired unless the sandwich artist folds the meat disproportionately across the length of the bread. This never happens.

The veggies. The sandwich artist asks me what veggies I want on my creation and I always reply wholeheartedly with a reply of “EVERYTHING.” Dear god. This is usually when I really start to go crazy because vegetable spread distribution and the amount used varies greatly from location to location. So the sandwich artist gets to work with the lettuce first, and I usually always want just a little more placed on the very end of the sandwich. A good artist spreads vegetables end to end with no goodness spread to the very tip of the bread. If there is spinach available I will request to have that put on there as well. Usually tomatoes are next and if the tomatoes are not touching across the entire bun I am crying bloody murder. Pickles and green peppers are difficult because they never put enough on and those are in my top three favorite ingredients. I always ask to put more on and more times than not this means he/she just piles more on in the middle. Awful. Spread distribution is of paramount importance. At this point I want to hop over the fucking glass and do the rest by myself, but you just cant do that. If anyone were to ever look at my facial expression as the sandwich artist is putting the pickles and peppers on, my eyes are drilling a hole in to the artist’s hands, watching his/her every move. And then come the onions. Just when the artist thinks they are getting to know me as enjoying a hearty helping of all the vegetables they pile on the onions. Huge mistake and now I want to hit someone. I instruct otherwise and usually have them remove some of them. I enjoy onions, but not in equally as large a pile as the peppers and pickles. I only need the essence of onion, I don’t want to kill people with my breath. By now I have sweat pouring down my forehead and the artist is absolutely terrified of how to approach the situation with the jalapenos. Of course I want them, but the artist has no idea on the quantity that I desire. 85% of the time they follow the lead of the onions and assume that I don’t want too many. And now the artist has officially screwed up again and I am seriously considering a talk with the manager to see if I can just make my own sandwich. I instruct the artist to continue putting the jalapenos on the sandwich and then proclaim that I do not want any sauces. About 40% of the time the artist asks me to repeat myself when I tell them no sauce, this is apparently something of a rarity. He/she then puts it in the subway wrapping paper and I am handed this sandwich with my Visa receipt.

I eat Subway probably 5 to 10 times a week and go through this fairly regularly. It really is an unnecessarily stressful process.

ANYWAY, I was going through the list of cities I have recently traversed and it reminded me of those movies or scenes in TV shows where the rock band comes on stage and is like “THANK YOU SEATTLE!” but really they are in Omaha, Nebraska. It’s a characteristic of being on the road and just plain losing yourself in where exactly you are. In some sense I kind of feel like that from time to time. No, I don’t proclaim at the top of my lungs to an open audience of thousands that I am in the wrong city, but I just feel that the places kind of all blend together. I find myself weaving this sort of fabric of one where occasionally something monumental pops its head (like a trip to Cedar Point or a barbeque with new friends) that I reflect on, but when someone asks me where I am right now as I am walking down the street I kind of have to walk through the progression in my head of exactly where my feet are planted. I can’t say this is a bad thing or a good thing for that matter, its just a sentiment I constantly feel myself experiencing. WHERE AM I TODAY AND WHAT AM I DOING? It’s all part of the plan. The movement keeps my brain fit. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

A few days come to mind—a few of those days where the opposite occurred and I knew exactly where I was because I loved the moment I was in. I wasn’t necessarily thinking about astrophysics or the key to the good life in those days, I just remember them very, very, very well.

One, I was driving along I-80 out of Cleveland headed for Denver which happens to run nearly straight through the great city that is Sandusky, Ohio. To the average human, Sandusky appears to be a tired Midwestern lake city that revolves around Jerry Springer episodes and trips to the auto parts store. Riding through the city, one very well may want to burn the state of Ohio off the map. But to a small percentage of us that live in this universe, particularly in the Midwestern United States, Sandusky, Ohio is the home of one of God’s great creations: CEDAR POINT.

Yep.

An amusement park. Another one—but this one didn’t make me want to gouge my eyes out at the sight of another Mickey Mouse. Instead, Cedar Point houses the world’s most extensive collection of roller coasters known to mankind (this is fact, of course). At Cedar Point there are no characters running around taking photos with you. There are no cheesy resorts that serve you overpriced drinks in faux coconut shells with etchings of Minnie on the side. At Cedar Point you just get towers of roller coasters that beckon you at every corner. Cedar Point’s goal is to make you vomit. This is evidenced in fact by their latest addition to the roller coaster entourage: The Top Thrill Dragster. When that monstrosity opened, it set five new records: the first continuous-circuit roller coaster to top 400 feet, the first roller coaster to reach 120 mph, the highest drop of any coaster and finally, it was the fastest AND tallest roller coaster in the world. Perfection.

I entered the park on a Monday afternoon in tote with four counterparts (Jill and Katie from work and Nathan Booneskids Peerbolt and his father Doug) ready and willing to traverse every corner of the park. Nate and I both had a pint of whisky wedged between our ass cheeks as we moved through the turnstile. Doug looked on with youthful amusement. I was fully planning on riding the Top Thrill Dragster at least 15 times and wanted to try and make a stab at throwing up for the first time on a roller coaster. My theory was that if we went on a Monday afternoon this sort of feat would be possible because of drastically lower attendance at the park midweek. Well, my theory was completely wrong. It happened to be world science day or something equally as chaotic and there were about 25,000 pimple-laden high schoolers waiting in the same lines that I was trying to traverse to get to the Top Thrill.

I think over the course of the day we rode four roller coasters because of such extreme lines. All in all, this was heartbreaking for the most part, but when it was all said and done we were all very drunk and quite amused with the whole occasion. The Top Thrill did almost tear the front of my face off due to being shot out at 120 mph. Nate and I waited about 3 hours so that we could sit in the very front car and this was potentially the best decision of the day—that and my acute sense of cool when I took the cowboy boot beer glasses from the western style saloon in the park. Actually, I didn’t steal them. They were souvenir plastic cups. After the madness of Cedar Point, the five of us took to the Thirsty Pony, a dive bar just down the street from our hotel. I ate barbequed chicken wings and the Red Wings clinched their birth to the Stanley Cup Finals that night.

The second of those days remembered came about 85 hours later in Denver. The day pretty much started when I picked up a copy of the book “Love is a Mixtape” by Rob Sheffield at Urban Outfitters. I was at the mall for the first time in a while with Katie and a group of her friends she knew from growing up. Katie read the book and said she hated it. Why I picked it up at that moment is beyond me but as I leafed through the contents of a chapter I decided I had to have the book—mostly because each chapter started with the tracklisting of a mix tape.

The book is a love story for the most part. A real love story. It’s Rob Sheffield’s mini memoir about the seven years he was married to his wife Renee (and maybe a few before they were married, too) before she died very prematurely. In many ways, its very depressing to read. But the part of the book that I loved the most had little to do with the love story of it all and so much more with how the author connects the beauty of a mixtape to human emotion. Perhaps now it makes sense as to why I loved the book seeing as how I think I create a new mixtape every day.

After purchasing it, we all went to Katie’s friend Laura’s place. She lived in Governors Park in Denver, an area I had become intimately familiar with after spending a few days there with my friend Matt on my last road trip. We sat outside and barbequed for the most part in the Denver sun. I bought a few shish kebabs which is something I don’t think I have ever done. I usually stick with making a hamburger roughly the diameter of a compact disc. I sat there on the patio with that new book, shish kebabs, cheez-its and Budweiser. Everyone there was pretty interesting. All of them seemed to have exceptionally good taste in music so this made for particularly good conversation. Or maybe I wasn’t talking that much because lets be honest, I almost finished the new book. That night we saw a show at the Bluebird Theatre. It was a perfect day, really. One where you kind of look back and wonder how it all came together so nicely—after all, it went from buying a book that was strictly recommended against and a gathering of complete strangers to a perfectly pleasant afternoon and evening with new friends.

The third and final of those days came in a one-two 24 hour punch when I passed through Salt Lake City briefly to see my cousin Jeff and his girlfriend Kirsten. Aside from coining phrases like “Get in my Potato!” we sat outside barbequing like good Americans do. Jeff cooked steaks for the first time apparently, and I talked with Kirsten about my book and a lot of other general musings. There’s just something about that moment of freedom you get in a good conversation—I guess it either comes from being totally in love with the topic of conversation or just generally being satisfied. I mean we all have these moments, its just hard to explain them in words. Sometimes you are sitting by a river in rural Kansas and you see a fish jump, sometimes you are laying under the stars in Sun Valley Idaho, sometimes you are sitting with your sweetie watching airplanes take off. Well, sometimes you are in a 1980’s style folding lounge chair in Salt Lake City and all of the sudden the world just looks a little clearer.

In looking at those three anecdotes, it seems that if I want to be happy I just need a barbeque, some friends and a little talk of music. I guess it could be that simple. It reminds me of conversations I have had with my friend Omri talking about how we could be completely pleased with a modest lifestyle that dwelled on the availability of friends, some beers from time to time and plenty of outdoor barbequing— minus all the complications that trying to amass unnecessary financial wealth brings and just focusing on what makes you happy day to day. It’s best to not analyze our pleasures. Come to think of it, I think Mr. Otis Redding had it right. Sitting in the morning sun, he wrote “The Dock of the Bay” about just being there on the dock looking out at the water as the tide rolled in marveling at the simplicity of it all. Its probably best to lake a lesson from the fellow and not make this stuff any more complex than it needs to be.