He was called Bear because he looked like a bear.
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I figured something out yesterday: The closer I get to someone, the more of my name I lose. It's not the first time, I admit, that I've had this thought. I’ve often been concerned with the apparent fluid boundaries of what constitutes Identity, especially where names are involved. I got it naturally; after all, I’m no average Chris…I’m Kris…with a K. I even wrote a song about it once. It was always a delicious fantasy for me, though, in grade school, to change the spelling of my name on my homework assignments. I mean, Chris (with the “Ch”) was as foreign a person to...
I don't believe I cared much for sixth grade.
I don't believe I cared much for sixth grade. I was already fully in the grips of a terrific identity crisis (mostly sexual) by the time I was rounding out my junior high years. At my school, sixth grade was the last grade on the junior high side. Seventh graders had to move around to the right side of the building, and that side was high school. They also had more than one teacher, and several different classrooms. That didn't shock me nearly as much as when I was told they also had periods. Even the boys. I was terrified of high school. ...
The monsters in my mouth.
I'm no prude, but violence in any form shocks me. (I'm rather hoping that's a universal statement). But, and here's where we may differ, my response to it is to laugh. Maybe it's a nervous habit, maybe I think it's a deflection on my part to make it less real. I don't know why I do it, but I laugh. And loudly. See, what you might not know about me is that I am the world's most foremost expert at inappropriate laughter. It just seems easier to laugh at everything, for me. I get tired of crying. (Though, I've done my share of that,...
January 2004: The Five-Day Cider War
I've just about decided that there's nothing that karaoke can't fix. If it can train a Sicilian and a Southerner to live together, in harmony, then at the next G8, or G12, G+number, Summit...we need to hire Disco Dan, or Happy Butch to grab their mic stands and their CDs. I resisted this, what to me, was merely a bar-room, nocturnal, alcohol-fueled passtime, for many years. I felt that I couldn't possibly degrade myself, a real singer, I thought to myself, to such a ridiculously low-level thirst for spotlight attention. Ah, but what a little spotlight can do. With my brief second tenure in Indiana, I...
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