Treatises On Crystal Skulls, And The Kingdoms Thereof

"He chose... Poorly."

Hm.

I didn’t really want to discuss this. I specifically asked you, dear readers, in my last blog to not push me to the edge of reason and sanity by challenging my utterly truthful and unbiased opinion of the fourth Indiana Jones film, and you insisted on tickling the proverbial dragon’s tail by doing so. One person demanded that I get off my high horse, and to that I say no. I like it on my high horse. The view is good up here, and the altitude makes it easier for me to spit on your low-horsed opinions for comedic effect. If I got off my high horse, this blog wouldn’t be terribly entertaining, because as a general rule, humble people aren’t funny. Do you know any Amish standup comedians? No, you don’t, and you never will, both because they’re too humble to challenge the legitimacy of airline peanuts and because their religion restricts them from using an electronic microphone.

So let’s face the facts: Yes, I did imply that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Egregiously Long, Overwrought Homage to 1930s Serial Adventure Films was more terrible than redneck humor and the worst nuclear disaster in history. I still stand by my opinion, even with full knowledge that as we speak people are dying from cancer brought on by Chernobyl or Larry the Cable Guy. Don’t take this to mean that I thought this movie was any better than Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, because I most certainly don’t. Temple of Doom is higher on the travesty list, just barely above those airport toilets with the sensor triggered flush that always flushes when you’re still going.* I can’t decide what I hate most about Temple of Doom - the overblown horror movie gore, Kate Capshaw as a bitchy and incompetent “heroine” who never quit screaming, or the fact that a streetwise treasure hunter/university professor maintains a close and apparently platonic relationship with a 10 year old Engrish speaking Chinese kid who also happened to be in The Goonies. No, you know what? I’ve decided what I hate most, and it was definitely Kate Capshaw. A few weeks ago, my friends a few doors down were watching Temple of Doom with their door open, and all the way down the hall I could hear her screaming. With my door closed. Here’s a fun fact about writing for the movies: Characters screaming is the result of the screenwriters being too lazy to think up any dialogue, so in as scream-heavy a movie as Temple of Doom, you’ve really got to appreciate the writers’ firm commitment to dicking the viewers in pursuit of a quick paycheck.

*Seriously, what the hell? Who thought that was a good idea? Because some people don’t flush the toilet, did society have to implement a haywire sensor that triggers the flush mechanism at any old time? Have you ever started using one of these and only realized once you’ve passed the point of no return that you’re on a toilet that decides for itself when you’re all finished? You wind up sitting perfectly still, poised to jump up at a moment’s notice lest you be treated to a highly unsanitary bidet experience. It’s like crapping on a time bomb! My theory is that a bunch of folks at some laboratory got drunk and said, “Hell yeah! Let’s put a laser on a toilet! Because we can!” Then somebody found it and marketed it so that people in airports everywhere could have The Bowel Movement Of The Future™, and now the whole world suffers. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why laser sensor toilets are such a travesty.

At this point, there’ll be a few spoilers about all this Crystal Skull nonsense, but for the record, I’d figured out all these plot points before the end of the first reel, so you could just read ahead and save your money.

So no, Crystal Skull didn’t have cute 10 year old boys or Kate Capshaw. On the contrary, it had Karen Allen, Indiana’s lover from Raiders and a particular favorite of mine in terms of spunky adventure film heroines. However, Karen Allen alone could not save this movie from three devastating problems:

1) I’ve had it with these motherfucking science fiction elements in this motherfucking fantasy based film series! - I’m not particularly enamored of fantasy, and Bible history ain’t exactly my bag either, but the two good Indiana Jones movies (Raiders and Last Crusade) managed to combine the elements into a perfect formula. If you watch these two movies, you’ll see that the bulk of the action consists of Indy and friends fighting Nazis and debating the ethics of hunting these Biblical relics, all within a fairly realistic tone. At each film’s climax, there’s a brief, graphic, and highly awesome scene in which God serves the Nazis, and then everybody goes home happy. That’s a great system and it made everybody rich; I don’t see why they had to divert from it by adding aliens to the mix. I mean, I love aliens as much as the next science fiction aficionado, but the Indiana Jones series has been primarily about globe trotting archaeology, not cover-ups and conspiracy.

2) MS Word Spellcheck hates your name, LeBeouf - Hi there, Shia, it’s me – Truman. Much like you, I am geeky and funny looking. However, I am not so fortunate to have made out with Megan Fox on the hood of a muscle car, which, in and of itself, is a Transformer. During the shooting of that scene at the end of Transformers, you achieved the high point of your career, and I don’t care if you go on to win an Oscar, because 1) Megan Fox is a modern day Baberham Lincoln, and 2) Transformers are awesome, and you had both at once! Let’s leave it at that, okay? You don’t make a very good greaser. I don’t believe that Indiana Jones sired you oh-so-many years ago. Watching you swinging from vine to vine, leading a charge of monkeys to attack a Communist platoon, all while combing your hair and wearing a leather jacket, I could only lament the fact that one dopey cinematic set-piece had not only tarnished my memories of the Indiana Jones franchise, but also Transformers. Good luck on Transformers 2, and give Megan and all the Autobots my love.

3) It beats screaming, but only just - This movie was poorly written. There are no jokes in the previous sentence because this is a very serious matter: The script for this movie was absolute caca. You can disagree with me about everything else, fine, go ahead, be my guest, but I’d like to think that I, as a writer myself, have a pretty good idea of what good writing is, and I can tell you that it most certainly wasn’t present in this movie. In Raiders, Indiana Jones is gruff, abrupt, and sort of a fuckup. That works. In that movie, Indiana Jones didn’t need witticisms or a sense of humor to solve his problems; for example, he didn’t say anything to that ninja in the marketplace, he just shot him and went on with his day. We have a word for that: Awesome. That shit is all the way live, and evidence that sometimes the best scripts know when not to be too talky. In Last Crusade, he’s a little more verbal in the fight scenes, but it’s quick. For example: “No ticket.” Once again, awesome. To be perfectly honest, I use either “No ticket” or “He chose… Poorly” on a daily basis, and that’s what makes Last Crusade’s script so great. But Crystal Skull just tries too hard. The writers obviously watched a lot of Indiana Jones and tried their best to mimic it, and they wound up overplaying every line to the point that this feels more like a bunch of people trying really hard to be in an Indiana Jones movie than an actual Indiana Jones movie. “They’re going to the space between spaces.” “The real treasure was knowledge.” “Stick around son,” “Why didn’t you, Dad?” It’s cheesy and hammy and corny, and if I were describing a sandwich right now we’d be in great shape, but sadly I’m talking about an installment in a highly popular film series with many devoted fans. Now I’m hungry.

The simple fact is that they should have left us with our memories. I mean, c’mon – the last movie was called Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which is as about as final a title as you can get save for Indiana Jones and the Decision to Stop Having Adventures and Move to Florida. I didn’t want to see Indiana Jones as a family man, because this is the guy who built his image on being a tough as nails, globe trotting asshole. Watching Indiana Jones settle down and get married is a complete departure from the character we know and love – it’s like watching Han Solo stop being a dick long enough to express his feelings for Leia!

Oh, wait, I guess that happened too. One day we will discuss Return of the Jedi, and why I hate George Lucas.

Truman Capps hopes you’ve all learned your lesson about getting him started on movies.

In Reedsport

If you equate every aspect of your life to 80s power ballads (and let’s face it – who doesn’t?) my neighbor and future roommate Josh is Journey’s proverbial “small town girl” (livin’ in a lonely world), while I’m more of the “city boy” (born and raised in South Detroit), because…

No, no, no, no.

My friend and future roommate Josh lives in Reedsport, Oregon. I don’t blame you if you’ve never heard of it – neither had I, up until I met Josh, and up until this weekend I was honestly convinced that Josh had been lying about it and was from suburban Portland just like everyone else I know. It was this weekend that Josh proved me wrong by inviting my friend Jeff and I to stay with him in Reedsport for the Memorial Day weekend. I’m here to tell you that yes, Reedsport does exist, and yes, Josh is from there, but it’s arguably the best kept secret in Oregon. Reedsport is two hours outside of Eugene, an hour and a half of which is spent on winding two lane roads that cut through dense, sparsely populated forest – I shit you not, I’m pretty sure I spotted some Hobbits on the way in here. At the end of the road lay Reedsport, a town of 4500 people within spitting distance of the coast (provided that you can spit for two miles).

I’ve never been in a town this small before. Salem, technically speaking, was a small town in that it had no culture or nightlife, but it had crime and urban sprawl on big city levels, thereby sacrificing any potential quaintness. Reedsport, though, has proven to be everything I expected a little town to be. Everyone here knows everyone, and everyone knows what everyone else is doing, so it’s sort of like a 4500 person high school with its own volunteer fire department. Listening to Josh and his parents talk is like listening to two people discussing the events of a TV show you’ve never watched. “Mike and Wendy are having a barbecue tomorrow night, and Kim is going even though she’s a vegetarian but she hasn’t told Frank yet, and Paul isn’t going because he’s got to take Cheryl- No, not that Cheryl, the other Cheryl, to a dance recital in Coos Bay, but Jack Bauer is in town and he’s probably going to crash his car into Paul’s and make them tell him where their Cousin Abdullah is with the nukes.”

Josh drove us around town yesterday (there isn’t much town to drive around, so it took about 15 minutes) and pointed out where all of Reedsport’s movers and shakers live. He showed us the house of the high school history teacher, Mr. Tymchuck (I’m not even kidding, that’s actually his name), who also happens to be the mayor (I didn’t believe it at first either, but mark my words: Tim-Chuck), and along the way waved to one of Reedsport’s six policemen, Officer Funk* (I am so not making this up).

*“In a world where evil deeds go unpunished, one thing is certain – WE NEED THE FUNK! Coming this November to a theater near you.”

Also, I’ve never been in a town this close to nature before. On the first night, as Jeff and I were getting settled on the floor of Josh’s room, his mother came in to see if we needed anything. We told her that we were fine, and the following conversation ensued:

Josh’s Mom: “Well, alright, we’re right upstairs if you need anything. Oh, and if the dog starts barking, don’t worry about it. She gets spooked pretty easily if a bear or some deer come through the neighborhood.”

Truman: “Excuse me… Bears?”

I guess every town has its problems. Salem has meth, Eugene has hobos, and Reedsport has bears. And let me just say, Salem and Eugene’s problems don’t seem all that bad when you put them up against wayward bears tramping through your yard while you sleep. Sure, I don’t like it when hobos press me for change outside Quiznos – I feel guilty for not giving them any of the spare change I’ve got on hand. However, I’d much rather run into a hobo outside Quiznos than a bear. A hobo you can reason with. A hobo shuts up when you give him change. A hobo doesn’t maul you and drag you back to its den (at least, not before sunset).

There are no movie theaters in Reedsport – for that, you have to drive 25 miles to a theater in North Bend.** There is no shopping center – for that, you have to drive 100 miles to Eugene. There is, however, a bowling alley, and since it was Saturday night, Jeff and Josh and I went bowling, along with the rest of the town. Now, as I’ve mentioned before, bowling is little more to me than a $10 reminder that I’m embarrassingly incompetent in every field that doesn’t involve cheap jokes or the Internet. However, in a small town it’s unspeakably worse, because every single person in that bowling alley had been going there for entertainment a few times a week since they learned how to walk and throw heavy objects. There was a 7-year-old girl in the lane next to ours, and she was toddling around rolling strikes like nobody’s business, whereas the high point of my evening was singing along with “Cum On Feel The Noize” when it came on the stereo. Women have always made me feel foolish and inadequate, but they’ve never started this young.

**Might I add, there’s something about that theater that just isn’t right. I can’t put my finger on quite what – the smell that’s borderline unpleasant without actually being unpleasant, the desolation in the eyes of the employees, the senior citizens making out in the ticket line (I regret to inform you that I am not kidding). I might just be overly critical of the theater because that’s where I’m ashamed to say I spent money – real, valuable, currency – to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which is quite simply one of the worst things in human history. It’s no Holocaust, sure, but I’d put it above Chernobyl and Larry the Cable Guy on the tragedy scale.

I’m going to go on the record and say that I like Reedsport a lot. I like not hearing sirens all the time and I like how everybody smiles at me despite the stifling aura of despair that I do my best to bring with me no matter where I go. In the past 36 hours, I have eaten fresh fish and chips, pancakes and bacon, and homemade steak, baked potato, corn on the cob, baked beans, etc. When word got around Reedsport (and it gets around fast) that I had my trumpet with me, the Marine Band, in town for a concert and parade later this weekend, invited me to their rehearsal on Sunday – you probably don’t find this terribly interesting unless you’re my Mom and Dad, and yeah, Mom and Dad, I’m pretty excited too.

Despite the atmosphere and the friendly servicemen and the delicious food that is, as we speak, building a hydroelectric dam of cholesterol in my arteries, it will be nice to get back to school in a couple days. I was talking with Josh’s Dad earlier and we both agreed that we didn’t like Eugene much – he thinks it’s too big, and I think it’s too small. The peace and quiet of Reedsport is nice for a little while, but when all is said and done I need to be someplace bigger, a place with at least two movie theaters and more entertainment options than bowling. I like the big – or at least mid-sized – city for its anonymity and bustle, such as they are in Oregon. Reedsport’s charm and isolation are a great draw for a few days, but they’re also the main reasons I could never stay in a place like this.

Also, I don’t want to get eaten by bears.

Truman Capps urges you not to reply if all you’re going to say is, “Hey! I liked Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull Soiree for the following reasons!”, because he will not respect you afterwards.

House Quest V: Tokyo Drift

Hahaha! Isn't this funny? He has the same name as where people live!

As you may remember, I, along with my friends Jeff and Josh, have been in feverish pursuit of someplace to live next year, and we’ve been consistently thwarted by the fact that nothing we’ve looked at has struck our fancy, piqued our interest, or blown up our collective skirt. Each one of us is picky in our own way: Josh, the resident Adrian Monk, finds inherent fault in anything that is dirty, has been dirty, or will be dirty at some point in the near future; Jeff, an architecture major, has a knack for pointing out dangerous architectural flaws in our proposed dwellings; and I, Truman Capps, refuse to live in any house that isn’t exactly like Tony Stark’s house in Iron Man, complete with robots and Gwyneth Paltrow.

However, some time ago, we all came to the conclusion that we either had to compromise, live on the streets, or succumb to that most unimaginable of horrors: Living in the dorms again. Now, I’m sure that if you’re a college student the dormitories at your school aren’t quite ghetto-fabulous. You’re probably sharing a bathroom with people who would rather die than attempt to aim their pee, and climate control probably leaves something to be desired, and maybe the food isn’t exactly Emril quality. However, your living situation is not nearly as bad as the living situation at the University of Oregon, because while the housing department at your school may simply not care about you, the housing department at the University of Oregon actively loathes all of its residents. No, forgive me, this statement is unfair to University of Oregon Housing – they don’t hate the residents only, they hate all humans in existence. The director of our board of housing has aligned his soul with the dark gods of Chaos, and in their service he is relentlessly driven to completely and utterly RF the bejeezus out of everything that breathes. Why, yes, there is a loading dock right outside my window, and yes, food service trucks do make loud beeping noises when they back up there at 6:00 every morning. And yes, over the past three weeks construction crews have been demolishing the building across from my dorm, with work starting at about 8:00 every morning. And it’s also true that from time to time I’ll just throw the food they serve us into the toilet in order to save it the trouble of spending five minutes inside my body. However, no matter how bad it is right now is a mere preview of how bad it will be next year, for the housing department has promised beds to 6000 incoming freshmen when the dormitories right now only have room for 3500. Next year’s freshmen, who will be paying thousands of dollars for a dormitory, may well wind up sleeping in lounges. RAs will have roommates. I predict early morning knife fights over bathroom stalls and long lines to smoke pot in the shower. Why would the housing department do this? Because, my friends, Chaos is a seductive and persuasive mistress. Also, the housing department is run by morons.

Faced with living conditions somewhat akin to the Tokyo subway, my friends and I lowered our standards and have put down safety deposits on a quad unit across the street from campus. A quad unit, for those of you out of the bargain basement housing loop, is a series of four rooms surrounding a common kitchen and shower. Each room has its own sink and toilet, plus two doors – one leading outside, and one leading into the shared kitchen. Each room is rented individually to each tenant as a bedroom, and the three of us are splitting the cost of the fourth room so that we can use it as a TV room/swimming pool (bear with me – it’s going to be awesome). At first, we were somewhat reluctant to get a quad, as most of the quads we’ve seen are about as aesthetically pleasing as Richard Nixon, and twice as dirty. Right now, the quads we’re going to live in next year still have all the warmth and livability of our 37th president, but we’re rationalizing the decision by reminding ourselves that the quads are going to be remodeled over the summer, and we have been assured that by the time we move in, every room will sparkle with a beauty and charisma reminiscent of JFK, or at least a young Chester Arthur. We sat transfixed in the cramped and dim rental office as Kimberly the Landlady, her eyes sparkling with excitement, spun us breathtaking tales of granite countertops and hardwood floors, of wall mounted flatscreen TVs and brand new furnishing packages (one of which includes robots and Gweneth Paltrow).

What’s wrong with the place? Well, for one thing, I’m going to be a tenant, so there goes the neighborhood, I guess. Also, the complex is situated between a fraternity and a sorority, so we’ll have yet another chance to listen to drunk people belching and, what’s worse, Kanye West, but on the plus side we get to watch the girls doing the Walk of Shame the next morning. Also, the complex is roughly two blocks away from one of the largest hospitals in the city, so if you’re injured anywhere in or around Eugene, Oregon, you can bet I’ll hear the ambulance going out to pick you up, and also coming back. Make a point of not getting hurt late at night, asshole.

Is it absolutely ideal? No. But that’s not really the point; we’re just a bunch of college students looking for a place to live that isn’t infested by as-yet undocumented breeds of wood tick. It’s just a place to sleep when we’re not in class. None of us are planning to raise a family there – I’d love to, but I haven’t been on a date in about a year and as a journalism major I doubt I’ll ever be able to pay for the place without my Dad’s assistance, so it’s probably not going to happen.

Truman Capps is worried that he won't be able to fall asleep at night if there isn't someone near him is puking up cheap beer.

Heatwave

Right now, this would only make my room cooler.

If you’re fortunate enough to live in Oregon, you’ve probably noticed recently that the sun is a lot closer than it usually is – namely, it’s hovering about 10 feet over my conspicuously non climate controlled dormitory in an attempt to cook out all my flavor so that it can make gravy. You may doubt this, and if so, you are stupid, because you don’t know how hot it is in here right now. I don’t care where you live, be it a constantly erupting volcano, Hell, or even Michigan in the summer; no matter where you are, it’s hotter in my room. As my room is on the third floor, all the heat generated by the nonstop hormone factories (girls) on the second floor has been drifting up to me and my Y-chromosomed compadres. The heat has been so bad that most of the guys up here have taken to smoking marijuana in the showers and getting drunk all the time – to be fair, they do this all year round no matter what the weather is like, and would probably continue to do it if it spontaneously started raining cash and Jessica Alba, but thanks to the heat the smell of their activities is that much worse. The stairwell leading up to my room, which usually only smells a lot like stale urine and pot, now smells so overpoweringly of both that I’m starting to wonder whether the very building is made out of anything but ganja and pee. I live in a very smelly place* ordinarily, and turning up the heat has done little to improve things.

*Rumor abounds that one of my neighbors has been crapping in the garbage can in his room instead of walking all the way down the hall to the toilets. No, I’m not making this up. In fact, we’re all pretty sure that it’s the truth, y’know, that this grown man who lives very close to me has been defecating in a small plastic container, because we’ve heard the suspect talking about it to his friends (and who wouldn’t be proud of that, am I right?) and also smelled some disturbing things. So, just for the record, at the University of Oregon, at least one freshman is pooping in the garbage bin which he keeps in his 100-odd square foot room. Yeah, he’s just sitting around in there, dropping the kids off at the pool, only it’s not a pool, it’s a garbage can that he just keeps in his room, because to say ‘pool’ implies that this human being who is paying for and receiving (to some extent) a university education is capable of utilizing the miracle of modern pumbing, which he is clearly not, as evidenced by the fact that he stores his own shit in an open receptacle right next to his bed in the middle of a goddam heat wave! These people are fucking savages! I have to get out of here!

As you can tell from the above footnote, the hot weather has been bringing out the more aggressive qualities in just about everyone. Indeed, it is at this time of year that the unbridled rage on campus really gets flowing, but not just because of the heat – because of the combination of heat and some of that old time religion.

The University of Oregon has a few full time Christian evangelist types, the most prominent of whom is Jesus Guy, who, every day, rain or shine, stands outside the student union with a large sign reading “TRUST JESUS”, along with a few hearts thrown in for good measure. For the record, I like Jesus Guy a lot. He isn’t preachy, he doesn’t force his views on anyone, and the message he’s sending with his sign is pretty friendly and unobtrusive. Also, he’s out there every day. I’ve I can’t remember a day that I haven’t seen him leaning on the fence, holding his sign, and quietly smiling at passerby. I admire his devotion; I mean, sometimes I feel like I’d give my life to get Firefly back on the air, but I sure as hell wouldn’t stand around on the street all the time with a “TRUST JOSS WHEDON” sign. The other regular is Apocalypse Dog Guy, who generally makes an appearance about once a week for a few months at a stretch, preaching about the impending Apocalypse while his dog lies at his side. He’s a lot feistier than Jesus Guy, but I like his dog, and I still have some respect for his tenacity, if not quite his message. However, the warm (or, as I might have mentioned earlier, unbearably hot) weather of spring term signals the arrival of other, less enlightened street preachers.

These are the Incredibly Hateful Christians, who show up for a few weeks every spring like the horribly prejudiced swallows returning to Capistrano. They stand around in the amphitheater by the student union and shout at passers-by about how anyone who doesn’t abide by God’s law is going to hell – this includes “rebellious” women, loose women, people of any faith except their branch of Christianity, people who drink, people who smoke pot, women who are not entirely subservient to men, and – say it with me now, folks – atheists. They’ve got loads of facts to support their views; for example, did you know that all Mormons everywhere are child molesters? Apparently, Mormonism is just one big ‘ol cult dedicated to molesting children – but hey, somebody’s got to do it. Those kids aren’t going to molest themselves, now.

Fortunately, the very rational students of the University of Oregon have responded to the Incredibly Hateful Christians with more hate of their own, which, as every country in the Middle East has repeatedly shown us, always solves everyone’s problems completely, forever. Angry feminists, atheists, and all sorts of other “ists” spend hours gathered around these Incredibly Hateful Christians, trying to pick apart their nonsensical bigotry with logic and facts; this process is about as effective as trying to tunnel to the center of the Earth by Riverdancing in the same place for several hours – you just wind up making a lot of noise and looking like an idiot. But hey, some people saw Riverdance like seven times, so you can be my guest and go argue with these people, but expecting them to hear your Wikipedia researched facts about the Bible’s take on homosexuality and spontaneously stop being Incredibly Hateful is about as logical as them expecting you to hear that all Mormons are child molesters and join their church.

I think the best course of action, when faced with this sort of offensive, aggressive, attention craving razzmatazz, is to follow Jesus Guy’s example: Just stand further away and let the idiots do their thing. We can’t let this distract us from our real enemy: The Sun. It’s so hot and sticky around here that my hair won’t even hold its form anymore, and that just will not do. I plan to spend most of tomorrow on the roof screaming at the Sun to stop being such a dick, and we’ll see what happens.

Truman Capps understands that he’s written two faith related articles in the course of a week, but it’s really way too hot to think of something else to write about.

Economic Atheism

I only found this after writing the blog, so I guess I got upstaged by a highly imaginative 6 year old.

I’ve never made any secret of the fact that I’m an atheist. In the past, people have been confused about the exact definition of the term, so allow me to explain: A theist, when confronted with the Grand Canyon, human civilization, and beautiful distant planets, attributes them to the work of an immortal, infallible, benevolent God who swiftly created all of these things and yet left no concrete evidence whatsoever of his existence but expects us all to believe in him anyway. An atheist, on the other hand, looks at the Grand Canyon, human civilization, beautiful distant planets, and uses sciencey weasel-words to explain away these monumental edifices of beauty and complexity as mere accidents and coincidences. Out of these two, keep in mind that I am the second kind of crazy.

I’ve also never made any secret of the fact that I’m horrible at math. “Pfft.” You think, waving your hand at your monitor. “I’m so much worse at math than Truman is.” No, sorry, you’re wrong. I can provide evidence to the contrary. I can produce witnesses to the nonstop tirade of rage and despair that was my so-called “education” in mathematics during elementary, middle, and high school. I achieved something of a mythical status in the Salem-Keizer School District – “Have you heard of Truman Capps?” Teachers would whisper to one another over vodka-spiked coffee in the crumbling, asbestos laced teachers lounges of my former hometown. “He doesn’t get anything! Cross multiplication, dividing fractions, the metric system… Not a damn thing! He tries hard, but nothing can get through that thick hair of his!” At the beginning of each year, my math teacher would sit down with me and explain that he or she wasn’t giving up on me, and that by the end of the year I would be an expert at whatever institutionalized crap they were trying to cram down my throat. Of course, the teacher would explain, I was going to have to meet them halfway – I’d need to do my homework, be willing to stay late, and possibly sacrifice one of my parents to the Math Gods (I’m sorry, Dad, but if it ever came to that you would’ve been my choice). Every year I would solemnly agree, and within two months the teacher in question would be tacitly avoiding me when I came in after school looking for help, and at the end of the year, respectful of the fact that they had truly encountered the village idiot of math, they’d mark down a B on my report card out of concern for my GPA and shunt me off to the next unlucky educator.

This continued until my sophomore year of high school, when I took Geometry. Most people had said that Geometry was going to be easy, much in the same way that most people said that I was going to have no trouble finding a girlfriend in college. At the beginning of the year, Mr. Brown guaranteed all of us that if we tried as hard as possible every day, we would at least get a B in his class. This was a relief to me, especially as the year wore on and Geometry taught me to mistrust everything Sesame Street had ever taught me about the very nature of shapes themselves. A month before the end of the school year, with the final exam looming, I received a progress report showing that I had a solid C in the class. I brought this up to Mr. Brown, who said, “Well, just study really hard for the final, I guess.” I pointed out that I’d been studying hard for every test that I’d gotten a D on, and he said, “I don’t know what to tell you, Truman.”

It was at that point that I gave up entirely on ever learning math. Shortly thereafter, I contacted a girl in another one of Mr. Brown’s Geometry classes who happened to be really good at math, and because they took the final before my class did she was kind enough to copy down all of her answers on a separate piece of paper and give them to me. So yes, I cheated like crazy, and if Mr. Brown found anything amiss about one of his worst students getting a 94% after a long history of Cs and Ds, he sure as hell didn’t say anything about it. Next year, our school’s new math curriculum made it possible to coast through my final required year of math with a mid range B, and ever since then I’ve been free of the stuff. Journalism majors at the University of Oregon are not required to take math classes, which is the closest an atheist will ever come to acknowledging a miracle. However, they do require Journalism majors to take economics.

And before we go any further, allow me to say this about economics: Fuck that shit.

Economics is an academic Trojan horse. Outwardly, it appears to be an interesting study of the nature of consumerism and the pursuit of total market efficiency – the sort of thing that’s right up the alley of a guy who watches The History Channel in his spare time. So yeah, I invited this Trojan horse into my schedule for spring term, partially because I had to in order to graduate, but also because I figured this would be something kind of nifty to learn about. But within a week, that Trojan horse burst open and suddenly math was, for the first time in a year and a half, all up in my Kool-Aid. As we speak, the mathematical Odysseus is beating my face in with the very concept of long division, and it really, really hurts.

I understand the ideas of supply and demand just fine. I understand that a drop in price creates a surge of demand, which will, as a result, bump prices up again, so I definitely understand the economy better than Hilary Clinton and John McCain, but then they had to throw in all these freaking equations! My book is tossing out equations like they’re going out of style, monstrous equations the size of skyscrapers with grizzly bears for arms! You’ve got to subtract this from this, and then multiply it by that, and then subtract it from another thing, and then divide it by the second thing you subtracted it from, and then, just for the hell of it, you multiply it by 100! And at that point you’re only half done, because you’ve got to do something similar to another set of numbers and then, when you’ve forced these numbers to jump through hoops and do unspeakable things to one another, you take each equation’s bastard child and start grinding them together until, after a few years, you might potentially have a number that corresponds to one of the multiple answers on the test. However, when I attempt to do these equations, the results that my calculator vomits out are a near incomprehensible jumble of integers and decimal points; a numeric “Garden of Earthly Delights”, if you will.

I like to live my life pretending that I’m smarter than just about everybody else on Earth, but when I’m reduced to intellectual rubble by a class that frat boy business majors are excelling at, I can no longer sign my name as “Truman Capps, Certified Genius” in good conscience. This is all too familiar a replay of the 11 years I spent struggling with math in my pre-college education. It will not stand, and I have taken the proper measures for my own well-being:

I no longer believe in math.*

*Since economics spurred this, it goes without saying that I don’t believe in the economy anymore either. I now consider trade, banks, inflation, and all other day-to-day elements of what you know as an “economy” to be the work of a pack of particularly bookish witches.

One of the many reasons I don’t believe in God is because I can’t verify His existence. How different from that is math? In my textbooks are equations so grand that they doubtless have their own ZIP codes, equations that, when performed, magically produce the correct answer like some sort of incredibly boring Rube Goldberg machine. I’ve tried my very hardest, but I can’t reproduce these results on my own; from a scientific perspective, as far as I’m concerned math is a mere theory.* It just doesn’t make sense to me. Take Algebra for instance: A + B = C – it’s all well and good until you remember that you can’t add letters! Don’t try to argue, I’m the expert here (I was almost an English major). You can just as soon add one letter to another as you can add North Dakota to cheese. I just don’t see the point in adopting a form of study based around the teachings of a civilization that ceremonially ripped the brains out of their dead by way of the nose.

*If every school system in the South has decided that Evolution, something I believe in, is a mere theory, then I can do the same about math, something everyone else believes in.

This will no doubt come across as blasphemy to math majors, economists, and the entire student body at MIT. I’m sorry it had to be this way, but math kind of brought this on itself, after all. I’m sure that you can provide plenty of evidence indicating that math does, in fact, exist, and perhaps even provide evidence indicating that science fiction or marching bands do not exist. However, like most theological debates, that would do little more than entrench us deeper in our respective beliefs. As I see it, it takes a remarkable amount of faith to believe that numbers fuse together and split apart in the creation of new numbers – likewise, it takes a lot of faith (and ego) to spontaneously adopt the notion that a quarter of all educational curriculum is hocus pocus while the monetary doings of our country are witchcraft.

You have your cockeyed beliefs, and I have mine. Let’s stop quibbling about math and agree that chemistry is an outright joke.

Truman Capps wants all his potential employers to know that 10th grade was the only time he ever cheated on a test. Seriously.

Mother's Day

The only picture I could find where Mom and I both had our eyes open at the same time.

In light of last week’s update, I’d just like to clear the air about my mother. Now, you may have got the impression from her red wine fueled faux-pas that she, while inebriated, is simply a ticking time bomb of sensitive information about me. This is most certainly true; however, Mom is almost never drunk, so she’s only really embarrassed me maybe five times in my entire life. This is no doubt a great disappointment to her, as both she and Dad have made it clear almost every day that they want nothing more than to embarrass the bejeezus out of me as much as possible. As they see it, half the reason to have kids in the first place is to embarrass them in front of their friends. And so, on this Mother’s Day, I’d like to say this much, Mom: You may not embarrass me very often, but when you do, you do it so damn well.

“Oh, no, Truman’s a cop out,” you’re saying. “He’s writing about his mother on Mother’s Day – boo, hiss! Write about alcohol and sex again, we like it when you do that!” Here’s the thing: My mother is arguably the main reason my blog is funny. For one thing, if not for my mother I wouldn’t have been born, and blogs that don’t exist are generally not only tough to read but also rather dry in terms of content. But what I think is really important – yes, even more important than being born in the first place – is that my Mom happens to be one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. Example: My mother can do an impression of Ethel Merman singing “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane. Can your mom do that?* No, she can’t, and that’s why I have a blog and you’re reading it.

*Before this even starts, I’m not insulting your mother, I’m just letting you know that her Ethel Merman impression doesn’t hold a candle to my mother’s. I’m sure your mother is a very nice lady, and she’s probably much better than my mother at math or bow hunting or some crap like that.

A lot of people I’ve talked to have asked me how my Mom happened to know that I was spending most of my time in college trying to get laid. It’s quite simple, really – I was talking with my parents on iChat and Mom said, “So, what have you been up to?” And I said, “Oh, the usual, just trying to get laid.” And then Dad started laughing and Mom squawked and threw a napkin over her face, as she usually does when I manage to turn the tables and embarrass her. Why would I say something like this to my own mother? Honestly, I don’t even know. This is clearly not a thing that normal people do. Abraham Lincoln did not discuss his sex life with his mother – just another reason that he won the Civil War and I’m still struggling with Guitar Hero.

For some reason, taboo subjects have always been a comfortable topic for family discussion. At breakfast one morning in high school, I referred to our principal as a “tool”. My Mom and Dad, uncertain of what the term meant, looked at one another, and then my Mom said, over our toast and orange juice, “What, you mean like a dildo?” Once, while out driving somewhere with Mom, I noticed an Adult Shop right next door to a Jack In The Box. “Huh.” I said. “Mo’ like jack off in the box!” And we laughed! Oh, how we laughed! Of Thomas Kinkaid, self proclaimed ‘Painter of Light’, Mom once said, “You’d need a Painter of Light when your head is stuffed that far up your ass.” I can’t remember the last time Mom told me to watch my language, or grounded me for making crude jokes at dinner. On the rare occasions that I’ve had a girlfriend over at the house, Mom quickly gives up on her mission to embarrass me and will instead become sweet and witty before quickly absenting herself in order to create as much ‘alone time’ as possible. Furthermore, whenever she reenters the room she makes a point of clearing her throat loudly before coming in, as a sort of warning. It’s always worked as intended, but there have been a few close calls.

Now, of course, all of this sounds like the sort of thing that a responsible mother wouldn’t do. I mean, talking about dildos? Simply giving her son the opportunity to make out without even forcing him to sneak around first? On TV there was always the kid with the “cool” mother who lets him get away with all kinds of stuff, but then there’s always that really melodramatic episode where it turns out that there’s something messed up in the family, like somebody cheating on somebody else or maybe the kid’s brother is a robot, that explains why the kid is getting such a responsibility free upbringing. There’s the prominent opinion in our society that in order to be a good mother, you can’t also be a good friend.

I’ve got to say, I disagree with all that. My Mom treated me as an equal for most all of my upbringing. I was never hounded about grades, homework, or keeping up with the trumpet – I just sort of did it on my own, with my parents’ help when I needed it. I did these things on my own because from an early age my parents made it clear to me that they’d be proud of me no matter what I did, even if I became a gas station attendant or, worse yet, a blogger. Because they didn’t pressure me I felt like I was achieving for myself as opposed to them, which was why, in sixth grade, I did my homework instead of simply taking the easy way out by killing my worthless hack of a science teacher. I’m not discounting any other method of parenting, I’m just saying that I think I turned out alright myself, having spent my adolescence swapping dirty jokes with my mother. I don’t consider myself entitled to anything (except unconditional love from everyone I meet, and also an Xbox 360), and so far I haven’t murdered any of my friends for drug money – although I’m not below selling their possessions on eBay.

So, yes, I love you Mom. I know you hate Mother’s Day because you think it’s a cheap excuse for Hallmark to make money, but since you didn’t bat an eye when I elected to stay in Eugene to see Barack Obama instead of coming home to see you, I owe you at least this much. You’re sweet and intelligent and hilarious, and nobody makes fun of Republicans quite like you do, and you’re a fabulous cook, and you always say nice things about my blogs even when they’re not that funny and we both know it, and when I was sick last year you sat there with me while I threw up which is a truly nasty job but even a year later I still can’t tell you how much I appreciate it, and I promise that when I finally do bring a girl home she won’t have any visible tattoos or extraneous body piercings. Happy Mother’s Day.

Truman Capps will feel sincerely awkward if anybody starts crying after reading this, especially if they’re not his mother.

Treatises on Alcohol

He's doing this because girls are watching, so maybe I DO have a little Captain in me...

I believe I’m a closet Mormon. I sometimes go door to door trying to convince people how awesome I am*, I don’t smoke, and up until recently I didn’t drink, either. I know what you’re saying: I’m wasting the precious four years in which I can get absolutely shitfaced every night and not be an alcoholic for it. I’m well aware that I’m squandering my youth by opting not to spend most of my evenings with my head in a toilet, because people often tell me this between games of beer pong or while sponging their own vomit off the bathroom floor. I’m just not quite willing to dive into drinking yet, and since I’ve got a whole lot of blog left to write, I’ll share my reasons with you.

*I’ve got a lot of readers from Utah – particularly you, Allie – and I just want to let you know that I’m not making fun of the Mormons with that comment, I’m making fun of organized religion’s penchant for pimping itself out to complete strangers. I mean, hey, at least the Mormons don’t kill thousands of people when they go on mission trips – I’m looking at you, Catholicism!

For one thing, I aspire to be a writer, and if not for alcohol there would be literally hundreds more writers on Earth, traveling in majestic herds and foraging throughout the Upper East Side for cheap coffee. By not acquiring a taste for alcohol, I already figure I’m dodging a bullet that hit the likes of Poe, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Joyce, Melville, Crane, Roethke, O. Henry, Lowell, Steinbeck, and so on – there’s so many alcohol bullets flying around in the writing community that that you’d think God had a Tommy Gun.

Furthermore, I hate throwing up. I probably hate throwing up a lot more than you do, in fact, that’s how much I hate it. Like, how much you hate throwing up times infinity, and then you’ll be close to knowing how much I hate it. Leading my normal, healthy lifestyle I scarcely ever do throw up, and I don’t see why I should increase my risks by drinking. Now, I’ve got friends who drink that claim they’ve never thrown up despite countless tequila binges and games of beer pong. I’ve also got a friend who blacked out and spent 45 minutes crying and vomiting all over the bathroom during a concert at the student union and only escaped a citation through the guile of her sober friends. I don’t know why, but somehow the bad stories always stick out in my mind even more, particularly when vomit is involved.

However, the primary reason I don’t drink is my mother. You see, last weekend, my parents went to a wine tasting party put on by the manager of their condominium for all the residents. Now, as time went by, my mother tasted a little too much wine, and then she wound up talking about me to a large group of our neighbors. “How’s your son doing at U of O?” Someone asked, to which my mother offhandedly replied, “Oh, he’s doing fine… He just wishes he could get laid.” This reportedly brought on the granddaddy of all awkward silences. See, thanks to alcohol my own mother said this, knowingly, to a group of people who I’ll be seeing on a regular basis all summer.

Yeah, that’s right, Mom, you embarrass me in front of the neighbors, I’ll embarrass you in front of the Internet. Now everybody knows what you did! It’s on! Happy Mother’s Day.

All these perfectly logical reasons not to drink aside, I did indeed take my first shot of alcohol this past Thursday. “But Truman!” You, the highly offended casual drinker shout. “If you’re so opposed to drinking, why did you do it?” The answer is quite simple: Someone offered me a shot of Malibu rum while girls were watching. Had girls not been watching, I probably would have said, “No thanks.” It’s a little known fact, but nearly everything men have ever done, including jousting and the Spanish American War, happened because girls were watching. If girls weren’t watching, men wouldn’t be perceived as ignorant, macho lugheads, but would instead selflessly dedicate themselves to the creation of art. Writers selflessly dedicate themselves to art regardless because they know that they can’t do anything to impress girls anyway, and the reason so many writers become alcoholics is because they start drinking in a vain and desperate attempt to impress the girls who are watching.

The experience itself wasn’t really an eye opener. The shot (which smelled like Herbal Essences Mango Orgasm shampoo) made my mouth numb, and my first words after swallowing were (direct quote), “Urgh. Blarg!” My friends quickly passed me a chaser, which happened to be one of the girls’ bottle of pink lemonade, to help me wash down the fruity mango rum, officially making this the gayest first drink in history.** It wasn’t all bad, though, because shortly thereafter my esophagus got pleasantly warm for a few minutes. That was the extent of the experience for me – I didn’t have any more to drink, I didn’t throw up, and the girls weren’t impressed enough to have sex with me. You hear that, Mom? You want to let the neighbors know? I can call grandma right now, if you want.

**Unless you had your first drink while having gay sex, which would be considerably gayer than my first drink.

It’s becoming clearer to me that college binge drinking just might not be my thing, along with anime and swing choir. It works for other people, and I’m glad they can have a good time, and despite my highfalootin’ language I don’t look down on them, but it’s just not my scene. I don’t like the taste of alcohol, and even though I hear it’s not all about the taste, I don’t see the percentage in putting stuff in my mouth if I don’t like it that’s what she said. And yeah, maybe being drunk is fun. In fact, I’m just as curious as you are about what I’d be like while drunk. The thing is, I’m also frightened by what Drunk Truman could be like. A lot of my friends already consider me to be an outrageously vulgar and irreverent person, and alcohol would take away the precious few inhibitions I have left. Maybe Drunk Truman thinks he can sing and dance. Maybe Drunk Truman will ramble on for hours about his novel. Maybe Drunk Truman will kill a hobo. And sure, all of this sounds like fun and games to you, but in the morning, Drunk Truman is just going to be Mortally Embarrassed Truman, or possibly Fugitive From Justice Truman, neither of whom can dance.

Truman Capps has no problems with gay people, and only said that his first drinking experience was “gay” because the simple fact is that mangos and pink stuff are really, really, really gay.

Bowling

If it were more like this, there would be no blog tonight.

There’s a popular song that the kids love these days. Perhaps you’ve heard of it; it’s called “Crank That (Soulja Boy)”, and rather than being about the act of cranking things or soulja boys themselves, it deals with prevalent social issues of the day – namely masturbating all over your lover. It seems there’s a whole dance that goes along with this song, and if you’re stupid I’m sure you’re doing it right now. Up until last night, I had never heard “Soulja Boy” in its entirety – I avoided listening to it for the same reason most people avoid bludgeoning themselves in the head with a sock full of batteries. However, last night I went bowling, and oh, I heard Soulja Boy.

Fun fact: Bowling was originally a family friendly activity. In the 1960s, bowling alleys sprung up all across the country so happy parents and children could go fling heavy pieces of plastic at carefully arranged pins, all in a safe and nurturing environment rife with cigarette smoke and beer. However, somewhere in the early 1990s, bowling alley owners took a look at the wholesome environment they’d created and said a collective, “That shit’s for fags, yo!”

Bowling alleys today have taken all the worst elements of nightclubs and combined them with the sport that has the most inherent chance of disaster (Exhibit A, There Will Be Blood). Your average bowling alley is now an affront to the senses – blacklights making every stain on your clothes glow, laser light shows dancing every which way, and alcohol – while still being a place where people chuck 15 pound bludgeons around. I’m honestly shocked that more people haven’t died in bowling alley related incidents. Big crowds of people, most of them intoxicated, everybody’s wearing smooth soled shoes (not to mention that there’s grease everywhere) – one bowling ball goes the wrong way and it’s like throwing bowling balls at fish in a barrel.

I bowled a lot in high school, thanks mainly to the enthusiasm of my friend Alexander, who once cut his arm open on barbed wire and didn’t notice for 20 minutes. Whenever we got tired of shooting Diet Coke cans with an air rifle, Alexander would suggest that we go bowling, and every time I’d say yes because I sort of expected to get good at it after spending so much money and time. In Salem, our combination rave/bowling alley was hidden behind a hive of low rent apartments in the sketchiest part of town, isolated in a gigantic and poorly lit parking lot that practically screams “My internal organs, if harvested and sold, will fund your meth habit for weeks.” Once inside, standard bowling alley rules applied. It was in Salem’s bowling alley that I heard “Get Low” for the first time, another highly socially conscious rap song that extols the virtues of masturbating all over your lover.

What was the case back home, and what is still the case now, is that I’m just a really horrible bowler. My top score last night was 72, a disappointment not just because it’s an abysmal failure compared to even a mediocre bowler but also, on a personal level, because I overshot my dream score of 69 by just three points. Alexander was pretty good at bowling (in addition to tracking, stick-based combat, and animal handling – the 21st century Huckleberry Finn to my Tom Sawyer, if you will) and would offer me advice on my game ranging from “Try not pulling your arm to the left so much on the follow through” to “Try not being so god damn ugly”. None of it worked, though, and inevitably my ball would wind up drifting across the lane and into the gutter. I could’ve saved everybody a lot of time if I’d just put the ball in the gutter to begin with and kicked it, or, better yet, stayed at home and made a ham sandwich, because that way I’d still have $10, plus a ham sandwich.

I don’t know why bowling is so expensive. Sure, it probably costs tens of thousands of dollars to keep a bowling alley in pristine condition, but every bowling alley I’ve been to has made a point of not doing that. The money doesn’t go to purchase of decent food, or paying the platoon of heavily tattooed carnies who diligently and drunkily go about the business of keeping the alley (barely) running, like a monastic order with no concept of shampoo. I can only expect that maybe all bowling alleys in this fine country of ours are run by Halliburton, and the $10 I spent to bowl last night will, in the long run, go to the purchase of Dick Cheney’s next glass of puppy blood.

Of course, I guess bowling isn’t so much about winning, or eating decent food, or not touching things so coated in grease that you can’t even grip a doorknob afterwards. Bowling, on the casual level, is really just an excuse to hang out with your friends. Although I think it’d be a lot easier to hang out with my friends if I was able to hear what they were saying over the sound of masturbationally conscious rap artists, or see them without being blinded by errant laser beams. As it is right now, bowling, with its drunk horny people and its loud music, is more or less a school dance, and as social interaction goes a school dance is barely a cut above butt sniffing or reading my blog.

I’d prefer it if bowling could decide what it wanted to be – a wholesome and friendly activity or a good place to get Hepatitis. As a child, I’d go bowling on my friends’ birthdays, and the experience was generally more fun. Inflatable bumpers ensured that I always hit at least one pin, Soulja Boy had not yet been written, and I was too young to understand any of the “ball grabbing” jokes my parents were making.

Truman Capps is still eager to find a sport he’s good at – just not eager enough to actually start playing sports.