DC, Part 1

There’s not much else to be said about Chicago, really – which, I suppose, sounds like a cheap shot, even though I don’t mean it that way. We only spent a couple days there and only did a few things that, while interesting and culturally edifying, aren’t especially funny. For example, we took a bus tour of the city in which we saw, among other things, Barack Obama’s house…

There goes the neighborhood.

…but by far the comedy highlight of the blog was this Segway tour group we bumped into.

Doctors agree that riding a Segway is so nerdy that it actually can actually turn you back into a virgin.

We spent a week in Washington DC, though, and saw things that had both cultural and comedic value. So, really, what am I waiting for?

We got to Washington DC by way of the Baltimore airport. Having seen The Wire, I recognized the danger I had put myself in by being in Baltimore and as such walked through the airport as quickly as possible without touching anything.

Everyone in this picture is on crack. That is because this picture was taken in Baltimore.

There was no particularly cost effective way to get from Baltimore to Washington short of a cab, so Dad dropped a few extra bucks to get us a Lincoln Towncar which, all told, was far more luxurious than the airplane for a fraction of the price. Don’t believe me?

Yeah, that’s right: Complimentary magazine about fine wine. It’s so hoity-toity that I’d never heard of it, and I’m majoring in magazine journalism.

The only thing that took away from my enjoyment of the ride was our driver, Bill, who was clearly a troll of some sort because he could only communicate his conspiracy theories about the National Security Agency and the unconstitutionality of traffic surveillance cameras through a series of abrupt grunts and phlegmy coughs. Or maybe that’s just a Baltimore thing.*

*My godmother is from Baltimore and will probably take exception to all the stuff that I’ve said about her hometown, so I’ll take this opportunity to point out that Baltimore has a pro football team, which is far more than I can say for Portland. However, they’ve also had multiple pro soccer teams, so don’t get cocky.

After 40 minutes or so, Bill exited the highway and cordially grunted that we were now entering Washington D.C.

It did not make a stellar first impression.

Washington DC is markedly different from other American cities because one gets the impression that the people who laid it out were actually thinking about what they were doing. Most cities – notably Los Angeles – feel like the people building them had maybe two good ideas regarding urban planning which they halfheartedly implemented before saying, “Fuck it” and just letting fate take over.

DC, on the other hand, is all low-rise buildings, wide boulevards, and traffic circles. I don’t know what that does for congestion, but it does mean you get some pretty cool line of sight stuff.

Like this. This is cool.

All the important museums, monuments, and government buildings are located along the National Mall, and from each one you’ve inexplicably got a direct line of sight to another big, famous, picturesque thing, even if it seems geographically impossible.

A front view of the White House, from near our hotel…

…And a front view of the White House, from a completely different position.

At first, I assumed that instead of Washington DC we were in some sort of Inception theme park, but after a few days I realized that a lot of these grandiose buildings look pretty similar from either the front or the back – presumably because a huge tree-lined boulevard leading up to a back porch, some garbage cans, and a screen door wouldn’t have quite the same effect as all those columns and shit.

But, see, they planned it that way from the start. Street layout, architecture, monuments… They figured out the best places for everything to be so that everywhere you looked, you’d see something impressive. If I’d been in charge of designing Washington DC, I would not have thought of that. I’d probably just try to build the entire city in the shape of a wang or something.

Some elements of my philosophy were clearly at work here.

Much has also been made of Washington DC’s high crime rate, and I had the impression that our time in the capitol would be spent scampering from museum to monument in a hail of bullets.* But I didn’t once feel threatened anywhere downtown or in the vicinity of the National Mall, and this is coming from the guy who felt so threatened by the mouse in his house that he taped cardboard to the bottom of his door to keep it out.

*For the record, the only cool way to scamper is in a hail of bullets. Just in case you were planning on doing any scampering in the near future.

The reason for this safety is that virtually everyone wearing a uniform in downtown DC is carrying a gun. There’s the Secret Service, the United States Park Police, United States Capitol Police, Bureau of Engraving and Printing Police, DC Metro Police, and the security guards at the Smithsonian museums, every last one of whom is armed.

That’s just our nation’s capitol putting our best foot forward, I guess. As if to say, ‘America is a beautiful, well laid out place, and watch your step, asshole, because we’ve all got guns.’

Truman Capps will actually continue to talk about Washington DC in his next blog update, and when he does he won’t gush about city planning or law enforcement.

Truman's Chicago Adventure

Save Ferris!

My knowledge of Chicago prior to this trip was limited to the film Chicago, which I saw in theaters with my parents when I was 12, and a few John Hughes movies. The good news is that nobody burst into song and dance routines about murder; the bad news is that I didn’t spend my time in the Windy City tearassing around unsupervised in a sports car with my hot girlfriend of indeterminate ethnicity, either. Mixed bag, there.

Hispanic? Italian? Mia Sara - a foxy mystery for the ages.

Chicago is a very dark city, even during the daytime. It’s a city with a lot of tall buildings – really obnoxiously tall, all lined up next to each other, like the city is trying to compensate for being so far away from an ocean by extending as far as possible into the sky. The result of this is that you only get direct sunlight downtown for maybe half an hour a day, when the sun is directly overhead. Add into that the fact that the city’s most prominent form of public transportation is a railroad built over, as opposed to under, the streets, and you start to get the impression that Chicagoans just really have some sort of dispute with the sun.

I had to use a flash for this picture.

They also seem to be really angry at their hearts, arteries, and colons, because I would say that there are more steakhouses in Chicago than there are Starbucks in Portland, and all of them are doing a robust business. On my first night in town I had a ribeye steak so huge that I still feel full, and yet on every corner there was yet another similarly classy establishment offering a similarly huge chunk of beef to anybody with $45 burning a hole in his pocket. I think the city’s official motto is ‘Oh Jesus I’ve got the meat sweats and I haven’t pooped since Thursday.’

Essentially, Chicago is a city built on the concept of sitting in the shadows and eating red meat. Needless to say, it’s my kind of town.

I didn't get a picture of the steak, but I did get a picture of what is without question the finest pizza I have ever consumed.

On our first full day in Chicago, we went to the Chicago Art Institute to see their collection – some of the more famous stuff in particular, such as American Gothic, or Nighthawks, my favorite painting, by my favorite artist, Edward Hopper.

Before Mad Men, people just looked at this painting to see classy people being sad.


Edward Hopper, fresh from getting drunk and beating his wife, enjoys a cigarette before painting Nighthawks.

Yeah, that’s right, I’ve got a favorite painting and artist. Doesn’t everyone? Oh, you don’t? Hm. How quaint. Well, keep this in mind next time you want to criticize me for drinking at Taylor’s, you cretins.

We spent the evening at a taping of Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me, the NPR news quiz, before going to bed early so we could get up in time for our tour of the old Chicago Public Library building the next day. It was really fascinating to-

Jesus Christ, this was my last fucking spring break and I went to an art museum, a public radio taping, and then toured a fucking library? Holy shit, Peter Parker* is officially cooler than I am! I had friends getting drunk in Hawaii while my parents and I were in a theater cracking up as Paula Poundstone interviewed Judy Collins. Is anybody still listening, or have you all dozed off already?

*Pre-radioactive spider bite, of course. Post bite he’s a really bland nerdy guy who moonlights as Spider-Man, and being Spider-Man half the time is still way cooler than whatever I am 24/7.

Well, at some point we went up the Sears Tower! That’s cool, right? Tall buildings?

Is that the tallest building in America, or are you just happy to see me?

Actually, it was one of the low points of our time in Chicago. To go up 108 stories to the observation deck we had to pay $51 for our tickets. Yes, tickets. They’re selling tickets to ride in an elevator and look out a window. I would understand this business model if we were Amish or something, but I ride in elevators a lot. It’s not Avatar or anything, folks.

Of course, I can criticize it all I want, but still, there we were in a long line winding through the visitor’s center of Sears Tower, sandwiched in between a big fat Minnesotan family with no less than two screaming infants and a group of rowdy Middle Eastern students whose interests included jostling into us and speaking Farsi very loudly and then laughing in my ear.

The elevators they sent us up in were large freight-style models that would’ve been quite spacious if not for the fact that the surly tour guides shoehorned us in there as tightly as humanly possible. When we were at the head of the line and the doors opened, we were all but shoved into the elevator until everyone was either pressed face first against the wall or face first into some overweight German tourist’s flabby, sweaty backside.

There I was, sandwiched in between my mother and some Sarah Palin sounding housewife from Duluth, when the tour guide peeped in at the sardine-style conditions and yelled over her shoulder, “We’ve got room for three more!”

The entire elevator groaned. “No!” Dad yelled. “We don’t have room for three more!”

The tour guide shoved three of the Middle Eastern students into the elevator and sighed. “It’s only a 60 second ride.” She said, her exasperated tone suggesting that we were being major pussies about this whole thing.

When, 60 seconds later, we reached the top and were able to quit breathing the body odor of several other nationalities*, we found ourselves on the observation deck – a floor with glass walls allowing a fairly impressive 360 degree panorama of the city.

$51, and they don't even clean the window. JERKS.

*This wasn’t all bad, because one of the guys on our elevator was Johnny Depp. He just was. My parents insist it was just a guy wearing a trendy jacket, shades, and fedora, but take one look at this discreet picture I took in the reflection off the doors and tell me I’m wrong:

"We can't stop here! This is... Bat Country!"

And yeah, it was great to get up above all the shade and darkness and into the light and look down at all that urban sprawl we’d ascended out of, but then we saw an intimidating line extending all the way around the corner of the observation deck.

“What’s that for?” I asked a guide, gesturing to the line.

“The line for the elevator back down.” He grunted.

“Oh.” I muttered, watching three more grotesquely obese people join the line. “Well… I guess we should probably jump back in line, then, before it gets much longer.”

So, after another 20 minutes in line, they crammed us back into the elevator for the return trip. I had been shoved up so close to the wall that I could see my breath condensating on it when I heard the tour guide yell, “We’ve got room for three more!”

“We don’t!” I yelled. “It’s not possible! We’d have to take turns breathing!”

“It’s only 60 seconds, folks.” The tour guide grunted, shoving three terrified looking Japanese tourists in and shutting the doors.

Try this: Go up to somebody and ask them if they want to head on down to the city morgue and have sex with one of the corpses. When they (hopefully) refuse, point out that they’ll only have to do it for exactly 60 seconds. Chances are, they’re still not going to want to do it, because their qualm isn’t with the duration of the unpleasant task, but the task that they have to do it in the first place.

This seems like fairly simple logic to me. However, they clearly don’t hire the brightest bulbs to work in the visitor’s center at Sears Tower. I bet they don’t even have favorite paintings, let alone artists.

That being said, they DO have the ability to eat falafel sandwiches at Subway, which, as this picture confirms, are real things that exist in this world.

Truman Capps will be back soon with more tales of vague Midwestern interest.

Guest Update: Matt Takimoto

This final update comes to us from Matt Takimoto. He is Asian.

The State of the Union (Between My Ass and the Couch)

On February 28th, 1983, 121.6 million people watched the final episode of M*A*S*H. Was it the culmination of one of the great TV series in history? Yes. Was it the only thing on? Possibly. But mostly, it was because this was the only opportunity to watch it. If you missed it, that was it. 121.6 million people cried when Hawkeye’s chopper took off, and you get left out of every barroom conversation for twelve years until the Hallmark Channel picked up syndication rights. Fast forward to 2010, and the series finale of Lost. Arguably the most talked about show in history, the finale only garnered 13.5 million viewers, making it the 55th most watched finale, far behind such works of television genius like Magnum P.I and Family Ties. Fast forward to ten days ago. Ten days ago, I had watched exactly zero episodes of 30 Rock. Thanks to the magic of Netflix Instant Watch, Hulu Plus, I have now watched every episode of 30 Rock. And because, frankly, it’s ridiculous to watch a TV show on something other than a TV, my Playstation 3 puts the Internet on my television. My question: is this world we live in a better place?

The answer is, well duh. If I want something, whether it’s a pepperoni pizza, tickets to see Kid ‘n Play, or a $1000/hour escort, I can do it from the comfort of my own home, and without talking to another human being. All I need is one of those Jetsons robots that dresses and bathes you, and I will have to literally do no work to enjoy myself. The modern era of entertainment is like that $1000/hour escort I mentioned previously: fast, easy, and commitment-free. Twenty years ago, if I wanted to watch The Big Bang Theory, my options were either pick up the show from the next new episode, and somehow try and piece together earlier episodes through re-runs and word of mouth, or just come to grips with the fact that I missed out. Now, I could watch the whole series in the next 72 hours if I wanted to, or I could spend ten minutes on the Internet and catch myself up on everything that has happened in the past three years. God bless America.

Where do we go from here? A step further. Let’s throw out any semblance of a regular TV schedule, except for the first time a show is available for me to watch at my leisure. Every single thing that shows up on television should be immediately available on demand, because I’m too goddamn hip to watch a TV show at the same time as other people. I want to watch it at 2:15 AM in the midst of my mid-week ascetic shut-in because my cutoff sweatpants are too cumbersome to take on and off multiple times a day. This is America, all I want are the liberties the Founding Fathers fought to afford me. Yes, that’s right. George Washington crossed the Delaware River so ordinary Americans like myself can be two steps away from Real Housewives of Orange County at all times. Freedom isn’t free, but as long as you set up automatic bill pay, it’ll feel free.

Guest Update: Brent Jones

I'm in Washington D.C., and I don't even want to TELL you how late I stayed up waiting for guest contributor Brent Jones to email me his update, which he never did. So Brent, just know that while you did take more English classes than I did in high school, I can adhere to a deadline. Or, since I update biweekly, 104 deadlines per year. But hey, great job totally fucking up on doing the one thing you explicitly begged me to let you do.

Sorry, folks. I'll never go on vacation again, I promise. Tune in on Wednesday for an update from an Asian guy I know.

Truman Capps thinks finding guest writers is like finding a babysitter - you have to be really careful not to pick someone who'll drop the baby on its head. THANKS, BRENT.

Guest Update: Cameron Shultz

I'm in Chicago, and I'm about to go eat at a steakhouse so good they list it in those magazines they put on airplanes. Also, they have something called a Garbage Salad on the menu for $19, which leads me to believe that either the word 'garbage' has a different connotation in Illinois or every joke I ever made about the Midwest is completely true.

While I do that, enjoy this blog update from guest writer Cameron Shultz about the one time that he went to a major city or something like that. I'm just hitting CTRL + V. I literally have no idea what this is.

A Night in Gotham

The red markers around the club I visited indicate some of New York’s finest mugging locations.

This past summer I spent a week in New York City with my cousin, Kelley, and her niece, Fay. Aside from walking around Manhattan and eating stacks of pizza, I tried my best to extract that real New York experience from my trip. Something that was special--really worth remembering. Luckily for me, about two-thirds of the way in, I found it.

We started the day late. Kelley was helping me find stuff to do on my own once she left for work, so we checked out some events on-line and she saw something that looked pretty interesting. There was a comedy contest at the Gotham Comedy Club where local journalists try their hand at stand-up and compete for the title of New York's funniest reporter. It wasn't free and the only way in was to be on the guest list. Kelley dialed the number on the site and spoke to a man named Ryan, who initially wasn't very helpful, but once Kelley mentioned that she was a CBS radio producer and that I was a visiting journalism student, he perked up, and said he would try to get me on the list and to text his email so that he could get back to us. The show started at six and it was already past three, so chances were pretty low there'd be room for me. The address he gave us was ryan@goldmanmccormick.com, and Kelley told me later that he’d said I should ask for Mr. Goldman at the door, even if he wasn't able to add my name to the list. We ate lunch and then I went with Fay to Times Square to buy a two-day pass that would allow me free entry to several well known locations around Manhattan, which I would use another day.

After purchasing the pass from Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, Fay and I caught the subway down to 23rd street. It was about ten to six, so we were right on time. Opening the door to Gotham we saw a long, dimly lit hallway bisected by a red velvet-covered chain rail. To the left was the host, and to the right was his beady-eyed bouncer. I gulped hard and proceeded forward.

"Good evening," the host said with a smile.

"Hi," I replied. "My name's Cameron Shultz. I think I might be on the guest list."

He flipped through the guest book a few times, and then frowned.

"No, I'm actually not seeing you."

Shit!

"Okay well, is, uh…Ryan Goldman around? Is there any way I could talk to him?"

The host stopped scribbling and looked at me, then at Fay, then turned and glanced back into the club. He flipped the pages of the guest book a few more times and said, "I'm just going to write you guys in."

I didn't respond, and instead stood there stupidly with my brow wrinkled, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. The host X’d out a table on his lectern and handed us a card with the number thirteen written on it. He smiled. "Enjoy the show, guys," he said.

Apparently I started walking into the club, and I think said something like "Thank you," as I passed. I’m not positive, though, as I was still dumbfounded by what had just happened. A waitress met us at the door and I handed her the card with the same trepidation one might have if they were using a fake ID for the first time. "Hi, welcome!" she chirped. "Let me show you to your seat."

Gotham Comedy Club is cramped, dark and shaped like a half-circle with chairs and tables arcing in rows along the back, then forming even rows that lead all the way up to the stage. The waitress led us into the club and over to a table for four directly in front and to the left of the stage. She handed us cocktail menus and asked us what we'd like to drink. It had been explained to me earlier that this venue had a two-drink minimum, so I ordered two Sierra Madras’s (…I know, I know) while Fay ordered a margarita. I couldn't stop fidgeting from the excitement. No one asked for our IDs; we were surrounded by 30 and 40-somethings wearing expensive clothes; it was all in a fucking New York City comedy club at six in the evening; and the comedians were all journalists!

As waited for the show to begin, I snatched up one of the programs from the table and pointed out to Fay that the show was being presented by Goldman McCormick Public Relations.

"Wow," I said, "it must mean that this Ryan Goldman guy is a bigger deal than we'd thought. He isn't just some event organizer—he’s got his own company!"

Pleased with myself for getting past the host and security without paying a cover fee or having my name on the guest list just because I'd asked for the right guy at the right time, I sipped my drink and skimmed through the rest of the program. It was full of the usual acknowledgements and ads, along with profiles of the each of the reporters performing that night and in the back it had a picture of professional comedian Franklyn Ajaye, who was the guest comic for the evening. Then I read the very last page, and nearly hit the ceiling.

It was a brief bio of the two executive producers of the show. A Mister Goldman and a Mister McCormick. Mr. MarkMcCormick of Goldman McCormick Public Relations. I had asked to speak with someone who didn’t even exist, and yet here we were. This sent Fay and I into private peals of laughter. We couldn’t believe it. Goldman and Mr. Ryan

It was around this time that the show started. The Emcee got everyone warmed up before the six reporters came on one at a time to perform their routines. Most of them were actually pretty funny for *cough* journalism folk *cough*. A few of them were downright ridiculous. One female scene reporter with heavy makeup and a squatty dog in her purse rambled for fifteen minutes trying to tell an incomprehensible story about an ex-boyfriend. But since she was drunk, she couldn’t stop snort-laughing and eventually the Emcee saved the show by running her off the stage. Isn’t she great, folks? I wrote down the punch lines to a few of the jokes I heard and will try to recreate them to the best of my ability for you:

"When an attractive older woman likes younger guys she's a Cougar. And that's great. Unfortunately the reversal of that isn't. No, it isn't at all. Attractive older woman who likes guys is a called a Cougar...An older man who likes young girls is what we call a pedophile, folks."

"When you see a group of ladies out together you know they're going to have a good time. There's that whole lookin' out for your sister mentality that women have when they go out together. Guys—they don't have that. You see a group of guys out together and you know they won't be having as good a time as the ladies. Ever have that awkward moment where you're walking with your buddies and one of you accidentally brushes the hand of another? ‘Did you just try to hold my hand, you fucking homo?’ Guys don't touch each other. Girls do. You ever wonder why girls always look so much better than guys? It's because they help one another out. When they're getting ready, you know, fixing each other's breasts, tightening this up here or whatever. Yeah, guys don't dress one another. You don't see a bro squat down and say to another bro, 'Hey, Jimmy, your left one's a hangin' a bit low today, buddy. Hold still and I'll stuff it back up there for ya.'"

"I don't like soccer. You know why? Because it gives third-world countries something to feel good about since, apparently, the U.S. sucks at soccer. Oh, you can score a goal from half-field? I have indoor plumbing; I feel like a winner every time I turn the water on. What's that? Your country's won two World Cups? Well ours won two world wars."

"This economy, man, this economy is in real bad shape. I know. I been around a while and I've got my own economic downturn indicators, and we're in some time tough times. You know how I know? Saw an Asian homeless man for the first time on the street the other day. I was like 'Oh, shit, we must be in some real big trouble.' He had a sign and everything…It was the most neatly organized sign I'd ever seen. Said: Will do science and math for food. And people weren't giving him money or nothin', they were just yellin' out complicated equations at him all day long. He's raising the curve for homeless people! They're probably like 'Fuck, I used to just be able to wash windows...Now I got to explain the theory of relativity, too."

"Met a woman on the plane the other day. Nice-looking woman, so I decided to ask her, 'What social groups do you interact with in your life?' And she said, 'Well I have personal relationship with God and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.' I realized at that point that I wasn't in the mood for that shit. So I said to her 'Girl, He’s seein' other people, you know. Has been for a long time.' Well that pissed her off. Told me I was going straight to Hell and everything unless I accepted Christ into my life. Even when I asked her if I was a good person – if I'm kind to others - she said no. So I'm down there with Hitler, and Stalin and Khan and all those evil, barbaric motherfuckers since the beginning of time? And I could just picture it. Going down there to Hell's orientation and getting to meet the Hell assembly. You know, Ted Bundy, Hitler, Jeffrey Dahmer, and having the ringleader say: 'Adolf, why don't you tell everyone how you ended up here?'

'I was responsible for World-War Two and the killing of six million Jews before committing suicide.'

'Great. Thanks, Adolf. Jeffrey, why don't you share?'

'Well, I would fuck young boys and eat'em. And you see, it's never the other way around. I don't know about any of you crazy people out there trying to eat the boys and then fuck’em, but it doesn't work.'

'Well done, Jeffrey. Franklyn, please tell us what you did to get to Hell.'

I'd stand up and say: 'Oh, all I did was not accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior.' And you would hear the collective 'oooOOOh...' and whispers of 'Daaamn,' reverberate through each layer of Hell."

Cameron Shultz swears to this day that he was already intoxicated when he ordered those Madras’s.

Vacation (All I Ever Wanted)

Just a big, sweaty mob of bros. Delightful.

It should come as no surprise to you that I’m not a beach person. I’m completely out of my element on a beach. There’s nothing for me there.

I mean, volleyball, really? I can’t understand why I would play volleyball unless it was 2004 and my PE teacher was making me. There’s sand, which is nice enough to look at through a window or perhaps from a safe distance, but once you’re up close it’s just getting in places that it’ll need to get cleaned out of later, e.g. shoes, or crevasses you didn’t know your body had. There’s swimming, which can be fun, but the waves are a little too much for me to deal with. And what’s left after that? Well, I guess I could lounge around and read a book, but I could just as easily do the same thing in a hotel bar, where the seating is far more comfortable and nobody expects me to be partially naked in public.

Reasons like these are why I’ve never spent a spring break in Cancun or Fort Lauderdale – that and the fact that the only place less enticing for me to visit than crime ridden, wartorn Mexico is Florida.

No, as I mentioned last week, my parents and I are visiting Chicago and Washington D.C. Is it lame for a 22 year old to spend his last spring break visiting museums with his parents? Perhaps so. But I guarantee you I’d look far lamer on a beach surrounded by partying coeds.

Imagine it for a second. Have you got it? I’m frowning. Drinks at the beach bar are too expensive, and all the girls have tattoos and weird piercings. At least I’ll be enjoying myself in Chicago and D.C.

I’ve never been to Chicago before, but my knowledge of it comes mostly from John Hughes movies – particularly Planes, Trains, and Automobiles and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. In the former, Steve Martin’s goal for the whole movie is to get to Chicago, which makes sense once you’ve seen the latter, wherein Chicago is essentially a playground for Matthew Broderick and his friends. I mean, why wouldn’t everyone want to live in Chicago? It’s a city built on hijinx, with a random parade thrown in for good measure.

As for actual attractions in Chicago, I’m not really sure what we’re going to be doing, because I’ve been concentrating more on what we’ll be eating. Namely steak. Lots of steak. Many steaks. Chicago is also known for its deep-dish pizza, which, because pizza in and of itself is far too healthy, has been injected with enough cheese to make it as thick as a paperback novel, and its Italian beef sandwiches, which are basically roast beef sandwiches on hoagie rolls which have been soaked in the beef drippings.

I wonder, does the City of Chicago give a prize to the person who can die of congestive heart failure the fastest? If so, I’m totally going to be a contender. I don’t know if you heard, but I spent a weekend eating deep fried pizza in Scotland. I am ready for this.

After a few days testing the limits of what our digestive systems can handle in the Midwest, we’ll be boarding a plane and flying out to Washington D.C. We’ll be landing in Baltimore, and our first order of business will be to rent a car and get the hell out of Baltimore as quickly as possible with all the windows rolled up and the doors locked.

From there, it’s on to a week in Washington D.C., where we’re going to spend the week gorging ourselves on cultural edification in hopes of making up for gorging ourselves on red meat and cheese over the previous few days. Some of our planned destinations include:

The Newseum - See, it’s like a museum, but it’s all about journalism. Y’know, news, and stuff. Classic wordplay. As a journalism major, I imagine I’ll get a discount on admission; however, if they find out I used to work for the Oregon Daily Emerald they’ll probably charge me extra admission if they let me in at all, so nobody tell them, okay?

The White House - I’m still sort of surprised that they let tour groups in here. Not only is this the home of the most powerful man in the world, but it’s also his office. This is where America works and sleeps and they let tourists come in and poke around. All I’m saying is, this makes George Clooney look like a real jackass for not letting people tour his house – what, like he’s that busy? He can’t find time in his schedule? Because the President can.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial - Because nobody in my family died in Vietnam, I think it’d be best if I refrain from posing for that classic picture where the guy reaches out and touches the wall. But I will think about Platoon basically the entire time, which, given that Charlie Sheen was in it, is still probably dishonoring the legacy of the dead somehow.

The Smithsonian - This one is difficult, because I’ve heard from a lot of people that you could basically live your entire life in the Smithsonian and not see all of it. We’re definitely hitting the Air and Space museum as well as the American History museum, but we’ve opted to give the following a pass:

National Museum of Natural History - I’ve seen animals – yes, even dead animals – before. Of course, I’ve also seen fighter jets and spaceships before, but they have the benefit of being awesome.

National Museum of African Art - I’m just not that interested. Am I racist? I don’t think I’m racist. Maybe I’m racist.

National Postal Museum - According to Wikipedia, one of the main attractions here is the ability to buy a souvenir envelope with your name on it. As cool as that sounds, I get an envelope with my name on it from the utility company every month, so stick that in your pipe and smoke it, National Postal Museum.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - Jesus, I really hope we don’t visit this on the same day as we visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Is there a National Museum of Clowning we can visit afterwards to cheer ourselves up? Maybe the interactive collection at the American Waterslide Museum?

Truman Capps encourages anybody else who wants to write for this blog during his absence to contact him by 10:00 AM tomorrow, because that’s when he’s going to notify the “winners.”

Wanted: Temporary Hair Guy

Hair Guy is responsible for the cost of your 'inspiration'.

Do you like me? Do you want to be more like me? Do you want to write this blog?

Okay, obviously not. Let me go at this from a different angle:

If there’s one thing I’ve taken very seriously in the four years I’ve been writing this blog, it’s consistency. That’s sort of my gimmick – lots of other blogs start and then peter out quickly once the blogger realizes the inherent difficulty of making quality updates on a regular basis, but I’ve found that by sacrificing quality I can keep to a pretty solid schedule. If it’s Sunday or Wednesday, there’ll be something here for you to read.* Yes, you may be reading the literary equivalent of a home video of two deer fucking in someone’s backyard, but just imagine what you’d be doing if you didn’t have a blog to read. Meth, probably. You’re welcome.

*Notable exceptions include exactly one week ago, when I was shoehorning digital footage together as fast as possible to meet a deadline, and almost exactly two years ago, when I was holding The Ex Girlfriend’s hair back as she regurgitated red wine, tequila, and tortilla chips into a garbage can after a St. Patrick’s Day party, which, while disgusting, also taught me a lot about the strengths and weaknesses of the human digestive system.

Sticking to this schedule hasn’t been that difficult for me, for the most part. I spend most of my time in front of a computer, or at least near one, and I’m usually thinking something stupid about something inconsequential, which are really the only two criteria necessary for a Hair Guy update, aside from ‘Is it Wednesday or Sunday? (Y/N)”

However, sometimes I know I’ll be doing something in the near future that will keep me away from a computer for a long enough period of time that I won’t be able to update. This is pretty rare, seeing as I tend to pass on any activity that involves me not having Internet access. The blog is a great excuse to not go camping.

So now we get to the point:

Spring break is coming up – my last ever spring break. Like many college students burned out after a rough winter term, I’m going someplace exotic for the week to relax and unwind: Chicago, Illinois, crown jewel of the Midwest!* With my parents! And also Washington D.C.! Still with my parents.

*I’ve never been to the Midwest before, save for a couple of three hour layovers, but a girl checking out a camera today told me I have a Wisconsin accent, which just goes to show that anything is possible if you eat enough cheese curds.

I’m leaving next Wednesday and coming back Saturday after next. That’s three blog updates that need to be made, and I’ll be so busy frolicking on the shores of Lake Michigan that I won’t have time to blog it until afterwards.

In the past, when these situations would arise, I would call on one or two of my friends who I trusted to step in as guest writers for the time that I was gone, and they treated this like the chore it clearly was and is. But just yesterday I saw that Charlie Sheen is looking for an intern, and by God, if he’s allowed to find some idealistic sap to do his dirty work, I should be able to do the same.*

*I’m also in the market for some goddesses. Just think it over.

If you want to write one of the three blog updates while I’m gone, shoot me an email at trumancapps@gmail.com or hit me up on Facebook, along with a reasonably brief statement about what you intend to write about. Keep in mind, I’ll be judging you based on how much I laugh when I read your application, and also by how physically attractive you are. This gives women and Anderson Cooper an unfair advantage, but so be it.

Here’s some things you should keep in mind:

-Blog updates are about a thousand words long, and funny. Those are the only non-negotiable parts of this deal, and in the past guest writers have had trouble with them. This is a long form comedy blog. People don’t come here to see something short that makes them laugh; if they did, I could just post a picture of my it’s too bad Two and a Half Men got cancelled because they’d probably love this joke.

-I’ve been doing this twice a week for four years through sickness, breakups, and Info Hell. If you sign up to write an update and then crap out at the last second, I’ll understand, but I’ll also mock you on here, probably forever.

-Your name is going to be on this, and anywhere between four and eleven people will be reading it (more than that, if you count the people who Google ‘hairy guys’ and are disappointed when see what this blog actually is.) If for whatever reason freaks you out, I’d rather you be having those emotions now than when you’re trying to write the update.

So if you’re looking to positively destroy all of your credibility as a writer and speak to an audience that includes my old third grade teacher and the only two girls from my high school who aren’t pregnant yet, do please drop me a line.

Truman Capps figures he can probably blog about what a terrible idea this was in three weeks’ time.

Tiger Blood

The very picture of sanity.

When I watched Charlie Sheen’s 20/20 interview, I pulled up a Microsoft Word document and started taking notes on specifically how crazy he sounded so that I could describe the experience quickly to people who hadn’t seen the interview yet. Here’s what I came up with:

-Charlie Sheen talks the way I imagine my blog would look if I did cocaine, but when I’m imagining it I’m also doing tequila shots.

-Charlie Sheen talks like his brain has had a really bad day, so it’s masturbating to try and feel better about itself. “God damn it that barista was so mean to me today – good thing the only gear I have is go! I bet that cop who gave me a parking ticket didn’t know that I took more drugs than anyone could survive, and I only survived it because I’m me! You’re damn right I’m different! Yeah!”

-Charlie Sheen talks like he thinks he’s a contender to replace Steve Carell on The Office, and is also crazy.

-Charlie Sheen talks like a shitty actor playing the lead role in a made-for-TV biopic about Robert Downey Jr. in 1997.

But here’s what I think it is, more than any of that: Charlie Sheen is playing Charlie Sheen.

Not that he hasn’t been for a while, mind you – in Platoon he smoked weed through a shotgun, in Major League he played a pitcher who earns a reputation for being a hard living bad boy, and the plot of Two and a Half Men is basically “Charlie Sheen has sex more often than that other guy or his kid.”

But now it looks like Charlie Sheen’s immersion into Charlie Sheen has become so great that he’s pretty much lost himself and become a shapeless caricature of a stereotypical hedonistic lout. Think of it like Black Swan, only with less lesbian oral sex and like 100% more tiger blood.

The best thing that could’ve happened to Charlie Sheen in that 20/20 interview, from a public image standpoint, was for him to test positive on the drug test they gave him. The fact that he wasn’t on drugs when he was saying all those things means that that’s how Charlie Sheen is on a normal day.*

*He’s basically America’s creepy uncle when he’s stone cold sober, and he’s been very blunt and open about the fact that he occasionally does enough drugs to kill a normal human. Hearing that makes me want us to design some sort of Hannibal Lecter style cage that society can put him in whenever he starts ingesting substances that make even normal people act crazy.

But there’s something about his hedonistic persona that seems so forced, like he’s trying to prove something to the world, or maybe himself. He’s like a twelve year old who saw Caligula and is trying to become just like that, but in the most ham-fisted way possible.

“People say it’s lonely at the top,” he says, before sticking his arms out like wings and waggling them back and forth. “But I suuuure like the view!”

If somebody wrote that as a line of dialogue in a screenplay about an egocentric Hollywood douchebag, people would laugh that line off as drawing the character too broadly. But Charlie Sheen doesn’t care. He wants to be that broadly drawn. He wants to drive the point home to the entire world that he’s fucked up and crazy, but he doesn’t have the subtle tact of Winona Ryder.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think Charlie Sheen is faking anything and I completely agree with the rest of the world that he’s crazy. Who other than a crazy man spends thousands of dollars on a secret cigar vault hidden behind a cupboard in his gym, only to blow the secrecy of the whole thing by showing it off to a camera crew and talking about what a nifty hiding place it is? Who speaks glowingly of drug use and a hard partying lifestyle, then turns around and demands to have something in his life that isn’t “TMZ’d up the butt”?*

*Charlie Sheen being mad about attracting paparazzi attention for acting like a contemporary Jabba the Hutt is about the same as me complaining about people reading my blog. I mean, seriously – just because I put it up publicly doesn’t mean you’re allowed to look at it, assholes.

But I think that, in addition to the undeniable crazy having an awesome pizza party in his brain, there’s also a very sane, very shrewd sense of public relations ensuring that everything he says and does is as over the top as can be.

I think this because Charlie Sheen is a 45 year old man with expensive tastes who just went from being the most highly paid actor in television to history to one of the most unemployed, which by his own admission in the interview has put him in a bit of a financial crunch. He’s got to pay for the life he’s built for himself, his children, and his ‘goddesses’ somehow, so it’s in his best interests to act full on crazy for the sake of keeping himself in the news and his persona in demand. For a television personality, there’s no bad publicity, but being forgotten is a death sentence.

And hey, I could be wrong. But three days after his 20/20 interview, Charlie Sheen started a Twitter account and got a million followers in roughly a day, setting a new Guinness World Record. If this tells me anything, it’s that 1) The people at Guinness are giving out records for anything these days, and 2) It pays to be crazy.

Truman Capps, due to a highly experimental blood transfusion in the early 90s, actually does have tiger blood.

On A Roll

I'm spending the night in the editing lab at Allen Hall, because I'm absolutely punishing the multimedia project(s) I'm working on. I have a blog in the works about Charlie Sheen, which you'll hopefully see within the next 24 hours.

In the mean time, here's the best thing ever: