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Introduction: Losing Sucks

I am discouraged by last night’s loss against the Spurs. It’s going to be difficult for the Suns to get out of the first round of the playoffs when we’re down two games to none.

But I will say this, in the past few years, there’ve been two teams that have climbed out of a hole this deep. The Miami Heat was down 2-0 in the 2006 NBA Championship series against the Dallas Mavericks, and the Heat went on to win the next four. The Phoenix Suns were down 3-1 against the LA Lakers a few years ago in the 1st round of the play offs. The Suns went on to win the next three and move onto the next round.

Why does this matter? Both of those come-from-behind teams were lead by two future Hall of Famers: Shaq (Heat) and Nash (Suns.) Now here we are in 2008, and the MVPs are both Phoenix Suns. If anyone can do it, it’s the Suns.

Having said that, lets talk about…

My Trouble with the Police

Last fall, Candyce and I were on our way to see The Darjeeling Limited in the theaters when I decided to swing by her brother’s house to pick up her jacket. (Lesson from first year of marriage: females get cold more quickly than males, especially in air conditioned movie theaters.) While she was inside digging for her jacket, I noticed two cop cars pulled in front of a house down the street. Candyce hopped back in the car and I opted to exit out of the neighborhood through the far gate just to see what the commotion was all about. I know this is messed up, to snoop in on neighbors like that, but curiosity is a powerful thing.

I rolled by the cop cars slow enough to see what was going on, but not so slow that I looked suspicious. Both cop cars gunned onto the street and followed me through the neighborhood. Great. As I sat at the exit to the neighborhood waiting for the gates to swing open, I told Candyce that I was going to get pulled over. “But first they’re going to follow me down the street and into the intersection so they can put on a big show with their flashing lights.” She started to panic, and I told her not to worry because we hadn’t broken any laws.

Twenty seconds later, they lit me up with the swinging blue lights. The whole intersection froze. The only cars that moved was my own, followed by two cops.

A young police officer walked up to the car and put his flashlight in my face. “Do you know why we pulled you over?” I was friendly but honest. “No officer, I don’t.” With the light still in my face, he told me that my license plates expired six months ago.

I did not know this.

He asked for some paperwork and we couldn’t find any of it in the glove compartment. As I handed him my driver’s license and an expired insurance card, I offered an explanation, “We got married earlier this year, and it’s been really hectic. I lost track of time.”

He came back to my car a few minutes later. He leaned into my door and held my driver’s license two feet in front of his face, skipping his eyes from my face to the photo on my license. As I am prepared to defend the authenticity of my ID, he tells me this: “You look really familiar.”

I have heard those four words assembled in that order more time than I can remember…those words have become a part of my life. Without hesitation, I casually told the officer that I was involved in local churches…that I live in the area…that I write for the Phoenix Suns…and that I was on The Real World… (This is my verbal resume for PHX Citizen of the Year, punctuated by a claim to fame.) His stern look of disapproval melted into a smile. “No way! I thought that was you!”

He turned away from the window and looked back to the second police officer sitting in his car. He waved his hand forward with enthusiasm. The second officer was too lazy to get out of his car, or maybe he thought I was a tool and didn’t want to waste his time. No problem.

The cop, Candyce, and I spent the next 20 minutes talking about reality television and the Phoenix Suns. He finished the conversation with a gentle reprimand for having an expired tag, but then told me what I needed to do to fix the problem. I told him I would send his wife an autographed photo. We shook hands and went on with our lives.

(Officer, if you are reading this, I apologize for not sending that photo. I lost your address and I feel really bad about it. If you email me, I’ll make things right.)

Welcome to the Department of Motor Vehicles

I’ve driven around town for the past four months understanding that I could get pulled over at anytime because of my expired plates. As illogical as it sounds, dodging cops all winter seemed like a better option going to the DMV.

You see, standing in line at the DMV is a humbling rite of passage into adulthood. It’s a memorable encounter with lifeless world of tax-funded bureaucracy. At risk of sounding melodramatic, it’s a two-hour experience that makes you feel like you’ve lost all momentum in life. Smart people will experience the DMV once, and then vow to avoid that place again.

Last week my friends made fun of me for my expired plates, and I defended myself be explaining the DMV is a leper colony. Jason told me to renew my plates online and avoid the DMV. It was a dream come true. I walked back inside and renewed my tags on the Internet in less than ten minutes. Just for fun, I played Chamillionaire’s anthem “Ridin’ Dirty” while I clicked through the site.

But what do you do when the stickers don’t come in the mail? You call them and ask what’s up. And what did the person on the phone tell me to do? Go to the DMV.

Sucker Free DMV

Since my last trip to the building, they’ve added a Time-Square like news ticker. In theory, this is a clever addition. The news lights up the screen brightens our spirits by connecting us to the hyper reality outside the walls of the DMV. But since all the news was bad that day, I just got more sad. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and tried to get some spiritual perspective when I was jolted back to reality when they called my number.

I sat in a chair and spoke to the 20-something girl across the counter from me. I explained that I needed to renew my license plate… She nodded her head, and then spent two minutes in silence clicking around her computer. There wasn’t much for me to do in those awkward moments except to size up the gravity of the moment.

I pity the young people who work at the DMV. If you are in your 30s or 40s and you work at the DMV, somehow it doesn’t seem that bad. But if you’re in your 20s and therefore young enough to still want to be a rock star, then working at the DMV is a public admission of defeat. I know this because our entire generation was raised on The Simpsons. Marge Simpson’s repulsive twin sisters, Patty and Selma, work at the DMV by day, and chainsmoke and the lust over McGyver by night. They are the epitome of uncool.

The Springfield DMV Employees of the Year

She got angry at her computer, sighed, and then I got two more minutes of silence. I was searching for something to make the moment more exciting for both of us. So I just blurted it out: “Have you ever seen The Real World?” She nodded her head slowly, only mildly interested in my question. I bounced back, “Well, I was on that show a long time ago.” She instantly came to life.

She explained that she watched the entire season of RW New Orleans, and that she liked me then. She stopped with that statement–I liked you then. She looked at me, I suppose to figure out whether she liked me now.

I still don’t know if she likes me now, because she switched lanes. “You know, famous people come in here all the time…Mike Tyson is in here every other day. I saw Ice-T when I first started.”

Left: Mike Tyson, the boxing ear-biting psychopath.
Right: Ice-T, the aging gangster rapper/ misogynist and now tenured Law & Order star.

Here I was prepared to fill her up with stories from my own life, and she cut me off with stuff far more interesting. Why was Mike Tyson in the DMV all the time? She said it in the same way a waitress would claim to serve up drinks to Eddie Van Halen and his buddies every Tuesday night–trying to play it cool, but barely disguising the fact that she’s excited to host a celebrity.

She continued typing and I sat in silence trying to imagine these two pop culture characters from my teen years sitting in that same chair waiting for a renewed license plate. I was in scene of the Surreal Life at the DMV in Mesa, Arizona.

She slid my precious stickers across the counter with a smile. “It looks like you’re all done here. It’s been fun. You should come back and see us!”

I walked to my car utterly confused. Was she suggesting I renew my license plate more than often than required? Or was that an open invitation to swing by on my lunch break with a Subway sandwich so I could pull up next to her on the employee side of the counter? We could gossip about Mike Tyson’s dumb tattoo and his propensity for traffic violations.

Then I drove to Home Depot and returned a door threshold I purchased 18 months ago, a random object that has resided in the back of my car for just as many months. (Think about how uncool that is.) But married life has made my life hectic and things like this just don’t seem important. I’ve driven my Home Depot many times in the past 18 months, but never with enough time to wait in line. But today was that day. Who knows, I might run into Ice-T.

So The Denver Nugget’s star Carmelo Anthony was busted for drunk driving at 4 in the morning. You don’t have to think about this too long to understand this was an epic display of foolishness:

1. Drunk driving kills people. This is why our society has made it very clear that driving while intoxicated is socially unacceptable. A lot of people will tell you that celebrities always get off easy, which may be true when it comes time to sentencing.

What people don’t realize is that celebrities have a bigger judge outside the courtroom: the public. Millions of opinionated people spit venom on reckless celebrities. And this isn’t just from haters who are happy to drag someone down. There are many people who’ve had a loved one killed by a drunk driver, and they have no compassion for anyone who will swerve through life mowing down innocent lives. That means you, Carmelo.

2. You ignored your civic responsibility. Very few people on this planet are privileged enough to have fans. If you are one of these special people, it is critical that you understand that it’s not about fame and fortune–because these all pass–but more importantly, your role in this society at this point in history.

Professional athletes are the most accessible role models for children, especially young boys. No doubt, there were a lot of little boys who woke up yesterday totally confused by their hero’s behavior. But it’s not just a child’s fleeting disappointment that is really at stake here. These little boys will be the fathers of the next generation (we’ve all scene The Lion King right?) Each of these boys is looking for someone that they want to grow up to be like. If you are lucky enough to be a professional athlete, then it is your civic duty to be a good role model.

3. It’s playoff time, jackass. Let’s say you are so absorbed in basketball to really consider my first two points. Let’s suspend reality for a moment and just consider only how Carmelo’s DWI impacts the game.

Carmelo’s Denver Nuggets barely made the playoffs, and they need every break they can get to make it out of the first round in the highly competitive Western Conference. The entire team is built around Carmelo and depends on his leadership. These men have worked hard to get a chance at an NBA championship. How are Carmelo’s team mates supposed to trust him as a leader on the court when he’s a fool off the court?

Summary: Carmelo, I hope you do some hard thinking in the off-season. If you don’t get your act together, people will only remember you as irresponsible fool.

It’s been a week or so since we filmed the Real World 20th Awards Bash in LA, and I know I have to discipline myself and just write about it. It’s hard to write about the reunion because there is so much about the past that I have to explain before I can talk about the present. And who really wants to spend hours writing about the past?

Plus, it’s hard to write about something that could potentially be so juicy. If chose to write about my day-to-day dramas over the past 5 years, it would read like a transcript of This Old House. Here I have a rare chance to write about something like a Hollywood insider, but there’s nothing more exhausting than writing a play-by-play of the night’s drama. Plus, these people are my friends, and it’s not right to exploit them so I can get a few thousand more visits on my website.

Now I’m just going to type and see what I can come up with…

Real World Reunion vs. High School Class Reunion

A Real World reunion is essentially a high school class reunion except a little more complicated. My theory is that there are 4 Stages you go through on your path to your first class reunion.

–Actually, before I write any more, I should say that nobody likes to admit this stuff, much less write about this one their website. We were all fragile in our passage through high school, and it’s hard to feel cool by stepping back and analyzing that part of your life. It’s much easier to be confident as an adult and act like high school wasn’t that big of a deal.–

But I’m in Stage 4, so I don’t mind writing about the subject…

• Stage 1: Get me out of here! This begins in your last years of high school or shortly after you graduate. This stage is entirely a reaction to the self-absorbed kids who act like the social ordeals of high school are the biggest thing in the world. You cannot handle the ugliness of cliques and the silly games of popularity. You believe that you belong somewhere else where you will thrive. I would never come back here for a reunion! Why would I want to relive this at a reunion?
• Stage 2: This is why I’m hot.* This stage begins a couple years after you graduate when you have accomplished things as your own person. You’ve got new, cooler friends who understand you more.** You still replay those social games of high school in your head, except insert your new self into those same situations because you now have the upper hand. Although there’s a big desire to go back and show “them” what who you’ve become at a class reunion, it’s a greater temptation to ditch the whole event because your too cool. The hope is that your absence will add to your mystique.
• Stage 3: What’s going on here? After you graduate college you promptly get hammered by grown-up realities of jobs, dating, bills, traveling, etc. You are too busy to mull over high school. Years pass.
• Stage 4: Let’s get along. You realize that you have more in common with your high school classmates than you ever would’ve imagined: you grew up together. A reunion is something you don’t want to miss. You’ve been through enough real-life trial to understand that the spats you had in high school were trivial. A reunion gives people a chance to reconcile with others and make peace with their past. In a bizarre twist, these old classmates become your new best friends.

*Stage 2 is when 90% of rap songs are written and recorded. These guys in their early 20s have a microphone that allows them itemize their success (in no vague terms) for all their peers to hear. For more information, listen to all rap released since Puffy recorded “Mo Money Mo Problems.”

** By default, everyone upgrades to “new cooler friends” after high school because your age group is growing up and maturing. The irony here is that your new cool friends might be the “them” that someone else loathes from high school.

My So Called Life***

I know these stages because I passed through all four stages for three times. I went to my first high school as a freshman, and then spent my sophomore and junior years my second high school. I left that school my senior year to be a full-time student at a local college. So my “high school memories” were spread over three campuses with three unique groups of peers.

Everyone is different. Some people will be in Stage 1 and never come to a reunion. Some people may sit in Stage 2 way too long. These are the girls who get plastic surgery in time for their 20th reunion, or the guy who leases a Porsche three weeks before his 10th reunion. You have to wonder if some people hit Stage 3 and become so overwhelmed by the trials of life that you’ll never see them again.

Me? I arrived at Stage 4 when I turned 22. By then I had been through the big dramas of being on a reality show, and I looked back at my teenager years with friends as a blissfully simple time. In part 2 I’ll write about the new drama.

*** “My So Called Life” is a reference to the short-lived teen drama in the 1990s starring the young Claire Danes. Her crush on the show was a hunky Jared Catalano played by the actor Jared Leto, who is now the lead singer of 30 Seconds to Mars, a reasonably successful rock band. If they handed out awards for 1990s people who’ve done pretty well doing something new, Jared Leto would get 2nd place. Billy Ray Cyrus wins 1st by a landslide.

Fall from Grace. Copyright Reuters

News broke a couple days ago that the FBI busted New York governor Eliot Spitzer for using prostitutes. After reading the headlines this morning, I wouldn’t be surprised if he will resign before I am finished writing.

The moral of the story is obvious. I doubt anyone respectable blogger or political columnist will warn readers of of the wrath that awaits hypocrites.

At this very moment Spitzer’s opponents are popping the cork of champaign bottles to toast to his self-inflicted political death. On the other side of the street, supporters mourn beneath confusion and betrayal. As for me, I don’t know much about his voting record or state initiatives, so I have to take this story in it’s simplest form. My only response is to be sad with him.

I am sad for Spitzer because his fall from grace is nothing but sad. It’s sad for his family. Sad for the state of New York. Sad for opponents of the sex trade. Sad for the Democratic party.

On this day last week, his future was bright with a fighting chance at becoming a future president of the United States. Now he’ll spend the next decade of his life tangled in regret and anger.

Last night Candyce and I went to see the Phoenix Symphony with conductor Lawrence Golan at the Mesa Arts Center. They performed “A Musical Love Story”, which narrates the progression of a romantic relationship. If you want a good afternoon of music, make the playlist:

1. Prelude, from Holberg Suite, Opus 40 by Edvard Grieg
2. Largo, from Concerto in D major for Two Violins, BWV1043 by Johann Sebastian Bach
3. Allegretto, from Palladio by Karl Jenkins
4. Adagietto, from Symphony No. 5 by Gustav Mahler
5. Canon by Johann Pachelbel
6. Serenade for Strings, Opus 1 by Samuel Barber
7. Serenade for Strings in C major, Opus 48 by Tchaikovsky

I don’t think you find anything more inspiring and enriching than tickets for two to the symphony. Which affirms my belief that….

Your City is Not Boring. You are boring.

I am tired of meeting young adults who complain about their city. I can understand why teenagers whine that there’s “nothing to do here” because a lot of them don’t have a car or enough money to explore their city. But once you’ve graduated from the dramas of high school, there’s nothing keeping your from enjoying your city but your own laziness. There are a thousand things to do today, you just have to get off your ass and get out there.

I am beginning to see that these “young adult whiners” do not age very well. Soon they’ll be just an “adult whiner” sliding to the Middle. Tomorrow, they’ll be the adults that the new young people come to ignore.

Thoughts on Popular Music

Let’s talk about pop music. This is a difficult subject to bring up, because it’s hard to say only a few words and be done with it. That’s why there are dozens of music magazines that have something new to write about every month of every year. In the interest of time, I will write two paragraphs:

The problem we have today is that the overwhelming majority of new music is created for and marketed exclusively to young people. That’s why the most successful bands, rappers, and entertainers come pre-packaged with an image–or even better–a lifestyle. Teens grab onto these lifestyles because gives them an identity in a time in their life where they don’t know how to be cool.

Can anything so shallow be of any lasting worth? Last night we enjoyed music that was written over the course of the last three centuries. Will any music be written in my generation that is worth passing onto the next generation?