On Cheerleaders and Their Discontents

Two weeks ago I went to the gym for the first time in over a month and I was rewarded with cheerleaders. Jets cheerleaders. Professional Jets cheerleaders. They didn't stand at my machine and erupt into verse, nor did they follow me around clapping in unison, but they were there. Omnipresent. Around every bend, catching streams of water in their mouths at the water fountains, prancing through the locker room like it was the tree fort of fantasies...

So I went back. I went back to the gym 1 week later on the same day (Wednesday) at the same time (wouldn't YOU like to know?) and lo and behold, there they were again. I got there earlier this time and was rewarded by the sight of them 'warming up' on the machines with complete pre-session enthusiasm. I wasn't the only one catching on to their schedule - most of the male trainers at the gym had also blocked off Wednesday night to get their own personal workouts in... Have you ever seen/heard a pull-up competition between 7 guys wearing weight belts and tankinis? Did I mention the pull-up cage is adjacent to studio 2/mecca 'o cheerleaders?

Needless to say, by this third week I was planning my schedule around a Wednesday at the gym. I blocked it off in my calendar, I scheduled a late dinner, I even asked my fellow NYSC-ers if they'd care to join me for a workout.

And they weren't there. The cheerleaders. Absent.

Mildly disappointed at the time, it has since blossomed into an irritation with the entire Jets franchise. But why? Because they robbed me of motivation? What was it that I was so motivated about anyway? Am I really looking to date (sleep with?) a cheerleader? Really? And if I am, did I really think this subset of women would follow the genetically accepted incidence of homosexuality and that at least ONE of the 15 of them would be gay? And did I really think that the one professional gay cheerleader would also be single? (After all, when you have the fortitude to wear a mini skirt in a blizzard while drumming up deafening support from a cold wet (drunk) crowd, you most certainly know how to snag a girlfriend...) All that said, I started to lose track of why I was drawn to a gym full of cheerleaders in the first place. At the end of the day, I'm NOT attracted to these women. I'm not attracted to the bubbles of misogyny replete with matching pom poms. I'm not looking for a magazine centerfold if she aspires to be a magazine centerfold. (I mean... Don't get me wrong... I AM looking for the girl that has everything else and just so happens to have been genetically CURSED with magazine centerfold aesthetics...)

But STILL, I will go back next Wednesday. And if they're not there, I'll go back for another 5 (hundred) Wednesdays. Because what I realized is that it really isn't about the 15 cheerleaders - or the seemingly favorable incidence of homosexuality in the population. It's not about seeing them prance about the locker room (because, trust me, that's more awkward than sexy anyway as I scramble to not look at them). It's not about feeling out-stepped, under-dressed or hypothyroidic every Wednesday.

It's about hope, like following the wake of the titanic through the river Styx. I'm attracted to the idea of proximity to a national monument. I'm attracted to the dichotomy of a dirty gym and the glitz of veneers. I'm attracted to the REASON to workout in the first place. And, honestly, I'm attracted to being in the same room as the entire Jets' cheerleading squad -- for novelty -- because how often does that happen!!??

Procrastination Creationist

What if we all got to be what we thought it was that we really wanted to be and then found out that it isn't desire per se, that led us there, but the fact that we're predisposed to throw our hearts into whatever it is we aren't allowed to do... Like toddlers. With credit cards. And a remarkably spry portfolio given the times...

What if we're only good at the things we do while procrastinating in general? Everything from blogging to chatting to hitting up Starbucks to STAYING HOME SICK is markedly more enjoyable while you're at work and/or supposed to be at work...

I guess that can be extended to all sorts of situations... Food is more tempting when you're on a diet, sex is, well, sexier anytime other than 10pm to 11pm, even a slide rule can be considered a toy if it comes with a whip and a ball gag... So why is it surprising that working is more fun if it's for my NOT job?

The essence of my conundrum: what if I can only focus on writing while there's a deadline for something else pressing up against my paycheck?

It's just that it's harder to write on Saturdays. It's harder to focus after work. It's harder to be invested in a storyline or a concept when there are 10 hours of couch-time staring at me from across the weekend. Maybe I need to NOT be a writer just to get something written down? Always while I'm supposed to be building a powerpoint...

But I guess I have a similar yen to try my hand at carpentry... and to start an NGO... and to play professional soccer... and to be an insanely rich philanthropist... (who wants to live in a world where that isn't redundant?!)

So... Maybe the career I want is to be anything I'm not (supposed to be doing), as long as I can write about it?

Meta-Blog and the Evolution of Habit

As far as I can tell, the blog-worthy sentiments in life are inconsistencies, ironies, fallacies, insights, witticisms, allusions, or even mere coincidences (which will forever be nailed to ironies via the mis-educated lyrical stylings of Alanis Morisette, hence the predilection to include it in this set to avoid having to delineate between the two).

Despite this acknowledgement, I haven't taken to carrying around a little notebook in my back pocket. Nor do I make it a habit to jot things down in my smart phone memo pad. I have yet to utilize the efficiencies of voice notes on the fly and I certainly haven't conscripted a personal assistant to follow me around night and day (though, for the right price...).

My point is that I only infrequently capture the fun ideas (subjectively speaking) in the moment in which they occur to me. My thinking, on the thought, is that if it has occurred to me once, it'll occur to me again. Why stop the train to write something down if the train will swing by there again? I've done some thinking on the origins of this mentality and concluded that this assumption is more than likely derived from a question posed in that infamous core class, Moral Reasoning with Michael Sandel, during which half the freshmen spend their time watching the dark wood of Sander's theater confusedly and the other half dislocate their shoulders trying grasp at the microphone from which they hope to pose the most paralyzing philosophical query ever to be brought to court with aforementioned Sandel. The thought exercise was: if one could return to a moment in their past, having no knowledge of their future or the consequences of their actions, if one could "go back" that is to say, what would one ever be able to change?

The unilateral answer (obviously, because everything philosophical is absolute), after many clarifying questions and the characteristic ping-ponging of inflated vernacular, is: nothing. We predicate every decision on a lifetime of warm-ups. Nothing we do has been untouched by the weight of everything we've done up until the very moment our next decision is solidified. My next sentence will always have followed from my last, no matter how many times I change it, because I will always have been meant to change it up until the very last iteration. In short, no matter how many times we're allowed to go back, without new information - aka, with no knowledge of the future, or of the, presumable, regret or sadness that has prompted a trip to the past in the first place - we are destined to repeat our original actions (decisions). One could even argue, we have no recourse BUT to repeat our original actions.

THAT is the very reason why I always think that no matter what it is that has occurred to me, if it originates organically and is not a response to an idea presented TO me, even if I don't write it down and I forget what it is in the moment, I am bound to eventually be in a similar situation which will prompt a similar neuronal reaction at some point in my future. In sum, if we have, inside of us, all the pieces necessary to create something once, creating it a second time will be easy. Thus, everything blog-worthy is replicable and my resistance to interrupting life to write things down is justified.

Until today. Why? New organically reasoned blog-worthy revelation that indicates I'm a MORON:

The very weighty revelation that has forced a behavioral modification to which everyone is now witness is that even if a blog-able idea is replicable, how fucking blog-worthy will it be if it takes ANOTHER 26 years to fucking occur to me again!?

Integrated Communication Platforms & Napalm

I'd like to wax poetic about life and consequences today - but where to BEGIN?!

This has led to a fairly consuming bemusement about all the ways people communicate these days - and THAT has led to the revelation (late I'm sure) that breaking up is wayyyyyyyyyyy harder to do now than it was 15 or 20 years ago.

If all you had back in yesteryear was a phone number (of a communal phone) and an address, all you had to do was:

1) Forget a 10 digit number (or a seven digit number if you live in Rhode Island). This is easily accomplished via excessive alcohol, a baseball bat smacking of negative reinforcement, and a new 10 digit number to memorize. We only have room for 1, you know. 1 number and 50 million memories - so choose wisely. And

2) Always go out of your way to avoid a certain bar, street, street corner, restaurant, grocery store, school, business, re-bound, movie theater, strip club or section of town.

That seems EASY compared to what it takes to break up in this gilded age of integrated technology and hurried, incessant communication.

For amusement and therapy (mostly amusement, therapy would involve an opinion other than my own...): How do we communicate these days and what kind of measures would one have to go through to STOP communicating (ie, break up)? It's not as easy as it sounds!!!!

Like chatter and silence there is:

1) Gchat and the 'block and burn' (blocking them as a contact and searching your inbox and deleting all to/from emails/gchats).

2) Facebook/myspace/OkCupid/Twitter/Gaming Forums and the ultimate 'de-friending'.

3) Blackberry messenger and the 'remove contact' functionality. (parallel feature for iphone would be... non-existent? What a simple life, you lucky bastards!)

4) Phones in general and deleting whole contact entries. (choke)

5) AIM/Yahoo/GoogleTalk instant messaging and the thwarting thereof.

6) Shared email account/Google-calendar/Pandora de-privilege-ing.

7) Virtual business cards in Outlook and the recycle bin.

8) Family members/spouses/mutual (but really not-so-mutual) friend removal from all aforementioned communication avenues.

9) Pictures you've saved off facebook/myspace/google stalks and, again, the recycle bin.

10) EMPTYING YOUR RECYCLE BIN.

11) No. Really. EMPTY YOUR FUCKING RECYCLING BIN. (Do this via cmd for bonus points.)

12) Blogs/websites and bookmark deleting (or, a more amusing alternative: changing bookmarks to link to sites you loathe - Perez, perhaps? - a negative association trick. You're welcome.)

13) The memory of them and investing in that flashy-light-thingy from Men In Black

14) The memory of them and, realistically, coaxing your best friend venture-capitalist to invest in that flashy-light-thingy from Men In Black.

15) And, finally, THE MEMORY OF THEM and performing an at-your-desk lobotomy for the following reasons:

a) To remove the images of them from the central viewing center of your brain so you don't flash through your own personal slide show every time you try to get some sleep (and fail).

b) To forget the smell of their skin (awwwwwww) and replace it with the smell of burning/cauterized flesh from the lobotomy. (yay!!!!!!)

c) To extract the set of neurons inducing that palpable excitement you get from new emails, new txt messages, new bbms, new instant messages, new gchats, new friend requests, new blog comments, and any/all carrier pigeon scrolls you may receive in the next 288 million seconds.

PHEW.

It seems pretty complicated compared to yesteryear and you have to wonder if we're really any better off with all this communication... Does 17 hundred million ways to communicate make for better relationships? Does it make for faster relationships as we burn through our work day pinging and bbming and txting and gchatting and emailing and *gasp* calling the person we're dating/loving/chasing/marrying? Are we getting to know people that much faster? Are we finding flaws sooner and before we've invested enough 'time' in them to appreciate them despite their flaws? Why do we measure 'time' in gregorian anymore!? Shouldn't "so how long have you been dating?" really be "So how many gigs of communication have you swapped so far?" And "So what's your daily communication frequency/mix look like?"

"Ohhh, wow, simultaneous facebook wall-posting and txt-jesting? The response time on the emails are approaching gchat speed? It must be serious!!"

If it's this hard to DATE/LOVE/CHASE/MARRY someone in this grand old age of FRENETICS, how can it not be exponentially harder to BREAK UP, too?!?!! A number? An ADDRESS? We're getting clocked on words-per-minute and turn around time while maintaining a witticism-quota and depth-despite-a-two-dimensional-screen expectation to boot - JUST TO BREAK UP!?!?! Just to spend HALF THE TIME you WERE pinging making sure you CAN'T PING or get PINGED?!?! WHAT A FUCKING CROCK OF MODERN TECHNOLOGY!!!!!!

(pant pant pant)

And then you remember the flashy-light-thingy. Your grandparents DEFINITELY didn't have the iron clad, hollywood promise of the flashy-light-thingy. Which is probably why you're around to read this blog today. Which, CLEARLY, is a good thing. (Yay!! modern technology!)

Unless, of course, you're NOT supposed to be reading this blog as per communication device disablement rule #12, to which I say... call me? (heart)

An Excerpt from my AMAZING Family

This is from my little sister's college graduation concert. I watch it roughly once a week to remember that there are perfect moments in life.

<3

things i thought about today...

It rained.

When men go in for a handshake, are they settling? Do they really want a hug?

Do I do the obligatory 9/11 post? Is it obligatory? Do I just mention that it rained today?

I'm moving to the west village... at 26... is that too late?

Everyone seemed a bit down today... Is it because of the weather?

Is midtown a grown-up thing?

Is it bad that I want the new Lincoln? Am I just trying to impress my grandparents?

Can't we just agree that it's not about the NY so much as the fact that it's pizza?

My parents are 51. That seems young to me.

Is credit the enemy? Still?

Are alcoholic popsicles really just an excuse to make popsicles? Like watermelon and jello and brownies? Is nothing sacred??!?! Can't fucking wait.

Do we need to know the difference between sustainable and tolerable?

Are free radicals really free?

Honestly. For real. Are there calories in vodka soda?

Is having a 'job' just an excuse to watch TV on the weekends?

How far would a billion dollars worth of health care reform really get me at a strip club?

If the last strip club I was at was unionized, does that make me a feminist?

When you say unionized... How many people would love to be a union organizer right now?

Are unions unionized? Does being a lesbian and objectifying women count against me as a feminist?

Will my 37" flatscreen fit into my west village studio (measuring 108" by 156")?

Pleats? Really???

The entertainment industry seems superfluous... And I want to write a screenplay. Does that make me an underachiever? Or just full of attainable asinine aspiration?

Is it bad that I want to box for a living? And by 'living', I mean, for the chicks...

Where ARE you?

Boxer briefs are not at all momentary. Or short. Or comfortable when wet.

Did I mention it rained today?

6 months......... a fraction of life... Epic. And so so momentary.

Oh my GOD this week was endless.

Who needs a vacation? (hands in the air....... oh, oh, oh - me!) K. How about 2 days off to move to the west village?

Hot roast beef and coleslaw pressed between hot iron plates. Yes. The sandwich.

Spackle.

Let's just agree to agree, ok?

Pleats?!?!?!????

Hoodies cure all ill.

If I had a piano, I wouldn't have a blog, I'd have an empire (as everyone moved out of the apartment complex around me).

What a fucking day.

I love you.

Like. Even in pleats.

What? Yeah. I know. Confusing.

Rock on, rockstar.

A Tribute to American Football...

Cheerleaders.

I hung around work until about 730 last night to avoid the after-work swell at the gym. It's not that I don't enjoy scoping out the eclectic and unpretentious, mostly middle aged midtown NYSC scene, I do. For sure. But I'd rather the sprint in the locker room not be the quickest thing I do in the 52 minutes I spend checking off a workout on my (non-existent) calendar o'will power(lessness). Predictably, when I got there, I had my pick of all the choicest corners (in the locker room) and there was hardly a machine in motion that wasn't next to two lifeless ones. Wiiiiide berths, empty locker room, well played, Case, well played.

Fast forward through a falling out with a treadmill, a blossoming romance with an elliptical, and an awkward embrace with an exercise ball, and I'm heading back to that aforementioned, empty-save-the-chatty-cleaning-lady locker room. But what is this? In the studio tucked in the back of the basement, by the free weights and the cycling room (really? a whole room for that?) there's an explosion. Color, chanting, stomping, flashes of silver... at almost 9pm? I look closer and find a shortage of shirts and an overwhelming ratio of booty shorts to booties in the air and then BAM - circling, chanting, what are those? what are THOSE? POM POMS?!?!

I've been caught staring at the fray right about now so I head back to the locker room to shower. It dawns on me IN THE ACTUAL SHOWER... They were circling up. They were chanting. They had their pom poms in the air, their kicks around their necks and their eyes closed as they strained to out-screech each other -- they were ENDING their 'SESSION'! (oh no, I will never refer to that as practice.)

Fuck.

Then it starts. As I'm turning off the water of my shower I hear the first of the pom poms ruffle into the locker room. The walk back to my corner would not go as I planned - and I definitely didn't plan for this. I planned on skirting around the cleaning lady in boxer briefs. I did not plan on bobbing and weaving through fifteen to twenty JETS cheerleaders all hopped up on team spirit and forced enthusiasm just to slip into a corner where I would stick clothes to my body in what I would HOPE to be the right order just to slink out of the joint like a shoplifter lifting imagery.

Long story short... three things.

1) The Jets are colluding with Hooters to keep the tan stockings + white sneakers + booty shorts combo in fashion. (And I'm pretty sure they're both getting underpaid, can NO ONE afford a shirt these days??)

2) Yes, it's true. Cheerleaders squeal when they shower. Irrefutable evidence. They squeal and they laugh and they skip around locker rooms in nothing but a bottom towel. I'll die happier knowing this.

3) So there I was with the entire Jet's backup cheerleading squad (backup because I overheard them talking about 'making it to the big leagues' and, also, I'm sure the varsity squad trains at Equinox), bobbing and weaving through the gaiety, and as I reached to collect my double D's around an especially tight turn, it hit me...

They aren't called the B-squad fer nuthin'.

...

There are other dreams, lad, there are other dreams... *sniff.