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| Weekly Post-Eds |

Weekly Post-Ed #46

by Robert Hyma September 22, 2022

written by Robert Hyma

DICAPRIO TAKES NO S***

I’m terrible at saying Thank You. All my life I’ve struggled to say it. I know what you’re thinking: wow, what an ungrateful and selfish human being. Robert Hyma can’t say thank you? Suppose a surgeon finished removing a tumor the size of a Jeep Cherokee headlight from his leg, would he puff up his chest, grin like a 40’s gangster, and say, “What? That’s what they pay you for, Doc! I’m outta here…”?

In another life, one in which I’m terribly cruel to other human beings (and perhaps introducing the torture of impalement), that’s exactly what I’d say. However, my real response would be just the opposite:

I would track down the surgeon, ascertain his address, type up a heartfelt letter (that probably reveals a childhood traumatic event that he had also helped clear up), and hope that – along with the many thousands of dollars I owe with my insurance co-pay – that I wish there was some other way I could show my appreciation for his having saved my life.

That’s because I have the exact opposite of a Thank You problem.

I have a “can’t say Thank You good enough” problem.

Unlike most of my adulthood issues, I know where this problem started. On Christmas Day when I was about 10 years old, my mother (or Santa, depending) gifted me what I had been asking for all summer: a CD case for my growing collection of comedy albums. I had imagined a sleek, faux-leather double-sleeved case with a rain-proof zipper, the kind you took along for long road trips just as importantly as one of those hygiene travel bags stuffed with a toothbrush, facial cleanser, and deodorant.

When I opened my present that Christmas, instead of the premium CD case of my dreams, it turned out to be a rough-fabric, camouflage, single slot CD case—just the opposite of the sleek, trendy one I had wanted.

My mother waited eagerly for my response to hear how pleased I was. “Do you like it?” she asked.

I might as well have been Leo DiCaprio from The Wolf of Wallstreet. “This?” I said, turning over the camouflage aberration in my hands. “Look, this isn’t what I wanted. I mean, I wanted a CD case – you got that part right – but what is this? Camouflage? Really?”

I gave my mother a “you know that I know that this ain’t it” look.

Except she didn’t know. In fact, she silently moved away from me, like an extra on a movie set being directed off-camera because her part in the scene was over.

Meanwhile, I thought I was objectionably correct. It was a shabby CD case. And who was it for? It was camouflage: supposing I was going to take up hunting, I imagined a herd of deer in the woods might race past my collection of CDs and would not be tempted to steal them (as we all know herds of deer are wont to do). In hindsight, this thought made much more sense since my most coveted CD at the time was Steve Martin’s “Let’s Get Small” album, which was damn near impossible to find in West Michigan at the time.

With a shrug, I watched my family finish opening their presents, loosely aware that my mother’s stare into the middle distance—a despondent look that usually accompanied shame and embarrassment.

What I didn’t notice, however, was my father’s vengeful glare from across the room. Shortly after opening presents, he pulled me aside with a swift wrench of the arm.

“Why did you say that to your mother?” he growled.

Hey, DiCaprio takes no shit, so I showed him the CD case. “Have you seen this?”

He swatted the CD case out of my hand, and it landed on a nearby armchair. “It doesn’t matter what it is; your mother gave that to you because she loves you. Now go say ‘Thank You’ and really mean it.”

He didn’t yell, just growled like the inner Grizzley bear that seldom came out whenever my sister and I did something insensitive. We never saw the bear paws, but we always saw the tracks on the ground.

I sighed. He was right. I was a jerky jerkwad. So, I sheepishly went up to my mother. “Hey, Thank You for the CD case.”

“You’re welcome,” she smiled. “I’m glad you like it.” And she gave me a hug.

That next Christmas, I said Thank You to her again for the gifts. I don’t remember what they were, but I made sure to say it regardless.

I had seen the Grizzley tracks nearby.

***

THANKS FOR THE PIZZA

23 years later and I still haven’t forgotten the lessons of saying Thank You to those who do something thoughtful. It so happens that I felt the same obligation to give another satisfying Thank You this past week, this time to the gift of a pizza party following Thursday Night Hockey.

I seldom write about this part of my life that has been with me for well over a decade now. Once a week, I play hockey with the same group of guys in something affectionally called Thursday Night Hockey. It’s a weekly gathering of the relieved; twenty of us working up a sweat on the ice and then clambering to a dank locker room to guzzle cans of beer afterwards. We gather at an ice rink, an oasis located just off the highway, with brick walls and painted black ceilings that likely hide the real killer among us: a steady trickle of asbestos falling like invisible snowflakes.

It doesn’t matter.

No one minds the late-night skate time in the middle of a workweek or traveling far to play (many coming from 20 or more minutes away). That’s because Thursday Night Hockey is about camaraderie. And despite the mindboggling averageness of our hockey skills over the past decade (yes, mine included), we gather like a tribe, celebrating that we’re together in the first place.

Of course, you would never say this out loud (you would much rather write it on a personal website and assume it is true).

Over the summer, our weekly gatherings morphed from a late-night happy hour to something that resembled an open house or campfire cookout. Where there was beer in coolers and idle conversation at the start, there was soon JBL speakers pulsing with 80s rock ballads and a Sam’s Club sized pretzel mix container being passed around. Most brought canvas chairs, others preferred to stand, which invariably created a “Sneetches on the Beaches” scenario of those who sat versus those who remained standing.

The comforts kept growing, and I wondered if the summer had lasted another two months that we might had had portable firepits, pavilion tents, assorted cheeses and meats on a charcuterie board, and maybe hire a caricature artist for an evening.

Ok, I’m exaggerating: the caricature artist would only be invited if they brought the beer.

So, for the first time in our history, we decided to celebrate the final skate of the summer with boxes of pizza.

If you’ve never woofed down pizza at 11:30 at night, there are consequences. Not only does one mentally note if a bottle of Tums is stocked at home for afterwards, but there’s also concern for how the pizza arrives.

The pizza was delivered from Dominos by a driver with questionable delivery skills. With thick-framed glasses and a beard of a man who likely dwells in the mountains, the delivery guy turned into the ice rink parking lot with his brights on, needing the light of a medium-sized star to see twenty feet ahead of the front bumper. He then stopped the car in front of our group and pulled a 36-point turn to aim his car towards the exit of the parking lot. We all watched in amazement at this five-minute-long process. Maybe this driver had a former life as a bank heist driver, sitting out front with the engine running, waiting for a trio of guys with stuffed duffle bags and ski masks to shout, “Go! Go! Go!” before stomping the gas pedal.

We all looked to one another, skeptical about how great a condition the pizza was going to be from this guy.

Luckily, after the private stunt show, the delivery driver peeled away, the pizza safely delivered on a folding table. Twenty of us flocked to paper plates, steaming slices of pizza, and another beer in tow. No one cared about the consequences of eating heavy pizza late at night; we reveled as this group knew how: talking about anything else but hockey, drinking beer, and laughter, lots of laughter.

We were all having a great time.

Until I looked down and saw the Grizzley bear tracks at my feet.

I realized I was going to have to say Thank You to the guy that provided the pizza, the organizer of our weekly gathering, Jonny.

I was one of the last to leave, mostly because I watched with envy how the others said Thank You, as though they never received a camouflage CD case at Christmastime, and have never lived with a guilty obligation to over-stress a Thank You. “Thanks again, Jonny,” they would say and walk away, not even looking back for affirmation they were heard or not.

“Oh,” I thought. “That’s easy. I can do that.”

I blew it immediately. I approached Jonny like I had two royal trumpeters finishing their introductions before I could speak—I just hovered awkwardly, waiting for an opening. I imagined my herald introducing me: “May I present to you, Sir Robert the Dumb, of Making-This-Harder-Than-This-Needs-To-Be”.

Finally, I took my opening. “Thanks again for the pizza, Jonny. That was very thoughtful, and I appreciate it.”

I heard the record skip. It was very thoughtful? AND I appreciate it? Was I talking to a girlfriend over our first Christmas together, and I was reassuring her that it was the effort that counted the most? No! I was talking to middle-aged hockey players: guys with 401Ks and bustling family lives—you know, normal people who don’t need validation for providing boxes of pizza.

“Yeah, no problem,” said Jonny.

Of course, to my Thank You impaired brain, this wasn’t enough. I felt I needed to keep getting through. Best not leave now, I figured. I should find another opportunity to fit in a joke, stick around for a while longer—just something to show an indication that I was REALLY thankful.

I said a joke.

A polite laugh from Jonny. Grizzley bear tracks all around.

Obviously, I had to keep trying harder; can’t leave after a so-so joke. Maybe I could offer to help clean up, take care of the folding table, make sure—

“Do you want to take the pizzas home?” Jonny asked suddenly. “I’m just going to throw them away. Better take them if you want.”

Relief. Exoneration. Something I could do to show appreciation. I hid my glee. “You’re sure?”

“Yup, otherwise it’s going in the trash,” he said.

I repressed a smile. “Cool, I’ll take them if no one wants them.”

No one else did (401ks, bustling family lives). I scooped up the two remaining pizza boxes with extra slices stuffed inside and headed towards my car. I didn’t want the pizzas, but by taking them I showed how thankful I was for the pizza…ok, I would eat a slice on the road, but still!

And I did it all without tracking down an address, writing a letter, or revealing a childhood trauma that was also resolved in the process.

Well…

Anyway, I drove home with pizza boxes steaming on the passenger seat, unsure of how I’d store the slices in my already crammed refrigerator at home. Oh well, I was confident I could find space for it.

Just like the camouflage CD case that I still own.

Hey, DiCaprio takes no shit.

But he does take home leftovers.

***

***

Wishing everyone as well as you can be. You’re not alone out there,

September 22, 2022 0 comments

| Weekly Post-Eds |

Weekly Post-Ed #45

by Robert Hyma September 14, 2022

written by Robert Hyma

SPARKS OF REDESIGN

And Voila! A new website redesign is here, this time in the guise of Mario+Rabbids Sparks of Hope. It’s the long-awaited sequel to Mario+Rabbids Kingdom Battle, a funny/farcical take on Mario, Princess Peach, Bowser, and the rest. The Mushroom Kingdom is overrun by Rabbids—derpy, bipedal bunny-like creatures with serious sass and pratfall tendencies. In the original strategy game, Mario must team up with a team of Rabbid lookalikes to battle against an interdimensional onslaught of opposing Rabbids that have teamed up with Bowser. Position your team behind walls and barricades, pick the right combination of weapons and abilities, and outmaneuver the opposing team of villains in this turn-by-turn strategy game full of charm.

Mario+Rabbids Kingdom Battle brought a humorous take to the world of Super Mario Bros. It was a joy to explore all the environments, solve puzzles, find new weapons and abilities to use in battle. I have little doubt that the sequel will push the boundaries of the strategy RPG (including a recent reveal trailer that Rayman, the hero from the world that the Rabbids originate from, will be added later after release) and will be a must-play title by the end of the year.

Included below is the new logo of the site and artwork behind the Header: a constellation of Rabbid-Mario characters spread across the night sky, including a classic Rabbid wielding a plunger from the Rayman: Raving Rabbids box art on the left-most side of the canvas. Enjoy the gallery below!

Mario+Rabbids Sparks of Hope launches October 20, 2022 for Nintendo Switch.

***

LIKE, IT’S JUST, LIKE, TOO MANY LIKES?

Like, I’m sure someone else has tackled the subject of hearing someone speak with a “like” problem before. Like, you know what I mean. Everything is, like, preceded by the word “like” and, like, it becomes so distracting that, like, I don’t even know what’s being said anymore.

There is a girl in one of my classes who loves the word “like”. Like, she uses it every third or fourth word, rendering her sentences, like, indecipherable. Like, she means well, but, like, I just lose interest and can’t, like, follow what she’s, like, saying.

And, like, all the more credit to the professor who, like, is patient with her and nods his head until she’s, like, done speaking. It takes a toll to, like, listen to her, though. Like, the professor, like, coaxes her along with grunts and, like, other hurrying phrases like, “Yeah,” and, “Right,” that, like, is a kind of verbal countdown to, like, hurry the f*** up.

Like, I’ve been trying to figure out how someone, like, can use the word “like”, like, so much. I assume, like, it’s a nervous tick, a placeholder to give more, like, time to find the right words to, like, say.

“Right. Yeah.”

And, like, that isn’t the end of it. Then, like, she ends every sentence as a, like, question? So that, like, no one is, like, sure if she’s asking something instead? So, it, like, becomes a series of higher intonations that, like, becomes more annoying?

Like, you know?

“Yeah. Right.”

So, like, I shut down and can’t, like, keep listening to her. I only hear, like, all the “likes”. And soon I get to wondering if, like, there has ever been any other word used in place of, like, “like”? For myself, I, like, sometimes use “umm” instead of “like”. Like, umm, it gives me time to, like, think of what to say next, so, umm, like, it isn’t as, umm, distracting?

You know?

And, like, I’m trying to write about this stuff and, umm, like, does any of this work in, like, umm, writing?

“Right. Yeah.”

Because, like, umm, I’m trying to put together this Weekly Post-Ed and, like, umm, I’m trying to come up with something decent to say? But, like, I’m writing, umm, like, nothing.

“Right. Yeah.”

Umm.

Like, I don’t want to waste anyone’s, umm, time reading this. You know? Umm. This is, like, supposed to be a place to read something slightly, umm, like, humorous? You know? Like, what if someone, like, reads this and, umm, finds it tedious or ANNOYING, like, and not entertaining?

Like, is that possible?

You know?

I don’t know.

“Yeah. Right.”

Maybe I should, like, hurry up. Like, why keep going? Umm, what do you think?

“Yeah. Right. Ok, let’s move on to another opinion,” says my professor cutting the “like” girl off in the middle of her, like, tangent.

And it’s, like, the rightest thing he’s done yet for the class?

You know?

“Right. Yeah.”

In all seriousness, no writer has done justice to the word “like” since the poet Taylor Mali. Linked below is his poem “Like Lilly Like Wilson” that he performed on HBO’s Def Poetry. It’s still one of my favorite spoken-word poems and definitely worth the listen:

***

SOME GOOD NEWS

In a double dose of video game news, Nintendo held a fall Direct, and PlayStation held a State of Play in the same day. Both consoles are deep into their lifespans (with the regrettable price increase for the PS5 that took place recently) and so there’s a large delineation with what products are on offer. With Nintendo, game announcements are mostly tailored towards remakes and ports coming to the console, while the PlayStation game catalogue grows more robust with a console still reaching its performance potential.

Both companies appeal to different fanbases, and the direction of each news conference is proof of that. Nintendo is maintaining its audience towards the end of the Switch’s lifecycle, while PlayStation is further separating itself with graphically impressive, denser story-driven content.

Here’s a few highlights I’m looking forward to:

MARIO+RABBIDS SPARKS OF HOPE

A new trailer debuted yesterday, and showing a charming battle aboard a Wiggler Train, something that I didn’t know I wanted! As I stated above, the game looks fantastic and I can’t wait to play it in the next month.

TEKKEN 8

In a shocking reveal, TEKKEN 8 was revealed with a teaser trailer showing off the much-improved graphics from its predecessor, TEKKEN 7 (that launched over 10 years ago, my god!). The trailer features an action-packed bout between Kazuya and Jin, the two centerpieces of the current franchise. The trailer is beautiful and linked below:

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: TEARS OF THE KINGDOM

Finally! The sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild received an official title card and logo! Despite a series of delays that made many question if this game was really coming out, it appears the fate of Hyrule will finally be known by the summer of 2023. The trailer was vague on specifics other than a vertical island system that will prove integral to the puzzle mechanics of the world, but a sigh of relief was heard around the internet to finally see some news on the storied franchise.

Freakin’ finally.

GOD OF WAR: RAGNARÖK

This was my favorite reveal of the day. PlayStation’s most famous god butcher, Kratos, is about to unleash hell on the Nordic gods of Asgard in the sequel to the previous GOD OF WAR. The trailer is fantastic, showing exotic locales interwoven within mythological elements that truly evokes a sense of wonder. I can’t wait to see what’s in store (particularly with that climactic battle teased in the final seconds of the trailer).

God of War: Ragnarök launches November 11. It cannot come soon enough.

There were many more announcements, but these were the ones I was most excited for. It was a pretty snazzy day for video games, one that hasn’t come for a long time.

What games are you look forward to? Shout them out in the comments below!

***

Wishing everyone as well as you can be. You’re not alone out there,

September 14, 2022 0 comments

| Weekly Post-Eds |

Weekly Post-Ed #44

by Robert Hyma September 7, 2022

written by Robert Hyma

HANGMAN

There was a classmate playing a game of Hangman in front of one of my classes and I hated him immediately.

Which isn’t fair to write about this kid, but I’ll explain my reaction:

Usually, the professor strolls into class as the bell rings (a metaphorical one—there isn’t a classroom bell on a college campus), which means that the punctual among us sit in silence before he walks through the door. It’s dead silent before class, either because no one is familiar with each other, hesitant to start conversations that would be obviously eavesdropped upon should they start, or that everyone is on a phone perusing social media apps in place of real-life experiences (as we all do).

This isn’t uncommon practice. Most of my classes feature this lack of conversational atmosphere. It’s deathly silent in the preceding minutes before class starts.

Except for when I walked into my class last Friday.

There, stationed at the whiteboard was a sandy-haired, twig-thin literature type adding the last limb to a stick figure dangling from a crookedly drawn gallows, signifying that he had just won a game of Hangman. I perused the words that had so stumped the two or three other participants that played (the rest of the class had their heads down and didn’t give a shit).

O B F U S C A T I O N

M A L F E A S A N C E

“T O D R E A M I S T O D I E”

I made the last quote up, but he had something just as obscure and niche. The point is: where there was silence – despondent, antisocial, un-spirited silence – now there was a game of Hangman hosted by a literature fan showing off his vocabulary and knowledge of little-known quotes.

And I thought, “Oh, f*** you.”

Here’s why:

There’s a difference between enthusiasm and ego. Regarding this game of Hangman, were the words chosen to loosen up the class, to get people talking? No. Did this guy choose words or phrases that might draw a laugh or cue some recognition? No. The words were obnoxiously chosen and the quote was obscure and meant nothing to anyone else. This was a game of vanity, of ego. This guy was showing off how smart he was and to get a little attention by playacting cavalier at the front of the class.

Not only was the game an eye roll, but then this guy took pride in winning the game! Of f***ing Hangman! I know this is true because he laughed with glee when the two or three other classmates offered up guesses (with the same enthusiasm as an employee reluctantly volunteering to clean out the toilets at a grimy diner, “I guess I’ll do it. Is there an ‘A’?”). This game of Hangman was proof of wit.

Which incurred another silent, “Oh, f*** you,” as I took my seat.

I then felt guilty. How old was this literature enthusiast: 18, 19-years-old? Why was I responding so harshly? Was it because I secretly wanted to rile the class, to spread my influence as a seasoned 33-year-old who understood how to NOT be like a pompous academic? And, honestly, if I had tried ANYTHING like this classmate of mine, it would have backfired anyway. I would have been like a parent that “tries to be cool” and my efforts would have tanked just as hard.

So, maybe I needed to let up. Let this classmate be pompous and gleeful. He’ll grow out of it. After all, wasn’t he trying to break the ice? He’ll learn how to NOT be a tightwad in the future, I thought.

The next thing I knew, the metaphorical bell rang for class and in walked the professor. He examined the whiteboard, which still had the game of Hangman on it for some reason (all the better to have the professor admire your prowess of recalling English words longer than 8 letters, I guess).

“Obfuscation, malfeasance,” listed off the professor, rubbing his chin and considering the terms. “I’m going to leave this up, today. I’ll write things on the other whiteboard. Looks like a great game of Hangman was had here. Great vocabulary, whoever was playing.”

All my previous patience and understanding went out the window. “Well, f*** you, too,” I thought.

Therein was the cause of my classmate’s misplaced enthusiasm: a professor that enabled academic pageantry.

For the next minute, the professor and twiggy classmate bantered back and forth, pitching even more obnoxious words to stump future players with.

And I, with a herculean effort to resist groaning, sat in the back of the class, content with my omniscient view of the world, knowing how truly cringy the past five minutes of class had been.

At least I wouldn’t ever degrade myself like my classmate had, I thought.

I, after all, had dignity.

“Alright, let’s take attendance,” said the professor. “Bertie? Where’s Bertie…ah! There you are. How’s it going Bertie?”

The professor was still calling me Bertie. (Read more about it here.)

“Good,” I answered the professor with a sigh. I proceeded to draw my own game of Hangman on a fresh sheet of paper. I couldn’t figure out the last letter of my own game, though.

Maybe you can help me fill it in?

***

WATER WITCHES

This was irresistible to write about.

There’s a family neighbor in northern Michigan with a truck drilling a water well that is still in the front yard. The truck has been there several months, the well digging deeper and deeper without any luck. Either water has been undrinkable or there hasn’t been enough to act as a well for an entire household.

My mother adds to this piece of news, “They should hire a Water Witch.”

“A what?” I asked.

“That’s not what they’re called, but that’s who used to find spots to dig wells.”

“Explain,” I said. I couldn’t wait to hear this.

“If you were looking to dig a well out by a farm, you’d hire a Water Witch. The Water Witch would look around for a tree branch, shaped like a Y, and when he found a good one, he’d wander around the grounds and wait for the tree branch to start shaking.”

(It turns out you can use just about anything, but most modern Water Witches – yes, this is still a thing – prefer using two metal rods.)

“Go on,” I said, almost drooling with anticipation.

My mother shrugged. “Once the stick is shaking, that’s the spot you started digging a well.”

“And this worked? People really dug wells like this?”

“Oh, sure. They were hired all the time.”

“These people were hired?!”

“Well, yes. They were never wrong,” said my mother.

My father put down his mug of coffee. “Of course they weren’t wrong! It’s Michigan; if you dig deep enough, you’ll find water no matter where the branch starts shaking.”

“Oh come on,” said my mother, egging him on, “Those tree branches really shook.”

“Because the guy was shaking it himself!”

“You don’t believe that do you?” asked my mother with a coy smile.

And while the merits of the Water Witch were playfully debated by my parents, I had a renewed sense of hope in humanity. If a Water Witch was really a paid position in the history of American farming, then I can see no better future for a people who were creative enough to shake a stick and say, “Dig your well here, Farmer John.”

Entire neighborhoods had wells dug on such foundations.

Kind of gives you a tingly feeling of pride in grassroots American history, doesn’t it?

For your viewing pleasure, I’ve attached an article about Water Witches from Time Magazine. Apparently, they are still sought after during droughts, particularly the dry season in California. I won’t spoil the end of the article; it isn’t a very long read.

https://time.com/11462/california-farmers-are-using-water-witches-to-make-your-two-buck-chuck/

***

***

Wishing everyone as well as you can be. You’re not alone out there,

September 7, 2022 0 comments

| Weekly Post-Eds |

Weekly Post-Ed #43

by Robert Hyma August 31, 2022

written by Robert Hyma

BACK TO COLLEGE

I’ve made the decision to head back to college full time to finish my BA. This meant quitting my job as a preschool teacher and heading back to a university as a 33-year-old. Over the past few weeks, I’ve had many anxieties about what it means to be, on average, 12-years older than everyone else attending an university. So, as the first week of classes is nearly at an end, I thought I’d bring you through some of my adventures from the first week of the semester.

***

THE LAST TIME I WAS HERE…

Having a decade between stints of attending college full-time, I’ve had a chance to reflect on how things went in my early twenties.

In short: it wasn’t pretty.

I’m sure there were successful moments, but as I was lying awake in bed, waiting for the sun to rise on another stint as a full-time student, I could only recall the things that were of particular embarrassment. Here’s a few of them:

I once emailed my Astronomy 101 professor, someone whom I greatly admired, and asked why he wasn’t more famous in his field. I wrote to him, “You seem so capable. Why are you a professor at a community college instead of conducting research at an observatory, or at NASA?”

I meant this in earnest, but in hindsight I can see this translates to: “Why are you a loser in your field?” It never dawned on me that not everyone rises to the top of prominence because they want to. There is such a thing as luck and academic politics to consider, as well as geography (observatories aren’t nestled in the farmlands of West Michigan, typically). Never mind family responsibilities, his general expertise, or if he wanted any part of that burgeoning astronomer life (in which, I imagine, consists of a series of Friday nights staring at the stars and uncorking bottles of champagne as new coordinates are punched into the sensitive instrumentation of the observatory telescopes—a real party scene amongst scientists. This isn’t accurate in the slightest, but I can dream).

The professor never responded to my email, which was gracious in hindsight.

Here’s another:

I once woke up late for class and drove in a sleepy haze to campus, running to class only to find a classroom full of strangers there. The professor, whom I had also never seen before, said in all this confusion, “Can I help you?”

“Sorry, I’m late,” I said, and proceeded to find an empty seat to sit down.

“Uh, I think you’re in the wrong class,” said the professor.

“No, I don’t think that’s right,” I said, still in a sleepy haze. “I think you all are.”

Imagine: an entirely different group of classmates, an unknown professor, and YOU are the one telling the class THEY are in the wrong place. I was like a theater director telling the cast to stop the performance because they were performing the wrong play.

Just imagine the confusion, which, was probably the same look as everyone else in the class who stared at me.

Eventually, I emerged from sleepy usurping and realized how wrong I was. I stood up, probably bowed politely (as all the crazies ought to do when they politely leave) and sped out of the classroom. I looked to my watch and saw that it was exactly an hour before I was supposed to arrive for my first class.

How could this mismatch have happened, then? It dawned on me:

I hadn’t adjusted the clock in my car to Daylight Savings Time. In my sleepy stupor, I referenced this clock on the road, in which I thought I was slightly late for my class instead of an hour early.

Oops.

I later learned that the class I had interrupted was a Psychology 101 course. In hindsight, I figure I gave them a real-life case study.

So, you’re welcome, Science.

These and other memories came to mind, but I’ll spare the others for now. It was time to get out of bed and begin another stint of full-time university life at the age of 33.

Little did I know, things hadn’t changed much.

***

‘RACE CAR’ SPELLED BACKWARDS IS ‘STUDENT PARKING’

Ok, not really. “Race Car” spelled backwards is “Race Car” (as opposed to the old Bugs Bunny joke: “Mud spelt backwards is Dumb”). Strolling through the parking lot towards campus, I noticed cars lapping the already filled parking spaces. That’s because students arriving later in the day might as well have been driving race cars around an elliptical raceway. Most student commuters do laps around parking lots, waiting for a parking spot to open up. This could take hours, so if you’re observant enough to stop and watch the traffic, you could be treated to a miniature Indianapolis 500 in Lot B2. Most students want parking spots up front to limit walking (Hiss! The horror!), so the route most cars follows looked like this:

Many spots open up towards the back of the lot, which results in the route being changed to this over time:

Student Parking route over the course of many hours

Needless to say, there were multitudes of classmates missing during my classes, most of them hemmed into bumper-to-bumper traffic, awaiting the rescue of pit crews to help change tires from the wear and tear of driving laps around the Lot B2 raceway.

***

CLASSROOM SEATING

As I sat down for my first class, I recognized a distinct pattern in where everyone chose to sit. Most students clustered to seats along the exterior, lining the walls and keeping away from the middle aisle. Maybe it’s a social anxiety, but I like to think my classmates pick seats pretending there’s a massive canon pointed directly at them from the head of the classroom and they are taking cover.

Most professors enter class right as the hour starts, so they wander through this patch of uninhabited seats, wondering why students avoid the middle of the classroom. Then, the professor takes attendance aloud (this is for the first few days until they are familiar with names, then this task is silently done). It is then obvious why there are vacant seats:

This is where the professor looks while lecturing. He’ll look to you for acknowledgement, to make sure ideas are setting in.

It’s unwanted attention and no one wants to be looked at as though they are about to be called forth for jury duty.

Everyone bows their head as though to say, “Just look somewhere else, please!”

Well, most keep to the outer perimeter except for a few yuppie students sitting towards the front who adore the professor and want to impress the room with some witty banter.

And after a few, “Hey, I’ve had you in one of my other classes, right?” and “You’re an English major? I’ll have to get you in touch with another professor I know. He’s into that obscure novel you’re reading, too, haha!”, one can’t but hope for a literal canon to blast the room to smithereens.

***

QUAKING QUAKERS

The center of campus has an impressive clocktower in the middle of a circular walkway. The opening day of classes invites student groups to get a head start with recruitment, so many organizations set up tables to hand out fliers, hold sign-ups, and invite passersby to attend upcoming events. On my first day, I passed a set of photographers that offered to take a “First Day of School Photo”, which led to a five-minute pitch session on attending a prayer group held on Thursday nights.

It’s a entrepreneur’s world on the first few days of class.

Towards the afternoon of my first day, I passed by the clocktower where a pair of older, potbellied men offered pamphlets to join a Quaker campus group. To the discontent of one of the students passing by, he turned round and shouted at the Quakers, “You don’t know anything about Quakers! Quakers take a vow of silence on Sundays!”

“Ok, do you want to talk about it?” asked the potbellied Quaker passing out the pamphlets, probably to calm the outburst. “Do you want to talk?”

The disgruntled student turned around and shouted, “Yeah I want to talk! BECAUSE you don’t get it!”

I stopped to listen into the oncoming argument.

“Quakers QUAKE on Sundays!!!”

I nodded, happy about the gift of a great soundbite, even if I had no clue what it meant. Quaker’s quake? Are they fearful on Sundays? Are they literally shaking wildly to appease their God? I couldn’t help but wonder.

This led to a rabbit hole of other religious acts based on names.

“If Quakers quake,” I thought, “do you think Christians christen?”

I liked the idea of Christians gathering on the docks of Lake Michigan to formally bless the launching of boats. On Sundays, they would smash champagne bottles against the hulls of anyone renting at the marina.

I decided I like being at college if I could hear more things like this.

***

IT’S BERT, NOT BERTIE

By 3 PM on the first day of classes, I thought I made it through the first day without any major embarrassment. I hadn’t emailed a professor to ask why he wasn’t more successful in his field, nor did I enter another classroom to accuse everyone of being in the wrong place. As my last class started, I thought fortunes had changed for me; maybe I had ceased to do stupid things.

Nopity. Nope. And nope.

I have a professor twice in a single day—once in the morning and in the late afternoon. In the morning session, the professor called my name for attendance with little mind, “Robert Hyma?” and he marked me present as I raised my hand. In the second class, he called my name and stopped with recognition, “I have you in another class, right?”

“Yes,” I said, hating every moment of conversations that happen in front of other people. I could feel all my classmates watching.

“Robert, is it? Is that what you want to be called?”

Blame it on the monotony of the question, or that I felt there was an audience, but I wanted to play with this notion. “I can change my name to anything?”

“Sure,” he said.

“My friends call me Bert,” I said, feeling brave.

“Bertie? They call you Bertie?”

“No, Bert,” I corrected. “Bert. Just call me Bert.”

“Bertie?” He asked again. “Ok, I’ll call you Bertie if you want.”

Bertie, which isn’t close to sounding like the name Bert, by the way, was the worst interpretation of my name I’ve ever heard. Luckily, another classmate, a girl I can’t remember, chimed in. “He’s saying Bert, like as in the second part of Ro-Bert.”

“Oh,” said the professor. “I kept hearing Bertie for some reason.” He smiled through awkward laughs around the class. “Side note,” he continued, “the reason I kept hearing ‘Bertie’ is because I have a grandma named ‘Roberta’ and that’s what we call her: either ‘Bob’ or ‘Bertie’ for short.”

“Oh,” I muttered. “I wish I would have known that two minutes ago.”

“But alright, I’ll remember,” said the professor, and moved on to the next person with attendance.

Thank God, I thought, reflecting on the lesson I just learned: next time, just say your normal goddam name.

“Ok, I think that’s everyone,” said the professor, concluding attendance. “I’ll try not to babble this afternoon like I did in my morning class. I don’t know what it is about the first day, but I just can’t stop from gabbing at the start. Was anyone in my first class that saw me? Bertie! That’s right, you were there. I just couldn’t stop talking, could I Bertie?”

Not even a hint of recognition from the guy. At first, I thought he was screwing with me, saying the absurd rendition of my name as a joke, but I was wrong. He was searching my face for recognition, to give credence to his anecdote about the morning class. “Sure,” I said, not knowing how to handle the fact that for the rest of the semester I might be called Bertie.

“I promise I won’t do that this time,” said the professor, and then he went on to show us a documentary about American Whaling that showed in vivid detail how sperm whales were hunted, harpooned, stripped for parts, and the carcass thrown back to sea.

I sat there watching the vivid description of whale murder and thought, “Motherf***er! Now I’m Bertie.”

Oh well, beats my last name, which is often mispronounced. To my confusion growing up, teachers often called out Hyma (Hi-mah) but added an ‘N’ to the end for some reason, making my name ‘Hyman‘. This always drew laughs, and I didn’t realize why until high school when it was explained to me that a ‘hymen’ was a part of female genitalia. People like to laugh at the guy who had a last name that was associated with the vagina.

At least my first name wasn’t “Dick”, which would have caused people’s heads to explode (I’m sure there’s a sexual innuendo joke in that sentence somewhere).

So, since my first name has now mutated into Bertie, I suppose my faux full name is Bertie Hyman, which roughly translates to “A grandmother’s vaginal tissue”.

Hard to live that one down, but it’s a long semester.

More adventures will surely follow.

Stay tuned for more…

***

***

Wishing everyone as well as you can be. You’re not alone out there,

August 31, 2022 0 comments

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Weekly Post-Ed #42

by Robert Hyma August 24, 2022

written by Robert Hyma

42

How could you not write about the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything in Weekly Post-Ed #42?

Perhaps some context:

Long ago on the distant planet of Magrathea, the greatest computer ever built, Default, was tasked to find an answer to the ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. For millions of years Default calculated all that it knew about existence and millions of years later, it was finally ready to reveal the answer.

“42,” said Default.

It’s a wonderful piece of comedy that comes from Douglas Adam’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Over the weekend, I rewatched the 2005 movie adaptation starring Martin Freeman, Zoey Deschanel, Mos Def, and Sam Rockwell. From the opening musical number about dolphins leaving the planet earth from impending doom (the musical theater ballad, “So Long and Thanks for All the Fish”), I reverted back to being 14 again and why the movie meant so much.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy DVD Box Art, 2005

Up until that first viewing, I had known about the comedy of Monty Python, Mel Brooks, the Marx Brothers and so many others, but The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy opened up the entire cosmos of what could be funny. Whereas a Mel Brooks film delved into the world of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Young Frankenstein), or a saga of the wild west (Blazing Saddles), the jokes were related to the story’s characters, never central to moving the plot forward itself. Hitchhiker’s not only had outlandish comedy, but it was the reason the story existed at all.

Planet earth being demolished to make room for a hyperspace expressway? Yes, that’s the incident that begins the story!
A paperwork-obsessed, bureaucratic race of aliens with the stinginess of an elitist British Parliament? Why yes, they’re the villains of the movie!

Anything was possible in the vast universe of Douglas Adam’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (which I soon discovered were also a series of novels). You could poke fun of a religion’s odd celebrations and rituals, answer philosophical questions in meaningful but obtuse ways (the answer of 42 for example), and show that planets are really manufactured like any other product bought at a department store. All of this was possible to cram into a single narrative.

“You can write things like this?” I thought, and suddenly I felt like I had been given the freedom to make whatever I wanted.

After watching the film again, I also recalled that it was the major reason why I wanted to write fiction in the first place. Suddenly, it made sense to write big ideas into a concise, comedic packaging. There was a wider universe out there and I couldn’t wait to write all about it.

And I would go on to keep writing forever after.

(Psst: more on those stories in the future!)

***

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

I find that as I grow older, I watch my favorite movies from a different perspective. Nowhere in my personal experience has this been more the case than rewatching old Looney Tunes shorts. Packed inside those ten-minute episodes were layers of adult humor amidst the antics of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.

Rewatching favorite movies and television shows after many years is like eating a favorite meal once in a while: you remember why it was so damn good to begin with.

It must have been three or four years since I’ve seen 2005’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which meant another round of life experiences acting as the lens through which I watched it. The biggest change over the course of the past few years has been my going on numerous dates, which I suspect has changed how I’ve viewed romance in movies.

Certainly, I have a much more prevalent sense of skepticism when it comes to the romantic “Love at First Sight” motif.

The romantic spine of the 2005 adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (the books are much different) follows Arthur Dent (Martin Freeman) regretting his missed opportunity to capture the heart of Trillion McMillan (Zoey Deschanel). At a costume party, they meet awkwardly, but sweetly, and soon get to chatting. Then, Trillion says, “We should go to Madagascar.” Arthur is confused and thinks this means a new swanky club, but Trillion means the country off the coast of Africa. Arthur realizes she is serious and says he can’t just go to Madagascar. Trillion is let down when he offers somewhere local instead. Then along comes a man with flowing blonde locks, a faux Elvis Presley accent, and futuristic wardrobe.

“Is this man boring you?” he says. “I’m from a different planet. Want to see my spaceship?”

Trillion goes with spaceman, leaving Arthur behind, and that’s the extent of their meeting.

Before, I never blinked an eye at this initial meeting. It works in the movie and I get it: Arthur likes her, she likes him, but along the way came a more interesting and adventurous man that swept Trillion away.

Cool, right?

Not really.

When thinking about the logistics of meeting someone at a party, I assume Arthur and Trillion knew one another for about two or three hours in total. This means that Arthur is convinced Trillion is someone significant over that short time. So much so, in fact, that he comes to think of her as “The One That Got Away”.

I’m amazed at the confidence required to make Arthur think so. Either Arthur doesn’t get out and date very much (which is likely), or there was something wonderful about Trillion that quietly disposed of any other potential love interests he had. Since Trillion up and leaves him at a party for another man, I can’t imagine she showed him the affection he was looking for. So, what was the appeal at the party?

I’m skeptical a man would be love-drunk over a woman like this who has experienced more dates. It’s unclear the amount of time that passes between this first meeting at the party and when the earth is destroyed for a hyperspace expressway (spoilers), but I think most would have moved on from the girl at the party after a certain length of time. As someone who has gone on many dates and has been ghosted for less interesting reasons, it’s amazing to think Arthur would remain hung up on this girl when she leaves with another man from the same party.

This is why I’m concerned about Arthur’s mental state during this viewing of the movie–he’s willing to endure the thought of a girl running off with another man as karma for his not jumping on a plane immediately to travel with her to Madagascar.

It’s a little sad, honestly.

Later, Trillion and Arthur are reunited on a spaceship that improbably passed by the exact coordinates he was thrown off another ship into the vacuum of space. Aboard the ship, Arthur comes across the spaceman from the party, who turned out to be President of the Galaxy Zaphod Beeblebrox. Arthur’s first actions upon being on a spaceship after surviving the ether of outer space? He immediately inquires what became of Trillion after the party.

If I’m Trillion, I’d be on my guard with this guy. Perhaps it’s the improbability of the two of them meeting on the same spaceship, but Trillion doesn’t blink when this guy immediately starts demanding “why didn’t you fall in love with me instead?”

Uh, what?

The correct response for Trillion should have been: “Hey, we hung out for a while at that party, which was really great, but I CLEARLY left with someone else, remember? You were really nice, Arthur, but it’s not going to work out. Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

That’s it, problem solved!

But that doesn’t happen. Instead, she hints that they shouldn’t talk about it in front of Zaphod Beeblebrox in order not to upset him.

Not to be deterred, Arthur’s motive is to bring up their brief courtship whenever possible throughout the movie. He’s pleading his case that they were something special and should pick up where they left off.

It’s downright creepy to assume that anything marginally approaching romance should exist between these two people. Couples who have sex have less incentive to think romance or a relationship is taking place! Why does Arthur’s reluctance to give up on Trillion mean that she’ll ever return his affections?

I think the reason for their eventual romance is interwoven with the meaning of the film.

Why Arthur loses out on Trillion at the party is because he refuses to give up his usual comforts and spontaneously travel with her across the world. He has a rational point—they’ve just met, he has a job to go to in the morning…it’s not realistic to do something so drastic. However, Trillion sees this as another sign of another disappointing man who isn’t adventurous and willing to see the wider world.

What Trillion is asking of Arthur is if he’ll put in the effort for her. Yes, she wants the trip because she wants affirmation that the world has more to offer, but she’s also watching to see if he’s willing to fight for her.

When Arthur joins Zaphod and Trillion aboard the ship to zip around the galaxy in search of the ultimate answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, Trillion gets into all the danger. It’s up to Arthur to save her. Zaphod, the mysterious spaceman from the party, does not. While Zaphod Beeblebrox won Trillion over with a willingness to travel the universe on a whim, he also didn’t think of her anything more than collected cargo. Zaphod was only interested in fame, recognition, and Trillion was always an afterthought.

Even when Trillion was imprisoned on another planet by the Vogons, he doesn’t think to go rescue her (although, his brain is technically being run on lemons at that point in the movie, so maybe a little leniency in his case). Couple along the reveal that Zaphod was the one who signed the order to demolish the earth in the first place, and Trillion really grew to dislike him.

This left Trillion to ponder why the aimlessness of her life on earth has followed her through the cosmos. By going somewhere else, be it Madagascar or the vastness of space, she was seeking greater meaning.

What she discovered is that there wasn’t an answer to her life, the universe, and everything (even if it ended up being 42). Bereft in space, she was without a home planet, without anyone.

She was done looking outward for answers and instead looked around. It’s then that she realizes she just wants to be loved by someone who wants her.

Trillion now sees Arthur’s journey. He has learned how to fight for what he wants. His life is about embracing adventure so that he can be present for someone else.

Now there may be romance between the two of them. He sees her, and she sees him.

And they can roll around with their towels.

But there’s one question that still bothers me: why her? With only a few hours of talking at a party, why did Arthur maintain that he missed out on Trillion this entire time?

In my limited experience with truly remarkable women (since romance is the angle I’m writing this from), I can say there’s no logical reason. Once you see someone great, you just know it. It’s a recognition of something within them, perhaps something you can’t quite explain. And once recognized, there’s no going back to the way things were.

Ironically, this is how I felt upon first watching The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I couldn’t tell you why it meant so much to see this movie, but it did.

I’ll just call it Love at First Sight.

***

THAT MCTAVISH SAVE

Usually, I’d stray away from posting a hockey highlight, but the final moments of Team Canada winning gold at the 2022 World Junior Hockey Championships was one of the greatest moments I’ve ever seen in hockey. I’ll include the highlights below but be sure to watch the goal-line save by Mason McTavish who literally kept his team alive in Overtime by an inch.

https://youtu.be/N1F_1IbJNxw

***

***

Wishing everyone as well as you can be. You’re not alone out there,

August 24, 2022 0 comments

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Weekly Post-Ed #41

by Robert Hyma August 17, 2022

written by Robert Hyma

LIVING THE DREAM

A few weeks after graduating from high school, I went up to my varsity goalie coach to talk about where I could play next season. He was standing by the glass at the ice rink, watching another up-and-coming goalie, a sophomore who could potentially make the varsity team next year. He saw me in the corner of his eye, and I awkwardly put my hands into my pocket and approached.

“Hey coach,” I said. “Got a second?”

“Sure,” he said, still watching the sophomore practice. “What’s on your mind?”

“I was just wondering if…you know…you had any suggestions of where I could play next year?”

My former goalie coach turned away from the glass and looked to see if I was kidding. Pitifully, he saw I wasn’t. “You can always try the community college team. I hear they’re bringing the program back around.”

“I mean, I can go anywhere, right? What teams should I try out for?”

He turned back to watching the sophomore. “You played four games last year, Robert. Not a lot of teams had a good look at you, or even know who you are. I’d say the beer leagues are a great place to start.”

At the time, I thought that his answer was dismissive. However, from the vantage of my mid-thirties and looking back at my 18-year-old self that had just completed his first year of competitive hockey, this answer was gracious in hindsight. My former coach knew my story. He knew I started playing ice hockey three years before and started taking goalie lessons only a year after I had begun. He knew my knowledge about travel hockey was next to nil.

It was a gracious answer because he didn’t tell me the truth—which was that I was a dreamer who had no idea what the road to pro hockey looked like.

My former goalie coach was Carl Howell, a former pro goaltender who played minor league hockey. Carl played goalie in an era when wearing a thin layer of molded fiberglass over your face was the best protection available—you know, the “Jason” mask from the film Friday the 13^th.

His career ended when scrambling in his goal crease for a loose puck, and a stick struck him in the eye, plucking it out of the socket. This was also the era where dirty tactics were the norm. Many forwards pounded a nail into the top of the blade of their hockey sticks, which made it all the easier to hook a guy and cut him open in the process (because if you’re going to get a 2-minute penalty for hooking, you might as well cut an incision big enough for a surgeon on your way to the penalty box).

Scrambling in the crease, a nail stuck into his eye and pulled the eye clean out of his face.

The eye was saved and reinserted into the socket, but my former coach lost most of his depth perception, which made stopping pucks nearly impossible, thereby ending his career. He might have played in the NHL full time had he had better fortune.

“Ok,” I answered my goalie coach after he told me to play in the beer leagues. “Do you know which one I should join?”

He smiled, a brimming, knowing smile full of hockey knowledge I could never know or understand. “They’ll find you if they want you. Keep your phone on.”

It took years to realize that, no, I wasn’t going to be scouted to play pro hockey. I had a dream when I started playing, and only years after that did the bigger picture of the pro hockey life start to dawn on me.

All I had was a dream and I thought it was enough to make the NHL.

I’ve always pondered the phrase “Living the Dream”. To me, the phrase meant to have the ideal life where one was doing the work they loved, the kind where real struggle and toil were nonexistent. While watching the 2022 World Junior Hockey Championship over the last week, I discovered a vastly different view form what it means to live the dream.

Many of the players participating in the 2022 World Junior Hockey Championship are living the dream. To be chosen to represent your country is indication that you are the best of your age group. You see the names that have made previous Canadian or US World Junior teams and many have become stars in the NHL. To assume these young players are on a path to greatness seems logical. Aren’t these players living the dream?

Not exactly.

To have arrived at the World Junior stage, these players have grown up with a constant pressure to perform since they’ve put on a pair of skates and shown superior skills compared to everyone else their age. With these superior skills came a caravan of interested parties: parents, coaches, scouts, former pros, and everyone else who saw the potential of someone who, one day, could have his name on the back of a NHL jersey. All these young players had to leave their families to play in the top Junior Leagues in the country, living with host families in place of their own, devoting their whole life to playing the game they hope will lead to becoming a professional.

The 2022 World Junior Championship is just a steppingstone along the way to being a professional. It’s another measuring station to prove that these prospects are on task and exceeding even greater expectations. There’s no downtime. These players are still required to produce, to keep separating themselves from the competition, to put up the best numbers of their careers in their draft year just to move up a few spots into the coveted Top 5 of the NHL Draft.

These players know the road to pro hockey by 17-years-old because it has been instilled into their belief system since they started. They are the future, and they play every shift like it, too.

And after watching a few games of these future stars, I thought back to when I was 17-years-old with the dream of becoming one of them.

I can laugh at how absurd that dream was.

A year before talking with my varsity goalie coach, I was at my neighborhood park on a cement rink with a painted goalie crease and undersized net, donning plastic-shelled street hockey goalie gear. I spent nights duct-taping the goalie pads back together after they had disintegrated from the last time of sliding across the cement crease. A group of five of us played along with whichever neighborhood kids came around, ranging from elementary to high schoolers. Most everyone ran in tennis shoes or didn’t own a pair of rollerblades. Hardly any wore hockey gloves and had blisters on their hands after a few hours of shooting with old wooden hockey sticks.

We played in 90-degree heat. All of us wearing a replica jersey of our favorite NHL teams we had bid on eBay for cheap. We were the neighborhood all-stars without a clue about what it meant to play the pro game, but it didn’t much matter.

I was never going to play at a level remotely close to what the best players in the world could play at age 17. It still doesn’t much matter. I still play hockey even with a worsening arthritic wrist and pinched nerve near a hip flexor that feels like absolute agony after playing all these years.

I’ll keep playing because I’ve decided the dream is to keep it going for as long as possible.

That’s what I share with those 2022 World Junior players—the will to keep living the dream.

It’s not worth losing an eye over, maybe, but for a sore wrist and stiff hip?

I’ll keep my phone on.

***

GOODY TWO-SHOES

I struggle to write about movies because they inevitably morph into mini reviews. And truthfully, I don’t want to write reviews on this website. Reviews, and criticism for that matter, revolve around an air of expertise, that because a thing has flaws or was masterful in some way, it means that the reviewer had the pedigree to point out why. A good critic is a fine thing to have in the world (allegedly), but overall, I think an audience knows how they feel about entertainment without someone defining terms.

In the world of entertainment, I’ve seldom found a review useful before experiencing something first.

So, if you haven’t seen Luck, don’t worry—I won’t be reviewing the movie. Instead, I’m interested in the ramifications of the hero of the movie, the aged-out orphan, Sam.

Sam is fascinating because there isn’t much to her character other than the fact that she was an orphan with bad luck and was never adopted. She is good to a fault and wants nothing more than for others to succeed in life. Samrepresents the ideal kind and selfless person, someone willing to sacrifice her own wellbeing for the sake of others. Of course, this goodness leads to her saving the day and everyone lives happily ever after by the end.

Hey, this is a kid’s movie after all—why would everything not work out?

However, it’s the subject matter of the movie that further complicates the character of Sam. The movie is about “bad luck” and its value in the world. Can someone with bad luck still strive to be a good person despite how things have turned out? What would be different about our lives if we had had “good luck” instead of “bad luck”?

These are fun concepts to debate, but let’s think about it in terms of Sam’s character as the ideal selfless giver.

In Luck, the question the film wants us to ask of Sam is, “Will she ever get rid of her bad luck?”

And this was my problem with Sam: I didn’t really care if she got rid of bad luck or not.

Here’s the thing: I want to believe in the characters of the movie. I want to follow and cheer for them when they get what they need. With characters like Sam, however, I found myself rolling my eyes at her selfless acts and goodwill. She was SO GOOD that I began to see this as annoying. I started to feel the gimmick of bad luck following her around all the time was JUSTIFIED.

There’s a name for this wanting someone to have misfortune. No, it’s not schadenfreude, which is pleasure we derive from others’ pain. No, this was more of a feeling of wanting bad things to happen to someone attempting to do “too much” good.

We’ve heard the term before. We call these people who do good without reciprocity a Goody Two-Shoes.

We want a Goody Two-Shoes to fail. They’re the ones who always raise their hand in class because they have the right answer, the ones who always have a compliment or positive thing to say about someone, the ones who pitch in and help clean up a mess they didn’t make. While these are all wonderful qualities, we want terrible things to befall this person.

Why?

Because none of it is justified without acknowledgment of a dark side. Goodness is impressive with 3-dimensional characters, not as a moral set of instructions.

Sam is good for goodness sake (yes, like the Christmas song) and for no other reason that’s given. Perhaps there wasn’t time to further flesh out why she behaves this way, but I had a hard time empathizing with someone passed over for adoption, who certainly suffers from some history of childhood trauma or abandonment issues with no symptoms at age 18. This is someone I’m not rooting for because I don’t understand her.

I’d argue this choice of character doesn’t work. I like goodness, but like love, I want to see it earned. In a romantic comedy, the audience knows the leading man and lady are going to end up together in the end…but the fun of the story is the style and stakes of the obstacles that prevent this.

In Luck, without consequences to Sam’s “bad luck” other than the universe backfiring on her every waking move, there’s very little reason to care.

(Unless you feel the idea of a “good person” is enough…in which case, good for you—two enthusiastic thumbs up.)

Sam isn’t responsible for her misfortune; the universe is.

In other words, Deus Ex Machina, which is why I think the story all falls apart.

Something else influences Sam’s destiny, not her choices.

It’s difficult to root for someone who isn’t in control of their destiny. With Sam, I felt neutral about her misfortunes coming to an end. I liked her, but what else was there?

I wanted to know more about Sam.

I just didn’t get it.

Which is just my luck!

***

MY FIRST ESSAY IS OUT NOW!

That’s right, my first full essay was posted last Sunday! It’s about EVO, the Evolution Championship Seriesor the premiere fighting game tournament held in Las Vegas every summer. The tournament has undergone quite a storied couple of years and I wanted to write about my history following the fighting game community during that time. I’m happy with how the essay turned out and will link it below.

I plan on writing more essays like the EVO piece more often. I have a few in the pipeline but I haven’t much else to share right now, so to stay tuned!

Please give EVO: Reunion a read! I’m always looking for feedback and would love to read your thoughts!

***

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Wishing everyone as well as you can be. You’re not alone out there,

August 17, 2022 0 comments

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Weekly Post-Ed #40

by Robert Hyma August 10, 2022

written by Robert Hyma

CLUELESS ABOUT CLUELESS

Apple Fitness has this masterful way of thematically curating music during workouts—and as it turns out a stint of Pilates (yup, not ashamed to admit it—Pilates kicks my ass) was rocking to the soundtrack greats from 90s romantic comedies, most notably 10 Things I Hate About You and Clueless. Since it has been a decade since I’ve seen the latter film, I loaded up my movie library Monday night and watched the cult comedy written and directed by Amy Heckerling.

After the first ten minutes of the movie, I realized I had undergone a time warp. Watching Clueless today was nothing like when I first saw it at 10-years-old (yes, on television, those dark days before on-demand streaming services). What I was watching today was masterful moviemaking; but this wasn’t how I thought of Clueless as a kid. In fact, I don’t think I knew what to think of movies back then.

At ten, I remember being aware of adult relationships but unsure of how they worked. Movies were the framework that I based my earliest experiences with girls on—a practice that landed me a 100% failure rate.

When I first saw The American President starring Michael Douglas, for example, the first “flirtatious” move I learned was to compliment girls on their shoes—a famous Aaron Sorkin line from the film. This confused many girls who wore dated Nikes and grass-stained Adidas sneakers, as rightfully they should have been. The compliment was meant for dressing up at fancy State Dinners at the White House, not for footwear that befell the wear and tear of Michigan winters.

I made a similar mistake after watching The Fast and the Furious when I thought a good move was to compliment a cute girl on her mother’s beat up red 1998 Grand Prix. “Your mom’s got a nice car,” I told her. She asked why I said this and I didn’t really know—I wanted to look knowledgeable about cars because that was impressive to girls in the movie.

My rule was that if a movie said it, I should probably say it, too. Why else would these things be in movies if it wasn’t a cool thing to talk about?

I don’t remember taking many social cues from Clueless, however. The relationships in the movie mystified me. For example, when Alicia Silverstone’s character, Cher, has a romantic fling with Christian, the new boy in school, I was COMPLETELY unaware of why the relationship didn’t work out and he abruptly left after their date. He seemed like everything she ever wanted, they seemed compatible…what more was there to it?

I just assumed he was too cool for her…even though he didn’t compliment her shoes or her father’s make and model of car.

Even after Donald Faison’s character, Murray, explains in the next scene during a disastrous car ride along a LA freeway, “He’s a cake eater!…He’s gay!” I still didn’t understand. I paused the movie trying to determine what “gay” meant at ten-years-old. I just knew people made fun of you for being it, but that wasn’t Christian in the movie. That guy was cool. He stood up for Brittany Murphy’s character, Tai, when she was held over the ledge of the upstairs railing at a mall. He gallantly pushed the two jerk guys who thought it funny.

If Christian was “gay”, gay seemed like the way to go.

Coincidentally, a few years later, before the advent of my first girlfriend, there was a period of about two weeks when I seriously considered if I was gay or not. There was no evidence to speak of, but because I didn’t think all men looked yucky (think Brad Pitt or George Clooney at the time), I debated if other penises were in my romantic future. I guess I thought of being gay as a conscious commitment, like buying those orange/baggy cargo pants with a million little pockets down the sides. No one bought them unless they really wanted them.

For the record, I wanted those orange/baggy cargo pants but never ended up purchasing them.

I felt similarly about my choice with being gay—just didn’t make the purchase.

(Go easy on me, I’m joking—I was 10-12 when I thought things worked this way.)

Now, in the year 2022, I understand that Christian’s character from Clueless was a parody of 1950’s movie stars. He was a combination of members of the Rat Pack, with the wardrobe and slicked back hair donned by Marlon Brando. He even drove around in an old Nash Metropolitan, a car sold in 1953. All his lines are faux gangster, something that might have been said in the musical “Guys and Dolls“.

I also understand now that Clueless is a sharp piece of satire and an homage to another literary work. The film is based on Emma, the famous Jane Austin novel about a young matchmaker proud of her ability to match up close friends and relatives with what she feels is best for them (except, she falls prey to the monsters she makes of them, leading to betrayals, etc). She must become humble, which mostly comes from the subtly flirtatious encounters of an older gentleman in her life (Paul Rudd’s character Josh in the Clueless) who wins her heart and ends her single-hood, as all romantic comedies must.

The only thing that wasn’t lost on me at 10-years-old was that everyone in the movie didn’t look like sophomores in high school. They looked much older, much more mature than they ought to have been.

Oh yeah! That, and the item donated to Cher during the canned good drive was pretty obvious. Some have said it was a bong, but I know that it was, in fact, a potato shredder (similar to a pencil sharpener, but for potatoes). They existed in the 90s (it did not) and were a dangerous kitchen utensil.

Of that, I was correct at 10-years-old and still maintain that’s what the tinny device sorted as “Kitchen wear” was used for.

Why else keep it in the kitchen?

***

EVO 2022

I’ll be brief: this past weekend was EVO 2022, the premiere fighting game tournament held in Las Vegas, Nevada every year. It’s a storied tournament that was particularly eventful this year for several reasons, many of which deserve its own post on this website. So, this ~~Saturday~~ Sunday at 8 PM, I’ll be posting an essay of this year’s event and the storylines that unfolded.

Look out for that ~~Saturday~~ Sunday @ 8PM EST (Sorry all, put the wrong day! Sunday instead of Saturday)

***

***

Wishing everyone as well as you can be. You’re not alone out there,

August 10, 2022 0 comments

| Weekly Post-Eds |

Weekly Post-Ed #39

by Robert Hyma August 3, 2022

written by Robert Hyma

ROCK GODS

Why is music today so terrible?

It’s an argument I hear from anyone older (my generation included) who turns on any modern FM radio station: “Music isn’t like it used to be,” and “They aren’t even playing instruments now,” or, most frequently, “What do you call this crap, anyway?”

And I tend to agree. My golden age of music was from a post-punk UK indie movement where Bloc Party, Foals, Interpol, Kaiser Chiefs and the like were my Rock Gods and wrote the anthems that defined my adolescent years. They ruled the stage, sold out arenas, and changed the music landscape with a sound and attitude that still resonates.

My dad’s generation had The Beatles, Elton John, Chicago. The guys I play hockey with laud anything Rush, Led Zeplin, AC/DC, perhaps straying into the ~~cheeseburger~~ rock paradise of Jimmy Buffett. My generation likened teen angst to screamo ballads and frantic guitar strumming: Green Day, Foo Fighters, Paramore.

And on and on it goes, bygone eras where the music brought together droves of people and has lasted throughout our lives on Spotify playlists, blasting around campfires on JBL speakers the neighborhood over.

But not the music of today, it feels like. Why does it seem like today’s music lacks such defining bands and songs?

Where have all the Rock Gods gone?

That’s where it started for me this week. While at a friend’s house, I found an old instrument stashed away in a box in his basement. It wasn’t an old electric guitar, or the hard-shell case of an abandoned marching band instrument unused since graduation day. What I found was a miniaturized plastic guitar, shaped like a Fender Stratocaster, with six rectangular, rainbow-colored buttons assorted down the neck, one occupying each of the farthest frets. A large switch, maybe three inches long, clicked up and down, spring-loaded back into position where the strings would normally be strummed.

This was the controller of the game Guitar Hero and was instrument to some of the greatest Rock Gods that ever played.

Oh, I can see the grin of skepticism on all your faces. Don’t worry, I used to laugh at them, too. Why would anyone put all their efforts into fake learning “Sweet Home Alabama?” or “Thunder”? If they were so good at the game, why didn’t they just learn a real instrument?

And yet, everyone stopped to watch these Rock Gods play. The superhighway of colored rectangles flashed on the screen at breakneck speed, and these Rock Gods kept in rhythm with every chord progression, every solo riff, and we all watched in wonder while all the hits were played—Black Sabbath, Mötley Crüe, DragonForce. We couldn’t help ourselves.

We watched because music isn’t concerned about what is real or earned (like an actual guitar versus as a two-foot-long plastic one), it was all about being involved.

It’s the same reason we love the Rock Gods that we do. They make us feel alive with their music, with their swagger, and we channel that into our lives. There’s nothing like seeing a live band perform the shit out of the songs they’ve made. Even cover bands qualify. The same goes for players of Guitar Hero and Rock Band who hit 100% accuracy after a session of “Through the Fire Flames” and “The Pretender”.

“Hey, remember Guitar Hero?” I asked my friend after dusting off the old controller.

“Yeah, I don’t play anymore,” he said.

“No one does. We should play it, though.”

So we did, pretending we were the same Rock Gods that hadn’t aged a day past 16-years-old. And the joy of playing those old tracks came flooding back, all from a guitar-shaped piece of plastic and six colorful buttons.

“Music is anything but math,” Andrew Bird, perhaps on the greatest musicians of the last decade, once said.

I believe that goes for why we love the music we do, even if it comes from the Guitar Hero catalogue, or from the auto-tuning synth-lords of this generation.

We all pay tribute to our own Rock Gods because they move us. They make our lives meaningful, perhaps in a way that only music ever could.

And as long as there is music, even if we don’t like it, there will always be its Rock Gods.

That’s what I thought about driving home from playing an hour of Guitar Hero. I turned off my Apple Music playlist in the car, switched to a non-static FM station, and listened to something from today.

And immediately shut it off after a minute.

I tried. These aren’t my Rock Gods; but I know now that they are somebody’s.

Even those who listen to Jack Harlow.

***

I’M HALLUCINATING, YOU’RE HALLUCINATING…

Here’s a thought to unsettle you for the rest of your life: everything you perceive, from sunshine beaming in through the window, to the sounds of people bustling around you, to the smell of the coffee steaming from the mug at your desk…all of it is made up in the mind as a glorious, biochemical hallucination.

Yes, this is the Matrix.

So, would you like the Red or Blue pill?

I’m joking, of course, but the premise of being plugged into our senses strikes closer to home when it comes to understanding consciousness than previously thought.

In Anil Seth’s TED Talk, he explains that what we perceive the world to be is really the body’s sensory system finely tuned over millions of years of evolution to calculate an accurate depiction of reality. We see color and shadow because it helps us identify contrast or danger (brightly colored berries, insects, reptiles usually signaled ‘danger’ in primitive man); we distinguish noises from loud to silent as we’re able to understand if danger is approaching. It became useful, through our evolution, to identify the world around us. Most humans interpret sensory signals in the same ways: grass is green, the sky is blue, a splash of water feels wet, etc, etc.

But within the finer points of our sensory organs, we are making approximations based on our own experiences and personal abilities to understand what is real around us. Even though we understand that grass is green (well, maybe not in your neighbor’s yard), the eye cannot actually “see” anything; rather, it is a bodily organ that translates wavelength frequencies to the mind, and the occipital lobe “determines” what is being seen.

And in some cases, the mind can be wrong about what it sees.

Take this famous optical illusion shown below:

The darkness of the checkered boxes outside of the pillar’s shadow seem to be darker in the checkered Box A than the checkered Box B, but this is only our mind’s approximation of what seems to be correct in terms of what we know of light and shadow. In reality, the two boxes are the same color:

So, who is to say our senses are to be totally trusted?

As Anil Seth says in his TED Talk: “Reality is the hallucination we all agree on.”

It’s a wonderful notion, isn’t it? To think this is why animals see things differently, like how dogs can only perceive different color spectra. We all see things in our own way…so long as we all agree that Jack Harlow is just ok.

I’m kidding. I have nothing against that guy, I just like his name as a punchline.

All of this and more is covered in the Anil Seth’s TED Talk below. It’s a cathartic 20-minutes and worth the watch:

***

***

Wishing everyone as well as you can be. You’re not alone out there,

August 3, 2022 0 comments

| Weekly Post-Eds |

Weekly Post-Ed #38

by Robert Hyma July 27, 2022

written by Robert Hyma

A MARVELOUS CULTURAL DISPLAY

After contemplating why I write semi/sort-of reviews of Marvel properties, I have to ask aloud: is it because I spent five hours making this week’s Weekly Post-Ed graphic in the style of the Disney+ show Ms. Marvel (you read that correctly, FIVE HOURS), does that mean I must write something even if I don’t have anything unique to say about the television series?

I think the answer is yes; I really enjoyed making the logo. Go ahead, scroll up and take another look, just for me. Yup, that’s five hours well spent, I’d say!

My new favorite attraction to every Disney+ Marvel show is being taken on a personal tour of a given culture or people or idea. In Moon Knight, we were given a tour of Egyptian culture and gods, culminating in a final adventure that spanned across the sands of Egypt. In WandaVision, the grieving process was studied through a powerful witch who manipulated a small town into becoming different eras of television symbolizing the Five Stages of Grief.

And now, we have the MCU’s latest show, Ms. Marvel, which draws heavily from Muslim culture in America and what it means to retain heritage while forging one’s own identity in a new place. The show followed a similar structure as Moon Knight as we eventually traveled with Kamala to her grandmother’s home in Pakistan where she solved a family mystery as well as why her powers stem from the ancient bangle that acts as catalyst for her marvelous superpowers.

Ms. Marvel is dense with Muslim culture, ranging from the graffiti art opening credits that also pay homage to the original comic illustrations, to the music that not only sets a tone for modern Muslim influences for the show but also ties into the theming of each episode. So much of the series took place in a modern Muslim household, not only acting as a window to a world that many of us have never considered, but showed, like any culture, how loving and connected family is to our own sense of identity, even while forging it in our tumultuous teenage years.

Criticism of story and plot aside, I enjoyed each episode and gained a greater appreciation for the world that Kamala (Ms. Marvel) comes from.

Ok, now for some criticism.

Can we please stop making police and/or government officials idiots in television shows? Granted, it can be argued that real world government agents act no differently, but I like a formidable foe in my fiction. Since a government agency is the villain in this show (really, it is), they need to be better at being competent. Highlights of inept police work include:

A car pulls up and helps the hero escape, driving off with squealing tires down an abandoned road—and no agents seem to notice.
Escaping through a loud, metal door when other characters are in the act of being arrested at gunpoint by the police—and no one notices the door closing with a loud thud as our heroes escape.
Missing every shot fired from advanced weapon systems as our heroes escape unscathed around corners, ducking underneath falling debris.

I understand this is a relatively low stakes show in which teenagers are meant to win against the big/bad governmental agents abusing their power, but there must be a better way of showing this other than having the same police pratfalls as an episode of RENO 911. Not only do I roll my eyes at every stereotype reinforced by snobbish portrayals of governmental authority abusing power, but that the cops are not well-trained at catching the Scooby-Doo equivalent of “Those meddling kids!”, it only adds to the middle finger thrown to the audience in place of real conflict and tension in the show.

This is where Marvel Studios can do better. I’m still a believer in things taking time to get better (the first season of Parks and Recreation a prime example), and Marvel has yet to master a winning formula for their online shows. And perhaps six episodes just isn’t enough to put into place a structure that makes the audience care about the villains as much as the heroes. It was just revealed at San Diego Comic-Con that a new Daredevil series will be releasing in 2024 and has an 18-episode arc; maybe that’s something to consider in properly delivering a show that is as satisfying as the movies seem to be, budgets notwithstanding.

But I found there’s more reasons to watch Ms. Marvel other than implications for future stories from the MCU. From Kamala’s parents and family to her friends and community, to the locales and music and wardrobe of the show, all of it was fascinating and worth sitting down for six episodes to enjoy something new and yet familiar.

Just like Ms. Marvel herself.

***

THE SHAPE OF AN “L” ON HIS FOREHEAD

Has anyone ever had a dreamcatcher on their wall as a kid, and still had a nightmare, and upon waking up from the nightmare with a cold sweat and a few lingering images from that horrifying experience say aloud,

“Wow, I should have believed harder that my dreamcatcher actually works. If I believe hard enough, I wouldn’t get any nightmares.”

If this kind of idiocy describes you, then let me introduce Clark Kegley, the only YouTube content creator I’ve lost respect for immediately after one video.

If you’ve ever clicked on a Self-Help video on YouTube, you’ve just acquired a sort of algorithm herpes. One click on a self-help guru (even worse on mobile if you linger for too long over a thumbnail and the video auto-plays *cringe*) and you’re bound to get these videos popping up in your feed all the time. I call it a YouTube Outbreak; and the only cure is to ONLY watch things that you want popping up in your feed for a period of months before the outbreak can clear up.

And I liked Clark Kegley. Initially. He seemed like a good dude even if he sported a greasy mustache, slicked hair combo…but I suppose he’s emphasizing that masculine look that many men look for in their “worldly” self-help gurus, so more power to him.

The video I first saw of Kegley was about his quest to divulge the top three lessons he gleaned from reading over 300 self-help books. Sadly, the top advice was not, “Stop reading self-help books,” which, in my experience, would have been the most useful. Instead, Kegley spoke about waiting for permission and how we often seek exoneration (from work, from a needy spouse/family, time constraints and other responsibilities) before starting something, how we remain sentimental to the idea of change (understand it without true action—which requires sacrifice, something most of us are not willing to give), and forgiveness in terms of others and ourselves so that we can move on.

It wasn’t groundbreaking (self-help videos never are) but I thought Kegley had some interesting ideas to share.

Then, the algorithm herpes of Kegley videos and others like his kept surfacing.

Soon, I was scrolling past swaths of celebrity commencement speeches, the everlasting advice of Steve Jobs, what Elon Musk’s diet was as a child that led to his founding SpaceX…just a constant stream of “I’ll help you improve your life if only you subscribe to my channel,” nonsense.

Usually, I’m fine ignoring videos (especially the YouTube self-help guru crowd that lives entirely on saturation of their own videos – cranking out as many as possible – and growing their subscriber numbers—which seems counterintuitive; if your videos are helping people, shouldn’t your subscriber numbers decline since they no longer need your services? Just a thought), but eventually one of Kegley’s appeared that raised an eyebrow. It was titled:

How to MANIFEST A Text INSTANTLY from a SPECIFIC Person.

If you’re wondering why I’m not linking the video here, I refuse to give this man extra views after having watched it. If interested (and I know you are, you industrious internet connoisseur), you’ll find it on your own.

Basically, the video says this:

(Paraphrasing): “Here are the three steps to make anyone think of you and message you back. Anyone. No matter what your relationship is with them.

Fill your head with positive thoughts, only good ones.
Write the name of the person you want contacting you with your finger on the glass of your phone. Over and over and over again.
Wait. Within three days, maybe four, you’ll get a message from them.”

Kegley proudly summarizes, “I guarantee that this works, guys!”

First, no it doesn’t. And I know it doesn’t because coincidences do not count as mysticality. There has been literally thousands of years of research and philosophy disseminating similar belief systems. If you’re not hearing back from your father, in Kegley’s case, because he “never” contacts you first and suddenly does…the event was still possible because there was still a basis to get ahold of you even without this so-called “Manifestation”. It may be unlikely that your father does text first, but it isn’t out of the realm of possibility since a.) he is your dad and is, therefore, invested in your existence, and b.) has the means of contacting you in the first place.

If I am secretly in love with Emma Watson, the actress, it doesn’t mean that I can write her name on my phone and expect a text from her at some point in the future. The same goes for Anna Kendrick, Elizabeth Olson, and, to a lesser degree, Pedro Pascal (because let’s face it: he’s a lovely man and bends the curvature of heterosexuality in men if left stranded on a desert island, not ashamed to admit that) and anyone else I’m trying to think of that might have a phone I could develop a psychic connection with.

And while this idea of writing someone’s name on a phone screen is objectively stupid, the part that drove me to write about this guy was the end of the video.

Kegley says, (paraphrasing, because I refuse to rewatch the video to properly quote): “If it doesn’t work after three days, it means you just have to do it over. But guys, I’m telling you if you’re NOT BELIEVING HARD ENOUGH, it won’t work. You have to believe in this, 100%. And if you aren’t believing in this entirely, you won’t get results…”

That’s why this guy deserves a shot taken at his content. It’s the old: “It’s not my fault my made-up thing is the dumbest idea and doesn’t work because I made it up, it’s because you just didn’t try hard enough!”

A KEKW laugh

While it’s an old formula to gaslight a victim that it is their fault for why something isn’t working (I think religions of the world call the same process imbedding guilt, but that’s a different brand altogether), it should evoke a KEKW laugh from everyone who encounters it. Every time.

But after some deliberation about posting this segment (because I don’t like tearing specific people apart on a personal website, not when I can be vague and clever about something and pass it off as fine writing), I have to admit that Kegley’s method of writing on the glass of a phone with a finger does work to some degree. For example, whenever I happen upon another of Kegley’s videos, I write the shape of an “L” on his forehead (yes, from the famous Smashmouth song), and it turns out to be true!

And I can only surmise it’s because I BELIEVE hard enough that it is.

In a way, Kegley’s videos really have helped move my life along. But now that they have, I can unsubscribe.

The YouTube Outbreak is over, I can go back to living my life again.

Speaking of, think Emma Watson will really message me if I keep writing her name with my finger on my phone screen?

I guess there’s only one way to find out…

***

***

Wishing everyone as well as you can be. You’re not alone out there,

July 27, 2022 0 comments

| Weekly Post-Eds |

Weekly Post-Ed #37

by Robert Hyma July 19, 2022

written by Robert Hyma

A TALE OF MILWAUKEE

I took a two-day trip to Milwaukee for two reasons: to get away from West Michigan and experience someplace else for a short while, and to meet a girl. I did both. And while writing this Weekly Post-Ed and describing my experiences, I felt that what I wrote wasn’t quite as true as the journals I kept during my time there. I was writing in a way that portrayed Milwaukee as mundane or uninteresting, which was far from the truth. There were mundane aspects about the trip: the drive was fine, the hotel was fine, the girl was – to put it nicely – fine. So, what gives? I traveled to some place I’ve never seen before, enamored with its architecture and history, a culture that was bustling and interwoven between every race, class, shape, and construct, like a fine soup streaming through the busy sidewalks of the city.

And yet, I was writing about these experiences with a certain expectation after the fact;

I was hoping for something cathartic to happen to me while I was there.

Maybe I was supposed to run into an interesting group of people who would invite me to a party and offset how I saw the world up until that point, or that I might bump into someone in a coffee shop that was intrigued by me. No such things happened, of course, and I’ve sat at my computer for the past few days pondering what exactly to make of my time in Milwaukee.

But maybe this isn’t such a complicated problem. I journaled all of my experiences on the road. The problem is that the length of these writings, even cut and pasted together, is a bit long for a Weekly Post-Ed. So, I’m going to compile these entries into a travelogue about what happened in Milwaukee.

If you can’t wait for the juicy details, here’s a rundown of what happened:

Drove for 4.5 hours straight until arriving in Milwaukee.
Checked into the Drury Plaza Hotel
Walked the streets downtown, saw the river, saw Lake Michigan from the other side (looked similar, really).
Had a date that evening with someone I’ve talked with sparsely from a dating app.
Went to bed.
Spent most of the following day in my hotel, exhausted from a variety of factors (the lingering fatigue of my previous bout with Covid as one of them).
Walked the streets of Milwaukee on a Monday—fun fact, most everything is closed on Mondays in Milwaukee
Had a second date with the same girl; regretted not kissing her when I should have.
Slept early.
Had brunch with this same date. No kiss, again. Regretted it, again.
Drove 4.5 hours home.

And somewhere in there was supposed to be this grand, ubiquitous breakthrough that would provide the foundation for a summer I’ve deemed as a fresh start, a way of cleansing the old for the new.

What I found was that all of this did unfold on the trip, just not in the way I expected.

In fact, I wrote it during my time in the hotel:

“I wouldn’t call it boredom, but there is a feeling of, “Is this all?” And, yes, I think that’s right. This is likely all, and the fun travelers have is the fun they make for themselves.”

The Milwaukee 2022 Travelogue will be posted this weekend. Keep an eye out for that!

***

PHOTOBOMBING

There was a social experiment done at the University of Florida with a photography class. The class was split into two groups: the first group was told they were to be graded on QUANTITY—meaning, they were to take as many photos as possible for the best grade. The second group was told their grade would be based on QUALITY—or deciding upon a select group of photos that best exhibited their skills.

The results of the experiment showed two things: first, that the QUANTITY group not only produced more photos, but that the quality of their photos was better. This was because the pressure to produce a select number of photos to be excellent didn’t exist. The QUANTITY group could take as many photos as they liked and the freedom to experiment led to considerably better results.

The QUALITY group, by contrast, produced a significantly smaller number of photographs. Since the grade was about excellence, the students in this group did not take excess photos that would, as a result, push the boundaries of what they knew currently about photography. In short, the QUALITY group played it safe in order to appease the professor, which led to a stunting of growth with their photography skills and the photographs suffered as a result.

The lesson that has been derived from this social experiment is that with more QUANTITY, it follows there will also be more QUALITY.

Now, I wrote all of that to say that my experiences with dating apps DOES NOT FOLLOW these findings whatsoever.

I’ve been online dating for 13 months (on and off, of course). Over that period, I’ve been on dates with 22 different women. Before this era of dating, I went on a grand total of 3 dates as a teenager and into my early college years, two of these dates developed into serious, long-term relationships (one a brief marriage), and I thought I was doing fairly well in terms of finding romantic partners that connected and resonated with me.

By contrast, the past year has introduced me to dates with such staggering backgrounds and belief systems that I’m often left speechless by stories that I could never fathom to make up as a writer (believe me, I have tried—these stories are much more complex and surprising).

My ultimate goal with dating is to find a meaningful, long-term relationship. And after 13 months, I have to ask: what’s been going wrong over the past year? Why haven’t I found a serious connection?

In short: I don’t know.

And after reading books, articles, and constantly introspecting on the matter…I don’t think anyone does.

It appears we’re living in an era where genuine connection is a trial in and of itself.

But I’ve certainly had a QUANTITY of dates (22 women in just over 52 weeks is a potent sample size in the greater dating world). So why hasn’t this led to better QUALITY in dates?

First, I think bad luck plays a bigger role in the dating world than it does with a skill that can be improved over time like, say, photography. Dating certainly depends on many elements not in your control: natural chemistry, a person’s background/belief system/social ability, which leads to how open and communicative they are as dates, as well as a willingness to keep curious and want to know more about another person. This listing doesn’t account for other social conventions such as access to to instant gratification that has become available – oh, I don’t know – EVERYWHERE in the modern age (streaming services, social media, the internet and the never-ending wealth of information available instantly and from wherever to name a few).

Since all of these variables are ever-shifting, it makes the practice of dating something impossible to master since you aren’t playing with a full deck of cards most nights.

To take the photography example from above a bit further: it’s the equivalent of snapping a photo, but the resulting image is either distorted or that objects shifted in the background without warning. Can you imagine? A tree branch moves in the way of a crimson sunset, a sandhill appears blurry – not because of the camera settings, but just – you know – because it can.

Essentially, everything in the image can “PhotoBomb”—the act of jumping in front, garnering attention, or taking away from the intended intention of the photo by some means.

That about wraps up what online dating feels like—a giant Photobomb that gets in the way of a genuine connection. Oh, things might have gone well except for (and I’ve experienced all of these and more):

“I have a close relationship with my ex, I hope it’s not weird that I sometimes go to his house to spend the night when I need to get things off my chest. He’s such a great listener…”
“I’m sorry, but I’m looking for someone that is seeking a relationship with Jesus like I am. It doesn’t seem like you go to church three nights a week like I do…”
“I don’t trust men. I’ve had a string of bad relationships, the last guy cheated on me with three different girls, and I just don’t see the good in them anymore. Anyway, I’m glad we’re on this date; how was your day?”
And on and on and on it goes…

How does it feel to be on the dating scene for just over a year without the ultimate goal of a serious relationship?

Picture that scene from the original Jumanji when Robin William’s character emerges from the board game and looks like a wild man who has survived the wilderness of a jungle that should have killed him since he was a kid.

Yeah, that’s the psyche of someone who has online dated for too long.

That’s why I take breaks. If not for my own sanity, but to remind myself that the results do not necessarily reflect the person. Will more practice lead to better results? Not really, but I like to think I gain something else with the more dates I go on.

I have Twenty-Two unique stories to tell, each one of them more unique than the last. Each felt promising but was inevitably photobombed by something unexpected. If you think about it, 22 dates without coming close to a functional fit is quite the streak to be on.

I should put together a photo album someday of all these experiences. Then, after this journey is said and done, I’ll pull out the album show a friend who wonders why I would ever keep such old, ugly things.

“Why would you keep any of this?” she would ask as I flipped the plastic pages to the next story.

And I’d shrug.

Because I didn’t know what else to do with them.