Idiocy for fun and profit

Normally, being an idiot is a definite drawback. Not being able to find what's right in front of my face, spending hours on a task it takes a person of average intelligence only minutes, confidently saying something that turns out to be very, very wrong...these are the hallmarks of the idiot, and they're things that I do so often that I'm thinking of trying to pass them off as hobbies. Which is a pretty stupid thing to do.

But tonight, some greater force took pity on me and decided that the usual punishment for idiocy would, just this once, be replaced with reward.

The story goes like this: I was signed up for some focus group of non-profit web folks. Or something. I wasn't really sure, since the invitation was passed along to me by someone who wasn't really sure. But I figured I could learn a few things, and, as an idiot, I have to take all the chances I can get for learnin' and such. Also, they were incomprehensibly giving everyone $150 to participate. Well. Okay!

I got off the Metro and looked around for the address, and couldn't find it where my feeble brain kept insisting it should be. I walked up and down a three block area, searching for the spot, only to be told by my useless brain that it just wan't there, that any spot it could have been in was under construction. I called Ivan to get him to look up the place, checked the spot where he told me it was, still couldn't find it, and was just about to give up when I saw the right address: right where it should be, and even more embarrassingly, right at the spot where I had called Ivan.

At this point, I was 15 minutes late, and considered just turning around, but reconsidered (it takes my brain even longer to reconsider than it does to consider in the first place), and figured that I could just rudely-but-quietly bust in late to the room and still get my learn on.

I made it to the office, signed in, and was greeted by a guy with a pained expression on his face. He asked if I was there for the focus group, I said I was, and he said that it had already started, in a way that made it clear that latecomers weren't going to be joining. "But," he said, "I'll still get you your compensation."

Suddenly, it became clear to me why he had a pained expression on his face: he was going to have to give me the money anyway, and he was hoping that I would turn it down. I was torn. The decent part of me was arguing, "You haven't done anything. It would be wrong to take their money." Luckily, I've lately been successful in beating down the decent part of me, and so I took the money. And walked out the door.

Sometimes, things work out okay. Hey, brain? You worthless, rotten brain? Thanks, man.

In the confessional

Forgive me, world, for I have sinned. It's been weeks and the guilt is weighing on me. I hope that you and my creator (Blogger) can forgive me.

I was getting ready for work one morning this past August when I heard a pounding noise coming from outside. I looked through one back window and saw nothing. I looked through the other just in time to see what it was: a man running away from an SUV that had a newly-broken window and a dent in the passenger-side door, and a cinder block resting on the ground beside it.

My first thought was—I swear—that I should call 911 and report it. But my second-guessing took it's rightful place as my second thought and I was filled with jaded, cynical conclusions: "I can't even describe the perp beyond 'black guy with a red cap on', and why would 911 in Washington DC care about a simple car break-in when they'll never find the guy who did it? The car owner will report it eventually, and my call isn't going to make a damn bit of difference. So I won't report it." And I didn't.

But I should have reported it, not because it would have resulted in any prosecution or any semblance of justice, but simply because it's like casting a vote against lawlessness and wrongdoing, no matter how small and almost-entirely meaningless that vote may be. And for not voting, I'm deeply sorry and profoundly regretful.

As penance, I'll recite five "Losing My Edge"s and ten "Common People"s. And I offer myself as an example that civic duty should trump cynicism.

The Story of Are Seven

A work task last week took me YouTube, where I found out that I didn't have a username yet. "No problem," I thought as I always do when prompted to create a username. "areseven is never taken." Only this time, it was. Some guy in Turkey. I was devastated. What could "areseven" possibly mean to this guy?! Doesn't he know that it's been part of my life for 20 years? Didn't he research and find that I had the areseven.com domain and areseven@ all of the major email providers?! Apparently not.

Then it realized that, not only does this YouTube owner not realize these things, you, my readers may not know it. So here, after four years of blogging, settle in for the unnecessarily long story of the origin of Are Seven:

It begins in Houston, where everything is both exactly like and nothing like it's Texan stereotypes. Football's a big deal. It's hot. It's boring. You can only get around in a car. People say "y'all", but there's not much in the way of accents. Boys wear cowboy boots and jeans with tuxedo jackets and cummerbunds to the formals (aka, "The Texas Tux"). It's an unfortunate place, I never liked it, and now I'm cursed to care about a town I hate.

The high school's architecture was made for warm weather: mostly open with a big courtyard and lots of steel and plexiglass. It was also clearly made in the '60's. It had seven wings of classrooms, which were differentiated by color: blue, orange, green, aqua (where the tough kids went outside to smoke), and red. The classrooms then had numbers with a letter to designate the color of the wing: B-9, O-14, G-17, etc. It sounded like a game of Battleship.

I had almost no friends or social life to speak of through most of high school (I know everyone says this, but I really didn't), until I started doing journalism in my junior year. Extracurricular activities were a big deal (and extremely competitive) at this high school, and the yearbook and newspaper staffs had pretty close-knit communities. It was starting my junior year and into my senior year when I made my first group of close friends in high school. We spent many late-night hours in the classroom that was the journalism headquarters: red wing, room seven. R-7, one of the few numbers in the school that carried a weight of meaning.

A year after I graduated, a line in a Michelle Shocked song—"Texas always seemed so big, but you know you're in the largest state in the Union when you're anchored down in Anchorage"—took on personal meaning when I moved with my parents to Alaska, taking a year off before I went back to college. It was an intentionally lonely year for me, marked by a switch of musical interests from drums to songwriting. I bought two guitars, a bass, and a 4-track and took to writing and recording in my bedroom.

My first stabs at songwriting had lyrics and virtually no understanding of song structure. They were terrible songs. But luckily, this was a time when I became strangely fascinated with surf instrumentals, and I abandoned attempts to write lyrics and just stuck to the sounds, and it started sounding pretty good.

The songs I was constructing started forming into a project: I would write an instrumental for each of the friends I had left back in Houston, giving it a sound that I thought suited the person and then an in-joke title. I finished the songs, mocked up a cover for this "band" called The Mome Raths, after my favorite part in Alice in Wonderland, and copied tapes to send to these friends, none of whom would know about the project until the tape arrived in the mail.

It's kind of amazing to think that, in this grand execution of the album, I almost forgot an important piece: the record label. In one final in-joke, I took a cue from the fact that almost all the friends this tape was going to I had known from the journalism staff, and I decided to nod to the room where we spent so much time. But I spelled it out: Are Seven. In spite of its now-blush-worthy immaturity and clueless recording, that tape was one of the proudest achievements of my life, and the name Are Seven gained an even greater meaning in my life.

The Mome Raths, "The Penguin Spy Theme"


Years passed and I found myself in college and in a real band, with actual other human beings. We called ourselves Touk, and we loved us, which, in retrospect, was both justified and ridiculous. We wanted to conquer the world, and didn't quite understand why it didn't happen. Turns out we made a lot of mistakes, but I'm glad that we gave it a try, and I'm glad that on our releases (an EP cassette, a full-length CD and a 7" single), we attached the Are Seven record label on those self-released tunes.

Touk, "Ten Overrun"


The Touk days changed the way I thought of Are Seven: it turned from a respectful nod to my old high school friends to a goal of my own record label. Laziness and cluelessness kept me from ever making this reality, though, which you may have guessed, since it's fairly well known that, among the many things that I am, one thing I am not is the proprietor of a record label.

The rise of the internet brought on a need for usernames and email addresses, but it was an embarrassingly long time before I realized I could use areseven. But it was perfect once I stumbled on it. It was a pseudonym that I could use almost anywhere, since it was never taken.

Until last week.

You got what I need

A couple months ago, Jordan Baker pointed out this story in the Post about an old (elderly? senior? advanced age?) woman who wrote a book called The Joy of Drinking that went along with her earlier book Endangered Pleasures, "which praised cigarettes, naps, bacon, swearing, loafing and other precious joys." Most of the comments on Jordan's post praised exactly that praising, and God knows I'm alongside them, but there was one quote in the story that really stood out to me:

"I'm in favor of a little more sociability, a little more merriment, maybe even a little more singing and dancing," she says. "Jeepers, I'm so old that I remember when we all used to sing all the time."

I do love that a woman who loves swearing chose to say "jeepers", but what really made me glaze over with joy was this past reality when people would pepper their lives with singing, both alone and together. Song was an active part of life and not just a form of passive entertainment. I daydream about being able to burst into Of Montreal's "Bunny Ain't No Kind of Rider" and having people join in to entertain no one but ourselves. I dream of singing out an appropriate line during a conversation and not having people look at me like I just offered them a trampling.

This little daydream came to a nighttime reality as I was walking down U Street last night, heading home after the Femi Kuti show at the 9:30. Approaching 16th, a drunk group of three girls and a guy burst into Biz Markee's "Just A Friend." A group of about six people heading the other way joined in. I joined in. One of the girls in the first group turned around and smiled at me as we sang together. For just a second, we were groups of strangers singing a famously terrible-but-fun song, not as a performance or a boast, but only because we wanted to and it felt good.

We stopped singing and I veered off onto New Hampshire, as the girls in the group turned back inward and started into a round of "I love you so much" that was as inspired as much by that thrilling release of singing as their intake of booze. It was a great moment that only had one bad part: I wish it happened more often.

Word problems

Instructions: Read the description and then answer the multiple-choice questions based on the information given to you.

The scene: About 10-12 pm Saturday night, at a hotel bar directly on Dupont Circle. This bar tends to draw all crowds: the small "let's grab a drink in the neighborhood" groups, the "Wooo! We're out for the night!" crowds, the "Might as well go downstairs and get a drink" hotel residents and even the "We were at a formal event/wedding, now let's go drinking" groups.

But we were focusing on one group in particular.

The men: About 10 of them, all looking late-30's, early-40's, all pretty badly dressed in that suburban-casual way: striped, tucked polo shirts with belted khakis. The would all get a call-back if they were auditioning for the role of "obnoxious guy #4" in The Office. One guy seemed kind of shy and dejected and stayed off to the side, one guy was wearing a Hawaiian-style shirt, one guy looked about ten years older than the rest, but mostly, their from-a-distance type was identical. That we could see, every one of their left hands had a wedding ring on it.

Also: they were all (excect for the dejected guy) in very high spirits, both in terms of alcohol and attitude.

The woman: That is, the only woman in this group of guys. About mid-30's, moderately attractive (I would say better-than-moderately, but the rest of my group thought she looked like a transvestite, which either says that I have better taste or that I'm just that desperate. Both are true). She was dressed much more formally than her male companions, in a generic-but-still-sexy short black dress. Nice body, with legs that the dress showed off well. Short dark hair, nice haircut. Trannie or not, she took care of herself. Her left ring finger was bare.

The interaction: Even when we got there, the woman was being very flirty with the guys to either side of her. Now, it's important to note that it was a goofy, drunken style of flirting, not the "Well, look at how much attention I'm paying to you, handsome!" She was pretending to fondle the chest of the guy to her right and being very touchy with any guy who got close to her.

The weird dynamic got ratcheted up a notch when she started doing what looked for all the world like an exaggerated impression of Sharon Stone's infamous leg-crossing scene in Basic Instinct. She did this about five or six times. The guys were intrigued, and there was some definite drooling happening, but they were mostly just laughing and carrying on. There was no indication that there was any one guy who she had her eye on or that any one guy was clearly after her.

My group debated over what these people's relationship to each other was but then lost some interest in other conversation, but I looked over just as the woman was—in the middle of the crowded bar—lifting her short black skirt clear above her waist, showing a black thong and, presumably, showing off a tattoo or scar or something. More drooling and laughing from the men. A few seconds later, she did a Lewinsky, pulling up her skirt only on one side to show off whatever she was trying to show off.

So, from what we know, what is going on with this group?

1. They are colleagues and/or attending the same convention. She's either the wild woman of the office, or someone who's just having some fun with some conservative men she just met.
   
2. They're old friends having a mini-reunion. She was the girl at school who always said, "All my closest friends are guys" and they all had crushes on her. Now, they're all married, she isn't and looks great, and someone's life is about to go very, very wrong.
   
3. She's clearly a prostitute.
4. Some other option that I've missed. You'll provide an explanation in the comments.

If you guess "c", bonus points for guessing how much she charged. Though, I guess that would be bonus points on top of nothing, since we will, sadly, never know the right answer.

London roundup: PIES!

Traveling and only-periodic access to a connection kept me from doing posting dispatches from days 4 and 5 of my London trip. My editor is going to kill me! Besides a day trip to Oxford, though, there's not a whole lot of events to fill you in on. It was more hanging out with my sister and some casual, quality London time.

In the interest of closure, though, let's sum up four days with everyone's favorite cultural calculator: the Gross Generalization.

The Best Part of London
Besides the amazing neighborhoods that seem to stretch on without end, my favorite part of London is exactly the part that they get so maligned for: the food. Yes, it's easy to talk about how much cultural diversity has improved the cuisine, but it's the junk food that I love. The pies...ohhh, the pies. They'll take pretty much anything and stuff it into a fried pie, and every one that I had was delicious. Their chips (which they call "crisps", which doesn't make any sense at...oh, wait...now I get it) come in flavors that no American mind ever would have dreamed. The pre-packaged sandwiches are combinations that seem so logical, but yet aren't everywhere. Clotted cream? I mean, come ON! It's a flavor paradise.

The Worst Part of London
By Monday, I was thinking how funny it was that the stereotype of New Yorkers is rude and unpleasant and the Londoner stereotype is witty and charming. In fact, I've found that New Yorkers are actually pretty calm and helpful but Londoners? They are a irritable and angry people. I stopped trying to count the number of times we heard someone yell out "Fuckin' 'ell!!" The bus drivers are--without exception--placed on earth by Satan. There's a hooligan hostility seething underneath too much of the nightlife. It's a beautiful, historic, incredible city, but there's very little about it that feels very friendly.

I'm back now, and I brought chocolates and toffee. They're sitting on the corner of my desk, so stop by any time and help yourself before I put myself into a sugar coma that I'll never wake up from.

London, Day 3: You dim sum, you lose some

Today is what my trip has been about. It's a plot that doesn't make for the best stories. There's no debauchery or insane drunken stories. It's simply a heartwarming story of friends spending time together, of a trip to the British Museum, of meeting top-quality new people while eating riduculous amounts of food at dim sum in Chinatown, of having a great dinner with my dear little sister and then off to a drink on the Strand.

Well...that's pretty much the whole story, actually.

London, Day 2: In which our hero rocks down to Electric Avenue, but elects not to take it higher

Test your trivia!

Q: When you go on vacation to a scenic, picturesque place, what's the one thing you don't want to forget?

Come on, now...

It's not hard...

Oh, come on!

Give up? Alright, it's....

A: Your camera!

Now, as a follow-up question:

Q: What's the one thing that Reid forgot on his trip to London?

A: Oh, dear God, I'm an idiot.

If it wasn't for my need to pack with one hand and answer work emails with the other last Thursday, you'd be looking at a grand parade of snapshots from London. But as it is, I'll just have to describe them.

Here's a shot of my sister Mary, my friend Irene and me walking down Electric Avenue in Brixton. I'd only ever been to Brixton once before, 14 years ago to see the Lemonheads, but I'd never seen the markets, filled with Jamaican accents, halal butchers and reggae CD sellers.

Here's one of Mary and me enjoying some sort of supposedly-Sicilian fried mushroom pie-type thing from a outdoor vendor in a charming neighborhood called Angel, another part of London I'd never seen. As you can see from the picture, it's pretty messy, with cheese going all over the place. Look at the expression on Mary's face! Anyway, it was delicious.

This is a picture of us at some sports pub watching the FA Cup match between Chelsea and Manchester United. We were there with Mary's school friends Oren (Canadian) and Jelena (Londoner). Jelena is hilarious and hates Chelsea with a seething passion. Unfortunately, Chelsea wins and, as you can see on her face, she's pretty dejected, almost as though Chelsea had beaten her beloved Arsenal.

Here's Mary, Oren, Jelena and me sitting outdoors at a leafy pub in Angel, enjoying a(nother) pint. It was a pretty day, but you can probably tell that we're shivering a little in this shot. Time to head inside to...

...a nice dinner at a delicious semi-fancy restaurant in Angel. That's polenta in blue cheese sauce on Mary's and my plates, and Oren's enjoying some sort of steak sandwich. We're laughing at the fact that British people use all of the French names for food: arugula is called rocket, eggplant is called aubergine, and zucchini is called courgette. Crazy Brits! That's not right at all!

Oh, here's one from the night before. It's Mary, her hilarious and charming friends Morgan and Jelena and me walking across Waterloo Bridge after closing down a pub (not hard to do, since they close at 11). It didn't come out very well, and it doesn't do the scene justice, but those are the lights of London: the blue lights in the trees on the South Bank, the lights on the big "gherkin" building, the neon of the old OXO factory. It's gorgeous. I wish you could see it a little better.

Note: Please do not Photoshop or otherwise manipulate any of the above images. © 2007 Are Seven

Take me out to the squall game

Alright, kids: settle down for a story that's probably past its expiration date already, and is a pretty superfluous telling, since about half of my regular readership experienced it first-hand, but it deserves to be put down in type, if only because Annie will probably enjoy it at least a little.

The cast of characters is three of the best friends a guy could ask for: Hans (visiting from Asheville), Doug (visiting from Nashville, aka Ca$hville, aka Asheville-with-an-N) and Christian (coming at you live from 13th street NW). The main point of the trip was to see God's Gift To Music Lovers on Sunday night, but we take any chance we can to get together and rehash the same 10 jokes enjoyed by approximately six people for well over a decade. Needless to say, it was a blast. I would say that you should wish you were there, but not being one of the four of us or Alex, I can't imagine you would have thought it was nearly as funny. By which I mean, "funny at all".

Saturday's baseball game was a must, partly because sports is a required feature of these weekends and partly because of Doug's near-obsessive Marlins fandom. We gave The Finger to the forecast of rain, headed to the stadium and settled in our cheap, upper-deck seats, which we chose in spite of Christian's absolute insistence that he would accept nothing less than the $150 Diamond Level seats.

It started to rain, of course. And then it started to POUR. By the end of it, the game had been delayed for over two hours, but the plus side was that there were only a few hundred people left in the stadium, which put us in Christian's precious Diamond Level seats: first row, directly behind home plate.

It was both a thrilling and a bizarre experience. Being right behind home plate gave us about as great a sense as possible of the sheer power that goes into the hits and the pitching. But we had these rich cat seats in an almost-empty stadium. There was a couple of kids heckling the Marlins hitters (Doug: "It's like watching a game with the Bad News Bears") and their heckles echoed off the empty corners of RFK. So sitting in those seats was like being a millionaire in a country where they don't take your currency.

Then the rain started falling, as rain does. It was cold and we were looking at another delay, so we figured we'd head out. Unfortunately, we listened to me and left just before the Nats went up to bat again. Hans, Christian and I hit the bathroom before we left the stadium, and when we were in there, a huge roar (well, as huge as a couple hundred people could get) filled the stadium. I figured, Classic. We miss the one good thing. I just didn't know how good until Doug walked into the bathroom with that you're-not-going-to-believe-this look that he does so well.

"Yeah," he said. "That was an inside-the-park home run."

"No it wasn't," I said, and I really didn't believe him.

"Yeah. It was."

Sure enough, we get to the monitors outside the bathroom just in time to hear the announcer say, "...and that was an inside-the-park home run for the Nationals!"

We couldn't stop laughing about it on the wet walk back to the Metro. We stick out a 2-and-a-half hour rain delay only to miss the most exciting play of the game. We started imagining all the ridiculously thrilling plays we were going to miss by heading home.

The rain fell even harder as we headed home, and we assumed that there was no way they were going to finish. Finally back at my place, we checked the score again, and it showed the Marlins up 3-2 in the middle of the 9th with play suspended. As we all went to bed with the sky opened up, there was no reason to think that game was anything other than over.

The next day, at brunch on the roof of The Reef, half-full of mimosas, we figured that we might as well get Hans to dial up the final on his fancy-pants internet phone.

"Weird," he reports back. "It says 7-3, Nationals".

That couldn't be right, we thought. It was impossible, we thought, but we were already laughing as we added the runs and figured out what happened. Did we really leave a game that was won by a walk-off grand slam after the Nationals had tied it? Sure enough, that's exactly what happened.

Maybe it's not that funny when taken as a whole. The game ended at a quarter to two in front of maybe a dozen people. There's no way in hell we would have sat through another rain delay. But sitting there with my best friends on a sunny roof top deck, there didn't seem much in the world that was funnier than us missing out on a game whose exciting ending we had predicted as a ludicrous exaggeration. Maybe you had to be there to appreciate why it was so funny that we weren't there.

R7 Vegas Travelogue: I! LOVE! GAMBLING!

As much as we all think that we know ourselves, there are those moments when we have some visceral reaction to something that makes us realize that maybe we’re not as in control of our emotions as we thought we were. I’ve had more than my fair share of those moments this year, which is part of the reason that Of Montreal lyric “I’m in a crisis” keeps running through my head lately. But the most recent moment of hidden emotion realization is this: somewhere inside of me is the craving of a compulsive gambler.

After the unstated events of the night before, and at the end of the conference on Wednesday afternoon, I was looking to distract myself by touring the hotels and casinos that I hadn’t seen. I marveled at the retchingly cheesy façade at the Excalibur, was both offended and amazed by the cultural re-enactments of New York, New York, Paris and the Venetian, and was wowed by those two hotels that managed to tread that line between themed and genuine: the Mandalay Bay and the Bellagio, the latter of which seems clearly the crown jewel of Vegas to me.

As impressive (in one way or another) as they all were, they couldn’t keep The Thoughts from running through my head. I knew I needed to do some gambling before I left, and I'd been given strict instructions on a roulette bet to place, so I stopped into New York, New York, thinking I'd just do a few bets on the roulette table and then go back to my hotel and play some blackjack, just to say I did.

It probably seems strange that I couldn't quite get up the nerve to gamble, but it just seemed like something that required a certain amount of savvy to do. Being a beginner gambler is like being, say, a beginner mercenary. Everyone has to start somewhere, but you don't want to be that guy at the mercenary meeting that has to ask, "So are we supposed to dump the body in a lake or do we deliver it to the person commissioning the killing or what?" And then all the other mercenaries laugh at you and you never live it down.

I managed to find a roulette table that didn't have anyone at it, so I asked the woman running the table all my dumb questions, but what I found out in my time at that table is that very few people knew what they were doing. Every now and then, some haggard gambling veteran would come up and make a bunch of money and then lose it all in about ten minutes, but for the most part, it was people like me who needed the whole thing explained and re-explained and get a frustrated "Not yet" or "has to be at least $10 inside" when they broke the rules.

I sat at that table for three hours. And I loved it. I loved the randomness of picking the numbers, loved watching the ball spin around, deciding your fate, loved watching my pile of chips grow and grow and then just as suddenly start to shrink again. I loved the companionship of some fun folks in their 20's who were there for a conference and giving the gambling thing a try. I loved how it threw out all the worries that I had in my head.

And it worried me that I loved it all so much. This morning, when my office-mate/hotel roommate and I realized we had some time to kill before needing to leave for the airport, I convinced him to go down to our hotel's casino and play roulette with me. He promptly lost the $20 he had put down, and so did I, and yet I found myself reaching for my wallet to put down another $20. This wasn't the guy I thought I would be. I thought I'd be a responsible gambler; someone who decides beforehand just how much money to put down and never goes past that. But there I was, desperate to at least make my money back.

I did, in fact, make my $40 back and stopped there, though mostly because we'd run out of time. As I made my way to the cashier, I realized my stomach was turning loops and my palms were sweating. The concerned, rational part of my brain was saying, "Thank God we're getting out of here, because this could have gotten very bad very fast."

All parts of my brain were pretty happy with the outcome, though. I made a profit of $60 last night, which I know is small time for anyone but beginner gamblers, but hell...I've played plenty of Tetris for three hours or more and no one gave me $60 at the end of that.

R7 Travelogue: Las Vegas, Day 3, when things get fucking weird weird weird weird weird

There's days when I wish I had a pseudonym and had one of those blogs where all the events and conversations and frustrations could come pouring out. You all would know the intimate details of my life, and my readership would be about ten times what it is, because people eat that shit up. But this is not one of those blogs.

I've already said too much.

Last night, I ended up at a snooty bar that I only got in thanks to the conference. When they started letting non-conference folks in, all of the seating areas were roped off and guarded by security. I was there alone (again or), but dammit if I was going to turn down a chance to dance. I was dancing with myself on an increasingly-crowded dance floor, just enjoying being able to go nuts and not worry about things like ever seeing any of those people ever again. So when the DJ played "Let Me Clear My Throat", I allowed myself to yell out "DC!" I made a few moves, but I'm no dance floor lothario, so I kept to myself mostly.

Good times, strangely.

R7 Travelogue: Las Vegas after a few

What a difference a few drinks make. Las Vegas When You're Drunk (LVWYD) is a very, very different town than Las Vegas When You're Sober (LVWYSE. The 'e' is silent). Abandoned by my two travel companions, I wandered around the casino last night taking in the sights, before staring in awe of two of the fountain shows in front of the Bellagio hotel.

Oh, alcohol. Giver of confidence, taker of worries. What would we do without you?

R7 Travelogue: Las Vegas, Day 1

Oh, sweet Jesus, this place is so freaking weird! I'm going to be a lot more drunk than I am now, because I'm not going to be able to handle this place without a constant buzz. Right now, the phrase what have I gotten myself into keeps flying around my head.

More dispatches as time allows.

Weekend FAQ

What is the closest thing to heaven on earth?
Sitting with some top-quality friends, buzzing on a unending flow of cheap Mimosas, eating a sausage, cheese, tomato and egg on French toast sandwich, laughing yourself to tears...all on the roof of the Reef on a day that couldn't be any more gorgeous.

Fallen off the wagon?
Seems that way. I'm back to a more-than-two daily schedule, though I haven't gone past four, which is as it should be.

Why in God's name did you get on the Metro at Gallery Place just to get off at Judiciary Square?
It was a mistake. An honest, bone-headed mistake. On the plus side, I did find out that you can actually see the Gallery Place Metro entrance from the Judiciary Square Metro entrance. Needless to say, I felt like kind of an idiot.

What's up with the black plastic shades?
I know, I know. But years ago, I saw a picture of the Velvet Underground and Lou Reed and John Cale had sunglasses like that and I knew I had to have some too. But you're right: it's time for some new ones.

The Green Building exhibit at the Building Museum was kind of disappointing, huh?
Yeah, it really was. The information on exactly how the buildings were environmentally friendly was actually kind of difficult to find. It came across more as an architect's resume than an informative demonstration on how to improve on enviro-minded building design. I know others who feel this same way, which, of course, proves me right.

Was that you having breakfast with a pretty girl at the Diner Saturday morning? Early Saturday morning?
Yes. I would say more, but I prefer you to continue thinking what you're thinking.

Did you ever tell Susan your theory on Imus?
Oh! No, I didn't, but thanks for reminding me. It goes something like this: Imus got called out for something that a lot of other people seemingly get away with because what he said was lame. If it had actually carried any political, persuasive or humorous weight, no one would have really cared. But talking about the Rutgers women's basketball team like that? It's pointless, stupid and not at all funny. And that's why he got fired.

So what makes you think anyone would ask you these questions at all, let alone frequently?
They were clearly implied.

You do realize that doing a fake FAQ and putting in a bit about how they're not really frequently asked is kind of tired, right?
Well, yeah, but you're the one asking the questions.

Am I?
Sort of. I think. I'm not sure.

This is getting kind of confusing, isn't it?
It is, kind of. Yeah.

Do you think we should just abandon this here?
I think that'd be for the best.

Dizzy, my head is spinning...

First things first: if you happened to see a guy pass out at 17th and R this past Sunday morning...that was me. Please write to me at areseven(at)gmail.com so I can not only give you about the biggest Thank You I've ever given anyone, but find out what the hell happened, the most important part being whether or not I had a seizure.

And now the full story, with apologies to the people who've already heard it a million times.

Saturday was a night of heavy drinking, but I don't think that had anything to do with it. I woke up after a short sleep, but I don't think that had anything to do with it, either. I was at home, rehydrated well and felt fine. But I wanted some breakfast, so I grabbed my book and headed off for Teaism.

About a block away from my place, I started feeling really light-headed. I assumed it was a hangover and that food would help, so I kept on. After another block, though, I realized I was in pretty bad shape, so I figured I'd just to the Safeway on 17th and get something to have at home. Somewhere down R street, I remember looking down at my feet and thinking that I needed to concentrate on walking straight, because everything else in the world was spinning around me.

At this point, my arch-enemy Hindsight said to me, "Why don't you just sit down for a minute?" But I had my mission for food and so I kept on.

The next thing I knew, I was in the back of an ambulance.

Strike that: I can't really say that it was the next thing I knew, because it was the most disorienting experience of my entire life. I came to strapped to a gurney, feeling like I was being kidnapped in spite of the fact that the two EMTs were very nice. The worst part was that they were asking me questions like, "What year is it?" and I didn't know. I mean: I really couldn't even begin to think of the answer. Not just that I couldn't guess wrong, but that I couldn't even think what format a guess should be in. Four thousand and twenty? A million? The '78 Steelers? Good guesses as far as I was concerned. It was absolutely the most frustrating thing in the world...I just didn't know.

They took me to GW hospital, and by the time they had me at the front desk, taking my information, everything was coming back to me. That was a relief, but it still didn't clear up anything. Why the hell would a guy with absolutely zero health problems suddenly pass out some Sunday morning?

They went backwards, which still makes me think there's something they weren't telling me. I started fully clothed sitting around in the ER, and slowly declined from there: in a gown, back on a gurney, in a whiplash collar (!), and up to my own room in the ICU (!!). Meanwhile, the doctors were taking gallons (it felt like) of blood out of me and conducting just about every possible acronymic test there is on me: EEG, MRI, MRA, EKG, ECG, you name it. I was still waking up dizzy every morning, and am still pretty dizzy as I write this, so I'll keep it short. All the thoughts I've had in the last three days about health care, hospital rooms, and impossibly attractive doctors will have to wait.

I do want to give a huge thanks to the people who came to visit me in spite of my insistence that no one see me/smell me at my worst. I'm really truly blessed with some amazing friends.

Being older has not made me more concise

This post would have started with "last night", but to paraphrase Gloria Estefan, the work gets in the way, so it will start with "earlier this week".

Earlier this week, Christian, Nicole and I had dinner with Steve, an old college friend of Christian's and mine. He's a family man now, with a baby, and we haven't seen each other in a while and we're all in our 30's, so inevitably, the conversation turns to what's changed with age. At one point, Steve made the following observation (paraphrased, since I don't tape record my dinner conversations, unlike you):

You know how you used to think MTV was the really cool and VH1 was for old people, but now, we love VH1 and think MTV is really stupid! It's true! Admit it!

I didn't admit it, partly because I watch as much VH1 now as I did when I was in high school, which is slightly more than none. And I think those "Best Week Ever" shows are about as dumb as anything on MTV, which is a little more than a lot.

But I think that the main reason that I busted up our nice dinner to disagree is that I haven't found those sorts of changes in the aging of me (or most of the people I know). Sure, there have been plenty of surprises, like just how much I do care that I'm losing my hair, or that seeing the lines in my cheeks growing deeper and longer does bother me more than I thought it would, or just how odd it is to think of my aging.

What I don't accept is that growing older somehow means letting go of things that are considering "young" in favor of things that are "old". Most of my changes of emotion and opinion are simply a matter of living more. I could have the same body and hair and ability to eat a large pizza without gaining weight that I had when I was 18, but the simple act of seeing more and learning more is going to bring about changes. I don't listen to more jazz and Pet Sounds and quiet guitar music like Sufjan Stevens and read non-fiction because I'm old and I need quiet music that rescues me from that loud rock 'n' roll and rap that the kids listen to; I listen to it because I learned to like it and because after a while, regardless of the changes to your body, you're going to look for changes and challenges.

Maybe what I'm saying is not far off from what Steve is saying. And maybe this is all a product of being nerdy and quiet for even my teen and college years. I just always get a little rankled by suggestions that our age forces us to stop making new choices and to continue to see the world in "old people like this, young people like this" black and white.

To me, the glory of age is getting a greater sense of sincerity. I like what I've always liked: exactly what I like, and now I'm more sure and aware of what I like. If I could talk with my 50-year-old self and find that he loves new age music and just wants to watch TV murder mysteries, I won't think that he's a doddering, lame old man; I'll ask him why he likes that crap. Because I know he'll have a damn good reason.

And for the record: I got more annoyed with teenagers when I was one than I do now. Now I just feel kind of sorry for them.

I could tell you, but telling gets old

You probably find yourself often wondering, "Reid claims that he likes Sufjan Stevens, but does he like him enough to give up a precious sleep-in Saturday morning to wait in the freezing cold for a chance to see him play with the NSO at the Kennedy Center". Wonder no more.

Yes, I was one of those people (along with about half the readership of this page) who waited for tickets. We showed up at 8:30 to a line that I would call "snaking" if it wasn't for the fact that imagining a snake that big makes me scared. Needless to say, we didn't get tickets, and we had felt secure in arriving there "early". Weren't even close. Christian said it best when he walked up to join us in line after parking the car: "We are so naive."

It did remind me of a cold day in 1987 when I waited in line with my friend Lyle to get tickets to see Genesis at the Summit in Houston. We got to the Ticketmaster outlet at around 3:00 AM, got to know our neighbor line-mates, and finally got tickets way in the back of the lower prom. We likely could have gotten much better seats to that show if I'd gone the usual route of hitting up my concert promoter Uncle, but I enjoyed the satisfaction of having sacrificed a little for tickets.

Still, I had sworn that no one is worth seeing enough to do that again, but...circumstances sometimes dictate it. File under: never say never.

The Resolution To Do Different Things #1: Roller Derby. Seriously.

My first opportunity to act on my new year's resolution to try different things was handed to me on a silver platter. My dear friend Becky was in town with her boyfriend Chris (and to all who care: he's a great guy. I'm a big fan) to see the Carolina Roller Girls All Stars take on the Mob Town Maulers in a roller derby bout up in Baltimore.

Huh? What? Yeah. Roller derby. You didn't know about it? You hadn't read the previews of the bout in the sports section? Really?! Weird.

So here's the story: my good friend Tajhia has gotten really involved in roller derby down in Raleigh. I would have had no idea that roller derby was making a comeback if it wasn't for the fact that Taj was so heavily involved in not only the Carolina Rollergirls, but in the entire Women's Flat Track Derby Association, including having a hand in rules changes and the incorporation of new teams. I'm impressed.

The feel of the sport is total punk rock: part vixen and part violence. Argyle knee socks with skulls and crossbones, helmets covered in stickers, a hardcore band to start the proceedings. And then there's the nicknames: Faye Tallity. Shirley Temper. Rosie the Rioter. Trudy Struction. HR Rufnstuf. And my favorite: a gorgeous, heavily-tattooed referee who goes by "Bitchy Sambora". Well, maybe that's her real name. I shouldn't be presumptuous.

The track in Towson was a seriously old-school rink that included an awesome old board that had lights signaling that when it was "Ladies Only", "Couples Dance" and "Good Night". Multiple signs warning against wearing gang colors showed that, these days, this place saw worse things than south-bound hands during couples dance, but today, it was all for the roller girls. And the place was packed.

Becky, Chris and I found Taj (who wasn't skating due to still mending a broken collarbone) and got spots at the edge of the track; a coveted spectating position due to the likelihood of rollergirls careening off into the crowd.

I had no idea how roller derby worked, and the reading of the rules in the program didn't help much. But as with any sport, you can pretty quickly figure out the main object. Here's the simplified version: two teams of five people each skate in circles. Most of the players have to stay together in "the pack". Meanwhile, one player on each team are designated "jammers". They try to overtake the pack while their teammates try to help them through and their opponents try to hold them back. Teams get four points when the jammer overtakes the pack and one point when their jammer overtakes the other team's jammer. I think that's how it goes. The full suite of rules is pretty complex, but that's the basics.

And I understood enough. The game was a thrill, in spite of the fact that Carolina held a massive lead for the entire bout. Some of the jammers made moves through the pack that rivaled a running back's sharp cuts through a defensive line, and when the Baltimore team's jammer broke out in front of the pack, the crowd let out huge roar. The hits and spills into the crowd only heightened the thrill.

Maybe it was because Tajhia was sitting next to me explaining the rules, tactics and history of the game, but there in that rink outside of Baltimore, I really felt like this is a spectator sport that's got some legs (*ahem*). I'm sure it won't go far beyond its indie status and will likely stay amateur for a while, but it's a damn exciting experience. I didn't regret missing the Eagles/Giants game for a minute.

Movement

A life lesson I try to keep in mind:

Six years ago was the last time that my grandparents (on my mother's side) came with us on our family beach trip. The 5-hour drive from the Piedmont to the Outer Banks was getting to be too much, their bodies were slowing down too much for the beach activity, and my grandfather's laryngectomy gave him a hole in his throat that meant that he couldn't get close to the water, which, as a lifelong fisherman and swimmer and former naval officer, broke his heart.

On the morning of our first full day there, my grandmother slowly made her way down the stairs of the house to the beach, where we had already set up our towels and umbrellas. She got herself into a beach chair only to realize that she had left her book back up at the house, and asked me to go get it for her. I jumped out of my chair to go get her book, bounding up the stairs two at a time. No big deal to even a 30-year-old. Standard, even. But I looked back down at my grandmother who had just watched me leap up the stairs and she had a smile on her face, a smile that said that she was almost amazed at what I had just done, that said that it had been years since she could jump up and go running up a flight of stairs. It was a simple act for me, but that kind of movement was foreign to her; a language she couldn't speak anymore.

I've thought of that moment often this week. Home for Christmas, we've spent a lot of time with my grandparents. They're both fully lucid, have lived blessed and full lives and are still in reasonably good health for their ages, but their bodies have only slowed more. My grandfather is using a walker, and suffers from intense back pain and usually needs at least one person to lift him out of a chair or help him into the car. My grandmother can still move pretty well for an 88-year-old, but she still has to slowly ease herself into and out of chairs. They both have sicknesses that come and go, but that linger longer than they used to. And the days of running or moving quickly are gone and will never return.

I try to get these lessons through my head. I'm reminded to use my body while I still can, to take the stairs and go running and dancing. It's trite and cliche, but yet as many times as the sentiment is repeated, we still can't truly grasp it. We tell ourselves that we're too tired, that we'll do it tomorrow, that we just can't. But there really will be a day when we just can't, when the ability to move quickly and with ease is gone and will never be back no matter how much we promise ourselves that we'll start a new exercise routine or eat better. There will be a day when we look back and be amazed that we ever took the stairs two at a time.

Recipe for a perfect weekend

Stuck with a Friday and Saturday night with nothing to do? No need to head to the video store! Just find two of your best friends (who must have fantastic taste in music), get them to marry each other, throw a big wedding with The World's Greatest DJ™ and have all of your closest friends attend! It's that easy!

In other words, Christian and Nicole's wedding was at least ten times as amazing and beautiful as any of us possibly could have imagined. I'm still sore from dancing and laughing, and while "God Only Knows" and "Waterloo Sunset" always had that sweetly sad sound to them, they now have a new nostalgia that will always remind me of this past Saturday. And make me tear up a little, because I'm a sentimental softie like that.

...but I'm still kicking myself for not getting a picture of the bride in the hotel bar eating a bacon cheeseburger in her wedding dress at 1 am.