Mo

We just got wired for wireless internet at our house, an occasion so joyous as to warrant a new posting. We've been borrowing from the neighbors since 2004, so in that spirit I am leaving our network unprotected as a means of returning the karmic favor. Please don't steal my credit card numbers (that goes especially for the dude next door who woke us up our first night sleeping in our new house, while my parents slumbered peacefully in the guest bedroom, by screaming over and over, "YOU'RE A FUCKING WHORE, YOU FUCKING WHORE!" and is apparently faking having cancer according to a subsequent conversation overheard, without much effort, a week or so later).
What I wanted to talk about was this amazing show we saw last night. We went to Andrew and Anne's Half Way to Derby Party last weekend (or, as Adam heard it, Half-Witted Derby Party), and they have a friend Davy from Ann Arbor who is an amazing dude. He founded a magazine called Found, where people send in stuff they've found blowing down the street that happens to be interesting. If it doesn't sound absolutely hilarious, poignant, touching and creative, then I haven't explained it well and you have to check it out for yourself: www.foundmagazine.com. Turns out, Davy was doing a show in Lexington last night (already been through Boston- was at the Burren in Sept), and Andrew and Anne invited us to check it out. Davy had teamed up with another guy, Frank- who was inspired in part by Davy's zine to come up with his own community art effort, Post Secret (www.postsecret.com -again, check it out)- to do this tour together. Post Secret is this dude Frank who asked people to send him their anonymous secrets on postcards. It can be a bit more intense and serious, although pretty funny too at times. We went last night, and it was mind-bogglingly awesome. I laughed til I cried, I sat and thought about life, I pondered, I fell more in love with Mariam- all that stuff. The format was kooky and kind of bush-league. Davy and Frank read their stuff, interspersed with Davy's brother Peter playing songs based on some of the Found stuff, interspersed with a tug of war contest and inflatable basketball tournament, while they all got slowly wasted onstage with a mix of liquor, beer and some florescent blue Alize. Davy is my new hero, right up there next to Ira Glass, who, it turns out, he actually works for. Davy is a radio personality, and has done 5 episodes of This American Life! He even sells a CD with all his TAL's on it, which I listened to tonight, and they are amazing (I bought $40 worth of schwag at the show). TAL has been kinda boring lately, with lots of old recycled shows, but all 5 of these Davy shows were unbelievably good and made me tear up and everything, and remember back to the best TAL's like the one with Alex, the homeschooled teenage Russian adventure junky. So I've been a bit inspired. I wanted to post the weirdest, most bizarre things that have happened to me, and invite all y'all to do the same, and we'll see if it gets on a roll. This is how Davy got started.
Part of what started this kick is that the weirdest event of my life occurred just a few weeks ago. Maybe it won't sound like a lot, but despite its simplicity, this event is the closest I've come to the paranormal. Shane and I decided to have a bit of a man-date -- to go biking at Capital View Park in Frankfort. We'd been there once before, the day after a going-away party for our friend Eddy, who was leaving for Alabama (Mississippi?) a few days after I arrived here. Anyway, on that occasion, I was eager to show off my mountain biking skills and my new bike, which was completely untested on the trails. I had made sure to bring my knobby tires, my biking shorts, etc., but somehow in the hubbub of packing, I had completely forgotten my helmet. It kind of killed the ride. We still went, but I was especially cautious the entire time- I didn't try anything risky, didn't ever go very fast. All in all, it wasn't the balls-to-the-wall biking experience I had been hoping for. However, it did remind me how much fun it is to mountain bike, especially on a great trail with a great buddy. So, on this second trip, I was doubly excited to show off and have a blast. I made sure this time to bring a helmet. The weather didn't fully cooperate. It was pouring in Lexington, but we figured we'd head out to Frankfort anyway and if it was totally flooded we'd just hit up a bar that Shane knew. But it wasn't totally flooded- it was soggy and drizzling but completely rideable. I had my helmet on and was on my bike hopping around in the parking lot while Shane finished putting on his gear, and then we were off. The first stretch was pretty flat and straight (with TONS of deer- all day, we easily saw 100+ deer in that tiny park), but then it comes to this steep, technical section. We both skidded down unsteadily. I ate shit multiple times, but it was fine. Then we were off again, cruising on winding singletrack through the beautiful rainy deer-filled woods. And then it happened. I felt the wind in my hair on a little downhill stretch. It felt deliciously cool, but somehow off. I realized I wasn't wearing my helmet! I stopped Shane, we talked it over. It was absolutely certain that I had started out with my helmet. He even thought I had it on one minute earlier when we had stopped for a second to strip layers. But we rode back and forth over the entire stretch of trail- the technical downhill, the winding singletrack, back to the car, and back and forth and back and forth, and there was no helmet to be found. Let me just interject here, that this is not like the old days of riding to Diamond Middle School when we used to take our helmets off and stash them in the Valsky's hedge or drape them on our handlebars because they weren't cool (and our moms always knew because they had a secret Helmet Patrol network of vigilantes watching out their windows for us along the route to school). I wanted my helmet, bad. I had already ruined one ride here by not having it. I wasn't purposely losing it so that I wouldn't be the dork wearing his helmet. I was desperately looking for it along the trail, both sides, riding slowly, over and over. It was gone. It had just disappeared! Poof! Right off my freakin head. One second it's there, next second I'm feeling wind in my hair. Weirdest thing that's ever happened to me.
(Mom and Dad, I do want to take this opportunity to tell you that I was lying about wearing my helmet that time when I rode to Concord Academy and Susan Plumb said she saw me without it on and I said well then she must be crazy. She wasn't crazy. I had stashed it in the woods along Wood St., because I was trying to impress the girls at CA and I was embarrassed to have helmet head and to be wearing it at all, and then I thought I would get in trouble and you wouldn't let me go back. That was dumb and I won't lie to you anymore. I'm sorry to you, and I'm sorry to Susan.)
The two runners up to that story for weirdest thing ever were the time I really needed 8 burgers from 1 pound of ground beef, but no matter how I stretched it, I could only get 7 reasonable patties. So I just put them on the grill, figuring the last person could eat hotdogs. But when I opened the lid of the grill to flip the burgers, there were 8! No joke, I almost shit myself. Then there was the time I was playing tennis at Center Courts in Lexington MA, which I've done maybe 13 times in my life, and I found a pair of blue checkered Umbro soccer shorts pulled through a link in the fence. I checked the tag on them, and in black sharpie was the name "Kissel" in my mother's handwriting style. I recognized them as shorts I had lost maybe 7 or 8 years previously. (Disclaimer- I'm not so sure about this story. Although I remember it clearly, it has a certain dream quality that I associate with other stories that I cannot get corroborated by other participants. Examples of these stories would be the one where I am in my sister's room, maybe 5 years old, and my father is holding me over his lap while my mother spanks me over and over and over and over. Neither parent will confirm this story. And then there is the one where the tree in front of Caitlin's house is covered with gigantic rainbow colored cocoon things that we later realized were her own turds, fastened to the bark with mussel-like stalks. This "memory" has the feeling of perhaps being confused with a bizarre dream (not that I have lots of rainbow turd dreams)). Anyway, if you have any weird stories or miraculous experiences, please share and I'll publish them in a magazine. It can be anonymous if you want. Seriously, this is gonna be awesome.