Just like the good old days

Another story in the wonderful adventure that is my life…

So after winning sneak preview tickets to the Simpsons movie at trivia last night I came home, wrote the blog, surfed the net a little and went to bed around midnight. I didn’t even watch my tape of Top Chef, which is good because if I knew that Lia had been eliminated I would have been so pissed I wouldn’t have been able to go to sleep. Wouldn’t you know it, the second I write about a contestant being cute and talented and someone I want to watch she immediately gets eliminated. So much for the universe rearranging itself to meet my desires. The Secret my ass. Anyway, after a long day I finally went to bed at midnight.

And a little after one in the morning I was woken up by a noise. Given that I was at that fun moment in the first hour of sleep where upon waking nothing makes sense my thought process was a little hazy. Here is my best recollection of my internal dialogue between my waking mind and my surprisingly cognitive rational mind.

“What…what…what’s going on? Who am I again?”
“You’re EC.”
“Ok, I can get behind that. Is this place my apartment?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Good. Where the hell is that anyway?”
“Kansas City.”
“Seriously? You’re kidding me, right?”
“Nope, you’re in Kansas City.”
“Damn.”
“I know, tell me about it.”
“Ok, I can’t deal with that now but what the hell is this noise?”
“Well, it’s not the alarm clock next to the bed that makes a buzzing sound. It’s not the alarm clock on the dresser as that one goes “Beep, Beep” like the roadrunner. Whatever it is sounds vaguely like music but it can’t be good music.”
“I know, it just sounds awful. I can’t even make out any words and it seems to be coming from the next room.”
“Yeah and whoever it is…wait a minute, that’s Social Distortion, isn’t it?”
“Sounds like Ball and Chain.”
“God damnit, it’s my phone.”

And with that I stumble out of bed and into my living room just in time to turn off the phone and see who in the world is calling me. I had two missed calls. One from the dreaded “Unknown” and the other from, well, it looked like a phone number. Except that there were more numbers than there should be and I think there was a Q in there somewhere. Anyway, I didn’t have a voice mail so I just shrugged it off and went back to bed.

Which meant that thirty minutes later my phone rang again and again I stumble out of bed, this time I’m just able to get there when it beeps that I have a voice mail. I listen and all I hear is bar noise so whoever is calling me is having an extremely good time. I can only make out about half of what is being said and what I get is “Chris! Where the hell are you? We’re all out at the bar, getting drunk” and then it just slurs off into something incomprehensible. I’m still at a loss as to who this is. I’m running through my mental database of people who would call me from a bar who aren’t in my phonebook. By the time I finish that voice mail I see that I have another one. Listen to that one and I hear, very clearly and directly “Hey Chris it’s Gabriel.” And then it suddenly dawns on me

“Oh yeah, the Mexican Mafia we’re having a reunion in Mexico City this week. That explains everything.”

Yep, it was a bunch of my buddies from b-school who decided to call me from the bar very late at night and encourage me to join them despite the fact that I was technically in another country. I still can’t figure out if the first one was from Nato or Yuyo (which is scary) and the second was Gabriel sounding like, well, I can put this one of two ways. In one sense he sounded as if he wanted to set up an appointment to discuss reallocating the assets in my stock portfolio. But more accurately, it sounded like those nights at the Backer where he would act as my life coach and instill the wisdom of the ages to me. Man, just hearing the message made me miss that so much.

So that’s why I’ve been tired and out of sorts all day. Didn’t sleep because of drunken phone calls. That’s not too unusual, it’s just that for most people it isn’t an international call. And to be honest, it was one of the coolest things to happen to me in a while. Thanks for calling guys.

Ok, I’m off to camp out in front of Barnes and Noble. I swear to God if anyone posts Harry Potter spoilers I am going to unleash havoc. I’ve waited two years to find out if Snape is good or evil. And to see if Ron gets stuck dating Hermione for the rest of his life. Later.

All hail the Funk!

Tonight’s pictures: For those of you wondering what my view of the world was on many a night this one pretty much sums it up. I was always amazed when I watched Donna and Joey close up the tabs at the end of the night since the cash register seems to have been made fifty years ago and watching that thing print out the end record was always a wonder to behold. Especially after a few too many shots. Plus, you can see the televisions that always distracted me when Erik and I would have our father-son discussions (which always seemed to devolve into a conversation about music.) I’m sorry but bright lights and motion always get my attention.

Plus, since I walked by them I figured that I would take a picture of the trophy case with the seven Heisman trophies. That’s not something you see everyday. Especially not on the Illinois campus where we still talk about how great Jeff George was.

Ok, on to business. I would like to take a moment and officially recognize that the reign of Funk is at hand! Yes, thanks to my tireless efforts the mothership has landed in Kansas City and Mark Funkhouser has been elected mayor. No, I’m not kidding. It’s the same guy I wrote about a few months ago and came up with campaign slogans for that just happened to show up in his advertisements. The one who started inviting me to press events. Even after I wrote that he “looks vaguely like Rasputin” and “always seems to be auditioning for the role of third zombie in the next Dawn of the Dead remake.” It is entirely possible that I a) influenced the politics of a mid-major American city and b) might be named vice mayor as a result. I deserve an easy politico job out of this to say the least.

But wow, the Funkster has been elected. I’ll have to say that this will make reading the news much more enjoyable. Can you read the words “Mayor Funkhouser” and not smile? Plus, if he can actually do what he wants to focus on he might actually be a good mayor. He has big plans like fixing the sewer system so that a) the streets don’t flood every time it rains and b) the water mains no longer burst, thus flooding the streets every time it doesn’t rain. Or fixing the potholes that seem to swallow up entire cars. Or dealing with a mass transit system that I’m not sure technically exists. It’ll be some interesting times, that’s for sure.

(And please can we have P Funk for the inaugural ball? That dude in the diaper should definitely play Hail to the Mayor or The Train from Kansas City or whatever the hell the official song is.)

Also, in a case of target marketing gone berserk Ticketmaster made sure that I was the first person to know that I can get tickets to see Morrisey play in KC. I’m not sure that this is a good thing. For the record, I’ve never been a Morrisey/Smiths fan though seemingly everyone I hung out with was. But there is something intriguing about going to see a show from someone who lost relevancy once I left high school. Plus, what is it like at one of his shows anyway? Do we all just hang out and get collectively bummed? Except now that we are old and bummed? It’s like you’ll have an entire crowd in their mid-thirties going “Aw man, this reminds me of being back in high school and being depressed and being picked on by jocks and having no one understand me. Man those were the days.”

Finally, I have a link to pass on thanks to my good friends at deadspin.com. One of the great things about college basketball is that the season ends with the greatest montage in sports; the playing of One Shining Moment. As cheesy as it may sound, this one song always gets to me. This one site has decided to collect all of the clips in one handy link. Plus, I think he goes back far enough for the awesome Teddy Pendergrass version. If you have time to kill (and don’t mind getting choked up as you watch your favorite team lose in the title game) these are incredible. The link is http://tmastc.blogspot.com/2007/03/one-shining-moment.html

Relying on the safety valve

Today’s pictures: For those who wonder where I spent most of 2001-2003, these two pictures pretty much sum it up. One is the corner of the Backer that we occupied for a vast majority of business school. Actually, we probably occupied every single corner of that bar, this is just the one that I have a picture of. And somehow, despite all the damage I did to myself during those two years, I can tell you about events that happened in that very spot. The other picture is of the Doermer Center, now with a sign. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t there when we were students. I’m surprised that there is any need to indicate precisely where the Doermer is. As I said after one particularly harrowing Security Analysis project, you can pretty much find it by the scent of fear and desperation.

Oh, and also it isn’t springtime unless there are ducks swimming on the grass in the Main Quad. In typical EC style, I got in on Thursday when the weather was beautiful but waited until Friday to walk the campus. A day that was cloudy and rainy and at one point had so much fog that I couldn’t see Mendoza from the JACC. Looks like the weather hasn’t changed.

It is strange the sense of nostalgia that hit me while I walked through Mendoza. I understand feeling nostalgic when I went back to my high school last year. There I was reliving memories from half a lifetime ago, back when I was a know-it-all kid. Here I was, looking back at a place I was a few years ago as an adult and going, “That’s where my mailbox used to be! And there’s my old locker!” like a complete idiot. I wouldn’t do that in an old office. I don’t long for any of my old cubicles. Maybe that just shows how different a world business school was for me.

On to the current state of my life, which probably still needs some additional discussion. I’ll grant you that I am lazy. As someone who has stated that his dream job is to sit on his couch and watch ESPN Classic all day that is a perfectly fair adjective to use about my lifestyle. But that’s not the real reason behind my reluctance to do what my heart is telling me to do. The real reason is that I’m scared to death that I might fail.

I’ve always found it interesting that most people view me as successful when in reality all I’ve ever done is put myself in situations where I couldn’t fail. I did it in college when I decided to be an electrical engineer instead of following my dream of being a writer. Even though EE is insanely difficult I knew that at the end of the day it is just math and I could figure it out. But writing, that was something that I could do my very best at and have a professor look at my work, shake his head, and go “Have you ever thought about being an accountant?” And I couldn’t risk that level of failure. My work at the electric company (not the PBS one) was another case where I found a role where my ability to see patterns and having a photographic memory were the two biggest keys to success. I’ve always taken the path where, while it may be difficult, I knew that I would succeed.

(And yes, I know that this is at the heart of why I am so god awful at relationships. I really have trouble with situations where I can fail without even doing anything wrong. Equations are much simpler, if a hell of a lot less enjoyable.)

So that is how I’ve found myself in my current predicament. I’m leading a perfectly comfortable and blessed, though unsatisfying, life. And I’m not sure how to handle this without making huge changes to my life. I still like what I do for a living and there are very few jobs I know of where I can learn something every day while getting to spend the day listening to Arcade Fire songs. But at the end of the day I don’t know if it means I’ll have any legacy (and I still can’t answer Renee’s age-old question of whether or not work is bringing me closer to a state of grace.) The good news is that everything that I have done up to now has put me in a position where I can do pretty much anything that I would want to. I just have to find the courage to face the unknown.

Same old popcorn machine...

So, as the above pictures show, I was back in South Bend this weekend. (Thanks to Rodolfo for the pictures, by the way). One is of course my homing beacon, otherwise known as the sign for the Backer. The other is of myself standing where once they start putting up memorial plaques documenting my life a rather large historical marker will be placed. Possibly the only one in existence that would begin with the phrase “Dude, you will never believe this…”

(As I told someone over the weekend, it’s tough for me to discuss my last semester of business school in polite company because ninety percent of my stories begin with “So we were hanging out at the Backer…”)

(Oh, despite what Rodolfo claimed, I am not wearing the exact same shirt I wore four years ago. It is just more of a bluish-green than the blue polo I used to wear. Otherwise, it really is just me with new glasses and a couple more pounds. Also, for those of you who were wondering, see, here is actual proof that I occasionally do smile.)

Anyway, the reason I was in town is that the MBA program held a conference on leadership and I decided to attend for a variety of reasons. First off, I was intrigued by the speakers and the conference. I’ll write about them later this week but let’s just say that they really made you think about just what your potential really is. But the main reason is that I just wanted to get back to South Bend. I hadn’t been in town for a year and a half and I needed to see if being back there would add some perspective to my life.

Of course, perspective meant a trip to the Backer pretty much immediately upon arrival. I did attend the reception for the conference but must admit that as the ND Glee Club walked in I walked out, acting as if I had just received a phone call. That let me walk into the backer and see the Rodolfo and Judd were already there. Donna was behind the bar and greeted me with a hug and a beer, which means that I am still a regular at a bar in a town I haven’t lived in for years. A few minutes later Rosemary walked in the door and we had a mini-reunion on our hands. It was one of those classic Backer nights where it feels like no one is there but everyone who is there I knew. It really felt the same way as it did four years ago.

And it definitely did when I had one of the strangest déjà vu experiences of my life. We had all just sat down at the bar, in our usual seats, and were ordering drinks and burgers and joking around. From my seat I could watch the door and was thinking that this is really like old times. Especially when five minutes later the dude who always came to the Backer to sit down at the end of the bar with something to read came in. Does anyone other than me remember this dude? He was kind of like my dopplegager. About my height with glasses but with dark, wavy hair? Thanks to Joey I remembered that his name is Cordell and I swear this guy was there whenever I was at a bar in South Bend. And he always had something to read. A newspaper, some printouts from the web, there was always something in his hands. Seeing him was like walking into a time warp. I was scared to death about who else might walk through that door.

It really was great to just hang out at the bar and talk with friends and watch the ball games. Even though I hadn’t seen any of them for more than a year we immediately fell into our old positions and made the same jokes we always made. When I think about business school I don’t think about the classes or what I learned, I remember the moments of just hanging out with the brightest and most interesting people that I have ever known. Getting to have that moment again was worth the airfare, even if it was only for one night.

(Oh, and for those who need details. Backer is basically the same though they now have some flat screen televisions. Also, they changed the trivia machine to the type I hate where you have to bet points. I mean, “Dr. Wang” still has the high score but I liked the old school machine better. I should have just bought it from them when I had the chance. I‘ll post more pictures from my trip throughout the week.)

(Also, thanks for all of the comments on yesterday’s post. I have thought about teaching and have always wanted to work for a school or a non-profit at some point in my career. I just don’t know a) how to go about it and b) if I could deal with the pay cut. Which is sad in so many ways. What has been getting me is that a few months ago I asked myself “Am I wasting my life?” and my answer was “Probably.” And you don’t sleep too well after having that exchange.)