A new Will to honor all God's creation

New flag on the mast
Without any secrets, without any past
All things are new again, within and without
Sooner or later the ending begins
Just then it can be said that all things are new again

While the days leading up to Easter were, as Mal Reynolds might say, "not my best Holy Week ever," Easter itself was quite lovely. I've been singing in the Christ Episcopal Church choir since the late fall, and we do special musical events around the important holy days of the year. This year we did a Maundy Thursday evensong of sorts, accompanying the stripping of the altar with a choral arrangement of Psalm 22. There was also a Good Friday service, but it was a capella and it was at noon on a day I had work to do, so I was sadly unable to attend.

Easter, as would be expected, was very busy. There was an Easter Vigil which I did not attend because I was up far too late the night before celebrating the fact that my friends Matt and John passed their doctoral engineering qualifying exams. However, I did sing in both the 8:30 and 10:30 services, the latter of which featured a Tudor anthem entitled "Haec Dies" (I forget the author) during Communion. One of the things I've come to love about singing at Christ Church is the focus on using Tudor anthems and hymns during the special services and evensongs. They're hard to sing, but they sound so hauntingly beautiful that it's enough to make you see why some purists believe music reached its peak in England during that time period.

On a more hedonic note: after the 8:30 service, the choir was granted a brief reprieve and had brunch with the congregation. I managed to get my hands on two mimosas, which made me very happy. It's a sure bet that they played a large part in my sunny outlook on the 10:30 service.

Earlier in the month, my friend Kara had invited me to have brunch with her family at a hotel restaurant here in town, so as soon as the recessional was done I got changed and headed over before the inevitable post-church traffic started. Kara's father is an engineering professor here at Tech and has a flattering amount of faith in my enological prowess, so towards the end of the meal he managed to steer the conversation around to wine, particularly Virginia wine. In the past couple of months, I've affected a strange mixture of overconfidence and diffidence on matters where I feel as though I have a passing familiarity but am somewhat out of my depth. It's this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that once I venture past profound-sounding banalities, someone is going to come over and prove me wrong on every single semi-controversial point I may have espoused. On the other hand, stepping out on a limb has a strange attraction for me, so I gave my usual speech wholesale. (Virginia's wine laws are crippling its image, ABC and big distribution companies are out to get the small wineries, a lot of the small wineries are somewhat apathetic about marketing anyway, and no, we're never going to beat California and France at their own game, we have to rewrite the rules. Et cetera. I really need to make that into a wineblog post.)

The silence around the table when the monologue-with-slight-discussion was over kind of unnerved me. I told people that they could feel free to shush me at any moment, that I was pretty much used to it. It was a bit of a surprise to find that they were silent more because they'd actually been impressed by what I was saying. I suppose that because I didn't think I'd said much of import, I was expecting a lackluster response, and it never fails to take me by surprise when people feel as though my pontifications are anything more than out-loud brainstorming sessions with myself.

This post may have appeared to have veered from the "The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia" into "Woo hoo look how great I am", and maybe it has, but I suppose the whole point of this is that this year has been my Eastertide of sorts. I have come out of a long, hard period in my life into a sunny, hopeful, Other Side that, while it's not exactly where I wanted to be, is new. It's uncharted territory. The things that I was put through last semester and part of this semester have left me confident that even if things go to Hell, I will know how to deal with it, or at least be able to make a clean break without going into the fetal position. For some people, like my brother or my father, maybe this wouldn't be new ground, but for me it feels like the first step towards actually being the kind of man I want(ed) to be. On this Easter, I gave thanks for a host of things.


The ability to discern and either avoid or weather the bad situations that crop up inevitably, and often;

The good sense to appreciate and nurture the small miracles that make life a journey worth taking;

A group of friends with whom I can run the race and find something better.


Here's to the birth of another new age. Here's to making the most of it while it lasts. And here's to seeking, striving, and never yielding, and looking back only in fondness and wisdom.



(I'm still flying.)

Who Watches “The Watchmen”? Why Watch “The Watchmen”?

This weekend, I had the misfortune to watch the film adaptation of the famous graphic novel The Watchmen. It was a movie I had every intention of enjoying — the trailers looked fantastic and everything pointed to it being a thrilling, if gruesome, ride through yet another untapped franchise. Sadly, it proved to be nothing more than a pretentiously dark and high-mindedly nihilistic piece that would be more forgettable if its images weren’t so pervasively disturbing.

This abominably empty film is set in an alternate 1985 during which Richard Nixon is serving his fifth term as president. How exactly he got Congress to repeal the 22nd Amendment is never explained, but don’t let’s fret our pretty little heads about that. American scientists and military leaders have put together a Doomsday Clock which counts down towards inevitable nuclear war with the Soviet Union. (The method by which the clock is turned towards Midnight — Mutually Assured Destruction — is another plot device left maddeningly unexplained.) Former superheroes, hamstrung by a bill (the Keane Act) which prohibits anonymous vigilantism, have turned reclusive, like the terminally nice Nite Owl/Daniel Dreiberg, or gone rogue, like the raspy, violent Rorschach/Walter Kovacs. All in all, it is — was — a nice set-up for a grimy crusade through a Gothamesque New York, with the idea of superheroes made obsolete providing the bittersweet leitmotif.

However, it all goes downhill pretty damned fast as we find out more about superheroes past and present:

The aging Comedian, thrown out of his apartment window in the first scene of the movie, is revealed to be a sexually and physically abusive, murderous scumbag who began working for right-wing nationalist third-world governments (the worst kind) after the Keane Act restricted his ability to beat up on hippie scum with impunity.

Rorschach was designed by his writers (both film and print) to be a “realistic” interpretation of what a Batman-type character might have turned out like — sociopathic, merciless, scornful of the very people he allegedly protects.

The Silk Spectre is an aging, promiscuous lush living in a retirement home, and her daughter, the Silk Spectre II, has basically no other purpose than to be The Girl Superhero. Jokes are made about her latex costume, but they would ring truer if said outfit were less ridiculously revealing in the most stereotypical way imaginable.

Dr. Manhattan has been stripped of his humanity by a scientific accident that left him gigantic, blue, and imbued with godlike powers; however, his bald pate and robotically tormented demeanor evoke images of a fretfully indecisive Charlie Brown.

Dan Dreiberg, as the Nite Owl, comes close to being a sympathetic character. Like the rest of the movie, however, he tries too hard and ultimately fails, often sounding less like a retired superhero struggling to find his way in a world that doesn’t want him and more like a parody of Jughead saying “Aw, jeepers!”

That’s the rub of this entire movie — the world doesn’t want its superheroes. And who would want this motley crew, anyway? All of them are fascistic embodiments of the ultimate abusive parents — brutalizing and beating the people who supposedly look to them for protection, and then bitterly lamenting the fact that they aren’t loved and idolized. The graphic portrayals of violence reach several ham-fisted climaxes throughout the movie. One scene in an alleyway that results in Nite Owl and the Silk Spectre II maiming or killing an entire Asian street gang was probably intended to be balletic and artistic, but instead comes across as embarrassingly pornographic, and raises the question of whether violence is just another form of foreplay for these purported superheroes.

I could go on for hours about the ways in which this movie displays an apparent contempt for humanity. Out of all of them, however, I was the most disgusted by the lack of any characters with whom we can empathize. One of the “heroes” is murdered, quite violently and graphically (and in the least subtly ironic way possible), towards the close of the movie, and I found myself thinking that I cared as little about his death as I would about the death of pretty much any of the rest of the main cast. My sympathies, such as they were, lay with the Unnamed Public, on whom the unasked-for “protection” of these “heroes” was foisted the way similar “protection” was foisted on Chicago shopkeepers by the mob.

Attempts to make the surviving main characters more likeable and human are much too little and far too late, and come across as implausible and forced. The Silk Spectre, justifying her rape and impregnation by the misogynistically violent Comedian, says to her daughter and successor, “I can’t hate him for what he did because he gave me you.” In a movie as devoid of the milk of human kindness as this one, one can only assume that some hack assistant writer got his scripts mixed up. It’s less insulting to our intelligence as viewers than assuming the directors and producers thought we’d buy such a mawkish line after having pure, distilled nihilism shoved down our throats for almost three hours.

It is necessary to pause here and answer the unheard-yet-foreseen voices, crying out in indignation that while everything I’ve said is true, my arguments are rendered moot by the fact that the writers of both the graphic novel and the movie set out to do just what has been described. It’s just like every other apocalyptic story: create a terrifying future by turning an established norm (in this case, the superhero as a projected ideal of human virtue) on its head (the superhero as a fascist enforcer of Order at any cost). To which I would reply: if you set out to make a salad out of broken glass, garbage, and the tears of infants, you still have a depressing meal that no one wants to eat. Even if it’s the BEST salad made out of refuse and lachrymation, and moreover made in an ironic way.

Somewhere in the interminable middle of this movie, the Keane Act-flouting Rorschach is framed for murder and put in prison. He ends up foiling an attempt on his life by savagely beating and dumping hot grease all over an inmate who tries to stab him. As the guards drag him away, he yells “You all don’t understand! I’m not locked up in here with you! You’re locked up in here with me!”

Indeed.

And later on, when he is freed, the entire world is locked up with him. We are left to ponder the question: with heroes like these, who needs villains?

An Interlude: The Girl and Her Horse

Ellen O'Mara, 1905. (source)


There is a story on my mother's side of the family that my great-grandfather, James Sullivan, attended a horse show with a friend of his not long after being appointed to a diplomatic position by the U.S. government. While at the show, he noticed one Ellen "Nell" O'Mara, the daughter of the mayor of Limerick, riding by. Upon seeing her, he turned to his friend and said, "That's the woman I'm going to marry." He was proven right; Nell O’Mara Sullivan later became the mother of my grandfather Stephen.

I wonder, sometimes, how many other men have spoken with such surety and conviction. I wonder whether their stories ended similarly. I wonder if James Sullivan would have spoken with such certainty about anything else in his life, had his attention been elsewhere when that pretty Irish girl went by on her horse.





(I'm still flying.)

I got back to Blacksburg a bit before Break ended to help out with the Enology/Grape Chemistry Group's "Short Course" for winemakers. It's basically an introduction to laboratory analytical techniques that are useful (and sometimes necessary) for determining wine quality and characteristics. Some of the equipment is beyond the range of a small-scale winery's budget, but I suppose it's a good thing that winemakers and their staffs are being exposed and made aware of such things. With the Enology Service Lab able to run large amounts of samples, it's not really necessary to have an on-site cash still for measuring volatile acidity at your winery anyway. Unless you REALLY REALLY want to, maybe.

Anyway, so classes have started, as they are wont at the beginning of every semester. One of the interesting things about grad school is that your schedule can end up to be quite a bit weirder than it did in college:


Monday
Food Microbiology: 9:05 AM - 9:55 AM
Graduate Seminar: 11:15 AM - 12:05 PM
Biometry II: 4:00 PM - 5:15 PM

Tuesday/Thursday
No classes, but I T.A. the "Wines and Vines" class, which involves variable amounts of prep work.

Wednesday
Food Microbiology: 9:05 AM - 9:55 AM
Flavor Chem: 10:15 AM - 12:15 PM
Biometry II: 4:00 PM - 5:15 PM

Friday
Food Microbiology: 9:05 AM - 9:55 AM


It's a bit odd, being a T.A. You're barely any older than your students, and you don't always really have the sense that you know exactly what you're doing or indeed what the hell is going on, and yet they're coming to you with questions. They're not coming to you with big questions, but it's easy to remember what it felt like to be an undergrad. TA's seem more human because they have a first name instead of a "Dr.", and they're less frightening to email. I'm confused. I don't understand. I didn't turn something in--can I turn it in late? Will I get in trouble? I didn't understand this. I'm confused.

And so I cast in my lot with the host of T.A.'s who have gone before me, caring enough to get stuff done but doing my best not to care so much that I get bogged down in the details. It's easy to get snared in the trap of perfectionism but in a class of one hundred forty-two students, there's just no way that's going to happen. I perform triage, sort out what I can, hope the rest sorts itself out, and move on. Not exactly the most original view, but it's what works, or at least gives me some measure of distance and sanity.

I'll probably have more to say as the semester unfolds. Posting on here isn't what it was in college, nor is it what it was when I was living at home. It's not for lack of excitement--swing dancing and the semi-monthly Wine Nights that I hold at my apartment provide that--nor is it because of laziness, although you could argue that I slack off more than I really should, sometimes, as a Master's Student. It's just because, well--I want to disturb the universe a little, I suppose. Based on the fact that blogging about grad school would read like a travelogue of Purgatory, it doesn't seem likely that any novel or profound thoughts would emerge from such an endeavor.

This may not be a novel or profound reflection, but the other night I was getting a CD out of the cases I keep in my car and noticed a set that a girl sent me back in 2004. She was a senior I had a brief fling with when I was finishing up my freshman year. (It ended painfully, although after the things I've been through since then the hurt feelings seem somewhat silly in retrospect.) It made me remember that a year or so later I found a picture of this girl at the Fall 2003 Phi Mu Alpha semi-formal. Among those pictures was also, oddly enough, a picture of Maria--whom I was dating at the time--with some of her NKE/PMA friends.

At the time I just chalked it up to odd coincidence. Now, though, I'm starting to think about it a little more. It led me to the somewhat sophomoric conclusion that my future is all around me all the time, and I'm just as unaware of it now as I was in October of 2003. It makes me think about the people who are on the periphery of my life right now that will enter it in ways that I could not, or would not, imagine.

I guess it's a Malcolm Gladwell train of thought. When you calculate the odds of me dating two girls who were at the same dance on the same night out of the entire female population of William & Mary, yeah, it seems like a statistically significant event. However, thinking about it more closely--those two girls were moving in almost exactly the same circles I was in, making some of the same friends, or friends of friends, their orbits and mine becoming more and more aligned. Therefore, the odds of me meeting, becoming attracted to, and even dating them became more likely when considering the parallel nature of our social interactions.

So I wonder now about the people I am moving towards. It seems like a tangential thought process in grad school, when you're more focussed on the what--the degree--than the whom. Still, they've been telling us in our graduate seminar that professionalism requires a great deal of thought about the initial impressions you make on people, including the friends who will later become your colleagues, your peers in the working world.

I'm not teleologically minded. I don't believe that I am being inexorably drawn towards someone, or something. It's interesting to note, though, that when looking back at our past and the friends we make, the interactions we have, we're more likely to chalk it up to "random" (as if such a thing existed) happenstance. We'd like to think that what happens to us is the result of situations, as though we didn't create our own microenvironments through our actions and words and behaviors. In other words, we look at our own pasts as though they weren't, at one point in our life, an uncertain future. We don't give ourselves enough credit for the often unseen effect that the depths our innate character--our Soul--can have on causing the events we refer to as "lucky" or "chance." We have more power than we realize, or perhaps want to admit.

So here's to, in the words of David Roth, "the miracles that cause us to believe." May we realize that there are those miracles which come from inside the Self, and may they bring us from a lesser perfection to a greater perfection.



(I'm still flying.)

It's Impressive What Grad School Can Do To a Man

Well, the semester is finally over. My first term at Virginia Tech was a fruitful one; I got A's in all my classes—Food Processing, Packaging, and Chemistry (or Food Proc/Pkg/Chem as they became known)—and some of my thesis proposal work out of the way. I won't deny that it's been stressful, more stressful than college ever was. Grad school is a weird world if you pause and think about it for too long. You're given more responsibility than an undergraduate ever was, and in a lot of cases (though not mine, not yet) you're given money as well. Even with that, though, you can't help feeling like undergrads have a bit of a better deal. They're paying to go to school and therefore are seen as a source of revenue. Grad students get paid (at least in most cases...am I being a little too obvious here?) and therefore are seen as something of a benign liability by some professors. It boils down to a very feudal perception of things; you're still a serf but with the duties of a noble. (And if you think that academia isn't a society built on classism, even of an artificial nature, then you are what experts call "wrong.")

So I'm pleased with the way the first semester turns out, although I'm a lot more nervous about the next few semesters than I was in college. I've never written a thesis before, and it's frightening, to be honest. I put off doing a thesis in college for an extended research paper due to this same fear of contributing to a body of knowledge. At some level it's probably a fear of rejection, of feeling like I don't know enough or have enough experience to put myself out there. Samuel Johnson summed it up nicely:

"He that writes may be considered as a kind of general challenger, whom every one has a right to attack; since he quits the common rank of life, steps forward beyond the lists, and offers his merit to the public judgement. To commence author is to claim praise, and no man can justly aspire to honour, but at the hazard of disgrace."

It seems that the "aspiration to honor" and the "hazard of disgrace" are the things that are frightening me the most. Here's hoping that the aspiration is warranted and that the hazard never has the oppurtunity to present itself.

But I'm still going to keep repeating: "Only three more semesters..."



(I'm still flying.)

Questionable Content

I’m going to start this off by saying that I am well aware that I am not another John Solomon. This fact may still be pointed out to me at length in the comments, even with that initial assertion. However, there is a webcomic that merits the merciless eye and the red pen of the reviewer, and I consider myself inspired enough to take on the job. It’s been called many things—pointlessly dramatic, a t-shirt factory, a webcomic version of Friends, etc. All of these comments underscore in various ways is the fact that Questionable Content is bad and Jeph Jacques (or Jeff Jacks, or whatever the hell his name is) should feel bad.

This is a somewhat personal post. I used to enjoy this comic; it was on my sidebar for several years. Like Saint Paul, however, I gave up childish things (and webcomics), and moved on. I bring this up because, as someone who used to think it was decent, I feel ashamed for ever liking it. It was never any better than it is now. In a way, this post is penance for not seeing through the shallow, callow “plots” more quickly. Unlike some webcomics, the art isn’t what kills it. No, it’s the writing. There are a variety of sins that Jacques commits, and we’ll go through them in order of severity.

First off, the jokes. Jacques shoehorns, bludgeons, and maims a “joke” like no other webcomic author that I’ve run across. The man simply has no idea when to quit. In the first link above, the joke would have been slightly more tolerable if it had stopped with Marten’s line. Granted, the joke was sort of pre-empted by Jeph (speaking through Steve, the guy on the couch) giving us a Wiki entry on cubist art, but I'm going to overlook that in favor of Faye’s final comment, which makes no goddam sense. Seriously. Read it. Even if she were a former member of the Velvet Underground, her comparison of masturbation and Andy Warhol paintings would still bring this panel to a grinding, screeching, crashing, halt. Mostly because it is—or was intended to be—the punchline. Except that it illicits only frustration and perplexity instead of amusement.

“But surely Jacques has changed between then and now,” people will no doubt say. “This was only his ninety-fourth comic! He’s done over a thousand!”

Yes, and the jokes are still just as bad. Look at that second link again. A joke that should have lasted half a panel—or better yet, no panels at all—is dragged out for three panels, giving an initially ham-fisted attempt at comedy the grim aura of a death march. Overall, though, I find this joke less offensive than his comment on the newspost at the bottom of the strip:

“This is probably my favorite kind of strip to write- two or three characters just taking an idea and riffing on it for a few panels. I think it's because I grew up watching MST3K religiously.”

It’s a damn shame that that’s his favorite type of strip to write, because he is terrible at it. In fact, if you “riff off” of a joke—any joke—for three panels in the verbose manner that Jacques employs, you’re going to wring out any vestiges of humor it once had like the last drops of blood from a recalcitrant stone. As for the MST3K reference, I am just gobsmacked. In what way does he think his comic bears any resemblance to MST3K? Perhaps the inclusion of a sassy-talking robot gave him delusions of grandeur. At any rate, Questionable Content is in no way, shape, or form anywhere CLOSE to amusing, let alone close to an MST3K level of humor, and Jacques should feel bad for that self-congratulatory remark alone.

Secondly, QC doesn’t verge on the disgusting, as “verging on” would imply that it held back—that Jeph Jacques had some measure of restraint. Which he doesn’t appear to have. That last link comes at the end of a wonderfully hilarious “arc” wherein the goth chick, Raven—against ALL logic whatsoever—decides to use lubricant as a hair product. Tasteful. The pain doesn’t end there, though, as we are treated to a special episode of QC Women Say Things That No Woman Would Ever Say In Real Life. In the third panel, Dora starts off with a joke that even Jacques didn't want to finish. Raven continues the trend by hypothesizing about Faye and Dora’s menstrual cycles. Ha ha! We all know from Family Guy that period jokes are comedy gold. Jacques apparently believes this, because Dora AGREES, giving us more information than we could possibly ever want about the state of her underwear. (Assuming this wasn’t meant to be a medical emergency, we can only assume that Jacques has never heard of the invention of feminine hygiene products. Consider that the man is married when you read that last sentence.) Marten takes the final punchline to a whole new level with a joke about defecation, because that’s exactly the finishing touch that this utter monstrosity of a strip needed. Bravo, Mr. Jacques. Well played.

Finally, the man apparently has no concept of how to write a dramatic storyline. None. (As an aside, the one comic I didn’t include in that list contains a joke about Joan Rivers'…well, read for yourself. Ugh. Quit with those jokes already, Jacques.) Like Dave Willis, the author of Shortpacked!, Jacques appears to have thought his comic could gain street cred via drama. Unlike Willis, however, he wasn’t funny before the drama, and he sure as hell ain’t funny now. Faye’s stilted and unrealistic conversation with her mother proves that he also has no clue how actual drama—as opposed to drama cooked up to explain why a character is a horrendous bitch—plays out in people’s lives. A comment from one of his newsposts during the suicide arc shows how oblivious he is:

“…I figure two weeks is more than enough time for exposition, by then it will be time to explore some of the interesting (and hopefully entertaining) ripple effects caused by Marten and Faye having this little chat.”

...Because nothing is more entertaining than the aftermath of paternal suicide.

I give up, and I haven’t even gotten to Marten and Dora’s completely improbable and implausible courtship. Jacques, your attempts to show off your indie hipsterism through awkward and drawn-out jokes, your apparent preoccupation with various human bodily functions, and your astoundingly inept fumblings with "dramatic" "plotlines" combine to make this comic a festering, cringe-inducing eyesore. It’s a real shame that, in other ways, QC is such a “success story"—making its way from humble beginnings to massive popularity (and prosperity, in the form of T-shirts and ads)—because it’s pure, unadulterated tripe.

And, one more time, because it needs to be said, and I feel like saying it: Jeph Jacques, your webcomic is bad, and you should FEEL BAD.

Mr. Mistletoe’s Sundial

If you ever walk along Charlottesville’s University Avenue, you'll go past what's called the Corner. The name is misleading—it’s actually more of a long stretch of restaurants, bookstores, bars, and kitschy little shops between Chancellor and 14th Streets. Or at least it used to be; the restaurants and some of the bars are still around, but a Starbucks replaced one of the old businesses that used to be there, and I’m sure there have been a few other changes as well in the time I’ve been gone. That place still carries a lot of emotional currency for me, though, because of a few weeks every year I’d spend there with my dad, selling mistletoe.

This all happened when I was about five or six years old. My dad was self-employed, and therefore was his own boss when it came to budgeting his time. I’m not sure how the idea came about, or why he settled on mistletoe particularly. He disdained the typical method employed by local Buckingham County natives, which involved shooting the mistletoe off the tree with a .22, as it caused too many berries to fall off and required a gun and the ability to shoot it besides. For those reasons, he had my brother-in-law fix him an eighteen-foot pole with a hook welded onto the end of it. In late November, usually right after Thanksgiving, he’d drive around the county, looking for mistletoe-infested trees in people’s yards. If he found one, he’d knock on the person’s door and ask them if he could climb the tree in their yard and pull the mistletoe down. Most of the people he asked were obliging, though no doubt amused by the idea of a man climbing up a tree for such a purpose. He’d clamber up the tree and I’d hand him the pole, and he’d hook the mistletoe and half-lower, half-drop it onto a tarp below.

We’d gather up as much as we could into giant black trash bags. Once we got it home, we tied the mistletoe—about two or three sprigs at a time—together with ribbon, curled the ends of the ribbon, packed the tied sprigs into Ziploc bags, and put them in the refrigerator to keep them fresh. The day after that, we would pack up the car with an assortment of objects—equipment and gear that started out in a rudimentary, utilitarian fashion and evolved into something much larger and more complex than selling mistletoe would seem to require. At the height of his career as a salesman, my father had a huge sign made of pieces of paperboard that spelled out “MR MISTLETOE” in individual letters, which he suspended between a hook on the outside wall of LittleJohn’s Deli and a streetlamp. He put a sign on a wooden gardening post that said “Mr. Mistletoe” as well, and he made up a box that he decorated carefully with wrapping paper and signs that announced his name, a third time, and “$2”—the price of each bag of three sprigs.

His target demographic on the corner was college students, more specifically college girls. Two bucks was an affordable enough price, and many such girls were so taken with the idea and carried away with the double ecstasy of holiday fever and the end of exams that the shrewdness of his plan became evident rather quickly. College guys were targeted as well, in much the same way as girls; a gift that says—no, demands—“kiss me” is likely to appeal with such a group. The simple genius of his plan would become clearer to me, much later, when I was at William & Mary; no doubt I would have shelled out a few bucks myself, albeit more out of hope than certainty.

At one point, his advertising campaign included making a giant wooden sandwichboard sign that said “Buy Mistletoe from Mr. Mistletoe,” putting it over my shoulders, and having me walk up and down West Main, from the Lucky Seven convenience store way down to the corner of West Main and 14th Street, across the street from where the Orbit bar is now. Mistaking the amused laughter of passers-by for ridicule, I would wear the sign with a prominent blush searing my cheeks, and would dutifully trudge my appointed path as rapidly as was possible while wearing two heavy pieces of board across my back and chest. For this task I was paid a quarter, enough money to play one of the arcade games in the basement of a nearby comic shop and thus ease the heartbreak of the perceived indignity of my ambulatory marketing.

At a certain point in the afternoon, my dad would pack up his stuff into the car and go around peddling his wares to various businesses. Being a computer programmer and a mathematician, his salesman’s plan was stylized and deeply planned out. At my age, I was not entirely curious about where we went, so long as there was the possibility of soda, food, or toys. (However, I did learn, from conversations in the car, that hairdressers were often his best sales.) There were scattered locations all over town where he was guaranteed to sell quite a few bags, just as there were a few locations where he knew that the managers were likely to be unfriendly to him—much in the way Depression-era tramps used to leave symbols on houses as reminders: “Mean dog,” “Nice lady,” “Good food.” He never seemed deterred by rudeness. I suppose, in retrospect, he considered it the other person’s problem, much the way Ronald Reagan once said, when an aide showed him an article harshly criticizing his presidency: “Yeah, I wonder what’s eating that guy?”

I could go on for hours about those few weeks in December: how I explored the gardens on the UVA campus, sitting on the wall of the University park eating hot hamburgers from the White Spot and drinking cream soda, buying my dad a latté every morning (from a coffee shop that no longer exists, sadly). However, something that really sticks in my mind is the way my dad kept time. He would go inside LittleJohn’s and find the times on the hour. Then he’d go outside and use his nail file to make a mark on the knee wall behind his sales table, scratching a line where the shadow of a nearby tree fell on the surface. That way he didn’t have to go inside and check every day—once he had each hourly time, he could tell what time it was based on the shadows across the wall.

I was on the Corner this past winter (right around the time of year my dad would have been selling mistletoe sixteen years ago), shopping at Plan 9 and getting a cup of coffee at the Starbucks that’s up towards Bodo’s. While walking by LittleJohn’s, I paused at the wall. I was sure I could see the etchings in the stone, made by a man living life on his own terms and doing what pleased him; a man who, rather than buying a watch, decided to leave his mark on this world in his own quiet but determined way.





(I'm still flying.)