Zachisms

 
Somewhere along the line, those fine people at the University of Alberta decided that I, and every other student graduating with a BA, would need three credits of math to make it through life. When I left high school, I assumed that a little addition here and a little multiplication there would be enough math to get me through any number crisis that I might encounter. Unfortunately, the university did not agree.

I avoided my math credits for five years, hoping that they would just go away and when they didn’t I simply went to the arts office and asked them to take my math credits away. When they disagreed I realized that I was actually going to have to take a math class. So, for the final class of my degree I enrolled in Stats 141.

I have taken two classes in summer school before, both of which were fine arts classes. For fine arts students, summer school is almost a necessity. Classes are usually filled with familiar faces who are doing there best to make sure they finish as close to on-time as possible. I assumed that would be true of all summer school classes. As I walked to my first class of Stats 141 I was expecting a to encounter desks filled with fresh-faced students right out of high school who were here hoping to get the jump on their University educations. When I entered a classroom occupied by four women over the age of 35; two Asian guys who didn’t’ seem to speak much English; two guys who, based on appearances had smoked two joints before class and planned on smoking two more after; a group of girls who looked like they were taking Stats for at least the second time; and one jock, I realized that was very wrong. So I, the boy who was afraid of numbers, took my place with the rest of the University’s rejects (who had apparently been taking refuge in summer school all these years) and hoped that these were the fastest six weeks of my life.

Day 1
My teacher’s name is one that I cannot pronounce, at least not the way I am supposed to. He is of an ethnicity that I’m sure has made him the butt of many a Kwiki-mart joke in his day. I would say Pakistani but I find so often that to not be the case, possibly revealing my cultural ignorance. He came to the first class wearing beige khaki pants and a beige short-sleeved button up shirt. It was an outfit that, upon seeing him, made me wonder “Why does the janitor have a brief case?” rather than “Why is our teacher dressed for Dessert Storm?” Despite his apparent like of fashion sense, he seemed like a nice man. The kind of nice that gets you stuck with a bunch of Stats rejects for six weeks. He came in and quickly began talking about how some classrooms had white boards in them while others had chalk boards. I didn’t see how this was relevant until he muttered something about going to find the chalks. You can often tell when someone has come from a fairly different language than English, because a lot of our grammatical rules simply don’t make sense. While “chalks” really is a word that logically deserves an “S”, hearing it said aloud that way was very unusual. I was unsure if he was going to return with a box of chalk or a family of pasty white people. He returned with neither and said he would simply use the overhead today. I was expecting his to pluralize overhead as well and was somewhat disappointed when he did not.
He passed out the syllabus and went over it which gave me ample time to space out and think about how I could mess with the class if I could move objects with my mind. I only returned my attention to the teacher when I heard the word bell curve. I am terrified of the bell curve. While it would seem that, in a class like mine, the curve should be of little concern, the idea of being scored against the other people in my class always makes me hesitant. It’s not that I think I am stupid, it’s just that if anyone in the class were to feed me a good enough line and ask me to do a little worse for them then I would probably do it and before you know it I would be doing my best to hang on to the end of the curve.

There is always a moment on the first day of class, after the teacher has finished with the syllabus where you wonder if that’s going to be all or if he is actually going to start teaching. It is usually as simple as the difference in how the teacher says a word. He will put down the syllabus and say alright. That alright is usually starting one of two sentences. The first is “Alright, that’s it for today.” The second is “Alright, open your books to page 9.”

“Alright,” my teacher said. His apparent lack of comfort with the English language made his tone more difficult to read but since there was an hour left in class, I was fairly certain that we were going to be learning.

Day 2
By day two of any class you begin to establish an unspoken understanding with the rest of the class that the seat you are choosing is going to be your seat for the remainder of class. I remember a teacher once told my class that they have done studies on where a person sits in the room and how well he does. People who sit closer often do much better. I always wondered if they bothered to see if there was any correlation between where a person sat and how much they actually cared about the class. Since I didn’t care much at all, I sat at the back.

I usually try to arrive just on time for class to avoid making awkward small talk with the people around me. I had come much too early for that today. When it looked like the woman next to me, a 35 + women who looked like she was likely a hippie on the mend, was getting ready to start up a conversation I quickly began drawing in my binder doing my best to look like I was concentrating very hard and did not want to be disturbed. If she had seen my page and noticed that I was doodling a sketch of my own hand holding the very pencil I was drawing with I’m sure she would have decided I wasn’t worth talking to anyway.

Day 3
By day three, people can usually start to make friends, assuming that if anyone were going to drop the class they would have done so by now. Two of the older women who were sitting in the same row started talking to each other bonding over, I’m guessing, how much they love their cats. The girls in the front row all made friends as well. The jock made friends with this girl who always came late and always took here shoes off as soon as she came to class, and I figured the stoners would become fast friends, but their skipping schedules seemed set up so they never actually encountered each other. The recovering hippy and I continued to sit in the same row, but never spoke.

Day 5
On the Monday of our second week, my teacher handed back our first assignments. He began the process of calling out names with a simple Jennifer and worked his way through the pile. I was surprised by the some of the unusual names that I encountered, especially when the teacher called out Gilgamesh. I didn’t think you were even allowed to name your child Gilgamesh anymore and couldn’t wait to see what he looked like. Unfortunately Gilgamesh was not in class that day. I figured he was off slaying a dragon or getting drunk on mead and hitting on bar wenches. I assumed that was the strangest name I was going to encounter in this class until the teacher called out for a Zochang. I was expecting to turn around and see a fifty year old Asian man with a long wispy moustache to stand up and utter a badly-dubbed thanks and accept his assignment with a bow. I looked around the room for Zochang but quickly realized that everyone else had already received their assignments; everyone except me. I was Zocahng. I put up my hand and he passed me my assignment asking if he had pronounced my name right. It took me about two seconds to decide that living out the remainder of this class as Zochang, grand master of Stats-Fu, was much more interesting than spending the rest of the class as Zachary, BA in art and design, year five and a half. I smiled at him and said “Yup, that’s right.”

Day 7
It’s usually about two weeks into any class that you really start to learn stuff that will be relevant for the exam. It’s also around this time that I start to get unbelievably bored. Unfortunately, in the compressed world of summer school, this had come much sooner than anticipated.

We had just started learning about Significance Tests (something I was sure this class would fail) when I looked up at the clock and noticed that there were exactly twenty three minutes left in class. I realized that if I started watching an episode of Sex and the City right now, then I would finish right when class was over. So that’s what I did. In my head I began watching an episode of Sex and the City. I sat there with my eyes glued to the invisible television in front of me, my head bobbing along to the catchy theme song. At one point, about six minutes into the episode a let out a little laugh that made the hippy break our silence pact. “What’s so funny?” She asked.

I kept my eyes glued to my television, not turning to look at her, but rather leaning slightly to the side to say “Samantha just said something funny.”

Day 9
I am beginning to develop a crush on one of the stoners. He has messy blonde hair and he sits in the front row, and I think my teacher has caught me starring a few times.

I figure his name is Gilgamesh since he was one of the people who was not here when our assignments were passed back.

Every class, Gilgamesh gets up and walks out of class for about twenty minutes, presumably to go smoke up. I learn quite intently for those twenty minutes. Then he comes back and I wonder how our names would sound together. Gilgamesh and Zochang, kings of the world. It has a nice ring to it.

Day 15
Gilgamesh did not show up for the mid-term today. While I am sure that he probably got stoned and slept through it I imagine that it is because he found our connection too distracting and he will continue his Stats studies during the school year. Instead, he will spend the rest of the summer storming castles or playing poker with his friends Lancelot and Merlin, leaving me, Zochang, to battle Stats alone. 

To a gay man, Saturday night can be many things: date night, the good night at your favourite gay bar, movie night.
For this gay man one thing Saturday night is not is game night.

Do you remember when there used to be seasons when it came to sports? When there was a definite break between where hockey ended and baseball began?
I miss that break. Nowadays it’s like one long sports fiesta that lasts all year and only breaks for major holidays. As a person who can count the number of sports he likes to watch on television on one hand, this is not an inviting transition.
Last super bowl Sunday I was out buying something and the guy behind the counter said, “How come you aren’t at home watching the game?” I lied and said I had homework. The look on his face told me that telling him I simply didn’t care would have been like telling a five year-old child that there was no Santa Claus.

But at least the Super Bowl is only one day. The Stanley Cup playoffs are in a whole different league (pun intended). They can last up to seven games. If you are friends with people who enjoy watching hockey, on seven different occasions you are going to have to go out and stare at an oversized television (becoming increasingly aware of its two-dimensionality) and wait for commercial breaks. To a sports lover, watching hockey is like serving a five course meal to a starving man, there is no talking, only the sounds that relate to the enjoyment of what you are doing. To a non-sports lover, hockey is like the drift-off period, when a person starts to think about what he would wish for if he had one wish or what he would do if the world was going to end tomorrow. The commercial break is the verbal oasis in the desert of sticks and pucks. And overtime is the arch nemesis. Typically, a person knows that once that clock hits zero in the third period, the game is over, but every so often (and always in the playoffs) you’ll be watching the game and realize that the score is tied and that the clock is running dangerously low on time. It’s like realizing that you are watching the first half of a “to be continued” episode of television; there is no way they are going to resolve this in the next minute. And just when you thought it was over, you have to sit there for another twenty minutes…or how ever long overtime lasts…eternity, maybe.

This hockey season, I thought I was safe.
Edmonton did not make the playoffs.
The two teams that did were Calgary and Tampa Bay. To me this seems about as likely as catching George W. at a Pride Parade.
The one thing that reassured me was that I didn’t think Edmontonians were gonna care who won or lost. Six games ago I was faced with a rude awakening; people always cheer for someone.

As far as I can tell, there is a fairly definite system used to determine who a person is going to cheer for. If there is no one playing that you like, then you cheer for the team that hasn’t been “bought.” If you can’t use that to qualify it, then you cheer for the fan favourite or the underdog. If you still can’t figure out who to cheer for after all that then you simply cheer for whoever is geographically closer. I think that, paired with the fact that Calgary is the only Canadian team in the Playoffs, is why Edmontonians jumped to their feet for Calgary. Ordinarily we hate Calgary, except when they are in the playoffs.

This playoff season, I had been fairly lucky. School, work and conflicting schedules had allowed me to dodge the first five games. I thought I had game six in the bag too. It was Saturday night and I had two events to attend. One was a birthday and the other was a conglomerate party being held for many different reasons, not the least of which was the presence of a keg. I knew that the second party was going to be planted in front of the television waiting for someone to win, so I decided to hit the birthday party first. It was at a bar and I figured even if the game was on, I could find some way to distract myself. I got to the bar in the middle of what ended up being the first overtime of game six. I walked in the door and looked around the room but could not see my friends. I decided to stop at the beer tub girl for a beer that would accompany me on my search of the bar. This ended up being a bad idea.

With beer in hand I began to walk through the bar searching for my friends, weaving in and out of the avid sports fans. It turns out that walking in front of someone during playoff hockey is like going to the bathroom at the climax of a movie, every one you have to walk in front of instantly hates you. This made the search a bit discouraging. What made it even more discouraging was the fact that I had not yet found my friends. And it was at this point that I came to that awful realization that the people I was supposed to be meeting were not actually there. And I cursed the beer I had just purchased.

So there I was surrounded by hockey fans, in the midst of overtime, with a fresh beer. It would have made a winning beer commercial…for me it was hell. I figured my best approach was to try and watch the game while I downed my leash. I tried my best to blend in, realizing that I was that guy that you see drinking a beer at a bar…alone. And then something occurred to me; Calgary might win. There was a chance that while I was standing there doing my best impersonation of an interested man, Calgary might win. I could fake watching hockey; that was the easy part. I think there are a good number of straight men who feel obliged to do it all the time, like fantasizing about lesbians or admiring the hub-caps of a friend’s new car. Faking being excited about hockey was a different story. If Calgary did in fact win the Stanley Cup then people were going to freak out. There would be deep-throated cheering and lots of man-hugs. I was in no position to do either. I wasn’t excited enough to cheer and had no one to hug. I stared at the television screen taking increasingly bigger gulps and waited for that fateful goal that would cause me to have to smile casually at all the hockey fans around me. And then it happened. The first over-time ended. I put my empty beer bottle down on the nearest table and made for the exit. I was quite sure the bouncer at the door remembered my face, since I had only entered the bar about fifteen minutes earlier, but I didn’t care. I had missed a birthday but I was out of overtime hell. I walked down the street and was anticipating party number two and could see handfuls of people around me running to get to the next bar before the next period started. I headed for my car comfortable in the fact that I was probably the only person in Edmonton who was happy that Calgary hadn’t scored before the whistle was blown.
By the time I got home, Tampa Bay had scored and Calgary had lost game six. For me, though, game six will be remembered as the game when, at the end of the first overtime, Calgary and Tampa Bay tied.

Yesterday night, after the obligatory bottle of wine and my second beer, I wandered to the Roost bathroom to relieve the increasing pressure on my bladder. Upon entering the bathroom I noticed that all the stalls were taken and that there was only one free urinal. I moseyed up to the urinal and started to pave my own yellow brick road. About 10 seconds into my peeing experience it became obvious that the guy occupying the urinal next to me was straying over that invisible line that eyes are never supposed to cross. I was less than sure what I was supposed to do with this so I continued peeing and counted the blessings that allowed me to avoid the ever fearful stage fright. I finished peeing at the same time as the golden voyeur and as we both did up our pants he turned to me and said “Nice.” As I had never been in that situation before, I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I smiled and told him thanks. Then he told me he was a bit drunk and asked if I was single. When I told him yes, he told me that he now liked me that much more and to come find him later. As he left the bathroom I stood there considering the possible ego stroking I had just been offered and considered how casually my privacy had just been invaded. It got me wondering, how much space does a person really need in a bathroom and when is it acceptable to just stand back and wait for the next free stall.

Men have been lead to believe that, for women, a trip to the bathroom is like a bite sized slumber party. They take off their underwear, talk about boys and sample each others make-up. To the average man, when a woman goes to the bathroom, she is going to her sanctuary, her safety zone. You never hear a woman complaining that her personal space was being invaded by a neighbouring urinater.

The male bathroom is the exact opposite. While, for women, the bathroom seems to be one of the most comfortable places they can visit, for men, the bathroom can just be downright awkward.

One of the most uncomfortable situations I have encountered is being confronted by a drunk or otherwise conversational person while you are mid-stream. There are few conversations that I like to have with my cock hanging out that don’t end with an orgasm, and none that I like to have within spitting distance of a public urinal. The thing about maintaining a conversation with someone who you are standing shoulder to shoulder with is what you do with your eyes. I am someone who, unless I’m driving, doesn’t like to talk to someone without making eye contact. At the urinal wall, though, eye contact is something that a lot of people don’t want to make. First of all, eye contact is an invitation for a longer conversation, and really, who wants to lengthen a conversation that you are having while you penis hangs somewhere near a urinal puck. There is also the chance that, in mid-conversation, your eyes will naturally shift and make contact with a different eye…the one that you are never supposed to look at in the bathroom.

The best conversation that I have had in a public bathroom was with a man who stood two urinals away and began asking me questions about Edmonton. It was quite obviously sincere and didn’t at all feel like an invasion of my space. The worst conversation I have had was when I was in Montreal. I was doing my best to fill the urinal I was facing. It was one of those short ones that looks like an exaggerated version of something you would use to catch a wiffle ball. As I peed, the guy next to me began talking to me about some girl that he thought was hot. He reached a point in the conversation (unfortunately, before I reached empty) where he asked me my opinion about her or another girl out there. I stood there, a little drunk and holding my painfully slow penis, and decided that this was not the time to tell my urineighbour that I was gay. Instead, I made some random comment about a girl whose shirt I had noticed earlier that evening that managed to ramble on until my fly was up and I was headed out the bathroom. I wished him luck with the girl and headed for the bar where I decided that it was time to switch from beer to anything that was going to keep me from possibly running into Bobby the Womanizer in the bathroom again that night.

I figured this was a random occurrence and that I would be fine to continue using the urinal even when sandwiched between two other guys. This was a fine theory until my little encounter with the Peeping Tom yesterday. Because of him, I have developed a couple rules about urinal usage.

The first is simple. Check out the neighbours before you move in. When you enter the bathroom, look at who's manning the urinals. If they look like they might talk you through this bathroom experience then it might be time for a stall. The same can be said if it looks like the men you are about to saddle up next to might have wandering eyes. If you can’t tell how a urinal experience could go, there is always rule number two: the rule of one. When in doubt, leave one urinal, and if that’s not possible, go to a stall.

I used to think the men who went to a stall to pee were just nervous, and now I know I was right. They were probably guys who had spent two minutes next to Bobby the Womanizer or Tommy the Peeping Tom and were nervous that if they went to a urinal, it could happen again. And I can empathize, because I have made friends in a few weird places, but in a public bathroom is not one of them.

Recently, while reading an article by David Sedaris (my literary hero of the moment) about hippies begging in the streets, I started to wonder something about them, their modern-day distant descendants the homeless, and generally anyone who sits on the street asking for money. Why is it that they hold so much power over most of us?

In a world that is so obviously dominated by money and the amalgamation of wealth, why is it that so few of us are insulted at the prospect of being asked to simply hand over our money? Why are so many of us sorry that we can’t actually hand over any of the money that we earned in one form or another?

Is it because these people are doing what we all would if we had the courage? Is it really just a fear of being seen as a beggar that keeps all of us from taking to the streets and asking for change?
Are we living in a world where the true power in the social equation comes not from earning your money but from asking those who earn it to hand it over for no reason at all?
Would we all rather perform sidewalk robbery than work everyday?

I imagine that most of you have encountered at least one person on a street corner downtown or in the Jasper Gates parking lot (I’ve lost two fifty to that parking lot) who has asked you for any change you can spare. If you haven’t, then it’s time to get the hell out of the suburbs and grab some reality.

Now, I’m sure each of you has at least one friend who doesn’t give a shit about telling anyone who asks for money to fuck off (I have three), heck you might even be one such person. But if you are like most of us, myself included, you are likely under the sway of the modern day beggar in one form or another.

There are typically three responses to being asked for spare change by someone on the street. The first and most typical response a person can have when encountering the question “Do you have any spare change?” is to do his or her best impersonation of a def person and to continue walking.

The second response, the one that I typically fall back on, is the apologetic response. This can come in many forms and, lately for me, has reduced itself to simple eye contact. Other variations of the apology involve patting ones pockets with a “sorry pal” look on your face; shrugging with a “sorry pal” look on your face, or actually searching for the smallest coin you can find in your pocket (praying its not a loonie), handing it over and apologizing that you don’t have more to give.

The third response is the one that is so rarely encountered. It is the piss the fuck off response. Why is it that this response is so rare in our society? If you ask people, the majority of them will admit that they hate being asked for money. On many levels it’s simply insulting. It’s like telling someone that “Hey, I think you look like a sucker…gimme some money.” But people don’t do anything about it. People are quicker to freak out at the cashier who has miscounted change than at the beggar who has flat out asked for it.

Now it could be argued that by not acknowledging the existence of the modern day beggar people are exerting some degree of superiority over them; that, for beggars, being acknowledged by someone with money must feel like the highest validation of their existence. But I don’t think so. I think that on the street, the person asking for money holds all the power. I have observed many homeless people on the street asking anyone who walks by for some spare change and it is quite obvious who is more uncomfortable in each interaction.

There is about a two-foot radius around each beggar that I like to call the dead zone. It is a space in which most beggars will make their move and for most people, any interaction in this dead zone is more awkward than a fart in a crowded elevator.

But why is that? Why is it that the person with the money, the person who holds all the cards is the person who feels so uncomfortable about playing them? It’s possible that we are now so conditioned to maintain a rational and calm exterior that something as socially perpendicular as asking for money leaves most of us with little to say. It’s also possible that it’s simply denial. It’s easier to ignore any problem than admit it exists.

I came to my answer when thinking back a couple of years to some time I spent in Victoria. Some friends and I were walking down a street downtwon when we passed a kid of about fourteen asking for money. This kid was obviously able-bodied. He could have flipped burgers in a heartbeat, but instead he sat his sorry ass on the street and expected people to give him money, and it worked. The shiny ant hill of change in front of him was proof of that. But it wasn’t his age or any sense of concern that people may have had for this boy’s wellbeing that got him his loot. It was the simple fact that he was honest. Whenever anyone passed by him he would tell them “I’ll do anything for some spare change.” (His tone was less like Oliver Twist and more like that dirty kid on the playground that ate dirt in public to try and win the hearts of the pretty girls.) And who could turn down a kid that would do anything. Torn between adulthood and sweet immaturity my friends and I stood thumbing the nickels in our pockets while we thought of something we could make this kid do. The best we could come up with was making him squawk around the sidewalk on his knees like a chicken (we smoked a lot of pot when we were there…give us a break). Now, thinking back to this day when I watched a fourteen year old chicken-boy topple around on the pavement I start to wonder if that is in fact the secret. Is it that homeless people will do anything for our money (short of working for it)? And if people are willing to beg for money then are they willing to do almost anything else and could it be your “piss the fuck off” that pushes them to all-out violent robbery? Is encountering a beggar like sitting next to a meathead in a movie theatre who won’t shut up? You want to tell him to shut the fuck up but when it really comes down to it, if things should go the wrong way, you know who will end up on the wrong end of a fist. Maybe homeless people and beggars in general hold some sort of social conch because they are seen as unpredictable. If they are asking for money, they could do anything.

This doesn't mean that I am transforming into a type 3 person. People have their piss the fuck off response, and that’s fine, but for now I’m just gonna continue doing what I’m doing…wearing my headphones whenever I walk around. Because when the music is turned up just loud enough, it always feels like you’ve got the upper hand.

1.
I have never known a love I couldn’t outrun
headlong into the night
ignoring finger twitch

soles on slick pavement
and wet breath from cold burn lungs
I find the jackrabbits and their December
at midnight I have to stay open longer,
most light comes from the snow

jackrabbits move too quickly
on chameleon white and opposite sky
blinking cannot hold

I can’t stay still for that long
with eyes closed I will run
the wrong way

2.
The walls here are painfully white
for an art studio too medicinal
waiting for negatives
dripping seconds drying to curl
stolen sand smeared out
on celluloid

lately so few feel like glass
so few feel breakable

a fleck in the eye
placebo finger

3.
Spring and it’s ticking past midnight

I am more aware of when the sun goes away
and leaves the moon and flashing red neon
through the window and across your face

I wake with one eye closed

The Fiction Bleed

My father and our neighbour spent the summer building a new fence around our house. They took all of the long white drain spouts off the house while building.
Last week runoff from the melting snow leaked its way through the foundation of our house and soaked the basement carpet, turning it a colour that I don’t recognize.

―

My parents once told me that when I was a child I peed on the priest during my baptism. I have been telling people that story for years.
Only recently did I discover that it is not true.

―

When I was much younger a friend and I were playing in my parents’ bathroom. Quick to imitate the actions of her father, my friend grabbed a razor and began to shave; dry metal against soft skin.
Despite an absence of scars and a knowledge of truth, in my memory it is I who so quickly reached for the razor

―

In 1988, my parents bought me and brother a Key Board Synthesizer for Christmas. On Boxing Day, noticing a damage that was unapparent to us, they took it to be repaired.
Six months later when we asked about the gift, my parents told us they had lost the receipt and could no longer pick it up.
Two years ago they admitted that they had simply returned it.
In 23 years I have never lost a receipt.

―

I woke up this morning with a headache and the distinct smell of the many things I don’t remember doing last night. A friend told me that by the end of the night I was dancing on a table with a complete stranger.
Assuming the memory will eventually return, I tell my brother the story as if it were my own.

―

The wall in our basement is speckled with photos of me and my brother as children. Not until an age where we were posed with random foreshadows (my brother a small yellow football, me and piece of fruit) can I tell us apart.
I’ve always assumed all the images that came before were of me.

―

Upon discovering the soaked carpet in our basement, my mother set me to work sucking up the water with a steam cleaner.
The discolouration of the now-dry area of is still obvious to me.

I have a subscription to Details magazine...and generally speaking I love it, if for no other reason the predetermined knowledge that I am sure to get 10 pieces of wanted mail each year. But I do actually really enjoy the magazine. The thing about having a subscription is that every so often, an issue that you wouldn't normally pick up if you stumbled across it at the news stand ends up in your mail box one way or the other. Today I returned home to one such issue.

Typically Details is a magazine which features various talents on the covers of the magazine. They are always male, typically quiet famous, and in most cases are enjoying (or likely will in the future) some longevity in their celebrity careers. Last month featured Ethan Hawke, and before that was Jude Law. The issues also feature interviews with strong actresses (Selma Blair and Christina Ricci respectively). This month I came home to a mailbox crammed with letters, bills (neither of which were for me) and a magazine sporting a flashy picture of Nick Lachey (the anticipation and according disappointment experienced here is similar to that of a child smelling and then sampling vanilla extract for the first time). Apparently millions of MTV viewers have found room in their hearts for Nick Lachey because he puts up with a big-boobed, dumb-blonde wife and at the same time tries desperately to keep his life boat of a music career afloat on the high seas of celebrity success while oil tankers like Justin Timberlake go plowing past.

I imagine Nick hoped that, like his reality television show, this interview and countless others, would pull on just the right heart strings to get people to reach for his album and then their wallets. As a twenty-three year old male, I'm assuming I don't fall within his target audience which is good because the article had little to no affect on me. I can recognize that he seems to be a charming guy and no less deserving of success than anyone else that stumbles across it or works their butt of to get it. And really I was quite indifferent about his success until the least paragraph of the article when Mr. Jessica Simpson mentioned his desire to move towards acting and abandon his sinking singing career. He then proceeded to say he admired Bruce Willis and Harrison Ford because they are action stars but also do artsy films. It was at this point that I marveled at the hidden depths of Nick Lachey. I mean seriously, anyone whose acting cover letter reads "I'd ike to do action stuff and some artsy films" might as well sign up for Hollywood Squares now. The thought of seeing Nick "98degrees" Lachey jumping from a burning boat (other than the one he is currently trying to paddle) or saving the day, and then taking a turn in something he would call "artsy" makes me want to throw my TV out the window (it should be noted that I live in a one story house and the TV would likely survive the fall, but the act should be representative of my feelings just the same).

It's funny, after reading the article and the assumed futures of both Nick and Jessica, I look at the couple and wonder if Jessica truly is the dumb one.