The Library, the Gates, Impending Boy Barrettes
Currently I spend at least 7 hours a week in public libraries. In the last month I’ve probably spent more time in libraries than I have throughout my entire 15.166666 years of schooling. Which is probably why I’m 1 and 5/6 of a year short of a degree. On Mondays and Wednesdays I drop my daughter off at afternoon preschool in Perham. It’s a 25 minute drive, so I prefer to stick around Perham rather than drive all the way back just to turn around 2 hours later and spend another hour in the car. So I drop her off. Go to Subway for a foot long veggie delight on honey oat bread with no cucumbers and no olives, and then I go the Perham Public Library. I find a comfortable cubicle and I get out whatever I’m writing and put everything in it’s place. Notes go at the back of the cubicle, rough drafts up on the shelf. Blank note cards in the back right corner, 5-10 sharpened #2 pencils on the right edge and my green pencil sharpener on the left. My cubicle of choice faces the information desk, above which there is a clock which usually keeps me punctual in picking up my daughter. As I write I set realistic, attainable goals, and celebrate them when achieved. Thank you Matt Marohl for that standard. If I’m writing something easily measured, such as an intergenerational activity, my measure of success is completion of a draft. When I’m working on something broad – perhaps a brainstorming or journaling activity – I measure success by having moved all of the pencils in the sharpened pile over to the dull pile on the left by the green pencil sharpener. After sharpening them and replacing them in the sharp pile, I’m ready to celebrate my achievements. I read a paper for 4 minutes or get a drink from the short drinking fountain since it has better water pressure than the adjacent tall drinking fountain. On saucy days I read a paper and get a drink. Because I’m my own man, that’s why.
After the celbebration it’s back to the grindstone.
Well it just so happens that to the direct right of my cubical of choice there is a display of new arrivals of non-fiction. And what did I see? Chuck Klosterman IV. Oh Chuck, lead me not astray. Well Chuck did lead me astray – but only for 2 chapters (one on Bono, one on Tweedy -the Jeff not the bird). But today a bullet made it through Chuck’s previously impenetrable armor. His face is on the cover, and on the back, and he’s gone and grown himself a beard, and forgotten to trim his bangs. With his round scandihoovian head he looks quite a bit like animal from the muppets. The beard is relatively minor. Beards are in and cool, and well they should be, shaving sucks. I’ve been sporting my own sad excuses for facial fuzz to be well beyond any sort of holier than thou posturings concerning beards.
but the whispy in your eye hair.
durn you chuck -that is the dumbest most asanine haircut ever sported by men – and I might point out that really it’s a teen boy thing to do and then you turn twenty and get a real hair cut, unless of course you’re in a whiny nazel gazing indie rock outfit that wears low cut jeans and walks around with thier heads sideways to start with from baring the weight of the corporate rock world trying to weazle their way into your punk rock ethic. But really the head tilt is to keep the hair out of the way. And really Chuck, you are not an adolescent and you are not in an indie rock band. And if you were in rock band it would be glam, and your hair would be much longer and the hairspray would keep your bangs far far away from round norwegian face and your so-not-rock baby blue eyes.
But Chuck, (apparently this has morphed into an open letter to Mr. Klosterman) I still love you. We’ve all made hair mistakes, and yes even I have yet to find a haircut that goes beyond convenience into style, but do me a favor and cut your hair. Don’t listen to Pavement, do cut your hair. Be the boy with the pretty, new haircut. Please, you’re hipper than being a dumb hipster. At least we (apparently my open letter is now our open letter) still think you are.
But Chuck, we are a kind and tolerant people and understand that the idea of cutting your hair might take some getting used to, so in the meantime I (yes, it’s back to being my letter, because there’s a heckuva money making idea coming up and I don’t want to share the gravy when the boat comes in and all you couch potatoes ponie up to the pay roll) would like you to take on one small job. Start a trend. Start wearing boy barrettes. I’ve been thinking about this for about a year now, and a couple months ago in a gathering of hundreds of jr. high kids where this dumb-ass haircut had reached pandemic levels I spoke out in a prohetic voice that within 2 years all these boys would be wearing boy barrettes, and Chuch your the chosen one to make this happen. The way I see it, it could go two ways. a) start wearing girl barrettes and call them boy barrettes, or 2) use your spin dollars and start your own line of boy barrettes, which could have skulls and ‘fall out boy’ logos on them. It could start small, market it through your NY boutique stores, and then once we get one indie rock band that’s sold out to MTV to wear one… we’re in the money!!! It’ll be huge – the next big thing and when people see a boy with a barrette they’ll refer to him as having “Kloster-locks” Oh it’ll be so cool.
Or stick with plan A and cut your freakin’ hair.
Love, Nate.
So as I stood at the entry way of the Perham Public Library beside the bi-level bubblers, I thought about all of this and absent mindedly stared at a wooden tree that listed all the big donors to support this library. Bill and Melinda Gates were in the $5000+ category. I could write a whole ‘nother blog on my opinion that when ranked against the PC vs. Mac commercials, my knowledge of William Gates filed into that commercial’s rubric leads me to believe that Bill Gates is a PC guy. But I’ve said enough for one night, and am pretty sure that it makes very little sense. I’m okay with that.