Nostalgia

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I Was Born in a Small Town

While movies we watch tend to portray life in the “big city” because it’s more practical to film in larger cities, I would say that the settings of Country songs portray what life was like for most of us while growing up, whether the hometown is in the South or not. In fact, I can’t really think of anyone I personally know who grew up in the heart of a big city. Small towns and suburbs seem to be much more relevant to America as I know it, compared to the city life I grew up seeing on John Hughes’ movies set in Chicago (like The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) and Saved by the Bell which was set near Los Angeles. Somewhere between Seinfeld and Little House on the Prairie is the setting of my real life.

Spending my first 18 years in Fort Payne, Alabama, it seemed everyone I knew pretty much knew everything about me. Actually, I should say that everyone knew everything about everyone. There was no avoiding it. I graduated in a class of 183 students, most of whom I knew from at least Kindergarten. Their parents had seen me grow up. We pretty much all went to one of four main churches (either Baptist or Methodist).

Just saying the name “Fort Payne” has the same connotation to me as the word “cousin” or “aunt” or “1st grade teacher”- people who knew me as a kid that cried when E.T. had to leave Elliot to go back to his home planet. People who I could never try to act too cool around- they simply know me too well. That’s what my hometown is to me.

And that’s not a bad thing, at all. There definitely is a unique comfort in a home town. Hence the word “home”.

Back in February, my wife and I had a free weekend so we decided to spend it at a free bed-and-breakfast in Fort Payne (my parents’ house). We noticed how quiet and peaceful the city is. The opposite of the life we often know in Nashville. My wife wanted to take a driving tour of the place, so since I had already shown her the tourist spots (the canyon and the waterfall) I decided to drive her around the neighborhoods I spent time in.

As I drove up the big hill where we as Cub Scouts had a box car race, I saw my friend Alex Igou’s dad working in the yard. My wife was amazed that he knew who I was right away and that we talked a good 10 minutes before we went on our way to get some coffee at the local coffee shop. Which is owned and ran by my other friend Alex Pate’s mom. While there, the other customers who came in also greeted me by name. That caused my wife to say, “Do you know EVERYBODY in this town?!”

Pretty much. Nearly all 13,000 of them. Or I would least be recognized as “Jack Shell’s boy”. I learned that the same reasons an 18-year old kid was ready to leave his small hometown on Graduation Day became the same reasons I found the town endearing today, ten years later.

The town that for a brief time in 1989 held the record for the world’s largest cake. The town that the Country music super-group Alabama put on the map. The town with the self-proclaimed title “Sock Capitol of the World”, which is proudly displayed on the green Fort Payne City Limits sign with the word “capitol” being misspelled. Maybe one day they’ll finally fix that sign.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Payne

This article was posted in The Franklin News of Franklin, TX in July 2009.

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Manspeak, Volume 7: Bromance

It’s not simply a fad. It’s much more complex than that. It’s not simply a gimmick to make more money in the theatres. It’s a clue that we as Americans have missing been out on something. The newfound popularity and acceptance of bromance is simply a realization that men were meant love each other, not just women.

America is good at teaching men masculinity: Rocky, Rambo, The Terminator, He-Man, GI Joe. It’s been ingrained in us our whole lives. We don’t have a problem accepting the fact that men are meant to be tough. Men are born to protect and defend. I think we do that pretty well. But while the bald eagle holds 13 arrows in one claw, he also holds 13 olive branches in the other.

Living overseas in Asia taught me a lot about American men. Though I was told that there were a lot of transvestites in Thailand, it wasn’t until my second summer over there that I was able to recognize them. I then came to the conclusion that the reason there are so many men living their lives as women there is because it is not culturally acceptable to be gay in Thailand, at all.

So when it’s not acceptable in a country at all to be gay (as compared to America where it’s not popular but there’s a growing level of acceptance), to take out the possibly of any men around being gay, it affects the cultural behavior of a nation. Men can be close without any possible thought of the other thinking he is sexually attracted to him. And even more relevant, there is not so much a possibly of awkwardness because of that. In the Philippine’s, it is common for men show their friendship publicly by holding hands.

But before there was Jackie Chan & Chris Tucker, before there was Owen Wilson & Ben Stiller, before there was Joey & Chandler, there was a time when men truly weren’t afraid to hug and be close. It simply symbolized their friendship but was nothing more.

My eyes were opened when I read Moby Dick in college. The 1851 novel was written in the American-Romanticism period, and while the theme of Christianity is more obvious than Season 5 of LOST, something else that really captured my attention and even became the topic of my final paper for that class was the bromantic relationship between the protagonist Ishmael (a 5’ 9” New England native) and his ship mate Queequeg (a 6’ 7” South Seas tribesman of mixed race).

The two men quickly become best friends and the narrator, Ishmael, is not reluctant to elaborate regarding his friendship. They simply slept in the same quarters and were close friends, but reading it with today’s mindset can make it easily be interpreted differently:

“How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts’ honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg—a cosy, loving pair.”  -Herman Melville (Moby Dick)

Something else that really opened by eyes to bromance was when I started paying close attention to Jesus and His disciples in the New Testament. They were not hesitant to show physical affection for each other. At the Last Supper, look at Peter’s physical closeness to Jesus during dinner.

“Then, leaning back on Jesus’ breast, Peter said to Him, “Lord, who is it?”  -John 13:25

Imagine 12 dudes eating dinner in today’s society and one leans back on the other’s chest to ask him a question. Completely not acceptable.

Even this week I ran across something odd in the Old Testament as I was finishing up Genesis. This is where Jacob is blessing his sons before he dies:

“He called his son Joseph and said to him, ‘Now if I have found favor in your sight, please put your hand under my thigh, and deal kindly and truly with me. Please do not bury me in Egypt.”  -Genesis 47:29

In their culture, a son could make a vow to his father by placing his hand under his father’s thigh, or as my Bible’s study notes explain, it was a gentler way of saying his “procreative organ”. Think of how not acceptable that is today.

We’ve obviously come a long way since Biblical times regarding same-sex friendship and closeness. But even the culture that was present 158 years ago in Moby Dick paints a completely different picture compared to what is acceptable in American same-sex friendship today. The title of Moby Dick itself serves a perfect example of how far we’ve come. Add to that the fact that the story involves the close friendship of shipmates. That’s a lot of joke material for a 15 year-old boy to work with.

In fact, in recent decades there have been critics of Moby Dick claim that the book has homosexual undertones. Key phrase: “in recent decades”. For its time, the behavior found in the novel was not seen at all as a curious thing. It was normal back then.

I say it’s no wonder that today’s culture loves bromance. Men were made for close friendship with other men but are taught to hide their feelings because it’s not masculine to show them. When I think about it, several of my top favorite movies of all time have a heavy dose of bromance: Rocky 3, Plains Trains and Automobiles, Zoolander, Pineapple Express, Band of Brothers. And Hollywood knows it’s a winning formula.

The truth is, compare the box office sales of pretty much any Judd Apatow and/or Seth Rogan movie (bromantic comedies) to any romantic comedy made since 2005. Bromance wins every time. Romance, on the other hand, can be an unpredictable thing.

The best 3 minutes of recorded bromance, courtesy of 1982:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0qVUn4797g

All pictures with the “JHP” logo were taken by Joe Hendricks Photography:

Blog- www.photojoeblog.com

Website- www.joehendricks.com

 

Originally posted in April 2009 on facebook as “The History of Bromance”, which helped inspire the Manspeak series.

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The Invisible Touch, Yeah (The 2nd Installment)

It takes seeing bad acting to know what good acting is.  Bad acting isn’t simply defined by an actor who conveys no emotion (Ben Stein).  But there is a thin invisible line between a person who is a good actor (Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise, Paul Giamatti) and a person who simply plays the same character in every movie (Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, Arnold Schwarzenegger).  Of course there are also the in-betweens (Adam Sandler, Ashton Kutcher, Robin Williams) that only seem to play the same character in all their comedies but in dramas actually become a different person.

 

But ultimately for an actor who has appeared in a string of successful/popular movies, the question of how good of an actor is, is irrelevant.  It doesn’t matter.  Because there is some unseen force that causes people to keep watching that actor’s movies.  It’s not simply professional acting skills that audiences follow, it’s that invaluable quality of “I like this person”.

Friendships don’t grow just because of common interests.  Now that I think about it, I’ve never made a conscience decision to be a person’s friend.  It just happens.  I never have to say anything like, “You’re cool.  Let’s officially become friends.”

 

It starts with a few joking insults through text messages, leads to several Sunday afternoon Mario Kart Wii tournaments, and before I know it I plan a whole Saturday around rowing down the Harpeth River in a canoe with him, trying to forget about the movie Deliverance as we paddle our way through the quiet waters.

 

The “I like this person” quality transcends to romance as well.  There is something extremely ironic about “Singles” events and groups.  For my first year living in Nashville I attended the Singles Sunday School class at my church (around 80 in attendance) plus I went to Kairos (another Singles event every Tuesday night with an average of 1200 people).  It seems with all those single-and-looking people in the same place with the same wishful thinking, it would be easy for people to match up.  But that’s not where I met my wife.  (A mutual friend unintentionally set us up.)

 

And when she and I started dating, I knew right away she was the one.  Aside from all the obvious reasons I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, it was those subconscious connections we had that caused both of us to know right away that the search was over.  The greatest occurrence of “I like this person” that I have ever known.

“We are all a little weird, and life is a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.”  -Chinese fortune cookie

The Invisible Touch, Yeah

The 1st Installment
The 2nd Installment
The 3rd Installment

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The Invisible Touch, Yeah (The 1st Installment)

 

It’s magic and invisible. After months or even years of faithful patronage to a quaint restaurant or hours spent re-watching a favorite movie, the desire just suddenly goes away. Without realization. Without a good motive. All of the sudden it will just occur to me, “Hey, I haven’t watched Napoleon Dynamite in three years…” (Though I loved it so much when it came out that I saw it in the theatre five times and ultimately had the entire script memorized word for word by the third viewing. And for the people in the theatre with me seeing it for the first time, I passionately [and possibly angrily] shouted at them to stay in their seats once the credits started rolling so they wouldn’t miss the hidden “but I still love technology” wedding scene.)

A matter of connection. Personal spark. Invaluable attraction. Somehow that place or thing that once drew me in and gave me a sense of belonging, now never crosses my mind. And it’s typically a case of “it’s not you, it’s me”. I just lose interest.

Sometimes because it gets old. Sometimes because I didn’t feel good the last time I experienced it. Sometimes because I’ve just simply moved on with my life.

 

Exactly four years ago today I started posting my writings online. It all started with the now archaic Myspace. Since August 17, 2005 I have been “thinking out loud on paper”. From the introspective “who am I and what will I do with my life?” themed blogs of single life to social commentary seasoned “abstract thought somehow finds its way into making an actual point that applies to life” articles here on facebook.

And in those four years I have seen many readers come and go. Some who come back after a long absence. And whenever a handful disappears, a new group of readers arrives in their place. Eager to explore some more strategic randomness when it pops up every couple of days. And I know that some are simply entering the glass revolving door only to come back out in a few weeks, while others will stick around for a while.

I witness this concept of “unpredictable sudden loss of interest” from both perspectives. Not only do I become extremely faithful to venues of entertainment and leisure then suddenly stop, but I see readers step into my attic of thoughts for months at a time, then without reason, they disappear.

Journey was definitely right. We are streetlight people.

The Invisible Touch, Yeah

The 1st Installment
The 2nd Installment
The 3rd Installment

 

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The Edge of “Me Too” Culture: What Makes People Famous

My sister is my editor. She is the first to read what I write, typically two days before it’s published. If I am working on a piece that I feel may be pushing the envelope/over the top/too forceful, I let her proofread it for me. And most of the time, she tells me to keep it the way it is.

Just last week she labeled one of my drafts as “edgy”. Then later that day as I read a chapter in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Publishing Magazine Articles on my lunch break, it stressed the importance of each article I write needing to be short, informative, and edgy. There that word is again. Edgy.

 

Thanks to WordPress I am finally able to track the number of daily readers along with knowing which things I write are the most popular posts. So far, it has consistenty been those “edgy” ones that I ran by my sister before posting. People like edgy stuff. It has now been statistically proven.

We live in a world of “me too” culture. “Anything you can do, I can do better” has become “anything you can do, I can do, but it will probably be a crappier version, but still, I can do it too.” Anyone can sing, dance, record music, make a computer app, do a video series on YouTube, and write blogs. The more crowded a venue, the more mediocre and blandized the general talent becomes. That’s why people are drawn to the edge. The edge of what’s normal. The edge of what’s familiar. The salt of the earth.

 

People tend to talk about how crazy life is. (Instantly the intro to Jon and Kate Plus 8 comes to mind, along with Michael Buble’s song “Everything”). Yes, life is crazy. And it’s also pretty mundane. So when people look for entertainment and/or enlightenment, they tend to venture off the main trail to find it.

Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, and Tom Petty would most likely not have won American Idol in their days. But their uniqueness and off-beat perspective found a way to draw people in through their odd lyrics and quirky personas.

It’s pretty obvious in any episode of Howie Mandel’s “Deal or No Deal”. The contestants always have some sort of stupid gimmick. An annoying catch phrase or weird favorite color. It becomes the theme of that episode.

 

From Seinfeld to Super Mario Bros.  Things that are both weird and common attract people.

For me it all goes back to Junior High when I realized the irony of the phrase “everyone is special and unique”. Yes. Yes, they are. But if everyone is special and unique, then they’re all the same. Standing in the in-between of what’s familiar and what is off-beat is often where audiences form.  Nothin’ draws a crowd like a crowd.