Category Archives: Uncategorized

I’ve been noticing my psoriasis marks more and more lately, and I don’t know if they’ve gotten more apparent recently, or if I’m just able to see them since the spring sun is out and they’re exposed in short sleeves, or maybe I’m just sort of more self-conscious of them.  

The psoriasis doesn’t bother me, not really; it’s manageable and on the spectrum of “difficult stuff to deal with” they’re really, really low down on the list. A broken air fryer would be more distressing, you know?

I think the reason I think about the psoriasis is that its another aspect of ageing, of the differences in my face compared to the way it looked before. I’m noticing it, and that’s probably a natural response to being middle-aged, to growing a pandemic beard that is now a permanent part of my look, to having two kids that I’ve paid more attention to for years than to my personal grooming (my wife is reading this and is furiously messaging me, “you still have to groom yourself”).  

I look at myself in the mirror and don’t remember how I got here; I don’t remember much of the “me” part of the last few years, or of the last decade or two. I remember childbirths, and weddings, and job changes, and moving countries. I remember how my IKEA desk looked in Chicago, and can describe its differences to my current IKEA desk here in Barcelona, even though they are the exact same color and model. I can remember what our living room looked like, to the smallest detail, when the Cubs won the 2016 world series. But I don’t remember what *I* looked like. And that’s what’s sometimes jars me when I look in the mirror: “Oh, that’s me, now. Huh.”

This isn’t a lament against getting older, because, as the cliché says, its beats the alternative. I like how I look now; I like being 45 years old. It’s nice to be at this stage in life, because about 95% of the things that used to bother us in our younger days doesn’t bother us at all at this point. I like being here, as I am, and I’m thankful for it. I’m luckier than I ever expected to be at this stage, when I imagined my 40s at age 21.

It’s a minor thing, just noticing that my head shape, my number of chins, has changed slightly with the layers of material that years of burritos and ham sandwiches have added. It’s a minor thing, just noticing that I look like the weathered uncle of the person in my head named “Mark Nabong.”

***

One aspect of moving to a brand new city after years in the same place is that you have to reestablish who you are to people you meet; this can be weird, as it takes a long time to unveil all the bits about yourself you want to share with people, and to get at all the bits about other people that you’d like to learn. How do I bring up that I like ragtime music? That I have a top ten list of favourite buildings? That I love Long John Silvers chicken planks, or even what Long John Silver is?  

How do I find out all those things about other people? Do I even need to?

Making friends as an adult is famously difficult; for many people who are also parents (us included) you end up becoming friends with the parents of your kids’ friends. That’s great, and a normal thing. But its strange knowing almost nothing about someone one day and then, two weeks later, you’re having conversations every day at pickup, at volleyball practice, at dance rehearsal. And you’re getting to know each other AFTER a decision has been made, via your children’s friendships, that you’re going to be connected together for a while. It’s like an arranged marriage, but it’s our kids arranging playdates for us.

And these folks, these new friends and acquaintances, they’ll never know what I looked like before, what I acted like before. They’ll see the face I wear now, and that face will be how they know me. And vice versa. My daughter has a friend from swim class, and that kid’s father is completely bald. He wears it well, but he told me he started shaving it two years ago, and he had bright read hair before. I’ve never seen it, can’t even imagine it, and I’ll never really know what face he sees when he imagines himself. But it’s there, whatever he imagines, and it’s as remote to me as the face of a beardless Mark is to him. And that’s sort of weird.

But, it’s also not weird at all.

I spent years wearing a suit everyday to work. Every Monday to Friday, I wore a suit, tie, dress shoes, fedora (I know, I know). And I’d go home, I’d have dinner with my wife, change into a flannel shirt, jeans, yellow baseball cap (I know, I know), head out to a stand up comedy club or bar and do open mics or feature sets all night. And not a single person from my day job ever saw me in a yellow ball cap, and not a singe person at those comedy shows ever saw me in a suit.  

Not a single person from my day job ever heard me be funny in the way I was at the comedy shows, and not a single person from the comedy shows ever saw me be serious in the way I was at work.  

***

The moon doesn’t have its own illumination, the moonlight we see on earth is directly reflected sunlight. Well, not all of it. There is a tiny, tiny amount of sunlight that is reflected off the earth first, then hits the moon, then comes back to us. It’s called “earthshine” or the “DaVinci glow”, and you can only really see it where the moon is not directly reflecting sunlight. You can see it in the new moon, or in the area outside the crescent in the quarter moons. That bit of moon face you see in the new moon? Or in the “dark” parts of the half moon? That’s earthshine.  

***

I suppose it does’t really matter that my image of my face in the mirror is not quite the one I remember. My family, my loved ones, the strangers on the train, they all see my current face. It is the current face they see that helps them, or hurts them, or ignores them, or neglects them. It is the slightly balding face, with bifocals and psoriasis, that they see when I put a coin in their cup, and it is this older face that is buried in my phone when I pretend not to see their outstretched hand.  

My children do not remember a face before this one, and it is this one that they love.

The years pass, and my face, the outside face, reflects it. And I can only know what that face looks like indirectly, in the faces of the people I love and the people I hate and all the people in between.  

I am a moon, and my face has never been illuminated by my own light, it can only be seen in yours.

****

Image source: SpaceWeather.com, via Facebook

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There is an a species of immortal jellyfish out there in the far-flung depths of the ocean (Turritopsis dohrnii).  I don’t mean it’s immortal in an allegorical sense, like “your fifth studio album was amazing, MC Jellyfish, it’ll make you immortal in the world of hiphop” or “Jellyfish, your pitching performance in game five of the World Series will immortalise you in Cleveland Guardians history.”  No, I’m far too sober to make allegories right now.  I mean it literally: the damn jellyfish is immortal.  If nothing eats it (their predators are turtles and Cantonese restaurants) then it can just… go on living… forever.  It’s really rare, but it’s still an amazing critter to learn about.

***

When the new year turned a few hours ago, we were in our apartment here in Barcelona.  This is the first time in about 42 years that I’ve spent the new year in a country other than the US, which is absolutely not an interesting fact.  What is slightly more interesting is that, given my age of 43 years, I am likely more than halfway through my natural life.  I mean, I hope not, I hope I stick around for a long long time as a burden to society and to see my enemies buried before me, but the actuarial tables say otherwise. What is *really* interesting, at least to me, is that I’m totally cool with being middle aged.

I always thought I would dread my middle years; every sitcom and Dave Barry book I ever read said that I would experience crisis upon crisis, and holy moly were they wrong.  I go through emotional crises all the time, mind you, but the thing is that I’ve been having them since I was like 13, so middle ages have been nothing new.  In fact, I have a LOT fewer crises now, and the sudden drop in crises lately is surprising.  

I used to live in an apartment building where the two people next door (brother/sister?  married couple?  pair of parrots? I have no idea) would yell at each other almost every day about the TV shows they were watching.  One weekend they were quiet for about three days straight, I got really really concerned and went and knocked on the door.  Turns out they bought headphones for each of them and now they watch different shows in silence.  Anyway.  That’s what this feels like to me, having a vastly reduced amount of angst: its like the neighbours in my head are quiet.

My wife and I talked about it, and there are probably a number of causes for this internal relative calm: 

1) an increased sense of peace about who I am stemming from personal growth and a loving family life, 

2) drugs, 

3) age-related memory loss of any angst or self-esteem issues, 4) legal drugs, 

5) a recent ADHD diagnosis which just makes EVERYTHING MAKES SENSE NOW HOLY CRAP THATS WHY I AM THE WAY I AM, 

6) the cafe next door makes that sandwich I like.

***

The way the immortal jellyfish works is that, during their life, they alternate between two phases, a polyp and a medusa phase.  The polyp phase is where they stay rooted to the ocean floor, like a coral or an anemone.  The medusa phase is what most jellyfish you think are are in, they float around in the water column eating smaller sea creatures or, on Level 1-2, Mario and Luigi.  

In fact, jellyfish and corals are all Cnidarians, a phylum of goopy animals where none of them have spines or faces or credit scores or anything.  They’re all basically waterlogged grocery bags that are either filled with rocks (corals) or spicy needles (jellyfish).  Most Cnidarians start off swimming around in the water column when their parents squirt them and their thousand of siblings into the ocean, but then each species kind of picks a lane, Polyp or Medusa, and then they’re like that for the rest of their lives. They either pick a spot and buy some real estate for cash (no credit score for a mortgage, remember) or they roam the earth like David Carradine and the Incredible Hulk.  

That’s where the immortal jellyfish comes in: they spend some type in the polyp stage, then, when the environmental cues change in certain ways, they cut their roots and drift in the ocean for a while.  When they find a good spot, they anchor again.  Ad nauseam, Ad infinitum, until they’re eaten or the world ends.  

***

Back in Chicago, we bought a two bedroom condo near the kids school, and, for all intents and purposes, probably looked like we were settling down for a long while.  The truth, though, is that we’d been hoping to live out of the country for a bit, and when we saw a chance to move to Barcelona with our current jobs, we grabbed it.  Our plan is to move back to Chicago after a few years out here, polyp/medusa/polyp.

We’ve become, in our mortal and warm-blooded way, a reflection of the immortal jellyfish.  And, when I stop and think about it, this isn’t just our family: I think this applies to most folks, at least sometimes.  All of us on this side of heaven are continuously pulling up stakes and moving when the environment requires it.  Job change, marriage, divorce, war, flood, school admissions, political crackdowns, all these environmental perturbations knock us out of our comfort zone and make our secure footholds seem less secure that we previously thought.  The polyp sometimes looks around and says to herself, “I better medusa the hell out of this situation.”  And the medusa looks around sometimes and says, “this place seems like a good spot to rest and stretch my legs for a little while.”

Maybe that’s why it feels ok being middle aged; I’m more comfortable with either where I’m at or who I am.  For those of us confronting the realisation that we’re on the other side of the inflection point of a lifetime, it is easier to handle the medusa phase, to be jostled by politics and expenses and work and unemployment, if one is emotionally in polyp phase, if one can be more at peace with the imperfect, mortal, human beings that we are.  Like the Cnidarians, we’re just water-logged bags of bones and anxiety, and I find myself to be more at peace the more comfortable I am with that fact.

***

In the first paragraph, I told a lie. I said that the immortal jellyfish are rare, that they are found in the deep depths of the ocean. That’s not true: they’re everywhere.  They’ve spread all over the world, via the circulation of the ocean and as stowaways in ship ballast tanks.  Everyone of us, emotionally and physically, is swinging between polyp and medusa phase, for all our lives, and either we notice that we are doing it, or the jellyfish just hide in our own mental ballast tanks.  

 I hope you and yours have a wonderful 2022.  I hope that you find deep roots when you can grow and be safe and warm.  If, instead, you need to change where or who you are, then I hope that your road is bright and the wind is at your back.  And I hope, whatever stage of life you are in, that you know that the ocean is a weirder and more wonderful place with you in it.

***

Works cited:

I am an unreliable narrator.  You’re lucky I remembered to include this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_dohrnii#Distribution_and_invasion

Photo Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Turritopsis_dohrnii.jpg

There are four basic approaches to the needs of others:

1) selfishness / narcissism: this places yourself above all, full stop. 

2) martyrdom: placing others over yourself in all ways, usually neglecting ones own well being. 

3) egalitarian selflessness: placing the needs of others in line with your own, including people of different “groups”, whether religious, ethnic, political, or national. 

4) in-group selflessness: placing the needs of others in line with your own, provided they are in-group. For out-group folks, there are two sub-categories how people of viewpoint 4) look at them:

4a) out-group individuals should have their needs considered only after the needs of the the in group folks are met

4b) out-group individuals are fully expendable for the sake of in-group individuals. 

***

I suspect that most of us fall into the category of 4a, depending on how our groups are defined. 

I also suspect that the big divide in the USA (and possibly other places) is WHO is considered in-group. Are Muslim citizens in-group?  Are undocumented residents in-group?  Are refugees in the Mediterranean in-group?  Are religious minorities in Iraq and Syria in-group?  Are prisoners in federal penitentiaries in-group?

This was originally posted on Facebook on Nov. 20, 2015 (LINK).

***

So, I’ve been talking a lot about refugees lately. Maybe an explanation is in order. Story time!

I’ve been very lucky. VERY lucky. I was born into a loving family, to a mother and father that moved over an ocean to give me a shot at the best life I could somehow carve out for myself. They left the Philippines at a time when a dictator and his wife were in power, hoarding money and shoes and years in purgatory.
I was raised in the U.S., which, for all her faults, is a dream country to many, many people. I was traveling overseas a few years ago and met a pedicab driver who asked where I was from; when I said, “America,” he said “That is my dream. That is my dream. That is the dream of all of us,” he said, waving his arm at his fellow pedicab drivers.

Just so you know, my family members back in the Philippines are doing well, and through hard work and talent they’ve built wonderful lives for their families there. I, for one, do not have the skill that my cousins back in the Philippines have, but I live in the U.S., and here, an eternal B-minus student with a penchant for bullshit can do alright. And I do.

There was a communist insurgency in the Philippines, then and now, and the specter of murderers and thugs calling themselves Abu Sayyaf and MILF still haunts men and women in the southern part of the nation, Muslim and Christian alike. I did not have anything to do with either the communists or Abu Sayyaf. I was one when we left for the United States. More on this later.

I will always be proud of my Filipino heritage, and the values and culture and history and religion that go hand in glove with it. Make no mistake, though: the U.S. has given me everything I have. Here I found a career, an education, a safe home, the Texan who freed my soul, and the Most Beautiful Daughter In The World. I owe it all to my parents, who emigrated from home and taught me bravery and sacrifice and basketball; they had their struggles to get us here, but I think that is not my story to tell.

Here, I can read any book I choose and argue freely on Facebook and put whatever bumper sticker I want on my car. American men and women I’ve never met fought and died so I could vote and be free; they roared and charged and fell, holding helmets and rifles and newsprint.

I was given a ladder I did not earn, and that ladder lead me up to where I am, to an apartment with hot running water and Chinese take-out within walking distance and a life without drones and mortars and men with bombs.

Here, you really only see most balaclavas on bitterly cold days.

I did nothing to deserve this. My parents worked and sacrificed to get me here; I am tremendously lucky, as I said. I could have been born in a war zone. My parents could have been killed by a car bomb or snipers or morality police. I spent my seventh year on earth in primary school, racing to get the good play rug in Ms. Wendell’s second grade classroom; I could have spent it in a camp after my school was burned to the ground.

Whenever I meet an immigrant here, no matter their origin, their religion, nor how they got here, I admit: I see little bit of me, as a young boy. I see a bit of my father, my mother, looking for work and affordable clothes and some picture books for their boys.

Sometimes these other immigrants worship God differently than I do, or not at all. Sometimes they were professionals Back Home, sometimes they were laborers. Sometimes they want to leave memories of the Old County behind forever, and sometimes they would pay anything to have soup the way Mother made it one last time. They remind me of me. They are me; they are me if only the Cosmic dice had rolled differently. If those dice had rolled differently, the Abu Sayyaf kidnappings and communist insurgencies could have halted immigration from the Philippines to U.S., or at least made it harder. Those are the dice that have been rolled from some would-be Americans, for some immigrants who made it to our soil.

These other immigrants, they came here on that ladder I used. Sometimes that ladder looked like an unguarded part of the Rio Grande and sometimes it looked like the front door of a consular office and sometimes it looked like a wedding veil. I took that ladder, too, ma’am; my parents carried me. I was on that ladder, too, sir; it is not always an easy climb.

Sometimes that ladder is in a refugee camp, through 18 months of interviews and vetting and background checks and more interviews.

I admit, I have been on something of a soapbox lately about refugees, at least on social media. I’m sorry if I have come off as shrill, and to anyone who does not want to accept more refugees here, I disagree, but I want to make sure you know I respect you. Most of you who oppose the refugees are concerned for your own families, your own little ones, and I cannot fault you for that. Some of you have lived in places with bombs and blasts and monsters with human faces, and you don’t want that here, on American soil, and I cannot fault you for that.

By way of explanation, this is not an political exercise for me; I like the U.S. president, but I will vote for any and all of his political rivals if it would mean that more refugees would be let into the U.S.

When I see the doors closing on refugees, I see my ladder being pulled up. When I see the gate close on any of these families, I see the gate closing on me. Please, let down that ladder, I am down there. Please, please, someone let down that ladder, my father and my mother are down there, holding me. Please let down that ladder, I am down there, holding my daughter and my wife and we are scared and we have nowhere to go. I am trapped down here with murderers and killers, and they will either kill me or turn my son into one of them.

I am an American citizen, and I have freedom and privilege that other, better men earned for me; I do not deserve it by my own acts. Please let the ladder down, I am also in a refugee camp with my children and my grandchildren and we did nothing to deserve this, either.

“Ok Mark, I believe in you. We need this run, but don’t worry about the two outs, don’t worry about the loaded bases, just focus on the next pitch, got it?”

I nodded. The batting helmet, two sizes too small for my head, fell off. Again. The only helmet that fit my head was the one we inherited from the junior high kids, and David Rezick always used it because he knew that if he got a hit I’d have no helmets that could stay on my head. Rezick was standing at second base.

Coach R picked the helmet up out of the dirt and brushed it off. “You can do this. If you can just get one run in, we tie the game, ok? I put you in the number two spot in this lineup for a reason, you know that? You deserve it. You’ll deserve it no matter what happens in this at bat. Just play your heart out, you’ve got a big one.”

I rubbed my nose. “I’m pretty sure a big heart is a health problem, coach.”

“Shut up, Mark. Just get on the Goddamn base, ok, big guy? Get on base.” He trotted back to the dugout, spitting in the ground as he got there. Five or six of the 10-year-olds sitting the dug out spit in response, a Greek chorus chomping on Big League Chew. I stepped up to the plate.

The umpire looked me in the eye. His eyes narrowed to slits, remembering me from the last two at-bats. Randy Stein’s older brother Adam was a sophomore and had classes with the ump, and Randy said he was a jag-off, so we took it as gospel that he was obviously, then, a jag-off. Jag-off, as in, “this jag-off better call the game fairly.”

“PLAY BALL” the jag-off yelled, pulling his facemark on.

I stepped up to the plate, right to the very edge of the batter’s box. I saw my father standing up, shielding his eyes with his right hand. My mother was sitting on a lawn chair next to him, my little bother was in his baseball uniform sitting on the grass. The t-ball league ended earlier in the day, so he was eating whatever snacks my folks had packed and picking at dandelions. Or maybe he was picking at the snacks and eating the dandelions, I don’t know. What am I, a high elf ranger? My eyes are terrible, I can’t see that far.

I can make out the sound of my family cheering for me, but the helmet is pinching my ears.

I look up at the pitchers mound. The pitcher is tall, the tallest 6th grader in the league. His fastball is so strong that it was whispered that he once broke a catcher’s hand, like Dwight Gooden. It was so fast that, to hit it, you had to start swinging before you even stepped up to the plate. When we heard which team were facing for this game, we knew exactly who would be pitching: John Moon. John Moon, the biggest arm in Morton Grove Little League, the terror of Mansfield Park.

I wiped my brow, caking my hand in dirt and sweat and gatorade. I was nervous, a kind of nervousness that only baseball players feel, the nerves that come from being alone against the storm. There are reasons why poems are written about being at-bat; its a microcosm of life, you know? I had to have absolute concentration if I wanted to have any shot at all of

“STRIKE ONE!”

What the heck oh crap, geez, really? C’mon Mark, pay attention, I thought, punching myself in the hip.

“HEY MARK PAY ATTENTION WILL YA?” Coach R yelled from the third base dugout, adjusting his cap. I had played for him for three straight years, and about once a year he would show up to practice without his ball cap and we would all be surprised that he was bald, all over again, every year.

Alright, I can do this. I can do this. I turned to face John Moon, the Howitzer of the North Shore, gripping the bat tight as I steeled my nerves. I’m gonna be a hero, like Frodo or Peter Parker or Willis Drummond, and I just had to focus on the moment and not think about how itchy this jock strap is and

“STRIKE TWO!”

A collective groan came up from the Greek chorus. Coach R folded his arms and spit again. A voice cried out “That was three feet out of the strike zone, jag-off!”

The ump whipped off his facemark and wheeled around to face the spectators. “I will kick you out of here if if you use that language again, do you hear me?” the ump yelled, pointing his finger at the stands on the first base line, “and I mean it, ma’am.”

“MOM SIT DOWN,” Rezick screamed from second base.

I squared my stance, spitting into my hands. The spit helps to remove dirt that can decrease your grip, so the bat is easier to control. Aluminum bats can be really painful if you connect on a good swing, which makes it weird that little leagues tend to use them. I guess its because of their durability? Or the lower expense? Maybe there is, like, an aluminum conspiracy or

“PAY ATTENTION THIS TIME, BUDDY, YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO.” Coach R called, soft chirps of agreement coming from the dugout.

John Moon looked at the signal from his catcher. We all used signals, even though no one was allowed to throw anything but a fastball. Curveballs can hurt your arm development, so the league outlawed them. He stood up, exhaled loudly, then started his wind up.

I tightened my grip on the bat, inhaled as hard as I could and did what I had done many, many times before, what I did better than anyone else in the league, maybe in the whole Chicagoland area: I crowded the damn plate.

A wet smack, louder than you’d expect, and my hip felt like it was on fire. My helmet fell off and I dropped my bat.

“TAKE YOUR BASE” yelled the jag-off, “…AGAIN.” The crowd roared, or as much as about a dozen people can roar.

The ball had struck me on the thigh, on the meaty part, and I left out a manly yell. Or, in my head I Let out a manly yell. I was told later that I screamed like a little girl, but that’s ok. I knew my job, and I did it.

“YEAH! YEAH! Way to go, Mark!” Coach R was jumping up and down. The dugout was a mass of jumping, cheering, and sunflower seeds.

“Way to go, Ma-Mark! Way to go!” my father yelled, clapping his hands and high fiving my brother. “Tie game!”

My mother was clapping, smiling, and shaking her head. “Why does he never get out of the way? Why is this always happening to him? No one else gets hit like this.”

I picked myself out of the dirt (when did I fall?) The third base runner came jogging into home plate, fist pumping. We high fived, and he said “Great job, Mark, I knew you’d get hit.” I smiled and whimpered a “damn right.”

I limped to first base, holding my helmet in my hand. I gave a thumbs up to Rezick at third.

John Moon’s first baseman looked at me, his grimace softening into a smile. “Nice job. You’re crying less than you did the last time.”

“Thanks, man,” I replied, “That’s what I said to your mom last night.”

Reinvention and the Power of Community
Five Lessons from Greendale’s Finest Students

Guest post by Kyle Schmitt

College is a time of personal growth and discovery, especially at Greendale Community College, where teenagers and seniors alike converge to seek education and learn who they really are. Greendale, the setting for the NBC sitcom Community, also serves as a haven for losers on their last chances. Called a “toilet” by its own students and promoted by the slogan, “You’re already accepted!”, the school provides a constant reminder of its denizens’ past failures and lack of opportunity for the future.

Greendale is a place, however, that allows for hard-won self-improvement. Some metamorphoses are just lateral movements – witness Ben Chang (Ken Jeong), who transforms from an incompetent Spanish professor to an incompetent math instructor. But the “Greendale Seven” study group members draw on themselves and their fellow students for courage and support in becoming the people they want to be.

Community shows how we all possess the power for personal reinvention. Here are five lessons the study group teaches us about how to become more ideal versions of ourselves:

Set your goals and pursue them vigorously. Shirley Bennett (played by Yvette Nicole Brown) entered Greendale after a traumatic event in her personal life. When her husband leaves her and their two sons for a stripper, she decides to attend community college to gain independence and a life outside of being an unappreciated homemaker. Shirley gains experience in cooking and promoting her own products. Her efforts culminate in the opening of Shirley’s Sandwiches, a small business she starts on Greendale’s campus. While she eventually reconciles with her husband, Shirley achieves personal growth and finds her own happiness by taking chances and discovering new skills that empower her.

Don’t be afraid to change paths. Annie Edison (Alison Brie) is your typical high-achieving, straight-A student – minus the Adderall addiction that landed her at a bottom-tier community college. She takes academics seriously and keeps a laser focus on the lucrative hospital administration career waiting for her after Greendale. We see periodic signs, however, that Annie is second-guessing her plans for life. And when a class-project yam is destroyed, causing the study group to band together for a Law & Order-style criminal investigation, she realizes a new interest. After graduating and finding no fulfillment in her healthcare industry job, Annie re-enrolls in Greendale to pursue her passion for forensic science. She throws away the rulebook that has restricted her throughout life, and embarks on a new journey that excites and challenges her.

Keep your values along the way. A disgraced lawyer who lost his job for lying about his non-existent college degree, Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) creates the study group merely to hook up with his first recruit, Britta Perry (Gillian Jacobs). His egotistical attitude leads him to act aloof and aim sarcastic barbs at group members who look up to him as being cooler and better than they are. Even after growing close with the other students, Jeff often struggles to prioritize his friends over his own selfish desires. His better angels consistently win out, however, as Jeff routinely postpones whatever he’d rather be doing to serve as a father figure to a group desperate for his leadership. He makes time to support Annie’s creation of a Model U.N. group, provide Shirley with pro bono legal help, and throw fellow group member Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi) a Pulp Fiction-themed birthday party. Even when he gets his life back on-track, Jeff maintains tight connections with the classmates he once treated with contempt. These outcasts become a surrogate family for a man who finally learned to prize friendship over wealth and professional achievement.

It’s never too late to become the person you want to be. Pierce Hawthorne (Chevy Chase) serves as a constant reminder to his younger cohorts of where poor decisions and failed relationships will eventually lead. He treats his fellow study group members with disrespect, then complains that the study group leaves him out of their outside activities. This vicious cycle leads him to act maliciously toward his friends, further driving a wedge between himself and those who should be closest to him. After his frustrations boil over into physical aggression between himself and Jeff, Pierce begins to let others into his heart. He sticks up for his fellow students when he believes they are being bullied, dials back the racist/sexist comments, and even saves Greendale from financial ruin by winning a campus-wide paintball competition, then giving the destroyed school his prize money. Pierce waits until after his own death, however, to openly share his feelings with his friends. In his written will, Pierce posthumously tells Shirley that he admired her business acumen and strength of character, and reveals that Britta’s passion for her various causes inspired him. He also provides a life-changing opportunity for Troy Barnes (Donald Glover), who realizes that Pierce saw something in him that he never saw for himself. Accepting the friends he once kept at arm’s length, Pierce makes continued progress (even into eternity) in becoming a more considerate and appreciative person to those who care about him.

Challenge yourself. The show’s biggest transformation is made by Troy Barnes (Donald Glover), an obtuse ex-jock whose stated ambition is to wait until his best friend Abed strikes it rich with a social media innovation, then sue for a cut of his fortune. While the other study group members mature, Troy remains content to watch unwatchable b-movies and co-host Troy & Abed in the Morning, an early morning television program that no one bothers to film. But his stagnancy is shattered when Pierce offers him $14 million in stock options if he successfully sails around the world. Pierce tells Troy that he sees in him the “heart of a hero”, and challenges him to become the man he knows he can be. Whether induced by the lure of money or the opportunity for personal growth, Troy accepts this offer and sets sail with co-voyager LeVar Burton (per another provision in Pierce’s will). True to form, Troy cannot say goodbye to Greendale without playing an increasingly ridiculous game of “The floor is lava” that symbolizes his rite of passage into manhood. But, eventually, he sheds his lethargic state of no expectations and evolves into an adventurous adult whose best years are just beginning.

Reinvention doesn’t require enrollment at a community college that prides itself on its “Straight A’s” (two of which are “Air Conditioning” and “A Lot of Classes”) or which offers “certificates of completion” due to being legally prevented from awarding diplomas. The Greendale study group members demonstrate that setting goals, keeping an open mind to new ideas and opportunities, and recognizing the worth of those around you can help you live the life you want.

The author can be reached at kyleschmitt81 (at) gmail dot com.

Bruce Springsteen Campaigning for Barack Obama

This is a guest post by the always awesome Kyle Schmitt. He can be reached by emailing the moderator of this blog here.

Running neck-and-neck with Governor Mitt Romney just days before the 2012 election, President Barack Obama brought out the big guns for his final campaign rallies. To help make the case for a second term, the Commander-in-Chief turned to the Boss.

Obama campaigned with Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews and other musicians during the campaign’s final week. These artists performed their songs in front of thousands of the President’s supporters in the crucial swing states that decided the election. Running to unseat Obama, Romney enlisted Kid Rock, Lee Greenwood, and the Marshall Tucker Band to play his closing campaign events.

Romney and Meatloaf: Both flavorless

But why campaign with a bunch of long-hairs when you’re running for leader of the free world? Why would Obama and Romney choose musicians as their advocates instead of business moguls like Warren Buffett or Donald Trump, superstar athletes, or even other entertainers with pop culture appeal? It’s only rock ‘n’ roll, as the Rolling Stones have reminded us for almost 40 years. But not only do voters like it, they may cast their votes based on their favorite singers’ support for their candidates of choice. This devotion led to numerous musicians being welcomed onstage to boost rally attendance and fire up the candidates’ supporters ahead of an election that appeared too close to call until the very end. Here’s how the recording artists who appeared with Obama and Romney helped rock the vote.

’Cause I’m Proud to be an American – The right campaign song can serve as the perfect theme for a candidate’s vision, as well as the American attributes they claim as their own. Springsteen’s anthem “We Take Care of Our Own” provides a powerful defense of the social welfare system and Obama’s oft-repeated Twitter statement that, “We’re all in this together.” Over a pounding drumbeat and triumphant guitar, he challenges the nation to stand up for those he believes have been left defenseless and destroyed by the recession. These lyrics provide implicit support not only for specific measures such as the President’s call to extend unemployment benefits, but his campaign’s cornerstone promise to serve as a champion for the country’s middle-class.

On the Republican side, Romney supporter Trace Adkins promoted a more libertarian viewpoint when performing “Tough People Do”. This defiant country song contains the lyric, “Tough people pull themselves up by the bootstraps when they hit hard luck”, and can be read as a conservative indictment of the government-funded bailouts and other perceived Washington excesses of the past five years. Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” and Kid Rock’s song “Born Free” make use of religious and patriotic imagery, with Rock vowing, “I will bow to the shining sea / and celebrate God’s grace on thee.” These songs touched a chord with the Republican base, which is heavily Christian and places a premium on love of country.

Wilco, with President Obama for scale.

Reaching out, touching me… – Associating with the right musicians can also boost candidates’ appeal to voters they need to win an election, a truth demonstrated in Obama’s choice of campaign performers. Springsteen was deployed to Rust Belt events, where his connection to middle-class white Americans would theoretically lead to greater support for the President among these voters. Obama utilized musicians to reach out to numerous favorable voting groups and enhance his preexisting support from these demographics. His campaign rallies featured the Spanish-language band Maná, hip-hop icon Jay-Z, and pop sensation Katy Perry. These performers helped the President’s campaign to successfully target Hispanic voters (a group Obama won 71% of), black voters (93%), and 18-29-year-old voters (60%).

Both candidates benefitted from campaigning with musicians whose dedicated fanbases connect with their artistic merits as well as their personal backgrounds. Romney worked to shore up his own working-class credentials and appeal to rural voters by appearing with Michigan native Kid Rock and Trace Adkins, a lifetime member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Obama attempted to turn the personal narratives of Springsteen and Jay-Z to his advantage, telling supporters at a November 5 rally in Ohio that “both of them tell an American story.” He further linked himself to Jay-Z, who is married to pop star Beyoncé Knowles and holds the Billboard 200 record for most #1 albums by a solo act musician, by noting that “both of us now have daughters … and both of us have wives who are more popular than we are.”

Get on your feet – Enthusiasm is paramount to turning out voters and bringing in volunteers, especially during the campaigns’ all-important Get Out the Vote timeframe. This critical juncture takes place during the four-day period prior to the election when campaigns shift into overdrive to contact all potential voters and get them to the polls. And at a time when campaign volunteers may be weary from canvassing door-to-door (and voters tired of their constant visits), live music provides a welcome jolt of adrenaline to all involved in the political process.

Perhaps no performance was more emblematic of this excitement than Kid Rock standing on a piano this past election eve and belting out the soulful vocals of “Born Free” before a New Hampshire audience of 12,000 people. Obama leveraged the same dynamic when he brought in Dave Matthews to headline a sold-out Virginia amphitheater event November 3. But the motivating factor of live music was never clearer than when the legendary Stevie Wonder played an unannounced concert for Clevelanders standing in line for early voting that same day. His impromptu performance provided extra incentive for these voters to brave the long lines for hours and make their voices heard.

All together now – No matter how strident the song, campaign music rarely turns into attacks on fellow Americans who share different political beliefs. And for good cause: no campaign wants a belligerent message that will turn off independent voters. This policy seems to extend to candidate-affiliated musicians’ comments off-stage, for reasons not limited to the threat of alienating fans and losing record and ticket sales. Even after endorsing the President, Springsteen still made time to speak (via telephone aboard Air Force One) with devoted E Street fan and Republican National Convention keynote speaker Governor Chris Christie. Kid Rock breached the partisan gap the hard way when he ran into Obama at an event just weeks after the November election. He said the President reminded him, “I’m still here,” which he recalled acknowledging while laughingly retelling the encounter. Kid Rock went on to call for Americans to support their country and wished the President good luck in resolving the nation’s challenges. If politicians and musicians, even the self-designated Devil Without a Cause, can reconcile after an election, surely their supporters can come together right now.