Aren't You the Guy Who Hit Me in the Eye?

Hello there from Poland.

Pop Culture Must Die has been growing by leaps and bounds, both in new subscribers and the traffic coming to the website. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this. I’ve been having too much fun putting these newsletters together every week, so it’s gratifying to know that people are responding to them. Thank you.

This week, I’ll be talking about my Hard Out, a look at one of the more interesting books from my library, and a crime most delicious.

The Hard Out

22 years later, I still think of St. Patrick’s Day 2003 as the night before the end of the world.

This was in South Tampa a lifetime ago. I had moved there two years earlier from Philadelphia, and like the city before, there was a sense that this spin-off version of my life was about to be rebooted again. And it had to, really, because I was (again) inching toward a life of endless drunken nights, saying yes to all the wrong things, and waking up in strange places.

Even now I’m still flabbergasted about those two years spent in South Tampa. It was all about access: porn sets on Davis Island, midnight gatherings in strange penthouses, VIP parties, sitting in restaurant kitchens being spoon-fed by chefs, Halloween parties that significantly altered our DNA, and so on.

My spin-off was running out of ideas and was going to jump the shark soon.

When I came home from work that St. Patrick’s Day, there was an email waiting for me. I had gotten the teaching position that I had applied for. It was in Poland. I just needed to let them know if I wanted it.

And there it was. My Hard Out.

I stepped out of my apartment — surrounded by some of the best clubs, pubs, and restaurants Tampa had to offer — and felt high from the email. It was early Monday evening, and the streets were already alive with drunk zombies and lines of cars circling for parking spaces. You could already tell it was going to be a long night.

I met my parents for dinner around the corner and had the first beer of the night. Somewhere during the meal, I mentioned that I got another job.

“What is it?” my mother asked.

“Teaching,” I said. “Teaching English.”

“Where?” my father asked.

“A university.” I took a sip of my beer. “In Poland.”

“Good for you!” my mother said.

“You always wanted to live in Europe,” my father said.

I wanted to attribute their enthusiasm to the alcohol they were (uncharacteristically) drinking, but it was mostly because they thought I Was Full of Shit.

It wouldn’t be until I went home the following Sunday for dinner — when I repeated that I had gotten a teaching job in Poland — that they realized I was For Serious. While supportive, their enthusiasm was dramatically different then.

After dinner, I ended up at the Dubliner Irish Pub. Things started soberly with the President of the United States going on TV and announcing that we were 48 hours away from another war with Iraq. They turned off the music so everyone could listen. One man dressed as a leprechaun — and already ahead of the curve with the drinking — handled it so poorly that he was asked to leave.

It was a terrible way to start, like there was a countdown on the world’s sanity. It was an apocalyptic creeping dread, but I still had the comfort of knowing about my Hard Out. As if I could side-step my way out of reality itself.

I felt invincible. But then again, it’s easy to feel that way before midnight.

This is how I wrote about the night two days later:

Suffice it to say, it was a long and stupid night, like most of the nights in my 20s. But as ridiculous as it was on reflection, it was also pivotal. It was a turning point. Because that was the night I made a choice.

Hard Outs — those moments when your life is fundamentally altered — rarely come in life, and when they do, most of the time it’s not your decision. You’re downsized at work. You’re unceremoniously dumped by a partner. You’re trapped in the Black Lodge.

And every so often, a Hard Out comes along that’s all on you. An opportunity. A choice. An impasse. While it might be unknowingly thrust on you, the next part is entirely your decision.

It’s like time travel, where you’re allowed to change something in the past to make a better future, only this past is this moment.

This is your chance to reboot your life.

Will you be ready when that moment comes?

I already knew my answer before I opened that email. I knew before I told my parents about the job at dinner. I knew it before the drunk leprechaun said all those terrible things about the President.

The end of the world was coming, only it was the end of my world here. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. The end of the world isn’t supposed to be easy, but, good god, my heart could’ve burst with joy.

At some point way past midnight, I was outside in the patio area of the pub. It was humid. I could feel my clothes clinging to my skin in that way only Florida can provide. There was a full moon above. A band was onstage, and the members were really going for it. It seemed like all of South Tampa was on the dance floor. The crowd was chanting the chorus, “Everything’s gonna be alright! Everything’s gonna be alright! Everything’s gonna be alright, yeah!” Everyone was moving and laughing and singing.

I closed my eyes. I could feel heat all around me, and the music was so loud it was all-consuming. I opened my eyes and saw the faces around me: lots of smiles, and wet eyes, and flinging hair.

The crowd continued: “Everything’s gonna be alright! Everything’s gonna be alright! Everything’s gonna be alright, yeah!”

And for the first time in a long time, even I could believe it.

Mutilation

Since I’m still catching up on writing about all the books I’ve read recently, I thought this would be a good time to take a book off the shelf and just, you know, talk about it.

You might have picked up on how much I love books. I don’t just love books, but I love them as objects. And I especially love books that really try to create something new with the form.

One of the more interesting examples of this in my library is Oka-Leczenie by Zenon Fajfer and Katarzyna Bazarnik, which was published in 2009 in a limited print run (1001 copies). If you’ve read my book Notes from Paraspace, you might remember that I wrote about Fajfer and Bazarnik and their ideas on liberature (yeah, I spelled it right!) quite a bit.

Here’s how Oka-Leczenie is described (translated into English):

Books like this can go either way. I believe that no matter how experimental you make the book, you still owe the reader something of substance, whether that be a good story (like Danielewski’s House of Leaves or The Fifty Year Sword) or an emotional experience that’s enhanced by the book choices made by the writer (like Johnson’s The Unfortunates and, again, House of Leaves).

Oka-Leczenie is the latter, but it still takes a lot of work to get an emotional experience. For instance, the middle section of the book — perhaps the easiest part — initially looks like gibberish. The handwriting font(?) echoes how a heartbeat appears on a monitor. As you turn the pages, you start to see some words appearing in the pattern. A word here. Two words there. Little by little, there’s a story pushing out of the pattern until you get to the final page.

The other two sections operate similarly, except they experiment with different fonts, languages, images, etc.

As you can see, Oka-Leczenie is more of a puzzle, a curiosity. I love the book. It’s one of those books I return to now and again because I know I’ll see something new.

The Crime Most Delicious

Did you know that in 2013, a group of thieves stole FIVE TONS of Nutella in Germany? That’s about £14,000 or over 6800 large jars of happiness.

Whenever I feel like I’m firing on all cylinders, I think about this story as a reminder that I CAN ALWAYS BE DOING BETTER.

Five tons? What am I doing with my life?

(I really want to see this movie, by the way. I especially want to see the scene at the end when the thieves are all sitting on a beach eating from their endless jars of Nutella. One of them, our hero, says, “We did it! We can finally retire!” Netflix, hit me up! I can write this one!)

Ask Me Anything

Many of you have been great at reaching out by email with your own stories and questions. I love it all. But I recently answered a question I think would have been a great point to discuss here in the newsletter.

So if there’s a question you’ve wanted to ask that you’d be cool with me answering here, feel free to respond or reach out to me directly. I’d be thrilled to make this weekly project more collaborative.

As always, have a great week!