Ode to Memorial Park

‘The Park’

If you were ever a teenager in Omaha, then chances are you might have hung around Memorial Park. Since its creation in 1948 it’s served as a war memorial, but every adolescent in Omaha knows its true function: an uninhibited teenage wasteland.

Sure, the 67 acres of open fields allow for unparalleled games of ultimate frisbee, and the rose garden and monument offer a small respite from the trivialities of everyday life – but to me, Memorial Park was and never will be about the war memorial, the grassy expanses, or the annual shit-show concert on the 4th of July.

My affair with the Park started in the summer of 2006 when my cronies and I would wander over to the fields to toss footballs, and then to the creeks to smoke pipe tobacco -all beyond the beady eyes of the neighborhood parents. It started out as just fun & games, but eventually we found the strength to wander up to Robert H. Storz Drive (the circle), where we knew all the magic happened. After this fateful move, away from the baseball diamond and into the heart of the wasteland, there was no going back. This was like Boyz 2 Men type shit. None of us would ever be the same after.

For some reference, at this point in time kids were starting to ‘party’ –  and whether that meant drinking alcohol, smoking schwag, or gulping down Robitussin, there was an unquenchable urge to not be sober anymore. The Park was an oasis for minors trying to catch a buzz, and the creeks and shaded areas provided endless room to experiment with new-found, alternate sensory realities.

I’m going to tell you right now that I’m not here to talk about whether it’s okay for teens to use drugs, but then again, I don’t care what anyone says – every kid just wants to chug some UV Blue at one point or another.

I got totally drunk off UV Blue once. But just ONCE.

If the lure of drugs & alcohol initially brought me up to Robert H. Storz Drive, then it was the people that I encountered there that brought me back for the entirety of my high school career. The Park shaped the way I dressed, thought, talked and acted from the summer of 2006 until pretty much right now. I did a lot of growing up there, whether it was learning how to function socially or just having a basic understanding of how to not act like a dipshit in most situations, I think I owe the Park a word or two.

Memorial got a lot of bad press as a place for kids to do drugs and act like real-life delinquents.  All that stuff was obviously going on, but the Park also harbored a group of people that forged a pretty incredible, diverse community.  Nobody meant any harm, and nobody was trying to cause a ruckus. That’s kind of why we were hanging out at a park all day, duh.

Delinquents at the Park circa 2007 or something.

The mainstays of the Park were from all different walks of life. You had your typical high-schoolers, middle-age hippies, wanksters, gangsters, and then a few random neighborhood derelicts that would saunter to and fro. I’ll admit the crowd was not always pretty, but for the most part everyone got along because everyone was up there to have a good time. Also, it was a public park, so its not like anyone was barred from going there. When shit did hit the fan, like if the cops circled through or if a fight was about to ensue, everyone pretty much cooperated to make the experience as painless as possible.

One instance I remember is when the Sandman, aka the Peppa’ Man, was defending a bunch of high-schoolers from a group of thugs that were firing airsoft guns. If you knew the Sandman then you probably realize he was absolutely nothing like the high-schoolers, but nonetheless he defended the flock. After aggressively swinging some jumper cables he got the airsoft punks to leave, and paradise was saved. He really had no reason to intervene, but he did. God bless the Sandman.

This is only one of many examples, though. Memorial Park was not just a meeting place, it was the place to be. Most of the time I remember just showing up there because I knew somebody would be hanging around. Friends were everywhere. Friday and Saturday nights were packed. Occasionally things got so hyphy that the cops decided to disperse the crowds with helicopters. I mean, when has a park ever been that hoppin’?

But that was some time ago, and while I’m glad that I don’t still hang out in a park all day, I miss those years. I mean, a lot of kids practically grew up together there. Everything seemed so inconsequential at the time, but the Park was probably an important place for a lot of people. Although I could have been doing something productive instead of spending time at the Park, I don’t regret any of it. It was a lifestyle, and an opportunity to think and act for myself in some pretty real-life scenarios. I really doubt that anything like what happened from ’06-09′ can ever be done again. The community there was real if you just looked for it.

Friendships were made, doobies were smoked, virginities were taken, and lessons were learned. To everything there is a season.

Memorial Park Forever

West O still sucks,

Squincy

Why COPS is a Great TV Show

Reality television is a strange beast. From Survivor to The Real World to Jersey Shore, everyone has seen their fair share of shit going down and getting nasty. I think reality television gets a bad rap, and it definitely should because it makes super-stars out of hare-brains. When I think about these kinds of shows I get very concerned about the future of the human race, knowing that a lot of people actually enjoy watching them.

However, I think there are some reality TV series that actually do a great job of capturing ‘reality’ as it happens, and one of those shows is COPS. Sure, it’s just as edited as other shows, but some real-life shit happens on COPS, like people getting arrested, shot, and killed. Lives are torn apart right in front of your eyes – how much more real can it get than that?

Cops: Not your average reality show

I’ve been doing some research, and I can say with a decent amount of certainty that COPS was the first ‘true’ reality television show. There was, however, a show that aired in 1971 on PBS which chronicled the life of the Loud family in a show called An American Family. It was supposed to be pretty dumb and boring, but the parents divorced and their son Lance came out as a homosexual during filming. The family pretty much fell apart right in front of the cameras and actually served as the inspiration behind MTV’s The Real World.

However, at the time, the show wasn’t viewed as reality television because the concept didn’t exist yet, and the show was discontinued because there was no longer a family to film. This is why 17 years later COPS became the first ever reality television show, and why it’s also one of the most important historical documents available to the American public.

Under arrest for lewd haircut

If you look beyond all the glorious mullets, Space Jam t-shirts, and jorts, COPS is not just a show from the 90’s about petty, poor citizens being filmed violating the law. This show, when looked at as a whole, is incredibly fucking important. It’s a show that, knowingly or not, has captured massive changes and schisms within American society.

A lot of people will insist that the first reality television show was The Real World in 1992, but I say, ‘fuck that shit’. COPS first aired in Florida in March 1989 and is one of the longest running series on television, spanning 24 years.

A quarter century is a lot of time to capture on film, especially with the environments that were captured – mostly the lives of the poor, and their endeavors to live their lives without too much trouble from the fuzz. COPS has been criticized for only airing footage of these poorer, minority figures as they break the law, but the way I view it is that usually these peoples’ stories go untold. History usually only makes way for Kings, but this series is filling in the gaps. It’s showing the trickled-down results of years of bad policy in Washington, and what effect it had on the daily lives of citizens in America.

COPS effectively chronicles the Crack Epidemic of the late 80’s and early 90’s, the rise of the use of methamphetamine, as well as showing us a drastically different world from pre- and post-911 filming periods.

Police in military gear?

The episodes from earlier in the series feature lots of drug-busting, and that doesn’t surprise me because this was the height of the War on Drugs and also the Crack Epidemic, and the police were using the show as a recruiting tool and also as a way to spread Reagan’s anti-drug propaganda. Newer episodes portray a more competent, almost militant, police force that did a lot of growing up after 9/11. There are less mustaches, better weapons, more technology, and better policing in general, and I can’t tell if that’s a good or a bad thing.

However, what’s most fascinating to me is what COPS says about cops.  Some Police Forces, such as the Chicago Police Department, have come out and made public statements against it, saying that they have no time to play those types of ‘games’, which is good because Chicago is one hell of a fucked-up city.

The fact that some Police Departments are willing to entertain citizens instead of doling out justice is alarming, but telling. It’s funny that it’s illegal for us to film a policeman, but it’s perfectly fine for these television companies to come in with camera crews and broadcast those same activities over cable television (albeit with some careful editing).

Police love attention

I don’t know if Police Departments or producers of reality television shows are to blame, and it’s hard to differentiate who is preying on who here, but what I do know is that both the goals of the reality show producers and the cops is to entertain you.

They want you happy, quiet and complicit. They want you to laugh at the mullets and the crackheads, and most of the time that’s well deserved, but don’t be distracted by them. Don’t forget that the criminals and the COPS are all playing the same game, infected with the reality TV bug, subject to some corporate money-making shaman. Nobody is winning, and everyone is laughing.

But I don’t know, I’m probably wrong. Maybe COPS is just a reality show with a bangin’ theme song by Inner Circle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd68AthoNIw

I’m totally serious about everything I just said,

Squincy

College Prepared me for a life of Squalor, which might be Okay

All throughout college I thought that I was being prepped for a life of professionalism and success.  However, as my sad post-collegiate life is blooming, I can’t help but to look back and think that I was just a vagabond-in-training. I mean, I did eat out of the trash maybe once or twice.

We had the best coffee table ever.

First off, I learned to live in complete and utter filth.  Not just your dirty, run-of-the-mill college house, either.  I shit you not, there were mice living in the stove and birds nesting in the walls.  The floors were always sticky, covered in a quarter-inch of crusted booze & blood from parties thrown eons ago. We also had a collection of couches, some of which I’m convinced were legitimate bio-hazards. I don’t even know if you could really call the place a ‘house’ let alone a ‘home’.  I probably should have worn a hazmat suit while living there.

Also, for about three or four months we had no hot water, and that was literally the lowest I’ve ever felt in my life. This was like a legitimate 3rd-world problem and it totally ruined me. During that time I’m willing to bet that every bum in Fort Collins took more hot showers than I did, which is good for them I guess.

This was my favorite bathroom in the whole house!

Something else that struck me as very hobo-ish is the fact that I worked but never had any money.  I delivered pizza to the masses of Fort Collins, and after a shift was over what would I do with all my tip money? Drank it all away every single chance I got.

The Summer of 2012 was all about Lost Lake.

I wasn’t drinking any of the good stuff either. I went through a particular phase where I explored the underside of the beer world, because everyone knows there is no bad beer, some are just better than others.  I’m talking about Lost Lake, Olympia, Schlitz, Minhas, Gennesy, etc.  Every time at the liquor store when I was making a selection for what shitty beer to try next, I’d just let a drifter come inside and observe what he/she was buying, and then buy the same thing.  Vagrants really know how to drink bad beer, and I respect the shit out of them for that.

As a side effect of exploring all the varieties of poo-beer, I adapted to sleep in all sorts of different places, which is also characteristic of the vagrant.  After a little practice, you can adapt to sleep on floors, chairs, corners, and tables (because, duh, couches and beds are only for the bourgeois).  My personal favorite spot is the floor because nobody messes with someone who’s knocked out on the ground, and when you wake up on the floor it gives you great perspective into where your life path is or isn’t taking you. I like to think of the floor as a great equalizer.

This is solid form for floor-sleeping.

Perhaps I’m over-thinking things here and maybe college wasn’t a training ground for an impoverished life. However, I did see a lot of bums catnapping on the sofas in the library, and they all oddly resembled my university professors, which tells me that success is not such a linear path as we’re taught to believe. The library bums had a place to sleep, books to read, access to computers, and lots of tail to look at. They might as well have been politicians.

In retrospect I probably didn’t have to live like such a dirtbag, but I’m really glad I did. It made me appreciate stuff, like hot water, old food that still tasted kinda good, or the feeling one gets when being awakened to the chirping of baby birds inside the walls of your house.

It may be a mistake for me to think that I’m entitled to success because I’ve graduated college and have done everything I’ve been told to do up until now. But perhaps I’m making an even larger mistake by believing that I can succeed. In the Tao te Ching Lao-tzu taught that ‘success’ is like a ladder with no end: you can climb very high, but the only outcome is that you will eventually fall off. The ladder doesn’t really exist,  and the only way to achieve balance is to remain on the ground, or in my case – passed out on the floor.

Because when you’re lying on the dirty floor the ceiling always looks desirable, but no matter how hard you try, you won’t ever be able to sleep up there. The best you can do is to get a bunk bed, but that’s cheating. So perhaps a good dose of squalor is what a lot of people need, because if I’m not mistaken, living like a scumbag in college was the best time I’ve ever had.

Life should be enjoyable, but it doesn’t have to be clean, pretty or successful.

Squincy

My Family Line is in Jeopardy

The thought is always creeping around my mind, sticking it’s head out in front of me once in a while and scaring the be-jeezus out of me.  It’s an odd and unrelenting predicament that finds a few unfortunate men, and it’s all caused by the god-damned social construct that we know as Patriarchy.

As I have no first cousins (you heard that right, I have no cousins) and am the only male offspring of a very small family, it is now solely up to me to carry on my family name.  And as I’m getting older and seeing people my age getting hitched & impregnated and whatnot, it’s blatantly clear that this little problem is only going to become more obvious as life crawls onward.

My family tree has shriveled marvelously in the last few generations, leaving only a few leaves from which my progeny and I must spring forth.  Check it out.

Beholdeth: the Family Tree

When I dote over the dilemma that I’m faced with, I can’t help but to think back upon my ancestors who have dealt with it as well.  They stood up to this Herculean task, but then again, I’m pretty sure all my male ancestors were sufficiently better at living life than I ever will be.  They were born in sod huts, got hit by trains, and were introduced to manhood by fighting for their lives in foreign wars.  However, they also managed to spread their genetic pools, which have dripped down solely to myself.  Yikes.

Great-grandfather Matthew: man of class and composure.

Take a look at this guy.  He makes it look too easy.  His parents brought him in from Ireland on a boat and said, “Matthew, welcome home, don’t catch polio and go get a job at that textile mill.”  Matthew, from what I know, didn’t do either of those things but I like to imagine him hanging out in Victorian parlors, smoking tobacco and sipping tea while occasionally spinning a large globe, choosing what continent to embark on next.

However, in reality he must have just been like, “Yolo, I’m moving to Chicago and raising a bad-ass son so he can do the same someday. I’m also raising him as a White Sox fan because the Cubs are dog-meat and they always will be.”  He was right about the Cubs and his bad-ass son.

Clyde Fox circa 1944, just mobbin’ with the Coast Guard.

Take a look at that goddamn mustache.  I think that says it all about my grandfather.  He could probably drink me under the table.  Oh yeah, he got hit by a fucking train too, on his way to World War II.

HE PLAYED FOR CREIGHTON

Some of you might know this guy, my dad.  He mows the lawn, drinks more Coors light than water, smokes stogies, played basketball at Creighton in the early 70’s, and can cook a helluva steak.  He passed on absolutely NONE of his athletic ability to me. He’s also been around the block a couple of times if ya’ know what I mean.

Then there’s me:

Squincy: the end of the family line?

Well folks, this could be it.  The sterling, iron-eating nature of the family line is clearly gone, replaced by a drunk guy with a mullet eating a meatball in dangerous fashion.  I didn’t play ball for Creighton, or get hit by a goddamn train on my way to engage in foreign combat.  However, I can throw a boomerang extremely well and hold my breath for a pretty long time, which are good attributes to have at least in my own opinion.

When it comes down to it, I’m kind of like an endangered animal, except I’m just a dude.  However, the difference with a dude is that he can realize he is endangered, and then he has two choices: to give a shit about his endangerment, or to not give a shit.

I don’t know what camp I land in, but I think it’s pretty badass that I alone hold the power to extend the family line, thereby continuing the flow of hundreds of years of family breeding.  I have the power to destroy, and the power to create.  I’m not sure which is better, but then again, it’s not like I asked for this, I’m just trying to deal with it.

I guess it doesn’t matter if I carry on the family line or not because either way I’ll be getting screwed.  And it doesn’t matter how ‘punny’ that last line was because whether it’s patriarchy or matriarchy, we’re still following the same ideological bullshit that got me here in the first place.

I’ve got a lot of work to do,

Squincy

Blow me, Tinder

I think Tinder is gross for two different reasons:

1. I’ve noticed I’m usually on the toilet when I’m using the app.

2. You’ll have to read all this crap below to understand #2:

When I first heard of Tinder this last Spring I was totally, completely disgusted.  I immediately tossed it aside as a bunch of sleazy, millennial riff-raff.  After my initial dismissal of the application I forgot about it and went on with my surprisingly mediocre life: cooking beans, pumping gas, peeling scabs…you know, the usual.

That is, until a few months ago when an acquaintance of mine was completely enthralled by his phone.  I was unable to grab his attention, and once I did, I learned he was Tinder-ing.  I watched as he flipped through women like a deck of cards, tossing some and saving others for future usage.  There were ogre-beasts and vixen-babes, and some that just looked plain illegal.

Needless to say, the seeds of curiosity had taken sprout in my crotch.  It was only a few days later that I found myself pissing away all of my self-worth when I created a Tinder account.  I chose the most flattering pictures of myself that I could find (which are few), and began Tindering.

Tinder me, baby

For a while I was like, “Yeah, this is cool, look at all these babes!”  But as I flipped through these women I noticed that I was deciding if they were good enough for me based on an image that I viewed (in most cases) for less than 3-5 seconds.

When I initially got a Tinder I realized it would be extremely, extremely shallow, but the speed  and general carelessness with which I was rejecting/accepting women came to me as even more surprisingly disgusting.  And then I began thinking about how wildly popular this application is and I became thoroughly, almost violently upset with myself and the sultry world of Tinder.

If anything, Tinder is an app that perfectly reflects our millennial generation: creepy, anonymous, addicted to instant-gratification, and shallow-as-shit.  I never really expected anything out of Tinder – surely not anonymous sex – but what I’ve gotten from it is a sickening view of myself and everyone else using the app.

I’m not going to make any claims that Tinder is turning our generation into a bunch of secluded nincompoops because it’s way, way too late for that.  However, I will say that it’s part of the rickety machine that promotes unabashed materialism, and I’m not going to be complacent with a process that essentially transforms me into a piece of lust-meat.

Tinder might be fun & exciting for a while, but so is heroin – and that’s an awful comparison – but seriously, Tinder sucks.  It was like a throat-punch to any sense of self-esteem I had built up in the last few years, and realizing that I had contributed to such a system of judgmental idolatry made me feel even worse about myself.

However, I guess if you’re self-indulgent, shameless and one-dimensional, then Tinder would be perfect for you.  Just remember to throw yourself off a cliff before you set up an account.

Blow me Tinder,

Squincy

p.s. Tinder also sucks because not nearly enough vixen-babes matched with me, so they can blow me too.

Tour de Fart

Last weekend my boy Ice-Pick and I ascended upon Fort Collins, Colorado, for Tour de Fat.  In case you didn’t know, Tour de Fat is a bike parade sponsored by New Belgium Brewing Co. to promote cycling and drinking beer.  But more on that later – I’m gonna be tackling this venture chronologically.

Everything began bright and early in Omaha when Ice-Pick (aka Wermers) and I threw all our shit in my car, including two bikes, and hit the road.  If you’ve never driven all the way through Nebraska from East to West –  don’t do it.  It actually doesn’t matter which direction you’re going – because either way there is a whole lot of nothing.  Just yellow fields, empty road, the occasional cop, and dumb rural attractions (with the exception of Ole’s Big Game Steakhouse in Paxton because that place is paradise).

The most interesting thing that happened on our way was when this car totally caught fire on the side of the road.  Ice-Pick and I saw the thick black smoke from a ways away, thinking someone was burning their field, but apparently neither of us know shit about burning fields because it turned out to be a burning car.  It was probably the prettiest thing we saw along the rolling prairies except for a few babes from South Dakota.

Burnt-to-shit car

In case you were wondering, everyone in the car escaped a fiery death.

But anyway – three or four hours later, the high plains opened up and the foothills appeared : Alas, Icepick and I had reached Snort Collins…I mean Fort Collins.

After stepping foot out of my car, things rapidly escalated.  Reunited with college friends and drunk off nostalgia and Hamm’s, I suddenly found myself and Icepick struggling to bike home from downtown Fort Collins in an effort to get a little shut-eye before the Tour the next morning.  Before flopping onto Jordan Ciani and Joey Maestas’ radical futon, I set my alarm for 7:30 am.

Four or five hours later I awoke feeling surprisingly spry, and started the day off right with a hardy egg sandwich and a Busch light.  After slipping into some hand-crafted jorts and slamming another Sunshine, we were off to the races.

By races, I mean just more drinking.  We arrived around 8:30 to my friend’s pre-Tour party, and there were free pancakes that everyone was throwing instead of eating.  I don’t really know what to say about partying so early in the morning, but it was fun.

Going HAM in the A.M.

So, big deal, everyone was sauced.  But this was Tour-de-FUCKING-Fat.  It was time to go HAM or go home.

So after a few more brewski’s we all reluctantly hopped on our bikes and headed towards the parade.  The actual ‘Tour’ of Tour de Fat isn’t really that amusing.  You don’t really ride your bike, you walk it because there are so many other riders.  Tour de Fat is really just a bunch of people pedaling along the streets of Fort Collins looking where to get their next beer, opting to dip out of the parade at any chance to wet their gullets.

sweaty kids at the ‘Tour’

After getting lost and sweating a lot, I found my friends and we agreed that it’d be a good idea to drink more.  As I continued slamming beers and yelling YOLO I looked at my watch and noticed it was only noon, which was way too early to be yelling YOLO.  I think of the entire weekend, my biggest mistake was saying that before noon.

The rest of Tour de Fat is history because I lost my phone and woke up in a gutter with a different pair of clothes on.

BAC’s were  really spiking at this point.

Just kidding, I totally made that last part up because nothing super-cool happened the rest of the afternoon – I just kept sweating with my friends and stuff.

Life is tough sometimes,

Squincy

I’ve finally done it…..

I’ve finally done it.  My abysmal collegiate career is dripping in the rear view and now I wake up every day in my childhood bedroom, directly adjacent to my parents’, as if nothing ever really changed.  Living the dream, for sure, dudes.

Even worse, I’ve created this blog.  Really, it’s my theoretical attempt to defeat the despotic nepotism of local publishers and America’s workforce in general, but then again, I’m definitely one of the gears in that horrible machine, and definitely not intelligent enough to defeat it.

Fuck me, right?  A college-educated schmuck complaining about the trivialities of a privileged life while blogging at his parent’s house.  What do I know?

Well, that’s exactly what I’m here to show you.  I promise you, it’s not a whole lot, but at the very least it might make you think and giggle about how illicitly ignorant I am.  So please, laugh with me and at me, tag along for this dip-shitted adventure with your twenty-something, plebeian dream-kid: Squincy.

In case you’re wondering, Squincy is a fictional man of many interests, and chief among them are: toilet literature, colonies of ants, fire, ignorant people with ignorant thoughts, homemade salsa, scatology, shitty beer, acting cool and nonchalant, getting sick off of caffeine, regretting lots of decisions, and generally believing that I’m an original dude with something unique to offer, just like everyone else.  I’m also into YOLO culture, but more on that later.

Anyway, maybe you’ll keep reading, but if you don’t – I would never know – so I don’t know why I would care.  At the very least you could talk behind my back about this shit-blog I’m trying to start. Anything helps.

Until next time….

Squincy